{"id": "3hop2__30654_128704_89329", "docs_added": {"50585": "Philadelphia\nLargest city in Pennsylvania, United States\nPhiladelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the sixth-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 1,603,797 in the 2020 census. The city is the urban core of the larger Delaware Valley, also known as the Philadelphia metropolitan area, the nation's eighth-largest metropolitan area and seventh-largest combined statistical area with 6.245 million residents and 7.366 million residents, respectively.\nPhiladelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn, an English Quaker and advocate of religious freedom, and served as the capital of the colonial era Province of Pennsylvania. It then played a historic and vital role during the American Revolution and Revolutionary War. It served as the central meeting place for the nation's Founding Fathers, hosted the First Continental Congress (1774) and the Second Continental Congress, during which the Founders formed the Continental Army, elected George Washington as its commander, and adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. During the Revolutionary War's Philadelphia campaign, the city briefly fell to the British Army, which occupied Philadelphia for nine months from September 1777 to June 1778. \nIn 1787, following the end of the Revolutionary War and establishment of independence, the U.S. Constitution was ratified in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Convention. Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until 1790, and it served as the nation's first capital from May 10, 1775, until December 12, 1776, and on four subsequent occasions until 1800, when construction of the new national capital in Washington, D.C. was completed.\nPhiladelphia maintains extensive contemporary influence in business and industry, culture, sports, and music. With 17 four-year universities and colleges in the city, Philadelphia is one of the nation's leading centers for higher education and academic research. The city is a national cultural center, hosting more outdoor sculptures and murals than any other city in the nation. Fairmount Park, when combined with adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park in the same watershed, is , representing one of the nation's largest and the world's 55th-largest urban park. Philadelphia is known for its arts, culture, cuisine, and colonial and Revolutionary-era history; in 2016, it attracted 42\u00a0million domestic tourists who spent $6.8\u00a0billion, representing $11\u00a0billion in economic impact to the city and its surrounding Pennsylvania counties. With five professional sports teams and one of the nation's most loyal and passionate fan bases, Philadelphia is often ranked as the nation's best city for professional sports fans. The city has a culturally and philanthropically active LGBTQ+ community. Philadelphia also has played an immensely influential historic and ongoing role in the development and evolution of American music, especially R&B, soul, and rock.\nAs of 2023[ [update]], the Philadelphia metropolitan area had a gross metropolitan product of US$557.6 billion and is home to 13 \"Fortune\" 500 corporate headquarters. Metropolitan Philadelphia ranks as one of the nation's Big Five venture capital hubs, facilitated by its geographic proximity to both the entrepreneurial and financial ecosystems of New York City and the federal regulatory environment of Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Philadelphia is also a biotechnology hub. The Philadelphia Stock Exchange, owned by Nasdaq since 2008, is the nation's oldest stock exchange and a global leader in options trading. 30th Street Station, the city's primary rail station, is the third-busiest Amtrak hub in the nation with over 4.1 million passengers in 2023. The city's multimodal transportation and logistics infrastructure includes Philadelphia International Airport, a major transatlantic gateway and transcontinental hub; the rapidly-growing PhilaPort seaport; and Interstate 95, the spine of the north\u2013south highway system along the U.S. East Coast.\nPhiladelphia is a city of many firsts, including the nation's first library (1731), hospital (1751), medical school (1765), national capital (1774), university (by some accounts) (1779), central bank (1781), stock exchange (1790), zoo (1874), and business school (1881). Philadelphia contains 67 National Historic Landmarks, including Independence Hall. From the city's 17th century founding through the present, Philadelphia has been the birthplace or home to an extensive number of prominent and influential Americans.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nNative peoples.\nPrior to the arrival of Europeans in the early 17th century, the Lenape, an Indian tribe also known as the Delaware Indians, lived in the village of Shackamaxon in present-day Philadelphia and the surrounding area. The Lenape historically lived along the Delaware River watershed, western Long Island, and the Lower Hudson Valley. Most Lenape were pushed out of the region during the 18th century as the original Thirteen colonies expanded, which was further exacerbated by losses from intertribal conflicts. Lenape communities were also weakened by newly introduced diseases, mainly smallpox, and conflicts with Europeans. The Iroquois occasionally fought the Lenape. Surviving Lenape moved west into the upper Ohio River basin. Following the American Revolutionary War and the subsequent establishment of the United States, the Lenape began moving further west. In the 1860s, the U.S. federal government sent most remaining Lenape in the eastern United States to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma and surrounding territories as part of the Indian removal policy.\nColonial era.\nEuropeans first entered Philadelphia and the surrounding Delaware Valley in the early 17th century. The first settlements were founded by Dutch colonists, who built Fort Nassau on the Delaware River in 1623 in what is now Brooklawn, New Jersey. The Dutch considered the entire Delaware River valley to be part of their New Netherland colony. In 1638, Swedish settlers led by renegade Dutch established the colony of New Sweden at Fort Christina, located in present-day Wilmington, Delaware, and quickly spread out in the valley. In 1644, New Sweden supported the Susquehannocks in their war against Maryland colonists. In 1648, the Dutch built Fort Beversreede on the west bank of the Delaware, south of the Schuylkill River near the present-day Eastwick section of Philadelphia, to reassert their dominion over the area. The Swedes responded by building Fort Nya Korsholm, or New Korsholm, named after a town in Finland with a Swedish majority.\nIn 1655, a Dutch military campaign led by New Netherland Director-General Peter Stuyvesant took control of the Swedish colony, ending its claim to independence. The Swedish and Finnish settlers continued to have their own militia, religion, and court, and to enjoy substantial autonomy under the Dutch. An English fleet captured the New Netherland colony in 1664, though the situation did not change substantially until 1682, when the area was included in William Penn's charter for Pennsylvania.\nIn 1681, in partial repayment of a debt, Charles II of England granted Penn a charter for what would become the Pennsylvania colony. Despite the royal charter, Penn bought the land from the local Lenape in an effort to establish good terms with the Native Americans and ensure peace for the colony. Penn made a treaty of friendship with Lenape chief Tammany under an elm tree at Shackamaxon, in what is now the city's Fishtown neighborhood. Penn named the city Philadelphia, which is Greek for \"brotherly love\", derived from the Ancient Greek terms \u03c6\u03af\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2 \"ph\u00edlos\" (beloved, dear) and \u1f00\u03b4\u03b5\u03bb\u03c6\u03cc\u03c2 \"adelph\u00f3s\" (brother, brotherly). There were a number of cities named \"Philadelphia\" in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Greek and Roman periods, including modern Ala\u015fehir, mentioned as the site of an early Christian congregation in the Book of Revelation. As a Quaker, Penn had experienced religious persecution and wanted his colony to be a place where anyone could worship freely. This tolerance, which exceeded that of other colonies, led to better relations with the local native tribes and fostered Philadelphia's rapid growth into America's most important city.\nPenn planned a city on the Delaware River to serve as a port and place for government. Hoping that Philadelphia would become more like an English rural town instead of a city, Penn laid out roads on a grid plan to keep houses and businesses spread far apart with areas for gardens and orchards.\nThe city's inhabitants did not follow Penn's plans, however, and instead crowded the present-day Port of Philadelphia on the Delaware River and subdivided and resold their lots. Before Penn left Philadelphia for the final time, he issued the Charter of 1701 establishing it as a city. Though poor at first, Philadelphia became an important trading center with tolerable living conditions by the 1750s. Benjamin Franklin, a leading citizen, helped improve city services and founded new ones that were among the first in the nation, including a fire company, library, and hospital.\nA number of philosophical societies were formed, which were centers of the city's intellectual life, including the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture (1785), the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts (1787), the Academy of Natural Sciences (1812), and the Franklin Institute (1824). These societies developed and financed new industries that attracted skilled and knowledgeable immigrants from Europe.\nAmerican Revolution.\nPhiladelphia's importance and central location in the colonies made it a natural center for America's revolutionaries. By the 1750s, Philadelphia surpassed Boston as the largest city and busiest port in British America, and the second-largest city in the entire British Empire after London. In 1774, as resentment of the British government's policies towards the colonies and support for independence began burgeoning in the colonies, Philadelphia hosted the First Continental Congress at Carpenters' Hall, and 12 of the original 13 colonies sent delegates to the Congress.\nFrom 1775 to 1781, Philadelphia hosted the Second Continental Congress, whose 56 delegated unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence inside what was then called Pennsylvania State House and was later renamed Independence Hall. Written predominantly by Thomas Jefferson from his second-floor apartment on Market Street within walking distance of Independence Hall, the Declaration has been described by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis as \"the most potent and consequential words in American history,\" and its adoption represented a declaration of war against Great Britain. Since the Declaration's July 4, 1776, adoption, its signing has been cited globally and repeatedly by various peoples of the world seeking independence and liberty. It also has been, since its adoption, the basis for annual celebration by Americans; in 1938, this celebration of the Declaration was formalized as Independence Day, one of only eleven designated U.S. federal holidays.\nAfter George Washington's defeat at the Battle of Brandywine in Chadds Ford Township, on September 11, 1777, during the Philadelphia campaign, the revolutionary capital of Philadelphia was defenseless, and the city prepared for what was perceived to be an inevitable British attack. Because bells could easily be recast into munitions, the Liberty Bell, then known as the Pennsylvania State Bell, and bells from two Philadelphia churches, Christ Church and St. Peter's Church, were hastily taken down and transported by heavily guarded wagon train out of the city. The Liberty Bell was taken to Zion German Reformed Church in Northampton Town, which is present-day Allentown, where it was hidden under the church's floor boards for nine months from September 1777 until departure of British forces from Philadelphia in June 1778. Two Revolutionary War battles, the Siege of Fort Mifflin, fought between September 26 and November 16, 1777, and the Battle of Germantown, fought on October 4, 1777, took place within Philadelphia's city limits.\nIn Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation on November 15, 1777. Independence Hall in Philadelphia was the meeting place for the Constitutional Convention, which ratified the Constitution on September 17, 1787, which is now the longest-standing codified national constitution.\nPhiladelphia served as capital of the United States for most of the colonial and early post-colonial period. including for a decade, from 1790 to 1800, while Washington, D.C., was being constructed and prepared to serve as the new national capital, and on five prior occasions between 1776 and 1790. In 1793, the largest yellow fever epidemic in U.S. history killed approximately 4,000 to 5,000 people in Philadelphia, or about ten percent of the city's population at the time. The capital of the United States was moved to Washington, D.C. in 1800 upon completion of the White House and U.S. Capitol buildings.\nThe state capital was moved from Philadelphia to Lancaster in 1799, then ultimately to Harrisburg in 1812. Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until the late 18th century. It also was the nation's financial and cultural center until ultimately being eclipsed in total population by New York City in 1790. In 1816, the city's free Black community founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent Black denomination in the country, and the first Black Episcopal Church. The free Black community also established many schools for its children with the help of Quakers. Large-scale construction projects for new roads, canals, and railroads made Philadelphia the first major industrial city in the United States.\n19th century.\nThroughout the 19th century, Philadelphia hosted a variety of industries and businesses; the largest was the textile industry. Major corporations in the 19th and early 20th centuries included the Baldwin Locomotive Works, William Cramp & Sons Shipbuilding Company, and the Pennsylvania Railroad. Established in 1870, the Philadelphia Conveyancers' Association was chartered by the state in 1871. Along with the U.S. Centennial in 1876, the city's industry was celebrated in the Centennial Exposition, the first official World's fair in the U.S.\nImmigrants, mostly from Ireland and Germany, settled in Philadelphia and the surrounding districts. These immigrants were largely responsible for the first general strike in North America in 1835, in which workers in the city won the ten-hour workday. The city was a destination for thousands of Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine in the 1840s; housing for them was developed south of South Street and later occupied by succeeding immigrants. They established a network of Catholic churches and schools and dominated the Catholic clergy for decades. Anti-Irish, anti-Catholic nativist riots erupted in Philadelphia in 1844. The rise in population of the surrounding districts helped lead to the Act of Consolidation of 1854, which extended the city limits from the of Center City to the roughly of Philadelphia County.\nIn the latter half of the 19th century and leading into the 20th century, immigrants from Russia, Eastern Europe, and Italy, and African Americans from the southern U.S. settled in the city.\nPhiladelphia was represented by the Washington Grays in the American Civil War. The African-American population of Philadelphia increased from 31,699 to 219,559 between 1880 and 1930, largely stemming from the Great Migration from the South.\n20th century.\nBy the 20th century, Philadelphia had an entrenched Republican political machine and a complacent population. In 1910, a general strike shut down the entire city.\nIn 1917, following outrage over the election-year murder of a Philadelphia police officer, the City Council shrank from two houses to just one. In July 1919, Philadelphia was one of more than 36 industrial cities nationally to suffer a race riot during Red Summer in post-World War I unrest as recent immigrants competed with Blacks for jobs. In the 1920s, the public flouting of Prohibition laws, organized crime, mob violence, and corrupt police involvement in illegal activities led to the appointment of Brig. Gen. Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marine Corps as the city's director of public safety, but political pressure still prevented long-term success in fighting crime and corruption.\nIn 1940, non-Hispanic whites constituted 86.8% of the city's population. In 1950, the population peaked at more than two million residents, then began to decline with the restructuring of industry that led to the loss of many middle-class union jobs. In addition, suburbanization enticed many affluent residents to depart the city for its outlying railroad commuting towns and newer housing. The resulting reduction in Philadelphia's tax base and the resources of local government caused the city to struggle through a long period of adjustment, and it approached bankruptcy by the late 1980s.\nIn 1985, the MOVE Bombing of the Cobbs Creek neighborhood by city helicopters occurred, killing 11 and destroying 61 homes.\nRevitalization and gentrification of neighborhoods began in the late 1970s and continues into the 21st century with much of the development occurring in the Center City and University City neighborhoods. But this expanded a shortage of affordable housing in the city. After many manufacturers and businesses left Philadelphia or shut down, the city started attracting service businesses and began to market itself more aggressively as a tourist destination. Contemporary glass-and-granite skyscrapers were built in Center City beginning in the 1980s. Historic areas such as Old City and Society Hill were renovated during the reformist mayoral era of the 1950s through the 1980s, making both areas among the most desirable Center City neighborhoods. Immigrants from around the world began to enter the U.S. through Philadelphia as their gateway, leading to a reversal of the city's population decline between 1950 and 2000, during which it lost about 25 percent of its residents.\n21st century.\nPhiladelphia eventually began experiencing a growth in its population in 2007, which continued with incremental annual increases through the present. A migration pattern has been established from New York City to Philadelphia by residents opting for a large city with relative proximity and a lower cost of living.\nGeography.\nTopography.\nPhiladelphia's geographic center is about 40\u00b0 0\u2032 34\u2033 north latitude and 75\u00b0 8\u2032 0\u2033 west longitude. The 40th parallel north passes through neighborhoods in Northeast Philadelphia, North Philadelphia, and West Philadelphia including Fairmount Park. The city encompasses , of which is land and , or 6%, is water. Natural bodies of water include the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, lakes in Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park, and Cobbs, Wissahickon, and Pennypack creeks. The largest artificial body of water is East Park Reservoir in Fairmount Park.\nThe lowest point is sea level and the highest point is in Chestnut Hill, about above sea level on Summit Street near the intersection of Germantown Avenue and Bethlehem Pike at: 40.07815 N, 75.20747 W. Philadelphia is located on the Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line that separates the Atlantic Plain from the Piedmont. The Schuylkill River's rapids at East Falls were inundated by completion of the dam at Fairmount Water Works.\nThe city is the seat of its own county. The city is bordered by six adjacent counties: Montgomery to the northwest; Bucks to the north and northeast; Burlington County, New Jersey to the east; Camden County, New Jersey to the southeast; Gloucester County, New Jersey to the south; and Delaware County to the southwest.\nCityscape.\nCity planning.\nPhiladelphia was created in the 17th century, following the plan by William Penn's surveyor Thomas Holme. Center City is structured with long, straight streets running nearly due east\u2013west and north\u2013south, forming a grid pattern between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers that is aligned with their courses. The original city plan was designed to allow for easy travel and to keep residences separated by open space that would help prevent the spread of fire. In keeping with the idea of a \"Greene Countrie Towne\", and inspired by the many types of trees that grew in the region, Penn named many of the east\u2013west streets for local trees. Penn planned the creation of five public parks in the city which were renamed in 1824. Centre Square was renamed Penn Square; Northeast Square was renamed Franklin Square; Southeast Square was renamed Washington Square; Southwest Square was renamed Rittenhouse Square; and Northwest Square was renamed Logan Circle/Square. Center City had an estimated 183,240 residents as of 2015[ [update]], making it the second-most populated downtown area in the United States after Midtown Manhattan in New York City.\nPhiladelphia's neighborhoods are divided into six large sections that surround Center City: North Philadelphia, Northeast Philadelphia, South Philadelphia, Southwest Philadelphia, West Philadelphia, and Northwest Philadelphia. The city's geographic boundaries have been largely unchanged since these neighborhoods were consolidated in 1854. However, each of these large areas contains numerous neighborhoods, some of whose boundaries derive from the boroughs, townships, and other communities that constituted Pennsylvania County before their inclusion within the city.\nThe City Planning Commission, tasked with guiding growth and development of the city, has divided the city into 18 planning districts as part of the Philadelphia2035 physical development plan. Much of the city's 1980 zoning code was overhauled from 2007 to 2012 as part of a joint effort between former mayors John F. Street and Michael Nutter. The zoning changes were intended to rectify incorrect zoning maps to facilitate future community development, as the city forecasts an additional 100,000 residents and 40,000 jobs will be added by 2035.\nThe Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) is the largest landlord in Pennsylvania. Established in 1937, the PHA is the nation's fourth-largest housing authority, serving about 81,000 people with affordable housing, while employing 1,400 on a budget of $371\u00a0million. The Philadelphia Parking Authority is responsible for ensuring adequate parking for city residents, businesses, and visitors.\nArchitecture.\nPhiladelphia's architectural history dates back to colonial times and includes a wide range of styles. The earliest structures were constructed with logs, but brick structures were common by 1700. During the 18th century, the cityscape was dominated by Georgian architecture, including Independence Hall and Christ Church.\nIn the first decades of the 19th century, Federal and Greek Revival architecture were the dominant styles produced by Philadelphia architects such as Benjamin Latrobe, William Strickland, John Haviland, John Notman, Thomas Walter, and Samuel Sloan. Frank Furness is considered Philadelphia's greatest architect of the second half of the 19th century. His contemporaries included John McArthur Jr., Addison Hutton, Wilson Eyre, the Wilson Brothers, and Horace Trumbauer. In 1871, construction began on the Second Empire-style Philadelphia City Hall. The Philadelphia Historical Commission was created in 1955 to preserve the cultural and architectural history of the city. The commission maintains the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, adding historic buildings, structures, sites, objects and districts as it sees fit.\nIn 1932, Philadelphia became home to the first modern International Style skyscraper in the United States, the PSFS Building, designed by George Howe and William Lescaze. The City Hall remained the tallest building in the city until 1987 when One Liberty Place was completed. Numerous glass and granite skyscrapers were built in Center City beginning in the late 1980s. In 2007, the Comcast Center surpassed One Liberty Place to become the city's tallest building. The Comcast Technology Center was completed in 2018, reaching a height of , as the tallest building in the United States outside of Manhattan and Chicago.\nFor much of Philadelphia's history, the typical home has been the row house. The row house was introduced to the United States via Philadelphia in the early 19th century and, for a time, row houses built elsewhere in the United States were known as \"Philadelphia rows\". A variety of row houses are found throughout the city, from Federal-style continuous blocks in Old City and Society Hill to Victorian-style homes in North Philadelphia to twin row houses in West Philadelphia. While newer homes have been built recently, much of the housing dates to the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, which has created problems such as urban decay and vacant lots. Some neighborhoods, including Northern Liberties and Society Hill, have been rehabilitated through gentrification.\nParks.\nAs of 2014[ [update]], the city's total park space, including municipal, state, and federal parks in the city, amounts to . Philadelphia's largest park is Fairmount Park, which includes the Philadelphia Zoo and encompasses of the total parkland. Fairmount Park's adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park contains . Fairmount Park, when combined with Wissahickon Valley Park, is one of the largest contiguous urban park areas in the U.S. The two parks, along with the Colonial Revival, Georgian and Federal-style mansions in them, have been listed as one entity on the National Register of Historic Places since 1972.\nClimate.\nWithin the K\u00f6ppen climate classification, Philadelphia falls under the northern periphery of the humid subtropical climate zone (K\u00f6ppen \"Cfa\"). Within the Trewartha climate classification, Philadelphia has a temperate maritime climate (\"Do\") limited to the north by the continental climate (\"Dc\"). Summers are typically hot and muggy. Fall and spring are generally mild, and winter is moderately cold. The plant life hardiness zones are 7a and 7b, reflecting an average annual extreme minimum temperature between .\nSnowfall is highly variable. Some winters have only light snow while others include major snowstorms. The normal seasonal snowfall averages , with rare snowfalls in November or April, and rarely any sustained snow cover. Seasonal snowfall accumulation has ranged from trace amounts in 1972\u201373, to in the winter of 2009\u201310. The city's heaviest single-storm snowfall was , which occurred in January 1996.\nPrecipitation is generally spread throughout the year, with eight to eleven wet days per month, at an average annual rate of , but historically ranging from in 1922 to in 2011. The most rain recorded in one day occurred on July 28, 2013, when fell at Philadelphia International Airport. Philadelphia has a moderately sunny climate with an average of 2,498 hours of sunshine annually. The percentage of sunshine ranges from 47% in December to 61% in June, July, and August.\nThe January daily average temperature is . The temperature frequently rises to during thaws. July averages . Heat waves accompanied by high humidity and heat indices are frequent, with highs reaching or exceeding on 30 days of the year. The average window for freezing temperatures is November 6 to April 2, allowing a growing season of 217 days. Early fall and late winter are generally dry, with February having the lowest average precipitation at . The dewpoint in the summer averages between .\nThe highest recorded temperature was on August 7, 1918. Temperatures at or above are not common, with the last occurrence of such a temperature being July 21, 2019. The lowest officially recorded temperature was on February 9, 1934. Temperatures at or below are rare, with the last such occurrence being January 19, 1994. The record low maximum is on February 10, 1899, and December 30, 1880. The record high minimum is on July 23, 2011, and July 24, 2010.\nTime Series.\nAir quality.\nPhiladelphia County received an ozone grade of F and a 24-hour particle pollution rating of D in the American Lung Association's 2017 State of the Air report, which analyzed data from 2013 to 2015. The city was ranked 22nd for ozone, 20th for short-term particle pollution, and 11th for year-round particle pollution. According to the same report, the city experienced a significant reduction in high ozone days since 2001\u2014from nearly 50 days per year to fewer than 10\u2014along with fewer days of high particle pollution since 2000\u2014from about 19 days per year to about 3\u2014and an approximate 30% reduction in annual levels of particle pollution since 2000.\nFive of the ten largest combined statistical areas (CSAs) were ranked higher for ozone: Los Angeles (1st), New York City (9th), Houston (12th), Dallas (13th), and San Jose, California (18th). Many smaller CSAs were also ranked higher for ozone, including Sacramento (8th), Las Vegas (10th), Denver (11th), El Paso (16th), and Salt Lake City (20th). Only two of those same ten CSAs, San Jose and Los Angeles, were ranked higher than Philadelphia for both year-round and short-term particle pollution.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nAs of the 2020 U.S. Census, there were 1,603,797 people residing in Philadelphia, representing a 1.2% increase from the 2019 census estimate. The racial composition of the city was 39.3% Black alone (42.0% Black alone or in combination), 36.3% White alone (41.9% White alone or in combination), 8.7% Asian alone, 0.4% American Indian and Alaska Native alone, 8.7% some other race, and 6.9% multiracial. 14.9% of residents were Hispanic or Latino.\n34.8% had a bachelor's degree or higher. 23.9% spoke a language other than English at home, the most common of which was Spanish (10.8%). 15.0% of the populations foreign born, roughly half of whom are naturalized U.S. citizens. 3.7% of the population are veterans. The median household income was $52,889 and 22.8% of the population lived in poverty. 49.5% of the population drove alone to work, while 23.2% used public transit, 8.2% carpooled, 7.9% walked, and 7.0% worked from home. The average commute is 31 minutes.\nAfter the 1950 census, when a record high of 2,071,605 was recorded, the city's population began a long decline. The population dropped to a low of 1,488,710 residents in 2006 before beginning to rise again. Between 2006 and 2017, Philadelphia added 92,153 residents. In 2017, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that the racial composition of the city was 41.3% Black (non-Hispanic), 34.9% White (non-Hispanic), 14.1% Hispanic or Latino, 7.1% Asian, 0.4% Native American, 0.05% Pacific Islander, and 2.8% multiracial.\nImmigration and cultural diversity.\nIn addition to the city's economic growth, the city's population has been fueled by foreign immigration. According to The Pew Charitable Trusts, the city's foreign-born population increased by 69% between 2000 and 2016 to constitute nearly 20% of Philadelphia's workforce, and it doubled between 1990 and 2017 to constitute 13.8% of the city's total population, with the top five countries of origin being China by a significant margin followed by the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, India, and Vietnam.\nIrish, Italian, German, Polish, English, Russian, Ukrainian, and French ancestries constitute the largest European ethnic groups in the city. Philadelphia has the second-largest Irish and Italian populations in the United States after New York City. South Philadelphia remains one of the largest Italian neighborhoods in the country and is home to the Italian Market.\nThe Pennsport neighborhood and Gray's Ferry section of South Philadelphia, home to many Mummer clubs, are well known as Irish neighborhoods. The Kensington, Port Richmond, and Fishtown neighborhoods have historically been heavily Irish and Polish. Port Richmond is a center for the Polish-American community in Philadelphia, and it remains a common destination for Polish immigrants. Northeast Philadelphia, although known for its Irish and Irish-American population, is home to a Jewish and Russian population. Mount Airy in Northwest Philadelphia also contains a Jewish community. Nearby Chestnut Hill is historically known as an Anglo-Saxon Protestant community.\nPhiladelphia's Black American population is the fourth-largest in the country after New York City, Chicago, and Houston. West Philadelphia and North Philadelphia are largely African-American neighborhoods, but many are leaving those areas in favor of the Northeast and Southwest sections of Philadelphia. A higher proportion of African-American Muslims reside in Philadelphia than most other major U.S. cities. West Philadelphia and Southwest Philadelphia are home to various Afro-Caribbean and African immigrant communities.\nThe Puerto Rican population in Philadelphia is the second-largest on the U.S. mainland after New York City, and the second-fastest growing after Orlando. Eastern North Philadelphia, particularly Fairhill and surrounding areas to the north and east, has one of the highest concentrations of Puerto Ricans outside Puerto Rico, with many large swaths of blocks being close to 100% Puerto Rican. Puerto Rican and Dominican populations reside in North Philadelphia and the Northeast, and Mexican and Central American populations exist in South Philadelphia. South American migrants were being transported by bus from Texas to Philadelphia beginning in 2022.\nPhiladelphia's Asian American population includes those of Chinese, Indians, Vietnamese, South Koreans, Filipinos, Cambodians, and Indonesians. Over 35,000 Chinese Americans lived in the city in 2015, including a Fuzhounese population. Center City hosts a Chinatown that is served by Chinatown bus lines with service to/from Chinatown, Manhattan. Indians make up the second-largest Asian group in the city of Philadelphia, while making up the largest foreign-born population in the Delaware Valley. A Korean community initially settled in the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Olney; however, the primary Koreatown has subsequently shifted further north, straddling the city's border with adjacent Cheltenham in Montgomery County and Cherry Hill in South Jersey. South Philadelphia is home to Vietnamese-Americans in Little Saigon and Cambodian-Americans in Cambodia Town, as well as Thai-American, Indonesian-American, and Chinese-American communities.\nPhiladelphia's Gay village near Washington Square is home to a concentration of gay and lesbian-friendly businesses, restaurants, and bars.\nReligion.\nIn a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, 68% of the population of the city identified themselves as Christian. Approximately 41% of Christians in the city and area professed attendance at a variety of churches that could be considered Protestant, while 26% professed Catholic beliefs.\nThe Protestant Christian community in Philadelphia is dominated by mainline Protestant denominations including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church in the United States, Presbyterian Church (USA) and American Baptist Churches USA. One of the most prominent mainline Protestant jurisdictions is the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. The African Methodist Episcopal Church was established in Philadelphia. Historically, the city has strong connections to the Quakers, Unitarian Universalism, and the Ethical Culture movement, all of which continue to be represented in the city. The Quaker Friends General Conference is based in Philadelphia. Evangelical Protestants making up less than 15% of the population were also prevalent.\nEvangelical Protestant bodies included the Anglican Church in North America, Lutheran Church\u2014Missouri Synod, Presbyterian Church in America, and National Baptist Convention of America. The Catholic community is primarily served by the Latin Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Eparchy of the United States of America and Canada, though some independent Catholic churches exist throughout Philadelphia and its suburbs. The Latin Church-based jurisdiction is headquartered in the city, and its see is the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. The Ukrainian Catholic jurisdiction is headquartered in Philadelphia, and is seated at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.\nLess than 1% of Philadelphia's Christians were Mormons. The remainder of the Christian demographic is spread among smaller Protestant denominations and the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox among others. The Diocese of Eastern Pennsylvania (Orthodox Church in America) and Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (Ecumenical Patriarchate) divide the Eastern Orthodox in Philadelphia. The Russian Orthodox St. Andrew's Cathedral is in the city.\nThe same study says that other religions collectively compose about 8% of the population, including Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Sikhism. Philadelphia has the fifth-largest Muslim population among U.S. cities. The remaining 24% claimed no religious affiliation.\nThe Philadelphia metropolitan area's Jewish population was estimated at 206,000 in 2001, which was the sixth-largest in the U.S. at that time. Jewish traders were operating in southeastern Pennsylvania long before William Penn. Jews in Philadelphia took a prominent part in the War of Independence. Although the majority of the early Jewish residents were of Portuguese or Spanish descent, some among them had emigrated from Germany and Poland. About the beginning of the 19th century, a number of Jews from the latter countries, finding the services of the Congregation Mickv\u00e9 Israel unfamiliar to them, resolved to form a new congregation which would use the ritual to which they had been accustomed.\nAfrican diasporic religions are practiced in some Latino and Hispanic and Caribbean communities in North and West Philadelphia.\nLanguages.\nAs of 2010[ [update]], 79.12% (1,112,441) of Philadelphia residents age 5 and older spoke English at home as a primary language, while 9.72% (136,688) spoke Spanish, 1.64% (23,075) Chinese, 0.89% (12,499) Vietnamese, 0.77% (10,885) Russian, 0.66% (9,240) French, 0.61% (8,639) other Asian languages, 0.58% (8,217) African languages, 0.56% (7,933) Cambodian (Mon-Khmer), and Italian was spoken as a main language by 0.55% (7,773) of the population over the age of five. In total, 20.88% (293,544) of Philadelphia's population age 5 and older spoke a mother language other than English.\nPoverty.\nPhiladelphia is home to many food poverty programs, of which two of the largest are Philabundance which claims to feed 90000 people per week. and Share Food Program which claims to feed 1 million people per month.\nEconomy.\nPhiladelphia's close geographical and transportation connections to other large metropolitan economies along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States have been cited as offering a significant competitive advantage for business creation and entrepreneurship. The city is the center of economic activity in both Pennsylvania and the four-state Delaware Valley metropolitan region. Five Fortune 500 companies are based in the city. As of 2021[ [update]], the Philadelphia metropolitan area is estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of US$479\u00a0billion, an increase from the $445\u00a0billion calculated by the Bureau of Economic Analysis for 2017, representing the ninth-largest U.S. metropolitan economy.\nPhiladelphia's economic sectors include financial services, health care, biotechnology, information technology, trade and transportation, manufacturing, oil refining, food processing, and tourism. Metropolitan Philadelphia is one of the top five American venture capital hubs, credited to its proximity to New York City's financial and tech and biotechnology ecosystems. Financial activities account for the largest economic sector of the metropolitan area, which is one of the largest health education and research centers in the United States. The city's two largest employers are the federal and city governments. Philadelphia's largest private employer is the University of Pennsylvania followed by Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.\nFinance and corporations.\nThe Philadelphia Stock Exchange, acquired by Nasdaq in 2007, is a global leader in options trading. The city is home to the headquarters of Comcast, the nation's largest multinational telecommunications corporation; insurance conglomerates Cigna, Colonial Penn, and Independence Blue Cross; as well as food services company Aramark, chemical makers FMC Corporation and Rohm and Haas, pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline, Amicus Therapeutics, Spark Therapeutics, apparel retailers Five Below and Urban Outfitters and its subsidiary Anthropologie, automotive parts retailer Pep Boys, and stainless steel producer Carpenter Technology Corporation.\nOther corporation headquarters in the city include RiteAid, Crown Holdings, and Brandywine Realty Trust. The headquarters of Boeing Rotorcraft Systems and its main rotorcraft factory are in the Philadelphia suburb of Ridley Park; The Vanguard Group, and the U.S. headquarters of Siemens Healthineers are headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb. Healthcare conglomerate AmerisourceBergen is located in suburban Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Across the Delaware River in adjacent Camden County, New Jersey, Campbell Soup Company and Subaru USA are both headquartered in Camden, New Jersey, and TD Bank (USA) is headquartered in nearby suburban Cherry Hill, New Jersey.\nTech and biotech.\nPhiladelphia is a hub for information technology and biotechnology. Philadelphia and Pennsylvania are attracting new life sciences ventures. As of 2024, the Delaware Valley ranks as one of the Big Five U.S. venture capital hubs, enabled by its proximity to both the entrepreneurial and financial ecosystems of New York City and to the federal regulatory environment of Washington, D.C.\nTourism.\nPhiladelphia's history attracts many tourists, with the Independence National Historical Park, which includes the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and other historic sites, received over 5\u00a0million visitors in 2016. The city welcomed 42\u00a0million domestic tourists in 2016 who spent $6.8\u00a0billion, generating an estimated $11\u00a0billion in total economic impact in the city and surrounding four counties of Pennsylvania. The annual Naked Bike Ride attracts participants from around the United States and internationally to Philadelphia.\nTrade and transportation.\nPhiladelphia International Airport, a major Transatlantic gateway and transcontinental hub, has undergone a $900\u00a0million infrastructural expansion to increase passenger capacity and augment passenger experience, and the airport continues an ongoing capital expenditure program to upgrade facilities and add further amenities. The Port of Philadelphia, having experienced the highest percentage growth by tonnage loaded in 2017 among major U.S. seaports, has doubled its shipping capacity to accommodate super-sized post-Panamax shipping vessels since 2018. Philadelphia's 30th Street Station is the third-busiest Amtrak rail hub, following Penn Station in Manhattan and Union Station in Washington, D.C., transporting over 4\u00a0million inter-city rail passengers annually.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nEducation in Philadelphia is provided by many private and public institutions. The School District of Philadelphia is the local school district, operating public schools, in all of the city. The Philadelphia School District is the eighth-largest school district in the nation with 142,266 students in 218 traditional public schools and 86 charter schools as of 2014[ [update]].\nThe city's K-12 enrollment in district\u2013run schools dropped from 156,211 students in 2010 to 130,104 students in 2015. During the same time period, the enrollment in charter schools increased from 33,995 students in 2010 to 62,358 students in 2015. This consistent drop in enrollment led the city to close 24 of its public schools in 2013. During the 2014 school year, the city spent an average of $12,570 per pupil, below the average among comparable urban school districts.\nGraduation rates among district-run schools, meanwhile, steadily increased in the ten years from 2005. In 2005, Philadelphia had a district graduation rate of 52%. This number increased to 65% in 2014, still below the national and state averages. Scores on the state's standardized test, the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) trended upward from 2005 to 2011 but subsequently decreased. In 2005, the district-run schools scored an average of 37.4% on math and 35.5% on reading. The city's schools reached their peak scores in 2011 with 59.0% on math and 52.3% on reading. In 2014, the scores dropped significantly to 45.2% on math and 42.0% on reading.\nOf the city's public high schools, including charter schools, only four performed above the national average on the SAT (1497 out of 2400) in 2014: Masterman, Central, Girard Academic Music Program, and MaST Community Charter School. All other district-run schools were below average.\nHigher education.\nMedical and research facilities of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Philadelphia has the third-largest student concentration on the East Coast, with more than 120,000 college and university students enrolled within the city and nearly 300,000 in the metropolitan area. More than 80 colleges, universities, trade, and specialty schools are in the Philadelphia region. One of the founding members of the Association of American Universities is in the city, the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution with claims to be the First university in the United States.\nThe city's largest university by student enrollment is Temple University, followed by Drexel University. The city's nationally ranked research universities comprise the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, Drexel University, and Thomas Jefferson University. Philadelphia is also home to five schools of medicine: Drexel University College of Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Temple University School of Medicine, and Thomas Jefferson University's Sidney Kimmel Medical College. Hospitals, universities, and higher education research institutions in Philadelphia's four congressional districts received more than $252\u00a0million in National Institutes of Health grants in 2015.\nOther institutions of higher learning within the city's borders include:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCulture.\nPhiladelphia is home to many national historical sites that relate to the founding of the United States. Independence National Historical Park is the center of these historical landmarks and one of the country's 22 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, and the Liberty Bell is housed, are among the city's most popular attractions. Other national historic sites include the homes of Edgar Allan Poe and Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and early government buildings, including the First and the Second Bank of the United States, Fort Mifflin, and the Gloria Dei (Old Swedes') Church. Philadelphia alone has 67 National Historic Landmarks, the third most of any city in the country.\nPhiladelphia's major science museums include the Franklin Institute, which contains the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the M\u00fctter Museum, and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. History museums include the National Constitution Center, the Museum of the American Revolution, the Philadelphia History Museum, the National Museum of American Jewish History, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Masonic Library and Museum of Pennsylvania in the Masonic Temple, and the Eastern State Penitentiary. Philadelphia is home to the United States's first zoo and hospital, as well as Fairmount Park, one of America's oldest and largest urban parks, founded in 1855.\nThe city is home to important archival repositories, including the Library Company of Philadelphia, established in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin at 1314 Locust Street, and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, founded in 1814. The Presbyterian Historical Society is the country's oldest denominational historical society, organized in 1852.\nArts.\nThe city is home to multiple art museums, including the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Rodin Museum, which holds the largest collection of work by Auguste Rodin outside France. The city's largest art museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is one of the largest art museums in the world. The long flight of steps to the Art Museum's main entrance became famous after the film \"Rocky\" (1976).\nAnnual events include the Philadelphia Film Festival, held annually each October, the 6abc Dunkin' Donuts Thanksgiving Day Parade, the nation's longest-running continuously held Thanksgiving Day parade, and the Mummers Parade, the nation's longest continuously held folk parade, which is held every New Year's Day predominantly on Broad Street.\nAreas such as South Street and the Old City section of the city have a vibrant night life. The Avenue of the Arts in Center City contains many restaurants and theaters, such as the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, home of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Academy of Music, home of Opera Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Ballet. The Wilma Theatre and the Philadelphia Theatre Company at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre produce a variety of new plays. Several blocks to the east are the Lantern Theater Company at St. Stephens Episcopal Church; and the Walnut Street Theatre, a National Historic Landmark stated to be the oldest and most subscribed-to theatre in the English-speaking world, founded in 1809. In May 2019, the Walnut Street Theatre announced a major expansion to begin in 2020. New Freedom Theatre, Pennsylvania's oldest African-American theatre, is located on North Broad Street.\nPhiladelphia has more public art than any other American city. In 1872, the Association for Public Art, formerly the Fairmount Park Art Association, was created as the first private association in the United States dedicated to integrating public art and urban planning. In 1959, lobbying by the Artists Equity Association helped create the Percent for Art ordinance, the first for a U.S. city. The program, which has funded more than 200 pieces of public art, is administered by the Philadelphia Office of Arts and Culture, the city's art agency. The city has more murals than any other American city, due to the 1984 creation of the Department of Recreation's Mural Arts Program, which seeks to beautify neighborhoods and provide an outlet for graffiti artists. The program has funded more than 2,800 murals by professional, staff and volunteer artists and educated more than 20,000 youth in underserved neighborhoods throughout Philadelphia.\nThe city is home to a number of art organizations, including the regional art advocacy nonprofit Philadelphia Tri-State Artists Equity, the Philadelphia Sketch Club, one of the country's oldest artists' clubs, and The Plastic Club, started by women excluded from the Sketch Club. Many Old City art galleries stay open late on the First Friday event of each month.\nCuisine.\nThe city is known for its hoagies, stromboli, roast pork sandwich, scrapple, soft pretzels, water ice, Irish potato candy, tastykakes, and the cheesesteak sandwich which was developed by Italian immigrants. The Philadelphia area has many establishments that serve cheesesteaks, including restaurants, taverns, delicatessens and pizza parlors. The originator of the thinly-sliced steak sandwich in the 1930s, initially without cheese, is Pat's King of Steaks, which faces its rival Geno's Steaks, founded in 1966, across the intersection of 9th Street and Passyunk Avenue in the Italian Market of South Philadelphia.\nMcGillin's Olde Ale House, opened in 1860 on Drury Street in Center City, is the oldest continuously operated tavern in the city. The City Tavern is a replica of a historic 18th-century building first opened in 1773, demolished in 1854 after a fire, and rebuilt in 1975 on the same site as part of Independence National Historical Park. The tavern offers authentic 18th-century recipes, served in seven period dining rooms, three wine cellar rooms and an outdoor garden.\nThe Reading Terminal Market is a historic food market founded in 1893 in the Reading Terminal building, a designated National Historic Landmark. The enclosed market is one of the oldest and largest markets in the country, hosting over a hundred merchants offering Pennsylvania Dutch specialties, artisan cheese and meat, locally grown groceries, and specialty and ethnic foods.\nDialect.\nThe traditional Philadelphia accent is considered by some linguists to be the most distinctive accent in North America. The Philadelphia dialect, which is spread throughout the Delaware Valley and South Jersey, is part of a larger Mid-Atlantic American English family, a designation that also includes the Baltimore accent. Additionally, it shares many similarities with the New York accent. Owing to over a century of linguistic data collected by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania under sociolinguist William Labov, the Philadelphia dialect has been one of the best-studied forms of American English. The accent is especially found within the Irish American and Italian American working-class neighborhoods. Philadelphia also has its own unique collection of neologisms and slang terms.\nMusic.\nThe Philadelphia Orchestra is generally considered one of the top five orchestras in the United States. The orchestra performs at the Kimmel Center and has a summer concert series at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts. Opera Philadelphia performs at the nation's oldest continually operating opera house\u2014the Academy of Music. The Philadelphia Boys Choir & Chorale has performed its music all over the world. The Philly Pops plays orchestral versions of popular jazz, swing, Broadway, and blues songs at the Kimmel Center and other venues within the mid-Atlantic region. The Curtis Institute of Music is one of the world's premier conservatories and among the most selective institutes of higher education in the nation.\nPhiladelphia has played a prominent role in the music of the United States. The culture of American popular music has been influenced by significant contributions of Philadelphia area musicians and producers, in both the recording and broadcasting industries. In 1952, the teen dance party program called \"Bandstand\" premiered on local television, hosted by Bob Horn. The show was renamed \"American Bandstand\" in 1957, when it began national syndication on ABC, hosted by Dick Clark and produced in Philadelphia until 1964 when it moved to Los Angeles. Promoters marketed youthful musical artists known as teen idols to appeal to the young audience. Philadelphia-born singers, including Frankie Avalon, James Darren, Eddie Fisher, Fabian Forte, Bobby Rydell, and South Philly-raised Chubby Checker, topped the music charts, establishing a clean-cut rock and roll image.\nPhilly soul music of the late 1960s\u20131970s is a highly produced version of soul music which led to later forms of popular music such as disco and urban contemporary rhythm and blues. On July 13, 1985, John F. Kennedy Stadium was the American venue for the Live Aid concert. The city also hosted the Live 8 concert, which attracted about 700,000 people to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on July 2, 2005.\nNotable rock and pop musicians from Philadelphia and its suburbs include Bill Haley & His Comets, Nazz, Todd Rundgren, Hall & Oates, the Hooters, Cinderella, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Ween, Schoolly D, Pink, the Roots, Beanie Sigel, State Property, Lisa \"Left Eye\" Lopes, Meek Mill, Lil Uzi Vert, and others.\nSports.\nPhiladelphia has one of the nation's richest histories in professional sports, dating back to the mid-19th century. Its first professional sports team, the Philadelphia Athletics, a professional baseball team, was founded in 1860. The Athletics were initially an amateur league team that turned professional in 1871. In 1876, the Athletics joined with seven other teams in founding the National League, now the longest continuously operating league in world sports. \nPhiladelphia is one of 12 U.S. cities to have teams in all four major league sports: the Philadelphia Phillies of Major League Baseball (MLB), the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League (NFL), the Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League (NHL), and the Philadelphia 76ers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Phillies, formed in 1883 as the Quakers and renamed in 1884, are the oldest team continuously playing under the same name in the same city in the history of American professional sports.\nThe Philadelphia metro area is also home to the Philadelphia Union of Major League Soccer (MLS), plays their home games at Subaru Park, a soccer-specific stadium in Chester, Pennsylvania.\nPhiladelphia was the second of eight U.S. cities to win titles in all four major leagues, the MLB, NFL, NHL, and NBA. It won a title in soccer in the now-defunct North American Soccer League in 1973. Following the 76ers' victory over the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1983 NBA Finals, however, the city's professional teams and their fans endured 25 years without a championship in any professional sport until the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, defeating the Tampa Bay Rays. This quarter century without a championship for any Philadelphia sports team is sometimes described as the Curse of Billy Penn, a reference to a 1987 decision that permitted One Liberty Place to become the first building in city history to surpass the height of \"William Penn\", a statue installed in 1894 atop City Hall. In 2004, during the city's championship drought, ESPN placed Philadelphia second on its list of \"The Fifteen Most Tortured Sports Cities\". The city's sports fans are often both praised and sometimes derided. In 2011, for instance, \"GQ\" magazine named Eagles and Phillies fans the nation's worst professional sports fans, describing them as the \"Meanest Fans in America\" in summarizing repeated incidents of their drunken behavior and long history of booing.\nAfter the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, nine years passed without a championship until the Eagles won their first Super Bowl following the 2017 season, defeating the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII. Seven seasons later, following the 2024 season, the Eagles won their second Super Bowl, defeating the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX. \nMajor professional sports teams that originated in Philadelphia, which later moved to other cities, include the Golden State Warriors basketball team, which played in Philadelphia from 1946 to 1962 and the Oakland Athletics baseball team, which was originally the Philadelphia Athletics and played in Philadelphia from 1901 to 1954.\nPhiladelphia is home to professional, semi-professional, and elite amateur teams in multiple other sports, including cricket, rugby league, and rugby union. Major running events in the city include the Penn Relays, the Philadelphia Marathon, and the Broad Street Run. The Collegiate Rugby Championship is played annually each June at Talen Energy Stadium in Chester.\nThe city also has a rich history in rowing, which has been popular in Philadelphia since the 18th century. On Boathouse Row, a symbol of Philadelphia's rich rowing history, each Big Five member has its own boathouse. Philadelphia hosts numerous local and collegiate rowing clubs and competitions, including the annual Dad Vail Regatta, the largest intercollegiate rowing event in North America with more than 100 participating U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities; the annual Stotesbury Cup Regatta, which is billed as the world's oldest and largest rowing event for high school students; and the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta. The regattas are held on the Schuylkill River and organized by Schuylkill Navy, an association of area rowing clubs that has produced numerous Olympic rowers.\nThe Philadelphia Spinners were a professional ultimate team in Major League Ultimate (MLU) until 2016. The Spinners were one of the original eight teams of the American Ultimate Disc League (AUDL), which was founded in 2012. They played at Franklin Field and won the inaugural AUDL championship and the final MLU championship in 2016. The MLU was suspended indefinitely by its investors in December 2016. As of 2018[ [update]], the Philadelphia Phoenix continue to play in the AUDL.\nPhiladelphia is home to the Philadelphia Big 5, a group of five NCAA Division I college basketball programs, including La Salle, Penn, Saint Joseph's, Temple, and Villanova universities. The sixth NCAA Division I school in Philadelphia is Drexel University. La Salle won the 1954 championship of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. Villanova won the 1985, 2016, and 2018 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournaments. Philadelphia will be one of the eleven US host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.\nLaw and government.\nPhiladelphia County is a legal nullity. All county functions were assumed by the city in 1952. The city has been coterminous with the county since 1854.\nPhiladelphia's 1952 Home Rule Charter was written by the City Charter Commission, which was created by the Pennsylvania General Assembly in an act of April 1949, and a city ordinance of June 1949. The existing city council received a proposed draft in February 1951, and the electors approved it in an election held in April 1951. The first elections under the new Home Rule Charter were held in November 1951, and the newly elected officials took office in January 1952.\nThe city uses the strong-mayor version of the mayor\u2013council form of government, which is led by one mayor in whom executive authority is vested. The mayor has the authority to appoint and dismiss members of all boards and commissions without the approval of the city council. Elected at-large, the mayor is limited to two consecutive four-year terms, but can run for the position again after an intervening term.\nCourts.\nPhiladelphia County is coterminous with the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas is the trial court of general jurisdiction for the city, hearing felony-level criminal cases and civil suits above the minimum jurisdictional limit of $10,000. The court has appellate jurisdiction over rulings from the Municipal and Traffic Courts, and some administrative agencies and boards. The trial division has 70 commissioned judges elected by the voters, along with about one thousand other employees. The court has a family division with 25 judges and an orphans' court with three judges.\nAs of 2018[ [update]], the city's District Attorney is Larry Krasner, a Democrat. The last Republican to hold the office is Ronald D. Castille, who left in 1991 and later served as the Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court from 2008 to 2014.\nThe Philadelphia Municipal Court handles traffic cases, misdemeanor and felony criminal cases with maximum incarceration of five years, and civil cases involving $12,000 or less ($15,000 in real estate and school tax cases), and all landlord-tenant disputes. The municipal court has 27 judges elected by the voters.\nPennsylvania's three appellate courts also have sittings in Philadelphia. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the court of last resort in the state, regularly hears arguments in Philadelphia City Hall. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania and the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania also sit in Philadelphia several times a year. Judges for these courts are elected at large. The state Supreme Court and Superior Court have deputy prothonotary offices in Philadelphia.\nPhiladelphia is home to the federal United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, both of which are housed in the James A. Byrne United States Courthouse.\nPolitics.\nThe current mayor is Cherelle Parker who won the election in November 2023. Parker's predecessor, Jim Kenney, served two terms from 2016 to January 2024. Parker is a member of the Democratic Party. For over seven decades, since 1952, every Philadelphia mayor has been a Democrat.\nPhiladelphia City Council is the legislative branch which consists of ten council members representing individual districts and seven members elected at-large, all of whom are elected to four-year terms. Democrats are currently the majority and hold 14 seats including nine of the ten districts and five at-large seats. Republicans hold one seat: the Northeast-based Tenth District. The Working Families Party holds two at-large seats making them the council's minority party. The current council president is Kenyatta Johnson.\nPhiladelphia's political structure consists of a system of wards and divisions. There are 66 wards with 11 to 51 divisions each for a total of 1703 divisions. Each division elects two committee people who are supposed to live within the division boundaries, and committee people select a leader for their ward. Democrats and Republicans elect their own committee people every four years. The committee person's role is to serve as a point of contact between voters and party officials and help get out the vote. Most wards are closed which means the ward leader makes sole endorsement decisions; open wards allow committee people to weigh in on these decisions. There are groups such as Open Wards Philadelphia and individuals who are working to elect ward leaders who promote an open ward system.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nPhiladelphia had historically been a bastion of the Republican Party from the American Civil War until the mid-1930s. In 1856, the first Republican National Convention was held at Musical Fund Hall at 808 Locust Street in Philadelphia.\nDemocratic registrations increased after the Great Depression; however, the city was not carried by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt in his landslide victory of 1932, as Pennsylvania was one of only six states won by Republican Herbert Hoover. Voter turnout surged from 600,000 in 1932 to nearly 900,000 in 1936 and Roosevelt carried Philadelphia with over 60% of the vote. Philadelphia has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1936. In 2008, Democrat Barack Obama drew 83% of the city's vote. Obama's win was even larger in 2012, capturing 85% of the vote. In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton won 82% of the vote.\nAs a result of the previously declining population in the city and state, Philadelphia has only three congressional districts of the 18 districts in Pennsylvania, based on the 2010 census apportionment: the 2nd district, represented by Brendan Boyle; the 3rd, represented by Dwight Evans; and the 5th, represented by Mary Gay Scanlon. All three representatives are Democrats, though Republicans still have some support in the city, primarily in the Northeast. Sam Katz ran competitive mayoral races as the Republican nominee in 1999 and 2003, losing to Democrat John Street both times.\nPennsylvania's longest-serving Senator, Arlen Specter, was an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania who opened his first law practice in Philadelphia. Specter served as a Republican from 1981 and as a Democrat from 2009, losing that party's primary in 2010 and leaving office in January 2011. He was assistant counsel on the Warren Commission in 1964 and the city's district attorney from 1966 to 1974.\nPhiladelphia has hosted various national conventions, including in 1848 (Whig), 1856 (Republican), 1872 (Republican), 1900 (Republican), 1936 (Democratic), 1940 (Republican), 1948 (Republican), 1948 (Progressive), 2000 (Republican), and 2016 (Democratic). Philadelphia has been home to one vice president, George M. Dallas, and one general of the American Civil War, George B. McClellan, who won his party's nomination for president but lost in the general election to Abraham Lincoln in 1864. In May 2019, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden chose Philadelphia to be his 2020 U.S. presidential campaign headquarters.\nEnvironmental policy.\n\"Green Cities, Clean Water\" is an environmental policy initiative based in Philadelphia that has shown promising results in mitigating the effects of climate change. The researchers on the policy have stated that despite such promising plans of green infrastructure building, \"the city is forecasted to grow warmer, wetter, and more urbanized over the century, runoff and local temperatures will increase on average throughout the city\". Even though landcover predictive models on the effects of the policy initiative have indicated that green infrastructure could be useful at decreasing the amount of runoff in the city over time, the city government would have to expand its current plans and \"consider the cobenefit of climate change adaptation when planning new projects\" in limiting the scope of city-wide temperature increase.\nPublic safety.\nPolice and law enforcement.\nIn a 2015 report by Pew Charitable Trusts, the police districts with the highest rates of violent crime were Frankford (15th district) and Kensington (24th district) in the Near Northeast, and districts to the North (22nd, 25th, and 35th districts), West (19th district) and Southwest (12th district) of Center City. Each of those seven districts recorded more than a thousand violent crimes in 2014. The lowest rates of violent crime occurred in Center City, South Philadelphia, the Far Northeast, and Roxborough districts, the latter of which includes Manayunk.\nPhiladelphia had 500, 503 according to some sources, murders in 1990, a rate of 31.5 per 100,000. An average of about 400 murders occurred each year for most of the 1990s. The murder count dropped in 2002 to 288, then rose to 406 by 2006, before dropping slightly to 392 in 2007. A few years later, Philadelphia began to see a rapid decline in homicides and violent crime. In 2013, the city had 246 murders, which is a decrease of nearly 40% since 2006.\nIn 2014, 248 homicides were committed. The homicide rate rose to 280 in 2015, then fell slightly to 277 in 2016, before rising again to 317 in 2017. Homicides increased dramatically in the late 2010s/early 2020s, reaching 499 homicides in 2020 and surpassing the 1990 \"record\" in 2021, with 501st murder on November 27 and 510 by the end of the month. Phillie ended the year with 562 murders, an all-time record. It dropped in 2022 to 514, and significantly further again in 2023, to 410.\nIn 2006, Philadelphia's homicide rate of 27.7 per 100,000 people was the highest of the country's 10 most populous cities. In 2012, Philadelphia had the fourth-highest homicide rate among the country's most populous cities. The rate dropped to 16 homicides per 100,000 residents by 2014 placing Philadelphia as the sixth-highest city in the country.\nThe number of shootings in the city has declined significantly since the early years of the 21st century. Shooting incidents peaked at 1,857 in 2006 before declining nearly 44 percent to 1,047 shootings in 2014. Major crimes have decreased gradually since a peak in 2006 when 85,498 major crimes were reported. The number of reported major crimes fell 11 percent in three years to 68,815 occurrences in 2014. Violent crimes, which include homicide, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery, decreased 14 percent in three years to 15,771 occurrences in 2014.\nIn 2014, Philadelphia enacted an ordinance decriminalizing the possession of less than 30 grams of marijuana or eight grams of hashish; the ordinance gave police officers the discretion to treat possession of these amounts as a civil infraction punishable by a $25 ticket, rather than a crime. At the time, Philadelphia was at the largest city in the nation to decriminalize the possession of marijuana. From 2013 to 2018, marijuana arrests in the city dropped by more than 85%. The purchase or sale of marijuana remains a criminal offense in Philadelphia.\nFirefighting.\nThe Philadelphia Fire Department provides fire protection and emergency medical services (EMS). The department's official mission is to protect public safety by quick and professional response to emergencies and the promotion of sound emergency prevention measures. This mandate encompasses all traditional firefighting functions, including fire suppression, with 60 engine companies and 30 ladder companies as well as specialty and support units deployed throughout the city; specialized firefighting units for Philadelphia International Airport and the Port of Philadelphia; investigations conducted by the fire marshal's office to determine the origins of fires and develop preventive strategies; prevention programs to educate the public; and support services including research and planning, management of the fire communications center within the city's 911 system, and operation of the Philadelphia Fire Academy.\nMedia.\nNewspapers.\nPhiladelphia's two major daily newspapers are \"The Philadelphia Inquirer\", first published in 1829\u2014the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the country\u2014and the \"Philadelphia Daily News\", first published in 1925. The \"Daily News\" has been published as an edition of the \"Inquirer\" since 2009. Recent owners of the \"Inquirer\" and \"Daily News\" have included Knight Ridder, The McClatchy Company, and Philadelphia Media Holdings, with the latter organization declaring bankruptcy in 2010. After two years of financial struggle, the newspapers were sold to Interstate General Media in 2012. The two newspapers had a combined daily circulation of 306,831 and a Sunday circulation of 477,313 in 2013[ [update]], the 18th-largest circulation in the country, and their collective website, Philly.com, was ranked 13th in popularity among online U.S. newspapers by Alexa Internet the same year.\nSmaller publications include the \"Philadelphia Tribune\" published five days each week for the African-American community; \"Philadelphia\" magazine, a monthly regional magazine; \"Philadelphia Weekly\", a weekly alternative newspaper; \"Philadelphia Gay News\", a weekly newspaper for the LGBT community; \"The Jewish Exponent\", a weekly newspaper for the Jewish community; \"Al D\u00eda\", a weekly newspaper for the Latino community; and \"Philadelphia Metro\", a free daily newspaper.\nStudent-run newspapers include the University of Pennsylvania's \"The Daily Pennsylvanian\", Temple University's \"The Temple News\", and Drexel University's \"The Triangle\".\nRadio.\nThe first experimental radio license was issued in Philadelphia in August 1912 to St. Joseph's College. The first commercial AM radio stations began broadcasting in 1922: first WIP, then owned by Gimbels department store, followed by WFIL, then owned by Strawbridge & Clothier department store, and WOO, a defunct station owned by Wanamaker's department store, as well as WCAU and WDAS.\nAs of 2018[ [update]], the FCC lists 28 FM and 11 AM stations for Philadelphia. As of December 2017, the ten highest-rated stations in Philadelphia were adult contemporary WBEB-FM (101.1), sports talk WIP-FM (94.1), classic rock WMGK-FM (102.9), urban adult contemporary WDAS-FM (105.3), classic hits WOGL-FM (98.1), album-oriented rock WMMR-FM (93.3), country music WXTU-FM (92.5), all-news KYW-AM (1060), talk radio WHYY-FM (90.9), and urban adult contemporary WRNB-FM (100.3). Philadelphia is served by three non-commercial public radio stations: WHYY-FM (NPR), WRTI-FM (classical and jazz), and WXPN-FM (adult alternative music).\nTelevision.\nIn the 1930s, W3XE, an experimental station owned by Philco, launched as Philadelphia's first television station. In 1939, the station became the nation's first NBC's first affiliate, and later became KYW-TV, the Philadelphia television market's CBS affiliate. In 1952, WFIL, later renamed WPVI, premiered the television show \"Bandstand\", which later became the nationally broadcast \"American Bandstand\" hosted by Dick Clark. In the 1960s, WCAU-TV, WFIL-TV, and WHYY-TV were founded.\nEach of the nation's commercial networks has an affiliate in Philadelphia: KYW-TV 3 (CBS), WPVI-TV 6 (ABC), WCAU 10 (NBC), WPHL-TV 17 (The CW with MyNetworkTV on DT2), WFPA-CD 28 (UniM\u00e1s), WTXF-TV 29 (Fox), WPSG 57 (Independent), WWSI 62 (Telemundo), and WUVP-DT 65 (Univision). The region is served also by public broadcasting stations WPPT-TV in Philadelphia, WHYY-TV in Wilmington, Delaware and Philadelphia, WLVT-TV in the Lehigh Valley, and NJTV in New Jersey.\nSince September 2024, Philadelphia is the nation's largest television market where at least one of the six English networks are shown at a station not owned by a particular network's associated parent company. The major Spanish language networks are Univision (WUVP-DT), UniM\u00e1s (WFPA-CD), and Telemundo (WWSI-TV).\nAs of 2023, the Philadelphia media market is the fifth-largest in North America with over 7.8 million viewers\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nPhiladelphia is served by SEPTA, which operates buses, trains, rapid transit (as both subways and elevated trains), trolleys, and trackless trolleys (electric buses) throughout Philadelphia, the four Pennsylvania suburban counties of Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery, in addition to service to Mercer County, New Jersey (Trenton) and New Castle County, Delaware (Wilmington and Newark, Delaware). The city's subway system consists of two routes: the subway section of the Market\u2013Frankford Line running east\u2013west under Market Street which opened in 1905 to the west and 1908 to the east of City Hall, and the Broad Street Line running north\u2013south beneath Broad Street which opened in stages from 1928 to 1938.\nBeginning in the 1980s, large sections of the SEPTA Regional Rail service to the far suburbs of Philadelphia were discontinued due to a lack of funding for equipment and infrastructure maintenance.\nPhiladelphia's 30th Street Station is a major railroad station on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor with 4.4\u00a0million passengers in 2017 making it the third-busiest station in the country after New York City's Pennsylvania Station and Washington's Union Station. 30th Street Station offers access to Amtrak, SEPTA, and NJ Transit lines. Over 12\u00a0million SEPTA and NJ Transit rail commuters use the station each year, and more than 100,000 people on an average weekday.\nThe PATCO Speedline provides rapid transit service to Camden, Collingswood, Westmont, Haddonfield, Woodcrest (Cherry Hill), Ashland (Voorhees), and Lindenwold, New Jersey, from stations on Locust Street between 16th and 15th, 13th and 12th, and 10th and 9th streets, and on Market Street at 8th Street.\nAirports.\nPhiladelphia is served by two airports. Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), the larger of the two, is south-southwest of Center City on the boundary with Delaware County, and provides scheduled domestic and international air service. As of 2023, Philadelphia International Airport is the 21st-busiest airport in the nation with over 13.6 million passengers. It is also among the world's busiest airports measured by traffic movements, including takeoffs and landings. Over 30\u00a0million passengers pass through the airport annually on 25 airlines, including all major domestic carriers. The airport has nearly 500 daily departures to over 120 destinations worldwide. SEPTA's Airport Line provides direct service between Center City railroad stations and Philadelphia International Airport.\nPhiladelphia's second major airport, Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE), is a general aviation relief airport in Northeast Philadelphia, which provides general and corporate aviation.\nRoads.\nWilliam Penn planned Philadelphia with numbered streets traversing north and south, and streets named for trees, including Chestnut, Walnut, and Mulberry (since renamed Arch Streets, traversing east and west. The two main streets were named Broad Street, the north\u2013south artery, later designated Pennsylvania Route 611, and High Street, the east\u2013west artery, which was later renamed Market Street, converging at Centre Square which later became the site of City Hall.\nInterstate 95, also known as the Delaware Expressway, traverses the southern and eastern edges of the city along the Delaware River as the main north\u2013south controlled-access highway, and connects Philadelphia with Newark, New Jersey and New York City to the north and Baltimore and Washington, D.C. to the south. The city is served by Interstate 76, also known as the Schuylkill Expressway, which runs along the Schuylkill River, intersecting the Pennsylvania Turnpike at King of Prussia and providing access to Harrisburg and points west. Interstate 676, also known as Vine Street Expressway, links I-95 and I-76 through Center City, running below street level between the eastbound and westbound lanes of Vine Street. Entrance and exit ramps for the Benjamin Franklin Bridge are near the eastern end of the expressway just west of the I-95 interchange.\nRoosevelt Boulevard and Expressway, also known as U.S. 1, connects Northeast Philadelphia with Center City via I-76 through Fairmount Park. Woodhaven Road, also known as Route 63, and Cottman Avenue, also known as Route 73, serve the neighborhoods of Northeast Philadelphia, running between I-95 and the Roosevelt Boulevard. Fort Washington Expressway, also known as Route 309, extends north from the city's northern border, serving Montgomery and Bucks Counties. U.S. Route 30, also known as Lancaster Avenue, extends west from West Philadelphia to Lancaster.\nInterstate 476, locally called the Blue Route, traverses Delaware County, bypassing the city to the west and serving the city's western suburbs, providing a direct route to Allentown, the Poconos, and points north. Interstate 276, the Pennsylvania Turnpike's Delaware River extension, is a bypass and commuter route north of the city, which links to the New Jersey Turnpike and New York City.\nDelaware River Port Authority operates four bridges in the Philadelphia area, each of which cross the Delaware River to South Jersey: Walt Whitman Bridge (I-76), the Benjamin Franklin Bridge (I-676 and U.S. 30), Betsy Ross Bridge (New Jersey Route 90), and Commodore Barry Bridge (U.S. 322 in Delaware County, south of the city. The Burlington County Bridge Commission maintains two additional bridges that cross the Delaware River. Tacony\u2013Palmyra Bridge connects PA Route 73 in the Tacony section of Northeast Philadelphia with New Jersey Route 73 in Palmyra in Burlington County. Burlington\u2013Bristol Bridge connects NJ Route 413/U.S. Route 130 in Burlington, New Jersey with PA Route 413/U.S. 13 in Bristol Township, north of Philadelphia.\nBus service.\nThe Greyhound terminal is at 1001 Filbert Street (at 10th Street) in Center City, southeast of the Pennsylvania Convention Center and south of Chinatown. Several other bus operators provide service at the Greyhound terminal including Fullington Trailways, Martz Trailways, Peter Pan Bus Lines, and NJ Transit buses.\nOther intercity bus services include Megabus with stops at 30th Street Station and the visitor center for Independence Hall, BoltBus (operated by Greyhound) at 30th Street Station, OurBus at various stops in the city.\nRail.\nSince the early days of rail transportation in the United States, Philadelphia has served as a hub for several major rail companies, particularly the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Railroad. The Pennsylvania Railroad first operated Broad Street Station, then 30th Street Station and Suburban Station, and the Reading Railroad operated Reading Terminal, now part of the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The two companies also operated competing commuter rail systems in the area. The two systems now operate as a single system under the control of SEPTA, the regional transit authority. Additionally, the PATCO Speedline subway system and NJ Transit's Atlantic City Line operate successor services to South Jersey.\nIn 1911, Philadelphia had nearly 4,000 electric trolleys running on 86 lines. In 2005, SEPTA reintroduced trolley service to the Girard Avenue Line, Route 15. SEPTA operates six subway-surface trolleys that run on street-level tracks in West Philadelphia and subway tunnels in Center City, along with two surface trolleys in adjacent suburbs.\nPhiladelphia is a regional hub of the federally-owned Amtrak system, with 30th Street Station being a primary stop on the Washington-Boston Northeast Corridor and the Keystone Corridor to Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. 30th Street also serves as a major station for services via the Pennsylvania Railroad's former Pennsylvania Main Line to Chicago. As of 2018[ [update]], 30th Street is Amtrak's third-busiest station in the country, after New York City and Washington.\nUtilities.\nWater purity and availability.\nIn 1815, Philadelphia began sourcing its water via the Fairmount Water Works on the Schuylkill River, the nation's first major urban water supply system. In 1909, the Water Works was decommissioned as the city transitioned to modern sand filtration methods. Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) provides drinking water, wastewater collection, and stormwater services for Philadelphia, as well as surrounding counties. PWD draws about 57 percent of its drinking water from the Delaware River and the balance from the Schuylkill River. The city has two filtration plants on the Schuylkill River and one on the Delaware River. The three plants can treat up to 546\u00a0million gallons of water per day, while the total storage capacity of the combined plant and distribution system exceeds one billion gallons. The wastewater system consists of three water pollution control plants, 21 pumping stations, and about of sewers.\nElectricity.\nExelon subsidiary PECO Energy Company, founded as the Brush Electric Light Company of Philadelphia in 1881 and renamed Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) in 1902, provides electricity to about 1.6\u00a0million customers and more than 500,000 natural gas customers in the southeastern Pennsylvania area including the city of Philadelphia and most of its suburbs. PECO is the largest electric and natural gas utility in the state with 472 power substations and nearly of electric transmission and distribution lines and of natural gas transmission, distribution, and service lines.\nNatural gas.\nPhiladelphia Gas Works (PGW), overseen by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, is the nation's largest municipally-owned natural gas utility. PGW serves over 500,000 homes and businesses in the Philadelphia area. Founded in 1836, the company came under city ownership in 1987 and has been providing the majority of gas distributed within city limits. In 2014, the City Council refused to conduct hearings on a $1.86\u00a0billion sale of PGW, part of a two-year effort that was proposed by the mayor. The refusal led to the prospective buyer terminating its offer.\nTelecommunications.\nSoutheastern Pennsylvania was assigned the 215 area code in 1947 when the North American Numbering Plan of the Bell System went into effect. The geographic area covered by the code was split nearly in half in 1994 when area code 610 was created, with the city and its northern suburbs retaining 215. Overlay area code 267 was added to the 215 service area in 1997, and 484 was added to the 610 area in 1999. A plan in 2001 to introduce a third overlay code to both service areas, area code 445 to 215 and area code 835 to 610, was delayed and later rescinded. Area code 445 was implemented as an overlay for area codes 215 and 267 starting on February 3, 2018.\nSister cities.\nPhiladelphia also has three partnership cities or regions:\nPhiladelphia has eight official sister cities as designated by the Citizen Diplomacy International (CDI) of Philadelphia: Philadelphia has dedicated landmarks to its sister cities. The Sister Cities Park, a site of at 18th and Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Logan Square, was dedicated in June 1976. The park was built to commemorate Philadelphia's first two sister city relationships, with Tel Aviv and Florence. Toru\u0144 Triangle, honoring the sister city relationship with Toru\u0144, Poland, was constructed in 1976, west of the United Way building at 18th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Sister Cities Park was redesigned and reopened in 2012, featuring an interactive fountain honoring Philadelphia's sister and partnership cities, a caf\u00e9 and visitor center, children's play area, outdoor garden, boat pond, and a pavilion built to environmentally friendly standards.\nThe Chinatown Gate, erected in 1984 and crafted by artisans from Tianjin, stands astride 10th Street, on the north side of its intersection with Arch Street, as a symbol of the sister city relationship. The CDI of Philadelphia has participated in the U.S. Department of State's \"Partners for Peace\" project with Mosul, Iraq, and in accepting visiting delegations from dozens of other countries.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nclass=\"wikitable succession-box noprint\" style=\"margin:0.5em auto; font-size:small;clear:both;\"", "570934": "Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church\nHistoric church in Pennsylvania, United States\nThe Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is a historic church and congregation which is located at 419 South 6th Street in Center City Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The congregation, founded in 1794, is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal congregation in the nation.\nIts present church, completed in 1890, is the oldest church property in the United States to be continuously owned by African Americans. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972.\nHistory of the congregation.\nThe church was proposed in 1791 by members of the Free African Society of Philadelphia, including Absalom Jones, out of a desire to create a space for autonomous African-American worship and community in the city. The desire to create the church was strengthened in 1792, after African-American members of St. George's Methodist Church walked out due to racial segregation in the worship services. Leading roles in the founding were played by Richard Allen, who arranged the purchase of the church's site and its construction, and Absalom Jones, who raised funds among both black and white Philadelphia residents (including then-President George Washington). Mother Bethel was one of the first African-American churches in the United States, dedicated July 29, 1794, by Bishop Francis Asbury.\nOn October 12, 1794, Reverend Robert Blackwell announced that the congregation was received in full fellowship in the Methodist Episcopal Church.\nIn 1816, Rev. Richard Allen brought together other black Methodist congregations from the region to organize the new African Methodist Episcopal Church denomination. He was elected bishop of this denomination. After the American Civil War, its missionaries went to the South to help freedmen and planted many new churches in the region.\nIn 1838, the building was damaged during the riots that followed the destruction of Pennsylvania Hall.\nAllen and his wife, Sarah Allen are both buried in the present church's crypt. The current church building was constructed in 1888\u20131890, and it has been designated a National Historic Landmark.\nOn October 25, 2009, \"The Great Gathering\" took place at St. George's Church in which the community of Mother Bethel AME and St. George's congregations gathered for Sunday worship at St. George's for the first time since the historic walkout. The Rev. Dr. Mark Kelly Tyler preached for this service.\nBuilding history.\nThe property was acquired for the new congregation in 1794. Its first building was a frame structure originally used as a blacksmith's shop, which was hauled to the site.\nThis building was later replaced by frame structures in 1805 and 1841. The 1841 church was reported to have a tunnel connecting it with a nearby Quaker meetinghouse to facilitate the movements of fugitive slaves.\nThe present building, which was completed in 1890, is a three-story masonry structure with Romanesque styling. Its large round-arch windows are adorned with stained glass from Germany.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1946572": "WXPN\nPublic radio station in Philadelphia\nWXPN (88.5 FM) is a non-commercial, public radio station licensed to the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that broadcasts an adult album alternative (AAA) radio format, along with many other format shows. WXPN produces \"World Cafe\", a music program distributed by NPR to many non-commercial stations in the United States. The station's call sign, which is often abbreviated to XPN, stands for \"Experimental Pennsylvania Network\". The broadcast tower used by WXPN is located at (), in the antenna farm complex in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia.\nHistory.\n20th century.\nWhile the University of Pennsylvania has been involved with radio since 1909 when a wireless station was located in Houston Hall, WXPN itself first came into existence in 1945 as a carrier current station at 730 AM.\nIn 1957, it was granted a full license as a 10-watt college radio station at 88.9 FM in addition to their frequency of 730 AM. From then into the mid-1970s, WXPN was a student activity of the university and as it grew, the station initiated unique programming designs including one of the earliest freeform radio formats, Phase II, in the 1960s. Local DJ Michael Tearson got his start at WXPN in the late 1960s with a radio show \"The Attic\". Tearson went on to replace Dave Herman at WMMR in 1970.\nIn 1975, a controversial broadcast on the talk show \"The Vegetable Report\" led to an obscenity complaint with the FCC, which found the charges serious enough to decline renewal of the broadcast license. This incident (December 1975) marked the first time the FCC pulled a license on grounds of obscenity. But a citizen's group organized to petition the FCC to consider XPN's unique service, and with a pledge from Penn to create positions for professional staff to run the station, the FCC allowed the license to renew.\nWith this new staff of five managers, WXPN became a steady fountain of high-quality folk, jazz, new and avant-garde music and public affairs programming produced by a combination of station alumni and community volunteers, with little to no student involvement. Veterans of WXPN that have gone on to notable achievements in other areas include Broadway producer and director Harold Prince, the station's first program director, NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell, its former news director, jazz producer Michael Cuscuna, a former DJ, and Echoes producers John Diliberto and Kimberly Haas, former producers of \"Diaspar\", and other WXPN shows.\nShows that have been staples on XPN since the 1970s include \"The Blues Show with Jonny Meister\" (Saturday nights), \"Sleepy Hollow\" (Saturday and Sunday morning quiet music shows), \"Star's End\" (ambient and space music Saturday night/Sunday morning) and \"Amazon Country\" (lesbian-oriented music and programming on Sunday evening). WXPN also broadcasts the Folk Show on Sunday evening, which started at WHAT-FM in 1962 and continued on WDAS-FM, WMMR, WIOQ and WHYY-FM but moved to WXPN in the 1990s when WHYY changed to a talk format.\nIn 1986, the station qualified for membership in the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and began the legal process to move from 88.9 to 88.5 on the FM broadcast band in order to increase signal coverage. Beginning the late 1980s, the programming and personnel were shifted from its diverse volunteer voice to full-time salaried programmers. Penn student radio activity is currently carried out on WQHS.\nIn 1988, WXPN started \"Kids Corner\", a daily interactive radio show for kids hosted by Kathy O'Connell. \"Kids Corner\" has won numerous awards, including the Peabody Award and the Armstrong Award.\n21st century.\nIn 2004, WXPN moved to new facilities at 3025 Walnut Street, where the radio station shares space with a music venue called World Cafe Live. (World Cafe Live is an independent for-profit entity that pays a yearly fee to license the World Cafe name from WXPN.)\nIn October 2015, WXPN and WNTI jointly announced a sales agreement for transfer of ownership of the Hackettstown, New Jersey, public radio station owned by Centenary College. The sale price is $1,250,000 in cash and another $500,000 in underwriting value over 10 years. A Public Service Operating Agreement enabled WXPN to begin using the WNTI transmission facilities to air WXPN programming, effective October 15, 2015. WNTI changed its call sign to WXPJ on May 16, 2016.\nPrograms.\nWXPN carries primarily locally originated programs, supplemented by a few nationally syndicated shows. The station's weekday programs are all produced by its own staff, including \"World Cafe\", a show developed and hosted by WXPN host David Dye and now distributed by NPR. The station also produces most of its night and weekend specialty programs, including \"Kids Corner\" with Kathy O'Connell, \"The Geator's Rock & Roll, Rhythm & Blues Express\" with legendary Philadelphia DJ Jerry Blavat, \"The Blues Show\" with Jonny Meister, \"The Folk Show\" with Ian Zolitor and \"Sleepy Hollow\", an early morning program of quiet music. The station's syndicated offerings include \"The Grateful Dead Hour\" with David Gans, \"The Many Moods of Ben Vaughn\", \"Echoes\" with John Diliberto and \"Mountain Stage\" with Larry Groce.\nQ'zine, produced and hosted by Robert Drake since 1996, is a voice for the LGBTQ community in Philadelphia. The program originated as Sunshine Gaydreams, later shortened to Gaydreams, in 1974.\nWXPN also broadcasts the Penn Quakers men's basketball games.\nFrom August 15 to 18, 2019, WXPN broadcast a \"Woodstock \u2014 As It Happened \u2014 50 Years On\" weekend to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Woodstock festival. It used all of the festival's archived audio in \"as close to real time as possible\", using newly reconstructed audio archives of each of Woodstock's 32 performances.\nStations.\nOne full-power station (WXPH) is licensed to simulcast the programming of WXPN full-time. One full-power station (WXPJ) currently has a Public Service Operating Agreement to simulcast the programming of WXPN.\nTranslators.\nWXPN programming is broadcast on the following translators:\nFrom 1993 to 2007, the WXPH call sign was used on 88.1 in Harrisburg, now WZXM. WXPN traded that facility to Four Rivers Community Broadcasting in return for 88.7 Middletown and W259AU.\nPortions of WXPN's schedule are simulcast on WKHS 90.5 FM, Worton, Maryland (Eastern Shore Chesapeake Bay and Baltimore areas).\nWXPN-HD2.\nXPN2/XPoNential Radio is an adult album alternative radio station broadcast on the HD2 channels of WXPN in Philadelphia and WXPH in Middletown, Pennsylvania. The station is also syndicated to several other public radio stations, which air it on their HD2 or HD3 channels.\nHistory.\nOn May 2, 2007, WXPN launched an indie rock format on its HD2 channel, branded as \"Y-Rock on XPN\". Y-Rock on XPN featured on-air personalities originally from Philadelphia radio station WPLY (100.3 FM), branded as \"Y100\". WPLY owner Radio One changed the station's format in 2005, ending the alternative rock format. Y-Rock on XPN was the latest incarnation of the Y100 brand that originally aired on WPLY, which was the market's alternative rock station from 1995 until 2005.\nIn mid-June 2010, \"Y-Rock on XPN\" programming was cancelled due to budget cuts. The \"Y-Rock on XPN\" branding officially changed to XPN2 at midnight, June 15, 2011. The HD2 channel and companion online stream would later be re-branded as \"XpoNential Radio\".\nWQHS.\nWQHS is the only wholly student-operated college radio station at the University of Pennsylvania. WXPN was the University's principal student radio station until 1975, with WQHS as an AM-based training ground for DJs. After 1975, WQHS became the official student radio station of the University, with WXPN being taken over by an external company. The radio station currently broadcasts an eclectic freeform radio format over internet radio, as a result of their radio tower, formerly on top of Harnwell College House, falling down in a severe storm in 2003.\nHistory.\nIn the 1960s, the University had two radio stations with the call sign WXPN, an FM station at 88.9\u00a0MHz and an AM station at 730\u00a0kHz. The AM radio station broadcast as a non-licensed carrier current radio station, and able to be heard only on the University grounds. Both radio stations consisted of educational programming, news and sports coverage, as well as music. In 1965, WXPN-AM started airing popular music shows, stirring interest among the students. At the time, the radio station operated out of Houston Hall, directly in the center of campus.\nIn 1970, WXPN-AM's operations moved from Houston Hall, directly in the center of campus, to 3905 Spruce Street. After problems with the FCC over show content in the 1970s, WXPN-FM's broadcast license was not renewed. WXPN-AM then became WQHS, which stands for \"Quad Hill Superblock\" (referring to student dormitories on campus). As it had not been involved with the FCC dispute, WQHS remained completely student-run while WXPN was afterwards run by a mix of community volunteers and former students. The stations developed two distinct styles, with WQHS focused more on contemporary music and WXPN reflecting the more esoteric interests of its staff. This ultimately led to a complete split between the stations, with both moving from their common Spruce Street location. The FM radio station became professionally run by 1980, with former students and community volunteers staffing the station, while the AM radio station was still student-run. As of September 2005, the radio station is located on the fifth floor of the Hollenback Center, on the far east side of campus.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["1946572", "570934", "50585"], "permutation_1": ["570934", "1946572", "50585"], "permutation_2": ["50585", "570934", "1946572"], "permutation_3": ["570934", "50585", "1946572"]}
{"id": "3hop2__30654_73799_89329", "docs_added": {"50585": "Philadelphia\nLargest city in Pennsylvania, United States\nPhiladelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the sixth-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 1,603,797 in the 2020 census. The city is the urban core of the larger Delaware Valley, also known as the Philadelphia metropolitan area, the nation's eighth-largest metropolitan area and seventh-largest combined statistical area with 6.245 million residents and 7.366 million residents, respectively.\nPhiladelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn, an English Quaker and advocate of religious freedom, and served as the capital of the colonial era Province of Pennsylvania. It then played a historic and vital role during the American Revolution and Revolutionary War. It served as the central meeting place for the nation's Founding Fathers, hosted the First Continental Congress (1774) and the Second Continental Congress, during which the Founders formed the Continental Army, elected George Washington as its commander, and adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. During the Revolutionary War's Philadelphia campaign, the city briefly fell to the British Army, which occupied Philadelphia for nine months from September 1777 to June 1778. \nIn 1787, following the end of the Revolutionary War and establishment of independence, the U.S. Constitution was ratified in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Convention. Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until 1790, and it served as the nation's first capital from May 10, 1775, until December 12, 1776, and on four subsequent occasions until 1800, when construction of the new national capital in Washington, D.C. was completed.\nPhiladelphia maintains extensive contemporary influence in business and industry, culture, sports, and music. With 17 four-year universities and colleges in the city, Philadelphia is one of the nation's leading centers for higher education and academic research. The city is a national cultural center, hosting more outdoor sculptures and murals than any other city in the nation. Fairmount Park, when combined with adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park in the same watershed, is , representing one of the nation's largest and the world's 55th-largest urban park. Philadelphia is known for its arts, culture, cuisine, and colonial and Revolutionary-era history; in 2016, it attracted 42\u00a0million domestic tourists who spent $6.8\u00a0billion, representing $11\u00a0billion in economic impact to the city and its surrounding Pennsylvania counties. With five professional sports teams and one of the nation's most loyal and passionate fan bases, Philadelphia is often ranked as the nation's best city for professional sports fans. The city has a culturally and philanthropically active LGBTQ+ community. Philadelphia also has played an immensely influential historic and ongoing role in the development and evolution of American music, especially R&B, soul, and rock.\nAs of 2023[ [update]], the Philadelphia metropolitan area had a gross metropolitan product of US$557.6 billion and is home to 13 \"Fortune\" 500 corporate headquarters. Metropolitan Philadelphia ranks as one of the nation's Big Five venture capital hubs, facilitated by its geographic proximity to both the entrepreneurial and financial ecosystems of New York City and the federal regulatory environment of Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Philadelphia is also a biotechnology hub. The Philadelphia Stock Exchange, owned by Nasdaq since 2008, is the nation's oldest stock exchange and a global leader in options trading. 30th Street Station, the city's primary rail station, is the third-busiest Amtrak hub in the nation with over 4.1 million passengers in 2023. The city's multimodal transportation and logistics infrastructure includes Philadelphia International Airport, a major transatlantic gateway and transcontinental hub; the rapidly-growing PhilaPort seaport; and Interstate 95, the spine of the north\u2013south highway system along the U.S. East Coast.\nPhiladelphia is a city of many firsts, including the nation's first library (1731), hospital (1751), medical school (1765), national capital (1774), university (by some accounts) (1779), central bank (1781), stock exchange (1790), zoo (1874), and business school (1881). Philadelphia contains 67 National Historic Landmarks, including Independence Hall. From the city's 17th century founding through the present, Philadelphia has been the birthplace or home to an extensive number of prominent and influential Americans.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nNative peoples.\nPrior to the arrival of Europeans in the early 17th century, the Lenape, an Indian tribe also known as the Delaware Indians, lived in the village of Shackamaxon in present-day Philadelphia and the surrounding area. The Lenape historically lived along the Delaware River watershed, western Long Island, and the Lower Hudson Valley. Most Lenape were pushed out of the region during the 18th century as the original Thirteen colonies expanded, which was further exacerbated by losses from intertribal conflicts. Lenape communities were also weakened by newly introduced diseases, mainly smallpox, and conflicts with Europeans. The Iroquois occasionally fought the Lenape. Surviving Lenape moved west into the upper Ohio River basin. Following the American Revolutionary War and the subsequent establishment of the United States, the Lenape began moving further west. In the 1860s, the U.S. federal government sent most remaining Lenape in the eastern United States to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma and surrounding territories as part of the Indian removal policy.\nColonial era.\nEuropeans first entered Philadelphia and the surrounding Delaware Valley in the early 17th century. The first settlements were founded by Dutch colonists, who built Fort Nassau on the Delaware River in 1623 in what is now Brooklawn, New Jersey. The Dutch considered the entire Delaware River valley to be part of their New Netherland colony. In 1638, Swedish settlers led by renegade Dutch established the colony of New Sweden at Fort Christina, located in present-day Wilmington, Delaware, and quickly spread out in the valley. In 1644, New Sweden supported the Susquehannocks in their war against Maryland colonists. In 1648, the Dutch built Fort Beversreede on the west bank of the Delaware, south of the Schuylkill River near the present-day Eastwick section of Philadelphia, to reassert their dominion over the area. The Swedes responded by building Fort Nya Korsholm, or New Korsholm, named after a town in Finland with a Swedish majority.\nIn 1655, a Dutch military campaign led by New Netherland Director-General Peter Stuyvesant took control of the Swedish colony, ending its claim to independence. The Swedish and Finnish settlers continued to have their own militia, religion, and court, and to enjoy substantial autonomy under the Dutch. An English fleet captured the New Netherland colony in 1664, though the situation did not change substantially until 1682, when the area was included in William Penn's charter for Pennsylvania.\nIn 1681, in partial repayment of a debt, Charles II of England granted Penn a charter for what would become the Pennsylvania colony. Despite the royal charter, Penn bought the land from the local Lenape in an effort to establish good terms with the Native Americans and ensure peace for the colony. Penn made a treaty of friendship with Lenape chief Tammany under an elm tree at Shackamaxon, in what is now the city's Fishtown neighborhood. Penn named the city Philadelphia, which is Greek for \"brotherly love\", derived from the Ancient Greek terms \u03c6\u03af\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2 \"ph\u00edlos\" (beloved, dear) and \u1f00\u03b4\u03b5\u03bb\u03c6\u03cc\u03c2 \"adelph\u00f3s\" (brother, brotherly). There were a number of cities named \"Philadelphia\" in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Greek and Roman periods, including modern Ala\u015fehir, mentioned as the site of an early Christian congregation in the Book of Revelation. As a Quaker, Penn had experienced religious persecution and wanted his colony to be a place where anyone could worship freely. This tolerance, which exceeded that of other colonies, led to better relations with the local native tribes and fostered Philadelphia's rapid growth into America's most important city.\nPenn planned a city on the Delaware River to serve as a port and place for government. Hoping that Philadelphia would become more like an English rural town instead of a city, Penn laid out roads on a grid plan to keep houses and businesses spread far apart with areas for gardens and orchards.\nThe city's inhabitants did not follow Penn's plans, however, and instead crowded the present-day Port of Philadelphia on the Delaware River and subdivided and resold their lots. Before Penn left Philadelphia for the final time, he issued the Charter of 1701 establishing it as a city. Though poor at first, Philadelphia became an important trading center with tolerable living conditions by the 1750s. Benjamin Franklin, a leading citizen, helped improve city services and founded new ones that were among the first in the nation, including a fire company, library, and hospital.\nA number of philosophical societies were formed, which were centers of the city's intellectual life, including the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture (1785), the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts (1787), the Academy of Natural Sciences (1812), and the Franklin Institute (1824). These societies developed and financed new industries that attracted skilled and knowledgeable immigrants from Europe.\nAmerican Revolution.\nPhiladelphia's importance and central location in the colonies made it a natural center for America's revolutionaries. By the 1750s, Philadelphia surpassed Boston as the largest city and busiest port in British America, and the second-largest city in the entire British Empire after London. In 1774, as resentment of the British government's policies towards the colonies and support for independence began burgeoning in the colonies, Philadelphia hosted the First Continental Congress at Carpenters' Hall, and 12 of the original 13 colonies sent delegates to the Congress.\nFrom 1775 to 1781, Philadelphia hosted the Second Continental Congress, whose 56 delegated unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence inside what was then called Pennsylvania State House and was later renamed Independence Hall. Written predominantly by Thomas Jefferson from his second-floor apartment on Market Street within walking distance of Independence Hall, the Declaration has been described by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis as \"the most potent and consequential words in American history,\" and its adoption represented a declaration of war against Great Britain. Since the Declaration's July 4, 1776, adoption, its signing has been cited globally and repeatedly by various peoples of the world seeking independence and liberty. It also has been, since its adoption, the basis for annual celebration by Americans; in 1938, this celebration of the Declaration was formalized as Independence Day, one of only eleven designated U.S. federal holidays.\nAfter George Washington's defeat at the Battle of Brandywine in Chadds Ford Township, on September 11, 1777, during the Philadelphia campaign, the revolutionary capital of Philadelphia was defenseless, and the city prepared for what was perceived to be an inevitable British attack. Because bells could easily be recast into munitions, the Liberty Bell, then known as the Pennsylvania State Bell, and bells from two Philadelphia churches, Christ Church and St. Peter's Church, were hastily taken down and transported by heavily guarded wagon train out of the city. The Liberty Bell was taken to Zion German Reformed Church in Northampton Town, which is present-day Allentown, where it was hidden under the church's floor boards for nine months from September 1777 until departure of British forces from Philadelphia in June 1778. Two Revolutionary War battles, the Siege of Fort Mifflin, fought between September 26 and November 16, 1777, and the Battle of Germantown, fought on October 4, 1777, took place within Philadelphia's city limits.\nIn Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation on November 15, 1777. Independence Hall in Philadelphia was the meeting place for the Constitutional Convention, which ratified the Constitution on September 17, 1787, which is now the longest-standing codified national constitution.\nPhiladelphia served as capital of the United States for most of the colonial and early post-colonial period. including for a decade, from 1790 to 1800, while Washington, D.C., was being constructed and prepared to serve as the new national capital, and on five prior occasions between 1776 and 1790. In 1793, the largest yellow fever epidemic in U.S. history killed approximately 4,000 to 5,000 people in Philadelphia, or about ten percent of the city's population at the time. The capital of the United States was moved to Washington, D.C. in 1800 upon completion of the White House and U.S. Capitol buildings.\nThe state capital was moved from Philadelphia to Lancaster in 1799, then ultimately to Harrisburg in 1812. Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until the late 18th century. It also was the nation's financial and cultural center until ultimately being eclipsed in total population by New York City in 1790. In 1816, the city's free Black community founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent Black denomination in the country, and the first Black Episcopal Church. The free Black community also established many schools for its children with the help of Quakers. Large-scale construction projects for new roads, canals, and railroads made Philadelphia the first major industrial city in the United States.\n19th century.\nThroughout the 19th century, Philadelphia hosted a variety of industries and businesses; the largest was the textile industry. Major corporations in the 19th and early 20th centuries included the Baldwin Locomotive Works, William Cramp & Sons Shipbuilding Company, and the Pennsylvania Railroad. Established in 1870, the Philadelphia Conveyancers' Association was chartered by the state in 1871. Along with the U.S. Centennial in 1876, the city's industry was celebrated in the Centennial Exposition, the first official World's fair in the U.S.\nImmigrants, mostly from Ireland and Germany, settled in Philadelphia and the surrounding districts. These immigrants were largely responsible for the first general strike in North America in 1835, in which workers in the city won the ten-hour workday. The city was a destination for thousands of Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine in the 1840s; housing for them was developed south of South Street and later occupied by succeeding immigrants. They established a network of Catholic churches and schools and dominated the Catholic clergy for decades. Anti-Irish, anti-Catholic nativist riots erupted in Philadelphia in 1844. The rise in population of the surrounding districts helped lead to the Act of Consolidation of 1854, which extended the city limits from the of Center City to the roughly of Philadelphia County.\nIn the latter half of the 19th century and leading into the 20th century, immigrants from Russia, Eastern Europe, and Italy, and African Americans from the southern U.S. settled in the city.\nPhiladelphia was represented by the Washington Grays in the American Civil War. The African-American population of Philadelphia increased from 31,699 to 219,559 between 1880 and 1930, largely stemming from the Great Migration from the South.\n20th century.\nBy the 20th century, Philadelphia had an entrenched Republican political machine and a complacent population. In 1910, a general strike shut down the entire city.\nIn 1917, following outrage over the election-year murder of a Philadelphia police officer, the City Council shrank from two houses to just one. In July 1919, Philadelphia was one of more than 36 industrial cities nationally to suffer a race riot during Red Summer in post-World War I unrest as recent immigrants competed with Blacks for jobs. In the 1920s, the public flouting of Prohibition laws, organized crime, mob violence, and corrupt police involvement in illegal activities led to the appointment of Brig. Gen. Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marine Corps as the city's director of public safety, but political pressure still prevented long-term success in fighting crime and corruption.\nIn 1940, non-Hispanic whites constituted 86.8% of the city's population. In 1950, the population peaked at more than two million residents, then began to decline with the restructuring of industry that led to the loss of many middle-class union jobs. In addition, suburbanization enticed many affluent residents to depart the city for its outlying railroad commuting towns and newer housing. The resulting reduction in Philadelphia's tax base and the resources of local government caused the city to struggle through a long period of adjustment, and it approached bankruptcy by the late 1980s.\nIn 1985, the MOVE Bombing of the Cobbs Creek neighborhood by city helicopters occurred, killing 11 and destroying 61 homes.\nRevitalization and gentrification of neighborhoods began in the late 1970s and continues into the 21st century with much of the development occurring in the Center City and University City neighborhoods. But this expanded a shortage of affordable housing in the city. After many manufacturers and businesses left Philadelphia or shut down, the city started attracting service businesses and began to market itself more aggressively as a tourist destination. Contemporary glass-and-granite skyscrapers were built in Center City beginning in the 1980s. Historic areas such as Old City and Society Hill were renovated during the reformist mayoral era of the 1950s through the 1980s, making both areas among the most desirable Center City neighborhoods. Immigrants from around the world began to enter the U.S. through Philadelphia as their gateway, leading to a reversal of the city's population decline between 1950 and 2000, during which it lost about 25 percent of its residents.\n21st century.\nPhiladelphia eventually began experiencing a growth in its population in 2007, which continued with incremental annual increases through the present. A migration pattern has been established from New York City to Philadelphia by residents opting for a large city with relative proximity and a lower cost of living.\nGeography.\nTopography.\nPhiladelphia's geographic center is about 40\u00b0 0\u2032 34\u2033 north latitude and 75\u00b0 8\u2032 0\u2033 west longitude. The 40th parallel north passes through neighborhoods in Northeast Philadelphia, North Philadelphia, and West Philadelphia including Fairmount Park. The city encompasses , of which is land and , or 6%, is water. Natural bodies of water include the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, lakes in Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park, and Cobbs, Wissahickon, and Pennypack creeks. The largest artificial body of water is East Park Reservoir in Fairmount Park.\nThe lowest point is sea level and the highest point is in Chestnut Hill, about above sea level on Summit Street near the intersection of Germantown Avenue and Bethlehem Pike at: 40.07815 N, 75.20747 W. Philadelphia is located on the Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line that separates the Atlantic Plain from the Piedmont. The Schuylkill River's rapids at East Falls were inundated by completion of the dam at Fairmount Water Works.\nThe city is the seat of its own county. The city is bordered by six adjacent counties: Montgomery to the northwest; Bucks to the north and northeast; Burlington County, New Jersey to the east; Camden County, New Jersey to the southeast; Gloucester County, New Jersey to the south; and Delaware County to the southwest.\nCityscape.\nCity planning.\nPhiladelphia was created in the 17th century, following the plan by William Penn's surveyor Thomas Holme. Center City is structured with long, straight streets running nearly due east\u2013west and north\u2013south, forming a grid pattern between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers that is aligned with their courses. The original city plan was designed to allow for easy travel and to keep residences separated by open space that would help prevent the spread of fire. In keeping with the idea of a \"Greene Countrie Towne\", and inspired by the many types of trees that grew in the region, Penn named many of the east\u2013west streets for local trees. Penn planned the creation of five public parks in the city which were renamed in 1824. Centre Square was renamed Penn Square; Northeast Square was renamed Franklin Square; Southeast Square was renamed Washington Square; Southwest Square was renamed Rittenhouse Square; and Northwest Square was renamed Logan Circle/Square. Center City had an estimated 183,240 residents as of 2015[ [update]], making it the second-most populated downtown area in the United States after Midtown Manhattan in New York City.\nPhiladelphia's neighborhoods are divided into six large sections that surround Center City: North Philadelphia, Northeast Philadelphia, South Philadelphia, Southwest Philadelphia, West Philadelphia, and Northwest Philadelphia. The city's geographic boundaries have been largely unchanged since these neighborhoods were consolidated in 1854. However, each of these large areas contains numerous neighborhoods, some of whose boundaries derive from the boroughs, townships, and other communities that constituted Pennsylvania County before their inclusion within the city.\nThe City Planning Commission, tasked with guiding growth and development of the city, has divided the city into 18 planning districts as part of the Philadelphia2035 physical development plan. Much of the city's 1980 zoning code was overhauled from 2007 to 2012 as part of a joint effort between former mayors John F. Street and Michael Nutter. The zoning changes were intended to rectify incorrect zoning maps to facilitate future community development, as the city forecasts an additional 100,000 residents and 40,000 jobs will be added by 2035.\nThe Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) is the largest landlord in Pennsylvania. Established in 1937, the PHA is the nation's fourth-largest housing authority, serving about 81,000 people with affordable housing, while employing 1,400 on a budget of $371\u00a0million. The Philadelphia Parking Authority is responsible for ensuring adequate parking for city residents, businesses, and visitors.\nArchitecture.\nPhiladelphia's architectural history dates back to colonial times and includes a wide range of styles. The earliest structures were constructed with logs, but brick structures were common by 1700. During the 18th century, the cityscape was dominated by Georgian architecture, including Independence Hall and Christ Church.\nIn the first decades of the 19th century, Federal and Greek Revival architecture were the dominant styles produced by Philadelphia architects such as Benjamin Latrobe, William Strickland, John Haviland, John Notman, Thomas Walter, and Samuel Sloan. Frank Furness is considered Philadelphia's greatest architect of the second half of the 19th century. His contemporaries included John McArthur Jr., Addison Hutton, Wilson Eyre, the Wilson Brothers, and Horace Trumbauer. In 1871, construction began on the Second Empire-style Philadelphia City Hall. The Philadelphia Historical Commission was created in 1955 to preserve the cultural and architectural history of the city. The commission maintains the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, adding historic buildings, structures, sites, objects and districts as it sees fit.\nIn 1932, Philadelphia became home to the first modern International Style skyscraper in the United States, the PSFS Building, designed by George Howe and William Lescaze. The City Hall remained the tallest building in the city until 1987 when One Liberty Place was completed. Numerous glass and granite skyscrapers were built in Center City beginning in the late 1980s. In 2007, the Comcast Center surpassed One Liberty Place to become the city's tallest building. The Comcast Technology Center was completed in 2018, reaching a height of , as the tallest building in the United States outside of Manhattan and Chicago.\nFor much of Philadelphia's history, the typical home has been the row house. The row house was introduced to the United States via Philadelphia in the early 19th century and, for a time, row houses built elsewhere in the United States were known as \"Philadelphia rows\". A variety of row houses are found throughout the city, from Federal-style continuous blocks in Old City and Society Hill to Victorian-style homes in North Philadelphia to twin row houses in West Philadelphia. While newer homes have been built recently, much of the housing dates to the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, which has created problems such as urban decay and vacant lots. Some neighborhoods, including Northern Liberties and Society Hill, have been rehabilitated through gentrification.\nParks.\nAs of 2014[ [update]], the city's total park space, including municipal, state, and federal parks in the city, amounts to . Philadelphia's largest park is Fairmount Park, which includes the Philadelphia Zoo and encompasses of the total parkland. Fairmount Park's adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park contains . Fairmount Park, when combined with Wissahickon Valley Park, is one of the largest contiguous urban park areas in the U.S. The two parks, along with the Colonial Revival, Georgian and Federal-style mansions in them, have been listed as one entity on the National Register of Historic Places since 1972.\nClimate.\nWithin the K\u00f6ppen climate classification, Philadelphia falls under the northern periphery of the humid subtropical climate zone (K\u00f6ppen \"Cfa\"). Within the Trewartha climate classification, Philadelphia has a temperate maritime climate (\"Do\") limited to the north by the continental climate (\"Dc\"). Summers are typically hot and muggy. Fall and spring are generally mild, and winter is moderately cold. The plant life hardiness zones are 7a and 7b, reflecting an average annual extreme minimum temperature between .\nSnowfall is highly variable. Some winters have only light snow while others include major snowstorms. The normal seasonal snowfall averages , with rare snowfalls in November or April, and rarely any sustained snow cover. Seasonal snowfall accumulation has ranged from trace amounts in 1972\u201373, to in the winter of 2009\u201310. The city's heaviest single-storm snowfall was , which occurred in January 1996.\nPrecipitation is generally spread throughout the year, with eight to eleven wet days per month, at an average annual rate of , but historically ranging from in 1922 to in 2011. The most rain recorded in one day occurred on July 28, 2013, when fell at Philadelphia International Airport. Philadelphia has a moderately sunny climate with an average of 2,498 hours of sunshine annually. The percentage of sunshine ranges from 47% in December to 61% in June, July, and August.\nThe January daily average temperature is . The temperature frequently rises to during thaws. July averages . Heat waves accompanied by high humidity and heat indices are frequent, with highs reaching or exceeding on 30 days of the year. The average window for freezing temperatures is November 6 to April 2, allowing a growing season of 217 days. Early fall and late winter are generally dry, with February having the lowest average precipitation at . The dewpoint in the summer averages between .\nThe highest recorded temperature was on August 7, 1918. Temperatures at or above are not common, with the last occurrence of such a temperature being July 21, 2019. The lowest officially recorded temperature was on February 9, 1934. Temperatures at or below are rare, with the last such occurrence being January 19, 1994. The record low maximum is on February 10, 1899, and December 30, 1880. The record high minimum is on July 23, 2011, and July 24, 2010.\nTime Series.\nAir quality.\nPhiladelphia County received an ozone grade of F and a 24-hour particle pollution rating of D in the American Lung Association's 2017 State of the Air report, which analyzed data from 2013 to 2015. The city was ranked 22nd for ozone, 20th for short-term particle pollution, and 11th for year-round particle pollution. According to the same report, the city experienced a significant reduction in high ozone days since 2001\u2014from nearly 50 days per year to fewer than 10\u2014along with fewer days of high particle pollution since 2000\u2014from about 19 days per year to about 3\u2014and an approximate 30% reduction in annual levels of particle pollution since 2000.\nFive of the ten largest combined statistical areas (CSAs) were ranked higher for ozone: Los Angeles (1st), New York City (9th), Houston (12th), Dallas (13th), and San Jose, California (18th). Many smaller CSAs were also ranked higher for ozone, including Sacramento (8th), Las Vegas (10th), Denver (11th), El Paso (16th), and Salt Lake City (20th). Only two of those same ten CSAs, San Jose and Los Angeles, were ranked higher than Philadelphia for both year-round and short-term particle pollution.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nAs of the 2020 U.S. Census, there were 1,603,797 people residing in Philadelphia, representing a 1.2% increase from the 2019 census estimate. The racial composition of the city was 39.3% Black alone (42.0% Black alone or in combination), 36.3% White alone (41.9% White alone or in combination), 8.7% Asian alone, 0.4% American Indian and Alaska Native alone, 8.7% some other race, and 6.9% multiracial. 14.9% of residents were Hispanic or Latino.\n34.8% had a bachelor's degree or higher. 23.9% spoke a language other than English at home, the most common of which was Spanish (10.8%). 15.0% of the populations foreign born, roughly half of whom are naturalized U.S. citizens. 3.7% of the population are veterans. The median household income was $52,889 and 22.8% of the population lived in poverty. 49.5% of the population drove alone to work, while 23.2% used public transit, 8.2% carpooled, 7.9% walked, and 7.0% worked from home. The average commute is 31 minutes.\nAfter the 1950 census, when a record high of 2,071,605 was recorded, the city's population began a long decline. The population dropped to a low of 1,488,710 residents in 2006 before beginning to rise again. Between 2006 and 2017, Philadelphia added 92,153 residents. In 2017, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that the racial composition of the city was 41.3% Black (non-Hispanic), 34.9% White (non-Hispanic), 14.1% Hispanic or Latino, 7.1% Asian, 0.4% Native American, 0.05% Pacific Islander, and 2.8% multiracial.\nImmigration and cultural diversity.\nIn addition to the city's economic growth, the city's population has been fueled by foreign immigration. According to The Pew Charitable Trusts, the city's foreign-born population increased by 69% between 2000 and 2016 to constitute nearly 20% of Philadelphia's workforce, and it doubled between 1990 and 2017 to constitute 13.8% of the city's total population, with the top five countries of origin being China by a significant margin followed by the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, India, and Vietnam.\nIrish, Italian, German, Polish, English, Russian, Ukrainian, and French ancestries constitute the largest European ethnic groups in the city. Philadelphia has the second-largest Irish and Italian populations in the United States after New York City. South Philadelphia remains one of the largest Italian neighborhoods in the country and is home to the Italian Market.\nThe Pennsport neighborhood and Gray's Ferry section of South Philadelphia, home to many Mummer clubs, are well known as Irish neighborhoods. The Kensington, Port Richmond, and Fishtown neighborhoods have historically been heavily Irish and Polish. Port Richmond is a center for the Polish-American community in Philadelphia, and it remains a common destination for Polish immigrants. Northeast Philadelphia, although known for its Irish and Irish-American population, is home to a Jewish and Russian population. Mount Airy in Northwest Philadelphia also contains a Jewish community. Nearby Chestnut Hill is historically known as an Anglo-Saxon Protestant community.\nPhiladelphia's Black American population is the fourth-largest in the country after New York City, Chicago, and Houston. West Philadelphia and North Philadelphia are largely African-American neighborhoods, but many are leaving those areas in favor of the Northeast and Southwest sections of Philadelphia. A higher proportion of African-American Muslims reside in Philadelphia than most other major U.S. cities. West Philadelphia and Southwest Philadelphia are home to various Afro-Caribbean and African immigrant communities.\nThe Puerto Rican population in Philadelphia is the second-largest on the U.S. mainland after New York City, and the second-fastest growing after Orlando. Eastern North Philadelphia, particularly Fairhill and surrounding areas to the north and east, has one of the highest concentrations of Puerto Ricans outside Puerto Rico, with many large swaths of blocks being close to 100% Puerto Rican. Puerto Rican and Dominican populations reside in North Philadelphia and the Northeast, and Mexican and Central American populations exist in South Philadelphia. South American migrants were being transported by bus from Texas to Philadelphia beginning in 2022.\nPhiladelphia's Asian American population includes those of Chinese, Indians, Vietnamese, South Koreans, Filipinos, Cambodians, and Indonesians. Over 35,000 Chinese Americans lived in the city in 2015, including a Fuzhounese population. Center City hosts a Chinatown that is served by Chinatown bus lines with service to/from Chinatown, Manhattan. Indians make up the second-largest Asian group in the city of Philadelphia, while making up the largest foreign-born population in the Delaware Valley. A Korean community initially settled in the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Olney; however, the primary Koreatown has subsequently shifted further north, straddling the city's border with adjacent Cheltenham in Montgomery County and Cherry Hill in South Jersey. South Philadelphia is home to Vietnamese-Americans in Little Saigon and Cambodian-Americans in Cambodia Town, as well as Thai-American, Indonesian-American, and Chinese-American communities.\nPhiladelphia's Gay village near Washington Square is home to a concentration of gay and lesbian-friendly businesses, restaurants, and bars.\nReligion.\nIn a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, 68% of the population of the city identified themselves as Christian. Approximately 41% of Christians in the city and area professed attendance at a variety of churches that could be considered Protestant, while 26% professed Catholic beliefs.\nThe Protestant Christian community in Philadelphia is dominated by mainline Protestant denominations including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church in the United States, Presbyterian Church (USA) and American Baptist Churches USA. One of the most prominent mainline Protestant jurisdictions is the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. The African Methodist Episcopal Church was established in Philadelphia. Historically, the city has strong connections to the Quakers, Unitarian Universalism, and the Ethical Culture movement, all of which continue to be represented in the city. The Quaker Friends General Conference is based in Philadelphia. Evangelical Protestants making up less than 15% of the population were also prevalent.\nEvangelical Protestant bodies included the Anglican Church in North America, Lutheran Church\u2014Missouri Synod, Presbyterian Church in America, and National Baptist Convention of America. The Catholic community is primarily served by the Latin Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Eparchy of the United States of America and Canada, though some independent Catholic churches exist throughout Philadelphia and its suburbs. The Latin Church-based jurisdiction is headquartered in the city, and its see is the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. The Ukrainian Catholic jurisdiction is headquartered in Philadelphia, and is seated at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.\nLess than 1% of Philadelphia's Christians were Mormons. The remainder of the Christian demographic is spread among smaller Protestant denominations and the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox among others. The Diocese of Eastern Pennsylvania (Orthodox Church in America) and Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (Ecumenical Patriarchate) divide the Eastern Orthodox in Philadelphia. The Russian Orthodox St. Andrew's Cathedral is in the city.\nThe same study says that other religions collectively compose about 8% of the population, including Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Sikhism. Philadelphia has the fifth-largest Muslim population among U.S. cities. The remaining 24% claimed no religious affiliation.\nThe Philadelphia metropolitan area's Jewish population was estimated at 206,000 in 2001, which was the sixth-largest in the U.S. at that time. Jewish traders were operating in southeastern Pennsylvania long before William Penn. Jews in Philadelphia took a prominent part in the War of Independence. Although the majority of the early Jewish residents were of Portuguese or Spanish descent, some among them had emigrated from Germany and Poland. About the beginning of the 19th century, a number of Jews from the latter countries, finding the services of the Congregation Mickv\u00e9 Israel unfamiliar to them, resolved to form a new congregation which would use the ritual to which they had been accustomed.\nAfrican diasporic religions are practiced in some Latino and Hispanic and Caribbean communities in North and West Philadelphia.\nLanguages.\nAs of 2010[ [update]], 79.12% (1,112,441) of Philadelphia residents age 5 and older spoke English at home as a primary language, while 9.72% (136,688) spoke Spanish, 1.64% (23,075) Chinese, 0.89% (12,499) Vietnamese, 0.77% (10,885) Russian, 0.66% (9,240) French, 0.61% (8,639) other Asian languages, 0.58% (8,217) African languages, 0.56% (7,933) Cambodian (Mon-Khmer), and Italian was spoken as a main language by 0.55% (7,773) of the population over the age of five. In total, 20.88% (293,544) of Philadelphia's population age 5 and older spoke a mother language other than English.\nPoverty.\nPhiladelphia is home to many food poverty programs, of which two of the largest are Philabundance which claims to feed 90000 people per week. and Share Food Program which claims to feed 1 million people per month.\nEconomy.\nPhiladelphia's close geographical and transportation connections to other large metropolitan economies along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States have been cited as offering a significant competitive advantage for business creation and entrepreneurship. The city is the center of economic activity in both Pennsylvania and the four-state Delaware Valley metropolitan region. Five Fortune 500 companies are based in the city. As of 2021[ [update]], the Philadelphia metropolitan area is estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of US$479\u00a0billion, an increase from the $445\u00a0billion calculated by the Bureau of Economic Analysis for 2017, representing the ninth-largest U.S. metropolitan economy.\nPhiladelphia's economic sectors include financial services, health care, biotechnology, information technology, trade and transportation, manufacturing, oil refining, food processing, and tourism. Metropolitan Philadelphia is one of the top five American venture capital hubs, credited to its proximity to New York City's financial and tech and biotechnology ecosystems. Financial activities account for the largest economic sector of the metropolitan area, which is one of the largest health education and research centers in the United States. The city's two largest employers are the federal and city governments. Philadelphia's largest private employer is the University of Pennsylvania followed by Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.\nFinance and corporations.\nThe Philadelphia Stock Exchange, acquired by Nasdaq in 2007, is a global leader in options trading. The city is home to the headquarters of Comcast, the nation's largest multinational telecommunications corporation; insurance conglomerates Cigna, Colonial Penn, and Independence Blue Cross; as well as food services company Aramark, chemical makers FMC Corporation and Rohm and Haas, pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline, Amicus Therapeutics, Spark Therapeutics, apparel retailers Five Below and Urban Outfitters and its subsidiary Anthropologie, automotive parts retailer Pep Boys, and stainless steel producer Carpenter Technology Corporation.\nOther corporation headquarters in the city include RiteAid, Crown Holdings, and Brandywine Realty Trust. The headquarters of Boeing Rotorcraft Systems and its main rotorcraft factory are in the Philadelphia suburb of Ridley Park; The Vanguard Group, and the U.S. headquarters of Siemens Healthineers are headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb. Healthcare conglomerate AmerisourceBergen is located in suburban Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Across the Delaware River in adjacent Camden County, New Jersey, Campbell Soup Company and Subaru USA are both headquartered in Camden, New Jersey, and TD Bank (USA) is headquartered in nearby suburban Cherry Hill, New Jersey.\nTech and biotech.\nPhiladelphia is a hub for information technology and biotechnology. Philadelphia and Pennsylvania are attracting new life sciences ventures. As of 2024, the Delaware Valley ranks as one of the Big Five U.S. venture capital hubs, enabled by its proximity to both the entrepreneurial and financial ecosystems of New York City and to the federal regulatory environment of Washington, D.C.\nTourism.\nPhiladelphia's history attracts many tourists, with the Independence National Historical Park, which includes the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and other historic sites, received over 5\u00a0million visitors in 2016. The city welcomed 42\u00a0million domestic tourists in 2016 who spent $6.8\u00a0billion, generating an estimated $11\u00a0billion in total economic impact in the city and surrounding four counties of Pennsylvania. The annual Naked Bike Ride attracts participants from around the United States and internationally to Philadelphia.\nTrade and transportation.\nPhiladelphia International Airport, a major Transatlantic gateway and transcontinental hub, has undergone a $900\u00a0million infrastructural expansion to increase passenger capacity and augment passenger experience, and the airport continues an ongoing capital expenditure program to upgrade facilities and add further amenities. The Port of Philadelphia, having experienced the highest percentage growth by tonnage loaded in 2017 among major U.S. seaports, has doubled its shipping capacity to accommodate super-sized post-Panamax shipping vessels since 2018. Philadelphia's 30th Street Station is the third-busiest Amtrak rail hub, following Penn Station in Manhattan and Union Station in Washington, D.C., transporting over 4\u00a0million inter-city rail passengers annually.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nEducation in Philadelphia is provided by many private and public institutions. The School District of Philadelphia is the local school district, operating public schools, in all of the city. The Philadelphia School District is the eighth-largest school district in the nation with 142,266 students in 218 traditional public schools and 86 charter schools as of 2014[ [update]].\nThe city's K-12 enrollment in district\u2013run schools dropped from 156,211 students in 2010 to 130,104 students in 2015. During the same time period, the enrollment in charter schools increased from 33,995 students in 2010 to 62,358 students in 2015. This consistent drop in enrollment led the city to close 24 of its public schools in 2013. During the 2014 school year, the city spent an average of $12,570 per pupil, below the average among comparable urban school districts.\nGraduation rates among district-run schools, meanwhile, steadily increased in the ten years from 2005. In 2005, Philadelphia had a district graduation rate of 52%. This number increased to 65% in 2014, still below the national and state averages. Scores on the state's standardized test, the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) trended upward from 2005 to 2011 but subsequently decreased. In 2005, the district-run schools scored an average of 37.4% on math and 35.5% on reading. The city's schools reached their peak scores in 2011 with 59.0% on math and 52.3% on reading. In 2014, the scores dropped significantly to 45.2% on math and 42.0% on reading.\nOf the city's public high schools, including charter schools, only four performed above the national average on the SAT (1497 out of 2400) in 2014: Masterman, Central, Girard Academic Music Program, and MaST Community Charter School. All other district-run schools were below average.\nHigher education.\nMedical and research facilities of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Philadelphia has the third-largest student concentration on the East Coast, with more than 120,000 college and university students enrolled within the city and nearly 300,000 in the metropolitan area. More than 80 colleges, universities, trade, and specialty schools are in the Philadelphia region. One of the founding members of the Association of American Universities is in the city, the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution with claims to be the First university in the United States.\nThe city's largest university by student enrollment is Temple University, followed by Drexel University. The city's nationally ranked research universities comprise the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, Drexel University, and Thomas Jefferson University. Philadelphia is also home to five schools of medicine: Drexel University College of Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Temple University School of Medicine, and Thomas Jefferson University's Sidney Kimmel Medical College. Hospitals, universities, and higher education research institutions in Philadelphia's four congressional districts received more than $252\u00a0million in National Institutes of Health grants in 2015.\nOther institutions of higher learning within the city's borders include:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCulture.\nPhiladelphia is home to many national historical sites that relate to the founding of the United States. Independence National Historical Park is the center of these historical landmarks and one of the country's 22 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, and the Liberty Bell is housed, are among the city's most popular attractions. Other national historic sites include the homes of Edgar Allan Poe and Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and early government buildings, including the First and the Second Bank of the United States, Fort Mifflin, and the Gloria Dei (Old Swedes') Church. Philadelphia alone has 67 National Historic Landmarks, the third most of any city in the country.\nPhiladelphia's major science museums include the Franklin Institute, which contains the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the M\u00fctter Museum, and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. History museums include the National Constitution Center, the Museum of the American Revolution, the Philadelphia History Museum, the National Museum of American Jewish History, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Masonic Library and Museum of Pennsylvania in the Masonic Temple, and the Eastern State Penitentiary. Philadelphia is home to the United States's first zoo and hospital, as well as Fairmount Park, one of America's oldest and largest urban parks, founded in 1855.\nThe city is home to important archival repositories, including the Library Company of Philadelphia, established in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin at 1314 Locust Street, and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, founded in 1814. The Presbyterian Historical Society is the country's oldest denominational historical society, organized in 1852.\nArts.\nThe city is home to multiple art museums, including the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Rodin Museum, which holds the largest collection of work by Auguste Rodin outside France. The city's largest art museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is one of the largest art museums in the world. The long flight of steps to the Art Museum's main entrance became famous after the film \"Rocky\" (1976).\nAnnual events include the Philadelphia Film Festival, held annually each October, the 6abc Dunkin' Donuts Thanksgiving Day Parade, the nation's longest-running continuously held Thanksgiving Day parade, and the Mummers Parade, the nation's longest continuously held folk parade, which is held every New Year's Day predominantly on Broad Street.\nAreas such as South Street and the Old City section of the city have a vibrant night life. The Avenue of the Arts in Center City contains many restaurants and theaters, such as the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, home of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Academy of Music, home of Opera Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Ballet. The Wilma Theatre and the Philadelphia Theatre Company at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre produce a variety of new plays. Several blocks to the east are the Lantern Theater Company at St. Stephens Episcopal Church; and the Walnut Street Theatre, a National Historic Landmark stated to be the oldest and most subscribed-to theatre in the English-speaking world, founded in 1809. In May 2019, the Walnut Street Theatre announced a major expansion to begin in 2020. New Freedom Theatre, Pennsylvania's oldest African-American theatre, is located on North Broad Street.\nPhiladelphia has more public art than any other American city. In 1872, the Association for Public Art, formerly the Fairmount Park Art Association, was created as the first private association in the United States dedicated to integrating public art and urban planning. In 1959, lobbying by the Artists Equity Association helped create the Percent for Art ordinance, the first for a U.S. city. The program, which has funded more than 200 pieces of public art, is administered by the Philadelphia Office of Arts and Culture, the city's art agency. The city has more murals than any other American city, due to the 1984 creation of the Department of Recreation's Mural Arts Program, which seeks to beautify neighborhoods and provide an outlet for graffiti artists. The program has funded more than 2,800 murals by professional, staff and volunteer artists and educated more than 20,000 youth in underserved neighborhoods throughout Philadelphia.\nThe city is home to a number of art organizations, including the regional art advocacy nonprofit Philadelphia Tri-State Artists Equity, the Philadelphia Sketch Club, one of the country's oldest artists' clubs, and The Plastic Club, started by women excluded from the Sketch Club. Many Old City art galleries stay open late on the First Friday event of each month.\nCuisine.\nThe city is known for its hoagies, stromboli, roast pork sandwich, scrapple, soft pretzels, water ice, Irish potato candy, tastykakes, and the cheesesteak sandwich which was developed by Italian immigrants. The Philadelphia area has many establishments that serve cheesesteaks, including restaurants, taverns, delicatessens and pizza parlors. The originator of the thinly-sliced steak sandwich in the 1930s, initially without cheese, is Pat's King of Steaks, which faces its rival Geno's Steaks, founded in 1966, across the intersection of 9th Street and Passyunk Avenue in the Italian Market of South Philadelphia.\nMcGillin's Olde Ale House, opened in 1860 on Drury Street in Center City, is the oldest continuously operated tavern in the city. The City Tavern is a replica of a historic 18th-century building first opened in 1773, demolished in 1854 after a fire, and rebuilt in 1975 on the same site as part of Independence National Historical Park. The tavern offers authentic 18th-century recipes, served in seven period dining rooms, three wine cellar rooms and an outdoor garden.\nThe Reading Terminal Market is a historic food market founded in 1893 in the Reading Terminal building, a designated National Historic Landmark. The enclosed market is one of the oldest and largest markets in the country, hosting over a hundred merchants offering Pennsylvania Dutch specialties, artisan cheese and meat, locally grown groceries, and specialty and ethnic foods.\nDialect.\nThe traditional Philadelphia accent is considered by some linguists to be the most distinctive accent in North America. The Philadelphia dialect, which is spread throughout the Delaware Valley and South Jersey, is part of a larger Mid-Atlantic American English family, a designation that also includes the Baltimore accent. Additionally, it shares many similarities with the New York accent. Owing to over a century of linguistic data collected by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania under sociolinguist William Labov, the Philadelphia dialect has been one of the best-studied forms of American English. The accent is especially found within the Irish American and Italian American working-class neighborhoods. Philadelphia also has its own unique collection of neologisms and slang terms.\nMusic.\nThe Philadelphia Orchestra is generally considered one of the top five orchestras in the United States. The orchestra performs at the Kimmel Center and has a summer concert series at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts. Opera Philadelphia performs at the nation's oldest continually operating opera house\u2014the Academy of Music. The Philadelphia Boys Choir & Chorale has performed its music all over the world. The Philly Pops plays orchestral versions of popular jazz, swing, Broadway, and blues songs at the Kimmel Center and other venues within the mid-Atlantic region. The Curtis Institute of Music is one of the world's premier conservatories and among the most selective institutes of higher education in the nation.\nPhiladelphia has played a prominent role in the music of the United States. The culture of American popular music has been influenced by significant contributions of Philadelphia area musicians and producers, in both the recording and broadcasting industries. In 1952, the teen dance party program called \"Bandstand\" premiered on local television, hosted by Bob Horn. The show was renamed \"American Bandstand\" in 1957, when it began national syndication on ABC, hosted by Dick Clark and produced in Philadelphia until 1964 when it moved to Los Angeles. Promoters marketed youthful musical artists known as teen idols to appeal to the young audience. Philadelphia-born singers, including Frankie Avalon, James Darren, Eddie Fisher, Fabian Forte, Bobby Rydell, and South Philly-raised Chubby Checker, topped the music charts, establishing a clean-cut rock and roll image.\nPhilly soul music of the late 1960s\u20131970s is a highly produced version of soul music which led to later forms of popular music such as disco and urban contemporary rhythm and blues. On July 13, 1985, John F. Kennedy Stadium was the American venue for the Live Aid concert. The city also hosted the Live 8 concert, which attracted about 700,000 people to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on July 2, 2005.\nNotable rock and pop musicians from Philadelphia and its suburbs include Bill Haley & His Comets, Nazz, Todd Rundgren, Hall & Oates, the Hooters, Cinderella, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Ween, Schoolly D, Pink, the Roots, Beanie Sigel, State Property, Lisa \"Left Eye\" Lopes, Meek Mill, Lil Uzi Vert, and others.\nSports.\nPhiladelphia has one of the nation's richest histories in professional sports, dating back to the mid-19th century. Its first professional sports team, the Philadelphia Athletics, a professional baseball team, was founded in 1860. The Athletics were initially an amateur league team that turned professional in 1871. In 1876, the Athletics joined with seven other teams in founding the National League, now the longest continuously operating league in world sports. \nPhiladelphia is one of 12 U.S. cities to have teams in all four major league sports: the Philadelphia Phillies of Major League Baseball (MLB), the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League (NFL), the Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League (NHL), and the Philadelphia 76ers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Phillies, formed in 1883 as the Quakers and renamed in 1884, are the oldest team continuously playing under the same name in the same city in the history of American professional sports.\nThe Philadelphia metro area is also home to the Philadelphia Union of Major League Soccer (MLS), plays their home games at Subaru Park, a soccer-specific stadium in Chester, Pennsylvania.\nPhiladelphia was the second of eight U.S. cities to win titles in all four major leagues, the MLB, NFL, NHL, and NBA. It won a title in soccer in the now-defunct North American Soccer League in 1973. Following the 76ers' victory over the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1983 NBA Finals, however, the city's professional teams and their fans endured 25 years without a championship in any professional sport until the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, defeating the Tampa Bay Rays. This quarter century without a championship for any Philadelphia sports team is sometimes described as the Curse of Billy Penn, a reference to a 1987 decision that permitted One Liberty Place to become the first building in city history to surpass the height of \"William Penn\", a statue installed in 1894 atop City Hall. In 2004, during the city's championship drought, ESPN placed Philadelphia second on its list of \"The Fifteen Most Tortured Sports Cities\". The city's sports fans are often both praised and sometimes derided. In 2011, for instance, \"GQ\" magazine named Eagles and Phillies fans the nation's worst professional sports fans, describing them as the \"Meanest Fans in America\" in summarizing repeated incidents of their drunken behavior and long history of booing.\nAfter the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, nine years passed without a championship until the Eagles won their first Super Bowl following the 2017 season, defeating the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII. Seven seasons later, following the 2024 season, the Eagles won their second Super Bowl, defeating the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX. \nMajor professional sports teams that originated in Philadelphia, which later moved to other cities, include the Golden State Warriors basketball team, which played in Philadelphia from 1946 to 1962 and the Oakland Athletics baseball team, which was originally the Philadelphia Athletics and played in Philadelphia from 1901 to 1954.\nPhiladelphia is home to professional, semi-professional, and elite amateur teams in multiple other sports, including cricket, rugby league, and rugby union. Major running events in the city include the Penn Relays, the Philadelphia Marathon, and the Broad Street Run. The Collegiate Rugby Championship is played annually each June at Talen Energy Stadium in Chester.\nThe city also has a rich history in rowing, which has been popular in Philadelphia since the 18th century. On Boathouse Row, a symbol of Philadelphia's rich rowing history, each Big Five member has its own boathouse. Philadelphia hosts numerous local and collegiate rowing clubs and competitions, including the annual Dad Vail Regatta, the largest intercollegiate rowing event in North America with more than 100 participating U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities; the annual Stotesbury Cup Regatta, which is billed as the world's oldest and largest rowing event for high school students; and the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta. The regattas are held on the Schuylkill River and organized by Schuylkill Navy, an association of area rowing clubs that has produced numerous Olympic rowers.\nThe Philadelphia Spinners were a professional ultimate team in Major League Ultimate (MLU) until 2016. The Spinners were one of the original eight teams of the American Ultimate Disc League (AUDL), which was founded in 2012. They played at Franklin Field and won the inaugural AUDL championship and the final MLU championship in 2016. The MLU was suspended indefinitely by its investors in December 2016. As of 2018[ [update]], the Philadelphia Phoenix continue to play in the AUDL.\nPhiladelphia is home to the Philadelphia Big 5, a group of five NCAA Division I college basketball programs, including La Salle, Penn, Saint Joseph's, Temple, and Villanova universities. The sixth NCAA Division I school in Philadelphia is Drexel University. La Salle won the 1954 championship of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. Villanova won the 1985, 2016, and 2018 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournaments. Philadelphia will be one of the eleven US host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.\nLaw and government.\nPhiladelphia County is a legal nullity. All county functions were assumed by the city in 1952. The city has been coterminous with the county since 1854.\nPhiladelphia's 1952 Home Rule Charter was written by the City Charter Commission, which was created by the Pennsylvania General Assembly in an act of April 1949, and a city ordinance of June 1949. The existing city council received a proposed draft in February 1951, and the electors approved it in an election held in April 1951. The first elections under the new Home Rule Charter were held in November 1951, and the newly elected officials took office in January 1952.\nThe city uses the strong-mayor version of the mayor\u2013council form of government, which is led by one mayor in whom executive authority is vested. The mayor has the authority to appoint and dismiss members of all boards and commissions without the approval of the city council. Elected at-large, the mayor is limited to two consecutive four-year terms, but can run for the position again after an intervening term.\nCourts.\nPhiladelphia County is coterminous with the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas is the trial court of general jurisdiction for the city, hearing felony-level criminal cases and civil suits above the minimum jurisdictional limit of $10,000. The court has appellate jurisdiction over rulings from the Municipal and Traffic Courts, and some administrative agencies and boards. The trial division has 70 commissioned judges elected by the voters, along with about one thousand other employees. The court has a family division with 25 judges and an orphans' court with three judges.\nAs of 2018[ [update]], the city's District Attorney is Larry Krasner, a Democrat. The last Republican to hold the office is Ronald D. Castille, who left in 1991 and later served as the Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court from 2008 to 2014.\nThe Philadelphia Municipal Court handles traffic cases, misdemeanor and felony criminal cases with maximum incarceration of five years, and civil cases involving $12,000 or less ($15,000 in real estate and school tax cases), and all landlord-tenant disputes. The municipal court has 27 judges elected by the voters.\nPennsylvania's three appellate courts also have sittings in Philadelphia. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the court of last resort in the state, regularly hears arguments in Philadelphia City Hall. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania and the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania also sit in Philadelphia several times a year. Judges for these courts are elected at large. The state Supreme Court and Superior Court have deputy prothonotary offices in Philadelphia.\nPhiladelphia is home to the federal United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, both of which are housed in the James A. Byrne United States Courthouse.\nPolitics.\nThe current mayor is Cherelle Parker who won the election in November 2023. Parker's predecessor, Jim Kenney, served two terms from 2016 to January 2024. Parker is a member of the Democratic Party. For over seven decades, since 1952, every Philadelphia mayor has been a Democrat.\nPhiladelphia City Council is the legislative branch which consists of ten council members representing individual districts and seven members elected at-large, all of whom are elected to four-year terms. Democrats are currently the majority and hold 14 seats including nine of the ten districts and five at-large seats. Republicans hold one seat: the Northeast-based Tenth District. The Working Families Party holds two at-large seats making them the council's minority party. The current council president is Kenyatta Johnson.\nPhiladelphia's political structure consists of a system of wards and divisions. There are 66 wards with 11 to 51 divisions each for a total of 1703 divisions. Each division elects two committee people who are supposed to live within the division boundaries, and committee people select a leader for their ward. Democrats and Republicans elect their own committee people every four years. The committee person's role is to serve as a point of contact between voters and party officials and help get out the vote. Most wards are closed which means the ward leader makes sole endorsement decisions; open wards allow committee people to weigh in on these decisions. There are groups such as Open Wards Philadelphia and individuals who are working to elect ward leaders who promote an open ward system.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nPhiladelphia had historically been a bastion of the Republican Party from the American Civil War until the mid-1930s. In 1856, the first Republican National Convention was held at Musical Fund Hall at 808 Locust Street in Philadelphia.\nDemocratic registrations increased after the Great Depression; however, the city was not carried by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt in his landslide victory of 1932, as Pennsylvania was one of only six states won by Republican Herbert Hoover. Voter turnout surged from 600,000 in 1932 to nearly 900,000 in 1936 and Roosevelt carried Philadelphia with over 60% of the vote. Philadelphia has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1936. In 2008, Democrat Barack Obama drew 83% of the city's vote. Obama's win was even larger in 2012, capturing 85% of the vote. In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton won 82% of the vote.\nAs a result of the previously declining population in the city and state, Philadelphia has only three congressional districts of the 18 districts in Pennsylvania, based on the 2010 census apportionment: the 2nd district, represented by Brendan Boyle; the 3rd, represented by Dwight Evans; and the 5th, represented by Mary Gay Scanlon. All three representatives are Democrats, though Republicans still have some support in the city, primarily in the Northeast. Sam Katz ran competitive mayoral races as the Republican nominee in 1999 and 2003, losing to Democrat John Street both times.\nPennsylvania's longest-serving Senator, Arlen Specter, was an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania who opened his first law practice in Philadelphia. Specter served as a Republican from 1981 and as a Democrat from 2009, losing that party's primary in 2010 and leaving office in January 2011. He was assistant counsel on the Warren Commission in 1964 and the city's district attorney from 1966 to 1974.\nPhiladelphia has hosted various national conventions, including in 1848 (Whig), 1856 (Republican), 1872 (Republican), 1900 (Republican), 1936 (Democratic), 1940 (Republican), 1948 (Republican), 1948 (Progressive), 2000 (Republican), and 2016 (Democratic). Philadelphia has been home to one vice president, George M. Dallas, and one general of the American Civil War, George B. McClellan, who won his party's nomination for president but lost in the general election to Abraham Lincoln in 1864. In May 2019, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden chose Philadelphia to be his 2020 U.S. presidential campaign headquarters.\nEnvironmental policy.\n\"Green Cities, Clean Water\" is an environmental policy initiative based in Philadelphia that has shown promising results in mitigating the effects of climate change. The researchers on the policy have stated that despite such promising plans of green infrastructure building, \"the city is forecasted to grow warmer, wetter, and more urbanized over the century, runoff and local temperatures will increase on average throughout the city\". Even though landcover predictive models on the effects of the policy initiative have indicated that green infrastructure could be useful at decreasing the amount of runoff in the city over time, the city government would have to expand its current plans and \"consider the cobenefit of climate change adaptation when planning new projects\" in limiting the scope of city-wide temperature increase.\nPublic safety.\nPolice and law enforcement.\nIn a 2015 report by Pew Charitable Trusts, the police districts with the highest rates of violent crime were Frankford (15th district) and Kensington (24th district) in the Near Northeast, and districts to the North (22nd, 25th, and 35th districts), West (19th district) and Southwest (12th district) of Center City. Each of those seven districts recorded more than a thousand violent crimes in 2014. The lowest rates of violent crime occurred in Center City, South Philadelphia, the Far Northeast, and Roxborough districts, the latter of which includes Manayunk.\nPhiladelphia had 500, 503 according to some sources, murders in 1990, a rate of 31.5 per 100,000. An average of about 400 murders occurred each year for most of the 1990s. The murder count dropped in 2002 to 288, then rose to 406 by 2006, before dropping slightly to 392 in 2007. A few years later, Philadelphia began to see a rapid decline in homicides and violent crime. In 2013, the city had 246 murders, which is a decrease of nearly 40% since 2006.\nIn 2014, 248 homicides were committed. The homicide rate rose to 280 in 2015, then fell slightly to 277 in 2016, before rising again to 317 in 2017. Homicides increased dramatically in the late 2010s/early 2020s, reaching 499 homicides in 2020 and surpassing the 1990 \"record\" in 2021, with 501st murder on November 27 and 510 by the end of the month. Phillie ended the year with 562 murders, an all-time record. It dropped in 2022 to 514, and significantly further again in 2023, to 410.\nIn 2006, Philadelphia's homicide rate of 27.7 per 100,000 people was the highest of the country's 10 most populous cities. In 2012, Philadelphia had the fourth-highest homicide rate among the country's most populous cities. The rate dropped to 16 homicides per 100,000 residents by 2014 placing Philadelphia as the sixth-highest city in the country.\nThe number of shootings in the city has declined significantly since the early years of the 21st century. Shooting incidents peaked at 1,857 in 2006 before declining nearly 44 percent to 1,047 shootings in 2014. Major crimes have decreased gradually since a peak in 2006 when 85,498 major crimes were reported. The number of reported major crimes fell 11 percent in three years to 68,815 occurrences in 2014. Violent crimes, which include homicide, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery, decreased 14 percent in three years to 15,771 occurrences in 2014.\nIn 2014, Philadelphia enacted an ordinance decriminalizing the possession of less than 30 grams of marijuana or eight grams of hashish; the ordinance gave police officers the discretion to treat possession of these amounts as a civil infraction punishable by a $25 ticket, rather than a crime. At the time, Philadelphia was at the largest city in the nation to decriminalize the possession of marijuana. From 2013 to 2018, marijuana arrests in the city dropped by more than 85%. The purchase or sale of marijuana remains a criminal offense in Philadelphia.\nFirefighting.\nThe Philadelphia Fire Department provides fire protection and emergency medical services (EMS). The department's official mission is to protect public safety by quick and professional response to emergencies and the promotion of sound emergency prevention measures. This mandate encompasses all traditional firefighting functions, including fire suppression, with 60 engine companies and 30 ladder companies as well as specialty and support units deployed throughout the city; specialized firefighting units for Philadelphia International Airport and the Port of Philadelphia; investigations conducted by the fire marshal's office to determine the origins of fires and develop preventive strategies; prevention programs to educate the public; and support services including research and planning, management of the fire communications center within the city's 911 system, and operation of the Philadelphia Fire Academy.\nMedia.\nNewspapers.\nPhiladelphia's two major daily newspapers are \"The Philadelphia Inquirer\", first published in 1829\u2014the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the country\u2014and the \"Philadelphia Daily News\", first published in 1925. The \"Daily News\" has been published as an edition of the \"Inquirer\" since 2009. Recent owners of the \"Inquirer\" and \"Daily News\" have included Knight Ridder, The McClatchy Company, and Philadelphia Media Holdings, with the latter organization declaring bankruptcy in 2010. After two years of financial struggle, the newspapers were sold to Interstate General Media in 2012. The two newspapers had a combined daily circulation of 306,831 and a Sunday circulation of 477,313 in 2013[ [update]], the 18th-largest circulation in the country, and their collective website, Philly.com, was ranked 13th in popularity among online U.S. newspapers by Alexa Internet the same year.\nSmaller publications include the \"Philadelphia Tribune\" published five days each week for the African-American community; \"Philadelphia\" magazine, a monthly regional magazine; \"Philadelphia Weekly\", a weekly alternative newspaper; \"Philadelphia Gay News\", a weekly newspaper for the LGBT community; \"The Jewish Exponent\", a weekly newspaper for the Jewish community; \"Al D\u00eda\", a weekly newspaper for the Latino community; and \"Philadelphia Metro\", a free daily newspaper.\nStudent-run newspapers include the University of Pennsylvania's \"The Daily Pennsylvanian\", Temple University's \"The Temple News\", and Drexel University's \"The Triangle\".\nRadio.\nThe first experimental radio license was issued in Philadelphia in August 1912 to St. Joseph's College. The first commercial AM radio stations began broadcasting in 1922: first WIP, then owned by Gimbels department store, followed by WFIL, then owned by Strawbridge & Clothier department store, and WOO, a defunct station owned by Wanamaker's department store, as well as WCAU and WDAS.\nAs of 2018[ [update]], the FCC lists 28 FM and 11 AM stations for Philadelphia. As of December 2017, the ten highest-rated stations in Philadelphia were adult contemporary WBEB-FM (101.1), sports talk WIP-FM (94.1), classic rock WMGK-FM (102.9), urban adult contemporary WDAS-FM (105.3), classic hits WOGL-FM (98.1), album-oriented rock WMMR-FM (93.3), country music WXTU-FM (92.5), all-news KYW-AM (1060), talk radio WHYY-FM (90.9), and urban adult contemporary WRNB-FM (100.3). Philadelphia is served by three non-commercial public radio stations: WHYY-FM (NPR), WRTI-FM (classical and jazz), and WXPN-FM (adult alternative music).\nTelevision.\nIn the 1930s, W3XE, an experimental station owned by Philco, launched as Philadelphia's first television station. In 1939, the station became the nation's first NBC's first affiliate, and later became KYW-TV, the Philadelphia television market's CBS affiliate. In 1952, WFIL, later renamed WPVI, premiered the television show \"Bandstand\", which later became the nationally broadcast \"American Bandstand\" hosted by Dick Clark. In the 1960s, WCAU-TV, WFIL-TV, and WHYY-TV were founded.\nEach of the nation's commercial networks has an affiliate in Philadelphia: KYW-TV 3 (CBS), WPVI-TV 6 (ABC), WCAU 10 (NBC), WPHL-TV 17 (The CW with MyNetworkTV on DT2), WFPA-CD 28 (UniM\u00e1s), WTXF-TV 29 (Fox), WPSG 57 (Independent), WWSI 62 (Telemundo), and WUVP-DT 65 (Univision). The region is served also by public broadcasting stations WPPT-TV in Philadelphia, WHYY-TV in Wilmington, Delaware and Philadelphia, WLVT-TV in the Lehigh Valley, and NJTV in New Jersey.\nSince September 2024, Philadelphia is the nation's largest television market where at least one of the six English networks are shown at a station not owned by a particular network's associated parent company. The major Spanish language networks are Univision (WUVP-DT), UniM\u00e1s (WFPA-CD), and Telemundo (WWSI-TV).\nAs of 2023, the Philadelphia media market is the fifth-largest in North America with over 7.8 million viewers\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nPhiladelphia is served by SEPTA, which operates buses, trains, rapid transit (as both subways and elevated trains), trolleys, and trackless trolleys (electric buses) throughout Philadelphia, the four Pennsylvania suburban counties of Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery, in addition to service to Mercer County, New Jersey (Trenton) and New Castle County, Delaware (Wilmington and Newark, Delaware). The city's subway system consists of two routes: the subway section of the Market\u2013Frankford Line running east\u2013west under Market Street which opened in 1905 to the west and 1908 to the east of City Hall, and the Broad Street Line running north\u2013south beneath Broad Street which opened in stages from 1928 to 1938.\nBeginning in the 1980s, large sections of the SEPTA Regional Rail service to the far suburbs of Philadelphia were discontinued due to a lack of funding for equipment and infrastructure maintenance.\nPhiladelphia's 30th Street Station is a major railroad station on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor with 4.4\u00a0million passengers in 2017 making it the third-busiest station in the country after New York City's Pennsylvania Station and Washington's Union Station. 30th Street Station offers access to Amtrak, SEPTA, and NJ Transit lines. Over 12\u00a0million SEPTA and NJ Transit rail commuters use the station each year, and more than 100,000 people on an average weekday.\nThe PATCO Speedline provides rapid transit service to Camden, Collingswood, Westmont, Haddonfield, Woodcrest (Cherry Hill), Ashland (Voorhees), and Lindenwold, New Jersey, from stations on Locust Street between 16th and 15th, 13th and 12th, and 10th and 9th streets, and on Market Street at 8th Street.\nAirports.\nPhiladelphia is served by two airports. Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), the larger of the two, is south-southwest of Center City on the boundary with Delaware County, and provides scheduled domestic and international air service. As of 2023, Philadelphia International Airport is the 21st-busiest airport in the nation with over 13.6 million passengers. It is also among the world's busiest airports measured by traffic movements, including takeoffs and landings. Over 30\u00a0million passengers pass through the airport annually on 25 airlines, including all major domestic carriers. The airport has nearly 500 daily departures to over 120 destinations worldwide. SEPTA's Airport Line provides direct service between Center City railroad stations and Philadelphia International Airport.\nPhiladelphia's second major airport, Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE), is a general aviation relief airport in Northeast Philadelphia, which provides general and corporate aviation.\nRoads.\nWilliam Penn planned Philadelphia with numbered streets traversing north and south, and streets named for trees, including Chestnut, Walnut, and Mulberry (since renamed Arch Streets, traversing east and west. The two main streets were named Broad Street, the north\u2013south artery, later designated Pennsylvania Route 611, and High Street, the east\u2013west artery, which was later renamed Market Street, converging at Centre Square which later became the site of City Hall.\nInterstate 95, also known as the Delaware Expressway, traverses the southern and eastern edges of the city along the Delaware River as the main north\u2013south controlled-access highway, and connects Philadelphia with Newark, New Jersey and New York City to the north and Baltimore and Washington, D.C. to the south. The city is served by Interstate 76, also known as the Schuylkill Expressway, which runs along the Schuylkill River, intersecting the Pennsylvania Turnpike at King of Prussia and providing access to Harrisburg and points west. Interstate 676, also known as Vine Street Expressway, links I-95 and I-76 through Center City, running below street level between the eastbound and westbound lanes of Vine Street. Entrance and exit ramps for the Benjamin Franklin Bridge are near the eastern end of the expressway just west of the I-95 interchange.\nRoosevelt Boulevard and Expressway, also known as U.S. 1, connects Northeast Philadelphia with Center City via I-76 through Fairmount Park. Woodhaven Road, also known as Route 63, and Cottman Avenue, also known as Route 73, serve the neighborhoods of Northeast Philadelphia, running between I-95 and the Roosevelt Boulevard. Fort Washington Expressway, also known as Route 309, extends north from the city's northern border, serving Montgomery and Bucks Counties. U.S. Route 30, also known as Lancaster Avenue, extends west from West Philadelphia to Lancaster.\nInterstate 476, locally called the Blue Route, traverses Delaware County, bypassing the city to the west and serving the city's western suburbs, providing a direct route to Allentown, the Poconos, and points north. Interstate 276, the Pennsylvania Turnpike's Delaware River extension, is a bypass and commuter route north of the city, which links to the New Jersey Turnpike and New York City.\nDelaware River Port Authority operates four bridges in the Philadelphia area, each of which cross the Delaware River to South Jersey: Walt Whitman Bridge (I-76), the Benjamin Franklin Bridge (I-676 and U.S. 30), Betsy Ross Bridge (New Jersey Route 90), and Commodore Barry Bridge (U.S. 322 in Delaware County, south of the city. The Burlington County Bridge Commission maintains two additional bridges that cross the Delaware River. Tacony\u2013Palmyra Bridge connects PA Route 73 in the Tacony section of Northeast Philadelphia with New Jersey Route 73 in Palmyra in Burlington County. Burlington\u2013Bristol Bridge connects NJ Route 413/U.S. Route 130 in Burlington, New Jersey with PA Route 413/U.S. 13 in Bristol Township, north of Philadelphia.\nBus service.\nThe Greyhound terminal is at 1001 Filbert Street (at 10th Street) in Center City, southeast of the Pennsylvania Convention Center and south of Chinatown. Several other bus operators provide service at the Greyhound terminal including Fullington Trailways, Martz Trailways, Peter Pan Bus Lines, and NJ Transit buses.\nOther intercity bus services include Megabus with stops at 30th Street Station and the visitor center for Independence Hall, BoltBus (operated by Greyhound) at 30th Street Station, OurBus at various stops in the city.\nRail.\nSince the early days of rail transportation in the United States, Philadelphia has served as a hub for several major rail companies, particularly the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Railroad. The Pennsylvania Railroad first operated Broad Street Station, then 30th Street Station and Suburban Station, and the Reading Railroad operated Reading Terminal, now part of the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The two companies also operated competing commuter rail systems in the area. The two systems now operate as a single system under the control of SEPTA, the regional transit authority. Additionally, the PATCO Speedline subway system and NJ Transit's Atlantic City Line operate successor services to South Jersey.\nIn 1911, Philadelphia had nearly 4,000 electric trolleys running on 86 lines. In 2005, SEPTA reintroduced trolley service to the Girard Avenue Line, Route 15. SEPTA operates six subway-surface trolleys that run on street-level tracks in West Philadelphia and subway tunnels in Center City, along with two surface trolleys in adjacent suburbs.\nPhiladelphia is a regional hub of the federally-owned Amtrak system, with 30th Street Station being a primary stop on the Washington-Boston Northeast Corridor and the Keystone Corridor to Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. 30th Street also serves as a major station for services via the Pennsylvania Railroad's former Pennsylvania Main Line to Chicago. As of 2018[ [update]], 30th Street is Amtrak's third-busiest station in the country, after New York City and Washington.\nUtilities.\nWater purity and availability.\nIn 1815, Philadelphia began sourcing its water via the Fairmount Water Works on the Schuylkill River, the nation's first major urban water supply system. In 1909, the Water Works was decommissioned as the city transitioned to modern sand filtration methods. Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) provides drinking water, wastewater collection, and stormwater services for Philadelphia, as well as surrounding counties. PWD draws about 57 percent of its drinking water from the Delaware River and the balance from the Schuylkill River. The city has two filtration plants on the Schuylkill River and one on the Delaware River. The three plants can treat up to 546\u00a0million gallons of water per day, while the total storage capacity of the combined plant and distribution system exceeds one billion gallons. The wastewater system consists of three water pollution control plants, 21 pumping stations, and about of sewers.\nElectricity.\nExelon subsidiary PECO Energy Company, founded as the Brush Electric Light Company of Philadelphia in 1881 and renamed Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) in 1902, provides electricity to about 1.6\u00a0million customers and more than 500,000 natural gas customers in the southeastern Pennsylvania area including the city of Philadelphia and most of its suburbs. PECO is the largest electric and natural gas utility in the state with 472 power substations and nearly of electric transmission and distribution lines and of natural gas transmission, distribution, and service lines.\nNatural gas.\nPhiladelphia Gas Works (PGW), overseen by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, is the nation's largest municipally-owned natural gas utility. PGW serves over 500,000 homes and businesses in the Philadelphia area. Founded in 1836, the company came under city ownership in 1987 and has been providing the majority of gas distributed within city limits. In 2014, the City Council refused to conduct hearings on a $1.86\u00a0billion sale of PGW, part of a two-year effort that was proposed by the mayor. The refusal led to the prospective buyer terminating its offer.\nTelecommunications.\nSoutheastern Pennsylvania was assigned the 215 area code in 1947 when the North American Numbering Plan of the Bell System went into effect. The geographic area covered by the code was split nearly in half in 1994 when area code 610 was created, with the city and its northern suburbs retaining 215. Overlay area code 267 was added to the 215 service area in 1997, and 484 was added to the 610 area in 1999. A plan in 2001 to introduce a third overlay code to both service areas, area code 445 to 215 and area code 835 to 610, was delayed and later rescinded. Area code 445 was implemented as an overlay for area codes 215 and 267 starting on February 3, 2018.\nSister cities.\nPhiladelphia also has three partnership cities or regions:\nPhiladelphia has eight official sister cities as designated by the Citizen Diplomacy International (CDI) of Philadelphia: Philadelphia has dedicated landmarks to its sister cities. The Sister Cities Park, a site of at 18th and Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Logan Square, was dedicated in June 1976. The park was built to commemorate Philadelphia's first two sister city relationships, with Tel Aviv and Florence. Toru\u0144 Triangle, honoring the sister city relationship with Toru\u0144, Poland, was constructed in 1976, west of the United Way building at 18th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Sister Cities Park was redesigned and reopened in 2012, featuring an interactive fountain honoring Philadelphia's sister and partnership cities, a caf\u00e9 and visitor center, children's play area, outdoor garden, boat pond, and a pavilion built to environmentally friendly standards.\nThe Chinatown Gate, erected in 1984 and crafted by artisans from Tianjin, stands astride 10th Street, on the north side of its intersection with Arch Street, as a symbol of the sister city relationship. The CDI of Philadelphia has participated in the U.S. Department of State's \"Partners for Peace\" project with Mosul, Iraq, and in accepting visiting delegations from dozens of other countries.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nclass=\"wikitable succession-box noprint\" style=\"margin:0.5em auto; font-size:small;clear:both;\"", "570934": "Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church\nHistoric church in Pennsylvania, United States\nThe Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is a historic church and congregation which is located at 419 South 6th Street in Center City Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The congregation, founded in 1794, is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal congregation in the nation.\nIts present church, completed in 1890, is the oldest church property in the United States to be continuously owned by African Americans. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972.\nHistory of the congregation.\nThe church was proposed in 1791 by members of the Free African Society of Philadelphia, including Absalom Jones, out of a desire to create a space for autonomous African-American worship and community in the city. The desire to create the church was strengthened in 1792, after African-American members of St. George's Methodist Church walked out due to racial segregation in the worship services. Leading roles in the founding were played by Richard Allen, who arranged the purchase of the church's site and its construction, and Absalom Jones, who raised funds among both black and white Philadelphia residents (including then-President George Washington). Mother Bethel was one of the first African-American churches in the United States, dedicated July 29, 1794, by Bishop Francis Asbury.\nOn October 12, 1794, Reverend Robert Blackwell announced that the congregation was received in full fellowship in the Methodist Episcopal Church.\nIn 1816, Rev. Richard Allen brought together other black Methodist congregations from the region to organize the new African Methodist Episcopal Church denomination. He was elected bishop of this denomination. After the American Civil War, its missionaries went to the South to help freedmen and planted many new churches in the region.\nIn 1838, the building was damaged during the riots that followed the destruction of Pennsylvania Hall.\nAllen and his wife, Sarah Allen are both buried in the present church's crypt. The current church building was constructed in 1888\u20131890, and it has been designated a National Historic Landmark.\nOn October 25, 2009, \"The Great Gathering\" took place at St. George's Church in which the community of Mother Bethel AME and St. George's congregations gathered for Sunday worship at St. George's for the first time since the historic walkout. The Rev. Dr. Mark Kelly Tyler preached for this service.\nBuilding history.\nThe property was acquired for the new congregation in 1794. Its first building was a frame structure originally used as a blacksmith's shop, which was hauled to the site.\nThis building was later replaced by frame structures in 1805 and 1841. The 1841 church was reported to have a tunnel connecting it with a nearby Quaker meetinghouse to facilitate the movements of fugitive slaves.\nThe present building, which was completed in 1890, is a three-story masonry structure with Romanesque styling. Its large round-arch windows are adorned with stained glass from Germany.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "540802": "Founding Fathers of the United States\nLeaders in the formation of the United States\nThe Founding Fathers of the United States, often simply referred to as the Founding Fathers or the Founders, were a group of late-18th-century American revolutionary leaders who united the Thirteen Colonies, oversaw the War of Independence from Great Britain, established the United States of America, and crafted a framework of government for the new nation. \nThe Founding Fathers include those who wrote and signed the United States Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution of the United States - all adopted in the colonial capital of Philadelphia - certain military personnel who fought in the American Revolutionary War, and others who greatly assisted in the nation's formation. The single person most identified as \"Father\" of the United States is George Washington, a general in the American Revolution and the nation's first president. In 1973, historian Richard B. Morris identified seven figures as key founders, based on what he called the \"triple tests\" of leadership, longevity, and statesmanship: John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Washington.\nMost of the Founding Fathers were of English ancestry, though many had family roots extending across various regions of the British Isles, including Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Additionally, some traced their lineage back to the early Dutch settlers of New York (New Netherland) during the colonial era, while others were descendants of French Huguenots who settled in the colonies, escaping religious persecution in France.\nHistorical founders.\nHistorian Richard Morris' selection of seven key founders was widely accepted through the 20th century. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin were members of the Committee of Five that were charged by the Second Continental Congress with drafting the Declaration of Independence. Franklin, Adams, and John Jay negotiated the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which established American independence and brought an end to the American Revolutionary War. The constitutions drafted by Jay and Adams for their respective states of New York (1777) and Massachusetts (1780) proved influential in the language used in developing the U.S. Constitution. \"The Federalist Papers\", which advocated the ratification of the Constitution, were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Jay. George Washington was commander-in-chief of the Continental Army and later president of the Constitutional Convention. \nEach of these men held additional important roles in the early government of the United States. Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison served as the first four presidents; Adams and Jefferson were the nation's first two vice presidents; Jay was the nation's first chief justice; Hamilton was the first secretary of the treasury; Jefferson was the first secretary of state; and Franklin was America's most senior diplomat from the start of the Revolutionary War through its conclusion with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783.\nThe list of Founding Fathers is often expanded to include the signers of the Declaration of Independence and individuals who later approved the U.S. Constitution. Some scholars regard all delegates to the Constitutional Convention as Founding Fathers whether they approved the Constitution or not. In addition, some historians include signers of the Articles of Confederation, which was adopted in 1781 as the nation's first constitution.\nHistorians have come to recognize others as founders, such as Revolutionary War military leaders as well as participants in developments leading up to the war, including prominent writers, orators, and other men and women who contributed to cause. Since the 19th century, the Founding Fathers have shifted from the concept of them as demigods who created the modern nation-state, to take into account their inability to address issues such as slavery and the debt owed after the American Revolutionary War. Scholars emphasize that the Founding Fathers' accomplishments and shortcomings be viewed within the context of their time.\nOrigin of phrase.\nThe phrase \"Founding Fathers\" was first used by U.S. senator Warren G. Harding in his keynote speech at the Republican National Convention of 1916. Harding later repeated the phrase at his March 4, 1921, presidential inauguration. While U.S. presidents used the terms \"founders\" and \"fathers\" in their speeches throughout much of the early 20th century, it was another 60 years before Harding's phrase would be used again during the presidential inaugural ceremonies. Ronald Reagan referred to \"Founding Fathers\" at both his first inauguration on January 20, 1981, and his second on January 20, 1985.\nIn 1811, responding to praise for his generation, John Adams wrote to a younger Josiah Quincy III, \"I ought not to object to your Reverence for your Fathers as you call them\u00a0... but to tell you a very great secret ... I have no reason to believe We were better than you are.\" He also wrote, \"Don't call me,\u00a0... Father\u00a0... [or] Founder\u00a0... These titles belong to no man, but to the American people in general.\"\nIn Thomas Jefferson's second presidential inaugural address in 1805, he referred to those who first came to the New World as \"forefathers\". At his 1825 inauguration, John Quincy Adams called the U.S. Constitution \"the work of our forefathers\" and expressed his gratitude to \"founders of the Union\". In July of the following year, this second President Adams, in an executive order upon the deaths of his father, John, and Jefferson, who both died on the same day, paid tribute to them as \"Fathers\" and \"Founders of the Republic\". These terms were used in the U.S. throughout the 19th century, from the inaugurations of Martin Van Buren and James Polk in 1837 and 1845, to Abraham Lincoln's Cooper Union speech in 1860 and his Gettysburg Address in 1863, and up to William McKinley's first inauguration in 1897.\nAt a 1902 celebration of Washington's Birthday in Brooklyn, James M. Beck, a constitutional lawyer and later a U.S. congressman, delivered an address, \"Founders of the Republic\", in which he connected the concepts of founders and fathers, saying: \"It is well for us to remember certain human aspects of the founders of the republic. Let me first refer to the fact that these fathers of the republic were for the most part young men.\"\nList of Founding Fathers.\nFramers and signers.\nThe National Archives has identified three founding documents as the \"Charters of Freedom\": Declaration of Independence, United States Constitution, and Bill of Rights. According to the Archives, these documents \"have secured the rights of the American people for nearly two and a half centuries and are considered instrumental to the founding and philosophy of the United States.\" In addition, as the nation's first constitution, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union is also a founding document. As a result, signers of three key documents are generally considered to be Founding Fathers of the United States: Declaration of Independence (DI), Articles of Confederation (AC), and U.S. Constitution (USC). The following table provides a list of these signers, some of whom signed more than one document.\nOther delegates.\nThe 55 delegates who attended the Constitutional Convention are referred to as framers. Of these, the 16 listed below did not sign the document. Three refused, while the remainder left early, either in protest of the proceedings or for personal reasons. Nevertheless, some sources regard all framers as founders, including those who did not sign:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\n(*) Randolph, Mason, and Gerry were the only three present at the Constitution's adoption who refused to sign.\nAdditional Founding Fathers.\nIn addition to the signers and Framers of the founding documents and one of the seven notable leaders previously mentioned\u2014John Jay\u2014the following are regarded as founders based on their contributions to the creation and early development of the new nation:\nWomen founders.\nHistorians have come to recognize the roles women played in the nation's early development, using the term \"Founding Mothers\". Among the women honored in this respect are:\nOther patriots.\nThe following men and women are also recognized for the notable contributions they made during the founding era:\nThe colonies unite (1765\u20131774).\nIn the mid-1760s, Parliament began levying taxes on the colonies to finance Britain's debts from the French and Indian War, a decade-long conflict that ended in 1763. Opposition to Stamp Act and Townshend Acts united the colonies in a common cause. While the Stamp Act was withdrawn, taxes on tea remained under the Townshend Acts and took on a new form in 1773 with Parliament's adoption of the Tea Act. The new tea tax, along with stricter customs enforcement, was not well-received across the colonies, particularly in Massachusetts.\nOn December 16, 1773, 150 colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded ships in Boston and dumped 342 chests of tea into the city's harbor, a protest that came to be known as the Boston Tea Party. Orchestrated by Samuel Adams and the Boston Committee of Correspondence, the protest was viewed as treasonous by British authorities. In response, Parliament passed the Coercive or Intolerable Acts, a series of punitive laws that closed Boston's port and placed the colony under direct control of the British government. These measures stirred unrest throughout the colonies, which felt Parliament had overreached its authority and was posing a threat to the self-rule that had existed in the Americas since the 1600s.\nIntent on responding to the Acts, twelve of the Thirteen Colonies agreed to send delegates to meet in Philadelphia as the First Continental Congress, with Georgia declining because it needed British military support in its conflict with native tribes. The concept of an American union had been entertained long before 1774, but always embraced the idea that it would be subject to the authority of the British Empire. By 1774, however, letters published in colonial newspapers, mostly by anonymous writers, began asserting the need for a \"Congress\" to represent all Americans, one that would have equal status with British authority.\nContinental Congress (1774\u20131775).\nThe Continental Congress was convened to deal with a series of pressing issues the colonies were facing with Britain. Its delegates were men considered to be the most intelligent and thoughtful among the colonialists. In the wake of the Intolerable Acts, at the hands of an unyielding British King and Parliament, the colonies were forced to choose between either totally submitting to arbitrary Parliamentary authority or resorting to unified armed resistance. The new Congress functioned as the directing body in declaring a great war and was sanctioned only by reason of the guidance it provided during the armed struggle. Its authority remained ill-defined, and few of its delegates realized that events would soon lead them to decide policies that ultimately established a \"new power among the nations\". In the process the Congress performed many experiments in government before an adequate Constitution evolved.\nFirst Continental Congress (1774).\nThe First Continental Congress convened at Philadelphia's Carpenter's Hall on September 5, 1774. The Congress, which had no legal authority to raise taxes or call on colonial militias, consisted of 56 delegates, including George Washington of Virginia; John Adams and Samuel Adams of Massachusetts; John Jay of New York; John Dickinson of Pennsylvania; and Roger Sherman of Connecticut. Peyton Randolph of Virginia was unanimously elected its first president.\nThe Congress came close to disbanding in its first few days over the issue of representation, with smaller colonies desiring equality with the larger ones. While Patrick Henry, from the largest colony, Virginia, disagreed, he stressed the greater importance of uniting the colonies: \"The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American!\". The delegates then began with a discussion of the Suffolk Resolves, which had just been approved at a town meeting in Milton, Massachusetts. Joseph Warren, chairman of the Resolves drafting committee, had dispatched Paul Revere to deliver signed copies to the Congress in Philadelphia. The Resolves called for the ouster of British officials, a trade embargo of British goods, and the formation of a militia throughout the colonies. Despite the radical nature of the resolves, on September 17 the Congress passed them in their entirety in exchange for assurances that Massachusetts' colonists would do nothing to provoke war.\nThe delegates then approved a series of measures, including a Petition to the King in an appeal for peace and a Declaration and Resolves which introduced the ideas of natural law and natural rights, foreshadowing some of the principles found in the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. The declaration asserted the rights of colonists and outlined Parliament's abuses of power. Proposed by Richard Henry Lee, it also included a trade boycott known as the Continental Association. The Association, a crucial step toward unification, empowered committees of correspondence throughout the colonies to enforce the boycott. The Declaration and its boycott directly challenged Parliament's right to govern in the Americas, bolstering the view of King George III and his administration under Lord North that the colonies were in a state of rebellion.\nLord Dartmouth, the secretary of state for the colonies who had been sympathetic to the Americans, condemned the newly established Congress for what he considered its illegal formation and actions. In tandem with the Intolerable Acts, British Army commander-in-chief Lieutenant General Thomas Gage was installed as governor of Massachusetts. In January 1775, Gage's superior, Lord Dartmouth, ordered the general to arrest those responsible for the Tea Party and to seize the munitions that had been stockpiled by militia forces outside of Boston. The letter took several months to reach Gage, who acted immediately by sending out 700 army regulars. During their march to Lexington and Concord on the morning of April 19, 1775, the British troops encountered militia forces, who had been warned the night before by Paul Revere and another messenger on horseback, William Dawes. Even though it is unknown who fired the first shot, the Revolutionary War began.\nSecond Continental Congress (1775).\nOn May 10, 1775, less than three weeks after the Battles at Lexington and Concord, the Second Continental Congress convened in the Pennsylvania State House. The gathering essentially reconstituted the First Congress with many of the same delegates in attendance. Among the new arrivals were Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, John Hancock of Massachusetts, and in June, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. Hancock was elected president two weeks into the session when Peyton Randolph was recalled to Virginia to preside over the House of Burgesses as speaker, and Jefferson was named to replace him in the Virginia delegation. After adopting the rules of debate from the previous year and reinforcing its emphasis on secrecy, the Congress turned to its foremost concern, the defense of the colonies.\nThe provincial assembly in Massachusetts, which had declared the colony's governorship vacant, reached out to the Congress for direction on two matters: whether the assembly could assume the powers of civil government and whether the Congress would take over the army being formed in Boston. In answer to the first question, on June 9 the colony's leaders were directed to choose a council to govern within the spirit of the colony's charter. As for the second, Congress spent several days discussing plans for guiding the forces of all thirteen colonies. Finally, on June 14 Congress approved provisioning the New England militias, agreed to send ten companies of riflemen from other colonies as reinforcements, and appointed a committee to draft rules for governing the military, thus establishing the Continental Army. The next day, Samuel and John Adams nominated Washington as commander-in-chief, a motion that was unanimously approved. Two days later, on June 17, the militias clashed with British forces at Bunker Hill, a victory for Britain but a costly one.\nThe Congress's actions came despite the divide between conservatives who still hoped for reconciliation with England and at the other end of the spectrum, those who favored independence. To satisfy the former, Congress adopted the Olive Branch Petition on July 5, an appeal for peace to King George III written by John Dickinson. Then, the following day, it approved the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, a resolution justifying military action. The declaration, intended for Washington to read to the troops upon his arrival in Massachusetts, was drafted by Jefferson but edited by Dickinson who thought its language too strong. When the Olive Branch Petition arrived in London in September, the king refused to look at it. By then, he had already issued a proclamation declaring the American colonies in rebellion.\nDeclaration of Independence (1776).\nUnder the auspices of the Second Continental Congress and its Committee of Five, Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence. It was presented to the Congress by the Committee on June 28, and after much debate and editing of the document, on July 2, 1776, Congress passed the Lee Resolution, which declared the United Colonies independent from Great Britain. Two days later, on July 4, the Declaration of Independence was adopted. The name \"United States of America\", which first appeared in the Declaration, was formally approved by the Congress on September 9, 1776.\nIn an effort to get this important document promptly into the public realm John Hancock, president of the Second Continental Congress, commissioned John Dunlap, editor and printer of the \"Pennsylvania Packet\", to print 200 broadside copies of the Declaration, which came to be known as the Dunlap broadsides. Printing commenced the day after the Declaration was adopted. They were distributed throughout the 13 colonies/states with copies sent to General Washington and his troops at New York with a directive that it be read aloud. Copies were also sent to Britain and other points in Europe.\nFighting for independence.\nWhile the colonists were fighting the British to gain independence their newly formed government, with its Articles of Confederation, were put to the test, revealing the shortcomings and weaknesses of America's first Constitution. During this time Washington became convinced that a strong federal government was urgently needed, as the individual states were not meeting the organizational and supply demands of the war on their own individual accord. Key precipitating events included the Boston Tea Party in 1773, Paul Revere's Ride in 1775, and the Battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775. George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River was a major American victory over Hessian forces at the Battle of Trenton and greatly boosted American morale. The Battle of Saratoga and the Siege of Yorktown, which primarily ended the fighting between American and British, were also pivotal events during the war. The 1783 Treaty of Paris marked the official end of the war.\nAfter the war, Washington was instrumental in organizing the effort to create a \"national militia\" made up of individual state units, and under the direction of the federal government. He also endorsed the creation of a military academy to train artillery offices and engineers. Not wanting to leave the country disarmed and vulnerable so soon after the war, Washington favored a peacetime army of 2,600 men. He also favored the creation of a navy that could repel any European intruders. He approached Henry Knox, who accompanied Washington during most of his campaigns, with the prospect of becoming the future Secretary of War.\nTreaty of Paris.\nAfter Washington's final victory at the surrender at Yorktown on October 19, 1781, more than a year passed before official negotiations for peace commenced. The Treaty of Paris was drafted in November 1782, and negotiations began in April 1783. The completed treaty was signed on September 3. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Jay and Henry Laurens represented the United States, while David Hartley, a member of Parliament, and Richard Oswald, a prominent and influential Scottish businessman, represented Great Britain.\nFranklin, who had a long-established rapport with the French and was almost entirely responsible for securing an alliance with them a few months after the start of the war, was greeted with high honors from the French council, while the others received due accommodations but were generally considered to be amateur negotiators. Communications between Britain and France were largely effected through Franklin and Lord Shelburne who was on good terms with Franklin. Franklin, Adams and Jay understood the concerns of the French at this uncertain juncture and, using that to their advantage, in the final sessions of negotiations convinced both the French and the British that American independence was in their best interests.\nConstitutional Convention.\nUnder the Articles of Confederation, the Congress of the Confederation had no power to collect taxes, regulate commerce, pay the national debt, conduct diplomatic relations, or effectively manage the western territories. Key leaders \u2013 George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and others \u2013 began fearing for the young nation's fate. As the Articles' weaknesses became more and more apparent, the idea of creating a strong central government gained support, leading to the call for a convention to amend the Articles.\nThe Constitutional Convention met in the Pennsylvania State House from May 14 through September 17, 1787. The 55 delegates in attendance represented a cross-section of 18th-century American leadership. The vast majority were well-educated and prosperous, and all were prominent in their respective states with over 70 percent (40 delegates) serving in the Congress when the convention was proposed.\nMany delegates were late to arrive, and after eleven days' delay, a quorum was finally present on May 25 to elect Washington, the nation's most trusted figure, as convention president. Four days later, on May 29, the convention adopted a rule of secrecy, a controversial decision but a common practice that allowed delegates to speak freely.\nVirginia and New Jersey plans.\nImmediately following the secrecy vote, Virginia governor Edmund Randolph introduced the Virginia Plan, fifteen resolutions written by Madison and his colleagues proposing a government of three branches: a single executive, a bicameral (two-house) legislature, and a judiciary. The lower house was to be elected by the people, with seats apportioned by state population. The upper house would be chosen by the lower house from delegates nominated by state legislatures. The executive, who would have veto power over legislation, would be elected by the Congress, which could overrule state laws. While the plan exceeded the convention's objective of merely amending the Articles, most delegates were willing to abandon their original mandate in favor of crafting a new form of government.\nDiscussions of the Virginia resolutions continued into mid-June, when William Paterson of New Jersey presented an alternative proposal. The New Jersey Plan retained most of the Articles' provisions, including a one-house legislature and equal power for the states. One of the plan's innovations was a \"plural\" executive branch, but its primary concession was to allow the national government to regulate trade and commerce. Meeting as a committee of the whole, the delegates discussed the two proposals beginning with the question of whether there should be a single or three-fold executive and then whether to grant the executive veto power. After agreeing on a single executive who could veto legislation, the delegates turned to an even more contentious issue, legislative representation. Larger states favored proportional representation based on population, while smaller states wanted each state to have the same number of legislators.\nConnecticut Compromise.\nBy mid-July, the debates between the large-state and small-state factions had reached an impasse. With the convention on the verge of collapse, Roger Sherman of Connecticut introduced what became known as the Connecticut (or Great) Compromise. Sherman's proposal called for a House of Representatives elected proportionally and a Senate where all states would have the same number of seats. On July 16, the compromise was approved by the narrowest of margins, 5 states to 4.\nThe proceedings left most delegates with reservations. Several went home early in protest, believing the convention was overstepping its authority. Others were concerned about the lack of a Bill of Rights safeguarding individual liberties. Even Madison, the Constitution's chief architect, was dissatisfied, particularly over equal representation in the Senate and the failure to grant Congress the power to veto state legislation. Misgivings aside, a final draft was approved overwhelmingly on September 17, with 11 states in favor and New York unable to vote since it had only one delegate remaining, Hamilton. Rhode Island, which was in a dispute over the state's paper currency, had refused to send anyone to the convention. Of the 42 delegates present, only three refused to sign: Randolph and George Mason, both of Virginia, and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts.\nState ratification conventions.\nThe U. S. Constitution faced one more hurdle: approval by the legislatures in at least nine of the 13 states. Within three days of the signing, the draft was submitted to the Congress of the Confederation, which forwarded the document to the states for ratification. In November, Pennsylvania's legislature convened the first of the conventions. Before it could vote, Delaware became the first state to ratify, approving the Constitution on December 7 by a 30\u20130 margin. Pennsylvania followed suit five days later, splitting its vote 46\u201323. Despite unanimous votes in New Jersey and Georgia, several key states appeared to be leaning against ratification because of the omission of a Bill of Rights, particularly Virginia where the opposition was led by Mason and Patrick Henry, who had refused to participate in the convention claiming he \"smelt a rat\". Rather than risk everything, the Federalists relented, promising that if the Constitution was adopted, amendments would be added to secure people's rights.\nOver the next year, the string of ratifications continued. Finally, on June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify, making the Constitution the law of the land. Virginia followed suit four days later, and New York did the same in late July. After North Carolina's assent in November, another year-and-a-half would pass before the 13th state would weigh in. Facing trade sanctions and the possibility of being forced out of the union, Rhode Island approved the Constitution on May 29, 1790, by a begrudging 34\u201332 vote.\nNew form of government.\nThe Constitution officially took effect on \u00a04, 1789 ()\u00a0(1789--), when the House and Senate met for their first sessions. On April 30, Washington was sworn in as the nation's first president. Ten amendments, known collectively as the United States Bill of Rights, were ratified on December 15, 1791. Because the delegates were sworn to secrecy, Madison's notes on the ratification were not published until after his death in 1836.\nBill of Rights.\nThe Constitution, as drafted, was sharply criticized by the Anti-Federalists, a group that contended the document failed to safeguard individual liberties from the federal government. Leading Anti-Federalists included Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee, both from Virginia, and Samuel Adams of Massachusetts. Delegates at the Constitutional Convention who shared their views were Virginians George Mason and Edmund Randolph and Massachusetts representative Elbridge Gerry, the three delegates who refused to sign the final document. Henry, who derived his hatred of a central governing authority from his Scottish ancestry, did all in his power to defeat the Constitution, opposing Madison every step of the way.\nThe criticisms are what led to the amendments proposed under the Bill of Rights. Madison, the bill's principal author, was originally opposed to the amendments, but was influenced by the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, primarily written by Mason, and the Declaration of Independence, by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, while in France, shared Henry's and Mason's fears about a strong central government, especially the president's power, but because of his friendship with Madison and the pending Bill of Rights, he quieted his concerns. Alexander Hamilton, however, was opposed to a Bill of Rights believing the amendments not only unnecessary but dangerous:\nWhy declare things shall not be done, which there is no power to do ... that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed?\nMadison had no way of knowing the debate between Virginia's two legislative houses would delay the adoption of the amendments for more than two years. The final draft, referred to the states by the federal Congress on September 25, 1789, was not ratified by Virginia's Senate until December 15, 1791.\nThe Bill of Rights drew its authority from the consent of the people and held that,\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nMadison came to be recognized as the founding era's foremost proponent of religious liberty, free speech, and freedom of the press.\nAscending to the presidency.\nThe first five U.S. presidents are regarded as Founding Fathers for their active participation in the American Revolution: Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. Each of them served as a delegate to the Continental Congress.\nDemographics and other characteristics.\nThe Founding Fathers represented the upper echelon of political leadership in the British colonies during the latter half of the 18th century. All were leaders in their communities and respective colonies who were willing to assume responsibility for public affairs.\nOf the signers of the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, and U.S. Constitution, nearly all were native born and of British heritage, including Scots, Irish, and Welsh. Nearly half were lawyers, while the remainder were primarily businessmen and planter-farmers. The average age of the founders was 43. Benjamin Franklin, born in 1706, was the oldest, while only a few were born after 1750 and thus were in their 20s.\nThe following sections discuss these and other demographic topics in greater detail. For the most part, the information is confined to signers/delegates associated with the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, and Constitution.\nPolitical experience.\nAll of the Founding Fathers had extensive political experience at the national and state levels. As just one example, the signers of the Declaration of Independence and Articles of Confederation were members of Second Continental Congress, while four-fifths of the delegates at the Constitutional Convention had served in the Congress either during or prior to the convention. The remaining fifth attending the convention were recognized as leaders in the state assemblies that appointed them.\nFollowing are brief profiles of the political backgrounds of some of the more notable founders:\nEducation.\nMore than a third of the Founding Fathers attended or graduated from colleges in the American colonies, while additional founders attended college abroad, primarily in England and Scotland. All other founders either were home schooled, received tutoring, completed apprenticeships, or were self-educated.\nAmerican institutions.\nFollowing is a listing of founders who graduated from six of the nine colleges established in the Americas during the Colonial Era. A few founders, such as Alexander Hamilton and James Monroe, attended college (Columbia and William & Mary, respectively) but did not graduate. The other three colonial colleges, all founded in the 1760s, included Brown University (College of Rhode Island), Dartmouth College, and Rutgers University (Queen's College).\nBritish institutions.\nFollowing are founders who graduated from institutions in Britain:\nEthnicity.\nAll of the founders were white, and two-thirds (36 out of 55) were natives of the American Colonies, while nineteen were born in other parts of the British Empire.\nOccupations.\nWhile the Founding Fathers were engaged in a broad range of occupations, most had careers in three professions: about half the founders were lawyers, a sixth were planters/farmers, another sixth were merchants/businessmen, and the others were spread across miscellaneous professions.\nReligion.\nOf the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, 28 were Anglicans (Church of England or Episcopalian), 21 were other Protestants, and three were Catholics (Daniel Carroll and Fitzsimons; Charles Carroll was Catholic but was not a Constitution signatory). Among the non-Anglican Protestant delegates to the Constitutional Convention, eight were Presbyterians, seven were Congregationalists, two were Lutherans, two were Dutch Reformed, and two were Methodists. \nA few prominent Founding Fathers were anti-clerical, notably Jefferson. Historian Gregg L. Frazer argues that the leading founders (John Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Wilson, Morris, Madison, Hamilton, and Washington) were neither Christians nor Deists, but rather supporters of a hybrid \"theistic rationalism\". Many founders deliberately avoided public discussion of their faith. Historian David L. Holmes uses evidence gleaned from letters, government documents, and second-hand accounts to identify their religious beliefs.\nFounders on currency and postage.\nFour U.S. founders are minted on American currency\u2014Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington; Washington and Jefferson both appear on three different denominations.\nPolitical and cultural impact.\nPolitical rhetoric.\nAccording to David Sehat, in modern politics: Everyone cites the Founders. Constitutional originalists consult the Founders' papers to decide original meaning. Proponents of a living and evolving Constitution turn to the Founders as the font of ideas that have grown over time. Conservatives view the Founders as architects of a free enterprise system that built American greatness. The more liberal-leaning, following their sixties parents, claim the Founders as egalitarians, suspicious of concentrations of wealth. Independents look to the Founders to break the logjam of partisan brinksmanship. Across the political spectrum, Americans ground their views in a supposed set of ideas that emerged in the eighteenth century.\nBut, in fact, the Founders disagreed with each other...they had vast and profound differences. They argued over federal intervention in the economy and about foreign policy. They fought bitterly over how much authority rested with the executive branch, about the relationship and prerogatives of federal and state government. The Constitution provided a nearly limitless theater of argument. The founding era was, in reality, one of the most partisan periods of American history.\nHolidays.\nIndependence Day (colloquially called the \"Fourth of July\") is a United States national holiday celebrated yearly on July 4 to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the nation. Washington's Birthday is also observed as a national federal holiday, and on April 13 Jefferson's Birthday honors the US founder and president.\nMedia and theater.\nThe Founding Fathers were portrayed in the Tony Award\u2013winning 1969 musical \"1776\", which depicted the debates over and eventual adoption of the Declaration of Independence. The stage production was adapted into the 1972 film of the same name. The 1989 film \"A More Perfect Union\", which was filmed on location in Independence Hall, depicts the events of the Constitutional Convention. The writing and passing of the founding documents are depicted in the 1997 documentary miniseries \"Liberty!\", and the passage of the Declaration of Independence is portrayed in the second episode of the 2008 miniseries ' and the third episode of the 2015 miniseries \"Sons of Liberty\". The Founders also feature in the 1986 miniseries ', the 2002\u20132003 animated television series \"Liberty's Kids\", the 2020 miniseries \"Washington\", and in many other films and television portrayals.\nSeveral Founding Fathers, Hamilton, Washington, Jefferson, and Madison\u2014were reimagined in \"Hamilton\", a 2015 musical inspired by Ron Chernow's 2004 biography \"Alexander Hamilton\", with music, lyrics and book by Lin-Manuel Miranda. The musical won eleven Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize for Drama.\nSports.\nSeveral major professional sports teams in the Northeastern United States are named for themes based on the founders:\nReligious freedom.\nReligious persecution had existed for centuries around the world and it existed in colonial America. Founders such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry, and George Mason first established a measure of religious freedom in Virginia in 1776 with the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which became a model for religious liberty for the nation. Prior to this, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Lutherans had for a decade petitioned against the Church of England's efforts to suppress religious liberties in Virginia.\nJefferson left the Continental Congress to return to Virginia to join the fight for religious freedom, which proved difficult since many members of the Virginia legislature belonged to the established Church of England. While Jefferson was not completely successful, he managed to have repealed the various laws that were punitive toward those with different religious beliefs. Jefferson was the architect for separation of Church and State, which opposed the use of public funds to support any established religion and believed it was unwise to link civil rights to religious doctrine.\nThe United States Constitution, ratified in 1788, states in Article VI that \"no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States\". Freedom of religion and freedom of speech were further affirmed as the nation's law in the Bill of Rights. The 14th Amendment of 1868 provided all Americans with \"equal protection under the laws\" and thus applied the First Amendment restriction against limiting the free exercise of religion to the states.\nWashington, a local leader of the Church of England, was also a strong proponent of religious freedom. He assured Baptists worried that the Constitution might not protect their religious liberties, that, \"... certainly, I would never have placed my signature to it.\" Jews also viewed Washington as a champion of freedom and sought his assurances that they would enjoy complete religious freedom. Washington responded by declaring America's revolution in religion stood as an example for the rest of the world.\nSlavery.\nThe Founding Fathers were not unified on the issue of slavery and continued to accommodate it within the new nation. Some were morally opposed to it and some attempted to end it in several of the colonies, but nationally, slavery remained protected. In her study of Jefferson, a slaveholder of 600 slaves, Annette Gordon-Reed notes ironically, \"Others of the founders held slaves, but no other founder drafted the charter for American freedom\". As well as Jefferson, Washington and many other Founding Fathers were slaveowners; 41 of the 56 signers of the Declaration owned slaves. Some were conflicted by the institution, seeing it as immoral and politically divisive; Washington freed his slaves, in his will. Jay and Hamilton led the successful fight to outlaw the international slave trade in New York, with efforts beginning in 1777.\nThomas Jefferson included an anti slavery clause in his original draft of the Declaration of Independence:\n\"He [King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.\"\nFounders such as Samuel Adams and John Adams were against slavery. Rush wrote a pamphlet in 1773 which criticized the slave trade, and slavery. Rush argued scientifically that Africans are not intellectually or morally inferior, and any apparent evidence to the contrary is only the \"perverted expression\" of slavery, which \"is so foreign to the human mind, that the moral faculties, as well as those of the understanding are debased, and rendered torpid by it.\" The Continental Association contained a clause which banned any Patriot involvement in slave trading.\nFranklin, though a key founder of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, owned slaves whom he manumitted (released). While serving in the Rhode Island Assembly, in 1769 Hopkins introduced one of the earliest anti-slavery laws in the colonies. When Jefferson entered public life as a member of the House of Burgesses, he began as a social reformer by an effort to secure legislation permitting emancipation of slaves. <includeonly>Jefferson say's \"In 1769, I became a member of the legislature\u2026. I made one effort in that body for the permission of the emancipation of slaves, which was rejected\", but the representatives of the Crown sought \"to direct our labors in subservience to [the mother country's] interest\u2026. and\u2026 the Royal negative closed the last door to every hope of amelioration.\"</includeonly> Jay founded the New York Manumission Society in 1785, for which Hamilton became an officer. They and other members of the Society founded the African Free School in New York, to educate the children of free blacks and slaves. When Jay was governor of New York in 1798, he helped secure and signed into law an abolition law; fully ending forced labor as of 1827. He freed his slaves in 1798. Hamilton opposed slavery, as his experiences left him familiar with it and its effect on slaves and slaveholders, though he did negotiate slave transactions for his wife's family, the Schuylers. Evidence suggests Hamilton may have owned a house slave and after the Jay Treaty was signed, Hamilton advocated that American slaves freed by the British during the war be forcibly returned to their enslavers. Henry Laurens, ran the largest slave trading house in North America. In the 1750s alone, his firm, Austin and Laurens, handled sales of more than 8,000 Africans. \nSlaves and slavery are mentioned indirectly in the 1787 Constitution. For example, Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 prescribes that \"three-fifths of all other Persons\" are to be counted for the apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives and direct taxes. Additionally, in Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3, slaves are referred to as \"persons held in service or labor\". The Founding Fathers made some efforts to contain slavery. Many Northern states had adopted legislation to end, or significantly reduce slavery, during and after the revolution. In 1782, Virginia passed a manumission law that allowed owners to free their slaves by will or deed. As a result, thousands of slaves were manumitted in Virginia. In the Ordinance of 1784, Jefferson proposed to ban slavery in all the western territories, which failed to pass Congress by one vote. Partially following Jefferson's plan, Congress did ban slavery in the Northwest Ordinance, for lands north of the Ohio River. The international slave trade was banned in all states except South Carolina by 1800. In 1807, President Jefferson called for and signed into law a federally enforced ban on the international slave trade, throughout the U.S. and its territories. It became a federal crime to import or export a slave. However, the domestic slave trade was allowed for expansion or for diffusion of slavery into the Louisiana Territory.\nReconstruction as a \"Second Founding\".\nAccording to Jeffrey K. Tulis and Nicole Mellow:The Founding, Reconstruction (often called \"the second founding\"), and the New Deal are typically heralded as the most significant turning points in the country's history, with many observers seeing each of these as political triumphs through which the United States has come to more closely realize its liberal ideals of liberty and equality. \nScholars such as Eric Foner have expanded the theme. Black abolitionists played a key role by stressing that freed blacks needed equal rights after slavery was abolished. Biographer David Blight states that Frederick Douglass, \"played a pivotal role in America's Second Founding out of the apocalypse of the Civil War, and he very much wished to see himself as a founder and a defender of the Second American Republic.\" Constitutional provision for racial equality for free blacks was enacted by a Republican Congress led by Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner and Lyman Trumbull. The \"second founding\" comprised the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution. All citizens now had federal rights that could be enforced in federal court. In a deep reaction, after 1876 freedmen lost many of these rights and had second class citizenship in the era of lynching and Jim Crow laws. Finally in the 1950s the U.S., Supreme Court started to restore those rights. Under the leadership of Martin Luther King and James Bevel, the Civil Rights movement made the nation aware of the crisis, and under President Lyndon Johnson major civil rights legislation was passed in 1964\u201365, and 1968.\nScholarly analysis.\nHistorians who wrote about the American Revolution era and the founding of the United States government now number in the thousands. Their inclusion would go well beyond the scope of this article. Some of the most prominent ones, however, are listed below. While most scholarly works maintain overall objectivity, historian Arthur H. Shaffer notes that many of the early works about the American Revolution often express a national bias, or anti-bias. Shaffer maintains that this bias lends a direct insight into the minds of the founders and their adversaries respectively. He notes that any bias is the product of a national interest and prevailing political mood, and as such cannot be dismissed as having no historic value for the modern historian. Conversely, various modern accounts of history contain anachronisms, modern day ideals and perceptions used in an effort to write about the past and as such can distort the historical account in an effort to placate a modern audience.\nEarly historians.\nSeveral of the earliest histories of the founding of the United States and its founders were written by Jeremy Belknap, author of his three-volume work, \"The history of New-Hampshire\", published in 1784.\nModern historians.\nArticles and books by these and other 20th- and 21st-century historians, combined with the digitization of primary sources such as handwritten letters, continue to contribute to an encyclopedic body of knowledge about the Founding Fathers:\nAccording to American historian Joseph Ellis, the concept of the Founding Fathers of the U.S. emerged in the 1820s as the last survivors died out. Ellis says the founders, or the fathers comprised an aggregate of semi-sacred figures whose particular accomplishments and singular achievements were decidedly less important than their sheer presence as a powerful but faceless symbol of past greatness. For the generation of national leaders coming of age in the 1820s and 1830s, such as Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun, the founders represented heroic but anonymous abstraction whose long shadow fell across all followers and whose legendary accomplishments defied comparison.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nWe can win no laurels in a war for independence. Earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all. Nor are there places for us\u00a0... [as] the founders of states. Our fathers have filled them. But there remains to us a great duty of defence and preservation.\nDaniel Webster, 1825\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nJournal articles.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nOnline sources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\nBooks.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nJournal articles.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["570934", "540802", "50585"], "permutation_1": ["540802", "50585", "570934"], "permutation_2": ["540802", "570934", "50585"], "permutation_3": ["570934", "540802", "50585"]}
{"id": "3hop1__16275_71250_135051", "docs_added": {"30570": "Trajan\nRoman emperor from AD 98 to 117\nTrajan ( ; born Marcus Ulpius Traianus, 18 September\u00a053\u00a0\u2013\u00a0c.\u20099 August\u00a0117) was a Roman emperor from AD\u00a098 to 117, remembered as the second of the Five Good Emperors of the Nerva\u2013Antonine dynasty. He was a philanthropic ruler and a successful soldier-emperor who presided over one of the greatest military expansions in Roman history, during which, by the time of his death, the Roman Empire reached its maximum territorial extent. He was given the title of ('the best') by the Roman Senate.\nTrajan was born in the of Italica in the present-day Andalusian province of Seville in southern Spain, an Italic settlement in Hispania Baetica; his came from the town of Tuder in the Umbria region of central Italy. His namesake father, Marcus Ulpius Traianus, was a general and distinguished senator. Trajan rose to prominence during the reign of Domitian; in AD 89, serving as a in , he supported the emperor against a revolt on the Rhine led by Antonius Saturninus. He then served as governor of Germania and Pannonia. In September 96, Domitian was succeeded by the elderly and childless Nerva, who proved to be unpopular with the army. After a revolt by members of the Praetorian Guard, Nerva decided to adopt as his heir and successor the more popular Trajan, who had distinguished himself in military campaigns against Germanic tribes.\nAs emperor of Rome, Trajan oversaw the construction of building projects such as the forum named after him, the introduction of social welfare policies such as the , and new military conquests. He annexed Nabataea and Dacia, and his war against the Parthian Empire ended with the incorporation of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria as Roman provinces. In August AD\u00a0117, while sailing back to Rome, Trajan fell ill and died of a stroke in the city of Selinus. He was deified by the senate and his successor Hadrian (Trajan's cousin). According to historical tradition, Trajan's ashes were entombed in a small room beneath Trajan's Column.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nSources.\nAn account of the Dacian Wars, the \"Commentarii de bellis Dacicis\", written by Trajan himself or a ghostwriter and modelled after Caesar's \"Commentarii de Bello Gallico\", is lost with the exception of one sentence. Only fragments remain of the \"Getica\", a book by Trajan's personal physician Titus Statilius Criton. The \"Parthica\", a 17-volume account of the Parthian Wars written by Arrian, has met a similar fate. Book68 in Greek author Cassius Dio's \"Roman History\", which survives mostly as Byzantine abridgements and epitomes, is the main source for the political history of Trajan's rule. Besides this, Pliny the Younger's \"Panegyricus\" and Dio Chrysostom's orations are the best surviving contemporary sources. Both are adulatory perorations, typical of the High Imperial period, that describe an idealized monarch and an equally idealized view of Trajan's rule, and concern themselves more with ideology than with fact.\nThe 10th volume of Pliny's letters contains his correspondence with Trajan, which deals with various aspects of imperial Roman government. It is generally agreed that Pliny, being part of the emperor's inner circle, provides a unique and valuable source of information through his letters with Trajan, the only surviving correspondence between a governor and his emperor. However, it has been argued that Pliny's correspondence with Trajan is neither intimate nor candid, but rather an exchange of official mail in which Pliny's stance borders on the servile. Some authors have even proposed that much of the text was written and/or edited by Trajan's Imperial secretary, his \"ab epistulis\". Given the scarcity of literary sources, discussion of Trajan and his rule in modern historiography cannot avoid speculation. Non-literary sources such as archaeology, epigraphy, and numismatics are also useful for reconstructing his reign.\nEarly life.\nMarcus Ulpius Traianus was born on 18 September AD53 in the Roman province of Hispania Baetica (in what is now Andalusia in modern Spain), in the \"municipium\" of Italica (now in the municipal area of Santiponce, in the outskirts of Seville), a Roman colony established in 206BC by Scipio Africanus. At the time of Trajan's birth it was a small town, without baths, theatre and amphitheatre, and with a very narrow territory under its direct administration. Trajan's year of birth is not reliably attested and may instead have been AD 56.\nThe epitome of Cassius Dio's Roman history describes Trajan as \"an Iberian and neither an Italian nor even an Italiote\", but this claim is contradicted by other ancient sources and rejected by modern scholars, who have reconstructed Trajan's Italic lineage. Appian states that Trajan's hometown of Italica was settled by and named after Italic veterans who fought in Spain under Scipio, and new settlers arrived there from Italy in the following centuries. Among the Italic settlers were the Ulpii and the Traii, who were either part of the original colonists or arrived as late as the end of the 1st century BC. Their original home, according to the description of Trajan as \"Ulpius Traianus ex urbe Tudertina\" in the Epitome de Caesaribus, was the town of Tuder (Todi) in the Umbria region of central Italy. This is confirmed by archeology, with epigraphic evidence placing both the Ulpii and the Traii in Umbria generally and Tuder specifically, and by linguistic studies of the family names \"Ulpius\" and \"Traius\" which show that both are of Osco-Umbrian origin. \nIt is unknown whether Trajan's ancestors were Roman citizens or not at their arrival in Spain. They would have certainly possessed Roman citizenship in case they arrived after the Social War (91\u201387 BC), when Tuder became a municipium of Roman citizens. In Spain they may well have intermarried with native Iberians, in which case they would have lost their citizenship. Had they lacked or lost the status of Roman citizens, they would have achieved it or recovered it when Italica became a municipium with Latin rights in the mid-1st century BC.\nTrajan's paternal grandfather Ulpius married a Traia. Their son, Trajan's namesake father Marcus Ulpius Traianus, was born at Italica during the reign of Tiberius and became a prominent senator and general, commanding the Legio X Fretensis under Vespasian in the First Jewish-Roman War. Trajan's mother was Marcia, a Roman noblewoman of the gens Marcia and a sister-in-law of the second Flavian Emperor Titus. Little is known of her. Her father is believed to be Quintus Marcius Barea Sura. Her mother was Antonia Furnilla, daughter of Aulus Antonius Rufus and Furnia. Trajan owned some lands called \"Figlinae Marcianae\" in Ameria, another Umbrian town, located near both Tuder and Reate (the home of the Flavian dynasty) and believed to be the home of Marcia's family.\nThe line of the Ulpii continued long after Trajan's death. His elder sister was Ulpia Marciana, and his niece was Salonia Matidia. Very little is known about Trajan's early formative years, but it is thought likely that he spent his first months or years in Italica before moving to Rome and then, perhaps at around eight or nine years of age, he almost certainly would have returned temporarily to Italica with his father during Trajanus's governorship of Baetica (ca. 64\u201365). The lack of a strong local power base, caused by the size of the town from which they came, made it necessary for the Ulpii (and for the Aelii, the other important senatorial family of Italica with whom they were allied) to weave local alliances, in the Baetica (with the Annii, the Ucubi and perhaps the Dasumii from Corduba), the Tarraconense and the Narbonense, here above all through Pompeia Plotina, Trajan's wife. Many of these alliances were made not in Spain, but in Rome. The family home in Rome, the Domus Traiana, was on the Aventine Hill; excavations under the Piazza del Tempio di Diana found remains thought to be of the family's large suburban villa, with evidence of highly decorated rooms.\nMilitary career.\nAs a young man Trajan rose through the ranks of the Roman army, serving in some of the most contested parts of the empire's frontier. In 76\u201377, his father was Governor of Syria (\"Legatus pro praetore Syriae\"), where Trajan himself remained as \"Tribunus legionis\". From there, after his father's replacement, he seems to have been transferred to an unspecified Rhine province, and Pliny implies that he engaged in active combat duty during both commissions.\nIn about 86, Trajan's cousin Aelius Afer died, leaving his young children Hadrian and Paulina orphans. Trajan and his colleague Publius Acilius Attianus became co-guardians of the two children. Trajan, in his late thirties, was created ordinary consul for the year 91. This early appointment may reflect the prominence of his father's career, as his father had been instrumental to the ascent of the ruling Flavian dynasty, held consular rank himself and had just been made a patrician. Around this time Trajan brought the architect and engineer Apollodorus of Damascus with him to Rome, and married Pompeia Plotina, a noblewoman from the Roman settlement at N\u00eemes; the marriage ultimately remained childless.\nThe historian Cassius Dio later noted that Trajan was a lover of young men, in contrast to the usual bisexual activity that was common among upper-class Roman men of the period. The emperor Julian also made a sardonic reference to his predecessor's sexual preference, stating that Zeus himself would have had to be on guard had his Ganymede come within Trajan's vicinity. This distaste reflected a change of mores that began with the Severan dynasty, Trajan's putative lovers included the future emperor, Hadrian, pages of the imperial household, the actor Pylades, a dancer called Apolaustus, Lucius Licinius Sura, and Trajan's predecessor Nerva. Cassius Dio also relates that Trajan made an ally out of Abgar VII on account of the latter's beautiful son, Arbandes, who would then dance for Trajan at a banquet.\nThe details of Trajan's early military career are obscure, save for the fact that in 89, as legate of Legio VII Gemina in Hispania Tarraconensis, he supported Domitian against an attempted coup by Lucius Antonius Saturninus, the governor of Germania Superior. Trajan probably remained in the region after the revolt was quashed, to engage with the Chatti who had sided with Saturninus, before returning the VII Gemina legion to Legio in Hispania Tarraconensis. In 91 he held a consulate with Acilius Glabrio, a rarity in that neither consul was a member of the ruling dynasty. He held an unspecified consular commission as governor of either Pannonia or Germania Superior, or possibly both. Pliny\u00a0\u2013\u00a0who seems to deliberately avoid offering details that would stress personal attachment between Trajan and the \"tyrant\" Domitian\u00a0\u2013\u00a0attributes to him, at the time, various (and unspecified) feats of arms.\nRise to power.\nDomitian's successor, Nerva, was unpopular with the army, and had been forced by his Praetorian Prefect Casperius Aelianus to execute Domitian's killers. Nerva needed the army's support to avoid being ousted. He accomplished this in the summer of 97 by naming Trajan as his adoptive son and successor, claiming that this was entirely due to Trajan's outstanding military merits. There are hints, however, in contemporary literary sources that Trajan's adoption was imposed on Nerva. Pliny implied as much when he wrote that, although an emperor could not be coerced into doing something, if this was the way in which Trajan was raised to power, then it was worth it. Alice K\u00f6nig argues that the notion of a natural continuity between Nerva's and Trajan's reigns was an \"ex post facto\" fiction developed by authors writing under Trajan, including Tacitus and Pliny.\nAccording to the \"Historia Augusta\", the future Emperor Hadrian brought word to Trajan of his adoption. Trajan retained Hadrian on the Rhine frontier as a military tribune, and Hadrian thus became privy to the circle of friends and relations with whom Trajan surrounded himself. Among them was Lucius Licinius Sura, a Roman senator born in Spain and the governor of Germania Inferior, who was Trajan's personal friend and became an official adviser of the Emperor. Sura was highly influential, and was appointed consul for a third term in 107. Some senators may have resented Sura's activities as a kingmaker and \u00e9minence grise, among them the historian Tacitus, who acknowledged Sura's military and oratorical talents, but compared his rapacity and devious ways to those of Vespasian's \u00e9minence grise Licinius Mucianus. Sura is said to have informed Hadrian in 108 that he had been chosen as Trajan's imperial heir.\nAs governor of Upper Germany (Germania Superior) during Nerva's reign, Trajan received the impressive title of \"Germanicus\" for his skilful management and rule of the volatile Imperial province. When Nerva died on 28 January 98, Trajan succeeded to the role of emperor without any outward adverse incident. The fact that he chose not to hasten towards Rome, but made a lengthy tour of inspection on the Rhine and Danube frontiers, may suggest that he was unsure of his position, both in Rome and with the armies at the front. Alternatively, Trajan's keen military mind understood the importance of strengthening the empire's frontiers. His vision for future conquests required the diligent improvement of surveillance networks, defences and transport along the Danube. Prior to his frontier tours, Trajan ordered his Prefect Aelianus to attend him in Germany, where he was apparently executed forthwith (\"put out of the way\"), and his now-vacant post taken by Attius Suburanus. Trajan's accession, therefore, could qualify more as a successful coup than an orderly succession.\nRoman emperor.\nOn his entry to Rome, Trajan granted the plebs a direct gift of money. The traditional donative to the troops, however, was reduced by half. There remained the issue of the strained relations between the emperor and the Senate, especially after the supposed bloodiness that had marked Domitian's reign and his dealings with the Curia. By feigning reluctance to hold power, Trajan was able to start building a consensus around him in the Senate. His belated ceremonial entry into Rome in 99 was notably understated, something on which Pliny the Younger elaborated. By not openly supporting Domitian's preference for equestrian officers, Trajan appeared to conform to the idea (developed by Pliny) that an emperor derived his legitimacy from his adherence to traditional hierarchies and senatorial morals. Therefore, he could point to the allegedly republican character of his rule.\nIn a speech at the inauguration of his third consulship, on 1January 100, Trajan exhorted the senate to share the care-taking of the empire with him\u00a0\u2013\u00a0an event later celebrated on a coin. In reality, Trajan did not share power in any meaningful way with the senate, something that Pliny admits candidly: \"[E]verything depends on the whims of a single man who, on behalf of the common welfare, has taken upon himself all functions and all tasks\". One of the most significant trends of his reign was his encroachment on the senate's sphere of authority, such as his decision to make the senatorial provinces of Achaea and Bithynia into imperial ones in order to deal with the inordinate spending on public works by local magnates and the general mismanagement of provincial affairs by various proconsuls appointed by the Senate.\n\"Optimus princeps\".\nIn the formula developed by Pliny, however, Trajan was a \"good\" emperor in that, by himself, he approved or blamed the same things that the Senate would have approved or blamed. If in reality Trajan was an autocrat, his deferential behavior towards his peers qualified him to be viewed as a virtuous monarch. The idea is that Trajan wielded autocratic power through \"moderatio\" instead of \"contumacia\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0moderation instead of insolence. In short, according to the ethics for autocracy developed by most political writers of the Imperial Roman Age, Trajan was a good ruler in that he ruled less by fear, and more by acting as a role model, for, according to Pliny, \"men learn better from examples\". Eventually, Trajan's popularity among his peers was such that the Roman Senate bestowed upon him the honorific of \"optimus\", meaning \"the best\", which appears on coins from 105 on. This title had mostly to do with Trajan's role as benefactor, such as in the case of his returning confiscated property. The epithet \"optimus princeps\" had already been used for the emperors since the late republic, but Trajan was the only one officially honoured by the title.\nPliny states that Trajan's ideal role was a conservative one, argued as well by the orations of Dio Chrysostom\u2014in particular his four \"Orations on Kingship\", composed early during Trajan's reign. Dio, as a Greek notable and intellectual with friends in high places, and possibly an official friend to the emperor (\"amicus caesaris\"), saw Trajan as a defender of the \"status quo\". In his third kingship oration, Dio describes an ideal king ruling by means of \"friendship\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0that is, through patronage and a network of local notables who act as mediators between the ruled and the ruler. Dio's notion of being \"friend\" to Trajan (or any other Roman emperor), however, was that of an \"informal\" arrangement, that involved no formal entry of such \"friends\" into the Roman administration. Trajan ingratiated himself with the Greek intellectual elite by recalling to Rome many (including Dio) who had been exiled by Domitian, and by returning (in a process begun by Nerva) a great deal of private property that Domitian had confiscated. He also had good dealings with Plutarch, who, as a notable of Delphi, seems to have been favoured by the decisions taken on behalf of his home-place by one of Trajan's legates, who had arbitrated a boundary dispute between Delphi and its neighbouring cities.\nHowever, it was clear to Trajan that Greek intellectuals and notables were to be regarded as tools for local administration, and not be allowed to fancy themselves in a privileged position. As Pliny said in one of his letters at the time, it was official policy that Greek civic elites be treated according to their status as notionally free but not put on an equal footing with their Roman rulers. When the city of Apamea complained of an audit of its accounts by Pliny, alleging its \"free\" status as a Roman colony, Trajan replied by writing that it was by his own wish that such inspections had been ordered. Concern about independent local political activity is seen in Trajan's decision to forbid Nicomedia from having a corps of firemen (\"If people assemble for a common purpose... they soon turn it into a political society\", Trajan wrote to Pliny) as well as in his and Pliny's fears about excessive civic generosities by local notables such as distribution of money or gifts.\nPliny's letters suggest that Trajan and his aides were as much bored as they were alarmed by the claims of Dio and other Greek notables to political influence based on what they saw as their \"special connection\" to their Roman overlords. Pliny tells of Dio of Prusa placing a statue of Trajan in a building complex where Dio's wife and son were buried \u2013 therefore incurring a charge of treason for placing the emperor's statue near a grave. Trajan, however, dropped the charge. Nevertheless, while the office of \"corrector\" was intended as a tool to curb any hint of independent political activity among local notables in the Greek cities, the \"correctores\" themselves were all men of the highest social standing entrusted with an exceptional commission. The post seems to have been conceived partly as a reward for senators who had chosen to make a career solely on the emperor's behalf. Therefore, in reality the post was conceived as a means for \"taming\" both Greek notables and Roman senators. It must be added that, although Trajan was wary of the civic oligarchies in the Greek cities, he also admitted into the senate a number of prominent Eastern notables already slated for promotion during Domitian's reign by reserving for them one of the twenty posts open each year for minor magistrates (the \"vigintiviri\"). Such must be the case of the Galatian notable and \"leading member of the Greek community\" (according to one inscription) Gaius Julius Severus, who was a descendant of several Hellenistic dynasts and client kings.\nSeverus was the grandfather of the prominent general Gaius Julius Quadratus Bassus, consul in 105. Other prominent Eastern senators included Gaius Julius Alexander Berenicianus, a descendant of Herod the Great, suffect consul in 116. Trajan created at least fourteen new senators from the Greek-speaking half of the empire, an unprecedented recruitment number that opens to question the issue of the \"traditionally Roman\" character of his reign, as well as the \"Hellenism\" of his successor Hadrian. But then Trajan's new Eastern senators were mostly very powerful and very wealthy men with more than local influence and much interconnected by marriage, so that many of them were not altogether \"new\" to the Senate. On the local level, among the lower section of the Eastern propertied, the alienation of most Greek notables and intellectuals towards Roman rule, and the fact that the Romans were seen by most such Greek notables as aliens, persisted well after Trajan's reign. One of Trajan's senatorial creations from the East, the Athenian Gaius Julius Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappos, a member of the Royal House of Commagene, left behind him a funeral monument on the Mouseion Hill that was later disparagingly described by Pausanias as \"a monument built to a Syrian man\".\nGreek-Roman relations.\nAs a senatorial Emperor, Trajan was inclined to choose his local base of political support from among the members of the ruling urban oligarchies. In the West, that meant local senatorial families like his own. In the East, that meant the families of Greek notables. The Greeks, though, had their own memories of independence\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and a commonly acknowledged sense of cultural superiority\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and, instead of seeing themselves as Roman, disdained Roman rule. What the Greek oligarchies wanted from Rome was, above all, to be left in peace, to be allowed to exert their right to self-government (i.e., to be excluded from the provincial government, as was Italy) and to concentrate on their local interests. This was something the Romans were not disposed to do as from their perspective the Greek notables were shunning their responsibilities in regard to the management of Imperial affairs\u00a0\u2013\u00a0primarily in failing to keep the common people under control, thus creating the need for the Roman governor to intervene. An excellent example of this Greek alienation was the personal role played by Dio of Prusa in his relationship with Trajan. Dio is described by Philostratus as Trajan's close friend, and Trajan as supposedly engaging publicly in conversations with Dio.\nNevertheless, as a Greek local magnate with a taste for costly building projects and pretensions of being an important political agent for Rome, Dio of Prusa was actually a target for one of Trajan's authoritarian innovations: the appointing of imperial \"correctores\" to audit the civic finances of the technically free Greek cities. The main goal was to curb the overenthusiastic spending on public works that served to channel ancient rivalries between neighbouring cities. As Pliny wrote to Trajan, this had as its most visible consequence a trail of unfinished or ill-kept public utilities. Competition among Greek cities and their ruling oligarchies was mainly for marks of pre-eminence, especially for titles bestowed by the Roman emperor. Such titles were ordered in a ranking system that determined how the cities were to be outwardly treated by Rome. The usual form that such rivalries took was that of grandiose building plans, giving the cities the opportunity to vie with each other over \"extravagant, needless... structures that would make a show\". A side effect of such extravagant spending was that junior and thus less wealthy members of the local oligarchies felt disinclined to present themselves to fill posts as local magistrates, positions that involved ever-increasing personal expense. Roman authorities liked to play the Greek cities against one another\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something of which Dio of Prusa was fully aware:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />[B]y their public acts [the Roman governors] have branded you as a pack of fools, yes, they treat you just like children, for we often offer children the most trivial things in place of things of greatest worth [...] In place of justice, in place of the freedom of the cities from spoliation or from the seizure of the private possessions of their inhabitants, in place of their refraining from insulting you [...] your governors hand you titles, and call you 'first' either by word of mouth or in writing; that done, they may thenceforth with impunity treat you as being the very last!\"These same Roman authorities had also an interest in assuring the cities' solvency and therefore ready collection of Imperial taxes. Last but not least, inordinate spending on civic buildings was not only a means to achieve local superiority, but also a means for the local Greek elites to maintain a separate cultural identity\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something expressed in the contemporary rise of the Second Sophistic; this \"cultural patriotism\" acted as a kind of substitute for the loss of political independence, and as such was shunned by Roman authorities. As Trajan himself wrote to Pliny: \"These poor Greeks all love a gymnasium... they will have to content with one that suits their real needs\". The first known \"corrector\" was charged with a commission \"to deal with the situation of the free cities\", as it was felt that the old method of \"ad hoc\" intervention by the Emperor and/or the proconsuls had not been enough to curb the pretensions of the Greek notables. It is noteworthy that an embassy from Dio's city of Prusa was not favourably received by Trajan, and that this had to do with Dio's chief objective, which was to elevate Prusa to the status of a free city, an \"independent\" city-state exempt from paying taxes to Rome. Eventually, Dio gained for Prusa the right to become the head of the assize-district, conventus (meaning that Prusans did not have to travel to be judged by the Roman governor), but \"eleutheria\" (freedom, in the sense of full political autonomy) was denied.\nEventually, it fell to Pliny, as imperial governor of Bithynia in AD110, to deal with the consequences of the financial mess wrought by Dio and his fellow civic officials. \"It's well established that [the cities' finances] are in a state of disorder\", Pliny once wrote to Trajan, plans for unnecessary works made in collusion with local contractors being identified as one of the main problems. One of the compensatory measures proposed by Pliny expressed a thoroughly Roman conservative position: as the cities' financial solvency depended on the councilmen's purses, it was necessary to have more councilmen on the local city councils. According to Pliny, the best way to achieve this was to lower the minimum age for holding a seat on the council, making it possible for more sons of the established oligarchical families to join and thus contribute to civic spending; this was seen as preferable to enrolling non-noble wealthy upstarts. Such an increase in the number of council members was granted to Dio's city of Prusa, to the dismay of existing councilmen who felt their status lowered. A similar situation existed in Claudiopolis, where a public bath was built with the proceeds from the entrance fees paid by \"supernumerary\" members of the council, enrolled with Trajan's permission. According to the Digest, Trajan decreed that when a city magistrate promised to achieve a particular public building, his heirs inherited responsibility for its completion.\nBuilding projects.\nTrajan was a prolific builder. Many of his buildings were designed and erected by the gifted architect Apollodorus of Damascus, including a massive bridge over the Danube, which the Roman army and its reinforcements could use regardless of weather; the Danube sometimes froze over in winter, but seldom enough to bear the passage of a party of soldiers. Trajan's works at the Iron Gates region of the Danube created or enlarged the boardwalk road cut into the cliff-face along the Iron Gate's gorge. A canal was built between the Danube's Kasajna tributary and Ducis Pratum, circumventing rapids and cataracts.\nTrajan's Forum Traiani was Rome's largest forum. It was built to commemorate his victories in Dacia, and was largely financed from that campaign's loot. To accommodate it, parts of the Capitoline and Quirinal Hills had to be removed, the latter enlarging a clear area first established by Domitian. Apollodorus of Damascus' \"magnificent\" design incorporated a Triumphal arch entrance, a forum space approximately 120 m long and 90m wide, surrounded by peristyles: a monumentally sized basilica: and later, Trajan's Column and libraries. It was started in AD 107, dedicated on 1 January 112, and remained in use for at least 500 years. It still drew admiration when Emperor Constantius II visited Rome in the fourth century. It accommodated Trajan's Market, and an adjacent brick market.\nTrajan was also a prolific builder of triumphal arches, many of which survive. He built roads, such as the Via Traiana, an extension of the Via Appia from Beneventum to Brundisium and the Via Traiana Nova, a mostly military road between Damascus and Aila, which Rome employed in its annexation of Nabataea and founding of Arabia Province.\nSome historians attribute the construction or reconstruction of Old Cairo's Roman fortress (also known as \"Babylon Fort\") to Trajan, and the building of a canal between the River Nile and the Red Sea. In Egypt, Trajan was \"quite active\" in constructing and embellishing buildings. He is portrayed, together with Domitian, on the propylon of the Temple of Hathor at Dendera. His cartouche also appears in the column shafts of the Temple of Khnum at Esna.\nHe built palatial villas outside Rome at Arcinazzo, at Centumcellae and at Talamone.\nHe also built a bath complex as well as the Aqua Traiana.\nGames.\nTrajan invested heavily in the provision of popular amusements. He carried out a \"massive reconstruction\" of the Circus Maximus, which was already the empire's biggest and best appointed circuit for the immensely popular sport of chariot racing. The Circus also hosted religious theatrical spectacles and games, and public processions on a grand scale. Trajan's reconstruction, completed by 103, was modestly described by Trajan himself as \"adequate\" for the Roman people. It replaced flammable wooden seating tiers with stone, and increased the Circus' already vast capacity by about 5,000 seats. Its lofty, elevated Imperial viewing box was rebuilt among the seating tiers, so that spectators could see their emperor sharing their enjoyment of the races, alongside his family and images of the gods,\nAt some time during 108 or 109, Trajan held 123 days of games to celebrate his Dacian victory. They involved \"fully 10,000\" gladiators and the slaughter of thousands, \"possibly tens of thousands,\" of animals, both wild and domestic. Trajan's careful management of public spectacles led the orator Fronto to congratulate him for paying equal attention to public entertainments and more serious issues, acknowledging that \"neglect of serious matters can cause greater damage, but neglect of amusements greater discontent\". State-funded public entertainments helped to maintain contentment among the populace; the more \"serious matter\" of the corn dole aimed to satisfy individuals.\nChristians.\nDuring the period of peace that followed the Dacian war, Trajan exchanged letters with Pliny the Younger on how best to deal with the Christians of Pontus. Trajan told Pliny to continue prosecutions of Christians if they merited that, but not to accept anonymous or malicious denunciations. He considered this to be in the interests of justice, and to reflect \"the spirit of the age\". Non-citizens who admitted to being Christians and refused to recant were to be executed \"for obstinacy\". Citizens were sent to Rome for trial.\nFurther tests faced by Christians in Pontus are alluded to in correspondence between Pliny the Younger, governor of the Roman province of Bithynia and Pontus, and Emperor Trajan. Writing from Pontus in about AD 112, Pliny reported that the \"contagion\" of Christianity threatened everyone, regardless of gender, age, or rank. Pliny gave those accused of being Christians opportunity to deny it, and those who would not, he executed. Any who cursed Christ or recited a prayer to the gods or to Trajan\u2019s statue were released. Pliny acknowledged that these were things that \"those who are really Christians cannot be made to do.\"\nCurrency and welfare.\nIn 107, Trajan devalued the Roman currency, decreasing the silver content of the denarius from 93.5% to 89.0%\u00a0\u2013\u00a0the actual silver weight dropping from 3.04grams to 2.88grams. This devaluation, along with the massive amounts of gold and silver acquired through his Dacian wars, allowed Trajan to mint many more denarii than his predecessors. He also withdrew from circulation silver denarii minted before Nero's devaluation. Trajan's devaluation may have had a political intent, enabling planned increases in civil and military spending. Trajan formalised the alimenta, a welfare program that helped orphans and poor children throughout Italy by providing cash, food and subsidized education. The program was supported out of Dacian War booty, estate taxes and philanthropy. The alimenta also relied indirectly on mortgages secured against Italian farms (\"fundi\"). Registered landowners received a lump sum from the imperial treasury, and in return were expected to repay an annual sum to support the alimentary fund.\nMilitary campaigns.\nConquest of Dacia.\nThe earliest of Trajan's conquests were Rome's two wars against Dacia, an area that had troubled Roman politics for over a decade in regard to the unstable peace negotiated by Domitian's ministers with the powerful Dacian king Decebalus. Dacia would be reduced by Trajan's Rome to a client kingdom in the first war (101\u2013102), followed by a second war that ended in actual incorporation into the Empire of the trans-Danube border group of Dacia. According to the provisions of Decebalus's earlier treaty with Rome, made in the time of Domitian, Decebalus was acknowledged as \"rex amicus\", that is, client king; in exchange for accepting client status, he received from Rome both a generous stipend and a steady supply of technical experts. The treaty seems to have allowed Roman troops the right of passage through the Dacian kingdom in order to attack the Marcomanni, Quadi and Sarmatians. However, senatorial opinion never forgave Domitian for paying what was seen as tribute to a barbarian king. Unlike the Germanic tribes, the Dacian kingdom was an organized state capable of developing alliances of its own, thus making it a strategic threat and giving Trajan a strong motive to attack it.\nIn May of 101, Trajan launched his first campaign into the Dacian kingdom, crossing to the northern bank of the Danube and defeating the Dacian army at Tapae (see Second Battle of Tapae), near the Iron Gates of Transylvania. It was not a decisive victory, however. Trajan's troops took heavy losses in the encounter, and he put off further campaigning for the year in order to regroup and reinforce his army. Nevertheless, the battle was considered a Roman victory and Trajan strived to ultimately consolidate his position, including other major engagements, as well as the capture of Decebalus' sister as depicted on Trajan's Column.\nThe following winter, Decebalus took the initiative by launching a counter-attack across the Danube further downstream, supported by Sarmatian cavalry, forcing Trajan to come to the aid of the troops in his rearguard. The Dacians and their allies were repulsed after two battles in Moesia, at Nicopolis ad Istrum and Adamclisi. Trajan's army then advanced further into Dacian territory, and, a year later, forced Decebalus to submit. He had to renounce claim to some regions of his kingdom, return runaways from Rome then under his protection (most of them technical experts), and surrender all his war machines. Trajan returned to Rome in triumph and was granted the title \"Dacicus\". The peace of 102 had returned Decebalus to the condition of more or less harmless client king; however, he soon began to rearm, to again harbour Roman runaways, and to pressure his Western neighbours, the Iazyges Sarmatians, into allying themselves with him. Through his efforts to develop an anti-Roman bloc, Decebalus prevented Trajan from treating Dacia as a protectorate instead of an outright conquest. In 104, Decebalus devised an attempt on Trajan's life by means of some Roman deserters, a plan that failed. Decebalus also took prisoner Trajan's legate Longinus, who eventually poisoned himself while in custody. Finally, in 105, Decebalus undertook an invasion of Roman-occupied territory north of the Danube.\nPrior to the campaign, Trajan had raised two entirely new legions: II Traiana\u00a0\u2013\u00a0which, however, may have been posted in the East, at the Syrian port of Laodicea\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and XXX Ulpia Victrix, which was posted to Brigetio, in Pannonia. By 105, the concentration of Roman troops assembled in the middle and lower Danube amounted to fourteen legions (up from nine in 101)\u00a0\u2013\u00a0about half of the entire Roman army. Even after the Dacian wars, the Danube frontier would permanently replace the Rhine as the main military axis of the Roman Empire. Including auxiliaries, the number of Roman troops engaged on both campaigns was between 150,000 and 175,000, while Decebalus could dispose of up to 200,000. Other estimates for the Roman forces involved in Trajan's second Dacian War cite around 86,000 for active campaigning with large reserves retained in the proximal provinces, and potentially much lower numbers around 50,000 for Decebalus' depleted forces and absent allies.\nIn a fierce campaign that seems to have consisted mostly of static warfare, the Dacians, devoid of manoeuvring room, kept to their network of fortresses, which the Romans sought systematically to storm (see also Second Dacian War). The Romans gradually tightened their grip around Decebalus' stronghold in Sarmizegetusa Regia, which they finally took and destroyed. A controversial scene on Trajan's column just before the fall of Sarmizegetusa Regia suggests that Decebalus may have offered poison to his remaining men as an alternative option to capture or death while trying to flee the besieged capital with him. Decebalus fled but, when later cornered by Roman cavalry, committed suicide. His severed head, brought to Trajan by the cavalryman Tiberius Claudius Maximus, was later exhibited in Rome on the steps leading up to the Capitol and thrown on the Gemonian stairs. The famous Dacian treasures were not found in the captured capital and their whereabouts were only revealed when a Dacian nobleman called Bikilis was captured. Decebalus\u2019 treasures had been buried under a temporarily diverted river and the captive workers executed to retain the secret. Staggering amounts of gold and silver were found and packed off to fill Rome's coffers.\nTrajan built a new city, Colonia Ulpia Traiana Augusta Dacica Sarmizegetusa, on another site (north of the hill citadel holding the previous Dacian capital), although bearing the same full name, Sarmizegetusa. This capital city was conceived as a purely civilian administrative centre and was provided the usual Romanized administrative apparatus (decurions, aediles, etc.). Urban life in Roman Dacia seems to have been restricted to Roman colonists, mostly military veterans; there is no extant evidence for the existence in the province of peregrine cities. Native Dacians continued to live in scattered rural settlements, according to their own ways. In another arrangement with no parallels in any other Roman province, the existing quasi-urban Dacian settlements disappeared after the Roman conquest.\nA number of unorganized urban settlements (\"vici\") developed around military encampments in Dacia proper \u2013 the most important being Apulum \u2013 but were only acknowledged as cities proper well after Trajan's reign. The main regional effort of urbanization was concentrated by Trajan at the rearguard, in Moesia, where he created the new cities of Nicopolis ad Istrum and Marcianopolis. A vicus was also created around the Tropaeum Traianum. The garrison city of Oescus received the status of Roman colony after its legionary garrison was redeployed. The fact that these former Danubian outposts had ceased to be frontier bases and were now in the deep rear acted as an inducement to their urbanization and development. Not all of Dacia was permanently occupied. After the post-Trajanic evacuation of lands across the lower Danube, land extending from the Danube to the inner arch of the Carpathian Mountains, including Transylvania, the Metaliferi Mountains and Oltenia was absorbed into the Roman province, which eventually took the form of an \"excrescence\" with ill-defined limits, stretching from the Danube northwards to the Carpathians. This may have been intended as a basis for further expansion within Eastern Europe, as the Romans believed the region to be much more geographically \"flattened\", and thus easier to traverse, than it actually was; they also underestimated the distance from those vaguely defined borders to the ocean.\nDefence of the province was entrusted to a single legion, the XIII Gemina, stationed at Apulum, which functioned as an advance guard that could, in case of need, strike either west or east at the Sarmatians living at the borders. Therefore, the indefensible character of the province did not appear to be a problem for Trajan, as the province was conceived more as a sally-base for further attacks. Even in the absence of further Roman expansion, the value of the province depended on Roman overall strength: while Rome was strong, the Dacian salient was an instrument of military and diplomatic control over the Danubian lands; when Rome was weak, as during the Crisis of the Third Century, the province became a liability and was eventually abandoned. Trajan resettled Dacia with Romans and annexed it as a province of the Roman Empire. Aside from their enormous booty (over half a million slaves, according to John Lydus), Trajan's Dacian campaigns benefited the Empire's finances through the acquisition of Dacia's gold mines, managed by an imperial procurator of equestrian rank (\"procurator aurariarum\"). On the other hand, commercial agricultural exploitation on the villa model, based on the centralized management of a huge landed estate by a single owner (\"fundus\") was poorly developed. Therefore, use of slave labor in the province itself seems to have been relatively undeveloped, and epigraphic evidence points to work in the gold mines being conducted by means of labor contracts (\"locatio conductio rei\") and seasonal wage-earning. The victory was commemorated by the construction both of the 102 cenotaph generally known as the Tropaeum Traiani in Moesia, as well of the much later (113) Trajan's Column in Rome, the latter depicting in stone carved bas-reliefs the Dacian Wars' most important moments.\nNabataean annexation.\nIn 106, Rabbel II Soter, one of Rome's client kings, died. This event might have prompted the annexation of the Nabataean Kingdom, but the manner and the formal reasons for the annexation are unclear. Some epigraphic evidence suggests a military operation, with forces from Syria and Egypt. What is known is that by 107, Roman legions were stationed in the area around Petra and Bosra, as is shown by a papyrus found in Egypt. The furthest south the Romans occupied (or, better, garrisoned, adopting a policy of having garrisons at key points in the desert) was Hegra, over south-west of Petra. The empire gained what became the province of Arabia Petraea (modern southern Jordan and northwest Saudi Arabia). At this time, a Roman road (\"Via Traiana Nova\") was built from Aila (now Aqaba) in Limes Arabicus to Bosrah. As Nabataea was the last client kingdom in Asia west of the Euphrates, the annexation meant that the entire Roman East had been provincialized, completing a trend towards direct rule that had begun under the Flavians.\nParthian campaign.\nIn 113, Trajan embarked on his last campaign, provoked by Parthia's decision to put an unacceptable king on the throne of Armenia, a kingdom over which the two great empires had shared hegemony since the time of Nero some fifty years earlier. Trajan, already in Syria early in 113, consistently refused to accept diplomatic approaches from the Parthians intended to settle the Armenian imbroglio peacefully. As the surviving literary accounts of Trajan's Parthian War are fragmentary and scattered, it is difficult to assign them a proper context, something that has led to a long-running controversy about its precise happenings and ultimate aims.\nCause of the war.\nModern historians advance the possibility that Trajan's decision to wage war against Parthia had economic motives: after Trajan's annexation of Arabia, he built a new road, Via Traiana Nova, that went from Bostra to Aila on the Red Sea. That meant that Charax on the Persian Gulf was the sole remaining western terminus of the Indian trade route outside direct Roman control, and such control was important in order to lower import prices and to limit the supposed drain of precious metals created by the deficit in Roman trade with the Far East. That Charax traded with the Roman Empire, there can be no doubt, as its actual connections with merchants from Palmyra during the period are well documented in a contemporary Palmyrene epigraph, which tells of various Palmyrene citizens honoured for holding office in Charax. Also, Charax's rulers' domains at the time possibly included the Bahrain islands, which offered the possibility of extending Roman hegemony into the Persian Gulf itself. (A Palmyrene citizen held office as satrap over the islands shortly after Trajan's death, though the appointment was made by a Parthian king of Charax.) The rationale behind Trajan's campaign, in this case, was one of breaking down a system of Far Eastern trade through small Semitic (\"Arab\") cities under Parthia's control and to put it under Roman control instead.\nIn his Dacian conquests, Trajan had already resorted to Syrian auxiliary units, whose veterans, along with Syrian traders, had an important role in the subsequent colonization of Dacia. He had recruited Palmyrene units into his army, including a camel unit, therefore apparently procuring Palmyrene support to his ultimate goal of annexing Charax. It has even been ventured that, when earlier in his campaign Trajan annexed Armenia, he was bound to annex the whole of Mesopotamia lest the Parthians interrupt the flux of trade from the Persian Gulf and/or foment trouble at the Roman frontier on the Danube. Other historians reject these motives, as the supposed Parthian \"control\" over the maritime Far Eastern trade route was, at best, conjectural and based on a selective reading of Chinese sources\u00a0\u2013\u00a0trade by land through Parthia seems to have been unhampered by Parthian authorities and left solely to the devices of private enterprise. Commercial activity in second century Mesopotamia seems to have been a general phenomenon, shared by many peoples within and without the Roman Empire, with no sign of a concerted Imperial policy towards it.\nAs in the case of the \"alimenta\", scholars like Moses Finley and Paul Veyne have considered the idea that a foreign trade policy underlay Trajan's war to be anachronistic; according to these scholars, the concern of Roman leaders with the trade in far eastern luxuries\u00a0\u2013\u00a0besides collecting toll taxes and customs\u00a0\u2013\u00a0was moral in nature, because contemporary Roman mores frowned upon the \"softness\" of luxuries. In the absence of conclusive evidence, trade between Rome and India might have been far more balanced, in terms of quantities of precious metals exchanged: one of our sources for the notion of the Roman gold drain\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Pliny's the Younger's uncle Pliny the Elder\u00a0\u2013\u00a0had earlier described the Gangetic Plains as one of the gold sources for the Roman Empire. Accordingly \u2013 in a controversial book on the Roman economy \u2013 Finley considers Trajan's \"badly miscalculated and expensive assault on Parthia\" to be an example of the many Roman \"commercial wars\" that had in common the fact of existing only in the books of modern historians.\nThe alternative view is to see the campaign as triggered by the lure of territorial annexation and prestige, the sole motive ascribed by Cassius Dio. As far as territorial conquest involved tax-collecting, especially of the 25% tax levied on all goods entering the Roman Empire, the \"tetarte\", one can say that Trajan's Parthian War had an \"economic\" motive. Also, there was the propaganda value of an Eastern conquest that would emulate, in Roman fashion, those of Alexander the Great. The fact that emissaries from the Kushan Empire might have attended to the commemorative ceremonies for the Dacian War may have kindled in some Greco-Roman intellectuals like Plutarch\u00a0\u2013\u00a0who wrote about only 70,000 Roman soldiers being necessary to a conquest of India \u00a0\u2013\u00a0as well as in Trajan's closer associates, speculative dreams about the booty to be obtained by reproducing Macedonian Eastern conquests. There could also be Trajan's idea to use an ambitious blueprint of conquests as a way to emphasize quasi-divine status, such as with his cultivated association, in coins and monuments, to Hercules.\nAlso, it is possible that the attachment of Trajan to an expansionist policy was supported by a powerful circle of conservative senators from Hispania committed to a policy of imperial expansion, first among them being the all-powerful Licinius Sura. Alternatively, one can explain the campaign by the fact that, for the Romans, their empire was in principle unlimited, and that Trajan only took advantage of an opportunity to make idea and reality coincide. Finally, there are other modern historians who think that Trajan's original aims were purely military and strategic: to assure a more defensible Eastern frontier for the Roman Empire, crossing Northern Mesopotamia along the course of the Khabur River in order to offer cover to a Roman Armenia. This interpretation is backed by the fact that all subsequent Roman wars against Parthia would aim at establishing a Roman presence deep into Parthia itself. It is possible that during the onset of Trajan's military experience, as a young tribune, he had witnessed engagement with the Parthians; so any strategic vision was grounded in a tactical awareness of what was needed to tackle Parthia.\nCourse of the war.\nThe campaign was carefully planned in advance: ten legions were concentrated in the Eastern theatre; since 111, the correspondence of Pliny the Younger witnesses to the fact that provincial authorities in Bithynia had to organize supplies for passing troops, and local city councils and their individual members had to shoulder part of the increased expenses by supplying troops themselves. The intended campaign, therefore, was immensely costly from its very beginning. Trajan marched first on Armenia, deposed the Parthian-appointed king, Parthamasiris (who was afterwards murdered while kept in the custody of Roman troops in an unclear incident, later described by Fronto as a breach of Roman good faith), and annexed it to the Roman Empire as a province, receiving in passing the acknowledgement of Roman hegemony by various tribes in the Caucasus and on the Eastern coast of the Black Sea\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a process that kept him busy until the end of 114. At the same time, a Roman column under the legate Lusius Quietus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0an outstanding cavalry general who had signalled himself during the Dacian Wars by commanding a unit from his native Mauretania\u00a0\u2013\u00a0crossed the Araxes river from Armenia into Media Atropatene and the land of the Mardians (present-day Ghilan). It is possible that Quietus' campaign had as its goal the extending of the newer, more defensible Roman border eastwards towards the Caspian Sea and northwards to the foothills of the Caucasus. This newer, more \"rational\" frontier, depended, however, on an increased, permanent Roman presence east of the Euphrates.\nThe chronology of subsequent events is uncertain, but it is generally believed that early in 115 Trajan launched a Mesopotamian campaign, marching down towards the Taurus mountains in order to consolidate territory between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. He placed permanent garrisons along the way to secure the territory. While Trajan moved from west to east, Lusius Quietus moved with his army from the Caspian Sea towards the west, both armies performing a successful pincer movement, whose apparent result was to establish a Roman presence into the Parthian Empire proper, with Trajan taking the northern Mesopotamian cities of Nisibis and Batnae and organizing a province of Mesopotamia, including the Kingdom of Osrhoene\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where King Abgar VII submitted to Trajan publicly\u00a0\u2013\u00a0as a Roman protectorate. This process seems to have been completed at the beginning of 116, when coins were issued announcing that Armenia and Mesopotamia had been put under the authority of the Roman people. The area between the Khabur River and the mountains around Singara seems to have been considered as the new frontier, and as such received a road surrounded by fortresses.\nAfter wintering in Antioch during 115/116 \u00a0\u2013\u00a0and, according to literary sources, barely escaping from a violent earthquake that claimed the life of one of the consuls, Marcus Pedo Virgilianus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Trajan again took to the field in 116, with a view to the conquest of the whole of Mesopotamia, an overambitious goal that eventually backfired on the results of his entire campaign. According to some modern historians, the aim of the campaign of 116 was to achieve a \"pre-emptive demonstration\" aiming not toward the conquest of Parthia, but for tighter Roman control over the Eastern trade route. However, the overall scarcity of manpower for the Roman military establishment meant that the campaign was doomed from the start. It is noteworthy that no new legions were raised by Trajan before the Parthian campaign, maybe because the sources of new citizen recruits were already over-exploited.\nAs far as the sources allow a description of this campaign, it seems that one Roman division crossed the Tigris into Adiabene, sweeping south and capturing Adenystrae; a second followed the river south, capturing Babylon; Trajan himself sailed down the Euphrates from Dura-Europos\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where a triumphal arch was erected in his honour\u00a0\u2013\u00a0through Ozogardana, where he erected a \"tribunal\" still to be seen at the time of Julian the Apostate's campaigns in the same area. Having come to the narrow strip of land between the Euphrates and the Tigris, he then dragged his fleet overland into the Tigris, capturing Seleucia and finally the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon. He continued southward to the Persian Gulf, when, after escaping with his fleet a tidal bore on the Tigris, he received the submission of Athambelus, the ruler of Charax. He declared Babylon a new province of the Empire and had his statue erected on the shore of the Persian Gulf, after which he sent the Senate a laurelled letter declaring the war to be at a close and bemoaning that he was too old to go on any further and repeat the conquests of Alexander the Great. Since Charax was a \"de facto\" independent kingdom whose connections to Palmyra were described above, Trajan's bid for the Persian Gulf may have coincided with Palmyrene interests in the region. Another hypothesis is that the rulers of Charax had expansionist designs on Parthian Babylon, giving them a rationale for alliance with Trajan. The Parthian city of Susa was apparently also occupied by the Romans.\nAccording to late literary sources (not backed by numismatic or inscriptional evidence) a province of Assyria was also proclaimed, apparently covering the territory of Adiabene. Some measures seem to have been considered regarding the fiscal administration of Indian trade\u00a0\u2013\u00a0or simply about the payment of customs (\"portoria\") on goods traded on the Euphrates and Tigris. It is possible that it was this \"streamlining\" of the administration of the newly conquered lands according to the standard pattern of Roman provincial administration in tax collecting, requisitions and the handling of local potentates' prerogatives, that triggered later resistance against Trajan. According to some modern historians, Trajan might have busied himself during his stay on the Persian Gulf with ordering raids on the Parthian coasts, as well as probing into extending Roman suzerainty over the mountaineer tribes holding the passes across the Zagros Mountains into the Iranian plateau eastward, as well as establishing some sort of direct contact between Rome and the Kushan Empire. No attempt was made to expand into the Iranian Plateau itself, where the Roman army, with its relative weakness in cavalry, would have been at a disadvantage.\nTrajan left the Persian Gulf for Babylon\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where he intended to offer sacrifice to Alexander in the house where he had died in 323BC\u00a0\u2013\u00a0 But a revolt led by Sanatruces, a nephew of the Parthian king Osroes I who had retained a cavalry force, possibly strengthened by the addition of Saka archers, imperilled Roman positions in Mesopotamia and Armenia. Trajan sought to deal with this by forsaking direct Roman rule in Parthia proper, at least partially. Trajan sent two armies towards Northern Mesopotamia: the first, under Lusius Quietus, recovered Nisibis and Edessa from the rebels, probably having King Abgarus deposed and killed in the process, with Quietus probably earning the right to receive the honors of a senator of praetorian rank (\"adlectus inter praetorios\"). The second army, however, under Appius Maximus Santra (probably a governor of Macedonia) was defeated and Santra killed.\nLater in 116, Trajan, with the assistance of Quietus and two other legates, Marcus Erucius Clarus and Tiberius Julius Alexander Julianus, defeated a Parthian army in a battle where Sanatruces was killed (possibly with the assistance of Osroes' son and Sanatruces' cousin, Parthamaspates, whom Trajan wooed successfully). After re-taking and burning Seleucia, Trajan then formally deposed Osroes, putting Parthamaspates on the throne as client ruler. This event was commemorated in a coin as the reduction of Parthia to client kingdom status: , \"a king is given to the Parthians\". That done, Trajan retreated north in order to retain what he could of the new provinces of Armenia\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where he had already accepted an armistice in exchange for surrendering part of the territory to Sanatruces' son Vologeses\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and Mesopotamia. It was at this point that Trajan's health started to fail him. The fortress city of Hatra, on the Tigris in his rear, continued to hold out against repeated Roman assaults. He was personally present at the siege, and it is possible that he suffered a heat stroke while in the blazing heat.\nDiaspora revolt.\nAbout this same time (AD 116\u2013117), Jews in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire\u2014Egypt, Cyprus, and Cyrene, which was likely the original trouble hotspot\u2014rebelled in what appears to have been an ethnic and religious uprising against the local populations, later known as the Diaspora Revolt. Additionally, Jewish communities in Northern Mesopotamia revolted, likely as part of a broader resistance against Roman occupation. Trajan had to withdraw his army to suppress these revolts, a move he considered a temporary setback. He never returned to command, delegating Eastern operations to Lusius Quietus, who was appointed governor of Judaea in early 117 and likely dealt with Jewish unrest there. Quietus discharged his commissions successfully, leading rabbinic sources to name the conflict in Judaea the \"Kitos War,\" with \"Kitus\" being a corruption of \"Quietus\". Whether or not the Diaspora revolt included Judea proper, or only the Jewish Eastern diaspora, remains doubtful in the absence of clear epigraphic and archaeological evidence. What is certain is that there was an increased Roman military presence in Judea at the time.\nQuietus was promised a consulate in the following year (118) for his victories, but he was killed before this could occur, during the bloody purge that opened Hadrian's reign, in which Quietus and three other former consuls were sentenced to death after being tried on a vague charge of conspiracy by the (secret) court of the Praetorian Prefect Attianus. It has been thought that Quietus and his colleagues were executed on Hadrian's direct orders, for fear of their popular standing with the army and their close connections to Trajan. In contrast, the next prominent Roman figure in charge of the repression of the Jewish revolt, the equestrian Quintus Marcius Turbo, who had dealt with the rebel leader from Cyrene, Loukuas, retained Hadrian's trust, eventually becoming his Praetorian Prefect. As all four consulars were senators of the highest standing and as such generally regarded as able to take imperial power (\"capaces imperii\"), Hadrian seems to have decided to forestall these prospective rivals.\nDeath and succession.\nEarly in 117, Trajan grew ill and set sail for Italy. His health declined throughout the spring and summer of 117, possibly acknowledged to the public by the display of a bronze portrait-bust at the public baths of Ancyra, showing an aged and emaciated man, though the identification with Trajan is disputed. He reached Selinus, where he suddenly died, shortly before 11 August. Trajan in person could have lawfully nominated Hadrian as his successor, but Dio claims that Trajan's wife, Pompeia Plotina, assured Hadrian's succession by keeping Trajan's death a secret, long enough for her to produce and sign a document attesting to Hadrian's adoption as son and successor. Dio, who tells this narrative, offers his father\u00a0\u2013\u00a0the governor of Cilicia Apronianus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0as a source, so his narrative may be based on contemporary rumour. It may also reflect male Roman displeasure that an empress\u00a0\u2013\u00a0let alone any woman\u00a0\u2013\u00a0 could presume to meddle in Rome's political affairs.\nHadrian held an ambiguous position during Trajan's reign. After commanding Legio I Minervia during the Dacian Wars, he had been relieved from front-line duties at the decisive stage of the Second Dacian War, being sent to govern the newly created province of Pannonia Inferior. He had pursued a senatorial career without particular distinction and had not been officially adopted by Trajan although he received from him decorations and other marks of distinction that made him hope for the succession. He received no post after his 108 consulate and no further honours other than being made Archon eponymos for Athens in 111/112. He probably did not take part in the Parthian War. Literary sources relate that Trajan had considered others, such as the jurist Lucius Neratius Priscus, as heir. Hadrian, who was eventually entrusted with the governorship of Syria at the time of Trajan's death, was Trajan's cousin and was married to Trajan's grandniece, which all made him as good as heir designate. Hadrian seems to have been well connected to the powerful and influential coterie of Spanish senators at Trajan's court, through his ties to Plotina and the Prefect Attianus. His refusal to sustain Trajan's senatorial and expansionist policy during his own reign may account for the \"crass hostility\" shown him by literary sources.\nHadrian's first major act as emperor was to abandon Mesopotamia as too costly and distant to defend, and to restore Armenia and Osrhoene to Parthian hegemony, under Rome's suzerainty. The Parthian campaign had been an enormous setback to Trajan's policy, proof that Rome had overstretched its capacity to sustain an ambitious program of conquest. According to the \"Historia Augusta\", Hadrian claimed to follow the precedent set by Cato the Elder towards the Macedonians, who \"were to be set free because they could not be protected\" \u2013 something Birley sees as an unconvincing precedent. Other territories conquered by Trajan were retained. According to a well-established historical tradition, Trajan's ashes were placed within the small cella that still survives at the base of Trajan's column. In some modern scholarship, his ashes were more likely interred near his column, in a mausoleum, temple or tomb built for his cult as a \"divus\" of the Roman state.\nLegacy.\nAncient sources on Trajan's personality and accomplishments are unanimously positive. Pliny the Younger, for example, celebrates Trajan in his panegyric as a wise and just emperor and a moral man. Cassius Dio added that he always remained dignified and fair. A third-century emperor, Decius, even received from the Senate the name Trajan as a decoration. In the Later Roman Empire, following the setbacks of the third century, Trajan, together with Augustus, became the paragon of the most positive traits of the Imperial order. Emperors in the 4th century were honoured by the Senate with the acclamation \"Felicior Augusto, Melior Traiano\" (\"May you be more fortunate than Augustus and better than Trajan\"). The fourth-century emperor Constantine I is credited with calling him a \"plant upon every wall\" for the many buildings bearing inscriptions with his name.\nIconography.\nAll Roman emperors until Trajan, except Nero who occasionally wore sideburns, were depicted clean-shaven, according to the fashion introduced among the Romans by Scipio Africanus (236\u00a0\u2013\u00a0183 BC). This Imperial fashion was changed by Trajan's successor Hadrian who made beards fashionable for emperors.\nAfter Rome.\nDuring the Middle Ages, some theologians such as Thomas Aquinas discussed Trajan as an example of a virtuous pagan. In the \"Divine Comedy\", Dante, following this legend, sees the spirit of Trajan in the Heaven of Jupiter with other historical and mythological persons noted for their justice. Also, a mural of Trajan stopping to provide justice for a poor widow is present in the first terrace of Purgatory as a lesson to those who are purged for being proud.\n<poem>\nI noticed that the inner bank of the curve...\nWas of white marble, and so decorated\nWith carvings that not only Polycletus\nBut nature herself would there be put to shame...\nThere was recorded the high glory\nOf that ruler of Rome whose worth\nMoved Gregory to his great victory;\nI mean by this the Emperor Trajan;\nAnd at his bridle a poor widow\nWhose attitude bespoke tears and grief...\nThe wretched woman, in the midst of all this,\nSeemed to be saying: 'Lord, avenge my son,\nWho is dead, so that my heart is broken..'\nSo he said: 'Now be comforted, for I must\nCarry out my duty before I go on:\nJustice requires it and pity holds me back.'\n\"Dante, The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio X, ll. 32 f. and 73 f.\"\n</poem>\nIn the Renaissance, Machiavelli, speaking on the advantages of adoptive succession over heredity, mentioned the five successive good emperors \"from Nerva to Marcus\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a trope out of which the 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon popularized the notion of the Five Good Emperors, of whom Trajan was the second.\nIn the 18th century, King Charles III of Spain commissioned Anton Raphael Mengs to paint \"The Triumph of Trajan\" on the ceiling of the banquet hall of the Royal Palace of Madrid\u00a0\u2013\u00a0considered among the best works of this artist.\nIt was only during the Enlightenment that this legacy began to be contested, when Edward Gibbon expressed doubts about the militarized character of Trajan's reign in contrast to the \"moderate\" practices of his immediate successors. Mommsen adopted a divided stance towards Trajan, at some point of his posthumously published lectures even speaking about his \"vainglory\" (\"Scheinglorie\"). Mommsen also speaks of Trajan's \"insatiable, unlimited lust for conquest\". Although Mommsen had no liking for Trajan's successor Hadrian\u00a0\u2013\u00a0\"a repellent manner, and a venomous, envious and malicious nature\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0he admitted that Hadrian, in renouncing Trajan's conquests, was \"doing what the situation clearly required\".\nIt was exactly this military character of Trajan's reign that attracted his early twentieth-century biographer, the Italian historian Roberto Paribeni, who in his 1927 two-volume biography \"Optimus Princeps\" described Trajan's reign as the acme of the Roman principate, which he saw as Italy's patrimony. Following in Paribeni's footsteps, the German historian Alfred Heuss saw in Trajan \"the accomplished human embodiment of the imperial title\" (\"die ideale Verk\u00f6rperung des humanen Kaiserbegriffs\"). Trajan's first English-language biography by Julian Bennett is also a positive one in that it assumes that Trajan was an active policy-maker concerned with the management of the empire as a whole\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something his reviewer Lendon considers an anachronistic outlook that sees in the Roman emperor a kind of modern administrator.\nDuring the 1980s, the Romanian historian Eugen Cizek took a more nuanced view as he described the changes in the \"personal\" ideology of Trajan's reign, stressing the fact that it became ever more autocratic and militarized, especially after 112 and towards the Parthian War (as \"only an universal monarch, a \"kosmocrator\", could dictate his law to the East\"). The biography by the German historian Karl Strobel stresses the continuity between Domitian's and Trajan's reigns, saying that Trajan's rule followed the same autocratic and sacred character as Domitian's, culminating in a failed Parthian adventure intended as the crown of his personal achievement. It is in modern French historiography that Trajan's reputation becomes most markedly deflated: Paul Petit writes about Trajan's portraits as a \"lowbrow boor with a taste for booze and boys\". For Paul Veyne, what is to be retained from Trajan's \"stylish\" qualities was that he was the last Roman emperor to think of the empire as a purely Italian and Rome-centred hegemony of conquest. In contrast, his successor Hadrian would stress the notion of the empire as ecumenical and of the emperor as universal benefactor and not \"kosmocrator\".\nIn Romanian culture.\nIn Romania, Trajan (Romanian: \"Traian\") is regarded as one of the founders of the Romanian nation and a historical figure of great importance to the Romanian people and culture. This is due to his orchestration of the Dacian Wars that led to the foundation of the Daco-Roman culture and the Latin-based Romanian language. The creation of Roman Dacia is therefore seen in the country as the ethnogenesis of the Romanian nation.\nIn Jewish legend.\nIn the Jewish homiletical works, such as \"Esther Rabbah\", Trajan is described with the epitaph \"may his bones be crushed\" (). The same epitaph is also used for Hadrian.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "150184": "Ashkenazi Jews\nJewish diaspora of Central Europe\nAshkenazi Jews ( ; also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim) form a distinct subgroup of the Jewish diaspora, that emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium CE. They traditionally speak Yiddish, a language that originated in the 9th century, and largely migrated towards northern and eastern Europe during the late Middle Ages due to persecution. Hebrew was primarily used as a literary and sacred language until its 20th-century revival as a common language in Israel.\nAshkenazim adapted their traditions to Europe and underwent a transformation in their interpretation of Judaism. In the late 18th and 19th centuries, Jews who remained in or returned to historical German lands experienced a cultural reorientation. Under the influence of the Haskalah and the struggle for emancipation, as well as the intellectual and cultural ferment in urban centres, some gradually abandoned Yiddish in favor of German and developed new forms of Jewish religious life and cultural identity.\nThroughout the centuries, Ashkenazim made significant contributions to Europe's philosophy, scholarship, literature, art, music, and science.\nAs a proportion of the world Jewish population, Ashkenazim were estimated to be 3% in the 11th century, rising to 92% in 1930 near the population's peak. The Ashkenazi population was significantly diminished by the Holocaust carried out by Nazi Germany during World War II, which killed some six million Jews, affecting practically every European Jewish family. In 1933, prior to World War II, the estimated worldwide Jewish population was 15.3 million. Israeli demographer and statistician Sergio D. Pergola implied that Ashkenazim comprised 65\u201370% of Jews worldwide in 2000, while other estimates suggest more than 75%. As of 2013[ [update]], the population was estimated to be between 10 million and 11.2 million. \nGenetic studies indicate that Ashkenazim have both Levantine and European (mainly southern and eastern European) ancestry. These studies draw diverging conclusions about the degree and sources of European admixture, with some focusing on the European genetic origin in Ashkenazi maternal lineages, contrasting with the predominantly Middle Eastern genetic origin in paternal lineages.\nEtymology.\nThe name \"Ashkenazi\" derives from the biblical figure of Ashkenaz, the first son of Gomer, son of Japhet, son of Noah, and a Japhetic patriarch in the Table of Nations (). The name of Gomer has often been linked to the Cimmerians.\nThe Biblical \"Ashkenaz\" is usually derived from Assyrian (cuneiform \"A\u0161kuzai/I\u0161kuzai\"), a people who expelled the Cimmerians from the Armenian area of the Upper Euphrates; the name \"\" is identified with the Scythians. The intrusive \"n\" in the Biblical name is likely due to a scribal error confusing a \"vav\" <templatestyles src=\"Script/styles_hebrew.css\" />\u05d5\u200e with a \"nun\" <templatestyles src=\"Script/styles_hebrew.css\" />\u05e0\u200e.\nIn Jeremiah 51:27, Ashkenaz figures as one of three kingdoms in the far north, the others being Minni and Ararat (corresponding to Urartu), called on by God to resist Babylon. In Talmud (b. Yoma 10a; y. Megillah 71b) the name Gomer is rendered as \"Germania\", which elsewhere in rabbinical literature was identified with Germanikia in northwestern Syria, but later became associated with \"Germania\". In \"Genesis Rabbah\", Rabbi Berechiah mentions Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah as German tribes or as German lands. Ashkenaz is linked to Scandza/Scanzia, viewed as the cradle of Germanic tribes, as early as a 6th-century gloss to the Historia Ecclesiastica of Eusebius.\nIn the 10th-century \"History of Armenia\" of Yovhannes Drasxanakertc'i (1.15), Ashkenaz was associated with Armenia, as it was occasionally in Jewish usage, where its denotation extended at times to Adiabene, Khazaria, Crimea and areas to the east. His contemporary Saadia Gaon identified Ashkenaz with the \"Saquliba\" or Slavic territories, and such usage covered also the lands of tribes neighboring the Slavs, and Eastern and Central Europe. In modern times, Samuel Krauss identified the Biblical \"Ashkenaz\" with Khazaria.\nSometime in the Early Medieval period, the Jews of central and eastern Europe came to be called by this term. Conforming to the custom of designating areas of Jewish settlement with biblical names, Spain was denominated \"Sefarad\" (Obadiah 20), France was called \"Tsarefat\" (1 Kings 17:9), and Bohemia was called the \"Land of Canaan\". By the start of the high medieval period, Hai Gaon refers to questions that had been addressed to him from Ashkenaz, by which he undoubtedly means Germany, and Talmudic commentators like Rashi began to use \"Ashkenaz/Eretz Ashkenaz\" to designate Germany, earlier known as \"Loter\", where, especially in the Rhineland communities of Speyer, Worms and Mainz, the most important Jewish communities arose. Rashi uses \"leshon Ashkenaz\" (Ashkenazi language) to describe Yiddish, and Byzantium and Syrian Jewish letters referred to the Crusaders as Ashkenazim. During the 12th century, the word appears quite frequently. In the \"Mahzor Vitry\", the kingdom of Ashkenaz is referred to chiefly in regard to the ritual of the synagogue there, but occasionally also with regard to certain other observances. In the literature of the 13th century, references to the land and the language of Ashkenaz often occur. Examples include Solomon ben Aderet's Responsa (vol. i., No. 395); the Responsa of Asher ben Jehiel (pp.\u00a04, 6); his \"Halakot\" (Berakot i. 12, ed. Wilna, p.\u00a010); the work of his son Jacob ben Asher, \"Tur Orach Chayim\" (chapter 59); the Responsa of Isaac ben Sheshet (numbers 193, 268, 270). Given the close links between the Jewish communities of France and Germany following the Carolingian unification, the term Ashkenazi came to refer to the Jews of both medieval Germany and France.\nIn later times, the word Ashkenaz is used to designate southern and western Germany, the ritual of which sections differs somewhat from that of eastern Germany and Poland. Thus the prayer-book of Isaiah Horowitz, and many others, give the piyyutim according to the Minhag of Ashkenaz and Poland.\nHistory.\nLike other Jewish ethnic groups, the Ashkenazi originate from the Israelites and Hebrews of historical Israel and Judah. Ashkenazi Jews share a significant amount of ancestry with other Jewish populations and derive their ancestry mostly from populations in the Middle East, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe. Other than their origins in ancient Israel, the question of how Ashkenazi Jews came to exist as a distinct community is unknown, and has given rise to several theories.\nEarly Jewish communities in Europe.\nBeginning in the fourth century BCE, Jewish colonies sprang up in southern Europe, including the Aegean Islands, Greece, and Italy. Jews left ancient Israel for a number of causes, including a number of push and pull factors. More Jews moved into these communities as a result of wars, persecution, unrest, and for opportunities in trade and commerce.\nJews migrated to southern Europe from the Middle East voluntarily for opportunities in trade and commerce. Following Alexander the Great's conquests, Jews migrated to Greek settlements in the Eastern Mediterranean, spurred on by economic opportunities. Jewish economic migration to southern Europe is also believed to have occurred during the Roman period.\nIn 63 BCE, the Siege of Jerusalem saw the Roman Republic conquer Judea, and thousands of Jewish prisoners of war were brought to Rome as slaves. After gaining their freedom, they settled permanently in Rome as traders. It is likely that there was an additional influx of Jewish slaves taken to southern Europe by Roman forces after the capture of Jerusalem by the forces of Herod the Great with assistance from Roman forces in 37 BCE. It is known that Jewish war captives were sold into slavery after the suppression of a minor Jewish revolt in 53 BCE, and some were probably taken to southern Europe.\nRegarding Jewish settlements founded in southern Europe during the Roman era, E. Mary Smallwood wrote that \"no date or origin can be assigned to the numerous settlements eventually known in the west, and some may have been founded as a result of the dispersal of Palestinian Jews after the revolts of AD 66\u201370 and 132\u2013135, but it is reasonable to conjecture that many, such as the settlement in Puteoli attested in 4 BC, went back to the late republic or early empire and originated in voluntary emigration and the lure of trade and commerce.\"\nJewish\u2013Roman Wars.\nThe first and second centuries CE saw a series of unsuccessful large-scale Jewish revolts against Rome. The Roman suppression of these revolts led to wide-scale destruction, a very high toll of life and enslavement. The First Jewish-Roman War (66\u201373 CE) resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple. Two generations later, the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132\u2013136 CE) erupted. Judea's countryside was devastated, and many were killed, displaced or sold into slavery. Jerusalem was rebuilt as a Roman colony under the name of Aelia Capitolina, and the province of Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina. Jews were prohibited from entering the city on pain of death. Jewish presence in the region significantly dwindled after the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt.\nWith their national aspirations crushed and widespread devastation in Judea, despondent Jews migrated out of Judea in the aftermath of both revolts, and many settled in southern Europe. In contrast to the earlier Assyrian and Babylonian captivities, the movement was by no means a singular, centralized event, and a Jewish diaspora had already been established before.\nDuring both of these rebellions, many Jews were captured and sold into slavery by the Romans. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, 97,000 Jews were sold as slaves in the aftermath of the first revolt. In one occasion, Vespasian reportedly ordered 6,000 Jewish prisoners of war from Galilee to work on the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece. Jewish slaves and their children eventually gained their freedom and joined local free Jewish communities.\nLate antiquity.\nMany Jews were denied full Roman citizenship until Emperor Caracalla granted all free peoples this privilege in 212 CE. Jews were required to pay a poll tax until the reign of Emperor Julian in 363 CE. In the late Roman Empire, Jews were free to form networks of cultural and religious ties and enter into various local occupations. However, after Christianity became the official religion of Rome and Constantinople in 380 CE, Jews were increasingly marginalized.\nThe Synagogue in the Agora of Athens is dated to the period between 267 and 396 CE. The Stobi Synagogue in Macedonia was built on the ruins of a more ancient synagogue in the 4th century, while later in the 5th century, the synagogue was transformed into a Christian basilica. Hellenistic Judaism thrived in Antioch and Alexandria, and many of these Greek-speaking Jews would convert to Christianity.\nSporadic epigraphic evidence in gravesite excavations, particularly in Brigetio (Sz\u0151ny), Aquincum (\u00d3buda), Intercisa (Duna\u00fajv\u00e1ros), Triccinae (S\u00e1rv\u00e1r), Savaria (Szombathely), Sopianae (P\u00e9cs) in Hungary, and Mursa (Osijek) in Croatia, attest to the presence of Jews after the 2nd and 3rd centuries where Roman garrisons were established. There was a sufficient number of Jews in Pannonia to form communities and build a synagogue. Jewish troops were among the Syrian soldiers transferred there, and replenished from the Middle East. After 175 CE Jews and especially Syrians came from Antioch, Tarsus, and Cappadocia. Others came from Italy and the Hellenized parts of the Roman Empire. The excavations suggest they first lived in isolated enclaves attached to Roman legion camps and intermarried with other similar oriental families within the military orders of the region.\nRaphael Patai states that later Roman writers remarked that they differed little in either customs, manner of writing, or names from the people among whom they dwelt; and it was especially difficult to differentiate Jews from the Syrians. After Pannonia was ceded to the Huns in 433, the garrison populations were withdrawn to Italy, and only a few, enigmatic traces remain of a possible Jewish presence in the area some centuries later. No evidence has yet been found of a Jewish presence in antiquity in Germany beyond its Roman border, nor in Eastern Europe. In Gaul and Germany itself, with the possible exception of Trier and Cologne, the archeological evidence suggests at most a fleeting presence of very few Jews, primarily itinerant traders or artisans.\nEstimating the number of Jews in antiquity is a task fraught with peril due to the nature of and lack of accurate documentation. The number of Jews in the Roman Empire for a long time was based on the accounts of Syrian Orthodox bishop Bar Hebraeus who lived between 1226 and 1286 CE, who stated by the time of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, as many as six million Jews were already living in the Roman Empire, a conclusion which has been contested as highly exaggerated. The 13th-century author Bar Hebraeus gave a figure of 6,944,000 Jews in the Roman world. Salo Wittmayer Baron considered the figure convincing. The figure of seven million within and one million outside the Roman world in the mid-first century became widely accepted, including by Louis Feldman. However, contemporary scholars now accept that Bar Hebraeus based his figure on a census of total Roman citizens and thus included non-Jews, the figure of 6,944,000 being recorded in Eusebius' \"Chronicon\". Louis Feldman, previously an active supporter of the figure, now states that he and Baron were mistaken. Philo gives a figure of one million Jews living in Egypt. Brian McGing rejects Baron's figures entirely, arguing that we have no clue as to the size of the Jewish demographic in the ancient world. Sometimes the scholars who accepted the high number of Jews in Rome had explained it by Jews having been active in proselytising. The idea of ancient Jews trying to convert Gentiles to Judaism is nowadays rejected by several scholars. The Romans did not distinguish between Jews inside and outside of the land of Israel/Judaea. They collected an annual temple tax from Jews both in and outside of Israel. The revolts in and suppression of diaspora communities in Egypt, Libya and Crete during the Kitos War of 115\u2013117 CE had a severe impact on the Jewish diaspora.\nA substantial Jewish population emerged in northern Gaul by the Middle Ages, but Jewish communities existed in 465 CE in Brittany, in 524 CE in Valence, and in 533 CE in Orl\u00e9ans. Throughout this period and into the early Middle Ages, some Jews assimilated into the dominant Greek and Latin cultures, mostly through conversion to Christianity. King Dagobert I of the Franks expelled the Jews from his Merovingian kingdom in 629. Jews in former Roman territories faced new challenges as harsher anti-Jewish Church rulings were enforced.\nEarly Middle Ages.\nCharlemagne's expansion of the Frankish empire around 800, including northern Italy and Rome, brought on a brief period of stability and unity in Francia. This created opportunities for Jewish merchants to settle again north of the Alps. Charlemagne granted the Jews freedoms similar to those once enjoyed under the Roman Empire. In addition, Jews from southern Italy, fleeing religious persecution, began to move into Central Europe. Returning to Frankish lands, many Jewish merchants took up occupations in finance and commerce, including money lending, or usury. (Church legislation banned Christians from lending money in exchange for interest.) From Charlemagne's time to the present, Jewish life in northern Europe is well documented. By the 11th century, when Rashi of Troyes wrote his commentaries, Jews in what came to be known as \"Ashkenaz\" were known for their halakhic learning, and Talmudic studies. They were criticized by Sephardim and other Jewish scholars in Islamic lands for their lack of expertise in Jewish jurisprudence and general ignorance of Hebrew linguistics and literature. Yiddish emerged as a result of Judeo-Latin language contact with various High German vernaculars in the medieval period. It is a Germanic language written in Hebrew letters, and heavily influenced by Hebrew and Aramaic, with some elements of Romance and later Slavic languages.\nHigh and Late Middle Ages migrations.\nHistorical records show evidence of Jewish communities north of the Alps and Pyrenees as early as the 8th and 9th centuries. By the 11th century, Jewish settlers moving from southern European and Middle Eastern centers (such as Babylonian Jews and Persian Jews) and Maghrebi Jewish traders from North Africa who had contacts with their Ashkenazi brethren and had visited each other from time to time in each's domain appear to have begun to settle in the north, especially along the Rhine, often in response to new economic opportunities and at the invitation of local Christian rulers. Thus Baldwin V, Count of Flanders, invited Jacob ben Yekutiel and his fellow Jews to settle in his lands; and soon after the Norman conquest of England, William the Conqueror likewise extended a welcome to continental Jews to take up residence there. Bishop R\u00fcdiger Huzmann called on the Jews of Mainz to relocate to Speyer. In all of these decisions, the idea that Jews had the know-how and capacity to jump-start the economy, improve revenues, and enlarge trade seems to have played a prominent role. Typically, Jews relocated close to the markets and churches in town centres, where, though they came under the authority of both royal and ecclesiastical powers, they were accorded administrative autonomy.\nAccording to 16th-century mystic Rabbi Elijah of Chelm, Ashkenazi Jews lived in Jerusalem during the 11th century. The story is told that a German-speaking Jew saved the life of a young German man surnamed Dolberger. So when the knights of the First Crusade came to siege Jerusalem, one of Dolberger's family members who was among them rescued Jews in Palestine and carried them back to Worms to repay the favor. Further evidence of German communities in the holy city comes in the form of halakhic questions sent from Germany to Jerusalem during the second half of the 11th century.\nIn the 11th century, the \"Rabbinic mode of thought and life\" and the culture of the Babylonian Talmud that underlies it became established in southern Italy and then spread north to Ashkenaz. However, many traditions and customs from the Jerusalem Talmud and other Land of Israel rabbinic sources were known and practiced in Ashkenaz long before the 11th century - so long before that the sources of these practices were forgotten by 11th century Ashkenazi writers, and the practices regarded simply as \"minhag\".\nNumerous massacres of Jews occurred throughout Europe during the Christian Crusades. Inspired by the preaching of a First Crusade, crusader mobs in France and Germany perpetrated the Rhineland massacres of 1096, devastating Jewish communities along the Rhine River, including the SHuM cities of Speyer, Worms, and Mainz. The cluster of cities contain the earliest Jewish settlements north of the Alps, and played a major role in the formation of Ashkenazi Jewish religious tradition, along with Troyes and Sens in France. Nonetheless, Jewish life in Germany persisted, while some Ashkenazi Jews joined Sephardic Jewry in Spain. Expulsions from England (1290), France (1394), and parts of Germany (15th century), gradually pushed Ashkenazi Jewry eastward, to Poland (10th century), Lithuania (10th century), and Russia (12th century). Over this period of several hundred years, some have suggested, Jewish economic activity was focused on trade, business management, and financial services, due to several presumed factors: Christian European prohibitions restricting certain activities by Jews, preventing certain financial activities (such as \"usurious\" loans) between Christians, high rates of literacy, near-universal male education, and ability of merchants to rely upon and trust family members living in different regions and countries.\nIn Poland, Jews were granted special protection by the Statute of Kalisz of 1264. By the 15th century, the Ashkenazi Jewish communities in Poland were the largest Jewish communities of the Diaspora. This area, which eventually fell under the domination of Russia, Austria, and Prussia (Germany) following the Partitions of Poland, and was later largely regained by reborn Poland in the interbellum, would remain the main center of Ashkenazi Jewry until the Holocaust.\nThe answer to why there was so little assimilation of Jews in central and eastern Europe for so long would seem to lie in part in the probability that the alien surroundings in central and eastern Europe were not conducive, though there was some assimilation. Furthermore, Jews lived almost exclusively in shtetls, maintained a strong system of education for males, heeded rabbinic leadership, and had a very different lifestyle to that of their neighbours; all of these tendencies increased with every outbreak of antisemitism.\nIn parts of Eastern Europe, before the arrival of the Ashkenazi Jews from Central Europe, some non-Ashkenazi Jews were present who spoke Leshon Knaan and held various other Non-Ashkenazi traditions and customs. In 1966, the historian Cecil Roth questioned the inclusion of all Yiddish speaking Jews as Ashkenazim in descent, suggesting that upon the arrival of Ashkenazi Jews from central Europe to Eastern Europe, from the Middle Ages to the 16th century, there were a substantial number of non-Ashkenazim Jews already there who later abandoned their original Eastern European Jewish culture in favor of the Ashkenazi one. However, according to more recent research, mass migrations of Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews occurred to Eastern Europe, from Central Europe in the west, who due to high birth rates absorbed and largely replaced the preceding non-Ashkenazi Jewish groups of Eastern Europe (whose numbers the demographer Sergio Della Pergola considers to have been small). Genetic evidence also indicates that Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews largely descend from Ashkenazi Jews who migrated from central to eastern Europe and subsequently experienced high birthrates and genetic isolation.\nSome Jewish immigration from southern Europe to Eastern Europe continued into the early modern period. During the 16th century, as conditions for Italian Jews worsened, many Jews from Venice and the surrounding area migrated to Poland and Lithuania. During the 16th and 17th centuries, some Sephardi Jews and Romaniote Jews from throughout the Ottoman Empire migrated to Eastern Europe, as did Arabic-speaking Mizrahi Jews and Persian Jews.\nModern history.\nMaterial relating to the history of German Jews has been preserved in the communal accounts of certain communities on the Rhine, a \"Memorbuch\", and a \"Liebesbrief\", documents that are now part of the Sassoon Collection. Heinrich Graetz also added to the history of German Jewry in modern times in the abstract of his seminal work, \"History of the Jews\", which he entitled \"Volksth\u00fcmliche Geschichte der Juden\".\nIn an essay on Sephardi Jewry, Daniel Elazar at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs summarized the demographic history of Ashkenazi Jews in the last thousand years. He noted that at the end of the 11th century, 97% of world Jewry was Sephardic and 3% Ashkenazi; in the mid-17th century, \"Sephardim still outnumbered Ashkenazim three to two\"; by the end of the 18th century, \"Ashkenazim outnumbered Sephardim three to two, the result of improved living conditions in Christian Europe versus the Ottoman Muslim world.\" By 1930, Arthur Ruppin estimated that Ashkenazi Jews accounted for nearly 92% of world Jewry. These factors are sheer demography showing the migration patterns of Jews from Southern and Western Europe to Central and Eastern Europe.\nIn 1740, a family from Lithuania became the first Ashkenazi Jews to settle in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem.\nIn the generations after emigration from the west, Jewish communities in places like Poland, Russia, and Belarus enjoyed a comparatively stable socio-political environment. A thriving publishing industry and the printing of hundreds of biblical commentaries precipitated the development of the Hasidic movement as well as major Jewish academic centers. After two centuries of comparative tolerance in the new nations, massive westward emigration occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries in response to pogroms in the east and the economic opportunities offered in other parts of the world. Ashkenazi Jews have made up the majority of the American Jewish community since 1750.\nIn the context of the European Enlightenment, Jewish emancipation began in 18th century France and spread throughout Western and Central Europe. Disabilities that had limited the rights of Jews since the Middle Ages were abolished, including the requirements to wear distinctive clothing, pay special taxes, and live in ghettos isolated from non-Jewish communities and the prohibitions on certain professions. Laws were passed to integrate Jews into their host countries, forcing Ashkenazi Jews to adopt family names (they had formerly used patronymics). Newfound inclusion into public life led to cultural growth in the \"Haskalah\", or Jewish Enlightenment, with its goal of integrating modern European values into Jewish life. As a reaction to increasing antisemitism and assimilation following the emancipation, Zionism developed in central Europe. Other Jews, particularly those in the Pale of Settlement, turned to socialism. These tendencies would be united in Labor Zionism, the founding ideology of the State of Israel.\nThe Holocaust.\nOf the estimated 8.8 million Jews living in Europe at the beginning of World War II, the majority of whom were Ashkenazi, about 6 million \u2013 more than two-thirds \u2013 were systematically murdered in the Holocaust. These included 3 million of 3.3 million Polish Jews (91%); 900,000 of 1.5 million in Ukraine (60%); and 50\u201390% of the Jews of other Slavic nations, Germany, Hungary, and the Baltic states, and over 25% of the Jews in France. Sephardi communities suffered similar devastation in a few countries, including Greece, the Netherlands and the former Yugoslavia. As the large majority of the victims were Ashkenazi Jews, their percentage dropped from an estimate of 92% of world Jewry in 1930 to nearly 80% of world Jewry today. The Holocaust also effectively put an end to the dynamic development of the Yiddish language in the previous decades, as the vast majority of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, around 5 million, were Yiddish speakers. Many of the surviving Ashkenazi Jews emigrated to countries such as Israel, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and the United States after the war.\nFollowing the Holocaust, some sources place Ashkenazim today as making up approximately 83%\u201385% of Jews worldwide, while Sergio DellaPergola in a rough calculation of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, implies that Ashkenazi make up a notably lower figure, less than 74%. Other estimates place Ashkenazi Jews as making up about 75% of Jews worldwide.\nIsrael.\nFrom the 1880s onwards, Ashkenazi Jews from Russia, Poland and Germany immigrated to the Land of Israel in large numbers. By 1948, they comprised 80% of the Jewish population of Israel, shortly before the Jewish exodus from the Muslim world changed the demographic composition of Israeli society. Currently, Jews of mixed background are increasingly common, partly because of intermarriage between Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi, and partly because many do not see such historic markers as relevant to their life experiences as Jews.\nAshkenazi Jews have played a prominent role in the economy, media, and politics of Israel since its founding. During the first decades of Israel as a state, strong cultural conflict occurred between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews (mainly east European Ashkenazim). The roots of this conflict, which still exists to a much smaller extent in present-day Israeli society, are chiefly attributed to the concept of the \"melting pot\". That is to say, all Jewish immigrants who arrived in Israel were strongly encouraged to \"meltdown\" their own particular exilic identities within the general social \"pot\" in order to become Israeli.\nReligious Ashkenazi Jews living in Israel are obliged to follow the authority of the chief Ashkenazi rabbi in halakhic matters. In this respect, a religiously Ashkenazi Jew is an Israeli who is more likely to support certain religious interests in Israel, including certain political parties. These political parties result from the fact that a portion of the Israeli electorate votes for Jewish religious parties; although the electoral map changes from one election to another, there are generally several small parties associated with the interests of religious Ashkenazi Jews. The role of religious parties, including small religious parties that play important roles as coalition members, results in turn from Israel's composition as a complex society in which competing social, economic, and religious interests stand for election to the Knesset, a unicameral legislature with 120 seats.\nUnited States of America.\nAs of 2020, 66% of American Jews identify as Ashkenazic, compared to 4% who identify as Sephardic or Mizrahi, and 6% who claim mixed heritage. A disproportionate number of Ashkenazi Americans are religious compared to American Jews of other racial groups. They live in large populations in the states of New York, California, Florida, and New Jersey. The majority of American Ashkenazi Jewish voters vote for the Democratic Party; Orthodox Ashkenazim tend to support the Republican Party, while Conservative, Reform, and non denominational Ashkenazim tend to support the Democratic Party.\nDefinition.\nBy religion.\nReligious Jews have minhagim, customs, in addition to halakha, or religious law, and different interpretations of the law. Different groups of religious Jews in different geographic areas historically adopted different customs and interpretations. On certain issues, Orthodox Jews are required to follow the customs of their ancestors and do not believe they have the option of picking and choosing. For this reason, observant Jews at times find it important for religious reasons to ascertain who their household's religious ancestors are in order to know what customs their household should follow. These times include, for example, when two Jews of different ethnic background marry, when a non-Jew converts to Judaism and determines what customs to follow for the first time, or when a lapsed or less observant Jew returns to traditional Judaism and must determine what was done in his or her family's past. In this sense, \"Ashkenazic\" refers both to a family ancestry and to a body of customs binding on Jews of that ancestry. Reform Judaism, which does not necessarily follow those minhagim, did nonetheless originate among Ashkenazi Jews.\nIn a religious sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is any Jew whose family tradition and ritual follow Ashkenazi practice. Until the Ashkenazi community first began to develop in the Early Middle Ages, the centers of Jewish religious authority were in the Islamic world, at Baghdad and in Islamic Spain. Ashkenaz (Germany) was so distant geographically that it developed a \"minhag\" of its own. Ashkenazi Hebrew came to be pronounced in ways distinct from other forms of Hebrew.\nIn this respect, the counterpart of Ashkenazi is Sephardic, since most non-Ashkenazi Orthodox Jews follow Sephardic rabbinical authorities, whether or not they are ethnically Sephardic. By tradition, a Sephardic or Mizrahi woman who marries into an Orthodox or Haredi Ashkenazi Jewish family raises her children to be Ashkenazi Jews; conversely an Ashkenazi woman who marries a Sephardi or Mizrahi man is expected to take on Sephardic practice and the children inherit a Sephardic identity, though in practice many families compromise. A convert generally follows the practice of the beth din that converted him or her. With the integration of Jews from around the world in Israel, North America, and other places, the religious definition of an Ashkenazi Jew is blurring, especially outside Orthodox Judaism.\nNew developments in Judaism often transcend differences in religious practice between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. In North American cities, social trends such as the chavurah movement, and the emergence of \"post-denominational Judaism\" often bring together younger Jews of diverse ethnic backgrounds. In recent years, there has been increased interest in \"Kabbalah\", which many Ashkenazi Jews study outside of the Yeshiva framework. Another trend is the new popularity of ecstatic worship in the Jewish Renewal movement and the Carlebach style minyan, both of which are nominally of Ashkenazi origin. Outside of Haredi communities, the traditional Ashkenazi pronunciation of Hebrew has also drastically declined in favor of the Sephardi-based pronunciation of Modern Hebrew.\nBy culture.\nCulturally, an Ashkenazi Jew can be identified by the concept of \"Yiddishkeit\", which means \"Jewishness\" in the Yiddish language. \"Yiddishkeit\" is specifically the Jewishness of Ashkenazi Jews. Before the Haskalah and the emancipation of Jews in Europe, this meant the study of Torah and Talmud for men, and a family and communal life governed by the observance of Jewish Law for men and women. From the Rhineland to Riga to Romania, most Jews prayed in liturgical Ashkenazi Hebrew, and spoke Yiddish in their secular lives. But with modernization, \"Yiddishkeit\" now encompasses not just Orthodoxy and Hasidism, but a broad range of movements, ideologies, practices, and traditions in which Ashkenazi Jews have participated and somehow retained a sense of Jewishness. Although a far smaller number of Jews still speak Yiddish, \"Yiddishkeit\" can be identified in manners of speech, in styles of humor, in patterns of association. Broadly speaking, a Jew is one who associates culturally with Jews, supports Jewish institutions, reads Jewish books and periodicals, attends Jewish movies and theater, travels to Israel, visits historical synagogues, and so forth. It is a definition that applies to Jewish culture in general, and to Ashkenazi Yiddishkeit in particular.\nAs Ashkenazi Jews moved away from Europe, mostly in the form of aliyah to Israel, or immigration to North America, and other English-speaking areas such as South Africa; and Europe (particularly France) and Latin America, the geographic isolation that gave rise to Ashkenazim have given way to mixing with other cultures, and with non-Ashkenazi Jews who, similarly, are no longer isolated in distinct geographic locales. Hebrew has replaced Yiddish as the primary Jewish language for many Ashkenazi Jews, although many Hasidic and Hareidi groups continue to use Yiddish in daily life. (There are numerous Ashkenazi Jewish anglophones and Russian-speakers as well, although English and Russian are not originally Jewish languages.)\nFrance's blended Jewish community is typical of the cultural recombination that is going on among Jews throughout the world. Although France expelled its original Jewish population in the Middle Ages, by the time of the French Revolution, there were two distinct Jewish populations. One consisted of Sephardic Jews, originally refugees from the Inquisition and concentrated in the southwest, while the other community was Ashkenazi, concentrated in formerly German Alsace, and mainly speaking a German dialect similar to Yiddish. (The third community of Proven\u00e7al Jews living in Comtat Venaissin were technically outside France, and were later absorbed into the Sephardim.) The two communities were so separate and different that the National Assembly emancipated them separately in 1790 and 1791.\nBut after emancipation, a sense of a unified French Jewry emerged, especially when France was wracked by the Dreyfus affair in the 1890s. In the 1920s and 1930s, Ashkenazi Jews from Europe arrived in large numbers as refugees from antisemitism, the Russian revolution, and the economic turmoil of the Great Depression. By the 1930s, Paris had a vibrant Yiddish culture, and many Jews were involved in diverse political movements. After the Vichy years and the Holocaust, the French Jewish population was augmented once again, first by Ashkenazi refugees from Central Europe, and later by Sephardi immigrants and refugees from North Africa, many of them francophone.\nAshkenazi Jews did not record their traditions or achievements by text, instead these traditions were passed down orally from one generation to the next. The desire to maintain pre-Holocaust traditions relating to Ashkenazi culture has often been met with criticism by Jews in Eastern Europe. Reasoning for this could be related to the development of a new style of Jewish arts and culture developed by the Jews of Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s, which in conjunction with the decimation of European Ashkenazi Jews and their culture by the Nazi regime made it easier to assimilate to the new style of ritual rather than try to repair the older traditions. This new style of tradition was referred to as the \"Mediterranean Style\", and was noted for its simplicity and metaphorical rejuvenation of Jews abroad. This was intended to replace the Galut traditions, which were more sorrowful in practice.\nThen, in the 1990s, yet another Ashkenazi Jewish wave began to arrive from countries of the former Soviet Union and Central Europe. The result is a pluralistic Jewish community that still has some distinct elements of both Ashkenazi and Sephardic culture. But in France, it is becoming much more difficult to sort out the two, and a distinctly French Jewishness has emerged.\nBy ethnicity.\nIn an ethnic sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is one whose ancestry can be traced to the Jews who settled in Central Europe. For roughly a thousand years, the Ashkenazim were a reproductively isolated population in Europe, despite living in many countries, with little inflow or outflow from migration, conversion, or intermarriage with other groups, including other Jews. Human geneticists have argued that genetic variations have been identified that show high frequencies among Ashkenazi Jews, but not in the general European population, be they for patrilineal markers (Y-chromosome haplotypes) and for matrilineal markers (mitotypes). Since the middle of the 20th century, many Ashkenazi Jews have intermarried, both with members of other Jewish communities and non-Jews.\nCustoms, laws and traditions.\nThe \"Halakhic\" practices of (Orthodox) Ashkenazi Jews may differ from those of Sephardi Jews, particularly in matters of custom. Differences are noted in the \"Shulkhan Arukh\" itself, in the gloss of Moses Isserles. Well known differences in practice include:\nAshkenazic liturgy.\nThe term Ashkenazi also refers to the Nusach Ashkenaz, the liturgical tradition used by Ashkenazi Jews in their siddur (prayer book). A nusach is defined by a liturgical tradition's choice of prayers, the order of prayers, the text of prayers, and melodies used in the singing of prayers. Two other major forms of nusach among Ashkenazic Jews are Nusach Sefard (not to be confused with the Sephardic ritual), which is the general Polish Hasidic nusach, and Nusach Ari, used by those in Chabad.\nRelations with Sephardim.\nRelations between Ashkenazim and Sephardim have at times been tense and clouded by arrogance, snobbery and claims of racial superiority with both sides claiming the inferiority of the other, based upon such features as physical traits and culture.\nNorth African Sephardim and Berber Jews were often looked down upon by Ashkenazim as second-class citizens during the first decade after the creation of Israel. This has led to protest movements such as the Israeli Black Panthers led by Saadia Marciano, a Moroccan Jew. Research in 2010 revealed a genetic common ancestry of all Jewish populations. In some instances, Ashkenazi communities have accepted significant numbers of Sephardi newcomers, sometimes resulting in intermarriage and the possible merging between the two communities.\nNotable Ashkenazim.\nThough Ashkenazi Jews have never exceeded 3% of the American population, Jews account for 37% of the winners of the U.S. National Medal of Science, 25% of the American Nobel Prize winners in literature, and 40% of the American Nobel Prize winners in science and economics.\nGenetics.\nGenetic origins.\nEfforts to identify the origins of Ashkenazi Jews through DNA analysis began in the 1990s. There are three types of genetic origin testing, autosomal DNA (atDNA), mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), and Y-chromosomal DNA (Y-DNA). Autosomal DNA is a mixture from an individual's entire ancestry. Y-DNA shows a male's lineage along his paternal line. mtDNA shows any person's lineage only along their maternal line. Genome-wide association studies have also been used for genetic origin testing.\nLike most DNA studies of human migration patterns, the earliest studies on Ashkenazi Jews focused on the Y-DNA and mtDNA segments of the human genome. Both segments are unaffected by recombination (except for the ends of the Y chromosome \u2013 the pseudoautosomal regions known as PAR1 and PAR2), thus allowing tracing of direct maternal and paternal lineages.\nThese studies revealed that Ashkenazi Jews originate from an ancient (2000\u2013700 BCE) population of the Middle East who spread to Europe. Ashkenazic Jews display the homogeneity of a genetic bottleneck, meaning they descend from a larger population whose numbers were greatly reduced but recovered through a few founding individuals. Although the Jewish people, in general, were present across a wide geographical area as described, genetic research by Gil Atzmon of the Longevity Genes Project at Albert Einstein College of Medicine suggests \"that Ashkenazim branched off from other Jews around the time of the destruction of the First Temple, 2,500 years ago ... flourished during the Roman Empire but then went through a 'severe bottleneck' as they dispersed, reducing a population of several million to just 400 families who left Northern Italy around the year 1000 for Central and eventually Eastern Europe.\"\nVarious studies have drawn diverging conclusions about the degree and sources of the non-Levantine admixture in Ashkenazim, particularly the extent of the non-Levantine origin in maternal lineages, which is in contrast to the predominant Levantine genetic origin in paternal lineages. But all studies agree that both lineages have genetic overlap with the Fertile Crescent, albeit at differing rates. Collectively, Ashkenazi Jews are less genetically diverse than other Jewish ethnic divisions, due to their genetic bottleneck.\nMale lineages: Y-chromosomal DNA.\nMost genetic studies of Ashkenazi Jews conclude that the male lines were from the Middle East.\nA 2000 study by Hammer \"et al.\" found that the Y-chromosome of Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews contained mutations that are also common among Middle Eastern peoples, but uncommon among indigenous Europeans. This suggests that Ashkenazim male ancestors are mostly from the Middle East. Ashkenazim had less than 0.5% male genetic admixture per generation over an estimated 80 generations, with \"relatively minor contribution of European Y chromosomes to the Ashkenazim,\" and the total admixture estimate \"very similar to Motulsky's average estimate of 12.5%\". This supported the finding that \"Diaspora Jews from Europe, Northwest Africa, and the Near East resemble each other more closely than they resemble their non-Jewish neighbors.\" \"Past research found that 50%\u201380% of DNA from the Ashkenazi Y chromosome, which is used to trace the male lineage, originated in the Near East,\" Richards said. The population has subsequently spread out.\nA 2001 study by Nebel \"et al.\" showed that Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews share overall Near Eastern paternal ancestries. In comparison with data available from other relevant populations in the region, Jews were found to be more closely related to groups in the north of the Fertile Crescent. The study also found Eu 19 (R1a) chromosomes had elevated frequency among Ashkenazi Jews (13%), and they are very frequent in Central and Eastern Europeans (54\u201360%). They hypothesized that the differences among Ashkenazim could reflect low-level gene flow from surrounding European populations or genetic drift during isolation. A 2005 study by Nebel \"et al.\", found a similar level of 11.5% of male Ashkenazim belonging to R1a1a (M17+), the dominant Y-chromosome haplogroup in Central and Eastern Europeans. However, a 2017 study, of Ashkenazi Levites where the proportion reaches 50%, found a \"rich variation of haplogroup R1a outside of Europe which is phylogenetically separate from the typically European R1a branches\", and concludes that the particular R1a-Y2619 sub-clade is evidence for a local origin, and that this validates the \"Middle Eastern origin of the Ashkenazi Levite lineage\" which had previously been concluded based on a few samples.\nFemale lineages: Mitochondrial DNA.\nA 2006 study by Behar \"et al.\", of 1,000 units of haplogroup K (mtDNA), suggested that about 40% of today's Ashkenazim descend from just four women who were \"likely from a Hebrew/Levantine mtDNA pool\" originating in the Middle East in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. The rest of Ashkenazi mtDNA reportedly originated from about 150 women, most of whom were also likely of Middle Eastern origin. Specifically, although haplogroup K is common throughout western Eurasia, its global distribution makes it very unlikely that \"the four aforementioned founder lineages entered the Ashkenazi mtDNA pool via gene flow from a European host population\".\nA 2013 study of Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA by a team led by Martin B. Richards tested all 16,600 DNA units of mtDNA, and found that the four main female Ashkenazi founders had descent lines that were established in Europe 10,000 to 20,000 years in the past while most of the remaining minor founders also have a deep European ancestry. The study argued that the great majority of Ashkenazi maternal lineages were not brought from the Near East or the Caucasus, but instead assimilated within Europe, primarily of Italian and Old French origins. The study estimated that more than 80% of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry comes from women indigenous to (mainly prehistoric Western) Europe, and only 8% from the Near East, while the origin of the remainder is undetermined. According to the study this \"point to a significant role for the conversion of women in the formation of Ashkenazi communities.\" Karl Skorecki criticized the study, arguing that while it \"re-opened the question of the maternal origins of Ashkenazi Jewry, the phylogenetic analysis in the manuscript does not 'settle' the question.\"\nA 2014 study by Fern\u00e1ndez \"et al.\" found that Ashkenazi Jews display a frequency of haplogroup K in their maternal DNA, suggesting an ancient Near Eastern matrilineal origin, similar to the results of the Behar study in 2006. Fern\u00e1ndez noted that this observation clearly contradicts the results of the 2013 study led by Richards that suggested a European source for 3 exclusively Ashkenazi K lineages.\nAssociation and linkage studies (autosomal DNA).\nIn genetic epidemiology, a genome-wide association study (GWA study, or GWAS) is an examination of all or most of the genes (the genome) of different individuals of a particular species to see how much the genes vary from individual to individual. These techniques were originally designed for epidemiological uses, to identify genetic associations with observable traits.\nA 2006 study by Seldin \"et al.\" used over 5,000 autosomal SNPs to demonstrate European genetic substructure. The results showed \"a consistent and reproducible distinction between 'northern' and 'southern' European population groups\". Most northern, central, and eastern Europeans (Finns, Swedes, English, Irish, Germans, and Ukrainians) showed >90%, while most southern Europeans (Italians, Greeks, Portuguese, Spaniards) showed >85%. Both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews showed >85% membership in the \"southern\" group. Referring to the Jews clustering with southern Europeans, the authors state the results were \"consistent with a later Mediterranean origin of these ethnic groups\".\nA 2007 study by Bauchet \"et al.\" found that Ashkenazim were most closely clustered with Arabic North African populations than with the global population, and in the European structure analysis, they share similarities only with Greeks and Southern Italians, reflecting their east Mediterranean origins.\nA 2010 study of Jewish ancestry by Atzmon-Ostrer \"et al.\" identified two major groups: Middle Eastern Jews and European/Syrian Jews, by using \"principal component, phylogenetic, and identity by descent (IBD) analysis\". \"The IBD segment sharing and the proximity of European Jews to each other and to southern European populations suggested similar origins for European Jewry and refuted large-scale genetic contributions of Central and Eastern European and Slavic populations to the formation of Ashkenazi Jewry\", as the two groups share ancestors in the Middle East about 2500 years ago. The study examines genetic markers spread across the entire genome and finds that the Jewish groups (Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi) share large swaths of DNA, indicating close relationships, and that each studied Jewish group (Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Italian, Turkish, Greek and Ashkenazi) has its own genetic signature but is more closely related to the other Jewish groups than to their fellow non-Jewish countrymen. Atzmon's team found that the SNP markers in genetic segments of 3 million DNA letters or longer were 10 times more likely to be identical among Jews than non-Jews. Results of the analysis also tally with biblical accounts of the fate of the Jews. The study also found that with respect to non-Jewish European groups, the population most closely related to Ashkenazi Jews are modern-day Italians. The study speculated that this similarity may be due to inter-marriage and conversions during the Roman Empire. It was also found that any two Ashkenazi Jewish participants shared about as much DNA as fourth or fifth cousins.\nA 2010 study by Bray \"et al.\", using SNP microarray techniques and linkage analysis, found that when assuming Druze and Palestinian Arab populations to represent the reference to world Jewry ancestor genome, 35% to 55% of the modern Ashkenazi genome may be of European origin, and that European \"admixture is considerably higher than previous estimates by studies that used the Y chromosome\" with this reference point. The authors interpreted this linkage disequilibrium in the Ashkenazi Jewish population as matching signs \"of interbreeding or 'admixture' between Middle Eastern and European populations\". On the Bray \"et al.\" tree, Ashkenazi Jews were found to be a genetically more divergent population than Russians, Orcadians, French, Basques, Sardinians, Italians and Tuscans. The study also observed that Ashkenazim are more diverse than their Middle Eastern relatives, which was counterintuitive because Ashkenazim are supposed to be a subset, not a superset, of their assumed geographical source population. Bray \"et al.\" therefore suggest that these results reflect a history of mixing between genetically distinct populations in Europe. However, it is possible that Ashkenazim's high heterozygocity was due to a relaxation of marriage prescription in their ancestors, while the low heterozygocity in te Middle East is due to maintenance of FBD marriage there. Therefore, Ashkenazim distinctiveness as found in the Bray \"et al.\" study may come from their ethnic endogamy (ethnic inbreeding), which allowed them to \"mine\" their ancestral gene pool in the context of relative reproductive isolation from European neighbors, and not from clan endogamy (clan inbreeding). Consequently, their higher diversity compared to Middle Easterners stems from the latter's marriage practices, not necessarily from the former's admixture with Europeans. \nA 2010 genome-wide genetic study by Behar \"et al.\" examined the genetic relationships among all major Jewish groups, including Ashkenazim, and their genetic relationship with non-Jewish ethnic populations. It found that today's Jews (except Indian and Ethiopian Jews) are closely related to people from the Levant. The authors explained that \"the most parsimonious explanation for these observations is a common genetic origin, which is consistent with an historical formulation of the Jewish people as descending from ancient Hebrew and Israelite residents of the Levant\".\nA 2013 study by Behar \"et al.\" found evidence among Ashkenazim of mixed European and Levantine origins. The authors found Ashkenazi had the greatest affinity and shared ancestry firstly with other Jewish groups from southern Europe, Syria, and North Africa, and secondly with both southern Europeans (such as Italians) and modern Levantines (such as the Druze, Cypriots, Lebanese and Samaritans). The study found no affinity of Ashkenazim to northern Caucasus populations, and no more affinity to modern south Caucasus and eastern Anatolian populations (such as Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Georgians, and Turks) than found in other Jews or non-Jewish Middle Easterners (such as the Kurds, Iranians, Druze and Lebanese).\nA 2017 autosomal study by Xue, Shai Carmi \"et al.\" found an admixture of Middle-Eastern and European ancestry in Ashkenazi Jews: with the European component comprising \u224850%\u201370% (estimated at \"possibly 60%\") and largely being of a southern European source and a minority eastern European, and the remainder (estimated at possibly \u224840%) being Middle Eastern ancestry showing the strongest affinity to Levantine populations such as the Druze and Lebanese.\nA 2018 study, referencing the popular theory of Ashkenazi Jewish (AJ) origins in \"an initial settlement in Western Europe (Northern France and Germany), followed by migration to Poland and an expansion there and in the rest of Eastern Europe\", tested \"whether Ashkenazi Jews with recent origins in Eastern Europe are genetically distinct from Western European Ashkenazi\". The study concluded that \"Western AJ consist of two slightly distinct groups: one that descends from a subset of the original founders [who remained in Western Europe], and another that migrated there back from Eastern Europe, possibly after absorbing a limited degree of gene flow\".\nA 2022 study of genome data from the medieval Jewish cemetery of Erfurt found at least two related but genetically distinct Jewish groups: one closely related to Middle Eastern populations and especially similar to modern Ashkenazi Jews from France and Germany and modern Sephardic Jews from Turkey; the other group had a substantial contribution from Eastern European populations. But today Ashkenazi Jews from eastern Europe no longer exhibit this genetic variability, and instead, their genomes resemble a nearly even mixture of the two Erfurt groups (with about 60% from the first group and 40% from the second).\nThe Khazar hypothesis.\nIn the late 19th century, it was proposed that the core of Ashkenazi Jews were genetically descended from a hypothetical Khazarian Jewish diaspora who had migrated westward from modern Russia and Ukraine into modern France and Germany (as opposed to the currently held theory that Jews migrated from France and Germany into Eastern Europe). The hypothesis is not corroborated by historical sources, and is unsubstantiated by genetics, but it is still occasionally supported by scholars who have had some success in keeping the theory in the academic consciousness.\nThe theory has sometimes been used by Jewish authors such as Arthur Koestler as part of an argument against traditional forms of antisemitism (for example the claim that \"the Jews killed Christ\"), just as similar arguments have been advanced on behalf of the Crimean Karaites. Today, however, the theory is more often associated with antisemitism and anti-Zionism.\nA 2013 trans-genome study carried out by 30 geneticists, from 13 universities and academies, from nine countries, assembling the largest data set available to date, for assessment of Ashkenazi Jewish genetic origins found no evidence of Khazar origin among Ashkenazi Jews. The authors concluded:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Thus, analysis of Ashkenazi Jews together with a large sample from the region of the Khazar Khaganate corroborates the earlier results that Ashkenazi Jews derive their ancestry primarily from populations of the Middle East and Europe, that they possess considerable shared ancestry with other Jewish populations, and that there is no indication of a significant genetic contribution either from within or from north of the Caucasus region.\nThe authors found no affinity in Ashkenazim with north Caucasus populations, as well as no greater affinity in Ashkenazim to south Caucasus or Anatolian populations than that found in non-Ashkenazi Jews and non-Jewish Middle Easterners (such as the Kurds, Iranians, Druze and Lebanese). The greatest affinity and shared ancestry of Ashkenazi Jews were found to be (after those with other Jewish groups from southern Europe, Syria, and North Africa) with both southern Europeans and Levantines such as Druze, Cypriot, Lebanese and Samaritan groups.\nEast Asian ancestry.\nIn addition to the genetic contributions from neighboring Europeans, Near Easterners and North Africans, Ashkenazi Jews share some East Eurasian haplogroups, such as N9a, A, and M33c, with Chinese populations. This originates from their economic and cultural exchanges along the Silk Road.\nMedical genetics.\nThere are many references to Ashkenazi Jews in the literature of medical and population genetics. Indeed, much awareness of \"Ashkenazi Jews\" as an ethnic group or category stems from the large number of genetic studies of disease, including many that are well reported in the media, that have been conducted among Jews. Jewish populations have been studied more thoroughly than most other human populations, for a variety of reasons:\nThe result is a form of ascertainment bias. This has sometimes created an impression that Jews are more susceptible to genetic disease than other populations. Healthcare professionals are often taught to consider those of Ashkenazi descent to be at increased risk for colon cancer. People of Ashkenazi descent are at much higher risk of being a carrier for Tay\u2013Sachs disease, which is fatal in its homozygous form.\nGenetic counseling and genetic testing are often undertaken by couples where both partners are of Ashkenazi ancestry. Some organizations, most notably Dor Yeshorim, organize screening programs to prevent homozygosity for the genes that cause related diseases.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nOther references.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "25507": "Roman Empire\nTerritory ruled by Rome and period of Roman history\nThe Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Romans conquered most of this during the Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of effective sole rule in 27\u00a0BC. The western empire collapsed in 476\u00a0AD, but the eastern empire lasted until the fall of Constantinople in 1453.\nBy 100\u00a0BC, the city of Rome had expanded its rule from the Italian peninsula to most of the Mediterranean and beyond. However, it was severely destabilised by civil wars and political conflicts, which culminated in the victory of Octavian over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31\u00a0BC, and the subsequent conquest of the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt. In 27\u00a0BC, the Roman Senate granted Octavian overarching military power () and the new title of \"Augustus\", marking his accession as the first Roman emperor. The vast Roman territories were organized into senatorial provinces, governed by proconsuls who were appointed by lot annually, and imperial provinces, which belonged to the emperor but were governed by legates.\nThe first two centuries of the Empire saw a period of unprecedented stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana (lit.\u2009'Roman Peace'). Rome reached its greatest territorial extent under Trajan (r.\u200998\u00a0\u2013\u00a0117\u00a0AD), but a period of increasing trouble and decline began under Commodus (r.\u2009180\u00a0\u2013\u00a0192). In the 3rd century, the Empire underwent a 49-year crisis that threatened its existence due to civil war, plagues and barbarian invasions. The Gallic and Palmyrene empires broke away from the state and a series of short-lived emperors led the Empire, which was later reunified under Aurelian (r.\u2009270\u00a0\u2013\u00a0275). The civil wars ended with the victory of Diocletian (r.\u2009284\u00a0\u2013\u00a0305), who set up two different imperial courts in the Greek East and Latin West. Constantine the Great (r.\u2009306\u00a0\u2013\u00a0337), the first Christian emperor, moved the imperial seat from Rome to Byzantium in 330, and renamed it Constantinople. The Migration Period, involving large invasions by Germanic peoples and by the Huns of Attila, led to the decline of the Western Roman Empire. With the fall of Ravenna to the Germanic Herulians and the deposition of Romulus Augustus in 476 by Odoacer, the Western Empire finally collapsed. The Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire survived for another millennium with Constantinople as its sole capital, until the city's fall in 1453.\nDue to the Empire's extent and endurance, its institutions and culture had a lasting influence on the development of language, religion, art, architecture, literature, philosophy, law, and forms of government across its territories. Latin evolved into the Romance languages while Medieval Greek became the language of the East. The Empire's adoption of Christianity resulted in the formation of medieval Christendom. Roman and Greek art had a profound impact on the Italian Renaissance. Rome's architectural tradition served as the basis for Romanesque, Renaissance and Neoclassical architecture, influencing Islamic architecture. The rediscovery of classical science and technology (which formed the basis for Islamic science) in medieval Europe contributed to the Scientific Renaissance and Scientific Revolution. Many modern legal systems, such as the Napoleonic Code, descend from Roman law. Rome's republican institutions have influenced the Italian city-state republics of the medieval period, the early United States, and modern democratic republics.\nHistory.\nTransition from Republic to Empire.\nRome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the Roman Republic in the 6th century BC, though not outside the Italian Peninsula until the 3rd century BC. Thus, it was an \"empire\" (a great power) long before it had an emperor. The Republic was not a nation-state in the modern sense, but a network of self-ruled towns (with varying degrees of independence from the Senate) and provinces administered by military commanders. It was governed by annually elected magistrates (Roman consuls above all) in conjunction with the Senate. The 1st century BC was a time of political and military upheaval, which ultimately led to rule by emperors. The consuls' military power rested in the Roman legal concept of \"imperium\", meaning \"command\" (typically in a military sense). Occasionally, successful consuls or generals were given the honorary title \"imperator\" (commander); this is the origin of the word \"emperor\", since this title was always bestowed to the early emperors.\nRome suffered a long series of internal conflicts, conspiracies, and civil wars from the late second century BC (see Crisis of the Roman Republic) while greatly extending its power beyond Italy. In 44 BC Julius Caesar was briefly perpetual dictator before being assassinated by a faction that opposed his concentration of power. This faction was driven from Rome and defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC by Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son Octavian. Antony and Octavian divided the Roman world between them, but this did not last long. Octavian's forces defeated those of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. In 27 BC the Senate gave him the title \"Augustus\" (\"venerated\") and made him \"princeps\" (\"foremost\") with proconsular \"imperium\", thus beginning the Principate, the first epoch of Roman imperial history. Although the republic stood in name, Augustus had all meaningful authority. During his 40-year rule, a new constitutional order emerged so that, upon his death, Tiberius would succeed him as the new \"de facto\" monarch.\n\"Pax Romana\".\nThe 200 years that began with Augustus's rule is traditionally regarded as the \"Pax Romana\" (\"Roman Peace\"). The cohesion of the empire was furthered by a degree of social stability and economic prosperity that Rome had never before experienced. Uprisings in the provinces were infrequent and put down \"mercilessly and swiftly\". The success of Augustus in establishing principles of dynastic succession was limited by his outliving a number of talented potential heirs. The Julio-Claudian dynasty lasted for four more emperors\u2014Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero\u2014before it yielded in 69 AD to the strife-torn Year of the Four Emperors, from which Vespasian emerged as the victor. Vespasian became the founder of the brief Flavian dynasty, followed by the Nerva\u2013Antonine dynasty which produced the \"Five Good Emperors\": Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius.\nTransition from classical to late antiquity.\nIn the view of contemporary Greek historian Cassius Dio, the accession of Commodus in 180 marked the descent \"from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron\", a comment which has led some historians, notably Edward Gibbon, to take Commodus' reign as the beginning of the Empire's decline.\nIn 212, during the reign of Caracalla, Roman citizenship was granted to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. The Severan dynasty was tumultuous; an emperor's reign was ended routinely by his murder or execution and, following its collapse, the Empire was engulfed by the Crisis of the Third Century, a period of invasions, civil strife, economic disorder, and plague. In defining historical epochs, this crisis sometimes marks the transition from Classical to Late Antiquity. Aurelian (r.\u2009270\u00a0\u2013\u00a0275) stabilised the empire militarily and Diocletian reorganised and restored much of it in 285. Diocletian's reign brought the empire's most concerted effort against the perceived threat of Christianity, the \"Great Persecution\".\nDiocletian divided the empire into four regions, each ruled by a separate tetrarch. Confident that he fixed the disorder plaguing Rome, he abdicated along with his co-emperor, but the Tetrarchy collapsed shortly after. Order was eventually restored by Constantine the Great, who became the first emperor to convert to Christianity, and who established Constantinople as the new capital of the Eastern Empire. During the decades of the Constantinian and Valentinian dynasties, the empire was divided along an east\u2013west axis, with dual power centres in Constantinople and Rome. Julian, who under the influence of his adviser Mardonius attempted to restore Classical Roman and Hellenistic religion, only briefly interrupted the succession of Christian emperors. Theodosius I, the last emperor to rule over both East and West, died in 395 after making Christianity the state religion.\nFall in the West and survival in the East.\nThe Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate in the early 5th century. The Romans fought off all invaders, most famously Attila, but the empire had assimilated so many Germanic peoples of dubious loyalty to Rome that the empire started to dismember itself. Most chronologies place the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476, when Romulus Augustulus was forced to abdicate to the Germanic warlord Odoacer.\nOdoacer ended the Western Empire by declaring Zeno sole emperor and placing himself as Zeno's nominal subordinate. In reality, Italy was ruled by Odoacer alone. The Eastern Roman Empire, called the Byzantine Empire by later historians, continued until the reign of Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Roman emperor. He died in battle in 1453 against Mehmed II and his Ottoman forces during the siege of Constantinople. Mehmed II adopted the title of \"caesar\" in an attempt to claim a connection to the former Empire. His claim was soon recognized by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, but not by European monarchs.\nGeography and demography.\nThe Roman Empire was one of the largest in history, with contiguous territories throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The Latin phrase \"imperium sine fine\" (\"empire without end\") expressed the ideology that neither time nor space limited the Empire. In Virgil's \"Aeneid\", limitless empire is said to be granted to the Romans by Jupiter. This claim of universal dominion was renewed when the Empire came under Christian rule in the 4th century. In addition to annexing large regions, the Romans directly altered their geography, for example cutting down entire forests.\nRoman expansion was mostly accomplished under the Republic, though parts of northern Europe were conquered in the 1st century, when Roman control in Europe, Africa, and Asia was strengthened. Under Augustus, a \"global map of the known world\" was displayed for the first time in public at Rome, coinciding with the creation of the most comprehensive political geography that survives from antiquity, the \"Geography\" of Strabo. When Augustus died, the account of his achievements (\"Res Gestae\") prominently featured the geographical cataloguing of the Empire. Geography alongside meticulous written records were central concerns of Roman Imperial administration.\nThe Empire reached its largest expanse under Trajan (r.\u200998\u00a0\u2013\u00a0117), encompassing 5 million km2. The traditional population estimate of 55\u201360 million inhabitants accounted for between one-sixth and one-fourth of the world's total population and made it the most populous unified political entity in the West until the mid-19th century. Recent demographic studies have argued for a population peak from 70 million to more than 100 million. Each of the three largest cities in the Empire\u2014Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch\u2014was almost twice the size of any European city at the beginning of the 17th century.\nAs the historian Christopher Kelly described it:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Then the empire stretched from Hadrian's Wall in drizzle-soaked northern England to the sun-baked banks of the Euphrates in Syria; from the great Rhine\u2013Danube river system, which snaked across the fertile, flat lands of Europe from the Low Countries to the Black Sea, to the rich plains of the North African coast and the luxuriant gash of the Nile Valley in Egypt. The empire completely circled the Mediterranean\u00a0... referred to by its conquerors as \"mare nostrum\"\u2014'our sea'.\nTrajan's successor Hadrian adopted a policy of maintaining rather than expanding the empire. Borders (\"fines\") were marked, and the frontiers (\"limites\") patrolled. The most heavily fortified borders were the most unstable. Hadrian's Wall, which separated the Roman world from what was perceived as an ever-present barbarian threat, is the primary surviving monument of this effort.\nLanguages.\nLatin and Greek were the main languages of the Empire, but the Empire was deliberately multilingual. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill says \"The main desire of the Roman government was to make itself understood\". At the start of the Empire, knowledge of Greek was useful to pass as educated nobility and knowledge of Latin was useful for a career in the military, government, or law. Bilingual inscriptions indicate the everyday interpenetration of the two languages.\nLatin and Greek's mutual linguistic and cultural influence is a complex topic. Latin words incorporated into Greek were very common by the early imperial era, especially for military, administration, and trade and commerce matters. Greek grammar, literature, poetry and philosophy shaped Latin language and culture.\nThere was never a legal requirement for Latin in the Empire, but it represented a certain status. High standards of Latin, \"Latinitas\", started with the advent of Latin literature. Due to the flexible language policy of the Empire, a natural competition of language emerged that spurred \"Latinitas\", to defend Latin against the stronger cultural influence of Greek. Over time Latin usage was used to project power and a higher social class. Most of the emperors were bilingual but had a preference for Latin in the public sphere for political reasons, a \"rule\" that first started during the Punic Wars. Different emperors up until Justinian would attempt to require the use of Latin in various sections of the administration but there is no evidence that a linguistic imperialism existed during the early Empire.\nAfter all freeborn inhabitants were universally enfranchised in 212, many Roman citizens would have lacked a knowledge of Latin. The wide use of Koine Greek was what enabled the spread of Christianity and reflects its role as the lingua franca of the Mediterranean during the time of the Empire. Following Diocletian's reforms in the 3rd century CE, there was a decline in the knowledge of Greek in the west. Spoken Latin later fragmented into the incipient romance languages in the 7th century CE following the collapse of the Empire's west.\nThe dominance of Latin and Greek among the literate elite obscure the continuity of other spoken languages within the Empire. Latin, referred to in its spoken form as Vulgar Latin, gradually replaced Celtic and Italic languages. References to interpreters indicate the continuing use of local languages, particularly in Egypt with Coptic, and in military settings along the Rhine and Danube. Roman jurists also show a concern for local languages such as Punic, Gaulish, and Aramaic in assuring the correct understanding of laws and oaths. In Africa, Libyco-Berber and Punic were used in inscriptions into the 2nd century. In Syria, Palmyrene soldiers used their dialect of Aramaic for inscriptions, an exception to the rule that Latin was the language of the military. The last reference to Gaulish was between 560 and 575. The emergent Gallo-Romance languages would then be shaped by Gaulish. Proto-Basque or Aquitanian evolved with Latin loan words to modern Basque. The Thracian language, as were several now-extinct languages in Anatolia, are attested in Imperial-era inscriptions.\nSociety.\nThe Empire was remarkably multicultural, with \"astonishing cohesive capacity\" to create shared identity while encompassing diverse peoples. Public monuments and communal spaces open to all\u2014such as forums, amphitheatres, racetracks and baths\u2014helped foster a sense of \"Romanness\".\nRoman society had multiple, overlapping social hierarchies. The civil war preceding Augustus caused upheaval, but did not effect an immediate redistribution of wealth and social power. From the perspective of the lower classes, a peak was merely added to the social pyramid. Personal relationships\u2014patronage, friendship (\"amicitia\"), family, marriage\u2014continued to influence politics. By the time of Nero, however, it was not unusual to find a former slave who was richer than a freeborn citizen, or an equestrian who exercised greater power than a senator.\nThe blurring of the Republic's more rigid hierarchies led to increased social mobility, both upward and downward, to a greater extent than all other well-documented ancient societies. Women, freedmen, and slaves had opportunities to profit and exercise influence in ways previously less available to them. Social life, particularly for those whose personal resources were limited, was further fostered by a proliferation of voluntary associations and confraternities (\"collegia\" and \"sodalitates\"): professional and trade guilds, veterans' groups, religious sodalities, drinking and dining clubs, performing troupes, and burial societies.\nLegal status.\nAccording to the jurist Gaius, the essential distinction in the Roman \"law of persons\" was that all humans were either free (\"liberi\") or slaves (\"servi\"). The legal status of free persons was further defined by their citizenship. Most citizens held limited rights (such as the \"ius Latinum\", \"Latin right\"), but were entitled to legal protections and privileges not enjoyed by non-citizens. Free people not considered citizens, but living within the Roman world, were \"peregrini\", non-Romans. In 212, the \"Constitutio Antoniniana\" extended citizenship to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. This legal egalitarianism required a far-reaching revision of existing laws that distinguished between citizens and non-citizens.\nWomen in Roman law.\nFreeborn Roman women were considered citizens, but did not vote, hold political office, or serve in the military. A mother's citizen status determined that of her children, as indicated by the phrase \"ex duobus civibus Romanis natos\" (\"children born of two Roman citizens\"). A Roman woman kept her own family name (\"nomen\") for life. Children most often took the father's name, with some exceptions. Women could own property, enter contracts, and engage in business. Inscriptions throughout the Empire honour women as benefactors in funding public works, an indication they could hold considerable fortunes.\nThe archaic \"manus\" marriage in which the woman was subject to her husband's authority was largely abandoned by the Imperial era, and a married woman retained ownership of any property she brought into the marriage. Technically she remained under her father's legal authority, even though she moved into her husband's home, but when her father died she became legally emancipated. This arrangement was a factor in the degree of independence Roman women enjoyed compared to many other cultures up to the modern period: although she had to answer to her father in legal matters, she was free of his direct scrutiny in daily life, and her husband had no legal power over her. Although it was a point of pride to be a \"one-man woman\" (\"univira\") who had married only once, there was little stigma attached to divorce, nor to speedy remarriage after being widowed or divorced. Girls had equal inheritance rights with boys if their father died without leaving a will. A mother's right to own and dispose of property, including setting the terms of her will, gave her enormous influence over her sons into adulthood.\nAs part of the Augustan programme to restore traditional morality and social order, moral legislation attempted to regulate conduct as a means of promoting \"family values\". Adultery was criminalized, and defined broadly as an illicit sex act (\"stuprum\") between a male citizen and a married woman, or between a married woman and any man other than her husband. That is, a double standard was in place: a married woman could have sex only with her husband, but a married man did not commit adultery if he had sex with a prostitute or person of marginalized status. Childbearing was encouraged: a woman who had given birth to three children was granted symbolic honours and greater legal freedom (the \"ius trium liberorum\").\nSlaves and the law.\nAt the time of Augustus, as many as 35% of the people in Roman Italy were slaves, making Rome one of five historical \"slave societies\" in which slaves constituted at least a fifth of the population and played a major role in the economy. Slavery was a complex institution that supported traditional Roman social structures as well as contributing economic utility. In urban settings, slaves might be professionals such as teachers, physicians, chefs, and accountants; the majority of slaves provided trained or unskilled labour. Agriculture and industry, such as milling and mining, relied on the exploitation of slaves. Outside Italy, slaves were on average an estimated 10 to 20% of the population, sparse in Roman Egypt but more concentrated in some Greek areas. Expanding Roman ownership of arable land and industries affected preexisting practices of slavery in the provinces. Although slavery has often been regarded as waning in the 3rd and 4th centuries, it remained an integral part of Roman society until gradually ceasing in the 6th and 7th centuries with the disintegration of the complex Imperial economy.\nLaws pertaining to slavery were \"extremely intricate\". Slaves were considered property and had no legal personhood. They could be subjected to forms of corporal punishment not normally exercised on citizens, sexual exploitation, torture, and summary execution. A slave could not as a matter of law be raped; a slave's rapist had to be prosecuted by the owner for property damage under the Aquilian Law. Slaves had no right to the form of legal marriage called \"conubium\", but their unions were sometimes recognized. Technically, a slave could not own property, but a slave who conducted business might be given access to an individual fund (\"peculium\") that he could use, depending on the degree of trust and co-operation between owner and slave. Within a household or workplace, a hierarchy of slaves might exist, with one slave acting as the master of others. Talented slaves might accumulate a large enough \"peculium\" to justify their freedom, or be manumitted for services rendered. Manumission had become frequent enough that in 2 BC a law (\"Lex Fufia Caninia\") limited the number of slaves an owner was allowed to free in his will.\nFollowing the Servile Wars of the Republic, legislation under Augustus and his successors shows a driving concern for controlling the threat of rebellions through limiting the size of work groups, and for hunting down fugitive slaves. Over time slaves gained increased legal protection, including the right to file complaints against their masters. A bill of sale might contain a clause stipulating that the slave could not be employed for prostitution, as prostitutes in ancient Rome were often slaves. The burgeoning trade in eunuchs in the late 1st century prompted legislation that prohibited the castration of a slave against his will \"for lust or gain\".\nRoman slavery was not based on race. Generally, slaves in Italy were indigenous Italians, with a minority of foreigners (including both slaves and freedmen) estimated at 5% of the total in the capital at its peak, where their number was largest. Foreign slaves had higher mortality and lower birth rates than natives and were sometimes even subjected to mass expulsions. The average recorded age at death for the slaves of the city of Rome was seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females).\nDuring the period of republican expansionism when slavery had become pervasive, war captives were a main source of slaves. The range of ethnicities among slaves to some extent reflected that of the armies Rome defeated in war, and the conquest of Greece brought a number of highly skilled and educated slaves. Slaves were also traded in markets and sometimes sold by pirates. Infant abandonment and self-enslavement among the poor were other sources. \"Vernae\", by contrast, were \"homegrown\" slaves born to female slaves within the household, estate or farm. Although they had no special legal status, an owner who mistreated or failed to care for his \"vernae\" faced social disapproval, as they were considered part of the family household and in some cases might actually be the children of free males in the family.\nFreedmen.\nRome differed from Greek city-states in allowing freed slaves to become citizens; any future children of a freedman were born free, with full rights of citizenship. After manumission, a slave who had belonged to a Roman citizen enjoyed active political freedom (\"libertas\"), including the right to vote. His former master became his patron (\"patronus\"): the two continued to have customary and legal obligations to each other. A freedman was not entitled to hold public office or the highest state priesthoods, but could play a priestly role. He could not marry a woman from a senatorial family, nor achieve legitimate senatorial rank himself, but during the early Empire, freedmen held key positions in the government bureaucracy, so much so that Hadrian limited their participation by law. The rise of successful freedmen\u2014through political influence or wealth\u2014is a characteristic of early Imperial society. The prosperity of a high-achieving group of freedmen is attested by .\nCensus rank.\nThe Latin word \"ordo\" (plural \"ordines\") is translated variously and inexactly into English as \"class, order, rank\". One purpose of the Roman census was to determine the \"ordo\" to which an individual belonged. Two of the highest \"ordines\" in Rome were the senatorial and equestrian. Outside Rome, cities or colonies were led by decurions, also known as \"curiales.\"\n\"Senator\" was not itself an elected office in ancient Rome; an individual gained admission to the Senate after he had been elected to and served at least one term as an executive magistrate. A senator also had to meet a minimum property requirement of 1 million \"sestertii\". Not all men who qualified for the \"ordo senatorius\" chose to take a Senate seat, which required legal domicile at Rome. Emperors often filled vacancies in the 600-member body by appointment. A senator's son belonged to the \"ordo senatorius\", but he had to qualify on his own merits for admission to the Senate. A senator could be removed for violating moral standards.\nIn the time of Nero, senators were still primarily from Italy, with some from the Iberian peninsula and southern France; men from the Greek-speaking provinces of the East began to be added under Vespasian. The first senator from the easternmost province, Cappadocia, was admitted under Marcus Aurelius. By the Severan dynasty (193\u2013235), Italians made up less than half the Senate. During the 3rd century, domicile at Rome became impractical, and inscriptions attest to senators who were active in politics and munificence in their homeland (\"patria\").\nSenators were the traditional governing class who rose through the \"cursus honorum\", the political career track, but equestrians often possessed greater wealth and political power. Membership in the equestrian order was based on property; in Rome's early days, \"equites\" or knights had been distinguished by their ability to serve as mounted warriors, but cavalry service was a separate function in the Empire. A census valuation of 400,000 sesterces and three generations of free birth qualified a man as an equestrian. The census of 28 BC uncovered large numbers of men who qualified, and in 14 AD, a thousand equestrians were registered at C\u00e1diz and Padua alone. Equestrians rose through a military career track (\"tres militiae\") to become highly placed prefects and procurators within the Imperial administration.\nThe rise of provincial men to the senatorial and equestrian orders is an aspect of social mobility in the early Empire. Roman aristocracy was based on competition, and unlike later European nobility, a Roman family could not maintain its position merely through hereditary succession or having title to lands. Admission to the higher \"ordines\" brought distinction and privileges, but also responsibilities. In antiquity, a city depended on its leading citizens to fund public works, events, and services (\"munera\"). Maintaining one's rank required massive personal expenditures. Decurions were so vital for the functioning of cities that in the later Empire, as the ranks of the town councils became depleted, those who had risen to the Senate were encouraged to return to their hometowns, in an effort to sustain civic life.\nIn the later Empire, the \"dignitas\" (\"worth, esteem\") that attended on senatorial or equestrian rank was refined further with titles such as \"vir illustris\" (\"illustrious man\"). The appellation \"clarissimus\" (Greek \"lamprotatos\") was used to designate the \"dignitas\" of certain senators and their immediate family, including women. \"Grades\" of equestrian status proliferated.\nUnequal justice.\nAs the republican principle of citizens' equality under the law faded, the symbolic and social privileges of the upper classes led to an informal division of Roman society into those who had acquired greater honours (\"honestiores\") and humbler folk (\"humiliores\"). In general, \"honestiores\" were the members of the three higher \"orders\", along with certain military officers. The granting of universal citizenship in 212 seems to have increased the competitive urge among the upper classes to have their superiority affirmed, particularly within the justice system. Sentencing depended on the judgment of the presiding official as to the relative \"worth\" (\"dignitas\") of the defendant: an \"honestior\" could pay a fine for a crime for which an \"humilior\" might receive a scourging.\nExecution, which was an infrequent legal penalty for free men under the Republic, could be quick and relatively painless for \"honestiores\", while \"humiliores\" might suffer the kinds of torturous death previously reserved for slaves, such as crucifixion and condemnation to the beasts. In the early Empire, those who converted to Christianity could lose their standing as \"honestiores\", especially if they declined to fulfil religious responsibilities, and thus became subject to punishments that created the conditions of martyrdom.\nGovernment and military.\nThe three major elements of the Imperial state were the central government, the military, and the provincial government. The military established control of a territory through war, but after a city or people was brought under treaty, the mission turned to policing: protecting Roman citizens, agricultural fields, and religious sites. The Romans lacked sufficient manpower or resources to rule through force alone. Cooperation with local elites was necessary to maintain order, collect information, and extract revenue. The Romans often exploited internal political divisions.\nCommunities with demonstrated loyalty to Rome retained their own laws, could collect their own taxes locally, and in exceptional cases were exempt from Roman taxation. Legal privileges and relative independence incentivized compliance. Roman government was thus limited, but efficient in its use of available resources.\nCentral government.\nThe Imperial cult of ancient Rome identified emperors and some members of their families with divinely sanctioned authority (\"auctoritas\"). The rite of apotheosis (also called \"consecratio\") signified the deceased emperor's deification. The dominance of the emperor was based on the consolidation of powers from several republican offices. The emperor made himself the central religious authority as \"pontifex maximus\", and centralized the right to declare war, ratify treaties, and negotiate with foreign leaders. While these functions were clearly defined during the Principate, the emperor's powers over time became less constitutional and more monarchical, culminating in the Dominate.\nThe emperor was the ultimate authority in policy- and decision-making, but in the early Principate, he was expected to be accessible and deal personally with official business and petitions. A bureaucracy formed around him only gradually. The Julio-Claudian emperors relied on an informal body of advisors that included not only senators and equestrians, but trusted slaves and freedmen. After Nero, the influence of the latter was regarded with suspicion, and the emperor's council (\"consilium\") became subject to official appointment for greater transparency. Though the Senate took a lead in policy discussions until the end of the Antonine dynasty, equestrians played an increasingly important role in the \"consilium\". The women of the emperor's family often intervened directly in his decisions.\nAccess to the emperor might be gained at the daily reception (\"salutatio\"), a development of the traditional homage a client paid to his patron; public banquets hosted at the palace; and religious ceremonies. The common people who lacked this access could manifest their approval or displeasure as a group at games. By the 4th century, the Christian emperors became remote figureheads who issued general rulings, no longer responding to individual petitions. Although the Senate could do little short of assassination and open rebellion to contravene the will of the emperor, it retained its symbolic political centrality. The Senate legitimated the emperor's rule, and the emperor employed senators as legates (\"legati\"): generals, diplomats, and administrators.\nThe practical source of an emperor's power and authority was the military. The legionaries were paid by the Imperial treasury, and swore an annual oath of loyalty to the emperor. Most emperors chose a successor, usually a close family member or adopted heir. The new emperor had to seek a swift acknowledgement of his status and authority to stabilize the political landscape. No emperor could hope to survive without the allegiance of the Praetorian Guard and the legions. To secure their loyalty, several emperors paid the \"donativum\", a monetary reward. In theory, the Senate was entitled to choose the new emperor, but did so mindful of acclamation by the army or Praetorians.\nMilitary.\nAfter the Punic Wars, the Roman army comprised professional soldiers who volunteered for 20 years of active duty and five as reserves. The transition to a professional military began during the late Republic and was one of the many profound shifts away from republicanism, under which an army of conscript citizens defended the homeland against a specific threat. The Romans expanded their war machine by \"organizing the communities that they conquered in Italy into a system that generated huge reservoirs of manpower for their army\". By Imperial times, military service was a full-time career. The pervasiveness of military garrisons throughout the Empire was a major influence in the process of Romanization.\nThe primary mission of the military of the early empire was to preserve the Pax Romana. The three major divisions of the military were:\nThrough his military reforms, which included consolidating or disbanding units of questionable loyalty, Augustus regularized the legion. A legion was organized into ten cohorts, each of which comprised six centuries, with a century further made up of ten squads (\"contubernia\"); the exact size of the Imperial legion, which was likely determined by logistics, has been estimated to range from 4,800 to 5,280. After Germanic tribes wiped out three legions in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, the number of legions was increased from 25 to around 30. The army had about 300,000 soldiers in the 1st century, and under 400,000 in the 2nd, \"significantly smaller\" than the collective armed forces of the conquered territories. No more than 2% of adult males living in the Empire served in the Imperial army. Augustus also created the Praetorian Guard: nine cohorts, ostensibly to maintain the public peace, which were garrisoned in Italy. Better paid than the legionaries, the Praetorians served only sixteen years.\nThe \"auxilia\" were recruited from among the non-citizens. Organized in smaller units of roughly cohort strength, they were paid less than the legionaries, and after 25 years of service were rewarded with Roman citizenship, also extended to their sons. According to Tacitus there were roughly as many auxiliaries as there were legionaries\u2014thus, around 125,000 men, implying approximately 250 auxiliary regiments. The Roman cavalry of the earliest Empire were primarily from Celtic, Hispanic or Germanic areas. Several aspects of training and equipment derived from the Celts.\nThe Roman navy not only aided in the supply and transport of the legions but also in the protection of the frontiers along the rivers Rhine and Danube. Another duty was protecting maritime trade against pirates. It patrolled the Mediterranean, parts of the North Atlantic coasts, and the Black Sea. Nevertheless, the army was considered the senior and more prestigious branch.\nProvincial government.\nAn annexed territory became a Roman province in three steps: making a register of cities, taking a census, and surveying the land. Further government recordkeeping included births and deaths, real estate transactions, taxes, and juridical proceedings. In the 1st and 2nd centuries, the central government sent out around 160 officials annually to govern outside Italy. Among these officials were the Roman governors: magistrates elected at Rome who in the name of the Roman people governed senatorial provinces; or governors, usually of equestrian rank, who held their \"imperium\" on behalf of the emperor in imperial provinces, most notably Roman Egypt. A governor had to make himself accessible to the people he governed, but he could delegate various duties. His staff, however, was minimal: his official attendants (\"apparitores\"), including lictors, heralds, messengers, scribes, and bodyguards; legates, both civil and military, usually of equestrian rank; and friends who accompanied him unofficially.\nOther officials were appointed as supervisors of government finances. Separating fiscal responsibility from justice and administration was a reform of the Imperial era, to avoid provincial governors and tax farmers exploiting local populations for personal gain. Equestrian procurators, whose authority was originally \"extra-judicial and extra-constitutional\", managed both state-owned property and the personal property of the emperor (\"res privata\"). Because Roman government officials were few, a provincial who needed help with a legal dispute or criminal case might seek out any Roman perceived to have some official capacity.\nIn the High Empire, Italy was legally distinguished from the provinces, and along with some favored provincial communities, enjoyed immunity from the property tax and poll tax. However, under the Emperor Diocletian, Italy lost these privileges and was subdivided into provinces.\nLaw.\nRoman courts held original jurisdiction over cases involving Roman citizens throughout the empire, but there were too few judicial functionaries to impose Roman law uniformly in the provinces. Most parts of the Eastern Empire already had well-established law codes and juridical procedures. Generally, it was Roman policy to respect the \"mos regionis\" (\"regional tradition\" or \"law of the land\") and to regard local laws as a source of legal precedent and social stability. The compatibility of Roman and local law was thought to reflect an underlying \"ius gentium\", the \"law of nations\" or international law regarded as common and customary. If provincial law conflicted with Roman law or custom, Roman courts heard appeals, and the emperor held final decision-making authority.\nIn the West, law had been administered on a highly localized or tribal basis, and private property rights may have been a novelty of the Roman era, particularly among Celts. Roman law facilitated the acquisition of wealth by a pro-Roman elite. The extension of universal citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Empire in 212 required the uniform application of Roman law, replacing local law codes that had applied to non-citizens. Diocletian's efforts to stabilize the Empire after the Crisis of the Third Century included two major compilations of law in four years, the \"Codex Gregorianus\" and the \"Codex Hermogenianus\", to guide provincial administrators in setting consistent legal standards.\nThe pervasiveness of Roman law throughout Western Europe enormously influenced the Western legal tradition, reflected by continued use of Latin legal terminology in modern law.\nTaxation.\nTaxation under the Empire amounted to about 5% of its gross product. The typical tax rate for individuals ranged from 2 to 5%. The tax code was \"bewildering\" in its complicated system of direct and indirect taxes, some paid in cash and some in kind. Taxes might be specific to a province, or kinds of properties such as fisheries; they might be temporary. Tax collection was justified by the need to maintain the military, and taxpayers sometimes got a refund if the army captured a surplus of booty. In-kind taxes were accepted from less-monetized areas, particularly those who could supply grain or goods to army camps.\nThe primary source of direct tax revenue was individuals, who paid a poll tax and a tax on their land, construed as a tax on its produce or productive capacity. Tax obligations were determined by the census: each head of household provided a headcount of his household, as well as an accounting of his property. A major source of indirect-tax revenue was the \"portoria\", customs and tolls on trade, including among provinces. Towards the end of his reign, Augustus instituted a 4% tax on the sale of slaves, which Nero shifted from the purchaser to the dealers, who responded by raising their prices. An owner who manumitted a slave paid a \"freedom tax\", calculated at 5% of value. An inheritance tax of 5% was assessed when Roman citizens above a certain net worth left property to anyone outside their immediate family. Revenues from the estate tax and from an auction tax went towards the veterans' pension fund (\"aerarium militare\").\nLow taxes helped the Roman aristocracy increase their wealth, which equalled or exceeded the revenues of the central government. An emperor sometimes replenished his treasury by confiscating the estates of the \"super-rich\", but in the later period, the resistance of the wealthy to paying taxes was one of the factors contributing to the collapse of the Empire.\nEconomy.\nThe Empire is best thought of as a network of regional economies, based on a form of \"political capitalism\" in which the state regulated commerce to assure its own revenues. Economic growth, though not comparable to modern economies, was greater than that of most other societies prior to industrialization. Territorial conquests permitted a large-scale reorganization of land use that resulted in agricultural surplus and specialization, particularly in north Africa. Some cities were known for particular industries. The scale of urban building indicates a significant construction industry. Papyri preserve complex accounting methods that suggest elements of economic rationalism, and the Empire was highly monetized. Although the means of communication and transport were limited in antiquity, transportation in the 1st and 2nd centuries expanded greatly, and trade routes connected regional economies. The supply contracts for the army drew on local suppliers near the base (\"castrum\"), throughout the province, and across provincial borders.\nEconomic historians vary in their calculations of the gross domestic product during the Principate. In the sample years of 14, 100, and 150 AD, estimates of per capita GDP range from 166 to 380 \"HS\". The GDP per capita of Italy is estimated as 40 to 66% higher than in the rest of the Empire, due to tax transfers from the provinces and the concentration of elite income.\nEconomic dynamism resulted in social mobility. Although aristocratic values permeated traditional elite society, wealth requirements for rank indicate a strong tendency towards plutocracy. Prestige could be obtained through investing one's wealth in grand estates or townhouses, luxury items, public entertainments, funerary monuments, and religious dedications. Guilds (\"collegia\") and corporations (\"corpora\") provided support for individuals to succeed through networking. \"There can be little doubt that the lower classes of ... provincial towns of the Roman Empire enjoyed a high standard of living not equaled again in Western Europe until the 19th century\". Households in the top 1.5% of income distribution captured about 20% of income. The \"vast majority\" produced more than half of the total income, but lived near subsistence.\nCurrency and banking.\nThe early Empire was monetized to a near-universal extent, using money as a way to express prices and debts. The \"sestertius\" (English \"sesterces\", symbolized as \"HS\") was the basic unit of reckoning value into the 4th century, though the silver \"denarius\", worth four sesterces, was also used beginning in the Severan dynasty. The smallest coin commonly circulated was the bronze \"as\", one-tenth \"denarius\". Bullion and ingots seem not to have counted as \"pecunia\" (\"money\") and were used only on the frontiers. Romans in the first and second centuries counted coins, rather than weighing them\u2014an indication that the coin was valued on its face. This tendency towards fiat money led to the debasement of Roman coinage in the later Empire. The standardization of money throughout the Empire promoted trade and market integration. The high amount of metal coinage in circulation increased the money supply for trading or saving.\nRome had no central bank, and regulation of the banking system was minimal. Banks of classical antiquity typically kept less in reserves than the full total of customers' deposits. A typical bank had fairly limited capital, and often only one principal. Seneca assumes that anyone involved in Roman commerce needs access to credit. A professional deposit banker received and held deposits for a fixed or indefinite term, and lent money to third parties. The senatorial elite were involved heavily in private lending, both as creditors and borrowers. The holder of a debt could use it as a means of payment by transferring it to another party, without cash changing hands. Although it has sometimes been thought that ancient Rome lacked documentary transactions, the system of banks throughout the Empire permitted the exchange of large sums without physically transferring coins, in part because of the risks of moving large amounts of cash. Only one serious credit shortage is known to have occurred in the early Empire, in 33 AD; generally, available capital exceeded the amount needed by borrowers. The central government itself did not borrow money, and without public debt had to fund deficits from cash reserves.\nEmperors of the Antonine and Severan dynasties debased the currency, particularly the \"denarius\", under the pressures of meeting military payrolls. Sudden inflation under Commodus damaged the credit market. In the mid-200s, the supply of specie contracted sharply. Conditions during the Crisis of the Third Century\u2014such as reductions in long-distance trade, disruption of mining operations, and the physical transfer of gold coinage outside the empire by invading enemies\u2014greatly diminished the money supply and the banking sector. Although Roman coinage had long been fiat money or fiduciary currency, general economic anxieties came to a head under Aurelian, and bankers lost confidence in coins. Despite Diocletian's introduction of the gold \"solidus\" and monetary reforms, the credit market of the Empire never recovered its former robustness.\nMining and metallurgy.\nThe main mining regions of the Empire were the Iberian Peninsula (silver, copper, lead, iron and gold); Gaul (gold, silver, iron); Britain (mainly iron, lead, tin), the Danubian provinces (gold, iron); Macedonia and Thrace (gold, silver); and Asia Minor (gold, silver, iron, tin). Intensive large-scale mining\u2014of alluvial deposits, and by means of open-cast mining and underground mining\u2014took place from the reign of Augustus up to the early 3rd century, when the instability of the Empire disrupted production.\nHydraulic mining allowed base and precious metals to be extracted on a proto-industrial scale. The total annual iron output is estimated at 82,500\u00a0tonnes. Copper and lead production levels were unmatched until the Industrial Revolution. At its peak around the mid-2nd century, the Roman silver stock is estimated at 10,000\u00a0t, five to ten times larger than the combined silver mass of medieval Europe and the Caliphate around 800\u00a0AD. As an indication of the scale of Roman metal production, lead pollution in the Greenland ice sheet quadrupled over prehistoric levels during the Imperial era and dropped thereafter.\nTransportation and communication.\nThe Empire completely encircled the Mediterranean, which they called \"our sea\" (\"Mare Nostrum\"). Roman sailing vessels navigated the Mediterranean as well as major rivers. Transport by water was preferred where possible, as moving commodities by land was more difficult. Vehicles, wheels, and ships indicate the existence of a great number of skilled woodworkers.\nLand transport utilized the advanced system of Roman roads, called \"viae\". These roads were primarily built for military purposes, but also served commercial ends. The in-kind taxes paid by communities included the provision of personnel, animals, or vehicles for the \"cursus publicus\", the state mail and transport service established by Augustus. Relay stations were located along the roads every seven to twelve Roman miles, and tended to grow into villages or trading posts. A \"mansio\" (plural \"mansiones\") was a privately run service station franchised by the imperial bureaucracy for the \"cursus publicus\". The distance between \"mansiones\" was determined by how far a wagon could travel in a day. Carts were usually pulled by mules, travelling about 4\u00a0mph.\nTrade and commodities.\nRoman provinces traded among themselves, but trade extended outside the frontiers to regions as far away as China and India. Chinese trade was mostly conducted overland through middle men along the Silk Road; Indian trade also occurred by sea from Egyptian ports. The main commodity was grain. Also traded were olive oil, foodstuffs, \"garum\" (fish sauce), slaves, ore and manufactured metal objects, fibres and textiles, timber, pottery, glassware, marble, papyrus, spices and \"materia medica\", ivory, pearls, and gemstones. Though most provinces could produce wine, regional varietals were desirable and wine was a central trade good.\nLabour and occupations.\nInscriptions record 268 different occupations in Rome and 85 in Pompeii. Professional associations or trade guilds (\"collegia\") are attested for a wide range of occupations, some quite specialized.\nWork performed by slaves falls into five general categories: domestic, with epitaphs recording at least 55 different household jobs; imperial or public service; urban crafts and services; agriculture; and mining. Convicts provided much of the labour in the mines or quarries, where conditions were notoriously brutal. In practice, there was little division of labour between slave and free, and most workers were illiterate and without special skills. The greatest number of common labourers were employed in agriculture: in Italian industrial farming (\"latifundia\"), these may have been mostly slaves, but elsewhere slave farm labour was probably less important.\nTextile and clothing production was a major source of employment. Both textiles and finished garments were traded and products were often named for peoples or towns, like a fashion \"label\". Better ready-to-wear was exported by local businessmen (\"negotiatores\" or \"mercatores\"). Finished garments might be retailed by their sales agents, by \"vestiarii\" (clothing dealers), or peddled by itinerant merchants. The fullers (\"fullones\") and dye workers (\"coloratores\") had their own guilds. \"Centonarii\" were guild workers who specialized in textile production and the recycling of old clothes into pieced goods.\nArchitecture and engineering.\nThe chief Roman contributions to architecture were the arch, vault, and dome. Some Roman structures still stand today, due in part to sophisticated methods of making cements and concrete. Roman temples developed Etruscan and Greek forms, with some distinctive elements. Roman roads are considered the most advanced built until the early 19th century.\nRoman bridges were among the first large and lasting bridges, built from stone (and in most cases concrete) with the arch as the basic structure. The largest Roman bridge was Trajan's bridge over the lower Danube, constructed by Apollodorus of Damascus, which remained for over a millennium the longest bridge to have been built. The Romans built many dams and reservoirs for water collection, such as the Subiaco Dams, two of which fed the Anio Novus, one of the largest aqueducts of Rome.\nThe Romans constructed numerous aqueducts. \"De aquaeductu\", a treatise by Frontinus, who served as water commissioner, reflects the administrative importance placed on the water supply. Masonry channels carried water along a precise gradient, using gravity alone. It was then collected in tanks and fed through pipes to public fountains, baths, toilets, or industrial sites. The main aqueducts in Rome were the Aqua Claudia and the Aqua Marcia. The complex system built to supply Constantinople had its most distant supply drawn from over 120\u00a0km away along a route of more than 336\u00a0km. Roman aqueducts were built to remarkably fine tolerance, and to a technological standard not equalled until modern times. The Romans also used aqueducts in their extensive mining operations across the empire.\nInsulated glazing (or \"double glazing\") was used in the construction of public baths. Elite housing in cooler climates might have hypocausts, a form of central heating. The Romans were the first culture to assemble all essential components of the much later steam engine: the crank and connecting rod system, Hero's aeolipile (generating steam power), the cylinder and piston (in metal force pumps), non-return valves (in water pumps), and gearing (in water mills and clocks).\nDaily life.\nCity and country.\nThe city was viewed as fostering civilization by being \"properly designed, ordered, and adorned\". Augustus undertook a vast building programme in Rome, supported public displays of art that expressed imperial ideology, and reorganized the city into neighbourhoods \"(vici)\" administered at the local level with police and firefighting services. A focus of Augustan monumental architecture was the Campus Martius, an open area outside the city centre: the Altar of Augustan Peace () was located there, as was an obelisk imported from Egypt that formed the pointer (\"gnomon\") of a horologium. With its public gardens, the Campus was among the most attractive places in Rome to visit.\nCity planning and urban lifestyles was influenced by the Greeks early on, and in the Eastern Empire, Roman rule shaped the development of cities that already had a strong Hellenistic character. Cities such as Athens, Aphrodisias, Ephesus and Gerasa tailored city planning and architecture to imperial ideals, while expressing their individual identity and regional preeminence. In areas inhabited by Celtic-speaking peoples, Rome encouraged the development of urban centres with stone temples, forums, monumental fountains, and amphitheatres, often on or near the sites of preexisting walled settlements known as \"oppida\". Urbanization in Roman Africa expanded on Greek and Punic coastal cities.\nThe network of cities (, \"municipia\", \"civitates\" or in Greek terms \"poleis\") was a primary cohesive force during the Pax Romana. Romans of the 1st and 2nd centuries were encouraged to \"inculcate the habits of peacetime\". As the classicist Clifford Ando noted:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Most of the cultural appurtenances popularly associated with imperial culture\u2014public cult and its games and civic banquets, competitions for artists, speakers, and athletes, as well as the funding of the great majority of public buildings and public display of art\u2014were financed by private individuals, whose expenditures in this regard helped to justify their economic power and legal and provincial privileges.\nIn the city of Rome, most people lived in multistory apartment buildings (\"insulae\") that were often squalid firetraps. Public facilities\u2014such as baths (\"thermae\"), toilets with running water (\"latrinae\"), basins or elaborate fountains (\"nymphea\") delivering fresh water, and large-scale entertainments such as chariot races and gladiator combat\u2014were aimed primarily at the common people. \nThe public baths served hygienic, social and cultural functions. Bathing was the focus of daily socializing. Roman baths were distinguished by a series of rooms that offered communal bathing in three temperatures, with amenities that might include an exercise room, sauna, exfoliation spa, ball court, or outdoor swimming pool. Baths had hypocaust heating: the floors were suspended over hot-air channels. Public baths were part of urban culture throughout the provinces, but in the late 4th century, individual tubs began to replace communal bathing. Christians were advised to go to the baths only for hygiene.\nRich families from Rome usually had two or more houses: a townhouse (\"domus\") and at least one luxury home (\"villa\") outside the city. The \"domus\" was a privately owned single-family house, and might be furnished with a private bath (\"balneum\"), but it was not a place to retreat from public life. Although some neighbourhoods show a higher concentration of such houses, they were not segregated enclaves. The \"domus\" was meant to be visible and accessible. The atrium served as a reception hall in which the \"paterfamilias\" (head of household) met with clients every morning. It was a centre of family religious rites, containing a shrine and images of family ancestors. The houses were located on busy public roads, and ground-level spaces were often rented out as shops (\"tabernae\"). In addition to a kitchen garden\u2014windowboxes might substitute in the \"insulae\"\u2014townhouses typically enclosed a peristyle garden.\nThe villa by contrast was an escape from the city, and in literature represents a lifestyle that balances intellectual and artistic interests (\"otium\") with an appreciation of nature and agriculture. Ideally a villa commanded a view or vista, carefully framed by the architectural design. \nAugustus' programme of urban renewal, and the growth of Rome's population to as many as one million, was accompanied by nostalgia for rural life. Poetry idealized the lives of farmers and shepherds. Interior decorating often featured painted gardens, fountains, landscapes, vegetative ornament, and animals, rendered accurately enough to be identified by species. On a more practical level, the central government took an active interest in supporting agriculture. Producing food was the priority of land use. Larger farms (\"latifundia\") achieved an economy of scale that sustained urban life. Small farmers benefited from the development of local markets in towns and trade centres. Agricultural techniques such as crop rotation and selective breeding were disseminated throughout the Empire, and new crops were introduced from one province to another.\nMaintaining an affordable food supply to the city of Rome had become a major political issue in the late Republic, when the state began to provide a grain dole (Cura Annonae) to citizens who registered for it (about 200,000\u2013250,000 adult males in Rome). The dole cost at least 15% of state revenues, but improved living conditions among the lower classes, and subsidized the rich by allowing workers to spend more of their earnings on the wine and olive oil produced on estates. The grain dole also had symbolic value: it affirmed the emperor's position as universal benefactor, and the right of citizens to share in \"the fruits of conquest\". The \"annona\", public facilities, and spectacular entertainments mitigated the otherwise dreary living conditions of lower-class Romans, and kept social unrest in check. The satirist Juvenal, however, saw \"bread and circuses\" (\"panem et circenses\") as emblematic of the loss of republican political liberty:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The public has long since cast off its cares: the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things: bread and circuses.\nHealth and disease.\nEpidemics were common in the ancient world, and occasional pandemics in the Empire killed millions. The Roman population was unhealthy. About 20 percent\u2014a large percentage by ancient standards\u2014lived in cities, Rome being the largest. The cities were a \"demographic sink\": the death rate exceeded the birth rate and constant immigration was necessary to maintain the population. Average lifespan is estimated at the mid-twenties, and perhaps more than half of children died before reaching adulthood. Dense urban populations and poor sanitation contributed to disease. Land and sea connections facilitated and sped the transfer of infectious diseases across the empire's territories. The rich were not immune; only two of emperor Marcus Aurelius's fourteen children are known to have reached adulthood.\nThe importance of a good diet to health was recognized by medical writers such as Galen (2nd century). Views on nutrition were influenced by beliefs like humoral theory. A good indicator of nutrition and disease burden is average height: the average Roman was shorter in stature than the population of pre-Roman Italian societies and medieval Europe.\nFood and dining.\nMost apartments in Rome lacked kitchens, though a charcoal brazier could be used for rudimentary cookery. Prepared food was sold at pubs and bars, inns, and food stalls (\"tabernae\", \"cauponae\", \"popinae\", \"thermopolia\"). Carryout and restaurants were for the lower classes; fine dining appeared only at dinner parties in wealthy homes with a chef (\"archimagirus\") and kitchen staff, or banquets hosted by social clubs (\"collegia\").\nMost Romans consumed at least 70% of their daily calories in the form of cereals and legumes. \"Puls\" (pottage) was considered the food of the Romans, and could be elaborated to produce dishes similar to polenta or risotto. Urban populations and the military preferred bread. By the reign of Aurelian, the state had begun to distribute the \"annona\" as a daily ration of bread baked in state factories, and added olive oil, wine, and pork to the dole.\nRoman literature focuses on the dining habits of the upper classes, for whom the evening meal (\"cena\") had important social functions. Guests were entertained in a finely decorated dining room (\"triclinium\") furnished with couches. By the late Republic, women dined, reclined, and drank wine along with men. The poet Martial describes a dinner, beginning with the \"gustatio\" (\"tasting\" or \"appetizer\") salad. The main course was kid, beans, greens, a chicken, and leftover ham, followed by a dessert of fruit and wine. Roman \"foodies\" indulged in wild game, fowl such as peacock and flamingo, large fish (mullet was especially prized), and shellfish. Luxury ingredients were imported from the far reaches of empire. A book-length collection of Roman recipes is attributed to Apicius, a name for several figures in antiquity that became synonymous with \"gourmet\".\nRefined cuisine could be moralized as a sign of either civilized progress or decadent decline. Most often, because of the importance of landowning in Roman culture, produce\u2014cereals, legumes, vegetables, and fruit\u2014were considered more civilized foods than meat. The Mediterranean staples of bread, wine, and oil were sacralized by Roman Christianity, while Germanic meat consumption became a mark of paganism. Some philosophers and Christians resisted the demands of the body and the pleasures of food, and adopted fasting as an ideal. Food became simpler in general as urban life in the West diminished and trade routes were disrupted; the Church formally discouraged gluttony, and hunting and pastoralism were seen as simple and virtuous.\nSpectacles.\nWhen Juvenal complained that the Roman people had exchanged their political liberty for \"bread and circuses\", he was referring to the state-provided grain dole and the \"circenses\", events held in the entertainment venue called a \"circus\". The largest such venue in Rome was the Circus Maximus, the setting of horse races, chariot races, the equestrian Troy Game, staged beast hunts (\"venationes\"), athletic contests, gladiator combat, and historical re-enactments. From earliest times, several religious festivals had featured games (\"ludi\"), primarily horse and chariot races (\"ludi circenses\"). The races retained religious significance in connection with agriculture, initiation, and the cycle of birth and death.\nUnder Augustus, public entertainments were presented on 77 days of the year; by the reign of Marcus Aurelius, this had expanded to 135. Circus games were preceded by an elaborate parade (\"pompa circensis\") that ended at the venue. Competitive events were held also in smaller venues such as the amphitheatre, which became the characteristic Roman spectacle venue, and stadium. Greek-style athletics included footraces, boxing, wrestling, and the pancratium. Aquatic displays, such as the mock sea battle (\"naumachia\") and a form of \"water ballet\", were presented in engineered pools. State-supported theatrical events (\"ludi scaenici\") took place on temple steps or in grand stone theatres, or in the smaller enclosed theatre called an \"odeon\".\nCircuses were the largest structure regularly built in the Roman world. The Flavian Amphitheatre, better known as the Colosseum, became the regular arena for blood sports in Rome. Many Roman amphitheatres, circuses and theatres built in cities outside Italy are visible as ruins today. The local ruling elite were responsible for sponsoring spectacles and arena events, which both enhanced their status and drained their resources. The physical arrangement of the amphitheatre represented the order of Roman society: the emperor in his opulent box; senators and equestrians in reserved advantageous seats; women seated at a remove from the action; slaves given the worst places, and everybody else in-between. The crowd could call for an outcome by booing or cheering, but the emperor had the final say. Spectacles could quickly become sites of social and political protest, and emperors sometimes had to deploy force to put down crowd unrest, most notoriously at the Nika riots in 532.\nThe chariot teams were known by the colours they wore. Fan loyalty was fierce and at times erupted into sports riots. Racing was perilous, but charioteers were among the most celebrated and well-compensated athletes. Circuses were designed to ensure that no team had an unfair advantage and to minimize collisions (\"naufragia\"), which were nonetheless frequent and satisfying to the crowd. The races retained a magical aura through their early association with chthonic rituals: circus images were considered protective or lucky, curse tablets have been found buried at the site of racetracks, and charioteers were often suspected of sorcery. Chariot racing continued into the Byzantine period under imperial sponsorship, but the decline of cities in the 6th and 7th centuries led to its eventual demise.\nThe Romans thought gladiator contests had originated with funeral games and sacrifices. Some of the earliest styles of gladiator fighting had ethnic designations such as \"Thracian\" or \"Gallic\". The staged combats were considered , \"services, offerings, benefactions\", initially distinct from the festival games (\"ludi\"). To mark the opening of the Colosseum, Titus presented 100 days of arena events, with 3,000 gladiators competing on a single day. Roman fascination with gladiators is indicated by how widely they are depicted on mosaics, wall paintings, lamps, and in graffiti. Gladiators were trained combatants who might be slaves, convicts, or free volunteers. Death was not a necessary or even desirable outcome in matches between these highly skilled fighters, whose training was costly and time-consuming. By contrast, \"noxii\" were convicts sentenced to the arena with little or no training, often unarmed, and with no expectation of survival; physical suffering and humiliation were considered appropriate retributive justice. These executions were sometimes staged or ritualized as re-enactments of myths, and amphitheatres were equipped with elaborate stage machinery to create special effects.\nModern scholars have found the pleasure Romans took in the \"theatre of life and death\" difficult to understand. Pliny the Younger rationalized gladiator spectacles as good for the people, \"to inspire them to face honourable wounds and despise death, by exhibiting love of glory and desire for victory\". Some Romans such as Seneca were critical of the brutal spectacles, but found virtue in the courage and dignity of the defeated fighter\u2014an attitude that finds its fullest expression with the Christians martyred in the arena. Tertullian considered deaths in the arena to be nothing more than a dressed-up form of human sacrifice. Even martyr literature, however, offers \"detailed, indeed luxuriant, descriptions of bodily suffering\", and became a popular genre at times indistinguishable from fiction.\nRecreation.\nThe singular \"ludus\", \"play, game, sport, training\", had a wide range of meanings such as \"word play\", \"theatrical performance\", \"board game\", \"primary school\", and even \"gladiator training school\" (as in \"Ludus Magnus\"). Activities for children and young people in the Empire included hoop rolling and knucklebones (\"astragali\" or \"jacks\"). Girls had dolls made of wood, terracotta, and especially bone and ivory. Ball games include trigon and harpastum. People of all ages played board games, including \"latrunculi\" (\"Raiders\") and \"XII scripta\" (\"Twelve Marks\"). A game referred to as \"alea\" (dice) or \"tabula\" (the board) may have been similar to backgammon. Dicing as a form of gambling was disapproved of, but was a popular pastime during the festival of the Saturnalia.\nAfter adolescence, most physical training for males was of a military nature. The Campus Martius originally was an exercise field where young men learned horsemanship and warfare. Hunting was also considered an appropriate pastime. According to Plutarch, conservative Romans disapproved of Greek-style athletics that promoted a fine body for its own sake, and condemned Nero's efforts to encourage Greek-style athletic games. Some women trained as gymnasts and dancers, and a rare few as female gladiators. The \"Bikini Girls\" mosaic shows young women engaging in routines comparable to rhythmic gymnastics. Women were encouraged to maintain health through activities such as playing ball, swimming, walking, or reading aloud (as a breathing exercise).\nClothing.\nIn a status-conscious society like that of the Romans, clothing and personal adornment indicated the etiquette of interacting with the wearer. Wearing the correct clothing reflected a society in good order. There is little direct evidence of how Romans dressed in daily life, since portraiture may show the subject in clothing with symbolic value, and surviving textiles are rare.\nThe toga was the distinctive national garment of the male citizen, but it was heavy and impractical, worn mainly for conducting political or court business and religious rites. It was a \"vast expanse\" of semi-circular white wool that could not be put on and draped correctly without assistance. The drapery became more intricate and structured over time. The \"toga praetexta\", with a purple or purplish-red stripe representing inviolability, was worn by children who had not come of age, curule magistrates, and state priests. Only the emperor could wear an all-purple toga (\"toga picta\").\nOrdinary clothing was dark or colourful. The basic garment for all Romans, regardless of gender or wealth, was the simple sleeved tunic, with length differing by wearer. The tunics of poor people and labouring slaves were made from coarse wool in natural, dull shades; finer tunics were made of lightweight wool or linen. A man of the senatorial or equestrian order wore a tunic with two purple stripes (\"clavi\") woven vertically: the wider the stripe, the higher the wearer's status. Other garments could be layered over the tunic. Common male attire also included cloaks, and in some regions, trousers. In the 2nd century, emperors and elite men are often portrayed wearing the pallium, an originally Greek mantle; women are also portrayed in the pallium. Tertullian considered the pallium an appropriate garment both for Christians, in contrast to the toga, and for educated people.\nRoman clothing styles changed over time. In the Dominate, clothing worn by both soldiers and bureaucrats became highly decorated with geometrical patterns, stylized plant motifs, and in more elaborate examples, human or animal figures. Courtiers of the later Empire wore elaborate silk robes. The militarization of Roman society, and the waning of urban life, affected fashion: heavy military-style belts were worn by bureaucrats as well as soldiers, and the toga was abandoned, replaced by the pallium as a garment embodying social unity.\nArts.\nGreek art had a profound influence on Roman art. Public art\u2014including sculpture, monuments such as victory columns or triumphal arches, and the iconography on coins\u2014is often analysed for historical or ideological significance. In the private sphere, artistic objects were made for religious dedications, funerary commemoration, domestic use, and commerce. The wealthy advertised their appreciation of culture through artwork and decorative arts in their homes. Despite the value placed on art, even famous artists were of low social status, partly as they worked with their hands.\nPortraiture.\nPortraiture, which survives mainly in sculpture, was the most copious form of imperial art. Portraits during the Augustan period utilize classical proportions, evolving later into a mixture of realism and idealism. Republican portraits were characterized by verism, but as early as the 2nd century BC, Greek heroic nudity was adopted for conquering generals. Imperial portrait sculptures may model a mature head atop a youthful nude or semi-nude body with perfect musculature. Clothed in the toga or military regalia, the body communicates rank or role, not individual characteristics. \nPortraiture in painting is represented primarily by the Fayum mummy portraits, which evoke Egyptian and Roman traditions of commemorating the dead with realistic painting. Marble portrait sculpture were painted, but traces have rarely survived.\nSculpture and sarcophagi.\nExamples of Roman sculpture survive abundantly, though often in damaged or fragmentary condition, including freestanding statuary in marble, bronze and terracotta, and reliefs from public buildings and monuments. Niches in amphitheatres were originally filled with statues, as were formal gardens. Temples housed cult images of deities, often by famed sculptors.\nElaborately carved marble and limestone sarcophagi are characteristic of the 2nd to 4th centuries. Sarcophagus relief has been called the \"richest single source of Roman iconography\", depicting mythological scenes or Jewish/Christian imagery as well as the deceased's life.\nPainting.\nInitial Roman painting drew from Etruscan and Greek models and techniques. Examples of Roman paintings can be found in palaces, catacombs and villas. Much of what is known of Roman painting is from the interior decoration of private homes, particularly as preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius. In addition to decorative borders and panels with geometric or vegetative motifs, wall painting depicts scenes from mythology and theatre, landscapes and gardens, spectacles, everyday life, and erotic art.\nMosaic.\nMosaics are among the most enduring of Roman decorative arts, and are found on floors and other architectural features. The most common is the tessellated mosaic, formed from uniform pieces \"(tesserae)\" of materials such as stone and glass. \"Opus sectile\" is a related technique in which flat stone, usually coloured marble, is cut precisely into shapes from which geometric or figurative patterns are formed. This more difficult technique became especially popular for luxury surfaces in the 4th century (e.g. the Basilica of Junius Bassus).\nFigurative mosaics share many themes with painting, and in some cases use almost identical compositions. Geometric patterns and mythological scenes occur throughout the Empire. In North Africa, a particularly rich source of mosaics, homeowners often chose scenes of life on their estates, hunting, agriculture, and local wildlife. Plentiful and major examples of Roman mosaics come also from present-day Turkey (particularly the (Antioch mosaics), Italy, southern France, Spain, and Portugal.\nDecorative arts.\nDecorative arts for luxury consumers included fine pottery, silver and bronze vessels and implements, and glassware. Pottery manufacturing was economically important, as were the glass and metalworking industries. Imports stimulated new regional centres of production. Southern Gaul became a leading producer of the finer red-gloss pottery (\"terra sigillata\") that was a major trade good in 1st-century Europe. Glassblowing was regarded by the Romans as originating in Syria in the 1st century BC, and by the 3rd century, Egypt and the Rhineland had become noted for fine glass.\nPerforming arts.\nIn Roman tradition, borrowed from the Greeks, literary theatre was performed by all-male troupes that used face masks with exaggerated facial expressions to portray emotion. Female roles were played by men in drag (\"travesti\"). Roman literary theatre tradition is represented in Latin literature by the tragedies of Seneca, for example.\nMore popular than literary theatre was the genre-defying \"mimus\" theatre, which featured scripted scenarios with free improvisation, risqu\u00e9 language and sex scenes, action sequences, and political satire, along with dance, juggling, acrobatics, tightrope walking, striptease, and dancing bears. Unlike literary theatre, \"mimus\" was played without masks, and encouraged stylistic realism. Female roles were performed by women. \"Mimus\" was related to \"pantomimus\", an early form of story ballet that contained no spoken dialogue but rather a sung libretto, often mythological, either tragic or comic.\nAlthough sometimes regarded as foreign, music and dance existed in Rome from earliest times. Music was customary at funerals, and the \"tibia\", a woodwind instrument, was played at sacrifices. Song \"(carmen)\" was integral to almost every social occasion. Music was thought to reflect the orderliness of the cosmos. Various woodwinds and \"brass\" instruments were played, as were stringed instruments such as the \"cithara\", and percussion. The \"cornu\", a long tubular metal wind instrument, was used for military signals and on parade. These instruments spread throughout the provinces and are widely depicted in Roman art. The hydraulic pipe organ \"(hydraulis)\" was \"one of the most significant technical and musical achievements of antiquity\", and accompanied gladiator games and events in the amphitheatre. Although certain dances were seen at times as non-Roman or unmanly, dancing was embedded in religious rituals of archaic Rome. Ecstatic dancing was a feature of the mystery religions, particularly the cults of Cybele and Isis. In the secular realm, dancing girls from Syria and Cadiz were extremely popular.\nLike gladiators, entertainers were legally \"infames\", technically free but little better than slaves. \"Stars\", however, could enjoy considerable wealth and celebrity, and mingled socially and often sexually with the elite. Performers supported each other by forming guilds, and several memorials for theatre members survive. Theatre and dance were often condemned by Christian polemicists in the later Empire.\nLiteracy, books, and education.\nEstimates of the average literacy rate range from 5 to over 30%. The Roman obsession with documents and inscriptions indicates the value placed on the written word. Laws and edicts were posted as well as read out. Illiterate Roman subjects could have a government scribe (\"scriba\") read or write their official documents for them. The military produced extensive written records. The Babylonian Talmud declared \"if all seas were ink, all reeds were pen, all skies parchment, and all men scribes, they would be unable to set down the full scope of the Roman government's concerns\".\nNumeracy was necessary for commerce. Slaves were numerate and literate in significant numbers; some were highly educated. Graffiti and low-quality inscriptions with misspellings and solecisms indicate casual literacy among non-elites.\nThe Romans had an extensive priestly archive, and inscriptions appear throughout the Empire in connection with votives dedicated by ordinary people, as well as \"magic spells\" (e.g. the Greek Magical Papyri).\nBooks were expensive, since each copy had to be written out on a papyrus roll (\"volumen\") by scribes. The codex\u2014pages bound to a spine\u2014was still a novelty in the 1st century, but by the end of the 3rd century was replacing the \"volumen\". Commercial book production was established by the late Republic, and by the 1st century certain neighbourhoods of Rome and Western provincial cities were known for their bookshops. The quality of editing varied wildly, and plagiarism or forgery were common, since there was no copyright law.\nCollectors amassed personal libraries, and a fine library was part of the cultivated leisure (\"otium\") associated with the villa lifestyle. Significant collections might attract \"in-house\" scholars, and an individual benefactor might endow a community with a library (as Pliny the Younger did in Comum). Imperial libraries were open to users on a limited basis, and represented a literary canon. Books considered subversive might be publicly burned, and Domitian crucified copyists for reproducing works deemed treasonous.\nLiterary texts were often shared aloud at meals or with reading groups. Public readings (\"recitationes\") expanded from the 1st through the 3rd century, giving rise to \"consumer literature\" for entertainment. Illustrated books, including erotica, were popular, but are poorly represented by extant fragments.\nLiteracy began to decline during the Crisis of the Third Century. The emperor Julian banned Christians from teaching the classical curriculum, but the Church Fathers and other Christians adopted Latin and Greek literature, philosophy and science in biblical interpretation. As the Western Roman Empire declined, reading became rarer even for those within the Church hierarchy, although it continued in the Byzantine Empire.\nEducation.\nTraditional Roman education was moral and practical. Stories were meant to instil Roman values (\"mores maiorum\"). Parents were expected to act as role models, and working parents passed their skills to their children, who might also enter apprenticeships. Young children were attended by a pedagogue, usually a Greek slave or former slave, who kept the child safe, taught self-discipline and public behaviour, attended class and helped with tutoring.\nFormal education was available only to families who could pay for it; lack of state support contributed to low literacy. Primary education in reading, writing, and arithmetic might take place at home if parents hired or bought a teacher. Other children attended \"public\" schools organized by a schoolmaster (\"ludimagister\") paid by parents. \"Vernae\" (homeborn slave children) might share in-home or public schooling. Boys and girls received primary education generally from ages 7 to 12, but classes were not segregated by grade or age. Most schools employed corporal punishment. For the socially ambitious, education in Greek as well as Latin was necessary. Schools became more numerous during the Empire, increasing educational opportunities.\nAt the age of 14, upperclass males made their rite of passage into adulthood, and began to learn leadership roles through mentoring from a senior family member or family friend. Higher education was provided by \"grammatici\" or \"rhetores\". The \"grammaticus\" or \"grammarian\" taught mainly Greek and Latin literature, with history, geography, philosophy or mathematics treated as explications of the text. With the rise of Augustus, contemporary Latin authors such as Virgil and Livy also became part of the curriculum. The \"rhetor\" was a teacher of oratory or public speaking. The art of speaking (\"ars dicendi\") was highly prized, and \"eloquentia\" (\"speaking ability, eloquence\") was considered the \"glue\" of civilized society. Rhetoric was not so much a body of knowledge (though it required a command of the literary canon) as it was a mode of expression that distinguished those who held social power. The ancient model of rhetorical training\u2014\"restraint, coolness under pressure, modesty, and good humour\"\u2014endured into the 18th century as a Western educational ideal.\nIn Latin, \"illiteratus\" could mean both \"unable to read and write\" and \"lacking in cultural awareness or sophistication\". Higher education promoted career advancement. Urban elites throughout the Empire shared a literary culture imbued with Greek educational ideals (\"paideia\"). Hellenistic cities sponsored schools of higher learning to express cultural achievement. Young Roman men often went abroad to study rhetoric and philosophy, mostly to Athens. The curriculum in the East was more likely to include music and physical training. On the Hellenistic model, Vespasian endowed chairs of grammar, Latin and Greek rhetoric, and philosophy at Rome, and gave secondary teachers special exemptions from taxes and legal penalties. In the Eastern Empire, Berytus (present-day Beirut) was unusual in offering a Latin education, and became famous for its school of Roman law. The cultural movement known as the Second Sophistic (1st\u20133rd century AD) promoted the assimilation of Greek and Roman social, educational, and esthetic values.\nLiterate women ranged from cultured aristocrats to girls trained to be calligraphers and scribes. The ideal woman in Augustan love poetry was educated and well-versed in the arts. Education seems to have been standard for daughters of the senatorial and equestrian orders. An educated wife was an asset for the socially ambitious household.\nLiterature.\nLiterature under Augustus, along with that of the Republic, has been viewed as the \"Golden Age\" of Latin literature, embodying classical ideals. The three most influential Classical Latin poets\u2014Virgil, Horace, and Ovid\u2014belong to this period. Virgil's \"Aeneid\" was a national epic in the manner of the Homeric epics of Greece. Horace perfected the use of Greek lyric metres in Latin verse. Ovid's erotic poetry was enormously popular, but ran afoul of Augustan morality, contributing to his exile. Ovid's \"Metamorphoses\" wove together Greco-Roman mythology; his versions of Greek myths became a primary source of later classical mythology, and his work was hugely influential on medieval literature. The early Principate produced satirists such as Persius and Juvenal.\nThe mid-1st through mid-2nd century has conventionally been called the \"Silver Age\" of Latin literature. The three leading writers\u2014Seneca, Lucan, and Petronius\u2014committed suicide after incurring Nero's displeasure. Epigrammatist and social observer Martial and the epic poet Statius, whose poetry collection \"Silvae\" influenced Renaissance literature, wrote during the reign of Domitian. Other authors of the Silver Age included Pliny the Elder, author of the encyclopedic \"Natural History\"; his nephew, Pliny the Younger; and the historian Tacitus.\nThe principal Latin prose author of the Augustan age is the historian Livy, whose account of Rome's founding became the most familiar version in modern-era literature. \"The Twelve Caesars\" by Suetonius is a primary source for imperial biography. Among Imperial historians who wrote in Greek are Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Josephus, and Cassius Dio. Other major Greek authors of the Empire include the biographer Plutarch, the geographer Strabo, and the rhetorician and satirist Lucian.\nFrom the 2nd to the 4th centuries, Christian authors were in active dialogue with the classical tradition. Tertullian was one of the earliest prose authors with a distinctly Christian voice. After the conversion of Constantine, Latin literature is dominated by the Christian perspective. In the late 4th century, Jerome produced the Latin translation of the Bible that became authoritative as the Vulgate. Around that same time, Augustine wrote \"The City of God against the Pagans\", considered \"a masterpiece of Western culture\".\nIn contrast to the unity of Classical Latin, the literary esthetic of late antiquity has a tessellated quality. A continuing interest in the religious traditions of Rome prior to Christian dominion is found into the 5th century, with the \"Saturnalia\" of Macrobius and \"The Marriage of Philology and Mercury\" of Martianus Capella. Latin poets of late antiquity include Ausonius, Prudentius, Claudian, and Sidonius Apollinaris.\nReligion.\nThe Romans thought of themselves as highly religious, and attributed their success to their collective piety (\"pietas\") and good relations with the gods (\"pax deorum\"). The archaic religion believed to have come from the earliest kings of Rome was the foundation of the \"mos maiorum\", \"the way of the ancestors\", central to Roman identity.\nRoman religion was practical and contractual, based on the principle of \"do ut des\", \"I give that you might give\". Religion depended on knowledge and the correct practice of prayer, ritual, and sacrifice, not on faith or dogma, although Latin literature preserves learned speculation on the nature of the divine. For ordinary Romans, religion was a part of daily life. Each home had a household shrine to offer prayers and libations to the family's domestic deities. Neighbourhood shrines and sacred places such as springs and groves dotted the city. The Roman calendar was structured around religious observances; as many as 135 days were devoted to religious festivals and games (\"ludi\").\nIn the wake of the Republic's collapse, state religion adapted to support the new regime. Augustus justified one-man rule with a vast programme of religious revivalism and reform. Public vows now were directed at the wellbeing of the emperor. So-called \"emperor worship\" expanded on a grand scale the traditional veneration of the ancestral dead and of the \"Genius\", the divine tutelary of every individual. Upon death, an emperor could be made a state divinity (\"divus\") by vote of the Senate. The Roman imperial cult, influenced by Hellenistic ruler cult, became one of the major ways Rome advertised its presence in the provinces and cultivated shared cultural identity. Cultural precedent in the Eastern provinces facilitated a rapid dissemination of Imperial cult, extending as far as Najran, in present-day Saudi Arabia. Rejection of the state religion became tantamount to treason.\nThe Romans are known for the great number of deities they honoured. As the Romans extended their territories, their general policy was to promote stability among diverse peoples by absorbing local deities and cults rather than eradicating them, building temples that framed local theology within Roman religion. Inscriptions throughout the Empire record the side-by-side worship of local and Roman deities, including dedications made by Romans to local gods. By the height of the Empire, numerous syncretic or reinterpreted gods were cultivated, among them cults of Cybele, Isis, Epona, and of solar gods such as Mithras and Sol Invictus, found as far north as Roman Britain. Because Romans had never been obligated to cultivate one god or cult only, religious tolerance was not an issue.\nMystery religions, which offered initiates salvation in the afterlife, were a matter of personal choice, practiced in addition to one's family rites and public religion. The mysteries, however, involved exclusive oaths and secrecy, which conservative Romans viewed with suspicion as characteristic of \"magic\", conspiracy (\"coniuratio\"), and subversive activity. Thus, sporadic and sometimes brutal attempts were made to suppress religionists. In Gaul, the power of the druids was checked, first by forbidding Roman citizens to belong to the order, and then by banning druidism altogether. However, Celtic traditions were reinterpreted within the context of Imperial theology, and a new Gallo-Roman religion coalesced; its capital at the Sanctuary of the Three Gauls established precedent for Western cult as a form of Roman-provincial identity. The monotheistic rigour of Judaism posed difficulties for Roman policy that led at times to compromise and granting of special exemptions. Tertullian noted that Judaism, unlike Christianity, was considered a \"religio licita\", \"legitimate religion\". The Jewish\u2013Roman wars resulted from political as well as religious conflicts; the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD led to the sacking of the Second Temple and the dispersal of Jewish political power (see Jewish diaspora).\nChristianity emerged in Roman Judaea as a Jewish religious sect in the 1st century and gradually spread out of Jerusalem throughout the Empire and beyond. Imperially authorized persecutions were limited and sporadic, with martyrdoms occurring most often under the authority of local officials. Tacitus reports that after the Great Fire of Rome in AD\u00a064, the emperor attempted to deflect blame from himself onto the Christians. A major persecution occurred under the emperor Domitian and a persecution in 177 took place at Lugdunum, the Gallo-Roman religious capital. A letter from Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia, describes his persecution and executions of Christians. The Decian persecution of 246\u2013251 seriously threatened the Christian Church, but ultimately strengthened Christian defiance. Diocletian undertook the most severe persecution of Christians, from 303 to 311.\nFrom the 2nd century onward, the Church Fathers condemned the diverse religions practiced throughout the Empire as \"pagan\". In the early 4th century, Constantine I became the first emperor to convert to Christianity. He supported the Church financially and made laws that favored it, but the new religion was already successful, having moved from less than 50,000 to over a million adherents between 150 and 250. Constantine and his successors banned public sacrifice while tolerating other traditional practices. Constantine never engaged in a purge, there were no \"pagan martyrs\" during his reign, and people who had not converted to Christianity remained in important positions at court. Julian attempted to revive traditional public sacrifice and Hellenistic religion, but met Christian resistance and lack of popular support.\nChristians of the 4th century believed the conversion of Constantine showed that Christianity had triumphed over paganism (in Heaven) and little further action besides such rhetoric was necessary. Thus, their focus shifted towards heresy. According to Peter Brown, \"In most areas, polytheists were not molested, and apart from a few ugly incidents of local violence, Jewish communities also enjoyed a century of stable, even privileged, existence\". There were anti-pagan laws, but they were not generally enforced; through the 6th century, centers of paganism existed in Athens, Gaza, Alexandria, and elsewhere.\nAccording to recent Jewish scholarship, toleration of the Jews was maintained under Christian emperors. This did not extend to heretics: Theodosius I made multiple laws and acted against alternate forms of Christianity, and heretics were persecuted and killed by both the government and the church throughout Late Antiquity. Non-Christians were not persecuted until the 6th century. Rome's original religious hierarchy and ritual influenced Christian forms, and many pre-Christian practices survived in Christian festivals and local traditions.\nLegacy.\nSeveral states claimed to be the Roman Empire's successor. The Holy Roman Empire was established in 800 when Pope Leo\u00a0III crowned Charlemagne as Roman emperor. The Russian Tsardom, as inheritor of the Byzantine Empire's Orthodox Christian tradition, counted itself the Third Rome (Constantinople having been the second), in accordance with the concept of translatio imperii. The last Eastern Roman titular, Andreas Palaiologos, sold the title of Emperor of Constantinople to Charles VIII of France; upon Charles' death, Palaiologos reclaimed the title and on his death granted it to Ferdinand and Isabella and their successors, who never used it. When the Ottomans, who based their state on the Byzantine model, took Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed\u00a0II established his capital there and claimed to sit on the throne of the Roman Empire. He even launched an invasion of Otranto with the purpose of re-uniting the Empire, which was aborted by his death. In the medieval West, \"Roman\" came to mean the church and the Catholic Pope. The Greek form Romaioi remained attached to the Greek-speaking Christian population of the Byzantine Empire and is still used by Greeks.\nThe Roman Empire's control of the Italian Peninsula influenced Italian nationalism and the unification of Italy (\"Risorgimento\") in 1861. \nIn the United States, the founders were educated in the classical tradition, and used classical models for landmarks in Washington, D.C.. The founders saw Athenian democracy and Roman republicanism as models for the mixed constitution, but regarded the emperor as a figure of tyranny.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nstyle=\"width:100%\""}, "descending_order": ["150184", "30570", "25507"], "permutation_1": ["30570", "25507", "150184"], "permutation_2": ["30570", "25507", "150184"], "permutation_3": ["30570", "25507", "150184"]}
{"id": "3hop1__157631_42467_91253", "docs_added": {"19694": "Mercury (planet)\nFirst planet from the Sun\nMercury is the first planet from the Sun and the smallest in the Solar System. In English, it is named after the ancient Roman god (Mercury), god of commerce and communication, and the messenger of the gods. Mercury is classified as a terrestrial planet, with roughly the same surface gravity as Mars. The surface of Mercury is heavily cratered, as a result of countless impact events that have accumulated over billions of years. Its largest crater, Caloris Planitia, has a diameter of , which is about one-third the diameter of the planet (). Similarly to the Earth's Moon, Mercury's surface displays an expansive rupes system generated from thrust faults and bright ray systems formed by impact event remnants.\nMercury's sidereal year (88.0 Earth days) and sidereal day (58.65 Earth days) are in a 3:2 ratio. This relationship is called spin\u2013orbit resonance, and \"sidereal\" here means \"relative to the stars\". Consequently, one solar day (sunrise to sunrise) on Mercury lasts for around 176 Earth days: twice the planet's sidereal year. This means that one side of Mercury will remain in sunlight for one Mercurian year of 88 Earth days; while during the next orbit, that side will be in darkness all the time until the next sunrise after another 88 Earth days.\nCombined with its high orbital eccentricity, the planet's surface has widely varying sunlight intensity and temperature, with the equatorial regions ranging from at night to during sunlight. Due to the very small axial tilt, the planet's poles are permanently shadowed. This strongly suggests that water ice could be present in the craters. Above the planet's surface is an extremely tenuous exosphere and a faint magnetic field that is strong enough to deflect solar winds. Mercury has no natural satellites.\nAs of the early 2020s, many broad details of Mercury's geological history are still under investigation or pending data from space probes. Like other planets in the Solar System, Mercury was formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago. Its mantle is highly homogeneous, which suggests that Mercury had a magma ocean early in its history, like the Moon. According to current models, Mercury may have a solid silicate crust and mantle overlying a solid outer core, a deeper liquid core layer, and a solid inner core. There are many competing hypotheses about Mercury's origins and development, some of which incorporate collision with planetesimals and rock vaporization.\nNomenclature.\nHistorically, humans knew Mercury by different names depending on whether it was an evening star or a morning star. By about 350 BC, the ancient Greeks had realized the two stars were one. They knew the planet as , meaning \"twinkling\", and , for its fleeting motion, a name that is retained in modern [[Greek language|Greek]] ( ). The Romans named the planet after the swift-footed Roman messenger god, [[Mercury (mythology)|Mercury]] (Latin ), whom they equated with the Greek Hermes, because it moves across the sky faster than any other planet, though some associated the planet with [[Apollo]] instead, as detailed by [[Pliny the Elder]]. The [[astronomical symbol]] for Mercury is a stylized version of Hermes' [[caduceus]]; a [[Christian cross]] was added in the 16th century:[[File:Mercury symbol (fixed width).svg|16px|\u263f]].\nPhysical characteristics.\n[[File:Terrestrial planet size comparisons-2.jpg|thumb|upright=1.4|Mercury to scale among the [[Inner Solar System]] [[planetary-mass object]]s beside the Sun, arranged by the order of their orbits outward from the Sun (from left: Mercury, [[Venus]],\n[[Earth]], the [[Moon]], [[Mars]] and [[Ceres (dwarf planet)|Ceres]])]]\nMercury is one of four [[terrestrial planet]]s in the [[Solar System]], which means it is a rocky body like Earth. It is the smallest planet in the Solar System, with an [[equator]]ial [[radius]] of . Mercury is also [[list of Solar System objects by radius|smaller]]\u2014albeit more massive\u2014than the largest [[natural satellite]]s in the Solar System, [[Ganymede (moon)|Ganymede]] and [[Titan (moon)|Titan]]. Mercury consists of approximately 70% metallic and 30% [[silicate]] material.\nInternal structure.\n[[File:Mercury with magnetic field.svg|left|thumb|upright=1.6|Mercury's internal structure and magnetic field]]\nMercury appears to have a solid silicate [[Crust (geology)|crust]] and mantle overlying a solid, metallic outer core layer, a deeper liquid core layer, and a solid inner core. The composition of the iron-rich core remains uncertain, but it likely contains nickel, silicon and perhaps sulfur and carbon, plus trace amounts of other elements. The planet's density is the second highest in the Solar System at 5.427\u00a0g/cm3, only slightly less than Earth's density of 5.515\u00a0g/cm3. If the effect of [[gravitational compression]] were to be factored out from both planets, the materials of which Mercury is made would be denser than those of Earth, with an uncompressed density of 5.3\u00a0g/cm3 versus Earth's 4.4\u00a0g/cm3. Mercury's density can be used to infer details of its inner structure. Although Earth's high density results appreciably from gravitational compression, particularly at the [[planetary core|core]], Mercury is much smaller and its inner regions are not as compressed. Therefore, for it to have such a high density, its core must be large and rich in iron.\nThe radius of Mercury's core is estimated to be , based on interior models constrained to be consistent with a [[moment of inertia factor]] of . Hence, Mercury's core occupies about 57% of its volume; for Earth this proportion is 17%. Research published in 2007 suggests that Mercury has a molten core. The mantle-crust layer is in total thick. Projections differ as to the size of the crust specifically; data from the \"Mariner 10\" and \"MESSENGER\" probes suggests a thickness of , whereas an [[Airy isostacy]] model suggests a thickness of . One distinctive feature of Mercury's surface is the presence of numerous narrow ridges, extending up to several hundred kilometers in length. It is thought that these were formed as Mercury's core and mantle cooled and contracted at a time when the crust had already solidified.\nMercury's core has a higher iron content than that of any other planet in the Solar System, and several theories have been proposed to explain this. The most widely accepted theory is that Mercury originally had a metal\u2013silicate ratio similar to common [[chondrite]] meteorites, thought to be typical of the Solar System's rocky matter, and a mass approximately 2.25 times its current mass. Early in the Solar System's history, Mercury may have been struck by a [[planetesimal]] of approximately <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1\u20446 Mercury's mass and several thousand kilometers across. The impact would have stripped away much of the original crust and mantle, leaving the core behind as a relatively major component. A similar process, known as the [[giant impact hypothesis]], has been proposed to explain the formation of Earth's Moon.\nAlternatively, Mercury may have formed from the [[solar nebula]] before the Sun's energy output had stabilized. It would initially have had twice its present mass, but as the [[protostar|protosun]] contracted, temperatures near Mercury could have been between 2,500 and 3,500\u00a0K and possibly even as high as 10,000\u00a0K. Much of Mercury's surface rock could have been vaporized at such temperatures, forming an atmosphere of \"rock vapor\" that could have been carried away by the [[solar wind]]. A third hypothesis proposes that the solar nebula caused [[drag (physics)|drag]] on the particles from which Mercury was [[Accretion (astrophysics)|accreting]], which meant that lighter particles were lost from the accreting material and not gathered by Mercury.\nEach hypothesis predicts a different surface composition, and two space missions have been tasked with making observations of this composition. The first \"[[MESSENGER]]\", which ended in 2015, found higher-than-expected potassium and sulfur levels on the surface, suggesting that the giant impact hypothesis and vaporization of the crust and mantle did not occur because said potassium and sulfur would have been driven off by the extreme heat of these events. \"[[BepiColombo]]\", which will arrive at Mercury in 2025, will make observations to test these hypotheses. The findings so far would seem to favor the third hypothesis; however, further analysis of the data is needed.\nSurface geology.\nMercury's surface is similar in appearance to that of the Moon, showing extensive [[Lunar mare|mare]]-like plains and heavy cratering, indicating that it has been geologically inactive for billions of years. It is more [[heterogeneous]] than the surface of [[Mars]] or the Moon, both of which contain significant stretches of similar geology, such as [[Lunar mare|maria]] and plateaus. [[Albedo]] features are areas of markedly different reflectivity, which include impact craters, the resulting ejecta, and [[ray system]]s. Larger albedo features correspond to higher reflectivity plains. Mercury has \"[[wrinkle-ridge]]s\" (dorsa), Moon-like [[highland]]s, mountains (montes), plains (planitiae), escarpments (rupes), and valleys ([[Vallis (planetary geology)|valles]]).\n[[File:Unmasking the Secrets of Mercury.jpg|thumb|left|[[MESSENGER#Scientific instruments|MASCS]] spectrum scan of Mercury's surface by \"MESSENGER\"]]\nThe planet's mantle is chemically heterogeneous, suggesting the planet went through a [[magma ocean]] phase early in its history. Crystallization of minerals and convective overturn resulted in a layered, chemically heterogeneous crust with large-scale variations in chemical composition observed on the surface. The crust is low in iron but high in sulfur, resulting from the stronger early [[Chemical reduction|chemically reducing]] conditions than is found on other terrestrial planets. The surface is dominated by iron-poor [[pyroxene]] and [[olivine]], as represented by [[enstatite]] and [[forsterite]], respectively, along with sodium-rich [[plagioclase]] and minerals of mixed magnesium, calcium, and iron-sulfide. The less reflective regions of the crust are high in carbon, most likely in the form of graphite.\nNames for features on Mercury come from a variety of sources and are set according to the [[IAU]] [[planetary nomenclature]] system. Names coming from people are limited to the deceased. Craters are named for artists, musicians, painters, and authors who have made outstanding or fundamental contributions to their field. Ridges, or dorsa, are named for scientists who have contributed to the study of Mercury. Depressions or [[fossa (geology)|fossae]] are named for works of architecture. Montes are named for the word \"hot\" in a variety of languages. [[Plain]]s or planitiae are named for [[Mercury (god)|Mercury]] in various languages. [[Escarpment]]s or [[rup\u0113s]] are named for ships of scientific expeditions. Valleys or valles are named for abandoned cities, towns, or settlements of antiquity.\nImpact basins and craters.\n[[File:PIA19421-Mercury-Craters-MunchSanderPoe-20150416.jpg|thumb|left|Enhanced-color image of craters [[Munch (crater)|Munch]] (left), [[Sander (crater)|Sander]] (center), and [[Poe (crater)|Poe]] (right) amid volcanic plains (orange) near [[Caloris Basin]]]]\nMercury was heavily bombarded by comets and [[asteroid]]s during and shortly following its formation 4.6 billion years ago, as well as during a possibly separate subsequent episode called the [[Late Heavy Bombardment]] that ended 3.8 billion years ago. Mercury received impacts over its entire surface during this period of intense crater formation, facilitated by the lack of any [[atmosphere]] to slow impactors down. During this time Mercury was [[volcano|volcanically]] active; basins were filled by [[magma]], producing smooth plains similar to the maria found on the Moon. One of the most unusual craters is [[Apollodorus (crater)|Apollodorus]], or \"the Spider\", which hosts a series of radiating troughs extending outwards from its impact site.\n[[Craters on Mercury]] range in diameter from small bowl-shaped cavities to [[multi-ringed impact basin]]s hundreds of kilometers across. They appear in all states of degradation, from relatively fresh rayed craters to highly degraded crater remnants. Mercurian craters differ subtly from lunar craters in that the area blanketed by their ejecta is much smaller, a consequence of Mercury's stronger surface gravity. According to [[International Astronomical Union]] rules, each new crater must be named after an artist who was famous for more than fifty years, and dead for more than three years, before the date the crater is named.\nThe largest known crater is [[Caloris Planitia]], or Caloris Basin, with a diameter of . The impact that created the Caloris Basin was so powerful that it caused [[lava]] eruptions and left a concentric mountainous ring ~ tall surrounding the [[impact crater]]. The floor of the Caloris Basin is filled by a geologically distinct flat plain, broken up by ridges and fractures in a roughly polygonal pattern. It is not clear whether they were volcanic lava flows induced by the impact or a large sheet of impact melt.\nAt the [[antipodes|antipode]] of the Caloris Basin is a large region of unusual, hilly terrain known as the \"Weird Terrain\". One hypothesis for its origin is that shock waves generated during the Caloris impact traveled around Mercury, converging at the basin's antipode (180 degrees away). The resulting high stresses fractured the surface. Alternatively, it has been suggested that this terrain formed as a result of the convergence of ejecta at this basin's antipode.\n[[File:EW1027346412Gnomap.png|thumb|Tolstoj basin is along the bottom of this image of Mercury's limb]]\nOverall, 46 impact basins have been identified. A notable basin is the -wide, multi-ring [[Tolstoj Basin]] that has an ejecta blanket extending up to from its rim and a floor that has been filled by smooth plains materials. [[Beethoven Basin]] has a similar-sized ejecta blanket and a -diameter rim. Like the Moon, the surface of Mercury has likely incurred the effects of [[space weathering]] processes, including solar wind and [[micrometeorite]] impacts.\nPlains.\nThere are two geologically distinct plains regions on Mercury. Gently rolling, hilly [[Inter-crater plains on Mercury|plains in the regions between craters]] are Mercury's oldest visible surfaces, predating the heavily cratered terrain. These inter-crater plains appear to have obliterated many earlier craters, and show a general paucity of smaller craters below about in diameter.\nSmooth plains are widespread flat areas that fill depressions of various sizes and bear a strong resemblance to lunar maria. Unlike lunar maria, the smooth plains of Mercury have the same albedo as the older inter-crater plains. Despite a lack of unequivocally volcanic characteristics, the localization and rounded, lobate shape of these plains strongly support volcanic origins. All the smooth plains of Mercury formed significantly later than the Caloris basin, as evidenced by appreciably smaller crater densities than on the Caloris ejecta blanket.\nCompressional features.\nAn unusual feature of Mercury's surface is the numerous compression folds, or [[rupes]], that crisscross the plains. These exist on the Moon, but are much more prominent on Mercury. As Mercury's interior cooled, it contracted and its surface began to deform, creating [[wrinkle ridge]]s and [[lobate scarp]]s associated with [[thrust fault]]s. The scarps can reach lengths of and heights of . These compressional features can be seen on top of other features, such as craters and smooth plains, indicating they are more recent. Mapping of the features has suggested a total shrinkage of Mercury's radius in the range of ~. Most activity along the major thrust systems probably ended about 3.6\u20133.7\u00a0billion years ago. Small-scale thrust fault scarps have been found, tens of meters in height and with lengths in the range of a few kilometers, that appear to be less than 50 million years old, indicating that compression of the interior and consequent surface geological activity continue to the present.\nVolcanism.\n[[File:Picasso crater.png|thumb|[[Picasso (crater)|Picasso crater]]\u2014the large arc-shaped pit located on the eastern side of its floor is postulated to have formed when subsurface magma subsided or drained, causing the surface to collapse into the resulting void.]]\nThere is evidence for [[pyroclastic flow]]s on Mercury from low-profile [[shield volcano]]es. Fifty-one pyroclastic deposits have been identified, where 90% of them are found within impact craters. A study of the degradation state of the impact craters that host pyroclastic deposits suggests that pyroclastic activity occurred on Mercury over a prolonged interval.\nA \"rimless depression\" inside the southwest rim of the Caloris Basin consists of at least nine overlapping volcanic vents, each individually up to in diameter. It is thus a \"[[compound volcano]]\". The vent floors are at least below their brinks and they bear a closer resemblance to volcanic craters sculpted by explosive eruptions or modified by collapse into void spaces created by magma withdrawal back down into a conduit. Scientists could not quantify the age of the volcanic complex system but reported that it could be on the order of a billion years.\nSurface conditions and exosphere.\n[[File:North pole of Mercury -- NASA.jpg|thumb|Composite of the north pole of Mercury, where NASA confirmed the discovery of a large volume of water ice, in permanently dark craters that are found there.]]\nThe surface temperature of Mercury ranges from . It never rises above 180\u00a0K at the poles, due to the absence of an atmosphere and a steep temperature gradient between the equator and the poles. At [[perihelion]], the equatorial [[subsolar point]] is located at latitude 0\u00b0W or 180\u00b0W, and it climbs to a temperature of about . During [[aphelion]], this occurs at 90\u00b0 or 270\u00b0W and reaches only . On the dark side of the planet, temperatures average . The intensity of [[sunlight]] on Mercury's surface ranges between 4.59 and 10.61 times the [[solar constant]] (1,370 W\u00b7m\u22122).\nAlthough daylight temperatures at the surface of Mercury are generally extremely high, observations strongly suggest that ice (frozen water) exists on Mercury. The floors of deep craters at the poles are never exposed to direct sunlight, and temperatures there remain below 102\u00a0K, far lower than the global average. This creates a [[Cold trap (astronomy)|cold trap]] where ice can accumulate. Water ice strongly reflects [[radar]], and observations by the 70-meter [[Goldstone Solar System Radar]] and the [[Very Large Array|VLA]] in the early 1990s revealed that there are patches of high radar [[Reflection (physics)|reflection]] near the poles. Although ice was not the only possible cause of these reflective regions, astronomers thought it to be the most likely explanation. The presence of [[ice|water ice]] was confirmed using \"MESSENGER\" images of craters at the north pole.\nThe icy crater regions are estimated to contain about 1014\u20131015\u00a0kg of ice, and may be covered by a layer of [[regolith]] that inhibits [[Sublimation (phase transition)|sublimation]]. By comparison, the [[Antarctica|Antarctic]] ice sheet on Earth has a mass of about 4\u00d71018\u00a0kg, and Mars's south polar cap contains about 1016\u00a0kg of water. The origin of the ice on Mercury is not yet known, but the two most likely sources are from [[outgassing]] of water from the planet's interior and deposition by impacts of comets.\nMercury is too small and hot for its [[gravity]] to retain any significant [[atmosphere]] over long periods of time; it does have a tenuous surface-bounded [[exosphere]] at a surface pressure of less than approximately 0.5\u00a0nPa (0.005 picobars). It includes [[hydrogen]], [[helium]], [[oxygen]], [[sodium]], [[calcium]], [[potassium]], [[magnesium]], [[silicon]], and [[hydroxide]], among others. This exosphere is not stable\u2014atoms are continuously lost and replenished from a variety of sources. [[Hydrogen atom]]s and [[helium atom]]s probably come from the solar wind, [[diffusion|diffusing]] into Mercury's [[magnetosphere]] before later escaping back into space. The [[radioactive decay]] of elements within Mercury's crust is another source of helium, as well as sodium and potassium. Water vapor is present, released by a combination of processes such as comets striking its surface, [[sputtering]] creating water out of hydrogen from the solar wind and oxygen from rock, and sublimation from reservoirs of water ice in the permanently shadowed polar craters. The detection of high amounts of water-related ions like O+, OH\u2212, and [[hydronium|H3O+]] was a surprise. Because of the quantities of these ions that were detected in Mercury's space environment, scientists surmise that these molecules were blasted from the surface or exosphere by the solar wind.\nSodium, potassium, and calcium were discovered in the atmosphere during the 1980s\u20131990s, and are thought to result primarily from the vaporization of surface rock struck by micrometeorite impacts including presently from [[Comet Encke]]. In 2008, magnesium was discovered by \"MESSENGER\". Studies indicate that, at times, sodium emissions are localized at points that correspond to the planet's magnetic poles. This would indicate an interaction between the magnetosphere and the planet's surface.\nAccording to NASA, Mercury is not a suitable planet for Earth-like life. It has a [[exosphere|surface boundary exosphere]] instead of a layered atmosphere, extreme temperatures, and high solar radiation. It is unlikely that any living beings can withstand those conditions. Some parts of the subsurface of Mercury may have been [[Planetary habitability|habitable]], and perhaps [[life form]]s, albeit likely primitive [[microorganism]]s, may have existed on the planet.\nMagnetic field and magnetosphere.\n[[File:Mercury Magnetic Field NASA.jpg|thumb|Graph showing relative strength of Mercury's magnetic field]]\nDespite its small size and slow 59-day-long rotation, Mercury has a significant, and apparently global, [[magnetic field]]. According to measurements taken by \"Mariner 10\", it is about 1.1% the strength of [[Earth's magnetic field|Earth's]]. The magnetic-field strength at Mercury's equator is about 300 [[Tesla (unit)|nT]]. Like that of Earth, Mercury's magnetic field is [[dipolar]] and nearly aligned with the planet's spin axis (10\u00b0 dipolar tilt, compared to 11\u00b0 for Earth). Measurements from both the \"Mariner 10\" and \"MESSENGER\" space probes have indicated that the strength and shape of the magnetic field are stable.\nIt is likely that this magnetic field is generated by a [[Dynamo theory|dynamo]] effect, in a manner similar to the magnetic field of Earth. This dynamo effect would result from the circulation of the planet's iron-rich liquid core. Particularly strong [[tidal heating]] effects caused by the planet's high orbital eccentricity would serve to keep part of the core in the liquid state necessary for this dynamo effect.\nMercury's magnetic field is strong enough to deflect the solar wind around the planet, creating a magnetosphere. The planet's magnetosphere, though small enough to fit within Earth, is strong enough to trap solar wind [[plasma (physics)|plasma]]. This contributes to the space weathering of the planet's surface. Observations taken by the \"Mariner 10\" spacecraft detected this low energy plasma in the magnetosphere of the planet's nightside. Bursts of energetic particles in the planet's magnetotail indicate a dynamic quality to the planet's magnetosphere.\nDuring its second flyby of the planet on October 6, 2008, \"MESSENGER\" discovered that Mercury's magnetic field can be extremely \"leaky\". The spacecraft encountered magnetic \"tornadoes\"\u2014twisted bundles of magnetic fields connecting the planetary magnetic field to interplanetary space\u2014that were up to 800 km wide or a third of the radius of the planet. These twisted magnetic flux tubes, technically known as [[flux transfer event]]s, form open windows in the planet's magnetic shield through which the solar wind may enter and directly impact Mercury's surface via [[magnetic reconnection]]. This also occurs in Earth's magnetic field. The \"MESSENGER\" observations showed the reconnection rate was ten times higher at Mercury, but its proximity to the Sun only accounts for about a third of the reconnection rate observed by \"MESSENGER\".\nOrbit, rotation, and longitude.\nMercury has the most [[Orbital eccentricity|eccentric]] orbit of all the planets in the Solar System; its eccentricity is 0.21 with its distance from the Sun ranging from . It takes 87.969 Earth days to complete an orbit. The diagram illustrates the effects of the eccentricity, showing Mercury's orbit overlaid with a circular orbit having the same [[semi-major axis]]. Mercury's higher velocity when it is near perihelion is clear from the greater distance it covers in each 5-day interval. In the diagram, the varying distance of Mercury to the Sun is represented by the size of the planet, which is inversely proportional to Mercury's distance from the Sun.\nThis varying distance to the Sun leads to Mercury's surface being flexed by [[tidal bulge]]s raised by the [[Sun]] that are about 17 times stronger than the Moon's on Earth. Combined with a 3:2 [[#Spin-orbit resonance|spin\u2013orbit resonance]] of the planet's rotation around its axis, it also results in complex variations of the surface temperature. The resonance makes a single [[solar day]] (the length between two [[meridian (astronomy)|meridian]] transits of the Sun) on Mercury last exactly two Mercury years, or about 176 Earth days.\nMercury's orbit is inclined by 7 degrees to the plane of Earth's orbit (the [[ecliptic]]), the largest of all eight known solar planets. As a result, [[transits of Mercury]] across the face of the Sun can only occur when the planet is crossing the plane of the ecliptic at the time it lies between Earth and the Sun, which is in May or November. This occurs about every seven years on average.\nMercury's [[axial tilt]] is almost zero, with the best measured value as low as 0.027 degrees. This is significantly smaller than that of [[Jupiter]], which has the second smallest axial tilt of all planets at 3.1 degrees. This means that to an observer at Mercury's poles, the center of the Sun never rises more than 2.1 [[arcminutes]] above the horizon. By comparison, the [[angular size]] of the Sun as seen from Mercury ranges from <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1+1\u20444 to 2 degrees across.\nAt certain points on Mercury's surface, an observer would be able to see the Sun peek up a little more than two-thirds of the way over the horizon, then reverse and set before rising again, all within the same [[Extraterrestrial skies#Mercury|Mercurian day]]. This is because approximately four Earth days before perihelion, Mercury's angular [[orbital speed|orbital velocity]] equals its angular [[rotational velocity]] so that the Sun's [[improper motion|apparent motion]] ceases; closer to perihelion, Mercury's angular orbital velocity then exceeds the angular rotational velocity. Thus, to a hypothetical observer on Mercury, the Sun appears to move in a [[apparent retrograde motion|retrograde]] direction. Four Earth days after perihelion, the Sun's normal apparent motion resumes. A similar effect would have occurred if Mercury had been in synchronous rotation: the alternating gain and loss of rotation over a revolution would have caused a libration of 23.65\u00b0 in longitude.\nFor the same reason, there are two points on Mercury's equator, 180 degrees apart in [[longitude]], at either of which, around perihelion in alternate Mercurian years (once a Mercurian day), the Sun passes overhead, then reverses its apparent motion and passes overhead again, then reverses a second time and passes overhead a third time, taking a total of about 16 Earth-days for this entire process. In the other alternate Mercurian years, the same thing happens at the other of these two points. The amplitude of the retrograde motion is small, so the overall effect is that, for two or three weeks, the Sun is almost stationary overhead, and is at its most brilliant because Mercury is at perihelion, its closest to the Sun. This prolonged exposure to the Sun at its brightest makes these two points the hottest places on Mercury. Maximum temperature occurs when the Sun is at an angle of about 25 degrees past noon due to [[Diurnal temperature variation#Temperature lag|diurnal temperature lag]], at 0.4 Mercury days and 0.8 Mercury years past sunrise. Conversely, there are two other points on the equator, 90 degrees of longitude apart from the first ones, where the Sun passes overhead only when the planet is at aphelion in alternate years, when the apparent motion of the Sun in Mercury's sky is relatively rapid. These points, which are the ones on the equator where the apparent retrograde motion of the Sun happens when it is crossing the horizon as described in the preceding paragraph, receive much less solar heat than the first ones described above.\nMercury attains an inferior conjunction (nearest approach to Earth) every 116 Earth days on average, but this interval can range from 105 days to 129 days due to the planet's eccentric orbit. Mercury can come as near as to Earth, and that is slowly declining: The next approach to within is in 2679, and to within in 4487, but it will not be closer to Earth than until 28,622. Its period of retrograde motion as seen from Earth can vary from 8 to 15 days on either side of an inferior conjunction. This large range arises from the planet's high orbital eccentricity. Essentially, because Mercury is closest to the Sun, when taking an average over time, Mercury is most often the closest planet to the Earth, and\u2014in that measure\u2014it is the closest planet to each of the other planets in the Solar System.\nLongitude convention.\nThe longitude convention for Mercury puts the zero of longitude at one of the two hottest points on the surface, as described above. However, when this area was first visited, by \"Mariner 10\", this zero meridian was in darkness, so it was impossible to select a feature on the surface to define the exact position of the meridian. Therefore, a small crater further west was chosen, called [[Hun Kal]], which provides the exact reference point for measuring longitude. The center of Hun Kal defines the 20\u00b0\u00a0west meridian. A 1970 International Astronomical Union resolution suggests that longitudes be measured positively in the westerly direction on Mercury. The two hottest places on the equator are therefore at longitudes 0\u00b0\u00a0W and 180\u00b0\u00a0W, and the coolest points on the equator are at longitudes 90\u00b0\u00a0W and 270\u00b0\u00a0W. However, the \"MESSENGER\" project uses an east-positive convention.\nSpin-orbit resonance.\n[[File:Mercury's orbital resonance.svg|thumb|After one orbit, Mercury has rotated 1.5 times, so after two complete orbits the same hemisphere is again illuminated.]]\nFor many years it was thought that Mercury was synchronously [[tidally locked]] with the Sun, [[rotating]] once for each orbit and always keeping the same face directed towards the Sun, in the same way that the same side of the Moon always faces Earth. Radar observations in 1965 proved that the planet has a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance, rotating three times for every two revolutions around the Sun. The eccentricity of Mercury's orbit makes this resonance stable\u2014at perihelion, when the solar tide is strongest, the Sun is nearly stationary in Mercury's sky.\nThe 3:2 resonant tidal locking is stabilized by the variance of the tidal force along Mercury's eccentric orbit, acting on a permanent dipole component of Mercury's mass distribution. In a circular orbit there is no such variance, so the only resonance stabilized in such an orbit is at 1:1 (e.g., Earth\u2013Moon), when the tidal force, stretching a body along the \"center-body\" line, exerts a torque that aligns the body's axis of least inertia (the \"longest\" axis, and the axis of the aforementioned dipole) to always point at the center. However, with noticeable eccentricity, like that of Mercury's orbit, the tidal force has a maximum at perihelion and therefore stabilizes resonances, like 3:2, ensuring that the planet points its axis of least inertia roughly at the Sun when passing through perihelion.\nThe original reason astronomers thought it was synchronously locked was that, whenever Mercury was best placed for observation, it was always nearly at the same point in its 3:2 resonance, hence showing the same face. This is because, coincidentally, Mercury's rotation period is almost exactly half of its synodic period with respect to Earth. Due to Mercury's 3:2 spin-orbit resonance, a solar day lasts about 176 Earth days. A [[sidereal day]] (the period of rotation) lasts about 58.7 Earth days.\nSimulations indicate that the orbital eccentricity of Mercury varies [[chaos theory|chaotically]] from nearly zero (circular) to more than 0.45 over millions of years due to [[Perturbation (astronomy)|perturbations]] from the other planets. This was thought to explain Mercury's 3:2 spin-orbit resonance (rather than the more usual 1:1), because this state is more likely to arise during a period of high eccentricity. However, accurate modeling based on a realistic model of tidal response has demonstrated that Mercury was captured into the 3:2 spin-orbit state at a very early stage of its history, within 20 (more likely, 10) million years after its formation.\nNumerical simulations show that a future [[Secular resonance|secular]] [[Orbital resonance|orbital resonant]] interaction with the perihelion of Jupiter may cause the eccentricity of Mercury's orbit to increase to the point where there is a 1% chance that the orbit will be destabilized in the next five billion years. If this happens, Mercury may fall into the Sun, collide with Venus, be ejected from the Solar System, or even disrupt the rest of the inner Solar System.\nAdvance of perihelion.\n[[File:Drehung der Apsidenlinie light.svg|right|thumb|[[Apsidal precession]] of Mercury's orbit]]\nIn 1859, the French mathematician and astronomer [[Urbain Le Verrier]] reported that the slow [[precession]] of Mercury's orbit around the Sun could not be completely explained by [[Newtonian mechanics]] and perturbations by the known planets. He suggested, among possible explanations, that another planet (or perhaps instead a series of smaller \"corpuscules\") might exist in an orbit even closer to the Sun than that of Mercury, to account for this perturbation. Other explanations considered included a slight oblateness of the Sun. The success of the search for [[Neptune]] based on its perturbations of the orbit of [[Uranus]] led astronomers to place faith in this possible explanation, and the hypothetical planet was named [[Vulcan (hypothetical planet)|Vulcan]], but no such planet was ever found.\nThe observed [[perihelion precession]] of Mercury is 5,600 [[arcseconds]] (1.5556\u00b0) per century relative to Earth, or per century relative to the inertial [[International Celestial Reference Frame|ICRF]]. Newtonian mechanics, taking into account all the effects from the other planets and including 0.0254 arcseconds per century due to the oblateness of the Sun, predicts a precession of 5,557 arcseconds (1.5436\u00b0) per century relative to Earth, or per century relative to ICRF. In the early 20th century, [[Albert Einstein]]'s [[general theory of relativity]] provided the explanation for the observed precession, by formalizing gravitation as being mediated by the curvature of spacetime. The effect is small: just per century (or 0.43 arcsecond per year, or 0.1035 arcsecond per orbital period) for Mercury; it therefore requires a little over 12.5 million orbits, or 3 million years, for a full excess turn. Similar, but much smaller, effects exist for other Solar System bodies: 8.6247 arcseconds per century for Venus, 3.8387 for Earth, 1.351 for Mars, and 10.05 for [[1566 Icarus]].\nObservation.\n[[File:Mercury.jpg|thumb|Image mosaic by \"Mariner 10\", 1974]]\nMercury's [[apparent magnitude]] is calculated to vary between \u22122.48 (brighter than [[Sirius]]) around [[superior conjunction]] and +7.25 (below the limit of naked-eye visibility) around [[inferior conjunction]]. The mean apparent magnitude is 0.23 while the standard deviation of 1.78 is the largest of any planet. The mean apparent magnitude at superior conjunction is \u22121.89 while that at inferior conjunction is +5.93. Observation of Mercury is complicated by its proximity to the Sun, as it is lost in the Sun's glare for much of the time. Mercury can be observed for only a brief period during either morning or evening twilight.\nGround-based telescope observations of Mercury reveal only an illuminated partial disk with limited detail. The [[Hubble Space Telescope]] cannot observe Mercury at all, due to safety procedures that prevent its pointing too close to the Sun. Because the shift of 0.15 revolutions of Earth in a Mercurian year makes up a seven-Mercurian-year cycle (0.15 \u00d7 7 \u2248 1.0), in the seventh Mercurian year, Mercury follows almost exactly (earlier by 7 days) the sequence of phenomena it showed seven Mercurian years before.\nLike the Moon and Venus, Mercury exhibits [[Lunar phase|phases]] as seen from Earth. It is \"new\" at [[inferior conjunction]] and \"full\" at superior conjunction. The planet is rendered invisible from Earth on both of these occasions because of its being obscured by the Sun, except at its new phase during a transit. Mercury is technically brightest as seen from Earth when it is at a full phase. Although Mercury is farthest from Earth when it is full, the greater illuminated area that is visible and the [[opposition effect|opposition brightness surge]] more than compensates for the distance. The opposite is true for Venus, which appears brightest when it is a [[crescent]], because it is much closer to Earth than when [[gibbous]].\n[[File:PIA19247-Mercury-NPolarRegion-Messenger20150316.jpg|thumb|left|False-color map showing the maximum temperatures of the north polar region]]\n[[File:Mercury Venus Moon over San Jose 08 Jan 2024.png|thumb|right|Mercury (lower left) as seen from [[San Jose, California]] with Venus and the Moon.]]\nMercury is best observed at the first and last quarter, although they are phases of lesser brightness. The first and last quarter phases occur at greatest [[elongation (astronomy)|elongation]] east and west of the Sun, respectively. At both of these times, Mercury's separation from the Sun ranges anywhere from 17.9\u00b0 at perihelion to 27.8\u00b0 at aphelion. At greatest \"western\" elongation, Mercury rises at its earliest before sunrise, and at greatest \"eastern\" elongation, it sets at its latest after sunset.\n[[File:PIA19422-Mercury-CarnegieRupes-MDIS-MLA-20150416.jpg|thumb|right|False-color image of [[Carnegie Rupes]], a tectonic landform\u2014high terrain (red); low (blue).]]\nMercury is more often and easily visible from the [[Southern Hemisphere]] than from the [[Northern Hemisphere|Northern]]. This is because Mercury's maximum western elongation occurs only during early autumn in the Southern Hemisphere, whereas its greatest eastern elongation happens only during late winter in the Southern Hemisphere. In both of these cases, the angle at which the planet's orbit intersects the horizon is maximized, allowing it to rise several hours before sunrise in the former instance and not set until several hours after sundown in the latter from southern mid-latitudes, such as Argentina and South Africa.\nAn alternate method for viewing Mercury involves observing the planet with a [[telescope]] during daylight hours when conditions are clear, ideally when it is at its greatest elongation. This allows the planet to be found easily, even when using telescopes with apertures. However, great care must be taken to obstruct the Sun from sight because of the extreme risk for eye damage. This method bypasses the limitation of twilight observing when the ecliptic is located at a low elevation (e.g. on autumn evenings). The planet is higher in the sky and less atmospheric effects affect the view of the planet. Mercury can be viewed as close as 4\u00b0 to the Sun near superior conjunction when it is almost at its brightest.\nMercury can, like several other planets and the brightest stars, be seen during a total [[solar eclipse]].\nObservation history.\nAncient astronomers.\n[[File:Mercury-bonatti.png|thumb|Mercury, from \"Liber astronomiae\", 1550]]\nThe earliest known recorded observations of Mercury are from the [[MUL.APIN]] tablets. These observations were most likely made by an [[Assyria]]n astronomer around the 14th century BC. The [[cuneiform]] name used to designate Mercury on the MUL.APIN tablets is transcribed as UDU.IDIM.GU\\U4.UD (\"the jumping planet\"). [[Babylonian astronomy|Babylonian records]] of Mercury date back to the 1st millennium BC. The [[Babylonia]]ns called the planet [[Nabu]] after the messenger to the gods in [[Babylonian mythology|their mythology]].\nThe [[Greeks in Egypt|Greco]]-[[Ancient Egypt|Egyptian]] astronomer [[Ptolemy]] wrote about the possibility of planetary transits across the face of the Sun in his work \"Planetary Hypotheses\". He suggested that no transits had been observed either because planets such as Mercury were too small to see, or because transits were too infrequent.\n[[File:Shatir500.jpg|thumb|left|[[Ibn al-Shatir]]'s model for the appearances of Mercury, showing the multiplication of [[epicycles]] using the [[Tusi couple]], thus eliminating the Ptolemaic eccentrics and [[equant]].]]\nIn [[ancient China]], Mercury was known as \"the Hour Star\" (\"Chen-xing\" ). It was associated with the direction north and the phase of water in the [[Five Phases]] system of metaphysics. Modern [[Chinese culture|Chinese]], [[Korean culture|Korean]], [[Japanese culture|Japanese]] and [[Vietnamese culture|Vietnamese]] cultures refer to the planet literally as the \"water star\" (), based on the [[Five elements (Chinese philosophy)|Five elements]]. [[Hindu mythology]] used the name [[Budha]] for Mercury, and this god was thought to preside over Wednesday. The god [[Odin]] (or Woden) of [[Germanic paganism]] was associated with the planet Mercury and Wednesday. The [[Maya civilization|Maya]] may have represented Mercury as an owl (or possibly four owls; two for the morning aspect and two for the evening) that served as a messenger to the [[underworld]]. Mercury was sometimes known as [[Stilbon (mythology)|Stilbon]] ([[Greek language|Greek]]: \u03a3\u03c4\u03af\u03bb\u03b2\u03c9\u03bd) meaning 'the shining, glittering'.\nIn [[medieval Islamic astronomy]], the [[Al-Andalus|Andalusian]] astronomer [[Ab\u016b Ish\u0101q Ibr\u0101h\u012bm al-Zarq\u0101l\u012b]] in the 11th century described the [[deferent]] of Mercury's [[geocentric orbit]] as being oval, like an egg or a [[Pine nut|pignon]], although this insight did not influence his astronomical theory or his astronomical calculations. In the 12th century, [[Ibn Bajjah]] observed \"two planets as black spots on the face of the Sun\", which was later suggested as the transit of Mercury and/or Venus by the [[Maragheh observatory|Maragha]] astronomer [[Qotb al-Din Shirazi]] in the 13th century. Most such medieval reports of transits were later taken as observations of [[sunspot]]s.\nIn India, the [[Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics|Kerala school]] astronomer [[Nilakantha Somayaji]] in the 15th century developed a partially heliocentric planetary model in which Mercury orbits the Sun, which in turn orbits Earth, similar to the [[Tychonic system]] later proposed by [[Tycho Brahe]] in the late 16th century.\nGround-based telescopic research.\nThe first telescopic observations of Mercury were made by [[Thomas Harriot]] and [[Galileo]] from 1610. In 1612, [[Simon Marius]] observed the brightness of Mercury varied with the planet's orbital position and concluded it had phases \"in the same way as Venus and the Moon\". In 1631, [[Pierre Gassendi]] made the first telescopic observations of the transit of a planet across the Sun when he saw a transit of Mercury predicted by [[Johannes Kepler]]. In 1639, [[Giovanni Zupi]] used a telescope to discover that the planet had orbital phases similar to Venus and the Moon. The observation demonstrated conclusively that Mercury orbited the Sun.\nA rare event in astronomy is the passage of one planet in front of another ([[occultation]]), as seen from Earth. Mercury and Venus occult each other every few centuries, and the event of May 28, 1737, is the only one historically observed, having been seen by [[John Bevis]] at the [[Royal Greenwich Observatory]]. The next occultation of Mercury by Venus will be on December 3, 2133.\nThe difficulties inherent in observing Mercury meant that it was far less studied than the other planets. In 1800, [[Johann Schr\u00f6ter]] made observations of surface features, claiming to have observed mountains. [[Friedrich Bessel]] used Schr\u00f6ter's drawings to erroneously estimate the rotation period as 24 hours and an axial tilt of 70\u00b0. In the 1880s, [[Giovanni Schiaparelli]] mapped the planet more accurately, and suggested that Mercury's rotational period was 88 days, the same as its orbital period due to tidal locking. This phenomenon is known as [[synchronous rotation]]. The effort to map the surface of Mercury was continued by [[Eugenios Antoniadi]], who published a book in 1934 that included both maps and his own observations. Many of the planet's surface features, particularly the [[List of albedo features on Mercury|albedo features]], take their names from Antoniadi's map.\nIn June 1962, Soviet scientists at the [[Institute of Radio-engineering and Electronics]] of the [[USSR Academy of Sciences]], led by [[Vladimir Kotelnikov]], became the first to bounce a radar signal off Mercury and receive it, starting radar observations of the planet. Three years later, radar observations by Americans [[Gordon H. Pettengill]] and Rolf B. Dyce, using the [[Arecibo radio telescope]] in [[Puerto Rico]], showed conclusively that the planet's rotational period was about 59 days. The theory that Mercury's rotation was synchronous had become widely held, and it was a surprise to astronomers when these radio observations were announced. If Mercury were tidally locked, its dark face would be extremely cold, but measurements of radio emission revealed that it was much hotter than expected. Astronomers were reluctant to drop the synchronous rotation theory and proposed alternative mechanisms such as powerful heat-distributing winds to explain the observations.\nIn 1965, Italian astronomer [[Giuseppe Colombo]] noted that the rotation value was about two-thirds of Mercury's orbital period, and proposed that the planet's orbital and rotational periods were locked into a 3:2 rather than a 1:1 resonance. Data from \"Mariner 10\" subsequently confirmed this view. This means that Schiaparelli's and Antoniadi's maps were not \"wrong\". Instead, the astronomers saw the same features during every \"second\" orbit and recorded them, but disregarded those seen in the meantime, when Mercury's other face was toward the Sun, because the orbital geometry meant that these observations were made under poor viewing conditions.\nGround-based optical observations did not shed much further light on Mercury, but radio astronomers using interferometry at microwave wavelengths, a technique that enables removal of the solar radiation, were able to discern physical and chemical characteristics of the subsurface layers to a depth of several meters. Not until the first space probe flew past Mercury did many of its most fundamental morphological properties become known. Moreover, technological advances have led to improved ground-based observations. In 2000, high-resolution [[lucky imaging]] observations were conducted by the [[Mount Wilson Observatory]] Hale telescope. They provided the first views that resolved surface features on the parts of Mercury that were not imaged in the \"Mariner 10\" mission. Most of the planet has been mapped by the Arecibo radar telescope, with resolution, including polar deposits in shadowed craters of what may be water ice.\nResearch with space probes.\n[[File:MESSENGER Assembly.jpg|thumb|left|\"MESSENGER\" being prepared for launch]]\n[[File:PIA18389-MarsCuriosityRover-MercuryTransitsSun-20140603.gif|thumb|Mercury transiting the [[Sun]] as viewed by the Mars rover [[Curiosity (rover)|\"Curiosity\"]] (June 3, 2014).]]\nReaching Mercury from Earth poses significant technical challenges, because it orbits so much closer to the Sun than Earth. A Mercury-bound spacecraft launched from Earth must travel over into the Sun's gravitational [[potential well]]. Mercury has an [[orbital speed]] of , whereas Earth's orbital speed is . Therefore, the spacecraft must make a larger change in [[velocity]] ([[delta-v]]) to get to Mercury and then enter orbit, as compared to the delta-v required for, say, [[Exploration of Mars|Mars planetary missions]].\nThe [[potential energy]] liberated by moving down the Sun's potential well becomes [[kinetic energy]], requiring a delta-v change to do anything other than pass by Mercury. Some portion of this [[delta-v budget]] can be provided from a [[gravity assist]] during one or more fly-bys of Venus. To land safely or enter a stable orbit the spacecraft would rely entirely on rocket motors. [[Aerobraking]] is ruled out because Mercury has a negligible atmosphere. A trip to Mercury requires more rocket fuel than that required to [[escape velocity|escape]] the Solar System completely. As a result, only three space probes have visited it so far. A proposed alternative approach would use a [[solar sail]] to attain a Mercury-synchronous orbit around the Sun.\n\"Mariner 10\".\n[[File:Mariner 10.jpg|thumb|\"Mariner 10\", the first probe to visit Mercury]]\nThe first spacecraft to visit Mercury was NASA's \"Mariner 10\" (1974\u20131975). The spacecraft used the gravity of Venus to adjust its orbital velocity so that it could approach Mercury, making it both the first spacecraft to use this gravitational \"slingshot\" effect and the first NASA mission to visit multiple planets. \"Mariner 10\" provided the first close-up images of Mercury's surface, which immediately showed its heavily cratered nature, and revealed many other types of geological features, such as the giant scarps that were later ascribed to the effect of the planet shrinking slightly as its iron core cools. Unfortunately, the same face of the planet was lit at each of \"Mariner 10\"'s close approaches. This made close observation of both sides of the planet impossible, and resulted in the mapping of less than 45% of the planet's surface.\nThe spacecraft made three close approaches to Mercury, the closest of which took it to within of the surface. At the first close approach, instruments detected a magnetic field, to the great surprise of planetary geologists\u2014Mercury's rotation was expected to be much too slow to generate a significant [[dynamo]] effect. The second close approach was primarily used for imaging, but at the third approach, extensive magnetic data were obtained. The data revealed that the planet's magnetic field is much like Earth's, which deflects the solar wind around the planet. For many years after the \"Mariner 10\" encounters, the origin of Mercury's magnetic field remained the subject of several competing theories.\nOn March 24, 1975, just eight days after its final close approach, \"Mariner 10\" ran out of fuel. Because its orbit could no longer be accurately controlled, mission controllers instructed the probe to shut down. \"Mariner 10\" is thought to be still orbiting the Sun, passing close to Mercury every few months.\n\"MESSENGER\".\n[[File:Details of MESSENGER's Impact Location.jpg|thumb|Estimated details of the impact of \"MESSENGER\" on April 30, 2015]]\nA second NASA mission to Mercury, named \"MESSENGER\" (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging), was launched on August 3, 2004. It made a fly-by of Earth in August 2005, and of Venus in October 2006 and June 2007 to place it onto the correct trajectory to reach an orbit around Mercury. A first fly-by of Mercury occurred on January 14, 2008, a second on October 6, 2008, and a third on September 29, 2009. Most of the hemisphere not imaged by \"Mariner 10\" was mapped during these fly-bys. The probe successfully entered an elliptical orbit around the planet on March 18, 2011. The first orbital image of Mercury was obtained on March 29, 2011. The probe finished a one-year mapping mission, and then entered a one-year extended mission into 2013. In addition to continued observations and mapping of Mercury, \"MESSENGER\" observed the 2012 [[solar maximum]].\n[[File:MercuryTopo.png|thumb|right|Topography of Mercury based on MDIS (Mercury Dual Imaging System) data]] The mission was designed to clear up six key issues: Mercury's high density, its geological history, the nature of its magnetic field, the structure of its core, whether it has ice at its poles, and where its tenuous atmosphere comes from. To this end, the probe carried imaging devices that gathered much-higher-resolution images of much more of Mercury than \"Mariner 10\", assorted [[spectrometer]]s to determine the abundances of elements in the crust, and [[magnetometer]]s and devices to measure velocities of charged particles. Measurements of changes in the probe's orbital velocity were expected to be used to infer details of the planet's interior structure. \"MESSENGER\"'s final maneuver was on April 24, 2015, and it crashed into Mercury's surface on April 30, 2015. The spacecraft's impact with Mercury occurred at 3:26:01\u00a0p.m. [[Eastern Time Zone|EDT]] on April 30, 2015, leaving a crater estimated to be in diameter.\n\"BepiColombo\".\nThe [[European Space Agency]] and the [[Japanese Space Agency]] developed and launched a joint mission called \"BepiColombo\", which will orbit Mercury with two probes: one to map the planet and the other to study its magnetosphere. Launched on October 20, 2018, \"BepiColombo\" is expected to reach Mercury in 2025. It will release a magnetometer probe into an elliptical orbit, then chemical rockets will fire to deposit the mapper probe into a circular orbit. Both probes will operate for one terrestrial year. The mapper probe carries an array of spectrometers similar to those on \"MESSENGER\", and will study the planet at many different wavelengths including [[infrared]], [[ultraviolet]], [[X-ray]] and [[gamma ray]]. \"BepiColombo\" conducted the first of its six planned Mercury flybys on October 1, 2021, and the sixth was completed on January 9, 2025. The spacecraft will enter the planet's orbit in 2026.\n\"Perseverance\" rover.\nOn March 5, 2024, NASA released images of transits of the moon [[Deimos (moon)|Deimos]], the moon [[Phobos (moon)|Phobos]] and the planet Mercury as viewed by the \"Perseverance\" rover on the planet Mars.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n[[Category:Mercury (planet)| ]]\n[[Category:Planets of the Solar System]]\n[[Category:Terrestrial planets]]\n[[Category:Astronomical objects known since antiquity]]\n[[Category:Solar System]]", "10902": "Force\nInfluence that can change motion of an object\n<templatestyles src=\"Hlist/styles.css\"/>\nA force is an influence that can cause an object to change its velocity unless counterbalanced by other forces. The concept of force makes the everyday notion of pushing or pulling mathematically precise. Because the magnitude and direction of a force are both important, force is a vector quantity. The SI unit of force is the newton (N), and force is often represented by the symbol F.\nForce plays an important role in classical mechanics. The concept of force is central to all three of Newton's laws of motion. Types of forces often encountered in classical mechanics include elastic, frictional, contact or \"normal\" forces, and gravitational. The rotational version of force is torque, which produces changes in the rotational speed of an object. In an extended body, each part applies forces on the adjacent parts; the distribution of such forces through the body is the internal mechanical stress. In the case of multiple forces, if the net force on an extended body is zero the body is in equilibrium. \nIn modern physics, which includes relativity and quantum mechanics, the laws governing motion are revised to rely on fundamental interactions as the ultimate origin of force. However, the understanding of force provided by classical mechanics is useful for practical purposes.\nDevelopment of the concept.\nPhilosophers in antiquity used the concept of force in the study of stationary and moving objects and simple machines, but thinkers such as Aristotle and Archimedes retained fundamental errors in understanding force. In part, this was due to an incomplete understanding of the sometimes non-obvious force of friction and a consequently inadequate view of the nature of natural motion. A fundamental error was the belief that a force is required to maintain motion, even at a constant velocity. Most of the previous misunderstandings about motion and force were eventually corrected by Galileo Galilei and Sir Isaac Newton. With his mathematical insight, Newton formulated laws of motion that were not improved for over two hundred years.\nBy the early 20th century, Einstein developed a theory of relativity that correctly predicted the action of forces on objects with increasing momenta near the speed of light and also provided insight into the forces produced by gravitation and inertia. With modern insights into quantum mechanics and technology that can accelerate particles close to the speed of light, particle physics has devised a Standard Model to describe forces between particles smaller than atoms. The Standard Model predicts that exchanged particles called gauge bosons are the fundamental means by which forces are emitted and absorbed. Only four main interactions are known: in order of decreasing strength, they are: strong, electromagnetic, weak, and gravitational. High-energy particle physics observations made during the 1970s and 1980s confirmed that the weak and electromagnetic forces are expressions of a more fundamental electroweak interaction.\nPre-Newtonian concepts.\nSince antiquity the concept of force has been recognized as integral to the functioning of each of the simple machines. The mechanical advantage given by a simple machine allowed for less force to be used in exchange for that force acting over a greater distance for the same amount of work. Analysis of the characteristics of forces ultimately culminated in the work of Archimedes who was especially famous for formulating a treatment of buoyant forces inherent in fluids.\nAristotle provided a philosophical discussion of the concept of a force as an integral part of Aristotelian cosmology. In Aristotle's view, the terrestrial sphere contained four elements that come to rest at different \"natural places\" therein. Aristotle believed that motionless objects on Earth, those composed mostly of the elements earth and water, were in their natural place when on the ground, and that they stay that way if left alone. He distinguished between the innate tendency of objects to find their \"natural place\" (e.g., for heavy bodies to fall), which led to \"natural motion\", and unnatural or forced motion, which required continued application of a force. This theory, based on the everyday experience of how objects move, such as the constant application of a force needed to keep a cart moving, had conceptual trouble accounting for the behavior of projectiles, such as the flight of arrows. An archer causes the arrow to move at the start of the flight, and it then sails through the air even though no discernible efficient cause acts upon it. Aristotle was aware of this problem and proposed that the air displaced through the projectile's path carries the projectile to its target. This explanation requires a continuous medium such as air to sustain the motion.\nThough Aristotelian physics was criticized as early as the 6th century, its shortcomings would not be corrected until the 17th century work of Galileo Galilei, who was influenced by the late medieval idea that objects in forced motion carried an innate force of impetus. Galileo constructed an experiment in which stones and cannonballs were both rolled down an incline to disprove the Aristotelian theory of motion. He showed that the bodies were accelerated by gravity to an extent that was independent of their mass and argued that objects retain their velocity unless acted on by a force, for example friction. Galileo's idea that force is needed to change motion rather than to sustain it, further improved upon by Isaac Beeckman, Ren\u00e9 Descartes, and Pierre Gassendi, became a key principle of Newtonian physics.\nIn the early 17th century, before Newton's \"Principia\", the term \"force\" () was applied to many physical and non-physical phenomena, e.g., for an acceleration of a point. The product of a point mass and the square of its velocity was named (live force) by Leibniz. The modern concept of force corresponds to Newton's (accelerating force).\nNewtonian mechanics.\nSir Isaac Newton described the motion of all objects using the concepts of inertia and force. In 1687, Newton published his magnum opus, \"Philosophi\u00e6 Naturalis Principia Mathematica\". In this work Newton set out three laws of motion that have dominated the way forces are described in physics to this day. The precise ways in which Newton's laws are expressed have evolved in step with new mathematical approaches.\nFirst law.\nNewton's first law of motion states that the natural behavior of an object at rest is to continue being at rest, and the natural behavior of an object moving at constant speed in a straight line is to continue moving at that constant speed along that straight line. The latter follows from the former because of the principle that the laws of physics are the same for all inertial observers, i.e., all observers who do not feel themselves to be in motion. An observer moving in tandem with an object will see it as being at rest. So, its natural behavior will be to remain at rest with respect to that observer, which means that an observer who sees it moving at constant speed in a straight line will see it continuing to do so.\nSecond law.\nAccording to the first law, motion at constant speed in a straight line does not need a cause. It is \"change\" in motion that requires a cause, and Newton's second law gives the quantitative relationship between force and change of motion.\nNewton's second law states that the net force acting upon an object is equal to the rate at which its momentum changes with time. If the mass of the object is constant, this law implies that the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the net force acting on the object, is in the direction of the net force, and is inversely proportional to the mass of the object.\nA modern statement of Newton's second law is a vector equation:\nformula_1\nwhere formula_2 is the momentum of the system, and formula_3 is the net (vector sum) force.399 If a body is in equilibrium, there is zero \"net\" force by definition (balanced forces may be present nevertheless). In contrast, the second law states that if there is an \"unbalanced\" force acting on an object it will result in the object's momentum changing over time.\nIn common engineering applications the mass in a system remains constant allowing as simple algebraic form for the second law. By the definition of momentum,\nformula_4\nwhere \"m\" is the mass and formula_5 is the velocity. If Newton's second law is applied to a system of constant mass, \"m\" may be moved outside the derivative operator. The equation then becomes\nformula_6\nBy substituting the definition of acceleration, the algebraic version of Newton's second law is derived:\nformula_7\nThird law.\nWhenever one body exerts a force on another, the latter simultaneously exerts an equal and opposite force on the first. In vector form, if formula_8 is the force of body 1 on body 2 and formula_9 that of body 2 on body 1, then\nformula_10\nThis law is sometimes referred to as the \"action-reaction law\", with formula_11 called the \"action\" and formula_12 the \"reaction\".\nNewton's Third Law is a result of applying symmetry to situations where forces can be attributed to the presence of different objects. The third law means that all forces are \"interactions\" between different bodies. and thus that there is no such thing as a unidirectional force or a force that acts on only one body.\nIn a system composed of object 1 and object 2, the net force on the system due to their mutual interactions is zero:\nformula_13\nMore generally, in a closed system of particles, all internal forces are balanced. The particles may accelerate with respect to each other but the center of mass of the system will not accelerate. If an external force acts on the system, it will make the center of mass accelerate in proportion to the magnitude of the external force divided by the mass of the system.\nCombining Newton's Second and Third Laws, it is possible to show that the linear momentum of a system is conserved in any closed system. In a system of two particles, if formula_14 is the momentum of object 1 and formula_15 the momentum of object 2, then\nformula_16\nUsing similar arguments, this can be generalized to a system with an arbitrary number of particles. In general, as long as all forces are due to the interaction of objects with mass, it is possible to define a system such that net momentum is never lost nor gained.ch.12\nDefining \"force\".\nSome textbooks use Newton's second law as a \"definition\" of force. However, for the equation formula_17 for a constant mass formula_18 to then have any predictive content, it must be combined with further information. Moreover, inferring that a force is present because a body is accelerating is only valid in an inertial frame of reference. The question of which aspects of Newton's laws to take as definitions and which to regard as holding physical content has been answered in various ways, which ultimately do not affect how the theory is used in practice. Notable physicists, philosophers and mathematicians who have sought a more explicit definition of the concept of force include Ernst Mach and Walter Noll.\nCombining forces.\nForces act in a particular direction and have sizes dependent upon how strong the push or pull is. Because of these characteristics, forces are classified as \"vector quantities\". This means that forces follow a different set of mathematical rules than physical quantities that do not have direction (denoted scalar quantities). For example, when determining what happens when two forces act on the same object, it is necessary to know both the magnitude and the direction of both forces to calculate the result. If both of these pieces of information are not known for each force, the situation is ambiguous.\nHistorically, forces were first quantitatively investigated in conditions of static equilibrium where several forces canceled each other out. Such experiments demonstrate the crucial properties that forces are additive vector quantities: they have magnitude and direction. When two forces act on a point particle, the resulting force, the \"resultant\" (also called the \"net force\"), can be determined by following the parallelogram rule of vector addition: the addition of two vectors represented by sides of a parallelogram, gives an equivalent resultant vector that is equal in magnitude and direction to the transversal of the parallelogram. The magnitude of the resultant varies from the difference of the magnitudes of the two forces to their sum, depending on the angle between their lines of action.ch.12\nFree-body diagrams can be used as a convenient way to keep track of forces acting on a system. Ideally, these diagrams are drawn with the angles and relative magnitudes of the force vectors preserved so that graphical vector addition can be done to determine the net force.\nAs well as being added, forces can also be resolved into independent components at right angles to each other. A horizontal force pointing northeast can therefore be split into two forces, one pointing north, and one pointing east. Summing these component forces using vector addition yields the original force. Resolving force vectors into components of a set of basis vectors is often a more mathematically clean way to describe forces than using magnitudes and directions. This is because, for orthogonal components, the components of the vector sum are uniquely determined by the scalar addition of the components of the individual vectors. Orthogonal components are independent of each other because forces acting at ninety degrees to each other have no effect on the magnitude or direction of the other. Choosing a set of orthogonal basis vectors is often done by considering what set of basis vectors will make the mathematics most convenient. Choosing a basis vector that is in the same direction as one of the forces is desirable, since that force would then have only one non-zero component. Orthogonal force vectors can be three-dimensional with the third component being at right angles to the other two.ch.12\nEquilibrium.\nWhen all the forces that act upon an object are balanced, then the object is said to be in a state of equilibrium. Hence, equilibrium occurs when the resultant force acting on a point particle is zero (that is, the vector sum of all forces is zero). When dealing with an extended body, it is also necessary that the net torque be zero. A body is in \"static equilibrium\" with respect to a frame of reference if it at rest and not accelerating, whereas a body in \"dynamic equilibrium\" is moving at a constant speed in a straight line, i.e., moving but not accelerating. What one observer sees as static equilibrium, another can see as dynamic equilibrium and vice versa.\nStatic.\nStatic equilibrium was understood well before the invention of classical mechanics. Objects that are not accelerating have zero net force acting on them.\nThe simplest case of static equilibrium occurs when two forces are equal in magnitude but opposite in direction. For example, an object on a level surface is pulled (attracted) downward toward the center of the Earth by the force of gravity. At the same time, a force is applied by the surface that resists the downward force with equal upward force (called a normal force). The situation produces zero net force and hence no acceleration.\nPushing against an object that rests on a frictional surface can result in a situation where the object does not move because the applied force is opposed by static friction, generated between the object and the table surface. For a situation with no movement, the static friction force \"exactly\" balances the applied force resulting in no acceleration. The static friction increases or decreases in response to the applied force up to an upper limit determined by the characteristics of the contact between the surface and the object.\nA static equilibrium between two forces is the most usual way of measuring forces, using simple devices such as weighing scales and spring balances. For example, an object suspended on a vertical spring scale experiences the force of gravity acting on the object balanced by a force applied by the \"spring reaction force\", which equals the object's weight. Using such tools, some quantitative force laws were discovered: that the force of gravity is proportional to volume for objects of constant density (widely exploited for millennia to define standard weights); Archimedes' principle for buoyancy; Archimedes' analysis of the lever; Boyle's law for gas pressure; and Hooke's law for springs. These were all formulated and experimentally verified before Isaac Newton expounded his three laws of motion.ch.12\nDynamic.\nDynamic equilibrium was first described by Galileo who noticed that certain assumptions of Aristotelian physics were contradicted by observations and logic. Galileo realized that simple velocity addition demands that the concept of an \"absolute rest frame\" did not exist. Galileo concluded that motion in a constant velocity was completely equivalent to rest. This was contrary to Aristotle's notion of a \"natural state\" of rest that objects with mass naturally approached. Simple experiments showed that Galileo's understanding of the equivalence of constant velocity and rest were correct. For example, if a mariner dropped a cannonball from the crow's nest of a ship moving at a constant velocity, Aristotelian physics would have the cannonball fall straight down while the ship moved beneath it. Thus, in an Aristotelian universe, the falling cannonball would land behind the foot of the mast of a moving ship. When this experiment is actually conducted, the cannonball always falls at the foot of the mast, as if the cannonball knows to travel with the ship despite being separated from it. Since there is no forward horizontal force being applied on the cannonball as it falls, the only conclusion left is that the cannonball continues to move with the same velocity as the boat as it falls. Thus, no force is required to keep the cannonball moving at the constant forward velocity.\nMoreover, any object traveling at a constant velocity must be subject to zero net force (resultant force). This is the definition of dynamic equilibrium: when all the forces on an object balance but it still moves at a constant velocity. A simple case of dynamic equilibrium occurs in constant velocity motion across a surface with kinetic friction. In such a situation, a force is applied in the direction of motion while the kinetic friction force exactly opposes the applied force. This results in zero net force, but since the object started with a non-zero velocity, it continues to move with a non-zero velocity. Aristotle misinterpreted this motion as being caused by the applied force. When kinetic friction is taken into consideration it is clear that there is no net force causing constant velocity motion.ch.12\nExamples of forces in classical mechanics.\nSome forces are consequences of the fundamental ones. In such situations, idealized models can be used to gain physical insight. For example, each solid object is considered a rigid body.\nGravitational force or Gravity.\nWhat we now call gravity was not identified as a universal force until the work of Isaac Newton. Before Newton, the tendency for objects to fall towards the Earth was not understood to be related to the motions of celestial objects. Galileo was instrumental in describing the characteristics of falling objects by determining that the acceleration of every object in free-fall was constant and independent of the mass of the object. Today, this acceleration due to gravity towards the surface of the Earth is usually designated as formula_19 and has a magnitude of about 9.81 meters per second squared (this measurement is taken from sea level and may vary depending on location), and points toward the center of the Earth. This observation means that the force of gravity on an object at the Earth's surface is directly proportional to the object's mass. Thus an object that has a mass of formula_18 will experience a force:\nformula_21\nFor an object in free-fall, this force is unopposed and the net force on the object is its weight. For objects not in free-fall, the force of gravity is opposed by the reaction forces applied by their supports. For example, a person standing on the ground experiences zero net force, since a normal force (a reaction force) is exerted by the ground upward on the person that counterbalances his weight that is directed downward.ch.12\nNewton's contribution to gravitational theory was to unify the motions of heavenly bodies, which Aristotle had assumed were in a natural state of constant motion, with falling motion observed on the Earth. He proposed a law of gravity that could account for the celestial motions that had been described earlier using Kepler's laws of planetary motion.\nNewton came to realize that the effects of gravity might be observed in different ways at larger distances. In particular, Newton determined that the acceleration of the Moon around the Earth could be ascribed to the same force of gravity if the acceleration due to gravity decreased as an inverse square law. Further, Newton realized that the acceleration of a body due to gravity is proportional to the mass of the other attracting body. Combining these ideas gives a formula that relates the mass (formula_22) and the radius (formula_23) of the Earth to the gravitational acceleration:\nformula_24\nwhere formula_25 is the distance between the two objects' centers of mass and formula_26 is the unit vector pointed in the direction away from the center of the first object toward the center of the second object.\nThis formula was powerful enough to stand as the basis for all subsequent descriptions of motion within the Solar System until the 20th century. During that time, sophisticated methods of perturbation analysis were invented to calculate the deviations of orbits due to the influence of multiple bodies on a planet, moon, comet, or asteroid. The formalism was exact enough to allow mathematicians to predict the existence of the planet Neptune before it was observed.\nElectromagnetic.\nThe electrostatic force was first described in 1784 by Coulomb as a force that existed intrinsically between two charges. The properties of the electrostatic force were that it varied as an inverse square law directed in the radial direction, was both attractive and repulsive (there was intrinsic polarity), was independent of the mass of the charged objects, and followed the superposition principle. Coulomb's law unifies all these observations into one succinct statement.\nSubsequent mathematicians and physicists found the construct of the \"electric field\" to be useful for determining the electrostatic force on an electric charge at any point in space. The electric field was based on using a hypothetical \"test charge\" anywhere in space and then using Coulomb's Law to determine the electrostatic force. Thus the electric field anywhere in space is defined as\nformula_27\nwhere formula_28 is the magnitude of the hypothetical test charge. Similarly, the idea of the \"magnetic field\" was introduced to express how magnets can influence one another at a distance. The Lorentz force law gives the force upon a body with charge formula_28 due to electric and magnetic fields:\nformula_30\nwhere formula_3 is the electromagnetic force, formula_32 is the electric field at the body's location, formula_33 is the magnetic field, and formula_5 is the velocity of the particle. The magnetic contribution to the Lorentz force is the cross product of the velocity vector with the magnetic field.\nThe origin of electric and magnetic fields would not be fully explained until 1864 when James Clerk Maxwell unified a number of earlier theories into a set of 20 scalar equations, which were later reformulated into 4 vector equations by Oliver Heaviside and Josiah Willard Gibbs. These \"Maxwell's equations\" fully described the sources of the fields as being stationary and moving charges, and the interactions of the fields themselves. This led Maxwell to discover that electric and magnetic fields could be \"self-generating\" through a wave that traveled at a speed that he calculated to be the speed of light. This insight united the nascent fields of electromagnetic theory with optics and led directly to a complete description of the electromagnetic spectrum.\nNormal.\nWhen objects are in contact, the force directly between them is called the normal force, the component of the total force in the system exerted normal to the interface between the objects. The normal force is closely related to Newton's third law. The normal force, for example, is responsible for the structural integrity of tables and floors as well as being the force that responds whenever an external force pushes on a solid object. An example of the normal force in action is the impact force on an object crashing into an immobile surface.ch.12\nFriction.\nFriction is a force that opposes relative motion of two bodies. At the macroscopic scale, the frictional force is directly related to the normal force at the point of contact. There are two broad classifications of frictional forces: static friction and kinetic friction.\nThe static friction force (formula_35) will exactly oppose forces applied to an object parallel to a surface up to the limit specified by the coefficient of static friction (formula_36) multiplied by the normal force (formula_37). In other words, the magnitude of the static friction force satisfies the inequality:\nformula_38\nThe kinetic friction force (formula_39) is typically independent of both the forces applied and the movement of the object. Thus, the magnitude of the force equals:\nformula_40\nwhere formula_41 is the coefficient of kinetic friction. The coefficient of kinetic friction is normally less than the coefficient of static friction.\nTension.\nTension forces can be modeled using ideal strings that are massless, frictionless, unbreakable, and do not stretch. They can be combined with ideal pulleys, which allow ideal strings to switch physical direction. Ideal strings transmit tension forces instantaneously in action\u2013reaction pairs so that if two objects are connected by an ideal string, any force directed along the string by the first object is accompanied by a force directed along the string in the opposite direction by the second object. By connecting the same string multiple times to the same object through the use of a configuration that uses movable pulleys, the tension force on a load can be multiplied. For every string that acts on a load, another factor of the tension force in the string acts on the load. Such machines allow a mechanical advantage for a corresponding increase in the length of displaced string needed to move the load. These tandem effects result ultimately in the conservation of mechanical energy since the work done on the load is the same no matter how complicated the machine.ch.12\nSpring.\nA simple elastic force acts to return a spring to its natural length. An ideal spring is taken to be massless, frictionless, unbreakable, and infinitely stretchable. Such springs exert forces that push when contracted, or pull when extended, in proportion to the displacement of the spring from its equilibrium position. This linear relationship was described by Robert Hooke in 1676, for whom Hooke's law is named. If formula_42 is the displacement, the force exerted by an ideal spring equals:\nformula_43\nwhere formula_44 is the spring constant (or force constant), which is particular to the spring. The minus sign accounts for the tendency of the force to act in opposition to the applied load.ch.12\nCentripetal.\nFor an object in uniform circular motion, the net force acting on the object equals:\nformula_45\nwhere formula_18 is the mass of the object, formula_47 is the velocity of the object and formula_25 is the distance to the center of the circular path and formula_49 is the unit vector pointing in the radial direction outwards from the center. This means that the net force felt by the object is always directed toward the center of the curving path. Such forces act perpendicular to the velocity vector associated with the motion of an object, and therefore do not change the speed of the object (magnitude of the velocity), but only the direction of the velocity vector. More generally, the net force that accelerates an object can be resolved into a component that is perpendicular to the path, and one that is tangential to the path. This yields both the tangential force, which accelerates the object by either slowing it down or speeding it up, and the radial (centripetal) force, which changes its direction.ch.12\nContinuum mechanics.\nNewton's laws and Newtonian mechanics in general were first developed to describe how forces affect idealized point particles rather than three-dimensional objects. In real life, matter has extended structure and forces that act on one part of an object might affect other parts of an object. For situations where lattice holding together the atoms in an object is able to flow, contract, expand, or otherwise change shape, the theories of continuum mechanics describe the way forces affect the material. For example, in extended fluids, differences in pressure result in forces being directed along the pressure gradients as follows:\nformula_50\nwhere formula_51 is the volume of the object in the fluid and formula_52 is the scalar function that describes the pressure at all locations in space. Pressure gradients and differentials result in the buoyant force for fluids suspended in gravitational fields, winds in atmospheric science, and the lift associated with aerodynamics and flight.ch.12\nA specific instance of such a force that is associated with dynamic pressure is fluid resistance: a body force that resists the motion of an object through a fluid due to viscosity. For so-called \"Stokes' drag\" the force is approximately proportional to the velocity, but opposite in direction:\nformula_53\nwhere:\nMore formally, forces in continuum mechanics are fully described by a stress tensor with terms that are roughly defined as\nformula_56\nwhere formula_57 is the relevant cross-sectional area for the volume for which the stress tensor is being calculated. This formalism includes pressure terms associated with forces that act normal to the cross-sectional area (the matrix diagonals of the tensor) as well as shear terms associated with forces that act parallel to the cross-sectional area (the off-diagonal elements). The stress tensor accounts for forces that cause all strains (deformations) including also tensile stresses and compressions.\nFictitious.\nThere are forces that are frame dependent, meaning that they appear due to the adoption of non-Newtonian (that is, non-inertial) reference frames. Such forces include the centrifugal force and the Coriolis force. These forces are considered fictitious because they do not exist in frames of reference that are not accelerating.ch.12 Because these forces are not genuine they are also referred to as \"pseudo forces\".\nIn general relativity, gravity becomes a fictitious force that arises in situations where spacetime deviates from a flat geometry.\nConcepts derived from force.\nRotation and torque.\nForces that cause extended objects to rotate are associated with torques. Mathematically, the torque of a force formula_3 is defined relative to an arbitrary reference point as the cross product:\nformula_59\nwhere formula_60 is the position vector of the force application point relative to the reference point.\nTorque is the rotation equivalent of force in the same way that angle is the rotational equivalent for position, angular velocity for velocity, and angular momentum for momentum. As a consequence of Newton's first law of motion, there exists rotational inertia that ensures that all bodies maintain their angular momentum unless acted upon by an unbalanced torque. Likewise, Newton's second law of motion can be used to derive an analogous equation for the instantaneous angular acceleration of the rigid body:\nformula_61\nwhere\nThis provides a definition for the moment of inertia, which is the rotational equivalent for mass. In more advanced treatments of mechanics, where the rotation over a time interval is described, the moment of inertia must be substituted by the tensor that, when properly analyzed, fully determines the characteristics of rotations including precession and nutation.\nEquivalently, the differential form of Newton's Second Law provides an alternative definition of torque:\nformula_64\nwhere formula_65 is the angular momentum of the particle.\nNewton's Third Law of Motion requires that all objects exerting torques themselves experience equal and opposite torques, and therefore also directly implies the conservation of angular momentum for closed systems that experience rotations and revolutions through the action of internal torques.\nYank.\nThe yank is defined as the rate of change of force\nformula_66\nThe term is used in biomechanical analysis, athletic assessment and robotic control. The second (\"tug\"), third (\"snatch\"), fourth (\"shake\"), and higher derivatives are rarely used.\nKinematic integrals.\nForces can be used to define a number of physical concepts by integrating with respect to kinematic variables. For example, integrating with respect to time gives the definition of impulse:\nformula_67\nwhich by Newton's Second Law must be equivalent to the change in momentum (yielding the Impulse momentum theorem).\nSimilarly, integrating with respect to position gives a definition for the work done by a force:\nformula_68\nwhich is equivalent to changes in kinetic energy (yielding the work energy theorem).\nPower \"P\" is the rate of change d\"W\"/d\"t\" of the work \"W\", as the trajectory is extended by a position change formula_69 in a time interval d\"t\":\nformula_70\nso\nformula_71\nwith formula_72 the velocity.\nPotential energy.\nInstead of a force, often the mathematically related concept of a potential energy field is used. For instance, the gravitational force acting upon an object can be seen as the action of the gravitational field that is present at the object's location. Restating mathematically the definition of energy (via the definition of work), a potential scalar field formula_73 is defined as that field whose gradient is equal and opposite to the force produced at every point:\nformula_74\nForces can be classified as conservative or nonconservative. Conservative forces are equivalent to the gradient of a potential while nonconservative forces are not.ch.12\nConservation.\nA conservative force that acts on a closed system has an associated mechanical work that allows energy to convert only between kinetic or potential forms. This means that for a closed system, the net mechanical energy is conserved whenever a conservative force acts on the system. The force, therefore, is related directly to the difference in potential energy between two different locations in space, and can be considered to be an artifact of the potential field in the same way that the direction and amount of a flow of water can be considered to be an artifact of the contour map of the elevation of an area.ch.12\nConservative forces include gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the spring force. Each of these forces has models that are dependent on a position often given as a radial vector formula_60 emanating from spherically symmetric potentials. Examples of this follow:\nFor gravity:\nformula_76\nwhere formula_77 is the gravitational constant, and formula_78 is the mass of object \"n\".\nFor electrostatic forces:\nformula_79\nwhere formula_80 is electric permittivity of free space, and formula_81 is the electric charge of object \"n\".\nFor spring forces:\nformula_82\nwhere formula_44 is the spring constant.ch.12\nFor certain physical scenarios, it is impossible to model forces as being due to a simple gradient of potentials. This is often due a macroscopic statistical average of microstates. For example, static friction is caused by the gradients of numerous electrostatic potentials between the atoms, but manifests as a force model that is independent of any macroscale position vector. Nonconservative forces other than friction include other contact forces, tension, compression, and drag. For any sufficiently detailed description, all these forces are the results of conservative ones since each of these macroscopic forces are the net results of the gradients of microscopic potentials.ch.12\nThe connection between macroscopic nonconservative forces and microscopic conservative forces is described by detailed treatment with statistical mechanics. In macroscopic closed systems, nonconservative forces act to change the internal energies of the system, and are often associated with the transfer of heat. According to the Second law of thermodynamics, nonconservative forces necessarily result in energy transformations within closed systems from ordered to more random conditions as entropy increases.ch.12\nUnits.\nThe SI unit of force is the newton (symbol N), which is the force required to accelerate a one kilogram mass at a rate of one meter per second squared, or kg\u00b7m\u00b7s\u22122.The corresponding CGS unit is the dyne, the force required to accelerate a one gram mass by one centimeter per second squared, or g\u00b7cm\u00b7s\u22122. A newton is thus equal to 100,000\u00a0dynes.\nThe gravitational foot-pound-second English unit of force is the pound-force (lbf), defined as the force exerted by gravity on a pound-mass in the standard gravitational field of 9.80665\u00a0m\u00b7s\u22122. The pound-force provides an alternative unit of mass: one slug is the mass that will accelerate by one foot per second squared when acted on by one pound-force. An alternative unit of force in a different foot\u2013pound\u2013second system, the absolute fps system, is the poundal, defined as the force required to accelerate a one-pound mass at a rate of one foot per second squared.\nThe pound-force has a metric counterpart, less commonly used than the newton: the kilogram-force (kgf) (sometimes kilopond), is the force exerted by standard gravity on one kilogram of mass. The kilogram-force leads to an alternate, but rarely used unit of mass: the metric slug (sometimes mug or hyl) is that mass that accelerates at 1\u00a0m\u00b7s\u22122 when subjected to a force of 1\u00a0kgf. The kilogram-force is not a part of the modern SI system, and is generally deprecated, sometimes used for expressing aircraft weight, jet thrust, bicycle spoke tension, torque wrench settings and engine output torque.\n See also \"Ton-force\".\nRevisions of the force concept.\nAt the beginning of the 20th century, new physical ideas emerged to explain experimental results in astronomical and submicroscopic realms. As discussed below, relativity alters the definition of momentum and quantum mechanics reuses the concept of \"force\" in microscopic contexts where Newton's laws do not apply directly.\nSpecial theory of relativity.\nIn the special theory of relativity, mass and energy are equivalent (as can be seen by calculating the work required to accelerate an object). When an object's velocity increases, so does its energy and hence its mass equivalent (inertia). It thus requires more force to accelerate it the same amount than it did at a lower velocity. Newton's Second Law,\nformula_84\nremains valid because it is a mathematical definition. But for momentum to be conserved at relativistic relative velocity, formula_47, momentum must be redefined as:\nformula_86\nwhere formula_87 is the rest mass and formula_88 the speed of light.\nThe expression relating force and acceleration for a particle with constant non-zero rest mass formula_18 moving in the formula_90 direction at velocity formula_47 is:\nformula_92\nwhere\nformula_93\nis called the Lorentz factor. The Lorentz factor increases steeply as the relative velocity approaches the speed of light. Consequently, the greater and greater force must be applied to produce the same acceleration at extreme velocity. The relative velocity cannot reach formula_88.\u00a715\u20138\nIf formula_47 is very small compared to formula_88, then formula_97 is very close to 1 and\nformula_98\nis a close approximation. Even for use in relativity, one can restore the form of\nformula_99\nthrough the use of four-vectors. This relation is correct in relativity when formula_100 is the four-force, formula_18 is the invariant mass, and formula_102 is the four-acceleration.\nThe \"general\" theory of relativity incorporates a more radical departure from the Newtonian way of thinking about force, specifically gravitational force. This reimagining of the nature of gravity is described more fully below.\nQuantum mechanics.\nQuantum mechanics is a theory of physics originally developed in order to understand microscopic phenomena: behavior at the scale of molecules, atoms or subatomic particles. Generally and loosely speaking, the smaller a system is, the more an adequate mathematical model will require understanding quantum effects. The conceptual underpinning of quantum physics is different from that of classical physics. Instead of thinking about quantities like position, momentum, and energy as properties that an object \"has\", one considers what result might \"appear\" when a measurement of a chosen type is performed. Quantum mechanics allows the physicist to calculate the probability that a chosen measurement will elicit a particular result. The expectation value for a measurement is the average of the possible results it might yield, weighted by their probabilities of occurrence.\nIn quantum mechanics, interactions are typically described in terms of energy rather than force. The Ehrenfest theorem provides a connection between quantum expectation values and the classical concept of force, a connection that is necessarily inexact, as quantum physics is fundamentally different from classical. In quantum physics, the Born rule is used to calculate the expectation values of a position measurement or a momentum measurement. These expectation values will generally change over time; that is, depending on the time at which (for example) a position measurement is performed, the probabilities for its different possible outcomes will vary. The Ehrenfest theorem says, roughly speaking, that the equations describing how these expectation values change over time have a form reminiscent of Newton's second law, with a force defined as the negative derivative of the potential energy. However, the more pronounced quantum effects are in a given situation, the more difficult it is to derive meaningful conclusions from this resemblance.\nQuantum mechanics also introduces two new constraints that interact with forces at the submicroscopic scale and which are especially important for atoms. Despite the strong attraction of the nucleus, the uncertainty principle limits the minimum extent of an electron probability distribution and the Pauli exclusion principle prevents electrons from sharing the same probability distribution. This gives rise to an emergent pressure known as degeneracy pressure. The dynamic equilibrium between the degeneracy pressure and the attractive electromagnetic force give atoms, molecules, liquids, and solids stability.\nQuantum field theory.\nIn modern particle physics, forces and the acceleration of particles are explained as a mathematical by-product of exchange of momentum-carrying gauge bosons. With the development of quantum field theory and general relativity, it was realized that force is a redundant concept arising from conservation of momentum (4-momentum in relativity and momentum of virtual particles in quantum electrodynamics). The conservation of momentum can be directly derived from the homogeneity or symmetry of space and so is usually considered more fundamental than the concept of a force. Thus the currently known fundamental forces are considered more accurately to be \"fundamental interactions\".\nWhile sophisticated mathematical descriptions are needed to predict, in full detail, the result of such interactions, there is a conceptually simple way to describe them through the use of Feynman diagrams. In a Feynman diagram, each matter particle is represented as a straight line (see world line) traveling through time, which normally increases up or to the right in the diagram. Matter and anti-matter particles are identical except for their direction of propagation through the Feynman diagram. World lines of particles intersect at interaction vertices, and the Feynman diagram represents any force arising from an interaction as occurring at the vertex with an associated instantaneous change in the direction of the particle world lines. Gauge bosons are emitted away from the vertex as wavy lines and, in the case of virtual particle exchange, are absorbed at an adjacent vertex. The utility of Feynman diagrams is that other types of physical phenomena that are part of the general picture of fundamental interactions but are conceptually separate from forces can also be described using the same rules. For example, a Feynman diagram can describe in succinct detail how a neutron decays into an electron, proton, and antineutrino, an interaction mediated by the same gauge boson that is responsible for the weak nuclear force.\nFundamental interactions.\nAll of the known forces of the universe are classified into four fundamental interactions. The strong and the weak forces act only at very short distances, and are responsible for the interactions between subatomic particles, including nucleons and compound nuclei. The electromagnetic force acts between electric charges, and the gravitational force acts between masses. All other forces in nature derive from these four fundamental interactions operating within quantum mechanics, including the constraints introduced by the Schr\u00f6dinger equation and the Pauli exclusion principle. For example, friction is a manifestation of the electromagnetic force acting between atoms of two surfaces. The forces in springs, modeled by Hooke's law, are also the result of electromagnetic forces. Centrifugal forces are acceleration forces that arise simply from the acceleration of rotating frames of reference.\nThe fundamental theories for forces developed from the unification of different ideas. For example, Newton's universal theory of gravitation showed that the force responsible for objects falling near the surface of the Earth is also the force responsible for the falling of celestial bodies about the Earth (the Moon) and around the Sun (the planets). Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell demonstrated that electric and magnetic forces were unified through a theory of electromagnetism. In the 20th century, the development of quantum mechanics led to a modern understanding that the first three fundamental forces (all except gravity) are manifestations of matter (fermions) interacting by exchanging virtual particles called gauge bosons. This Standard Model of particle physics assumes a similarity between the forces and led scientists to predict the unification of the weak and electromagnetic forces in electroweak theory, which was subsequently confirmed by observation.\nGravitational.\nNewton's law of gravitation is an example of \"action at a distance\": one body, like the Sun, exerts an influence upon any other body, like the Earth, no matter how far apart they are. Moreover, this action at a distance is \"instantaneous.\" According to Newton's theory, the one body shifting position changes the gravitational pulls felt by all other bodies, all at the same instant of time. Albert Einstein recognized that this was inconsistent with special relativity and its prediction that influences cannot travel faster than the speed of light. So, he sought a new theory of gravitation that would be relativistically consistent. Mercury's orbit did not match that predicted by Newton's law of gravitation. Some astrophysicists predicted the existence of an undiscovered planet (Vulcan) that could explain the discrepancies. When Einstein formulated his theory of general relativity (GR) he focused on Mercury's problematic orbit and found that his theory added a correction, which could account for the discrepancy. This was the first time that Newton's theory of gravity had been shown to be inexact.\nSince then, general relativity has been acknowledged as the theory that best explains gravity. In GR, gravitation is not viewed as a force, but rather, objects moving freely in gravitational fields travel under their own inertia in straight lines through curved spacetime \u2013 defined as the shortest spacetime path between two spacetime events. From the perspective of the object, all motion occurs as if there were no gravitation whatsoever. It is only when observing the motion in a global sense that the curvature of spacetime can be observed and the force is inferred from the object's curved path. Thus, the straight line path in spacetime is seen as a curved line in space, and it is called the \"ballistic trajectory\" of the object. For example, a basketball thrown from the ground moves in a parabola, as it is in a uniform gravitational field. Its spacetime trajectory is almost a straight line, slightly curved (with the radius of curvature of the order of few light-years). The time derivative of the changing momentum of the object is what we label as \"gravitational force\".\nElectromagnetic.\nMaxwell's equations and the set of techniques built around them adequately describe a wide range of physics involving force in electricity and magnetism. This classical theory already includes relativity effects. Understanding quantized electromagnetic interactions between elementary particles requires quantum electrodynamics (or QED). In QED, photons are fundamental exchange particles, describing all interactions relating to electromagnetism including the electromagnetic force.\nStrong nuclear.\nThere are two \"nuclear forces\", which today are usually described as interactions that take place in quantum theories of particle physics. The strong nuclear force is the force responsible for the structural integrity of atomic nuclei, and gains its name from its ability to overpower the electromagnetic repulsion between protons.\nThe strong force is today understood to represent the interactions between quarks and gluons as detailed by the theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). The strong force is the fundamental force mediated by gluons, acting upon quarks, antiquarks, and the gluons themselves. The strong force only acts \"directly\" upon elementary particles. A residual is observed between hadrons (notably, the nucleons in atomic nuclei), known as the nuclear force. Here the strong force acts indirectly, transmitted as gluons that form part of the virtual pi and rho mesons, the classical transmitters of the nuclear force. The failure of many searches for free quarks has shown that the elementary particles affected are not directly observable. This phenomenon is called color confinement.232\nWeak nuclear.\nUnique among the fundamental interactions, the weak nuclear force creates no bound states. The weak force is due to the exchange of the heavy W and Z bosons. Since the weak force is mediated by two types of bosons, it can be divided into two types of interaction or \"vertices\" \u2014 charged current, involving the electrically charged W+ and W\u2212 bosons, and neutral current, involving electrically neutral Z0 bosons. The most familiar effect of weak interaction is beta decay (of neutrons in atomic nuclei) and the associated radioactivity. This is a type of charged-current interaction. The word \"weak\" derives from the fact that the field strength is some 1013 times less than that of the strong force. Still, it is stronger than gravity over short distances. A consistent electroweak theory has also been developed, which shows that electromagnetic forces and the weak force are indistinguishable at a temperatures in excess of approximately . Such temperatures occurred in the plasma collisions in the early moments of the Big Bang.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "14627": "Isaac Newton\nEnglish polymath (1642\u20131726)\nSir Isaac Newton (; 4 January\u00a0[O.S. 25 December]\u00a01643\u00a0\u2013 31 March\u00a0[O.S. 20 March]\u00a01727) was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author. Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment that followed. His book (\"Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy\"), first published in 1687, achieved the first great unification in physics and established classical mechanics. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for formulating infinitesimal calculus, though he developed calculus years before Leibniz. He contributed to and refined the scientific method, and his work is considered the most influential in bringing forth modern science.\nIn the , Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that formed the dominant scientific viewpoint for centuries until it was superseded by the theory of relativity. He used his mathematical description of gravity to derive Kepler's laws of planetary motion, account for tides, the trajectories of comets, the precession of the equinoxes and other phenomena, eradicating doubt about the Solar System's heliocentricity. Newton solved the two-body problem, and introduced the three-body problem. He demonstrated that the motion of objects on Earth and celestial bodies could be accounted for by the same principles. Newton's inference that the Earth is an oblate spheroid was later confirmed by the geodetic measurements of Maupertuis, La Condamine, and others, thereby convincing most European scientists of the superiority of Newtonian mechanics over earlier systems. Newton was also the first to calculate the age of Earth by experiment, and described a precursor to the modern wind tunnel.\nNewton built the first reflecting telescope and developed a sophisticated theory of colour based on the observation that a prism separates white light into the colours of the visible spectrum. His work on light was collected in his book \"Opticks\", published in 1704. He originated prisms as beam expanders and multiple-prism arrays, which would later become integral to the development of tunable lasers. He also anticipated wave-particle duality. Newton further formulated an empirical law of cooling, which was the first heat transfer formulation and serves as the formal basis of convective heat transfer, made the first theoretical calculation of the speed of sound, and introduced the notions of a Newtonian fluid and a black body. Furthermore, he made early studies into electricity. In addition to his creation of calculus, Newton's work on mathematics was extensive. He generalized the binomial theorem to any real number, introduced the Puiseux series, was the first to state B\u00e9zout's theorem, classified most of the cubic plane curves, contributed to the study of Cremona transformations, developed a method for approximating the roots of a function, and also originated the Newton-Cotes formulas for numerical integration. He further initiated the field of calculus of variations, devised an early form of regression analysis, and was a pioneer of vector analysis.\nNewton was a fellow of Trinity College and the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge; he was appointed at the age of 26. He was a devout but unorthodox Christian who privately rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. He refused to take holy orders in the Church of England, unlike most members of the Cambridge faculty of the day. Beyond his work on the mathematical sciences, Newton dedicated much of his time to the study of alchemy and biblical chronology, but most of his work in those areas remained unpublished until long after his death. Politically and personally tied to the Whig party, Newton served two brief terms as Member of Parliament for the University of Cambridge, in 1689\u20131690 and 1701\u20131702. He was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705 and spent the last three decades of his life in London, serving as Warden (1696\u20131699) and Master (1699\u20131727) of the Royal Mint, in which he increased the accuracy and security of British coinage, as well as president of the Royal Society (1703\u20131727).\nEarly life.\nIsaac Newton was born (according to the Julian calendar in use in England at the time) on Christmas Day, 25 December 1642 (NS 4 January 1643) at Woolsthorpe Manor in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, a hamlet in the county of Lincolnshire. His father, also named Isaac Newton, had died three months before. Born prematurely, Newton was a small child; his mother Hannah Ayscough reportedly said that he could have fit inside a quart mug. When Newton was three, his mother remarried and went to live with her new husband, the Reverend Barnabas Smith, leaving her son in the care of his maternal grandmother, Margery Ayscough (n\u00e9e Blythe). Newton disliked his stepfather and maintained some enmity towards his mother for marrying him, as revealed by this entry in a list of sins committed up to the age of 19: \"Threatening my father and mother Smith to burn them and the house over them.\" Newton's mother had three children (Mary, Benjamin, and Hannah) from her second marriage.\nThe King's School.\nFrom the age of about twelve until he was seventeen, Newton was educated at The King's School in Grantham, which taught Latin and Ancient Greek and probably imparted a significant foundation of mathematics. He was removed from school by his mother and returned to Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth by October 1659. His mother, widowed for the second time, attempted to make him a farmer, an occupation he hated. Henry Stokes, master at The King's School, persuaded his mother to send him back to school. Motivated partly by a desire for revenge against a schoolyard bully, he became the top-ranked student, distinguishing himself mainly by building sundials and models of windmills.\nUniversity of Cambridge.\nIn June 1661, Newton was admitted to Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. His uncle the Reverend William Ayscough, who had studied at Cambridge, recommended him to the university. At Cambridge, Newton started as a subsizar, paying his way by performing valet duties until he was awarded a scholarship in 1664, which covered his university costs for four more years until the completion of his MA. At the time, Cambridge's teachings were based on those of Aristotle, whom Newton read along with then more modern philosophers, including Ren\u00e9 Descartes and astronomers such as Galileo Galilei and Thomas Street. He set down in his notebook a series of \"\"Quaestiones\"\" about mechanical philosophy as he found it. In 1665, he discovered the generalised binomial theorem and began to develop a mathematical theory that later became calculus. Soon after Newton obtained his BA degree at Cambridge in August 1665, the university temporarily closed as a precaution against the Great Plague.\nAlthough he had been undistinguished as a Cambridge student, his private studies and the years following his bachelor's degree have been described as \"the richest and most productive ever experienced by a scientist\". The next two years alone saw the development of theories on calculus, optics, and the law of gravitation, at his home in Woolsthorpe. The physicist Louis T. More stated that \"There are no other examples of achievement in the history of science to compare with that of Newton during those two golden years.\"\nNewton has been described as an \"exceptionally organized\" person when it came to note-taking, further dog-earing pages he saw as important. Furthermore, Newton's \"indexes look like present-day indexes: They are alphabetical, by topic.\" His books showed his interests to be wide-ranging, with Newton himself described as a \"Janusian thinker, someone who could mix and combine seemingly disparate fields to stimulate creative breakthroughs.\"\nIn April 1667, Newton returned to the University of Cambridge, and in October he was elected as a fellow of Trinity. Fellows were required to take holy orders and be ordained as Anglican priests, although this was not enforced in the Restoration years, and an assertion of conformity to the Church of England was sufficient. He made the commitment that \"I will either set Theology as the object of my studies and will take holy orders when the time prescribed by these statutes [7\u00a0years] arrives, or I will resign from the college.\" Up until this point he had not thought much about religion and had twice signed his agreement to the Thirty-nine Articles, the basis of Church of England doctrine. By 1675 the issue could not be avoided, and his unconventional views stood in the way.\nHis academic work impressed the Lucasian Professor Isaac Barrow, who was anxious to develop his own religious and administrative potential (he became master of Trinity College two years later); in 1669, Newton succeeded him, only one year after receiving his MA. Newton argued that this should exempt him from the ordination requirement, and King Charles II, whose permission was needed, accepted this argument; thus, a conflict between Newton's religious views and Anglican orthodoxy was averted. He was appointed at the age of 26.\nThe Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge position included the responsibility of instructing geography. In 1672, and again in 1681, Newton published a revised, corrected, and amended edition of the \"Geographia Generalis\", a geography textbook first published in 1650 by the then-deceased Bernhardus Varenius. In the \"Geographia Generalis,\" Varenius attempted to create a theoretical foundation linking scientific principles to classical concepts in geography, and considered geography to be a mix between science and pure mathematics applied to quantifying features of the Earth. While it is unclear if Newton ever lectured in geography, the 1733 Dugdale and Shaw English translation of the book stated Newton published the book to be read by students while he lectured on the subject. The \"Geographia Generalis\" is viewed by some as the dividing line between ancient and modern traditions in the history of geography, and Newton's involvement in the subsequent editions is thought to be a large part of the reason for this enduring legacy.\nNewton was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1672.\nMid-life.\nCalculus.\nNewton's work has been said \"to distinctly advance every branch of mathematics then studied\". His work on calculus, usually referred to as fluxions, began in 1664, and by 20 May 1665 as seen in a manuscript, Newton \"had already developed the calculus to the point where he could compute the tangent and the curvature at any point of a continuous curve\". Another manuscript of October 1666, is now published among Newton's mathematical papers. His work \"De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas\", sent by Isaac Barrow to John Collins in June 1669, was identified by Barrow in a letter sent to Collins that August as the work \"of an extraordinary genius and proficiency in these things\". Newton later became involved in a dispute with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz over priority in the development of calculus. Both are now credited with independently developing calculus, though with very different mathematical notations. However, it is established that Newton came to develop calculus much earlier than Leibniz. Leibniz's notation is recognized as the more convenient notation, being adopted by continental European mathematicians, and after 1820, by British mathematicians.\nHistorian of science A. Rupert Hall notes that while Leibniz deserves credit for his independent formulation of calculus, Newton was undoubtedly the first to develop it, stating:<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />But all these matters are of little weight in comparison with the central truth, which has indeed long been universally recognized, that Newton was master of the essential techniques of the calculus by the end of 1666, almost exactly nine years before Leibniz . . . Newton\u2019s claim to have mastered the new infinitesimal calculus long before Leibniz, and even to have written \u2014 or at least made a good start upon \u2014 a publishable exposition of it as early as 1671, is certainly borne out by copious evidence, and though Leibniz and some of his friends sought to belittle Newton\u2019s case, the truth has not been seriously in doubt for the last 250 years.Hall further notes that in \"Principia\", Newton was able to \"formulate and resolve problems by the integration of differential equations\" and \"in fact, he anticipated in his book many results that later exponents of the calculus regarded as their own novel achievements.\" Hall notes Newton's rapid development of calculus in comparison to his contemporaries, stating that Newton \"well before 1690 . . . had reached roughly the point in the development of the calculus that Leibniz, the two Bernoullis, L\u2019Hospital, Hermann and others had by joint efforts reached in print by the early 1700s\".\nIt has been noted that despite the convenience of Leibniz's notation, Newton's notation could still have been used to develop multivariate techniques, with his dot notation still widely used in physics. Some academics have noted the richness and depth of Newton's work, such as physicist Roger Penrose, stating \"in most cases Newton\u2019s geometrical methods are not only more concise and elegant, they reveal deeper principles than would become evident by the use of those formal methods of calculus that nowadays would seem more direct.\" Mathematician Vladimir Arnold states \"Comparing the texts of Newton with the comments of his successors, it is striking how Newton\u2019s original presentation is more modern, more understandable and richer in ideas than the translation due to commentators of his geometrical ideas into the formal language of the calculus of Leibniz.\"\nHis work extensively uses calculus in geometric form based on limiting values of the ratios of vanishingly small quantities: in the \"Principia\" itself, Newton gave demonstration of this under the name of \"the method of first and last ratios\" and explained why he put his expositions in this form, remarking also that \"hereby the same thing is performed as by the method of indivisibles.\" Because of this, the \"Principia\" has been called \"a book dense with the theory and application of the infinitesimal calculus\" in modern times and in Newton's time \"nearly all of it is of this calculus.\" His use of methods involving \"one or more orders of the infinitesimally small\" is present in his \"De motu corporum in gyrum\" of 1684 and in his papers on motion \"during the two decades preceding 1684\".\nNewton had been reluctant to publish his calculus because he feared controversy and criticism. He was close to the Swiss mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier. In 1691, Duillier started to write a new version of Newton's \"Principia\", and corresponded with Leibniz. In 1693, the relationship between Duillier and Newton deteriorated and the book was never completed. Starting in 1699, Duillier accused Leibniz of plagiarism. Mathematician John Keill accused Leibniz of plagiarism in 1708 in the Royal Society journal, thereby deteriorating the situation even more. The dispute then broke out in full force in 1711 when the Royal Society proclaimed in a study that it was Newton who was the true discoverer and labelled Leibniz a fraud; it was later found that Newton wrote the study's concluding remarks on Leibniz. Thus began the bitter controversy which marred the lives of both men until Leibniz's death in 1716.\nNewton is credited with the generalised binomial theorem, valid for any exponent. He discovered Newton's identities, Newton's method, classified cubic plane curves (polynomials of degree three in two variables), is a founder of the theory of Cremona transformations, made substantial contributions to the theory of finite differences, with Newton regarded as \"the single most significant contributor to finite difference interpolation\", with many formulas created by Newton. He was the first to state B\u00e9zout's theorem, and was also the first to use fractional indices and to employ coordinate geometry to derive solutions to Diophantine equations. He approximated partial sums of the harmonic series by logarithms (a precursor to Euler's summation formula) and was the first to use power series with confidence and to revert power series. He introduced the Puisseux series. He originated the Newton-Cotes formulas for numerical integration. His work on infinite series was inspired by Simon Stevin's decimals. He also initiated the field of calculus of variations, being the first to clearly formulate and correctly solve a problem in the field, that being Newton's minimal resistance problem, which he posed and solved in 1685, and then later published in \"Principia\" in 1687. It is regarded as one of the most difficult problems tackled by variational methods prior to the twentieth century. He then used calculus of variations in his solving of the brachistochrone curve problem in 1697, which was posed by Johann Bernoulli in 1696, thus he pioneered the field with his work on the two problems. He was also a pioneer of vector analysis, as he demonstrated how to apply the parallelogram law for adding various physical quantities and realized that these quantities could be broken down into components in any direction.\nOptics.\nIn 1666, Newton observed that the spectrum of colours exiting a prism in the position of minimum deviation is oblong, even when the light ray entering the prism is circular, which is to say, the prism refracts different colours by different angles. This led him to conclude that colour is a property intrinsic to light \u2013 a point which had, until then, been a matter of debate.\nFrom 1670 to 1672, Newton lectured on optics. During this period he investigated the refraction of light, demonstrating that the multicoloured image produced by a prism, which he named a spectrum, could be recomposed into white light by a lens and a second prism. Modern scholarship has revealed that Newton's analysis and resynthesis of white light owes a debt to corpuscular alchemy.\nIn his work on Newton's rings in 1671, he used a method that was unprecedented in the 17th century, as \"he \"averaged\" all of the differences, and he then calculated the difference between the average and the value for the first ring\", in effect introducing a now standard method for reducing noise in measurements, and which does not appear elsewhere at the time. He extended his \"error-slaying method\" to studies of equinoxes in 1700, which was described as an \"altogether unprecedented method\" but differed in that here \"Newton required good values for each of the original equinoctial times, and so he devised a method that allowed them to, as it were, self-correct.\" Newton wrote down the first of the two 'normal equations' known from ordinary least squares and introduced \"an embryonic linear regression analysis\", as he averaged a set of data, 50 years before Tobias Mayer and also \"summing the residuals to zero he \"forced\" the regression line to pass through the average point\". He also \"distinguished between two inhomogeneous sets of data and might have thought of an \"optimal\" solution in terms of bias, though not in terms of effectiveness\".\nHe showed that coloured light does not change its properties by separating out a coloured beam and shining it on various objects, and that regardless of whether reflected, scattered, or transmitted, the light remains the same colour. Thus, he observed that colour is the result of objects interacting with already-coloured light rather than objects generating the colour themselves. This is known as Newton's theory of colour. His 1672 paper on the nature of white light and colours forms the basis for all work that followed on colour and colour vision.\nFrom this work, he concluded that the lens of any refracting telescope would suffer from the dispersion of light into colours (chromatic aberration). As a proof of the concept, he constructed a telescope using reflective mirrors instead of lenses as the objective to bypass that problem. Building the design, the first known functional reflecting telescope, today known as a Newtonian telescope, involved solving the problem of a suitable mirror material and shaping technique. He grounded his own mirrors out of a custom composition of highly reflective speculum metal, using Newton's rings to judge the quality of the optics for his telescopes. In late 1668, he was able to produce this first reflecting telescope. It was about eight inches long and it gave a clearer and larger image. In 1671, he was asked for a demonstration of his reflecting telescope by the Royal Society. Their interest encouraged him to publish his notes, \"Of Colours\", which he later expanded into the work \"Opticks\". When Robert Hooke criticised some of Newton's ideas, Newton was so offended that he withdrew from public debate. However, the two had brief exchanges in 1679\u201380, when Hooke, who had been appointed Secretary of the Royal Society, opened a correspondence intended to elicit contributions from Newton to Royal Society transactions, which had the effect of stimulating Newton to work out a proof that the elliptical form of planetary orbits would result from a centripetal force inversely proportional to the square of the radius vector.\nNewton argued that light is composed of particles or corpuscles, which were refracted by accelerating into a denser medium. He verged on soundlike waves to explain the repeated pattern of reflection and transmission by thin films (\"Opticks\" Bk. II, Props. 12), but still retained his theory of 'fits' that disposed corpuscles to be reflected or transmitted (Props.13). Physicists later favoured a purely wavelike explanation of light to account for the interference patterns and the general phenomenon of diffraction. Despite his known preference of a particle theory, Newton in fact noted that light had both particle-like and wave-like properties in \"Opticks\", and was the first to attempt to reconcile the two theories, thereby anticipating later developments of wave-particle duality, which is the modern understanding of light. Physicist David Finkelstein called him \"the first quantum physicist\" as a result.\nIn his \"Hypothesis of Light\" of 1675, Newton posited the existence of the ether to transmit forces between particles. The contact with the Cambridge Platonist philosopher Henry More revived his interest in alchemy. He replaced the ether with occult forces based on Hermetic ideas of attraction and repulsion between particles. His contributions to science cannot be isolated from his interest in alchemy. This was at a time when there was no clear distinction between alchemy and science.\nIn 1704, Newton published \"Opticks\", in which he expounded his corpuscular theory of light, and included a set of queries at the end, which were posed as unanswered questions and positive assertions. In line with his corpuscle theory, he thought that normal matter was made of grosser corpuscles and speculated that through a kind of alchemical transmutation, with query 30 stating \"Are not gross Bodies and Light convertible into one another, and may not Bodies receive much of their Activity from the Particles of Light which enter their Composition?\" Query 6 introduced the concept of a black body. \nNewton investigated electricity by constructing a primitive form of a frictional electrostatic generator using a glass globe, and detailed an experiment in 1675 that showed when one side of a glass sheet is rubbed to create an electric charge, it attracts \"light bodies\" to the opposite side. He interpreted this as evidence that electric forces could pass through glass. His idea in \"Opticks\" that optical reflection and refraction arise from interactions across the entire surface is regarded as the beginning of the field theory of electric force. He recognized the crucial role of electricity in nature, believing it to be responsible for various phenomena, including the emission, reflection, refraction, inflection, and heating effects of light. He also proposed that electricity was involved in the sensations experienced by the human body, affecting everything from muscle movement to brain function. His mass-dispersion model, ancestral to the successful use of the least action principle, provided a credible framework for understanding refraction, particularly in its approach to refraction in terms of momentum.\nIn \"Opticks\", he was the first to show a diagram using a prism as a beam expander, and also the use of multiple-prism arrays. Some 278 years after Newton's discussion, multiple-prism beam expanders became central to the development of narrow-linewidth tunable lasers. The use of these prismatic beam expanders led to the multiple-prism dispersion theory.\nNewton was also the first to propose the Goos\u2013H\u00e4nchen effect, an optical phenomenon in which linearly polarized light undergoes a small lateral shift when totally internally reflected. He provided both experimental and theoretical explanations for the effect using a mechanical model.\nScience came to realise the difference between perception of colour and mathematisable optics. The German poet and scientist, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, could not shake the Newtonian foundation but \"one hole Goethe did find in Newton's armour,\u00a0... Newton had committed himself to the doctrine that refraction without colour was impossible. He, therefore, thought that the object-glasses of telescopes must forever remain imperfect, achromatism and refraction being incompatible. This inference was proved by Dollond to be wrong.\"\nGravity.\nNewton had been developing his theory of gravitation as far back as 1665. In 1679, he returned to his work on celestial mechanics by considering gravitation and its effect on the orbits of planets with reference to Kepler's laws of planetary motion. Newton's reawakening interest in astronomical matters received further stimulus by the appearance of a comet in the winter of 1680\u20131681, on which he corresponded with John Flamsteed. After the exchanges with Hooke, Newton worked out a proof that the elliptical form of planetary orbits would result from a centripetal force inversely proportional to the square of the radius vector. He shared his results with Edmond Halley and the Royal Society in , a tract written on about nine sheets which was copied into the Royal Society's Register Book in December 1684. This tract contained the nucleus that Newton developed and expanded to form the \"Principia\".\nThe was published on 5 July 1687 with encouragement and financial help from Halley. In this work, Newton stated the three universal laws of motion. Together, these laws describe the relationship between any object, the forces acting upon it and the resulting motion, laying the foundation for classical mechanics. They contributed to many advances during the Industrial Revolution which soon followed and were not improved upon for more than 200 years. Many of these advances continue to be the underpinnings of non-relativistic technologies in the modern world. He used the Latin word \"gravitas\" (weight) for the effect that would become known as gravity, and defined the law of universal gravitation. His work achieved the first great unification in physics. He further solved the two-body problem, and introduced the three-body problem.\nIn the same work, Newton presented a calculus-like method of geometrical analysis using 'first and last ratios', gave the first analytical determination (based on Boyle's law) of the speed of sound in air, inferred the oblateness of Earth's spheroidal figure, accounted for the precession of the equinoxes as a result of the Moon's gravitational attraction on the Earth's oblateness, initiated the gravitational study of the irregularities in the motion of the Moon, provided a theory for the determination of the orbits of comets, and much more. Newton's biographer David Brewster reported that the complexity of applying his theory of gravity to the motion of the moon was so great it affected Newton's health: \"[H]e was deprived of his appetite and sleep\" during his work on the problem in 1692\u201393, and told the astronomer John Machin that \"his head never ached but when he was studying the subject\". According to Brewster, Halley also told John Conduitt that when pressed to complete his analysis Newton \"always replied that it made his head ache, and \"kept him awake so often, that he would think of it no more\"\". [Emphasis in original] He provided the first calculation of the age of Earth by experiment, and described a precursor to the modern wind tunnel.\nNewton made clear his heliocentric view of the Solar System\u2014developed in a somewhat modern way because already in the mid-1680s he recognised the \"deviation of the Sun\" from the centre of gravity of the Solar System. For Newton, it was not precisely the centre of the Sun or any other body that could be considered at rest, but rather \"the common centre of gravity of the Earth, the Sun and all the Planets is to be esteem'd the Centre of the World\", and this centre of gravity \"either is at rest or moves uniformly forward in a right line\". (Newton adopted the \"at rest\" alternative in view of common consent that the centre, wherever it was, was at rest.)\nNewton was criticised for introducing \"occult agencies\" into science because of his postulate of an invisible force able to act over vast distances. Later, in the second edition of the \"Principia\" (1713), Newton firmly rejected such criticisms in a concluding General Scholium, writing that it was enough that the phenomena implied a gravitational attraction, as they did; but they did not so far indicate its cause, and it was both unnecessary and improper to frame hypotheses of things that were not implied by the phenomena. (Here he used what became his famous expression .)\nWith the , Newton became internationally recognised. He acquired a circle of admirers, including the Swiss-born mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier.\nIn the 1660s and 1670s, Newton found 72 of the 78 \"species\" of cubic curves and categorised them into four types, systemizing his results in later publications. However, a 1690s manuscript later analyzed showed that Newton had identified all 78 cubic curves, but chose not to publish the remaining six for unknown reasons. In 1717, and probably with Newton's help, James Stirling proved that every cubic was one of these four types. He claimed that the four types could be obtained by plane projection from one of them, and this was proved in 1731, four years after his death.\nOther significant work.\nNewton studied heat and energy flow, formulating an empirical law of cooling which states that the rate at which an object cools is proportional to the temperature difference between the object and its surrounding environment. It was first formulated in 1701, and is the first heat transfer formulation and serves as the formal basis of convective heat transfer.\nNewton introduced the notion of a Newtonian fluid with his formulation of his law of viscosity in \"Principia\" in 1687. It states that the shear stress between two fluid layers is directly proportional to the velocity gradient between them. He also discussed the circular motion of fluids and was the first to discuss Couette flow.\nPhilosophy of Science.\nStarting with the second edition of his \"Principia\", Newton included a final section on science philosophy or method. It was here that he wrote his famous line, in Latin, \"hypotheses non fingo\", which can be translated as \"I don't make hypotheses,\" (the direct translation of \"fingo\" is \"frame\", but in context he was advocating against the use of hypotheses in science). He went on to posit that if there is no data to explain a finding, one should simply wait for that data, rather than guessing at an explanation. The quote in part as translated is, \"Hitherto I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses, for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction\".\nNewton contributed to and refined the scientific method. In his work on the properties of light in the 1670s, he showed his rigorous method, which was conducting experiments, taking detailed notes, making measurements, conducting more experiments that grew out of the initial ones, he formulated a theory, created more experiments to test it, and finally described the entire process so other scientists could replicate every step.\nIn his 1687 \"Principia\", he outlined four rules: the first is, 'Admit no more causes of natural things than are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances'; the second is, 'To the same natural effect, assign the same causes'; the third is, 'Qualities of bodies, which are found to belong to all bodies within experiments, are to be esteemed universal'; and lastly, 'Propositions collected from observation of phenomena should be viewed as accurate or very nearly true until contradicted by other phenomena'. These rules have become the basis of the modern approaches to science.\nLater life.\nRoyal Mint.\nIn the 1690s, Newton wrote a number of religious tracts dealing with the literal and symbolic interpretation of the Bible. A manuscript Newton sent to John Locke in which he disputed the fidelity of \u2014the Johannine Comma\u2014and its fidelity to the original manuscripts of the New Testament, remained unpublished until 1785.\nNewton was also a member of the Parliament of England for Cambridge University in 1689 and 1701, but according to some accounts his only comments were to complain about a cold draught in the chamber and request that the window be closed. He was, however, noted by Cambridge diarist Abraham de la Pryme to have rebuked students who were frightening locals by claiming that a house was haunted.\nNewton moved to London to take up the post of warden of the Royal Mint during the reign of King William III in 1696, a position that he had obtained through the patronage of Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. He took charge of England's great recoining, trod on the toes of Lord Lucas, Governor of the Tower, and secured the job of deputy comptroller of the temporary Chester branch for Edmond Halley. Newton became perhaps the best-known Master of the Mint upon the death of Thomas Neale in 1699, a position he held for the last 30\u00a0years of his life. These appointments were intended as sinecures, but Newton took them seriously. He retired from his Cambridge duties in 1701, and exercised his authority to reform the currency and punish clippers and counterfeiters.\nAs Warden, and afterwards as Master, of the Royal Mint, Newton estimated that 20\u00a0percent of the coins taken in during the Great Recoinage of 1696 were counterfeit. Counterfeiting was high treason, punishable by the felon being hanged, drawn and quartered. Despite this, convicting even the most flagrant criminals could be extremely difficult, but Newton proved equal to the task.\nDisguised as a habitu\u00e9 of bars and taverns, he gathered much of that evidence himself. For all the barriers placed to prosecution, and separating the branches of government, English law still had ancient and formidable customs of authority. Newton had himself made a justice of the peace in all the home counties. A draft letter regarding the matter is included in Newton's personal first edition of \"Philosophi\u00e6 Naturalis Principia Mathematica\", which he must have been amending at the time. Then he conducted more than 100\u00a0cross-examinations of witnesses, informers, and suspects between June 1698 and Christmas 1699. He successfully prosecuted 28\u00a0coiners, including serial counterfeiter William Chaloner, who was subsequently hanged.\nBeyond prosecuting counterfeiters, he improved minting technology and reduced the standard deviation of the weight of guineas from 1.3 grams to 0.75 grams. Starting in 1707, Newton introduced the practice of testing a small sample of coins, a pound in weight, in the trial of the pyx, which helped to reduce the size of admissible error. He ultimately saved the Treasury a then \u00a341,510, roughly \u00a33 million in 2012, with his improvements lasting until the 1770s, thereby increasing the accuracy of British coinage.\nNewton was made president of the Royal Society in 1703 and an associate of the French Acad\u00e9mie des Sciences. In his position at the Royal Society, Newton made an enemy of John Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal, by prematurely publishing Flamsteed's \"Historia Coelestis Britannica\", which Newton had used in his studies.\nKnighthood.\nIn April 1705, Queen Anne knighted Newton during a royal visit to Trinity College, Cambridge. The knighthood is likely to have been motivated by political considerations connected with the parliamentary election in May 1705, rather than any recognition of Newton's scientific work or services as Master of the Mint. Newton was the second scientist to be knighted, after Francis Bacon.\nAs a result of a report written by Newton on 21 September 1717 to the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury, the bimetallic relationship between gold coins and silver coins was changed by royal proclamation on 22 December 1717, forbidding the exchange of gold guineas for more than 21\u00a0silver shillings. This inadvertently resulted in a silver shortage as silver coins were used to pay for imports, while exports were paid for in gold, effectively moving Britain from the silver standard to its first gold standard. It is a matter of debate as to whether he intended to do this or not. It has been argued that Newton conceived of his work at the Mint as a continuation of his alchemical work.\nNewton was invested in the South Sea Company and lost at least \u00a310,000, and plausibly more than \u00a320,000 (\u00a34.4\u00a0million in 2020) when it collapsed in around 1720. Since he was already rich before the bubble, he still died rich, at estate value around \u00a330,000.\nToward the end of his life, Newton took up residence at Cranbury Park, near Winchester, with his niece and her husband, until his death. His half-niece, Catherine Barton, served as his hostess in social affairs at his house on Jermyn Street in London; he was her \"very loving Uncle\", according to his letter to her when she was recovering from smallpox.\nDeath.\nNewton died in his sleep in London on 20 March 1727 (NS 31 March 1727). He was given a ceremonial funeral, attended by nobles, scientists, and philosophers, and was buried in Westminster Abbey among kings and queens. He was the first scientist to be buried in the abbey. Voltaire may have been present at his funeral. A bachelor, he had divested much of his estate to relatives during his last years, and died intestate. His papers went to John Conduitt and Catherine Barton.\nShortly after his death, a plaster death mask was moulded of Newton. It was used by Flemish sculptor John Michael Rysbrack in making a sculpture of Newton. It is now held by the Royal Society.\nNewton's hair was posthumously examined and found to contain mercury, probably resulting from his alchemical pursuits. Mercury poisoning could explain Newton's eccentricity in late life.\nPersonality.\nAlthough it was claimed that he was once engaged, Newton never married. The French writer and philosopher Voltaire, who was in London at the time of Newton's funeral, said that he \"was never sensible to any passion, was not subject to the common frailties of mankind, nor had any commerce with women\u2014a circumstance which was assured me by the physician and surgeon who attended him in his last moments.\u201d\nNewton had a close friendship with the Swiss mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, whom he met in London around 1689; some of their correspondence has survived. Their relationship came to an abrupt and unexplained end in 1693, and at the same time Newton suffered a nervous breakdown, which included sending wild accusatory letters to his friends Samuel Pepys and John Locke. His note to the latter included the charge that Locke had endeavoured to \"embroil\" him with \"woemen & by other means\".\nNewton appeared to be relatively modest about his achievements, writing in a later memoir, \"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.\" Nonetheless, he could be fiercely competitive and did on occasion hold grudges against his intellectual rivals, not abstaining from personal attacks when it suited him\u2014a common trait found in many of his contemporaries. In a letter to Robert Hooke in February 1675, for instance, he confessed \"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.\" Some historians argued that this, written at a time when Newton and Hooke were disputing over optical discoveries, was an oblique attack on Hooke who was presumably short and hunchbacked, rather than (or in addition to) a statement of modesty. On the other hand, the widely known proverb about standing on the shoulders of giants, found in 17th century poet George Herbert's (1651) among others, had as its main point that \"a dwarf on a giant's shoulders sees farther of the two\", and so in effect place Newton himself rather than Hooke as the 'dwarf' who saw farther.\nTheology.\nReligious views.\nAlthough born into an Anglican family, by his thirties Newton held a Christian faith that, had it been made public, would not have been considered orthodox by mainstream Christianity, with historian Stephen Snobelen labelling him a heretic.\nBy 1672, he had started to record his theological researches in notebooks which he showed to no one and which have only been available for public examination since 1972. Over half of what Newton wrote concerned theology and alchemy, and most has never been printed. His writings demonstrate an extensive knowledge of early Church writings and show that in the conflict between Athanasius and Arius which defined the Creed, he took the side of Arius, the loser, who rejected the conventional view of the Trinity. Newton \"recognized Christ as a divine mediator between God and man, who was subordinate to the Father who created him.\" He was especially interested in prophecy, but for him, \"the great apostasy was trinitarianism.\"\nNewton tried unsuccessfully to obtain one of the two fellowships that exempted the holder from the ordination requirement. At the last moment in 1675 he received a dispensation from the government that excused him and all future holders of the Lucasian chair.\nWorshipping Jesus Christ as God was, in Newton's eyes, idolatry, an act he believed to be the fundamental sin. In 1999, Snobelen wrote, that \"Isaac Newton was a heretic. But\u00a0... he never made a public declaration of his private faith\u2014which the orthodox would have deemed extremely radical. He hid his faith so well that scholars are still unraveling his personal beliefs.\" Snobelen concludes that Newton was at least a Socinian sympathiser (he owned and had thoroughly read at least eight Socinian books), possibly an Arian and almost certainly an anti-trinitarian.\nAlthough the laws of motion and universal gravitation became Newton's best-known discoveries, he warned against using them to view the Universe as a mere machine, as if akin to a great clock. He said, \"So then gravity may put the planets into motion, but without the Divine Power it could never put them into such a circulating motion, as they have about the sun\".\nAlong with his scientific fame, Newton's studies of the Bible and of the early Church Fathers were also noteworthy. Newton wrote works on textual criticism, most notably \"An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture\" and '. He placed the crucifixion of Jesus Christ at 3 April, AD 33, which agrees with one traditionally accepted date.\nHe believed in a rationally immanent world, but he rejected the hylozoism implicit in Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Baruch Spinoza. The ordered and dynamically informed Universe could be understood, and must be understood, by an active reason. In his correspondence, he claimed that in writing the \"Principia\" \"I had an eye upon such Principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity\". He saw evidence of design in the system of the world: \"Such a wonderful uniformity in the planetary system must be allowed the effect of choice\". But Newton insisted that divine intervention would eventually be required to reform the system, due to the slow growth of instabilities. For this, Leibniz lampooned him: \"God Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion.\"\nNewton's position was defended by his follower Samuel Clarke in a famous correspondence. A century later, Pierre-Simon Laplace's work \"Celestial Mechanics\" had a natural explanation for why the planet orbits do not require periodic divine intervention. The contrast between Laplace's mechanistic worldview and Newton's one is the most strident considering the famous answer which the French scientist gave Napoleon, who had criticised him for the absence of the Creator in the \"M\u00e9canique c\u00e9leste\": \"Sire, j'ai pu me passer de cette hypoth\u00e8se\" (\"Sir, I didn't need this hypothesis\").\nScholars long debated whether Newton disputed the doctrine of the Trinity. His first biographer, David Brewster, who compiled his manuscripts, interpreted Newton as questioning the veracity of some passages used to support the Trinity, but never denying the doctrine of the Trinity as such. In the twentieth century, encrypted manuscripts written by Newton and bought by John Maynard Keynes (among others) were deciphered and it became known that Newton did indeed reject Trinitarianism.\nReligious thought.\nNewton and Robert Boyle's approach to the mechanical philosophy was promoted by rationalist pamphleteers as a viable alternative to the pantheists and enthusiasts, and was accepted hesitantly by orthodox preachers as well as dissident preachers like the latitudinarians. The clarity and simplicity of science was seen as a way to combat the emotional and metaphysical superlatives of both superstitious enthusiasm and the threat of atheism, and at the same time, the second wave of English deists used Newton's discoveries to demonstrate the possibility of a \"Natural Religion\".\nThe attacks made against pre-Enlightenment \"magical thinking\", and the mystical elements of Christianity, were given their foundation with Boyle's mechanical conception of the universe. Newton gave Boyle's ideas their completion through mathematical proofs and, perhaps more importantly, was very successful in popularising them.\nAlchemy.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nNewton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago. Isaac Newton, a posthumous child born with no father on Christmas Day, 1642, was the last wonderchild to whom the Magi could do sincere and appropriate homage.\n \u2013John Maynard Keynes, \"Newton, the Man\"\nOf an estimated ten million words of writing in Newton's papers, about one million deal with alchemy. Many of Newton's writings on alchemy are copies of other manuscripts, with his own annotations. Alchemical texts mix artisanal knowledge with philosophical speculation, often hidden behind layers of wordplay, allegory, and imagery to protect craft secrets. Some of the content contained in Newton's papers could have been considered heretical by the church.\nIn 1888, after spending sixteen years cataloguing Newton's papers, Cambridge University kept a small number and returned the rest to the Earl of Portsmouth. In 1936, a descendant offered the papers for sale at Sotheby's. The collection was broken up and sold for a total of about \u00a39,000. John Maynard Keynes was one of about three dozen bidders who obtained part of the collection at auction. Keynes went on to reassemble an estimated half of Newton's collection of papers on alchemy before donating his collection to Cambridge University in 1946.\nAll of Newton's known writings on alchemy are currently being put online in a project undertaken by Indiana University: \"The Chymistry of Isaac Newton\" and has been summarised in a book.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Newton's fundamental contributions to science include the quantification of gravitational attraction, the discovery that white light is actually a mixture of immutable spectral colors, and the formulation of the calculus. Yet there is another, more mysterious side to Newton that is imperfectly known, a realm of activity that spanned some thirty years of his life, although he kept it largely hidden from his contemporaries and colleagues. We refer to Newton's involvement in the discipline of alchemy, or as it was often called in seventeenth-century England, \"chymistry.\"\nIn June 2020, two unpublished pages of Newton's notes on Jan Baptist van Helmont's book on plague, \"De Peste\", were being auctioned online by Bonhams. Newton's analysis of this book, which he made in Cambridge while protecting himself from London's 1665\u20131666 infection, is the most substantial written statement he is known to have made about the plague, according to Bonhams. As far as the therapy is concerned, Newton writes that \"the best is a toad suspended by the legs in a chimney for three days, which at last vomited up earth with various insects in it, on to a dish of yellow wax, and shortly after died. Combining powdered toad with the excretions and serum made into lozenges and worn about the affected area drove away the contagion and drew out the poison\".\nLegacy.\nRecognition.\nThe mathematician and astronomer Joseph-Louis Lagrange frequently asserted that Newton was the greatest genius who ever lived, and once added that Newton was also \"the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish.\" English poet Alexander Pope wrote the famous epitaph:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Nature, and Nature's laws lay hid in night.\nGod said, \"Let Newton be!\" and all was light.\nBut this was not allowed to be inscribed in Newton's monument at Westminster. The epitaph added is as follows:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nwhich can be translated as follows:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Here is buried Isaac Newton, Knight, who by a strength of mind almost divine, and mathematical principles peculiarly his own, explored the course and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, the tides of the sea, the dissimilarities in rays of light, and, what no other scholar has previously imagined, the properties of the colours thus produced. Diligent, sagacious and faithful, in his expositions of nature, antiquity and the holy Scriptures, he vindicated by his philosophy the majesty of God mighty and good, and expressed the simplicity of the Gospel in his manners. Mortals rejoice that there has existed such and so great an ornament of the human race! He was born on 25th December 1642, and died on 20th March 1726.\nNewton has been called \"the most influential figure in the history of Western science\", and has been regarded as \"the central figure in the history of science\", who \"more than anyone else is the source of our great confidence in the power of science.\" \"New Scientist\" called Newton \"the supreme genius and most enigmatic character in the history of science\". The philosopher and historian David Hume also declared that Newton was \"the greatest and rarest genius that ever arose for the ornament and instruction of the species\". In his home of Monticello, Thomas Jefferson, a Founding Father and President of the United States, kept portraits of John Locke, Sir Francis Bacon, and Newton, whom he described as \"the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception\", and who he credited with laying \"the foundation of those superstructures which have been raised in the Physical and Moral sciences\".\nNewton has further been called \"the towering figure of the Scientific Revolution\" and that \"In a period rich with outstanding thinkers, Newton was simply the most outstanding.\" The polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe labeled Newton's birth as the \"Christmas of the modern age\". In the Italian polymath Vilfredo Pareto's estimation, Newton was the greatest human being who ever lived. On the bicentennial of Newton's death in 1927, astronomer James Jeans stated that he \"was certainly the greatest man of science, and perhaps the greatest intellect, the human race has seen\". Newton ultimately conceived four revolutions\u2014in optics, mathematics, mechanics, and gravity\u2014but also foresaw a fifth in electricity, though he lacked the time and energy in old age to fully accomplish it.\nThe physicist Ludwig Boltzmann called Newton's \"Principia\" \"the first and greatest work ever written about theoretical physics\". Physicist Stephen Hawking similarly called \"Principia\" \"probably the most important single work ever published in the physical sciences\". Lagrange called \"Principia\" \"the greatest production of the human mind\", and noted that \"he felt dazed at such an illustration of what man's intellect might be capable\".\nPhysicist Edward Andrade stated that Newton \"was capable of greater sustained mental effort than any man, before or since\", and noted earlier the place of Isaac Newton in history, stating:<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />From time to time in the history of mankind a man arises who is of universal significance, whose work changes the current of human thought or of human experience, so that all that comes after him bears evidence of his spirit. Such a man was Shakespeare, such a man was Beethoven, such a man was Newton, and, of the three, his kingdom is the most widespread.The French physicist and mathematician Jean-Baptiste Biot praised Newton's genius, stating that:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Never was the supremacy of intellect so justly established and so fully confessed . . . In mathematical and in experimental science without an equal and without an example; combining the genius for both in its highest degree.Despite his rivalry with Gottfried Wilhem Leibniz, Leibniz still praised the work of Newton, with him responding to a question at a dinner in 1701 from Sophia Charlotte, the Queen of Prussia, about his view of Newton with:<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Taking mathematics from the beginning of the world to the time of when Newton lived, what he had done was much the better half.\nMathematician E.T. Bell ranked Newton alongside Carl Friedrich Gauss and Archimedes as the three greatest mathematicians of all time, with the mathematician Donald M. Davis also noting that Newton is generally ranked with the other two as the greatest mathematicians ever. In \"The Cambridge Companion to Isaac Newton\" (2016), he is described as being \"from a very young age, an extraordinary problem-solver, as good, it would appear, as humanity has ever produced\". He is ultimately ranked among the top two or three greatest theoretical scientists ever, alongside James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein, the greatest mathematician ever alongside Carl F. Gauss, and among the best experimentalists ever, thereby \"putting Newton in a class by himself among empirical scientists, for one has trouble in thinking of any other candidate who was in the first rank of even two of these categories.\" Also noted is \"At least in comparison to subsequent scientists, Newton was also exceptional in his ability to put his scientific effort in much wider perspective\". Gauss himself had Archimedes and Newton as his heroes, and used terms such as \"clarissimus\" or \"magnus\" to describe other intellectuals such as great mathematicians and philosophers, but reserved \"summus\" for Newton only, and once remarked that \"Newton remains forever the master of all masters!\" \nAlbert Einstein kept a picture of Newton on his study wall alongside ones of Michael Faraday and of James Clerk Maxwell. Einstein stated that Newton's creation of calculus in relation to his laws of motion was \"perhaps the greatest advance in thought that a single individual was ever privileged to make.\" He also noted the influence of Newton, stating that:<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The whole evolution of our ideas about the processes of nature, with which we have been concerned so far, might be regarded as an organic development of Newton's ideas.In 1999, an opinion poll of 100 of the day's leading physicists voted Einstein the \"greatest physicist ever,\" with Newton the runner-up, while a parallel survey of rank-and-file physicists ranked Newton as the greatest. In 2005, a dual survey of both the public and of members of Britain's Royal Society (formerly headed by Newton) asking who had the greater effect on both the history of science and on the history of mankind, Newton or Einstein, both the public and the Royal Society deemed Newton to have made the greater overall contributions for both.\nIn 1999, \"Time\" named Newton the Person of the Century for the 17th century. Newton placed sixth in the \"100 Greatest Britons\" poll conducted by BBC in 2002. However, in 2003, he was voted as the greatest Briton in a poll conducted by BBC World, with Winston Churchill second. He was voted as the greatest Cantabrigian by University of Cambridge students in 2009.\nPhysicist Lev Landau ranked physicists on a logarithmic scale of productivity and genius ranging from 0 to 5. The highest ranking, 0, was assigned to Newton. Einstein was ranked 0.5. A rank of 1 was awarded to the fathers of quantum mechanics, such as Werner Heisenberg and Paul Dirac. Landau, a Nobel prize winner and the discoverer of superfluidity, ranked himself as 2.\nThe SI derived unit of force is named the Newton in his honour.\nApple incident.\nNewton himself often told the story that he was inspired to formulate his theory of gravitation by watching the fall of an apple from a tree. The story is believed to have passed into popular knowledge after being related by Catherine Barton, Newton's niece, to Voltaire. Voltaire then wrote in his \"Essay on Epic Poetry\" (1727), \"Sir Isaac Newton walking in his gardens, had the first thought of his system of gravitation, upon seeing an apple falling from a tree.\"\nAlthough it has been said that the apple story is a myth and that he did not arrive at his theory of gravity at any single moment, acquaintances of Newton (such as William Stukeley, whose manuscript account of 1752 has been made available by the Royal Society) do in fact confirm the incident, though not the apocryphal version that the apple actually hit Newton's head. Stukeley recorded in his \"Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life\" a conversation with Newton in Kensington on 15 April 1726:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />we went into the garden, & drank thea under the shade of some appletrees, only he, & myself. amidst other discourse, he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. \"why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground,\" thought he to him self: occasion'd by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a comtemplative mood: \"why should it not go sideways, or upwards? but constantly to the earths centre? assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. there must be a drawing power in matter. & the sum of the drawing power in the matter of the earth must be in the earths center, not in any side of the earth. therefore dos this apple fall perpendicularly, or toward the center. if matter thus draws matter; it must be in proportion of its quantity. therefore the apple draws the earth, as well as the earth draws the apple.\"\nJohn Conduitt, Newton's assistant at the Royal Mint and husband of Newton's niece, also described the event when he wrote about Newton's life:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />In the year 1666 he retired again from Cambridge to his mother in Lincolnshire. Whilst he was pensively meandering in a garden it came into his thought that the power of gravity (which brought an apple from a tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from earth, but that this power must extend much further than was usually thought. Why not as high as the Moon said he to himself & if so, that must influence her motion & perhaps retain her in her orbit, whereupon he fell a calculating what would be the effect of that supposition.\nIt is known from his notebooks that Newton was grappling in the late 1660s with the idea that terrestrial gravity extends, in an inverse-square proportion, to the Moon; however, it took him two decades to develop the full-fledged theory. The question was not whether gravity existed, but whether it extended so far from Earth that it could also be the force holding the Moon to its orbit. Newton showed that if the force decreased as the inverse square of the distance, one could indeed calculate the Moon's orbital period, and get good agreement. He guessed the same force was responsible for other orbital motions, and hence named it \"universal gravitation\".\nVarious trees are claimed to be \"the\" apple tree which Newton describes. The King's School, Grantham claims that the tree was purchased by the school, uprooted and transported to the headmaster's garden some years later. The staff of the (now) National Trust-owned Woolsthorpe Manor dispute this, and claim that a tree present in their gardens is the one described by Newton. A descendant of the original tree can be seen growing outside the main gate of Trinity College, Cambridge, below the room Newton lived in when he studied there. The National Fruit Collection at Brogdale in Kent can supply grafts from their tree, which appears identical to Flower of Kent, a coarse-fleshed cooking variety.\nCommemorations.\nNewton's monument (1731) can be seen in Westminster Abbey, at the north of the entrance to the choir against the choir screen, near his tomb. It was executed by the sculptor Michael Rysbrack (1694\u20131770) in white and grey marble with design by the architect William Kent. The monument features a figure of Newton reclining on top of a sarcophagus, his right elbow resting on several of his great books and his left hand pointing to a scroll with a mathematical design. Above him is a pyramid and a celestial globe showing the signs of the Zodiac and the path of the comet of 1680. A relief panel depicts putti using instruments such as a telescope and prism.\nFrom 1978 until 1988, an image of Newton designed by Harry Ecclestone appeared on Series D \u00a31 banknotes issued by the Bank of England (the last \u00a31 notes to be issued by the Bank of England). Newton was shown on the reverse of the notes holding a book and accompanied by a telescope, a prism and a map of the Solar System.\nA statue of Isaac Newton, looking at an apple at his feet, can be seen at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. A large bronze statue, \"Newton, after William Blake\", by Eduardo Paolozzi, dated 1995 and inspired by Blake's etching, dominates the piazza of the British Library in London. A bronze statue of Newton was erected in 1858 in the centre of Grantham where he went to school, prominently standing in front of Grantham Guildhall.\nThe still-surviving farmhouse at Woolsthorpe By Colsterworth is a Grade I listed building by Historic England through being his birthplace and \"where he discovered gravity and developed his theories regarding the refraction of light\".\nThe Enlightenment.\nEnlightenment philosophers chose a short history of scientific predecessors\u2014Galileo Galilei, Robert Boyle, and Newton, principally\u2014as the guides and guarantors of their applications of the singular concept of nature and natural law to every physical and social field of the day. In this respect, the lessons of history and the social structures built upon it could be discarded.\nIt is held by European philosophers of the Enlightenment and by historians of the Enlightenment that Newton's publication of the \"Principia\" was a turning point in the Scientific Revolution and started the Enlightenment. It was Newton's conception of the universe based upon natural and rationally understandable laws that became one of the seeds for Enlightenment ideology. John Locke and Voltaire applied concepts of natural law to political systems advocating intrinsic rights; the physiocrats and Adam Smith applied natural conceptions of psychology and self-interest to economic systems; and sociologists criticised the current social order for trying to fit history into natural models of progress. Monboddo and Samuel Clarke resisted elements of Newton's work, but eventually rationalised it to conform with their strong religious views of nature.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\nPrimary.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nAlchemy.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nScience.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nDigital archives.\nclass=\"wikitable succession-box noprint\" style=\"margin:0.5em auto; font-size:small;clear:both;\""}, "descending_order": ["14627", "19694", "10902"], "permutation_1": ["19694", "14627", "10902"], "permutation_2": ["14627", "19694", "10902"], "permutation_3": ["10902", "19694", "14627"]}
{"id": "3hop1__473969_23998_21435", "docs_added": {"27945430": "George Townsend (baseball)\nAmerican baseball player (1867\u20131930)\nGeorge Hodgson Townsend (June 4, 1867 in Hartsdale, New York \u2013 March 15, 1930 in New Haven, Connecticut), nicknamed \"Sleepy\", was an American baseball player who played catcher in the Major Leagues from 1887 to 1891. He played for the Philadelphia Athletics and Baltimore Orioles.", "53825": "New Haven, Connecticut\nNew Haven is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is the third largest city in Connecticut after Bridgeport and Stamford, the largest city in the South Central Connecticut Planning Region, and the principal municipality of Greater New Haven, which had a total population of 864,835 in 2020.\nNew Haven was one of the first planned cities in the U.S. A year after its founding by English Puritans in 1638, eight streets were laid out in a four-by-four grid, creating the \"Nine Square Plan\". The central common block is the New Haven Green, a square at the center of Downtown New Haven. The Green is now a National Historic Landmark, and the \"Nine Square Plan\" is recognized by the American Planning Association as a National Planning Landmark.\nNew Haven is the home of Yale University, New Haven's biggest taxpayer and employer, and an integral part of the city's economy. Health care, professional and financial services and retail trade also contribute to the city's economic activity.\nThe city served as co-capital of Connecticut from 1701 until 1873, when sole governance was transferred to the more centrally located city of Hartford. New Haven has since billed itself as the \"Cultural Capital of Connecticut\" for its supply of established theaters, museums, and music venues. New Haven had the first public tree planting program in the U.S., producing a canopy of mature trees (including some large elms) that gave the city the nickname \"The Elm City\".\nHistory.\nPre-colonial foundation as an independent colony.\nBefore Europeans arrived, the New Haven area was the home of the Quinnipiac tribe of Native Americans, who lived in villages around the harbor and sustained an economy of local fisheries and the farming of maize. The area was briefly visited by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block in 1614. Dutch traders set up a small trading system of beaver pelts with the local inhabitants, but trade was sporadic and the Dutch did not settle permanently in the area.\nIn 1637, a small party of Puritans did a reconnaissance of the New Haven harbor area and wintered over. In April 1638, the main party of five hundred Puritans, who had left the Massachusetts Bay Colony under the leadership of Reverend John Davenport and London merchant Theophilus Eaton, sailed into the harbor. It was their hope to set up a theological community with the government more closely linked to the church than that in Massachusetts, and to exploit the area's potential as a port. The Quinnipiacs, who were under attack by neighboring Pequots, sold their land to the settlers in return for a pledge of protection.\nBy 1640, \"Quinnipiac's\" theocratic government and nine-square grid plan were in place, and the town was renamed New Haven, with 'haven' meaning harbor or port. However, the area to the north remained Quinnipiac until 1678, when it was renamed Hamden. The settlement became the headquarters of the New Haven Colony, distinct from the Connecticut Colony previously established to the north centering on Hartford. Reflecting its theocratic roots, the New Haven Colony forbade the establishment of other churches, whereas the Connecticut Colony permitted them.\nEconomic disaster struck New Haven in 1646, when the town sent its first fully loaded ship of local goods (the \"Great Shippe\") back to England. It never reached its destination, and its disappearance hindered New Haven's development as compared to the rising trade powers of Boston and New Amsterdam (modern day New York City).\nIn 1660, Colony founder John Davenport's wishes were fulfilled, and Hopkins School was founded in New Haven with money from the estate of Edward Hopkins.\nIn 1661, the Regicides who had signed the death warrant of Charles I of England were pursued by Charles II. Two of them, Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe, fled to New Haven for refuge. Davenport arranged for them to hide in the West Rock hills northwest of the town. A third judge, John Dixwell, later joined the others. None of the three were ever returned to England for trial; Dixwell died of old age in New Haven, the others likewise elsewhere in New England.\nAs part of the Connecticut Colony.\nIn 1664, New Haven became part of the Connecticut Colony when the two colonies were merged under political pressure from England. Seeking to establish a new theocracy elsewhere, some members of the New Haven Colony went on to establish Newark, New Jersey.\nNew Haven was made co-capital of Connecticut in 1701, a status it retained until 1873.\nIn 1716, the Collegiate School relocated from Old Saybrook to New Haven, establishing it as a center of learning. In 1718, in response to a large donation from East India Company merchant Elihu Yale, former Governor of Madras, the Collegiate School was renamed Yale College.\nFor over a century, New Haven citizens had fought in the colonial militia alongside regular British forces, including the French and Indian War. As the American Revolution approached, General David Wooster and other influential residents hoped that the conflict with the British parliament could be resolved short of rebellion. On April 23, 1775, Captain Benedict Arnold commanded the Second Company, Governor's Foot Guard, of New Haven to break into the powder house to arm themselves for a three-day march to Cambridge, Massachusetts, an event still celebrated in New Haven as Powder House Day. Other New Haven militia members were on hand to escort George Washington from his overnight stay in New Haven on his way to Cambridge. Contemporary reports, from both sides, remark on the New Haven volunteers' professional military bearing, including uniforms.\nOn July 5, 1779, 2,600 loyalists and British regulars under General William Tryon, governor of New York, landed in New Haven Harbor and raided the town of 3,500. A militia of Yale students had been preparing for battle, and former Yale president and Yale Divinity School professor Naphtali Daggett rode out to confront the Redcoats. Yale president Ezra Stiles recounted in his diary that while he moved furniture in anticipation of battle, he still couldn't quite believe the revolution had begun. New Haven was not torched as the invaders did with Danbury in 1777, or Fairfield and Norwalk a week after the New Haven raid, preserving many of the town's colonial features.\nPost-colonial period and industrialization.\nNew Haven was incorporated as a city in 1784, and Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Constitution and author of the \"Connecticut Compromise\", became the new city's first mayor.\nThe city struck fortune in the late 18th century with the inventions and industrial activity of Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate who remained in New Haven to develop the cotton gin and establish a gun-manufacturing factory in the northern part of the city near the Hamden town line. That area is still known as Whitneyville, and the main road through both towns is known as Whitney Avenue. The factory is now the Eli Whitney Museum, which has a particular emphasis on activities for children and exhibits pertaining to the A. C. Gilbert Company. His factory, along with that of Simeon North, and the lively clock-making and brass hardware sectors, contributed to making early Connecticut a powerful manufacturing economy; so many arms manufacturers sprang up that the state became known as \"The Arsenal of America\". It was in Whitney's gun-manufacturing plant that Samuel Colt invented the automatic revolver in 1836. Many other talented machinists and firearms designers would go on to found successful firearms manufacturing companies in New Haven, including Oliver Winchester and O.F. Mossberg & Sons.\nThe Farmington Canal, created in the early 19th century, was a short-lived transporter of goods into the interior regions of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and ran from New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts.\nNew Haven was to be the site of the first college for African Americans in the United States, but the plan was obstructed by efforts led by Yale Law School founder and former New Haven Mayor David Daggett, who went on to serve as a U.S. Senator and judge on Connecticut's highest court. Daggett denigrated African Americans, denied they were citizens, and presided over the trial of a woman persecuted for trying to admit an African American girl to her boarding school and, having that effort blocked, running a boarding school for African American girls.\nNew Haven was home to one of the important early events in the burgeoning anti-slavery movement when, in 1839, the trial of mutineering Mende tribesmen being transported as slaves on the Spanish slaveship \"Amistad\" was held in New Haven's United States District Court. There is a statue of Joseph Cinqu\u00e9, the informal leader of the slaves, beside City Hall. See \"Museums\" below for more information. Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech on slavery in New Haven in 1860, shortly before he secured the Republican nomination for President.\nThe American Civil War boosted the local economy with wartime purchases of industrial goods, including that of the New Haven Arms Company, which would later become the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. (Winchester would continue to produce arms in New Haven until 2006, and many of the buildings that were a part of the Winchester plant are now a part of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company Historic District). After the war, population grew and doubled by the start of the 20th century, most notably due to the influx of immigrants from southern Europe, particularly Italy. Today, roughly half the populations of East Haven, West Haven, and North Haven are Italian-American. Jewish immigration to New Haven has left an enduring mark on the city. Westville was the center of Jewish life in New Haven, though today many have fanned out to suburban communities such as Woodbridge and Cheshire. Lowell House, the city's first settlement, opened in 1900.\nPost-industrial era and urban redevelopment.\nNew Haven's expansion continued during the two World Wars, with most new inhabitants being African Americans from the American South, and Puerto Ricans. The city reached its peak population after World War II. The area of New Haven is only , encouraging further development of new housing after 1950 in adjacent, suburban towns. Moreover, as in other U.S. cities in the 1950s, New Haven began to suffer white flight of middle-class workers. One author suggested that aggressive redlining and rezoning made it difficult for residents to obtain financing for older, deteriorating urban housing stock, thereby condemning such structures to deterioration.\nIn 1954, then-mayor Richard C. Lee began some of the earliest major urban renewal projects in the United States. Certain sections of downtown New Haven were redeveloped to include museums, new office towers, a hotel, and large shopping complexes. Other parts of the city, particularly the Wooster Square and Fair Haven neighborhoods were affected by the construction of Interstate 95 along the Long Wharf section, Interstate 91, and the Oak Street Connector. The Oak Street Connector (Route 34), running between Interstate 95, downtown, and The Hill neighborhood, was originally intended as a highway to the city's western suburbs but was only completed as a highway to the downtown area, with the area to the west becoming a boulevard (See \"Redevelopment\" below).\nIn 1970, a series of criminal prosecutions against various members of the Black Panther Party took place in New Haven, inciting mass protests on the New Haven Green involving twelve thousand demonstrators and many well-known New Left political activists. (See \"Political Culture\" below for more information). From the 1960s through the early 1990s, some areas of New Haven continued to decline both economically and in terms of population despite attempts to resurrect certain neighborhoods through renewal projects. In conjunction with its declining population, New Haven experienced a steep rise in its crime rate.\nSince approximately 2000, many parts of downtown New Haven have been revitalized with new restaurants, nightlife, and small retail stores. In particular, the area surrounding the New Haven Green has experienced an influx of apartments and condominiums. In addition, two new supermarkets opened to serve downtown's growing residential population: a Stop & Shop opened just west of downtown, while Elm City Market, located one block from the Green, opened in 2011. The recent turnaround of downtown New Haven has received positive press from various periodicals.\nMajor projects include the current construction of a new campus for Gateway Community College downtown, and also a 32-story, 500-unit apartment/retail building called 360 State Street. The 360 State Street project is now occupied and is the largest residential building in Connecticut. A new boathouse and dock is planned for New Haven Harbor, and the linear park Farmington Canal Trail is set to extend into downtown New Haven within the coming year. Additionally, foundation and ramp work to widen I-95 to create a new harbor crossing for New Haven, with an extradosed bridge to replace the 1950s-era Q Bridge, has begun. The city still hopes to redevelop the site of the New Haven Coliseum, which was demolished in 2007.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 18 white firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no black firefighters scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. In the subsequent \"Ricci v. DeStefano\" decision the court found 5\u20134 that New Haven's decision to ignore the test results violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a result, a district court subsequently ordered the city to promote 14 of the white firefighters.\nIn 2010 and 2011, state and federal funds were awarded to Connecticut (and Massachusetts) to construct the Hartford Line, with a southern terminus at New Haven's Union Station and a northern terminus at Springfield's Union Station. According to the White House, \"This corridor [currently] has one train per day connecting communities in Connecticut and Massachusetts to the Northeast Corridor and Vermont. The vision for this corridor is to restore the alignment to its original route via the Knowledge Corridor in western Massachusetts, improving trip time and increasing the population base that can be served.\" Set for construction in 2013, the \"Knowledge Corridor high speed intercity passenger rail\" project will cost approximately $1\u00a0billion, and the ultimate northern terminus for the project is reported to be Montreal in Canada. Train speeds between will reportedly exceed and increase both cities' rail traffic exponentially.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 6.67%, is water.\nNew Haven's best-known geographic features are its large, shallow harbor, and two reddish basalt trap rock ridges which rise to the northeast and northwest of the city core. These trap rocks are known respectively as East Rock and West Rock, and both serve as extensive parks. West Rock has been tunneled through to make way for the east\u2013west passage of the Wilbur Cross Parkway (the only highway tunnel through a natural obstacle in Connecticut), and once served as the hideout of the \"Regicides\" (see: Regicides Trail). Most New Haveners refer to these men as \"The Three Judges\". East Rock features the prominent Soldiers and Sailors war monument on its peak as well as the \"Great/Giant Steps\" which run up the rock's cliffside.\nThe city is drained by three rivers; the West, Mill, and Quinnipiac, named in order from west to east. The West River discharges into West Haven Harbor, while the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers discharge into New Haven Harbor. Both harbors are embayments of Long Island Sound. In addition, several smaller streams flow through the city's neighborhoods, including Wintergreen Brook, the Beaver Ponds Outlet, Wilmot Brook, Belden Brook, and Prospect Creek. Not all of these small streams have continuous flow year-round.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen classification, New Haven experiences a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\"), bordering a hot-summer humid continental climate (\"Dfa\"). The city has hot, humid summers and cool to cold winters. From May to late September, the weather is typically hot and humid, with average temperatures exceeding on 70 days per year. In summer, the Bermuda High creates as southern flow of warm and humid air, with frequent (but brief) thundershowers. October to early December is normally mild to cool late in the season, while early spring (April) can be cool to warm. Winters are more variable, with cool to cold temperatures, mixed with warmer spells, with both rain and snow fall.\nWhile the weather patterns that affect New Haven result from a primarily offshore direction, thus reducing the marine influence of Long Island Sound, the location on Long Island Sound often influences the weather along the coastline compared to inland. During summer heat waves, temperatures may reach or higher on occasion with heat-index values of over . Tropical cyclones have struck New Haven in the past, including 1938 Hurricane (Long Island Express), Hurricane Carol in 1954, Hurricane Gloria in 1985. The hardiness zone is 7a.\nStreetscape.\nNew Haven has a long tradition of urban planning and a purposeful design for the city's layout. The city could be argued to have some of the first preconceived layouts in the country. Upon founding, New Haven was laid out in a grid plan of nine square blocks; the central square was left open, in the tradition of many New England towns, as the city green (a commons area). The city also instituted the first public tree planting program in America. As in other cities, many of the elms that gave New Haven the nickname \"Elm City\" perished in the mid-20th century due to Dutch elm disease, although many have since been replanted. The New Haven Green is currently home to three separate historic churches which speak to the original theocratic nature of the city. The Green remains the social center of the city today. It was named a National Historic Landmark in 1970.\nDowntown New Haven, occupied by nearly 7,000 residents, has a more residential character than most downtowns. The downtown area provides about half of the city's jobs and half of its tax base and in recent years has become filled with dozens of new upscale restaurants, in addition to shops and thousands of apartments and condominium units which subsequently help overall growth of the city.\nNeighborhoods.\nThe city has many distinct neighborhoods. In addition to Downtown, centered on the central business district and the Green, are the following neighborhoods: the west central neighborhoods of Dixwell and Dwight; the southern neighborhoods of The Hill, historic water-front City Point (or Oyster Point), and the harborside district of Long Wharf; the western neighborhoods of Beaver Hills, Edgewood, West River, Westville, Amity, and West Rock-Westhills; East Rock, Cedar Hill, Prospect Hill, and Newhallville in the northern side of town; the east central neighborhoods of Mill River and Wooster Square, an Italian-American neighborhood; Fair Haven, an immigrant community located between the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers; Quinnipiac Meadows and Fair Haven Heights across the Quinnipiac River; and facing the eastern side of the harbor, The Annex and East Shore (or Morris Cove).\nDemographics.\nCensus data.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nThe U.S. Census Bureau reports a 2010 population of 129,779, with 47,094 households and 25,854 families within the city of New Haven. The population density was . There were 52,941 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 42.6% White, 35.4% African American, 0.5% Native American, 4.6% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 12.9% from other races, and 3.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 27.4% of the population. Non-Hispanic Whites were 31.8% of the population in 2010, down from 69.6% in 1970. The city's Latino population is growing rapidly. Previous influxes among ethnic groups have been African-Americans in the postwar era, and Irish, Italian and (to a lesser degree) Slavic peoples in the prewar period.\nAs of the 2010 census, of the 47,094 households, 29.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 27.5% include married couples living together, 22.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 36.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.5% had someone living alone who was 65\u00a0years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40 and the average family size 3.19.\nThe ages of New Haven's residents were 25.4% under the age of 18, 16.4% from 18 to 24, 31.2% from 25 to 44, 16.7% from 45 to 64, and 10.2% who were 65\u00a0years of age or older. The median age was 29\u00a0years, which was significantly lower than the national average. There were 91.8 males per 100 females. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.6 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $29,604, and the median income for a family was $35,950. Median income for males was $33,605, compared with $28,424 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,393. About 20.5% of families and 24.4% of the population were living below the poverty line, including 32.2% of those under age 18 and 17.9% of those age 65 or over.\nOther data.\nIt is estimated that 14% of New Haven residents are pedestrian commuters, ranking it number four by highest percentage in the United States. This is primarily due to New Haven's small area and the presence of Yale University.\nNew Haven is noted for having the highest percentage of Italian American residents of any US city, and is noted for its local style of pizza.\nA study of the demographics of the New Haven metro area, based on age, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity, found that they were the closest of any American city to the national average.\nEconomy.\nNew Haven's economy originally was based in manufacturing, but the postwar period brought rapid industrial decline; the entire Northeast was affected, and medium-sized cities with large working-class populations, like New Haven, were hit particularly hard. Simultaneously, the growth and expansion of Yale University further affected the economic shift. Today, over half (56%) of the city's economy is now made up of services, in particular education and health care; Yale is the city's largest employer, followed by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital. Other large employers include Southern Connecticut State University, Assa Abloy lock manufacturing, the Knights of Columbus headquarters, Higher One, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Covidien and United Illuminating. Clothing stores Gant and Ann Taylor were founded in the city.\nIn 2017, New Haven was ranked by a Verizon study as one of the top 10 cities in America for launching tech startups, and top two in New England.\nIndustry sectors: Agriculture (.6%), Construction and Mining (4.9%), Manufacturing (2.9%), Transportation and Utilities (2.9%), Trade (21.7%), Finance and Real Estate (7.1%), Services (55.9%), Government (4.0%)\nHeadquarters.\nThe Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization and a Fortune 1000 company, is headquartered in New Haven. Amphenol, based in Greater New Haven (Wallingford), is a Fortune 100 company. Eight Courant 100 companies are based in Greater New Haven, with four headquartered in New Haven proper. New Haven-based companies traded on stock exchanges include NewAlliance Bank, the second largest bank in Connecticut and fourth-largest in New England (NYSE: NAL), Higher One Holdings (NYSE: ONE), a financial services firm, United Illuminating, the electricity distributor for southern Connecticut (NYSE: UIL), and Transpro Inc. (AMEX: TPR). The American division of Assa Abloy (one of the world's leading manufacturers of locks) is located in the city. The Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET) began operations in the city as the District Telephone Company of New Haven in 1878; the company remains headquartered in New Haven as a subsidiary of Frontier Communications and provides telephone service for all but two municipalities in Connecticut. SeeClickFix was founded and has been headquartered in the city since 2007. Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company (a candy-making division of the Hershey Company) was formerly located in the city. Achillion Pharmaceuticals and Alexion Pharmaceuticals were also formerly headquartered in New Haven.\nLaw and government.\nPolitical structure.\nNew Haven is governed via the mayor-council system. Connecticut municipalities (like those of neighboring states Massachusetts and Rhode Island) provide nearly all local services (such as fire and rescue, education, snow removal, etc.), as county government has been abolished since 1960.\nNew Haven County merely refers to a grouping of towns and a judicial district, not a governmental entity. New Haven is a member of the South Central Connecticut Regional Council of Governments (SCRCOG), a regional agency created to facilitate coordination between area municipal governments and state and federal agencies, in the absence of county government.\nJustin Elicker is the mayor of New Haven. He was sworn in as the 51st mayor of New Haven on January 1, 2020.\nThe city council, called the Board of Alders, consists of thirty members, each elected from single-member wards. Each of the 30 wards consists of slightly over 4,300 residents; redistricting takes place every ten years.\nThe city is overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2017, of the town's 83,694 voters, 66% were registered as Democrats (\u22124% since 2015), 4% were registered as Republicans (+1%), and 29% were unaffiliated (+3). The board of alders is dominated by Democrats; a Republican has not served as a New Haven alder since 2011.\nNew Haven is served by the New Haven Police Department, which had 443 sworn officers in 2011. The city is also served by the New Haven Fire Department.\nNew Haven lies within Connecticut's 3rd congressional district and has been represented by Rosa DeLauro since 1991. Martin Looney and Gary Holder-Winfield represent New Haven in the Connecticut State Senate, and the city lies within six districts (numbers 92 through 97) of the Connecticut House of Representatives.\nThe Greater New Haven area is served by the New Haven Judicial District Court and the New Haven Superior Court, both headquartered at the New Haven County Courthouse. The federal District Court for the District of Connecticut has a New Haven facility, the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse.\nPolitical history.\nNew Haven is the birthplace of former president George W. Bush, who was born when his father, former president George H. W. Bush, was living in New Haven while a student at Yale. In addition to being the site of the college educations of both Presidents Bush, as Yale students, New Haven was also the temporary home of former presidents William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, and Bill Clinton, as well as Secretary of State John Kerry. President Clinton met his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while the two were students at Yale Law School. Former vice presidents John C. Calhoun and Dick Cheney also studied in New Haven (although the latter did not graduate from Yale). Before the 2008 election, the last time there was not a person with ties to New Haven and Yale on either major party's ticket was 1968. James Hillhouse, a New Haven native, served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate in 1801.\nNew Haven voters overwhelmingly supported Al Gore in the 2000 election, Yale graduate John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. In the 2008 election, New Haven County was third among all Connecticut counties in campaign contributions, after Fairfield and Hartford counties. (Connecticut, in turn, was ranked 14th among all states in total campaign contributions.)\nNew Haven was the subject of \" Who Governs? Democracy and Power in An American City\", a very influential book in political science by preeminent Yale professor Robert A. Dahl, which includes an extensive history of the city and thorough description of its politics in the 1950s. New Haven's theocratic history is also mentioned several times by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic volume on 19th-century American political life, \"Democracy in America\". New Haven was the residence of conservative thinker William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1951, when he wrote his influential \"God and Man at Yale\". William Lee Miller's \"The Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society\" (1966) similarly explores the relationship between local politics in New Haven and national political movements, focusing on Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and urban renewal.\nGeorge Williamson Crawford, a Yale Law School graduate, served as the city's first black corporation counsel from 1954 to 1962, under Mayor Richard C. Lee.\nIn 1970, the New Haven Black Panther trials took place, the largest and longest trials in Connecticut history. Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale and ten other party members were tried for murdering an alleged informant. Beginning on May Day, the city became a center of protest for 12,000 Panther supporters, college students, and New Left activists (including Jean Genet, Benjamin Spock, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and John Froines), who amassed on the New Haven Green, across the street from where the trials were being held. Violent confrontations between the demonstrators and the New Haven Police occurred, and several bombs were set off in the area by radicals. The event became a rallying point for the New Left and critics of the Nixon Administration.\nDuring the summer of 2007, New Haven was the center of protests by anti-immigration groups who opposed the city's program of offering municipal ID cards, known as the Elm City Resident Card, to illegal immigrants. In 2008, the country of Ecuador opened a consulate in New Haven to serve the large Ecuadorean immigrant population in the area. It is the first foreign mission to open in New Haven since Italy opened a consulate (now closed) in the city in 1910.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 20 white and Hispanic firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no blacks scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. On June 29, 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the firefighters, agreeing that they were improperly denied promotion because of their race. The case, \"Ricci v. DeStefano\", became highly publicized and brought national attention to New Haven politics due to the involvement of then-Supreme Court nominee (and Yale Law School graduate) Sonia Sotomayor in a lower court decision.\nGarry Trudeau, creator of the political \"Doonesbury\" comic strip, attended Yale University. There he met fellow student and later Green Party candidate for Congress Charles Pillsbury, a long-time New Haven resident for whom Trudeau's comic strip is named. During his college years, Pillsbury was known by the nickname \"The Doones\". A theory of international law, which argues for a sociological normative approach in regards to jurisprudence, is named the New Haven Approach, after the city. Connecticut US senator Richard Blumenthal is a Yale graduate, as is former Connecticut US Senator Joe Lieberman who also was a New Haven resident for many years, before moving back to his hometown of Stamford.\nCrime.\nCrime increased in the 1990s, with New Haven having one of the ten highest violent crime rates per capita in the United States. In the late 1990s New Haven's crime began to stabilize. The city, adopting a policy of community policing, saw crime rates drop during the 2000s.\nViolent crime levels vary dramatically among New Haven's neighborhoods, with some areas having crime rates in line with the state of Connecticut average, and others having extremely high rates of crime. A 2011 New Haven Health Department report identifies these issues in greater detail.\nIn 2010, New Haven ranked as the 18th most dangerous city in the United States (albeit below the safety benchmark of 200.00 for the second consecutive year). However, according to a completely different analysis conducted by the \"24/7 Wall Street Blog\", in 2011 New Haven had risen to become the fourth most dangerous city in the United States, and was widely cited in the press as such.\nHowever, an analysis by the Regional Data Cooperative for Greater New Haven, Inc., has shown that due to issues of comparative denominators and other factors, such municipality-based rankings can be considered inaccurate. For example, two cities of identical population can cover widely differing land areas, making such analyses irrelevant. The research organization called for comparisons based on neighborhoods, blocks, or standard methodologies (similar to those used by Brookings, DiversityData, and other established institutions), not based on municipalities.\nEducation.\nColleges and universities.\nNew Haven is a notable center for higher education. Yale University, at the heart of downtown, is one of the city's best known features and its largest employer. New Haven is also home to Southern Connecticut State University, part of the Connecticut State University System, and Albertus Magnus College, a private institution. Gateway Community College has a campus in downtown New Haven, formerly located in the Long Wharf district; Gateway consolidated into one campus downtown into a new state-of-the-art campus (on the site of the old Macy's building) and was open for the Fall 2012 semester.\nThere are several institutions immediately outside of New Haven, as well. Quinnipiac University and the Paier College of Art are located just to the north, in the town of Hamden. The University of New Haven is located not in New Haven but in neighboring West Haven.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nNew Haven Public Schools is the school district serving the city. Wilbur Cross High School and Hillhouse High School are New Haven's two largest public secondary schools.\nHopkins School, a private school, was founded in 1660 and is the fifth-oldest educational institution in the United States. New Haven is home to a number of other private schools as well as public magnet schools, including Metropolitan Business Academy, High School in the Community, Hill Regional Career High School, Co-op High School, New Haven Academy, Edgewood Magnet School, ACES Educational Center for the Arts, the Foote School and the Sound School, all of which draw students from New Haven and suburban towns. New Haven is also home to two Achievement First charter schools, Amistad Academy and Elm City College Prep, and to Common Ground, an environmental charter school.\nThe city is renowned for its progressive school lunch programs, and participation in statewide bussing efforts toward increased diversity in schools.\nCulture.\nCuisine.\nLivability.com named New Haven as the Best Foodie City in the country in 2014. There are dozens of Zagat-rated restaurants in New Haven, the most in Connecticut and the third most in New England (after Boston and Cambridge). More than 120 restaurants are located within two blocks of the New Haven Green. The city is home to an eclectic mix of ethnic restaurants and small markets specializing in various foreign foods. Represented cuisines include Malaysian, Ethiopian, Spanish, Belgian, French, Greek, Latin American, Mexican, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Cuban, Peruvian, Syrian/Lebanese, and Turkish.\nNew Haven's greatest culinary claim to fame may be its pizza, which has been claimed to be among the best in the country, or even in the world. New Haven-style pizza, called \"apizza\", made its debut at the iconic Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana (known as Pepe's) in 1925. Apizza is baked in coal- or wood-fired brick ovens, and is notable for its thin crust. Apizza may be red (with a tomato-based sauce) or white (with a sauce of garlic and olive oil), and pies ordered \"plain\" are made without the otherwise customary mozzarella (originally smoked mozzarella, known as \"scamorza\" in Italian). A white clam pie is a well-known specialty of the restaurants on Wooster Street in the Little Italy section of New Haven, including Pepe's and Sally's Apizza (which opened in 1938). Modern Apizza on State Street, which opened in 1934, is also well-known.\nA second New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Louis' Lunch, which is located in a small brick building on Crown Street and has been serving fast food since 1895. Though fiercely debated, the restaurant's founder Louis Lassen is credited by the Library of Congress with inventing the hamburger and steak sandwich. Louis' Lunch broils hamburgers, steak sandwiches and hot dogs vertically in original antique 1898 cast iron stoves using gridirons, patented by local resident Luigi Pieragostini in 1939, that hold the meat in place while it cooks.\nA third New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Miya's, the first sustainable sushi restaurant in the world. Miya's, founded by Chef Yoshiko Lai in 1982, featured the first sustainable seafood-based sushi menu, the first plant-based sushi menu, and the first invasive species menu in the world. Second generation Miya's chef, Bun Lai, is the 2016 White House Champions of Change for Sustainable Seafood and a James Beard Foundation Award nominee. Chef Bun Lai is credited as the first chef in the world for implementing a sustainability paradigm to the cuisine of sushi.\nDuring weekday lunchtime, over 150 lunch carts and food trucks cater to diners around the city. The carts and food trucks cluster at four main points: on Long Wharf Drive, along the city's shoreline with quick access off Interstate 95, by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital in the center of the Hospital Green (Cedar and York streets), by Yale's Trumbull College (Elm and York streets), and on the intersection of Prospect and Sachem streets by the Yale School of Management.\nPopular farmers' markets, managed by the local non-profit CitySeed, set up shop weekly in several neighborhoods, including Westville/Edgewood Park, Fair Haven, Upper State Street, Wooster Square, and Downtown/New Haven Green.\nA large grocery store, the Elm City Market, opened on 360 State Street in New Haven in early fall 2011 and served local produce and groceries to the community. Originally, the market was a member-owned co-op, but debt defaults in August 2014 forced a sale of the business. It is now an employee-owned business; the co-op's previous owners received no equity in the new business.\nIn the past several years, two separate Downtown food tour companies have started offering popular restaurant tours on weekends.\nTaste of New Haven Tours offers several different weekly restaurant/bar tours and a popular pizza, bike, and pints tour. Culinary Walking Tours offers monthly restaurant tours and sponsors an annual Elm City Iron Chef competition.\nTheatre and film.\nThe city hosts numerous theatres and production houses, including the Yale Repertory Theatre, the Long Wharf Theatre, and the Shubert Theatre. There is also theatre activity from the Yale School of Drama, which works through the Yale University Theatre and the student-run Yale Cabaret. Southern Connecticut State University hosts the Lyman Center for the Performing Arts. The shuttered Palace Theatre (opposite the Shubert Theatre) was renovated and reopened as the College Street Music Hall in May 2015. Smaller theatres include the Little Theater on Lincoln Street. Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School also has a theatre on College Street. The theatre is used for student productions, and is the home to weekly services to a local non-denominational church, the City Church New Haven.\nThe Shubert Theatre once premiered many major theatrical productions before their Broadway debuts. Productions that premiered at the Shubert include \"Oklahoma!\" (which was also written in New Haven), \"Carousel\", \"South Pacific\", \"My Fair Lady\", \"The King and I\", and \"The Sound of Music\", and the Tennessee Williams play \"A Streetcar Named Desire\".\nBow Tie Cinemas owns and operates the Criterion Cinemas, the first new movie theater to open in New Haven in over 30 years and the first luxury movie complex in the city's history. The Criterion has seven screens and opened in November 2004, showing a mix of upscale first run commercial and independent film.\nMuseums.\nNew Haven has a variety of museums, many of them associated with Yale. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library features an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible. There is also the Connecticut Children's Museum; the Knights of Columbus museum near that organization's world headquarters; the Peabody Museum of Natural History; the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments; the Eli Whitney Museum (across the town line in Hamden, Connecticut, on Whitney Avenue); the Yale Center for British Art, which houses the largest collection of British art outside the U.K., and the Yale University Art Gallery, the western hemisphere's oldest college art museum. New Haven is also home to the New Haven Museum and Historical Society on Whitney Avenue, which has a library of many primary source treasures dating from Colonial times to the present.\nArtspace on Orange Street is one of several contemporary art galleries around the city, showcasing the work of local, national, and international artists. Others include City Gallery and A. Leaf Gallery in the downtown area. Westville galleries include Kehler Liddell, Jennifer Jane Gallery, and The Hungry Eye. The Erector Square complex in the Fair Haven neighborhood houses, the Parachute Factory gallery along with numerous artist studios, and the complex serves as an active destination during City-Wide Open Studios held yearly in October.\nNew Haven is the home port of a life-size replica of the historical \"Freedom Schooner Amistad\", which is open for tours at Long Wharf pier at certain times during the summer. Also at Long Wharf pier is the \"Quinnipiack\" schooner, offering sailing cruises of the harbor area throughout the summer. The \"Quinnipiack\" also functions as a floating classroom for hundreds of local students.\nMusic.\nThe New Haven Green is the site of many free music concerts, especially during the summer months. These have included the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the July Free Concerts on the Green, and the New Haven Jazz Festival in August. The Jazz Festival, which began in 1982, is one of the longest-running free outdoor festivals in the U.S., until it was canceled for 2007. Headliners such as Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles and Celia Cruz have historically drawn 30,000 to 50,000 fans, filling up the New Haven Green to capacity. The New Haven Jazz Festival was revived in 2008 and has been sponsored since by Jazz Haven.\nNew Haven is home to the concert venue Toad's Place, and a new venue, College Street Music Hall. The city has retained an alternative art and music underground that has helped to influence post-punk era music movements such as indie, college rock and underground hip-hop.\nThe Yale School of Music contributes to the city's music scene by offering hundreds of free concerts throughout the year at venues in and around the Yale campus. Large performances are held in the 2,700-seat Woolsey Hall auditorium, which contains the world's largest symphonic organs, while chamber music and recitals are performed in Sprague Hall.\nHardcore band Hatebreed are from Wallingford, but got their start in New Haven under the name Jasta 14. The band Miracle Legion formed in New Haven in 1983. Folk musicians from New Haven include Loren Mazzacane Connors and Kath Bloom.\nThe Hillhouse Opera Company is a U.S. non-profit opera company based in New Haven that performs in the New Haven area. Founded in 2008 by Victoria Leigh Gardner, Nicole Rodriguez and Jim Coatsworth Hillhouse Opera Company has performed operas as well as opera scenes programs, master classes and concert series. In 2011, the Company professionally staged the works created through the Riverview Opera Project. The Riverview Opera Project created workshops for children and adolescents at Riverview Hospital, Connecticut's only state-funded psychiatric hospital for youth, and helped them to successfully create, produce, and perform four original operas.\nFestivals.\nIn addition to the Jazz Festival (described above), New Haven serves as the home city of the annual International Festival of Arts and Ideas. New Haven's Saint Patrick's Day parade, which began in 1842, is New England's oldest and draws the largest crowds of any one-day spectator event in Connecticut. The St. Andrew the Apostle Italian Festival has taken place in the historic Wooster Square neighborhood every year since 1900. Other parishes in the city celebrate the Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua and a carnival in honor of St. Bernadette Soubirous. New Haven celebrates Powder House Day every April on the New Haven Green to commemorate the city's entrance into the Revolutionary War. The annual Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival commemorates the 1973 planting of 72 Yoshino Japanese cherry blossom trees by the New Haven Historic Commission in collaboration with the New Haven Parks Department and residents of the neighborhood. The Festival now draws well over 5,000 visitors. The Film Fest New Haven has been held annually since 1995.\nNightlife.\nIn the past decade downtown has seen an influx of new restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Large crowds are drawn to the Crown Street area downtown on weekends where many of the restaurants and bars are located. Crown Street between State and High Streets has dozens of establishments, as do nearby Temple and College Streets. Away from downtown, Upper State Street has a number of restaurants and bars popular with local residents and weekend visitors.\nNewspapers and media.\nNew Haven is served by the daily \"New Haven Register\", the weekly \"alternative\" \"New Haven Advocate\" (which is run by Tribune, the corporation owning the \"Hartford Courant\"), the online daily \"New Haven Independent\", and the monthly \"Grand News Community Newspaper.\" Downtown New Haven is covered by an in-depth civic news forum, Design New Haven. The \"Register\" also backs \"PLAY\" magazine, a weekly entertainment publication. The city is also served by several student-run papers, including the \"Yale Daily News\", the weekly \"Yale Herald\" and a humor tabloid, \"Rumpus Magazine\".\nWTNH Channel 8, the ABC affiliate for Connecticut, WCTX Channel 59, the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the state, Connecticut Public Television station WEDY channel 65, a PBS affiliate, and WTXX Channel 34, the IntrigueTV affiliate, broadcast from New Haven. All New York City news and sports team stations broadcast to New Haven County.\nSports and athletics.\nNew Haven has a history of professional sports franchises dating back to the 19th century and has been the home to professional baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer teams\u2014including the New York Giants of the National Football League from 1973 to 1974, who played at the Yale Bowl. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, New Haven consistently had minor league hockey and baseball teams, which played at the New Haven Arena (built in 1926, demolished in 1972), New Haven Coliseum (1972\u20132002), and Yale Field (1928\u2013present).\nWhen John DeStefano, Jr., became mayor of New Haven in 1995, he outlined a plan to transform the city into a major cultural and arts center in the Northeast, which involved investments in programs and projects other than sports franchises. As nearby Bridgeport built new sports facilities, the brutalist New Haven Coliseum rapidly deteriorated. Believing the upkeep on the venue to be a drain of tax dollars, the DeStefano administration closed the Coliseum in 2002; it was demolished in 2007. New Haven's last professional sports team, the New Haven County Cutters, left in 2009. The DeStefano administration did, however, see the construction of the New Haven Athletic Center in 1998, a indoor athletic facility with a seating capacity of over 3,000. The NHAC, built adjacent to Hillhouse High School, is used for New Haven public schools athletics, as well as large-scale area and state sporting events; it is the largest high school indoor sports complex in the state.\nNew Haven was the host of the 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games; then-President Bill Clinton spoke at the opening ceremonies. The city is home to the Pilot Pen International tennis event, which takes place every August at the Connecticut Tennis Center, one of the largest tennis venues in the world. New Haven biannually hosts \"The Game\" between Yale and Harvard, the country's second-oldest college football rivalry. Numerous road races take place in New Haven, including the USATF 20K Championship during the New Haven Road Race.\nGreater New Haven is home to a number of college sports teams. The Yale Bulldogs play Division I college sports, as do the Quinnipiac Bobcats in neighboring Hamden. Division II athletics are played by Southern Connecticut State University and the University of New Haven (actually located in neighboring West Haven), while Albertus Magnus College athletes perform at the Division III level.\nNew Haven is home to many New York Yankees, New York Mets, & Boston Red Sox fans due to the proximity of New York City & Boston.\nWalter Camp, deemed the \"father of American football\", was a New Havener.\nThe New Haven Warriors rugby league team play in the AMNRL. They have a large number of Pacific Islanders playing for them. Their field is located at the West Haven High School's Ken Strong Stadium. They won the 2008 AMNRL Grand Final.\nStructures.\nArchitecture.\nNew Haven has many architectural landmarks dating from every important time period and architectural style in American history. The city has been home to a number of architects and architectural firms that have left their mark on the city including Ithiel Town and Henry Austin in the 19th century and Cesar Pelli, Warren Platner, Kevin Roche, Herbert Newman and Barry Svigals in the 20th. The Yale School of Architecture has fostered this important component of the city's economy. Cass Gilbert, of the Beaux-Arts school, designed New Haven's Union Station and the New Haven Free Public Library and was also commissioned for a City Beautiful plan in 1919. Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, Alexander Jackson Davis, Philip C. Johnson, Gordon Bunshaft, Louis Kahn, James Gamble Rogers, Frank Gehry, Charles Willard Moore, Stefan Behnisch, James Polshek, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen and Robert Venturi all have designed buildings in New Haven. Yale's 1950s-era Ingalls Rink, designed by Eero Saarinen, was included on the \"America's Favorite Architecture\" list created in 2007.\nSeveral residential homes in New Haven were designed by Alice Washburn, a noted female architect whose Colonial Revival style set a standard for homes in the region.\nMany of the city's neighborhoods are well-preserved as walkable \"museums\" of 19th- and 20th-century American architecture, particularly by the New Haven Green, Hillhouse Avenue and other residential sections close to Downtown New Haven. Overall, a large proportion of the city's land area is National (NRHP) historic districts. One of the best sources on local architecture is \"New Haven: Architecture and Urban Design\", by Elizabeth Mills Brown.\nThe five tallest buildings in New Haven are:\nHistoric points of interest.\nMany historical sites exist throughout the city, including 59 properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Of these, nine are among the 60 U.S. National Historic Landmarks in Connecticut. The New Haven Green, one of the National Historic Landmarks, was formed in 1638, and is home to three 19th-century churches. Below the First Church of Christ in New Haven (referred to as the Center Church on the Green) lies a 17th-century crypt, which is open to visitors. Some of the more famous burials include the first wife of Benedict Arnold and the aunt and grandmother of President Rutherford B. Hayes; Hayes visited the crypt while President in 1880. The Old Campus of Yale University is located next to the Green, and includes Connecticut Hall, Yale's oldest building and a National Historic Landmark. The Hillhouse Avenue area, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a part of Yale's campus, has been called a walkable museum, due to its 19th-century mansions and street scape; Charles Dickens is said to have called Hillhouse Avenue \"the most beautiful street in America\" when visiting the city in 1868.\nIn 1660, Edward Whalley (a cousin and friend of Oliver Cromwell) and William Goffe, two English Civil War generals who signed the death warrant of King Charles I, hid in a rock formation in New Haven after having fled England upon the restoration of Charles II to the English throne. They were later joined by a third regicide, John Dixwell. The rock formation, which is now a part of West Rock Park, is known as Judges' Cave, and the path leading to the cave is called the Regicides Trail.\nAfter the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, the Connecticut colonial government ordered the construction of Black Rock Fort (to be built on top of an older 17th-century fort) to protect the port of New Haven. In 1779, during the Battle of New Haven, British soldiers captured Black Rock Fort and burned the barracks to the ground. The fort was reconstructed in 1807 by the federal government (on orders from the Thomas Jefferson administration), and rechristened Fort Nathan Hale, after the Revolutionary War hero who had lived in New Haven. The cannons of Fort Nathan Hale were successful in defying British war ships during the War of 1812. In 1863, during the Civil War, a second Fort Hale was built next to the original, complete with bomb-resistant bunkers and a moat, to defend the city should a Southern raid against New Haven be launched. The United States Congress deeded the site to the state in 1921, and all three versions of the fort have been restored. The site is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and receives thousands of visitors each year.\nGrove Street Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark which lies adjacent to Yale's campus, contains the graves of Roger Sherman, Eli Whitney, Noah Webster, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Charles Goodyear and Walter Camp, among other notable burials. The cemetery is noted for its Egyptian Revival gateway, and is the oldest planned burial ground in the United States. The Union League Club of New Haven building, located on Chapel Street, is notable for not only being a historic Beaux-Arts building, but also is built on the site where Roger Sherman's home once stood; George Washington is known to have stayed at the Sherman residence while President in 1789 (one of three times Washington visited New Haven throughout his lifetime).\nTwo sites pay homage to the time President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft lived in the city, as both a student and later Professor at Yale: a plaque on Prospect Street marks the site where Taft's home formerly stood, and downtown's Taft Apartment Building (formerly the Taft Hotel) bears the name of the former president who resided in the building for eight years before becoming Chief Justice of the United States.\nLighthouse Point Park, a public beach run by the city, was a popular tourist destination during the Roaring Twenties, attracting luminaries of the period such as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. The park remains popular among New Haveners, and is home to the Five Mile Point Lighthouse, constructed in 1847, and the Lighthouse Point Carousel, constructed in 1916. Five Mile Point Light was decommissioned in 1877 following the construction of Southwest Ledge Light at the entrance of the harbor, which remains in service to this day. Both of the lighthouses and the carousel are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nOther historic sites in the city include the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, which stands at the summit of East Rock, the Marsh Botanical Garden, Wooster Square, Dwight Street, Louis' Lunch, and the Farmington Canal, all of which date back to the 19th century. Other historic parks besides the Green include Edgerton Park, Edgewood Park, and East Rock Park, each of which is included on the National Register of Historic Places.\nTransportation.\nRail.\nNew Haven has two railroad stations, connected to New York City and points along the Northeast Corridor by commuter rail, regional rail and inter-city rail. Service is provided by:\nThe city's main railroad station is the historic Beaux-Arts Union Station, which serves Metro-North, Hartford Line, and Shore Line East commuter trains. Approximately 175 trains serve Union Station on weekdays. Union Station is also served by four Amtrak lines: the \"Northeast Regional\" and the high-speed \"Acela Express\" provide service to New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston, and rank as the first and second busiest routes in the country; the New Haven\u2013Springfield Line provides service to Hartford and Springfield, Massachusetts; and the \"Vermonter\" provides service to both Washington, D.C., and Vermont, from the Canada\u2013US border.\nAn additional station, State Street Station, was opened in 2002, providing passengers easier access to downtown New Haven. State Street Station is currently serviced by Shore Line East and Hartford Line trains, plus some peak-hour Metro-North trips.\nBus.\nThe New Haven Division of Connecticut Transit (CT Transit), the state's bus system, is the second largest division in the state with 24 routes. All routes originate from the New Haven Green, making it the central transfer hub of the city. Service is provided to 19 different municipalities throughout Greater New Haven. Bus routes were formerly identified by letters, but as of October 8, 2017, all service was renamed using 200-series numbers, in accordance with a renumbering of CTtransit's statewide services.\nCT Transit's Union Station Shuttle provides free service from Union Station to the New Haven Green and several New Haven parking garages. Peter Pan and Greyhound bus lines have scheduled stops at Union Station, and connections downtown can be made via the Union Station Shuttle. A private company operates the New Haven/Hartford Express which provides commuter bus service to Hartford. The Yale University Shuttle provides free transportation around New Haven for Yale students, faculty, and staff.\nThe New Haven Division buses follow routes that had originally been covered by trolley service. Horse-drawn streetcars began operating in New Haven in the 1860s, and by the mid-1890s all the lines had become electric. In the 1920s and 1930s, some of the trolley lines began to be replaced by bus lines, with the last trolley route converted to bus in 1948. The City of New Haven is in the very early stages of considering the restoration of streetcar (light-rail) service, which has been absent since the postwar period.\nBicycle.\nBikeshare.\nOn February 21, 2018, New Haven officially launched its Bike New Haven bikeshare program. based on dockless technology powered by Noa Technologies At time of launch, the program features 10 docking stations and 100 bikes, spread throughout the urban core; there are plans to reach 30 bike stations and 300 bikes by the end of April 2018. The launch of the New Haven bikeshare program coincided with the launch of Yale University's own bikeshare program, which uses the same technology powered by Noa.\nBike lanes.\nIn 2004, the first bike lane in the city was added to Orange Street, connecting East Rock Park and the East Rock neighborhood to downtown. Since then, bike lanes have also been added to sections of Howard Ave, Elm St, Dixwell Avenue, Water Street, Clinton Avenue and State Street. The city has created recommended bike routes for getting around New Haven, including use of the Canal Trail and the Orange Street lane. As of the end of 2012, bicycle lanes have also been added in both directions on Dixwell Avenue along most of the street from downtown to the Hamden town line, as well as along Howard Avenue from Yale New Haven Hospital to City Point.\nThe city has plans to create two additional bike lanes connecting Union Station with downtown, and the Westville neighborhood with downtown. The city has added dozens of covered bike parking spots at Union Station, in order to facilitate more bike commuting to the station.\nFarmington Canal Greenway.\nThe Farmington Canal Trail is a rail trail that will eventually run continuously from downtown New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts. The scenic trail follows the path of the historic New Haven and Northampton Company and the Farmington Canal. Currently, there is a continuous stretch of the trail from downtown, through Hamden and into Cheshire, making bicycle commuting between New Haven and those suburbs possible. The trail is part of the East Coast Greenway, a proposed bike path that would link every major city on the East Coast from Florida to Maine.\nRoads.\nNew Haven lies at the intersection of Interstate 95 on the coast\u2014which provides access southwards and/or westwards to the western coast of Connecticut and to New York City, and eastwards to the eastern Connecticut shoreline, Rhode Island, and eastern Massachusetts\u2014and Interstate 91, which leads northward to the interior of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont and the Canada\u2013US border. I-95 is notorious for traffic jams increasing with proximity to New York City; on the east side of New Haven it passes over the Quinnipiac River via the Pearl Harbor Memorial, or \"Q Bridge\", which often presents a major bottleneck to traffic. I-91, however, is relatively less congested, except at the intersection with I-95 during peak travel times.\nThe Oak Street Connector (Connecticut Route 34) intersects I-91 at exit 1, just south of the I-95/I-91 interchange, and runs northwest for a few blocks as an expressway spur into downtown before emptying onto surface roads. The Wilbur Cross Parkway (Connecticut Route 15) runs parallel to I-95 west of New Haven, turning northwards as it nears the city and then running northwards parallel to I-91 through the outer rim of New Haven and Hamden, offering an alternative to the I-95/I-91 journey (restricted to non-commercial vehicles). Route 15 in New Haven is the site of the only highway tunnel in the state (officially designated as Heroes Tunnel), running through West Rock, home to West Rock Park and the Three Judges Cave.\nThe city also has several major surface arteries. U.S. Route 1 (Columbus Avenue, Union Avenue, Water Street, Forbes Avenue) runs in an east\u2013west direction south of downtown serving Union Station and leading out of the city to Milford, West Haven, East Haven and Branford. The main road from downtown heading northwest is Whalley Avenue (partly signed as Route 10 and Route 63) leading to Westville and Woodbridge. Heading north towards Hamden, there are two major thoroughfares, Dixwell Avenue and Whitney Avenue. To the northeast are Middletown Avenue (Route 17), which leads to the Montowese section of North Haven, and Foxon Boulevard (Route 80), which leads to the Foxon section of East Haven and to the town of North Branford. To the west is Route 34, which leads to the city of Derby. Other major intracity arteries are Ella Grasso Boulevard (Route 10) west of downtown, and College Street, Temple Street, Church Street, Elm Street, and Grove Street in the downtown area.\nTraffic safety is a major concern for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists in New Haven. In addition to many traffic-related fatalities in the city each year, since 2005, over a dozen Yale students, staff and faculty have been killed or injured in traffic collisions on or near the campus.\nAirport.\nTweed New Haven Airport is located within the city limits east of the business district, straddling the border with neighboring East Haven. Service to approximately 25 cities is provided by Avelo Airlines, which established its first East Coast base at the airport in 2021. Breeze Airways plans to begin operations at Tweed in December 2024, and will provide service to 10 destinations. The airport is currently planning a runway lengthening and new terminal on the East Haven side of the airport.\nBus service between Downtown New Haven and Tweed is available via the CT Transit New Haven Division.\nSeaport.\nNew Haven Harbor is home to the Port of New Haven, a deep-water seaport with three berths capable of hosting vessels and barges as well as the facilities required to handle break bulk cargo. The port has the capacity to load 200 trucks a day from the ground or via loading docks. Providence and Worcester Railroad provides freight rail transportation to the port, with the railroad operating a switch engine for yard movements, a private siding for loading and unloading, and trackage over the Tomlinson Lift Bridge toward the Northeast Corridor. Approximately of inside storage and of outside storage are available at the site. Five shore cranes with a 250-ton capacity and 26 forklifts, each with a 26-ton capacity, are also available.\nOn June 17, 2013, the city commissioned the \"Nathan Hale\", a port security vessel capable of serving search and rescue, firefighting, and constabulary roles.\nInfrastructure.\nHospitals and medicine.\nThe New Haven area supports several medical facilities that are considered some of the best hospitals in the country. There are two major medical centers downtown: Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital has four pavilions, including the Yale \u2013 New Haven Children's Hospital and the Smilow Cancer Hospital; the Hospital of Saint Raphael is several blocks north, and touts its excellent cardiac emergency care program. Smaller downtown health facilities are the Temple Medical Center located downtown on Temple Street, Connecticut Mental Health Center/ across Park Street from Y-NHH, and the Hill Health Center, which serves the working-class Hill neighborhood. A large Veterans Affairs hospital is located in neighboring West Haven. To the west in Milford is Milford Hospital, and to the north in Meriden is the MidState Medical Center.\nIn recent years, Yale and the City of New Haven have been working to build a medical and biotechnology research hub in the city and Greater New Haven region. The city, state and Yale together run Science Park, a large site three blocks northwest of Yale's Science Hill campus. This multi-block site, approximately bordered by Mansfield Street, Division Street, and Shelton Avenue, is the former home of Winchester's and Olin Corporation's 45 large-scale factory buildings. Currently, sections of the site are large-scale parking lots or abandoned structures, but there is also a large remodeled and functioning area of buildings (leased primarily by a private developer) with numerous Yale employees, financial service and biotech companies.\nA second biotechnology district is being planned for the median strip on Frontage Road, on land cleared for the never-built Route 34 extension. As of late 2009, a Pfizer drug-testing clinic, a medical laboratory building serving Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital, and a mixed-use structure containing parking, housing and office space, have been constructed on this corridor. A former SNET telephone building at 300 George Street is being converted into lab space, and has been quite successful so far in attracting biotechnology and medical firms.\nPower supply facilities.\nElectricity for New Haven is generated by a 448\u00a0MW oil and gas-fired generating station located on the shore at New Haven Harbor. PPL Corporation operates a 220\u00a0MW peaking natural gas turbine plant in nearby Wallingford.\nNear New Haven there is the static inverter plant of the HVDC Cross Sound Cable.\nThere are three PureCell Model 400 fuel cells placed in the city of New Haven\u2014one at the New Haven Public Schools and newly constructed Roberto Clemente School, one at the mixed-use 360 State Street building, and one at City Hall. According to Giovanni Zinn of the city's Office of Sustainability, each fuel cell may save the city up to $1 million in energy costs over a decade. The fuel cells were provided by ClearEdge Power, formerly UTC Power. Additional fuel cells are located at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and at the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority (GNHWPCA). Ikea's New Haven facility also utilizes a 250\u00a0kW fuel cell and 940.8\u00a0kW solar array.\nNew Haven recently installed solar panels at 11 city schools with a combined power generation capacity of 1.8 MW. Owned and maintained by Greenskies, the panels allow New Haven to purchase electricity at a discounted rate through a power-purchasing agreement. The panels bring New Haven's solar capacity to 2.8 MW and will help New Haven meet its commitment to powering 100% of its municipal operations through clean energy, which it made in Summer 2017 and reaffirmed in the 2018 New Haven Climate and Sustainability Framework.\nIn popular culture.\nSeveral movies have been filmed in New Haven since 2000, including \"Mona Lisa Smile\" (2003), with Julia Roberts, \"The Life Before Her Eyes\" (2007), with Uma Thurman, and \"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull\" (2008) directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett and Shia LaBeouf. The filming of \"Crystal Skull\" involved an extensive chase sequence through the streets of New Haven. Several downtown streets were closed to traffic and received a \"makeover\" to look like streets of 1957, when the film is set. 500 locals were cast as extras for the film. In \"Everybody's Fine\" (2009), Robert De Niro has a close encounter in what is supposed to be the Denver train station; the scene was filmed in New Haven's Union Station.\n New Haven is mentioned in the song Peace Frog by the Doors, referencing a 1967 incident where vocalist Jim Morrison was arrested for \"attempting to incite a riot\" in the middle of a concert at the New Haven Arena.\nSister cities.\nNew Haven's sister cities are:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSome of these were selected because of historical connection\u2014Freetown because of the \"Amistad\" trial. Others, such as Amalfi and Afula, reflect ethnic groups in New Haven.\nIn 1990, the United Nations named New Haven a \"Peace Messenger City\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "34273": "Yale University\nPrivate university in New Haven, Connecticut, US\n \nYale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution.\nYale was established as the Collegiate School in 1701 by Congregationalist clergy of the Connecticut Colony. Originally restricted to instructing ministers in theology and sacred languages, the school's curriculum expanded, incorporating humanities and sciences by the time of the American Revolution. In the 19th century, the college expanded into graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first PhD in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887. Yale's faculty and student populations grew rapidly after 1890 due to the expansion of the physical campus and its scientific research programs.\nYale is organized into fifteen constituent schools, including the original undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and Yale Law School. While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each school's faculty oversees its curriculum and degree programs. In addition to a central campus in downtown New Haven, the university owns athletic facilities in western New Haven, a campus in West Haven, and forests and nature preserves throughout New England. As of 2023[ [update]], the university's endowment was valued at $, the third largest of any educational institution. The Yale University Library, serving all constituent schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States. Student athletes compete in intercollegiate sports as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I Ivy League conference.\nAs of \u00a02024[ [update]], 68 Nobel laureates, 5 Fields medalists, 4 Abel Prize laureates, and 3 Turing Award winners have been affiliated with Yale University. In addition, Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including 5 U.S. presidents, 10 Founding Fathers, 19 U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 31 living billionaires, 54 college founders and presidents, many heads of state, cabinet members and governors. Hundreds of members of Congress and many U.S. diplomats, 96 MacArthur Fellows, 263 Rhodes Scholars, 123 Marshall Scholars, 81 Gates Cambridge Scholars, 102 Guggenheim Fellows and 9 Mitchell Scholars have been affiliated with the university. Yale's current faculty include 67 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 55 members of the National Academy of Medicine, 8 members of the National Academy of Engineering, and 193 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.\nHistory.\nEarly history of Yale College.\nOrigins.\nYale traces its beginnings to \"An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School\", a would-be charter passed in New Haven by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut on October 9, 1701. The Act was an effort to create an institution to train ministers and lay leadership. Soon after, a group of ten Congregational ministers, Samuel Andrew, Thomas Buckingham, Israel Chauncy, Samuel Mather (nephew of Increase Mather), Rev. James Noyes II (son of James Noyes), James Pierpont, Abraham Pierson, Noadiah Russell, Joseph Webb, and Timothy Woodbridge, all Harvard alumni, met in the study of Reverend Samuel Russell, in Branford, to donate books to form the school's library. The group, led by James Pierpont, is now known as \"The Founders\".\nKnown from its origin as the \"Collegiate School\", the institution opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson, who is considered Yale's first president. Pierson lived in Killingworth. The school moved to Saybrook in 1703, when the first treasurer of Yale, Nathaniel Lynde, donated land and a building. In 1716, it moved to New Haven.\nMeanwhile, there was a rift forming at Harvard between its sixth president, Increase Mather, and the rest of the Harvard clergy, whom Mather viewed as increasingly liberal, ecclesiastically lax, and overly broad in Church polity. The feud caused the Mathers to champion the Collegiate School in the hope it would maintain the Puritan religious orthodoxy in a way Harvard had not. Rev. Jason Haven, minister at the First Church and Parish in Dedham, Massachusetts, had been considered for the presidency on account of his orthodox theology and \"Neatness dignity and purity of Style [which] surpass those of all that have been mentioned\", but was passed over due to his \"very Valetudinary and infirm State of Health\".\nNaming and development.\nIn 1718, at the behest of either Rector Samuel Andrew or the colony's Governor Gurdon Saltonstall, Cotton Mather contacted the Boston-born businessman Elihu Yale to ask for money to construct a new building for the college. Through the persuasion of Jeremiah Dummer, Yale, who had made a fortune in Madras while working for the East India Company as the first president of Fort St. George, donated nine bales of goods, which were sold for more than \u00a3560, a substantial sum of money. Cotton Mather suggested the school change its name to \"Yale College\". The name Yale is the Anglicized spelling of the Welsh name I\u00e2l, which had been used for the family estate at Plas yn I\u00e2l, near Llandegla, Wales.\nMeanwhile, a Harvard graduate working in England convinced 180 prominent intellectuals to donate books to Yale. The 1714 shipment of 500 books represented the best of modern English literature, science, philosophy and theology. It had a profound effect on intellectuals at Yale. Undergraduate Jonathan Edwards discovered John Locke's works and developed his \"new divinity\". In 1722 the rector and six friends, who had a study group to discuss the new ideas, announced they had given up Calvinism, become Arminians, and joined the Church of England. They were ordained in England and returned to the colonies as missionaries for the Anglican faith. Thomas Clapp became president in 1745, and while he attempted to return the college to Calvinist orthodoxy, did not close the library. Other students found Deist books in the library.\nCurriculum.\nYale College undergraduates follow a liberal arts curriculum with departmental majors and is organized into a social system of residential colleges.\nYale was swept up by the great intellectual movements of the period\u2014the Great Awakening and Enlightenment\u2014due to the religious and scientific interests of presidents Thomas Clap and Ezra Stiles. They were instrumental in developing the scientific curriculum while dealing with wars, student tumults, graffiti, \"irrelevance\" of curricula, desperate need for endowment and disagreements with the Connecticut legislature.\nSerious American students of theology and divinity, particularly in New England, regarded Hebrew as a classical language, along with Greek and Latin, and essential for study of the Old Testament in the original. Reverend Stiles, president from 1778 to 1795, brought with him his interest in Hebrew as a vehicle for studying ancient Biblical texts in their original language, requiring all freshmen to study Hebrew (in contrast to Harvard, where only upperclassmen were required to study it) and is responsible for the Hebrew phrase \u05d0\u05d5\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u05d5\u05ea\u05de\u05d9\u05dd (Urim and Thummim) on the Yale seal. A 1746 graduate of Yale, Stiles came to the college with experience in education, having played an integral role in founding Brown University. Stiles' greatest challenge occurred in 1779 when British forces occupied New Haven and threatened to raze the college. However, Yale graduate Edmund Fanning, secretary to the British general in command of the occupation, intervened and the college was saved. In 1803, Fanning was granted an honorary degree LL.D..\nStudents.\nAs the only college in Connecticut from 1701 to 1823, Yale educated the sons of the elite. Punishable offenses included cardplaying, tavern-going, destruction of college property, and acts of disobedience. Harvard was distinctive for the stability and maturity of its tutor corps, while Yale had youth and zeal.\nThe emphasis on classics gave rise to private student societies, open only by invitation, which arose as forums for discussions of scholarship, literature and politics. The first were debating societies: Crotonia in 1738, Linonia in 1753 and Brothers in Unity in 1768. Linonia and Brothers in Unity continue to exist; commemorations to them can be found with names given to campus structures, like Brothers in Unity Courtyard in Branford College.\n19th century.\nThe Yale Report of 1828 was a dogmatic defense of the Latin and Greek curriculum against critics who wanted more courses in modern languages, math and science. Unlike higher education in Europe, there was no national curriculum for U.S. colleges and universities. In the competition for students and financial support, college leaders strove to keep current with demands for innovation. At the same time, they realized a significant portion of students and prospective students demanded a classical background. The report meant the classics would not be abandoned. During this period, institutions experimented with changes in the curriculum, often resulting in a dual-track curriculum. In the decentralized environment of U.S. higher education, balancing change with tradition was a common challenge. A group of professors at Yale and New Haven Congregationalist ministers articulated a conservative response to the changes brought by Victorian culture. They concentrated on developing a person possessed of religious values strong enough to sufficiently resist temptations from within, yet flexible enough to adjust to the 'isms' (professionalism, materialism, individualism, and consumerism) tempting them from without. William Graham Sumner, professor from 1872 to 1909, taught in the emerging disciplines of economics and sociology to overflowing classrooms. Sumner bested President Noah Porter, who disliked the social sciences and wanted Yale to lock into its traditions of classical education. Porter objected to Sumner's use of a textbook by Herbert Spencer that espoused agnostic materialism because it might harm students.\nUntil 1887, the legal name of the university was \"The President and Fellows of Yale College, in New Haven\". In 1887, under an act passed by the Connecticut General Assembly, Yale was renamed \"Yale University\".\nSports and debate.\nThe Revolutionary War soldier Nathan Hale (Yale 1773) was the archetype of the Yale ideal in the early 19th\u00a0century: a manly yet aristocratic scholar, well-versed in knowledge and sports, and a patriot who \"regretted\" that he \"had but one life to lose\" for his country. Western painter Frederic Remington (Yale 1900) was an artist whose heroes gloried in the combat and tests of strength in the Wild West. The fictional, turn-of-the-20th-century Yale man Frank Merriwell embodied this same heroic ideal without racial prejudice, and his fictional successor Dink Stover in the novel \"Stover at Yale\" (1912) questioned the business mentality that had become prevalent at the school. Increasingly students turned to athletic stars as their heroes, especially since winning the big game became the goal of the student body, the alumni, and the team itself.\nAlong with Harvard and Princeton, Yale students rejected British concepts about 'amateurism' and constructed athletic programs that were uniquely American. The Harvard\u2013Yale football rivalry began in 1875. Between 1892, when Harvard and Yale met in one of the first intercollegiate debates, and in 1909 (year of the first Triangular Debate of Harvard/Yale/Princeton) the rhetoric, symbolism, and metaphors used in athletics were used to frame these debates. Debates were covered on front pages of college newspapers and emphasized in yearbooks, and team members received the equivalent of athletic letters for their jackets. There were rallies to send off teams to matches, but they never attained the broad appeal athletics enjoyed. One reason may be that debates do not have a clear winner, because scoring is subjective. With late 19th-century concerns about the impact of modern life on the body, athletics offered hope that neither the individual nor society was coming apart.\nIn 1909\u201310, football faced a crisis resulting from the failure of the reforms of 1905\u201306, which sought to solve the problem of serious injuries. There was a mood of alarm and mistrust, and, while the crisis was developing, the presidents of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton developed a project to reform the sport and forestall possible radical changes forced by government. Presidents Arthur Hadley of Yale, A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard, and Woodrow Wilson of Princeton worked to develop moderate reforms to reduce injuries. Their attempts, however, were reduced by rebellion against the rules committee and formation of the Intercollegiate Athletic Association. While the big three had attempted to operate independently of the majority, the changes pushed did reduce injuries.\nExpansion.\nStarting with the addition of the Yale School of Medicine in 1810, the college expanded gradually, establishing the Yale Divinity School in 1822, Yale Law School in 1822, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1847, the now-defunct Sheffield Scientific School in 1847, and the Yale School of Fine Arts in 1869. In 1887, under the presidency of Timothy Dwight V, Yale College was renamed to Yale University, and the former name was applied only to the undergraduate college. The university would continue to expand into the 20th and 21st centuries, adding the Yale School of Music in 1894, the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies in 1900, the Yale School of Public Health in 1915, the Yale School of Architecture in 1916, the Yale School of Nursing 1923, the Yale School of Drama in 1955, the Yale School of Management in 1976, and the Jackson School of Global Affairs in 2022. The Sheffield Scientific School would also reorganize its relationship with the university to teach only undergraduate courses.\nExpansion caused controversy about Yale's new roles. Noah Porter, a moral philosopher, was president from 1871 to 1886. During an age of expansion in higher education, Porter resisted the rise of the new research university, claiming an eager embrace of its ideals would corrupt undergraduate education. Historian George Levesque argues Porter was not a simple-minded reactionary, uncritically committed to tradition, but a principled and selective conservative. Levesque says he did not endorse everything old or reject everything new; rather, he sought to apply long-established ethical and pedagogical principles to a changing culture. Levesque concludes, noting he may have misunderstood some of the challenges, but he correctly anticipated the enduring tensions that have accompanied the emergence of the modern university.\n20th century.\nMedicine.\nMilton Winternitz led the Yale School of Medicine as its dean from 1920 to 1935. Dedicated to the new scientific medicine established in Germany, he was equally fervent about \"social medicine\" and the study of humans in their environment. He established the \"Yale System\" of teaching, with few lectures and fewer exams, and strengthened the full-time faculty system; he created the graduate-level Yale School of Nursing and the psychiatry department and built new buildings. Progress toward his plans for an Institute of Human Relations, envisioned as a refuge where social scientists would collaborate with biological scientists in a holistic study of humankind, lasted only a few years before resentful antisemitic colleagues drove him to resign.\nFaculty.\nBefore World War II, most elite university faculties counted among their numbers few, if any, Jews, blacks, women, or other minorities; Yale was no exception. By 1980, this condition had been altered dramatically, as numerous members of those groups held faculty positions. Almost all members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences\u2014and some members of other faculties\u2014teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually.\nWomen.\nIn 1793, Lucinda Foote passed the entrance exams for Yale College, but was rejected by the president on the basis of her gender. Women studied at Yale from 1892, in graduate-level programs at the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The first seven women to earn PhDs received their degrees in 1894: Elizabeth Deering Hanscom, Cornelia H. B. Rogers, Sara Bulkley Rogers, Margaretta Palmer, Mary Augusta Scott, Laura Johnson Wylie, and Charlotte Fitch Roberts. There is a portrait of them in Sterling Memorial Library, painted by Brenda Zlamany.\nIn 1966, Yale began discussions with its sister school Vassar College about merging to foster coeducation at the undergraduate level. Vassar, then all-female and part of the Seven Sisters\u2014elite higher education schools that served as sister institutions to the Ivy League when nearly all Ivy League institutions still only admitted men\u2014tentatively accepted, but then declined the invitation. Both schools introduced coeducation independently in 1969. Amy Solomon was the first woman to register as a Yale undergraduate; she was the first woman at Yale to join an undergraduate society, St. Anthony Hall. The undergraduate class of 1973 was the first to have women starting from freshman year; all undergraduate women were housed in Vanderbilt Hall.\nA decade into co-education, student assault and harassment by faculty became the impetus for the trailblazing lawsuit \"Alexander v. Yale\". In the 1970s, a group of students and a faculty member sued Yale for its failure to curtail sexual harassment, especially by male faculty. The case was partly built from a 1977 report authored by plaintiff Ann Olivarius, \"A report to the Yale Corporation from the Yale Undergraduate Women's Caucus\". This case was the first to use Title IX to argue and establish that sexual harassment of female students can be considered illegal sex discrimination. The plaintiffs were Olivarius, Ronni Alexander, Margery Reifler, Pamela Price, and Lisa E. Stone. They were joined by Yale classics professor John \"Jack\" J. Winkler. The lawsuit, brought partly by Catharine MacKinnon, alleged rape, fondling, and offers of higher grades for sex by faculty, including Keith Brion, professor of flute and director of bands, political science professor Raymond Duvall, English professor Michael Cooke, and coach of the field hockey team, Richard Kentwell. While unsuccessful in the courts, the legal reasoning changed the landscape of sex discrimination law and resulted in the establishment of Yale's Grievance Board and Women's Center. In 2011 a Title IX complaint was filed against Yale by students and graduates, including editors of Yale's feminist magazine \"Broad Recognition\", alleging the university had a hostile sexual climate. In response, the university formed a Title IX steering committee to address complaints of sexual misconduct. Afterwards, universities and colleges throughout the U.S. also established sexual harassment grievance procedures.\nClass.\nYale instituted policies in the early 20th century designed to maintain the proportion of white Protestants from notable families in the student body (see \"numerus clausus\") and eliminated such preferences, beginning with the class of 1970.\n21st century.\nIn 2006, Yale and Peking University (PKU) established a Joint Undergraduate Program in Beijing, an exchange program allowing Yale students to spend a semester living and studying with PKU honor students. In July 2012, the Yale University-PKU Program ended due to weak participation.\nIn 2007 outgoing Yale President Rick Levin characterized Yale's institutional priorities: \"First, among the nation's finest research universities, Yale is distinctively committed to excellence in undergraduate education. Second, in our graduate and professional schools, as well as in Yale College, we are committed to the education of leaders.\"\nIn 2009, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair picked Yale as one location\u2014the others being Britain's Durham University and Universiti Teknologi Mara\u2014for the Tony Blair Faith Foundation's United States Faith and Globalization Initiative. As of 2009, former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo is the director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and teaches an undergraduate seminar, \"Debating Globalization\". As of 2009, former presidential candidate and DNC chair Howard Dean teaches a residential college seminar, \"Understanding Politics and Politicians\". Also in 2009, an alliance was formed among Yale, University College London, and both schools' affiliated hospital complexes to conduct research focused on the direct improvement of patient care\u2014a field known as translational medicine. President Richard Levin noted that Yale has hundreds of other partnerships across the world, but \"no existing collaboration matches the scale of the new partnership with UCL\". In August 2013, a new partnership with the National University of Singapore led to the opening of Yale-NUS College in Singapore, a joint effort to create a new liberal arts college in Asia featuring a curriculum including Western and Asian traditions.\nIn 2017, having been suggested for decades, Yale University renamed Calhoun College, named for slave owner, anti-abolitionist, and white supremacist Vice President John C. Calhoun. It is now Hopper College, after Grace Hopper.\nIn 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd protests, the #CancelYale tag was used on social media to demand that Elihu Yale's name be removed from Yale University. Much of the support originated from right-wing pundits such as Mike Cernovich and Ann Coulter, who intended to satirize what they perceived as the excesses of cancel culture. Yale spent most of his professional career in the employ of the East India Company (EIC), serving as the governor of the Presidency of Fort St. George in modern-day Chennai. The EIC, including Yale himself, was involved in the Indian Ocean slave trade, though the extent of Yale's involvement in slavery remains debated.\nHis singularly large donation led critics to argue Yale University relied on money derived from slavery for its first scholarships and endowments.\nIn 2020, the U.S. Justice Department sued Yale for alleged discrimination against Asian and white candidates, through affirmative action admission policies. In 2021, under the new Biden administration, the Justice Department withdrew the lawsuit. The group, Students for Fair Admissions, later won a similar lawsuit against Harvard.\nIn April 2024, Yale students joined other campuses across the United States in protests against the Gaza war. The student protestors demanded that Yale University divest from military weapons companies with ties to Israel's war on Gaza. Over 50 people were arrested at protests in and around Beinecke Plaza, and protests continued during the summer and in the new academic year starting September 2024. Undergraduate students \"overwhelmingly\" voted in a December referendum to call for divestment. \nAlumni in politics.\nThe \"Boston Globe\" wrote in 2002 that \"if there's one school that can lay claim to educating the nation's top national leaders over the past three decades, it's Yale\". Yale alumni were represented on the Democratic or Republican ticket in every U.S. presidential election between 1972 and 2004. Yale-educated presidents since the end of the Vietnam War include Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, and major-party nominees include Hillary Clinton (2016), John Kerry (2004), Joseph Lieberman (vice president, 2000), and Sargent Shriver (vice president, 1972). Other alumni who have made serious bids for the presidency include Amy Klobuchar (2020), Tom Steyer (2020), Ben Carson (2016), Howard Dean (2004), Gary Hart (1984 and 1988), Paul Tsongas (1992), Pat Robertson (1988) and Jerry Brown (1976, 1980, 1992).\nSeveral explanations have been offered for Yale's representation since the end of the Vietnam War. Sources note the spirit of campus activism that has existed at Yale since the 1960s, and the intellectual influence of Reverend William Sloane Coffin on future candidates. Yale President Levin attributes the run to Yale's focus on creating \"a laboratory for future leaders\", an institutional priority that began during the tenure of Yale Presidents Alfred Whitney Griswold and Kingman Brewster. Richard H. Brodhead, former dean of Yale College and now president of Duke University, stated: \"We do give very significant attention to orientation to the community in our admissions, and there is a very strong tradition of volunteerism at Yale\". Yale historian Gaddis Smith notes \"an ethos of organized activity\" at Yale during the 20th century that led Kerry to lead the Yale Political Union's Liberal Party, George Pataki the Conservative Party, and Lieberman to manage the \"Yale Daily News\". Camille Paglia points to a history of networking and elitism: \"It has to do with a web of friendships and affiliations built up in school\". CNN suggests that George W. Bush benefited from preferential admissions policies for the \"son and grandson of alumni\", and for a \"member of a politically influential family\". Elisabeth Bumiller and James Fallows credit the culture of community that exists between students, faculty, and administration, which downplays self-interest and reinforces commitment to others.\nDuring the 1988 presidential election, George H. W. Bush (Yale '48) derided Michael Dukakis for having \"foreign-policy views born in Harvard Yard's boutique\". When challenged on the distinction between Dukakis's Harvard connection and his Yale background, he said that, unlike Harvard, Yale's reputation was \"so diffuse, there isn't a symbol, I don't think, in the Yale situation, any symbolism in it\" and said Yale did not share Harvard's reputation for \"liberalism and elitism\". In 2004 Howard Dean stated, \"In some ways, I consider myself separate from the other three (Yale) candidates of 2004. Yale changed so much between the class of '68 and the class of '71. My class was the first class to have women in it; it was the first class to have a significant effort to recruit African Americans. It was an extraordinary time, and in that span of time is the change of an entire generation\".\nAdministration and organization.\nLeadership.\nThe President and Fellows of Yale College, also known as the Yale Corporation, or board of trustees, is the governing body of the university and consists of thirteen standing committees with separate responsibilities outlined in the by-laws. The corporation has 19 members: three \"ex officio\" members, ten successor trustees, and six elected alumni fellows. The university has three major academic components: Yale College (the undergraduate program), the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the twelve professional schools.\nYale's former president Richard C. Levin was, at the time, one of the highest paid university presidents in the United States with a 2008 salary of $. Yale's succeeding president Peter Salovey ranks 40th with a 2020 salary of $.\nThe Yale Provost's Office and similar executive positions have launched several women into prominent university executive positions. In 1977, Provost Hanna Holborn Gray was appointed interim president of Yale and later went on to become president of the University of Chicago, being the first woman to hold either position at each respective school. In 1994, Provost Judith Rodin became the first permanent female president of an Ivy League institution at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2002, Provost Alison Richard became the vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge. In 2003, the dean of the Divinity School, Rebecca Chopp, was appointed president of Colgate University and later went on to serve as the president of Swarthmore College in 2009, and then the first female chancellor of the University of Denver in 2014. In 2004, Provost Dr. Susan Hockfield became the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2004, Dean of the Nursing school, Catherine Gilliss, was appointed the dean of Duke University's School of Nursing and vice chancellor for nursing affairs. In 2007, Deputy Provost H. Kim Bottomly was named president of Wellesley College.\nSimilar examples for men who have served in Yale leadership positions can also be found. In 2004, Dean of Yale College Richard H. Brodhead was appointed as the president of Duke University. In 2008, Provost Andrew Hamilton was confirmed to be the vice chancellor of the University of Oxford.\nStaff and labor unions.\nYale University staff are represented by several different unions. Clerical and technical workers are represented by Local 34, and service and maintenance workers are represented by Local 35, both of the same union affiliate UNITE HERE. Unlike similar institutions, Yale has consistently refused to recognize its graduate student union, Local 33 (another affiliate of UNITE HERE), citing claims that the union's elections were undemocratic and how graduate students are not employees; the move to not recognize the union has been criticized by the American Federation of Teachers. In addition, officers of the Yale University Police Department are represented by the Yale Police Benevolent Association, which affiliated in 2005 with the Connecticut Organization for Public Safety Employees. Yale security officers joined the International Union of Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America in late 2010, even though the Yale administration contested the election. In October 2014, after deliberation, Yale security decided to form a new union, the Yale University Security Officers Association, which has since represented the campus security officers.\nYale has a history of difficult and prolonged labor negotiations, often culminating in strikes. There have been at least eight strikes since 1968, and \"The New York Times\" wrote that Yale has a reputation as having the worst record of labor tension of any university in the U.S. Moreover, Yale has been accused by the AFL\u2013CIO of failing to treat workers with respect, as well as not renewing contracts with professors over involvement in campus labor issues. Yale has responded to strikes with claims over mediocre union participation and the benefits of their contracts.\nCampus.\nYale's central campus in downtown New Haven covers and comprises its main, historic campus and a medical campus adjacent to the Yale\u2013New Haven Hospital. In western New Haven, the university holds of athletic facilities, including the Yale Golf Course. In 2008, Yale purchased the 17-building, former Bayer HealthCare complex in West Haven, Connecticut, the buildings of which are now used as laboratory and research space. Yale also owns seven forests in Connecticut, Vermont, and New Hampshire\u2014the largest of which is the Yale-Myers Forest in Connecticut's Quiet Corner\u2014and nature preserves including Horse Island.\nYale is noted for its largely Collegiate Gothic campus as well as several iconic modern buildings commonly discussed in architectural history survey courses: Louis Kahn's Yale Art Gallery and Center for British Art, Eero Saarinen's Ingalls Rink and Ezra Stiles and Morse Colleges, and Paul Rudolph's Art & Architecture Building. Yale also owns and has restored many noteworthy 19th-century mansions along Hillhouse Avenue, which was considered the most beautiful street in America by Charles Dickens when he visited the United States in the 1840s. In 2011, \"Travel + Leisure\" listed the Yale campus as one of the most beautiful in the United States.\nMany of Yale's buildings were constructed in the Collegiate Gothic architecture style from 1917 to 1931, financed largely by Edward S. Harkness, including the Yale Drama School. Stone sculpture built into the walls of the buildings portray contemporary college personalities, such as a writer, an athlete, a tea-drinking socialite, and a student who has fallen asleep while reading. Similarly, the decorative friezes on the buildings depict contemporary scenes, like a policemen chasing a robber and arresting a prostitute (on the wall of the Law School), or a student relaxing with a mug of beer and a cigarette. The architect, James Gamble Rogers, faux-aged these buildings by splashing the walls with acid, deliberately breaking their leaded glass windows and repairing them in the style of the Middle Ages, and creating niches for decorative statuary but leaving them empty to simulate loss or theft over the ages. In fact, the buildings merely simulate Middle Ages architecture, for though they appear to be constructed of solid stone blocks in the authentic manner, most actually have steel framing as was commonly used in 1930. One exception is Harkness Tower, tall, which was originally a free-standing stone structure. It was reinforced in 1964 to allow the installation of the Yale Memorial Carillon.\nOther examples of the Gothic style are on the Old Campus by architects like Henry Austin, Charles C. Haight and Russell Sturgis. Several are associated with members of the Vanderbilt family, including Vanderbilt Hall, Phelps Hall, St. Anthony Hall (a commission for member Frederick William Vanderbilt), the Mason, Sloane and Osborn laboratories, dormitories for the Sheffield Scientific School (the engineering and sciences school at Yale until 1956) and elements of Silliman College, the largest residential college.\nThe oldest building on campus, Connecticut Hall (built in 1750), is in the Georgian style. Georgian-style buildings erected from 1929 to 1933 include Timothy Dwight College, Pierson College, and Davenport College, except the latter's east, York Street fa\u00e7ade, which was constructed in the Gothic style to coordinate with adjacent structures.\nThe Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, is one of the largest buildings in the world reserved exclusively for the preservation of rare books and manuscripts. The library includes a six-story above-ground tower of book stacks, filled with 180,000 volumes, that is surrounded by large translucent Vermont marble panels and a steel and granite truss. The panels act as windows and subdue direct sunlight while also diffusing the light in warm hues throughout the interior. Near the library is a sunken courtyard with sculptures by Isamu Noguchi that are said to represent time (the pyramid), the sun (the circle), and chance (the cube). The library is located near the center of the university in Hewitt Quadrangle, which is now more commonly referred to as \"Beinecke Plaza\".\nAlumnus Eero Saarinen, Finnish-American architect of such notable structures as the Gateway Arch in St.\u00a0Louis, Washington Dulles International Airport main terminal, Bell Labs Holmdel Complex and the CBS Building in Manhattan, designed Ingalls Rink, dedicated in 1959, as well as the residential colleges Ezra Stiles and Morse. These latter were modeled after the medieval Italian hill town of San Gimignano\u2014a prototype chosen for the town's pedestrian-friendly milieu and fortress-like stone towers. These tower forms at Yale act in counterpoint to the college's many Gothic spires and Georgian cupolas.\nThe athletic field complex is partially in New Haven, and partially in West Haven.\nNotable nonresidential campus buildings.\nNotable nonresidential campus buildings and landmarks include Battell Chapel, Beinecke Rare Book Library, Harkness Tower, Humanities Quadrangle, Ingalls Rink, Kline Biology Tower, Osborne Memorial Laboratories, Payne Whitney Gymnasium, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Sterling Hall of Medicine, Sterling Law Buildings, Sterling Memorial Library, Woolsey Hall, Yale Center for British Art, Yale University Art Gallery, Yale Art & Architecture Building, and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London.\nYale's secret society buildings (some of which are called \"tombs\") were built to be private yet unmistakable. A diversity of architectural styles is represented: Berzelius, Donn Barber in an austere cube with classical detailing (erected in 1908 or 1910); Book and Snake, Louis R. Metcalfe in a Greek Ionic style (erected in 1901); Elihu, architect unknown but built in a Colonial style (constructed on an early 17th-century foundation although the building is from the 18th century); Mace and Chain, in a late colonial, early Victorian style (built in 1823). (Interior moulding is said to have belonged to Benedict Arnold); Manuscript Society, King-lui Wu with Dan Kiley responsible for landscaping and Josef Albers for the brickwork intaglio mural. Building constructed in a mid-century modern style; Scroll and Key, Richard Morris Hunt in a Moorish- or Islamic-inspired Beaux-Arts style (erected 1869\u201370); Skull and Bones, possibly Alexander Jackson Davis or Henry Austin in an Egypto-Doric style utilizing Brownstone (in 1856 the first wing was completed, in 1903 the second wing, 1911 the Neo-Gothic towers in rear garden were completed); St. Elmo, (former tomb) Kenneth M. Murchison, 1912, designs inspired by Elizabethan manor. Current location, brick colonial; and Wolf's Head, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, erected 1923\u20131924, Collegiate Gothic.\nSustainability.\nYale's Office of Sustainability develops and implements sustainability practices at Yale. Yale is committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 10% below 1990 levels by 2020. As part of this commitment, the university allocates renewable energy credits to offset some of the energy used by residential colleges. Eleven campus buildings are candidates for LEED design and certification. Yale Sustainable Food Project initiated the introduction of local, organic vegetables, fruits, and beef to all residential college dining halls. Yale was listed as a Campus Sustainability Leader on the Sustainable Endowments Institute's College Sustainability Report Card 2008, and received a \"B+\" grade overall. Yale is a member of the Ivy Plus Sustainability Consortium, through which it has committed to best-practice sharing and the ongoing exchange of campus sustainability solutions along with other member institutions.\nRelationship with New Haven.\nYale is the largest taxpayer and employer in the City of New Haven, and has often buoyed the city's economy and communities. Yale, however, has consistently opposed paying a tax on its academic property. Yale's Art Galleries, along with many other university resources, are free and openly accessible. Yale also funds the New Haven Promise program, paying full tuition for eligible students from New Haven public schools.\nTown\u2013gown relations.\nYale has a complicated relationship with its home city; for example, thousands of students volunteer every year in myriad community organizations, but city officials, who decry Yale's exemption from local property taxes, have long pressed the university to do more to help. Under President Levin, Yale has financially supported many of New Haven's efforts to reinvigorate the city. Evidence suggests that the town and gown relationships are mutually beneficial. Still, the economic power of the university increased dramatically with its financial success amid a decline in the local economy.\nCampus safety.\nSeveral campus safety strategies have been pioneered at Yale. The first campus police force was founded at Yale in 1894, when the university contracted city police officers to exclusively cover the campus. Later hired by the university, the officers were originally brought in to quell unrest between students and city residents and curb destructive student behavior. In addition to the Yale Police Department, a variety of safety services are available including blue phones, a safety escort, and 24-hour shuttle service.\nIn the 1970s and 1980s, poverty and violent crime rose in New Haven, dampening Yale's student and faculty recruiting efforts. Between 1990 and 2006, New Haven's crime rate fell by half, helped by a community policing strategy by the New Haven Police and Yale's campus became the safest among peer schools.\nIn 2004, the national non-profit watchdog group Security on Campus filed a complaint with the U.S.\u00a0Department of Education, accusing Yale of under-reporting rape and sexual assaults.\nIn April 2021, Yale announced that it will require students to receive a COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of being on campus during the fall 2021 term.\nAcademics.\nAdmissions.\nUndergraduate admission to Yale College is considered \"most selective\" by \"U.S. News\". In 2022, Yale accepted 2,234 students to the Class of 2026 out of 50,015 applicants, for an acceptance rate of 4.46%. 98% of students graduate within six years.\nThrough its program of need-based financial aid, Yale commits to meet the full demonstrated financial need of all applicants, and the university is need-blind for both domestic and international applicants. Most financial aid is in the form of grants and scholarships that do not need to be paid back to the university, and the average need-based aid grant for the Class of 2017 was $. 15% of Yale College students are expected to have no parental contribution, and about 50% receive some form of financial aid. About 16% of the Class of 2013 had some form of student loan debt at graduation, with an average debt of $ among borrowers. For 2019, Yale ranked second in enrollment of recipients of the National Merit $2,500 Scholarship (140 scholars).\nHalf of all Yale undergraduates are women, more than 39% are ethnic minority U.S. citizens (19% are underrepresented minorities), and 10.5% are international students. 55% attended public schools and 45% attended private, religious, or international schools, and 97% of students were in the top 10% of their high school class. Every year, Yale College also admits a small group of non-traditional students through the Eli Whitney Students Program.\nCollections.\nYale University Library, which holds over 15\u00a0million volumes, is the second-largest university collection in the United States. The main library, Sterling Memorial Library, contains about 4\u00a0million volumes, and other holdings are dispersed at subject and location libraries.\nRare books are found in several Yale collections. The Beinecke Rare Book Library has a large collection of rare books and manuscripts. The Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library includes important historical medical texts, including an impressive collection of rare books, as well as historical medical instruments. The Lewis Walpole Library contains the largest collection of 18th\u2011century British literary works. The Elizabethan Club, technically a private organization, makes its Elizabethan folios and first editions available to qualified researchers through Yale.\nYale's museum collections are also of international stature. The Yale University Art Gallery, the country's first university-affiliated art museum, contains more than 200,000 works, including Old Masters and important collections of modern art, in the Swartwout and Kahn buildings. The latter, Louis Kahn's first large-scale American work (1953), was renovated and reopened in December 2006. The Yale Center for British Art, the largest collection of British art outside of the UK, grew from a gift of Paul Mellon and is housed in another Kahn-designed building.\nThe Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven is used by school children and contains research collections in anthropology, archaeology, and the natural environment.\nThe Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments, affiliated with the Yale School of Music, is perhaps the least-known of Yale's collections because its hours of opening are restricted.\nThe museums once housed the artifacts brought to the United States from Peru by Yale history professor Hiram Bingham in his Yale-financed expedition to Machu Picchu in 1912\u2014when the removal of such artifacts was legal. The artifacts were restored to Peru in 2012.\nRankings.\nThe \"U.S. News & World Report\" ranked Yale third among U.S. national universities for 2016, as it had for each of the previous sixteen years. Yale University is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education.\nInternationally, Yale was ranked 11th in the 2016 Academic Ranking of World Universities, tenth in the 2016\u201317 Nature Index for quality of scientific research output, and tenth in the 2016 CWUR World University Rankings. The university was also ranked sixth in the 2016 Times Higher Education (THE) Global University Employability Rankings and eighth in the Academic World Reputation Rankings. In 2019, it ranked 27th among the universities around the world by \"SCImago Institutions Rankings\".\nFaculty, research, and intellectual traditions.\nYale is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU) and is classified among \"R1: Doctoral Universities\u2014Very high research activity\". The National Science Foundation ranked Yale 15th among American universities for research and development expenditures in 2021 with $.\nYale's current faculty include 67 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 55 members of the National Academy of Medicine, 8 members of the National Academy of Engineering, and 187 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The college is, after normalization for institution size, the tenth-largest baccalaureate source of doctoral degree recipients in the United States, and the largest such source within the Ivy League. It also is a top 10 (ranked seventh) baccalaureate source (after normalization for the number of graduates) of some of the most notable scientists (Nobel, Fields, Turing prizes, or membership in National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, or National Academy of Medicine).\nYale's English and Comparative Literature departments were part of the New Criticism movement. Of the New Critics, Robert Penn Warren, W.K. Wimsatt, and Cleanth Brooks were all Yale faculty. Later, the Yale Comparative literature department became a center of American deconstruction. Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, taught at the department of comparative literature from the late 1970s to mid-1980s. Several other Yale faculty members were also associated with deconstruction, forming the so-called \"Yale School\". These included Paul de Man who taught in the Departments of Comparative Literature and French, J.\u00a0Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartman (both taught in the Departments of English and Comparative Literature), and Harold Bloom (English), whose theoretical position was always somewhat specific, and who ultimately took a very different path from the rest of this group. Yale's history department has also originated important intellectual trends. Historians C.\u00a0Vann Woodward and David Brion Davis are credited with beginning in the 1960s and 1970s an important stream of southern historians; likewise, David Montgomery, a labor historian, advised many of the current generation of labor historians in the country. Yale's Music School and department fostered the growth of Music Theory in the latter half of the 20th\u00a0century. The \"Journal of Music Theory\" was founded there in 1957; Allen Forte and David Lewin were influential teachers and scholars.\nSince the late 1960s, Yale produces social sciences and policy research through its Yale Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS).\nIn addition to eminent faculty members, Yale research relies heavily on the presence of roughly 1200 Postdocs from various national and international origin working in the multiple laboratories in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and professional schools of the university. The university progressively recognized this working force with the recent creation of the Office for Postdoctoral Affairs and the Yale Postdoctoral Association.\nCampus life.\nYale is a research university, with the majority of its students in the graduate and professional schools. Undergraduates, or Yale College students, come from a variety of ethnic, national, socioeconomic, and personal backgrounds. Of the 2010\u20132011 freshman class, 10% are non\u2011U.S. citizens, while 54% went to public high schools. The median family income of Yale students is $, with 57% of students coming from the top 10% highest-earning families and 16% from the bottom 60%.\nResidential colleges.\nYale's residential college system was established in 1933 by Edward S. Harkness, who admired the social intimacy of Oxford and Cambridge and donated significant funds to found similar colleges at Yale and Harvard. Though Yale's colleges resemble their English precursors organizationally and architecturally, they are dependent entities of Yale College and have limited autonomy. The colleges are led by a head and an academic dean, who reside in the college, and university faculty and affiliates constitute each college's fellowship. Colleges offer their own seminars, social events, and speaking engagements known as \"Master's Teas\", but do not contain programs of study or academic departments. All other undergraduate courses are taught by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and are open to members of any college.\nAll undergraduates are members of a college, to which they are assigned before their freshman year, and 85 percent live in the college quadrangle or a college-affiliated dormitory. While the majority of upperclassman live in the colleges, most on-campus freshmen live on the Old Campus, the university's oldest precinct.\nWhile Harkness' original colleges were Georgian Revival or Collegiate Gothic in style, two colleges constructed in the 1960s, Morse and Ezra Stiles Colleges, have modernist designs. All twelve college quadrangles are organized around a courtyard, and each has a dining hall, courtyard, library, common room, and a range of student facilities. The twelve colleges are named for important alumni or significant places in university history. In 2017, the university opened two new colleges near Science Hill.\nCalhoun College.\nSince the 1960s, John C. Calhoun's white supremacist beliefs and pro-slavery leadership had prompted calls to rename the college or remove its tributes to Calhoun. The racially motivated church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, led to renewed calls in the summer of 2015 for Calhoun College, one of 12 residential colleges at the time, to be renamed. In July 2015 students signed a petition calling for the name change. They argued in the petition that\u2014while Calhoun was respected in the 19th century as an \"extraordinary American statesman\"\u2014he was \"one of the most prolific defenders of slavery and white supremacy\" in the history of the United States. In August 2015, Yale President Peter Salovey addressed the Freshman Class of 2019 in which he responded to the racial tensions but explained why the college would not be renamed. He described Calhoun as \"a notable political theorist, a vice president to two different U.S. presidents, a secretary of war and of state, and a congressman and senator representing South Carolina\". He acknowledged that Calhoun also \"believed that the highest forms of civilization depend on involuntary servitude. Not only that, but he also believed that the races he thought to be inferior, black people in particular, ought to be subjected to it for the sake of their own best interests.\" Student activism about this issue increased in the fall of 2015, and included further protests sparked by controversy surrounding an administrator's comments on the potential positive and negative implications of students who wear Halloween costumes that are culturally sensitive. Campus-wide discussions expanded to include critical discussion of the experiences of women of color on campus, and the realities of racism in undergraduate life. The protests were sensationalized by the media and led to the labelling of some students as being members of Generation Snowflake.\nIn April 2016, Salovey announced that \"despite decades of vigorous alumni and student protests\", Calhoun's name will remain on the Yale residential college explaining that it is preferable for Yale students to live in Calhoun's \"shadow\" so they will be \"better prepared to rise to the challenges of the present and the future\". He claimed that if they removed Calhoun's name, it would \"obscure\" his \"legacy of slavery rather than addressing it\". \"Yale is part of that history\" and \"We cannot erase American history, but we can confront it, teach it and learn from it.\" One change that will be issued is the title of \"master\" for faculty members who serve as residential college leaders will be renamed to \"head of college\" due to its connotation of slavery.\nDespite this apparently conclusive reasoning, Salovey announced that Calhoun College would be renamed for groundbreaking computer scientist Grace Hopper in February 2017. This renaming decision received a range of responses from Yale students and alumni. In his 2019 book \"Assault on American Excellence\", former Dean of Yale Law School Anthony T. Kronman criticized the title and name changes and the lack of support from Salovey for the Christakises, who were targeted by the student activists. Other members of the university community disagreed with Kronman's positions.\nStudent organizations.\nIn 2024, Yale had 526 registered undergraduate student organizations, plus hundreds of others for graduate students.\nThe university hosts a variety of student journals, magazines, and newspapers. The \"Yale Literary Magazine\", founded in February 1836, is the oldest student literary magazine in the United States. Established in 1872, \"The Yale Record\" is the world's oldest college humor magazine. Newspapers include the \"Yale Daily News\", which was first published in 1878, and the weekly \"Yale Herald\", which was first published in 1986. The \"Yale Journal of Medicine & Law\" is a biannual magazine that explores the intersection of law and medicine.\nDwight Hall, an independent, non-profit community service organization, oversees more than 2,000 Yale undergraduates working on more than 70 community service initiatives in New Haven. The Yale College Council runs several agencies that oversee campus wide activities and student services. The Yale Dramatic Association and Bulldog Productions cater to the theater and film communities, respectively. In addition, the Yale Drama Coalition serves to coordinate between and provide resources for the various Sudler Fund sponsored theater productions which run each weekend. WYBC Yale Radio is the campus's radio station, owned and operated by students. While students used to broadcast on AM and FM frequencies, they now have an Internet-only stream.\nThe Yale College Council (YCC) serves as the campus's undergraduate student government. All registered student organizations are regulated and funded by a subsidiary organization of the YCC, known as the Undergraduate Organizations Funding Committee (UOFC). The Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS) serves as Yale's graduate and professional student government.\nThe Yale Political Union (YPU) is a debate society founded in 1934 to host student discussions on a wide variety of topics. It is advised by alumni political leaders such as John Kerry and George Pataki.\nThe Yale International Relations Association (YIRA) functions as the umbrella organization for the university's top-ranked Model UN team. YIRA also has a Europe-based offshoot, Yale Model Government Europe, other Model UN conferences such as YMUN, YMUN Korea, YMUN Taiwan and Yale Model African Union (YMAU), the Yale Review of International Studies (YRIS), and educational programs such as the Yale International Relations Leadership Institute and Hemispheres.\nThe campus includes several fraternities and sororities. The campus features at least 18 a\u00a0cappella groups, the most famous of which is The Whiffenpoofs, which from its founding in 1909 until 2018 was made up solely of senior men.\nThe Elizabethan Club, a social club, has a membership of undergraduates, graduates, faculty and staff with literary or artistic interests. Membership is by invitation. Members and their guests may enter the \"Lizzie's\" premises for conversation and tea. The club owns first editions of a Shakespeare Folio, several Shakespeare Quartos, and a first edition of Milton's \"Paradise Lost\", among other important literary texts.\nSecret societies.\nYale's secret societies include Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key, Wolf's Head, Book and Snake, Elihu, Berzelius, St.\u00a0Elmo, Manuscript, Brothers in Unity, Linonia, St. Anthony Hall, Shabtai, Myth and Sword, Daughters of Sovereign Government (DSG), Mace and Chain, ISO, Spade and Grave, and Sage and Chalice, among others. The two oldest existing honor societies are the Aurelian (1910) and the Torch Honor Society (1916).\nThese are akin to Harvard finals clubs, Princeton eating clubs, and senior societies at University of Pennsylvania.\nTraditions.\nYale seniors at graduation smash clay pipes underfoot to symbolize passage from their \"bright college years\", though in recent history the pipes have been replaced with \"bubble pipes\". (\"Bright College Years\", the university's alma mater, was penned in 1881 by Henry Durand, Class of 1881, to the tune of \"Die Wacht am Rhein\".) Yale's student tour guides tell visitors that students consider it good luck to rub the toe of the statue of Theodore Dwight Woolsey on Old Campus; however, actual students rarely do so. In the second half of the 20th century Bladderball, a campus-wide game played with a large inflatable ball, became a popular tradition but was banned by administration due to safety concerns. In spite of administration opposition, students revived the game in 2009, 2011, and 2014.\nAthletics.\nYale supports 35 varsity athletic teams that compete in the Ivy League Conference, the Eastern College Athletic Conference, and the New England Intercollegiate Sailing Association. Yale athletic teams compete intercollegiately at the NCAA Division\u00a0I level. Like other members of the Ivy League, Yale does not offer athletic scholarships.\nYale has numerous athletic facilities, including the Yale Bowl (the nation's first natural \"bowl\" stadium, and prototype for such stadiums as the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the Rose Bowl), located at The Walter Camp Field athletic complex, and the Payne Whitney Gymnasium, the second-largest indoor athletic complex in the world.\nIn 1970, the NCAA banned Yale from participating in all NCAA sports for two years, in reaction to Yale\u2014against the wishes of the NCAA\u2014playing its Jewish center Jack Langer in college games after Langer had played for Team United States at the 1969 Maccabiah Games in Israel with the approval of Yale President Kingman Brewster. The decision impacted 300 Yale students, every Yale student on its sports teams, over the next two years.\nIn 2016, the men's basketball team won the Ivy League Championship title for the first time in 54 years, earning a spot in the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. In the first round of the tournament, the Bulldogs beat the Baylor Bears 79\u201375 in the school's first-ever tournament win.\nIn May 2018, the men's lacrosse team defeated the Duke Blue Devils to claim their first-ever NCAA Division I Men's Lacrosse Championship, and were the first Ivy League school to win the title since the Princeton Tigers in 2001.\nYale crew is the oldest collegiate athletic team in America, and won Olympic Games Gold Medal for men's eights in 1924 and 1956. The Yale Corinthian Yacht Club, founded in 1881, is the oldest collegiate sailing club in the world. October 21, 2000, marked the dedication of Yale's fourth new boathouse in 157\u00a0years of collegiate rowing. The Gilder Boathouse is named to honor former Olympic rower Virginia Gilder\u00a0'79 and her father Richard Gilder\u00a0'54, who gave $ towards the $ project. Yale also maintains the Gales Ferry site where the heavyweight men's team trains for the Yale-Harvard Boat Race.\nIn 1896, Yale and Johns Hopkins played the first known ice hockey game in the United States. Since 2006, the school's ice hockey clubs have played a commemorative game.\nYale students claim to have invented Frisbee, by tossing empty Frisbie Pie Company tins.\nYale athletics are supported by the Yale Precision Marching Band. \"Precision\" is used here ironically; the band is a scatter-style band that runs wildly between formations rather than actually marching. The band attends every home football game and many away, as well as most hockey and basketball games throughout the winter.\nYale intramural sports are also a significant aspect of student life. Students compete for their respective residential colleges, fostering a friendly rivalry. The year is divided into fall, winter, and spring seasons, each of which includes about 10 different sports. About half the sports are coeducational. At the end of the year, the residential college with the most points (not all sports count equally) wins the Tyng Cup.\nSong.\nNotable among the songs commonly played and sung at events such as commencement, convocation, alumni gatherings, and athletic games is the alma mater, \"Bright College Years\". Despite its popularity, \"Boola Boola\" is not the official fight song, albeit being the origin of the university's unofficial motto. The official Yale fight song, \"Bulldog\" was written by Cole Porter during his undergraduate days and is sung after touchdowns during a football game. Additionally, two other songs, \"Down the Field\" by C.W. O'Conner, and \"Bingo Eli Yale\", also by Cole Porter, are still sung at football games. According to \"College Fight Songs: An Annotated Anthology\" published in 1998, \"Down the Field\" ranks as the fourth-greatest fight song of all time.\nMascot.\nThe school mascot is \"Handsome Dan\", the Yale bulldog, and the Yale fight song contains the refrain, \"Bulldog, bulldog, bow wow wow\". The school color, since 1894, is Yale Blue. Yale's Handsome Dan is believed to be the first college mascot in America, having been established in 1889.\nMental health.\nYale has faced significant criticism for its handling of student mental health on campus. Suicidal and depressed students say that Yale forced them to medically withdraw rather than provide them with academic accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and in 2018 the Ruderman Family Foundation ranked Yale as having the worst mental health policies in the Ivy League.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nDear Yale, I loved being here. I only wish I could've had some time. I needed time to work things out and to wait for new medication to kick in, but I couldn't do it in school, and I couldn't bear the thought of having to leave for a full year, or of leaving and never being readmitted. Love, Luchang.\nLuchang Wang, posted on Facebook in 2015 shortly before her death\nStudents at Yale say that the university's policies force them to hide their depression and avoid seeking help, for fear of being forced to leave. One prominent case was the suicide of Luchang Wang in 2015, who died by suicide after making a Facebook post saying that she needed time to deal with her mental health issues, but could not deal with being forced to medically withdraw for an entire year with an uncertain chance of being readmitted. Wang had previously withdrawn from school due to mental health issues, and was afraid of being forced to withdraw again, as a second readmission attempt would be considerably more difficult for her. A friend of Wang said that she routinely lied to her university therapist to avoid being kicked out, and another student said that many at Yale lie to their counselors as \"there's no clear standard established that says exactly what students will get involuntarily hospitalized or withdrawn for\". In response, the university convened a commission to evaluate their readmission policies after a mental health withdrawal, renaming the process to \"reinstatement\" as well as eliminating the $ reapplication fee.\nFor students that do seek help, waitlists for therapy can be months long, with individual counselling sessions only 30 minutes in length. In 2022, after a Washington Post article about their medical withdrawal policies, the school increased the number of mental health clinicians on campus from 51 to 60 as well as promised further changes. In 2023, after a lawsuit was filed against the school for what the plaintiffs described as discrimination, the university changed the name of a \"medical withdrawal\" to a \"medical leave of absence\" saying that the \"leave of absence\" terminology would allow students to remain on Yale's insurance while away from the school. The new policy also allowed for students on a leave of absence to participate in extracurricular clubs and visit campus, something a student on medical withdrawal was banned from doing. A representative of Yale also said that the criticism of their policies \"misrepresents our efforts and unwavering commitment to supporting our students, whose well-being and success are our primary focus\" and that \"the mental health of our students is a very, very high priority\".\nAfter the death of undergraduate student Rachael Shaw Rosenbaum by suicide, an organization called Elis for Rachael was formed, advocating for mental health-related reforms. The group has sued Yale, demanding changes.\nNotable people.\nBenefactors.\nYale has had many financial supporters, but some stand out by the magnitude or timeliness of their contributions. Among those who have made large donations commemorated at the university are: Elihu Yale, Jeremiah Dummer, the Vanderbilt family, the Harkness family (Edward, Anna, and William), the Beinecke family (Edwin, Frederick, and Walter), John William Sterling, Payne Whitney, Joseph Earl Sheffield, Paul Mellon, Charles B.\u00a0G. Murphy, Joseph Tsai, William K. Lanman, and Stephen Schwarzman. The Yale Class of 1954, led by Richard Gilder, donated $ in commemoration of their 50th\u00a0reunion. Charles B. Johnson, a 1954 graduate of Yale College, pledged a $ gift in 2013 to support the construction of two new residential colleges. The colleges have been named respectively in honor of Pauli Murray and Benjamin Franklin. A $ contribution by Stephen Adams enabled the Yale School of Music to become tuition-free and the Adams Center for Musical Arts to be built, while a $ contribution by David Geffen enabled the Yale School of Drama (renamed the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale) to become tuition-free as well.\nNotable alumni.\nYale has produced many distinguished alumni in various fields, in both the public and private sectors. According to 2020 data, around 71% of undergraduates join the workforce, while 17% attend graduate or professional schools. Yale graduates have been recipients of 263 Rhodes Scholarships, 123 Marshall Scholarships, 67 Truman Scholarships, 21 Churchill Scholarships, and 9 Mitchell Scholarships. The university is the 2nd largest producer of Fulbright Scholars, with 1,244 in its history and 89 MacArthur Fellows. The U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs ranked Yale fifth among research institutions producing the most 2020\u20132021 Fulbright Scholars. 31 living billionaires are alumni.\nOne of the most popular undergraduate majors is political science, with many going on to serve in government and politics. Former presidents who attended for undergrad include William Howard Taft, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush while former presidents Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton attended Yale Law School. Vice president JD Vance graduated from Yale Law School. Former vice president and influential antebellum era politician John C. Calhoun also graduated from Yale. Former world leaders include Italian prime minister Mario Monti, Turkish prime minister Tansu \u00c7iller, South Korean prime minister Lee Hong-koo, Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, German president Karl Carstens, Philippine president Jos\u00e9 Paciano Laurel, Latvian president Valdis Zatlers, Taiwanese premier Jiang Yi-huah, and Malawian president Peter Mutharika, among others. Prominent royals who graduated are Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, and Olympia Bonaparte, Princess Napol\u00e9on.\nAlumni have had considerable presence in U.S. government in all three branches. On the U.S. Supreme Court, 19 justices have been alumni, including current Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh. Alumni have been U.S. Senators, including current senators Michael Bennet, Richard Blumenthal, Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown, Chris Coons, Amy Klobuchar, Sheldon Whitehouse. Current and former cabinet members include Secretaries of State John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Cyrus Vance, and Dean Acheson; U.S. Secretaries of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, Robert Rubin, Nicholas F. Brady, Steven Mnuchin, and Janet Yellen; U.S. Attorneys General Nicholas Katzenbach, Edwin Meese, John Ashcroft, and Edward H. Levi; and many others. Peace Corps founder and American diplomat Sargent Shriver and public official and urban planner Robert Moses are Yale alumni.\nYale has produced numerous award-winning authors and influential writers, like Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Sinclair Lewis and Pulitzer Prize winners Stephen Vincent Ben\u00e9t, Thornton Wilder, Doug Wright, and David McCullough. Academy Award winning actors, actresses, and directors include Jodie Foster, Paul Newman, Meryl Streep, Elia Kazan, George Roy Hill, Lupita Nyong'o, Oliver Stone, and Frances McDormand. Alumni from Yale have also made notable contributions to both music and the arts. Leading American composer from the 20th century Charles Ives, Broadway composer Cole Porter, Grammy award winner David Lang, multi-Tony Award winner Composer and Musicologist Maury Yeston, and award-winning jazz pianist and composer Vijay Iyer all hail from Yale. Hugo Boss Prize winner Matthew Barney, famed American sculptor Richard Serra, President Barack Obama presidential portrait painter Kehinde Wiley, MacArthur Fellows and contemporary artists Tschabalala Self, Titus Kaphar, Richard Whitten, and Sarah Sze, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Garry Trudeau, and National Medal of Arts photorealist painter Chuck Close all graduated from Yale. Additional alumni include architect and Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Maya Lin, Pritzker Prize winner Norman Foster, and Gateway Arch designer Eero Saarinen. Journalists and pundits include Dick Cavett, Chris Cuomo, Anderson Cooper, William F. Buckley Jr., Blake Hounshell, and Fareed Zakaria.\nIn business, Yale has had numerous alumni and former students go on to become founders of influential business, like William Boeing (Boeing, United Airlines), Briton Hadden and Henry Luce (\"Time Magazine\"), Stephen A. Schwarzman (Blackstone Group), Frederick W. Smith (FedEx), Juan Trippe (Pan Am), Harold Stanley (Morgan Stanley), Bing Gordon (Electronic Arts), and Ben Silbermann (Pinterest). Other business people from Yale include former chairman and CEO of Sears Holdings Edward Lampert, former Time Warner president Jeffrey Bewkes, former PepsiCo chairperson and CEO Indra Nooyi, sports agent Donald Dell, and investor/philanthropist Sir John Templeton,\nAlumni distinguished in academia include literary critic and historian Henry Louis Gates, economists Irving Fischer, Mahbub ul Haq, and Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman; Nobel Prize in Physics laureates Ernest Lawrence and Murray Gell-Mann; Fields Medalist John G. Thompson; Human Genome Project leader and National Institutes of Health director Francis S. Collins; brain surgery pioneer Harvey Cushing; pioneering computer scientist Grace Hopper; influential mathematician and chemist Josiah Willard Gibbs; National Women's Hall of Fame inductee and biochemist Florence B. Seibert; Turing Award recipient Ron Rivest; inventors Samuel F.B. Morse and Eli Whitney; Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate John B. Goodenough; lexicographer Noah Webster; and theologians Jonathan Edwards and Reinhold Niebuhr.\nIn the sporting arena, alumni include baseball players Ron Darling and Craig Breslow who in the major leagues played with fellow Yale alum Ryan Lavarnway and baseball executives Theo Epstein and George Weiss; football players Calvin Hill, Gary Fenick, Amos Alonzo Stagg, and \"the Father of American Football\" Walter Camp; ice hockey players Chris Higgins and Olympian Helen Resor; Olympic figure skating champions Sarah Hughes and Nathan Chen; nine-time U.S. Squash men's champion Julian Illingworth; Olympic swimmer Don Schollander; Olympic rowers Josh West and Rusty Wailes; Olympic sailor Stuart McNay; Olympic runner Frank Shorter; and others.\nIn fiction and popular culture.\nYale University is a cultural referent as an institution that produces some of the most elite members of society and its grounds, alumni, and students have been prominently portrayed in fiction and U.S. popular culture. For example, Owen Johnson's novel \"Stover at Yale\" follows the college career of Dink Stover, and Frank Merriwell, the model for all later juvenile sports fiction, plays football, baseball, crew, and track at Yale while solving mysteries and righting wrongs. Yale University also is mentioned in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel \"The Great Gatsby\". The narrator, Nick Carraway, wrote a series of editorials for the \"Yale News\", and Tom Buchanan was \"one of the most powerful ends that ever played football\" for Yale.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["34273", "27945430", "53825"], "permutation_1": ["34273", "27945430", "53825"], "permutation_2": ["27945430", "53825", "34273"], "permutation_3": ["34273", "27945430", "53825"]}
{"id": "3hop1__465026_35178_826724", "docs_added": {"25270592": "Lilihan carpets and rugs\nArmenians wove Lilihans in Lilihan village in what used to be called Kamareh (now Khomeyn) district in Iran. The term Lilihan is better known in the US, in Europe it is not as widely used.\nStructure.\nAlthough a wide range of carpet and mat sizes are produced, the most common sizes found are 4 x 6 to 8 x 10 feet. The use of a longer pile traditionally appealed to Americans. The Lilihan rugs are executed using the Hamadan (single-wefted) weave, typically this means that they have one heavy cotton weft and are made with thick, first quality wool. The Lilihan rugs are the only fabrics in the Sultanabad region to be single-wefted. Lilihan carpets and rugs are coarsely, but tightly flat woven, making them extremely durable.\nDesign.\nLilihan carpets and rugs are similar to Sarouk rug carpets in colour, style and thickness. According to Leslie Stroh of Rug News, there are about 3000 different designs for Hamadan rugs. This is attributed to 1500 villages in the Hamadan region that each produced two styles of designs. While some geometric patterns can be found amongst Lilihan carpets, the more prevalent designs are traditional floral motifs.\nColour.\nThe pink colour of the weft, distinguishes the Lilihan carpets from all others. Khaki and brown also accentuate the primarily salmon field colour.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />*Neff, Ivan C. and Carol V. Maggs. Dictionary of Oriental Rugs. London: AD. Donker LTD, 1977. ", "35413648": "Khosrowabad, Tehran\nCity in Tehran province, Iran\nKhosrowabad () is a city in, and the capital of, Jajrud District of Pardis County, Tehran province, Iran. It also serves as the administrative center for Jajrud Rural District.\nDemographics.\nPopulation.\nAt the time of the 2006 National Census, Khosrowabad's population was 1,180 in 386 households, when it was a village in Siyahrud Rural District of the Central District of Tehran County. The following census in 2011 counted 799 people in 250 households. The 2016 census measured the population of the village as 1,083 people in 340 households, by which time most of the rural district had been separated from the county in the establishment of Pardis County. Khosrowabad was transferred to Jajrud Rural District created in the new Jajrud District. It was the most populous village in its rural district.\nAfter the census, Khosrowabad was elevated to the status of a city.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "14653": "Iran\nCountry in West Asia\nIran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Turkey to the northwest and Iraq to the west, Azerbaijan, Armenia, the Caspian Sea, and Turkmenistan to the north, Afghanistan to the east, Pakistan to the southeast, the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south. With a multi-ethnic population of nearly 86 million in an area of , Iran ranks 17th globally in both geographic size and population. It is the sixth-largest country entirely in Asia and one of the world's most mountainous countries. Officially an Islamic republic, Iran is divided into five regions with 31 provinces. Tehran is the nation's capital, largest city and financial centre.\nA cradle of civilisation, Iran has been inhabited since the Lower Palaeolithic. The large part of Iran was first unified as a political entity by the Medes under Cyaxares in the seventh century BC, and reached its territorial height in the sixth century BC, when Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Empire, one of the largest in ancient history. Alexander the Great conquered the empire in the fourth century BC. An Iranian rebellion established the Parthian Empire in the third century BC and liberated the country, which was succeeded by the Sasanian Empire in the third century AD. Ancient Iran saw some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, religion and central government. The Sasanian era is considered a golden age in the history of Iranian civilisation. Muslims conquered the region in the seventh century AD, leading to Iran's Islamisation. The literature, philosophy, mathematics, medicine, astronomy and art which had blossomed during the Sasanian era were renewed during the Islamic Golden Age and Persian Renaissance, when a series of Iranian Muslim dynasties ended Arab rule, revived the Persian language and ruled the country until the Seljuk and Mongol conquests of the 11th to 14th centuries.\nIn the 16th century, the native Safavid dynasty re-established a unified Iranian state with Twelver Shi'ism as the official religion. During the Afsharid Empire in the 18th century, Iran was a leading world power, but this was no longer the case after the Qajars took power in the 1790s. The early 20th century saw the Persian Constitutional Revolution and the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty by Reza Shah the Great, who ousted the last Qajar shah in 1925. Attempts by Mohammad Mosaddegh to nationalise the oil industry led to an Anglo-American coup in 1953. After the Iranian Revolution, the monarchy was overthrown in 1979 and the Islamic Republic of Iran was established by Ruhollah Khomeini, who became the country's first Supreme Leader. In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, sparking the eight-year-long Iran\u2013Iraq War, which ended in stalemate.\nIran is officially governed as a unitary Islamic republic with a presidential system, with ultimate authority vested in a Supreme Leader. The government is authoritarian and has attracted widespread criticism for its significant violations of human rights and civil liberties. Iran is a major regional power, due to its large reserves of fossil fuels, including the world's second largest natural gas supply, third largest proven oil reserves, its geopolitically significant location, military capabilities, cultural hegemony, regional influence, and role as the world's focal point of Shia Islam. The Iranian economy is the world's 23rd-largest by PPP. Iran is a founding member of the United Nations, OIC, OPEC, and ECO as well as a current member of the NAM, SCO, and BRICS. Iran is home to 28 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the 10th highest in the world, and ranks 5th in Intangible Cultural Heritage, or human treasures.\nEtymology.\nThe term \"Iran\" 'the land of the Aryans' derives from Middle Persian , first attested in a 3rd-century inscription at Naqsh-e Rostam, with the accompanying Parthian inscription using , in reference to the Iranians. and are oblique plural forms of gentilic nouns \"\u0113r-\" (Middle Persian) and \"ary-\" (Parthian), deriving from Proto-Iranian language \"*arya-\" (meaning 'Aryan', i.e. of the Iranians), recognised as a derivative of Proto-Indo-European language \"*ar-yo-\", meaning 'one who assembles (skilfully)'. According to Iranian mythology, the name comes from Iraj, a legendary king.\nIran was referred to as \"Persia\" by the West, due to Greek historians who referred to all of Iran as , meaning 'the land of the Persians'. \"Persia\" is the Fars province in southwest Iran, the 4th largest province, also known as \"P\u00e2rs\". The Persian \"F\u00e2rs\" (\u0641\u0627\u0631\u0633), derived from the earlier form \"P\u00e2rs\" (\u067e\u0627\u0631\u0633), which is in turn derived from \"P\u00e2rs\u00e2\" (Old Persian: \ud800\udfb1\ud800\udfa0\ud800\udfbc\ud800\udfbf). Due to Fars' historical importance, \"Persia\" originated from this territory through Greek in around 550 BC, and Westerners referred to the entire country as \"Persia\", until 1935, when Reza Shah requested the international community to use its native and original name, \"Iran\"; Iranians called their nation \"Iran\" since at least 1000 BC. Today, both \"Iran\" and \"Persia\" are used culturally, while \"Iran\" remains mandatory in official use.\nThe Persian pronunciation of \"Iran\" is . Commonwealth English pronunciations of \"Iran\" are listed in the \"Oxford English Dictionary\" as and , while American English dictionaries provide pronunciations which map to , or . The \"Cambridge Dictionary\" lists as the British pronunciation and as the American pronunciation. Voice of America's pronunciation guide provides .\nHistory.\nIran is home to one of the world's oldest continuous major civilisations, with historical and urban settlements dating back to 4000 BC. The western part of the Iranian plateau participated in the traditional ancient Near East with Elam (3200\u2013539 BC), and later with other peoples such as the Kassites, Mannaeans, and Gutians. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel called the Persians the \"first Historical People\". The Iranian Empire began in the Iron Age with the rise of the Medes, who unified Iran as a nation and empire in 625 BC. The Achaemenid Empire (550\u2013330 BC), founded by Cyrus the Great, was the largest empire the world had seen, spanning from the Balkans to North Africa and Central Asia. They were succeeded by the Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian Empires, who governed Iran for almost 1,000 years, making Iran a leading power once again. Persia's arch-rival during this time was the Roman Empire and its successor, the Byzantine Empire.\nIran endured invasions by the Macedonians, Arabs, Turks, and Mongols. Despite these invasions, Iran continually reasserted its national identity and developed as a distinct political and cultural entity. The Muslim conquest of Persia (632\u2013654) ended the Sasanian Empire and marked a turning point in Iranian history, leading to the Islamisation of Iran from the eighth to tenth centuries and the decline of Zoroastrianism. However, the achievements of prior Persian civilisations were absorbed into the new Islamic polity. Iran suffered invasions by nomadic tribes during the Late Middle Ages and early modern period, negatively impacting the region. Iran was reunified as an independent state in 1501 by the Safavid dynasty, which established Shia Islam as the empire's official religion, marking another turning point in the history of Islam. Iran functioned again as a leading world power, especially in rivalry with the Ottoman Empire. In the 19th century, Iran lost significant territories in the Caucasus to the Russian Empire following the Russo-Persian Wars.\nIran remained a monarchy until the 1979 Iranian Revolution, when it officially became an Islamic republic on 1 April 1979. Since then, Iran has experienced significant political, social, and economic changes. The establishment of the \"Islamic Republic of Iran\" led to the restructuring of its political system, with Ayatollah Khomeini as the Supreme Leader. Iran's foreign relations have been shaped by the Iran\u2013Iraq War (1980\u20131988), ongoing tensions with the United States, and its nuclear programme, which has been a point of contention in international diplomacy.\nSince the 1990s.\nIn 1989, Akbar Rafsanjani concentrated on a pro-business policy of rebuilding the economy without breaking with the ideology of the revolution. He supported a free market domestically, favouring privatisation of state industries and a moderate position internationally. In 1997, Rafsanjani was succeeded by moderate reformist Mohammad Khatami, whose government advocated freedom of expression, constructive diplomatic relations with Asia and the European Union, and an economic policy that supported a free market and foreign investment.\nThe 2005 presidential election brought conservative populist and nationalist candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power. He was known for his hardline views, nuclearisation, and hostility towards Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UK, the US and other states. He was the first president to be summoned by the parliament to answer questions regarding his presidency. In 2013, centrist and reformist Hassan Rouhani was elected president. In domestic policy, he encouraged personal freedom, free access to information, and improved women's rights. He improved Iran's diplomatic relations through exchanging conciliatory letters. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was reached in Vienna in 2015, between Iran, the P5+1 (UN Security Council + Germany) and the EU. The negotiations centred around ending the economic sanctions in exchange for Iran's restriction in producing enriched uranium. In 2018, however, the US under Trump Administration withdrew from the deal and new sanctions were imposed. This nulled the economic provisions, left the agreement in jeopardy, and brought Iran to nuclear threshold status. In 2020, IRGC general, Qasem Soleimani, the 2nd-most powerful person in Iran, was assassinated by the US, heightening tensions between them. Iran retaliated against US airbases in Iraq, the largest ballistic missile attack ever on Americans; 110 sustained brain injuries.\nHardliner Ebrahim Raisi ran for president again in 2021, succeeding Hassan Rouhani. During Raisi's term, Iran intensified uranium enrichment, hindered international inspections, joined SCO and BRICS, supported Russia in its invasion of Ukraine and restored diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia. In April 2024, Israel's airstrike on an Iranian consulate, killed an IRGC commander. Iran retaliated with UAVs, cruise and ballistic missiles; 9 hit Israel. Western and Jordanian military helped Israel down some Iranian drones. It was the largest drone strike in history, biggest missile attack in Iranian history, its first ever direct attack on Israel and the first time since 1991, Israel was directly attacked by a state force. This occurred during heightened tensions amid the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. In May 2024, President Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash, and Iran held a presidential election in June, when reformist and former Minister of Health, Masoud Pezeshkian, was elected to office. On 1 October 2024, Iran launched about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for assassinations of Ismail Haniyeh, Hassan Nasrallah and Abbas Nilforoushan. On 27 October, Israel responded to that attack by strikes on a missile defence system in the Iranian region of Isfahan.\nGeography.\nIran has an area of . It is the sixth-largest country entirely in Asia and the second-largest in West Asia. It lies between latitudes 24\u00b0 and 40\u00b0 N, and longitudes 44\u00b0 and 64\u00b0 E. It is bordered to the northwest by Armenia (), the Azeri exclave of Nakhchivan (), and the Republic of Azerbaijan (); to the north by the Caspian Sea; to the northeast by Turkmenistan (); to the east by Afghanistan () and Pakistan (); to the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman; and to the west by Iraq () and Turkey ().\nIran is in a seismically active area. On average, an earthquake of magnitude seven on the Richter scale occurs once every ten years. Most earthquakes are shallow-focus and can be very devastating, such as the 2003 Bam earthquake.\nIran consists of the Iranian Plateau. It is one of the world's most mountainous countries; its landscape is dominated by rugged mountain ranges that separate basins or plateaus. The populous west part is the most mountainous, with ranges such as the Caucasus, Zagros, and Alborz, the last containing Mount Damavand, Iran's highest point, at , which is the highest volcano in Asia. Iran's mountains have impacted its politics and economics for centuries.\nThe north part is covered by the lush lowland Caspian Hyrcanian forests, near the southern shores of the Caspian Sea. The east part consists mostly of desert basins, such as the Kavir Desert, which is the country's largest desert, and the Lut Desert, as well as salt lakes. The Lut Desert is the hottest recorded spot on the Earth's surface, with 70.7\u00a0\u00b0C recorded in 2005. The only large plains are found along the coast of the Caspian and at the north end of the Persian Gulf, where the country borders the mouth of the Arvand river. Smaller, discontinuous plains are found along the remaining coast of the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman.\nIslands.\nIranian islands are mainly located in the Persian Gulf. Iran has 102 islands in Urmia Lake, 427 in Aras River, several in Anzali Lagoon, Ashurade Island in the Caspian Sea, Sheytan Island in the Oman Sea and other inland islands. Iran has an uninhabited island at the far end of the Gulf of Oman, near Pakistan. A few islands can be visited by tourists. Most are owned by the military or used for wildlife protection, and entry is prohibited or requires a permit.\nIran took control of Bumusa, and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs in 1971, in the Strait of Hormuz between the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. Despite the islands being small and having little natural resources or population, they are highly valuable for their strategic location. Although the United Arab Emirates claims sovereignty, it has consistently been met with a strong response from Iran, based on their historical and cultural background. Iran has full control over the islands.\nKish island, as a free trade zone, is touted as a consumer's paradise, with malls, shopping centres, tourist attractions, and luxury hotels. Qeshm is the largest island in Iran, and a UNESCO Global Geopark since 2016. Its salt cave, Namakdan, is the largest in the world, and one of the world's longest caves.\nClimate.\nIran's climate is diverse, ranging from arid and semi-arid, to subtropical along the Caspian coast and northern forests. On the north edge of the country, temperatures rarely fall below freezing and the area remains humid. Summer temperatures rarely exceed . Annual precipitation is in the east part of the plain and more than in the west part. The UN Resident Coordinator for Iran, has said that \"Water scarcity poses the most severe human security challenge in Iran today\".\nTo the west, settlements in the Zagros basin experience lower temperatures, severe winters with freezing average daily temperatures and heavy snowfall. The east and central basins are arid, with less than of rain and have occasional deserts. Average summer temperatures rarely exceed . The southern coastal plains of the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman have mild winters, and very humid and hot summers. The annual precipitation ranges from .\nBiodiversity.\nMore than one-tenth of the country is forested. About 120 million hectares of forests and fields are government-owned for national exploitation. Iran's forests can be divided into five vegetation regions: Hyrcanian region which forms the green belt of the north side of the country; the Turan region, which are mainly scattered in the centre of Iran; Zagros region, which mainly contains oak forests in the west; the Persian Gulf region, which is scattered in the southern coastal belt; the Arasbarani region, which contains rare and unique species. More than 8,200 plant species are grown. The land covered by natural flora is four times that of Europe's. There are over 200 protected areas to preserve biodiversity and wildlife, with over 30 being national parks.\nIran's living fauna includes 34 bat species, Indian grey mongoose, small Indian mongoose, golden jackal, Indian wolf, foxes, striped hyena, leopard, Eurasian lynx, brown bear and Asian black bear. Ungulate species include wild boar, urial, Armenian mouflon, red deer, and goitered gazelle. One of the most famous animals is the critically endangered Asiatic cheetah, which survives only in Iran. Iran lost all its Asiatic lions and the extinct Caspian tigers by the early 20th century. Domestic ungulates are represented by sheep, goat, cattle, horse, water buffalo, donkey and camel. Bird species like pheasant, partridge, stork, eagles and falcons are native.\nGovernment and politics.\nSupreme Leader.\nThe Supreme Leader, \"Rahbar\", Leader of the Revolution or Supreme Leadership Authority, is the head of state and responsible for supervision of policy. The president has limited power compared to the Rahbar. Key ministers are selected with the Rahbar's agreement and they have the ultimate say on foreign policy. The Rahbar is directly involved in ministerial appointments for Defence, Intelligence and Foreign Affairs, as well as other top ministries after submission of candidates from the president.\nRegional policy is directly controlled by the Rahbar, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' task limited to protocol and ceremonial occasions. Ambassadors to Arab countries, for example, are chosen by the Quds Force, which directly reports to the Rahbar. The Rahbar can order laws to be amended. Setad was estimated at $95\u00a0billion in 2013 by Reuters, accounts of which are secret even to the parliament.\nThe Rahbar is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, controls military intelligence and security operations, and has sole power to declare war or peace. The heads of the judiciary, state radio and television networks, commanders of the police and military, and the members of the Guardian Council are all appointed by the Rahbar.\nThe Assembly of Experts is responsible for electing the Rahbar, and has the power to dismiss him on the basis of qualifications and popular esteem. To date, the Assembly of Experts has not challenged any of the Rahbar's decisions nor attempted to dismiss him. The previous head of the judicial system, Sadeq Larijani, appointed by the Rahbar, said that it is illegal for the Assembly of Experts to supervise the Rahbar. Many believe the Assembly of Experts has become a ceremonial body without any real power. In February 2025,\u00a0 the New York Times reported that according to Karim Sadjadpour, an expert on Iran at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, there exist in the Islamic Republic of Iran two parallel regimes. One which is ruled by the military and intelligence forces, who report to the Rahbar, and \"who oversee the nuclear programme and regional proxies and are tasked with repression, hostage taking and assassinations\u201d. The other ruled by diplomats and politicians \"who are authorized to speak to Western media and officials\" and have minimal knowledge of Iran's nuclear programme.\nThe political system is based on the country's constitution. Iran ranked 154th in the 2022 \"The Economist Democracy Index\". Juan Jos\u00e9 Linz wrote in 2000 that \"the Iranian regime combines the ideological bent of totalitarianism with the limited pluralism of authoritarianism\".\nPresident.\nThe President is head of government and the second highest-ranking authority, after the Supreme Leader. The President is elected by universal suffrage for 4 years. Before elections, nominees to become a presidential candidate must be approved by the Guardian Council. The Council's members are chosen by the Leader, with the Leader having the power to dismiss the president. The President can only be re-elected for one term. The president is the deputy commander-in-chief of the Army, the head of Supreme National Security Council, and has the power to declare a state of emergency after passage by the parliament.\nThe President is responsible for the implementation of the constitution, and for the exercise of executive powers in implementing the decrees and general policies as outlined by the Rahbar, except for matters directly related to the Rahbar, who has the final say. The President functions as the executive of affairs such as signing treaties and other international agreements, and administering national planning, budget, and state employment affairs, all as approved by the Rahbar.\nThe President appoints ministers, subject to the approval of the Parliament, and the Rahbar, who can dismiss or reinstate any minister. The President supervises the Council of Ministers, coordinates government decisions, and selects government policies to be placed before the legislature. Eight Vice Presidents serve under the President, as well as a cabinet of 22 ministers, all appointed by the president.\nGuardian Council.\nPresidential and parliamentary candidates must be approved by the 12-member Guardian Council (all members of which are appointed by the Leader) or the Leader, before running to ensure their allegiance. The Leader rarely does the vetting, but has the power to do so, in which case additional approval of the Guardian Council is not needed. The Leader can revert the decisions of the Guardian Council.\nThe constitution gives the council three mandates: veto power over legislation passed by the parliament, supervision of elections and approving or disqualifying candidates seeking to run in local, parliamentary, presidential, or Assembly of Experts elections. The council can nullify a law based on two accounts: being against Sharia (Islamic law), or being against the constitution.\nSupreme National Security Council.\nThe Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) is at the top of the foreign policy decisions process. The council was formed during the 1989 Iranian constitutional referendum for the protection and support of national interests, the revolution, territorial integrity and national sovereignty. It is mandated by Article 176 of the Constitution to be presided over by the President.\nThe Leader selects the secretary of the Supreme Council, and the decisions of the council are effective after the confirmation by the Leader. The SNSC formulates nuclear policy, and would become effective if they are confirmed by the Leader.\nLegislature.\nThe legislature, known as the Islamic Consultative Assembly (ICA), Iranian Parliament or \"Majles\", is a unicameral body comprising 290 members elected for four-years. It drafts legislation, ratifies international treaties, and approves the national budget. All parliamentary candidates and legislation from the assembly must be approved by the Guardian Council. The Guardian Council can and has dismissed elected members of the parliament. The parliament has no legal status without the Guardian Council, and the Council holds absolute veto power over legislation.\nThe Expediency Discernment Council has the authority to mediate disputes between Parliament and the Guardian Council, and serves as an advisory body to the Supreme Leader, making it one of the most powerful governing bodies in Iran.\nThe Parliament has 207 constituencies, including the 5 reserved seats for religious minorities. The remaining 202 are territorial, each covering one or more of Iran's counties.\nLaw.\nIran uses the Sharia law as its legal system, with elements of Civil law. The Supreme Leader appoints the head of the Supreme Court and chief public prosecutor. There are several types of courts, including public courts that deal with civil and criminal cases, and revolutionary courts which deal with certain offences, such as crimes against national security. The decisions of the revolutionary courts are final and cannot be appealed.\nThe Chief Justice is the head of the judicial system and responsible for its administration and supervision. He is the highest judge of the Supreme Court of Iran. The Chief Justice nominates candidates to serve as minister of justice, and the President selects one. The Chief Justice can serve for two five-year terms.\nThe Special Clerical Court handles crimes allegedly committed by clerics, although it has taken on cases involving laypeople. The Special Clerical Court functions independently of the regular judicial framework and is accountable only to the Rahbar. The Court's rulings are final and cannot be appealed. The Assembly of Experts, which meets for one week annually, comprises 86 \"virtuous and learned\" clerics elected by adult suffrage for 8-year terms.\nAdministrative divisions.\nIran is subdivided into thirty-one provinces ( \"ost\u00e2n\"), each governed from a local centre, usually the largest local city, which is called the capital (Persian: , \"markaz\") of that province. The provincial authority is headed by a governor-general ( \"ost\u00e2nd\u00e2r\"), who is appointed by the Minister of the Interior subject to approval of the cabinet.\nForeign relations.\nIran maintains diplomatic relations with 165 countries, but not the United States and Israel\u2014a state which Iran derecognised in 1979.\nIran has an adversarial relationship with Saudi Arabia due to different political ideologies. Iran and Turkey have been involved in modern proxy conflicts such as in Syria, Libya, and the South Caucasus. However, they have shared common interests, such as the issue of Kurdish separatism and the Qatar diplomatic crisis. Iran has a close and strong relationship with Tajikistan. Iran has deep economic relations and alliance with Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, with Syria often described as Iran's \"closest ally\".\nRussia is a key trading partner, especially in regard to its excess oil reserves. Both share a close economic and military alliance, and are subject to heavy sanctions by Western nations. Iran is the only country in Western Asia that has been invited to join the CSTO, the Russia-based international treaty organisation that parallels NATO.\nRelations between Iran and China are strong economically; they have developed a friendly, economic and strategic relationship. In 2021, Iran and China signed a 25-year cooperation agreement that will strengthen the relations between the two countries and would include \"political, strategic and economic\" components. Iran-China relations dates back to at least 200 BC and possibly earlier. Iran is one of the few countries in the world that has a good relationship with both North and South Korea.\nIn December 2024, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, a close ally of Iran, was a severe setback for the political influence of Iran in the region.\nIran is a member of dozens of international organisations, including the G-15, G-24, G-77, IAEA, IBRD, IDA, NAM, IDB, IFC, ILO, IMF, IMO, Interpol, OIC, OPEC, WHO, and the UN, and currently has observer status at the WTO.\nMilitary.\nThe military is organised under a unified structure, the Islamic Republic of Iran Armed Forces, comprising the Islamic Republic of Iran Army, which includes the Ground Forces, Air Defence Force, Air Force, and Navy; the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which consists of the Ground Forces, Aerospace Force, Navy, Quds Force, and Basij; and the Law Enforcement Command (Faraja), which serves an analogous function to a gendarme. While the IRIAF protects the country's sovereignty in a traditional capacity, the IRGC is mandated to ensure the integrity of the Republic, against foreign interference, coups, and internal riots. Since 1925, it is mandatory for all male citizen aged 18 to serve around 14 months in the IRIAF or IRGC.\nIran has over 610,000 active troops and around 350,000 reservists, totalling over 1 million military personnel, one of the world's highest percentage of citizens with military training. The Basij\",\" a paramilitary volunteer militia within the IRGC, has over 20 million members, 600,000 available for immediate call-up, 300,000 reservists, and a million that could be mobilised when necessary. Faraja, the Iranian uniformed police force, has over 260,000 active personnel. Most statistical organisations do not include the Basij and Faraja in their ratings report.\nExcluding the Basij and Faraja, Iran has been identified as a major military power, owing it to the size and capabilities of its armed forces. It possesses the world's 14th strongest military. It ranks 13th globally in terms of overall military strength, 7th in the number of active military personnel, and 9th in the size of both its ground force and armoured force. Iran's armed forces are the largest in West Asia and comprise the greatest Army Aviation fleet in the Middle East. Iran is among the top 15 countries in terms of military budget. In 2021, its military spending increased for the first time in four years, to $24.6 billion, 2.3% of the national GDP. Funding for the IRGC accounted for 34% of Iran's total military spending in 2021.\nSince the Revolution, to overcome foreign embargoes, Iran has developed a domestic military industry capable of producing indigenous tanks, armoured personnel carriers, missiles, submarines, missile destroyer, radar systems, helicopters, naval vessels, and fighter planes. Official announcements have highlighted the development of advanced weaponry, particularly in rocketry. Consequently, Iran has the largest and most diverse ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East and is only the 5th country in the world with hypersonic missile technology. It is the world's 6th missile power. Iran designs and produces a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and is considered a global leader and superpower in drone warfare and technology. It is one of the world's five countries with cyberwarfare capabilities and is identified as \"one of the most active players in the international cyber arena\". Iran is an key exporter of arms since 2000s.\nFollowing Russia's purchase of Iranian drones during the invasion of Ukraine, in November 2023, the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) finalized arrangements to acquire Russian Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets, Mil Mi-28 attack helicopters, air defence and missile systems. The Iranian Navy has had joint exercises with Russia and China.\nNuclear programme.\nIran's nuclear programme dates back to the 1950s. Iran revived it after the Revolution, and its extensive nuclear fuel cycle, including enrichment capabilities, became the subject of intense international negotiations and sanctions. Many countries have expressed concern Iran could divert civilian nuclear technology into a weapons programme. In 2015, Iran and the P5+1 agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan on Action (JCPOA), aiming to end economic sanctions in exchange for restriction in producing enriched uranium.\nIn 2018, however, the US withdrew from the deal under the Trump administration, and reimposed sanctions. This was met with resistance by Iran and other members of the P5+1. A year later, Iran began decreasing its compliance. By 2020, Iran announced it would no longer observe any limit set by the agreement. Progress since then has brought Iran to the nuclear threshold status. As of November 2023[ [update]], Iran had uranium enriched to up to 60% fissile content, close to weapon grade. Some analysts already regard Iran as a de facto nuclear power.\nRegional influence.\nIran's significant influence and foothold, sometimes characterised as the \"Dawn of A New Persian Empire.\" Some analysts associate the Iranian influence to the nation's proud national legacy, empire and history.\nSince the Revolution, Iran has grown its influence across and beyond the region. It has built military forces with a wide network of state and none-state actors, starting with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 1982. The IRGC has been key to Iranian influence, through its Quds Force. The instability in Lebanon (from the 1980s), Iraq (from 2003) and Yemen (from 2014) has allowed Iran to build strong alliances and footholds beyond its borders. Iran has a prominent influence in the social services, education, economy and politics of Lebanon, and Lebanon provides Iran access to the Mediterranean Sea. Hezbollah's strategic successes against Israel, such as its symbolic victory during the 2006 Israel\u2013Hezbollah War, elevated Iran's influence in the Levant and strengthened its appeal across the Muslim World.\nSince the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the arrival of ISIS in the mid-2010s, Iran has financed and trained militia groups in Iraq. Since the Iran-Iraq war in 1980s and the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iran has shaped Iraq's politics. Following Iraq's struggle against ISIS in 2014, companies linked to the IRGC such as Khatam al-Anbiya, started to build roads, power plants, hotels and businesses in Iraq, creating an economic corridor worth around $9 billion before COVID-19. This is expected to grow to $20 billion.\nDuring Yemen's civil war, Iran provided military support to the Houthis, a Zaydi Shiite movement fighting Yemen's Sunni government since 2004. They gained significant power in recent years. Iran has considerable influence in Afghanistan and Pakistan through militant groups such as Liwa Fatemiyoun and Liwa Zainebiyoun.\nIn Syria, Iran has supported President Bashar al-Assad; the two countries are long-standing allies. Iran has provided significant military and economic support to Assad's government, so has a considerable foothold in Syria. Iran has long supported the anti-Israel fronts in North Africa in countries like Algeria and Tunisia, embracing Hamas in part to help undermine the popularity of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Iran's support of Hamas emerged more clearly in later years. According to US intelligence, Iran does not have full control over these state and non-state groups.\nHuman rights and censorship.\nThe Iranian government has been denounced by various international organisations and governments for violating human rights. The government has frequently persecuted and arrested critics of the government. Iranian law does not recognise sexual orientations. Sexual activity between members of the same sex is illegal and is punishable by death. Capital punishment is a legal punishment, and according to the BBC, Iran \"carries out more executions than any other country, except China\". UN Special Rapporteur Javaid Rehman has reported discrimination against several ethnic minorities in Iran. A group of UN experts in 2022 urged Iran to stop \"systematic persecution\" of religious minorities, adding that members of the Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith were arrested, barred from universities, or had their homes demolished.\nCensorship in Iran is ranked among the most extreme worldwide. Iran has strict internet censorship, with the government persistently blocking social media and other sites. Since January 2021, Iranian authorities have blocked a list of social media platforms; Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Telegram, Twitter and YouTube.\nThe 2006 election results were widely disputed, resulting in protests. The 2017\u201318 Iranian protests swept across the country in response to the economic and political situation. It was formally confirmed that thousands of protesters were arrested. The 2019\u201320 Iranian protests started on 15 November in Ahvaz, and spread across the country after the government announced increases in fuel prices of up to 300%. A week-long total Internet shutdown marked one of the most severe Internet blackouts in any country, and the bloodiest governmental crackdown of the protestors. Tens of thousands were arrested and hundreds were killed within a few days according to multiple international observers, including Amnesty International.\nUkraine International Airlines Flight 752, was a scheduled international civilian passenger flight from Tehran to Kyiv, operated by Ukraine International Airlines. On 8 January 2020, the Boeing 737\u2013800 flying the route was shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) shortly after takeoff, killing all 176 occupants on board and leading to protests. An international investigation led to the government admitting to the shootdown, calling it a \"human error\". Another Protests against the government began on 16 September 2022 after a woman named Mahsa Amini died in police custody following her arrest by the Guidance Patrol, known commonly as the \"morality police\".\nEconomy.\nAs of 2024[ [update]], Iran has the world's 19th largest economy (by PPP). It is a mixture of central planning, state ownership of oil and other large enterprises, village agriculture, and small-scale private trading and service ventures. Services contribute the largest percentage of GDP, followed by industry (mining and manufacturing) and agriculture. The economy is characterised by its hydrocarbon sector, in addition to manufacturing and financial services. With 10% of the world's oil reserves and 15% of gas reserves, Iran is an energy superpower. Over 40 industries are directly involved in the Tehran Stock Exchange.\nTehran is the economic powerhouse of Iran. About 30% of Iran's public-sector workforce and 45% of its large industrial firms are located there, and half those firms' employees work for government. The Central Bank of Iran is responsible for developing and maintaining the currency: the Iranian rial. The government does not recognise trade unions other than the Islamic labour councils, which are subject to the approval of employers and the security services. Unemployment was 9% in 2022.\nBudget deficits have been a chronic problem, mostly due to large state subsidies, that include foodstuffs and especially petrol, totalling $100\u00a0billion in 2022 for energy alone. In 2010, the economic reform plan was to cut subsidies gradually and replace them with targeted social assistance. The objective is to move towards free market prices and increase productivity and social justice. The administration continues reform, and indicates it will diversify the oil-reliant economy. Iran has developed a biotechnology, nanotechnology, and pharmaceutical industry. The government is privatising industries.\nIran has leading manufacturing industries in automobile manufacture, transportation, construction materials, home appliances, food and agricultural goods, armaments, pharmaceuticals, information technology, and petrochemicals in the Middle East. Iran is among the world's top five producers of apricots, cherries, cucumbers and gherkins, dates, figs, pistachios, quinces, walnuts, Kiwifruit and watermelons. International sanctions against Iran have damaged the economy. Iran is one of three countries that have not ratified the Paris Agreement to limit climate change, although academics say it would be good for the country.\nIran suffers from high inflation and especially surging food prices. A major contributing factor is the involvement of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the economy, particularly in the agriculture and food sectors but also due to significant spending on the Axis of Resistance which increase the public deficit. \nTourism.\nTourism had been rapidly growing before the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching nearly 9 million foreign visitors in 2019, the world's third fastest-growing tourism destination. In 2022 it expanded its share to 5% of the economy. Iran's tourism experienced a growth of 43% in 2023, attracting 6 million foreign tourists. The government ended visa requirements for 60 countries in 2023.\n98% of visits are for leisure, while 2% are for business, indicating the country's appeal as a tourist destination. Alongside the capital, the most popular tourist destinations are Isfahan, Shiraz and Mashhad. Iran is emerging as a preferred destination for medical tourism. Travellers from other West Asian countries grew 31% in the first seven months of 2023, surpassing Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Domestic tourism is one of the world's largests; Iranian tourists spent $33bn in 2021. Iran projects investment of $32 billion in the tourism sector by 2026.\nAgriculture and fishery.\nRoughly one-third of Iran's total surface area is suited for farmland. Only 12% of the total land area is under cultivation, but less than one-third of the cultivated area is irrigated; the rest is devoted to dryland farming. Some 92% of agricultural products depend on water. The western and northwestern portions of the country have the most fertile soils. Iran's food security index stands at around 96 percent. 3% of the total land area is used for grazing and fodder production. Most of the grazing is done on mostly semi-dry rangeland in mountain areas and on areas surrounding the large deserts of Central Iran. Progressive government efforts and incentives during the 1990s, improved agricultural productivity, helping Iran toward its goal of reestablishing national self-sufficiency in food production.\nAccess to the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and many river basins provides Iran the potential to develop excellent fisheries. The government assumed control of commercial fishing in 1952. Expansion of the fishery infrastructure enabled the country to harvest an estimated 700,000 tons of fish annually from the southern waters. Since the Revolution, increased attention has been focused on producing fish from inland waters. Between 1976 and 2004, the combined take from inland waters by the state and private sectors increased from 1,100 tons to 110,175 tons. Iran is the world's largest producer and exporter of caviar, exporting more than 300 tonnes annually.\nIndustry and services.\nIran is globally ranked 16th in car manufacturing, ahead of the UK, Italy, and Russia. It has outputted 1.188 million cars in 2023, a 12% growth compared to the previous years. Iran has exported various cars to countries such as Venezuela, Russia and Belarus. From 2008 to 2009, Iran leaped to 28th place from 69th in annual industrial production growth rate. Iranian contractors have been awarded several foreign tender contracts in different fields of construction of dams, bridges, roads, buildings, railroads, power generation, and gas, oil and petrochemical industries. As of 2011, some 66 Iranian industrial companies are carrying out projects in 27 countries. Iran exported over $20 billion worth of technical and engineering services over 2001\u20132011. The availability of local raw materials, rich mineral reserves, experienced manpower have all played crucial role in winning the bids.\n45% of large industrial firms are located in Tehran, and almost half of their workers work for government. The Iranian retail industry is largely in the hands of cooperatives, many of them government-sponsored, and of independent retailers in the bazaars. The bulk of food sales occur at street markets, where the Chief Statistics Bureau sets the prices. Iran's main exports are to Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Syria, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Canada, Venezuela, Japan, South Korea and Turkey. Iran's automotive industry is the second most active industry of the country, after its oil and gas industry. Iran Khodro is the largest car manufacturer in the Middle East, and ITMCO is the biggest tractor manufacturer. Iran is the 12th largest automaker in the world. Construction is one of the most important sectors in Iran accounting for 20\u201350% of the total private investment.\nIran is one of the most important mineral producers in the world, ranked among 15 major mineral-rich countries. Iran has become self-sufficient in designing, building and operating dams and power plants. Iran is one of the six countries in the world that manufacture gas- and steam-powered turbines.\nTransport.\nIn 2011 Iran had of roads, of which 73% were paved. In 2008 there were nearly 100 passenger cars for every 1,000 inhabitants.\nTehran Metro is the largest in the Middle East, it carries more than 3 million passengers daily and in 2018, 820 million trips. Trains operate on of track. The country's major port of entry is Bandar Abbas on the Strait of Hormuz. Imported goods are distributed through the country by trucks and freight trains. The Tehran\u2013Bandar Abbas railroad connects Bandar-Abbas to the railroad system of Central Asia, via Tehran and Mashhad. Other major ports include Bandar e-Anzali and Bandar e-Torkeman on the Caspian Sea and Khorramshahr and Bandar-e Emam Khomeyni on the Persian Gulf.\nDozens of cities have airports that serve passenger and cargo planes. Iran Air, the national airline, operates domestic and international flights. All large cities have mass transit systems using buses, and private companies provide bus services between cities. Over a million people work in transport, accounting for 9% of GDP.\nEnergy.\nIran is an energy superpower and petroleum plays a key part. As of 2023[ [update]], Iran produced 4% of the world's crude oil ( per day), which generates US$36bn of export revenue and is the main source of foreign currency. Oil and gas reserves are estimated at 1.2 trn barrels; Iran holds 10% of world oil reserves and 15% for gas. It ranks 3rd in oil reserves and is OPEC's 2nd largest exporter. It has the 2nd largest gas reserves, and 3rd largest natural gas production. In 2019, Iran discovered a southern oil field of 50 bn barrels and in April 2024, the NIOC discovered 10 giant shale oil deposits, totalling 2.6 bn barrels. Iran plans to invest $500 billion in oil by 2025.\nIran manufactures 60\u201370% of its industrial equipment domestically, including turbines, pumps, catalysts, refineries, oil tankers, drilling rigs, offshore platforms, towers, pipes, and exploration instruments. The addition of new hydroelectric stations and streamlining of conventional coal and oil-fired stations increased installed capacity to 33 GW; about 75% was based on natural gas, 18% on oil, and 7% on hydroelectric power. In 2004, Iran opened its first wind-powered and geothermal plants, and the first solar thermal plant began in 2009. Iran is the world's third country to develop GTL technology.\nDemographic trends and intensified industrialisation have caused electric power demand to grow by 8% per year. The government's goal of 53 GW of installed capacity by 2010 is to be reached by bringing on line new gas-fired plants, and adding hydropower and nuclear generation capacity. Iran's first nuclear power plant went online in 2011.\nDespite being an energy superpower as of 2024-2025 Iran suffers from an energy crisis, manifested by many power outages.\nScience and technology.\nIran has made considerable advances in science and technology, despite international sanctions. In the biomedical sciences, Iran's Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics has a UNESCO chair in biology. In 2006, Iranian scientists successfully cloned a sheep at the Royan Research Centre in Tehran. Stem cell research is among the top 10 in the world. Iran ranks 15th in the world in nanotechnologies. Iranian scientists outside Iran have made major scientific contributions. In 1960, Ali Javan co-invented the first gas laser, and fuzzy set theory was introduced by Lotfi A. Zadeh.\nCardiologist Tofy Mussivand invented and developed the first artificial cardiac pump, the precursor of the artificial heart. Furthering research in diabetes, the HbA1c was discovered by Samuel Rahbar. Many papers in string theory are published in Iran. In 2014, Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani became the first woman, and Iranian, to receive the Fields Medal, the highest prize in mathematics.\nIran increased its publication output nearly tenfold from 1996 through 2004, and ranked first in output growth rate, followed by China. According to a study by SCImago in 2012, Iran would rank fourth in research output by 2018, if the trend persisted. The Iranian humanoid robot Sorena 2, which was designed by engineers at the University of Tehran, was unveiled in 2010. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has placed the name of Surena among the five most prominent robots, after analysing its performance. \nAccording to a 2019 study by Isabel Campos-Varela et al., Iran recorded the highest proportion of retracted publications globally, with 15.52 retractions per 10,000 publications. Media reports from 2023 indicate that Iran continues to rank among the countries with the highest retraction rates. Common types of misconduct include fraudulent peer review processes, plagiarism, and data fabrication. Data from the Retraction Watch Leaderboard further highlights that two of the 32 individuals with the highest number of retracted articles worldwide are based in Iran.\nIran was ranked 64th in the Global Innovation Index in 2024.\nIranian Space Agency.\nThe Iranian Space Agency (ISA) was established in 2004. Iran became an orbital-launch-capable nation in 2009, and is a founding member of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Iran placed its domestically built satellite Omid into orbit on the 30th anniversary of the Revolution, in 2009, through its first expendable launch vehicle Safir. It became the 9th country capable of both producing a satellite and sending it into space from a domestically made launcher. Simorgh's launch in 2016, is the successor of Safir.\nIn January 2024, Iran launched the Soraya satellite into its highest orbit yet (750\u00a0km), a new space launch milestone for the country. It was launched by Qaem 100 rocket. Iran also successfully launched 3 indigenous satellites, The Mahda, Kayan and Hatef, into orbit using the Simorgh carrier rocket. It was the first time in country's history that it simultaneously sent three satellites into space. The three satellites are designed for testing advanced satellite subsystems, space-based positioning technology, and narrowband communication.\nIn February 2024, Iran launched its domestically developed imaging satellite, Pars 1, from Russia into orbit. This was the second time since August 2022, when Russia launched another Iranian remote-sensing, Khayyam satellite, into orbit from Kazakhstan, reflecting deep scientific cooperation between the countries.\nTelecommunication.\nIran's telecommunications industry is almost entirely state-owned, dominated by the Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI). As of 2020, 70 million Iranians use high-speed mobile internet. Iran is among the first five countries which have had a growth rate of over 20 percent and the highest level of development in telecommunication. Iran has been awarded the UNESCO special certificate for providing telecommunication services to rural areas.\nGlobally, Iran ranks 75th in mobile internet speed and 153rd in fixed internet speed.\nDemographics.\nIran's population grew rapidly from about 19\u00a0million in 1956 to about 85 million by February 2023. However, Iran's fertility rate has dropped dramatically, from 6.5 children born per woman to about 1.7 two decades later, leading to a population growth rate of about 1.39% as of 2018. Due to its young population, studies project that the growth will continue to slow until it stabilises at around 105\u00a0million by 2050.\nIran hosts one of the largest refugee populations, with almost one million, mostly from Afghanistan and Iraq. According to the Iranian Constitution, the government is required to provide every citizen with access to social security, covering retirement, unemployment, old age, disability, accidents, calamities, health and medical treatment and care services. This is covered by tax revenues and income derived from public contributions.\nThe country has one of the highest urban growth rates in the world. From 1950 to 2002, the urban proportion of the population increased from 27% to 60%. Iran's population is concentrated in its western half, especially in the north, north-west and west.\nTehran, with a population of around 9.4\u00a0million, is Iran's capital and largest city. The country's second most populous city, Mashhad, has a population of around 3.4\u00a0million, and is capital of the province of Razavi Khorasan. Isfahan has a population of around 2.2\u00a0million and is Iran's third most populous city. It is the capital of Isfahan province and was also the third capital of the Safavid Empire.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nEthnic groups.\nEthnic group composition remains a point of debate, mainly regarding the largest and second largest ethnic groups, the Persians and Azerbaijanis, due to the lack of Iranian state censuses based on ethnicity. The World Factbook has estimated that around 79% of the population of Iran is a diverse Indo-European ethno-linguistic group, with Persians (including Mazenderanis and Gilaks) constituting 61% of the population, Kurds 10%, Lurs 6%, and Balochs 2%. Peoples of other ethnolinguistic groups make up the remaining 21%, with Azerbaijanis constituting 16%, Arabs 2%, Turkmens and other Turkic tribes 2%, and others (such as Armenians, Talysh, Georgians, Circassians, Assyrians) 1%.\nThe Library of Congress issued slightly different estimates: 65% Persians (including Mazenderanis, Gilaks, and the Talysh), 16% Azerbaijanis, 7% Kurds, 6% Lurs, 2% Baloch, 1% Turkic tribal groups (including Qashqai and Turkmens), and non-Iranian, non-Turkic groups (including Armenians, Georgians, Assyrians, Circassians, and Arabs) less than 3%.\nEthnic based discrimination is prevalent in Iran. Minorities in Iran have been disproportionately affected by the ongoing crackdown aimed at repressing the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' movement, according to the UN Fact-Finding Mission.\nLanguages.\nMost of the population speaks Persian, the country's official and national language. Others include speakers of other Iranian languages, within the greater Indo-European family, and languages belonging to other ethnicities. The Gilaki and Mazenderani languages are widely spoken in Gilan and Mazenderan, northern Iran. The Talysh language is spoken in parts of Gilan. Varieties of Kurdish are concentrated in the province of Kurdistan and nearby areas. In Khuzestan, several dialects of Persian are spoken. South Iran also houses the Luri and Lari languages.\nAzerbaijani, the most-spoken minority language in the country, and other Turkic languages and dialects are found in various regions, especially Azerbaijan. Notable minority languages include Armenian, Georgian, Neo-Aramaic, and Arabic. Khuzi Arabic is spoken by the Arabs in Khuzestan, and the wider group of Iranian Arabs. Circassian was also once widely spoken by the large Circassian minority, but, due to assimilation, no sizable number of Circassians speak the language anymore.\nPercentages of spoken language continue to be a point of debate, most notably regarding the largest and second largest ethnicities in Iran, the Persians and Azerbaijanis. Percentages given by the CIA's World Factbook include 53% Persian, 16% Azerbaijani, 10% Kurdish, 7% Mazenderani and Gilaki, 7% Luri, 2% Turkmen, 2% Balochi, 2% Arabic, and 2% the remainder Armenian, Georgian, Neo-Aramaic, and Circassian.\nReligion.\nTwelver Shia Islam is the state religion, to which 90\u201395% of Iranians adhere; about 5\u201310% are in the Sunni and Sufi branches of Islam. 96% of Iranians believe in Islam, but 14% identify as not religious.\nThere is a large population of adherents to Yarsanism, a Kurdish indigenous religion, estimated to be over half a million to one million followers. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is not officially recognised and has been subject to official persecution. Since the Revolution, the persecution of Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds has increased. Irreligion is not recognised by the government.\nChristianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and the Sunni branch of Islam are officially recognised by the government and have reserved seats in the Parliament. Iran is home to the largest Jewish community in the Muslim World and the Middle East, outside of Israel. Around 250,000 to 370,000 Christians reside in Iran, and Christianity is the country's largest recognised minority religion, most are of Armenian background, as well as a sizable minority of Assyrians. The Iranian government has supported the rebuilding and renovation of Armenian churches, and has supported the Armenian Monastic Ensembles of Iran. In 2019, the government registered the Vank Cathedral, in Isfahan, as a World Heritage Site. Currently three Armenian churches in Iran have been included in the World Heritage List.\nEducation.\nEducation is highly centralised. K\u201312 is supervised by the Ministry of Education, and higher education is supervised by the Ministry of Science and Technology. Literacy among people aged 15 and older was 86% as of 2016[ [update]], with men (90%) significantly more educated than women (81%). Government expenditure on education is around 4% of GDP.\nThe requirement to enter into higher education is to have a high school diploma and pass the Iranian University Entrance Exam. Many students do a one\u2013two-year course of pre-university. Iran's higher education is sanctioned by different levels of diplomas, including an associate degree in two years, a bachelor's degree in four years, and a master's degree in two years, after which another exam allows the candidate to pursue a doctoral programme.\nHealth.\nHealthcare is provided by the public-governmental system, the private sector, and NGOs.\nIran is the only country in the world with a legal organ trade. Iran has been able to extend public health preventive services through the establishment of an extensive Primary Health Care Network. As a result, child and maternal mortality rates have fallen significantly, and life expectancy at birth has risen. Iran's medical knowledge rank is 17th globally, and 1st in the Middle East and North Africa. In terms of medical science production index, Iran ranks 16th in the world. Iran is fast emerging as a preferred destination for medical tourism.\nThe country faces the common problem of other young demographic nations in the region, which is keeping pace with growth of an already huge demand for various public services. An anticipated increase in the population growth rate will increase the need for public health infrastructures and services. About 90% of Iranians have health insurance.\nCulture.\nArt.\nIran has one of the richest art heritages in history and been strong in many media including architecture, painting, literature, music, metalworking, stonemasonry, weaving, calligraphy and sculpture. At different times, influences from neighbouring civilisations have been important, and latterly Persian art gave and received major influences as part of the wider styles of Islamic art.\nFrom the Achaemenid Empire of 550\u2013330 BC, the courts of successive dynasties led the style of Persian art, and court-sponsored art left many of the most impressive pieces that remain. The Islamic style of dense decoration, geometrically laid out, developed in Iran into an elegant and harmonious style, combining motifs derived from plants with Chinese motifs such as the cloud-band, and often animals represented at a smaller scale. During the Safavid Empire in the 16th century, this style was used across a variety of media, and diffused from the court artists of the king, most being painters.\nBy the time of the Sasanians, Iranian art had a renaissance. During the Middle Ages, Sasanian art played a prominent role in the formation of European and Asian mediaeval art.\nThe Safavid era is known as the Golden Age of Iranian art. Safavid art exerted noticeable influences upon the Ottomans, the Mughals, and the Deccans, and was influential through its fashion and garden architecture on 11th\u201317th-century Europe.\nIran's contemporary art traces its origins to Kamal-ol-molk, a prominent realist painter at the court of the Qajar Empire who affected the norms of painting and adopted a naturalistic style that would compete with photographic works. A new Iranian school of fine art was established by him in 1928, and was followed by the so-called \"coffeehouse\" style of painting. Iran's avant-garde modernists emerged by the arrival of new western influences during World War II. The contemporary art scene originates in the late 1940s, and Tehran's first modern art gallery, Apadana, was opened in 1949 by Mahmud Javadipur, Hosein Kazemi, and Hushang Ajudani. The new movements received official encouragement by the 1950s, which led to the emergence of artists such as Marcos Grigorian.\nArchitecture.\nThe history of architecture in Iran dates back to at least 5,000 BC, with characteristic examples distributed over an area from what is now Turkey and Iraq to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and from the Caucasus to Zanzibar. The Iranians made early use of mathematics, geometry and astronomy in their architecture, yielding a tradition with structural and aesthetic variety. The guiding motif is its cosmic symbolism.\nWithout sudden innovations, and despite the trauma of invasions and cultural shocks, it developed a recognizable style distinct from other regions of the Muslim world. Its virtues are \"a marked feeling for form and scale; structural inventiveness, especially in vault and dome construction; a genius for decoration with a freedom and success not rivalled in any other architecture\". In addition to historic gates, palaces, and mosques, the rapid growth of cities such as Tehran has brought a wave of construction. Iran ranks 7th among UNESCO's list of countries with the most archaeological ruins and attractions from antiquity.\nWorld Heritage Sites.\nIran's rich culture and history is reflected by its 27 World Heritage Sites, ranking 1st in the Middle East, and 10th in the world. These include Persepolis, Naghsh-e Jahan Square, Chogha Zanbil, Pasargadae, Golestan Palace, Arg-e Bam, Behistun Inscription, Shahr-e Sukhteh, Susa, Takht-e Soleyman, Hyrcanian forests, the city of Yazd and more. Iran has 24 Intangible Cultural Heritage, or Human treasures, which ranks 5th worldwide.\nWeaving.\nIran's carpet-weaving has its origins in the Bronze Age and is one of the most distinguished manifestations of Iranian art. Carpet weaving is an essential part of Persian culture and Iranian art. Persian rugs and carpets were woven in parallel by nomadic tribes in village and town workshops, and by royal court manufactories. As such, they represent simultaneous lines of tradition, and reflect the history of Iran, Persian culture, and its various peoples. Although the term \"Persian carpet\" most often refers to pile-woven textiles, flat-woven carpets and rugs like Kilim, Soumak, and embroidered tissues like Suzani are part of the manifold tradition of Persian carpet weaving.\nIran produces three-quarters of the world's handmade carpets, and has 30% of export markets. In 2010, the \"traditional skills of carpet weaving\" in Fars Province and Kashan were inscribed to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List. Within the Oriental rugs produced by the countries of the \"rug belt\", the Persian carpet stands out by the variety and elaborateness of its manifold designs.\nCarpets woven in towns and regional centres like Tabriz, Kerman, Ravar, Neyshabour, Mashhad, Kashan, Isfahan, Nain and Qom are characterized by their specific weaving techniques and use of high-quality materials, colours and patterns. Hand-woven Persian rugs and carpets have been regarded as objects of high artistic value and prestige, since they were mentioned by ancient Greek writers.\nLiterature.\nIran's oldest literary tradition is that of Avestan, the Old Iranian sacred language of the Avesta, which consists of the legendary and religious texts of Zoroastrianism and the ancient Iranian religion. The Persian language was used and developed through Persianate societies in Asia Minor, Central Asia, and South Asia, leaving extensive influences on Ottoman and Mughal literatures, among others. Iran has several famous mediaeval poets, notably Mawlana, Ferdowsi, Hafez, Sa'adi, Omar Khayyam, and Nezami Ganjavi.\nDescribed as one of the great literatures of humanity, including Goethe's assessment of it as one of the four main bodies of world literature, Persian literature has its roots in surviving works of Middle Persian and Old Persian, the latter of which dates back as far as 522\u00a0BCE, the date of the earliest surviving Achaemenid inscription, the Behistun Inscription. The bulk of surviving Persian literature, however, comes from the times following the Muslim conquest in c. 650\u00a0CE. After the Abbasids came to power (750 CE), the Iranians became the scribes and bureaucrats of the Islamic Caliphate and, increasingly, also its writers and poets. The New Persian language literature arose and flourished in Khorasan and Transoxiana because of political reasons, early Iranian dynasties of post-Islamic Iran such as the Tahirids and Samanids being based in Khorasan.\nPhilosophy.\nIranian philosophy can be traced back as far as Old Iranian philosophical traditions and thoughts which originated in ancient Indo-Iranian roots and were influenced by Zarathustra's teachings. Throughout Iranian history and due to remarkable political and social changes such as the Arab and Mongol invasions, a wide spectrum of schools of thoughts showed a variety of views on philosophical questions, extending from Old Iranian and mainly Zoroastrianism-related traditions, to schools appearing in the late pre-Islamic era such as Manicheism and Mazdakism as well as post-Islamic schools.\nThe Cyrus Cylinder is seen as a reflection of the questions and thoughts expressed by Zoroaster and developed in Zoroastrian schools of the Achaemenid era. Post-Islam Iranian philosophy is characterised by different interactions with the Old Iranian philosophy, the Greek philosophy and with the development of Islamic philosophy. The Illumination School and the Transcendent Philosophy are regarded as two of the main philosophical traditions of that era in Iran. Contemporary Iranian philosophy has been limited in its scope by intellectual repression.\nMythology and folklore.\nIranian mythology consists of ancient Iranian folklore and stories of extraordinary beings reflecting on good and evil (Ahura Mazda and Ahriman), actions of the gods, and the exploits of heroes and creatures. The tenth-century Persian poet, Ferdowsi, is the author of the national epic known as the \"Shahnameh\" (\"Book of Kings\"), which is for the most part based on \"Xwad\u0101yn\u0101mag\", a Middle Persian compilation of the history of Iranian kings and heroes, as well as the stories and characters of the Zoroastrian tradition, from the texts of the Avesta, the Denkard, the Vendidad and the Bundahishn. Modern scholars study the myths to shed light on the religious and political institutions of not only Iran but of the Greater Iran, which includes regions of West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, and Transcaucasia where the culture of Iran has had significant influence.\nStorytelling has a significant presence in Iranian folklore and culture. In classical Iran, minstrels performed for their audiences at royal courts and in public theatres. A minstrel was referred to by the Parthians as g\u014ds\u0101n, and by the Sasanians as huniy\u0101gar. Since the Safavid Empire, storytellers and poetry readers appeared at coffeehouses. After the Iranian Revolution, it took until 1985 to found the MCHTH (Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts), a now heavily centralised organisation, supervising all kinds of cultural activities. It held the first scientific meeting on anthropology and folklore in 1990.\nMuseums.\nThe National Museum of Iran in Tehran is the country's most important cultural institution. As the first and biggest museum in Iran, the institution includes the Museum of Ancient Iran and the Museum of the Islamic Era. The National Museum is the world's most important museum in terms of preservation, display and research of archaeological collections of Iran, and ranks as one of the few most prestigious museums globally in terms of volume, diversity and quality of its monuments.\nThere are many other popular museums across the country such as the Golestan Palace (World Heritage Site), The Treasury of National Jewels, Reza Abbasi Museum, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Sa'dabad Complex, The Carpet Museum, Abgineh Museum, Pars Museum, Azerbaijan Museum, Hegmataneh Museum, Susa Museum and more. Around 25 million people visited the museums in 2019.\nMusic and dance.\nIran is the apparent birthplace of the earliest complex instruments, dating to the third millennium\u00a0BC. The use of angular harps have been documented at Madaktu and Kul-e Farah, with the largest collection of Elamite instruments documented at Kul-e Farah. Xenophon's \"Cyropaedia\" mentions singing women at the court of the Achaemenid Empire. Under the Parthian Empire, the \"g\u014ds\u0101n\" (Parthian for 'minstrel') had a prominent role.\nThe history of Sasanian music is better documented than earlier periods and is especially more evident in Avestan texts. By the time of Khosrow II, the Sasanian royal court hosted prominent musicians, namely Azad, Bamshad, Barbad, Nagisa, Ramtin, and Sarkash. Iranian traditional musical instruments include string instruments such as chang (harp), qanun, santur, rud (oud, barbat), tar, dotar, setar, tanbur, and kamanche, wind instruments such as sorna (zurna, karna) and ney, and percussion instruments such as tompak, kus, daf (dayere), and naqare.\nIran's first symphony orchestra, the Tehran Symphony Orchestra, was founded in 1933. By the late 1940s, Ruhollah Khaleqi founded the country's first national music society and established the School of National Music in 1949. Iranian pop music has its origins in the Qajar era. It was significantly developed since the 1950s, using indigenous instruments and forms accompanied by electric guitar and other imported characteristics. Iranian rock emerged in the 1960s and hip hop in the 2000s.\nIran has known dance in the forms of music, play, drama or religious rituals since at least the 6th millennium BC. Artifacts with pictures of dancers were found in archaeological prehistoric sites. Genres of dance vary depending on the area, culture, and language of the local people, and can range from sophisticated reconstructions of refined court dances to energetic folk dances. Each group, region, and historical epoch has specific dance styles associated with it. The earliest researched dance from historic Iran is a dance worshipping Mithra. Ancient Persian dance was significantly researched by Greek historian Herodotus. Iran was occupied by foreign powers, causing a slow disappearance of heritage dance traditions.\nThe Qajar period had an important influence on Persian dance. In this period, a style of dance began to be called \"classical Persian dance\". Dancers performed artistic dances in court for entertainment purposes such as coronations, marriage celebrations, and Norouz celebrations. In the 20th century, the music came to be orchestrated and dance movement and costuming gained a modernistic orientation to the West.\nFashion and clothing.\nThe exact date of the emergence of weaving in Iran is not yet known, but it is likely to coincide with the emergence of civilisation. Ferdowsi and many historians have considered Keyumars to be first to use animals' skin and hair as clothing, while others propose Hushang. Ferdowsi considers Tahmuras to be a kind of textile initiator in Iran. The clothing of ancient Iran took an advanced form, and the fabric and colour of clothing became very important. Depending on the social status, eminence, climate of the region and the season, Persian clothing during the Achaemenian period took various forms. This clothing, in addition to being functional, had an aesthetic role.\nCinema, animation and theatre.\nA third-millennium BC earthen goblet discovered at the Burnt City in southeast Iran depicts what could be the world's oldest example of animation. The earliest attested Iranian examples of visual representations, however, are traced back to the bas-reliefs of Persepolis, the ritual centre of the Achaemenid Empire.\nThe first Iranian filmmaker was probably Mirza Ebrahim (Akkas Bashi), the court photographer of Mozaffar-ed-Din of the Qajar Empire. Mirza Ebrahim obtained a camera and filmed the Qajar ruler's visit to Europe. In 1904, Mirza Ebrahim (Sahhaf Bashi) opened the first public cinema in Tehran. The first Iranian feature film, \"Abi and Rabi\", was a silent comedy directed by Ovanes Ohanian in 1930. The first sound one, \"Lor Girl\", was produced by Ardeshir Irani and Abd-ol-Hosein Sepanta in 1932. Iran's animation industry began by the 1950s and was followed by the establishment of the influential Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults in 1965.\nWith the screening of the films \"Qeysar\" and \"The Cow\", directed by Masoud Kimiai and Dariush Mehrjui respectively in 1969, alternative films set out to establish their status in the film industry and Bahram Beyzai's \"Downpour\" and Nasser Taghvai's \"Tranquility in the Presence of Others\" followed. Attempts to organise a film festival, which had begun in 1954 within the Golrizan Festival, resulted in the festival of Sepas in 1969. It also resulted in the formation of Tehran's World Film Festival in 1973.\nFollowing the Cultural Revolution, a new age emerged in Iranian cinema, starting with \"Long Live!\" by Khosrow Sinai and followed by other directors, such as Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi. Kiarostami, an acclaimed director, planted Iran firmly on the map of world cinema when he won the for \"Taste of Cherry\" in 1997. The presence of Iranian films in prestigious international festivals, such as Cannes, Venice and Berlin, attracted attention to Iranian films. In 2006, 6 films represented Iranian cinema at Berlin; critics considered this a remarkable event in Iranian cinema. Asghar Farhadi, an Iranian director, has received a Golden Globe Award and two Academy Awards, representing Iran for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012 and 2017, with \"A Separation\" and \"The Salesman\". In 2020, Ashkan Rahgozar's \"The Last Fiction\" became the first representative of Iranian animated cinema in the competition section, in Best Animated Feature and Best Picture categories at the Academy Awards.\nThe oldest Iranian initiation of theatre can be traced to ancient epic ceremonial theatres such as \"Sug-e Si\u0101vu\u0691\" (\"mourning of Si\u0101va\u0691\"), as well as dances and theatre narrations of Iranian mythological tales reported by Herodotus and Xenophon. Iran's traditional theatrical genres include Baqq\u0101l-b\u0101zi (\"grocer play\", a form of slapstick comedy), Ruhowzi (or \"Taxt-howzi\", comedy performed over a courtyard pool covered with boards), Si\u0101h-b\u0101zi (the central comedian appears in blackface), S\u0101ye-b\u0101zi (shadow play), Xeyme-\u0691ab-b\u0101zi (marionette), and Arusak-b\u0101zi (puppetry), and Ta'zie (religious tragedy plays).\nThe Roudaki Hall is home to the Tehran Symphony Orchestra, the Tehran Opera Orchestra, and the Iranian National Ballet Company, and was officially renamed \"Vahdat Hall\" after the Revolution.\nMedia.\nIran's largest media corporation is the state-owned IRIB. The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance is responsible for the cultural policy, including activities regarding communications and information.\nMost of the newspapers published in Iran are in Persian, the country's official and national language. The country's most widely circulated periodicals are based in Tehran, among which are \"Etemad\", \"Ettela'at\", \"Kayhan\", \"Hamshahri\", \"Resalat\", and \"Shargh\". \"Tehran Times\", \"Iran Daily\", and \"Financial Tribune\" are among the famous English-language newspapers based in Iran.\nIran ranks 17th among countries by number of Internet users. Google Search is Iran's most widely used search engine and Instagram is the most popular online social networking service. Direct access to many worldwide mainstream websites has been blocked in Iran, including Facebook, which has been blocked since 2009. About 90% of Iran's e-commerce takes place on the Iranian online store Digikala, which has around 750,000 visitors per day and is the most visited online store in the Middle East.\nCuisine.\nIranian main dishes include varieties of kebab, pilaf, stew (khoresh), soup and \u0101sh, and omelette. Lunch and dinner meals are commonly accompanied by side dishes such as plain yogurt or mast-o-khiar, sabzi, salad Shirazi, and torshi, and might follow dishes such as borani, Mirza Qasemi, or kashk e bademjan. In Iranian culture, tea is widely consumed. Iran is the world's seventh major tea producer. One of Iran's most popular desserts is the falude. There is also the popular saffron ice cream, known as \"Bastani Sonnati\" (\"traditional ice cream\"), which is sometimes accompanied with carrot juice. Iran is also famous for its caviar.\nTypical Iranian main dishes are combinations of rice with meat, vegetables and nuts. Herbs are frequently used, along with fruits such as plums, pomegranates, quince, prunes, apricots and raisins. Characteristic Iranian spices and flavourings such as saffron, cardamom, and dried lime and other sources of sour flavoring, cinnamon, turmeric and parsley are mixed and used in various dishes.\nSports.\nIran is the most likely birthplace of polo, locally known as Chogan, with its earliest records attributed to the ancient Medes. Freestyle wrestling is traditionally considered the national sport, and Iran's wrestlers have been world champions many times. Iran's traditional wrestling, called \"ko\u0691ti e pahlev\u0101ni\" (\"heroic wrestling\"), is registered on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Iran's National Olympic Committee was founded in 1947. Wrestlers and weightlifters have achieved the country's highest records at the Olympics. In 1974, Iran became the first country in West Asia to host the Asian Games.\nAs a mountainous country, Iran is a venue for skiing, snowboarding, hiking, rock climbing, and mountain climbing. It is home to ski resorts, the most famous being Tochal, Dizin, and Shemshak. Dizin is the largest, and authorised by FIS to administer international competitions.\nFootball is the most popular sport, with the men's national team having won the Asian Cup three times. The men's team ranks 2nd in Asia and 20th in the FIFA World Rankings as of April 2024[ [update]]. The Azadi Stadium in Tehran is the largest association football stadium in West Asia and on a list of top-20 stadiums in the world. Volleyball is the second most popular sport. Having won the 2011 and 2013 Asian Men's Volleyball Championships, the men's national team is the 2nd strongest in Asia, and 15th in the FIVB World Rankings as of January\u00a02024[ [update]]. Basketball is also popular, with the men's national team having won three Asian Championships since 2007.\nObservances.\nIran's official New Year begins with Nowruz, an ancient Iranian tradition celebrated annually on the vernal equinox and described as the \"Persian New Year\". It was registered on the UNESCO's list of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2009. On the eve of the last Wednesday of the preceding year, as a prelude to Nowruz, the ancient festival of \u0628\u0101r\u0691anbe Suri celebrates \u0100tar (\"fire\") by performing rituals such as jumping over bonfires and lighting fireworks.\nYald\u0101, another ancient tradition, commemorates the ancient goddess Mithra and marks the longest night of the year on the eve of the winter solstice (usually on 20 or 21 December), during which families gather to recite poetry and eat fruits. In some regions of Mazanderan and Markazi, there is a midsummer festival, Tirg\u0101n, which is observed on Tir 13 (2 or 3July) as a celebration of water.\nIslamic annual events such as Ramez\u0101n, Eid e Fetr, and Ruz e \u0100\u0691ur\u0101 are marked by the country's population, Christian traditions such as Noel, elle ye Ruze, and Eid e P\u0101k are observed by the Christian communities, Jewish traditions such as Hanuk\u0101 and Eid e Fatir (Pesah) are observed by the Jewish communities, and Zoroastrian traditions such as Sade and Mehrg\u0101n are observed by the Zoroastrians.\nPublic holidays.\nWith 26, Iran has one of the world's highest number of public holidays. It ranks 1st in the world with the most paid leave days: 52. Iran's official calendar is the Solar Hejri calendar, beginning at the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. Each of the 12 months of the Solar Hejri calendar correspond with a zodiac sign, and the length of each year is solar. Alternatively, the Lunar Hejri calendar is used to indicate Islamic events, and the Gregorian calendar marks international events.\nLegal public holidays based on the Iranian solar calendar include the cultural celebrations of Nowruz (Farvardin 1\u20134; 21\u201324 March) and Sizdebedar (Farvardin 13; 2April), and the political events of Islamic Republic Day (Farvardin 12; 1April), the death of Ruhollah Khomeini (Khordad 14; 4June), the Khordad 15 event (Khordad 15; 5June), the anniversary of the Iranian Revolution (Bahman 22; 10 February), and Oil Nationalisation Day (Esfand 29; 19 March).\nLunar Islamic public holidays include Tasua (Muharram 9), Ashura (Muharram 10), Arba'een (Safar 20), Muhammad's death (Safar 28), the death of Ali al-Ridha (Safar 29 or 30), the birthday of Muhammad (Rabi-al-Awwal 17), the death of Fatimah (Jumada-al-Thani 3), the birthday of Ali (Rajab 13), Muhammad's first revelation (Rajab 27), the birthday of Muhammad al-Mahdi (Sha'ban 15), the death of Ali (Ramadan 21), Eid al-Fitr (Shawwal 1\u20132), the death of Ja'far al-Sadiq (Shawwal 25), Eid al-Qurban (Zulhijja 10), and Eid al-Qadir (Zulhijja 18).\nExplanatory notes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nFootnotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n<templatestyles src=\"Plain navboxes/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["35413648", "25270592", "14653"], "permutation_1": ["35413648", "14653", "25270592"], "permutation_2": ["25270592", "14653", "35413648"], "permutation_3": ["14653", "35413648", "25270592"]}
{"id": "3hop2__30796_283562_24137", "docs_added": {"5122699": "John Kerry\nAmerican politician and diplomat (born 1943)\nJohn Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician, and diplomat who served as the 68th United States secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 in the administration of Barack Obama. A member of the Forbes family and of the Democratic Party, he previously represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1985 to 2013 and later served as the first U.S. special presidential envoy for climate from 2021 to 2024. Kerry was the Democratic nominee for president of the United States in the 2004 election, narrowly losing to then-incumbent president George W. Bush.\nKerry grew up in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. In 1966, after graduating from Yale University, he enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve, ultimately attaining the rank of lieutenant. During the Vietnam War, Kerry served a brief tour in South Vietnam. While commanding a Swift boat, he sustained three wounds in combat with the Viet Cong, for which he earned three Purple Heart medals. Kerry was also awarded the Silver Star Medal and the Bronze Star Medal for conduct in separate military engagements. After completing his active military service, Kerry returned to the United States and became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. He gained national recognition as an anti-war activist, serving as a spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization. Kerry testified in the Fulbright Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where he described the United States government's policy in Vietnam as the cause of war crimes.\nIn 1972, Kerry entered electoral politics as a Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives in Massachusetts's 5th congressional district, losing to Republican Paul W. Cronin in the general election. He subsequently worked as a radio talk show host and as the executive director of an advocacy organization while attending law school. After a period in private legal practice, he was elected the 66th lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1982. In 1984, Kerry was elected to the United States Senate. In 2004, Kerry won the Democratic presidential nomination alongside Senator John Edwards. He lost the Electoral College and the popular vote by slim margins, winning 251 electors to Bush's 286 and 48.3% of the popular vote to Bush's 50.7%.\nIn January 2013, Kerry was nominated by President Obama to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and was subsequently confirmed by his Senate colleagues. He was U.S. secretary of state throughout the second term of the Obama administration from 2013 to 2017. During his tenure, he initiated the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks and negotiated agreements restricting the nuclear program of Iran, including the 2013 Joint Plan of Action and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In 2015, Kerry signed the Paris Agreement on climate change on behalf of the United States.\nIn January 2021, Kerry returned to government, becoming the first person to hold the position of U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, under President Joe Biden. On March 6, Kerry left this position to work on Biden's 2024 presidential campaign. Kerry was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Biden in May 2024.\nEarly life and education (1943\u20131966).\nJohn Forbes Kerry was born on December 11, 1943, at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado. He is the second of four children born to Richard John Kerry, a U.S. diplomat and lawyer, and Rosemary Forbes, a nurse and social activist. His father was raised Catholic (John's paternal grandparents were Austro-Hungarian Jewish immigrants who converted to Catholicism) and his mother was Episcopalian. He was raised with an elder sister Margaret, a younger sister Diana, and a younger brother Cameron. The children were raised in their father's Catholic faith, and John served as an altar boy.\nKerry was originally considered a military brat, until his father was discharged from the Army Air Corps in 1944. Kerry lived in Groton, Massachusetts his first year and Millis, Massachusetts afterwards before moving to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. at age seven, when his father took a position in the Department of the Navy's Office of General Counsel and soon became a diplomat in the State Department's Bureau of United Nations Affairs.\nAs members of the Forbes and Dudley\u2013Winthrop families, his maternal extended family enjoyed great wealth. Kerry's parents themselves were considered upper-middle class. They turned to his wealthy great-aunt, Clara Winthrop, who paid for his attendance at elite boarding schools, such as Institut Montana Zugerberg, in Zug, Switzerland. Through his maternal ancestry, Kerry also descends from Rev. James McGregor who was among the first 500 Scots-Irish immigrants to Boston Harbor in the 18th century.\nAt the age of ten, Kerry's father took a position as the U.S. Attorney for Berlin. When Kerry was twelve, he crossed into the Soviet Occupation Zone to visit Hitler's bunker and ride through the Brandenburg Gate. \nIn 1957, his father was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway, and Kerry was sent back to the United States to attend boarding school. He first attended the Fessenden School in Newton, Massachusetts, and later St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, where he learned skills in public speaking and began developing an interest in politics. Kerry founded the John Winant Society at St. Paul's to debate the issues of the day; the Society still exists there. In 1960, while at St. Paul's, he played bass in a minor rock band called The Electras with six of his classmates. The band had about five hundred copies of one album printed in 1961, which they sold some of at dances at the school; it was made available on streaming platforms many years later.\nIn 1962, Kerry attended Yale University, majoring in political science and residing in Jonathan Edwards College. By that year, his parents returned to Groton. While at Yale, Kerry briefly dated Janet Auchincloss, the younger half-sister of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Through Auchincloss, Kerry was invited to a day of sailing with then-President John F. Kennedy and his family.\nKerry played on the varsity Yale Bulldogs men's soccer team, earning his only letter in his senior year. He also played freshman and junior varsity hockey and, in his senior year, junior varsity lacrosse. In addition, he was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity and took flying lessons.\nIn his sophomore year, Kerry became the chairman of the Liberal Party of the Yale Political Union, and a year later he served as president of the union. Amongst his influential teachers in this period was Professor H. Bradford Westerfield, who was himself a former president of the Political Union. His involvement with the Political Union gave him an opportunity to be involved with important issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and the New Frontier program. He also became a member of Skull and Bones Society, and traveled to Switzerland through AIESEC Yale.\nUnder the guidance of the speaking coach and history professor Rollin G. Osterweis, Kerry won many debates against other college students from across the nation. In March 1965, as the Vietnam War escalated, he won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that was critical of U.S. foreign policy. In the speech he said, \"It is the spectre of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism and thus, it is self-defeating.\"\nKerry graduated from Yale with a bachelor of arts degree in 1966. Overall, he had below-average grades, graduating with a cumulative average of 76 over his four years. His freshman-year average was a 71, but he improved to an 81 average for his senior year. He never received an \"A\" during his time at Yale; his highest grade was an 89.\nMilitary service (1966\u20131970).\nDuty on USS \"Gridley\".\nOn February 18, 1966, Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserve. He began his active duty military service on August 19, 1966. After completing 16 weeks of Officer Candidate School at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island, Kerry received his officer's commission on December 16, 1966. During the 2004 election, Kerry posted his military records at his website, and permitted reporters to inspect his medical records. In 2005, Kerry released his military and medical records to the representatives of three news organizations, but has not authorized full public access to those records.\nDuring his tour on the guided missile frigate , Kerry requested duty in South Vietnam, listing as his first preference a position as the commander of a Fast Patrol Craft (PCF), also known as a \"Swift boat\". These boats have aluminum hulls and have little or no armor, but are heavily armed and rely on speed. \"I didn't really want to get involved in the war,\" Kerry said in a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. \"When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing.\" However, his second choice of billet was on a river patrol boat, or \"PBR\", which at the time was serving a more dangerous duty on the rivers of Vietnam.\nMilitary honors.\nDuring the night of December 2 and early morning of December 3, 1968, Kerry was in charge of a small boat operating near a peninsula north of Cam Ranh Bay together with a Swift boat (PCF-60). According to Kerry and the two crewmen who accompanied him that night, Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis, they surprised a group of Vietnamese men unloading sampans at a river crossing, who began running and failed to obey an order to stop. As the men fled, Kerry and his crew opened fire on the sampans and destroyed them, then rapidly left. During this encounter, Kerry received a shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow. It was for this injury that Kerry received his first Purple Heart Medal.\nKerry received his second Purple Heart for a wound received in action on the B\u1ed3 \u0110\u1ec1 River on February 20, 1969. The plan had been for the Swift boats to be accompanied by support helicopters. On the way up the Bo De, however, the helicopters were attacked. As the Swift boats reached the C\u1eeda L\u1edbn River, Kerry's boat was hit by a B-40 rocket (rocket propelled grenade round), and a piece of shrapnel hit Kerry's left leg, wounding him. Thereafter, enemy fire ceased and his boat reached the Gulf of Thailand safely. Kerry continues to have shrapnel embedded in his left thigh because the doctors that first treated him decided to remove the damaged tissue and close the wound with sutures rather than make a wide opening to remove the shrapnel. Although wounded like several others earlier that day, Kerry did not lose any time off from duty.\nSilver Star.\nEight days later, on February 28, 1969, came the events for which Kerry was awarded his Silver Star Medal. On this occasion, Kerry was in tactical command of his Swift boat and two other Swift boats during a combat operation. Their mission on the Duong Keo River included bringing an underwater demolition team and dozens of South Vietnamese Marines to destroy enemy sampans, structures and bunkers as described in the story \"The Death Of PCF 43\". Running into heavy small arms fire from the river banks, Kerry \"directed the units to turn to the beach and charge the Viet Cong positions\" and he \"expertly directed\" his boat's fire causing the enemy to flee while at the same time coordinating the insertion of the ninety South Vietnamese troops (according to the original medal citation signed by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt). Moving a short distance upstream, Kerry's boat was the target of a B-40 rocket round; Kerry charged the enemy positions and as his boat hove to and beached, a Viet Cong (\"VC\") insurgent armed with a rocket launcher emerged from a spider hole and ran. While the boat's gunner opened fire, wounding the VC in the leg, and while the other boats approached and offered cover fire, Kerry jumped from the boat to pursue the VC insurgent, subsequently killing him and capturing his loaded rocket launcher.\nKerry's commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander George Elliott, stated to Douglas Brinkley in 2003 that he did not know whether to court-martial Kerry for beaching the boat without orders or give him a medal for saving the crew. Elliott recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, and Zumwalt flew into An Thoi to personally award medals to Kerry and the rest of the sailors involved in the mission. The Navy's account of Kerry's actions is presented in the original signed by Zumwalt. The engagement was documented in an after-action report, a press release written on March 1, 1969, and a historical summary dated March 17, 1969.\nBronze Star.\nOn March 13, 1969, on the B\u00e1i H\u00e1p River, Kerry was in charge of one of five Swift boats that were returning to their base after performing an Operation Sealords mission to transport South Vietnamese troops from the garrison at C\u00e1i N\u01b0\u1edbc and MIKE Force advisors for a raid on a Vietcong camp located on the Rach Dong Cung canal. Earlier in the day, Kerry received a slight shrapnel wound in the buttocks from blowing up a rice bunker. Debarking some but not all of the passengers at a small village, the boats approached a fishing weir; one group of boats went around to the left of the weir, hugging the shore, and a group with Kerry's PCF-94 boat went around to the right, along the shoreline. A mine was detonated directly beneath the lead boat, PCF-3, as it crossed the weir to the left, lifting PCF-3 \"about 2\u20133 ft out of water\".\nJames Rassmann, a Green Beret advisor who was aboard Kerry's PCF-94, was knocked overboard when, according to witnesses and the documentation of the event, a mine or rocket exploded close to the boat. According to the documentation for the event, Kerry's arm was injured when he was thrown against a bulkhead during the explosion. PCF 94 returned to the scene and Kerry rescued Rassmann who was receiving sniper fire from the water. Kerry received the Bronze Star Medal with Combat \"V\" for \"heroic achievement\", for his actions during this incident; he also received his third Purple Heart.\nReturn from Vietnam.\nAfter Kerry's third qualifying wound, he was entitled per Navy regulations to reassignment away from combat duties. Kerry's preferred choice for reassignment was as a military aide in Boston, New York City or Washington, D.C. On April 11, 1969, he reported to the Brooklyn-based Atlantic Military Sea Transportation Service, where he would remain on active duty for the following year as a personal aide to an officer, Rear Admiral Walter Schlech. On January 1, 1970, Kerry was temporarily promoted to full lieutenant. Kerry had agreed to an extension of his active duty obligation from December 1969 to August 1970 in order to perform Swift Boat duty. John Kerry was on active duty in the United States Navy from August 1966 until January 1970. He continued to serve in the Naval Reserve until February 1978.\n\"Swiftboating\" controversy.\nWith the continuing controversy that had surrounded the military service of George W. Bush since the 2000 presidential election (when he was accused of having used his father's political influence to gain entrance to the Texas Air National Guard, thereby protecting himself from conscription into the United States Army, and possible service in the Vietnam War), John Kerry's contrasting status as a decorated Vietnam War veteran posed a problem for Bush's re-election campaign, which Republicans sought to counter by calling Kerry's war record into question. As the presidential campaign of 2004 developed, approximately 250 members of a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT, later renamed Swift Vets and POWs for Truth) opposed Kerry's campaign. The group held press conferences, ran ads and endorsed a book questioning Kerry's service record and his military awards. The group included several members of Kerry's unit, such as Larry Thurlow, who commanded a swift boat alongside of Kerry's, and Stephen Gardner, who served on Kerry's boat. The campaign inspired the widely used political pejorative '\"swiftboating,\" to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. Most of Kerry's former crewmates have stated that SBVT's allegations are false.\nAnti-war activism (1970\u20131971).\nAfter returning to the United States, Kerry moved to Waltham, Massachusetts and joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Then numbering about 20,000, VVAW was considered by some (including the administration of President Richard Nixon) to be an effective, if controversial, component of the antiwar movement. Kerry participated in the \"Winter Soldier Investigation\" conducted by VVAW of U.S. atrocities in Vietnam, and he appears in a film by that name that documents the investigation. According to Nixon Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, \"I didn't approve of what he did, but I understood the protesters quite well\", and he declined two requests from the Navy to court martial Reserve Lieutenant Kerry over his antiwar activity.\nOn April 22, 1971, Kerry appeared before a U.S. Senate committee hearing on proposals relating to ending the war. The day after this testimony, Kerry participated in a demonstration with thousands of other veterans in which he and other Vietnam War veterans threw their medals and service ribbons over a fence erected at the front steps of the United States Capitol building to dramatize their opposition to the war. Jack Smith, a Marine, read a statement explaining why the veterans were returning their military awards to the government. For more than two hours, almost 1,000 angry veterans tossed their medals, ribbons, hats, jackets, and military papers over the fence. Each veteran gave his or her name, hometown, branch of service and a statement. Kerry threw some of his own decorations and awards as well as some given to him by other veterans to throw. As Kerry threw his decorations over the fence, his statement was: \"I'm not doing this for any violent reasons, but for peace and justice, and to try and make this country wake up once and for all.\"\nKerry was arrested on May 30, 1971, during a VVAW march to honor American POWs held captive by North Vietnam. The march was planned as a multi-day event from Concord to Boston, and while in Lexington, participants tried to camp on the village green. At 2:30a.m., local and state police arrested 441 demonstrators, including Kerry, for trespassing. All were given the Miranda Warning and were hauled away on school buses to spend the night at the Lexington Public Works Garage. Kerry and the other protesters later paid a $5 fine, and were released. The mass arrests caused a community backlash and ended up giving positive coverage to the VVAW.\nEarly political career (1972\u20131985).\n1972 congressional election.\nIn 1970, Kerry had considered running for Congress in the Democratic primary against hawkish Democrat Philip J. Philbin of Massachusetts's 3rd congressional district, but deferred in favor of Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest and anti-war activist, who went on to defeat Philbin. In February 1972, Kerry's wife bought a house in Worcester, with Kerry intending to run against the 4th district's aging thirteen-term incumbent Democrat, Harold Donohue. The couple never moved in. After Republican Congressman F. Bradford Morse of the neighboring 5th district announced his retirement and then resignation to become Under-Secretary-General for Political and General Assembly Affairs at the United Nations, the couple instead rented an apartment in Lowell, so that Kerry could run to succeed him.\nIncluding Kerry, the Democratic primary race had 10 candidates, including attorney Paul J. Sheehy, State Representative Anthony R. DiFruscia, John J. Desmond and Robert B. Kennedy. Kerry ran a \"very expensive, sophisticated campaign\", financed by out-of-state backers and supported by many young volunteers. DiFruscia's campaign headquarters shared the same building as Kerry's. On the eve of the September 19 primary, police found Kerry's younger brother Cameron and campaign field director Thomas J. Vallely, breaking into where the building's telephone lines were located. They were arrested and charged with \"breaking and entering with the intent to commit grand larceny\", but the charges were dropped a year later. DiFruscia alleged that the two were trying to disrupt his get-out-the vote efforts. Vallely and Cameron Kerry maintained that they were only checking their own telephone lines because they had received an anonymous call warning that the Kerry lines would be cut.\nDespite the arrests, Kerry won the primary with 20,771 votes (27.56%). Sheehy came second with 15,641 votes (20.75%), followed by DiFruscia with 12,222 votes (16.22%), Desmond with 10,213 votes (13.55%) and Kennedy with 5,632 votes (7.47%). The remaining 10,891 votes were split amongst the other five candidates, with 1970 nominee Richard Williams coming last with just 1,706 votes (2.26%).\nIn the general election, Kerry was initially favored to defeat the Republican candidate, former State Representative Paul W. Cronin, and conservative Democrat Roger P. Durkin, who ran as an Independent. A week after the primary, one poll put Kerry 26-points ahead of Cronin. His campaign called for a national health insurance system, discounted prescription drugs for the unemployed, a jobs program to clean up the Merrimack River and rent controls in Lowell and Lawrence. A major obstacle, however, was the district's leading newspaper, the conservative \"The Sun\". The paper editorialized against him. It also ran critical news stories about his out-of-state contributions and his \"carpetbagging\", because he had only moved into the district in April. Subsequently, released \"Watergate\" Oval Office tape recordings of the Nixon White House showed that defeating Kerry's candidacy had attracted the personal attention of President Nixon. Kerry himself asserts that Nixon sent operatives to Lowell to help derail his campaign.\nThe race was the most expensive for Congress in the country that year and four days before the general election, Durkin withdrew and endorsed Cronin, hoping to see Kerry defeated. The week before, a poll had put Kerry 10 points ahead of Cronin, with Durkin at 13%. In the final days of the campaign, Kerry sensed that it was \"slipping away\" and Cronin emerged victorious by 110,970 votes (53.45%) to Kerry's 92,847 (44.72%). After his defeat, Kerry lamented in a letter to supporters that \"for two solid weeks, [\"The Sun\"] called me un-American, New Left antiwar agitator, unpatriotic, and labeled me every other 'un-' and 'anti-' that they could find. It's hard to believe that one newspaper could be so powerful, but they were.\" He later felt that his failure to respond directly to \"The Sun\"'s attacks cost him the race.\nLaw career.\nAfter Kerry's 1972 defeat, he and his wife bought a house in the Belvidere section of Lowell, Massachusetts, entering a decade which his brother Cameron later called \"the years in exile\". He spent some time working as a fundraiser for the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE), an international humanitarian organization. In September 1973, he entered Boston College Law School. While studying, Kerry worked as a talk radio host on WBZ and, in July 1974, was named executive director of Mass Action, a Massachusetts advocacy association.\nKerry received his juris doctor (J.D.) from Boston College in 1976. While in law school he had been a student prosecutor in the office of the District Attorney of Middlesex County, John J. Droney. After passing the bar exam and being admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1976, he went to work in that office as a full-time prosecutor and moved to Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.\nIn January 1977, Droney promoted him to First Assistant District Attorney, essentially making Kerry his campaign and media surrogate because Droney was afflicted with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease). As First Assistant, Kerry tried cases, which included winning convictions in a high-profile rape case and a murder. He also played a role in administering the office, including initiating the creation of special white-collar and organized crime units, creating programs to address the problems of rape and other crime victims and witnesses, and managing trial calendars to reflect case priorities. In 1978, Kerry launched a criminal investigation against Senator Edward Brooke, regarding \"misstatements\" in his first divorce trial. The inquiry ended with no charges being brought after investigators and prosecutors determined that Brooke's misstatements were pertinent to the case, but were not material enough to have affected the outcome.\nDroney's health was poor and Kerry had decided to run for his position in the 1978 election should Droney drop out. However, Droney was re-elected and his health improved; he went on to re-assume many of the duties that he had delegated to Kerry. Kerry thus decided to leave, departing in 1979 with assistant DA Roanne Sragow to set up their own law firm. Kerry also worked as a commentator for WCVB-TV and co-founded a bakery, Kilvert & Forbes Ltd., with businessman and former Kennedy aide K. Dun Gifford.\nLieutenant Governor of Massachusetts.\nIn the 1982 Massachusetts gubernatorial election, Lieutenant Governor Thomas P. O'Neill III declined to seek a third term, instead deciding to run for governor of Massachusetts. Kerry declared his candidacy, entering the primary election alongside Massachusetts Secretary of Environmental Affairs Evelyn Murphy, State Senator Samuel Rotondi, State Representative Lou Nickinello, and Lois Pines.\nKerry won the nomination with 325,890 votes (29%) to Murphy's 286,378 (25.48%), Rotondi's 228,086 (20.29%), Nickinello's 150,829 (13.42%) and Pines' 132,734 (11.81%). In the concurrent gubernatorial primary, former Governor Michael Dukakis defeated O'Neill and incumbent Governor Edward J. King. The Dukakis and Kerry ticket defeated the Republican ticket of John W. Sears and Leon Lombardi in the general election by 1,219,109 votes (61.92%) to 749,679 (38.08%).\nAs Lieutenant Governor, Kerry led meetings of the Massachusetts Governor's Council. Dukakis also delegated other tasks to Kerry, including serving as the state's liaison to the Federal government of the United States. He was also active on environmental issues, including combating acid rain.\n1984 U.S. Senate election.\nThe junior U.S. senator from Massachusetts, Paul Tsongas, announced in 1984 that he would be stepping down for health reasons. Kerry ran, and as in his 1982 race for Lieutenant Governor, he did not receive the endorsement of the party regulars at the state Democratic convention. Congressman James Shannon, a favorite of House Speaker Tip O'Neill, was the early favorite to win the nomination, and he \"won broad establishment support and led in early polling\". Again as in 1982, however, Kerry prevailed in a close primary.\nIn his general election campaign, Kerry promised to mix liberalism with tight budget controls. He defeated Republican Ray Shamie despite a nationwide landslide for the re-election of Republican President Ronald Reagan, for whom Massachusetts voted by a narrow margin. In his victory speech, Kerry asserted that his win meant that the people of Massachusetts \"emphatically reject the politics of selfishness and the notion that women must be treated as second-class citizens\".\nTsongas resigned on January 2, 1985, one day before the end of his term. Dukakis appointed Kerry to fill the vacancy, giving him seniority over other new senators who were sworn in on January 3, the scheduled start of their new terms.\nU.S. Senate (1985\u20132013).\nIran\u2013Contra hearings.\nOn April 18, 1985, a few months after taking his Senate seat, Kerry and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa traveled to Nicaragua and met the country's president, Daniel Ortega. Although Ortega had won internationally certified elections, the trip was criticized because Ortega and his leftist Sandinista government had strong ties to Cuba and the USSR and were accused of human rights abuses. The Sandinista government was opposed by the right-wing CIA-backed rebels known as the Contras. While in Nicaragua, Kerry and Harkin talked to people on both sides of the conflict. Through the senators, Ortega offered a cease-fire agreement in exchange for the U.S. dropping support of the Contras. The offer was denounced by the Reagan administration as a \"propaganda initiative\" designed to influence a House vote on a $14million Contra aid package, but Kerry said \"I am willing... to take the risk in the effort to put to test the good faith of the Sandinistas.\" The House voted down the Contra aid, but Ortega flew to Moscow to accept a $200million loan the next day, which in part prompted the House to pass a larger $27million aid package six weeks later.\nMeanwhile, Kerry's staff began their own investigations and, on October 14, issued a report that exposed illegal activities on the part of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who had set up a private network involving the National Security Council and the CIA to deliver military equipment to right-wing Nicaraguan rebels (Contras). In effect, North and certain members of the President's administration were accused by Kerry's report of illegally funding and supplying armed militants without the authorization of Congress. Kerry's staff investigation, based on a year-long inquiry and interviews with fifty unnamed sources, is said to raise \"serious questions about whether the United States has abided by the law in its handling of the contras over the past three years\".\nThe Kerry Committee report found that \"the Contra drug links included... payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies.\" The U.S. State Department paid over $806,000 to known drug traffickers to carry humanitarian assistance to the Contras. Kerry's findings provoked little reaction in the media and official Washington.\nThe Kerry report was a precursor to the Iran\u2013Contra affair. On May 4, 1989, North was convicted of charges relating to the Iran/Contra controversy, including three felonies. On September 16, 1991, however, North's convictions were overturned on appeal.\nGeorge H. W. Bush administration.\nOn November 15, 1988, at a businessmen's breakfast in East Lynn, Massachusetts, Kerry made a joke about then-President-elect George H. W. Bush and his running mate, saying \"if Bush is shot, the Secret Service has orders to shoot Dan Quayle.\" He apologized the following day.\nDuring their investigation of General Manuel Noriega, the \"de facto\" ruler of Panama, Kerry's staff found reason to believe that the Pakistan-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) had facilitated Noriega's drug trafficking and money laundering. This led to a separate inquiry into BCCI, and as a result, banking regulators shut down BCCI in 1991. In December 1992, Kerry and Senator Hank Brown, a Republican from Colorado, released \"The BCCI Affair\", a report on the BCCI scandal. The report showed that the bank was crooked and was working with terrorists, including Abu Nidal. It blasted the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, the Customs Service, the Federal Reserve Bank, as well as influential lobbyists and the CIA.\nKerry was criticized by some Democrats for having pursued his own party members, including former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, although Republicans said he should have pressed against some Democrats even harder. The BCCI scandal was later turned over to the Manhattan District Attorney's office.\nPrecursors to presidential bid.\nIn 1996, Kerry faced a difficult re-election fight against Governor William Weld, a popular Republican incumbent who had been re-elected in 1994 with 71% of the vote. The race was covered nationwide as one of the most closely watched Senate races that year. Kerry and Weld held several debates and negotiated a campaign spending cap of $6.9million at Kerry's Beacon Hill townhouse. Both candidates spent more than the cap, with each camp accusing the other of being first to break the agreement. During the campaign, Kerry spoke briefly at the 1996 Democratic National Convention. Kerry won re-election with 52 percent to Weld's 45 percent.\nIn the 2000 presidential election, Kerry found himself close to being chosen as the vice presidential running mate.\nA release from the presidential campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Al Gore listed Kerry on the short list to be selected as the vice-presidential nominee, along with North Carolina Senator John Edwards, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt, New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. Gore ultimately chose Lieberman.\n\"You get stuck in Iraq\" controversy.\nOn October 30, 2006, Kerry was a headline speaker at a campaign rally being held for Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. Speaking to an audience composed mainly of college students, Kerry said, \"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.\"\nThe day after he made the remark, leaders from both sides of the political spectrum criticized Kerry's remarks, which he said were a botched joke. Republicans including President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain and then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, said that Kerry's comments were insulting to American military forces fighting in Iraq. Democratic Representative Harold Ford Jr. called on Kerry to apologize.\nKerry initially stated: \"I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy\". Kerry also responded to criticism from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.\nKerry said that he had intended the remark as a jab at President Bush, and described the remarks as a \"botched joke\", having inadvertently left out the key word \"us\" (which would have been, \"If you don't, you get \"us\" stuck in Iraq\"), as well as leaving the phrase \"just ask President Bush\" off of the end of the sentence. In Kerry's prepared remarks, which he released during the ensuing media frenzy, the corresponding line was \"...you end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush\". He also said that from the context of the speech which, prior to the \"stuck in Iraq\" line, made several specific references to Bush and elements of his biography, that Kerry was referring to President Bush and not American troops in general.\nAfter two days of media coverage, citing a desire not to be a diversion, Kerry apologized to those who took offense at what he called the misinterpretation of his comment.\nAfghanistan and Pakistan.\nA \"Washington Post\" report in May 2011 stated that Kerry \"has emerged in the past few years as an important envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan during times of crisis\", as he undertook another trip to the two countries. The killing of Osama bin Laden \"has generated perhaps the most important crossroads yet\", the report continued, as the senator spoke at a press conference and prepared to fly from Kabul to Pakistan. Among matters discussed during the May visit to Pakistan, under the general rubric of \"recalibrating\" the bilateral relationship, Kerry sought and retrieved from the Pakistanis the tail-section of the U.S. helicopter which had had to be abandoned at Abbottabad during the bin Laden strike. In 2013, Kerry met with Pakistan's army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to discuss the peace process with the Taliban in Afghanistan.\nVoting record.\nOverall.\nMost analyses place Kerry's voting record on the left within the Senate Democratic caucus. During the 2004 presidential election he was portrayed as a staunch liberal by conservative groups and the Bush campaign, who often noted that in 2003 Kerry was rated the top Senate liberal by \"National Journal\". However, that rating was based only upon voting on legislation within that past year. In fact, in terms of career voting records, the \"National Journal\" found that Kerry is the 11th most liberal member of the Senate. Most analyses find that Kerry is at least slightly more liberal than the typical Democratic Senator. Kerry has stated that he opposes privatizing Social Security, supports abortion rights for adult women and minors, supports same-sex marriage, opposes capital punishment except for terrorists, supports most gun control laws, and is generally a supporter of trade agreements. In some of these, as in the case of abortion, Kerry distinguishes his personal views as in line with his Catholic faith, but believes that separation of church and state demands that he not legislate his religious beliefs upon those who do not share those beliefs. Kerry supported the North American Free Trade Agreement and Most Favored Nation status for China, but opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement.\nIn July 1997, Kerry joined his Senate colleagues in voting against ratification of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming without greenhouse gas emissions limits on nations deemed developing, including India and China. Since then, Kerry has attacked President Bush, charging him with opposition to international efforts to combat global warming.\nOn October 1, 2008, Kerry voted for Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, also known as the TARP bailout.\nIraq.\nIn the lead up to the Iraq War, Kerry said on October 9, 2002; \"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.\" Bush relied on that resolution in ordering the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Kerry also gave a January 23, 2003, speech to Georgetown University saying \"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator; leading an oppressive regime he presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.\" Kerry did, however, warn that the administration should exhaust its diplomatic avenues before launching war: \"Mr. President, do not rush to war, take the time to build the coalition, because it's not winning the war that's hard, it's winning the peace that's hard.\"\nAfter the invasion of Iraq, when no weapons of mass destruction were found, Kerry strongly criticized Bush, contending that he had misled the country: \"When the President of the United States looks at you and tells you something, there should be some trust.\"\nLibya.\nIn 2011, Kerry supported American military action in Libya.\nLeadership.\nKerry chaired the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs from 1991 to 1993. The committee's report, which Kerry endorsed, stated there was \"no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia\". In 1994 the Senate passed a resolution, sponsored by Kerry and fellow Vietnam veteran John McCain, that called for an end to the existing trade embargo against Vietnam; it was intended to pave the way for normalization. In 1995, President Bill Clinton normalized diplomatic relations with the country of Vietnam.\nKerry was the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 1987 to 1989. He was reelected to the Senate in 1990, 1996 (after winning re-election against the then-Governor of Massachusetts Republican William Weld), 2002, and 2008. In January 2009, Kerry replaced Joe Biden as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.\nAs a role model for campus leaders across the nation and strong advocate for global development, Kerry was honored by the Millennium Campus Network (MCN) as a Global Generation Award winner in 2011.\nCommittee assignments.\nDuring his tenure, Kerry served on four Senate committees and nine subcommittees:\nSeniority.\nFrom the beginning of the 113th United States Congress until his resignation, Kerry ranked as the 7th most senior U.S. Senator. Due to the longevity of Ted Kennedy's service, Kerry was the most senior \"junior Senator\" in the 111th United States Congress. On Tuesday, August 25, 2009, Kerry became the senior senator from Massachusetts following Ted Kennedy's death.\nSponsorship of legislation.\nAreas of concern in the bills Kerry introduced into the Senate included small business concerns, education, terrorism, veterans' and POW/MIA issues, and marine resource protection. A full list of Kerry's sponsored legislation was available on his Senate web site.\nDuring his Senate career, Kerry was primary sponsor of the following bills (excluding resolutions and amendments sponsored). This table does not count bills which Kerry co-sponsored.\nA chronological list of various bills and resolutions sponsored by Kerry follows.\n2004 presidential campaign.\nIn the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries, John Kerry defeated several Democratic rivals, including Sen. John Edwards (D-North Carolina), former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and retired Army General Wesley Clark. His victory in the Iowa caucuses is widely believed to be the tipping point where Kerry revived his sagging campaign in New Hampshire and the February 3, 2004, primary states like Arizona, South Carolina and New Mexico. Kerry then went on to win landslide victories in Nevada and Wisconsin. Kerry thus won the Democratic nomination to run for President of the United States against incumbent George W. Bush. On July 6, 2004, he announced his selection of John Edwards as his running mate. Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who was Kerry's 2004 campaign adviser, wrote an article in \"Time\" magazine claiming that after the election, Kerry had said that he wished he had never picked Edwards, and that the two have since stopped speaking to each other. In a subsequent appearance on ABC's \"This Week\", Kerry refused to respond to Shrum's allegation, calling it a \"ridiculous waste of time\".\nDuring his bid to be elected president in 2004, Kerry frequently criticized President George W. Bush for starting the Iraq War. While Kerry had initially voted in support of authorizing President Bush to use force in dealing with Saddam Hussein, he voted against an $87billion supplemental appropriations bill to pay for the subsequent war. His statement on March 16, 2004, \"I actually did vote for the $87billion before I voted against it\", helped the Bush campaign to paint him as a flip-flopper and has been cited as contributing to Kerry's defeat.\nOn November 3, 2004, Kerry conceded the race. Kerry won 59.03 million votes, or 48.3 percent of the popular vote; Bush won 62.04 million votes, or 50.7 percent of the popular vote. Kerry carried states with a total of 252 electoral votes. One Kerry elector voted for Kerry's running mate, Edwards, so in the final tally Kerry had 251 electoral votes to Bush's 286. He was the first Democrat since Michael Dukakis in 1988 to lose the popular vote in a presidential election, and until Kamala Harris's loss in 2024, he was the most recent Democrat to do so.\nSubsequent presidential-election activities.\nImmediately after the 2004 election, some Democrats mentioned Kerry as a possible contender for the 2008 Democratic nomination. His brother had said such a campaign was \"conceivable\", and Kerry himself reportedly said at a farewell party for his 2004 campaign staff, \"There's always another four years\".\nKerry established a separate political action committee, Keeping America's Promise, which declared as its mandate \"A Democratic Congress will restore accountability to Washington and help change a disastrous course in Iraq\", and raised money and channeled contributions to Democratic candidates in state and federal races. Through Keeping America's Promise in 2005, Kerry raised over $5.5million for other Democrats up and down the ballot. Through his campaign account and his political action committee, the Kerry campaign operation generated more than $10million for various party committees and 179 candidates for the U.S. House, Senate, state and local offices in 42 states focusing on the midterm elections during the 2006 election cycle. \"Cumulatively, John Kerry has done as much if not more than any other individual senator\", Hassan Nemazee, the national finance chairman of the DSCC said.\nOn January 10, 2008, Kerry endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama for president. He was mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate for Senator Obama, although fellow Senator Joe Biden was eventually chosen. After Biden's acceptance of the vice presidential nomination, speculation arose that John Kerry would be a candidate for Secretary of State in the Obama administration. However, Senator Hillary Clinton was offered the position.\nDuring the 2012 Obama reelection campaign, Kerry participated in one-on-one debate prep with the president, impersonating the Republican candidate Mitt Romney.\nSecretary of State (2013\u20132017).\nNomination and confirmation.\nOn December 15, 2012, several news outlets reported that President Barack Obama would nominate Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, after Susan Rice, widely seen as Obama's preferred choice, withdrew her name from consideration citing a politicized confirmation process following criticism of her response to the 2012 Benghazi attack. On December 21, Obama proposed the nomination, which received positive commentary. His confirmation hearing took place on January 24, 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the same panel where he first testified in 1971. The committee unanimously voted to approve him on January 29, 2013, and the same day the full Senate confirmed him on a vote of 94\u20133. In a letter to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Kerry announced his resignation from the Senate effective February 1.\nTenure.\nKerry was sworn in as Secretary of State on February 1, 2013.\nWhile serving as the Secretary of State, Kerry spoke in the French language on several occasions in his official capacity.\nAfter six months of rigorous diplomacy within the Middle East, Kerry was able to have Israeli and Palestinian negotiators agree to start the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks. Senior U.S. officials stated the two sides were able to meet on July 30, 2013, at the State Department without American mediators following a dinner the previous evening hosted by Kerry.\nOn September 27, 2013, he met with the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the P5+1 and Iran summit, which eventually led to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. It was the highest-level direct contact between the United States and Iran in the last six years, and made him the first U.S. Secretary of State to have met with his Iranian counterpart since 1979 Iranian Revolution.\nIn the State Department, Kerry quickly earned a reputation \"for being aloof, keeping to himself, and not bothering to read staff memos\". Career State Department officials complained that power became too centralized under Kerry's leadership, which slowed department operations when Kerry was on frequent overseas trips. Others in State described Kerry as having \"a kind of diplomatic attention deficit disorder\" as he shifted from topic to topic instead of focusing on long-term strategy. When asked whether he was traveling too much, he responded, \"Hell no. I'm not slowing down.\" Despite Kerry's early achievements, morale at State was lower than under Hillary Clinton, according to department employees. However, after Kerry's first six months in the State Department, a Gallup poll found he had high approval ratings among Americans as Secretary of State. After a year, another poll showed Kerry's favorability continued to rise. Less than two years into Kerry's term, the Foreign Policy Magazine's 2014 Ivory Tower survey of international relations scholars asked, \"Who was the most effective U.S. Secretary of State in the past 50 years?\"; John Kerry and Lawrence Eagleburger tied for 11th place out of the 15 confirmed Secretaries of State in that period.\nIn January 2014, having met with Vatican Secretary of State Archbishop Pietro Parolin, Kerry said: \"We touched on just about every major issue that we are both working on, that are issues of concern to all of us. First of all, we talked at great length about Syria, and I was particularly appreciative for the Archbishop's raising this issue, and equally grateful for the Holy Father's comments\u00a0\u2013 the Pope's comments yesterday regarding his support for the GenevaII process. We welcome that support. It is very important to have broad support, and I know that the Pope is particularly concerned about the massive numbers of displaced human beings and the violence that has taken over 130,000 lives.\"\nKerry expressed support for Israel's right to defend itself during the 2014 Israel\u2013Gaza conflict.\nKerry said the United States supported the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen because Saudi Arabia, an ally, was threatened \"very directly\" by the takeover of neighboring Yemen by the Houthis, but noted that the United States would not reflexively support Saudi Arabia's proxy wars against Iran.\nOn December 28, 2016, soon after United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 passed 14\u20130 with the U.S. abstaining, Kerry joined the rest of the U.N. Security Council in strongly criticizing Israel's settlement policies in a speech. His speech and criticisms met negative reactions from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while UK Prime Minister Theresa May distanced the UK from Kerry's strongly worded speech in what appeared to be an attempt to build bridges with the incoming Trump administration. Kerry's speech received positive reactions from Arab nations, but some criticized his remarks as too little, too late from the outgoing administration.\nSyria.\nFollowing the August 21, 2013, chemical weapons attack on the Ghouta suburbs of Damascus attributed to Syrian government forces, Kerry became a leading advocate for the use of military force against the Syrian government for what he called \"a despot's brutal and flagrant use of chemical weapons\".\nOn September 9, in response to a reporter's question about whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could avert a military strike, Kerry said \"He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that. But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done, obviously.\" This unscripted remark initiated a process that would lead to Syria agreeing to relinquish and destroy its chemical weapons arsenal, as Russia treated Kerry's statement as a serious proposal. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia would work \"immediately\" to convince Syria relinquish and destroy its large chemical weapons arsenal. Syria quickly welcomed this proposal and on September 14, the UN formally accepted Syria's application to join the convention banning chemical weapons, and separately, the U.S. and Russia agreed on a plan to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons by the middle of 2014, leading Kerry to declare on July 20, 2014: \"we struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out\". On September 28, the UN Security Council passed a resolution ordering the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons and condemning the August 21 Ghouta attack.\nLatin America.\nIn a speech before the Organization of American States in November 2013, Kerry remarked that the era of the Monroe Doctrine was over. He went on to explain, \"The relationship that we seek and that we have worked hard to foster is not about a United States declaration about how and when it will intervene in the affairs of other American states. It's about all of our countries viewing one another as equals, sharing responsibilities, cooperating on security issues, and adhering not to doctrine, but to the decisions that we make as partners to advance the values and the interests that we share.\"\nEnvironmentalism.\nIn April 2016, he signed the Paris Climate Accords at the United Nations in New York.\nOn November 11, 2016, Kerry became the first Secretary of State and highest-ranking U.S. official to date to visit Antarctica. Kerry spent two days on the continent meeting with researchers and staying overnight at McMurdo Station.\nIn 1994, Kerry led opposition to continued funding for the Integral Fast Reactor, which resulted in the end of funding for the project. However, in light of increasing concerns regarding climate change, in 2017 Kerry reversed his position on nuclear power, saying \"Given this challenge we face today, and given the progress of fourth generation nuclear: go for it. No other alternative, zero emissions.\"\nGlobal Connect initiative.\nIn September 2015, the U.S. Department of State unveiled a new initiative called \"Global Connect\" which sought to provide internet access to more than 1.5 billion people around the world within five years. In 2016, in partnership with OPIC, Kerry announced an investment of $171million to enable \"a low-cost and rapidly scalable wireless broadband network in India\". OPIC's financing is aimed at helping its Indian Partner, Tikona Digital Networks, to provide Internet through wireless technology.\nOut of government (2017\u20132021).\nKerry retired from his diplomatic work following the end of the Obama administration on January 20, 2017. He did not attend Donald Trump's inauguration on that day, and the following day took part in the 2017 Women's March in Washington, D.C.\nKerry has taken a strong stand against Trump policies and joined in filing a brief arguing against Trump's executive order banning entry of persons from seven Muslim countries. In November 2018, in a \"Guardian Live\" conversation with Andrew Rawnsley, sponsored by \"The Guardian\" at London's Central Hall, Kerry discussed several issues which have developed further since his tenure as Secretary of State, including migration into Europe and climate change.\nOn December 5, 2019, Kerry endorsed Joe Biden's bid for the Democratic nomination for president, saying \"He'll be ready on day one to put back together the country and the world that Donald Trump has broken apart\" and asserting that \"Joe will defeat Donald Trump next November. He's the candidate with the wisdom and standing to fix what Trump has broken, to restore our place in the world, and improve the lives of working people here at home.\"\nFollowing retirement from government service, Kerry signed an agreement with Simon & Schuster for publishing his planned memoirs, dealing with his life and career in government. In September 2018, he published \"Every Day Is Extra\".\nLeaked audiotape.\nOn April 25, 2021, \"The New York Times\" published content from a leaked audiotape of a three-hour taped conversation between economist Saeed Leylaz and Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. The taped conversation was connected to an oral history project, known as \"In the Islamic Republic the military field rules\", which documents the work of Iran's current administration. The tape was obtained by the London-based news channel Iran International.\nIn the tape, which the \"Times\" referred to as \"extraordinary\", Zarif reveals that then-Secretary of State Kerry told him that Israel attacked Iranian assets in Syria, \"at least 200 times\". Although the tape has not been verified, the spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry did not deny its validity.\nNineteen Republican senators signed a letter asking President Biden to investigate Zarif's claim. On April 27, 2021, Republicans called on Kerry to resign from the Biden administration's National Security Council. In a tweet, Kerry denied Zarif's account, writing, \"I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false. This never happened \u2014 either when I was Secretary of State or since.\"\nSpecial Presidential Envoy for Climate (2021\u20132024).\nOn November 23, 2020, President-elect Joe Biden's transition team announced that Kerry would be taking a full-time position in the administration, serving as a special envoy for climate; in this role he will be a principal on the National Security Council. Kerry assumed office on January 20, 2021, following Biden's inauguration.\nClimate cooperation with China.\nIn July 2023, John Kerry visited China for advance climate cooperation. The main achievement of the visit was some progress in the fields of: \"methane reduction commitments; reducing China's reliance on coal; China's objections to trade restrictions on solar panel and battery components; and climate finance.\" This was obtained despite many currently existing obstacles to cooperation. The visit was made in the middle of the 2023 Asia heat wave that set a new record of in Sanbu, Xinjiang, China, which Kerry mentioned in particular.\nClimate cooperation with India.\nAt the end of July 2023, John Kerry visited India. Among others he declared, the US will be committed to the target of delivering 100 billion dollars for climate action to low income countries and no future US president can retreat from climate commitment. He criticized Donald Trump for leaving the Paris agreement before.\nClimate cooperation with countries in the Middle East.\nIn June 2023, Kerry made visits to Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. In Israel, he emphasized the need for climate legislation to reach climate targets and reached an agreement about the renewal of \"Memorandum of understanding between Israel and the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Israel is one of the few developed countries which have still not approved a climate law and lags behind other OECD countries in climate action. Israeli environmental protection minister Idit Silman said that Israel intended to go to COP28 \"with an ambitious and applicable climate law and put the State of Israel on the same level as the developed countries of the OECD.\"\nDeparture.\nOn January 13, 2024, at least three sources close to Kerry revealed that he would step down as U.S. climate envoy by the upcoming spring. He told the \"Financial Times\" he planned to stay active in the climate finance space. He officially resigned from his position on March 6, 2024.\nPersonal and family life.\nAncestry.\nKerry's paternal ancestors came from the Fr\u00e4nkel family, which owned a textile factory in Neustadt, Upper Silesia (now Prudnik, Poland), founded by Samuel Fr\u00e4nkel. The Fr\u00e4nkels originated from Hotzenplotz, Austria (now Osoblaha, Czech Republic) and Z\u00fclz, Prussia (now Bia\u0142a Prudnicka, Poland). Kerry's paternal great-grandmother, Mathilda Fr\u00e4nkel, was born in Oberglogau (now G\u0142og\u00f3wek, near Prudnik) and married Benedikt Kohn from Bennisch (now Horn\u00ed Bene\u0161ov). His grandparents, shoe businessman Frederick A. \"Fred\" Kerry and musician Ida L\u00f6we, immigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the U.S. Fred, his wife, and his brother converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1901, and changed their names from Kohn to Kerry. Ida was of remote ancestry of Rabbi Sinai Loew of Worms, brother of Judah Loew ben Bezalel. Fred and Ida Kerry emigrated to the United States in 1905, living at first in Chicago and eventually moving to Brookline, Massachusetts, by 1915. According to \"The New York Times\", \"[the] brother and sister of John Kerry's paternal grandmother, Otto and Jenni Lowe, died in concentration camps\". Kerry's Jewish ancestry was publicly revealed during his 2004 presidential campaign; he has stated that he was unaware of it until a reporter informed him of it in 2003.\nKerry's maternal ancestors were of Scottish and English descent, and his maternal grandparents were James Grant Forbes II of the Forbes family and Margaret Tyndal Winthrop of the Dudley\u2013Winthrop family. Margaret's paternal grandfather Robert Charles Winthrop served as the 22nd Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Robert's father was Governor Thomas Lindall Winthrop. Thomas' father John Still Winthrop was a great-great-grandson of Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop and great-grandson of Governor Thomas Dudley. Through his mother, Kerry is a first cousin once removed of French politician Brice Lalonde.\nMarriages and children.\nKerry was married to Julia Thorne in 1970, and they had two daughters together: documentary filmmaker Alexandra Kerry (born September 5, 1973) and physician Vanessa Kerry (born December 31, 1976).\nAlexandra was born days before Kerry began law school. In 1982, Julia asked Kerry for a separation while she was suffering from severe depression. They were divorced on July 25, 1988, and the marriage was formally annulled in 1997. \"After 14 years as a political wife, I associated politics only with anger, fear and loneliness\", she wrote in \"A Change of Heart\", her book about depression. Thorne later married Richard Charlesworth, an architect, and moved to Bozeman, Montana, where she became active in local environmental groups such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Thorne supported Kerry's 2004 presidential run. She died of cancer on April 27, 2006.\nKerry and his second wife\u2014Portuguese-born businesswoman and philanthropist Teresa Heinz, the widow of Kerry's late Pennsylvania Republican Senate colleague John Heinz\u2014were introduced to each other by Heinz at an Earth Day rally in 1990. Early the following year, Senator Heinz was killed in a plane crash near Lower Merion. Teresa has three sons from her marriage to Heinz, Henry John IV, Andr\u00e9, and Christopher. Heinz and Kerry were married on May 26, 1995, in Nantucket, Massachusetts.\nNet worth.\nThe \"Forbes 400\" survey estimated in 2004 that Teresa Heinz Kerry had a net worth of $750million. However, estimates have frequently varied, ranging from around $165million to as high as $3.2billion, according to a study in the \"Los Angeles Times\". Regardless of which figure is correct, Kerry was the wealthiest U.S. Senator while serving in the Senate. Independent of Heinz, Kerry is wealthy in his own right, and is the beneficiary of at least four trusts inherited from Forbes family relatives, including his mother, Rosemary Forbes Kerry, who died in 2002. \"Forbes\" magazine (named for the Forbes family of publishers, unrelated to Kerry) estimated that if elected, and if Heinz family assets were included, Kerry would have been the third-richest U.S. president in history, when adjusted for inflation. This assessment was based on Heinz's and Kerry's combined assets, but the couple signed a prenuptial agreement that keeps their assets separate. Kerry's financial disclosure form for 2011 put his personal assets in the range of $230,000,000 to $320,000,000, including the assets of his spouse and any dependent children. This included slightly more than $3,000,000 worth of H. J. Heinz Company assets, which increased in value by over $600,000 in 2013 when Berkshire Hathaway announced their intention to purchase the company.\nIn April 2017, Kerry purchased an 18-acre property on the northwest corner of Martha's Vineyard overlooking Vineyard Sound in the town of Chilmark, Massachusetts. The property is located in Seven Gates Farm and according to property records, cost $11.75million for the seven bedroom home.\nReligious beliefs.\nKerry is a Roman Catholic, and is said to have carried a religious rosary, a prayer book, and a St. Christopher medal (the patron saint of travelers) when he campaigned. Discussing his faith, Kerry said: \"I thought of being a priest. I was very religious while at school in Switzerland. I was an altar boy and prayed all the time. I was very centered around the Mass and the church.\" He also said that the Letters of Paul (Apostle Paul) moved him the most, stating that they taught him to \"not feel sorry for myself\".\nKerry told \"Christianity Today\" in October 2004:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I'm a Catholic and I practice, but at the same time I have an open-mindedness to many other expressions of spirituality that come through different religions... I've spent some time reading and thinking about religion and trying to study it, and I've arrived at not so much a sense of the differences, but a sense of the similarities in so many ways.\nHe said that he believed that the Torah, the Quran, and the Bible all share a fundamental story which connects with readers.\nHealth.\nIn 2003, Kerry was diagnosed with and successfully treated for prostate cancer. On May 31, 2015, Kerry broke his right leg in a biking accident in Scionzier, France, and was flown to Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital for recovery. MGH Hip and Knee Replacement Orthopaedic Surgeon Dr. Dennis Burke, who had met Kerry in France and had accompanied him in the plane from France to Boston, set Kerry's right leg on Tuesday, June 2, in a four-hour operation.\nAthletics and sailing.\nIn addition to the sports he played at Yale, Kerry is described by \"Sports Illustrated\", among others, as an \"avid cyclist\", primarily riding on a road bike. Prior to his presidential bid, Kerry had participated in several long-distance rides. During his many campaigns, he was reported to have visited bicycle stores in both his home state and elsewhere. His staff requested recumbent stationary bikes for his hotel rooms. He has also been a snowboarder, windsurfer, and sailor.\nThe \"Boston Herald\" reported on July 23, 2010, that Kerry commissioned construction on a new $7million yacht (a Friendship 75) in New Zealand and moored it in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where the Friendship yacht company is based. The article claimed this allowed him to avoid paying Massachusetts taxes on the property including approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $500. On July 27, Kerry stated he would voluntarily pay $500,000 in Massachusetts taxes on his yacht.\nHonors.\nJohn Kerry was awarded:\nHonorary degrees.\nJohn Kerry has received several honorary degrees in recognition of his service to the United States, These include:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "2905269": "Toby Edward Rosenthal\n19th/20th-century American painter\nTobias Edward Rosenthal, known as Toby (15 March 1848 in Strasburg, Prussia\u00a0\u2013 23 December 1917 in Munich) was a German-American genre and portrait painter. He generally claimed to have been born in New Haven, Connecticut.\nBiography.\nShortly after he was born, his parents emigrated to the United States. They settled in San Francisco in 1858 and his father, Jakob, worked as a tailor. He had expressed a strong desire to be a painter, so they enrolled him at a drawing school operated by a French-born sculptor named Louis Bacon. There, he attracted the attention of the expatriate Mexican artist, Fortunato Arriola, who gave him free lessons. \nIn 1865, at Arriola's urging, his parents raised the money to send him to Munich, where he became a pupil at the Academy of Fine Arts. His instructors there included Alexander Str\u00e4huber and Karl Raupp. Later, he attended master classes taught by Karl Theodor von Piloty. His painting of Johann Sebastian Bach and his family at their morning prayers (1870) was awarded a medal and purchased by the State Museum in Leipzig.\nDuring his stay there, his father had been publishing his letters in the local newspapers. When he returned home, in 1871, he found himself the center of attention, and received numerous commissions for portraits. Despite that, the constant socializing became monotonous, and he went back to Munich. There he painted \"The Beautiful Elaine\" (1874), based on a work by Alfred Tennyson, which had been commissioned by a banker in San Francisco. It proved to be a difficult painting, so Rosenthal requested more money for it, but was refused. He then sold it to someone else for several times the originally promised amount. His breach of contract created a small scandal.\nIn 1876, he participated in the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. He was awarded another medal in 1883 for \"Trial of the Escaped Nun Constance de Beverley\", based on the poem \"Marmion\" by Sir Walter Scott, now on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.\nExcept for an occasional visit to his family, he spent the rest of his life in Germany and married a local banker's daughter, although he continued to accept commissions from America. He died in 1917, at the age of sixty-nine, and was interred in the Nordfriedhof. His works may be seen at the Art Institute of Chicago and the De Young Museum.\nNotable works.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "53825": "New Haven, Connecticut\nNew Haven is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is the third largest city in Connecticut after Bridgeport and Stamford, the largest city in the South Central Connecticut Planning Region, and the principal municipality of Greater New Haven, which had a total population of 864,835 in 2020.\nNew Haven was one of the first planned cities in the U.S. A year after its founding by English Puritans in 1638, eight streets were laid out in a four-by-four grid, creating the \"Nine Square Plan\". The central common block is the New Haven Green, a square at the center of Downtown New Haven. The Green is now a National Historic Landmark, and the \"Nine Square Plan\" is recognized by the American Planning Association as a National Planning Landmark.\nNew Haven is the home of Yale University, New Haven's biggest taxpayer and employer, and an integral part of the city's economy. Health care, professional and financial services and retail trade also contribute to the city's economic activity.\nThe city served as co-capital of Connecticut from 1701 until 1873, when sole governance was transferred to the more centrally located city of Hartford. New Haven has since billed itself as the \"Cultural Capital of Connecticut\" for its supply of established theaters, museums, and music venues. New Haven had the first public tree planting program in the U.S., producing a canopy of mature trees (including some large elms) that gave the city the nickname \"The Elm City\".\nHistory.\nPre-colonial foundation as an independent colony.\nBefore Europeans arrived, the New Haven area was the home of the Quinnipiac tribe of Native Americans, who lived in villages around the harbor and sustained an economy of local fisheries and the farming of maize. The area was briefly visited by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block in 1614. Dutch traders set up a small trading system of beaver pelts with the local inhabitants, but trade was sporadic and the Dutch did not settle permanently in the area.\nIn 1637, a small party of Puritans did a reconnaissance of the New Haven harbor area and wintered over. In April 1638, the main party of five hundred Puritans, who had left the Massachusetts Bay Colony under the leadership of Reverend John Davenport and London merchant Theophilus Eaton, sailed into the harbor. It was their hope to set up a theological community with the government more closely linked to the church than that in Massachusetts, and to exploit the area's potential as a port. The Quinnipiacs, who were under attack by neighboring Pequots, sold their land to the settlers in return for a pledge of protection.\nBy 1640, \"Quinnipiac's\" theocratic government and nine-square grid plan were in place, and the town was renamed New Haven, with 'haven' meaning harbor or port. However, the area to the north remained Quinnipiac until 1678, when it was renamed Hamden. The settlement became the headquarters of the New Haven Colony, distinct from the Connecticut Colony previously established to the north centering on Hartford. Reflecting its theocratic roots, the New Haven Colony forbade the establishment of other churches, whereas the Connecticut Colony permitted them.\nEconomic disaster struck New Haven in 1646, when the town sent its first fully loaded ship of local goods (the \"Great Shippe\") back to England. It never reached its destination, and its disappearance hindered New Haven's development as compared to the rising trade powers of Boston and New Amsterdam (modern day New York City).\nIn 1660, Colony founder John Davenport's wishes were fulfilled, and Hopkins School was founded in New Haven with money from the estate of Edward Hopkins.\nIn 1661, the Regicides who had signed the death warrant of Charles I of England were pursued by Charles II. Two of them, Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe, fled to New Haven for refuge. Davenport arranged for them to hide in the West Rock hills northwest of the town. A third judge, John Dixwell, later joined the others. None of the three were ever returned to England for trial; Dixwell died of old age in New Haven, the others likewise elsewhere in New England.\nAs part of the Connecticut Colony.\nIn 1664, New Haven became part of the Connecticut Colony when the two colonies were merged under political pressure from England. Seeking to establish a new theocracy elsewhere, some members of the New Haven Colony went on to establish Newark, New Jersey.\nNew Haven was made co-capital of Connecticut in 1701, a status it retained until 1873.\nIn 1716, the Collegiate School relocated from Old Saybrook to New Haven, establishing it as a center of learning. In 1718, in response to a large donation from East India Company merchant Elihu Yale, former Governor of Madras, the Collegiate School was renamed Yale College.\nFor over a century, New Haven citizens had fought in the colonial militia alongside regular British forces, including the French and Indian War. As the American Revolution approached, General David Wooster and other influential residents hoped that the conflict with the British parliament could be resolved short of rebellion. On April 23, 1775, Captain Benedict Arnold commanded the Second Company, Governor's Foot Guard, of New Haven to break into the powder house to arm themselves for a three-day march to Cambridge, Massachusetts, an event still celebrated in New Haven as Powder House Day. Other New Haven militia members were on hand to escort George Washington from his overnight stay in New Haven on his way to Cambridge. Contemporary reports, from both sides, remark on the New Haven volunteers' professional military bearing, including uniforms.\nOn July 5, 1779, 2,600 loyalists and British regulars under General William Tryon, governor of New York, landed in New Haven Harbor and raided the town of 3,500. A militia of Yale students had been preparing for battle, and former Yale president and Yale Divinity School professor Naphtali Daggett rode out to confront the Redcoats. Yale president Ezra Stiles recounted in his diary that while he moved furniture in anticipation of battle, he still couldn't quite believe the revolution had begun. New Haven was not torched as the invaders did with Danbury in 1777, or Fairfield and Norwalk a week after the New Haven raid, preserving many of the town's colonial features.\nPost-colonial period and industrialization.\nNew Haven was incorporated as a city in 1784, and Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Constitution and author of the \"Connecticut Compromise\", became the new city's first mayor.\nThe city struck fortune in the late 18th century with the inventions and industrial activity of Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate who remained in New Haven to develop the cotton gin and establish a gun-manufacturing factory in the northern part of the city near the Hamden town line. That area is still known as Whitneyville, and the main road through both towns is known as Whitney Avenue. The factory is now the Eli Whitney Museum, which has a particular emphasis on activities for children and exhibits pertaining to the A. C. Gilbert Company. His factory, along with that of Simeon North, and the lively clock-making and brass hardware sectors, contributed to making early Connecticut a powerful manufacturing economy; so many arms manufacturers sprang up that the state became known as \"The Arsenal of America\". It was in Whitney's gun-manufacturing plant that Samuel Colt invented the automatic revolver in 1836. Many other talented machinists and firearms designers would go on to found successful firearms manufacturing companies in New Haven, including Oliver Winchester and O.F. Mossberg & Sons.\nThe Farmington Canal, created in the early 19th century, was a short-lived transporter of goods into the interior regions of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and ran from New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts.\nNew Haven was to be the site of the first college for African Americans in the United States, but the plan was obstructed by efforts led by Yale Law School founder and former New Haven Mayor David Daggett, who went on to serve as a U.S. Senator and judge on Connecticut's highest court. Daggett denigrated African Americans, denied they were citizens, and presided over the trial of a woman persecuted for trying to admit an African American girl to her boarding school and, having that effort blocked, running a boarding school for African American girls.\nNew Haven was home to one of the important early events in the burgeoning anti-slavery movement when, in 1839, the trial of mutineering Mende tribesmen being transported as slaves on the Spanish slaveship \"Amistad\" was held in New Haven's United States District Court. There is a statue of Joseph Cinqu\u00e9, the informal leader of the slaves, beside City Hall. See \"Museums\" below for more information. Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech on slavery in New Haven in 1860, shortly before he secured the Republican nomination for President.\nThe American Civil War boosted the local economy with wartime purchases of industrial goods, including that of the New Haven Arms Company, which would later become the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. (Winchester would continue to produce arms in New Haven until 2006, and many of the buildings that were a part of the Winchester plant are now a part of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company Historic District). After the war, population grew and doubled by the start of the 20th century, most notably due to the influx of immigrants from southern Europe, particularly Italy. Today, roughly half the populations of East Haven, West Haven, and North Haven are Italian-American. Jewish immigration to New Haven has left an enduring mark on the city. Westville was the center of Jewish life in New Haven, though today many have fanned out to suburban communities such as Woodbridge and Cheshire. Lowell House, the city's first settlement, opened in 1900.\nPost-industrial era and urban redevelopment.\nNew Haven's expansion continued during the two World Wars, with most new inhabitants being African Americans from the American South, and Puerto Ricans. The city reached its peak population after World War II. The area of New Haven is only , encouraging further development of new housing after 1950 in adjacent, suburban towns. Moreover, as in other U.S. cities in the 1950s, New Haven began to suffer white flight of middle-class workers. One author suggested that aggressive redlining and rezoning made it difficult for residents to obtain financing for older, deteriorating urban housing stock, thereby condemning such structures to deterioration.\nIn 1954, then-mayor Richard C. Lee began some of the earliest major urban renewal projects in the United States. Certain sections of downtown New Haven were redeveloped to include museums, new office towers, a hotel, and large shopping complexes. Other parts of the city, particularly the Wooster Square and Fair Haven neighborhoods were affected by the construction of Interstate 95 along the Long Wharf section, Interstate 91, and the Oak Street Connector. The Oak Street Connector (Route 34), running between Interstate 95, downtown, and The Hill neighborhood, was originally intended as a highway to the city's western suburbs but was only completed as a highway to the downtown area, with the area to the west becoming a boulevard (See \"Redevelopment\" below).\nIn 1970, a series of criminal prosecutions against various members of the Black Panther Party took place in New Haven, inciting mass protests on the New Haven Green involving twelve thousand demonstrators and many well-known New Left political activists. (See \"Political Culture\" below for more information). From the 1960s through the early 1990s, some areas of New Haven continued to decline both economically and in terms of population despite attempts to resurrect certain neighborhoods through renewal projects. In conjunction with its declining population, New Haven experienced a steep rise in its crime rate.\nSince approximately 2000, many parts of downtown New Haven have been revitalized with new restaurants, nightlife, and small retail stores. In particular, the area surrounding the New Haven Green has experienced an influx of apartments and condominiums. In addition, two new supermarkets opened to serve downtown's growing residential population: a Stop & Shop opened just west of downtown, while Elm City Market, located one block from the Green, opened in 2011. The recent turnaround of downtown New Haven has received positive press from various periodicals.\nMajor projects include the current construction of a new campus for Gateway Community College downtown, and also a 32-story, 500-unit apartment/retail building called 360 State Street. The 360 State Street project is now occupied and is the largest residential building in Connecticut. A new boathouse and dock is planned for New Haven Harbor, and the linear park Farmington Canal Trail is set to extend into downtown New Haven within the coming year. Additionally, foundation and ramp work to widen I-95 to create a new harbor crossing for New Haven, with an extradosed bridge to replace the 1950s-era Q Bridge, has begun. The city still hopes to redevelop the site of the New Haven Coliseum, which was demolished in 2007.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 18 white firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no black firefighters scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. In the subsequent \"Ricci v. DeStefano\" decision the court found 5\u20134 that New Haven's decision to ignore the test results violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a result, a district court subsequently ordered the city to promote 14 of the white firefighters.\nIn 2010 and 2011, state and federal funds were awarded to Connecticut (and Massachusetts) to construct the Hartford Line, with a southern terminus at New Haven's Union Station and a northern terminus at Springfield's Union Station. According to the White House, \"This corridor [currently] has one train per day connecting communities in Connecticut and Massachusetts to the Northeast Corridor and Vermont. The vision for this corridor is to restore the alignment to its original route via the Knowledge Corridor in western Massachusetts, improving trip time and increasing the population base that can be served.\" Set for construction in 2013, the \"Knowledge Corridor high speed intercity passenger rail\" project will cost approximately $1\u00a0billion, and the ultimate northern terminus for the project is reported to be Montreal in Canada. Train speeds between will reportedly exceed and increase both cities' rail traffic exponentially.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 6.67%, is water.\nNew Haven's best-known geographic features are its large, shallow harbor, and two reddish basalt trap rock ridges which rise to the northeast and northwest of the city core. These trap rocks are known respectively as East Rock and West Rock, and both serve as extensive parks. West Rock has been tunneled through to make way for the east\u2013west passage of the Wilbur Cross Parkway (the only highway tunnel through a natural obstacle in Connecticut), and once served as the hideout of the \"Regicides\" (see: Regicides Trail). Most New Haveners refer to these men as \"The Three Judges\". East Rock features the prominent Soldiers and Sailors war monument on its peak as well as the \"Great/Giant Steps\" which run up the rock's cliffside.\nThe city is drained by three rivers; the West, Mill, and Quinnipiac, named in order from west to east. The West River discharges into West Haven Harbor, while the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers discharge into New Haven Harbor. Both harbors are embayments of Long Island Sound. In addition, several smaller streams flow through the city's neighborhoods, including Wintergreen Brook, the Beaver Ponds Outlet, Wilmot Brook, Belden Brook, and Prospect Creek. Not all of these small streams have continuous flow year-round.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen classification, New Haven experiences a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\"), bordering a hot-summer humid continental climate (\"Dfa\"). The city has hot, humid summers and cool to cold winters. From May to late September, the weather is typically hot and humid, with average temperatures exceeding on 70 days per year. In summer, the Bermuda High creates as southern flow of warm and humid air, with frequent (but brief) thundershowers. October to early December is normally mild to cool late in the season, while early spring (April) can be cool to warm. Winters are more variable, with cool to cold temperatures, mixed with warmer spells, with both rain and snow fall.\nWhile the weather patterns that affect New Haven result from a primarily offshore direction, thus reducing the marine influence of Long Island Sound, the location on Long Island Sound often influences the weather along the coastline compared to inland. During summer heat waves, temperatures may reach or higher on occasion with heat-index values of over . Tropical cyclones have struck New Haven in the past, including 1938 Hurricane (Long Island Express), Hurricane Carol in 1954, Hurricane Gloria in 1985. The hardiness zone is 7a.\nStreetscape.\nNew Haven has a long tradition of urban planning and a purposeful design for the city's layout. The city could be argued to have some of the first preconceived layouts in the country. Upon founding, New Haven was laid out in a grid plan of nine square blocks; the central square was left open, in the tradition of many New England towns, as the city green (a commons area). The city also instituted the first public tree planting program in America. As in other cities, many of the elms that gave New Haven the nickname \"Elm City\" perished in the mid-20th century due to Dutch elm disease, although many have since been replanted. The New Haven Green is currently home to three separate historic churches which speak to the original theocratic nature of the city. The Green remains the social center of the city today. It was named a National Historic Landmark in 1970.\nDowntown New Haven, occupied by nearly 7,000 residents, has a more residential character than most downtowns. The downtown area provides about half of the city's jobs and half of its tax base and in recent years has become filled with dozens of new upscale restaurants, in addition to shops and thousands of apartments and condominium units which subsequently help overall growth of the city.\nNeighborhoods.\nThe city has many distinct neighborhoods. In addition to Downtown, centered on the central business district and the Green, are the following neighborhoods: the west central neighborhoods of Dixwell and Dwight; the southern neighborhoods of The Hill, historic water-front City Point (or Oyster Point), and the harborside district of Long Wharf; the western neighborhoods of Beaver Hills, Edgewood, West River, Westville, Amity, and West Rock-Westhills; East Rock, Cedar Hill, Prospect Hill, and Newhallville in the northern side of town; the east central neighborhoods of Mill River and Wooster Square, an Italian-American neighborhood; Fair Haven, an immigrant community located between the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers; Quinnipiac Meadows and Fair Haven Heights across the Quinnipiac River; and facing the eastern side of the harbor, The Annex and East Shore (or Morris Cove).\nDemographics.\nCensus data.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nThe U.S. Census Bureau reports a 2010 population of 129,779, with 47,094 households and 25,854 families within the city of New Haven. The population density was . There were 52,941 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 42.6% White, 35.4% African American, 0.5% Native American, 4.6% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 12.9% from other races, and 3.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 27.4% of the population. Non-Hispanic Whites were 31.8% of the population in 2010, down from 69.6% in 1970. The city's Latino population is growing rapidly. Previous influxes among ethnic groups have been African-Americans in the postwar era, and Irish, Italian and (to a lesser degree) Slavic peoples in the prewar period.\nAs of the 2010 census, of the 47,094 households, 29.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 27.5% include married couples living together, 22.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 36.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.5% had someone living alone who was 65\u00a0years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40 and the average family size 3.19.\nThe ages of New Haven's residents were 25.4% under the age of 18, 16.4% from 18 to 24, 31.2% from 25 to 44, 16.7% from 45 to 64, and 10.2% who were 65\u00a0years of age or older. The median age was 29\u00a0years, which was significantly lower than the national average. There were 91.8 males per 100 females. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.6 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $29,604, and the median income for a family was $35,950. Median income for males was $33,605, compared with $28,424 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,393. About 20.5% of families and 24.4% of the population were living below the poverty line, including 32.2% of those under age 18 and 17.9% of those age 65 or over.\nOther data.\nIt is estimated that 14% of New Haven residents are pedestrian commuters, ranking it number four by highest percentage in the United States. This is primarily due to New Haven's small area and the presence of Yale University.\nNew Haven is noted for having the highest percentage of Italian American residents of any US city, and is noted for its local style of pizza.\nA study of the demographics of the New Haven metro area, based on age, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity, found that they were the closest of any American city to the national average.\nEconomy.\nNew Haven's economy originally was based in manufacturing, but the postwar period brought rapid industrial decline; the entire Northeast was affected, and medium-sized cities with large working-class populations, like New Haven, were hit particularly hard. Simultaneously, the growth and expansion of Yale University further affected the economic shift. Today, over half (56%) of the city's economy is now made up of services, in particular education and health care; Yale is the city's largest employer, followed by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital. Other large employers include Southern Connecticut State University, Assa Abloy lock manufacturing, the Knights of Columbus headquarters, Higher One, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Covidien and United Illuminating. Clothing stores Gant and Ann Taylor were founded in the city.\nIn 2017, New Haven was ranked by a Verizon study as one of the top 10 cities in America for launching tech startups, and top two in New England.\nIndustry sectors: Agriculture (.6%), Construction and Mining (4.9%), Manufacturing (2.9%), Transportation and Utilities (2.9%), Trade (21.7%), Finance and Real Estate (7.1%), Services (55.9%), Government (4.0%)\nHeadquarters.\nThe Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization and a Fortune 1000 company, is headquartered in New Haven. Amphenol, based in Greater New Haven (Wallingford), is a Fortune 100 company. Eight Courant 100 companies are based in Greater New Haven, with four headquartered in New Haven proper. New Haven-based companies traded on stock exchanges include NewAlliance Bank, the second largest bank in Connecticut and fourth-largest in New England (NYSE: NAL), Higher One Holdings (NYSE: ONE), a financial services firm, United Illuminating, the electricity distributor for southern Connecticut (NYSE: UIL), and Transpro Inc. (AMEX: TPR). The American division of Assa Abloy (one of the world's leading manufacturers of locks) is located in the city. The Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET) began operations in the city as the District Telephone Company of New Haven in 1878; the company remains headquartered in New Haven as a subsidiary of Frontier Communications and provides telephone service for all but two municipalities in Connecticut. SeeClickFix was founded and has been headquartered in the city since 2007. Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company (a candy-making division of the Hershey Company) was formerly located in the city. Achillion Pharmaceuticals and Alexion Pharmaceuticals were also formerly headquartered in New Haven.\nLaw and government.\nPolitical structure.\nNew Haven is governed via the mayor-council system. Connecticut municipalities (like those of neighboring states Massachusetts and Rhode Island) provide nearly all local services (such as fire and rescue, education, snow removal, etc.), as county government has been abolished since 1960.\nNew Haven County merely refers to a grouping of towns and a judicial district, not a governmental entity. New Haven is a member of the South Central Connecticut Regional Council of Governments (SCRCOG), a regional agency created to facilitate coordination between area municipal governments and state and federal agencies, in the absence of county government.\nJustin Elicker is the mayor of New Haven. He was sworn in as the 51st mayor of New Haven on January 1, 2020.\nThe city council, called the Board of Alders, consists of thirty members, each elected from single-member wards. Each of the 30 wards consists of slightly over 4,300 residents; redistricting takes place every ten years.\nThe city is overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2017, of the town's 83,694 voters, 66% were registered as Democrats (\u22124% since 2015), 4% were registered as Republicans (+1%), and 29% were unaffiliated (+3). The board of alders is dominated by Democrats; a Republican has not served as a New Haven alder since 2011.\nNew Haven is served by the New Haven Police Department, which had 443 sworn officers in 2011. The city is also served by the New Haven Fire Department.\nNew Haven lies within Connecticut's 3rd congressional district and has been represented by Rosa DeLauro since 1991. Martin Looney and Gary Holder-Winfield represent New Haven in the Connecticut State Senate, and the city lies within six districts (numbers 92 through 97) of the Connecticut House of Representatives.\nThe Greater New Haven area is served by the New Haven Judicial District Court and the New Haven Superior Court, both headquartered at the New Haven County Courthouse. The federal District Court for the District of Connecticut has a New Haven facility, the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse.\nPolitical history.\nNew Haven is the birthplace of former president George W. Bush, who was born when his father, former president George H. W. Bush, was living in New Haven while a student at Yale. In addition to being the site of the college educations of both Presidents Bush, as Yale students, New Haven was also the temporary home of former presidents William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, and Bill Clinton, as well as Secretary of State John Kerry. President Clinton met his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while the two were students at Yale Law School. Former vice presidents John C. Calhoun and Dick Cheney also studied in New Haven (although the latter did not graduate from Yale). Before the 2008 election, the last time there was not a person with ties to New Haven and Yale on either major party's ticket was 1968. James Hillhouse, a New Haven native, served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate in 1801.\nNew Haven voters overwhelmingly supported Al Gore in the 2000 election, Yale graduate John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. In the 2008 election, New Haven County was third among all Connecticut counties in campaign contributions, after Fairfield and Hartford counties. (Connecticut, in turn, was ranked 14th among all states in total campaign contributions.)\nNew Haven was the subject of \" Who Governs? Democracy and Power in An American City\", a very influential book in political science by preeminent Yale professor Robert A. Dahl, which includes an extensive history of the city and thorough description of its politics in the 1950s. New Haven's theocratic history is also mentioned several times by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic volume on 19th-century American political life, \"Democracy in America\". New Haven was the residence of conservative thinker William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1951, when he wrote his influential \"God and Man at Yale\". William Lee Miller's \"The Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society\" (1966) similarly explores the relationship between local politics in New Haven and national political movements, focusing on Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and urban renewal.\nGeorge Williamson Crawford, a Yale Law School graduate, served as the city's first black corporation counsel from 1954 to 1962, under Mayor Richard C. Lee.\nIn 1970, the New Haven Black Panther trials took place, the largest and longest trials in Connecticut history. Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale and ten other party members were tried for murdering an alleged informant. Beginning on May Day, the city became a center of protest for 12,000 Panther supporters, college students, and New Left activists (including Jean Genet, Benjamin Spock, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and John Froines), who amassed on the New Haven Green, across the street from where the trials were being held. Violent confrontations between the demonstrators and the New Haven Police occurred, and several bombs were set off in the area by radicals. The event became a rallying point for the New Left and critics of the Nixon Administration.\nDuring the summer of 2007, New Haven was the center of protests by anti-immigration groups who opposed the city's program of offering municipal ID cards, known as the Elm City Resident Card, to illegal immigrants. In 2008, the country of Ecuador opened a consulate in New Haven to serve the large Ecuadorean immigrant population in the area. It is the first foreign mission to open in New Haven since Italy opened a consulate (now closed) in the city in 1910.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 20 white and Hispanic firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no blacks scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. On June 29, 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the firefighters, agreeing that they were improperly denied promotion because of their race. The case, \"Ricci v. DeStefano\", became highly publicized and brought national attention to New Haven politics due to the involvement of then-Supreme Court nominee (and Yale Law School graduate) Sonia Sotomayor in a lower court decision.\nGarry Trudeau, creator of the political \"Doonesbury\" comic strip, attended Yale University. There he met fellow student and later Green Party candidate for Congress Charles Pillsbury, a long-time New Haven resident for whom Trudeau's comic strip is named. During his college years, Pillsbury was known by the nickname \"The Doones\". A theory of international law, which argues for a sociological normative approach in regards to jurisprudence, is named the New Haven Approach, after the city. Connecticut US senator Richard Blumenthal is a Yale graduate, as is former Connecticut US Senator Joe Lieberman who also was a New Haven resident for many years, before moving back to his hometown of Stamford.\nCrime.\nCrime increased in the 1990s, with New Haven having one of the ten highest violent crime rates per capita in the United States. In the late 1990s New Haven's crime began to stabilize. The city, adopting a policy of community policing, saw crime rates drop during the 2000s.\nViolent crime levels vary dramatically among New Haven's neighborhoods, with some areas having crime rates in line with the state of Connecticut average, and others having extremely high rates of crime. A 2011 New Haven Health Department report identifies these issues in greater detail.\nIn 2010, New Haven ranked as the 18th most dangerous city in the United States (albeit below the safety benchmark of 200.00 for the second consecutive year). However, according to a completely different analysis conducted by the \"24/7 Wall Street Blog\", in 2011 New Haven had risen to become the fourth most dangerous city in the United States, and was widely cited in the press as such.\nHowever, an analysis by the Regional Data Cooperative for Greater New Haven, Inc., has shown that due to issues of comparative denominators and other factors, such municipality-based rankings can be considered inaccurate. For example, two cities of identical population can cover widely differing land areas, making such analyses irrelevant. The research organization called for comparisons based on neighborhoods, blocks, or standard methodologies (similar to those used by Brookings, DiversityData, and other established institutions), not based on municipalities.\nEducation.\nColleges and universities.\nNew Haven is a notable center for higher education. Yale University, at the heart of downtown, is one of the city's best known features and its largest employer. New Haven is also home to Southern Connecticut State University, part of the Connecticut State University System, and Albertus Magnus College, a private institution. Gateway Community College has a campus in downtown New Haven, formerly located in the Long Wharf district; Gateway consolidated into one campus downtown into a new state-of-the-art campus (on the site of the old Macy's building) and was open for the Fall 2012 semester.\nThere are several institutions immediately outside of New Haven, as well. Quinnipiac University and the Paier College of Art are located just to the north, in the town of Hamden. The University of New Haven is located not in New Haven but in neighboring West Haven.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nNew Haven Public Schools is the school district serving the city. Wilbur Cross High School and Hillhouse High School are New Haven's two largest public secondary schools.\nHopkins School, a private school, was founded in 1660 and is the fifth-oldest educational institution in the United States. New Haven is home to a number of other private schools as well as public magnet schools, including Metropolitan Business Academy, High School in the Community, Hill Regional Career High School, Co-op High School, New Haven Academy, Edgewood Magnet School, ACES Educational Center for the Arts, the Foote School and the Sound School, all of which draw students from New Haven and suburban towns. New Haven is also home to two Achievement First charter schools, Amistad Academy and Elm City College Prep, and to Common Ground, an environmental charter school.\nThe city is renowned for its progressive school lunch programs, and participation in statewide bussing efforts toward increased diversity in schools.\nCulture.\nCuisine.\nLivability.com named New Haven as the Best Foodie City in the country in 2014. There are dozens of Zagat-rated restaurants in New Haven, the most in Connecticut and the third most in New England (after Boston and Cambridge). More than 120 restaurants are located within two blocks of the New Haven Green. The city is home to an eclectic mix of ethnic restaurants and small markets specializing in various foreign foods. Represented cuisines include Malaysian, Ethiopian, Spanish, Belgian, French, Greek, Latin American, Mexican, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Cuban, Peruvian, Syrian/Lebanese, and Turkish.\nNew Haven's greatest culinary claim to fame may be its pizza, which has been claimed to be among the best in the country, or even in the world. New Haven-style pizza, called \"apizza\", made its debut at the iconic Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana (known as Pepe's) in 1925. Apizza is baked in coal- or wood-fired brick ovens, and is notable for its thin crust. Apizza may be red (with a tomato-based sauce) or white (with a sauce of garlic and olive oil), and pies ordered \"plain\" are made without the otherwise customary mozzarella (originally smoked mozzarella, known as \"scamorza\" in Italian). A white clam pie is a well-known specialty of the restaurants on Wooster Street in the Little Italy section of New Haven, including Pepe's and Sally's Apizza (which opened in 1938). Modern Apizza on State Street, which opened in 1934, is also well-known.\nA second New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Louis' Lunch, which is located in a small brick building on Crown Street and has been serving fast food since 1895. Though fiercely debated, the restaurant's founder Louis Lassen is credited by the Library of Congress with inventing the hamburger and steak sandwich. Louis' Lunch broils hamburgers, steak sandwiches and hot dogs vertically in original antique 1898 cast iron stoves using gridirons, patented by local resident Luigi Pieragostini in 1939, that hold the meat in place while it cooks.\nA third New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Miya's, the first sustainable sushi restaurant in the world. Miya's, founded by Chef Yoshiko Lai in 1982, featured the first sustainable seafood-based sushi menu, the first plant-based sushi menu, and the first invasive species menu in the world. Second generation Miya's chef, Bun Lai, is the 2016 White House Champions of Change for Sustainable Seafood and a James Beard Foundation Award nominee. Chef Bun Lai is credited as the first chef in the world for implementing a sustainability paradigm to the cuisine of sushi.\nDuring weekday lunchtime, over 150 lunch carts and food trucks cater to diners around the city. The carts and food trucks cluster at four main points: on Long Wharf Drive, along the city's shoreline with quick access off Interstate 95, by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital in the center of the Hospital Green (Cedar and York streets), by Yale's Trumbull College (Elm and York streets), and on the intersection of Prospect and Sachem streets by the Yale School of Management.\nPopular farmers' markets, managed by the local non-profit CitySeed, set up shop weekly in several neighborhoods, including Westville/Edgewood Park, Fair Haven, Upper State Street, Wooster Square, and Downtown/New Haven Green.\nA large grocery store, the Elm City Market, opened on 360 State Street in New Haven in early fall 2011 and served local produce and groceries to the community. Originally, the market was a member-owned co-op, but debt defaults in August 2014 forced a sale of the business. It is now an employee-owned business; the co-op's previous owners received no equity in the new business.\nIn the past several years, two separate Downtown food tour companies have started offering popular restaurant tours on weekends.\nTaste of New Haven Tours offers several different weekly restaurant/bar tours and a popular pizza, bike, and pints tour. Culinary Walking Tours offers monthly restaurant tours and sponsors an annual Elm City Iron Chef competition.\nTheatre and film.\nThe city hosts numerous theatres and production houses, including the Yale Repertory Theatre, the Long Wharf Theatre, and the Shubert Theatre. There is also theatre activity from the Yale School of Drama, which works through the Yale University Theatre and the student-run Yale Cabaret. Southern Connecticut State University hosts the Lyman Center for the Performing Arts. The shuttered Palace Theatre (opposite the Shubert Theatre) was renovated and reopened as the College Street Music Hall in May 2015. Smaller theatres include the Little Theater on Lincoln Street. Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School also has a theatre on College Street. The theatre is used for student productions, and is the home to weekly services to a local non-denominational church, the City Church New Haven.\nThe Shubert Theatre once premiered many major theatrical productions before their Broadway debuts. Productions that premiered at the Shubert include \"Oklahoma!\" (which was also written in New Haven), \"Carousel\", \"South Pacific\", \"My Fair Lady\", \"The King and I\", and \"The Sound of Music\", and the Tennessee Williams play \"A Streetcar Named Desire\".\nBow Tie Cinemas owns and operates the Criterion Cinemas, the first new movie theater to open in New Haven in over 30 years and the first luxury movie complex in the city's history. The Criterion has seven screens and opened in November 2004, showing a mix of upscale first run commercial and independent film.\nMuseums.\nNew Haven has a variety of museums, many of them associated with Yale. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library features an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible. There is also the Connecticut Children's Museum; the Knights of Columbus museum near that organization's world headquarters; the Peabody Museum of Natural History; the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments; the Eli Whitney Museum (across the town line in Hamden, Connecticut, on Whitney Avenue); the Yale Center for British Art, which houses the largest collection of British art outside the U.K., and the Yale University Art Gallery, the western hemisphere's oldest college art museum. New Haven is also home to the New Haven Museum and Historical Society on Whitney Avenue, which has a library of many primary source treasures dating from Colonial times to the present.\nArtspace on Orange Street is one of several contemporary art galleries around the city, showcasing the work of local, national, and international artists. Others include City Gallery and A. Leaf Gallery in the downtown area. Westville galleries include Kehler Liddell, Jennifer Jane Gallery, and The Hungry Eye. The Erector Square complex in the Fair Haven neighborhood houses, the Parachute Factory gallery along with numerous artist studios, and the complex serves as an active destination during City-Wide Open Studios held yearly in October.\nNew Haven is the home port of a life-size replica of the historical \"Freedom Schooner Amistad\", which is open for tours at Long Wharf pier at certain times during the summer. Also at Long Wharf pier is the \"Quinnipiack\" schooner, offering sailing cruises of the harbor area throughout the summer. The \"Quinnipiack\" also functions as a floating classroom for hundreds of local students.\nMusic.\nThe New Haven Green is the site of many free music concerts, especially during the summer months. These have included the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the July Free Concerts on the Green, and the New Haven Jazz Festival in August. The Jazz Festival, which began in 1982, is one of the longest-running free outdoor festivals in the U.S., until it was canceled for 2007. Headliners such as Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles and Celia Cruz have historically drawn 30,000 to 50,000 fans, filling up the New Haven Green to capacity. The New Haven Jazz Festival was revived in 2008 and has been sponsored since by Jazz Haven.\nNew Haven is home to the concert venue Toad's Place, and a new venue, College Street Music Hall. The city has retained an alternative art and music underground that has helped to influence post-punk era music movements such as indie, college rock and underground hip-hop.\nThe Yale School of Music contributes to the city's music scene by offering hundreds of free concerts throughout the year at venues in and around the Yale campus. Large performances are held in the 2,700-seat Woolsey Hall auditorium, which contains the world's largest symphonic organs, while chamber music and recitals are performed in Sprague Hall.\nHardcore band Hatebreed are from Wallingford, but got their start in New Haven under the name Jasta 14. The band Miracle Legion formed in New Haven in 1983. Folk musicians from New Haven include Loren Mazzacane Connors and Kath Bloom.\nThe Hillhouse Opera Company is a U.S. non-profit opera company based in New Haven that performs in the New Haven area. Founded in 2008 by Victoria Leigh Gardner, Nicole Rodriguez and Jim Coatsworth Hillhouse Opera Company has performed operas as well as opera scenes programs, master classes and concert series. In 2011, the Company professionally staged the works created through the Riverview Opera Project. The Riverview Opera Project created workshops for children and adolescents at Riverview Hospital, Connecticut's only state-funded psychiatric hospital for youth, and helped them to successfully create, produce, and perform four original operas.\nFestivals.\nIn addition to the Jazz Festival (described above), New Haven serves as the home city of the annual International Festival of Arts and Ideas. New Haven's Saint Patrick's Day parade, which began in 1842, is New England's oldest and draws the largest crowds of any one-day spectator event in Connecticut. The St. Andrew the Apostle Italian Festival has taken place in the historic Wooster Square neighborhood every year since 1900. Other parishes in the city celebrate the Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua and a carnival in honor of St. Bernadette Soubirous. New Haven celebrates Powder House Day every April on the New Haven Green to commemorate the city's entrance into the Revolutionary War. The annual Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival commemorates the 1973 planting of 72 Yoshino Japanese cherry blossom trees by the New Haven Historic Commission in collaboration with the New Haven Parks Department and residents of the neighborhood. The Festival now draws well over 5,000 visitors. The Film Fest New Haven has been held annually since 1995.\nNightlife.\nIn the past decade downtown has seen an influx of new restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Large crowds are drawn to the Crown Street area downtown on weekends where many of the restaurants and bars are located. Crown Street between State and High Streets has dozens of establishments, as do nearby Temple and College Streets. Away from downtown, Upper State Street has a number of restaurants and bars popular with local residents and weekend visitors.\nNewspapers and media.\nNew Haven is served by the daily \"New Haven Register\", the weekly \"alternative\" \"New Haven Advocate\" (which is run by Tribune, the corporation owning the \"Hartford Courant\"), the online daily \"New Haven Independent\", and the monthly \"Grand News Community Newspaper.\" Downtown New Haven is covered by an in-depth civic news forum, Design New Haven. The \"Register\" also backs \"PLAY\" magazine, a weekly entertainment publication. The city is also served by several student-run papers, including the \"Yale Daily News\", the weekly \"Yale Herald\" and a humor tabloid, \"Rumpus Magazine\".\nWTNH Channel 8, the ABC affiliate for Connecticut, WCTX Channel 59, the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the state, Connecticut Public Television station WEDY channel 65, a PBS affiliate, and WTXX Channel 34, the IntrigueTV affiliate, broadcast from New Haven. All New York City news and sports team stations broadcast to New Haven County.\nSports and athletics.\nNew Haven has a history of professional sports franchises dating back to the 19th century and has been the home to professional baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer teams\u2014including the New York Giants of the National Football League from 1973 to 1974, who played at the Yale Bowl. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, New Haven consistently had minor league hockey and baseball teams, which played at the New Haven Arena (built in 1926, demolished in 1972), New Haven Coliseum (1972\u20132002), and Yale Field (1928\u2013present).\nWhen John DeStefano, Jr., became mayor of New Haven in 1995, he outlined a plan to transform the city into a major cultural and arts center in the Northeast, which involved investments in programs and projects other than sports franchises. As nearby Bridgeport built new sports facilities, the brutalist New Haven Coliseum rapidly deteriorated. Believing the upkeep on the venue to be a drain of tax dollars, the DeStefano administration closed the Coliseum in 2002; it was demolished in 2007. New Haven's last professional sports team, the New Haven County Cutters, left in 2009. The DeStefano administration did, however, see the construction of the New Haven Athletic Center in 1998, a indoor athletic facility with a seating capacity of over 3,000. The NHAC, built adjacent to Hillhouse High School, is used for New Haven public schools athletics, as well as large-scale area and state sporting events; it is the largest high school indoor sports complex in the state.\nNew Haven was the host of the 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games; then-President Bill Clinton spoke at the opening ceremonies. The city is home to the Pilot Pen International tennis event, which takes place every August at the Connecticut Tennis Center, one of the largest tennis venues in the world. New Haven biannually hosts \"The Game\" between Yale and Harvard, the country's second-oldest college football rivalry. Numerous road races take place in New Haven, including the USATF 20K Championship during the New Haven Road Race.\nGreater New Haven is home to a number of college sports teams. The Yale Bulldogs play Division I college sports, as do the Quinnipiac Bobcats in neighboring Hamden. Division II athletics are played by Southern Connecticut State University and the University of New Haven (actually located in neighboring West Haven), while Albertus Magnus College athletes perform at the Division III level.\nNew Haven is home to many New York Yankees, New York Mets, & Boston Red Sox fans due to the proximity of New York City & Boston.\nWalter Camp, deemed the \"father of American football\", was a New Havener.\nThe New Haven Warriors rugby league team play in the AMNRL. They have a large number of Pacific Islanders playing for them. Their field is located at the West Haven High School's Ken Strong Stadium. They won the 2008 AMNRL Grand Final.\nStructures.\nArchitecture.\nNew Haven has many architectural landmarks dating from every important time period and architectural style in American history. The city has been home to a number of architects and architectural firms that have left their mark on the city including Ithiel Town and Henry Austin in the 19th century and Cesar Pelli, Warren Platner, Kevin Roche, Herbert Newman and Barry Svigals in the 20th. The Yale School of Architecture has fostered this important component of the city's economy. Cass Gilbert, of the Beaux-Arts school, designed New Haven's Union Station and the New Haven Free Public Library and was also commissioned for a City Beautiful plan in 1919. Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, Alexander Jackson Davis, Philip C. Johnson, Gordon Bunshaft, Louis Kahn, James Gamble Rogers, Frank Gehry, Charles Willard Moore, Stefan Behnisch, James Polshek, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen and Robert Venturi all have designed buildings in New Haven. Yale's 1950s-era Ingalls Rink, designed by Eero Saarinen, was included on the \"America's Favorite Architecture\" list created in 2007.\nSeveral residential homes in New Haven were designed by Alice Washburn, a noted female architect whose Colonial Revival style set a standard for homes in the region.\nMany of the city's neighborhoods are well-preserved as walkable \"museums\" of 19th- and 20th-century American architecture, particularly by the New Haven Green, Hillhouse Avenue and other residential sections close to Downtown New Haven. Overall, a large proportion of the city's land area is National (NRHP) historic districts. One of the best sources on local architecture is \"New Haven: Architecture and Urban Design\", by Elizabeth Mills Brown.\nThe five tallest buildings in New Haven are:\nHistoric points of interest.\nMany historical sites exist throughout the city, including 59 properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Of these, nine are among the 60 U.S. National Historic Landmarks in Connecticut. The New Haven Green, one of the National Historic Landmarks, was formed in 1638, and is home to three 19th-century churches. Below the First Church of Christ in New Haven (referred to as the Center Church on the Green) lies a 17th-century crypt, which is open to visitors. Some of the more famous burials include the first wife of Benedict Arnold and the aunt and grandmother of President Rutherford B. Hayes; Hayes visited the crypt while President in 1880. The Old Campus of Yale University is located next to the Green, and includes Connecticut Hall, Yale's oldest building and a National Historic Landmark. The Hillhouse Avenue area, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a part of Yale's campus, has been called a walkable museum, due to its 19th-century mansions and street scape; Charles Dickens is said to have called Hillhouse Avenue \"the most beautiful street in America\" when visiting the city in 1868.\nIn 1660, Edward Whalley (a cousin and friend of Oliver Cromwell) and William Goffe, two English Civil War generals who signed the death warrant of King Charles I, hid in a rock formation in New Haven after having fled England upon the restoration of Charles II to the English throne. They were later joined by a third regicide, John Dixwell. The rock formation, which is now a part of West Rock Park, is known as Judges' Cave, and the path leading to the cave is called the Regicides Trail.\nAfter the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, the Connecticut colonial government ordered the construction of Black Rock Fort (to be built on top of an older 17th-century fort) to protect the port of New Haven. In 1779, during the Battle of New Haven, British soldiers captured Black Rock Fort and burned the barracks to the ground. The fort was reconstructed in 1807 by the federal government (on orders from the Thomas Jefferson administration), and rechristened Fort Nathan Hale, after the Revolutionary War hero who had lived in New Haven. The cannons of Fort Nathan Hale were successful in defying British war ships during the War of 1812. In 1863, during the Civil War, a second Fort Hale was built next to the original, complete with bomb-resistant bunkers and a moat, to defend the city should a Southern raid against New Haven be launched. The United States Congress deeded the site to the state in 1921, and all three versions of the fort have been restored. The site is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and receives thousands of visitors each year.\nGrove Street Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark which lies adjacent to Yale's campus, contains the graves of Roger Sherman, Eli Whitney, Noah Webster, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Charles Goodyear and Walter Camp, among other notable burials. The cemetery is noted for its Egyptian Revival gateway, and is the oldest planned burial ground in the United States. The Union League Club of New Haven building, located on Chapel Street, is notable for not only being a historic Beaux-Arts building, but also is built on the site where Roger Sherman's home once stood; George Washington is known to have stayed at the Sherman residence while President in 1789 (one of three times Washington visited New Haven throughout his lifetime).\nTwo sites pay homage to the time President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft lived in the city, as both a student and later Professor at Yale: a plaque on Prospect Street marks the site where Taft's home formerly stood, and downtown's Taft Apartment Building (formerly the Taft Hotel) bears the name of the former president who resided in the building for eight years before becoming Chief Justice of the United States.\nLighthouse Point Park, a public beach run by the city, was a popular tourist destination during the Roaring Twenties, attracting luminaries of the period such as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. The park remains popular among New Haveners, and is home to the Five Mile Point Lighthouse, constructed in 1847, and the Lighthouse Point Carousel, constructed in 1916. Five Mile Point Light was decommissioned in 1877 following the construction of Southwest Ledge Light at the entrance of the harbor, which remains in service to this day. Both of the lighthouses and the carousel are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nOther historic sites in the city include the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, which stands at the summit of East Rock, the Marsh Botanical Garden, Wooster Square, Dwight Street, Louis' Lunch, and the Farmington Canal, all of which date back to the 19th century. Other historic parks besides the Green include Edgerton Park, Edgewood Park, and East Rock Park, each of which is included on the National Register of Historic Places.\nTransportation.\nRail.\nNew Haven has two railroad stations, connected to New York City and points along the Northeast Corridor by commuter rail, regional rail and inter-city rail. Service is provided by:\nThe city's main railroad station is the historic Beaux-Arts Union Station, which serves Metro-North, Hartford Line, and Shore Line East commuter trains. Approximately 175 trains serve Union Station on weekdays. Union Station is also served by four Amtrak lines: the \"Northeast Regional\" and the high-speed \"Acela Express\" provide service to New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston, and rank as the first and second busiest routes in the country; the New Haven\u2013Springfield Line provides service to Hartford and Springfield, Massachusetts; and the \"Vermonter\" provides service to both Washington, D.C., and Vermont, from the Canada\u2013US border.\nAn additional station, State Street Station, was opened in 2002, providing passengers easier access to downtown New Haven. State Street Station is currently serviced by Shore Line East and Hartford Line trains, plus some peak-hour Metro-North trips.\nBus.\nThe New Haven Division of Connecticut Transit (CT Transit), the state's bus system, is the second largest division in the state with 24 routes. All routes originate from the New Haven Green, making it the central transfer hub of the city. Service is provided to 19 different municipalities throughout Greater New Haven. Bus routes were formerly identified by letters, but as of October 8, 2017, all service was renamed using 200-series numbers, in accordance with a renumbering of CTtransit's statewide services.\nCT Transit's Union Station Shuttle provides free service from Union Station to the New Haven Green and several New Haven parking garages. Peter Pan and Greyhound bus lines have scheduled stops at Union Station, and connections downtown can be made via the Union Station Shuttle. A private company operates the New Haven/Hartford Express which provides commuter bus service to Hartford. The Yale University Shuttle provides free transportation around New Haven for Yale students, faculty, and staff.\nThe New Haven Division buses follow routes that had originally been covered by trolley service. Horse-drawn streetcars began operating in New Haven in the 1860s, and by the mid-1890s all the lines had become electric. In the 1920s and 1930s, some of the trolley lines began to be replaced by bus lines, with the last trolley route converted to bus in 1948. The City of New Haven is in the very early stages of considering the restoration of streetcar (light-rail) service, which has been absent since the postwar period.\nBicycle.\nBikeshare.\nOn February 21, 2018, New Haven officially launched its Bike New Haven bikeshare program. based on dockless technology powered by Noa Technologies At time of launch, the program features 10 docking stations and 100 bikes, spread throughout the urban core; there are plans to reach 30 bike stations and 300 bikes by the end of April 2018. The launch of the New Haven bikeshare program coincided with the launch of Yale University's own bikeshare program, which uses the same technology powered by Noa.\nBike lanes.\nIn 2004, the first bike lane in the city was added to Orange Street, connecting East Rock Park and the East Rock neighborhood to downtown. Since then, bike lanes have also been added to sections of Howard Ave, Elm St, Dixwell Avenue, Water Street, Clinton Avenue and State Street. The city has created recommended bike routes for getting around New Haven, including use of the Canal Trail and the Orange Street lane. As of the end of 2012, bicycle lanes have also been added in both directions on Dixwell Avenue along most of the street from downtown to the Hamden town line, as well as along Howard Avenue from Yale New Haven Hospital to City Point.\nThe city has plans to create two additional bike lanes connecting Union Station with downtown, and the Westville neighborhood with downtown. The city has added dozens of covered bike parking spots at Union Station, in order to facilitate more bike commuting to the station.\nFarmington Canal Greenway.\nThe Farmington Canal Trail is a rail trail that will eventually run continuously from downtown New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts. The scenic trail follows the path of the historic New Haven and Northampton Company and the Farmington Canal. Currently, there is a continuous stretch of the trail from downtown, through Hamden and into Cheshire, making bicycle commuting between New Haven and those suburbs possible. The trail is part of the East Coast Greenway, a proposed bike path that would link every major city on the East Coast from Florida to Maine.\nRoads.\nNew Haven lies at the intersection of Interstate 95 on the coast\u2014which provides access southwards and/or westwards to the western coast of Connecticut and to New York City, and eastwards to the eastern Connecticut shoreline, Rhode Island, and eastern Massachusetts\u2014and Interstate 91, which leads northward to the interior of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont and the Canada\u2013US border. I-95 is notorious for traffic jams increasing with proximity to New York City; on the east side of New Haven it passes over the Quinnipiac River via the Pearl Harbor Memorial, or \"Q Bridge\", which often presents a major bottleneck to traffic. I-91, however, is relatively less congested, except at the intersection with I-95 during peak travel times.\nThe Oak Street Connector (Connecticut Route 34) intersects I-91 at exit 1, just south of the I-95/I-91 interchange, and runs northwest for a few blocks as an expressway spur into downtown before emptying onto surface roads. The Wilbur Cross Parkway (Connecticut Route 15) runs parallel to I-95 west of New Haven, turning northwards as it nears the city and then running northwards parallel to I-91 through the outer rim of New Haven and Hamden, offering an alternative to the I-95/I-91 journey (restricted to non-commercial vehicles). Route 15 in New Haven is the site of the only highway tunnel in the state (officially designated as Heroes Tunnel), running through West Rock, home to West Rock Park and the Three Judges Cave.\nThe city also has several major surface arteries. U.S. Route 1 (Columbus Avenue, Union Avenue, Water Street, Forbes Avenue) runs in an east\u2013west direction south of downtown serving Union Station and leading out of the city to Milford, West Haven, East Haven and Branford. The main road from downtown heading northwest is Whalley Avenue (partly signed as Route 10 and Route 63) leading to Westville and Woodbridge. Heading north towards Hamden, there are two major thoroughfares, Dixwell Avenue and Whitney Avenue. To the northeast are Middletown Avenue (Route 17), which leads to the Montowese section of North Haven, and Foxon Boulevard (Route 80), which leads to the Foxon section of East Haven and to the town of North Branford. To the west is Route 34, which leads to the city of Derby. Other major intracity arteries are Ella Grasso Boulevard (Route 10) west of downtown, and College Street, Temple Street, Church Street, Elm Street, and Grove Street in the downtown area.\nTraffic safety is a major concern for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists in New Haven. In addition to many traffic-related fatalities in the city each year, since 2005, over a dozen Yale students, staff and faculty have been killed or injured in traffic collisions on or near the campus.\nAirport.\nTweed New Haven Airport is located within the city limits east of the business district, straddling the border with neighboring East Haven. Service to approximately 25 cities is provided by Avelo Airlines, which established its first East Coast base at the airport in 2021. Breeze Airways plans to begin operations at Tweed in December 2024, and will provide service to 10 destinations. The airport is currently planning a runway lengthening and new terminal on the East Haven side of the airport.\nBus service between Downtown New Haven and Tweed is available via the CT Transit New Haven Division.\nSeaport.\nNew Haven Harbor is home to the Port of New Haven, a deep-water seaport with three berths capable of hosting vessels and barges as well as the facilities required to handle break bulk cargo. The port has the capacity to load 200 trucks a day from the ground or via loading docks. Providence and Worcester Railroad provides freight rail transportation to the port, with the railroad operating a switch engine for yard movements, a private siding for loading and unloading, and trackage over the Tomlinson Lift Bridge toward the Northeast Corridor. Approximately of inside storage and of outside storage are available at the site. Five shore cranes with a 250-ton capacity and 26 forklifts, each with a 26-ton capacity, are also available.\nOn June 17, 2013, the city commissioned the \"Nathan Hale\", a port security vessel capable of serving search and rescue, firefighting, and constabulary roles.\nInfrastructure.\nHospitals and medicine.\nThe New Haven area supports several medical facilities that are considered some of the best hospitals in the country. There are two major medical centers downtown: Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital has four pavilions, including the Yale \u2013 New Haven Children's Hospital and the Smilow Cancer Hospital; the Hospital of Saint Raphael is several blocks north, and touts its excellent cardiac emergency care program. Smaller downtown health facilities are the Temple Medical Center located downtown on Temple Street, Connecticut Mental Health Center/ across Park Street from Y-NHH, and the Hill Health Center, which serves the working-class Hill neighborhood. A large Veterans Affairs hospital is located in neighboring West Haven. To the west in Milford is Milford Hospital, and to the north in Meriden is the MidState Medical Center.\nIn recent years, Yale and the City of New Haven have been working to build a medical and biotechnology research hub in the city and Greater New Haven region. The city, state and Yale together run Science Park, a large site three blocks northwest of Yale's Science Hill campus. This multi-block site, approximately bordered by Mansfield Street, Division Street, and Shelton Avenue, is the former home of Winchester's and Olin Corporation's 45 large-scale factory buildings. Currently, sections of the site are large-scale parking lots or abandoned structures, but there is also a large remodeled and functioning area of buildings (leased primarily by a private developer) with numerous Yale employees, financial service and biotech companies.\nA second biotechnology district is being planned for the median strip on Frontage Road, on land cleared for the never-built Route 34 extension. As of late 2009, a Pfizer drug-testing clinic, a medical laboratory building serving Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital, and a mixed-use structure containing parking, housing and office space, have been constructed on this corridor. A former SNET telephone building at 300 George Street is being converted into lab space, and has been quite successful so far in attracting biotechnology and medical firms.\nPower supply facilities.\nElectricity for New Haven is generated by a 448\u00a0MW oil and gas-fired generating station located on the shore at New Haven Harbor. PPL Corporation operates a 220\u00a0MW peaking natural gas turbine plant in nearby Wallingford.\nNear New Haven there is the static inverter plant of the HVDC Cross Sound Cable.\nThere are three PureCell Model 400 fuel cells placed in the city of New Haven\u2014one at the New Haven Public Schools and newly constructed Roberto Clemente School, one at the mixed-use 360 State Street building, and one at City Hall. According to Giovanni Zinn of the city's Office of Sustainability, each fuel cell may save the city up to $1 million in energy costs over a decade. The fuel cells were provided by ClearEdge Power, formerly UTC Power. Additional fuel cells are located at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and at the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority (GNHWPCA). Ikea's New Haven facility also utilizes a 250\u00a0kW fuel cell and 940.8\u00a0kW solar array.\nNew Haven recently installed solar panels at 11 city schools with a combined power generation capacity of 1.8 MW. Owned and maintained by Greenskies, the panels allow New Haven to purchase electricity at a discounted rate through a power-purchasing agreement. The panels bring New Haven's solar capacity to 2.8 MW and will help New Haven meet its commitment to powering 100% of its municipal operations through clean energy, which it made in Summer 2017 and reaffirmed in the 2018 New Haven Climate and Sustainability Framework.\nIn popular culture.\nSeveral movies have been filmed in New Haven since 2000, including \"Mona Lisa Smile\" (2003), with Julia Roberts, \"The Life Before Her Eyes\" (2007), with Uma Thurman, and \"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull\" (2008) directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett and Shia LaBeouf. The filming of \"Crystal Skull\" involved an extensive chase sequence through the streets of New Haven. Several downtown streets were closed to traffic and received a \"makeover\" to look like streets of 1957, when the film is set. 500 locals were cast as extras for the film. In \"Everybody's Fine\" (2009), Robert De Niro has a close encounter in what is supposed to be the Denver train station; the scene was filmed in New Haven's Union Station.\n New Haven is mentioned in the song Peace Frog by the Doors, referencing a 1967 incident where vocalist Jim Morrison was arrested for \"attempting to incite a riot\" in the middle of a concert at the New Haven Arena.\nSister cities.\nNew Haven's sister cities are:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSome of these were selected because of historical connection\u2014Freetown because of the \"Amistad\" trial. Others, such as Amalfi and Afula, reflect ethnic groups in New Haven.\nIn 1990, the United Nations named New Haven a \"Peace Messenger City\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["2905269", "5122699", "53825"], "permutation_1": ["53825", "5122699", "2905269"], "permutation_2": ["53825", "5122699", "2905269"], "permutation_3": ["2905269", "53825", "5122699"]}
{"id": "3hop1__614720_71250_135051", "docs_added": {"30570": "Trajan\nRoman emperor from AD 98 to 117\nTrajan ( ; born Marcus Ulpius Traianus, 18 September\u00a053\u00a0\u2013\u00a0c.\u20099 August\u00a0117) was a Roman emperor from AD\u00a098 to 117, remembered as the second of the Five Good Emperors of the Nerva\u2013Antonine dynasty. He was a philanthropic ruler and a successful soldier-emperor who presided over one of the greatest military expansions in Roman history, during which, by the time of his death, the Roman Empire reached its maximum territorial extent. He was given the title of ('the best') by the Roman Senate.\nTrajan was born in the of Italica in the present-day Andalusian province of Seville in southern Spain, an Italic settlement in Hispania Baetica; his came from the town of Tuder in the Umbria region of central Italy. His namesake father, Marcus Ulpius Traianus, was a general and distinguished senator. Trajan rose to prominence during the reign of Domitian; in AD 89, serving as a in , he supported the emperor against a revolt on the Rhine led by Antonius Saturninus. He then served as governor of Germania and Pannonia. In September 96, Domitian was succeeded by the elderly and childless Nerva, who proved to be unpopular with the army. After a revolt by members of the Praetorian Guard, Nerva decided to adopt as his heir and successor the more popular Trajan, who had distinguished himself in military campaigns against Germanic tribes.\nAs emperor of Rome, Trajan oversaw the construction of building projects such as the forum named after him, the introduction of social welfare policies such as the , and new military conquests. He annexed Nabataea and Dacia, and his war against the Parthian Empire ended with the incorporation of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria as Roman provinces. In August AD\u00a0117, while sailing back to Rome, Trajan fell ill and died of a stroke in the city of Selinus. He was deified by the senate and his successor Hadrian (Trajan's cousin). According to historical tradition, Trajan's ashes were entombed in a small room beneath Trajan's Column.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nSources.\nAn account of the Dacian Wars, the \"Commentarii de bellis Dacicis\", written by Trajan himself or a ghostwriter and modelled after Caesar's \"Commentarii de Bello Gallico\", is lost with the exception of one sentence. Only fragments remain of the \"Getica\", a book by Trajan's personal physician Titus Statilius Criton. The \"Parthica\", a 17-volume account of the Parthian Wars written by Arrian, has met a similar fate. Book68 in Greek author Cassius Dio's \"Roman History\", which survives mostly as Byzantine abridgements and epitomes, is the main source for the political history of Trajan's rule. Besides this, Pliny the Younger's \"Panegyricus\" and Dio Chrysostom's orations are the best surviving contemporary sources. Both are adulatory perorations, typical of the High Imperial period, that describe an idealized monarch and an equally idealized view of Trajan's rule, and concern themselves more with ideology than with fact.\nThe 10th volume of Pliny's letters contains his correspondence with Trajan, which deals with various aspects of imperial Roman government. It is generally agreed that Pliny, being part of the emperor's inner circle, provides a unique and valuable source of information through his letters with Trajan, the only surviving correspondence between a governor and his emperor. However, it has been argued that Pliny's correspondence with Trajan is neither intimate nor candid, but rather an exchange of official mail in which Pliny's stance borders on the servile. Some authors have even proposed that much of the text was written and/or edited by Trajan's Imperial secretary, his \"ab epistulis\". Given the scarcity of literary sources, discussion of Trajan and his rule in modern historiography cannot avoid speculation. Non-literary sources such as archaeology, epigraphy, and numismatics are also useful for reconstructing his reign.\nEarly life.\nMarcus Ulpius Traianus was born on 18 September AD53 in the Roman province of Hispania Baetica (in what is now Andalusia in modern Spain), in the \"municipium\" of Italica (now in the municipal area of Santiponce, in the outskirts of Seville), a Roman colony established in 206BC by Scipio Africanus. At the time of Trajan's birth it was a small town, without baths, theatre and amphitheatre, and with a very narrow territory under its direct administration. Trajan's year of birth is not reliably attested and may instead have been AD 56.\nThe epitome of Cassius Dio's Roman history describes Trajan as \"an Iberian and neither an Italian nor even an Italiote\", but this claim is contradicted by other ancient sources and rejected by modern scholars, who have reconstructed Trajan's Italic lineage. Appian states that Trajan's hometown of Italica was settled by and named after Italic veterans who fought in Spain under Scipio, and new settlers arrived there from Italy in the following centuries. Among the Italic settlers were the Ulpii and the Traii, who were either part of the original colonists or arrived as late as the end of the 1st century BC. Their original home, according to the description of Trajan as \"Ulpius Traianus ex urbe Tudertina\" in the Epitome de Caesaribus, was the town of Tuder (Todi) in the Umbria region of central Italy. This is confirmed by archeology, with epigraphic evidence placing both the Ulpii and the Traii in Umbria generally and Tuder specifically, and by linguistic studies of the family names \"Ulpius\" and \"Traius\" which show that both are of Osco-Umbrian origin. \nIt is unknown whether Trajan's ancestors were Roman citizens or not at their arrival in Spain. They would have certainly possessed Roman citizenship in case they arrived after the Social War (91\u201387 BC), when Tuder became a municipium of Roman citizens. In Spain they may well have intermarried with native Iberians, in which case they would have lost their citizenship. Had they lacked or lost the status of Roman citizens, they would have achieved it or recovered it when Italica became a municipium with Latin rights in the mid-1st century BC.\nTrajan's paternal grandfather Ulpius married a Traia. Their son, Trajan's namesake father Marcus Ulpius Traianus, was born at Italica during the reign of Tiberius and became a prominent senator and general, commanding the Legio X Fretensis under Vespasian in the First Jewish-Roman War. Trajan's mother was Marcia, a Roman noblewoman of the gens Marcia and a sister-in-law of the second Flavian Emperor Titus. Little is known of her. Her father is believed to be Quintus Marcius Barea Sura. Her mother was Antonia Furnilla, daughter of Aulus Antonius Rufus and Furnia. Trajan owned some lands called \"Figlinae Marcianae\" in Ameria, another Umbrian town, located near both Tuder and Reate (the home of the Flavian dynasty) and believed to be the home of Marcia's family.\nThe line of the Ulpii continued long after Trajan's death. His elder sister was Ulpia Marciana, and his niece was Salonia Matidia. Very little is known about Trajan's early formative years, but it is thought likely that he spent his first months or years in Italica before moving to Rome and then, perhaps at around eight or nine years of age, he almost certainly would have returned temporarily to Italica with his father during Trajanus's governorship of Baetica (ca. 64\u201365). The lack of a strong local power base, caused by the size of the town from which they came, made it necessary for the Ulpii (and for the Aelii, the other important senatorial family of Italica with whom they were allied) to weave local alliances, in the Baetica (with the Annii, the Ucubi and perhaps the Dasumii from Corduba), the Tarraconense and the Narbonense, here above all through Pompeia Plotina, Trajan's wife. Many of these alliances were made not in Spain, but in Rome. The family home in Rome, the Domus Traiana, was on the Aventine Hill; excavations under the Piazza del Tempio di Diana found remains thought to be of the family's large suburban villa, with evidence of highly decorated rooms.\nMilitary career.\nAs a young man Trajan rose through the ranks of the Roman army, serving in some of the most contested parts of the empire's frontier. In 76\u201377, his father was Governor of Syria (\"Legatus pro praetore Syriae\"), where Trajan himself remained as \"Tribunus legionis\". From there, after his father's replacement, he seems to have been transferred to an unspecified Rhine province, and Pliny implies that he engaged in active combat duty during both commissions.\nIn about 86, Trajan's cousin Aelius Afer died, leaving his young children Hadrian and Paulina orphans. Trajan and his colleague Publius Acilius Attianus became co-guardians of the two children. Trajan, in his late thirties, was created ordinary consul for the year 91. This early appointment may reflect the prominence of his father's career, as his father had been instrumental to the ascent of the ruling Flavian dynasty, held consular rank himself and had just been made a patrician. Around this time Trajan brought the architect and engineer Apollodorus of Damascus with him to Rome, and married Pompeia Plotina, a noblewoman from the Roman settlement at N\u00eemes; the marriage ultimately remained childless.\nThe historian Cassius Dio later noted that Trajan was a lover of young men, in contrast to the usual bisexual activity that was common among upper-class Roman men of the period. The emperor Julian also made a sardonic reference to his predecessor's sexual preference, stating that Zeus himself would have had to be on guard had his Ganymede come within Trajan's vicinity. This distaste reflected a change of mores that began with the Severan dynasty, Trajan's putative lovers included the future emperor, Hadrian, pages of the imperial household, the actor Pylades, a dancer called Apolaustus, Lucius Licinius Sura, and Trajan's predecessor Nerva. Cassius Dio also relates that Trajan made an ally out of Abgar VII on account of the latter's beautiful son, Arbandes, who would then dance for Trajan at a banquet.\nThe details of Trajan's early military career are obscure, save for the fact that in 89, as legate of Legio VII Gemina in Hispania Tarraconensis, he supported Domitian against an attempted coup by Lucius Antonius Saturninus, the governor of Germania Superior. Trajan probably remained in the region after the revolt was quashed, to engage with the Chatti who had sided with Saturninus, before returning the VII Gemina legion to Legio in Hispania Tarraconensis. In 91 he held a consulate with Acilius Glabrio, a rarity in that neither consul was a member of the ruling dynasty. He held an unspecified consular commission as governor of either Pannonia or Germania Superior, or possibly both. Pliny\u00a0\u2013\u00a0who seems to deliberately avoid offering details that would stress personal attachment between Trajan and the \"tyrant\" Domitian\u00a0\u2013\u00a0attributes to him, at the time, various (and unspecified) feats of arms.\nRise to power.\nDomitian's successor, Nerva, was unpopular with the army, and had been forced by his Praetorian Prefect Casperius Aelianus to execute Domitian's killers. Nerva needed the army's support to avoid being ousted. He accomplished this in the summer of 97 by naming Trajan as his adoptive son and successor, claiming that this was entirely due to Trajan's outstanding military merits. There are hints, however, in contemporary literary sources that Trajan's adoption was imposed on Nerva. Pliny implied as much when he wrote that, although an emperor could not be coerced into doing something, if this was the way in which Trajan was raised to power, then it was worth it. Alice K\u00f6nig argues that the notion of a natural continuity between Nerva's and Trajan's reigns was an \"ex post facto\" fiction developed by authors writing under Trajan, including Tacitus and Pliny.\nAccording to the \"Historia Augusta\", the future Emperor Hadrian brought word to Trajan of his adoption. Trajan retained Hadrian on the Rhine frontier as a military tribune, and Hadrian thus became privy to the circle of friends and relations with whom Trajan surrounded himself. Among them was Lucius Licinius Sura, a Roman senator born in Spain and the governor of Germania Inferior, who was Trajan's personal friend and became an official adviser of the Emperor. Sura was highly influential, and was appointed consul for a third term in 107. Some senators may have resented Sura's activities as a kingmaker and \u00e9minence grise, among them the historian Tacitus, who acknowledged Sura's military and oratorical talents, but compared his rapacity and devious ways to those of Vespasian's \u00e9minence grise Licinius Mucianus. Sura is said to have informed Hadrian in 108 that he had been chosen as Trajan's imperial heir.\nAs governor of Upper Germany (Germania Superior) during Nerva's reign, Trajan received the impressive title of \"Germanicus\" for his skilful management and rule of the volatile Imperial province. When Nerva died on 28 January 98, Trajan succeeded to the role of emperor without any outward adverse incident. The fact that he chose not to hasten towards Rome, but made a lengthy tour of inspection on the Rhine and Danube frontiers, may suggest that he was unsure of his position, both in Rome and with the armies at the front. Alternatively, Trajan's keen military mind understood the importance of strengthening the empire's frontiers. His vision for future conquests required the diligent improvement of surveillance networks, defences and transport along the Danube. Prior to his frontier tours, Trajan ordered his Prefect Aelianus to attend him in Germany, where he was apparently executed forthwith (\"put out of the way\"), and his now-vacant post taken by Attius Suburanus. Trajan's accession, therefore, could qualify more as a successful coup than an orderly succession.\nRoman emperor.\nOn his entry to Rome, Trajan granted the plebs a direct gift of money. The traditional donative to the troops, however, was reduced by half. There remained the issue of the strained relations between the emperor and the Senate, especially after the supposed bloodiness that had marked Domitian's reign and his dealings with the Curia. By feigning reluctance to hold power, Trajan was able to start building a consensus around him in the Senate. His belated ceremonial entry into Rome in 99 was notably understated, something on which Pliny the Younger elaborated. By not openly supporting Domitian's preference for equestrian officers, Trajan appeared to conform to the idea (developed by Pliny) that an emperor derived his legitimacy from his adherence to traditional hierarchies and senatorial morals. Therefore, he could point to the allegedly republican character of his rule.\nIn a speech at the inauguration of his third consulship, on 1January 100, Trajan exhorted the senate to share the care-taking of the empire with him\u00a0\u2013\u00a0an event later celebrated on a coin. In reality, Trajan did not share power in any meaningful way with the senate, something that Pliny admits candidly: \"[E]verything depends on the whims of a single man who, on behalf of the common welfare, has taken upon himself all functions and all tasks\". One of the most significant trends of his reign was his encroachment on the senate's sphere of authority, such as his decision to make the senatorial provinces of Achaea and Bithynia into imperial ones in order to deal with the inordinate spending on public works by local magnates and the general mismanagement of provincial affairs by various proconsuls appointed by the Senate.\n\"Optimus princeps\".\nIn the formula developed by Pliny, however, Trajan was a \"good\" emperor in that, by himself, he approved or blamed the same things that the Senate would have approved or blamed. If in reality Trajan was an autocrat, his deferential behavior towards his peers qualified him to be viewed as a virtuous monarch. The idea is that Trajan wielded autocratic power through \"moderatio\" instead of \"contumacia\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0moderation instead of insolence. In short, according to the ethics for autocracy developed by most political writers of the Imperial Roman Age, Trajan was a good ruler in that he ruled less by fear, and more by acting as a role model, for, according to Pliny, \"men learn better from examples\". Eventually, Trajan's popularity among his peers was such that the Roman Senate bestowed upon him the honorific of \"optimus\", meaning \"the best\", which appears on coins from 105 on. This title had mostly to do with Trajan's role as benefactor, such as in the case of his returning confiscated property. The epithet \"optimus princeps\" had already been used for the emperors since the late republic, but Trajan was the only one officially honoured by the title.\nPliny states that Trajan's ideal role was a conservative one, argued as well by the orations of Dio Chrysostom\u2014in particular his four \"Orations on Kingship\", composed early during Trajan's reign. Dio, as a Greek notable and intellectual with friends in high places, and possibly an official friend to the emperor (\"amicus caesaris\"), saw Trajan as a defender of the \"status quo\". In his third kingship oration, Dio describes an ideal king ruling by means of \"friendship\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0that is, through patronage and a network of local notables who act as mediators between the ruled and the ruler. Dio's notion of being \"friend\" to Trajan (or any other Roman emperor), however, was that of an \"informal\" arrangement, that involved no formal entry of such \"friends\" into the Roman administration. Trajan ingratiated himself with the Greek intellectual elite by recalling to Rome many (including Dio) who had been exiled by Domitian, and by returning (in a process begun by Nerva) a great deal of private property that Domitian had confiscated. He also had good dealings with Plutarch, who, as a notable of Delphi, seems to have been favoured by the decisions taken on behalf of his home-place by one of Trajan's legates, who had arbitrated a boundary dispute between Delphi and its neighbouring cities.\nHowever, it was clear to Trajan that Greek intellectuals and notables were to be regarded as tools for local administration, and not be allowed to fancy themselves in a privileged position. As Pliny said in one of his letters at the time, it was official policy that Greek civic elites be treated according to their status as notionally free but not put on an equal footing with their Roman rulers. When the city of Apamea complained of an audit of its accounts by Pliny, alleging its \"free\" status as a Roman colony, Trajan replied by writing that it was by his own wish that such inspections had been ordered. Concern about independent local political activity is seen in Trajan's decision to forbid Nicomedia from having a corps of firemen (\"If people assemble for a common purpose... they soon turn it into a political society\", Trajan wrote to Pliny) as well as in his and Pliny's fears about excessive civic generosities by local notables such as distribution of money or gifts.\nPliny's letters suggest that Trajan and his aides were as much bored as they were alarmed by the claims of Dio and other Greek notables to political influence based on what they saw as their \"special connection\" to their Roman overlords. Pliny tells of Dio of Prusa placing a statue of Trajan in a building complex where Dio's wife and son were buried \u2013 therefore incurring a charge of treason for placing the emperor's statue near a grave. Trajan, however, dropped the charge. Nevertheless, while the office of \"corrector\" was intended as a tool to curb any hint of independent political activity among local notables in the Greek cities, the \"correctores\" themselves were all men of the highest social standing entrusted with an exceptional commission. The post seems to have been conceived partly as a reward for senators who had chosen to make a career solely on the emperor's behalf. Therefore, in reality the post was conceived as a means for \"taming\" both Greek notables and Roman senators. It must be added that, although Trajan was wary of the civic oligarchies in the Greek cities, he also admitted into the senate a number of prominent Eastern notables already slated for promotion during Domitian's reign by reserving for them one of the twenty posts open each year for minor magistrates (the \"vigintiviri\"). Such must be the case of the Galatian notable and \"leading member of the Greek community\" (according to one inscription) Gaius Julius Severus, who was a descendant of several Hellenistic dynasts and client kings.\nSeverus was the grandfather of the prominent general Gaius Julius Quadratus Bassus, consul in 105. Other prominent Eastern senators included Gaius Julius Alexander Berenicianus, a descendant of Herod the Great, suffect consul in 116. Trajan created at least fourteen new senators from the Greek-speaking half of the empire, an unprecedented recruitment number that opens to question the issue of the \"traditionally Roman\" character of his reign, as well as the \"Hellenism\" of his successor Hadrian. But then Trajan's new Eastern senators were mostly very powerful and very wealthy men with more than local influence and much interconnected by marriage, so that many of them were not altogether \"new\" to the Senate. On the local level, among the lower section of the Eastern propertied, the alienation of most Greek notables and intellectuals towards Roman rule, and the fact that the Romans were seen by most such Greek notables as aliens, persisted well after Trajan's reign. One of Trajan's senatorial creations from the East, the Athenian Gaius Julius Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappos, a member of the Royal House of Commagene, left behind him a funeral monument on the Mouseion Hill that was later disparagingly described by Pausanias as \"a monument built to a Syrian man\".\nGreek-Roman relations.\nAs a senatorial Emperor, Trajan was inclined to choose his local base of political support from among the members of the ruling urban oligarchies. In the West, that meant local senatorial families like his own. In the East, that meant the families of Greek notables. The Greeks, though, had their own memories of independence\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and a commonly acknowledged sense of cultural superiority\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and, instead of seeing themselves as Roman, disdained Roman rule. What the Greek oligarchies wanted from Rome was, above all, to be left in peace, to be allowed to exert their right to self-government (i.e., to be excluded from the provincial government, as was Italy) and to concentrate on their local interests. This was something the Romans were not disposed to do as from their perspective the Greek notables were shunning their responsibilities in regard to the management of Imperial affairs\u00a0\u2013\u00a0primarily in failing to keep the common people under control, thus creating the need for the Roman governor to intervene. An excellent example of this Greek alienation was the personal role played by Dio of Prusa in his relationship with Trajan. Dio is described by Philostratus as Trajan's close friend, and Trajan as supposedly engaging publicly in conversations with Dio.\nNevertheless, as a Greek local magnate with a taste for costly building projects and pretensions of being an important political agent for Rome, Dio of Prusa was actually a target for one of Trajan's authoritarian innovations: the appointing of imperial \"correctores\" to audit the civic finances of the technically free Greek cities. The main goal was to curb the overenthusiastic spending on public works that served to channel ancient rivalries between neighbouring cities. As Pliny wrote to Trajan, this had as its most visible consequence a trail of unfinished or ill-kept public utilities. Competition among Greek cities and their ruling oligarchies was mainly for marks of pre-eminence, especially for titles bestowed by the Roman emperor. Such titles were ordered in a ranking system that determined how the cities were to be outwardly treated by Rome. The usual form that such rivalries took was that of grandiose building plans, giving the cities the opportunity to vie with each other over \"extravagant, needless... structures that would make a show\". A side effect of such extravagant spending was that junior and thus less wealthy members of the local oligarchies felt disinclined to present themselves to fill posts as local magistrates, positions that involved ever-increasing personal expense. Roman authorities liked to play the Greek cities against one another\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something of which Dio of Prusa was fully aware:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />[B]y their public acts [the Roman governors] have branded you as a pack of fools, yes, they treat you just like children, for we often offer children the most trivial things in place of things of greatest worth [...] In place of justice, in place of the freedom of the cities from spoliation or from the seizure of the private possessions of their inhabitants, in place of their refraining from insulting you [...] your governors hand you titles, and call you 'first' either by word of mouth or in writing; that done, they may thenceforth with impunity treat you as being the very last!\"These same Roman authorities had also an interest in assuring the cities' solvency and therefore ready collection of Imperial taxes. Last but not least, inordinate spending on civic buildings was not only a means to achieve local superiority, but also a means for the local Greek elites to maintain a separate cultural identity\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something expressed in the contemporary rise of the Second Sophistic; this \"cultural patriotism\" acted as a kind of substitute for the loss of political independence, and as such was shunned by Roman authorities. As Trajan himself wrote to Pliny: \"These poor Greeks all love a gymnasium... they will have to content with one that suits their real needs\". The first known \"corrector\" was charged with a commission \"to deal with the situation of the free cities\", as it was felt that the old method of \"ad hoc\" intervention by the Emperor and/or the proconsuls had not been enough to curb the pretensions of the Greek notables. It is noteworthy that an embassy from Dio's city of Prusa was not favourably received by Trajan, and that this had to do with Dio's chief objective, which was to elevate Prusa to the status of a free city, an \"independent\" city-state exempt from paying taxes to Rome. Eventually, Dio gained for Prusa the right to become the head of the assize-district, conventus (meaning that Prusans did not have to travel to be judged by the Roman governor), but \"eleutheria\" (freedom, in the sense of full political autonomy) was denied.\nEventually, it fell to Pliny, as imperial governor of Bithynia in AD110, to deal with the consequences of the financial mess wrought by Dio and his fellow civic officials. \"It's well established that [the cities' finances] are in a state of disorder\", Pliny once wrote to Trajan, plans for unnecessary works made in collusion with local contractors being identified as one of the main problems. One of the compensatory measures proposed by Pliny expressed a thoroughly Roman conservative position: as the cities' financial solvency depended on the councilmen's purses, it was necessary to have more councilmen on the local city councils. According to Pliny, the best way to achieve this was to lower the minimum age for holding a seat on the council, making it possible for more sons of the established oligarchical families to join and thus contribute to civic spending; this was seen as preferable to enrolling non-noble wealthy upstarts. Such an increase in the number of council members was granted to Dio's city of Prusa, to the dismay of existing councilmen who felt their status lowered. A similar situation existed in Claudiopolis, where a public bath was built with the proceeds from the entrance fees paid by \"supernumerary\" members of the council, enrolled with Trajan's permission. According to the Digest, Trajan decreed that when a city magistrate promised to achieve a particular public building, his heirs inherited responsibility for its completion.\nBuilding projects.\nTrajan was a prolific builder. Many of his buildings were designed and erected by the gifted architect Apollodorus of Damascus, including a massive bridge over the Danube, which the Roman army and its reinforcements could use regardless of weather; the Danube sometimes froze over in winter, but seldom enough to bear the passage of a party of soldiers. Trajan's works at the Iron Gates region of the Danube created or enlarged the boardwalk road cut into the cliff-face along the Iron Gate's gorge. A canal was built between the Danube's Kasajna tributary and Ducis Pratum, circumventing rapids and cataracts.\nTrajan's Forum Traiani was Rome's largest forum. It was built to commemorate his victories in Dacia, and was largely financed from that campaign's loot. To accommodate it, parts of the Capitoline and Quirinal Hills had to be removed, the latter enlarging a clear area first established by Domitian. Apollodorus of Damascus' \"magnificent\" design incorporated a Triumphal arch entrance, a forum space approximately 120 m long and 90m wide, surrounded by peristyles: a monumentally sized basilica: and later, Trajan's Column and libraries. It was started in AD 107, dedicated on 1 January 112, and remained in use for at least 500 years. It still drew admiration when Emperor Constantius II visited Rome in the fourth century. It accommodated Trajan's Market, and an adjacent brick market.\nTrajan was also a prolific builder of triumphal arches, many of which survive. He built roads, such as the Via Traiana, an extension of the Via Appia from Beneventum to Brundisium and the Via Traiana Nova, a mostly military road between Damascus and Aila, which Rome employed in its annexation of Nabataea and founding of Arabia Province.\nSome historians attribute the construction or reconstruction of Old Cairo's Roman fortress (also known as \"Babylon Fort\") to Trajan, and the building of a canal between the River Nile and the Red Sea. In Egypt, Trajan was \"quite active\" in constructing and embellishing buildings. He is portrayed, together with Domitian, on the propylon of the Temple of Hathor at Dendera. His cartouche also appears in the column shafts of the Temple of Khnum at Esna.\nHe built palatial villas outside Rome at Arcinazzo, at Centumcellae and at Talamone.\nHe also built a bath complex as well as the Aqua Traiana.\nGames.\nTrajan invested heavily in the provision of popular amusements. He carried out a \"massive reconstruction\" of the Circus Maximus, which was already the empire's biggest and best appointed circuit for the immensely popular sport of chariot racing. The Circus also hosted religious theatrical spectacles and games, and public processions on a grand scale. Trajan's reconstruction, completed by 103, was modestly described by Trajan himself as \"adequate\" for the Roman people. It replaced flammable wooden seating tiers with stone, and increased the Circus' already vast capacity by about 5,000 seats. Its lofty, elevated Imperial viewing box was rebuilt among the seating tiers, so that spectators could see their emperor sharing their enjoyment of the races, alongside his family and images of the gods,\nAt some time during 108 or 109, Trajan held 123 days of games to celebrate his Dacian victory. They involved \"fully 10,000\" gladiators and the slaughter of thousands, \"possibly tens of thousands,\" of animals, both wild and domestic. Trajan's careful management of public spectacles led the orator Fronto to congratulate him for paying equal attention to public entertainments and more serious issues, acknowledging that \"neglect of serious matters can cause greater damage, but neglect of amusements greater discontent\". State-funded public entertainments helped to maintain contentment among the populace; the more \"serious matter\" of the corn dole aimed to satisfy individuals.\nChristians.\nDuring the period of peace that followed the Dacian war, Trajan exchanged letters with Pliny the Younger on how best to deal with the Christians of Pontus. Trajan told Pliny to continue prosecutions of Christians if they merited that, but not to accept anonymous or malicious denunciations. He considered this to be in the interests of justice, and to reflect \"the spirit of the age\". Non-citizens who admitted to being Christians and refused to recant were to be executed \"for obstinacy\". Citizens were sent to Rome for trial.\nFurther tests faced by Christians in Pontus are alluded to in correspondence between Pliny the Younger, governor of the Roman province of Bithynia and Pontus, and Emperor Trajan. Writing from Pontus in about AD 112, Pliny reported that the \"contagion\" of Christianity threatened everyone, regardless of gender, age, or rank. Pliny gave those accused of being Christians opportunity to deny it, and those who would not, he executed. Any who cursed Christ or recited a prayer to the gods or to Trajan\u2019s statue were released. Pliny acknowledged that these were things that \"those who are really Christians cannot be made to do.\"\nCurrency and welfare.\nIn 107, Trajan devalued the Roman currency, decreasing the silver content of the denarius from 93.5% to 89.0%\u00a0\u2013\u00a0the actual silver weight dropping from 3.04grams to 2.88grams. This devaluation, along with the massive amounts of gold and silver acquired through his Dacian wars, allowed Trajan to mint many more denarii than his predecessors. He also withdrew from circulation silver denarii minted before Nero's devaluation. Trajan's devaluation may have had a political intent, enabling planned increases in civil and military spending. Trajan formalised the alimenta, a welfare program that helped orphans and poor children throughout Italy by providing cash, food and subsidized education. The program was supported out of Dacian War booty, estate taxes and philanthropy. The alimenta also relied indirectly on mortgages secured against Italian farms (\"fundi\"). Registered landowners received a lump sum from the imperial treasury, and in return were expected to repay an annual sum to support the alimentary fund.\nMilitary campaigns.\nConquest of Dacia.\nThe earliest of Trajan's conquests were Rome's two wars against Dacia, an area that had troubled Roman politics for over a decade in regard to the unstable peace negotiated by Domitian's ministers with the powerful Dacian king Decebalus. Dacia would be reduced by Trajan's Rome to a client kingdom in the first war (101\u2013102), followed by a second war that ended in actual incorporation into the Empire of the trans-Danube border group of Dacia. According to the provisions of Decebalus's earlier treaty with Rome, made in the time of Domitian, Decebalus was acknowledged as \"rex amicus\", that is, client king; in exchange for accepting client status, he received from Rome both a generous stipend and a steady supply of technical experts. The treaty seems to have allowed Roman troops the right of passage through the Dacian kingdom in order to attack the Marcomanni, Quadi and Sarmatians. However, senatorial opinion never forgave Domitian for paying what was seen as tribute to a barbarian king. Unlike the Germanic tribes, the Dacian kingdom was an organized state capable of developing alliances of its own, thus making it a strategic threat and giving Trajan a strong motive to attack it.\nIn May of 101, Trajan launched his first campaign into the Dacian kingdom, crossing to the northern bank of the Danube and defeating the Dacian army at Tapae (see Second Battle of Tapae), near the Iron Gates of Transylvania. It was not a decisive victory, however. Trajan's troops took heavy losses in the encounter, and he put off further campaigning for the year in order to regroup and reinforce his army. Nevertheless, the battle was considered a Roman victory and Trajan strived to ultimately consolidate his position, including other major engagements, as well as the capture of Decebalus' sister as depicted on Trajan's Column.\nThe following winter, Decebalus took the initiative by launching a counter-attack across the Danube further downstream, supported by Sarmatian cavalry, forcing Trajan to come to the aid of the troops in his rearguard. The Dacians and their allies were repulsed after two battles in Moesia, at Nicopolis ad Istrum and Adamclisi. Trajan's army then advanced further into Dacian territory, and, a year later, forced Decebalus to submit. He had to renounce claim to some regions of his kingdom, return runaways from Rome then under his protection (most of them technical experts), and surrender all his war machines. Trajan returned to Rome in triumph and was granted the title \"Dacicus\". The peace of 102 had returned Decebalus to the condition of more or less harmless client king; however, he soon began to rearm, to again harbour Roman runaways, and to pressure his Western neighbours, the Iazyges Sarmatians, into allying themselves with him. Through his efforts to develop an anti-Roman bloc, Decebalus prevented Trajan from treating Dacia as a protectorate instead of an outright conquest. In 104, Decebalus devised an attempt on Trajan's life by means of some Roman deserters, a plan that failed. Decebalus also took prisoner Trajan's legate Longinus, who eventually poisoned himself while in custody. Finally, in 105, Decebalus undertook an invasion of Roman-occupied territory north of the Danube.\nPrior to the campaign, Trajan had raised two entirely new legions: II Traiana\u00a0\u2013\u00a0which, however, may have been posted in the East, at the Syrian port of Laodicea\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and XXX Ulpia Victrix, which was posted to Brigetio, in Pannonia. By 105, the concentration of Roman troops assembled in the middle and lower Danube amounted to fourteen legions (up from nine in 101)\u00a0\u2013\u00a0about half of the entire Roman army. Even after the Dacian wars, the Danube frontier would permanently replace the Rhine as the main military axis of the Roman Empire. Including auxiliaries, the number of Roman troops engaged on both campaigns was between 150,000 and 175,000, while Decebalus could dispose of up to 200,000. Other estimates for the Roman forces involved in Trajan's second Dacian War cite around 86,000 for active campaigning with large reserves retained in the proximal provinces, and potentially much lower numbers around 50,000 for Decebalus' depleted forces and absent allies.\nIn a fierce campaign that seems to have consisted mostly of static warfare, the Dacians, devoid of manoeuvring room, kept to their network of fortresses, which the Romans sought systematically to storm (see also Second Dacian War). The Romans gradually tightened their grip around Decebalus' stronghold in Sarmizegetusa Regia, which they finally took and destroyed. A controversial scene on Trajan's column just before the fall of Sarmizegetusa Regia suggests that Decebalus may have offered poison to his remaining men as an alternative option to capture or death while trying to flee the besieged capital with him. Decebalus fled but, when later cornered by Roman cavalry, committed suicide. His severed head, brought to Trajan by the cavalryman Tiberius Claudius Maximus, was later exhibited in Rome on the steps leading up to the Capitol and thrown on the Gemonian stairs. The famous Dacian treasures were not found in the captured capital and their whereabouts were only revealed when a Dacian nobleman called Bikilis was captured. Decebalus\u2019 treasures had been buried under a temporarily diverted river and the captive workers executed to retain the secret. Staggering amounts of gold and silver were found and packed off to fill Rome's coffers.\nTrajan built a new city, Colonia Ulpia Traiana Augusta Dacica Sarmizegetusa, on another site (north of the hill citadel holding the previous Dacian capital), although bearing the same full name, Sarmizegetusa. This capital city was conceived as a purely civilian administrative centre and was provided the usual Romanized administrative apparatus (decurions, aediles, etc.). Urban life in Roman Dacia seems to have been restricted to Roman colonists, mostly military veterans; there is no extant evidence for the existence in the province of peregrine cities. Native Dacians continued to live in scattered rural settlements, according to their own ways. In another arrangement with no parallels in any other Roman province, the existing quasi-urban Dacian settlements disappeared after the Roman conquest.\nA number of unorganized urban settlements (\"vici\") developed around military encampments in Dacia proper \u2013 the most important being Apulum \u2013 but were only acknowledged as cities proper well after Trajan's reign. The main regional effort of urbanization was concentrated by Trajan at the rearguard, in Moesia, where he created the new cities of Nicopolis ad Istrum and Marcianopolis. A vicus was also created around the Tropaeum Traianum. The garrison city of Oescus received the status of Roman colony after its legionary garrison was redeployed. The fact that these former Danubian outposts had ceased to be frontier bases and were now in the deep rear acted as an inducement to their urbanization and development. Not all of Dacia was permanently occupied. After the post-Trajanic evacuation of lands across the lower Danube, land extending from the Danube to the inner arch of the Carpathian Mountains, including Transylvania, the Metaliferi Mountains and Oltenia was absorbed into the Roman province, which eventually took the form of an \"excrescence\" with ill-defined limits, stretching from the Danube northwards to the Carpathians. This may have been intended as a basis for further expansion within Eastern Europe, as the Romans believed the region to be much more geographically \"flattened\", and thus easier to traverse, than it actually was; they also underestimated the distance from those vaguely defined borders to the ocean.\nDefence of the province was entrusted to a single legion, the XIII Gemina, stationed at Apulum, which functioned as an advance guard that could, in case of need, strike either west or east at the Sarmatians living at the borders. Therefore, the indefensible character of the province did not appear to be a problem for Trajan, as the province was conceived more as a sally-base for further attacks. Even in the absence of further Roman expansion, the value of the province depended on Roman overall strength: while Rome was strong, the Dacian salient was an instrument of military and diplomatic control over the Danubian lands; when Rome was weak, as during the Crisis of the Third Century, the province became a liability and was eventually abandoned. Trajan resettled Dacia with Romans and annexed it as a province of the Roman Empire. Aside from their enormous booty (over half a million slaves, according to John Lydus), Trajan's Dacian campaigns benefited the Empire's finances through the acquisition of Dacia's gold mines, managed by an imperial procurator of equestrian rank (\"procurator aurariarum\"). On the other hand, commercial agricultural exploitation on the villa model, based on the centralized management of a huge landed estate by a single owner (\"fundus\") was poorly developed. Therefore, use of slave labor in the province itself seems to have been relatively undeveloped, and epigraphic evidence points to work in the gold mines being conducted by means of labor contracts (\"locatio conductio rei\") and seasonal wage-earning. The victory was commemorated by the construction both of the 102 cenotaph generally known as the Tropaeum Traiani in Moesia, as well of the much later (113) Trajan's Column in Rome, the latter depicting in stone carved bas-reliefs the Dacian Wars' most important moments.\nNabataean annexation.\nIn 106, Rabbel II Soter, one of Rome's client kings, died. This event might have prompted the annexation of the Nabataean Kingdom, but the manner and the formal reasons for the annexation are unclear. Some epigraphic evidence suggests a military operation, with forces from Syria and Egypt. What is known is that by 107, Roman legions were stationed in the area around Petra and Bosra, as is shown by a papyrus found in Egypt. The furthest south the Romans occupied (or, better, garrisoned, adopting a policy of having garrisons at key points in the desert) was Hegra, over south-west of Petra. The empire gained what became the province of Arabia Petraea (modern southern Jordan and northwest Saudi Arabia). At this time, a Roman road (\"Via Traiana Nova\") was built from Aila (now Aqaba) in Limes Arabicus to Bosrah. As Nabataea was the last client kingdom in Asia west of the Euphrates, the annexation meant that the entire Roman East had been provincialized, completing a trend towards direct rule that had begun under the Flavians.\nParthian campaign.\nIn 113, Trajan embarked on his last campaign, provoked by Parthia's decision to put an unacceptable king on the throne of Armenia, a kingdom over which the two great empires had shared hegemony since the time of Nero some fifty years earlier. Trajan, already in Syria early in 113, consistently refused to accept diplomatic approaches from the Parthians intended to settle the Armenian imbroglio peacefully. As the surviving literary accounts of Trajan's Parthian War are fragmentary and scattered, it is difficult to assign them a proper context, something that has led to a long-running controversy about its precise happenings and ultimate aims.\nCause of the war.\nModern historians advance the possibility that Trajan's decision to wage war against Parthia had economic motives: after Trajan's annexation of Arabia, he built a new road, Via Traiana Nova, that went from Bostra to Aila on the Red Sea. That meant that Charax on the Persian Gulf was the sole remaining western terminus of the Indian trade route outside direct Roman control, and such control was important in order to lower import prices and to limit the supposed drain of precious metals created by the deficit in Roman trade with the Far East. That Charax traded with the Roman Empire, there can be no doubt, as its actual connections with merchants from Palmyra during the period are well documented in a contemporary Palmyrene epigraph, which tells of various Palmyrene citizens honoured for holding office in Charax. Also, Charax's rulers' domains at the time possibly included the Bahrain islands, which offered the possibility of extending Roman hegemony into the Persian Gulf itself. (A Palmyrene citizen held office as satrap over the islands shortly after Trajan's death, though the appointment was made by a Parthian king of Charax.) The rationale behind Trajan's campaign, in this case, was one of breaking down a system of Far Eastern trade through small Semitic (\"Arab\") cities under Parthia's control and to put it under Roman control instead.\nIn his Dacian conquests, Trajan had already resorted to Syrian auxiliary units, whose veterans, along with Syrian traders, had an important role in the subsequent colonization of Dacia. He had recruited Palmyrene units into his army, including a camel unit, therefore apparently procuring Palmyrene support to his ultimate goal of annexing Charax. It has even been ventured that, when earlier in his campaign Trajan annexed Armenia, he was bound to annex the whole of Mesopotamia lest the Parthians interrupt the flux of trade from the Persian Gulf and/or foment trouble at the Roman frontier on the Danube. Other historians reject these motives, as the supposed Parthian \"control\" over the maritime Far Eastern trade route was, at best, conjectural and based on a selective reading of Chinese sources\u00a0\u2013\u00a0trade by land through Parthia seems to have been unhampered by Parthian authorities and left solely to the devices of private enterprise. Commercial activity in second century Mesopotamia seems to have been a general phenomenon, shared by many peoples within and without the Roman Empire, with no sign of a concerted Imperial policy towards it.\nAs in the case of the \"alimenta\", scholars like Moses Finley and Paul Veyne have considered the idea that a foreign trade policy underlay Trajan's war to be anachronistic; according to these scholars, the concern of Roman leaders with the trade in far eastern luxuries\u00a0\u2013\u00a0besides collecting toll taxes and customs\u00a0\u2013\u00a0was moral in nature, because contemporary Roman mores frowned upon the \"softness\" of luxuries. In the absence of conclusive evidence, trade between Rome and India might have been far more balanced, in terms of quantities of precious metals exchanged: one of our sources for the notion of the Roman gold drain\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Pliny's the Younger's uncle Pliny the Elder\u00a0\u2013\u00a0had earlier described the Gangetic Plains as one of the gold sources for the Roman Empire. Accordingly \u2013 in a controversial book on the Roman economy \u2013 Finley considers Trajan's \"badly miscalculated and expensive assault on Parthia\" to be an example of the many Roman \"commercial wars\" that had in common the fact of existing only in the books of modern historians.\nThe alternative view is to see the campaign as triggered by the lure of territorial annexation and prestige, the sole motive ascribed by Cassius Dio. As far as territorial conquest involved tax-collecting, especially of the 25% tax levied on all goods entering the Roman Empire, the \"tetarte\", one can say that Trajan's Parthian War had an \"economic\" motive. Also, there was the propaganda value of an Eastern conquest that would emulate, in Roman fashion, those of Alexander the Great. The fact that emissaries from the Kushan Empire might have attended to the commemorative ceremonies for the Dacian War may have kindled in some Greco-Roman intellectuals like Plutarch\u00a0\u2013\u00a0who wrote about only 70,000 Roman soldiers being necessary to a conquest of India \u00a0\u2013\u00a0as well as in Trajan's closer associates, speculative dreams about the booty to be obtained by reproducing Macedonian Eastern conquests. There could also be Trajan's idea to use an ambitious blueprint of conquests as a way to emphasize quasi-divine status, such as with his cultivated association, in coins and monuments, to Hercules.\nAlso, it is possible that the attachment of Trajan to an expansionist policy was supported by a powerful circle of conservative senators from Hispania committed to a policy of imperial expansion, first among them being the all-powerful Licinius Sura. Alternatively, one can explain the campaign by the fact that, for the Romans, their empire was in principle unlimited, and that Trajan only took advantage of an opportunity to make idea and reality coincide. Finally, there are other modern historians who think that Trajan's original aims were purely military and strategic: to assure a more defensible Eastern frontier for the Roman Empire, crossing Northern Mesopotamia along the course of the Khabur River in order to offer cover to a Roman Armenia. This interpretation is backed by the fact that all subsequent Roman wars against Parthia would aim at establishing a Roman presence deep into Parthia itself. It is possible that during the onset of Trajan's military experience, as a young tribune, he had witnessed engagement with the Parthians; so any strategic vision was grounded in a tactical awareness of what was needed to tackle Parthia.\nCourse of the war.\nThe campaign was carefully planned in advance: ten legions were concentrated in the Eastern theatre; since 111, the correspondence of Pliny the Younger witnesses to the fact that provincial authorities in Bithynia had to organize supplies for passing troops, and local city councils and their individual members had to shoulder part of the increased expenses by supplying troops themselves. The intended campaign, therefore, was immensely costly from its very beginning. Trajan marched first on Armenia, deposed the Parthian-appointed king, Parthamasiris (who was afterwards murdered while kept in the custody of Roman troops in an unclear incident, later described by Fronto as a breach of Roman good faith), and annexed it to the Roman Empire as a province, receiving in passing the acknowledgement of Roman hegemony by various tribes in the Caucasus and on the Eastern coast of the Black Sea\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a process that kept him busy until the end of 114. At the same time, a Roman column under the legate Lusius Quietus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0an outstanding cavalry general who had signalled himself during the Dacian Wars by commanding a unit from his native Mauretania\u00a0\u2013\u00a0crossed the Araxes river from Armenia into Media Atropatene and the land of the Mardians (present-day Ghilan). It is possible that Quietus' campaign had as its goal the extending of the newer, more defensible Roman border eastwards towards the Caspian Sea and northwards to the foothills of the Caucasus. This newer, more \"rational\" frontier, depended, however, on an increased, permanent Roman presence east of the Euphrates.\nThe chronology of subsequent events is uncertain, but it is generally believed that early in 115 Trajan launched a Mesopotamian campaign, marching down towards the Taurus mountains in order to consolidate territory between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. He placed permanent garrisons along the way to secure the territory. While Trajan moved from west to east, Lusius Quietus moved with his army from the Caspian Sea towards the west, both armies performing a successful pincer movement, whose apparent result was to establish a Roman presence into the Parthian Empire proper, with Trajan taking the northern Mesopotamian cities of Nisibis and Batnae and organizing a province of Mesopotamia, including the Kingdom of Osrhoene\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where King Abgar VII submitted to Trajan publicly\u00a0\u2013\u00a0as a Roman protectorate. This process seems to have been completed at the beginning of 116, when coins were issued announcing that Armenia and Mesopotamia had been put under the authority of the Roman people. The area between the Khabur River and the mountains around Singara seems to have been considered as the new frontier, and as such received a road surrounded by fortresses.\nAfter wintering in Antioch during 115/116 \u00a0\u2013\u00a0and, according to literary sources, barely escaping from a violent earthquake that claimed the life of one of the consuls, Marcus Pedo Virgilianus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Trajan again took to the field in 116, with a view to the conquest of the whole of Mesopotamia, an overambitious goal that eventually backfired on the results of his entire campaign. According to some modern historians, the aim of the campaign of 116 was to achieve a \"pre-emptive demonstration\" aiming not toward the conquest of Parthia, but for tighter Roman control over the Eastern trade route. However, the overall scarcity of manpower for the Roman military establishment meant that the campaign was doomed from the start. It is noteworthy that no new legions were raised by Trajan before the Parthian campaign, maybe because the sources of new citizen recruits were already over-exploited.\nAs far as the sources allow a description of this campaign, it seems that one Roman division crossed the Tigris into Adiabene, sweeping south and capturing Adenystrae; a second followed the river south, capturing Babylon; Trajan himself sailed down the Euphrates from Dura-Europos\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where a triumphal arch was erected in his honour\u00a0\u2013\u00a0through Ozogardana, where he erected a \"tribunal\" still to be seen at the time of Julian the Apostate's campaigns in the same area. Having come to the narrow strip of land between the Euphrates and the Tigris, he then dragged his fleet overland into the Tigris, capturing Seleucia and finally the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon. He continued southward to the Persian Gulf, when, after escaping with his fleet a tidal bore on the Tigris, he received the submission of Athambelus, the ruler of Charax. He declared Babylon a new province of the Empire and had his statue erected on the shore of the Persian Gulf, after which he sent the Senate a laurelled letter declaring the war to be at a close and bemoaning that he was too old to go on any further and repeat the conquests of Alexander the Great. Since Charax was a \"de facto\" independent kingdom whose connections to Palmyra were described above, Trajan's bid for the Persian Gulf may have coincided with Palmyrene interests in the region. Another hypothesis is that the rulers of Charax had expansionist designs on Parthian Babylon, giving them a rationale for alliance with Trajan. The Parthian city of Susa was apparently also occupied by the Romans.\nAccording to late literary sources (not backed by numismatic or inscriptional evidence) a province of Assyria was also proclaimed, apparently covering the territory of Adiabene. Some measures seem to have been considered regarding the fiscal administration of Indian trade\u00a0\u2013\u00a0or simply about the payment of customs (\"portoria\") on goods traded on the Euphrates and Tigris. It is possible that it was this \"streamlining\" of the administration of the newly conquered lands according to the standard pattern of Roman provincial administration in tax collecting, requisitions and the handling of local potentates' prerogatives, that triggered later resistance against Trajan. According to some modern historians, Trajan might have busied himself during his stay on the Persian Gulf with ordering raids on the Parthian coasts, as well as probing into extending Roman suzerainty over the mountaineer tribes holding the passes across the Zagros Mountains into the Iranian plateau eastward, as well as establishing some sort of direct contact between Rome and the Kushan Empire. No attempt was made to expand into the Iranian Plateau itself, where the Roman army, with its relative weakness in cavalry, would have been at a disadvantage.\nTrajan left the Persian Gulf for Babylon\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where he intended to offer sacrifice to Alexander in the house where he had died in 323BC\u00a0\u2013\u00a0 But a revolt led by Sanatruces, a nephew of the Parthian king Osroes I who had retained a cavalry force, possibly strengthened by the addition of Saka archers, imperilled Roman positions in Mesopotamia and Armenia. Trajan sought to deal with this by forsaking direct Roman rule in Parthia proper, at least partially. Trajan sent two armies towards Northern Mesopotamia: the first, under Lusius Quietus, recovered Nisibis and Edessa from the rebels, probably having King Abgarus deposed and killed in the process, with Quietus probably earning the right to receive the honors of a senator of praetorian rank (\"adlectus inter praetorios\"). The second army, however, under Appius Maximus Santra (probably a governor of Macedonia) was defeated and Santra killed.\nLater in 116, Trajan, with the assistance of Quietus and two other legates, Marcus Erucius Clarus and Tiberius Julius Alexander Julianus, defeated a Parthian army in a battle where Sanatruces was killed (possibly with the assistance of Osroes' son and Sanatruces' cousin, Parthamaspates, whom Trajan wooed successfully). After re-taking and burning Seleucia, Trajan then formally deposed Osroes, putting Parthamaspates on the throne as client ruler. This event was commemorated in a coin as the reduction of Parthia to client kingdom status: , \"a king is given to the Parthians\". That done, Trajan retreated north in order to retain what he could of the new provinces of Armenia\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where he had already accepted an armistice in exchange for surrendering part of the territory to Sanatruces' son Vologeses\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and Mesopotamia. It was at this point that Trajan's health started to fail him. The fortress city of Hatra, on the Tigris in his rear, continued to hold out against repeated Roman assaults. He was personally present at the siege, and it is possible that he suffered a heat stroke while in the blazing heat.\nDiaspora revolt.\nAbout this same time (AD 116\u2013117), Jews in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire\u2014Egypt, Cyprus, and Cyrene, which was likely the original trouble hotspot\u2014rebelled in what appears to have been an ethnic and religious uprising against the local populations, later known as the Diaspora Revolt. Additionally, Jewish communities in Northern Mesopotamia revolted, likely as part of a broader resistance against Roman occupation. Trajan had to withdraw his army to suppress these revolts, a move he considered a temporary setback. He never returned to command, delegating Eastern operations to Lusius Quietus, who was appointed governor of Judaea in early 117 and likely dealt with Jewish unrest there. Quietus discharged his commissions successfully, leading rabbinic sources to name the conflict in Judaea the \"Kitos War,\" with \"Kitus\" being a corruption of \"Quietus\". Whether or not the Diaspora revolt included Judea proper, or only the Jewish Eastern diaspora, remains doubtful in the absence of clear epigraphic and archaeological evidence. What is certain is that there was an increased Roman military presence in Judea at the time.\nQuietus was promised a consulate in the following year (118) for his victories, but he was killed before this could occur, during the bloody purge that opened Hadrian's reign, in which Quietus and three other former consuls were sentenced to death after being tried on a vague charge of conspiracy by the (secret) court of the Praetorian Prefect Attianus. It has been thought that Quietus and his colleagues were executed on Hadrian's direct orders, for fear of their popular standing with the army and their close connections to Trajan. In contrast, the next prominent Roman figure in charge of the repression of the Jewish revolt, the equestrian Quintus Marcius Turbo, who had dealt with the rebel leader from Cyrene, Loukuas, retained Hadrian's trust, eventually becoming his Praetorian Prefect. As all four consulars were senators of the highest standing and as such generally regarded as able to take imperial power (\"capaces imperii\"), Hadrian seems to have decided to forestall these prospective rivals.\nDeath and succession.\nEarly in 117, Trajan grew ill and set sail for Italy. His health declined throughout the spring and summer of 117, possibly acknowledged to the public by the display of a bronze portrait-bust at the public baths of Ancyra, showing an aged and emaciated man, though the identification with Trajan is disputed. He reached Selinus, where he suddenly died, shortly before 11 August. Trajan in person could have lawfully nominated Hadrian as his successor, but Dio claims that Trajan's wife, Pompeia Plotina, assured Hadrian's succession by keeping Trajan's death a secret, long enough for her to produce and sign a document attesting to Hadrian's adoption as son and successor. Dio, who tells this narrative, offers his father\u00a0\u2013\u00a0the governor of Cilicia Apronianus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0as a source, so his narrative may be based on contemporary rumour. It may also reflect male Roman displeasure that an empress\u00a0\u2013\u00a0let alone any woman\u00a0\u2013\u00a0 could presume to meddle in Rome's political affairs.\nHadrian held an ambiguous position during Trajan's reign. After commanding Legio I Minervia during the Dacian Wars, he had been relieved from front-line duties at the decisive stage of the Second Dacian War, being sent to govern the newly created province of Pannonia Inferior. He had pursued a senatorial career without particular distinction and had not been officially adopted by Trajan although he received from him decorations and other marks of distinction that made him hope for the succession. He received no post after his 108 consulate and no further honours other than being made Archon eponymos for Athens in 111/112. He probably did not take part in the Parthian War. Literary sources relate that Trajan had considered others, such as the jurist Lucius Neratius Priscus, as heir. Hadrian, who was eventually entrusted with the governorship of Syria at the time of Trajan's death, was Trajan's cousin and was married to Trajan's grandniece, which all made him as good as heir designate. Hadrian seems to have been well connected to the powerful and influential coterie of Spanish senators at Trajan's court, through his ties to Plotina and the Prefect Attianus. His refusal to sustain Trajan's senatorial and expansionist policy during his own reign may account for the \"crass hostility\" shown him by literary sources.\nHadrian's first major act as emperor was to abandon Mesopotamia as too costly and distant to defend, and to restore Armenia and Osrhoene to Parthian hegemony, under Rome's suzerainty. The Parthian campaign had been an enormous setback to Trajan's policy, proof that Rome had overstretched its capacity to sustain an ambitious program of conquest. According to the \"Historia Augusta\", Hadrian claimed to follow the precedent set by Cato the Elder towards the Macedonians, who \"were to be set free because they could not be protected\" \u2013 something Birley sees as an unconvincing precedent. Other territories conquered by Trajan were retained. According to a well-established historical tradition, Trajan's ashes were placed within the small cella that still survives at the base of Trajan's column. In some modern scholarship, his ashes were more likely interred near his column, in a mausoleum, temple or tomb built for his cult as a \"divus\" of the Roman state.\nLegacy.\nAncient sources on Trajan's personality and accomplishments are unanimously positive. Pliny the Younger, for example, celebrates Trajan in his panegyric as a wise and just emperor and a moral man. Cassius Dio added that he always remained dignified and fair. A third-century emperor, Decius, even received from the Senate the name Trajan as a decoration. In the Later Roman Empire, following the setbacks of the third century, Trajan, together with Augustus, became the paragon of the most positive traits of the Imperial order. Emperors in the 4th century were honoured by the Senate with the acclamation \"Felicior Augusto, Melior Traiano\" (\"May you be more fortunate than Augustus and better than Trajan\"). The fourth-century emperor Constantine I is credited with calling him a \"plant upon every wall\" for the many buildings bearing inscriptions with his name.\nIconography.\nAll Roman emperors until Trajan, except Nero who occasionally wore sideburns, were depicted clean-shaven, according to the fashion introduced among the Romans by Scipio Africanus (236\u00a0\u2013\u00a0183 BC). This Imperial fashion was changed by Trajan's successor Hadrian who made beards fashionable for emperors.\nAfter Rome.\nDuring the Middle Ages, some theologians such as Thomas Aquinas discussed Trajan as an example of a virtuous pagan. In the \"Divine Comedy\", Dante, following this legend, sees the spirit of Trajan in the Heaven of Jupiter with other historical and mythological persons noted for their justice. Also, a mural of Trajan stopping to provide justice for a poor widow is present in the first terrace of Purgatory as a lesson to those who are purged for being proud.\n<poem>\nI noticed that the inner bank of the curve...\nWas of white marble, and so decorated\nWith carvings that not only Polycletus\nBut nature herself would there be put to shame...\nThere was recorded the high glory\nOf that ruler of Rome whose worth\nMoved Gregory to his great victory;\nI mean by this the Emperor Trajan;\nAnd at his bridle a poor widow\nWhose attitude bespoke tears and grief...\nThe wretched woman, in the midst of all this,\nSeemed to be saying: 'Lord, avenge my son,\nWho is dead, so that my heart is broken..'\nSo he said: 'Now be comforted, for I must\nCarry out my duty before I go on:\nJustice requires it and pity holds me back.'\n\"Dante, The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio X, ll. 32 f. and 73 f.\"\n</poem>\nIn the Renaissance, Machiavelli, speaking on the advantages of adoptive succession over heredity, mentioned the five successive good emperors \"from Nerva to Marcus\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a trope out of which the 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon popularized the notion of the Five Good Emperors, of whom Trajan was the second.\nIn the 18th century, King Charles III of Spain commissioned Anton Raphael Mengs to paint \"The Triumph of Trajan\" on the ceiling of the banquet hall of the Royal Palace of Madrid\u00a0\u2013\u00a0considered among the best works of this artist.\nIt was only during the Enlightenment that this legacy began to be contested, when Edward Gibbon expressed doubts about the militarized character of Trajan's reign in contrast to the \"moderate\" practices of his immediate successors. Mommsen adopted a divided stance towards Trajan, at some point of his posthumously published lectures even speaking about his \"vainglory\" (\"Scheinglorie\"). Mommsen also speaks of Trajan's \"insatiable, unlimited lust for conquest\". Although Mommsen had no liking for Trajan's successor Hadrian\u00a0\u2013\u00a0\"a repellent manner, and a venomous, envious and malicious nature\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0he admitted that Hadrian, in renouncing Trajan's conquests, was \"doing what the situation clearly required\".\nIt was exactly this military character of Trajan's reign that attracted his early twentieth-century biographer, the Italian historian Roberto Paribeni, who in his 1927 two-volume biography \"Optimus Princeps\" described Trajan's reign as the acme of the Roman principate, which he saw as Italy's patrimony. Following in Paribeni's footsteps, the German historian Alfred Heuss saw in Trajan \"the accomplished human embodiment of the imperial title\" (\"die ideale Verk\u00f6rperung des humanen Kaiserbegriffs\"). Trajan's first English-language biography by Julian Bennett is also a positive one in that it assumes that Trajan was an active policy-maker concerned with the management of the empire as a whole\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something his reviewer Lendon considers an anachronistic outlook that sees in the Roman emperor a kind of modern administrator.\nDuring the 1980s, the Romanian historian Eugen Cizek took a more nuanced view as he described the changes in the \"personal\" ideology of Trajan's reign, stressing the fact that it became ever more autocratic and militarized, especially after 112 and towards the Parthian War (as \"only an universal monarch, a \"kosmocrator\", could dictate his law to the East\"). The biography by the German historian Karl Strobel stresses the continuity between Domitian's and Trajan's reigns, saying that Trajan's rule followed the same autocratic and sacred character as Domitian's, culminating in a failed Parthian adventure intended as the crown of his personal achievement. It is in modern French historiography that Trajan's reputation becomes most markedly deflated: Paul Petit writes about Trajan's portraits as a \"lowbrow boor with a taste for booze and boys\". For Paul Veyne, what is to be retained from Trajan's \"stylish\" qualities was that he was the last Roman emperor to think of the empire as a purely Italian and Rome-centred hegemony of conquest. In contrast, his successor Hadrian would stress the notion of the empire as ecumenical and of the emperor as universal benefactor and not \"kosmocrator\".\nIn Romanian culture.\nIn Romania, Trajan (Romanian: \"Traian\") is regarded as one of the founders of the Romanian nation and a historical figure of great importance to the Romanian people and culture. This is due to his orchestration of the Dacian Wars that led to the foundation of the Daco-Roman culture and the Latin-based Romanian language. The creation of Roman Dacia is therefore seen in the country as the ethnogenesis of the Romanian nation.\nIn Jewish legend.\nIn the Jewish homiletical works, such as \"Esther Rabbah\", Trajan is described with the epitaph \"may his bones be crushed\" (). The same epitaph is also used for Hadrian.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "25507": "Roman Empire\nTerritory ruled by Rome and period of Roman history\nThe Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Romans conquered most of this during the Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of effective sole rule in 27\u00a0BC. The western empire collapsed in 476\u00a0AD, but the eastern empire lasted until the fall of Constantinople in 1453.\nBy 100\u00a0BC, the city of Rome had expanded its rule from the Italian peninsula to most of the Mediterranean and beyond. However, it was severely destabilised by civil wars and political conflicts, which culminated in the victory of Octavian over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31\u00a0BC, and the subsequent conquest of the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt. In 27\u00a0BC, the Roman Senate granted Octavian overarching military power () and the new title of \"Augustus\", marking his accession as the first Roman emperor. The vast Roman territories were organized into senatorial provinces, governed by proconsuls who were appointed by lot annually, and imperial provinces, which belonged to the emperor but were governed by legates.\nThe first two centuries of the Empire saw a period of unprecedented stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana (lit.\u2009'Roman Peace'). Rome reached its greatest territorial extent under Trajan (r.\u200998\u00a0\u2013\u00a0117\u00a0AD), but a period of increasing trouble and decline began under Commodus (r.\u2009180\u00a0\u2013\u00a0192). In the 3rd century, the Empire underwent a 49-year crisis that threatened its existence due to civil war, plagues and barbarian invasions. The Gallic and Palmyrene empires broke away from the state and a series of short-lived emperors led the Empire, which was later reunified under Aurelian (r.\u2009270\u00a0\u2013\u00a0275). The civil wars ended with the victory of Diocletian (r.\u2009284\u00a0\u2013\u00a0305), who set up two different imperial courts in the Greek East and Latin West. Constantine the Great (r.\u2009306\u00a0\u2013\u00a0337), the first Christian emperor, moved the imperial seat from Rome to Byzantium in 330, and renamed it Constantinople. The Migration Period, involving large invasions by Germanic peoples and by the Huns of Attila, led to the decline of the Western Roman Empire. With the fall of Ravenna to the Germanic Herulians and the deposition of Romulus Augustus in 476 by Odoacer, the Western Empire finally collapsed. The Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire survived for another millennium with Constantinople as its sole capital, until the city's fall in 1453.\nDue to the Empire's extent and endurance, its institutions and culture had a lasting influence on the development of language, religion, art, architecture, literature, philosophy, law, and forms of government across its territories. Latin evolved into the Romance languages while Medieval Greek became the language of the East. The Empire's adoption of Christianity resulted in the formation of medieval Christendom. Roman and Greek art had a profound impact on the Italian Renaissance. Rome's architectural tradition served as the basis for Romanesque, Renaissance and Neoclassical architecture, influencing Islamic architecture. The rediscovery of classical science and technology (which formed the basis for Islamic science) in medieval Europe contributed to the Scientific Renaissance and Scientific Revolution. Many modern legal systems, such as the Napoleonic Code, descend from Roman law. Rome's republican institutions have influenced the Italian city-state republics of the medieval period, the early United States, and modern democratic republics.\nHistory.\nTransition from Republic to Empire.\nRome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the Roman Republic in the 6th century BC, though not outside the Italian Peninsula until the 3rd century BC. Thus, it was an \"empire\" (a great power) long before it had an emperor. The Republic was not a nation-state in the modern sense, but a network of self-ruled towns (with varying degrees of independence from the Senate) and provinces administered by military commanders. It was governed by annually elected magistrates (Roman consuls above all) in conjunction with the Senate. The 1st century BC was a time of political and military upheaval, which ultimately led to rule by emperors. The consuls' military power rested in the Roman legal concept of \"imperium\", meaning \"command\" (typically in a military sense). Occasionally, successful consuls or generals were given the honorary title \"imperator\" (commander); this is the origin of the word \"emperor\", since this title was always bestowed to the early emperors.\nRome suffered a long series of internal conflicts, conspiracies, and civil wars from the late second century BC (see Crisis of the Roman Republic) while greatly extending its power beyond Italy. In 44 BC Julius Caesar was briefly perpetual dictator before being assassinated by a faction that opposed his concentration of power. This faction was driven from Rome and defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC by Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son Octavian. Antony and Octavian divided the Roman world between them, but this did not last long. Octavian's forces defeated those of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. In 27 BC the Senate gave him the title \"Augustus\" (\"venerated\") and made him \"princeps\" (\"foremost\") with proconsular \"imperium\", thus beginning the Principate, the first epoch of Roman imperial history. Although the republic stood in name, Augustus had all meaningful authority. During his 40-year rule, a new constitutional order emerged so that, upon his death, Tiberius would succeed him as the new \"de facto\" monarch.\n\"Pax Romana\".\nThe 200 years that began with Augustus's rule is traditionally regarded as the \"Pax Romana\" (\"Roman Peace\"). The cohesion of the empire was furthered by a degree of social stability and economic prosperity that Rome had never before experienced. Uprisings in the provinces were infrequent and put down \"mercilessly and swiftly\". The success of Augustus in establishing principles of dynastic succession was limited by his outliving a number of talented potential heirs. The Julio-Claudian dynasty lasted for four more emperors\u2014Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero\u2014before it yielded in 69 AD to the strife-torn Year of the Four Emperors, from which Vespasian emerged as the victor. Vespasian became the founder of the brief Flavian dynasty, followed by the Nerva\u2013Antonine dynasty which produced the \"Five Good Emperors\": Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius.\nTransition from classical to late antiquity.\nIn the view of contemporary Greek historian Cassius Dio, the accession of Commodus in 180 marked the descent \"from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron\", a comment which has led some historians, notably Edward Gibbon, to take Commodus' reign as the beginning of the Empire's decline.\nIn 212, during the reign of Caracalla, Roman citizenship was granted to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. The Severan dynasty was tumultuous; an emperor's reign was ended routinely by his murder or execution and, following its collapse, the Empire was engulfed by the Crisis of the Third Century, a period of invasions, civil strife, economic disorder, and plague. In defining historical epochs, this crisis sometimes marks the transition from Classical to Late Antiquity. Aurelian (r.\u2009270\u00a0\u2013\u00a0275) stabilised the empire militarily and Diocletian reorganised and restored much of it in 285. Diocletian's reign brought the empire's most concerted effort against the perceived threat of Christianity, the \"Great Persecution\".\nDiocletian divided the empire into four regions, each ruled by a separate tetrarch. Confident that he fixed the disorder plaguing Rome, he abdicated along with his co-emperor, but the Tetrarchy collapsed shortly after. Order was eventually restored by Constantine the Great, who became the first emperor to convert to Christianity, and who established Constantinople as the new capital of the Eastern Empire. During the decades of the Constantinian and Valentinian dynasties, the empire was divided along an east\u2013west axis, with dual power centres in Constantinople and Rome. Julian, who under the influence of his adviser Mardonius attempted to restore Classical Roman and Hellenistic religion, only briefly interrupted the succession of Christian emperors. Theodosius I, the last emperor to rule over both East and West, died in 395 after making Christianity the state religion.\nFall in the West and survival in the East.\nThe Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate in the early 5th century. The Romans fought off all invaders, most famously Attila, but the empire had assimilated so many Germanic peoples of dubious loyalty to Rome that the empire started to dismember itself. Most chronologies place the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476, when Romulus Augustulus was forced to abdicate to the Germanic warlord Odoacer.\nOdoacer ended the Western Empire by declaring Zeno sole emperor and placing himself as Zeno's nominal subordinate. In reality, Italy was ruled by Odoacer alone. The Eastern Roman Empire, called the Byzantine Empire by later historians, continued until the reign of Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Roman emperor. He died in battle in 1453 against Mehmed II and his Ottoman forces during the siege of Constantinople. Mehmed II adopted the title of \"caesar\" in an attempt to claim a connection to the former Empire. His claim was soon recognized by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, but not by European monarchs.\nGeography and demography.\nThe Roman Empire was one of the largest in history, with contiguous territories throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The Latin phrase \"imperium sine fine\" (\"empire without end\") expressed the ideology that neither time nor space limited the Empire. In Virgil's \"Aeneid\", limitless empire is said to be granted to the Romans by Jupiter. This claim of universal dominion was renewed when the Empire came under Christian rule in the 4th century. In addition to annexing large regions, the Romans directly altered their geography, for example cutting down entire forests.\nRoman expansion was mostly accomplished under the Republic, though parts of northern Europe were conquered in the 1st century, when Roman control in Europe, Africa, and Asia was strengthened. Under Augustus, a \"global map of the known world\" was displayed for the first time in public at Rome, coinciding with the creation of the most comprehensive political geography that survives from antiquity, the \"Geography\" of Strabo. When Augustus died, the account of his achievements (\"Res Gestae\") prominently featured the geographical cataloguing of the Empire. Geography alongside meticulous written records were central concerns of Roman Imperial administration.\nThe Empire reached its largest expanse under Trajan (r.\u200998\u00a0\u2013\u00a0117), encompassing 5 million km2. The traditional population estimate of 55\u201360 million inhabitants accounted for between one-sixth and one-fourth of the world's total population and made it the most populous unified political entity in the West until the mid-19th century. Recent demographic studies have argued for a population peak from 70 million to more than 100 million. Each of the three largest cities in the Empire\u2014Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch\u2014was almost twice the size of any European city at the beginning of the 17th century.\nAs the historian Christopher Kelly described it:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Then the empire stretched from Hadrian's Wall in drizzle-soaked northern England to the sun-baked banks of the Euphrates in Syria; from the great Rhine\u2013Danube river system, which snaked across the fertile, flat lands of Europe from the Low Countries to the Black Sea, to the rich plains of the North African coast and the luxuriant gash of the Nile Valley in Egypt. The empire completely circled the Mediterranean\u00a0... referred to by its conquerors as \"mare nostrum\"\u2014'our sea'.\nTrajan's successor Hadrian adopted a policy of maintaining rather than expanding the empire. Borders (\"fines\") were marked, and the frontiers (\"limites\") patrolled. The most heavily fortified borders were the most unstable. Hadrian's Wall, which separated the Roman world from what was perceived as an ever-present barbarian threat, is the primary surviving monument of this effort.\nLanguages.\nLatin and Greek were the main languages of the Empire, but the Empire was deliberately multilingual. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill says \"The main desire of the Roman government was to make itself understood\". At the start of the Empire, knowledge of Greek was useful to pass as educated nobility and knowledge of Latin was useful for a career in the military, government, or law. Bilingual inscriptions indicate the everyday interpenetration of the two languages.\nLatin and Greek's mutual linguistic and cultural influence is a complex topic. Latin words incorporated into Greek were very common by the early imperial era, especially for military, administration, and trade and commerce matters. Greek grammar, literature, poetry and philosophy shaped Latin language and culture.\nThere was never a legal requirement for Latin in the Empire, but it represented a certain status. High standards of Latin, \"Latinitas\", started with the advent of Latin literature. Due to the flexible language policy of the Empire, a natural competition of language emerged that spurred \"Latinitas\", to defend Latin against the stronger cultural influence of Greek. Over time Latin usage was used to project power and a higher social class. Most of the emperors were bilingual but had a preference for Latin in the public sphere for political reasons, a \"rule\" that first started during the Punic Wars. Different emperors up until Justinian would attempt to require the use of Latin in various sections of the administration but there is no evidence that a linguistic imperialism existed during the early Empire.\nAfter all freeborn inhabitants were universally enfranchised in 212, many Roman citizens would have lacked a knowledge of Latin. The wide use of Koine Greek was what enabled the spread of Christianity and reflects its role as the lingua franca of the Mediterranean during the time of the Empire. Following Diocletian's reforms in the 3rd century CE, there was a decline in the knowledge of Greek in the west. Spoken Latin later fragmented into the incipient romance languages in the 7th century CE following the collapse of the Empire's west.\nThe dominance of Latin and Greek among the literate elite obscure the continuity of other spoken languages within the Empire. Latin, referred to in its spoken form as Vulgar Latin, gradually replaced Celtic and Italic languages. References to interpreters indicate the continuing use of local languages, particularly in Egypt with Coptic, and in military settings along the Rhine and Danube. Roman jurists also show a concern for local languages such as Punic, Gaulish, and Aramaic in assuring the correct understanding of laws and oaths. In Africa, Libyco-Berber and Punic were used in inscriptions into the 2nd century. In Syria, Palmyrene soldiers used their dialect of Aramaic for inscriptions, an exception to the rule that Latin was the language of the military. The last reference to Gaulish was between 560 and 575. The emergent Gallo-Romance languages would then be shaped by Gaulish. Proto-Basque or Aquitanian evolved with Latin loan words to modern Basque. The Thracian language, as were several now-extinct languages in Anatolia, are attested in Imperial-era inscriptions.\nSociety.\nThe Empire was remarkably multicultural, with \"astonishing cohesive capacity\" to create shared identity while encompassing diverse peoples. Public monuments and communal spaces open to all\u2014such as forums, amphitheatres, racetracks and baths\u2014helped foster a sense of \"Romanness\".\nRoman society had multiple, overlapping social hierarchies. The civil war preceding Augustus caused upheaval, but did not effect an immediate redistribution of wealth and social power. From the perspective of the lower classes, a peak was merely added to the social pyramid. Personal relationships\u2014patronage, friendship (\"amicitia\"), family, marriage\u2014continued to influence politics. By the time of Nero, however, it was not unusual to find a former slave who was richer than a freeborn citizen, or an equestrian who exercised greater power than a senator.\nThe blurring of the Republic's more rigid hierarchies led to increased social mobility, both upward and downward, to a greater extent than all other well-documented ancient societies. Women, freedmen, and slaves had opportunities to profit and exercise influence in ways previously less available to them. Social life, particularly for those whose personal resources were limited, was further fostered by a proliferation of voluntary associations and confraternities (\"collegia\" and \"sodalitates\"): professional and trade guilds, veterans' groups, religious sodalities, drinking and dining clubs, performing troupes, and burial societies.\nLegal status.\nAccording to the jurist Gaius, the essential distinction in the Roman \"law of persons\" was that all humans were either free (\"liberi\") or slaves (\"servi\"). The legal status of free persons was further defined by their citizenship. Most citizens held limited rights (such as the \"ius Latinum\", \"Latin right\"), but were entitled to legal protections and privileges not enjoyed by non-citizens. Free people not considered citizens, but living within the Roman world, were \"peregrini\", non-Romans. In 212, the \"Constitutio Antoniniana\" extended citizenship to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. This legal egalitarianism required a far-reaching revision of existing laws that distinguished between citizens and non-citizens.\nWomen in Roman law.\nFreeborn Roman women were considered citizens, but did not vote, hold political office, or serve in the military. A mother's citizen status determined that of her children, as indicated by the phrase \"ex duobus civibus Romanis natos\" (\"children born of two Roman citizens\"). A Roman woman kept her own family name (\"nomen\") for life. Children most often took the father's name, with some exceptions. Women could own property, enter contracts, and engage in business. Inscriptions throughout the Empire honour women as benefactors in funding public works, an indication they could hold considerable fortunes.\nThe archaic \"manus\" marriage in which the woman was subject to her husband's authority was largely abandoned by the Imperial era, and a married woman retained ownership of any property she brought into the marriage. Technically she remained under her father's legal authority, even though she moved into her husband's home, but when her father died she became legally emancipated. This arrangement was a factor in the degree of independence Roman women enjoyed compared to many other cultures up to the modern period: although she had to answer to her father in legal matters, she was free of his direct scrutiny in daily life, and her husband had no legal power over her. Although it was a point of pride to be a \"one-man woman\" (\"univira\") who had married only once, there was little stigma attached to divorce, nor to speedy remarriage after being widowed or divorced. Girls had equal inheritance rights with boys if their father died without leaving a will. A mother's right to own and dispose of property, including setting the terms of her will, gave her enormous influence over her sons into adulthood.\nAs part of the Augustan programme to restore traditional morality and social order, moral legislation attempted to regulate conduct as a means of promoting \"family values\". Adultery was criminalized, and defined broadly as an illicit sex act (\"stuprum\") between a male citizen and a married woman, or between a married woman and any man other than her husband. That is, a double standard was in place: a married woman could have sex only with her husband, but a married man did not commit adultery if he had sex with a prostitute or person of marginalized status. Childbearing was encouraged: a woman who had given birth to three children was granted symbolic honours and greater legal freedom (the \"ius trium liberorum\").\nSlaves and the law.\nAt the time of Augustus, as many as 35% of the people in Roman Italy were slaves, making Rome one of five historical \"slave societies\" in which slaves constituted at least a fifth of the population and played a major role in the economy. Slavery was a complex institution that supported traditional Roman social structures as well as contributing economic utility. In urban settings, slaves might be professionals such as teachers, physicians, chefs, and accountants; the majority of slaves provided trained or unskilled labour. Agriculture and industry, such as milling and mining, relied on the exploitation of slaves. Outside Italy, slaves were on average an estimated 10 to 20% of the population, sparse in Roman Egypt but more concentrated in some Greek areas. Expanding Roman ownership of arable land and industries affected preexisting practices of slavery in the provinces. Although slavery has often been regarded as waning in the 3rd and 4th centuries, it remained an integral part of Roman society until gradually ceasing in the 6th and 7th centuries with the disintegration of the complex Imperial economy.\nLaws pertaining to slavery were \"extremely intricate\". Slaves were considered property and had no legal personhood. They could be subjected to forms of corporal punishment not normally exercised on citizens, sexual exploitation, torture, and summary execution. A slave could not as a matter of law be raped; a slave's rapist had to be prosecuted by the owner for property damage under the Aquilian Law. Slaves had no right to the form of legal marriage called \"conubium\", but their unions were sometimes recognized. Technically, a slave could not own property, but a slave who conducted business might be given access to an individual fund (\"peculium\") that he could use, depending on the degree of trust and co-operation between owner and slave. Within a household or workplace, a hierarchy of slaves might exist, with one slave acting as the master of others. Talented slaves might accumulate a large enough \"peculium\" to justify their freedom, or be manumitted for services rendered. Manumission had become frequent enough that in 2 BC a law (\"Lex Fufia Caninia\") limited the number of slaves an owner was allowed to free in his will.\nFollowing the Servile Wars of the Republic, legislation under Augustus and his successors shows a driving concern for controlling the threat of rebellions through limiting the size of work groups, and for hunting down fugitive slaves. Over time slaves gained increased legal protection, including the right to file complaints against their masters. A bill of sale might contain a clause stipulating that the slave could not be employed for prostitution, as prostitutes in ancient Rome were often slaves. The burgeoning trade in eunuchs in the late 1st century prompted legislation that prohibited the castration of a slave against his will \"for lust or gain\".\nRoman slavery was not based on race. Generally, slaves in Italy were indigenous Italians, with a minority of foreigners (including both slaves and freedmen) estimated at 5% of the total in the capital at its peak, where their number was largest. Foreign slaves had higher mortality and lower birth rates than natives and were sometimes even subjected to mass expulsions. The average recorded age at death for the slaves of the city of Rome was seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females).\nDuring the period of republican expansionism when slavery had become pervasive, war captives were a main source of slaves. The range of ethnicities among slaves to some extent reflected that of the armies Rome defeated in war, and the conquest of Greece brought a number of highly skilled and educated slaves. Slaves were also traded in markets and sometimes sold by pirates. Infant abandonment and self-enslavement among the poor were other sources. \"Vernae\", by contrast, were \"homegrown\" slaves born to female slaves within the household, estate or farm. Although they had no special legal status, an owner who mistreated or failed to care for his \"vernae\" faced social disapproval, as they were considered part of the family household and in some cases might actually be the children of free males in the family.\nFreedmen.\nRome differed from Greek city-states in allowing freed slaves to become citizens; any future children of a freedman were born free, with full rights of citizenship. After manumission, a slave who had belonged to a Roman citizen enjoyed active political freedom (\"libertas\"), including the right to vote. His former master became his patron (\"patronus\"): the two continued to have customary and legal obligations to each other. A freedman was not entitled to hold public office or the highest state priesthoods, but could play a priestly role. He could not marry a woman from a senatorial family, nor achieve legitimate senatorial rank himself, but during the early Empire, freedmen held key positions in the government bureaucracy, so much so that Hadrian limited their participation by law. The rise of successful freedmen\u2014through political influence or wealth\u2014is a characteristic of early Imperial society. The prosperity of a high-achieving group of freedmen is attested by .\nCensus rank.\nThe Latin word \"ordo\" (plural \"ordines\") is translated variously and inexactly into English as \"class, order, rank\". One purpose of the Roman census was to determine the \"ordo\" to which an individual belonged. Two of the highest \"ordines\" in Rome were the senatorial and equestrian. Outside Rome, cities or colonies were led by decurions, also known as \"curiales.\"\n\"Senator\" was not itself an elected office in ancient Rome; an individual gained admission to the Senate after he had been elected to and served at least one term as an executive magistrate. A senator also had to meet a minimum property requirement of 1 million \"sestertii\". Not all men who qualified for the \"ordo senatorius\" chose to take a Senate seat, which required legal domicile at Rome. Emperors often filled vacancies in the 600-member body by appointment. A senator's son belonged to the \"ordo senatorius\", but he had to qualify on his own merits for admission to the Senate. A senator could be removed for violating moral standards.\nIn the time of Nero, senators were still primarily from Italy, with some from the Iberian peninsula and southern France; men from the Greek-speaking provinces of the East began to be added under Vespasian. The first senator from the easternmost province, Cappadocia, was admitted under Marcus Aurelius. By the Severan dynasty (193\u2013235), Italians made up less than half the Senate. During the 3rd century, domicile at Rome became impractical, and inscriptions attest to senators who were active in politics and munificence in their homeland (\"patria\").\nSenators were the traditional governing class who rose through the \"cursus honorum\", the political career track, but equestrians often possessed greater wealth and political power. Membership in the equestrian order was based on property; in Rome's early days, \"equites\" or knights had been distinguished by their ability to serve as mounted warriors, but cavalry service was a separate function in the Empire. A census valuation of 400,000 sesterces and three generations of free birth qualified a man as an equestrian. The census of 28 BC uncovered large numbers of men who qualified, and in 14 AD, a thousand equestrians were registered at C\u00e1diz and Padua alone. Equestrians rose through a military career track (\"tres militiae\") to become highly placed prefects and procurators within the Imperial administration.\nThe rise of provincial men to the senatorial and equestrian orders is an aspect of social mobility in the early Empire. Roman aristocracy was based on competition, and unlike later European nobility, a Roman family could not maintain its position merely through hereditary succession or having title to lands. Admission to the higher \"ordines\" brought distinction and privileges, but also responsibilities. In antiquity, a city depended on its leading citizens to fund public works, events, and services (\"munera\"). Maintaining one's rank required massive personal expenditures. Decurions were so vital for the functioning of cities that in the later Empire, as the ranks of the town councils became depleted, those who had risen to the Senate were encouraged to return to their hometowns, in an effort to sustain civic life.\nIn the later Empire, the \"dignitas\" (\"worth, esteem\") that attended on senatorial or equestrian rank was refined further with titles such as \"vir illustris\" (\"illustrious man\"). The appellation \"clarissimus\" (Greek \"lamprotatos\") was used to designate the \"dignitas\" of certain senators and their immediate family, including women. \"Grades\" of equestrian status proliferated.\nUnequal justice.\nAs the republican principle of citizens' equality under the law faded, the symbolic and social privileges of the upper classes led to an informal division of Roman society into those who had acquired greater honours (\"honestiores\") and humbler folk (\"humiliores\"). In general, \"honestiores\" were the members of the three higher \"orders\", along with certain military officers. The granting of universal citizenship in 212 seems to have increased the competitive urge among the upper classes to have their superiority affirmed, particularly within the justice system. Sentencing depended on the judgment of the presiding official as to the relative \"worth\" (\"dignitas\") of the defendant: an \"honestior\" could pay a fine for a crime for which an \"humilior\" might receive a scourging.\nExecution, which was an infrequent legal penalty for free men under the Republic, could be quick and relatively painless for \"honestiores\", while \"humiliores\" might suffer the kinds of torturous death previously reserved for slaves, such as crucifixion and condemnation to the beasts. In the early Empire, those who converted to Christianity could lose their standing as \"honestiores\", especially if they declined to fulfil religious responsibilities, and thus became subject to punishments that created the conditions of martyrdom.\nGovernment and military.\nThe three major elements of the Imperial state were the central government, the military, and the provincial government. The military established control of a territory through war, but after a city or people was brought under treaty, the mission turned to policing: protecting Roman citizens, agricultural fields, and religious sites. The Romans lacked sufficient manpower or resources to rule through force alone. Cooperation with local elites was necessary to maintain order, collect information, and extract revenue. The Romans often exploited internal political divisions.\nCommunities with demonstrated loyalty to Rome retained their own laws, could collect their own taxes locally, and in exceptional cases were exempt from Roman taxation. Legal privileges and relative independence incentivized compliance. Roman government was thus limited, but efficient in its use of available resources.\nCentral government.\nThe Imperial cult of ancient Rome identified emperors and some members of their families with divinely sanctioned authority (\"auctoritas\"). The rite of apotheosis (also called \"consecratio\") signified the deceased emperor's deification. The dominance of the emperor was based on the consolidation of powers from several republican offices. The emperor made himself the central religious authority as \"pontifex maximus\", and centralized the right to declare war, ratify treaties, and negotiate with foreign leaders. While these functions were clearly defined during the Principate, the emperor's powers over time became less constitutional and more monarchical, culminating in the Dominate.\nThe emperor was the ultimate authority in policy- and decision-making, but in the early Principate, he was expected to be accessible and deal personally with official business and petitions. A bureaucracy formed around him only gradually. The Julio-Claudian emperors relied on an informal body of advisors that included not only senators and equestrians, but trusted slaves and freedmen. After Nero, the influence of the latter was regarded with suspicion, and the emperor's council (\"consilium\") became subject to official appointment for greater transparency. Though the Senate took a lead in policy discussions until the end of the Antonine dynasty, equestrians played an increasingly important role in the \"consilium\". The women of the emperor's family often intervened directly in his decisions.\nAccess to the emperor might be gained at the daily reception (\"salutatio\"), a development of the traditional homage a client paid to his patron; public banquets hosted at the palace; and religious ceremonies. The common people who lacked this access could manifest their approval or displeasure as a group at games. By the 4th century, the Christian emperors became remote figureheads who issued general rulings, no longer responding to individual petitions. Although the Senate could do little short of assassination and open rebellion to contravene the will of the emperor, it retained its symbolic political centrality. The Senate legitimated the emperor's rule, and the emperor employed senators as legates (\"legati\"): generals, diplomats, and administrators.\nThe practical source of an emperor's power and authority was the military. The legionaries were paid by the Imperial treasury, and swore an annual oath of loyalty to the emperor. Most emperors chose a successor, usually a close family member or adopted heir. The new emperor had to seek a swift acknowledgement of his status and authority to stabilize the political landscape. No emperor could hope to survive without the allegiance of the Praetorian Guard and the legions. To secure their loyalty, several emperors paid the \"donativum\", a monetary reward. In theory, the Senate was entitled to choose the new emperor, but did so mindful of acclamation by the army or Praetorians.\nMilitary.\nAfter the Punic Wars, the Roman army comprised professional soldiers who volunteered for 20 years of active duty and five as reserves. The transition to a professional military began during the late Republic and was one of the many profound shifts away from republicanism, under which an army of conscript citizens defended the homeland against a specific threat. The Romans expanded their war machine by \"organizing the communities that they conquered in Italy into a system that generated huge reservoirs of manpower for their army\". By Imperial times, military service was a full-time career. The pervasiveness of military garrisons throughout the Empire was a major influence in the process of Romanization.\nThe primary mission of the military of the early empire was to preserve the Pax Romana. The three major divisions of the military were:\nThrough his military reforms, which included consolidating or disbanding units of questionable loyalty, Augustus regularized the legion. A legion was organized into ten cohorts, each of which comprised six centuries, with a century further made up of ten squads (\"contubernia\"); the exact size of the Imperial legion, which was likely determined by logistics, has been estimated to range from 4,800 to 5,280. After Germanic tribes wiped out three legions in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, the number of legions was increased from 25 to around 30. The army had about 300,000 soldiers in the 1st century, and under 400,000 in the 2nd, \"significantly smaller\" than the collective armed forces of the conquered territories. No more than 2% of adult males living in the Empire served in the Imperial army. Augustus also created the Praetorian Guard: nine cohorts, ostensibly to maintain the public peace, which were garrisoned in Italy. Better paid than the legionaries, the Praetorians served only sixteen years.\nThe \"auxilia\" were recruited from among the non-citizens. Organized in smaller units of roughly cohort strength, they were paid less than the legionaries, and after 25 years of service were rewarded with Roman citizenship, also extended to their sons. According to Tacitus there were roughly as many auxiliaries as there were legionaries\u2014thus, around 125,000 men, implying approximately 250 auxiliary regiments. The Roman cavalry of the earliest Empire were primarily from Celtic, Hispanic or Germanic areas. Several aspects of training and equipment derived from the Celts.\nThe Roman navy not only aided in the supply and transport of the legions but also in the protection of the frontiers along the rivers Rhine and Danube. Another duty was protecting maritime trade against pirates. It patrolled the Mediterranean, parts of the North Atlantic coasts, and the Black Sea. Nevertheless, the army was considered the senior and more prestigious branch.\nProvincial government.\nAn annexed territory became a Roman province in three steps: making a register of cities, taking a census, and surveying the land. Further government recordkeeping included births and deaths, real estate transactions, taxes, and juridical proceedings. In the 1st and 2nd centuries, the central government sent out around 160 officials annually to govern outside Italy. Among these officials were the Roman governors: magistrates elected at Rome who in the name of the Roman people governed senatorial provinces; or governors, usually of equestrian rank, who held their \"imperium\" on behalf of the emperor in imperial provinces, most notably Roman Egypt. A governor had to make himself accessible to the people he governed, but he could delegate various duties. His staff, however, was minimal: his official attendants (\"apparitores\"), including lictors, heralds, messengers, scribes, and bodyguards; legates, both civil and military, usually of equestrian rank; and friends who accompanied him unofficially.\nOther officials were appointed as supervisors of government finances. Separating fiscal responsibility from justice and administration was a reform of the Imperial era, to avoid provincial governors and tax farmers exploiting local populations for personal gain. Equestrian procurators, whose authority was originally \"extra-judicial and extra-constitutional\", managed both state-owned property and the personal property of the emperor (\"res privata\"). Because Roman government officials were few, a provincial who needed help with a legal dispute or criminal case might seek out any Roman perceived to have some official capacity.\nIn the High Empire, Italy was legally distinguished from the provinces, and along with some favored provincial communities, enjoyed immunity from the property tax and poll tax. However, under the Emperor Diocletian, Italy lost these privileges and was subdivided into provinces.\nLaw.\nRoman courts held original jurisdiction over cases involving Roman citizens throughout the empire, but there were too few judicial functionaries to impose Roman law uniformly in the provinces. Most parts of the Eastern Empire already had well-established law codes and juridical procedures. Generally, it was Roman policy to respect the \"mos regionis\" (\"regional tradition\" or \"law of the land\") and to regard local laws as a source of legal precedent and social stability. The compatibility of Roman and local law was thought to reflect an underlying \"ius gentium\", the \"law of nations\" or international law regarded as common and customary. If provincial law conflicted with Roman law or custom, Roman courts heard appeals, and the emperor held final decision-making authority.\nIn the West, law had been administered on a highly localized or tribal basis, and private property rights may have been a novelty of the Roman era, particularly among Celts. Roman law facilitated the acquisition of wealth by a pro-Roman elite. The extension of universal citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Empire in 212 required the uniform application of Roman law, replacing local law codes that had applied to non-citizens. Diocletian's efforts to stabilize the Empire after the Crisis of the Third Century included two major compilations of law in four years, the \"Codex Gregorianus\" and the \"Codex Hermogenianus\", to guide provincial administrators in setting consistent legal standards.\nThe pervasiveness of Roman law throughout Western Europe enormously influenced the Western legal tradition, reflected by continued use of Latin legal terminology in modern law.\nTaxation.\nTaxation under the Empire amounted to about 5% of its gross product. The typical tax rate for individuals ranged from 2 to 5%. The tax code was \"bewildering\" in its complicated system of direct and indirect taxes, some paid in cash and some in kind. Taxes might be specific to a province, or kinds of properties such as fisheries; they might be temporary. Tax collection was justified by the need to maintain the military, and taxpayers sometimes got a refund if the army captured a surplus of booty. In-kind taxes were accepted from less-monetized areas, particularly those who could supply grain or goods to army camps.\nThe primary source of direct tax revenue was individuals, who paid a poll tax and a tax on their land, construed as a tax on its produce or productive capacity. Tax obligations were determined by the census: each head of household provided a headcount of his household, as well as an accounting of his property. A major source of indirect-tax revenue was the \"portoria\", customs and tolls on trade, including among provinces. Towards the end of his reign, Augustus instituted a 4% tax on the sale of slaves, which Nero shifted from the purchaser to the dealers, who responded by raising their prices. An owner who manumitted a slave paid a \"freedom tax\", calculated at 5% of value. An inheritance tax of 5% was assessed when Roman citizens above a certain net worth left property to anyone outside their immediate family. Revenues from the estate tax and from an auction tax went towards the veterans' pension fund (\"aerarium militare\").\nLow taxes helped the Roman aristocracy increase their wealth, which equalled or exceeded the revenues of the central government. An emperor sometimes replenished his treasury by confiscating the estates of the \"super-rich\", but in the later period, the resistance of the wealthy to paying taxes was one of the factors contributing to the collapse of the Empire.\nEconomy.\nThe Empire is best thought of as a network of regional economies, based on a form of \"political capitalism\" in which the state regulated commerce to assure its own revenues. Economic growth, though not comparable to modern economies, was greater than that of most other societies prior to industrialization. Territorial conquests permitted a large-scale reorganization of land use that resulted in agricultural surplus and specialization, particularly in north Africa. Some cities were known for particular industries. The scale of urban building indicates a significant construction industry. Papyri preserve complex accounting methods that suggest elements of economic rationalism, and the Empire was highly monetized. Although the means of communication and transport were limited in antiquity, transportation in the 1st and 2nd centuries expanded greatly, and trade routes connected regional economies. The supply contracts for the army drew on local suppliers near the base (\"castrum\"), throughout the province, and across provincial borders.\nEconomic historians vary in their calculations of the gross domestic product during the Principate. In the sample years of 14, 100, and 150 AD, estimates of per capita GDP range from 166 to 380 \"HS\". The GDP per capita of Italy is estimated as 40 to 66% higher than in the rest of the Empire, due to tax transfers from the provinces and the concentration of elite income.\nEconomic dynamism resulted in social mobility. Although aristocratic values permeated traditional elite society, wealth requirements for rank indicate a strong tendency towards plutocracy. Prestige could be obtained through investing one's wealth in grand estates or townhouses, luxury items, public entertainments, funerary monuments, and religious dedications. Guilds (\"collegia\") and corporations (\"corpora\") provided support for individuals to succeed through networking. \"There can be little doubt that the lower classes of ... provincial towns of the Roman Empire enjoyed a high standard of living not equaled again in Western Europe until the 19th century\". Households in the top 1.5% of income distribution captured about 20% of income. The \"vast majority\" produced more than half of the total income, but lived near subsistence.\nCurrency and banking.\nThe early Empire was monetized to a near-universal extent, using money as a way to express prices and debts. The \"sestertius\" (English \"sesterces\", symbolized as \"HS\") was the basic unit of reckoning value into the 4th century, though the silver \"denarius\", worth four sesterces, was also used beginning in the Severan dynasty. The smallest coin commonly circulated was the bronze \"as\", one-tenth \"denarius\". Bullion and ingots seem not to have counted as \"pecunia\" (\"money\") and were used only on the frontiers. Romans in the first and second centuries counted coins, rather than weighing them\u2014an indication that the coin was valued on its face. This tendency towards fiat money led to the debasement of Roman coinage in the later Empire. The standardization of money throughout the Empire promoted trade and market integration. The high amount of metal coinage in circulation increased the money supply for trading or saving.\nRome had no central bank, and regulation of the banking system was minimal. Banks of classical antiquity typically kept less in reserves than the full total of customers' deposits. A typical bank had fairly limited capital, and often only one principal. Seneca assumes that anyone involved in Roman commerce needs access to credit. A professional deposit banker received and held deposits for a fixed or indefinite term, and lent money to third parties. The senatorial elite were involved heavily in private lending, both as creditors and borrowers. The holder of a debt could use it as a means of payment by transferring it to another party, without cash changing hands. Although it has sometimes been thought that ancient Rome lacked documentary transactions, the system of banks throughout the Empire permitted the exchange of large sums without physically transferring coins, in part because of the risks of moving large amounts of cash. Only one serious credit shortage is known to have occurred in the early Empire, in 33 AD; generally, available capital exceeded the amount needed by borrowers. The central government itself did not borrow money, and without public debt had to fund deficits from cash reserves.\nEmperors of the Antonine and Severan dynasties debased the currency, particularly the \"denarius\", under the pressures of meeting military payrolls. Sudden inflation under Commodus damaged the credit market. In the mid-200s, the supply of specie contracted sharply. Conditions during the Crisis of the Third Century\u2014such as reductions in long-distance trade, disruption of mining operations, and the physical transfer of gold coinage outside the empire by invading enemies\u2014greatly diminished the money supply and the banking sector. Although Roman coinage had long been fiat money or fiduciary currency, general economic anxieties came to a head under Aurelian, and bankers lost confidence in coins. Despite Diocletian's introduction of the gold \"solidus\" and monetary reforms, the credit market of the Empire never recovered its former robustness.\nMining and metallurgy.\nThe main mining regions of the Empire were the Iberian Peninsula (silver, copper, lead, iron and gold); Gaul (gold, silver, iron); Britain (mainly iron, lead, tin), the Danubian provinces (gold, iron); Macedonia and Thrace (gold, silver); and Asia Minor (gold, silver, iron, tin). Intensive large-scale mining\u2014of alluvial deposits, and by means of open-cast mining and underground mining\u2014took place from the reign of Augustus up to the early 3rd century, when the instability of the Empire disrupted production.\nHydraulic mining allowed base and precious metals to be extracted on a proto-industrial scale. The total annual iron output is estimated at 82,500\u00a0tonnes. Copper and lead production levels were unmatched until the Industrial Revolution. At its peak around the mid-2nd century, the Roman silver stock is estimated at 10,000\u00a0t, five to ten times larger than the combined silver mass of medieval Europe and the Caliphate around 800\u00a0AD. As an indication of the scale of Roman metal production, lead pollution in the Greenland ice sheet quadrupled over prehistoric levels during the Imperial era and dropped thereafter.\nTransportation and communication.\nThe Empire completely encircled the Mediterranean, which they called \"our sea\" (\"Mare Nostrum\"). Roman sailing vessels navigated the Mediterranean as well as major rivers. Transport by water was preferred where possible, as moving commodities by land was more difficult. Vehicles, wheels, and ships indicate the existence of a great number of skilled woodworkers.\nLand transport utilized the advanced system of Roman roads, called \"viae\". These roads were primarily built for military purposes, but also served commercial ends. The in-kind taxes paid by communities included the provision of personnel, animals, or vehicles for the \"cursus publicus\", the state mail and transport service established by Augustus. Relay stations were located along the roads every seven to twelve Roman miles, and tended to grow into villages or trading posts. A \"mansio\" (plural \"mansiones\") was a privately run service station franchised by the imperial bureaucracy for the \"cursus publicus\". The distance between \"mansiones\" was determined by how far a wagon could travel in a day. Carts were usually pulled by mules, travelling about 4\u00a0mph.\nTrade and commodities.\nRoman provinces traded among themselves, but trade extended outside the frontiers to regions as far away as China and India. Chinese trade was mostly conducted overland through middle men along the Silk Road; Indian trade also occurred by sea from Egyptian ports. The main commodity was grain. Also traded were olive oil, foodstuffs, \"garum\" (fish sauce), slaves, ore and manufactured metal objects, fibres and textiles, timber, pottery, glassware, marble, papyrus, spices and \"materia medica\", ivory, pearls, and gemstones. Though most provinces could produce wine, regional varietals were desirable and wine was a central trade good.\nLabour and occupations.\nInscriptions record 268 different occupations in Rome and 85 in Pompeii. Professional associations or trade guilds (\"collegia\") are attested for a wide range of occupations, some quite specialized.\nWork performed by slaves falls into five general categories: domestic, with epitaphs recording at least 55 different household jobs; imperial or public service; urban crafts and services; agriculture; and mining. Convicts provided much of the labour in the mines or quarries, where conditions were notoriously brutal. In practice, there was little division of labour between slave and free, and most workers were illiterate and without special skills. The greatest number of common labourers were employed in agriculture: in Italian industrial farming (\"latifundia\"), these may have been mostly slaves, but elsewhere slave farm labour was probably less important.\nTextile and clothing production was a major source of employment. Both textiles and finished garments were traded and products were often named for peoples or towns, like a fashion \"label\". Better ready-to-wear was exported by local businessmen (\"negotiatores\" or \"mercatores\"). Finished garments might be retailed by their sales agents, by \"vestiarii\" (clothing dealers), or peddled by itinerant merchants. The fullers (\"fullones\") and dye workers (\"coloratores\") had their own guilds. \"Centonarii\" were guild workers who specialized in textile production and the recycling of old clothes into pieced goods.\nArchitecture and engineering.\nThe chief Roman contributions to architecture were the arch, vault, and dome. Some Roman structures still stand today, due in part to sophisticated methods of making cements and concrete. Roman temples developed Etruscan and Greek forms, with some distinctive elements. Roman roads are considered the most advanced built until the early 19th century.\nRoman bridges were among the first large and lasting bridges, built from stone (and in most cases concrete) with the arch as the basic structure. The largest Roman bridge was Trajan's bridge over the lower Danube, constructed by Apollodorus of Damascus, which remained for over a millennium the longest bridge to have been built. The Romans built many dams and reservoirs for water collection, such as the Subiaco Dams, two of which fed the Anio Novus, one of the largest aqueducts of Rome.\nThe Romans constructed numerous aqueducts. \"De aquaeductu\", a treatise by Frontinus, who served as water commissioner, reflects the administrative importance placed on the water supply. Masonry channels carried water along a precise gradient, using gravity alone. It was then collected in tanks and fed through pipes to public fountains, baths, toilets, or industrial sites. The main aqueducts in Rome were the Aqua Claudia and the Aqua Marcia. The complex system built to supply Constantinople had its most distant supply drawn from over 120\u00a0km away along a route of more than 336\u00a0km. Roman aqueducts were built to remarkably fine tolerance, and to a technological standard not equalled until modern times. The Romans also used aqueducts in their extensive mining operations across the empire.\nInsulated glazing (or \"double glazing\") was used in the construction of public baths. Elite housing in cooler climates might have hypocausts, a form of central heating. The Romans were the first culture to assemble all essential components of the much later steam engine: the crank and connecting rod system, Hero's aeolipile (generating steam power), the cylinder and piston (in metal force pumps), non-return valves (in water pumps), and gearing (in water mills and clocks).\nDaily life.\nCity and country.\nThe city was viewed as fostering civilization by being \"properly designed, ordered, and adorned\". Augustus undertook a vast building programme in Rome, supported public displays of art that expressed imperial ideology, and reorganized the city into neighbourhoods \"(vici)\" administered at the local level with police and firefighting services. A focus of Augustan monumental architecture was the Campus Martius, an open area outside the city centre: the Altar of Augustan Peace () was located there, as was an obelisk imported from Egypt that formed the pointer (\"gnomon\") of a horologium. With its public gardens, the Campus was among the most attractive places in Rome to visit.\nCity planning and urban lifestyles was influenced by the Greeks early on, and in the Eastern Empire, Roman rule shaped the development of cities that already had a strong Hellenistic character. Cities such as Athens, Aphrodisias, Ephesus and Gerasa tailored city planning and architecture to imperial ideals, while expressing their individual identity and regional preeminence. In areas inhabited by Celtic-speaking peoples, Rome encouraged the development of urban centres with stone temples, forums, monumental fountains, and amphitheatres, often on or near the sites of preexisting walled settlements known as \"oppida\". Urbanization in Roman Africa expanded on Greek and Punic coastal cities.\nThe network of cities (, \"municipia\", \"civitates\" or in Greek terms \"poleis\") was a primary cohesive force during the Pax Romana. Romans of the 1st and 2nd centuries were encouraged to \"inculcate the habits of peacetime\". As the classicist Clifford Ando noted:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Most of the cultural appurtenances popularly associated with imperial culture\u2014public cult and its games and civic banquets, competitions for artists, speakers, and athletes, as well as the funding of the great majority of public buildings and public display of art\u2014were financed by private individuals, whose expenditures in this regard helped to justify their economic power and legal and provincial privileges.\nIn the city of Rome, most people lived in multistory apartment buildings (\"insulae\") that were often squalid firetraps. Public facilities\u2014such as baths (\"thermae\"), toilets with running water (\"latrinae\"), basins or elaborate fountains (\"nymphea\") delivering fresh water, and large-scale entertainments such as chariot races and gladiator combat\u2014were aimed primarily at the common people. \nThe public baths served hygienic, social and cultural functions. Bathing was the focus of daily socializing. Roman baths were distinguished by a series of rooms that offered communal bathing in three temperatures, with amenities that might include an exercise room, sauna, exfoliation spa, ball court, or outdoor swimming pool. Baths had hypocaust heating: the floors were suspended over hot-air channels. Public baths were part of urban culture throughout the provinces, but in the late 4th century, individual tubs began to replace communal bathing. Christians were advised to go to the baths only for hygiene.\nRich families from Rome usually had two or more houses: a townhouse (\"domus\") and at least one luxury home (\"villa\") outside the city. The \"domus\" was a privately owned single-family house, and might be furnished with a private bath (\"balneum\"), but it was not a place to retreat from public life. Although some neighbourhoods show a higher concentration of such houses, they were not segregated enclaves. The \"domus\" was meant to be visible and accessible. The atrium served as a reception hall in which the \"paterfamilias\" (head of household) met with clients every morning. It was a centre of family religious rites, containing a shrine and images of family ancestors. The houses were located on busy public roads, and ground-level spaces were often rented out as shops (\"tabernae\"). In addition to a kitchen garden\u2014windowboxes might substitute in the \"insulae\"\u2014townhouses typically enclosed a peristyle garden.\nThe villa by contrast was an escape from the city, and in literature represents a lifestyle that balances intellectual and artistic interests (\"otium\") with an appreciation of nature and agriculture. Ideally a villa commanded a view or vista, carefully framed by the architectural design. \nAugustus' programme of urban renewal, and the growth of Rome's population to as many as one million, was accompanied by nostalgia for rural life. Poetry idealized the lives of farmers and shepherds. Interior decorating often featured painted gardens, fountains, landscapes, vegetative ornament, and animals, rendered accurately enough to be identified by species. On a more practical level, the central government took an active interest in supporting agriculture. Producing food was the priority of land use. Larger farms (\"latifundia\") achieved an economy of scale that sustained urban life. Small farmers benefited from the development of local markets in towns and trade centres. Agricultural techniques such as crop rotation and selective breeding were disseminated throughout the Empire, and new crops were introduced from one province to another.\nMaintaining an affordable food supply to the city of Rome had become a major political issue in the late Republic, when the state began to provide a grain dole (Cura Annonae) to citizens who registered for it (about 200,000\u2013250,000 adult males in Rome). The dole cost at least 15% of state revenues, but improved living conditions among the lower classes, and subsidized the rich by allowing workers to spend more of their earnings on the wine and olive oil produced on estates. The grain dole also had symbolic value: it affirmed the emperor's position as universal benefactor, and the right of citizens to share in \"the fruits of conquest\". The \"annona\", public facilities, and spectacular entertainments mitigated the otherwise dreary living conditions of lower-class Romans, and kept social unrest in check. The satirist Juvenal, however, saw \"bread and circuses\" (\"panem et circenses\") as emblematic of the loss of republican political liberty:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The public has long since cast off its cares: the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things: bread and circuses.\nHealth and disease.\nEpidemics were common in the ancient world, and occasional pandemics in the Empire killed millions. The Roman population was unhealthy. About 20 percent\u2014a large percentage by ancient standards\u2014lived in cities, Rome being the largest. The cities were a \"demographic sink\": the death rate exceeded the birth rate and constant immigration was necessary to maintain the population. Average lifespan is estimated at the mid-twenties, and perhaps more than half of children died before reaching adulthood. Dense urban populations and poor sanitation contributed to disease. Land and sea connections facilitated and sped the transfer of infectious diseases across the empire's territories. The rich were not immune; only two of emperor Marcus Aurelius's fourteen children are known to have reached adulthood.\nThe importance of a good diet to health was recognized by medical writers such as Galen (2nd century). Views on nutrition were influenced by beliefs like humoral theory. A good indicator of nutrition and disease burden is average height: the average Roman was shorter in stature than the population of pre-Roman Italian societies and medieval Europe.\nFood and dining.\nMost apartments in Rome lacked kitchens, though a charcoal brazier could be used for rudimentary cookery. Prepared food was sold at pubs and bars, inns, and food stalls (\"tabernae\", \"cauponae\", \"popinae\", \"thermopolia\"). Carryout and restaurants were for the lower classes; fine dining appeared only at dinner parties in wealthy homes with a chef (\"archimagirus\") and kitchen staff, or banquets hosted by social clubs (\"collegia\").\nMost Romans consumed at least 70% of their daily calories in the form of cereals and legumes. \"Puls\" (pottage) was considered the food of the Romans, and could be elaborated to produce dishes similar to polenta or risotto. Urban populations and the military preferred bread. By the reign of Aurelian, the state had begun to distribute the \"annona\" as a daily ration of bread baked in state factories, and added olive oil, wine, and pork to the dole.\nRoman literature focuses on the dining habits of the upper classes, for whom the evening meal (\"cena\") had important social functions. Guests were entertained in a finely decorated dining room (\"triclinium\") furnished with couches. By the late Republic, women dined, reclined, and drank wine along with men. The poet Martial describes a dinner, beginning with the \"gustatio\" (\"tasting\" or \"appetizer\") salad. The main course was kid, beans, greens, a chicken, and leftover ham, followed by a dessert of fruit and wine. Roman \"foodies\" indulged in wild game, fowl such as peacock and flamingo, large fish (mullet was especially prized), and shellfish. Luxury ingredients were imported from the far reaches of empire. A book-length collection of Roman recipes is attributed to Apicius, a name for several figures in antiquity that became synonymous with \"gourmet\".\nRefined cuisine could be moralized as a sign of either civilized progress or decadent decline. Most often, because of the importance of landowning in Roman culture, produce\u2014cereals, legumes, vegetables, and fruit\u2014were considered more civilized foods than meat. The Mediterranean staples of bread, wine, and oil were sacralized by Roman Christianity, while Germanic meat consumption became a mark of paganism. Some philosophers and Christians resisted the demands of the body and the pleasures of food, and adopted fasting as an ideal. Food became simpler in general as urban life in the West diminished and trade routes were disrupted; the Church formally discouraged gluttony, and hunting and pastoralism were seen as simple and virtuous.\nSpectacles.\nWhen Juvenal complained that the Roman people had exchanged their political liberty for \"bread and circuses\", he was referring to the state-provided grain dole and the \"circenses\", events held in the entertainment venue called a \"circus\". The largest such venue in Rome was the Circus Maximus, the setting of horse races, chariot races, the equestrian Troy Game, staged beast hunts (\"venationes\"), athletic contests, gladiator combat, and historical re-enactments. From earliest times, several religious festivals had featured games (\"ludi\"), primarily horse and chariot races (\"ludi circenses\"). The races retained religious significance in connection with agriculture, initiation, and the cycle of birth and death.\nUnder Augustus, public entertainments were presented on 77 days of the year; by the reign of Marcus Aurelius, this had expanded to 135. Circus games were preceded by an elaborate parade (\"pompa circensis\") that ended at the venue. Competitive events were held also in smaller venues such as the amphitheatre, which became the characteristic Roman spectacle venue, and stadium. Greek-style athletics included footraces, boxing, wrestling, and the pancratium. Aquatic displays, such as the mock sea battle (\"naumachia\") and a form of \"water ballet\", were presented in engineered pools. State-supported theatrical events (\"ludi scaenici\") took place on temple steps or in grand stone theatres, or in the smaller enclosed theatre called an \"odeon\".\nCircuses were the largest structure regularly built in the Roman world. The Flavian Amphitheatre, better known as the Colosseum, became the regular arena for blood sports in Rome. Many Roman amphitheatres, circuses and theatres built in cities outside Italy are visible as ruins today. The local ruling elite were responsible for sponsoring spectacles and arena events, which both enhanced their status and drained their resources. The physical arrangement of the amphitheatre represented the order of Roman society: the emperor in his opulent box; senators and equestrians in reserved advantageous seats; women seated at a remove from the action; slaves given the worst places, and everybody else in-between. The crowd could call for an outcome by booing or cheering, but the emperor had the final say. Spectacles could quickly become sites of social and political protest, and emperors sometimes had to deploy force to put down crowd unrest, most notoriously at the Nika riots in 532.\nThe chariot teams were known by the colours they wore. Fan loyalty was fierce and at times erupted into sports riots. Racing was perilous, but charioteers were among the most celebrated and well-compensated athletes. Circuses were designed to ensure that no team had an unfair advantage and to minimize collisions (\"naufragia\"), which were nonetheless frequent and satisfying to the crowd. The races retained a magical aura through their early association with chthonic rituals: circus images were considered protective or lucky, curse tablets have been found buried at the site of racetracks, and charioteers were often suspected of sorcery. Chariot racing continued into the Byzantine period under imperial sponsorship, but the decline of cities in the 6th and 7th centuries led to its eventual demise.\nThe Romans thought gladiator contests had originated with funeral games and sacrifices. Some of the earliest styles of gladiator fighting had ethnic designations such as \"Thracian\" or \"Gallic\". The staged combats were considered , \"services, offerings, benefactions\", initially distinct from the festival games (\"ludi\"). To mark the opening of the Colosseum, Titus presented 100 days of arena events, with 3,000 gladiators competing on a single day. Roman fascination with gladiators is indicated by how widely they are depicted on mosaics, wall paintings, lamps, and in graffiti. Gladiators were trained combatants who might be slaves, convicts, or free volunteers. Death was not a necessary or even desirable outcome in matches between these highly skilled fighters, whose training was costly and time-consuming. By contrast, \"noxii\" were convicts sentenced to the arena with little or no training, often unarmed, and with no expectation of survival; physical suffering and humiliation were considered appropriate retributive justice. These executions were sometimes staged or ritualized as re-enactments of myths, and amphitheatres were equipped with elaborate stage machinery to create special effects.\nModern scholars have found the pleasure Romans took in the \"theatre of life and death\" difficult to understand. Pliny the Younger rationalized gladiator spectacles as good for the people, \"to inspire them to face honourable wounds and despise death, by exhibiting love of glory and desire for victory\". Some Romans such as Seneca were critical of the brutal spectacles, but found virtue in the courage and dignity of the defeated fighter\u2014an attitude that finds its fullest expression with the Christians martyred in the arena. Tertullian considered deaths in the arena to be nothing more than a dressed-up form of human sacrifice. Even martyr literature, however, offers \"detailed, indeed luxuriant, descriptions of bodily suffering\", and became a popular genre at times indistinguishable from fiction.\nRecreation.\nThe singular \"ludus\", \"play, game, sport, training\", had a wide range of meanings such as \"word play\", \"theatrical performance\", \"board game\", \"primary school\", and even \"gladiator training school\" (as in \"Ludus Magnus\"). Activities for children and young people in the Empire included hoop rolling and knucklebones (\"astragali\" or \"jacks\"). Girls had dolls made of wood, terracotta, and especially bone and ivory. Ball games include trigon and harpastum. People of all ages played board games, including \"latrunculi\" (\"Raiders\") and \"XII scripta\" (\"Twelve Marks\"). A game referred to as \"alea\" (dice) or \"tabula\" (the board) may have been similar to backgammon. Dicing as a form of gambling was disapproved of, but was a popular pastime during the festival of the Saturnalia.\nAfter adolescence, most physical training for males was of a military nature. The Campus Martius originally was an exercise field where young men learned horsemanship and warfare. Hunting was also considered an appropriate pastime. According to Plutarch, conservative Romans disapproved of Greek-style athletics that promoted a fine body for its own sake, and condemned Nero's efforts to encourage Greek-style athletic games. Some women trained as gymnasts and dancers, and a rare few as female gladiators. The \"Bikini Girls\" mosaic shows young women engaging in routines comparable to rhythmic gymnastics. Women were encouraged to maintain health through activities such as playing ball, swimming, walking, or reading aloud (as a breathing exercise).\nClothing.\nIn a status-conscious society like that of the Romans, clothing and personal adornment indicated the etiquette of interacting with the wearer. Wearing the correct clothing reflected a society in good order. There is little direct evidence of how Romans dressed in daily life, since portraiture may show the subject in clothing with symbolic value, and surviving textiles are rare.\nThe toga was the distinctive national garment of the male citizen, but it was heavy and impractical, worn mainly for conducting political or court business and religious rites. It was a \"vast expanse\" of semi-circular white wool that could not be put on and draped correctly without assistance. The drapery became more intricate and structured over time. The \"toga praetexta\", with a purple or purplish-red stripe representing inviolability, was worn by children who had not come of age, curule magistrates, and state priests. Only the emperor could wear an all-purple toga (\"toga picta\").\nOrdinary clothing was dark or colourful. The basic garment for all Romans, regardless of gender or wealth, was the simple sleeved tunic, with length differing by wearer. The tunics of poor people and labouring slaves were made from coarse wool in natural, dull shades; finer tunics were made of lightweight wool or linen. A man of the senatorial or equestrian order wore a tunic with two purple stripes (\"clavi\") woven vertically: the wider the stripe, the higher the wearer's status. Other garments could be layered over the tunic. Common male attire also included cloaks, and in some regions, trousers. In the 2nd century, emperors and elite men are often portrayed wearing the pallium, an originally Greek mantle; women are also portrayed in the pallium. Tertullian considered the pallium an appropriate garment both for Christians, in contrast to the toga, and for educated people.\nRoman clothing styles changed over time. In the Dominate, clothing worn by both soldiers and bureaucrats became highly decorated with geometrical patterns, stylized plant motifs, and in more elaborate examples, human or animal figures. Courtiers of the later Empire wore elaborate silk robes. The militarization of Roman society, and the waning of urban life, affected fashion: heavy military-style belts were worn by bureaucrats as well as soldiers, and the toga was abandoned, replaced by the pallium as a garment embodying social unity.\nArts.\nGreek art had a profound influence on Roman art. Public art\u2014including sculpture, monuments such as victory columns or triumphal arches, and the iconography on coins\u2014is often analysed for historical or ideological significance. In the private sphere, artistic objects were made for religious dedications, funerary commemoration, domestic use, and commerce. The wealthy advertised their appreciation of culture through artwork and decorative arts in their homes. Despite the value placed on art, even famous artists were of low social status, partly as they worked with their hands.\nPortraiture.\nPortraiture, which survives mainly in sculpture, was the most copious form of imperial art. Portraits during the Augustan period utilize classical proportions, evolving later into a mixture of realism and idealism. Republican portraits were characterized by verism, but as early as the 2nd century BC, Greek heroic nudity was adopted for conquering generals. Imperial portrait sculptures may model a mature head atop a youthful nude or semi-nude body with perfect musculature. Clothed in the toga or military regalia, the body communicates rank or role, not individual characteristics. \nPortraiture in painting is represented primarily by the Fayum mummy portraits, which evoke Egyptian and Roman traditions of commemorating the dead with realistic painting. Marble portrait sculpture were painted, but traces have rarely survived.\nSculpture and sarcophagi.\nExamples of Roman sculpture survive abundantly, though often in damaged or fragmentary condition, including freestanding statuary in marble, bronze and terracotta, and reliefs from public buildings and monuments. Niches in amphitheatres were originally filled with statues, as were formal gardens. Temples housed cult images of deities, often by famed sculptors.\nElaborately carved marble and limestone sarcophagi are characteristic of the 2nd to 4th centuries. Sarcophagus relief has been called the \"richest single source of Roman iconography\", depicting mythological scenes or Jewish/Christian imagery as well as the deceased's life.\nPainting.\nInitial Roman painting drew from Etruscan and Greek models and techniques. Examples of Roman paintings can be found in palaces, catacombs and villas. Much of what is known of Roman painting is from the interior decoration of private homes, particularly as preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius. In addition to decorative borders and panels with geometric or vegetative motifs, wall painting depicts scenes from mythology and theatre, landscapes and gardens, spectacles, everyday life, and erotic art.\nMosaic.\nMosaics are among the most enduring of Roman decorative arts, and are found on floors and other architectural features. The most common is the tessellated mosaic, formed from uniform pieces \"(tesserae)\" of materials such as stone and glass. \"Opus sectile\" is a related technique in which flat stone, usually coloured marble, is cut precisely into shapes from which geometric or figurative patterns are formed. This more difficult technique became especially popular for luxury surfaces in the 4th century (e.g. the Basilica of Junius Bassus).\nFigurative mosaics share many themes with painting, and in some cases use almost identical compositions. Geometric patterns and mythological scenes occur throughout the Empire. In North Africa, a particularly rich source of mosaics, homeowners often chose scenes of life on their estates, hunting, agriculture, and local wildlife. Plentiful and major examples of Roman mosaics come also from present-day Turkey (particularly the (Antioch mosaics), Italy, southern France, Spain, and Portugal.\nDecorative arts.\nDecorative arts for luxury consumers included fine pottery, silver and bronze vessels and implements, and glassware. Pottery manufacturing was economically important, as were the glass and metalworking industries. Imports stimulated new regional centres of production. Southern Gaul became a leading producer of the finer red-gloss pottery (\"terra sigillata\") that was a major trade good in 1st-century Europe. Glassblowing was regarded by the Romans as originating in Syria in the 1st century BC, and by the 3rd century, Egypt and the Rhineland had become noted for fine glass.\nPerforming arts.\nIn Roman tradition, borrowed from the Greeks, literary theatre was performed by all-male troupes that used face masks with exaggerated facial expressions to portray emotion. Female roles were played by men in drag (\"travesti\"). Roman literary theatre tradition is represented in Latin literature by the tragedies of Seneca, for example.\nMore popular than literary theatre was the genre-defying \"mimus\" theatre, which featured scripted scenarios with free improvisation, risqu\u00e9 language and sex scenes, action sequences, and political satire, along with dance, juggling, acrobatics, tightrope walking, striptease, and dancing bears. Unlike literary theatre, \"mimus\" was played without masks, and encouraged stylistic realism. Female roles were performed by women. \"Mimus\" was related to \"pantomimus\", an early form of story ballet that contained no spoken dialogue but rather a sung libretto, often mythological, either tragic or comic.\nAlthough sometimes regarded as foreign, music and dance existed in Rome from earliest times. Music was customary at funerals, and the \"tibia\", a woodwind instrument, was played at sacrifices. Song \"(carmen)\" was integral to almost every social occasion. Music was thought to reflect the orderliness of the cosmos. Various woodwinds and \"brass\" instruments were played, as were stringed instruments such as the \"cithara\", and percussion. The \"cornu\", a long tubular metal wind instrument, was used for military signals and on parade. These instruments spread throughout the provinces and are widely depicted in Roman art. The hydraulic pipe organ \"(hydraulis)\" was \"one of the most significant technical and musical achievements of antiquity\", and accompanied gladiator games and events in the amphitheatre. Although certain dances were seen at times as non-Roman or unmanly, dancing was embedded in religious rituals of archaic Rome. Ecstatic dancing was a feature of the mystery religions, particularly the cults of Cybele and Isis. In the secular realm, dancing girls from Syria and Cadiz were extremely popular.\nLike gladiators, entertainers were legally \"infames\", technically free but little better than slaves. \"Stars\", however, could enjoy considerable wealth and celebrity, and mingled socially and often sexually with the elite. Performers supported each other by forming guilds, and several memorials for theatre members survive. Theatre and dance were often condemned by Christian polemicists in the later Empire.\nLiteracy, books, and education.\nEstimates of the average literacy rate range from 5 to over 30%. The Roman obsession with documents and inscriptions indicates the value placed on the written word. Laws and edicts were posted as well as read out. Illiterate Roman subjects could have a government scribe (\"scriba\") read or write their official documents for them. The military produced extensive written records. The Babylonian Talmud declared \"if all seas were ink, all reeds were pen, all skies parchment, and all men scribes, they would be unable to set down the full scope of the Roman government's concerns\".\nNumeracy was necessary for commerce. Slaves were numerate and literate in significant numbers; some were highly educated. Graffiti and low-quality inscriptions with misspellings and solecisms indicate casual literacy among non-elites.\nThe Romans had an extensive priestly archive, and inscriptions appear throughout the Empire in connection with votives dedicated by ordinary people, as well as \"magic spells\" (e.g. the Greek Magical Papyri).\nBooks were expensive, since each copy had to be written out on a papyrus roll (\"volumen\") by scribes. The codex\u2014pages bound to a spine\u2014was still a novelty in the 1st century, but by the end of the 3rd century was replacing the \"volumen\". Commercial book production was established by the late Republic, and by the 1st century certain neighbourhoods of Rome and Western provincial cities were known for their bookshops. The quality of editing varied wildly, and plagiarism or forgery were common, since there was no copyright law.\nCollectors amassed personal libraries, and a fine library was part of the cultivated leisure (\"otium\") associated with the villa lifestyle. Significant collections might attract \"in-house\" scholars, and an individual benefactor might endow a community with a library (as Pliny the Younger did in Comum). Imperial libraries were open to users on a limited basis, and represented a literary canon. Books considered subversive might be publicly burned, and Domitian crucified copyists for reproducing works deemed treasonous.\nLiterary texts were often shared aloud at meals or with reading groups. Public readings (\"recitationes\") expanded from the 1st through the 3rd century, giving rise to \"consumer literature\" for entertainment. Illustrated books, including erotica, were popular, but are poorly represented by extant fragments.\nLiteracy began to decline during the Crisis of the Third Century. The emperor Julian banned Christians from teaching the classical curriculum, but the Church Fathers and other Christians adopted Latin and Greek literature, philosophy and science in biblical interpretation. As the Western Roman Empire declined, reading became rarer even for those within the Church hierarchy, although it continued in the Byzantine Empire.\nEducation.\nTraditional Roman education was moral and practical. Stories were meant to instil Roman values (\"mores maiorum\"). Parents were expected to act as role models, and working parents passed their skills to their children, who might also enter apprenticeships. Young children were attended by a pedagogue, usually a Greek slave or former slave, who kept the child safe, taught self-discipline and public behaviour, attended class and helped with tutoring.\nFormal education was available only to families who could pay for it; lack of state support contributed to low literacy. Primary education in reading, writing, and arithmetic might take place at home if parents hired or bought a teacher. Other children attended \"public\" schools organized by a schoolmaster (\"ludimagister\") paid by parents. \"Vernae\" (homeborn slave children) might share in-home or public schooling. Boys and girls received primary education generally from ages 7 to 12, but classes were not segregated by grade or age. Most schools employed corporal punishment. For the socially ambitious, education in Greek as well as Latin was necessary. Schools became more numerous during the Empire, increasing educational opportunities.\nAt the age of 14, upperclass males made their rite of passage into adulthood, and began to learn leadership roles through mentoring from a senior family member or family friend. Higher education was provided by \"grammatici\" or \"rhetores\". The \"grammaticus\" or \"grammarian\" taught mainly Greek and Latin literature, with history, geography, philosophy or mathematics treated as explications of the text. With the rise of Augustus, contemporary Latin authors such as Virgil and Livy also became part of the curriculum. The \"rhetor\" was a teacher of oratory or public speaking. The art of speaking (\"ars dicendi\") was highly prized, and \"eloquentia\" (\"speaking ability, eloquence\") was considered the \"glue\" of civilized society. Rhetoric was not so much a body of knowledge (though it required a command of the literary canon) as it was a mode of expression that distinguished those who held social power. The ancient model of rhetorical training\u2014\"restraint, coolness under pressure, modesty, and good humour\"\u2014endured into the 18th century as a Western educational ideal.\nIn Latin, \"illiteratus\" could mean both \"unable to read and write\" and \"lacking in cultural awareness or sophistication\". Higher education promoted career advancement. Urban elites throughout the Empire shared a literary culture imbued with Greek educational ideals (\"paideia\"). Hellenistic cities sponsored schools of higher learning to express cultural achievement. Young Roman men often went abroad to study rhetoric and philosophy, mostly to Athens. The curriculum in the East was more likely to include music and physical training. On the Hellenistic model, Vespasian endowed chairs of grammar, Latin and Greek rhetoric, and philosophy at Rome, and gave secondary teachers special exemptions from taxes and legal penalties. In the Eastern Empire, Berytus (present-day Beirut) was unusual in offering a Latin education, and became famous for its school of Roman law. The cultural movement known as the Second Sophistic (1st\u20133rd century AD) promoted the assimilation of Greek and Roman social, educational, and esthetic values.\nLiterate women ranged from cultured aristocrats to girls trained to be calligraphers and scribes. The ideal woman in Augustan love poetry was educated and well-versed in the arts. Education seems to have been standard for daughters of the senatorial and equestrian orders. An educated wife was an asset for the socially ambitious household.\nLiterature.\nLiterature under Augustus, along with that of the Republic, has been viewed as the \"Golden Age\" of Latin literature, embodying classical ideals. The three most influential Classical Latin poets\u2014Virgil, Horace, and Ovid\u2014belong to this period. Virgil's \"Aeneid\" was a national epic in the manner of the Homeric epics of Greece. Horace perfected the use of Greek lyric metres in Latin verse. Ovid's erotic poetry was enormously popular, but ran afoul of Augustan morality, contributing to his exile. Ovid's \"Metamorphoses\" wove together Greco-Roman mythology; his versions of Greek myths became a primary source of later classical mythology, and his work was hugely influential on medieval literature. The early Principate produced satirists such as Persius and Juvenal.\nThe mid-1st through mid-2nd century has conventionally been called the \"Silver Age\" of Latin literature. The three leading writers\u2014Seneca, Lucan, and Petronius\u2014committed suicide after incurring Nero's displeasure. Epigrammatist and social observer Martial and the epic poet Statius, whose poetry collection \"Silvae\" influenced Renaissance literature, wrote during the reign of Domitian. Other authors of the Silver Age included Pliny the Elder, author of the encyclopedic \"Natural History\"; his nephew, Pliny the Younger; and the historian Tacitus.\nThe principal Latin prose author of the Augustan age is the historian Livy, whose account of Rome's founding became the most familiar version in modern-era literature. \"The Twelve Caesars\" by Suetonius is a primary source for imperial biography. Among Imperial historians who wrote in Greek are Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Josephus, and Cassius Dio. Other major Greek authors of the Empire include the biographer Plutarch, the geographer Strabo, and the rhetorician and satirist Lucian.\nFrom the 2nd to the 4th centuries, Christian authors were in active dialogue with the classical tradition. Tertullian was one of the earliest prose authors with a distinctly Christian voice. After the conversion of Constantine, Latin literature is dominated by the Christian perspective. In the late 4th century, Jerome produced the Latin translation of the Bible that became authoritative as the Vulgate. Around that same time, Augustine wrote \"The City of God against the Pagans\", considered \"a masterpiece of Western culture\".\nIn contrast to the unity of Classical Latin, the literary esthetic of late antiquity has a tessellated quality. A continuing interest in the religious traditions of Rome prior to Christian dominion is found into the 5th century, with the \"Saturnalia\" of Macrobius and \"The Marriage of Philology and Mercury\" of Martianus Capella. Latin poets of late antiquity include Ausonius, Prudentius, Claudian, and Sidonius Apollinaris.\nReligion.\nThe Romans thought of themselves as highly religious, and attributed their success to their collective piety (\"pietas\") and good relations with the gods (\"pax deorum\"). The archaic religion believed to have come from the earliest kings of Rome was the foundation of the \"mos maiorum\", \"the way of the ancestors\", central to Roman identity.\nRoman religion was practical and contractual, based on the principle of \"do ut des\", \"I give that you might give\". Religion depended on knowledge and the correct practice of prayer, ritual, and sacrifice, not on faith or dogma, although Latin literature preserves learned speculation on the nature of the divine. For ordinary Romans, religion was a part of daily life. Each home had a household shrine to offer prayers and libations to the family's domestic deities. Neighbourhood shrines and sacred places such as springs and groves dotted the city. The Roman calendar was structured around religious observances; as many as 135 days were devoted to religious festivals and games (\"ludi\").\nIn the wake of the Republic's collapse, state religion adapted to support the new regime. Augustus justified one-man rule with a vast programme of religious revivalism and reform. Public vows now were directed at the wellbeing of the emperor. So-called \"emperor worship\" expanded on a grand scale the traditional veneration of the ancestral dead and of the \"Genius\", the divine tutelary of every individual. Upon death, an emperor could be made a state divinity (\"divus\") by vote of the Senate. The Roman imperial cult, influenced by Hellenistic ruler cult, became one of the major ways Rome advertised its presence in the provinces and cultivated shared cultural identity. Cultural precedent in the Eastern provinces facilitated a rapid dissemination of Imperial cult, extending as far as Najran, in present-day Saudi Arabia. Rejection of the state religion became tantamount to treason.\nThe Romans are known for the great number of deities they honoured. As the Romans extended their territories, their general policy was to promote stability among diverse peoples by absorbing local deities and cults rather than eradicating them, building temples that framed local theology within Roman religion. Inscriptions throughout the Empire record the side-by-side worship of local and Roman deities, including dedications made by Romans to local gods. By the height of the Empire, numerous syncretic or reinterpreted gods were cultivated, among them cults of Cybele, Isis, Epona, and of solar gods such as Mithras and Sol Invictus, found as far north as Roman Britain. Because Romans had never been obligated to cultivate one god or cult only, religious tolerance was not an issue.\nMystery religions, which offered initiates salvation in the afterlife, were a matter of personal choice, practiced in addition to one's family rites and public religion. The mysteries, however, involved exclusive oaths and secrecy, which conservative Romans viewed with suspicion as characteristic of \"magic\", conspiracy (\"coniuratio\"), and subversive activity. Thus, sporadic and sometimes brutal attempts were made to suppress religionists. In Gaul, the power of the druids was checked, first by forbidding Roman citizens to belong to the order, and then by banning druidism altogether. However, Celtic traditions were reinterpreted within the context of Imperial theology, and a new Gallo-Roman religion coalesced; its capital at the Sanctuary of the Three Gauls established precedent for Western cult as a form of Roman-provincial identity. The monotheistic rigour of Judaism posed difficulties for Roman policy that led at times to compromise and granting of special exemptions. Tertullian noted that Judaism, unlike Christianity, was considered a \"religio licita\", \"legitimate religion\". The Jewish\u2013Roman wars resulted from political as well as religious conflicts; the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD led to the sacking of the Second Temple and the dispersal of Jewish political power (see Jewish diaspora).\nChristianity emerged in Roman Judaea as a Jewish religious sect in the 1st century and gradually spread out of Jerusalem throughout the Empire and beyond. Imperially authorized persecutions were limited and sporadic, with martyrdoms occurring most often under the authority of local officials. Tacitus reports that after the Great Fire of Rome in AD\u00a064, the emperor attempted to deflect blame from himself onto the Christians. A major persecution occurred under the emperor Domitian and a persecution in 177 took place at Lugdunum, the Gallo-Roman religious capital. A letter from Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia, describes his persecution and executions of Christians. The Decian persecution of 246\u2013251 seriously threatened the Christian Church, but ultimately strengthened Christian defiance. Diocletian undertook the most severe persecution of Christians, from 303 to 311.\nFrom the 2nd century onward, the Church Fathers condemned the diverse religions practiced throughout the Empire as \"pagan\". In the early 4th century, Constantine I became the first emperor to convert to Christianity. He supported the Church financially and made laws that favored it, but the new religion was already successful, having moved from less than 50,000 to over a million adherents between 150 and 250. Constantine and his successors banned public sacrifice while tolerating other traditional practices. Constantine never engaged in a purge, there were no \"pagan martyrs\" during his reign, and people who had not converted to Christianity remained in important positions at court. Julian attempted to revive traditional public sacrifice and Hellenistic religion, but met Christian resistance and lack of popular support.\nChristians of the 4th century believed the conversion of Constantine showed that Christianity had triumphed over paganism (in Heaven) and little further action besides such rhetoric was necessary. Thus, their focus shifted towards heresy. According to Peter Brown, \"In most areas, polytheists were not molested, and apart from a few ugly incidents of local violence, Jewish communities also enjoyed a century of stable, even privileged, existence\". There were anti-pagan laws, but they were not generally enforced; through the 6th century, centers of paganism existed in Athens, Gaza, Alexandria, and elsewhere.\nAccording to recent Jewish scholarship, toleration of the Jews was maintained under Christian emperors. This did not extend to heretics: Theodosius I made multiple laws and acted against alternate forms of Christianity, and heretics were persecuted and killed by both the government and the church throughout Late Antiquity. Non-Christians were not persecuted until the 6th century. Rome's original religious hierarchy and ritual influenced Christian forms, and many pre-Christian practices survived in Christian festivals and local traditions.\nLegacy.\nSeveral states claimed to be the Roman Empire's successor. The Holy Roman Empire was established in 800 when Pope Leo\u00a0III crowned Charlemagne as Roman emperor. The Russian Tsardom, as inheritor of the Byzantine Empire's Orthodox Christian tradition, counted itself the Third Rome (Constantinople having been the second), in accordance with the concept of translatio imperii. The last Eastern Roman titular, Andreas Palaiologos, sold the title of Emperor of Constantinople to Charles VIII of France; upon Charles' death, Palaiologos reclaimed the title and on his death granted it to Ferdinand and Isabella and their successors, who never used it. When the Ottomans, who based their state on the Byzantine model, took Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed\u00a0II established his capital there and claimed to sit on the throne of the Roman Empire. He even launched an invasion of Otranto with the purpose of re-uniting the Empire, which was aborted by his death. In the medieval West, \"Roman\" came to mean the church and the Catholic Pope. The Greek form Romaioi remained attached to the Greek-speaking Christian population of the Byzantine Empire and is still used by Greeks.\nThe Roman Empire's control of the Italian Peninsula influenced Italian nationalism and the unification of Italy (\"Risorgimento\") in 1861. \nIn the United States, the founders were educated in the classical tradition, and used classical models for landmarks in Washington, D.C.. The founders saw Athenian democracy and Roman republicanism as models for the mixed constitution, but regarded the emperor as a figure of tyranny.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nstyle=\"width:100%\"", "28084921": "Ablabius (consul)\nRoman politician\nFlavius Ablabius or Ablavius (; fl. 4th century AD, died 338) was a high official of the Roman Empire and contemporary of Emperor Constantine I (r. 306\u2013337). and tutor to his son, Constantius II.\nFamily and early life.\nAblabius was a Greek from the island of Crete and a man of humble birth. When his mother was pregnant with him, she allegedly received a prophecy from an Egyptian astrologer about him, that she would almost have borne an emperor. His date of birth is unknown, the identities of his parents are unknown, and it is unknown whether he had any siblings or relatives and his early life is largely a mystery. Ablabius was of a non-aristocratic and non-senatorial background. Ablabius was at birth a pagan who converted later to Christianity and became one of the officials of the Roman governor of Crete. At some point, he left Crete and travelled to Constantinople to make his fortune.\nConstantine I and his family.\nAfter arriving at Constantinople, Ablabius by chance acquired great influence over the Roman emperor Constantine I and became one of the most important senators of Constantinople. Ablabius served as \"vicarius\" of the Diocese of Asia, held the praetorian prefecture of the East from 329 to 337/338, and served as ordinary consul in 331. Ablabius was active in the Roman East and West and during his political career, he was based at Antioch.\nConsidering his provincial background, Ablabius seemed to be attached to Constantine I, making him one of a small number of Easterners who held high offices throughout the Roman Empire. Ablabius convinced Constantine that the failure of grain supplies to arrive at Constantinople had been caused by the magical arts of the pagan sage Sopater of Apamea, who had verbally attacked the emperor and Ablabius for their dissolute behavior. Constantine followed the advice of Ablabius and had Sopater put to death. In 333, Constantine addressed a letter to Ablabius which is still preserved, in which he decreed that each party in a trial could appeal to a bishop's judgment.\nIn 336, Constantine ordered a Greek inscription carved on a pedestal of a statue representing himself in Antioch, where Ablabius is named with his fellow senators Lucius Papius Pacatianus, Valerius Felix, Annius Tiberianus and Nestorius Timonianus. Constantine also made Ablabius tutor and preceptor of his son Constantius II. When Constantine died in May 337, Constantius succeeded him. Later in 337, Ablabius sided with Athanasius of Alexandria, the Nicene Bishop of Alexandria who had powerful enemies at the court of the pro-Arian Constantius. Due to Ablabius\u2019 support for Athanasius, Constantius dismissed him from the imperial court, and Ablabius retired to his estates in Bithynia. In 338, Constantius condemned Ablabius to death following false accusations of intending to usurp the throne; the emperor had him executed in front of his own house. His house in Constantinople later belonged to the Empress Galla Placidia.\nFamily.\nAblabius had married an unnamed noblewoman by whom he had two known children: \nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["28084921", "25507", "30570"], "permutation_1": ["30570", "25507", "28084921"], "permutation_2": ["25507", "28084921", "30570"], "permutation_3": ["30570", "28084921", "25507"]}
{"id": "3hop2__30796_311440_24137", "docs_added": {"5541595": "Edward Deering Mansfield\nAmerican author (1801\u20131880)\nEdward Deering Mansfield (August 17, 1801 \u2014October 27, 1880), was an American lawyer, journalist and writer.\nBiography.\nMansfield was born in New Haven, Connecticut, son of Jared Mansfield. He graduated from West Point in 1818, but declined to enter the army and studied at Princeton, from which he graduated in 1822. In 1825 he was admitted to the Connecticut bar. He afterward removed to Cincinnati, and in 1836 became professor of constitutional law at Cincinnati College. Shortly afterward, however, he abandoned the legal profession to engage in journalism, and edited successively the Cincinnati \"Chronicle\" (1836\u201349), \"Atlas\" (1849\u201352), and \"Railroad Record\" (1854\u201372). While editing the \"Chronicle\" and \"Atlas\" he introduced many young writers to the public, among whom was Harriet Beecher Stowe. He was Commissioner of Statistics for the State of Ohio from 1859 to 1868 and was a member of the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 fran\u00e7aise de statistique universelle. He published:\nMansfield died at his country home called \"Yamoyden\" near Morrow, Ohio.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "53825": "New Haven, Connecticut\nNew Haven is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is the third largest city in Connecticut after Bridgeport and Stamford, the largest city in the South Central Connecticut Planning Region, and the principal municipality of Greater New Haven, which had a total population of 864,835 in 2020.\nNew Haven was one of the first planned cities in the U.S. A year after its founding by English Puritans in 1638, eight streets were laid out in a four-by-four grid, creating the \"Nine Square Plan\". The central common block is the New Haven Green, a square at the center of Downtown New Haven. The Green is now a National Historic Landmark, and the \"Nine Square Plan\" is recognized by the American Planning Association as a National Planning Landmark.\nNew Haven is the home of Yale University, New Haven's biggest taxpayer and employer, and an integral part of the city's economy. Health care, professional and financial services and retail trade also contribute to the city's economic activity.\nThe city served as co-capital of Connecticut from 1701 until 1873, when sole governance was transferred to the more centrally located city of Hartford. New Haven has since billed itself as the \"Cultural Capital of Connecticut\" for its supply of established theaters, museums, and music venues. New Haven had the first public tree planting program in the U.S., producing a canopy of mature trees (including some large elms) that gave the city the nickname \"The Elm City\".\nHistory.\nPre-colonial foundation as an independent colony.\nBefore Europeans arrived, the New Haven area was the home of the Quinnipiac tribe of Native Americans, who lived in villages around the harbor and sustained an economy of local fisheries and the farming of maize. The area was briefly visited by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block in 1614. Dutch traders set up a small trading system of beaver pelts with the local inhabitants, but trade was sporadic and the Dutch did not settle permanently in the area.\nIn 1637, a small party of Puritans did a reconnaissance of the New Haven harbor area and wintered over. In April 1638, the main party of five hundred Puritans, who had left the Massachusetts Bay Colony under the leadership of Reverend John Davenport and London merchant Theophilus Eaton, sailed into the harbor. It was their hope to set up a theological community with the government more closely linked to the church than that in Massachusetts, and to exploit the area's potential as a port. The Quinnipiacs, who were under attack by neighboring Pequots, sold their land to the settlers in return for a pledge of protection.\nBy 1640, \"Quinnipiac's\" theocratic government and nine-square grid plan were in place, and the town was renamed New Haven, with 'haven' meaning harbor or port. However, the area to the north remained Quinnipiac until 1678, when it was renamed Hamden. The settlement became the headquarters of the New Haven Colony, distinct from the Connecticut Colony previously established to the north centering on Hartford. Reflecting its theocratic roots, the New Haven Colony forbade the establishment of other churches, whereas the Connecticut Colony permitted them.\nEconomic disaster struck New Haven in 1646, when the town sent its first fully loaded ship of local goods (the \"Great Shippe\") back to England. It never reached its destination, and its disappearance hindered New Haven's development as compared to the rising trade powers of Boston and New Amsterdam (modern day New York City).\nIn 1660, Colony founder John Davenport's wishes were fulfilled, and Hopkins School was founded in New Haven with money from the estate of Edward Hopkins.\nIn 1661, the Regicides who had signed the death warrant of Charles I of England were pursued by Charles II. Two of them, Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe, fled to New Haven for refuge. Davenport arranged for them to hide in the West Rock hills northwest of the town. A third judge, John Dixwell, later joined the others. None of the three were ever returned to England for trial; Dixwell died of old age in New Haven, the others likewise elsewhere in New England.\nAs part of the Connecticut Colony.\nIn 1664, New Haven became part of the Connecticut Colony when the two colonies were merged under political pressure from England. Seeking to establish a new theocracy elsewhere, some members of the New Haven Colony went on to establish Newark, New Jersey.\nNew Haven was made co-capital of Connecticut in 1701, a status it retained until 1873.\nIn 1716, the Collegiate School relocated from Old Saybrook to New Haven, establishing it as a center of learning. In 1718, in response to a large donation from East India Company merchant Elihu Yale, former Governor of Madras, the Collegiate School was renamed Yale College.\nFor over a century, New Haven citizens had fought in the colonial militia alongside regular British forces, including the French and Indian War. As the American Revolution approached, General David Wooster and other influential residents hoped that the conflict with the British parliament could be resolved short of rebellion. On April 23, 1775, Captain Benedict Arnold commanded the Second Company, Governor's Foot Guard, of New Haven to break into the powder house to arm themselves for a three-day march to Cambridge, Massachusetts, an event still celebrated in New Haven as Powder House Day. Other New Haven militia members were on hand to escort George Washington from his overnight stay in New Haven on his way to Cambridge. Contemporary reports, from both sides, remark on the New Haven volunteers' professional military bearing, including uniforms.\nOn July 5, 1779, 2,600 loyalists and British regulars under General William Tryon, governor of New York, landed in New Haven Harbor and raided the town of 3,500. A militia of Yale students had been preparing for battle, and former Yale president and Yale Divinity School professor Naphtali Daggett rode out to confront the Redcoats. Yale president Ezra Stiles recounted in his diary that while he moved furniture in anticipation of battle, he still couldn't quite believe the revolution had begun. New Haven was not torched as the invaders did with Danbury in 1777, or Fairfield and Norwalk a week after the New Haven raid, preserving many of the town's colonial features.\nPost-colonial period and industrialization.\nNew Haven was incorporated as a city in 1784, and Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Constitution and author of the \"Connecticut Compromise\", became the new city's first mayor.\nThe city struck fortune in the late 18th century with the inventions and industrial activity of Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate who remained in New Haven to develop the cotton gin and establish a gun-manufacturing factory in the northern part of the city near the Hamden town line. That area is still known as Whitneyville, and the main road through both towns is known as Whitney Avenue. The factory is now the Eli Whitney Museum, which has a particular emphasis on activities for children and exhibits pertaining to the A. C. Gilbert Company. His factory, along with that of Simeon North, and the lively clock-making and brass hardware sectors, contributed to making early Connecticut a powerful manufacturing economy; so many arms manufacturers sprang up that the state became known as \"The Arsenal of America\". It was in Whitney's gun-manufacturing plant that Samuel Colt invented the automatic revolver in 1836. Many other talented machinists and firearms designers would go on to found successful firearms manufacturing companies in New Haven, including Oliver Winchester and O.F. Mossberg & Sons.\nThe Farmington Canal, created in the early 19th century, was a short-lived transporter of goods into the interior regions of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and ran from New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts.\nNew Haven was to be the site of the first college for African Americans in the United States, but the plan was obstructed by efforts led by Yale Law School founder and former New Haven Mayor David Daggett, who went on to serve as a U.S. Senator and judge on Connecticut's highest court. Daggett denigrated African Americans, denied they were citizens, and presided over the trial of a woman persecuted for trying to admit an African American girl to her boarding school and, having that effort blocked, running a boarding school for African American girls.\nNew Haven was home to one of the important early events in the burgeoning anti-slavery movement when, in 1839, the trial of mutineering Mende tribesmen being transported as slaves on the Spanish slaveship \"Amistad\" was held in New Haven's United States District Court. There is a statue of Joseph Cinqu\u00e9, the informal leader of the slaves, beside City Hall. See \"Museums\" below for more information. Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech on slavery in New Haven in 1860, shortly before he secured the Republican nomination for President.\nThe American Civil War boosted the local economy with wartime purchases of industrial goods, including that of the New Haven Arms Company, which would later become the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. (Winchester would continue to produce arms in New Haven until 2006, and many of the buildings that were a part of the Winchester plant are now a part of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company Historic District). After the war, population grew and doubled by the start of the 20th century, most notably due to the influx of immigrants from southern Europe, particularly Italy. Today, roughly half the populations of East Haven, West Haven, and North Haven are Italian-American. Jewish immigration to New Haven has left an enduring mark on the city. Westville was the center of Jewish life in New Haven, though today many have fanned out to suburban communities such as Woodbridge and Cheshire. Lowell House, the city's first settlement, opened in 1900.\nPost-industrial era and urban redevelopment.\nNew Haven's expansion continued during the two World Wars, with most new inhabitants being African Americans from the American South, and Puerto Ricans. The city reached its peak population after World War II. The area of New Haven is only , encouraging further development of new housing after 1950 in adjacent, suburban towns. Moreover, as in other U.S. cities in the 1950s, New Haven began to suffer white flight of middle-class workers. One author suggested that aggressive redlining and rezoning made it difficult for residents to obtain financing for older, deteriorating urban housing stock, thereby condemning such structures to deterioration.\nIn 1954, then-mayor Richard C. Lee began some of the earliest major urban renewal projects in the United States. Certain sections of downtown New Haven were redeveloped to include museums, new office towers, a hotel, and large shopping complexes. Other parts of the city, particularly the Wooster Square and Fair Haven neighborhoods were affected by the construction of Interstate 95 along the Long Wharf section, Interstate 91, and the Oak Street Connector. The Oak Street Connector (Route 34), running between Interstate 95, downtown, and The Hill neighborhood, was originally intended as a highway to the city's western suburbs but was only completed as a highway to the downtown area, with the area to the west becoming a boulevard (See \"Redevelopment\" below).\nIn 1970, a series of criminal prosecutions against various members of the Black Panther Party took place in New Haven, inciting mass protests on the New Haven Green involving twelve thousand demonstrators and many well-known New Left political activists. (See \"Political Culture\" below for more information). From the 1960s through the early 1990s, some areas of New Haven continued to decline both economically and in terms of population despite attempts to resurrect certain neighborhoods through renewal projects. In conjunction with its declining population, New Haven experienced a steep rise in its crime rate.\nSince approximately 2000, many parts of downtown New Haven have been revitalized with new restaurants, nightlife, and small retail stores. In particular, the area surrounding the New Haven Green has experienced an influx of apartments and condominiums. In addition, two new supermarkets opened to serve downtown's growing residential population: a Stop & Shop opened just west of downtown, while Elm City Market, located one block from the Green, opened in 2011. The recent turnaround of downtown New Haven has received positive press from various periodicals.\nMajor projects include the current construction of a new campus for Gateway Community College downtown, and also a 32-story, 500-unit apartment/retail building called 360 State Street. The 360 State Street project is now occupied and is the largest residential building in Connecticut. A new boathouse and dock is planned for New Haven Harbor, and the linear park Farmington Canal Trail is set to extend into downtown New Haven within the coming year. Additionally, foundation and ramp work to widen I-95 to create a new harbor crossing for New Haven, with an extradosed bridge to replace the 1950s-era Q Bridge, has begun. The city still hopes to redevelop the site of the New Haven Coliseum, which was demolished in 2007.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 18 white firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no black firefighters scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. In the subsequent \"Ricci v. DeStefano\" decision the court found 5\u20134 that New Haven's decision to ignore the test results violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a result, a district court subsequently ordered the city to promote 14 of the white firefighters.\nIn 2010 and 2011, state and federal funds were awarded to Connecticut (and Massachusetts) to construct the Hartford Line, with a southern terminus at New Haven's Union Station and a northern terminus at Springfield's Union Station. According to the White House, \"This corridor [currently] has one train per day connecting communities in Connecticut and Massachusetts to the Northeast Corridor and Vermont. The vision for this corridor is to restore the alignment to its original route via the Knowledge Corridor in western Massachusetts, improving trip time and increasing the population base that can be served.\" Set for construction in 2013, the \"Knowledge Corridor high speed intercity passenger rail\" project will cost approximately $1\u00a0billion, and the ultimate northern terminus for the project is reported to be Montreal in Canada. Train speeds between will reportedly exceed and increase both cities' rail traffic exponentially.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 6.67%, is water.\nNew Haven's best-known geographic features are its large, shallow harbor, and two reddish basalt trap rock ridges which rise to the northeast and northwest of the city core. These trap rocks are known respectively as East Rock and West Rock, and both serve as extensive parks. West Rock has been tunneled through to make way for the east\u2013west passage of the Wilbur Cross Parkway (the only highway tunnel through a natural obstacle in Connecticut), and once served as the hideout of the \"Regicides\" (see: Regicides Trail). Most New Haveners refer to these men as \"The Three Judges\". East Rock features the prominent Soldiers and Sailors war monument on its peak as well as the \"Great/Giant Steps\" which run up the rock's cliffside.\nThe city is drained by three rivers; the West, Mill, and Quinnipiac, named in order from west to east. The West River discharges into West Haven Harbor, while the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers discharge into New Haven Harbor. Both harbors are embayments of Long Island Sound. In addition, several smaller streams flow through the city's neighborhoods, including Wintergreen Brook, the Beaver Ponds Outlet, Wilmot Brook, Belden Brook, and Prospect Creek. Not all of these small streams have continuous flow year-round.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen classification, New Haven experiences a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\"), bordering a hot-summer humid continental climate (\"Dfa\"). The city has hot, humid summers and cool to cold winters. From May to late September, the weather is typically hot and humid, with average temperatures exceeding on 70 days per year. In summer, the Bermuda High creates as southern flow of warm and humid air, with frequent (but brief) thundershowers. October to early December is normally mild to cool late in the season, while early spring (April) can be cool to warm. Winters are more variable, with cool to cold temperatures, mixed with warmer spells, with both rain and snow fall.\nWhile the weather patterns that affect New Haven result from a primarily offshore direction, thus reducing the marine influence of Long Island Sound, the location on Long Island Sound often influences the weather along the coastline compared to inland. During summer heat waves, temperatures may reach or higher on occasion with heat-index values of over . Tropical cyclones have struck New Haven in the past, including 1938 Hurricane (Long Island Express), Hurricane Carol in 1954, Hurricane Gloria in 1985. The hardiness zone is 7a.\nStreetscape.\nNew Haven has a long tradition of urban planning and a purposeful design for the city's layout. The city could be argued to have some of the first preconceived layouts in the country. Upon founding, New Haven was laid out in a grid plan of nine square blocks; the central square was left open, in the tradition of many New England towns, as the city green (a commons area). The city also instituted the first public tree planting program in America. As in other cities, many of the elms that gave New Haven the nickname \"Elm City\" perished in the mid-20th century due to Dutch elm disease, although many have since been replanted. The New Haven Green is currently home to three separate historic churches which speak to the original theocratic nature of the city. The Green remains the social center of the city today. It was named a National Historic Landmark in 1970.\nDowntown New Haven, occupied by nearly 7,000 residents, has a more residential character than most downtowns. The downtown area provides about half of the city's jobs and half of its tax base and in recent years has become filled with dozens of new upscale restaurants, in addition to shops and thousands of apartments and condominium units which subsequently help overall growth of the city.\nNeighborhoods.\nThe city has many distinct neighborhoods. In addition to Downtown, centered on the central business district and the Green, are the following neighborhoods: the west central neighborhoods of Dixwell and Dwight; the southern neighborhoods of The Hill, historic water-front City Point (or Oyster Point), and the harborside district of Long Wharf; the western neighborhoods of Beaver Hills, Edgewood, West River, Westville, Amity, and West Rock-Westhills; East Rock, Cedar Hill, Prospect Hill, and Newhallville in the northern side of town; the east central neighborhoods of Mill River and Wooster Square, an Italian-American neighborhood; Fair Haven, an immigrant community located between the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers; Quinnipiac Meadows and Fair Haven Heights across the Quinnipiac River; and facing the eastern side of the harbor, The Annex and East Shore (or Morris Cove).\nDemographics.\nCensus data.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nThe U.S. Census Bureau reports a 2010 population of 129,779, with 47,094 households and 25,854 families within the city of New Haven. The population density was . There were 52,941 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 42.6% White, 35.4% African American, 0.5% Native American, 4.6% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 12.9% from other races, and 3.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 27.4% of the population. Non-Hispanic Whites were 31.8% of the population in 2010, down from 69.6% in 1970. The city's Latino population is growing rapidly. Previous influxes among ethnic groups have been African-Americans in the postwar era, and Irish, Italian and (to a lesser degree) Slavic peoples in the prewar period.\nAs of the 2010 census, of the 47,094 households, 29.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 27.5% include married couples living together, 22.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 36.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.5% had someone living alone who was 65\u00a0years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40 and the average family size 3.19.\nThe ages of New Haven's residents were 25.4% under the age of 18, 16.4% from 18 to 24, 31.2% from 25 to 44, 16.7% from 45 to 64, and 10.2% who were 65\u00a0years of age or older. The median age was 29\u00a0years, which was significantly lower than the national average. There were 91.8 males per 100 females. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.6 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $29,604, and the median income for a family was $35,950. Median income for males was $33,605, compared with $28,424 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,393. About 20.5% of families and 24.4% of the population were living below the poverty line, including 32.2% of those under age 18 and 17.9% of those age 65 or over.\nOther data.\nIt is estimated that 14% of New Haven residents are pedestrian commuters, ranking it number four by highest percentage in the United States. This is primarily due to New Haven's small area and the presence of Yale University.\nNew Haven is noted for having the highest percentage of Italian American residents of any US city, and is noted for its local style of pizza.\nA study of the demographics of the New Haven metro area, based on age, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity, found that they were the closest of any American city to the national average.\nEconomy.\nNew Haven's economy originally was based in manufacturing, but the postwar period brought rapid industrial decline; the entire Northeast was affected, and medium-sized cities with large working-class populations, like New Haven, were hit particularly hard. Simultaneously, the growth and expansion of Yale University further affected the economic shift. Today, over half (56%) of the city's economy is now made up of services, in particular education and health care; Yale is the city's largest employer, followed by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital. Other large employers include Southern Connecticut State University, Assa Abloy lock manufacturing, the Knights of Columbus headquarters, Higher One, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Covidien and United Illuminating. Clothing stores Gant and Ann Taylor were founded in the city.\nIn 2017, New Haven was ranked by a Verizon study as one of the top 10 cities in America for launching tech startups, and top two in New England.\nIndustry sectors: Agriculture (.6%), Construction and Mining (4.9%), Manufacturing (2.9%), Transportation and Utilities (2.9%), Trade (21.7%), Finance and Real Estate (7.1%), Services (55.9%), Government (4.0%)\nHeadquarters.\nThe Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization and a Fortune 1000 company, is headquartered in New Haven. Amphenol, based in Greater New Haven (Wallingford), is a Fortune 100 company. Eight Courant 100 companies are based in Greater New Haven, with four headquartered in New Haven proper. New Haven-based companies traded on stock exchanges include NewAlliance Bank, the second largest bank in Connecticut and fourth-largest in New England (NYSE: NAL), Higher One Holdings (NYSE: ONE), a financial services firm, United Illuminating, the electricity distributor for southern Connecticut (NYSE: UIL), and Transpro Inc. (AMEX: TPR). The American division of Assa Abloy (one of the world's leading manufacturers of locks) is located in the city. The Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET) began operations in the city as the District Telephone Company of New Haven in 1878; the company remains headquartered in New Haven as a subsidiary of Frontier Communications and provides telephone service for all but two municipalities in Connecticut. SeeClickFix was founded and has been headquartered in the city since 2007. Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company (a candy-making division of the Hershey Company) was formerly located in the city. Achillion Pharmaceuticals and Alexion Pharmaceuticals were also formerly headquartered in New Haven.\nLaw and government.\nPolitical structure.\nNew Haven is governed via the mayor-council system. Connecticut municipalities (like those of neighboring states Massachusetts and Rhode Island) provide nearly all local services (such as fire and rescue, education, snow removal, etc.), as county government has been abolished since 1960.\nNew Haven County merely refers to a grouping of towns and a judicial district, not a governmental entity. New Haven is a member of the South Central Connecticut Regional Council of Governments (SCRCOG), a regional agency created to facilitate coordination between area municipal governments and state and federal agencies, in the absence of county government.\nJustin Elicker is the mayor of New Haven. He was sworn in as the 51st mayor of New Haven on January 1, 2020.\nThe city council, called the Board of Alders, consists of thirty members, each elected from single-member wards. Each of the 30 wards consists of slightly over 4,300 residents; redistricting takes place every ten years.\nThe city is overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2017, of the town's 83,694 voters, 66% were registered as Democrats (\u22124% since 2015), 4% were registered as Republicans (+1%), and 29% were unaffiliated (+3). The board of alders is dominated by Democrats; a Republican has not served as a New Haven alder since 2011.\nNew Haven is served by the New Haven Police Department, which had 443 sworn officers in 2011. The city is also served by the New Haven Fire Department.\nNew Haven lies within Connecticut's 3rd congressional district and has been represented by Rosa DeLauro since 1991. Martin Looney and Gary Holder-Winfield represent New Haven in the Connecticut State Senate, and the city lies within six districts (numbers 92 through 97) of the Connecticut House of Representatives.\nThe Greater New Haven area is served by the New Haven Judicial District Court and the New Haven Superior Court, both headquartered at the New Haven County Courthouse. The federal District Court for the District of Connecticut has a New Haven facility, the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse.\nPolitical history.\nNew Haven is the birthplace of former president George W. Bush, who was born when his father, former president George H. W. Bush, was living in New Haven while a student at Yale. In addition to being the site of the college educations of both Presidents Bush, as Yale students, New Haven was also the temporary home of former presidents William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, and Bill Clinton, as well as Secretary of State John Kerry. President Clinton met his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while the two were students at Yale Law School. Former vice presidents John C. Calhoun and Dick Cheney also studied in New Haven (although the latter did not graduate from Yale). Before the 2008 election, the last time there was not a person with ties to New Haven and Yale on either major party's ticket was 1968. James Hillhouse, a New Haven native, served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate in 1801.\nNew Haven voters overwhelmingly supported Al Gore in the 2000 election, Yale graduate John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. In the 2008 election, New Haven County was third among all Connecticut counties in campaign contributions, after Fairfield and Hartford counties. (Connecticut, in turn, was ranked 14th among all states in total campaign contributions.)\nNew Haven was the subject of \" Who Governs? Democracy and Power in An American City\", a very influential book in political science by preeminent Yale professor Robert A. Dahl, which includes an extensive history of the city and thorough description of its politics in the 1950s. New Haven's theocratic history is also mentioned several times by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic volume on 19th-century American political life, \"Democracy in America\". New Haven was the residence of conservative thinker William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1951, when he wrote his influential \"God and Man at Yale\". William Lee Miller's \"The Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society\" (1966) similarly explores the relationship between local politics in New Haven and national political movements, focusing on Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and urban renewal.\nGeorge Williamson Crawford, a Yale Law School graduate, served as the city's first black corporation counsel from 1954 to 1962, under Mayor Richard C. Lee.\nIn 1970, the New Haven Black Panther trials took place, the largest and longest trials in Connecticut history. Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale and ten other party members were tried for murdering an alleged informant. Beginning on May Day, the city became a center of protest for 12,000 Panther supporters, college students, and New Left activists (including Jean Genet, Benjamin Spock, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and John Froines), who amassed on the New Haven Green, across the street from where the trials were being held. Violent confrontations between the demonstrators and the New Haven Police occurred, and several bombs were set off in the area by radicals. The event became a rallying point for the New Left and critics of the Nixon Administration.\nDuring the summer of 2007, New Haven was the center of protests by anti-immigration groups who opposed the city's program of offering municipal ID cards, known as the Elm City Resident Card, to illegal immigrants. In 2008, the country of Ecuador opened a consulate in New Haven to serve the large Ecuadorean immigrant population in the area. It is the first foreign mission to open in New Haven since Italy opened a consulate (now closed) in the city in 1910.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 20 white and Hispanic firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no blacks scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. On June 29, 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the firefighters, agreeing that they were improperly denied promotion because of their race. The case, \"Ricci v. DeStefano\", became highly publicized and brought national attention to New Haven politics due to the involvement of then-Supreme Court nominee (and Yale Law School graduate) Sonia Sotomayor in a lower court decision.\nGarry Trudeau, creator of the political \"Doonesbury\" comic strip, attended Yale University. There he met fellow student and later Green Party candidate for Congress Charles Pillsbury, a long-time New Haven resident for whom Trudeau's comic strip is named. During his college years, Pillsbury was known by the nickname \"The Doones\". A theory of international law, which argues for a sociological normative approach in regards to jurisprudence, is named the New Haven Approach, after the city. Connecticut US senator Richard Blumenthal is a Yale graduate, as is former Connecticut US Senator Joe Lieberman who also was a New Haven resident for many years, before moving back to his hometown of Stamford.\nCrime.\nCrime increased in the 1990s, with New Haven having one of the ten highest violent crime rates per capita in the United States. In the late 1990s New Haven's crime began to stabilize. The city, adopting a policy of community policing, saw crime rates drop during the 2000s.\nViolent crime levels vary dramatically among New Haven's neighborhoods, with some areas having crime rates in line with the state of Connecticut average, and others having extremely high rates of crime. A 2011 New Haven Health Department report identifies these issues in greater detail.\nIn 2010, New Haven ranked as the 18th most dangerous city in the United States (albeit below the safety benchmark of 200.00 for the second consecutive year). However, according to a completely different analysis conducted by the \"24/7 Wall Street Blog\", in 2011 New Haven had risen to become the fourth most dangerous city in the United States, and was widely cited in the press as such.\nHowever, an analysis by the Regional Data Cooperative for Greater New Haven, Inc., has shown that due to issues of comparative denominators and other factors, such municipality-based rankings can be considered inaccurate. For example, two cities of identical population can cover widely differing land areas, making such analyses irrelevant. The research organization called for comparisons based on neighborhoods, blocks, or standard methodologies (similar to those used by Brookings, DiversityData, and other established institutions), not based on municipalities.\nEducation.\nColleges and universities.\nNew Haven is a notable center for higher education. Yale University, at the heart of downtown, is one of the city's best known features and its largest employer. New Haven is also home to Southern Connecticut State University, part of the Connecticut State University System, and Albertus Magnus College, a private institution. Gateway Community College has a campus in downtown New Haven, formerly located in the Long Wharf district; Gateway consolidated into one campus downtown into a new state-of-the-art campus (on the site of the old Macy's building) and was open for the Fall 2012 semester.\nThere are several institutions immediately outside of New Haven, as well. Quinnipiac University and the Paier College of Art are located just to the north, in the town of Hamden. The University of New Haven is located not in New Haven but in neighboring West Haven.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nNew Haven Public Schools is the school district serving the city. Wilbur Cross High School and Hillhouse High School are New Haven's two largest public secondary schools.\nHopkins School, a private school, was founded in 1660 and is the fifth-oldest educational institution in the United States. New Haven is home to a number of other private schools as well as public magnet schools, including Metropolitan Business Academy, High School in the Community, Hill Regional Career High School, Co-op High School, New Haven Academy, Edgewood Magnet School, ACES Educational Center for the Arts, the Foote School and the Sound School, all of which draw students from New Haven and suburban towns. New Haven is also home to two Achievement First charter schools, Amistad Academy and Elm City College Prep, and to Common Ground, an environmental charter school.\nThe city is renowned for its progressive school lunch programs, and participation in statewide bussing efforts toward increased diversity in schools.\nCulture.\nCuisine.\nLivability.com named New Haven as the Best Foodie City in the country in 2014. There are dozens of Zagat-rated restaurants in New Haven, the most in Connecticut and the third most in New England (after Boston and Cambridge). More than 120 restaurants are located within two blocks of the New Haven Green. The city is home to an eclectic mix of ethnic restaurants and small markets specializing in various foreign foods. Represented cuisines include Malaysian, Ethiopian, Spanish, Belgian, French, Greek, Latin American, Mexican, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Cuban, Peruvian, Syrian/Lebanese, and Turkish.\nNew Haven's greatest culinary claim to fame may be its pizza, which has been claimed to be among the best in the country, or even in the world. New Haven-style pizza, called \"apizza\", made its debut at the iconic Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana (known as Pepe's) in 1925. Apizza is baked in coal- or wood-fired brick ovens, and is notable for its thin crust. Apizza may be red (with a tomato-based sauce) or white (with a sauce of garlic and olive oil), and pies ordered \"plain\" are made without the otherwise customary mozzarella (originally smoked mozzarella, known as \"scamorza\" in Italian). A white clam pie is a well-known specialty of the restaurants on Wooster Street in the Little Italy section of New Haven, including Pepe's and Sally's Apizza (which opened in 1938). Modern Apizza on State Street, which opened in 1934, is also well-known.\nA second New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Louis' Lunch, which is located in a small brick building on Crown Street and has been serving fast food since 1895. Though fiercely debated, the restaurant's founder Louis Lassen is credited by the Library of Congress with inventing the hamburger and steak sandwich. Louis' Lunch broils hamburgers, steak sandwiches and hot dogs vertically in original antique 1898 cast iron stoves using gridirons, patented by local resident Luigi Pieragostini in 1939, that hold the meat in place while it cooks.\nA third New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Miya's, the first sustainable sushi restaurant in the world. Miya's, founded by Chef Yoshiko Lai in 1982, featured the first sustainable seafood-based sushi menu, the first plant-based sushi menu, and the first invasive species menu in the world. Second generation Miya's chef, Bun Lai, is the 2016 White House Champions of Change for Sustainable Seafood and a James Beard Foundation Award nominee. Chef Bun Lai is credited as the first chef in the world for implementing a sustainability paradigm to the cuisine of sushi.\nDuring weekday lunchtime, over 150 lunch carts and food trucks cater to diners around the city. The carts and food trucks cluster at four main points: on Long Wharf Drive, along the city's shoreline with quick access off Interstate 95, by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital in the center of the Hospital Green (Cedar and York streets), by Yale's Trumbull College (Elm and York streets), and on the intersection of Prospect and Sachem streets by the Yale School of Management.\nPopular farmers' markets, managed by the local non-profit CitySeed, set up shop weekly in several neighborhoods, including Westville/Edgewood Park, Fair Haven, Upper State Street, Wooster Square, and Downtown/New Haven Green.\nA large grocery store, the Elm City Market, opened on 360 State Street in New Haven in early fall 2011 and served local produce and groceries to the community. Originally, the market was a member-owned co-op, but debt defaults in August 2014 forced a sale of the business. It is now an employee-owned business; the co-op's previous owners received no equity in the new business.\nIn the past several years, two separate Downtown food tour companies have started offering popular restaurant tours on weekends.\nTaste of New Haven Tours offers several different weekly restaurant/bar tours and a popular pizza, bike, and pints tour. Culinary Walking Tours offers monthly restaurant tours and sponsors an annual Elm City Iron Chef competition.\nTheatre and film.\nThe city hosts numerous theatres and production houses, including the Yale Repertory Theatre, the Long Wharf Theatre, and the Shubert Theatre. There is also theatre activity from the Yale School of Drama, which works through the Yale University Theatre and the student-run Yale Cabaret. Southern Connecticut State University hosts the Lyman Center for the Performing Arts. The shuttered Palace Theatre (opposite the Shubert Theatre) was renovated and reopened as the College Street Music Hall in May 2015. Smaller theatres include the Little Theater on Lincoln Street. Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School also has a theatre on College Street. The theatre is used for student productions, and is the home to weekly services to a local non-denominational church, the City Church New Haven.\nThe Shubert Theatre once premiered many major theatrical productions before their Broadway debuts. Productions that premiered at the Shubert include \"Oklahoma!\" (which was also written in New Haven), \"Carousel\", \"South Pacific\", \"My Fair Lady\", \"The King and I\", and \"The Sound of Music\", and the Tennessee Williams play \"A Streetcar Named Desire\".\nBow Tie Cinemas owns and operates the Criterion Cinemas, the first new movie theater to open in New Haven in over 30 years and the first luxury movie complex in the city's history. The Criterion has seven screens and opened in November 2004, showing a mix of upscale first run commercial and independent film.\nMuseums.\nNew Haven has a variety of museums, many of them associated with Yale. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library features an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible. There is also the Connecticut Children's Museum; the Knights of Columbus museum near that organization's world headquarters; the Peabody Museum of Natural History; the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments; the Eli Whitney Museum (across the town line in Hamden, Connecticut, on Whitney Avenue); the Yale Center for British Art, which houses the largest collection of British art outside the U.K., and the Yale University Art Gallery, the western hemisphere's oldest college art museum. New Haven is also home to the New Haven Museum and Historical Society on Whitney Avenue, which has a library of many primary source treasures dating from Colonial times to the present.\nArtspace on Orange Street is one of several contemporary art galleries around the city, showcasing the work of local, national, and international artists. Others include City Gallery and A. Leaf Gallery in the downtown area. Westville galleries include Kehler Liddell, Jennifer Jane Gallery, and The Hungry Eye. The Erector Square complex in the Fair Haven neighborhood houses, the Parachute Factory gallery along with numerous artist studios, and the complex serves as an active destination during City-Wide Open Studios held yearly in October.\nNew Haven is the home port of a life-size replica of the historical \"Freedom Schooner Amistad\", which is open for tours at Long Wharf pier at certain times during the summer. Also at Long Wharf pier is the \"Quinnipiack\" schooner, offering sailing cruises of the harbor area throughout the summer. The \"Quinnipiack\" also functions as a floating classroom for hundreds of local students.\nMusic.\nThe New Haven Green is the site of many free music concerts, especially during the summer months. These have included the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the July Free Concerts on the Green, and the New Haven Jazz Festival in August. The Jazz Festival, which began in 1982, is one of the longest-running free outdoor festivals in the U.S., until it was canceled for 2007. Headliners such as Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles and Celia Cruz have historically drawn 30,000 to 50,000 fans, filling up the New Haven Green to capacity. The New Haven Jazz Festival was revived in 2008 and has been sponsored since by Jazz Haven.\nNew Haven is home to the concert venue Toad's Place, and a new venue, College Street Music Hall. The city has retained an alternative art and music underground that has helped to influence post-punk era music movements such as indie, college rock and underground hip-hop.\nThe Yale School of Music contributes to the city's music scene by offering hundreds of free concerts throughout the year at venues in and around the Yale campus. Large performances are held in the 2,700-seat Woolsey Hall auditorium, which contains the world's largest symphonic organs, while chamber music and recitals are performed in Sprague Hall.\nHardcore band Hatebreed are from Wallingford, but got their start in New Haven under the name Jasta 14. The band Miracle Legion formed in New Haven in 1983. Folk musicians from New Haven include Loren Mazzacane Connors and Kath Bloom.\nThe Hillhouse Opera Company is a U.S. non-profit opera company based in New Haven that performs in the New Haven area. Founded in 2008 by Victoria Leigh Gardner, Nicole Rodriguez and Jim Coatsworth Hillhouse Opera Company has performed operas as well as opera scenes programs, master classes and concert series. In 2011, the Company professionally staged the works created through the Riverview Opera Project. The Riverview Opera Project created workshops for children and adolescents at Riverview Hospital, Connecticut's only state-funded psychiatric hospital for youth, and helped them to successfully create, produce, and perform four original operas.\nFestivals.\nIn addition to the Jazz Festival (described above), New Haven serves as the home city of the annual International Festival of Arts and Ideas. New Haven's Saint Patrick's Day parade, which began in 1842, is New England's oldest and draws the largest crowds of any one-day spectator event in Connecticut. The St. Andrew the Apostle Italian Festival has taken place in the historic Wooster Square neighborhood every year since 1900. Other parishes in the city celebrate the Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua and a carnival in honor of St. Bernadette Soubirous. New Haven celebrates Powder House Day every April on the New Haven Green to commemorate the city's entrance into the Revolutionary War. The annual Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival commemorates the 1973 planting of 72 Yoshino Japanese cherry blossom trees by the New Haven Historic Commission in collaboration with the New Haven Parks Department and residents of the neighborhood. The Festival now draws well over 5,000 visitors. The Film Fest New Haven has been held annually since 1995.\nNightlife.\nIn the past decade downtown has seen an influx of new restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Large crowds are drawn to the Crown Street area downtown on weekends where many of the restaurants and bars are located. Crown Street between State and High Streets has dozens of establishments, as do nearby Temple and College Streets. Away from downtown, Upper State Street has a number of restaurants and bars popular with local residents and weekend visitors.\nNewspapers and media.\nNew Haven is served by the daily \"New Haven Register\", the weekly \"alternative\" \"New Haven Advocate\" (which is run by Tribune, the corporation owning the \"Hartford Courant\"), the online daily \"New Haven Independent\", and the monthly \"Grand News Community Newspaper.\" Downtown New Haven is covered by an in-depth civic news forum, Design New Haven. The \"Register\" also backs \"PLAY\" magazine, a weekly entertainment publication. The city is also served by several student-run papers, including the \"Yale Daily News\", the weekly \"Yale Herald\" and a humor tabloid, \"Rumpus Magazine\".\nWTNH Channel 8, the ABC affiliate for Connecticut, WCTX Channel 59, the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the state, Connecticut Public Television station WEDY channel 65, a PBS affiliate, and WTXX Channel 34, the IntrigueTV affiliate, broadcast from New Haven. All New York City news and sports team stations broadcast to New Haven County.\nSports and athletics.\nNew Haven has a history of professional sports franchises dating back to the 19th century and has been the home to professional baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer teams\u2014including the New York Giants of the National Football League from 1973 to 1974, who played at the Yale Bowl. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, New Haven consistently had minor league hockey and baseball teams, which played at the New Haven Arena (built in 1926, demolished in 1972), New Haven Coliseum (1972\u20132002), and Yale Field (1928\u2013present).\nWhen John DeStefano, Jr., became mayor of New Haven in 1995, he outlined a plan to transform the city into a major cultural and arts center in the Northeast, which involved investments in programs and projects other than sports franchises. As nearby Bridgeport built new sports facilities, the brutalist New Haven Coliseum rapidly deteriorated. Believing the upkeep on the venue to be a drain of tax dollars, the DeStefano administration closed the Coliseum in 2002; it was demolished in 2007. New Haven's last professional sports team, the New Haven County Cutters, left in 2009. The DeStefano administration did, however, see the construction of the New Haven Athletic Center in 1998, a indoor athletic facility with a seating capacity of over 3,000. The NHAC, built adjacent to Hillhouse High School, is used for New Haven public schools athletics, as well as large-scale area and state sporting events; it is the largest high school indoor sports complex in the state.\nNew Haven was the host of the 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games; then-President Bill Clinton spoke at the opening ceremonies. The city is home to the Pilot Pen International tennis event, which takes place every August at the Connecticut Tennis Center, one of the largest tennis venues in the world. New Haven biannually hosts \"The Game\" between Yale and Harvard, the country's second-oldest college football rivalry. Numerous road races take place in New Haven, including the USATF 20K Championship during the New Haven Road Race.\nGreater New Haven is home to a number of college sports teams. The Yale Bulldogs play Division I college sports, as do the Quinnipiac Bobcats in neighboring Hamden. Division II athletics are played by Southern Connecticut State University and the University of New Haven (actually located in neighboring West Haven), while Albertus Magnus College athletes perform at the Division III level.\nNew Haven is home to many New York Yankees, New York Mets, & Boston Red Sox fans due to the proximity of New York City & Boston.\nWalter Camp, deemed the \"father of American football\", was a New Havener.\nThe New Haven Warriors rugby league team play in the AMNRL. They have a large number of Pacific Islanders playing for them. Their field is located at the West Haven High School's Ken Strong Stadium. They won the 2008 AMNRL Grand Final.\nStructures.\nArchitecture.\nNew Haven has many architectural landmarks dating from every important time period and architectural style in American history. The city has been home to a number of architects and architectural firms that have left their mark on the city including Ithiel Town and Henry Austin in the 19th century and Cesar Pelli, Warren Platner, Kevin Roche, Herbert Newman and Barry Svigals in the 20th. The Yale School of Architecture has fostered this important component of the city's economy. Cass Gilbert, of the Beaux-Arts school, designed New Haven's Union Station and the New Haven Free Public Library and was also commissioned for a City Beautiful plan in 1919. Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, Alexander Jackson Davis, Philip C. Johnson, Gordon Bunshaft, Louis Kahn, James Gamble Rogers, Frank Gehry, Charles Willard Moore, Stefan Behnisch, James Polshek, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen and Robert Venturi all have designed buildings in New Haven. Yale's 1950s-era Ingalls Rink, designed by Eero Saarinen, was included on the \"America's Favorite Architecture\" list created in 2007.\nSeveral residential homes in New Haven were designed by Alice Washburn, a noted female architect whose Colonial Revival style set a standard for homes in the region.\nMany of the city's neighborhoods are well-preserved as walkable \"museums\" of 19th- and 20th-century American architecture, particularly by the New Haven Green, Hillhouse Avenue and other residential sections close to Downtown New Haven. Overall, a large proportion of the city's land area is National (NRHP) historic districts. One of the best sources on local architecture is \"New Haven: Architecture and Urban Design\", by Elizabeth Mills Brown.\nThe five tallest buildings in New Haven are:\nHistoric points of interest.\nMany historical sites exist throughout the city, including 59 properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Of these, nine are among the 60 U.S. National Historic Landmarks in Connecticut. The New Haven Green, one of the National Historic Landmarks, was formed in 1638, and is home to three 19th-century churches. Below the First Church of Christ in New Haven (referred to as the Center Church on the Green) lies a 17th-century crypt, which is open to visitors. Some of the more famous burials include the first wife of Benedict Arnold and the aunt and grandmother of President Rutherford B. Hayes; Hayes visited the crypt while President in 1880. The Old Campus of Yale University is located next to the Green, and includes Connecticut Hall, Yale's oldest building and a National Historic Landmark. The Hillhouse Avenue area, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a part of Yale's campus, has been called a walkable museum, due to its 19th-century mansions and street scape; Charles Dickens is said to have called Hillhouse Avenue \"the most beautiful street in America\" when visiting the city in 1868.\nIn 1660, Edward Whalley (a cousin and friend of Oliver Cromwell) and William Goffe, two English Civil War generals who signed the death warrant of King Charles I, hid in a rock formation in New Haven after having fled England upon the restoration of Charles II to the English throne. They were later joined by a third regicide, John Dixwell. The rock formation, which is now a part of West Rock Park, is known as Judges' Cave, and the path leading to the cave is called the Regicides Trail.\nAfter the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, the Connecticut colonial government ordered the construction of Black Rock Fort (to be built on top of an older 17th-century fort) to protect the port of New Haven. In 1779, during the Battle of New Haven, British soldiers captured Black Rock Fort and burned the barracks to the ground. The fort was reconstructed in 1807 by the federal government (on orders from the Thomas Jefferson administration), and rechristened Fort Nathan Hale, after the Revolutionary War hero who had lived in New Haven. The cannons of Fort Nathan Hale were successful in defying British war ships during the War of 1812. In 1863, during the Civil War, a second Fort Hale was built next to the original, complete with bomb-resistant bunkers and a moat, to defend the city should a Southern raid against New Haven be launched. The United States Congress deeded the site to the state in 1921, and all three versions of the fort have been restored. The site is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and receives thousands of visitors each year.\nGrove Street Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark which lies adjacent to Yale's campus, contains the graves of Roger Sherman, Eli Whitney, Noah Webster, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Charles Goodyear and Walter Camp, among other notable burials. The cemetery is noted for its Egyptian Revival gateway, and is the oldest planned burial ground in the United States. The Union League Club of New Haven building, located on Chapel Street, is notable for not only being a historic Beaux-Arts building, but also is built on the site where Roger Sherman's home once stood; George Washington is known to have stayed at the Sherman residence while President in 1789 (one of three times Washington visited New Haven throughout his lifetime).\nTwo sites pay homage to the time President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft lived in the city, as both a student and later Professor at Yale: a plaque on Prospect Street marks the site where Taft's home formerly stood, and downtown's Taft Apartment Building (formerly the Taft Hotel) bears the name of the former president who resided in the building for eight years before becoming Chief Justice of the United States.\nLighthouse Point Park, a public beach run by the city, was a popular tourist destination during the Roaring Twenties, attracting luminaries of the period such as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. The park remains popular among New Haveners, and is home to the Five Mile Point Lighthouse, constructed in 1847, and the Lighthouse Point Carousel, constructed in 1916. Five Mile Point Light was decommissioned in 1877 following the construction of Southwest Ledge Light at the entrance of the harbor, which remains in service to this day. Both of the lighthouses and the carousel are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nOther historic sites in the city include the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, which stands at the summit of East Rock, the Marsh Botanical Garden, Wooster Square, Dwight Street, Louis' Lunch, and the Farmington Canal, all of which date back to the 19th century. Other historic parks besides the Green include Edgerton Park, Edgewood Park, and East Rock Park, each of which is included on the National Register of Historic Places.\nTransportation.\nRail.\nNew Haven has two railroad stations, connected to New York City and points along the Northeast Corridor by commuter rail, regional rail and inter-city rail. Service is provided by:\nThe city's main railroad station is the historic Beaux-Arts Union Station, which serves Metro-North, Hartford Line, and Shore Line East commuter trains. Approximately 175 trains serve Union Station on weekdays. Union Station is also served by four Amtrak lines: the \"Northeast Regional\" and the high-speed \"Acela Express\" provide service to New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston, and rank as the first and second busiest routes in the country; the New Haven\u2013Springfield Line provides service to Hartford and Springfield, Massachusetts; and the \"Vermonter\" provides service to both Washington, D.C., and Vermont, from the Canada\u2013US border.\nAn additional station, State Street Station, was opened in 2002, providing passengers easier access to downtown New Haven. State Street Station is currently serviced by Shore Line East and Hartford Line trains, plus some peak-hour Metro-North trips.\nBus.\nThe New Haven Division of Connecticut Transit (CT Transit), the state's bus system, is the second largest division in the state with 24 routes. All routes originate from the New Haven Green, making it the central transfer hub of the city. Service is provided to 19 different municipalities throughout Greater New Haven. Bus routes were formerly identified by letters, but as of October 8, 2017, all service was renamed using 200-series numbers, in accordance with a renumbering of CTtransit's statewide services.\nCT Transit's Union Station Shuttle provides free service from Union Station to the New Haven Green and several New Haven parking garages. Peter Pan and Greyhound bus lines have scheduled stops at Union Station, and connections downtown can be made via the Union Station Shuttle. A private company operates the New Haven/Hartford Express which provides commuter bus service to Hartford. The Yale University Shuttle provides free transportation around New Haven for Yale students, faculty, and staff.\nThe New Haven Division buses follow routes that had originally been covered by trolley service. Horse-drawn streetcars began operating in New Haven in the 1860s, and by the mid-1890s all the lines had become electric. In the 1920s and 1930s, some of the trolley lines began to be replaced by bus lines, with the last trolley route converted to bus in 1948. The City of New Haven is in the very early stages of considering the restoration of streetcar (light-rail) service, which has been absent since the postwar period.\nBicycle.\nBikeshare.\nOn February 21, 2018, New Haven officially launched its Bike New Haven bikeshare program. based on dockless technology powered by Noa Technologies At time of launch, the program features 10 docking stations and 100 bikes, spread throughout the urban core; there are plans to reach 30 bike stations and 300 bikes by the end of April 2018. The launch of the New Haven bikeshare program coincided with the launch of Yale University's own bikeshare program, which uses the same technology powered by Noa.\nBike lanes.\nIn 2004, the first bike lane in the city was added to Orange Street, connecting East Rock Park and the East Rock neighborhood to downtown. Since then, bike lanes have also been added to sections of Howard Ave, Elm St, Dixwell Avenue, Water Street, Clinton Avenue and State Street. The city has created recommended bike routes for getting around New Haven, including use of the Canal Trail and the Orange Street lane. As of the end of 2012, bicycle lanes have also been added in both directions on Dixwell Avenue along most of the street from downtown to the Hamden town line, as well as along Howard Avenue from Yale New Haven Hospital to City Point.\nThe city has plans to create two additional bike lanes connecting Union Station with downtown, and the Westville neighborhood with downtown. The city has added dozens of covered bike parking spots at Union Station, in order to facilitate more bike commuting to the station.\nFarmington Canal Greenway.\nThe Farmington Canal Trail is a rail trail that will eventually run continuously from downtown New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts. The scenic trail follows the path of the historic New Haven and Northampton Company and the Farmington Canal. Currently, there is a continuous stretch of the trail from downtown, through Hamden and into Cheshire, making bicycle commuting between New Haven and those suburbs possible. The trail is part of the East Coast Greenway, a proposed bike path that would link every major city on the East Coast from Florida to Maine.\nRoads.\nNew Haven lies at the intersection of Interstate 95 on the coast\u2014which provides access southwards and/or westwards to the western coast of Connecticut and to New York City, and eastwards to the eastern Connecticut shoreline, Rhode Island, and eastern Massachusetts\u2014and Interstate 91, which leads northward to the interior of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont and the Canada\u2013US border. I-95 is notorious for traffic jams increasing with proximity to New York City; on the east side of New Haven it passes over the Quinnipiac River via the Pearl Harbor Memorial, or \"Q Bridge\", which often presents a major bottleneck to traffic. I-91, however, is relatively less congested, except at the intersection with I-95 during peak travel times.\nThe Oak Street Connector (Connecticut Route 34) intersects I-91 at exit 1, just south of the I-95/I-91 interchange, and runs northwest for a few blocks as an expressway spur into downtown before emptying onto surface roads. The Wilbur Cross Parkway (Connecticut Route 15) runs parallel to I-95 west of New Haven, turning northwards as it nears the city and then running northwards parallel to I-91 through the outer rim of New Haven and Hamden, offering an alternative to the I-95/I-91 journey (restricted to non-commercial vehicles). Route 15 in New Haven is the site of the only highway tunnel in the state (officially designated as Heroes Tunnel), running through West Rock, home to West Rock Park and the Three Judges Cave.\nThe city also has several major surface arteries. U.S. Route 1 (Columbus Avenue, Union Avenue, Water Street, Forbes Avenue) runs in an east\u2013west direction south of downtown serving Union Station and leading out of the city to Milford, West Haven, East Haven and Branford. The main road from downtown heading northwest is Whalley Avenue (partly signed as Route 10 and Route 63) leading to Westville and Woodbridge. Heading north towards Hamden, there are two major thoroughfares, Dixwell Avenue and Whitney Avenue. To the northeast are Middletown Avenue (Route 17), which leads to the Montowese section of North Haven, and Foxon Boulevard (Route 80), which leads to the Foxon section of East Haven and to the town of North Branford. To the west is Route 34, which leads to the city of Derby. Other major intracity arteries are Ella Grasso Boulevard (Route 10) west of downtown, and College Street, Temple Street, Church Street, Elm Street, and Grove Street in the downtown area.\nTraffic safety is a major concern for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists in New Haven. In addition to many traffic-related fatalities in the city each year, since 2005, over a dozen Yale students, staff and faculty have been killed or injured in traffic collisions on or near the campus.\nAirport.\nTweed New Haven Airport is located within the city limits east of the business district, straddling the border with neighboring East Haven. Service to approximately 25 cities is provided by Avelo Airlines, which established its first East Coast base at the airport in 2021. Breeze Airways plans to begin operations at Tweed in December 2024, and will provide service to 10 destinations. The airport is currently planning a runway lengthening and new terminal on the East Haven side of the airport.\nBus service between Downtown New Haven and Tweed is available via the CT Transit New Haven Division.\nSeaport.\nNew Haven Harbor is home to the Port of New Haven, a deep-water seaport with three berths capable of hosting vessels and barges as well as the facilities required to handle break bulk cargo. The port has the capacity to load 200 trucks a day from the ground or via loading docks. Providence and Worcester Railroad provides freight rail transportation to the port, with the railroad operating a switch engine for yard movements, a private siding for loading and unloading, and trackage over the Tomlinson Lift Bridge toward the Northeast Corridor. Approximately of inside storage and of outside storage are available at the site. Five shore cranes with a 250-ton capacity and 26 forklifts, each with a 26-ton capacity, are also available.\nOn June 17, 2013, the city commissioned the \"Nathan Hale\", a port security vessel capable of serving search and rescue, firefighting, and constabulary roles.\nInfrastructure.\nHospitals and medicine.\nThe New Haven area supports several medical facilities that are considered some of the best hospitals in the country. There are two major medical centers downtown: Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital has four pavilions, including the Yale \u2013 New Haven Children's Hospital and the Smilow Cancer Hospital; the Hospital of Saint Raphael is several blocks north, and touts its excellent cardiac emergency care program. Smaller downtown health facilities are the Temple Medical Center located downtown on Temple Street, Connecticut Mental Health Center/ across Park Street from Y-NHH, and the Hill Health Center, which serves the working-class Hill neighborhood. A large Veterans Affairs hospital is located in neighboring West Haven. To the west in Milford is Milford Hospital, and to the north in Meriden is the MidState Medical Center.\nIn recent years, Yale and the City of New Haven have been working to build a medical and biotechnology research hub in the city and Greater New Haven region. The city, state and Yale together run Science Park, a large site three blocks northwest of Yale's Science Hill campus. This multi-block site, approximately bordered by Mansfield Street, Division Street, and Shelton Avenue, is the former home of Winchester's and Olin Corporation's 45 large-scale factory buildings. Currently, sections of the site are large-scale parking lots or abandoned structures, but there is also a large remodeled and functioning area of buildings (leased primarily by a private developer) with numerous Yale employees, financial service and biotech companies.\nA second biotechnology district is being planned for the median strip on Frontage Road, on land cleared for the never-built Route 34 extension. As of late 2009, a Pfizer drug-testing clinic, a medical laboratory building serving Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital, and a mixed-use structure containing parking, housing and office space, have been constructed on this corridor. A former SNET telephone building at 300 George Street is being converted into lab space, and has been quite successful so far in attracting biotechnology and medical firms.\nPower supply facilities.\nElectricity for New Haven is generated by a 448\u00a0MW oil and gas-fired generating station located on the shore at New Haven Harbor. PPL Corporation operates a 220\u00a0MW peaking natural gas turbine plant in nearby Wallingford.\nNear New Haven there is the static inverter plant of the HVDC Cross Sound Cable.\nThere are three PureCell Model 400 fuel cells placed in the city of New Haven\u2014one at the New Haven Public Schools and newly constructed Roberto Clemente School, one at the mixed-use 360 State Street building, and one at City Hall. According to Giovanni Zinn of the city's Office of Sustainability, each fuel cell may save the city up to $1 million in energy costs over a decade. The fuel cells were provided by ClearEdge Power, formerly UTC Power. Additional fuel cells are located at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and at the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority (GNHWPCA). Ikea's New Haven facility also utilizes a 250\u00a0kW fuel cell and 940.8\u00a0kW solar array.\nNew Haven recently installed solar panels at 11 city schools with a combined power generation capacity of 1.8 MW. Owned and maintained by Greenskies, the panels allow New Haven to purchase electricity at a discounted rate through a power-purchasing agreement. The panels bring New Haven's solar capacity to 2.8 MW and will help New Haven meet its commitment to powering 100% of its municipal operations through clean energy, which it made in Summer 2017 and reaffirmed in the 2018 New Haven Climate and Sustainability Framework.\nIn popular culture.\nSeveral movies have been filmed in New Haven since 2000, including \"Mona Lisa Smile\" (2003), with Julia Roberts, \"The Life Before Her Eyes\" (2007), with Uma Thurman, and \"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull\" (2008) directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett and Shia LaBeouf. The filming of \"Crystal Skull\" involved an extensive chase sequence through the streets of New Haven. Several downtown streets were closed to traffic and received a \"makeover\" to look like streets of 1957, when the film is set. 500 locals were cast as extras for the film. In \"Everybody's Fine\" (2009), Robert De Niro has a close encounter in what is supposed to be the Denver train station; the scene was filmed in New Haven's Union Station.\n New Haven is mentioned in the song Peace Frog by the Doors, referencing a 1967 incident where vocalist Jim Morrison was arrested for \"attempting to incite a riot\" in the middle of a concert at the New Haven Arena.\nSister cities.\nNew Haven's sister cities are:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSome of these were selected because of historical connection\u2014Freetown because of the \"Amistad\" trial. Others, such as Amalfi and Afula, reflect ethnic groups in New Haven.\nIn 1990, the United Nations named New Haven a \"Peace Messenger City\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "5122699": "John Kerry\nAmerican politician and diplomat (born 1943)\nJohn Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician, and diplomat who served as the 68th United States secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 in the administration of Barack Obama. A member of the Forbes family and of the Democratic Party, he previously represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1985 to 2013 and later served as the first U.S. special presidential envoy for climate from 2021 to 2024. Kerry was the Democratic nominee for president of the United States in the 2004 election, narrowly losing to then-incumbent president George W. Bush.\nKerry grew up in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. In 1966, after graduating from Yale University, he enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve, ultimately attaining the rank of lieutenant. During the Vietnam War, Kerry served a brief tour in South Vietnam. While commanding a Swift boat, he sustained three wounds in combat with the Viet Cong, for which he earned three Purple Heart medals. Kerry was also awarded the Silver Star Medal and the Bronze Star Medal for conduct in separate military engagements. After completing his active military service, Kerry returned to the United States and became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. He gained national recognition as an anti-war activist, serving as a spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization. Kerry testified in the Fulbright Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where he described the United States government's policy in Vietnam as the cause of war crimes.\nIn 1972, Kerry entered electoral politics as a Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives in Massachusetts's 5th congressional district, losing to Republican Paul W. Cronin in the general election. He subsequently worked as a radio talk show host and as the executive director of an advocacy organization while attending law school. After a period in private legal practice, he was elected the 66th lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1982. In 1984, Kerry was elected to the United States Senate. In 2004, Kerry won the Democratic presidential nomination alongside Senator John Edwards. He lost the Electoral College and the popular vote by slim margins, winning 251 electors to Bush's 286 and 48.3% of the popular vote to Bush's 50.7%.\nIn January 2013, Kerry was nominated by President Obama to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and was subsequently confirmed by his Senate colleagues. He was U.S. secretary of state throughout the second term of the Obama administration from 2013 to 2017. During his tenure, he initiated the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks and negotiated agreements restricting the nuclear program of Iran, including the 2013 Joint Plan of Action and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In 2015, Kerry signed the Paris Agreement on climate change on behalf of the United States.\nIn January 2021, Kerry returned to government, becoming the first person to hold the position of U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, under President Joe Biden. On March 6, Kerry left this position to work on Biden's 2024 presidential campaign. Kerry was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Biden in May 2024.\nEarly life and education (1943\u20131966).\nJohn Forbes Kerry was born on December 11, 1943, at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado. He is the second of four children born to Richard John Kerry, a U.S. diplomat and lawyer, and Rosemary Forbes, a nurse and social activist. His father was raised Catholic (John's paternal grandparents were Austro-Hungarian Jewish immigrants who converted to Catholicism) and his mother was Episcopalian. He was raised with an elder sister Margaret, a younger sister Diana, and a younger brother Cameron. The children were raised in their father's Catholic faith, and John served as an altar boy.\nKerry was originally considered a military brat, until his father was discharged from the Army Air Corps in 1944. Kerry lived in Groton, Massachusetts his first year and Millis, Massachusetts afterwards before moving to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. at age seven, when his father took a position in the Department of the Navy's Office of General Counsel and soon became a diplomat in the State Department's Bureau of United Nations Affairs.\nAs members of the Forbes and Dudley\u2013Winthrop families, his maternal extended family enjoyed great wealth. Kerry's parents themselves were considered upper-middle class. They turned to his wealthy great-aunt, Clara Winthrop, who paid for his attendance at elite boarding schools, such as Institut Montana Zugerberg, in Zug, Switzerland. Through his maternal ancestry, Kerry also descends from Rev. James McGregor who was among the first 500 Scots-Irish immigrants to Boston Harbor in the 18th century.\nAt the age of ten, Kerry's father took a position as the U.S. Attorney for Berlin. When Kerry was twelve, he crossed into the Soviet Occupation Zone to visit Hitler's bunker and ride through the Brandenburg Gate. \nIn 1957, his father was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway, and Kerry was sent back to the United States to attend boarding school. He first attended the Fessenden School in Newton, Massachusetts, and later St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, where he learned skills in public speaking and began developing an interest in politics. Kerry founded the John Winant Society at St. Paul's to debate the issues of the day; the Society still exists there. In 1960, while at St. Paul's, he played bass in a minor rock band called The Electras with six of his classmates. The band had about five hundred copies of one album printed in 1961, which they sold some of at dances at the school; it was made available on streaming platforms many years later.\nIn 1962, Kerry attended Yale University, majoring in political science and residing in Jonathan Edwards College. By that year, his parents returned to Groton. While at Yale, Kerry briefly dated Janet Auchincloss, the younger half-sister of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Through Auchincloss, Kerry was invited to a day of sailing with then-President John F. Kennedy and his family.\nKerry played on the varsity Yale Bulldogs men's soccer team, earning his only letter in his senior year. He also played freshman and junior varsity hockey and, in his senior year, junior varsity lacrosse. In addition, he was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity and took flying lessons.\nIn his sophomore year, Kerry became the chairman of the Liberal Party of the Yale Political Union, and a year later he served as president of the union. Amongst his influential teachers in this period was Professor H. Bradford Westerfield, who was himself a former president of the Political Union. His involvement with the Political Union gave him an opportunity to be involved with important issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and the New Frontier program. He also became a member of Skull and Bones Society, and traveled to Switzerland through AIESEC Yale.\nUnder the guidance of the speaking coach and history professor Rollin G. Osterweis, Kerry won many debates against other college students from across the nation. In March 1965, as the Vietnam War escalated, he won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that was critical of U.S. foreign policy. In the speech he said, \"It is the spectre of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism and thus, it is self-defeating.\"\nKerry graduated from Yale with a bachelor of arts degree in 1966. Overall, he had below-average grades, graduating with a cumulative average of 76 over his four years. His freshman-year average was a 71, but he improved to an 81 average for his senior year. He never received an \"A\" during his time at Yale; his highest grade was an 89.\nMilitary service (1966\u20131970).\nDuty on USS \"Gridley\".\nOn February 18, 1966, Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserve. He began his active duty military service on August 19, 1966. After completing 16 weeks of Officer Candidate School at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island, Kerry received his officer's commission on December 16, 1966. During the 2004 election, Kerry posted his military records at his website, and permitted reporters to inspect his medical records. In 2005, Kerry released his military and medical records to the representatives of three news organizations, but has not authorized full public access to those records.\nDuring his tour on the guided missile frigate , Kerry requested duty in South Vietnam, listing as his first preference a position as the commander of a Fast Patrol Craft (PCF), also known as a \"Swift boat\". These boats have aluminum hulls and have little or no armor, but are heavily armed and rely on speed. \"I didn't really want to get involved in the war,\" Kerry said in a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. \"When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing.\" However, his second choice of billet was on a river patrol boat, or \"PBR\", which at the time was serving a more dangerous duty on the rivers of Vietnam.\nMilitary honors.\nDuring the night of December 2 and early morning of December 3, 1968, Kerry was in charge of a small boat operating near a peninsula north of Cam Ranh Bay together with a Swift boat (PCF-60). According to Kerry and the two crewmen who accompanied him that night, Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis, they surprised a group of Vietnamese men unloading sampans at a river crossing, who began running and failed to obey an order to stop. As the men fled, Kerry and his crew opened fire on the sampans and destroyed them, then rapidly left. During this encounter, Kerry received a shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow. It was for this injury that Kerry received his first Purple Heart Medal.\nKerry received his second Purple Heart for a wound received in action on the B\u1ed3 \u0110\u1ec1 River on February 20, 1969. The plan had been for the Swift boats to be accompanied by support helicopters. On the way up the Bo De, however, the helicopters were attacked. As the Swift boats reached the C\u1eeda L\u1edbn River, Kerry's boat was hit by a B-40 rocket (rocket propelled grenade round), and a piece of shrapnel hit Kerry's left leg, wounding him. Thereafter, enemy fire ceased and his boat reached the Gulf of Thailand safely. Kerry continues to have shrapnel embedded in his left thigh because the doctors that first treated him decided to remove the damaged tissue and close the wound with sutures rather than make a wide opening to remove the shrapnel. Although wounded like several others earlier that day, Kerry did not lose any time off from duty.\nSilver Star.\nEight days later, on February 28, 1969, came the events for which Kerry was awarded his Silver Star Medal. On this occasion, Kerry was in tactical command of his Swift boat and two other Swift boats during a combat operation. Their mission on the Duong Keo River included bringing an underwater demolition team and dozens of South Vietnamese Marines to destroy enemy sampans, structures and bunkers as described in the story \"The Death Of PCF 43\". Running into heavy small arms fire from the river banks, Kerry \"directed the units to turn to the beach and charge the Viet Cong positions\" and he \"expertly directed\" his boat's fire causing the enemy to flee while at the same time coordinating the insertion of the ninety South Vietnamese troops (according to the original medal citation signed by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt). Moving a short distance upstream, Kerry's boat was the target of a B-40 rocket round; Kerry charged the enemy positions and as his boat hove to and beached, a Viet Cong (\"VC\") insurgent armed with a rocket launcher emerged from a spider hole and ran. While the boat's gunner opened fire, wounding the VC in the leg, and while the other boats approached and offered cover fire, Kerry jumped from the boat to pursue the VC insurgent, subsequently killing him and capturing his loaded rocket launcher.\nKerry's commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander George Elliott, stated to Douglas Brinkley in 2003 that he did not know whether to court-martial Kerry for beaching the boat without orders or give him a medal for saving the crew. Elliott recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, and Zumwalt flew into An Thoi to personally award medals to Kerry and the rest of the sailors involved in the mission. The Navy's account of Kerry's actions is presented in the original signed by Zumwalt. The engagement was documented in an after-action report, a press release written on March 1, 1969, and a historical summary dated March 17, 1969.\nBronze Star.\nOn March 13, 1969, on the B\u00e1i H\u00e1p River, Kerry was in charge of one of five Swift boats that were returning to their base after performing an Operation Sealords mission to transport South Vietnamese troops from the garrison at C\u00e1i N\u01b0\u1edbc and MIKE Force advisors for a raid on a Vietcong camp located on the Rach Dong Cung canal. Earlier in the day, Kerry received a slight shrapnel wound in the buttocks from blowing up a rice bunker. Debarking some but not all of the passengers at a small village, the boats approached a fishing weir; one group of boats went around to the left of the weir, hugging the shore, and a group with Kerry's PCF-94 boat went around to the right, along the shoreline. A mine was detonated directly beneath the lead boat, PCF-3, as it crossed the weir to the left, lifting PCF-3 \"about 2\u20133 ft out of water\".\nJames Rassmann, a Green Beret advisor who was aboard Kerry's PCF-94, was knocked overboard when, according to witnesses and the documentation of the event, a mine or rocket exploded close to the boat. According to the documentation for the event, Kerry's arm was injured when he was thrown against a bulkhead during the explosion. PCF 94 returned to the scene and Kerry rescued Rassmann who was receiving sniper fire from the water. Kerry received the Bronze Star Medal with Combat \"V\" for \"heroic achievement\", for his actions during this incident; he also received his third Purple Heart.\nReturn from Vietnam.\nAfter Kerry's third qualifying wound, he was entitled per Navy regulations to reassignment away from combat duties. Kerry's preferred choice for reassignment was as a military aide in Boston, New York City or Washington, D.C. On April 11, 1969, he reported to the Brooklyn-based Atlantic Military Sea Transportation Service, where he would remain on active duty for the following year as a personal aide to an officer, Rear Admiral Walter Schlech. On January 1, 1970, Kerry was temporarily promoted to full lieutenant. Kerry had agreed to an extension of his active duty obligation from December 1969 to August 1970 in order to perform Swift Boat duty. John Kerry was on active duty in the United States Navy from August 1966 until January 1970. He continued to serve in the Naval Reserve until February 1978.\n\"Swiftboating\" controversy.\nWith the continuing controversy that had surrounded the military service of George W. Bush since the 2000 presidential election (when he was accused of having used his father's political influence to gain entrance to the Texas Air National Guard, thereby protecting himself from conscription into the United States Army, and possible service in the Vietnam War), John Kerry's contrasting status as a decorated Vietnam War veteran posed a problem for Bush's re-election campaign, which Republicans sought to counter by calling Kerry's war record into question. As the presidential campaign of 2004 developed, approximately 250 members of a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT, later renamed Swift Vets and POWs for Truth) opposed Kerry's campaign. The group held press conferences, ran ads and endorsed a book questioning Kerry's service record and his military awards. The group included several members of Kerry's unit, such as Larry Thurlow, who commanded a swift boat alongside of Kerry's, and Stephen Gardner, who served on Kerry's boat. The campaign inspired the widely used political pejorative '\"swiftboating,\" to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. Most of Kerry's former crewmates have stated that SBVT's allegations are false.\nAnti-war activism (1970\u20131971).\nAfter returning to the United States, Kerry moved to Waltham, Massachusetts and joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Then numbering about 20,000, VVAW was considered by some (including the administration of President Richard Nixon) to be an effective, if controversial, component of the antiwar movement. Kerry participated in the \"Winter Soldier Investigation\" conducted by VVAW of U.S. atrocities in Vietnam, and he appears in a film by that name that documents the investigation. According to Nixon Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, \"I didn't approve of what he did, but I understood the protesters quite well\", and he declined two requests from the Navy to court martial Reserve Lieutenant Kerry over his antiwar activity.\nOn April 22, 1971, Kerry appeared before a U.S. Senate committee hearing on proposals relating to ending the war. The day after this testimony, Kerry participated in a demonstration with thousands of other veterans in which he and other Vietnam War veterans threw their medals and service ribbons over a fence erected at the front steps of the United States Capitol building to dramatize their opposition to the war. Jack Smith, a Marine, read a statement explaining why the veterans were returning their military awards to the government. For more than two hours, almost 1,000 angry veterans tossed their medals, ribbons, hats, jackets, and military papers over the fence. Each veteran gave his or her name, hometown, branch of service and a statement. Kerry threw some of his own decorations and awards as well as some given to him by other veterans to throw. As Kerry threw his decorations over the fence, his statement was: \"I'm not doing this for any violent reasons, but for peace and justice, and to try and make this country wake up once and for all.\"\nKerry was arrested on May 30, 1971, during a VVAW march to honor American POWs held captive by North Vietnam. The march was planned as a multi-day event from Concord to Boston, and while in Lexington, participants tried to camp on the village green. At 2:30a.m., local and state police arrested 441 demonstrators, including Kerry, for trespassing. All were given the Miranda Warning and were hauled away on school buses to spend the night at the Lexington Public Works Garage. Kerry and the other protesters later paid a $5 fine, and were released. The mass arrests caused a community backlash and ended up giving positive coverage to the VVAW.\nEarly political career (1972\u20131985).\n1972 congressional election.\nIn 1970, Kerry had considered running for Congress in the Democratic primary against hawkish Democrat Philip J. Philbin of Massachusetts's 3rd congressional district, but deferred in favor of Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest and anti-war activist, who went on to defeat Philbin. In February 1972, Kerry's wife bought a house in Worcester, with Kerry intending to run against the 4th district's aging thirteen-term incumbent Democrat, Harold Donohue. The couple never moved in. After Republican Congressman F. Bradford Morse of the neighboring 5th district announced his retirement and then resignation to become Under-Secretary-General for Political and General Assembly Affairs at the United Nations, the couple instead rented an apartment in Lowell, so that Kerry could run to succeed him.\nIncluding Kerry, the Democratic primary race had 10 candidates, including attorney Paul J. Sheehy, State Representative Anthony R. DiFruscia, John J. Desmond and Robert B. Kennedy. Kerry ran a \"very expensive, sophisticated campaign\", financed by out-of-state backers and supported by many young volunteers. DiFruscia's campaign headquarters shared the same building as Kerry's. On the eve of the September 19 primary, police found Kerry's younger brother Cameron and campaign field director Thomas J. Vallely, breaking into where the building's telephone lines were located. They were arrested and charged with \"breaking and entering with the intent to commit grand larceny\", but the charges were dropped a year later. DiFruscia alleged that the two were trying to disrupt his get-out-the vote efforts. Vallely and Cameron Kerry maintained that they were only checking their own telephone lines because they had received an anonymous call warning that the Kerry lines would be cut.\nDespite the arrests, Kerry won the primary with 20,771 votes (27.56%). Sheehy came second with 15,641 votes (20.75%), followed by DiFruscia with 12,222 votes (16.22%), Desmond with 10,213 votes (13.55%) and Kennedy with 5,632 votes (7.47%). The remaining 10,891 votes were split amongst the other five candidates, with 1970 nominee Richard Williams coming last with just 1,706 votes (2.26%).\nIn the general election, Kerry was initially favored to defeat the Republican candidate, former State Representative Paul W. Cronin, and conservative Democrat Roger P. Durkin, who ran as an Independent. A week after the primary, one poll put Kerry 26-points ahead of Cronin. His campaign called for a national health insurance system, discounted prescription drugs for the unemployed, a jobs program to clean up the Merrimack River and rent controls in Lowell and Lawrence. A major obstacle, however, was the district's leading newspaper, the conservative \"The Sun\". The paper editorialized against him. It also ran critical news stories about his out-of-state contributions and his \"carpetbagging\", because he had only moved into the district in April. Subsequently, released \"Watergate\" Oval Office tape recordings of the Nixon White House showed that defeating Kerry's candidacy had attracted the personal attention of President Nixon. Kerry himself asserts that Nixon sent operatives to Lowell to help derail his campaign.\nThe race was the most expensive for Congress in the country that year and four days before the general election, Durkin withdrew and endorsed Cronin, hoping to see Kerry defeated. The week before, a poll had put Kerry 10 points ahead of Cronin, with Durkin at 13%. In the final days of the campaign, Kerry sensed that it was \"slipping away\" and Cronin emerged victorious by 110,970 votes (53.45%) to Kerry's 92,847 (44.72%). After his defeat, Kerry lamented in a letter to supporters that \"for two solid weeks, [\"The Sun\"] called me un-American, New Left antiwar agitator, unpatriotic, and labeled me every other 'un-' and 'anti-' that they could find. It's hard to believe that one newspaper could be so powerful, but they were.\" He later felt that his failure to respond directly to \"The Sun\"'s attacks cost him the race.\nLaw career.\nAfter Kerry's 1972 defeat, he and his wife bought a house in the Belvidere section of Lowell, Massachusetts, entering a decade which his brother Cameron later called \"the years in exile\". He spent some time working as a fundraiser for the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE), an international humanitarian organization. In September 1973, he entered Boston College Law School. While studying, Kerry worked as a talk radio host on WBZ and, in July 1974, was named executive director of Mass Action, a Massachusetts advocacy association.\nKerry received his juris doctor (J.D.) from Boston College in 1976. While in law school he had been a student prosecutor in the office of the District Attorney of Middlesex County, John J. Droney. After passing the bar exam and being admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1976, he went to work in that office as a full-time prosecutor and moved to Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.\nIn January 1977, Droney promoted him to First Assistant District Attorney, essentially making Kerry his campaign and media surrogate because Droney was afflicted with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease). As First Assistant, Kerry tried cases, which included winning convictions in a high-profile rape case and a murder. He also played a role in administering the office, including initiating the creation of special white-collar and organized crime units, creating programs to address the problems of rape and other crime victims and witnesses, and managing trial calendars to reflect case priorities. In 1978, Kerry launched a criminal investigation against Senator Edward Brooke, regarding \"misstatements\" in his first divorce trial. The inquiry ended with no charges being brought after investigators and prosecutors determined that Brooke's misstatements were pertinent to the case, but were not material enough to have affected the outcome.\nDroney's health was poor and Kerry had decided to run for his position in the 1978 election should Droney drop out. However, Droney was re-elected and his health improved; he went on to re-assume many of the duties that he had delegated to Kerry. Kerry thus decided to leave, departing in 1979 with assistant DA Roanne Sragow to set up their own law firm. Kerry also worked as a commentator for WCVB-TV and co-founded a bakery, Kilvert & Forbes Ltd., with businessman and former Kennedy aide K. Dun Gifford.\nLieutenant Governor of Massachusetts.\nIn the 1982 Massachusetts gubernatorial election, Lieutenant Governor Thomas P. O'Neill III declined to seek a third term, instead deciding to run for governor of Massachusetts. Kerry declared his candidacy, entering the primary election alongside Massachusetts Secretary of Environmental Affairs Evelyn Murphy, State Senator Samuel Rotondi, State Representative Lou Nickinello, and Lois Pines.\nKerry won the nomination with 325,890 votes (29%) to Murphy's 286,378 (25.48%), Rotondi's 228,086 (20.29%), Nickinello's 150,829 (13.42%) and Pines' 132,734 (11.81%). In the concurrent gubernatorial primary, former Governor Michael Dukakis defeated O'Neill and incumbent Governor Edward J. King. The Dukakis and Kerry ticket defeated the Republican ticket of John W. Sears and Leon Lombardi in the general election by 1,219,109 votes (61.92%) to 749,679 (38.08%).\nAs Lieutenant Governor, Kerry led meetings of the Massachusetts Governor's Council. Dukakis also delegated other tasks to Kerry, including serving as the state's liaison to the Federal government of the United States. He was also active on environmental issues, including combating acid rain.\n1984 U.S. Senate election.\nThe junior U.S. senator from Massachusetts, Paul Tsongas, announced in 1984 that he would be stepping down for health reasons. Kerry ran, and as in his 1982 race for Lieutenant Governor, he did not receive the endorsement of the party regulars at the state Democratic convention. Congressman James Shannon, a favorite of House Speaker Tip O'Neill, was the early favorite to win the nomination, and he \"won broad establishment support and led in early polling\". Again as in 1982, however, Kerry prevailed in a close primary.\nIn his general election campaign, Kerry promised to mix liberalism with tight budget controls. He defeated Republican Ray Shamie despite a nationwide landslide for the re-election of Republican President Ronald Reagan, for whom Massachusetts voted by a narrow margin. In his victory speech, Kerry asserted that his win meant that the people of Massachusetts \"emphatically reject the politics of selfishness and the notion that women must be treated as second-class citizens\".\nTsongas resigned on January 2, 1985, one day before the end of his term. Dukakis appointed Kerry to fill the vacancy, giving him seniority over other new senators who were sworn in on January 3, the scheduled start of their new terms.\nU.S. Senate (1985\u20132013).\nIran\u2013Contra hearings.\nOn April 18, 1985, a few months after taking his Senate seat, Kerry and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa traveled to Nicaragua and met the country's president, Daniel Ortega. Although Ortega had won internationally certified elections, the trip was criticized because Ortega and his leftist Sandinista government had strong ties to Cuba and the USSR and were accused of human rights abuses. The Sandinista government was opposed by the right-wing CIA-backed rebels known as the Contras. While in Nicaragua, Kerry and Harkin talked to people on both sides of the conflict. Through the senators, Ortega offered a cease-fire agreement in exchange for the U.S. dropping support of the Contras. The offer was denounced by the Reagan administration as a \"propaganda initiative\" designed to influence a House vote on a $14million Contra aid package, but Kerry said \"I am willing... to take the risk in the effort to put to test the good faith of the Sandinistas.\" The House voted down the Contra aid, but Ortega flew to Moscow to accept a $200million loan the next day, which in part prompted the House to pass a larger $27million aid package six weeks later.\nMeanwhile, Kerry's staff began their own investigations and, on October 14, issued a report that exposed illegal activities on the part of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who had set up a private network involving the National Security Council and the CIA to deliver military equipment to right-wing Nicaraguan rebels (Contras). In effect, North and certain members of the President's administration were accused by Kerry's report of illegally funding and supplying armed militants without the authorization of Congress. Kerry's staff investigation, based on a year-long inquiry and interviews with fifty unnamed sources, is said to raise \"serious questions about whether the United States has abided by the law in its handling of the contras over the past three years\".\nThe Kerry Committee report found that \"the Contra drug links included... payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies.\" The U.S. State Department paid over $806,000 to known drug traffickers to carry humanitarian assistance to the Contras. Kerry's findings provoked little reaction in the media and official Washington.\nThe Kerry report was a precursor to the Iran\u2013Contra affair. On May 4, 1989, North was convicted of charges relating to the Iran/Contra controversy, including three felonies. On September 16, 1991, however, North's convictions were overturned on appeal.\nGeorge H. W. Bush administration.\nOn November 15, 1988, at a businessmen's breakfast in East Lynn, Massachusetts, Kerry made a joke about then-President-elect George H. W. Bush and his running mate, saying \"if Bush is shot, the Secret Service has orders to shoot Dan Quayle.\" He apologized the following day.\nDuring their investigation of General Manuel Noriega, the \"de facto\" ruler of Panama, Kerry's staff found reason to believe that the Pakistan-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) had facilitated Noriega's drug trafficking and money laundering. This led to a separate inquiry into BCCI, and as a result, banking regulators shut down BCCI in 1991. In December 1992, Kerry and Senator Hank Brown, a Republican from Colorado, released \"The BCCI Affair\", a report on the BCCI scandal. The report showed that the bank was crooked and was working with terrorists, including Abu Nidal. It blasted the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, the Customs Service, the Federal Reserve Bank, as well as influential lobbyists and the CIA.\nKerry was criticized by some Democrats for having pursued his own party members, including former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, although Republicans said he should have pressed against some Democrats even harder. The BCCI scandal was later turned over to the Manhattan District Attorney's office.\nPrecursors to presidential bid.\nIn 1996, Kerry faced a difficult re-election fight against Governor William Weld, a popular Republican incumbent who had been re-elected in 1994 with 71% of the vote. The race was covered nationwide as one of the most closely watched Senate races that year. Kerry and Weld held several debates and negotiated a campaign spending cap of $6.9million at Kerry's Beacon Hill townhouse. Both candidates spent more than the cap, with each camp accusing the other of being first to break the agreement. During the campaign, Kerry spoke briefly at the 1996 Democratic National Convention. Kerry won re-election with 52 percent to Weld's 45 percent.\nIn the 2000 presidential election, Kerry found himself close to being chosen as the vice presidential running mate.\nA release from the presidential campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Al Gore listed Kerry on the short list to be selected as the vice-presidential nominee, along with North Carolina Senator John Edwards, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt, New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. Gore ultimately chose Lieberman.\n\"You get stuck in Iraq\" controversy.\nOn October 30, 2006, Kerry was a headline speaker at a campaign rally being held for Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. Speaking to an audience composed mainly of college students, Kerry said, \"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.\"\nThe day after he made the remark, leaders from both sides of the political spectrum criticized Kerry's remarks, which he said were a botched joke. Republicans including President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain and then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, said that Kerry's comments were insulting to American military forces fighting in Iraq. Democratic Representative Harold Ford Jr. called on Kerry to apologize.\nKerry initially stated: \"I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy\". Kerry also responded to criticism from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.\nKerry said that he had intended the remark as a jab at President Bush, and described the remarks as a \"botched joke\", having inadvertently left out the key word \"us\" (which would have been, \"If you don't, you get \"us\" stuck in Iraq\"), as well as leaving the phrase \"just ask President Bush\" off of the end of the sentence. In Kerry's prepared remarks, which he released during the ensuing media frenzy, the corresponding line was \"...you end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush\". He also said that from the context of the speech which, prior to the \"stuck in Iraq\" line, made several specific references to Bush and elements of his biography, that Kerry was referring to President Bush and not American troops in general.\nAfter two days of media coverage, citing a desire not to be a diversion, Kerry apologized to those who took offense at what he called the misinterpretation of his comment.\nAfghanistan and Pakistan.\nA \"Washington Post\" report in May 2011 stated that Kerry \"has emerged in the past few years as an important envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan during times of crisis\", as he undertook another trip to the two countries. The killing of Osama bin Laden \"has generated perhaps the most important crossroads yet\", the report continued, as the senator spoke at a press conference and prepared to fly from Kabul to Pakistan. Among matters discussed during the May visit to Pakistan, under the general rubric of \"recalibrating\" the bilateral relationship, Kerry sought and retrieved from the Pakistanis the tail-section of the U.S. helicopter which had had to be abandoned at Abbottabad during the bin Laden strike. In 2013, Kerry met with Pakistan's army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to discuss the peace process with the Taliban in Afghanistan.\nVoting record.\nOverall.\nMost analyses place Kerry's voting record on the left within the Senate Democratic caucus. During the 2004 presidential election he was portrayed as a staunch liberal by conservative groups and the Bush campaign, who often noted that in 2003 Kerry was rated the top Senate liberal by \"National Journal\". However, that rating was based only upon voting on legislation within that past year. In fact, in terms of career voting records, the \"National Journal\" found that Kerry is the 11th most liberal member of the Senate. Most analyses find that Kerry is at least slightly more liberal than the typical Democratic Senator. Kerry has stated that he opposes privatizing Social Security, supports abortion rights for adult women and minors, supports same-sex marriage, opposes capital punishment except for terrorists, supports most gun control laws, and is generally a supporter of trade agreements. In some of these, as in the case of abortion, Kerry distinguishes his personal views as in line with his Catholic faith, but believes that separation of church and state demands that he not legislate his religious beliefs upon those who do not share those beliefs. Kerry supported the North American Free Trade Agreement and Most Favored Nation status for China, but opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement.\nIn July 1997, Kerry joined his Senate colleagues in voting against ratification of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming without greenhouse gas emissions limits on nations deemed developing, including India and China. Since then, Kerry has attacked President Bush, charging him with opposition to international efforts to combat global warming.\nOn October 1, 2008, Kerry voted for Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, also known as the TARP bailout.\nIraq.\nIn the lead up to the Iraq War, Kerry said on October 9, 2002; \"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.\" Bush relied on that resolution in ordering the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Kerry also gave a January 23, 2003, speech to Georgetown University saying \"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator; leading an oppressive regime he presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.\" Kerry did, however, warn that the administration should exhaust its diplomatic avenues before launching war: \"Mr. President, do not rush to war, take the time to build the coalition, because it's not winning the war that's hard, it's winning the peace that's hard.\"\nAfter the invasion of Iraq, when no weapons of mass destruction were found, Kerry strongly criticized Bush, contending that he had misled the country: \"When the President of the United States looks at you and tells you something, there should be some trust.\"\nLibya.\nIn 2011, Kerry supported American military action in Libya.\nLeadership.\nKerry chaired the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs from 1991 to 1993. The committee's report, which Kerry endorsed, stated there was \"no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia\". In 1994 the Senate passed a resolution, sponsored by Kerry and fellow Vietnam veteran John McCain, that called for an end to the existing trade embargo against Vietnam; it was intended to pave the way for normalization. In 1995, President Bill Clinton normalized diplomatic relations with the country of Vietnam.\nKerry was the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 1987 to 1989. He was reelected to the Senate in 1990, 1996 (after winning re-election against the then-Governor of Massachusetts Republican William Weld), 2002, and 2008. In January 2009, Kerry replaced Joe Biden as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.\nAs a role model for campus leaders across the nation and strong advocate for global development, Kerry was honored by the Millennium Campus Network (MCN) as a Global Generation Award winner in 2011.\nCommittee assignments.\nDuring his tenure, Kerry served on four Senate committees and nine subcommittees:\nSeniority.\nFrom the beginning of the 113th United States Congress until his resignation, Kerry ranked as the 7th most senior U.S. Senator. Due to the longevity of Ted Kennedy's service, Kerry was the most senior \"junior Senator\" in the 111th United States Congress. On Tuesday, August 25, 2009, Kerry became the senior senator from Massachusetts following Ted Kennedy's death.\nSponsorship of legislation.\nAreas of concern in the bills Kerry introduced into the Senate included small business concerns, education, terrorism, veterans' and POW/MIA issues, and marine resource protection. A full list of Kerry's sponsored legislation was available on his Senate web site.\nDuring his Senate career, Kerry was primary sponsor of the following bills (excluding resolutions and amendments sponsored). This table does not count bills which Kerry co-sponsored.\nA chronological list of various bills and resolutions sponsored by Kerry follows.\n2004 presidential campaign.\nIn the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries, John Kerry defeated several Democratic rivals, including Sen. John Edwards (D-North Carolina), former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and retired Army General Wesley Clark. His victory in the Iowa caucuses is widely believed to be the tipping point where Kerry revived his sagging campaign in New Hampshire and the February 3, 2004, primary states like Arizona, South Carolina and New Mexico. Kerry then went on to win landslide victories in Nevada and Wisconsin. Kerry thus won the Democratic nomination to run for President of the United States against incumbent George W. Bush. On July 6, 2004, he announced his selection of John Edwards as his running mate. Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who was Kerry's 2004 campaign adviser, wrote an article in \"Time\" magazine claiming that after the election, Kerry had said that he wished he had never picked Edwards, and that the two have since stopped speaking to each other. In a subsequent appearance on ABC's \"This Week\", Kerry refused to respond to Shrum's allegation, calling it a \"ridiculous waste of time\".\nDuring his bid to be elected president in 2004, Kerry frequently criticized President George W. Bush for starting the Iraq War. While Kerry had initially voted in support of authorizing President Bush to use force in dealing with Saddam Hussein, he voted against an $87billion supplemental appropriations bill to pay for the subsequent war. His statement on March 16, 2004, \"I actually did vote for the $87billion before I voted against it\", helped the Bush campaign to paint him as a flip-flopper and has been cited as contributing to Kerry's defeat.\nOn November 3, 2004, Kerry conceded the race. Kerry won 59.03 million votes, or 48.3 percent of the popular vote; Bush won 62.04 million votes, or 50.7 percent of the popular vote. Kerry carried states with a total of 252 electoral votes. One Kerry elector voted for Kerry's running mate, Edwards, so in the final tally Kerry had 251 electoral votes to Bush's 286. He was the first Democrat since Michael Dukakis in 1988 to lose the popular vote in a presidential election, and until Kamala Harris's loss in 2024, he was the most recent Democrat to do so.\nSubsequent presidential-election activities.\nImmediately after the 2004 election, some Democrats mentioned Kerry as a possible contender for the 2008 Democratic nomination. His brother had said such a campaign was \"conceivable\", and Kerry himself reportedly said at a farewell party for his 2004 campaign staff, \"There's always another four years\".\nKerry established a separate political action committee, Keeping America's Promise, which declared as its mandate \"A Democratic Congress will restore accountability to Washington and help change a disastrous course in Iraq\", and raised money and channeled contributions to Democratic candidates in state and federal races. Through Keeping America's Promise in 2005, Kerry raised over $5.5million for other Democrats up and down the ballot. Through his campaign account and his political action committee, the Kerry campaign operation generated more than $10million for various party committees and 179 candidates for the U.S. House, Senate, state and local offices in 42 states focusing on the midterm elections during the 2006 election cycle. \"Cumulatively, John Kerry has done as much if not more than any other individual senator\", Hassan Nemazee, the national finance chairman of the DSCC said.\nOn January 10, 2008, Kerry endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama for president. He was mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate for Senator Obama, although fellow Senator Joe Biden was eventually chosen. After Biden's acceptance of the vice presidential nomination, speculation arose that John Kerry would be a candidate for Secretary of State in the Obama administration. However, Senator Hillary Clinton was offered the position.\nDuring the 2012 Obama reelection campaign, Kerry participated in one-on-one debate prep with the president, impersonating the Republican candidate Mitt Romney.\nSecretary of State (2013\u20132017).\nNomination and confirmation.\nOn December 15, 2012, several news outlets reported that President Barack Obama would nominate Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, after Susan Rice, widely seen as Obama's preferred choice, withdrew her name from consideration citing a politicized confirmation process following criticism of her response to the 2012 Benghazi attack. On December 21, Obama proposed the nomination, which received positive commentary. His confirmation hearing took place on January 24, 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the same panel where he first testified in 1971. The committee unanimously voted to approve him on January 29, 2013, and the same day the full Senate confirmed him on a vote of 94\u20133. In a letter to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Kerry announced his resignation from the Senate effective February 1.\nTenure.\nKerry was sworn in as Secretary of State on February 1, 2013.\nWhile serving as the Secretary of State, Kerry spoke in the French language on several occasions in his official capacity.\nAfter six months of rigorous diplomacy within the Middle East, Kerry was able to have Israeli and Palestinian negotiators agree to start the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks. Senior U.S. officials stated the two sides were able to meet on July 30, 2013, at the State Department without American mediators following a dinner the previous evening hosted by Kerry.\nOn September 27, 2013, he met with the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the P5+1 and Iran summit, which eventually led to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. It was the highest-level direct contact between the United States and Iran in the last six years, and made him the first U.S. Secretary of State to have met with his Iranian counterpart since 1979 Iranian Revolution.\nIn the State Department, Kerry quickly earned a reputation \"for being aloof, keeping to himself, and not bothering to read staff memos\". Career State Department officials complained that power became too centralized under Kerry's leadership, which slowed department operations when Kerry was on frequent overseas trips. Others in State described Kerry as having \"a kind of diplomatic attention deficit disorder\" as he shifted from topic to topic instead of focusing on long-term strategy. When asked whether he was traveling too much, he responded, \"Hell no. I'm not slowing down.\" Despite Kerry's early achievements, morale at State was lower than under Hillary Clinton, according to department employees. However, after Kerry's first six months in the State Department, a Gallup poll found he had high approval ratings among Americans as Secretary of State. After a year, another poll showed Kerry's favorability continued to rise. Less than two years into Kerry's term, the Foreign Policy Magazine's 2014 Ivory Tower survey of international relations scholars asked, \"Who was the most effective U.S. Secretary of State in the past 50 years?\"; John Kerry and Lawrence Eagleburger tied for 11th place out of the 15 confirmed Secretaries of State in that period.\nIn January 2014, having met with Vatican Secretary of State Archbishop Pietro Parolin, Kerry said: \"We touched on just about every major issue that we are both working on, that are issues of concern to all of us. First of all, we talked at great length about Syria, and I was particularly appreciative for the Archbishop's raising this issue, and equally grateful for the Holy Father's comments\u00a0\u2013 the Pope's comments yesterday regarding his support for the GenevaII process. We welcome that support. It is very important to have broad support, and I know that the Pope is particularly concerned about the massive numbers of displaced human beings and the violence that has taken over 130,000 lives.\"\nKerry expressed support for Israel's right to defend itself during the 2014 Israel\u2013Gaza conflict.\nKerry said the United States supported the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen because Saudi Arabia, an ally, was threatened \"very directly\" by the takeover of neighboring Yemen by the Houthis, but noted that the United States would not reflexively support Saudi Arabia's proxy wars against Iran.\nOn December 28, 2016, soon after United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 passed 14\u20130 with the U.S. abstaining, Kerry joined the rest of the U.N. Security Council in strongly criticizing Israel's settlement policies in a speech. His speech and criticisms met negative reactions from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while UK Prime Minister Theresa May distanced the UK from Kerry's strongly worded speech in what appeared to be an attempt to build bridges with the incoming Trump administration. Kerry's speech received positive reactions from Arab nations, but some criticized his remarks as too little, too late from the outgoing administration.\nSyria.\nFollowing the August 21, 2013, chemical weapons attack on the Ghouta suburbs of Damascus attributed to Syrian government forces, Kerry became a leading advocate for the use of military force against the Syrian government for what he called \"a despot's brutal and flagrant use of chemical weapons\".\nOn September 9, in response to a reporter's question about whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could avert a military strike, Kerry said \"He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that. But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done, obviously.\" This unscripted remark initiated a process that would lead to Syria agreeing to relinquish and destroy its chemical weapons arsenal, as Russia treated Kerry's statement as a serious proposal. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia would work \"immediately\" to convince Syria relinquish and destroy its large chemical weapons arsenal. Syria quickly welcomed this proposal and on September 14, the UN formally accepted Syria's application to join the convention banning chemical weapons, and separately, the U.S. and Russia agreed on a plan to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons by the middle of 2014, leading Kerry to declare on July 20, 2014: \"we struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out\". On September 28, the UN Security Council passed a resolution ordering the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons and condemning the August 21 Ghouta attack.\nLatin America.\nIn a speech before the Organization of American States in November 2013, Kerry remarked that the era of the Monroe Doctrine was over. He went on to explain, \"The relationship that we seek and that we have worked hard to foster is not about a United States declaration about how and when it will intervene in the affairs of other American states. It's about all of our countries viewing one another as equals, sharing responsibilities, cooperating on security issues, and adhering not to doctrine, but to the decisions that we make as partners to advance the values and the interests that we share.\"\nEnvironmentalism.\nIn April 2016, he signed the Paris Climate Accords at the United Nations in New York.\nOn November 11, 2016, Kerry became the first Secretary of State and highest-ranking U.S. official to date to visit Antarctica. Kerry spent two days on the continent meeting with researchers and staying overnight at McMurdo Station.\nIn 1994, Kerry led opposition to continued funding for the Integral Fast Reactor, which resulted in the end of funding for the project. However, in light of increasing concerns regarding climate change, in 2017 Kerry reversed his position on nuclear power, saying \"Given this challenge we face today, and given the progress of fourth generation nuclear: go for it. No other alternative, zero emissions.\"\nGlobal Connect initiative.\nIn September 2015, the U.S. Department of State unveiled a new initiative called \"Global Connect\" which sought to provide internet access to more than 1.5 billion people around the world within five years. In 2016, in partnership with OPIC, Kerry announced an investment of $171million to enable \"a low-cost and rapidly scalable wireless broadband network in India\". OPIC's financing is aimed at helping its Indian Partner, Tikona Digital Networks, to provide Internet through wireless technology.\nOut of government (2017\u20132021).\nKerry retired from his diplomatic work following the end of the Obama administration on January 20, 2017. He did not attend Donald Trump's inauguration on that day, and the following day took part in the 2017 Women's March in Washington, D.C.\nKerry has taken a strong stand against Trump policies and joined in filing a brief arguing against Trump's executive order banning entry of persons from seven Muslim countries. In November 2018, in a \"Guardian Live\" conversation with Andrew Rawnsley, sponsored by \"The Guardian\" at London's Central Hall, Kerry discussed several issues which have developed further since his tenure as Secretary of State, including migration into Europe and climate change.\nOn December 5, 2019, Kerry endorsed Joe Biden's bid for the Democratic nomination for president, saying \"He'll be ready on day one to put back together the country and the world that Donald Trump has broken apart\" and asserting that \"Joe will defeat Donald Trump next November. He's the candidate with the wisdom and standing to fix what Trump has broken, to restore our place in the world, and improve the lives of working people here at home.\"\nFollowing retirement from government service, Kerry signed an agreement with Simon & Schuster for publishing his planned memoirs, dealing with his life and career in government. In September 2018, he published \"Every Day Is Extra\".\nLeaked audiotape.\nOn April 25, 2021, \"The New York Times\" published content from a leaked audiotape of a three-hour taped conversation between economist Saeed Leylaz and Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. The taped conversation was connected to an oral history project, known as \"In the Islamic Republic the military field rules\", which documents the work of Iran's current administration. The tape was obtained by the London-based news channel Iran International.\nIn the tape, which the \"Times\" referred to as \"extraordinary\", Zarif reveals that then-Secretary of State Kerry told him that Israel attacked Iranian assets in Syria, \"at least 200 times\". Although the tape has not been verified, the spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry did not deny its validity.\nNineteen Republican senators signed a letter asking President Biden to investigate Zarif's claim. On April 27, 2021, Republicans called on Kerry to resign from the Biden administration's National Security Council. In a tweet, Kerry denied Zarif's account, writing, \"I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false. This never happened \u2014 either when I was Secretary of State or since.\"\nSpecial Presidential Envoy for Climate (2021\u20132024).\nOn November 23, 2020, President-elect Joe Biden's transition team announced that Kerry would be taking a full-time position in the administration, serving as a special envoy for climate; in this role he will be a principal on the National Security Council. Kerry assumed office on January 20, 2021, following Biden's inauguration.\nClimate cooperation with China.\nIn July 2023, John Kerry visited China for advance climate cooperation. The main achievement of the visit was some progress in the fields of: \"methane reduction commitments; reducing China's reliance on coal; China's objections to trade restrictions on solar panel and battery components; and climate finance.\" This was obtained despite many currently existing obstacles to cooperation. The visit was made in the middle of the 2023 Asia heat wave that set a new record of in Sanbu, Xinjiang, China, which Kerry mentioned in particular.\nClimate cooperation with India.\nAt the end of July 2023, John Kerry visited India. Among others he declared, the US will be committed to the target of delivering 100 billion dollars for climate action to low income countries and no future US president can retreat from climate commitment. He criticized Donald Trump for leaving the Paris agreement before.\nClimate cooperation with countries in the Middle East.\nIn June 2023, Kerry made visits to Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. In Israel, he emphasized the need for climate legislation to reach climate targets and reached an agreement about the renewal of \"Memorandum of understanding between Israel and the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Israel is one of the few developed countries which have still not approved a climate law and lags behind other OECD countries in climate action. Israeli environmental protection minister Idit Silman said that Israel intended to go to COP28 \"with an ambitious and applicable climate law and put the State of Israel on the same level as the developed countries of the OECD.\"\nDeparture.\nOn January 13, 2024, at least three sources close to Kerry revealed that he would step down as U.S. climate envoy by the upcoming spring. He told the \"Financial Times\" he planned to stay active in the climate finance space. He officially resigned from his position on March 6, 2024.\nPersonal and family life.\nAncestry.\nKerry's paternal ancestors came from the Fr\u00e4nkel family, which owned a textile factory in Neustadt, Upper Silesia (now Prudnik, Poland), founded by Samuel Fr\u00e4nkel. The Fr\u00e4nkels originated from Hotzenplotz, Austria (now Osoblaha, Czech Republic) and Z\u00fclz, Prussia (now Bia\u0142a Prudnicka, Poland). Kerry's paternal great-grandmother, Mathilda Fr\u00e4nkel, was born in Oberglogau (now G\u0142og\u00f3wek, near Prudnik) and married Benedikt Kohn from Bennisch (now Horn\u00ed Bene\u0161ov). His grandparents, shoe businessman Frederick A. \"Fred\" Kerry and musician Ida L\u00f6we, immigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the U.S. Fred, his wife, and his brother converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1901, and changed their names from Kohn to Kerry. Ida was of remote ancestry of Rabbi Sinai Loew of Worms, brother of Judah Loew ben Bezalel. Fred and Ida Kerry emigrated to the United States in 1905, living at first in Chicago and eventually moving to Brookline, Massachusetts, by 1915. According to \"The New York Times\", \"[the] brother and sister of John Kerry's paternal grandmother, Otto and Jenni Lowe, died in concentration camps\". Kerry's Jewish ancestry was publicly revealed during his 2004 presidential campaign; he has stated that he was unaware of it until a reporter informed him of it in 2003.\nKerry's maternal ancestors were of Scottish and English descent, and his maternal grandparents were James Grant Forbes II of the Forbes family and Margaret Tyndal Winthrop of the Dudley\u2013Winthrop family. Margaret's paternal grandfather Robert Charles Winthrop served as the 22nd Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Robert's father was Governor Thomas Lindall Winthrop. Thomas' father John Still Winthrop was a great-great-grandson of Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop and great-grandson of Governor Thomas Dudley. Through his mother, Kerry is a first cousin once removed of French politician Brice Lalonde.\nMarriages and children.\nKerry was married to Julia Thorne in 1970, and they had two daughters together: documentary filmmaker Alexandra Kerry (born September 5, 1973) and physician Vanessa Kerry (born December 31, 1976).\nAlexandra was born days before Kerry began law school. In 1982, Julia asked Kerry for a separation while she was suffering from severe depression. They were divorced on July 25, 1988, and the marriage was formally annulled in 1997. \"After 14 years as a political wife, I associated politics only with anger, fear and loneliness\", she wrote in \"A Change of Heart\", her book about depression. Thorne later married Richard Charlesworth, an architect, and moved to Bozeman, Montana, where she became active in local environmental groups such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Thorne supported Kerry's 2004 presidential run. She died of cancer on April 27, 2006.\nKerry and his second wife\u2014Portuguese-born businesswoman and philanthropist Teresa Heinz, the widow of Kerry's late Pennsylvania Republican Senate colleague John Heinz\u2014were introduced to each other by Heinz at an Earth Day rally in 1990. Early the following year, Senator Heinz was killed in a plane crash near Lower Merion. Teresa has three sons from her marriage to Heinz, Henry John IV, Andr\u00e9, and Christopher. Heinz and Kerry were married on May 26, 1995, in Nantucket, Massachusetts.\nNet worth.\nThe \"Forbes 400\" survey estimated in 2004 that Teresa Heinz Kerry had a net worth of $750million. However, estimates have frequently varied, ranging from around $165million to as high as $3.2billion, according to a study in the \"Los Angeles Times\". Regardless of which figure is correct, Kerry was the wealthiest U.S. Senator while serving in the Senate. Independent of Heinz, Kerry is wealthy in his own right, and is the beneficiary of at least four trusts inherited from Forbes family relatives, including his mother, Rosemary Forbes Kerry, who died in 2002. \"Forbes\" magazine (named for the Forbes family of publishers, unrelated to Kerry) estimated that if elected, and if Heinz family assets were included, Kerry would have been the third-richest U.S. president in history, when adjusted for inflation. This assessment was based on Heinz's and Kerry's combined assets, but the couple signed a prenuptial agreement that keeps their assets separate. Kerry's financial disclosure form for 2011 put his personal assets in the range of $230,000,000 to $320,000,000, including the assets of his spouse and any dependent children. This included slightly more than $3,000,000 worth of H. J. Heinz Company assets, which increased in value by over $600,000 in 2013 when Berkshire Hathaway announced their intention to purchase the company.\nIn April 2017, Kerry purchased an 18-acre property on the northwest corner of Martha's Vineyard overlooking Vineyard Sound in the town of Chilmark, Massachusetts. The property is located in Seven Gates Farm and according to property records, cost $11.75million for the seven bedroom home.\nReligious beliefs.\nKerry is a Roman Catholic, and is said to have carried a religious rosary, a prayer book, and a St. Christopher medal (the patron saint of travelers) when he campaigned. Discussing his faith, Kerry said: \"I thought of being a priest. I was very religious while at school in Switzerland. I was an altar boy and prayed all the time. I was very centered around the Mass and the church.\" He also said that the Letters of Paul (Apostle Paul) moved him the most, stating that they taught him to \"not feel sorry for myself\".\nKerry told \"Christianity Today\" in October 2004:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I'm a Catholic and I practice, but at the same time I have an open-mindedness to many other expressions of spirituality that come through different religions... I've spent some time reading and thinking about religion and trying to study it, and I've arrived at not so much a sense of the differences, but a sense of the similarities in so many ways.\nHe said that he believed that the Torah, the Quran, and the Bible all share a fundamental story which connects with readers.\nHealth.\nIn 2003, Kerry was diagnosed with and successfully treated for prostate cancer. On May 31, 2015, Kerry broke his right leg in a biking accident in Scionzier, France, and was flown to Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital for recovery. MGH Hip and Knee Replacement Orthopaedic Surgeon Dr. Dennis Burke, who had met Kerry in France and had accompanied him in the plane from France to Boston, set Kerry's right leg on Tuesday, June 2, in a four-hour operation.\nAthletics and sailing.\nIn addition to the sports he played at Yale, Kerry is described by \"Sports Illustrated\", among others, as an \"avid cyclist\", primarily riding on a road bike. Prior to his presidential bid, Kerry had participated in several long-distance rides. During his many campaigns, he was reported to have visited bicycle stores in both his home state and elsewhere. His staff requested recumbent stationary bikes for his hotel rooms. He has also been a snowboarder, windsurfer, and sailor.\nThe \"Boston Herald\" reported on July 23, 2010, that Kerry commissioned construction on a new $7million yacht (a Friendship 75) in New Zealand and moored it in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where the Friendship yacht company is based. The article claimed this allowed him to avoid paying Massachusetts taxes on the property including approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $500. On July 27, Kerry stated he would voluntarily pay $500,000 in Massachusetts taxes on his yacht.\nHonors.\nJohn Kerry was awarded:\nHonorary degrees.\nJohn Kerry has received several honorary degrees in recognition of his service to the United States, These include:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["5541595", "5122699", "53825"], "permutation_1": ["5541595", "5122699", "53825"], "permutation_2": ["5541595", "5122699", "53825"], "permutation_3": ["5122699", "5541595", "53825"]}
{"id": "3hop1__159612_22372_27337", "docs_added": {"17926": "League of Nations\n20th-century international organisation, predecessor to the United Nations\nThe League of Nations (LN or LoN; , SdN) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. The main organisation ceased operations on 18 April 1946 when many of its components were relocated into the new United Nations (UN) which was created in the aftermath of the Second World War. As the template for modern global governance, the League profoundly shaped the modern world.\nThe League's primary goals were stated in its eponymous Covenant. They included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration. Its other concerns included labour conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, human and drug trafficking, the arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in Europe. The Covenant of the League of Nations was signed on 28 June 1919 as Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, and it became effective with the rest of the Treaty on 10 January 1920. Australia was granted the right to participate as an autonomous member nation, marking the start of Australian independence on the global stage. The first meeting of the Council of the League took place on 16 January 1920, and the first meeting of the Assembly of the League took place on 15 November 1920. In 1919, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role as the leading architect of the League.\nThe diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift from the preceding hundred years. The League lacked its own armed force and depended on the victorious Allied Powers of World War I (Britain, France, Italy and Japan were the initial permanent members of the Council) to enforce its resolutions, keep to its economic sanctions, or provide an army when needed. The Great Powers were often reluctant to do so. Sanctions could hurt League members, so they were reluctant to comply with them. During the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, when the League accused Italian soldiers of targeting International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement medical tents, Benito Mussolini responded that \"the League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out.\"\nAt its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935, it had 58 members. After some notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930s. Its credibility was weakened because the United States never joined. Japan and Germany left in 1933, Italy left in 1937, and Spain left in 1939. The Soviet Union only joined in 1934 and was expelled in 1939 after invading Finland. Furthermore, the League demonstrated an irresolute approach to sanction enforcement for fear it might only spark further conflict, further decreasing its credibility. One example of this hesitancy was the Abyssinia Crisis, in which Italy's sanctions were only limited from the outset (coal and oil were not restricted), and later altogether abandoned despite Italy being declared the aggressors in the conflict. The onset of the Second World War in 1939 showed that the League had failed its primary purpose: to prevent another world war. It was largely inactive until its abolition. The League lasted for 26 years; the United Nations effectively replaced it in 1945, inheriting several agencies and organisations founded by the League, with the League itself formally dissolving the following year.\nCurrent scholarly consensus views that, even though the League failed to achieve its main goal of world peace, it did manage to build new roads towards expanding the rule of law across the globe; strengthened the concept of collective security, gave a voice to smaller nations; fostered economic stabilisation and financial stability, especially in Central Europe in the 1920s; helped to raise awareness of problems such as epidemics, slavery, child labour, colonial tyranny, refugee crises and general working conditions through its numerous commissions and committees; and paved the way for new forms of statehood, as the mandate system put the colonial powers under international observation. Professor David Kennedy portrays the League as a unique moment when international affairs were \"institutionalised\", as opposed to the pre\u2013First World War methods of law and politics.\nOrigins.\nBackground.\nThe concept of a peaceful community of nations had been proposed as early as 1795, when Immanuel Kant's \"\" outlined the idea of a league of nations to control conflict and promote peace between states. Kant argued for the establishment of a peaceful world community, not in a sense of a global government, but in the hope that each state would declare itself a free state that respects its citizens and welcomes foreign visitors as fellow rational beings, thus promoting peaceful society worldwide. International co-operation to promote collective security originated in the Concert of Europe that developed after the Napoleonic Wars in the 19th century in an attempt to maintain the \"status quo\" between European states and so avoid war.\nBy 1910, international law developed, with the first Geneva Conventions establishing laws dealing with humanitarian relief during wartime, and the international Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 governing rules of war and the peaceful settlement of international disputes. Theodore Roosevelt at the acceptance for his Nobel Prize in 1910, said: \"it would be a masterstroke if those great powers honestly bent on peace would form a League of Peace.\"\nOne small forerunner of the League of Nations, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), was formed by the peace activists William Randal Cremer and Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Passy in 1889 (and still exists as an international body focused on the world's various elected legislative bodies). The IPU was founded with an international scope, with a third of the members of parliaments (in the 24 countries that had parliaments) serving as members of the IPU by 1914. Its foundational aims were to encourage governments to solve international disputes by peaceful means. Annual conferences were established to help governments refine the process of international arbitration. Its structure was designed as a council headed by a president, which would later be reflected in the structure of the League.\nPlans and proposals.\nAt the start of the First World War, the first schemes for an international organisation to prevent future wars began to gain considerable public support, particularly in Great Britain and the United States. Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, a British political scientist, coined the term \"League of Nations\" in 1914 and drafted a scheme for its organisation. Together with Lord Bryce, he played a leading role in the founding of the group of internationalist pacifists known as the Bryce Group, later the League of Nations Union. The group became steadily more influential among the public and as a pressure group within the then-governing Liberal Party. In Dickinson's 1915 pamphlet \"After the War\" he wrote of his \"League of Peace\" as being essentially an organisation for arbitration and conciliation. He felt that the secret diplomacy of the early twentieth century had brought about war, and thus, could write that, \"the impossibility of war, I believe, would be increased in proportion as the issues of foreign policy should be known to and controlled by public opinion.\" The 'Proposals' of the Bryce Group were circulated widely, both in England and the US, where they had a profound influence on the nascent international movement.\nIn January 1915, a peace conference directed by Jane Addams was held in the neutral United States. The delegates adopted a platform calling for creation of international bodies with administrative and legislative powers to develop a \"permanent league of neutral nations\" to work for peace and disarmament. Within months, a call was made for an international women's conference to be held in The Hague. Coordinated by Mia Boissevain, Aletta Jacobs and Rosa Manus, the congress, which opened on 28 April 1915 was attended by 1,136 participants from neutral nations, and resulted in the establishment of an organisation which would become the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). At the close of the conference, two delegations of women were dispatched to meet European heads of state over the next several months. They secured agreement from reluctant foreign ministers, who overall felt that such a body would be ineffective, but agreed to participate in or not impede creation of a neutral mediating body, if other nations agreed and if President Woodrow Wilson would initiate a body. In the midst of the War, Wilson refused.\nIn 1915, a body similar to the Bryce Group was set up in the United States, led by former president William Howard Taft. It was called the League to Enforce Peace. It advocated the use of arbitration in conflict resolution and the imposition of sanctions on aggressive countries. None of these early organisations envisioned a continuously functioning body; with the exception of the Fabian Society in England, they maintained a legalistic approach that would limit the international body to a court of justice. The Fabians were the first to argue for a \"council\" of states, necessarily the Great Powers, who would adjudicate world affairs, and for the creation of a permanent secretariat to enhance international co-operation across a range of activities.\nIn the course of the diplomatic efforts surrounding World War I, both sides had to clarify their long-term war aims. By 1916 in Britain, fighting on the side of the Allies, and in the neutral United States, long-range thinkers had begun to design a unified international organisation to prevent future wars. Historian Peter Yearwood argues that when the new coalition government of David Lloyd George took power in December 1916, there was widespread discussion among intellectuals and diplomats of the desirability of establishing such an organisation. When Lloyd George was challenged by Wilson to state his position with an eye on the postwar situation, he endorsed such an organisation. Wilson himself included in his Fourteen Points in January 1918 a \"league of nations to ensure peace and justice.\" British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, argued that, as a condition of durable peace, \"behind international law, and behind all treaty arrangements for preventing or limiting hostilities, some form of international sanction should be devised which would give pause to the hardiest aggressor.\"\nThe war had had a profound impact, affecting the social, political and economic systems of Europe and inflicting psychological and physical damage. Several empires collapsed: first the Russian Empire in February 1917, followed by the German Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empire. Anti-war sentiment rose across the world; the First World War was described as \"the war to end all wars\", and its possible causes were vigorously investigated. The causes identified included arms races, alliances, militaristic nationalism, secret diplomacy, and the freedom of sovereign states to enter into war for their own benefit. One proposed remedy was the creation of an international organisation whose aim was to prevent future war through disarmament, open diplomacy, international co-operation, restrictions on the right to wage war, and penalties that made war unattractive.\nIn London Balfour commissioned the first official report into the matter in early 1918, under the initiative of Lord Robert Cecil. The British committee was finally appointed in February 1918. It was led by Walter Phillimore (and became known as the Phillimore Committee), but also included Eyre Crowe, William Tyrrell, and Cecil Hurst. The recommendations of the so-called Phillimore Commission included the establishment of a \"Conference of Allied States\" that would arbitrate disputes and impose sanctions on offending states. The proposals were approved by the British government, and much of the commission's results were later incorporated into the Covenant of the League of Nations.\nThe French authorities also drafted a much more far-reaching proposal in June 1918; they advocated annual meetings of a council to settle all disputes, as well as an \"international army\" to enforce its decisions.\nAmerican President Woodrow Wilson instructed Edward M. House to draft a US plan which reflected Wilson's own idealistic views (first articulated in the Fourteen Points of January 1918), as well as the work of the Phillimore Commission. The outcome of House's work and Wilson's own first draft proposed the termination of \"unethical\" state behaviour, including forms of espionage and dishonesty. Methods of compulsion against recalcitrant states would include severe measures, such as \"blockading and closing the frontiers of that power to commerce or intercourse with any part of the world and to use any force that may be necessary...\"\nThe two principal drafters and architects of the covenant of the League of Nations were the British politician Lord Robert Cecil and the South African statesman Jan Smuts. Smuts's proposals included the creation of a council of the great powers as permanent members and a non-permanent selection of the minor states. He also proposed the creation of a mandate system for captured colonies of the Central Powers during the war. Cecil focused on the administrative side and proposed annual council meetings and quadrennial meetings for the Assembly of all members. He also argued for a large and permanent secretariat to carry out the League's administrative duties.\nAccording to historian Patricia Clavin, Cecil and the British continued their leadership of the development of a rules-based global order into the 1920s and 1930s, with a primary focus on the League of Nations. The British goal was to systematise and normalise the economic and social relations between states, markets, and civil society. They gave priority to business and banking issues, but also considered the needs of ordinary women, children and the family as well. They moved beyond high-level intellectual discussions, and set up local organisations to support the League. The British were particularly active in setting up junior branches for secondary students.\nThe League of Nations was relatively more universal and inclusive in its membership and structure than previous international organisations, but the organisation enshrined racial hierarchy by curtailing the right to self-determination and prevented decolonisation.\nEstablishment.\nAt the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Wilson, Cecil and Smuts all put forward their draft proposals. After lengthy negotiations between the delegates, the Hurst\u2013Miller draft was finally produced as a basis for the Covenant. After more negotiation and compromise, the delegates finally approved of the proposal to create the League of Nations (, ) on 25 January 1919. The final Covenant of the League of Nations was drafted by a special commission, and the League was established by Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919.\nFrench women's rights advocates invited international feminists to participate in a parallel conference to the Paris Conference in hopes that they could gain permission to participate in the official conference. The Inter-Allied Women's Conference asked to be allowed to submit suggestions to the peace negotiations and commissions and were granted the right to sit on commissions dealing specifically with women and children. Though they asked for enfranchisement and full legal protection under the law equal with men, those rights were ignored. Women won the right to serve in all capacities, including as staff or delegates in the League of Nations organisation. They also won a declaration that member nations should prevent trafficking of women and children and should equally support humane conditions for children, women and men labourers. At the Z\u00fcrich Peace Conference held between 17 and 19 May 1919, the women of the WILPF condemned the terms of the Treaty of Versailles for both its punitive measures, as well as its failure to provide for condemnation of violence and exclusion of women from civil and political participation. Upon reading the Rules of Procedure for the League of Nations, Catherine Marshall, a British suffragist, discovered that the guidelines were completely undemocratic and they were modified based on her suggestion.\nThe League would be made up of a Assembly (representing all member states), a Council (with membership limited to major powers), and a permanent Secretariat. Member states were expected to \"respect and preserve as against external aggression\" the territorial integrity of other members and to disarm \"to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.\" All states were required to submit complaints for arbitration or judicial inquiry before going to war. The Council would create a Permanent Court of International Justice to make judgements on the disputes.\nDespite Wilson's efforts to establish and promote the League, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1919, the United States never joined. Senate Republicans led by Henry Cabot Lodge wanted a League with the reservation that only Congress could take the U.S. into war. Lodge gained a majority of Senators and Wilson refused to allow a compromise. The Senate voted on the ratification on 19 March 1920, and the 49\u201335 vote fell short of the needed 2/3 majority.\nThe League held its first council meeting in Paris on 16 January 1920, six days after the Versailles Treaty and the Covenant of the League of Nations came into force. On 1 November 1920, the headquarters of the League was moved from London to Geneva, where the first General Assembly was held on 15 November 1920. Geneva made sense as an ideal city for the League, since Switzerland had been a neutral country for centuries and was already the headquarters for the International Red Cross. Its strong democracy and location in central Europe made it a good choice for the nations of the world. Support for Geneva as the selection came from Swiss Federal Councillor Gustave Ador and economist William Rappard. The Palais Wilson on Geneva's western lakeshore, named after Woodrow Wilson, was the League's first permanent home.\nMission.\nThe covenant had ambiguities, as Carole Fink points out. There was not a good fit between Wilson's \"revolutionary conception of the League as a solid replacement for a corrupt alliance system, a guardian of international order, and protector of small states,\" versus Lloyd George's desire for a \"cheap, self-enforcing, peace, such as had been maintained by the old and more fluid Concert of Europe.\"\nFurthermore, the League, according to Carole Fink, was, \"deliberately excluded from such great-power prerogatives as freedom of the seas and naval disarmament, the Monroe Doctrine and the internal affairs of the French and British empires, and inter-Allied debts and German reparations, not to mention the Allied intervention and the settlement of borders with Soviet Russia.\"\nAlthough the United States never joined, unofficial observers became more and more involved, especially in the 1930s. American philanthropies became heavily involved, especially the Rockefeller Foundation. It made major grants designed to build up the technical expertise of the League staff. Ludovic Tourn\u00e8s argues that by the 1930s the foundations had changed the League from a \"Parliament of Nations\" to a modern think tank that used specialised expertise to provide an in-depth impartial analysis of international issues.\nLanguages and symbols.\nThe official languages of the League of Nations were French and English.\nDuring the 1939 New York World's Fair, a semi-official flag and emblem for the League of Nations emerged: two five-pointed stars within a blue pentagon. They symbolised the Earth's five continents and \"five races\". A bow at the top displayed the English name (\"League of Nations\"), while another at the bottom showed the French (\"Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 des Nations\").\nMembership.\nThe League consisted of 42 founding members in November 1920. Six other states joined in its founding year (by December 1920), and seven more joined by September 1924, bringing the League's size to 55. Costa Rica withdrew in December 1924, making it the member to have most quickly withdrawn, and Brazil became the first founding member to withdraw in June 1926. Germany (under the Weimar Republic) was admitted to the League of Nations through a resolution passed on 8 September 1926. The League's size remained at 54 for the next five years.\nThrough the first half of the 1930s, six more states joined, including Iraq in 1932 (newly independent from a League of Nations mandate) and the Soviet Union on 18 September 1934, but the Empire of Japan and Germany (under Hitler) withdrew in 1933. This marked the League's largest extent at 58 member states.\nIn December 1920, Argentina quit (being absent from all sessions and votes) without formally withdrawing, on rejection of an Argentine resolution that all sovereign states would be admitted to the League. It resumed its participation in September 1933.\nThe League's membership declined through the second half of the 1930s as it weakened. Between 1935 and the start of World War II in Europe in September 1939, only Egypt joined (becoming the last state to join), 11 members left, and 3 members ceased to exist or fell under military occupation (Ethiopia, Austria, and Czechoslovakia). The Soviet Union was expelled on 14 December 1939 for invading Finland, as one of the last acts of the League before it ceased functioning.\nOrganization.\n \nPermanent organs.\nThe main constitutional organs of the League were the Assembly, the council, and the Permanent Secretariat. It also had two essential wings: the Permanent Court of International Justice and the International Labour Organization. In addition, there were several auxiliary agencies and bodies. Each organ's budget was allocated by the Assembly (the League was supported financially by its member states).\nThe relations between the assembly and the council and the competencies of each were for the most part not explicitly defined. Each body could deal with any matter within the sphere of competence of the league or affecting peace in the world. Particular questions or tasks might be referred to either.\nUnanimity was required for the decisions of both the assembly and the council, except in matters of procedure and some other specific cases such as the admission of new members. This requirement was a reflection of the league's belief in the sovereignty of its component nations; the league sought a solution by consent, not by dictation. In case of a dispute, the consent of the parties to the dispute was not required for unanimity.\nThe Permanent Secretariat, established at the seat of the League at Geneva, comprised a body of experts in various spheres under the direction of the general secretary. Its principal sections were Political, Financial and Economics, Transit, Minorities and Administration (administering the Saar and Danzig), Mandates, Disarmament, Health, Social (Opium and Traffic in Women and Children), Intellectual Cooperation and International Bureaux, Legal, and Information. The staff of the Secretariat was responsible for preparing the agenda for the Council and the Assembly and publishing reports of the meetings and other routine matters, effectively acting as the League's civil service. In 1931 the staff numbered 707.\nThe Assembly consisted of representatives of all members of the League, with each state allowed up to three representatives and one vote. It met in Geneva and, after its initial sessions in 1920, it convened once a year in September. The special functions of the Assembly included the admission of new members, the periodical election of non-permanent members to the council, the election with the Council of the judges of the Permanent Court, and control of the budget. In practice, the Assembly was the general directing force of League activities.\nThe Council acted as a type of executive body directing the Assembly's business. It began with four permanent members \u2013 Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan \u2013 and four non-permanent members that were elected by the Assembly for a three-year term. The first non-permanent members were Belgium, Brazil, Greece, and Spain.\nThe composition of the Council was changed several times. The number of non-permanent members was first increased to six on 22 September 1922 and to nine on 8 September 1926. Werner Dankwort of Germany pushed for his country to join the League; joining in 1926, Germany became the fifth permanent member of the Council. Later, after Germany and Japan both left the League, the number of non-permanent seats was increased from nine to eleven, and the Soviet Union was made a permanent member giving the council a total of fifteen members. The Council met, on average, five times a year and in extraordinary sessions when required. In total, 107 sessions were held between 1920 and 1939.\nOther bodies.\nThe League oversaw the Permanent Court of International Justice and several other agencies and commissions created to deal with pressing international problems. These included the Disarmament Commission, the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Mandates Commission, the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation (precursor to UNESCO), the Permanent Central Opium Board, the Commission for Refugees, the Slavery Commission, and the Economic and Financial Organization. Three of these institutions were transferred to the United Nations after the Second World War: the International Labour Organization, the Permanent Court of International Justice (as the International Court of Justice), and the Health Organisation (restructured as the World Health Organization).\nThe Permanent Court of International Justice was provided for by the Covenant, but not established by it. The Council and the Assembly established its constitution. Its judges were elected by the Council and the Assembly, and its budget was provided by the latter. The Court was to hear and decide any international dispute which the parties concerned submitted to it. It might also give an advisory opinion on any dispute or question referred to it by the council or the Assembly. The Court was open to all the nations of the world under certain broad conditions.\nThe International Labour Organization was created in 1919 on the basis of Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles. The ILO, although having the same members as the League and being subject to the budget control of the Assembly, was an autonomous organisation with its own Governing Body, its own General Conference and its own Secretariat. Its constitution differed from that of the League: representation had been accorded not only to governments but also to representatives of employers' and workers' organisations. Albert Thomas was its first director.\nThe ILO successfully restricted the addition of lead to paint, and convinced several countries to adopt an eight-hour work day and forty-eight-hour working week. It also campaigned to end child labour, increase the rights of women in the workplace, and make shipowners liable for accidents involving seamen. After the demise of the League, the ILO became an agency of the United Nations in 1946.\nThe League's Health Organisation had three bodies: the Health Bureau, containing permanent officials of the League; the General Advisory Council or Conference, an executive section consisting of medical experts; and the Health Committee. In practice, the Paris-based Office international d'hygi\u00e8ne publique (OIHP) founded in 1907 after the International Sanitary Conferences, was discharging most of the practical health-related questions, and its relations with the League's Health Committee were often conflictual. The Health Committee's purpose was to conduct inquiries, oversee the operation of the League's health work, and prepare work to be presented to the council. This body focused on ending leprosy, malaria, and yellow fever, the latter two by starting an international campaign to exterminate mosquitoes. The Health Organisation also worked successfully with the government of the Soviet Union to prevent typhus epidemics, including organising a large education campaign.\nLinked with health, but also commercial concerns, was the topic of narcotics control. Introduced by the second International Opium Convention, the Permanent Central Opium Board had to supervise the statistical reports on trade in opium, morphine, cocaine and heroin. The board also established a system of import certificates and export authorisations for the legal international trade in narcotics.\nThe League of Nations had devoted serious attention to the question of international intellectual cooperation since its creation. The First Assembly in December 1920 recommended that the Council take action aiming at the international organisation of intellectual work, which it did by adopting a report presented by the Fifth Committee of the Second Assembly and inviting a committee on intellectual co-operation to meet in Geneva in August 1922. The French philosopher Henri Bergson became the first chairman of the committee. The work of the committee included: an inquiry into the conditions of intellectual life, assistance to countries where intellectual life was endangered, creation of national committees for intellectual cooperation, cooperation with international intellectual organisations, protection of intellectual property, inter-university co-operation, co-ordination of bibliographical work and international interchange of publications, and international co-operation in archaeological research.\nThe Slavery Commission sought to eradicate slavery and slave trading across the world, and fought forced prostitution. Its main success was through pressing the governments who administered mandated countries to end slavery in those countries. The League secured a commitment from Ethiopia to end slavery as a condition of membership in 1923, and worked with Liberia to abolish forced labour and intertribal slavery. The United Kingdom had not supported Ethiopian membership of the League on the grounds that \"Ethiopia had not reached a state of civilisation and internal security sufficient to warrant her admission.\"\nThe League also succeeded in reducing the death rate of workers constructing the Tanganyika railway from 55 to 4 per cent. Records were kept to control slavery, prostitution, and the trafficking of women and children. Partly as a result of pressure brought by the League of Nations, Afghanistan abolished slavery in 1923, Iraq in 1924, Nepal in 1926, Transjordan and Persia in 1929, Bahrain in 1937, and Ethiopia in 1942.\nLed by Fridtjof Nansen, the Commission for Refugees was established on 27 June 1921 to look after the interests of refugees, including overseeing their repatriation and, when necessary, resettlement. At the end of the First World War, there were two to three million ex-prisoners of war from various nations dispersed throughout Russia; within two years of the commission's foundation, it had helped 425,000 of them return home. It established camps in Turkey in 1922 to aid the country with an ongoing refugee crisis, helping to prevent the spread of cholera, smallpox and dysentery as well as feeding the refugees in the camps. It also established the Nansen passport as a means of identification for stateless people.\nThe Committee for the Study of the Legal Status of Women sought to inquire into the status of women all over the world. It was formed in 1937, and later became part of the United Nations as the Commission on the Status of Women.\nThe Covenant of the League said little about economics. Nonetheless, in 1920 the Council of the League called for a financial conference. The First Assembly at Geneva provided for the appointment of an Economic and Financial Advisory Committee to provide information to the conference. In 1923, a permanent Economic and Financial Organisation came into being. The existing bilateral treaty regime was integrated into the League where the most-favoured-nation norm was codified and the League took on responsibilities related to international oversight and standardisation.\nMandates.\nAt the end of the First World War, the Allied Powers were confronted with the question of the disposal of the former German colonies in Africa and the Pacific, and the several Arabic-speaking provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Many British and French leaders wanted to annex colonies of the defeated Central Powers, but U.S. President Woodrow Wilson strongly insisted that instead of annexation, these territories should be assisted under League of Nations supervision in achieving self-governance and eventual independence depending on the inhabitants' choices.\nThe Paris Peace Conference compromised with Wilson by adopting the principle that these territories should be administered by different governments on behalf of the League \u2013 a system of national responsibility subject to international supervision. This plan, defined as the mandate system, was adopted by the \"Council of Ten\" (the heads of government and foreign ministers of the main Allied Powers: Britain, France, the United States, Italy, and Japan) on 30 January 1919 and transmitted to the League of Nations.\nLeague of Nations mandates were established under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. The Permanent Mandates Commission supervised League of Nations mandates, and also organised plebiscites in disputed territories so that residents could decide which country they would join. There were three mandate classifications: A, B and C.\nThe A mandates (applied to parts of the old Ottoman Empire) were \"certain communities\" that had <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Article 22\nThe B mandates were applied to the former German colonies that the League took responsibility for after the First World War. These were described as \"peoples\" that the League said were <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Article 22\nSouth West Africa and certain South Pacific Islands were administered by League members under C mandates. These were classified as \"territories\" <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Article 22\nMandatory powers.\nThe territories were governed by mandatory powers, such as the United Kingdom in the case of the Mandate of Palestine, and the Union of South Africa in the case of South-West Africa, until the territories were deemed capable of self-government. Fourteen mandate territories were divided up among seven mandatory powers: the United Kingdom, the Union of South Africa, France, Belgium, New Zealand, Australia and Japan. With the exception of the Kingdom of Iraq, which joined the League on 3 October 1932, most of these territories did not begin to gain their independence until after the Second World War, in a process that did not end until 1990. Following the demise of the League, most of the remaining mandates became United Nations Trust Territories.\nIn addition to the mandates, the League itself governed the Territory of the Saar Basin for 15 years, before it was returned to Germany following a plebiscite, and the Free City of Danzig (now Gda\u0144sk, Poland) from 15 November 1920 to 1 September 1939.\nResolving territorial disputes.\nThe aftermath of the First World War left many issues to be settled, including the exact position of national boundaries and which country particular regions would join. Most of these questions were handled by the victorious Allied Powers in bodies such as the Allied Supreme Council. The Allied Powers tended to refer only particularly difficult matters to the League. This meant that, during the early interwar period, the League played little part in resolving the turmoil resulting from the war. The questions the League considered in its early years included those designated by the Paris Peace treaties.\nAs the League developed, its role expanded, and by the middle of the 1920s it had become the centre of international activity. This change can be seen in the relationship between the League and non-members. The United States and the Soviet Union, for example, increasingly worked with the League. During the second half of the 1920s, France, Britain and Germany were all using the League of Nations as the focus of their diplomatic activity, and each of their foreign secretaries attended League meetings at Geneva during this period. They also used the League's machinery to try to improve relations and settle their differences.\n\u00c5land Islands.\n\u00c5land is a collection of around 6,500 islands in the Baltic Sea, midway between Sweden and Finland. The islands are almost exclusively Swedish-speaking, but in 1809, the \u00c5land Islands, along with Finland, were taken by Imperial Russia. In December 1917, during the turmoil of the Russian October Revolution, Finland declared its independence, but most of the \u00c5landers wished to rejoin Sweden. The Finnish government considered the islands to be a part of their new nation, as the Russians had included \u00c5land in the Grand Duchy of Finland, formed in 1809. By 1920, the dispute had escalated to the point that there was danger of war. The British government referred the problem to the League of Nations Council, but Finland would not let the League intervene, as they considered it an internal matter. The League created a small panel to decide if it should investigate the matter and, with an affirmative response, a neutral commission was created. In June 1921, the League announced its decision: the islands were to remain a part of Finland, but with guaranteed protection of the islanders, including demilitarisation. With Sweden's reluctant agreement, this became the first European international agreement concluded directly through the League.\nUpper Silesia.\nThe Allied powers referred the problem of Upper Silesia to the League after they had been unable to resolve the territorial dispute between Poland and Germany. In 1919 Poland voiced a claim to Upper Silesia, which had been part of Prussia. The Treaty of Versailles had recommended a plebiscite in Upper Silesia to determine whether the territory should become part of Germany or Poland. Complaints about the attitude of the German authorities led to rioting and eventually to the first two Silesian Uprisings (1919 and 1920). A plebiscite took place on 20 March 1921, with 59.6 per cent (around 500,000) of the votes cast in favour of joining Germany, but Poland claimed the conditions surrounding it had been unfair. This result led to the Third Silesian Uprising in 1921.\nOn 12 August 1921, the League was asked to settle the matter; the Council created a commission with representatives from Belgium, Brazil, China and Spain to study the situation. The committee recommended that Upper Silesia be divided between Poland and Germany according to the preferences shown in the plebiscite and that the two sides should decide the details of the interaction between the two areas \u2013 for example, whether goods should pass freely over the border due to the economic and industrial interdependence of the two areas. In November 1921, a conference was held in Geneva to negotiate a convention between Germany and Poland. A final settlement was reached, after five meetings, in which most of the area was given to Germany, but with the Polish section containing the majority of the region's mineral resources and much of its industry. When this agreement became public in May 1922, bitter resentment was expressed in Germany, but the treaty was still ratified by both countries. The settlement produced peace in the area until the beginning of the Second World War.\nAlbania.\nThe frontiers of the Principality of Albania had not been set during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, as they were left for the League to decide. They had not yet been determined by September 1921, creating an unstable situation. Greek troops conducted military operations in the south of Albania. Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslav) forces became engaged, after clashes with Albanian tribesmen, in the northern part of the country. The League sent a commission of representatives from various powers to the region. In November 1921, the League decided that the frontiers of Albania should be the same as they had been in 1913, with three minor changes that favoured Yugoslavia. Yugoslav forces withdrew a few weeks later, albeit under protest.\nThe borders of Albania again became the cause of international conflict when Italian General Enrico Tellini and four of his assistants were ambushed and killed on 27 August 1923 while marking out the newly decided border between Greece and Albania. Italian leader Benito Mussolini was incensed and demanded that a commission investigate the incident within five days. Whatever the results of the investigation, Mussolini insisted that the Greek government pay Italy Lire\u00a050 million in reparations. The Greeks said they would not pay unless it was proved that the crime was committed by Greeks.\nMussolini sent a warship to shell the Greek island of Corfu, and Italian forces occupied the island on 31 August 1923. This contravened the League of Nations Covenant, so Greece appealed to the League to deal with the situation. The Allied Powers agreed (at Mussolini's insistence) that the Conference of Ambassadors should be responsible for resolving the dispute because it was the conference that had appointed General Tellini. The League of Nations Council examined the dispute, but then passed on their findings to the Conference of Ambassadors to make the final decision. The conference accepted most of the League's recommendations, forcing Greece to pay fifty million lire to Italy, even though those who committed the crime were never discovered. Italian forces then withdrew from Corfu.\nMemel.\nThe port city of Memel (now Klaip\u0117da) and the surrounding area, with a predominantly German population, was under provisional Entente control according to Article 99 of the Treaty of Versailles. The French and Polish governments favoured turning Memel into an international city, while Lithuania wanted to annex the area. By 1923, the fate of the area had still not been decided, prompting Lithuanian forces to invade in January 1923 and seize the port. After the Allied Powers failed to reach an agreement with Lithuania, they referred the matter to the League of Nations. In December 1923, the League of Nations Council appointed a Commission of Inquiry. The commission chose to cede Memel to Lithuania and give the area autonomous rights. The Klaip\u0117da Convention was approved by the Council on 14 March 1924, and then by the Allied Powers and Lithuania. In 1939 Germany retook the region following the rise of the Nazis and an ultimatum to Lithuania, demanding the return of the region under threat of war. The League of Nations failed to prevent the secession of the Memel region to Germany.\nHatay.\nWith League oversight, the Sanjak of Alexandretta in the French Mandate of Syria was given autonomy in 1937. Renamed Hatay, its parliament declared independence as the Republic of Hatay in September 1938, after elections the previous month. It was annexed by Turkey with French consent in mid-1939.\nMosul.\nThe League resolved a dispute between the Kingdom of Iraq and the Republic of Turkey over control of the former Ottoman province of Mosul in 1926. According to the British, who had been awarded a League of Nations mandate over Iraq in 1920 and therefore represented Iraq in its foreign affairs, Mosul belonged to Iraq; on the other hand, the new Turkish republic claimed the province as part of its historic heartland. A League of Nations Commission of Inquiry, with Belgian, Hungarian and Swedish members, was sent to the region in 1924; it found that the people of Mosul did not want to be part of either Turkey or Iraq, but if they had to choose, they would pick Iraq. In 1925, the commission recommended that the region stay part of Iraq, under the condition that the British hold the mandate over Iraq for another 25 years, to ensure the autonomous rights of the Kurdish population. The League Council adopted the recommendation and decided on 16 December 1925 to award Mosul to Iraq. Although Turkey had accepted League of Nations arbitration in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), it rejected the decision, questioning the Council's authority. The matter was referred to the Permanent Court of International Justice, which ruled that, when the Council made a unanimous decision, it must be accepted. Nonetheless, Britain, Iraq and Turkey ratified a separate treaty on 5 June 1926 that mostly followed the decision of the Council and also assigned Mosul to Iraq. It was agreed that Iraq could still apply for League membership within 25 years and that the mandate would end upon its admission.\nVilnius.\nAfter the First World War, Poland and Lithuania both regained their independence but soon became immersed in territorial disputes. During the Polish\u2013Soviet War, Lithuania signed the Moscow Peace Treaty with the Soviet Russia that laid out Lithuania's frontiers. This agreement gave Lithuanians control of the city of Vilnius (, ), the old Lithuanian capital, but a city with a majority Polish population. This heightened tension between Lithuania and Poland and led to fears that they would resume the Polish\u2013Lithuanian War, and on 7 October 1920, the League negotiated the Suwa\u0142ki Agreement establishing a cease-fire and a demarcation line between the two nations. On 9 October 1920, General Lucjan \u017beligowski, commanding a Polish military force in contravention of the Suwa\u0142ki Agreement, took the city and established the Republic of Central Lithuania.\nAfter a request for assistance from Lithuania, the League of Nations Council called for Poland's withdrawal from the area. The Polish government indicated they would comply, but instead reinforced the city with more Polish troops. This prompted the League to decide that the future of Vilnius should be determined by its residents in a plebiscite and that the Polish forces should withdraw and be replaced by an international force organised by the League. The plan was met with resistance in Poland, Lithuania, and the Soviet Russia, which opposed any international force in Lithuania. In March 1921, the League abandoned plans for the plebiscite. After unsuccessful proposals by Paul Hymans to create a federation between Poland and Lithuania, which was intended as a reincarnation of the former Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth which the two nations had shared before losing their independence, Vilnius and the surrounding area was formally annexed by Poland in March 1922. After Lithuania took over the Klaip\u0117da Region, the Allied Conference set the frontier between Lithuania and Poland, leaving Vilnius within Poland, on 14 March 1923. Lithuanian authorities refused to accept the decision, and officially remained in a state of war with Poland until 1927. It was not until the 1938 Polish ultimatum that Lithuania restored diplomatic relations with Poland and thus \"de facto\" accepted the borders.\nColombia and Peru.\nThere were several border conflicts between Colombia and Peru in the early part of the 20th century, and in 1922, their governments signed the Salom\u00f3n-Lozano Treaty in an attempt to resolve them. As part of this treaty, the border town of Leticia and its surrounding area was ceded from Peru to Colombia, giving Colombia access to the Amazon River. On 1 September 1932, business leaders from Peruvian rubber and sugar industries who had lost land, as a result, organised an armed takeover of Leticia. At first, the Peruvian government did not recognise the military takeover, but President of Peru Luis S\u00e1nchez Cerro decided to resist a Colombian re-occupation. The Peruvian Army occupied Leticia, leading to an armed conflict between the two nations. After months of diplomatic negotiations, the governments accepted mediation by the League of Nations, and their representatives presented their cases before the Council. A provisional peace agreement, signed by both parties in May 1933, provided for the League to assume control of the disputed territory while bilateral negotiations proceeded. In May 1934, a final peace agreement was signed, resulting in the return of Leticia to Colombia, a formal apology from Peru for the 1932 invasion, demilitarisation of the area around Leticia, free navigation on the Amazon and Putumayo Rivers, and a pledge of non-aggression.\nSaar.\nSaar was a province formed from parts of Prussia and the Rhenish Palatinate and placed under League control by the Treaty of Versailles. A plebiscite was to be held after fifteen years of League rule to determine whether the province should belong to Germany or France. When the referendum was held in 1935, 90.3 per cent of voters supported becoming part of Germany, which was quickly approved by the League of Nations Council.\nOther conflicts.\nIn addition to territorial disputes, the League also tried to intervene in other conflicts between and within nations. Among its successes were its fight against the international trade in opium and sexual slavery, and its work to alleviate the plight of refugees, particularly in Turkey in the period up to 1926. One of its innovations in this latter area was the 1922 introduction of the Nansen passport, which was the first internationally recognised identity card for stateless refugees.\nGreece and Bulgaria.\nAfter an incident involving sentries on the Greek-Bulgarian border in October 1925, fighting began between the two countries. Three days after the initial incident, Greek troops invaded Bulgaria. The Bulgarian government ordered its troops to make only token resistance, and evacuated between ten thousand and fifteen thousand people from the border region, trusting the League to settle the dispute. The League condemned the Greek invasion, and called for both Greek withdrawal and compensation to Bulgaria.\nLiberia.\nFollowing accusations of forced labour on the large American-owned Firestone rubber plantation and American accusations of slave trading, the Liberian government asked the League to launch an investigation. The resulting commission was jointly appointed by the League, the United States, and Liberia. In 1930, a League report confirmed the presence of slavery and forced labour. The report implicated many government officials in the selling of contract labour and recommended that they be replaced by Europeans or Americans, which generated anger within Liberia and led to the resignation of President Charles D. B. King and his vice-president. The Liberian government outlawed forced labour and slavery and asked for American help in social reforms.\nMukden Incident.\nThe Mukden Incident, also known as the \"Manchurian Incident\", was a decisive setback that weakened the League because its major members refused to tackle Japanese aggression. Japan itself withdrew.\nUnder the agreed terms of the Twenty-One Demands with China, the Japanese government had the right to station its troops in the area around the South Manchurian Railway, a major trade route between China and Korea (then a Japanese colony), in the Chinese region of Manchuria. In September 1931, a section of the railway was lightly damaged by the Japanese Kwantung Army as a pretext for an invasion of Manchuria. The Japanese army claimed that Chinese soldiers had sabotaged the railway and in apparent retaliation (acting contrary to orders from Tokyo) occupied all of Manchuria. They renamed the area Manchukuo, and on 9 March 1932 set up a puppet government, with Puyi, the final emperor of China, as its nominal head of state.\nThe League of Nations sent observers. The Lytton Report appeared a year later (October 1932). It refused to recognise Manchukuo and demanded Manchuria be returned to China. The report passed 42\u20131 in the Assembly in 1933 (only Japan voting against), but instead of removing its troops from China, Japan withdrew from the League. In the end, as British historian Charles Mowat argued, collective security was dead:\nThe League and the ideas of collective security and the rule of law were defeated; partly because of indifference and of sympathy with the aggressor, but partly because the League powers were unprepared, preoccupied with other matters, and too slow to perceive the scale of Japanese ambitions.\nChaco War.\nThe League failed to prevent the 1932 war between Bolivia and Paraguay over the arid Gran Chaco region. Although the region was sparsely populated, it contained the Paraguay River, which would have given either landlocked country access to the Atlantic Ocean, and there was also speculation, later proved incorrect, that the Chaco would be a rich source of petroleum. Border skirmishes throughout the late 1920s culminated in an all-out war in 1932 when the Bolivian army attacked the Paraguayans at Fort Carlos Antonio L\u00f3pez at Lake Pitiantuta. The war was a disaster for both sides, causing 57,000 casualties for Bolivia, whose population was around three million, and 36,000 dead for Paraguay, whose population was approximately one million. It also brought both countries to the brink of economic disaster. By the time a ceasefire was negotiated on 12 June 1935, Paraguay had seized control of most of the region, as was later recognised by the 1938 truce.\nInitially, both sides refused to allow the League to conduct an inquiry until November 1933, over a year after the start of the war. As a result, the League did not formally invoke Article 16 to apply sanctions. The Pan-American Conference offered to mediate and the League deferred to the conference, but the warring sides ignored the conference. Eventually (without going through Article 16), an arms embargo was enacted by several members of the League (plus non-League members the United States and Brazil), but several neighbouring states ignored the embargo rendering it ineffective. In November 1934, the League demanded that both sides withdraw and undergo arbitration. Bolivia accepted, but Paraguay by then had taken control of all of the disputed area. Paraguay rejected arbitration and quit the League.\nItalian invasion of Abyssinia.\nIn October 1935, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini sent 400,000 troops to invade Abyssinia (Ethiopia). Marshal Pietro Badoglio led the campaign from November 1935, ordering bombing, the use of chemical weapons such as mustard gas, and the poisoning of water supplies, against targets which included undefended villages and medical facilities. The modern Italian Army defeated the poorly armed Abyssinians and captured Addis Ababa in May 1936, forcing Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie to flee to exile in England.\nThe League of Nations condemned Italy's aggression and imposed economic sanctions in November 1935, but the sanctions were largely ineffective since they did not ban the sale of oil or close the Suez Canal (controlled by Britain). As Stanley Baldwin, the British Prime Minister, later observed, this was ultimately because no one had the military forces on hand to withstand an Italian attack. In October 1935, the US president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, invoked the recently passed Neutrality Acts and placed an embargo on arms and munitions to both sides, but extended a further \"moral embargo\" to the belligerent Italians, including other trade items. On 5 October and later on 29 February 1936, the United States endeavoured, with limited success, to limit its exports of oil and other materials to normal peacetime levels. The League sanctions were lifted on 4 July 1936, but by that point, Italy had already gained control of the urban areas of Abyssinia.\nThe Hoare\u2013Laval Pact of December 1935 was an attempt by the British Foreign Secretary Samuel Hoare and the French Prime Minister Pierre Laval to end the conflict in Abyssinia by proposing to partition the country into an Italian sector and an Abyssinian sector. Mussolini was prepared to agree to the pact, but news of the deal leaked out. Both the British and French public vehemently protested against it, describing it as a sell-out of Abyssinia. Hoare and Laval were forced to resign, and the British and French governments dissociated themselves from the two men. In June 1936, although there was no precedent for a head of state addressing the Assembly of the League of Nations in person, Haile Selassie spoke to the Assembly, appealing for its help in protecting his country.\nThe Abyssinian crisis showed how the League could be influenced by the self-interest of its members; one of the reasons why the sanctions were not very harsh was that both Britain and France feared the prospect of driving Mussolini and Adolf Hitler into an alliance.\nSpanish Civil War.\nOn 17 July 1936, the Spanish Army launched a coup d'\u00e9tat, leading to a prolonged armed conflict between Spanish Republicans (the elected leftist national government) and the Nationalists (conservative, anti-communist rebels who included most officers of the Spanish Army). Julio \u00c1lvarez del Vayo, the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, appealed to the League in September 1936 for arms to defend Spain's territorial integrity and political independence. The League members would not intervene in the Spanish Civil War nor prevent foreign intervention in the conflict. Adolf Hitler and Mussolini aided General Francisco Franco's Nationalists, while the Soviet Union helped the Spanish Republic. In February 1937, the League did ban foreign volunteers, but this was in practice a symbolic move. The result was a Nationalist victory in 1939 and confirmation to all observers that the League was ineffective in dealing with a major issue.\nSecond Sino-Japanese War.\nFollowing a long record of instigating localised conflicts throughout the 1930s, Japan began a full-scale invasion of China on 7 July 1937. On 12 September, the Chinese representative, Wellington Koo, appealed to the League for international intervention. Western countries were sympathetic to the Chinese in their struggle, particularly in their stubborn defence of Shanghai, a city with a substantial number of foreigners. The League was unable to provide any practical measures; on 4 October, it turned the case over to the Nine Power Treaty Conference.\nSoviet invasion of Finland.\nThe Nazi-Soviet Pact of 23 August 1939 contained secret protocols outlining spheres of interest. Finland and the Baltic states, as well as eastern Poland, fell into the Soviet sphere. After invading Poland on 17 September 1939, on 30 November the Soviets invaded Finland. Then \"the League of Nations for the first time expelled a member who had violated the Covenant.\" The League action of 14 December 1939, stung, because the Soviet Union became \"the only League member ever to suffer such an indignity\".\nFailure of disarmament.\nArticle 8 of the Covenant gave the League the task of reducing \"armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the enforcement by common action of international obligations\". Haakon Ikonomou argues that the Disarmament Section was a major failure. It was distrusted by the great powers, and given little autonomy by the Secretariat. Its mediocre staffers generated information that was unreliable and caused unrealistic expectations in the general public.\nSuccesses.\nThe League scored some successes, including the 1925 Conference for the Supervision of the International Trade in Arms and Ammunition and in Implements of War. It started to collect international arms data. Most important was the passage in 1925 of the Geneva protocol banning poison gas in war. It reflected strong worldwide public opinion, although the United States did not ratify it until 1975.\nFailures.\nThe League had numerous failures and shortfalls. In 1921, it set up the Temporary Mixed Commission on Armaments to explore possibilities for disarmament. It was made up not of government representatives but of famous individuals. They rarely agreed. Proposals ranged from abolishing chemical warfare and strategic bombing to the limitation of more conventional weapons, such as tanks.\n1923 Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance.\nThe 1923 Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance was an unsuccessful proposal made by the League of Nations to address the issue of disarmament and security in Europe after World War I. It was rejected by the British government in 1924 and was never adopted. The Draft Treaty was an early attempt by the League to create a system of collective security and disarmament, leading the League to pursue alternative approaches that also ultimately failed to gain traction.\nGeneva Protocol of 1924.\nA draft treaty was assembled in 1923 that made aggressive war illegal and bound the member states to defend victims of aggression by force. Since the onus of responsibility would, in practice, be on the great powers of the League, it was vetoed by Great Britain, who feared that this pledge would strain its own commitment to police its British Empire.\nThe \"Geneva Protocol for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes\" was a proposal by British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and his French counterpart \u00c9douard Herriot. It set up compulsory arbitration of disputes and created a method to determine the aggressor in international conflicts. All legal disputes between nations would be submitted to the World Court. It called for a disarmament conference in 1925. Any government that refused to comply in a dispute would be named an aggressor. Any victim of aggression was to receive immediate assistance from League members.\nBritish Conservatives condemned the proposal for fear that it would lead to conflict with the United States, which also opposed the proposal. The British Dominions strongly opposed it. The Conservatives came to power in Britain and in March 1925 the proposal was shelved and never reintroduced.\nWorld Disarmament Conference.\nThe Allied powers were also under obligation by the Treaty of Versailles to attempt to disarm, and the armament restrictions imposed on the defeated countries had been described as the first step toward worldwide disarmament. The League Covenant assigned the League the task of creating a disarmament plan for each state, but the Council devolved this responsibility to a special commission set up in 1926 to prepare for the 1932\u20131934 World Disarmament Conference. Members of the League held different views towards the issue. The French were reluctant to reduce their armaments without a guarantee of military help if they were attacked; Poland and Czechoslovakia felt vulnerable to attack from the west and wanted the League's response to aggression against its members to be strengthened before they disarmed. Without this guarantee, they would not reduce armaments because they felt the risk of attack from Germany was too great. Fear of attack increased as Germany regained its strength after the First World War, especially after Adolf Hitler gained power and became German Chancellor in 1933. In particular, Germany's attempts to overturn the Treaty of Versailles and the reconstruction of the German military made France increasingly unwilling to disarm.\nThe World Disarmament Conference was convened by the League of Nations in Geneva in 1932, with representatives from 60 states. It was a failure. A one-year moratorium on the expansion of armaments, later extended by a few months, was proposed at the start of the conference. The Disarmament Commission obtained initial agreement from France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Britain to limit the size of their navies but no final agreement was reached. Ultimately, the Commission failed to halt the military build-up by Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan during the 1930s.\nHelpless during buildup to World War II.\nThe League was mostly silent in the face of major events leading to the Second World War, such as Hitler's remilitarisation of the Rhineland, occupation of the Sudetenland and \"Anschluss\" of Austria, which had been forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In fact, League members themselves re-armed. In 1933, Japan simply withdrew from the League rather than submit to its judgement, as did Germany the same year (using the failure of the World Disarmament Conference to agree to arms parity between France and Germany as a pretext), Italy in 1937, and Spain in 1939. The final significant act of the League was to expel the Soviet Union in December 1939 after it invaded Finland.\nEconomic policies.\nInternational taxation.\nThe intellectual foundation of the modern international taxation regime was set with a 1923 report prepared by prominent political economists and tax law experts for the League of Nations. The report formulated \"general principles\" to avoid the adverse effects of double taxation and encourage free trade, international capital flows, and economic growth. For example, the report tried to set guidelines for resolving who would be allowed to tax a resident or citizen of one state when that individual earned income in another state. Prior to the publication of the report, these kinds of questions were primarily decided through unilateral state decisions or bilateral tax treaties.\nGeneral weaknesses.\nThe onset of the Second World War demonstrated that the League had failed in its primary purpose, the prevention of another world war. There were a variety of reasons for this failure, many connected to general weaknesses within the organisation. Additionally, the power of the League was limited by the United States' refusal to join.\nOrigins and structure.\nThe origins of the League as an organisation created by the Allied powers as part of the peace settlement to end the First World War led to it being viewed as a \"League of Victors\". The League's neutrality tended to manifest itself as indecision. It required a unanimous vote of nine, later fifteen, Council members to enact a resolution; hence, conclusive and effective action was difficult, if not impossible. It was also slow in coming to its decisions, as certain ones required the unanimous consent of the entire Assembly. This problem mainly stemmed from the fact that the primary members of the League of Nations were not willing to accept the possibility of their fate being decided by other countries and (by enforcing unanimous voting) had effectively given themselves veto power.\nGlobal representation.\nRepresentation at the League was often a problem. Though it was intended to encompass all nations, many never joined, or their period of membership was short. The most conspicuous absentee was the United States. President Woodrow Wilson had been a driving force behind the League's formation and strongly influenced the form it took, but the US Senate voted not to join on 19 November 1919. Ruth Henig has suggested that, had the United States become a member, it would have also provided support to France and Britain, possibly making France feel more secure, and so encouraging France and Britain to co-operate more fully regarding Germany, thus making the rise to power of the Nazi Party less likely. Conversely, Henig acknowledges that if the US had been a member, its reluctance to engage in war with European states or to enact economic sanctions might have hampered the ability of the League to deal with international incidents. The structure of the US federal government might also have made its membership problematic, as its representatives at the League would only be able to answer on behalf of the executive branch, certain League decisions such as to go to war, would always require prior approval of the legislative branch regardless of the outcome of any floor vote even.\nIn January 1920, when the League was born, Germany was not permitted to join because it was seen as having been the aggressor in the First World War. Soviet Russia was also initially excluded because Communist regimes were not welcomed and membership would have been initially dubious due to the ongoing Russian Civil War in which both sides claimed to be the legitimate government of the country. The League was further weakened when major powers left in the 1930s. Japan began as a permanent member of the Council since the country was an Allied Power in the First World War but withdrew in 1933 after the League voiced opposition to its occupation of Manchuria. Italy also began as a permanent member of the council. However the League staunchly opposed Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1934. When the war ended in an Italian conquest, the League refused to recognise Italian sovereignty over Ethiopia, prompting the Italian-Fascist government to withdraw from the organisation altogether in 1937. Though neutral during World War I, Spain (then still a kingdom) also began as a permanent member of the council, but withdrew in 1939 after the Spanish Civil War ended in a victory for the Nationalists. Though world opinion was much more divided over the Spanish Civil War than the conflicts involving Japan and Italy, the general perception leaned in favour of the Republican cause. The League had accepted Germany, also as a permanent member of the council, in 1926, deeming it to have become a \"peace-loving country\" under the Weimar Republic. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Adolf Hitler withdrew Germany almost immediately.\nCollective security.\nAnother important weakness grew from the contradiction between the idea of collective security that formed the basis of the League and international relations between individual states. The League's collective security system required nations to act, if necessary, against states they considered friendly, and in a way that might endanger their national interests, to support states for which they had no normal affinity. This weakness was exposed during the Abyssinia Crisis, when Britain and France had to balance maintaining the security they had attempted to create for themselves in Europe \"to defend against the enemies of internal order\", in which Italy's support played a pivotal role, with their obligations to Abyssinia as a member of the League.\nOn 23 June 1936, in the wake of the collapse of League efforts to restrain Italy's war against Abyssinia, the British Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, told the House of Commons that collective security had <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nUltimately, Britain and France both abandoned the concept of collective security in favour of appeasement in the face of growing German militarism under Hitler.\nIn this context, the League of Nations was also the institution where the first international debate on terrorism took place following the 1934 assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in Marseille, France. This debate established precedents regarding global surveillance (in the form of routine international sharing of surveillance data), the punishment of terrorists as an international (rather than national) matter, and the right of a nation to conduct military attacks within another nation as a response to international terrorism. Many of these concepts are detectable in the discourse of terrorism among states after 9/11.\nAmerican diplomatic historian Samuel Flagg Bemis originally supported the League, but after two decades changed his mind:\nThe League of Nations has been a disappointing failure... It has been a failure, not because the United States did not join it; but because the great powers have been unwilling to apply sanctions except where it suited their individual national interests to do so, and because Democracy, on which the original concepts of the League rested for support, has collapsed over half the world.\nPacifism, disarmament and radio.\nThe League of Nations lacked an armed force of its own and depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, which they were very unwilling to do. Its two most important members, Britain and France, were reluctant to use sanctions and even more reluctant to resort to military action on behalf of the League. Immediately after the First World War, pacifism became a strong force among both the people and governments of the two countries. The British Conservatives were especially tepid to the League and preferred, when in government, to negotiate treaties without the involvement of that organisation. Moreover, the League's advocacy of disarmament for Britain, France, and its other members, while at the same time advocating collective security, meant that the League was depriving itself of the only forceful means by which it could uphold its authority.\nDavid Goodman argues that the 1936 League of Nations Convention on the Use of Broadcasting in the Cause of Peace tried to create the standards for a liberal international public sphere. The Convention encouraged friendly radio broadcasts to other nations. It called for League prohibitions on international broadcasts containing hostile speech and false claims. It tried to draw the line between liberal and illiberal policies in communications, and emphasised the dangers of nationalist chauvinism. With Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia active on the radio, its liberal goals were ignored, while liberals warned that the code represented restraints on free speech.\nDemise and legacy.\nAs the situation in Europe escalated into war, the Assembly transferred enough power to the Secretary General on 30 September 1938 and 14 December 1939 to allow the League to continue to exist legally and carry on reduced operations. The headquarters of the League, the Palace of Nations, remained unoccupied for nearly six years until the Second World War ended.\nAt the 1943 Tehran Conference, the Allied powers agreed to create a new body to replace the League: the United Nations. Many League bodies, such as the International Labour Organization, continued to function and eventually became affiliated with the UN. The designers of the structures of the United Nations intended to make it more effective than the League.\nThe final session of the League of Nations concluded on 18 April 1946 in Geneva. Delegates from 34 nations attended the assembly. This session concerned itself with liquidating the League: it transferred assets worth approximately $22,000,000 (U.S.) in 1946 (including the Palace of Nations and the League's archives) to the UN, returned reserve funds to the nations that had supplied them, and settled the debts of the League. Robert Cecil, addressing the final session, said:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Let us boldly state that aggression wherever it occurs and however it may be defended, is an international crime, that it is the duty of every peace-loving state to resent it and employ whatever force is necessary to crush it, that the machinery of the Charter, no less than the machinery of the Covenant, is sufficient for this purpose if properly used, and that every well-disposed citizen of every state should be ready to undergo any sacrifice in order to maintain peace ... I venture to impress upon my hearers that the great work of peace is resting not only on the narrow interests of our own nations, but even more on those great principles of right and wrong which nations, like individuals, depend.\nThe League is dead. Long live the United Nations.\nThe Assembly passed a resolution that \"With effect from the day following the close of the present session of the Assembly [i.e., April 19], the League of Nations shall cease to exist except for the sole purpose of the liquidation of its affairs as provided in the present resolution.\" A Board of Liquidation consisting of nine persons from different countries spent the next 15 months overseeing the transfer of the League's assets and functions to the United Nations or specialised bodies, finally dissolving itself on 31 July 1947. The archive of the League of Nations was transferred to the United Nations Office at Geneva and is now an entry in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.\nIn the Assembly's last session in 1946, Philip Noel-Baker (representing the United Kingdom) remarked that failure to act as soon as a great power had invaded another state had ultimately doomed the League: \"We know the World War began in Manchuria 15 years ago...Manchuria, Abyssinia, Munich have killed another great illusion, the belief that appeasement, seeking the national interest at the expense of others, individual action, secret bargains, could bring us peace.\"\nIn the past few decades, by research using the League Archives at Geneva, historians have reviewed the legacy of the League of Nations as the United Nations has faced similar troubles to those of the interwar period. Current consensus views that, even though the League failed to achieve its ultimate goal of world peace, it did manage to build new roads towards expanding the rule of law across the globe; strengthened the concept of collective security, giving a voice to smaller nations; helped to raise awareness to problems like epidemics, slavery, child labour, colonial tyranny, refugee crises and general working conditions through its numerous commissions and committees; and paved the way for new forms of statehood, as the mandate system put the colonial powers under international observation. Erez Manela situated the League as a catalyst for transforming the postwar global order into one critical of the arrangements of empire. Alternatively, Laura Robson & Joe Maiolo posit the argument that the Mandate System under the League was a re-vitalised form of imperialism that placed former colonies under the ownership of greater powers.\nProfessor David Kennedy portrays the League as a unique moment when international affairs were \"institutionalised\", as opposed to the pre\u2013First World War methods of law and politics.\nThe principal Allies in the Second World War (the UK, the USSR, France, the U.S., and the Republic of China) became permanent members of the United Nations Security Council in 1946; in 1971, the People's Republic of China replaced the Republic of China (then only in control of Taiwan) as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and in 1991 the Russian Federation assumed the seat of the dissolved USSR. Decisions of the Security Council are binding on all members of the UN, and unanimous decisions are not required, unlike in the League Council. Only the five permanent members of the Security Council can wield a veto to protect their vital interests.\nLeague of Nations archives.\nThe League of Nations archives is a collection of the League's records and documents. It consists of approximately 15 million pages of content dating from the inception of the League of Nations in 1919 extending through its dissolution in 1946. It is located at the United Nations Office at Geneva. In 2017, the UN Library & Archives Geneva launched the Total Digital Access to the League of Nations Archives Project (LONTAD), with the intention of preserving, digitising, and providing online access to the League of Nations archives. It was completed in 2022.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nGeneral and cited references.\nSurveys.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nLeague topics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nRelated topics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistoriography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "26748": "Switzerland\nCountry in Central Europe\nSwitzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is geographically divided among the Swiss Plateau, the Alps and the Jura; the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory, whereas most of the country's nearly 9 million people are concentrated on the plateau, which hosts its largest cities and economic centres, including Zurich, Geneva, and Lausanne. \nSwitzerland is a federal republic composed of 26 cantons, with federal authorities based in Bern. It has four main linguistic and cultural regions: German, French, Italian and Romansh. Although most Swiss are German-speaking, national identity is fairly cohesive, being rooted in a common historical background, shared values such as federalism and direct democracy, and Alpine symbolism. Swiss identity transcends language, ethnicity, and religion, leading to Switzerland being described as a (\"nation of volition\") rather than a nation state.\nSwitzerland originates from the Old Swiss Confederacy established in the Late Middle Ages as a defensive and commercial alliance; the Federal Charter of 1291 is considered the country's founding document. The confederation steadily expanded and consolidated despite external threats and internal political and religious strife. Swiss independence from the Holy Roman Empire was formally recognised in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The confederation was among the first and few republics of the early modern period, and the only one besides San Marino to survive the Napoleonic Wars. \nSwitzerland remained a network of self-governing states until 1798, when revolutionary France invaded and imposed the centralist Helvetic Republic. Napoleon abolished the republic in 1803 and reinstated a confederation. Following the Napoleonic Wars, Switzerland restored its pre-revolutionary system, but by 1830 faced growing division and conflict between liberal and conservative movements; this culminated in a new constitution in 1848 that established the current federal system and enshrined principles such as individual rights, separation of powers, and parliamentary bicameralism. \nSwitzerland has maintained a policy of armed neutrality since the 16th century and has not fought an international war since 1815. It joined the United Nations only in 2002 but pursues an active foreign policy that includes frequent involvement in peace building and global governance. Switzerland is the birthplace of the Red Cross and hosts the headquarters or offices of most major international institutions, including the WTO, the WHO, the ILO, FIFA, the WEF, and the UN. It is a founding member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) but not part of the European Union (EU), the European Economic Area, or the eurozone; however, it participates in the European single market and the Schengen Area. \nSwitzerland is among the world's most developed countries, with the highest nominal wealth per adult and the eighth-highest gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. It performs highly on several international metrics, including economic competitiveness, democratic governance, and press freedom. Zurich, Geneva and Basel rank among the highest in quality of life, albeit with some of the highest costs of living. Switzerland holds an international reputation for its established banking sector and for its specialized industries in watchmaking and chocolate production.\nEtymology.\nThe English name \"Switzerland\" is a portmanteau of \"Switzer\", an obsolete term for a Swiss person which was in use during the 16th to 19th centuries, and \"land\". The English adjective \"Swiss\" is a loanword from French ', also in use since the 16th century. The name \"Switzer\" is from the Alemannic ', in origin an inhabitant of \"Schwyz\" and its associated territory, one of the cantons which formed the nucleus of the Old Swiss Confederacy. The Swiss began to adopt the name for themselves after the Swabian War of 1499, used alongside the term for \"Confederates\", (literally: \"comrades by oath\"), used since the 14th century. The data code for Switzerland, CH, is derived from Latin (\"Helvetic Confederation\").\nThe toponym \"Schwyz\" itself was first attested in 972, as Old High German ', perhaps related to ' 'to burn' (cf. Old Norse 'to singe, burn'), referring to the area of forest that was burned and cleared to build. The name was extended to the area dominated by the canton, and after the Swabian War of 1499 gradually came to be used for the entire Confederation. The Swiss German name of the country, ', is homophonous to that of the canton and the settlement, but distinguished by the use of the definite article (' for the Confederation, but simply \"\" for the canton and the town). The long [i\u02d0] of Swiss German is historically and still often today spelled \u27e8y\u27e9 rather than \u27e8ii\u27e9, preserving the original identity of the two names even in writing.\nThe Latin name was neologised and introduced gradually after the formation of the federal state in 1848, harking back to the Napoleonic Helvetic Republic. It appeared on coins from 1879, inscribed on the Federal Palace in 1902 and after 1948 used in the official seal (e.g., the ISO banking code \"CHF\" for the Swiss franc, the Swiss postage stamps ('HELVETIA') and the country top-level domain \".ch\", are both taken from the state's Latin name). is derived from the \"Helvetii\", a Gaulish tribe living on the Swiss Plateau before the Roman era.\n\"Helvetia\" appeared as a national personification of the Swiss confederacy in the 17th century in a 1672 play by Johann Caspar Weissenbach.\nHistory.\nThe state of Switzerland took its present form with the adoption of the Swiss Federal Constitution in 1848. Switzerland's precursors established a defensive alliance in 1291, forming a loose confederation that persisted for centuries.\nBeginnings.\nThe oldest traces of hominid existence in Switzerland date to about 150,000 years ago. The oldest known farming settlements in Switzerland, which were found at G\u00e4chlingen, date to around 5300 BC.\nThe earliest known tribes formed the Hallstatt and La T\u00e8ne cultures, named after the archaeological site of La T\u00e8ne on the north side of Lake Neuch\u00e2tel. La T\u00e8ne culture developed and flourished during the late Iron Age from around 450 BC, possibly influenced by Greek and Etruscan civilisations. One of the most prominent La T\u00e8ne tribes were the Helvetii, who primarily occupied the Swiss Plateau, alongside the Rhaetians in the eastern regions. Facing pressures from Germanic tribes, in 58 BC, the Helvetii, influenced by Orgetorix, a wealthy aristocrat, decided to abandon the Swiss Plateau for better opportunities in western Gallia. After Orgetorix's mysterious death, the tribe continued their migration but was decisively defeated by Julius Caesar's armies at the Battle of Bibracte, in present-day eastern France. Following their defeat, the Helvetii were forced by Caesar to return to their original lands, where they were subjected to stringent restrictions on their autonomy and movements. In 15 BC, Tiberius (later the second Roman emperor) and his brother Drusus conquered the Alps, integrating them into the Roman Empire. The area occupied by the Helvetii first became part of Rome's Gallia Belgica province and then of its Germania Superior province. The eastern portion of modern Switzerland was integrated into the Roman province of Raetia. Sometime around the start of the Common Era, the Romans maintained a large camp called Vindonissa, now a ruin at the confluence of the Aare and Reuss rivers, near the town of Windisch.\nThe first and second century AD was an age of prosperity on the Swiss Plateau. Towns such as Aventicum, Iulia Equestris and Augusta Raurica reached a remarkable size, while hundreds of agricultural estates (Villae rusticae) were established in the countryside.\nAround 260 AD, the fall of the Agri Decumates territory north of the Rhine transformed today's Switzerland into a frontier land of the Empire. Repeated raids by the Alamanni tribes provoked the ruin of the Roman towns and economy, forcing the population to shelter near Roman fortresses, like the Castrum Rauracense near Augusta Raurica. The Empire built another line of defence at the north border (the so-called Donau-Iller-Rhine-Limes). At the end of the fourth century, the increased Germanic pressure forced the Romans to abandon the linear defence concept. The Swiss Plateau was finally open to Germanic tribes.\nIn the Early Middle Ages, from the end of the fourth century, the western extent of modern-day Switzerland was part of the territory of the Kings of the Burgundians, who introduced the French language to the area. The Alemanni settled the Swiss Plateau in the fifth century and the valleys of the Alps in the eighth century, forming Alemannia. Modern-day Switzerland was then divided between the kingdoms of Alemannia and Burgundy. The entire region became part of the expanding Frankish Empire in the sixth century, following Clovis I's victory over the Alemanni at Tolbiac in 504 AD, and later Frankish domination of the Burgundians.\nThroughout the rest of the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries, Swiss regions continued under Frankish hegemony (Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties) but after its extension under Charlemagne, the Frankish Empire was divided by the Treaty of Verdun in 843. The territories of present-day Switzerland became divided into Middle Francia and East Francia until they were reunified under the Holy Roman Empire around 1000\u00a0AD.\nIn the 10th century, as the rule of the Carolingians waned, Magyars destroyed Basel in 917 and St. Gallen in 926. In response, Henry the Fowler, the then ruler of East Francia, decreed the fortification of key settlements to defend against these invasions. Large villages and towns, including strategic locations like Zurich and St.Gallen, were fortified. This initiative led to the development of what were essentially early urban strongholds and city governments in Eastern Switzerland.\nBy 1200, the Swiss Plateau comprised the dominions of the houses of Savoy, Z\u00e4hringer, Habsburg, and Kyburg. Some regions (Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, later known as ) were accorded the Imperial immediacy to grant the empire direct control over the mountain passes. With the extinction of its male line in 1263, the Kyburg dynasty fell in AD 1264. The Habsburgs under King Rudolph I (Holy Roman Emperor in 1273) laid claim to the Kyburg lands and annexed them, extending their territory to the eastern Swiss Plateau.\nOld Swiss Confederacy.\nThe Old Swiss Confederacy was an alliance among the valley communities of the central Alps. The Confederacy was governed by nobles and patricians of various cantons who facilitated management of common interests and ensured peace on mountain trade routes. The Federal Charter of 1291 is considered the confederacy's founding document, even though similar alliances likely existed decades earlier. The document was agreed among the rural communes of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden.\nBy 1353, the three original cantons had joined with the cantons of Glarus and Zug and the Lucerne, Zurich and Bern city-states to form the \"Old Confederacy\" of eight states that obtained through the end of the 15th century. The expansion led to increased power and wealth for the confederation. By 1460, the confederates controlled most of the territory south and west of the Rhine to the Alps and the Jura mountains, and the University of Basel was founded (with a faculty of medicine) establishing a tradition of chemical and medical research. This increased after victories against the Habsburgs (Battle of Sempach, Battle of N\u00e4fels), over Charles the Bold of Burgundy during the 1470s, and the success of the Swiss mercenaries. The Swiss victory in the Swabian War against the Swabian League of Emperor Maximilian I in 1499 amounted to \"de facto\" independence within the Holy Roman Empire. In 1501, Basel and Schaffhausen joined the Old Swiss Confederacy.\nThe Confederacy acquired a reputation of invincibility during these earlier wars, but expansion of the confederation suffered a setback in 1515 with the Swiss defeat in the Battle of Marignano. This ended the so-called \"heroic\" epoch of Swiss history. The success of Zwingli's Reformation in some cantons led to inter-cantonal religious conflicts in 1529 and 1531 (Wars of Kappel). It was not until more than one hundred years after these internal wars that, in 1648, under the Peace of Westphalia, European countries recognised Switzerland's independence from the Holy Roman Empire and its neutrality.\nDuring the Early Modern period of Swiss history, the growing authoritarianism of the patriciate families combined with a financial crisis in the wake of the Thirty Years' War led to the Swiss peasant war of 1653. In the background to this struggle, the conflict between Catholic and Protestant cantons persisted, erupting in further violence at the First War of Villmergen, in 1656, and the Toggenburg War (or Second War of Villmergen), in 1712.\nNapoleonic era.\nIn 1798, the revolutionary French government invaded Switzerland and imposed a new unified constitution. This centralised the government of the country, effectively abolishing the cantons: moreover, M\u00fclhausen left Switzerland and the Valtellina valley became part of the Cisalpine Republic. The new regime, known as the Helvetic Republic, was highly unpopular. An invading foreign army had imposed and destroyed centuries of tradition, making Switzerland nothing more than a French satellite state. The fierce French suppression of the Nidwalden Revolt in September 1798 was an example of the oppressive presence of the French Army and the local population's resistance to the occupation.\nWhen war broke out between France and its rivals, Russian and Austrian forces invaded Switzerland. The Swiss refused to fight alongside the French in the name of the Helvetic Republic. In 1803 Napoleon organised a meeting of the leading Swiss politicians from both sides in Paris. The Act of Mediation was the result, which largely restored Swiss autonomy and introduced a Confederation of 19 cantons. Henceforth, much of Swiss politics would concern balancing the cantons' tradition of self-rule with the need for a central government.\nIn 1815, the Congress of Vienna fully re-established Swiss independence, and the European powers recognised permanent Swiss neutrality. Swiss troops served foreign governments until 1860 when they fought in the siege of Gaeta. The treaty allowed Switzerland to increase its territory, with the admission of the cantons of Valais, Neuch\u00e2tel and Geneva. Switzerland's borders saw only minor adjustments thereafter.\nFederal state.\nThe restoration of power to the patriciate was only temporary. After a period of unrest with repeated violent clashes, such as the Z\u00fcriputsch of 1839, civil war (the \"Sonderbundskrieg\") broke out in 1847 when some Catholic cantons tried to set up a separate alliance (the \"Sonderbund\"). The war lasted less than a month, causing fewer than 100 casualties, most of which were through friendly fire. The Sonderbundskrieg had a significant impact on the psychology and society of Switzerland.\nThe war convinced most Swiss of the need for unity and strength. Swiss from all strata of society, whether Catholic or Protestant, from the liberal or conservative current, realised that the cantons would profit more from merging their economic and religious interests.\nThus, while the rest of Europe saw revolutionary uprisings, the Swiss drew up a constitution that provided for a federal layout, much of it inspired by the American example. This constitution provided central authority while leaving the cantons the right to self-government on local issues. Giving credit to those who favoured the power of the cantons (the Sonderbund Kantone), the national assembly was divided between an upper house (the Council of States, two representatives per canton) and a lower house (the National Council, with representatives elected from across the country). Referendums were made mandatory for any amendments. This new constitution ended the legal power of nobility in Switzerland.\nA single system of weights and measures was introduced, and in 1850 the Swiss franc became the Swiss single currency, complemented by the WIR franc in 1934. Article 11 of the constitution forbade sending troops to serve abroad, marking the end of foreign service. It came with the expectation of serving the Holy See, and the Swiss were still obliged to serve Francis II of the Two Sicilies with Swiss Guards present at the siege of Gaeta in 1860.\nAn important clause of the constitution was that it could be entirely rewritten, if necessary, thus enabling it to evolve as a whole rather than being modified one amendment at a time.\nThis need soon proved itself when the rise in population and the Industrial Revolution that followed led to calls to modify the constitution accordingly. The population rejected an early draft in 1872, but modifications led to its acceptance in 1874. It introduced the facultative referendum for laws at the federal level. It also established federal responsibility for defence, trade, and legal matters.\nIn 1891, the constitution was revised with uncommonly strong elements of direct democracy, which remain unique today.\nModern history.\nSwitzerland was not invaded during either of the world wars. During World War I, Switzerland was home to the revolutionary and founder of the Soviet Union Vladimir Illych Ulyanov (Vladimir Lenin) who remained there until 1917. Swiss neutrality was seriously questioned by the short-lived Grimm\u2013Hoffmann affair in 1917. In 1920, Switzerland joined the League of Nations, which was based in Geneva, after it was exempted from military requirements.\nDuring World War II, detailed invasion plans were drawn up by the Germans, but Switzerland was never attacked. Switzerland was able to remain independent through a combination of military deterrence, concessions to Germany, and good fortune, as larger events during the war intervened. General Henri Guisan, appointed the commander-in-chief for the duration of the war ordered a general mobilisation of the armed forces. The Swiss military strategy changed from static defence at the borders to organised long-term attrition and withdrawal to strong, well-stockpiled positions high in the Alps, known as the Reduit. Switzerland was an important base for espionage by both sides and often mediated communications between the Axis and Allied powers.\nSwitzerland's trade was blockaded by both the Allies and the Axis. Economic cooperation and extension of credit to Nazi Germany varied according to the perceived likelihood of invasion and the availability of other trading partners. Concessions reached a peak after a crucial rail link through Vichy France was severed in 1942, leaving Switzerland (together with Liechtenstein) entirely isolated from the wider world by Axis-controlled territory. Over the course of the war, Switzerland interned over 300,000 refugees aided by the International Red Cross, based in Geneva. Strict immigration and asylum policies and the financial relationships with Nazi Germany raised controversy, only at the end of the 20th century.\nDuring the war, the Swiss Air Force engaged aircraft of both sides, shooting down 11 intruding Luftwaffe planes in May and June 1940, then forcing down other intruders after a change of policy following threats from Germany. Over 100 Allied bombers and their crews were interned. Between 1940 and 1945, Switzerland was bombed by the Allies, causing fatalities and property damage. Among the cities and towns bombed were Basel, Brusio, Chiasso, Cornol, Geneva, Koblenz, Niederweningen, Rafz, Renens, Samedan, Schaffhausen, Stein am Rhein, T\u00e4gerwilen, Thayngen, Vals, and Zurich. Allied forces maintained that the bombings, which violated the 96th Article of War, resulted from navigation errors, equipment failure, weather conditions, and pilot errors. The Swiss expressed fear and concern that the bombings were intended to put pressure on Switzerland to end economic cooperation and neutrality with Nazi Germany. Court-martial proceedings took place in England. The US paid SFR 62M for reparations.\nSwitzerland's attitude towards refugees was complicated and controversial; over the course of the war, it admitted as many as 300,000 refugees while refusing tens of thousands more, including Jews persecuted by the Nazis.\nAfter the war, the Swiss government exported credits through the charitable fund known as the and donated to the Marshall Plan to help Europe's recovery, efforts that ultimately benefited the Swiss economy.\nDuring the Cold War, Swiss authorities considered the construction of a Swiss nuclear bomb. Leading nuclear physicists at the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich such as Paul Scherrer made this a realistic possibility. In 1988, the Paul Scherrer Institute was founded in his name to explore the therapeutic uses of neutron scattering technologies. Financial problems with the defence budget and ethical considerations prevented the substantial funds from being allocated, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 was seen as a valid alternative. Plans for building nuclear weapons were dropped by 1988. Switzerland joined the Council of Europe in 1963.\nSwitzerland was the last Western republic (the Principality of Liechtenstein followed in 1984) to grant women the right to vote. Some Swiss cantons approved this in 1959, while at the federal level, it was achieved in 1971 and, after resistance, in the last canton Appenzell Innerrhoden (one of only two remaining \"Landsgemeinde\", along with Glarus) in 1990. After obtaining suffrage at the federal level, women quickly rose in political significance. The first woman on the seven-member Federal Council executive was Elisabeth Kopp, who served from 1984 to 1989, and the first female president was Ruth Dreifuss in 1999.\nIn 1979 areas from the canton of Bern attained independence from the Bernese, forming the new canton of Jura. On 18 April 1999, the Swiss population and the cantons voted in favour of a completely revised federal constitution.\nIn 2002 Switzerland became a full member of the United Nations, leaving Vatican City as the last widely recognised state without full UN membership. Switzerland is a founding member of the EFTA but not the European Economic Area (EEA). An application for membership in the European Union was sent in May 1992, but did not advance since rejecting the EEA in December 1992 when Switzerland conducted a referendum on the EEA. Several referendums on the EU issue ensued; due to opposition from the citizens, the membership application was withdrawn. Nonetheless, Swiss law is gradually changing to conform with that of the EU, and the government signed bilateral agreements with the European Union. Switzerland, together with Liechtenstein, has been surrounded by the EU since Austria's entry in 1995. On 5 June 2005, Swiss voters agreed by a 55% majority to join the Schengen treaty, a result that EU commentators regarded as a sign of support. In September 2020, a referendum calling for a vote to end the pact that allowed a free movement of people from the European Union was introduced by the Swiss People's Party (SVP). However, voters rejected the attempt to retake control of immigration, defeating the motion by a roughly 63%\u201337% margin.\nOn 9 February 2014, 50.3% of Swiss voters approved a ballot initiative launched by the Swiss People's Party (SVP/UDC) to restrict immigration. This initiative was mostly backed by rural (57.6% approval) and suburban groups (51.2% approval), and isolated towns (51.3% approval) as well as by a strong majority (69.2% approval) in Ticino, while metropolitan centres (58.5% rejection) and the French-speaking part (58.5% rejection) rejected it. In December 2016, a political compromise with the EU was attained that eliminated quotas on EU citizens, but still allowed favourable treatment of Swiss-based job applicants. On 27 September 2020, 62% of Swiss voters rejected the anti-free movement referendum by SVP.\nGeography.\nExtending across the north and south side of the Alps in west-central Europe, Switzerland encompasses diverse landscapes and climates across its .\nSwitzerland lies between latitudes 45\u00b0 and 48\u00b0 N, and longitudes 5\u00b0 and 11\u00b0 E. It contains three basic topographical areas: the Swiss Alps to the south, the Swiss Plateau or Central Plateau, and the Jura mountains on the west. The Alps are a mountain range running across the central and south of the country, constituting about 60% of the country's area. The majority of the population live on the Swiss Plateau. The Swiss Alps host many glaciers, covering . From these originate the headwaters of several major rivers, such as the Rhine, Inn, Ticino and Rh\u00f4ne, which flow in the four cardinal directions, spreading across Europe. The hydrographic network includes several of the largest bodies of fresh water in Central and Western Europe, among which are Lake Geneva (Lac L\u00e9man in French), Lake Constance (Bodensee in German) and Lake Maggiore. Switzerland has more than 1500 lakes and contains 6% of Europe's freshwater stock. Lakes and glaciers cover about 6% of the national territory. Lake Geneva is the largest lake and is shared with France. The Rh\u00f4ne is both the main source and outflow of Lake Geneva. Lake Constance is the second largest and, like Lake Geneva, an intermediate step by the Rhine at the border with Austria and Germany. While the Rh\u00f4ne flows into the Mediterranean Sea at the French Camargue region and the Rhine flows into the North Sea at Rotterdam, about apart, both springs are only about apart in the Swiss Alps. 90% of Switzerland's 65,000-kilometre-long network of rivers and streams have been straightened, dammed, canalized or channeled underground, in an effort to prevent natural disasters such as flooding, landslides, and avalanches. 80% of all Swiss drinking water comes from groundwater sources.\nForty-eight mountains are or higher in height. At , Monte Rosa is the highest, although the Matterhorn () is the best known. Both are located within the Pennine Alps in the canton of Valais, on the border with Italy. The section of the Bernese Alps above the deep glacial Lauterbrunnen valley, containing 72 waterfalls, is well known for the Jungfrau () Eiger and M\u00f6nch peaks, and its many picturesque valleys. In the southeast the long Engadin Valley, encompassing St. Moritz, is also well known; the highest peak in the neighbouring Bernina Alps is Piz Bernina ().\nThe Swiss Plateau has greater open and hilly landscapes, partly forested, partly open pastures, usually with grazing herds or vegetable and fruit fields, but it is still hilly. Large lakes and the biggest Swiss cities are found there.\nSwitzerland contains two small enclaves: B\u00fcsingen belongs to Germany, while Campione d'Italia belongs to Italy. Switzerland has no exclaves.\nClimate.\nThe Swiss climate is generally temperate, but can vary greatly across localities, from glacial conditions on the mountaintops to the near-Mediterranean climate at Switzerland's southern tip. Some valley areas in the southern part of Switzerland offer cold-hardy palm trees. Summers tend to be warm and humid at times with periodic rainfall, ideal for pastures/grazing. The less humid winters in the mountains may see weeks-long intervals of stable conditions. At the same time, the lower lands tend to suffer from inversion during such periods, hiding the sun.\nA weather phenomenon known as the f\u00f6hn (with an identical effect to the chinook wind) can occur any time and is characterised by an unexpectedly warm wind, bringing low relative humidity air to the north of the Alps during rainfall periods on the south-facing slopes. This works both ways across the alps but is more efficient if blowing from the south due to the steeper step for oncoming wind. Valleys running south to north trigger the best effect. The driest conditions persist in all inner alpine valleys that receive less rain because arriving clouds lose a lot of their moisture content while crossing the mountains before reaching these areas. Large alpine areas such as Graub\u00fcnden remain drier than pre-alpine areas, and as in the main valley of the Valais, wine grapes are grown there.\nThe wettest conditions persist in the high Alps and in the Ticino canton, which has much sun yet heavy bursts of rain from time to time. Precipitation tends to be spread moderately throughout the year, with a peak in summer. Autumn is the driest season, winter receives less precipitation than summer, yet the weather patterns in Switzerland are not in a stable climate system. They can vary from year to year with no strict and predictable periods.\nEnvironment.\nSwitzerland contains two terrestrial ecoregions: Western European broadleaf forests and Alps conifer and mixed forests.\nSwitzerland's many small valleys separated by high mountains often host unique ecologies. The mountainous regions themselves offer a rich range of plants not found at other altitudes. The climatic, geological and topographical conditions of the alpine region make for a fragile ecosystem that is particularly sensitive to climate change. According to the 2014 Environmental Performance Index, Switzerland ranks first among 132 nations in safeguarding the environment, due to its high scores on environmental public health, its heavy reliance on renewable sources of energy (hydropower and geothermal energy), and its level of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2020 it was ranked third out of 180 countries. The country pledged to cut GHG emissions by 50% by 2030 compared to the level of 1990 and plans to reach zero emissions by 2050.\nHowever, access to biocapacity in Switzerland is far lower than the world average. In 2016, Switzerland had 1.0 hectares of biocapacity per person within its territory, 40 per cent less than world average of 1.6. In contrast, in 2016, Swiss consumption required 4.6 hectares of biocapacity \u2013 their ecological footprint, 4.6 times as much as Swiss territory can support. The remainder comes from other countries and the shared resources (such as the atmosphere impacted by greenhouse gas emissions). Switzerland had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 3.53/10, ranking it 150th globally out of 172 countries.\nSwitzerland ranked 9th in the Environmental Performance Index for 2024. It scored well in parameters including air pollution, sanitation and drinking water, waste management, and climate change mitigation.\nUrbanisation.\nAbout 85% of the population live in urban areas. Switzerland went from a largely rural country to an urban one from 1930 to 2000. After 1935 urban development claimed as much of the Swiss landscape as it did during the prior 2,000 years. Urban sprawl affects the plateau, the Jura and the Alpine foothills, raising concerns about land use. During the 21st century, population growth in urban areas is higher than in the countryside.\nSwitzerland has a dense network of complementary large, medium and small towns. The plateau is densely populated with about 400 people per km2 and the landscape shows uninterrupted signs of human presence. The weight of the largest metropolitan areas \u2013 Zurich, Geneva\u2013Lausanne, Basel and Bern \u2013 tend to increase. The importance of these urban areas is greater than their population suggests. These urban centers are recognised for their high quality of life.\nThe average population density in 2019 was . In the largest canton by area, Graub\u00fcnden, lying entirely in the Alps, population density falls to . In the canton of Zurich, with its large urban capital, the density is .\nGovernment and politics.\nThe Federal Constitution adopted in 1848 is the legal foundation of Switzerland's federal state. It is regularly modified by referendum and has been completely revised twice, in 1874 and 1999. The constitution outlines rights of individuals and citizen participation in public affairs, divides the powers between the confederation and the cantons and defines federal jurisdiction and authority. Three main bodies govern on the federal level: the Federal Assembly (legislative), the Federal Council (executive) and the federal courts (judicial).\nFederal Assembly.\nThe Federal Assembly is the parliament of Switzerland. It consists of two houses: The Council of States has 46 members, two from each canton and one from each half-canton. The National Council has 200 members, apportioned to reflect the population of each canton, and elected by proportional representation within each canton. Members of both houses serve for four years and work part-time (\"Milizsystem\"). When both houses are in joint session, they are known collectively as the Federal Assembly. Through optional referendums, citizens may challenge any law passed by parliament.\nFederal Council.\nThe Federal Council is the Swiss executive. It leads the federal administration and serves as a collective head of state. It is a collegial body of seven members, elected to four-year terms by the Federal Assembly, which oversees the council. Each member leads a department of the federal government. Each year, one member of the Council is elected President of the Confederation by the Assembly, with the presidency traditionally rotating between members. The President chairs and represents the government, but has no additional powers and remains the head of their department.\nThe government has been a coalition of the four major political parties since 1959, each party having a number of seats that roughly reflects its share of the electorate and representation in the federal parliament. This distribution is called the \"magic formula\". Since 2003, the seven seats in the Federal Council have been distributed as follows:\nSupreme Court.\nThe function of the Federal Supreme Court is to hear appeals against rulings of cantonal or federal courts. The judges are elected by the Federal Assembly for six-year terms.\nDirect democracy.\nDirect democracy and federalism are hallmarks of the Swiss political system defined in the Swiss constitution. The Swiss people are subject to three legal jurisdictions: the municipal, cantonal and federal levels. At the federal level, popular rights include the right to submit a federal initiative and a referendum, both of which may overturn parliamentary decisions.\nThere are three types of federal referendum in Switzerland: \nThe Federal Council and the Federal Assembly can supplement a popular initiative with a counterproposal. Voters must then indicate their preference if both proposals are accepted. \nCantons.\nThe Swiss Confederation consists of 26 cantons. The cantons are federated states, with permanent constitutional status and a high degree of independence relative to the subnational divisions of most countries. Under the Federal Constitution, all 26 cantons are equal in status, except that six (referred to often as the half-cantons) are represented by one councillor instead of two in the Council of States and have only half a cantonal vote with respect to the required cantonal majority in referendums on constitutional amendments. Each canton has its own constitution and its own parliament, government, police and courts. However, considerable differences define the individual cantons, particularly in terms of population and geographical area. Their populations vary between 16,003 (Appenzell Innerrhoden) and 1,487,969 (Zurich), and their area between (Basel-Stadt) and (Grisons).\nMunicipalities.\nAs of 2018 the cantons comprised 2,222 municipalities.\nFederal City.\nUntil 1848, the loosely coupled Confederation did not have a central political organisation. Issues thought to affect the whole Confederation were the subject of periodic meetings in various locations.\nIn 1848, the federal constitution provided that details concerning federal institutions, such as their locations, should be addressed by the Federal Assembly (BV 1848 Art. 108). Thus on 28 November 1848, the Federal Assembly voted in the majority to locate the seat of government in Bern and, as a prototypical federal compromise, to assign other federal institutions, such as the Federal Polytechnical School (1854, the later ETH) to Zurich, and other institutions to Lucerne, such as the later SUVA (1912) and the Federal Insurance Court (1917). Other federal institutions were subsequently attributed to Lausanne (Federal Supreme Court in 1872, and EPFL in 1969), Bellinzona (Federal Criminal Court, 2004), and St. Gallen (Federal Administrative Court and Federal Patent Court, 2012).\nThe 1999 Constitution does not mention a Federal City and the Federal Council has yet to address the matter. Thus no city in Switzerland has the \"official\" status either of capital or of Federal City. Nevertheless, Bern is commonly referred to as \"Federal City\" (, , ).\nForeign relations and international institutions.\nTraditionally, Switzerland avoids alliances that might entail military, political, or direct economic action and has been neutral since the end of its expansion in 1515. Its policy of neutrality was internationally recognised at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Swiss neutrality has been questioned at times. In 2002 Switzerland became a full member of the United Nations. It was the first state to join it by referendum. Switzerland maintains diplomatic relations with almost all countries and historically has served as an intermediary between other states. Switzerland is not a member of the European Union; the Swiss people have consistently rejected membership since the early 1990s. However, Switzerland does participate in the Schengen Area.\nMany international institutions have headquarters in Switzerland, in part because of its policy of neutrality. Geneva is the birthplace of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the Geneva Conventions and, since 2006, hosts the United Nations Human Rights Council. Even though Switzerland is one of the most recent countries to join the United Nations, the Palace of Nations in Geneva is the second biggest centre for the United Nations after the headquarters in New York. Switzerland was a founding member and hosted the League of Nations.\nApart from the United Nations headquarters, the Swiss Confederation is host to many UN agencies, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and about 200 other international organisations, including the World Trade Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization. The annual meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos bring together business and political leaders from Switzerland and foreign countries to discuss important issues. The headquarters of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) moved to Basel in 1930.\nMany sports federations and organisations are located in the country, including the International Handball Federation in Basel, the International Basketball Federation in Geneva, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) in Nyon, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) and the International Ice Hockey Federation both in Zurich, the International Cycling Union in Aigle, and the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne.\nSwitzerland became a member of the United Nations Security Council for the 2023\u20132024 period. According to the 2024 Global Peace Index, Switzerland is the 6th most peaceful country in the world.\nSwitzerland and the European Union.\nAlthough not a member, Switzerland maintains relationships with the EU and European countries through bilateral agreements. The Swiss have brought their economic practices largely into conformity with those of the EU, in an effort to compete internationally. EU membership faces considerable negative popular sentiment. It is opposed by the conservative SVP party, the largest party in the National Council, and not advocated by several other political parties. The membership application was formally withdrawn in 2016. The western French-speaking areas and the urban regions of the rest of the country tend to be more pro-EU, but do not form a significant share of the population.\nAn Integration Office operates under the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Economic Affairs. Seven bilateral agreements liberalised trade ties, taking effect in 2001. This first series of bilateral agreements included the free movement of persons. A second series of agreements covering nine areas was signed in 2004, including the Schengen Treaty and the Dublin Convention.\nIn 2006, a referendum approved 1 billion francs of supportive investment in Southern and Central European countries in support of positive ties to the EU as a whole. A further referendum will be needed to approve 300 million francs to support Romania and Bulgaria and their recent admission.\nThe Swiss have faced EU and international pressure to reduce banking secrecy and raise tax rates to parity with the EU. Preparatory discussions involved four areas: the electricity market, participation in project Galileo, cooperating with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and certificates of origin for food products.\nSwitzerland is a member of the Schengen passport-free zone. Land border checkpoints monitor goods movements, but not people.\nMilitary.\nThe Swiss Armed Forces, including the Land Forces and the Air Force, are composed mostly of conscripts, male citizens aged from 20 to 34 (in exceptional cases up to 50) years. Being a landlocked country, Switzerland has no navy; however, on lakes bordering neighbouring countries, armed boats patrol. Swiss citizens are prohibited from serving in foreign armies, except for the Swiss Guards of the Vatican, or if they are dual citizens of a foreign country and reside there.\nThe Swiss militia system stipulates that soldiers keep their army-issued equipment, including fully automatic personal weapons, at home. Women can serve voluntarily. Men usually receive military conscription orders for training at the age of 18. About two-thirds of young Swiss are found suitable for service; for the others, various forms of alternative service are available. Annually, approximately 20,000 persons are trained in recruit centres for 18 to 21 weeks. The reform \"Army XXI\" was adopted by popular vote in 2003, replacing \"Army 95\", reducing the rolls from 400,000 to about 200,000. Of those, 120,000 are active in periodic Army training, and 80,000 are non-training reserves.\nThe newest reform of the military, (WEA; English: Further development of the Army), started in 2018 and was expected to reduce the number of army personnel to 100,000 by the end of 2022.\nOverall, three general mobilisations have been declared to ensure the integrity and neutrality of Switzerland. The first mobilisation was held in response to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870\u201371; while the second was in response to the First World War outbreak in August 1914; the third mobilisation took place in September 1939 in response to the German attack on Poland.\nBecause of its neutrality policy, the Swiss army does not take part in armed conflicts in other countries but joins some peacekeeping missions. Since 2000 the armed force department has maintained the Onyx intelligence gathering system to monitor satellite communications.\nGun politics in Switzerland are unique in Europe in that 2\u20133.5\u00a0million guns are in the hands of civilians, giving the nation an estimate of 28\u201341 guns per 100 people. As per the Small Arms Survey, only 324,484 guns are owned by the military. Only 143,372 are in the hands of soldiers. However, ammunition is no longer issued.\nEconomy and labour law.\nSwitzerland has a stable, prosperous and high-tech economy. It is the world's wealthiest country per capita in multiple rankings. The country ranks as one of the least corrupt countries in the world, while its banking sector is rated as \"one of the most corrupt in the world\". It has the world's twentieth largest economy by nominal GDP and the thirty-eighth largest by purchasing power parity. As of 2021, it is the thirteenth largest exporter, and the fifth largest per capita. Zurich and Geneva are regarded as global cities, ranked as Alpha and Beta respectively. Basel is the capital of Switzerland's pharmaceutical industry, hosting Novartis, Roche, and many other players. It is one of the world's most important centres for the life sciences industry.\nSwitzerland had the second-highest global rating in the Index of Economic Freedom 2023, while also providing significant public services. On a per capita basis, nominal GDP is higher than those of the larger Western and Central European economies and Japan, while adjusted for purchasing power, Switzerland ranked 11th in 2017, fifth in 2018, and ninth in 2020.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nThe 2016 World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report ranked Switzerland's economy as the world's most competitive; as of 2019, it ranks fifth globally. The European Union labeled it Europe's most innovative country. Switzerland has been ranked the most innovative country in the Global Innovation Index in 2024, as it had done in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019. It ranked 20th of 189 countries in the Ease of Doing Business Index. Switzerland's slow growth in the 1990s and the early 2000s increased support for economic reforms and harmonisation with the European Union. In 2020, IMD placed Switzerland first in attracting skilled workers.\nFor much of the 20th century, Switzerland was the wealthiest country in Europe by a considerable margin (per capita GDP). Switzerland has one of the world's largest account balances as a percentage of GDP. In 2018, the canton of Basel-City had the highest GDP per capita, ahead of Zug and Geneva. According to Credit Suisse, only about 37% of residents own their own homes, one of the lowest rates of home ownership in Europe. Housing and food price levels were 171% and 145% of the EU-25 index in 2007, compared to 113% and 104% in Germany.\nSwitzerland is home to several large multinational corporations. The largest by revenue are Glencore, Gunvor, Nestl\u00e9, Mediterranean Shipping Company, Novartis, Hoffmann-La Roche, ABB, Mercuria Energy Group and Adecco. Also, notable are UBS, Zurich Insurance, Richemont, Credit Suisse, Barry Callebaut, Swiss Re, Rolex, Tetra Pak, Swatch Group and Swiss International Air Lines.\nSwitzerland's most important economic sector is manufacturing. Manufactured products include specialty chemicals, health and pharmaceutical goods, scientific and precision measuring instruments and musical instruments. The largest exported goods are chemicals (34% of exported goods), machines/electronics (20.9%), and precision instruments/watches (16.9%). The service sector \u2013 especially banking and insurance, commodities trading, tourism, and international organisations \u2013 is another important industry for Switzerland. Exported services amount to a third of exports.\nAgricultural protectionism\u2014a rare exception to Switzerland's free trade policies\u2014contributes to high food prices. Product market liberalisation is lagging behind many EU countries according to the OECD. Apart from agriculture, economic and trade barriers between the European Union and Switzerland are minimal, and Switzerland has free trade agreements with many countries. Switzerland is a member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).\nSwitzerland is considered as the \"land of Cooperatives\" with the ten largest cooperative companies accounting for more than 11% of GDP in 2018. They include Migros and Coop, the two largest retail companies in Switzerland.\nTaxation and government spending.\nSwitzerland is a tax haven. The private sector economy dominates. It features low tax rates; tax revenue to GDP ratio is one of the smallest of developed countries. The Swiss Federal budget reached 62.8 billion Swiss francs in 2010, 11.35% of GDP; however, canton and municipality budgets are not counted as part of the federal budget. Total government spending is closer to 33.8% of GDP. The main sources of income for the federal government are the value-added tax (33% of tax revenue) and the direct federal tax (29%). The main areas of expenditure are in social welfare and finance/taxes. The expenditures of the Swiss Confederation have been growing from 7% of GDP in 1960 to 9.7% in 1990 and 10.7% in 2010. While the social welfare and finance sectors and tax grew from 35% in 1990 to 48.2% in 2010, a significant reduction of expenditures has been occurring in agriculture and national defence; from 26.5% to 12.4% (estimation for the year 2015).\nLabour force.\nSlightly more than 5 million people work in Switzerland; about 25% of employees belonged to a trade union in 2004. Switzerland has a more flexible labor market than neighbouring countries and the unemployment rate is consistently low. The unemployment rate increased from 1.7% in June 2000 to 4.4% in December 2009. It then decreased to 3.2% in 2014 and held steady for several years, before further dropping to 2.5% in 2018 and 2.3% in 2019; in 2023 it had reached a 20-year low of 2%. Population growth (from net immigration) reached 0.52% of population in 2004, increased in the following years before falling to 0.54% again in 2017. The foreign citizen population was 28.9% in 2015, about the same as in Australia.\nIn 2016, the median monthly gross income in Switzerland was 6,502 francs per month (equivalent to US$6,597 per month). After rent, taxes and pension contributions, plus spending on goods and services, the average household has about 15% of its gross income left for savings. Though 61% of the population made less than the mean income, income inequality is relatively low with a Gini coefficient of 29.7, placing Switzerland among the top 20 countries. In 2015, the richest 1% owned 35% of the wealth. Wealth inequality increased through 2019.\nAbout 8.2% of the population live below the national poverty line, defined in Switzerland as earning less than CHF3,990 per month for a household of two adults and two children, and a further 15% are at risk of poverty. Single-parent families, those with no post-compulsory education and those out of work are among the most likely to live below the poverty line. Although work is considered a way out of poverty, some 4.3% are considered working poor. One in ten jobs in Switzerland is considered low-paid; roughly 12% of Swiss workers hold such jobs, many of them women and foreigners.\nEducation and science.\nEducation in Switzerland is diverse, because the constitution of Switzerland delegates the operation for the school system to the cantons. Public and private schools are available, including many private international schools.\nPrimary education.\nThe minimum age for primary school is about six years, but most cantons provide a free \"children's school\" starting at age four or five. Primary school continues until grade four, five or six, depending on the school. Traditionally, the first foreign language in school was one of the other Swiss languages, although in 2000, English was elevated in a few cantons. At the end of primary school or at the beginning of secondary school, pupils are assigned according to their capacities into one of several sections (often three). The fastest learners are taught advanced classes to prepare for further studies and the matura, while other students receive an education adapted to their needs.\nTertiary education.\nSwitzerland hosts 12 universities, ten of which are maintained at cantonal level and usually offer non-technical subjects. It ranked 87th on the 2019 Academic Ranking of World Universities. The largest is the University of Zurich with nearly 25,000 students. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) and the University of Zurich are listed 20th and 54th respectively, on the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities.\nThe federal government sponsors two institutes: the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) in Zurich, founded in 1855 and the (EPFL) in Lausanne, founded in 1969, formerly associated with the University of Lausanne.\nEight of the world's ten best hotel schools are located in Switzerland. In addition, various universities of applied sciences are available. In business and management studies, the University of St. Gallen, (HSG) is ranked 329th in the world according to QS World University Rankings and the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), was ranked first in open programmes worldwide\".\" Switzerland has the second highest rate (almost 18% in 2003) of foreign students in tertiary education, after Australia (slightly over 18%).\nThe Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, located in Geneva, is continental Europe's oldest graduate school of international and development studies. It is widely held to be one of its most prestigious.\nScience.\nSwitzerland is among the countries with the highest number of Nobel laureates, both in total and per capita; of the 28 Swiss nationals who have won the Nobel Prize, 23 were recognised in the sciences. Among the most famous is Albert Einstein, who became a Swiss citizen in 1901 and developed his theory of special relativity in Bern. Among the Nobel laureates born or nautralised in Switzerland are Vladimir Prelog, Heinrich Rohrer, Richard Ernst, Edmond Fischer, Rolf Zinkernagel, Kurt W\u00fcthrich and Jacques Dubochet. Over 100 laureates across all fields have a relationship to Switzerland. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded nine times to organisations headquartered in Switzerland.\nGeneva and the nearby French department of Ain co-host the world's largest laboratory, CERN, dedicated to particle physics research. Another important research centre is the Paul Scherrer Institute, which conducts multi-disciplinary research in the natural and engineering sciences. \nNotable Swiss inventions include lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), diazepam (Valium), Velcro, and the scanning tunnelling microscope (which earned inventors Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics. Auguste Piccard became the first person to enter the Stratosphere with his pressurised hydrogen ballon, while his son Jacques Piccard became one of the first people to explore the deepest known part of the world's ocean (along with American Don Walsh).\nThe Swiss Space Office has been involved in various space technologies and programmes. It was one of the 10 founders of the European Space Agency in 1975 and is the seventh largest contributor to the ESA budget. In the private sector, several companies participate in the space industry, such as Oerlikon Space and Maxon Motors.\nEnergy.\nElectricity generated in Switzerland is 56% from hydroelectricity and 39% from nuclear power, producing negligible CO2. On 18 May 2003, two anti-nuclear referendums were defeated: \"Moratorium Plus\", aimed at forbidding the building of new nuclear power plants (41.6% supported), and Electricity Without Nuclear (33.7% supported) after a moratorium expired in 2000. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, in 2011 the government announced plans to end the use of nuclear energy in the following 20 to 30 years. In November 2016, Swiss voters rejected a Green Party referendum to accelerate the phaseout of nuclear power (45.8% supported). The Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) is responsible for energy supply and energy use within the Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC). The agency supports the 2000-watt society initiative to cut the nation's energy use by more than half by 2050.\nTransport.\nThe densest rail network in Europe spans and carried 614 million passengers in 2023. In 2015, each Swiss resident travelled on average by rail, more than any other European country. Virtually 100% of the network is electrified. 60% of the network is operated by the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB\u00a0CFF\u00a0FFS). Besides the second largest standard gauge railway company, BLS AG, two railways companies operate on narrow gauge networks: the Rhaetian Railway (RhB) in Graub\u00fcnden, which includes some World Heritage lines, and the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn (MGB), which co-operates with RhB the Glacier Express between Zermatt and St. Moritz/Davos. Switzerland operates the world's longest and deepest railway tunnel and the first flat, low-level route through the Alps, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the largest part of the New Railway Link through the Alps (NRLA) project.\nSwitzerland has a publicly managed, toll-free road network financed by highway permits as well as vehicle and petrol taxes. The Swiss autobahn/autoroute system requires the annual purchase of a vignette (toll sticker)\u2014for 40 Swiss francs\u2014to use its roadways, including passenger cars and trucks. The Swiss autobahn/autoroute network stretches for and has one of the highest motorway densities in the world.\nZurich Airport is Switzerland's largest international flight gateway; it handled 22.8\u00a0million passengers in 2012. The other international airports are Geneva Airport (13.9\u00a0million passengers in 2012), EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg (located in France), Bern Airport, Lugano Airport, St. Gallen-Altenrhein Airport and Sion Airport. Swiss International Air Lines is the flag carrier. Its main hub is Zurich, but it is legally domiciled in Basel.\nEnvironment.\nSwitzerland has one of the best environmental records among developed nations. It is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol. With Mexico and South Korea, it forms the Environmental Integrity Group (EIG).\nThe country is active in recycling and anti-littering programs and is one of the world's top recyclers, recovering 66% to 96% of recyclable materials, varying across the country. The 2014 Global Green Economy Index placed Switzerland among the top 10 green economies.\nSwitzerland has an economic system for garbage disposal, which is based mostly on recycling and energy-producing incinerators. As in other European countries, the illegal disposal of garbage is heavily fined. In almost all Swiss municipalities, mandatory stickers or dedicated garbage bags allow the identification of disposable garbage.\nDemographics.\nIn common with other developed countries, the Swiss population increased rapidly during the industrial era, quadrupling between 1800 and 1990, and it has continued to grow.\nThe population is about 9 million (2023 est.). Population growth is projected to continue to 2035, due mostly to immigration. Like most of Europe, Switzerland faces an ageing population, with a fertility rate close to replacement level. Switzerland has one of the world's oldest populations, with an average age of 44.5 years.\nAccording to the World Factbook, ethnic groups in Switzerland are as follows: Swiss 69.2%, German 4.2%, Italian 3.2%, Portuguese 2.5%, French 2.1%, Kosovan 1.1%, Turkish 1%, other 16.7% (2020 est). The Council of Europe figures suggest a population of around 30,000 Romani people in the country.\nImmigration.\nIn 2023, resident foreigners made up 26.3% of Switzerland's population. Most of these (83%) were from European countries. Italy provided the largest single group of foreigners, providing 14.7% of total foreign population, followed closely by Germany (14.0%), Portugal (11.7%), France (6.6%), Kosovo (5.1%), Spain (3.9%), Turkey (3.1%), North Macedonia (3.1%), Serbia (2.8%), Austria (2.0%), United Kingdom (1.9%), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1.3%) and Croatia (1.3%). Immigrants from Sri Lanka (1.3%), most of them former Tamil refugees, were the largest group of Asian origin (7.9%).\n2021 figures show that 39.5% (compared to 34.7% in 2012) of the permanent resident population aged 15 or over (around 2.89\u00a0million), had an immigrant background. 38% of the population with an immigrant background (1.1\u00a0million) held Swiss citizenship.\nIn the 2000s, domestic and international institutions expressed concern about what was perceived as an increase in xenophobia. In reply to one critical report, the Federal Council noted that \"racism unfortunately is present in Switzerland\", but stated that the high proportion of foreign citizens in the country, as well as the generally successful integration of foreigners, underlined Switzerland's openness. A follow-up study conducted in 2018 reported that 59% considered racism a serious problem in Switzerland. The proportion of the population that claimed to have been targeted by racial discrimination increased from 10% in 2014 to almost 17% in 2018, according to the Federal Statistical Office.\nLargest cities.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nLanguages.\nSwitzerland has four national languages: mainly German (spoken natively by 62.8% of the population in 2016); French (22.9%) spoken natively in the west; and Italian (8.2%) spoken natively in the south. The fourth national language, Romansh (0.5%), is a Romance language spoken locally in the southeastern trilingual canton of Grisons, and is designated by Article 4 of the Federal Constitution as a national language along with German, French, and Italian. In Article 70 it is mentioned as an official language if the authorities communicate with persons who speak Romansh. However, federal laws and other official acts do not need to be decreed in Romansh.\nIn 2016, the languages most spoken at home among permanent residents aged 15 and older were Swiss German (59.4%), French (23.5%), Standard German (10.6%), and Italian (8.5%). Other languages spoken at home included English (5.0%), Portuguese (3.8%), Albanian (3.0%), Spanish (2.6%) and Serbian and Croatian (2.5%). 6.9% reported speaking another language at home. In 2014 almost two-thirds (64.4%) of the permanent resident population indicated speaking more than one language regularly.\nThe federal government is obliged to communicate in the official languages, and in the federal parliament simultaneous translation is provided from and into German, French and Italian.\nAside from the official forms of their respective languages, the four linguistic regions of Switzerland also have local dialectal forms. The role played by dialects in each linguistic region varies dramatically: in German-speaking regions, Swiss German dialects have become more prevalent since the second half of the 20th century, especially in the media, and are used as an everyday language for many, while the Swiss variety of Standard German is almost always used instead of dialect for written communication (cf. diglossic usage of a language). Conversely, in the French-speaking regions, local Franco-Proven\u00e7al dialects have almost disappeared (only 6.3% of the population of Valais, 3.9% of Fribourg, and 3.1% of Jura still spoke dialects at the end of the 20th century), while in the Italian-speaking regions, the use of Lombard dialects is mostly limited to family settings and casual conversation.\nThe principal official languages have terms not used outside of Switzerland, known as Helvetisms. German Helvetisms are, roughly speaking, a large group of words typical of Swiss Standard German that do not appear in Standard German, nor in other German dialects. These include terms from Switzerland's surrounding language cultures (German \"Billett\" from French), from similar terms in another language (Italian \"azione\" used not only as \"act\" but also as \"discount\" from German \"Aktion\"). Swiss French, while generally close to the French of France, also contains some Helvetisms. The most frequent characteristics of Helvetisms are in vocabulary, phrases, and pronunciation, although certain Helvetisms denote themselves as special in syntax and orthography. Duden, the comprehensive German dictionary, contains about 3000 Helvetisms. Current French dictionaries, such as the Petit Larousse, include several hundred Helvetisms; notably, Swiss French uses different terms than that of France for the numbers 70 (\"septante\") and 90 (\"nonante\") and often 80 (\"huitante\") as well.\nLearning one of the other national languages is compulsory for all Swiss pupils, hence many Swiss are supposed to be at least bilingual, especially those belonging to linguistic minority groups. Because the largest part of Switzerland is German-speaking, many French, Italian, and Romansh speakers migrating to the rest of Switzerland and the children of those non-German-speaking Swiss born within the rest of Switzerland speak German. While learning one of the other national languages at school is important, most Swiss learn English to communicate with Swiss speakers of other languages, as it is perceived as a neutral means of communication. English often functions as the de facto lingua franca.\nHealth.\nSwiss residents are required to buy health insurance from private insurance companies, which in turn are required to accept every applicant. While the cost of the system is among the highest, its health outcomes compare well with other European countries; patients have been reported as in general, highly satisfied with it. In 2012, life expectancy at birth was 80.4 years for men and 84.7 years for women \u2013 the world's highest. However, spending on health at 11.4% of GDP (2010) is on par with Germany and France (11.6%) and other European countries, but notably less than the US (17.6%). From 1990, costs steadily increased.\nIt is estimated that one out of six Swiss persons suffers from mental illness.\nAccording to a survey conducted by Addiction Switzerland, fourteen per cent of men and 6.5% of women between 20 and 24 reported consuming cannabis in the past 30 days in 2020, and 4 Swiss cities were listed among the top 10 European cities for cocaine use as measured in wastewater, down from 5 in 2018.\nCulture.\nSwiss culture is characterised by diversity, which is reflected in diverse traditional customs. A region may be in some ways culturally connected to the neighbouring country that shares its language, all rooted in western European culture. The linguistically isolated Romansh culture in Graub\u00fcnden in eastern Switzerland constitutes an exception. It survives only in the upper valleys of the Rhine and the Inn and strives to maintain its rare linguistic tradition.\nSwitzerland is home to notable contributors to literature, art, architecture, music and sciences. In addition, the country attracted creatives during times of unrest or war. Some 1000 museums are found in the country.\nAmong the most important cultural performances held annually are the Pal\u00e9o Festival, Lucerne Festival, the Montreux Jazz Festival, the Locarno International Film Festival and Art Basel.\nAlpine symbolism played an essential role in shaping Swiss history and the Swiss national identity. Many alpine areas and ski resorts attract visitors for winter sports as well as hiking and mountain biking in summer. The quieter seasons are spring and autumn. A traditional pastoral culture predominates in many areas, and small farms are omnipresent in rural areas. Folk art is nurtured in organisations across the country. Switzerland most directly in appears in music, dance, poetry, wood carving, and embroidery. The alphorn, a trumpet-like musical instrument made of wood has joined yodeling and the accordion as epitomes of traditional Swiss music.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nChristianity is the predominant religion according to national surveys of Swiss Federal Statistical Office (about 67% of resident population in 2016\u20132018 and 75% of Swiss citizens), divided between the Catholic Church (35.8% of the population), the Swiss Reformed Church (23.8%), further Protestant churches (2.2%), Eastern Orthodoxy (2.5%), and other Christian denominations (2.2%).\nSwitzerland has no official state religion, though most of the cantons (except Geneva and Neuch\u00e2tel) recognise official churches, either the Catholic Church or the Swiss Reformed Church. These churches, and in some cantons the Old Catholic Church and Jewish congregations, are financed by official taxation of members. In 2020, the Roman Catholic Church had 3,048,475 registered and church tax paying members (corresponding to 35.2% of the total population), while the Swiss Reformed Church had 2,015,816 members (23.3% of the total population).\n26.3% of Swiss permanent residents are not affiliated with a religious community.\nAs of 2020, according to a national survey conducted by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, Christian minority communities included Neo-Pietism (0.5%), Pentecostalism (0.4%, mostly incorporated in the Schweizer Pfingstmission), Apostolic communities (0.3%), other Protestant denominations (1.1%, including Methodism), the Old Catholic Church (0.1%), other Christian denominations (0.3%). Non-Christian religions are Islam (5.3%), Hinduism (0.6%), Buddhism (0.5%), Judaism (0.25%) and others (0.4%).\nHistorically, the country was about evenly balanced between Catholic and Protestant, in a complex patchwork. During the Reformation Switzerland became home to many reformers. Geneva converted to Protestantism in 1536, just before John Calvin arrived. In 1541, he founded the \"Republic of Geneva\" on his own ideals. It became known internationally as the \"Protestant Rome\" and housed such reformers as Theodore Beza, William Farel or Pierre Viret. Zurich became another reform stronghold around the same time, with Huldrych Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger taking the lead. Anabaptists Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel also operated there. They were later joined by the fleeing Peter Martyr Vermigli and Hans Denck. Other centres included Basel (Andreas Karlstadt and Johannes Oecolampadius), Bern (Berchtold Haller and Niklaus Manuel), and St. Gallen (Joachim Vadian). One canton, Appenzell, was officially divided into Catholic and Protestant sections in 1597. The larger cities and their cantons (Bern, Geneva, Lausanne, Zurich and Basel) used to be predominantly Protestant. Central Switzerland, the Valais, the Ticino, Appenzell Innerrhodes, the Jura, and Fribourg are traditionally Catholic.\nThe Swiss Constitution of 1848, under the recent impression of the clashes of Catholic vs Protestant cantons that culminated in the Sonderbundskrieg, consciously defines a consociational state, allowing the peaceful co-existence of Catholics and Protestants. A 1980 initiative calling for the complete separation of church and state was rejected by 78.9% of the voters. Some traditionally Protestant cantons and cities nowadays have a slight Catholic majority, because since about 1970 a steadily growing minority were not affiliated with any religious body (21.4% in Switzerland, 2012) especially in traditionally Protestant regions, such as Basel-City (42%), canton of Neuch\u00e2tel (38%), canton of Geneva (35%), canton of Vaud (26%), or Zurich city (city: >25%; canton: 23%).\nLiterature.\nThe earliest forms of literature were in German, reflecting the language's early predominance. In the 18th century, French became fashionable in Bern and elsewhere, while the influence of the French-speaking allies and subject lands increased.\nAmong the classic authors of Swiss literature are Jeremias Gotthelf (1797\u20131854) and Gottfried Keller (1819\u20131890); later writers are Max Frisch (1911\u20131991) and Friedrich D\u00fcrrenmatt (1921\u20131990), whose (\"\") was released as a Hollywood film in 2001, starring Jack Nicholson.\nFamous French-speaking writers were Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712\u20131778) and Germaine de Sta\u00ebl (1766\u20131817). More recent authors include Charles Ferdinand Ramuz (1878\u20131947), whose novels describe the lives of peasants and mountain dwellers, set in a harsh environment, and Blaise Cendrars (born Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Sauser, 1887\u20131961). Italian and Romansh-speaking authors also contributed to the Swiss literary landscape, generally in proportion to their number.\nProbably the most famous Swiss literary creation, \"Heidi\", the story of an orphan girl who lives with her grandfather in the Alps, is one of the most popular children's books and has come to be a symbol of Switzerland. Her creator, Johanna Spyri (1827\u20131901), wrote a number of books on similar themes.\nMedia.\nFreedom of the press and the right to free expression is guaranteed in the constitution. The Swiss News Agency (SNA) broadcasts information in three of the four national languages\u2014on politics, economics, society and culture. The SNA supplies almost all Swiss media and foreign media with its reporting.\nIn Switzerland, the most influential newspapers include the German-language and \"Neue Z\u00fcrcher Zeitung\", as well as the French-language \"Le Temps\". Additionally, almost every city has at least one local newspaper published in the predominant local language.\nThe government exerts greater control over broadcast media than print media, especially due to financing and licensing. The Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, whose name was recently changed to SRG SSR, is charged with the production and distribution of radio and television content. SRG SSR studios are distributed across the various language regions. Radio content is produced in six central and four regional studios while video media are produced in Geneva, Zurich, Basel, and Lugano. An extensive cable network allows most Swiss to access content from neighbouring countries.\nSports.\nSkiing, snowboarding and mountaineering are among the most popular sports, reflecting the nature of the country Winter sports are practised by natives and visitors. The bobsleigh was invented in St. Moritz. The first world ski championships were held in M\u00fcrren (1931) and St. Moritz (1934). The latter town hosted the second Winter Olympic Games in 1928 and the fifth edition in 1948. Among its most successful skiers and world champions are Pirmin Zurbriggen and Didier Cuche.\nThe most prominently watched sports in Switzerland are football and ice hockey.\nThe headquarters of the international football's and ice hockey's governing bodies, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) and International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) are located in Zurich. Many other headquarters of international sports federations are located in Switzerland. For example, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), IOC's Olympic Museum and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) are located in Lausanne.\nSwitzerland hosted the 1954 FIFA World Cup and was the joint host, with Austria, of the UEFA Euro 2008 tournament. The Swiss Super League is the nation's professional football club league. Europe's highest football pitch, at above sea level, is located in Switzerland, the \"Ottmar Hitzfeld Stadium\".\nMany Swiss follow ice hockey and support one of the 12 teams of the National League, which is the most attended league in Europe. In 2009, Switzerland hosted the IIHF World Championship for the tenth time. It also became World Vice-Champion in 2013 and 2018. Its numerous lakes make Switzerland an attractive sailing destination. The largest, Lake Geneva, is the home of the sailing team Alinghi which was the first European team to win the America's Cup in 2003 and which successfully defended the title in 2007.\nSwiss tennis player Roger Federer is widely regarded as among the sport's greatest players. He won 20 Grand Slam tournaments overall including a record 8 Wimbledon titles. He won six ATP Finals. He was ranked no. 1 in the ATP rankings for a record 237 consecutive weeks. He ended 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009 ranked no. 1. Fellow Swiss players Martina Hingis and Stan Wawrinka also won multiple Grand Slam titles. Switzerland won the Davis Cup title in 2014.\nMotorsport racecourses and events were banned in Switzerland following the 1955 Le Mans disaster with exceptions for events such as hillclimbing. The country continued to produce successful racing drivers such as Clay Regazzoni, S\u00e9bastien Buemi, Jo Siffert, Dominique Aegerter, successful World Touring Car Championship driver Alain Menu, 2014 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Marcel F\u00e4ssler and 2015 24 Hours N\u00fcrburgring winner Nico M\u00fcller. Switzerland also won the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport in 2007\u201308 with driver Neel Jani. Swiss motorcycle racer Thomas L\u00fcthi won the 2005 MotoGP World Championship in the 125cc category. In June 2007 the Swiss National Council, one house of the Federal Assembly of Switzerland, voted to overturn the ban, however the other house, the Swiss Council of States rejected the change and the ban remains in place.\nTraditional sports include Swiss wrestling or , a tradition from the rural central cantons and considered the national sport by some. Hornussen is another indigenous Swiss sport, which is like a cross between baseball and golf. is the Swiss variant of stone put, a competition in throwing a heavy stone. Practised only among the alpine population since prehistoric times, it is recorded to have taken place in Basel in the 13th century. It is central to the Unspunnenfest, first held in 1805, with its symbol the 83.5 stone named .\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine is multifaceted. While dishes such as fondue, raclette or r\u00f6sti are omnipresent, each region developed its gastronomy according to the varieties of climate and language, for example, , engl.: sliced meat Zurich style. Traditional Swiss cuisine uses ingredients similar to those in other European countries, as well as unique dairy products and cheeses such as Gruy\u00e8re or Emmental, produced in the valleys of Gruy\u00e8res and Emmental. The number of fine-dining establishments is high, particularly in western Switzerland.\nChocolate has been made in Switzerland since the 18th century. Its reputation grew at the end of the 19th century with the invention of modern techniques such as conching and tempering, which enabled higher quality. Another breakthrough was the invention of solid milk chocolate in 1875 by Daniel Peter. The Swiss are the world's largest chocolate consumers.\nThe most popular alcoholic drink is wine. Switzerland is notable for its variety of grape varieties, reflecting the large variations in terroirs. Swiss wine is produced mainly in Valais, Vaud (Lavaux), Geneva and Ticino, with a small majority of white wines. Vineyards have been cultivated in Switzerland since the Roman era, even though traces of a more ancient origin can be found. The most widespread varieties are the Chasselas (called Fendant in Valais) and Pinot Noir. Merlot is the main variety produced in Ticino.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "51879": "Gamal Abdel Nasser\nPresident of Egypt from 1956 to 1970\nGamal Abdel Nasser Hussein (15 January 1918 \u2013 28 September 1970) was an Egyptian military officer and politician who served as the second president of Egypt from 1954 until his death in 1970. Nasser led the Egyptian revolution of 1952 and introduced far-reaching land reforms the following year. Following a 1954 assassination attempt on his life by a Muslim Brotherhood member, he cracked down on the organization, put President Mohamed Naguib under house arrest and assumed executive office. He was formally elected president in June 1956.\nNasser's popularity in Egypt and the Arab world skyrocketed after his nationalization of the Suez Canal Company and his political victory in the subsequent Suez Crisis, known in Egypt as the \"Tripartite Aggression\". Calls for pan-Arab unity under his leadership increased, culminating with the formation of the United Arab Republic with Syria from 1958 to 1961. In 1962, Nasser began a series of major socialist measures and modernization reforms in Egypt. Despite setbacks to his pan-Arabist cause, by 1963 Nasser's supporters gained power in several Arab countries, but he became embroiled in the North Yemen Civil War, and eventually the much larger Arab Cold War. He began his second presidential term in March 1965 after his political opponents were banned from running. Following Egypt's defeat by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967, Nasser resigned, but he returned to office after popular demonstrations called for his reinstatement. By 1968, Nasser had appointed himself prime minister, launched the War of Attrition to regain the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula, begun a process of depoliticizing the military, and issued a set of political liberalization reforms. After the conclusion of the 1970 Arab League summit, Nasser suffered a heart attack and died. His funeral in Cairo drew five to six million mourners, and prompted an outpouring of grief across the Arab world.\nNasser remains an iconic figure in the Arab world, particularly for his strides towards social justice and Arab unity, his modernization policies, and his anti-imperialist efforts. His presidency also encouraged and coincided with an Egyptian cultural boom, and the launching of large industrial projects, including the Aswan Dam, and Helwan city. Nasser's detractors criticize his authoritarianism, his human rights violations, his antisemitism, and the dominance of the military over civil institutions that characterised his tenure, establishing a pattern of military and dictatorial rule in Egypt which has persisted, nearly uninterrupted, to the present day.\nEarly life.\nGamal Abdel Nasser Hussein was born in Bakos, Alexandria, Egypt on 15 January 1918, a year before the tumultuous events of the Egyptian Revolution of 1919. Nasser's father was a postal worker born in Beni Mur in Upper Egypt, and raised in Alexandria, and his mother's family came from Mallawi, el-Minya. His parents had married in 1917. Nasser had two brothers, Izz al-Arab and al-Leithi. Nasser's biographers Robert Stephens and Said Aburish wrote that Nasser's family believed strongly in the \"Arab notion of glory\", since the name of Nasser's brother, Izz al-Arab, translates to \"Glory of the Arabs\".\nNasser's family traveled frequently due to his father's work. In 1921, they moved to Asyut and, in 1923, to Khatatba, where Nasser's father ran a post office. Nasser attended a primary school for the children of railway employees until 1924, when he was sent to live with his paternal uncle in Cairo, and to attend the Nahhasin elementary school.\nNasser exchanged letters with his mother and visited her on holidays. He stopped receiving messages at the end of April 1926. Upon returning to Khatatba, he learned that his mother had died after giving birth to his third brother, Shawki, and that his family had kept the news from him. Nasser later stated that \"losing her this way was a shock so deep that time failed to remedy\". He adored his mother and the injury of her death deepened when his father remarried before the year's end.\nIn 1928, Nasser went to Alexandria to live with his maternal grandfather and attend the city's Attarin elementary school. He left in 1929 for a private boarding school in Helwan, and later returned to Alexandria to enter the Ras el-Tin secondary school and to join his father, who was working for the city's postal service. It was in Alexandria that Nasser became involved in political activism. After witnessing clashes between protesters and police in Manshia Square, he joined the demonstration without being aware of its purpose. The protest, organized by the ultranationalist Young Egypt Society, called for the end of colonialism in Egypt in the wake of the 1923 Egyptian constitution's annulment by Prime Minister Isma'il Sidqi. Nasser was arrested and detained for a night before his father bailed him out. Nasser joined the paramilitary wing of the group, known as the Green Shirts, for a brief period in 1934. His association with the group and active role in student demonstrations during this period \"imbued him with a fierce Egyptian nationalism\", according to the historian James Jankowski.\nWhen his father was transferred to Cairo in 1933, Nasser joined him and attended al-Nahda al-Masria school. He took up acting in school plays for a brief period and wrote articles for the school's paper, including a piece on French philosopher Voltaire titled \"Voltaire, the Man of Freedom\". On 13 November 1935, Nasser led a student demonstration against British rule, protesting against a statement made four days prior by UK foreign minister Samuel Hoare that rejected prospects for the 1923 Constitution's restoration. Two protesters were killed and Nasser received a graze to the head from a policeman's bullet. The incident garnered his first mention in the press: the nationalist newspaper \"Al Gihad\" reported that Nasser led the protest and was among the wounded. On 12 December, the new king, Farouk, issued a decree restoring the constitution.\nNasser's involvement in political activity increased throughout his school years, such that he only attended 45 days of classes during his last year of secondary school. Despite it having the almost unanimous backing of Egypt's political forces, Nasser strongly objected to the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty because it stipulated the continued presence of British military bases in the country. Nonetheless, political unrest in Egypt declined significantly and Nasser resumed his studies at al-Nahda, where he received his leaving certificate later that year.\nEarly influences.\nAburish asserts that Nasser was not distressed by his frequent relocations, which broadened his horizons and showed him Egyptian society's class divisions. His own social status was well below the wealthy Egyptian elite, and his discontent with those born into wealth and power grew throughout his lifetime. Nasser spent most of his spare time reading, particularly in 1933, when he lived near the National Library of Egypt. He read the Qur'an, the sayings of Muhammad, the lives of the Sahaba (Muhammad's companions), the biographies of nationalist leaders Napoleon, Atat\u00fcrk, Otto von Bismarck and Garibaldi, and the autobiography of Winston Churchill.\nNasser was greatly influenced by Egyptian nationalism, as espoused by politician Mustafa Kamel, poet Ahmed Shawqi, and his anti-colonialist instructor at the Royal Military Academy, Aziz al-Masri, to whom Nasser expressed his gratitude in a 1961 newspaper interview. He was especially influenced by Egyptian writer Tawfiq al-Hakim's novel \"Return of the Spirit\", in which al-Hakim wrote that the Egyptian people were only in need of a \"man in whom all their feelings and desires will be represented, and who will be for them a symbol of their objective\". Nasser later credited the novel as his inspiration to launch the coup d'\u00e9tat that began the Egyptian Revolution of 1952.\nMilitary career.\nIn 1937, Nasser applied to the Royal Military Academy for army officer training, but his police record of anti-government protest initially blocked his entry. Disappointed, he enrolled in the law school at King Fuad University, but quit after one semester to reapply to the Military Academy. From his readings, Nasser, who frequently spoke of \"dignity, glory, and freedom\" in his youth, became enchanted with the stories of national liberators and heroic conquerors; a military career became his chief priority.\nConvinced that he needed a \"wasta\", or an influential intermediary to promote his application above the others, Nasser managed to secure a meeting with Under-Secretary of War Ibrahim Khairy Pasha, the person responsible for the academy's selection board, and requested his help. Khairy Pasha agreed and sponsored Nasser's second application, which was accepted in late 1937. Nasser focused on his military career from then on, and had little contact with his family. At the academy, he met Abdel Hakim Amer and Anwar Sadat, both of whom became important aides during his presidency. After graduating from the academy in July 1938, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the infantry, and posted to Mankabad. It was here that Nasser and his closest comrades, including Sadat and Amer, first discussed their dissatisfaction at widespread corruption in the country and their desire to topple the monarchy. Sadat would later write that because of his \"energy, clear-thinking, and balanced judgement\", Nasser emerged as the group's natural leader.\nIn 1941, Nasser was posted to Khartoum, Sudan, which was part of Egypt at the time. Nasser returned to Egypt in September 1942 after a brief stay in Sudan, then secured a position as an instructor in the Cairo Royal Military Academy in May 1943. In February 1942, in what became known as the Abdeen Palace Incident, British soldiers and tanks surrounded King Farouk's palace to compel the King to dismiss Prime Minister Hussein Sirri Pasha in favour of Mostafa El-Nahas, whom the United Kingdom government felt would be more sympathetic to their war effort against the Axis. The British Ambassador, Miles Lampson, marched into the palace, and threatened the King with the bombardment of his palace, his removal as king, and his exile from Egypt unless he conceded to the British demands. Ultimately, the 22 year old King submitted, and appointed El-Nahas. Nasser saw the incident as a blatant violation of Egyptian sovereignty and wrote, \"I am ashamed that our army has not reacted against this attack\", and wished for \"calamity\" to overtake the British. Nasser was accepted into the General Staff College later that year. He began to form a group of young military officers with strong nationalist sentiments who supported some form of revolution. Nasser stayed in touch with the group's members primarily through Amer, who continued to seek out interested officers within the Egyptian Armed Force's various branches and presented Nasser with a complete file on each of them.\n1948 Arab\u2013Israeli War.\nNasser's first battlefield experience was in Palestine during the 1948 Arab\u2013Israeli War. He initially volunteered to serve with the Arab Higher Committee (AHC) led by Mohammad Amin al-Husayni. Nasser met with and impressed al-Husayni, but was ultimately refused entry to the AHC's forces by the Egyptian government for reasons that were unclear.\nIn May 1948, following the British withdrawal, King Farouk sent the Egyptian army into Israel, with Nasser serving as a staff officer of the 6th Infantry Battalion. During the war, he wrote of the Egyptian army's unpreparedness, saying \"our soldiers were dashed against fortifications\". Nasser was deputy commander of the Egyptian forces that secured the Faluja pocket (commanded by Said Taha Bey nicknamed the \"Sudanese tiger\" by the Israelis). On 12 July, he was lightly wounded in the fighting. By August, his brigade was surrounded by the Israeli Army. Appeals for help from Transjordan's Arab Legion went unheeded, but the brigade refused to surrender. Negotiations between Israel and Egypt finally resulted in the ceding of Faluja to Israel. According to veteran journalist Eric Margolis, the defenders of Faluja, \"including young army officer Gamal Abdel Nasser, became national heroes\" for enduring Israeli bombardment while isolated from their command.\nStill stationed after the war in the Faluja enclave, Nasser agreed to an Israeli request to identify 67 killed soldiers of the \"religious platoon\". The expedition was led by Rabbi Shlomo Goren and Nasser personally accompanied him, ordering the Egyptian soldiers to stand at attention. They spoke briefly, and according to Goren, after learning what the square phylacteries found with the soldiers were, Nasser told him that he \"now understands their courageous stand\". During an interview on Israeli TV in 1971, Rabbi Goren claimed the two agreed to meet again when the time of peace comes.\nThe Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum hosted a public celebration for the officers' return despite reservations from the royal government, which had been pressured by the British to prevent the reception. The apparent difference in attitude between the government and the general public increased Nasser's determination to topple the monarchy. Nasser had also felt bitter that his brigade had not been relieved despite the resilience it displayed. He started writing his book \"Philosophy of the Revolution\" during the siege.\nAfter the war, Nasser returned to his role as an instructor at the Royal Military Academy. He sent emissaries to forge an alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood in October 1948, but soon concluded that the religious agenda of the Brotherhood was not compatible with his nationalism. From then on, Nasser prevented the Brotherhood's influence over his cadres' activities without severing ties with the organization. Nasser was sent as a member of the Egyptian delegation to Rhodes in February 1949 to negotiate a formal armistice with Israel, and reportedly considered the terms to be humiliating, particularly because the Israelis were able to easily occupy the Eilat region while negotiating with the Arabs in March.\nRevolution.\nFree Officers.\nNasser's return to Egypt coincided with Husni al-Za'im's Syrian coup d'\u00e9tat. Its success and evident popular support among the Syrian people encouraged Nasser's revolutionary pursuits. Soon after his return, he was summoned and interrogated by Prime Minister Ibrahim Abdel Hadi regarding suspicions that he was forming a secret group of dissenting officers. According to secondhand reports, Nasser convincingly denied the allegations. Abdel Hadi was also hesitant to take drastic measures against the army, especially in front of its chief of staff, who was present during the interrogation, and subsequently released Nasser. The interrogation pushed Nasser to speed up his group's activities.\nAfter 1949, the group adopted the name \"Association of Free Officers\" and advocated \"little else but freedom and the restoration of their country's dignity\". Nasser organized the Free Officers' founding committee, which eventually comprised fourteen men from different social and political backgrounds, including representation from Young Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian Communist Party, and the aristocracy. Nasser was unanimously elected chairman of the organization.\nIn the 1950 parliamentary elections, the Wafd Party of el-Nahhas gained a victory\u2014mostly due to the absence of the Muslim Brotherhood, which boycotted the elections\u2014and was perceived as a threat by the Free Officers as the Wafd had campaigned on demands similar to their own. Accusations of corruption against Wafd politicians began to surface, however, breeding an atmosphere of rumor and suspicion that consequently brought the Free Officers to the forefront of Egyptian politics. By then, the organization had expanded to around ninety members. According to Khaled Mohieddin, \"nobody knew all of them and where they belonged in the hierarchy except Nasser\". Nasser felt that the Free Officers were not ready to move against the government and, for nearly two years, he did little beyond officer recruitment and underground news bulletins.\nOn 11 October 1951, the Wafd government abrogated the unpopular Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 by which the United Kingdom had the right to maintain its military forces in the Suez Canal Zone. The popularity of this move, as well as that of government-sponsored guerrilla attacks against the British, put pressure on Nasser to act. According to Sadat, Nasser decided to wage \"a large scale assassination campaign\". In January 1952, he and Hassan Ibrahim attempted to kill the royalist general Hussein Sirri Amer by firing their submachine guns at his car as he drove through the streets of Cairo. Instead of killing the general, the attackers wounded an innocent female passerby. Nasser recalled that her wails \"haunted\" him and firmly dissuaded him from undertaking similar actions in the future.\nSirri Amer was close to King Farouk, and was nominated for the presidency of the Officer's Club\u2014normally a ceremonial office\u2014with the king's backing. Nasser was determined to establish the independence of the army from the monarchy, and with Amer as the intercessor, resolved to field a nominee for the Free Officers. They selected Mohamed Naguib, a popular general who had offered his resignation to Farouk in 1942 over British high-handedness and was wounded three times in the Palestine War. Naguib won overwhelmingly and the Free Officers, through their connection with a leading Egyptian daily, \"al-Misri\", publicized his victory while praising the nationalistic spirit of the army.\nRevolution of 1952.\nOn 25 January 1952, at a time of growing fedayeen attacks on British forces occupying the Suez Canal Zone, some 7,000 British soldiers attacked the main police station in the Canal city Ismailia. In the ensuing battle, which lasted two hours, 50 Egyptian policeman were killed, sparking outrage across Egypt, and the Cairo Fire riots which left 76 people dead. Afterwards, Nasser published a simple six-point program in \"Rose al-Y\u016bsuf\" to dismantle feudalism and British influence in Egypt. In May, Nasser received word that Farouk knew the names of the Free Officers and intended to arrest them; he immediately entrusted Free Officer Zakaria Mohieddin with the task of planning the government takeover by army units loyal to the association.\nThe Free Officers' intention was not to install themselves in government, but to re-establish a parliamentary democracy. Nasser did not believe that a low-ranking officer like himself (a lieutenant colonel) would be accepted by the Egyptian people, and so selected General Naguib to be his \"boss\" and lead the coup in name. The revolution they had long sought was launched on 22 July and was declared a success the next day. The Free Officers seized control of all government buildings, radio stations, and police stations, as well as army headquarters in Cairo. While many of the rebel officers were leading their units, Nasser donned civilian clothing to avoid detection by royalists and moved around Cairo monitoring the situation. In a move to stave off foreign intervention two days before the revolution, Nasser had notified the American and British governments of his intentions, and both had agreed not to aid Farouk. Under pressure from the Americans, Nasser had agreed to exile the deposed king with an honorary ceremony.\nOn 18 June 1953, the monarchy was abolished and the Republic of Egypt declared, with Naguib as its first president. According to Aburish, after assuming power, Nasser and the Free Officers expected to become the \"guardians of the people's interests\" against the monarchy and the pasha class while leaving the day-to-day tasks of government to civilians. They asked former prime minister Ali Maher to accept reappointment to his previous position, and to form an all-civilian cabinet. The Free Officers then governed as the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) with Naguib as chairman and Nasser as vice-chairman. Relations between the RCC and Maher grew tense, however, as the latter viewed many of Nasser's schemes\u2014agrarian reform, abolition of the monarchy, reorganization of political parties\u2014as too radical, culminating in Maher's resignation on 7 September. Naguib assumed the additional role of prime minister, and Nasser that of deputy prime minister. In September, the Agrarian Reform Law was put into effect. In Nasser's eyes, this law gave the RCC its own identity and transformed the coup into a revolution.\nPreceding the reform law, in August 1952, communist-led riots broke out at textile factories in Kafr el-Dawwar, leading to a clash with the army that left nine people dead. While most of the RCC insisted on executing the riot's two ringleaders, Nasser opposed this. Nonetheless, the sentences were carried out. The Muslim Brotherhood supported the RCC, and after Naguib's assumption of power, demanded four ministerial portfolios in the new cabinet. Nasser turned down their demands and instead hoped to co-opt the Brotherhood by giving two of its members, who were willing to serve officially as independents, minor ministerial posts.\nRoad to presidency.\nDisputes with Naguib.\nIn January 1953, Nasser overcame opposition from Naguib and banned all political parties, creating a one-party system under the Liberation Rally, a loosely structured movement whose chief task was to organize pro-RCC rallies and lectures, with Nasser its secretary-general. Despite the dissolution order, Nasser was the only RCC member who still favored holding parliamentary elections, according to his fellow officer Abdel Latif Boghdadi. Although outvoted, he still advocated holding elections by 1956. In March 1953, Nasser led the Egyptian delegation negotiating a British withdrawal from the Suez Canal.\nWhen Naguib began showing signs of independence from Nasser by distancing himself from the RCC's land reform decrees and drawing closer to Egypt's established political forces, namely the Wafd and the Brotherhood, Nasser resolved to depose him. In June, Nasser took control of the interior ministry post from Naguib loyalist Sulayman Hafez, and pressured Naguib to conclude the abolition of the monarchy.\nOn 25 February 1954, Naguib announced his resignation after the RCC held an official meeting without his presence two days prior. On 26 February, Nasser accepted the resignation, put Naguib under house arrest, and the RCC proclaimed Nasser as both RCC chairman and prime minister. As Naguib intended, a mutiny immediately followed, demanding Naguib's reinstatement and the RCC's dissolution. While visiting the striking officers at Military Headquarters (GHQ) to call for the mutiny's end, Nasser was initially intimidated into accepting their demands. However, on 27 February, Nasser's supporters in the army launched a raid on the GHQ, ending the mutiny. Later that day, hundreds of thousands of protesters, mainly belonging to the Brotherhood, called for Naguib's return and Nasser's imprisonment. In response, a sizable group within the RCC, led by Khaled Mohieddin, demanded Naguib's release and return to the presidency. Nasser acquiesced, but delayed Naguib's reinstatement until 4 March, allowing him to promote Amer to Commander of the Armed Forces\u2014a position formerly occupied by Naguib.\nOn 5 March, Nasser's security coterie arrested thousands of participants in the uprising. As a ruse to rally opposition against a return to the pre-1952 order, the RCC decreed an end to restrictions on monarchy-era parties and the Free Officers' withdrawal from politics. The RCC succeeded in provoking the beneficiaries of the revolution, namely the workers, peasants, and petty bourgeois, to oppose the decrees, with one million transport workers launching a strike and thousands of peasants entering Cairo in protest in late March. Naguib sought to crack down on the protesters, but his requests were rebuffed by the heads of the security forces. On 29 March, Nasser announced the decrees' revocation in response to the \"impulse of the street\". Between April and June, hundreds of Naguib's supporters in the military were either arrested or dismissed, and Mohieddin was informally exiled to Switzerland to represent the RCC abroad. King Saud of Saudi Arabia attempted to mend relations between Nasser and Naguib, but to no avail.\nAssuming chairmanship of RCC.\nOn 26 October 1954, Muslim Brotherhood member Mahmoud Abdel-Latif attempted to assassinate Nasser while he was delivering a speech in Alexandria, broadcast to the Arab world by radio, to celebrate the British military withdrawal. The gunman was away from him and fired eight shots, but all missed Nasser. Panic broke out in the mass audience, but Nasser maintained his posture and raised his voice to appeal for calm. With great emotion he exclaimed the following:\nMy countrymen, my blood spills for you and for Egypt. I will live for your sake and die for the sake of your freedom and honor. Let them kill me; it does not concern me so long as I have instilled pride, honor, and freedom in you. If Gamal Abdel Nasser should die, each of you shall be Gamal Abdel Nasser ... Gamal Abdel Nasser is of you and from you and he is willing to sacrifice his life for the nation.\nThe crowd roared in approval and Arab audiences were electrified. The assassination attempt backfired, quickly playing into Nasser's hands. Upon returning to Cairo, he ordered one of the largest political crackdowns in the modern history of Egypt, with the arrests of thousands of dissenters, mostly members of the Brotherhood, but also communists, and the dismissal of 140 officers loyal to Naguib. Eight Brotherhood leaders were sentenced to death, although the sentence of its chief ideologue, Sayyid Qutb, was commuted to a 15-year imprisonment. Naguib was removed from the presidency and put under house arrest, but was never tried or sentenced, and no one in the army rose to defend him. With his rivals neutralized, Nasser became the undisputed leader of Egypt.\nNasser's street following was still too small to sustain his plans for reform and to secure him in office. To promote himself and the Liberation Rally, he gave speeches in a cross-country tour, and imposed controls over the country's press by decreeing that all publications had to be approved by the party to prevent \"sedition\". Both Umm Kulthum and Abdel Halim Hafez, the leading Arab singers of the era, performed songs praising Nasser's nationalism. Others produced plays denigrating his political opponents. According to his associates, Nasser orchestrated the campaign himself. Arab nationalist terms such \"Arab homeland\" and \"Arab nation\" frequently began appearing in his speeches in 1954\u201355, whereas prior he would refer to the Arab \"peoples\" or the \"Arab region\". In January 1955, the RCC appointed him as their president, pending national elections.\nNasser made secret contacts with Israel in 1954\u201355, but determined that peace with Israel would be impossible, considering it an \"expansionist state that viewed the Arabs with disdain\". On 28 February 1955, Israeli troops attacked the Egyptian-held Gaza Strip with the stated aim of suppressing Palestinian fedayeen raids. Nasser did not feel that the Egyptian Army was ready for a confrontation and did not retaliate militarily. His failure to respond to Israeli military action demonstrated the ineffectiveness of his armed forces and constituted a blow to his growing popularity. Nasser subsequently ordered the tightening of the blockade on Israeli shipping through the Straits of Tiran and restricted the use of airspace over the Gulf of Aqaba by Israeli aircraft in early September. The Israelis re-militarized the al-Auja Demilitarized Zone on the Egyptian border on 21 September.\nSimultaneous with Israel's February raid, the Baghdad Pact was formed between some regional allies of the UK. Nasser considered the Baghdad Pact a threat to his efforts to eliminate British military influence in the Middle East, and a mechanism to undermine the Arab League and \"perpetuate [Arab] subservience to Zionism and [Western] imperialism\". Nasser felt that if he was to maintain Egypt's regional leadership position he needed to acquire modern weaponry to arm his military. When it became apparent to him that Western countries would not supply Egypt under acceptable financial and military terms, Nasser turned to the Eastern Bloc and concluded a armaments agreement with Czechoslovakia on 27 September. Through the Czechoslovakian arms deal, the balance of power between Egypt and Israel was more or less equalized and Nasser's role as the Arab leader defying the West was enhanced. The arms deal led to increased unease in the United States, where Nasser was compared to Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, causing it to strengthen its relations with Israel and become more wary of Egypt as a result.\nAdoption of neutralism.\nAt the Bandung Conference in Indonesia in late April 1955, Nasser was treated as the leading representative of the Arab countries and was one of the most popular figures at the summit. He had paid earlier visits to Pakistan (9 April), India (14 April), Burma, and Afghanistan on the way to Bandung, and previously cemented a treaty of friendship with India in Cairo on 6 April, strengthening Egyptian\u2013Indian relations on the international policy and economic development fronts.\nNasser mediated discussions between the pro-Western, pro-Soviet, and neutralist conference factions over the composition of the \"Final Communique\" addressing colonialism in Africa and Asia and the fostering of global peace amid the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union. At Bandung, Nasser sought a proclamation for the avoidance of international defense alliances, support for the independence of Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco from French rule, support for the Palestinian right of return, and the implementation of UN resolutions regarding the Arab\u2013Israeli conflict. He succeeded in lobbying the attendees to pass resolutions on each of these issues, notably securing the strong support of China and India.\nFollowing Bandung, Nasser officially adopted the \"positive neutralism\" of Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru as a principal theme of Egyptian foreign policy regarding the Cold War. Nasser was welcomed by large crowds of people lining the streets of Cairo on his return to Egypt on 2 May and was widely heralded in the press for his achievements and leadership in the conference. Consequently, Nasser's prestige was greatly boosted, as was his self-confidence and image.\n1956 constitution and presidency.\nWith his domestic position considerably strengthened, Nasser was able to secure primacy over his RCC colleagues and gained relatively unchallenged decision-making authority, particularly over foreign policy.\nIn January 1956, the new Constitution of Egypt was drafted, entailing the establishment of a single-party system under the National Union (NU), a movement Nasser described as the \"cadre through which we will realize our revolution\". The NU was a reconfiguration of the Liberation Rally, which Nasser determined had failed in generating mass public participation. In the new movement, Nasser attempted to incorporate more citizens, approved by local-level party committees, in order to solidify popular backing for his government. The NU would select a nominee for the presidential election whose name would be provided for public approval.\nNasser's nomination for the post and the new constitution were put to public referendum on 23 June and each was approved by an overwhelming majority. A 350-member National Assembly was established, elections for which were held in July 1957. Nasser had ultimate approval over all the candidates. The constitution granted women's suffrage, prohibited discrimination by sex, and entailed special protection for women in the workplace. Coinciding with the new constitution and Nasser's presidency, the RCC dissolved itself and its members resigned their military commissions as part of the transition to civilian rule. During the deliberations surrounding the establishment of a new government, Nasser began a process of sidelining his rivals among the original Free Officers, while elevating his closest allies to high-ranking positions in the cabinet.\nNationalization of the Suez Canal Company.\nAfter the three-year transition period ended with Nasser's official assumption of power, his domestic and independent foreign policies increasingly collided with the regional interests of the UK and France. The latter condemned his strong support for Algerian independence, and the UK's Eden government was agitated by Nasser's campaign against the Baghdad Pact. In addition, Nasser's adherence to neutralism regarding the Cold War, recognition of communist China, and arms deal with the Eastern bloc alienated the United States. On 19 July 1956, the US and UK abruptly withdrew their offer to finance construction of the Aswan Dam, citing concerns that Egypt's economy would be overwhelmed by the project.\nNasser was informed of the British\u2013American withdrawal in a news statement while aboard a plane returning to Cairo from Belgrade, and took great offense. Although ideas for nationalizing the Suez Canal Company were in the offing after the UK agreed to withdraw its military from Egypt in 1954 (the last British troops left on 13 June 1956), journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heikal asserts that Nasser made the final decision to nationalize the company that operated the waterway between 19 and 20 July. Nasser himself would later state that he decided on 23 July, after studying the issue and deliberating with some of his advisers from the dissolved RCC, namely Boghdadi and technical specialist Mahmoud Younis, beginning on 21 July. The rest of the RCC's former members were informed of the decision on 24 July, while the bulk of the cabinet was unaware of the nationalization scheme until hours before Nasser publicly announced it. According to Ramadan, Nasser's decision to nationalize the canal was a solitary decision, taken without consultation.\nOn 26 July 1956, Nasser gave a speech in Alexandria announcing the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company as a means to fund the Aswan Dam project in light of the British\u2013American withdrawal. In the speech, he denounced British imperialism in Egypt and British control over the canal company's profits, and upheld that the Egyptian people had a right to sovereignty over the waterway, especially since \"120,000 Egyptians had died building it\". The motion was technically in breach of the international agreement he had signed with the UK on 19 October 1954, although he ensured that all existing stockholders would be paid off.\nThe nationalization announcement was greeted very emotionally by the audience and, throughout the Arab world, thousands entered the streets shouting slogans of support. US ambassador Henry A. Byroade stated, \"I cannot overemphasize [the] popularity of the Canal Company nationalization within Egypt, even among Nasser's enemies.\" Egyptian political scientist Mahmoud Hamad wrote that, prior to 1956, Nasser had consolidated control over Egypt's military and civilian bureaucracies, but it was only after the canal's nationalization that he gained near-total popular legitimacy and firmly established himself as the \"charismatic leader\" and \"spokesman for the masses not only in Egypt, but all over the Third World\". According to Aburish, this was Nasser's largest pan-Arab triumph at the time and \"soon his pictures were to be found in the tents of Yemen, the souks of Marrakesh, and the posh villas of Syria\". The official reason given for the nationalization was that funds from the canal would be used for the construction of the dam in Aswan. That same day, Egypt closed the canal to Israeli shipping.\nSuez Crisis.\nFrance and the UK, the largest shareholders in the Suez Canal Company, saw its nationalization as yet another hostile measure aimed at them by the Egyptian government. Nasser was aware that the canal's nationalization would instigate an international crisis and believed the prospect of military intervention by the two countries was 80 percent likely. Nasser dismissed their claims, and believed that the UK would not be able to intervene militarily for at least two months after the announcement, and dismissed Israeli action as \"impossible\". In early October, the UN Security Council met on the matter of the canal's nationalization and adopted a resolution recognizing Egypt's right to control the canal as long as it continued to allow passage through it for foreign ships. According to Heikal, after this agreement, \"Nasser estimated that the danger of invasion had dropped to 10 percent\". Shortly thereafter, however, the UK, France, and Israel made a secret agreement to take over the Suez Canal, occupy the Suez Canal zone, and topple Nasser.\nOn 29 October 1956, Israeli forces crossed the Sinai Peninsula, overwhelmed Egyptian army posts, and quickly advanced to their objectives. Two days later, British and French planes bombarded Egyptian airfields in the canal zone. Nasser ordered the military's high command to withdraw the Egyptian Army from Sinai to bolster the canal's defenses. Moreover, he feared that if the armored corps was dispatched to confront the Israeli invading force and the British and French subsequently landed in the canal city of Port Said, Egyptian armor in the Sinai would be cut off from the canal and destroyed by the combined tripartite forces. Amer strongly disagreed, insisting that Egyptian tanks meet the Israelis in battle. The two had a heated exchange on 3 November, and Amer conceded. Nasser also ordered blockage of the canal by sinking or otherwise disabling forty-nine ships at its entrance.\nDespite the commanded withdrawal of Egyptian troops, about 2,000 Egyptian soldiers were killed during engagement with Israeli forces, and some 5,000 Egyptian soldiers were captured by the Israeli Army. Amer and Salah Salem proposed requesting a ceasefire, with Salem further recommending that Nasser surrender himself to British forces. Nasser berated Amer and Salem, and vowed, \"Nobody is going to surrender.\" Nasser assumed military command. Despite the relative ease in which Sinai was occupied, Nasser's prestige at home and among Arabs was undamaged. To counterbalance the Egyptian Army's dismal performance, Nasser authorized the distribution of about 400,000 rifles to civilian volunteers and hundreds of militias were formed throughout Egypt, many led by Nasser's political opponents.\nIt was at Port Said that Nasser saw a confrontation with the invading forces as being the strategic and psychological focal point of Egypt's defense. A third infantry battalion and hundreds of national guardsmen were sent to the city as reinforcements, while two regular companies were dispatched to organize popular resistance. Nasser and Boghdadi traveled to the canal zone to boost the morale of the armed volunteers. According to Boghdadi's memoirs, Nasser described the Egyptian Army as \"shattered\" as he saw the wreckage of Egyptian military equipment en route. When British and French forces landed in Port Said on 5\u20136 November, its local militia put up a stiff resistance, resulting in street-to-street fighting. The Egyptian Army commander in the city was preparing to request terms for a ceasefire, but Nasser ordered him to desist. The British-French forces managed to largely secure the city by 7 November. Between 750 and 1,000 Egyptians were killed in the battle for Port Said.\nThe US Eisenhower administration condemned the tripartite invasion, and supported UN resolutions demanding withdrawal and a United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) to be stationed in Sinai. Nasser commended Eisenhower, stating he played the \"greatest and most decisive role\" in stopping the \"tripartite conspiracy\". By the end of December, British and French forces had totally withdrawn from Egyptian territory, while Israel completed its withdrawal in March 1957 and released all Egyptian prisoners of war. As a result of the Suez Crisis, Nasser brought in a set of regulations imposing rigorous requirements for residency and citizenship as well as forced expulsions, mostly affecting British and French nationals and Jews with foreign nationality, as well as many Egyptian Jews. Some 25,000 Jews, almost half of the Jewish community, left in 1956, mainly for Israel, Europe, the United States and South America.\nAfter the fighting ended, Amer accused Nasser of provoking an unnecessary war and then blaming the military for the result. On 8 April, the canal was reopened, and Nasser's political position was enormously enhanced by the widely perceived failure of the invasion and attempt to topple him. British diplomat Anthony Nutting claimed the crisis \"established Nasser finally and completely\" as the \"rayyes\" (president) of Egypt.\nPan-Arabism and socialism.\nBy 1957, pan-Arabism had become the dominant ideology in the Arab world, and the average Arab citizen considered Nasser their undisputed leader. Historian Adeed Dawisha credited Nasser's status to his \"charisma, bolstered by his perceived victory in the Suez Crisis\". The Cairo-based Voice of the Arabs radio station spread Nasser's ideas of united Arab action throughout the Arabic-speaking world, so much so that historian Eugene Rogan wrote, \"Nasser conquered the Arab world by radio.\" Lebanese sympathizers of Nasser and the Egyptian embassy in Beirut\u2014the press center of the Arab world\u2014bought out Lebanese media outlets to further disseminate Nasser's ideals. Egypt also expanded its policy of secondment, dispatching thousands of high-skilled Egyptian professionals (usually politically active teachers) across the region. Nasser also enjoyed the support of Arab nationalist civilian and paramilitary organizations throughout the region. His followers were numerous and well-funded, but lacked any permanent structure and organization. They called themselves \"Nasserites\", despite Nasser's objection to the label (he preferred the term \"Arab nationalists\").\nIn January 1957, the US adopted the Eisenhower Doctrine and pledged to prevent the spread of communism and its perceived agents in the Middle East. Although Nasser was an opponent of communism in the region, his promotion of pan-Arabism was viewed as a threat by pro-Western states in the region. Eisenhower tried to isolate Nasser and reduce his regional influence by attempting to transform King Saud into a counterweight. Also in January, the elected Jordanian prime minister and Nasser supporter Sulayman al-Nabulsi brought Jordan into a military pact with Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.\nRelations between Nasser and King Hussein of Jordan deteriorated in April when Hussein implicated Nasser in two coup attempts against him\u2014although Nasser's involvement was never established\u2014and dissolved al-Nabulsi's cabinet. Nasser subsequently slammed Hussein on Cairo radio as being \"a tool of the imperialists\". Relations with King Saud also became antagonistic as the latter began to fear that Nasser's increasing popularity in Saudi Arabia was a genuine threat to the royal family's survival. Despite opposition from the governments of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Lebanon, Nasser maintained his prestige among their citizens and those of other Arab countries.\nBy the end of 1957, Nasser nationalized all remaining British and French assets in Egypt, including the tobacco, cement, pharmaceutical, and phosphate industries. When efforts to offer tax incentives and attract outside investments yielded no tangible results, he nationalized more companies and made them a part of his economic development organization. He stopped short of total government control: two-thirds of the economy was still in private hands. This effort achieved a measure of success, with increased agricultural production and investment in industrialization. Nasser initiated the Helwan steelworks, which subsequently became Egypt's largest enterprise, providing the country with product and tens of thousands of jobs. Nasser also decided to cooperate with the Soviet Union in the construction of the Aswan Dam to replace the withdrawal of US funds.\nUnited Arab Republic.\nDespite his popularity with the people of the Arab world, by mid-1957 his only regional ally was Syria. In September, Turkish troops massed along the Syrian border, giving credence to rumors that the Baghdad Pact countries were attempting to topple Syria's leftist government. Nasser sent a contingent force to Syria as a symbolic display of solidarity, further elevating his prestige in the Arab world, and particularly among Syrians.\nAs political instability grew in Syria, delegations from the country were sent to Nasser demanding immediate unification with Egypt. Nasser initially turned down the request, citing the two countries' incompatible political and economic systems, lack of contiguity, the Syrian military's record of intervention in politics, and the deep factionalism among Syria's political forces. However, in January 1958, a second Syrian delegation managed to convince Nasser of an impending communist takeover and a consequent slide to civil strife. Nasser subsequently opted for union, albeit on the condition that it would be a total political merger with him as its president, to which the delegates and Syrian president Shukri al-Quwatli agreed. On 1 February, the United Arab Republic (UAR) was proclaimed and, according to Dawisha, the Arab world reacted in \"stunned amazement, which quickly turned into uncontrolled euphoria.\" Nasser ordered a crackdown against Syrian communists, dismissing many of them from their governmental posts.\nOn a surprise visit to Damascus to celebrate the union on 24 February, Nasser was welcomed by crowds in the hundreds of thousands. Crown Prince Imam Badr of North Yemen was dispatched to Damascus with proposals to include his country in the new republic. Nasser agreed to establish a loose federal union with Yemen\u2014the United Arab States\u2014in place of total integration. While Nasser was in Syria, King Saud planned to have him assassinated on his return flight to Cairo. On 4 March, Nasser addressed the masses in Damascus and waved before them the Saudi check given to Syrian security chief and, unbeknownst to the Saudis, ardent Nasser supporter Abdel Hamid Sarraj to shoot down Nasser's plane. As a consequence of Saud's plot, he was forced by senior members of the Saudi royal family to informally cede most of his powers to his brother, King Faisal, a major Nasser opponent who advocated pan-Islamic unity over pan-Arabism.\nA day after announcing the attempt on his life, Nasser established a new provisional constitution proclaiming a 600-member National Assembly (400 from Egypt and 200 from Syria) and the dissolution of all political parties. Nasser gave each of the provinces two vice-presidents: Boghdadi and Amer in Egypt, and Sabri al-Asali and Akram al-Hawrani in Syria. Nasser then left for Moscow to meet with Nikita Khrushchev. At the meeting, Khrushchev pressed Nasser to lift the ban on the Communist Party, but Nasser refused, stating it was an internal matter which was not a subject of discussion with outside powers. Khrushchev was reportedly taken aback and denied he had meant to interfere in the UAR's affairs. The matter was settled as both leaders sought to prevent a rift between their two countries.\nWith the establishment of the United Arab Republic, the United States under President Eisenhower attempted to build better relations and initiate a rapprochement between the two countries, contrasting with the previously cautious stance of the American government towards Nasser. In particular, Nasser sought American assistance in his ideological cold war with Abdel Karim Qasim in Iraq and his ideology of Qasimism, which conflicted with Nasser's pan-Arab nationalism. However, due to major ideological differences, no significant long-term working relationship developed between Nasser and Eisenhower.\nInfluence on the Arab world.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nThe holy march on which the Arab nation insists, will carry us forward from one victory to another ... the flag of freedom which flies over Baghdad today will fly over Amman and Riyadh. Yes, the flag of freedom which flies over Cairo, Damascus, and Baghdad today will fly over the rest of the Middle East ...\nGamal Abdel Nasser, 19 July in Damascus\nIn Lebanon, clashes between pro-Nasser factions and supporters of staunch Nasser opponent, then-President Camille Chamoun, culminated in civil strife by May. The former sought to unite with the UAR, while the latter sought Lebanon's continued independence. Nasser delegated oversight of the issue to Sarraj, who provided limited aid to Nasser's Lebanese supporters through money, light arms, and officer training\u2014short of the large-scale support that Chamoun alleged. Nasser did not covet Lebanon, seeing it as a \"special case\", but sought to prevent Chamoun from a second presidential term. In Oman, the Jebel Akhdar War between the rebels in the interior of Oman against the British-backed Sultanate of Oman prompted Nasser to support the rebels in what was considered a war against colonialism between 1954 and 1959.\nOn 14 July 1958, Iraqi army officers Abdel Karim Qasim and Abdel Salam Aref overthrew the Iraqi monarchy and, the next day, Iraqi prime minister and Nasser's chief Arab antagonist, Nuri al-Said, was killed. The entire Iraqi royal family was killed, and Al-Said's and Iraqi crown prince 'Abd al-Ilah's bodies were mutilated and dragged across Baghdad. Nasser recognized the new government and stated that \"any attack on Iraq was tantamount to an attack on the UAR\". On 15 July, US marines landed in Lebanon, and British special forces in Jordan, upon the request of those countries' governments to prevent them from falling to pro-Nasser forces. Nasser felt that the revolution in Iraq left the road for pan-Arab unity unblocked. On 19 July, for the first time, he declared that he was opting for full Arab union, although he had no plan to merge Iraq with the UAR. While most members of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) favored Iraqi-UAR unity, Qasim sought to keep Iraq independent and resented Nasser's large popular base in the country.\nIn the fall of 1958, Nasser formed a tripartite committee consisting of Zakaria Mohieddin, al-Hawrani, and Salah Bitar to oversee developments in Syria. By moving the latter two, who were Ba'athists, to Cairo, he neutralized important political figures who had their own ideas about how Syria should be run. He put Syria under Sarraj, who effectively reduced the province to a police state by imprisoning and exiling landholders who objected to the introduction of Egyptian agricultural reform in Syria, as well as communists. Following the Lebanese election of Fuad Chehab in September 1958, relations between Lebanon and the UAR improved considerably. On 25 March 1959, Chehab and Nasser met at the Lebanese\u2013Syrian border and compromised on an end to the Lebanese crisis.\nRelations between Nasser and Qasim grew increasingly bitter on 9 March, after Qasim's forces suppressed a rebellion in Mosul, launched a day earlier by a pro-Nasser Iraqi RCC officer backed by UAR authorities. Nasser had considered dispatching troops to aid his Iraqi sympathizers, but decided against it. He clamped down on Egyptian communist activity due to the key backing Iraqi communists provided Qasim. Several influential communists were arrested, including Nasser's old comrade Khaled Mohieddin, who had been allowed to re-enter Egypt in 1956.\nBy December, the political situation in Syria was faltering and Nasser responded by appointing Amer as governor-general alongside Sarraj. Syria's leaders opposed the appointment and many resigned from their government posts. Nasser later met with the opposition leaders and in a heated moment, exclaimed that he was the elected president of the UAR and those who did not accept his authority could \"walk away\".\nCollapse of the union and aftermath.\nOpposition to the union mounted among some of Syria's key elements, namely the socioeconomic, political, and military elites. In response to Syria's worsening economy, which Nasser attributed to its control by the bourgeoisie, in July 1961, Nasser decreed socialist measures that nationalized wide-ranging sectors of the Syrian economy. He also dismissed Sarraj in September to curb the growing political crisis. Aburish states that Nasser was not fully capable of addressing Syrian problems because they were \"foreign to him\". In Egypt, the economic situation was more positive, with a GNP growth of 4.5 percent and a rapid growth of industry. In 1960, Nasser nationalized the Egyptian press, which had already been cooperating with his government, in order to steer coverage towards the country's socioeconomic issues and galvanize public support for his socialist measures.\nOn 28 September 1961, secessionist army units launched a coup in Damascus, declaring Syria's secession from the UAR. In response, pro-union army units in northern Syria revolted and pro-Nasser protests occurred in major Syrian cities. Nasser sent Egyptian Special Forces to Latakia to bolster his allies, but withdrew them two days later, citing a refusal to allow inter-Arab fighting. Addressing the UAR's breakup on 5 October, Nasser accepted personal responsibility and declared that Egypt would recognize an elected Syrian government. He privately blamed interference by hostile Arab governments. According to Heikal, Nasser suffered something resembling a nervous breakdown after the dissolution of the union; he began to smoke more heavily and his health began to deteriorate.\nRevival on regional stage.\nNasser's regional position changed unexpectedly when Yemeni officers led by Nasser supporter Abdullah al-Sallal overthrew Imam Badr of North Yemen on 27 September 1962. Al-Badr and his tribal partisans began receiving increasing support from Saudi Arabia to help reinstate the kingdom, while Nasser subsequently accepted a request by Sallal to militarily aid the new government on 30 September. Consequently, Egypt became increasingly embroiled in the drawn-out civil war, with 60,000 Egyptian soldiers deployed in North Yemen in March 1966. In August 1967, in order to make up for Egyptian losses during the Six-Day War, Nasser recalled 15,000 troops from North Yemen. As part of the Khartoum Resolution at the 1967 Arab League summit in the same month, Egypt announced that it was ready to withdraw all its soldiers from North Yemen and it did so by the end of 1967. 26,000 Egyptian soldiers were killed during the intervention. Most of Nasser's old colleagues had questioned the wisdom of continuing the war, but Amer reassured Nasser of their coming victory. Nasser later remarked in 1968 that intervention in Yemen was a \"miscalculation\".\nIn July 1962, Algeria became independent of France. As a staunch political and financial supporter of the Algerian independence movement, Nasser considered the country's independence to be a personal victory. Amid these developments, a pro-Nasser clique in the Saudi royal family led by Prince Talal defected to Egypt, along with the Jordanian chief of staff, in early 1963.\nOn 8 February 1963, a military coup in Iraq led by a Ba'athist\u2013Nasserist alliance toppled Qasim, who was subsequently shot dead. Abdel Salam Aref, a Nasserist, was chosen to be the new president. A similar alliance toppled the Syrian government on 8 March. On 14 March, the new Iraqi and Syrian governments sent Nasser delegations to push for a new Arab union. At the meeting, Nasser lambasted the Ba'athists for \"facilitating\" Syria's split from the UAR, and asserted that he was the \"leader of the Arabs\". A transitional unity agreement stipulating a federal system was signed by the parties on 17 April and the new union was set to be established in May 1965. However, the agreement fell apart weeks later when Syria's Ba'athists purged Nasser's supporters from the officers corps. A failed counter-coup by a Nasserist colonel followed, after which Nasser condemned the Ba'athists as \"fascists\".\nIn January 1964, Nasser called for an Arab League summit in Cairo to establish a unified Arab response against Israel's plans to divert the Jordan River's waters for economic purposes, which Syria and Jordan deemed an act of war. Nasser blamed Arab divisions for what he deemed \"the disastrous situation\". He discouraged Syria and Palestinian guerrillas from provoking the Israelis, conceding that he had no plans for war with Israel. During the summit, Nasser developed cordial relations with King Hussein, and ties were mended with the rulers of Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Morocco. In May, Nasser moved to formally share his leadership position over the Palestine issue by initiating the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In practice, Nasser used the PLO to wield control over the Palestinian fedayeen. Its head was to be Ahmad Shukeiri, Nasser's personal nominee.\nAfter years of foreign policy coordination and developing ties, Nasser, President Sukarno of Indonesia, President Tito of Yugoslavia, and Prime Minister Nehru of India founded the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in 1961. Its declared purpose was to solidify international non-alignment and promote world peace amid the Cold War, end colonization, and increase economic cooperation among developing countries. In 1964, Nasser was made president of the NAM and held the second conference of the organization in Cairo.\nNasser played a significant part in the strengthening of African solidarity in the late 1950s and early 1960s, although his continental leadership role had increasingly passed to Algeria since 1962. During this period, Nasser made Egypt a refuge for anti-colonial leaders from several African countries and allowed the broadcast of anti-colonial propaganda from Cairo. Beginning in 1958, Nasser had a key role in the discussions among African leaders that led to the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963.\nModernization efforts and internal dissent.\nAl-Azhar.\nIn 1961, Nasser sought to firmly establish Egypt as the leader of the Arab world and to promote a second revolution in Egypt with the purpose of merging Islamic and socialist thinking. To achieve this, he initiated several reforms to modernize al-Azhar, which serves as the \"de facto\" leading authority in Sunni Islam, and to ensure its prominence over the Muslim Brotherhood and the more conservative Wahhabism promoted by Saudi Arabia. Nasser had used al-Azhar's most willing \"ulema\" (scholars) as a counterweight to the Brotherhood's Islamic influence, starting in 1953.\nNasser instructed al-Azhar to create changes in its syllabus that trickled to the lower levels of Egyptian education, consequently allowing the establishment of coeducational schools and the introduction of evolution into school curriculum. The reforms also included the merger of religious and civil courts. Moreover, Nasser forced al-Azhar to issue a fatw\u0101 admitting Shia Muslims, Alawites, and Druze into mainstream Islam; for centuries prior, al-Azhar deemed them to be \"heretics\".\nRivalry with Amer.\nFollowing Syria's secession, Nasser grew concerned with Amer's inability to train and modernize the army, and with the state within a state Amer had created in the military command and intelligence apparatus. In late 1961, Nasser established the Presidential Council and decreed it the authority to approve all senior military appointments, instead of leaving this responsibility solely to Amer. Moreover, he instructed that the primary criterion for promotion should be merit and not personal loyalties. Nasser retracted the initiative after Amer's allies in the officers corps threatened to mobilize against him.\nIn early 1962 Nasser again attempted to wrest control of the military command from Amer. Amer responded by directly confronting Nasser for the first time and secretly rallying his loyalist officers. Nasser ultimately backed down, wary of a possible violent confrontation between the military and his civilian government. According to Boghdadi, the stress caused by the UAR's collapse and Amer's increasing autonomy forced Nasser, who already had diabetes, to practically live on painkillers from then on.\nNational Charter and second term.\nIn October 1961, Nasser embarked on a major nationalization program for Egypt, believing the total adoption of socialism was the answer to his country's problems and would have prevented Syria's secession. In order to organize and solidify his popular base with Egypt's citizens and counter the army's influence, Nasser introduced the National Charter in 1962 and a new constitution. The charter called for universal health care, affordable housing, vocational schools, greater women's rights and a family planning program, as well as widening the Suez Canal.\nNasser also attempted to maintain oversight of the country's civil service to prevent it from inflating and consequently becoming a burden to the state. New laws provided workers with a minimum wage, profit shares, free education, free health care, reduced working hours, and encouragement to participate in management. Land reforms guaranteed the security of tenant farmers, promoted agricultural growth, and reduced rural poverty. As a result of the 1962 measures, government ownership of Egyptian business reached 51\u00a0percent, and the National Union was renamed the Arab Socialist Union (ASU). With these measures came more domestic repression, as thousands of Islamists were imprisoned, including dozens of military officers. Nasser's tilt toward a Soviet-style system led his aides Boghdadi and Hussein el-Shafei to submit their resignations in protest.\nDuring the presidential referendum in Egypt, Nasser was re-elected to a second term as UAR president and took his oath on 25 March 1965. He was the only candidate for the position, with virtually all of his political opponents forbidden by law from running for office, and his fellow party members reduced to mere followers. That same year, Nasser had the Muslim Brotherhood chief ideologue Sayyed Qutb imprisoned. Qutb was charged and found guilty by the court of plotting to assassinate Nasser, and was executed in 1966. Beginning in 1966, as Egypt's economy slowed and government debt became increasingly burdensome, Nasser began to ease state control over the private sector, encouraging state-owned bank loans to private business and introducing incentives to increase exports. During the '60s, the Egyptian economy went from sluggishness to the verge of collapse, the society became less free, and Nasser's appeal waned considerably.\nSix-Day War.\nIn mid May 1967, the Soviet Union issued warnings to Nasser of an impending Israeli attack on Syria, although Chief of Staff Mohamed Fawzi considered the warnings to be \"baseless\". According to Kandil, without Nasser's authorization, Amer used the Soviet warnings as a pretext to dispatch troops to Sinai on 14 May, and Nasser subsequently demanded UNEF's withdrawal. Earlier that day, Nasser received a warning from King Hussein of Israeli-American collusion to drag Egypt into war. The message had been originally received by Amer on 2 May, but was withheld from Nasser until the Sinai deployment on 14 May. Although in the preceding months, Hussein and Nasser had been accusing each other of avoiding a fight with Israel, Hussein was nonetheless wary that an Egyptian\u2013Israeli war would risk the West Bank's occupation by Israel. Nasser still felt that the US would restrain Israel from attacking due to assurances that he received from the US and Soviet Union. In turn, he also reassured both powers that Egypt would only act defensively.\nOn 21 May, Amer asked Nasser to order the Straits of Tiran blockaded, a move Nasser believed Israel would use as a \"casus belli\". Amer reassured him that the army was prepared for confrontation, but Nasser doubted Amer's assessment of the military's readiness. According to Nasser's vice president Zakaria Mohieddin, although \"Amer had absolute authority over the armed forces, Nasser had his ways of knowing what was really going on\". Moreover, Amer anticipated an impending Israeli attack and advocated a preemptive strike. Nasser refused the call upon determination that the air force lacked pilots and Amer's handpicked officers were incompetent. Still, Nasser concluded that if Israel attacked, Egypt's quantitative advantage in manpower and arms could stave off Israeli forces for at least two weeks, allowing for diplomacy towards a ceasefire. Israel repeated declarations it had made in 1957 that any closure of the Straits would be considered an act of war, or justification for war, but Nasser closed the Straits to Israeli shipping on 22\u201323 May. Towards the end of May, Nasser increasingly exchanged his positions of deterrence for deference to the inevitability of war, under increased pressure to act by both the general Arab populace and various Arab governments. On 26 May Nasser declared, \"our basic objective will be to destroy Israel\". On 30 May, King Hussein committed Jordan in an alliance with Egypt and Syria.\nOn the morning of 5 June, the Israeli Air Force struck Egyptian air fields, destroying much of the Egyptian Air Force. Before the day ended, Israeli armored units had cut through Egyptian defense lines and captured the town of el-Arish. The next day, Amer ordered the immediate withdrawal of Egyptian troops from Sinai\u2014causing the majority of Egyptian casualties during the war. Israel quickly captured Sinai and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.\nAccording to Sadat, it was only when the Israelis cut off the Egyptian garrison at Sharm el-Sheikh that Nasser became aware of the situation's gravity. After hearing of the attack, he rushed to army headquarters to inquire about the military situation. The simmering conflict between Nasser and Amer subsequently came to the fore, and officers present reported the pair burst into \"a nonstop shouting match\". The Supreme Executive Committee, set up by Nasser to oversee the conduct of the war, attributed the repeated Egyptian defeats to the Nasser\u2013Amer rivalry and Amer's overall incompetence. According to Egyptian diplomat Ismail Fahmi, who became foreign minister during Sadat's presidency, the Israeli invasion and Egypt's consequent defeat was a result of Nasser's dismissal of all rational analysis of the situation and his undertaking of a series of irrational decisions.\nResignation and aftermath.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nI have taken a decision with which I need your help. I have decided to withdraw totally and for good from any official post or political role, and to return to the ranks of the masses, performing my duty in their midst, like any other citizen. This is a time for action, not grief. ... My whole heart is with you, and let your hearts be with me. May God be with us\u2014hope, light, and guidance in our hearts.\nNasser's 9 June resignation speech, which was retracted the next day\nDuring the first four days of the war, the general population of the Arab world believed Arab radio station fabrications of imminent Arab victory. On 9 June, Nasser appeared on television to inform Egypt's citizens of their country's defeat. He announced his resignation on television later that day, and ceded all presidential powers to his then-Vice President Zakaria Mohieddin, who had no prior information of this decision and refused to accept the post. It was in this resignation\nspeech that the Six Day War was first called the \"setback\". The second sentence of his speech ran: \"We cannot hide from ourselves the fact that we have met with a grave setback [naksa] in the last few days\"\u2014the \"naksa\" or \"setback\" for Egypt being the destruction of its armed forces, the loss of the entire Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza region, and the national humiliation and disgrace of losing a war to the vastly smaller Israeli Army.\nHundreds of thousands of sympathizers poured into the streets in mass demonstrations throughout Egypt and across the Arab world rejecting his resignation, chanting, \"We are your soldiers, Gamal!\" Nasser retracted his decision the next day.\nOn 11 July, Nasser replaced Amer with Mohamed Fawzi as general commander, over the protestations of Amer's loyalists in the military, 600 of whom marched on army headquarters and demanded Amer's reinstatement. After Nasser sacked thirty of the loyalists in response, Amer and his allies devised a plan to topple him on 27 August. Nasser was tipped off about their activities and, after several invitations, he convinced Amer to meet him at his home on 24 August. Nasser confronted Amer about the coup plot, which he denied before being arrested by Mohieddin. Amer committed suicide on 14 September. Despite his souring relationship with Amer, Nasser spoke of losing \"the person closest to [him]\". Thereafter, Nasser began a process of depoliticizing the armed forces, arresting dozens of leading military and intelligence figures loyal to Amer.\nAt the 29 August Arab League summit in Khartoum, Nasser's usual commanding position had receded as the attending heads of state expected Saudi King Faisal to lead. A ceasefire in the Yemen War was declared and the summit concluded with the Khartoum Resolution, which, according to Abd al Azim Ramadan, left only one option\u2014a war with Israel.\nThe Soviet Union soon resupplied the Egyptian military with about half of its former arsenals and broke diplomatic relations with Israel. Nasser cut relations with the US following the war, and, according to Aburish, his policy of \"playing the superpowers against each other\" ended. In November, Nasser accepted UN Resolution 242, which called for Israel's withdrawal from territories acquired in the war. His supporters claimed Nasser's move was meant to buy time to prepare for another confrontation with Israel, while his detractors believed his acceptance of the resolution signaled a waning interest in Palestinian independence.\nFinal years of presidency.\nDomestic reforms and governmental changes.\nNasser appointed himself the additional roles of prime minister and supreme commander of the armed forces on 19 June 1967. Angry at the military court's perceived leniency with air force officers charged with negligence during the 1967 war, workers and students launched protests calling for major political reforms in late February 1968. Nasser responded to the demonstrations, the most significant public challenge to his rule since workers' protests in March 1954, by removing most military figures from his cabinet and appointing eight civilians in place of several high-ranking members of the Arab Socialist Union (ASU). By 3 March, Nasser directed Egypt's intelligence apparatus to focus on external rather than domestic espionage, and declared the \"fall of the mukhabarat state\".\nOn 30 March, Nasser proclaimed a manifesto stipulating the restoration of civil liberties, greater parliamentary independence from the executive, major structural changes to the ASU, and a campaign to rid the government of corrupt elements. A public referendum approved the proposed measures in May, and held subsequent elections for the Supreme Executive Committee, the ASU's highest decision-making body. Observers noted that the declaration signaled an important shift from political repression to liberalization, although its promises would largely go unfulfilled.\nNasser appointed Sadat and Hussein el-Shafei as his vice presidents in December 1969. By then, relations with his other original military comrades, namely Khaled and Zakaria Mohieddin and former vice president Sabri, had become strained. By mid-1970, Nasser pondered replacing Sadat with Boghdadi after reconciling with the latter.\nWar of Attrition and regional diplomatic initiatives.\nMeanwhile, in January 1968, Nasser commenced the War of Attrition to reclaim territory captured by Israel, ordering attacks against Israeli positions east of the then-blockaded Suez Canal. In March, Nasser offered Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement arms and funds after their performance against Israeli forces in the Battle of Karameh that month. He also advised Arafat to think of peace with Israel and the establishment of a Palestinian state comprising the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Nasser effectively ceded his leadership of the \"Palestine issue\" to Arafat.\nIsrael retaliated against Egyptian shelling with commando raids, artillery shelling and air strikes. This resulted in an exodus of civilians from Egyptian cities along the Suez Canal's western bank. Nasser ceased all military activities and began a program to build a network of internal defenses, while receiving the financial backing of various Arab states. The war resumed in March 1969. In November, Nasser brokered an agreement between the PLO and the Lebanese military that granted Palestinian guerrillas the right to use Lebanese territory to attack Israel.\nIn June 1970, Nasser accepted the US-sponsored Rogers Plan, which called for an end to hostilities and an Israeli withdrawal from Egyptian territory, but it was rejected by Israel, the PLO, and most Arab states except Jordan. Nasser had initially rejected the plan, but conceded under pressure from the Soviet Union, which feared that escalating regional conflict could drag it into a war with the US. He also determined that a ceasefire could serve as a tactical step toward the strategic goal of recapturing the Suez Canal. Nasser forestalled any movement toward direct negotiations with Israel. In dozens of speeches and statements, Nasser posited the equation that any direct peace talks with Israel were tantamount to surrender. Following Nasser's acceptance, Israel agreed to a ceasefire and Nasser used the lull in fighting to move surface-to-air missiles towards the canal zone.\nMeanwhile, tensions in Jordan between an increasingly autonomous PLO and King Hussein's government had been simmering; following the Dawson's Field hijackings, a military campaign was launched to rout out PLO forces. The offensive elevated risks of a regional war and prompted Nasser to hold an emergency Arab League summit on 27 September in Cairo, where he forged a ceasefire.\nDeath and funeral.\nAs the Arab League summit closed on 28 September 1970, hours after escorting the last Arab leader to leave, Nasser suffered a heart attack. He was immediately transported to his house, where his physicians tended to him. Nasser died several hours later, around 6\u00a0p.m. at age 52. Heikal, Sadat, and Nasser's wife Tahia were at his deathbed. According to his doctor, al-Sawi Habibi, Nasser's likely cause of death was arteriosclerosis, varicose veins, and complications from long-standing diabetes. Nasser was also a heavy smoker with a family history of heart disease\u2014two of his brothers died in their fifties from the same condition. The state of Nasser's health was not known to the public prior to his death. He had suffered heart attacks before, in 1966 and September 1969.\nFollowing the announcement of Nasser's death, most Arabs were in a state of shock. Nasser's funeral procession through Cairo on 1 October was attended by at least five million mourners. The procession to his burial site began at the old RCC headquarters with a flyover by MiG-21 jets. His flag-draped coffin was attached to a gun carriage pulled by six horses and led by a column of cavalrymen. All Arab heads of state attended, with the exception of Saudi King Faisal. King Hussein and Arafat cried openly, and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya fainted from emotional distress twice. A few major non-Arab dignitaries were present, including Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin and French Prime Minister Jacques Chaban-Delmas.\nAlmost immediately after the procession began, mourners engulfed Nasser's coffin chanting, \"There is no God but Allah, and Nasser is God's beloved... Each of us is Nasser.\" Police unsuccessfully attempted to quell the crowds and, as a result, most of the foreign dignitaries were evacuated. The final destination was the Nasr Mosque, which was afterwards renamed Abdel Nasser Mosque, where Nasser was buried.\nBecause of his ability to motivate nationalistic passions, \"men, women, and children wept and wailed in the streets\" after hearing of his death, according to Nutting. The general Arab reaction was of mourning, with thousands of people pouring onto the streets of major cities throughout the Arab world. Over a dozen people were killed in Beirut as a result of the chaos, and in Jerusalem, roughly 75,000\u00a0Arabs marched through the Old City chanting, \"Nasser will never die.\" As a testament to his unchallenged leadership of the Arab people, following his death, the headline of the Lebanese \"Le Jour\" read, \"One hundred million human beings\u2014the Arabs\u2014are orphans.\" Sherif Hetata, a former political prisoner and later member Nasser's ASU, said that \"Nasser's greatest achievement was his funeral. The world will never again see five million people crying together.\"\nLegacy.\nNasser made Egypt fully independent of British influence, and the country became a major power in the developing world under his leadership. One of Nasser's main domestic efforts was to establish social justice, which he deemed a prerequisite to liberal democracy. During his presidency, ordinary citizens enjoyed unprecedented access to housing, education, jobs, health services and nourishment, as well as other forms of social welfare, while feudalistic influence waned.\nHowever, these advances came at the expense of civil liberties. In Nasser's Egypt, the media were tightly controlled, mail was opened, and telephones were wiretapped. He was elected in 1956, 1958 and 1965 in plebiscites in which he was the sole candidate, each time claiming unanimous or near-unanimous support. With few exceptions, the legislature did little more than approve Nasser's policies. As the legislature was made up almost entirely of government supporters, Nasser effectively held all governing power in the nation.\nBy the end of his presidency, employment and working conditions improved considerably, although poverty was still high in the country and substantial resources allocated for social welfare had been diverted to the war effort.\nThe national economy grew significantly through agrarian reform, major modernization projects such as the Helwan steel works and the Aswan Dam, and nationalization schemes such as that of the Suez Canal. However, the marked economic growth of the early 1960s took a downturn for the remainder of the decade, only recovering in 1970. Egypt experienced a \"golden age\" of culture during Nasser's presidency, according to historian Joel Gordon, particularly in film, television, theater, radio, literature, fine arts, comedy, poetry, and music. Egypt under Nasser dominated the Arab world in these fields, producing cultural icons.\nDuring Mubarak's presidency, Nasserist political parties began to emerge in Egypt, the first being the Arab Democratic Nasserist Party (ADNP). The party carried minor political influence, and splits between its members beginning in 1995 resulted in the gradual establishment of splinter parties, including Hamdeen Sabahi's 1997 founding of Al-Karama. Sabahi came in third place during the 2012 presidential election. Nasserist activists were among the founders of Kefaya, a major opposition force during Mubarak's rule. On 19 September 2012, four Nasserist parties (the ADNP, Karama, the National Conciliation Party, and the Popular Nasserist Congress Party) merged to form the United Nasserist Party.\nPublic image.\nNasser was known for his accessibility and direct relationship with ordinary Egyptians. His availability to the public, despite assassination attempts against him, was unparalleled among his successors. A skilled orator, Nasser gave 1,359 speeches between 1953 and 1970, a record for any Egyptian head of state. Historian Elie Podeh wrote that a constant theme of Nasser's image was \"his ability to represent Egyptian authenticity, in triumph or defeat\". The national press also helped to foster his popularity and profile\u2014more so after the nationalization of state media. Historian Tarek Osman wrote:\nThe interplay in the Nasser 'phenomenon' between genuine expression of popular feeling and state-sponsored propaganda may sometimes be hard to disentangle. But behind it lies a vital historical fact: that Gamal Abdel Nasser signifies the only truly Egyptian developmental project in the country's history since the fall of the Pharaonic state. There had been other projects ... But this was different\u2014in origin, meaning and impact. For Nasser was a man of the Egyptian soil who had overthrown the Middle East's most established and sophisticated monarchy in a swift and bloodless move\u2014to the acclaim of millions of poor, oppressed Egyptians\u2014and ushered in a programme of 'social justice', 'progress and development', and 'dignity'.\nWhile Nasser was increasingly criticized by Egyptian intellectuals following the Six-Day War and his death in 1970, the general public was persistently sympathetic both during and after Nasser's life. According to political scientist Mahmoud Hamad, writing in 2008, \"nostalgia for Nasser is easily sensed in Egypt and all Arab countries today\". General malaise in Egyptian society, particularly during the Mubarak era, augmented nostalgia for Nasser's presidency, which increasingly became associated with the ideals of national purpose, hope, social cohesion, and vibrant culture.\nUntil the present day, Nasser serves as an iconic figure throughout the Arab world, a symbol of Arab unity and dignity, and a towering figure in modern Middle Eastern history. He is also considered a champion of social justice in Egypt. \"Time\" writes that despite his mistakes and shortcomings, Nasser \"imparted a sense of personal worth and national pride that [Egypt and the Arabs] had not known for 400 years. This alone may have been enough to balance his flaws and failures.\"\nHistorian Steven A. Cook wrote in July 2013, \"Nasser's heyday still represents, for many, the last time that Egypt felt united under leaders whose espoused principles met the needs of ordinary Egyptians.\" During the Arab Spring, which resulted in a revolution in Egypt, photographs of Nasser were raised in Cairo and Arab capitals during anti-government demonstrations. According to journalist Lamis Andoni, Nasser had become a \"symbol of Arab dignity\" during the mass demonstrations.\nCriticism.\nSadat declared his intention to \"continue the path of Nasser\" in his 7 October 1970 presidential inauguration speech, but began to depart from Nasserist policies as his domestic position improved following the 1973 October War. President Sadat's Infitah policy sought to open Egypt's economy for private investment. According to Heikal, ensuing anti-Nasser developments until the present day led to an Egypt \"[half] at war with Abdel-Nasser, half [at war] with Anwar El-Sadat\".\nNasser's Egyptian detractors considered him a dictator who thwarted democratic progress, imprisoned thousands of dissidents, and led a repressive administration responsible for numerous human rights violations. Islamists in Egypt, particularly members of the politically persecuted Brotherhood, viewed Nasser as oppressive, tyrannical, and demonic. Samer S. Shehata, who wrote an article on \"The Politics of Laughter: Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarek in Egyptian Political Jokes\" noted that \"with the new regime came the end of parliamentary politics and political freedoms, including the right to organize political parties, and freedoms of speech and the press\". Liberal writer Tawfiq al-Hakim described Nasser as a \"confused Sultan\" who employed stirring rhetoric, but had no actual plan to achieve his stated goals.\nSome of Nasser's liberal and Islamist critics in Egypt, including the founding members of the New Wafd Party and writer Jamal Badawi, dismissed Nasser's popular appeal with the Egyptian masses during his presidency as being the product of successful manipulation and demagoguery. Egyptian political scientist Alaa al-Din Desouki blamed the 1952 revolution's shortcomings on Nasser's concentration of power, and Egypt's lack of democracy on Nasser's political style and his government's limitations on freedom of expression and political participation.\nAmerican political scientist Mark Cooper asserted that Nasser's charisma and his direct relationship with the Egyptian people \"rendered intermediaries (organizations and individuals) unnecessary\". He opined that Nasser's legacy was a \"guarantee of instability\" due to Nasser's reliance on personal power and the absence of strong political institutions under his rule. Historian Abd al-Azim Ramadan wrote that Nasser was an irrational and irresponsible leader, blaming his inclination to solitary decision-making for Egypt's losses during the Suez War, among other events. Miles Copeland, Jr., a Central Intelligence Agency officer known for his close personal relationship with Nasser, said that the barriers between Nasser and the outside world have grown so thick that all but the information that attest to his infallibility, indispensability, and immortality has been filtered out.\nZakaria Mohieddin, who was Nasser's vice president, said that Nasser gradually changed during his reign. He ceased consulting his colleagues and made more and more of the decisions himself. Although Nasser repeatedly said that a war with Israel will start at a time of his, or Arab, choosing, in 1967 he started a bluffing game \"but a successful bluff means your opponent must not know which cards you are holding. In this case Nasser's opponent could see his hand in the mirror and knew he was only holding a pair of deuces\" and Nasser knew that his army is not prepared yet. \"All of this was out of character...His tendencies in this regard may have been accentuated by diabetes... That was the only rational explanation for his actions in 1967\".\nAntisemitism.\nNasser told a German neo-Nazi newspaper in 1964 that \"no person, not even the most simple one, takes seriously the lie of the six million Jews that were murdered [in the Holocaust].\" However, he is not known to have ever again publicly called the figure of six million into question, perhaps because his advisors and East German contacts had advised him on the subject. Nasser, convinced of its authenticity, also encouraged the distribution of the antisemitic fabrication \"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion\". He believed that the Jews greatly influenced the global financial market and that they ultimately strove for world domination. Nasser also hired former Nazi officials like Johann von Leers to distribute antisemitic propaganda. He is, however, thought to have been more moderate in that regard than contemporary political powers like Young Egypt or the Muslim Brotherhood.\nRegional leadership.\nThrough his actions and speeches, and because he was able to symbolize the popular Arab will, Nasser inspired several nationalist revolutions in the Arab world. He defined the politics of his generation and communicated directly with the public masses of the Arab world, bypassing the various heads of states of those countries\u2014an accomplishment not repeated by other Arab leaders. The extent of Nasser's centrality in the region made it a priority for incoming Arab nationalist heads of state to seek good relations with Egypt, in order to gain popular legitimacy from their own citizens.\nTo varying degrees, Nasser's statist system of government was continued in Egypt and emulated by virtually all Arab republics, namely Algeria, Syria, Iraq, Tunisia, Yemen, Sudan, and Libya. Ahmed Ben Bella, Algeria's first president, was a staunch Nasserist. Abdullah al-Sallal drove out the king of North Yemen in the name of Nasser's pan-Arabism. Other coups influenced by Nasser included those that occurred in Iraq in July 1958 and Syria in 1963. Muammar Gaddafi, who overthrew the Libyan monarchy in 1969, considered Nasser his hero and sought to succeed him as \"leader of the Arabs\". Also in 1969, Colonel Gaafar Nimeiry, a supporter of Nasser, took power in Sudan. The Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM) helped spread Nasser's pan-Arabist ideas throughout the Arab world, particularly among the Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese, and in South Yemen, the Persian Gulf, and Iraq. While many regional heads of state tried to emulate Nasser, Podeh opined that the \"parochialism\" of successive Arab leaders \"transformed imitation [of Nasser] into parody\".\nPortrayal in film.\nIn 1963, Egyptian director Youssef Chahine produced the film \"El Nasser Salah El Dine\" (\"Saladin The Victorious\"), which intentionally drew parallels between Saladin, considered a hero in the Arab world, and Nasser and his pan-Arabist policies. Nasser is played by Ahmed Zaki in Mohamed Fadel's 1996 \"Nasser 56\". The film set the Egyptian box office record at the time, and focused on Nasser during the Suez Crisis. It is also considered a milestone in Egyptian and Arab cinema as the first film to dramatize the role of a modern-day Arab leader. Together with the 1999 Syrian biopic \"Gamal Abdel Nasser\", the films marked the first biographical movies about contemporary public figures produced in the Arab world. He is portrayed by Amir Boutrous in the Netflix television series \"The Crown\".\nPersonal life.\nIn 1944, Nasser married Tahia Kazem (1920 \u2013 25 March 1992), the daughter of a wealthy Iranian father and an Egyptian mother, both of whom had died when she was young. She had been introduced to Nasser through her brother, Abdel Hamid Kazim, a merchant friend of Nasser's, in 1943. After their wedding, the couple moved into a house in Manshiyat al-Bakri, a suburb of Cairo, where they lived for the rest of their lives. Nasser's entry into the officer corps in 1937 secured him relatively well-paid employment in a society where most people lived in poverty. Nasser and Tahia would sometimes discuss politics at home, but for the most part Nasser kept his career separate from his family life. He preferred to spend most of his free time with his children.\nNasser and Tahia had two daughters and three sons:\nAlthough he was a proponent of secular politics, Nasser was an observant Muslim who made the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in 1954 and 1965. He was known to be personally incorruptible, a characteristic which further enhanced his reputation among the citizens of Egypt and the Arab world. Nasser's personal hobbies included playing chess, photography, watching American films, reading Arabic, English, and French magazines, and listening to classical music.\nNasser was a chain smoker. He maintained 18-hour workdays and rarely took time off for vacations. The combination of smoking and working long hours contributed to his poor health. He was diagnosed with diabetes in the early 1960s and by the time of his death in 1970, he also had arteriosclerosis, heart disease, and high blood pressure. He suffered two major heart attacks (in 1966 and 1969), and was on bed rest for six weeks after the second episode. State media reported that Nasser's absence from the public view at that time was a result of influenza.\nWritings.\nNasser wrote the following books, published during his lifetime:\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["17926", "51879", "26748"], "permutation_1": ["51879", "17926", "26748"], "permutation_2": ["51879", "26748", "17926"], "permutation_3": ["26748", "17926", "51879"]}
{"id": "3hop1__92903_71250_135051", "docs_added": {"21208200": "Western world\nCountries with an originally European shared culture\nThe Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to various nations and states in Western Europe, Northern America, and Australasia; with some debate as to whether those in Eastern Europe and Latin America also constitute the West. The Western world likewise is called the Occident (from la \" occidens\"\u00a0'setting down, sunset, west') in contrast to the Eastern world known as the Orient (from la \" oriens\"\u00a0'origin, sunrise, east'). The West is considered an evolving concept; made up of cultural, political, and economic synergy among diverse groups of people, and not a rigid region with fixed borders and members. Definitions of \"Western world\" vary according to context and perspectives.\nSome historians contend that a linear development of the West can be traced from Ancient Greece and Rome, while others argue that such a projection constructs a false genealogy. A geographical concept of the West started to take shape in the 4th century CE when Constantine, the first Christian Roman emperor, divided the Roman Empire between the Greek East and Latin West. The East Roman Empire, later called the Byzantine Empire, continued for a millennium, while the West Roman Empire lasted for only about a century and a half. Significant theological and ecclesiastical differences led Western Europeans to consider the Christians in the Byzantine Empire as heretics. In 1054 CE, when the church in Rome excommunicated the patriarch of Byzantium, the politico-religious division between the Western church and Eastern church culminated in the Great Schism or the East\u2013West Schism. Even though friendly relations continued between the two parts of Christendom for some time, the crusades made the schism definitive with hostility. The West during these crusades tried to capture trade routes to the East and failed, it instead discovered the Americas. In the aftermath of the European colonization of the Americas, primarily involving Western European countries, an idea of the \"Western\" world, as an inheritor of Latin Christendom emerged. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest reference to the term \"Western world\" was from 1586, found in the writings of William Warner.\nThe countries that are considered constituents of the West vary according to perspective rather than their geographical location. Countries like Australia and New Zealand, located in the Eastern Hemisphere are included in modern definitions of the Western world, as these regions and others like them have been significantly influenced by the British\u2014derived from colonization, and immigration of Europeans\u2014factors that grounded such countries to the West. Depending on the context and the historical period in question, Russia was sometimes seen as a part of the West, and at other times juxtaposed with it, as well as endorsing anti-Western sentiment.\nRunning parallel to the rise of the United States as a great power and the development of communication\u2013transportation technologies \"shrinking\" the distance between both the Atlantic Ocean shores, the US became more prominently featured in the conceptualizations of the West.\nAt some times between the 18th century and the mid-20th century, prominent countries in the West such as the United States, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand have been envisioned by some as ethnocracies for Whites. Racism is cited as a contributing factor to European colonization of the New World, which today constitutes much of the \"geographical\" Western world. Starting from the late 1960s, certain parts of the Western world have become notable for their diversity due to immigration. The idea of \"the West\" over the course of time has evolved from a directional concept to a socio-political concept that had been temporalized and rendered as a concept of the future bestowed with notions of progress and modernity.\nIntroduction.\nThe origins of Western civilization can be traced back to the ancient Mediterranean world. Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome are generally considered to be the birthplaces of Western civilization\u2014Greece having heavily influenced Rome\u2014the former due to its impact on philosophy, democracy, science, aesthetics, as well as building designs and proportions and architecture; the latter due to its influence on art, law, warfare, governance, republicanism, engineering and religion. Western Civilization is also closely associated with Christianity, the dominant religion in the West, with roots in Greco-Roman and Jewish thought. Christian ethics, drawing from the ethical and moral principles of its historical roots in Judaism, has played a pivotal role in shaping the foundational framework of Western societies. Earlier civilizations, such as the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians, had also significantly influenced Western civilization through their advancements in writing, law codes, and societal structures. The convergence of Greek-Roman and Judeo-Christian influences in shaping Western civilization has led certain scholars to characterize it as emerging from the legacies of Athens and Jerusalem, or Athens, Jerusalem and Rome.\nIn ancient Greece and Rome, individuals identified primarily as subjects of states, city-states, or empires, rather than as members of Western civilization. The distinct identification of Western civilization began to crystallize with the rise of Christianity during the Late Roman Empire. In this period, peoples in Europe started to perceive themselves as part of a unique civilization, differentiating from others like Islam, giving rise to the concept of Western civilization. By the 15th century, Renaissance intellectuals solidified this concept, associating Western civilization not only with Christianity but also with the intellectual and political achievements of the ancient Greeks and Romans.\nHistorians, such as Carroll Quigley in \"The Evolution of Civilizations\", contend that Western civilization was born around AD 500, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, leaving a vacuum for new ideas to flourish that were impossible in Classical societies. In either view, between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Renaissance, the West (or those regions that would later become the heartland of the culturally \"western sphere\") experienced a period of decline, and then readaptation, reorientation and considerable renewed material, technological and political development. Classical culture of the \"ancient Western world\" was partly preserved during this period due to the survival of the Eastern Roman Empire and the introduction of the Catholic Church; it was also greatly expanded by the Arab importation of both the Ancient Greco-Roman and new technology through the Arabs from India and China to Europe.\nSince the Renaissance, the West evolved beyond the influence of the ancient Greeks and Romans and the Islamic world, due to the successful Second Agricultural, Commercial, Scientific, and Industrial revolutions (propellers of modern banking concepts). The West rose further with the 18th century's Age of Enlightenment and through the Age of Exploration's expansion of peoples of European empires in the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly the globe-spanning colonial empires of Western Europe. Numerous times, this expansion was accompanied by Catholic missionaries, who attempted to proselytize Christianity.\nIn the modern era, Western culture has undergone further transformation through the Renaissance, Ages of Discovery and Enlightenment, and the Industrial and Scientific Revolutions. The widespread influence of Western culture extended globally through imperialism, colonialism, and Christianization by Western powers from the 15th to 20th centuries. This influence persists through the exportation of mass culture, a phenomenon often referred to as Westernization.\nThere was debate among some in the 1960s as to whether Latin America as a whole is in a category of its own.\nHistorical divisions.\nThe west of the Mediterranean region during Antiquity.\nThe geopolitical divisions in Europe that created a concept of \"East\" and \"West\" originated in the ancient tyrannical and imperialistic Graeco-Roman times. The Eastern Mediterranean was home to the highly urbanized cultures that had Greek as their common language (owing to the older empire of Alexander the Great and of the Hellenistic successors), whereas the West was much more rural in its character and more readily adopted Latin as its common language. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the beginning of medieval times (or \"Middle Ages\"), Western and Central Europe were substantially cut off from the East, where \"Byzantine\" Greek culture and Eastern Christianity became founding influences in the Eastern European world such as the East and South Slavic peoples.\nRoman Catholic Western and Central Europe thus maintained a distinct identity, particularly as it began to redevelop during the Renaissance. Even following the Protestant Reformation, Protestant Europe continued to see itself as more tied to Roman Catholic Europe than other parts of the perceived \"civilized world\". Use of the term \"West\" as a specific cultural and geopolitical term developed over the course of the Age of Exploration as Europe spread its culture to other parts of the world. Roman Catholics were the first major religious group to migrate to the New World, as settlers in the colonies of Spain and Portugal (and later, France) belonged to that faith. English and Dutch colonies, on the other hand, tended to be more religiously diverse. Settlers to these colonies included Anglicans, Dutch Calvinists, English Puritans and other nonconformists, English Catholics, Scottish Presbyterians, French Huguenots, German and Swedish Lutherans, as well as Quakers, Mennonites, Amish, and Moravians.\nAncient Roman world (6th century BC \u2013 AD 395\u2013476).\nAncient Rome (6th century BC \u2013 AD 476) is a term to describe the ancient Roman society that conquered Central Italy assimilating the Italian Etruscan culture, growing from the Latium region since about the 8th century BC, to a massive empire straddling the Mediterranean Sea. In its 10-centuries territorial expansion, Roman civilization shifted from a small monarchy (753\u2013509 BC), to a republic (509\u201327 BC), into an autocratic empire (27 BC \u2013 AD 476). Its Empire came to dominate Western, Central and Southeastern Europe, Northern Africa and, becoming an autocratic Empire a vast Middle Eastern area, when it ended. Conquest was enforced using the Roman legions and then through cultural assimilation by eventual recognition of some form of Roman citizenship's privileges. Nonetheless, despite its great legacy, a number of factors led to the eventual decline and ultimately fall of the Roman Empire.\nThe Roman Empire succeeded the approximately 500-year-old Roman Republic (c. 510\u201330 BC). In 350 years, from the successful and deadliest war with the Phoenicians which began in 218 BC to the rule of Emperor Hadrian by AD 117, ancient Rome expanded up to twenty-five times its area. The same time passed again before its fall in AD 476. Rome had expanded long before the empire reached its zenith with the conquest of Dacia in AD 106 (modern-day Romania) under Emperor Trajan. During its territorial peak, the Roman Empire controlled about of land surface and had a population of 100 million. From the time of Caesar (100\u201344 BC) to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, Rome dominated Southern Europe, the Mediterranean coast of Northern Africa and the Levant, including the ancient trade routes with population living outside. Ancient Rome has contributed greatly to the development of law, war, art, literature, architecture, technology and language in the \"Western world\", and its history continues to have a major influence on the world today. The Latin language has been the base from which Romance languages evolved and it has been the official language of the Catholic Church and all Catholic religious ceremonies all over Europe until 1967, as well as one of, or the official language of countries such as Italy and Poland (9th\u201318th centuries).\nIn AD 395, a few decades before its Western collapse, the Roman Empire formally split into a Western and an Eastern one, each with their own emperors, capitals, and governments, although ostensibly they still belonged to one formal Empire. The Western Roman Empire provinces eventually were replaced by Northern European Germanic ruled kingdoms in the 5th century due to civil wars, corruption, and devastating Germanic invasions from such tribes as the Huns, Goths, the Franks and the Vandals by their late expansion throughout Europe. The three-day Visigoths's AD 410 sack of Rome who had been raiding Greece not long before, a shocking time for Greco-Romans, was the first time after almost 800 years that Rome had fallen to a foreign enemy, and St. Jerome, living in Bethlehem at the time, wrote that \"The City which had taken the whole world was itself taken.\" There followed the sack of AD 455 lasting 14 days, this time conducted by the Vandals, retaining Rome's eternal spirit through the Holy See of Rome (the Latin Church) for centuries to come. The ancient Barbarian tribes, often composed of well-trained Roman soldiers paid by Rome to guard the extensive borders, had become militarily sophisticated \"Romanized barbarians\", and mercilessly slaughtered the Romans conquering their Western territories while looting their possessions.\nThe Roman Empire is where the idea of \"the West\" began to emerge.\nThe Eastern Roman Empire, governed from Constantinople, is usually referred to as the Byzantine Empire after AD 476, the traditional date for the fall of the Roman Empire and beginning of the Early Middle Ages. The survival of the Eastern Roman Empire protected Roman legal and cultural traditions, combining them with Greek and Christian elements, for another thousand years. The name Byzantine Empire was first used centuries later, after the Byzantine Empire ended. The dissolution of the Western half, nominally ended in AD 476, but in truth a long process that ended by the rise of Catholic Gaul (modern-day France) ruling from around the year AD 800, left only the Eastern Roman Empire alive. The Eastern half continued to think of itself as the Eastern Roman Empire until AD 610\u2013800, when Latin ceased to be the official language of the empire. The inhabitants called themselves Romans because the term \"Roman\" was meant to signify all Christians. The Pope crowned Charlemagne as Emperor of the Romans of the newly established Holy Roman Empire, and the West began thinking in terms of \"Western Latins\" living in the old Western Empire, and \"Eastern Greeks\" (those inside the Roman remnant of the old Eastern Empire).\nThe birth of the European West during the Middle Ages.\nIn the early 4th century, the central focus of power was on two separate imperial legacies within the Roman Empire: the older Aegean Sea Greek heritage (of Classical Greece) in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the newer most successful Tyrrhenian Sea Latin heritage (of Ancient Latium and Tuscany) in the Western Mediterranean. A turning point was Constantine the Great's decision to establish the city of Constantinople (today's Istanbul) in modern-day Turkey as the \"New Rome\" when he picked it as capital of his Empire (later called \"Byzantine Empire\" by modern historians) in AD 330.\nThis internal conflict of legacies had possibly emerged since the assassination of Julius Caesar three centuries earlier, when Roman imperialism had just been born with the Roman Republic becoming \"Roman Empire\", but reached its zenith during 3rd century's many internal civil wars. This is the time when the Huns (part of the ancient Eastern European tribes named \"barbarians\" by the Romans) from modern-day Hungary penetrated into the Dalmatian (modern-day Croatia) region then originating in the following 150 years in the Roman Empire officially splitting in two halves. Also the time of the formal acceptance of Christianity as Empire's religious policy, when the Emperors began actively banning and fighting previous pagan religions.\nThe Eastern Roman Empire included lands south-west of the Black Sea and bordering on the Eastern Mediterranean and parts of the Adriatic Sea. This division into Eastern and Western Roman Empires was later reflected in the administration of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Greek Orthodox churches, with Rome and Constantinople debating over whether either city was the capital of Western religion.\nAs the Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Catholic) churches spread their influence, the line between Eastern and Western Christianity was moving. Its movement was affected by the influence of the Byzantine empire and the fluctuating power and influence of the Catholic church in Rome. The geographic line of religious division approximately followed a line of cultural divide.\nIn AD 800 under Charlemagne, the Early Medieval Franks established an empire that was recognized by the Pope in Rome as the Holy Roman Empire (Latin Christian revival of the ancient Roman Empire, under perpetual Germanic rule from AD 962) inheriting ancient Roman Empire's prestige but offending the Eastern Roman Emperor in Constantinople, and leading to the Crusades and the East\u2013West Schism. The crowning of the Emperor by the Pope led to the assumption that the highest power was the papal hierarchy, quintessential Roman Empire's spiritual heritage authority, establishing then, until the Protestant Reformation, the civilization of Western Christendom.\nThe earliest concept of Europe as a cultural sphere (instead of simple geographic term) is believed to have been formed by Alcuin of York during the Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century, but was limited to the territories that practised Western Christianity at the time.\nThe Latin Church of western and central Europe split with the eastern Greek patriarchates in the Christian East\u2013West Schism, also known as the \"Great Schism\", during the Gregorian Reforms (calling for a more central status of the Roman Catholic Church Institution), three months after Pope Leo IX's death in April 1054. Following the 1054 Great Schism, both the Western Church and Eastern Church continued to consider themselves \"uniquely\" orthodox and catholic. Augustine wrote in On True Religion: \"Religion is to be sought... only among those who are called Catholic or orthodox Christians, that is, guardians of truth and followers of right.\" Over time, the Western Christianity gradually identified with the \"Catholic\" label, and people of Western Europe gradually associated the \"Orthodox\" label with Eastern Christianity (although in some languages the \"Catholic\" label is not necessarily identified with the Western Church). This was in note of the fact that both Catholic and Orthodox were in use as ecclesiastical adjectives as early as the 2nd and 4th centuries respectively. Meanwhile, the extent of both Christendoms expanded, as Germanic peoples, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, Scandinavia, Finnic peoples, Baltic peoples, British Isles and the other non-Christian lands of the northwest were converted by the Western Church, while Eastern Slavic peoples, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Russian territories, Vlachs and Georgia were converted by the Eastern Orthodox Church.\nIn 1071, the Byzantine army was defeated by the Muslim Turco-Persians of medieval Asia, resulting in the loss of most of Asia Minor. The situation was a serious threat to the future of the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire. The Emperor sent a plea to the Pope in Rome to send military aid to restore the lost territories to Christian rule. The result was a series of western European military campaigns into the eastern Mediterranean, known as the Crusades. Unfortunately for the Byzantines, the crusaders (belonging to the members of nobility from France, German territories, the Low countries, England and Italy) had no allegiance to the Byzantine Emperor and established their own states in the conquered regions, including the heart of the Byzantine Empire.\nThe Holy Roman Empire would dissolve on 6 August 1806, after the French Revolution and the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine by Napoleon.\nThe decline of the Byzantine Empire (13th\u201315th centuries) began with the Latin Christian Fourth Crusade in AD 1202\u201304, considered to be one of the most important events, solidifying the schism between the Christian churches of Greek Byzantine Rite and Latin Roman Rite. An anti-Western riot in 1182 broke out in Constantinople targeting Latins. The extremely wealthy (after previous Crusades) Venetians in particular made a successful attempt to maintain control over the coast of Catholic present-day Croatia (specifically the Dalmatia, a region of interest to the maritime medieval Venetian Republic moneylenders and its rivals, such as the Republic of Genoa) rebelling against the Venetian economic domination. What followed dealt an irrevocable blow to the already weakened Byzantine Empire with the Crusader army's sack of Constantinople in April 1204, capital of the Greek Christian-controlled Byzantine Empire, described as one of the most profitable and disgraceful sacks of a city in history. This paved the way for Muslim conquests in present-day Turkey and the Balkans in the coming centuries (only a handful of the Crusaders followed to the stated destination thereafter, the Holy Land). The geographical identity of the Balkans is historically known as a crossroads of cultures, a juncture between the Latin and Greek bodies of the Roman Empire, the destination of a massive influx of pagans (meaning \"non-Christians\") Bulgars and Slavs, an area where Catholic and Orthodox Christianity met, as well as the meeting point between Islam and Christianity. The Papal Inquisition was established in AD 1229 on a permanent basis, run largely by clergymen in Rome, and abolished six centuries later. Before AD 1100, the Catholic Church suppressed what they believed to be heresy, usually through a system of ecclesiastical proscription or imprisonment, but without using torture, and seldom resorting to executions.\nThis very profitable Central European Fourth Crusade had prompted the 14th century Renaissance (translated as 'Rebirth') of Italian city-states including the Papal States, on eve of the Protestant Reformation and Counter-Reformation (which established the Roman Inquisition to succeed the Medieval Inquisition). There followed the discovery of the American continent, and consequent dissolution of West Christendom as even a theoretical unitary political body, later resulting in the religious Eighty Years War (1568\u20131648) and Thirty Years War (1618\u20131648) between various Protestant and Catholic states of the Holy Roman Empire (and emergence of religiously diverse confessions). In this context, the Protestant Reformation (1517) may be viewed as a schism within the Catholic Church. German monk Martin Luther, in the wake of precursors, broke with the pope and with the emperor by the Catholic Church's abusive commercialization of indulgences in the Late Medieval Period, backed by many of the German princes and helped by the development of the printing press, in an attempt to reform corruption within the church.\nBoth these religious wars ended with the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which enshrined the concept of the nation-state, and the principle of absolute national sovereignty in international law. As European influence spread across the globe, these Westphalian principles, especially the concept of sovereign states, became central to international law and to the prevailing world order.\nExpansion of the West: the Era of Colonialism (15th\u201320th centuries).\nIn the 13th and 14th centuries, a number of European travelers, many of them Christian missionaries, had sought to cultivate trading with Asia and Africa. With the Crusades came the relative contraction of the Orthodox Byzantine's large silk industry in favor of Catholic Western Europe and the rise of Western Papacy. The most famous of these merchant travelers pursuing was Venetian Marco Polo. But these journeys had little permanent effect on east\u2013west trade because of a series of political developments in Asia in the last decades of the 14th century, which put an end to further European exploration of Asia: namely the new Ming rulers were found to be unreceptive of religious proselytism by European missionaries and merchants. Meanwhile, the Ottoman Turks consolidated control over the eastern Mediterranean, closing off key overland trade routes.\nThe Portuguese spearheaded the drive to find oceanic routes that would provide cheaper and easier access to South and East Asian goods, by advancements in maritime technology such as the caravel ship introduced in the mid-1400s. The charting of oceanic routes between East and West began with the unprecedented voyages of Portuguese and Spanish sea captains. In 1492, European colonialism expanded across the globe with the exploring voyage of merchant, navigator, and Hispano-Italian colonizer Christopher Columbus. Such voyages were influenced by medieval European adventurers after the European spice trade with Asia, who had journeyed overland to the Far East contributing to geographical knowledge of parts of the Asian continent. They are of enormous significance in Western history as they marked the beginning of the European exploration, colonization and exploitation of the American continents and their native inhabitants. The European colonization of the Americas led to the Atlantic slave trade between the 1490s and the 1800s, which also contributed to the development of African intertribal warfare and racist ideology. Before the abolition of its slave trade in 1807, the British Empire alone (which had started colonial efforts in 1578, almost a century after Portuguese and Spanish empires) was responsible for the transportation of 3.5 million African slaves to the Americas, a third of all slaves transported across the Atlantic. The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved in 1806 by the French Revolutionary Wars; abolition of the Roman Catholic Inquisition followed.\nDue to the reach of these empires, Western institutions expanded throughout the world. This process of influence (and imposition) began with the voyages of discovery, colonization, conquest, and exploitation of Portugal enforced as well by papal bulls in 1450s (by the fall of the Byzantine Empire), granting Portugal navigation, war and trade monopoly for any newly discovered lands, and competing Spanish navigators. It continued with the rise of the Dutch East India Company by the destabilizing Spanish discovery of the New World, and the creation and expansion of the English and French colonial empires, and others. Even after demands for self-determination from subject peoples within Western empires were met with decolonization, these institutions persisted. One specific example was the requirement that post-colonial societies were made to form nation-states (in the Western tradition), which often created arbitrary boundaries and borders that did not necessarily represent a whole nation, people, or culture (as in much of Africa), and are often the cause of international conflicts and friction even to this day. Although not part of Western colonization process proper, following the Middle Ages Western culture in fact entered other global-spanning cultures during the colonial 15th\u201320th centuries. Historically colonialism had been justified with the values of individualism and enlightenment.\nThe concepts of a world of nation-states born by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, coupled with the ideologies of the Enlightenment, the coming of modernity, the Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, would produce powerful social transformations, political and economic institutions that have come to influence (or been imposed upon) most nations of the world today. Historians agree that the Industrial Revolution has been one of the most important events in history.\nThe course of three centuries since Christopher Columbus' late 15th century's voyages, of deportation of slaves from Africa and British dominant northern-Atlantic location, later developed into modern-day United States of America, evolving from the ratification of the Constitution of the United States by thirteen States on the North American East Coast before end of the 18th century.\nEnlightenment (17th\u201318th centuries).\nEric Voegelin described the 18th-century as one where \"the sentiment grows that one age has come to its close and that a new age of Western civilization is about to be born\". According to Voeglin the Enlightenment (also called the Age of Reason) represents the \"atrophy of Christian transcendental experiences and [seeks] to enthrone the Newtonian method of science as the only valid method of arriving at truth\". Its precursors were John Milton and Baruch Spinoza. Meeting Galileo in 1638 left an enduring impact on John Milton and influenced Milton's great work \"Areopagitica\", where he warns that, without free speech, inquisitorial forces will impose \"an undeserved thraldom upon learning\".\nThe achievements of the 17th century included the invention of the telescope and acceptance of heliocentrism. 18th century scholars continued to refine Newton's theory of gravitation, notably Leonhard Euler, Pierre Louis Maupertuis, Alexis-Claude Clairaut, Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, Pierre-Simon de Laplace. Laplace's five-volume \"Treatise on Celestial Mechanics\" is one of the great works of 18th-century Newtonianism. Astronomy gained in prestige as new observatories were funded by governments and more powerful telescopes developed, leading to the discovery of new planets, asteroids, nebulae and comets, and paving the way for improvements in navigation and cartography. Astronomy became the second most popular scientific profession, after medicine.\nA common metanarrative of the Enlightenment is the \"secularization theory\". Modernity, as understood within the framework, means a total break with the past. Innovation and science are the good, representing the modern values of rationalism, while faith is ruled by superstition and traditionalism. Inspired by the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment embodied the ideals of improvement and progress. Descartes and Isaac Newton were regarded as exemplars of human intellectual achievement. Condorcet wrote about the progress of humanity in the \"Sketch of the Progress of the Human Mind\" (1794), from primitive society to agrarianism, the invention of writing, the later invention of the printing press and the advancement to \"the Period when the Sciences and Philosophy threw off the Yoke of Authority\".\nFrench writer Pierre Bayle denounced Spinoza as a pantheist (thereby accusing him of atheism). Bayle's criticisms garnered much attention for Spinoza. The pantheism controversy in the late 18th century saw Gotthold Lessing attacked by Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi over support for Spinoza's pantheism. Lessing was defended by Moses Mendelssohn, although Mendelssohn diverged from pantheism to follow Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in arguing that God and the world were not of the same substance (equivalency). Spinoza was excommunicated from the Dutch Sephardic community, but for Jews who sought out Jewish sources to guide their own path to secularism, Spinoza was as important as Voltaire and Kant.\n19th century.\nIn the early 19th century, the systematic urbanization process (migration from villages in search of jobs in manufacturing centers) had begun, and the concentration of labor into factories led to the rise in the population of the towns. World population had been rising as well. It is estimated to have first reached one billion in 1804. Also, the new philosophical movement later known as Romanticism originated, in the wake of the previous Age of Reason of the 1600s and the Enlightenment of 1700s. These are seen as fostering the 19th century \"Western world\"'s sustained economic development. Before the urbanization and industrialization of the 1800s, demand for oriental goods such as porcelain, silk, spices and tea remained the driving force behind European imperialism in Asia, and (with the important exception of British East India Company rule in India) the European stake in Asia remained confined largely to trading stations and strategic outposts necessary to protect trade. Industrialization, however, dramatically increased European demand for Asian raw materials; and the severe Long Depression of the 1870s provoked a scramble for new markets for European industrial products and financial services in Africa, the Americas, Eastern Europe, and especially in Asia (Western powers exploited their advantages in China for example by the Opium Wars). This resulted in the \"New Imperialism\", which saw a shift in focus from trade and indirect rule to formal colonial control of vast overseas territories ruled as political extensions of their mother countries. The later years of the 19th century saw the transition from \"informal imperialism\" (hegemony) by military influence and economic dominance, to direct rule (a revival of colonial imperialism) in the African continent and Middle East.\nDuring the socioeconomically optimistic and innovative decades of the Second Industrial Revolution between the 1870s and 1914, also known as the \"Beautiful Era\", the established colonial powers in Asia (United Kingdom, France, Netherlands) added to their empires also vast expanses of territory in the Indian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia. Japan was involved primarily during the Meiji period (1868\u20131912), though earlier contacts with the Portuguese, Spaniards and Dutch were also present in the Japanese Empire's recognition of the strategic importance of European nations. Traditional Japanese society became an industrial and militarist power like the Western British Empire and the French Third Republic, and similar to the German Empire.\nAt the close of the Spanish\u2013American War in 1898 the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam and Cuba were ceded to the United States under the terms of the Treaty of Paris. The US quickly emerged as the new imperial power in East Asia and in the Pacific Ocean area. The Philippines continued to fight against colonial rule in the Philippine\u2013American War.\nBy 1913, the British Empire held sway over 412 million people, of the world population at the time, and by 1920, it covered , of the Earth's total land area. At its apex, the phrase \"the empire on which the sun never sets\" described the British Empire, because its expanse around the globe meant that the sun always shone on at least one of its territories. As a result, its political, legal, linguistic and cultural legacy is widespread throughout the \"Western world\". In the aftermath of the Second World War, decolonizing efforts were employed by all Western powers under United Nations (ex-League of Nations) international directives. Most of colonized nations received independence by 1960. Great Britain showed ongoing responsibility for the welfare of its former colonies as member states of the Commonwealth of Nations. But the end of Western colonial imperialism saw the rise of Western neocolonialism or economic imperialism. Multinational corporations came to offer \"a dramatic refinement of the traditional business enterprise\", through \"issues as far ranging as national sovereignty, ownership of the means of production, environmental protection, consumerism, and policies toward organized labor.\" Though the overt colonial era had passed, \"Western\" nations, as comparatively rich, well-armed, and culturally powerful states, wielded a large degree of influence throughout the world, and with little or no sense of responsibility toward the peoples impacted by its multinational corporations in their exploitation of minerals and markets. The dictum of Alfred Thayer Mahan is shown to have lasting relevance, that whoever controls the seas controls the world.\nCold War (1947\u20131991).\nDuring the Cold War, a new definition emerged. Earth was divided into three \"worlds\". The First World, analogous in this context to what was called \"the West\", was composed of NATO members and other countries aligned with the United States.\nThe Second World was the Eastern bloc in the Soviet sphere of influence, including the Soviet Union (15 republics including the then occupied but now independent Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) and Warsaw Pact countries like Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, East Germany (now united with West Germany), and Czechoslovakia (now split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia).\nThe Third World consisted of countries, many of which were unaligned with either the west or the east; important members included India, Yugoslavia, Finland (Finlandization) and Switzerland (Swiss Neutrality); some include the People's Republic of China, though this is disputed, since the People's Republic of China, as communist, had friendly relations\u2014at certain times\u2014with the Soviet bloc, and had a significant degree of importance in global geopolitics. Some Third World countries aligned themselves with either the US-led West or the Soviet-led Eastern bloc.\nA number of countries did not fit comfortably into this neat definition of partition, including Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, and Ireland, which chose to be neutral. Finland was under the Soviet Union's military sphere of influence (see FCMA treaty) but remained neutral and was not communist, nor was it a member of the Warsaw Pact or Comecon but a member of the EFTA from 1986, and was west of the Iron Curtain. In 1955, when Austria again became a fully independent republic, it did so under the condition that it remain neutral; but as a country to the west of the Iron Curtain, it was in the \"United States\"' sphere of influence. Spain did not join NATO until 1982, seven years after the death of the authoritarian Franco.\nThe 1980s advent of Mikhail Gorbachev led to the end of the Cold War following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.\nModern definitions.\nThe exact scope of the \"Western world\" is somewhat subjective in nature, depending on whether cultural, economic, spiritual or political criteria are employed. It is a generally accepted Western view to recognize the existence of at least three \"major worlds\" (or \"cultures\", or \"civilizations\"), broadly in contrast with the Western: the \"Eastern world\", the \"Arab\" and the \"African\" worlds, with no clearly specified boundaries. Additionally, \"Latin American\" and \"Orthodox European\" worlds are sometimes either a sub-civilization within Western civilization or separately considered \"akin\" to the West.\nMany anthropologists, sociologists and historians oppose \"the West and the Rest\" in a categorical manner. The same has been done by Malthusian demographers with a sharp distinction between European and non-European family systems. Among anthropologists, this includes Durkheim, Dumont, and L\u00e9vi-Strauss.\nCultural definition.\nThe Oxford English dictionary noted that the earliest use of the term \"Western world\" in the English language was in 1586, found in the writings of William Warner.\nIn modern usage, \"Western world\" refers to Europe and to areas whose populations largely originate from Europe, through the Age of Discovery's imperialism.\nIn the 20th century, Christianity declined in influence in many Western countries, mostly in the European Union where some member states have experienced falling church attendance and membership in recent years, and also elsewhere.\nSecularism (separating religion from politics and science) increased. However, while church attendance is in decline, in some Western countries (i.e. Italy, Poland, and Portugal), more than half of the people state that religion is important, and most Westerners nominally identify themselves as Christians (e.g. 59% in the United Kingdom) and attend church on major occasions, such as Christmas and Easter. In the Americas, Christianity continues to play an important societal role, though in areas such as Canada, a low level of religiosity is common due to a European-type secularization. The official religions of the United Kingdom and some Nordic countries are forms of Christianity, while the majority of European countries have no official religion. Despite this, Christianity, in its different forms, remains the largest faith in most Western countries.\nChristianity remains the dominant religion in the \"Western world\", where 70% are Christians. A 2011 Pew Research Center survey found that 76.2% of Europeans, 73.3% in Oceania, and about 86.0% in the Americas (90% in Latin America and the Caribbean and 77.4% in Northern America) described themselves as Christians.\nSince the mid-twentieth century, the west became known for its irreligious sentiments, following the Age of Enlightenment and the French Revolution, inquisitions were abolished in the 19th and 20th centuries, this hastened the separation of church and state, and secularization of the Western world where unchurched spirituality is gaining more prominence over organized religion.\nCertain parts of the Western world have become notable for their diversity since the late 1960s.\nEarlier, between the eighteenth century to mid-twentieth century, prominent western countries like the United States, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand have been once envisioned as homelands for whites. Racism has been noted as a contributing factor to Westerners' colonization of the New World, which makes up much of the geographical West today.\nCountries in the \"Western world\" are also the most keen on digital and televisual media technologies, as they were in the postwar period on television and radio: from 2000 to 2014, the Internet's market penetration in the West was twice that in non-Western regions.\nEconomic definition.\nThe term \"Western world\" is sometimes interchangeably used with the term First World or developed countries, stressing the difference between First World and the Third World or developing countries. This usage occurs despite the fact that many countries that may be culturally Western are developing countries \u2013 in fact, a significant percentage of the Americas are developing countries. It is also used despite many developed countries or regions not being culturally Western (e.g. Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao). Privatization policies (involving government enterprises and public services) and multinational corporations are often considered a visible sign of Western nations' economic presence, especially in Third World countries, and represent a common institutional environment for powerful politicians, enterprises, trade unions and firms, bankers and thinkers of the Western world.\nOther views.\nA series of scholars of civilization, including Arnold J. Toynbee, Alfred Kroeber and Carroll Quigley have identified and analyzed \"Western civilization\" as one of the civilizations that have historically existed and still exist today. Toynbee entered into quite an expansive mode, including as candidates those countries or cultures who became so heavily influenced by the West as to adopt these borrowings into their very self-identity. Carried to its limit, this would in practice include almost everyone within the West, in one way or another. In particular, Toynbee refers to the \"intelligentsia\" formed among the educated elite of countries impacted by the European expansion of centuries past. While often pointedly nationalist, these cultural and political leaders interacted within the West to such an extent as to change both themselves and the West.\nThe theologian and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin conceived of the West as the set of civilizations descended from the Nile Valley Civilization of Egypt.\nPalestinian-American literary critic Edward Said uses the term \"Occident\" in his discussion of Orientalism. According to his binary, the West, or Occident, created a romanticized vision of the East, or Orient, to justify colonial and imperialist intentions. This Occident-Orient binary focuses on the Western vision of the East instead of any truths about the East. His theories are rooted in Hegel's master-slave dialectic: The Occident would not exist without the Orient and vice versa. Further, Western writers created this irrational, feminine, weak \"Other\" to contrast with the rational, masculine, strong West because of a need to create a difference between the two that would justify imperialist ambitions, according to the Said-influenced Indian-American theorist Homi K. Bhabha.\nThe idea of \"the West\" over the course of time has evolved from a directional concept to a sociopolitical concept, and has been temporalized and rendered as a concept of the future bestowed with notions of progress and modernity.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "30570": "Trajan\nRoman emperor from AD 98 to 117\nTrajan ( ; born Marcus Ulpius Traianus, 18 September\u00a053\u00a0\u2013\u00a0c.\u20099 August\u00a0117) was a Roman emperor from AD\u00a098 to 117, remembered as the second of the Five Good Emperors of the Nerva\u2013Antonine dynasty. He was a philanthropic ruler and a successful soldier-emperor who presided over one of the greatest military expansions in Roman history, during which, by the time of his death, the Roman Empire reached its maximum territorial extent. He was given the title of ('the best') by the Roman Senate.\nTrajan was born in the of Italica in the present-day Andalusian province of Seville in southern Spain, an Italic settlement in Hispania Baetica; his came from the town of Tuder in the Umbria region of central Italy. His namesake father, Marcus Ulpius Traianus, was a general and distinguished senator. Trajan rose to prominence during the reign of Domitian; in AD 89, serving as a in , he supported the emperor against a revolt on the Rhine led by Antonius Saturninus. He then served as governor of Germania and Pannonia. In September 96, Domitian was succeeded by the elderly and childless Nerva, who proved to be unpopular with the army. After a revolt by members of the Praetorian Guard, Nerva decided to adopt as his heir and successor the more popular Trajan, who had distinguished himself in military campaigns against Germanic tribes.\nAs emperor of Rome, Trajan oversaw the construction of building projects such as the forum named after him, the introduction of social welfare policies such as the , and new military conquests. He annexed Nabataea and Dacia, and his war against the Parthian Empire ended with the incorporation of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria as Roman provinces. In August AD\u00a0117, while sailing back to Rome, Trajan fell ill and died of a stroke in the city of Selinus. He was deified by the senate and his successor Hadrian (Trajan's cousin). According to historical tradition, Trajan's ashes were entombed in a small room beneath Trajan's Column.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nSources.\nAn account of the Dacian Wars, the \"Commentarii de bellis Dacicis\", written by Trajan himself or a ghostwriter and modelled after Caesar's \"Commentarii de Bello Gallico\", is lost with the exception of one sentence. Only fragments remain of the \"Getica\", a book by Trajan's personal physician Titus Statilius Criton. The \"Parthica\", a 17-volume account of the Parthian Wars written by Arrian, has met a similar fate. Book68 in Greek author Cassius Dio's \"Roman History\", which survives mostly as Byzantine abridgements and epitomes, is the main source for the political history of Trajan's rule. Besides this, Pliny the Younger's \"Panegyricus\" and Dio Chrysostom's orations are the best surviving contemporary sources. Both are adulatory perorations, typical of the High Imperial period, that describe an idealized monarch and an equally idealized view of Trajan's rule, and concern themselves more with ideology than with fact.\nThe 10th volume of Pliny's letters contains his correspondence with Trajan, which deals with various aspects of imperial Roman government. It is generally agreed that Pliny, being part of the emperor's inner circle, provides a unique and valuable source of information through his letters with Trajan, the only surviving correspondence between a governor and his emperor. However, it has been argued that Pliny's correspondence with Trajan is neither intimate nor candid, but rather an exchange of official mail in which Pliny's stance borders on the servile. Some authors have even proposed that much of the text was written and/or edited by Trajan's Imperial secretary, his \"ab epistulis\". Given the scarcity of literary sources, discussion of Trajan and his rule in modern historiography cannot avoid speculation. Non-literary sources such as archaeology, epigraphy, and numismatics are also useful for reconstructing his reign.\nEarly life.\nMarcus Ulpius Traianus was born on 18 September AD53 in the Roman province of Hispania Baetica (in what is now Andalusia in modern Spain), in the \"municipium\" of Italica (now in the municipal area of Santiponce, in the outskirts of Seville), a Roman colony established in 206BC by Scipio Africanus. At the time of Trajan's birth it was a small town, without baths, theatre and amphitheatre, and with a very narrow territory under its direct administration. Trajan's year of birth is not reliably attested and may instead have been AD 56.\nThe epitome of Cassius Dio's Roman history describes Trajan as \"an Iberian and neither an Italian nor even an Italiote\", but this claim is contradicted by other ancient sources and rejected by modern scholars, who have reconstructed Trajan's Italic lineage. Appian states that Trajan's hometown of Italica was settled by and named after Italic veterans who fought in Spain under Scipio, and new settlers arrived there from Italy in the following centuries. Among the Italic settlers were the Ulpii and the Traii, who were either part of the original colonists or arrived as late as the end of the 1st century BC. Their original home, according to the description of Trajan as \"Ulpius Traianus ex urbe Tudertina\" in the Epitome de Caesaribus, was the town of Tuder (Todi) in the Umbria region of central Italy. This is confirmed by archeology, with epigraphic evidence placing both the Ulpii and the Traii in Umbria generally and Tuder specifically, and by linguistic studies of the family names \"Ulpius\" and \"Traius\" which show that both are of Osco-Umbrian origin. \nIt is unknown whether Trajan's ancestors were Roman citizens or not at their arrival in Spain. They would have certainly possessed Roman citizenship in case they arrived after the Social War (91\u201387 BC), when Tuder became a municipium of Roman citizens. In Spain they may well have intermarried with native Iberians, in which case they would have lost their citizenship. Had they lacked or lost the status of Roman citizens, they would have achieved it or recovered it when Italica became a municipium with Latin rights in the mid-1st century BC.\nTrajan's paternal grandfather Ulpius married a Traia. Their son, Trajan's namesake father Marcus Ulpius Traianus, was born at Italica during the reign of Tiberius and became a prominent senator and general, commanding the Legio X Fretensis under Vespasian in the First Jewish-Roman War. Trajan's mother was Marcia, a Roman noblewoman of the gens Marcia and a sister-in-law of the second Flavian Emperor Titus. Little is known of her. Her father is believed to be Quintus Marcius Barea Sura. Her mother was Antonia Furnilla, daughter of Aulus Antonius Rufus and Furnia. Trajan owned some lands called \"Figlinae Marcianae\" in Ameria, another Umbrian town, located near both Tuder and Reate (the home of the Flavian dynasty) and believed to be the home of Marcia's family.\nThe line of the Ulpii continued long after Trajan's death. His elder sister was Ulpia Marciana, and his niece was Salonia Matidia. Very little is known about Trajan's early formative years, but it is thought likely that he spent his first months or years in Italica before moving to Rome and then, perhaps at around eight or nine years of age, he almost certainly would have returned temporarily to Italica with his father during Trajanus's governorship of Baetica (ca. 64\u201365). The lack of a strong local power base, caused by the size of the town from which they came, made it necessary for the Ulpii (and for the Aelii, the other important senatorial family of Italica with whom they were allied) to weave local alliances, in the Baetica (with the Annii, the Ucubi and perhaps the Dasumii from Corduba), the Tarraconense and the Narbonense, here above all through Pompeia Plotina, Trajan's wife. Many of these alliances were made not in Spain, but in Rome. The family home in Rome, the Domus Traiana, was on the Aventine Hill; excavations under the Piazza del Tempio di Diana found remains thought to be of the family's large suburban villa, with evidence of highly decorated rooms.\nMilitary career.\nAs a young man Trajan rose through the ranks of the Roman army, serving in some of the most contested parts of the empire's frontier. In 76\u201377, his father was Governor of Syria (\"Legatus pro praetore Syriae\"), where Trajan himself remained as \"Tribunus legionis\". From there, after his father's replacement, he seems to have been transferred to an unspecified Rhine province, and Pliny implies that he engaged in active combat duty during both commissions.\nIn about 86, Trajan's cousin Aelius Afer died, leaving his young children Hadrian and Paulina orphans. Trajan and his colleague Publius Acilius Attianus became co-guardians of the two children. Trajan, in his late thirties, was created ordinary consul for the year 91. This early appointment may reflect the prominence of his father's career, as his father had been instrumental to the ascent of the ruling Flavian dynasty, held consular rank himself and had just been made a patrician. Around this time Trajan brought the architect and engineer Apollodorus of Damascus with him to Rome, and married Pompeia Plotina, a noblewoman from the Roman settlement at N\u00eemes; the marriage ultimately remained childless.\nThe historian Cassius Dio later noted that Trajan was a lover of young men, in contrast to the usual bisexual activity that was common among upper-class Roman men of the period. The emperor Julian also made a sardonic reference to his predecessor's sexual preference, stating that Zeus himself would have had to be on guard had his Ganymede come within Trajan's vicinity. This distaste reflected a change of mores that began with the Severan dynasty, Trajan's putative lovers included the future emperor, Hadrian, pages of the imperial household, the actor Pylades, a dancer called Apolaustus, Lucius Licinius Sura, and Trajan's predecessor Nerva. Cassius Dio also relates that Trajan made an ally out of Abgar VII on account of the latter's beautiful son, Arbandes, who would then dance for Trajan at a banquet.\nThe details of Trajan's early military career are obscure, save for the fact that in 89, as legate of Legio VII Gemina in Hispania Tarraconensis, he supported Domitian against an attempted coup by Lucius Antonius Saturninus, the governor of Germania Superior. Trajan probably remained in the region after the revolt was quashed, to engage with the Chatti who had sided with Saturninus, before returning the VII Gemina legion to Legio in Hispania Tarraconensis. In 91 he held a consulate with Acilius Glabrio, a rarity in that neither consul was a member of the ruling dynasty. He held an unspecified consular commission as governor of either Pannonia or Germania Superior, or possibly both. Pliny\u00a0\u2013\u00a0who seems to deliberately avoid offering details that would stress personal attachment between Trajan and the \"tyrant\" Domitian\u00a0\u2013\u00a0attributes to him, at the time, various (and unspecified) feats of arms.\nRise to power.\nDomitian's successor, Nerva, was unpopular with the army, and had been forced by his Praetorian Prefect Casperius Aelianus to execute Domitian's killers. Nerva needed the army's support to avoid being ousted. He accomplished this in the summer of 97 by naming Trajan as his adoptive son and successor, claiming that this was entirely due to Trajan's outstanding military merits. There are hints, however, in contemporary literary sources that Trajan's adoption was imposed on Nerva. Pliny implied as much when he wrote that, although an emperor could not be coerced into doing something, if this was the way in which Trajan was raised to power, then it was worth it. Alice K\u00f6nig argues that the notion of a natural continuity between Nerva's and Trajan's reigns was an \"ex post facto\" fiction developed by authors writing under Trajan, including Tacitus and Pliny.\nAccording to the \"Historia Augusta\", the future Emperor Hadrian brought word to Trajan of his adoption. Trajan retained Hadrian on the Rhine frontier as a military tribune, and Hadrian thus became privy to the circle of friends and relations with whom Trajan surrounded himself. Among them was Lucius Licinius Sura, a Roman senator born in Spain and the governor of Germania Inferior, who was Trajan's personal friend and became an official adviser of the Emperor. Sura was highly influential, and was appointed consul for a third term in 107. Some senators may have resented Sura's activities as a kingmaker and \u00e9minence grise, among them the historian Tacitus, who acknowledged Sura's military and oratorical talents, but compared his rapacity and devious ways to those of Vespasian's \u00e9minence grise Licinius Mucianus. Sura is said to have informed Hadrian in 108 that he had been chosen as Trajan's imperial heir.\nAs governor of Upper Germany (Germania Superior) during Nerva's reign, Trajan received the impressive title of \"Germanicus\" for his skilful management and rule of the volatile Imperial province. When Nerva died on 28 January 98, Trajan succeeded to the role of emperor without any outward adverse incident. The fact that he chose not to hasten towards Rome, but made a lengthy tour of inspection on the Rhine and Danube frontiers, may suggest that he was unsure of his position, both in Rome and with the armies at the front. Alternatively, Trajan's keen military mind understood the importance of strengthening the empire's frontiers. His vision for future conquests required the diligent improvement of surveillance networks, defences and transport along the Danube. Prior to his frontier tours, Trajan ordered his Prefect Aelianus to attend him in Germany, where he was apparently executed forthwith (\"put out of the way\"), and his now-vacant post taken by Attius Suburanus. Trajan's accession, therefore, could qualify more as a successful coup than an orderly succession.\nRoman emperor.\nOn his entry to Rome, Trajan granted the plebs a direct gift of money. The traditional donative to the troops, however, was reduced by half. There remained the issue of the strained relations between the emperor and the Senate, especially after the supposed bloodiness that had marked Domitian's reign and his dealings with the Curia. By feigning reluctance to hold power, Trajan was able to start building a consensus around him in the Senate. His belated ceremonial entry into Rome in 99 was notably understated, something on which Pliny the Younger elaborated. By not openly supporting Domitian's preference for equestrian officers, Trajan appeared to conform to the idea (developed by Pliny) that an emperor derived his legitimacy from his adherence to traditional hierarchies and senatorial morals. Therefore, he could point to the allegedly republican character of his rule.\nIn a speech at the inauguration of his third consulship, on 1January 100, Trajan exhorted the senate to share the care-taking of the empire with him\u00a0\u2013\u00a0an event later celebrated on a coin. In reality, Trajan did not share power in any meaningful way with the senate, something that Pliny admits candidly: \"[E]verything depends on the whims of a single man who, on behalf of the common welfare, has taken upon himself all functions and all tasks\". One of the most significant trends of his reign was his encroachment on the senate's sphere of authority, such as his decision to make the senatorial provinces of Achaea and Bithynia into imperial ones in order to deal with the inordinate spending on public works by local magnates and the general mismanagement of provincial affairs by various proconsuls appointed by the Senate.\n\"Optimus princeps\".\nIn the formula developed by Pliny, however, Trajan was a \"good\" emperor in that, by himself, he approved or blamed the same things that the Senate would have approved or blamed. If in reality Trajan was an autocrat, his deferential behavior towards his peers qualified him to be viewed as a virtuous monarch. The idea is that Trajan wielded autocratic power through \"moderatio\" instead of \"contumacia\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0moderation instead of insolence. In short, according to the ethics for autocracy developed by most political writers of the Imperial Roman Age, Trajan was a good ruler in that he ruled less by fear, and more by acting as a role model, for, according to Pliny, \"men learn better from examples\". Eventually, Trajan's popularity among his peers was such that the Roman Senate bestowed upon him the honorific of \"optimus\", meaning \"the best\", which appears on coins from 105 on. This title had mostly to do with Trajan's role as benefactor, such as in the case of his returning confiscated property. The epithet \"optimus princeps\" had already been used for the emperors since the late republic, but Trajan was the only one officially honoured by the title.\nPliny states that Trajan's ideal role was a conservative one, argued as well by the orations of Dio Chrysostom\u2014in particular his four \"Orations on Kingship\", composed early during Trajan's reign. Dio, as a Greek notable and intellectual with friends in high places, and possibly an official friend to the emperor (\"amicus caesaris\"), saw Trajan as a defender of the \"status quo\". In his third kingship oration, Dio describes an ideal king ruling by means of \"friendship\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0that is, through patronage and a network of local notables who act as mediators between the ruled and the ruler. Dio's notion of being \"friend\" to Trajan (or any other Roman emperor), however, was that of an \"informal\" arrangement, that involved no formal entry of such \"friends\" into the Roman administration. Trajan ingratiated himself with the Greek intellectual elite by recalling to Rome many (including Dio) who had been exiled by Domitian, and by returning (in a process begun by Nerva) a great deal of private property that Domitian had confiscated. He also had good dealings with Plutarch, who, as a notable of Delphi, seems to have been favoured by the decisions taken on behalf of his home-place by one of Trajan's legates, who had arbitrated a boundary dispute between Delphi and its neighbouring cities.\nHowever, it was clear to Trajan that Greek intellectuals and notables were to be regarded as tools for local administration, and not be allowed to fancy themselves in a privileged position. As Pliny said in one of his letters at the time, it was official policy that Greek civic elites be treated according to their status as notionally free but not put on an equal footing with their Roman rulers. When the city of Apamea complained of an audit of its accounts by Pliny, alleging its \"free\" status as a Roman colony, Trajan replied by writing that it was by his own wish that such inspections had been ordered. Concern about independent local political activity is seen in Trajan's decision to forbid Nicomedia from having a corps of firemen (\"If people assemble for a common purpose... they soon turn it into a political society\", Trajan wrote to Pliny) as well as in his and Pliny's fears about excessive civic generosities by local notables such as distribution of money or gifts.\nPliny's letters suggest that Trajan and his aides were as much bored as they were alarmed by the claims of Dio and other Greek notables to political influence based on what they saw as their \"special connection\" to their Roman overlords. Pliny tells of Dio of Prusa placing a statue of Trajan in a building complex where Dio's wife and son were buried \u2013 therefore incurring a charge of treason for placing the emperor's statue near a grave. Trajan, however, dropped the charge. Nevertheless, while the office of \"corrector\" was intended as a tool to curb any hint of independent political activity among local notables in the Greek cities, the \"correctores\" themselves were all men of the highest social standing entrusted with an exceptional commission. The post seems to have been conceived partly as a reward for senators who had chosen to make a career solely on the emperor's behalf. Therefore, in reality the post was conceived as a means for \"taming\" both Greek notables and Roman senators. It must be added that, although Trajan was wary of the civic oligarchies in the Greek cities, he also admitted into the senate a number of prominent Eastern notables already slated for promotion during Domitian's reign by reserving for them one of the twenty posts open each year for minor magistrates (the \"vigintiviri\"). Such must be the case of the Galatian notable and \"leading member of the Greek community\" (according to one inscription) Gaius Julius Severus, who was a descendant of several Hellenistic dynasts and client kings.\nSeverus was the grandfather of the prominent general Gaius Julius Quadratus Bassus, consul in 105. Other prominent Eastern senators included Gaius Julius Alexander Berenicianus, a descendant of Herod the Great, suffect consul in 116. Trajan created at least fourteen new senators from the Greek-speaking half of the empire, an unprecedented recruitment number that opens to question the issue of the \"traditionally Roman\" character of his reign, as well as the \"Hellenism\" of his successor Hadrian. But then Trajan's new Eastern senators were mostly very powerful and very wealthy men with more than local influence and much interconnected by marriage, so that many of them were not altogether \"new\" to the Senate. On the local level, among the lower section of the Eastern propertied, the alienation of most Greek notables and intellectuals towards Roman rule, and the fact that the Romans were seen by most such Greek notables as aliens, persisted well after Trajan's reign. One of Trajan's senatorial creations from the East, the Athenian Gaius Julius Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappos, a member of the Royal House of Commagene, left behind him a funeral monument on the Mouseion Hill that was later disparagingly described by Pausanias as \"a monument built to a Syrian man\".\nGreek-Roman relations.\nAs a senatorial Emperor, Trajan was inclined to choose his local base of political support from among the members of the ruling urban oligarchies. In the West, that meant local senatorial families like his own. In the East, that meant the families of Greek notables. The Greeks, though, had their own memories of independence\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and a commonly acknowledged sense of cultural superiority\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and, instead of seeing themselves as Roman, disdained Roman rule. What the Greek oligarchies wanted from Rome was, above all, to be left in peace, to be allowed to exert their right to self-government (i.e., to be excluded from the provincial government, as was Italy) and to concentrate on their local interests. This was something the Romans were not disposed to do as from their perspective the Greek notables were shunning their responsibilities in regard to the management of Imperial affairs\u00a0\u2013\u00a0primarily in failing to keep the common people under control, thus creating the need for the Roman governor to intervene. An excellent example of this Greek alienation was the personal role played by Dio of Prusa in his relationship with Trajan. Dio is described by Philostratus as Trajan's close friend, and Trajan as supposedly engaging publicly in conversations with Dio.\nNevertheless, as a Greek local magnate with a taste for costly building projects and pretensions of being an important political agent for Rome, Dio of Prusa was actually a target for one of Trajan's authoritarian innovations: the appointing of imperial \"correctores\" to audit the civic finances of the technically free Greek cities. The main goal was to curb the overenthusiastic spending on public works that served to channel ancient rivalries between neighbouring cities. As Pliny wrote to Trajan, this had as its most visible consequence a trail of unfinished or ill-kept public utilities. Competition among Greek cities and their ruling oligarchies was mainly for marks of pre-eminence, especially for titles bestowed by the Roman emperor. Such titles were ordered in a ranking system that determined how the cities were to be outwardly treated by Rome. The usual form that such rivalries took was that of grandiose building plans, giving the cities the opportunity to vie with each other over \"extravagant, needless... structures that would make a show\". A side effect of such extravagant spending was that junior and thus less wealthy members of the local oligarchies felt disinclined to present themselves to fill posts as local magistrates, positions that involved ever-increasing personal expense. Roman authorities liked to play the Greek cities against one another\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something of which Dio of Prusa was fully aware:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />[B]y their public acts [the Roman governors] have branded you as a pack of fools, yes, they treat you just like children, for we often offer children the most trivial things in place of things of greatest worth [...] In place of justice, in place of the freedom of the cities from spoliation or from the seizure of the private possessions of their inhabitants, in place of their refraining from insulting you [...] your governors hand you titles, and call you 'first' either by word of mouth or in writing; that done, they may thenceforth with impunity treat you as being the very last!\"These same Roman authorities had also an interest in assuring the cities' solvency and therefore ready collection of Imperial taxes. Last but not least, inordinate spending on civic buildings was not only a means to achieve local superiority, but also a means for the local Greek elites to maintain a separate cultural identity\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something expressed in the contemporary rise of the Second Sophistic; this \"cultural patriotism\" acted as a kind of substitute for the loss of political independence, and as such was shunned by Roman authorities. As Trajan himself wrote to Pliny: \"These poor Greeks all love a gymnasium... they will have to content with one that suits their real needs\". The first known \"corrector\" was charged with a commission \"to deal with the situation of the free cities\", as it was felt that the old method of \"ad hoc\" intervention by the Emperor and/or the proconsuls had not been enough to curb the pretensions of the Greek notables. It is noteworthy that an embassy from Dio's city of Prusa was not favourably received by Trajan, and that this had to do with Dio's chief objective, which was to elevate Prusa to the status of a free city, an \"independent\" city-state exempt from paying taxes to Rome. Eventually, Dio gained for Prusa the right to become the head of the assize-district, conventus (meaning that Prusans did not have to travel to be judged by the Roman governor), but \"eleutheria\" (freedom, in the sense of full political autonomy) was denied.\nEventually, it fell to Pliny, as imperial governor of Bithynia in AD110, to deal with the consequences of the financial mess wrought by Dio and his fellow civic officials. \"It's well established that [the cities' finances] are in a state of disorder\", Pliny once wrote to Trajan, plans for unnecessary works made in collusion with local contractors being identified as one of the main problems. One of the compensatory measures proposed by Pliny expressed a thoroughly Roman conservative position: as the cities' financial solvency depended on the councilmen's purses, it was necessary to have more councilmen on the local city councils. According to Pliny, the best way to achieve this was to lower the minimum age for holding a seat on the council, making it possible for more sons of the established oligarchical families to join and thus contribute to civic spending; this was seen as preferable to enrolling non-noble wealthy upstarts. Such an increase in the number of council members was granted to Dio's city of Prusa, to the dismay of existing councilmen who felt their status lowered. A similar situation existed in Claudiopolis, where a public bath was built with the proceeds from the entrance fees paid by \"supernumerary\" members of the council, enrolled with Trajan's permission. According to the Digest, Trajan decreed that when a city magistrate promised to achieve a particular public building, his heirs inherited responsibility for its completion.\nBuilding projects.\nTrajan was a prolific builder. Many of his buildings were designed and erected by the gifted architect Apollodorus of Damascus, including a massive bridge over the Danube, which the Roman army and its reinforcements could use regardless of weather; the Danube sometimes froze over in winter, but seldom enough to bear the passage of a party of soldiers. Trajan's works at the Iron Gates region of the Danube created or enlarged the boardwalk road cut into the cliff-face along the Iron Gate's gorge. A canal was built between the Danube's Kasajna tributary and Ducis Pratum, circumventing rapids and cataracts.\nTrajan's Forum Traiani was Rome's largest forum. It was built to commemorate his victories in Dacia, and was largely financed from that campaign's loot. To accommodate it, parts of the Capitoline and Quirinal Hills had to be removed, the latter enlarging a clear area first established by Domitian. Apollodorus of Damascus' \"magnificent\" design incorporated a Triumphal arch entrance, a forum space approximately 120 m long and 90m wide, surrounded by peristyles: a monumentally sized basilica: and later, Trajan's Column and libraries. It was started in AD 107, dedicated on 1 January 112, and remained in use for at least 500 years. It still drew admiration when Emperor Constantius II visited Rome in the fourth century. It accommodated Trajan's Market, and an adjacent brick market.\nTrajan was also a prolific builder of triumphal arches, many of which survive. He built roads, such as the Via Traiana, an extension of the Via Appia from Beneventum to Brundisium and the Via Traiana Nova, a mostly military road between Damascus and Aila, which Rome employed in its annexation of Nabataea and founding of Arabia Province.\nSome historians attribute the construction or reconstruction of Old Cairo's Roman fortress (also known as \"Babylon Fort\") to Trajan, and the building of a canal between the River Nile and the Red Sea. In Egypt, Trajan was \"quite active\" in constructing and embellishing buildings. He is portrayed, together with Domitian, on the propylon of the Temple of Hathor at Dendera. His cartouche also appears in the column shafts of the Temple of Khnum at Esna.\nHe built palatial villas outside Rome at Arcinazzo, at Centumcellae and at Talamone.\nHe also built a bath complex as well as the Aqua Traiana.\nGames.\nTrajan invested heavily in the provision of popular amusements. He carried out a \"massive reconstruction\" of the Circus Maximus, which was already the empire's biggest and best appointed circuit for the immensely popular sport of chariot racing. The Circus also hosted religious theatrical spectacles and games, and public processions on a grand scale. Trajan's reconstruction, completed by 103, was modestly described by Trajan himself as \"adequate\" for the Roman people. It replaced flammable wooden seating tiers with stone, and increased the Circus' already vast capacity by about 5,000 seats. Its lofty, elevated Imperial viewing box was rebuilt among the seating tiers, so that spectators could see their emperor sharing their enjoyment of the races, alongside his family and images of the gods,\nAt some time during 108 or 109, Trajan held 123 days of games to celebrate his Dacian victory. They involved \"fully 10,000\" gladiators and the slaughter of thousands, \"possibly tens of thousands,\" of animals, both wild and domestic. Trajan's careful management of public spectacles led the orator Fronto to congratulate him for paying equal attention to public entertainments and more serious issues, acknowledging that \"neglect of serious matters can cause greater damage, but neglect of amusements greater discontent\". State-funded public entertainments helped to maintain contentment among the populace; the more \"serious matter\" of the corn dole aimed to satisfy individuals.\nChristians.\nDuring the period of peace that followed the Dacian war, Trajan exchanged letters with Pliny the Younger on how best to deal with the Christians of Pontus. Trajan told Pliny to continue prosecutions of Christians if they merited that, but not to accept anonymous or malicious denunciations. He considered this to be in the interests of justice, and to reflect \"the spirit of the age\". Non-citizens who admitted to being Christians and refused to recant were to be executed \"for obstinacy\". Citizens were sent to Rome for trial.\nFurther tests faced by Christians in Pontus are alluded to in correspondence between Pliny the Younger, governor of the Roman province of Bithynia and Pontus, and Emperor Trajan. Writing from Pontus in about AD 112, Pliny reported that the \"contagion\" of Christianity threatened everyone, regardless of gender, age, or rank. Pliny gave those accused of being Christians opportunity to deny it, and those who would not, he executed. Any who cursed Christ or recited a prayer to the gods or to Trajan\u2019s statue were released. Pliny acknowledged that these were things that \"those who are really Christians cannot be made to do.\"\nCurrency and welfare.\nIn 107, Trajan devalued the Roman currency, decreasing the silver content of the denarius from 93.5% to 89.0%\u00a0\u2013\u00a0the actual silver weight dropping from 3.04grams to 2.88grams. This devaluation, along with the massive amounts of gold and silver acquired through his Dacian wars, allowed Trajan to mint many more denarii than his predecessors. He also withdrew from circulation silver denarii minted before Nero's devaluation. Trajan's devaluation may have had a political intent, enabling planned increases in civil and military spending. Trajan formalised the alimenta, a welfare program that helped orphans and poor children throughout Italy by providing cash, food and subsidized education. The program was supported out of Dacian War booty, estate taxes and philanthropy. The alimenta also relied indirectly on mortgages secured against Italian farms (\"fundi\"). Registered landowners received a lump sum from the imperial treasury, and in return were expected to repay an annual sum to support the alimentary fund.\nMilitary campaigns.\nConquest of Dacia.\nThe earliest of Trajan's conquests were Rome's two wars against Dacia, an area that had troubled Roman politics for over a decade in regard to the unstable peace negotiated by Domitian's ministers with the powerful Dacian king Decebalus. Dacia would be reduced by Trajan's Rome to a client kingdom in the first war (101\u2013102), followed by a second war that ended in actual incorporation into the Empire of the trans-Danube border group of Dacia. According to the provisions of Decebalus's earlier treaty with Rome, made in the time of Domitian, Decebalus was acknowledged as \"rex amicus\", that is, client king; in exchange for accepting client status, he received from Rome both a generous stipend and a steady supply of technical experts. The treaty seems to have allowed Roman troops the right of passage through the Dacian kingdom in order to attack the Marcomanni, Quadi and Sarmatians. However, senatorial opinion never forgave Domitian for paying what was seen as tribute to a barbarian king. Unlike the Germanic tribes, the Dacian kingdom was an organized state capable of developing alliances of its own, thus making it a strategic threat and giving Trajan a strong motive to attack it.\nIn May of 101, Trajan launched his first campaign into the Dacian kingdom, crossing to the northern bank of the Danube and defeating the Dacian army at Tapae (see Second Battle of Tapae), near the Iron Gates of Transylvania. It was not a decisive victory, however. Trajan's troops took heavy losses in the encounter, and he put off further campaigning for the year in order to regroup and reinforce his army. Nevertheless, the battle was considered a Roman victory and Trajan strived to ultimately consolidate his position, including other major engagements, as well as the capture of Decebalus' sister as depicted on Trajan's Column.\nThe following winter, Decebalus took the initiative by launching a counter-attack across the Danube further downstream, supported by Sarmatian cavalry, forcing Trajan to come to the aid of the troops in his rearguard. The Dacians and their allies were repulsed after two battles in Moesia, at Nicopolis ad Istrum and Adamclisi. Trajan's army then advanced further into Dacian territory, and, a year later, forced Decebalus to submit. He had to renounce claim to some regions of his kingdom, return runaways from Rome then under his protection (most of them technical experts), and surrender all his war machines. Trajan returned to Rome in triumph and was granted the title \"Dacicus\". The peace of 102 had returned Decebalus to the condition of more or less harmless client king; however, he soon began to rearm, to again harbour Roman runaways, and to pressure his Western neighbours, the Iazyges Sarmatians, into allying themselves with him. Through his efforts to develop an anti-Roman bloc, Decebalus prevented Trajan from treating Dacia as a protectorate instead of an outright conquest. In 104, Decebalus devised an attempt on Trajan's life by means of some Roman deserters, a plan that failed. Decebalus also took prisoner Trajan's legate Longinus, who eventually poisoned himself while in custody. Finally, in 105, Decebalus undertook an invasion of Roman-occupied territory north of the Danube.\nPrior to the campaign, Trajan had raised two entirely new legions: II Traiana\u00a0\u2013\u00a0which, however, may have been posted in the East, at the Syrian port of Laodicea\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and XXX Ulpia Victrix, which was posted to Brigetio, in Pannonia. By 105, the concentration of Roman troops assembled in the middle and lower Danube amounted to fourteen legions (up from nine in 101)\u00a0\u2013\u00a0about half of the entire Roman army. Even after the Dacian wars, the Danube frontier would permanently replace the Rhine as the main military axis of the Roman Empire. Including auxiliaries, the number of Roman troops engaged on both campaigns was between 150,000 and 175,000, while Decebalus could dispose of up to 200,000. Other estimates for the Roman forces involved in Trajan's second Dacian War cite around 86,000 for active campaigning with large reserves retained in the proximal provinces, and potentially much lower numbers around 50,000 for Decebalus' depleted forces and absent allies.\nIn a fierce campaign that seems to have consisted mostly of static warfare, the Dacians, devoid of manoeuvring room, kept to their network of fortresses, which the Romans sought systematically to storm (see also Second Dacian War). The Romans gradually tightened their grip around Decebalus' stronghold in Sarmizegetusa Regia, which they finally took and destroyed. A controversial scene on Trajan's column just before the fall of Sarmizegetusa Regia suggests that Decebalus may have offered poison to his remaining men as an alternative option to capture or death while trying to flee the besieged capital with him. Decebalus fled but, when later cornered by Roman cavalry, committed suicide. His severed head, brought to Trajan by the cavalryman Tiberius Claudius Maximus, was later exhibited in Rome on the steps leading up to the Capitol and thrown on the Gemonian stairs. The famous Dacian treasures were not found in the captured capital and their whereabouts were only revealed when a Dacian nobleman called Bikilis was captured. Decebalus\u2019 treasures had been buried under a temporarily diverted river and the captive workers executed to retain the secret. Staggering amounts of gold and silver were found and packed off to fill Rome's coffers.\nTrajan built a new city, Colonia Ulpia Traiana Augusta Dacica Sarmizegetusa, on another site (north of the hill citadel holding the previous Dacian capital), although bearing the same full name, Sarmizegetusa. This capital city was conceived as a purely civilian administrative centre and was provided the usual Romanized administrative apparatus (decurions, aediles, etc.). Urban life in Roman Dacia seems to have been restricted to Roman colonists, mostly military veterans; there is no extant evidence for the existence in the province of peregrine cities. Native Dacians continued to live in scattered rural settlements, according to their own ways. In another arrangement with no parallels in any other Roman province, the existing quasi-urban Dacian settlements disappeared after the Roman conquest.\nA number of unorganized urban settlements (\"vici\") developed around military encampments in Dacia proper \u2013 the most important being Apulum \u2013 but were only acknowledged as cities proper well after Trajan's reign. The main regional effort of urbanization was concentrated by Trajan at the rearguard, in Moesia, where he created the new cities of Nicopolis ad Istrum and Marcianopolis. A vicus was also created around the Tropaeum Traianum. The garrison city of Oescus received the status of Roman colony after its legionary garrison was redeployed. The fact that these former Danubian outposts had ceased to be frontier bases and were now in the deep rear acted as an inducement to their urbanization and development. Not all of Dacia was permanently occupied. After the post-Trajanic evacuation of lands across the lower Danube, land extending from the Danube to the inner arch of the Carpathian Mountains, including Transylvania, the Metaliferi Mountains and Oltenia was absorbed into the Roman province, which eventually took the form of an \"excrescence\" with ill-defined limits, stretching from the Danube northwards to the Carpathians. This may have been intended as a basis for further expansion within Eastern Europe, as the Romans believed the region to be much more geographically \"flattened\", and thus easier to traverse, than it actually was; they also underestimated the distance from those vaguely defined borders to the ocean.\nDefence of the province was entrusted to a single legion, the XIII Gemina, stationed at Apulum, which functioned as an advance guard that could, in case of need, strike either west or east at the Sarmatians living at the borders. Therefore, the indefensible character of the province did not appear to be a problem for Trajan, as the province was conceived more as a sally-base for further attacks. Even in the absence of further Roman expansion, the value of the province depended on Roman overall strength: while Rome was strong, the Dacian salient was an instrument of military and diplomatic control over the Danubian lands; when Rome was weak, as during the Crisis of the Third Century, the province became a liability and was eventually abandoned. Trajan resettled Dacia with Romans and annexed it as a province of the Roman Empire. Aside from their enormous booty (over half a million slaves, according to John Lydus), Trajan's Dacian campaigns benefited the Empire's finances through the acquisition of Dacia's gold mines, managed by an imperial procurator of equestrian rank (\"procurator aurariarum\"). On the other hand, commercial agricultural exploitation on the villa model, based on the centralized management of a huge landed estate by a single owner (\"fundus\") was poorly developed. Therefore, use of slave labor in the province itself seems to have been relatively undeveloped, and epigraphic evidence points to work in the gold mines being conducted by means of labor contracts (\"locatio conductio rei\") and seasonal wage-earning. The victory was commemorated by the construction both of the 102 cenotaph generally known as the Tropaeum Traiani in Moesia, as well of the much later (113) Trajan's Column in Rome, the latter depicting in stone carved bas-reliefs the Dacian Wars' most important moments.\nNabataean annexation.\nIn 106, Rabbel II Soter, one of Rome's client kings, died. This event might have prompted the annexation of the Nabataean Kingdom, but the manner and the formal reasons for the annexation are unclear. Some epigraphic evidence suggests a military operation, with forces from Syria and Egypt. What is known is that by 107, Roman legions were stationed in the area around Petra and Bosra, as is shown by a papyrus found in Egypt. The furthest south the Romans occupied (or, better, garrisoned, adopting a policy of having garrisons at key points in the desert) was Hegra, over south-west of Petra. The empire gained what became the province of Arabia Petraea (modern southern Jordan and northwest Saudi Arabia). At this time, a Roman road (\"Via Traiana Nova\") was built from Aila (now Aqaba) in Limes Arabicus to Bosrah. As Nabataea was the last client kingdom in Asia west of the Euphrates, the annexation meant that the entire Roman East had been provincialized, completing a trend towards direct rule that had begun under the Flavians.\nParthian campaign.\nIn 113, Trajan embarked on his last campaign, provoked by Parthia's decision to put an unacceptable king on the throne of Armenia, a kingdom over which the two great empires had shared hegemony since the time of Nero some fifty years earlier. Trajan, already in Syria early in 113, consistently refused to accept diplomatic approaches from the Parthians intended to settle the Armenian imbroglio peacefully. As the surviving literary accounts of Trajan's Parthian War are fragmentary and scattered, it is difficult to assign them a proper context, something that has led to a long-running controversy about its precise happenings and ultimate aims.\nCause of the war.\nModern historians advance the possibility that Trajan's decision to wage war against Parthia had economic motives: after Trajan's annexation of Arabia, he built a new road, Via Traiana Nova, that went from Bostra to Aila on the Red Sea. That meant that Charax on the Persian Gulf was the sole remaining western terminus of the Indian trade route outside direct Roman control, and such control was important in order to lower import prices and to limit the supposed drain of precious metals created by the deficit in Roman trade with the Far East. That Charax traded with the Roman Empire, there can be no doubt, as its actual connections with merchants from Palmyra during the period are well documented in a contemporary Palmyrene epigraph, which tells of various Palmyrene citizens honoured for holding office in Charax. Also, Charax's rulers' domains at the time possibly included the Bahrain islands, which offered the possibility of extending Roman hegemony into the Persian Gulf itself. (A Palmyrene citizen held office as satrap over the islands shortly after Trajan's death, though the appointment was made by a Parthian king of Charax.) The rationale behind Trajan's campaign, in this case, was one of breaking down a system of Far Eastern trade through small Semitic (\"Arab\") cities under Parthia's control and to put it under Roman control instead.\nIn his Dacian conquests, Trajan had already resorted to Syrian auxiliary units, whose veterans, along with Syrian traders, had an important role in the subsequent colonization of Dacia. He had recruited Palmyrene units into his army, including a camel unit, therefore apparently procuring Palmyrene support to his ultimate goal of annexing Charax. It has even been ventured that, when earlier in his campaign Trajan annexed Armenia, he was bound to annex the whole of Mesopotamia lest the Parthians interrupt the flux of trade from the Persian Gulf and/or foment trouble at the Roman frontier on the Danube. Other historians reject these motives, as the supposed Parthian \"control\" over the maritime Far Eastern trade route was, at best, conjectural and based on a selective reading of Chinese sources\u00a0\u2013\u00a0trade by land through Parthia seems to have been unhampered by Parthian authorities and left solely to the devices of private enterprise. Commercial activity in second century Mesopotamia seems to have been a general phenomenon, shared by many peoples within and without the Roman Empire, with no sign of a concerted Imperial policy towards it.\nAs in the case of the \"alimenta\", scholars like Moses Finley and Paul Veyne have considered the idea that a foreign trade policy underlay Trajan's war to be anachronistic; according to these scholars, the concern of Roman leaders with the trade in far eastern luxuries\u00a0\u2013\u00a0besides collecting toll taxes and customs\u00a0\u2013\u00a0was moral in nature, because contemporary Roman mores frowned upon the \"softness\" of luxuries. In the absence of conclusive evidence, trade between Rome and India might have been far more balanced, in terms of quantities of precious metals exchanged: one of our sources for the notion of the Roman gold drain\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Pliny's the Younger's uncle Pliny the Elder\u00a0\u2013\u00a0had earlier described the Gangetic Plains as one of the gold sources for the Roman Empire. Accordingly \u2013 in a controversial book on the Roman economy \u2013 Finley considers Trajan's \"badly miscalculated and expensive assault on Parthia\" to be an example of the many Roman \"commercial wars\" that had in common the fact of existing only in the books of modern historians.\nThe alternative view is to see the campaign as triggered by the lure of territorial annexation and prestige, the sole motive ascribed by Cassius Dio. As far as territorial conquest involved tax-collecting, especially of the 25% tax levied on all goods entering the Roman Empire, the \"tetarte\", one can say that Trajan's Parthian War had an \"economic\" motive. Also, there was the propaganda value of an Eastern conquest that would emulate, in Roman fashion, those of Alexander the Great. The fact that emissaries from the Kushan Empire might have attended to the commemorative ceremonies for the Dacian War may have kindled in some Greco-Roman intellectuals like Plutarch\u00a0\u2013\u00a0who wrote about only 70,000 Roman soldiers being necessary to a conquest of India \u00a0\u2013\u00a0as well as in Trajan's closer associates, speculative dreams about the booty to be obtained by reproducing Macedonian Eastern conquests. There could also be Trajan's idea to use an ambitious blueprint of conquests as a way to emphasize quasi-divine status, such as with his cultivated association, in coins and monuments, to Hercules.\nAlso, it is possible that the attachment of Trajan to an expansionist policy was supported by a powerful circle of conservative senators from Hispania committed to a policy of imperial expansion, first among them being the all-powerful Licinius Sura. Alternatively, one can explain the campaign by the fact that, for the Romans, their empire was in principle unlimited, and that Trajan only took advantage of an opportunity to make idea and reality coincide. Finally, there are other modern historians who think that Trajan's original aims were purely military and strategic: to assure a more defensible Eastern frontier for the Roman Empire, crossing Northern Mesopotamia along the course of the Khabur River in order to offer cover to a Roman Armenia. This interpretation is backed by the fact that all subsequent Roman wars against Parthia would aim at establishing a Roman presence deep into Parthia itself. It is possible that during the onset of Trajan's military experience, as a young tribune, he had witnessed engagement with the Parthians; so any strategic vision was grounded in a tactical awareness of what was needed to tackle Parthia.\nCourse of the war.\nThe campaign was carefully planned in advance: ten legions were concentrated in the Eastern theatre; since 111, the correspondence of Pliny the Younger witnesses to the fact that provincial authorities in Bithynia had to organize supplies for passing troops, and local city councils and their individual members had to shoulder part of the increased expenses by supplying troops themselves. The intended campaign, therefore, was immensely costly from its very beginning. Trajan marched first on Armenia, deposed the Parthian-appointed king, Parthamasiris (who was afterwards murdered while kept in the custody of Roman troops in an unclear incident, later described by Fronto as a breach of Roman good faith), and annexed it to the Roman Empire as a province, receiving in passing the acknowledgement of Roman hegemony by various tribes in the Caucasus and on the Eastern coast of the Black Sea\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a process that kept him busy until the end of 114. At the same time, a Roman column under the legate Lusius Quietus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0an outstanding cavalry general who had signalled himself during the Dacian Wars by commanding a unit from his native Mauretania\u00a0\u2013\u00a0crossed the Araxes river from Armenia into Media Atropatene and the land of the Mardians (present-day Ghilan). It is possible that Quietus' campaign had as its goal the extending of the newer, more defensible Roman border eastwards towards the Caspian Sea and northwards to the foothills of the Caucasus. This newer, more \"rational\" frontier, depended, however, on an increased, permanent Roman presence east of the Euphrates.\nThe chronology of subsequent events is uncertain, but it is generally believed that early in 115 Trajan launched a Mesopotamian campaign, marching down towards the Taurus mountains in order to consolidate territory between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. He placed permanent garrisons along the way to secure the territory. While Trajan moved from west to east, Lusius Quietus moved with his army from the Caspian Sea towards the west, both armies performing a successful pincer movement, whose apparent result was to establish a Roman presence into the Parthian Empire proper, with Trajan taking the northern Mesopotamian cities of Nisibis and Batnae and organizing a province of Mesopotamia, including the Kingdom of Osrhoene\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where King Abgar VII submitted to Trajan publicly\u00a0\u2013\u00a0as a Roman protectorate. This process seems to have been completed at the beginning of 116, when coins were issued announcing that Armenia and Mesopotamia had been put under the authority of the Roman people. The area between the Khabur River and the mountains around Singara seems to have been considered as the new frontier, and as such received a road surrounded by fortresses.\nAfter wintering in Antioch during 115/116 \u00a0\u2013\u00a0and, according to literary sources, barely escaping from a violent earthquake that claimed the life of one of the consuls, Marcus Pedo Virgilianus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Trajan again took to the field in 116, with a view to the conquest of the whole of Mesopotamia, an overambitious goal that eventually backfired on the results of his entire campaign. According to some modern historians, the aim of the campaign of 116 was to achieve a \"pre-emptive demonstration\" aiming not toward the conquest of Parthia, but for tighter Roman control over the Eastern trade route. However, the overall scarcity of manpower for the Roman military establishment meant that the campaign was doomed from the start. It is noteworthy that no new legions were raised by Trajan before the Parthian campaign, maybe because the sources of new citizen recruits were already over-exploited.\nAs far as the sources allow a description of this campaign, it seems that one Roman division crossed the Tigris into Adiabene, sweeping south and capturing Adenystrae; a second followed the river south, capturing Babylon; Trajan himself sailed down the Euphrates from Dura-Europos\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where a triumphal arch was erected in his honour\u00a0\u2013\u00a0through Ozogardana, where he erected a \"tribunal\" still to be seen at the time of Julian the Apostate's campaigns in the same area. Having come to the narrow strip of land between the Euphrates and the Tigris, he then dragged his fleet overland into the Tigris, capturing Seleucia and finally the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon. He continued southward to the Persian Gulf, when, after escaping with his fleet a tidal bore on the Tigris, he received the submission of Athambelus, the ruler of Charax. He declared Babylon a new province of the Empire and had his statue erected on the shore of the Persian Gulf, after which he sent the Senate a laurelled letter declaring the war to be at a close and bemoaning that he was too old to go on any further and repeat the conquests of Alexander the Great. Since Charax was a \"de facto\" independent kingdom whose connections to Palmyra were described above, Trajan's bid for the Persian Gulf may have coincided with Palmyrene interests in the region. Another hypothesis is that the rulers of Charax had expansionist designs on Parthian Babylon, giving them a rationale for alliance with Trajan. The Parthian city of Susa was apparently also occupied by the Romans.\nAccording to late literary sources (not backed by numismatic or inscriptional evidence) a province of Assyria was also proclaimed, apparently covering the territory of Adiabene. Some measures seem to have been considered regarding the fiscal administration of Indian trade\u00a0\u2013\u00a0or simply about the payment of customs (\"portoria\") on goods traded on the Euphrates and Tigris. It is possible that it was this \"streamlining\" of the administration of the newly conquered lands according to the standard pattern of Roman provincial administration in tax collecting, requisitions and the handling of local potentates' prerogatives, that triggered later resistance against Trajan. According to some modern historians, Trajan might have busied himself during his stay on the Persian Gulf with ordering raids on the Parthian coasts, as well as probing into extending Roman suzerainty over the mountaineer tribes holding the passes across the Zagros Mountains into the Iranian plateau eastward, as well as establishing some sort of direct contact between Rome and the Kushan Empire. No attempt was made to expand into the Iranian Plateau itself, where the Roman army, with its relative weakness in cavalry, would have been at a disadvantage.\nTrajan left the Persian Gulf for Babylon\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where he intended to offer sacrifice to Alexander in the house where he had died in 323BC\u00a0\u2013\u00a0 But a revolt led by Sanatruces, a nephew of the Parthian king Osroes I who had retained a cavalry force, possibly strengthened by the addition of Saka archers, imperilled Roman positions in Mesopotamia and Armenia. Trajan sought to deal with this by forsaking direct Roman rule in Parthia proper, at least partially. Trajan sent two armies towards Northern Mesopotamia: the first, under Lusius Quietus, recovered Nisibis and Edessa from the rebels, probably having King Abgarus deposed and killed in the process, with Quietus probably earning the right to receive the honors of a senator of praetorian rank (\"adlectus inter praetorios\"). The second army, however, under Appius Maximus Santra (probably a governor of Macedonia) was defeated and Santra killed.\nLater in 116, Trajan, with the assistance of Quietus and two other legates, Marcus Erucius Clarus and Tiberius Julius Alexander Julianus, defeated a Parthian army in a battle where Sanatruces was killed (possibly with the assistance of Osroes' son and Sanatruces' cousin, Parthamaspates, whom Trajan wooed successfully). After re-taking and burning Seleucia, Trajan then formally deposed Osroes, putting Parthamaspates on the throne as client ruler. This event was commemorated in a coin as the reduction of Parthia to client kingdom status: , \"a king is given to the Parthians\". That done, Trajan retreated north in order to retain what he could of the new provinces of Armenia\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where he had already accepted an armistice in exchange for surrendering part of the territory to Sanatruces' son Vologeses\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and Mesopotamia. It was at this point that Trajan's health started to fail him. The fortress city of Hatra, on the Tigris in his rear, continued to hold out against repeated Roman assaults. He was personally present at the siege, and it is possible that he suffered a heat stroke while in the blazing heat.\nDiaspora revolt.\nAbout this same time (AD 116\u2013117), Jews in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire\u2014Egypt, Cyprus, and Cyrene, which was likely the original trouble hotspot\u2014rebelled in what appears to have been an ethnic and religious uprising against the local populations, later known as the Diaspora Revolt. Additionally, Jewish communities in Northern Mesopotamia revolted, likely as part of a broader resistance against Roman occupation. Trajan had to withdraw his army to suppress these revolts, a move he considered a temporary setback. He never returned to command, delegating Eastern operations to Lusius Quietus, who was appointed governor of Judaea in early 117 and likely dealt with Jewish unrest there. Quietus discharged his commissions successfully, leading rabbinic sources to name the conflict in Judaea the \"Kitos War,\" with \"Kitus\" being a corruption of \"Quietus\". Whether or not the Diaspora revolt included Judea proper, or only the Jewish Eastern diaspora, remains doubtful in the absence of clear epigraphic and archaeological evidence. What is certain is that there was an increased Roman military presence in Judea at the time.\nQuietus was promised a consulate in the following year (118) for his victories, but he was killed before this could occur, during the bloody purge that opened Hadrian's reign, in which Quietus and three other former consuls were sentenced to death after being tried on a vague charge of conspiracy by the (secret) court of the Praetorian Prefect Attianus. It has been thought that Quietus and his colleagues were executed on Hadrian's direct orders, for fear of their popular standing with the army and their close connections to Trajan. In contrast, the next prominent Roman figure in charge of the repression of the Jewish revolt, the equestrian Quintus Marcius Turbo, who had dealt with the rebel leader from Cyrene, Loukuas, retained Hadrian's trust, eventually becoming his Praetorian Prefect. As all four consulars were senators of the highest standing and as such generally regarded as able to take imperial power (\"capaces imperii\"), Hadrian seems to have decided to forestall these prospective rivals.\nDeath and succession.\nEarly in 117, Trajan grew ill and set sail for Italy. His health declined throughout the spring and summer of 117, possibly acknowledged to the public by the display of a bronze portrait-bust at the public baths of Ancyra, showing an aged and emaciated man, though the identification with Trajan is disputed. He reached Selinus, where he suddenly died, shortly before 11 August. Trajan in person could have lawfully nominated Hadrian as his successor, but Dio claims that Trajan's wife, Pompeia Plotina, assured Hadrian's succession by keeping Trajan's death a secret, long enough for her to produce and sign a document attesting to Hadrian's adoption as son and successor. Dio, who tells this narrative, offers his father\u00a0\u2013\u00a0the governor of Cilicia Apronianus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0as a source, so his narrative may be based on contemporary rumour. It may also reflect male Roman displeasure that an empress\u00a0\u2013\u00a0let alone any woman\u00a0\u2013\u00a0 could presume to meddle in Rome's political affairs.\nHadrian held an ambiguous position during Trajan's reign. After commanding Legio I Minervia during the Dacian Wars, he had been relieved from front-line duties at the decisive stage of the Second Dacian War, being sent to govern the newly created province of Pannonia Inferior. He had pursued a senatorial career without particular distinction and had not been officially adopted by Trajan although he received from him decorations and other marks of distinction that made him hope for the succession. He received no post after his 108 consulate and no further honours other than being made Archon eponymos for Athens in 111/112. He probably did not take part in the Parthian War. Literary sources relate that Trajan had considered others, such as the jurist Lucius Neratius Priscus, as heir. Hadrian, who was eventually entrusted with the governorship of Syria at the time of Trajan's death, was Trajan's cousin and was married to Trajan's grandniece, which all made him as good as heir designate. Hadrian seems to have been well connected to the powerful and influential coterie of Spanish senators at Trajan's court, through his ties to Plotina and the Prefect Attianus. His refusal to sustain Trajan's senatorial and expansionist policy during his own reign may account for the \"crass hostility\" shown him by literary sources.\nHadrian's first major act as emperor was to abandon Mesopotamia as too costly and distant to defend, and to restore Armenia and Osrhoene to Parthian hegemony, under Rome's suzerainty. The Parthian campaign had been an enormous setback to Trajan's policy, proof that Rome had overstretched its capacity to sustain an ambitious program of conquest. According to the \"Historia Augusta\", Hadrian claimed to follow the precedent set by Cato the Elder towards the Macedonians, who \"were to be set free because they could not be protected\" \u2013 something Birley sees as an unconvincing precedent. Other territories conquered by Trajan were retained. According to a well-established historical tradition, Trajan's ashes were placed within the small cella that still survives at the base of Trajan's column. In some modern scholarship, his ashes were more likely interred near his column, in a mausoleum, temple or tomb built for his cult as a \"divus\" of the Roman state.\nLegacy.\nAncient sources on Trajan's personality and accomplishments are unanimously positive. Pliny the Younger, for example, celebrates Trajan in his panegyric as a wise and just emperor and a moral man. Cassius Dio added that he always remained dignified and fair. A third-century emperor, Decius, even received from the Senate the name Trajan as a decoration. In the Later Roman Empire, following the setbacks of the third century, Trajan, together with Augustus, became the paragon of the most positive traits of the Imperial order. Emperors in the 4th century were honoured by the Senate with the acclamation \"Felicior Augusto, Melior Traiano\" (\"May you be more fortunate than Augustus and better than Trajan\"). The fourth-century emperor Constantine I is credited with calling him a \"plant upon every wall\" for the many buildings bearing inscriptions with his name.\nIconography.\nAll Roman emperors until Trajan, except Nero who occasionally wore sideburns, were depicted clean-shaven, according to the fashion introduced among the Romans by Scipio Africanus (236\u00a0\u2013\u00a0183 BC). This Imperial fashion was changed by Trajan's successor Hadrian who made beards fashionable for emperors.\nAfter Rome.\nDuring the Middle Ages, some theologians such as Thomas Aquinas discussed Trajan as an example of a virtuous pagan. In the \"Divine Comedy\", Dante, following this legend, sees the spirit of Trajan in the Heaven of Jupiter with other historical and mythological persons noted for their justice. Also, a mural of Trajan stopping to provide justice for a poor widow is present in the first terrace of Purgatory as a lesson to those who are purged for being proud.\n<poem>\nI noticed that the inner bank of the curve...\nWas of white marble, and so decorated\nWith carvings that not only Polycletus\nBut nature herself would there be put to shame...\nThere was recorded the high glory\nOf that ruler of Rome whose worth\nMoved Gregory to his great victory;\nI mean by this the Emperor Trajan;\nAnd at his bridle a poor widow\nWhose attitude bespoke tears and grief...\nThe wretched woman, in the midst of all this,\nSeemed to be saying: 'Lord, avenge my son,\nWho is dead, so that my heart is broken..'\nSo he said: 'Now be comforted, for I must\nCarry out my duty before I go on:\nJustice requires it and pity holds me back.'\n\"Dante, The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio X, ll. 32 f. and 73 f.\"\n</poem>\nIn the Renaissance, Machiavelli, speaking on the advantages of adoptive succession over heredity, mentioned the five successive good emperors \"from Nerva to Marcus\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a trope out of which the 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon popularized the notion of the Five Good Emperors, of whom Trajan was the second.\nIn the 18th century, King Charles III of Spain commissioned Anton Raphael Mengs to paint \"The Triumph of Trajan\" on the ceiling of the banquet hall of the Royal Palace of Madrid\u00a0\u2013\u00a0considered among the best works of this artist.\nIt was only during the Enlightenment that this legacy began to be contested, when Edward Gibbon expressed doubts about the militarized character of Trajan's reign in contrast to the \"moderate\" practices of his immediate successors. Mommsen adopted a divided stance towards Trajan, at some point of his posthumously published lectures even speaking about his \"vainglory\" (\"Scheinglorie\"). Mommsen also speaks of Trajan's \"insatiable, unlimited lust for conquest\". Although Mommsen had no liking for Trajan's successor Hadrian\u00a0\u2013\u00a0\"a repellent manner, and a venomous, envious and malicious nature\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0he admitted that Hadrian, in renouncing Trajan's conquests, was \"doing what the situation clearly required\".\nIt was exactly this military character of Trajan's reign that attracted his early twentieth-century biographer, the Italian historian Roberto Paribeni, who in his 1927 two-volume biography \"Optimus Princeps\" described Trajan's reign as the acme of the Roman principate, which he saw as Italy's patrimony. Following in Paribeni's footsteps, the German historian Alfred Heuss saw in Trajan \"the accomplished human embodiment of the imperial title\" (\"die ideale Verk\u00f6rperung des humanen Kaiserbegriffs\"). Trajan's first English-language biography by Julian Bennett is also a positive one in that it assumes that Trajan was an active policy-maker concerned with the management of the empire as a whole\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something his reviewer Lendon considers an anachronistic outlook that sees in the Roman emperor a kind of modern administrator.\nDuring the 1980s, the Romanian historian Eugen Cizek took a more nuanced view as he described the changes in the \"personal\" ideology of Trajan's reign, stressing the fact that it became ever more autocratic and militarized, especially after 112 and towards the Parthian War (as \"only an universal monarch, a \"kosmocrator\", could dictate his law to the East\"). The biography by the German historian Karl Strobel stresses the continuity between Domitian's and Trajan's reigns, saying that Trajan's rule followed the same autocratic and sacred character as Domitian's, culminating in a failed Parthian adventure intended as the crown of his personal achievement. It is in modern French historiography that Trajan's reputation becomes most markedly deflated: Paul Petit writes about Trajan's portraits as a \"lowbrow boor with a taste for booze and boys\". For Paul Veyne, what is to be retained from Trajan's \"stylish\" qualities was that he was the last Roman emperor to think of the empire as a purely Italian and Rome-centred hegemony of conquest. In contrast, his successor Hadrian would stress the notion of the empire as ecumenical and of the emperor as universal benefactor and not \"kosmocrator\".\nIn Romanian culture.\nIn Romania, Trajan (Romanian: \"Traian\") is regarded as one of the founders of the Romanian nation and a historical figure of great importance to the Romanian people and culture. This is due to his orchestration of the Dacian Wars that led to the foundation of the Daco-Roman culture and the Latin-based Romanian language. The creation of Roman Dacia is therefore seen in the country as the ethnogenesis of the Romanian nation.\nIn Jewish legend.\nIn the Jewish homiletical works, such as \"Esther Rabbah\", Trajan is described with the epitaph \"may his bones be crushed\" (). The same epitaph is also used for Hadrian.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "25507": "Roman Empire\nTerritory ruled by Rome and period of Roman history\nThe Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Romans conquered most of this during the Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of effective sole rule in 27\u00a0BC. The western empire collapsed in 476\u00a0AD, but the eastern empire lasted until the fall of Constantinople in 1453.\nBy 100\u00a0BC, the city of Rome had expanded its rule from the Italian peninsula to most of the Mediterranean and beyond. However, it was severely destabilised by civil wars and political conflicts, which culminated in the victory of Octavian over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31\u00a0BC, and the subsequent conquest of the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt. In 27\u00a0BC, the Roman Senate granted Octavian overarching military power () and the new title of \"Augustus\", marking his accession as the first Roman emperor. The vast Roman territories were organized into senatorial provinces, governed by proconsuls who were appointed by lot annually, and imperial provinces, which belonged to the emperor but were governed by legates.\nThe first two centuries of the Empire saw a period of unprecedented stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana (lit.\u2009'Roman Peace'). Rome reached its greatest territorial extent under Trajan (r.\u200998\u00a0\u2013\u00a0117\u00a0AD), but a period of increasing trouble and decline began under Commodus (r.\u2009180\u00a0\u2013\u00a0192). In the 3rd century, the Empire underwent a 49-year crisis that threatened its existence due to civil war, plagues and barbarian invasions. The Gallic and Palmyrene empires broke away from the state and a series of short-lived emperors led the Empire, which was later reunified under Aurelian (r.\u2009270\u00a0\u2013\u00a0275). The civil wars ended with the victory of Diocletian (r.\u2009284\u00a0\u2013\u00a0305), who set up two different imperial courts in the Greek East and Latin West. Constantine the Great (r.\u2009306\u00a0\u2013\u00a0337), the first Christian emperor, moved the imperial seat from Rome to Byzantium in 330, and renamed it Constantinople. The Migration Period, involving large invasions by Germanic peoples and by the Huns of Attila, led to the decline of the Western Roman Empire. With the fall of Ravenna to the Germanic Herulians and the deposition of Romulus Augustus in 476 by Odoacer, the Western Empire finally collapsed. The Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire survived for another millennium with Constantinople as its sole capital, until the city's fall in 1453.\nDue to the Empire's extent and endurance, its institutions and culture had a lasting influence on the development of language, religion, art, architecture, literature, philosophy, law, and forms of government across its territories. Latin evolved into the Romance languages while Medieval Greek became the language of the East. The Empire's adoption of Christianity resulted in the formation of medieval Christendom. Roman and Greek art had a profound impact on the Italian Renaissance. Rome's architectural tradition served as the basis for Romanesque, Renaissance and Neoclassical architecture, influencing Islamic architecture. The rediscovery of classical science and technology (which formed the basis for Islamic science) in medieval Europe contributed to the Scientific Renaissance and Scientific Revolution. Many modern legal systems, such as the Napoleonic Code, descend from Roman law. Rome's republican institutions have influenced the Italian city-state republics of the medieval period, the early United States, and modern democratic republics.\nHistory.\nTransition from Republic to Empire.\nRome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the Roman Republic in the 6th century BC, though not outside the Italian Peninsula until the 3rd century BC. Thus, it was an \"empire\" (a great power) long before it had an emperor. The Republic was not a nation-state in the modern sense, but a network of self-ruled towns (with varying degrees of independence from the Senate) and provinces administered by military commanders. It was governed by annually elected magistrates (Roman consuls above all) in conjunction with the Senate. The 1st century BC was a time of political and military upheaval, which ultimately led to rule by emperors. The consuls' military power rested in the Roman legal concept of \"imperium\", meaning \"command\" (typically in a military sense). Occasionally, successful consuls or generals were given the honorary title \"imperator\" (commander); this is the origin of the word \"emperor\", since this title was always bestowed to the early emperors.\nRome suffered a long series of internal conflicts, conspiracies, and civil wars from the late second century BC (see Crisis of the Roman Republic) while greatly extending its power beyond Italy. In 44 BC Julius Caesar was briefly perpetual dictator before being assassinated by a faction that opposed his concentration of power. This faction was driven from Rome and defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC by Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son Octavian. Antony and Octavian divided the Roman world between them, but this did not last long. Octavian's forces defeated those of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. In 27 BC the Senate gave him the title \"Augustus\" (\"venerated\") and made him \"princeps\" (\"foremost\") with proconsular \"imperium\", thus beginning the Principate, the first epoch of Roman imperial history. Although the republic stood in name, Augustus had all meaningful authority. During his 40-year rule, a new constitutional order emerged so that, upon his death, Tiberius would succeed him as the new \"de facto\" monarch.\n\"Pax Romana\".\nThe 200 years that began with Augustus's rule is traditionally regarded as the \"Pax Romana\" (\"Roman Peace\"). The cohesion of the empire was furthered by a degree of social stability and economic prosperity that Rome had never before experienced. Uprisings in the provinces were infrequent and put down \"mercilessly and swiftly\". The success of Augustus in establishing principles of dynastic succession was limited by his outliving a number of talented potential heirs. The Julio-Claudian dynasty lasted for four more emperors\u2014Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero\u2014before it yielded in 69 AD to the strife-torn Year of the Four Emperors, from which Vespasian emerged as the victor. Vespasian became the founder of the brief Flavian dynasty, followed by the Nerva\u2013Antonine dynasty which produced the \"Five Good Emperors\": Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius.\nTransition from classical to late antiquity.\nIn the view of contemporary Greek historian Cassius Dio, the accession of Commodus in 180 marked the descent \"from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron\", a comment which has led some historians, notably Edward Gibbon, to take Commodus' reign as the beginning of the Empire's decline.\nIn 212, during the reign of Caracalla, Roman citizenship was granted to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. The Severan dynasty was tumultuous; an emperor's reign was ended routinely by his murder or execution and, following its collapse, the Empire was engulfed by the Crisis of the Third Century, a period of invasions, civil strife, economic disorder, and plague. In defining historical epochs, this crisis sometimes marks the transition from Classical to Late Antiquity. Aurelian (r.\u2009270\u00a0\u2013\u00a0275) stabilised the empire militarily and Diocletian reorganised and restored much of it in 285. Diocletian's reign brought the empire's most concerted effort against the perceived threat of Christianity, the \"Great Persecution\".\nDiocletian divided the empire into four regions, each ruled by a separate tetrarch. Confident that he fixed the disorder plaguing Rome, he abdicated along with his co-emperor, but the Tetrarchy collapsed shortly after. Order was eventually restored by Constantine the Great, who became the first emperor to convert to Christianity, and who established Constantinople as the new capital of the Eastern Empire. During the decades of the Constantinian and Valentinian dynasties, the empire was divided along an east\u2013west axis, with dual power centres in Constantinople and Rome. Julian, who under the influence of his adviser Mardonius attempted to restore Classical Roman and Hellenistic religion, only briefly interrupted the succession of Christian emperors. Theodosius I, the last emperor to rule over both East and West, died in 395 after making Christianity the state religion.\nFall in the West and survival in the East.\nThe Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate in the early 5th century. The Romans fought off all invaders, most famously Attila, but the empire had assimilated so many Germanic peoples of dubious loyalty to Rome that the empire started to dismember itself. Most chronologies place the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476, when Romulus Augustulus was forced to abdicate to the Germanic warlord Odoacer.\nOdoacer ended the Western Empire by declaring Zeno sole emperor and placing himself as Zeno's nominal subordinate. In reality, Italy was ruled by Odoacer alone. The Eastern Roman Empire, called the Byzantine Empire by later historians, continued until the reign of Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Roman emperor. He died in battle in 1453 against Mehmed II and his Ottoman forces during the siege of Constantinople. Mehmed II adopted the title of \"caesar\" in an attempt to claim a connection to the former Empire. His claim was soon recognized by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, but not by European monarchs.\nGeography and demography.\nThe Roman Empire was one of the largest in history, with contiguous territories throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The Latin phrase \"imperium sine fine\" (\"empire without end\") expressed the ideology that neither time nor space limited the Empire. In Virgil's \"Aeneid\", limitless empire is said to be granted to the Romans by Jupiter. This claim of universal dominion was renewed when the Empire came under Christian rule in the 4th century. In addition to annexing large regions, the Romans directly altered their geography, for example cutting down entire forests.\nRoman expansion was mostly accomplished under the Republic, though parts of northern Europe were conquered in the 1st century, when Roman control in Europe, Africa, and Asia was strengthened. Under Augustus, a \"global map of the known world\" was displayed for the first time in public at Rome, coinciding with the creation of the most comprehensive political geography that survives from antiquity, the \"Geography\" of Strabo. When Augustus died, the account of his achievements (\"Res Gestae\") prominently featured the geographical cataloguing of the Empire. Geography alongside meticulous written records were central concerns of Roman Imperial administration.\nThe Empire reached its largest expanse under Trajan (r.\u200998\u00a0\u2013\u00a0117), encompassing 5 million km2. The traditional population estimate of 55\u201360 million inhabitants accounted for between one-sixth and one-fourth of the world's total population and made it the most populous unified political entity in the West until the mid-19th century. Recent demographic studies have argued for a population peak from 70 million to more than 100 million. Each of the three largest cities in the Empire\u2014Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch\u2014was almost twice the size of any European city at the beginning of the 17th century.\nAs the historian Christopher Kelly described it:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Then the empire stretched from Hadrian's Wall in drizzle-soaked northern England to the sun-baked banks of the Euphrates in Syria; from the great Rhine\u2013Danube river system, which snaked across the fertile, flat lands of Europe from the Low Countries to the Black Sea, to the rich plains of the North African coast and the luxuriant gash of the Nile Valley in Egypt. The empire completely circled the Mediterranean\u00a0... referred to by its conquerors as \"mare nostrum\"\u2014'our sea'.\nTrajan's successor Hadrian adopted a policy of maintaining rather than expanding the empire. Borders (\"fines\") were marked, and the frontiers (\"limites\") patrolled. The most heavily fortified borders were the most unstable. Hadrian's Wall, which separated the Roman world from what was perceived as an ever-present barbarian threat, is the primary surviving monument of this effort.\nLanguages.\nLatin and Greek were the main languages of the Empire, but the Empire was deliberately multilingual. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill says \"The main desire of the Roman government was to make itself understood\". At the start of the Empire, knowledge of Greek was useful to pass as educated nobility and knowledge of Latin was useful for a career in the military, government, or law. Bilingual inscriptions indicate the everyday interpenetration of the two languages.\nLatin and Greek's mutual linguistic and cultural influence is a complex topic. Latin words incorporated into Greek were very common by the early imperial era, especially for military, administration, and trade and commerce matters. Greek grammar, literature, poetry and philosophy shaped Latin language and culture.\nThere was never a legal requirement for Latin in the Empire, but it represented a certain status. High standards of Latin, \"Latinitas\", started with the advent of Latin literature. Due to the flexible language policy of the Empire, a natural competition of language emerged that spurred \"Latinitas\", to defend Latin against the stronger cultural influence of Greek. Over time Latin usage was used to project power and a higher social class. Most of the emperors were bilingual but had a preference for Latin in the public sphere for political reasons, a \"rule\" that first started during the Punic Wars. Different emperors up until Justinian would attempt to require the use of Latin in various sections of the administration but there is no evidence that a linguistic imperialism existed during the early Empire.\nAfter all freeborn inhabitants were universally enfranchised in 212, many Roman citizens would have lacked a knowledge of Latin. The wide use of Koine Greek was what enabled the spread of Christianity and reflects its role as the lingua franca of the Mediterranean during the time of the Empire. Following Diocletian's reforms in the 3rd century CE, there was a decline in the knowledge of Greek in the west. Spoken Latin later fragmented into the incipient romance languages in the 7th century CE following the collapse of the Empire's west.\nThe dominance of Latin and Greek among the literate elite obscure the continuity of other spoken languages within the Empire. Latin, referred to in its spoken form as Vulgar Latin, gradually replaced Celtic and Italic languages. References to interpreters indicate the continuing use of local languages, particularly in Egypt with Coptic, and in military settings along the Rhine and Danube. Roman jurists also show a concern for local languages such as Punic, Gaulish, and Aramaic in assuring the correct understanding of laws and oaths. In Africa, Libyco-Berber and Punic were used in inscriptions into the 2nd century. In Syria, Palmyrene soldiers used their dialect of Aramaic for inscriptions, an exception to the rule that Latin was the language of the military. The last reference to Gaulish was between 560 and 575. The emergent Gallo-Romance languages would then be shaped by Gaulish. Proto-Basque or Aquitanian evolved with Latin loan words to modern Basque. The Thracian language, as were several now-extinct languages in Anatolia, are attested in Imperial-era inscriptions.\nSociety.\nThe Empire was remarkably multicultural, with \"astonishing cohesive capacity\" to create shared identity while encompassing diverse peoples. Public monuments and communal spaces open to all\u2014such as forums, amphitheatres, racetracks and baths\u2014helped foster a sense of \"Romanness\".\nRoman society had multiple, overlapping social hierarchies. The civil war preceding Augustus caused upheaval, but did not effect an immediate redistribution of wealth and social power. From the perspective of the lower classes, a peak was merely added to the social pyramid. Personal relationships\u2014patronage, friendship (\"amicitia\"), family, marriage\u2014continued to influence politics. By the time of Nero, however, it was not unusual to find a former slave who was richer than a freeborn citizen, or an equestrian who exercised greater power than a senator.\nThe blurring of the Republic's more rigid hierarchies led to increased social mobility, both upward and downward, to a greater extent than all other well-documented ancient societies. Women, freedmen, and slaves had opportunities to profit and exercise influence in ways previously less available to them. Social life, particularly for those whose personal resources were limited, was further fostered by a proliferation of voluntary associations and confraternities (\"collegia\" and \"sodalitates\"): professional and trade guilds, veterans' groups, religious sodalities, drinking and dining clubs, performing troupes, and burial societies.\nLegal status.\nAccording to the jurist Gaius, the essential distinction in the Roman \"law of persons\" was that all humans were either free (\"liberi\") or slaves (\"servi\"). The legal status of free persons was further defined by their citizenship. Most citizens held limited rights (such as the \"ius Latinum\", \"Latin right\"), but were entitled to legal protections and privileges not enjoyed by non-citizens. Free people not considered citizens, but living within the Roman world, were \"peregrini\", non-Romans. In 212, the \"Constitutio Antoniniana\" extended citizenship to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. This legal egalitarianism required a far-reaching revision of existing laws that distinguished between citizens and non-citizens.\nWomen in Roman law.\nFreeborn Roman women were considered citizens, but did not vote, hold political office, or serve in the military. A mother's citizen status determined that of her children, as indicated by the phrase \"ex duobus civibus Romanis natos\" (\"children born of two Roman citizens\"). A Roman woman kept her own family name (\"nomen\") for life. Children most often took the father's name, with some exceptions. Women could own property, enter contracts, and engage in business. Inscriptions throughout the Empire honour women as benefactors in funding public works, an indication they could hold considerable fortunes.\nThe archaic \"manus\" marriage in which the woman was subject to her husband's authority was largely abandoned by the Imperial era, and a married woman retained ownership of any property she brought into the marriage. Technically she remained under her father's legal authority, even though she moved into her husband's home, but when her father died she became legally emancipated. This arrangement was a factor in the degree of independence Roman women enjoyed compared to many other cultures up to the modern period: although she had to answer to her father in legal matters, she was free of his direct scrutiny in daily life, and her husband had no legal power over her. Although it was a point of pride to be a \"one-man woman\" (\"univira\") who had married only once, there was little stigma attached to divorce, nor to speedy remarriage after being widowed or divorced. Girls had equal inheritance rights with boys if their father died without leaving a will. A mother's right to own and dispose of property, including setting the terms of her will, gave her enormous influence over her sons into adulthood.\nAs part of the Augustan programme to restore traditional morality and social order, moral legislation attempted to regulate conduct as a means of promoting \"family values\". Adultery was criminalized, and defined broadly as an illicit sex act (\"stuprum\") between a male citizen and a married woman, or between a married woman and any man other than her husband. That is, a double standard was in place: a married woman could have sex only with her husband, but a married man did not commit adultery if he had sex with a prostitute or person of marginalized status. Childbearing was encouraged: a woman who had given birth to three children was granted symbolic honours and greater legal freedom (the \"ius trium liberorum\").\nSlaves and the law.\nAt the time of Augustus, as many as 35% of the people in Roman Italy were slaves, making Rome one of five historical \"slave societies\" in which slaves constituted at least a fifth of the population and played a major role in the economy. Slavery was a complex institution that supported traditional Roman social structures as well as contributing economic utility. In urban settings, slaves might be professionals such as teachers, physicians, chefs, and accountants; the majority of slaves provided trained or unskilled labour. Agriculture and industry, such as milling and mining, relied on the exploitation of slaves. Outside Italy, slaves were on average an estimated 10 to 20% of the population, sparse in Roman Egypt but more concentrated in some Greek areas. Expanding Roman ownership of arable land and industries affected preexisting practices of slavery in the provinces. Although slavery has often been regarded as waning in the 3rd and 4th centuries, it remained an integral part of Roman society until gradually ceasing in the 6th and 7th centuries with the disintegration of the complex Imperial economy.\nLaws pertaining to slavery were \"extremely intricate\". Slaves were considered property and had no legal personhood. They could be subjected to forms of corporal punishment not normally exercised on citizens, sexual exploitation, torture, and summary execution. A slave could not as a matter of law be raped; a slave's rapist had to be prosecuted by the owner for property damage under the Aquilian Law. Slaves had no right to the form of legal marriage called \"conubium\", but their unions were sometimes recognized. Technically, a slave could not own property, but a slave who conducted business might be given access to an individual fund (\"peculium\") that he could use, depending on the degree of trust and co-operation between owner and slave. Within a household or workplace, a hierarchy of slaves might exist, with one slave acting as the master of others. Talented slaves might accumulate a large enough \"peculium\" to justify their freedom, or be manumitted for services rendered. Manumission had become frequent enough that in 2 BC a law (\"Lex Fufia Caninia\") limited the number of slaves an owner was allowed to free in his will.\nFollowing the Servile Wars of the Republic, legislation under Augustus and his successors shows a driving concern for controlling the threat of rebellions through limiting the size of work groups, and for hunting down fugitive slaves. Over time slaves gained increased legal protection, including the right to file complaints against their masters. A bill of sale might contain a clause stipulating that the slave could not be employed for prostitution, as prostitutes in ancient Rome were often slaves. The burgeoning trade in eunuchs in the late 1st century prompted legislation that prohibited the castration of a slave against his will \"for lust or gain\".\nRoman slavery was not based on race. Generally, slaves in Italy were indigenous Italians, with a minority of foreigners (including both slaves and freedmen) estimated at 5% of the total in the capital at its peak, where their number was largest. Foreign slaves had higher mortality and lower birth rates than natives and were sometimes even subjected to mass expulsions. The average recorded age at death for the slaves of the city of Rome was seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females).\nDuring the period of republican expansionism when slavery had become pervasive, war captives were a main source of slaves. The range of ethnicities among slaves to some extent reflected that of the armies Rome defeated in war, and the conquest of Greece brought a number of highly skilled and educated slaves. Slaves were also traded in markets and sometimes sold by pirates. Infant abandonment and self-enslavement among the poor were other sources. \"Vernae\", by contrast, were \"homegrown\" slaves born to female slaves within the household, estate or farm. Although they had no special legal status, an owner who mistreated or failed to care for his \"vernae\" faced social disapproval, as they were considered part of the family household and in some cases might actually be the children of free males in the family.\nFreedmen.\nRome differed from Greek city-states in allowing freed slaves to become citizens; any future children of a freedman were born free, with full rights of citizenship. After manumission, a slave who had belonged to a Roman citizen enjoyed active political freedom (\"libertas\"), including the right to vote. His former master became his patron (\"patronus\"): the two continued to have customary and legal obligations to each other. A freedman was not entitled to hold public office or the highest state priesthoods, but could play a priestly role. He could not marry a woman from a senatorial family, nor achieve legitimate senatorial rank himself, but during the early Empire, freedmen held key positions in the government bureaucracy, so much so that Hadrian limited their participation by law. The rise of successful freedmen\u2014through political influence or wealth\u2014is a characteristic of early Imperial society. The prosperity of a high-achieving group of freedmen is attested by .\nCensus rank.\nThe Latin word \"ordo\" (plural \"ordines\") is translated variously and inexactly into English as \"class, order, rank\". One purpose of the Roman census was to determine the \"ordo\" to which an individual belonged. Two of the highest \"ordines\" in Rome were the senatorial and equestrian. Outside Rome, cities or colonies were led by decurions, also known as \"curiales.\"\n\"Senator\" was not itself an elected office in ancient Rome; an individual gained admission to the Senate after he had been elected to and served at least one term as an executive magistrate. A senator also had to meet a minimum property requirement of 1 million \"sestertii\". Not all men who qualified for the \"ordo senatorius\" chose to take a Senate seat, which required legal domicile at Rome. Emperors often filled vacancies in the 600-member body by appointment. A senator's son belonged to the \"ordo senatorius\", but he had to qualify on his own merits for admission to the Senate. A senator could be removed for violating moral standards.\nIn the time of Nero, senators were still primarily from Italy, with some from the Iberian peninsula and southern France; men from the Greek-speaking provinces of the East began to be added under Vespasian. The first senator from the easternmost province, Cappadocia, was admitted under Marcus Aurelius. By the Severan dynasty (193\u2013235), Italians made up less than half the Senate. During the 3rd century, domicile at Rome became impractical, and inscriptions attest to senators who were active in politics and munificence in their homeland (\"patria\").\nSenators were the traditional governing class who rose through the \"cursus honorum\", the political career track, but equestrians often possessed greater wealth and political power. Membership in the equestrian order was based on property; in Rome's early days, \"equites\" or knights had been distinguished by their ability to serve as mounted warriors, but cavalry service was a separate function in the Empire. A census valuation of 400,000 sesterces and three generations of free birth qualified a man as an equestrian. The census of 28 BC uncovered large numbers of men who qualified, and in 14 AD, a thousand equestrians were registered at C\u00e1diz and Padua alone. Equestrians rose through a military career track (\"tres militiae\") to become highly placed prefects and procurators within the Imperial administration.\nThe rise of provincial men to the senatorial and equestrian orders is an aspect of social mobility in the early Empire. Roman aristocracy was based on competition, and unlike later European nobility, a Roman family could not maintain its position merely through hereditary succession or having title to lands. Admission to the higher \"ordines\" brought distinction and privileges, but also responsibilities. In antiquity, a city depended on its leading citizens to fund public works, events, and services (\"munera\"). Maintaining one's rank required massive personal expenditures. Decurions were so vital for the functioning of cities that in the later Empire, as the ranks of the town councils became depleted, those who had risen to the Senate were encouraged to return to their hometowns, in an effort to sustain civic life.\nIn the later Empire, the \"dignitas\" (\"worth, esteem\") that attended on senatorial or equestrian rank was refined further with titles such as \"vir illustris\" (\"illustrious man\"). The appellation \"clarissimus\" (Greek \"lamprotatos\") was used to designate the \"dignitas\" of certain senators and their immediate family, including women. \"Grades\" of equestrian status proliferated.\nUnequal justice.\nAs the republican principle of citizens' equality under the law faded, the symbolic and social privileges of the upper classes led to an informal division of Roman society into those who had acquired greater honours (\"honestiores\") and humbler folk (\"humiliores\"). In general, \"honestiores\" were the members of the three higher \"orders\", along with certain military officers. The granting of universal citizenship in 212 seems to have increased the competitive urge among the upper classes to have their superiority affirmed, particularly within the justice system. Sentencing depended on the judgment of the presiding official as to the relative \"worth\" (\"dignitas\") of the defendant: an \"honestior\" could pay a fine for a crime for which an \"humilior\" might receive a scourging.\nExecution, which was an infrequent legal penalty for free men under the Republic, could be quick and relatively painless for \"honestiores\", while \"humiliores\" might suffer the kinds of torturous death previously reserved for slaves, such as crucifixion and condemnation to the beasts. In the early Empire, those who converted to Christianity could lose their standing as \"honestiores\", especially if they declined to fulfil religious responsibilities, and thus became subject to punishments that created the conditions of martyrdom.\nGovernment and military.\nThe three major elements of the Imperial state were the central government, the military, and the provincial government. The military established control of a territory through war, but after a city or people was brought under treaty, the mission turned to policing: protecting Roman citizens, agricultural fields, and religious sites. The Romans lacked sufficient manpower or resources to rule through force alone. Cooperation with local elites was necessary to maintain order, collect information, and extract revenue. The Romans often exploited internal political divisions.\nCommunities with demonstrated loyalty to Rome retained their own laws, could collect their own taxes locally, and in exceptional cases were exempt from Roman taxation. Legal privileges and relative independence incentivized compliance. Roman government was thus limited, but efficient in its use of available resources.\nCentral government.\nThe Imperial cult of ancient Rome identified emperors and some members of their families with divinely sanctioned authority (\"auctoritas\"). The rite of apotheosis (also called \"consecratio\") signified the deceased emperor's deification. The dominance of the emperor was based on the consolidation of powers from several republican offices. The emperor made himself the central religious authority as \"pontifex maximus\", and centralized the right to declare war, ratify treaties, and negotiate with foreign leaders. While these functions were clearly defined during the Principate, the emperor's powers over time became less constitutional and more monarchical, culminating in the Dominate.\nThe emperor was the ultimate authority in policy- and decision-making, but in the early Principate, he was expected to be accessible and deal personally with official business and petitions. A bureaucracy formed around him only gradually. The Julio-Claudian emperors relied on an informal body of advisors that included not only senators and equestrians, but trusted slaves and freedmen. After Nero, the influence of the latter was regarded with suspicion, and the emperor's council (\"consilium\") became subject to official appointment for greater transparency. Though the Senate took a lead in policy discussions until the end of the Antonine dynasty, equestrians played an increasingly important role in the \"consilium\". The women of the emperor's family often intervened directly in his decisions.\nAccess to the emperor might be gained at the daily reception (\"salutatio\"), a development of the traditional homage a client paid to his patron; public banquets hosted at the palace; and religious ceremonies. The common people who lacked this access could manifest their approval or displeasure as a group at games. By the 4th century, the Christian emperors became remote figureheads who issued general rulings, no longer responding to individual petitions. Although the Senate could do little short of assassination and open rebellion to contravene the will of the emperor, it retained its symbolic political centrality. The Senate legitimated the emperor's rule, and the emperor employed senators as legates (\"legati\"): generals, diplomats, and administrators.\nThe practical source of an emperor's power and authority was the military. The legionaries were paid by the Imperial treasury, and swore an annual oath of loyalty to the emperor. Most emperors chose a successor, usually a close family member or adopted heir. The new emperor had to seek a swift acknowledgement of his status and authority to stabilize the political landscape. No emperor could hope to survive without the allegiance of the Praetorian Guard and the legions. To secure their loyalty, several emperors paid the \"donativum\", a monetary reward. In theory, the Senate was entitled to choose the new emperor, but did so mindful of acclamation by the army or Praetorians.\nMilitary.\nAfter the Punic Wars, the Roman army comprised professional soldiers who volunteered for 20 years of active duty and five as reserves. The transition to a professional military began during the late Republic and was one of the many profound shifts away from republicanism, under which an army of conscript citizens defended the homeland against a specific threat. The Romans expanded their war machine by \"organizing the communities that they conquered in Italy into a system that generated huge reservoirs of manpower for their army\". By Imperial times, military service was a full-time career. The pervasiveness of military garrisons throughout the Empire was a major influence in the process of Romanization.\nThe primary mission of the military of the early empire was to preserve the Pax Romana. The three major divisions of the military were:\nThrough his military reforms, which included consolidating or disbanding units of questionable loyalty, Augustus regularized the legion. A legion was organized into ten cohorts, each of which comprised six centuries, with a century further made up of ten squads (\"contubernia\"); the exact size of the Imperial legion, which was likely determined by logistics, has been estimated to range from 4,800 to 5,280. After Germanic tribes wiped out three legions in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, the number of legions was increased from 25 to around 30. The army had about 300,000 soldiers in the 1st century, and under 400,000 in the 2nd, \"significantly smaller\" than the collective armed forces of the conquered territories. No more than 2% of adult males living in the Empire served in the Imperial army. Augustus also created the Praetorian Guard: nine cohorts, ostensibly to maintain the public peace, which were garrisoned in Italy. Better paid than the legionaries, the Praetorians served only sixteen years.\nThe \"auxilia\" were recruited from among the non-citizens. Organized in smaller units of roughly cohort strength, they were paid less than the legionaries, and after 25 years of service were rewarded with Roman citizenship, also extended to their sons. According to Tacitus there were roughly as many auxiliaries as there were legionaries\u2014thus, around 125,000 men, implying approximately 250 auxiliary regiments. The Roman cavalry of the earliest Empire were primarily from Celtic, Hispanic or Germanic areas. Several aspects of training and equipment derived from the Celts.\nThe Roman navy not only aided in the supply and transport of the legions but also in the protection of the frontiers along the rivers Rhine and Danube. Another duty was protecting maritime trade against pirates. It patrolled the Mediterranean, parts of the North Atlantic coasts, and the Black Sea. Nevertheless, the army was considered the senior and more prestigious branch.\nProvincial government.\nAn annexed territory became a Roman province in three steps: making a register of cities, taking a census, and surveying the land. Further government recordkeeping included births and deaths, real estate transactions, taxes, and juridical proceedings. In the 1st and 2nd centuries, the central government sent out around 160 officials annually to govern outside Italy. Among these officials were the Roman governors: magistrates elected at Rome who in the name of the Roman people governed senatorial provinces; or governors, usually of equestrian rank, who held their \"imperium\" on behalf of the emperor in imperial provinces, most notably Roman Egypt. A governor had to make himself accessible to the people he governed, but he could delegate various duties. His staff, however, was minimal: his official attendants (\"apparitores\"), including lictors, heralds, messengers, scribes, and bodyguards; legates, both civil and military, usually of equestrian rank; and friends who accompanied him unofficially.\nOther officials were appointed as supervisors of government finances. Separating fiscal responsibility from justice and administration was a reform of the Imperial era, to avoid provincial governors and tax farmers exploiting local populations for personal gain. Equestrian procurators, whose authority was originally \"extra-judicial and extra-constitutional\", managed both state-owned property and the personal property of the emperor (\"res privata\"). Because Roman government officials were few, a provincial who needed help with a legal dispute or criminal case might seek out any Roman perceived to have some official capacity.\nIn the High Empire, Italy was legally distinguished from the provinces, and along with some favored provincial communities, enjoyed immunity from the property tax and poll tax. However, under the Emperor Diocletian, Italy lost these privileges and was subdivided into provinces.\nLaw.\nRoman courts held original jurisdiction over cases involving Roman citizens throughout the empire, but there were too few judicial functionaries to impose Roman law uniformly in the provinces. Most parts of the Eastern Empire already had well-established law codes and juridical procedures. Generally, it was Roman policy to respect the \"mos regionis\" (\"regional tradition\" or \"law of the land\") and to regard local laws as a source of legal precedent and social stability. The compatibility of Roman and local law was thought to reflect an underlying \"ius gentium\", the \"law of nations\" or international law regarded as common and customary. If provincial law conflicted with Roman law or custom, Roman courts heard appeals, and the emperor held final decision-making authority.\nIn the West, law had been administered on a highly localized or tribal basis, and private property rights may have been a novelty of the Roman era, particularly among Celts. Roman law facilitated the acquisition of wealth by a pro-Roman elite. The extension of universal citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Empire in 212 required the uniform application of Roman law, replacing local law codes that had applied to non-citizens. Diocletian's efforts to stabilize the Empire after the Crisis of the Third Century included two major compilations of law in four years, the \"Codex Gregorianus\" and the \"Codex Hermogenianus\", to guide provincial administrators in setting consistent legal standards.\nThe pervasiveness of Roman law throughout Western Europe enormously influenced the Western legal tradition, reflected by continued use of Latin legal terminology in modern law.\nTaxation.\nTaxation under the Empire amounted to about 5% of its gross product. The typical tax rate for individuals ranged from 2 to 5%. The tax code was \"bewildering\" in its complicated system of direct and indirect taxes, some paid in cash and some in kind. Taxes might be specific to a province, or kinds of properties such as fisheries; they might be temporary. Tax collection was justified by the need to maintain the military, and taxpayers sometimes got a refund if the army captured a surplus of booty. In-kind taxes were accepted from less-monetized areas, particularly those who could supply grain or goods to army camps.\nThe primary source of direct tax revenue was individuals, who paid a poll tax and a tax on their land, construed as a tax on its produce or productive capacity. Tax obligations were determined by the census: each head of household provided a headcount of his household, as well as an accounting of his property. A major source of indirect-tax revenue was the \"portoria\", customs and tolls on trade, including among provinces. Towards the end of his reign, Augustus instituted a 4% tax on the sale of slaves, which Nero shifted from the purchaser to the dealers, who responded by raising their prices. An owner who manumitted a slave paid a \"freedom tax\", calculated at 5% of value. An inheritance tax of 5% was assessed when Roman citizens above a certain net worth left property to anyone outside their immediate family. Revenues from the estate tax and from an auction tax went towards the veterans' pension fund (\"aerarium militare\").\nLow taxes helped the Roman aristocracy increase their wealth, which equalled or exceeded the revenues of the central government. An emperor sometimes replenished his treasury by confiscating the estates of the \"super-rich\", but in the later period, the resistance of the wealthy to paying taxes was one of the factors contributing to the collapse of the Empire.\nEconomy.\nThe Empire is best thought of as a network of regional economies, based on a form of \"political capitalism\" in which the state regulated commerce to assure its own revenues. Economic growth, though not comparable to modern economies, was greater than that of most other societies prior to industrialization. Territorial conquests permitted a large-scale reorganization of land use that resulted in agricultural surplus and specialization, particularly in north Africa. Some cities were known for particular industries. The scale of urban building indicates a significant construction industry. Papyri preserve complex accounting methods that suggest elements of economic rationalism, and the Empire was highly monetized. Although the means of communication and transport were limited in antiquity, transportation in the 1st and 2nd centuries expanded greatly, and trade routes connected regional economies. The supply contracts for the army drew on local suppliers near the base (\"castrum\"), throughout the province, and across provincial borders.\nEconomic historians vary in their calculations of the gross domestic product during the Principate. In the sample years of 14, 100, and 150 AD, estimates of per capita GDP range from 166 to 380 \"HS\". The GDP per capita of Italy is estimated as 40 to 66% higher than in the rest of the Empire, due to tax transfers from the provinces and the concentration of elite income.\nEconomic dynamism resulted in social mobility. Although aristocratic values permeated traditional elite society, wealth requirements for rank indicate a strong tendency towards plutocracy. Prestige could be obtained through investing one's wealth in grand estates or townhouses, luxury items, public entertainments, funerary monuments, and religious dedications. Guilds (\"collegia\") and corporations (\"corpora\") provided support for individuals to succeed through networking. \"There can be little doubt that the lower classes of ... provincial towns of the Roman Empire enjoyed a high standard of living not equaled again in Western Europe until the 19th century\". Households in the top 1.5% of income distribution captured about 20% of income. The \"vast majority\" produced more than half of the total income, but lived near subsistence.\nCurrency and banking.\nThe early Empire was monetized to a near-universal extent, using money as a way to express prices and debts. The \"sestertius\" (English \"sesterces\", symbolized as \"HS\") was the basic unit of reckoning value into the 4th century, though the silver \"denarius\", worth four sesterces, was also used beginning in the Severan dynasty. The smallest coin commonly circulated was the bronze \"as\", one-tenth \"denarius\". Bullion and ingots seem not to have counted as \"pecunia\" (\"money\") and were used only on the frontiers. Romans in the first and second centuries counted coins, rather than weighing them\u2014an indication that the coin was valued on its face. This tendency towards fiat money led to the debasement of Roman coinage in the later Empire. The standardization of money throughout the Empire promoted trade and market integration. The high amount of metal coinage in circulation increased the money supply for trading or saving.\nRome had no central bank, and regulation of the banking system was minimal. Banks of classical antiquity typically kept less in reserves than the full total of customers' deposits. A typical bank had fairly limited capital, and often only one principal. Seneca assumes that anyone involved in Roman commerce needs access to credit. A professional deposit banker received and held deposits for a fixed or indefinite term, and lent money to third parties. The senatorial elite were involved heavily in private lending, both as creditors and borrowers. The holder of a debt could use it as a means of payment by transferring it to another party, without cash changing hands. Although it has sometimes been thought that ancient Rome lacked documentary transactions, the system of banks throughout the Empire permitted the exchange of large sums without physically transferring coins, in part because of the risks of moving large amounts of cash. Only one serious credit shortage is known to have occurred in the early Empire, in 33 AD; generally, available capital exceeded the amount needed by borrowers. The central government itself did not borrow money, and without public debt had to fund deficits from cash reserves.\nEmperors of the Antonine and Severan dynasties debased the currency, particularly the \"denarius\", under the pressures of meeting military payrolls. Sudden inflation under Commodus damaged the credit market. In the mid-200s, the supply of specie contracted sharply. Conditions during the Crisis of the Third Century\u2014such as reductions in long-distance trade, disruption of mining operations, and the physical transfer of gold coinage outside the empire by invading enemies\u2014greatly diminished the money supply and the banking sector. Although Roman coinage had long been fiat money or fiduciary currency, general economic anxieties came to a head under Aurelian, and bankers lost confidence in coins. Despite Diocletian's introduction of the gold \"solidus\" and monetary reforms, the credit market of the Empire never recovered its former robustness.\nMining and metallurgy.\nThe main mining regions of the Empire were the Iberian Peninsula (silver, copper, lead, iron and gold); Gaul (gold, silver, iron); Britain (mainly iron, lead, tin), the Danubian provinces (gold, iron); Macedonia and Thrace (gold, silver); and Asia Minor (gold, silver, iron, tin). Intensive large-scale mining\u2014of alluvial deposits, and by means of open-cast mining and underground mining\u2014took place from the reign of Augustus up to the early 3rd century, when the instability of the Empire disrupted production.\nHydraulic mining allowed base and precious metals to be extracted on a proto-industrial scale. The total annual iron output is estimated at 82,500\u00a0tonnes. Copper and lead production levels were unmatched until the Industrial Revolution. At its peak around the mid-2nd century, the Roman silver stock is estimated at 10,000\u00a0t, five to ten times larger than the combined silver mass of medieval Europe and the Caliphate around 800\u00a0AD. As an indication of the scale of Roman metal production, lead pollution in the Greenland ice sheet quadrupled over prehistoric levels during the Imperial era and dropped thereafter.\nTransportation and communication.\nThe Empire completely encircled the Mediterranean, which they called \"our sea\" (\"Mare Nostrum\"). Roman sailing vessels navigated the Mediterranean as well as major rivers. Transport by water was preferred where possible, as moving commodities by land was more difficult. Vehicles, wheels, and ships indicate the existence of a great number of skilled woodworkers.\nLand transport utilized the advanced system of Roman roads, called \"viae\". These roads were primarily built for military purposes, but also served commercial ends. The in-kind taxes paid by communities included the provision of personnel, animals, or vehicles for the \"cursus publicus\", the state mail and transport service established by Augustus. Relay stations were located along the roads every seven to twelve Roman miles, and tended to grow into villages or trading posts. A \"mansio\" (plural \"mansiones\") was a privately run service station franchised by the imperial bureaucracy for the \"cursus publicus\". The distance between \"mansiones\" was determined by how far a wagon could travel in a day. Carts were usually pulled by mules, travelling about 4\u00a0mph.\nTrade and commodities.\nRoman provinces traded among themselves, but trade extended outside the frontiers to regions as far away as China and India. Chinese trade was mostly conducted overland through middle men along the Silk Road; Indian trade also occurred by sea from Egyptian ports. The main commodity was grain. Also traded were olive oil, foodstuffs, \"garum\" (fish sauce), slaves, ore and manufactured metal objects, fibres and textiles, timber, pottery, glassware, marble, papyrus, spices and \"materia medica\", ivory, pearls, and gemstones. Though most provinces could produce wine, regional varietals were desirable and wine was a central trade good.\nLabour and occupations.\nInscriptions record 268 different occupations in Rome and 85 in Pompeii. Professional associations or trade guilds (\"collegia\") are attested for a wide range of occupations, some quite specialized.\nWork performed by slaves falls into five general categories: domestic, with epitaphs recording at least 55 different household jobs; imperial or public service; urban crafts and services; agriculture; and mining. Convicts provided much of the labour in the mines or quarries, where conditions were notoriously brutal. In practice, there was little division of labour between slave and free, and most workers were illiterate and without special skills. The greatest number of common labourers were employed in agriculture: in Italian industrial farming (\"latifundia\"), these may have been mostly slaves, but elsewhere slave farm labour was probably less important.\nTextile and clothing production was a major source of employment. Both textiles and finished garments were traded and products were often named for peoples or towns, like a fashion \"label\". Better ready-to-wear was exported by local businessmen (\"negotiatores\" or \"mercatores\"). Finished garments might be retailed by their sales agents, by \"vestiarii\" (clothing dealers), or peddled by itinerant merchants. The fullers (\"fullones\") and dye workers (\"coloratores\") had their own guilds. \"Centonarii\" were guild workers who specialized in textile production and the recycling of old clothes into pieced goods.\nArchitecture and engineering.\nThe chief Roman contributions to architecture were the arch, vault, and dome. Some Roman structures still stand today, due in part to sophisticated methods of making cements and concrete. Roman temples developed Etruscan and Greek forms, with some distinctive elements. Roman roads are considered the most advanced built until the early 19th century.\nRoman bridges were among the first large and lasting bridges, built from stone (and in most cases concrete) with the arch as the basic structure. The largest Roman bridge was Trajan's bridge over the lower Danube, constructed by Apollodorus of Damascus, which remained for over a millennium the longest bridge to have been built. The Romans built many dams and reservoirs for water collection, such as the Subiaco Dams, two of which fed the Anio Novus, one of the largest aqueducts of Rome.\nThe Romans constructed numerous aqueducts. \"De aquaeductu\", a treatise by Frontinus, who served as water commissioner, reflects the administrative importance placed on the water supply. Masonry channels carried water along a precise gradient, using gravity alone. It was then collected in tanks and fed through pipes to public fountains, baths, toilets, or industrial sites. The main aqueducts in Rome were the Aqua Claudia and the Aqua Marcia. The complex system built to supply Constantinople had its most distant supply drawn from over 120\u00a0km away along a route of more than 336\u00a0km. Roman aqueducts were built to remarkably fine tolerance, and to a technological standard not equalled until modern times. The Romans also used aqueducts in their extensive mining operations across the empire.\nInsulated glazing (or \"double glazing\") was used in the construction of public baths. Elite housing in cooler climates might have hypocausts, a form of central heating. The Romans were the first culture to assemble all essential components of the much later steam engine: the crank and connecting rod system, Hero's aeolipile (generating steam power), the cylinder and piston (in metal force pumps), non-return valves (in water pumps), and gearing (in water mills and clocks).\nDaily life.\nCity and country.\nThe city was viewed as fostering civilization by being \"properly designed, ordered, and adorned\". Augustus undertook a vast building programme in Rome, supported public displays of art that expressed imperial ideology, and reorganized the city into neighbourhoods \"(vici)\" administered at the local level with police and firefighting services. A focus of Augustan monumental architecture was the Campus Martius, an open area outside the city centre: the Altar of Augustan Peace () was located there, as was an obelisk imported from Egypt that formed the pointer (\"gnomon\") of a horologium. With its public gardens, the Campus was among the most attractive places in Rome to visit.\nCity planning and urban lifestyles was influenced by the Greeks early on, and in the Eastern Empire, Roman rule shaped the development of cities that already had a strong Hellenistic character. Cities such as Athens, Aphrodisias, Ephesus and Gerasa tailored city planning and architecture to imperial ideals, while expressing their individual identity and regional preeminence. In areas inhabited by Celtic-speaking peoples, Rome encouraged the development of urban centres with stone temples, forums, monumental fountains, and amphitheatres, often on or near the sites of preexisting walled settlements known as \"oppida\". Urbanization in Roman Africa expanded on Greek and Punic coastal cities.\nThe network of cities (, \"municipia\", \"civitates\" or in Greek terms \"poleis\") was a primary cohesive force during the Pax Romana. Romans of the 1st and 2nd centuries were encouraged to \"inculcate the habits of peacetime\". As the classicist Clifford Ando noted:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Most of the cultural appurtenances popularly associated with imperial culture\u2014public cult and its games and civic banquets, competitions for artists, speakers, and athletes, as well as the funding of the great majority of public buildings and public display of art\u2014were financed by private individuals, whose expenditures in this regard helped to justify their economic power and legal and provincial privileges.\nIn the city of Rome, most people lived in multistory apartment buildings (\"insulae\") that were often squalid firetraps. Public facilities\u2014such as baths (\"thermae\"), toilets with running water (\"latrinae\"), basins or elaborate fountains (\"nymphea\") delivering fresh water, and large-scale entertainments such as chariot races and gladiator combat\u2014were aimed primarily at the common people. \nThe public baths served hygienic, social and cultural functions. Bathing was the focus of daily socializing. Roman baths were distinguished by a series of rooms that offered communal bathing in three temperatures, with amenities that might include an exercise room, sauna, exfoliation spa, ball court, or outdoor swimming pool. Baths had hypocaust heating: the floors were suspended over hot-air channels. Public baths were part of urban culture throughout the provinces, but in the late 4th century, individual tubs began to replace communal bathing. Christians were advised to go to the baths only for hygiene.\nRich families from Rome usually had two or more houses: a townhouse (\"domus\") and at least one luxury home (\"villa\") outside the city. The \"domus\" was a privately owned single-family house, and might be furnished with a private bath (\"balneum\"), but it was not a place to retreat from public life. Although some neighbourhoods show a higher concentration of such houses, they were not segregated enclaves. The \"domus\" was meant to be visible and accessible. The atrium served as a reception hall in which the \"paterfamilias\" (head of household) met with clients every morning. It was a centre of family religious rites, containing a shrine and images of family ancestors. The houses were located on busy public roads, and ground-level spaces were often rented out as shops (\"tabernae\"). In addition to a kitchen garden\u2014windowboxes might substitute in the \"insulae\"\u2014townhouses typically enclosed a peristyle garden.\nThe villa by contrast was an escape from the city, and in literature represents a lifestyle that balances intellectual and artistic interests (\"otium\") with an appreciation of nature and agriculture. Ideally a villa commanded a view or vista, carefully framed by the architectural design. \nAugustus' programme of urban renewal, and the growth of Rome's population to as many as one million, was accompanied by nostalgia for rural life. Poetry idealized the lives of farmers and shepherds. Interior decorating often featured painted gardens, fountains, landscapes, vegetative ornament, and animals, rendered accurately enough to be identified by species. On a more practical level, the central government took an active interest in supporting agriculture. Producing food was the priority of land use. Larger farms (\"latifundia\") achieved an economy of scale that sustained urban life. Small farmers benefited from the development of local markets in towns and trade centres. Agricultural techniques such as crop rotation and selective breeding were disseminated throughout the Empire, and new crops were introduced from one province to another.\nMaintaining an affordable food supply to the city of Rome had become a major political issue in the late Republic, when the state began to provide a grain dole (Cura Annonae) to citizens who registered for it (about 200,000\u2013250,000 adult males in Rome). The dole cost at least 15% of state revenues, but improved living conditions among the lower classes, and subsidized the rich by allowing workers to spend more of their earnings on the wine and olive oil produced on estates. The grain dole also had symbolic value: it affirmed the emperor's position as universal benefactor, and the right of citizens to share in \"the fruits of conquest\". The \"annona\", public facilities, and spectacular entertainments mitigated the otherwise dreary living conditions of lower-class Romans, and kept social unrest in check. The satirist Juvenal, however, saw \"bread and circuses\" (\"panem et circenses\") as emblematic of the loss of republican political liberty:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The public has long since cast off its cares: the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things: bread and circuses.\nHealth and disease.\nEpidemics were common in the ancient world, and occasional pandemics in the Empire killed millions. The Roman population was unhealthy. About 20 percent\u2014a large percentage by ancient standards\u2014lived in cities, Rome being the largest. The cities were a \"demographic sink\": the death rate exceeded the birth rate and constant immigration was necessary to maintain the population. Average lifespan is estimated at the mid-twenties, and perhaps more than half of children died before reaching adulthood. Dense urban populations and poor sanitation contributed to disease. Land and sea connections facilitated and sped the transfer of infectious diseases across the empire's territories. The rich were not immune; only two of emperor Marcus Aurelius's fourteen children are known to have reached adulthood.\nThe importance of a good diet to health was recognized by medical writers such as Galen (2nd century). Views on nutrition were influenced by beliefs like humoral theory. A good indicator of nutrition and disease burden is average height: the average Roman was shorter in stature than the population of pre-Roman Italian societies and medieval Europe.\nFood and dining.\nMost apartments in Rome lacked kitchens, though a charcoal brazier could be used for rudimentary cookery. Prepared food was sold at pubs and bars, inns, and food stalls (\"tabernae\", \"cauponae\", \"popinae\", \"thermopolia\"). Carryout and restaurants were for the lower classes; fine dining appeared only at dinner parties in wealthy homes with a chef (\"archimagirus\") and kitchen staff, or banquets hosted by social clubs (\"collegia\").\nMost Romans consumed at least 70% of their daily calories in the form of cereals and legumes. \"Puls\" (pottage) was considered the food of the Romans, and could be elaborated to produce dishes similar to polenta or risotto. Urban populations and the military preferred bread. By the reign of Aurelian, the state had begun to distribute the \"annona\" as a daily ration of bread baked in state factories, and added olive oil, wine, and pork to the dole.\nRoman literature focuses on the dining habits of the upper classes, for whom the evening meal (\"cena\") had important social functions. Guests were entertained in a finely decorated dining room (\"triclinium\") furnished with couches. By the late Republic, women dined, reclined, and drank wine along with men. The poet Martial describes a dinner, beginning with the \"gustatio\" (\"tasting\" or \"appetizer\") salad. The main course was kid, beans, greens, a chicken, and leftover ham, followed by a dessert of fruit and wine. Roman \"foodies\" indulged in wild game, fowl such as peacock and flamingo, large fish (mullet was especially prized), and shellfish. Luxury ingredients were imported from the far reaches of empire. A book-length collection of Roman recipes is attributed to Apicius, a name for several figures in antiquity that became synonymous with \"gourmet\".\nRefined cuisine could be moralized as a sign of either civilized progress or decadent decline. Most often, because of the importance of landowning in Roman culture, produce\u2014cereals, legumes, vegetables, and fruit\u2014were considered more civilized foods than meat. The Mediterranean staples of bread, wine, and oil were sacralized by Roman Christianity, while Germanic meat consumption became a mark of paganism. Some philosophers and Christians resisted the demands of the body and the pleasures of food, and adopted fasting as an ideal. Food became simpler in general as urban life in the West diminished and trade routes were disrupted; the Church formally discouraged gluttony, and hunting and pastoralism were seen as simple and virtuous.\nSpectacles.\nWhen Juvenal complained that the Roman people had exchanged their political liberty for \"bread and circuses\", he was referring to the state-provided grain dole and the \"circenses\", events held in the entertainment venue called a \"circus\". The largest such venue in Rome was the Circus Maximus, the setting of horse races, chariot races, the equestrian Troy Game, staged beast hunts (\"venationes\"), athletic contests, gladiator combat, and historical re-enactments. From earliest times, several religious festivals had featured games (\"ludi\"), primarily horse and chariot races (\"ludi circenses\"). The races retained religious significance in connection with agriculture, initiation, and the cycle of birth and death.\nUnder Augustus, public entertainments were presented on 77 days of the year; by the reign of Marcus Aurelius, this had expanded to 135. Circus games were preceded by an elaborate parade (\"pompa circensis\") that ended at the venue. Competitive events were held also in smaller venues such as the amphitheatre, which became the characteristic Roman spectacle venue, and stadium. Greek-style athletics included footraces, boxing, wrestling, and the pancratium. Aquatic displays, such as the mock sea battle (\"naumachia\") and a form of \"water ballet\", were presented in engineered pools. State-supported theatrical events (\"ludi scaenici\") took place on temple steps or in grand stone theatres, or in the smaller enclosed theatre called an \"odeon\".\nCircuses were the largest structure regularly built in the Roman world. The Flavian Amphitheatre, better known as the Colosseum, became the regular arena for blood sports in Rome. Many Roman amphitheatres, circuses and theatres built in cities outside Italy are visible as ruins today. The local ruling elite were responsible for sponsoring spectacles and arena events, which both enhanced their status and drained their resources. The physical arrangement of the amphitheatre represented the order of Roman society: the emperor in his opulent box; senators and equestrians in reserved advantageous seats; women seated at a remove from the action; slaves given the worst places, and everybody else in-between. The crowd could call for an outcome by booing or cheering, but the emperor had the final say. Spectacles could quickly become sites of social and political protest, and emperors sometimes had to deploy force to put down crowd unrest, most notoriously at the Nika riots in 532.\nThe chariot teams were known by the colours they wore. Fan loyalty was fierce and at times erupted into sports riots. Racing was perilous, but charioteers were among the most celebrated and well-compensated athletes. Circuses were designed to ensure that no team had an unfair advantage and to minimize collisions (\"naufragia\"), which were nonetheless frequent and satisfying to the crowd. The races retained a magical aura through their early association with chthonic rituals: circus images were considered protective or lucky, curse tablets have been found buried at the site of racetracks, and charioteers were often suspected of sorcery. Chariot racing continued into the Byzantine period under imperial sponsorship, but the decline of cities in the 6th and 7th centuries led to its eventual demise.\nThe Romans thought gladiator contests had originated with funeral games and sacrifices. Some of the earliest styles of gladiator fighting had ethnic designations such as \"Thracian\" or \"Gallic\". The staged combats were considered , \"services, offerings, benefactions\", initially distinct from the festival games (\"ludi\"). To mark the opening of the Colosseum, Titus presented 100 days of arena events, with 3,000 gladiators competing on a single day. Roman fascination with gladiators is indicated by how widely they are depicted on mosaics, wall paintings, lamps, and in graffiti. Gladiators were trained combatants who might be slaves, convicts, or free volunteers. Death was not a necessary or even desirable outcome in matches between these highly skilled fighters, whose training was costly and time-consuming. By contrast, \"noxii\" were convicts sentenced to the arena with little or no training, often unarmed, and with no expectation of survival; physical suffering and humiliation were considered appropriate retributive justice. These executions were sometimes staged or ritualized as re-enactments of myths, and amphitheatres were equipped with elaborate stage machinery to create special effects.\nModern scholars have found the pleasure Romans took in the \"theatre of life and death\" difficult to understand. Pliny the Younger rationalized gladiator spectacles as good for the people, \"to inspire them to face honourable wounds and despise death, by exhibiting love of glory and desire for victory\". Some Romans such as Seneca were critical of the brutal spectacles, but found virtue in the courage and dignity of the defeated fighter\u2014an attitude that finds its fullest expression with the Christians martyred in the arena. Tertullian considered deaths in the arena to be nothing more than a dressed-up form of human sacrifice. Even martyr literature, however, offers \"detailed, indeed luxuriant, descriptions of bodily suffering\", and became a popular genre at times indistinguishable from fiction.\nRecreation.\nThe singular \"ludus\", \"play, game, sport, training\", had a wide range of meanings such as \"word play\", \"theatrical performance\", \"board game\", \"primary school\", and even \"gladiator training school\" (as in \"Ludus Magnus\"). Activities for children and young people in the Empire included hoop rolling and knucklebones (\"astragali\" or \"jacks\"). Girls had dolls made of wood, terracotta, and especially bone and ivory. Ball games include trigon and harpastum. People of all ages played board games, including \"latrunculi\" (\"Raiders\") and \"XII scripta\" (\"Twelve Marks\"). A game referred to as \"alea\" (dice) or \"tabula\" (the board) may have been similar to backgammon. Dicing as a form of gambling was disapproved of, but was a popular pastime during the festival of the Saturnalia.\nAfter adolescence, most physical training for males was of a military nature. The Campus Martius originally was an exercise field where young men learned horsemanship and warfare. Hunting was also considered an appropriate pastime. According to Plutarch, conservative Romans disapproved of Greek-style athletics that promoted a fine body for its own sake, and condemned Nero's efforts to encourage Greek-style athletic games. Some women trained as gymnasts and dancers, and a rare few as female gladiators. The \"Bikini Girls\" mosaic shows young women engaging in routines comparable to rhythmic gymnastics. Women were encouraged to maintain health through activities such as playing ball, swimming, walking, or reading aloud (as a breathing exercise).\nClothing.\nIn a status-conscious society like that of the Romans, clothing and personal adornment indicated the etiquette of interacting with the wearer. Wearing the correct clothing reflected a society in good order. There is little direct evidence of how Romans dressed in daily life, since portraiture may show the subject in clothing with symbolic value, and surviving textiles are rare.\nThe toga was the distinctive national garment of the male citizen, but it was heavy and impractical, worn mainly for conducting political or court business and religious rites. It was a \"vast expanse\" of semi-circular white wool that could not be put on and draped correctly without assistance. The drapery became more intricate and structured over time. The \"toga praetexta\", with a purple or purplish-red stripe representing inviolability, was worn by children who had not come of age, curule magistrates, and state priests. Only the emperor could wear an all-purple toga (\"toga picta\").\nOrdinary clothing was dark or colourful. The basic garment for all Romans, regardless of gender or wealth, was the simple sleeved tunic, with length differing by wearer. The tunics of poor people and labouring slaves were made from coarse wool in natural, dull shades; finer tunics were made of lightweight wool or linen. A man of the senatorial or equestrian order wore a tunic with two purple stripes (\"clavi\") woven vertically: the wider the stripe, the higher the wearer's status. Other garments could be layered over the tunic. Common male attire also included cloaks, and in some regions, trousers. In the 2nd century, emperors and elite men are often portrayed wearing the pallium, an originally Greek mantle; women are also portrayed in the pallium. Tertullian considered the pallium an appropriate garment both for Christians, in contrast to the toga, and for educated people.\nRoman clothing styles changed over time. In the Dominate, clothing worn by both soldiers and bureaucrats became highly decorated with geometrical patterns, stylized plant motifs, and in more elaborate examples, human or animal figures. Courtiers of the later Empire wore elaborate silk robes. The militarization of Roman society, and the waning of urban life, affected fashion: heavy military-style belts were worn by bureaucrats as well as soldiers, and the toga was abandoned, replaced by the pallium as a garment embodying social unity.\nArts.\nGreek art had a profound influence on Roman art. Public art\u2014including sculpture, monuments such as victory columns or triumphal arches, and the iconography on coins\u2014is often analysed for historical or ideological significance. In the private sphere, artistic objects were made for religious dedications, funerary commemoration, domestic use, and commerce. The wealthy advertised their appreciation of culture through artwork and decorative arts in their homes. Despite the value placed on art, even famous artists were of low social status, partly as they worked with their hands.\nPortraiture.\nPortraiture, which survives mainly in sculpture, was the most copious form of imperial art. Portraits during the Augustan period utilize classical proportions, evolving later into a mixture of realism and idealism. Republican portraits were characterized by verism, but as early as the 2nd century BC, Greek heroic nudity was adopted for conquering generals. Imperial portrait sculptures may model a mature head atop a youthful nude or semi-nude body with perfect musculature. Clothed in the toga or military regalia, the body communicates rank or role, not individual characteristics. \nPortraiture in painting is represented primarily by the Fayum mummy portraits, which evoke Egyptian and Roman traditions of commemorating the dead with realistic painting. Marble portrait sculpture were painted, but traces have rarely survived.\nSculpture and sarcophagi.\nExamples of Roman sculpture survive abundantly, though often in damaged or fragmentary condition, including freestanding statuary in marble, bronze and terracotta, and reliefs from public buildings and monuments. Niches in amphitheatres were originally filled with statues, as were formal gardens. Temples housed cult images of deities, often by famed sculptors.\nElaborately carved marble and limestone sarcophagi are characteristic of the 2nd to 4th centuries. Sarcophagus relief has been called the \"richest single source of Roman iconography\", depicting mythological scenes or Jewish/Christian imagery as well as the deceased's life.\nPainting.\nInitial Roman painting drew from Etruscan and Greek models and techniques. Examples of Roman paintings can be found in palaces, catacombs and villas. Much of what is known of Roman painting is from the interior decoration of private homes, particularly as preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius. In addition to decorative borders and panels with geometric or vegetative motifs, wall painting depicts scenes from mythology and theatre, landscapes and gardens, spectacles, everyday life, and erotic art.\nMosaic.\nMosaics are among the most enduring of Roman decorative arts, and are found on floors and other architectural features. The most common is the tessellated mosaic, formed from uniform pieces \"(tesserae)\" of materials such as stone and glass. \"Opus sectile\" is a related technique in which flat stone, usually coloured marble, is cut precisely into shapes from which geometric or figurative patterns are formed. This more difficult technique became especially popular for luxury surfaces in the 4th century (e.g. the Basilica of Junius Bassus).\nFigurative mosaics share many themes with painting, and in some cases use almost identical compositions. Geometric patterns and mythological scenes occur throughout the Empire. In North Africa, a particularly rich source of mosaics, homeowners often chose scenes of life on their estates, hunting, agriculture, and local wildlife. Plentiful and major examples of Roman mosaics come also from present-day Turkey (particularly the (Antioch mosaics), Italy, southern France, Spain, and Portugal.\nDecorative arts.\nDecorative arts for luxury consumers included fine pottery, silver and bronze vessels and implements, and glassware. Pottery manufacturing was economically important, as were the glass and metalworking industries. Imports stimulated new regional centres of production. Southern Gaul became a leading producer of the finer red-gloss pottery (\"terra sigillata\") that was a major trade good in 1st-century Europe. Glassblowing was regarded by the Romans as originating in Syria in the 1st century BC, and by the 3rd century, Egypt and the Rhineland had become noted for fine glass.\nPerforming arts.\nIn Roman tradition, borrowed from the Greeks, literary theatre was performed by all-male troupes that used face masks with exaggerated facial expressions to portray emotion. Female roles were played by men in drag (\"travesti\"). Roman literary theatre tradition is represented in Latin literature by the tragedies of Seneca, for example.\nMore popular than literary theatre was the genre-defying \"mimus\" theatre, which featured scripted scenarios with free improvisation, risqu\u00e9 language and sex scenes, action sequences, and political satire, along with dance, juggling, acrobatics, tightrope walking, striptease, and dancing bears. Unlike literary theatre, \"mimus\" was played without masks, and encouraged stylistic realism. Female roles were performed by women. \"Mimus\" was related to \"pantomimus\", an early form of story ballet that contained no spoken dialogue but rather a sung libretto, often mythological, either tragic or comic.\nAlthough sometimes regarded as foreign, music and dance existed in Rome from earliest times. Music was customary at funerals, and the \"tibia\", a woodwind instrument, was played at sacrifices. Song \"(carmen)\" was integral to almost every social occasion. Music was thought to reflect the orderliness of the cosmos. Various woodwinds and \"brass\" instruments were played, as were stringed instruments such as the \"cithara\", and percussion. The \"cornu\", a long tubular metal wind instrument, was used for military signals and on parade. These instruments spread throughout the provinces and are widely depicted in Roman art. The hydraulic pipe organ \"(hydraulis)\" was \"one of the most significant technical and musical achievements of antiquity\", and accompanied gladiator games and events in the amphitheatre. Although certain dances were seen at times as non-Roman or unmanly, dancing was embedded in religious rituals of archaic Rome. Ecstatic dancing was a feature of the mystery religions, particularly the cults of Cybele and Isis. In the secular realm, dancing girls from Syria and Cadiz were extremely popular.\nLike gladiators, entertainers were legally \"infames\", technically free but little better than slaves. \"Stars\", however, could enjoy considerable wealth and celebrity, and mingled socially and often sexually with the elite. Performers supported each other by forming guilds, and several memorials for theatre members survive. Theatre and dance were often condemned by Christian polemicists in the later Empire.\nLiteracy, books, and education.\nEstimates of the average literacy rate range from 5 to over 30%. The Roman obsession with documents and inscriptions indicates the value placed on the written word. Laws and edicts were posted as well as read out. Illiterate Roman subjects could have a government scribe (\"scriba\") read or write their official documents for them. The military produced extensive written records. The Babylonian Talmud declared \"if all seas were ink, all reeds were pen, all skies parchment, and all men scribes, they would be unable to set down the full scope of the Roman government's concerns\".\nNumeracy was necessary for commerce. Slaves were numerate and literate in significant numbers; some were highly educated. Graffiti and low-quality inscriptions with misspellings and solecisms indicate casual literacy among non-elites.\nThe Romans had an extensive priestly archive, and inscriptions appear throughout the Empire in connection with votives dedicated by ordinary people, as well as \"magic spells\" (e.g. the Greek Magical Papyri).\nBooks were expensive, since each copy had to be written out on a papyrus roll (\"volumen\") by scribes. The codex\u2014pages bound to a spine\u2014was still a novelty in the 1st century, but by the end of the 3rd century was replacing the \"volumen\". Commercial book production was established by the late Republic, and by the 1st century certain neighbourhoods of Rome and Western provincial cities were known for their bookshops. The quality of editing varied wildly, and plagiarism or forgery were common, since there was no copyright law.\nCollectors amassed personal libraries, and a fine library was part of the cultivated leisure (\"otium\") associated with the villa lifestyle. Significant collections might attract \"in-house\" scholars, and an individual benefactor might endow a community with a library (as Pliny the Younger did in Comum). Imperial libraries were open to users on a limited basis, and represented a literary canon. Books considered subversive might be publicly burned, and Domitian crucified copyists for reproducing works deemed treasonous.\nLiterary texts were often shared aloud at meals or with reading groups. Public readings (\"recitationes\") expanded from the 1st through the 3rd century, giving rise to \"consumer literature\" for entertainment. Illustrated books, including erotica, were popular, but are poorly represented by extant fragments.\nLiteracy began to decline during the Crisis of the Third Century. The emperor Julian banned Christians from teaching the classical curriculum, but the Church Fathers and other Christians adopted Latin and Greek literature, philosophy and science in biblical interpretation. As the Western Roman Empire declined, reading became rarer even for those within the Church hierarchy, although it continued in the Byzantine Empire.\nEducation.\nTraditional Roman education was moral and practical. Stories were meant to instil Roman values (\"mores maiorum\"). Parents were expected to act as role models, and working parents passed their skills to their children, who might also enter apprenticeships. Young children were attended by a pedagogue, usually a Greek slave or former slave, who kept the child safe, taught self-discipline and public behaviour, attended class and helped with tutoring.\nFormal education was available only to families who could pay for it; lack of state support contributed to low literacy. Primary education in reading, writing, and arithmetic might take place at home if parents hired or bought a teacher. Other children attended \"public\" schools organized by a schoolmaster (\"ludimagister\") paid by parents. \"Vernae\" (homeborn slave children) might share in-home or public schooling. Boys and girls received primary education generally from ages 7 to 12, but classes were not segregated by grade or age. Most schools employed corporal punishment. For the socially ambitious, education in Greek as well as Latin was necessary. Schools became more numerous during the Empire, increasing educational opportunities.\nAt the age of 14, upperclass males made their rite of passage into adulthood, and began to learn leadership roles through mentoring from a senior family member or family friend. Higher education was provided by \"grammatici\" or \"rhetores\". The \"grammaticus\" or \"grammarian\" taught mainly Greek and Latin literature, with history, geography, philosophy or mathematics treated as explications of the text. With the rise of Augustus, contemporary Latin authors such as Virgil and Livy also became part of the curriculum. The \"rhetor\" was a teacher of oratory or public speaking. The art of speaking (\"ars dicendi\") was highly prized, and \"eloquentia\" (\"speaking ability, eloquence\") was considered the \"glue\" of civilized society. Rhetoric was not so much a body of knowledge (though it required a command of the literary canon) as it was a mode of expression that distinguished those who held social power. The ancient model of rhetorical training\u2014\"restraint, coolness under pressure, modesty, and good humour\"\u2014endured into the 18th century as a Western educational ideal.\nIn Latin, \"illiteratus\" could mean both \"unable to read and write\" and \"lacking in cultural awareness or sophistication\". Higher education promoted career advancement. Urban elites throughout the Empire shared a literary culture imbued with Greek educational ideals (\"paideia\"). Hellenistic cities sponsored schools of higher learning to express cultural achievement. Young Roman men often went abroad to study rhetoric and philosophy, mostly to Athens. The curriculum in the East was more likely to include music and physical training. On the Hellenistic model, Vespasian endowed chairs of grammar, Latin and Greek rhetoric, and philosophy at Rome, and gave secondary teachers special exemptions from taxes and legal penalties. In the Eastern Empire, Berytus (present-day Beirut) was unusual in offering a Latin education, and became famous for its school of Roman law. The cultural movement known as the Second Sophistic (1st\u20133rd century AD) promoted the assimilation of Greek and Roman social, educational, and esthetic values.\nLiterate women ranged from cultured aristocrats to girls trained to be calligraphers and scribes. The ideal woman in Augustan love poetry was educated and well-versed in the arts. Education seems to have been standard for daughters of the senatorial and equestrian orders. An educated wife was an asset for the socially ambitious household.\nLiterature.\nLiterature under Augustus, along with that of the Republic, has been viewed as the \"Golden Age\" of Latin literature, embodying classical ideals. The three most influential Classical Latin poets\u2014Virgil, Horace, and Ovid\u2014belong to this period. Virgil's \"Aeneid\" was a national epic in the manner of the Homeric epics of Greece. Horace perfected the use of Greek lyric metres in Latin verse. Ovid's erotic poetry was enormously popular, but ran afoul of Augustan morality, contributing to his exile. Ovid's \"Metamorphoses\" wove together Greco-Roman mythology; his versions of Greek myths became a primary source of later classical mythology, and his work was hugely influential on medieval literature. The early Principate produced satirists such as Persius and Juvenal.\nThe mid-1st through mid-2nd century has conventionally been called the \"Silver Age\" of Latin literature. The three leading writers\u2014Seneca, Lucan, and Petronius\u2014committed suicide after incurring Nero's displeasure. Epigrammatist and social observer Martial and the epic poet Statius, whose poetry collection \"Silvae\" influenced Renaissance literature, wrote during the reign of Domitian. Other authors of the Silver Age included Pliny the Elder, author of the encyclopedic \"Natural History\"; his nephew, Pliny the Younger; and the historian Tacitus.\nThe principal Latin prose author of the Augustan age is the historian Livy, whose account of Rome's founding became the most familiar version in modern-era literature. \"The Twelve Caesars\" by Suetonius is a primary source for imperial biography. Among Imperial historians who wrote in Greek are Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Josephus, and Cassius Dio. Other major Greek authors of the Empire include the biographer Plutarch, the geographer Strabo, and the rhetorician and satirist Lucian.\nFrom the 2nd to the 4th centuries, Christian authors were in active dialogue with the classical tradition. Tertullian was one of the earliest prose authors with a distinctly Christian voice. After the conversion of Constantine, Latin literature is dominated by the Christian perspective. In the late 4th century, Jerome produced the Latin translation of the Bible that became authoritative as the Vulgate. Around that same time, Augustine wrote \"The City of God against the Pagans\", considered \"a masterpiece of Western culture\".\nIn contrast to the unity of Classical Latin, the literary esthetic of late antiquity has a tessellated quality. A continuing interest in the religious traditions of Rome prior to Christian dominion is found into the 5th century, with the \"Saturnalia\" of Macrobius and \"The Marriage of Philology and Mercury\" of Martianus Capella. Latin poets of late antiquity include Ausonius, Prudentius, Claudian, and Sidonius Apollinaris.\nReligion.\nThe Romans thought of themselves as highly religious, and attributed their success to their collective piety (\"pietas\") and good relations with the gods (\"pax deorum\"). The archaic religion believed to have come from the earliest kings of Rome was the foundation of the \"mos maiorum\", \"the way of the ancestors\", central to Roman identity.\nRoman religion was practical and contractual, based on the principle of \"do ut des\", \"I give that you might give\". Religion depended on knowledge and the correct practice of prayer, ritual, and sacrifice, not on faith or dogma, although Latin literature preserves learned speculation on the nature of the divine. For ordinary Romans, religion was a part of daily life. Each home had a household shrine to offer prayers and libations to the family's domestic deities. Neighbourhood shrines and sacred places such as springs and groves dotted the city. The Roman calendar was structured around religious observances; as many as 135 days were devoted to religious festivals and games (\"ludi\").\nIn the wake of the Republic's collapse, state religion adapted to support the new regime. Augustus justified one-man rule with a vast programme of religious revivalism and reform. Public vows now were directed at the wellbeing of the emperor. So-called \"emperor worship\" expanded on a grand scale the traditional veneration of the ancestral dead and of the \"Genius\", the divine tutelary of every individual. Upon death, an emperor could be made a state divinity (\"divus\") by vote of the Senate. The Roman imperial cult, influenced by Hellenistic ruler cult, became one of the major ways Rome advertised its presence in the provinces and cultivated shared cultural identity. Cultural precedent in the Eastern provinces facilitated a rapid dissemination of Imperial cult, extending as far as Najran, in present-day Saudi Arabia. Rejection of the state religion became tantamount to treason.\nThe Romans are known for the great number of deities they honoured. As the Romans extended their territories, their general policy was to promote stability among diverse peoples by absorbing local deities and cults rather than eradicating them, building temples that framed local theology within Roman religion. Inscriptions throughout the Empire record the side-by-side worship of local and Roman deities, including dedications made by Romans to local gods. By the height of the Empire, numerous syncretic or reinterpreted gods were cultivated, among them cults of Cybele, Isis, Epona, and of solar gods such as Mithras and Sol Invictus, found as far north as Roman Britain. Because Romans had never been obligated to cultivate one god or cult only, religious tolerance was not an issue.\nMystery religions, which offered initiates salvation in the afterlife, were a matter of personal choice, practiced in addition to one's family rites and public religion. The mysteries, however, involved exclusive oaths and secrecy, which conservative Romans viewed with suspicion as characteristic of \"magic\", conspiracy (\"coniuratio\"), and subversive activity. Thus, sporadic and sometimes brutal attempts were made to suppress religionists. In Gaul, the power of the druids was checked, first by forbidding Roman citizens to belong to the order, and then by banning druidism altogether. However, Celtic traditions were reinterpreted within the context of Imperial theology, and a new Gallo-Roman religion coalesced; its capital at the Sanctuary of the Three Gauls established precedent for Western cult as a form of Roman-provincial identity. The monotheistic rigour of Judaism posed difficulties for Roman policy that led at times to compromise and granting of special exemptions. Tertullian noted that Judaism, unlike Christianity, was considered a \"religio licita\", \"legitimate religion\". The Jewish\u2013Roman wars resulted from political as well as religious conflicts; the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD led to the sacking of the Second Temple and the dispersal of Jewish political power (see Jewish diaspora).\nChristianity emerged in Roman Judaea as a Jewish religious sect in the 1st century and gradually spread out of Jerusalem throughout the Empire and beyond. Imperially authorized persecutions were limited and sporadic, with martyrdoms occurring most often under the authority of local officials. Tacitus reports that after the Great Fire of Rome in AD\u00a064, the emperor attempted to deflect blame from himself onto the Christians. A major persecution occurred under the emperor Domitian and a persecution in 177 took place at Lugdunum, the Gallo-Roman religious capital. A letter from Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia, describes his persecution and executions of Christians. The Decian persecution of 246\u2013251 seriously threatened the Christian Church, but ultimately strengthened Christian defiance. Diocletian undertook the most severe persecution of Christians, from 303 to 311.\nFrom the 2nd century onward, the Church Fathers condemned the diverse religions practiced throughout the Empire as \"pagan\". In the early 4th century, Constantine I became the first emperor to convert to Christianity. He supported the Church financially and made laws that favored it, but the new religion was already successful, having moved from less than 50,000 to over a million adherents between 150 and 250. Constantine and his successors banned public sacrifice while tolerating other traditional practices. Constantine never engaged in a purge, there were no \"pagan martyrs\" during his reign, and people who had not converted to Christianity remained in important positions at court. Julian attempted to revive traditional public sacrifice and Hellenistic religion, but met Christian resistance and lack of popular support.\nChristians of the 4th century believed the conversion of Constantine showed that Christianity had triumphed over paganism (in Heaven) and little further action besides such rhetoric was necessary. Thus, their focus shifted towards heresy. According to Peter Brown, \"In most areas, polytheists were not molested, and apart from a few ugly incidents of local violence, Jewish communities also enjoyed a century of stable, even privileged, existence\". There were anti-pagan laws, but they were not generally enforced; through the 6th century, centers of paganism existed in Athens, Gaza, Alexandria, and elsewhere.\nAccording to recent Jewish scholarship, toleration of the Jews was maintained under Christian emperors. This did not extend to heretics: Theodosius I made multiple laws and acted against alternate forms of Christianity, and heretics were persecuted and killed by both the government and the church throughout Late Antiquity. Non-Christians were not persecuted until the 6th century. Rome's original religious hierarchy and ritual influenced Christian forms, and many pre-Christian practices survived in Christian festivals and local traditions.\nLegacy.\nSeveral states claimed to be the Roman Empire's successor. The Holy Roman Empire was established in 800 when Pope Leo\u00a0III crowned Charlemagne as Roman emperor. The Russian Tsardom, as inheritor of the Byzantine Empire's Orthodox Christian tradition, counted itself the Third Rome (Constantinople having been the second), in accordance with the concept of translatio imperii. The last Eastern Roman titular, Andreas Palaiologos, sold the title of Emperor of Constantinople to Charles VIII of France; upon Charles' death, Palaiologos reclaimed the title and on his death granted it to Ferdinand and Isabella and their successors, who never used it. When the Ottomans, who based their state on the Byzantine model, took Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed\u00a0II established his capital there and claimed to sit on the throne of the Roman Empire. He even launched an invasion of Otranto with the purpose of re-uniting the Empire, which was aborted by his death. In the medieval West, \"Roman\" came to mean the church and the Catholic Pope. The Greek form Romaioi remained attached to the Greek-speaking Christian population of the Byzantine Empire and is still used by Greeks.\nThe Roman Empire's control of the Italian Peninsula influenced Italian nationalism and the unification of Italy (\"Risorgimento\") in 1861. \nIn the United States, the founders were educated in the classical tradition, and used classical models for landmarks in Washington, D.C.. The founders saw Athenian democracy and Roman republicanism as models for the mixed constitution, but regarded the emperor as a figure of tyranny.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nstyle=\"width:100%\""}, "descending_order": ["21208200", "30570", "25507"], "permutation_1": ["30570", "25507", "21208200"], "permutation_2": ["21208200", "25507", "30570"], "permutation_3": ["21208200", "25507", "30570"]}
{"id": "3hop1__387338_610398_68437", "docs_added": {"21650": "North Carolina\nU.S. state\nNorth Carolina ( ) is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia to the southwest, and Tennessee to the west. The state is the 28th-largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. Along with South Carolina, it makes up the Carolinas region of the East Coast. At the 2020 census, the state had a population of 10,439,388. Raleigh is the state's capital and Charlotte is its most populous city. The Charlotte metropolitan area, with an estimated population of 2,805,115 in 2023, is the most populous metropolitan area in North Carolina, the 22nd-most populous in the United States, and the largest banking center in the nation after New York City. The Research Triangle, with an estimated population of 2,368,947 in 2023, is the second-most populous combined metropolitan area in the state, 31st-most populous in the United States, and is home to the largest research park in the United States, Research Triangle Park.\nThe earliest evidence of human occupation in North Carolina dates back 10,000 years, found at the Hardaway Site. North Carolina was inhabited by Carolina Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Siouan speaking tribes of Native Americans prior to the arrival of Europeans. King Charles II granted eight lord proprietors a colony they named Carolina after the king and which was established in 1670 with the first permanent settlement at Charles Town (Charleston). Because of the difficulty of governing the entire colony from Charles Town, the colony was eventually divided and North Carolina was established as a royal colony in 1729 and was one of the Thirteen Colonies. The Halifax Resolves resolution adopted by North Carolina on April 12, 1776, was the first formal call for independence from Great Britain among the American Colonies during the American Revolution.\nOn November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the United States Constitution. In the run-up to the American Civil War, North Carolina reluctantly declared its secession from the Union on May 20, 1861, becoming the tenth of eleven states to join the Confederate States of America. Following the Civil War, the state was restored to the Union on July 4, 1868. On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully piloted the world's first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina's Outer Banks. North Carolina often uses the slogan \"First in Flight\" on state license plates to commemorate this achievement, alongside a newer alternative design bearing the slogan \"First in Freedom\" in reference to the Mecklenburg Declaration and Halifax Resolves.\nNorth Carolina is defined by a wide range of elevations and landscapes. From west to east, North Carolina's elevation descends from the Appalachian Mountains to the Piedmont and Atlantic coastal plain. North Carolina's Mount Mitchell at is the highest point in North America east of the Mississippi River. Most of the state falls in the humid subtropical climate zone; however, the western, mountainous part of the state has a subtropical highland climate.\nHistory.\nNative Americans, lost colony, and permanent settlement.\nNorth Carolina was inhabited for at least 10,000 years by succeeding prehistoric Indigenous cultures. The Hardaway Site saw major periods of occupation dating to 10,000 years BCE. Before 200 AD, people were building earthwork platform mounds for ceremonial and religious purposes. Succeeding peoples, including those of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture, established by 1000 AD in the Piedmont and mountain region, continued to build this style of mounds. In contrast to some of the larger centers of the classic Mississippian culture in the area that became known as the western Carolinas, northeastern Georgia, and southeastern Tennessee, most of the larger towns had only one central platform mound. Smaller settlements had none, but were close to more prominent towns. This area became known as the homelands of the historic Cherokee people, who are believed to have migrated over time from the Great Lakes area.\nIn the 500\u2013700 years preceding European contact, the Mississippian culture built elaborate cities and maintained far-flung regional trading networks. Its largest city was Cahokia, which had numerous mounds for different purposes, a highly stratified society, and was located in present-day southwestern Illinois near the Mississippi River. Starting in 1540, the Native polities of the Mississippian culture fell apart and reformed as new groups, such as the Catawba, due to a series of destabilizing events known as the \"Mississippian shatter zone\". Introduction of colonial trading arrangements and hostile native groups from the north such as the Westo Indians hastened changes in an already tenuous regional hierarchy. As described by anthropologist Robbie Ethridge, the Mississippian shatter zone was a time of great instability in what is now the American South, caused by the instability of Mississippian chiefdoms, high mortality from new Eurasian diseases, conversion to an agricultural society and the accompanying population increase, and the emergence of Native \"militaristic slaving societies\".\nHistorically documented tribes in the North Carolina region include the Carolina Algonquian-speaking tribes of the coastal areas, such as the Chowanoc, Roanoke, Pamlico, Machapunga, and Coree, who were the first encountered by the English; the Iroquoian-speaking Meherrin, Cherokee, and Tuscarora of the interior; and Southeastern Siouan-speaking tribes, such as the Cheraw, Waxhaw, Saponi, Waccamaw, Cape Fear Indians, and Catawba of the Piedmont.\nIn the late 16th century, the first Spanish explorers traveling inland recorded meeting Mississippian culture people at Joara, a regional chiefdom near what later developed as Morganton. Records of Hernando de Soto attested to his meeting with them in 1540. In 1567, Captain Juan Pardo led an expedition to claim the area for the Spanish colony and to establish another route to reach silver mines in Mexico. Pardo made a winter base at Joara, which he renamed \"Cuenca\". His expedition built Fort San Juan and left a contingent of 30 Spaniards there, while Pardo traveled further. His forces built and garrisoned five other forts. He returned by a different route to Santa Elena on Parris Island, South Carolina, then a center of Spanish Florida. In the spring of 1568, natives killed all but seventy four of the Spaniards and burned the six forts in the interior, including Fort San Juan. Although the Spanish never returned to the interior, this effort marked the first European attempt at colonization of the interior of what became the United States. A 16th-century journal by Pardo's scribe Bandera, and archaeological findings since 1986 at Joara, have confirmed the settlement.\nAnglo-European settlement.\nIn 1584, Elizabeth I granted a charter to Sir Walter Raleigh, for whom the state capital is named, for land in present-day North Carolina (then part of the territory of Virginia). It was the second American territory that the English attempted to colonize. Raleigh established two colonies on the coast in the late 1580s, but both failed. The colony established in 1587 saw 118 colonists 'disappear' when John White was unable to return from a supply run during battles with the Spanish Armada. The fate of the \"Lost Colony\" of Roanoke Island remains one of the most widely debated mysteries of American history. Two native Chieftains, Manteo and Wanchese, of which the former helped the colonists and the latter was distrustful, had involvement in the colony and even accompanied Raleigh to England on a previous voyage in 1585. Manteo was also the first Indigenous North American to be baptized by English settlers. Upon White's return in 1590, neither native nor Englishman were to be found. Popular theory holds that the colonists either traveled away with or assimilated into local native culture. Virginia Dare, the first English person to be born in North America, was born on Roanoke Island on August 18, 1587; the surrounding Dare County is named for her.\nAs early as 1650, settlers from the Virginia colony had moved into the Albemarle Sound region. By 1663, King Charles\u00a0II of England granted a charter to start a new colony on the North American continent; this would generally establish North Carolina's borders. He named it \"Carolina\" in honor of his father, CharlesI. By 1665, a second charter was issued to attempt to resolve territorial questions. This charter rewarded the Lords Proprietors, eight Englishmen to whom King Charles II granted joint ownership of a tract of land in the state. All of these men either had remained loyal to the Crown or aided Charles's restoration to the English throne after Cromwell. In 1712, owing to disputes over governance, the Carolina colony split into North Carolina and South Carolina. North Carolina became a crown colony in 1729.\nMost of the English colonists had arrived as indentured servants, hiring themselves out as laborers for a fixed period to pay for their passage. In the early years the line between indentured servants and African slaves or laborers was fluid. Some Africans were allowed to earn their freedom before slavery became a lifelong status. Most of the free colored families formed in North Carolina before the Revolution were descended from unions or marriages between free whites and enslaved or free Africans or African-Americans. If the mothers were free, their children were born free. Many had migrated or were descendants of migrants from colonial Virginia. As the flow of indentured laborers to the colony decreased with improving economic conditions in Great Britain, planters imported more slaves, and the state's legal delineations between free and slave status tightened, effectively hardening the latter into a racial caste. Conditions for both slaves and workers worsened as the ranks of the former eclipsed the latter and expansion of farming operations into former Indigenous territories lowered prices. Unable to establish deep water ports such as at Charles Town and Norfolk, the economy's growth and prosperity was thus based on cheap labor and slave plantation systems, devoted primarily to the production of tobacco, then later cotton and textiles.\nIn 1738\u20131739, smallpox caused high fatalities among the Native Americans, who had no immunity to the new disease (it had become endemic over centuries in Europe). According to the historian Russell Thornton, \"The 1738 epidemic was said to have killed one-half of the Cherokee, with other tribes of the area suffering equally.\"\nColonial period.\nAfter the Spanish in the 16th century, the first permanent European settlers of North Carolina were English colonists who migrated south from Virginia. Virginia had grown rapidly and land was less available. Nathaniel Batts was documented as one of the first of these Virginian migrants. He settled south of the Chowan River and east of the Great Dismal Swamp in 1655. By 1663, this northeastern area of the Province of Carolina, known as the Albemarle Settlements, was undergoing full-scale English settlement. During the same period, the English monarch CharlesII gave provincial land grants to the Lords Proprietors, the group of noblemen who had helped restore him to the throne in 1660. These grants were predicated on an agreement that the Lords would use their influence to bring in colonists and establish ports of trade. This new Province of Carolina was named in honor and memory of his father, CharlesI (Latin: \"Carolus\").\nLacking a viable coastal port city due to geography, towns grew at a slower pace and remained small. By the late 17th century, Carolina was essentially two colonies, one centered in the Albemarle region in the north and the other located in the south around Charleston. In 1705 South Carolinian John Lawson purchased land on the Pamlico River and laid out Bath, North Carolina's first town. After returning to England, he published the book A New Voyage to Carolina, which became a travelogue and a marketing piece to encourage new colonists to Carolina. Lawson encouraged Baron Christoph Von Graffenried, the leader of a group of Swiss and German Protestants, to immigrate to Carolina. Von Graffenried purchased land between the Neuse and the Trent Rivers and established the town of New Bern. After an attack on New Bern in which hundreds were killed or injured, Lawson was caught then executed by Tuscarora Indians. A large revolt happened in the state in 1711, known as Cary's Rebellion. In 1712, North Carolina became a separate colony, and in 1729 it became a royal colony, with the exception of the Earl Granville holdings.\nIn June 1718, \"Queen Anne's Revenge\", the flagship of pirate Blackbeard, ran aground at Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina, in present-day Carteret County. After the grounding, her crew and supplies were transferred to smaller ships. In November 1718, after appealing to the governor of North Carolina, who promised safe-haven and a pardon, Blackbeard was killed in an ambush by troops from Virginia. In 1996, Intersal, Inc., a private maritime research firm, discovered the remains of a vessel likely to be the \"Queen Anne's Revenge\", which was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.\nNorth Carolina became one of the Thirteen Colonies and with the territory of South Carolina was originally known as the Province of North Carolina. The northern and southern parts of the original province separated in 1712, with North Carolina becoming a royal colony in 1729. Originally settled by small farmers, sometimes having a few slaves, who were oriented toward subsistence agriculture, the colony lacked large cities or towns. Pirates menaced the coastal settlements, but by 1718 piracy in the Carolinas was on the decline. Growth was strong in the middle of the 18th century, as the economy attracted Scots-Irish, Quaker, English and German immigrants. A majority of the North Carolina colonists generally supported the American Revolution, although there were some Loyalists. Loyalists in North Carolina were fewer in number than in some other colonies such as Georgia, South Carolina, Delaware, and New York.\nDuring colonial times, Edenton served as the state capital beginning in 1722, followed by New Bern becoming the capital in 1766. Construction of Tryon Palace, which served as the residence and offices of the provincial governor William Tryon, began in 1767 and was completed in 1771. In 1788, Raleigh was chosen as the site of the new capital, as its central location protected it from coastal attacks. Officially established in 1792 as both county seat and state capital, the city was named after Sir Walter Raleigh, sponsor of Roanoke, the \"lost colony\" on Roanoke Island. The population of the colony more than quadrupled from 52,000 in 1740 to 270,000 in 1780 from high immigration from Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, plus immigrants from abroad.\nNorth Carolina did not have any printer or print shops until 1749, when the North Carolina Assembly commissioned James Davis from Williamsburg Virginia to act as their official printer. Before this time the laws and legal journals of North Carolina were handwritten and were kept in a largely disorganized manner, prompting the hiring of Davis. Davis settled in New Bern, married, and in 1755 was appointed by Benjamin Franklin as North Carolina's first postmaster. In October of that year the North Carolina Assembly awarded Davis a contract to carry mail between Wilmington, North Carolina and Suffolk, Virginia. He was also active in North Carolina politics as a member of the Assembly and later as the Sheriff. Davis also founded and printed the \"North-Carolina Gazette\", North Carolina's first newspaper, printed in his printing house in New Bern.\nDifferences in the settlement patterns of eastern and western North Carolina, or the Atlantic coastal plain and uplands, affected the political, economic, and social life of the state from the 18th until the 20th century. Eastern North Carolina was settled chiefly by immigrants from rural England and Gaelic speakers from the Scottish Highlands. The Piedmont upcountry and western mountain region of North Carolina was settled chiefly by Scots-Irish, English, and German Protestants, the so-called \"cohee\". Arriving during the mid-to-late 18th century, the Scots-Irish, people of Scottish descent who migrated to and then emigrated from what is today Northern Ireland, were the largest non-English immigrant group before the Revolution; English indentured servants were overwhelmingly the largest immigrant group before the Revolution.\nRevolutionary War.\nDuring the American Revolutionary War, the English and Gaelic speaking Highland Scots of eastern North Carolina tended to remain loyal to the British Crown, because of longstanding business and personal connections with Great Britain. The English, Welsh, Scots-Irish, and German settlers of western North Carolina tended to favor American independence from Britain. British loyalists dubbed the Mecklenburg County area to be 'a hornet's nest' of radicals, birthing the name of the future Charlotte NBA team. On April 12, 1776, the colony became the first to instruct its delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence from the British Crown, through the Halifax Resolves passed by the North Carolina Provincial Congress. The date of this event is memorialized on the state flag and state seal. Throughout the Revolutionary War, fierce guerrilla warfare erupted between bands of pro-independence and pro-British colonists. In some cases the war was also an excuse to settle private grudges and rivalries.\nNorth Carolina had around 7,800 Patriots join the Continental Army under General George Washington; and an additional 10,000 served in local militia units under such leaders as General Nathanael Greene. There was some military action, especially in 1780\u201381. Many Carolinian frontiersmen had moved west over the mountains, into the Washington District (later known as Tennessee), but in 1789, following the Revolution, the state was persuaded to relinquish its claim to the western lands. It ceded them to the national government so the Northwest Territory could be organized and managed nationally.\nA major American victory in the war took place at King's Mountain along the North Carolina\u2013South Carolina border; on October 7, 1780, a force of 1,000 Patriots from western North Carolina (including what is today the state of Tennessee) and southwest Virginia overwhelmed a force of some 1,000 British troops led by Major Patrick Ferguson. Most of the soldiers fighting for the British side in this battle were Carolinians who had remained loyal to the Crown (they were called \"Tories\" or Loyalists). The American victory at King's Mountain gave the advantage to colonists who favored American independence, and it prevented the British Army from recruiting new soldiers from the Tories.\nThe road to Yorktown and America's independence from Great Britain led through North Carolina. As the British Army moved north from victories in Charleston and Camden, South Carolina, the Southern Division of the Continental Army and local militia prepared to meet them. Following General Daniel Morgan's victory over the British Cavalry Commander Banastre Tarleton at the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781, southern commander Nathanael Greene led British Lord Charles Cornwallis across the heartland of North Carolina, and away from the latter's base of supply in Charleston, South Carolina. This campaign is known as \"The Race to the Dan\" or \"The Race for the River\".\nIn the Battle of Cowan's Ford, Cornwallis met resistance along the banks of the Catawba River at Cowan's Ford on February 1, 1781, in an attempt to engage General Morgan's forces during a tactical withdrawal. Morgan had moved to the northern part of the state to combine with General Greene's newly recruited forces. Generals Greene and Cornwallis finally met at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in present-day Greensboro on March 15, 1781. Although the British troops held the field at the end of the battle, their casualties at the hands of the numerically superior Continental Army were crippling. Following this \"Pyrrhic victory\", Cornwallis chose to move to the Virginia coastline to get reinforcements, and to allow the Royal Navy to protect his battered army. This decision would result in Cornwallis' eventual defeat at Yorktown, Virginia, later in 1781. The Patriots' victory there guaranteed American independence. On November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the twelfth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.\nAntebellum period.\nAfter 1800, cotton and tobacco became important export crops. The eastern half of the state, especially the Coastal Plain region, developed a slave society based on a plantation system and slave labor. Planters owning large estates wielded significant political and socio-economic power in antebellum North Carolina. They placed their interests above those of the generally non-slave-holding yeoman farmers of North Carolina. While slaveholding was slightly less concentrated compared to some other Southern states, according to the 1860 census, more than 330,000 people, or 33% of the population out of 992,622 people in total, were enslaved African Americans. They lived and worked chiefly on plantations in the Piedmont and Coastal Plain regions of the state. In addition, 30,463 free people of color lived in the state. They were also mainly concentrated in the eastern coastal plain, especially at port cities such as Wilmington and New Bern, where a variety of jobs were available. Most were descendants from free African Americans who had migrated along with neighbors from Virginia during the 18th century. The majority were the descendants of unions in the working classes between white women, indentured servants or free, and African men, indentured, slave or free.\nAfter the American Revolution, Quakers and Mennonites worked to persuade slaveholders to free their slaves. Some were inspired by their efforts and the language of the Revolution to arrange for manumission of their slaves. The number of free people of color rose markedly in the first couple of decades after the Revolution. Many free people of color migrated to the frontier, along with their European-American neighbors, where the social system was looser. By 1810, nearly three percent of the free population consisted of free people of color, who numbered slightly more than 10,000. The western areas of North Carolina were mainly white families of European descent, especially Scotch-Irish, who operated small subsistence farms. In the early national period, the state became a center of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy, with a strong Whig presence, especially in the western part of the state. After Nat Turner's slave uprising in 1831, North Carolina and other southern states reduced the rights of free blacks. In 1835, the legislature withdrew their right to vote.\nIn mid-century, the state's rural and commercial areas were connected by the construction of a wooden plank road, known as a \"farmer's railroad\", from Fayetteville in the east to Bethania (northwest of Winston-Salem). On October 25, 1836, construction began on the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad to connect the port city of Wilmington with the state capital of Raleigh. In 1840, the state capitol building in Raleigh was completed, and still stands today.\nIn 1849, the North Carolina Railroad was created by act of the legislature to extend that railroad west to Greensboro, High Point, and Charlotte. During the Civil War, the Wilmington-to-Raleigh stretch of the railroad was vital to the Confederate war effort; supplies shipped into Wilmington were moved by rail through Raleigh to the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.\nAmerican Civil War.\nIn 1860, North Carolina was a slave state, in which one-third of the state's total population were African-American slaves. The state did not vote to join the Confederacy until President Abraham Lincoln called on it to invade its sister state, South Carolina, becoming the last or penultimate state to officially join the Confederacy. The title of \"last to join the Confederacy\" has been disputed; although Tennessee's informal secession on May 7, 1861, preceded North Carolina's official secession on May 20, the Tennessee legislature did not formally vote to secede until June 8, 1861.\nAround 125,000 troops from North Carolina served in the Confederate Army, and about 15,000 North Carolina troops (both black and white) served in Union Army regiments, including those who left the state to join Union regiments elsewhere. Over 30,000 North Carolina troops died from combat or disease during the war. Elected in 1862, Governor Zebulon Baird Vance tried to maintain state autonomy against Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Richmond. The state government was reluctant to support the demands of the national government in Richmond, and the state was the scene of only small battles. In 1865, Durham County saw the largest single surrender of Confederate soldiers at Bennett Place, when Joseph E. Johnston surrendered the Army of Tennessee and all remaining Confederate forces still active in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, totalling 89,270 soldiers.\nConfederate troops from all parts of North Carolina served in virtually all the major battles of the Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederacy's most famous army. The largest battle fought in North Carolina was at Bentonville, which was a futile attempt by Confederate General Joseph Johnston to slow Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's advance through the Carolinas in the spring of 1865. In April 1865, after losing the Battle of Morrisville, Johnston surrendered to Sherman at Bennett Place, in what is today Durham. North Carolina's port city of Wilmington, was the last Confederate port to fall to the Union, in February 1865, after the Union won the nearby Second Battle of Fort Fisher, its major defense downriver.\nThe first Confederate soldier to be killed in the Civil War was Private Henry Wyatt from North Carolina, in the Battle of Big Bethel in June 1861. At the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, the 26th North Carolina Regiment participated in Pickett/Pettigrew's Charge and advanced the farthest into Union lines of any Confederate regiment. During the Battle of Chickamauga, the 58th North Carolina Regiment advanced farther than any other regiment on Snodgrass Hill to push back the remaining Union forces from the battlefield. At Appomattox Court House in Virginia in April 1865, the 75th North Carolina Regiment, a cavalry unit, fired the last shots of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the Civil War. The phrase \"First at Bethel, Farthest at Gettysburg and Chickamauga, and Last at Appomattox\", later became used through much of the early 20th century.\nAfter secession, some North Carolinians refused to support the Confederacy. Some of the yeoman farmers chiefly in the state's mountains and western Piedmont region remained neutral during the Civil War, with others covertly supporting the Union cause during the conflict. Approximately 15,000 North Carolinians (both black and white) from across the state enlisted in the Union Army. Numerous slaves also escaped to Union lines, where they became essentially free.\nReconstruction era through late 19th century.\nFollowing the collapse of the Confederacy in 1865, North Carolina, along with other former Confederate States (except Tennessee), was put under direct control by the U.S. military and was relieved of its constitutional government and representation within the United States Congress in what is now referred to as the Reconstruction era. To earn back its rights, the state had to make concessions to Washington, one of which was ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment. Congressional Republicans during Reconstruction, commonly referred to as \"radical Republicans\", constantly pushed for new constitutions for each of the Southern states that emphasized equal rights for African-Americans. In 1868, a constitutional convention restored the state government of North Carolina. Though the Fifteenth Amendment was also adopted that same year, it remained in most cases ineffective for almost a century, not to mention paramilitary groups and their lynching with impunity.\nThe elections in April 1868 following the constitutional convention led to a narrow victory for a Republican-dominated government, with 19 African-Americans holding positions in the North Carolina State Legislature. In attempt to put the reforms into effect, the new Republican Governor William W. Holden declared martial law on any county allegedly not complying with law and order using the passage of the Shoffner Act.\nA Republican Party coalition of black freedmen, northern carpetbaggers and local scalawags controlled state government for three years. The white conservative Democrats regained control of the state legislature in 1870, in part by Ku Klux Klan violence and terrorism at the polls, to suppress black voting. Republicans were elected to the governorship until 1876, when the Red Shirts, a paramilitary organization that arose in 1874 and was allied with the Democratic Party, helped suppress black voting. More than 150 black Americans were murdered in electoral violence in 1876.\nPost\u2013Civil War-debt cycles pushed people to switch from subsistence agriculture to commodity agriculture. Among this time the notorious Crop-Lien system developed and was financially difficult on landless whites and blacks, due to high amounts of usury. Also due to the push for commodity agriculture, the free range was ended. Prior to this time people fenced in their crops and had their livestock feeding on the free range areas. After the ending of the free range people now fenced their animals and had their crops in the open.\nDemocrats were elected to the legislature and governor's office, but the Populists attracted voters displeased with them. In 1896 a biracial, Populist-Republican Fusionist coalition gained the governor's office and passed laws that would extend the voting franchise to blacks and poor whites. The Democrats regained control of the legislature in 1896 and passed laws to impose Jim Crow and racial segregation of public facilities. Voters of North Carolina's 2nd congressional district elected a total of four African-American congressmen through these years of the late 19th century.\nPolitical tensions ran so high a small group of white Democrats in 1898 planned to take over the Wilmington government if their candidates were not elected. In the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, white Democrats led around 2,000 of their supporters that attacked the black newspaper and neighborhood, killed an estimated 60 to 300 people, and ran off the white Republican mayor and aldermen. They installed their own people and elected Alfred M. Waddell as mayor, in the only successful coup d'\u00e9tat in United States history.\nIn 1899, the state legislature passed a new constitution, with requirements for poll taxes and literacy tests for voter registration which disenfranchised most black Americans in the state. Exclusion from voting had wide effects: it meant black Americans could not serve on juries or in any local office. After a decade of white supremacy, many people forgot North Carolina had ever had thriving middle-class black Americans. Black citizens had no political voice in the state until after the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed to enforce their constitutional rights. It was not until 1992 that another African American was elected as a U.S. Representative from North Carolina.\nEarly through mid-20th century.\nAfter the reconstruction era, North Carolina had become a one-party state, dominated by the Democratic Party. The state mainly continued with an economy based on tobacco, cotton textiles and commodity agriculture. Large towns and cities remained in few numbers. However, a major industrial base emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century, in the counties of the Piedmont Triad, based on cotton mills established at the fall line. Railroads were built to connect the new industrializing cities.\nThe state was the site of the first successful controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air flight, by the Wright brothers, near Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903.\nIn the first half of the 20th century, many African Americans left the state to go North for better opportunities, in the Great Migration. Their departure changed the demographic characteristics of many areas.\nNorth Carolina was hard hit by the Great Depression, but the New Deal programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt for cotton and tobacco significantly helped the farmers. After World War\u00a0II, the state's economy grew rapidly, highlighted by the growth of such cities as Charlotte, Raleigh, and Durham in the Piedmont region.\nResearch Triangle Park, established in 1959, serves as the largest research park in the United States. Formed near Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, the Research Triangle metro is a major area of universities and advanced scientific and technical research.\nThe Greensboro sit-ins in 1960 played a crucial role in the Civil Rights Movement to bring full equality to American blacks. By the late 1960s, spurred in part by the increasingly leftward tilt of national Democrats, conservative whites began to vote for Republican national candidates and gradually for more Republicans locally.\nLate 20th century to present.\nSince the 1970s, North Carolina has seen steady increases in population growth. This growth has largely occurred in metropolitan areas located within the Piedmont Crescent, in places such as Charlotte, Concord, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Durham and Raleigh. The Charlotte metropolitan area has experienced large growth mainly due to its finance, banking, and tech industries.\nBy the 1990s, Charlotte had become a major regional and national banking center. Towards Raleigh, North Carolina State, Duke University, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, have helped the Research Triangle area attract an educated workforce and develop more jobs.\nIn 1988, North Carolina gained its first professional sports franchise, the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The hornets team name stems from the American Revolutionary War, when British General Cornwallis described Charlotte as a \"hornet's nest of rebellion\". The Carolina Panthers of the National Football League (NFL) became based in Charlotte as well, with their first season being in 1995. The Carolina Hurricanes of the National Hockey League (NHL) moved to Raleigh in 1997, with their colors being the same as the NC State Wolfpack, who are also located in Raleigh.\nBy the late 20th century and into the early 21st century, economic industries such as technology, pharmaceuticals, banking, food processing, vehicle parts, and tourism started to emerge as North Carolina's main economic drivers. This marked a shift from the state's former main industries of tobacco, textiles, and furniture. Factors that played a role in this shift were globalization, the state's higher education system, national banking, the transformation of agriculture, and new companies moving to the state.\nGeography.\nNorth Carolina is bordered by South Carolina on the south, Georgia on the southwest, Tennessee on the west, Virginia on the north, and the Atlantic Ocean on the east. The United States Census Bureau places North Carolina in the South Atlantic division of the southern region. It has a total area of , of which is land and (9.66%) is water.\nNorth Carolina consists of three main geographic regions: the Atlantic coastal plain, occupying the eastern portion of the state; the central Piedmont region, and the mountain region in the west, which is part of the Appalachian Mountains. The coastal plain consists of more specifically defined areas known as the Outer Banks, a string of sandy, narrow barrier islands separated from the mainland by sounds or inlets, including Albemarle Sound and Pamlico Sound, the native home of the venus flytrap, and the inner coastal plain, where longleaf pine trees are native.\nSo many ships have been lost off Cape Hatteras that the area is known as the \"Graveyard of the Atlantic\"; more than a thousand ships have sunk in these waters since records began in 1526. The most famous of these is the \"Queen Anne's Revenge\" (flagship of the pirate Blackbeard), which went aground in Beaufort Inlet in 1718.\nThe coastal plain transitions to the Piedmont region along the Atlantic Seaboard fall line, the elevation at which waterfalls first appear on streams and rivers. The Piedmont region of central North Carolina is the state's most populous region, containing the six largest cities in the state by population. It consists of gently rolling countryside frequently broken by hills or low mountain ridges. Small, isolated, and deeply eroded mountain ranges and peaks are located in the Piedmont, including the Sauratown Mountains, Pilot Mountain, the Uwharrie Mountains, Crowder's Mountain, King's Pinnacle, the Brushy Mountains, and the South Mountains. The Piedmont ranges from about in elevation in the east to about in the west.\nThe western section of the state is part of the Blue Ridge Mountains of the larger Appalachian Mountain range. Among the subranges of the Blue Ridge Mountains located in the state are the Great Smoky Mountains and the Black Mountains. The Black Mountains are the highest in the eastern United States, and culminate in Mount Mitchell at , the highest point east of the Mississippi River.\nNorth Carolina has 17 major river basins. The five basins west of the Blue Ridge Mountains flow to the Gulf of Mexico, while the remainder flow to the Atlantic Ocean. Of the 17 basins, 11 originate within the state of North Carolina, but only four are contained entirely within the state's border\u2014the Cape Fear, the Neuse, the White Oak, and the Tar\u2013Pamlico basin.\nClimate.\nElevation above sea level is most responsible for temperature change across the state, with the mountainous regions being coolest year-round. The climate is also influenced by the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf Stream, especially in the coastal plain. These influences tend to cause warmer winter temperatures along the coast, where temperatures only occasionally drop below the freezing point at night. The coastal plain averages around of snow or ice annually, and in many years, there may be no snow or ice at all.\nThe Atlantic Ocean exerts less influence on the climate of the Piedmont region, which has hotter summers and colder winters than along the coast, though winters are still mild.\nNorth Carolina experiences severe weather both in summer and in winter, with summer bringing threat of hurricanes, tropical storms, heavy rain, and flooding. Destructive hurricanes that have hit North Carolina include Hurricane Fran, Hurricane Florence, Hurricane Floyd, Hurricane Hugo, and Hurricane Hazel, the latter being the strongest storm ever to make landfall in the state, as a Category4 in 1954. Hurricane Isabel ranks as the most destructive of the 21st century.\nNorth Carolina averages fewer than 20 tornadoes per year, many of them produced by hurricanes or tropical storms along the coastal plain. Tornadoes from thunderstorms are a risk, especially in the eastern part of the state. The western Piedmont is often protected by the mountains, which tend to break up storms as they cross over; the storms will often re-form farther east. A phenomenon known as \"cold-air damming\" often occurs in the northwestern part of the state, which can weaken storms but can also lead to major ice events in winter.\nIn April 2011, the worst tornado outbreak in North Carolina's history occurred. Thirty confirmed tornadoes touched down, mainly in the Eastern Piedmont and Sandhills, killing at least 24 people. In September 2019 Hurricane Dorian hit the area.\nParks and recreation.\nNorth Carolina provides a large range of recreational activities, from swimming at the beach to skiing in the mountains. North Carolina offers fall colors, freshwater and saltwater fishing, hunting, birdwatching, agritourism, ATV trails, ballooning, rock climbing, biking, hiking, skiing, boating and sailing, camping, canoeing, caving (spelunking), gardens, and arboretums. North Carolina has theme parks, aquariums, museums, historic sites, lighthouses, elegant theaters, concert halls, and fine dining.\nNorth Carolinians enjoy outdoor recreation using numerous local bike paths, 34 state parks, and 14 national parks. National Park Service units include the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, the Blue Ridge Parkway, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Cape Lookout National Seashore, Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site at Flat Rock, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site at Manteo, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Great Smoky Mountains Railroad, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park in Greensboro, Moores Creek National Battlefield near Currie in Pender County, the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, Old Salem National Historic Site in Winston-Salem, the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, and Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills.\nNational Forests include Uwharrie National Forest in central North Carolina, Croatan National Forest in Eastern North Carolina, Pisgah National Forest in the western mountains, and Nantahala National Forest in the southwestern part of the state.\nMajor cities.\nIn 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau released the 2023 population estimates for municipalities in North Carolina. Charlotte has the largest population, while Raleigh has the second-largest population in North Carolina.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nMost populous counties.\nAfter the 2020 census, Wake County\u2014with a population of 1,129,410\u2014became the most populous county in the state, overtaking Mecklenburg County\u2014with a population of 1,115,482\u2014by a margin of about 14,000. Both counties are still the only to have populations over one million in North Carolina and the Carolinas region.\nStatistical areas.\nNorth Carolina has four major combined statistical areas (CSA) with a population over 1\u00a0million (as of 2023):\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nThe United States Census Bureau determined the population of North Carolina was 10,439,388 at the 2020 census. Based on numbers in 2012 of the people residing in North Carolina 58.5% were born there; 33.1% were born in another state; 1.0% were born in Puerto Rico, U.S. island areas, or born abroad to American parent(s); and 7.4% were foreign-born.\nAccording to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 9,382 homeless people in North Carolina.\nThe top countries of origin for North Carolina's immigrants were Mexico, India, Honduras, China and El Salvador, as of 2018[ [update]].\nRace and ethnicity.\nAt the 2010 census, the racial composition of North Carolina was: White: 68.5% (65.3% non-Hispanic white, 3.2% White Hispanic), Black or African American: 21.5%, Latin and Hispanic American of any race: 8.4%, some other race: 4.3%, Multiracial American: 2.2%, Asian American: 2.2%, and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander: 1%. In 2020, North Carolina like much of the U.S. experienced a decline in its non-Hispanic white population; at the 2020 census, non-Hispanic whites were 62.2%, Blacks or African Americans 20.5%, American Indian and Alaska Natives 1.2%, Asians 3.3%, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders 0.1%, people from other race 5.9%, and multiracial Americans 6.8%.\nThe majority of the Black American population is concentrated in the urban areas and northeastern part of the state.\nNorth Carolina's Hispanic population has grown rapidly. The Hispanic population more than doubled in size between 1990 and 2000. Many of North Carolina's Hispanic residents are of Mexican descent. Many of North Carolina's newer Latino residents came from Mexico largely to work in agriculture, manufacturing, or on one of North Carolina's military installations.\nThe most common ancestries in North Carolina are African-American, American, German, English, and Irish.\nNorth Carolina has the eighth-largest Native American population in the country. The state is home to eight Native American tribes and four urban Native American organizations.\nLanguages.\nNorth Carolina is home to a spectrum of different dialects of Southern American English and Appalachian English.\nIn 2010, 89.66% (7,750,904) of North Carolina residents age five and older spoke English at home as a primary language, while 6.93% (598,756) spoke Spanish, 0.32% (27,310) French, 0.27% (23,204) German, and Chinese (which includes Mandarin) was spoken as a main language by 0.27% (23,072) of the population five and older. In total, 10.34% (893,735) of North Carolina's population age five and older spoke a mother language other than English. In 2019, 87.7% of the population aged 5 and older spoke English and 12.3% spoke another language. The most common non-English language was Spanish at the 2019 American Community Survey.\nReligion.\nNorth Carolina residents since the colonial era have historically been overwhelmingly Protestant\u2014first Anglican, then Baptist and Methodist. In 2010, the Southern Baptist Convention was the single largest Christian denomination, with 4,241 churches and 1,513,000 members. The second largest in 2024 was the Roman Catholic Church which is organised into two dioceses. In the west is the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte which includes Charlotte and has 530,000 members in 196 parishes. In the east is the Diocese of Raleigh with a total of 80 parishes and nearly 500,000 Catholics. The third largest was the United Methodist Church, with 660,000 members and 1,923 churches. The fourth largest was the Presbyterian Church (USA), with 186,000 members and 710 congregations; this denomination was brought by Scots-Irish immigrants who settled the backcountry in the colonial era. In 2020, the Southern Baptists remained the largest with 1,324,747 adherents, though Methodists and others were collectively overtaken by non/interdenominational Protestants numbering 1,053,564.\nIn 1845, the Baptists split into regional associations of the Northern United States and Southern U.S., over the issue of slavery. These new associations were the Northern Baptist Convention (today the American Baptist Churches USA) and Southern Baptist Convention. By the late 19th century, the largest Protestant denomination in North Carolina were Baptists. After emancipation, black Baptists quickly set up their own independent congregations in North Carolina and other states of the South, as they wanted to be free of white supervision. Black Baptists developed their own state and national associations, such as the National Baptist Convention. Other primarily African American Baptist conventions which grew in the state since the 20th century were the Progressive National Baptist Convention and Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship.\nMethodists (the second largest group among North Carolinian Protestants) were divided along racial lines in the United Methodist Church and African Methodist Episcopal Church. The Methodist tradition tends to be strong in the northern Piedmont, especially in populous Guilford County. Other prominent Protestant groups in North Carolina as of the Pew Research Center's 2014 study were non/interdenominational Protestants and Pentecostalism. The Assemblies of God and Church of God in Christ are the largest Pentecostal denominations operating in the state, while notable minorities include Oneness Pentecostals primarily affiliated with the United Pentecostal Church International.\nThe state also has a special history with the Moravian Church, as settlers of this faith (largely of German origin) settled in the Winston-Salem area in the 18th and 19th centuries. Historically Scots-Irish have had a strong presence in Charlotte and in Scotland County.\nA wide variety of non-Christian faiths are practiced by other residents in the state, including: Judaism, Islam, Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed, Buddhism, and Hinduism. The rapid influx of Northerners and immigrants from Latin America is steadily increasing ethnic and religious diversity within the state. The number of Roman Catholics and Jews in the state has increased, along with general religious diversity as a whole. There are also a substantial number of Quakers in Guilford County and northeastern North Carolina. Many universities and colleges in the state have been founded on religious traditions, and some currently maintain that affiliation, including:\nThe state also has several major seminaries, including the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, and the Hood Theological Seminary (AME Zion) in Salisbury.\nEconomy.\nNorth Carolina's 2018 total gross state product was $496 billion. Based on American Community Survey 2010\u20132014 data, North Carolina's median household income was $46,693. It ranked forty-first out of fifty states plus the District of Columbia for median household income. North Carolina had the fourteenth highest poverty rate in the nation at 17.6%, with 13% of families that were below the poverty line.\nThe state has a very diverse economy because of its great availability of hydroelectric power, its pleasant climate, and its wide variety of soils. The state ranks third among the South Atlantic states in population, but leads the region in industry and agriculture. North Carolina leads the nation in the production of tobacco.\nCharlotte, the state's largest city, is a major textile and trade center. According to a Forbes article written in 2013, employment in the \"Old North State\" has gained many different industry sectors. Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) industries in the area surrounding North Carolina's capital have grown 17.9 percent since 2001. Raleigh ranked the third best city for technology in 2020 due to the state's growing technology sector. In 2010, North Carolina's total gross state product was $424.9 billion, while the state debt in November 2012, according to one source, totaled $2.4 billion, while according to another, was in 2012 $57.8 billion. In 2011, the civilian labor force was at around 4.5 million with employment near 4.1 million.\nNorth Carolina is the leading U.S. state in production of flue-cured tobacco and sweet potatoes, and comes second in the farming of pigs and hogs, trout, and turkeys. In the three most recent USDA surveys (2002, 2007, 2012), North Carolina also ranked second in the production of Christmas trees.\nNorth Carolina has 15 metropolitan areas, and in 2010 was chosen as the third-best state for business by Forbes Magazine, and the second-best state by chief executive officer Magazine. Since 2000, there has been a clear division in the economic growth of North Carolina's urban and rural areas. While North Carolina's urban areas have enjoyed a prosperous economy with steady job growth, low unemployment, and rising wages, many of the state's rural counties have suffered from job loss, rising levels of poverty, and population loss as their manufacturing base has declined. According to one estimate, one-half of North Carolina's 100 counties have lost population since 2010, primarily due to the poor economy in many of North Carolina's rural areas. However, the population of the state's urban areas is steadily increasing.\nArts and culture.\nNorth Carolina has traditions in art, music, and cuisine. The nonprofit arts and culture industry generates $1.2billion in direct economic activity in North Carolina, supporting more than 43,600 full-time equivalent jobs and generating $119million in revenue for local governments and the state of North Carolina. North Carolina established the North Carolina Museum of Art as the first major museum collection in the country to be formed by state legislation and funding and continues to bring millions into the NC economy.\nOne of the more famous arts communities in the state is Seagrove, the handmade-pottery capital of the U.S., where artisans create handcrafted pottery inspired by the same traditions that began in this community more than two hundred years ago.\nMusic.\nNorth Carolina boasts a large number of noteworthy jazz musicians, some among the most important in the history of the genre. These include: John Coltrane, (Hamlet, High Point); Thelonious Monk (Rocky Mount); Billy Taylor (Greenville); Woody Shaw (Laurinburg); Lou Donaldson (Durham); Max Roach (Newland); Tal Farlow (Greensboro); Albert, Jimmy and Percy Heath (Wilmington); Nina Simone (Tryon); and Billy Strayhorn (Hillsborough).\nNorth Carolina is also famous for its tradition of old-time music, and many recordings were made in the early 20th century by folk-song collector Bascom Lamar Lunsford. Musicians such as the North Carolina Ramblers helped solidify the sound of country music in the late 1920s, while the influential bluegrass musician Doc Watson also hailed from North Carolina. Both North and South Carolina are hotbeds for traditional rural blues, especially the style known as the Piedmont blues.\nBen Folds Five originated in Winston-Salem, and Ben Folds still records and resides in Chapel Hill.\nThe British band Pink Floyd is named, in part, after Chapel Hill bluesman Floyd Council.\nThe Research Triangle area has long been a well-known center for folk, rock, metal, jazz and punk. James Taylor grew up around Chapel Hill, and his 1968 song \"Carolina in My Mind\" has been called an unofficial anthem for the state. Other famous musicians from North Carolina include J. Cole, DaBaby, 9th Wonder, Shirley Caesar, Roberta Flack, Clyde McPhatter, Nnenna Freelon, Link Wray, Warren Haynes, Jimmy Herring, Michael Houser, Eric Church, Future Islands, Randy Travis, Ryan Adams, Ronnie Milsap, Anthony Hamilton, The Avett Brothers, Charlie Daniels, and Luke Combs.\nMetal and punk acts such as Corrosion of Conformity, Between the Buried and Me, and Nightmare Sonata are native to North Carolina.\nEDM producer Porter Robinson hails from Chapel Hill.\nNorth Carolina is the home of more \"American Idol\" finalists than any other state: Clay Aiken (season two), Fantasia Barrino (season three), Chris Daughtry (season five), Kellie Pickler (season five), Bucky Covington (season five), Anoop Desai (season eight), Scotty McCreery (season ten), and Caleb Johnson (season thirteen). North Carolina also has the most \"American Idol\" winners with Barrino, McCreery, and Johnson.\nIn the mountains, the Brevard Music Center hosts choral, operatic, orchestral, and solo performances during its annual summer schedule.\nNorth Carolina has five professional opera companies: Opera Carolina in Charlotte, NC Opera in Raleigh, Greensboro Opera in Greensboro, Piedmont Opera in Winston-Salem, and Asheville Lyric Opera in Asheville. Academic conservatories and universities also produce fully staged operas, such as the A. J. Fletcher Opera Institute of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, the Department of Music of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and UNC Greensboro.\nAmong others, there are three high-level symphonic orchestras: NC Symphony in Raleigh, Charlotte Symphony, and Winston-Salem Symphony. The NC Symphony holds the North Carolina Master Chorale. The Carolina Ballet is headquartered in Raleigh, and there is also the Charlotte Ballet.\nThe state boasts three performing arts centers: DPAC in Durham, Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts in Raleigh, and the Blumenthal Performing Art Centers in Charlotte. They feature concerts, operas, recitals, and traveling Broadway musicals.\nShopping.\nNorth Carolina has a variety of shopping choices. SouthPark Mall in Charlotte is the largest and most upscale mall in the Carolinas, featuring multiple luxury tenants with their sole location in the state. Other major malls in Charlotte include Northlake Mall and Carolina Place Mall in nearby suburb Pineville. Other major malls throughout the state include Hanes Mall in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, The Thruway Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Crabtree Valley Mall, North Hills Mall, and Triangle Town Center in Raleigh; Friendly Center and Four Seasons Town Centre in Greensboro; Oak Hollow Mall in High Point; Concord Mills in Concord; Valley Hills Mall in Hickory; Cross Creek Mall in Fayetteville; and The Streets at Southpoint in Durham and Independence Mall in Wilmington, North Carolina, and Tanger Outlets in Charlotte, Nags Head, Blowing Rock, and Mebane, North Carolina.\nCuisine and agriculture.\nA culinary staple of North Carolina is pork barbecue. There are strong regional differences and rivalries over the sauces and methods used in making the barbecue. The common trend across Western North Carolina is the use of premium grade Boston butt. Western North Carolina pork barbecue uses a tomato-based sauce, and only the pork shoulder (dark meat) is used. Western North Carolina barbecue is commonly referred to as Lexington barbecue after the Piedmont Triad town of Lexington, home of the Lexington Barbecue Festival, which attracts more than 100,000 visitors each October. Eastern North Carolina pork barbecue uses a vinegar-and-red-pepper-based sauce and the \"whole hog\" is cooked, thus integrating both white and dark meat.\nKrispy Kreme, an international chain of doughnut stores, was started in North Carolina; the company's headquarters are in Winston-Salem. Pepsi-Cola was first produced in 1898 in New Bern. A regional soft drink, Cheerwine, was created and is still based in the city of Salisbury. Despite its name, the hot sauce Texas Pete was created in North Carolina; its headquarters are also in Winston-Salem. The Hardee's fast-food chain was started in Rocky Mount. Another fast-food chain, Bojangles', was started in Charlotte, and has its corporate headquarters there. A popular North Carolina restaurant chain is Golden Corral. Started in 1973, the chain was founded in Fayetteville, with headquarters located in Raleigh. Popular pickle brand Mount Olive Pickle Company was founded in Mount Olive in 1926. Fast casual burger chain Hwy 55 Burgers, Shakes & Fries also makes its home in Mount Olive. Cook Out, a popular fast-food chain featuring burgers, hot dogs, and milkshakes in a wide variety of flavors, was founded in Greensboro in 1989 and has begun expanding outside North Carolina. In 2013 \"Southern Living\" named Durham\u2013Chapel Hill the South's \"Tastiest City\".\nOver the last decade, North Carolina has become a cultural epicenter and haven for internationally prize-winning wine (Noni Bacca Winery), internationally prized cheeses (Ashe County), \"L'institut International aux Arts Gastronomiques: Conquerront Les Yanks les Truffes, January 15, 2010\" international hub for truffles (Garland Truffles), and beer making, as tobacco land has been converted to grape orchards while state laws regulating alcohol by volume (ABV) in beer allowed a jump from six to fifteen percent. The Yadkin Valley in particular has become a strengthening market for grape production, while Asheville recently won the recognition of being named \"Beer City USA\". Asheville boasts the largest number of breweries per capita of any city in the United States. Recognized and marketed brands of beer in North Carolina include Highland Brewing, Duck Rabbit Brewery, Mother Earth Brewery, Weeping Radish Brewery, Big Boss Brewing, Foothills Brewing, Carolina Brewing Company, Lonerider Brewing, and White Rabbit Brewing Company.\nNorth Carolina has large grazing areas for beef and dairy cattle. Truck farms can be found in North Carolina. A truck farm is a small farm where fruits and vegetables are grown to be sold at local markets. The state's shipping, commercial fishing, and lumber industries are important to its economy. Service industries, including education, health care, private research, and retail trade, are also important. Research Triangle Park, a large industrial complex located in the Raleigh-Durham area, is one of the major centers in the country for electronics and medical research.\nTobacco was one of the first major industries to develop after the Civil War. Many farmers grew some tobacco, and the invention of the cigarette made the product especially popular. Winston-Salem is the birthplace of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR), founded by R. J. Reynolds in 1874 as one of sixteen tobacco companies in the town. By 1914 it was selling 425 million packs of Camels a year. Today it is the second-largest tobacco company in the U.S. (behind Altria Group). RJR is an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Reynolds American Inc., which in turn is 42% owned by British American Tobacco.\nShips named for the state.\nSeveral ships have been named after the state, most famously in the Pacific Ocean theater of World War\u00a0II. Now decommissioned, she is part of the USS \"North Carolina\" Battleship Memorial in Wilmington. Another , a nuclear attack submarine, was commissioned in Wilmington on May 3, 2008.\nState parks.\nThe state maintains a group of protected areas known as the North Carolina State Park System, which is managed by the North Carolina Division of Parks & Recreation (NCDPR), an agency of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (NCDNCR).\nArmed forces installations.\nFort Bragg, near Fayetteville and Southern Pines, is a large and comprehensive military base and is the headquarters of the XVIII Airborne Corps, 82nd Airborne Division, and the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. Serving as the air wing for Fort Bragg is Pope Field, also located near Fayetteville.\nLocated in Jacksonville, Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, combined with nearby bases Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Cherry Point, MCAS New River, Camp Geiger, Camp Johnson, Stone Bay and Courthouse Bay, makes up the largest concentration of Marines and sailors in the world. MCAS Cherry Point is home of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing. Located in Goldsboro, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base is home of the 4th Fighter Wing and 916th Air Refueling Wing. One of the busiest air stations in the United States Coast Guard is located at the Coast Guard Air Station in Elizabeth City. Also stationed in North Carolina is the Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point in Southport.\nOn January 24, 1961, a B-52G broke up in midair and crashed after suffering a severe fuel loss, near Goldsboro, dropping two nuclear bombs in the process without detonation. In 2013, it was revealed that three safety mechanisms on one bomb had failed, leaving just one low-voltage switch preventing detonation.\nTourism.\nCharlotte is the most-visited city in the state, attracting 28.3million visitors in 2018. Area attractions include Carolina Panthers NFL football team and Charlotte Hornets basketball team, Carowinds amusement park, Catawba Two Kings Casino (in nearby Kings Mountain), Charlotte Motor Speedway, U.S. National Whitewater Center, Discovery Place, Great Wolf Lodge, Sea Life Aquarium, Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, Billy Graham Library, Carolinas Aviation Museum, Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, Levine Museum of the New South, McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Mint Museum, and the NASCAR Hall of Fame.\nEvery year the Appalachian Mountains attract several million tourists to the western part of the state, including the historic Biltmore Estate. The scenic Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smoky Mountains National Park are the two most visited national park and unit in the United States with more than 25million visitors in 2013. The City of Asheville is consistently voted as one of the top places to visit and live in the United States, known for its rich art deco architecture, mountain scenery and outdoor activities.\nIn Raleigh, many tourists visit the capital, African American Cultural Complex, Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh, Gregg Museum of Art & Design at NCSU, Haywood Hall House & Gardens, Marbles Kids Museum, North Carolina Museum of Art, North Carolina Museum of History, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, Raleigh City Museum, J. C. Raulston Arboretum, Joel Lane House, Mordecai House, Montfort Hall, and the Pope House Museum. The Carolina Hurricanes NHL hockey team is also located in the city.\nIn the Conover\u2013Hickory area, attractions include Hickory Motor Speedway, RockBarn Golf and Spa, home of the Greater Hickory Classic at Rock Barn; Catawba County Firefighters Museum, the SALT Block, and Valley Hills Mall.\nThe Piedmont Triad, or center of the state, is home to Krispy Kreme, Mayberry, Texas Pete, the Lexington Barbecue Festival, and Moravian cookies. The internationally acclaimed North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro attracts visitors to its animals, plants, and a 57-piece art collection along of shaded pathways in the world's largest-land-area natural-habitat park. Seagrove, in the central portion of the state, attracts many tourists along Pottery Highway (NC Hwy 705). MerleFest in Wilkesboro attracts more than 80,000 people to its four-day music festival; and Wet 'n Wild Emerald Pointe water park in Greensboro is another attraction.\nThe Outer Banks and surrounding beaches attract millions of people to the Atlantic beaches every year.\nThe mainland northeastern part of the state, having recently adopted the name the Inner Banks, is also known as the Albemarle Region, for the Albemarle Settlements, some of the first settlements on North Carolina's portion of the Atlantic Coastal Plain. The region's historic sites are connected by the Historic Albemarle Tour.\nTransportation.\nTransportation systems in North Carolina consist of air, water, road, rail, and public transportation including intercity rail via Amtrak and light rail in Charlotte. North Carolina has the second-largest state highway system in the country as well as the largest ferry system on the East Coast.\nNorth Carolina's airports serve destinations throughout the United States and international destinations in Canada, Europe, Central America, and the Caribbean. In July 2022, Charlotte Douglas International Airport, which serves as the second busiest hub for American Airlines, ranked as the 11th busiest airport in the United States with Raleigh-Durham International Airport, a focus-city for Delta Air Lines and formerly a hub for American Airlines and Midway Airlines, ranked as the 37th busiest airport in the United States.\nNorth Carolina has a growing passenger rail system with Amtrak serving most major cities. Charlotte is also home to North Carolina's only light rail system known as LYNX.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nElementary and secondary public schools are overseen by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. The North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction is the secretary of the North Carolina State Board of Education, but the board, rather than the superintendent, holds most of the legal authority for making public education policy. In 2009, the board's chairman also became the \"chief executive officer\" for the state's school system. North Carolina has 115 public school systems, each of which is overseen by a local school board. A county may have one or more systems within it. The largest school systems in North Carolina are the Wake County Public School System, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Guilford County Schools, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, and Cumberland County Schools. In total there are 2,425 public schools in the state, including over 200 charter schools. North Carolina Schools were segregated until the \"Brown v. Board of Education\" trial and the release of the Pearsall Plan.\nPreviously the SAT was the dominant university entrance examination students took. In 2004 76% of NC high school students took the SAT. In 2012 state law changed which required 11th grade students to take the ACT. The SAT testing rate fell to 46% in 2019. Because students now can take that test for free, the ACT became the dominant university entrance examination. This also caused SAT average scores to rise, as in 1996 North Carolina was 48th nationally in SAT scores, but the profile of students taking the SAT has gotten smaller.\nColleges and universities.\nIn 1795, North Carolina opened the first public university in the United States\u2014the University of North Carolina (now named the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). More than 200 years later, the University of North Carolina System encompasses 16 public universities, which are Appalachian State University, East Carolina University, Elizabeth City State University, Fayetteville State University, North Carolina A&T State University, North Carolina Central University, North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Asheville, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Western Carolina University, and Winston-Salem State University, and one public, boarding high school, the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. Along with its public universities, North Carolina has 58 public community colleges in its community college system. The largest university in North Carolina is currently North Carolina State University, with more than 34,000 students.\nNorth Carolina is also home to many well-known private colleges and universities, including Barton College, Belmont Abbey College (the only Catholic college in the Carolinas), Campbell University, Davidson College, Duke University, Elon University, Guilford College, High Point University, Laurel University, Lees-McRae College, Lenoir-Rhyne University (the only Lutheran university in North Carolina), Livingstone College, Meredith College, Methodist University, Montreat College, North Carolina Wesleyan University, Pfeiffer University, Salem College, Shaw University (the first historically black college or university in the South), University of Mount Olive, Wake Forest University, William Peace University, and Wingate University.\nNorth Carolina is also home to the oldest and largest folk school in the United States, the John C. Campbell Folk School.\nHealth.\nThe residents of North Carolina have a lower life expectancy than the U.S. national average of life expectancy. According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, in 2014, males in North Carolina lived an average of 75.4 years compared to the national average of 76.7 years. Females in North Carolina lived an average of 80.2 years compared to the national average of 81.5 years. Male life expectancy in North Carolina between 1980 and 2014 increased by an average of 6.9 years, slightly higher than the male national average of a 6.7-year increase. Life expectancy for females in North Carolina between 1980 and 2014 increased by 3.2 years, lower than the female national average of a 3.9-year increase.\nUsing 2017\u20132019 data, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation calculated that life expectancy for North Carolina counties ranged from 71.4 years for Swain County to 82.3 years for Orange County. Life expectancy for the state was 78.1 years. The Foundation estimated that life expectancy for the United States as a whole in 2021 was 79.2 years.\nMedia.\nEarly newspapers were established in the eastern part of North Carolina in the mid-18th century. The Fayetteville Observer, established in 1816, is the oldest newspaper still in publication in North Carolina. The Wilmington Star-News, established 1867, is the oldest continuously running newspaper. As of January 1, 2020, there were approximately 240 North Carolina newspapers in publication in the state of North Carolina.\nThe News and Observer was founded in 1871 and is the largest in circulation in the state. In 2006, The Charlotte Observer was acquired by the company, it is the second largest circulating news paper in the state.\nGovernment and politics.\nThe government of North Carolina is divided into three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. These consist of the Council of State (led by the Governor), the bicameral legislature (called the General Assembly), and the state court system (headed by the North Carolina Supreme Court). The state constitution delineates the structure and function of the state government. Most municipalities in North Carolina operate under council\u2013manager governments.\nNorth Carolina's party loyalties have undergone a series of important shifts in the last few years: While the 2010 midterms saw Tarheel voters elect a bicameral Republican majority legislature for the first time in more than a century, North Carolina has also become a Southern swing state in presidential races. Since Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter's comfortable victory in the state in 1976, the state had consistently leaned Republican in presidential elections until Democrat Barack Obama narrowly won the state in 2008. In the 1990s, Democrat Bill Clinton came within a point of winning the state in 1992 and also only narrowly lost the state in 1996. In 2000, Republican George W. Bush easily won the state by more than 13 points.\nBy 2008, demographic shifts, population growth, and increased liberalization in densely populated areas such as the Research Triangle, Charlotte, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Fayetteville, and Asheville, propelled Barack Obama to victory in North Carolina, the first Democrat to win the state since 1976. In 2012, North Carolina was again considered a competitive swing state, with the Democrats even holding their 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. However, Republican Mitt Romney ultimately eked out a two-point win in North Carolina, the only 2012 swing state Obama lost, and one of only two states (along with Indiana) to flip from Obama in 2008 to the GOP in 2012. Furthermore, Republican Donald Trump carried the state in 2016, 2020, and 2024.\nIn 2012, the state elected a Republican governor (Pat McCrory) and lieutenant governor (Dan Forest) for the first time in more than two decades, while also giving the Republicans veto-proof majorities in both the State House of Representatives and the State Senate. Several U.S. House of Representatives seats flipped control in 2012, with the Republicans holding nine seats to the Democrats' four. In the 2014 midterm elections, Republican David Rouzer won the state's 7th congressional district seat, increasing the congressional delegation party split to 10\u20133 in favor of the GOP, a split they retained in subsequent elections until 2020, when it narrowed to 8\u20135 in favor of the GOP. In 2016, despite Donald Trump winning the state, North Carolina voters elected Democrat Roy Cooper as governor, in part due to an unpopular law passed by former governor Pat McCrory known as HB2. Cooper went on to win re-election in 2020, despite Donald Trump narrowly winning the state again against Joe Biden.\nAs a result of the 2020 census, North Carolina gained another seat in the 118th United States Congress, for a total of 14. After the 2024 elections, the state was represented by 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats.\nIn a 2020 study, North Carolina was ranked as the 23rd easiest state for citizens to vote in.\nGerrymandering.\nThe state has been sued for racially gerrymandering the districts, which resulted in minority voting power being diluted in some areas, resulting in skewed representation. In 2000, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina ruled that the 12th congressional district was an illegal racial gerrymander. This was again appealed, now as \"Easley v. Cromartie\". The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Eastern District of North Carolina in 2001 and ruled that the 12th district boundaries were not racially based but was a partisan gerrymander. They said this was a political question that the courts should not rule upon.\nIn 2015, federal courts again ordered redistricting. Two lawsuits challenging the state congressional district map were led by \"two dozen voters, the state Democratic Party, the state chapter of the League of Women Voters, and the interest group Common Cause\". They contend that the redistricting resulted in deliberate under-representation of a substantial portion of voters. This case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in March 2019, which also heard a related partisan gerrymandering case from Maryland.\nOn February 4, 2022, the North Carolina Supreme Court struck down the congressional and state legislative district maps drawn by the GOP-controlled General Assembly on terms of partisan gerrymandering in a 4\u20133 ruling. Later that month, a panel of three former judges chosen by the Wake County Superior Court drew and approved a remedial congressional map after the new map proposed by the General Assembly was struck down by the North Carolina Supreme Court. Though, the state legislative maps proposed by the General Assembly were allowed to be used. The General Assembly would then redraw all three maps for the 2024 elections in the state.\nOn April 28, 2023, the North Carolina Supreme Court\u2014after Republicans gained a majority in the court following the 2022 judicial elections\u2014overturned the same ruling in a 5\u20132 decision, which cleared the way for gerrymandering in the next redistricting cycle. New maps were approved by the General Assembly on October 25, 2023. All three new maps heavily favor the GOP, with allegations of racial bias made against the maps as well.\nIn November 2023, a lawsuit was filed against the North Carolina Senate district map\u2014specifically the 1st and 2nd Senate districts\u2014in the Eastern District of North Carolina, arguing the map violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In December 2023, two lawsuits were filed in the Middle District of North Carolina, with the first challenging the 1st, 6th, 12th, and 14th congressional districts in the map, and the second, challenging multiple specific districts in all three maps, as racial gerrymanders. Both lawsuits were consolidated together in March 2024.\nOn January 26, 2024\u2014regarding the lawsuit currently in the Eastern District of North Carolina\u2014a preliminary injunction to block the current North Carolina Senate district map was denied, citing the \"Purcell\" principle. The ruling was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which upheld the lower court's decision on March 28, 2024. The lawsuit will continue in the district court, but no ruling will be made until after the 2024 elections.\nSports.\nNorth Carolina is home to four major league sports franchises: the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League, the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association, and Charlotte FC of Major League Soccer are based in Charlotte, while the Raleigh-based Carolina Hurricanes play in the National Hockey League. The Panthers and Hurricanes are the only two major professional sports teams that have the same geographical designation while playing in different metropolitan areas. The Hurricanes are the only major professional team from North Carolina to have won a league championship, having captured the Stanley Cup in 2006. North Carolina is also home to two other top-level professional teams \u2014 the Charlotte Hounds of Major League Lacrosse and the North Carolina Courage of the National Women's Soccer League.\nWhile North Carolina has no Major League Baseball team, it does have numerous Minor League Baseball teams, with the highest level of play coming from the Triple-A Charlotte Knights and Durham Bulls. Additionally, North Carolina has minor league teams in other team sports including soccer and ice hockey, most notably North Carolina FC and the Charlotte Checkers, both of which play in the second tier of their respective sports.\nIn addition to professional team sports, North Carolina has a strong affiliation with NASCAR and stock-car racing, with Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord hosting two Cup Series races every year. Charlotte also hosts the NASCAR Hall of Fame, while Concord is the home of several top-flight racing teams, including Hendrick Motorsports, Roush Fenway Racing, GMS Racing, Stewart-Haas Racing, and Chip Ganassi Racing. Numerous other tracks around North Carolina host races from low-tier NASCAR circuits as well.\nGolf is a popular summertime leisure activity, and North Carolina has hosted several important professional golf tournaments. Pinehurst Resort in Pinehurst has hosted a PGA Championship, Ryder Cup, two U.S. Opens, and one U.S. Women's Open. The Wells Fargo Championship is a regular stop on the PGA Tour and is held at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, and Quail Hollow has also played host to the PGA Championship. The Wyndham Championship is played annually in Greensboro at Sedgefield Country Club.\nCollege sports are also popular in North Carolina, with 18 schools competing at the Division I level. The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is headquartered in Greensboro, and both the ACC Football Championship Game (Charlotte) and the ACC men's basketball tournament (Greensboro) were most recently held in North Carolina. Additionally, the city of Charlotte is home to the National Junior College Athletics Association's (NJCAA) headquarters. College basketball is very popular in North Carolina, buoyed by the Tobacco Road rivalries between ACC members North Carolina, Duke, North Carolina State, and Wake Forest. The ACC Championship Game and the Duke's Mayo Bowl are held annually in Charlotte's Bank of America Stadium, featuring teams from the ACC and the Southeastern Conference. Additionally, the state has hosted the NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four on two occasions, in Greensboro in 1974 and in Charlotte in 1994.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "24108346": "Smoky Mountain Brass Quintet\nSmoky Mountain Brass Quintet is a brass quintet founded in 1993 and currently Quintet in Residence at Western Carolina University.\nSince its founding in 1993, the Smoky Mountain Brass Quintet has entertained audiences around the world in nine countries on three continents in venues such as Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and Shostakovich Philharmonia Hall. The Quintet performs a wide variety of music ranging from Early Renaissance to Jazz. In addition, works commissioned from regional composers such as Bruce Frazier, Michael Kallstrom and Robert Kehrberg have expanded the repertoire for all brass quintets.\nThe Smoky Mountain Brass Quintet is a non-profit, 501-c(3) organization whose mission is \"to promote the understanding and enjoyment of music, particularly among the youth of western North Carolina, and to expand appreciation for the musical heritage of the Southern Appalachian region\".\nAmong its many community service performances, the SMBQ has helped to raise money for the new public library, for the local arts council, and for the Jackson County band program. On an afternoon in 2007, the quintet hosted \"Sunday in the Park\" and helped raise $14,500 for National Alzheimer's Day.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "200582": "Western Carolina University\nPublic university in Cullowhee, North Carolina, US\nWestern Carolina University (WCU) is a public university in Cullowhee, North Carolina, United States. It is part of the University of North Carolina system.\nThe fifth oldest institution of the sixteen four-year universities in the UNC system, WCU was founded to educate the people of the western North Carolina mountains. Enrollment for the fall 2020 semester was 12,243 students.\nHistory.\nIn 1888, the residents of Cullowhee desired a better school for the community than was offered in public schools of that day, organized a board of trustees\nand established a community school that came to be known as Cullowhee Academy. Founded in August 1889 as a semi-public secondary school and chartered as Cullowhee High School in 1891 (also called Cullowhee Academy), it served the Cullowhee community and boarding students from neighboring counties and other states. The founder, Robert Lee Madison, wanted to provide an education for the young people in the region and train teachers to spread education throughout the western part of the state. In 1893, through the efforts of Walter E. Moore,\nrepresentative from Jackson County, the North Carolina Legislature authorized an appropriation for the establishment of a normal department at the school \"for the purpose of training teachers\". This designation became the first publicly funded normal school in North Carolina.\nIn 1905, the state assumed title to the school's buildings and property and made it a state institution. That same year, the school's name was changed to Cullowhee Normal & Industrial School. In 1925, the school's name was changed to Cullowhee State Normal School. During its years as Cullowhee Normal, the stated purpose of the school was to train teachers for the North Carolina public schools. A coeducational institution, Cullowhee Normal trained over two thousand teachers by the mid-1920s.\nOver the next forty years, the school expanded its curriculum and evolved into a junior college, and in 1929 it was chartered by the Legislature as a four-year institution under the name Western Carolina Teachers College. Called \"the Cullowhee experiment\", Madison's idea became a model for the other regional colleges in the state.\nThe demand for both liberal arts and other programs led to an expansion of the school's offerings. Postgraduate studies and the Master of Arts in Education degree were added to the curriculum in 1951. In 1953, the name Western Carolina College was adopted.\nIn 1967, the institution was designated a regional university by the North Carolina General Assembly and given its current name, Western Carolina University. On July 1, 1972, WCU became a member of the University of North Carolina system.\nOne of the residence halls, Shining Rock, has been the target of several arson attacks in 2023 and 2024. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation entered into a joint investigation with the campus police to find the perpetrator, but the investigation stalled and the perpetrator has not been caught.\nCampuses.\nWestern Carolina University is located in Jackson County, in the unincorporated village of Cullowhee, North Carolina. The university operates learning centers in both Asheville and Cherokee with programs offered online and at various community colleges. The main campus is located in a valley of the Tuckasegee River, between the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains, west of Asheville, North Carolina and south of Sylva, North Carolina. The university lies close to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Reservation (officially known as the Qualla Boundary), and national forest lands. The campus is at an elevation of , but is located in a thermal valley, shielding it from some of the most extreme temperatures by the surrounding mountains. Cullowhee usually has a mild winter season and can go some winters with little to no snowfall.\nMain campus in Cullowhee.\nThe main campus in Cullowhee offers twelve residence halls, two full-service cafeterias, a food court with fast-food outlets, health services, counseling, a bookstore, library, a swimming pool, tennis and basketball courts, movie theater, jogging trail and quarter-mile track, hiking and biking trails and intramural fields.\nThe campus center is the A.K. Hinds University Center. The UC contains the university post office, a movie theater, video and commuter lounges, student organization HQs including the Student Government Association and Last Minute Productions, meeting rooms and office spaces. Outside of the UC is the \"Alumni Tower\", built in 1989, on the 100th birthday of the university.\nA $13.5 million Student Recreation Center, was completed over the summer of 2008. Harrill Residence Hall was renovated to add 6,000 square feet (557 m2) and bring the 1971 building to LEED standards of environmental friendliness and energy efficiency, and re-opened in fall 2012.\nThe new $46.2 million Health and Human Sciences Building opened for use at the start of the 2012\u201313 academic year, also built to LEED standards. This facility is the first project on the Millennial Initiative property and houses WCU's educational and outreach programs in the College of Health and Human Sciences. The four-story facility is home to the undergraduate and graduate programs in social work and communication sciences and disorders; graduate programs in physical therapy and health sciences; and undergraduate programs in athletic training, emergency medical care, environmental health, nutrition and dietetics, nursing and recreational therapy.\nAsheville campus.\nWCU's educational facilities in Asheville focus on professional and graduate degrees for working students.\nCherokee campus.\nThe Western Carolina University Cherokee Center in Cherokee, North Carolina, was established in 1975 in cooperation with the tribal government of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians. The center serves Cherokee and the surrounding communities and is available to all of the people of the region. Their services include the application process, transcript request, scholarships, internships placement, high school recruitment.\nOrganization and administration.\nThe university is led by Chancellor Kelli R. Brown, the chief administrative officer, along with Interim Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Richard Starnes and several advisory groups. The institution operates under the guidance and policies of the Board of Trustees of Western Carolina University. WCU also falls under the administration of University of North Carolina system president Thomas W. Ross. The university moved to a provost and senior vice chancellor model in 2004.\nUniversity media.\nThe university produces the following publications and broadcasts:\nWCU students, faculty and staff also contribute to:\nAcademics and research.\nAcademic structure.\nWestern Carolina University's academic programs are housed in six colleges: Arts and Sciences, Business, Education and Allied Professions, David Orr Belcher College of Fine and Performing Arts, Health and Human Sciences, and Engineering and Technology. \nIn addition, Western Carolina University's Brinson Honors College coordinates courses and events in every area of student and offers several interdisciplinary program, the Graduate School coordinates the admission process, funding support, and awarding of degrees to graduate students, and Hunter Library provides academic support for all academic units.\nAcademic programs.\nWith its main campus located on the site of an ancient Cherokee Indian village and adjacent to the Great Smoky and Blue Ridge Mountains, Western Carolina has a commitment to the rich traditions of both the Appalachian and Cherokee cultures. The university's Mountain Heritage Center; Cherokee Center; Craft Revival Project; Cherokee Studies Program and WCU's partnership to preserve the Cherokee language all reflect that influence \u2013 and provide educational resources for the region.\nWestern is classified among \"M1: Master's Colleges and Universities \u2013 Larger programs\" and in the elective \"community engagement\" category. WCU is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to award degrees at the bachelor, masters, intermediate, and doctoral levels. The university holds 21 program accreditations and is a member of more than 30 state and national associations and organizations to which its professional programs are related. In 2009, the Corporation for National and Community Service recognized WCU by awarding the President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll with Distinction for \"exemplary commitment to service and civic engagement\" on WCU's campus and beyond.\nAs the sixth-largest producer of teachers in North Carolina, the College of Education and Allied Professions was the national winner of the Association of Teacher Educators' Distinguished Program in Teacher Education Award in 2006. The college is also the 2007 co-winner of the Christa McAuliffe Excellence in Teacher Education Award presented by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. The Christa McAuliffe Award nationally recognizes outstanding programs in teacher education at AASCU member institutions.\nWestern Carolina's Forensic Research Facility (commonly referred to as the \"FoREST\") is just the second facility of its kind nationally. The decomposition research station is an extremely valuable resource for researchers and forensic anthropology students to study natural decomposition.\nWestern Carolina University's Brinson Honors College provides an academic community in which high-achieving students challenge themselves to meet and exceed their own academic goals. WCU's Honors College was the first residential honors college in the University of North Carolina System, beginning in 1997 with only 77 students in Reynolds Hall. It now has more than 1,300 students and residential space in Balsam and Blue Ridge residence halls. The Honors College was later renamed to the Brinson Honors College in September 2020 to honor Jack and Judy Brinson. The Brinson Honors College is one of a few in the state to offer a residential option and among a few nationwide to award graduates with a special honors diploma. Entering freshman, must meet one of the following criteria to be considered for consideration into the Brinson Honors College: weighted GPA of 4.2 minimum, unweighted GPA of 3.8 minimum, class rank of 10%, ACT score of 30 minimum, or SAT score of 1370. To graduate from the Brinson Honors College, students must have a cumulative WCU GPA of at least 3.5 and they must have completed 27 credit hours with honors designation or 24 credit hours with honors designation and completion of DegreePlus Level 3. Students who graduate from the Brinson Honors College receive the specially designed Brinson Honors College diploma, the Honors medallion, and walk at the head of their class. The college is a member of the National Collegiate Honors Council. In August 2009, Balsam Hall, the first part of a $50.2 million Honors College residential community located at the center of campus opened, housing 426 students. In Fall 2010, Blue Ridge Hall completed the community and add an additional 400 beds for Honors College students and Teaching Fellows.\nIn the spring of 2000, WCU was officially designated a National Merit sponsoring university, just the fourth institution of higher education in North Carolina, public or private, to receive that distinction The university grants scholarships to students who qualify as National Merit Finalists. The Western Meritorious Award for Finalists provides a four-year scholarship, which covers the equivalent amount of in-state tuition, fees, room, and board, to National Merit Finalists, who also receive a computer.\nThe 2012 edition of the \"U.S. News & World Report\" guide to \"America's Best Colleges\" ranks Western Carolina University 14th among public universities in the South that offer master's degrees.\nIn 2015, the North Carolina General Assembly approved the NC Promise Tuition Plan, a tuition reduction plan to make three universities - WCU, Elizabeth City State University, and University of North Carolina at Pembroke - more affordable and accessible. The NC Promise began in the fall semester of 2018 and drastically reduces the tuition cost for students. In-state students pay $500 a semester and out-of-state students pay $2,500 a semester. Attendance has increased for three consecutive years with the total attendance as of Fall 2020 at 12,243 students, being the ninth time in the past ten years record enrollment has been recorded.\nCenters, institutes, and affiliates.\nCommunity focus, economic development, scholarly research, business development, preservation of the Cherokee & Appalachian Mountain cultures, and the advancement of technology & public policy are the guiding foci of Western Carolina's Centers, Institutes & Affiliates.\nStudent life.\nResidential life.\nThe main campus at Cullowhee has residential facilities for students. These include seventeen residence halls, two full-service cafeterias, and one food court with fast-food outlets. The halls house more than 4,500 WCU students each academic year. The campus residence buildings include one with a priority given to graduate students, named Madison Hall. Balsam Hall and Blue Ridge Hall are residence halls for Brinson Honors College students. These halls are centrally located to campus and are connected via an arch between them. The Village, home to residential Greek and student organizations. Three new residence facilities were recently completed from a $50.2 million residence hall project. The newest residence halls are referred to as \"The Rocks\". They consist of three buildings, Black Rock, Shining Rock, and Water Rock. They were all fully opened in Spring of 2023 and are located in place of former Scott and Walker Halls.\nAthletics.\nAs a member of the Southern Conference, Western Carolina University participates in NCAA Division I athletics. Intercollegiate athletics include football, men and women's basketball, baseball, softball, women's soccer, men and women's golf, men and women's track and field (Indoor and Outdoor), cross country running, women's volleyball and tennis. Catamount football is a member of Division I FCS and plays at Whitmire Stadium. The Ramsey Center is home to men's and women's basketball, and women's volleyball. Baseball is played at Hennon Stadium, softball is played at the Catamount Softball Complex, and the Catamount Athletic Complex is home to women's soccer, tennis, and track and field.\nOn November 29, 1980, Western Carolina's Ronnie Carr made the first intercollegiate three-point field goal, in a game against Middle Tennessee State University, a game WCU won 77\u201370. The ball he used is on display at the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts.\nWestern Carolina and Appalachian State have a football rivalry in which they once competed in the Battle for the Old Mountain Jug on an annual basis. Western Carolina and East Tennessee State have a football rivalry in which they compete in the Blue Ridge Border Battle. The Catamounts football team was runner-up in the Division I-AA National Football Championship Game in 1983.\nCurrent NCAA sports at WCU include:\nIn 2016 the WCU dance team won third place at the NDA Nationals dance competition, performing in Daytona Beach, Florida.\nMusic.\nConcerts and recitals.\nThe Schools of Music and Fine and Performing Arts offer a variety of events featuring students, faculty, and outside performers. These cultural opportunities are typically relatively cheap, and students can often attend them free of charge.\nPride of the Mountains.\nThe Pride of the Mountains is the largest college marching band in the Carolinas and Tennessee. As of Fall 2014, the marching band includes just over 500 members, making it one of the largest marching bands in the United States. The band is open to all Western Carolina students regardless of class or major, with approximately 60% of its members non-music majors.\nIn 2014, the band performed in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with 510 band members participating. The Pride of the Mountains also performed at a Carolina Panthers halftime show in 2011. The band was also the special guest at the Bands of America Grand National Championships in Indianapolis in 1998, 2003, 2008 and 2012, an honor given to only one college band in the United States each year. In addition, the band was also a special guest at the Bands of America Regional's held in Atlanta in 1995, 2006, 2010, and 2011. In 2009, the Pride of the Mountains was selected as one of the five best collegiate marching bands in the nation by the College Band Directors National Association and featured in the book \"Marching Bands and Drumlines: Secrets of Success from the Best of the Best\" by Paul Buyer.\nThe band is the 2009 recipient of the Sudler Trophy awarded by the John Philip Sousa Foundation. They participated in the 2011 Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California, and won the most votes in a \"best band\" in the parade poll hosted by KTLA-TV.\nGreek life.\nWCU is home to a wide range of Greek fraternities and sororities, as well as several councils and societies. The Greek community offers many social opportunities to enrich college life. Greeks get personal guidance in planning their curriculum and choosing classes and instructors, and assistance with registration and financial aid. Chapter study sessions, educational programs, tutoring, and study partners and teams offer support for developing and maintaining study skills. Greeks are recognized for their academic successes through Greek scholarship and awards programs and honor societies such as the Order of Omega. According to 2011\u201312 figures from \"U.S. News & World Report\", 3.4% of WCU's male undergraduate students are in fraternities, while 3.6% of female undergraduate students are in sororities.\nWCU student media.\nHoused in the Student Media Center (Old Student Union) on the hill area of campus are WCU's Student Media Organizations. The following organizations are a part of WCU Student Media:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["24108346", "21650", "200582"], "permutation_1": ["200582", "21650", "24108346"], "permutation_2": ["200582", "24108346", "21650"], "permutation_3": ["24108346", "21650", "200582"]}
{"id": "3hop1__397785_35178_686699", "docs_added": {"43077563": "Meydan Mosque, Kashan\nMosque in Kashan, Iran\nThe Meydan Mosque () is a historical mosque in Kashan, Iran. It is located in the southern side of the \"Sang-e Ghadimi square\" and beside the Bazaar of Kashan. It is one of the oldest structures in Kashan. The primary structure belonged possibly to the seljuq era, but it was destroyed by the Mongols during their invasions. Later it was rebuilt and repaired by \"Khaje Emad ed-Din\". A quotation for this matter is an inscription in the old mihrab, in which it is mentioned that it is built in 623 Hijri (1226 AD) by \"Hassan ebn-e Arabschah\" in Kashan. The mihrab was in its original place until the last century, but it is kept now in the Museum of Islamic art in Berlin.\nJane Dieulafoy describes the mihrab as follows:\n\"\"Meydan mosque is a spacious structure with an appropriate architectural technique, but its distinctive characteristic in comparison with other similar structures is its exquisite mihrab, which is covered with splendid tiles with metal reflections. With respect to their high-quality these tiles are like the famous tiles of Imamzadeh Yahya in Varamin.\"\"\n\"Abd ol-Ghaffar Najm od-Dole\" predicted well in 1882 the future of the mihrab as follows:\n\"\"The embossed tiles, which I saw in the mihrab of Meydan mosque, were very interesting and spectacular. Westerners will buy them at least 2000 Tomans and will take the poor tiles away, if they can get a chance.\"\"\nThe mosque had in its past glorious times high iwans, a splendid inner dome space, large yard, Shabestan and Howz hall, but despite many repairs most parts of the mosque have been destroyed. The mosque had a special social and political importance, which can be realized from many orders written above its portal. These orders date back to the 15th century in the Kara Koyunlu era until the 19th century in the Qajar era. These orders include guidelines, regulations and commands about the buying and selling of goods and food stuffs with approved prices of that time and about the prohibition of gamble and acts against the sharia.\nThe portal of the mosque stands out because of its pure Iranian architectural techniques.\nThe former stone minaret was destroyed in 1778 in the late Safavid era by an earthquake.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "35522057": "Qaleh Now-e Khaleseh, Tehran\nCity in Tehran province, Iran\nQaleh Now-e Khaleseh () is a city in, and the capital of, Qaleh Now District of Ray County, Tehran province, Iran. It also serves as the administrative center for Qaleh Now Rural District.\nDemographics.\nPopulation.\nAt the time of the 2006 National Census, Qaleh Now-e Khaleseh's population was 4,718 in 1,195 households, when it was a village in Qaleh Now Rural District of Kahrizak District. The following census in 2011 counted 5,289 people in 1,476 households. The 2016 census measured the population of the village as 5,352 people in 1,584 households, by which time the rural district had been separated from the district in the formation of Qaleh Now District.\nAfter the 2016 census, the village of Qaleh Now-e Khaleseh was elevated to the status of a city.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "14653": "Iran\nCountry in West Asia\nIran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Turkey to the northwest and Iraq to the west, Azerbaijan, Armenia, the Caspian Sea, and Turkmenistan to the north, Afghanistan to the east, Pakistan to the southeast, the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south. With a multi-ethnic population of nearly 86 million in an area of , Iran ranks 17th globally in both geographic size and population. It is the sixth-largest country entirely in Asia and one of the world's most mountainous countries. Officially an Islamic republic, Iran is divided into five regions with 31 provinces. Tehran is the nation's capital, largest city and financial centre.\nA cradle of civilisation, Iran has been inhabited since the Lower Palaeolithic. The large part of Iran was first unified as a political entity by the Medes under Cyaxares in the seventh century BC, and reached its territorial height in the sixth century BC, when Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Empire, one of the largest in ancient history. Alexander the Great conquered the empire in the fourth century BC. An Iranian rebellion established the Parthian Empire in the third century BC and liberated the country, which was succeeded by the Sasanian Empire in the third century AD. Ancient Iran saw some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, religion and central government. The Sasanian era is considered a golden age in the history of Iranian civilisation. Muslims conquered the region in the seventh century AD, leading to Iran's Islamisation. The literature, philosophy, mathematics, medicine, astronomy and art which had blossomed during the Sasanian era were renewed during the Islamic Golden Age and Persian Renaissance, when a series of Iranian Muslim dynasties ended Arab rule, revived the Persian language and ruled the country until the Seljuk and Mongol conquests of the 11th to 14th centuries.\nIn the 16th century, the native Safavid dynasty re-established a unified Iranian state with Twelver Shi'ism as the official religion. During the Afsharid Empire in the 18th century, Iran was a leading world power, but this was no longer the case after the Qajars took power in the 1790s. The early 20th century saw the Persian Constitutional Revolution and the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty by Reza Shah the Great, who ousted the last Qajar shah in 1925. Attempts by Mohammad Mosaddegh to nationalise the oil industry led to an Anglo-American coup in 1953. After the Iranian Revolution, the monarchy was overthrown in 1979 and the Islamic Republic of Iran was established by Ruhollah Khomeini, who became the country's first Supreme Leader. In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, sparking the eight-year-long Iran\u2013Iraq War, which ended in stalemate.\nIran is officially governed as a unitary Islamic republic with a presidential system, with ultimate authority vested in a Supreme Leader. The government is authoritarian and has attracted widespread criticism for its significant violations of human rights and civil liberties. Iran is a major regional power, due to its large reserves of fossil fuels, including the world's second largest natural gas supply, third largest proven oil reserves, its geopolitically significant location, military capabilities, cultural hegemony, regional influence, and role as the world's focal point of Shia Islam. The Iranian economy is the world's 23rd-largest by PPP. Iran is a founding member of the United Nations, OIC, OPEC, and ECO as well as a current member of the NAM, SCO, and BRICS. Iran is home to 28 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the 10th highest in the world, and ranks 5th in Intangible Cultural Heritage, or human treasures.\nEtymology.\nThe term \"Iran\" 'the land of the Aryans' derives from Middle Persian , first attested in a 3rd-century inscription at Naqsh-e Rostam, with the accompanying Parthian inscription using , in reference to the Iranians. and are oblique plural forms of gentilic nouns \"\u0113r-\" (Middle Persian) and \"ary-\" (Parthian), deriving from Proto-Iranian language \"*arya-\" (meaning 'Aryan', i.e. of the Iranians), recognised as a derivative of Proto-Indo-European language \"*ar-yo-\", meaning 'one who assembles (skilfully)'. According to Iranian mythology, the name comes from Iraj, a legendary king.\nIran was referred to as \"Persia\" by the West, due to Greek historians who referred to all of Iran as , meaning 'the land of the Persians'. \"Persia\" is the Fars province in southwest Iran, the 4th largest province, also known as \"P\u00e2rs\". The Persian \"F\u00e2rs\" (\u0641\u0627\u0631\u0633), derived from the earlier form \"P\u00e2rs\" (\u067e\u0627\u0631\u0633), which is in turn derived from \"P\u00e2rs\u00e2\" (Old Persian: \ud800\udfb1\ud800\udfa0\ud800\udfbc\ud800\udfbf). Due to Fars' historical importance, \"Persia\" originated from this territory through Greek in around 550 BC, and Westerners referred to the entire country as \"Persia\", until 1935, when Reza Shah requested the international community to use its native and original name, \"Iran\"; Iranians called their nation \"Iran\" since at least 1000 BC. Today, both \"Iran\" and \"Persia\" are used culturally, while \"Iran\" remains mandatory in official use.\nThe Persian pronunciation of \"Iran\" is . Commonwealth English pronunciations of \"Iran\" are listed in the \"Oxford English Dictionary\" as and , while American English dictionaries provide pronunciations which map to , or . The \"Cambridge Dictionary\" lists as the British pronunciation and as the American pronunciation. Voice of America's pronunciation guide provides .\nHistory.\nIran is home to one of the world's oldest continuous major civilisations, with historical and urban settlements dating back to 4000 BC. The western part of the Iranian plateau participated in the traditional ancient Near East with Elam (3200\u2013539 BC), and later with other peoples such as the Kassites, Mannaeans, and Gutians. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel called the Persians the \"first Historical People\". The Iranian Empire began in the Iron Age with the rise of the Medes, who unified Iran as a nation and empire in 625 BC. The Achaemenid Empire (550\u2013330 BC), founded by Cyrus the Great, was the largest empire the world had seen, spanning from the Balkans to North Africa and Central Asia. They were succeeded by the Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian Empires, who governed Iran for almost 1,000 years, making Iran a leading power once again. Persia's arch-rival during this time was the Roman Empire and its successor, the Byzantine Empire.\nIran endured invasions by the Macedonians, Arabs, Turks, and Mongols. Despite these invasions, Iran continually reasserted its national identity and developed as a distinct political and cultural entity. The Muslim conquest of Persia (632\u2013654) ended the Sasanian Empire and marked a turning point in Iranian history, leading to the Islamisation of Iran from the eighth to tenth centuries and the decline of Zoroastrianism. However, the achievements of prior Persian civilisations were absorbed into the new Islamic polity. Iran suffered invasions by nomadic tribes during the Late Middle Ages and early modern period, negatively impacting the region. Iran was reunified as an independent state in 1501 by the Safavid dynasty, which established Shia Islam as the empire's official religion, marking another turning point in the history of Islam. Iran functioned again as a leading world power, especially in rivalry with the Ottoman Empire. In the 19th century, Iran lost significant territories in the Caucasus to the Russian Empire following the Russo-Persian Wars.\nIran remained a monarchy until the 1979 Iranian Revolution, when it officially became an Islamic republic on 1 April 1979. Since then, Iran has experienced significant political, social, and economic changes. The establishment of the \"Islamic Republic of Iran\" led to the restructuring of its political system, with Ayatollah Khomeini as the Supreme Leader. Iran's foreign relations have been shaped by the Iran\u2013Iraq War (1980\u20131988), ongoing tensions with the United States, and its nuclear programme, which has been a point of contention in international diplomacy.\nSince the 1990s.\nIn 1989, Akbar Rafsanjani concentrated on a pro-business policy of rebuilding the economy without breaking with the ideology of the revolution. He supported a free market domestically, favouring privatisation of state industries and a moderate position internationally. In 1997, Rafsanjani was succeeded by moderate reformist Mohammad Khatami, whose government advocated freedom of expression, constructive diplomatic relations with Asia and the European Union, and an economic policy that supported a free market and foreign investment.\nThe 2005 presidential election brought conservative populist and nationalist candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power. He was known for his hardline views, nuclearisation, and hostility towards Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UK, the US and other states. He was the first president to be summoned by the parliament to answer questions regarding his presidency. In 2013, centrist and reformist Hassan Rouhani was elected president. In domestic policy, he encouraged personal freedom, free access to information, and improved women's rights. He improved Iran's diplomatic relations through exchanging conciliatory letters. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was reached in Vienna in 2015, between Iran, the P5+1 (UN Security Council + Germany) and the EU. The negotiations centred around ending the economic sanctions in exchange for Iran's restriction in producing enriched uranium. In 2018, however, the US under Trump Administration withdrew from the deal and new sanctions were imposed. This nulled the economic provisions, left the agreement in jeopardy, and brought Iran to nuclear threshold status. In 2020, IRGC general, Qasem Soleimani, the 2nd-most powerful person in Iran, was assassinated by the US, heightening tensions between them. Iran retaliated against US airbases in Iraq, the largest ballistic missile attack ever on Americans; 110 sustained brain injuries.\nHardliner Ebrahim Raisi ran for president again in 2021, succeeding Hassan Rouhani. During Raisi's term, Iran intensified uranium enrichment, hindered international inspections, joined SCO and BRICS, supported Russia in its invasion of Ukraine and restored diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia. In April 2024, Israel's airstrike on an Iranian consulate, killed an IRGC commander. Iran retaliated with UAVs, cruise and ballistic missiles; 9 hit Israel. Western and Jordanian military helped Israel down some Iranian drones. It was the largest drone strike in history, biggest missile attack in Iranian history, its first ever direct attack on Israel and the first time since 1991, Israel was directly attacked by a state force. This occurred during heightened tensions amid the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. In May 2024, President Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash, and Iran held a presidential election in June, when reformist and former Minister of Health, Masoud Pezeshkian, was elected to office. On 1 October 2024, Iran launched about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for assassinations of Ismail Haniyeh, Hassan Nasrallah and Abbas Nilforoushan. On 27 October, Israel responded to that attack by strikes on a missile defence system in the Iranian region of Isfahan.\nGeography.\nIran has an area of . It is the sixth-largest country entirely in Asia and the second-largest in West Asia. It lies between latitudes 24\u00b0 and 40\u00b0 N, and longitudes 44\u00b0 and 64\u00b0 E. It is bordered to the northwest by Armenia (), the Azeri exclave of Nakhchivan (), and the Republic of Azerbaijan (); to the north by the Caspian Sea; to the northeast by Turkmenistan (); to the east by Afghanistan () and Pakistan (); to the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman; and to the west by Iraq () and Turkey ().\nIran is in a seismically active area. On average, an earthquake of magnitude seven on the Richter scale occurs once every ten years. Most earthquakes are shallow-focus and can be very devastating, such as the 2003 Bam earthquake.\nIran consists of the Iranian Plateau. It is one of the world's most mountainous countries; its landscape is dominated by rugged mountain ranges that separate basins or plateaus. The populous west part is the most mountainous, with ranges such as the Caucasus, Zagros, and Alborz, the last containing Mount Damavand, Iran's highest point, at , which is the highest volcano in Asia. Iran's mountains have impacted its politics and economics for centuries.\nThe north part is covered by the lush lowland Caspian Hyrcanian forests, near the southern shores of the Caspian Sea. The east part consists mostly of desert basins, such as the Kavir Desert, which is the country's largest desert, and the Lut Desert, as well as salt lakes. The Lut Desert is the hottest recorded spot on the Earth's surface, with 70.7\u00a0\u00b0C recorded in 2005. The only large plains are found along the coast of the Caspian and at the north end of the Persian Gulf, where the country borders the mouth of the Arvand river. Smaller, discontinuous plains are found along the remaining coast of the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman.\nIslands.\nIranian islands are mainly located in the Persian Gulf. Iran has 102 islands in Urmia Lake, 427 in Aras River, several in Anzali Lagoon, Ashurade Island in the Caspian Sea, Sheytan Island in the Oman Sea and other inland islands. Iran has an uninhabited island at the far end of the Gulf of Oman, near Pakistan. A few islands can be visited by tourists. Most are owned by the military or used for wildlife protection, and entry is prohibited or requires a permit.\nIran took control of Bumusa, and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs in 1971, in the Strait of Hormuz between the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. Despite the islands being small and having little natural resources or population, they are highly valuable for their strategic location. Although the United Arab Emirates claims sovereignty, it has consistently been met with a strong response from Iran, based on their historical and cultural background. Iran has full control over the islands.\nKish island, as a free trade zone, is touted as a consumer's paradise, with malls, shopping centres, tourist attractions, and luxury hotels. Qeshm is the largest island in Iran, and a UNESCO Global Geopark since 2016. Its salt cave, Namakdan, is the largest in the world, and one of the world's longest caves.\nClimate.\nIran's climate is diverse, ranging from arid and semi-arid, to subtropical along the Caspian coast and northern forests. On the north edge of the country, temperatures rarely fall below freezing and the area remains humid. Summer temperatures rarely exceed . Annual precipitation is in the east part of the plain and more than in the west part. The UN Resident Coordinator for Iran, has said that \"Water scarcity poses the most severe human security challenge in Iran today\".\nTo the west, settlements in the Zagros basin experience lower temperatures, severe winters with freezing average daily temperatures and heavy snowfall. The east and central basins are arid, with less than of rain and have occasional deserts. Average summer temperatures rarely exceed . The southern coastal plains of the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman have mild winters, and very humid and hot summers. The annual precipitation ranges from .\nBiodiversity.\nMore than one-tenth of the country is forested. About 120 million hectares of forests and fields are government-owned for national exploitation. Iran's forests can be divided into five vegetation regions: Hyrcanian region which forms the green belt of the north side of the country; the Turan region, which are mainly scattered in the centre of Iran; Zagros region, which mainly contains oak forests in the west; the Persian Gulf region, which is scattered in the southern coastal belt; the Arasbarani region, which contains rare and unique species. More than 8,200 plant species are grown. The land covered by natural flora is four times that of Europe's. There are over 200 protected areas to preserve biodiversity and wildlife, with over 30 being national parks.\nIran's living fauna includes 34 bat species, Indian grey mongoose, small Indian mongoose, golden jackal, Indian wolf, foxes, striped hyena, leopard, Eurasian lynx, brown bear and Asian black bear. Ungulate species include wild boar, urial, Armenian mouflon, red deer, and goitered gazelle. One of the most famous animals is the critically endangered Asiatic cheetah, which survives only in Iran. Iran lost all its Asiatic lions and the extinct Caspian tigers by the early 20th century. Domestic ungulates are represented by sheep, goat, cattle, horse, water buffalo, donkey and camel. Bird species like pheasant, partridge, stork, eagles and falcons are native.\nGovernment and politics.\nSupreme Leader.\nThe Supreme Leader, \"Rahbar\", Leader of the Revolution or Supreme Leadership Authority, is the head of state and responsible for supervision of policy. The president has limited power compared to the Rahbar. Key ministers are selected with the Rahbar's agreement and they have the ultimate say on foreign policy. The Rahbar is directly involved in ministerial appointments for Defence, Intelligence and Foreign Affairs, as well as other top ministries after submission of candidates from the president.\nRegional policy is directly controlled by the Rahbar, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' task limited to protocol and ceremonial occasions. Ambassadors to Arab countries, for example, are chosen by the Quds Force, which directly reports to the Rahbar. The Rahbar can order laws to be amended. Setad was estimated at $95\u00a0billion in 2013 by Reuters, accounts of which are secret even to the parliament.\nThe Rahbar is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, controls military intelligence and security operations, and has sole power to declare war or peace. The heads of the judiciary, state radio and television networks, commanders of the police and military, and the members of the Guardian Council are all appointed by the Rahbar.\nThe Assembly of Experts is responsible for electing the Rahbar, and has the power to dismiss him on the basis of qualifications and popular esteem. To date, the Assembly of Experts has not challenged any of the Rahbar's decisions nor attempted to dismiss him. The previous head of the judicial system, Sadeq Larijani, appointed by the Rahbar, said that it is illegal for the Assembly of Experts to supervise the Rahbar. Many believe the Assembly of Experts has become a ceremonial body without any real power. In February 2025,\u00a0 the New York Times reported that according to Karim Sadjadpour, an expert on Iran at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, there exist in the Islamic Republic of Iran two parallel regimes. One which is ruled by the military and intelligence forces, who report to the Rahbar, and \"who oversee the nuclear programme and regional proxies and are tasked with repression, hostage taking and assassinations\u201d. The other ruled by diplomats and politicians \"who are authorized to speak to Western media and officials\" and have minimal knowledge of Iran's nuclear programme.\nThe political system is based on the country's constitution. Iran ranked 154th in the 2022 \"The Economist Democracy Index\". Juan Jos\u00e9 Linz wrote in 2000 that \"the Iranian regime combines the ideological bent of totalitarianism with the limited pluralism of authoritarianism\".\nPresident.\nThe President is head of government and the second highest-ranking authority, after the Supreme Leader. The President is elected by universal suffrage for 4 years. Before elections, nominees to become a presidential candidate must be approved by the Guardian Council. The Council's members are chosen by the Leader, with the Leader having the power to dismiss the president. The President can only be re-elected for one term. The president is the deputy commander-in-chief of the Army, the head of Supreme National Security Council, and has the power to declare a state of emergency after passage by the parliament.\nThe President is responsible for the implementation of the constitution, and for the exercise of executive powers in implementing the decrees and general policies as outlined by the Rahbar, except for matters directly related to the Rahbar, who has the final say. The President functions as the executive of affairs such as signing treaties and other international agreements, and administering national planning, budget, and state employment affairs, all as approved by the Rahbar.\nThe President appoints ministers, subject to the approval of the Parliament, and the Rahbar, who can dismiss or reinstate any minister. The President supervises the Council of Ministers, coordinates government decisions, and selects government policies to be placed before the legislature. Eight Vice Presidents serve under the President, as well as a cabinet of 22 ministers, all appointed by the president.\nGuardian Council.\nPresidential and parliamentary candidates must be approved by the 12-member Guardian Council (all members of which are appointed by the Leader) or the Leader, before running to ensure their allegiance. The Leader rarely does the vetting, but has the power to do so, in which case additional approval of the Guardian Council is not needed. The Leader can revert the decisions of the Guardian Council.\nThe constitution gives the council three mandates: veto power over legislation passed by the parliament, supervision of elections and approving or disqualifying candidates seeking to run in local, parliamentary, presidential, or Assembly of Experts elections. The council can nullify a law based on two accounts: being against Sharia (Islamic law), or being against the constitution.\nSupreme National Security Council.\nThe Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) is at the top of the foreign policy decisions process. The council was formed during the 1989 Iranian constitutional referendum for the protection and support of national interests, the revolution, territorial integrity and national sovereignty. It is mandated by Article 176 of the Constitution to be presided over by the President.\nThe Leader selects the secretary of the Supreme Council, and the decisions of the council are effective after the confirmation by the Leader. The SNSC formulates nuclear policy, and would become effective if they are confirmed by the Leader.\nLegislature.\nThe legislature, known as the Islamic Consultative Assembly (ICA), Iranian Parliament or \"Majles\", is a unicameral body comprising 290 members elected for four-years. It drafts legislation, ratifies international treaties, and approves the national budget. All parliamentary candidates and legislation from the assembly must be approved by the Guardian Council. The Guardian Council can and has dismissed elected members of the parliament. The parliament has no legal status without the Guardian Council, and the Council holds absolute veto power over legislation.\nThe Expediency Discernment Council has the authority to mediate disputes between Parliament and the Guardian Council, and serves as an advisory body to the Supreme Leader, making it one of the most powerful governing bodies in Iran.\nThe Parliament has 207 constituencies, including the 5 reserved seats for religious minorities. The remaining 202 are territorial, each covering one or more of Iran's counties.\nLaw.\nIran uses the Sharia law as its legal system, with elements of Civil law. The Supreme Leader appoints the head of the Supreme Court and chief public prosecutor. There are several types of courts, including public courts that deal with civil and criminal cases, and revolutionary courts which deal with certain offences, such as crimes against national security. The decisions of the revolutionary courts are final and cannot be appealed.\nThe Chief Justice is the head of the judicial system and responsible for its administration and supervision. He is the highest judge of the Supreme Court of Iran. The Chief Justice nominates candidates to serve as minister of justice, and the President selects one. The Chief Justice can serve for two five-year terms.\nThe Special Clerical Court handles crimes allegedly committed by clerics, although it has taken on cases involving laypeople. The Special Clerical Court functions independently of the regular judicial framework and is accountable only to the Rahbar. The Court's rulings are final and cannot be appealed. The Assembly of Experts, which meets for one week annually, comprises 86 \"virtuous and learned\" clerics elected by adult suffrage for 8-year terms.\nAdministrative divisions.\nIran is subdivided into thirty-one provinces ( \"ost\u00e2n\"), each governed from a local centre, usually the largest local city, which is called the capital (Persian: , \"markaz\") of that province. The provincial authority is headed by a governor-general ( \"ost\u00e2nd\u00e2r\"), who is appointed by the Minister of the Interior subject to approval of the cabinet.\nForeign relations.\nIran maintains diplomatic relations with 165 countries, but not the United States and Israel\u2014a state which Iran derecognised in 1979.\nIran has an adversarial relationship with Saudi Arabia due to different political ideologies. Iran and Turkey have been involved in modern proxy conflicts such as in Syria, Libya, and the South Caucasus. However, they have shared common interests, such as the issue of Kurdish separatism and the Qatar diplomatic crisis. Iran has a close and strong relationship with Tajikistan. Iran has deep economic relations and alliance with Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, with Syria often described as Iran's \"closest ally\".\nRussia is a key trading partner, especially in regard to its excess oil reserves. Both share a close economic and military alliance, and are subject to heavy sanctions by Western nations. Iran is the only country in Western Asia that has been invited to join the CSTO, the Russia-based international treaty organisation that parallels NATO.\nRelations between Iran and China are strong economically; they have developed a friendly, economic and strategic relationship. In 2021, Iran and China signed a 25-year cooperation agreement that will strengthen the relations between the two countries and would include \"political, strategic and economic\" components. Iran-China relations dates back to at least 200 BC and possibly earlier. Iran is one of the few countries in the world that has a good relationship with both North and South Korea.\nIn December 2024, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, a close ally of Iran, was a severe setback for the political influence of Iran in the region.\nIran is a member of dozens of international organisations, including the G-15, G-24, G-77, IAEA, IBRD, IDA, NAM, IDB, IFC, ILO, IMF, IMO, Interpol, OIC, OPEC, WHO, and the UN, and currently has observer status at the WTO.\nMilitary.\nThe military is organised under a unified structure, the Islamic Republic of Iran Armed Forces, comprising the Islamic Republic of Iran Army, which includes the Ground Forces, Air Defence Force, Air Force, and Navy; the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which consists of the Ground Forces, Aerospace Force, Navy, Quds Force, and Basij; and the Law Enforcement Command (Faraja), which serves an analogous function to a gendarme. While the IRIAF protects the country's sovereignty in a traditional capacity, the IRGC is mandated to ensure the integrity of the Republic, against foreign interference, coups, and internal riots. Since 1925, it is mandatory for all male citizen aged 18 to serve around 14 months in the IRIAF or IRGC.\nIran has over 610,000 active troops and around 350,000 reservists, totalling over 1 million military personnel, one of the world's highest percentage of citizens with military training. The Basij\",\" a paramilitary volunteer militia within the IRGC, has over 20 million members, 600,000 available for immediate call-up, 300,000 reservists, and a million that could be mobilised when necessary. Faraja, the Iranian uniformed police force, has over 260,000 active personnel. Most statistical organisations do not include the Basij and Faraja in their ratings report.\nExcluding the Basij and Faraja, Iran has been identified as a major military power, owing it to the size and capabilities of its armed forces. It possesses the world's 14th strongest military. It ranks 13th globally in terms of overall military strength, 7th in the number of active military personnel, and 9th in the size of both its ground force and armoured force. Iran's armed forces are the largest in West Asia and comprise the greatest Army Aviation fleet in the Middle East. Iran is among the top 15 countries in terms of military budget. In 2021, its military spending increased for the first time in four years, to $24.6 billion, 2.3% of the national GDP. Funding for the IRGC accounted for 34% of Iran's total military spending in 2021.\nSince the Revolution, to overcome foreign embargoes, Iran has developed a domestic military industry capable of producing indigenous tanks, armoured personnel carriers, missiles, submarines, missile destroyer, radar systems, helicopters, naval vessels, and fighter planes. Official announcements have highlighted the development of advanced weaponry, particularly in rocketry. Consequently, Iran has the largest and most diverse ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East and is only the 5th country in the world with hypersonic missile technology. It is the world's 6th missile power. Iran designs and produces a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and is considered a global leader and superpower in drone warfare and technology. It is one of the world's five countries with cyberwarfare capabilities and is identified as \"one of the most active players in the international cyber arena\". Iran is an key exporter of arms since 2000s.\nFollowing Russia's purchase of Iranian drones during the invasion of Ukraine, in November 2023, the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) finalized arrangements to acquire Russian Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets, Mil Mi-28 attack helicopters, air defence and missile systems. The Iranian Navy has had joint exercises with Russia and China.\nNuclear programme.\nIran's nuclear programme dates back to the 1950s. Iran revived it after the Revolution, and its extensive nuclear fuel cycle, including enrichment capabilities, became the subject of intense international negotiations and sanctions. Many countries have expressed concern Iran could divert civilian nuclear technology into a weapons programme. In 2015, Iran and the P5+1 agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan on Action (JCPOA), aiming to end economic sanctions in exchange for restriction in producing enriched uranium.\nIn 2018, however, the US withdrew from the deal under the Trump administration, and reimposed sanctions. This was met with resistance by Iran and other members of the P5+1. A year later, Iran began decreasing its compliance. By 2020, Iran announced it would no longer observe any limit set by the agreement. Progress since then has brought Iran to the nuclear threshold status. As of November 2023[ [update]], Iran had uranium enriched to up to 60% fissile content, close to weapon grade. Some analysts already regard Iran as a de facto nuclear power.\nRegional influence.\nIran's significant influence and foothold, sometimes characterised as the \"Dawn of A New Persian Empire.\" Some analysts associate the Iranian influence to the nation's proud national legacy, empire and history.\nSince the Revolution, Iran has grown its influence across and beyond the region. It has built military forces with a wide network of state and none-state actors, starting with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 1982. The IRGC has been key to Iranian influence, through its Quds Force. The instability in Lebanon (from the 1980s), Iraq (from 2003) and Yemen (from 2014) has allowed Iran to build strong alliances and footholds beyond its borders. Iran has a prominent influence in the social services, education, economy and politics of Lebanon, and Lebanon provides Iran access to the Mediterranean Sea. Hezbollah's strategic successes against Israel, such as its symbolic victory during the 2006 Israel\u2013Hezbollah War, elevated Iran's influence in the Levant and strengthened its appeal across the Muslim World.\nSince the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the arrival of ISIS in the mid-2010s, Iran has financed and trained militia groups in Iraq. Since the Iran-Iraq war in 1980s and the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iran has shaped Iraq's politics. Following Iraq's struggle against ISIS in 2014, companies linked to the IRGC such as Khatam al-Anbiya, started to build roads, power plants, hotels and businesses in Iraq, creating an economic corridor worth around $9 billion before COVID-19. This is expected to grow to $20 billion.\nDuring Yemen's civil war, Iran provided military support to the Houthis, a Zaydi Shiite movement fighting Yemen's Sunni government since 2004. They gained significant power in recent years. Iran has considerable influence in Afghanistan and Pakistan through militant groups such as Liwa Fatemiyoun and Liwa Zainebiyoun.\nIn Syria, Iran has supported President Bashar al-Assad; the two countries are long-standing allies. Iran has provided significant military and economic support to Assad's government, so has a considerable foothold in Syria. Iran has long supported the anti-Israel fronts in North Africa in countries like Algeria and Tunisia, embracing Hamas in part to help undermine the popularity of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Iran's support of Hamas emerged more clearly in later years. According to US intelligence, Iran does not have full control over these state and non-state groups.\nHuman rights and censorship.\nThe Iranian government has been denounced by various international organisations and governments for violating human rights. The government has frequently persecuted and arrested critics of the government. Iranian law does not recognise sexual orientations. Sexual activity between members of the same sex is illegal and is punishable by death. Capital punishment is a legal punishment, and according to the BBC, Iran \"carries out more executions than any other country, except China\". UN Special Rapporteur Javaid Rehman has reported discrimination against several ethnic minorities in Iran. A group of UN experts in 2022 urged Iran to stop \"systematic persecution\" of religious minorities, adding that members of the Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith were arrested, barred from universities, or had their homes demolished.\nCensorship in Iran is ranked among the most extreme worldwide. Iran has strict internet censorship, with the government persistently blocking social media and other sites. Since January 2021, Iranian authorities have blocked a list of social media platforms; Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Telegram, Twitter and YouTube.\nThe 2006 election results were widely disputed, resulting in protests. The 2017\u201318 Iranian protests swept across the country in response to the economic and political situation. It was formally confirmed that thousands of protesters were arrested. The 2019\u201320 Iranian protests started on 15 November in Ahvaz, and spread across the country after the government announced increases in fuel prices of up to 300%. A week-long total Internet shutdown marked one of the most severe Internet blackouts in any country, and the bloodiest governmental crackdown of the protestors. Tens of thousands were arrested and hundreds were killed within a few days according to multiple international observers, including Amnesty International.\nUkraine International Airlines Flight 752, was a scheduled international civilian passenger flight from Tehran to Kyiv, operated by Ukraine International Airlines. On 8 January 2020, the Boeing 737\u2013800 flying the route was shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) shortly after takeoff, killing all 176 occupants on board and leading to protests. An international investigation led to the government admitting to the shootdown, calling it a \"human error\". Another Protests against the government began on 16 September 2022 after a woman named Mahsa Amini died in police custody following her arrest by the Guidance Patrol, known commonly as the \"morality police\".\nEconomy.\nAs of 2024[ [update]], Iran has the world's 19th largest economy (by PPP). It is a mixture of central planning, state ownership of oil and other large enterprises, village agriculture, and small-scale private trading and service ventures. Services contribute the largest percentage of GDP, followed by industry (mining and manufacturing) and agriculture. The economy is characterised by its hydrocarbon sector, in addition to manufacturing and financial services. With 10% of the world's oil reserves and 15% of gas reserves, Iran is an energy superpower. Over 40 industries are directly involved in the Tehran Stock Exchange.\nTehran is the economic powerhouse of Iran. About 30% of Iran's public-sector workforce and 45% of its large industrial firms are located there, and half those firms' employees work for government. The Central Bank of Iran is responsible for developing and maintaining the currency: the Iranian rial. The government does not recognise trade unions other than the Islamic labour councils, which are subject to the approval of employers and the security services. Unemployment was 9% in 2022.\nBudget deficits have been a chronic problem, mostly due to large state subsidies, that include foodstuffs and especially petrol, totalling $100\u00a0billion in 2022 for energy alone. In 2010, the economic reform plan was to cut subsidies gradually and replace them with targeted social assistance. The objective is to move towards free market prices and increase productivity and social justice. The administration continues reform, and indicates it will diversify the oil-reliant economy. Iran has developed a biotechnology, nanotechnology, and pharmaceutical industry. The government is privatising industries.\nIran has leading manufacturing industries in automobile manufacture, transportation, construction materials, home appliances, food and agricultural goods, armaments, pharmaceuticals, information technology, and petrochemicals in the Middle East. Iran is among the world's top five producers of apricots, cherries, cucumbers and gherkins, dates, figs, pistachios, quinces, walnuts, Kiwifruit and watermelons. International sanctions against Iran have damaged the economy. Iran is one of three countries that have not ratified the Paris Agreement to limit climate change, although academics say it would be good for the country.\nIran suffers from high inflation and especially surging food prices. A major contributing factor is the involvement of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the economy, particularly in the agriculture and food sectors but also due to significant spending on the Axis of Resistance which increase the public deficit. \nTourism.\nTourism had been rapidly growing before the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching nearly 9 million foreign visitors in 2019, the world's third fastest-growing tourism destination. In 2022 it expanded its share to 5% of the economy. Iran's tourism experienced a growth of 43% in 2023, attracting 6 million foreign tourists. The government ended visa requirements for 60 countries in 2023.\n98% of visits are for leisure, while 2% are for business, indicating the country's appeal as a tourist destination. Alongside the capital, the most popular tourist destinations are Isfahan, Shiraz and Mashhad. Iran is emerging as a preferred destination for medical tourism. Travellers from other West Asian countries grew 31% in the first seven months of 2023, surpassing Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Domestic tourism is one of the world's largests; Iranian tourists spent $33bn in 2021. Iran projects investment of $32 billion in the tourism sector by 2026.\nAgriculture and fishery.\nRoughly one-third of Iran's total surface area is suited for farmland. Only 12% of the total land area is under cultivation, but less than one-third of the cultivated area is irrigated; the rest is devoted to dryland farming. Some 92% of agricultural products depend on water. The western and northwestern portions of the country have the most fertile soils. Iran's food security index stands at around 96 percent. 3% of the total land area is used for grazing and fodder production. Most of the grazing is done on mostly semi-dry rangeland in mountain areas and on areas surrounding the large deserts of Central Iran. Progressive government efforts and incentives during the 1990s, improved agricultural productivity, helping Iran toward its goal of reestablishing national self-sufficiency in food production.\nAccess to the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and many river basins provides Iran the potential to develop excellent fisheries. The government assumed control of commercial fishing in 1952. Expansion of the fishery infrastructure enabled the country to harvest an estimated 700,000 tons of fish annually from the southern waters. Since the Revolution, increased attention has been focused on producing fish from inland waters. Between 1976 and 2004, the combined take from inland waters by the state and private sectors increased from 1,100 tons to 110,175 tons. Iran is the world's largest producer and exporter of caviar, exporting more than 300 tonnes annually.\nIndustry and services.\nIran is globally ranked 16th in car manufacturing, ahead of the UK, Italy, and Russia. It has outputted 1.188 million cars in 2023, a 12% growth compared to the previous years. Iran has exported various cars to countries such as Venezuela, Russia and Belarus. From 2008 to 2009, Iran leaped to 28th place from 69th in annual industrial production growth rate. Iranian contractors have been awarded several foreign tender contracts in different fields of construction of dams, bridges, roads, buildings, railroads, power generation, and gas, oil and petrochemical industries. As of 2011, some 66 Iranian industrial companies are carrying out projects in 27 countries. Iran exported over $20 billion worth of technical and engineering services over 2001\u20132011. The availability of local raw materials, rich mineral reserves, experienced manpower have all played crucial role in winning the bids.\n45% of large industrial firms are located in Tehran, and almost half of their workers work for government. The Iranian retail industry is largely in the hands of cooperatives, many of them government-sponsored, and of independent retailers in the bazaars. The bulk of food sales occur at street markets, where the Chief Statistics Bureau sets the prices. Iran's main exports are to Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Syria, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Canada, Venezuela, Japan, South Korea and Turkey. Iran's automotive industry is the second most active industry of the country, after its oil and gas industry. Iran Khodro is the largest car manufacturer in the Middle East, and ITMCO is the biggest tractor manufacturer. Iran is the 12th largest automaker in the world. Construction is one of the most important sectors in Iran accounting for 20\u201350% of the total private investment.\nIran is one of the most important mineral producers in the world, ranked among 15 major mineral-rich countries. Iran has become self-sufficient in designing, building and operating dams and power plants. Iran is one of the six countries in the world that manufacture gas- and steam-powered turbines.\nTransport.\nIn 2011 Iran had of roads, of which 73% were paved. In 2008 there were nearly 100 passenger cars for every 1,000 inhabitants.\nTehran Metro is the largest in the Middle East, it carries more than 3 million passengers daily and in 2018, 820 million trips. Trains operate on of track. The country's major port of entry is Bandar Abbas on the Strait of Hormuz. Imported goods are distributed through the country by trucks and freight trains. The Tehran\u2013Bandar Abbas railroad connects Bandar-Abbas to the railroad system of Central Asia, via Tehran and Mashhad. Other major ports include Bandar e-Anzali and Bandar e-Torkeman on the Caspian Sea and Khorramshahr and Bandar-e Emam Khomeyni on the Persian Gulf.\nDozens of cities have airports that serve passenger and cargo planes. Iran Air, the national airline, operates domestic and international flights. All large cities have mass transit systems using buses, and private companies provide bus services between cities. Over a million people work in transport, accounting for 9% of GDP.\nEnergy.\nIran is an energy superpower and petroleum plays a key part. As of 2023[ [update]], Iran produced 4% of the world's crude oil ( per day), which generates US$36bn of export revenue and is the main source of foreign currency. Oil and gas reserves are estimated at 1.2 trn barrels; Iran holds 10% of world oil reserves and 15% for gas. It ranks 3rd in oil reserves and is OPEC's 2nd largest exporter. It has the 2nd largest gas reserves, and 3rd largest natural gas production. In 2019, Iran discovered a southern oil field of 50 bn barrels and in April 2024, the NIOC discovered 10 giant shale oil deposits, totalling 2.6 bn barrels. Iran plans to invest $500 billion in oil by 2025.\nIran manufactures 60\u201370% of its industrial equipment domestically, including turbines, pumps, catalysts, refineries, oil tankers, drilling rigs, offshore platforms, towers, pipes, and exploration instruments. The addition of new hydroelectric stations and streamlining of conventional coal and oil-fired stations increased installed capacity to 33 GW; about 75% was based on natural gas, 18% on oil, and 7% on hydroelectric power. In 2004, Iran opened its first wind-powered and geothermal plants, and the first solar thermal plant began in 2009. Iran is the world's third country to develop GTL technology.\nDemographic trends and intensified industrialisation have caused electric power demand to grow by 8% per year. The government's goal of 53 GW of installed capacity by 2010 is to be reached by bringing on line new gas-fired plants, and adding hydropower and nuclear generation capacity. Iran's first nuclear power plant went online in 2011.\nDespite being an energy superpower as of 2024-2025 Iran suffers from an energy crisis, manifested by many power outages.\nScience and technology.\nIran has made considerable advances in science and technology, despite international sanctions. In the biomedical sciences, Iran's Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics has a UNESCO chair in biology. In 2006, Iranian scientists successfully cloned a sheep at the Royan Research Centre in Tehran. Stem cell research is among the top 10 in the world. Iran ranks 15th in the world in nanotechnologies. Iranian scientists outside Iran have made major scientific contributions. In 1960, Ali Javan co-invented the first gas laser, and fuzzy set theory was introduced by Lotfi A. Zadeh.\nCardiologist Tofy Mussivand invented and developed the first artificial cardiac pump, the precursor of the artificial heart. Furthering research in diabetes, the HbA1c was discovered by Samuel Rahbar. Many papers in string theory are published in Iran. In 2014, Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani became the first woman, and Iranian, to receive the Fields Medal, the highest prize in mathematics.\nIran increased its publication output nearly tenfold from 1996 through 2004, and ranked first in output growth rate, followed by China. According to a study by SCImago in 2012, Iran would rank fourth in research output by 2018, if the trend persisted. The Iranian humanoid robot Sorena 2, which was designed by engineers at the University of Tehran, was unveiled in 2010. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has placed the name of Surena among the five most prominent robots, after analysing its performance. \nAccording to a 2019 study by Isabel Campos-Varela et al., Iran recorded the highest proportion of retracted publications globally, with 15.52 retractions per 10,000 publications. Media reports from 2023 indicate that Iran continues to rank among the countries with the highest retraction rates. Common types of misconduct include fraudulent peer review processes, plagiarism, and data fabrication. Data from the Retraction Watch Leaderboard further highlights that two of the 32 individuals with the highest number of retracted articles worldwide are based in Iran.\nIran was ranked 64th in the Global Innovation Index in 2024.\nIranian Space Agency.\nThe Iranian Space Agency (ISA) was established in 2004. Iran became an orbital-launch-capable nation in 2009, and is a founding member of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Iran placed its domestically built satellite Omid into orbit on the 30th anniversary of the Revolution, in 2009, through its first expendable launch vehicle Safir. It became the 9th country capable of both producing a satellite and sending it into space from a domestically made launcher. Simorgh's launch in 2016, is the successor of Safir.\nIn January 2024, Iran launched the Soraya satellite into its highest orbit yet (750\u00a0km), a new space launch milestone for the country. It was launched by Qaem 100 rocket. Iran also successfully launched 3 indigenous satellites, The Mahda, Kayan and Hatef, into orbit using the Simorgh carrier rocket. It was the first time in country's history that it simultaneously sent three satellites into space. The three satellites are designed for testing advanced satellite subsystems, space-based positioning technology, and narrowband communication.\nIn February 2024, Iran launched its domestically developed imaging satellite, Pars 1, from Russia into orbit. This was the second time since August 2022, when Russia launched another Iranian remote-sensing, Khayyam satellite, into orbit from Kazakhstan, reflecting deep scientific cooperation between the countries.\nTelecommunication.\nIran's telecommunications industry is almost entirely state-owned, dominated by the Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI). As of 2020, 70 million Iranians use high-speed mobile internet. Iran is among the first five countries which have had a growth rate of over 20 percent and the highest level of development in telecommunication. Iran has been awarded the UNESCO special certificate for providing telecommunication services to rural areas.\nGlobally, Iran ranks 75th in mobile internet speed and 153rd in fixed internet speed.\nDemographics.\nIran's population grew rapidly from about 19\u00a0million in 1956 to about 85 million by February 2023. However, Iran's fertility rate has dropped dramatically, from 6.5 children born per woman to about 1.7 two decades later, leading to a population growth rate of about 1.39% as of 2018. Due to its young population, studies project that the growth will continue to slow until it stabilises at around 105\u00a0million by 2050.\nIran hosts one of the largest refugee populations, with almost one million, mostly from Afghanistan and Iraq. According to the Iranian Constitution, the government is required to provide every citizen with access to social security, covering retirement, unemployment, old age, disability, accidents, calamities, health and medical treatment and care services. This is covered by tax revenues and income derived from public contributions.\nThe country has one of the highest urban growth rates in the world. From 1950 to 2002, the urban proportion of the population increased from 27% to 60%. Iran's population is concentrated in its western half, especially in the north, north-west and west.\nTehran, with a population of around 9.4\u00a0million, is Iran's capital and largest city. The country's second most populous city, Mashhad, has a population of around 3.4\u00a0million, and is capital of the province of Razavi Khorasan. Isfahan has a population of around 2.2\u00a0million and is Iran's third most populous city. It is the capital of Isfahan province and was also the third capital of the Safavid Empire.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nEthnic groups.\nEthnic group composition remains a point of debate, mainly regarding the largest and second largest ethnic groups, the Persians and Azerbaijanis, due to the lack of Iranian state censuses based on ethnicity. The World Factbook has estimated that around 79% of the population of Iran is a diverse Indo-European ethno-linguistic group, with Persians (including Mazenderanis and Gilaks) constituting 61% of the population, Kurds 10%, Lurs 6%, and Balochs 2%. Peoples of other ethnolinguistic groups make up the remaining 21%, with Azerbaijanis constituting 16%, Arabs 2%, Turkmens and other Turkic tribes 2%, and others (such as Armenians, Talysh, Georgians, Circassians, Assyrians) 1%.\nThe Library of Congress issued slightly different estimates: 65% Persians (including Mazenderanis, Gilaks, and the Talysh), 16% Azerbaijanis, 7% Kurds, 6% Lurs, 2% Baloch, 1% Turkic tribal groups (including Qashqai and Turkmens), and non-Iranian, non-Turkic groups (including Armenians, Georgians, Assyrians, Circassians, and Arabs) less than 3%.\nEthnic based discrimination is prevalent in Iran. Minorities in Iran have been disproportionately affected by the ongoing crackdown aimed at repressing the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' movement, according to the UN Fact-Finding Mission.\nLanguages.\nMost of the population speaks Persian, the country's official and national language. Others include speakers of other Iranian languages, within the greater Indo-European family, and languages belonging to other ethnicities. The Gilaki and Mazenderani languages are widely spoken in Gilan and Mazenderan, northern Iran. The Talysh language is spoken in parts of Gilan. Varieties of Kurdish are concentrated in the province of Kurdistan and nearby areas. In Khuzestan, several dialects of Persian are spoken. South Iran also houses the Luri and Lari languages.\nAzerbaijani, the most-spoken minority language in the country, and other Turkic languages and dialects are found in various regions, especially Azerbaijan. Notable minority languages include Armenian, Georgian, Neo-Aramaic, and Arabic. Khuzi Arabic is spoken by the Arabs in Khuzestan, and the wider group of Iranian Arabs. Circassian was also once widely spoken by the large Circassian minority, but, due to assimilation, no sizable number of Circassians speak the language anymore.\nPercentages of spoken language continue to be a point of debate, most notably regarding the largest and second largest ethnicities in Iran, the Persians and Azerbaijanis. Percentages given by the CIA's World Factbook include 53% Persian, 16% Azerbaijani, 10% Kurdish, 7% Mazenderani and Gilaki, 7% Luri, 2% Turkmen, 2% Balochi, 2% Arabic, and 2% the remainder Armenian, Georgian, Neo-Aramaic, and Circassian.\nReligion.\nTwelver Shia Islam is the state religion, to which 90\u201395% of Iranians adhere; about 5\u201310% are in the Sunni and Sufi branches of Islam. 96% of Iranians believe in Islam, but 14% identify as not religious.\nThere is a large population of adherents to Yarsanism, a Kurdish indigenous religion, estimated to be over half a million to one million followers. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is not officially recognised and has been subject to official persecution. Since the Revolution, the persecution of Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds has increased. Irreligion is not recognised by the government.\nChristianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and the Sunni branch of Islam are officially recognised by the government and have reserved seats in the Parliament. Iran is home to the largest Jewish community in the Muslim World and the Middle East, outside of Israel. Around 250,000 to 370,000 Christians reside in Iran, and Christianity is the country's largest recognised minority religion, most are of Armenian background, as well as a sizable minority of Assyrians. The Iranian government has supported the rebuilding and renovation of Armenian churches, and has supported the Armenian Monastic Ensembles of Iran. In 2019, the government registered the Vank Cathedral, in Isfahan, as a World Heritage Site. Currently three Armenian churches in Iran have been included in the World Heritage List.\nEducation.\nEducation is highly centralised. K\u201312 is supervised by the Ministry of Education, and higher education is supervised by the Ministry of Science and Technology. Literacy among people aged 15 and older was 86% as of 2016[ [update]], with men (90%) significantly more educated than women (81%). Government expenditure on education is around 4% of GDP.\nThe requirement to enter into higher education is to have a high school diploma and pass the Iranian University Entrance Exam. Many students do a one\u2013two-year course of pre-university. Iran's higher education is sanctioned by different levels of diplomas, including an associate degree in two years, a bachelor's degree in four years, and a master's degree in two years, after which another exam allows the candidate to pursue a doctoral programme.\nHealth.\nHealthcare is provided by the public-governmental system, the private sector, and NGOs.\nIran is the only country in the world with a legal organ trade. Iran has been able to extend public health preventive services through the establishment of an extensive Primary Health Care Network. As a result, child and maternal mortality rates have fallen significantly, and life expectancy at birth has risen. Iran's medical knowledge rank is 17th globally, and 1st in the Middle East and North Africa. In terms of medical science production index, Iran ranks 16th in the world. Iran is fast emerging as a preferred destination for medical tourism.\nThe country faces the common problem of other young demographic nations in the region, which is keeping pace with growth of an already huge demand for various public services. An anticipated increase in the population growth rate will increase the need for public health infrastructures and services. About 90% of Iranians have health insurance.\nCulture.\nArt.\nIran has one of the richest art heritages in history and been strong in many media including architecture, painting, literature, music, metalworking, stonemasonry, weaving, calligraphy and sculpture. At different times, influences from neighbouring civilisations have been important, and latterly Persian art gave and received major influences as part of the wider styles of Islamic art.\nFrom the Achaemenid Empire of 550\u2013330 BC, the courts of successive dynasties led the style of Persian art, and court-sponsored art left many of the most impressive pieces that remain. The Islamic style of dense decoration, geometrically laid out, developed in Iran into an elegant and harmonious style, combining motifs derived from plants with Chinese motifs such as the cloud-band, and often animals represented at a smaller scale. During the Safavid Empire in the 16th century, this style was used across a variety of media, and diffused from the court artists of the king, most being painters.\nBy the time of the Sasanians, Iranian art had a renaissance. During the Middle Ages, Sasanian art played a prominent role in the formation of European and Asian mediaeval art.\nThe Safavid era is known as the Golden Age of Iranian art. Safavid art exerted noticeable influences upon the Ottomans, the Mughals, and the Deccans, and was influential through its fashion and garden architecture on 11th\u201317th-century Europe.\nIran's contemporary art traces its origins to Kamal-ol-molk, a prominent realist painter at the court of the Qajar Empire who affected the norms of painting and adopted a naturalistic style that would compete with photographic works. A new Iranian school of fine art was established by him in 1928, and was followed by the so-called \"coffeehouse\" style of painting. Iran's avant-garde modernists emerged by the arrival of new western influences during World War II. The contemporary art scene originates in the late 1940s, and Tehran's first modern art gallery, Apadana, was opened in 1949 by Mahmud Javadipur, Hosein Kazemi, and Hushang Ajudani. The new movements received official encouragement by the 1950s, which led to the emergence of artists such as Marcos Grigorian.\nArchitecture.\nThe history of architecture in Iran dates back to at least 5,000 BC, with characteristic examples distributed over an area from what is now Turkey and Iraq to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and from the Caucasus to Zanzibar. The Iranians made early use of mathematics, geometry and astronomy in their architecture, yielding a tradition with structural and aesthetic variety. The guiding motif is its cosmic symbolism.\nWithout sudden innovations, and despite the trauma of invasions and cultural shocks, it developed a recognizable style distinct from other regions of the Muslim world. Its virtues are \"a marked feeling for form and scale; structural inventiveness, especially in vault and dome construction; a genius for decoration with a freedom and success not rivalled in any other architecture\". In addition to historic gates, palaces, and mosques, the rapid growth of cities such as Tehran has brought a wave of construction. Iran ranks 7th among UNESCO's list of countries with the most archaeological ruins and attractions from antiquity.\nWorld Heritage Sites.\nIran's rich culture and history is reflected by its 27 World Heritage Sites, ranking 1st in the Middle East, and 10th in the world. These include Persepolis, Naghsh-e Jahan Square, Chogha Zanbil, Pasargadae, Golestan Palace, Arg-e Bam, Behistun Inscription, Shahr-e Sukhteh, Susa, Takht-e Soleyman, Hyrcanian forests, the city of Yazd and more. Iran has 24 Intangible Cultural Heritage, or Human treasures, which ranks 5th worldwide.\nWeaving.\nIran's carpet-weaving has its origins in the Bronze Age and is one of the most distinguished manifestations of Iranian art. Carpet weaving is an essential part of Persian culture and Iranian art. Persian rugs and carpets were woven in parallel by nomadic tribes in village and town workshops, and by royal court manufactories. As such, they represent simultaneous lines of tradition, and reflect the history of Iran, Persian culture, and its various peoples. Although the term \"Persian carpet\" most often refers to pile-woven textiles, flat-woven carpets and rugs like Kilim, Soumak, and embroidered tissues like Suzani are part of the manifold tradition of Persian carpet weaving.\nIran produces three-quarters of the world's handmade carpets, and has 30% of export markets. In 2010, the \"traditional skills of carpet weaving\" in Fars Province and Kashan were inscribed to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List. Within the Oriental rugs produced by the countries of the \"rug belt\", the Persian carpet stands out by the variety and elaborateness of its manifold designs.\nCarpets woven in towns and regional centres like Tabriz, Kerman, Ravar, Neyshabour, Mashhad, Kashan, Isfahan, Nain and Qom are characterized by their specific weaving techniques and use of high-quality materials, colours and patterns. Hand-woven Persian rugs and carpets have been regarded as objects of high artistic value and prestige, since they were mentioned by ancient Greek writers.\nLiterature.\nIran's oldest literary tradition is that of Avestan, the Old Iranian sacred language of the Avesta, which consists of the legendary and religious texts of Zoroastrianism and the ancient Iranian religion. The Persian language was used and developed through Persianate societies in Asia Minor, Central Asia, and South Asia, leaving extensive influences on Ottoman and Mughal literatures, among others. Iran has several famous mediaeval poets, notably Mawlana, Ferdowsi, Hafez, Sa'adi, Omar Khayyam, and Nezami Ganjavi.\nDescribed as one of the great literatures of humanity, including Goethe's assessment of it as one of the four main bodies of world literature, Persian literature has its roots in surviving works of Middle Persian and Old Persian, the latter of which dates back as far as 522\u00a0BCE, the date of the earliest surviving Achaemenid inscription, the Behistun Inscription. The bulk of surviving Persian literature, however, comes from the times following the Muslim conquest in c. 650\u00a0CE. After the Abbasids came to power (750 CE), the Iranians became the scribes and bureaucrats of the Islamic Caliphate and, increasingly, also its writers and poets. The New Persian language literature arose and flourished in Khorasan and Transoxiana because of political reasons, early Iranian dynasties of post-Islamic Iran such as the Tahirids and Samanids being based in Khorasan.\nPhilosophy.\nIranian philosophy can be traced back as far as Old Iranian philosophical traditions and thoughts which originated in ancient Indo-Iranian roots and were influenced by Zarathustra's teachings. Throughout Iranian history and due to remarkable political and social changes such as the Arab and Mongol invasions, a wide spectrum of schools of thoughts showed a variety of views on philosophical questions, extending from Old Iranian and mainly Zoroastrianism-related traditions, to schools appearing in the late pre-Islamic era such as Manicheism and Mazdakism as well as post-Islamic schools.\nThe Cyrus Cylinder is seen as a reflection of the questions and thoughts expressed by Zoroaster and developed in Zoroastrian schools of the Achaemenid era. Post-Islam Iranian philosophy is characterised by different interactions with the Old Iranian philosophy, the Greek philosophy and with the development of Islamic philosophy. The Illumination School and the Transcendent Philosophy are regarded as two of the main philosophical traditions of that era in Iran. Contemporary Iranian philosophy has been limited in its scope by intellectual repression.\nMythology and folklore.\nIranian mythology consists of ancient Iranian folklore and stories of extraordinary beings reflecting on good and evil (Ahura Mazda and Ahriman), actions of the gods, and the exploits of heroes and creatures. The tenth-century Persian poet, Ferdowsi, is the author of the national epic known as the \"Shahnameh\" (\"Book of Kings\"), which is for the most part based on \"Xwad\u0101yn\u0101mag\", a Middle Persian compilation of the history of Iranian kings and heroes, as well as the stories and characters of the Zoroastrian tradition, from the texts of the Avesta, the Denkard, the Vendidad and the Bundahishn. Modern scholars study the myths to shed light on the religious and political institutions of not only Iran but of the Greater Iran, which includes regions of West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, and Transcaucasia where the culture of Iran has had significant influence.\nStorytelling has a significant presence in Iranian folklore and culture. In classical Iran, minstrels performed for their audiences at royal courts and in public theatres. A minstrel was referred to by the Parthians as g\u014ds\u0101n, and by the Sasanians as huniy\u0101gar. Since the Safavid Empire, storytellers and poetry readers appeared at coffeehouses. After the Iranian Revolution, it took until 1985 to found the MCHTH (Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts), a now heavily centralised organisation, supervising all kinds of cultural activities. It held the first scientific meeting on anthropology and folklore in 1990.\nMuseums.\nThe National Museum of Iran in Tehran is the country's most important cultural institution. As the first and biggest museum in Iran, the institution includes the Museum of Ancient Iran and the Museum of the Islamic Era. The National Museum is the world's most important museum in terms of preservation, display and research of archaeological collections of Iran, and ranks as one of the few most prestigious museums globally in terms of volume, diversity and quality of its monuments.\nThere are many other popular museums across the country such as the Golestan Palace (World Heritage Site), The Treasury of National Jewels, Reza Abbasi Museum, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Sa'dabad Complex, The Carpet Museum, Abgineh Museum, Pars Museum, Azerbaijan Museum, Hegmataneh Museum, Susa Museum and more. Around 25 million people visited the museums in 2019.\nMusic and dance.\nIran is the apparent birthplace of the earliest complex instruments, dating to the third millennium\u00a0BC. The use of angular harps have been documented at Madaktu and Kul-e Farah, with the largest collection of Elamite instruments documented at Kul-e Farah. Xenophon's \"Cyropaedia\" mentions singing women at the court of the Achaemenid Empire. Under the Parthian Empire, the \"g\u014ds\u0101n\" (Parthian for 'minstrel') had a prominent role.\nThe history of Sasanian music is better documented than earlier periods and is especially more evident in Avestan texts. By the time of Khosrow II, the Sasanian royal court hosted prominent musicians, namely Azad, Bamshad, Barbad, Nagisa, Ramtin, and Sarkash. Iranian traditional musical instruments include string instruments such as chang (harp), qanun, santur, rud (oud, barbat), tar, dotar, setar, tanbur, and kamanche, wind instruments such as sorna (zurna, karna) and ney, and percussion instruments such as tompak, kus, daf (dayere), and naqare.\nIran's first symphony orchestra, the Tehran Symphony Orchestra, was founded in 1933. By the late 1940s, Ruhollah Khaleqi founded the country's first national music society and established the School of National Music in 1949. Iranian pop music has its origins in the Qajar era. It was significantly developed since the 1950s, using indigenous instruments and forms accompanied by electric guitar and other imported characteristics. Iranian rock emerged in the 1960s and hip hop in the 2000s.\nIran has known dance in the forms of music, play, drama or religious rituals since at least the 6th millennium BC. Artifacts with pictures of dancers were found in archaeological prehistoric sites. Genres of dance vary depending on the area, culture, and language of the local people, and can range from sophisticated reconstructions of refined court dances to energetic folk dances. Each group, region, and historical epoch has specific dance styles associated with it. The earliest researched dance from historic Iran is a dance worshipping Mithra. Ancient Persian dance was significantly researched by Greek historian Herodotus. Iran was occupied by foreign powers, causing a slow disappearance of heritage dance traditions.\nThe Qajar period had an important influence on Persian dance. In this period, a style of dance began to be called \"classical Persian dance\". Dancers performed artistic dances in court for entertainment purposes such as coronations, marriage celebrations, and Norouz celebrations. In the 20th century, the music came to be orchestrated and dance movement and costuming gained a modernistic orientation to the West.\nFashion and clothing.\nThe exact date of the emergence of weaving in Iran is not yet known, but it is likely to coincide with the emergence of civilisation. Ferdowsi and many historians have considered Keyumars to be first to use animals' skin and hair as clothing, while others propose Hushang. Ferdowsi considers Tahmuras to be a kind of textile initiator in Iran. The clothing of ancient Iran took an advanced form, and the fabric and colour of clothing became very important. Depending on the social status, eminence, climate of the region and the season, Persian clothing during the Achaemenian period took various forms. This clothing, in addition to being functional, had an aesthetic role.\nCinema, animation and theatre.\nA third-millennium BC earthen goblet discovered at the Burnt City in southeast Iran depicts what could be the world's oldest example of animation. The earliest attested Iranian examples of visual representations, however, are traced back to the bas-reliefs of Persepolis, the ritual centre of the Achaemenid Empire.\nThe first Iranian filmmaker was probably Mirza Ebrahim (Akkas Bashi), the court photographer of Mozaffar-ed-Din of the Qajar Empire. Mirza Ebrahim obtained a camera and filmed the Qajar ruler's visit to Europe. In 1904, Mirza Ebrahim (Sahhaf Bashi) opened the first public cinema in Tehran. The first Iranian feature film, \"Abi and Rabi\", was a silent comedy directed by Ovanes Ohanian in 1930. The first sound one, \"Lor Girl\", was produced by Ardeshir Irani and Abd-ol-Hosein Sepanta in 1932. Iran's animation industry began by the 1950s and was followed by the establishment of the influential Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults in 1965.\nWith the screening of the films \"Qeysar\" and \"The Cow\", directed by Masoud Kimiai and Dariush Mehrjui respectively in 1969, alternative films set out to establish their status in the film industry and Bahram Beyzai's \"Downpour\" and Nasser Taghvai's \"Tranquility in the Presence of Others\" followed. Attempts to organise a film festival, which had begun in 1954 within the Golrizan Festival, resulted in the festival of Sepas in 1969. It also resulted in the formation of Tehran's World Film Festival in 1973.\nFollowing the Cultural Revolution, a new age emerged in Iranian cinema, starting with \"Long Live!\" by Khosrow Sinai and followed by other directors, such as Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi. Kiarostami, an acclaimed director, planted Iran firmly on the map of world cinema when he won the for \"Taste of Cherry\" in 1997. The presence of Iranian films in prestigious international festivals, such as Cannes, Venice and Berlin, attracted attention to Iranian films. In 2006, 6 films represented Iranian cinema at Berlin; critics considered this a remarkable event in Iranian cinema. Asghar Farhadi, an Iranian director, has received a Golden Globe Award and two Academy Awards, representing Iran for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012 and 2017, with \"A Separation\" and \"The Salesman\". In 2020, Ashkan Rahgozar's \"The Last Fiction\" became the first representative of Iranian animated cinema in the competition section, in Best Animated Feature and Best Picture categories at the Academy Awards.\nThe oldest Iranian initiation of theatre can be traced to ancient epic ceremonial theatres such as \"Sug-e Si\u0101vu\u0691\" (\"mourning of Si\u0101va\u0691\"), as well as dances and theatre narrations of Iranian mythological tales reported by Herodotus and Xenophon. Iran's traditional theatrical genres include Baqq\u0101l-b\u0101zi (\"grocer play\", a form of slapstick comedy), Ruhowzi (or \"Taxt-howzi\", comedy performed over a courtyard pool covered with boards), Si\u0101h-b\u0101zi (the central comedian appears in blackface), S\u0101ye-b\u0101zi (shadow play), Xeyme-\u0691ab-b\u0101zi (marionette), and Arusak-b\u0101zi (puppetry), and Ta'zie (religious tragedy plays).\nThe Roudaki Hall is home to the Tehran Symphony Orchestra, the Tehran Opera Orchestra, and the Iranian National Ballet Company, and was officially renamed \"Vahdat Hall\" after the Revolution.\nMedia.\nIran's largest media corporation is the state-owned IRIB. The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance is responsible for the cultural policy, including activities regarding communications and information.\nMost of the newspapers published in Iran are in Persian, the country's official and national language. The country's most widely circulated periodicals are based in Tehran, among which are \"Etemad\", \"Ettela'at\", \"Kayhan\", \"Hamshahri\", \"Resalat\", and \"Shargh\". \"Tehran Times\", \"Iran Daily\", and \"Financial Tribune\" are among the famous English-language newspapers based in Iran.\nIran ranks 17th among countries by number of Internet users. Google Search is Iran's most widely used search engine and Instagram is the most popular online social networking service. Direct access to many worldwide mainstream websites has been blocked in Iran, including Facebook, which has been blocked since 2009. About 90% of Iran's e-commerce takes place on the Iranian online store Digikala, which has around 750,000 visitors per day and is the most visited online store in the Middle East.\nCuisine.\nIranian main dishes include varieties of kebab, pilaf, stew (khoresh), soup and \u0101sh, and omelette. Lunch and dinner meals are commonly accompanied by side dishes such as plain yogurt or mast-o-khiar, sabzi, salad Shirazi, and torshi, and might follow dishes such as borani, Mirza Qasemi, or kashk e bademjan. In Iranian culture, tea is widely consumed. Iran is the world's seventh major tea producer. One of Iran's most popular desserts is the falude. There is also the popular saffron ice cream, known as \"Bastani Sonnati\" (\"traditional ice cream\"), which is sometimes accompanied with carrot juice. Iran is also famous for its caviar.\nTypical Iranian main dishes are combinations of rice with meat, vegetables and nuts. Herbs are frequently used, along with fruits such as plums, pomegranates, quince, prunes, apricots and raisins. Characteristic Iranian spices and flavourings such as saffron, cardamom, and dried lime and other sources of sour flavoring, cinnamon, turmeric and parsley are mixed and used in various dishes.\nSports.\nIran is the most likely birthplace of polo, locally known as Chogan, with its earliest records attributed to the ancient Medes. Freestyle wrestling is traditionally considered the national sport, and Iran's wrestlers have been world champions many times. Iran's traditional wrestling, called \"ko\u0691ti e pahlev\u0101ni\" (\"heroic wrestling\"), is registered on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Iran's National Olympic Committee was founded in 1947. Wrestlers and weightlifters have achieved the country's highest records at the Olympics. In 1974, Iran became the first country in West Asia to host the Asian Games.\nAs a mountainous country, Iran is a venue for skiing, snowboarding, hiking, rock climbing, and mountain climbing. It is home to ski resorts, the most famous being Tochal, Dizin, and Shemshak. Dizin is the largest, and authorised by FIS to administer international competitions.\nFootball is the most popular sport, with the men's national team having won the Asian Cup three times. The men's team ranks 2nd in Asia and 20th in the FIFA World Rankings as of April 2024[ [update]]. The Azadi Stadium in Tehran is the largest association football stadium in West Asia and on a list of top-20 stadiums in the world. Volleyball is the second most popular sport. Having won the 2011 and 2013 Asian Men's Volleyball Championships, the men's national team is the 2nd strongest in Asia, and 15th in the FIVB World Rankings as of January\u00a02024[ [update]]. Basketball is also popular, with the men's national team having won three Asian Championships since 2007.\nObservances.\nIran's official New Year begins with Nowruz, an ancient Iranian tradition celebrated annually on the vernal equinox and described as the \"Persian New Year\". It was registered on the UNESCO's list of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2009. On the eve of the last Wednesday of the preceding year, as a prelude to Nowruz, the ancient festival of \u0628\u0101r\u0691anbe Suri celebrates \u0100tar (\"fire\") by performing rituals such as jumping over bonfires and lighting fireworks.\nYald\u0101, another ancient tradition, commemorates the ancient goddess Mithra and marks the longest night of the year on the eve of the winter solstice (usually on 20 or 21 December), during which families gather to recite poetry and eat fruits. In some regions of Mazanderan and Markazi, there is a midsummer festival, Tirg\u0101n, which is observed on Tir 13 (2 or 3July) as a celebration of water.\nIslamic annual events such as Ramez\u0101n, Eid e Fetr, and Ruz e \u0100\u0691ur\u0101 are marked by the country's population, Christian traditions such as Noel, elle ye Ruze, and Eid e P\u0101k are observed by the Christian communities, Jewish traditions such as Hanuk\u0101 and Eid e Fatir (Pesah) are observed by the Jewish communities, and Zoroastrian traditions such as Sade and Mehrg\u0101n are observed by the Zoroastrians.\nPublic holidays.\nWith 26, Iran has one of the world's highest number of public holidays. It ranks 1st in the world with the most paid leave days: 52. Iran's official calendar is the Solar Hejri calendar, beginning at the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. Each of the 12 months of the Solar Hejri calendar correspond with a zodiac sign, and the length of each year is solar. Alternatively, the Lunar Hejri calendar is used to indicate Islamic events, and the Gregorian calendar marks international events.\nLegal public holidays based on the Iranian solar calendar include the cultural celebrations of Nowruz (Farvardin 1\u20134; 21\u201324 March) and Sizdebedar (Farvardin 13; 2April), and the political events of Islamic Republic Day (Farvardin 12; 1April), the death of Ruhollah Khomeini (Khordad 14; 4June), the Khordad 15 event (Khordad 15; 5June), the anniversary of the Iranian Revolution (Bahman 22; 10 February), and Oil Nationalisation Day (Esfand 29; 19 March).\nLunar Islamic public holidays include Tasua (Muharram 9), Ashura (Muharram 10), Arba'een (Safar 20), Muhammad's death (Safar 28), the death of Ali al-Ridha (Safar 29 or 30), the birthday of Muhammad (Rabi-al-Awwal 17), the death of Fatimah (Jumada-al-Thani 3), the birthday of Ali (Rajab 13), Muhammad's first revelation (Rajab 27), the birthday of Muhammad al-Mahdi (Sha'ban 15), the death of Ali (Ramadan 21), Eid al-Fitr (Shawwal 1\u20132), the death of Ja'far al-Sadiq (Shawwal 25), Eid al-Qurban (Zulhijja 10), and Eid al-Qadir (Zulhijja 18).\nExplanatory notes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nFootnotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n<templatestyles src=\"Plain navboxes/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["35522057", "43077563", "14653"], "permutation_1": ["43077563", "35522057", "14653"], "permutation_2": ["43077563", "35522057", "14653"], "permutation_3": ["43077563", "35522057", "14653"]}
{"id": "3hop1__614774_42467_91253", "docs_added": {"48781": "Philosophi\u00e6 Naturalis Principia Mathematica\n1687 work by Isaac Newton\n' (English: \"The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy\"), often referred to as simply the ' (), is a book by Isaac Newton that expounds Newton's laws of motion and his law of universal gravitation. The \"Principia\" is written in Latin and comprises three volumes, and was authorized, imprimatur, by Samuel Pepys, then-President of the Royal Society on 5 July 1686 and first published in 1687.\nThe is considered one of the most important works in the history of science. The French mathematical physicist Alexis Clairaut assessed it in 1747: \"The famous book of \"Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy\" marked the epoch of a great revolution in physics. The method followed by its illustrious author Sir Newton ... spread the light of mathematics on a science which up to then had remained in the darkness of conjectures and hypotheses.\" The French scientist Joseph-Louis Lagrange described it as \"the greatest production of the human mind\". French polymath Pierre-Simon Laplace stated that \"The \"Principia\" is pre-eminent above any other production of human genius\". Newton's work has also been called \"the greatest scientific work in history\", and \"the supreme expression in human thought of the mind's ability to hold the universe fixed as an object of contemplation\".\nA more recent assessment has been that while acceptance of Newton's laws was not immediate, by the end of the century after publication in 1687, \"no one could deny that [out of the ] a science had emerged that, at least in certain respects, so far exceeded anything that had ever gone before that it stood alone as the ultimate exemplar of science generally\".\nThe forms a mathematical foundation for the theory of classical mechanics. Among other achievements, it explains Johannes Kepler's laws of planetary motion, which Kepler had first obtained empirically. In formulating his physical laws, Newton developed and used mathematical methods now included in the field of calculus, expressing them in the form of geometric propositions about \"vanishingly small\" shapes. In a revised conclusion to the (<templatestyles src=\"Crossreference/styles.css\" />), Newton emphasized the empirical nature of the work with the expression \"Hypotheses non fingo\" (\"I frame/feign no hypotheses\").\nAfter annotating and correcting his personal copy of the first edition, Newton published two further editions, during 1713 with errors of the 1687 corrected, and an improved version of 1726.\nContents.\nExpressed aim and topics covered.\nThe Preface of the work states:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />... Rational Mechanics will be the sciences of motion resulting from any forces whatsoever, and of the forces required to produce any motion, accurately proposed and demonstrated ... And therefore we offer this work as mathematical principles of his philosophy. For all the difficulty of philosophy seems to consist in this\u2014from the phenomena of motions to investigate the forces of Nature, and then from these forces to demonstrate the other phenomena ...\nNewton situates himself within the contemporary scientific movement which had \"omit[ed] substantial forms and the occult qualities\" and instead endeavoured to explain the world by empirical investigation and outlining of empirical regularities.\nThe \"Principia\" deals primarily with massive bodies in motion, initially under a variety of conditions and hypothetical laws of force in both non-resisting and resisting media, thus offering criteria to decide, by observations, which laws of force are operating in phenomena that may be observed. It attempts to cover hypothetical or possible motions both of celestial bodies and of terrestrial projectiles. It explores difficult problems of motions perturbed by multiple attractive forces. Its third and final book deals with the interpretation of observations about the movements of planets and their satellites.\nThe book:\nThe opening sections of the \"Principia\" contain, in revised and extended form, nearly all of the content of Newton's 1684 tract \"De motu corporum in gyrum\".\nThe \"Principia\" begin with \"Definitions\" and \"Axioms or Laws of Motion\", and continues in three books:\nBook 1, \"De motu corporum\".\nBook 1, subtitled \"De motu corporum\" (\"On the motion of bodies\") concerns motion in the absence of any resisting medium. It opens with a collection of mathematical lemmas on \"the method of first and last ratios\", a geometrical form of infinitesimal calculus.\nThe second section establishes relationships between centripetal forces and the law of areas now known as Kepler's second law (Propositions 1\u20133), and relates circular velocity and radius of path-curvature to radial force (Proposition 4), and relationships between centripetal forces varying as the inverse-square of the distance to the center and orbits of conic-section form (Propositions 5\u201310).\nPropositions 11\u201331 establish properties of motion in paths of eccentric conic-section form including ellipses, and their relationship with inverse-square central forces directed to a focus and include Newton's theorem about ovals (lemma 28).\nPropositions 43\u201345 are demonstration that in an eccentric orbit under centripetal force where the apse may move, a steady non-moving orientation of the line of apses is an indicator of an inverse-square law of force.\nBook 1 contains some proofs with little connection to real-world dynamics. But there are also sections with far-reaching application to the solar system and universe:\nPropositions 57\u201369 deal with the \"motion of bodies drawn to one another by centripetal forces\". This section is of primary interest for its application to the Solar System, and includes Proposition 66 along with its 22 corollaries: here Newton took the first steps in the definition and study of the problem of the movements of three massive bodies subject to their mutually perturbing gravitational attractions, a problem which later gained name and fame (among other reasons, for its great difficulty) as the three-body problem.\nPropositions 70\u201384 deal with the attractive forces of spherical bodies. The section contains Newton's proof that a massive spherically symmetrical body attracts other bodies outside itself as if all its mass were concentrated at its centre. This fundamental result, called the Shell theorem, enables the inverse square law of gravitation to be applied to the real solar system to a very close degree of approximation.\nBook 2, part 2 of \"De motu corporum\".\nPart of the contents originally planned for the first book was divided out into a second book, which largely concerns motion through resisting mediums. Just as Newton examined consequences of different conceivable laws of attraction in Book 1, here he examines different conceivable laws of resistance; thus discusses resistance in direct proportion to velocity, and goes on to examine the implications of resistance in proportion to the square of velocity. Book 2 also discusses (in ) hydrostatics and the properties of compressible fluids; Newton also derives Boyle's law. The effects of air resistance on pendulums are studied in , along with Newton's account of experiments that he carried out, to try to find out some characteristics of air resistance in reality by observing the motions of pendulums under different conditions. Newton compares the resistance offered by a medium against motions of globes with different properties (material, weight, size). In Section 8, he derives rules to determine the speed of waves in fluids and relates them to the density and condensation (Proposition 48; this would become very important in acoustics). He assumes that these rules apply equally to light and sound and estimates that the speed of sound is around 1088 feet per second and can increase depending on the amount of water in air.\nLess of Book 2 has stood the test of time than of Books 1 and 3, and it has been said that Book 2 was largely written to refute a theory of Descartes which had some wide acceptance before Newton's work (and for some time after). According to Descartes's theory of vortices, planetary motions were produced by the whirling of fluid vortices that filled interplanetary space and carried the planets along with them. Newton concluded Book 2 by commenting that the hypothesis of vortices was completely at odds with the astronomical phenomena, and served not so much to explain as to confuse them.\nBook 3, \"De mundi systemate\".\nBook 3, subtitled \"De mundi systemate\" (\"On the system of the world\"), is an exposition of many consequences of universal gravitation, especially its consequences for astronomy. It builds upon the propositions of the previous books and applies them with further specificity than in Book 1 to the motions observed in the Solar System. Here (introduced by Proposition 22, and continuing in Propositions 25\u201335) are developed several of the features and irregularities of the orbital motion of the Moon, especially the variation. Newton lists the astronomical observations on which he relies, and establishes in a stepwise manner that the inverse square law of mutual gravitation applies to Solar System bodies, starting with the satellites of Jupiter and going on by stages to show that the law is of universal application. He also gives starting at Lemma 4 and Proposition 40 the theory of the motions of comets, for which much data came from John Flamsteed and Edmond Halley, and accounts for the tides, attempting quantitative estimates of the contributions of the Sun and Moon to the tidal motions; and offers the first theory of the precession of the equinoxes. Book 3 also considers the harmonic oscillator in three dimensions, and motion in arbitrary force laws.\nIn Book 3 Newton also made clear his heliocentric view of the Solar System, modified in a somewhat modern way, since already in the mid-1680s he recognised the \"deviation of the Sun\" from the centre of gravity of the Solar System. For Newton, \"the common centre of gravity of the Earth, the Sun and all the Planets is to be esteem'd the Centre of the World\", and that this centre \"either is at rest, or moves uniformly forward in a right line\". Newton rejected the second alternative after adopting the position that \"the centre of the system of the world is immoveable\", which \"is acknowledg'd by all, while some contend that the Earth, others, that the Sun is fix'd in that centre\". Newton estimated the mass ratios Sun:Jupiter and Sun:Saturn, and pointed out that these put the centre of the Sun usually a little way off the common center of gravity, but only a little, the distance at most \"would scarcely amount to one diameter of the Sun\".\nCommentary on the \"Principia\".\nThe sequence of definitions used in setting up dynamics in the \"Principia\" is recognisable in many textbooks today. Newton first set out the definition of mass\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The quantity of matter is that which arises conjointly from its density and magnitude. A body twice as dense in double the space is quadruple in quantity. This quantity I designate by the name of body or of mass.\nThis was then used to define the \"quantity of motion\" (today called momentum), and the principle of inertia in which mass replaces the previous Cartesian notion of \"intrinsic force\". This then set the stage for the introduction of forces through the change in momentum of a body. Curiously, for today's readers, the exposition looks dimensionally incorrect, since Newton does not introduce the dimension of time in rates of changes of quantities.\nHe defined space and time \"not as they are well known to all\". Instead, he defined \"true\" time and space as \"absolute\" and explained:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Only I must observe, that the vulgar conceive those quantities under no other notions but from the relation they bear to perceptible objects. And it will be convenient to distinguish them into absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and common. ... instead of absolute places and motions, we use relative ones; and that without any inconvenience in common affairs; but in philosophical discussions, we ought to step back from our senses, and consider things themselves, distinct from what are only perceptible measures of them.\nTo some modern readers it can appear that some dynamical quantities recognised today were used in the \"Principia\" but not named. The mathematical aspects of the first two books were so clearly consistent that they were easily accepted; for example, Locke asked Huygens whether he could trust the mathematical proofs and was assured about their correctness.\nHowever, the concept of an attractive force acting at a distance received a cooler response. In his notes, Newton wrote that the inverse square law arose naturally due to the structure of matter. However, he retracted this sentence in the published version, where he stated that the motion of planets is consistent with an inverse square law, but refused to speculate on the origin of the law. Huygens and Leibniz noted that the law was incompatible with the notion of the aether. From a Cartesian point of view, therefore, this was a faulty theory. Newton's defence has been adopted since by many famous physicists\u2014he pointed out that the mathematical form of the theory had to be correct since it explained the data, and he refused to speculate further on the basic nature of gravity. The sheer number of phenomena that could be organised by the theory was so impressive that younger \"philosophers\" soon adopted the methods and language of the \"Principia\".\nRules of Reason.\nPerhaps to reduce the risk of public misunderstanding, Newton included at the beginning of Book 3 (in the second (1713) and third (1726) editions) a section titled \"Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy\". In the four rules, as they came finally to stand in the 1726 edition, Newton effectively offers a methodology for handling unknown phenomena in nature and reaching towards explanations for them. The four Rules of the 1726 edition run as follows (omitting some explanatory comments that follow each):\nThis section of Rules for philosophy is followed by a listing of \"Phenomena\", in which are listed a number of mainly astronomical observations, that Newton used as the basis for inferences later on, as if adopting a consensus set of facts from the astronomers of his time.\nBoth the \"Rules\" and the \"Phenomena\" evolved from one edition of the \"Principia\" to the next. Rule 4 made its appearance in the third (1726) edition; Rules 1\u20133 were present as \"Rules\" in the second (1713) edition, and predecessors of them were also present in the first edition of 1687, but there they had a different heading: they were not given as \"Rules\", but rather in the first (1687) edition the predecessors of the three later \"Rules\", and of most of the later \"Phenomena\", were all lumped together under a single heading \"Hypotheses\" (in which the third item was the predecessor of a heavy revision that gave the later Rule 3).\nFrom this textual evolution, it appears that Newton wanted by the later headings \"Rules\" and \"Phenomena\" to clarify for his readers his view of the roles to be played by these various statements.\nIn the third (1726) edition of the \"Principia\", Newton explains each rule in an alternative way and/or gives an example to back up what the rule is claiming. The first rule is explained as a philosophers' principle of economy. The second rule states that if one cause is assigned to a natural effect, then the same cause so far as possible must be assigned to natural effects of the same kind: for example, respiration in humans and in animals, fires in the home and in the Sun, or the reflection of light whether it occurs terrestrially or from the planets. An extensive explanation is given of the third rule, concerning the qualities of bodies, and Newton discusses here the generalisation of observational results, with a caution against making up fancies contrary to experiments, and use of the rules to illustrate the observation of gravity and space.\nGeneral Scholium.\nThe \"General Scholium\" is a concluding essay added to the second edition, 1713 (and amended in the third edition, 1726). It is not to be confused with the \"General Scholium\" at the end of Book 2, Section 6, which discusses his pendulum experiments and resistance due to air, water, and other fluids.\nHere Newton used the expression hypotheses non fingo, \"I formulate no hypotheses\", in response to criticisms of the first edition of the \"Principia\". (\"Fingo\" is sometimes nowadays translated \"feign\" rather than the traditional \"frame,\" although \"feign\" does not properly translate \"fingo\"). Newton's gravitational attraction, an invisible force able to act over vast distances, had led to criticism that he had introduced \"occult agencies\" into science. Newton firmly rejected such criticisms and wrote that it was enough that the phenomena implied gravitational attraction, as they did; but the phenomena did not so far indicate the cause of this gravity, and it was both unnecessary and improper to frame hypotheses of things not implied by the phenomena: such hypotheses \"have no place in experimental philosophy\", in contrast to the proper way in which \"particular propositions are inferr'd from the phenomena and afterwards rendered general by induction\".\nNewton also underlined his criticism of the vortex theory of planetary motions, of Descartes, pointing to its incompatibility with the highly eccentric orbits of comets, which carry them \"through all parts of the heavens indifferently\".\nNewton also gave theological argument. From the system of the world, he inferred the existence of a god, along lines similar to what is sometimes called the argument from intelligent or purposive design. It has been suggested that Newton gave \"an oblique argument for a unitarian conception of God and an implicit attack on the doctrine of the Trinity\". The General Scholium does not address or attempt to refute the church doctrine; it simply does not mention Jesus, the Holy Ghost, or the hypothesis of the Trinity.\nPublishing the book.\nHalley and Newton's initial stimulus.\nIn January 1684, Edmond Halley, Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke had a conversation in which Hooke claimed to not only have derived the inverse-square law but also all the laws of planetary motion. Wren was unconvinced, Hooke did not produce the claimed derivation although the others gave him time to do it, and Halley, who could derive the inverse-square law for the restricted circular case (by substituting Kepler's relation into Huygens' formula for the centrifugal force) but failed to derive the relation generally, resolved to ask Newton.\nHalley's visits to Newton in 1684 thus resulted from Halley's debates about planetary motion with Wren and Hooke, and they seem to have provided Newton with the incentive and spur to develop and write what became \"Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica\". Halley was at that time a Fellow and Council member of the Royal Society in London (positions that in 1686 he resigned to become the Society's paid Clerk). Halley's visit to Newton in Cambridge in 1684 probably occurred in August. When Halley asked Newton's opinion on the problem of planetary motions discussed earlier that year between Halley, Hooke and Wren, Newton surprised Halley by saying that he had already made the derivations some time ago; but that he could not find the papers. (Matching accounts of this meeting come from Halley and Abraham De Moivre to whom Newton confided.) Halley then had to wait for Newton to \"find\" the results, and in November 1684 Newton sent Halley an amplified version of whatever previous work Newton had done on the subject. This took the form of a 9-page manuscript, \"De motu corporum in gyrum\" (\"Of the motion of bodies in an orbit\"): the title is shown on some surviving copies, although the (lost) original may have been without a title.\nNewton's tract \"De motu corporum in gyrum\", which he sent to Halley in late 1684, derived what is now known as the three laws of Kepler, assuming an inverse square law of force, and generalised the result to conic sections. It also extended the methodology by adding the solution of a problem on the motion of a body through a resisting medium. The contents of \"De motu\" so excited Halley by their mathematical and physical originality and far-reaching implications for astronomical theory, that he immediately went to visit Newton again, in November 1684, to ask Newton to let the Royal Society have more of such work. The results of their meetings clearly helped to stimulate Newton with the enthusiasm needed to take his investigations of mathematical problems much further in this area of physical science, and he did so in a period of highly concentrated work that lasted at least until mid-1686.\nNewton's single-minded attention to his work generally, and to his project during this time, is shown by later reminiscences from his secretary and copyist of the period, Humphrey Newton. His account tells of Isaac Newton's absorption in his studies, how he sometimes forgot his food, or his sleep, or the state of his clothes, and how when he took a walk in his garden he would sometimes rush back to his room with some new thought, not even waiting to sit before beginning to write it down. Other evidence also shows Newton's absorption in the \"Principia\": Newton for years kept up a regular programme of chemical or alchemical experiments, and he normally kept dated notes of them, but for a period from May 1684 to April 1686, Newton's chemical notebooks have no entries at all. So, it seems that Newton abandoned pursuits to which he was formally dedicated and did very little else for well over a year and a half, but concentrated on developing and writing what became his great work.\nThe first of the three constituent books was sent to Halley for the printer in spring 1686, and the other two books somewhat later. The complete work, published by Halley at his own financial risk, appeared in July 1687. Newton had also communicated \"De motu\" to Flamsteed, and during the period of composition, he exchanged a few letters with Flamsteed about observational data on the planets, eventually acknowledging Flamsteed's contributions in the published version of the \"Principia\" of 1687.\nPreliminary version.\nThe process of writing that first edition of the \"Principia\" went through several stages and drafts: some parts of the preliminary materials still survive, while others are lost except for fragments and cross-references in other documents.\nSurviving materials show that Newton (up to some time in 1685) conceived his book as a two-volume work. The first volume was to be titled \"De motu corporum, Liber primus\", with contents that later appeared in extended form as Book 1 of the \"Principia\".\nA fair-copy draft of Newton's planned second volume \"De motu corporum, Liber Secundus\" survives, its completion dated to about the summer of 1685. It covers the application of the results of \"Liber primus\" to the Earth, the Moon, the tides, the Solar System, and the universe; in this respect, it has much the same purpose as the final Book 3 of the \"Principia\", but it is written much less formally and is more easily read.\nIt is not known just why Newton changed his mind so radically about the final form of what had been a readable narrative in \"De motu corporum, Liber Secundus\" of 1685, but he largely started afresh in a new, tighter, and less accessible mathematical style, eventually to produce Book 3 of the \"Principia\" as we know it. Newton frankly admitted that this change of style was deliberate when he wrote that he had (first) composed this book \"in a popular method, that it might be read by many\", but to \"prevent the disputes\" by readers who could not \"lay aside the[ir] prejudices\", he had \"reduced\" it \"into the form of propositions (in the mathematical way) which should be read by those only, who had first made themselves masters of the principles established in the preceding books\". The final Book 3 also contained in addition some further important quantitative results arrived at by Newton in the meantime, especially about the theory of the motions of comets, and some of the perturbations of the motions of the Moon.\nThe result was numbered Book 3 of the \"Principia\" rather than Book 2 because in the meantime, drafts of \"Liber primus\" had expanded and Newton had divided it into two books. The new and final Book 2 was concerned largely with the motions of bodies through resisting mediums.\nBut the \"Liber Secundus\" of 1685 can still be read today. Even after it was superseded by Book 3 of the \"Principia\", it survived complete, in more than one manuscript. After Newton's death in 1727, the relatively accessible character of its writing encouraged the publication of an English translation in 1728 (by persons still unknown, not authorised by Newton's heirs). It appeared under the English title \"A Treatise of the System of the World\". This had some amendments relative to Newton's manuscript of 1685, mostly to remove cross-references that used obsolete numbering to cite the propositions of an early draft of Book 1 of the \"Principia\". Newton's heirs shortly afterwards published the Latin version in their possession, also in 1728, under the (new) title \"De Mundi Systemate\", amended to update cross-references, citations and diagrams to those of the later editions of the \"Principia\", making it look superficially as if it had been written by Newton after the \"Principia\", rather than before. The \"System of the World\" was sufficiently popular to stimulate two revisions (with similar changes as in the Latin printing), a second edition (1731), and a \"corrected\" reprint of the second edition (1740).\nHalley's role as publisher.\nThe text of the first of the three books of the \"Principia\" was presented to the Royal Society at the close of April 1686. Hooke made some priority claims (but failed to substantiate them), causing some delay. When Hooke's claim was made known to Newton, who hated disputes, Newton threatened to withdraw and suppress Book 3 altogether, but Halley, showing considerable diplomatic skills, tactfully persuaded Newton to withdraw his threat and let it go forward to publication. Samuel Pepys, as president, gave his imprimatur on 30 June 1686, licensing the book for publication. The Society had just spent its book budget on \"De Historia piscium\", and the cost of publication was borne by Edmund Halley (who was also then acting as publisher of the \"Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society\"): the book appeared in summer 1687. After Halley had personally financed the publication of \"Principia\", he was informed that the society could no longer afford to provide him the promised annual salary of \u00a350. Instead, Halley was paid with leftover copies of \"De Historia piscium\".\nHistorical context.\nBeginnings of the Scientific Revolution.\nNicolaus Copernicus had moved the Earth away from the center of the universe with the heliocentric theory for which he presented evidence in his book \"De revolutionibus orbium coelestium\" (\"On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres\") published in 1543. Johannes Kepler wrote the book \"Astronomia nova\" (\"A new astronomy\") in 1609, setting out the evidence that planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus, and that planets do not move with constant speed along this orbit. Rather, their speed varies so that the line joining the centres of the sun and a planet sweeps out equal areas in equal times. To these two laws he added a third a decade later, in his 1619 book \"Harmonices Mundi\" (\"Harmonies of the world\"). This law sets out a proportionality between the third power of the characteristic distance of a planet from the Sun and the square of the length of its year.\nThe foundation of modern dynamics was set out in Galileo's book \"Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo\" (\"Dialogue on the two main world systems\") where the notion of inertia was implicit and used. In addition, Galileo's experiments with inclined planes had yielded precise mathematical relations between elapsed time and acceleration, velocity or distance for uniform and uniformly accelerated motion of bodies.\nDescartes' book of 1644 \"Principia philosophiae\" (\"Principles of philosophy\") stated that bodies can act on each other only through contact: a principle that induced people, among them himself, to hypothesize a universal medium as the carrier of interactions such as light and gravity\u2014the aether. Newton was criticized for apparently introducing forces that acted at distance without any medium. Not until the development of particle theory was Descartes' notion vindicated when it was possible to describe all interactions, like the strong, weak, and electromagnetic fundamental interactions, using mediating gauge bosons and gravity through hypothesized gravitons.\nNewton's role.\nNewton had studied these books, or, in some cases, secondary sources based on them, and taken notes entitled \"Quaestiones quaedam philosophicae\" (\"Questions about philosophy\") during his days as an undergraduate. During this period (1664\u20131666) he created the basis of calculus and performed the first experiments in the optics of colour. At this time, his proof that white light was a combination of primary colours (found via prismatics) replaced the prevailing theory of colours and received an overwhelmingly favourable response and occasioned bitter disputes with Robert Hooke and others, which forced him to sharpen his ideas to the point where he already composed sections of his later book \"Opticks\" by the 1670s in response. Work on calculus is shown in various papers and letters, including two to Leibniz. He became a fellow of the Royal Society and the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics (succeeding Isaac Barrow) at Trinity College, Cambridge.\nNewton's early work on motion.\nIn the 1660s Newton studied the motion of colliding bodies and deduced that the centre of mass of two colliding bodies remains in uniform motion. Surviving manuscripts of the 1660s also show Newton's interest in planetary motion and that by 1669 he had shown, for a circular case of planetary motion, that the force he called \"endeavour to recede\" (now called centrifugal force) had an inverse-square relation with distance from the center. After his 1679\u20131680 correspondence with Hooke, described below, Newton adopted the language of inward or centripetal force. According to Newton scholar J. Bruce Brackenridge, although much has been made of the change in language and difference of point of view, as between centrifugal or centripetal forces, the actual computations and proofs remained the same either way. They also involved the combination of tangential and radial displacements, which Newton was making in the 1660s. The difference between the centrifugal and centripetal points of view, though a significant change of perspective, did not change the analysis. Newton also clearly expressed the concept of linear inertia in the 1660s: for this Newton was indebted to Descartes' work published 1644.\nControversy with Hooke.\nHooke published his ideas about gravitation in the 1660s and again in 1674. He argued for an attracting principle of gravitation in \"Micrographia\" of 1665, in a 1666 Royal Society lecture \"On gravity\", and again in 1674, when he published his ideas about the \"System of the World\" in somewhat developed form, as an addition to \"An Attempt to Prove the Motion of the Earth from Observations\". Hooke clearly postulated mutual attractions between the Sun and planets, in a way that increased with nearness to the attracting body, along with a principle of linear inertia. Hooke's statements up to 1674 made no mention, however, that an inverse square law applies or might apply to these attractions. Hooke's gravitation was also not yet universal, though it approached universality more closely than previous hypotheses. Hooke also did not provide accompanying evidence or mathematical demonstration. On these two aspects, Hooke stated in 1674: \"Now what these several degrees [of gravitational attraction] are I have not yet experimentally verified\" (indicating that he did not yet know what law the gravitation might follow); and as to his whole proposal: \"This I only hint at present\", \"having my self many other things in hand which I would first compleat, and therefore cannot so well attend it\" (i.e., \"prosecuting this Inquiry\").\nIn November 1679, Hooke began an exchange of letters with Newton, of which the full text is now published. Hooke told Newton that Hooke had been appointed to manage the Royal Society's correspondence, and wished to hear from members about their researches, or their views about the researches of others; and as if to whet Newton's interest, he asked what Newton thought about various matters, giving a whole list, mentioning \"compounding the celestial motions of the planets of a direct motion by the tangent and an attractive motion towards the central body\", and \"my hypothesis of the lawes or causes of springinesse\", and then a new hypothesis from Paris about planetary motions (which Hooke described at length), and then efforts to carry out or improve national surveys, the difference of latitude between London and Cambridge, and other items. Newton's reply offered \"a fansy of my own\" about a terrestrial experiment (not a proposal about celestial motions) which might detect the Earth's motion, by the use of a body first suspended in air and then dropped to let it fall. The main point was to indicate how Newton thought the falling body could experimentally reveal the Earth's motion by its direction of deviation from the vertical, but he went on hypothetically to consider how its motion could continue if the solid Earth had not been in the way (on a spiral path to the centre). Hooke disagreed with Newton's idea of how the body would continue to move. A short further correspondence developed, and towards the end of it Hooke, writing on 6 January 1680 to Newton, communicated his \"supposition ... that the Attraction always is in a duplicate proportion to the Distance from the Center Reciprocall, and Consequently that the Velocity will be in a subduplicate proportion to the Attraction and Consequently as Kepler Supposes Reciprocall to the Distance.\" (Hooke's inference about the velocity was actually incorrect.)\nIn 1686, when the first book of Newton's \"Principia\" was presented to the Royal Society, Hooke claimed that Newton had obtained from him the \"notion\" of \"the rule of the decrease of Gravity, being reciprocally as the squares of the distances from the Center\". At the same time (according to Edmond Halley's contemporary report) Hooke agreed that \"the Demonstration of the Curves generated therby\" was wholly Newton's.\nA recent assessment about the early history of the inverse square law is that \"by the late 1660s\", the assumption of an \"inverse proportion between gravity and the square of distance was rather common and had been advanced by a number of different people for different reasons\". Newton himself had shown in the 1660s that for planetary motion under a circular assumption, force in the radial direction had an inverse-square relation with distance from the center. Newton, faced in May 1686 with Hooke's claim on the inverse square law, denied that Hooke was to be credited as author of the idea, giving reasons including the citation of prior work by others before Hooke. Newton also firmly claimed that even if it had happened that he had first heard of the inverse square proportion from Hooke, which it had not, he would still have some rights to it in view of his mathematical developments and demonstrations, which enabled observations to be relied on as evidence of its accuracy, while Hooke, without mathematical demonstrations and evidence in favour of the supposition, could only guess (according to Newton) that it was approximately valid \"at great distances from the center\".\nThe background described above shows there was basis for Newton to deny deriving the inverse square law from Hooke. On the other hand, Newton did accept and acknowledge, in all editions of the \"Principia\", that Hooke (but not exclusively Hooke) had separately appreciated the inverse square law in the Solar System. Newton acknowledged Wren, Hooke and Halley in this connection in the Scholium to Proposition 4 in Book 1. Newton also acknowledged to Halley that his correspondence with Hooke in 1679\u201380 had reawakened his dormant interest in astronomical matters, but that did not mean, according to Newton, that Hooke had told Newton anything new or original: \"yet am I not beholden to him for any light into that business but only for the diversion he gave me from my other studies to think on these things & for his dogmaticalness in writing as if he had found the motion in the Ellipsis, which inclined me to try it ...\".) Newton's reawakening interest in astronomy received further stimulus by the appearance of a comet in the winter of 1680/1681, on which he corresponded with John Flamsteed.\nIn 1759, decades after the deaths of both Newton and Hooke, Alexis Clairaut, mathematical astronomer eminent in his own right in the field of gravitational studies, made his assessment after reviewing what Hooke had published on gravitation. \"One must not think that this idea ... of Hooke diminishes Newton's glory\", Clairaut wrote; \"The example of Hooke\" serves \"to show what a distance there is between a truth that is glimpsed and a truth that is demonstrated\".\nLocation of early edition copies.\nIt has been estimated that as many as 750 copies of the first edition were printed by the Royal Society, and \"it is quite remarkable that so many copies of this small first edition are still in existence ... but it may be because the original Latin text was more revered than read\". A survey published in 1953 located 189 surviving copies with nearly 200 further copies located by the most recent survey published in 2020, suggesting that the initial print run was larger than previously thought. However, more recent book historical and bibliographical research has examined those prior claims, and concludes that Macomber's earlier estimation of 500 copies is likely correct.\nIn 2016, a first edition sold for $3.7 million.\nThe second edition (1713) were printed in 750 copies, and the third edition (1726) were printed in 1,250 copies.\nA facsimile edition (based on the 3rd edition of 1726 but with variant readings from earlier editions and important annotations) was published in 1972 by Alexandre Koyr\u00e9 and I. Bernard Cohen.\nLater editions.\nSecond edition, 1713.\nTwo later editions were published by Newton: Newton had been urged to make a new edition of the \"Principia\" since the early 1690s, partly because copies of the first edition had already become very rare and expensive within a few years after 1687. Newton referred to his plans for a second edition in correspondence with Flamsteed in November 1694. Newton also maintained annotated copies of the first edition specially bound up with interleaves on which he could note his revisions; two of these copies still survive, but he had not completed the revisions by 1708. Newton had almost severed connections with one would-be editor, Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, and another, David Gregory seems not to have met with his approval and was also terminally ill, dying in 1708. Nevertheless, reasons were accumulating not to put off the new edition any longer. Richard Bentley, master of Trinity College, persuaded Newton to allow him to undertake a second edition, and in June 1708 Bentley wrote to Newton with a specimen print of the first sheet, at the same time expressing the (unfulfilled) hope that Newton had made progress towards finishing the revisions. It seems that Bentley then realised that the editorship was technically too difficult for him, and with Newton's consent he appointed Roger Cotes, Plumian professor of astronomy at Trinity, to undertake the editorship for him as a kind of deputy (but Bentley still made the publishing arrangements and had the financial responsibility and profit). The correspondence of 1709\u20131713 shows Cotes reporting to two masters, Bentley and Newton, and managing (and often correcting) a large and important set of revisions to which Newton sometimes could not give his full attention. Under the weight of Cotes' efforts, but impeded by priority disputes between Newton and Leibniz, and by troubles at the Mint, Cotes was able to announce publication to Newton on 30 June 1713. Bentley sent Newton only six presentation copies; Cotes was unpaid; Newton omitted any acknowledgement to Cotes.\nAmong those who gave Newton corrections for the Second Edition were: Firmin Abauzit, Roger Cotes and David Gregory. However, Newton omitted acknowledgements to some because of the priority disputes. John Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal, suffered this especially.\nThe Second Edition was the basis of the first edition to be printed abroad, which appeared in Amsterdam in 1714.\nThird edition, 1726.\nAfter his serious illness in 1722 and after the appearance of a reprint of the second edition in Amsterdam in 1723, the 80-year-old Newton began to revise once again the Principia in the fall of 1723. The third edition was published 25 March 1726, under the stewardship of \"Henry Pemberton, M.D., a man of the greatest skill in these matters...\"; Pemberton later said that this recognition was worth more to him than the two hundred guinea award from Newton.\nIn 1739\u20131742, two French priests, P\u00e8res Thomas LeSeur and Fran\u00e7ois Jacquier (of the Minim order, but sometimes erroneously identified as Jesuits), produced with the assistance of J.-L. Calandrini an extensively annotated version of the \"Principia\" in the 3rd edition of 1726. Sometimes this is referred to as the \"Jesuit edition\": it was much used, and reprinted more than once in Scotland during the 19th century.\n\u00c9milie du Ch\u00e2telet also made a translation of Newton's \"Principia\" into French. Unlike LeSeur and Jacquier's edition, hers was a complete translation of Newton's three books and their prefaces. She also included a Commentary section where she fused the three books into a much clearer and easier to understand summary. She included an analytical section where she applied the new mathematics of calculus to Newton's most controversial theories. Previously, geometry was the standard mathematics used to analyse theories. Du Ch\u00e2telet's translation is the only complete one to have been done in French and hers remains the standard French translation to this day.\nTranslations.\nFour full English translations of Newton's \"Principia\" have appeared, all based on Newton's 3rd edition of 1726. The first, from 1729, by Andrew Motte, was described by Newton scholar I. Bernard Cohen (in 1968) as \"still of enormous value in conveying to us the sense of Newton's words in their own time, and it is generally faithful to the original: clear, and well written\". The 1729 version was the basis for several republications, often incorporating revisions, among them a widely used modernised English version of 1934, which appeared under the editorial name of Florian Cajori (though completed and published only some years after his death). Cohen pointed out ways in which the 18th-century terminology and punctuation of the 1729 translation might be confusing to modern readers, but he also made severe criticisms of the 1934 modernised English version, and showed that the revisions had been made without regard to the original, also demonstrating gross errors \"that provided the final impetus to our decision to produce a wholly new translation\".\nThe second full English translation, into modern English, is the work that resulted from this decision by collaborating translators I. Bernard Cohen, Anne Whitman, and Julia Budenz; it was published in 1999 with a guide by way of introduction.\nThe third such translation is due to Ian Bruce, and appears, with many other translations of mathematical works of the 17th and 18th centuries, on his website.\nThe fourth complete English translation is due to Charles Leedham-Green, professor emeritus of mathematics at Queen Mary University of London, and was published in 2021 by Cambridge University Press. Prof. Leedham-Green was motivated to produce that translation, on which he worked for twenty years, in part because of his dissatisfaction with the work of Cohen, Whitman, and Budenz, whose translation of the \"Principia\" he found unnecessarily obscure. Leedham-Green's aim was to convey Newton's own reasoning and arguments in a way intelligible to a modern mathematical scientist. His translation is heavily annotated and his explanatory notes make use of the modern secondary literature on some of the more difficult technical aspects of Newton's work.\nDana Densmore and William H. Donahue have published a translation of the work's central argument, published in 1996, along with expansion of included proofs and ample commentary. The book was developed as a textbook for classes at St. John's College and the aim of this translation is to be faithful to the Latin text.\nVaria.\nIn 1977, the spacecraft Voyager 1 and 2 left earth for the interstellar space carrying a picture of a page from Newton's \"Principia Mathematica\", as part of the Golden Record, a collection of messages from humanity to extraterrestrials.\nIn 2014, British astronaut Tim Peake named his upcoming mission to the International Space Station \"Principia\" after the book, in \"honour of Britain's greatest scientist\". Tim Peake's \"Principia\" launched on 15 December 2015 aboard Soyuz TMA-19M.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nLatin versions.\nFirst edition (1687)\nSecond edition (1713)\nThird edition (1726)\nLater Latin editions", "10902": "Force\nInfluence that can change motion of an object\n<templatestyles src=\"Hlist/styles.css\"/>\nA force is an influence that can cause an object to change its velocity unless counterbalanced by other forces. The concept of force makes the everyday notion of pushing or pulling mathematically precise. Because the magnitude and direction of a force are both important, force is a vector quantity. The SI unit of force is the newton (N), and force is often represented by the symbol F.\nForce plays an important role in classical mechanics. The concept of force is central to all three of Newton's laws of motion. Types of forces often encountered in classical mechanics include elastic, frictional, contact or \"normal\" forces, and gravitational. The rotational version of force is torque, which produces changes in the rotational speed of an object. In an extended body, each part applies forces on the adjacent parts; the distribution of such forces through the body is the internal mechanical stress. In the case of multiple forces, if the net force on an extended body is zero the body is in equilibrium. \nIn modern physics, which includes relativity and quantum mechanics, the laws governing motion are revised to rely on fundamental interactions as the ultimate origin of force. However, the understanding of force provided by classical mechanics is useful for practical purposes.\nDevelopment of the concept.\nPhilosophers in antiquity used the concept of force in the study of stationary and moving objects and simple machines, but thinkers such as Aristotle and Archimedes retained fundamental errors in understanding force. In part, this was due to an incomplete understanding of the sometimes non-obvious force of friction and a consequently inadequate view of the nature of natural motion. A fundamental error was the belief that a force is required to maintain motion, even at a constant velocity. Most of the previous misunderstandings about motion and force were eventually corrected by Galileo Galilei and Sir Isaac Newton. With his mathematical insight, Newton formulated laws of motion that were not improved for over two hundred years.\nBy the early 20th century, Einstein developed a theory of relativity that correctly predicted the action of forces on objects with increasing momenta near the speed of light and also provided insight into the forces produced by gravitation and inertia. With modern insights into quantum mechanics and technology that can accelerate particles close to the speed of light, particle physics has devised a Standard Model to describe forces between particles smaller than atoms. The Standard Model predicts that exchanged particles called gauge bosons are the fundamental means by which forces are emitted and absorbed. Only four main interactions are known: in order of decreasing strength, they are: strong, electromagnetic, weak, and gravitational. High-energy particle physics observations made during the 1970s and 1980s confirmed that the weak and electromagnetic forces are expressions of a more fundamental electroweak interaction.\nPre-Newtonian concepts.\nSince antiquity the concept of force has been recognized as integral to the functioning of each of the simple machines. The mechanical advantage given by a simple machine allowed for less force to be used in exchange for that force acting over a greater distance for the same amount of work. Analysis of the characteristics of forces ultimately culminated in the work of Archimedes who was especially famous for formulating a treatment of buoyant forces inherent in fluids.\nAristotle provided a philosophical discussion of the concept of a force as an integral part of Aristotelian cosmology. In Aristotle's view, the terrestrial sphere contained four elements that come to rest at different \"natural places\" therein. Aristotle believed that motionless objects on Earth, those composed mostly of the elements earth and water, were in their natural place when on the ground, and that they stay that way if left alone. He distinguished between the innate tendency of objects to find their \"natural place\" (e.g., for heavy bodies to fall), which led to \"natural motion\", and unnatural or forced motion, which required continued application of a force. This theory, based on the everyday experience of how objects move, such as the constant application of a force needed to keep a cart moving, had conceptual trouble accounting for the behavior of projectiles, such as the flight of arrows. An archer causes the arrow to move at the start of the flight, and it then sails through the air even though no discernible efficient cause acts upon it. Aristotle was aware of this problem and proposed that the air displaced through the projectile's path carries the projectile to its target. This explanation requires a continuous medium such as air to sustain the motion.\nThough Aristotelian physics was criticized as early as the 6th century, its shortcomings would not be corrected until the 17th century work of Galileo Galilei, who was influenced by the late medieval idea that objects in forced motion carried an innate force of impetus. Galileo constructed an experiment in which stones and cannonballs were both rolled down an incline to disprove the Aristotelian theory of motion. He showed that the bodies were accelerated by gravity to an extent that was independent of their mass and argued that objects retain their velocity unless acted on by a force, for example friction. Galileo's idea that force is needed to change motion rather than to sustain it, further improved upon by Isaac Beeckman, Ren\u00e9 Descartes, and Pierre Gassendi, became a key principle of Newtonian physics.\nIn the early 17th century, before Newton's \"Principia\", the term \"force\" () was applied to many physical and non-physical phenomena, e.g., for an acceleration of a point. The product of a point mass and the square of its velocity was named (live force) by Leibniz. The modern concept of force corresponds to Newton's (accelerating force).\nNewtonian mechanics.\nSir Isaac Newton described the motion of all objects using the concepts of inertia and force. In 1687, Newton published his magnum opus, \"Philosophi\u00e6 Naturalis Principia Mathematica\". In this work Newton set out three laws of motion that have dominated the way forces are described in physics to this day. The precise ways in which Newton's laws are expressed have evolved in step with new mathematical approaches.\nFirst law.\nNewton's first law of motion states that the natural behavior of an object at rest is to continue being at rest, and the natural behavior of an object moving at constant speed in a straight line is to continue moving at that constant speed along that straight line. The latter follows from the former because of the principle that the laws of physics are the same for all inertial observers, i.e., all observers who do not feel themselves to be in motion. An observer moving in tandem with an object will see it as being at rest. So, its natural behavior will be to remain at rest with respect to that observer, which means that an observer who sees it moving at constant speed in a straight line will see it continuing to do so.\nSecond law.\nAccording to the first law, motion at constant speed in a straight line does not need a cause. It is \"change\" in motion that requires a cause, and Newton's second law gives the quantitative relationship between force and change of motion.\nNewton's second law states that the net force acting upon an object is equal to the rate at which its momentum changes with time. If the mass of the object is constant, this law implies that the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the net force acting on the object, is in the direction of the net force, and is inversely proportional to the mass of the object.\nA modern statement of Newton's second law is a vector equation:\nformula_1\nwhere formula_2 is the momentum of the system, and formula_3 is the net (vector sum) force.399 If a body is in equilibrium, there is zero \"net\" force by definition (balanced forces may be present nevertheless). In contrast, the second law states that if there is an \"unbalanced\" force acting on an object it will result in the object's momentum changing over time.\nIn common engineering applications the mass in a system remains constant allowing as simple algebraic form for the second law. By the definition of momentum,\nformula_4\nwhere \"m\" is the mass and formula_5 is the velocity. If Newton's second law is applied to a system of constant mass, \"m\" may be moved outside the derivative operator. The equation then becomes\nformula_6\nBy substituting the definition of acceleration, the algebraic version of Newton's second law is derived:\nformula_7\nThird law.\nWhenever one body exerts a force on another, the latter simultaneously exerts an equal and opposite force on the first. In vector form, if formula_8 is the force of body 1 on body 2 and formula_9 that of body 2 on body 1, then\nformula_10\nThis law is sometimes referred to as the \"action-reaction law\", with formula_11 called the \"action\" and formula_12 the \"reaction\".\nNewton's Third Law is a result of applying symmetry to situations where forces can be attributed to the presence of different objects. The third law means that all forces are \"interactions\" between different bodies. and thus that there is no such thing as a unidirectional force or a force that acts on only one body.\nIn a system composed of object 1 and object 2, the net force on the system due to their mutual interactions is zero:\nformula_13\nMore generally, in a closed system of particles, all internal forces are balanced. The particles may accelerate with respect to each other but the center of mass of the system will not accelerate. If an external force acts on the system, it will make the center of mass accelerate in proportion to the magnitude of the external force divided by the mass of the system.\nCombining Newton's Second and Third Laws, it is possible to show that the linear momentum of a system is conserved in any closed system. In a system of two particles, if formula_14 is the momentum of object 1 and formula_15 the momentum of object 2, then\nformula_16\nUsing similar arguments, this can be generalized to a system with an arbitrary number of particles. In general, as long as all forces are due to the interaction of objects with mass, it is possible to define a system such that net momentum is never lost nor gained.ch.12\nDefining \"force\".\nSome textbooks use Newton's second law as a \"definition\" of force. However, for the equation formula_17 for a constant mass formula_18 to then have any predictive content, it must be combined with further information. Moreover, inferring that a force is present because a body is accelerating is only valid in an inertial frame of reference. The question of which aspects of Newton's laws to take as definitions and which to regard as holding physical content has been answered in various ways, which ultimately do not affect how the theory is used in practice. Notable physicists, philosophers and mathematicians who have sought a more explicit definition of the concept of force include Ernst Mach and Walter Noll.\nCombining forces.\nForces act in a particular direction and have sizes dependent upon how strong the push or pull is. Because of these characteristics, forces are classified as \"vector quantities\". This means that forces follow a different set of mathematical rules than physical quantities that do not have direction (denoted scalar quantities). For example, when determining what happens when two forces act on the same object, it is necessary to know both the magnitude and the direction of both forces to calculate the result. If both of these pieces of information are not known for each force, the situation is ambiguous.\nHistorically, forces were first quantitatively investigated in conditions of static equilibrium where several forces canceled each other out. Such experiments demonstrate the crucial properties that forces are additive vector quantities: they have magnitude and direction. When two forces act on a point particle, the resulting force, the \"resultant\" (also called the \"net force\"), can be determined by following the parallelogram rule of vector addition: the addition of two vectors represented by sides of a parallelogram, gives an equivalent resultant vector that is equal in magnitude and direction to the transversal of the parallelogram. The magnitude of the resultant varies from the difference of the magnitudes of the two forces to their sum, depending on the angle between their lines of action.ch.12\nFree-body diagrams can be used as a convenient way to keep track of forces acting on a system. Ideally, these diagrams are drawn with the angles and relative magnitudes of the force vectors preserved so that graphical vector addition can be done to determine the net force.\nAs well as being added, forces can also be resolved into independent components at right angles to each other. A horizontal force pointing northeast can therefore be split into two forces, one pointing north, and one pointing east. Summing these component forces using vector addition yields the original force. Resolving force vectors into components of a set of basis vectors is often a more mathematically clean way to describe forces than using magnitudes and directions. This is because, for orthogonal components, the components of the vector sum are uniquely determined by the scalar addition of the components of the individual vectors. Orthogonal components are independent of each other because forces acting at ninety degrees to each other have no effect on the magnitude or direction of the other. Choosing a set of orthogonal basis vectors is often done by considering what set of basis vectors will make the mathematics most convenient. Choosing a basis vector that is in the same direction as one of the forces is desirable, since that force would then have only one non-zero component. Orthogonal force vectors can be three-dimensional with the third component being at right angles to the other two.ch.12\nEquilibrium.\nWhen all the forces that act upon an object are balanced, then the object is said to be in a state of equilibrium. Hence, equilibrium occurs when the resultant force acting on a point particle is zero (that is, the vector sum of all forces is zero). When dealing with an extended body, it is also necessary that the net torque be zero. A body is in \"static equilibrium\" with respect to a frame of reference if it at rest and not accelerating, whereas a body in \"dynamic equilibrium\" is moving at a constant speed in a straight line, i.e., moving but not accelerating. What one observer sees as static equilibrium, another can see as dynamic equilibrium and vice versa.\nStatic.\nStatic equilibrium was understood well before the invention of classical mechanics. Objects that are not accelerating have zero net force acting on them.\nThe simplest case of static equilibrium occurs when two forces are equal in magnitude but opposite in direction. For example, an object on a level surface is pulled (attracted) downward toward the center of the Earth by the force of gravity. At the same time, a force is applied by the surface that resists the downward force with equal upward force (called a normal force). The situation produces zero net force and hence no acceleration.\nPushing against an object that rests on a frictional surface can result in a situation where the object does not move because the applied force is opposed by static friction, generated between the object and the table surface. For a situation with no movement, the static friction force \"exactly\" balances the applied force resulting in no acceleration. The static friction increases or decreases in response to the applied force up to an upper limit determined by the characteristics of the contact between the surface and the object.\nA static equilibrium between two forces is the most usual way of measuring forces, using simple devices such as weighing scales and spring balances. For example, an object suspended on a vertical spring scale experiences the force of gravity acting on the object balanced by a force applied by the \"spring reaction force\", which equals the object's weight. Using such tools, some quantitative force laws were discovered: that the force of gravity is proportional to volume for objects of constant density (widely exploited for millennia to define standard weights); Archimedes' principle for buoyancy; Archimedes' analysis of the lever; Boyle's law for gas pressure; and Hooke's law for springs. These were all formulated and experimentally verified before Isaac Newton expounded his three laws of motion.ch.12\nDynamic.\nDynamic equilibrium was first described by Galileo who noticed that certain assumptions of Aristotelian physics were contradicted by observations and logic. Galileo realized that simple velocity addition demands that the concept of an \"absolute rest frame\" did not exist. Galileo concluded that motion in a constant velocity was completely equivalent to rest. This was contrary to Aristotle's notion of a \"natural state\" of rest that objects with mass naturally approached. Simple experiments showed that Galileo's understanding of the equivalence of constant velocity and rest were correct. For example, if a mariner dropped a cannonball from the crow's nest of a ship moving at a constant velocity, Aristotelian physics would have the cannonball fall straight down while the ship moved beneath it. Thus, in an Aristotelian universe, the falling cannonball would land behind the foot of the mast of a moving ship. When this experiment is actually conducted, the cannonball always falls at the foot of the mast, as if the cannonball knows to travel with the ship despite being separated from it. Since there is no forward horizontal force being applied on the cannonball as it falls, the only conclusion left is that the cannonball continues to move with the same velocity as the boat as it falls. Thus, no force is required to keep the cannonball moving at the constant forward velocity.\nMoreover, any object traveling at a constant velocity must be subject to zero net force (resultant force). This is the definition of dynamic equilibrium: when all the forces on an object balance but it still moves at a constant velocity. A simple case of dynamic equilibrium occurs in constant velocity motion across a surface with kinetic friction. In such a situation, a force is applied in the direction of motion while the kinetic friction force exactly opposes the applied force. This results in zero net force, but since the object started with a non-zero velocity, it continues to move with a non-zero velocity. Aristotle misinterpreted this motion as being caused by the applied force. When kinetic friction is taken into consideration it is clear that there is no net force causing constant velocity motion.ch.12\nExamples of forces in classical mechanics.\nSome forces are consequences of the fundamental ones. In such situations, idealized models can be used to gain physical insight. For example, each solid object is considered a rigid body.\nGravitational force or Gravity.\nWhat we now call gravity was not identified as a universal force until the work of Isaac Newton. Before Newton, the tendency for objects to fall towards the Earth was not understood to be related to the motions of celestial objects. Galileo was instrumental in describing the characteristics of falling objects by determining that the acceleration of every object in free-fall was constant and independent of the mass of the object. Today, this acceleration due to gravity towards the surface of the Earth is usually designated as formula_19 and has a magnitude of about 9.81 meters per second squared (this measurement is taken from sea level and may vary depending on location), and points toward the center of the Earth. This observation means that the force of gravity on an object at the Earth's surface is directly proportional to the object's mass. Thus an object that has a mass of formula_18 will experience a force:\nformula_21\nFor an object in free-fall, this force is unopposed and the net force on the object is its weight. For objects not in free-fall, the force of gravity is opposed by the reaction forces applied by their supports. For example, a person standing on the ground experiences zero net force, since a normal force (a reaction force) is exerted by the ground upward on the person that counterbalances his weight that is directed downward.ch.12\nNewton's contribution to gravitational theory was to unify the motions of heavenly bodies, which Aristotle had assumed were in a natural state of constant motion, with falling motion observed on the Earth. He proposed a law of gravity that could account for the celestial motions that had been described earlier using Kepler's laws of planetary motion.\nNewton came to realize that the effects of gravity might be observed in different ways at larger distances. In particular, Newton determined that the acceleration of the Moon around the Earth could be ascribed to the same force of gravity if the acceleration due to gravity decreased as an inverse square law. Further, Newton realized that the acceleration of a body due to gravity is proportional to the mass of the other attracting body. Combining these ideas gives a formula that relates the mass (formula_22) and the radius (formula_23) of the Earth to the gravitational acceleration:\nformula_24\nwhere formula_25 is the distance between the two objects' centers of mass and formula_26 is the unit vector pointed in the direction away from the center of the first object toward the center of the second object.\nThis formula was powerful enough to stand as the basis for all subsequent descriptions of motion within the Solar System until the 20th century. During that time, sophisticated methods of perturbation analysis were invented to calculate the deviations of orbits due to the influence of multiple bodies on a planet, moon, comet, or asteroid. The formalism was exact enough to allow mathematicians to predict the existence of the planet Neptune before it was observed.\nElectromagnetic.\nThe electrostatic force was first described in 1784 by Coulomb as a force that existed intrinsically between two charges. The properties of the electrostatic force were that it varied as an inverse square law directed in the radial direction, was both attractive and repulsive (there was intrinsic polarity), was independent of the mass of the charged objects, and followed the superposition principle. Coulomb's law unifies all these observations into one succinct statement.\nSubsequent mathematicians and physicists found the construct of the \"electric field\" to be useful for determining the electrostatic force on an electric charge at any point in space. The electric field was based on using a hypothetical \"test charge\" anywhere in space and then using Coulomb's Law to determine the electrostatic force. Thus the electric field anywhere in space is defined as\nformula_27\nwhere formula_28 is the magnitude of the hypothetical test charge. Similarly, the idea of the \"magnetic field\" was introduced to express how magnets can influence one another at a distance. The Lorentz force law gives the force upon a body with charge formula_28 due to electric and magnetic fields:\nformula_30\nwhere formula_3 is the electromagnetic force, formula_32 is the electric field at the body's location, formula_33 is the magnetic field, and formula_5 is the velocity of the particle. The magnetic contribution to the Lorentz force is the cross product of the velocity vector with the magnetic field.\nThe origin of electric and magnetic fields would not be fully explained until 1864 when James Clerk Maxwell unified a number of earlier theories into a set of 20 scalar equations, which were later reformulated into 4 vector equations by Oliver Heaviside and Josiah Willard Gibbs. These \"Maxwell's equations\" fully described the sources of the fields as being stationary and moving charges, and the interactions of the fields themselves. This led Maxwell to discover that electric and magnetic fields could be \"self-generating\" through a wave that traveled at a speed that he calculated to be the speed of light. This insight united the nascent fields of electromagnetic theory with optics and led directly to a complete description of the electromagnetic spectrum.\nNormal.\nWhen objects are in contact, the force directly between them is called the normal force, the component of the total force in the system exerted normal to the interface between the objects. The normal force is closely related to Newton's third law. The normal force, for example, is responsible for the structural integrity of tables and floors as well as being the force that responds whenever an external force pushes on a solid object. An example of the normal force in action is the impact force on an object crashing into an immobile surface.ch.12\nFriction.\nFriction is a force that opposes relative motion of two bodies. At the macroscopic scale, the frictional force is directly related to the normal force at the point of contact. There are two broad classifications of frictional forces: static friction and kinetic friction.\nThe static friction force (formula_35) will exactly oppose forces applied to an object parallel to a surface up to the limit specified by the coefficient of static friction (formula_36) multiplied by the normal force (formula_37). In other words, the magnitude of the static friction force satisfies the inequality:\nformula_38\nThe kinetic friction force (formula_39) is typically independent of both the forces applied and the movement of the object. Thus, the magnitude of the force equals:\nformula_40\nwhere formula_41 is the coefficient of kinetic friction. The coefficient of kinetic friction is normally less than the coefficient of static friction.\nTension.\nTension forces can be modeled using ideal strings that are massless, frictionless, unbreakable, and do not stretch. They can be combined with ideal pulleys, which allow ideal strings to switch physical direction. Ideal strings transmit tension forces instantaneously in action\u2013reaction pairs so that if two objects are connected by an ideal string, any force directed along the string by the first object is accompanied by a force directed along the string in the opposite direction by the second object. By connecting the same string multiple times to the same object through the use of a configuration that uses movable pulleys, the tension force on a load can be multiplied. For every string that acts on a load, another factor of the tension force in the string acts on the load. Such machines allow a mechanical advantage for a corresponding increase in the length of displaced string needed to move the load. These tandem effects result ultimately in the conservation of mechanical energy since the work done on the load is the same no matter how complicated the machine.ch.12\nSpring.\nA simple elastic force acts to return a spring to its natural length. An ideal spring is taken to be massless, frictionless, unbreakable, and infinitely stretchable. Such springs exert forces that push when contracted, or pull when extended, in proportion to the displacement of the spring from its equilibrium position. This linear relationship was described by Robert Hooke in 1676, for whom Hooke's law is named. If formula_42 is the displacement, the force exerted by an ideal spring equals:\nformula_43\nwhere formula_44 is the spring constant (or force constant), which is particular to the spring. The minus sign accounts for the tendency of the force to act in opposition to the applied load.ch.12\nCentripetal.\nFor an object in uniform circular motion, the net force acting on the object equals:\nformula_45\nwhere formula_18 is the mass of the object, formula_47 is the velocity of the object and formula_25 is the distance to the center of the circular path and formula_49 is the unit vector pointing in the radial direction outwards from the center. This means that the net force felt by the object is always directed toward the center of the curving path. Such forces act perpendicular to the velocity vector associated with the motion of an object, and therefore do not change the speed of the object (magnitude of the velocity), but only the direction of the velocity vector. More generally, the net force that accelerates an object can be resolved into a component that is perpendicular to the path, and one that is tangential to the path. This yields both the tangential force, which accelerates the object by either slowing it down or speeding it up, and the radial (centripetal) force, which changes its direction.ch.12\nContinuum mechanics.\nNewton's laws and Newtonian mechanics in general were first developed to describe how forces affect idealized point particles rather than three-dimensional objects. In real life, matter has extended structure and forces that act on one part of an object might affect other parts of an object. For situations where lattice holding together the atoms in an object is able to flow, contract, expand, or otherwise change shape, the theories of continuum mechanics describe the way forces affect the material. For example, in extended fluids, differences in pressure result in forces being directed along the pressure gradients as follows:\nformula_50\nwhere formula_51 is the volume of the object in the fluid and formula_52 is the scalar function that describes the pressure at all locations in space. Pressure gradients and differentials result in the buoyant force for fluids suspended in gravitational fields, winds in atmospheric science, and the lift associated with aerodynamics and flight.ch.12\nA specific instance of such a force that is associated with dynamic pressure is fluid resistance: a body force that resists the motion of an object through a fluid due to viscosity. For so-called \"Stokes' drag\" the force is approximately proportional to the velocity, but opposite in direction:\nformula_53\nwhere:\nMore formally, forces in continuum mechanics are fully described by a stress tensor with terms that are roughly defined as\nformula_56\nwhere formula_57 is the relevant cross-sectional area for the volume for which the stress tensor is being calculated. This formalism includes pressure terms associated with forces that act normal to the cross-sectional area (the matrix diagonals of the tensor) as well as shear terms associated with forces that act parallel to the cross-sectional area (the off-diagonal elements). The stress tensor accounts for forces that cause all strains (deformations) including also tensile stresses and compressions.\nFictitious.\nThere are forces that are frame dependent, meaning that they appear due to the adoption of non-Newtonian (that is, non-inertial) reference frames. Such forces include the centrifugal force and the Coriolis force. These forces are considered fictitious because they do not exist in frames of reference that are not accelerating.ch.12 Because these forces are not genuine they are also referred to as \"pseudo forces\".\nIn general relativity, gravity becomes a fictitious force that arises in situations where spacetime deviates from a flat geometry.\nConcepts derived from force.\nRotation and torque.\nForces that cause extended objects to rotate are associated with torques. Mathematically, the torque of a force formula_3 is defined relative to an arbitrary reference point as the cross product:\nformula_59\nwhere formula_60 is the position vector of the force application point relative to the reference point.\nTorque is the rotation equivalent of force in the same way that angle is the rotational equivalent for position, angular velocity for velocity, and angular momentum for momentum. As a consequence of Newton's first law of motion, there exists rotational inertia that ensures that all bodies maintain their angular momentum unless acted upon by an unbalanced torque. Likewise, Newton's second law of motion can be used to derive an analogous equation for the instantaneous angular acceleration of the rigid body:\nformula_61\nwhere\nThis provides a definition for the moment of inertia, which is the rotational equivalent for mass. In more advanced treatments of mechanics, where the rotation over a time interval is described, the moment of inertia must be substituted by the tensor that, when properly analyzed, fully determines the characteristics of rotations including precession and nutation.\nEquivalently, the differential form of Newton's Second Law provides an alternative definition of torque:\nformula_64\nwhere formula_65 is the angular momentum of the particle.\nNewton's Third Law of Motion requires that all objects exerting torques themselves experience equal and opposite torques, and therefore also directly implies the conservation of angular momentum for closed systems that experience rotations and revolutions through the action of internal torques.\nYank.\nThe yank is defined as the rate of change of force\nformula_66\nThe term is used in biomechanical analysis, athletic assessment and robotic control. The second (\"tug\"), third (\"snatch\"), fourth (\"shake\"), and higher derivatives are rarely used.\nKinematic integrals.\nForces can be used to define a number of physical concepts by integrating with respect to kinematic variables. For example, integrating with respect to time gives the definition of impulse:\nformula_67\nwhich by Newton's Second Law must be equivalent to the change in momentum (yielding the Impulse momentum theorem).\nSimilarly, integrating with respect to position gives a definition for the work done by a force:\nformula_68\nwhich is equivalent to changes in kinetic energy (yielding the work energy theorem).\nPower \"P\" is the rate of change d\"W\"/d\"t\" of the work \"W\", as the trajectory is extended by a position change formula_69 in a time interval d\"t\":\nformula_70\nso\nformula_71\nwith formula_72 the velocity.\nPotential energy.\nInstead of a force, often the mathematically related concept of a potential energy field is used. For instance, the gravitational force acting upon an object can be seen as the action of the gravitational field that is present at the object's location. Restating mathematically the definition of energy (via the definition of work), a potential scalar field formula_73 is defined as that field whose gradient is equal and opposite to the force produced at every point:\nformula_74\nForces can be classified as conservative or nonconservative. Conservative forces are equivalent to the gradient of a potential while nonconservative forces are not.ch.12\nConservation.\nA conservative force that acts on a closed system has an associated mechanical work that allows energy to convert only between kinetic or potential forms. This means that for a closed system, the net mechanical energy is conserved whenever a conservative force acts on the system. The force, therefore, is related directly to the difference in potential energy between two different locations in space, and can be considered to be an artifact of the potential field in the same way that the direction and amount of a flow of water can be considered to be an artifact of the contour map of the elevation of an area.ch.12\nConservative forces include gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the spring force. Each of these forces has models that are dependent on a position often given as a radial vector formula_60 emanating from spherically symmetric potentials. Examples of this follow:\nFor gravity:\nformula_76\nwhere formula_77 is the gravitational constant, and formula_78 is the mass of object \"n\".\nFor electrostatic forces:\nformula_79\nwhere formula_80 is electric permittivity of free space, and formula_81 is the electric charge of object \"n\".\nFor spring forces:\nformula_82\nwhere formula_44 is the spring constant.ch.12\nFor certain physical scenarios, it is impossible to model forces as being due to a simple gradient of potentials. This is often due a macroscopic statistical average of microstates. For example, static friction is caused by the gradients of numerous electrostatic potentials between the atoms, but manifests as a force model that is independent of any macroscale position vector. Nonconservative forces other than friction include other contact forces, tension, compression, and drag. For any sufficiently detailed description, all these forces are the results of conservative ones since each of these macroscopic forces are the net results of the gradients of microscopic potentials.ch.12\nThe connection between macroscopic nonconservative forces and microscopic conservative forces is described by detailed treatment with statistical mechanics. In macroscopic closed systems, nonconservative forces act to change the internal energies of the system, and are often associated with the transfer of heat. According to the Second law of thermodynamics, nonconservative forces necessarily result in energy transformations within closed systems from ordered to more random conditions as entropy increases.ch.12\nUnits.\nThe SI unit of force is the newton (symbol N), which is the force required to accelerate a one kilogram mass at a rate of one meter per second squared, or kg\u00b7m\u00b7s\u22122.The corresponding CGS unit is the dyne, the force required to accelerate a one gram mass by one centimeter per second squared, or g\u00b7cm\u00b7s\u22122. A newton is thus equal to 100,000\u00a0dynes.\nThe gravitational foot-pound-second English unit of force is the pound-force (lbf), defined as the force exerted by gravity on a pound-mass in the standard gravitational field of 9.80665\u00a0m\u00b7s\u22122. The pound-force provides an alternative unit of mass: one slug is the mass that will accelerate by one foot per second squared when acted on by one pound-force. An alternative unit of force in a different foot\u2013pound\u2013second system, the absolute fps system, is the poundal, defined as the force required to accelerate a one-pound mass at a rate of one foot per second squared.\nThe pound-force has a metric counterpart, less commonly used than the newton: the kilogram-force (kgf) (sometimes kilopond), is the force exerted by standard gravity on one kilogram of mass. The kilogram-force leads to an alternate, but rarely used unit of mass: the metric slug (sometimes mug or hyl) is that mass that accelerates at 1\u00a0m\u00b7s\u22122 when subjected to a force of 1\u00a0kgf. The kilogram-force is not a part of the modern SI system, and is generally deprecated, sometimes used for expressing aircraft weight, jet thrust, bicycle spoke tension, torque wrench settings and engine output torque.\n See also \"Ton-force\".\nRevisions of the force concept.\nAt the beginning of the 20th century, new physical ideas emerged to explain experimental results in astronomical and submicroscopic realms. As discussed below, relativity alters the definition of momentum and quantum mechanics reuses the concept of \"force\" in microscopic contexts where Newton's laws do not apply directly.\nSpecial theory of relativity.\nIn the special theory of relativity, mass and energy are equivalent (as can be seen by calculating the work required to accelerate an object). When an object's velocity increases, so does its energy and hence its mass equivalent (inertia). It thus requires more force to accelerate it the same amount than it did at a lower velocity. Newton's Second Law,\nformula_84\nremains valid because it is a mathematical definition. But for momentum to be conserved at relativistic relative velocity, formula_47, momentum must be redefined as:\nformula_86\nwhere formula_87 is the rest mass and formula_88 the speed of light.\nThe expression relating force and acceleration for a particle with constant non-zero rest mass formula_18 moving in the formula_90 direction at velocity formula_47 is:\nformula_92\nwhere\nformula_93\nis called the Lorentz factor. The Lorentz factor increases steeply as the relative velocity approaches the speed of light. Consequently, the greater and greater force must be applied to produce the same acceleration at extreme velocity. The relative velocity cannot reach formula_88.\u00a715\u20138\nIf formula_47 is very small compared to formula_88, then formula_97 is very close to 1 and\nformula_98\nis a close approximation. Even for use in relativity, one can restore the form of\nformula_99\nthrough the use of four-vectors. This relation is correct in relativity when formula_100 is the four-force, formula_18 is the invariant mass, and formula_102 is the four-acceleration.\nThe \"general\" theory of relativity incorporates a more radical departure from the Newtonian way of thinking about force, specifically gravitational force. This reimagining of the nature of gravity is described more fully below.\nQuantum mechanics.\nQuantum mechanics is a theory of physics originally developed in order to understand microscopic phenomena: behavior at the scale of molecules, atoms or subatomic particles. Generally and loosely speaking, the smaller a system is, the more an adequate mathematical model will require understanding quantum effects. The conceptual underpinning of quantum physics is different from that of classical physics. Instead of thinking about quantities like position, momentum, and energy as properties that an object \"has\", one considers what result might \"appear\" when a measurement of a chosen type is performed. Quantum mechanics allows the physicist to calculate the probability that a chosen measurement will elicit a particular result. The expectation value for a measurement is the average of the possible results it might yield, weighted by their probabilities of occurrence.\nIn quantum mechanics, interactions are typically described in terms of energy rather than force. The Ehrenfest theorem provides a connection between quantum expectation values and the classical concept of force, a connection that is necessarily inexact, as quantum physics is fundamentally different from classical. In quantum physics, the Born rule is used to calculate the expectation values of a position measurement or a momentum measurement. These expectation values will generally change over time; that is, depending on the time at which (for example) a position measurement is performed, the probabilities for its different possible outcomes will vary. The Ehrenfest theorem says, roughly speaking, that the equations describing how these expectation values change over time have a form reminiscent of Newton's second law, with a force defined as the negative derivative of the potential energy. However, the more pronounced quantum effects are in a given situation, the more difficult it is to derive meaningful conclusions from this resemblance.\nQuantum mechanics also introduces two new constraints that interact with forces at the submicroscopic scale and which are especially important for atoms. Despite the strong attraction of the nucleus, the uncertainty principle limits the minimum extent of an electron probability distribution and the Pauli exclusion principle prevents electrons from sharing the same probability distribution. This gives rise to an emergent pressure known as degeneracy pressure. The dynamic equilibrium between the degeneracy pressure and the attractive electromagnetic force give atoms, molecules, liquids, and solids stability.\nQuantum field theory.\nIn modern particle physics, forces and the acceleration of particles are explained as a mathematical by-product of exchange of momentum-carrying gauge bosons. With the development of quantum field theory and general relativity, it was realized that force is a redundant concept arising from conservation of momentum (4-momentum in relativity and momentum of virtual particles in quantum electrodynamics). The conservation of momentum can be directly derived from the homogeneity or symmetry of space and so is usually considered more fundamental than the concept of a force. Thus the currently known fundamental forces are considered more accurately to be \"fundamental interactions\".\nWhile sophisticated mathematical descriptions are needed to predict, in full detail, the result of such interactions, there is a conceptually simple way to describe them through the use of Feynman diagrams. In a Feynman diagram, each matter particle is represented as a straight line (see world line) traveling through time, which normally increases up or to the right in the diagram. Matter and anti-matter particles are identical except for their direction of propagation through the Feynman diagram. World lines of particles intersect at interaction vertices, and the Feynman diagram represents any force arising from an interaction as occurring at the vertex with an associated instantaneous change in the direction of the particle world lines. Gauge bosons are emitted away from the vertex as wavy lines and, in the case of virtual particle exchange, are absorbed at an adjacent vertex. The utility of Feynman diagrams is that other types of physical phenomena that are part of the general picture of fundamental interactions but are conceptually separate from forces can also be described using the same rules. For example, a Feynman diagram can describe in succinct detail how a neutron decays into an electron, proton, and antineutrino, an interaction mediated by the same gauge boson that is responsible for the weak nuclear force.\nFundamental interactions.\nAll of the known forces of the universe are classified into four fundamental interactions. The strong and the weak forces act only at very short distances, and are responsible for the interactions between subatomic particles, including nucleons and compound nuclei. The electromagnetic force acts between electric charges, and the gravitational force acts between masses. All other forces in nature derive from these four fundamental interactions operating within quantum mechanics, including the constraints introduced by the Schr\u00f6dinger equation and the Pauli exclusion principle. For example, friction is a manifestation of the electromagnetic force acting between atoms of two surfaces. The forces in springs, modeled by Hooke's law, are also the result of electromagnetic forces. Centrifugal forces are acceleration forces that arise simply from the acceleration of rotating frames of reference.\nThe fundamental theories for forces developed from the unification of different ideas. For example, Newton's universal theory of gravitation showed that the force responsible for objects falling near the surface of the Earth is also the force responsible for the falling of celestial bodies about the Earth (the Moon) and around the Sun (the planets). Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell demonstrated that electric and magnetic forces were unified through a theory of electromagnetism. In the 20th century, the development of quantum mechanics led to a modern understanding that the first three fundamental forces (all except gravity) are manifestations of matter (fermions) interacting by exchanging virtual particles called gauge bosons. This Standard Model of particle physics assumes a similarity between the forces and led scientists to predict the unification of the weak and electromagnetic forces in electroweak theory, which was subsequently confirmed by observation.\nGravitational.\nNewton's law of gravitation is an example of \"action at a distance\": one body, like the Sun, exerts an influence upon any other body, like the Earth, no matter how far apart they are. Moreover, this action at a distance is \"instantaneous.\" According to Newton's theory, the one body shifting position changes the gravitational pulls felt by all other bodies, all at the same instant of time. Albert Einstein recognized that this was inconsistent with special relativity and its prediction that influences cannot travel faster than the speed of light. So, he sought a new theory of gravitation that would be relativistically consistent. Mercury's orbit did not match that predicted by Newton's law of gravitation. Some astrophysicists predicted the existence of an undiscovered planet (Vulcan) that could explain the discrepancies. When Einstein formulated his theory of general relativity (GR) he focused on Mercury's problematic orbit and found that his theory added a correction, which could account for the discrepancy. This was the first time that Newton's theory of gravity had been shown to be inexact.\nSince then, general relativity has been acknowledged as the theory that best explains gravity. In GR, gravitation is not viewed as a force, but rather, objects moving freely in gravitational fields travel under their own inertia in straight lines through curved spacetime \u2013 defined as the shortest spacetime path between two spacetime events. From the perspective of the object, all motion occurs as if there were no gravitation whatsoever. It is only when observing the motion in a global sense that the curvature of spacetime can be observed and the force is inferred from the object's curved path. Thus, the straight line path in spacetime is seen as a curved line in space, and it is called the \"ballistic trajectory\" of the object. For example, a basketball thrown from the ground moves in a parabola, as it is in a uniform gravitational field. Its spacetime trajectory is almost a straight line, slightly curved (with the radius of curvature of the order of few light-years). The time derivative of the changing momentum of the object is what we label as \"gravitational force\".\nElectromagnetic.\nMaxwell's equations and the set of techniques built around them adequately describe a wide range of physics involving force in electricity and magnetism. This classical theory already includes relativity effects. Understanding quantized electromagnetic interactions between elementary particles requires quantum electrodynamics (or QED). In QED, photons are fundamental exchange particles, describing all interactions relating to electromagnetism including the electromagnetic force.\nStrong nuclear.\nThere are two \"nuclear forces\", which today are usually described as interactions that take place in quantum theories of particle physics. The strong nuclear force is the force responsible for the structural integrity of atomic nuclei, and gains its name from its ability to overpower the electromagnetic repulsion between protons.\nThe strong force is today understood to represent the interactions between quarks and gluons as detailed by the theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). The strong force is the fundamental force mediated by gluons, acting upon quarks, antiquarks, and the gluons themselves. The strong force only acts \"directly\" upon elementary particles. A residual is observed between hadrons (notably, the nucleons in atomic nuclei), known as the nuclear force. Here the strong force acts indirectly, transmitted as gluons that form part of the virtual pi and rho mesons, the classical transmitters of the nuclear force. The failure of many searches for free quarks has shown that the elementary particles affected are not directly observable. This phenomenon is called color confinement.232\nWeak nuclear.\nUnique among the fundamental interactions, the weak nuclear force creates no bound states. The weak force is due to the exchange of the heavy W and Z bosons. Since the weak force is mediated by two types of bosons, it can be divided into two types of interaction or \"vertices\" \u2014 charged current, involving the electrically charged W+ and W\u2212 bosons, and neutral current, involving electrically neutral Z0 bosons. The most familiar effect of weak interaction is beta decay (of neutrons in atomic nuclei) and the associated radioactivity. This is a type of charged-current interaction. The word \"weak\" derives from the fact that the field strength is some 1013 times less than that of the strong force. Still, it is stronger than gravity over short distances. A consistent electroweak theory has also been developed, which shows that electromagnetic forces and the weak force are indistinguishable at a temperatures in excess of approximately . Such temperatures occurred in the plasma collisions in the early moments of the Big Bang.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "19694": "Mercury (planet)\nFirst planet from the Sun\nMercury is the first planet from the Sun and the smallest in the Solar System. In English, it is named after the ancient Roman god (Mercury), god of commerce and communication, and the messenger of the gods. Mercury is classified as a terrestrial planet, with roughly the same surface gravity as Mars. The surface of Mercury is heavily cratered, as a result of countless impact events that have accumulated over billions of years. Its largest crater, Caloris Planitia, has a diameter of , which is about one-third the diameter of the planet (). Similarly to the Earth's Moon, Mercury's surface displays an expansive rupes system generated from thrust faults and bright ray systems formed by impact event remnants.\nMercury's sidereal year (88.0 Earth days) and sidereal day (58.65 Earth days) are in a 3:2 ratio. This relationship is called spin\u2013orbit resonance, and \"sidereal\" here means \"relative to the stars\". Consequently, one solar day (sunrise to sunrise) on Mercury lasts for around 176 Earth days: twice the planet's sidereal year. This means that one side of Mercury will remain in sunlight for one Mercurian year of 88 Earth days; while during the next orbit, that side will be in darkness all the time until the next sunrise after another 88 Earth days.\nCombined with its high orbital eccentricity, the planet's surface has widely varying sunlight intensity and temperature, with the equatorial regions ranging from at night to during sunlight. Due to the very small axial tilt, the planet's poles are permanently shadowed. This strongly suggests that water ice could be present in the craters. Above the planet's surface is an extremely tenuous exosphere and a faint magnetic field that is strong enough to deflect solar winds. Mercury has no natural satellites.\nAs of the early 2020s, many broad details of Mercury's geological history are still under investigation or pending data from space probes. Like other planets in the Solar System, Mercury was formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago. Its mantle is highly homogeneous, which suggests that Mercury had a magma ocean early in its history, like the Moon. According to current models, Mercury may have a solid silicate crust and mantle overlying a solid outer core, a deeper liquid core layer, and a solid inner core. There are many competing hypotheses about Mercury's origins and development, some of which incorporate collision with planetesimals and rock vaporization.\nNomenclature.\nHistorically, humans knew Mercury by different names depending on whether it was an evening star or a morning star. By about 350 BC, the ancient Greeks had realized the two stars were one. They knew the planet as , meaning \"twinkling\", and , for its fleeting motion, a name that is retained in modern [[Greek language|Greek]] ( ). The Romans named the planet after the swift-footed Roman messenger god, [[Mercury (mythology)|Mercury]] (Latin ), whom they equated with the Greek Hermes, because it moves across the sky faster than any other planet, though some associated the planet with [[Apollo]] instead, as detailed by [[Pliny the Elder]]. The [[astronomical symbol]] for Mercury is a stylized version of Hermes' [[caduceus]]; a [[Christian cross]] was added in the 16th century:[[File:Mercury symbol (fixed width).svg|16px|\u263f]].\nPhysical characteristics.\n[[File:Terrestrial planet size comparisons-2.jpg|thumb|upright=1.4|Mercury to scale among the [[Inner Solar System]] [[planetary-mass object]]s beside the Sun, arranged by the order of their orbits outward from the Sun (from left: Mercury, [[Venus]],\n[[Earth]], the [[Moon]], [[Mars]] and [[Ceres (dwarf planet)|Ceres]])]]\nMercury is one of four [[terrestrial planet]]s in the [[Solar System]], which means it is a rocky body like Earth. It is the smallest planet in the Solar System, with an [[equator]]ial [[radius]] of . Mercury is also [[list of Solar System objects by radius|smaller]]\u2014albeit more massive\u2014than the largest [[natural satellite]]s in the Solar System, [[Ganymede (moon)|Ganymede]] and [[Titan (moon)|Titan]]. Mercury consists of approximately 70% metallic and 30% [[silicate]] material.\nInternal structure.\n[[File:Mercury with magnetic field.svg|left|thumb|upright=1.6|Mercury's internal structure and magnetic field]]\nMercury appears to have a solid silicate [[Crust (geology)|crust]] and mantle overlying a solid, metallic outer core layer, a deeper liquid core layer, and a solid inner core. The composition of the iron-rich core remains uncertain, but it likely contains nickel, silicon and perhaps sulfur and carbon, plus trace amounts of other elements. The planet's density is the second highest in the Solar System at 5.427\u00a0g/cm3, only slightly less than Earth's density of 5.515\u00a0g/cm3. If the effect of [[gravitational compression]] were to be factored out from both planets, the materials of which Mercury is made would be denser than those of Earth, with an uncompressed density of 5.3\u00a0g/cm3 versus Earth's 4.4\u00a0g/cm3. Mercury's density can be used to infer details of its inner structure. Although Earth's high density results appreciably from gravitational compression, particularly at the [[planetary core|core]], Mercury is much smaller and its inner regions are not as compressed. Therefore, for it to have such a high density, its core must be large and rich in iron.\nThe radius of Mercury's core is estimated to be , based on interior models constrained to be consistent with a [[moment of inertia factor]] of . Hence, Mercury's core occupies about 57% of its volume; for Earth this proportion is 17%. Research published in 2007 suggests that Mercury has a molten core. The mantle-crust layer is in total thick. Projections differ as to the size of the crust specifically; data from the \"Mariner 10\" and \"MESSENGER\" probes suggests a thickness of , whereas an [[Airy isostacy]] model suggests a thickness of . One distinctive feature of Mercury's surface is the presence of numerous narrow ridges, extending up to several hundred kilometers in length. It is thought that these were formed as Mercury's core and mantle cooled and contracted at a time when the crust had already solidified.\nMercury's core has a higher iron content than that of any other planet in the Solar System, and several theories have been proposed to explain this. The most widely accepted theory is that Mercury originally had a metal\u2013silicate ratio similar to common [[chondrite]] meteorites, thought to be typical of the Solar System's rocky matter, and a mass approximately 2.25 times its current mass. Early in the Solar System's history, Mercury may have been struck by a [[planetesimal]] of approximately <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1\u20446 Mercury's mass and several thousand kilometers across. The impact would have stripped away much of the original crust and mantle, leaving the core behind as a relatively major component. A similar process, known as the [[giant impact hypothesis]], has been proposed to explain the formation of Earth's Moon.\nAlternatively, Mercury may have formed from the [[solar nebula]] before the Sun's energy output had stabilized. It would initially have had twice its present mass, but as the [[protostar|protosun]] contracted, temperatures near Mercury could have been between 2,500 and 3,500\u00a0K and possibly even as high as 10,000\u00a0K. Much of Mercury's surface rock could have been vaporized at such temperatures, forming an atmosphere of \"rock vapor\" that could have been carried away by the [[solar wind]]. A third hypothesis proposes that the solar nebula caused [[drag (physics)|drag]] on the particles from which Mercury was [[Accretion (astrophysics)|accreting]], which meant that lighter particles were lost from the accreting material and not gathered by Mercury.\nEach hypothesis predicts a different surface composition, and two space missions have been tasked with making observations of this composition. The first \"[[MESSENGER]]\", which ended in 2015, found higher-than-expected potassium and sulfur levels on the surface, suggesting that the giant impact hypothesis and vaporization of the crust and mantle did not occur because said potassium and sulfur would have been driven off by the extreme heat of these events. \"[[BepiColombo]]\", which will arrive at Mercury in 2025, will make observations to test these hypotheses. The findings so far would seem to favor the third hypothesis; however, further analysis of the data is needed.\nSurface geology.\nMercury's surface is similar in appearance to that of the Moon, showing extensive [[Lunar mare|mare]]-like plains and heavy cratering, indicating that it has been geologically inactive for billions of years. It is more [[heterogeneous]] than the surface of [[Mars]] or the Moon, both of which contain significant stretches of similar geology, such as [[Lunar mare|maria]] and plateaus. [[Albedo]] features are areas of markedly different reflectivity, which include impact craters, the resulting ejecta, and [[ray system]]s. Larger albedo features correspond to higher reflectivity plains. Mercury has \"[[wrinkle-ridge]]s\" (dorsa), Moon-like [[highland]]s, mountains (montes), plains (planitiae), escarpments (rupes), and valleys ([[Vallis (planetary geology)|valles]]).\n[[File:Unmasking the Secrets of Mercury.jpg|thumb|left|[[MESSENGER#Scientific instruments|MASCS]] spectrum scan of Mercury's surface by \"MESSENGER\"]]\nThe planet's mantle is chemically heterogeneous, suggesting the planet went through a [[magma ocean]] phase early in its history. Crystallization of minerals and convective overturn resulted in a layered, chemically heterogeneous crust with large-scale variations in chemical composition observed on the surface. The crust is low in iron but high in sulfur, resulting from the stronger early [[Chemical reduction|chemically reducing]] conditions than is found on other terrestrial planets. The surface is dominated by iron-poor [[pyroxene]] and [[olivine]], as represented by [[enstatite]] and [[forsterite]], respectively, along with sodium-rich [[plagioclase]] and minerals of mixed magnesium, calcium, and iron-sulfide. The less reflective regions of the crust are high in carbon, most likely in the form of graphite.\nNames for features on Mercury come from a variety of sources and are set according to the [[IAU]] [[planetary nomenclature]] system. Names coming from people are limited to the deceased. Craters are named for artists, musicians, painters, and authors who have made outstanding or fundamental contributions to their field. Ridges, or dorsa, are named for scientists who have contributed to the study of Mercury. Depressions or [[fossa (geology)|fossae]] are named for works of architecture. Montes are named for the word \"hot\" in a variety of languages. [[Plain]]s or planitiae are named for [[Mercury (god)|Mercury]] in various languages. [[Escarpment]]s or [[rup\u0113s]] are named for ships of scientific expeditions. Valleys or valles are named for abandoned cities, towns, or settlements of antiquity.\nImpact basins and craters.\n[[File:PIA19421-Mercury-Craters-MunchSanderPoe-20150416.jpg|thumb|left|Enhanced-color image of craters [[Munch (crater)|Munch]] (left), [[Sander (crater)|Sander]] (center), and [[Poe (crater)|Poe]] (right) amid volcanic plains (orange) near [[Caloris Basin]]]]\nMercury was heavily bombarded by comets and [[asteroid]]s during and shortly following its formation 4.6 billion years ago, as well as during a possibly separate subsequent episode called the [[Late Heavy Bombardment]] that ended 3.8 billion years ago. Mercury received impacts over its entire surface during this period of intense crater formation, facilitated by the lack of any [[atmosphere]] to slow impactors down. During this time Mercury was [[volcano|volcanically]] active; basins were filled by [[magma]], producing smooth plains similar to the maria found on the Moon. One of the most unusual craters is [[Apollodorus (crater)|Apollodorus]], or \"the Spider\", which hosts a series of radiating troughs extending outwards from its impact site.\n[[Craters on Mercury]] range in diameter from small bowl-shaped cavities to [[multi-ringed impact basin]]s hundreds of kilometers across. They appear in all states of degradation, from relatively fresh rayed craters to highly degraded crater remnants. Mercurian craters differ subtly from lunar craters in that the area blanketed by their ejecta is much smaller, a consequence of Mercury's stronger surface gravity. According to [[International Astronomical Union]] rules, each new crater must be named after an artist who was famous for more than fifty years, and dead for more than three years, before the date the crater is named.\nThe largest known crater is [[Caloris Planitia]], or Caloris Basin, with a diameter of . The impact that created the Caloris Basin was so powerful that it caused [[lava]] eruptions and left a concentric mountainous ring ~ tall surrounding the [[impact crater]]. The floor of the Caloris Basin is filled by a geologically distinct flat plain, broken up by ridges and fractures in a roughly polygonal pattern. It is not clear whether they were volcanic lava flows induced by the impact or a large sheet of impact melt.\nAt the [[antipodes|antipode]] of the Caloris Basin is a large region of unusual, hilly terrain known as the \"Weird Terrain\". One hypothesis for its origin is that shock waves generated during the Caloris impact traveled around Mercury, converging at the basin's antipode (180 degrees away). The resulting high stresses fractured the surface. Alternatively, it has been suggested that this terrain formed as a result of the convergence of ejecta at this basin's antipode.\n[[File:EW1027346412Gnomap.png|thumb|Tolstoj basin is along the bottom of this image of Mercury's limb]]\nOverall, 46 impact basins have been identified. A notable basin is the -wide, multi-ring [[Tolstoj Basin]] that has an ejecta blanket extending up to from its rim and a floor that has been filled by smooth plains materials. [[Beethoven Basin]] has a similar-sized ejecta blanket and a -diameter rim. Like the Moon, the surface of Mercury has likely incurred the effects of [[space weathering]] processes, including solar wind and [[micrometeorite]] impacts.\nPlains.\nThere are two geologically distinct plains regions on Mercury. Gently rolling, hilly [[Inter-crater plains on Mercury|plains in the regions between craters]] are Mercury's oldest visible surfaces, predating the heavily cratered terrain. These inter-crater plains appear to have obliterated many earlier craters, and show a general paucity of smaller craters below about in diameter.\nSmooth plains are widespread flat areas that fill depressions of various sizes and bear a strong resemblance to lunar maria. Unlike lunar maria, the smooth plains of Mercury have the same albedo as the older inter-crater plains. Despite a lack of unequivocally volcanic characteristics, the localization and rounded, lobate shape of these plains strongly support volcanic origins. All the smooth plains of Mercury formed significantly later than the Caloris basin, as evidenced by appreciably smaller crater densities than on the Caloris ejecta blanket.\nCompressional features.\nAn unusual feature of Mercury's surface is the numerous compression folds, or [[rupes]], that crisscross the plains. These exist on the Moon, but are much more prominent on Mercury. As Mercury's interior cooled, it contracted and its surface began to deform, creating [[wrinkle ridge]]s and [[lobate scarp]]s associated with [[thrust fault]]s. The scarps can reach lengths of and heights of . These compressional features can be seen on top of other features, such as craters and smooth plains, indicating they are more recent. Mapping of the features has suggested a total shrinkage of Mercury's radius in the range of ~. Most activity along the major thrust systems probably ended about 3.6\u20133.7\u00a0billion years ago. Small-scale thrust fault scarps have been found, tens of meters in height and with lengths in the range of a few kilometers, that appear to be less than 50 million years old, indicating that compression of the interior and consequent surface geological activity continue to the present.\nVolcanism.\n[[File:Picasso crater.png|thumb|[[Picasso (crater)|Picasso crater]]\u2014the large arc-shaped pit located on the eastern side of its floor is postulated to have formed when subsurface magma subsided or drained, causing the surface to collapse into the resulting void.]]\nThere is evidence for [[pyroclastic flow]]s on Mercury from low-profile [[shield volcano]]es. Fifty-one pyroclastic deposits have been identified, where 90% of them are found within impact craters. A study of the degradation state of the impact craters that host pyroclastic deposits suggests that pyroclastic activity occurred on Mercury over a prolonged interval.\nA \"rimless depression\" inside the southwest rim of the Caloris Basin consists of at least nine overlapping volcanic vents, each individually up to in diameter. It is thus a \"[[compound volcano]]\". The vent floors are at least below their brinks and they bear a closer resemblance to volcanic craters sculpted by explosive eruptions or modified by collapse into void spaces created by magma withdrawal back down into a conduit. Scientists could not quantify the age of the volcanic complex system but reported that it could be on the order of a billion years.\nSurface conditions and exosphere.\n[[File:North pole of Mercury -- NASA.jpg|thumb|Composite of the north pole of Mercury, where NASA confirmed the discovery of a large volume of water ice, in permanently dark craters that are found there.]]\nThe surface temperature of Mercury ranges from . It never rises above 180\u00a0K at the poles, due to the absence of an atmosphere and a steep temperature gradient between the equator and the poles. At [[perihelion]], the equatorial [[subsolar point]] is located at latitude 0\u00b0W or 180\u00b0W, and it climbs to a temperature of about . During [[aphelion]], this occurs at 90\u00b0 or 270\u00b0W and reaches only . On the dark side of the planet, temperatures average . The intensity of [[sunlight]] on Mercury's surface ranges between 4.59 and 10.61 times the [[solar constant]] (1,370 W\u00b7m\u22122).\nAlthough daylight temperatures at the surface of Mercury are generally extremely high, observations strongly suggest that ice (frozen water) exists on Mercury. The floors of deep craters at the poles are never exposed to direct sunlight, and temperatures there remain below 102\u00a0K, far lower than the global average. This creates a [[Cold trap (astronomy)|cold trap]] where ice can accumulate. Water ice strongly reflects [[radar]], and observations by the 70-meter [[Goldstone Solar System Radar]] and the [[Very Large Array|VLA]] in the early 1990s revealed that there are patches of high radar [[Reflection (physics)|reflection]] near the poles. Although ice was not the only possible cause of these reflective regions, astronomers thought it to be the most likely explanation. The presence of [[ice|water ice]] was confirmed using \"MESSENGER\" images of craters at the north pole.\nThe icy crater regions are estimated to contain about 1014\u20131015\u00a0kg of ice, and may be covered by a layer of [[regolith]] that inhibits [[Sublimation (phase transition)|sublimation]]. By comparison, the [[Antarctica|Antarctic]] ice sheet on Earth has a mass of about 4\u00d71018\u00a0kg, and Mars's south polar cap contains about 1016\u00a0kg of water. The origin of the ice on Mercury is not yet known, but the two most likely sources are from [[outgassing]] of water from the planet's interior and deposition by impacts of comets.\nMercury is too small and hot for its [[gravity]] to retain any significant [[atmosphere]] over long periods of time; it does have a tenuous surface-bounded [[exosphere]] at a surface pressure of less than approximately 0.5\u00a0nPa (0.005 picobars). It includes [[hydrogen]], [[helium]], [[oxygen]], [[sodium]], [[calcium]], [[potassium]], [[magnesium]], [[silicon]], and [[hydroxide]], among others. This exosphere is not stable\u2014atoms are continuously lost and replenished from a variety of sources. [[Hydrogen atom]]s and [[helium atom]]s probably come from the solar wind, [[diffusion|diffusing]] into Mercury's [[magnetosphere]] before later escaping back into space. The [[radioactive decay]] of elements within Mercury's crust is another source of helium, as well as sodium and potassium. Water vapor is present, released by a combination of processes such as comets striking its surface, [[sputtering]] creating water out of hydrogen from the solar wind and oxygen from rock, and sublimation from reservoirs of water ice in the permanently shadowed polar craters. The detection of high amounts of water-related ions like O+, OH\u2212, and [[hydronium|H3O+]] was a surprise. Because of the quantities of these ions that were detected in Mercury's space environment, scientists surmise that these molecules were blasted from the surface or exosphere by the solar wind.\nSodium, potassium, and calcium were discovered in the atmosphere during the 1980s\u20131990s, and are thought to result primarily from the vaporization of surface rock struck by micrometeorite impacts including presently from [[Comet Encke]]. In 2008, magnesium was discovered by \"MESSENGER\". Studies indicate that, at times, sodium emissions are localized at points that correspond to the planet's magnetic poles. This would indicate an interaction between the magnetosphere and the planet's surface.\nAccording to NASA, Mercury is not a suitable planet for Earth-like life. It has a [[exosphere|surface boundary exosphere]] instead of a layered atmosphere, extreme temperatures, and high solar radiation. It is unlikely that any living beings can withstand those conditions. Some parts of the subsurface of Mercury may have been [[Planetary habitability|habitable]], and perhaps [[life form]]s, albeit likely primitive [[microorganism]]s, may have existed on the planet.\nMagnetic field and magnetosphere.\n[[File:Mercury Magnetic Field NASA.jpg|thumb|Graph showing relative strength of Mercury's magnetic field]]\nDespite its small size and slow 59-day-long rotation, Mercury has a significant, and apparently global, [[magnetic field]]. According to measurements taken by \"Mariner 10\", it is about 1.1% the strength of [[Earth's magnetic field|Earth's]]. The magnetic-field strength at Mercury's equator is about 300 [[Tesla (unit)|nT]]. Like that of Earth, Mercury's magnetic field is [[dipolar]] and nearly aligned with the planet's spin axis (10\u00b0 dipolar tilt, compared to 11\u00b0 for Earth). Measurements from both the \"Mariner 10\" and \"MESSENGER\" space probes have indicated that the strength and shape of the magnetic field are stable.\nIt is likely that this magnetic field is generated by a [[Dynamo theory|dynamo]] effect, in a manner similar to the magnetic field of Earth. This dynamo effect would result from the circulation of the planet's iron-rich liquid core. Particularly strong [[tidal heating]] effects caused by the planet's high orbital eccentricity would serve to keep part of the core in the liquid state necessary for this dynamo effect.\nMercury's magnetic field is strong enough to deflect the solar wind around the planet, creating a magnetosphere. The planet's magnetosphere, though small enough to fit within Earth, is strong enough to trap solar wind [[plasma (physics)|plasma]]. This contributes to the space weathering of the planet's surface. Observations taken by the \"Mariner 10\" spacecraft detected this low energy plasma in the magnetosphere of the planet's nightside. Bursts of energetic particles in the planet's magnetotail indicate a dynamic quality to the planet's magnetosphere.\nDuring its second flyby of the planet on October 6, 2008, \"MESSENGER\" discovered that Mercury's magnetic field can be extremely \"leaky\". The spacecraft encountered magnetic \"tornadoes\"\u2014twisted bundles of magnetic fields connecting the planetary magnetic field to interplanetary space\u2014that were up to 800 km wide or a third of the radius of the planet. These twisted magnetic flux tubes, technically known as [[flux transfer event]]s, form open windows in the planet's magnetic shield through which the solar wind may enter and directly impact Mercury's surface via [[magnetic reconnection]]. This also occurs in Earth's magnetic field. The \"MESSENGER\" observations showed the reconnection rate was ten times higher at Mercury, but its proximity to the Sun only accounts for about a third of the reconnection rate observed by \"MESSENGER\".\nOrbit, rotation, and longitude.\nMercury has the most [[Orbital eccentricity|eccentric]] orbit of all the planets in the Solar System; its eccentricity is 0.21 with its distance from the Sun ranging from . It takes 87.969 Earth days to complete an orbit. The diagram illustrates the effects of the eccentricity, showing Mercury's orbit overlaid with a circular orbit having the same [[semi-major axis]]. Mercury's higher velocity when it is near perihelion is clear from the greater distance it covers in each 5-day interval. In the diagram, the varying distance of Mercury to the Sun is represented by the size of the planet, which is inversely proportional to Mercury's distance from the Sun.\nThis varying distance to the Sun leads to Mercury's surface being flexed by [[tidal bulge]]s raised by the [[Sun]] that are about 17 times stronger than the Moon's on Earth. Combined with a 3:2 [[#Spin-orbit resonance|spin\u2013orbit resonance]] of the planet's rotation around its axis, it also results in complex variations of the surface temperature. The resonance makes a single [[solar day]] (the length between two [[meridian (astronomy)|meridian]] transits of the Sun) on Mercury last exactly two Mercury years, or about 176 Earth days.\nMercury's orbit is inclined by 7 degrees to the plane of Earth's orbit (the [[ecliptic]]), the largest of all eight known solar planets. As a result, [[transits of Mercury]] across the face of the Sun can only occur when the planet is crossing the plane of the ecliptic at the time it lies between Earth and the Sun, which is in May or November. This occurs about every seven years on average.\nMercury's [[axial tilt]] is almost zero, with the best measured value as low as 0.027 degrees. This is significantly smaller than that of [[Jupiter]], which has the second smallest axial tilt of all planets at 3.1 degrees. This means that to an observer at Mercury's poles, the center of the Sun never rises more than 2.1 [[arcminutes]] above the horizon. By comparison, the [[angular size]] of the Sun as seen from Mercury ranges from <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1+1\u20444 to 2 degrees across.\nAt certain points on Mercury's surface, an observer would be able to see the Sun peek up a little more than two-thirds of the way over the horizon, then reverse and set before rising again, all within the same [[Extraterrestrial skies#Mercury|Mercurian day]]. This is because approximately four Earth days before perihelion, Mercury's angular [[orbital speed|orbital velocity]] equals its angular [[rotational velocity]] so that the Sun's [[improper motion|apparent motion]] ceases; closer to perihelion, Mercury's angular orbital velocity then exceeds the angular rotational velocity. Thus, to a hypothetical observer on Mercury, the Sun appears to move in a [[apparent retrograde motion|retrograde]] direction. Four Earth days after perihelion, the Sun's normal apparent motion resumes. A similar effect would have occurred if Mercury had been in synchronous rotation: the alternating gain and loss of rotation over a revolution would have caused a libration of 23.65\u00b0 in longitude.\nFor the same reason, there are two points on Mercury's equator, 180 degrees apart in [[longitude]], at either of which, around perihelion in alternate Mercurian years (once a Mercurian day), the Sun passes overhead, then reverses its apparent motion and passes overhead again, then reverses a second time and passes overhead a third time, taking a total of about 16 Earth-days for this entire process. In the other alternate Mercurian years, the same thing happens at the other of these two points. The amplitude of the retrograde motion is small, so the overall effect is that, for two or three weeks, the Sun is almost stationary overhead, and is at its most brilliant because Mercury is at perihelion, its closest to the Sun. This prolonged exposure to the Sun at its brightest makes these two points the hottest places on Mercury. Maximum temperature occurs when the Sun is at an angle of about 25 degrees past noon due to [[Diurnal temperature variation#Temperature lag|diurnal temperature lag]], at 0.4 Mercury days and 0.8 Mercury years past sunrise. Conversely, there are two other points on the equator, 90 degrees of longitude apart from the first ones, where the Sun passes overhead only when the planet is at aphelion in alternate years, when the apparent motion of the Sun in Mercury's sky is relatively rapid. These points, which are the ones on the equator where the apparent retrograde motion of the Sun happens when it is crossing the horizon as described in the preceding paragraph, receive much less solar heat than the first ones described above.\nMercury attains an inferior conjunction (nearest approach to Earth) every 116 Earth days on average, but this interval can range from 105 days to 129 days due to the planet's eccentric orbit. Mercury can come as near as to Earth, and that is slowly declining: The next approach to within is in 2679, and to within in 4487, but it will not be closer to Earth than until 28,622. Its period of retrograde motion as seen from Earth can vary from 8 to 15 days on either side of an inferior conjunction. This large range arises from the planet's high orbital eccentricity. Essentially, because Mercury is closest to the Sun, when taking an average over time, Mercury is most often the closest planet to the Earth, and\u2014in that measure\u2014it is the closest planet to each of the other planets in the Solar System.\nLongitude convention.\nThe longitude convention for Mercury puts the zero of longitude at one of the two hottest points on the surface, as described above. However, when this area was first visited, by \"Mariner 10\", this zero meridian was in darkness, so it was impossible to select a feature on the surface to define the exact position of the meridian. Therefore, a small crater further west was chosen, called [[Hun Kal]], which provides the exact reference point for measuring longitude. The center of Hun Kal defines the 20\u00b0\u00a0west meridian. A 1970 International Astronomical Union resolution suggests that longitudes be measured positively in the westerly direction on Mercury. The two hottest places on the equator are therefore at longitudes 0\u00b0\u00a0W and 180\u00b0\u00a0W, and the coolest points on the equator are at longitudes 90\u00b0\u00a0W and 270\u00b0\u00a0W. However, the \"MESSENGER\" project uses an east-positive convention.\nSpin-orbit resonance.\n[[File:Mercury's orbital resonance.svg|thumb|After one orbit, Mercury has rotated 1.5 times, so after two complete orbits the same hemisphere is again illuminated.]]\nFor many years it was thought that Mercury was synchronously [[tidally locked]] with the Sun, [[rotating]] once for each orbit and always keeping the same face directed towards the Sun, in the same way that the same side of the Moon always faces Earth. Radar observations in 1965 proved that the planet has a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance, rotating three times for every two revolutions around the Sun. The eccentricity of Mercury's orbit makes this resonance stable\u2014at perihelion, when the solar tide is strongest, the Sun is nearly stationary in Mercury's sky.\nThe 3:2 resonant tidal locking is stabilized by the variance of the tidal force along Mercury's eccentric orbit, acting on a permanent dipole component of Mercury's mass distribution. In a circular orbit there is no such variance, so the only resonance stabilized in such an orbit is at 1:1 (e.g., Earth\u2013Moon), when the tidal force, stretching a body along the \"center-body\" line, exerts a torque that aligns the body's axis of least inertia (the \"longest\" axis, and the axis of the aforementioned dipole) to always point at the center. However, with noticeable eccentricity, like that of Mercury's orbit, the tidal force has a maximum at perihelion and therefore stabilizes resonances, like 3:2, ensuring that the planet points its axis of least inertia roughly at the Sun when passing through perihelion.\nThe original reason astronomers thought it was synchronously locked was that, whenever Mercury was best placed for observation, it was always nearly at the same point in its 3:2 resonance, hence showing the same face. This is because, coincidentally, Mercury's rotation period is almost exactly half of its synodic period with respect to Earth. Due to Mercury's 3:2 spin-orbit resonance, a solar day lasts about 176 Earth days. A [[sidereal day]] (the period of rotation) lasts about 58.7 Earth days.\nSimulations indicate that the orbital eccentricity of Mercury varies [[chaos theory|chaotically]] from nearly zero (circular) to more than 0.45 over millions of years due to [[Perturbation (astronomy)|perturbations]] from the other planets. This was thought to explain Mercury's 3:2 spin-orbit resonance (rather than the more usual 1:1), because this state is more likely to arise during a period of high eccentricity. However, accurate modeling based on a realistic model of tidal response has demonstrated that Mercury was captured into the 3:2 spin-orbit state at a very early stage of its history, within 20 (more likely, 10) million years after its formation.\nNumerical simulations show that a future [[Secular resonance|secular]] [[Orbital resonance|orbital resonant]] interaction with the perihelion of Jupiter may cause the eccentricity of Mercury's orbit to increase to the point where there is a 1% chance that the orbit will be destabilized in the next five billion years. If this happens, Mercury may fall into the Sun, collide with Venus, be ejected from the Solar System, or even disrupt the rest of the inner Solar System.\nAdvance of perihelion.\n[[File:Drehung der Apsidenlinie light.svg|right|thumb|[[Apsidal precession]] of Mercury's orbit]]\nIn 1859, the French mathematician and astronomer [[Urbain Le Verrier]] reported that the slow [[precession]] of Mercury's orbit around the Sun could not be completely explained by [[Newtonian mechanics]] and perturbations by the known planets. He suggested, among possible explanations, that another planet (or perhaps instead a series of smaller \"corpuscules\") might exist in an orbit even closer to the Sun than that of Mercury, to account for this perturbation. Other explanations considered included a slight oblateness of the Sun. The success of the search for [[Neptune]] based on its perturbations of the orbit of [[Uranus]] led astronomers to place faith in this possible explanation, and the hypothetical planet was named [[Vulcan (hypothetical planet)|Vulcan]], but no such planet was ever found.\nThe observed [[perihelion precession]] of Mercury is 5,600 [[arcseconds]] (1.5556\u00b0) per century relative to Earth, or per century relative to the inertial [[International Celestial Reference Frame|ICRF]]. Newtonian mechanics, taking into account all the effects from the other planets and including 0.0254 arcseconds per century due to the oblateness of the Sun, predicts a precession of 5,557 arcseconds (1.5436\u00b0) per century relative to Earth, or per century relative to ICRF. In the early 20th century, [[Albert Einstein]]'s [[general theory of relativity]] provided the explanation for the observed precession, by formalizing gravitation as being mediated by the curvature of spacetime. The effect is small: just per century (or 0.43 arcsecond per year, or 0.1035 arcsecond per orbital period) for Mercury; it therefore requires a little over 12.5 million orbits, or 3 million years, for a full excess turn. Similar, but much smaller, effects exist for other Solar System bodies: 8.6247 arcseconds per century for Venus, 3.8387 for Earth, 1.351 for Mars, and 10.05 for [[1566 Icarus]].\nObservation.\n[[File:Mercury.jpg|thumb|Image mosaic by \"Mariner 10\", 1974]]\nMercury's [[apparent magnitude]] is calculated to vary between \u22122.48 (brighter than [[Sirius]]) around [[superior conjunction]] and +7.25 (below the limit of naked-eye visibility) around [[inferior conjunction]]. The mean apparent magnitude is 0.23 while the standard deviation of 1.78 is the largest of any planet. The mean apparent magnitude at superior conjunction is \u22121.89 while that at inferior conjunction is +5.93. Observation of Mercury is complicated by its proximity to the Sun, as it is lost in the Sun's glare for much of the time. Mercury can be observed for only a brief period during either morning or evening twilight.\nGround-based telescope observations of Mercury reveal only an illuminated partial disk with limited detail. The [[Hubble Space Telescope]] cannot observe Mercury at all, due to safety procedures that prevent its pointing too close to the Sun. Because the shift of 0.15 revolutions of Earth in a Mercurian year makes up a seven-Mercurian-year cycle (0.15 \u00d7 7 \u2248 1.0), in the seventh Mercurian year, Mercury follows almost exactly (earlier by 7 days) the sequence of phenomena it showed seven Mercurian years before.\nLike the Moon and Venus, Mercury exhibits [[Lunar phase|phases]] as seen from Earth. It is \"new\" at [[inferior conjunction]] and \"full\" at superior conjunction. The planet is rendered invisible from Earth on both of these occasions because of its being obscured by the Sun, except at its new phase during a transit. Mercury is technically brightest as seen from Earth when it is at a full phase. Although Mercury is farthest from Earth when it is full, the greater illuminated area that is visible and the [[opposition effect|opposition brightness surge]] more than compensates for the distance. The opposite is true for Venus, which appears brightest when it is a [[crescent]], because it is much closer to Earth than when [[gibbous]].\n[[File:PIA19247-Mercury-NPolarRegion-Messenger20150316.jpg|thumb|left|False-color map showing the maximum temperatures of the north polar region]]\n[[File:Mercury Venus Moon over San Jose 08 Jan 2024.png|thumb|right|Mercury (lower left) as seen from [[San Jose, California]] with Venus and the Moon.]]\nMercury is best observed at the first and last quarter, although they are phases of lesser brightness. The first and last quarter phases occur at greatest [[elongation (astronomy)|elongation]] east and west of the Sun, respectively. At both of these times, Mercury's separation from the Sun ranges anywhere from 17.9\u00b0 at perihelion to 27.8\u00b0 at aphelion. At greatest \"western\" elongation, Mercury rises at its earliest before sunrise, and at greatest \"eastern\" elongation, it sets at its latest after sunset.\n[[File:PIA19422-Mercury-CarnegieRupes-MDIS-MLA-20150416.jpg|thumb|right|False-color image of [[Carnegie Rupes]], a tectonic landform\u2014high terrain (red); low (blue).]]\nMercury is more often and easily visible from the [[Southern Hemisphere]] than from the [[Northern Hemisphere|Northern]]. This is because Mercury's maximum western elongation occurs only during early autumn in the Southern Hemisphere, whereas its greatest eastern elongation happens only during late winter in the Southern Hemisphere. In both of these cases, the angle at which the planet's orbit intersects the horizon is maximized, allowing it to rise several hours before sunrise in the former instance and not set until several hours after sundown in the latter from southern mid-latitudes, such as Argentina and South Africa.\nAn alternate method for viewing Mercury involves observing the planet with a [[telescope]] during daylight hours when conditions are clear, ideally when it is at its greatest elongation. This allows the planet to be found easily, even when using telescopes with apertures. However, great care must be taken to obstruct the Sun from sight because of the extreme risk for eye damage. This method bypasses the limitation of twilight observing when the ecliptic is located at a low elevation (e.g. on autumn evenings). The planet is higher in the sky and less atmospheric effects affect the view of the planet. Mercury can be viewed as close as 4\u00b0 to the Sun near superior conjunction when it is almost at its brightest.\nMercury can, like several other planets and the brightest stars, be seen during a total [[solar eclipse]].\nObservation history.\nAncient astronomers.\n[[File:Mercury-bonatti.png|thumb|Mercury, from \"Liber astronomiae\", 1550]]\nThe earliest known recorded observations of Mercury are from the [[MUL.APIN]] tablets. These observations were most likely made by an [[Assyria]]n astronomer around the 14th century BC. The [[cuneiform]] name used to designate Mercury on the MUL.APIN tablets is transcribed as UDU.IDIM.GU\\U4.UD (\"the jumping planet\"). [[Babylonian astronomy|Babylonian records]] of Mercury date back to the 1st millennium BC. The [[Babylonia]]ns called the planet [[Nabu]] after the messenger to the gods in [[Babylonian mythology|their mythology]].\nThe [[Greeks in Egypt|Greco]]-[[Ancient Egypt|Egyptian]] astronomer [[Ptolemy]] wrote about the possibility of planetary transits across the face of the Sun in his work \"Planetary Hypotheses\". He suggested that no transits had been observed either because planets such as Mercury were too small to see, or because transits were too infrequent.\n[[File:Shatir500.jpg|thumb|left|[[Ibn al-Shatir]]'s model for the appearances of Mercury, showing the multiplication of [[epicycles]] using the [[Tusi couple]], thus eliminating the Ptolemaic eccentrics and [[equant]].]]\nIn [[ancient China]], Mercury was known as \"the Hour Star\" (\"Chen-xing\" ). It was associated with the direction north and the phase of water in the [[Five Phases]] system of metaphysics. Modern [[Chinese culture|Chinese]], [[Korean culture|Korean]], [[Japanese culture|Japanese]] and [[Vietnamese culture|Vietnamese]] cultures refer to the planet literally as the \"water star\" (), based on the [[Five elements (Chinese philosophy)|Five elements]]. [[Hindu mythology]] used the name [[Budha]] for Mercury, and this god was thought to preside over Wednesday. The god [[Odin]] (or Woden) of [[Germanic paganism]] was associated with the planet Mercury and Wednesday. The [[Maya civilization|Maya]] may have represented Mercury as an owl (or possibly four owls; two for the morning aspect and two for the evening) that served as a messenger to the [[underworld]]. Mercury was sometimes known as [[Stilbon (mythology)|Stilbon]] ([[Greek language|Greek]]: \u03a3\u03c4\u03af\u03bb\u03b2\u03c9\u03bd) meaning 'the shining, glittering'.\nIn [[medieval Islamic astronomy]], the [[Al-Andalus|Andalusian]] astronomer [[Ab\u016b Ish\u0101q Ibr\u0101h\u012bm al-Zarq\u0101l\u012b]] in the 11th century described the [[deferent]] of Mercury's [[geocentric orbit]] as being oval, like an egg or a [[Pine nut|pignon]], although this insight did not influence his astronomical theory or his astronomical calculations. In the 12th century, [[Ibn Bajjah]] observed \"two planets as black spots on the face of the Sun\", which was later suggested as the transit of Mercury and/or Venus by the [[Maragheh observatory|Maragha]] astronomer [[Qotb al-Din Shirazi]] in the 13th century. Most such medieval reports of transits were later taken as observations of [[sunspot]]s.\nIn India, the [[Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics|Kerala school]] astronomer [[Nilakantha Somayaji]] in the 15th century developed a partially heliocentric planetary model in which Mercury orbits the Sun, which in turn orbits Earth, similar to the [[Tychonic system]] later proposed by [[Tycho Brahe]] in the late 16th century.\nGround-based telescopic research.\nThe first telescopic observations of Mercury were made by [[Thomas Harriot]] and [[Galileo]] from 1610. In 1612, [[Simon Marius]] observed the brightness of Mercury varied with the planet's orbital position and concluded it had phases \"in the same way as Venus and the Moon\". In 1631, [[Pierre Gassendi]] made the first telescopic observations of the transit of a planet across the Sun when he saw a transit of Mercury predicted by [[Johannes Kepler]]. In 1639, [[Giovanni Zupi]] used a telescope to discover that the planet had orbital phases similar to Venus and the Moon. The observation demonstrated conclusively that Mercury orbited the Sun.\nA rare event in astronomy is the passage of one planet in front of another ([[occultation]]), as seen from Earth. Mercury and Venus occult each other every few centuries, and the event of May 28, 1737, is the only one historically observed, having been seen by [[John Bevis]] at the [[Royal Greenwich Observatory]]. The next occultation of Mercury by Venus will be on December 3, 2133.\nThe difficulties inherent in observing Mercury meant that it was far less studied than the other planets. In 1800, [[Johann Schr\u00f6ter]] made observations of surface features, claiming to have observed mountains. [[Friedrich Bessel]] used Schr\u00f6ter's drawings to erroneously estimate the rotation period as 24 hours and an axial tilt of 70\u00b0. In the 1880s, [[Giovanni Schiaparelli]] mapped the planet more accurately, and suggested that Mercury's rotational period was 88 days, the same as its orbital period due to tidal locking. This phenomenon is known as [[synchronous rotation]]. The effort to map the surface of Mercury was continued by [[Eugenios Antoniadi]], who published a book in 1934 that included both maps and his own observations. Many of the planet's surface features, particularly the [[List of albedo features on Mercury|albedo features]], take their names from Antoniadi's map.\nIn June 1962, Soviet scientists at the [[Institute of Radio-engineering and Electronics]] of the [[USSR Academy of Sciences]], led by [[Vladimir Kotelnikov]], became the first to bounce a radar signal off Mercury and receive it, starting radar observations of the planet. Three years later, radar observations by Americans [[Gordon H. Pettengill]] and Rolf B. Dyce, using the [[Arecibo radio telescope]] in [[Puerto Rico]], showed conclusively that the planet's rotational period was about 59 days. The theory that Mercury's rotation was synchronous had become widely held, and it was a surprise to astronomers when these radio observations were announced. If Mercury were tidally locked, its dark face would be extremely cold, but measurements of radio emission revealed that it was much hotter than expected. Astronomers were reluctant to drop the synchronous rotation theory and proposed alternative mechanisms such as powerful heat-distributing winds to explain the observations.\nIn 1965, Italian astronomer [[Giuseppe Colombo]] noted that the rotation value was about two-thirds of Mercury's orbital period, and proposed that the planet's orbital and rotational periods were locked into a 3:2 rather than a 1:1 resonance. Data from \"Mariner 10\" subsequently confirmed this view. This means that Schiaparelli's and Antoniadi's maps were not \"wrong\". Instead, the astronomers saw the same features during every \"second\" orbit and recorded them, but disregarded those seen in the meantime, when Mercury's other face was toward the Sun, because the orbital geometry meant that these observations were made under poor viewing conditions.\nGround-based optical observations did not shed much further light on Mercury, but radio astronomers using interferometry at microwave wavelengths, a technique that enables removal of the solar radiation, were able to discern physical and chemical characteristics of the subsurface layers to a depth of several meters. Not until the first space probe flew past Mercury did many of its most fundamental morphological properties become known. Moreover, technological advances have led to improved ground-based observations. In 2000, high-resolution [[lucky imaging]] observations were conducted by the [[Mount Wilson Observatory]] Hale telescope. They provided the first views that resolved surface features on the parts of Mercury that were not imaged in the \"Mariner 10\" mission. Most of the planet has been mapped by the Arecibo radar telescope, with resolution, including polar deposits in shadowed craters of what may be water ice.\nResearch with space probes.\n[[File:MESSENGER Assembly.jpg|thumb|left|\"MESSENGER\" being prepared for launch]]\n[[File:PIA18389-MarsCuriosityRover-MercuryTransitsSun-20140603.gif|thumb|Mercury transiting the [[Sun]] as viewed by the Mars rover [[Curiosity (rover)|\"Curiosity\"]] (June 3, 2014).]]\nReaching Mercury from Earth poses significant technical challenges, because it orbits so much closer to the Sun than Earth. A Mercury-bound spacecraft launched from Earth must travel over into the Sun's gravitational [[potential well]]. Mercury has an [[orbital speed]] of , whereas Earth's orbital speed is . Therefore, the spacecraft must make a larger change in [[velocity]] ([[delta-v]]) to get to Mercury and then enter orbit, as compared to the delta-v required for, say, [[Exploration of Mars|Mars planetary missions]].\nThe [[potential energy]] liberated by moving down the Sun's potential well becomes [[kinetic energy]], requiring a delta-v change to do anything other than pass by Mercury. Some portion of this [[delta-v budget]] can be provided from a [[gravity assist]] during one or more fly-bys of Venus. To land safely or enter a stable orbit the spacecraft would rely entirely on rocket motors. [[Aerobraking]] is ruled out because Mercury has a negligible atmosphere. A trip to Mercury requires more rocket fuel than that required to [[escape velocity|escape]] the Solar System completely. As a result, only three space probes have visited it so far. A proposed alternative approach would use a [[solar sail]] to attain a Mercury-synchronous orbit around the Sun.\n\"Mariner 10\".\n[[File:Mariner 10.jpg|thumb|\"Mariner 10\", the first probe to visit Mercury]]\nThe first spacecraft to visit Mercury was NASA's \"Mariner 10\" (1974\u20131975). The spacecraft used the gravity of Venus to adjust its orbital velocity so that it could approach Mercury, making it both the first spacecraft to use this gravitational \"slingshot\" effect and the first NASA mission to visit multiple planets. \"Mariner 10\" provided the first close-up images of Mercury's surface, which immediately showed its heavily cratered nature, and revealed many other types of geological features, such as the giant scarps that were later ascribed to the effect of the planet shrinking slightly as its iron core cools. Unfortunately, the same face of the planet was lit at each of \"Mariner 10\"'s close approaches. This made close observation of both sides of the planet impossible, and resulted in the mapping of less than 45% of the planet's surface.\nThe spacecraft made three close approaches to Mercury, the closest of which took it to within of the surface. At the first close approach, instruments detected a magnetic field, to the great surprise of planetary geologists\u2014Mercury's rotation was expected to be much too slow to generate a significant [[dynamo]] effect. The second close approach was primarily used for imaging, but at the third approach, extensive magnetic data were obtained. The data revealed that the planet's magnetic field is much like Earth's, which deflects the solar wind around the planet. For many years after the \"Mariner 10\" encounters, the origin of Mercury's magnetic field remained the subject of several competing theories.\nOn March 24, 1975, just eight days after its final close approach, \"Mariner 10\" ran out of fuel. Because its orbit could no longer be accurately controlled, mission controllers instructed the probe to shut down. \"Mariner 10\" is thought to be still orbiting the Sun, passing close to Mercury every few months.\n\"MESSENGER\".\n[[File:Details of MESSENGER's Impact Location.jpg|thumb|Estimated details of the impact of \"MESSENGER\" on April 30, 2015]]\nA second NASA mission to Mercury, named \"MESSENGER\" (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging), was launched on August 3, 2004. It made a fly-by of Earth in August 2005, and of Venus in October 2006 and June 2007 to place it onto the correct trajectory to reach an orbit around Mercury. A first fly-by of Mercury occurred on January 14, 2008, a second on October 6, 2008, and a third on September 29, 2009. Most of the hemisphere not imaged by \"Mariner 10\" was mapped during these fly-bys. The probe successfully entered an elliptical orbit around the planet on March 18, 2011. The first orbital image of Mercury was obtained on March 29, 2011. The probe finished a one-year mapping mission, and then entered a one-year extended mission into 2013. In addition to continued observations and mapping of Mercury, \"MESSENGER\" observed the 2012 [[solar maximum]].\n[[File:MercuryTopo.png|thumb|right|Topography of Mercury based on MDIS (Mercury Dual Imaging System) data]] The mission was designed to clear up six key issues: Mercury's high density, its geological history, the nature of its magnetic field, the structure of its core, whether it has ice at its poles, and where its tenuous atmosphere comes from. To this end, the probe carried imaging devices that gathered much-higher-resolution images of much more of Mercury than \"Mariner 10\", assorted [[spectrometer]]s to determine the abundances of elements in the crust, and [[magnetometer]]s and devices to measure velocities of charged particles. Measurements of changes in the probe's orbital velocity were expected to be used to infer details of the planet's interior structure. \"MESSENGER\"'s final maneuver was on April 24, 2015, and it crashed into Mercury's surface on April 30, 2015. The spacecraft's impact with Mercury occurred at 3:26:01\u00a0p.m. [[Eastern Time Zone|EDT]] on April 30, 2015, leaving a crater estimated to be in diameter.\n\"BepiColombo\".\nThe [[European Space Agency]] and the [[Japanese Space Agency]] developed and launched a joint mission called \"BepiColombo\", which will orbit Mercury with two probes: one to map the planet and the other to study its magnetosphere. Launched on October 20, 2018, \"BepiColombo\" is expected to reach Mercury in 2025. It will release a magnetometer probe into an elliptical orbit, then chemical rockets will fire to deposit the mapper probe into a circular orbit. Both probes will operate for one terrestrial year. The mapper probe carries an array of spectrometers similar to those on \"MESSENGER\", and will study the planet at many different wavelengths including [[infrared]], [[ultraviolet]], [[X-ray]] and [[gamma ray]]. \"BepiColombo\" conducted the first of its six planned Mercury flybys on October 1, 2021, and the sixth was completed on January 9, 2025. The spacecraft will enter the planet's orbit in 2026.\n\"Perseverance\" rover.\nOn March 5, 2024, NASA released images of transits of the moon [[Deimos (moon)|Deimos]], the moon [[Phobos (moon)|Phobos]] and the planet Mercury as viewed by the \"Perseverance\" rover on the planet Mars.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n[[Category:Mercury (planet)| ]]\n[[Category:Planets of the Solar System]]\n[[Category:Terrestrial planets]]\n[[Category:Astronomical objects known since antiquity]]\n[[Category:Solar System]]"}, "descending_order": ["48781", "19694", "10902"], "permutation_1": ["10902", "19694", "48781"], "permutation_2": ["48781", "10902", "19694"], "permutation_3": ["19694", "48781", "10902"]}
{"id": "3hop1__35884_161545_10530", "docs_added": {"18630637": "Translation\nTransfer of the meaning of something in one language into another\nTranslation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between \"translating\" (a written text) and \"interpreting\" (oral or signed communication between users of different languages); under this distinction, translation can begin only after the appearance of writing within a language community.\nA translator always risks inadvertently introducing source-language words, grammar, or syntax into the target-language rendering. On the other hand, such \"spill-overs\" have sometimes imported useful source-language calques and loanwords that have enriched target languages. Translators, including early translators of sacred texts, have helped shape the very languages into which they have translated.\nBecause of the laboriousness of the translation process, since the 1940s efforts have been made, with varying degrees of success, to automate translation or to mechanically aid the human translator. More recently, the rise of the Internet has fostered a world-wide market for translation services and has facilitated \"language localisation\".\nEtymology.\nThe word for the concept of \"translation\" in English and in some other European languages derives from the Latin noun , which comes from , \"across\" + , \"to bring\"\u00a0\u2013 with coming from , the past participle of ). Thus, is the \"bringing across\" of a text from one language to another.\nSome other European languages derive their words for the concept of translation from the distinct Latin noun , from , \"bring across\", in turn coming from \"across\" + \"bring\".\nThe Ancient Greek term for \"translation\" (, \"a speaking across\") has supplied English with \"metaphrase\" (word-for-word translation), as contrasted with \"paraphrase\" (rephrasing in other words, from ). \"Metaphrase\" corresponds in one of the more recent terminologies to formal equivalence, and \"paraphrase\" to dynamic equivalence.\nThe concept of metaphrase (i.e., word-for-word translation) is an imperfect concept, because a given word in a given language often carries more than one meaning, and because a similar given meaning may often be represented in a given language by more than one word. Nevertheless, metaphrase and paraphrase may be useful as ideal concepts that mark the extremes in the spectrum of possible approaches to translation.\nTheories.\nWestern theory.\nDiscussions of the theory and practice of translation reach back into antiquity and show remarkable continuities. The ancient Greeks distinguished between \"metaphrase\" (literal translation) and \"paraphrase\". This distinction was adopted by English poet and translator John Dryden (1631\u20131700), who described translation as the judicious blending of these two modes of phrasing when selecting, in the target language, \"counterparts,\" or equivalents, for the expressions used in the source language:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />When [words] appear... literally graceful, it were an injury to the author that they should be changed. But since... what is beautiful in one [language] is often barbarous, nay sometimes nonsense, in another, it would be unreasonable to limit a translator to the narrow compass of his author's words: 'tis enough if he choose out some expression which does not vitiate the sense.\nDryden cautioned, however, against the license of \"imitation\", i.e., of adapted translation: \"When a painter copies from the life... he has no privilege to alter features and lineaments...\"\nThis general formulation of the central concept of translation\u2014equivalence\u2014is as adequate as any that has been proposed since Cicero and Horace, who, in 1st-century-BCE Rome, famously and literally cautioned against translating \"word for word\" ().\nDespite occasional theoretical diversity, the actual \"practice\" of translation has hardly changed since antiquity. Except for some extreme metaphrasers in the early Christian period and the Middle Ages, and adapters in various periods (especially pre-Classical Rome, and the 18th century), translators have generally shown prudent flexibility in seeking equivalents\u2014\"literal\" where possible, paraphrastic where necessary\u2014for the original meaning and other crucial \"values\" (e.g., style, verse form, concordance with musical accompaniment or, in films, with speech articulatory movements) as determined from context.\nIn general, translators have sought to preserve the context itself by reproducing the original order of sememes, and hence word order\u2014when necessary, reinterpreting the actual grammatical structure, for example, by shifting from active to passive voice, or \"vice versa\". The grammatical differences between \"fixed-word-order\" languages (e.g. English, French, German) and \"free-word-order\" languages (e.g., Greek, Latin, Polish, Russian) have been no impediment in this regard. The particular syntax (sentence-structure) characteristics of a text's source language are adjusted to the syntactic requirements of the target language.\nWhen a target language has lacked terms that are found in a source language, translators have borrowed those terms, thereby enriching the target language. Thanks in great measure to the exchange of calques and loanwords between languages, and to their importation from other languages, there are few concepts that are \"untranslatable\" among the modern European languages. A greater problem, however, is translating terms relating to cultural concepts that have no equivalent in the target language. For full comprehension, such situations require the provision of a gloss.\nGenerally, the greater the contact and exchange that have existed between two languages, or between those languages and a third one, the greater is the ratio of metaphrase to paraphrase that may be used in translating among them. However, due to shifts in ecological niches of words, a common etymology is sometimes misleading as a guide to current meaning in one or the other language. For example, the English \"actual\" should not be confused with the cognate French (\"present\", \"current\"), the Polish (\"present\", \"current,\" \"topical\", \"timely\", \"feasible\"), the Swedish \"aktuell\" (\"topical\", \"presently of importance\"), the Russian (\"urgent\", \"topical\") or the Dutch \"actueel\" (\"current\").\nThe translator's role as a bridge for \"carrying across\" values between cultures has been discussed at least since Terence, the 2nd-century-BCE Roman adapter of Greek comedies. The translator's role is, however, by no means a passive, mechanical one, and so has also been compared to that of an artist. The main ground seems to be the concept of parallel creation found in critics such as Cicero. Dryden observed that \"Translation is a type of drawing after life...\" Comparison of the translator with a musician or actor goes back at least to Samuel Johnson's remark about Alexander Pope playing Homer on a flageolet, while Homer himself used a bassoon.\nIn the 13th century, Roger Bacon wrote that if a translation is to be true, the translator must know both languages, as well as the science that he is to translate; and finding that few translators did, he wanted to do away with translation and translators altogether.\nThe translator of the Bible into German, Martin Luther (1483\u20131546), is credited with being the first European to posit that one translates satisfactorily only toward his own language. L.G. Kelly states that since Johann Gottfried Herder in the 18th century, \"it has been axiomatic\" that one translates only toward his own language.\nCompounding the demands on the translator is the fact that no dictionary or thesaurus can ever be a fully adequate guide in translating. The Scottish historian Alexander Tytler, in his \"Essay on the Principles of Translation\" (1790), emphasized that assiduous reading is a more comprehensive guide to a language than are dictionaries. The same point, but also including listening to the \"spoken\" language, had earlier, in 1783, been made by the Polish poet and grammarian Onufry Kopczy\u0144ski.\nThe translator's special role in society is described in a posthumous 1803 essay by \"Poland's La Fontaine\", the Roman Catholic Primate of Poland, poet, encyclopedist, author of the first Polish novel, and translator from French and Greek, Ignacy Krasicki:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />[T]ranslation... is in fact an art both estimable and very difficult, and therefore is not the labor and portion of common minds; [it] should be [practiced] by those who are themselves capable of being actors, when they see greater use in translating the works of others than in their own works, and hold higher than their own glory the service that they render their country.\nOther traditions.\nDue to Western colonialism and cultural dominance in recent centuries, Western translation traditions have largely replaced other traditions. The Western traditions draw on both ancient and medieval traditions, and on more recent European innovations.\nThough earlier approaches to translation are less commonly used today, they retain importance when dealing with their products, as when historians view ancient or medieval records to piece together events which took place in non-Western or pre-Western environments. Also, though heavily influenced by Western traditions and practiced by translators taught in Western-style educational systems, Chinese and related translation traditions retain some theories and philosophies unique to the Chinese tradition.\nNear East.\nTraditions of translating material among the languages of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Assyria (Syriac language), Anatolia, and Israel (Hebrew language) go back several millennia. There exist partial translations of the Sumerian \"Epic of Gilgamesh\" (c.\u20092000 BCE) into Southwest Asian languages of the second millennium BCE.\nAn early example of a bilingual document is the 1274 BCE Treaty of Kadesh between the ancient Egyptian and Hittie empires.\nThe Babylonians were the first to establish translation as a profession.\nThe first translations of Greek and Coptic texts into Arabic, possibly indirectly from Syriac translations, seem to have been undertaken as early as the late seventh century CE.\nThe second Abbasid Caliph funded a translation bureau in Baghdad in the eighth century.\nBayt al-Hikma, the famous library in Baghdad, was generously endowed and the collection included books in many languages, and it became a leading centre for the translation of works from antiquity into Arabic, with its own Translation Department.\nTranslations into European languages from Arabic versions of lost Greek and Roman texts began in the middle of the eleventh century, when the benefits to be gained from the Arabs\u2019 knowledge of the classical texts were recognised by European scholars, particularly after the establishment of the Escuela de Traductores de Toledo in Spain.\nWilliam Caxton\u2019s \"Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres\" (Sayings of the Philosophers, 1477) was a translation into English of an eleventh-century Egyptian text which reached English via translation into Latin and then French.\nThe translation of foreign works for publishing in Arabic was revived by the establishment of the Madrasat al-Alsun (School of Tongues) in Egypt in 1813.\nAsia.\nThere is a separate tradition of translation in South, Southeast and East Asia (primarily of texts from the Indian and Chinese civilizations), connected especially with the rendering of religious, particularly Buddhist, texts and with the governance of the Chinese empire. Classical Indian translation is characterized by loose adaptation, rather than the closer translation more commonly found in Europe; and Chinese translation theory identifies various criteria and limitations in translation.\nIn the East Asian sphere of Chinese cultural influence, more important than translation \"per se\" has been the use and reading of Chinese texts, which also had substantial influence on the Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese languages, with substantial borrowings of Chinese vocabulary and writing system. Notable is the Japanese kanbun, a system for glossing Chinese texts for Japanese speakers.\nThough Indianized states in Southeast Asia often translated Sanskrit material into the local languages, the literate elites and scribes more commonly used Sanskrit as their primary language of culture and government.\nSome special aspects of translating from Chinese are illustrated in Perry Link's discussion of translating the work of the Tang dynasty poet Wang Wei (699\u2013759 CE).\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Some of the art of classical Chinese poetry [writes Link] must simply be set aside as untranslatable. The internal structure of Chinese characters has a beauty of its own, and the calligraphy in which classical poems were written is another important but untranslatable dimension. Since Chinese characters do not vary in length, and because there are exactly five characters per line in a poem like [the one that Eliot Weinberger discusses in \"19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei (with More Ways)\"], another untranslatable feature is that the written result, hung on a wall, presents a rectangle. Translators into languages whose word lengths vary can reproduce such an effect only at the risk of fatal awkwardness...\nAnother imponderable is how to imitate the 1-2, 1-2-3 rhythm in which five-syllable lines in classical Chinese poems normally are read. Chinese characters are pronounced in one syllable apiece, so producing such rhythms in Chinese is not hard and the results are unobtrusive; but any imitation in a Western language is almost inevitably stilted and distracting. Even less translatable are the patterns of tone arrangement in classical Chinese poetry. Each syllable (character) belongs to one of two categories determined by the pitch contour in which it is read; in a classical Chinese poem the patterns of alternation of the two categories exhibit parallelism and mirroring.\nOnce the untranslatables have been set aside, the problems for a translator, especially of Chinese poetry, are two: What does the translator think the poetic line says? And once he thinks he understands it, how can he render it into the target language? Most of the difficulties, according to Link, arise in addressing the second problem, \"where the impossibility of perfect answers spawns endless debate.\" Almost always at the center is the letter-versus-spirit dilemma. At the literalist extreme, efforts are made to dissect every conceivable detail about the language of the original Chinese poem. \"The dissection, though,\" writes Link, \"normally does to the art of a poem approximately what the scalpel of an anatomy instructor does to the life of a frog.\"\nChinese characters, in avoiding grammatical specificity, offer advantages to poets (and, simultaneously, challenges to poetry translators) that are associated primarily with absences of subject, number, and tense.\nIt is the norm in classical Chinese poetry, and common even in modern Chinese prose, to omit subjects; the reader or listener infers a subject. The grammars of some Western languages, however, require that a subject be stated (although this is often avoided by using a passive or impersonal construction). Most of the translators cited in Eliot Weinberger's \"19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei\" supply a subject. Weinberger points out, however, that when an \"I\" as a subject is inserted, a \"controlling individual mind of the poet\" enters and destroys the effect of the Chinese line. Without a subject, he writes, \"the experience becomes both universal and immediate to the reader.\" Another approach to the subjectlessness is to use the target language's passive voice; but this again particularizes the experience too much.\nNouns have no number in Chinese. \"If,\" writes Link, \"you want to talk in Chinese about one rose, you may, but then you use a \"measure word\" to say \"one blossom-of roseness.\"\nChinese verbs are tense-less: there are several ways to specify when something happened or will happen, but verb tense is not one of them. For poets, this creates the great advantage of ambiguity. According to Link, Weinberger's insight about subjectlessness\u2014that it produces an effect \"both universal and immediate\"\u2014applies to timelessness as well.\nLink proposes a kind of uncertainty principle that may be applicable not only to translation from the Chinese language, but to all translation:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Dilemmas about translation do not have definitive right answers (although there can be unambiguously wrong ones if misreadings of the original are involved). Any translation (except machine translation, a different case) must pass through the mind of a translator, and that mind inevitably contains its own store of perceptions, memories, and values.\nWeinberger [...] pushes this insight further when he writes that \"every reading of every poem, regardless of language, is an act of translation: translation into the reader's intellectual and emotional life.\" Then he goes still further: because a reader's mental life shifts over time, there is a sense in which \"the same poem cannot be read twice.\"\nIslamic world.\nTranslation of material into Arabic expanded after the creation of Arabic script in the 5th century, and gained great importance with the rise of Islam and Islamic empires. Arab translation initially focused primarily on politics, rendering Persian, Greek, even Chinese and Indic diplomatic materials into Arabic. It later focused on translating classical Greek and Persian works, as well as some Chinese and Indian texts, into Arabic for scholarly study at major Islamic learning centers, such as the Al-Karaouine (Fes, Morocco), Al-Azhar (Cairo, Egypt), and the Al-Nizamiyya of Baghdad. In terms of theory, Arabic translation drew heavily on earlier Near Eastern traditions as well as more contemporary Greek and Persian traditions.\nArabic translation efforts and techniques are important to Western translation traditions due to centuries of close contacts and exchanges. Especially after the Renaissance, Europeans began more intensive study of Arabic and Persian translations of classical works as well as scientific and philosophical works of Arab and oriental origins. Arabic, and to a lesser degree Persian, became important sources of material and perhaps of techniques for revitalized Western traditions, which in time would overtake the Islamic and oriental traditions.\nIn the 19th century, after the Middle East's Islamic clerics and copyists\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />had conceded defeat in their centuries-old battle to contain the corrupting effects of the printing press, [an] explosion in publishing ... ensued. Along with expanding secular education, printing transformed an overwhelmingly illiterate society into a partly literate one.\nIn the past, the sheikhs and the government had exercised a monopoly over knowledge. Now an expanding elite benefitted from a stream of information on virtually anything that interested them. Between 1880 and 1908... more than six hundred newspapers and periodicals were founded in Egypt alone.\nThe most prominent among them was \"al-Muqtataf\" ... [It] was the popular expression of a translation movement that had begun earlier in the century with military and medical manuals and highlights from the Enlightenment canon. (Montesquieu's \"Considerations on the Romans\" and F\u00e9nelon's \"Telemachus\" had been favorites.)\nA translator who contributed mightily to the advance of the Islamic Enlightenment was the Egyptian cleric Rifaa al-Tahtawi (1801\u201373), who had spent five years in Paris in the late 1820s, teaching religion to Muslim students. After returning to Cairo with the encouragement of Muhammad Ali (1769\u20131849), the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt, al\u2013Tahtawi became head of the new school of languages and embarked on an intellectual revolution by initiating a program to translate some two thousand European and Turkish volumes, ranging from ancient texts on geography and geometry to Voltaire's biography of Peter the Great, along with the \"Marseillaise\" and the entire \"Code Napol\u00e9on\". This was the biggest, most meaningful importation of foreign thought into Arabic since Abbasid times (750\u20131258).\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />In France al-Tahtawi had been struck by the way the French language... was constantly renewing itself to fit modern ways of living. Yet Arabic has its own sources of reinvention. The root system that Arabic shares with other Semitic tongues such as Hebrew is capable of expanding the meanings of words using structured consonantal variations: the word for airplane, for example, has the same root as the word for bird.\nThe movement to translate English and European texts transformed the Arabic and Ottoman Turkish languages, and new words, simplified syntax, and directness came to be valued over the previous convolutions. Educated Arabs and Turks in the new professions and the modernized civil service expressed skepticism, writes Christopher de Bellaigue, \"with a freedom that is rarely witnessed today ... No longer was legitimate knowledge defined by texts in the religious schools, interpreted for the most part with stultifying literalness. It had come to include virtually any intellectual production anywhere in the world.\" One of the neologisms that, in a way, came to characterize the infusion of new ideas via translation was \"darwiniya\", or \"Darwinism\".\nOne of the most influential liberal Islamic thinkers of the time was Muhammad Abduh (1849\u20131905), Egypt's senior judicial authority\u2014its chief mufti\u2014at the turn of the 20th century and an admirer of Darwin who in 1903 visited Darwin's exponent Herbert Spencer at his home in Brighton. Spencer's view of society as an organism with its own laws of evolution paralleled Abduh's ideas.\nAfter World War I, when Britain and France divided up the Middle East's countries, apart from Turkey, between them, pursuant to the Sykes-Picot agreement\u2014in violation of solemn wartime promises of postwar Arab autonomy\u2014there came an immediate reaction: the Muslim Brotherhood emerged in Egypt, the House of Saud took over the Hijaz, and regimes led by army officers came to power in Iran and Turkey. \"[B]oth illiberal currents of the modern Middle East,\" writes de Bellaigue, \"Islamism and militarism, received a major impetus from Western empire-builders.\" As often happens in countries undergoing social crisis, the aspirations of the Muslim world's translators and modernizers, such as Muhammad Abduh, largely had to yield to retrograde currents.\nFidelity and transparency.\nFidelity (or \"faithfulness\") and felicity (or transparency), dual ideals in translation, are often (though not always) at odds. A 17th-century French critic coined the phrase \"\" to suggest that translations can be either faithful or beautiful, but not both. Fidelity is the extent to which a translation accurately renders the meaning of the source text, without distortion. Transparency is the extent to which a translation appears to a native speaker of the target language to have originally been written in that language, and conforms to its grammar, syntax and idiom. John Dryden (1631\u20131700) wrote in his preface to the translation anthology \"Sylvae\":\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Where I have taken away some of [the original authors'] Expressions, and cut them shorter, it may possibly be on this consideration, that what was beautiful in the Greek or Latin, would not appear so shining in the English; and where I have enlarg'd them, I desire the false Criticks would not always think that those thoughts are wholly mine, but that either they are secretly in the Poet, or may be fairly deduc'd from him; or at least, if both those considerations should fail, that my own is of a piece with his, and that if he were living, and an Englishman, they are such as he wou'd probably have written.\nA translation that meets the criterion of fidelity (faithfulness) is said to be \"faithful\"; a translation that meets the criterion of transparency, \"idiomatic\". Depending on the given translation, the two qualities may not be mutually exclusive. The criteria for judging the fidelity of a translation vary according to the subject, type and use of the text, its literary qualities, its social or historical context, etc. The criteria for judging the transparency of a translation appear more straightforward: an unidiomatic translation \"sounds wrong\" and, in extreme cases of word-for-word translation, often results in patent nonsense.\nNevertheless, in certain contexts a translator may consciously seek to produce a literal translation. Translators of literary, religious, or historic texts often adhere as closely as possible to the source text, stretching the limits of the target language to produce an unidiomatic text. Also, a translator may adopt expressions from the source language in order to provide \"local color\".\nWhile current Western translation practice is dominated by the dual concepts of \"fidelity\" and \"transparency\", this has not always been the case. There have been periods, especially in pre-Classical Rome and in the 18th century, when many translators stepped beyond the bounds of translation proper into the realm of \"adaptation\". Adapted translation retains currency in some non-Western traditions. The Indian epic, the \"Ramayana\", appears in many versions in the various Indian languages, and the stories are different in each. Similar examples are to be found in medieval Christian literature, which adjusted the text to local customs and mores.\nMany non-transparent-translation theories draw on concepts from German Romanticism, the most obvious influence being the German theologian and philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher. In his seminal lecture \"On the Different Methods of Translation\" (1813) he distinguished between translation methods that move \"the writer toward [the reader]\", i.e., transparency, and those that move the \"reader toward [the author]\", i.e., an extreme fidelity to the foreignness of the source text. Schleiermacher favored the latter approach; he was motivated, however, not so much by a desire to embrace the foreign, as by a nationalist desire to oppose France's cultural domination and to promote German literature.\nIn recent decades, prominent advocates of such \"non-transparent\" translation have included the French scholar Antoine Berman, who identified twelve deforming tendencies inherent in most prose translations, and the American theorist Lawrence Venuti, who has called on translators to apply \"foreignizing\" rather than domesticating translation strategies.\nEquivalence.\nThe question of fidelity vs. transparency has also been formulated in terms of, respectively, \"\"formal\" equivalence\" and \"\"dynamic\" [or \"functional\"] equivalence\" \u2013 expressions associated with the translator Eugene Nida and originally coined to describe ways of translating the Bible; but the two approaches are applicable to any translation. \"Formal equivalence\" corresponds to \"metaphrase\", and \"dynamic equivalence\" to \"paraphrase\". \"Formal equivalence\" (sought via \"literal\" translation) attempts to render the text literally, or \"word for word\" (the latter expression being itself a word-for-word rendering of the classical Latin ) \u2013 if necessary, at the expense of features natural to the target language. By contrast, \"dynamic equivalence\" (or \"\"functional\" equivalence\") conveys the essential thoughts expressed in a source text\u2014if necessary, at the expense of literality, original sememe and word order, the source text's active vs. passive voice, etc.\nThere is, however, no sharp boundary between formal and functional equivalence. On the contrary, they represent a spectrum of translation approaches. Each is used at various times and in various contexts by the same translator, and at various points within the same text \u2013 sometimes simultaneously. Competent translation entails the judicious blending of formal and functional equivalents.\nCommon pitfalls in translation, especially when practiced by inexperienced translators, involve false equivalents such as \"false friends\" and false cognates.\nSource and target languages.\nIn the practice of translation, the source language is the language being translated from, while the target language \u2013 also called the receptor language \u2013 is the language being translated into. Difficulties in translating can arise from lexical and syntactical differences between the source language and the target language, which differences tend to be greater between two languages belonging to different language families.\nOften the source language is the translator's second language, while the target language is the translator's first language. In some geographical settings, however, the source language is the translator's first language because not enough people speak the source language as a second language. For instance, a 2005 survey found that 89% of professional Slovene translators translate into their second language, usually English. In cases where the source language is the translator's first language, the translation process has been referred to by various terms, including \"translating into a non-mother tongue\", \"translating into a second language\", \"inverse translation\", \"reverse translation\", \"service translation\", and \"translation from A to B\". The process typically begins with a full and in-depth analysis of the original text in the source language, ensuring full comprehension and understanding before the actual act of translating is approached.\nTranslation for specialized or professional fields requires a working knowledge, as well, of the pertinent terminology in the field. For example, translation of a legal text requires not only fluency in the respective languages but also familiarity with the terminology specific to the legal field in each language.\nWhile the form and style of the source language often cannot be reproduced in the target language, the meaning and content can. Linguist Roman Jakobson went so far as to assert that all cognitive experience can be classified and expressed in any living language. Linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann suggests that the limits are not of translation \"per se\" but rather of \"elegant\" translation.\nSource and target texts.\nIn translation, a source text (ST) is a text written in a given source language which is to be, or has been, translated into another language, while a target text (TT) is a translated text written in the intended target language, which is the result of a translation from a given source text. According to Jeremy Munday's definition of translation, \"the process of translation between two different written languages involves the changing of an original written text (the source text or ST) in the original verbal language (the source language or SL) into a written text (the target text or TT) in a different verbal language (the target language or TL)\". The terms 'source text' and 'target text' are preferred over 'original' and 'translation' because they do not have the same positive vs. negative value judgment.\nTranslation scholars including Eugene Nida and Peter Newmark have represented the different approaches to translation as falling broadly into source-text-oriented or target-text-oriented categories.\nBack-translation.\nA \"back-translation\" is a translation of a translated text back into the language of the original text, made without reference to the original text. Comparison of a back-translation with the original text is sometimes used as a check on the accuracy of the original translation, much as the accuracy of a mathematical operation is sometimes checked by reversing the operation. But the results of such reverse-translation operations, while useful as approximate checks, are not always precisely reliable. Back-translation must in general be less accurate than back-calculation because linguistic symbols (words) are often ambiguous, whereas mathematical symbols are intentionally unequivocal. In the context of machine translation, a back-translation is also called a \"round-trip translation.\" When translations are produced of material used in medical clinical trials, such as informed-consent forms, a back-translation is often required by the ethics committee or institutional review board.\nMark Twain provided humorously telling evidence for the frequent unreliability of back-translation when he issued his own back-translation of a French translation of his short story, \"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County\". He published his back-translation in a 1903 volume together with his English-language original, the French translation, and a \"Private History of the 'Jumping Frog' Story\". The latter volumne included a synopsized adaptation of his story that Twain stated had appeared, unattributed to Twain, in a Professor Sidgwick's \"Greek Prose Composition\" (p.\u00a0116) under the title, \"The Athenian and the Frog\"; the adaptation had for a time been taken for an independent ancient Greek precursor to Twain's \"Jumping Frog\" story.\nWhen a document survives only in translation, the original having been lost, researchers sometimes undertake back-translation in an effort to reconstruct the original text. An example involves the novel \"The Saragossa Manuscript\" by the Polish aristocrat Jan Potocki (1761\u20131815), who wrote the novel in French and anonymously published fragments in 1804 and 1813\u201314. Portions of the original French-language manuscript were subsequently lost; however, the missing fragments survived in a Polish translation, made by Edmund Chojecki in 1847 from a complete French copy that has since been lost. French-language versions of the complete \"Saragossa Manuscript\" have since been produced, based on extant French-language fragments and on French-language versions that have been back-translated from Chojecki's Polish version.\nMany works by the influential Classical physician Galen survive only in medieval Arabic translation. Some survive only in Renaissance Latin translations from the Arabic, thus at a second remove from the original. To better understand Galen, scholars have attempted back-translation of such works in order to reconstruct the original Greek.\nWhen historians suspect that a document is actually a translation from another language, back-translation into that hypothetical original language can provide supporting evidence by showing that such characteristics as idioms, puns, peculiar grammatical structures, etc., are in fact derived from the original language. For example, the known text of the \"Till Eulenspiegel\" folk tales is in High German but contains puns that work only when back-translated to Low German. This seems clear evidence that these tales (or at least large portions of them) were originally written in Low German and translated into High German by an over-metaphrastic translator.\nSupporters of Aramaic primacy\u2014the view that the Christian New Testament or its sources were originally written in the Aramaic language\u2014seek to prove their case by showing that difficult passages in the existing Greek text of the New Testament make much more sense when back-translated to Aramaic: that, for example, some incomprehensible references are in fact Aramaic puns that do not work in Greek. Due to similar indications, it is believed that the 2nd century Gnostic Gospel of Judas, which survives only in Coptic, was originally written in Greek.\nJohn Dryden (1631\u20131700), the dominant English-language literary figure of his age, illustrates, in his use of back-translation, translators' influence on the evolution of languages and literary styles. Dryden is believed to be the first person to posit that English sentences should not end in prepositions because Latin sentences cannot end in prepositions. Dryden created the proscription against \"preposition stranding\" in 1672 when he objected to Ben Jonson's 1611 phrase, \"the bodies that those souls were frighted from\", though he did not provide the rationale for his preference. Dryden often translated his writing into Latin, to check whether his writing was concise and elegant, Latin being considered an elegant and long-lived language with which to compare; then he back-translated his writing back to English according to Latin-grammar usage. As Latin does not have sentences ending in prepositions, Dryden may have applied Latin grammar to English, thus forming the controversial rule of no sentence-ending prepositions, subsequently adopted by other writers.\nTranslators.\nCompetent translators show the following attributes:\nA competent translator is not only bilingual but bicultural. A language is not merely a collection of words and of rules of grammar and syntax for generating sentences, but also a vast interconnecting system of connotations and cultural references whose mastery, writes linguist Mario Pei, \"comes close to being a lifetime job.\" The complexity of the translator's task cannot be overstated; one author suggests that becoming an accomplished translator\u2014after having already acquired a good basic knowledge of both languages and cultures\u2014may require a minimum of ten years' experience. Viewed in this light, it is a serious misconception to assume that a person who has fair fluency in two languages will, by virtue of that fact alone, be consistently competent to translate between them.\nMichael Wood, a Princeton University emeritus professor, writes: \"[T]ranslation, like language itself, involves contexts, conventions, class, irony, posture and many other regions where speech acts hang out. This is why it helps to compare translations [of a given work].\"\nEmily Wilson, a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania and herself a translator, writes: \"[I]t is [hard] to produce a good literary translation. This is certainly true of translations of ancient Greek and Roman texts, but it is also true of literary translation in general: it is very difficult. Most readers of foreign languages are not translators; most writers are not translators. Translators have to read and write at the same time, as if always playing multiple instruments in a one-person band. And most one-person bands do not sound very good.\"\nWhen in 1921, three years before his death, the English-language novelist Joseph Conrad \u2013 who had long had little contact with everyday spoken Polish \u2013 attempted to translate into English Bruno Winawer's short Polish-language play, \"The Book of Job\", he predictably missed many crucial nuances of contemporary Polish language.\nThe translator's role, in relation to the original text, has been compared to the roles of other interpretive artists, e.g., a musician or actor who interprets a work of musical or dramatic art. Translating, especially a text of any complexity (like other human activities), involves \"interpretation\": choices must be made, which implies interpretation. Mark Polizzotti writes: \"A good translation offers not a reproduction of the work but an interpretation, a re-representation, just as the performance of a play or a sonata is a representation of the script or the score, one among many possible representations.\" A translation of a text of any complexity is \u2013 as, itself, a work of art \u2013 unique and unrepeatable.\nConrad, whose writings Zdzis\u0142aw Najder has described as verging on \"auto-translation\" from Conrad's Polish and French linguistic personae, advised his niece and Polish translator Aniela Zag\u00f3rska: \"[D]on't trouble to be too scrupulous ... I may tell you (in French) that in my opinion \"il vaut mieux interpr\u00e9ter que traduire\" [it is better to interpret than to translate] ...\"Il s'agit donc de trouver les \u00e9quivalents. Et l\u00e0, ma ch\u00e8re, je vous prie laissez vous guider plut\u00f4t par votre temp\u00e9rament que par une conscience s\u00e9v\u00e8re ...\" [It is, then, a question of finding the equivalent expressions. And there, my dear, I beg you to let yourself be guided more by your temperament than by a strict conscience...]\" Conrad advised another translator that the prime requisite for a good translation is that it be \"idiomatic\". \"For in the idiom is the \"clearness\" of a language and the language's force and its picturesqueness\u2014by which last I mean the picture-producing power of arranged words.\" Conrad thought C.K. Scott Moncrieff's English translation of Marcel Proust's \"\u00c0 la recherche du temps perdu\" (\"In Search of Lost Time\"\u2014or, in Scott Moncrieff's rendering, \"Remembrance of Things Past\") to be preferable to the French original.\nEmily Wilson writes that \"translation always involves interpretation, and [requires] every translator... to think as deeply as humanly possible about each verbal, poetic, and interpretative choice.\" Translation of other than the simplest brief texts requires painstakingly close reading of the source text and the draft translation, so as to resolve the ambiguities inherent in language and thereby to asymptotically approach the most accurate rendering of the source text.\nPart of the ambiguity, for a translator, involves the structure of human language. Psychologist and neural scientist Gary Marcus notes that \"virtually every sentence [that people generate] is ambiguous, often in multiple ways. Our brain is so good at comprehending language that we do not usually notice.\" An example of linguistic ambiguity is the \"pronoun disambiguation problem\" (\"PDP\"): a machine has no way of determining to whom or what a pronoun in a sentence\u2014such as \"he\", \"she\" or \"it\"\u2014refers. Such disambiguation is not infallible by a human, either.\nAmbiguity is a concern both to translators and \u2013 as the writings of poet and literary critic William Empson have demonstrated \u2013 to literary critics. Ambiguity may be desirable, indeed essential, in poetry and diplomacy; it can be more problematic in ordinary prose.\nIndividual expressions \u2013 words, phrases, sentences \u2013 are fraught with connotations. As Empson demonstrates, any piece of language seems susceptible to \"alternative reactions\", or as Joseph Conrad once wrote, \"No English word has clean edges.\" All expressions, Conrad thought, carried so many connotations as to be little more than \"instruments for exciting blurred emotions.\"\nChristopher Kasparek also cautions that competent translation \u2013 analogously to the dictum, in mathematics, of Kurt G\u00f6del's incompleteness theorems \u2013 generally requires more information about the subject matter than is present in the actual source text. Therefore, translation of a text of any complexity typically requires some research on the translator's part.\nA translator faces two contradictory tasks: when translating, to strive for omniscience concerning the text; and, when reviewing the resulting translation, to adopt the reader's unfamiliarity with it. Analogously, \"[i]n the process, the translator is also constantly seesawing between the respective linguistic and cultural features of his two languages.\"\nThus, writes Kasparek, \"Translating a text of any complexity, like the performing of a musical or dramatic work, involves \"interpretation\": choices must be made, which entails interpretation. Bernard Shaw, aspiring to felicitous understanding of literary works, wrote in the preface to his 1901 volume, \"Three Plays for Puritans\": 'I would give half a dozen of Shakespeare's plays for one of the prefaces he ought to have written.'\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />It is due to the inescapable necessity of interpretation that \u2013 \"pace\" the story about the 3rd century BCE Septuagint translations of some biblical Old Testament books from Hebrew into Koine Greek \u2013 no two translations of a literary work, by different hands or by the same hand at different times, are likely to be identical. As has been observed \u2013 by Leonardo da Vinci? Paul Valery? E.M. Forster? Pablo Picasso? by all of them? \u2013 \"A work of art is never finished, only abandoned.\"\nTranslators may render only parts of the original text, provided that they inform readers of that action. But a translator should not assume the role of censor and surreptitiously delete or bowdlerize passages merely to please a political or moral interest.\nTranslating has served as a school of writing for many an author, much as the copying of masterworks of painting has schooled many a novice painter. A translator who can competently render an author's thoughts into the translator's own language, should certainly be able to adequately render, in his own language, any thoughts of his own. Translating (like analytic philosophy) compels precise analysis of language elements and of their usage. In 1946 the poet Ezra Pound, then at St. Elizabeth's Hospital, in Washington, D.C., advised a visitor, the 18-year-old beginning poet W.S. Merwin: \"The work of translation is the best teacher you'll ever have.\" Merwin, translator-poet who took Pound's advice to heart, writes of translation as an \"impossible, unfinishable\" art.\nA translator acts as a bridge between two languages and cultures. When he has completed the first draft of a translation, he stands at the bridge's midpoint. Only after he has fully converted the vocabulary, idioms, grammar, and syntax of the source text to those of the target language, does he arrive at the bridge's other end.\nTranslators, including monks who spread Buddhist texts in East Asia, and the early modern European translators of the Bible, in the course of their work have shaped the very languages into which they have translated. They have acted as bridges for conveying knowledge between cultures; and along with ideas, they have imported from the source languages, into their own languages, loanwords and calques of grammatical structures, idioms, and vocabulary.\nInterpreting.\nInterpreting is the facilitation of oral or sign-language communication, either simultaneously or consecutively, between two, or among three or more, speakers who are not speaking, or signing, the same language. The term \"interpreting,\" rather than \"interpretation,\" is preferentially used for this activity by Anglophone interpreters and translators, to avoid confusion with other meanings of the word \"interpretation.\"\nUnlike English, many languages do not employ two separate words to denote the activities of written and live-communication (oral or sign-language) translators. Even English does not always make the distinction, frequently using \"translating\" as a synonym for \"interpreting.\"\nInterpreters have sometimes played crucial roles in human history. A prime example is La Malinche, also known as \"Malintzin\", \"Malinalli\" and \"Do\u00f1a Marina\", an early-16th-century Nahua woman from the Mexican Gulf Coast. As a child she had been sold or given to Maya slave-traders from Xicalango, and thus had become bilingual. Subsequently, given along with other women to the invading Spaniards, she became instrumental in the Spanish conquest of Mexico, acting as interpreter, adviser, intermediary and lover to Hern\u00e1n Cort\u00e9s.\nNearly three centuries later, in the United States, a comparable role as interpreter was played for the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804\u20136 by Sacagawea. As a child, the Lemhi Shoshone woman had been kidnapped by Hidatsa Indians and thus had become bilingual. Sacagawea facilitated the expedition's traverse of the North American continent to the Pacific Ocean.\nThe famous Chinese man of letters Lin Shu (1852 \u2013 1924), who knew no foreign languages, rendered Western literary classics into Chinese with the help of his friend Wang Shouchang (\u738b\u58fd\u660c), who had studied in France. Wang interpreted the texts for Lin, who rendered them into Chinese. Lin's first such translation, \u5df4\u9ece\u8336\u82b1\u5973\u907a\u4e8b (\"Past Stories of the Camellia-woman of Paris\" \u2013 Alexandre Dumas, fils's, \"La Dame aux Cam\u00e9lias\"), published in 1899, was an immediate success and was followed by many more translations from the French and the English.\nSworn translation.\nSworn translation, also called \"certified translation,\" aims at legal equivalence between two documents written in different languages. It is performed by someone authorized to do so by local regulations, which vary widely from country to country. Some countries recognize self-declared competence. Others require the translator to be an official state appointee. In some countries, such as the United Kingdom, certain government institutions require that translators be accredited by certain translation institutes or associations in order to be able to carry out certified translations.\nTelephone.\nMany commercial services exist that will interpret spoken language via telephone. There is also at least one custom-built mobile device that does the same thing. The device connects users to human interpreters who can translate between English and 180 other languages.\nInternet.\nWeb-based human translation is generally favored by companies and individuals that wish to secure more accurate translations. In view of the frequent inaccuracy of machine translations, human translation remains the most reliable, most accurate form of translation available. With the recent emergence of translation crowdsourcing, translation memory techniques, and internet applications, translation agencies have been able to provide on-demand human-translation services to businesses, individuals, and enterprises.\nWhile not instantaneous like its machine counterparts such as Google Translate and Babel Fish (now defunct), as of 2010 web-based human translation has been gaining popularity by providing relatively fast, accurate translation of business communications, legal documents, medical records, and software localization. Web-based human translation also appeals to private website users and bloggers. Contents of websites are translatable but URLs of websites are not translatable into other languages. Language tools on the internet provide help in understanding text.\nComputer assist.\nComputer-assisted translation (CAT), also called \"computer-aided translation,\" \"machine-aided human translation\" (MAHT) and \"interactive translation,\" is a form of translation wherein a human translator creates a target text with the assistance of a computer program. The machine supports a human translator.\nComputer-assisted translation can include standard dictionary and grammar software. The term, however, normally refers to a range of specialized programs available to the translator, including translation memory, terminology-management, concordance, and alignment programs.\nThese tools speed up and facilitate human translation, but they do not provide translation. The latter is a function of tools known broadly as machine translation. The tools speed up the translation process by assisting the human translator by memorizing or committing translations to a database (translation memory database) so that if the same sentence occurs in the same project or a future project, the content can be reused. This translation reuse leads to cost savings, better consistency and shorter project timelines.\nMachine translation.\nMachine translation (MT) is a process whereby a computer program analyzes a source text and, in principle, produces a target text without human intervention. In reality, however, machine translation typically does involve human intervention, in the form of pre-editing and post-editing. With proper terminology work, with preparation of the source text for machine translation (pre-editing), and with reworking of the machine translation by a human translator (post-editing), commercial machine-translation tools can produce useful results, especially if the machine-translation system is integrated with a translation memory or translation management system.\nUnedited machine translation is publicly available through tools on the Internet such as Google Translate, Almaany, Babylon, DeepL Translator, and StarDict. These produce rough translations that, under favorable circumstances, approximate the meaning of the source text. With the Internet, translation software can help non-native-speaking individuals understand web pages published in other languages. Whole-page-translation tools are of limited utility, however, since they offer only a limited potential understanding of the original author's intent and context; translated pages tend to be more erroneously humorous and confusing than enlightening.\nInteractive translations with pop-up windows are becoming more popular. These tools show one or more possible equivalents for each word or phrase. Human operators merely need to select the likeliest equivalent as the mouse glides over the foreign-language text. Possible equivalents can be grouped by pronunciation. Also, companies such as Ectaco produce pocket devices that provide machine translations.\nRelying exclusively on unedited machine translation, however, ignores the fact that communication in human language is context-embedded and that it takes a person to comprehend the context of the original text with a reasonable degree of probability. It is certainly true that even purely human-generated translations are prone to error; therefore, to ensure that a machine-generated translation will be useful to a human being and that publishable-quality translation is achieved, such translations must be reviewed and edited by a human. Claude Piron writes that machine translation, at its best, automates the easier part of a translator's job; the harder and more time-consuming part usually involves doing extensive research to resolve ambiguities in the source text, which the grammatical and lexical exigencies of the target language require to be resolved. Such research is a necessary prelude to the pre-editing necessary in order to provide input for machine-translation software, such that the output will not be meaningless.\nThe weaknesses of pure machine translation, unaided by human expertise, are those of artificial intelligence itself. As of 2018, professional translator Mark Polizzotti held that machine translation, by Google Translate and the like, was unlikely to threaten human translators anytime soon, because machines would never grasp nuance and connotation. Writes Paul Taylor: \"Perhaps there is a limit to what a computer can do without knowing that it is manipulating imperfect representations of an external reality.\"\nGary Marcus notes that a so far insuperable stumbling block to artificial intelligence is an incapacity for reliable disambiguation. \"[V]irtually every sentence [that people generate] is ambiguous, often in multiple ways.\" A prominent example is known as the \"pronoun disambiguation problem\": a machine has no way of determining to whom or what a pronoun in a sentence\u2014such as \"he\", \"she\" or \"it\"\u2014refers.\nJames Gleick writes: \"Agency is what distinguishes us from machines. For biological creatures, reason and purpose come from acting in the world and experiencing the consequences. Artificial intelligences \u2013 disembodied, strangers to blood, sweat, and tears \u2013 have no occasion for that.\"\nLiterary translation.\nTranslation of literary works (novels, short stories, plays, poems, etc.) is considered a literary pursuit in its own right. Notable in Canadian literature \"specifically\" as translators are figures such as Sheila Fischman, Robert Dickson, and Linda Gaboriau; and the Canadian Governor General's Awards annually present prizes for the best English-to-French and French-to-English literary translations.\nOther writers, among many who have made a name for themselves as literary translators, include Vasily Zhukovsky, Tadeusz Boy-\u017bele\u0144ski, Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges, Robert Stiller, Lydia Davis, Haruki Murakami, Achy Obejas, and Jhumpa Lahiri.\nIn the 2010s a substantial gender imbalance was noted in literary translation into English, with far more male writers being translated than women writers. In 2014 Meytal Radzinski launched the \"Women in Translation\" campaign to address this.\nHistory.\nThe first important translation in the West was that of the Septuagint, a collection of Jewish Scriptures translated into early Koine Greek in Alexandria between the 3rd and 1st centuries BCE. The dispersed Jews had forgotten their ancestral language and needed Greek versions (translations) of their Scriptures.\nThroughout the Middle Ages, Latin was the \"lingua franca\" of the western learned world. The 9th-century Alfred the Great, king of Wessex in England, was far ahead of his time in commissioning vernacular Anglo-Saxon translations of Bede's \"Ecclesiastical History\" and Boethius' \"Consolation of Philosophy\". Meanwhile, the Christian Church frowned on even partial adaptations of St. Jerome's Vulgate of c.\u2009384 CE, the standard Latin Bible.\nIn Asia, the spread of Buddhism led to large-scale ongoing translation efforts spanning well over a thousand years. The Tangut Empire was especially efficient in such efforts; exploiting the then newly invented block printing, and with the full support of the government (contemporary sources describe the Emperor and his mother personally contributing to the translation effort, alongside sages of various nationalities), the Tanguts took mere decades to translate volumes that had taken the Chinese centuries to render.\nThe Arabs undertook large-scale efforts at translation. Having conquered the Greek world, they made Arabic versions of its philosophical and scientific works. During the Middle Ages, translations of some of these Arabic versions were made into Latin, chiefly at C\u00f3rdoba in Spain. King Alfonso X the Wise of Castile in the 13th century promoted this effort by founding a \"Schola Traductorum\" (School of Translation) in Toledo. There Arabic texts, Hebrew texts, and Latin texts were translated into the other tongues by Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars, who also argued the merits of their respective religions. Latin translations of Greek and original Arab works of scholarship and science helped advance European Scholasticism, and thus European science and culture.\nThe broad historic trends in Western translation practice may be illustrated on the example of translation into the English language.\nThe first fine translations into English were made in the 14th century by Geoffrey Chaucer, who adapted from the Italian of Giovanni Boccaccio in his own \"Knight's Tale\" and \"Troilus and Criseyde\"; began a translation of the French-language \"Roman de la Rose\"; and completed a translation of Boethius from the Latin. Chaucer founded an English poetic tradition on adaptations and translations from those earlier-established literary languages.\nThe first great English translation was the Wycliffe Bible (c.\u20091382), which showed the weaknesses of an underdeveloped English prose. Only at the end of the 15th century did the great age of English prose translation begin with Thomas Malory's \"Le Morte d'Arthur\"\u2014an adaptation of Arthurian romances so free that it can, in fact, hardly be called a true translation. The first great Tudor translations are, accordingly, the Tyndale New Testament (1525), which influenced the Authorized Version (1611), and Lord Berners' version of Jean Froissart's \"Chronicles\" (1523\u201325).\nMeanwhile, in Renaissance Italy, a new period in the history of translation had opened in Florence with the arrival, at the court of Cosimo de' Medici, of the Byzantine scholar Georgius Gemistus Pletho shortly before the fall of Constantinople to the Turks (1453). A Latin translation of Plato's works was undertaken by Marsilio Ficino. This and Erasmus' Latin edition of the New Testament led to a new attitude to translation. For the first time, readers demanded rigor of rendering, as philosophical and religious beliefs depended on the exact words of Plato, Aristotle and Jesus.\nNon-scholarly literature, however, continued to rely on \"adaptation\". France's \"Pl\u00e9iade\", England's Tudor poets, and the Elizabethan translators adapted themes by Horace, Ovid, Petrarch and modern Latin writers, forming a new poetic style on those models. The English poets and translators sought to supply a new public, created by the rise of a middle class and the development of printing, with works such as the original authors \"would have written\", had they been writing in England in that day.\nThe Elizabethan period of translation saw considerable progress beyond mere paraphrase toward an ideal of stylistic equivalence, but even to the end of this period, which actually reached to the middle of the 17th century, there was no concern for verbal accuracy.\nIn the second half of the 17th century, the poet John Dryden sought to make Virgil speak \"in words such as he would probably have written if he were living and an Englishman\". As great as Dryden's poem is, however, one is reading Dryden, and not experiencing the Roman poet's concision. Similarly, Homer arguably suffers from Alexander Pope's endeavor to reduce the Greek poet's \"wild paradise\" to order. Both works live on as worthy \"English\" epics, more than as a point of access to the Latin or Greek.\nThroughout the 18th century, the watchword of translators was ease of reading. Whatever they did not understand in a text, or thought might bore readers, they omitted. They cheerfully assumed that their own style of expression was the best, and that texts should be made to conform to it in translation. For scholarship they cared no more than had their predecessors, and they did not shrink from making translations from translations in third languages, or from languages that they hardly knew, or\u2014as in the case of James Macpherson's \"translations\" of Ossian\u2014from texts that were actually of the \"translator's\" own composition.\nThe 19th century brought new standards of accuracy and style. In regard to accuracy, observes J.M. Cohen, the policy became \"the text, the whole text, and nothing but the text\", except for any bawdy passages and the addition of copious explanatory footnotes. In regard to style, the Victorians' aim, achieved through far-reaching metaphrase (literality) or \"pseudo\"-metaphrase, was to constantly remind readers that they were reading a \"foreign\" classic. An exception was the outstanding translation in this period, Edward FitzGerald's \"Rubaiyat\" of Omar Khayyam (1859), which achieved its Oriental flavor largely by using Persian names and discreet Biblical echoes and actually drew little of its material from the Persian original.\nIn advance of the 20th century, a new pattern was set in 1871 by Benjamin Jowett, who translated Plato into simple, straightforward language. Jowett's example was not followed, however, until well into the new century, when accuracy rather than style became the principal criterion.\nModern translation.\nAs a language evolves, texts in an earlier version of the language\u2014original texts, or old translations\u2014may become difficult for modern readers to understand. Such a text may therefore be translated into more modern language, producing a \"modern translation\" (e.g., a \"modern English translation\" or \"modernized translation\").\nSuch modern rendering is applied either to literature from classical languages such as Latin or Greek, notably to the Bible (see \"Modern English Bible translations\"), or to literature from an earlier stage of the same language, as with the works of William Shakespeare (which are largely understandable by a modern audience, though with some difficulty) or with Geoffrey Chaucer's Middle-English \"Canterbury Tales\" (which is understandable to most modern readers only through heavy dependence on footnotes). In 2015 the Oregon Shakespeare Festival commissioned professional translation of the entire Shakespeare canon, including disputed works such as \"Edward III\", into contemporary vernacular English; in 2019, off-off-Broadway, the canon was premiered in a month-long series of staged readings.\nModern translation is applicable to any language with a long literary history. For example, in Japanese the 11th-century \"Tale of Genji\" is generally read in modern translation (see \"\"Genji:\" modern readership\").\nModern translation often involves literary scholarship and textual revision, as there is frequently not one single canonical text. This is particularly noteworthy in the case of the Bible and Shakespeare, where modern scholarship can result in substantive textual changes.\nAnna North writes: \"Translating the long-dead language Homer used \u2014 a variant of ancient Greek called Homeric Greek \u2014 into contemporary English is no easy task, and translators bring their own skills, opinions, and stylistic sensibilities to the text. The result is that every translation is different, almost a new poem in itself.\" An example is Emily Wilson's 2017 translation of Homer's \"Odyssey\", where by conscious choice Wilson \"lays bare the morals of its time and place, and invites us to consider how different they are from our own, and how similar.\"\nModern translation meets with opposition from some traditionalists. In English, some readers prefer the Authorized King James Version of the Bible to modern translations, and Shakespeare in the original of c.\u20091600 to modern translations.\nAn opposite process involves translating modern literature into classical languages, for the purpose of extensive reading (for examples, see \"List of Latin translations of modern literature\").\nPoetry.\nViews on the possibility of satisfactorily translating poetry show a broad spectrum, depending partly on the degree of latitude desired by the translator in regard to a poem's formal features (rhythm, rhyme, verse form, etc.), but also relating to how much of the suggestiveness and imagery in the host poem can be recaptured or approximated in the target language. In his 1997 book \"Le Ton beau de Marot\", Douglas Hofstadter argued that a good translation of a poem must convey as much as possible not only of its literal meaning but also of its form and structure (meter, rhyme or alliteration scheme, etc.).\nThe Russian-born linguist and semiotician Roman Jakobson, however, had in his 1959 paper \"On Linguistic Aspects of Translation\", declared that \"poetry by definition [is] untranslatable\". Vladimir Nabokov, another Russian-born author, took a view similar to Jakobson's. He considered rhymed, metrical, versed poetry to be in principle untranslatable and therefore rendered his 1964 English translation of Alexander Pushkin's \"Eugene Onegin\" in prose.\nHofstadter, in \"Le Ton beau de Marot\", criticized Nabokov's attitude toward verse translation. In 1999 Hofstadter published his own translation of \"Eugene Onegin\", in verse form.\nHowever, a number of more contemporary literary translators of poetry lean toward Alexander von Humboldt's notion of language as a \"third universe\" existing \"midway between the phenomenal reality of the 'empirical world' and the internalized structures of consciousness.\" Perhaps this is what poet Sholeh Wolp\u00e9, translator of the 12th-century Iranian epic poem \"The Conference of the Birds\", means when she writes: Twelfth-century Persian and contemporary English are as different as sky and sea. The best I can do as a poet is to reflect one into the other.\u00a0The sea can reflect the sky with its moving stars, shifting clouds, gestations of the moon, and migrating birds\u2014but ultimately the sea is not the sky. By nature, it is liquid. It ripples. There are waves. If you are a fish living in the sea, you can only understand the sky if its reflection becomes part of the water. Therefore, this translation of \"The Conference of the Birds\", while faithful to the original text, aims at its re-creation into a still living and breathing work of literature.Poet Sherod Santos writes: \"The task is not to reproduce the content, but with the flint and the steel of one's own language to spark what Robert Lowell has called 'the fire and finish of the original.'\"\nAccording to Walter Benjamin:While a poet's words endure in his own language, even the greatest translation is destined to become part of the growth of its own language and eventually to perish with its renewal. Translation is so far removed from being the sterile equation of two dead languages that of all literary forms it is the one charged with the special mission of watching over the maturing process of the original language and the birth pangs of its own.Gregory Hays, in the course of discussing Roman adapted translations of ancient Greek literature, makes approving reference to some views on the translating of poetry expressed by David Bellos, an accomplished French-to-English translator. Hays writes:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Among the \"id\u00e9es re\u00e7ues\" [received ideas] skewered by David Bellos is the old saw that \"poetry is what gets lost in translation.\" The saying is often attributed to Robert Frost, but as Bellos notes, the attribution is as dubious as the idea itself. A translation is an assemblage of words, and as such it can contain as much or as little poetry as any other such assemblage. The Japanese even have a word (\"ch\u014dyaku\", roughly \"hypertranslation\") to designate a version that deliberately improves on the original.\nBook titles.\nBook-title translations can be either descriptive or symbolic. Descriptive book titles, for example Antoine de Saint-Exup\u00e9ry's \"Le Petit Prince\" (The Little Prince), are meant to be informative, and can name the protagonist, and indicate the theme of the book. An example of a symbolic book title is Stieg Larsson's \"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo\", whose original Swedish title is \"M\u00e4n som hatar kvinnor\" (Men Who Hate Women). Such symbolic book titles usually indicate the theme, issues, or atmosphere of the work.\nWhen translators are working with long book titles, the translated titles are often shorter and indicate the theme of the book.\nPlays.\nThe translation of plays poses many problems such as the added element of actors, speech duration, translation literalness, and the relationship between the arts of drama and acting. Successful play translators are able to create language that allows the actor and the playwright to work together effectively. Play translators must also take into account several other aspects: the final performance, varying theatrical and acting traditions, characters' speaking styles, modern theatrical discourse, and even the acoustics of the auditorium, i.e., whether certain words will have the same effect on the new audience as they had on the original audience.\nAudiences in Shakespeare's time were more accustomed than modern playgoers to actors having longer stage time. Modern translators tend to simplify the sentence structures of earlier dramas, which included compound sentences with intricate hierarchies of subordinate clauses.\nChinese literature.\nIn translating Chinese literature, translators struggle to find true fidelity in translating into the target language. In \"The Poem Behind the Poem\", Barnstone argues that poetry \"can't be made to sing through a mathematics that doesn't factor in the creativity of the translator\".\nA notable piece of work translated into English is the \"Wen Xuan\", an anthology representative of major works of Chinese literature. Translating this work requires a high knowledge of the genres presented in the book, such as poetic forms, various prose types including memorials, letters, proclamations, praise poems, edicts, and historical, philosophical and political disquisitions, threnodies and laments for the dead, and examination essays. Thus the literary translator must be familiar with the writings, lives, and thought of a large number of its 130 authors, making the \"Wen Xuan\" one of the most difficult literary works to translate.\nSung texts.\nTranslation of a text that is sung in vocal music for the purpose of singing in another language\u2014sometimes called \"singing translation\"\u2014is closely linked to translation of poetry because most vocal music, at least in the Western tradition, is set to verse, especially verse in regular patterns with rhyme. (Since the late 19th century, musical setting of prose and free verse has also been practiced in some art music, though popular music tends to remain conservative in its retention of stanzaic forms with or without refrains.) A rudimentary example of translating poetry for singing is church hymns, such as the German chorales translated into English by Catherine Winkworth.\nTranslation of sung texts is generally much more restrictive than translation of poetry, because in the former there is little or no freedom to choose between a versified translation and a translation that dispenses with verse structure. One might modify or omit rhyme in a singing translation, but the assignment of syllables to specific notes in the original musical setting places great challenges on the translator. There is the option in prose sung texts, less so in verse, of adding or deleting a syllable here and there by subdividing or combining notes, respectively, but even with prose the process is almost like strict verse translation because of the need to stick as closely as possible to the original prosody of the sung melodic line.\nOther considerations in writing a singing translation include repetition of words and phrases, the placement of rests and punctuation, the quality of vowels sung on high notes, and rhythmic features of the vocal line that may be more natural to the original language than to the target language. A sung translation may be considerably or completely different from the original, thus resulting in a contrafactum.\nTranslations of sung texts\u2014whether of the above type meant to be sung or of a more or less literal type meant to be read\u2014are also used as aids to audiences, singers and conductors, when a work is being sung in a language not known to them. The most familiar types are translations presented as subtitles or surtitles projected during opera performances, those inserted into concert programs, and those that accompany commercial audio CDs of vocal music. In addition, professional and amateur singers often sing works in languages they do not know (or do not know well), and translations are then used to enable them to understand the meaning of the words they are singing.\nReligious texts.\nAn important role in history has been played by translation of religious texts. Such translations may be influenced by tension between the text and the religious values the translators wish to convey. For example, Buddhist monks who translated the Indian sutras into Chinese occasionally adjusted their translations to better reflect China's distinct culture, emphasizing notions such as filial piety.\nOne of the first recorded instances of translation in the West was the 3rd century BCE rendering of some books of the biblical Old Testament from Hebrew into Koine Greek. The translation is known as the \"Septuagint\", a name that refers to the supposedly seventy translators (seventy-two, in some versions) who were commissioned to translate the Bible at Alexandria, Egypt. According to legend, each translator worked in solitary confinement in his own cell, and all seventy versions proved identical. The \"Septuagint\" became the source text for later translations into many languages, including Latin, Coptic, Armenian, and Georgian.\nStill considered one of the greatest translators in history, for having rendered the Bible into Latin, is Jerome (347\u2013420 CE), the patron saint of translators. For centuries the Roman Catholic Church used his translation (known as the Vulgate), though even this translation stirred controversy. By contrast with Jerome's contemporary, Augustine of Hippo (354\u2013430 CE), who endorsed precise translation, Jerome believed in adaptation, and sometimes invention, in order to more effectively bring across the meaning. Jerome's colorful Vulgate translation of the Bible includes some crucial instances of \"overdetermination\". For example, Isaiah's prophecy announcing that the Savior will be born of a virgin, uses the word \"'almah\", which is also used to describe the dancing girls at Solomon's court, and simply means young and nubile. Jerome, writes Marina Warner, translates it as \"virgo\", \"adding divine authority to the virulent cult of sexual disgust that shaped Christian moral theology (the [Moslem] \"Quran\", free from this linguistic trap, does not connect Mariam/Mary's miraculous nature with moral horror of sex).\" The apple that Eve offered to Adam, according to Mark Polizzotti, could equally well have been an apricot, orange, or banana; but Jerome liked the pun \"malus/malum\" (apple/evil).\nPope Francis has suggested that the phrase \"lead us not into temptation\", in the Lord's Prayer found in the Gospels of Matthew (the first Gospel, written c.\u200980\u201390 CE) and Luke (the third Gospel, written c.\u200980\u2013110 CE), should more properly be translated, \"do not let us fall into temptation\", commenting that God does not lead people into temptation\u2014Satan does. Some important early Christian authors interpreted the Bible's Greek text and Jerome's Latin Vulgate similarly to Pope Francis. A.J.B. Higgins in 1943 showed that among the earliest Christian authors, the understanding and even the text of this devotional verse underwent considerable changes. These ancient writers suggest that, even if the Greek and Latin texts are left unmodified, something like \"do not let us fall\" could be an acceptable English rendering. Higgins cited Tertullian, the earliest of the Latin Church Fathers (c.\u2009155\u00a0\u2013 c.\u2009240 CE, \"do not allow us to be led\") and Cyprian (c.\u2009200\u2013258 CE, \"do not allow us to be led into temptation\"). A later author, Ambrose (c.\u2009340\u2013397 CE), followed Cyprian's interpretation. Augustine of Hippo (354\u2013430), familiar with Jerome's Latin Vulgate rendering, observed that \"many people... say it this way: 'and do not allow us to be led into temptation.'\"\nIn 863 CE the brothers Saints Cyril and Methodius, the Byzantine Empire's \"Apostles to the Slavs\", began translating parts of the Bible into the Old Church Slavonic language, using the Glagolitic script that they had devised, based on the Greek alphabet.\nThe periods preceding and contemporary with the Protestant Reformation saw translations of the Bible into vernacular (local) European languages\u2014a development that contributed to Western Christianity's split into Roman Catholicism and Protestantism over disparities between Catholic and Protestant renderings of crucial words and passages (and due to a Protestant-perceived need to reform the Roman Catholic Church). Lasting effects on the religions, cultures, and languages of their respective countries were exerted by such Bible translations as Martin Luther's into German (the New Testament, 1522), Jakub Wujek's into Polish (1599, as revised by the Jesuits), and William Tyndale's version (New Testament, 1526 and revisions) and the King James Version into English (1611).\nEfforts to translate the Bible into English had their martyrs. William Tyndale (c.\u20091494\u20131536) was convicted of heresy at Antwerp, was strangled to death while tied at the stake, and then his dead body was burned. Earlier, John Wycliffe (c.\u2009mid-1320s \u2013 1384) had managed to die a natural death, but 30 years later the Council of Constance in 1415 declared him a heretic and decreed that his works and earthly remains should be burned; the order, confirmed by Pope Martin V, was carried out in 1428, and Wycliffe's corpse was exhumed and burned and the ashes cast into the River Swift. Debate and religious schism over different translations of religious texts continue, as demonstrated by, for example, the King James Only movement.\nA famous \"mistranslation\" of a Biblical text is the rendering of the Hebrew word (\"keren\"), which has several meanings, as \"horn\" in a context where it more plausibly means \"beam of light\": as a result, for centuries artists, including sculptor Michelangelo, have rendered Moses the Lawgiver with horns growing from his forehead.\nSuch fallibility of the translation process has contributed to the Islamic world's ambivalence about translating the \"Quran\" (also spelled \"Koran\") from the original Arabic, as received by the prophet Muhammad from Allah (God) through the angel Gabriel incrementally between 609 and 632 CE, the year of Muhammad's death. During prayers, the \"Quran\", as the miraculous and inimitable word of Allah, is recited only in Arabic. However, as of 1936, it had been translated into at least 102 languages.\nA fundamental difficulty in translating the \"Quran\" accurately stems from the fact that an Arabic word, like a Hebrew or Aramaic word, may have a range of meanings, depending on context. This is said to be a linguistic feature, particularly of all Semitic languages, that adds to the usual similar difficulties encountered in translating between any two languages. There is always an element of human judgment\u2014of interpretation\u2014involved in understanding and translating a text. Muslims regard any translation of the \"Quran\" as but one possible interpretation of the Quranic (Classical) Arabic text, and not as a full equivalent of that divinely communicated original. Hence such a translation is often called an \"interpretation\" rather than a translation.\nTo complicate matters further, as with other languages, the meanings and usages of some expressions have changed \"over time\", between the Classical Arabic of the \"Quran\", and modern Arabic. Thus a modern Arabic speaker may misinterpret the meaning of a word or passage in the \"Quran\". Moreover, the interpretation of a Quranic passage will also depend on the historic context of Muhammad's life and of his early community. Properly researching that context requires a detailed knowledge of \"hadith\" and \"sirah\", which are themselves vast and complex texts. Hence, analogously to the translating of Chinese literature, an attempt at an accurate translation of the \"Quran\" requires a knowledge not only of the Arabic language and of the target language, including their respective evolutions, but also a deep understanding of the two cultures involved.\nExperimental literature.\nExperimental literature, such as Kathy Acker\u2019s novel \"Don Quixote\" (1986) and Giannina Braschi\u2019s novel \"Yo-Yo Boing!\" (1998), features a translative writing that highlights discomforts of the interlingual and translingual encounters and literary translation as a creative practice. These authors weave their own translations into their texts.\nAcker's Postmodern fiction both fragments and preserves the materiality of Catullus\u2019s Latin text in ways that tease out its semantics and syntax without wholly appropriating them, a method that unsettles the notion of any fixed and finished translation.\nWhereas Braschi's trilogy of experimental works (\"Empire of Dreams\", 1988; \"Yo-Yo Boing!\", 1998, and \"United States of Banana\", 2011) deals with the very subject of translation. Her trilogy presents the evolution of the Spanish language through loose translations of dramatic, poetic, and philosophical writings from the Medieval, Golden Age, and Modernist eras into contemporary Caribbean, Latin American, and Nuyorican Spanish expressions. Braschi's translations of classical texts in Iberian Spanish (into other regional and historical linguistic and poetic frameworks) challenge the concept of national languages.\nScience fiction.\nScience fiction being a genre with a recognizable set of conventions and literary genealogies, in which language often includes neologisms, neosemes, and invented languages, techno-scientific and pseudoscientific vocabulary, and fictional representation of the translation process, the translation of science-fiction texts involves specific concerns. The science-fiction translator tends to acquire specific competences and assume a distinctive publishing and cultural agency. As in the case of other mass-fiction genres, this professional specialization and role often is not recognized by publishers and scholars.\nTranslation of science fiction accounts for the transnational nature of science fiction's repertoire of shared conventions and tropes. After World War II, many European countries were swept by a wave of translations from the English. Due to the prominence of English as a source language, the use of pseudonyms and pseudotranslations became common in countries such as Italy and Hungary, and English has often been used as a vehicular language to translate from languages such as Chinese and Japanese.\nMore recently, the international market in science-fiction translations has seen an increasing presence of source languages other than English.\nTechnical translation.\nTechnical translation renders documents such as manuals, instruction sheets, internal memos, minutes, financial reports, and other documents for a limited audience (who are directly affected by the document) and whose useful life is often limited. Thus, a user guide for a particular model of refrigerator is useful only for the owner of the refrigerator, and will remain useful only as long as that refrigerator model is in use. Similarly, software documentation generally pertains to a particular software, whose applications are used only by a certain class of users.\nSurvey translation.\nA survey questionnaire consists of a list of questions and answer categories aimed at extracting data from a particular group of people about their attitude, behavior, or knowledge. In cross-national and cross-cultural survey research, translation is crucial to collecting comparable data. Originally developed for the European Social Surveys, the model TRAPD (Translation, Review, Adjudication, Pretest, and Documentation) is now \"widely used in the global survey research community, although not always labeled as such or implemented in its complete form\".\nA team approach is recommended in the survey-translation process, to include translators, subject-matter experts, and persons helpful to the process. For example, even when project managers and researchers do not speak the language of the translation, they know the study objectives well and the intent behind the questions, and therefore have a key role in improving the translation. In addition, a survey-translation framework based on sociolinguistics states that a linguistically appropriate translation cannot be wholly sufficient to achieve the communicative effect of the source-language survey; the translation must also incorporate the social practices and cultural norms of the target language.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "7515849": "Syria\nCountry in West Asia\nSyria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east and southeast, Jordan to the south, and Israel and Lebanon to the southwest. It is a republic under a transitional government and comprises 14 governorates. Damascus is the capital and largest city. With a population of 25 million across an area of , it is the 57th-most populous and 87th-largest country.\nThe name \"Syria\" historically referred to a wider region. The modern state encompasses the sites of several ancient kingdoms and empires, including the Eblan civilization. Damascus was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate and a provincial capital under the Mamluk Sultanate. The modern Syrian state was established in the mid-20th century after centuries of Ottoman rule, as a French Mandate. The state represented the largest Arab state to emerge from the formerly Ottoman-ruled Syrian provinces. It gained \"de jure\" independence as a parliamentary republic in 1945 when the First Syrian Republic became a founding member of the United Nations, an act which legally ended the French Mandate. French troops withdrew in April 1946, granting the nation \"de facto\" independence. The post-independence period was tumultuous, with multiple coup attempts between 1949 and 1971. In 1958, Syria entered a brief pan-Arab union with Egypt, which was terminated following a 1961 coup d'\u00e9tat. The 1963 coup d'\u00e9tat carried out by the military committee of the Ba'ath Party established a one-party state, which ran Syria under martial law from 1963 to 2011. Internal power-struggles within Ba'athist factions caused further coups in 1966 and 1970, the latter of which saw Hafez al-Assad come to power. Under Assad, Syria became a hereditary dictatorship. Assad died in 2000, and he was succeeded by his son, Bashar.\nSince the Arab Spring in 2011, Syria has been embroiled in a multi-sided civil war with the involvement of several countries, leading to a refugee crisis in which more than 6 million refugees were displaced from the country. In response to rapid territorial gains made by the Islamic State during the civil war in 2014 and 2015, several countries intervened on behalf of various factions opposing it, leading to its territorial defeat in 2017 in both central and eastern Syria. Thereafter, three political entities \u2013 the Syrian Interim Government, Syrian Salvation Government, and the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria \u2013 emerged in Syrian territory to challenge Assad's rule. In late 2024, a series of offensives from a coalition of opposition forces led to the capture of Damascus and the fall of Assad's regime. In early 2025, the war has left Syria's economy in a poor state, exacerbated by many still-remaining international sanctions.\nA country of fertile plains, high mountains, and deserts, Syria is home to diverse ethnic and religious groups. Arabs are the largest ethnic group, and Sunni Muslims are the largest religious group.\nEtymology.\nSeveral sources indicate that the name \"Syria\" is derived from the 8th century BC Luwian term \"Sura/i\", and the derivative ancient Greek name: , ', or , ', both of which originally derived from A\u0161\u0161\u016br (Assyria) in northern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and north-eastern Syria). However, from the Seleucid Empire (323\u2013150 BC), this term was also applied to the Levant, and from this point the Greeks applied the term without distinction between the Assyrians of Mesopotamia and Arameans of the Levant. Mainstream modern academic opinion strongly favors the argument that the Greek word is related to the cognate , ', ultimately derived from the Akkadian '. The Greek name appears to correspond to Phoenician ' \"Assur\", ' \"Assyrians\", recorded in the 8th-century BC \u00c7inek\u00f6y inscription.\nThe area designated by the word has changed over time. Classically, Syria lies at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, between Arabia to the south and Asia Minor to the north, stretching inland to include parts of Iraq, and having an uncertain border to the northeast that Pliny the Elder describes as including, from west to east, Commagene, Sophene, and Adiabene.\nBy Pliny's time, however, this larger Syria had been divided into a number of provinces under the Roman Empire (but politically independent from each other): Judaea, later renamed Palaestina in AD 135 (the region corresponding to modern-day Israel, the Palestinian territories, and Jordan) in the extreme southwest; Phoenice (established in 194) corresponding to modern Lebanon, Damascus and Homs regions; Coele-Syria (or \"Hollow Syria\") and south of the Eleutheris river.\nHistory.\nAncient antiquity.\nThe Natufian culture was the first to become sedentary around the 11th millennium BC and became one of the centers of Neolithic culture (known as Pre-Pottery Neolithic A), where agriculture and cattle breeding first began to appear. The site of Tell Qaramel has several round stone towers dated to 10650 BC, making them the oldest structures of this kind in the world. The Neolithic period (Pre-Pottery Neolithic B) is represented by rectangular houses of Mureybet culture. At the time, people used containers made of stone, gyps, and burnt lime (Vaisselle blanche). The discovery of obsidian tools from Anatolia are evidence of early trade. The ancient cities of Hamoukar and Emar played an important role during the late Neolithic and Bronze Age. Archaeologists have demonstrated that civilization in Syria was one of the most ancient on earth, perhaps preceded by only that of Mesopotamia.\nThe earliest recorded indigenous civilization in the region was the Kingdom of Ebla near present-day Idlib, northern Syria. Ebla appears to have been founded around 3500 BC and gradually built its fortune through trade with the Mesopotamian states of Sumer, Assyria, and Akkad, as well as with the Hurrian and Hattian peoples to the northwest, in Asia Minor. Gifts from Pharaohs, found during excavations, confirm Ebla's contact with Egypt. One of the earliest written texts from Syria is a trading agreement between Vizier Ibrium of Ebla and an ambiguous kingdom called Abarsal c.\u20092300 BC. This is known as the Treaty between Ebla and Abarsal. Scholars believe the language of Ebla to be among the oldest known written Semitic languages after Akkadian. Recent classifications of the Eblaite language have shown that it was an East Semitic language, closely related to the Akkadian language. Ebla was weakened by a long war with Mari, and the whole of Syria became part of the Mesopotamian Akkadian Empire after Sargon of Akkad and his grandson Naram-Sin's conquests ended Eblan domination over Syria in the first half of the 23rd century BC.\nBy the 21st century BC, Hurrians settled in the northern east parts of Syria while the rest of the region was dominated by the Amorites. Syria was called the Land of the Amurru (Amorites) by their Assyro-Babylonian neighbors. The Northwest Semitic Amorite language is the earliest attested of the Canaanite languages. Mari reemerged during this period until conquered by Hammurabi of Babylon. Ugarit also arose during this time, circa 1800 BC, close to modern Latakia. Ugaritic was a Semitic language loosely related to the Canaanite languages and developed the Ugaritic alphabet, considered to be the world's earliest known alphabet. The Ugaritic kingdom survived until its destruction at the hands of the marauding Indo-European Sea Peoples in the 12th century BC in what was known as the Late Bronze Age Collapse.\nAleppo and Damascus are among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Yamhad (modern Aleppo) dominated northern Syria for two centuries, although eastern Syria was occupied in the 19th and 18th centuries BC by the Old Assyrian Empire ruled by the Amorite dynasty of Shamshi-Adad I, and by the Babylonian Empire which was founded by Amorites. Yamhad was described in the tablets of Mari as the mightiest state in the near east and as having more vassals than Hammurabi. Yamhad imposed its authority over Alalakh, Qatna, the Hurrians states, and the Euphrates valley down to the borders with Babylon. The army of Yamhad campaigned as far away as D\u0113r on the border of Elam (modern Iran). Yamhad was conquered and destroyed, along with Ebla, by the Hittites from Asia Minor circa 1600 BC. From this time, Syria became a battle ground for various foreign empires, these being the Hittite Empire, Mitanni Empire, Egyptian Empire, Middle Assyrian Empire, and to a lesser degree Babylonia. The Egyptians initially occupied much of the south, while the Hittites and the Mitanni occupied much of the north. However, Assyria eventually gained the upper hand, destroying the Mitanni Empire and annexing huge swathes of territory previously held by the Hittites and Babylon.\nAround the 14th century BC, various Semitic people appeared in the area, such as the semi-nomadic Suteans who came into an unsuccessful conflict with Babylonia to the east, and the West Semitic speaking Arameans who subsumed the earlier Amorites. They too were subjugated by Assyria and the Hittites for centuries. The Egyptians fought the Hittites for control over western Syria; the fighting reached its zenith in 1274 BC with the Battle of Kadesh. The west remained part of the Hittite empire until its destruction c.\u20091200 BC, while eastern Syria largely became part of the Middle Assyrian Empire, who also annexed much of the west during the reign of Tiglath-Pileser I 1114\u20131076 BC. With the destruction of the Hittites and the decline of Assyria in the late 11th century BC, the Aramean tribes gained control of much of the interior, founding states such as Bit Bahiani, Aram-Damascus, Hamath, Aram-Rehob, Aram-Naharaim, and Luhuti. From this point, the region became known as Aramea or Aram. There was also a synthesis between the Semitic Arameans and the remnants of the Indo-European Hittites, with the founding of a number of Syro-Hittite states centered in north central Aram (Syria) and south central Asia Minor (modern Turkey), including Palistin, Carchemish and Sam'al.\nA Canaanite group known as the Phoenicians came to dominate the coasts of Syria, (and also Lebanon and northern Palestine) from the 13th century BC, founding city states such as Amrit, Simyra, Arwad, Paltos, Ramitha, and Shuksi. From these coastal regions, they eventually spread their influence throughout the Mediterranean, including building colonies in Malta, Sicily, the Iberian peninsula, and the coasts of North Africa and most significantly, founding the major city-state of Carthage in the 9th century BC, which was much later to become the center of a major empire, rivaling the Roman Republic.\nSyria and the western half of Near East then fell to the vast Neo Assyrian Empire (911 BC \u2013 605 BC). The Assyrians introduced Imperial Aramaic as the lingua franca of their empire. This language was to remain dominant in Syria and the entire Near East until after the Islamic conquest in the 7th and 8th centuries AD, and was to be a vehicle for the spread of Christianity. The Assyrians named their colonies of Syria and Lebanon Eber-Nari. Assyrian domination ended after the Assyrians greatly weakened themselves in a series of brutal internal civil wars, followed by attacks from: the Medes, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Persians, Scythians and Cimmerians. During the fall of Assyria, the Scythians ravaged and plundered much of Syria. The last stand of the Assyrian army was at Carchemish in northern Syria in 605 BC. The Assyrian Empire was followed by the Neo-Babylonian Empire (605 BC \u2013 539 BC). During this period, Syria became a battle ground between Babylonia and another former Assyrian colony, that of Egypt. The Babylonians, like their Assyrian relations, were victorious over Egypt.\nClassical antiquity.\nLands that constitute modern-day Syria were part of the Neo-Babylonian Empire and had been annexed by the Achaemenid Empire in 539 BC. Led by Cyrus the Great, the Achaemenid Persians retained Imperial Aramaic as one of the diplomatic languages of their empire, as well as the Assyrian name for the new satrapy of Aram/Syria Eber-Nari. Syria was conquered by the Macedonian Empire which was ruled by Alexander the Great c.\u2009330 BC and consequently became Coele-Syria province of the Seleucid Empire (323 BC \u2013 64 BC), with the Seleucid kings styling themselves \"King of Syria\" and the city of Antioch being its capital starting from 240 BC. Thus, it was the Greeks who introduced the name \"Syria\" to the region. Originally an Indo-European corruption of \"Assyria\" in northern Mesopotamia (Iraq), the Greeks used this term to describe not only Assyria itself but also the lands to the west which had for centuries been under Assyrian dominion. Thus in the Greco-Roman world both the Arameans of Syria and the Assyrians of Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) to the east were referred to as \"Syrians\" or \"Syriacs\", despite these being distinct peoples in their own right, a confusion which would continue into the modern world. Eventually parts of southern Seleucid Syria were taken by the Jewish Hasmonean dynasty upon the slow disintegration of the Hellenistic Empire.\nSyria briefly came under Armenian control from 83 BC, with the conquests of the Armenian king Tigranes the Great, who was welcomed as a savior from the Seleucids and Romans by the Syrian people. However, Pompey the Great, a general of the Roman Empire, rode to Syria and captured Antioch and turned Syria into a Roman province in 64 BC, thus ending Armenian control over the region which had lasted two decades. Syria prospered under Roman rule, being strategically located on the Silk Road, which gave it massive wealth and importance, making it the battleground for the rivaling Romans and Persians.\nPalmyra, a rich and sometimes powerful native Aramaic-speaking kingdom, arose in northern Syria in the 2nd century; the Palmyrene established a trade network that made the city one of the richest in the Roman Empire. In the late 3rd century the Palmyrene king Odaenathus defeated the Persian emperor Shapur I and controlled the entirety of the Roman East while his successor and widow Zenobia established the Palmyrene Empire, which briefly conquered Egypt, Syria, Palestine, much of Asia Minor, Judah and Lebanon, before being finally brought under Roman control in 273.\nThe northern Mesopotamian Assyrian kingdom of Adiabene controlled areas of north east Syria between 10 and 117, before it was conquered by Rome. The Aramaic language has been found as far afield as Hadrian's Wall in Roman Britain, with an inscription written by a Palmyrene emigrant at the site of Fort Arbeia. Control of Syria eventually passed from the Romans to the Byzantines with the split in the Roman Empire. The largely Aramaic-speaking population of Syria during the heyday of the Byzantine Empire was probably not exceeded again until the 19th century. Prior to the Arab Islamic Conquest in the 7th century, the bulk of the population were Arameans, but Syria was also home to Greek and Roman ruling classes, Assyrians still dwelt in the north east, Phoenicians along the coasts, and Jewish and Armenian communities were also extant in major cities, with Nabateans and pre-Islamic Arabs such as the Lakhmids and Ghassanids dwelling in the deserts of southern Syria. Syriac Christianity had taken hold as the major religion, although others still followed Judaism, Mithraism, Manicheanism, Greco-Roman Religion, Canaanite Religion and Mesopotamian Religion. Syria's large and prosperous population made Syria one of the most important of the Roman and Byzantine provinces, particularly during the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD.\nSyrians held considerable power during the Severan dynasty. The matriarch of the family and empress of Rome as wife of emperor Septimius Severus was Julia Domna, a Syrian from the city of Emesa (modern day Homs), whose family held hereditary rights to the priesthood of the god El-Gabal. Her great nephews, also Arabs from Syria, would also become Roman emperors, the first being Elagabalus and the second his cousin Alexander Severus. Another Roman emperor who was a Syrian was Philip the Arab (Marcus Julius Philippus), who was born in Roman Arabia. He was emperor from 244 to 249 and ruled briefly during the Crisis of the Third Century. During his reign, he focused on his home town of Philippopolis (modern day Shahba) and began many construction projects to improve the city, most of which were halted after his death.\nSyria is significant in the history of Christianity; Saul of Tarsus, better known as the Apostle Paul, was converted on the road to Damascus and emerged as a significant figure in the Christian Church at Antioch in ancient Syria.\nMiddle Ages.\nMuhammad's first interaction with the people of Syria was during the invasion of Dumatul Jandal in July 626 where he ordered his followers to invade Duma, because Muhammad received intelligence that some tribes there were involved in highway robbery and were preparing to attack Medina. William Montgomery Watt claims that this was the most significant expedition Muhammad ordered at the time, even though it received little notice in the primary sources. Dumat Al-Jandal was from Medina, and Watt says that there was no immediate threat to Muhammad, other than the possibility that his communications to Syria and supplies to Medina would be interrupted. Watt says \"It is tempting to suppose that Muhammad was already envisaging something of the expansion which took place after his death\", and that the rapid march of his troops must have \"impressed all those who heard of it\". William Muir also believes that the expedition was important as Muhammad followed by 1,000 men reached the confines of Syria, where distant tribes had learnt his name, while the political horizon of Muhammad was extended.\nBy 640, Syria was conquered by the Rashidun army led by Khalid ibn al-Walid. In the mid-7th century, the Umayyad dynasty placed the capital of the empire in Damascus. The country's power declined during later Umayyad rule; this was mainly through totalitarianism, corruption and the resulting revolutions. The Umayyad dynasty was overthrown in 750 by the Abbasid dynasty, which moved the capital of empire to Baghdad. Arabic \u2013 made official under Umayyad rule \u2013 became the dominant language, replacing Greek and Aramaic of the Byzantine era. In 887, the Egypt-based Tulunids annexed Syria from the Abbasids and were later replaced by the Egypt-based Ikhshidids and then by the Hamdanids originating in Aleppo founded by Sayf al-Dawla.\nSections of Syria were held by French, English, Italian and German overlords between 1098 and 1189 during the Crusades and were known collectively as the Crusader states, among which the primary one in Syria was the Principality of Antioch. The coastal mountainous region was occupied in part by the Nizari Ismailis, the so-called Assassins, who had intermittent confrontations and truces with the Crusader States. Later in history when \"the Nizaris faced renewed Frankish hostilities, they received timely assistance from the Ayyubids.\" After a century of Seljuk rule, Syria was largely conquered (1175\u20131185) by the Kurdish liberator Salah ad-Din, founder of the Ayyubid dynasty of Egypt. Aleppo fell to the Mongols of Hulegu in January 1260; Damascus fell in March, but then Hulegu was forced to break off his attack to return to China to deal with a succession dispute.\nA few months later, the Mamluks arrived with an army from Egypt and defeated the Mongols in the Battle of Ain Jalut in Galilee. The Mamluk leader, Baibars, made Damascus a provincial capital. When he died, power was taken by Qalawun. In the meantime, an emir named Sunqur al-Ashqar had tried to declare himself ruler of Damascus, but he was defeated by Qalawun on 21 June 1280 and fled to northern Syria. Al-Ashqar, who had married a Mongol woman, appealed for help from the Mongols. The Mongols of the Ilkhanate took Aleppo in October 1280, but Qalawun persuaded Al-Ashqar to join him, and they fought against the Mongols on 29 October 1281 in the Second Battle of Homs, which was won by the Mamluks. In 1400, the Muslim Turco-Mongol conqueror Tamurlane invaded Syria, in which he sacked Aleppo and captured Damascus after defeating the Mamluk army. The city's inhabitants were massacred, except for the artisans who were deported to Samarkand. Tamurlane conducted massacres of the Assyrian Christian population, greatly reducing their numbers. By the end of the 15th century, the discovery of a sea route from Europe to the Far East ended the need for an overland trade route through Syria.\nOttoman Syria.\nIn 1516, the Ottoman Empire invaded the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, conquering Syria and incorporating it into its empire. The Ottoman system was not burdensome to Syrians because the Turks respected Arabic as the language of the Quran and accepted the mantle of defenders of the faith. Damascus was made the major entrepot for Mecca, and as such it acquired a holy character to Muslims, because of the beneficial results of the countless pilgrims who passed through on the hajj.\nOttoman administration followed a system that led to peaceful coexistence. Each ethno-religious minority\u2014Arab Shia Muslim, Arab Sunni Muslim, Syriac Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Maronite Christians, Assyrian Christians, Armenians, Kurds and Jews\u2014constituted a millet. The religious heads of each community administered all personal status laws and performed certain civil functions as well. In 1831, Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt renounced his loyalty to the empire and overran Ottoman Syria, capturing Damascus. His short-term rule over the domain attempted to change the demographics and social structure of the region: he brought thousands of Egyptian villagers to populate the plains of southern Syria, rebuilt Jaffa and settled it with veteran Egyptian soldiers aiming to turn it into a regional capital, and he crushed peasant and Druze rebellions and deported non-loyal tribesmen. By 1840, however, he had to surrender the area back to the Ottomans. From 1864, Tanzimat reforms were applied on Ottoman Syria, carving out the provinces (vilayets) of Aleppo, Zor, Beirut and Damascus Vilayet; Mutasarrifate of Mount Lebanon was created, and soon after the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem was given a separate status.\nDuring World War I, the Ottoman Empire entered the conflict as a Central Power. It ultimately suffered defeat and loss of control of the entire Near East to the British Empire and French Empire. During the conflict, genocide against indigenous Christian peoples was carried out by the Ottomans and their allies in the form of the Armenian genocide and Assyrian genocide, of which Deir ez-Zor in Ottoman Syria was the final destination of these death marches. In the midst of World War I, two Allied diplomats (Frenchman Fran\u00e7ois Georges-Picot and Briton Mark Sykes) secretly agreed on the post-war division of the Ottoman Empire into respective zones of influence in the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. Initially, the two territories were separated by a border that ran in an almost straight line from Jordan to Iran. However, the discovery of oil in the region of Mosul just before the end of the war led to yet another negotiation with France in 1918 to cede this region to the British zone of influence, which was to become Iraq. The fate of the intermediate province of Zor was left unclear; its occupation by Arab nationalists resulted in its attachment to Syria. This border was recognized internationally when Syria became a League of Nations mandate in 1920 and has not changed to date.\nFrench Mandate.\nIn 1920, a short-lived independent Kingdom of Syria was established under Faisal I of the Hashemite family. However, his rule over Syria ended after only a few months, following the Battle of Maysalun. French troops occupied Syria later that year after the San Remo conference proposed that the League of Nations put Syria under a French mandate. General Gouraud had according to his secretary de Caix two options: \"Either build a Syrian nation that does not exist... by smoothing the rifts which still divide it\" or \"cultivate and maintain all the phenomena, which require our arbitration that these divisions give\". De Caix added \"I must say only the second option interests me\". This is what Gouraud did.\nIn 1925, Sultan al-Atrash led a revolt that broke out in the Druze Mountain and spread to engulf the whole of Syria and parts of Lebanon. Al-Atrash won several battles against the French, notably the Battle of al-Kafr on 21 July 1925, the Battle of al-Mazraa on 2\u20133 August 1925, and the battles of Salkhad, al-Musayfirah and Suwayda. France sent thousands of troops from Morocco and Senegal, leading the French to regain many cities, although resistance lasted until the spring of 1927. The French sentenced al-Atrash to death, but he had escaped with the rebels to Transjordan and was eventually pardoned. He returned to Syria in 1937 after the signing of the Syrian-French Treaty.\nSyria and France negotiated a treaty of independence in September 1936, and Hashim al-Atassi was the first president to be elected under the first incarnation of the modern republic of Syria. However, the treaty never came into force because the French Legislature refused to ratify it. With the fall of France in 1940 during World War II, Syria came under the control of Vichy France until the British and Free French occupied the country in the Syria-Lebanon campaign in July 1941. Continuing pressure from Syrian nationalists and the British forced the French to evacuate their troops in April 1946, leaving the country in the hands of a republican government that had been formed during the mandate.\nIndependent Syrian Republic.\nUpheaval dominated Syrian politics from independence through the late 1960s. In May 1948, Syrian forces invaded Palestine, together with other Arab states, and immediately attacked Jewish settlements. President Shukri al-Quwwatli instructed his troops in the front, \"to destroy the Zionists\". The invasion purpose was to prevent the establishment of the state of Israel. Toward this end, the Syrian government engaged in an active process of recruiting former Nazis, including several former members of the Schutzstaffel, to build up their armed forces and military intelligence capabilities. Defeat in this war was one of several trigger factors for the March 1949 Syrian coup d'\u00e9tat by Colonel Husni al-Za'im, described as the first military overthrow of the Arab World since the start of the Second World War. This was soon followed by another overthrow, by Colonel Sami al-Hinnawi, who was quickly deposed by Colonel Adib Shishakli, all within the same year.Shishakli eventually abolished multipartyism altogether but was overthrown in a 1954 coup, and the parliamentary system was restored. However, by this time, power was increasingly concentrated in the military and security establishment. The weakness of Parliamentary institutions and the mismanagement of the economy led to unrest and the influence of Nasserism and other ideologies. There was fertile ground for various Arab nationalist, Syrian nationalist, and socialist movements, which represented disaffected elements of society. Notably included were religious minorities, who demanded radical reform.\nIn November 1956, as a direct result of the Suez Crisis, Syria signed a pact with the Soviet Union. This gave a foothold for communist influence within the government in exchange for military equipment. Turkey then became worried about this increase in the strength of Syrian military technology, as it seemed feasible that Syria might attempt to retake \u0130skenderun. Only heated debates in the United Nations lessened the threat of war.\nUnited Arab Republic.\nOn 1 February 1958, Syrian President Shukri al-Quwatli and Egypt's Nasser announced the merging of Egypt and Syria, creating the United Arab Republic, and all Syrian political parties, as well as the communists therein, ceased overt activities. Meanwhile, a group of Syrian Ba'athist officers, alarmed by the party's poor position and the increasing fragility of the union, decided to form a secret Military Committee; its initial members were Lieutenant-Colonel Muhammad Umran, Major Salah Jadid and Captain Hafez al-Assad. Syria seceded from the union with Egypt on 28 September 1961, after a coup and terminated the political union.\nLand reform.\nAgrarian reform measures were introduced which consisted of three interrelated programs: legislation regulating the relationship between agriculture laborers and landowners; legislation governing the ownership and use of private and state domain land and directing the economic organization of peasants; and measures reorganizing agricultural production under state control. Despite high levels of inequality in land ownership these reforms allowed for more progress in redistribution of land from 1958 to 1961 than any other reforms in Syria's history, since independence.\nThe first law passed (Law 134; passed 4 September 1958) was in response to concern about peasant mobilization and expanding peasants' rights. This was designed to strengthen the position of sharecroppers and agricultural laborers in relation to land owners. This law led to the creation of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, which announced the implementation of new laws that would allow the regulation of working condition especially for women and adolescents, set hours of work, and introduce the principle of minimum wage for paid laborers and an equitable division of harvest for sharecroppers. Furthermore, it obligated landlords to honor both written and oral contracts, established collective bargaining, contained provisions for workers' compensation, health, housing, and employment services. Law 134 was not designed strictly to protect workers. It also acknowledged the rights of landlords to form their own syndicates.\nBa'athist Syria.\nThe instability which followed the 1961 coup culminated in the 8 March 1963 Ba'athist coup. The takeover was engineered by members of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, led by Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar. The new Syrian cabinet was dominated by Ba'ath members. From the 1963 seizure of power by its Military Committee to the fall of the regime in 2024, the Ba'ath party ruled Syria as a dictatorship which has been frequently described as totalitarian, although some scholars have rejected this description. Ba'athists took control over country's politics, education, culture, religion and surveilled all aspects of civil society through its powerful \"Mukhabarat\" (secret police). Syrian Arab Armed forces and secret police were integrated with the Ba'ath party apparatus; after the purging of traditional civilian and military elites by the regime.\nThe 1963 Ba'athist coup marked a \"radical break\" in modern Syrian history, after which Ba'ath party monopolised power in the country to establish a one-party state and shaped a socio-political order by enforcing its state ideology. On 23 February 1966, the neo-Ba'athist Military Committee carried out an intra-party rebellion against the Ba'athist Old Guard (Aflaq and Bitar), imprisoned President Amin al-Hafiz and designated a regionalist, civilian Ba'ath government on 1 March. Although Nureddin al-Atassi became the formal head of state, Salah Jadid was Syria's effective ruler from 1966 until November 1970, when he was deposed by Hafez al-Assad, who at the time was Minister of Defense.\nThe coup led to the schism within the original pan-Arab Ba'ath Party: one Iraqi-led ba'ath movement (ruled Iraq from 1968 to 2003) and one Syrian-led ba'ath movement was established. In the first half of 1967, a low-key state of war existed between Syria and Israel. Conflict over Israeli cultivation of land in the Demilitarized Zone led to 7 April pre-war aerial clashes between Israel and Syria. When the Six-Day War broke out between Egypt and Israel, Syria joined the war and attacked Israel as well. In the final days of the war, Israel turned its attention to Syria, capturing two-thirds of the Golan Heights in under 48 hours. The defeat caused a split between Jadid and Assad over what steps to take next. Disagreement developed between Jadid, who controlled the party apparatus, and Assad, who controlled the military. The 1970 retreat of Syrian forces sent to aid the Palestine Liberation Organization led by Yasser Arafat during the \"Black September (also known as the Jordan Civil War of 1970)\" hostilities with Jordan reflected this disagreement.\nThe power struggle culminated in the November 1970 Syrian Corrective movement, a bloodless military coup that installed Hafez al-Assad as the strongman of the government. Assad transformed a Ba'athist party state into a dictatorship marked by his pervasive grip on the party, armed forces, secret police, media, education sector, religious and cultural spheres and all aspects of civil society. He assigned Alawite loyalists to key posts in the military forces, bureaucracy, intelligence and the ruling elite. A cult of personality revolving around Hafez and his family became a core tenet of Ba'athist ideology, which espoused that Assad dynasty was destined to rule perennially. On 6 October 1973, Syria and Egypt initiated the Yom Kippur War against Israel. The Israel Defense Forces reversed the initial Syrian gains and pushed deeper into Syrian territory. The village of Quneitra was largely destroyed by the Israeli army. In the late 1970s, an Islamist uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood was aimed against the government. Islamists attacked civilians and off-duty military personnel, leading security forces to also kill civilians in retaliatory strikes. The uprising had reached its climax in the 1982 Hama massacre, when more than 2,000 to 25,000-40,000 people (Islamist and civilians) were killed by Syrian military troops and Ba'athist paramilitaries. It has been described as the \"single deadliest act\" of violence perpetrated by any state upon its own population in modern Arab history\nIn a major shift in relations with both other Arab states and the Western world, Syria participated in the United States-led Gulf War against Saddam Hussein. The country participated in the multilateral Madrid Conference of 1991, and during the 1990s engaged in negotiations with Israel along with Palestine and Jordan. These negotiations failed, and there have been no further direct Syrian-Israeli talks since Assad's meeting with U.S. President Bill Clinton in Geneva in 2000.\nInvolvement of Lebanese war.\nHafez al-Assad died on 10 June 2000. His son, Bashar al-Assad, was elected president in an election in which he ran unopposed. His election saw the birth of the Damascus Spring and hopes of reform, but by autumn 2001 the authorities had suppressed the movement, imprisoning some of its leading intellectuals. Instead, reforms have been limited to some market reforms. On 5 October 2003 Israel bombed a site near Damascus, claiming it was a terrorist training facility for members of Islamic Jihad. In March 2004, Syrian Kurds and Arabs clashed in al-Qamishli. Signs of rioting were seen in Qamishli and Hasakeh. In 2005, Syria ended its military presence in Lebanon. Assassination of Rafic Hariri in 2005 led to international condemnation and triggered a popular \"Intifada\" in Lebanon, known as \"the Cedar Revolution\", which forced the Assad regime to end its 29-year-old military occupation in Lebanon. On 6 September 2007, foreign jet fighters, suspected as Israeli, reportedly carried out Operation Orchard against a suspected nuclear reactor under construction by North Korean technicians.\nSyrian Revolution and Civil War.\nNepotism of ruling elites and authoritarian regime caused Syrian Revolution as part of the wider Arab Spring. Public demonstrations across Syria began on 26 January 2011 and developed into a nationwide uprising. Protesters demanded the resignation of Assad, the overthrow of his government, and an end to nearly five decades of Ba'ath Party rule. Since spring 2011, the Syrian government deployed the Syrian Army to quell the uprising, and several cities were besieged, though the unrest continued. According to some witnesses, soldiers, who refused to open fire on civilians, were summarily executed by the Syrian Army. The Syrian government denied reports of defections, and blamed armed gangs for causing trouble. Since early autumn 2011, civilians and army defectors began forming fighting units, which began an insurgency campaign against the Syrian Army. The insurgents unified under the banner of the Free Syrian Army and fought in an increasingly organized fashion; however, the civilian component of the armed opposition lacked an organized leadership.\nThe Arab League, the United States, the European Union states, the Gulf Cooperation Council states, and other countries have condemned the use of violence against the protesters. China and Russia have avoided condemning the government or applying sanctions, saying that such methods could escalate into foreign intervention. However, military intervention has been ruled out by most countries. The Arab League suspended Syria's membership over the government's response to the crisis, but sent an observer mission in December 2011, as part of its proposal for peaceful resolution of the crisis.\nBy 2024, the Syrian civil war had resulted in more than 600,000 deaths, with pro-Assad forces causing more than 90% of the total civilian casualties. Between March 2011 and March 2021, more than 306,000 civilians were killed in the civil war. The war led to a massive refugee crisis, with an estimated 7.6 million internally displaced people (July 2015 UNHCR figure) and over 5 million refugees (July 2017 registered by UNHCR). The war has also worsened economic conditions, with more than 90% of the population living in poverty and 80% facing food insecurity.\nRise and fall of Islamic State, intervention of foreign countries and creation of several rebel factions.\nTaking an advantage of ongoing civil war, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) won many battles against the rebel factions and the Syrian government in 2014. ISIS was able to seize control of large parts of Eastern Syria, prompting a United States-led coalition to launch an aerial bombing campaign against ISIS, while providing ground support and supplies to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-dominated coalition led by the People's Defense Units (YPG).\nIn August 2016, Turkey launched a multi-pronged invasion of northern Syria, in response to the creation of the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, also known as Rojava, while also fighting ISIS and government forces in the process. During this time, Turkey helped establish the Syrian National Army (SNA) out of remnants of the Free Syrian Army. Iran and later Russia also intervened the civil war in behalf of Assad government to defeat ISIS and attack both SDF and SNA. The ISIS eventually lost its territory after the fall of IS in Mosul and increasingly resorted to more terror bombings and insurgency operations that continues in present.\nRebel offensive and fall of the Ba'athist regime.\nIn December 2024, violence flared up once again. Rebel factions, led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), took control of Aleppo in a lightning offensive, prompting a retaliatory airstrike campaign by Syrian regime forces, supported by Russian aviation assets. The strikes, which targeted population centers and several hospitals in rebel-held city of Idlib, resulted in at least 25 deaths according to the White Helmets rescue group. NATO issued a joint statement calling for the protection of civilians and critical infrastructure to prevent further displacement and ensure humanitarian access. They stressed the urgent need for a Syrian-led political solution, in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 2254, which advocates for dialogue between the Syrian government and opposition forces.\nThe rebel offensive, which had begun on 27 November, continued its advance into Hama province following their capture of Aleppo. On 4 December, fierce clashes erupted in Hama province as the Syrian army engaged rebel forces in a bid to halt their advance on the key city of Hama. Government forces claimed to have launched a counteroffensive with air support, pushing back rebel factions, including HTS, around six miles from the city. However, despite reinforcements, the rebels captured the city on 5 December. The fighting led to widespread displacement, with nearly 50,000 people fleeing the area and over 600 casualties reported, including 104 civilians.\nRebel forces reached the outskirts of Homs on 5 December, beginning a three-day battle for the city. Simultaneously, an HTS-coordinated mass uprising led by a coalition of Druze tribes and opposition forces captured the southern cities of Suwayda and Daraa by 6 December, and rapidly advanced northwards to encircle Damascus over the following day. Homs was captured by rebel forces by the early morning of 8 December, leaving no major regime strongholds between the rebel advance and Damascus itself.\nCut off from the Alawite heartland of Tartus and Latakia governorates, faced with a rebel pincer from both north and south bearing down on Damascus, and with no hope of foreign intervention from the regime's Russian and Iranian benefactors, Assadist authority over remaining regime-held territories rapidly disintegrated. The Syrian Arab Armed Forces melted away as its soldiers abandoned their weapons and uniforms, many deserting across the border to Iraq and Lebanon. Opposition forces captured the capital Damascus on 8 December, toppling Bashar al-Assad's government and ending the Assad family's 53-year-long rule over the country. Assad fled to Moscow with his family, where he was granted asylum.\nTransitional Government Syria: Interim Period.\nFollowing the fall of the Assad regime, Assad's ninth prime minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali, with support from the opposition and Ahmed al-Sharaa, remained at his post in a caretaker capacity until a transitional government led by Mohammed al-Bashir was formed the following day. Al-Jalali called for fresh elections so that the Syrian people may choose their new leaders.\nPrior to the fall of the Assad regime, Mohammed al-Bashir headed the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG) formed in the province of Idlib by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist militant organization which led the overthrow of Assad in December 2024. In general, the formation of the Transitional Government was scaling of the SSG \"to the whole of Syria\", as the composition of the new government was almost the same as of the one of the SSG. According to a report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights, critics and opponents of the HTS were subject to repression in forms of enforced disappearances and tortures.Shortly after the fall of the Assad regime, Israel commenced a ground invasion of the Purple Line buffer zone near the Golan Heights, as well as commencing a series of airstrikes against Syrian military depots and naval bases. The Israeli Defense Forces claims that it is destroying Ba'athist military infrastructure, including chemical weapons plants, so that the rebels cannot use them.\nDespite the collapse of the Assad regime, Turkish-backed Syrian National Army fighters in northern Syria continued their offensive against U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) forces until a ceasefire was reached on 11 December. In February 2025, the SDF, the Autonomous Administration, and the Syrian Democratic Council decided in a meeting that SDF would merge with the Syrian Armed Forces. The International Coalition against ISIS voiced support for continued dialogue between the SDF and the new Syrian government as well.\nThe prime minister of the transitional government, Mohammed al-Bashir, has promised to allow Christians and other minorities to continue practicing their religion without interference. However, this has been met with doubts as many rebel forces had previous connections to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. The use of a variation of the \"Tawhid\" flag by the new government alongside the opposition flag also raised worries, as it implies that the new state may be less secular. Aisha al-Dibs was appointed as the Minister of Women's Affairs on 22 December 2024.\nOn 12 December 2024, a spokesman of the transitional government speaking to Agence France-Presse said that during the government's three-month term, the constitution and parliament would be suspended and that a 'judicial and human rights committee' would be established to review the constitution, prior to making amendments.\nOn 29 January 2025, during the Syrian Revolution Victory Conference in Presidential Palace, the Syrian General Command appointed Ahmed al-Sharaa as president for the transitional period after he had served as the \"de facto\" leader following the fall of the Assad regime. \nIn March 2025, the UK-based SOHR reported that Syrian security forces and pro-government fighters had committed a massacre of more than 1500 Alawite civilians during clashes in western Syria. \nOn 10 March 2025, the SDF agreed to merge with the Syrian Armed Forces after SDF leader Mazloum Abdi met with al-Sharaa. Three days later al-Sharaa signed an interim constitution covering a five-year transitional period.\nOn 29 March 2025, the second Syrian transitional government was announced by Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa at a ceremony at the Presidential Palace in Damascus, in which the new ministers were sworn in and delivered speeches outlining their agendas. The government replaced the first Syrian transitional government, which was formed following the fall of the Assad regime on 8 December 2024.\nGeography.\nSyria's climate varies from the humid Mediterranean coast, through a semi-arid steppe zone, to arid desert in the east. The country consists mostly of arid plateau, although the northwest part bordering the Mediterranean is fairly green. Al-Jazira in the northeast and Hawran in the south are important agricultural areas. The Euphrates, Syria's most important river, crosses the country in the east. Syria is one of the fifteen states that comprise the so-called \"cradle of civilization\". Its land straddles the northwest of the Arabian plate.\nPetroleum in commercial quantities was first discovered in the northeast in 1956. The most important oil fields are those of al-Suwaydiyah, Karatchok, Rmelan near al-Hasakah, as well as al-Omar and al-Taym fields near Dayr az\u2013Zawr. The fields are a natural extension of the Iraqi fields of Mosul and Kirkuk. Petroleum became Syria's leading natural resource and chief export after 1974. Natural gas was discovered at the field of Jbessa in 1940.\nBiodiversity.\nSyria contains four terrestrial ecoregions: Syrian xeric grasslands and shrublands, Eastern Mediterranean conifer-sclerophyllous-broadleaf forests, Southern Anatolian montane conifer and deciduous forests, and Mesopotamian shrub desert. The country had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 3.64/10, ranking it 144th globally out of 172 countries.\nGovernment and politics.\nPost-Ba'athist Syria.\nSyria is currently undergoing a political transition following the fall of the Assad regime on 8 December 2024. A transitional government, led by Mohammed al-Bashir has been formed to govern the country. On 29 January 2025, during the Syrian Revolution Victory Conference in Presidential Palace, the Syrian General Command appointed Ahmed al-Sharaa as president for the transitional period after he had served as the \"de facto\" leader following the fall of the Assad regime. \nOn 13 March 2025, al-Sharaa ratified the interim constitution, which will be valid for five years. The constitution sets a presidential system, without the position of prime minister. The People's Assembly has been established to serve as an interim parliament during the five-year transition, overseeing the drafting of a new permanent constitution. On 29 March 2025, the second Syrian transitional government was announced by al-Sharaa at a ceremony at the Presidential Palace in Damascus, in which the new ministers were sworn in and delivered speeches outlining their agendas. The government replaced the first Syrian transitional government, which was formed following the fall of the Assad regime on 8 December 2024.\nBa'athist Syria (1963\u20132024).\nThe Syrian Arab Republic was a presidential state that nominally permitted the candidacy of individuals who were not part of the Ba'ath-controlled National Progressive Front. Despite this, Syria remained a one-party state with an extensive secret police apparatus that curtailed any independent political activity. The constitution introduced unilaterally by the Assad regime, without the participation of the Syrian opposition, had bolstered its authoritarian character by bestowing extraordinary powers on the presidency, and a Ba'athist political committee continued to be responsible for authorization of political parties.\nThe ruling Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party governed Syria as a police state through its control of the Syrian military and security apparatus; this system has frequently been described as totalitarian, although some scholars have preferred the term authoritarian. The 50th edition of Freedom in the World, published by Freedom House in 2023, designated Syria as \"Worst of the Worst\" among the \"Not Free\" countries and gave it the lowest score (1/100) alongside South Sudan.\nAccording to the 2012 Syrian constitution, the President of Syria was the head of the Syrian state, while the Prime Minister of Syria was nominally the head of government, although real power in the system lay with the presidency. The legislature, the People's Assembly, was the body responsible for passing laws, approving government appropriations and debating policy. In the event of a vote of no confidence by a simple majority, the prime minister was required to tender the resignation of their government to the president. Since the rule of Hafez al-Assad, the Ba'athist political system was centered around a comprehensive cult of personality focused on the al-Assad family; with Alawite loyalists of the Ba'ath party dominating key positions in the military apparatus, secret police, and political establishment.\nThe executive branch consisted of the president, two vice presidents, the prime minister, and the Council of Ministers (cabinet). The constitution required the president to be a Muslim but did not make Islam the state religion. On 31 January 1973, Hafez al-Assad implemented a new constitution, which led to a national crisis. Unlike previous constitutions, this one did not require that the President of Syria be a Muslim, leading to fierce demonstrations in Hama, Homs, and Aleppo organized by the Muslim Brotherhood and the traditional \"ulama\". They labelled Assad the \"enemy of Allah\" and called for a \"jihad\" against his rule. The government survived a series of armed revolts led mostly by Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood, between 1976 and 1982, through a series of repressions and massacres. The constitution gave the president the right to appoint ministers, to declare war and state of emergency, to issue laws (which, except in the case of emergency, require ratification by the People's Council), to declare amnesty, to amend the constitution, and to appoint civil servants and military personnel. According to the 2012 constitution, the president was elected by Syrian citizens in a direct election. Syria's legislative branch was the unicameral People's Council. The People's Council primarily served as an institution to validate Syria's one-party system and re-affirm the legislative proceedings of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath party.\nThere was no independent judiciary in Syria, since all judges and prosecutors were required to be Ba'athist appointees. Syria's judicial branches include the Supreme Constitutional Court, the High Judicial Council, the Court of Cassation, and the State Security Courts. Islamic jurisprudence was a main source of legislation and Syria's judicial system had elements of Ottoman, French, and Islamic laws. Syria had three levels of courts: courts of first instance, courts of appeals, and the constitutional court, the highest tribunal. Religious courts handled questions of personal and family law. The Supreme State Security Court was abolished by Bashar al-Assad in 2011. As a result of the ongoing civil war, various alternative governments were formed, including the Syrian Interim Government, the Democratic Union Party and localized regions governed by sharia. Representatives of the Syrian Interim government were invited to take up Syria's seat at the Arab League in 2013 and was recognised as the \"sole representative of the Syrian people\" by several nations including the United States, United Kingdom, and France.\nSyria's elections are conducted through a sham process; characterised by wide-scale rigging, repetitive voting and absence of voter registration and verification systems. Parliamentary elections were held on 13 April 2016 in the government-controlled areas of Syria, for all 250 seats of Syria's unicameral legislature, the Majlis al-Sha'ab, or the People's Council of Syria. Even before results had been announced, several nations, including Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom, have declared their refusal to accept the results, largely citing it \"not representing the will of the Syrian people.\" However, representatives of the Russian Federation have voiced their support of this election's results. Various independent observers and international organizations have denounced the Assad regime's electoral conduct as a scam; with the United Nations condemning it as illegitimate elections with \"no mandate\". Electoral Integrity Project's 2022 Global report designated Syrian elections as a \"facade\" with the worst electoral integrity in the world alongside Comoros and Central African Republic. Three alternative governments formed during the Syrian civil war, the Syrian Interim Government (formed in 2013), Rojava (formed in 2016) and the Syrian Salvation Government (formed in 2017), control northern areas of the country and operated independently of the Syrian Arab Republic.\nAdministrative divisions.\nSyria is divided into 14 governorates, which are subdivided into 61 districts, which are further divided into sub-districts.\nAutonomous Administration of North and East Syria.\nThe Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), while de facto autonomous, is not recognized by the country as such. The AANES, also known as Rojava, consists of self-governing sub-regions in the areas of Afrin, Jazira, Euphrates, Raqqa, Tabqa, Manbij and Deir Ez-Zor. The region gained its de facto autonomy in 2012 in the context of the ongoing Rojava conflict and the wider Syrian civil war, in which its official military force, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), has taken part.\nWhile entertaining some foreign relations, the region is not officially recognized as autonomous by the government of Syria or any state though it has been recognized by the regional Catalan Parliament. The AANES has widespread support for its universal democratic, sustainable, autonomous pluralist, equal, and feminist policies in dialogues with other parties and organizations. Northeastern Syria is polyethnic and home to sizeable ethnic Kurdish, Arab and Assyrian populations, with smaller communities of ethnic Turkmen, Armenians, Circassians, and Yazidis.\nThe supporters of the region's administration state that it is an officially secular polity with direct democratic ambitions based on an anarchistic, feminist, and libertarian socialist ideology promoting decentralization, gender equality, environmental sustainability, social ecology and pluralistic tolerance for religious, cultural and political diversity, and that these values are mirrored in its constitution, society, and politics, stating it to be a model for a federalized Syria as a whole, rather than outright independence. The region's administration has also been accused by some partisan and non-partisan sources of authoritarianism and support of the Syrian government. However, despite this the AANES has been the most democratic system in Syria, with direct open elections, universal equality, respecting human rights within the region, as well as defense of minority and religious rights within Syria.\nIn 2019, the SDF announced that it had reached an agreement with the Syrian Army which allowed the latter to enter the SDF-held cities of Manbij and Kobani in order to dissuade a Turkish attack on those cities as part of the cross-border offensive by Turkish and Turkish-backed Syrian rebels. The Syrian Army also deployed in the north of Syria together with the SDF along the Syrian-Turkish border and entered into several SDF-held cities such as Ayn Issa and Tell Tamer. Following the creation of the Second Northern Syria Buffer Zone the SDF stated that it was ready to work cooperatively with the Syrian Army if a political settlement between the Syrian government and the SDF was achieved.\nForeign relations.\nEnsuring national security, increasing influence among its Arab neighbors, and securing the return of the Golan Heights, have been the primary goals of Syria's foreign policy. At many points in its history, Syria has seen virulent tension with its geographically cultural neighbors, such as Turkey, Israel, Iraq, and Lebanon. Syria enjoyed an improvement in relations with several of the states in its region in the 21st century, prior to the Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war.\nSince the ongoing civil war of 2011 and associated killings and human rights abuses, Syria has been increasingly isolated from the countries in the region and the wider international community. Diplomatic relations have been severed with several countries including: Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, United States, Belgium, Spain, and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf.\nFrom the Arab league, Syria continues to maintain diplomatic relations with Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan and Yemen. Following its violent suppression of the Arab Spring protests of the 2011 Syrian Revolution, the Syrian government was suspended from the Arab League in November 2011 for over 11 years, until its reinstatement in 2023. Syria also quit the Union for the Mediterranean. After 11 years, the Arab League readmitted Syria. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation suspended Syria in August 2012 citing \"deep concern at the massacres and inhuman acts\" perpetrated by forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad.\nInternational disputes.\nIn 1939, while Syria was still a French mandate the French allowed a plebiscite regarding the Sanjak of Alexandretta joining to Turkey as part of a treaty of friendship in World War II. In order to facilitate this, a faulty election was done in which ethnic Turks who were originally from the Sanjak but lived in Adana and other areas near the border in Turkey came to vote in the elections, shifting the election in favor of secession. Through this, the Hatay Province of Turkey was formed. The move by the French was very controversial in Syria, and only five years later Syria became independent. Despite the Turkish annexation of the Sanjak of Alexandretta, the Syrian government has refused to recognize Turkish sovereignty over the region since Independence, except for a short period in 1949.The western two-thirds of Syria's Golan Heights region are since 1967 occupied by Israel and were in 1981 effectively annexed by Israel, whereas the eastern third is controlled by Syria, with the UNDOF maintaining a buffer zone in between, to implement the ceasefire of the Purple Line. Israel's 1981 Golan annexation law is not recognized in international law. The UN Security Council condemned it in Resolution 497 (1981) as \"null and void and without international legal effect.\" Since then, General Assembly resolutions on \"The Occupied Syrian Golan\" reaffirm the illegality of Israeli occupation and annexation. The Syrian government continues to demand the return of this territory.\nDuring its invasion of Syria in December 2024, Israel took control of the U.N.-patrolled buffer zone on Syrian territory, a move that violated the 1974 disengagement agreement with Syria. On 23 February 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded the complete demilitarization of southern Syria in the provinces of Quneitra, Daraa and Suweyda, and the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Syrian territory south of Damascus. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that Israeli forces would remain in southern Syria \"for an indefinite period of time to protect our communities and thwart any threat.\" Syria's new regime under transitional President Ahmed al-Sharaa condemned Israel's occupation of Syrian lands and demanded Israel's withdrawal.\nThe Turkish Armed Forces and its ally the Syrian National Army have occupied areas of northern Syria since 2016, during the Syrian civil war.\nIn early 1976, Syria entered Lebanon, beginning their 29-year military presence. Syria entered on the invitation of Suleiman Franjieh, the Maronite Christian president at the time to help aid the Lebanese Christian militias against the Palestinian militias. Over the following 15 years of Lebanese civil war, Syria fought for control over Lebanon. The Syrian military remained in Lebanon until 2005 in response to domestic and international pressure after the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.\nAnother disputed territory is the Shebaa farms, located in the intersection of the Lebanese-Syrian border and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The farms, which are 11km long and about 3 kilometers wide were occupied by Israel in 1981, along with rest of the Golan Heights. Yet following Syrian army advances the Israeli occupation ended and Syria became the de facto ruling power over the farms. Yet after Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah claimed that the withdrawal was not complete because Shebaa was on Lebanese \u2013 not Syrian \u2013 territory. After studying 81 maps, the United Nations concluded that there is no evidence of the abandoned farmlands being Lebanese. Nevertheless, Lebanon has continued to claim ownership of the territory.\nMilitary.\nThe President of Syria is commander in chief of the Syrian Armed Forces, comprising some 400,000 troops upon mobilization.The military is a conscripted force; males serve 30 months in the military upon reaching the age of 18. The obligatory military service period is being decreased over time, in 2005 from two and a half years to two years, in 2008 to 21 months and in 2011 to year and a half.\nThe breakup of the Soviet Union\u2014long the principal source of training, material, and credit for the Syrian forces\u2014may have slowed Syria's ability to acquire modern military equipment. It has an arsenal of surface-to-surface missiles. In the early 1990s, Scud-C missiles with a range were procured from North Korea, and Scud-D, with a range of up to , is allegedly being developed by Syria with the help of North Korea and Iran, according to Zisser.\nSyria received significant financial aid from Arab states of the Persian Gulf as a result of its participation in the Persian Gulf War, with a sizable portion of these funds earmarked for military spending. Iran and Russia are biggest suppliers of military aid to the Assad-led Syrian Government.\nHuman rights.\nPrior to the fall of the Assad regime, the situation for human rights in Syria has long been a significant concern among independent organizations such as Human Rights Watch, who in 2010 referred to the country's record as \"among the worst in the world.\" The 2011 Freedom House report ranked Syria \"Not Free\" in its annual Freedom in the World survey. The Ba'ath regime was a totalitarian dictatorship that has been internationally condemned for its domestic and political repression, including summary executions, massive censorship, forced disappearances, etc. as well as numerous crimes against Syrian civilians perpetrated during the civil war, such as massacres, barrel-bombings, chemical attacks, etc.\nThe authorities are accused of arresting democracy and human rights activists, censoring websites, detaining bloggers, and imposing travel bans. Arbitrary detention, torture, and disappearances are widespread. Although Syria's constitution guarantees gender equality, critics say that personal statutes laws and the penal code discriminate against women and girls. Moreover, it also grants leniency for so-called honour killing. As of 9 November 2011 during the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, the United Nations reported that of the over 3,500 deaths, over 250 deaths were children as young as two years old, and that boys as young as 11 years old have been gang-raped by security services officers. People opposing President Assad's rule claim that more than 200, mostly civilians, were massacred and about 300 injured in Hama in shelling by the government forces on 12 July 2012.\nIn August 2013, the government was suspected of using chemical weapons against its civilians. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said it was \"undeniable\" that chemical weapons had been used in the country and that al-Assad's forces had committed a \"moral obscenity\" against his own people. \"Make no mistake,\" Kerry said. \"President Obama believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world's most heinous weapon against the world's most vulnerable people. Nothing today is more serious, and nothing is receiving more serious scrutiny\". The Emergency Law, effectively suspending most constitutional protections, was in effect from 1963 until 21 April 2011. It was justified by the government in the light of the continuing war with Israel over the Golan Heights.\nIn August 2014, UN Human Rights chief Navi Pillay criticized the international community over its \"paralysis\" in dealing with the civil war gripping the country, which by 2014 had resulted in 191,369 deaths with war crimes, according to Pillay, being committed with total impunity on all sides in the conflict. Minority Alawites and Christians were targeted by Islamists and other groups. Three years later in April 2017, the U.S. Navy carried out a missile attack against a Syrian air base which had allegedly been used to conduct a chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians, according to the U.S. government. In November 2021, the U.S. Central Command called a 2019 airstrike that killed civilians in Syria \"legitimate\". The acknowledgement came after a New York Times investigation said the military had concealed the death of dozens of non-combatants.\nEconomy.\nThe ongoing civil war have left a negative impact on Syria's economy. However, Syria's economy began changing much before the beginning of the war. Syria's share in global exports has eroded gradually since 2001. The real per capita GDP growth was just 2.5% per year in the 2000\u20132008 period. Poverty rates increased from 11% in 2004 to 12.3% in 2007. In 2007, main exports included crude oil, refined products, raw cotton, clothing, fruits, and grains. The bulk of imports are raw materials essential for industry, vehicles, agricultural equipment, and heavy machinery. Earnings from oil exports as well as remittances from Syrian workers are the government's most important sources of foreign exchange.Despite this, prior to the war, Syria was one of the most dynamic markets in the Middle East. The government visioned a transition of Syria into a free market economy. The rising oil reserves triggered rapid growth in the economy, creating business opportunities for foreign firms and investments, as the booming oil and gas industry and infrastructure projects made Syria an attractive market. Prior to the war the government hoped to attract new investment in the tourism, natural gas, and service sectors to diversify its economy and reduce its dependence on oil and agriculture. The government began to institute economic reforms aimed at liberalizing most markets, but those reforms were slow and ad hoc, and were completely reversed since the outbreak of conflict. The UNDP announced in 2005 that 30% of the population lived in poverty, and 11.4% live below the subsistence level. At the outset of the civil war, Syria was classified by the World Bank as a \"lower middle income country,\" though in 2010 Syria remained dependent on the oil and agriculture sectors. The oil sector provided about 40% of export earnings.\nDuring the civil war, the Syrian economy relied upon dwindling customs and income taxes which are heavily bolstered by lines of credit from Iran, Russia and China. Iran is believed to have spent between $6billion and US$20billion per year on Syria during the first four years of the civil war. The Syrian pound lost 80% of its value, with the economy becoming part state-owned and part war economy. Proven offshore expeditions have indicated that large sums of oil exist on the Mediterranean Sea floor between Syria and Cyprus. The agriculture sector contributes to about 20% of GDP and 20% of employment. Oil reserves are expected to decrease in the coming years, and Syria has become a net oil importer. As of 2012[ [update]], the value of overall exports was slashed by two-thirds, from the figure of US$12billion in 2010 to only US$4billion in 2012.\nSince 2012, oil and tourism industries in particular have been devastated, with $5billion lost. Sanctions have sapped the government's finances. U.S. and European Union bans on oil imports, which went into effect in 2012, are estimated to cost Syria about $400million per month. Around 40% of all employees in the tourism sector lost their jobs since the beginning of the war. In May 2015, ISIS captured Syria's phosphate mines, one of the Syrian government's last chief sources of income. The following month, ISIS blew up a gas pipeline to Damascus that was used to generate heating and electricity in Damascus and Homs; \"the name of its game for now is denial of key resources to the regime\" an analyst stated. In addition, ISIS was closing in on Shaer gas field and three other facilities in the area\u2014Hayan, Jihar and Ebla\u2014with the loss of these western gas fields having the potential to cause Iran to further subsidize the Syrian government. Reconstruction will cost as much as $10billion. Aleppo soap is a popular product of Syria.\nThe economy was highly regulated by the government, which increased subsidies and tightened trade controls to assuage protesters and protect foreign currency reserves. Long-run economic constraints include foreign trade barriers, declining oil production, high unemployment, rising budget deficits, and increasing pressure on water supplies caused by heavy use in agriculture, rapid population growth, industrial expansion, and water pollution. In 2024, the World Bank estimated that the Syrian GDP had contracted by 84% from 2010 to 2023. As of 2023, its GDP was $6.2 billion. Syria's new government has vowed to stamp out the production of captagon, which makes up a major portion of the informal economy. The new government will also face challenges in securing and resuming the production of oil, as rebuilding the industry will require significant investments with no guarantee of a return.\nTransport.\nSyria has four international airports (Damascus, Aleppo, Lattakia and Qamishli), which serve as hubs for Syrian Air and are also served by a variety of foreign carriers. The majority of Syrian cargo is carried by Syrian Railways. As of 2024 there are no international rail services, but high-speed rail in Turkey is being extended close to the border. The road network in Syria is long, including of expressways. The country also has of navigable but not economically significant waterways.\nInternet and telecommunications.\nTelecommunications in Syria are overseen by the Ministry of Communications and Technology. In addition, Syrian Telecom plays an integral role in the distribution of government internet access. The Syrian Electronic Army serves as a pro-government military faction in cyberspace and has been long considered an enemy of the hacktivist group Anonymous. Because of internet censorship laws, 13,000 internet activists were arrested in 2011 and 2012.\nWater supply and sanitation.\nSyria is a semiarid country with scarce water resources. The largest water consuming sector in Syria is agriculture. Domestic water use stands at only about 9% of total water use. A big challenge for Syria before the civil war was its high population growth (in 2006 the growth rate was 2.7%), leading to rapidly increasing demand for urban and industrial water.\nDrug industry.\nPrior to the fall of the Ba'athist regime on 8 December 2024, Syria was home to a burgeoning illegal drugs industry run by associates and relatives of Bashar al-Assad. It mainly produced captagon, an addictive amphetamine popular in the Arab world. As of 2021, the export of illegal drugs eclipsed the country's legal exports, leading the \"New York Times\" to call Syria \"the world's newest narcostate\". The drug exports allow the government to generate hard currency and bypass international sanctions. Captagon was Syria's primary export, valued at a minimum of US$3.4 billion annually, surpassing the country's largest legal export, olive oil, which is valued at around US$122 million per year.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nMost people live in the Euphrates River valley and along the coastal plain, a fertile strip between the coastal mountains and the desert. Overall population density before the civil war was about 99 per square kilometre (258 per square mile). According to the \"World Refugee Survey 2008\", published by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Syria hosted a population of refugees and asylum seekers numbering approximately 1,852,300. The vast majority of this population was from Iraq (1,300,000), but sizeable populations from Palestine (543,400) and Somalia (5,200) also lived in the country.\nIn what the UN has described as \"the biggest humanitarian emergency of our era\", by 2014 about 9.5million Syrians, half the population, had been displaced since March 2011; 4million were outside the country as refugees. By 2020, the UN estimated that over 5.5 million Syrians were living as refugees in the region, and 6.1 million others were internally displaced.\nLargest cities.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nEthnic groups.\nSyrians are an overall indigenous Levantine people, closely related to their immediate neighbors, such as Lebanese, Palestinians, Jordanians and Jews. Syria has a population of approximately 18,500,000 (2019 estimate). Syrian Arabs, together with some 600,000 Palestinian not including the 6million refugees outside the country make up roughly 74% of the population. The indigenous Assyrians and Western Aramaic-speakers number around 400,000 people, with the Western Aramaic-speakers living mainly in the villages of Ma'loula, Jubb'adin and Bakh'a, while the Assyrians mainly reside in the north and northeast (Homs, Aleppo, Qamishli, Hasakah). Many (particularly the Assyrian group) still retain several Neo-Aramaic dialects as spoken and written languages.\nThe second-largest ethnic group in Syria are the Kurds. They constitute about 9% to 10% of the population, or approximately 2 million people (including 40,000 Yazidis). Most Kurds reside in the northeastern corner of Syria and most speak the Kurmanji variant of the Kurdish language. The third largest ethnic group are the Turkish-speaking Syrian Turkmen/Turkoman. There are no reliable estimates of their total population, with estimates ranging from several hundred thousand to 3.5million. The fourth largest ethnic group are the Assyrians (3\u20134%), followed by the Circassians (1.5%) and the Armenians (1%), most of which are the descendants of refugees who arrived in Syria during the Armenian genocide. Syria holds the 7th largest Armenian population in the world. They are mainly gathered in Aleppo, Qamishli, Damascus and Kesab.\nThere are also smaller ethnic minority groups, such as the Albanians, Bosnians, Georgians, Greeks, Persians, Pashtuns and Russians. However, most of these ethnic minorities have become Arabized to some degree, particularly those who practice the Muslim faith. The largest concentration of the Syrian diaspora outside the Arab world is in Brazil, which has millions of people of Arab and other Near Eastern ancestries. Brazil is the first country in the Americas to offer humanitarian visas to Syrian refugees. The majority of Arab Argentines are from either Lebanese or Syrian background.\nLanguages.\nArabic is the official language of the country. Several modern Arabic dialects are used in everyday life, most notably Levantine in the west and Mesopotamian in the northeast. According to \"The Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics\", in addition to Arabic, the following languages are spoken in the country, in order of the number of speakers: Kurdish, Turkish, Neo-Aramaic (four dialects), Circassian, Chechen, Armenian, and finally Greek. However, none of these minority languages have official status.\nAramaic was the lingua franca of the region before the advent of Arabic, and is still spoken among Assyrians, and Classical Syriac is still used as the liturgical language of various Syriac Christian denominations. Most remarkably, Western Neo-Aramaic is still spoken in the village of Ma'loula as well as two neighboring villages, northeast of Damascus. English and French are widely spoken as second languages, but English is more often used.\nReligion.\nIslam is the largest and predominant religion in Syria, comprising 87% of the population. Sunni Muslims make up around 74% of the population and Sunni Arabs account for 59\u201360%. Most Kurds (8.5%) and most Turkmens (3%) are Sunni, while 3% of Syrians are Shia Muslims (particularly Ismailis, and Twelvers but there are also Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens), 10% are Alawites, 10% are Christians (the majority are Antiochian Greek Orthodox, the rest are Syriac Orthodox, Greek Catholic and other Catholic Rites, Armenian Orthodox, Assyrian Church of the East, Protestants and other denominations), and 3% Druzes. Druze number around 500,000 and concentrate mainly in the southern area of Jabal al-Druze. According to the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA), 94.17% of Syrians are Muslims\u201379.19% are Sunnis and 14.10% are Shias (including Alawites)\u2013and 3.84% of Syrians are Christians as of 2020[ [update]].\nBecause the Assad family is Alawite, Alawites have historically dominated key government and military positions.\nChristians numbering 1.2million, a sizable number of whom are found among Syria's population of Palestinian and Iraqi refugees, are divided into several sects. The Greek Orthodox make up 45.7% of the Christian population; the Syriac Orthodox make up 22.4%; the Armenian Orthodox make up 10.9%; the Catholics (including Greek Catholic, Syriac Catholic, Armenian Catholic, Maronite, Chaldean Catholic and Latin) make up 16.2%; Assyrian Church of the East and several smaller Christian denominations account for the remainder. Many Christian monasteries also exist. Many Christian Syrians belong to a high socio-economic class. As per one estimate, the count of Christians affiliated with established denominations in Syria has dropped from approximately 2.5 million before the civil war, to about 500,000 in 2023.\nSyria was once home to a substantial population of Jews, with large communities in Damascus, Aleppo, and Qamishii. Due to a combination of persecution in Syria and opportunities elsewhere, the Jews began to emigrate in the second half of the 19th century to Great Britain, the United States, and Israel. The process was completed with the establishment of Israel in 1948. The remaining Jewish population dwindled as a result of the civil war. Today 100 Jews live in Syria. The United States is home to a large Syrian Jewish community, which is still considered as Syrian citizens by the Syrian government.\nEducation.\nEducation is free and compulsory from ages 6 to 12. Schooling consists of six years of primary education followed by a three-year general or vocational training period and a three-year academic or vocational program. The second three-year period of academic training is required for university admission. Total enrollment at post-secondary schools is over 150,000. The literacy rate of Syrians aged 15 and older is 90.7% for males and 82.2% for females.\nThere are six state universities in Syria and 15 private universities. The top two state universities are Damascus University (210,000 students as of 2014) and University of Aleppo. The top private universities in Syria are: Syrian Private University, Arab International University, University of Kalamoon and International University for Science and Technology. There are also many higher institutes in Syria, like the Higher Institute of Business Administration, which offer undergraduate and graduate programs in business.\nHealth.\nIn 2010, spending on healthcare accounted for 3.4% of the GDP. In 2008, there were 14.9 physicians and 18.5 nurses per 10,000 inhabitants. The life expectancy at birth was 75.7 years in 2010, or 74.2 years for males and 77.3 years for females.\nCulture.\nSyria is a traditional society with a long cultural history. Importance is placed on family, religion, education, self-discipline and respect. Syrians' taste for the traditional arts is expressed in dances such as the al-Samah, the Dabkeh in all their variations, and the sword dance. Marriage ceremonies and the births of children are occasions for the lively demonstration of folk customs.\nLiterature.\nThe literature of Syria has contributed to Arabic literature and has a proud tradition of oral and written poetry. Syrian writers, many of whom migrated to Egypt, played a crucial role in the nahda or Arab literary and cultural revival of the 19th century. Prominent contemporary Syrian writers include, among others, Adonis, Muhammad Maghout, Haidar Haidar, Ghada al-Samman, Nizar Qabbani and Zakariyya Tamer.\nBa'ath Party rule has brought about renewed censorship. In this context, the genre of the historical novel, spearheaded by Nabil Sulayman, Fawwaz Haddad, Khyri al-Dhahabi and Nihad Siris, is sometimes used as a means of expressing dissent, critiquing the present through a depiction of the past. Syrian folk narrative, as a subgenre of historical fiction, is imbued with magical realism, and is also used as a means of veiled criticism of the present. Salim Barakat, a Syrian \u00e9migr\u00e9 living in Sweden, is one of the leading figures of the genre. Contemporary Syrian literature also encompasses science fiction and futuristic utopiae (Nuhad Sharif, Talib Umran), which may also serve as media of dissent.\nMusic.\nThe Syrian music scene, in particular that of Damascus, has long been among the Arab world's most important, especially in the field of classical Arab music. Syria has produced several pan-Arab stars, including Asmahan, Farid al-Atrash and singer Lena Chamamyan. The city of Aleppo is known for its muwashshah, a form of Andalous sung poetry popularized by Sabri Moudallal, as well as for popular stars like Sabah Fakhri.\nMedia.\nTelevision was introduced to Syria and Egypt in 1960, when both were part of the United Arab Republic. It broadcast in black and white until 1976. Syrian soap operas have considerable market penetration throughout the eastern Arab world.\nNearly all of Syria's media outlets are state-owned. The authorities operate several intelligence agencies, among them Shu'bat al-Mukhabarat al-'Askariyya, employing many operatives. During the civil war many of Syria's artists, poets, writers and activists have been incarcerated, and some have been killed, including famed cartoonist Akram Raslan.\nCuisine.\nSyrian cuisine is rich and varied in its ingredients, linked to the regions where a specific dish has originated. Syrian food mostly consists of southern Mediterranean, Greek, and Southwest Asian dishes. Some Syrian dishes also evolved from Turkish and French cooking: dishes like shish kebab, stuffed zucchini/courgette, and \"yabra\u02be\" (stuffed grape leaves, the word \"yabra\u02be\" deriving from the Turkish word \"yaprak\", meaning leaf).\nThe main dishes are kibbeh, hummus, tabbouleh, fattoush, labneh, shawarma, mujaddara, shanklish, past\u0131rma, sujuk and baklava. Baklava is made of filo pastry filled with chopped nuts and soaked in honey. Syrians often serve selections of appetizers, known as meze, before the main course. Za'atar, minced beef, and cheese manakish are popular hors d'\u0153uvres. The Arabic flatbread khubz is always eaten together with meze.\nDrinks vary, depending on the time of day and the occasion. Arabic coffee is the most well-known hot drink, usually prepared in the morning at breakfast or in the evening. It is usually served for guests or after food. Arak, an alcoholic drink, is a well-known beverage, served mostly on special occasions. Other Syrian beverages include ayran, jallab, white coffee, and a locally manufactured beer called Al Shark.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "18836": "Middle Ages\nEuropean history from the 5th to 15th centuries\nIn the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and transitioned into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages.\nPopulation decline, counterurbanisation, the collapse of centralised authority, invasions, and mass migrations of tribes, which had begun in late antiquity, continued into the Early Middle Ages. The large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East\u2014once part of the Byzantine Empire\u2014came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, an Islamic empire, after conquest by Muhammad's successors. Although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was incomplete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire, Rome's direct continuation, survived in the Eastern Mediterranean and remained a major power. The empire's law code, the \"Corpus Juris Civilis\" or \"Code of Justinian\", was rediscovered in Northern Italy in the 11th century. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions. Monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise the remaining pagans across Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th and early 9th centuries. It covered much of Western Europe but later succumbed to the pressures of internal civil wars combined with external invasions: Vikings from the north, Magyars from the east, and Saracens from the south.\nDuring the High Middle Ages, which began after 1000, the population of Europe increased significantly as technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and the Medieval Warm Period climate change allowed crop yields to increase. Manorialism, the organisation of peasants into villages that owed rent and labour services to the nobles, and feudalism, the political structure whereby knights and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in return for the right to rent from lands and manors, were two of the ways society was organised in the High Middle Ages. This period also saw the collapse of the unified Christian church with the East\u2013West Schism of 1054. The Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation-states, reducing crime and violence but making the ideal of a unified Christendom more distant. Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. The theology of Thomas Aquinas, the paintings of Giotto, the poetry of Dante and Chaucer, the travels of Marco Polo, and the Gothic architecture of cathedrals such as Chartres are among the outstanding achievements toward the end of this period and into the Late Middle Ages.\nThe Late Middle Ages was marked by difficulties and calamities, including famine, plague, and war, which significantly diminished the population of Europe; between 1347 and 1350, the Black Death killed about a third of Europeans. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the interstate conflict, civil strife, and peasant revolts that occurred in the kingdoms. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages and beginning the early modern period.\nTerminology and periodisation.\nThe Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history: classical civilisation or antiquity, the Middle Ages and the modern period. The \"Middle Ages\" first appears in Latin in 1469 as \"media tempestas\" or \"middle season\". In early usage, there were many variants, including \"medium aevum\", or \"middle age\", first recorded in 1604, and \"media saecula\", or \"middle centuries\", first recorded in 1625. The adjective \"medieval\" (or sometimes \"mediaeval\" or \"medi\u00e6val\"), meaning pertaining to the Middle Ages, derives from .\nMedieval writers divided history into periods such as the \"Six Ages\" or the \"Four Empires\" and considered their time to be the last before the end of the world. When referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being \"modern\". In the 1330s, the Italian humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as ('ancient') and to the Christian period as ('new'). Petrarch regarded the post-Roman centuries as \"dark\" compared to the \"light\" of classical antiquity. Leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his \"History of the Florentine People\" (1442), with a middle period \"between the fall of the Roman Empire and the revival of city life sometime in late eleventh and twelfth centuries\". Tripartite periodisation became standard after the 17th-century German historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods: ancient, medieval, and modern.\nThe most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is around 500, with the date of 476 first used by Bruni. Later starting dates are sometimes used in the outer parts of Europe. For Europe as a whole, 1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. Depending on the context, events such as the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Americas in 1492, or the Reformation in 1517 are sometimes used. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period. For Spain, dates commonly used are the death of King Ferdinand II in 1516, the death of Queen Isabella I of Castile in 1504, or the conquest of Granada in 1492.\nHistorians from Romance-speaking countries tend to divide the Middle Ages into two parts: an earlier \"High\" and later \"Low\" period. English-speaking historians, following their German counterparts, generally subdivide the Middle Ages into three intervals: \"Early\", \"High\", and \"Late\". In the 19th century, the entire Middle Ages were often referred to as the \"Dark Ages\", but with the adoption of these subdivisions, use of this term was restricted to the Early Middle Ages, at least among historians.\nLater Roman Empire.\nThe Roman Empire reached its greatest territorial extent during the 2nd century AD; the following two centuries witnessed the slow decline of Roman control over its outlying territories. Economic issues, including inflation, and external pressure on the frontiers combined to create the Crisis of the Third Century, with emperors coming to the throne only to be rapidly replaced by new usurpers. Military expenses increased steadily during the 3rd century, mainly in response to the war with the Sasanian Empire, which revived in the middle of the 3rd century. The army doubled in size, and cavalry and smaller units replaced the Roman legion as the main tactical unit. The need for revenue led to increased taxes and a decline in numbers of the curial, or landowning, class, and decreasing numbers of them willing to shoulder the burdens of holding office in their native towns. More bureaucrats were needed in the central administration to deal with the needs of the army, which led to complaints from civilians that there were more tax-collectors in the empire than tax-payers.\nThe Emperor Diocletian (r. 284\u2013305) split the empire into separately administered eastern and western halves in 286; the empire was not considered divided by its inhabitants or rulers, as legal and administrative promulgations in one division were considered valid in the other. In 330, after a period of civil war, Constantine the Great (r. 306\u2013337) refounded the city of Byzantium as the newly renamed eastern capital, Constantinople. Diocletian's reforms strengthened the governmental bureaucracy, reformed taxation, and strengthened the army, which bought the empire time but did not resolve the problems it was facing: excessive taxation, a declining birthrate, and pressures on its frontiers, among others. Civil war between rival emperors became common in the middle of the 4th century, diverting soldiers from the empire's frontier forces and allowing invaders to encroach. For much of the 4th century, Roman society stabilised in a new form that differed from the earlier classical period, with a widening gulf between the rich and poor, and a decline in the vitality of the smaller towns. Another change was the Christianisation, or conversion of the empire to Christianity, a gradual process that lasted from the 2nd to the 5th centuries.\nIn 376, the Goths, fleeing from the Huns, received permission from Emperor Valens (r. 364\u2013378) to settle in the Roman province of Thracia in the Balkans. The settlement did not go smoothly, and the Goths began to raid and plunder when Roman officials mishandled the situation. Valens, attempting to put down the disorder, was killed fighting the Goths at the Battle of Adrianople on 9 August 378. In addition to the threat from such tribal confederacies in the north, internal divisions within the empire, especially within the Christian Church, caused problems. In 400, the Visigoths invaded the Western Roman Empire and, although briefly forced back from Italy, in 410 sacked the city of Rome. In 406 the Alans, Vandals, and Suevi crossed into Gaul; over the next three years they spread across Gaul and in 409 crossed the Pyrenees Mountains into modern-day Spain. The Migration Period began, when various peoples, initially largely Germanic peoples, moved across Europe. The Franks, Alemanni, and the Burgundians all ended up in northern Gaul while the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes settled in Britain, and the Vandals went on to cross the strait of Gibraltar after which they conquered the province of Africa. In the 430s the Huns began invading the empire; their king Attila (r. 434\u2013453) led invasions into the Balkans in 442 and 447, Gaul in 451, and Italy in 452. The Hunnic threat remained until Attila's death in 453, when the Hunnic confederation he led fell apart. These invasions by the tribes completely changed the political and demographic nature of what had been the Western Roman Empire.\nBy the end of the 5th century, the western section of the empire was divided into smaller political units ruled by the tribes that had invaded in the early part of the century. The deposition of the last emperor of the west, Romulus Augustulus, in 476 has traditionally marked the end of the Western Roman Empire. By 493 the Italian peninsula was conquered by the Ostrogoths. The Eastern Roman Empire, often referred to as the Byzantine Empire after the fall of its western counterpart, had little ability to assert control over the lost western territories. The Byzantine emperors maintained a claim over the territory, but while none of the new kings in the west dared to elevate himself to the position of emperor of the west, Byzantine control of most of the Western Empire could not be sustained; the reconquest of the Mediterranean periphery and the Italian Peninsula (Gothic War) in the reign of Justinian (r. 527\u2013565) was the sole, and temporary, exception.\nEarly Middle Ages.\nNew societies.\nThe political structure of Western Europe changed with the end of the united Roman Empire. Although the movements of peoples during this period are usually described as \"invasions\", they were not just military expeditions but migrations of entire peoples into the empire. Such movements were aided by the refusal of the Western Roman elites to support the army or pay the taxes that would have allowed the military to suppress the migration. The emperors of the 5th century were often controlled by military strongmen such as Stilicho (d. 408), Aetius (d. 454), Aspar (d. 471), Ricimer (d. 472), or Gundobad (d. 516), who were partly or fully of non-Roman background. When the line of Western emperors ceased, many of the kings who replaced them were from the same background. Intermarriage between the new kings and the Roman elites was common. This led to a fusion of Roman culture with the customs of the invading tribes, including the popular assemblies that allowed free male tribal members more say in political matters than was common in the Roman state. Material artefacts left by the Romans and the invaders are often similar, and tribal items were often modelled on Roman objects. Much of the scholarly and written culture of the new kingdoms was also based on Roman intellectual traditions. An important difference was the new polities' gradual loss of tax revenue. Many new political entities no longer supported their armies through taxes; instead, they relied on granting them land or rents. This meant there was less need for large tax revenues, so the taxation systems decayed. Warfare was common between and within the kingdoms. Slavery declined as the supply weakened, and society became more rural.\nBetween the 5th and 8th centuries, new peoples and individuals filled the political void left by the centralised Roman government. The Ostrogoths, a Gothic tribe, settled in Roman Italy in the late fifth century under Theoderic the Great (d. 526) and set up a kingdom marked by its co-operation between the Italians and the Ostrogoths, at least until the last years of Theodoric's reign. The Burgundians settled in Gaul, and after an earlier realm was destroyed by the Huns in 436, formed a new kingdom in the 440s. Between today's Geneva and Lyon, it grew to become the realm of Burgundy in the late 5th and early 6th centuries. Elsewhere in Gaul, the Franks and Celtic Britons set up small polities. Francia was centred in northern Gaul, and the first king of whom much is known is Childeric I (d. 481). His grave was discovered in 1653 and is remarkable for its grave goods, which included weapons and a large quantity of gold.\nUnder Childeric's son Clovis I (r. 509\u2013511), the founder of the Merovingian dynasty, the Frankish kingdom expanded and converted to Christianity. The Britons, related to the natives of Britannia\u00a0\u2013 modern-day Great Britain\u00a0\u2013 settled in what is now Brittany. Other monarchies were established by the Visigothic Kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula, the Suebi in northwestern Iberia, and the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa. In the sixth century, the Lombards settled in Northern Italy, replacing the Ostrogothic kingdom with a grouping of duchies that occasionally selected a king to rule over them all. By the late sixth century, this arrangement had been replaced by a permanent monarchy, the Kingdom of the Lombards.\nThe invasions brought new ethnic groups to Europe, although some regions received a larger influx of new peoples than others. In Gaul, for instance, the invaders settled much more extensively in the north-east than in the south-west. Slavs settled in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkan Peninsula. Changes in languages accompanied the settlement of peoples. Latin, the literary language of the Western Roman Empire, was gradually replaced by vernacular languages, which evolved from Latin but were distinct from it, collectively known as Romance languages. These changes from Latin to the new languages took many centuries. Greek remained the language of the Byzantine Empire, but the migrations of the Slavs added Slavic languages to Eastern Europe.\nByzantine survival.\nAs Western Europe witnessed the formation of new kingdoms, the Eastern Roman Empire remained intact and experienced an economic revival that lasted into the early 7th century. There were fewer invasions of the eastern section of the empire; most occurred in the Balkans. Peace with the Sasanian Empire, Rome's traditional enemy, lasted most of the 5th century. The Eastern Empire was marked by closer relations between the political state and the Christian Church, with doctrinal matters assuming an importance in Eastern politics that they did not have in Western Europe. Legal developments included the codification of Roman law; the first effort\u2014the \"Codex Theodosianus\"\u2014was completed in 438. Under Emperor Justinian (r. 527\u2013565), another compilation took place\u2014the \"Corpus Juris Civilis\". Justinian also oversaw the construction of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and the reconquest of North Africa from the Vandals and Italy from the Ostrogoths, under Belisarius (d. 565). The conquest of Italy was not complete, as a deadly outbreak of plague in 542 led to the rest of Justinian's reign concentrating on defensive measures rather than further conquests.\nAt the Emperor's death, the Byzantines had control of most of Italy, North Africa, and a small foothold in southern Spain. Historians have criticised Justinian's reconquests for overextending his realm and setting the stage for the early Muslim conquests, but many of the difficulties faced by Justinian's successors were due not just to over-taxation to pay for his wars but to the essentially civilian nature of the empire, which made raising troops difficult.\nIn the Eastern Empire, the Slavs' slow infiltration of the Balkans added further difficulty for Justinian's successors. It began gradually, but by the late 540s, Slavic tribes were in Thrace and Illyrium and had defeated an imperial army near Adrianople in 551. In the 560s, the Avars began to expand from their base on the north bank of the Danube; by the end of the 6th century, they were the dominant power in Central Europe and routinely able to force the Eastern emperors to pay tribute. They remained a strong power until 796.\nAn additional problem to face the empire came as a result of the involvement of Emperor Maurice (r. 582\u2013602) in Persian politics when he intervened in a succession dispute. This led to a period of peace, but when Maurice was overthrown, the Persians invaded and during the reign of Emperor Heraclius (r. 610\u2013641) controlled large chunks of the empire, including Egypt, Syria, and Anatolia until Heraclius' successful counterattack. In 628, the empire secured a peace treaty and recovered its lost territories.\nWestern society.\nIn Western Europe, some older Roman elite families died out while others became more involved with ecclesiastical than secular affairs. Values attached to Latin scholarship and education mostly disappeared, and while literacy remained important, it became a practical skill rather than a sign of elite status. In the 4th century, Jerome (d. 420) dreamed that God rebuked him for spending more time reading Cicero than the Bible. By the 6th century, Gregory of Tours (d. 594) had a similar dream, but instead of being chastised for reading Cicero, he was chastised for learning shorthand. By the late 6th century, the principal means of religious instruction in the Church had become music and art rather than the book. Most intellectual efforts went towards imitating classical scholarship, but some original works were created, along with now-lost oral compositions. The writings of Sidonius Apollinaris (d. 489), Cassiodorus (d. c.\u2009585), and Boethius (d. c. 525) were typical of the age.\nChanges also occurred among laypeople, as aristocratic culture focused on great feasts held in halls rather than on literary pursuits. Clothing for the elites was richly embellished with jewels and gold. Lords and kings supported the entourages of fighters who formed the backbone of the military forces. Family ties within the elites were important, as were the virtues of loyalty, courage, and honour. These ties led to the prevalence of feuds in aristocratic society, including those related by Gregory of Tours in Merovingian Gaul. Most feuds seem to have ended quickly with the payment of some compensation. Women took part in aristocratic society mainly in their roles as wives and mothers of men, with the role of mother of a ruler being especially prominent in Merovingian Gaul. In Anglo-Saxon society, the lack of many child rulers meant a lesser role for women as queen mothers, but this was compensated for by the increased role played by abbesses of monasteries. Only in Italy does it appear that women were always considered under the protection and control of a male relative.\nPeasant society is much less documented than the nobility. Most of the surviving information available to historians comes from archaeology; few detailed written records documenting peasant life remain from before the 9th century. Most of the descriptions of the lower classes come from either law codes or writers from the upper classes. Landholding patterns in the West were not uniform; some areas had greatly fragmented landholding patterns, but in other areas, large contiguous blocks of land were the norm. These differences allowed for a wide variety of peasant societies, some dominated by aristocratic landholders and others having great autonomy. Land settlement also varied greatly. Some peasants lived in large settlements that numbered as many as 700 inhabitants. Others lived in small groups of a few families and lived on isolated farms spread over the countryside. There were also areas where the pattern was a mix of two or more systems. Unlike in the late Roman period, there was no sharp break between the legal status of the free peasant and the aristocrat, and a free peasant's family could rise into the aristocracy over several generations through military service to a powerful lord.\nRoman city life and culture changed greatly in the early Middle Ages. Although Italian cities remained inhabited, they contracted significantly in size. For instance, Rome shrank from hundreds of thousands to around 30,000 by the end of the 6th century. Roman temples were converted into Christian churches and city walls remained in use. In Northern Europe, cities also shrank, while civic monuments and other public buildings were raided for building materials. The establishment of new kingdoms often meant some growth for the towns chosen as capitals. Although there had been Jewish communities in many Roman cities, the Jews suffered periods of persecution after the conversion of the empire to Christianity. Officially, they were tolerated, if subject to conversion efforts, and were sometimes encouraged to settle in new areas.\nRise of Islam.\nReligious beliefs in the Eastern Roman Empire and Iran were in flux during the late sixth and early seventh centuries. Judaism was an active proselytising faith, and at least one Arab political leader converted to it. In addition Jewish theologians wrote polemics defending their religion against Christian and Islamic influences.\nChristianity had active missions competing with the Persians' Zoroastrianism in seeking converts, especially among residents of the Arabian Peninsula. All these strands came together with the emergence of Islam in Arabia during the lifetime of Muhammad (d. 632). After his death, Islamic forces conquered much of the Eastern Roman Empire and Persia, starting with Syria in 634\u2013635, continuing with Persia between 637 and 642, reaching Egypt in 640\u2013641, North Africa in the later seventh century, and the Iberian Peninsula in 711. By 714, Islamic forces controlled much of the peninsula in a region they called Al-Andalus.\nThe Islamic conquests reached their peak in the mid-eighth century. The defeat of Muslim forces at the Battle of Tours in 732 led to the reconquest of southern France by the Franks, but the main reason for the halt of Islamic growth in Europe was the overthrow of the Umayyad Caliphate and its replacement by the Abbasid Caliphate. The Abbasids moved their capital to Baghdad and were more concerned with the Middle East than Europe, losing control of sections of the Muslim lands. Umayyad descendants took over the Iberian Peninsula, the Aghlabids controlled North Africa, and the Tulunids became rulers of Egypt. By the middle of the 8th century, new trading patterns were emerging in the Mediterranean; trade between the Franks and the Arabs replaced the old Roman economy. Franks traded timber, furs, swords, and enslaved people in return for silks and other fabrics, spices, and precious metals from the Arabs.\nTrade and economy.\nThe migrations and invasions of the 4th and 5th centuries disrupted trade networks around the Mediterranean. African goods stopped being imported into Europe, first disappearing from the interior and, by the 7th century, found only in a few cities such as Rome or Naples. By the end of the 7th century, under the impact of the Muslim conquests, African products were no longer found in Western Europe. Replacing goods from long-range trade with local products was a trend throughout the old Roman lands in the Early Middle Ages. This was especially marked in the lands that did not lie on the Mediterranean, such as northern Gaul or Britain. Non-local goods appearing in the archaeological record are usually luxury goods. In northern Europe, not only were the trade networks local, but the goods carried were simple, with little pottery or other complex products. Around the Mediterranean, pottery remained prevalent and appears to have been traded over medium-range networks, not just produced locally.\nThe various Germanic states in the west all had coinages that imitated existing Roman and Byzantine forms. Gold continued to be minted until the end of the 7th century in 693\u2013694, when it was replaced by silver in the Merovingian kingdom. The basic Frankish silver coin was the denarius or denier, while the Anglo-Saxon version was called a penny. From these areas, the denier or penny spread throughout Europe from 700 to 1000. Copper or bronze coins were not struck, nor were gold, except in Southern Europe. No silver coins denominated in multiple units were minted.\nChurch and monasticism.\nChristianity was a major unifying factor between Eastern and Western Europe before the Arab conquests, but the conquest of North Africa sundered maritime connections between those areas. Increasingly, the Byzantine Church differed in language, practices, and liturgy from the Western Church. The Eastern Church used Greek instead of Western Latin. Theological and political differences emerged, and by the early and middle 8th century, issues such as iconoclasm, clerical marriage, and state control of the Church had widened to the extent that the cultural and religious differences were more significant than the similarities. A formal break known as the East\u2013West Schism came in 1054, when the papacy and the patriarchy of Constantinople clashed over papal supremacy and excommunicated each other, which led to the division of Christianity into two Churches\u2014the Western branch became the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern branch the Eastern Orthodox Church.\nThe ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Empire survived the movements and invasions in the West mostly intact. Still, the papacy was little regarded, and few of the Western bishops looked to the bishop of Rome for religious or political leadership. Many of the popes before 750 were more concerned with Byzantine affairs and Eastern theological controversies. The register, or archived copies of the letters, of Pope Gregory the Great (pope 590\u2013604) survived. Of those 850 letters, most were concerned with affairs in Italy or Constantinople. The only part of Western Europe where the papacy had influence was Britain, where Gregory had sent the Gregorian mission in 597 to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. Irish missionaries were most active in Western Europe between the 5th and the 7th centuries, going first to England and Scotland and then on to the continent. Under such monks as Columba (d. 597) and Columbanus (d. 615), they founded monasteries, taught in Latin and Greek, and authored secular and religious works.\nThe Early Middle Ages witnessed the rise of monasticism in the West. The shape of European monasticism was determined by traditions and ideas that originated with the Desert Fathers of Egypt and Syria. Most European monasteries were of the type that focuses on the community experience of the spiritual life, called cenobitism, which was pioneered by Pachomius (d. 348) in the 4th century. Monastic ideals spread from Egypt to Western Europe in the 5th and 6th centuries through hagiographical literature such as the \"Life of Anthony\". Benedict of Nursia (d. 547) wrote the Benedictine Rule for Western monasticism during the 6th century, detailing the administrative and spiritual responsibilities of a community of monks led by an abbot. Monks and monasteries had a profound effect on the religious and political life of the Early Middle Ages, in various cases acting as land trusts for powerful families, centres of propaganda and royal support in newly conquered regions, and bases for missions and proselytisation. They were the main and sometimes only outposts of education and literacy in a region. Many of the surviving manuscripts of the Latin classics were copied in monasteries in the Early Middle Ages. Monks were also the authors of new works, including history, theology, and other subjects, written by authors such as Bede (d. 735), a native of northern England who wrote in the late 7th and early 8th centuries.\nCarolingian Europe.\nThe Frankish kingdom in northern Gaul split into kingdoms called Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgundy during the 6th and 7th centuries, all of them ruled by the Merovingian dynasty, who were descended from Clovis. The 7th century was a tumultuous period of wars between Austrasia and Neustria. Such warfare was exploited by Pippin I (d. 640), the Mayor of the Palace for Austrasia who became the power behind the Austrasian throne. Later, his family inherited the office and acted as advisers and regents. One of his descendants, Charles Martel (d. 741), won the Battle of Poitiers in 732, halting the advance of Muslim armies across the Pyrenees. Great Britain was divided into small states dominated by the kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, and East Anglia which descended from the Anglo-Saxon invaders. Smaller kingdoms in present-day Wales and Scotland were still under the control of the native Britons and Picts. Ireland was divided into even smaller political units, usually known as tribal kingdoms, under the control of kings. There were perhaps as many as 150 local kings in Ireland of varying importance.\nThe Carolingian dynasty, as the successors to Charles Martel are known, officially took control of the kingdoms of Austrasia and Neustria in a coup of 753 led by Pippin III (r. 752\u2013768). A contemporary chronicle claims that Pippin sought and gained authority for this coup from Pope Stephen II (pope 752\u2013757). Pippin's takeover was reinforced with propaganda that portrayed the Merovingians as inept or cruel rulers, exalted the accomplishments of Charles Martel, and circulated stories of the family's great piety. At the time of his death in 768, Pippin left his kingdom in the hands of his two sons, Charles (r. 768\u2013814) and Carloman (r. 768\u2013771). When Carloman died of natural causes, Charles blocked the succession of Carloman's young son and installed himself as the king of the united Austrasia and Neustria. Charles, more often known as Charles the Great or Charlemagne, embarked upon a programme of systematic expansion in 774 that unified a large portion of Europe, eventually controlling modern-day France, northern Italy, and Saxony. In the wars that lasted beyond 800, he rewarded allies with war booty and command over parcels of land. In 774, Charlemagne conquered the Lombards, which freed the papacy from the fear of Lombard conquest and marked the beginnings of the Papal States.\nThe coronation of Charlemagne as emperor on Christmas Day 800 is regarded as a turning point in medieval history, marking a return of the Western Roman Empire since the new emperor ruled over much of the area previously controlled by the Western emperors. It also marks a change in Charlemagne's relationship with the Byzantine Empire, as the assumption of the imperial title by the Carolingians asserted their equivalence to the Byzantine state. There were several differences between the newly established Carolingian Empire and both the older Western Roman Empire and the concurrent Byzantine Empire. The Frankish lands were rural, with only a few small cities. Most of the people were peasants who settled on small farms. Little trade existed, and much of that was with the British Isles and Scandinavia, in contrast to the older Roman Empire with its trading networks centred on the Mediterranean. The empire was administered by an itinerant court that travelled with the emperor, as well as approximately 300 imperial officials called counts, who administered the counties the empire had been divided into. Clergy and local bishops served as officials, as well as the imperial officials, called \"missi dominici\", who served as roving inspectors and troubleshooters.\nCarolingian Renaissance.\nCharlemagne's court in Aachen was the centre of the cultural revival, sometimes referred to as the \"Carolingian Renaissance\". Literacy increased, as did development in the arts, architecture, jurisprudence, and liturgical and scriptural studies. The English monk Alcuin (d. 804) was invited to Aachen and brought the education available in the monasteries of Northumbria. Charlemagne's chancery\u2014or writing office\u2014made use of a new script today known as Carolingian minuscule, allowing a standard writing style that advanced communication across much of Europe. Charlemagne sponsored changes in church liturgy, imposing the Roman form of church service on his domains, as well as the Gregorian chant in liturgical music for the churches. An important activity for scholars during this period was copying, correcting, and disseminating basic works on religious and secular topics to encourage learning. New works on religious topics and schoolbooks were also produced. Grammarians of the period modified the Latin language, changing it from the Classical Latin of the Roman Empire into a more flexible form to fit the needs of the Church and government. By the reign of Charlemagne, the language had so diverged from the classical Latin that it was later called Medieval Latin.\nBreakup of the Carolingian Empire.\nCharlemagne planned to continue the Frankish tradition of dividing his kingdom between all his heirs but was unable to do so as only one son, Louis the Pious (r. 814\u2013840), was still alive by 813. Just before Charlemagne died in 814, he crowned Louis as his successor. Numerous divisions of the empire marked Louis's reign of 26 years among his sons and, after 829, civil wars between various alliances of father and sons over the control of various parts of the empire. Eventually, Louis recognised his eldest son Lothair I (d. 855) as emperor and gave him Italy. Louis divided the rest of the empire between Lothair and Charles the Bald (d. 877), his youngest son. Lothair took East Francia, comprising both banks of the Rhine and eastwards, leaving Charles West Francia with the empire to the west of the Rhineland and the Alps. Louis the German (d. 876), the middle child, who had been rebellious to the last, was allowed to keep Bavaria under the suzerainty of his elder brother. The division was disputed. Pepin II of Aquitaine (d. after 864), the emperor's grandson, rebelled in a contest for Aquitaine, while Louis the German tried to annexe all of East Francia. Louis the Pious died in 840, with the empire still in chaos.\nA three-year civil war followed his death. By the Treaty of Verdun (843), a kingdom between the Rhine and Rhone rivers was created for Lothair to go with his lands in Italy, and his imperial title was recognised. Louis the German controlled Bavaria and the eastern lands in modern-day Germany. Charles the Bald received the western Frankish lands, comprising most of modern-day France. Charlemagne's grandsons and great-grandsons divided their kingdoms between their descendants, eventually causing all internal cohesion to be lost. In 987, the Carolingian dynasty was replaced in the western lands, with the crowning of Hugh Capet (r. 987\u2013996) as king. In the eastern lands, the dynasty had died out earlier, in 911, with the death of Louis the Child, and the selection of the unrelated Conrad I (r. 911\u2013918) as king.\nInvasions, migrations, and raids by external foes accompanied the break-up of the Carolingian Empire. The Atlantic and northern shores were harassed by the Vikings, who also raided the British Isles and settled there and in Iceland. In 911, the Viking chieftain Rollo (d. c. 931) received permission from the Frankish King Charles the Simple (r. 898\u2013922) to settle in what became Normandy. The eastern parts of the Frankish kingdoms, especially Germany and Italy, were under continual Magyar assault until the invader's defeat at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955. The break-up of the Abbasid dynasty meant that the Islamic world fragmented into smaller political states, some of which began expanding into Italy and Sicily, as well as over the Pyrenees into the southern parts of the Frankish kingdoms.\nNew kingdoms and Byzantine revival.\nEfforts by local kings to fight the invaders led to the formation of new political entities. In Anglo-Saxon England, King Alfred the Great (r. 871\u2013899) came to an agreement with the Viking invaders in the late 9th century, resulting in Danish settlements in Northumbria, Mercia, and parts of East Anglia. By the middle of the 10th century, Alfred's successors had conquered Northumbria and restored English control over most of the southern part of Great Britain. In northern Britain, Kenneth MacAlpin (d. c. 860) united the Picts and the Scots into the Kingdom of Alba. In the early 10th century, the Ottonian dynasty had established itself in Germany, and was engaged in driving back the Magyars. Its efforts culminated in the coronation in 962 of Otto I (r. 936\u2013973) as Holy Roman Emperor. In 972, he secured recognition of his title by the Byzantine Empire, which he sealed with the marriage of his son Otto II (r. 967\u2013983) to Theophanu (d. 991), daughter of an earlier Byzantine Emperor Romanos II (r. 959\u2013963). By the late 10th century Italy had been drawn into the Ottonian sphere after a period of instability; Otto III (r. 996\u20131002) spent much of his later reign in the kingdom. The western Frankish kingdom was more fragmented, and although kings remained nominally in charge, much of the political power devolved to the local lords.\nMissionary efforts to Scandinavia during the 9th and 10th centuries helped strengthen the growth of kingdoms such as Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, which gained power and territory. Some kings converted to Christianity, although not all by 1000. Scandinavians also expanded and colonised throughout Europe. Besides the settlements in Ireland, England, and Normandy, further settlement took place in what became Russia and Iceland. Swedish traders and raiders ranged down the rivers of the Russian steppe and even attempted to seize Constantinople in 860 and 907. Christian Spain, initially driven into a small section of the peninsula in the north, expanded slowly south during the 9th and 10th centuries, establishing the kingdoms of Asturias and Le\u00f3n.\nIn Eastern Europe, Byzantium revived its fortunes under Emperor Basil I (r. 867\u2013886) and his successors Leo VI (r. 886\u2013912) and Constantine VII (r. 913\u2013959), members of the Macedonian dynasty. Commerce revived, and the emperors oversaw the extension of a uniform administration to all the provinces. The military was reorganised, which allowed the emperors John I (r. 969\u2013976) and Basil II (r. 976\u20131025) to expand the frontiers of the empire on all fronts. The imperial court was the centre of a revival of classical learning, a process known as the Macedonian Renaissance. Writers such as John Geometres (fl. early 10th century) composed new hymns, poems, and other works. Missionary efforts by both Eastern and Western clergy resulted in the conversion of the Moravians, Bulgars, Bohemians, Poles, Magyars, and Slavic inhabitants of the Kievan Rus'. These conversions contributed to the founding of political states in the lands of those peoples\u2014the states of Moravia, Bulgaria, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, and the Kievan Rus'. Bulgaria, which was founded around 680, at its height reached from Budapest to the Black Sea and from the Dnieper River in modern Ukraine to the Adriatic Sea. By 1018, the last Bulgarian nobles had surrendered to the Byzantine Empire.\nArt and architecture.\nFew large stone buildings were constructed between the Constantinian basilicas of the 4th and 8th centuries, although many smaller ones were built during the 6th and 7th centuries. By the beginning of the 8th century, the Carolingian Empire revived the basilica form of architecture. One feature of the basilica is the use of a transept, or the \"arms\" of a cross-shaped building that are perpendicular to the long nave. Other new features of religious architecture include the crossing tower and a monumental entrance to the church, usually at the west end of the building.\nCarolingian art was produced for a small group of figures around the court and the monasteries and churches they supported. It was dominated by efforts to regain the dignity and classicism of imperial Roman and Byzantine art but was also influenced by the Insular art of the British Isles. Insular art integrated the energy of Irish Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Germanic styles of ornament with Mediterranean forms such as the book, and established many characteristics of art for the rest of the medieval period. Surviving religious works from the Early Middle Ages are mostly illuminated manuscripts and carved ivories, originally made for metalwork that has since been melted down. Objects in precious metals were the most prestigious form of art, but almost all are lost except for a few crosses such as the Cross of Lothair, several reliquaries, and finds such as the Anglo-Saxon burial at Sutton Hoo and the hoards of Gourdon from Merovingian France, Guarrazar from Visigothic Spain and Nagyszentmikl\u00f3s near Byzantine territory. There are survivals from the large brooches in fibula or penannular form that were key pieces of personal adornment for elites, including the Irish Tara Brooch. Highly decorated books were mostly Gospel Books and these have survived in larger numbers, including the Insular Book of Kells, the Book of Lindisfarne, and the imperial Codex Aureus of St. Emmeram, which is one of the few to retain its \"treasure binding\" of gold encrusted with jewels. Charlemagne's court seems to have been responsible for the acceptance of figurative monumental sculpture in Christian art, and by the end of the period near life-sized figures such as the Gero Cross were common in important churches.\nMilitary and technological developments.\nDuring the later Roman Empire, the principal military developments were attempts to create an effective cavalry force and the continued development of highly specialised types of troops. The creation of heavily armoured cataphract-type soldiers as cavalry was an important feature of the 5th-century Roman military. The various invading tribes had differing emphases on types of soldiers\u2014ranging from the primarily infantry Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain to the Vandals and Visigoths, who had a high proportion of cavalry in their armies. During the early invasion period, the stirrup had not been introduced into warfare, which limited the usefulness of cavalry as shock troops because it was not possible to put the full force of the horse and rider behind blows struck by the rider. The greatest change in military affairs during the invasion period was the adoption of the Hunnic composite bow in place of the earlier, and weaker, Scythian composite bow. Another development was the increasing use of longswords and the progressive replacement of scale armour by mail armour and lamellar armour.\nThe importance of infantry and light cavalry declined during the early Carolingian period, with a growing dominance of elite heavy cavalry. The use of militia-type levies of the free population declined over the Carolingian period. Although much of the Carolingian armies were mounted, a large proportion during the early period appear to have been mounted infantry, rather than true cavalry. One exception was Anglo-Saxon England, where the armies were still composed of regional levies, known as the \"fyrd\", which were led by the local elites. In military technology, one of the main changes was the return of the crossbow, which had been known in Roman times and reappeared as a military weapon during the last part of the Early Middle Ages. Another change was the introduction of the stirrup, which increased the effectiveness of cavalry as shock troops. A technological advance that had implications beyond the military was the horseshoe, which allowed horses to be used in rocky terrain.\nHigh Middle Ages.\nSociety and economic life.\nThe High Middle Ages was a period of tremendous population expansion. The estimated population of Europe grew from 35 to 80\u00a0million between 1000 and 1347, although the exact causes remain unclear: improved agricultural techniques, the decline of slaveholding, a more clement climate and the lack of invasion have all been suggested. As much as 90\u00a0per cent of the European population remained rural peasants. Many were no longer settled in isolated farms but had gathered into small communities, usually known as manors or villages. These peasants were often subject to noble overlords and owed them rents and other services in a system known as manorialism. There remained a few free peasants throughout this period and beyond, with more of them in the regions of Southern Europe than in the north. The practice of assarting, or bringing new lands into production by offering incentives to the peasants who settled them, also contributed to population expansion.\nThe open-field system of agriculture was commonly practised in most of Europe, especially in \"northwestern and central Europe\". Such agricultural communities had three essential characteristics: individual peasant holdings in the form of strips of land were scattered among the different fields belonging to the manor; crops were rotated from year to year to preserve soil fertility; and common land was used for grazing livestock and other purposes. Some regions used a three-field system of crop rotation; others retained the older two-field system.\nOther sections of society included the nobility, clergy, and townspeople. Nobles, both the titled nobility and simple knights, exploited the manors and the peasants. However, they did not own lands outright but were granted rights to the income from a manor or other lands by an overlord through the system of feudalism. During the 11th and 12th centuries, these lands, or fiefs, came to be considered hereditary. In most areas, they were no longer divisible between all the heirs, as had been the case in the early medieval period. Instead, most fiefs and lands went to the eldest son. The dominance of the nobility was built upon its control of the land, its military service as heavy cavalry, control of castles, and various immunities from taxes or other impositions. Castles, initially in wood but later in stone, began to be constructed in the 9th and 10th centuries in response to the disorder of the time, and protected from invaders and allowing lords defence from rivals. Control of castles allowed the nobles to defy kings or other overlords. Nobles were stratified; kings and the highest-ranking nobility controlled large numbers of commoners and large tracts of land, as well as other nobles. Beneath them, lesser nobles had authority over smaller land areas and fewer people. Knights were the lowest level of nobility; they controlled but did not own land and had to serve other nobles.\nThe clergy was divided into two types: the secular clergy, who lived out in the world, and the regular clergy, who lived isolated under a religious rule and usually consisted of monks. Throughout the period, monks remained a tiny proportion of the population, usually less than one percent. Most of the regular clergy were drawn from the nobility, the same social class that served as the recruiting ground for the upper levels of the secular clergy. The local parish priests were often drawn from the peasant class. Townspeople were somewhat unusual, as they did not fit into the traditional three-fold division of society into nobles, clergy, and peasants. During the 12th and 13th centuries, the ranks of the townspeople expanded greatly as existing towns grew and new population centres were founded. But throughout the Middle Ages, the population of the towns probably never exceeded 10 percent of the total population.\nJews also spread across Europe during the period. Communities were established in Germany and England in the 11th and 12th centuries, but Spanish Jews, long settled in Spain under the Muslims, came under Christian rule and increasing pressure to convert to Christianity. Most Jews were confined to the cities, as they were not allowed to own land or be peasants. Besides the Jews, there were other non-Christians on the edges of Europe\u2014pagan Slavs in Eastern Europe and Muslims in Southern Europe.\nWomen in the Middle Ages were officially required to be subordinate to some male, whether their father, husband, or other kinsman. Widows were often allowed much control over their lives, but they were still restricted legally. Women's work generally consisted of household or other domestically inclined tasks. Peasant women were usually responsible for caring for the household, child care, gardening, and animal husbandry near the house. They could supplement their household income by spinning or brewing at home. At harvest time, they were also expected to help with fieldwork. Townswomen, like peasant women, were responsible for the household and could also engage in trade. The trades that were open to women varied by country and period. Noblewomen were responsible for running a household and could occasionally be expected to handle estates in the absence of male relatives, but they were usually restricted from participation in military or government affairs. The only role open to women in the Church was that of nuns, as they could not become priests.\nIn central and northern Italy and in Flanders, the rise of towns that were, to a degree, self-governing stimulated economic growth and created an environment for new types of trade associations. Commercial cities on the shores of the Baltic entered into agreements known as the Hanseatic League. The Italian Maritime republics such as Venice, Genoa, and Pisa expanded their trade throughout the Mediterranean. Great trading fairs were established and flourished in northern France during the period, allowing Italian and German merchants to trade with each other as well as local merchants. In the late 13th century new land and sea routes to the Far East were pioneered, famously described in \"The Travels of Marco Polo\" written by one of the traders, Marco Polo (d. 1324). Besides new trading opportunities, agricultural and technological improvements increased crop yields, which allowed the trade networks to expand. Rising trade brought new methods of dealing with money, and gold coinage was again minted in Europe, first in Italy and later in France and other countries. New forms of commercial contracts emerged, sharing risk among merchants. Accounting methods improved, partly through the use of double-entry bookkeeping; letters of credit also appeared, allowing easy transmission of money.\nRise of state power.\nThe High Middle Ages was the formative period in the history of the modern Western state. Kings in France, England, and Spain consolidated their power and established lasting governing institutions. New kingdoms such as Hungary and Poland, after their conversion to Christianity, became Central European powers. The Magyars settled Hungary around 900 under King \u00c1rp\u00e1d (d. c. 907) after a series of invasions in the 9th century. The papacy, long attached to an ideology of independence from secular kings, first asserted its claim to temporal authority over the entire Christian world; the Papal Monarchy reached its apogee in the early 13th century under the pontificate of Innocent III (pope 1198\u20131216). Northern Crusades and the advance of Christian kingdoms and military orders into previously pagan regions in the Baltic and Finnic north-east brought the forced assimilation of numerous native peoples into European culture.\nDuring the early High Middle Ages, Germany was ruled by the Ottonian dynasty, which struggled to control the powerful dukes ruling over territorial duchies, tracing back to the Migration period. In 1024, they were replaced by the Salian dynasty, who famously clashed with the papacy under Emperor Henry IV (r. 1084\u20131105) over Church appointments as part of the Investiture Controversy. His successors continued to struggle against the papacy as well as the German nobility. A period of instability followed the death of Emperor Henry V (r. 1111\u20131125), who died without heirs, until Frederick I Barbarossa (r. 1155\u20131190) took the imperial throne. Although he ruled effectively, the basic problems remained, and his successors struggled into the 13th century. Barbarossa's grandson Frederick II (r. 1220\u20131250), who was also heir to the throne of Sicily through his mother, clashed repeatedly with the papacy. His court was famous for its scholars, and he was often accused of heresy. He and his successors faced many difficulties, including the invasion of the Mongols into Europe in the mid-13th century. Mongols first shattered the Kyivan Rus' principalities and then invaded Eastern Europe in 1241, 1259, and 1287.\nUnder the Capetian dynasty the French monarchy slowly began to expand its authority over the nobility, growing out of the \u00cele-de-France to exert control over more of the country in the 11th and 12th centuries. They faced a powerful rival in the Dukes of Normandy, who in 1066 under William the Conqueror (duke 1035\u20131087), conquered England (r. 1066\u20131087) and created a cross-channel empire that lasted, in various forms, throughout the rest of the Middle Ages. Normans also settled in Sicily and southern Italy, when Robert Guiscard (d. 1085) landed there in 1059 and established a duchy that later became the Kingdom of Sicily. Under the Angevin dynasty of Henry II (r. 1154\u20131189) and his son Richard I (r. 1189\u20131199), the kings of England ruled over England and large areas of France, brought to the family by Henry II's marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine (d. 1204), heiress to much of southern France. Richard's younger brother John (r. 1199\u20131216) lost Normandy and the rest of the northern French possessions in 1204 to the French King Philip II Augustus (r. 1180\u20131223). This led to dissension among the English nobility. John's financial exactions to pay for his unsuccessful attempts to regain Normandy led in 1215 to \"Magna Carta\", a charter that confirmed the rights and privileges of free men in England. Under Henry III (r. 1216\u20131272), John's son, further concessions were made to the nobility, and royal power was diminished. The French monarchy continued to make gains against the nobility during the late 12th and 13th centuries, bringing more territories within the kingdom under the king's personal rule and centralising the royal administration. Under Louis IX (r. 1226\u20131270), royal prestige rose to new heights as Louis served as a mediator for most of Europe.\nIn Iberia, the Christian states, which had been confined to the north-western part of the peninsula, began to push back against the Islamic states in the south, a period known as the \"Reconquista\". By about 1150, the Christian north had coalesced into the five major kingdoms of Le\u00f3n, Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and Portugal. Southern Iberia remained under control of Islamic states, initially under the Caliphate of C\u00f3rdoba, which broke up in 1031 into a shifting number of petty states known as \"taifas\", who fought with the Christians until the Almohad Caliphate re-established centralised rule over Southern Iberia in the 1170s. Christian forces advanced again in the early 13th century, culminating in the capture of Seville in 1248.\nCrusades.\nIn the 11th century, the Seljuk Turks took over much of the Middle East, occupying Persia during the 1040s, Armenia in the 1060s, and Jerusalem in 1070. In 1071, the Turkish army defeated the Byzantine army at the Battle of Manzikert and captured the Byzantine Emperor Romanus IV (r. 1068\u20131071). The Turks were then free to invade Asia Minor, which dealt a dangerous blow to the Byzantine Empire by seizing a large part of its population and its economic heartland. Although the Byzantines regrouped and recovered somewhat, they never fully regained Asia Minor and were often on the defensive. The Turks also had difficulties, losing control of Jerusalem to the Fatimids of Egypt and suffering from a series of internal civil wars. The Byzantines also faced a revived Bulgaria, which in the late 12th and 13th centuries spread throughout the Balkans.\nThe Crusades were intended to seize Jerusalem from Muslim control. The First Crusade was proclaimed by Pope Urban II (pope 1088\u20131099) at the Council of Clermont in 1095 in response to a request from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081\u20131118) for aid against further Muslim advances. Urban promised indulgence to anyone who took part. Tens of thousands of people from all levels of society mobilised across Europe and captured Jerusalem in 1099. One feature of the crusades was the pogroms against local Jews that often took place as the crusaders left their countries for the East. These were especially brutal during the First Crusade, when the Jewish communities in Cologne, Mainz, and Worms were destroyed, as well as other communities in cities between the rivers Seine and the Rhine. Another outgrowth of the crusades was the foundation of a new type of monastic order, the military orders of the Templars and Hospitallers, which fused monastic life with military service.\nThe Crusaders consolidated their conquests into Crusader states. During the 12th and 13th centuries, there were a series of conflicts between them and the surrounding Islamic states. Appeals from the crusader states to the papacy led to further crusades, such as the Third Crusade, called to try to regain Jerusalem, which had been captured by Saladin (d. 1193) in 1187. In 1203, the Fourth Crusade was diverted from the Holy Land to Constantinople, and captured the city in 1204, setting up a Latin Empire of Constantinople and greatly weakening the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines recaptured the city in 1261 but never regained their former strength. By 1291, all the crusader states had been captured or forced from the mainland. However, a titular Kingdom of Jerusalem survived on the island of Cyprus for several years afterwards.\nPopes called for crusades elsewhere besides the Holy Land: in Spain, southern France, and along the Baltic. The Spanish crusades became fused with the \"Reconquista\" of Spain from the Muslims. Although the Templars and Hospitallers took part in the Spanish crusades, similar Spanish military religious orders were founded, most of which had become part of the two main orders of Calatrava and Santiago by the beginning of the 12th century. Northern Europe also remained outside Christian influence until the 11th century or later and became a crusading venue as part of the Northern Crusades of the 12th to 14th centuries. These crusades also spawned a military order, the Order of the Sword Brothers. Another order, the Teutonic Knights, although founded in the crusader states, focused much of its activity in the Baltic after 1225 and, in 1309, moved its headquarters to Marienburg in Prussia.\nIntellectual life.\nDuring the 11th century, developments in philosophy and theology led to increased intellectual activity. There was a debate between the realists and the nominalists over the concept of \"universals\". Philosophical discourse was stimulated by the rediscovery of Aristotle and his emphasis on empiricism and rationalism. Scholars such as Peter Abelard (d. 1142) and Peter Lombard (d. 1164) introduced Aristotelian logic into theology. In the late 11th and early 12th centuries cathedral schools spread throughout Western Europe, signalling the shift of learning from monasteries to cathedrals and towns. Cathedral schools were in turn replaced by the universities established in major European cities. Philosophy and theology fused in scholasticism, an attempt by 12th- and 13th-century scholars to reconcile authoritative texts, most notably Aristotle and the Bible. This movement tried to employ a systemic approach to truth and reason and culminated in the thought of Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), who wrote the \"Summa Theologica\", or \"Summary of Theology\".\nChivalry and the ethos of courtly love developed in royal and noble courts. This culture was expressed in the vernacular languages rather than Latin and comprised poems, stories, legends, and popular songs spread by troubadours or Minnes\u00e4ngers, or wandering minstrels. Often the stories were written down in the \"chansons de geste\", or \"songs of great deeds\", such as \"The Song of Roland\" or \"The Song of Hildebrand\". Secular and religious histories were also produced. Geoffrey of Monmouth (d. c. 1155) composed his \"Historia Regum Britanniae\", a collection of stories and legends about Arthur. Other works were more clearly history, such as Otto von Freising's (d. 1158) \"Gesta Friderici Imperatoris\" detailing the deeds of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, or William of Malmesbury's (d. c. 1143) \"Gesta Regum\" on the kings of England.\nLegal studies advanced during the 12th century. Both secular law and canon law, or ecclesiastical law, were studied in the High Middle Ages. Secular law, or Roman law, was significantly advanced by the discovery of the \"Corpus Juris Civilis\" in the 11th century, and by 1100, Roman law was being taught at Bologna. This led to the recording and standardisation of legal codes throughout Western Europe. Canon law was also studied, and around 1140, a monk named Gratian (fl. 12th century), a teacher at Bologna, wrote what became the standard text of canon law\u2014the \"Decretum\".\nAmong the results of the Greek and Islamic influence on this period in European history was the replacement of Roman numerals with the decimal positional number system and the invention of algebra, which allowed more advanced mathematics. Astronomy advanced following the translation of Ptolemy's \"Almagest\" from Greek into Latin in the late 12th century. Medicine was also studied, especially in southern Italy, where Islamic medicine influenced the school at Salerno.\nTechnology and military.\nIn the 12th and 13th centuries, Europe experienced economic growth and innovations in methods of production. Significant technological advances included the invention of the windmill, the first mechanical clocks, the manufacture of distilled spirits, and the use of the astrolabe. Concave spectacles were invented around 1286 by an unknown Italian artisan, probably working in or near Pisa.\nThe development of a three-field rotation system for planting crops increased the usage of land from one-half in use each year under the old two-field system to two-thirds under the new system, with a consequent increase in production. The development of the heavy plough allowed heavier soils to be farmed more efficiently, aided by the spread of the horse collar, which led to the use of draught horses in place of oxen. Horses are faster than oxen and require less pasture, factors that aided the implementation of the three-field system. Legumes \u2013 such as peas, beans, or lentils \u2013 were grown more widely as crops, in addition to the usual cereal crops of wheat, oats, barley, and rye.\nThe construction of cathedrals and castles advanced building technology, developing large stone buildings. Ancillary structures included new town halls, houses, bridges, and tithe barns. Shipbuilding improved with the use of the rib and plank method rather than the old Roman system of mortise and tenon. Other improvements to ships included the use of lateen sails and the stern-post rudder, both of which increased the speed at which ships could be sailed.\nIn military affairs, the use of infantry with specialised roles increased. Along with the still-dominant heavy cavalry, armies often included mounted and infantry crossbowmen, as well as sappers and engineers. Crossbows, which had been known in Late Antiquity, increased in use partly because of the increase in siege warfare in the 10th and 11th centuries. The increasing use of crossbows during the 12th and 13th centuries led to the use of closed-face helmets, heavy body armour, as well as horse armour. Gunpowder was known in Europe by the mid-13th century with a recorded use in European warfare by the English against the Scots in 1304. However, it was merely used as an explosive and not as a weapon. Cannon were being used for sieges in the 1320s, and hand-held guns were in use by the 1360s.\nArchitecture, art, and music.\nIn the 10th century, the establishment of churches and monasteries led to the development of stone architecture that elaborated vernacular Roman forms, from which the term \"Romanesque\" was derived. Where available, Roman brick and stone buildings were recycled for their materials. From the tentative beginnings known as the First Romanesque, the style flourished and spread across Europe in a remarkably homogeneous form. Just before 1000, a great wave of stone churches were being built all over Europe. Romanesque buildings have massive stone walls, openings topped by semi-circular arches, small windows, and, particularly in France, arched stone vaults. The large portal with coloured sculpture in high relief became a central feature of fa\u00e7ades, especially in France, and the capitals of columns were often carved with narrative scenes of imaginative monsters and animals. According to art historian C. R. Dodwell, \"virtually all the churches in the West were decorated with wall-paintings\", of which few survive. Simultaneous with the development in church architecture, the distinctive European form of the castle was developed and became crucial to politics and warfare.\nRomanesque art, especially metalwork, was at its most sophisticated in Mosan art, in which distinct artistic personalities, including Nicholas of Verdun (d. 1205), become apparent. An almost classical style is seen in works such as a font at Li\u00e8ge, contrasting with the writhing animals of the exactly contemporary Gloucester Candlestick. Large illuminated bibles and psalters were the typical forms of luxury manuscripts, and wall-painting flourished in churches, often following a scheme with a \"Last Judgement\" on the west wall, a Christ in Majesty at the east end, and narrative biblical scenes down the nave, or in the best surviving example, at Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, on the barrel-vaulted roof.\nFrom the early 12th century, French builders developed the Gothic style, marked by the use of rib vaults, pointed arches, flying buttresses, and large stained glass windows. It was used mainly in churches and cathedrals and continued until the 16th century in much of Europe. Classic examples of Gothic architecture include Chartres Cathedral and Reims Cathedral in France, as well as Salisbury Cathedral in England. Stained glass became a crucial element in the design of churches, which continued to use extensive wall-paintings, now almost all lost.\nDuring this period, the practice of manuscript illumination gradually passed from monasteries to lay workshops, so that according to Janetta Benton \"by 1300 most monks bought their books in shops\", and the book of hours developed as a form of devotional book for lay-people. Metalwork remained the most prestigious art form, with Limoges enamel a popular and relatively affordable option for objects such as reliquaries and crosses. In Italy the innovations of Cimabue and Duccio, followed by the Trecento master Giotto (d. 1337), greatly increased the sophistication and status of panel painting and fresco. Increasing prosperity during the 12th century resulted in greater production of secular art; many carved ivory objects such as gaming-pieces, combs, and small religious figures have survived.\nChurch life.\nMonastic reform became an important issue during the 11th century, as elites began to worry that monks were not adhering to the rules binding them to a strictly religious life. Cluny Abbey, founded in the M\u00e2con region of France in 909, was established as part of the Cluniac Reforms, a larger movement of monastic reform in response to this fear. Cluny quickly established a reputation for austerity and rigour. It sought to maintain a high quality of spiritual life by placing itself under the protection of the papacy and by electing its own abbot without interference from laymen, thus maintaining economic and political independence from local lords.\nMonastic reform inspired change in the secular Church. The ideals upon which it was based were brought to the papacy by Pope Leo IX (pope 1049\u20131054) and provided the ideology of clerical independence that led to the Investiture Controversy in the late 11th century. This involved Pope Gregory VII (pope 1073\u20131085) and Emperor Henry IV, who initially clashed over episcopal appointments, a dispute that turned into a battle over the ideas of investiture, clerical marriage, and simony. The emperor saw the protection of the Church as one of his responsibilities and wanted to preserve the right to appoint his own choices as bishops within his lands. Still, the papacy insisted on the Church's independence from secular lords. These issues remained unresolved after the compromise of 1122, known as the Concordat of Worms. The dispute represents a significant stage in creating a papal monarchy separate from and equal to lay authorities. It also had the permanent consequence of empowering German princes at the expense of the German emperors.\nThe High Middle Ages was a period of great religious movements. Besides the Crusades and monastic reforms, people sought to participate in new forms of religious life. New monastic orders were founded, including the Carthusians and the Cistercians. The latter, in particular, expanded rapidly in their early years under the guidance of Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153). These new orders were formed in response to the feeling of the laity that Benedictine monasticism no longer met the needs of the laymen, who, along with those wishing to enter the religious life, wanted a return to the simpler hermetical monasticism of early Christianity, or to live an Apostolic life. Religious pilgrimages were also encouraged. Old pilgrimage sites such as Rome, Jerusalem, and Compostela received increasing numbers of visitors, and new sites such as Monte Gargano and Bari rose to prominence.\nIn the 13th century mendicant orders\u2014the Franciscans and the Dominicans\u2014who swore vows of poverty and earned their living by begging, were approved by the papacy. Religious groups such as the Waldensians and the Humiliati also attempted to return to the life of early Christianity in the middle 12th and early 13th centuries, another heretical movement condemned by the papacy. Others joined the Cathars, another movement condemned as heretical by the papacy. In 1209, a crusade was preached against the Cathars, the Albigensian Crusade, which, in combination with the medieval Inquisition, eliminated them.\nLate Middle Ages.\nWar, famine, and plague.\nThe first years of the 14th century were marked by famines, culminating in the Great Famine of 1315\u20131317. The causes of the Great Famine included the slow transition from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age, which left the population vulnerable when bad weather caused crop failures. The years 1313\u20131314 and 1317\u20131321 were excessively rainy throughout Europe, resulting in widespread crop failures. The climate change\u2014which resulted in a declining average annual temperature for Europe during the 14th century\u2014was accompanied by an economic downturn.\nThese troubles were followed in 1347 by the Black Death, a pandemic that spread throughout Europe during the following three years. The death toll was probably about 35\u00a0million people in Europe, about one-third of the population. Towns were especially hard-hit because of their crowded conditions. Large areas of land were left sparsely inhabited, and in some places fields were left unworked. Wages rose as landlords sought to entice fewer available workers to their fields. Further problems were lower rents and lower demand for food, which cut into agricultural income. Urban workers also felt they had a right to greater earnings, and popular uprisings broke out across Europe. Among the uprisings were the \"jacquerie\" in France, the Peasants' Revolt in England, and revolts in the cities of Florence in Italy and Ghent and Bruges in Flanders. The trauma of the plague led to an increased piety throughout Europe, manifested by the foundation of new charities, the self-mortification of the flagellants, and the scapegoating of Jews. Conditions were further unsettled by the return of the plague throughout the rest of the 14th century; it continued to strike Europe periodically during the rest of the Middle Ages.\nSociety and economy.\nSociety throughout Europe was disturbed by the dislocations caused by the Black Death. Lands that had been marginally productive were abandoned as the survivors could acquire more fertile areas. Although serfdom declined in Western Europe, it became more common in Eastern Europe, as landlords imposed it on those of their tenants who had previously been free. Most peasants in Western Europe changed the work they had previously owed to their landlords into cash rents. The percentage of serfs among the peasantry declined from a high of 90 to closer to 50 percent by the end of the period. Landlords also became more conscious of common interests with other landholders and joined to extort their governments' privileges. Partly at the urging of landlords, governments attempted to legislate a return to the economic conditions that existed before the Black Death. Non-clergy became increasingly literate, and urban populations began to imitate the nobility's interest in chivalry.\nJewish communities were expelled from England in 1290 and from France in 1306. Although some were allowed back into France, most were not. Many Jews emigrated eastwards, and Hungary. The Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, and dispersed to Turkey, France, Italy, and Holland. The rise of banking in Italy during the 13th century continued throughout the 14th century, fuelled partly by the increasing warfare of the period and the needs of the papacy to move money between kingdoms. Many banking firms loaned money to royalty at great risk, as some were bankrupted when kings defaulted on their loans.\nState resurgence.\nStrong, royalty-based nation states rose throughout Europe in the Late Middle Ages, particularly in England, France, and the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula: Aragon, Castile, and Portugal. The long conflicts of the period strengthened royal control over their kingdoms and were extremely hard on the peasantry. Kings profited from warfare that extended royal legislation and increased the lands they directly controlled. Paying for the wars required that methods of taxation become more effective and efficient, and the rate of taxation often increased. The requirement to obtain the consent of taxpayers allowed representative bodies such as the English Parliament and the French Estates General to gain power and authority.\nThroughout the 14th century, French kings sought to expand their influence at the expense of the territorial holdings of the nobility. They ran into difficulties when attempting to confiscate the holdings of the English kings in southern France, leading to the Hundred Years' War, waged from 1337 to 1453. Early in the war the English under Edward III (r. 1327\u20131377) and his son Edward, the Black Prince (d. 1376), won the battles of Cr\u00e9cy and Poitiers, captured the city of Calais, and won control of much of France. The resulting stresses almost caused the disintegration of the French kingdom during the early years of the war. In the early 15th century, France again came close to dissolving, but in the late 1420s, the military successes of Joan of Arc (d. 1431) led to the victory of the French and the capture of the last English possessions in southern France in 1453. The price was high, as the population of France at the end of the Wars was likely half what it had been at the start of the conflict. Conversely, the Wars positively affected English national identity, doing much to fuse the various local identities into a national English ideal. The conflict with France also helped create a national culture in England separate from French culture, which had previously been the dominant influence. The dominance of the English longbow began during early stages of the Hundred Years' War, and cannon appeared on the battlefield at Cr\u00e9cy in 1346.\nIn modern-day Germany, the Holy Roman Empire continued to rule, but the elective nature of the imperial crown meant there was no enduring dynasty around which a strong state could form. Further east, the kingdoms of Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia grew powerful. In Iberia, the Christian kingdoms continued to gain land from the Muslim kingdoms of the peninsula; Portugal concentrated on expanding overseas during the 15th century, while the other kingdoms were riven by difficulties over royal succession and other concerns. After losing the Hundred Years' War, England went on to suffer a long civil war known as the Wars of the Roses, which lasted into the 1490s and only ended when Henry Tudor (r. 1485\u20131509 as Henry VII) became king and consolidated power with his victory over Richard III (r. 1483\u20131485) at Bosworth in 1485. In Scandinavia, Margaret I of Denmark (r. in Denmark 1387\u20131412) consolidated Norway, Denmark, and Sweden in the Union of Kalmar, which continued until 1523. The major power around the Baltic Sea was the Hanseatic League, a commercial confederation of city-states that traded from Western Europe to Russia. Scotland emerged from English domination under Robert the Bruce (r. 1306\u20131329), who secured papal recognition of his kingship in 1328.\nCollapse of Byzantium.\nAlthough the Palaeologi emperors recaptured Constantinople from the Western Europeans in 1261, they could never regain control of much of the former imperial lands. They usually controlled only a small section of the Balkan Peninsula near Constantinople, the city itself, and some coastal lands on the Black Sea and around the Aegean Sea. The former Byzantine lands in the Balkans were divided between the new Kingdom of Serbia, the Second Bulgarian Empire, and the city-state of Venice. A new Turkish tribe threatened the power of the Byzantine emperors, the Ottomans, who established themselves in Anatolia in the 13th century and steadily expanded throughout the 14th century. The Ottomans expanded into Europe, reducing Bulgaria to a vassal state by 1366 and taking over Serbia after its defeat at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. Western Europeans rallied to the plight of the Christians in the Balkans and declared a new crusade in 1396; a great army was sent to the Balkans, where it was defeated at the Battle of Nicopolis. Constantinople was finally captured by the Ottomans in 1453.\nControversy within the Church.\nDuring the tumultuous 14th century, disputes within the leadership of the Church led to the Avignon Papacy of 1309\u20131376, also called the \"Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy\" (a reference to the Babylonian captivity of the Jews), and then to the Great Schism, lasting from 1378 to 1418, when there were two and later three rival popes, each supported by several states. Ecclesiastical officials convened at the Council of Constance in 1414, and in the following year the council deposed one of the rival popes leaving only two claimants. Further depositions followed, and in November 1417, the council elected Martin V (pope 1417\u20131431) as pope.\nBesides the schism, the Western Church was riven by theological controversies, some of which became heresies. John Wycliffe (d. 1384), an English theologian, was condemned as a heretic in 1415 for teaching that the laity should have access to the text of the Bible as well as for holding views on the Eucharist that were contrary to Church doctrine. Wycliffe's teachings influenced two of the major heretical movements of the later Middle Ages: Lollardy in England and Hussitism in Bohemia. The Bohemian movement initiated with the teaching of Jan Hus, who was burned at the stake in 1415 after being condemned as a heretic by the Council of Constance. The Hussite Church, although the target of a crusade, survived beyond the Middle Ages. Other heresies were manufactured, such as the accusations against the Knights Templar that resulted in their suppression in 1312, and the division of their great wealth between the French King Philip IV (r. 1285\u20131314) and the Hospitallers.\nThe papacy further refined the practice in the Mass in the Late Middle Ages, holding that the clergy alone was allowed to partake of the wine in the Eucharist. This further distanced the secular laity from the clergy. The laity continued the practices of pilgrimages, veneration of relics, and belief in the power of the Devil. Mystics such as Meister Eckhart (d. 1327) and Thomas \u00e0 Kempis (d. 1471) wrote works that taught the laity to focus on their inner spiritual life, which laid the groundwork for the Protestant Reformation. Besides mysticism, belief in witches and witchcraft became widespread. By the late 15th century, the Church had begun to lend credence to populist fears of witchcraft with its condemnation of witches in 1484 and the publication in 1486 of the \"Malleus Maleficarum\", the most popular handbook for witch-hunters.\nScholars, intellectuals, and exploration.\nDuring the Later Middle Ages, theologians such as John Duns Scotus (d. 1308) and William of Ockham (d. c. 1348) led a reaction against intellectualist scholasticism, objecting to the application of reason to faith. Their efforts undermined the prevailing Platonic idea of universals. Ockham's insistence that reason operates independently of faith allowed science to be separated from theology and philosophy. Legal studies were marked by the steady advance of Roman law into areas of jurisprudence previously governed by customary law. England was the lone exception to this trend, where the common law remained pre-eminent. Other countries codified their laws; legal codes were promulgated in Castile, Poland, and Lithuania.\nEducation remained mostly focused on the training of future clergy. The basic learning of the letters and numbers remained the province of the family or a village priest, but the secondary subjects of the trivium\u2014grammar, rhetoric, logic\u2014were studied in cathedral schools or schools provided by cities. Commercial secondary schools spread, and some Italian towns had more than one such enterprise. Universities also spread throughout Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries. Lay literacy rates rose but were still low; one estimate gave a literacy rate of 10 percent of males and 1 percent of females in 1500.\nThe publication of vernacular literature increased, with Dante (d. 1321), Petrarch (d. 1374) and Giovanni Boccaccio (d. 1375) in 14th-century Italy, Geoffrey Chaucer (d. 1400) and William Langland (d. c. 1386) in England, and Fran\u00e7ois Villon (d. 1464) and Christine de Pizan (d. c. 1430) in France. Much literature remained religious, and although a great deal of it continued to be written in Latin, a new demand developed for saints' lives and other devotional tracts in the vernacular languages. This was fed by the growth of the \"Devotio Moderna\" movement, most prominently in the formation of the Brethren of the Common Life, but also in the works of German mystics such as Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler (d. 1361). Theatre also developed in the guise of miracle plays put on by the Church. At the end of the period, the development of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in about 1450 led to the establishment of publishing houses throughout Europe by 1500.\nIn the early 15th century, the countries of the Iberian Peninsula began to sponsor exploration beyond the boundaries of Europe. Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal (d. 1460) sent expeditions that discovered the Canary Islands, the Azores, and Cape Verde during his lifetime. After his death, exploration continued; Bartolomeu Dias (d. 1500) went around the Cape of Good Hope in 1486, and Vasco da Gama (d. 1524) sailed around Africa to India in 1498. The combined Spanish monarchies of Castile and Aragon sponsored the voyage of exploration by Christopher Columbus (d. 1506) in 1492 that discovered the Americas. The English crown under Henry VII sponsored the voyage of John Cabot (d. 1498) in 1497, which landed on Cape Breton Island.\nTechnological and military developments.\nOne of the major developments in the military sphere during the Late Middle Ages was the increased use of infantry and light cavalry. The English also employed longbowmen, but other countries were unable to create similar forces with the same success. Armour continued to advance, spurred by the increasing power of crossbows, and plate armour was developed to protect soldiers from crossbows as well as the hand-held guns that were developed. Pole arms reached new prominence with the development of the Flemish and Swiss infantry armed with pikes and other long spears.\nIn agriculture, the increased usage of sheep with long-fibred wool allowed a stronger thread to be spun. In addition, the spinning wheel replaced the traditional distaff for spinning wool, tripling production. A less technological refinement that still greatly affected daily life was the use of buttons as closures for garments, which allowed for better fitting without having to lace clothing on the wearer. Windmills were refined with the creation of the tower mill, allowing the upper part of the windmill to be spun around to face the direction from which the wind was blowing. The blast furnace appeared around 1350 in Sweden, increasing the quantity of iron produced and improving its quality. The first patent law in 1447 in Venice protected the rights of inventors to their inventions.\nLate medieval art and architecture.\nThe Late Middle Ages in Europe correspond to Italy's Trecento and Early Renaissance cultural periods. Northern Europe and Spain continued to use Gothic styles, which became increasingly elaborate in the 15th century until almost the end. International Gothic was a courtly style that reached much of Europe in the decades around 1400, producing masterpieces such as the Tr\u00e8s Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. All over Europe secular art continued to increase in quantity and quality. In the 15th century, the mercantile classes of Italy and Flanders became important patrons, commissioning small portraits of themselves in oils as well as a growing range of luxury items such as jewellery, ivory caskets, cassone chests, and maiolica pottery. These objects also included the Hispano-Moresque ware produced by mostly Mud\u00e9jar potters in Spain. Although royalty owned huge plate collections, little survives except for the Royal Gold Cup. Italian silk manufacture developed so that Western churches and elites no longer needed to rely on imports from Byzantium or the Islamic world. In France and Flanders, tapestry weaving of sets like \"The Lady and the Unicorn\" became a major luxury industry.\nThe large external sculptural schemes of Early Gothic churches gave way to more sculpture inside the building, as tombs became more elaborate and other features such as pulpits were sometimes lavishly carved, as in the Pulpit by Giovanni Pisano in Sant'Andrea. Painted or carved wooden relief altarpieces became common, especially as churches created many side-chapels. Early Netherlandish painting by artists such as Jan van Eyck (d. 1441) and Rogier van der Weyden (d. 1464) rivalled that of Italy, as did northern illuminated manuscripts, which in the 15th century began to be collected on a large scale by secular elites, who also commissioned secular books, especially histories. From about 1450, printed books rapidly became popular, though still expensive. There were around 30,000 different editions of incunabula, or works printed before 1500, by which time illuminated manuscripts were commissioned only by royalty and a few others. Very small woodcuts, nearly all religious, were affordable even by peasants in parts of Northern Europe from the middle of the 15th century. More expensive engravings supplied a wealthier market with various images.\nModern perceptions.\nThe medieval period is frequently caricatured as a \"time of ignorance and superstition\" that placed \"the word of religious authorities over personal experience and rational activity.\" This is a legacy from both the Renaissance and Enlightenment when scholars favourably contrasted their intellectual cultures with those of the medieval period. Renaissance scholars saw the Middle Ages as a period of decline from the high culture and civilisation of the Classical world. Enlightenment scholars saw reason as superior to faith and thus viewed the Middle Ages as a time of ignorance and superstition.\nOthers argue that reason was held in high regard during the Middle Ages. Science historian Edward Grant writes, \"If revolutionary rational thoughts were expressed [in the 18th century], they were only made possible because of the long medieval tradition that established the use of reason as one of the most important of human activities\". Also, contrary to common belief, David Lindberg writes, \"the late medieval scholar rarely experienced the coercive power of the Church and would have regarded himself as free (particularly in the natural sciences) to follow reason and observation wherever they led\".\nThe caricature of the period is also reflected in some more specific notions. One misconception, first propagated in the 19th century and still very common, is that all people in the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat. This is untrue, as lecturers in medieval universities commonly argued that evidence showed the Earth was a sphere. Lindberg and Ronald Numbers, another scholar of the period, state that there \"was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference\". Other misconceptions such as \"the Church prohibited autopsies and dissections during the Middle Ages\", \"the rise of Christianity killed off ancient science\", or \"the medieval Christian Church suppressed the growth of natural philosophy\", are all cited by Numbers as examples of widely popular myths that still pass as historical truth, although they are not supported by historical research.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["18836", "18630637", "7515849"], "permutation_1": ["18836", "18630637", "7515849"], "permutation_2": ["18630637", "7515849", "18836"], "permutation_3": ["7515849", "18630637", "18836"]}
{"id": "3hop2__30796_190988_24137", "docs_added": {"5122699": "John Kerry\nAmerican politician and diplomat (born 1943)\nJohn Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician, and diplomat who served as the 68th United States secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 in the administration of Barack Obama. A member of the Forbes family and of the Democratic Party, he previously represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1985 to 2013 and later served as the first U.S. special presidential envoy for climate from 2021 to 2024. Kerry was the Democratic nominee for president of the United States in the 2004 election, narrowly losing to then-incumbent president George W. Bush.\nKerry grew up in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. In 1966, after graduating from Yale University, he enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve, ultimately attaining the rank of lieutenant. During the Vietnam War, Kerry served a brief tour in South Vietnam. While commanding a Swift boat, he sustained three wounds in combat with the Viet Cong, for which he earned three Purple Heart medals. Kerry was also awarded the Silver Star Medal and the Bronze Star Medal for conduct in separate military engagements. After completing his active military service, Kerry returned to the United States and became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. He gained national recognition as an anti-war activist, serving as a spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization. Kerry testified in the Fulbright Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where he described the United States government's policy in Vietnam as the cause of war crimes.\nIn 1972, Kerry entered electoral politics as a Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives in Massachusetts's 5th congressional district, losing to Republican Paul W. Cronin in the general election. He subsequently worked as a radio talk show host and as the executive director of an advocacy organization while attending law school. After a period in private legal practice, he was elected the 66th lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1982. In 1984, Kerry was elected to the United States Senate. In 2004, Kerry won the Democratic presidential nomination alongside Senator John Edwards. He lost the Electoral College and the popular vote by slim margins, winning 251 electors to Bush's 286 and 48.3% of the popular vote to Bush's 50.7%.\nIn January 2013, Kerry was nominated by President Obama to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and was subsequently confirmed by his Senate colleagues. He was U.S. secretary of state throughout the second term of the Obama administration from 2013 to 2017. During his tenure, he initiated the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks and negotiated agreements restricting the nuclear program of Iran, including the 2013 Joint Plan of Action and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In 2015, Kerry signed the Paris Agreement on climate change on behalf of the United States.\nIn January 2021, Kerry returned to government, becoming the first person to hold the position of U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, under President Joe Biden. On March 6, Kerry left this position to work on Biden's 2024 presidential campaign. Kerry was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Biden in May 2024.\nEarly life and education (1943\u20131966).\nJohn Forbes Kerry was born on December 11, 1943, at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado. He is the second of four children born to Richard John Kerry, a U.S. diplomat and lawyer, and Rosemary Forbes, a nurse and social activist. His father was raised Catholic (John's paternal grandparents were Austro-Hungarian Jewish immigrants who converted to Catholicism) and his mother was Episcopalian. He was raised with an elder sister Margaret, a younger sister Diana, and a younger brother Cameron. The children were raised in their father's Catholic faith, and John served as an altar boy.\nKerry was originally considered a military brat, until his father was discharged from the Army Air Corps in 1944. Kerry lived in Groton, Massachusetts his first year and Millis, Massachusetts afterwards before moving to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. at age seven, when his father took a position in the Department of the Navy's Office of General Counsel and soon became a diplomat in the State Department's Bureau of United Nations Affairs.\nAs members of the Forbes and Dudley\u2013Winthrop families, his maternal extended family enjoyed great wealth. Kerry's parents themselves were considered upper-middle class. They turned to his wealthy great-aunt, Clara Winthrop, who paid for his attendance at elite boarding schools, such as Institut Montana Zugerberg, in Zug, Switzerland. Through his maternal ancestry, Kerry also descends from Rev. James McGregor who was among the first 500 Scots-Irish immigrants to Boston Harbor in the 18th century.\nAt the age of ten, Kerry's father took a position as the U.S. Attorney for Berlin. When Kerry was twelve, he crossed into the Soviet Occupation Zone to visit Hitler's bunker and ride through the Brandenburg Gate. \nIn 1957, his father was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway, and Kerry was sent back to the United States to attend boarding school. He first attended the Fessenden School in Newton, Massachusetts, and later St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, where he learned skills in public speaking and began developing an interest in politics. Kerry founded the John Winant Society at St. Paul's to debate the issues of the day; the Society still exists there. In 1960, while at St. Paul's, he played bass in a minor rock band called The Electras with six of his classmates. The band had about five hundred copies of one album printed in 1961, which they sold some of at dances at the school; it was made available on streaming platforms many years later.\nIn 1962, Kerry attended Yale University, majoring in political science and residing in Jonathan Edwards College. By that year, his parents returned to Groton. While at Yale, Kerry briefly dated Janet Auchincloss, the younger half-sister of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Through Auchincloss, Kerry was invited to a day of sailing with then-President John F. Kennedy and his family.\nKerry played on the varsity Yale Bulldogs men's soccer team, earning his only letter in his senior year. He also played freshman and junior varsity hockey and, in his senior year, junior varsity lacrosse. In addition, he was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity and took flying lessons.\nIn his sophomore year, Kerry became the chairman of the Liberal Party of the Yale Political Union, and a year later he served as president of the union. Amongst his influential teachers in this period was Professor H. Bradford Westerfield, who was himself a former president of the Political Union. His involvement with the Political Union gave him an opportunity to be involved with important issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and the New Frontier program. He also became a member of Skull and Bones Society, and traveled to Switzerland through AIESEC Yale.\nUnder the guidance of the speaking coach and history professor Rollin G. Osterweis, Kerry won many debates against other college students from across the nation. In March 1965, as the Vietnam War escalated, he won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that was critical of U.S. foreign policy. In the speech he said, \"It is the spectre of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism and thus, it is self-defeating.\"\nKerry graduated from Yale with a bachelor of arts degree in 1966. Overall, he had below-average grades, graduating with a cumulative average of 76 over his four years. His freshman-year average was a 71, but he improved to an 81 average for his senior year. He never received an \"A\" during his time at Yale; his highest grade was an 89.\nMilitary service (1966\u20131970).\nDuty on USS \"Gridley\".\nOn February 18, 1966, Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserve. He began his active duty military service on August 19, 1966. After completing 16 weeks of Officer Candidate School at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island, Kerry received his officer's commission on December 16, 1966. During the 2004 election, Kerry posted his military records at his website, and permitted reporters to inspect his medical records. In 2005, Kerry released his military and medical records to the representatives of three news organizations, but has not authorized full public access to those records.\nDuring his tour on the guided missile frigate , Kerry requested duty in South Vietnam, listing as his first preference a position as the commander of a Fast Patrol Craft (PCF), also known as a \"Swift boat\". These boats have aluminum hulls and have little or no armor, but are heavily armed and rely on speed. \"I didn't really want to get involved in the war,\" Kerry said in a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. \"When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing.\" However, his second choice of billet was on a river patrol boat, or \"PBR\", which at the time was serving a more dangerous duty on the rivers of Vietnam.\nMilitary honors.\nDuring the night of December 2 and early morning of December 3, 1968, Kerry was in charge of a small boat operating near a peninsula north of Cam Ranh Bay together with a Swift boat (PCF-60). According to Kerry and the two crewmen who accompanied him that night, Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis, they surprised a group of Vietnamese men unloading sampans at a river crossing, who began running and failed to obey an order to stop. As the men fled, Kerry and his crew opened fire on the sampans and destroyed them, then rapidly left. During this encounter, Kerry received a shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow. It was for this injury that Kerry received his first Purple Heart Medal.\nKerry received his second Purple Heart for a wound received in action on the B\u1ed3 \u0110\u1ec1 River on February 20, 1969. The plan had been for the Swift boats to be accompanied by support helicopters. On the way up the Bo De, however, the helicopters were attacked. As the Swift boats reached the C\u1eeda L\u1edbn River, Kerry's boat was hit by a B-40 rocket (rocket propelled grenade round), and a piece of shrapnel hit Kerry's left leg, wounding him. Thereafter, enemy fire ceased and his boat reached the Gulf of Thailand safely. Kerry continues to have shrapnel embedded in his left thigh because the doctors that first treated him decided to remove the damaged tissue and close the wound with sutures rather than make a wide opening to remove the shrapnel. Although wounded like several others earlier that day, Kerry did not lose any time off from duty.\nSilver Star.\nEight days later, on February 28, 1969, came the events for which Kerry was awarded his Silver Star Medal. On this occasion, Kerry was in tactical command of his Swift boat and two other Swift boats during a combat operation. Their mission on the Duong Keo River included bringing an underwater demolition team and dozens of South Vietnamese Marines to destroy enemy sampans, structures and bunkers as described in the story \"The Death Of PCF 43\". Running into heavy small arms fire from the river banks, Kerry \"directed the units to turn to the beach and charge the Viet Cong positions\" and he \"expertly directed\" his boat's fire causing the enemy to flee while at the same time coordinating the insertion of the ninety South Vietnamese troops (according to the original medal citation signed by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt). Moving a short distance upstream, Kerry's boat was the target of a B-40 rocket round; Kerry charged the enemy positions and as his boat hove to and beached, a Viet Cong (\"VC\") insurgent armed with a rocket launcher emerged from a spider hole and ran. While the boat's gunner opened fire, wounding the VC in the leg, and while the other boats approached and offered cover fire, Kerry jumped from the boat to pursue the VC insurgent, subsequently killing him and capturing his loaded rocket launcher.\nKerry's commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander George Elliott, stated to Douglas Brinkley in 2003 that he did not know whether to court-martial Kerry for beaching the boat without orders or give him a medal for saving the crew. Elliott recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, and Zumwalt flew into An Thoi to personally award medals to Kerry and the rest of the sailors involved in the mission. The Navy's account of Kerry's actions is presented in the original signed by Zumwalt. The engagement was documented in an after-action report, a press release written on March 1, 1969, and a historical summary dated March 17, 1969.\nBronze Star.\nOn March 13, 1969, on the B\u00e1i H\u00e1p River, Kerry was in charge of one of five Swift boats that were returning to their base after performing an Operation Sealords mission to transport South Vietnamese troops from the garrison at C\u00e1i N\u01b0\u1edbc and MIKE Force advisors for a raid on a Vietcong camp located on the Rach Dong Cung canal. Earlier in the day, Kerry received a slight shrapnel wound in the buttocks from blowing up a rice bunker. Debarking some but not all of the passengers at a small village, the boats approached a fishing weir; one group of boats went around to the left of the weir, hugging the shore, and a group with Kerry's PCF-94 boat went around to the right, along the shoreline. A mine was detonated directly beneath the lead boat, PCF-3, as it crossed the weir to the left, lifting PCF-3 \"about 2\u20133 ft out of water\".\nJames Rassmann, a Green Beret advisor who was aboard Kerry's PCF-94, was knocked overboard when, according to witnesses and the documentation of the event, a mine or rocket exploded close to the boat. According to the documentation for the event, Kerry's arm was injured when he was thrown against a bulkhead during the explosion. PCF 94 returned to the scene and Kerry rescued Rassmann who was receiving sniper fire from the water. Kerry received the Bronze Star Medal with Combat \"V\" for \"heroic achievement\", for his actions during this incident; he also received his third Purple Heart.\nReturn from Vietnam.\nAfter Kerry's third qualifying wound, he was entitled per Navy regulations to reassignment away from combat duties. Kerry's preferred choice for reassignment was as a military aide in Boston, New York City or Washington, D.C. On April 11, 1969, he reported to the Brooklyn-based Atlantic Military Sea Transportation Service, where he would remain on active duty for the following year as a personal aide to an officer, Rear Admiral Walter Schlech. On January 1, 1970, Kerry was temporarily promoted to full lieutenant. Kerry had agreed to an extension of his active duty obligation from December 1969 to August 1970 in order to perform Swift Boat duty. John Kerry was on active duty in the United States Navy from August 1966 until January 1970. He continued to serve in the Naval Reserve until February 1978.\n\"Swiftboating\" controversy.\nWith the continuing controversy that had surrounded the military service of George W. Bush since the 2000 presidential election (when he was accused of having used his father's political influence to gain entrance to the Texas Air National Guard, thereby protecting himself from conscription into the United States Army, and possible service in the Vietnam War), John Kerry's contrasting status as a decorated Vietnam War veteran posed a problem for Bush's re-election campaign, which Republicans sought to counter by calling Kerry's war record into question. As the presidential campaign of 2004 developed, approximately 250 members of a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT, later renamed Swift Vets and POWs for Truth) opposed Kerry's campaign. The group held press conferences, ran ads and endorsed a book questioning Kerry's service record and his military awards. The group included several members of Kerry's unit, such as Larry Thurlow, who commanded a swift boat alongside of Kerry's, and Stephen Gardner, who served on Kerry's boat. The campaign inspired the widely used political pejorative '\"swiftboating,\" to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. Most of Kerry's former crewmates have stated that SBVT's allegations are false.\nAnti-war activism (1970\u20131971).\nAfter returning to the United States, Kerry moved to Waltham, Massachusetts and joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Then numbering about 20,000, VVAW was considered by some (including the administration of President Richard Nixon) to be an effective, if controversial, component of the antiwar movement. Kerry participated in the \"Winter Soldier Investigation\" conducted by VVAW of U.S. atrocities in Vietnam, and he appears in a film by that name that documents the investigation. According to Nixon Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, \"I didn't approve of what he did, but I understood the protesters quite well\", and he declined two requests from the Navy to court martial Reserve Lieutenant Kerry over his antiwar activity.\nOn April 22, 1971, Kerry appeared before a U.S. Senate committee hearing on proposals relating to ending the war. The day after this testimony, Kerry participated in a demonstration with thousands of other veterans in which he and other Vietnam War veterans threw their medals and service ribbons over a fence erected at the front steps of the United States Capitol building to dramatize their opposition to the war. Jack Smith, a Marine, read a statement explaining why the veterans were returning their military awards to the government. For more than two hours, almost 1,000 angry veterans tossed their medals, ribbons, hats, jackets, and military papers over the fence. Each veteran gave his or her name, hometown, branch of service and a statement. Kerry threw some of his own decorations and awards as well as some given to him by other veterans to throw. As Kerry threw his decorations over the fence, his statement was: \"I'm not doing this for any violent reasons, but for peace and justice, and to try and make this country wake up once and for all.\"\nKerry was arrested on May 30, 1971, during a VVAW march to honor American POWs held captive by North Vietnam. The march was planned as a multi-day event from Concord to Boston, and while in Lexington, participants tried to camp on the village green. At 2:30a.m., local and state police arrested 441 demonstrators, including Kerry, for trespassing. All were given the Miranda Warning and were hauled away on school buses to spend the night at the Lexington Public Works Garage. Kerry and the other protesters later paid a $5 fine, and were released. The mass arrests caused a community backlash and ended up giving positive coverage to the VVAW.\nEarly political career (1972\u20131985).\n1972 congressional election.\nIn 1970, Kerry had considered running for Congress in the Democratic primary against hawkish Democrat Philip J. Philbin of Massachusetts's 3rd congressional district, but deferred in favor of Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest and anti-war activist, who went on to defeat Philbin. In February 1972, Kerry's wife bought a house in Worcester, with Kerry intending to run against the 4th district's aging thirteen-term incumbent Democrat, Harold Donohue. The couple never moved in. After Republican Congressman F. Bradford Morse of the neighboring 5th district announced his retirement and then resignation to become Under-Secretary-General for Political and General Assembly Affairs at the United Nations, the couple instead rented an apartment in Lowell, so that Kerry could run to succeed him.\nIncluding Kerry, the Democratic primary race had 10 candidates, including attorney Paul J. Sheehy, State Representative Anthony R. DiFruscia, John J. Desmond and Robert B. Kennedy. Kerry ran a \"very expensive, sophisticated campaign\", financed by out-of-state backers and supported by many young volunteers. DiFruscia's campaign headquarters shared the same building as Kerry's. On the eve of the September 19 primary, police found Kerry's younger brother Cameron and campaign field director Thomas J. Vallely, breaking into where the building's telephone lines were located. They were arrested and charged with \"breaking and entering with the intent to commit grand larceny\", but the charges were dropped a year later. DiFruscia alleged that the two were trying to disrupt his get-out-the vote efforts. Vallely and Cameron Kerry maintained that they were only checking their own telephone lines because they had received an anonymous call warning that the Kerry lines would be cut.\nDespite the arrests, Kerry won the primary with 20,771 votes (27.56%). Sheehy came second with 15,641 votes (20.75%), followed by DiFruscia with 12,222 votes (16.22%), Desmond with 10,213 votes (13.55%) and Kennedy with 5,632 votes (7.47%). The remaining 10,891 votes were split amongst the other five candidates, with 1970 nominee Richard Williams coming last with just 1,706 votes (2.26%).\nIn the general election, Kerry was initially favored to defeat the Republican candidate, former State Representative Paul W. Cronin, and conservative Democrat Roger P. Durkin, who ran as an Independent. A week after the primary, one poll put Kerry 26-points ahead of Cronin. His campaign called for a national health insurance system, discounted prescription drugs for the unemployed, a jobs program to clean up the Merrimack River and rent controls in Lowell and Lawrence. A major obstacle, however, was the district's leading newspaper, the conservative \"The Sun\". The paper editorialized against him. It also ran critical news stories about his out-of-state contributions and his \"carpetbagging\", because he had only moved into the district in April. Subsequently, released \"Watergate\" Oval Office tape recordings of the Nixon White House showed that defeating Kerry's candidacy had attracted the personal attention of President Nixon. Kerry himself asserts that Nixon sent operatives to Lowell to help derail his campaign.\nThe race was the most expensive for Congress in the country that year and four days before the general election, Durkin withdrew and endorsed Cronin, hoping to see Kerry defeated. The week before, a poll had put Kerry 10 points ahead of Cronin, with Durkin at 13%. In the final days of the campaign, Kerry sensed that it was \"slipping away\" and Cronin emerged victorious by 110,970 votes (53.45%) to Kerry's 92,847 (44.72%). After his defeat, Kerry lamented in a letter to supporters that \"for two solid weeks, [\"The Sun\"] called me un-American, New Left antiwar agitator, unpatriotic, and labeled me every other 'un-' and 'anti-' that they could find. It's hard to believe that one newspaper could be so powerful, but they were.\" He later felt that his failure to respond directly to \"The Sun\"'s attacks cost him the race.\nLaw career.\nAfter Kerry's 1972 defeat, he and his wife bought a house in the Belvidere section of Lowell, Massachusetts, entering a decade which his brother Cameron later called \"the years in exile\". He spent some time working as a fundraiser for the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE), an international humanitarian organization. In September 1973, he entered Boston College Law School. While studying, Kerry worked as a talk radio host on WBZ and, in July 1974, was named executive director of Mass Action, a Massachusetts advocacy association.\nKerry received his juris doctor (J.D.) from Boston College in 1976. While in law school he had been a student prosecutor in the office of the District Attorney of Middlesex County, John J. Droney. After passing the bar exam and being admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1976, he went to work in that office as a full-time prosecutor and moved to Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.\nIn January 1977, Droney promoted him to First Assistant District Attorney, essentially making Kerry his campaign and media surrogate because Droney was afflicted with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease). As First Assistant, Kerry tried cases, which included winning convictions in a high-profile rape case and a murder. He also played a role in administering the office, including initiating the creation of special white-collar and organized crime units, creating programs to address the problems of rape and other crime victims and witnesses, and managing trial calendars to reflect case priorities. In 1978, Kerry launched a criminal investigation against Senator Edward Brooke, regarding \"misstatements\" in his first divorce trial. The inquiry ended with no charges being brought after investigators and prosecutors determined that Brooke's misstatements were pertinent to the case, but were not material enough to have affected the outcome.\nDroney's health was poor and Kerry had decided to run for his position in the 1978 election should Droney drop out. However, Droney was re-elected and his health improved; he went on to re-assume many of the duties that he had delegated to Kerry. Kerry thus decided to leave, departing in 1979 with assistant DA Roanne Sragow to set up their own law firm. Kerry also worked as a commentator for WCVB-TV and co-founded a bakery, Kilvert & Forbes Ltd., with businessman and former Kennedy aide K. Dun Gifford.\nLieutenant Governor of Massachusetts.\nIn the 1982 Massachusetts gubernatorial election, Lieutenant Governor Thomas P. O'Neill III declined to seek a third term, instead deciding to run for governor of Massachusetts. Kerry declared his candidacy, entering the primary election alongside Massachusetts Secretary of Environmental Affairs Evelyn Murphy, State Senator Samuel Rotondi, State Representative Lou Nickinello, and Lois Pines.\nKerry won the nomination with 325,890 votes (29%) to Murphy's 286,378 (25.48%), Rotondi's 228,086 (20.29%), Nickinello's 150,829 (13.42%) and Pines' 132,734 (11.81%). In the concurrent gubernatorial primary, former Governor Michael Dukakis defeated O'Neill and incumbent Governor Edward J. King. The Dukakis and Kerry ticket defeated the Republican ticket of John W. Sears and Leon Lombardi in the general election by 1,219,109 votes (61.92%) to 749,679 (38.08%).\nAs Lieutenant Governor, Kerry led meetings of the Massachusetts Governor's Council. Dukakis also delegated other tasks to Kerry, including serving as the state's liaison to the Federal government of the United States. He was also active on environmental issues, including combating acid rain.\n1984 U.S. Senate election.\nThe junior U.S. senator from Massachusetts, Paul Tsongas, announced in 1984 that he would be stepping down for health reasons. Kerry ran, and as in his 1982 race for Lieutenant Governor, he did not receive the endorsement of the party regulars at the state Democratic convention. Congressman James Shannon, a favorite of House Speaker Tip O'Neill, was the early favorite to win the nomination, and he \"won broad establishment support and led in early polling\". Again as in 1982, however, Kerry prevailed in a close primary.\nIn his general election campaign, Kerry promised to mix liberalism with tight budget controls. He defeated Republican Ray Shamie despite a nationwide landslide for the re-election of Republican President Ronald Reagan, for whom Massachusetts voted by a narrow margin. In his victory speech, Kerry asserted that his win meant that the people of Massachusetts \"emphatically reject the politics of selfishness and the notion that women must be treated as second-class citizens\".\nTsongas resigned on January 2, 1985, one day before the end of his term. Dukakis appointed Kerry to fill the vacancy, giving him seniority over other new senators who were sworn in on January 3, the scheduled start of their new terms.\nU.S. Senate (1985\u20132013).\nIran\u2013Contra hearings.\nOn April 18, 1985, a few months after taking his Senate seat, Kerry and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa traveled to Nicaragua and met the country's president, Daniel Ortega. Although Ortega had won internationally certified elections, the trip was criticized because Ortega and his leftist Sandinista government had strong ties to Cuba and the USSR and were accused of human rights abuses. The Sandinista government was opposed by the right-wing CIA-backed rebels known as the Contras. While in Nicaragua, Kerry and Harkin talked to people on both sides of the conflict. Through the senators, Ortega offered a cease-fire agreement in exchange for the U.S. dropping support of the Contras. The offer was denounced by the Reagan administration as a \"propaganda initiative\" designed to influence a House vote on a $14million Contra aid package, but Kerry said \"I am willing... to take the risk in the effort to put to test the good faith of the Sandinistas.\" The House voted down the Contra aid, but Ortega flew to Moscow to accept a $200million loan the next day, which in part prompted the House to pass a larger $27million aid package six weeks later.\nMeanwhile, Kerry's staff began their own investigations and, on October 14, issued a report that exposed illegal activities on the part of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who had set up a private network involving the National Security Council and the CIA to deliver military equipment to right-wing Nicaraguan rebels (Contras). In effect, North and certain members of the President's administration were accused by Kerry's report of illegally funding and supplying armed militants without the authorization of Congress. Kerry's staff investigation, based on a year-long inquiry and interviews with fifty unnamed sources, is said to raise \"serious questions about whether the United States has abided by the law in its handling of the contras over the past three years\".\nThe Kerry Committee report found that \"the Contra drug links included... payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies.\" The U.S. State Department paid over $806,000 to known drug traffickers to carry humanitarian assistance to the Contras. Kerry's findings provoked little reaction in the media and official Washington.\nThe Kerry report was a precursor to the Iran\u2013Contra affair. On May 4, 1989, North was convicted of charges relating to the Iran/Contra controversy, including three felonies. On September 16, 1991, however, North's convictions were overturned on appeal.\nGeorge H. W. Bush administration.\nOn November 15, 1988, at a businessmen's breakfast in East Lynn, Massachusetts, Kerry made a joke about then-President-elect George H. W. Bush and his running mate, saying \"if Bush is shot, the Secret Service has orders to shoot Dan Quayle.\" He apologized the following day.\nDuring their investigation of General Manuel Noriega, the \"de facto\" ruler of Panama, Kerry's staff found reason to believe that the Pakistan-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) had facilitated Noriega's drug trafficking and money laundering. This led to a separate inquiry into BCCI, and as a result, banking regulators shut down BCCI in 1991. In December 1992, Kerry and Senator Hank Brown, a Republican from Colorado, released \"The BCCI Affair\", a report on the BCCI scandal. The report showed that the bank was crooked and was working with terrorists, including Abu Nidal. It blasted the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, the Customs Service, the Federal Reserve Bank, as well as influential lobbyists and the CIA.\nKerry was criticized by some Democrats for having pursued his own party members, including former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, although Republicans said he should have pressed against some Democrats even harder. The BCCI scandal was later turned over to the Manhattan District Attorney's office.\nPrecursors to presidential bid.\nIn 1996, Kerry faced a difficult re-election fight against Governor William Weld, a popular Republican incumbent who had been re-elected in 1994 with 71% of the vote. The race was covered nationwide as one of the most closely watched Senate races that year. Kerry and Weld held several debates and negotiated a campaign spending cap of $6.9million at Kerry's Beacon Hill townhouse. Both candidates spent more than the cap, with each camp accusing the other of being first to break the agreement. During the campaign, Kerry spoke briefly at the 1996 Democratic National Convention. Kerry won re-election with 52 percent to Weld's 45 percent.\nIn the 2000 presidential election, Kerry found himself close to being chosen as the vice presidential running mate.\nA release from the presidential campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Al Gore listed Kerry on the short list to be selected as the vice-presidential nominee, along with North Carolina Senator John Edwards, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt, New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. Gore ultimately chose Lieberman.\n\"You get stuck in Iraq\" controversy.\nOn October 30, 2006, Kerry was a headline speaker at a campaign rally being held for Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. Speaking to an audience composed mainly of college students, Kerry said, \"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.\"\nThe day after he made the remark, leaders from both sides of the political spectrum criticized Kerry's remarks, which he said were a botched joke. Republicans including President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain and then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, said that Kerry's comments were insulting to American military forces fighting in Iraq. Democratic Representative Harold Ford Jr. called on Kerry to apologize.\nKerry initially stated: \"I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy\". Kerry also responded to criticism from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.\nKerry said that he had intended the remark as a jab at President Bush, and described the remarks as a \"botched joke\", having inadvertently left out the key word \"us\" (which would have been, \"If you don't, you get \"us\" stuck in Iraq\"), as well as leaving the phrase \"just ask President Bush\" off of the end of the sentence. In Kerry's prepared remarks, which he released during the ensuing media frenzy, the corresponding line was \"...you end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush\". He also said that from the context of the speech which, prior to the \"stuck in Iraq\" line, made several specific references to Bush and elements of his biography, that Kerry was referring to President Bush and not American troops in general.\nAfter two days of media coverage, citing a desire not to be a diversion, Kerry apologized to those who took offense at what he called the misinterpretation of his comment.\nAfghanistan and Pakistan.\nA \"Washington Post\" report in May 2011 stated that Kerry \"has emerged in the past few years as an important envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan during times of crisis\", as he undertook another trip to the two countries. The killing of Osama bin Laden \"has generated perhaps the most important crossroads yet\", the report continued, as the senator spoke at a press conference and prepared to fly from Kabul to Pakistan. Among matters discussed during the May visit to Pakistan, under the general rubric of \"recalibrating\" the bilateral relationship, Kerry sought and retrieved from the Pakistanis the tail-section of the U.S. helicopter which had had to be abandoned at Abbottabad during the bin Laden strike. In 2013, Kerry met with Pakistan's army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to discuss the peace process with the Taliban in Afghanistan.\nVoting record.\nOverall.\nMost analyses place Kerry's voting record on the left within the Senate Democratic caucus. During the 2004 presidential election he was portrayed as a staunch liberal by conservative groups and the Bush campaign, who often noted that in 2003 Kerry was rated the top Senate liberal by \"National Journal\". However, that rating was based only upon voting on legislation within that past year. In fact, in terms of career voting records, the \"National Journal\" found that Kerry is the 11th most liberal member of the Senate. Most analyses find that Kerry is at least slightly more liberal than the typical Democratic Senator. Kerry has stated that he opposes privatizing Social Security, supports abortion rights for adult women and minors, supports same-sex marriage, opposes capital punishment except for terrorists, supports most gun control laws, and is generally a supporter of trade agreements. In some of these, as in the case of abortion, Kerry distinguishes his personal views as in line with his Catholic faith, but believes that separation of church and state demands that he not legislate his religious beliefs upon those who do not share those beliefs. Kerry supported the North American Free Trade Agreement and Most Favored Nation status for China, but opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement.\nIn July 1997, Kerry joined his Senate colleagues in voting against ratification of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming without greenhouse gas emissions limits on nations deemed developing, including India and China. Since then, Kerry has attacked President Bush, charging him with opposition to international efforts to combat global warming.\nOn October 1, 2008, Kerry voted for Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, also known as the TARP bailout.\nIraq.\nIn the lead up to the Iraq War, Kerry said on October 9, 2002; \"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.\" Bush relied on that resolution in ordering the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Kerry also gave a January 23, 2003, speech to Georgetown University saying \"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator; leading an oppressive regime he presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.\" Kerry did, however, warn that the administration should exhaust its diplomatic avenues before launching war: \"Mr. President, do not rush to war, take the time to build the coalition, because it's not winning the war that's hard, it's winning the peace that's hard.\"\nAfter the invasion of Iraq, when no weapons of mass destruction were found, Kerry strongly criticized Bush, contending that he had misled the country: \"When the President of the United States looks at you and tells you something, there should be some trust.\"\nLibya.\nIn 2011, Kerry supported American military action in Libya.\nLeadership.\nKerry chaired the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs from 1991 to 1993. The committee's report, which Kerry endorsed, stated there was \"no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia\". In 1994 the Senate passed a resolution, sponsored by Kerry and fellow Vietnam veteran John McCain, that called for an end to the existing trade embargo against Vietnam; it was intended to pave the way for normalization. In 1995, President Bill Clinton normalized diplomatic relations with the country of Vietnam.\nKerry was the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 1987 to 1989. He was reelected to the Senate in 1990, 1996 (after winning re-election against the then-Governor of Massachusetts Republican William Weld), 2002, and 2008. In January 2009, Kerry replaced Joe Biden as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.\nAs a role model for campus leaders across the nation and strong advocate for global development, Kerry was honored by the Millennium Campus Network (MCN) as a Global Generation Award winner in 2011.\nCommittee assignments.\nDuring his tenure, Kerry served on four Senate committees and nine subcommittees:\nSeniority.\nFrom the beginning of the 113th United States Congress until his resignation, Kerry ranked as the 7th most senior U.S. Senator. Due to the longevity of Ted Kennedy's service, Kerry was the most senior \"junior Senator\" in the 111th United States Congress. On Tuesday, August 25, 2009, Kerry became the senior senator from Massachusetts following Ted Kennedy's death.\nSponsorship of legislation.\nAreas of concern in the bills Kerry introduced into the Senate included small business concerns, education, terrorism, veterans' and POW/MIA issues, and marine resource protection. A full list of Kerry's sponsored legislation was available on his Senate web site.\nDuring his Senate career, Kerry was primary sponsor of the following bills (excluding resolutions and amendments sponsored). This table does not count bills which Kerry co-sponsored.\nA chronological list of various bills and resolutions sponsored by Kerry follows.\n2004 presidential campaign.\nIn the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries, John Kerry defeated several Democratic rivals, including Sen. John Edwards (D-North Carolina), former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and retired Army General Wesley Clark. His victory in the Iowa caucuses is widely believed to be the tipping point where Kerry revived his sagging campaign in New Hampshire and the February 3, 2004, primary states like Arizona, South Carolina and New Mexico. Kerry then went on to win landslide victories in Nevada and Wisconsin. Kerry thus won the Democratic nomination to run for President of the United States against incumbent George W. Bush. On July 6, 2004, he announced his selection of John Edwards as his running mate. Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who was Kerry's 2004 campaign adviser, wrote an article in \"Time\" magazine claiming that after the election, Kerry had said that he wished he had never picked Edwards, and that the two have since stopped speaking to each other. In a subsequent appearance on ABC's \"This Week\", Kerry refused to respond to Shrum's allegation, calling it a \"ridiculous waste of time\".\nDuring his bid to be elected president in 2004, Kerry frequently criticized President George W. Bush for starting the Iraq War. While Kerry had initially voted in support of authorizing President Bush to use force in dealing with Saddam Hussein, he voted against an $87billion supplemental appropriations bill to pay for the subsequent war. His statement on March 16, 2004, \"I actually did vote for the $87billion before I voted against it\", helped the Bush campaign to paint him as a flip-flopper and has been cited as contributing to Kerry's defeat.\nOn November 3, 2004, Kerry conceded the race. Kerry won 59.03 million votes, or 48.3 percent of the popular vote; Bush won 62.04 million votes, or 50.7 percent of the popular vote. Kerry carried states with a total of 252 electoral votes. One Kerry elector voted for Kerry's running mate, Edwards, so in the final tally Kerry had 251 electoral votes to Bush's 286. He was the first Democrat since Michael Dukakis in 1988 to lose the popular vote in a presidential election, and until Kamala Harris's loss in 2024, he was the most recent Democrat to do so.\nSubsequent presidential-election activities.\nImmediately after the 2004 election, some Democrats mentioned Kerry as a possible contender for the 2008 Democratic nomination. His brother had said such a campaign was \"conceivable\", and Kerry himself reportedly said at a farewell party for his 2004 campaign staff, \"There's always another four years\".\nKerry established a separate political action committee, Keeping America's Promise, which declared as its mandate \"A Democratic Congress will restore accountability to Washington and help change a disastrous course in Iraq\", and raised money and channeled contributions to Democratic candidates in state and federal races. Through Keeping America's Promise in 2005, Kerry raised over $5.5million for other Democrats up and down the ballot. Through his campaign account and his political action committee, the Kerry campaign operation generated more than $10million for various party committees and 179 candidates for the U.S. House, Senate, state and local offices in 42 states focusing on the midterm elections during the 2006 election cycle. \"Cumulatively, John Kerry has done as much if not more than any other individual senator\", Hassan Nemazee, the national finance chairman of the DSCC said.\nOn January 10, 2008, Kerry endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama for president. He was mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate for Senator Obama, although fellow Senator Joe Biden was eventually chosen. After Biden's acceptance of the vice presidential nomination, speculation arose that John Kerry would be a candidate for Secretary of State in the Obama administration. However, Senator Hillary Clinton was offered the position.\nDuring the 2012 Obama reelection campaign, Kerry participated in one-on-one debate prep with the president, impersonating the Republican candidate Mitt Romney.\nSecretary of State (2013\u20132017).\nNomination and confirmation.\nOn December 15, 2012, several news outlets reported that President Barack Obama would nominate Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, after Susan Rice, widely seen as Obama's preferred choice, withdrew her name from consideration citing a politicized confirmation process following criticism of her response to the 2012 Benghazi attack. On December 21, Obama proposed the nomination, which received positive commentary. His confirmation hearing took place on January 24, 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the same panel where he first testified in 1971. The committee unanimously voted to approve him on January 29, 2013, and the same day the full Senate confirmed him on a vote of 94\u20133. In a letter to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Kerry announced his resignation from the Senate effective February 1.\nTenure.\nKerry was sworn in as Secretary of State on February 1, 2013.\nWhile serving as the Secretary of State, Kerry spoke in the French language on several occasions in his official capacity.\nAfter six months of rigorous diplomacy within the Middle East, Kerry was able to have Israeli and Palestinian negotiators agree to start the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks. Senior U.S. officials stated the two sides were able to meet on July 30, 2013, at the State Department without American mediators following a dinner the previous evening hosted by Kerry.\nOn September 27, 2013, he met with the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the P5+1 and Iran summit, which eventually led to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. It was the highest-level direct contact between the United States and Iran in the last six years, and made him the first U.S. Secretary of State to have met with his Iranian counterpart since 1979 Iranian Revolution.\nIn the State Department, Kerry quickly earned a reputation \"for being aloof, keeping to himself, and not bothering to read staff memos\". Career State Department officials complained that power became too centralized under Kerry's leadership, which slowed department operations when Kerry was on frequent overseas trips. Others in State described Kerry as having \"a kind of diplomatic attention deficit disorder\" as he shifted from topic to topic instead of focusing on long-term strategy. When asked whether he was traveling too much, he responded, \"Hell no. I'm not slowing down.\" Despite Kerry's early achievements, morale at State was lower than under Hillary Clinton, according to department employees. However, after Kerry's first six months in the State Department, a Gallup poll found he had high approval ratings among Americans as Secretary of State. After a year, another poll showed Kerry's favorability continued to rise. Less than two years into Kerry's term, the Foreign Policy Magazine's 2014 Ivory Tower survey of international relations scholars asked, \"Who was the most effective U.S. Secretary of State in the past 50 years?\"; John Kerry and Lawrence Eagleburger tied for 11th place out of the 15 confirmed Secretaries of State in that period.\nIn January 2014, having met with Vatican Secretary of State Archbishop Pietro Parolin, Kerry said: \"We touched on just about every major issue that we are both working on, that are issues of concern to all of us. First of all, we talked at great length about Syria, and I was particularly appreciative for the Archbishop's raising this issue, and equally grateful for the Holy Father's comments\u00a0\u2013 the Pope's comments yesterday regarding his support for the GenevaII process. We welcome that support. It is very important to have broad support, and I know that the Pope is particularly concerned about the massive numbers of displaced human beings and the violence that has taken over 130,000 lives.\"\nKerry expressed support for Israel's right to defend itself during the 2014 Israel\u2013Gaza conflict.\nKerry said the United States supported the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen because Saudi Arabia, an ally, was threatened \"very directly\" by the takeover of neighboring Yemen by the Houthis, but noted that the United States would not reflexively support Saudi Arabia's proxy wars against Iran.\nOn December 28, 2016, soon after United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 passed 14\u20130 with the U.S. abstaining, Kerry joined the rest of the U.N. Security Council in strongly criticizing Israel's settlement policies in a speech. His speech and criticisms met negative reactions from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while UK Prime Minister Theresa May distanced the UK from Kerry's strongly worded speech in what appeared to be an attempt to build bridges with the incoming Trump administration. Kerry's speech received positive reactions from Arab nations, but some criticized his remarks as too little, too late from the outgoing administration.\nSyria.\nFollowing the August 21, 2013, chemical weapons attack on the Ghouta suburbs of Damascus attributed to Syrian government forces, Kerry became a leading advocate for the use of military force against the Syrian government for what he called \"a despot's brutal and flagrant use of chemical weapons\".\nOn September 9, in response to a reporter's question about whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could avert a military strike, Kerry said \"He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that. But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done, obviously.\" This unscripted remark initiated a process that would lead to Syria agreeing to relinquish and destroy its chemical weapons arsenal, as Russia treated Kerry's statement as a serious proposal. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia would work \"immediately\" to convince Syria relinquish and destroy its large chemical weapons arsenal. Syria quickly welcomed this proposal and on September 14, the UN formally accepted Syria's application to join the convention banning chemical weapons, and separately, the U.S. and Russia agreed on a plan to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons by the middle of 2014, leading Kerry to declare on July 20, 2014: \"we struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out\". On September 28, the UN Security Council passed a resolution ordering the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons and condemning the August 21 Ghouta attack.\nLatin America.\nIn a speech before the Organization of American States in November 2013, Kerry remarked that the era of the Monroe Doctrine was over. He went on to explain, \"The relationship that we seek and that we have worked hard to foster is not about a United States declaration about how and when it will intervene in the affairs of other American states. It's about all of our countries viewing one another as equals, sharing responsibilities, cooperating on security issues, and adhering not to doctrine, but to the decisions that we make as partners to advance the values and the interests that we share.\"\nEnvironmentalism.\nIn April 2016, he signed the Paris Climate Accords at the United Nations in New York.\nOn November 11, 2016, Kerry became the first Secretary of State and highest-ranking U.S. official to date to visit Antarctica. Kerry spent two days on the continent meeting with researchers and staying overnight at McMurdo Station.\nIn 1994, Kerry led opposition to continued funding for the Integral Fast Reactor, which resulted in the end of funding for the project. However, in light of increasing concerns regarding climate change, in 2017 Kerry reversed his position on nuclear power, saying \"Given this challenge we face today, and given the progress of fourth generation nuclear: go for it. No other alternative, zero emissions.\"\nGlobal Connect initiative.\nIn September 2015, the U.S. Department of State unveiled a new initiative called \"Global Connect\" which sought to provide internet access to more than 1.5 billion people around the world within five years. In 2016, in partnership with OPIC, Kerry announced an investment of $171million to enable \"a low-cost and rapidly scalable wireless broadband network in India\". OPIC's financing is aimed at helping its Indian Partner, Tikona Digital Networks, to provide Internet through wireless technology.\nOut of government (2017\u20132021).\nKerry retired from his diplomatic work following the end of the Obama administration on January 20, 2017. He did not attend Donald Trump's inauguration on that day, and the following day took part in the 2017 Women's March in Washington, D.C.\nKerry has taken a strong stand against Trump policies and joined in filing a brief arguing against Trump's executive order banning entry of persons from seven Muslim countries. In November 2018, in a \"Guardian Live\" conversation with Andrew Rawnsley, sponsored by \"The Guardian\" at London's Central Hall, Kerry discussed several issues which have developed further since his tenure as Secretary of State, including migration into Europe and climate change.\nOn December 5, 2019, Kerry endorsed Joe Biden's bid for the Democratic nomination for president, saying \"He'll be ready on day one to put back together the country and the world that Donald Trump has broken apart\" and asserting that \"Joe will defeat Donald Trump next November. He's the candidate with the wisdom and standing to fix what Trump has broken, to restore our place in the world, and improve the lives of working people here at home.\"\nFollowing retirement from government service, Kerry signed an agreement with Simon & Schuster for publishing his planned memoirs, dealing with his life and career in government. In September 2018, he published \"Every Day Is Extra\".\nLeaked audiotape.\nOn April 25, 2021, \"The New York Times\" published content from a leaked audiotape of a three-hour taped conversation between economist Saeed Leylaz and Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. The taped conversation was connected to an oral history project, known as \"In the Islamic Republic the military field rules\", which documents the work of Iran's current administration. The tape was obtained by the London-based news channel Iran International.\nIn the tape, which the \"Times\" referred to as \"extraordinary\", Zarif reveals that then-Secretary of State Kerry told him that Israel attacked Iranian assets in Syria, \"at least 200 times\". Although the tape has not been verified, the spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry did not deny its validity.\nNineteen Republican senators signed a letter asking President Biden to investigate Zarif's claim. On April 27, 2021, Republicans called on Kerry to resign from the Biden administration's National Security Council. In a tweet, Kerry denied Zarif's account, writing, \"I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false. This never happened \u2014 either when I was Secretary of State or since.\"\nSpecial Presidential Envoy for Climate (2021\u20132024).\nOn November 23, 2020, President-elect Joe Biden's transition team announced that Kerry would be taking a full-time position in the administration, serving as a special envoy for climate; in this role he will be a principal on the National Security Council. Kerry assumed office on January 20, 2021, following Biden's inauguration.\nClimate cooperation with China.\nIn July 2023, John Kerry visited China for advance climate cooperation. The main achievement of the visit was some progress in the fields of: \"methane reduction commitments; reducing China's reliance on coal; China's objections to trade restrictions on solar panel and battery components; and climate finance.\" This was obtained despite many currently existing obstacles to cooperation. The visit was made in the middle of the 2023 Asia heat wave that set a new record of in Sanbu, Xinjiang, China, which Kerry mentioned in particular.\nClimate cooperation with India.\nAt the end of July 2023, John Kerry visited India. Among others he declared, the US will be committed to the target of delivering 100 billion dollars for climate action to low income countries and no future US president can retreat from climate commitment. He criticized Donald Trump for leaving the Paris agreement before.\nClimate cooperation with countries in the Middle East.\nIn June 2023, Kerry made visits to Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. In Israel, he emphasized the need for climate legislation to reach climate targets and reached an agreement about the renewal of \"Memorandum of understanding between Israel and the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Israel is one of the few developed countries which have still not approved a climate law and lags behind other OECD countries in climate action. Israeli environmental protection minister Idit Silman said that Israel intended to go to COP28 \"with an ambitious and applicable climate law and put the State of Israel on the same level as the developed countries of the OECD.\"\nDeparture.\nOn January 13, 2024, at least three sources close to Kerry revealed that he would step down as U.S. climate envoy by the upcoming spring. He told the \"Financial Times\" he planned to stay active in the climate finance space. He officially resigned from his position on March 6, 2024.\nPersonal and family life.\nAncestry.\nKerry's paternal ancestors came from the Fr\u00e4nkel family, which owned a textile factory in Neustadt, Upper Silesia (now Prudnik, Poland), founded by Samuel Fr\u00e4nkel. The Fr\u00e4nkels originated from Hotzenplotz, Austria (now Osoblaha, Czech Republic) and Z\u00fclz, Prussia (now Bia\u0142a Prudnicka, Poland). Kerry's paternal great-grandmother, Mathilda Fr\u00e4nkel, was born in Oberglogau (now G\u0142og\u00f3wek, near Prudnik) and married Benedikt Kohn from Bennisch (now Horn\u00ed Bene\u0161ov). His grandparents, shoe businessman Frederick A. \"Fred\" Kerry and musician Ida L\u00f6we, immigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the U.S. Fred, his wife, and his brother converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1901, and changed their names from Kohn to Kerry. Ida was of remote ancestry of Rabbi Sinai Loew of Worms, brother of Judah Loew ben Bezalel. Fred and Ida Kerry emigrated to the United States in 1905, living at first in Chicago and eventually moving to Brookline, Massachusetts, by 1915. According to \"The New York Times\", \"[the] brother and sister of John Kerry's paternal grandmother, Otto and Jenni Lowe, died in concentration camps\". Kerry's Jewish ancestry was publicly revealed during his 2004 presidential campaign; he has stated that he was unaware of it until a reporter informed him of it in 2003.\nKerry's maternal ancestors were of Scottish and English descent, and his maternal grandparents were James Grant Forbes II of the Forbes family and Margaret Tyndal Winthrop of the Dudley\u2013Winthrop family. Margaret's paternal grandfather Robert Charles Winthrop served as the 22nd Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Robert's father was Governor Thomas Lindall Winthrop. Thomas' father John Still Winthrop was a great-great-grandson of Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop and great-grandson of Governor Thomas Dudley. Through his mother, Kerry is a first cousin once removed of French politician Brice Lalonde.\nMarriages and children.\nKerry was married to Julia Thorne in 1970, and they had two daughters together: documentary filmmaker Alexandra Kerry (born September 5, 1973) and physician Vanessa Kerry (born December 31, 1976).\nAlexandra was born days before Kerry began law school. In 1982, Julia asked Kerry for a separation while she was suffering from severe depression. They were divorced on July 25, 1988, and the marriage was formally annulled in 1997. \"After 14 years as a political wife, I associated politics only with anger, fear and loneliness\", she wrote in \"A Change of Heart\", her book about depression. Thorne later married Richard Charlesworth, an architect, and moved to Bozeman, Montana, where she became active in local environmental groups such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Thorne supported Kerry's 2004 presidential run. She died of cancer on April 27, 2006.\nKerry and his second wife\u2014Portuguese-born businesswoman and philanthropist Teresa Heinz, the widow of Kerry's late Pennsylvania Republican Senate colleague John Heinz\u2014were introduced to each other by Heinz at an Earth Day rally in 1990. Early the following year, Senator Heinz was killed in a plane crash near Lower Merion. Teresa has three sons from her marriage to Heinz, Henry John IV, Andr\u00e9, and Christopher. Heinz and Kerry were married on May 26, 1995, in Nantucket, Massachusetts.\nNet worth.\nThe \"Forbes 400\" survey estimated in 2004 that Teresa Heinz Kerry had a net worth of $750million. However, estimates have frequently varied, ranging from around $165million to as high as $3.2billion, according to a study in the \"Los Angeles Times\". Regardless of which figure is correct, Kerry was the wealthiest U.S. Senator while serving in the Senate. Independent of Heinz, Kerry is wealthy in his own right, and is the beneficiary of at least four trusts inherited from Forbes family relatives, including his mother, Rosemary Forbes Kerry, who died in 2002. \"Forbes\" magazine (named for the Forbes family of publishers, unrelated to Kerry) estimated that if elected, and if Heinz family assets were included, Kerry would have been the third-richest U.S. president in history, when adjusted for inflation. This assessment was based on Heinz's and Kerry's combined assets, but the couple signed a prenuptial agreement that keeps their assets separate. Kerry's financial disclosure form for 2011 put his personal assets in the range of $230,000,000 to $320,000,000, including the assets of his spouse and any dependent children. This included slightly more than $3,000,000 worth of H. J. Heinz Company assets, which increased in value by over $600,000 in 2013 when Berkshire Hathaway announced their intention to purchase the company.\nIn April 2017, Kerry purchased an 18-acre property on the northwest corner of Martha's Vineyard overlooking Vineyard Sound in the town of Chilmark, Massachusetts. The property is located in Seven Gates Farm and according to property records, cost $11.75million for the seven bedroom home.\nReligious beliefs.\nKerry is a Roman Catholic, and is said to have carried a religious rosary, a prayer book, and a St. Christopher medal (the patron saint of travelers) when he campaigned. Discussing his faith, Kerry said: \"I thought of being a priest. I was very religious while at school in Switzerland. I was an altar boy and prayed all the time. I was very centered around the Mass and the church.\" He also said that the Letters of Paul (Apostle Paul) moved him the most, stating that they taught him to \"not feel sorry for myself\".\nKerry told \"Christianity Today\" in October 2004:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I'm a Catholic and I practice, but at the same time I have an open-mindedness to many other expressions of spirituality that come through different religions... I've spent some time reading and thinking about religion and trying to study it, and I've arrived at not so much a sense of the differences, but a sense of the similarities in so many ways.\nHe said that he believed that the Torah, the Quran, and the Bible all share a fundamental story which connects with readers.\nHealth.\nIn 2003, Kerry was diagnosed with and successfully treated for prostate cancer. On May 31, 2015, Kerry broke his right leg in a biking accident in Scionzier, France, and was flown to Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital for recovery. MGH Hip and Knee Replacement Orthopaedic Surgeon Dr. Dennis Burke, who had met Kerry in France and had accompanied him in the plane from France to Boston, set Kerry's right leg on Tuesday, June 2, in a four-hour operation.\nAthletics and sailing.\nIn addition to the sports he played at Yale, Kerry is described by \"Sports Illustrated\", among others, as an \"avid cyclist\", primarily riding on a road bike. Prior to his presidential bid, Kerry had participated in several long-distance rides. During his many campaigns, he was reported to have visited bicycle stores in both his home state and elsewhere. His staff requested recumbent stationary bikes for his hotel rooms. He has also been a snowboarder, windsurfer, and sailor.\nThe \"Boston Herald\" reported on July 23, 2010, that Kerry commissioned construction on a new $7million yacht (a Friendship 75) in New Zealand and moored it in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where the Friendship yacht company is based. The article claimed this allowed him to avoid paying Massachusetts taxes on the property including approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $500. On July 27, Kerry stated he would voluntarily pay $500,000 in Massachusetts taxes on his yacht.\nHonors.\nJohn Kerry was awarded:\nHonorary degrees.\nJohn Kerry has received several honorary degrees in recognition of his service to the United States, These include:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "53825": "New Haven, Connecticut\nNew Haven is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is the third largest city in Connecticut after Bridgeport and Stamford, the largest city in the South Central Connecticut Planning Region, and the principal municipality of Greater New Haven, which had a total population of 864,835 in 2020.\nNew Haven was one of the first planned cities in the U.S. A year after its founding by English Puritans in 1638, eight streets were laid out in a four-by-four grid, creating the \"Nine Square Plan\". The central common block is the New Haven Green, a square at the center of Downtown New Haven. The Green is now a National Historic Landmark, and the \"Nine Square Plan\" is recognized by the American Planning Association as a National Planning Landmark.\nNew Haven is the home of Yale University, New Haven's biggest taxpayer and employer, and an integral part of the city's economy. Health care, professional and financial services and retail trade also contribute to the city's economic activity.\nThe city served as co-capital of Connecticut from 1701 until 1873, when sole governance was transferred to the more centrally located city of Hartford. New Haven has since billed itself as the \"Cultural Capital of Connecticut\" for its supply of established theaters, museums, and music venues. New Haven had the first public tree planting program in the U.S., producing a canopy of mature trees (including some large elms) that gave the city the nickname \"The Elm City\".\nHistory.\nPre-colonial foundation as an independent colony.\nBefore Europeans arrived, the New Haven area was the home of the Quinnipiac tribe of Native Americans, who lived in villages around the harbor and sustained an economy of local fisheries and the farming of maize. The area was briefly visited by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block in 1614. Dutch traders set up a small trading system of beaver pelts with the local inhabitants, but trade was sporadic and the Dutch did not settle permanently in the area.\nIn 1637, a small party of Puritans did a reconnaissance of the New Haven harbor area and wintered over. In April 1638, the main party of five hundred Puritans, who had left the Massachusetts Bay Colony under the leadership of Reverend John Davenport and London merchant Theophilus Eaton, sailed into the harbor. It was their hope to set up a theological community with the government more closely linked to the church than that in Massachusetts, and to exploit the area's potential as a port. The Quinnipiacs, who were under attack by neighboring Pequots, sold their land to the settlers in return for a pledge of protection.\nBy 1640, \"Quinnipiac's\" theocratic government and nine-square grid plan were in place, and the town was renamed New Haven, with 'haven' meaning harbor or port. However, the area to the north remained Quinnipiac until 1678, when it was renamed Hamden. The settlement became the headquarters of the New Haven Colony, distinct from the Connecticut Colony previously established to the north centering on Hartford. Reflecting its theocratic roots, the New Haven Colony forbade the establishment of other churches, whereas the Connecticut Colony permitted them.\nEconomic disaster struck New Haven in 1646, when the town sent its first fully loaded ship of local goods (the \"Great Shippe\") back to England. It never reached its destination, and its disappearance hindered New Haven's development as compared to the rising trade powers of Boston and New Amsterdam (modern day New York City).\nIn 1660, Colony founder John Davenport's wishes were fulfilled, and Hopkins School was founded in New Haven with money from the estate of Edward Hopkins.\nIn 1661, the Regicides who had signed the death warrant of Charles I of England were pursued by Charles II. Two of them, Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe, fled to New Haven for refuge. Davenport arranged for them to hide in the West Rock hills northwest of the town. A third judge, John Dixwell, later joined the others. None of the three were ever returned to England for trial; Dixwell died of old age in New Haven, the others likewise elsewhere in New England.\nAs part of the Connecticut Colony.\nIn 1664, New Haven became part of the Connecticut Colony when the two colonies were merged under political pressure from England. Seeking to establish a new theocracy elsewhere, some members of the New Haven Colony went on to establish Newark, New Jersey.\nNew Haven was made co-capital of Connecticut in 1701, a status it retained until 1873.\nIn 1716, the Collegiate School relocated from Old Saybrook to New Haven, establishing it as a center of learning. In 1718, in response to a large donation from East India Company merchant Elihu Yale, former Governor of Madras, the Collegiate School was renamed Yale College.\nFor over a century, New Haven citizens had fought in the colonial militia alongside regular British forces, including the French and Indian War. As the American Revolution approached, General David Wooster and other influential residents hoped that the conflict with the British parliament could be resolved short of rebellion. On April 23, 1775, Captain Benedict Arnold commanded the Second Company, Governor's Foot Guard, of New Haven to break into the powder house to arm themselves for a three-day march to Cambridge, Massachusetts, an event still celebrated in New Haven as Powder House Day. Other New Haven militia members were on hand to escort George Washington from his overnight stay in New Haven on his way to Cambridge. Contemporary reports, from both sides, remark on the New Haven volunteers' professional military bearing, including uniforms.\nOn July 5, 1779, 2,600 loyalists and British regulars under General William Tryon, governor of New York, landed in New Haven Harbor and raided the town of 3,500. A militia of Yale students had been preparing for battle, and former Yale president and Yale Divinity School professor Naphtali Daggett rode out to confront the Redcoats. Yale president Ezra Stiles recounted in his diary that while he moved furniture in anticipation of battle, he still couldn't quite believe the revolution had begun. New Haven was not torched as the invaders did with Danbury in 1777, or Fairfield and Norwalk a week after the New Haven raid, preserving many of the town's colonial features.\nPost-colonial period and industrialization.\nNew Haven was incorporated as a city in 1784, and Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Constitution and author of the \"Connecticut Compromise\", became the new city's first mayor.\nThe city struck fortune in the late 18th century with the inventions and industrial activity of Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate who remained in New Haven to develop the cotton gin and establish a gun-manufacturing factory in the northern part of the city near the Hamden town line. That area is still known as Whitneyville, and the main road through both towns is known as Whitney Avenue. The factory is now the Eli Whitney Museum, which has a particular emphasis on activities for children and exhibits pertaining to the A. C. Gilbert Company. His factory, along with that of Simeon North, and the lively clock-making and brass hardware sectors, contributed to making early Connecticut a powerful manufacturing economy; so many arms manufacturers sprang up that the state became known as \"The Arsenal of America\". It was in Whitney's gun-manufacturing plant that Samuel Colt invented the automatic revolver in 1836. Many other talented machinists and firearms designers would go on to found successful firearms manufacturing companies in New Haven, including Oliver Winchester and O.F. Mossberg & Sons.\nThe Farmington Canal, created in the early 19th century, was a short-lived transporter of goods into the interior regions of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and ran from New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts.\nNew Haven was to be the site of the first college for African Americans in the United States, but the plan was obstructed by efforts led by Yale Law School founder and former New Haven Mayor David Daggett, who went on to serve as a U.S. Senator and judge on Connecticut's highest court. Daggett denigrated African Americans, denied they were citizens, and presided over the trial of a woman persecuted for trying to admit an African American girl to her boarding school and, having that effort blocked, running a boarding school for African American girls.\nNew Haven was home to one of the important early events in the burgeoning anti-slavery movement when, in 1839, the trial of mutineering Mende tribesmen being transported as slaves on the Spanish slaveship \"Amistad\" was held in New Haven's United States District Court. There is a statue of Joseph Cinqu\u00e9, the informal leader of the slaves, beside City Hall. See \"Museums\" below for more information. Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech on slavery in New Haven in 1860, shortly before he secured the Republican nomination for President.\nThe American Civil War boosted the local economy with wartime purchases of industrial goods, including that of the New Haven Arms Company, which would later become the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. (Winchester would continue to produce arms in New Haven until 2006, and many of the buildings that were a part of the Winchester plant are now a part of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company Historic District). After the war, population grew and doubled by the start of the 20th century, most notably due to the influx of immigrants from southern Europe, particularly Italy. Today, roughly half the populations of East Haven, West Haven, and North Haven are Italian-American. Jewish immigration to New Haven has left an enduring mark on the city. Westville was the center of Jewish life in New Haven, though today many have fanned out to suburban communities such as Woodbridge and Cheshire. Lowell House, the city's first settlement, opened in 1900.\nPost-industrial era and urban redevelopment.\nNew Haven's expansion continued during the two World Wars, with most new inhabitants being African Americans from the American South, and Puerto Ricans. The city reached its peak population after World War II. The area of New Haven is only , encouraging further development of new housing after 1950 in adjacent, suburban towns. Moreover, as in other U.S. cities in the 1950s, New Haven began to suffer white flight of middle-class workers. One author suggested that aggressive redlining and rezoning made it difficult for residents to obtain financing for older, deteriorating urban housing stock, thereby condemning such structures to deterioration.\nIn 1954, then-mayor Richard C. Lee began some of the earliest major urban renewal projects in the United States. Certain sections of downtown New Haven were redeveloped to include museums, new office towers, a hotel, and large shopping complexes. Other parts of the city, particularly the Wooster Square and Fair Haven neighborhoods were affected by the construction of Interstate 95 along the Long Wharf section, Interstate 91, and the Oak Street Connector. The Oak Street Connector (Route 34), running between Interstate 95, downtown, and The Hill neighborhood, was originally intended as a highway to the city's western suburbs but was only completed as a highway to the downtown area, with the area to the west becoming a boulevard (See \"Redevelopment\" below).\nIn 1970, a series of criminal prosecutions against various members of the Black Panther Party took place in New Haven, inciting mass protests on the New Haven Green involving twelve thousand demonstrators and many well-known New Left political activists. (See \"Political Culture\" below for more information). From the 1960s through the early 1990s, some areas of New Haven continued to decline both economically and in terms of population despite attempts to resurrect certain neighborhoods through renewal projects. In conjunction with its declining population, New Haven experienced a steep rise in its crime rate.\nSince approximately 2000, many parts of downtown New Haven have been revitalized with new restaurants, nightlife, and small retail stores. In particular, the area surrounding the New Haven Green has experienced an influx of apartments and condominiums. In addition, two new supermarkets opened to serve downtown's growing residential population: a Stop & Shop opened just west of downtown, while Elm City Market, located one block from the Green, opened in 2011. The recent turnaround of downtown New Haven has received positive press from various periodicals.\nMajor projects include the current construction of a new campus for Gateway Community College downtown, and also a 32-story, 500-unit apartment/retail building called 360 State Street. The 360 State Street project is now occupied and is the largest residential building in Connecticut. A new boathouse and dock is planned for New Haven Harbor, and the linear park Farmington Canal Trail is set to extend into downtown New Haven within the coming year. Additionally, foundation and ramp work to widen I-95 to create a new harbor crossing for New Haven, with an extradosed bridge to replace the 1950s-era Q Bridge, has begun. The city still hopes to redevelop the site of the New Haven Coliseum, which was demolished in 2007.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 18 white firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no black firefighters scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. In the subsequent \"Ricci v. DeStefano\" decision the court found 5\u20134 that New Haven's decision to ignore the test results violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a result, a district court subsequently ordered the city to promote 14 of the white firefighters.\nIn 2010 and 2011, state and federal funds were awarded to Connecticut (and Massachusetts) to construct the Hartford Line, with a southern terminus at New Haven's Union Station and a northern terminus at Springfield's Union Station. According to the White House, \"This corridor [currently] has one train per day connecting communities in Connecticut and Massachusetts to the Northeast Corridor and Vermont. The vision for this corridor is to restore the alignment to its original route via the Knowledge Corridor in western Massachusetts, improving trip time and increasing the population base that can be served.\" Set for construction in 2013, the \"Knowledge Corridor high speed intercity passenger rail\" project will cost approximately $1\u00a0billion, and the ultimate northern terminus for the project is reported to be Montreal in Canada. Train speeds between will reportedly exceed and increase both cities' rail traffic exponentially.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 6.67%, is water.\nNew Haven's best-known geographic features are its large, shallow harbor, and two reddish basalt trap rock ridges which rise to the northeast and northwest of the city core. These trap rocks are known respectively as East Rock and West Rock, and both serve as extensive parks. West Rock has been tunneled through to make way for the east\u2013west passage of the Wilbur Cross Parkway (the only highway tunnel through a natural obstacle in Connecticut), and once served as the hideout of the \"Regicides\" (see: Regicides Trail). Most New Haveners refer to these men as \"The Three Judges\". East Rock features the prominent Soldiers and Sailors war monument on its peak as well as the \"Great/Giant Steps\" which run up the rock's cliffside.\nThe city is drained by three rivers; the West, Mill, and Quinnipiac, named in order from west to east. The West River discharges into West Haven Harbor, while the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers discharge into New Haven Harbor. Both harbors are embayments of Long Island Sound. In addition, several smaller streams flow through the city's neighborhoods, including Wintergreen Brook, the Beaver Ponds Outlet, Wilmot Brook, Belden Brook, and Prospect Creek. Not all of these small streams have continuous flow year-round.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen classification, New Haven experiences a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\"), bordering a hot-summer humid continental climate (\"Dfa\"). The city has hot, humid summers and cool to cold winters. From May to late September, the weather is typically hot and humid, with average temperatures exceeding on 70 days per year. In summer, the Bermuda High creates as southern flow of warm and humid air, with frequent (but brief) thundershowers. October to early December is normally mild to cool late in the season, while early spring (April) can be cool to warm. Winters are more variable, with cool to cold temperatures, mixed with warmer spells, with both rain and snow fall.\nWhile the weather patterns that affect New Haven result from a primarily offshore direction, thus reducing the marine influence of Long Island Sound, the location on Long Island Sound often influences the weather along the coastline compared to inland. During summer heat waves, temperatures may reach or higher on occasion with heat-index values of over . Tropical cyclones have struck New Haven in the past, including 1938 Hurricane (Long Island Express), Hurricane Carol in 1954, Hurricane Gloria in 1985. The hardiness zone is 7a.\nStreetscape.\nNew Haven has a long tradition of urban planning and a purposeful design for the city's layout. The city could be argued to have some of the first preconceived layouts in the country. Upon founding, New Haven was laid out in a grid plan of nine square blocks; the central square was left open, in the tradition of many New England towns, as the city green (a commons area). The city also instituted the first public tree planting program in America. As in other cities, many of the elms that gave New Haven the nickname \"Elm City\" perished in the mid-20th century due to Dutch elm disease, although many have since been replanted. The New Haven Green is currently home to three separate historic churches which speak to the original theocratic nature of the city. The Green remains the social center of the city today. It was named a National Historic Landmark in 1970.\nDowntown New Haven, occupied by nearly 7,000 residents, has a more residential character than most downtowns. The downtown area provides about half of the city's jobs and half of its tax base and in recent years has become filled with dozens of new upscale restaurants, in addition to shops and thousands of apartments and condominium units which subsequently help overall growth of the city.\nNeighborhoods.\nThe city has many distinct neighborhoods. In addition to Downtown, centered on the central business district and the Green, are the following neighborhoods: the west central neighborhoods of Dixwell and Dwight; the southern neighborhoods of The Hill, historic water-front City Point (or Oyster Point), and the harborside district of Long Wharf; the western neighborhoods of Beaver Hills, Edgewood, West River, Westville, Amity, and West Rock-Westhills; East Rock, Cedar Hill, Prospect Hill, and Newhallville in the northern side of town; the east central neighborhoods of Mill River and Wooster Square, an Italian-American neighborhood; Fair Haven, an immigrant community located between the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers; Quinnipiac Meadows and Fair Haven Heights across the Quinnipiac River; and facing the eastern side of the harbor, The Annex and East Shore (or Morris Cove).\nDemographics.\nCensus data.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nThe U.S. Census Bureau reports a 2010 population of 129,779, with 47,094 households and 25,854 families within the city of New Haven. The population density was . There were 52,941 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 42.6% White, 35.4% African American, 0.5% Native American, 4.6% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 12.9% from other races, and 3.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 27.4% of the population. Non-Hispanic Whites were 31.8% of the population in 2010, down from 69.6% in 1970. The city's Latino population is growing rapidly. Previous influxes among ethnic groups have been African-Americans in the postwar era, and Irish, Italian and (to a lesser degree) Slavic peoples in the prewar period.\nAs of the 2010 census, of the 47,094 households, 29.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 27.5% include married couples living together, 22.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 36.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.5% had someone living alone who was 65\u00a0years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40 and the average family size 3.19.\nThe ages of New Haven's residents were 25.4% under the age of 18, 16.4% from 18 to 24, 31.2% from 25 to 44, 16.7% from 45 to 64, and 10.2% who were 65\u00a0years of age or older. The median age was 29\u00a0years, which was significantly lower than the national average. There were 91.8 males per 100 females. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.6 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $29,604, and the median income for a family was $35,950. Median income for males was $33,605, compared with $28,424 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,393. About 20.5% of families and 24.4% of the population were living below the poverty line, including 32.2% of those under age 18 and 17.9% of those age 65 or over.\nOther data.\nIt is estimated that 14% of New Haven residents are pedestrian commuters, ranking it number four by highest percentage in the United States. This is primarily due to New Haven's small area and the presence of Yale University.\nNew Haven is noted for having the highest percentage of Italian American residents of any US city, and is noted for its local style of pizza.\nA study of the demographics of the New Haven metro area, based on age, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity, found that they were the closest of any American city to the national average.\nEconomy.\nNew Haven's economy originally was based in manufacturing, but the postwar period brought rapid industrial decline; the entire Northeast was affected, and medium-sized cities with large working-class populations, like New Haven, were hit particularly hard. Simultaneously, the growth and expansion of Yale University further affected the economic shift. Today, over half (56%) of the city's economy is now made up of services, in particular education and health care; Yale is the city's largest employer, followed by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital. Other large employers include Southern Connecticut State University, Assa Abloy lock manufacturing, the Knights of Columbus headquarters, Higher One, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Covidien and United Illuminating. Clothing stores Gant and Ann Taylor were founded in the city.\nIn 2017, New Haven was ranked by a Verizon study as one of the top 10 cities in America for launching tech startups, and top two in New England.\nIndustry sectors: Agriculture (.6%), Construction and Mining (4.9%), Manufacturing (2.9%), Transportation and Utilities (2.9%), Trade (21.7%), Finance and Real Estate (7.1%), Services (55.9%), Government (4.0%)\nHeadquarters.\nThe Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization and a Fortune 1000 company, is headquartered in New Haven. Amphenol, based in Greater New Haven (Wallingford), is a Fortune 100 company. Eight Courant 100 companies are based in Greater New Haven, with four headquartered in New Haven proper. New Haven-based companies traded on stock exchanges include NewAlliance Bank, the second largest bank in Connecticut and fourth-largest in New England (NYSE: NAL), Higher One Holdings (NYSE: ONE), a financial services firm, United Illuminating, the electricity distributor for southern Connecticut (NYSE: UIL), and Transpro Inc. (AMEX: TPR). The American division of Assa Abloy (one of the world's leading manufacturers of locks) is located in the city. The Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET) began operations in the city as the District Telephone Company of New Haven in 1878; the company remains headquartered in New Haven as a subsidiary of Frontier Communications and provides telephone service for all but two municipalities in Connecticut. SeeClickFix was founded and has been headquartered in the city since 2007. Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company (a candy-making division of the Hershey Company) was formerly located in the city. Achillion Pharmaceuticals and Alexion Pharmaceuticals were also formerly headquartered in New Haven.\nLaw and government.\nPolitical structure.\nNew Haven is governed via the mayor-council system. Connecticut municipalities (like those of neighboring states Massachusetts and Rhode Island) provide nearly all local services (such as fire and rescue, education, snow removal, etc.), as county government has been abolished since 1960.\nNew Haven County merely refers to a grouping of towns and a judicial district, not a governmental entity. New Haven is a member of the South Central Connecticut Regional Council of Governments (SCRCOG), a regional agency created to facilitate coordination between area municipal governments and state and federal agencies, in the absence of county government.\nJustin Elicker is the mayor of New Haven. He was sworn in as the 51st mayor of New Haven on January 1, 2020.\nThe city council, called the Board of Alders, consists of thirty members, each elected from single-member wards. Each of the 30 wards consists of slightly over 4,300 residents; redistricting takes place every ten years.\nThe city is overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2017, of the town's 83,694 voters, 66% were registered as Democrats (\u22124% since 2015), 4% were registered as Republicans (+1%), and 29% were unaffiliated (+3). The board of alders is dominated by Democrats; a Republican has not served as a New Haven alder since 2011.\nNew Haven is served by the New Haven Police Department, which had 443 sworn officers in 2011. The city is also served by the New Haven Fire Department.\nNew Haven lies within Connecticut's 3rd congressional district and has been represented by Rosa DeLauro since 1991. Martin Looney and Gary Holder-Winfield represent New Haven in the Connecticut State Senate, and the city lies within six districts (numbers 92 through 97) of the Connecticut House of Representatives.\nThe Greater New Haven area is served by the New Haven Judicial District Court and the New Haven Superior Court, both headquartered at the New Haven County Courthouse. The federal District Court for the District of Connecticut has a New Haven facility, the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse.\nPolitical history.\nNew Haven is the birthplace of former president George W. Bush, who was born when his father, former president George H. W. Bush, was living in New Haven while a student at Yale. In addition to being the site of the college educations of both Presidents Bush, as Yale students, New Haven was also the temporary home of former presidents William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, and Bill Clinton, as well as Secretary of State John Kerry. President Clinton met his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while the two were students at Yale Law School. Former vice presidents John C. Calhoun and Dick Cheney also studied in New Haven (although the latter did not graduate from Yale). Before the 2008 election, the last time there was not a person with ties to New Haven and Yale on either major party's ticket was 1968. James Hillhouse, a New Haven native, served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate in 1801.\nNew Haven voters overwhelmingly supported Al Gore in the 2000 election, Yale graduate John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. In the 2008 election, New Haven County was third among all Connecticut counties in campaign contributions, after Fairfield and Hartford counties. (Connecticut, in turn, was ranked 14th among all states in total campaign contributions.)\nNew Haven was the subject of \" Who Governs? Democracy and Power in An American City\", a very influential book in political science by preeminent Yale professor Robert A. Dahl, which includes an extensive history of the city and thorough description of its politics in the 1950s. New Haven's theocratic history is also mentioned several times by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic volume on 19th-century American political life, \"Democracy in America\". New Haven was the residence of conservative thinker William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1951, when he wrote his influential \"God and Man at Yale\". William Lee Miller's \"The Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society\" (1966) similarly explores the relationship between local politics in New Haven and national political movements, focusing on Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and urban renewal.\nGeorge Williamson Crawford, a Yale Law School graduate, served as the city's first black corporation counsel from 1954 to 1962, under Mayor Richard C. Lee.\nIn 1970, the New Haven Black Panther trials took place, the largest and longest trials in Connecticut history. Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale and ten other party members were tried for murdering an alleged informant. Beginning on May Day, the city became a center of protest for 12,000 Panther supporters, college students, and New Left activists (including Jean Genet, Benjamin Spock, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and John Froines), who amassed on the New Haven Green, across the street from where the trials were being held. Violent confrontations between the demonstrators and the New Haven Police occurred, and several bombs were set off in the area by radicals. The event became a rallying point for the New Left and critics of the Nixon Administration.\nDuring the summer of 2007, New Haven was the center of protests by anti-immigration groups who opposed the city's program of offering municipal ID cards, known as the Elm City Resident Card, to illegal immigrants. In 2008, the country of Ecuador opened a consulate in New Haven to serve the large Ecuadorean immigrant population in the area. It is the first foreign mission to open in New Haven since Italy opened a consulate (now closed) in the city in 1910.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 20 white and Hispanic firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no blacks scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. On June 29, 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the firefighters, agreeing that they were improperly denied promotion because of their race. The case, \"Ricci v. DeStefano\", became highly publicized and brought national attention to New Haven politics due to the involvement of then-Supreme Court nominee (and Yale Law School graduate) Sonia Sotomayor in a lower court decision.\nGarry Trudeau, creator of the political \"Doonesbury\" comic strip, attended Yale University. There he met fellow student and later Green Party candidate for Congress Charles Pillsbury, a long-time New Haven resident for whom Trudeau's comic strip is named. During his college years, Pillsbury was known by the nickname \"The Doones\". A theory of international law, which argues for a sociological normative approach in regards to jurisprudence, is named the New Haven Approach, after the city. Connecticut US senator Richard Blumenthal is a Yale graduate, as is former Connecticut US Senator Joe Lieberman who also was a New Haven resident for many years, before moving back to his hometown of Stamford.\nCrime.\nCrime increased in the 1990s, with New Haven having one of the ten highest violent crime rates per capita in the United States. In the late 1990s New Haven's crime began to stabilize. The city, adopting a policy of community policing, saw crime rates drop during the 2000s.\nViolent crime levels vary dramatically among New Haven's neighborhoods, with some areas having crime rates in line with the state of Connecticut average, and others having extremely high rates of crime. A 2011 New Haven Health Department report identifies these issues in greater detail.\nIn 2010, New Haven ranked as the 18th most dangerous city in the United States (albeit below the safety benchmark of 200.00 for the second consecutive year). However, according to a completely different analysis conducted by the \"24/7 Wall Street Blog\", in 2011 New Haven had risen to become the fourth most dangerous city in the United States, and was widely cited in the press as such.\nHowever, an analysis by the Regional Data Cooperative for Greater New Haven, Inc., has shown that due to issues of comparative denominators and other factors, such municipality-based rankings can be considered inaccurate. For example, two cities of identical population can cover widely differing land areas, making such analyses irrelevant. The research organization called for comparisons based on neighborhoods, blocks, or standard methodologies (similar to those used by Brookings, DiversityData, and other established institutions), not based on municipalities.\nEducation.\nColleges and universities.\nNew Haven is a notable center for higher education. Yale University, at the heart of downtown, is one of the city's best known features and its largest employer. New Haven is also home to Southern Connecticut State University, part of the Connecticut State University System, and Albertus Magnus College, a private institution. Gateway Community College has a campus in downtown New Haven, formerly located in the Long Wharf district; Gateway consolidated into one campus downtown into a new state-of-the-art campus (on the site of the old Macy's building) and was open for the Fall 2012 semester.\nThere are several institutions immediately outside of New Haven, as well. Quinnipiac University and the Paier College of Art are located just to the north, in the town of Hamden. The University of New Haven is located not in New Haven but in neighboring West Haven.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nNew Haven Public Schools is the school district serving the city. Wilbur Cross High School and Hillhouse High School are New Haven's two largest public secondary schools.\nHopkins School, a private school, was founded in 1660 and is the fifth-oldest educational institution in the United States. New Haven is home to a number of other private schools as well as public magnet schools, including Metropolitan Business Academy, High School in the Community, Hill Regional Career High School, Co-op High School, New Haven Academy, Edgewood Magnet School, ACES Educational Center for the Arts, the Foote School and the Sound School, all of which draw students from New Haven and suburban towns. New Haven is also home to two Achievement First charter schools, Amistad Academy and Elm City College Prep, and to Common Ground, an environmental charter school.\nThe city is renowned for its progressive school lunch programs, and participation in statewide bussing efforts toward increased diversity in schools.\nCulture.\nCuisine.\nLivability.com named New Haven as the Best Foodie City in the country in 2014. There are dozens of Zagat-rated restaurants in New Haven, the most in Connecticut and the third most in New England (after Boston and Cambridge). More than 120 restaurants are located within two blocks of the New Haven Green. The city is home to an eclectic mix of ethnic restaurants and small markets specializing in various foreign foods. Represented cuisines include Malaysian, Ethiopian, Spanish, Belgian, French, Greek, Latin American, Mexican, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Cuban, Peruvian, Syrian/Lebanese, and Turkish.\nNew Haven's greatest culinary claim to fame may be its pizza, which has been claimed to be among the best in the country, or even in the world. New Haven-style pizza, called \"apizza\", made its debut at the iconic Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana (known as Pepe's) in 1925. Apizza is baked in coal- or wood-fired brick ovens, and is notable for its thin crust. Apizza may be red (with a tomato-based sauce) or white (with a sauce of garlic and olive oil), and pies ordered \"plain\" are made without the otherwise customary mozzarella (originally smoked mozzarella, known as \"scamorza\" in Italian). A white clam pie is a well-known specialty of the restaurants on Wooster Street in the Little Italy section of New Haven, including Pepe's and Sally's Apizza (which opened in 1938). Modern Apizza on State Street, which opened in 1934, is also well-known.\nA second New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Louis' Lunch, which is located in a small brick building on Crown Street and has been serving fast food since 1895. Though fiercely debated, the restaurant's founder Louis Lassen is credited by the Library of Congress with inventing the hamburger and steak sandwich. Louis' Lunch broils hamburgers, steak sandwiches and hot dogs vertically in original antique 1898 cast iron stoves using gridirons, patented by local resident Luigi Pieragostini in 1939, that hold the meat in place while it cooks.\nA third New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Miya's, the first sustainable sushi restaurant in the world. Miya's, founded by Chef Yoshiko Lai in 1982, featured the first sustainable seafood-based sushi menu, the first plant-based sushi menu, and the first invasive species menu in the world. Second generation Miya's chef, Bun Lai, is the 2016 White House Champions of Change for Sustainable Seafood and a James Beard Foundation Award nominee. Chef Bun Lai is credited as the first chef in the world for implementing a sustainability paradigm to the cuisine of sushi.\nDuring weekday lunchtime, over 150 lunch carts and food trucks cater to diners around the city. The carts and food trucks cluster at four main points: on Long Wharf Drive, along the city's shoreline with quick access off Interstate 95, by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital in the center of the Hospital Green (Cedar and York streets), by Yale's Trumbull College (Elm and York streets), and on the intersection of Prospect and Sachem streets by the Yale School of Management.\nPopular farmers' markets, managed by the local non-profit CitySeed, set up shop weekly in several neighborhoods, including Westville/Edgewood Park, Fair Haven, Upper State Street, Wooster Square, and Downtown/New Haven Green.\nA large grocery store, the Elm City Market, opened on 360 State Street in New Haven in early fall 2011 and served local produce and groceries to the community. Originally, the market was a member-owned co-op, but debt defaults in August 2014 forced a sale of the business. It is now an employee-owned business; the co-op's previous owners received no equity in the new business.\nIn the past several years, two separate Downtown food tour companies have started offering popular restaurant tours on weekends.\nTaste of New Haven Tours offers several different weekly restaurant/bar tours and a popular pizza, bike, and pints tour. Culinary Walking Tours offers monthly restaurant tours and sponsors an annual Elm City Iron Chef competition.\nTheatre and film.\nThe city hosts numerous theatres and production houses, including the Yale Repertory Theatre, the Long Wharf Theatre, and the Shubert Theatre. There is also theatre activity from the Yale School of Drama, which works through the Yale University Theatre and the student-run Yale Cabaret. Southern Connecticut State University hosts the Lyman Center for the Performing Arts. The shuttered Palace Theatre (opposite the Shubert Theatre) was renovated and reopened as the College Street Music Hall in May 2015. Smaller theatres include the Little Theater on Lincoln Street. Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School also has a theatre on College Street. The theatre is used for student productions, and is the home to weekly services to a local non-denominational church, the City Church New Haven.\nThe Shubert Theatre once premiered many major theatrical productions before their Broadway debuts. Productions that premiered at the Shubert include \"Oklahoma!\" (which was also written in New Haven), \"Carousel\", \"South Pacific\", \"My Fair Lady\", \"The King and I\", and \"The Sound of Music\", and the Tennessee Williams play \"A Streetcar Named Desire\".\nBow Tie Cinemas owns and operates the Criterion Cinemas, the first new movie theater to open in New Haven in over 30 years and the first luxury movie complex in the city's history. The Criterion has seven screens and opened in November 2004, showing a mix of upscale first run commercial and independent film.\nMuseums.\nNew Haven has a variety of museums, many of them associated with Yale. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library features an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible. There is also the Connecticut Children's Museum; the Knights of Columbus museum near that organization's world headquarters; the Peabody Museum of Natural History; the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments; the Eli Whitney Museum (across the town line in Hamden, Connecticut, on Whitney Avenue); the Yale Center for British Art, which houses the largest collection of British art outside the U.K., and the Yale University Art Gallery, the western hemisphere's oldest college art museum. New Haven is also home to the New Haven Museum and Historical Society on Whitney Avenue, which has a library of many primary source treasures dating from Colonial times to the present.\nArtspace on Orange Street is one of several contemporary art galleries around the city, showcasing the work of local, national, and international artists. Others include City Gallery and A. Leaf Gallery in the downtown area. Westville galleries include Kehler Liddell, Jennifer Jane Gallery, and The Hungry Eye. The Erector Square complex in the Fair Haven neighborhood houses, the Parachute Factory gallery along with numerous artist studios, and the complex serves as an active destination during City-Wide Open Studios held yearly in October.\nNew Haven is the home port of a life-size replica of the historical \"Freedom Schooner Amistad\", which is open for tours at Long Wharf pier at certain times during the summer. Also at Long Wharf pier is the \"Quinnipiack\" schooner, offering sailing cruises of the harbor area throughout the summer. The \"Quinnipiack\" also functions as a floating classroom for hundreds of local students.\nMusic.\nThe New Haven Green is the site of many free music concerts, especially during the summer months. These have included the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the July Free Concerts on the Green, and the New Haven Jazz Festival in August. The Jazz Festival, which began in 1982, is one of the longest-running free outdoor festivals in the U.S., until it was canceled for 2007. Headliners such as Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles and Celia Cruz have historically drawn 30,000 to 50,000 fans, filling up the New Haven Green to capacity. The New Haven Jazz Festival was revived in 2008 and has been sponsored since by Jazz Haven.\nNew Haven is home to the concert venue Toad's Place, and a new venue, College Street Music Hall. The city has retained an alternative art and music underground that has helped to influence post-punk era music movements such as indie, college rock and underground hip-hop.\nThe Yale School of Music contributes to the city's music scene by offering hundreds of free concerts throughout the year at venues in and around the Yale campus. Large performances are held in the 2,700-seat Woolsey Hall auditorium, which contains the world's largest symphonic organs, while chamber music and recitals are performed in Sprague Hall.\nHardcore band Hatebreed are from Wallingford, but got their start in New Haven under the name Jasta 14. The band Miracle Legion formed in New Haven in 1983. Folk musicians from New Haven include Loren Mazzacane Connors and Kath Bloom.\nThe Hillhouse Opera Company is a U.S. non-profit opera company based in New Haven that performs in the New Haven area. Founded in 2008 by Victoria Leigh Gardner, Nicole Rodriguez and Jim Coatsworth Hillhouse Opera Company has performed operas as well as opera scenes programs, master classes and concert series. In 2011, the Company professionally staged the works created through the Riverview Opera Project. The Riverview Opera Project created workshops for children and adolescents at Riverview Hospital, Connecticut's only state-funded psychiatric hospital for youth, and helped them to successfully create, produce, and perform four original operas.\nFestivals.\nIn addition to the Jazz Festival (described above), New Haven serves as the home city of the annual International Festival of Arts and Ideas. New Haven's Saint Patrick's Day parade, which began in 1842, is New England's oldest and draws the largest crowds of any one-day spectator event in Connecticut. The St. Andrew the Apostle Italian Festival has taken place in the historic Wooster Square neighborhood every year since 1900. Other parishes in the city celebrate the Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua and a carnival in honor of St. Bernadette Soubirous. New Haven celebrates Powder House Day every April on the New Haven Green to commemorate the city's entrance into the Revolutionary War. The annual Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival commemorates the 1973 planting of 72 Yoshino Japanese cherry blossom trees by the New Haven Historic Commission in collaboration with the New Haven Parks Department and residents of the neighborhood. The Festival now draws well over 5,000 visitors. The Film Fest New Haven has been held annually since 1995.\nNightlife.\nIn the past decade downtown has seen an influx of new restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Large crowds are drawn to the Crown Street area downtown on weekends where many of the restaurants and bars are located. Crown Street between State and High Streets has dozens of establishments, as do nearby Temple and College Streets. Away from downtown, Upper State Street has a number of restaurants and bars popular with local residents and weekend visitors.\nNewspapers and media.\nNew Haven is served by the daily \"New Haven Register\", the weekly \"alternative\" \"New Haven Advocate\" (which is run by Tribune, the corporation owning the \"Hartford Courant\"), the online daily \"New Haven Independent\", and the monthly \"Grand News Community Newspaper.\" Downtown New Haven is covered by an in-depth civic news forum, Design New Haven. The \"Register\" also backs \"PLAY\" magazine, a weekly entertainment publication. The city is also served by several student-run papers, including the \"Yale Daily News\", the weekly \"Yale Herald\" and a humor tabloid, \"Rumpus Magazine\".\nWTNH Channel 8, the ABC affiliate for Connecticut, WCTX Channel 59, the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the state, Connecticut Public Television station WEDY channel 65, a PBS affiliate, and WTXX Channel 34, the IntrigueTV affiliate, broadcast from New Haven. All New York City news and sports team stations broadcast to New Haven County.\nSports and athletics.\nNew Haven has a history of professional sports franchises dating back to the 19th century and has been the home to professional baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer teams\u2014including the New York Giants of the National Football League from 1973 to 1974, who played at the Yale Bowl. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, New Haven consistently had minor league hockey and baseball teams, which played at the New Haven Arena (built in 1926, demolished in 1972), New Haven Coliseum (1972\u20132002), and Yale Field (1928\u2013present).\nWhen John DeStefano, Jr., became mayor of New Haven in 1995, he outlined a plan to transform the city into a major cultural and arts center in the Northeast, which involved investments in programs and projects other than sports franchises. As nearby Bridgeport built new sports facilities, the brutalist New Haven Coliseum rapidly deteriorated. Believing the upkeep on the venue to be a drain of tax dollars, the DeStefano administration closed the Coliseum in 2002; it was demolished in 2007. New Haven's last professional sports team, the New Haven County Cutters, left in 2009. The DeStefano administration did, however, see the construction of the New Haven Athletic Center in 1998, a indoor athletic facility with a seating capacity of over 3,000. The NHAC, built adjacent to Hillhouse High School, is used for New Haven public schools athletics, as well as large-scale area and state sporting events; it is the largest high school indoor sports complex in the state.\nNew Haven was the host of the 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games; then-President Bill Clinton spoke at the opening ceremonies. The city is home to the Pilot Pen International tennis event, which takes place every August at the Connecticut Tennis Center, one of the largest tennis venues in the world. New Haven biannually hosts \"The Game\" between Yale and Harvard, the country's second-oldest college football rivalry. Numerous road races take place in New Haven, including the USATF 20K Championship during the New Haven Road Race.\nGreater New Haven is home to a number of college sports teams. The Yale Bulldogs play Division I college sports, as do the Quinnipiac Bobcats in neighboring Hamden. Division II athletics are played by Southern Connecticut State University and the University of New Haven (actually located in neighboring West Haven), while Albertus Magnus College athletes perform at the Division III level.\nNew Haven is home to many New York Yankees, New York Mets, & Boston Red Sox fans due to the proximity of New York City & Boston.\nWalter Camp, deemed the \"father of American football\", was a New Havener.\nThe New Haven Warriors rugby league team play in the AMNRL. They have a large number of Pacific Islanders playing for them. Their field is located at the West Haven High School's Ken Strong Stadium. They won the 2008 AMNRL Grand Final.\nStructures.\nArchitecture.\nNew Haven has many architectural landmarks dating from every important time period and architectural style in American history. The city has been home to a number of architects and architectural firms that have left their mark on the city including Ithiel Town and Henry Austin in the 19th century and Cesar Pelli, Warren Platner, Kevin Roche, Herbert Newman and Barry Svigals in the 20th. The Yale School of Architecture has fostered this important component of the city's economy. Cass Gilbert, of the Beaux-Arts school, designed New Haven's Union Station and the New Haven Free Public Library and was also commissioned for a City Beautiful plan in 1919. Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, Alexander Jackson Davis, Philip C. Johnson, Gordon Bunshaft, Louis Kahn, James Gamble Rogers, Frank Gehry, Charles Willard Moore, Stefan Behnisch, James Polshek, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen and Robert Venturi all have designed buildings in New Haven. Yale's 1950s-era Ingalls Rink, designed by Eero Saarinen, was included on the \"America's Favorite Architecture\" list created in 2007.\nSeveral residential homes in New Haven were designed by Alice Washburn, a noted female architect whose Colonial Revival style set a standard for homes in the region.\nMany of the city's neighborhoods are well-preserved as walkable \"museums\" of 19th- and 20th-century American architecture, particularly by the New Haven Green, Hillhouse Avenue and other residential sections close to Downtown New Haven. Overall, a large proportion of the city's land area is National (NRHP) historic districts. One of the best sources on local architecture is \"New Haven: Architecture and Urban Design\", by Elizabeth Mills Brown.\nThe five tallest buildings in New Haven are:\nHistoric points of interest.\nMany historical sites exist throughout the city, including 59 properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Of these, nine are among the 60 U.S. National Historic Landmarks in Connecticut. The New Haven Green, one of the National Historic Landmarks, was formed in 1638, and is home to three 19th-century churches. Below the First Church of Christ in New Haven (referred to as the Center Church on the Green) lies a 17th-century crypt, which is open to visitors. Some of the more famous burials include the first wife of Benedict Arnold and the aunt and grandmother of President Rutherford B. Hayes; Hayes visited the crypt while President in 1880. The Old Campus of Yale University is located next to the Green, and includes Connecticut Hall, Yale's oldest building and a National Historic Landmark. The Hillhouse Avenue area, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a part of Yale's campus, has been called a walkable museum, due to its 19th-century mansions and street scape; Charles Dickens is said to have called Hillhouse Avenue \"the most beautiful street in America\" when visiting the city in 1868.\nIn 1660, Edward Whalley (a cousin and friend of Oliver Cromwell) and William Goffe, two English Civil War generals who signed the death warrant of King Charles I, hid in a rock formation in New Haven after having fled England upon the restoration of Charles II to the English throne. They were later joined by a third regicide, John Dixwell. The rock formation, which is now a part of West Rock Park, is known as Judges' Cave, and the path leading to the cave is called the Regicides Trail.\nAfter the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, the Connecticut colonial government ordered the construction of Black Rock Fort (to be built on top of an older 17th-century fort) to protect the port of New Haven. In 1779, during the Battle of New Haven, British soldiers captured Black Rock Fort and burned the barracks to the ground. The fort was reconstructed in 1807 by the federal government (on orders from the Thomas Jefferson administration), and rechristened Fort Nathan Hale, after the Revolutionary War hero who had lived in New Haven. The cannons of Fort Nathan Hale were successful in defying British war ships during the War of 1812. In 1863, during the Civil War, a second Fort Hale was built next to the original, complete with bomb-resistant bunkers and a moat, to defend the city should a Southern raid against New Haven be launched. The United States Congress deeded the site to the state in 1921, and all three versions of the fort have been restored. The site is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and receives thousands of visitors each year.\nGrove Street Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark which lies adjacent to Yale's campus, contains the graves of Roger Sherman, Eli Whitney, Noah Webster, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Charles Goodyear and Walter Camp, among other notable burials. The cemetery is noted for its Egyptian Revival gateway, and is the oldest planned burial ground in the United States. The Union League Club of New Haven building, located on Chapel Street, is notable for not only being a historic Beaux-Arts building, but also is built on the site where Roger Sherman's home once stood; George Washington is known to have stayed at the Sherman residence while President in 1789 (one of three times Washington visited New Haven throughout his lifetime).\nTwo sites pay homage to the time President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft lived in the city, as both a student and later Professor at Yale: a plaque on Prospect Street marks the site where Taft's home formerly stood, and downtown's Taft Apartment Building (formerly the Taft Hotel) bears the name of the former president who resided in the building for eight years before becoming Chief Justice of the United States.\nLighthouse Point Park, a public beach run by the city, was a popular tourist destination during the Roaring Twenties, attracting luminaries of the period such as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. The park remains popular among New Haveners, and is home to the Five Mile Point Lighthouse, constructed in 1847, and the Lighthouse Point Carousel, constructed in 1916. Five Mile Point Light was decommissioned in 1877 following the construction of Southwest Ledge Light at the entrance of the harbor, which remains in service to this day. Both of the lighthouses and the carousel are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nOther historic sites in the city include the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, which stands at the summit of East Rock, the Marsh Botanical Garden, Wooster Square, Dwight Street, Louis' Lunch, and the Farmington Canal, all of which date back to the 19th century. Other historic parks besides the Green include Edgerton Park, Edgewood Park, and East Rock Park, each of which is included on the National Register of Historic Places.\nTransportation.\nRail.\nNew Haven has two railroad stations, connected to New York City and points along the Northeast Corridor by commuter rail, regional rail and inter-city rail. Service is provided by:\nThe city's main railroad station is the historic Beaux-Arts Union Station, which serves Metro-North, Hartford Line, and Shore Line East commuter trains. Approximately 175 trains serve Union Station on weekdays. Union Station is also served by four Amtrak lines: the \"Northeast Regional\" and the high-speed \"Acela Express\" provide service to New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston, and rank as the first and second busiest routes in the country; the New Haven\u2013Springfield Line provides service to Hartford and Springfield, Massachusetts; and the \"Vermonter\" provides service to both Washington, D.C., and Vermont, from the Canada\u2013US border.\nAn additional station, State Street Station, was opened in 2002, providing passengers easier access to downtown New Haven. State Street Station is currently serviced by Shore Line East and Hartford Line trains, plus some peak-hour Metro-North trips.\nBus.\nThe New Haven Division of Connecticut Transit (CT Transit), the state's bus system, is the second largest division in the state with 24 routes. All routes originate from the New Haven Green, making it the central transfer hub of the city. Service is provided to 19 different municipalities throughout Greater New Haven. Bus routes were formerly identified by letters, but as of October 8, 2017, all service was renamed using 200-series numbers, in accordance with a renumbering of CTtransit's statewide services.\nCT Transit's Union Station Shuttle provides free service from Union Station to the New Haven Green and several New Haven parking garages. Peter Pan and Greyhound bus lines have scheduled stops at Union Station, and connections downtown can be made via the Union Station Shuttle. A private company operates the New Haven/Hartford Express which provides commuter bus service to Hartford. The Yale University Shuttle provides free transportation around New Haven for Yale students, faculty, and staff.\nThe New Haven Division buses follow routes that had originally been covered by trolley service. Horse-drawn streetcars began operating in New Haven in the 1860s, and by the mid-1890s all the lines had become electric. In the 1920s and 1930s, some of the trolley lines began to be replaced by bus lines, with the last trolley route converted to bus in 1948. The City of New Haven is in the very early stages of considering the restoration of streetcar (light-rail) service, which has been absent since the postwar period.\nBicycle.\nBikeshare.\nOn February 21, 2018, New Haven officially launched its Bike New Haven bikeshare program. based on dockless technology powered by Noa Technologies At time of launch, the program features 10 docking stations and 100 bikes, spread throughout the urban core; there are plans to reach 30 bike stations and 300 bikes by the end of April 2018. The launch of the New Haven bikeshare program coincided with the launch of Yale University's own bikeshare program, which uses the same technology powered by Noa.\nBike lanes.\nIn 2004, the first bike lane in the city was added to Orange Street, connecting East Rock Park and the East Rock neighborhood to downtown. Since then, bike lanes have also been added to sections of Howard Ave, Elm St, Dixwell Avenue, Water Street, Clinton Avenue and State Street. The city has created recommended bike routes for getting around New Haven, including use of the Canal Trail and the Orange Street lane. As of the end of 2012, bicycle lanes have also been added in both directions on Dixwell Avenue along most of the street from downtown to the Hamden town line, as well as along Howard Avenue from Yale New Haven Hospital to City Point.\nThe city has plans to create two additional bike lanes connecting Union Station with downtown, and the Westville neighborhood with downtown. The city has added dozens of covered bike parking spots at Union Station, in order to facilitate more bike commuting to the station.\nFarmington Canal Greenway.\nThe Farmington Canal Trail is a rail trail that will eventually run continuously from downtown New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts. The scenic trail follows the path of the historic New Haven and Northampton Company and the Farmington Canal. Currently, there is a continuous stretch of the trail from downtown, through Hamden and into Cheshire, making bicycle commuting between New Haven and those suburbs possible. The trail is part of the East Coast Greenway, a proposed bike path that would link every major city on the East Coast from Florida to Maine.\nRoads.\nNew Haven lies at the intersection of Interstate 95 on the coast\u2014which provides access southwards and/or westwards to the western coast of Connecticut and to New York City, and eastwards to the eastern Connecticut shoreline, Rhode Island, and eastern Massachusetts\u2014and Interstate 91, which leads northward to the interior of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont and the Canada\u2013US border. I-95 is notorious for traffic jams increasing with proximity to New York City; on the east side of New Haven it passes over the Quinnipiac River via the Pearl Harbor Memorial, or \"Q Bridge\", which often presents a major bottleneck to traffic. I-91, however, is relatively less congested, except at the intersection with I-95 during peak travel times.\nThe Oak Street Connector (Connecticut Route 34) intersects I-91 at exit 1, just south of the I-95/I-91 interchange, and runs northwest for a few blocks as an expressway spur into downtown before emptying onto surface roads. The Wilbur Cross Parkway (Connecticut Route 15) runs parallel to I-95 west of New Haven, turning northwards as it nears the city and then running northwards parallel to I-91 through the outer rim of New Haven and Hamden, offering an alternative to the I-95/I-91 journey (restricted to non-commercial vehicles). Route 15 in New Haven is the site of the only highway tunnel in the state (officially designated as Heroes Tunnel), running through West Rock, home to West Rock Park and the Three Judges Cave.\nThe city also has several major surface arteries. U.S. Route 1 (Columbus Avenue, Union Avenue, Water Street, Forbes Avenue) runs in an east\u2013west direction south of downtown serving Union Station and leading out of the city to Milford, West Haven, East Haven and Branford. The main road from downtown heading northwest is Whalley Avenue (partly signed as Route 10 and Route 63) leading to Westville and Woodbridge. Heading north towards Hamden, there are two major thoroughfares, Dixwell Avenue and Whitney Avenue. To the northeast are Middletown Avenue (Route 17), which leads to the Montowese section of North Haven, and Foxon Boulevard (Route 80), which leads to the Foxon section of East Haven and to the town of North Branford. To the west is Route 34, which leads to the city of Derby. Other major intracity arteries are Ella Grasso Boulevard (Route 10) west of downtown, and College Street, Temple Street, Church Street, Elm Street, and Grove Street in the downtown area.\nTraffic safety is a major concern for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists in New Haven. In addition to many traffic-related fatalities in the city each year, since 2005, over a dozen Yale students, staff and faculty have been killed or injured in traffic collisions on or near the campus.\nAirport.\nTweed New Haven Airport is located within the city limits east of the business district, straddling the border with neighboring East Haven. Service to approximately 25 cities is provided by Avelo Airlines, which established its first East Coast base at the airport in 2021. Breeze Airways plans to begin operations at Tweed in December 2024, and will provide service to 10 destinations. The airport is currently planning a runway lengthening and new terminal on the East Haven side of the airport.\nBus service between Downtown New Haven and Tweed is available via the CT Transit New Haven Division.\nSeaport.\nNew Haven Harbor is home to the Port of New Haven, a deep-water seaport with three berths capable of hosting vessels and barges as well as the facilities required to handle break bulk cargo. The port has the capacity to load 200 trucks a day from the ground or via loading docks. Providence and Worcester Railroad provides freight rail transportation to the port, with the railroad operating a switch engine for yard movements, a private siding for loading and unloading, and trackage over the Tomlinson Lift Bridge toward the Northeast Corridor. Approximately of inside storage and of outside storage are available at the site. Five shore cranes with a 250-ton capacity and 26 forklifts, each with a 26-ton capacity, are also available.\nOn June 17, 2013, the city commissioned the \"Nathan Hale\", a port security vessel capable of serving search and rescue, firefighting, and constabulary roles.\nInfrastructure.\nHospitals and medicine.\nThe New Haven area supports several medical facilities that are considered some of the best hospitals in the country. There are two major medical centers downtown: Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital has four pavilions, including the Yale \u2013 New Haven Children's Hospital and the Smilow Cancer Hospital; the Hospital of Saint Raphael is several blocks north, and touts its excellent cardiac emergency care program. Smaller downtown health facilities are the Temple Medical Center located downtown on Temple Street, Connecticut Mental Health Center/ across Park Street from Y-NHH, and the Hill Health Center, which serves the working-class Hill neighborhood. A large Veterans Affairs hospital is located in neighboring West Haven. To the west in Milford is Milford Hospital, and to the north in Meriden is the MidState Medical Center.\nIn recent years, Yale and the City of New Haven have been working to build a medical and biotechnology research hub in the city and Greater New Haven region. The city, state and Yale together run Science Park, a large site three blocks northwest of Yale's Science Hill campus. This multi-block site, approximately bordered by Mansfield Street, Division Street, and Shelton Avenue, is the former home of Winchester's and Olin Corporation's 45 large-scale factory buildings. Currently, sections of the site are large-scale parking lots or abandoned structures, but there is also a large remodeled and functioning area of buildings (leased primarily by a private developer) with numerous Yale employees, financial service and biotech companies.\nA second biotechnology district is being planned for the median strip on Frontage Road, on land cleared for the never-built Route 34 extension. As of late 2009, a Pfizer drug-testing clinic, a medical laboratory building serving Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital, and a mixed-use structure containing parking, housing and office space, have been constructed on this corridor. A former SNET telephone building at 300 George Street is being converted into lab space, and has been quite successful so far in attracting biotechnology and medical firms.\nPower supply facilities.\nElectricity for New Haven is generated by a 448\u00a0MW oil and gas-fired generating station located on the shore at New Haven Harbor. PPL Corporation operates a 220\u00a0MW peaking natural gas turbine plant in nearby Wallingford.\nNear New Haven there is the static inverter plant of the HVDC Cross Sound Cable.\nThere are three PureCell Model 400 fuel cells placed in the city of New Haven\u2014one at the New Haven Public Schools and newly constructed Roberto Clemente School, one at the mixed-use 360 State Street building, and one at City Hall. According to Giovanni Zinn of the city's Office of Sustainability, each fuel cell may save the city up to $1 million in energy costs over a decade. The fuel cells were provided by ClearEdge Power, formerly UTC Power. Additional fuel cells are located at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and at the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority (GNHWPCA). Ikea's New Haven facility also utilizes a 250\u00a0kW fuel cell and 940.8\u00a0kW solar array.\nNew Haven recently installed solar panels at 11 city schools with a combined power generation capacity of 1.8 MW. Owned and maintained by Greenskies, the panels allow New Haven to purchase electricity at a discounted rate through a power-purchasing agreement. The panels bring New Haven's solar capacity to 2.8 MW and will help New Haven meet its commitment to powering 100% of its municipal operations through clean energy, which it made in Summer 2017 and reaffirmed in the 2018 New Haven Climate and Sustainability Framework.\nIn popular culture.\nSeveral movies have been filmed in New Haven since 2000, including \"Mona Lisa Smile\" (2003), with Julia Roberts, \"The Life Before Her Eyes\" (2007), with Uma Thurman, and \"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull\" (2008) directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett and Shia LaBeouf. The filming of \"Crystal Skull\" involved an extensive chase sequence through the streets of New Haven. Several downtown streets were closed to traffic and received a \"makeover\" to look like streets of 1957, when the film is set. 500 locals were cast as extras for the film. In \"Everybody's Fine\" (2009), Robert De Niro has a close encounter in what is supposed to be the Denver train station; the scene was filmed in New Haven's Union Station.\n New Haven is mentioned in the song Peace Frog by the Doors, referencing a 1967 incident where vocalist Jim Morrison was arrested for \"attempting to incite a riot\" in the middle of a concert at the New Haven Arena.\nSister cities.\nNew Haven's sister cities are:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSome of these were selected because of historical connection\u2014Freetown because of the \"Amistad\" trial. Others, such as Amalfi and Afula, reflect ethnic groups in New Haven.\nIn 1990, the United Nations named New Haven a \"Peace Messenger City\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "26396798": "Thomas Rutherford Bacon\nThomas Rutherford Bacon (June 26, 1850 in New Haven, Connecticut \u2013 March 26, 1913 in Berkeley, California) was an American Congregational clergyman and leading Mugwump. In the wake of the presidential election of 1884, he relocated to the West Coast, where he became a professor of history at the University of California.\nBiography.\nEarly Background.\nThomas Rutherford Bacon came from a family of preachers: he was the son of Leonard Bacon and the brother of Leonard Woolsey Bacon, Edward Woolsey Bacon (of New London, Connecticut), and George B. Bacon, all Congregational preachers.\nBacon graduated from Yale Divinity School in 1877. At Yale, he was the editor of the \"Yale Banner\" and contributed to \"The Yale Record\". At the time, \"The Yale Record\" was edited by Walker Blaine, son of Republican James G. Blaine.\n\"Original Mugwump\" and the Election of 1884.\nHe was a minister for three years at the Dwight Place Church in New Haven, Connecticut. On July 4, 1884, he delivered an oration on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the town.\n\"The New York Times\" praised Bacon for his integrity and \"manliness,\" and called him \"the original mugwump of Connecticut.\" The \"Mugwumps\" were Republican political activists who left the United States Republican Party to support Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland in the United States presidential election of 1884. During the Third Party System, party loyalty was held in high regard and independents were rare.\nIn 1884, he resigned unexpectedly, after some gossiping members of his congregations (\"without standing or influence\") had apparently complained about him. \"The New York Times\" later reported that Blaine's campaign was behind the gossip. The congregation was, according to the papers, moved to tears when Bacon, who was described as \"young, talented, eloquent, and popular,\" read his resignation letter. There were hints of an investigation, and the possible \"disciplining [of] certain folks whose too freely wagging tongues have brought about the trouble.\"\nAfter Blaine's Defeat.\nAfter his church career in New Haven was ended, he devoted himself to literary pursuits, publishing in the \"New Englander\" and serving as that magazine's associate editor from 1886 to 1887; he also edited the \"New Haven Morning News\", from 1884 to 1887.\nIn June 1887, his brother Edward died in Santa Clara County, California, and in that same year (until 1890) Thomas took up the ministry of the First Congregational Church in Berkeley, where Edward had also, briefly, been a minister. In 1888, he became an instructor in the history department at the University of California, and from 1890 to 1895 was a professor in European history. In 1895, he was promoted to full professor in Modern European History, a position he held\u2014in worsening health\u2014until his death in 1913.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["26396798", "5122699", "53825"], "permutation_1": ["26396798", "53825", "5122699"], "permutation_2": ["5122699", "53825", "26396798"], "permutation_3": ["26396798", "5122699", "53825"]}
{"id": "3hop1__5544_34179_23375", "docs_added": {"24795561": "Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic\nSoviet republic from 1917 to 1991\nThe Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR or RSFSR), previously known as the Russian Soviet Republic and the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, and unofficially as Soviet Russia, was a socialist state from 1917 to 1922, and afterwards the largest and most populous constituent republic of the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1922 to 1991, until becoming a sovereign part of the Soviet Union with priority of Russian laws over Union-level legislation in 1990 and 1991, the last two years of the existence of the USSR. The Russian SFSR was composed of sixteen smaller constituent units of autonomous republics, five autonomous oblasts, ten autonomous okrugs, six krais and forty oblasts. Russians formed the largest ethnic group. The capital of the Russian SFSR and the USSR as a whole was Moscow and the other major urban centers included Leningrad (Petrograd until 1924), Stalingrad (Volgograd after 1961), Novosibirsk, Sverdlovsk, Gorky and Kuybyshev.\nOn 7 November 1917 (O.S. 25 October), as a result of the October Revolution, the Russian Soviet Republic was proclaimed as a sovereign state and the world's first constitutionally socialist state guided by communist ideology. The first constitution was adopted in 1918. In 1922, the Russian SFSR signed a treaty officially creating the USSR. On 12 June 1990, the Congress of People's Deputies adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty. On 12 June 1991, Boris Yeltsin, supported by the Democratic Russia pro-reform movement, was elected the first and only President of the RSFSR, a post that would later become the Presidency of the Russian Federation. The August 1991 Soviet coup d'\u00e9tat attempt in Moscow with the temporary brief internment of President Mikhail Gorbachev destabilised the Soviet Union. Following these events, Gorbachev lost all his remaining power, with Yeltsin superseding him as the pre-eminent figure in the country. On 8 December 1991, the heads of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed the Belovezha Accords declaring dissolution of the USSR and established the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as a loose replacement confederation. On 12 December, the agreement was ratified by the Supreme Soviet (the parliament of the Russian SFSR); therefore the Russian SFSR had renounced the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and \"de facto\" declared Russia's independence from the USSR itself and the ties with the other Soviet republics.\nOn 25 December 1991, following the resignation of Gorbachev as President of the Soviet Union, the Russian SFSR was renamed the Russian Federation. The next day, the USSR was self-dissolved by the Soviet of the Republics on 26 December, which by that time was the only functioning parliamentary chamber of the All-Union Supreme Soviet. After the dissolution, Russia took full responsibility for all the rights and obligations of the USSR under the Charter of the United Nations, including the financial obligations. As such, Russia assumed the Soviet Union's UN membership and permanent membership on the Security Council, nuclear stockpile and the control over the armed forces; Soviet embassies abroad became Russian embassies.\nThe 1978 constitution of the Russian SFSR was amended several times to reflect the transition to democracy, private property and market economy. The new Russian constitution, coming into effect on 25 December 1993 after a constitutional crisis, completely abolished the Soviet form of government and replaced it with a semi-presidential system. The economy of Russia became heavily industrialized, accounting for about two-thirds of the electricity produced in the USSR. By 1961, it was the third largest producer of petroleum due to new discoveries in the Volga-Urals region and Siberia. In 1974, there were 475 institutes of higher education in the republic providing education in 47 languages to some 23,941,000 students. A network of territorially organized public-health services provided health care. The economy began to be liberalized starting in 1985 under Gorbachev's \"perestroika\" restructuring policies, including the introduction of non-state owned enterprises (e.g. cooperatives).\nNomenclature.\nUnder the leadership of Vladimir Lenin (1870\u20131924) and Leon Trotsky (1879\u20131940), the Bolsheviks established the Soviet state on 7 November\u00a0[O.S. 25 October]\u00a01917. This happened immediately after the October Revolution toppled the interim Russian Provisional Government (most recently led by opposing democratic socialist Alexander Kerensky (1881\u20131970)) which had governed the new Russian Republic after the abdication of the Russian Empire government of the Romanov imperial dynasty of Tsar Nicholas II the previous March (Old Style: February). The October Revolution was thus the second of the two Russian Revolutions of the turbulent year of 1917. Initially, the new Soviet state did not have an official name and was not recognized by neighboring countries for five months.\nAnti-Bolsheviks soon suggested new names, however. By 1919 they had coined the mocking label Sovdepia () for the nascent state of the Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies. Speakers of colloquial English coined the term \"Bololand\"\nto refer to the land of the Bolos (a term identified from 1919 onwards with the Bolsheviks).\nOn 25 January 1918 the third meeting of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets proclaimed the establishment of the Russian Soviet Republic. In July 1918, the Fifth All\u2013Russian Congress of Soviets adopted both the new name, Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR), and the Constitution of the Russian SFSR.\nInternationally, the Russian SFSR was recognized as an independent state in 1920 only by its bordering neighbors (Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania) in the Treaty of Tartu and by the short-lived Irish Republic of 1919\u20131922 in Ireland.\nOn 30 December 1922, with the treaty on the creation of the Soviet Union, Russia (the RSFSR), alongside the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR, formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The final Soviet name for the constituent republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, was adopted in the later Soviet Constitution of 1936. By that time, Soviet Russia had gained roughly the same borders of the old Tsardom of Russia before the Great Northern War of 1700 to 1721.\nThe RSFSR dominated the Soviet Union to a significant extent. For most of its existence, the Soviet Union was commonly (but incorrectly) referred to as \"Russia\". While the RSFSR itself was only one republic within the larger union, it was the largest, most powerful and most highly developed of the 15 republics.\nOn 25 December 1991, during the collapse of the Soviet Union, which concluded on the next day, the RSFSR's official name was changed to the Russian Federation, which it remains to this day. This name and \"Russia\" were specified as the official state names on 21 April 1992, in an amendment to the then existing Constitution of 1978, and were retained as such in the subsequent 1993 Constitution of Russia.\nGeography.\nAt a total of about 17,125,200\u00a0km (6,612,100 sq mi), the Russian SFSR was the largest of the fifteen Soviet republics, with its southerly neighbor, the Kazakh SSR, being second.\nThe international borders of the RSFSR touched Poland on the west; Norway and Finland on the northwest; and to its southeast in eastern Asia were the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), Mongolian People's Republic (now Mongolia) and the People's Republic of China (China, formerly the Republic of China; 1912\u20131949). Within the Soviet Union, the RSFSR bordered the Slavic states: Ukrainian SSR (now Ukraine), Byelorussian SSR (now Belarus), the Baltic states: Estonian SSR (now Estonia), Latvian SSR (now Latvia) and Lithuanian SSR (now Lithuania, included into USSR in 1940) to its west and the Azerbaijan SSR (now Azerbaijan), Georgian SSR (now Georgia), and Kazakh SSR (now Kazakhstan) to the south.\nRoughly 70% of the area in the RSFSR consisted of broad plains, with mountainous tundra regions mainly concentrated in the east of Siberia with Central Asia and East Asia. The area is rich in mineral resources, including petroleum, natural gas, and iron ore.\nHistory.\nEarly years (1917\u20131920).\nThe Soviet government first came to power on 7 November 1917, immediately after the interim Russian Provisional Government headed by Alexander Kerensky, which governed the Russian Republic, was overthrown in the October Revolution, the second of the two Russian Revolutions. The state it governed, which did not have an official name, would be unrecognized by neighboring countries for another five months. The initial stage of the October Revolution which involved the assault on Petrograd occurred largely without any human casualties.\nOn 18 January 1918, the newly elected Constituent Assembly issued a decree, proclaiming Russia a democratic federal republic under the name \"Russian Democratic Federal Republic\". However, the Bolsheviks dissolved the Assembly on the following day and declared its decrees null and void. Conversely, the Bolsheviks also reserved a number of vacant seats in the Soviets and Central Executive for the opposition parties in proportion to their vote share at the Congress. At the same time, a number of prominent members of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries had assumed positions in Lenin's government and lead commissariats in several areas. This included agriculture (Kolegaev), property (Karelin), justice (Steinberg), post offices and telegraphs (Proshian) and local government (Trutovsky). Lenin's government also instituted a number of progressive measures such as universal education, healthcare and equal rights for women.\nOn 25 January 1918, at the third meeting of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, the establishment of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) was proclaimed. On 3 March 1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed, giving away much of the westernmost lands of the former Russian Empire to the German Empire, in exchange for peace on the Eastern Front of World War I. In July 1918, the fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets adopted the Constitution of the Russian SFSR. By 1918, during the Russian Civil War, several states within the former Russian Empire had seceded, reducing the size of the country even more, although some were conquered by the Bolsheviks.\n1920s.\nThe Russian famine of 1921\u201322, also known as Povolzhye famine, killed an estimated 5\u00a0million, primarily affecting the Volga and Ural River regions.\nThe economic impact of the Civil War was devastating. A black market emerged in Russia, despite the threat of martial law against profiteering. The ruble collapsed, with barter increasingly replacing money as a medium of exchange and, by 1921, heavy industry output had fallen to 20% of 1913 levels. 90% of wages were paid with goods rather than money. 70% of locomotives were in need of repair, and food requisitioning, combined with the effects of seven years of war and a severe drought, contributed to a famine that caused between 3 and 10 million deaths. Coal production decreased from 27.5\u00a0million tons (1913) to 7 million tons (1920), while overall factory production also declined from 10,000\u00a0million roubles to 1,000\u00a0million roubles. According to the noted historian David Christian, the grain harvest was also slashed from 80.1\u00a0million tons (1913) to 46.5\u00a0million tons (1920).\nOn 30 December 1922, the First Congress of the Soviets of the USSR approved the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, by which Russia was united with the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic and Transcaucasian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic into a single federal state, the Soviet Union. The treaty was included in the 1924 Soviet Constitution, adopted on 31 January 1924 by the Second Congress of Soviets of the USSR.\nOne of the early ambitious economic plans of the Soviet government was GOELRO, Russian abbreviation for \"State Commission for Electrification of Russia\" (\u0413\u043e\u0441\u0443\u0434\u0430\u0440\u0441\u0442\u0432\u0435\u043d\u043d\u0430\u044f \u043a\u043e\u043c\u0438\u0441\u0441\u0438\u044f \u043f\u043e \u044d\u043b\u0435\u043a\u0442\u0440\u0438\u0444\u0438\u043a\u0430\u0446\u0438\u0438 \u0420\u043e\u0441\u0441\u0438\u0438), which sought to achieve total electrification of the entire country. Soviet propaganda declared the plan was basically fulfilled by 1931. The national power output per year stood at 1.9\u00a0billion kWh in Imperial Russia in 1913, and Lenin's goal of 8.8\u00a0billion kWh was reached in 1931. National power output continued to increase significantly. It reached 13.5\u00a0billion kWh by the end of the first five-year plan in 1932, 36\u00a0billion kWh by 1937, and 48\u00a0billion kWh by 1940.\nParagraph\u00a03 of Chapter\u00a01 of the 1925 Constitution of the RSFSR stated the following:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />By the will of the peoples of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, who decided on the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during the Tenth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, being a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, devolves to the Union the powers which according to Article\u00a01 of the Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics are included within the scope of responsibilities of the government bodies of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.\n1930s.\nMany regions in Russia were affected by the Soviet famine of 1932\u20131933: Volga, Central Black Soil Region, North Caucasus, the Urals, the Crimea, part of Western Siberia, and the Kazakh ASSR. With the adoption of the 1936 Soviet Constitution on 5 December 1936, the size of the RSFSR was significantly reduced. The Kazakh ASSR and Kirghiz ASSR were transformed into the Kazakh SSR (now Kazakhstan) and Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic (Kyrgyzstan). The former Karakalpak Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic was transferred to the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (Uzbekistan).\nThe final name for the republic during the Soviet era was adopted by the Russian Constitution of 1937, which renamed it the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR).\n1940s.\nJust four months after Operation Barbarossa, the Wehrmacht was quickly advancing through the Russian SFSR, and was approximately away from Moscow. However, after the defeat in the Battle of Moscow and the Soviet winter offensive, the Germans were pushed back. In 1942, the Wehrmacht entered Stalingrad. Despite a deadly five-month battle in which the Soviets suffered over 1,100,000 casualties, they achieved victory following the surrender of the last German troops near the Volga River, ultimately pushing German forces out of Russia by 1944.\nIn 1943, Karachay Autonomous Oblast was dissolved by Joseph Stalin (1878\u20131953), General Secretary of the Communist Party, later Premier, when the Karachays were exiled to Central Asia for their alleged collaboration with the invading Germans in the Great Patriotic War (World War II, 1941\u20131945), and territory was incorporated into the Georgian SSR.\nOn 3 March 1944, on the orders of Stalin, the Chechen-Ingush ASSR was disbanded and its population forcibly deported upon the accusations of collaboration with the invaders and separatism. The territory of the ASSR was divided between other administrative units of Russian SFSR and the Georgian SSR.\nOn 11 October 1944, the Tuvan People's Republic was joined with the Russian SFSR as the Tuvan Autonomous Oblast, becoming an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1961.\nAfter reconquering Estonia and Latvia in 1944, the Russian SFSR annexed their easternmost territories around Ivangorod and within the modern Pechorsky and Pytalovsky Districts in 1944\u20131945.\nAt the end of World War II Soviet troops of the Red Army occupied southern Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands off the coast of East Asia, north of Japan, making them part of the RSFSR. The status of the southernmost Kurils, north of Hokkaido of the Japanese home islands remains in dispute with Japan and the United States following the peace treaty of 1951 ending the state of war.\nOn 17 April 1946, the Kaliningrad Oblast \u2013 the north-eastern portion of the former Kingdom of Prussia, the founding state of the German Empire (1871\u20131918) and later the German province of East Prussia including the capital and Baltic seaport city of K\u00f6nigsberg \u2013 was annexed by the Soviet Union and made part of the Russian SFSR.\n1950s.\nAfter the death of Joseph Stalin on 5 March 1953, Georgy Malenkov became the new leader of the USSR. In January 1954, Malenkov (via Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union issuing a decree) transferred the Crimean Oblast from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR. \nOn 8 February 1955, Malenkov was officially demoted to deputy Prime Minister. As First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev's authority was significantly enhanced by Malenkov's demotion.\nUnder Khrushchev's leadership of the country, the Karelo-Finnish SSR was transferred back to the RSFSR as the Karelian ASSR in 1956.\nOn 9 January 1957, Karachay Autonomous Oblast and Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic were restored by Khrushchev and they were transferred from the Georgian SSR back to the Russian SFSR.\n1960s\u20131980s.\nIn 1964, Nikita Khrushchev was removed from his position of power and replaced with Leonid Brezhnev. Under his rule, the Russian SFSR and the rest of the Soviet Union went through a mass era of stagnation. Even after Brezhnev's death in 1982, the era did not end until Mikhail Gorbachev took power in March 1985 and introduced liberal reforms in Soviet society.\nOn 12 April 1978, a new Constitution of Russia was adopted.\nEarly 1990s.\nOn 29 May 1990, at his third attempt, Boris Yeltsin was elected the chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR. The Congress of People's Deputies of the Republic adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian SFSR on 12 June 1990, which was the beginning of the \"War of Laws\", pitting the Soviet Union against the Russian Federation and other constituent republics.\nOn 17 March 1991, an all-Russian referendum created the post of President of the RSFSR and on 12 June, Boris Yeltsin was elected president by popular vote.\nDuring the unsuccessful 1991 Soviet coup d'\u00e9tat attempt of 19\u201321 August 1991 in Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union and Russia, Yeltsin strongly supported the President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. On 23 August, Yeltsin, in the presence of Gorbachev, signed a decree suspending all activity by the Communist Party of the Russian SFSR in the territory of Russia. On 6 November, he went further, banning the Communist Parties of the USSR and the RSFSR in the RSFSR.\nOn 8 December 1991, at Viskuli near Brest (Belarus), Yeltsin, Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk and Belarusian leader Stanislav Shushkevich signed the \"Agreement on the Establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States\", known in media as the Belovezh Accords. The document, consisting of a preamble and fourteen articles, stated that the Soviet Union no longer existed \"as a subject of international law and geopolitical reality\". However, based on the historical community of peoples and relations between the three states, as well as bilateral treaties, the desire for a democratic rule of law, the intention to develop their relations based on mutual recognition and respect for state sovereignty, the parties agreed to the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States. On 12 December, the agreement was ratified by the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR by an overwhelming majority: 188 votes for, 6 against and 7 abstentions. The legality of this ratification raised doubts among some members of the Russian parliament, since according to the Constitution of the RSFSR of 1978 consideration of this document was in the exclusive jurisdiction of the Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR. However, by this time the Soviet government had been rendered more or less impotent, and was in no position to object. On the same day, the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR denounced the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and recalled all Russian deputies from the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. A number of lawyers believe that the denunciation of the union treaty was meaningless since it became invalid in 1924 with the adoption of the first constitution of the USSR. Although the 12 December vote is sometimes reckoned as the moment that the RSFSR seceded from the collapsing Soviet Union, this is not the case. It appears that the RSFSR took the line that it did not need to follow the secession process delineated in the Soviet Constitution because it was not possible to secede from a country that no longer existed.\nOn 24 December, Yeltsin informed the Secretary-General of the United Nations that by agreement of the member states of the CIS the Russian Federation would assume the membership of the Soviet Union in all UN organs (including the Soviet Union's permanent seat on the UN Security Council). Russia took full responsibility for all the rights and obligations of the USSR under the Charter of the United Nations, including the financial obligations, and assumed control over its nuclear stockpile and the armed forces; Soviet embassies abroad became Russian embassies. On 25 December \u2013 just hours after Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union \u2013 the Russian SFSR was renamed the Russian Federation (Russia), reflecting that it was now a sovereign state with Yeltsin assuming the Presidency. That same night, the Soviet flag was lowered and replaced with the tricolor. The Soviet Union officially ceased to exist the next day. The change was originally published on 6 January 1992 (). According to law, during 1992, it was allowed to use the old name of the RSFSR for official business (forms, seals, and stamps).\nOn 21 April 1992, the Congress of People's Deputies of Russia approved the renaming of the RSFSR into the Russian Federation, by making appropriate amendments to the Constitution, which entered into force \nsince publication on 16 May 1992.\nGovernment.\nThe Government was known officially as the Council of People's Commissars (1917\u20131946) and Council of Ministers (1946\u20131991). The first government was headed by Vladimir Lenin as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian SFSR and the last by Boris Yeltsin as both head of government and head of state under the title of president. The Russian SFSR was controlled by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union until the 1991 August coup, which prompted President Yeltsin to suspend the recently created Communist Party of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.\nEconomy.\nIn the first years of the existence of the RSFSR, the doctrine of war communism became the starting point of the state's economic activity. In March 1921, at the X Congress of the RCP (B), the tasks of the policy of \"war communism\" were recognized by the country's leadership as fulfilled, and a new economic policy was introduced at Lenin's suggestion.\nAfter the formation of the Soviet Union, the economy of the RSFSR became an integral part of the economy of the USSR. The economic program of the RSFSR (NEP) was continued in all union republics. The Gosplan (State General Planning Commission) of the RSFSR, which replaced GOELRO, was reorganized into the Gosplan of the USSR. His early task was to develop a unified national economic plan based on the electrification plan and to oversee the overall implementation of this plan.\nUnlike the previous Russian constitutions, the 1978 Constitution devoted an entire chapter (Chapter II) to the description of the economic system of the RSFSR, which defined the types of property and indicated the goals of the economic tasks of the state.\nAs noted by Corresponding Member RAS RAS V. I. Suslov, who took part in large-scale studies of the relationship between the economies of the republics of the USSR and the RSFSR in the late Soviet era: \"The degree of inequality of economic exchange was very high, and Russia was always the losing side. The product created by Russia largely supported the consumption of other union republics\".\nCulture.\nNational holidays and symbols.\nThe public holidays for the Russian SFSR included Defender of the Fatherland Day (23 February), which honors Russian men, especially those serving in the army; International Women's Day (8 March), which combines the traditions of Mother's Day and Valentine's Day; Spring and Labor Day (1 May); Victory Day; and like all other Soviet republics, the Great October Socialist Revolution (7 November).\nVictory Day is the second most popular holiday in Russia as it commemorates the victory over Nazism in the Great Patriotic War. A huge military parade, hosted by the President of Russia, is annually organised in Moscow on Red Square. Similar parades take place in all major Russian cities and cities with the status Hero City or City of Military Glory.\nDuring its 76-year existence, the Russian SFSR anthem was the same as the Soviet anthem (unlike other republics): The Internationale until 1944 and then the State Anthem of the USSR. In 1990, the RSFSR adopted its own separate anthem called Patrioticheskaya Pesnya, which went on to become the anthem of independent Russia since 1991. In 2000, Vladimir Putin re-introduced the Soviet anthem. The motto \"Workers of the world, unite!\" was commonly used and shared with other Soviet republics. The hammer and sickle and the full Soviet coat of arms are still widely seen in Russian cities as part of architectural decorations. The Soviet red stars are also encountered, often on military equipment and war memorials. The Red Banner continues to be honored, especially the Banner of Victory of 1945.\nThe Matryoshka doll is a recognizable symbol of the Russian SFSR (and the Soviet Union as a whole) and the towers of Moscow Kremlin and Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow are Russian SFSR's main architectural icons. Chamomile is the national flower while birch is the national tree. The Russian bear is an animal symbol and a national personification of Russia. Though this image has a Western origin, Russians themselves have accepted it. The native Soviet Russian national personification is Mother Russia.\nFlag history.\nThe flag of the Russian SFSR changed numerous times, with the original being a field of red with the Russian name of the republic written on the flag's centre in white. This flag had always been intended to be temporary, as it was changed less than a year after its adoption. The second flag had the letters \u0420\u0421\u0424\u0421\u0420 (RSFSR) written in yellow within the canton and encased within two yellow lines forming a right angle. The next flag was used from 1937, notably during World War II. Interesting because it was used until Stalin's death when a major vexillological reform was undertaken within the Soviet Union. This change incorporated an update for all the flags of the Soviet Republics as well as for the flag of the Soviet Union itself. The flag of the Russian SFSR was now a defaced version of the flag of the Soviet Union, with the main difference being a minor repositioning of the hammer and sickle and most notably adding a blue vertical stripe to the hoist. This version of the flag was used from 1954 all the way to 1991, where it was changed due to the ongoing collapse of the Soviet Union. The flag was changed to a design that resembled the original ensign of the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, with a notable difference of the flag ratio being 1:2 instead of the original 2:3 ratio. After 1993, when the Soviet form of government was officially dissolved in the Russian Federation, the flag of the Russian Federation was changed to the original civil ensign with its original 2:3 proportions.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "10918072": "Armenia\nCountry in West Asia\nArmenia, officially the Republic of Armenia, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of West Asia. It is a part of the Caucasus region and is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north and Azerbaijan to the east, and Iran and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan to the south. Yerevan is the capital, largest city and financial center.\nThe Armenian Highlands has been home to the Hayasa-Azzi, Shupria and Nairi. By at least 600 BC, an archaic form of Proto-Armenian, an Indo-European language, had diffused into the Armenian Highlands. The first Armenian state of Urartu was established in 860 BC, and by the 6th century BC it was replaced by the Satrapy of Armenia. The Kingdom of Armenia reached its height under Tigranes the Great in the 1st century BC and in the year 301 became the first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its official religion. Armenia still recognises the Armenian Apostolic Church, the world's oldest national church, as the country's primary religious establishment. The ancient Armenian kingdom was split between the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires around the early 5th century. Under the Bagratuni dynasty, the Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia was restored in the 9th century before falling in 1045. Cilician Armenia, an Armenian principality and later a kingdom, was located on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea between the 11th and 14th centuries.\nBetween the 16th and 19th centuries, the traditional Armenian homeland composed of Eastern Armenia and Western Armenia came under the rule of the Ottoman and Persian empires, repeatedly ruled by either of the two over the centuries. By the 19th century, Eastern Armenia had been conquered by the Russian Empire, while most of the western parts of the traditional Armenian homeland remained under Ottoman rule. During World War I, up to 1.5 million Armenians living in their ancestral lands in the Ottoman Empire were systematically exterminated in the Armenian genocide. In 1918, following the Russian Revolution, all non-Russian countries declared their independence after the Russian Empire ceased to exist, leading to the establishment of the First Republic of Armenia. By 1920, the state was incorporated into the Soviet Union as the Armenian SSR. Today's Republic of Armenia became independent in 1991 during the dissolution of the Soviet Union.\nModern Armenia is a unitary, multi-party, democratic nation-state. Armenia is a developing country and ranks 76th on the Human Development Index as of 2024. Its economy is primarily based on industrial output and mineral extraction. While Armenia is geographically located in the South Caucasus, Armenia views itself as part of Europe and is generally considered geopolitically European. Since Armenia aligns itself in many respects geopolitically with Europe, the country is a member of numerous European organisations including the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe, the Council of Europe, the Eastern Partnership, Eurocontrol, the Assembly of European Regions, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Armenia is also a member of certain regional groups throughout Eurasia, including the Asian Development Bank, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union, and the Eurasian Development Bank. Armenia supported the once \"de facto\" independent Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), which was proclaimed in 1991 on territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, until the republic's dissolution in September 2023.\nEtymology.\nThe original native Armenian name for the country was (); however, it is currently rarely used. The contemporary name (\"Hayastan\") became popular in the Middle Ages by addition of the Persian suffix \"-stan\" (place). However the origins of the name Hayastan trace back to much earlier dates and were first attested in c.\u20095th century in the works of Agathangelos, Faustus of Byzantium, Ghazar Parpetsi, Koryun, and Sebeos.\nThe name has traditionally been derived from Hayk (), the legendary patriarch of the Armenians and a great-great-grandson of Noah, who, according to the 5th-century AD author Moses of Chorene (Movsis Khorenatsi), defeated the Babylonian king Bel in 2492\u00a0BC and established his nation in the Ararat region. The further origin of the name is uncertain. It is also further postulated that the name \"Hay\" comes from one of the two confederated, Hittite vassal states\u00a0\u2013 the \u1e2aaya\u0161a-Azzi (1600\u20131200 BC).\nThe exonym \"Armenia\" is attested in the Old Persian Behistun Inscription (515 BC) as \"Armina\" (\ud800\udfa0\ud800\udfbc\ud800\udfb7\ud800\udfa1\ud800\udfb4). The Ancient Greek terms (\"Armen\u00eda\") and (\"Arm\u00e9nioi\", \"Armenians\") are first mentioned by Hecataeus of Miletus (c.\u2009550 BC \u2013 c.\u2009476 BC). Xenophon, a Greek general serving in some of the Persian expeditions, describes many aspects of Armenian village life and hospitality in around 401 BC.\nSome scholars have linked the name \"Armenia\" with the Early Bronze Age state of \"Armani (Armanum, Armi)\" or the Late Bronze Age state of \"Arme (Shupria)\". These connections are inconclusive as it is not known what languages were spoken in these kingdoms. Additionally, while it is agreed that Arme was located to the immediate west of Lake Van (probably in the vicinity of Sason, and therefore in the greater Armenia region), the location of the older site of Armani is a matter of debate. Some modern researchers have placed it near modern Samsat, and have suggested it was populated, at least partially, by an early Indo-European-speaking people. It is possible that the name \"Armenia\" originates in \"Armini\", Urartian for \"inhabitant of Arme\" or \"Armean country\". The Arme tribe of Urartian texts may have been the Urumu, who in the 12th century BC attempted to invade Assyria from the north with their allies the Mushki and the Kaskians. The Urumu apparently settled in the vicinity of Sason, lending their name to the regions of Arme and the nearby lands of Urme and Inner Urumu.\nAccording to the histories of both Moses of Chorene and Michael Chamchian, \"Armenia\" derives from the name of Aram, a lineal descendant of Hayk. In the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, the Table of Nations lists Aram as the son of Shem, to whom the Book of Jubilees attests, <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />And for Aram there came forth the fourth portion, all the land of Mesopotamia between the Tigris and the Euphrates to the north of the Chaldees to the border of the mountains of Asshur and the land of 'Arara'. Jubilees 8:21 also apportions the Mountains of Ararat to Shem, which Jubilees 9:5 expounds to be apportioned to Aram.\nThe historian Flavius Josephus also states in his Antiquities of the Jews, \n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Aram had the Aramites, which the Greeks called Syrians;... Of the four sons of Aram, Uz founded Trachonitis and Damascus: this country lies between Palestine and Celesyria. Ul founded Armenia; and Gather the Bactrians; and Mesa the Mesaneans; it is now called Charax Spasini.\nHistory.\nPrehistoric.\nThe first human traces are supported by the presence of Acheulean tools, generally close to the obsidian outcrops more than 1 million years ago.\nThe most recent and important excavation is at the Nor Geghi 1 Stone Age site in the Hrazdan river valley. Thousands of 325,000 year-old artifacts may indicate that this stage of human technological innovation occurred intermittently throughout the Old World, rather than spreading from a single point of origin (usually hypothesized to be Africa), as was previously thought.\nMany early Bronze Age settlements were built in Armenia (Valley of Ararat, Shengavit, Harich, Karaz, Amiranisgora, Margahovit, Garni, etc.). One of the important sites of the Early Bronze Age is Shengavit Settlement, It was located on the site of today's capital of Armenia, Yerevan.\nSuch things were discovered in Armenia, for example, the oldest shoe, oldest wagon, oldest skirt, and the oldest wine-making facility.\nAntiquity.\nArmenia lies in the highlands surrounding the mountains of Ararat. There is evidence of an early civilisation in Armenia in the Bronze Age and earlier, dating to about 4000 BC. Archaeological surveys in 2010 and 2011 at the Areni-1 cave complex have resulted in the discovery of the world's earliest known leather shoe, skirt, and wine-producing facility.\nSeveral Bronze Age cultures and states flourished in the area of Greater Armenia, including the Trialeti-Vanadzor culture, Hayasa-Azzi, and Mitanni (located in southwestern historical Armenia), all of which are believed to have had Indo-European populations. The Nairi confederation and its successor, Urartu, successively established their sovereignty over the Armenian Highlands. Each of the aforementioned nations and confederacies participated in the ethnogenesis of the Armenians. A large cuneiform lapidary inscription found in Yerevan established that the modern capital of Armenia was founded in the summer of 782\u00a0BC by King Argishti I. Yerevan is one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities.\nAfter the fall of the state of Urartu at the beginning of the 6th century BC, the Armenian Highlands were for some time under the hegemony of the Medes, and after that they were part of the Achaemenid Empire. Armenia was part of the Achaemenid state from the second half of the 6th century BC until the second half of the 4th century BC divided into two satrapies - XIII (western part, with the capital in Melitene) and XVIII (northeastern part).\nDuring the late 6th century BC, the first geographical entity that was called Armenia by neighbouring populations was established under the Orontid Dynasty within the Achaemenid Empire, as part of the latter's territories.\nThe kingdom became fully sovereign from the sphere of influence of the Seleucid Empire in 190 BC under King Artaxias I and begun the rule of the Artaxiad dynasty. Armenia reached its height between 95 and 66\u00a0BC under Tigranes the Great, becoming the most powerful kingdom of its time east of the Roman Republic.\nIn the next centuries, Armenia was in the Persian Empire's sphere of influence during the reign of Tiridates I, the founder of the Arsacid dynasty of Armenia, which itself was a branch of the Parthian Empire. Throughout its history, the kingdom of Armenia enjoyed both periods of independence and periods of autonomy subject to contemporary empires. Its strategic location between two continents has subjected it to invasions by many peoples, including Assyria (under Ashurbanipal, at around 669\u2013627 BC, the boundaries of Assyria reached as far as Armenia and the Caucasus Mountains), Medes, Achaemenid Empire, Greeks, Parthians, Romans, Sasanian Empire, Byzantine Empire, Arabs, Seljuk Empire, Mongols, Ottoman Empire, the successive Safavid, Afsharid, and Qajar dynasties of Iran, and the Russians.\nReligion in ancient Armenia was historically related to a set of beliefs that, in Persia, led to the emergence of Zoroastrianism. It particularly focused on the worship of Mithra and also included a pantheon of gods such as Aramazd, Vahagn, Anahit, and Astghik. The country used the solar Armenian calendar, which consisted of 12 months.\nChristianity spread into the country in the early 4th century AD. Tiridates III of Armenia (238\u2013314) made Christianity the state religion in 301, partly, in defiance of the Sasanian Empire, it seems, becoming the first officially Christian state, ten years before the Roman Empire granted Christianity an official toleration under Galerius, and 36\u00a0years before Constantine the Great was baptised. Prior to this, during the latter part of the Parthian period, Armenia was a predominantly Zoroastrian country.\nAfter the fall of the Kingdom of Armenia in 428, most of Armenia was incorporated as a \"marzpanate\" within the Sasanian Empire. Following the Battle of Avarayr in 451, Christian Armenians maintained their religion and Armenia gained autonomy.\nMiddle Ages.\nThe Sassanid Empire was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate in the mid 7th century, reuniting Armenian lands previously taken by the Byzantine Empire, and Armenia subsequently emerged as Arminiya, an autonomous principality under the Umayyad Caliphate. The principality was ruled by the Prince of Armenia, and recognised by the Caliph and the Byzantine Emperor. It was part of the administrative division/emirate \"Arminiya\" created by the Arabs, which also included parts of Georgia and Caucasian Albania, and had its centre in the Armenian city, Dvin. Arminiya lasted until 884, when it regained its independence from the weakened Abbasid Caliphate under Ashot I of Armenia.\nThe reemergent Armenian kingdom was ruled by the Bagratuni dynasty and lasted until 1045. In time, several areas of the Bagratid Armenia separated as independent kingdoms and principalities such as the Kingdom of Vaspurakan ruled by the House of Artsruni in the south, Kingdom of Syunik in the east, or Kingdom of Artsakh on the territory of modern Nagorno-Karabakh, while still recognising the supremacy of the Bagratid kings.\nIn 1045, the Byzantine Empire conquered Bagratid Armenia. Soon, the other Armenian states fell under Byzantine control as well. The Byzantine rule was short-lived, as in 1071 the Seljuk Empire defeated the Byzantines and conquered Armenia at the Battle of Manzikert, establishing the Seljuk Empire. To escape death or servitude at the hands of those who had assassinated his relative, Gagik II of Armenia, King of Ani, an Armenian named Ruben I, Prince of Armenia, went with some of his countrymen into the gorges of the Taurus Mountains and then into Tarsus of Cilicia. The Byzantine governor of the palace gave them shelter where the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia was eventually established on 6 January 1198 under Leo I, King of Armenia, a descendant of Prince Ruben.\nCilicia was a strong ally of the European Crusaders, and saw itself as a bastion of Christendom in the East. Cilicia's significance in Armenian history and statehood is also attested by the transfer of the seat of the Catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church, the spiritual leader of the Armenian people, to the region.\nThe Seljuk Empire soon started to collapse. In the early 12th century, Armenian princes of the Zakarid family drove out the Seljuk Turks and established a semi-independent principality in northern and eastern Armenia known as Zakarid Armenia, which lasted under the patronage of the Georgian Kingdom. The Orbelian Dynasty shared control with the Zakarids in various parts of the country, especially in Syunik and Vayots Dzor, while the House of Hasan-Jalalyan controlled provinces of Artsakh and Utik as the Kingdom of Artsakh.\nEarly Modern era.\nDuring the 1230s, the Mongol Empire conquered Zakarid Armenia and then the remainder of Armenia. The Mongolian invasions were soon followed by those of other Central Asian tribes, such as the Kara Koyunlu, Timurid dynasty and A\u011f Qoyunlu, which continued from the 13th century until the 15th century. After incessant invasions, each bringing destruction to the country, with time Armenia became weakened.\nIn the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire and the Safavid dynasty of Iran divided Armenia. From the early 16th century, both Western Armenia and Eastern Armenia fell to the Safavid Empire. Owing to the century long Turco-Iranian geopolitical rivalry that would last in West Asia, significant parts of the region were frequently fought over between the two rivalling empires during the Ottoman\u2013Persian Wars. From the mid 16th century with the Peace of Amasya, and decisively from the first half of the 17th century with the Treaty of Zuhab until the first half of the 19th century, Eastern Armenia was ruled by the successive Safavid, Afsharid and Qajar empires, while Western Armenia remained under Ottoman rule.\nFrom 1604, Abbas I of Iran implemented a \"scorched earth\" policy in the region to protect his north-western frontier against any invading Ottoman forces, a policy that involved a forced resettlement of masses of Armenians outside of their homelands.\nIn the 1813 Treaty of Gulistan and the 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay, following the Russo-Persian War (1804\u201313) and the Russo-Persian War (1826\u201328), respectively, the Qajar dynasty of Iran was forced to irrevocably cede Eastern Armenia, consisting of the Erivan and Karabakh Khanates, to Imperial Russia. This period is known as Russian Armenia.\nWhile Western Armenia still remained under Ottoman rule, the Armenians were granted considerable autonomy within their own enclaves and lived in relative harmony with other groups in the empire (including the ruling Turks). However, as Christians under a strict Muslim social structure, Armenians faced pervasive discrimination. In response to the 1894 Sasun rebellion, Sultan Abdul Hamid II organised state-sponsored massacres against the Armenians between 1894 and 1896, resulting in an estimated death toll of 80,000 to 300,000 people. The Hamidian massacres, as they came to be known, gave Hamid international infamy as the \"Red Sultan\" or \"Bloody Sultan\".\nDuring the 1890s, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, commonly known as \"Dashnaktsutyun\", became active within the Ottoman Empire with the aim of unifying the various small groups in the empire that were advocating for reform and defending Armenian villages from massacres that were widespread in some of the Armenian-populated areas of the empire. Dashnaktsutyun members also formed Armenian fedayi groups that defended Armenian civilians through armed resistance. The Dashnaks also worked for the wider goal of creating a \"free, independent and unified\" Armenia, although they sometimes set aside this goal in favour of a more realistic approach, such as advocating autonomy.\nThe Ottoman Empire began to collapse, and in 1908, the Young Turk Revolution overthrew the government of Sultan Hamid. In April 1909, the Adana massacre occurred in the Adana Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire resulting in the deaths of as many as 20,000\u201330,000 Armenians. The Armenians living in the empire hoped that the Committee of Union and Progress would change their second-class status. The Armenian reform package (1914) was presented as a solution by appointing an inspector general over Armenian issues.\nWorld War I and the Armenian genocide.\nThe outbreak of World War I led to confrontation between the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire in the Caucasus and Persian campaigns. The new government in Istanbul began to look on the Armenians with distrust and suspicion because the Imperial Russian Army contained a contingent of Armenian volunteers. On 24 April 1915, Armenian intellectuals were arrested by Ottoman authorities and, with the Tehcir Law (29 May 1915), eventually a large proportion of Armenians living in Anatolia perished in what has become known as the Armenian genocide.\nThe genocide was implemented in two phases: the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and subjection of army conscripts to forced labour, followed by the deportation of women, children, the elderly and infirm on death marches leading to the Syrian desert. Driven forward by military escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to periodic robbery, rape, and massacre. There was local Armenian resistance in the region, developed against the activities of the Ottoman Empire. The events of 1915 to 1917 are regarded by Armenians and the vast majority of Western historians to have been state-sponsored mass killings, or genocide.\nTurkish authorities deny the genocide took place to this day. The Armenian Genocide is acknowledged to have been one of the first modern genocides. According to the research conducted by Arnold J. Toynbee, an estimated 600,000 Armenians died during deportation from 1915 to 1916. This figure, however, accounts for solely the first year of the Genocide and does not take into account those who died or were killed after the report was compiled on 24 May 1916. The International Association of Genocide Scholars places the death toll at \"more than a million\". The total number of people killed has been most widely estimated at between 1 and 1.5 million.\nArmenia and the Armenian diaspora have been campaigning for official recognition of the events as genocide for over 30\u00a0years. These events are traditionally commemorated yearly on 24 April, the Armenian Martyr Day, or the Day of the Armenian genocide.\nFirst Republic of Armenia.\nAlthough the Russian Caucasus Army of Imperial forces commanded by Nikolai Yudenich and Armenians in volunteer units and Armenian militia led by Andranik Ozanian and Tovmas Nazarbekian succeeded in gaining most of Western Armenia during World War I, their gains were lost with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. At the time, Russian-controlled Eastern Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan attempted to bond together in the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic. This federation, however, lasted from only February to May 1918, when all three parties decided to dissolve it. As a result, the Dashnaktsutyun government of Eastern Armenia declared its independence on 28 May as the First Republic of Armenia under the leadership of Aram Manukian.\nThe First Republic's short-lived independence was fraught with war, territorial disputes, large-scale rebellions, and a mass influx of refugees from Western Armenia, bringing with them disease and starvation. The Entente Powers sought to help the newly founded Armenian state through relief funds and other forms of support.\nAt the end of the war, the victorious powers sought to divide up the Ottoman Empire. Signed between the Allied and Associated Powers and Ottoman Empire at S\u00e8vres on 10 August 1920, the Treaty of S\u00e8vres promised to maintain the existence of the Armenian republic and to attach the former territories of Western Armenia to it. Because the new borders of Armenia were to be drawn by United States President Woodrow Wilson, Western Armenia was also referred to as \"Wilsonian Armenia\". In addition, just days prior, on 5 August 1920, Mihran Damadian of the Armenian National Union, the de facto Armenian administration in Cilicia, declared the independence of Cilicia as an Armenian autonomous republic under French protectorate.\nThere was even consideration of making Armenia a mandate under the protection of the United States. The treaty, however, was rejected by the Turkish National Movement, and never came into effect. The movement used the treaty as the occasion to declare itself the rightful government of Turkey, replacing the monarchy based in Istanbul with a republic based in Ankara.\nIn 1920, Turkish nationalist forces invaded the fledgling Armenian republic from the east. Turkish forces under the command of Kaz\u0131m Karabekir captured Armenian territories that Russia had annexed in the aftermath of the 1877\u20131878 Russo-Turkish War and occupied the old city of Alexandropol (present-day Gyumri). The violent conflict finally concluded with the Treaty of Alexandropol on 2 December 1920. The treaty forced Armenia to disarm most of its military forces, cede all former Ottoman territory granted to it by the Treaty of S\u00e8vres, and to give up all the \"Wilsonian Armenia\" granted to it at the S\u00e8vres treaty. Simultaneously, the Soviet Eleventh Army, under the command of Grigoriy Ordzhonikidze, invaded Armenia at Karavansarai (present-day Ijevan) on 29 November. By 4 December, Ordzhonikidze's forces entered Yerevan and the short-lived Armenian republic collapsed.\nAfter the fall of the republic, the February Uprising soon took place in 1921, and led to the establishment of the Republic of Mountainous Armenia by Armenian forces under command of Garegin Nzhdeh on 26 April, which fought off both Soviet and Turkish intrusions in the Zangezur region of southern Armenia. After Soviet agreements to include the Syunik Province in Armenia's borders, the rebellion ended and the Red Army took control of the region on 13 July.\nArmenian SSR.\n1922 to World War II.\nArmenia was annexed by the Red Army and along with Georgia and Azerbaijan, was incorporated into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as part of the Transcaucasian SFSR (TSFSR) on 4 March 1922. With this annexation, the Treaty of Alexandropol was superseded by the Turkish-Soviet Treaty of Kars. In the agreement, Turkey allowed the Soviet Union to assume control over Adjara with the port city of Batumi in return for sovereignty over the cities of Kars, Ardahan, and I\u011fd\u0131r, all of which were part of Russian Armenia.\nThe TSFSR existed from 1922 to 1936, when it was divided up into three separate entities (Armenian SSR, Azerbaijan SSR, and Georgian SSR). Armenians enjoyed a period of relative stability within USSR in contrast to the turbulent final years of the Ottoman Empire. The situation was difficult for the church, which struggled with secular policies of USSR. After the death of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, the general secretary of the Communist Party, gradually established himself as the dictator of the USSR. Stalin's reign was characterized by mass repressions, that cost millions of lives all over the USSR.\nWorld War II and post-Stalinist period.\nArmenia was not the scene of any battles in World War II. An estimated 500,000 Armenians (nearly a third of the population) served in the Red Army during the war, and 175,000 died. A total of 117 citizens of Armenia including 10 non ethnic Armenians were awarded Hero of the Soviet Union. Six special military divisions were formed in Soviet Armenia in 1941\u201342, partly because so many draftees from the republic could not understand Russian. Five of them, the 89th, 409th, 408th, 390th, and 76th Divisions, would have a distinguished war record, while the sixth was ordered to stay in Armenia to guard the republic's western borders against a possible incursion by neighboring Turkey.\nThe 89th Tamanyan Division, composed of ethnic Armenians, fought in the Battle of Berlin and entered Berlin.\nIt is claimed that the freedom index in the region had seen an improvement after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 and the emergence of Nikita Khrushchev as the new general secretary of the CPSU. Soon, life in Armenia's SSR began to see rapid improvement. The church, which was limited during the secretaryship of Stalin, was revived when Catholicos Vazgen I assumed the duties of his office in 1955. In 1967, a memorial to the victims of the Armenian genocide was built at the Tsitsernakaberd hill above the Hrazdan gorge in Yerevan. This occurred after mass demonstrations took place on the tragic event's fiftieth anniversary in 1965.\nGorbachev era.\nDuring the Gorbachev era of the 1980s, with the reforms of Glasnost and Perestroika, Armenians began to demand better environmental care for their country, opposing the pollution that Soviet-built factories brought. Tensions also developed between Soviet Azerbaijan and its autonomous district of Nagorno-Karabakh, a majority-Armenian region. About 484,000 Armenians lived in Azerbaijan in 1970. The Armenians of Karabakh demanded unification with Soviet Armenia. Peaceful protests in Armenia supporting the Karabakh Armenians were met with anti-Armenian pogroms in Azerbaijan, such as the one in Sumgait, which was followed by anti-Azerbaijani violence in Armenia. Compounding Armenia's problems was a devastating earthquake in 1988 with a moment magnitude of 7.2.\nGorbachev's inability to alleviate any of Armenia's problems created disillusionment among the Armenians and fed a growing hunger for independence. In May 1990, the New Armenian Army (NAA) was established, serving as a defence force separate from the Soviet Red Army. Clashes soon broke out between the NAA and Soviet Internal Security Forces (MVD) troops based in Yerevan when Armenians decided to commemorate the establishment of the 1918 First Republic of Armenia. The violence resulted in the deaths of five Armenians killed in a shootout with the MVD at the railway station. Witnesses there claimed that the MVD used excessive force and that they had instigated the fighting.\nFurther firefights between Armenian militiamen and Soviet troops occurred in Sovetashen, near the capital and resulted in the deaths of over 26 people, mostly Armenians. The pogrom of Armenians in Baku in January 1990 forced almost all of the 200,000 Armenians in the Azerbaijani capital Baku to flee to Armenia. On 23 August 1990, Armenia declared its sovereignty on its territory. On 17 March 1991, Armenia, along with the Baltic states, Georgia and Moldova, boycotted a nationwide referendum in which 78% of all voters voted for the retention of the Soviet Union in a reformed form.\nRestoration of independence.\nOn 21 September 1991, Armenia officially declared its statehood after the failed August coup in Moscow, RSFSR. Levon Ter-Petrosyan was popularly elected the first President of the newly independent Republic of Armenia on 16 October 1991. He had risen to prominence by leading the Karabakh movement for the unification of the Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh. On 26 December 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist and Armenia's independence was recognised.\nTer-Petrosyan led Armenia alongside defence minister Vazgen Sargsyan through the First Nagorno-Karabakh War with neighbouring Azerbaijan. The initial post-Soviet years were marred by economic difficulties, which had their roots early in the Karabakh conflict when the Azerbaijani Popular Front managed to pressure the Azerbaijan SSR to instigate a railway and air blockade against Armenia. This move effectively debilitated Armenia's economy as 85% of its cargo and goods arrived through rail traffic. In 1993, Turkey joined the blockade against Armenia in support of Azerbaijan.\nThe Karabakh war ended after a Russian-brokered ceasefire was put in place in 1994. The war was a success for the Karabakh Armenian forces who managed to capture 16% of Azerbaijan's internationally recognised territory including almost all of the Nagorno-Karabakh itself. The Armenian backed forces remained in control of practically all of that territory until 2020. The economies of both Armenia and Azerbaijan have been hurt in the absence of a complete resolution and Armenia's borders with Turkey and Azerbaijan remain closed. By the time both Azerbaijan and Armenia had finally agreed to a ceasefire in 1994, an estimated 30,000 people had been killed and over a million had been displaced. Several thousand were killed in the later 2020 Karabakh war.\n21st century.\nIn the 21st century, Armenia faces many hardships. It has made a full switch to a market economy. One study ranks it the 50th most \"economically free\" nation in the world, as of 2023[ [update]]. Its relations with Europe, the Arab League, and the Commonwealth of Independent States have allowed Armenia to increase trade. Gas, oil, and other supplies come through two vital routes: Iran and Georgia. As of 2016[ [update]], Armenia maintained cordial relations with both countries.\nThe 2018 Armenian Revolution was a series of anti-government protests in Armenia from April to May 2018 staged by various political and civil groups led by a member of the Armenian parliament \u2014 Nikol Pashinyan (head of the Civil Contract party). Protests and marches took place initially in response to Serzh Sargsyan's third consecutive term as President of Armenia and later against the Republican Party controlled government in general. Pashinyan declared the movement, which led to Sargsyan's resignation, a \"velvet revolution\".\nIn March 2018, the Armenian parliament elected Armen Sarkissian as the new President of Armenia. The controversial constitutional reform to reduce presidential power was implemented, while the authority of the prime minister was strengthened. In May 2018, parliament elected opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan as the new prime minister. His predecessor Serzh Sargsyan resigned two weeks earlier following widespread anti-government demonstrations.\nOn 27 September 2020, a full-scale war erupted due to the unresolved Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Both the armed forces of Armenia and Azerbaijan reported military and civilian casualties. The Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement to end the six-week war between Armenia and Azerbaijan was seen by many as Armenia's defeat and capitulation. The year-long March of Dignity protests forced early elections.\nOn 20 June 2021, Pashinyan's Civil Contract party won an early parliamentary election. Acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan was officially appointed to the post of prime minister by Armenia's President Armen Sarkissian. In January 2022, Armenian President Armen Sarkissian resigned from office, stating that the constitution no longer gives the president sufficient powers or influence. On 3 March 2022, Vahagn Khachaturyan was elected as the fifth president of Armenia in the second round of parliamentary vote. The next month yet more protests broke out.\n2023 Azerbaijani offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh.\nBetween 19 and 20 September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a large-scale military offensive against the self-declared breakaway state of Artsakh, a move seen by the European Parliament as a violation of the 2020 ceasefire agreement. The offensive took place in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but populated by Armenians. The attacks occurred in the midst of an escalating crisis caused by Azerbaijan blockading Artsakh, which resulted in significant scarcities of essential supplies such as food, medicine, and other goods in the affected region.\nOne day after the offensive started, on 20 September, a ceasefire agreement was reached at the mediation of the Russian peacekeeping command in Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan held a meeting with representatives of the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians on 21 September in Yevlakh, to be followed by another meeting in October. Ceasefire violations by Azerbaijan were nonetheless reported by both Artsakhi residents and officials.\nHuman rights organisations and experts in genocide prevention issued multiple alerts, stating that the region's Armenian population was at risk or actively being subjected to ethnic cleansing and genocide. Luis Moreno Ocampo, a former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, warned that another Armenian genocide could take place, and attributed the inaction of the international community to encouraging Azerbaijan that it would face no serious consequences.\nGeography.\nArmenia is a landlocked country in the geopolitical Transcaucasus (South Caucasus) region, that is located in the Southern Caucasus Mountains and their lowlands between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, and northeast of the Armenian Highlands. Armenia is widely accepted as part of West Asia geographically, although other definitions place it either fully in Europe or across Europe and Asia. Located on the Armenian Highlands, it is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north, the Lachin corridor which is a part of Lachin District that is under the control of a Russian peacekeeping force and Azerbaijan proper to the east, and Iran and Azerbaijan's exclave of Nakhchivan to the south. Armenia lies between latitudes 38\u00b0 and 42\u00b0 N, and meridians 43\u00b0 and 47\u00b0 E. It contains two terrestrial ecoregions: Caucasus mixed forests and Eastern Anatolian montane steppe.\nTopography.\nArmenia has a territorial area of . The terrain is mostly mountainous, with fast flowing rivers, and few forests. The land rises to above sea level at Mount Aragats, and no point is below above sea level. Average elevation of the country area is tenth highest in the world and it has 85.9% mountain area, more than Switzerland or Nepal.\nMount Ararat, which was historically part of Armenia, is the highest mountain in the region at 5,137 meters (16,854 feet). Now located in Turkey, but clearly visible from Armenia, it is regarded by the Armenians as a symbol of their land. Because of this, the mountain is present on the Armenian national emblem today.\nClimate.\nThe climate in Armenia is markedly highland continental. Summers are hot, dry and sunny, lasting from June to mid-September. The temperature fluctuates between . However, the low humidity level mitigates the effect of high temperatures. Evening breezes blowing down the mountains provide a welcome refreshing and cooling effect. Springs are short, while autumns are long. Autumns are known for their vibrant and colourful foliage.\nWinters are quite cold with plenty of snow, with temperatures ranging between . Winter sports enthusiasts enjoy skiing down the hills of Tsaghkadzor, located thirty minutes outside Yerevan. Lake Sevan, nestled up in the Armenian highlands, is the second largest lake in the world relative to its altitude, at above sea level.\nEnvironment.\nArmenia ranked 63rd out of 180 countries on Environmental Performance Index (EPI) in 2018. Its rank on subindex Environmental Health (which is weighted at 40% in EPI) is 109, while Armenia's rank on subindex of Ecosystem Vitality (weighted at 60% in EPI) is 27th best in the world. This suggests that main environmental issues in Armenia are with population health, while environment vitality is of lesser concern. Out of sub-subindices contributing to Environmental Health subindex ranking on Air Quality to which population is exposed is particularly unsatisfying.\nIn Armenia forest cover is around 12% of the total land area, equivalent to 328,470 hectares (ha) of forest in 2020, down from 334,730 hectares (ha) in 1990. In 2020, naturally regenerating forest covered 310,000 hectares (ha) and planted forest covered 18,470 hectares (ha). Of the naturally regenerating forest 5% was reported to be primary forest (consisting of native tree species with no clearly visible indications of human activity) and around 0% of the forest area was found within protected areas. For the year 2015, 100% of the forest area was reported to be under public ownership.\nWaste management in Armenia is underdeveloped, as no waste sorting or recycling takes place at Armenia's 60 landfills. A waste processing plant is scheduled for construction near Hrazdan city, which will allow for closure of 10 waste dumps.\nDespite the availability of abundant renewable energy sources in Armenia (especially hydroelectric and wind power) and calls from EU officials to shut down the nuclear power plant at Metsamor, the Armenian Government is exploring the possibilities of installing new small modular nuclear reactors. In 2018 existing nuclear plant is scheduled for modernisation to enhance its safety and increase power production by about 10%.\nGovernment and politics.\nArmenia is a representative parliamentary democratic republic. The Armenian constitution adhered to the model of a semi-presidential republic until April 2018.\nAccording to the current Constitution of Armenia, the President is the head of state holding largely representational functions, while the Prime Minister is the head of government and exercises executive power.\nSince 1995 Legislative power is vested in the Azgayin Zhoghov or \"National Assembly\", which is a unicameral parliament consisting of 105 members.\nThe Fragile States Index since its first report in 2006 until most recent in 2019, consistently ranked Armenia better than all its neighboring countries (with one exception in 2011).\nArmenia has universal suffrage above the age of eighteen.\nForeign relations.\nArmenia became a member of the United Nations on 2 March 1992, and is a signatory to a number of its organisations and other international agreements. Armenia is also a member of international organisations such as the Council of Europe, the Asian Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Political Community, the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, the World Customs Organization, the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation and La Francophonie. It is a member of the CSTO military alliance, and also participates in NATO's Partnership for Peace programme and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council. In 2004, its forces joined KFOR, a NATO-led international force in Kosovo. Armenia is also an observer member of the Arab League, the Organization of American States, the Pacific Alliance, the Non-Aligned Movement, and a dialogue partner in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. As a result of its historical ties to France, Armenia was selected to host the biennial Francophonie summit in 2018.\nArmenia has a difficult relation with neighbouring countries Azerbaijan and Turkey. Tensions were running high between Armenians and Azerbaijanis during the final years of the Soviet Union. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict dominated the region's politics throughout the 1990s. To this day, Armenia's borders with Turkey and Azerbaijan are under severe blockade. In addition, a permanent solution for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has not been reached despite the mediation provided by organisations such as the OSCE.\nTurkey also has a long history of poor relations with Armenia over its refusal to acknowledge the Armenian genocide, even though it was one of the first countries to recognize the Republic of Armenia (the third republic) after its independence from the USSR in 1991. Despite this, for most of the 20th century and early 21st century, relations remain tense and there are no formal diplomatic relations between the two countries due to Turkey's refusal to establish them for numerous reasons. During the first Nagorno-Karabakh War, and citing it as the reason, Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993. It has not lifted its blockade despite pressure from the powerful Turkish business lobby interested in Armenian markets.\nOn 10 October 2009, Armenia and Turkey signed protocols on the normalisation of relations, which set a timetable for restoring diplomatic ties and reopening their joint border. The ratification of those had to be made in the national parliaments. In Armenia, before sending the protocols to the parliament, it was sent to the Constitutional Court to have their constitutionality to be approved. The Constitutional Court made references to the preamble of the protocols underlying three main issues. One of them stated that the implementation of the protocols did not imply Armenia's official recognition of the existing Turkish-Armenian border established by the Treaty of Kars. By doing so, the Constitutional Court rejected one of the main premises of the protocols, i.e. \"the mutual recognition of the existing border between the two countries as defined by relevant treaties of international law\". This was for the Turkish Government the reason to back down from the Protocols. The Armenian President had made multiple public announcements, both in Armenia and abroad, that, as the leader of the political majority of Armenia, he assured the parliamentary ratification of the protocols if Turkey also ratified them. Despite this, the process stopped, as Turkey continuously added more preconditions to its ratification and also \"delayed it beyond any reasonable time-period\".\nDue to its position between two hostile neighbours, Armenia has close security ties with Russia. At the request of the Armenian government, Russia maintains a military base in the city of Gyumri located in Northwestern Armenia as a deterrent against Turkey. Despite this, Armenia has also been looking toward Euro-Atlantic structures in recent years. Armenia maintains positive relations with the United States, which is home to the second largest Armenian diaspora community in the world. According to the US Census Bureau, there are 427,822 Armenian Americans in the country.\nBecause of the illicit border blockades by Azerbaijan and Turkey, Armenia continues to maintain solid relations with its southern neighbour Iran, especially in the economic sector. Economic projects are being developed between the two nations, including a gas pipeline going from Iran to Armenia.\nArmenia is a member of the Council of Europe and maintains close relations with the European Union; especially with its member states France and Greece. In January 2002, the European Parliament noted that Armenia may enter the EU in the future. A 2005 survey reported that 64% of Armenians favoured joining the EU, a move multiple Armenian officials have voiced support for.\nA former republic of the Soviet Union and an emerging democracy, Armenia was negotiating to become an associate EU partner and had completed negotiations to sign an Association Agreement with a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area with the EU in 2013. However, the government opted not to finalize the agreement, and instead joined the Eurasian Economic Union. Despite this, Armenia and the EU finalized the Armenia-EU Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA) on 24 November 2017. The agreement enhances the relationship between Armenia and the EU to a new partnership level, further develops cooperation in economic, trade and political areas, aims to improve investment climate, and is designed to bring Armenian law gradually closer to the EU acquis.\nLegally speaking, Armenia has the right to be considered as a prospective EU member provided it meets necessary standards and criteria, though officially such a plan does not exist in Brussels. Armenia is included in the EU's European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and participates in both the Eastern Partnership and the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly, which aims at bringing the EU and its neighbours closer.\nFollowing the 2023 Azerbaijani offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia's relations with a long-term ally Russia started to deteriorate. In February 2024, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that the CSTO \"hasn't fulfilled its security obligations towards Armenia\" and that \"in practice we have basically frozen our participation in the CSTO\". On 28 February 2024, during a speech made in the National Assembly, Pashinyan further stated that the CSTO is \"a threat to the national security of Armenia\". In March 2024, Armenia officially expelled Russian border guards from the Zvartnots International Airport in Yerevan.\nOn 2 March 2024, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan advised that Armenia would officially \"apply to become a candidate for EU membership in the coming days, within a month at most\". On 5 March, Pashinyan stated that Armenia would apply for EU candidacy by Autumn 2024 at the latest. On 8 March 2024, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan stated, \"Armenia is seeking to get closer to the West amid worsening relations with Russia\" and \"New opportunities are largely being discussed in Armenia nowadays, that includes membership in the European Union\".\nOn 12 February 2025, Armenia's parliament approved a bill officially endorsing Armenia's EU accession. The decision for the government to pass the bill was reported to be the first step of \"the beginning of the accession process of Armenia to the European Union\".\nMilitary.\nThe Armenian Army and Air Force are the two branches of the Armed Forces of Armenia. The Armenian military was formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and with the establishment of the Ministry of Defence in 1992. The Commander-in-Chief of the military is the Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan. The Ministry of Defence is in charge of political leadership, headed by Davit Tonoyan, while military command remains in the hands of the general staff, headed by the Chief of Staff, who is Lieutenant-General Onik Gasparyan.\nActive forces now number about 81,000 soldiers, with an additional reserve of 32,000 troops. Armenian border guards are in charge of patrolling the country's borders with Georgia and Azerbaijan, while Russian troops continue to monitor its borders with Iran and Turkey. In the case of an attack, Armenia is able to mobilize every able-bodied man between the age of 15 and 59, with military preparedness.\nThe Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, which establishes comprehensive limits on key categories of military equipment, was ratified by the Armenian parliament in July 1992. In March 1993, Armenia signed the multilateral Chemical Weapons Convention, which calls for the eventual elimination of chemical weapons. Armenia acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non-nuclear weapons state in July 1993. Armenia is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO). Armenia also has an Individual Partnership Action Plan with NATO and it participates in NATO's Partnership for Peace (PiP) programme and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC).\nHuman rights and freedom.\nHuman rights in Armenia tend to be better than those in most former Soviet republics and have drawn closer to acceptable standards, especially economically. Nonetheless, there are still several considerable problems.\nArmenia scored 5.63 on The Economist Democracy Index, published in January 2023 (data for 2022). Although still classified as \"hybrid regime\", Armenia recorded the strongest improvement among European countries and reached its ever-best score since calculation began in 2006.\nArmenia is classified as \"partly free\" in the 2019 report (with data from 2018) by Freedom House, which gives it a score of 51 out of 100, which is 6 points ahead of the previous estimate.\nArmenia recorded unprecedented progress in the 2019 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders, improving its position by 19 points and ranking 61st on the list. The publication also confirms the absence of cases of killed journalists, citizen journalists or media assistants.\nArmenia ranks 26th in the 2022 report of The Human Freedom Index published by the American CATO Institute and Canada's Fraser Institute.\nArmenia ranked 29th for economic freedom and 76th for personal freedom among 159 countries in the 2017 Human Freedom Index published by the Cato Institute.\nIn October 2023 Armenia ratified signing the Rome statute, whereby Armenia will become a full member of the International Criminal Court.\nAdministrative divisions.\nShirak\nLori\nTavush\nAragatsotn\nArmavir\nYerevan\nArarat\nKotayk\nGegharkunik\nVayotsDzor\nSyunik\nArmenia is divided into ten provinces (\"marzer\", singular \"marz\"), with the city (\"kaghak\") of Yerevan () having special administrative status as the country's capital. The chief executive in each of the ten provinces is the \"marzpet\" (\"marz\" governor), appointed by the government of Armenia. In Yerevan, the chief executive is the mayor, elected since 2009.\nWithin each province there are communities (\"hamaynkner\", singular \"hamaynk\"). Each community is self-governing and consists of one or more settlements (\"bnakavayrer\", singular \"bnakavayr\"). Settlements are classified as either towns (\"kaghakner\", singular \"kaghak\") or villages (\"gyugher\", singular \"gyugh\"). As of 2007[ [update]], Armenia includes 915 communities, of which 49 are considered urban and 866 are considered rural. The capital, Yerevan, also has the status of a community. Additionally, Yerevan is divided into twelve semi-autonomous districts.\nEconomy.\nThe economy relies heavily on investment and support from Armenians abroad. Before independence, Armenia's economy was largely industry-based \u2013 chemicals, electronics, machinery, processed food, synthetic rubber, and textile \u2013 and highly dependent on outside resources. The republic had developed a modern industrial sector, supplying machine tools, textiles, and other manufactured goods to sister republics in exchange for raw materials and energy.\nAgriculture accounted for less than 20% of both net material product and total employment before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. After independence, the importance of agriculture in the economy increased markedly, its share at the end of the 1990s rising to more than 30% of GDP and more than 40% of total employment. This increase in the importance of agriculture was attributable to food security needs of the population in the face of uncertainty during the first phases of transition and the collapse of the non-agricultural sectors of the economy in the early 1990s. As the economic situation stabilised and growth resumed, the share of agriculture in GDP dropped to slightly over 20% (2006 data), although the share of agriculture in employment remained more than 40%.\nArmenian mines produce copper, zinc, gold, and lead. The vast majority of energy is produced with fuel imported from Russia, including gas and nuclear fuel (for its one nuclear power plant); the main domestic energy source is hydroelectric. Small deposits of coal, gas, and petroleum exist but have not yet been developed.\nAccess to biocapacity in Armenia is lower than world average. In 2016, Armenia had 0.8 global hectares of biocapacity per person within its territory, much less than the world average of 1.6 global hectares per person. In 2016 Armenia used 1.9 global hectares of biocapacity per person\u2014their ecological footprint of consumption. This means they use double as much biocapacity as Armenia contains. As a result, Armenia is running a biocapacity deficit.\nLike other newly independent states of the former Soviet Union, Armenia's economy suffers from the breakdown of former Soviet trading patterns. Soviet investment in and support of Armenian industry has virtually disappeared, so that few major enterprises are still able to function. In addition, the effects of the 1988 Spitak earthquake, which killed more than 25,000 people and made 500,000 homeless, are still being felt. The conflict with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh has not been resolved. Shutdown of the nuclear power plant in 1989 led to the Armenian energy crisis of 1990s. The GDP fell nearly 60% between 1989 and 1993, but then resumed robust growth after the power plant was reopened in 1995. The national currency, the dram, suffered hyperinflation for the first years after its introduction in 1993.\nNevertheless, the government was able to make wide-ranging economic reforms that paid off in dramatically lower inflation and steady growth. The 1994 ceasefire in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has also helped the economy. Armenia has had strong economic growth since 1995, building on the turnaround that began the previous year, and inflation has been negligible for the past several years. New sectors, such as precious-stone processing and jewelry making, information and communication technology and tourism are beginning to supplement more traditional sectors of the economy, such as agriculture.\nThis steady economic progress has earned Armenia increasing support from international institutions. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and other international financial institutions (IFIs) and foreign countries are extending considerable grants and loans. Loans to Armenia since 1993 exceed $1.1\u00a0billion. These loans are targeted at reducing the budget deficit and stabilising the currency; developing private businesses; energy; agriculture; food processing; transportation; the health and education sectors; and ongoing rehabilitation in the earthquake zone. The government joined the WTO on 5 February 2003. But one of the main sources of foreign direct investments remains the Armenian diaspora, which finances major parts of the reconstruction of infrastructure and other public projects. Being a growing democratic state, Armenia also hopes to get more financial aid from the Western World.\nA liberal foreign investment law was approved in June 1994, and a law on privatisation was adopted in 1997, as well as a programme of state property privatisation. Continued progress will depend on the ability of the government to strengthen its macroeconomic management, including increasing revenue collection, improving the investment climate, and making strides against corruption. However, unemployment, which was 18.5% in 2015, still remains a major problem due to the influx of thousands of refugees from the Karabakh conflict.\nIn 2017, the economy grew by 7.5% due to rising copper prices.\nIn 2022, Armenia's GDP stood at $39.4 billion, and enjoyed an economic freedom index of 65.3, according to Heritage Organisation.\nThe Armenian economy is predicted to grow by 13% in 2022 due to a huge influx of Russian citizens. The IMF's preliminary forecast as of March 2022 predicted growth of 1.5% for the year.\nScience and technology.\nResearch spending is low in Armenia, averaging 0.25% of GDP over 2010\u20132013. However, the statistical record of research expenditure is incomplete, as expenditure by privately owned business enterprises is not surveyed in Armenia. The world average for domestic expenditure on research was 1.7% of GDP in 2013.\nThe country's \"Strategy for the Development of Science 2011\u20132020\" envisions that 'by 2020, Armenia is a country with a knowledge-based economy and is competitive within the European Research Area with its level of basic and applied research.' It fixes the following targets:\nBased on this strategy, the accompanying \"Action Plan\" was approved by the government in June 2011. It defines the following targets:\nAlthough the \"Strategy\" clearly pursues a 'science push' approach, with public research institutes serving as the key policy target, it nevertheless mentions the goal of establishing an innovation system. However, the main driver of innovation, the business sector, is not mentioned. In between publishing the \"Strategy\" and \"Action Plan\", the government issued a resolution in May 2010 on \"Science and Technology Development Priorities for 2010\u20132014\". These priorities are:\nThe Law on the National Academy of Sciences was adopted in May 2011. This law is expected to play a key role in shaping the Armenian innovation system. It allows the National Academy of Sciences to extend its business activities to the commercialisation of research results and the creation of spin-offs; it also makes provision for restructuring the National Academy of Sciences by combining institutes involved in closely related research areas into a single body. Three of these new centres are particularly relevant: the Centre for Biotechnology, the Centre for Zoology and Hydro-ecology and the Centre for Organic and Pharmaceutical Chemistry.\nThe government is focusing its support on selected industrial sectors. More than 20 projects have been cofunded by the State Committee of Science in targeted branches: pharmaceuticals, medicine and biotechnology, agricultural mechanisation and machine building, electronics, engineering, chemistry and, in particular, the sphere of information technology.\nOver the past decade, the government has made an effort to encourage science\u2013industry linkages. The Armenian information technology sector has been particularly active: a number of public\u2013private partnerships have been established between companies and universities, in order to give students marketable skills and generate innovative ideas at the interface of science and business. Examples are Synopsys Inc. and the Enterprise Incubator Foundation. Armenia was ranked 63rd in the Global Innovation Index in 2024.\nDemographics.\nArmenia has a population of 2,932,731 as of 2022 and is the third most densely populated of the former Soviet republics. There has been a problem of population decline due to elevated levels of emigration after the break-up of the USSR. In the past years emigration levels have declined and some population growth is observed since 2012.\nArmenia has a relatively large external diaspora (8\u00a0million by some estimates, greatly exceeding the 3\u00a0million population of Armenia itself), with communities existing across the globe. The largest Armenian communities outside of Armenia can be found in Russia, France, Iran, the United States, Georgia, Syria, Lebanon, Australia, Canada, Greece, Cyprus, Israel, Poland, Ukraine and Brazil. 40,000 to 70,000 Armenians still live in Turkey (mostly in and around Istanbul).\nAbout 1,000 Armenians reside in the Armenian Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem, a remnant of a once-larger community. Italy is home to the San Lazzaro degli Armeni, an island located in the Venetian Lagoon, which is completely occupied by a monastery run by the Mechitarists, an Armenian Catholic congregation. Approximately 139,000 Armenians lived in the de facto independent country Republic of Artsakh where they formed a majority before 1 October 2023, when almost the entire population of the region had fled to Armenia.\nCities.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nEthnic groups.\nEthnic Armenians make up 98.1% of the population. Yazidis make up 1.1%, and Russians 0.5%. Other minorities include Assyrians, Ukrainians, Greeks (usually called Caucasus Greeks), Kurds, Georgians, Belarusians, and Jews. There are also smaller communities of Vlachs, Mordvins, Ossetians, Udis, and Tats. Minorities of Poles and Caucasus Germans also exist though they are heavily Russified. As of 2022, there are 31,077 Yazidis in Armenia.\nDuring the Soviet era, Azerbaijanis were historically the second largest population in the country, numbering 76,550 in 1922, and forming about 2.5% in 1989. However, due to the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, virtually all of them emigrated from Armenia to Azerbaijan. Conversely, Armenia received a large influx of Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan, thus giving Armenia a more homogeneous character.\nAccording to Gallup research conducted in 2017 Armenia has one of the highest migrant acceptance (welcoming) rates in eastern Europe.\nLanguages.\nArmenians have their own distinct alphabet and language, which is the only official language. The alphabet was invented c.\u2009AD 405 by Mesrop Mashtots and consists of thirty-nine letters, three of which were added during the Cilician period. The main foreign languages that Armenians know are Russian and English. Due to its Soviet past, most of the old population can speak Russian quite well. According to a 2013 survey, 95% of Armenians said they had some knowledge of Russian (24% advanced, 59% intermediate) compared to 40% who said they knew some English (4% advanced, 16% intermediate and 20% beginner). However, more adults (50%) think that English should be taught in public secondary schools than those who prefer Russian (44%).\nReligion.\nArmenia was the first nation to adopt Christianity as a state religion, an event traditionally dated to AD 301.\nThe predominant religion in Armenia is Christianity. Its roots go back to the 1st century AD, when it was founded by two of Jesus' twelve apostles \u2013 Thaddaeus and Bartholomew \u2013 who preached Christianity in Armenia between AD 40\u201360.\nOver 93% of Christians in Armenia belong to the Armenian Apostolic Church, which is in communion only with the churches comprising Oriental Orthodoxy\u2014of which it is itself a member.\nThe Catholic Church maintains jurisdictions of both the Latin Church and Armenian Catholic Church in Armenia. Of note are the Mechitarists (also spelled \"Mekhitarists\" ), a congregation of Benedictine monks in the Armenian Catholic Church, founded in 1712 by Mekhitar of Sebaste. They are best known for their series of scholarly publications of ancient Armenian versions of otherwise lost ancient Greek texts.\nThe Armenian Evangelical Church has several thousand members throughout the country.\nOther Christian denominations in Armenia are the Pentecostal branches of Protestant community such as the Word of Life, the Armenian Brotherhood Church, the Baptists (which are known as one of the oldest existing denominations in Armenia, and were permitted by the authorities of the Soviet Union), and Presbyterians.\nArmenia is also home to a Russian community of Molokans which practice a form of Spiritual Christianity originated from the Russian Orthodox Church.\nThe Yazidis, who live in the western part of the country, practice Yazidism. The world's largest Yazidi temple, Quba M\u00ear\u00ea D\u00eewan\u00ea, was completed in 2019 in the village of Aknalich.\nThere is a Jewish community in Armenia of approximately 750 people since independence with most emigrants leaving for Israel. There are currently two synagogues in Armenia \u2013 one in the capital, Yerevan, and the other in the city of Sevan located near Lake Sevan.\nHealth care.\nHealthcare in Armenia has undergone significant changes since independence in 1991. Initially, the Soviet healthcare system was highly centralized and provided free medical assistance to all citizens. After independence, the healthcare system underwent reform and primary care services have been free of charge since 2006. Despite improvements in accessibility and the implementation of an Open Enrollment programme, out-of-pocket health expenditures remain high and corruption among healthcare professionals remains a concern. In 2019, healthcare became free for all citizens under the age of 18 and the number of people receiving free or subsidized care under the Basic Benefits Package was increased.\nAfter a significant decline in earlier decades, crude birth rates in Armenia slightly increased from 13.0 (per 1000 people) in the year 1998 to 14.2 in 2015; this timeframe also showed a similar trajectory in the crude death rate, which grew from 8.6 to 9.3. Life expectancy at birth at 74.8 years was the 4th-highest among the Post-Soviet states in 2014.\nEducation.\nIn medieval times, the University of Gladzor and University of Tatev took an important role for Armenian education.\nA literacy rate of 100% was reported as early as 1960. In the communist era, Armenian education followed the standard Soviet model of complete state control (from Moscow) of curricula and teaching methods and close integration of education activities with other aspects of society, such as politics, culture, and the economy.\nIn the 1988\u201389 school year, 301 students per 10,000 were in specialized secondary or higher education, a figure slightly lower than the Soviet average. In 1989, some 58% of Armenians over age fifteen had completed their secondary education, and 14% had a higher education. In the 1990\u201391 school year, the estimated 1,307 primary and secondary schools were attended by 608,800 students. Another seventy specialised secondary institutions had 45,900 students, and 68,400 students were enrolled in a total of ten postsecondary institutions that included universities. In addition, 35% of eligible children attended preschools. In 1992 Armenia's largest institution of higher learning, Yerevan State University, had eighteen departments, including ones for social sciences, sciences, and law. Its faculty numbered about 1,300 teachers and its student population about 10,000 students. The National Polytechnic University of Armenia is operating since 1933.\nIn the early 1990s, Armenia made substantial changes to the centralised and regimented Soviet system. Because at least 98% of students in higher education were Armenian, curricula began to emphasise Armenian history and culture. Armenian became the dominant language of instruction, and many schools that had taught in Russian closed by the end of 1991. Russian was still widely taught, however, as a second language.\nIn 2014, the National Programme for Educational Excellence embarked on creating an internationally competitive and academically rigorous alternative educational programme (the Araratian Baccalaureate) for Armenian schools and increasing the importance and status of the teacher's role in society.\nThe Ministry of Education and Science is responsible for regulation of the sector. Primary and secondary education in Armenia is free, and completion of secondary school is compulsory. Higher education in Armenia is harmonized with the Bologna process and the European Higher Education Area. The Armenian National Academy of Sciences plays an important role in postgraduate education.\nSchooling takes 12 years in Armenia and breaks down into primary (4 years), middle (5 years) and high school (3 years). Schools engage a 10-grade mark system. The government also supports Armenian schools outside of Armenia.\nGross enrollment in tertiary education at 44% in 2015 surpassed peer countries of the South Caucasus but remained below the average for Europe and Central Asia. However, public spending per student in tertiary education in GDP-ratio terms is one of the lowest for post-USSR countries (for which data was available).\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nArmenian architecture, as it originates in an earthquake-prone region, tends to be built with this hazard in mind. Armenian buildings tend to be rather low-slung and thick-walled in design. Armenia has abundant resources of stone, and relatively few forests, so stone was nearly always used throughout for large buildings. Small buildings and most residential buildings were normally constructed of lighter materials, and hardly any early examples survive, as at the abandoned medieval capital of Ani.\nMusic and dance.\nArmenian music is a mix of indigenous folk music, perhaps best-represented by Djivan Gasparyan's well-known duduk music, as well as light pop, and extensive Christian music.\nInstruments like the duduk, dhol, zurna, and kanun are commonly found in Armenian folk music. Artists such as Sayat Nova are famous due to their influence in the development of Armenian folk music. One of the oldest types of Armenian music is the Armenian chant which is the most common kind of religious music in Armenia. Many of these chants are ancient in origin, extending to pre-Christian times, while others are relatively modern, including several composed by Saint Mesrop Mashtots, the inventor of the Armenian alphabet. Whilst under Soviet rule, the Armenian classical music composer Aram Khatchaturian became internationally well known for his music, for various ballets and the Sabre Dance from his composition for the ballet Gayane.\nThe Armenian Genocide caused widespread emigration that led to the settlement of Armenians in various countries in the world. Armenians kept to their traditions and certain diasporans rose to fame with their music. In the post-genocide Armenian community of the United States, the so-called \"kef\" style Armenian dance music, using Armenian and Middle Eastern folk instruments (often electrified/amplified) and some western instruments, was popular. This style preserved the folk songs and dances of Western Armenia, and many artists also played the contemporary popular songs of Turkey and other Middle Eastern countries from which the Armenians emigrated.\nRichard Hagopian is perhaps the most famous artist of the traditional \"kef\" style and the Vosbikian Band was notable in the 1940s and 1950s for developing their own style of \"kef music\" heavily influenced by the popular American Big Band Jazz of the time. Later, stemming from the Middle Eastern Armenian diaspora and influenced by Continental European (especially French) pop music, the Armenian pop music genre grew to fame in the 1960s and 1970s with artists such as Adiss Harmandian and Harout Pamboukjian performing to the Armenian diaspora and Armenia; also with artists such as Sirusho, performing pop music combined with Armenian folk music in today's entertainment industry.\nOther Armenian diasporans that rose to fame in classical or international music circles are world-renowned French-Armenian singer and composer Charles Aznavour, pianist Sahan Arzruni, prominent opera sopranos such as Hasmik Papian and more recently Isabel Bayrakdarian and Anna Kasyan. Certain Armenians settled to sing non-Armenian tunes such as the heavy metal band System of a Down (which nonetheless often incorporates traditional Armenian instrumentals and styling into their songs) or pop star Cher. In the Armenian diaspora, Armenian revolutionary songs are popular with the youth. These songs encourage Armenian patriotism and are generally about Armenian history and national heroes.\nArt.\nYerevan Vernissage (arts and crafts market), close to Republic Square, bustles with hundreds of vendors selling a variety of crafts on weekends and Wednesdays (though the selection is much reduced mid-week). The market offers woodcarving, antiques, fine lace, and the hand-knotted wool carpets and kilims that are a Caucasus speciality. Obsidian, which is found locally, is crafted into assortment of jewellery and ornamental objects. Armenian gold smithery enjoys a long tradition, populating one corner of the market with a selection of gold items. Soviet relics and souvenirs of recent Russian manufacture \u2013 nesting dolls, watches, enamel boxes and so on \u2013 are also available at the Vernisage.\nAcross from the Opera House, a popular art market fills another city park on the weekends. Armenia's long history as a crossroads of the ancient world has resulted in a landscape with innumerable fascinating archaeological sites to explore. Medieval, Iron Age, Bronze Age and even Stone Age sites are all within a few hours drive from the city. All but the most spectacular remain virtually undiscovered, allowing visitors to view churches and fortresses in their original settings.\nThe National Art Gallery in Yerevan has more than 16,000 works that date back to the Middle Ages, which indicate Armenia's rich tales and stories of the times. It houses paintings by many European masters as well. The Modern Art Museum, the Children's Picture Gallery, and the Martiros Saryan Museum are only a few of the other noteworthy collections of fine art on display in Yerevan. Moreover, many private galleries are in operation, with many more opening every year, featuring rotating exhibitions and sales.\nOn 13 April 2013, the Armenian government announced a change in law to allow freedom of panorama for 3D works of art.\nMedia.\nTelevision, magazines, and newspapers are all operated by both state-owned and for-profit corporations which depend on advertising, subscription, and other sales-related revenues. The Constitution of Armenia guarantees freedom of speech and Armenia ranks 61st in the 2020 Press Freedom Index report compiled by Reporters Without Borders, between Georgia and Poland. Armenia's press freedom rose considerably following the 2018 Velvet Revolution.\nAs of 2020, the biggest issue facing press freedom in Armenia is judicial harassment of journalists, specifically defamation suits and attacks on journalists' right to protect sources, as well as excessive responses to combat disinformation spread by social media users. Reporters Without Borders also cites continued concerns about lack of transparency regarding ownership of media outlets.\nCinema.\nCinema in Armenia was born on 16 April 1923, when the Armenian State Committee of Cinema was established by a decree of the Soviet Armenian government.\nHowever, the first Armenian film with Armenian subject called \"Haykakan Sinema\" was produced earlier in 1912 in Cairo by Armenian-Egyptian publisher Vahan Zartarian. The film was premiered in Cairo on 13 March 1913.\nIn March 1924, the first Armenian film studio; \"Armenfilm\" ( \"Hayfilm\", \"Armenkino\") was established in Yerevan, starting with a documentary film called \"Soviet Armenia\".\n\"Namus\" was the first Armenian silent black-and-white film, directed by Hamo Beknazarian in 1925, based on a play of Alexander Shirvanzade, describing the ill fate of two lovers, who were engaged by their families to each other since childhood, but because of violations of \"namus\" (a tradition of honor), the girl was married by her father to another person. The first sound film, \"Pepo\" was shot in 1935 and directed by Hamo Beknazarian.\nCuisine.\nArmenian cuisine is closely related to eastern and Mediterranean cuisine; various spices, vegetables, fish, and fruits combine to present unique dishes. The main characteristics of Armenian cuisine are a reliance on the quality of the ingredients rather than heavily spicing food, the use of herbs, the use of wheat in a variety of forms, of legumes, nuts, and fruit (as a main ingredient as well as to sour food), and the stuffing of a wide variety of leaves.\nThe pomegranate, with its symbolic association with fertility, represents the nation. The apricot is the national fruit.\nSport.\nA wide array of sports are played in Armenia, the most popular among them being wrestling, weightlifting, judo, association football, chess, and boxing. Armenia's mountainous terrain provides great opportunities for the practice of sports like skiing and climbing. Being a landlocked country, water sports can only be practised on lakes, notably Lake Sevan. Competitively, Armenia has been successful in chess, weightlifting and wrestling at the international level. Armenia is also an active member of the international sports community, with full membership in the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF). It also hosts the Pan-Armenian Games.\nPrior to 1992, Armenians would participate in the Olympics representing the USSR. As part of the Soviet Union, Armenia was very successful, winning plenty of medals and helping the USSR win the medal standings at the Olympics on numerous occasions. The first medal won by an Armenian in modern Olympic history was by Hrant Shahinyan (sometimes spelled as Grant Shaginyan), who won two golds and two silvers in gymnastics at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. To highlight the level of success of Armenians in the Olympics, Shahinyan was quoted as saying:\n\"Armenian sportsmen had to outdo their opponents by several notches for the shot at being accepted into any Soviet team. But those difficulties notwithstanding, 90 percent of Armenian athletes on Soviet Olympic teams came back with medals.\"\nArmenia first participated at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona under a unified CIS team, where it was very successful, winning three golds and one silver in weightlifting, wrestling and sharp shooting, despite only having five athletes. Since the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Armenia has participated as an independent nation.\nArmenia participates in the Summer Olympic Games in boxing, wrestling, weightlifting, judo, gymnastics, track and field, diving, swimming and sharp shooting. It also participates in the Winter Olympic Games in alpine skiing, cross-country skiing and figure skating.\nFootball is also popular in Armenia. The most successful team was the FC Ararat Yerevan team of the 1970s who won the Soviet Cup in 1973 and 1975 and the Soviet Top League in 1973. The latter achievement saw FC Ararat gain entry to the European Cup where \u2013 despite a home victory in the second leg \u2013 they lost on aggregate at the quarter-final stage to eventual winner FC Bayern Munich. Armenia competed internationally as part of the USSR national football team until the Armenian national football team was formed in 1992 after the split of the Soviet Union. Armenia have never qualified for a major tournament although recent improvements saw the team to achieve 44th position in the FIFA World Rankings in September 2011. The national team is controlled by the Football Federation of Armenia. The Armenian Premier League is the highest level football competition in Armenia, and has been dominated by FC Pyunik in recent seasons. The league currently consists of eight teams and relegates to the Armenian First League.\nArmenia and the Armenian diaspora have produced many successful footballers, including Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Youri Djorkaeff, Alain Boghossian, Andranik Eskandarian, Andranik Teymourian, Edgar Manucharyan, Khoren Oganesian and Nikita Simonyan. Djokaeff and Boghossian won the 1998 FIFA World Cup with France, Teymourian competed in the 2006 World Cup for Iran and Manucharyan played in the Dutch Eredivisie for Ajax. Mkhitaryan has been one of the most successful Armenian footballers in recent years, playing for international clubs such as Borussia Dortmund, Manchester United, Arsenal, A.S. Roma and currently for Inter Milan.\nWrestling has been a successful sport in the Olympics for Armenia. At the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Armen Nazaryan won the gold in the Men's Greco-Roman Flyweight (52\u00a0kg) category and Armen Mkrtchyan won the silver in Men's Freestyle Paperweight (48\u00a0kg) category, securing Armenia's first two medals in its Olympic history.\nTraditional Armenian wrestling is called Kokh and practised in traditional garb; it was one of the influences included in the Soviet combat sport of Sambo, which is also very popular.\nThe government of Armenia budgets about $2.8\u00a0million annually for sports and gives it to the National Committee of Physical Education and Sports, the body that determines which programmes should benefit from the funds.\nDue to the lack of success lately on the international level, in recent years, Armenia has rebuilt 16 Soviet-era sports schools and furnished them with new equipment for a total cost of $1.9\u00a0million. The rebuilding of the regional schools was financed by the Armenian government. $9.3\u00a0million has been invested in the resort town of Tsaghkadzor to improve the winter sports infrastructure because of dismal performances at recent winter sports events. In 2005, a cycling centre was opened in Yerevan with the aim of helping produce world class Armenian cyclists. The government has also promised a cash reward of $700,000 to Armenians who win a gold medal at the Olympics.\nArmenia has also been very successful in chess, winning the World Champion in 2011 and the World Chess Olympiad on three occasions.\nExplanatory notes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "20950": "Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact\n1939 neutrality pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union\nThe Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact, officially the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and also known as the Hitler\u2013Stalin Pact and the Nazi\u2013Soviet Pact, was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, with a secret protocol establishing Soviet and German spheres of influence across Eastern Europe. The pact was signed in Moscow on 24 August 1939 (backdated 23 August 1939) by Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. \nThe treaty was the culmination of negotiations around the 1938\u20131939 deal discussions, after tripartite discussions with the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and France had broken down, and committed neither government would aid or ally itself with an enemy of the other, for the next 10 years. Under the Secret Protocol, Poland was to be shared, while Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Bessarabia went to the Soviet Union. The protocol also recognized the interest of Lithuania in the Vilnius region. In the west, rumoured existence of the Secret Protocol was proven only when it was made public during the Nuremberg trials.\nA week after signing the pact, on 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. On 17 September, one day after a Soviet\u2013Japanese ceasefire came into effect after the Battles of Khalkhin Gol, and one day after the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union approved the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact, Stalin, stating concern for ethnic Ukrainians and Belarusians in Poland, ordered the Soviet invasion of Poland. After a short war ending in military defeat for Poland, Germany and the Soviet Union drew up a new border between them on formerly Polish territory in the supplementary protocol of the German\u2013Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty.\nIn March 1940, parts of the Karelia, and eastern parts of Salla and Kuusamo regions as well, in Finland were annexed by the Soviet Union following the Winter War. The Soviet annexation of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and parts of Romania (Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region) followed. Stalin's invasion of Bukovina in 1940 violated the pact, since it went beyond the Soviet sphere of influence that had been agreed with the Axis.\nThe territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union following the 1939 Soviet invasion east of the Curzon line remained in the Soviet Union after the war and are now in Ukraine and Belarus. Vilnius was given to Lithuania. Only Podlaskie and a small part of Galicia east of the San River, around Przemy\u015bl, were returned to Poland. Of all the other territories annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939\u20131940, those detached from Finland (Western Karelia, Hanko) Estonia (Estonian Ingria and Petseri County) and Latvia (Abrene) remain part of Russia, the successor state to the Russian SFSR and the Soviet Union after the collapse of the USSR in 1991. The territories annexed from Romania were also integrated into the Soviet Union (such as the Moldavian SSR, or oblasts of the Ukrainian SSR). The core of Bessarabia now forms Moldova. Northern Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region now form the Chernivtsi Oblast of Ukraine. Southern Bessarabia is part of the Odessa Oblast, which is also now in Ukraine.\nThe pact was terminated on 22 June 1941, when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union, in pursuit of the ideological goal of \"Lebensraum\". The Anglo-Soviet Agreement succeeded it. After the war, Ribbentrop was convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg trials and executed in 1946, whilst Molotov died in 1986.\nBackground.\nThe outcome of World War I was disastrous for both the German and the Russian empires. The Russian Civil War broke out in late 1917 after the Bolshevik Revolution and Vladimir Lenin, the first leader of the new Soviet Russia, recognised the independence of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Moreover, facing a German military advance, Lenin and Trotsky were forced to agree to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which ceded many western Russian territories to Germany. After the German collapse, a multinational Allied-led army intervened in the civil war (1917\u20131922).\nOn 16 April 1922, the German Weimar Republic and the Soviet Union agreed to the Treaty of Rapallo in which they renounced territorial and financial claims against each other. Each party also pledged neutrality in the event of an attack against the other with the Treaty of Berlin (1926). Trade between the two countries had fallen sharply after World War I, but trade agreements signed in the mid-1920s helped to increase trade to 433\u00a0million\u00a0\u211b\ufe01\u2133\ufe01 per year by 1927.\nAt the beginning of the 1930s, the Nazi Party's rise to power increased tensions between Germany and the Soviet Union, along with other countries with ethnic Slavs, who were considered \"Untermenschen\" (subhuman) according to Nazi racial ideology. Moreover, the antisemitic Nazis associated ethnic Jews with both communism and financial capitalism, both of which they opposed. Nazi theory held that Slavs in the Soviet Union were being ruled by \"Jewish Bolshevik\" masters. Hitler had spoken of an inevitable battle for the acquisition of land for Germany in the east. The resulting manifestation of German anti-Bolshevism and an increase in Soviet foreign debts caused a dramatic decline in German\u2013Soviet trade. Imports of Soviet goods to Germany fell to 223\u00a0million\u00a0\u211b\ufe01\u2133\ufe01 in 1934 by the more isolationist Stalinist regime asserting power and by the abandonment of postwar Treaty of Versailles military controls, both of which decreased Germany's reliance on Soviet imports.\nIn 1935 Germany, after a previous German\u2013Polish declaration of non-aggression, Hermann G\u00f6ring proposed a military alliance with Poland against the Soviet Union, but this was rejected.\nIn 1936, Germany and Fascist Italy supported the Spanish Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War, but the Soviets supported the Spanish Republic. Thus, the Spanish Civil War became a proxy war between Germany and the Soviet Union. In 1936, Germany and Japan entered the Anti-Comintern Pact. and they were joined a year later by Italy, despite Italy having previously signed the Italo-Soviet Pact.\nOn 31 March 1939, Britain extended a guarantee to Poland that \"if any action clearly threatened Polish independence, and if the Poles felt it vital to resist such action by force, Britain would come to their aid\". Hitler was furious since that meant that the British were committed to political interests in Europe and that his land grabs such as the takeover of Czechoslovakia would no longer be taken lightly. His response to the political checkmate would later be heard at a rally in Wilhelmshaven: \"No power on earth would be able to break German might, and if the Western Allies thought Germany would stand by while they marshalled their 'satellite states' to act in their interests, then they were sorely mistaken\". Ultimately, Hitler's discontent with a British\u2013Polish alliance led to a restructuring of strategy towards Moscow. Alfred Rosenberg wrote that he had spoken to Hermann G\u00f6ring of the potential pact with the Soviet Union: \"When Germany's life is at stake, even a temporary alliance with Moscow must be contemplated\". Sometime in early May 1939 at Berghof, Ribbentrop showed Hitler a film of Stalin viewing his military in a recent parade. Hitler became intrigued with the idea of allying with the Soviets and Ribbentrop recalled Hitler saying that Stalin \"looked like a man he could do business with\". Ribbentrop was then given the nod to pursue negotiations with Moscow.\nMunich Conference.\nHitler's fierce anti-Soviet rhetoric was one of the reasons that Britain and France decided that Soviet participation in the 1938 Munich Conference on Czechoslovakia would be both dangerous and useless. In the Munich Agreement that followed the conference agreed to a German annexation of part of Czechoslovakia in late 1938, but in early 1939 it had been completely dissolved. The policy of appeasement toward Germany was conducted by the governments of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister \u00c9douard Daladier. The policy immediately raised the question of whether the Soviet Union could avoid being next on Hitler's list. The Soviet leadership believed that the West wanted to encourage German aggression in the East and to stay neutral in a war initiated by Germany in the hope that Germany and the Soviet Union would wear each other out and put an end to both regimes.\nFor Germany, an autarkic economic approach and an alliance with Britain were impossible and so closer relations with the Soviet Union to obtain raw materials became necessary. Besides economic reasons, an expected British blockade during a war would also create massive shortages for Germany in a number of key raw materials. After the Munich Agreement, the resulting increase in German military supply needs and Soviet demands for military machinery made talks between the two countries occur from late 1938 to March 1939. Also, the third Soviet five-year plan required new infusions of technology and industrial equipment. German war planners had estimated serious shortfalls of raw materials if Germany entered a war without the Soviet supply.\nOn 31 March 1939, in response to Germany's defiance of the Munich Agreement and the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Britain pledged its support and that of France to guarantee the independence of Poland, Belgium, Romania, Greece and Turkey. On 6 April, Poland and Britain agreed to formalise the guarantee as a military alliance, pending negotiations. On 28 April, Hitler denounced the 1934 German\u2013Polish declaration of non-aggression and the 1935 Anglo\u2013German Naval Agreement.\nIn mid-March 1939, attempting to contain Hitler's expansionism, the Soviet Union, Britain and France started to trade a flurry of suggestions and counterplans on a potential political and military agreement. Informal consultations started in April, but the main negotiations began only in May. Meanwhile, throughout early 1939, Germany had secretly hinted to Soviet diplomats that it could offer better terms for a political agreement than could Britain and France.\nThe Soviet Union, which feared Western powers and the possibility of \"capitalist encirclements\", had little hope of preventing war and wanted nothing less than an ironclad military alliance with France and Britain to provide guaranteed support for a two-pronged attack on Germany. Stalin's adherence to the collective security line was thus purely conditional. Britain and France believed that war could still be avoided and that since the Soviet Union was so weakened by the Great Purge that it could not be a main military participant. Many military sources were at variance with the last point, especially after the Soviet victories over the Japanese Kwantung Army in Manchuria. France was more anxious to find an agreement with the Soviet Union than Britain was. As a continental power, France was more willing to make concessions and more fearful of the dangers of an agreement between the Soviet Union and Germany. The contrasting attitudes partly explain why the Soviets have often been charged with playing a double game in 1939 of carrying on open negotiations for an alliance with Britain and France but secretly considering propositions from Germany.\nBy the end of May, drafts had been formally presented. In mid-June, the main tripartite negotiations started. Discussions were focused on potential guarantees to Central and Eastern Europe in the case of German aggression. The Soviets proposed to consider that a political turn towards Germany by the Baltic states would constitute an \"indirect aggression\" towards the Soviet Union. Britain opposed such proposals because they feared the Soviets' proposed language would justify a Soviet intervention in Finland and the Baltic states or push those countries to seek closer relations with Germany. The discussion of a definition of \"indirect aggression\" became one of the sticking points between the parties, and by mid-July, the tripartite political negotiations effectively stalled while the parties agreed to start negotiations on a military agreement, which the Soviets insisted had to be reached at the same time as any political agreement. One day before the military negotiations began, the Soviet Politburo pessimistically expected the coming negotiations to go nowhere and formally decided to consider German proposals seriously. The military negotiations began on 12 August in Moscow, with a British delegation headed by Admiral Sir Reginald Drax, French delegation headed by General and the Soviet delegation headed by Kliment Voroshilov, the commissar of defence, and Boris Shaposhnikov, chief of the general staff. Without written credentials, Drax was not authorised to guarantee anything to the Soviet Union and had been instructed by the British government to prolong the discussions as long as possible and to avoid answering the question of whether Poland would agree to permit Soviet troops to enter the country if the Germans invaded.\nNegotiations.\nBeginning of secret talks.\nFrom April to July, Soviet and German officials made statements on the potential for the beginning of political negotiations, but no actual negotiations took place. \"The Soviet Union had wanted good relations with Germany for years and was happy to see that feeling finally reciprocated\", wrote the historian Gerhard L. Weinberg. The ensuing discussion of a potential political deal between Germany and the Soviet Union had to be channeled into the framework of economic negotiations between the two countries, since close military and diplomatic connections that existed before the mid-1930s had been largely severed. In May, Stalin replaced his foreign minister from 1930 to 1939, Maxim Litvinov, who had advocated rapprochement with the West and was also Jewish, with Vyacheslav Molotov to allow the Soviet Union more latitude in discussions with more parties, instead of only Britain and France.\nOn 23 August 1939, two Focke-Wulf Condors, containing German diplomats, officials, and photographers (about 20 in each plane), headed by Ribbentrop, descended into Moscow. As the Nazi emissaries stepped off the plane, a Soviet military band played \"Deutschland, Deutschland \u00fcber Alles\". The Nazi arrival was well planned, with all aesthetics in order. The classic hammer and sickle was propped up next to the swastika of the Nazi flag that had been used in a local film studio for Soviet propaganda films. After stepping off the plane and shaking hands, Ribbentrop and Gustav Hilger along with German ambassador Friedrich-Werner von der Schulenburg and Stalin's chief bodyguard, Nikolai Vlasik, entered a limousine operated by the NKVD to travel to Red Square. The limousine arrived close to Stalin's office and was greeted by Alexander Poskrebyshev, the chief of Stalin's personal chancellery. The Germans were led up a flight of stairs to a room with lavish furnishings. Stalin and Molotov greeted the visitors, much to the Nazis' surprise. It was well known that Stalin avoided meeting foreign visitors, and so his presence at the meeting showed how seriously that the Soviets were taking the negotiations.\nIn late July and early August 1939, Soviet and German officials agreed on most of the details of a planned economic agreement and specifically addressed a potential political agreement, which the Soviets stated could come only after an economic agreement.\nThe German presence in the Soviet capital during negotiations can be regarded as rather tense. German pilot Hans Baur recalled that Soviet secret police followed every move. Their job was to inform authorities when he left his residence and where he was headed. Baur's guide informed him: \"Another car would tack itself onto us and follow us fifty or so yards in the rear, and wherever we went and whatever we did, the secret police would be on our heels.\" Baur also recalled trying to tip his Russian driver, which led to a harsh exchange of words: \"He was furious. He wanted to know whether this was the thanks he got for having done his best for us to get him into prison. We knew perfectly well it was forbidden to take tips.\"\nAugust negotiations.\nIn early August, Germany and the Soviet Union worked out the last details of their economic deal and started to discuss a political agreement. Both countries' diplomats explained to each other the reasons for the hostility in their foreign policy in the 1930s and found common ground in both countries' anticapitalism with Karl Schnurre stating: \"there is one common element in the ideology of Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union: opposition to the capitalist democracies\" or that \"it seems to us rather unnatural that a socialist state would stand on the side of the western democracies\".\nAt the same time, British, French, and Soviet negotiators scheduled three-party talks on military matters to occur in Moscow in August 1939 that aimed to define what the agreement would specify on the reaction of the three powers to a German attack. The tripartite military talks, started in mid-August, hit a sticking point on the passage of Soviet troops through Poland if Germans attacked, and the parties waited as British and French officials overseas pressured Polish officials to agree to such terms. Polish officials refused to allow Soviet troops into Polish territory if Germany attacked; Polish Foreign Minister J\u00f3zef Beck pointed out that the Polish government feared that if the Red Army entered Polish territory, it would never leave.\nOn 19 August, the 1939 German\u2013Soviet Commercial Agreement was finally signed. On 21 August, the Soviets suspended the tripartite military talks and cited other reasons. The same day, Stalin received assurances that Germany would approve secret protocols to the proposed non-aggression pact that would place the half of Poland east of the Vistula River as well as Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Bessarabia in the Soviet sphere of influence. That night, Stalin replied that the Soviets were willing to sign the pact and that he would receive Ribbentrop on 23 August.\nNews leaks.\nOn 25 August 1939, the \"New York Times\" ran a front-page story by Otto D. Tolischus, \"Nazi Talks Secret\", whose subtitle included \"Soviet and Reich Agree on East\". On 26 August 1939, the \"New York Times\" reported Japanese anger and French communist surprise over the pact. The same day, however, Tolischus filed a story that noted Nazi troops on the move near Gleiwitz (now Gliwice), which led to the false flag Gleiwitz incident on 31 August 1939. On 28 August 1939, the \"New York Times\" was still reporting on fears of a Gleiwitz raid. On 29 August 1939, the \"New York Times\" reported that the Supreme Soviet had failed on its first day of convening to act on the pact. The same day, the \"New York Times\" also reported from Montreal, Canada, that American Professor Samuel N. Harper of the University of Chicago had stated publicly his belief that \"the Russo-German non-aggression pact conceals an agreement whereby Russia and Germany may have planned spheres of influence for Eastern Europe\". On 30 August 1939, the \"New York Times\" reported a Soviet buildup on its Western frontiers by moving 200,000 troops from the Far East.\nSecret protocol.\nOn 22 August, one day after talks broke down with France and Britain, Moscow revealed that Ribbentrop would visit Stalin the next day. The Soviets were still negotiating with the British and the French missions in Moscow. With the Western nations unwilling to accede to Soviet demands, Stalin instead entered a secret German\u2013Soviet pact. On 23 August, a ten-year non-aggression pact was signed with provisions that included consultation, arbitration if either party disagreed, neutrality if either went to war against a third power and no membership of a group \"which is directly or indirectly aimed at the other\". The article \"On Soviet\u2013German Relations\" in the Soviet newspaper \"Izvestia\" of 21 August 1939, stated:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Following completion of the Soviet\u2013German trade and credit agreement, there has arisen the question of improving political links between Germany and the USSR.\nThere was also a secret protocol to the pact, which was revealed only after Germany's defeat in 1945 although hints about its provisions had been leaked much earlier, so as to influence Lithuania. According to the protocol, Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland were divided into German and Soviet \"spheres of influence\". In the north, Finland, Estonia, and Latvia were assigned to the Soviet sphere. Poland was to be partitioned in the event of its \"political rearrangement\": the areas east of the Pisa, Narew, Vistula, and San rivers would go to the Soviet Union, and Germany would occupy the west. Lithuania, which was adjacent to East Prussia, was assigned to the German sphere of influence, but a second secret protocol, agreed to in September 1939, reassigned Lithuania to the Soviet Union. According to the protocol, Lithuania would be granted its historical capital, Vilnius, which was part of Poland during the interwar period. Another clause stipulated that Germany would not interfere with the Soviet Union's actions towards Bessarabia, which was then part of Romania. As a result, Bessarabia as well as the Northern Bukovina and Hertsa regions were occupied by the Soviets and integrated into the Soviet Union.\nAt the signing, Ribbentrop and Stalin enjoyed warm conversations, exchanged toasts and further addressed the prior hostilities between the countries in the 1930s. They characterised Britain as always attempting to disrupt Soviet\u2013German relations and stated that the Anti-Comintern Pact was aimed not at the Soviet Union but actually at Western democracies and \"frightened principally the City of London [British financiers] and the English shopkeepers.\"\nRevelation.\nThe agreement stunned the world. John Gunther, in Moscow in August 1939, recalled how the news of the 19 August commercial agreement surprised journalists and diplomats, who hoped for world peace. They did not expect the 21 August announcement of the non-aggression pact: \"Nothing more unbelievable could be imagined. Astonishment and skepticism turned quickly to consternation and alarm\". The news was met with utter shock and surprise by government leaders and media worldwide, most of whom were aware of only the British\u2013French\u2013Soviet negotiations, which had taken place for months; by Germany's allies, notably Japan; by the Comintern and foreign Communist parties; and Jewish communities all around the world.\nOn 24 August, \"Pravda\" and \"Izvestia\" carried news of the pact's public portions, complete with the now-famous front-page picture of Molotov signing the treaty with a smiling Stalin looking on. The same day, German diplomat Hans von Herwarth, whose grandmother was Jewish, informed Italian diplomat Guido Relli and American charg\u00e9 d'affaires Charles Bohlen of the secret protocol on the vital interests in the countries' allotted \"spheres of influence\" but failed to reveal the annexation rights for \"territorial and political rearrangement\". The agreement's public terms so exceeded the terms of an ordinary non-aggression treaty\u2014requiring that both parties consult with each other, and not aid a third party attacking either\u2014that Gunther heard a joke that Stalin had joined the anti-Comintern pact. \"Time Magazine\" repeatedly referred to the Pact as the \"Communazi Pact\" and its participants as \"communazis\" until April 1941.\nSoviet propaganda and representatives went to great lengths to minimize the importance of the fact that they had opposed and fought the Germans in various ways for a decade prior to signing the pact. Molotov tried to reassure the Germans of his good intentions by commenting to journalists that \"fascism is a matter of taste\". For its part, Germany also did a public volte-face regarding its virulent opposition to the Soviet Union, but Hitler still viewed an attack on the Soviet Union as \"inevitable\".\nConcerns over the possible existence of a secret protocol were expressed first by the intelligence organizations of the Baltic states only days after the pact was signed. Speculation grew stronger when Soviet negotiators referred to its content during the negotiations for military bases in those countries (see occupation of the Baltic States).\nThe day after the pact was signed, the Franco-British military delegation urgently requested a meeting with Soviet military negotiator Kliment Voroshilov. On 25 August, Voroshilov told them that \"in view of the changed political situation, no useful purpose can be served in continuing the conversation\". The same day, Hitler told the British ambassador to Berlin that the pact with the Soviets prevented Germany from facing a two-front war, which changed the strategic situation from that in World War I, and that Britain should accept his demands on Poland.\nOn 25 August, Hitler was surprised when Britain joined a defense pact with Poland. Hitler postponed his plans for an invasion of Poland on 26 August to 1 September. In accordance with the defence pact, Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September.\nConsequences in Finland, Poland, the Baltic States and Romania.\nInitial invasions.\nOn 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland from the west. Within a few days, Germany began conducting massacres of Polish and Jewish civilians and POWs, which took place in over 30 towns and villages in the first month of the German occupation. The Luftwaffe also took part by strafing fleeing civilian refugees on roads and by carrying out a bombing campaign. The Soviet Union assisted German air forces by allowing them to use signals broadcast by the Soviet radio station at Minsk, allegedly \"for urgent aeronautical experiments\".\nHitler declared at Danzig:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nIn the opinion of Robert Service, Stalin did not move instantly but was waiting to see whether the Germans would halt within the agreed area, and the Soviet Union also needed to secure the frontier in the Soviet\u2013Japanese border conflicts. On 17 September, the Red Army invaded Poland, violating the 1932 Soviet\u2013Polish Non-Aggression Pact, and occupied the Polish territory assigned to it by the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact. That was followed by co-ordination with German forces in Poland. Polish troops already fighting much stronger German forces on its west desperately tried to delay the capture of Warsaw. Consequently, Polish forces could not mount significant resistance against the Soviets. On 18 September, \"The New York Times\" published an editorial arguing that \"Hitlerism is brown communism, Stalinism is red fascism...The world will now understand that the only real 'ideological' issue is one between democracy, liberty and peace on the one hand and despotism, terror and war on the other.\"\nOn 21 September, Marshal of the Soviet Union Voroshilov, German military attach\u00e9 General K\u00f6string, and other officers signed a formal agreement in Moscow co-ordinating military movements in Poland, including the \"purging\" of saboteurs and the Red Army assisting with destruction of the \"enemy\". Joint German\u2013Soviet parades were held in Lviv and Brest-Litovsk, and the countries' military commanders met in the latter city. Stalin had decided in August that he was going to liquidate the Polish state, and a German\u2013Soviet meeting in September addressed the future structure of the \"Polish region\". Soviet authorities immediately started a campaign of Sovietisation of the newly acquired areas. The Soviets organised staged elections, the result of which was to become a legitimisation of the Soviet annexation of eastern Poland.\nModification of secret protocols.\nEleven days after the Soviet invasion of the Polish Kresy, the secret protocol of the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact was modified by the German\u2013Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty, allotting Germany a larger part of Poland and transferring Lithuania, with the exception of the left bank of the River Scheschupe, the \"Lithuanian Strip\", from the envisioned German sphere to the Soviet sphere. On 28 September 1939, the Soviet Union and German Reich issued a joint declaration in which they declared:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />After the Government of the German Reich and the Government of the USSR have, by means of the treaty signed today, definitively settled the problems arising from the collapse of the Polish state and have thereby created a sure foundation for lasting peace in the region, they mutually express their conviction that it would serve the true interest of all peoples to put an end to the state of war existing at present between Germany on the one side and England and France on the other. Both Governments will, therefore, direct their common efforts, jointly with other friendly powers if the occasion arises, toward attaining this goal as soon as possible.\nShould, however, the efforts of the two Governments remain fruitless, this would demonstrate the fact that England and France are responsible for the continuation of the war, whereupon, in case of the continuation of the war, the Governments of Germany and of the USSR shall engage in mutual consultations with regard to necessary measures.\nOn 3 October, Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, the German ambassador in Moscow, informed Joachim Ribbentrop that the Soviet government was willing to cede the city of Vilnius and its environs. On 8 October 1939, a new German\u2013Soviet agreement was reached by an exchange of letters between Vyacheslav Molotov and the German ambassador.\nThe Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were given no choice but to sign a so-called \"Pact of Defence and Mutual Assistance\", which permitted the Soviet Union to station troops in them.\nSoviet war with Finland and Katyn massacre.\nAfter the Baltic states had been forced to accept treaties, Stalin turned his sights on Finland and was confident that its capitulation could be attained without great effort. The Soviets demanded territories on the Karelian Isthmus, the islands of the Gulf of Finland and a military base near the Finnish capital, Helsinki, which Finland rejected. The Soviets staged the shelling of Mainila on 26 November and used it as a pretext to withdraw from the Soviet\u2013Finnish Non-Aggression Pact. On 30 November, the Red Army invaded Finland, launching the Winter War with the aim of annexing Finland into the Soviet Union. The Soviets formed the Finnish Democratic Republic to govern Finland after Soviet conquest. The leader of the Leningrad Military District, Andrei Zhdanov, commissioned a celebratory piece from Dmitri Shostakovich, \"Suite on Finnish Themes\", to be performed as the marching bands of the Red Army would be parading through Helsinki. After Finnish defenses surprisingly held out for over three months and inflicted stiff losses on Soviet forces, under the command of Semyon Timoshenko, the Soviets settled for an interim peace. Finland ceded parts of Karelia, Kuusamo, and Salla together with Hanko leased as a naval base (9% of Finnish territory), which resulted in approximately 422,000 Finns (12% of Finland's population) losing their homes. Soviet official casualty counts in the war exceeded 200,000 although Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev later claimed that the casualties may have been one million.\nAround that time, after several Gestapo\u2013NKVD conferences, Soviet NKVD officers also conducted lengthy interrogations of 300,000 Polish POWs in camps that were a selection process to determine who would be killed. On 5 March 1940, in what would later be known as the Katyn massacre, 22,000 members of the military as well as intellectuals were executed, labelled \"nationalists and counterrevolutionaries\" or kept at camps and prisons in western Ukraine and Belarus.\nSoviet Union occupies the Baltic states and part of Romania.\nIn mid-June 1940, while international attention focused on the German invasion of France, Soviet NKVD troops raided border posts in Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia.\nState administrations were liquidated and replaced by Soviet cadres, who deported or killed 34,250 Latvians, 75,000 Lithuanians and almost 60,000 Estonians. Elections took place, with a single pro-Soviet candidate listed for many positions, and the resulting people's assemblies immediately requesting admission into the Soviet Union, which was granted. (The Soviets annexed the whole of Lithuania, including the \u0160e\u0161up\u0117 area, which had been earmarked for Germany.)\nFinally, on 26 June, four days after the armistice between France and Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union issued an ultimatum that demanded Bessarabia and unexpectedly Northern Bukovina from Romania. Two days later, the Romanians acceded to the Soviet demands, and the Soviets occupied the territories. The Hertsa region was initially not requested by the Soviets but was later occupied by force after the Romanians had agreed to the initial Soviet demands. The subsequent waves of deportations began in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina.\nBeginnings of Operation Tannenberg and other Nazi atrocities.\nAt the end of October 1939, Germany enacted the death penalty for disobedience to the German occupation. Germany began a campaign of \"Germanization\", which meant assimilating the occupied territories politically, culturally, socially and economically into the German Reich. 50,000\u2013200,000 Polish children were kidnapped to be Germanised.\nThe elimination of Polish elites and intelligentsia was part of \"Generalplan Ost\". The \"Intelligenzaktion\", a plan to eliminate the Polish intelligentsia, Poland's 'leadership class', took place soon after the German invasion of Poland and lasted from fall of 1939 to the spring of 1940. As the result of the operation, in ten regional actions, about 60,000 Polish nobles, teachers, social workers, priests, judges and political activists were killed. It was continued in May 1940, when Germany launched \"AB-Aktion\", More than 16,000 members of the intelligentsia were murdered in Operation Tannenberg alone.\nGermany also planned to incorporate all of the land into Nazi Germany. That effort resulted in the forced resettlement of two million Poles. Families were forced to travel in the severe winter of 1939\u20131940, leaving behind almost all of their possessions without compensation. As part of Operation Tannenberg alone, 750,000 Polish peasants were forced to leave, and their property was given to Germans. A further 330,000 were murdered. Germany planned the eventual move of ethnic Poles to Siberia.\nAlthough Germany used forced labourers in most other occupied countries, Poles and other Slavs were viewed as inferior by Nazi propaganda and thus better suited for such duties. Between 1 and 2.5\u00a0million Polish citizens were transported to the Reich for forced labour. All Polish males were made to perform forced labour. While ethnic Poles were subject to selective persecution, all ethnic Jews were targeted by the Reich. In the winter of 1939\u201340, about 100,000 Jews were thus deported to Poland. They were initially gathered into massive urban ghettos, such as the 380,000 held in the Warsaw Ghetto, where large numbers died of starvation and diseases under their harsh conditions, including 43,000 in the Warsaw Ghetto alone. Poles and ethnic Jews were imprisoned in nearly every camp of the extensive concentration camp system in German-occupied Poland and the Reich. In Auschwitz, which began operating on 14 June 1940, 1.1\u00a0million people perished.\nRomania and Soviet republics.\nIn the summer of 1940, fear of the Soviet Union, in conjunction with German support for the territorial demands of Romania's neighbours and the Romanian government's own miscalculations, resulted in more territorial losses for Romania. Between 28 June and 4 July, the Soviet Union occupied and annexed Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region of Romania.\nOn 30 August, Ribbentrop and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano issued the Second Vienna Award, giving Northern Transylvania to Hungary. On 7 September, Romania ceded Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria (Axis-sponsored Treaty of Craiova). After various events over the following months, Romania increasingly took on the aspect of a German-occupied country.\nThe Soviet-occupied territories were converted into republics of the Soviet Union. During the two years after the annexation, the Soviets arrested approximately 100,000 Polish citizens and deported between 350,000 and 1,500,000, of whom between 250,000 and 1,000,000 died, mostly civilians. Forced re-settlements into gulag labour camps and exile settlements in remote areas of the Soviet Union occurred. According to Norman Davies, almost half of them were dead by July 1940.\nFurther secret protocol modifications settling borders and immigration issues.\nOn 10 January 1941, Germany and the Soviet Union signed an agreement settling several ongoing issues. Secret protocols in the new agreement modified the \"Secret Additional Protocols\" of the German\u2013Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty, ceding the Lithuanian Strip to the Soviet Union in exchange for US$7.5\u00a0million (31.5\u00a0million\u00a0\u211b\ufe01\u2133\ufe01). The agreement formally set the border between Germany and the Soviet Union between the Igorka River and the Baltic Sea. It also extended trade regulation of the 1940 German-Soviet Commercial Agreement until 1 August 1942, increased deliveries above the levels of the first year of that agreement, settled trading rights in the Baltics and Bessarabia, calculated the compensation for German property interests in the Baltic states that were now occupied by the Soviets and covered other issues. It also covered the migration to Germany within <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />2+1\u20442 months of ethnic Germans and German citizens in Soviet-held Baltic territories and the migration to the Soviet Union of Baltic and \"White Russian\" \"nationals\" in the German-held territories.\nSoviet\u2013German relations.\nEarly political issues.\nBefore the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop pact was announced, Western communists denied that such a treaty would be signed. Herbert Biberman, a future member of the Hollywood Ten, denounced rumours as \"Fascist propaganda\". Earl Browder, the head of the Communist Party USA, stated that \"there is as much chance of agreement as of Earl Browder being elected president of the Chamber of Commerce.\" Gunther wrote, however, that some knew \"communism and Fascism were more closely allied than was normally understood\", and Ernst von Weizs\u00e4cker had told Nevile Henderson on 16 August that the Soviet Union would \"join in sharing in the Polish spoils\". In September 1939, the Comintern suspended all anti-Nazi and anti-fascist propaganda and explained that the war in Europe was a matter of capitalist states attacking one another for imperialist purposes. Western communists acted accordingly; although they had previously supported collective security, they now denounced Britain and France for going to war.\nWhen anti-German demonstrations erupted in Prague, Czechoslovakia, the Comintern ordered the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia to employ all of its strength to paralyse \"chauvinist elements\". Moscow soon forced the French Communist Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain to adopt anti-war positions. On 7 September, Stalin called Georgi Dimitrov, who sketched a new Comintern line on the war that stated that the war was unjust and imperialist, which was approved by the secretariat of the Comintern on 9 September. Thus, western communist parties now had to oppose the war and to vote against war credits. Although the French communists had unanimously voted in Parliament for war credits on 2 September and declared their \"unshakeable will\" to defend the country on 19 September, the Comintern formally instructed the party to condemn the war as imperialist on 27 September. By 1 October, the French communists advocated listening to German peace proposals, and leader Maurice Thorez deserted from the French Army on 4 October and fled to Russia. Other communists also deserted from the army.\nThe Communist Party of Germany featured similar attitudes. In \"Die Welt\", a communist newspaper published in Stockholm the exiled communist leader Walter Ulbricht opposed the Allies, stated that Britain represented \"the most reactionary force in the world\", and argued, \"The German government declared itself ready for friendly relations with the Soviet Union, whereas the English\u2013French war bloc desires a war against the socialist Soviet Union. The Soviet people and the working people of Germany have an interest in preventing the English war plan\".\nDespite a warning by the Comintern, German tensions were raised when the Soviets stated in September that they must enter Poland to \"protect\" their ethnic Ukrainian and Belarusian brethren from Germany. Molotov later admitted to German officials that the excuse was necessary because the Kremlin could find no other pretext for the Soviet invasion.\nDuring the early months of the Pact, Soviet foreign policy became critical of the Allies and more pro-German in turn. During the Fifth Session of the Supreme Soviet on 31 October 1939, Molotov analysed the international situation, thus giving the direction for communist propaganda. According to Molotov, Germany had a legitimate interest in regaining its position as a great power, and the Allies had started an aggressive war in order to maintain the Versailles system.\nExpansion of raw materials and military trading.\nGermany and the Soviet Union entered an intricate trade pact on 11 February 1940 that was over four times larger than the one that the two countries had signed in August 1939. The new trade pact helped Germany surmount a British blockade. In the first year, Germany received one million tons of cereals, half-a-million tons of wheat, 900,000 tons of oil, 100,000 tons of cotton, 500,000 tons of phosphates and considerable amounts of other vital raw materials, along with the transit of one million tons of soybeans from Manchuria. Those and other supplies were being transported through Soviet and occupied Polish territories. The Soviets were to receive a naval cruiser, the plans to the battleship \"Bismarck\", heavy naval guns, other naval gear and 30 of Germany's latest warplanes, including the Bf 109 and Bf 110 fighters and Ju 88 bomber. The Soviets would also receive oil and electric equipment, locomotives, turbines, generators, diesel engines, ships, machine tools, and samples of German artillery, tanks, explosives, chemical-warfare equipment, and other items.\nThe Soviets also helped Germany to avoid British naval blockades by providing a submarine base, Basis Nord, in the northern Soviet Union near Murmansk. That also provided a refueling and maintenance location and a takeoff point for raids and attacks on shipping. In addition, the Soviets provided Germany with access to the Northern Sea Route for both cargo ships and raiders though only the commerce raider used the route before the German invasion, which forced Britain to protect sea lanes in both the Atlantic and the Pacific.\nSummer deterioration of relations.\nThe Finnish and Baltic invasions began a deterioration of relations between the Soviets and Germany. Stalin's invasions were a severe irritant to Berlin since the intent to accomplish them had not been communicated to the Germans beforehand, and they prompted concern that Stalin was seeking to form an anti-German bloc. Molotov's reassurances to the Germans only intensified the Germans' mistrust. On 16 June, as the Soviets invaded Lithuania but before they had invaded Latvia and Estonia, Ribbentrop instructed his staff \"to submit a report as soon as possible as to whether in the Baltic States a tendency to seek support from the Reich can be observed or whether an attempt was made to form a bloc.\"\nIn August 1940, the Soviet Union briefly suspended its deliveries under its commercial agreement after relations were strained after disagreements over policy in Romania, the Soviet war with Finland, Germany's falling behind on its deliveries of goods under the pact and Stalin's worry that Hitler's war with the West might end quickly after France signed an armistice. The suspension created significant resource problems for Germany. By the end of August, relations had improved again, as the countries had redrawn the Hungarian and Romanian borders and settled some Bulgarian claims, and Stalin was again convinced that Germany would face a long war in the west with Britain's improvement in its air battle with Germany and the execution of an agreement between the United States and Britain regarding destroyers and bases.\nIn early September however, Germany arranged its own occupation of Romania, targeting its oil fields. That move raised tensions with the Soviets, who responded that Germany was supposed to have consulted with the Soviet Union under Article III of the pact.\nGerman\u2013Soviet Axis talks.\nAfter Germany in September 1940 entered the Tripartite Pact with Japan and Italy, Ribbentrop wrote to Stalin, inviting Molotov to Berlin for negotiations aimed to create a 'continental bloc' of Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union that would oppose Britain and the United States. Stalin sent Molotov to Berlin to negotiate the terms for the Soviet Union to join the Axis and potentially to enjoy the spoils of the pact. After negotiations during November 1940 on where to extend the Soviet sphere of influence, Hitler broke off talks and continued planning for the eventual attempts to invade the Soviet Union.\nLate relations.\nIn an effort to demonstrate peaceful intentions toward Germany, on 13 April 1941, the Soviets signed a neutrality pact with Japan, an Axis power. While Stalin had little faith in Japan's commitment to neutrality, he felt that the pact was important for its political symbolism to reinforce a public affection for Germany. Stalin felt that there was a growing split in German circles about whether Germany should initiate a war with the Soviet Union. Stalin did not know that Hitler had been secretly discussing an invasion of the Soviet Union since summer 1940 and that Hitler had ordered his military in late 1940 to prepare for war in the East, regardless of the parties' talks of a potential Soviet entry as a fourth Axis power.\nTermination.\nGermany unilaterally terminated the pact at 03:15 on 22 June 1941 by launching a massive attack on the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. Stalin had ignored repeated warnings that Germany was likely to invade and ordered no \"full-scale\" mobilisation of forces although the mobilisation was ongoing. After the launch of the invasion, the territories gained by the Soviet Union as a result of the pact were lost in a matter of weeks. The southeastern part was absorbed into Greater Germany's General Government, and the rest was integrated with the Reichskommissariats Ostland and Ukraine. Within six months, the Soviet military had suffered 4.3\u00a0million casualties, and three million more had been captured. The lucrative export of Soviet raw materials to Germany over the course of the economic relations continued uninterrupted until the outbreak of hostilities. The Soviet exports in several key areas enabled Germany to maintain its stocks of rubber and grain from the first day of the invasion to October 1941.\nAftermath.\nDiscovery of the secret protocol.\nThe German original of the secret protocols was presumably destroyed in the bombing of Germany, but in late 1943, Ribbentrop had ordered the most secret records of the German Foreign Office from 1933 onward, amounting to some 9,800 pages, to be microfilmed. When the various departments of the Foreign Office in Berlin were evacuated to Thuringia at the end of the war, Karl von Loesch, a civil servant who had worked for the chief interpreter Paul Otto Schmidt, was entrusted with the microfilm copies. He eventually received orders to destroy the secret documents but decided to bury the metal container with the microfilms as personal insurance for his future well-being. In May 1945, von Loesch approached the British Lieutenant Colonel Robert C. Thomson with the request to transmit a personal letter to Duncan Sandys, Churchill's son-in-law. In the letter, von Loesch revealed that he had knowledge of the documents' whereabouts but expected preferential treatment in return. Thomson and his American counterpart, Ralph Collins, agreed to transfer von Loesch to Marburg, in the American zone if he would produce the microfilms. The microfilms contained a copy of the Non-Aggression Treaty as well as the Secret Protocol. Both documents were discovered as part of the microfilmed records in August 1945 by US State Department employee Wendell B. Blancke, the head of a special unit called \"Exploitation German Archives\" (EGA).\nNews of the secret protocols first appeared during the Nuremberg trials. Alfred Seidl, the attorney for defendant Hans Frank, was able to place into evidence an affidavit that described them. It was written from memory by Nazi Foreign Office lawyer Friedrich Gaus, who wrote the text and was present at its signing in Moscow. Later, Seidl obtained the German-language text of the secret protocols from an anonymous Allied source and attempted to place them into evidence while he was questioning witness Ernst von Weizs\u00e4cker, a former Foreign Office State Secretary. The Allied prosecutors objected, and the texts were not accepted into evidence, but Weizs\u00e4cker was permitted to describe them from memory, thus corroborating the Gaus affidavit. Finally, at the request of a \"St. Louis Post-Dispatch\" reporter, American deputy prosecutor Thomas J. Dodd acquired a copy of the secret protocols from Seidl and had it translated into English. They were first published on 22 May 1946 in a front-page story in that newspaper. Later, in Britain, they were published by \"The Manchester Guardian\".\nThe protocols gained wider media attention when they were included in an official State Department collection, \"Nazi\u2013Soviet Relations 1939\u20131941\", edited by Raymond J. Sontag and James S. Beddie and published on 21 January 1948. The decision to publish the key documents on German\u2013Soviet relations, including the treaty and protocol, had been taken already in spring 1947. Sontag and Beddie prepared the collection throughout the summer of 1947. In November 1947, President Harry S. Truman personally approved the publication, but it was held back in view of the Foreign Ministers Conference in London scheduled for December. Since negotiations at that conference did not prove to be constructive from an American point of view, the document edition was sent to press. The documents made headlines worldwide. State Department officials counted it as a success: \"The Soviet Government was caught flat-footed in what was the first effective blow from our side in a clear-cut propaganda war.\"\nDespite publication of the recovered copy in western media, for decades, the official policy of the Soviet Union was to deny the existence of the secret protocol. The secret protocol's existence was officially denied until 1989. Vyacheslav Molotov, one of the signatories, went to his grave categorically rejecting its existence. The French Communist Party did not acknowledge the existence of the secret protocol until 1968, as the party de-Stalinized.\nOn 23 August 1986, tens of thousands of demonstrators in 21 western cities, including New York, London, Stockholm, Toronto, Seattle, and Perth participated in Black Ribbon Day Rallies to draw attention to the secret protocols.\nStalin's \"Falsifiers of History\" and Axis negotiations.\nIn response to the publication of the secret protocols and other secret German\u2013Soviet relations documents in the State Department edition \"Nazi\u2013Soviet Relations\" (1948), Stalin published \"Falsifiers of History\", which included the claim that during the pact's operation, Stalin rejected Hitler's claim to share in a division of the world, without mentioning the Soviet offer to join the Axis. That version persisted, without exception, in historical studies, official accounts, memoirs, and textbooks published in the Soviet Union until the dissolution of the Soviet Union.\nThe book also claimed that the Munich Agreement was a \"secret agreement\" between Germany and \"the west\" and a \"highly important phase in their policy aimed at goading the Hitlerite aggressors against the Soviet Union.\"\nDenial of the secret protocol.\nFor decades, it was the official policy of the Soviet Union to deny the existence of the secret protocol to the Soviet\u2013German Pact. At the behest of Mikhail Gorbachev, Alexander Yakovlev headed a commission investigating the existence of such a protocol. In December 1989, the commission concluded that the protocol had existed and revealed its findings to the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union. As a result, the Congress passed the declaration confirming the existence of the secret protocols and condemning and denouncing them. The Soviet government thus finally acknowledged and denounced the Secret Treaty and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Head of State condemned the pact. Vladimir Putin condemned the pact as \"immoral\" but also defended it as a \"necessary evil\". At a press conference on 19 December 2019, Putin went further and announced that the signing of the pact was no worse than the 1938 Munich Agreement, which led to the partition of Czechoslovakia.\nBoth successor states of the pact parties have declared the secret protocols to be invalid from the moment that they were signed: the Federal Republic of Germany on 1 September 1989 and the Soviet Union on 24 December 1989, following an examination of the microfilmed copy of the German originals.\nThe Soviet copy of the original document was declassified in 1992 and published in a scientific journal in early 1993.\nIn August 2009, in an article written for the Polish newspaper \"Gazeta Wyborcza\", Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin condemned the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact as \"immoral\".\nThe new Russian nationalists and revisionists, including Russian negationist Aleksandr Dyukov and Nataliya Narotchnitskaya, whose book carried an approving foreword by the Russian foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, described the pact as a necessary measure because of the British and French failure to enter into an antifascist pact.\nPostwar commentary on motives of Stalin and Hitler.\nSome scholars believe that, from the very beginning of the Tripartite negotiations between the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France, the Soviets clearly required the other parties to agree to a Soviet occupation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and for Finland to be included in the Soviet sphere of influence.\nOn the timing of German rapprochement, many historians agree that the dismissal of Maxim Litvinov, whose Jewish ethnicity was viewed unfavourably by Nazi Germany, removed an obstacle to negotiations with Germany. Stalin immediately directed Molotov to \"purge the ministry of Jews.\" Given Litvinov's prior attempts to create an anti-fascist coalition, association with the doctrine of collective security with France and Britain and a pro-Western orientation by the standards of the Kremlin, his dismissal indicated the existence of a Soviet option of rapprochement with Germany. Likewise, Molotov's appointment served as a signal to Germany that the Soviet Union was open to offers. The dismissal also signaled to France and Britain the existence of a potential negotiation option with Germany. One British official wrote that Litvinov's termination also meant the loss of an admirable technician or shock-absorber but that Molotov's \"modus operandi\" was \"more truly Bolshevik than diplomatic or cosmopolitan.\" Carr argued that the Soviet Union's replacement of Litvinov with Molotov on 3 May 1939 indicated not an irrevocable shift towards alignment with Germany but rather was Stalin's way of engaging in hard bargaining with the British and the French by appointing a proverbial hard man to the Foreign Commissariat. Historian Albert Resis stated that the Litvinov dismissal gave the Soviets freedom to pursue faster German negotiations but that they did not abandon British\u2013French talks. Derek Watson argued that Molotov could get the best deal with Britain and France because he was not encumbered with the baggage of collective security and could negotiate with Germany. Geoffrey Roberts argued that Litvinov's dismissal helped the Soviets with British\u2013French talks because Litvinov doubted or maybe even opposed such discussions.\nE. H. Carr stated: \"In return for 'non-intervention' Stalin secured a breathing space of immunity from German attack.\" According to Carr, the \"bastion\" created by means of the pact \"was and could only be, a line of defense against potential German attack.\" According to Carr, an important advantage was that \"if Soviet Russia had eventually to fight Hitler, the Western Powers would already be involved.\" However, during the last decades, that view has been disputed. Historian Werner Maser - who served the German army during the second World War - stated that \"the claim that the Soviet Union was at the time threatened by Hitler, as Stalin supposed... is a legend, to whose creators Stalin himself belonged. In Maser's view, \"neither Germany nor Japan were in a situation [of] invading the USSR even with the least perspective [\"sic\"] of success,\" which must not have been known to Stalin. Carr further stated that for a long time, the primary motive of Stalin's sudden change of course was assumed to be the fear of German aggressive intentions. On the other hand, Soviet-born Australian historical writer Alex Ryvchin characterized the pact as \"a Soviet deal with the devil, which contained a secret protocol providing for the remaining independent states of East-Central Europe to be treated as courses on some debauched degustation menu for two of the greatest monsters in history.\"\nMany Polish newspapers published numerous articles claiming that Russia must apologise to Poland for the pact.\nTwo weeks after Soviet armies had entered the Baltic states, Berlin requested Finland to permit the transit of German troops, and five weeks later Hitler issued a secret directive \"to take up the Russian problem, to think about war preparations,\" a war whose objective would include establishment of a Baltic confederation.\nA number of German historians have debunked the claim that Operation Barbarossa was a preemptive strike, such as Andreas Hillgruber, Rolf-Dieter M\u00fcller, and Christian Hartmann, but they also acknowledge that the Soviets were aggressive to their neighbors.\nAccording to Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva she \"remembered her father saying after [the war]: 'Together with the Germans we would have been invincible'.\"\nRussian Trotskyist historian, Vadim Rogovin argued that Stalin had destroyed thousands of foreign communists capable of leading socialist change in their respective countries. He referenced the thousands of German communists that were handed over from Stalin to the Gestapo after the signing of the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact. Rogovin also noted that sixteen members of the Central Committee of the German Communist Party became victims of Stalinist terror. Similarly, historian Eric D. Weitz discussed the areas of collaboration between the regimes in which hundreds of German citizens, the majority of whom were Communists, had been handed over to the Gestapo from Stalin's administration. Weitz also stated that a higher proportion of the KPD Politburo members had died in the Soviet Union than in Nazi Germany. However, according to the work of Wilhelm Mensing, there is no evidence which suggests that the Soviets specifically targeted German and Austrian Communists or others who perceived themselves as \"anti-fascists\" for deportations to Nazi Germany.\nRemembrance and response.\nThe pact was a taboo subject in the postwar Soviet Union. In December 1989, the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union condemned the pact and its secret protocol as \"legally deficient and invalid\". In modern Russia, the pact is often portrayed positively or neutrally by the pro-government propaganda; for example, Russian textbooks tend to describe the pact as a defensive measure, not as one aiming at territorial expansion. In 2009, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that \"there are grounds to condemn the Pact\", but described it in 2014 as \"necessary for Russia's survival\". Accusations that cast doubt on the positive portrayal of the USSR's role in World War II have been seen as highly problematic for the modern Russian state, which sees Russia's victory in the war as one of \"the most venerated pillars of state ideology\", which legitimises the current government and its policies. In February 2021, the State Duma voted in favor of a law to punish the dissemination of \"fake news\" regarding the Soviet Union's role in World War II, including claiming that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union held equal responsibility due to the pact.\nIn 2009, the European Parliament proclaimed 23 August, the anniversary of the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact, as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism, to be commemorated with dignity and impartiality. In connection with the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe parliamentary resolution condemned both communism and fascism for starting World War II and called for a day of remembrance for victims of both Stalinism and Nazism on 23 August. In response to the resolution, Russian lawmakers threatened the OSCE with \"harsh consequences\". A similar resolution was passed by the European Parliament a decade later, blaming the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact for the outbreak of war in Europe and again leading to criticism by Russian authorities.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["20950", "24795561", "10918072"], "permutation_1": ["10918072", "24795561", "20950"], "permutation_2": ["20950", "10918072", "24795561"], "permutation_3": ["10918072", "24795561", "20950"]}
{"id": "3hop1__102694_35178_826724", "docs_added": {"35413648": "Khosrowabad, Tehran\nCity in Tehran province, Iran\nKhosrowabad () is a city in, and the capital of, Jajrud District of Pardis County, Tehran province, Iran. It also serves as the administrative center for Jajrud Rural District.\nDemographics.\nPopulation.\nAt the time of the 2006 National Census, Khosrowabad's population was 1,180 in 386 households, when it was a village in Siyahrud Rural District of the Central District of Tehran County. The following census in 2011 counted 799 people in 250 households. The 2016 census measured the population of the village as 1,083 people in 340 households, by which time most of the rural district had been separated from the county in the establishment of Pardis County. Khosrowabad was transferred to Jajrud Rural District created in the new Jajrud District. It was the most populous village in its rural district.\nAfter the census, Khosrowabad was elevated to the status of a city.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "14653": "Iran\nCountry in West Asia\nIran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Turkey to the northwest and Iraq to the west, Azerbaijan, Armenia, the Caspian Sea, and Turkmenistan to the north, Afghanistan to the east, Pakistan to the southeast, the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south. With a multi-ethnic population of nearly 86 million in an area of , Iran ranks 17th globally in both geographic size and population. It is the sixth-largest country entirely in Asia and one of the world's most mountainous countries. Officially an Islamic republic, Iran is divided into five regions with 31 provinces. Tehran is the nation's capital, largest city and financial centre.\nA cradle of civilisation, Iran has been inhabited since the Lower Palaeolithic. The large part of Iran was first unified as a political entity by the Medes under Cyaxares in the seventh century BC, and reached its territorial height in the sixth century BC, when Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Empire, one of the largest in ancient history. Alexander the Great conquered the empire in the fourth century BC. An Iranian rebellion established the Parthian Empire in the third century BC and liberated the country, which was succeeded by the Sasanian Empire in the third century AD. Ancient Iran saw some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, religion and central government. The Sasanian era is considered a golden age in the history of Iranian civilisation. Muslims conquered the region in the seventh century AD, leading to Iran's Islamisation. The literature, philosophy, mathematics, medicine, astronomy and art which had blossomed during the Sasanian era were renewed during the Islamic Golden Age and Persian Renaissance, when a series of Iranian Muslim dynasties ended Arab rule, revived the Persian language and ruled the country until the Seljuk and Mongol conquests of the 11th to 14th centuries.\nIn the 16th century, the native Safavid dynasty re-established a unified Iranian state with Twelver Shi'ism as the official religion. During the Afsharid Empire in the 18th century, Iran was a leading world power, but this was no longer the case after the Qajars took power in the 1790s. The early 20th century saw the Persian Constitutional Revolution and the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty by Reza Shah the Great, who ousted the last Qajar shah in 1925. Attempts by Mohammad Mosaddegh to nationalise the oil industry led to an Anglo-American coup in 1953. After the Iranian Revolution, the monarchy was overthrown in 1979 and the Islamic Republic of Iran was established by Ruhollah Khomeini, who became the country's first Supreme Leader. In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, sparking the eight-year-long Iran\u2013Iraq War, which ended in stalemate.\nIran is officially governed as a unitary Islamic republic with a presidential system, with ultimate authority vested in a Supreme Leader. The government is authoritarian and has attracted widespread criticism for its significant violations of human rights and civil liberties. Iran is a major regional power, due to its large reserves of fossil fuels, including the world's second largest natural gas supply, third largest proven oil reserves, its geopolitically significant location, military capabilities, cultural hegemony, regional influence, and role as the world's focal point of Shia Islam. The Iranian economy is the world's 23rd-largest by PPP. Iran is a founding member of the United Nations, OIC, OPEC, and ECO as well as a current member of the NAM, SCO, and BRICS. Iran is home to 28 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the 10th highest in the world, and ranks 5th in Intangible Cultural Heritage, or human treasures.\nEtymology.\nThe term \"Iran\" 'the land of the Aryans' derives from Middle Persian , first attested in a 3rd-century inscription at Naqsh-e Rostam, with the accompanying Parthian inscription using , in reference to the Iranians. and are oblique plural forms of gentilic nouns \"\u0113r-\" (Middle Persian) and \"ary-\" (Parthian), deriving from Proto-Iranian language \"*arya-\" (meaning 'Aryan', i.e. of the Iranians), recognised as a derivative of Proto-Indo-European language \"*ar-yo-\", meaning 'one who assembles (skilfully)'. According to Iranian mythology, the name comes from Iraj, a legendary king.\nIran was referred to as \"Persia\" by the West, due to Greek historians who referred to all of Iran as , meaning 'the land of the Persians'. \"Persia\" is the Fars province in southwest Iran, the 4th largest province, also known as \"P\u00e2rs\". The Persian \"F\u00e2rs\" (\u0641\u0627\u0631\u0633), derived from the earlier form \"P\u00e2rs\" (\u067e\u0627\u0631\u0633), which is in turn derived from \"P\u00e2rs\u00e2\" (Old Persian: \ud800\udfb1\ud800\udfa0\ud800\udfbc\ud800\udfbf). Due to Fars' historical importance, \"Persia\" originated from this territory through Greek in around 550 BC, and Westerners referred to the entire country as \"Persia\", until 1935, when Reza Shah requested the international community to use its native and original name, \"Iran\"; Iranians called their nation \"Iran\" since at least 1000 BC. Today, both \"Iran\" and \"Persia\" are used culturally, while \"Iran\" remains mandatory in official use.\nThe Persian pronunciation of \"Iran\" is . Commonwealth English pronunciations of \"Iran\" are listed in the \"Oxford English Dictionary\" as and , while American English dictionaries provide pronunciations which map to , or . The \"Cambridge Dictionary\" lists as the British pronunciation and as the American pronunciation. Voice of America's pronunciation guide provides .\nHistory.\nIran is home to one of the world's oldest continuous major civilisations, with historical and urban settlements dating back to 4000 BC. The western part of the Iranian plateau participated in the traditional ancient Near East with Elam (3200\u2013539 BC), and later with other peoples such as the Kassites, Mannaeans, and Gutians. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel called the Persians the \"first Historical People\". The Iranian Empire began in the Iron Age with the rise of the Medes, who unified Iran as a nation and empire in 625 BC. The Achaemenid Empire (550\u2013330 BC), founded by Cyrus the Great, was the largest empire the world had seen, spanning from the Balkans to North Africa and Central Asia. They were succeeded by the Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian Empires, who governed Iran for almost 1,000 years, making Iran a leading power once again. Persia's arch-rival during this time was the Roman Empire and its successor, the Byzantine Empire.\nIran endured invasions by the Macedonians, Arabs, Turks, and Mongols. Despite these invasions, Iran continually reasserted its national identity and developed as a distinct political and cultural entity. The Muslim conquest of Persia (632\u2013654) ended the Sasanian Empire and marked a turning point in Iranian history, leading to the Islamisation of Iran from the eighth to tenth centuries and the decline of Zoroastrianism. However, the achievements of prior Persian civilisations were absorbed into the new Islamic polity. Iran suffered invasions by nomadic tribes during the Late Middle Ages and early modern period, negatively impacting the region. Iran was reunified as an independent state in 1501 by the Safavid dynasty, which established Shia Islam as the empire's official religion, marking another turning point in the history of Islam. Iran functioned again as a leading world power, especially in rivalry with the Ottoman Empire. In the 19th century, Iran lost significant territories in the Caucasus to the Russian Empire following the Russo-Persian Wars.\nIran remained a monarchy until the 1979 Iranian Revolution, when it officially became an Islamic republic on 1 April 1979. Since then, Iran has experienced significant political, social, and economic changes. The establishment of the \"Islamic Republic of Iran\" led to the restructuring of its political system, with Ayatollah Khomeini as the Supreme Leader. Iran's foreign relations have been shaped by the Iran\u2013Iraq War (1980\u20131988), ongoing tensions with the United States, and its nuclear programme, which has been a point of contention in international diplomacy.\nSince the 1990s.\nIn 1989, Akbar Rafsanjani concentrated on a pro-business policy of rebuilding the economy without breaking with the ideology of the revolution. He supported a free market domestically, favouring privatisation of state industries and a moderate position internationally. In 1997, Rafsanjani was succeeded by moderate reformist Mohammad Khatami, whose government advocated freedom of expression, constructive diplomatic relations with Asia and the European Union, and an economic policy that supported a free market and foreign investment.\nThe 2005 presidential election brought conservative populist and nationalist candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power. He was known for his hardline views, nuclearisation, and hostility towards Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UK, the US and other states. He was the first president to be summoned by the parliament to answer questions regarding his presidency. In 2013, centrist and reformist Hassan Rouhani was elected president. In domestic policy, he encouraged personal freedom, free access to information, and improved women's rights. He improved Iran's diplomatic relations through exchanging conciliatory letters. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was reached in Vienna in 2015, between Iran, the P5+1 (UN Security Council + Germany) and the EU. The negotiations centred around ending the economic sanctions in exchange for Iran's restriction in producing enriched uranium. In 2018, however, the US under Trump Administration withdrew from the deal and new sanctions were imposed. This nulled the economic provisions, left the agreement in jeopardy, and brought Iran to nuclear threshold status. In 2020, IRGC general, Qasem Soleimani, the 2nd-most powerful person in Iran, was assassinated by the US, heightening tensions between them. Iran retaliated against US airbases in Iraq, the largest ballistic missile attack ever on Americans; 110 sustained brain injuries.\nHardliner Ebrahim Raisi ran for president again in 2021, succeeding Hassan Rouhani. During Raisi's term, Iran intensified uranium enrichment, hindered international inspections, joined SCO and BRICS, supported Russia in its invasion of Ukraine and restored diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia. In April 2024, Israel's airstrike on an Iranian consulate, killed an IRGC commander. Iran retaliated with UAVs, cruise and ballistic missiles; 9 hit Israel. Western and Jordanian military helped Israel down some Iranian drones. It was the largest drone strike in history, biggest missile attack in Iranian history, its first ever direct attack on Israel and the first time since 1991, Israel was directly attacked by a state force. This occurred during heightened tensions amid the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. In May 2024, President Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash, and Iran held a presidential election in June, when reformist and former Minister of Health, Masoud Pezeshkian, was elected to office. On 1 October 2024, Iran launched about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for assassinations of Ismail Haniyeh, Hassan Nasrallah and Abbas Nilforoushan. On 27 October, Israel responded to that attack by strikes on a missile defence system in the Iranian region of Isfahan.\nGeography.\nIran has an area of . It is the sixth-largest country entirely in Asia and the second-largest in West Asia. It lies between latitudes 24\u00b0 and 40\u00b0 N, and longitudes 44\u00b0 and 64\u00b0 E. It is bordered to the northwest by Armenia (), the Azeri exclave of Nakhchivan (), and the Republic of Azerbaijan (); to the north by the Caspian Sea; to the northeast by Turkmenistan (); to the east by Afghanistan () and Pakistan (); to the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman; and to the west by Iraq () and Turkey ().\nIran is in a seismically active area. On average, an earthquake of magnitude seven on the Richter scale occurs once every ten years. Most earthquakes are shallow-focus and can be very devastating, such as the 2003 Bam earthquake.\nIran consists of the Iranian Plateau. It is one of the world's most mountainous countries; its landscape is dominated by rugged mountain ranges that separate basins or plateaus. The populous west part is the most mountainous, with ranges such as the Caucasus, Zagros, and Alborz, the last containing Mount Damavand, Iran's highest point, at , which is the highest volcano in Asia. Iran's mountains have impacted its politics and economics for centuries.\nThe north part is covered by the lush lowland Caspian Hyrcanian forests, near the southern shores of the Caspian Sea. The east part consists mostly of desert basins, such as the Kavir Desert, which is the country's largest desert, and the Lut Desert, as well as salt lakes. The Lut Desert is the hottest recorded spot on the Earth's surface, with 70.7\u00a0\u00b0C recorded in 2005. The only large plains are found along the coast of the Caspian and at the north end of the Persian Gulf, where the country borders the mouth of the Arvand river. Smaller, discontinuous plains are found along the remaining coast of the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman.\nIslands.\nIranian islands are mainly located in the Persian Gulf. Iran has 102 islands in Urmia Lake, 427 in Aras River, several in Anzali Lagoon, Ashurade Island in the Caspian Sea, Sheytan Island in the Oman Sea and other inland islands. Iran has an uninhabited island at the far end of the Gulf of Oman, near Pakistan. A few islands can be visited by tourists. Most are owned by the military or used for wildlife protection, and entry is prohibited or requires a permit.\nIran took control of Bumusa, and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs in 1971, in the Strait of Hormuz between the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. Despite the islands being small and having little natural resources or population, they are highly valuable for their strategic location. Although the United Arab Emirates claims sovereignty, it has consistently been met with a strong response from Iran, based on their historical and cultural background. Iran has full control over the islands.\nKish island, as a free trade zone, is touted as a consumer's paradise, with malls, shopping centres, tourist attractions, and luxury hotels. Qeshm is the largest island in Iran, and a UNESCO Global Geopark since 2016. Its salt cave, Namakdan, is the largest in the world, and one of the world's longest caves.\nClimate.\nIran's climate is diverse, ranging from arid and semi-arid, to subtropical along the Caspian coast and northern forests. On the north edge of the country, temperatures rarely fall below freezing and the area remains humid. Summer temperatures rarely exceed . Annual precipitation is in the east part of the plain and more than in the west part. The UN Resident Coordinator for Iran, has said that \"Water scarcity poses the most severe human security challenge in Iran today\".\nTo the west, settlements in the Zagros basin experience lower temperatures, severe winters with freezing average daily temperatures and heavy snowfall. The east and central basins are arid, with less than of rain and have occasional deserts. Average summer temperatures rarely exceed . The southern coastal plains of the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman have mild winters, and very humid and hot summers. The annual precipitation ranges from .\nBiodiversity.\nMore than one-tenth of the country is forested. About 120 million hectares of forests and fields are government-owned for national exploitation. Iran's forests can be divided into five vegetation regions: Hyrcanian region which forms the green belt of the north side of the country; the Turan region, which are mainly scattered in the centre of Iran; Zagros region, which mainly contains oak forests in the west; the Persian Gulf region, which is scattered in the southern coastal belt; the Arasbarani region, which contains rare and unique species. More than 8,200 plant species are grown. The land covered by natural flora is four times that of Europe's. There are over 200 protected areas to preserve biodiversity and wildlife, with over 30 being national parks.\nIran's living fauna includes 34 bat species, Indian grey mongoose, small Indian mongoose, golden jackal, Indian wolf, foxes, striped hyena, leopard, Eurasian lynx, brown bear and Asian black bear. Ungulate species include wild boar, urial, Armenian mouflon, red deer, and goitered gazelle. One of the most famous animals is the critically endangered Asiatic cheetah, which survives only in Iran. Iran lost all its Asiatic lions and the extinct Caspian tigers by the early 20th century. Domestic ungulates are represented by sheep, goat, cattle, horse, water buffalo, donkey and camel. Bird species like pheasant, partridge, stork, eagles and falcons are native.\nGovernment and politics.\nSupreme Leader.\nThe Supreme Leader, \"Rahbar\", Leader of the Revolution or Supreme Leadership Authority, is the head of state and responsible for supervision of policy. The president has limited power compared to the Rahbar. Key ministers are selected with the Rahbar's agreement and they have the ultimate say on foreign policy. The Rahbar is directly involved in ministerial appointments for Defence, Intelligence and Foreign Affairs, as well as other top ministries after submission of candidates from the president.\nRegional policy is directly controlled by the Rahbar, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' task limited to protocol and ceremonial occasions. Ambassadors to Arab countries, for example, are chosen by the Quds Force, which directly reports to the Rahbar. The Rahbar can order laws to be amended. Setad was estimated at $95\u00a0billion in 2013 by Reuters, accounts of which are secret even to the parliament.\nThe Rahbar is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, controls military intelligence and security operations, and has sole power to declare war or peace. The heads of the judiciary, state radio and television networks, commanders of the police and military, and the members of the Guardian Council are all appointed by the Rahbar.\nThe Assembly of Experts is responsible for electing the Rahbar, and has the power to dismiss him on the basis of qualifications and popular esteem. To date, the Assembly of Experts has not challenged any of the Rahbar's decisions nor attempted to dismiss him. The previous head of the judicial system, Sadeq Larijani, appointed by the Rahbar, said that it is illegal for the Assembly of Experts to supervise the Rahbar. Many believe the Assembly of Experts has become a ceremonial body without any real power. In February 2025,\u00a0 the New York Times reported that according to Karim Sadjadpour, an expert on Iran at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, there exist in the Islamic Republic of Iran two parallel regimes. One which is ruled by the military and intelligence forces, who report to the Rahbar, and \"who oversee the nuclear programme and regional proxies and are tasked with repression, hostage taking and assassinations\u201d. The other ruled by diplomats and politicians \"who are authorized to speak to Western media and officials\" and have minimal knowledge of Iran's nuclear programme.\nThe political system is based on the country's constitution. Iran ranked 154th in the 2022 \"The Economist Democracy Index\". Juan Jos\u00e9 Linz wrote in 2000 that \"the Iranian regime combines the ideological bent of totalitarianism with the limited pluralism of authoritarianism\".\nPresident.\nThe President is head of government and the second highest-ranking authority, after the Supreme Leader. The President is elected by universal suffrage for 4 years. Before elections, nominees to become a presidential candidate must be approved by the Guardian Council. The Council's members are chosen by the Leader, with the Leader having the power to dismiss the president. The President can only be re-elected for one term. The president is the deputy commander-in-chief of the Army, the head of Supreme National Security Council, and has the power to declare a state of emergency after passage by the parliament.\nThe President is responsible for the implementation of the constitution, and for the exercise of executive powers in implementing the decrees and general policies as outlined by the Rahbar, except for matters directly related to the Rahbar, who has the final say. The President functions as the executive of affairs such as signing treaties and other international agreements, and administering national planning, budget, and state employment affairs, all as approved by the Rahbar.\nThe President appoints ministers, subject to the approval of the Parliament, and the Rahbar, who can dismiss or reinstate any minister. The President supervises the Council of Ministers, coordinates government decisions, and selects government policies to be placed before the legislature. Eight Vice Presidents serve under the President, as well as a cabinet of 22 ministers, all appointed by the president.\nGuardian Council.\nPresidential and parliamentary candidates must be approved by the 12-member Guardian Council (all members of which are appointed by the Leader) or the Leader, before running to ensure their allegiance. The Leader rarely does the vetting, but has the power to do so, in which case additional approval of the Guardian Council is not needed. The Leader can revert the decisions of the Guardian Council.\nThe constitution gives the council three mandates: veto power over legislation passed by the parliament, supervision of elections and approving or disqualifying candidates seeking to run in local, parliamentary, presidential, or Assembly of Experts elections. The council can nullify a law based on two accounts: being against Sharia (Islamic law), or being against the constitution.\nSupreme National Security Council.\nThe Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) is at the top of the foreign policy decisions process. The council was formed during the 1989 Iranian constitutional referendum for the protection and support of national interests, the revolution, territorial integrity and national sovereignty. It is mandated by Article 176 of the Constitution to be presided over by the President.\nThe Leader selects the secretary of the Supreme Council, and the decisions of the council are effective after the confirmation by the Leader. The SNSC formulates nuclear policy, and would become effective if they are confirmed by the Leader.\nLegislature.\nThe legislature, known as the Islamic Consultative Assembly (ICA), Iranian Parliament or \"Majles\", is a unicameral body comprising 290 members elected for four-years. It drafts legislation, ratifies international treaties, and approves the national budget. All parliamentary candidates and legislation from the assembly must be approved by the Guardian Council. The Guardian Council can and has dismissed elected members of the parliament. The parliament has no legal status without the Guardian Council, and the Council holds absolute veto power over legislation.\nThe Expediency Discernment Council has the authority to mediate disputes between Parliament and the Guardian Council, and serves as an advisory body to the Supreme Leader, making it one of the most powerful governing bodies in Iran.\nThe Parliament has 207 constituencies, including the 5 reserved seats for religious minorities. The remaining 202 are territorial, each covering one or more of Iran's counties.\nLaw.\nIran uses the Sharia law as its legal system, with elements of Civil law. The Supreme Leader appoints the head of the Supreme Court and chief public prosecutor. There are several types of courts, including public courts that deal with civil and criminal cases, and revolutionary courts which deal with certain offences, such as crimes against national security. The decisions of the revolutionary courts are final and cannot be appealed.\nThe Chief Justice is the head of the judicial system and responsible for its administration and supervision. He is the highest judge of the Supreme Court of Iran. The Chief Justice nominates candidates to serve as minister of justice, and the President selects one. The Chief Justice can serve for two five-year terms.\nThe Special Clerical Court handles crimes allegedly committed by clerics, although it has taken on cases involving laypeople. The Special Clerical Court functions independently of the regular judicial framework and is accountable only to the Rahbar. The Court's rulings are final and cannot be appealed. The Assembly of Experts, which meets for one week annually, comprises 86 \"virtuous and learned\" clerics elected by adult suffrage for 8-year terms.\nAdministrative divisions.\nIran is subdivided into thirty-one provinces ( \"ost\u00e2n\"), each governed from a local centre, usually the largest local city, which is called the capital (Persian: , \"markaz\") of that province. The provincial authority is headed by a governor-general ( \"ost\u00e2nd\u00e2r\"), who is appointed by the Minister of the Interior subject to approval of the cabinet.\nForeign relations.\nIran maintains diplomatic relations with 165 countries, but not the United States and Israel\u2014a state which Iran derecognised in 1979.\nIran has an adversarial relationship with Saudi Arabia due to different political ideologies. Iran and Turkey have been involved in modern proxy conflicts such as in Syria, Libya, and the South Caucasus. However, they have shared common interests, such as the issue of Kurdish separatism and the Qatar diplomatic crisis. Iran has a close and strong relationship with Tajikistan. Iran has deep economic relations and alliance with Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, with Syria often described as Iran's \"closest ally\".\nRussia is a key trading partner, especially in regard to its excess oil reserves. Both share a close economic and military alliance, and are subject to heavy sanctions by Western nations. Iran is the only country in Western Asia that has been invited to join the CSTO, the Russia-based international treaty organisation that parallels NATO.\nRelations between Iran and China are strong economically; they have developed a friendly, economic and strategic relationship. In 2021, Iran and China signed a 25-year cooperation agreement that will strengthen the relations between the two countries and would include \"political, strategic and economic\" components. Iran-China relations dates back to at least 200 BC and possibly earlier. Iran is one of the few countries in the world that has a good relationship with both North and South Korea.\nIn December 2024, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, a close ally of Iran, was a severe setback for the political influence of Iran in the region.\nIran is a member of dozens of international organisations, including the G-15, G-24, G-77, IAEA, IBRD, IDA, NAM, IDB, IFC, ILO, IMF, IMO, Interpol, OIC, OPEC, WHO, and the UN, and currently has observer status at the WTO.\nMilitary.\nThe military is organised under a unified structure, the Islamic Republic of Iran Armed Forces, comprising the Islamic Republic of Iran Army, which includes the Ground Forces, Air Defence Force, Air Force, and Navy; the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which consists of the Ground Forces, Aerospace Force, Navy, Quds Force, and Basij; and the Law Enforcement Command (Faraja), which serves an analogous function to a gendarme. While the IRIAF protects the country's sovereignty in a traditional capacity, the IRGC is mandated to ensure the integrity of the Republic, against foreign interference, coups, and internal riots. Since 1925, it is mandatory for all male citizen aged 18 to serve around 14 months in the IRIAF or IRGC.\nIran has over 610,000 active troops and around 350,000 reservists, totalling over 1 million military personnel, one of the world's highest percentage of citizens with military training. The Basij\",\" a paramilitary volunteer militia within the IRGC, has over 20 million members, 600,000 available for immediate call-up, 300,000 reservists, and a million that could be mobilised when necessary. Faraja, the Iranian uniformed police force, has over 260,000 active personnel. Most statistical organisations do not include the Basij and Faraja in their ratings report.\nExcluding the Basij and Faraja, Iran has been identified as a major military power, owing it to the size and capabilities of its armed forces. It possesses the world's 14th strongest military. It ranks 13th globally in terms of overall military strength, 7th in the number of active military personnel, and 9th in the size of both its ground force and armoured force. Iran's armed forces are the largest in West Asia and comprise the greatest Army Aviation fleet in the Middle East. Iran is among the top 15 countries in terms of military budget. In 2021, its military spending increased for the first time in four years, to $24.6 billion, 2.3% of the national GDP. Funding for the IRGC accounted for 34% of Iran's total military spending in 2021.\nSince the Revolution, to overcome foreign embargoes, Iran has developed a domestic military industry capable of producing indigenous tanks, armoured personnel carriers, missiles, submarines, missile destroyer, radar systems, helicopters, naval vessels, and fighter planes. Official announcements have highlighted the development of advanced weaponry, particularly in rocketry. Consequently, Iran has the largest and most diverse ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East and is only the 5th country in the world with hypersonic missile technology. It is the world's 6th missile power. Iran designs and produces a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and is considered a global leader and superpower in drone warfare and technology. It is one of the world's five countries with cyberwarfare capabilities and is identified as \"one of the most active players in the international cyber arena\". Iran is an key exporter of arms since 2000s.\nFollowing Russia's purchase of Iranian drones during the invasion of Ukraine, in November 2023, the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) finalized arrangements to acquire Russian Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets, Mil Mi-28 attack helicopters, air defence and missile systems. The Iranian Navy has had joint exercises with Russia and China.\nNuclear programme.\nIran's nuclear programme dates back to the 1950s. Iran revived it after the Revolution, and its extensive nuclear fuel cycle, including enrichment capabilities, became the subject of intense international negotiations and sanctions. Many countries have expressed concern Iran could divert civilian nuclear technology into a weapons programme. In 2015, Iran and the P5+1 agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan on Action (JCPOA), aiming to end economic sanctions in exchange for restriction in producing enriched uranium.\nIn 2018, however, the US withdrew from the deal under the Trump administration, and reimposed sanctions. This was met with resistance by Iran and other members of the P5+1. A year later, Iran began decreasing its compliance. By 2020, Iran announced it would no longer observe any limit set by the agreement. Progress since then has brought Iran to the nuclear threshold status. As of November 2023[ [update]], Iran had uranium enriched to up to 60% fissile content, close to weapon grade. Some analysts already regard Iran as a de facto nuclear power.\nRegional influence.\nIran's significant influence and foothold, sometimes characterised as the \"Dawn of A New Persian Empire.\" Some analysts associate the Iranian influence to the nation's proud national legacy, empire and history.\nSince the Revolution, Iran has grown its influence across and beyond the region. It has built military forces with a wide network of state and none-state actors, starting with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 1982. The IRGC has been key to Iranian influence, through its Quds Force. The instability in Lebanon (from the 1980s), Iraq (from 2003) and Yemen (from 2014) has allowed Iran to build strong alliances and footholds beyond its borders. Iran has a prominent influence in the social services, education, economy and politics of Lebanon, and Lebanon provides Iran access to the Mediterranean Sea. Hezbollah's strategic successes against Israel, such as its symbolic victory during the 2006 Israel\u2013Hezbollah War, elevated Iran's influence in the Levant and strengthened its appeal across the Muslim World.\nSince the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the arrival of ISIS in the mid-2010s, Iran has financed and trained militia groups in Iraq. Since the Iran-Iraq war in 1980s and the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iran has shaped Iraq's politics. Following Iraq's struggle against ISIS in 2014, companies linked to the IRGC such as Khatam al-Anbiya, started to build roads, power plants, hotels and businesses in Iraq, creating an economic corridor worth around $9 billion before COVID-19. This is expected to grow to $20 billion.\nDuring Yemen's civil war, Iran provided military support to the Houthis, a Zaydi Shiite movement fighting Yemen's Sunni government since 2004. They gained significant power in recent years. Iran has considerable influence in Afghanistan and Pakistan through militant groups such as Liwa Fatemiyoun and Liwa Zainebiyoun.\nIn Syria, Iran has supported President Bashar al-Assad; the two countries are long-standing allies. Iran has provided significant military and economic support to Assad's government, so has a considerable foothold in Syria. Iran has long supported the anti-Israel fronts in North Africa in countries like Algeria and Tunisia, embracing Hamas in part to help undermine the popularity of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Iran's support of Hamas emerged more clearly in later years. According to US intelligence, Iran does not have full control over these state and non-state groups.\nHuman rights and censorship.\nThe Iranian government has been denounced by various international organisations and governments for violating human rights. The government has frequently persecuted and arrested critics of the government. Iranian law does not recognise sexual orientations. Sexual activity between members of the same sex is illegal and is punishable by death. Capital punishment is a legal punishment, and according to the BBC, Iran \"carries out more executions than any other country, except China\". UN Special Rapporteur Javaid Rehman has reported discrimination against several ethnic minorities in Iran. A group of UN experts in 2022 urged Iran to stop \"systematic persecution\" of religious minorities, adding that members of the Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith were arrested, barred from universities, or had their homes demolished.\nCensorship in Iran is ranked among the most extreme worldwide. Iran has strict internet censorship, with the government persistently blocking social media and other sites. Since January 2021, Iranian authorities have blocked a list of social media platforms; Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Telegram, Twitter and YouTube.\nThe 2006 election results were widely disputed, resulting in protests. The 2017\u201318 Iranian protests swept across the country in response to the economic and political situation. It was formally confirmed that thousands of protesters were arrested. The 2019\u201320 Iranian protests started on 15 November in Ahvaz, and spread across the country after the government announced increases in fuel prices of up to 300%. A week-long total Internet shutdown marked one of the most severe Internet blackouts in any country, and the bloodiest governmental crackdown of the protestors. Tens of thousands were arrested and hundreds were killed within a few days according to multiple international observers, including Amnesty International.\nUkraine International Airlines Flight 752, was a scheduled international civilian passenger flight from Tehran to Kyiv, operated by Ukraine International Airlines. On 8 January 2020, the Boeing 737\u2013800 flying the route was shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) shortly after takeoff, killing all 176 occupants on board and leading to protests. An international investigation led to the government admitting to the shootdown, calling it a \"human error\". Another Protests against the government began on 16 September 2022 after a woman named Mahsa Amini died in police custody following her arrest by the Guidance Patrol, known commonly as the \"morality police\".\nEconomy.\nAs of 2024[ [update]], Iran has the world's 19th largest economy (by PPP). It is a mixture of central planning, state ownership of oil and other large enterprises, village agriculture, and small-scale private trading and service ventures. Services contribute the largest percentage of GDP, followed by industry (mining and manufacturing) and agriculture. The economy is characterised by its hydrocarbon sector, in addition to manufacturing and financial services. With 10% of the world's oil reserves and 15% of gas reserves, Iran is an energy superpower. Over 40 industries are directly involved in the Tehran Stock Exchange.\nTehran is the economic powerhouse of Iran. About 30% of Iran's public-sector workforce and 45% of its large industrial firms are located there, and half those firms' employees work for government. The Central Bank of Iran is responsible for developing and maintaining the currency: the Iranian rial. The government does not recognise trade unions other than the Islamic labour councils, which are subject to the approval of employers and the security services. Unemployment was 9% in 2022.\nBudget deficits have been a chronic problem, mostly due to large state subsidies, that include foodstuffs and especially petrol, totalling $100\u00a0billion in 2022 for energy alone. In 2010, the economic reform plan was to cut subsidies gradually and replace them with targeted social assistance. The objective is to move towards free market prices and increase productivity and social justice. The administration continues reform, and indicates it will diversify the oil-reliant economy. Iran has developed a biotechnology, nanotechnology, and pharmaceutical industry. The government is privatising industries.\nIran has leading manufacturing industries in automobile manufacture, transportation, construction materials, home appliances, food and agricultural goods, armaments, pharmaceuticals, information technology, and petrochemicals in the Middle East. Iran is among the world's top five producers of apricots, cherries, cucumbers and gherkins, dates, figs, pistachios, quinces, walnuts, Kiwifruit and watermelons. International sanctions against Iran have damaged the economy. Iran is one of three countries that have not ratified the Paris Agreement to limit climate change, although academics say it would be good for the country.\nIran suffers from high inflation and especially surging food prices. A major contributing factor is the involvement of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the economy, particularly in the agriculture and food sectors but also due to significant spending on the Axis of Resistance which increase the public deficit. \nTourism.\nTourism had been rapidly growing before the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching nearly 9 million foreign visitors in 2019, the world's third fastest-growing tourism destination. In 2022 it expanded its share to 5% of the economy. Iran's tourism experienced a growth of 43% in 2023, attracting 6 million foreign tourists. The government ended visa requirements for 60 countries in 2023.\n98% of visits are for leisure, while 2% are for business, indicating the country's appeal as a tourist destination. Alongside the capital, the most popular tourist destinations are Isfahan, Shiraz and Mashhad. Iran is emerging as a preferred destination for medical tourism. Travellers from other West Asian countries grew 31% in the first seven months of 2023, surpassing Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Domestic tourism is one of the world's largests; Iranian tourists spent $33bn in 2021. Iran projects investment of $32 billion in the tourism sector by 2026.\nAgriculture and fishery.\nRoughly one-third of Iran's total surface area is suited for farmland. Only 12% of the total land area is under cultivation, but less than one-third of the cultivated area is irrigated; the rest is devoted to dryland farming. Some 92% of agricultural products depend on water. The western and northwestern portions of the country have the most fertile soils. Iran's food security index stands at around 96 percent. 3% of the total land area is used for grazing and fodder production. Most of the grazing is done on mostly semi-dry rangeland in mountain areas and on areas surrounding the large deserts of Central Iran. Progressive government efforts and incentives during the 1990s, improved agricultural productivity, helping Iran toward its goal of reestablishing national self-sufficiency in food production.\nAccess to the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and many river basins provides Iran the potential to develop excellent fisheries. The government assumed control of commercial fishing in 1952. Expansion of the fishery infrastructure enabled the country to harvest an estimated 700,000 tons of fish annually from the southern waters. Since the Revolution, increased attention has been focused on producing fish from inland waters. Between 1976 and 2004, the combined take from inland waters by the state and private sectors increased from 1,100 tons to 110,175 tons. Iran is the world's largest producer and exporter of caviar, exporting more than 300 tonnes annually.\nIndustry and services.\nIran is globally ranked 16th in car manufacturing, ahead of the UK, Italy, and Russia. It has outputted 1.188 million cars in 2023, a 12% growth compared to the previous years. Iran has exported various cars to countries such as Venezuela, Russia and Belarus. From 2008 to 2009, Iran leaped to 28th place from 69th in annual industrial production growth rate. Iranian contractors have been awarded several foreign tender contracts in different fields of construction of dams, bridges, roads, buildings, railroads, power generation, and gas, oil and petrochemical industries. As of 2011, some 66 Iranian industrial companies are carrying out projects in 27 countries. Iran exported over $20 billion worth of technical and engineering services over 2001\u20132011. The availability of local raw materials, rich mineral reserves, experienced manpower have all played crucial role in winning the bids.\n45% of large industrial firms are located in Tehran, and almost half of their workers work for government. The Iranian retail industry is largely in the hands of cooperatives, many of them government-sponsored, and of independent retailers in the bazaars. The bulk of food sales occur at street markets, where the Chief Statistics Bureau sets the prices. Iran's main exports are to Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Syria, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Canada, Venezuela, Japan, South Korea and Turkey. Iran's automotive industry is the second most active industry of the country, after its oil and gas industry. Iran Khodro is the largest car manufacturer in the Middle East, and ITMCO is the biggest tractor manufacturer. Iran is the 12th largest automaker in the world. Construction is one of the most important sectors in Iran accounting for 20\u201350% of the total private investment.\nIran is one of the most important mineral producers in the world, ranked among 15 major mineral-rich countries. Iran has become self-sufficient in designing, building and operating dams and power plants. Iran is one of the six countries in the world that manufacture gas- and steam-powered turbines.\nTransport.\nIn 2011 Iran had of roads, of which 73% were paved. In 2008 there were nearly 100 passenger cars for every 1,000 inhabitants.\nTehran Metro is the largest in the Middle East, it carries more than 3 million passengers daily and in 2018, 820 million trips. Trains operate on of track. The country's major port of entry is Bandar Abbas on the Strait of Hormuz. Imported goods are distributed through the country by trucks and freight trains. The Tehran\u2013Bandar Abbas railroad connects Bandar-Abbas to the railroad system of Central Asia, via Tehran and Mashhad. Other major ports include Bandar e-Anzali and Bandar e-Torkeman on the Caspian Sea and Khorramshahr and Bandar-e Emam Khomeyni on the Persian Gulf.\nDozens of cities have airports that serve passenger and cargo planes. Iran Air, the national airline, operates domestic and international flights. All large cities have mass transit systems using buses, and private companies provide bus services between cities. Over a million people work in transport, accounting for 9% of GDP.\nEnergy.\nIran is an energy superpower and petroleum plays a key part. As of 2023[ [update]], Iran produced 4% of the world's crude oil ( per day), which generates US$36bn of export revenue and is the main source of foreign currency. Oil and gas reserves are estimated at 1.2 trn barrels; Iran holds 10% of world oil reserves and 15% for gas. It ranks 3rd in oil reserves and is OPEC's 2nd largest exporter. It has the 2nd largest gas reserves, and 3rd largest natural gas production. In 2019, Iran discovered a southern oil field of 50 bn barrels and in April 2024, the NIOC discovered 10 giant shale oil deposits, totalling 2.6 bn barrels. Iran plans to invest $500 billion in oil by 2025.\nIran manufactures 60\u201370% of its industrial equipment domestically, including turbines, pumps, catalysts, refineries, oil tankers, drilling rigs, offshore platforms, towers, pipes, and exploration instruments. The addition of new hydroelectric stations and streamlining of conventional coal and oil-fired stations increased installed capacity to 33 GW; about 75% was based on natural gas, 18% on oil, and 7% on hydroelectric power. In 2004, Iran opened its first wind-powered and geothermal plants, and the first solar thermal plant began in 2009. Iran is the world's third country to develop GTL technology.\nDemographic trends and intensified industrialisation have caused electric power demand to grow by 8% per year. The government's goal of 53 GW of installed capacity by 2010 is to be reached by bringing on line new gas-fired plants, and adding hydropower and nuclear generation capacity. Iran's first nuclear power plant went online in 2011.\nDespite being an energy superpower as of 2024-2025 Iran suffers from an energy crisis, manifested by many power outages.\nScience and technology.\nIran has made considerable advances in science and technology, despite international sanctions. In the biomedical sciences, Iran's Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics has a UNESCO chair in biology. In 2006, Iranian scientists successfully cloned a sheep at the Royan Research Centre in Tehran. Stem cell research is among the top 10 in the world. Iran ranks 15th in the world in nanotechnologies. Iranian scientists outside Iran have made major scientific contributions. In 1960, Ali Javan co-invented the first gas laser, and fuzzy set theory was introduced by Lotfi A. Zadeh.\nCardiologist Tofy Mussivand invented and developed the first artificial cardiac pump, the precursor of the artificial heart. Furthering research in diabetes, the HbA1c was discovered by Samuel Rahbar. Many papers in string theory are published in Iran. In 2014, Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani became the first woman, and Iranian, to receive the Fields Medal, the highest prize in mathematics.\nIran increased its publication output nearly tenfold from 1996 through 2004, and ranked first in output growth rate, followed by China. According to a study by SCImago in 2012, Iran would rank fourth in research output by 2018, if the trend persisted. The Iranian humanoid robot Sorena 2, which was designed by engineers at the University of Tehran, was unveiled in 2010. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has placed the name of Surena among the five most prominent robots, after analysing its performance. \nAccording to a 2019 study by Isabel Campos-Varela et al., Iran recorded the highest proportion of retracted publications globally, with 15.52 retractions per 10,000 publications. Media reports from 2023 indicate that Iran continues to rank among the countries with the highest retraction rates. Common types of misconduct include fraudulent peer review processes, plagiarism, and data fabrication. Data from the Retraction Watch Leaderboard further highlights that two of the 32 individuals with the highest number of retracted articles worldwide are based in Iran.\nIran was ranked 64th in the Global Innovation Index in 2024.\nIranian Space Agency.\nThe Iranian Space Agency (ISA) was established in 2004. Iran became an orbital-launch-capable nation in 2009, and is a founding member of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Iran placed its domestically built satellite Omid into orbit on the 30th anniversary of the Revolution, in 2009, through its first expendable launch vehicle Safir. It became the 9th country capable of both producing a satellite and sending it into space from a domestically made launcher. Simorgh's launch in 2016, is the successor of Safir.\nIn January 2024, Iran launched the Soraya satellite into its highest orbit yet (750\u00a0km), a new space launch milestone for the country. It was launched by Qaem 100 rocket. Iran also successfully launched 3 indigenous satellites, The Mahda, Kayan and Hatef, into orbit using the Simorgh carrier rocket. It was the first time in country's history that it simultaneously sent three satellites into space. The three satellites are designed for testing advanced satellite subsystems, space-based positioning technology, and narrowband communication.\nIn February 2024, Iran launched its domestically developed imaging satellite, Pars 1, from Russia into orbit. This was the second time since August 2022, when Russia launched another Iranian remote-sensing, Khayyam satellite, into orbit from Kazakhstan, reflecting deep scientific cooperation between the countries.\nTelecommunication.\nIran's telecommunications industry is almost entirely state-owned, dominated by the Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI). As of 2020, 70 million Iranians use high-speed mobile internet. Iran is among the first five countries which have had a growth rate of over 20 percent and the highest level of development in telecommunication. Iran has been awarded the UNESCO special certificate for providing telecommunication services to rural areas.\nGlobally, Iran ranks 75th in mobile internet speed and 153rd in fixed internet speed.\nDemographics.\nIran's population grew rapidly from about 19\u00a0million in 1956 to about 85 million by February 2023. However, Iran's fertility rate has dropped dramatically, from 6.5 children born per woman to about 1.7 two decades later, leading to a population growth rate of about 1.39% as of 2018. Due to its young population, studies project that the growth will continue to slow until it stabilises at around 105\u00a0million by 2050.\nIran hosts one of the largest refugee populations, with almost one million, mostly from Afghanistan and Iraq. According to the Iranian Constitution, the government is required to provide every citizen with access to social security, covering retirement, unemployment, old age, disability, accidents, calamities, health and medical treatment and care services. This is covered by tax revenues and income derived from public contributions.\nThe country has one of the highest urban growth rates in the world. From 1950 to 2002, the urban proportion of the population increased from 27% to 60%. Iran's population is concentrated in its western half, especially in the north, north-west and west.\nTehran, with a population of around 9.4\u00a0million, is Iran's capital and largest city. The country's second most populous city, Mashhad, has a population of around 3.4\u00a0million, and is capital of the province of Razavi Khorasan. Isfahan has a population of around 2.2\u00a0million and is Iran's third most populous city. It is the capital of Isfahan province and was also the third capital of the Safavid Empire.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nEthnic groups.\nEthnic group composition remains a point of debate, mainly regarding the largest and second largest ethnic groups, the Persians and Azerbaijanis, due to the lack of Iranian state censuses based on ethnicity. The World Factbook has estimated that around 79% of the population of Iran is a diverse Indo-European ethno-linguistic group, with Persians (including Mazenderanis and Gilaks) constituting 61% of the population, Kurds 10%, Lurs 6%, and Balochs 2%. Peoples of other ethnolinguistic groups make up the remaining 21%, with Azerbaijanis constituting 16%, Arabs 2%, Turkmens and other Turkic tribes 2%, and others (such as Armenians, Talysh, Georgians, Circassians, Assyrians) 1%.\nThe Library of Congress issued slightly different estimates: 65% Persians (including Mazenderanis, Gilaks, and the Talysh), 16% Azerbaijanis, 7% Kurds, 6% Lurs, 2% Baloch, 1% Turkic tribal groups (including Qashqai and Turkmens), and non-Iranian, non-Turkic groups (including Armenians, Georgians, Assyrians, Circassians, and Arabs) less than 3%.\nEthnic based discrimination is prevalent in Iran. Minorities in Iran have been disproportionately affected by the ongoing crackdown aimed at repressing the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' movement, according to the UN Fact-Finding Mission.\nLanguages.\nMost of the population speaks Persian, the country's official and national language. Others include speakers of other Iranian languages, within the greater Indo-European family, and languages belonging to other ethnicities. The Gilaki and Mazenderani languages are widely spoken in Gilan and Mazenderan, northern Iran. The Talysh language is spoken in parts of Gilan. Varieties of Kurdish are concentrated in the province of Kurdistan and nearby areas. In Khuzestan, several dialects of Persian are spoken. South Iran also houses the Luri and Lari languages.\nAzerbaijani, the most-spoken minority language in the country, and other Turkic languages and dialects are found in various regions, especially Azerbaijan. Notable minority languages include Armenian, Georgian, Neo-Aramaic, and Arabic. Khuzi Arabic is spoken by the Arabs in Khuzestan, and the wider group of Iranian Arabs. Circassian was also once widely spoken by the large Circassian minority, but, due to assimilation, no sizable number of Circassians speak the language anymore.\nPercentages of spoken language continue to be a point of debate, most notably regarding the largest and second largest ethnicities in Iran, the Persians and Azerbaijanis. Percentages given by the CIA's World Factbook include 53% Persian, 16% Azerbaijani, 10% Kurdish, 7% Mazenderani and Gilaki, 7% Luri, 2% Turkmen, 2% Balochi, 2% Arabic, and 2% the remainder Armenian, Georgian, Neo-Aramaic, and Circassian.\nReligion.\nTwelver Shia Islam is the state religion, to which 90\u201395% of Iranians adhere; about 5\u201310% are in the Sunni and Sufi branches of Islam. 96% of Iranians believe in Islam, but 14% identify as not religious.\nThere is a large population of adherents to Yarsanism, a Kurdish indigenous religion, estimated to be over half a million to one million followers. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is not officially recognised and has been subject to official persecution. Since the Revolution, the persecution of Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds has increased. Irreligion is not recognised by the government.\nChristianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and the Sunni branch of Islam are officially recognised by the government and have reserved seats in the Parliament. Iran is home to the largest Jewish community in the Muslim World and the Middle East, outside of Israel. Around 250,000 to 370,000 Christians reside in Iran, and Christianity is the country's largest recognised minority religion, most are of Armenian background, as well as a sizable minority of Assyrians. The Iranian government has supported the rebuilding and renovation of Armenian churches, and has supported the Armenian Monastic Ensembles of Iran. In 2019, the government registered the Vank Cathedral, in Isfahan, as a World Heritage Site. Currently three Armenian churches in Iran have been included in the World Heritage List.\nEducation.\nEducation is highly centralised. K\u201312 is supervised by the Ministry of Education, and higher education is supervised by the Ministry of Science and Technology. Literacy among people aged 15 and older was 86% as of 2016[ [update]], with men (90%) significantly more educated than women (81%). Government expenditure on education is around 4% of GDP.\nThe requirement to enter into higher education is to have a high school diploma and pass the Iranian University Entrance Exam. Many students do a one\u2013two-year course of pre-university. Iran's higher education is sanctioned by different levels of diplomas, including an associate degree in two years, a bachelor's degree in four years, and a master's degree in two years, after which another exam allows the candidate to pursue a doctoral programme.\nHealth.\nHealthcare is provided by the public-governmental system, the private sector, and NGOs.\nIran is the only country in the world with a legal organ trade. Iran has been able to extend public health preventive services through the establishment of an extensive Primary Health Care Network. As a result, child and maternal mortality rates have fallen significantly, and life expectancy at birth has risen. Iran's medical knowledge rank is 17th globally, and 1st in the Middle East and North Africa. In terms of medical science production index, Iran ranks 16th in the world. Iran is fast emerging as a preferred destination for medical tourism.\nThe country faces the common problem of other young demographic nations in the region, which is keeping pace with growth of an already huge demand for various public services. An anticipated increase in the population growth rate will increase the need for public health infrastructures and services. About 90% of Iranians have health insurance.\nCulture.\nArt.\nIran has one of the richest art heritages in history and been strong in many media including architecture, painting, literature, music, metalworking, stonemasonry, weaving, calligraphy and sculpture. At different times, influences from neighbouring civilisations have been important, and latterly Persian art gave and received major influences as part of the wider styles of Islamic art.\nFrom the Achaemenid Empire of 550\u2013330 BC, the courts of successive dynasties led the style of Persian art, and court-sponsored art left many of the most impressive pieces that remain. The Islamic style of dense decoration, geometrically laid out, developed in Iran into an elegant and harmonious style, combining motifs derived from plants with Chinese motifs such as the cloud-band, and often animals represented at a smaller scale. During the Safavid Empire in the 16th century, this style was used across a variety of media, and diffused from the court artists of the king, most being painters.\nBy the time of the Sasanians, Iranian art had a renaissance. During the Middle Ages, Sasanian art played a prominent role in the formation of European and Asian mediaeval art.\nThe Safavid era is known as the Golden Age of Iranian art. Safavid art exerted noticeable influences upon the Ottomans, the Mughals, and the Deccans, and was influential through its fashion and garden architecture on 11th\u201317th-century Europe.\nIran's contemporary art traces its origins to Kamal-ol-molk, a prominent realist painter at the court of the Qajar Empire who affected the norms of painting and adopted a naturalistic style that would compete with photographic works. A new Iranian school of fine art was established by him in 1928, and was followed by the so-called \"coffeehouse\" style of painting. Iran's avant-garde modernists emerged by the arrival of new western influences during World War II. The contemporary art scene originates in the late 1940s, and Tehran's first modern art gallery, Apadana, was opened in 1949 by Mahmud Javadipur, Hosein Kazemi, and Hushang Ajudani. The new movements received official encouragement by the 1950s, which led to the emergence of artists such as Marcos Grigorian.\nArchitecture.\nThe history of architecture in Iran dates back to at least 5,000 BC, with characteristic examples distributed over an area from what is now Turkey and Iraq to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and from the Caucasus to Zanzibar. The Iranians made early use of mathematics, geometry and astronomy in their architecture, yielding a tradition with structural and aesthetic variety. The guiding motif is its cosmic symbolism.\nWithout sudden innovations, and despite the trauma of invasions and cultural shocks, it developed a recognizable style distinct from other regions of the Muslim world. Its virtues are \"a marked feeling for form and scale; structural inventiveness, especially in vault and dome construction; a genius for decoration with a freedom and success not rivalled in any other architecture\". In addition to historic gates, palaces, and mosques, the rapid growth of cities such as Tehran has brought a wave of construction. Iran ranks 7th among UNESCO's list of countries with the most archaeological ruins and attractions from antiquity.\nWorld Heritage Sites.\nIran's rich culture and history is reflected by its 27 World Heritage Sites, ranking 1st in the Middle East, and 10th in the world. These include Persepolis, Naghsh-e Jahan Square, Chogha Zanbil, Pasargadae, Golestan Palace, Arg-e Bam, Behistun Inscription, Shahr-e Sukhteh, Susa, Takht-e Soleyman, Hyrcanian forests, the city of Yazd and more. Iran has 24 Intangible Cultural Heritage, or Human treasures, which ranks 5th worldwide.\nWeaving.\nIran's carpet-weaving has its origins in the Bronze Age and is one of the most distinguished manifestations of Iranian art. Carpet weaving is an essential part of Persian culture and Iranian art. Persian rugs and carpets were woven in parallel by nomadic tribes in village and town workshops, and by royal court manufactories. As such, they represent simultaneous lines of tradition, and reflect the history of Iran, Persian culture, and its various peoples. Although the term \"Persian carpet\" most often refers to pile-woven textiles, flat-woven carpets and rugs like Kilim, Soumak, and embroidered tissues like Suzani are part of the manifold tradition of Persian carpet weaving.\nIran produces three-quarters of the world's handmade carpets, and has 30% of export markets. In 2010, the \"traditional skills of carpet weaving\" in Fars Province and Kashan were inscribed to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List. Within the Oriental rugs produced by the countries of the \"rug belt\", the Persian carpet stands out by the variety and elaborateness of its manifold designs.\nCarpets woven in towns and regional centres like Tabriz, Kerman, Ravar, Neyshabour, Mashhad, Kashan, Isfahan, Nain and Qom are characterized by their specific weaving techniques and use of high-quality materials, colours and patterns. Hand-woven Persian rugs and carpets have been regarded as objects of high artistic value and prestige, since they were mentioned by ancient Greek writers.\nLiterature.\nIran's oldest literary tradition is that of Avestan, the Old Iranian sacred language of the Avesta, which consists of the legendary and religious texts of Zoroastrianism and the ancient Iranian religion. The Persian language was used and developed through Persianate societies in Asia Minor, Central Asia, and South Asia, leaving extensive influences on Ottoman and Mughal literatures, among others. Iran has several famous mediaeval poets, notably Mawlana, Ferdowsi, Hafez, Sa'adi, Omar Khayyam, and Nezami Ganjavi.\nDescribed as one of the great literatures of humanity, including Goethe's assessment of it as one of the four main bodies of world literature, Persian literature has its roots in surviving works of Middle Persian and Old Persian, the latter of which dates back as far as 522\u00a0BCE, the date of the earliest surviving Achaemenid inscription, the Behistun Inscription. The bulk of surviving Persian literature, however, comes from the times following the Muslim conquest in c. 650\u00a0CE. After the Abbasids came to power (750 CE), the Iranians became the scribes and bureaucrats of the Islamic Caliphate and, increasingly, also its writers and poets. The New Persian language literature arose and flourished in Khorasan and Transoxiana because of political reasons, early Iranian dynasties of post-Islamic Iran such as the Tahirids and Samanids being based in Khorasan.\nPhilosophy.\nIranian philosophy can be traced back as far as Old Iranian philosophical traditions and thoughts which originated in ancient Indo-Iranian roots and were influenced by Zarathustra's teachings. Throughout Iranian history and due to remarkable political and social changes such as the Arab and Mongol invasions, a wide spectrum of schools of thoughts showed a variety of views on philosophical questions, extending from Old Iranian and mainly Zoroastrianism-related traditions, to schools appearing in the late pre-Islamic era such as Manicheism and Mazdakism as well as post-Islamic schools.\nThe Cyrus Cylinder is seen as a reflection of the questions and thoughts expressed by Zoroaster and developed in Zoroastrian schools of the Achaemenid era. Post-Islam Iranian philosophy is characterised by different interactions with the Old Iranian philosophy, the Greek philosophy and with the development of Islamic philosophy. The Illumination School and the Transcendent Philosophy are regarded as two of the main philosophical traditions of that era in Iran. Contemporary Iranian philosophy has been limited in its scope by intellectual repression.\nMythology and folklore.\nIranian mythology consists of ancient Iranian folklore and stories of extraordinary beings reflecting on good and evil (Ahura Mazda and Ahriman), actions of the gods, and the exploits of heroes and creatures. The tenth-century Persian poet, Ferdowsi, is the author of the national epic known as the \"Shahnameh\" (\"Book of Kings\"), which is for the most part based on \"Xwad\u0101yn\u0101mag\", a Middle Persian compilation of the history of Iranian kings and heroes, as well as the stories and characters of the Zoroastrian tradition, from the texts of the Avesta, the Denkard, the Vendidad and the Bundahishn. Modern scholars study the myths to shed light on the religious and political institutions of not only Iran but of the Greater Iran, which includes regions of West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, and Transcaucasia where the culture of Iran has had significant influence.\nStorytelling has a significant presence in Iranian folklore and culture. In classical Iran, minstrels performed for their audiences at royal courts and in public theatres. A minstrel was referred to by the Parthians as g\u014ds\u0101n, and by the Sasanians as huniy\u0101gar. Since the Safavid Empire, storytellers and poetry readers appeared at coffeehouses. After the Iranian Revolution, it took until 1985 to found the MCHTH (Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts), a now heavily centralised organisation, supervising all kinds of cultural activities. It held the first scientific meeting on anthropology and folklore in 1990.\nMuseums.\nThe National Museum of Iran in Tehran is the country's most important cultural institution. As the first and biggest museum in Iran, the institution includes the Museum of Ancient Iran and the Museum of the Islamic Era. The National Museum is the world's most important museum in terms of preservation, display and research of archaeological collections of Iran, and ranks as one of the few most prestigious museums globally in terms of volume, diversity and quality of its monuments.\nThere are many other popular museums across the country such as the Golestan Palace (World Heritage Site), The Treasury of National Jewels, Reza Abbasi Museum, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Sa'dabad Complex, The Carpet Museum, Abgineh Museum, Pars Museum, Azerbaijan Museum, Hegmataneh Museum, Susa Museum and more. Around 25 million people visited the museums in 2019.\nMusic and dance.\nIran is the apparent birthplace of the earliest complex instruments, dating to the third millennium\u00a0BC. The use of angular harps have been documented at Madaktu and Kul-e Farah, with the largest collection of Elamite instruments documented at Kul-e Farah. Xenophon's \"Cyropaedia\" mentions singing women at the court of the Achaemenid Empire. Under the Parthian Empire, the \"g\u014ds\u0101n\" (Parthian for 'minstrel') had a prominent role.\nThe history of Sasanian music is better documented than earlier periods and is especially more evident in Avestan texts. By the time of Khosrow II, the Sasanian royal court hosted prominent musicians, namely Azad, Bamshad, Barbad, Nagisa, Ramtin, and Sarkash. Iranian traditional musical instruments include string instruments such as chang (harp), qanun, santur, rud (oud, barbat), tar, dotar, setar, tanbur, and kamanche, wind instruments such as sorna (zurna, karna) and ney, and percussion instruments such as tompak, kus, daf (dayere), and naqare.\nIran's first symphony orchestra, the Tehran Symphony Orchestra, was founded in 1933. By the late 1940s, Ruhollah Khaleqi founded the country's first national music society and established the School of National Music in 1949. Iranian pop music has its origins in the Qajar era. It was significantly developed since the 1950s, using indigenous instruments and forms accompanied by electric guitar and other imported characteristics. Iranian rock emerged in the 1960s and hip hop in the 2000s.\nIran has known dance in the forms of music, play, drama or religious rituals since at least the 6th millennium BC. Artifacts with pictures of dancers were found in archaeological prehistoric sites. Genres of dance vary depending on the area, culture, and language of the local people, and can range from sophisticated reconstructions of refined court dances to energetic folk dances. Each group, region, and historical epoch has specific dance styles associated with it. The earliest researched dance from historic Iran is a dance worshipping Mithra. Ancient Persian dance was significantly researched by Greek historian Herodotus. Iran was occupied by foreign powers, causing a slow disappearance of heritage dance traditions.\nThe Qajar period had an important influence on Persian dance. In this period, a style of dance began to be called \"classical Persian dance\". Dancers performed artistic dances in court for entertainment purposes such as coronations, marriage celebrations, and Norouz celebrations. In the 20th century, the music came to be orchestrated and dance movement and costuming gained a modernistic orientation to the West.\nFashion and clothing.\nThe exact date of the emergence of weaving in Iran is not yet known, but it is likely to coincide with the emergence of civilisation. Ferdowsi and many historians have considered Keyumars to be first to use animals' skin and hair as clothing, while others propose Hushang. Ferdowsi considers Tahmuras to be a kind of textile initiator in Iran. The clothing of ancient Iran took an advanced form, and the fabric and colour of clothing became very important. Depending on the social status, eminence, climate of the region and the season, Persian clothing during the Achaemenian period took various forms. This clothing, in addition to being functional, had an aesthetic role.\nCinema, animation and theatre.\nA third-millennium BC earthen goblet discovered at the Burnt City in southeast Iran depicts what could be the world's oldest example of animation. The earliest attested Iranian examples of visual representations, however, are traced back to the bas-reliefs of Persepolis, the ritual centre of the Achaemenid Empire.\nThe first Iranian filmmaker was probably Mirza Ebrahim (Akkas Bashi), the court photographer of Mozaffar-ed-Din of the Qajar Empire. Mirza Ebrahim obtained a camera and filmed the Qajar ruler's visit to Europe. In 1904, Mirza Ebrahim (Sahhaf Bashi) opened the first public cinema in Tehran. The first Iranian feature film, \"Abi and Rabi\", was a silent comedy directed by Ovanes Ohanian in 1930. The first sound one, \"Lor Girl\", was produced by Ardeshir Irani and Abd-ol-Hosein Sepanta in 1932. Iran's animation industry began by the 1950s and was followed by the establishment of the influential Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults in 1965.\nWith the screening of the films \"Qeysar\" and \"The Cow\", directed by Masoud Kimiai and Dariush Mehrjui respectively in 1969, alternative films set out to establish their status in the film industry and Bahram Beyzai's \"Downpour\" and Nasser Taghvai's \"Tranquility in the Presence of Others\" followed. Attempts to organise a film festival, which had begun in 1954 within the Golrizan Festival, resulted in the festival of Sepas in 1969. It also resulted in the formation of Tehran's World Film Festival in 1973.\nFollowing the Cultural Revolution, a new age emerged in Iranian cinema, starting with \"Long Live!\" by Khosrow Sinai and followed by other directors, such as Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi. Kiarostami, an acclaimed director, planted Iran firmly on the map of world cinema when he won the for \"Taste of Cherry\" in 1997. The presence of Iranian films in prestigious international festivals, such as Cannes, Venice and Berlin, attracted attention to Iranian films. In 2006, 6 films represented Iranian cinema at Berlin; critics considered this a remarkable event in Iranian cinema. Asghar Farhadi, an Iranian director, has received a Golden Globe Award and two Academy Awards, representing Iran for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012 and 2017, with \"A Separation\" and \"The Salesman\". In 2020, Ashkan Rahgozar's \"The Last Fiction\" became the first representative of Iranian animated cinema in the competition section, in Best Animated Feature and Best Picture categories at the Academy Awards.\nThe oldest Iranian initiation of theatre can be traced to ancient epic ceremonial theatres such as \"Sug-e Si\u0101vu\u0691\" (\"mourning of Si\u0101va\u0691\"), as well as dances and theatre narrations of Iranian mythological tales reported by Herodotus and Xenophon. Iran's traditional theatrical genres include Baqq\u0101l-b\u0101zi (\"grocer play\", a form of slapstick comedy), Ruhowzi (or \"Taxt-howzi\", comedy performed over a courtyard pool covered with boards), Si\u0101h-b\u0101zi (the central comedian appears in blackface), S\u0101ye-b\u0101zi (shadow play), Xeyme-\u0691ab-b\u0101zi (marionette), and Arusak-b\u0101zi (puppetry), and Ta'zie (religious tragedy plays).\nThe Roudaki Hall is home to the Tehran Symphony Orchestra, the Tehran Opera Orchestra, and the Iranian National Ballet Company, and was officially renamed \"Vahdat Hall\" after the Revolution.\nMedia.\nIran's largest media corporation is the state-owned IRIB. The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance is responsible for the cultural policy, including activities regarding communications and information.\nMost of the newspapers published in Iran are in Persian, the country's official and national language. The country's most widely circulated periodicals are based in Tehran, among which are \"Etemad\", \"Ettela'at\", \"Kayhan\", \"Hamshahri\", \"Resalat\", and \"Shargh\". \"Tehran Times\", \"Iran Daily\", and \"Financial Tribune\" are among the famous English-language newspapers based in Iran.\nIran ranks 17th among countries by number of Internet users. Google Search is Iran's most widely used search engine and Instagram is the most popular online social networking service. Direct access to many worldwide mainstream websites has been blocked in Iran, including Facebook, which has been blocked since 2009. About 90% of Iran's e-commerce takes place on the Iranian online store Digikala, which has around 750,000 visitors per day and is the most visited online store in the Middle East.\nCuisine.\nIranian main dishes include varieties of kebab, pilaf, stew (khoresh), soup and \u0101sh, and omelette. Lunch and dinner meals are commonly accompanied by side dishes such as plain yogurt or mast-o-khiar, sabzi, salad Shirazi, and torshi, and might follow dishes such as borani, Mirza Qasemi, or kashk e bademjan. In Iranian culture, tea is widely consumed. Iran is the world's seventh major tea producer. One of Iran's most popular desserts is the falude. There is also the popular saffron ice cream, known as \"Bastani Sonnati\" (\"traditional ice cream\"), which is sometimes accompanied with carrot juice. Iran is also famous for its caviar.\nTypical Iranian main dishes are combinations of rice with meat, vegetables and nuts. Herbs are frequently used, along with fruits such as plums, pomegranates, quince, prunes, apricots and raisins. Characteristic Iranian spices and flavourings such as saffron, cardamom, and dried lime and other sources of sour flavoring, cinnamon, turmeric and parsley are mixed and used in various dishes.\nSports.\nIran is the most likely birthplace of polo, locally known as Chogan, with its earliest records attributed to the ancient Medes. Freestyle wrestling is traditionally considered the national sport, and Iran's wrestlers have been world champions many times. Iran's traditional wrestling, called \"ko\u0691ti e pahlev\u0101ni\" (\"heroic wrestling\"), is registered on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Iran's National Olympic Committee was founded in 1947. Wrestlers and weightlifters have achieved the country's highest records at the Olympics. In 1974, Iran became the first country in West Asia to host the Asian Games.\nAs a mountainous country, Iran is a venue for skiing, snowboarding, hiking, rock climbing, and mountain climbing. It is home to ski resorts, the most famous being Tochal, Dizin, and Shemshak. Dizin is the largest, and authorised by FIS to administer international competitions.\nFootball is the most popular sport, with the men's national team having won the Asian Cup three times. The men's team ranks 2nd in Asia and 20th in the FIFA World Rankings as of April 2024[ [update]]. The Azadi Stadium in Tehran is the largest association football stadium in West Asia and on a list of top-20 stadiums in the world. Volleyball is the second most popular sport. Having won the 2011 and 2013 Asian Men's Volleyball Championships, the men's national team is the 2nd strongest in Asia, and 15th in the FIVB World Rankings as of January\u00a02024[ [update]]. Basketball is also popular, with the men's national team having won three Asian Championships since 2007.\nObservances.\nIran's official New Year begins with Nowruz, an ancient Iranian tradition celebrated annually on the vernal equinox and described as the \"Persian New Year\". It was registered on the UNESCO's list of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2009. On the eve of the last Wednesday of the preceding year, as a prelude to Nowruz, the ancient festival of \u0628\u0101r\u0691anbe Suri celebrates \u0100tar (\"fire\") by performing rituals such as jumping over bonfires and lighting fireworks.\nYald\u0101, another ancient tradition, commemorates the ancient goddess Mithra and marks the longest night of the year on the eve of the winter solstice (usually on 20 or 21 December), during which families gather to recite poetry and eat fruits. In some regions of Mazanderan and Markazi, there is a midsummer festival, Tirg\u0101n, which is observed on Tir 13 (2 or 3July) as a celebration of water.\nIslamic annual events such as Ramez\u0101n, Eid e Fetr, and Ruz e \u0100\u0691ur\u0101 are marked by the country's population, Christian traditions such as Noel, elle ye Ruze, and Eid e P\u0101k are observed by the Christian communities, Jewish traditions such as Hanuk\u0101 and Eid e Fatir (Pesah) are observed by the Jewish communities, and Zoroastrian traditions such as Sade and Mehrg\u0101n are observed by the Zoroastrians.\nPublic holidays.\nWith 26, Iran has one of the world's highest number of public holidays. It ranks 1st in the world with the most paid leave days: 52. Iran's official calendar is the Solar Hejri calendar, beginning at the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. Each of the 12 months of the Solar Hejri calendar correspond with a zodiac sign, and the length of each year is solar. Alternatively, the Lunar Hejri calendar is used to indicate Islamic events, and the Gregorian calendar marks international events.\nLegal public holidays based on the Iranian solar calendar include the cultural celebrations of Nowruz (Farvardin 1\u20134; 21\u201324 March) and Sizdebedar (Farvardin 13; 2April), and the political events of Islamic Republic Day (Farvardin 12; 1April), the death of Ruhollah Khomeini (Khordad 14; 4June), the Khordad 15 event (Khordad 15; 5June), the anniversary of the Iranian Revolution (Bahman 22; 10 February), and Oil Nationalisation Day (Esfand 29; 19 March).\nLunar Islamic public holidays include Tasua (Muharram 9), Ashura (Muharram 10), Arba'een (Safar 20), Muhammad's death (Safar 28), the death of Ali al-Ridha (Safar 29 or 30), the birthday of Muhammad (Rabi-al-Awwal 17), the death of Fatimah (Jumada-al-Thani 3), the birthday of Ali (Rajab 13), Muhammad's first revelation (Rajab 27), the birthday of Muhammad al-Mahdi (Sha'ban 15), the death of Ali (Ramadan 21), Eid al-Fitr (Shawwal 1\u20132), the death of Ja'far al-Sadiq (Shawwal 25), Eid al-Qurban (Zulhijja 10), and Eid al-Qadir (Zulhijja 18).\nExplanatory notes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nFootnotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n<templatestyles src=\"Plain navboxes/styles.css\" />", "32820034": "Javad Hardani\nIranian Paralympic athlete (born 1984)\nJavad Hardani (born 22 March 1984) is a Paralympic athlete from Iran. He competes in throwing events, and is classified F38, a class for athletes with cerebral palsy.\nJavad competed in the 2008 Summer Paralympics where he won the F37/38 discus and finished third in F37/38 javelin. In 2012, at the London Paralympic Games he succeeded in winning a gold medal in the F37/38 discus, breaking the F38 world record in the process.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["35413648", "32820034", "14653"], "permutation_1": ["32820034", "14653", "35413648"], "permutation_2": ["35413648", "32820034", "14653"], "permutation_3": ["35413648", "32820034", "14653"]}
{"id": "3hop1__456999_71250_135051", "docs_added": {"30570": "Trajan\nRoman emperor from AD 98 to 117\nTrajan ( ; born Marcus Ulpius Traianus, 18 September\u00a053\u00a0\u2013\u00a0c.\u20099 August\u00a0117) was a Roman emperor from AD\u00a098 to 117, remembered as the second of the Five Good Emperors of the Nerva\u2013Antonine dynasty. He was a philanthropic ruler and a successful soldier-emperor who presided over one of the greatest military expansions in Roman history, during which, by the time of his death, the Roman Empire reached its maximum territorial extent. He was given the title of ('the best') by the Roman Senate.\nTrajan was born in the of Italica in the present-day Andalusian province of Seville in southern Spain, an Italic settlement in Hispania Baetica; his came from the town of Tuder in the Umbria region of central Italy. His namesake father, Marcus Ulpius Traianus, was a general and distinguished senator. Trajan rose to prominence during the reign of Domitian; in AD 89, serving as a in , he supported the emperor against a revolt on the Rhine led by Antonius Saturninus. He then served as governor of Germania and Pannonia. In September 96, Domitian was succeeded by the elderly and childless Nerva, who proved to be unpopular with the army. After a revolt by members of the Praetorian Guard, Nerva decided to adopt as his heir and successor the more popular Trajan, who had distinguished himself in military campaigns against Germanic tribes.\nAs emperor of Rome, Trajan oversaw the construction of building projects such as the forum named after him, the introduction of social welfare policies such as the , and new military conquests. He annexed Nabataea and Dacia, and his war against the Parthian Empire ended with the incorporation of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria as Roman provinces. In August AD\u00a0117, while sailing back to Rome, Trajan fell ill and died of a stroke in the city of Selinus. He was deified by the senate and his successor Hadrian (Trajan's cousin). According to historical tradition, Trajan's ashes were entombed in a small room beneath Trajan's Column.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nSources.\nAn account of the Dacian Wars, the \"Commentarii de bellis Dacicis\", written by Trajan himself or a ghostwriter and modelled after Caesar's \"Commentarii de Bello Gallico\", is lost with the exception of one sentence. Only fragments remain of the \"Getica\", a book by Trajan's personal physician Titus Statilius Criton. The \"Parthica\", a 17-volume account of the Parthian Wars written by Arrian, has met a similar fate. Book68 in Greek author Cassius Dio's \"Roman History\", which survives mostly as Byzantine abridgements and epitomes, is the main source for the political history of Trajan's rule. Besides this, Pliny the Younger's \"Panegyricus\" and Dio Chrysostom's orations are the best surviving contemporary sources. Both are adulatory perorations, typical of the High Imperial period, that describe an idealized monarch and an equally idealized view of Trajan's rule, and concern themselves more with ideology than with fact.\nThe 10th volume of Pliny's letters contains his correspondence with Trajan, which deals with various aspects of imperial Roman government. It is generally agreed that Pliny, being part of the emperor's inner circle, provides a unique and valuable source of information through his letters with Trajan, the only surviving correspondence between a governor and his emperor. However, it has been argued that Pliny's correspondence with Trajan is neither intimate nor candid, but rather an exchange of official mail in which Pliny's stance borders on the servile. Some authors have even proposed that much of the text was written and/or edited by Trajan's Imperial secretary, his \"ab epistulis\". Given the scarcity of literary sources, discussion of Trajan and his rule in modern historiography cannot avoid speculation. Non-literary sources such as archaeology, epigraphy, and numismatics are also useful for reconstructing his reign.\nEarly life.\nMarcus Ulpius Traianus was born on 18 September AD53 in the Roman province of Hispania Baetica (in what is now Andalusia in modern Spain), in the \"municipium\" of Italica (now in the municipal area of Santiponce, in the outskirts of Seville), a Roman colony established in 206BC by Scipio Africanus. At the time of Trajan's birth it was a small town, without baths, theatre and amphitheatre, and with a very narrow territory under its direct administration. Trajan's year of birth is not reliably attested and may instead have been AD 56.\nThe epitome of Cassius Dio's Roman history describes Trajan as \"an Iberian and neither an Italian nor even an Italiote\", but this claim is contradicted by other ancient sources and rejected by modern scholars, who have reconstructed Trajan's Italic lineage. Appian states that Trajan's hometown of Italica was settled by and named after Italic veterans who fought in Spain under Scipio, and new settlers arrived there from Italy in the following centuries. Among the Italic settlers were the Ulpii and the Traii, who were either part of the original colonists or arrived as late as the end of the 1st century BC. Their original home, according to the description of Trajan as \"Ulpius Traianus ex urbe Tudertina\" in the Epitome de Caesaribus, was the town of Tuder (Todi) in the Umbria region of central Italy. This is confirmed by archeology, with epigraphic evidence placing both the Ulpii and the Traii in Umbria generally and Tuder specifically, and by linguistic studies of the family names \"Ulpius\" and \"Traius\" which show that both are of Osco-Umbrian origin. \nIt is unknown whether Trajan's ancestors were Roman citizens or not at their arrival in Spain. They would have certainly possessed Roman citizenship in case they arrived after the Social War (91\u201387 BC), when Tuder became a municipium of Roman citizens. In Spain they may well have intermarried with native Iberians, in which case they would have lost their citizenship. Had they lacked or lost the status of Roman citizens, they would have achieved it or recovered it when Italica became a municipium with Latin rights in the mid-1st century BC.\nTrajan's paternal grandfather Ulpius married a Traia. Their son, Trajan's namesake father Marcus Ulpius Traianus, was born at Italica during the reign of Tiberius and became a prominent senator and general, commanding the Legio X Fretensis under Vespasian in the First Jewish-Roman War. Trajan's mother was Marcia, a Roman noblewoman of the gens Marcia and a sister-in-law of the second Flavian Emperor Titus. Little is known of her. Her father is believed to be Quintus Marcius Barea Sura. Her mother was Antonia Furnilla, daughter of Aulus Antonius Rufus and Furnia. Trajan owned some lands called \"Figlinae Marcianae\" in Ameria, another Umbrian town, located near both Tuder and Reate (the home of the Flavian dynasty) and believed to be the home of Marcia's family.\nThe line of the Ulpii continued long after Trajan's death. His elder sister was Ulpia Marciana, and his niece was Salonia Matidia. Very little is known about Trajan's early formative years, but it is thought likely that he spent his first months or years in Italica before moving to Rome and then, perhaps at around eight or nine years of age, he almost certainly would have returned temporarily to Italica with his father during Trajanus's governorship of Baetica (ca. 64\u201365). The lack of a strong local power base, caused by the size of the town from which they came, made it necessary for the Ulpii (and for the Aelii, the other important senatorial family of Italica with whom they were allied) to weave local alliances, in the Baetica (with the Annii, the Ucubi and perhaps the Dasumii from Corduba), the Tarraconense and the Narbonense, here above all through Pompeia Plotina, Trajan's wife. Many of these alliances were made not in Spain, but in Rome. The family home in Rome, the Domus Traiana, was on the Aventine Hill; excavations under the Piazza del Tempio di Diana found remains thought to be of the family's large suburban villa, with evidence of highly decorated rooms.\nMilitary career.\nAs a young man Trajan rose through the ranks of the Roman army, serving in some of the most contested parts of the empire's frontier. In 76\u201377, his father was Governor of Syria (\"Legatus pro praetore Syriae\"), where Trajan himself remained as \"Tribunus legionis\". From there, after his father's replacement, he seems to have been transferred to an unspecified Rhine province, and Pliny implies that he engaged in active combat duty during both commissions.\nIn about 86, Trajan's cousin Aelius Afer died, leaving his young children Hadrian and Paulina orphans. Trajan and his colleague Publius Acilius Attianus became co-guardians of the two children. Trajan, in his late thirties, was created ordinary consul for the year 91. This early appointment may reflect the prominence of his father's career, as his father had been instrumental to the ascent of the ruling Flavian dynasty, held consular rank himself and had just been made a patrician. Around this time Trajan brought the architect and engineer Apollodorus of Damascus with him to Rome, and married Pompeia Plotina, a noblewoman from the Roman settlement at N\u00eemes; the marriage ultimately remained childless.\nThe historian Cassius Dio later noted that Trajan was a lover of young men, in contrast to the usual bisexual activity that was common among upper-class Roman men of the period. The emperor Julian also made a sardonic reference to his predecessor's sexual preference, stating that Zeus himself would have had to be on guard had his Ganymede come within Trajan's vicinity. This distaste reflected a change of mores that began with the Severan dynasty, Trajan's putative lovers included the future emperor, Hadrian, pages of the imperial household, the actor Pylades, a dancer called Apolaustus, Lucius Licinius Sura, and Trajan's predecessor Nerva. Cassius Dio also relates that Trajan made an ally out of Abgar VII on account of the latter's beautiful son, Arbandes, who would then dance for Trajan at a banquet.\nThe details of Trajan's early military career are obscure, save for the fact that in 89, as legate of Legio VII Gemina in Hispania Tarraconensis, he supported Domitian against an attempted coup by Lucius Antonius Saturninus, the governor of Germania Superior. Trajan probably remained in the region after the revolt was quashed, to engage with the Chatti who had sided with Saturninus, before returning the VII Gemina legion to Legio in Hispania Tarraconensis. In 91 he held a consulate with Acilius Glabrio, a rarity in that neither consul was a member of the ruling dynasty. He held an unspecified consular commission as governor of either Pannonia or Germania Superior, or possibly both. Pliny\u00a0\u2013\u00a0who seems to deliberately avoid offering details that would stress personal attachment between Trajan and the \"tyrant\" Domitian\u00a0\u2013\u00a0attributes to him, at the time, various (and unspecified) feats of arms.\nRise to power.\nDomitian's successor, Nerva, was unpopular with the army, and had been forced by his Praetorian Prefect Casperius Aelianus to execute Domitian's killers. Nerva needed the army's support to avoid being ousted. He accomplished this in the summer of 97 by naming Trajan as his adoptive son and successor, claiming that this was entirely due to Trajan's outstanding military merits. There are hints, however, in contemporary literary sources that Trajan's adoption was imposed on Nerva. Pliny implied as much when he wrote that, although an emperor could not be coerced into doing something, if this was the way in which Trajan was raised to power, then it was worth it. Alice K\u00f6nig argues that the notion of a natural continuity between Nerva's and Trajan's reigns was an \"ex post facto\" fiction developed by authors writing under Trajan, including Tacitus and Pliny.\nAccording to the \"Historia Augusta\", the future Emperor Hadrian brought word to Trajan of his adoption. Trajan retained Hadrian on the Rhine frontier as a military tribune, and Hadrian thus became privy to the circle of friends and relations with whom Trajan surrounded himself. Among them was Lucius Licinius Sura, a Roman senator born in Spain and the governor of Germania Inferior, who was Trajan's personal friend and became an official adviser of the Emperor. Sura was highly influential, and was appointed consul for a third term in 107. Some senators may have resented Sura's activities as a kingmaker and \u00e9minence grise, among them the historian Tacitus, who acknowledged Sura's military and oratorical talents, but compared his rapacity and devious ways to those of Vespasian's \u00e9minence grise Licinius Mucianus. Sura is said to have informed Hadrian in 108 that he had been chosen as Trajan's imperial heir.\nAs governor of Upper Germany (Germania Superior) during Nerva's reign, Trajan received the impressive title of \"Germanicus\" for his skilful management and rule of the volatile Imperial province. When Nerva died on 28 January 98, Trajan succeeded to the role of emperor without any outward adverse incident. The fact that he chose not to hasten towards Rome, but made a lengthy tour of inspection on the Rhine and Danube frontiers, may suggest that he was unsure of his position, both in Rome and with the armies at the front. Alternatively, Trajan's keen military mind understood the importance of strengthening the empire's frontiers. His vision for future conquests required the diligent improvement of surveillance networks, defences and transport along the Danube. Prior to his frontier tours, Trajan ordered his Prefect Aelianus to attend him in Germany, where he was apparently executed forthwith (\"put out of the way\"), and his now-vacant post taken by Attius Suburanus. Trajan's accession, therefore, could qualify more as a successful coup than an orderly succession.\nRoman emperor.\nOn his entry to Rome, Trajan granted the plebs a direct gift of money. The traditional donative to the troops, however, was reduced by half. There remained the issue of the strained relations between the emperor and the Senate, especially after the supposed bloodiness that had marked Domitian's reign and his dealings with the Curia. By feigning reluctance to hold power, Trajan was able to start building a consensus around him in the Senate. His belated ceremonial entry into Rome in 99 was notably understated, something on which Pliny the Younger elaborated. By not openly supporting Domitian's preference for equestrian officers, Trajan appeared to conform to the idea (developed by Pliny) that an emperor derived his legitimacy from his adherence to traditional hierarchies and senatorial morals. Therefore, he could point to the allegedly republican character of his rule.\nIn a speech at the inauguration of his third consulship, on 1January 100, Trajan exhorted the senate to share the care-taking of the empire with him\u00a0\u2013\u00a0an event later celebrated on a coin. In reality, Trajan did not share power in any meaningful way with the senate, something that Pliny admits candidly: \"[E]verything depends on the whims of a single man who, on behalf of the common welfare, has taken upon himself all functions and all tasks\". One of the most significant trends of his reign was his encroachment on the senate's sphere of authority, such as his decision to make the senatorial provinces of Achaea and Bithynia into imperial ones in order to deal with the inordinate spending on public works by local magnates and the general mismanagement of provincial affairs by various proconsuls appointed by the Senate.\n\"Optimus princeps\".\nIn the formula developed by Pliny, however, Trajan was a \"good\" emperor in that, by himself, he approved or blamed the same things that the Senate would have approved or blamed. If in reality Trajan was an autocrat, his deferential behavior towards his peers qualified him to be viewed as a virtuous monarch. The idea is that Trajan wielded autocratic power through \"moderatio\" instead of \"contumacia\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0moderation instead of insolence. In short, according to the ethics for autocracy developed by most political writers of the Imperial Roman Age, Trajan was a good ruler in that he ruled less by fear, and more by acting as a role model, for, according to Pliny, \"men learn better from examples\". Eventually, Trajan's popularity among his peers was such that the Roman Senate bestowed upon him the honorific of \"optimus\", meaning \"the best\", which appears on coins from 105 on. This title had mostly to do with Trajan's role as benefactor, such as in the case of his returning confiscated property. The epithet \"optimus princeps\" had already been used for the emperors since the late republic, but Trajan was the only one officially honoured by the title.\nPliny states that Trajan's ideal role was a conservative one, argued as well by the orations of Dio Chrysostom\u2014in particular his four \"Orations on Kingship\", composed early during Trajan's reign. Dio, as a Greek notable and intellectual with friends in high places, and possibly an official friend to the emperor (\"amicus caesaris\"), saw Trajan as a defender of the \"status quo\". In his third kingship oration, Dio describes an ideal king ruling by means of \"friendship\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0that is, through patronage and a network of local notables who act as mediators between the ruled and the ruler. Dio's notion of being \"friend\" to Trajan (or any other Roman emperor), however, was that of an \"informal\" arrangement, that involved no formal entry of such \"friends\" into the Roman administration. Trajan ingratiated himself with the Greek intellectual elite by recalling to Rome many (including Dio) who had been exiled by Domitian, and by returning (in a process begun by Nerva) a great deal of private property that Domitian had confiscated. He also had good dealings with Plutarch, who, as a notable of Delphi, seems to have been favoured by the decisions taken on behalf of his home-place by one of Trajan's legates, who had arbitrated a boundary dispute between Delphi and its neighbouring cities.\nHowever, it was clear to Trajan that Greek intellectuals and notables were to be regarded as tools for local administration, and not be allowed to fancy themselves in a privileged position. As Pliny said in one of his letters at the time, it was official policy that Greek civic elites be treated according to their status as notionally free but not put on an equal footing with their Roman rulers. When the city of Apamea complained of an audit of its accounts by Pliny, alleging its \"free\" status as a Roman colony, Trajan replied by writing that it was by his own wish that such inspections had been ordered. Concern about independent local political activity is seen in Trajan's decision to forbid Nicomedia from having a corps of firemen (\"If people assemble for a common purpose... they soon turn it into a political society\", Trajan wrote to Pliny) as well as in his and Pliny's fears about excessive civic generosities by local notables such as distribution of money or gifts.\nPliny's letters suggest that Trajan and his aides were as much bored as they were alarmed by the claims of Dio and other Greek notables to political influence based on what they saw as their \"special connection\" to their Roman overlords. Pliny tells of Dio of Prusa placing a statue of Trajan in a building complex where Dio's wife and son were buried \u2013 therefore incurring a charge of treason for placing the emperor's statue near a grave. Trajan, however, dropped the charge. Nevertheless, while the office of \"corrector\" was intended as a tool to curb any hint of independent political activity among local notables in the Greek cities, the \"correctores\" themselves were all men of the highest social standing entrusted with an exceptional commission. The post seems to have been conceived partly as a reward for senators who had chosen to make a career solely on the emperor's behalf. Therefore, in reality the post was conceived as a means for \"taming\" both Greek notables and Roman senators. It must be added that, although Trajan was wary of the civic oligarchies in the Greek cities, he also admitted into the senate a number of prominent Eastern notables already slated for promotion during Domitian's reign by reserving for them one of the twenty posts open each year for minor magistrates (the \"vigintiviri\"). Such must be the case of the Galatian notable and \"leading member of the Greek community\" (according to one inscription) Gaius Julius Severus, who was a descendant of several Hellenistic dynasts and client kings.\nSeverus was the grandfather of the prominent general Gaius Julius Quadratus Bassus, consul in 105. Other prominent Eastern senators included Gaius Julius Alexander Berenicianus, a descendant of Herod the Great, suffect consul in 116. Trajan created at least fourteen new senators from the Greek-speaking half of the empire, an unprecedented recruitment number that opens to question the issue of the \"traditionally Roman\" character of his reign, as well as the \"Hellenism\" of his successor Hadrian. But then Trajan's new Eastern senators were mostly very powerful and very wealthy men with more than local influence and much interconnected by marriage, so that many of them were not altogether \"new\" to the Senate. On the local level, among the lower section of the Eastern propertied, the alienation of most Greek notables and intellectuals towards Roman rule, and the fact that the Romans were seen by most such Greek notables as aliens, persisted well after Trajan's reign. One of Trajan's senatorial creations from the East, the Athenian Gaius Julius Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappos, a member of the Royal House of Commagene, left behind him a funeral monument on the Mouseion Hill that was later disparagingly described by Pausanias as \"a monument built to a Syrian man\".\nGreek-Roman relations.\nAs a senatorial Emperor, Trajan was inclined to choose his local base of political support from among the members of the ruling urban oligarchies. In the West, that meant local senatorial families like his own. In the East, that meant the families of Greek notables. The Greeks, though, had their own memories of independence\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and a commonly acknowledged sense of cultural superiority\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and, instead of seeing themselves as Roman, disdained Roman rule. What the Greek oligarchies wanted from Rome was, above all, to be left in peace, to be allowed to exert their right to self-government (i.e., to be excluded from the provincial government, as was Italy) and to concentrate on their local interests. This was something the Romans were not disposed to do as from their perspective the Greek notables were shunning their responsibilities in regard to the management of Imperial affairs\u00a0\u2013\u00a0primarily in failing to keep the common people under control, thus creating the need for the Roman governor to intervene. An excellent example of this Greek alienation was the personal role played by Dio of Prusa in his relationship with Trajan. Dio is described by Philostratus as Trajan's close friend, and Trajan as supposedly engaging publicly in conversations with Dio.\nNevertheless, as a Greek local magnate with a taste for costly building projects and pretensions of being an important political agent for Rome, Dio of Prusa was actually a target for one of Trajan's authoritarian innovations: the appointing of imperial \"correctores\" to audit the civic finances of the technically free Greek cities. The main goal was to curb the overenthusiastic spending on public works that served to channel ancient rivalries between neighbouring cities. As Pliny wrote to Trajan, this had as its most visible consequence a trail of unfinished or ill-kept public utilities. Competition among Greek cities and their ruling oligarchies was mainly for marks of pre-eminence, especially for titles bestowed by the Roman emperor. Such titles were ordered in a ranking system that determined how the cities were to be outwardly treated by Rome. The usual form that such rivalries took was that of grandiose building plans, giving the cities the opportunity to vie with each other over \"extravagant, needless... structures that would make a show\". A side effect of such extravagant spending was that junior and thus less wealthy members of the local oligarchies felt disinclined to present themselves to fill posts as local magistrates, positions that involved ever-increasing personal expense. Roman authorities liked to play the Greek cities against one another\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something of which Dio of Prusa was fully aware:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />[B]y their public acts [the Roman governors] have branded you as a pack of fools, yes, they treat you just like children, for we often offer children the most trivial things in place of things of greatest worth [...] In place of justice, in place of the freedom of the cities from spoliation or from the seizure of the private possessions of their inhabitants, in place of their refraining from insulting you [...] your governors hand you titles, and call you 'first' either by word of mouth or in writing; that done, they may thenceforth with impunity treat you as being the very last!\"These same Roman authorities had also an interest in assuring the cities' solvency and therefore ready collection of Imperial taxes. Last but not least, inordinate spending on civic buildings was not only a means to achieve local superiority, but also a means for the local Greek elites to maintain a separate cultural identity\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something expressed in the contemporary rise of the Second Sophistic; this \"cultural patriotism\" acted as a kind of substitute for the loss of political independence, and as such was shunned by Roman authorities. As Trajan himself wrote to Pliny: \"These poor Greeks all love a gymnasium... they will have to content with one that suits their real needs\". The first known \"corrector\" was charged with a commission \"to deal with the situation of the free cities\", as it was felt that the old method of \"ad hoc\" intervention by the Emperor and/or the proconsuls had not been enough to curb the pretensions of the Greek notables. It is noteworthy that an embassy from Dio's city of Prusa was not favourably received by Trajan, and that this had to do with Dio's chief objective, which was to elevate Prusa to the status of a free city, an \"independent\" city-state exempt from paying taxes to Rome. Eventually, Dio gained for Prusa the right to become the head of the assize-district, conventus (meaning that Prusans did not have to travel to be judged by the Roman governor), but \"eleutheria\" (freedom, in the sense of full political autonomy) was denied.\nEventually, it fell to Pliny, as imperial governor of Bithynia in AD110, to deal with the consequences of the financial mess wrought by Dio and his fellow civic officials. \"It's well established that [the cities' finances] are in a state of disorder\", Pliny once wrote to Trajan, plans for unnecessary works made in collusion with local contractors being identified as one of the main problems. One of the compensatory measures proposed by Pliny expressed a thoroughly Roman conservative position: as the cities' financial solvency depended on the councilmen's purses, it was necessary to have more councilmen on the local city councils. According to Pliny, the best way to achieve this was to lower the minimum age for holding a seat on the council, making it possible for more sons of the established oligarchical families to join and thus contribute to civic spending; this was seen as preferable to enrolling non-noble wealthy upstarts. Such an increase in the number of council members was granted to Dio's city of Prusa, to the dismay of existing councilmen who felt their status lowered. A similar situation existed in Claudiopolis, where a public bath was built with the proceeds from the entrance fees paid by \"supernumerary\" members of the council, enrolled with Trajan's permission. According to the Digest, Trajan decreed that when a city magistrate promised to achieve a particular public building, his heirs inherited responsibility for its completion.\nBuilding projects.\nTrajan was a prolific builder. Many of his buildings were designed and erected by the gifted architect Apollodorus of Damascus, including a massive bridge over the Danube, which the Roman army and its reinforcements could use regardless of weather; the Danube sometimes froze over in winter, but seldom enough to bear the passage of a party of soldiers. Trajan's works at the Iron Gates region of the Danube created or enlarged the boardwalk road cut into the cliff-face along the Iron Gate's gorge. A canal was built between the Danube's Kasajna tributary and Ducis Pratum, circumventing rapids and cataracts.\nTrajan's Forum Traiani was Rome's largest forum. It was built to commemorate his victories in Dacia, and was largely financed from that campaign's loot. To accommodate it, parts of the Capitoline and Quirinal Hills had to be removed, the latter enlarging a clear area first established by Domitian. Apollodorus of Damascus' \"magnificent\" design incorporated a Triumphal arch entrance, a forum space approximately 120 m long and 90m wide, surrounded by peristyles: a monumentally sized basilica: and later, Trajan's Column and libraries. It was started in AD 107, dedicated on 1 January 112, and remained in use for at least 500 years. It still drew admiration when Emperor Constantius II visited Rome in the fourth century. It accommodated Trajan's Market, and an adjacent brick market.\nTrajan was also a prolific builder of triumphal arches, many of which survive. He built roads, such as the Via Traiana, an extension of the Via Appia from Beneventum to Brundisium and the Via Traiana Nova, a mostly military road between Damascus and Aila, which Rome employed in its annexation of Nabataea and founding of Arabia Province.\nSome historians attribute the construction or reconstruction of Old Cairo's Roman fortress (also known as \"Babylon Fort\") to Trajan, and the building of a canal between the River Nile and the Red Sea. In Egypt, Trajan was \"quite active\" in constructing and embellishing buildings. He is portrayed, together with Domitian, on the propylon of the Temple of Hathor at Dendera. His cartouche also appears in the column shafts of the Temple of Khnum at Esna.\nHe built palatial villas outside Rome at Arcinazzo, at Centumcellae and at Talamone.\nHe also built a bath complex as well as the Aqua Traiana.\nGames.\nTrajan invested heavily in the provision of popular amusements. He carried out a \"massive reconstruction\" of the Circus Maximus, which was already the empire's biggest and best appointed circuit for the immensely popular sport of chariot racing. The Circus also hosted religious theatrical spectacles and games, and public processions on a grand scale. Trajan's reconstruction, completed by 103, was modestly described by Trajan himself as \"adequate\" for the Roman people. It replaced flammable wooden seating tiers with stone, and increased the Circus' already vast capacity by about 5,000 seats. Its lofty, elevated Imperial viewing box was rebuilt among the seating tiers, so that spectators could see their emperor sharing their enjoyment of the races, alongside his family and images of the gods,\nAt some time during 108 or 109, Trajan held 123 days of games to celebrate his Dacian victory. They involved \"fully 10,000\" gladiators and the slaughter of thousands, \"possibly tens of thousands,\" of animals, both wild and domestic. Trajan's careful management of public spectacles led the orator Fronto to congratulate him for paying equal attention to public entertainments and more serious issues, acknowledging that \"neglect of serious matters can cause greater damage, but neglect of amusements greater discontent\". State-funded public entertainments helped to maintain contentment among the populace; the more \"serious matter\" of the corn dole aimed to satisfy individuals.\nChristians.\nDuring the period of peace that followed the Dacian war, Trajan exchanged letters with Pliny the Younger on how best to deal with the Christians of Pontus. Trajan told Pliny to continue prosecutions of Christians if they merited that, but not to accept anonymous or malicious denunciations. He considered this to be in the interests of justice, and to reflect \"the spirit of the age\". Non-citizens who admitted to being Christians and refused to recant were to be executed \"for obstinacy\". Citizens were sent to Rome for trial.\nFurther tests faced by Christians in Pontus are alluded to in correspondence between Pliny the Younger, governor of the Roman province of Bithynia and Pontus, and Emperor Trajan. Writing from Pontus in about AD 112, Pliny reported that the \"contagion\" of Christianity threatened everyone, regardless of gender, age, or rank. Pliny gave those accused of being Christians opportunity to deny it, and those who would not, he executed. Any who cursed Christ or recited a prayer to the gods or to Trajan\u2019s statue were released. Pliny acknowledged that these were things that \"those who are really Christians cannot be made to do.\"\nCurrency and welfare.\nIn 107, Trajan devalued the Roman currency, decreasing the silver content of the denarius from 93.5% to 89.0%\u00a0\u2013\u00a0the actual silver weight dropping from 3.04grams to 2.88grams. This devaluation, along with the massive amounts of gold and silver acquired through his Dacian wars, allowed Trajan to mint many more denarii than his predecessors. He also withdrew from circulation silver denarii minted before Nero's devaluation. Trajan's devaluation may have had a political intent, enabling planned increases in civil and military spending. Trajan formalised the alimenta, a welfare program that helped orphans and poor children throughout Italy by providing cash, food and subsidized education. The program was supported out of Dacian War booty, estate taxes and philanthropy. The alimenta also relied indirectly on mortgages secured against Italian farms (\"fundi\"). Registered landowners received a lump sum from the imperial treasury, and in return were expected to repay an annual sum to support the alimentary fund.\nMilitary campaigns.\nConquest of Dacia.\nThe earliest of Trajan's conquests were Rome's two wars against Dacia, an area that had troubled Roman politics for over a decade in regard to the unstable peace negotiated by Domitian's ministers with the powerful Dacian king Decebalus. Dacia would be reduced by Trajan's Rome to a client kingdom in the first war (101\u2013102), followed by a second war that ended in actual incorporation into the Empire of the trans-Danube border group of Dacia. According to the provisions of Decebalus's earlier treaty with Rome, made in the time of Domitian, Decebalus was acknowledged as \"rex amicus\", that is, client king; in exchange for accepting client status, he received from Rome both a generous stipend and a steady supply of technical experts. The treaty seems to have allowed Roman troops the right of passage through the Dacian kingdom in order to attack the Marcomanni, Quadi and Sarmatians. However, senatorial opinion never forgave Domitian for paying what was seen as tribute to a barbarian king. Unlike the Germanic tribes, the Dacian kingdom was an organized state capable of developing alliances of its own, thus making it a strategic threat and giving Trajan a strong motive to attack it.\nIn May of 101, Trajan launched his first campaign into the Dacian kingdom, crossing to the northern bank of the Danube and defeating the Dacian army at Tapae (see Second Battle of Tapae), near the Iron Gates of Transylvania. It was not a decisive victory, however. Trajan's troops took heavy losses in the encounter, and he put off further campaigning for the year in order to regroup and reinforce his army. Nevertheless, the battle was considered a Roman victory and Trajan strived to ultimately consolidate his position, including other major engagements, as well as the capture of Decebalus' sister as depicted on Trajan's Column.\nThe following winter, Decebalus took the initiative by launching a counter-attack across the Danube further downstream, supported by Sarmatian cavalry, forcing Trajan to come to the aid of the troops in his rearguard. The Dacians and their allies were repulsed after two battles in Moesia, at Nicopolis ad Istrum and Adamclisi. Trajan's army then advanced further into Dacian territory, and, a year later, forced Decebalus to submit. He had to renounce claim to some regions of his kingdom, return runaways from Rome then under his protection (most of them technical experts), and surrender all his war machines. Trajan returned to Rome in triumph and was granted the title \"Dacicus\". The peace of 102 had returned Decebalus to the condition of more or less harmless client king; however, he soon began to rearm, to again harbour Roman runaways, and to pressure his Western neighbours, the Iazyges Sarmatians, into allying themselves with him. Through his efforts to develop an anti-Roman bloc, Decebalus prevented Trajan from treating Dacia as a protectorate instead of an outright conquest. In 104, Decebalus devised an attempt on Trajan's life by means of some Roman deserters, a plan that failed. Decebalus also took prisoner Trajan's legate Longinus, who eventually poisoned himself while in custody. Finally, in 105, Decebalus undertook an invasion of Roman-occupied territory north of the Danube.\nPrior to the campaign, Trajan had raised two entirely new legions: II Traiana\u00a0\u2013\u00a0which, however, may have been posted in the East, at the Syrian port of Laodicea\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and XXX Ulpia Victrix, which was posted to Brigetio, in Pannonia. By 105, the concentration of Roman troops assembled in the middle and lower Danube amounted to fourteen legions (up from nine in 101)\u00a0\u2013\u00a0about half of the entire Roman army. Even after the Dacian wars, the Danube frontier would permanently replace the Rhine as the main military axis of the Roman Empire. Including auxiliaries, the number of Roman troops engaged on both campaigns was between 150,000 and 175,000, while Decebalus could dispose of up to 200,000. Other estimates for the Roman forces involved in Trajan's second Dacian War cite around 86,000 for active campaigning with large reserves retained in the proximal provinces, and potentially much lower numbers around 50,000 for Decebalus' depleted forces and absent allies.\nIn a fierce campaign that seems to have consisted mostly of static warfare, the Dacians, devoid of manoeuvring room, kept to their network of fortresses, which the Romans sought systematically to storm (see also Second Dacian War). The Romans gradually tightened their grip around Decebalus' stronghold in Sarmizegetusa Regia, which they finally took and destroyed. A controversial scene on Trajan's column just before the fall of Sarmizegetusa Regia suggests that Decebalus may have offered poison to his remaining men as an alternative option to capture or death while trying to flee the besieged capital with him. Decebalus fled but, when later cornered by Roman cavalry, committed suicide. His severed head, brought to Trajan by the cavalryman Tiberius Claudius Maximus, was later exhibited in Rome on the steps leading up to the Capitol and thrown on the Gemonian stairs. The famous Dacian treasures were not found in the captured capital and their whereabouts were only revealed when a Dacian nobleman called Bikilis was captured. Decebalus\u2019 treasures had been buried under a temporarily diverted river and the captive workers executed to retain the secret. Staggering amounts of gold and silver were found and packed off to fill Rome's coffers.\nTrajan built a new city, Colonia Ulpia Traiana Augusta Dacica Sarmizegetusa, on another site (north of the hill citadel holding the previous Dacian capital), although bearing the same full name, Sarmizegetusa. This capital city was conceived as a purely civilian administrative centre and was provided the usual Romanized administrative apparatus (decurions, aediles, etc.). Urban life in Roman Dacia seems to have been restricted to Roman colonists, mostly military veterans; there is no extant evidence for the existence in the province of peregrine cities. Native Dacians continued to live in scattered rural settlements, according to their own ways. In another arrangement with no parallels in any other Roman province, the existing quasi-urban Dacian settlements disappeared after the Roman conquest.\nA number of unorganized urban settlements (\"vici\") developed around military encampments in Dacia proper \u2013 the most important being Apulum \u2013 but were only acknowledged as cities proper well after Trajan's reign. The main regional effort of urbanization was concentrated by Trajan at the rearguard, in Moesia, where he created the new cities of Nicopolis ad Istrum and Marcianopolis. A vicus was also created around the Tropaeum Traianum. The garrison city of Oescus received the status of Roman colony after its legionary garrison was redeployed. The fact that these former Danubian outposts had ceased to be frontier bases and were now in the deep rear acted as an inducement to their urbanization and development. Not all of Dacia was permanently occupied. After the post-Trajanic evacuation of lands across the lower Danube, land extending from the Danube to the inner arch of the Carpathian Mountains, including Transylvania, the Metaliferi Mountains and Oltenia was absorbed into the Roman province, which eventually took the form of an \"excrescence\" with ill-defined limits, stretching from the Danube northwards to the Carpathians. This may have been intended as a basis for further expansion within Eastern Europe, as the Romans believed the region to be much more geographically \"flattened\", and thus easier to traverse, than it actually was; they also underestimated the distance from those vaguely defined borders to the ocean.\nDefence of the province was entrusted to a single legion, the XIII Gemina, stationed at Apulum, which functioned as an advance guard that could, in case of need, strike either west or east at the Sarmatians living at the borders. Therefore, the indefensible character of the province did not appear to be a problem for Trajan, as the province was conceived more as a sally-base for further attacks. Even in the absence of further Roman expansion, the value of the province depended on Roman overall strength: while Rome was strong, the Dacian salient was an instrument of military and diplomatic control over the Danubian lands; when Rome was weak, as during the Crisis of the Third Century, the province became a liability and was eventually abandoned. Trajan resettled Dacia with Romans and annexed it as a province of the Roman Empire. Aside from their enormous booty (over half a million slaves, according to John Lydus), Trajan's Dacian campaigns benefited the Empire's finances through the acquisition of Dacia's gold mines, managed by an imperial procurator of equestrian rank (\"procurator aurariarum\"). On the other hand, commercial agricultural exploitation on the villa model, based on the centralized management of a huge landed estate by a single owner (\"fundus\") was poorly developed. Therefore, use of slave labor in the province itself seems to have been relatively undeveloped, and epigraphic evidence points to work in the gold mines being conducted by means of labor contracts (\"locatio conductio rei\") and seasonal wage-earning. The victory was commemorated by the construction both of the 102 cenotaph generally known as the Tropaeum Traiani in Moesia, as well of the much later (113) Trajan's Column in Rome, the latter depicting in stone carved bas-reliefs the Dacian Wars' most important moments.\nNabataean annexation.\nIn 106, Rabbel II Soter, one of Rome's client kings, died. This event might have prompted the annexation of the Nabataean Kingdom, but the manner and the formal reasons for the annexation are unclear. Some epigraphic evidence suggests a military operation, with forces from Syria and Egypt. What is known is that by 107, Roman legions were stationed in the area around Petra and Bosra, as is shown by a papyrus found in Egypt. The furthest south the Romans occupied (or, better, garrisoned, adopting a policy of having garrisons at key points in the desert) was Hegra, over south-west of Petra. The empire gained what became the province of Arabia Petraea (modern southern Jordan and northwest Saudi Arabia). At this time, a Roman road (\"Via Traiana Nova\") was built from Aila (now Aqaba) in Limes Arabicus to Bosrah. As Nabataea was the last client kingdom in Asia west of the Euphrates, the annexation meant that the entire Roman East had been provincialized, completing a trend towards direct rule that had begun under the Flavians.\nParthian campaign.\nIn 113, Trajan embarked on his last campaign, provoked by Parthia's decision to put an unacceptable king on the throne of Armenia, a kingdom over which the two great empires had shared hegemony since the time of Nero some fifty years earlier. Trajan, already in Syria early in 113, consistently refused to accept diplomatic approaches from the Parthians intended to settle the Armenian imbroglio peacefully. As the surviving literary accounts of Trajan's Parthian War are fragmentary and scattered, it is difficult to assign them a proper context, something that has led to a long-running controversy about its precise happenings and ultimate aims.\nCause of the war.\nModern historians advance the possibility that Trajan's decision to wage war against Parthia had economic motives: after Trajan's annexation of Arabia, he built a new road, Via Traiana Nova, that went from Bostra to Aila on the Red Sea. That meant that Charax on the Persian Gulf was the sole remaining western terminus of the Indian trade route outside direct Roman control, and such control was important in order to lower import prices and to limit the supposed drain of precious metals created by the deficit in Roman trade with the Far East. That Charax traded with the Roman Empire, there can be no doubt, as its actual connections with merchants from Palmyra during the period are well documented in a contemporary Palmyrene epigraph, which tells of various Palmyrene citizens honoured for holding office in Charax. Also, Charax's rulers' domains at the time possibly included the Bahrain islands, which offered the possibility of extending Roman hegemony into the Persian Gulf itself. (A Palmyrene citizen held office as satrap over the islands shortly after Trajan's death, though the appointment was made by a Parthian king of Charax.) The rationale behind Trajan's campaign, in this case, was one of breaking down a system of Far Eastern trade through small Semitic (\"Arab\") cities under Parthia's control and to put it under Roman control instead.\nIn his Dacian conquests, Trajan had already resorted to Syrian auxiliary units, whose veterans, along with Syrian traders, had an important role in the subsequent colonization of Dacia. He had recruited Palmyrene units into his army, including a camel unit, therefore apparently procuring Palmyrene support to his ultimate goal of annexing Charax. It has even been ventured that, when earlier in his campaign Trajan annexed Armenia, he was bound to annex the whole of Mesopotamia lest the Parthians interrupt the flux of trade from the Persian Gulf and/or foment trouble at the Roman frontier on the Danube. Other historians reject these motives, as the supposed Parthian \"control\" over the maritime Far Eastern trade route was, at best, conjectural and based on a selective reading of Chinese sources\u00a0\u2013\u00a0trade by land through Parthia seems to have been unhampered by Parthian authorities and left solely to the devices of private enterprise. Commercial activity in second century Mesopotamia seems to have been a general phenomenon, shared by many peoples within and without the Roman Empire, with no sign of a concerted Imperial policy towards it.\nAs in the case of the \"alimenta\", scholars like Moses Finley and Paul Veyne have considered the idea that a foreign trade policy underlay Trajan's war to be anachronistic; according to these scholars, the concern of Roman leaders with the trade in far eastern luxuries\u00a0\u2013\u00a0besides collecting toll taxes and customs\u00a0\u2013\u00a0was moral in nature, because contemporary Roman mores frowned upon the \"softness\" of luxuries. In the absence of conclusive evidence, trade between Rome and India might have been far more balanced, in terms of quantities of precious metals exchanged: one of our sources for the notion of the Roman gold drain\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Pliny's the Younger's uncle Pliny the Elder\u00a0\u2013\u00a0had earlier described the Gangetic Plains as one of the gold sources for the Roman Empire. Accordingly \u2013 in a controversial book on the Roman economy \u2013 Finley considers Trajan's \"badly miscalculated and expensive assault on Parthia\" to be an example of the many Roman \"commercial wars\" that had in common the fact of existing only in the books of modern historians.\nThe alternative view is to see the campaign as triggered by the lure of territorial annexation and prestige, the sole motive ascribed by Cassius Dio. As far as territorial conquest involved tax-collecting, especially of the 25% tax levied on all goods entering the Roman Empire, the \"tetarte\", one can say that Trajan's Parthian War had an \"economic\" motive. Also, there was the propaganda value of an Eastern conquest that would emulate, in Roman fashion, those of Alexander the Great. The fact that emissaries from the Kushan Empire might have attended to the commemorative ceremonies for the Dacian War may have kindled in some Greco-Roman intellectuals like Plutarch\u00a0\u2013\u00a0who wrote about only 70,000 Roman soldiers being necessary to a conquest of India \u00a0\u2013\u00a0as well as in Trajan's closer associates, speculative dreams about the booty to be obtained by reproducing Macedonian Eastern conquests. There could also be Trajan's idea to use an ambitious blueprint of conquests as a way to emphasize quasi-divine status, such as with his cultivated association, in coins and monuments, to Hercules.\nAlso, it is possible that the attachment of Trajan to an expansionist policy was supported by a powerful circle of conservative senators from Hispania committed to a policy of imperial expansion, first among them being the all-powerful Licinius Sura. Alternatively, one can explain the campaign by the fact that, for the Romans, their empire was in principle unlimited, and that Trajan only took advantage of an opportunity to make idea and reality coincide. Finally, there are other modern historians who think that Trajan's original aims were purely military and strategic: to assure a more defensible Eastern frontier for the Roman Empire, crossing Northern Mesopotamia along the course of the Khabur River in order to offer cover to a Roman Armenia. This interpretation is backed by the fact that all subsequent Roman wars against Parthia would aim at establishing a Roman presence deep into Parthia itself. It is possible that during the onset of Trajan's military experience, as a young tribune, he had witnessed engagement with the Parthians; so any strategic vision was grounded in a tactical awareness of what was needed to tackle Parthia.\nCourse of the war.\nThe campaign was carefully planned in advance: ten legions were concentrated in the Eastern theatre; since 111, the correspondence of Pliny the Younger witnesses to the fact that provincial authorities in Bithynia had to organize supplies for passing troops, and local city councils and their individual members had to shoulder part of the increased expenses by supplying troops themselves. The intended campaign, therefore, was immensely costly from its very beginning. Trajan marched first on Armenia, deposed the Parthian-appointed king, Parthamasiris (who was afterwards murdered while kept in the custody of Roman troops in an unclear incident, later described by Fronto as a breach of Roman good faith), and annexed it to the Roman Empire as a province, receiving in passing the acknowledgement of Roman hegemony by various tribes in the Caucasus and on the Eastern coast of the Black Sea\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a process that kept him busy until the end of 114. At the same time, a Roman column under the legate Lusius Quietus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0an outstanding cavalry general who had signalled himself during the Dacian Wars by commanding a unit from his native Mauretania\u00a0\u2013\u00a0crossed the Araxes river from Armenia into Media Atropatene and the land of the Mardians (present-day Ghilan). It is possible that Quietus' campaign had as its goal the extending of the newer, more defensible Roman border eastwards towards the Caspian Sea and northwards to the foothills of the Caucasus. This newer, more \"rational\" frontier, depended, however, on an increased, permanent Roman presence east of the Euphrates.\nThe chronology of subsequent events is uncertain, but it is generally believed that early in 115 Trajan launched a Mesopotamian campaign, marching down towards the Taurus mountains in order to consolidate territory between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. He placed permanent garrisons along the way to secure the territory. While Trajan moved from west to east, Lusius Quietus moved with his army from the Caspian Sea towards the west, both armies performing a successful pincer movement, whose apparent result was to establish a Roman presence into the Parthian Empire proper, with Trajan taking the northern Mesopotamian cities of Nisibis and Batnae and organizing a province of Mesopotamia, including the Kingdom of Osrhoene\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where King Abgar VII submitted to Trajan publicly\u00a0\u2013\u00a0as a Roman protectorate. This process seems to have been completed at the beginning of 116, when coins were issued announcing that Armenia and Mesopotamia had been put under the authority of the Roman people. The area between the Khabur River and the mountains around Singara seems to have been considered as the new frontier, and as such received a road surrounded by fortresses.\nAfter wintering in Antioch during 115/116 \u00a0\u2013\u00a0and, according to literary sources, barely escaping from a violent earthquake that claimed the life of one of the consuls, Marcus Pedo Virgilianus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Trajan again took to the field in 116, with a view to the conquest of the whole of Mesopotamia, an overambitious goal that eventually backfired on the results of his entire campaign. According to some modern historians, the aim of the campaign of 116 was to achieve a \"pre-emptive demonstration\" aiming not toward the conquest of Parthia, but for tighter Roman control over the Eastern trade route. However, the overall scarcity of manpower for the Roman military establishment meant that the campaign was doomed from the start. It is noteworthy that no new legions were raised by Trajan before the Parthian campaign, maybe because the sources of new citizen recruits were already over-exploited.\nAs far as the sources allow a description of this campaign, it seems that one Roman division crossed the Tigris into Adiabene, sweeping south and capturing Adenystrae; a second followed the river south, capturing Babylon; Trajan himself sailed down the Euphrates from Dura-Europos\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where a triumphal arch was erected in his honour\u00a0\u2013\u00a0through Ozogardana, where he erected a \"tribunal\" still to be seen at the time of Julian the Apostate's campaigns in the same area. Having come to the narrow strip of land between the Euphrates and the Tigris, he then dragged his fleet overland into the Tigris, capturing Seleucia and finally the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon. He continued southward to the Persian Gulf, when, after escaping with his fleet a tidal bore on the Tigris, he received the submission of Athambelus, the ruler of Charax. He declared Babylon a new province of the Empire and had his statue erected on the shore of the Persian Gulf, after which he sent the Senate a laurelled letter declaring the war to be at a close and bemoaning that he was too old to go on any further and repeat the conquests of Alexander the Great. Since Charax was a \"de facto\" independent kingdom whose connections to Palmyra were described above, Trajan's bid for the Persian Gulf may have coincided with Palmyrene interests in the region. Another hypothesis is that the rulers of Charax had expansionist designs on Parthian Babylon, giving them a rationale for alliance with Trajan. The Parthian city of Susa was apparently also occupied by the Romans.\nAccording to late literary sources (not backed by numismatic or inscriptional evidence) a province of Assyria was also proclaimed, apparently covering the territory of Adiabene. Some measures seem to have been considered regarding the fiscal administration of Indian trade\u00a0\u2013\u00a0or simply about the payment of customs (\"portoria\") on goods traded on the Euphrates and Tigris. It is possible that it was this \"streamlining\" of the administration of the newly conquered lands according to the standard pattern of Roman provincial administration in tax collecting, requisitions and the handling of local potentates' prerogatives, that triggered later resistance against Trajan. According to some modern historians, Trajan might have busied himself during his stay on the Persian Gulf with ordering raids on the Parthian coasts, as well as probing into extending Roman suzerainty over the mountaineer tribes holding the passes across the Zagros Mountains into the Iranian plateau eastward, as well as establishing some sort of direct contact between Rome and the Kushan Empire. No attempt was made to expand into the Iranian Plateau itself, where the Roman army, with its relative weakness in cavalry, would have been at a disadvantage.\nTrajan left the Persian Gulf for Babylon\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where he intended to offer sacrifice to Alexander in the house where he had died in 323BC\u00a0\u2013\u00a0 But a revolt led by Sanatruces, a nephew of the Parthian king Osroes I who had retained a cavalry force, possibly strengthened by the addition of Saka archers, imperilled Roman positions in Mesopotamia and Armenia. Trajan sought to deal with this by forsaking direct Roman rule in Parthia proper, at least partially. Trajan sent two armies towards Northern Mesopotamia: the first, under Lusius Quietus, recovered Nisibis and Edessa from the rebels, probably having King Abgarus deposed and killed in the process, with Quietus probably earning the right to receive the honors of a senator of praetorian rank (\"adlectus inter praetorios\"). The second army, however, under Appius Maximus Santra (probably a governor of Macedonia) was defeated and Santra killed.\nLater in 116, Trajan, with the assistance of Quietus and two other legates, Marcus Erucius Clarus and Tiberius Julius Alexander Julianus, defeated a Parthian army in a battle where Sanatruces was killed (possibly with the assistance of Osroes' son and Sanatruces' cousin, Parthamaspates, whom Trajan wooed successfully). After re-taking and burning Seleucia, Trajan then formally deposed Osroes, putting Parthamaspates on the throne as client ruler. This event was commemorated in a coin as the reduction of Parthia to client kingdom status: , \"a king is given to the Parthians\". That done, Trajan retreated north in order to retain what he could of the new provinces of Armenia\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where he had already accepted an armistice in exchange for surrendering part of the territory to Sanatruces' son Vologeses\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and Mesopotamia. It was at this point that Trajan's health started to fail him. The fortress city of Hatra, on the Tigris in his rear, continued to hold out against repeated Roman assaults. He was personally present at the siege, and it is possible that he suffered a heat stroke while in the blazing heat.\nDiaspora revolt.\nAbout this same time (AD 116\u2013117), Jews in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire\u2014Egypt, Cyprus, and Cyrene, which was likely the original trouble hotspot\u2014rebelled in what appears to have been an ethnic and religious uprising against the local populations, later known as the Diaspora Revolt. Additionally, Jewish communities in Northern Mesopotamia revolted, likely as part of a broader resistance against Roman occupation. Trajan had to withdraw his army to suppress these revolts, a move he considered a temporary setback. He never returned to command, delegating Eastern operations to Lusius Quietus, who was appointed governor of Judaea in early 117 and likely dealt with Jewish unrest there. Quietus discharged his commissions successfully, leading rabbinic sources to name the conflict in Judaea the \"Kitos War,\" with \"Kitus\" being a corruption of \"Quietus\". Whether or not the Diaspora revolt included Judea proper, or only the Jewish Eastern diaspora, remains doubtful in the absence of clear epigraphic and archaeological evidence. What is certain is that there was an increased Roman military presence in Judea at the time.\nQuietus was promised a consulate in the following year (118) for his victories, but he was killed before this could occur, during the bloody purge that opened Hadrian's reign, in which Quietus and three other former consuls were sentenced to death after being tried on a vague charge of conspiracy by the (secret) court of the Praetorian Prefect Attianus. It has been thought that Quietus and his colleagues were executed on Hadrian's direct orders, for fear of their popular standing with the army and their close connections to Trajan. In contrast, the next prominent Roman figure in charge of the repression of the Jewish revolt, the equestrian Quintus Marcius Turbo, who had dealt with the rebel leader from Cyrene, Loukuas, retained Hadrian's trust, eventually becoming his Praetorian Prefect. As all four consulars were senators of the highest standing and as such generally regarded as able to take imperial power (\"capaces imperii\"), Hadrian seems to have decided to forestall these prospective rivals.\nDeath and succession.\nEarly in 117, Trajan grew ill and set sail for Italy. His health declined throughout the spring and summer of 117, possibly acknowledged to the public by the display of a bronze portrait-bust at the public baths of Ancyra, showing an aged and emaciated man, though the identification with Trajan is disputed. He reached Selinus, where he suddenly died, shortly before 11 August. Trajan in person could have lawfully nominated Hadrian as his successor, but Dio claims that Trajan's wife, Pompeia Plotina, assured Hadrian's succession by keeping Trajan's death a secret, long enough for her to produce and sign a document attesting to Hadrian's adoption as son and successor. Dio, who tells this narrative, offers his father\u00a0\u2013\u00a0the governor of Cilicia Apronianus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0as a source, so his narrative may be based on contemporary rumour. It may also reflect male Roman displeasure that an empress\u00a0\u2013\u00a0let alone any woman\u00a0\u2013\u00a0 could presume to meddle in Rome's political affairs.\nHadrian held an ambiguous position during Trajan's reign. After commanding Legio I Minervia during the Dacian Wars, he had been relieved from front-line duties at the decisive stage of the Second Dacian War, being sent to govern the newly created province of Pannonia Inferior. He had pursued a senatorial career without particular distinction and had not been officially adopted by Trajan although he received from him decorations and other marks of distinction that made him hope for the succession. He received no post after his 108 consulate and no further honours other than being made Archon eponymos for Athens in 111/112. He probably did not take part in the Parthian War. Literary sources relate that Trajan had considered others, such as the jurist Lucius Neratius Priscus, as heir. Hadrian, who was eventually entrusted with the governorship of Syria at the time of Trajan's death, was Trajan's cousin and was married to Trajan's grandniece, which all made him as good as heir designate. Hadrian seems to have been well connected to the powerful and influential coterie of Spanish senators at Trajan's court, through his ties to Plotina and the Prefect Attianus. His refusal to sustain Trajan's senatorial and expansionist policy during his own reign may account for the \"crass hostility\" shown him by literary sources.\nHadrian's first major act as emperor was to abandon Mesopotamia as too costly and distant to defend, and to restore Armenia and Osrhoene to Parthian hegemony, under Rome's suzerainty. The Parthian campaign had been an enormous setback to Trajan's policy, proof that Rome had overstretched its capacity to sustain an ambitious program of conquest. According to the \"Historia Augusta\", Hadrian claimed to follow the precedent set by Cato the Elder towards the Macedonians, who \"were to be set free because they could not be protected\" \u2013 something Birley sees as an unconvincing precedent. Other territories conquered by Trajan were retained. According to a well-established historical tradition, Trajan's ashes were placed within the small cella that still survives at the base of Trajan's column. In some modern scholarship, his ashes were more likely interred near his column, in a mausoleum, temple or tomb built for his cult as a \"divus\" of the Roman state.\nLegacy.\nAncient sources on Trajan's personality and accomplishments are unanimously positive. Pliny the Younger, for example, celebrates Trajan in his panegyric as a wise and just emperor and a moral man. Cassius Dio added that he always remained dignified and fair. A third-century emperor, Decius, even received from the Senate the name Trajan as a decoration. In the Later Roman Empire, following the setbacks of the third century, Trajan, together with Augustus, became the paragon of the most positive traits of the Imperial order. Emperors in the 4th century were honoured by the Senate with the acclamation \"Felicior Augusto, Melior Traiano\" (\"May you be more fortunate than Augustus and better than Trajan\"). The fourth-century emperor Constantine I is credited with calling him a \"plant upon every wall\" for the many buildings bearing inscriptions with his name.\nIconography.\nAll Roman emperors until Trajan, except Nero who occasionally wore sideburns, were depicted clean-shaven, according to the fashion introduced among the Romans by Scipio Africanus (236\u00a0\u2013\u00a0183 BC). This Imperial fashion was changed by Trajan's successor Hadrian who made beards fashionable for emperors.\nAfter Rome.\nDuring the Middle Ages, some theologians such as Thomas Aquinas discussed Trajan as an example of a virtuous pagan. In the \"Divine Comedy\", Dante, following this legend, sees the spirit of Trajan in the Heaven of Jupiter with other historical and mythological persons noted for their justice. Also, a mural of Trajan stopping to provide justice for a poor widow is present in the first terrace of Purgatory as a lesson to those who are purged for being proud.\n<poem>\nI noticed that the inner bank of the curve...\nWas of white marble, and so decorated\nWith carvings that not only Polycletus\nBut nature herself would there be put to shame...\nThere was recorded the high glory\nOf that ruler of Rome whose worth\nMoved Gregory to his great victory;\nI mean by this the Emperor Trajan;\nAnd at his bridle a poor widow\nWhose attitude bespoke tears and grief...\nThe wretched woman, in the midst of all this,\nSeemed to be saying: 'Lord, avenge my son,\nWho is dead, so that my heart is broken..'\nSo he said: 'Now be comforted, for I must\nCarry out my duty before I go on:\nJustice requires it and pity holds me back.'\n\"Dante, The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio X, ll. 32 f. and 73 f.\"\n</poem>\nIn the Renaissance, Machiavelli, speaking on the advantages of adoptive succession over heredity, mentioned the five successive good emperors \"from Nerva to Marcus\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a trope out of which the 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon popularized the notion of the Five Good Emperors, of whom Trajan was the second.\nIn the 18th century, King Charles III of Spain commissioned Anton Raphael Mengs to paint \"The Triumph of Trajan\" on the ceiling of the banquet hall of the Royal Palace of Madrid\u00a0\u2013\u00a0considered among the best works of this artist.\nIt was only during the Enlightenment that this legacy began to be contested, when Edward Gibbon expressed doubts about the militarized character of Trajan's reign in contrast to the \"moderate\" practices of his immediate successors. Mommsen adopted a divided stance towards Trajan, at some point of his posthumously published lectures even speaking about his \"vainglory\" (\"Scheinglorie\"). Mommsen also speaks of Trajan's \"insatiable, unlimited lust for conquest\". Although Mommsen had no liking for Trajan's successor Hadrian\u00a0\u2013\u00a0\"a repellent manner, and a venomous, envious and malicious nature\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0he admitted that Hadrian, in renouncing Trajan's conquests, was \"doing what the situation clearly required\".\nIt was exactly this military character of Trajan's reign that attracted his early twentieth-century biographer, the Italian historian Roberto Paribeni, who in his 1927 two-volume biography \"Optimus Princeps\" described Trajan's reign as the acme of the Roman principate, which he saw as Italy's patrimony. Following in Paribeni's footsteps, the German historian Alfred Heuss saw in Trajan \"the accomplished human embodiment of the imperial title\" (\"die ideale Verk\u00f6rperung des humanen Kaiserbegriffs\"). Trajan's first English-language biography by Julian Bennett is also a positive one in that it assumes that Trajan was an active policy-maker concerned with the management of the empire as a whole\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something his reviewer Lendon considers an anachronistic outlook that sees in the Roman emperor a kind of modern administrator.\nDuring the 1980s, the Romanian historian Eugen Cizek took a more nuanced view as he described the changes in the \"personal\" ideology of Trajan's reign, stressing the fact that it became ever more autocratic and militarized, especially after 112 and towards the Parthian War (as \"only an universal monarch, a \"kosmocrator\", could dictate his law to the East\"). The biography by the German historian Karl Strobel stresses the continuity between Domitian's and Trajan's reigns, saying that Trajan's rule followed the same autocratic and sacred character as Domitian's, culminating in a failed Parthian adventure intended as the crown of his personal achievement. It is in modern French historiography that Trajan's reputation becomes most markedly deflated: Paul Petit writes about Trajan's portraits as a \"lowbrow boor with a taste for booze and boys\". For Paul Veyne, what is to be retained from Trajan's \"stylish\" qualities was that he was the last Roman emperor to think of the empire as a purely Italian and Rome-centred hegemony of conquest. In contrast, his successor Hadrian would stress the notion of the empire as ecumenical and of the emperor as universal benefactor and not \"kosmocrator\".\nIn Romanian culture.\nIn Romania, Trajan (Romanian: \"Traian\") is regarded as one of the founders of the Romanian nation and a historical figure of great importance to the Romanian people and culture. This is due to his orchestration of the Dacian Wars that led to the foundation of the Daco-Roman culture and the Latin-based Romanian language. The creation of Roman Dacia is therefore seen in the country as the ethnogenesis of the Romanian nation.\nIn Jewish legend.\nIn the Jewish homiletical works, such as \"Esther Rabbah\", Trajan is described with the epitaph \"may his bones be crushed\" (). The same epitaph is also used for Hadrian.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "7620193": "W. C. Firebaugh\nW. C. Firebaugh was the author of two works on the history of inns and taverns, and also of a fine English translation of Petronius's \"Satyricon\", the fragmentary realistic novel of low life under the Roman Empire.\nThe translation was published in 1922 in New York, in a very expensive ($30) limited edition, by Horace Liveright, founder of the Modern Library. Like earlier English translations, but more completely, Firebaugh's \"Satyricon\" includes the spurious supplements devised by various early scholars and forgers in an attempt to round out the fragmentary story. Firebaugh was however careful to distinguish all these supplements from the real translated text. His is still the only English translation of the supplement by Jos\u00e9 Marchena, which, because of its obscenity, had previously been printed only in the original Latin.\nThe 1923 publication includes a sequence of 100 etchings by the Australian artist Norman Lindsay, originally used in the even rarer 1910 \"Satyricon\" edited by Stephen Gaselee.\nThe original text, the etchings, and the Marchena supplement were all arguably pornographic by the strict standards of English-language publishing in the 1920s. John S. Sumner, secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, obtained a copy before publication and accused Liveright of selling obscene material directed to the public. After a celebrated trial the case was dismissed by the New York court.\nFour years after the initial publication of Firebaugh's \"Satyricon\", a version adapted for a general market was published by Liveright in 1927. It was edited by Charles Whibley.", "25507": "Roman Empire\nTerritory ruled by Rome and period of Roman history\nThe Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Romans conquered most of this during the Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of effective sole rule in 27\u00a0BC. The western empire collapsed in 476\u00a0AD, but the eastern empire lasted until the fall of Constantinople in 1453.\nBy 100\u00a0BC, the city of Rome had expanded its rule from the Italian peninsula to most of the Mediterranean and beyond. However, it was severely destabilised by civil wars and political conflicts, which culminated in the victory of Octavian over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31\u00a0BC, and the subsequent conquest of the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt. In 27\u00a0BC, the Roman Senate granted Octavian overarching military power () and the new title of \"Augustus\", marking his accession as the first Roman emperor. The vast Roman territories were organized into senatorial provinces, governed by proconsuls who were appointed by lot annually, and imperial provinces, which belonged to the emperor but were governed by legates.\nThe first two centuries of the Empire saw a period of unprecedented stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana (lit.\u2009'Roman Peace'). Rome reached its greatest territorial extent under Trajan (r.\u200998\u00a0\u2013\u00a0117\u00a0AD), but a period of increasing trouble and decline began under Commodus (r.\u2009180\u00a0\u2013\u00a0192). In the 3rd century, the Empire underwent a 49-year crisis that threatened its existence due to civil war, plagues and barbarian invasions. The Gallic and Palmyrene empires broke away from the state and a series of short-lived emperors led the Empire, which was later reunified under Aurelian (r.\u2009270\u00a0\u2013\u00a0275). The civil wars ended with the victory of Diocletian (r.\u2009284\u00a0\u2013\u00a0305), who set up two different imperial courts in the Greek East and Latin West. Constantine the Great (r.\u2009306\u00a0\u2013\u00a0337), the first Christian emperor, moved the imperial seat from Rome to Byzantium in 330, and renamed it Constantinople. The Migration Period, involving large invasions by Germanic peoples and by the Huns of Attila, led to the decline of the Western Roman Empire. With the fall of Ravenna to the Germanic Herulians and the deposition of Romulus Augustus in 476 by Odoacer, the Western Empire finally collapsed. The Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire survived for another millennium with Constantinople as its sole capital, until the city's fall in 1453.\nDue to the Empire's extent and endurance, its institutions and culture had a lasting influence on the development of language, religion, art, architecture, literature, philosophy, law, and forms of government across its territories. Latin evolved into the Romance languages while Medieval Greek became the language of the East. The Empire's adoption of Christianity resulted in the formation of medieval Christendom. Roman and Greek art had a profound impact on the Italian Renaissance. Rome's architectural tradition served as the basis for Romanesque, Renaissance and Neoclassical architecture, influencing Islamic architecture. The rediscovery of classical science and technology (which formed the basis for Islamic science) in medieval Europe contributed to the Scientific Renaissance and Scientific Revolution. Many modern legal systems, such as the Napoleonic Code, descend from Roman law. Rome's republican institutions have influenced the Italian city-state republics of the medieval period, the early United States, and modern democratic republics.\nHistory.\nTransition from Republic to Empire.\nRome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the Roman Republic in the 6th century BC, though not outside the Italian Peninsula until the 3rd century BC. Thus, it was an \"empire\" (a great power) long before it had an emperor. The Republic was not a nation-state in the modern sense, but a network of self-ruled towns (with varying degrees of independence from the Senate) and provinces administered by military commanders. It was governed by annually elected magistrates (Roman consuls above all) in conjunction with the Senate. The 1st century BC was a time of political and military upheaval, which ultimately led to rule by emperors. The consuls' military power rested in the Roman legal concept of \"imperium\", meaning \"command\" (typically in a military sense). Occasionally, successful consuls or generals were given the honorary title \"imperator\" (commander); this is the origin of the word \"emperor\", since this title was always bestowed to the early emperors.\nRome suffered a long series of internal conflicts, conspiracies, and civil wars from the late second century BC (see Crisis of the Roman Republic) while greatly extending its power beyond Italy. In 44 BC Julius Caesar was briefly perpetual dictator before being assassinated by a faction that opposed his concentration of power. This faction was driven from Rome and defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC by Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son Octavian. Antony and Octavian divided the Roman world between them, but this did not last long. Octavian's forces defeated those of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. In 27 BC the Senate gave him the title \"Augustus\" (\"venerated\") and made him \"princeps\" (\"foremost\") with proconsular \"imperium\", thus beginning the Principate, the first epoch of Roman imperial history. Although the republic stood in name, Augustus had all meaningful authority. During his 40-year rule, a new constitutional order emerged so that, upon his death, Tiberius would succeed him as the new \"de facto\" monarch.\n\"Pax Romana\".\nThe 200 years that began with Augustus's rule is traditionally regarded as the \"Pax Romana\" (\"Roman Peace\"). The cohesion of the empire was furthered by a degree of social stability and economic prosperity that Rome had never before experienced. Uprisings in the provinces were infrequent and put down \"mercilessly and swiftly\". The success of Augustus in establishing principles of dynastic succession was limited by his outliving a number of talented potential heirs. The Julio-Claudian dynasty lasted for four more emperors\u2014Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero\u2014before it yielded in 69 AD to the strife-torn Year of the Four Emperors, from which Vespasian emerged as the victor. Vespasian became the founder of the brief Flavian dynasty, followed by the Nerva\u2013Antonine dynasty which produced the \"Five Good Emperors\": Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius.\nTransition from classical to late antiquity.\nIn the view of contemporary Greek historian Cassius Dio, the accession of Commodus in 180 marked the descent \"from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron\", a comment which has led some historians, notably Edward Gibbon, to take Commodus' reign as the beginning of the Empire's decline.\nIn 212, during the reign of Caracalla, Roman citizenship was granted to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. The Severan dynasty was tumultuous; an emperor's reign was ended routinely by his murder or execution and, following its collapse, the Empire was engulfed by the Crisis of the Third Century, a period of invasions, civil strife, economic disorder, and plague. In defining historical epochs, this crisis sometimes marks the transition from Classical to Late Antiquity. Aurelian (r.\u2009270\u00a0\u2013\u00a0275) stabilised the empire militarily and Diocletian reorganised and restored much of it in 285. Diocletian's reign brought the empire's most concerted effort against the perceived threat of Christianity, the \"Great Persecution\".\nDiocletian divided the empire into four regions, each ruled by a separate tetrarch. Confident that he fixed the disorder plaguing Rome, he abdicated along with his co-emperor, but the Tetrarchy collapsed shortly after. Order was eventually restored by Constantine the Great, who became the first emperor to convert to Christianity, and who established Constantinople as the new capital of the Eastern Empire. During the decades of the Constantinian and Valentinian dynasties, the empire was divided along an east\u2013west axis, with dual power centres in Constantinople and Rome. Julian, who under the influence of his adviser Mardonius attempted to restore Classical Roman and Hellenistic religion, only briefly interrupted the succession of Christian emperors. Theodosius I, the last emperor to rule over both East and West, died in 395 after making Christianity the state religion.\nFall in the West and survival in the East.\nThe Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate in the early 5th century. The Romans fought off all invaders, most famously Attila, but the empire had assimilated so many Germanic peoples of dubious loyalty to Rome that the empire started to dismember itself. Most chronologies place the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476, when Romulus Augustulus was forced to abdicate to the Germanic warlord Odoacer.\nOdoacer ended the Western Empire by declaring Zeno sole emperor and placing himself as Zeno's nominal subordinate. In reality, Italy was ruled by Odoacer alone. The Eastern Roman Empire, called the Byzantine Empire by later historians, continued until the reign of Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Roman emperor. He died in battle in 1453 against Mehmed II and his Ottoman forces during the siege of Constantinople. Mehmed II adopted the title of \"caesar\" in an attempt to claim a connection to the former Empire. His claim was soon recognized by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, but not by European monarchs.\nGeography and demography.\nThe Roman Empire was one of the largest in history, with contiguous territories throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The Latin phrase \"imperium sine fine\" (\"empire without end\") expressed the ideology that neither time nor space limited the Empire. In Virgil's \"Aeneid\", limitless empire is said to be granted to the Romans by Jupiter. This claim of universal dominion was renewed when the Empire came under Christian rule in the 4th century. In addition to annexing large regions, the Romans directly altered their geography, for example cutting down entire forests.\nRoman expansion was mostly accomplished under the Republic, though parts of northern Europe were conquered in the 1st century, when Roman control in Europe, Africa, and Asia was strengthened. Under Augustus, a \"global map of the known world\" was displayed for the first time in public at Rome, coinciding with the creation of the most comprehensive political geography that survives from antiquity, the \"Geography\" of Strabo. When Augustus died, the account of his achievements (\"Res Gestae\") prominently featured the geographical cataloguing of the Empire. Geography alongside meticulous written records were central concerns of Roman Imperial administration.\nThe Empire reached its largest expanse under Trajan (r.\u200998\u00a0\u2013\u00a0117), encompassing 5 million km2. The traditional population estimate of 55\u201360 million inhabitants accounted for between one-sixth and one-fourth of the world's total population and made it the most populous unified political entity in the West until the mid-19th century. Recent demographic studies have argued for a population peak from 70 million to more than 100 million. Each of the three largest cities in the Empire\u2014Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch\u2014was almost twice the size of any European city at the beginning of the 17th century.\nAs the historian Christopher Kelly described it:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Then the empire stretched from Hadrian's Wall in drizzle-soaked northern England to the sun-baked banks of the Euphrates in Syria; from the great Rhine\u2013Danube river system, which snaked across the fertile, flat lands of Europe from the Low Countries to the Black Sea, to the rich plains of the North African coast and the luxuriant gash of the Nile Valley in Egypt. The empire completely circled the Mediterranean\u00a0... referred to by its conquerors as \"mare nostrum\"\u2014'our sea'.\nTrajan's successor Hadrian adopted a policy of maintaining rather than expanding the empire. Borders (\"fines\") were marked, and the frontiers (\"limites\") patrolled. The most heavily fortified borders were the most unstable. Hadrian's Wall, which separated the Roman world from what was perceived as an ever-present barbarian threat, is the primary surviving monument of this effort.\nLanguages.\nLatin and Greek were the main languages of the Empire, but the Empire was deliberately multilingual. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill says \"The main desire of the Roman government was to make itself understood\". At the start of the Empire, knowledge of Greek was useful to pass as educated nobility and knowledge of Latin was useful for a career in the military, government, or law. Bilingual inscriptions indicate the everyday interpenetration of the two languages.\nLatin and Greek's mutual linguistic and cultural influence is a complex topic. Latin words incorporated into Greek were very common by the early imperial era, especially for military, administration, and trade and commerce matters. Greek grammar, literature, poetry and philosophy shaped Latin language and culture.\nThere was never a legal requirement for Latin in the Empire, but it represented a certain status. High standards of Latin, \"Latinitas\", started with the advent of Latin literature. Due to the flexible language policy of the Empire, a natural competition of language emerged that spurred \"Latinitas\", to defend Latin against the stronger cultural influence of Greek. Over time Latin usage was used to project power and a higher social class. Most of the emperors were bilingual but had a preference for Latin in the public sphere for political reasons, a \"rule\" that first started during the Punic Wars. Different emperors up until Justinian would attempt to require the use of Latin in various sections of the administration but there is no evidence that a linguistic imperialism existed during the early Empire.\nAfter all freeborn inhabitants were universally enfranchised in 212, many Roman citizens would have lacked a knowledge of Latin. The wide use of Koine Greek was what enabled the spread of Christianity and reflects its role as the lingua franca of the Mediterranean during the time of the Empire. Following Diocletian's reforms in the 3rd century CE, there was a decline in the knowledge of Greek in the west. Spoken Latin later fragmented into the incipient romance languages in the 7th century CE following the collapse of the Empire's west.\nThe dominance of Latin and Greek among the literate elite obscure the continuity of other spoken languages within the Empire. Latin, referred to in its spoken form as Vulgar Latin, gradually replaced Celtic and Italic languages. References to interpreters indicate the continuing use of local languages, particularly in Egypt with Coptic, and in military settings along the Rhine and Danube. Roman jurists also show a concern for local languages such as Punic, Gaulish, and Aramaic in assuring the correct understanding of laws and oaths. In Africa, Libyco-Berber and Punic were used in inscriptions into the 2nd century. In Syria, Palmyrene soldiers used their dialect of Aramaic for inscriptions, an exception to the rule that Latin was the language of the military. The last reference to Gaulish was between 560 and 575. The emergent Gallo-Romance languages would then be shaped by Gaulish. Proto-Basque or Aquitanian evolved with Latin loan words to modern Basque. The Thracian language, as were several now-extinct languages in Anatolia, are attested in Imperial-era inscriptions.\nSociety.\nThe Empire was remarkably multicultural, with \"astonishing cohesive capacity\" to create shared identity while encompassing diverse peoples. Public monuments and communal spaces open to all\u2014such as forums, amphitheatres, racetracks and baths\u2014helped foster a sense of \"Romanness\".\nRoman society had multiple, overlapping social hierarchies. The civil war preceding Augustus caused upheaval, but did not effect an immediate redistribution of wealth and social power. From the perspective of the lower classes, a peak was merely added to the social pyramid. Personal relationships\u2014patronage, friendship (\"amicitia\"), family, marriage\u2014continued to influence politics. By the time of Nero, however, it was not unusual to find a former slave who was richer than a freeborn citizen, or an equestrian who exercised greater power than a senator.\nThe blurring of the Republic's more rigid hierarchies led to increased social mobility, both upward and downward, to a greater extent than all other well-documented ancient societies. Women, freedmen, and slaves had opportunities to profit and exercise influence in ways previously less available to them. Social life, particularly for those whose personal resources were limited, was further fostered by a proliferation of voluntary associations and confraternities (\"collegia\" and \"sodalitates\"): professional and trade guilds, veterans' groups, religious sodalities, drinking and dining clubs, performing troupes, and burial societies.\nLegal status.\nAccording to the jurist Gaius, the essential distinction in the Roman \"law of persons\" was that all humans were either free (\"liberi\") or slaves (\"servi\"). The legal status of free persons was further defined by their citizenship. Most citizens held limited rights (such as the \"ius Latinum\", \"Latin right\"), but were entitled to legal protections and privileges not enjoyed by non-citizens. Free people not considered citizens, but living within the Roman world, were \"peregrini\", non-Romans. In 212, the \"Constitutio Antoniniana\" extended citizenship to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. This legal egalitarianism required a far-reaching revision of existing laws that distinguished between citizens and non-citizens.\nWomen in Roman law.\nFreeborn Roman women were considered citizens, but did not vote, hold political office, or serve in the military. A mother's citizen status determined that of her children, as indicated by the phrase \"ex duobus civibus Romanis natos\" (\"children born of two Roman citizens\"). A Roman woman kept her own family name (\"nomen\") for life. Children most often took the father's name, with some exceptions. Women could own property, enter contracts, and engage in business. Inscriptions throughout the Empire honour women as benefactors in funding public works, an indication they could hold considerable fortunes.\nThe archaic \"manus\" marriage in which the woman was subject to her husband's authority was largely abandoned by the Imperial era, and a married woman retained ownership of any property she brought into the marriage. Technically she remained under her father's legal authority, even though she moved into her husband's home, but when her father died she became legally emancipated. This arrangement was a factor in the degree of independence Roman women enjoyed compared to many other cultures up to the modern period: although she had to answer to her father in legal matters, she was free of his direct scrutiny in daily life, and her husband had no legal power over her. Although it was a point of pride to be a \"one-man woman\" (\"univira\") who had married only once, there was little stigma attached to divorce, nor to speedy remarriage after being widowed or divorced. Girls had equal inheritance rights with boys if their father died without leaving a will. A mother's right to own and dispose of property, including setting the terms of her will, gave her enormous influence over her sons into adulthood.\nAs part of the Augustan programme to restore traditional morality and social order, moral legislation attempted to regulate conduct as a means of promoting \"family values\". Adultery was criminalized, and defined broadly as an illicit sex act (\"stuprum\") between a male citizen and a married woman, or between a married woman and any man other than her husband. That is, a double standard was in place: a married woman could have sex only with her husband, but a married man did not commit adultery if he had sex with a prostitute or person of marginalized status. Childbearing was encouraged: a woman who had given birth to three children was granted symbolic honours and greater legal freedom (the \"ius trium liberorum\").\nSlaves and the law.\nAt the time of Augustus, as many as 35% of the people in Roman Italy were slaves, making Rome one of five historical \"slave societies\" in which slaves constituted at least a fifth of the population and played a major role in the economy. Slavery was a complex institution that supported traditional Roman social structures as well as contributing economic utility. In urban settings, slaves might be professionals such as teachers, physicians, chefs, and accountants; the majority of slaves provided trained or unskilled labour. Agriculture and industry, such as milling and mining, relied on the exploitation of slaves. Outside Italy, slaves were on average an estimated 10 to 20% of the population, sparse in Roman Egypt but more concentrated in some Greek areas. Expanding Roman ownership of arable land and industries affected preexisting practices of slavery in the provinces. Although slavery has often been regarded as waning in the 3rd and 4th centuries, it remained an integral part of Roman society until gradually ceasing in the 6th and 7th centuries with the disintegration of the complex Imperial economy.\nLaws pertaining to slavery were \"extremely intricate\". Slaves were considered property and had no legal personhood. They could be subjected to forms of corporal punishment not normally exercised on citizens, sexual exploitation, torture, and summary execution. A slave could not as a matter of law be raped; a slave's rapist had to be prosecuted by the owner for property damage under the Aquilian Law. Slaves had no right to the form of legal marriage called \"conubium\", but their unions were sometimes recognized. Technically, a slave could not own property, but a slave who conducted business might be given access to an individual fund (\"peculium\") that he could use, depending on the degree of trust and co-operation between owner and slave. Within a household or workplace, a hierarchy of slaves might exist, with one slave acting as the master of others. Talented slaves might accumulate a large enough \"peculium\" to justify their freedom, or be manumitted for services rendered. Manumission had become frequent enough that in 2 BC a law (\"Lex Fufia Caninia\") limited the number of slaves an owner was allowed to free in his will.\nFollowing the Servile Wars of the Republic, legislation under Augustus and his successors shows a driving concern for controlling the threat of rebellions through limiting the size of work groups, and for hunting down fugitive slaves. Over time slaves gained increased legal protection, including the right to file complaints against their masters. A bill of sale might contain a clause stipulating that the slave could not be employed for prostitution, as prostitutes in ancient Rome were often slaves. The burgeoning trade in eunuchs in the late 1st century prompted legislation that prohibited the castration of a slave against his will \"for lust or gain\".\nRoman slavery was not based on race. Generally, slaves in Italy were indigenous Italians, with a minority of foreigners (including both slaves and freedmen) estimated at 5% of the total in the capital at its peak, where their number was largest. Foreign slaves had higher mortality and lower birth rates than natives and were sometimes even subjected to mass expulsions. The average recorded age at death for the slaves of the city of Rome was seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females).\nDuring the period of republican expansionism when slavery had become pervasive, war captives were a main source of slaves. The range of ethnicities among slaves to some extent reflected that of the armies Rome defeated in war, and the conquest of Greece brought a number of highly skilled and educated slaves. Slaves were also traded in markets and sometimes sold by pirates. Infant abandonment and self-enslavement among the poor were other sources. \"Vernae\", by contrast, were \"homegrown\" slaves born to female slaves within the household, estate or farm. Although they had no special legal status, an owner who mistreated or failed to care for his \"vernae\" faced social disapproval, as they were considered part of the family household and in some cases might actually be the children of free males in the family.\nFreedmen.\nRome differed from Greek city-states in allowing freed slaves to become citizens; any future children of a freedman were born free, with full rights of citizenship. After manumission, a slave who had belonged to a Roman citizen enjoyed active political freedom (\"libertas\"), including the right to vote. His former master became his patron (\"patronus\"): the two continued to have customary and legal obligations to each other. A freedman was not entitled to hold public office or the highest state priesthoods, but could play a priestly role. He could not marry a woman from a senatorial family, nor achieve legitimate senatorial rank himself, but during the early Empire, freedmen held key positions in the government bureaucracy, so much so that Hadrian limited their participation by law. The rise of successful freedmen\u2014through political influence or wealth\u2014is a characteristic of early Imperial society. The prosperity of a high-achieving group of freedmen is attested by .\nCensus rank.\nThe Latin word \"ordo\" (plural \"ordines\") is translated variously and inexactly into English as \"class, order, rank\". One purpose of the Roman census was to determine the \"ordo\" to which an individual belonged. Two of the highest \"ordines\" in Rome were the senatorial and equestrian. Outside Rome, cities or colonies were led by decurions, also known as \"curiales.\"\n\"Senator\" was not itself an elected office in ancient Rome; an individual gained admission to the Senate after he had been elected to and served at least one term as an executive magistrate. A senator also had to meet a minimum property requirement of 1 million \"sestertii\". Not all men who qualified for the \"ordo senatorius\" chose to take a Senate seat, which required legal domicile at Rome. Emperors often filled vacancies in the 600-member body by appointment. A senator's son belonged to the \"ordo senatorius\", but he had to qualify on his own merits for admission to the Senate. A senator could be removed for violating moral standards.\nIn the time of Nero, senators were still primarily from Italy, with some from the Iberian peninsula and southern France; men from the Greek-speaking provinces of the East began to be added under Vespasian. The first senator from the easternmost province, Cappadocia, was admitted under Marcus Aurelius. By the Severan dynasty (193\u2013235), Italians made up less than half the Senate. During the 3rd century, domicile at Rome became impractical, and inscriptions attest to senators who were active in politics and munificence in their homeland (\"patria\").\nSenators were the traditional governing class who rose through the \"cursus honorum\", the political career track, but equestrians often possessed greater wealth and political power. Membership in the equestrian order was based on property; in Rome's early days, \"equites\" or knights had been distinguished by their ability to serve as mounted warriors, but cavalry service was a separate function in the Empire. A census valuation of 400,000 sesterces and three generations of free birth qualified a man as an equestrian. The census of 28 BC uncovered large numbers of men who qualified, and in 14 AD, a thousand equestrians were registered at C\u00e1diz and Padua alone. Equestrians rose through a military career track (\"tres militiae\") to become highly placed prefects and procurators within the Imperial administration.\nThe rise of provincial men to the senatorial and equestrian orders is an aspect of social mobility in the early Empire. Roman aristocracy was based on competition, and unlike later European nobility, a Roman family could not maintain its position merely through hereditary succession or having title to lands. Admission to the higher \"ordines\" brought distinction and privileges, but also responsibilities. In antiquity, a city depended on its leading citizens to fund public works, events, and services (\"munera\"). Maintaining one's rank required massive personal expenditures. Decurions were so vital for the functioning of cities that in the later Empire, as the ranks of the town councils became depleted, those who had risen to the Senate were encouraged to return to their hometowns, in an effort to sustain civic life.\nIn the later Empire, the \"dignitas\" (\"worth, esteem\") that attended on senatorial or equestrian rank was refined further with titles such as \"vir illustris\" (\"illustrious man\"). The appellation \"clarissimus\" (Greek \"lamprotatos\") was used to designate the \"dignitas\" of certain senators and their immediate family, including women. \"Grades\" of equestrian status proliferated.\nUnequal justice.\nAs the republican principle of citizens' equality under the law faded, the symbolic and social privileges of the upper classes led to an informal division of Roman society into those who had acquired greater honours (\"honestiores\") and humbler folk (\"humiliores\"). In general, \"honestiores\" were the members of the three higher \"orders\", along with certain military officers. The granting of universal citizenship in 212 seems to have increased the competitive urge among the upper classes to have their superiority affirmed, particularly within the justice system. Sentencing depended on the judgment of the presiding official as to the relative \"worth\" (\"dignitas\") of the defendant: an \"honestior\" could pay a fine for a crime for which an \"humilior\" might receive a scourging.\nExecution, which was an infrequent legal penalty for free men under the Republic, could be quick and relatively painless for \"honestiores\", while \"humiliores\" might suffer the kinds of torturous death previously reserved for slaves, such as crucifixion and condemnation to the beasts. In the early Empire, those who converted to Christianity could lose their standing as \"honestiores\", especially if they declined to fulfil religious responsibilities, and thus became subject to punishments that created the conditions of martyrdom.\nGovernment and military.\nThe three major elements of the Imperial state were the central government, the military, and the provincial government. The military established control of a territory through war, but after a city or people was brought under treaty, the mission turned to policing: protecting Roman citizens, agricultural fields, and religious sites. The Romans lacked sufficient manpower or resources to rule through force alone. Cooperation with local elites was necessary to maintain order, collect information, and extract revenue. The Romans often exploited internal political divisions.\nCommunities with demonstrated loyalty to Rome retained their own laws, could collect their own taxes locally, and in exceptional cases were exempt from Roman taxation. Legal privileges and relative independence incentivized compliance. Roman government was thus limited, but efficient in its use of available resources.\nCentral government.\nThe Imperial cult of ancient Rome identified emperors and some members of their families with divinely sanctioned authority (\"auctoritas\"). The rite of apotheosis (also called \"consecratio\") signified the deceased emperor's deification. The dominance of the emperor was based on the consolidation of powers from several republican offices. The emperor made himself the central religious authority as \"pontifex maximus\", and centralized the right to declare war, ratify treaties, and negotiate with foreign leaders. While these functions were clearly defined during the Principate, the emperor's powers over time became less constitutional and more monarchical, culminating in the Dominate.\nThe emperor was the ultimate authority in policy- and decision-making, but in the early Principate, he was expected to be accessible and deal personally with official business and petitions. A bureaucracy formed around him only gradually. The Julio-Claudian emperors relied on an informal body of advisors that included not only senators and equestrians, but trusted slaves and freedmen. After Nero, the influence of the latter was regarded with suspicion, and the emperor's council (\"consilium\") became subject to official appointment for greater transparency. Though the Senate took a lead in policy discussions until the end of the Antonine dynasty, equestrians played an increasingly important role in the \"consilium\". The women of the emperor's family often intervened directly in his decisions.\nAccess to the emperor might be gained at the daily reception (\"salutatio\"), a development of the traditional homage a client paid to his patron; public banquets hosted at the palace; and religious ceremonies. The common people who lacked this access could manifest their approval or displeasure as a group at games. By the 4th century, the Christian emperors became remote figureheads who issued general rulings, no longer responding to individual petitions. Although the Senate could do little short of assassination and open rebellion to contravene the will of the emperor, it retained its symbolic political centrality. The Senate legitimated the emperor's rule, and the emperor employed senators as legates (\"legati\"): generals, diplomats, and administrators.\nThe practical source of an emperor's power and authority was the military. The legionaries were paid by the Imperial treasury, and swore an annual oath of loyalty to the emperor. Most emperors chose a successor, usually a close family member or adopted heir. The new emperor had to seek a swift acknowledgement of his status and authority to stabilize the political landscape. No emperor could hope to survive without the allegiance of the Praetorian Guard and the legions. To secure their loyalty, several emperors paid the \"donativum\", a monetary reward. In theory, the Senate was entitled to choose the new emperor, but did so mindful of acclamation by the army or Praetorians.\nMilitary.\nAfter the Punic Wars, the Roman army comprised professional soldiers who volunteered for 20 years of active duty and five as reserves. The transition to a professional military began during the late Republic and was one of the many profound shifts away from republicanism, under which an army of conscript citizens defended the homeland against a specific threat. The Romans expanded their war machine by \"organizing the communities that they conquered in Italy into a system that generated huge reservoirs of manpower for their army\". By Imperial times, military service was a full-time career. The pervasiveness of military garrisons throughout the Empire was a major influence in the process of Romanization.\nThe primary mission of the military of the early empire was to preserve the Pax Romana. The three major divisions of the military were:\nThrough his military reforms, which included consolidating or disbanding units of questionable loyalty, Augustus regularized the legion. A legion was organized into ten cohorts, each of which comprised six centuries, with a century further made up of ten squads (\"contubernia\"); the exact size of the Imperial legion, which was likely determined by logistics, has been estimated to range from 4,800 to 5,280. After Germanic tribes wiped out three legions in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, the number of legions was increased from 25 to around 30. The army had about 300,000 soldiers in the 1st century, and under 400,000 in the 2nd, \"significantly smaller\" than the collective armed forces of the conquered territories. No more than 2% of adult males living in the Empire served in the Imperial army. Augustus also created the Praetorian Guard: nine cohorts, ostensibly to maintain the public peace, which were garrisoned in Italy. Better paid than the legionaries, the Praetorians served only sixteen years.\nThe \"auxilia\" were recruited from among the non-citizens. Organized in smaller units of roughly cohort strength, they were paid less than the legionaries, and after 25 years of service were rewarded with Roman citizenship, also extended to their sons. According to Tacitus there were roughly as many auxiliaries as there were legionaries\u2014thus, around 125,000 men, implying approximately 250 auxiliary regiments. The Roman cavalry of the earliest Empire were primarily from Celtic, Hispanic or Germanic areas. Several aspects of training and equipment derived from the Celts.\nThe Roman navy not only aided in the supply and transport of the legions but also in the protection of the frontiers along the rivers Rhine and Danube. Another duty was protecting maritime trade against pirates. It patrolled the Mediterranean, parts of the North Atlantic coasts, and the Black Sea. Nevertheless, the army was considered the senior and more prestigious branch.\nProvincial government.\nAn annexed territory became a Roman province in three steps: making a register of cities, taking a census, and surveying the land. Further government recordkeeping included births and deaths, real estate transactions, taxes, and juridical proceedings. In the 1st and 2nd centuries, the central government sent out around 160 officials annually to govern outside Italy. Among these officials were the Roman governors: magistrates elected at Rome who in the name of the Roman people governed senatorial provinces; or governors, usually of equestrian rank, who held their \"imperium\" on behalf of the emperor in imperial provinces, most notably Roman Egypt. A governor had to make himself accessible to the people he governed, but he could delegate various duties. His staff, however, was minimal: his official attendants (\"apparitores\"), including lictors, heralds, messengers, scribes, and bodyguards; legates, both civil and military, usually of equestrian rank; and friends who accompanied him unofficially.\nOther officials were appointed as supervisors of government finances. Separating fiscal responsibility from justice and administration was a reform of the Imperial era, to avoid provincial governors and tax farmers exploiting local populations for personal gain. Equestrian procurators, whose authority was originally \"extra-judicial and extra-constitutional\", managed both state-owned property and the personal property of the emperor (\"res privata\"). Because Roman government officials were few, a provincial who needed help with a legal dispute or criminal case might seek out any Roman perceived to have some official capacity.\nIn the High Empire, Italy was legally distinguished from the provinces, and along with some favored provincial communities, enjoyed immunity from the property tax and poll tax. However, under the Emperor Diocletian, Italy lost these privileges and was subdivided into provinces.\nLaw.\nRoman courts held original jurisdiction over cases involving Roman citizens throughout the empire, but there were too few judicial functionaries to impose Roman law uniformly in the provinces. Most parts of the Eastern Empire already had well-established law codes and juridical procedures. Generally, it was Roman policy to respect the \"mos regionis\" (\"regional tradition\" or \"law of the land\") and to regard local laws as a source of legal precedent and social stability. The compatibility of Roman and local law was thought to reflect an underlying \"ius gentium\", the \"law of nations\" or international law regarded as common and customary. If provincial law conflicted with Roman law or custom, Roman courts heard appeals, and the emperor held final decision-making authority.\nIn the West, law had been administered on a highly localized or tribal basis, and private property rights may have been a novelty of the Roman era, particularly among Celts. Roman law facilitated the acquisition of wealth by a pro-Roman elite. The extension of universal citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Empire in 212 required the uniform application of Roman law, replacing local law codes that had applied to non-citizens. Diocletian's efforts to stabilize the Empire after the Crisis of the Third Century included two major compilations of law in four years, the \"Codex Gregorianus\" and the \"Codex Hermogenianus\", to guide provincial administrators in setting consistent legal standards.\nThe pervasiveness of Roman law throughout Western Europe enormously influenced the Western legal tradition, reflected by continued use of Latin legal terminology in modern law.\nTaxation.\nTaxation under the Empire amounted to about 5% of its gross product. The typical tax rate for individuals ranged from 2 to 5%. The tax code was \"bewildering\" in its complicated system of direct and indirect taxes, some paid in cash and some in kind. Taxes might be specific to a province, or kinds of properties such as fisheries; they might be temporary. Tax collection was justified by the need to maintain the military, and taxpayers sometimes got a refund if the army captured a surplus of booty. In-kind taxes were accepted from less-monetized areas, particularly those who could supply grain or goods to army camps.\nThe primary source of direct tax revenue was individuals, who paid a poll tax and a tax on their land, construed as a tax on its produce or productive capacity. Tax obligations were determined by the census: each head of household provided a headcount of his household, as well as an accounting of his property. A major source of indirect-tax revenue was the \"portoria\", customs and tolls on trade, including among provinces. Towards the end of his reign, Augustus instituted a 4% tax on the sale of slaves, which Nero shifted from the purchaser to the dealers, who responded by raising their prices. An owner who manumitted a slave paid a \"freedom tax\", calculated at 5% of value. An inheritance tax of 5% was assessed when Roman citizens above a certain net worth left property to anyone outside their immediate family. Revenues from the estate tax and from an auction tax went towards the veterans' pension fund (\"aerarium militare\").\nLow taxes helped the Roman aristocracy increase their wealth, which equalled or exceeded the revenues of the central government. An emperor sometimes replenished his treasury by confiscating the estates of the \"super-rich\", but in the later period, the resistance of the wealthy to paying taxes was one of the factors contributing to the collapse of the Empire.\nEconomy.\nThe Empire is best thought of as a network of regional economies, based on a form of \"political capitalism\" in which the state regulated commerce to assure its own revenues. Economic growth, though not comparable to modern economies, was greater than that of most other societies prior to industrialization. Territorial conquests permitted a large-scale reorganization of land use that resulted in agricultural surplus and specialization, particularly in north Africa. Some cities were known for particular industries. The scale of urban building indicates a significant construction industry. Papyri preserve complex accounting methods that suggest elements of economic rationalism, and the Empire was highly monetized. Although the means of communication and transport were limited in antiquity, transportation in the 1st and 2nd centuries expanded greatly, and trade routes connected regional economies. The supply contracts for the army drew on local suppliers near the base (\"castrum\"), throughout the province, and across provincial borders.\nEconomic historians vary in their calculations of the gross domestic product during the Principate. In the sample years of 14, 100, and 150 AD, estimates of per capita GDP range from 166 to 380 \"HS\". The GDP per capita of Italy is estimated as 40 to 66% higher than in the rest of the Empire, due to tax transfers from the provinces and the concentration of elite income.\nEconomic dynamism resulted in social mobility. Although aristocratic values permeated traditional elite society, wealth requirements for rank indicate a strong tendency towards plutocracy. Prestige could be obtained through investing one's wealth in grand estates or townhouses, luxury items, public entertainments, funerary monuments, and religious dedications. Guilds (\"collegia\") and corporations (\"corpora\") provided support for individuals to succeed through networking. \"There can be little doubt that the lower classes of ... provincial towns of the Roman Empire enjoyed a high standard of living not equaled again in Western Europe until the 19th century\". Households in the top 1.5% of income distribution captured about 20% of income. The \"vast majority\" produced more than half of the total income, but lived near subsistence.\nCurrency and banking.\nThe early Empire was monetized to a near-universal extent, using money as a way to express prices and debts. The \"sestertius\" (English \"sesterces\", symbolized as \"HS\") was the basic unit of reckoning value into the 4th century, though the silver \"denarius\", worth four sesterces, was also used beginning in the Severan dynasty. The smallest coin commonly circulated was the bronze \"as\", one-tenth \"denarius\". Bullion and ingots seem not to have counted as \"pecunia\" (\"money\") and were used only on the frontiers. Romans in the first and second centuries counted coins, rather than weighing them\u2014an indication that the coin was valued on its face. This tendency towards fiat money led to the debasement of Roman coinage in the later Empire. The standardization of money throughout the Empire promoted trade and market integration. The high amount of metal coinage in circulation increased the money supply for trading or saving.\nRome had no central bank, and regulation of the banking system was minimal. Banks of classical antiquity typically kept less in reserves than the full total of customers' deposits. A typical bank had fairly limited capital, and often only one principal. Seneca assumes that anyone involved in Roman commerce needs access to credit. A professional deposit banker received and held deposits for a fixed or indefinite term, and lent money to third parties. The senatorial elite were involved heavily in private lending, both as creditors and borrowers. The holder of a debt could use it as a means of payment by transferring it to another party, without cash changing hands. Although it has sometimes been thought that ancient Rome lacked documentary transactions, the system of banks throughout the Empire permitted the exchange of large sums without physically transferring coins, in part because of the risks of moving large amounts of cash. Only one serious credit shortage is known to have occurred in the early Empire, in 33 AD; generally, available capital exceeded the amount needed by borrowers. The central government itself did not borrow money, and without public debt had to fund deficits from cash reserves.\nEmperors of the Antonine and Severan dynasties debased the currency, particularly the \"denarius\", under the pressures of meeting military payrolls. Sudden inflation under Commodus damaged the credit market. In the mid-200s, the supply of specie contracted sharply. Conditions during the Crisis of the Third Century\u2014such as reductions in long-distance trade, disruption of mining operations, and the physical transfer of gold coinage outside the empire by invading enemies\u2014greatly diminished the money supply and the banking sector. Although Roman coinage had long been fiat money or fiduciary currency, general economic anxieties came to a head under Aurelian, and bankers lost confidence in coins. Despite Diocletian's introduction of the gold \"solidus\" and monetary reforms, the credit market of the Empire never recovered its former robustness.\nMining and metallurgy.\nThe main mining regions of the Empire were the Iberian Peninsula (silver, copper, lead, iron and gold); Gaul (gold, silver, iron); Britain (mainly iron, lead, tin), the Danubian provinces (gold, iron); Macedonia and Thrace (gold, silver); and Asia Minor (gold, silver, iron, tin). Intensive large-scale mining\u2014of alluvial deposits, and by means of open-cast mining and underground mining\u2014took place from the reign of Augustus up to the early 3rd century, when the instability of the Empire disrupted production.\nHydraulic mining allowed base and precious metals to be extracted on a proto-industrial scale. The total annual iron output is estimated at 82,500\u00a0tonnes. Copper and lead production levels were unmatched until the Industrial Revolution. At its peak around the mid-2nd century, the Roman silver stock is estimated at 10,000\u00a0t, five to ten times larger than the combined silver mass of medieval Europe and the Caliphate around 800\u00a0AD. As an indication of the scale of Roman metal production, lead pollution in the Greenland ice sheet quadrupled over prehistoric levels during the Imperial era and dropped thereafter.\nTransportation and communication.\nThe Empire completely encircled the Mediterranean, which they called \"our sea\" (\"Mare Nostrum\"). Roman sailing vessels navigated the Mediterranean as well as major rivers. Transport by water was preferred where possible, as moving commodities by land was more difficult. Vehicles, wheels, and ships indicate the existence of a great number of skilled woodworkers.\nLand transport utilized the advanced system of Roman roads, called \"viae\". These roads were primarily built for military purposes, but also served commercial ends. The in-kind taxes paid by communities included the provision of personnel, animals, or vehicles for the \"cursus publicus\", the state mail and transport service established by Augustus. Relay stations were located along the roads every seven to twelve Roman miles, and tended to grow into villages or trading posts. A \"mansio\" (plural \"mansiones\") was a privately run service station franchised by the imperial bureaucracy for the \"cursus publicus\". The distance between \"mansiones\" was determined by how far a wagon could travel in a day. Carts were usually pulled by mules, travelling about 4\u00a0mph.\nTrade and commodities.\nRoman provinces traded among themselves, but trade extended outside the frontiers to regions as far away as China and India. Chinese trade was mostly conducted overland through middle men along the Silk Road; Indian trade also occurred by sea from Egyptian ports. The main commodity was grain. Also traded were olive oil, foodstuffs, \"garum\" (fish sauce), slaves, ore and manufactured metal objects, fibres and textiles, timber, pottery, glassware, marble, papyrus, spices and \"materia medica\", ivory, pearls, and gemstones. Though most provinces could produce wine, regional varietals were desirable and wine was a central trade good.\nLabour and occupations.\nInscriptions record 268 different occupations in Rome and 85 in Pompeii. Professional associations or trade guilds (\"collegia\") are attested for a wide range of occupations, some quite specialized.\nWork performed by slaves falls into five general categories: domestic, with epitaphs recording at least 55 different household jobs; imperial or public service; urban crafts and services; agriculture; and mining. Convicts provided much of the labour in the mines or quarries, where conditions were notoriously brutal. In practice, there was little division of labour between slave and free, and most workers were illiterate and without special skills. The greatest number of common labourers were employed in agriculture: in Italian industrial farming (\"latifundia\"), these may have been mostly slaves, but elsewhere slave farm labour was probably less important.\nTextile and clothing production was a major source of employment. Both textiles and finished garments were traded and products were often named for peoples or towns, like a fashion \"label\". Better ready-to-wear was exported by local businessmen (\"negotiatores\" or \"mercatores\"). Finished garments might be retailed by their sales agents, by \"vestiarii\" (clothing dealers), or peddled by itinerant merchants. The fullers (\"fullones\") and dye workers (\"coloratores\") had their own guilds. \"Centonarii\" were guild workers who specialized in textile production and the recycling of old clothes into pieced goods.\nArchitecture and engineering.\nThe chief Roman contributions to architecture were the arch, vault, and dome. Some Roman structures still stand today, due in part to sophisticated methods of making cements and concrete. Roman temples developed Etruscan and Greek forms, with some distinctive elements. Roman roads are considered the most advanced built until the early 19th century.\nRoman bridges were among the first large and lasting bridges, built from stone (and in most cases concrete) with the arch as the basic structure. The largest Roman bridge was Trajan's bridge over the lower Danube, constructed by Apollodorus of Damascus, which remained for over a millennium the longest bridge to have been built. The Romans built many dams and reservoirs for water collection, such as the Subiaco Dams, two of which fed the Anio Novus, one of the largest aqueducts of Rome.\nThe Romans constructed numerous aqueducts. \"De aquaeductu\", a treatise by Frontinus, who served as water commissioner, reflects the administrative importance placed on the water supply. Masonry channels carried water along a precise gradient, using gravity alone. It was then collected in tanks and fed through pipes to public fountains, baths, toilets, or industrial sites. The main aqueducts in Rome were the Aqua Claudia and the Aqua Marcia. The complex system built to supply Constantinople had its most distant supply drawn from over 120\u00a0km away along a route of more than 336\u00a0km. Roman aqueducts were built to remarkably fine tolerance, and to a technological standard not equalled until modern times. The Romans also used aqueducts in their extensive mining operations across the empire.\nInsulated glazing (or \"double glazing\") was used in the construction of public baths. Elite housing in cooler climates might have hypocausts, a form of central heating. The Romans were the first culture to assemble all essential components of the much later steam engine: the crank and connecting rod system, Hero's aeolipile (generating steam power), the cylinder and piston (in metal force pumps), non-return valves (in water pumps), and gearing (in water mills and clocks).\nDaily life.\nCity and country.\nThe city was viewed as fostering civilization by being \"properly designed, ordered, and adorned\". Augustus undertook a vast building programme in Rome, supported public displays of art that expressed imperial ideology, and reorganized the city into neighbourhoods \"(vici)\" administered at the local level with police and firefighting services. A focus of Augustan monumental architecture was the Campus Martius, an open area outside the city centre: the Altar of Augustan Peace () was located there, as was an obelisk imported from Egypt that formed the pointer (\"gnomon\") of a horologium. With its public gardens, the Campus was among the most attractive places in Rome to visit.\nCity planning and urban lifestyles was influenced by the Greeks early on, and in the Eastern Empire, Roman rule shaped the development of cities that already had a strong Hellenistic character. Cities such as Athens, Aphrodisias, Ephesus and Gerasa tailored city planning and architecture to imperial ideals, while expressing their individual identity and regional preeminence. In areas inhabited by Celtic-speaking peoples, Rome encouraged the development of urban centres with stone temples, forums, monumental fountains, and amphitheatres, often on or near the sites of preexisting walled settlements known as \"oppida\". Urbanization in Roman Africa expanded on Greek and Punic coastal cities.\nThe network of cities (, \"municipia\", \"civitates\" or in Greek terms \"poleis\") was a primary cohesive force during the Pax Romana. Romans of the 1st and 2nd centuries were encouraged to \"inculcate the habits of peacetime\". As the classicist Clifford Ando noted:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Most of the cultural appurtenances popularly associated with imperial culture\u2014public cult and its games and civic banquets, competitions for artists, speakers, and athletes, as well as the funding of the great majority of public buildings and public display of art\u2014were financed by private individuals, whose expenditures in this regard helped to justify their economic power and legal and provincial privileges.\nIn the city of Rome, most people lived in multistory apartment buildings (\"insulae\") that were often squalid firetraps. Public facilities\u2014such as baths (\"thermae\"), toilets with running water (\"latrinae\"), basins or elaborate fountains (\"nymphea\") delivering fresh water, and large-scale entertainments such as chariot races and gladiator combat\u2014were aimed primarily at the common people. \nThe public baths served hygienic, social and cultural functions. Bathing was the focus of daily socializing. Roman baths were distinguished by a series of rooms that offered communal bathing in three temperatures, with amenities that might include an exercise room, sauna, exfoliation spa, ball court, or outdoor swimming pool. Baths had hypocaust heating: the floors were suspended over hot-air channels. Public baths were part of urban culture throughout the provinces, but in the late 4th century, individual tubs began to replace communal bathing. Christians were advised to go to the baths only for hygiene.\nRich families from Rome usually had two or more houses: a townhouse (\"domus\") and at least one luxury home (\"villa\") outside the city. The \"domus\" was a privately owned single-family house, and might be furnished with a private bath (\"balneum\"), but it was not a place to retreat from public life. Although some neighbourhoods show a higher concentration of such houses, they were not segregated enclaves. The \"domus\" was meant to be visible and accessible. The atrium served as a reception hall in which the \"paterfamilias\" (head of household) met with clients every morning. It was a centre of family religious rites, containing a shrine and images of family ancestors. The houses were located on busy public roads, and ground-level spaces were often rented out as shops (\"tabernae\"). In addition to a kitchen garden\u2014windowboxes might substitute in the \"insulae\"\u2014townhouses typically enclosed a peristyle garden.\nThe villa by contrast was an escape from the city, and in literature represents a lifestyle that balances intellectual and artistic interests (\"otium\") with an appreciation of nature and agriculture. Ideally a villa commanded a view or vista, carefully framed by the architectural design. \nAugustus' programme of urban renewal, and the growth of Rome's population to as many as one million, was accompanied by nostalgia for rural life. Poetry idealized the lives of farmers and shepherds. Interior decorating often featured painted gardens, fountains, landscapes, vegetative ornament, and animals, rendered accurately enough to be identified by species. On a more practical level, the central government took an active interest in supporting agriculture. Producing food was the priority of land use. Larger farms (\"latifundia\") achieved an economy of scale that sustained urban life. Small farmers benefited from the development of local markets in towns and trade centres. Agricultural techniques such as crop rotation and selective breeding were disseminated throughout the Empire, and new crops were introduced from one province to another.\nMaintaining an affordable food supply to the city of Rome had become a major political issue in the late Republic, when the state began to provide a grain dole (Cura Annonae) to citizens who registered for it (about 200,000\u2013250,000 adult males in Rome). The dole cost at least 15% of state revenues, but improved living conditions among the lower classes, and subsidized the rich by allowing workers to spend more of their earnings on the wine and olive oil produced on estates. The grain dole also had symbolic value: it affirmed the emperor's position as universal benefactor, and the right of citizens to share in \"the fruits of conquest\". The \"annona\", public facilities, and spectacular entertainments mitigated the otherwise dreary living conditions of lower-class Romans, and kept social unrest in check. The satirist Juvenal, however, saw \"bread and circuses\" (\"panem et circenses\") as emblematic of the loss of republican political liberty:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The public has long since cast off its cares: the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things: bread and circuses.\nHealth and disease.\nEpidemics were common in the ancient world, and occasional pandemics in the Empire killed millions. The Roman population was unhealthy. About 20 percent\u2014a large percentage by ancient standards\u2014lived in cities, Rome being the largest. The cities were a \"demographic sink\": the death rate exceeded the birth rate and constant immigration was necessary to maintain the population. Average lifespan is estimated at the mid-twenties, and perhaps more than half of children died before reaching adulthood. Dense urban populations and poor sanitation contributed to disease. Land and sea connections facilitated and sped the transfer of infectious diseases across the empire's territories. The rich were not immune; only two of emperor Marcus Aurelius's fourteen children are known to have reached adulthood.\nThe importance of a good diet to health was recognized by medical writers such as Galen (2nd century). Views on nutrition were influenced by beliefs like humoral theory. A good indicator of nutrition and disease burden is average height: the average Roman was shorter in stature than the population of pre-Roman Italian societies and medieval Europe.\nFood and dining.\nMost apartments in Rome lacked kitchens, though a charcoal brazier could be used for rudimentary cookery. Prepared food was sold at pubs and bars, inns, and food stalls (\"tabernae\", \"cauponae\", \"popinae\", \"thermopolia\"). Carryout and restaurants were for the lower classes; fine dining appeared only at dinner parties in wealthy homes with a chef (\"archimagirus\") and kitchen staff, or banquets hosted by social clubs (\"collegia\").\nMost Romans consumed at least 70% of their daily calories in the form of cereals and legumes. \"Puls\" (pottage) was considered the food of the Romans, and could be elaborated to produce dishes similar to polenta or risotto. Urban populations and the military preferred bread. By the reign of Aurelian, the state had begun to distribute the \"annona\" as a daily ration of bread baked in state factories, and added olive oil, wine, and pork to the dole.\nRoman literature focuses on the dining habits of the upper classes, for whom the evening meal (\"cena\") had important social functions. Guests were entertained in a finely decorated dining room (\"triclinium\") furnished with couches. By the late Republic, women dined, reclined, and drank wine along with men. The poet Martial describes a dinner, beginning with the \"gustatio\" (\"tasting\" or \"appetizer\") salad. The main course was kid, beans, greens, a chicken, and leftover ham, followed by a dessert of fruit and wine. Roman \"foodies\" indulged in wild game, fowl such as peacock and flamingo, large fish (mullet was especially prized), and shellfish. Luxury ingredients were imported from the far reaches of empire. A book-length collection of Roman recipes is attributed to Apicius, a name for several figures in antiquity that became synonymous with \"gourmet\".\nRefined cuisine could be moralized as a sign of either civilized progress or decadent decline. Most often, because of the importance of landowning in Roman culture, produce\u2014cereals, legumes, vegetables, and fruit\u2014were considered more civilized foods than meat. The Mediterranean staples of bread, wine, and oil were sacralized by Roman Christianity, while Germanic meat consumption became a mark of paganism. Some philosophers and Christians resisted the demands of the body and the pleasures of food, and adopted fasting as an ideal. Food became simpler in general as urban life in the West diminished and trade routes were disrupted; the Church formally discouraged gluttony, and hunting and pastoralism were seen as simple and virtuous.\nSpectacles.\nWhen Juvenal complained that the Roman people had exchanged their political liberty for \"bread and circuses\", he was referring to the state-provided grain dole and the \"circenses\", events held in the entertainment venue called a \"circus\". The largest such venue in Rome was the Circus Maximus, the setting of horse races, chariot races, the equestrian Troy Game, staged beast hunts (\"venationes\"), athletic contests, gladiator combat, and historical re-enactments. From earliest times, several religious festivals had featured games (\"ludi\"), primarily horse and chariot races (\"ludi circenses\"). The races retained religious significance in connection with agriculture, initiation, and the cycle of birth and death.\nUnder Augustus, public entertainments were presented on 77 days of the year; by the reign of Marcus Aurelius, this had expanded to 135. Circus games were preceded by an elaborate parade (\"pompa circensis\") that ended at the venue. Competitive events were held also in smaller venues such as the amphitheatre, which became the characteristic Roman spectacle venue, and stadium. Greek-style athletics included footraces, boxing, wrestling, and the pancratium. Aquatic displays, such as the mock sea battle (\"naumachia\") and a form of \"water ballet\", were presented in engineered pools. State-supported theatrical events (\"ludi scaenici\") took place on temple steps or in grand stone theatres, or in the smaller enclosed theatre called an \"odeon\".\nCircuses were the largest structure regularly built in the Roman world. The Flavian Amphitheatre, better known as the Colosseum, became the regular arena for blood sports in Rome. Many Roman amphitheatres, circuses and theatres built in cities outside Italy are visible as ruins today. The local ruling elite were responsible for sponsoring spectacles and arena events, which both enhanced their status and drained their resources. The physical arrangement of the amphitheatre represented the order of Roman society: the emperor in his opulent box; senators and equestrians in reserved advantageous seats; women seated at a remove from the action; slaves given the worst places, and everybody else in-between. The crowd could call for an outcome by booing or cheering, but the emperor had the final say. Spectacles could quickly become sites of social and political protest, and emperors sometimes had to deploy force to put down crowd unrest, most notoriously at the Nika riots in 532.\nThe chariot teams were known by the colours they wore. Fan loyalty was fierce and at times erupted into sports riots. Racing was perilous, but charioteers were among the most celebrated and well-compensated athletes. Circuses were designed to ensure that no team had an unfair advantage and to minimize collisions (\"naufragia\"), which were nonetheless frequent and satisfying to the crowd. The races retained a magical aura through their early association with chthonic rituals: circus images were considered protective or lucky, curse tablets have been found buried at the site of racetracks, and charioteers were often suspected of sorcery. Chariot racing continued into the Byzantine period under imperial sponsorship, but the decline of cities in the 6th and 7th centuries led to its eventual demise.\nThe Romans thought gladiator contests had originated with funeral games and sacrifices. Some of the earliest styles of gladiator fighting had ethnic designations such as \"Thracian\" or \"Gallic\". The staged combats were considered , \"services, offerings, benefactions\", initially distinct from the festival games (\"ludi\"). To mark the opening of the Colosseum, Titus presented 100 days of arena events, with 3,000 gladiators competing on a single day. Roman fascination with gladiators is indicated by how widely they are depicted on mosaics, wall paintings, lamps, and in graffiti. Gladiators were trained combatants who might be slaves, convicts, or free volunteers. Death was not a necessary or even desirable outcome in matches between these highly skilled fighters, whose training was costly and time-consuming. By contrast, \"noxii\" were convicts sentenced to the arena with little or no training, often unarmed, and with no expectation of survival; physical suffering and humiliation were considered appropriate retributive justice. These executions were sometimes staged or ritualized as re-enactments of myths, and amphitheatres were equipped with elaborate stage machinery to create special effects.\nModern scholars have found the pleasure Romans took in the \"theatre of life and death\" difficult to understand. Pliny the Younger rationalized gladiator spectacles as good for the people, \"to inspire them to face honourable wounds and despise death, by exhibiting love of glory and desire for victory\". Some Romans such as Seneca were critical of the brutal spectacles, but found virtue in the courage and dignity of the defeated fighter\u2014an attitude that finds its fullest expression with the Christians martyred in the arena. Tertullian considered deaths in the arena to be nothing more than a dressed-up form of human sacrifice. Even martyr literature, however, offers \"detailed, indeed luxuriant, descriptions of bodily suffering\", and became a popular genre at times indistinguishable from fiction.\nRecreation.\nThe singular \"ludus\", \"play, game, sport, training\", had a wide range of meanings such as \"word play\", \"theatrical performance\", \"board game\", \"primary school\", and even \"gladiator training school\" (as in \"Ludus Magnus\"). Activities for children and young people in the Empire included hoop rolling and knucklebones (\"astragali\" or \"jacks\"). Girls had dolls made of wood, terracotta, and especially bone and ivory. Ball games include trigon and harpastum. People of all ages played board games, including \"latrunculi\" (\"Raiders\") and \"XII scripta\" (\"Twelve Marks\"). A game referred to as \"alea\" (dice) or \"tabula\" (the board) may have been similar to backgammon. Dicing as a form of gambling was disapproved of, but was a popular pastime during the festival of the Saturnalia.\nAfter adolescence, most physical training for males was of a military nature. The Campus Martius originally was an exercise field where young men learned horsemanship and warfare. Hunting was also considered an appropriate pastime. According to Plutarch, conservative Romans disapproved of Greek-style athletics that promoted a fine body for its own sake, and condemned Nero's efforts to encourage Greek-style athletic games. Some women trained as gymnasts and dancers, and a rare few as female gladiators. The \"Bikini Girls\" mosaic shows young women engaging in routines comparable to rhythmic gymnastics. Women were encouraged to maintain health through activities such as playing ball, swimming, walking, or reading aloud (as a breathing exercise).\nClothing.\nIn a status-conscious society like that of the Romans, clothing and personal adornment indicated the etiquette of interacting with the wearer. Wearing the correct clothing reflected a society in good order. There is little direct evidence of how Romans dressed in daily life, since portraiture may show the subject in clothing with symbolic value, and surviving textiles are rare.\nThe toga was the distinctive national garment of the male citizen, but it was heavy and impractical, worn mainly for conducting political or court business and religious rites. It was a \"vast expanse\" of semi-circular white wool that could not be put on and draped correctly without assistance. The drapery became more intricate and structured over time. The \"toga praetexta\", with a purple or purplish-red stripe representing inviolability, was worn by children who had not come of age, curule magistrates, and state priests. Only the emperor could wear an all-purple toga (\"toga picta\").\nOrdinary clothing was dark or colourful. The basic garment for all Romans, regardless of gender or wealth, was the simple sleeved tunic, with length differing by wearer. The tunics of poor people and labouring slaves were made from coarse wool in natural, dull shades; finer tunics were made of lightweight wool or linen. A man of the senatorial or equestrian order wore a tunic with two purple stripes (\"clavi\") woven vertically: the wider the stripe, the higher the wearer's status. Other garments could be layered over the tunic. Common male attire also included cloaks, and in some regions, trousers. In the 2nd century, emperors and elite men are often portrayed wearing the pallium, an originally Greek mantle; women are also portrayed in the pallium. Tertullian considered the pallium an appropriate garment both for Christians, in contrast to the toga, and for educated people.\nRoman clothing styles changed over time. In the Dominate, clothing worn by both soldiers and bureaucrats became highly decorated with geometrical patterns, stylized plant motifs, and in more elaborate examples, human or animal figures. Courtiers of the later Empire wore elaborate silk robes. The militarization of Roman society, and the waning of urban life, affected fashion: heavy military-style belts were worn by bureaucrats as well as soldiers, and the toga was abandoned, replaced by the pallium as a garment embodying social unity.\nArts.\nGreek art had a profound influence on Roman art. Public art\u2014including sculpture, monuments such as victory columns or triumphal arches, and the iconography on coins\u2014is often analysed for historical or ideological significance. In the private sphere, artistic objects were made for religious dedications, funerary commemoration, domestic use, and commerce. The wealthy advertised their appreciation of culture through artwork and decorative arts in their homes. Despite the value placed on art, even famous artists were of low social status, partly as they worked with their hands.\nPortraiture.\nPortraiture, which survives mainly in sculpture, was the most copious form of imperial art. Portraits during the Augustan period utilize classical proportions, evolving later into a mixture of realism and idealism. Republican portraits were characterized by verism, but as early as the 2nd century BC, Greek heroic nudity was adopted for conquering generals. Imperial portrait sculptures may model a mature head atop a youthful nude or semi-nude body with perfect musculature. Clothed in the toga or military regalia, the body communicates rank or role, not individual characteristics. \nPortraiture in painting is represented primarily by the Fayum mummy portraits, which evoke Egyptian and Roman traditions of commemorating the dead with realistic painting. Marble portrait sculpture were painted, but traces have rarely survived.\nSculpture and sarcophagi.\nExamples of Roman sculpture survive abundantly, though often in damaged or fragmentary condition, including freestanding statuary in marble, bronze and terracotta, and reliefs from public buildings and monuments. Niches in amphitheatres were originally filled with statues, as were formal gardens. Temples housed cult images of deities, often by famed sculptors.\nElaborately carved marble and limestone sarcophagi are characteristic of the 2nd to 4th centuries. Sarcophagus relief has been called the \"richest single source of Roman iconography\", depicting mythological scenes or Jewish/Christian imagery as well as the deceased's life.\nPainting.\nInitial Roman painting drew from Etruscan and Greek models and techniques. Examples of Roman paintings can be found in palaces, catacombs and villas. Much of what is known of Roman painting is from the interior decoration of private homes, particularly as preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius. In addition to decorative borders and panels with geometric or vegetative motifs, wall painting depicts scenes from mythology and theatre, landscapes and gardens, spectacles, everyday life, and erotic art.\nMosaic.\nMosaics are among the most enduring of Roman decorative arts, and are found on floors and other architectural features. The most common is the tessellated mosaic, formed from uniform pieces \"(tesserae)\" of materials such as stone and glass. \"Opus sectile\" is a related technique in which flat stone, usually coloured marble, is cut precisely into shapes from which geometric or figurative patterns are formed. This more difficult technique became especially popular for luxury surfaces in the 4th century (e.g. the Basilica of Junius Bassus).\nFigurative mosaics share many themes with painting, and in some cases use almost identical compositions. Geometric patterns and mythological scenes occur throughout the Empire. In North Africa, a particularly rich source of mosaics, homeowners often chose scenes of life on their estates, hunting, agriculture, and local wildlife. Plentiful and major examples of Roman mosaics come also from present-day Turkey (particularly the (Antioch mosaics), Italy, southern France, Spain, and Portugal.\nDecorative arts.\nDecorative arts for luxury consumers included fine pottery, silver and bronze vessels and implements, and glassware. Pottery manufacturing was economically important, as were the glass and metalworking industries. Imports stimulated new regional centres of production. Southern Gaul became a leading producer of the finer red-gloss pottery (\"terra sigillata\") that was a major trade good in 1st-century Europe. Glassblowing was regarded by the Romans as originating in Syria in the 1st century BC, and by the 3rd century, Egypt and the Rhineland had become noted for fine glass.\nPerforming arts.\nIn Roman tradition, borrowed from the Greeks, literary theatre was performed by all-male troupes that used face masks with exaggerated facial expressions to portray emotion. Female roles were played by men in drag (\"travesti\"). Roman literary theatre tradition is represented in Latin literature by the tragedies of Seneca, for example.\nMore popular than literary theatre was the genre-defying \"mimus\" theatre, which featured scripted scenarios with free improvisation, risqu\u00e9 language and sex scenes, action sequences, and political satire, along with dance, juggling, acrobatics, tightrope walking, striptease, and dancing bears. Unlike literary theatre, \"mimus\" was played without masks, and encouraged stylistic realism. Female roles were performed by women. \"Mimus\" was related to \"pantomimus\", an early form of story ballet that contained no spoken dialogue but rather a sung libretto, often mythological, either tragic or comic.\nAlthough sometimes regarded as foreign, music and dance existed in Rome from earliest times. Music was customary at funerals, and the \"tibia\", a woodwind instrument, was played at sacrifices. Song \"(carmen)\" was integral to almost every social occasion. Music was thought to reflect the orderliness of the cosmos. Various woodwinds and \"brass\" instruments were played, as were stringed instruments such as the \"cithara\", and percussion. The \"cornu\", a long tubular metal wind instrument, was used for military signals and on parade. These instruments spread throughout the provinces and are widely depicted in Roman art. The hydraulic pipe organ \"(hydraulis)\" was \"one of the most significant technical and musical achievements of antiquity\", and accompanied gladiator games and events in the amphitheatre. Although certain dances were seen at times as non-Roman or unmanly, dancing was embedded in religious rituals of archaic Rome. Ecstatic dancing was a feature of the mystery religions, particularly the cults of Cybele and Isis. In the secular realm, dancing girls from Syria and Cadiz were extremely popular.\nLike gladiators, entertainers were legally \"infames\", technically free but little better than slaves. \"Stars\", however, could enjoy considerable wealth and celebrity, and mingled socially and often sexually with the elite. Performers supported each other by forming guilds, and several memorials for theatre members survive. Theatre and dance were often condemned by Christian polemicists in the later Empire.\nLiteracy, books, and education.\nEstimates of the average literacy rate range from 5 to over 30%. The Roman obsession with documents and inscriptions indicates the value placed on the written word. Laws and edicts were posted as well as read out. Illiterate Roman subjects could have a government scribe (\"scriba\") read or write their official documents for them. The military produced extensive written records. The Babylonian Talmud declared \"if all seas were ink, all reeds were pen, all skies parchment, and all men scribes, they would be unable to set down the full scope of the Roman government's concerns\".\nNumeracy was necessary for commerce. Slaves were numerate and literate in significant numbers; some were highly educated. Graffiti and low-quality inscriptions with misspellings and solecisms indicate casual literacy among non-elites.\nThe Romans had an extensive priestly archive, and inscriptions appear throughout the Empire in connection with votives dedicated by ordinary people, as well as \"magic spells\" (e.g. the Greek Magical Papyri).\nBooks were expensive, since each copy had to be written out on a papyrus roll (\"volumen\") by scribes. The codex\u2014pages bound to a spine\u2014was still a novelty in the 1st century, but by the end of the 3rd century was replacing the \"volumen\". Commercial book production was established by the late Republic, and by the 1st century certain neighbourhoods of Rome and Western provincial cities were known for their bookshops. The quality of editing varied wildly, and plagiarism or forgery were common, since there was no copyright law.\nCollectors amassed personal libraries, and a fine library was part of the cultivated leisure (\"otium\") associated with the villa lifestyle. Significant collections might attract \"in-house\" scholars, and an individual benefactor might endow a community with a library (as Pliny the Younger did in Comum). Imperial libraries were open to users on a limited basis, and represented a literary canon. Books considered subversive might be publicly burned, and Domitian crucified copyists for reproducing works deemed treasonous.\nLiterary texts were often shared aloud at meals or with reading groups. Public readings (\"recitationes\") expanded from the 1st through the 3rd century, giving rise to \"consumer literature\" for entertainment. Illustrated books, including erotica, were popular, but are poorly represented by extant fragments.\nLiteracy began to decline during the Crisis of the Third Century. The emperor Julian banned Christians from teaching the classical curriculum, but the Church Fathers and other Christians adopted Latin and Greek literature, philosophy and science in biblical interpretation. As the Western Roman Empire declined, reading became rarer even for those within the Church hierarchy, although it continued in the Byzantine Empire.\nEducation.\nTraditional Roman education was moral and practical. Stories were meant to instil Roman values (\"mores maiorum\"). Parents were expected to act as role models, and working parents passed their skills to their children, who might also enter apprenticeships. Young children were attended by a pedagogue, usually a Greek slave or former slave, who kept the child safe, taught self-discipline and public behaviour, attended class and helped with tutoring.\nFormal education was available only to families who could pay for it; lack of state support contributed to low literacy. Primary education in reading, writing, and arithmetic might take place at home if parents hired or bought a teacher. Other children attended \"public\" schools organized by a schoolmaster (\"ludimagister\") paid by parents. \"Vernae\" (homeborn slave children) might share in-home or public schooling. Boys and girls received primary education generally from ages 7 to 12, but classes were not segregated by grade or age. Most schools employed corporal punishment. For the socially ambitious, education in Greek as well as Latin was necessary. Schools became more numerous during the Empire, increasing educational opportunities.\nAt the age of 14, upperclass males made their rite of passage into adulthood, and began to learn leadership roles through mentoring from a senior family member or family friend. Higher education was provided by \"grammatici\" or \"rhetores\". The \"grammaticus\" or \"grammarian\" taught mainly Greek and Latin literature, with history, geography, philosophy or mathematics treated as explications of the text. With the rise of Augustus, contemporary Latin authors such as Virgil and Livy also became part of the curriculum. The \"rhetor\" was a teacher of oratory or public speaking. The art of speaking (\"ars dicendi\") was highly prized, and \"eloquentia\" (\"speaking ability, eloquence\") was considered the \"glue\" of civilized society. Rhetoric was not so much a body of knowledge (though it required a command of the literary canon) as it was a mode of expression that distinguished those who held social power. The ancient model of rhetorical training\u2014\"restraint, coolness under pressure, modesty, and good humour\"\u2014endured into the 18th century as a Western educational ideal.\nIn Latin, \"illiteratus\" could mean both \"unable to read and write\" and \"lacking in cultural awareness or sophistication\". Higher education promoted career advancement. Urban elites throughout the Empire shared a literary culture imbued with Greek educational ideals (\"paideia\"). Hellenistic cities sponsored schools of higher learning to express cultural achievement. Young Roman men often went abroad to study rhetoric and philosophy, mostly to Athens. The curriculum in the East was more likely to include music and physical training. On the Hellenistic model, Vespasian endowed chairs of grammar, Latin and Greek rhetoric, and philosophy at Rome, and gave secondary teachers special exemptions from taxes and legal penalties. In the Eastern Empire, Berytus (present-day Beirut) was unusual in offering a Latin education, and became famous for its school of Roman law. The cultural movement known as the Second Sophistic (1st\u20133rd century AD) promoted the assimilation of Greek and Roman social, educational, and esthetic values.\nLiterate women ranged from cultured aristocrats to girls trained to be calligraphers and scribes. The ideal woman in Augustan love poetry was educated and well-versed in the arts. Education seems to have been standard for daughters of the senatorial and equestrian orders. An educated wife was an asset for the socially ambitious household.\nLiterature.\nLiterature under Augustus, along with that of the Republic, has been viewed as the \"Golden Age\" of Latin literature, embodying classical ideals. The three most influential Classical Latin poets\u2014Virgil, Horace, and Ovid\u2014belong to this period. Virgil's \"Aeneid\" was a national epic in the manner of the Homeric epics of Greece. Horace perfected the use of Greek lyric metres in Latin verse. Ovid's erotic poetry was enormously popular, but ran afoul of Augustan morality, contributing to his exile. Ovid's \"Metamorphoses\" wove together Greco-Roman mythology; his versions of Greek myths became a primary source of later classical mythology, and his work was hugely influential on medieval literature. The early Principate produced satirists such as Persius and Juvenal.\nThe mid-1st through mid-2nd century has conventionally been called the \"Silver Age\" of Latin literature. The three leading writers\u2014Seneca, Lucan, and Petronius\u2014committed suicide after incurring Nero's displeasure. Epigrammatist and social observer Martial and the epic poet Statius, whose poetry collection \"Silvae\" influenced Renaissance literature, wrote during the reign of Domitian. Other authors of the Silver Age included Pliny the Elder, author of the encyclopedic \"Natural History\"; his nephew, Pliny the Younger; and the historian Tacitus.\nThe principal Latin prose author of the Augustan age is the historian Livy, whose account of Rome's founding became the most familiar version in modern-era literature. \"The Twelve Caesars\" by Suetonius is a primary source for imperial biography. Among Imperial historians who wrote in Greek are Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Josephus, and Cassius Dio. Other major Greek authors of the Empire include the biographer Plutarch, the geographer Strabo, and the rhetorician and satirist Lucian.\nFrom the 2nd to the 4th centuries, Christian authors were in active dialogue with the classical tradition. Tertullian was one of the earliest prose authors with a distinctly Christian voice. After the conversion of Constantine, Latin literature is dominated by the Christian perspective. In the late 4th century, Jerome produced the Latin translation of the Bible that became authoritative as the Vulgate. Around that same time, Augustine wrote \"The City of God against the Pagans\", considered \"a masterpiece of Western culture\".\nIn contrast to the unity of Classical Latin, the literary esthetic of late antiquity has a tessellated quality. A continuing interest in the religious traditions of Rome prior to Christian dominion is found into the 5th century, with the \"Saturnalia\" of Macrobius and \"The Marriage of Philology and Mercury\" of Martianus Capella. Latin poets of late antiquity include Ausonius, Prudentius, Claudian, and Sidonius Apollinaris.\nReligion.\nThe Romans thought of themselves as highly religious, and attributed their success to their collective piety (\"pietas\") and good relations with the gods (\"pax deorum\"). The archaic religion believed to have come from the earliest kings of Rome was the foundation of the \"mos maiorum\", \"the way of the ancestors\", central to Roman identity.\nRoman religion was practical and contractual, based on the principle of \"do ut des\", \"I give that you might give\". Religion depended on knowledge and the correct practice of prayer, ritual, and sacrifice, not on faith or dogma, although Latin literature preserves learned speculation on the nature of the divine. For ordinary Romans, religion was a part of daily life. Each home had a household shrine to offer prayers and libations to the family's domestic deities. Neighbourhood shrines and sacred places such as springs and groves dotted the city. The Roman calendar was structured around religious observances; as many as 135 days were devoted to religious festivals and games (\"ludi\").\nIn the wake of the Republic's collapse, state religion adapted to support the new regime. Augustus justified one-man rule with a vast programme of religious revivalism and reform. Public vows now were directed at the wellbeing of the emperor. So-called \"emperor worship\" expanded on a grand scale the traditional veneration of the ancestral dead and of the \"Genius\", the divine tutelary of every individual. Upon death, an emperor could be made a state divinity (\"divus\") by vote of the Senate. The Roman imperial cult, influenced by Hellenistic ruler cult, became one of the major ways Rome advertised its presence in the provinces and cultivated shared cultural identity. Cultural precedent in the Eastern provinces facilitated a rapid dissemination of Imperial cult, extending as far as Najran, in present-day Saudi Arabia. Rejection of the state religion became tantamount to treason.\nThe Romans are known for the great number of deities they honoured. As the Romans extended their territories, their general policy was to promote stability among diverse peoples by absorbing local deities and cults rather than eradicating them, building temples that framed local theology within Roman religion. Inscriptions throughout the Empire record the side-by-side worship of local and Roman deities, including dedications made by Romans to local gods. By the height of the Empire, numerous syncretic or reinterpreted gods were cultivated, among them cults of Cybele, Isis, Epona, and of solar gods such as Mithras and Sol Invictus, found as far north as Roman Britain. Because Romans had never been obligated to cultivate one god or cult only, religious tolerance was not an issue.\nMystery religions, which offered initiates salvation in the afterlife, were a matter of personal choice, practiced in addition to one's family rites and public religion. The mysteries, however, involved exclusive oaths and secrecy, which conservative Romans viewed with suspicion as characteristic of \"magic\", conspiracy (\"coniuratio\"), and subversive activity. Thus, sporadic and sometimes brutal attempts were made to suppress religionists. In Gaul, the power of the druids was checked, first by forbidding Roman citizens to belong to the order, and then by banning druidism altogether. However, Celtic traditions were reinterpreted within the context of Imperial theology, and a new Gallo-Roman religion coalesced; its capital at the Sanctuary of the Three Gauls established precedent for Western cult as a form of Roman-provincial identity. The monotheistic rigour of Judaism posed difficulties for Roman policy that led at times to compromise and granting of special exemptions. Tertullian noted that Judaism, unlike Christianity, was considered a \"religio licita\", \"legitimate religion\". The Jewish\u2013Roman wars resulted from political as well as religious conflicts; the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD led to the sacking of the Second Temple and the dispersal of Jewish political power (see Jewish diaspora).\nChristianity emerged in Roman Judaea as a Jewish religious sect in the 1st century and gradually spread out of Jerusalem throughout the Empire and beyond. Imperially authorized persecutions were limited and sporadic, with martyrdoms occurring most often under the authority of local officials. Tacitus reports that after the Great Fire of Rome in AD\u00a064, the emperor attempted to deflect blame from himself onto the Christians. A major persecution occurred under the emperor Domitian and a persecution in 177 took place at Lugdunum, the Gallo-Roman religious capital. A letter from Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia, describes his persecution and executions of Christians. The Decian persecution of 246\u2013251 seriously threatened the Christian Church, but ultimately strengthened Christian defiance. Diocletian undertook the most severe persecution of Christians, from 303 to 311.\nFrom the 2nd century onward, the Church Fathers condemned the diverse religions practiced throughout the Empire as \"pagan\". In the early 4th century, Constantine I became the first emperor to convert to Christianity. He supported the Church financially and made laws that favored it, but the new religion was already successful, having moved from less than 50,000 to over a million adherents between 150 and 250. Constantine and his successors banned public sacrifice while tolerating other traditional practices. Constantine never engaged in a purge, there were no \"pagan martyrs\" during his reign, and people who had not converted to Christianity remained in important positions at court. Julian attempted to revive traditional public sacrifice and Hellenistic religion, but met Christian resistance and lack of popular support.\nChristians of the 4th century believed the conversion of Constantine showed that Christianity had triumphed over paganism (in Heaven) and little further action besides such rhetoric was necessary. Thus, their focus shifted towards heresy. According to Peter Brown, \"In most areas, polytheists were not molested, and apart from a few ugly incidents of local violence, Jewish communities also enjoyed a century of stable, even privileged, existence\". There were anti-pagan laws, but they were not generally enforced; through the 6th century, centers of paganism existed in Athens, Gaza, Alexandria, and elsewhere.\nAccording to recent Jewish scholarship, toleration of the Jews was maintained under Christian emperors. This did not extend to heretics: Theodosius I made multiple laws and acted against alternate forms of Christianity, and heretics were persecuted and killed by both the government and the church throughout Late Antiquity. Non-Christians were not persecuted until the 6th century. Rome's original religious hierarchy and ritual influenced Christian forms, and many pre-Christian practices survived in Christian festivals and local traditions.\nLegacy.\nSeveral states claimed to be the Roman Empire's successor. The Holy Roman Empire was established in 800 when Pope Leo\u00a0III crowned Charlemagne as Roman emperor. The Russian Tsardom, as inheritor of the Byzantine Empire's Orthodox Christian tradition, counted itself the Third Rome (Constantinople having been the second), in accordance with the concept of translatio imperii. The last Eastern Roman titular, Andreas Palaiologos, sold the title of Emperor of Constantinople to Charles VIII of France; upon Charles' death, Palaiologos reclaimed the title and on his death granted it to Ferdinand and Isabella and their successors, who never used it. When the Ottomans, who based their state on the Byzantine model, took Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed\u00a0II established his capital there and claimed to sit on the throne of the Roman Empire. He even launched an invasion of Otranto with the purpose of re-uniting the Empire, which was aborted by his death. In the medieval West, \"Roman\" came to mean the church and the Catholic Pope. The Greek form Romaioi remained attached to the Greek-speaking Christian population of the Byzantine Empire and is still used by Greeks.\nThe Roman Empire's control of the Italian Peninsula influenced Italian nationalism and the unification of Italy (\"Risorgimento\") in 1861. \nIn the United States, the founders were educated in the classical tradition, and used classical models for landmarks in Washington, D.C.. The founders saw Athenian democracy and Roman republicanism as models for the mixed constitution, but regarded the emperor as a figure of tyranny.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nstyle=\"width:100%\""}, "descending_order": ["7620193", "30570", "25507"], "permutation_1": ["7620193", "30570", "25507"], "permutation_2": ["25507", "7620193", "30570"], "permutation_3": ["25507", "30570", "7620193"]}
{"id": "3hop1__5639_374149_23358", "docs_added": {"24795561": "Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic\nSoviet republic from 1917 to 1991\nThe Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR or RSFSR), previously known as the Russian Soviet Republic and the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, and unofficially as Soviet Russia, was a socialist state from 1917 to 1922, and afterwards the largest and most populous constituent republic of the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1922 to 1991, until becoming a sovereign part of the Soviet Union with priority of Russian laws over Union-level legislation in 1990 and 1991, the last two years of the existence of the USSR. The Russian SFSR was composed of sixteen smaller constituent units of autonomous republics, five autonomous oblasts, ten autonomous okrugs, six krais and forty oblasts. Russians formed the largest ethnic group. The capital of the Russian SFSR and the USSR as a whole was Moscow and the other major urban centers included Leningrad (Petrograd until 1924), Stalingrad (Volgograd after 1961), Novosibirsk, Sverdlovsk, Gorky and Kuybyshev.\nOn 7 November 1917 (O.S. 25 October), as a result of the October Revolution, the Russian Soviet Republic was proclaimed as a sovereign state and the world's first constitutionally socialist state guided by communist ideology. The first constitution was adopted in 1918. In 1922, the Russian SFSR signed a treaty officially creating the USSR. On 12 June 1990, the Congress of People's Deputies adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty. On 12 June 1991, Boris Yeltsin, supported by the Democratic Russia pro-reform movement, was elected the first and only President of the RSFSR, a post that would later become the Presidency of the Russian Federation. The August 1991 Soviet coup d'\u00e9tat attempt in Moscow with the temporary brief internment of President Mikhail Gorbachev destabilised the Soviet Union. Following these events, Gorbachev lost all his remaining power, with Yeltsin superseding him as the pre-eminent figure in the country. On 8 December 1991, the heads of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed the Belovezha Accords declaring dissolution of the USSR and established the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as a loose replacement confederation. On 12 December, the agreement was ratified by the Supreme Soviet (the parliament of the Russian SFSR); therefore the Russian SFSR had renounced the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and \"de facto\" declared Russia's independence from the USSR itself and the ties with the other Soviet republics.\nOn 25 December 1991, following the resignation of Gorbachev as President of the Soviet Union, the Russian SFSR was renamed the Russian Federation. The next day, the USSR was self-dissolved by the Soviet of the Republics on 26 December, which by that time was the only functioning parliamentary chamber of the All-Union Supreme Soviet. After the dissolution, Russia took full responsibility for all the rights and obligations of the USSR under the Charter of the United Nations, including the financial obligations. As such, Russia assumed the Soviet Union's UN membership and permanent membership on the Security Council, nuclear stockpile and the control over the armed forces; Soviet embassies abroad became Russian embassies.\nThe 1978 constitution of the Russian SFSR was amended several times to reflect the transition to democracy, private property and market economy. The new Russian constitution, coming into effect on 25 December 1993 after a constitutional crisis, completely abolished the Soviet form of government and replaced it with a semi-presidential system. The economy of Russia became heavily industrialized, accounting for about two-thirds of the electricity produced in the USSR. By 1961, it was the third largest producer of petroleum due to new discoveries in the Volga-Urals region and Siberia. In 1974, there were 475 institutes of higher education in the republic providing education in 47 languages to some 23,941,000 students. A network of territorially organized public-health services provided health care. The economy began to be liberalized starting in 1985 under Gorbachev's \"perestroika\" restructuring policies, including the introduction of non-state owned enterprises (e.g. cooperatives).\nNomenclature.\nUnder the leadership of Vladimir Lenin (1870\u20131924) and Leon Trotsky (1879\u20131940), the Bolsheviks established the Soviet state on 7 November\u00a0[O.S. 25 October]\u00a01917. This happened immediately after the October Revolution toppled the interim Russian Provisional Government (most recently led by opposing democratic socialist Alexander Kerensky (1881\u20131970)) which had governed the new Russian Republic after the abdication of the Russian Empire government of the Romanov imperial dynasty of Tsar Nicholas II the previous March (Old Style: February). The October Revolution was thus the second of the two Russian Revolutions of the turbulent year of 1917. Initially, the new Soviet state did not have an official name and was not recognized by neighboring countries for five months.\nAnti-Bolsheviks soon suggested new names, however. By 1919 they had coined the mocking label Sovdepia () for the nascent state of the Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies. Speakers of colloquial English coined the term \"Bololand\"\nto refer to the land of the Bolos (a term identified from 1919 onwards with the Bolsheviks).\nOn 25 January 1918 the third meeting of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets proclaimed the establishment of the Russian Soviet Republic. In July 1918, the Fifth All\u2013Russian Congress of Soviets adopted both the new name, Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR), and the Constitution of the Russian SFSR.\nInternationally, the Russian SFSR was recognized as an independent state in 1920 only by its bordering neighbors (Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania) in the Treaty of Tartu and by the short-lived Irish Republic of 1919\u20131922 in Ireland.\nOn 30 December 1922, with the treaty on the creation of the Soviet Union, Russia (the RSFSR), alongside the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR, formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The final Soviet name for the constituent republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, was adopted in the later Soviet Constitution of 1936. By that time, Soviet Russia had gained roughly the same borders of the old Tsardom of Russia before the Great Northern War of 1700 to 1721.\nThe RSFSR dominated the Soviet Union to a significant extent. For most of its existence, the Soviet Union was commonly (but incorrectly) referred to as \"Russia\". While the RSFSR itself was only one republic within the larger union, it was the largest, most powerful and most highly developed of the 15 republics.\nOn 25 December 1991, during the collapse of the Soviet Union, which concluded on the next day, the RSFSR's official name was changed to the Russian Federation, which it remains to this day. This name and \"Russia\" were specified as the official state names on 21 April 1992, in an amendment to the then existing Constitution of 1978, and were retained as such in the subsequent 1993 Constitution of Russia.\nGeography.\nAt a total of about 17,125,200\u00a0km (6,612,100 sq mi), the Russian SFSR was the largest of the fifteen Soviet republics, with its southerly neighbor, the Kazakh SSR, being second.\nThe international borders of the RSFSR touched Poland on the west; Norway and Finland on the northwest; and to its southeast in eastern Asia were the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), Mongolian People's Republic (now Mongolia) and the People's Republic of China (China, formerly the Republic of China; 1912\u20131949). Within the Soviet Union, the RSFSR bordered the Slavic states: Ukrainian SSR (now Ukraine), Byelorussian SSR (now Belarus), the Baltic states: Estonian SSR (now Estonia), Latvian SSR (now Latvia) and Lithuanian SSR (now Lithuania, included into USSR in 1940) to its west and the Azerbaijan SSR (now Azerbaijan), Georgian SSR (now Georgia), and Kazakh SSR (now Kazakhstan) to the south.\nRoughly 70% of the area in the RSFSR consisted of broad plains, with mountainous tundra regions mainly concentrated in the east of Siberia with Central Asia and East Asia. The area is rich in mineral resources, including petroleum, natural gas, and iron ore.\nHistory.\nEarly years (1917\u20131920).\nThe Soviet government first came to power on 7 November 1917, immediately after the interim Russian Provisional Government headed by Alexander Kerensky, which governed the Russian Republic, was overthrown in the October Revolution, the second of the two Russian Revolutions. The state it governed, which did not have an official name, would be unrecognized by neighboring countries for another five months. The initial stage of the October Revolution which involved the assault on Petrograd occurred largely without any human casualties.\nOn 18 January 1918, the newly elected Constituent Assembly issued a decree, proclaiming Russia a democratic federal republic under the name \"Russian Democratic Federal Republic\". However, the Bolsheviks dissolved the Assembly on the following day and declared its decrees null and void. Conversely, the Bolsheviks also reserved a number of vacant seats in the Soviets and Central Executive for the opposition parties in proportion to their vote share at the Congress. At the same time, a number of prominent members of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries had assumed positions in Lenin's government and lead commissariats in several areas. This included agriculture (Kolegaev), property (Karelin), justice (Steinberg), post offices and telegraphs (Proshian) and local government (Trutovsky). Lenin's government also instituted a number of progressive measures such as universal education, healthcare and equal rights for women.\nOn 25 January 1918, at the third meeting of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, the establishment of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) was proclaimed. On 3 March 1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed, giving away much of the westernmost lands of the former Russian Empire to the German Empire, in exchange for peace on the Eastern Front of World War I. In July 1918, the fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets adopted the Constitution of the Russian SFSR. By 1918, during the Russian Civil War, several states within the former Russian Empire had seceded, reducing the size of the country even more, although some were conquered by the Bolsheviks.\n1920s.\nThe Russian famine of 1921\u201322, also known as Povolzhye famine, killed an estimated 5\u00a0million, primarily affecting the Volga and Ural River regions.\nThe economic impact of the Civil War was devastating. A black market emerged in Russia, despite the threat of martial law against profiteering. The ruble collapsed, with barter increasingly replacing money as a medium of exchange and, by 1921, heavy industry output had fallen to 20% of 1913 levels. 90% of wages were paid with goods rather than money. 70% of locomotives were in need of repair, and food requisitioning, combined with the effects of seven years of war and a severe drought, contributed to a famine that caused between 3 and 10 million deaths. Coal production decreased from 27.5\u00a0million tons (1913) to 7 million tons (1920), while overall factory production also declined from 10,000\u00a0million roubles to 1,000\u00a0million roubles. According to the noted historian David Christian, the grain harvest was also slashed from 80.1\u00a0million tons (1913) to 46.5\u00a0million tons (1920).\nOn 30 December 1922, the First Congress of the Soviets of the USSR approved the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, by which Russia was united with the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic and Transcaucasian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic into a single federal state, the Soviet Union. The treaty was included in the 1924 Soviet Constitution, adopted on 31 January 1924 by the Second Congress of Soviets of the USSR.\nOne of the early ambitious economic plans of the Soviet government was GOELRO, Russian abbreviation for \"State Commission for Electrification of Russia\" (\u0413\u043e\u0441\u0443\u0434\u0430\u0440\u0441\u0442\u0432\u0435\u043d\u043d\u0430\u044f \u043a\u043e\u043c\u0438\u0441\u0441\u0438\u044f \u043f\u043e \u044d\u043b\u0435\u043a\u0442\u0440\u0438\u0444\u0438\u043a\u0430\u0446\u0438\u0438 \u0420\u043e\u0441\u0441\u0438\u0438), which sought to achieve total electrification of the entire country. Soviet propaganda declared the plan was basically fulfilled by 1931. The national power output per year stood at 1.9\u00a0billion kWh in Imperial Russia in 1913, and Lenin's goal of 8.8\u00a0billion kWh was reached in 1931. National power output continued to increase significantly. It reached 13.5\u00a0billion kWh by the end of the first five-year plan in 1932, 36\u00a0billion kWh by 1937, and 48\u00a0billion kWh by 1940.\nParagraph\u00a03 of Chapter\u00a01 of the 1925 Constitution of the RSFSR stated the following:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />By the will of the peoples of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, who decided on the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during the Tenth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, being a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, devolves to the Union the powers which according to Article\u00a01 of the Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics are included within the scope of responsibilities of the government bodies of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.\n1930s.\nMany regions in Russia were affected by the Soviet famine of 1932\u20131933: Volga, Central Black Soil Region, North Caucasus, the Urals, the Crimea, part of Western Siberia, and the Kazakh ASSR. With the adoption of the 1936 Soviet Constitution on 5 December 1936, the size of the RSFSR was significantly reduced. The Kazakh ASSR and Kirghiz ASSR were transformed into the Kazakh SSR (now Kazakhstan) and Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic (Kyrgyzstan). The former Karakalpak Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic was transferred to the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (Uzbekistan).\nThe final name for the republic during the Soviet era was adopted by the Russian Constitution of 1937, which renamed it the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR).\n1940s.\nJust four months after Operation Barbarossa, the Wehrmacht was quickly advancing through the Russian SFSR, and was approximately away from Moscow. However, after the defeat in the Battle of Moscow and the Soviet winter offensive, the Germans were pushed back. In 1942, the Wehrmacht entered Stalingrad. Despite a deadly five-month battle in which the Soviets suffered over 1,100,000 casualties, they achieved victory following the surrender of the last German troops near the Volga River, ultimately pushing German forces out of Russia by 1944.\nIn 1943, Karachay Autonomous Oblast was dissolved by Joseph Stalin (1878\u20131953), General Secretary of the Communist Party, later Premier, when the Karachays were exiled to Central Asia for their alleged collaboration with the invading Germans in the Great Patriotic War (World War II, 1941\u20131945), and territory was incorporated into the Georgian SSR.\nOn 3 March 1944, on the orders of Stalin, the Chechen-Ingush ASSR was disbanded and its population forcibly deported upon the accusations of collaboration with the invaders and separatism. The territory of the ASSR was divided between other administrative units of Russian SFSR and the Georgian SSR.\nOn 11 October 1944, the Tuvan People's Republic was joined with the Russian SFSR as the Tuvan Autonomous Oblast, becoming an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1961.\nAfter reconquering Estonia and Latvia in 1944, the Russian SFSR annexed their easternmost territories around Ivangorod and within the modern Pechorsky and Pytalovsky Districts in 1944\u20131945.\nAt the end of World War II Soviet troops of the Red Army occupied southern Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands off the coast of East Asia, north of Japan, making them part of the RSFSR. The status of the southernmost Kurils, north of Hokkaido of the Japanese home islands remains in dispute with Japan and the United States following the peace treaty of 1951 ending the state of war.\nOn 17 April 1946, the Kaliningrad Oblast \u2013 the north-eastern portion of the former Kingdom of Prussia, the founding state of the German Empire (1871\u20131918) and later the German province of East Prussia including the capital and Baltic seaport city of K\u00f6nigsberg \u2013 was annexed by the Soviet Union and made part of the Russian SFSR.\n1950s.\nAfter the death of Joseph Stalin on 5 March 1953, Georgy Malenkov became the new leader of the USSR. In January 1954, Malenkov (via Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union issuing a decree) transferred the Crimean Oblast from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR. \nOn 8 February 1955, Malenkov was officially demoted to deputy Prime Minister. As First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev's authority was significantly enhanced by Malenkov's demotion.\nUnder Khrushchev's leadership of the country, the Karelo-Finnish SSR was transferred back to the RSFSR as the Karelian ASSR in 1956.\nOn 9 January 1957, Karachay Autonomous Oblast and Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic were restored by Khrushchev and they were transferred from the Georgian SSR back to the Russian SFSR.\n1960s\u20131980s.\nIn 1964, Nikita Khrushchev was removed from his position of power and replaced with Leonid Brezhnev. Under his rule, the Russian SFSR and the rest of the Soviet Union went through a mass era of stagnation. Even after Brezhnev's death in 1982, the era did not end until Mikhail Gorbachev took power in March 1985 and introduced liberal reforms in Soviet society.\nOn 12 April 1978, a new Constitution of Russia was adopted.\nEarly 1990s.\nOn 29 May 1990, at his third attempt, Boris Yeltsin was elected the chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR. The Congress of People's Deputies of the Republic adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian SFSR on 12 June 1990, which was the beginning of the \"War of Laws\", pitting the Soviet Union against the Russian Federation and other constituent republics.\nOn 17 March 1991, an all-Russian referendum created the post of President of the RSFSR and on 12 June, Boris Yeltsin was elected president by popular vote.\nDuring the unsuccessful 1991 Soviet coup d'\u00e9tat attempt of 19\u201321 August 1991 in Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union and Russia, Yeltsin strongly supported the President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. On 23 August, Yeltsin, in the presence of Gorbachev, signed a decree suspending all activity by the Communist Party of the Russian SFSR in the territory of Russia. On 6 November, he went further, banning the Communist Parties of the USSR and the RSFSR in the RSFSR.\nOn 8 December 1991, at Viskuli near Brest (Belarus), Yeltsin, Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk and Belarusian leader Stanislav Shushkevich signed the \"Agreement on the Establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States\", known in media as the Belovezh Accords. The document, consisting of a preamble and fourteen articles, stated that the Soviet Union no longer existed \"as a subject of international law and geopolitical reality\". However, based on the historical community of peoples and relations between the three states, as well as bilateral treaties, the desire for a democratic rule of law, the intention to develop their relations based on mutual recognition and respect for state sovereignty, the parties agreed to the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States. On 12 December, the agreement was ratified by the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR by an overwhelming majority: 188 votes for, 6 against and 7 abstentions. The legality of this ratification raised doubts among some members of the Russian parliament, since according to the Constitution of the RSFSR of 1978 consideration of this document was in the exclusive jurisdiction of the Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR. However, by this time the Soviet government had been rendered more or less impotent, and was in no position to object. On the same day, the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR denounced the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and recalled all Russian deputies from the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. A number of lawyers believe that the denunciation of the union treaty was meaningless since it became invalid in 1924 with the adoption of the first constitution of the USSR. Although the 12 December vote is sometimes reckoned as the moment that the RSFSR seceded from the collapsing Soviet Union, this is not the case. It appears that the RSFSR took the line that it did not need to follow the secession process delineated in the Soviet Constitution because it was not possible to secede from a country that no longer existed.\nOn 24 December, Yeltsin informed the Secretary-General of the United Nations that by agreement of the member states of the CIS the Russian Federation would assume the membership of the Soviet Union in all UN organs (including the Soviet Union's permanent seat on the UN Security Council). Russia took full responsibility for all the rights and obligations of the USSR under the Charter of the United Nations, including the financial obligations, and assumed control over its nuclear stockpile and the armed forces; Soviet embassies abroad became Russian embassies. On 25 December \u2013 just hours after Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union \u2013 the Russian SFSR was renamed the Russian Federation (Russia), reflecting that it was now a sovereign state with Yeltsin assuming the Presidency. That same night, the Soviet flag was lowered and replaced with the tricolor. The Soviet Union officially ceased to exist the next day. The change was originally published on 6 January 1992 (). According to law, during 1992, it was allowed to use the old name of the RSFSR for official business (forms, seals, and stamps).\nOn 21 April 1992, the Congress of People's Deputies of Russia approved the renaming of the RSFSR into the Russian Federation, by making appropriate amendments to the Constitution, which entered into force \nsince publication on 16 May 1992.\nGovernment.\nThe Government was known officially as the Council of People's Commissars (1917\u20131946) and Council of Ministers (1946\u20131991). The first government was headed by Vladimir Lenin as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian SFSR and the last by Boris Yeltsin as both head of government and head of state under the title of president. The Russian SFSR was controlled by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union until the 1991 August coup, which prompted President Yeltsin to suspend the recently created Communist Party of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.\nEconomy.\nIn the first years of the existence of the RSFSR, the doctrine of war communism became the starting point of the state's economic activity. In March 1921, at the X Congress of the RCP (B), the tasks of the policy of \"war communism\" were recognized by the country's leadership as fulfilled, and a new economic policy was introduced at Lenin's suggestion.\nAfter the formation of the Soviet Union, the economy of the RSFSR became an integral part of the economy of the USSR. The economic program of the RSFSR (NEP) was continued in all union republics. The Gosplan (State General Planning Commission) of the RSFSR, which replaced GOELRO, was reorganized into the Gosplan of the USSR. His early task was to develop a unified national economic plan based on the electrification plan and to oversee the overall implementation of this plan.\nUnlike the previous Russian constitutions, the 1978 Constitution devoted an entire chapter (Chapter II) to the description of the economic system of the RSFSR, which defined the types of property and indicated the goals of the economic tasks of the state.\nAs noted by Corresponding Member RAS RAS V. I. Suslov, who took part in large-scale studies of the relationship between the economies of the republics of the USSR and the RSFSR in the late Soviet era: \"The degree of inequality of economic exchange was very high, and Russia was always the losing side. The product created by Russia largely supported the consumption of other union republics\".\nCulture.\nNational holidays and symbols.\nThe public holidays for the Russian SFSR included Defender of the Fatherland Day (23 February), which honors Russian men, especially those serving in the army; International Women's Day (8 March), which combines the traditions of Mother's Day and Valentine's Day; Spring and Labor Day (1 May); Victory Day; and like all other Soviet republics, the Great October Socialist Revolution (7 November).\nVictory Day is the second most popular holiday in Russia as it commemorates the victory over Nazism in the Great Patriotic War. A huge military parade, hosted by the President of Russia, is annually organised in Moscow on Red Square. Similar parades take place in all major Russian cities and cities with the status Hero City or City of Military Glory.\nDuring its 76-year existence, the Russian SFSR anthem was the same as the Soviet anthem (unlike other republics): The Internationale until 1944 and then the State Anthem of the USSR. In 1990, the RSFSR adopted its own separate anthem called Patrioticheskaya Pesnya, which went on to become the anthem of independent Russia since 1991. In 2000, Vladimir Putin re-introduced the Soviet anthem. The motto \"Workers of the world, unite!\" was commonly used and shared with other Soviet republics. The hammer and sickle and the full Soviet coat of arms are still widely seen in Russian cities as part of architectural decorations. The Soviet red stars are also encountered, often on military equipment and war memorials. The Red Banner continues to be honored, especially the Banner of Victory of 1945.\nThe Matryoshka doll is a recognizable symbol of the Russian SFSR (and the Soviet Union as a whole) and the towers of Moscow Kremlin and Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow are Russian SFSR's main architectural icons. Chamomile is the national flower while birch is the national tree. The Russian bear is an animal symbol and a national personification of Russia. Though this image has a Western origin, Russians themselves have accepted it. The native Soviet Russian national personification is Mother Russia.\nFlag history.\nThe flag of the Russian SFSR changed numerous times, with the original being a field of red with the Russian name of the republic written on the flag's centre in white. This flag had always been intended to be temporary, as it was changed less than a year after its adoption. The second flag had the letters \u0420\u0421\u0424\u0421\u0420 (RSFSR) written in yellow within the canton and encased within two yellow lines forming a right angle. The next flag was used from 1937, notably during World War II. Interesting because it was used until Stalin's death when a major vexillological reform was undertaken within the Soviet Union. This change incorporated an update for all the flags of the Soviet Republics as well as for the flag of the Soviet Union itself. The flag of the Russian SFSR was now a defaced version of the flag of the Soviet Union, with the main difference being a minor repositioning of the hammer and sickle and most notably adding a blue vertical stripe to the hoist. This version of the flag was used from 1954 all the way to 1991, where it was changed due to the ongoing collapse of the Soviet Union. The flag was changed to a design that resembled the original ensign of the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, with a notable difference of the flag ratio being 1:2 instead of the original 2:3 ratio. After 1993, when the Soviet form of government was officially dissolved in the Russian Federation, the flag of the Russian Federation was changed to the original civil ensign with its original 2:3 proportions.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3744692": "Karachay Autonomous Oblast\nKarachay Autonomous Oblast was an autonomous oblast in the Soviet Union created on 26 April 1926. It was formed by the split of the Karachay-Cherkess Autonomous Oblast in 1926, creating Karachay and Cherkess Autonomous Oblast. Karachay Autonomous Oblast was dissolved during World War II, when the Karachay people were exiled to Central Asia for their alleged collaboration with the Germans. During this time, the territory was partitioned between the Georgian SSR, Cherkess AO, Stavropol and Krasnodar regions. In 1957 it and the Cherkess Autonomous Oblast merged to reinstate the Karachay-Cherkess Autonomous Oblast.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "20950": "Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact\n1939 neutrality pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union\nThe Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact, officially the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and also known as the Hitler\u2013Stalin Pact and the Nazi\u2013Soviet Pact, was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, with a secret protocol establishing Soviet and German spheres of influence across Eastern Europe. The pact was signed in Moscow on 24 August 1939 (backdated 23 August 1939) by Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. \nThe treaty was the culmination of negotiations around the 1938\u20131939 deal discussions, after tripartite discussions with the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and France had broken down, and committed neither government would aid or ally itself with an enemy of the other, for the next 10 years. Under the Secret Protocol, Poland was to be shared, while Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Bessarabia went to the Soviet Union. The protocol also recognized the interest of Lithuania in the Vilnius region. In the west, rumoured existence of the Secret Protocol was proven only when it was made public during the Nuremberg trials.\nA week after signing the pact, on 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. On 17 September, one day after a Soviet\u2013Japanese ceasefire came into effect after the Battles of Khalkhin Gol, and one day after the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union approved the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact, Stalin, stating concern for ethnic Ukrainians and Belarusians in Poland, ordered the Soviet invasion of Poland. After a short war ending in military defeat for Poland, Germany and the Soviet Union drew up a new border between them on formerly Polish territory in the supplementary protocol of the German\u2013Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty.\nIn March 1940, parts of the Karelia, and eastern parts of Salla and Kuusamo regions as well, in Finland were annexed by the Soviet Union following the Winter War. The Soviet annexation of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and parts of Romania (Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region) followed. Stalin's invasion of Bukovina in 1940 violated the pact, since it went beyond the Soviet sphere of influence that had been agreed with the Axis.\nThe territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union following the 1939 Soviet invasion east of the Curzon line remained in the Soviet Union after the war and are now in Ukraine and Belarus. Vilnius was given to Lithuania. Only Podlaskie and a small part of Galicia east of the San River, around Przemy\u015bl, were returned to Poland. Of all the other territories annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939\u20131940, those detached from Finland (Western Karelia, Hanko) Estonia (Estonian Ingria and Petseri County) and Latvia (Abrene) remain part of Russia, the successor state to the Russian SFSR and the Soviet Union after the collapse of the USSR in 1991. The territories annexed from Romania were also integrated into the Soviet Union (such as the Moldavian SSR, or oblasts of the Ukrainian SSR). The core of Bessarabia now forms Moldova. Northern Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region now form the Chernivtsi Oblast of Ukraine. Southern Bessarabia is part of the Odessa Oblast, which is also now in Ukraine.\nThe pact was terminated on 22 June 1941, when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union, in pursuit of the ideological goal of \"Lebensraum\". The Anglo-Soviet Agreement succeeded it. After the war, Ribbentrop was convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg trials and executed in 1946, whilst Molotov died in 1986.\nBackground.\nThe outcome of World War I was disastrous for both the German and the Russian empires. The Russian Civil War broke out in late 1917 after the Bolshevik Revolution and Vladimir Lenin, the first leader of the new Soviet Russia, recognised the independence of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Moreover, facing a German military advance, Lenin and Trotsky were forced to agree to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which ceded many western Russian territories to Germany. After the German collapse, a multinational Allied-led army intervened in the civil war (1917\u20131922).\nOn 16 April 1922, the German Weimar Republic and the Soviet Union agreed to the Treaty of Rapallo in which they renounced territorial and financial claims against each other. Each party also pledged neutrality in the event of an attack against the other with the Treaty of Berlin (1926). Trade between the two countries had fallen sharply after World War I, but trade agreements signed in the mid-1920s helped to increase trade to 433\u00a0million\u00a0\u211b\ufe01\u2133\ufe01 per year by 1927.\nAt the beginning of the 1930s, the Nazi Party's rise to power increased tensions between Germany and the Soviet Union, along with other countries with ethnic Slavs, who were considered \"Untermenschen\" (subhuman) according to Nazi racial ideology. Moreover, the antisemitic Nazis associated ethnic Jews with both communism and financial capitalism, both of which they opposed. Nazi theory held that Slavs in the Soviet Union were being ruled by \"Jewish Bolshevik\" masters. Hitler had spoken of an inevitable battle for the acquisition of land for Germany in the east. The resulting manifestation of German anti-Bolshevism and an increase in Soviet foreign debts caused a dramatic decline in German\u2013Soviet trade. Imports of Soviet goods to Germany fell to 223\u00a0million\u00a0\u211b\ufe01\u2133\ufe01 in 1934 by the more isolationist Stalinist regime asserting power and by the abandonment of postwar Treaty of Versailles military controls, both of which decreased Germany's reliance on Soviet imports.\nIn 1935 Germany, after a previous German\u2013Polish declaration of non-aggression, Hermann G\u00f6ring proposed a military alliance with Poland against the Soviet Union, but this was rejected.\nIn 1936, Germany and Fascist Italy supported the Spanish Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War, but the Soviets supported the Spanish Republic. Thus, the Spanish Civil War became a proxy war between Germany and the Soviet Union. In 1936, Germany and Japan entered the Anti-Comintern Pact. and they were joined a year later by Italy, despite Italy having previously signed the Italo-Soviet Pact.\nOn 31 March 1939, Britain extended a guarantee to Poland that \"if any action clearly threatened Polish independence, and if the Poles felt it vital to resist such action by force, Britain would come to their aid\". Hitler was furious since that meant that the British were committed to political interests in Europe and that his land grabs such as the takeover of Czechoslovakia would no longer be taken lightly. His response to the political checkmate would later be heard at a rally in Wilhelmshaven: \"No power on earth would be able to break German might, and if the Western Allies thought Germany would stand by while they marshalled their 'satellite states' to act in their interests, then they were sorely mistaken\". Ultimately, Hitler's discontent with a British\u2013Polish alliance led to a restructuring of strategy towards Moscow. Alfred Rosenberg wrote that he had spoken to Hermann G\u00f6ring of the potential pact with the Soviet Union: \"When Germany's life is at stake, even a temporary alliance with Moscow must be contemplated\". Sometime in early May 1939 at Berghof, Ribbentrop showed Hitler a film of Stalin viewing his military in a recent parade. Hitler became intrigued with the idea of allying with the Soviets and Ribbentrop recalled Hitler saying that Stalin \"looked like a man he could do business with\". Ribbentrop was then given the nod to pursue negotiations with Moscow.\nMunich Conference.\nHitler's fierce anti-Soviet rhetoric was one of the reasons that Britain and France decided that Soviet participation in the 1938 Munich Conference on Czechoslovakia would be both dangerous and useless. In the Munich Agreement that followed the conference agreed to a German annexation of part of Czechoslovakia in late 1938, but in early 1939 it had been completely dissolved. The policy of appeasement toward Germany was conducted by the governments of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister \u00c9douard Daladier. The policy immediately raised the question of whether the Soviet Union could avoid being next on Hitler's list. The Soviet leadership believed that the West wanted to encourage German aggression in the East and to stay neutral in a war initiated by Germany in the hope that Germany and the Soviet Union would wear each other out and put an end to both regimes.\nFor Germany, an autarkic economic approach and an alliance with Britain were impossible and so closer relations with the Soviet Union to obtain raw materials became necessary. Besides economic reasons, an expected British blockade during a war would also create massive shortages for Germany in a number of key raw materials. After the Munich Agreement, the resulting increase in German military supply needs and Soviet demands for military machinery made talks between the two countries occur from late 1938 to March 1939. Also, the third Soviet five-year plan required new infusions of technology and industrial equipment. German war planners had estimated serious shortfalls of raw materials if Germany entered a war without the Soviet supply.\nOn 31 March 1939, in response to Germany's defiance of the Munich Agreement and the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Britain pledged its support and that of France to guarantee the independence of Poland, Belgium, Romania, Greece and Turkey. On 6 April, Poland and Britain agreed to formalise the guarantee as a military alliance, pending negotiations. On 28 April, Hitler denounced the 1934 German\u2013Polish declaration of non-aggression and the 1935 Anglo\u2013German Naval Agreement.\nIn mid-March 1939, attempting to contain Hitler's expansionism, the Soviet Union, Britain and France started to trade a flurry of suggestions and counterplans on a potential political and military agreement. Informal consultations started in April, but the main negotiations began only in May. Meanwhile, throughout early 1939, Germany had secretly hinted to Soviet diplomats that it could offer better terms for a political agreement than could Britain and France.\nThe Soviet Union, which feared Western powers and the possibility of \"capitalist encirclements\", had little hope of preventing war and wanted nothing less than an ironclad military alliance with France and Britain to provide guaranteed support for a two-pronged attack on Germany. Stalin's adherence to the collective security line was thus purely conditional. Britain and France believed that war could still be avoided and that since the Soviet Union was so weakened by the Great Purge that it could not be a main military participant. Many military sources were at variance with the last point, especially after the Soviet victories over the Japanese Kwantung Army in Manchuria. France was more anxious to find an agreement with the Soviet Union than Britain was. As a continental power, France was more willing to make concessions and more fearful of the dangers of an agreement between the Soviet Union and Germany. The contrasting attitudes partly explain why the Soviets have often been charged with playing a double game in 1939 of carrying on open negotiations for an alliance with Britain and France but secretly considering propositions from Germany.\nBy the end of May, drafts had been formally presented. In mid-June, the main tripartite negotiations started. Discussions were focused on potential guarantees to Central and Eastern Europe in the case of German aggression. The Soviets proposed to consider that a political turn towards Germany by the Baltic states would constitute an \"indirect aggression\" towards the Soviet Union. Britain opposed such proposals because they feared the Soviets' proposed language would justify a Soviet intervention in Finland and the Baltic states or push those countries to seek closer relations with Germany. The discussion of a definition of \"indirect aggression\" became one of the sticking points between the parties, and by mid-July, the tripartite political negotiations effectively stalled while the parties agreed to start negotiations on a military agreement, which the Soviets insisted had to be reached at the same time as any political agreement. One day before the military negotiations began, the Soviet Politburo pessimistically expected the coming negotiations to go nowhere and formally decided to consider German proposals seriously. The military negotiations began on 12 August in Moscow, with a British delegation headed by Admiral Sir Reginald Drax, French delegation headed by General and the Soviet delegation headed by Kliment Voroshilov, the commissar of defence, and Boris Shaposhnikov, chief of the general staff. Without written credentials, Drax was not authorised to guarantee anything to the Soviet Union and had been instructed by the British government to prolong the discussions as long as possible and to avoid answering the question of whether Poland would agree to permit Soviet troops to enter the country if the Germans invaded.\nNegotiations.\nBeginning of secret talks.\nFrom April to July, Soviet and German officials made statements on the potential for the beginning of political negotiations, but no actual negotiations took place. \"The Soviet Union had wanted good relations with Germany for years and was happy to see that feeling finally reciprocated\", wrote the historian Gerhard L. Weinberg. The ensuing discussion of a potential political deal between Germany and the Soviet Union had to be channeled into the framework of economic negotiations between the two countries, since close military and diplomatic connections that existed before the mid-1930s had been largely severed. In May, Stalin replaced his foreign minister from 1930 to 1939, Maxim Litvinov, who had advocated rapprochement with the West and was also Jewish, with Vyacheslav Molotov to allow the Soviet Union more latitude in discussions with more parties, instead of only Britain and France.\nOn 23 August 1939, two Focke-Wulf Condors, containing German diplomats, officials, and photographers (about 20 in each plane), headed by Ribbentrop, descended into Moscow. As the Nazi emissaries stepped off the plane, a Soviet military band played \"Deutschland, Deutschland \u00fcber Alles\". The Nazi arrival was well planned, with all aesthetics in order. The classic hammer and sickle was propped up next to the swastika of the Nazi flag that had been used in a local film studio for Soviet propaganda films. After stepping off the plane and shaking hands, Ribbentrop and Gustav Hilger along with German ambassador Friedrich-Werner von der Schulenburg and Stalin's chief bodyguard, Nikolai Vlasik, entered a limousine operated by the NKVD to travel to Red Square. The limousine arrived close to Stalin's office and was greeted by Alexander Poskrebyshev, the chief of Stalin's personal chancellery. The Germans were led up a flight of stairs to a room with lavish furnishings. Stalin and Molotov greeted the visitors, much to the Nazis' surprise. It was well known that Stalin avoided meeting foreign visitors, and so his presence at the meeting showed how seriously that the Soviets were taking the negotiations.\nIn late July and early August 1939, Soviet and German officials agreed on most of the details of a planned economic agreement and specifically addressed a potential political agreement, which the Soviets stated could come only after an economic agreement.\nThe German presence in the Soviet capital during negotiations can be regarded as rather tense. German pilot Hans Baur recalled that Soviet secret police followed every move. Their job was to inform authorities when he left his residence and where he was headed. Baur's guide informed him: \"Another car would tack itself onto us and follow us fifty or so yards in the rear, and wherever we went and whatever we did, the secret police would be on our heels.\" Baur also recalled trying to tip his Russian driver, which led to a harsh exchange of words: \"He was furious. He wanted to know whether this was the thanks he got for having done his best for us to get him into prison. We knew perfectly well it was forbidden to take tips.\"\nAugust negotiations.\nIn early August, Germany and the Soviet Union worked out the last details of their economic deal and started to discuss a political agreement. Both countries' diplomats explained to each other the reasons for the hostility in their foreign policy in the 1930s and found common ground in both countries' anticapitalism with Karl Schnurre stating: \"there is one common element in the ideology of Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union: opposition to the capitalist democracies\" or that \"it seems to us rather unnatural that a socialist state would stand on the side of the western democracies\".\nAt the same time, British, French, and Soviet negotiators scheduled three-party talks on military matters to occur in Moscow in August 1939 that aimed to define what the agreement would specify on the reaction of the three powers to a German attack. The tripartite military talks, started in mid-August, hit a sticking point on the passage of Soviet troops through Poland if Germans attacked, and the parties waited as British and French officials overseas pressured Polish officials to agree to such terms. Polish officials refused to allow Soviet troops into Polish territory if Germany attacked; Polish Foreign Minister J\u00f3zef Beck pointed out that the Polish government feared that if the Red Army entered Polish territory, it would never leave.\nOn 19 August, the 1939 German\u2013Soviet Commercial Agreement was finally signed. On 21 August, the Soviets suspended the tripartite military talks and cited other reasons. The same day, Stalin received assurances that Germany would approve secret protocols to the proposed non-aggression pact that would place the half of Poland east of the Vistula River as well as Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Bessarabia in the Soviet sphere of influence. That night, Stalin replied that the Soviets were willing to sign the pact and that he would receive Ribbentrop on 23 August.\nNews leaks.\nOn 25 August 1939, the \"New York Times\" ran a front-page story by Otto D. Tolischus, \"Nazi Talks Secret\", whose subtitle included \"Soviet and Reich Agree on East\". On 26 August 1939, the \"New York Times\" reported Japanese anger and French communist surprise over the pact. The same day, however, Tolischus filed a story that noted Nazi troops on the move near Gleiwitz (now Gliwice), which led to the false flag Gleiwitz incident on 31 August 1939. On 28 August 1939, the \"New York Times\" was still reporting on fears of a Gleiwitz raid. On 29 August 1939, the \"New York Times\" reported that the Supreme Soviet had failed on its first day of convening to act on the pact. The same day, the \"New York Times\" also reported from Montreal, Canada, that American Professor Samuel N. Harper of the University of Chicago had stated publicly his belief that \"the Russo-German non-aggression pact conceals an agreement whereby Russia and Germany may have planned spheres of influence for Eastern Europe\". On 30 August 1939, the \"New York Times\" reported a Soviet buildup on its Western frontiers by moving 200,000 troops from the Far East.\nSecret protocol.\nOn 22 August, one day after talks broke down with France and Britain, Moscow revealed that Ribbentrop would visit Stalin the next day. The Soviets were still negotiating with the British and the French missions in Moscow. With the Western nations unwilling to accede to Soviet demands, Stalin instead entered a secret German\u2013Soviet pact. On 23 August, a ten-year non-aggression pact was signed with provisions that included consultation, arbitration if either party disagreed, neutrality if either went to war against a third power and no membership of a group \"which is directly or indirectly aimed at the other\". The article \"On Soviet\u2013German Relations\" in the Soviet newspaper \"Izvestia\" of 21 August 1939, stated:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Following completion of the Soviet\u2013German trade and credit agreement, there has arisen the question of improving political links between Germany and the USSR.\nThere was also a secret protocol to the pact, which was revealed only after Germany's defeat in 1945 although hints about its provisions had been leaked much earlier, so as to influence Lithuania. According to the protocol, Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland were divided into German and Soviet \"spheres of influence\". In the north, Finland, Estonia, and Latvia were assigned to the Soviet sphere. Poland was to be partitioned in the event of its \"political rearrangement\": the areas east of the Pisa, Narew, Vistula, and San rivers would go to the Soviet Union, and Germany would occupy the west. Lithuania, which was adjacent to East Prussia, was assigned to the German sphere of influence, but a second secret protocol, agreed to in September 1939, reassigned Lithuania to the Soviet Union. According to the protocol, Lithuania would be granted its historical capital, Vilnius, which was part of Poland during the interwar period. Another clause stipulated that Germany would not interfere with the Soviet Union's actions towards Bessarabia, which was then part of Romania. As a result, Bessarabia as well as the Northern Bukovina and Hertsa regions were occupied by the Soviets and integrated into the Soviet Union.\nAt the signing, Ribbentrop and Stalin enjoyed warm conversations, exchanged toasts and further addressed the prior hostilities between the countries in the 1930s. They characterised Britain as always attempting to disrupt Soviet\u2013German relations and stated that the Anti-Comintern Pact was aimed not at the Soviet Union but actually at Western democracies and \"frightened principally the City of London [British financiers] and the English shopkeepers.\"\nRevelation.\nThe agreement stunned the world. John Gunther, in Moscow in August 1939, recalled how the news of the 19 August commercial agreement surprised journalists and diplomats, who hoped for world peace. They did not expect the 21 August announcement of the non-aggression pact: \"Nothing more unbelievable could be imagined. Astonishment and skepticism turned quickly to consternation and alarm\". The news was met with utter shock and surprise by government leaders and media worldwide, most of whom were aware of only the British\u2013French\u2013Soviet negotiations, which had taken place for months; by Germany's allies, notably Japan; by the Comintern and foreign Communist parties; and Jewish communities all around the world.\nOn 24 August, \"Pravda\" and \"Izvestia\" carried news of the pact's public portions, complete with the now-famous front-page picture of Molotov signing the treaty with a smiling Stalin looking on. The same day, German diplomat Hans von Herwarth, whose grandmother was Jewish, informed Italian diplomat Guido Relli and American charg\u00e9 d'affaires Charles Bohlen of the secret protocol on the vital interests in the countries' allotted \"spheres of influence\" but failed to reveal the annexation rights for \"territorial and political rearrangement\". The agreement's public terms so exceeded the terms of an ordinary non-aggression treaty\u2014requiring that both parties consult with each other, and not aid a third party attacking either\u2014that Gunther heard a joke that Stalin had joined the anti-Comintern pact. \"Time Magazine\" repeatedly referred to the Pact as the \"Communazi Pact\" and its participants as \"communazis\" until April 1941.\nSoviet propaganda and representatives went to great lengths to minimize the importance of the fact that they had opposed and fought the Germans in various ways for a decade prior to signing the pact. Molotov tried to reassure the Germans of his good intentions by commenting to journalists that \"fascism is a matter of taste\". For its part, Germany also did a public volte-face regarding its virulent opposition to the Soviet Union, but Hitler still viewed an attack on the Soviet Union as \"inevitable\".\nConcerns over the possible existence of a secret protocol were expressed first by the intelligence organizations of the Baltic states only days after the pact was signed. Speculation grew stronger when Soviet negotiators referred to its content during the negotiations for military bases in those countries (see occupation of the Baltic States).\nThe day after the pact was signed, the Franco-British military delegation urgently requested a meeting with Soviet military negotiator Kliment Voroshilov. On 25 August, Voroshilov told them that \"in view of the changed political situation, no useful purpose can be served in continuing the conversation\". The same day, Hitler told the British ambassador to Berlin that the pact with the Soviets prevented Germany from facing a two-front war, which changed the strategic situation from that in World War I, and that Britain should accept his demands on Poland.\nOn 25 August, Hitler was surprised when Britain joined a defense pact with Poland. Hitler postponed his plans for an invasion of Poland on 26 August to 1 September. In accordance with the defence pact, Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September.\nConsequences in Finland, Poland, the Baltic States and Romania.\nInitial invasions.\nOn 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland from the west. Within a few days, Germany began conducting massacres of Polish and Jewish civilians and POWs, which took place in over 30 towns and villages in the first month of the German occupation. The Luftwaffe also took part by strafing fleeing civilian refugees on roads and by carrying out a bombing campaign. The Soviet Union assisted German air forces by allowing them to use signals broadcast by the Soviet radio station at Minsk, allegedly \"for urgent aeronautical experiments\".\nHitler declared at Danzig:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nIn the opinion of Robert Service, Stalin did not move instantly but was waiting to see whether the Germans would halt within the agreed area, and the Soviet Union also needed to secure the frontier in the Soviet\u2013Japanese border conflicts. On 17 September, the Red Army invaded Poland, violating the 1932 Soviet\u2013Polish Non-Aggression Pact, and occupied the Polish territory assigned to it by the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact. That was followed by co-ordination with German forces in Poland. Polish troops already fighting much stronger German forces on its west desperately tried to delay the capture of Warsaw. Consequently, Polish forces could not mount significant resistance against the Soviets. On 18 September, \"The New York Times\" published an editorial arguing that \"Hitlerism is brown communism, Stalinism is red fascism...The world will now understand that the only real 'ideological' issue is one between democracy, liberty and peace on the one hand and despotism, terror and war on the other.\"\nOn 21 September, Marshal of the Soviet Union Voroshilov, German military attach\u00e9 General K\u00f6string, and other officers signed a formal agreement in Moscow co-ordinating military movements in Poland, including the \"purging\" of saboteurs and the Red Army assisting with destruction of the \"enemy\". Joint German\u2013Soviet parades were held in Lviv and Brest-Litovsk, and the countries' military commanders met in the latter city. Stalin had decided in August that he was going to liquidate the Polish state, and a German\u2013Soviet meeting in September addressed the future structure of the \"Polish region\". Soviet authorities immediately started a campaign of Sovietisation of the newly acquired areas. The Soviets organised staged elections, the result of which was to become a legitimisation of the Soviet annexation of eastern Poland.\nModification of secret protocols.\nEleven days after the Soviet invasion of the Polish Kresy, the secret protocol of the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact was modified by the German\u2013Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty, allotting Germany a larger part of Poland and transferring Lithuania, with the exception of the left bank of the River Scheschupe, the \"Lithuanian Strip\", from the envisioned German sphere to the Soviet sphere. On 28 September 1939, the Soviet Union and German Reich issued a joint declaration in which they declared:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />After the Government of the German Reich and the Government of the USSR have, by means of the treaty signed today, definitively settled the problems arising from the collapse of the Polish state and have thereby created a sure foundation for lasting peace in the region, they mutually express their conviction that it would serve the true interest of all peoples to put an end to the state of war existing at present between Germany on the one side and England and France on the other. Both Governments will, therefore, direct their common efforts, jointly with other friendly powers if the occasion arises, toward attaining this goal as soon as possible.\nShould, however, the efforts of the two Governments remain fruitless, this would demonstrate the fact that England and France are responsible for the continuation of the war, whereupon, in case of the continuation of the war, the Governments of Germany and of the USSR shall engage in mutual consultations with regard to necessary measures.\nOn 3 October, Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, the German ambassador in Moscow, informed Joachim Ribbentrop that the Soviet government was willing to cede the city of Vilnius and its environs. On 8 October 1939, a new German\u2013Soviet agreement was reached by an exchange of letters between Vyacheslav Molotov and the German ambassador.\nThe Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were given no choice but to sign a so-called \"Pact of Defence and Mutual Assistance\", which permitted the Soviet Union to station troops in them.\nSoviet war with Finland and Katyn massacre.\nAfter the Baltic states had been forced to accept treaties, Stalin turned his sights on Finland and was confident that its capitulation could be attained without great effort. The Soviets demanded territories on the Karelian Isthmus, the islands of the Gulf of Finland and a military base near the Finnish capital, Helsinki, which Finland rejected. The Soviets staged the shelling of Mainila on 26 November and used it as a pretext to withdraw from the Soviet\u2013Finnish Non-Aggression Pact. On 30 November, the Red Army invaded Finland, launching the Winter War with the aim of annexing Finland into the Soviet Union. The Soviets formed the Finnish Democratic Republic to govern Finland after Soviet conquest. The leader of the Leningrad Military District, Andrei Zhdanov, commissioned a celebratory piece from Dmitri Shostakovich, \"Suite on Finnish Themes\", to be performed as the marching bands of the Red Army would be parading through Helsinki. After Finnish defenses surprisingly held out for over three months and inflicted stiff losses on Soviet forces, under the command of Semyon Timoshenko, the Soviets settled for an interim peace. Finland ceded parts of Karelia, Kuusamo, and Salla together with Hanko leased as a naval base (9% of Finnish territory), which resulted in approximately 422,000 Finns (12% of Finland's population) losing their homes. Soviet official casualty counts in the war exceeded 200,000 although Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev later claimed that the casualties may have been one million.\nAround that time, after several Gestapo\u2013NKVD conferences, Soviet NKVD officers also conducted lengthy interrogations of 300,000 Polish POWs in camps that were a selection process to determine who would be killed. On 5 March 1940, in what would later be known as the Katyn massacre, 22,000 members of the military as well as intellectuals were executed, labelled \"nationalists and counterrevolutionaries\" or kept at camps and prisons in western Ukraine and Belarus.\nSoviet Union occupies the Baltic states and part of Romania.\nIn mid-June 1940, while international attention focused on the German invasion of France, Soviet NKVD troops raided border posts in Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia.\nState administrations were liquidated and replaced by Soviet cadres, who deported or killed 34,250 Latvians, 75,000 Lithuanians and almost 60,000 Estonians. Elections took place, with a single pro-Soviet candidate listed for many positions, and the resulting people's assemblies immediately requesting admission into the Soviet Union, which was granted. (The Soviets annexed the whole of Lithuania, including the \u0160e\u0161up\u0117 area, which had been earmarked for Germany.)\nFinally, on 26 June, four days after the armistice between France and Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union issued an ultimatum that demanded Bessarabia and unexpectedly Northern Bukovina from Romania. Two days later, the Romanians acceded to the Soviet demands, and the Soviets occupied the territories. The Hertsa region was initially not requested by the Soviets but was later occupied by force after the Romanians had agreed to the initial Soviet demands. The subsequent waves of deportations began in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina.\nBeginnings of Operation Tannenberg and other Nazi atrocities.\nAt the end of October 1939, Germany enacted the death penalty for disobedience to the German occupation. Germany began a campaign of \"Germanization\", which meant assimilating the occupied territories politically, culturally, socially and economically into the German Reich. 50,000\u2013200,000 Polish children were kidnapped to be Germanised.\nThe elimination of Polish elites and intelligentsia was part of \"Generalplan Ost\". The \"Intelligenzaktion\", a plan to eliminate the Polish intelligentsia, Poland's 'leadership class', took place soon after the German invasion of Poland and lasted from fall of 1939 to the spring of 1940. As the result of the operation, in ten regional actions, about 60,000 Polish nobles, teachers, social workers, priests, judges and political activists were killed. It was continued in May 1940, when Germany launched \"AB-Aktion\", More than 16,000 members of the intelligentsia were murdered in Operation Tannenberg alone.\nGermany also planned to incorporate all of the land into Nazi Germany. That effort resulted in the forced resettlement of two million Poles. Families were forced to travel in the severe winter of 1939\u20131940, leaving behind almost all of their possessions without compensation. As part of Operation Tannenberg alone, 750,000 Polish peasants were forced to leave, and their property was given to Germans. A further 330,000 were murdered. Germany planned the eventual move of ethnic Poles to Siberia.\nAlthough Germany used forced labourers in most other occupied countries, Poles and other Slavs were viewed as inferior by Nazi propaganda and thus better suited for such duties. Between 1 and 2.5\u00a0million Polish citizens were transported to the Reich for forced labour. All Polish males were made to perform forced labour. While ethnic Poles were subject to selective persecution, all ethnic Jews were targeted by the Reich. In the winter of 1939\u201340, about 100,000 Jews were thus deported to Poland. They were initially gathered into massive urban ghettos, such as the 380,000 held in the Warsaw Ghetto, where large numbers died of starvation and diseases under their harsh conditions, including 43,000 in the Warsaw Ghetto alone. Poles and ethnic Jews were imprisoned in nearly every camp of the extensive concentration camp system in German-occupied Poland and the Reich. In Auschwitz, which began operating on 14 June 1940, 1.1\u00a0million people perished.\nRomania and Soviet republics.\nIn the summer of 1940, fear of the Soviet Union, in conjunction with German support for the territorial demands of Romania's neighbours and the Romanian government's own miscalculations, resulted in more territorial losses for Romania. Between 28 June and 4 July, the Soviet Union occupied and annexed Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region of Romania.\nOn 30 August, Ribbentrop and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano issued the Second Vienna Award, giving Northern Transylvania to Hungary. On 7 September, Romania ceded Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria (Axis-sponsored Treaty of Craiova). After various events over the following months, Romania increasingly took on the aspect of a German-occupied country.\nThe Soviet-occupied territories were converted into republics of the Soviet Union. During the two years after the annexation, the Soviets arrested approximately 100,000 Polish citizens and deported between 350,000 and 1,500,000, of whom between 250,000 and 1,000,000 died, mostly civilians. Forced re-settlements into gulag labour camps and exile settlements in remote areas of the Soviet Union occurred. According to Norman Davies, almost half of them were dead by July 1940.\nFurther secret protocol modifications settling borders and immigration issues.\nOn 10 January 1941, Germany and the Soviet Union signed an agreement settling several ongoing issues. Secret protocols in the new agreement modified the \"Secret Additional Protocols\" of the German\u2013Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty, ceding the Lithuanian Strip to the Soviet Union in exchange for US$7.5\u00a0million (31.5\u00a0million\u00a0\u211b\ufe01\u2133\ufe01). The agreement formally set the border between Germany and the Soviet Union between the Igorka River and the Baltic Sea. It also extended trade regulation of the 1940 German-Soviet Commercial Agreement until 1 August 1942, increased deliveries above the levels of the first year of that agreement, settled trading rights in the Baltics and Bessarabia, calculated the compensation for German property interests in the Baltic states that were now occupied by the Soviets and covered other issues. It also covered the migration to Germany within <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />2+1\u20442 months of ethnic Germans and German citizens in Soviet-held Baltic territories and the migration to the Soviet Union of Baltic and \"White Russian\" \"nationals\" in the German-held territories.\nSoviet\u2013German relations.\nEarly political issues.\nBefore the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop pact was announced, Western communists denied that such a treaty would be signed. Herbert Biberman, a future member of the Hollywood Ten, denounced rumours as \"Fascist propaganda\". Earl Browder, the head of the Communist Party USA, stated that \"there is as much chance of agreement as of Earl Browder being elected president of the Chamber of Commerce.\" Gunther wrote, however, that some knew \"communism and Fascism were more closely allied than was normally understood\", and Ernst von Weizs\u00e4cker had told Nevile Henderson on 16 August that the Soviet Union would \"join in sharing in the Polish spoils\". In September 1939, the Comintern suspended all anti-Nazi and anti-fascist propaganda and explained that the war in Europe was a matter of capitalist states attacking one another for imperialist purposes. Western communists acted accordingly; although they had previously supported collective security, they now denounced Britain and France for going to war.\nWhen anti-German demonstrations erupted in Prague, Czechoslovakia, the Comintern ordered the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia to employ all of its strength to paralyse \"chauvinist elements\". Moscow soon forced the French Communist Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain to adopt anti-war positions. On 7 September, Stalin called Georgi Dimitrov, who sketched a new Comintern line on the war that stated that the war was unjust and imperialist, which was approved by the secretariat of the Comintern on 9 September. Thus, western communist parties now had to oppose the war and to vote against war credits. Although the French communists had unanimously voted in Parliament for war credits on 2 September and declared their \"unshakeable will\" to defend the country on 19 September, the Comintern formally instructed the party to condemn the war as imperialist on 27 September. By 1 October, the French communists advocated listening to German peace proposals, and leader Maurice Thorez deserted from the French Army on 4 October and fled to Russia. Other communists also deserted from the army.\nThe Communist Party of Germany featured similar attitudes. In \"Die Welt\", a communist newspaper published in Stockholm the exiled communist leader Walter Ulbricht opposed the Allies, stated that Britain represented \"the most reactionary force in the world\", and argued, \"The German government declared itself ready for friendly relations with the Soviet Union, whereas the English\u2013French war bloc desires a war against the socialist Soviet Union. The Soviet people and the working people of Germany have an interest in preventing the English war plan\".\nDespite a warning by the Comintern, German tensions were raised when the Soviets stated in September that they must enter Poland to \"protect\" their ethnic Ukrainian and Belarusian brethren from Germany. Molotov later admitted to German officials that the excuse was necessary because the Kremlin could find no other pretext for the Soviet invasion.\nDuring the early months of the Pact, Soviet foreign policy became critical of the Allies and more pro-German in turn. During the Fifth Session of the Supreme Soviet on 31 October 1939, Molotov analysed the international situation, thus giving the direction for communist propaganda. According to Molotov, Germany had a legitimate interest in regaining its position as a great power, and the Allies had started an aggressive war in order to maintain the Versailles system.\nExpansion of raw materials and military trading.\nGermany and the Soviet Union entered an intricate trade pact on 11 February 1940 that was over four times larger than the one that the two countries had signed in August 1939. The new trade pact helped Germany surmount a British blockade. In the first year, Germany received one million tons of cereals, half-a-million tons of wheat, 900,000 tons of oil, 100,000 tons of cotton, 500,000 tons of phosphates and considerable amounts of other vital raw materials, along with the transit of one million tons of soybeans from Manchuria. Those and other supplies were being transported through Soviet and occupied Polish territories. The Soviets were to receive a naval cruiser, the plans to the battleship \"Bismarck\", heavy naval guns, other naval gear and 30 of Germany's latest warplanes, including the Bf 109 and Bf 110 fighters and Ju 88 bomber. The Soviets would also receive oil and electric equipment, locomotives, turbines, generators, diesel engines, ships, machine tools, and samples of German artillery, tanks, explosives, chemical-warfare equipment, and other items.\nThe Soviets also helped Germany to avoid British naval blockades by providing a submarine base, Basis Nord, in the northern Soviet Union near Murmansk. That also provided a refueling and maintenance location and a takeoff point for raids and attacks on shipping. In addition, the Soviets provided Germany with access to the Northern Sea Route for both cargo ships and raiders though only the commerce raider used the route before the German invasion, which forced Britain to protect sea lanes in both the Atlantic and the Pacific.\nSummer deterioration of relations.\nThe Finnish and Baltic invasions began a deterioration of relations between the Soviets and Germany. Stalin's invasions were a severe irritant to Berlin since the intent to accomplish them had not been communicated to the Germans beforehand, and they prompted concern that Stalin was seeking to form an anti-German bloc. Molotov's reassurances to the Germans only intensified the Germans' mistrust. On 16 June, as the Soviets invaded Lithuania but before they had invaded Latvia and Estonia, Ribbentrop instructed his staff \"to submit a report as soon as possible as to whether in the Baltic States a tendency to seek support from the Reich can be observed or whether an attempt was made to form a bloc.\"\nIn August 1940, the Soviet Union briefly suspended its deliveries under its commercial agreement after relations were strained after disagreements over policy in Romania, the Soviet war with Finland, Germany's falling behind on its deliveries of goods under the pact and Stalin's worry that Hitler's war with the West might end quickly after France signed an armistice. The suspension created significant resource problems for Germany. By the end of August, relations had improved again, as the countries had redrawn the Hungarian and Romanian borders and settled some Bulgarian claims, and Stalin was again convinced that Germany would face a long war in the west with Britain's improvement in its air battle with Germany and the execution of an agreement between the United States and Britain regarding destroyers and bases.\nIn early September however, Germany arranged its own occupation of Romania, targeting its oil fields. That move raised tensions with the Soviets, who responded that Germany was supposed to have consulted with the Soviet Union under Article III of the pact.\nGerman\u2013Soviet Axis talks.\nAfter Germany in September 1940 entered the Tripartite Pact with Japan and Italy, Ribbentrop wrote to Stalin, inviting Molotov to Berlin for negotiations aimed to create a 'continental bloc' of Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union that would oppose Britain and the United States. Stalin sent Molotov to Berlin to negotiate the terms for the Soviet Union to join the Axis and potentially to enjoy the spoils of the pact. After negotiations during November 1940 on where to extend the Soviet sphere of influence, Hitler broke off talks and continued planning for the eventual attempts to invade the Soviet Union.\nLate relations.\nIn an effort to demonstrate peaceful intentions toward Germany, on 13 April 1941, the Soviets signed a neutrality pact with Japan, an Axis power. While Stalin had little faith in Japan's commitment to neutrality, he felt that the pact was important for its political symbolism to reinforce a public affection for Germany. Stalin felt that there was a growing split in German circles about whether Germany should initiate a war with the Soviet Union. Stalin did not know that Hitler had been secretly discussing an invasion of the Soviet Union since summer 1940 and that Hitler had ordered his military in late 1940 to prepare for war in the East, regardless of the parties' talks of a potential Soviet entry as a fourth Axis power.\nTermination.\nGermany unilaterally terminated the pact at 03:15 on 22 June 1941 by launching a massive attack on the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. Stalin had ignored repeated warnings that Germany was likely to invade and ordered no \"full-scale\" mobilisation of forces although the mobilisation was ongoing. After the launch of the invasion, the territories gained by the Soviet Union as a result of the pact were lost in a matter of weeks. The southeastern part was absorbed into Greater Germany's General Government, and the rest was integrated with the Reichskommissariats Ostland and Ukraine. Within six months, the Soviet military had suffered 4.3\u00a0million casualties, and three million more had been captured. The lucrative export of Soviet raw materials to Germany over the course of the economic relations continued uninterrupted until the outbreak of hostilities. The Soviet exports in several key areas enabled Germany to maintain its stocks of rubber and grain from the first day of the invasion to October 1941.\nAftermath.\nDiscovery of the secret protocol.\nThe German original of the secret protocols was presumably destroyed in the bombing of Germany, but in late 1943, Ribbentrop had ordered the most secret records of the German Foreign Office from 1933 onward, amounting to some 9,800 pages, to be microfilmed. When the various departments of the Foreign Office in Berlin were evacuated to Thuringia at the end of the war, Karl von Loesch, a civil servant who had worked for the chief interpreter Paul Otto Schmidt, was entrusted with the microfilm copies. He eventually received orders to destroy the secret documents but decided to bury the metal container with the microfilms as personal insurance for his future well-being. In May 1945, von Loesch approached the British Lieutenant Colonel Robert C. Thomson with the request to transmit a personal letter to Duncan Sandys, Churchill's son-in-law. In the letter, von Loesch revealed that he had knowledge of the documents' whereabouts but expected preferential treatment in return. Thomson and his American counterpart, Ralph Collins, agreed to transfer von Loesch to Marburg, in the American zone if he would produce the microfilms. The microfilms contained a copy of the Non-Aggression Treaty as well as the Secret Protocol. Both documents were discovered as part of the microfilmed records in August 1945 by US State Department employee Wendell B. Blancke, the head of a special unit called \"Exploitation German Archives\" (EGA).\nNews of the secret protocols first appeared during the Nuremberg trials. Alfred Seidl, the attorney for defendant Hans Frank, was able to place into evidence an affidavit that described them. It was written from memory by Nazi Foreign Office lawyer Friedrich Gaus, who wrote the text and was present at its signing in Moscow. Later, Seidl obtained the German-language text of the secret protocols from an anonymous Allied source and attempted to place them into evidence while he was questioning witness Ernst von Weizs\u00e4cker, a former Foreign Office State Secretary. The Allied prosecutors objected, and the texts were not accepted into evidence, but Weizs\u00e4cker was permitted to describe them from memory, thus corroborating the Gaus affidavit. Finally, at the request of a \"St. Louis Post-Dispatch\" reporter, American deputy prosecutor Thomas J. Dodd acquired a copy of the secret protocols from Seidl and had it translated into English. They were first published on 22 May 1946 in a front-page story in that newspaper. Later, in Britain, they were published by \"The Manchester Guardian\".\nThe protocols gained wider media attention when they were included in an official State Department collection, \"Nazi\u2013Soviet Relations 1939\u20131941\", edited by Raymond J. Sontag and James S. Beddie and published on 21 January 1948. The decision to publish the key documents on German\u2013Soviet relations, including the treaty and protocol, had been taken already in spring 1947. Sontag and Beddie prepared the collection throughout the summer of 1947. In November 1947, President Harry S. Truman personally approved the publication, but it was held back in view of the Foreign Ministers Conference in London scheduled for December. Since negotiations at that conference did not prove to be constructive from an American point of view, the document edition was sent to press. The documents made headlines worldwide. State Department officials counted it as a success: \"The Soviet Government was caught flat-footed in what was the first effective blow from our side in a clear-cut propaganda war.\"\nDespite publication of the recovered copy in western media, for decades, the official policy of the Soviet Union was to deny the existence of the secret protocol. The secret protocol's existence was officially denied until 1989. Vyacheslav Molotov, one of the signatories, went to his grave categorically rejecting its existence. The French Communist Party did not acknowledge the existence of the secret protocol until 1968, as the party de-Stalinized.\nOn 23 August 1986, tens of thousands of demonstrators in 21 western cities, including New York, London, Stockholm, Toronto, Seattle, and Perth participated in Black Ribbon Day Rallies to draw attention to the secret protocols.\nStalin's \"Falsifiers of History\" and Axis negotiations.\nIn response to the publication of the secret protocols and other secret German\u2013Soviet relations documents in the State Department edition \"Nazi\u2013Soviet Relations\" (1948), Stalin published \"Falsifiers of History\", which included the claim that during the pact's operation, Stalin rejected Hitler's claim to share in a division of the world, without mentioning the Soviet offer to join the Axis. That version persisted, without exception, in historical studies, official accounts, memoirs, and textbooks published in the Soviet Union until the dissolution of the Soviet Union.\nThe book also claimed that the Munich Agreement was a \"secret agreement\" between Germany and \"the west\" and a \"highly important phase in their policy aimed at goading the Hitlerite aggressors against the Soviet Union.\"\nDenial of the secret protocol.\nFor decades, it was the official policy of the Soviet Union to deny the existence of the secret protocol to the Soviet\u2013German Pact. At the behest of Mikhail Gorbachev, Alexander Yakovlev headed a commission investigating the existence of such a protocol. In December 1989, the commission concluded that the protocol had existed and revealed its findings to the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union. As a result, the Congress passed the declaration confirming the existence of the secret protocols and condemning and denouncing them. The Soviet government thus finally acknowledged and denounced the Secret Treaty and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Head of State condemned the pact. Vladimir Putin condemned the pact as \"immoral\" but also defended it as a \"necessary evil\". At a press conference on 19 December 2019, Putin went further and announced that the signing of the pact was no worse than the 1938 Munich Agreement, which led to the partition of Czechoslovakia.\nBoth successor states of the pact parties have declared the secret protocols to be invalid from the moment that they were signed: the Federal Republic of Germany on 1 September 1989 and the Soviet Union on 24 December 1989, following an examination of the microfilmed copy of the German originals.\nThe Soviet copy of the original document was declassified in 1992 and published in a scientific journal in early 1993.\nIn August 2009, in an article written for the Polish newspaper \"Gazeta Wyborcza\", Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin condemned the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact as \"immoral\".\nThe new Russian nationalists and revisionists, including Russian negationist Aleksandr Dyukov and Nataliya Narotchnitskaya, whose book carried an approving foreword by the Russian foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, described the pact as a necessary measure because of the British and French failure to enter into an antifascist pact.\nPostwar commentary on motives of Stalin and Hitler.\nSome scholars believe that, from the very beginning of the Tripartite negotiations between the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France, the Soviets clearly required the other parties to agree to a Soviet occupation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and for Finland to be included in the Soviet sphere of influence.\nOn the timing of German rapprochement, many historians agree that the dismissal of Maxim Litvinov, whose Jewish ethnicity was viewed unfavourably by Nazi Germany, removed an obstacle to negotiations with Germany. Stalin immediately directed Molotov to \"purge the ministry of Jews.\" Given Litvinov's prior attempts to create an anti-fascist coalition, association with the doctrine of collective security with France and Britain and a pro-Western orientation by the standards of the Kremlin, his dismissal indicated the existence of a Soviet option of rapprochement with Germany. Likewise, Molotov's appointment served as a signal to Germany that the Soviet Union was open to offers. The dismissal also signaled to France and Britain the existence of a potential negotiation option with Germany. One British official wrote that Litvinov's termination also meant the loss of an admirable technician or shock-absorber but that Molotov's \"modus operandi\" was \"more truly Bolshevik than diplomatic or cosmopolitan.\" Carr argued that the Soviet Union's replacement of Litvinov with Molotov on 3 May 1939 indicated not an irrevocable shift towards alignment with Germany but rather was Stalin's way of engaging in hard bargaining with the British and the French by appointing a proverbial hard man to the Foreign Commissariat. Historian Albert Resis stated that the Litvinov dismissal gave the Soviets freedom to pursue faster German negotiations but that they did not abandon British\u2013French talks. Derek Watson argued that Molotov could get the best deal with Britain and France because he was not encumbered with the baggage of collective security and could negotiate with Germany. Geoffrey Roberts argued that Litvinov's dismissal helped the Soviets with British\u2013French talks because Litvinov doubted or maybe even opposed such discussions.\nE. H. Carr stated: \"In return for 'non-intervention' Stalin secured a breathing space of immunity from German attack.\" According to Carr, the \"bastion\" created by means of the pact \"was and could only be, a line of defense against potential German attack.\" According to Carr, an important advantage was that \"if Soviet Russia had eventually to fight Hitler, the Western Powers would already be involved.\" However, during the last decades, that view has been disputed. Historian Werner Maser - who served the German army during the second World War - stated that \"the claim that the Soviet Union was at the time threatened by Hitler, as Stalin supposed... is a legend, to whose creators Stalin himself belonged. In Maser's view, \"neither Germany nor Japan were in a situation [of] invading the USSR even with the least perspective [\"sic\"] of success,\" which must not have been known to Stalin. Carr further stated that for a long time, the primary motive of Stalin's sudden change of course was assumed to be the fear of German aggressive intentions. On the other hand, Soviet-born Australian historical writer Alex Ryvchin characterized the pact as \"a Soviet deal with the devil, which contained a secret protocol providing for the remaining independent states of East-Central Europe to be treated as courses on some debauched degustation menu for two of the greatest monsters in history.\"\nMany Polish newspapers published numerous articles claiming that Russia must apologise to Poland for the pact.\nTwo weeks after Soviet armies had entered the Baltic states, Berlin requested Finland to permit the transit of German troops, and five weeks later Hitler issued a secret directive \"to take up the Russian problem, to think about war preparations,\" a war whose objective would include establishment of a Baltic confederation.\nA number of German historians have debunked the claim that Operation Barbarossa was a preemptive strike, such as Andreas Hillgruber, Rolf-Dieter M\u00fcller, and Christian Hartmann, but they also acknowledge that the Soviets were aggressive to their neighbors.\nAccording to Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva she \"remembered her father saying after [the war]: 'Together with the Germans we would have been invincible'.\"\nRussian Trotskyist historian, Vadim Rogovin argued that Stalin had destroyed thousands of foreign communists capable of leading socialist change in their respective countries. He referenced the thousands of German communists that were handed over from Stalin to the Gestapo after the signing of the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact. Rogovin also noted that sixteen members of the Central Committee of the German Communist Party became victims of Stalinist terror. Similarly, historian Eric D. Weitz discussed the areas of collaboration between the regimes in which hundreds of German citizens, the majority of whom were Communists, had been handed over to the Gestapo from Stalin's administration. Weitz also stated that a higher proportion of the KPD Politburo members had died in the Soviet Union than in Nazi Germany. However, according to the work of Wilhelm Mensing, there is no evidence which suggests that the Soviets specifically targeted German and Austrian Communists or others who perceived themselves as \"anti-fascists\" for deportations to Nazi Germany.\nRemembrance and response.\nThe pact was a taboo subject in the postwar Soviet Union. In December 1989, the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union condemned the pact and its secret protocol as \"legally deficient and invalid\". In modern Russia, the pact is often portrayed positively or neutrally by the pro-government propaganda; for example, Russian textbooks tend to describe the pact as a defensive measure, not as one aiming at territorial expansion. In 2009, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that \"there are grounds to condemn the Pact\", but described it in 2014 as \"necessary for Russia's survival\". Accusations that cast doubt on the positive portrayal of the USSR's role in World War II have been seen as highly problematic for the modern Russian state, which sees Russia's victory in the war as one of \"the most venerated pillars of state ideology\", which legitimises the current government and its policies. In February 2021, the State Duma voted in favor of a law to punish the dissemination of \"fake news\" regarding the Soviet Union's role in World War II, including claiming that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union held equal responsibility due to the pact.\nIn 2009, the European Parliament proclaimed 23 August, the anniversary of the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact, as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism, to be commemorated with dignity and impartiality. In connection with the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe parliamentary resolution condemned both communism and fascism for starting World War II and called for a day of remembrance for victims of both Stalinism and Nazism on 23 August. In response to the resolution, Russian lawmakers threatened the OSCE with \"harsh consequences\". A similar resolution was passed by the European Parliament a decade later, blaming the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact for the outbreak of war in Europe and again leading to criticism by Russian authorities.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["24795561", "20950", "3744692"], "permutation_1": ["20950", "3744692", "24795561"], "permutation_2": ["20950", "3744692", "24795561"], "permutation_3": ["20950", "24795561", "3744692"]}
{"id": "3hop1__162189_35178_686699", "docs_added": {"204260": "Hafez\nPersian poet and mystic (1325\u20131390)\n (), known by his pen name Hafez ( lit.\u2009'the memorizer' due to his memorization of the entire Quran; 1325\u20131390) or Hafiz, was a Persian lyric poet whose collected works are regarded by many Iranians as one of the highest pinnacles of Persian literature. His works are often found in the homes of Persian speakers, who learn his poems by heart and use them as everyday proverbs and sayings. His life and poems have become the subjects of much analysis, commentary, and interpretation, influencing post-14th century Persian writing more than any other Persian author.\nHafez is best known for his \"Div\u0101n\", a collection of his surviving poems probably compiled after his death. His works can be described as \"antinomian\" and with the medieval use of the term \"theosophical\"; the term \"theosophy\" in the 13th and 14th centuries was used to indicate mystical work by \"authors only inspired by the Islamic holy books\" (as distinguished from theology). Hafez primarily wrote in the literary genre of lyric poetry or ghazals, which is the ideal style for expressing the ecstasy of divine inspiration in the mystical form of love poems. He was a Sufi.\nThemes of his ghazals include the beloved, faith and exposing hypocrisy. In his ghazals, he deals with love, wine and taverns, all presenting religious ecstasy and freedom from restraint, whether in actual worldly release or in the voice of the lover. His influence on Persian speakers appears in divination by his poems (, somewhat similar to the Roman tradition of \"Sortes Vergilianae\") and in the frequent use of his poems in Persian traditional music, visual art and Persian calligraphy. His tomb is located in his birthplace of Shiraz. Adaptations, imitations, and translations of his poems exist in all major languages.\nLife.\nHafez was born in Shiraz, Iran. Few details of his life are known. Accounts of his early life rely upon traditional anecdotes. Early \"tazkiras\" (biographical sketches) mentioning Hafez are generally considered unreliable. At an early age, he memorized the Quran. He was given the title of \"Hafez\", which he later used as his pen name. The preface of his Div\u0101n, in which his early life is discussed, was written by an unknown contemporary whose name may have been Mo\u1e25ammad Goland\u0101m. Two of the most highly regarded modern editions of Hafez's \"Div\u0101n\" are compiled by Allame Mohammad Qazvini and Q\u0101sem Ghani (495 ghazals) and by Parviz Natel-Khanlari (486 ghazals). Hafez was a Sufi Muslim.\nModern scholars generally agree that he was born either in 1315 or 1317. According to an account by Jami, Hafez died in 1390. He was supported by patronage from several successive local regimes: Shah Abu Ishaq, who came to power while Hafez was in his teens; Timur at the end of his life; and even the strict ruler Shah Mubariz ud-Din Muhammad (Mubariz Muzaffar). Though his work flourished most under the 27-year rule of Jalal ud-Din Shah Shuja (Shah Shuja), it is claimed H\u0101fez briefly fell out of favor with Shah Shuja for mocking inferior poets (Shah Shuja wrote poetry himself and may have taken the comments personally), forcing H\u0101fez to flee from Shiraz to Isfahan and Yazd, however, no historical evidence is available. Hafez also exchanged letters and poetry with Ghiyasuddin Azam Shah, the Sultan of Bengal, who invited him to Sonargaon though he could not make it. Hafez was also a contemporary of the famous Sunni Shaf'iite theologian Adud al-Din al-Iji - who he praised as one of the five notables of Farz. \nTwenty years after his death, a tomb was erected to honor Hafez in the Musalla Gardens in Shiraz. The current mausoleum was designed by Andr\u00e9 Godard, a French archeologist and architect, in the late 1930s, and the tomb is raised on a dais amidst rose gardens, water channels, and orange trees. Inside, Hafez's alabaster sarcophagus bears the inscription of two of his poems.\nLegends.\nMany semi-miraculous mythical tales were woven around Hafez after his death. It is said that by listening to his father's recitations, Hafez had accomplished the task of learning the Quran by heart at an early age (that is the meaning of the word \"Hafez\"). At the same time, he is said to have known by heart the works of Rumi, Saadi, Attar Neyshapuri, and Nizami Ganjavi.\nAccording to one tradition, before meeting his self-chosen Sufi master Hajji Zayn al-Attar, Hafez had been working in a bakery, delivering bread to a wealthy quarter of the town. There, he first saw Shakh-e Nabat, a woman of great beauty, to whom some of his poems are addressed. Ravished by her beauty but knowing that his love for her would not be requited, he allegedly held his first mystic vigil in his desire to realize this union. Still, he encountered a being of surpassing beauty who identified himself as an angel, and his further attempts at union became mystic; a pursuit of spiritual union with the divine. \nAt 60, he is said to have begun a chilla-nashini, a 40-day-and-night vigil by sitting in a circle that he had drawn for himself. On the 40th day, he once again met with Zayn al-Attar on what is known to be their fortieth anniversary and was offered a cup of Shirazi wine. It was there where he is said to have attained \"Cosmic Consciousness\". He hints at this episode in one of his verses in which he advises the reader to attain \"clarity of wine\" by letting it \"sit for 40 days\".\nIn one tale, Timur angrily summoned Hafez to account for one of his verses:\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nSamarkand was Timur's capital and Bukhara was the kingdom's finest city. \"With the blows of my lustrous sword\", Timur complained, \"I have subjugated most of the habitable globe... to embellish Samarkand and Bokhara, the seats of my government; and you would sell them for the black mole of some girl in Shiraz!\"\nHafez, the tale goes, bowed deeply and replied, \"Alas, O Prince, it is this prodigality which is the cause of the misery in which you find me\". So surprised and pleased was Timur with this response that he dismissed Hafez with handsome gifts.\nInfluence.\nIntellectual and artistic legacy.\nHafez was acclaimed throughout the Islamic world during his lifetime, with other Persian poets imitating his work, and offers of patronage from Baghdad to India.\nHis work was first translated into English in 1771 by William Jones. It would leave a mark on such Western writers as Thoreau, Goethe, W. B. Yeats, in his prose anthology book of essays, \"Discoveries\", as well as gaining a positive reception within West Bengal, in India, among some of the most prolific religious leaders and poets in this province, Debendranath Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore's father, who knew Persian and used to recite from Hafez's Divans and in this line, Gurudev himself, who, during his visit to Persia in 1932, also made a homage visit to Hafez's tomb in Shiraz and Ralph Waldo Emerson (the last referred to him as \"a poet's poet\"). Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has his character Sherlock Holmes state that \"there is as much sense in Hafiz as in Horace, and as much knowledge of the world\" (in A Case of Identity). Friedrich Engels mentioned him in an 1853 letter to Karl Marx.\nThere is no definitive version of his collected works (or \"D\u012bv\u0101n\"); editions vary from 573 to 994 poems. Only since the 1940s has a sustained scholarly attempt (by Mas'ud Farzad, Qasim Ghani and others in Iran) been made to authenticate his work and to remove errors introduced by later copyists and censors. However, the reliability of such work has been questioned, and in the words of H\u0101fez scholar Iraj Bashiri, \"there remains little hope from there (i.e., Iran) for an authenticated diwan\".\nIn contemporary Iranian culture.\nHafez is the most popular poet in Iran. His works can be found in almost every Iranian home. In fact, October 12 is celebrated as Hafez Day in Iran.\nHis tomb is \"crowded with devotees\" who visit the site and the atmosphere is \"festive\" with visitors singing and reciting their favorite Hafez poems.\nMany Iranians use Divan of Hafez for bibliomancy. Iranian families usually have a \"Divan\" in their house, and when they get together during the Nowruz or Yald\u0101 Night, they open it to a random page and read the poem on it, which they believe to be an indication of things that will happen in the future.\nIn Iranian music.\nIn the genre of Persian traditional music, Hafez, along with Saadi Shirazi, have been the most popular poets in the art of \u0101v\u0101z, non-metered form of singing. Also the form 'S\u0101qi-N\u0101meh' in the radif of Persian music is based on the same title by Hafez. A number of contemporary composers such as Parviz Meshkatian (Sheydaie), Hossein Alizadeh (Ahu-ye Vahshi), Mohammad Reza Lotfi (Golest\u0101n), and Siamak Aghaie (Y\u0101d B\u0101d) have composed metric songs (tasnif) based on ghazals of Hafez which have become very popular in the genre of classical music. Hayedeh performed the song \"Padeshah-e Khooban\", with music by Farid Zoland. The Ottoman composer Buhurizade Mustafa Itri composed his magnum opus Neva K\u00e2r based upon one of Hafez's poems. The Polish composer Karol Szymanowski composed The Love Songs of Hafiz based upon a German translation of Hafez poems.\nIn Afghan music.\nMany Afghan singers, including Ahmad Zahir and Abdul Rahim Sarban, have composed songs such as \"Ay Padeshah-e Khooban\", \"Gar-Zulfe Parayshanat\".\nInterpretation.\nThe question of whether his work is to be interpreted literally, mystically, or both has been a source of contention among western scholars. On the one hand, some of his early readers such as William Jones saw in him a conventional lyricist similar to European love poets such as Petrarch. Others scholars such as Henry Wilberforce Clarke saw him as purely a poet of didactic, ecstatic mysticism in the manner of Rumi, a view that a minority of twentieth century critics and literary historians have come to challenge. Ralph Waldo Emerson rejected the Sufistic view of wine in Hafez's poems.\nThis confusion stems from the fact that, early in Persian literary history, the poetic vocabulary was usurped by mystics, who believed that the ineffable could be better approached in poetry than in prose. In composing poems of mystic content, they imbued every word and image with mystical undertones, causing mysticism and lyricism to converge into a single tradition. As a result, no fourteenth-century Persian poet could write a lyrical poem without having a flavor of mysticism forced on it by the poetic vocabulary itself. While some poets, such as Ubayd Zakani, attempted to distance themselves from this fused mystical-lyrical tradition by writing satires, Hafez embraced the fusion and thrived on it. Wheeler Thackston has said of this that Hafez \"sang a rare blend of human and mystic love so balanced... that it is impossible to separate one from the other\".\nFor reasons such as that, the history of the translation of H\u0101fez is fraught with complications, and few translations into western languages have been wholly successful.\nOne of the figurative gestures for which he is most famous (and which is among the most difficult to translate) is \"\u012bh\u0101m\" or artful punning. Thus, a word such as \"gowhar\", which could mean both \"essence, truth\" and \"pearl\", would take on \"both\" meanings at once as in a phrase such as \"a pearl/essential truth outside the shell of superficial existence\".\nHafez often took advantage of the aforementioned lack of distinction between lyrical, mystical, and panegyric writing by using highly intellectualized, elaborate metaphors and images to suggest multiple possible meanings. For example, a couplet from one of Hafez's poems reads:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nThe cypress tree is a symbol both of the beloved and of a regal presence; the nightingale and birdsong evoke the traditional setting for human love. The \"lessons of spiritual stations\" suggest, obviously, a mystical undertone as well (though the word for \"spiritual\" could also be translated as \"intrinsically meaningful\"). Therefore, the words could signify at once a prince addressing his devoted followers, a lover courting a beloved, and the reception of spiritual wisdom.\nSatire, religion, and politics.\nThough Hafez is well known for his poetry, he is less commonly recognized for his intellectual and political contributions. A defining feature of Hafez' poetry is its ironic tone and the theme of hypocrisy, widely believed to be a critique of the religious and ruling establishments of the time. Persian satire developed during the 14th century, within the courts of the Mongol Empire. In this period, Hafez and other notable early satirists, such as Ubayd Zakani, produced a body of work that has since become a template for the use of satire as a political device. Many of his critiques are believed to be targeted at the rule of Mubariz al-Din Muhammad, specifically, towards the disintegration of important public and private institutions.\nHis work, particularly his imaginative references to monasteries, convents, Shahneh, and muhtasib, ignored the religious taboos of his period, and he found humor in some of his society's religious doctrines. Employing humor polemically has since become a common practice in Iranian public discourse and satire is now perhaps the de facto language of Iranian social commentary. Hafez had been influenced by ancient Iran and Zoroastrian religion and the terminology of this religion has been consistently used in his poems. Examples are \"Mogh\", \"Mogh-bache\", \"Jamshid\" etc. Moreover it seems that he has had the aspiration of reviving this religion. In some verses he explicitly shows his interest to this issue. As an example in a verse he says: \"in the garden, renew the rituals of Zoroastrian religion...now that Nimrood fire have grown tulips\". In another verse he says: \"the reason I am loved in the magis circle...is the eternal fire that is my soul\".\nModern English editions.\nA standard modern English edition of Hafez is \"Faces of Love\" (2012) translated by Dick Davis for Penguin Classics. \"Beloved: 81 poems from Hafez\" (Bloodaxe Books, 2018) translated by Mario Petrucci, is a recent English selection, noted by Fatemeh Keshavarz (Roshan Institute for Persian studies, University of Maryland) for preserving \"that audacious and multilayered richness one finds in the originals\".\nPeter Avery translated a complete edition of Hafez in English, \"The Collected Lyrics of Hafiz of Shiraz\", published in 2007. It was awarded Iran's Farabi prize. Avery's translations are published with notes explaining allusions in the text and filling in what the poets would have expected their readers to know. An abridged version exists, titled \"Hafiz of Shiraz: Thirty Poems: An Introduction to the Sufi Master\".\nCertain English-language poems have been incorrectly attributed to Hafez. The American poet Daniel Ladinsky has published a number of volumes of poetry that describes its contents as \"poems inspired by Hafiz\" or \"poems of Hafiz\" or \"renderings of Hafiz.\" Some readers have understood this to mean that they are translations of poems written by Hafiz. However, the author has acknowledged that these are original poems inspired by Hafiz and they are not translations of Hafiz poems.\nDivan-e-Hafez.\nDivan Hafez is a book containing all the remaining poems of Hafez. Most of these poems are in Persian and the most crucial part of this Divan is ghazals. There are poems in other poetic formats such as piece, ode, Masnavi and quatrain in this Divan.\nThere is no evidence that most of Hafez's poems were destroyed. In addition, Hafez was very famous during his lifetime; Therefore, the small number of poetry in the court indicates that he was not a prolific poet.\nHafez's Divan was probably compiled for the first time by Mohammad Glendam after his death. Of course, some unconfirmed reports indicate that Hafez published his court in AH 770 (1368). that is, edited more than twenty years before his death.\nDeath and the tomb.\nThe year of Hafez's death is AH 791 (1389). Hafez was buried in the prayer hall of Shiraz called hafezieh. In AH 855 (1451), after the conquest of Shiraz by Abolghasem Babar Teymouri, they built a tomb under the command of his minister, Maulana Mohammad Mamaei.\nPoems by Hafez.\nThe number in the edition by Muhammad Qazvini and Qasem Ghani (1941) is given, as well as that of Parviz N\u0101tel-Kh\u0101nlari (2nd ed. 1983):\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nEnglish translations of Poetry by Hafez\nPersian texts and resources\nEnglish language resources\nOther", "35522057": "Qaleh Now-e Khaleseh, Tehran\nCity in Tehran province, Iran\nQaleh Now-e Khaleseh () is a city in, and the capital of, Qaleh Now District of Ray County, Tehran province, Iran. It also serves as the administrative center for Qaleh Now Rural District.\nDemographics.\nPopulation.\nAt the time of the 2006 National Census, Qaleh Now-e Khaleseh's population was 4,718 in 1,195 households, when it was a village in Qaleh Now Rural District of Kahrizak District. The following census in 2011 counted 5,289 people in 1,476 households. The 2016 census measured the population of the village as 5,352 people in 1,584 households, by which time the rural district had been separated from the district in the formation of Qaleh Now District.\nAfter the 2016 census, the village of Qaleh Now-e Khaleseh was elevated to the status of a city.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "14653": "Iran\nCountry in West Asia\nIran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Turkey to the northwest and Iraq to the west, Azerbaijan, Armenia, the Caspian Sea, and Turkmenistan to the north, Afghanistan to the east, Pakistan to the southeast, the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south. With a multi-ethnic population of nearly 86 million in an area of , Iran ranks 17th globally in both geographic size and population. It is the sixth-largest country entirely in Asia and one of the world's most mountainous countries. Officially an Islamic republic, Iran is divided into five regions with 31 provinces. Tehran is the nation's capital, largest city and financial centre.\nA cradle of civilisation, Iran has been inhabited since the Lower Palaeolithic. The large part of Iran was first unified as a political entity by the Medes under Cyaxares in the seventh century BC, and reached its territorial height in the sixth century BC, when Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Empire, one of the largest in ancient history. Alexander the Great conquered the empire in the fourth century BC. An Iranian rebellion established the Parthian Empire in the third century BC and liberated the country, which was succeeded by the Sasanian Empire in the third century AD. Ancient Iran saw some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, religion and central government. The Sasanian era is considered a golden age in the history of Iranian civilisation. Muslims conquered the region in the seventh century AD, leading to Iran's Islamisation. The literature, philosophy, mathematics, medicine, astronomy and art which had blossomed during the Sasanian era were renewed during the Islamic Golden Age and Persian Renaissance, when a series of Iranian Muslim dynasties ended Arab rule, revived the Persian language and ruled the country until the Seljuk and Mongol conquests of the 11th to 14th centuries.\nIn the 16th century, the native Safavid dynasty re-established a unified Iranian state with Twelver Shi'ism as the official religion. During the Afsharid Empire in the 18th century, Iran was a leading world power, but this was no longer the case after the Qajars took power in the 1790s. The early 20th century saw the Persian Constitutional Revolution and the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty by Reza Shah the Great, who ousted the last Qajar shah in 1925. Attempts by Mohammad Mosaddegh to nationalise the oil industry led to an Anglo-American coup in 1953. After the Iranian Revolution, the monarchy was overthrown in 1979 and the Islamic Republic of Iran was established by Ruhollah Khomeini, who became the country's first Supreme Leader. In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, sparking the eight-year-long Iran\u2013Iraq War, which ended in stalemate.\nIran is officially governed as a unitary Islamic republic with a presidential system, with ultimate authority vested in a Supreme Leader. The government is authoritarian and has attracted widespread criticism for its significant violations of human rights and civil liberties. Iran is a major regional power, due to its large reserves of fossil fuels, including the world's second largest natural gas supply, third largest proven oil reserves, its geopolitically significant location, military capabilities, cultural hegemony, regional influence, and role as the world's focal point of Shia Islam. The Iranian economy is the world's 23rd-largest by PPP. Iran is a founding member of the United Nations, OIC, OPEC, and ECO as well as a current member of the NAM, SCO, and BRICS. Iran is home to 28 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the 10th highest in the world, and ranks 5th in Intangible Cultural Heritage, or human treasures.\nEtymology.\nThe term \"Iran\" 'the land of the Aryans' derives from Middle Persian , first attested in a 3rd-century inscription at Naqsh-e Rostam, with the accompanying Parthian inscription using , in reference to the Iranians. and are oblique plural forms of gentilic nouns \"\u0113r-\" (Middle Persian) and \"ary-\" (Parthian), deriving from Proto-Iranian language \"*arya-\" (meaning 'Aryan', i.e. of the Iranians), recognised as a derivative of Proto-Indo-European language \"*ar-yo-\", meaning 'one who assembles (skilfully)'. According to Iranian mythology, the name comes from Iraj, a legendary king.\nIran was referred to as \"Persia\" by the West, due to Greek historians who referred to all of Iran as , meaning 'the land of the Persians'. \"Persia\" is the Fars province in southwest Iran, the 4th largest province, also known as \"P\u00e2rs\". The Persian \"F\u00e2rs\" (\u0641\u0627\u0631\u0633), derived from the earlier form \"P\u00e2rs\" (\u067e\u0627\u0631\u0633), which is in turn derived from \"P\u00e2rs\u00e2\" (Old Persian: \ud800\udfb1\ud800\udfa0\ud800\udfbc\ud800\udfbf). Due to Fars' historical importance, \"Persia\" originated from this territory through Greek in around 550 BC, and Westerners referred to the entire country as \"Persia\", until 1935, when Reza Shah requested the international community to use its native and original name, \"Iran\"; Iranians called their nation \"Iran\" since at least 1000 BC. Today, both \"Iran\" and \"Persia\" are used culturally, while \"Iran\" remains mandatory in official use.\nThe Persian pronunciation of \"Iran\" is . Commonwealth English pronunciations of \"Iran\" are listed in the \"Oxford English Dictionary\" as and , while American English dictionaries provide pronunciations which map to , or . The \"Cambridge Dictionary\" lists as the British pronunciation and as the American pronunciation. Voice of America's pronunciation guide provides .\nHistory.\nIran is home to one of the world's oldest continuous major civilisations, with historical and urban settlements dating back to 4000 BC. The western part of the Iranian plateau participated in the traditional ancient Near East with Elam (3200\u2013539 BC), and later with other peoples such as the Kassites, Mannaeans, and Gutians. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel called the Persians the \"first Historical People\". The Iranian Empire began in the Iron Age with the rise of the Medes, who unified Iran as a nation and empire in 625 BC. The Achaemenid Empire (550\u2013330 BC), founded by Cyrus the Great, was the largest empire the world had seen, spanning from the Balkans to North Africa and Central Asia. They were succeeded by the Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian Empires, who governed Iran for almost 1,000 years, making Iran a leading power once again. Persia's arch-rival during this time was the Roman Empire and its successor, the Byzantine Empire.\nIran endured invasions by the Macedonians, Arabs, Turks, and Mongols. Despite these invasions, Iran continually reasserted its national identity and developed as a distinct political and cultural entity. The Muslim conquest of Persia (632\u2013654) ended the Sasanian Empire and marked a turning point in Iranian history, leading to the Islamisation of Iran from the eighth to tenth centuries and the decline of Zoroastrianism. However, the achievements of prior Persian civilisations were absorbed into the new Islamic polity. Iran suffered invasions by nomadic tribes during the Late Middle Ages and early modern period, negatively impacting the region. Iran was reunified as an independent state in 1501 by the Safavid dynasty, which established Shia Islam as the empire's official religion, marking another turning point in the history of Islam. Iran functioned again as a leading world power, especially in rivalry with the Ottoman Empire. In the 19th century, Iran lost significant territories in the Caucasus to the Russian Empire following the Russo-Persian Wars.\nIran remained a monarchy until the 1979 Iranian Revolution, when it officially became an Islamic republic on 1 April 1979. Since then, Iran has experienced significant political, social, and economic changes. The establishment of the \"Islamic Republic of Iran\" led to the restructuring of its political system, with Ayatollah Khomeini as the Supreme Leader. Iran's foreign relations have been shaped by the Iran\u2013Iraq War (1980\u20131988), ongoing tensions with the United States, and its nuclear programme, which has been a point of contention in international diplomacy.\nSince the 1990s.\nIn 1989, Akbar Rafsanjani concentrated on a pro-business policy of rebuilding the economy without breaking with the ideology of the revolution. He supported a free market domestically, favouring privatisation of state industries and a moderate position internationally. In 1997, Rafsanjani was succeeded by moderate reformist Mohammad Khatami, whose government advocated freedom of expression, constructive diplomatic relations with Asia and the European Union, and an economic policy that supported a free market and foreign investment.\nThe 2005 presidential election brought conservative populist and nationalist candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power. He was known for his hardline views, nuclearisation, and hostility towards Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UK, the US and other states. He was the first president to be summoned by the parliament to answer questions regarding his presidency. In 2013, centrist and reformist Hassan Rouhani was elected president. In domestic policy, he encouraged personal freedom, free access to information, and improved women's rights. He improved Iran's diplomatic relations through exchanging conciliatory letters. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was reached in Vienna in 2015, between Iran, the P5+1 (UN Security Council + Germany) and the EU. The negotiations centred around ending the economic sanctions in exchange for Iran's restriction in producing enriched uranium. In 2018, however, the US under Trump Administration withdrew from the deal and new sanctions were imposed. This nulled the economic provisions, left the agreement in jeopardy, and brought Iran to nuclear threshold status. In 2020, IRGC general, Qasem Soleimani, the 2nd-most powerful person in Iran, was assassinated by the US, heightening tensions between them. Iran retaliated against US airbases in Iraq, the largest ballistic missile attack ever on Americans; 110 sustained brain injuries.\nHardliner Ebrahim Raisi ran for president again in 2021, succeeding Hassan Rouhani. During Raisi's term, Iran intensified uranium enrichment, hindered international inspections, joined SCO and BRICS, supported Russia in its invasion of Ukraine and restored diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia. In April 2024, Israel's airstrike on an Iranian consulate, killed an IRGC commander. Iran retaliated with UAVs, cruise and ballistic missiles; 9 hit Israel. Western and Jordanian military helped Israel down some Iranian drones. It was the largest drone strike in history, biggest missile attack in Iranian history, its first ever direct attack on Israel and the first time since 1991, Israel was directly attacked by a state force. This occurred during heightened tensions amid the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. In May 2024, President Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash, and Iran held a presidential election in June, when reformist and former Minister of Health, Masoud Pezeshkian, was elected to office. On 1 October 2024, Iran launched about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for assassinations of Ismail Haniyeh, Hassan Nasrallah and Abbas Nilforoushan. On 27 October, Israel responded to that attack by strikes on a missile defence system in the Iranian region of Isfahan.\nGeography.\nIran has an area of . It is the sixth-largest country entirely in Asia and the second-largest in West Asia. It lies between latitudes 24\u00b0 and 40\u00b0 N, and longitudes 44\u00b0 and 64\u00b0 E. It is bordered to the northwest by Armenia (), the Azeri exclave of Nakhchivan (), and the Republic of Azerbaijan (); to the north by the Caspian Sea; to the northeast by Turkmenistan (); to the east by Afghanistan () and Pakistan (); to the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman; and to the west by Iraq () and Turkey ().\nIran is in a seismically active area. On average, an earthquake of magnitude seven on the Richter scale occurs once every ten years. Most earthquakes are shallow-focus and can be very devastating, such as the 2003 Bam earthquake.\nIran consists of the Iranian Plateau. It is one of the world's most mountainous countries; its landscape is dominated by rugged mountain ranges that separate basins or plateaus. The populous west part is the most mountainous, with ranges such as the Caucasus, Zagros, and Alborz, the last containing Mount Damavand, Iran's highest point, at , which is the highest volcano in Asia. Iran's mountains have impacted its politics and economics for centuries.\nThe north part is covered by the lush lowland Caspian Hyrcanian forests, near the southern shores of the Caspian Sea. The east part consists mostly of desert basins, such as the Kavir Desert, which is the country's largest desert, and the Lut Desert, as well as salt lakes. The Lut Desert is the hottest recorded spot on the Earth's surface, with 70.7\u00a0\u00b0C recorded in 2005. The only large plains are found along the coast of the Caspian and at the north end of the Persian Gulf, where the country borders the mouth of the Arvand river. Smaller, discontinuous plains are found along the remaining coast of the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman.\nIslands.\nIranian islands are mainly located in the Persian Gulf. Iran has 102 islands in Urmia Lake, 427 in Aras River, several in Anzali Lagoon, Ashurade Island in the Caspian Sea, Sheytan Island in the Oman Sea and other inland islands. Iran has an uninhabited island at the far end of the Gulf of Oman, near Pakistan. A few islands can be visited by tourists. Most are owned by the military or used for wildlife protection, and entry is prohibited or requires a permit.\nIran took control of Bumusa, and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs in 1971, in the Strait of Hormuz between the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. Despite the islands being small and having little natural resources or population, they are highly valuable for their strategic location. Although the United Arab Emirates claims sovereignty, it has consistently been met with a strong response from Iran, based on their historical and cultural background. Iran has full control over the islands.\nKish island, as a free trade zone, is touted as a consumer's paradise, with malls, shopping centres, tourist attractions, and luxury hotels. Qeshm is the largest island in Iran, and a UNESCO Global Geopark since 2016. Its salt cave, Namakdan, is the largest in the world, and one of the world's longest caves.\nClimate.\nIran's climate is diverse, ranging from arid and semi-arid, to subtropical along the Caspian coast and northern forests. On the north edge of the country, temperatures rarely fall below freezing and the area remains humid. Summer temperatures rarely exceed . Annual precipitation is in the east part of the plain and more than in the west part. The UN Resident Coordinator for Iran, has said that \"Water scarcity poses the most severe human security challenge in Iran today\".\nTo the west, settlements in the Zagros basin experience lower temperatures, severe winters with freezing average daily temperatures and heavy snowfall. The east and central basins are arid, with less than of rain and have occasional deserts. Average summer temperatures rarely exceed . The southern coastal plains of the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman have mild winters, and very humid and hot summers. The annual precipitation ranges from .\nBiodiversity.\nMore than one-tenth of the country is forested. About 120 million hectares of forests and fields are government-owned for national exploitation. Iran's forests can be divided into five vegetation regions: Hyrcanian region which forms the green belt of the north side of the country; the Turan region, which are mainly scattered in the centre of Iran; Zagros region, which mainly contains oak forests in the west; the Persian Gulf region, which is scattered in the southern coastal belt; the Arasbarani region, which contains rare and unique species. More than 8,200 plant species are grown. The land covered by natural flora is four times that of Europe's. There are over 200 protected areas to preserve biodiversity and wildlife, with over 30 being national parks.\nIran's living fauna includes 34 bat species, Indian grey mongoose, small Indian mongoose, golden jackal, Indian wolf, foxes, striped hyena, leopard, Eurasian lynx, brown bear and Asian black bear. Ungulate species include wild boar, urial, Armenian mouflon, red deer, and goitered gazelle. One of the most famous animals is the critically endangered Asiatic cheetah, which survives only in Iran. Iran lost all its Asiatic lions and the extinct Caspian tigers by the early 20th century. Domestic ungulates are represented by sheep, goat, cattle, horse, water buffalo, donkey and camel. Bird species like pheasant, partridge, stork, eagles and falcons are native.\nGovernment and politics.\nSupreme Leader.\nThe Supreme Leader, \"Rahbar\", Leader of the Revolution or Supreme Leadership Authority, is the head of state and responsible for supervision of policy. The president has limited power compared to the Rahbar. Key ministers are selected with the Rahbar's agreement and they have the ultimate say on foreign policy. The Rahbar is directly involved in ministerial appointments for Defence, Intelligence and Foreign Affairs, as well as other top ministries after submission of candidates from the president.\nRegional policy is directly controlled by the Rahbar, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' task limited to protocol and ceremonial occasions. Ambassadors to Arab countries, for example, are chosen by the Quds Force, which directly reports to the Rahbar. The Rahbar can order laws to be amended. Setad was estimated at $95\u00a0billion in 2013 by Reuters, accounts of which are secret even to the parliament.\nThe Rahbar is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, controls military intelligence and security operations, and has sole power to declare war or peace. The heads of the judiciary, state radio and television networks, commanders of the police and military, and the members of the Guardian Council are all appointed by the Rahbar.\nThe Assembly of Experts is responsible for electing the Rahbar, and has the power to dismiss him on the basis of qualifications and popular esteem. To date, the Assembly of Experts has not challenged any of the Rahbar's decisions nor attempted to dismiss him. The previous head of the judicial system, Sadeq Larijani, appointed by the Rahbar, said that it is illegal for the Assembly of Experts to supervise the Rahbar. Many believe the Assembly of Experts has become a ceremonial body without any real power. In February 2025,\u00a0 the New York Times reported that according to Karim Sadjadpour, an expert on Iran at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, there exist in the Islamic Republic of Iran two parallel regimes. One which is ruled by the military and intelligence forces, who report to the Rahbar, and \"who oversee the nuclear programme and regional proxies and are tasked with repression, hostage taking and assassinations\u201d. The other ruled by diplomats and politicians \"who are authorized to speak to Western media and officials\" and have minimal knowledge of Iran's nuclear programme.\nThe political system is based on the country's constitution. Iran ranked 154th in the 2022 \"The Economist Democracy Index\". Juan Jos\u00e9 Linz wrote in 2000 that \"the Iranian regime combines the ideological bent of totalitarianism with the limited pluralism of authoritarianism\".\nPresident.\nThe President is head of government and the second highest-ranking authority, after the Supreme Leader. The President is elected by universal suffrage for 4 years. Before elections, nominees to become a presidential candidate must be approved by the Guardian Council. The Council's members are chosen by the Leader, with the Leader having the power to dismiss the president. The President can only be re-elected for one term. The president is the deputy commander-in-chief of the Army, the head of Supreme National Security Council, and has the power to declare a state of emergency after passage by the parliament.\nThe President is responsible for the implementation of the constitution, and for the exercise of executive powers in implementing the decrees and general policies as outlined by the Rahbar, except for matters directly related to the Rahbar, who has the final say. The President functions as the executive of affairs such as signing treaties and other international agreements, and administering national planning, budget, and state employment affairs, all as approved by the Rahbar.\nThe President appoints ministers, subject to the approval of the Parliament, and the Rahbar, who can dismiss or reinstate any minister. The President supervises the Council of Ministers, coordinates government decisions, and selects government policies to be placed before the legislature. Eight Vice Presidents serve under the President, as well as a cabinet of 22 ministers, all appointed by the president.\nGuardian Council.\nPresidential and parliamentary candidates must be approved by the 12-member Guardian Council (all members of which are appointed by the Leader) or the Leader, before running to ensure their allegiance. The Leader rarely does the vetting, but has the power to do so, in which case additional approval of the Guardian Council is not needed. The Leader can revert the decisions of the Guardian Council.\nThe constitution gives the council three mandates: veto power over legislation passed by the parliament, supervision of elections and approving or disqualifying candidates seeking to run in local, parliamentary, presidential, or Assembly of Experts elections. The council can nullify a law based on two accounts: being against Sharia (Islamic law), or being against the constitution.\nSupreme National Security Council.\nThe Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) is at the top of the foreign policy decisions process. The council was formed during the 1989 Iranian constitutional referendum for the protection and support of national interests, the revolution, territorial integrity and national sovereignty. It is mandated by Article 176 of the Constitution to be presided over by the President.\nThe Leader selects the secretary of the Supreme Council, and the decisions of the council are effective after the confirmation by the Leader. The SNSC formulates nuclear policy, and would become effective if they are confirmed by the Leader.\nLegislature.\nThe legislature, known as the Islamic Consultative Assembly (ICA), Iranian Parliament or \"Majles\", is a unicameral body comprising 290 members elected for four-years. It drafts legislation, ratifies international treaties, and approves the national budget. All parliamentary candidates and legislation from the assembly must be approved by the Guardian Council. The Guardian Council can and has dismissed elected members of the parliament. The parliament has no legal status without the Guardian Council, and the Council holds absolute veto power over legislation.\nThe Expediency Discernment Council has the authority to mediate disputes between Parliament and the Guardian Council, and serves as an advisory body to the Supreme Leader, making it one of the most powerful governing bodies in Iran.\nThe Parliament has 207 constituencies, including the 5 reserved seats for religious minorities. The remaining 202 are territorial, each covering one or more of Iran's counties.\nLaw.\nIran uses the Sharia law as its legal system, with elements of Civil law. The Supreme Leader appoints the head of the Supreme Court and chief public prosecutor. There are several types of courts, including public courts that deal with civil and criminal cases, and revolutionary courts which deal with certain offences, such as crimes against national security. The decisions of the revolutionary courts are final and cannot be appealed.\nThe Chief Justice is the head of the judicial system and responsible for its administration and supervision. He is the highest judge of the Supreme Court of Iran. The Chief Justice nominates candidates to serve as minister of justice, and the President selects one. The Chief Justice can serve for two five-year terms.\nThe Special Clerical Court handles crimes allegedly committed by clerics, although it has taken on cases involving laypeople. The Special Clerical Court functions independently of the regular judicial framework and is accountable only to the Rahbar. The Court's rulings are final and cannot be appealed. The Assembly of Experts, which meets for one week annually, comprises 86 \"virtuous and learned\" clerics elected by adult suffrage for 8-year terms.\nAdministrative divisions.\nIran is subdivided into thirty-one provinces ( \"ost\u00e2n\"), each governed from a local centre, usually the largest local city, which is called the capital (Persian: , \"markaz\") of that province. The provincial authority is headed by a governor-general ( \"ost\u00e2nd\u00e2r\"), who is appointed by the Minister of the Interior subject to approval of the cabinet.\nForeign relations.\nIran maintains diplomatic relations with 165 countries, but not the United States and Israel\u2014a state which Iran derecognised in 1979.\nIran has an adversarial relationship with Saudi Arabia due to different political ideologies. Iran and Turkey have been involved in modern proxy conflicts such as in Syria, Libya, and the South Caucasus. However, they have shared common interests, such as the issue of Kurdish separatism and the Qatar diplomatic crisis. Iran has a close and strong relationship with Tajikistan. Iran has deep economic relations and alliance with Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, with Syria often described as Iran's \"closest ally\".\nRussia is a key trading partner, especially in regard to its excess oil reserves. Both share a close economic and military alliance, and are subject to heavy sanctions by Western nations. Iran is the only country in Western Asia that has been invited to join the CSTO, the Russia-based international treaty organisation that parallels NATO.\nRelations between Iran and China are strong economically; they have developed a friendly, economic and strategic relationship. In 2021, Iran and China signed a 25-year cooperation agreement that will strengthen the relations between the two countries and would include \"political, strategic and economic\" components. Iran-China relations dates back to at least 200 BC and possibly earlier. Iran is one of the few countries in the world that has a good relationship with both North and South Korea.\nIn December 2024, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, a close ally of Iran, was a severe setback for the political influence of Iran in the region.\nIran is a member of dozens of international organisations, including the G-15, G-24, G-77, IAEA, IBRD, IDA, NAM, IDB, IFC, ILO, IMF, IMO, Interpol, OIC, OPEC, WHO, and the UN, and currently has observer status at the WTO.\nMilitary.\nThe military is organised under a unified structure, the Islamic Republic of Iran Armed Forces, comprising the Islamic Republic of Iran Army, which includes the Ground Forces, Air Defence Force, Air Force, and Navy; the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which consists of the Ground Forces, Aerospace Force, Navy, Quds Force, and Basij; and the Law Enforcement Command (Faraja), which serves an analogous function to a gendarme. While the IRIAF protects the country's sovereignty in a traditional capacity, the IRGC is mandated to ensure the integrity of the Republic, against foreign interference, coups, and internal riots. Since 1925, it is mandatory for all male citizen aged 18 to serve around 14 months in the IRIAF or IRGC.\nIran has over 610,000 active troops and around 350,000 reservists, totalling over 1 million military personnel, one of the world's highest percentage of citizens with military training. The Basij\",\" a paramilitary volunteer militia within the IRGC, has over 20 million members, 600,000 available for immediate call-up, 300,000 reservists, and a million that could be mobilised when necessary. Faraja, the Iranian uniformed police force, has over 260,000 active personnel. Most statistical organisations do not include the Basij and Faraja in their ratings report.\nExcluding the Basij and Faraja, Iran has been identified as a major military power, owing it to the size and capabilities of its armed forces. It possesses the world's 14th strongest military. It ranks 13th globally in terms of overall military strength, 7th in the number of active military personnel, and 9th in the size of both its ground force and armoured force. Iran's armed forces are the largest in West Asia and comprise the greatest Army Aviation fleet in the Middle East. Iran is among the top 15 countries in terms of military budget. In 2021, its military spending increased for the first time in four years, to $24.6 billion, 2.3% of the national GDP. Funding for the IRGC accounted for 34% of Iran's total military spending in 2021.\nSince the Revolution, to overcome foreign embargoes, Iran has developed a domestic military industry capable of producing indigenous tanks, armoured personnel carriers, missiles, submarines, missile destroyer, radar systems, helicopters, naval vessels, and fighter planes. Official announcements have highlighted the development of advanced weaponry, particularly in rocketry. Consequently, Iran has the largest and most diverse ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East and is only the 5th country in the world with hypersonic missile technology. It is the world's 6th missile power. Iran designs and produces a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and is considered a global leader and superpower in drone warfare and technology. It is one of the world's five countries with cyberwarfare capabilities and is identified as \"one of the most active players in the international cyber arena\". Iran is an key exporter of arms since 2000s.\nFollowing Russia's purchase of Iranian drones during the invasion of Ukraine, in November 2023, the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) finalized arrangements to acquire Russian Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets, Mil Mi-28 attack helicopters, air defence and missile systems. The Iranian Navy has had joint exercises with Russia and China.\nNuclear programme.\nIran's nuclear programme dates back to the 1950s. Iran revived it after the Revolution, and its extensive nuclear fuel cycle, including enrichment capabilities, became the subject of intense international negotiations and sanctions. Many countries have expressed concern Iran could divert civilian nuclear technology into a weapons programme. In 2015, Iran and the P5+1 agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan on Action (JCPOA), aiming to end economic sanctions in exchange for restriction in producing enriched uranium.\nIn 2018, however, the US withdrew from the deal under the Trump administration, and reimposed sanctions. This was met with resistance by Iran and other members of the P5+1. A year later, Iran began decreasing its compliance. By 2020, Iran announced it would no longer observe any limit set by the agreement. Progress since then has brought Iran to the nuclear threshold status. As of November 2023[ [update]], Iran had uranium enriched to up to 60% fissile content, close to weapon grade. Some analysts already regard Iran as a de facto nuclear power.\nRegional influence.\nIran's significant influence and foothold, sometimes characterised as the \"Dawn of A New Persian Empire.\" Some analysts associate the Iranian influence to the nation's proud national legacy, empire and history.\nSince the Revolution, Iran has grown its influence across and beyond the region. It has built military forces with a wide network of state and none-state actors, starting with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 1982. The IRGC has been key to Iranian influence, through its Quds Force. The instability in Lebanon (from the 1980s), Iraq (from 2003) and Yemen (from 2014) has allowed Iran to build strong alliances and footholds beyond its borders. Iran has a prominent influence in the social services, education, economy and politics of Lebanon, and Lebanon provides Iran access to the Mediterranean Sea. Hezbollah's strategic successes against Israel, such as its symbolic victory during the 2006 Israel\u2013Hezbollah War, elevated Iran's influence in the Levant and strengthened its appeal across the Muslim World.\nSince the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the arrival of ISIS in the mid-2010s, Iran has financed and trained militia groups in Iraq. Since the Iran-Iraq war in 1980s and the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iran has shaped Iraq's politics. Following Iraq's struggle against ISIS in 2014, companies linked to the IRGC such as Khatam al-Anbiya, started to build roads, power plants, hotels and businesses in Iraq, creating an economic corridor worth around $9 billion before COVID-19. This is expected to grow to $20 billion.\nDuring Yemen's civil war, Iran provided military support to the Houthis, a Zaydi Shiite movement fighting Yemen's Sunni government since 2004. They gained significant power in recent years. Iran has considerable influence in Afghanistan and Pakistan through militant groups such as Liwa Fatemiyoun and Liwa Zainebiyoun.\nIn Syria, Iran has supported President Bashar al-Assad; the two countries are long-standing allies. Iran has provided significant military and economic support to Assad's government, so has a considerable foothold in Syria. Iran has long supported the anti-Israel fronts in North Africa in countries like Algeria and Tunisia, embracing Hamas in part to help undermine the popularity of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Iran's support of Hamas emerged more clearly in later years. According to US intelligence, Iran does not have full control over these state and non-state groups.\nHuman rights and censorship.\nThe Iranian government has been denounced by various international organisations and governments for violating human rights. The government has frequently persecuted and arrested critics of the government. Iranian law does not recognise sexual orientations. Sexual activity between members of the same sex is illegal and is punishable by death. Capital punishment is a legal punishment, and according to the BBC, Iran \"carries out more executions than any other country, except China\". UN Special Rapporteur Javaid Rehman has reported discrimination against several ethnic minorities in Iran. A group of UN experts in 2022 urged Iran to stop \"systematic persecution\" of religious minorities, adding that members of the Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith were arrested, barred from universities, or had their homes demolished.\nCensorship in Iran is ranked among the most extreme worldwide. Iran has strict internet censorship, with the government persistently blocking social media and other sites. Since January 2021, Iranian authorities have blocked a list of social media platforms; Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Telegram, Twitter and YouTube.\nThe 2006 election results were widely disputed, resulting in protests. The 2017\u201318 Iranian protests swept across the country in response to the economic and political situation. It was formally confirmed that thousands of protesters were arrested. The 2019\u201320 Iranian protests started on 15 November in Ahvaz, and spread across the country after the government announced increases in fuel prices of up to 300%. A week-long total Internet shutdown marked one of the most severe Internet blackouts in any country, and the bloodiest governmental crackdown of the protestors. Tens of thousands were arrested and hundreds were killed within a few days according to multiple international observers, including Amnesty International.\nUkraine International Airlines Flight 752, was a scheduled international civilian passenger flight from Tehran to Kyiv, operated by Ukraine International Airlines. On 8 January 2020, the Boeing 737\u2013800 flying the route was shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) shortly after takeoff, killing all 176 occupants on board and leading to protests. An international investigation led to the government admitting to the shootdown, calling it a \"human error\". Another Protests against the government began on 16 September 2022 after a woman named Mahsa Amini died in police custody following her arrest by the Guidance Patrol, known commonly as the \"morality police\".\nEconomy.\nAs of 2024[ [update]], Iran has the world's 19th largest economy (by PPP). It is a mixture of central planning, state ownership of oil and other large enterprises, village agriculture, and small-scale private trading and service ventures. Services contribute the largest percentage of GDP, followed by industry (mining and manufacturing) and agriculture. The economy is characterised by its hydrocarbon sector, in addition to manufacturing and financial services. With 10% of the world's oil reserves and 15% of gas reserves, Iran is an energy superpower. Over 40 industries are directly involved in the Tehran Stock Exchange.\nTehran is the economic powerhouse of Iran. About 30% of Iran's public-sector workforce and 45% of its large industrial firms are located there, and half those firms' employees work for government. The Central Bank of Iran is responsible for developing and maintaining the currency: the Iranian rial. The government does not recognise trade unions other than the Islamic labour councils, which are subject to the approval of employers and the security services. Unemployment was 9% in 2022.\nBudget deficits have been a chronic problem, mostly due to large state subsidies, that include foodstuffs and especially petrol, totalling $100\u00a0billion in 2022 for energy alone. In 2010, the economic reform plan was to cut subsidies gradually and replace them with targeted social assistance. The objective is to move towards free market prices and increase productivity and social justice. The administration continues reform, and indicates it will diversify the oil-reliant economy. Iran has developed a biotechnology, nanotechnology, and pharmaceutical industry. The government is privatising industries.\nIran has leading manufacturing industries in automobile manufacture, transportation, construction materials, home appliances, food and agricultural goods, armaments, pharmaceuticals, information technology, and petrochemicals in the Middle East. Iran is among the world's top five producers of apricots, cherries, cucumbers and gherkins, dates, figs, pistachios, quinces, walnuts, Kiwifruit and watermelons. International sanctions against Iran have damaged the economy. Iran is one of three countries that have not ratified the Paris Agreement to limit climate change, although academics say it would be good for the country.\nIran suffers from high inflation and especially surging food prices. A major contributing factor is the involvement of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the economy, particularly in the agriculture and food sectors but also due to significant spending on the Axis of Resistance which increase the public deficit. \nTourism.\nTourism had been rapidly growing before the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching nearly 9 million foreign visitors in 2019, the world's third fastest-growing tourism destination. In 2022 it expanded its share to 5% of the economy. Iran's tourism experienced a growth of 43% in 2023, attracting 6 million foreign tourists. The government ended visa requirements for 60 countries in 2023.\n98% of visits are for leisure, while 2% are for business, indicating the country's appeal as a tourist destination. Alongside the capital, the most popular tourist destinations are Isfahan, Shiraz and Mashhad. Iran is emerging as a preferred destination for medical tourism. Travellers from other West Asian countries grew 31% in the first seven months of 2023, surpassing Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Domestic tourism is one of the world's largests; Iranian tourists spent $33bn in 2021. Iran projects investment of $32 billion in the tourism sector by 2026.\nAgriculture and fishery.\nRoughly one-third of Iran's total surface area is suited for farmland. Only 12% of the total land area is under cultivation, but less than one-third of the cultivated area is irrigated; the rest is devoted to dryland farming. Some 92% of agricultural products depend on water. The western and northwestern portions of the country have the most fertile soils. Iran's food security index stands at around 96 percent. 3% of the total land area is used for grazing and fodder production. Most of the grazing is done on mostly semi-dry rangeland in mountain areas and on areas surrounding the large deserts of Central Iran. Progressive government efforts and incentives during the 1990s, improved agricultural productivity, helping Iran toward its goal of reestablishing national self-sufficiency in food production.\nAccess to the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and many river basins provides Iran the potential to develop excellent fisheries. The government assumed control of commercial fishing in 1952. Expansion of the fishery infrastructure enabled the country to harvest an estimated 700,000 tons of fish annually from the southern waters. Since the Revolution, increased attention has been focused on producing fish from inland waters. Between 1976 and 2004, the combined take from inland waters by the state and private sectors increased from 1,100 tons to 110,175 tons. Iran is the world's largest producer and exporter of caviar, exporting more than 300 tonnes annually.\nIndustry and services.\nIran is globally ranked 16th in car manufacturing, ahead of the UK, Italy, and Russia. It has outputted 1.188 million cars in 2023, a 12% growth compared to the previous years. Iran has exported various cars to countries such as Venezuela, Russia and Belarus. From 2008 to 2009, Iran leaped to 28th place from 69th in annual industrial production growth rate. Iranian contractors have been awarded several foreign tender contracts in different fields of construction of dams, bridges, roads, buildings, railroads, power generation, and gas, oil and petrochemical industries. As of 2011, some 66 Iranian industrial companies are carrying out projects in 27 countries. Iran exported over $20 billion worth of technical and engineering services over 2001\u20132011. The availability of local raw materials, rich mineral reserves, experienced manpower have all played crucial role in winning the bids.\n45% of large industrial firms are located in Tehran, and almost half of their workers work for government. The Iranian retail industry is largely in the hands of cooperatives, many of them government-sponsored, and of independent retailers in the bazaars. The bulk of food sales occur at street markets, where the Chief Statistics Bureau sets the prices. Iran's main exports are to Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Syria, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Canada, Venezuela, Japan, South Korea and Turkey. Iran's automotive industry is the second most active industry of the country, after its oil and gas industry. Iran Khodro is the largest car manufacturer in the Middle East, and ITMCO is the biggest tractor manufacturer. Iran is the 12th largest automaker in the world. Construction is one of the most important sectors in Iran accounting for 20\u201350% of the total private investment.\nIran is one of the most important mineral producers in the world, ranked among 15 major mineral-rich countries. Iran has become self-sufficient in designing, building and operating dams and power plants. Iran is one of the six countries in the world that manufacture gas- and steam-powered turbines.\nTransport.\nIn 2011 Iran had of roads, of which 73% were paved. In 2008 there were nearly 100 passenger cars for every 1,000 inhabitants.\nTehran Metro is the largest in the Middle East, it carries more than 3 million passengers daily and in 2018, 820 million trips. Trains operate on of track. The country's major port of entry is Bandar Abbas on the Strait of Hormuz. Imported goods are distributed through the country by trucks and freight trains. The Tehran\u2013Bandar Abbas railroad connects Bandar-Abbas to the railroad system of Central Asia, via Tehran and Mashhad. Other major ports include Bandar e-Anzali and Bandar e-Torkeman on the Caspian Sea and Khorramshahr and Bandar-e Emam Khomeyni on the Persian Gulf.\nDozens of cities have airports that serve passenger and cargo planes. Iran Air, the national airline, operates domestic and international flights. All large cities have mass transit systems using buses, and private companies provide bus services between cities. Over a million people work in transport, accounting for 9% of GDP.\nEnergy.\nIran is an energy superpower and petroleum plays a key part. As of 2023[ [update]], Iran produced 4% of the world's crude oil ( per day), which generates US$36bn of export revenue and is the main source of foreign currency. Oil and gas reserves are estimated at 1.2 trn barrels; Iran holds 10% of world oil reserves and 15% for gas. It ranks 3rd in oil reserves and is OPEC's 2nd largest exporter. It has the 2nd largest gas reserves, and 3rd largest natural gas production. In 2019, Iran discovered a southern oil field of 50 bn barrels and in April 2024, the NIOC discovered 10 giant shale oil deposits, totalling 2.6 bn barrels. Iran plans to invest $500 billion in oil by 2025.\nIran manufactures 60\u201370% of its industrial equipment domestically, including turbines, pumps, catalysts, refineries, oil tankers, drilling rigs, offshore platforms, towers, pipes, and exploration instruments. The addition of new hydroelectric stations and streamlining of conventional coal and oil-fired stations increased installed capacity to 33 GW; about 75% was based on natural gas, 18% on oil, and 7% on hydroelectric power. In 2004, Iran opened its first wind-powered and geothermal plants, and the first solar thermal plant began in 2009. Iran is the world's third country to develop GTL technology.\nDemographic trends and intensified industrialisation have caused electric power demand to grow by 8% per year. The government's goal of 53 GW of installed capacity by 2010 is to be reached by bringing on line new gas-fired plants, and adding hydropower and nuclear generation capacity. Iran's first nuclear power plant went online in 2011.\nDespite being an energy superpower as of 2024-2025 Iran suffers from an energy crisis, manifested by many power outages.\nScience and technology.\nIran has made considerable advances in science and technology, despite international sanctions. In the biomedical sciences, Iran's Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics has a UNESCO chair in biology. In 2006, Iranian scientists successfully cloned a sheep at the Royan Research Centre in Tehran. Stem cell research is among the top 10 in the world. Iran ranks 15th in the world in nanotechnologies. Iranian scientists outside Iran have made major scientific contributions. In 1960, Ali Javan co-invented the first gas laser, and fuzzy set theory was introduced by Lotfi A. Zadeh.\nCardiologist Tofy Mussivand invented and developed the first artificial cardiac pump, the precursor of the artificial heart. Furthering research in diabetes, the HbA1c was discovered by Samuel Rahbar. Many papers in string theory are published in Iran. In 2014, Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani became the first woman, and Iranian, to receive the Fields Medal, the highest prize in mathematics.\nIran increased its publication output nearly tenfold from 1996 through 2004, and ranked first in output growth rate, followed by China. According to a study by SCImago in 2012, Iran would rank fourth in research output by 2018, if the trend persisted. The Iranian humanoid robot Sorena 2, which was designed by engineers at the University of Tehran, was unveiled in 2010. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has placed the name of Surena among the five most prominent robots, after analysing its performance. \nAccording to a 2019 study by Isabel Campos-Varela et al., Iran recorded the highest proportion of retracted publications globally, with 15.52 retractions per 10,000 publications. Media reports from 2023 indicate that Iran continues to rank among the countries with the highest retraction rates. Common types of misconduct include fraudulent peer review processes, plagiarism, and data fabrication. Data from the Retraction Watch Leaderboard further highlights that two of the 32 individuals with the highest number of retracted articles worldwide are based in Iran.\nIran was ranked 64th in the Global Innovation Index in 2024.\nIranian Space Agency.\nThe Iranian Space Agency (ISA) was established in 2004. Iran became an orbital-launch-capable nation in 2009, and is a founding member of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Iran placed its domestically built satellite Omid into orbit on the 30th anniversary of the Revolution, in 2009, through its first expendable launch vehicle Safir. It became the 9th country capable of both producing a satellite and sending it into space from a domestically made launcher. Simorgh's launch in 2016, is the successor of Safir.\nIn January 2024, Iran launched the Soraya satellite into its highest orbit yet (750\u00a0km), a new space launch milestone for the country. It was launched by Qaem 100 rocket. Iran also successfully launched 3 indigenous satellites, The Mahda, Kayan and Hatef, into orbit using the Simorgh carrier rocket. It was the first time in country's history that it simultaneously sent three satellites into space. The three satellites are designed for testing advanced satellite subsystems, space-based positioning technology, and narrowband communication.\nIn February 2024, Iran launched its domestically developed imaging satellite, Pars 1, from Russia into orbit. This was the second time since August 2022, when Russia launched another Iranian remote-sensing, Khayyam satellite, into orbit from Kazakhstan, reflecting deep scientific cooperation between the countries.\nTelecommunication.\nIran's telecommunications industry is almost entirely state-owned, dominated by the Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI). As of 2020, 70 million Iranians use high-speed mobile internet. Iran is among the first five countries which have had a growth rate of over 20 percent and the highest level of development in telecommunication. Iran has been awarded the UNESCO special certificate for providing telecommunication services to rural areas.\nGlobally, Iran ranks 75th in mobile internet speed and 153rd in fixed internet speed.\nDemographics.\nIran's population grew rapidly from about 19\u00a0million in 1956 to about 85 million by February 2023. However, Iran's fertility rate has dropped dramatically, from 6.5 children born per woman to about 1.7 two decades later, leading to a population growth rate of about 1.39% as of 2018. Due to its young population, studies project that the growth will continue to slow until it stabilises at around 105\u00a0million by 2050.\nIran hosts one of the largest refugee populations, with almost one million, mostly from Afghanistan and Iraq. According to the Iranian Constitution, the government is required to provide every citizen with access to social security, covering retirement, unemployment, old age, disability, accidents, calamities, health and medical treatment and care services. This is covered by tax revenues and income derived from public contributions.\nThe country has one of the highest urban growth rates in the world. From 1950 to 2002, the urban proportion of the population increased from 27% to 60%. Iran's population is concentrated in its western half, especially in the north, north-west and west.\nTehran, with a population of around 9.4\u00a0million, is Iran's capital and largest city. The country's second most populous city, Mashhad, has a population of around 3.4\u00a0million, and is capital of the province of Razavi Khorasan. Isfahan has a population of around 2.2\u00a0million and is Iran's third most populous city. It is the capital of Isfahan province and was also the third capital of the Safavid Empire.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nEthnic groups.\nEthnic group composition remains a point of debate, mainly regarding the largest and second largest ethnic groups, the Persians and Azerbaijanis, due to the lack of Iranian state censuses based on ethnicity. The World Factbook has estimated that around 79% of the population of Iran is a diverse Indo-European ethno-linguistic group, with Persians (including Mazenderanis and Gilaks) constituting 61% of the population, Kurds 10%, Lurs 6%, and Balochs 2%. Peoples of other ethnolinguistic groups make up the remaining 21%, with Azerbaijanis constituting 16%, Arabs 2%, Turkmens and other Turkic tribes 2%, and others (such as Armenians, Talysh, Georgians, Circassians, Assyrians) 1%.\nThe Library of Congress issued slightly different estimates: 65% Persians (including Mazenderanis, Gilaks, and the Talysh), 16% Azerbaijanis, 7% Kurds, 6% Lurs, 2% Baloch, 1% Turkic tribal groups (including Qashqai and Turkmens), and non-Iranian, non-Turkic groups (including Armenians, Georgians, Assyrians, Circassians, and Arabs) less than 3%.\nEthnic based discrimination is prevalent in Iran. Minorities in Iran have been disproportionately affected by the ongoing crackdown aimed at repressing the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' movement, according to the UN Fact-Finding Mission.\nLanguages.\nMost of the population speaks Persian, the country's official and national language. Others include speakers of other Iranian languages, within the greater Indo-European family, and languages belonging to other ethnicities. The Gilaki and Mazenderani languages are widely spoken in Gilan and Mazenderan, northern Iran. The Talysh language is spoken in parts of Gilan. Varieties of Kurdish are concentrated in the province of Kurdistan and nearby areas. In Khuzestan, several dialects of Persian are spoken. South Iran also houses the Luri and Lari languages.\nAzerbaijani, the most-spoken minority language in the country, and other Turkic languages and dialects are found in various regions, especially Azerbaijan. Notable minority languages include Armenian, Georgian, Neo-Aramaic, and Arabic. Khuzi Arabic is spoken by the Arabs in Khuzestan, and the wider group of Iranian Arabs. Circassian was also once widely spoken by the large Circassian minority, but, due to assimilation, no sizable number of Circassians speak the language anymore.\nPercentages of spoken language continue to be a point of debate, most notably regarding the largest and second largest ethnicities in Iran, the Persians and Azerbaijanis. Percentages given by the CIA's World Factbook include 53% Persian, 16% Azerbaijani, 10% Kurdish, 7% Mazenderani and Gilaki, 7% Luri, 2% Turkmen, 2% Balochi, 2% Arabic, and 2% the remainder Armenian, Georgian, Neo-Aramaic, and Circassian.\nReligion.\nTwelver Shia Islam is the state religion, to which 90\u201395% of Iranians adhere; about 5\u201310% are in the Sunni and Sufi branches of Islam. 96% of Iranians believe in Islam, but 14% identify as not religious.\nThere is a large population of adherents to Yarsanism, a Kurdish indigenous religion, estimated to be over half a million to one million followers. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is not officially recognised and has been subject to official persecution. Since the Revolution, the persecution of Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds has increased. Irreligion is not recognised by the government.\nChristianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and the Sunni branch of Islam are officially recognised by the government and have reserved seats in the Parliament. Iran is home to the largest Jewish community in the Muslim World and the Middle East, outside of Israel. Around 250,000 to 370,000 Christians reside in Iran, and Christianity is the country's largest recognised minority religion, most are of Armenian background, as well as a sizable minority of Assyrians. The Iranian government has supported the rebuilding and renovation of Armenian churches, and has supported the Armenian Monastic Ensembles of Iran. In 2019, the government registered the Vank Cathedral, in Isfahan, as a World Heritage Site. Currently three Armenian churches in Iran have been included in the World Heritage List.\nEducation.\nEducation is highly centralised. K\u201312 is supervised by the Ministry of Education, and higher education is supervised by the Ministry of Science and Technology. Literacy among people aged 15 and older was 86% as of 2016[ [update]], with men (90%) significantly more educated than women (81%). Government expenditure on education is around 4% of GDP.\nThe requirement to enter into higher education is to have a high school diploma and pass the Iranian University Entrance Exam. Many students do a one\u2013two-year course of pre-university. Iran's higher education is sanctioned by different levels of diplomas, including an associate degree in two years, a bachelor's degree in four years, and a master's degree in two years, after which another exam allows the candidate to pursue a doctoral programme.\nHealth.\nHealthcare is provided by the public-governmental system, the private sector, and NGOs.\nIran is the only country in the world with a legal organ trade. Iran has been able to extend public health preventive services through the establishment of an extensive Primary Health Care Network. As a result, child and maternal mortality rates have fallen significantly, and life expectancy at birth has risen. Iran's medical knowledge rank is 17th globally, and 1st in the Middle East and North Africa. In terms of medical science production index, Iran ranks 16th in the world. Iran is fast emerging as a preferred destination for medical tourism.\nThe country faces the common problem of other young demographic nations in the region, which is keeping pace with growth of an already huge demand for various public services. An anticipated increase in the population growth rate will increase the need for public health infrastructures and services. About 90% of Iranians have health insurance.\nCulture.\nArt.\nIran has one of the richest art heritages in history and been strong in many media including architecture, painting, literature, music, metalworking, stonemasonry, weaving, calligraphy and sculpture. At different times, influences from neighbouring civilisations have been important, and latterly Persian art gave and received major influences as part of the wider styles of Islamic art.\nFrom the Achaemenid Empire of 550\u2013330 BC, the courts of successive dynasties led the style of Persian art, and court-sponsored art left many of the most impressive pieces that remain. The Islamic style of dense decoration, geometrically laid out, developed in Iran into an elegant and harmonious style, combining motifs derived from plants with Chinese motifs such as the cloud-band, and often animals represented at a smaller scale. During the Safavid Empire in the 16th century, this style was used across a variety of media, and diffused from the court artists of the king, most being painters.\nBy the time of the Sasanians, Iranian art had a renaissance. During the Middle Ages, Sasanian art played a prominent role in the formation of European and Asian mediaeval art.\nThe Safavid era is known as the Golden Age of Iranian art. Safavid art exerted noticeable influences upon the Ottomans, the Mughals, and the Deccans, and was influential through its fashion and garden architecture on 11th\u201317th-century Europe.\nIran's contemporary art traces its origins to Kamal-ol-molk, a prominent realist painter at the court of the Qajar Empire who affected the norms of painting and adopted a naturalistic style that would compete with photographic works. A new Iranian school of fine art was established by him in 1928, and was followed by the so-called \"coffeehouse\" style of painting. Iran's avant-garde modernists emerged by the arrival of new western influences during World War II. The contemporary art scene originates in the late 1940s, and Tehran's first modern art gallery, Apadana, was opened in 1949 by Mahmud Javadipur, Hosein Kazemi, and Hushang Ajudani. The new movements received official encouragement by the 1950s, which led to the emergence of artists such as Marcos Grigorian.\nArchitecture.\nThe history of architecture in Iran dates back to at least 5,000 BC, with characteristic examples distributed over an area from what is now Turkey and Iraq to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and from the Caucasus to Zanzibar. The Iranians made early use of mathematics, geometry and astronomy in their architecture, yielding a tradition with structural and aesthetic variety. The guiding motif is its cosmic symbolism.\nWithout sudden innovations, and despite the trauma of invasions and cultural shocks, it developed a recognizable style distinct from other regions of the Muslim world. Its virtues are \"a marked feeling for form and scale; structural inventiveness, especially in vault and dome construction; a genius for decoration with a freedom and success not rivalled in any other architecture\". In addition to historic gates, palaces, and mosques, the rapid growth of cities such as Tehran has brought a wave of construction. Iran ranks 7th among UNESCO's list of countries with the most archaeological ruins and attractions from antiquity.\nWorld Heritage Sites.\nIran's rich culture and history is reflected by its 27 World Heritage Sites, ranking 1st in the Middle East, and 10th in the world. These include Persepolis, Naghsh-e Jahan Square, Chogha Zanbil, Pasargadae, Golestan Palace, Arg-e Bam, Behistun Inscription, Shahr-e Sukhteh, Susa, Takht-e Soleyman, Hyrcanian forests, the city of Yazd and more. Iran has 24 Intangible Cultural Heritage, or Human treasures, which ranks 5th worldwide.\nWeaving.\nIran's carpet-weaving has its origins in the Bronze Age and is one of the most distinguished manifestations of Iranian art. Carpet weaving is an essential part of Persian culture and Iranian art. Persian rugs and carpets were woven in parallel by nomadic tribes in village and town workshops, and by royal court manufactories. As such, they represent simultaneous lines of tradition, and reflect the history of Iran, Persian culture, and its various peoples. Although the term \"Persian carpet\" most often refers to pile-woven textiles, flat-woven carpets and rugs like Kilim, Soumak, and embroidered tissues like Suzani are part of the manifold tradition of Persian carpet weaving.\nIran produces three-quarters of the world's handmade carpets, and has 30% of export markets. In 2010, the \"traditional skills of carpet weaving\" in Fars Province and Kashan were inscribed to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List. Within the Oriental rugs produced by the countries of the \"rug belt\", the Persian carpet stands out by the variety and elaborateness of its manifold designs.\nCarpets woven in towns and regional centres like Tabriz, Kerman, Ravar, Neyshabour, Mashhad, Kashan, Isfahan, Nain and Qom are characterized by their specific weaving techniques and use of high-quality materials, colours and patterns. Hand-woven Persian rugs and carpets have been regarded as objects of high artistic value and prestige, since they were mentioned by ancient Greek writers.\nLiterature.\nIran's oldest literary tradition is that of Avestan, the Old Iranian sacred language of the Avesta, which consists of the legendary and religious texts of Zoroastrianism and the ancient Iranian religion. The Persian language was used and developed through Persianate societies in Asia Minor, Central Asia, and South Asia, leaving extensive influences on Ottoman and Mughal literatures, among others. Iran has several famous mediaeval poets, notably Mawlana, Ferdowsi, Hafez, Sa'adi, Omar Khayyam, and Nezami Ganjavi.\nDescribed as one of the great literatures of humanity, including Goethe's assessment of it as one of the four main bodies of world literature, Persian literature has its roots in surviving works of Middle Persian and Old Persian, the latter of which dates back as far as 522\u00a0BCE, the date of the earliest surviving Achaemenid inscription, the Behistun Inscription. The bulk of surviving Persian literature, however, comes from the times following the Muslim conquest in c. 650\u00a0CE. After the Abbasids came to power (750 CE), the Iranians became the scribes and bureaucrats of the Islamic Caliphate and, increasingly, also its writers and poets. The New Persian language literature arose and flourished in Khorasan and Transoxiana because of political reasons, early Iranian dynasties of post-Islamic Iran such as the Tahirids and Samanids being based in Khorasan.\nPhilosophy.\nIranian philosophy can be traced back as far as Old Iranian philosophical traditions and thoughts which originated in ancient Indo-Iranian roots and were influenced by Zarathustra's teachings. Throughout Iranian history and due to remarkable political and social changes such as the Arab and Mongol invasions, a wide spectrum of schools of thoughts showed a variety of views on philosophical questions, extending from Old Iranian and mainly Zoroastrianism-related traditions, to schools appearing in the late pre-Islamic era such as Manicheism and Mazdakism as well as post-Islamic schools.\nThe Cyrus Cylinder is seen as a reflection of the questions and thoughts expressed by Zoroaster and developed in Zoroastrian schools of the Achaemenid era. Post-Islam Iranian philosophy is characterised by different interactions with the Old Iranian philosophy, the Greek philosophy and with the development of Islamic philosophy. The Illumination School and the Transcendent Philosophy are regarded as two of the main philosophical traditions of that era in Iran. Contemporary Iranian philosophy has been limited in its scope by intellectual repression.\nMythology and folklore.\nIranian mythology consists of ancient Iranian folklore and stories of extraordinary beings reflecting on good and evil (Ahura Mazda and Ahriman), actions of the gods, and the exploits of heroes and creatures. The tenth-century Persian poet, Ferdowsi, is the author of the national epic known as the \"Shahnameh\" (\"Book of Kings\"), which is for the most part based on \"Xwad\u0101yn\u0101mag\", a Middle Persian compilation of the history of Iranian kings and heroes, as well as the stories and characters of the Zoroastrian tradition, from the texts of the Avesta, the Denkard, the Vendidad and the Bundahishn. Modern scholars study the myths to shed light on the religious and political institutions of not only Iran but of the Greater Iran, which includes regions of West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, and Transcaucasia where the culture of Iran has had significant influence.\nStorytelling has a significant presence in Iranian folklore and culture. In classical Iran, minstrels performed for their audiences at royal courts and in public theatres. A minstrel was referred to by the Parthians as g\u014ds\u0101n, and by the Sasanians as huniy\u0101gar. Since the Safavid Empire, storytellers and poetry readers appeared at coffeehouses. After the Iranian Revolution, it took until 1985 to found the MCHTH (Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts), a now heavily centralised organisation, supervising all kinds of cultural activities. It held the first scientific meeting on anthropology and folklore in 1990.\nMuseums.\nThe National Museum of Iran in Tehran is the country's most important cultural institution. As the first and biggest museum in Iran, the institution includes the Museum of Ancient Iran and the Museum of the Islamic Era. The National Museum is the world's most important museum in terms of preservation, display and research of archaeological collections of Iran, and ranks as one of the few most prestigious museums globally in terms of volume, diversity and quality of its monuments.\nThere are many other popular museums across the country such as the Golestan Palace (World Heritage Site), The Treasury of National Jewels, Reza Abbasi Museum, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Sa'dabad Complex, The Carpet Museum, Abgineh Museum, Pars Museum, Azerbaijan Museum, Hegmataneh Museum, Susa Museum and more. Around 25 million people visited the museums in 2019.\nMusic and dance.\nIran is the apparent birthplace of the earliest complex instruments, dating to the third millennium\u00a0BC. The use of angular harps have been documented at Madaktu and Kul-e Farah, with the largest collection of Elamite instruments documented at Kul-e Farah. Xenophon's \"Cyropaedia\" mentions singing women at the court of the Achaemenid Empire. Under the Parthian Empire, the \"g\u014ds\u0101n\" (Parthian for 'minstrel') had a prominent role.\nThe history of Sasanian music is better documented than earlier periods and is especially more evident in Avestan texts. By the time of Khosrow II, the Sasanian royal court hosted prominent musicians, namely Azad, Bamshad, Barbad, Nagisa, Ramtin, and Sarkash. Iranian traditional musical instruments include string instruments such as chang (harp), qanun, santur, rud (oud, barbat), tar, dotar, setar, tanbur, and kamanche, wind instruments such as sorna (zurna, karna) and ney, and percussion instruments such as tompak, kus, daf (dayere), and naqare.\nIran's first symphony orchestra, the Tehran Symphony Orchestra, was founded in 1933. By the late 1940s, Ruhollah Khaleqi founded the country's first national music society and established the School of National Music in 1949. Iranian pop music has its origins in the Qajar era. It was significantly developed since the 1950s, using indigenous instruments and forms accompanied by electric guitar and other imported characteristics. Iranian rock emerged in the 1960s and hip hop in the 2000s.\nIran has known dance in the forms of music, play, drama or religious rituals since at least the 6th millennium BC. Artifacts with pictures of dancers were found in archaeological prehistoric sites. Genres of dance vary depending on the area, culture, and language of the local people, and can range from sophisticated reconstructions of refined court dances to energetic folk dances. Each group, region, and historical epoch has specific dance styles associated with it. The earliest researched dance from historic Iran is a dance worshipping Mithra. Ancient Persian dance was significantly researched by Greek historian Herodotus. Iran was occupied by foreign powers, causing a slow disappearance of heritage dance traditions.\nThe Qajar period had an important influence on Persian dance. In this period, a style of dance began to be called \"classical Persian dance\". Dancers performed artistic dances in court for entertainment purposes such as coronations, marriage celebrations, and Norouz celebrations. In the 20th century, the music came to be orchestrated and dance movement and costuming gained a modernistic orientation to the West.\nFashion and clothing.\nThe exact date of the emergence of weaving in Iran is not yet known, but it is likely to coincide with the emergence of civilisation. Ferdowsi and many historians have considered Keyumars to be first to use animals' skin and hair as clothing, while others propose Hushang. Ferdowsi considers Tahmuras to be a kind of textile initiator in Iran. The clothing of ancient Iran took an advanced form, and the fabric and colour of clothing became very important. Depending on the social status, eminence, climate of the region and the season, Persian clothing during the Achaemenian period took various forms. This clothing, in addition to being functional, had an aesthetic role.\nCinema, animation and theatre.\nA third-millennium BC earthen goblet discovered at the Burnt City in southeast Iran depicts what could be the world's oldest example of animation. The earliest attested Iranian examples of visual representations, however, are traced back to the bas-reliefs of Persepolis, the ritual centre of the Achaemenid Empire.\nThe first Iranian filmmaker was probably Mirza Ebrahim (Akkas Bashi), the court photographer of Mozaffar-ed-Din of the Qajar Empire. Mirza Ebrahim obtained a camera and filmed the Qajar ruler's visit to Europe. In 1904, Mirza Ebrahim (Sahhaf Bashi) opened the first public cinema in Tehran. The first Iranian feature film, \"Abi and Rabi\", was a silent comedy directed by Ovanes Ohanian in 1930. The first sound one, \"Lor Girl\", was produced by Ardeshir Irani and Abd-ol-Hosein Sepanta in 1932. Iran's animation industry began by the 1950s and was followed by the establishment of the influential Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults in 1965.\nWith the screening of the films \"Qeysar\" and \"The Cow\", directed by Masoud Kimiai and Dariush Mehrjui respectively in 1969, alternative films set out to establish their status in the film industry and Bahram Beyzai's \"Downpour\" and Nasser Taghvai's \"Tranquility in the Presence of Others\" followed. Attempts to organise a film festival, which had begun in 1954 within the Golrizan Festival, resulted in the festival of Sepas in 1969. It also resulted in the formation of Tehran's World Film Festival in 1973.\nFollowing the Cultural Revolution, a new age emerged in Iranian cinema, starting with \"Long Live!\" by Khosrow Sinai and followed by other directors, such as Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi. Kiarostami, an acclaimed director, planted Iran firmly on the map of world cinema when he won the for \"Taste of Cherry\" in 1997. The presence of Iranian films in prestigious international festivals, such as Cannes, Venice and Berlin, attracted attention to Iranian films. In 2006, 6 films represented Iranian cinema at Berlin; critics considered this a remarkable event in Iranian cinema. Asghar Farhadi, an Iranian director, has received a Golden Globe Award and two Academy Awards, representing Iran for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012 and 2017, with \"A Separation\" and \"The Salesman\". In 2020, Ashkan Rahgozar's \"The Last Fiction\" became the first representative of Iranian animated cinema in the competition section, in Best Animated Feature and Best Picture categories at the Academy Awards.\nThe oldest Iranian initiation of theatre can be traced to ancient epic ceremonial theatres such as \"Sug-e Si\u0101vu\u0691\" (\"mourning of Si\u0101va\u0691\"), as well as dances and theatre narrations of Iranian mythological tales reported by Herodotus and Xenophon. Iran's traditional theatrical genres include Baqq\u0101l-b\u0101zi (\"grocer play\", a form of slapstick comedy), Ruhowzi (or \"Taxt-howzi\", comedy performed over a courtyard pool covered with boards), Si\u0101h-b\u0101zi (the central comedian appears in blackface), S\u0101ye-b\u0101zi (shadow play), Xeyme-\u0691ab-b\u0101zi (marionette), and Arusak-b\u0101zi (puppetry), and Ta'zie (religious tragedy plays).\nThe Roudaki Hall is home to the Tehran Symphony Orchestra, the Tehran Opera Orchestra, and the Iranian National Ballet Company, and was officially renamed \"Vahdat Hall\" after the Revolution.\nMedia.\nIran's largest media corporation is the state-owned IRIB. The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance is responsible for the cultural policy, including activities regarding communications and information.\nMost of the newspapers published in Iran are in Persian, the country's official and national language. The country's most widely circulated periodicals are based in Tehran, among which are \"Etemad\", \"Ettela'at\", \"Kayhan\", \"Hamshahri\", \"Resalat\", and \"Shargh\". \"Tehran Times\", \"Iran Daily\", and \"Financial Tribune\" are among the famous English-language newspapers based in Iran.\nIran ranks 17th among countries by number of Internet users. Google Search is Iran's most widely used search engine and Instagram is the most popular online social networking service. Direct access to many worldwide mainstream websites has been blocked in Iran, including Facebook, which has been blocked since 2009. About 90% of Iran's e-commerce takes place on the Iranian online store Digikala, which has around 750,000 visitors per day and is the most visited online store in the Middle East.\nCuisine.\nIranian main dishes include varieties of kebab, pilaf, stew (khoresh), soup and \u0101sh, and omelette. Lunch and dinner meals are commonly accompanied by side dishes such as plain yogurt or mast-o-khiar, sabzi, salad Shirazi, and torshi, and might follow dishes such as borani, Mirza Qasemi, or kashk e bademjan. In Iranian culture, tea is widely consumed. Iran is the world's seventh major tea producer. One of Iran's most popular desserts is the falude. There is also the popular saffron ice cream, known as \"Bastani Sonnati\" (\"traditional ice cream\"), which is sometimes accompanied with carrot juice. Iran is also famous for its caviar.\nTypical Iranian main dishes are combinations of rice with meat, vegetables and nuts. Herbs are frequently used, along with fruits such as plums, pomegranates, quince, prunes, apricots and raisins. Characteristic Iranian spices and flavourings such as saffron, cardamom, and dried lime and other sources of sour flavoring, cinnamon, turmeric and parsley are mixed and used in various dishes.\nSports.\nIran is the most likely birthplace of polo, locally known as Chogan, with its earliest records attributed to the ancient Medes. Freestyle wrestling is traditionally considered the national sport, and Iran's wrestlers have been world champions many times. Iran's traditional wrestling, called \"ko\u0691ti e pahlev\u0101ni\" (\"heroic wrestling\"), is registered on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Iran's National Olympic Committee was founded in 1947. Wrestlers and weightlifters have achieved the country's highest records at the Olympics. In 1974, Iran became the first country in West Asia to host the Asian Games.\nAs a mountainous country, Iran is a venue for skiing, snowboarding, hiking, rock climbing, and mountain climbing. It is home to ski resorts, the most famous being Tochal, Dizin, and Shemshak. Dizin is the largest, and authorised by FIS to administer international competitions.\nFootball is the most popular sport, with the men's national team having won the Asian Cup three times. The men's team ranks 2nd in Asia and 20th in the FIFA World Rankings as of April 2024[ [update]]. The Azadi Stadium in Tehran is the largest association football stadium in West Asia and on a list of top-20 stadiums in the world. Volleyball is the second most popular sport. Having won the 2011 and 2013 Asian Men's Volleyball Championships, the men's national team is the 2nd strongest in Asia, and 15th in the FIVB World Rankings as of January\u00a02024[ [update]]. Basketball is also popular, with the men's national team having won three Asian Championships since 2007.\nObservances.\nIran's official New Year begins with Nowruz, an ancient Iranian tradition celebrated annually on the vernal equinox and described as the \"Persian New Year\". It was registered on the UNESCO's list of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2009. On the eve of the last Wednesday of the preceding year, as a prelude to Nowruz, the ancient festival of \u0628\u0101r\u0691anbe Suri celebrates \u0100tar (\"fire\") by performing rituals such as jumping over bonfires and lighting fireworks.\nYald\u0101, another ancient tradition, commemorates the ancient goddess Mithra and marks the longest night of the year on the eve of the winter solstice (usually on 20 or 21 December), during which families gather to recite poetry and eat fruits. In some regions of Mazanderan and Markazi, there is a midsummer festival, Tirg\u0101n, which is observed on Tir 13 (2 or 3July) as a celebration of water.\nIslamic annual events such as Ramez\u0101n, Eid e Fetr, and Ruz e \u0100\u0691ur\u0101 are marked by the country's population, Christian traditions such as Noel, elle ye Ruze, and Eid e P\u0101k are observed by the Christian communities, Jewish traditions such as Hanuk\u0101 and Eid e Fatir (Pesah) are observed by the Jewish communities, and Zoroastrian traditions such as Sade and Mehrg\u0101n are observed by the Zoroastrians.\nPublic holidays.\nWith 26, Iran has one of the world's highest number of public holidays. It ranks 1st in the world with the most paid leave days: 52. Iran's official calendar is the Solar Hejri calendar, beginning at the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. Each of the 12 months of the Solar Hejri calendar correspond with a zodiac sign, and the length of each year is solar. Alternatively, the Lunar Hejri calendar is used to indicate Islamic events, and the Gregorian calendar marks international events.\nLegal public holidays based on the Iranian solar calendar include the cultural celebrations of Nowruz (Farvardin 1\u20134; 21\u201324 March) and Sizdebedar (Farvardin 13; 2April), and the political events of Islamic Republic Day (Farvardin 12; 1April), the death of Ruhollah Khomeini (Khordad 14; 4June), the Khordad 15 event (Khordad 15; 5June), the anniversary of the Iranian Revolution (Bahman 22; 10 February), and Oil Nationalisation Day (Esfand 29; 19 March).\nLunar Islamic public holidays include Tasua (Muharram 9), Ashura (Muharram 10), Arba'een (Safar 20), Muhammad's death (Safar 28), the death of Ali al-Ridha (Safar 29 or 30), the birthday of Muhammad (Rabi-al-Awwal 17), the death of Fatimah (Jumada-al-Thani 3), the birthday of Ali (Rajab 13), Muhammad's first revelation (Rajab 27), the birthday of Muhammad al-Mahdi (Sha'ban 15), the death of Ali (Ramadan 21), Eid al-Fitr (Shawwal 1\u20132), the death of Ja'far al-Sadiq (Shawwal 25), Eid al-Qurban (Zulhijja 10), and Eid al-Qadir (Zulhijja 18).\nExplanatory notes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nFootnotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n<templatestyles src=\"Plain navboxes/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["35522057", "204260", "14653"], "permutation_1": ["35522057", "204260", "14653"], "permutation_2": ["204260", "35522057", "14653"], "permutation_3": ["35522057", "14653", "204260"]}
{"id": "3hop1__159612_22372_9427", "docs_added": {"17926": "League of Nations\n20th-century international organisation, predecessor to the United Nations\nThe League of Nations (LN or LoN; , SdN) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. The main organisation ceased operations on 18 April 1946 when many of its components were relocated into the new United Nations (UN) which was created in the aftermath of the Second World War. As the template for modern global governance, the League profoundly shaped the modern world.\nThe League's primary goals were stated in its eponymous Covenant. They included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration. Its other concerns included labour conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, human and drug trafficking, the arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in Europe. The Covenant of the League of Nations was signed on 28 June 1919 as Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, and it became effective with the rest of the Treaty on 10 January 1920. Australia was granted the right to participate as an autonomous member nation, marking the start of Australian independence on the global stage. The first meeting of the Council of the League took place on 16 January 1920, and the first meeting of the Assembly of the League took place on 15 November 1920. In 1919, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role as the leading architect of the League.\nThe diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift from the preceding hundred years. The League lacked its own armed force and depended on the victorious Allied Powers of World War I (Britain, France, Italy and Japan were the initial permanent members of the Council) to enforce its resolutions, keep to its economic sanctions, or provide an army when needed. The Great Powers were often reluctant to do so. Sanctions could hurt League members, so they were reluctant to comply with them. During the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, when the League accused Italian soldiers of targeting International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement medical tents, Benito Mussolini responded that \"the League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out.\"\nAt its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935, it had 58 members. After some notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930s. Its credibility was weakened because the United States never joined. Japan and Germany left in 1933, Italy left in 1937, and Spain left in 1939. The Soviet Union only joined in 1934 and was expelled in 1939 after invading Finland. Furthermore, the League demonstrated an irresolute approach to sanction enforcement for fear it might only spark further conflict, further decreasing its credibility. One example of this hesitancy was the Abyssinia Crisis, in which Italy's sanctions were only limited from the outset (coal and oil were not restricted), and later altogether abandoned despite Italy being declared the aggressors in the conflict. The onset of the Second World War in 1939 showed that the League had failed its primary purpose: to prevent another world war. It was largely inactive until its abolition. The League lasted for 26 years; the United Nations effectively replaced it in 1945, inheriting several agencies and organisations founded by the League, with the League itself formally dissolving the following year.\nCurrent scholarly consensus views that, even though the League failed to achieve its main goal of world peace, it did manage to build new roads towards expanding the rule of law across the globe; strengthened the concept of collective security, gave a voice to smaller nations; fostered economic stabilisation and financial stability, especially in Central Europe in the 1920s; helped to raise awareness of problems such as epidemics, slavery, child labour, colonial tyranny, refugee crises and general working conditions through its numerous commissions and committees; and paved the way for new forms of statehood, as the mandate system put the colonial powers under international observation. Professor David Kennedy portrays the League as a unique moment when international affairs were \"institutionalised\", as opposed to the pre\u2013First World War methods of law and politics.\nOrigins.\nBackground.\nThe concept of a peaceful community of nations had been proposed as early as 1795, when Immanuel Kant's \"\" outlined the idea of a league of nations to control conflict and promote peace between states. Kant argued for the establishment of a peaceful world community, not in a sense of a global government, but in the hope that each state would declare itself a free state that respects its citizens and welcomes foreign visitors as fellow rational beings, thus promoting peaceful society worldwide. International co-operation to promote collective security originated in the Concert of Europe that developed after the Napoleonic Wars in the 19th century in an attempt to maintain the \"status quo\" between European states and so avoid war.\nBy 1910, international law developed, with the first Geneva Conventions establishing laws dealing with humanitarian relief during wartime, and the international Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 governing rules of war and the peaceful settlement of international disputes. Theodore Roosevelt at the acceptance for his Nobel Prize in 1910, said: \"it would be a masterstroke if those great powers honestly bent on peace would form a League of Peace.\"\nOne small forerunner of the League of Nations, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), was formed by the peace activists William Randal Cremer and Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Passy in 1889 (and still exists as an international body focused on the world's various elected legislative bodies). The IPU was founded with an international scope, with a third of the members of parliaments (in the 24 countries that had parliaments) serving as members of the IPU by 1914. Its foundational aims were to encourage governments to solve international disputes by peaceful means. Annual conferences were established to help governments refine the process of international arbitration. Its structure was designed as a council headed by a president, which would later be reflected in the structure of the League.\nPlans and proposals.\nAt the start of the First World War, the first schemes for an international organisation to prevent future wars began to gain considerable public support, particularly in Great Britain and the United States. Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, a British political scientist, coined the term \"League of Nations\" in 1914 and drafted a scheme for its organisation. Together with Lord Bryce, he played a leading role in the founding of the group of internationalist pacifists known as the Bryce Group, later the League of Nations Union. The group became steadily more influential among the public and as a pressure group within the then-governing Liberal Party. In Dickinson's 1915 pamphlet \"After the War\" he wrote of his \"League of Peace\" as being essentially an organisation for arbitration and conciliation. He felt that the secret diplomacy of the early twentieth century had brought about war, and thus, could write that, \"the impossibility of war, I believe, would be increased in proportion as the issues of foreign policy should be known to and controlled by public opinion.\" The 'Proposals' of the Bryce Group were circulated widely, both in England and the US, where they had a profound influence on the nascent international movement.\nIn January 1915, a peace conference directed by Jane Addams was held in the neutral United States. The delegates adopted a platform calling for creation of international bodies with administrative and legislative powers to develop a \"permanent league of neutral nations\" to work for peace and disarmament. Within months, a call was made for an international women's conference to be held in The Hague. Coordinated by Mia Boissevain, Aletta Jacobs and Rosa Manus, the congress, which opened on 28 April 1915 was attended by 1,136 participants from neutral nations, and resulted in the establishment of an organisation which would become the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). At the close of the conference, two delegations of women were dispatched to meet European heads of state over the next several months. They secured agreement from reluctant foreign ministers, who overall felt that such a body would be ineffective, but agreed to participate in or not impede creation of a neutral mediating body, if other nations agreed and if President Woodrow Wilson would initiate a body. In the midst of the War, Wilson refused.\nIn 1915, a body similar to the Bryce Group was set up in the United States, led by former president William Howard Taft. It was called the League to Enforce Peace. It advocated the use of arbitration in conflict resolution and the imposition of sanctions on aggressive countries. None of these early organisations envisioned a continuously functioning body; with the exception of the Fabian Society in England, they maintained a legalistic approach that would limit the international body to a court of justice. The Fabians were the first to argue for a \"council\" of states, necessarily the Great Powers, who would adjudicate world affairs, and for the creation of a permanent secretariat to enhance international co-operation across a range of activities.\nIn the course of the diplomatic efforts surrounding World War I, both sides had to clarify their long-term war aims. By 1916 in Britain, fighting on the side of the Allies, and in the neutral United States, long-range thinkers had begun to design a unified international organisation to prevent future wars. Historian Peter Yearwood argues that when the new coalition government of David Lloyd George took power in December 1916, there was widespread discussion among intellectuals and diplomats of the desirability of establishing such an organisation. When Lloyd George was challenged by Wilson to state his position with an eye on the postwar situation, he endorsed such an organisation. Wilson himself included in his Fourteen Points in January 1918 a \"league of nations to ensure peace and justice.\" British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, argued that, as a condition of durable peace, \"behind international law, and behind all treaty arrangements for preventing or limiting hostilities, some form of international sanction should be devised which would give pause to the hardiest aggressor.\"\nThe war had had a profound impact, affecting the social, political and economic systems of Europe and inflicting psychological and physical damage. Several empires collapsed: first the Russian Empire in February 1917, followed by the German Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empire. Anti-war sentiment rose across the world; the First World War was described as \"the war to end all wars\", and its possible causes were vigorously investigated. The causes identified included arms races, alliances, militaristic nationalism, secret diplomacy, and the freedom of sovereign states to enter into war for their own benefit. One proposed remedy was the creation of an international organisation whose aim was to prevent future war through disarmament, open diplomacy, international co-operation, restrictions on the right to wage war, and penalties that made war unattractive.\nIn London Balfour commissioned the first official report into the matter in early 1918, under the initiative of Lord Robert Cecil. The British committee was finally appointed in February 1918. It was led by Walter Phillimore (and became known as the Phillimore Committee), but also included Eyre Crowe, William Tyrrell, and Cecil Hurst. The recommendations of the so-called Phillimore Commission included the establishment of a \"Conference of Allied States\" that would arbitrate disputes and impose sanctions on offending states. The proposals were approved by the British government, and much of the commission's results were later incorporated into the Covenant of the League of Nations.\nThe French authorities also drafted a much more far-reaching proposal in June 1918; they advocated annual meetings of a council to settle all disputes, as well as an \"international army\" to enforce its decisions.\nAmerican President Woodrow Wilson instructed Edward M. House to draft a US plan which reflected Wilson's own idealistic views (first articulated in the Fourteen Points of January 1918), as well as the work of the Phillimore Commission. The outcome of House's work and Wilson's own first draft proposed the termination of \"unethical\" state behaviour, including forms of espionage and dishonesty. Methods of compulsion against recalcitrant states would include severe measures, such as \"blockading and closing the frontiers of that power to commerce or intercourse with any part of the world and to use any force that may be necessary...\"\nThe two principal drafters and architects of the covenant of the League of Nations were the British politician Lord Robert Cecil and the South African statesman Jan Smuts. Smuts's proposals included the creation of a council of the great powers as permanent members and a non-permanent selection of the minor states. He also proposed the creation of a mandate system for captured colonies of the Central Powers during the war. Cecil focused on the administrative side and proposed annual council meetings and quadrennial meetings for the Assembly of all members. He also argued for a large and permanent secretariat to carry out the League's administrative duties.\nAccording to historian Patricia Clavin, Cecil and the British continued their leadership of the development of a rules-based global order into the 1920s and 1930s, with a primary focus on the League of Nations. The British goal was to systematise and normalise the economic and social relations between states, markets, and civil society. They gave priority to business and banking issues, but also considered the needs of ordinary women, children and the family as well. They moved beyond high-level intellectual discussions, and set up local organisations to support the League. The British were particularly active in setting up junior branches for secondary students.\nThe League of Nations was relatively more universal and inclusive in its membership and structure than previous international organisations, but the organisation enshrined racial hierarchy by curtailing the right to self-determination and prevented decolonisation.\nEstablishment.\nAt the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Wilson, Cecil and Smuts all put forward their draft proposals. After lengthy negotiations between the delegates, the Hurst\u2013Miller draft was finally produced as a basis for the Covenant. After more negotiation and compromise, the delegates finally approved of the proposal to create the League of Nations (, ) on 25 January 1919. The final Covenant of the League of Nations was drafted by a special commission, and the League was established by Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919.\nFrench women's rights advocates invited international feminists to participate in a parallel conference to the Paris Conference in hopes that they could gain permission to participate in the official conference. The Inter-Allied Women's Conference asked to be allowed to submit suggestions to the peace negotiations and commissions and were granted the right to sit on commissions dealing specifically with women and children. Though they asked for enfranchisement and full legal protection under the law equal with men, those rights were ignored. Women won the right to serve in all capacities, including as staff or delegates in the League of Nations organisation. They also won a declaration that member nations should prevent trafficking of women and children and should equally support humane conditions for children, women and men labourers. At the Z\u00fcrich Peace Conference held between 17 and 19 May 1919, the women of the WILPF condemned the terms of the Treaty of Versailles for both its punitive measures, as well as its failure to provide for condemnation of violence and exclusion of women from civil and political participation. Upon reading the Rules of Procedure for the League of Nations, Catherine Marshall, a British suffragist, discovered that the guidelines were completely undemocratic and they were modified based on her suggestion.\nThe League would be made up of a Assembly (representing all member states), a Council (with membership limited to major powers), and a permanent Secretariat. Member states were expected to \"respect and preserve as against external aggression\" the territorial integrity of other members and to disarm \"to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.\" All states were required to submit complaints for arbitration or judicial inquiry before going to war. The Council would create a Permanent Court of International Justice to make judgements on the disputes.\nDespite Wilson's efforts to establish and promote the League, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1919, the United States never joined. Senate Republicans led by Henry Cabot Lodge wanted a League with the reservation that only Congress could take the U.S. into war. Lodge gained a majority of Senators and Wilson refused to allow a compromise. The Senate voted on the ratification on 19 March 1920, and the 49\u201335 vote fell short of the needed 2/3 majority.\nThe League held its first council meeting in Paris on 16 January 1920, six days after the Versailles Treaty and the Covenant of the League of Nations came into force. On 1 November 1920, the headquarters of the League was moved from London to Geneva, where the first General Assembly was held on 15 November 1920. Geneva made sense as an ideal city for the League, since Switzerland had been a neutral country for centuries and was already the headquarters for the International Red Cross. Its strong democracy and location in central Europe made it a good choice for the nations of the world. Support for Geneva as the selection came from Swiss Federal Councillor Gustave Ador and economist William Rappard. The Palais Wilson on Geneva's western lakeshore, named after Woodrow Wilson, was the League's first permanent home.\nMission.\nThe covenant had ambiguities, as Carole Fink points out. There was not a good fit between Wilson's \"revolutionary conception of the League as a solid replacement for a corrupt alliance system, a guardian of international order, and protector of small states,\" versus Lloyd George's desire for a \"cheap, self-enforcing, peace, such as had been maintained by the old and more fluid Concert of Europe.\"\nFurthermore, the League, according to Carole Fink, was, \"deliberately excluded from such great-power prerogatives as freedom of the seas and naval disarmament, the Monroe Doctrine and the internal affairs of the French and British empires, and inter-Allied debts and German reparations, not to mention the Allied intervention and the settlement of borders with Soviet Russia.\"\nAlthough the United States never joined, unofficial observers became more and more involved, especially in the 1930s. American philanthropies became heavily involved, especially the Rockefeller Foundation. It made major grants designed to build up the technical expertise of the League staff. Ludovic Tourn\u00e8s argues that by the 1930s the foundations had changed the League from a \"Parliament of Nations\" to a modern think tank that used specialised expertise to provide an in-depth impartial analysis of international issues.\nLanguages and symbols.\nThe official languages of the League of Nations were French and English.\nDuring the 1939 New York World's Fair, a semi-official flag and emblem for the League of Nations emerged: two five-pointed stars within a blue pentagon. They symbolised the Earth's five continents and \"five races\". A bow at the top displayed the English name (\"League of Nations\"), while another at the bottom showed the French (\"Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 des Nations\").\nMembership.\nThe League consisted of 42 founding members in November 1920. Six other states joined in its founding year (by December 1920), and seven more joined by September 1924, bringing the League's size to 55. Costa Rica withdrew in December 1924, making it the member to have most quickly withdrawn, and Brazil became the first founding member to withdraw in June 1926. Germany (under the Weimar Republic) was admitted to the League of Nations through a resolution passed on 8 September 1926. The League's size remained at 54 for the next five years.\nThrough the first half of the 1930s, six more states joined, including Iraq in 1932 (newly independent from a League of Nations mandate) and the Soviet Union on 18 September 1934, but the Empire of Japan and Germany (under Hitler) withdrew in 1933. This marked the League's largest extent at 58 member states.\nIn December 1920, Argentina quit (being absent from all sessions and votes) without formally withdrawing, on rejection of an Argentine resolution that all sovereign states would be admitted to the League. It resumed its participation in September 1933.\nThe League's membership declined through the second half of the 1930s as it weakened. Between 1935 and the start of World War II in Europe in September 1939, only Egypt joined (becoming the last state to join), 11 members left, and 3 members ceased to exist or fell under military occupation (Ethiopia, Austria, and Czechoslovakia). The Soviet Union was expelled on 14 December 1939 for invading Finland, as one of the last acts of the League before it ceased functioning.\nOrganization.\n \nPermanent organs.\nThe main constitutional organs of the League were the Assembly, the council, and the Permanent Secretariat. It also had two essential wings: the Permanent Court of International Justice and the International Labour Organization. In addition, there were several auxiliary agencies and bodies. Each organ's budget was allocated by the Assembly (the League was supported financially by its member states).\nThe relations between the assembly and the council and the competencies of each were for the most part not explicitly defined. Each body could deal with any matter within the sphere of competence of the league or affecting peace in the world. Particular questions or tasks might be referred to either.\nUnanimity was required for the decisions of both the assembly and the council, except in matters of procedure and some other specific cases such as the admission of new members. This requirement was a reflection of the league's belief in the sovereignty of its component nations; the league sought a solution by consent, not by dictation. In case of a dispute, the consent of the parties to the dispute was not required for unanimity.\nThe Permanent Secretariat, established at the seat of the League at Geneva, comprised a body of experts in various spheres under the direction of the general secretary. Its principal sections were Political, Financial and Economics, Transit, Minorities and Administration (administering the Saar and Danzig), Mandates, Disarmament, Health, Social (Opium and Traffic in Women and Children), Intellectual Cooperation and International Bureaux, Legal, and Information. The staff of the Secretariat was responsible for preparing the agenda for the Council and the Assembly and publishing reports of the meetings and other routine matters, effectively acting as the League's civil service. In 1931 the staff numbered 707.\nThe Assembly consisted of representatives of all members of the League, with each state allowed up to three representatives and one vote. It met in Geneva and, after its initial sessions in 1920, it convened once a year in September. The special functions of the Assembly included the admission of new members, the periodical election of non-permanent members to the council, the election with the Council of the judges of the Permanent Court, and control of the budget. In practice, the Assembly was the general directing force of League activities.\nThe Council acted as a type of executive body directing the Assembly's business. It began with four permanent members \u2013 Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan \u2013 and four non-permanent members that were elected by the Assembly for a three-year term. The first non-permanent members were Belgium, Brazil, Greece, and Spain.\nThe composition of the Council was changed several times. The number of non-permanent members was first increased to six on 22 September 1922 and to nine on 8 September 1926. Werner Dankwort of Germany pushed for his country to join the League; joining in 1926, Germany became the fifth permanent member of the Council. Later, after Germany and Japan both left the League, the number of non-permanent seats was increased from nine to eleven, and the Soviet Union was made a permanent member giving the council a total of fifteen members. The Council met, on average, five times a year and in extraordinary sessions when required. In total, 107 sessions were held between 1920 and 1939.\nOther bodies.\nThe League oversaw the Permanent Court of International Justice and several other agencies and commissions created to deal with pressing international problems. These included the Disarmament Commission, the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Mandates Commission, the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation (precursor to UNESCO), the Permanent Central Opium Board, the Commission for Refugees, the Slavery Commission, and the Economic and Financial Organization. Three of these institutions were transferred to the United Nations after the Second World War: the International Labour Organization, the Permanent Court of International Justice (as the International Court of Justice), and the Health Organisation (restructured as the World Health Organization).\nThe Permanent Court of International Justice was provided for by the Covenant, but not established by it. The Council and the Assembly established its constitution. Its judges were elected by the Council and the Assembly, and its budget was provided by the latter. The Court was to hear and decide any international dispute which the parties concerned submitted to it. It might also give an advisory opinion on any dispute or question referred to it by the council or the Assembly. The Court was open to all the nations of the world under certain broad conditions.\nThe International Labour Organization was created in 1919 on the basis of Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles. The ILO, although having the same members as the League and being subject to the budget control of the Assembly, was an autonomous organisation with its own Governing Body, its own General Conference and its own Secretariat. Its constitution differed from that of the League: representation had been accorded not only to governments but also to representatives of employers' and workers' organisations. Albert Thomas was its first director.\nThe ILO successfully restricted the addition of lead to paint, and convinced several countries to adopt an eight-hour work day and forty-eight-hour working week. It also campaigned to end child labour, increase the rights of women in the workplace, and make shipowners liable for accidents involving seamen. After the demise of the League, the ILO became an agency of the United Nations in 1946.\nThe League's Health Organisation had three bodies: the Health Bureau, containing permanent officials of the League; the General Advisory Council or Conference, an executive section consisting of medical experts; and the Health Committee. In practice, the Paris-based Office international d'hygi\u00e8ne publique (OIHP) founded in 1907 after the International Sanitary Conferences, was discharging most of the practical health-related questions, and its relations with the League's Health Committee were often conflictual. The Health Committee's purpose was to conduct inquiries, oversee the operation of the League's health work, and prepare work to be presented to the council. This body focused on ending leprosy, malaria, and yellow fever, the latter two by starting an international campaign to exterminate mosquitoes. The Health Organisation also worked successfully with the government of the Soviet Union to prevent typhus epidemics, including organising a large education campaign.\nLinked with health, but also commercial concerns, was the topic of narcotics control. Introduced by the second International Opium Convention, the Permanent Central Opium Board had to supervise the statistical reports on trade in opium, morphine, cocaine and heroin. The board also established a system of import certificates and export authorisations for the legal international trade in narcotics.\nThe League of Nations had devoted serious attention to the question of international intellectual cooperation since its creation. The First Assembly in December 1920 recommended that the Council take action aiming at the international organisation of intellectual work, which it did by adopting a report presented by the Fifth Committee of the Second Assembly and inviting a committee on intellectual co-operation to meet in Geneva in August 1922. The French philosopher Henri Bergson became the first chairman of the committee. The work of the committee included: an inquiry into the conditions of intellectual life, assistance to countries where intellectual life was endangered, creation of national committees for intellectual cooperation, cooperation with international intellectual organisations, protection of intellectual property, inter-university co-operation, co-ordination of bibliographical work and international interchange of publications, and international co-operation in archaeological research.\nThe Slavery Commission sought to eradicate slavery and slave trading across the world, and fought forced prostitution. Its main success was through pressing the governments who administered mandated countries to end slavery in those countries. The League secured a commitment from Ethiopia to end slavery as a condition of membership in 1923, and worked with Liberia to abolish forced labour and intertribal slavery. The United Kingdom had not supported Ethiopian membership of the League on the grounds that \"Ethiopia had not reached a state of civilisation and internal security sufficient to warrant her admission.\"\nThe League also succeeded in reducing the death rate of workers constructing the Tanganyika railway from 55 to 4 per cent. Records were kept to control slavery, prostitution, and the trafficking of women and children. Partly as a result of pressure brought by the League of Nations, Afghanistan abolished slavery in 1923, Iraq in 1924, Nepal in 1926, Transjordan and Persia in 1929, Bahrain in 1937, and Ethiopia in 1942.\nLed by Fridtjof Nansen, the Commission for Refugees was established on 27 June 1921 to look after the interests of refugees, including overseeing their repatriation and, when necessary, resettlement. At the end of the First World War, there were two to three million ex-prisoners of war from various nations dispersed throughout Russia; within two years of the commission's foundation, it had helped 425,000 of them return home. It established camps in Turkey in 1922 to aid the country with an ongoing refugee crisis, helping to prevent the spread of cholera, smallpox and dysentery as well as feeding the refugees in the camps. It also established the Nansen passport as a means of identification for stateless people.\nThe Committee for the Study of the Legal Status of Women sought to inquire into the status of women all over the world. It was formed in 1937, and later became part of the United Nations as the Commission on the Status of Women.\nThe Covenant of the League said little about economics. Nonetheless, in 1920 the Council of the League called for a financial conference. The First Assembly at Geneva provided for the appointment of an Economic and Financial Advisory Committee to provide information to the conference. In 1923, a permanent Economic and Financial Organisation came into being. The existing bilateral treaty regime was integrated into the League where the most-favoured-nation norm was codified and the League took on responsibilities related to international oversight and standardisation.\nMandates.\nAt the end of the First World War, the Allied Powers were confronted with the question of the disposal of the former German colonies in Africa and the Pacific, and the several Arabic-speaking provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Many British and French leaders wanted to annex colonies of the defeated Central Powers, but U.S. President Woodrow Wilson strongly insisted that instead of annexation, these territories should be assisted under League of Nations supervision in achieving self-governance and eventual independence depending on the inhabitants' choices.\nThe Paris Peace Conference compromised with Wilson by adopting the principle that these territories should be administered by different governments on behalf of the League \u2013 a system of national responsibility subject to international supervision. This plan, defined as the mandate system, was adopted by the \"Council of Ten\" (the heads of government and foreign ministers of the main Allied Powers: Britain, France, the United States, Italy, and Japan) on 30 January 1919 and transmitted to the League of Nations.\nLeague of Nations mandates were established under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. The Permanent Mandates Commission supervised League of Nations mandates, and also organised plebiscites in disputed territories so that residents could decide which country they would join. There were three mandate classifications: A, B and C.\nThe A mandates (applied to parts of the old Ottoman Empire) were \"certain communities\" that had <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Article 22\nThe B mandates were applied to the former German colonies that the League took responsibility for after the First World War. These were described as \"peoples\" that the League said were <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Article 22\nSouth West Africa and certain South Pacific Islands were administered by League members under C mandates. These were classified as \"territories\" <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Article 22\nMandatory powers.\nThe territories were governed by mandatory powers, such as the United Kingdom in the case of the Mandate of Palestine, and the Union of South Africa in the case of South-West Africa, until the territories were deemed capable of self-government. Fourteen mandate territories were divided up among seven mandatory powers: the United Kingdom, the Union of South Africa, France, Belgium, New Zealand, Australia and Japan. With the exception of the Kingdom of Iraq, which joined the League on 3 October 1932, most of these territories did not begin to gain their independence until after the Second World War, in a process that did not end until 1990. Following the demise of the League, most of the remaining mandates became United Nations Trust Territories.\nIn addition to the mandates, the League itself governed the Territory of the Saar Basin for 15 years, before it was returned to Germany following a plebiscite, and the Free City of Danzig (now Gda\u0144sk, Poland) from 15 November 1920 to 1 September 1939.\nResolving territorial disputes.\nThe aftermath of the First World War left many issues to be settled, including the exact position of national boundaries and which country particular regions would join. Most of these questions were handled by the victorious Allied Powers in bodies such as the Allied Supreme Council. The Allied Powers tended to refer only particularly difficult matters to the League. This meant that, during the early interwar period, the League played little part in resolving the turmoil resulting from the war. The questions the League considered in its early years included those designated by the Paris Peace treaties.\nAs the League developed, its role expanded, and by the middle of the 1920s it had become the centre of international activity. This change can be seen in the relationship between the League and non-members. The United States and the Soviet Union, for example, increasingly worked with the League. During the second half of the 1920s, France, Britain and Germany were all using the League of Nations as the focus of their diplomatic activity, and each of their foreign secretaries attended League meetings at Geneva during this period. They also used the League's machinery to try to improve relations and settle their differences.\n\u00c5land Islands.\n\u00c5land is a collection of around 6,500 islands in the Baltic Sea, midway between Sweden and Finland. The islands are almost exclusively Swedish-speaking, but in 1809, the \u00c5land Islands, along with Finland, were taken by Imperial Russia. In December 1917, during the turmoil of the Russian October Revolution, Finland declared its independence, but most of the \u00c5landers wished to rejoin Sweden. The Finnish government considered the islands to be a part of their new nation, as the Russians had included \u00c5land in the Grand Duchy of Finland, formed in 1809. By 1920, the dispute had escalated to the point that there was danger of war. The British government referred the problem to the League of Nations Council, but Finland would not let the League intervene, as they considered it an internal matter. The League created a small panel to decide if it should investigate the matter and, with an affirmative response, a neutral commission was created. In June 1921, the League announced its decision: the islands were to remain a part of Finland, but with guaranteed protection of the islanders, including demilitarisation. With Sweden's reluctant agreement, this became the first European international agreement concluded directly through the League.\nUpper Silesia.\nThe Allied powers referred the problem of Upper Silesia to the League after they had been unable to resolve the territorial dispute between Poland and Germany. In 1919 Poland voiced a claim to Upper Silesia, which had been part of Prussia. The Treaty of Versailles had recommended a plebiscite in Upper Silesia to determine whether the territory should become part of Germany or Poland. Complaints about the attitude of the German authorities led to rioting and eventually to the first two Silesian Uprisings (1919 and 1920). A plebiscite took place on 20 March 1921, with 59.6 per cent (around 500,000) of the votes cast in favour of joining Germany, but Poland claimed the conditions surrounding it had been unfair. This result led to the Third Silesian Uprising in 1921.\nOn 12 August 1921, the League was asked to settle the matter; the Council created a commission with representatives from Belgium, Brazil, China and Spain to study the situation. The committee recommended that Upper Silesia be divided between Poland and Germany according to the preferences shown in the plebiscite and that the two sides should decide the details of the interaction between the two areas \u2013 for example, whether goods should pass freely over the border due to the economic and industrial interdependence of the two areas. In November 1921, a conference was held in Geneva to negotiate a convention between Germany and Poland. A final settlement was reached, after five meetings, in which most of the area was given to Germany, but with the Polish section containing the majority of the region's mineral resources and much of its industry. When this agreement became public in May 1922, bitter resentment was expressed in Germany, but the treaty was still ratified by both countries. The settlement produced peace in the area until the beginning of the Second World War.\nAlbania.\nThe frontiers of the Principality of Albania had not been set during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, as they were left for the League to decide. They had not yet been determined by September 1921, creating an unstable situation. Greek troops conducted military operations in the south of Albania. Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslav) forces became engaged, after clashes with Albanian tribesmen, in the northern part of the country. The League sent a commission of representatives from various powers to the region. In November 1921, the League decided that the frontiers of Albania should be the same as they had been in 1913, with three minor changes that favoured Yugoslavia. Yugoslav forces withdrew a few weeks later, albeit under protest.\nThe borders of Albania again became the cause of international conflict when Italian General Enrico Tellini and four of his assistants were ambushed and killed on 27 August 1923 while marking out the newly decided border between Greece and Albania. Italian leader Benito Mussolini was incensed and demanded that a commission investigate the incident within five days. Whatever the results of the investigation, Mussolini insisted that the Greek government pay Italy Lire\u00a050 million in reparations. The Greeks said they would not pay unless it was proved that the crime was committed by Greeks.\nMussolini sent a warship to shell the Greek island of Corfu, and Italian forces occupied the island on 31 August 1923. This contravened the League of Nations Covenant, so Greece appealed to the League to deal with the situation. The Allied Powers agreed (at Mussolini's insistence) that the Conference of Ambassadors should be responsible for resolving the dispute because it was the conference that had appointed General Tellini. The League of Nations Council examined the dispute, but then passed on their findings to the Conference of Ambassadors to make the final decision. The conference accepted most of the League's recommendations, forcing Greece to pay fifty million lire to Italy, even though those who committed the crime were never discovered. Italian forces then withdrew from Corfu.\nMemel.\nThe port city of Memel (now Klaip\u0117da) and the surrounding area, with a predominantly German population, was under provisional Entente control according to Article 99 of the Treaty of Versailles. The French and Polish governments favoured turning Memel into an international city, while Lithuania wanted to annex the area. By 1923, the fate of the area had still not been decided, prompting Lithuanian forces to invade in January 1923 and seize the port. After the Allied Powers failed to reach an agreement with Lithuania, they referred the matter to the League of Nations. In December 1923, the League of Nations Council appointed a Commission of Inquiry. The commission chose to cede Memel to Lithuania and give the area autonomous rights. The Klaip\u0117da Convention was approved by the Council on 14 March 1924, and then by the Allied Powers and Lithuania. In 1939 Germany retook the region following the rise of the Nazis and an ultimatum to Lithuania, demanding the return of the region under threat of war. The League of Nations failed to prevent the secession of the Memel region to Germany.\nHatay.\nWith League oversight, the Sanjak of Alexandretta in the French Mandate of Syria was given autonomy in 1937. Renamed Hatay, its parliament declared independence as the Republic of Hatay in September 1938, after elections the previous month. It was annexed by Turkey with French consent in mid-1939.\nMosul.\nThe League resolved a dispute between the Kingdom of Iraq and the Republic of Turkey over control of the former Ottoman province of Mosul in 1926. According to the British, who had been awarded a League of Nations mandate over Iraq in 1920 and therefore represented Iraq in its foreign affairs, Mosul belonged to Iraq; on the other hand, the new Turkish republic claimed the province as part of its historic heartland. A League of Nations Commission of Inquiry, with Belgian, Hungarian and Swedish members, was sent to the region in 1924; it found that the people of Mosul did not want to be part of either Turkey or Iraq, but if they had to choose, they would pick Iraq. In 1925, the commission recommended that the region stay part of Iraq, under the condition that the British hold the mandate over Iraq for another 25 years, to ensure the autonomous rights of the Kurdish population. The League Council adopted the recommendation and decided on 16 December 1925 to award Mosul to Iraq. Although Turkey had accepted League of Nations arbitration in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), it rejected the decision, questioning the Council's authority. The matter was referred to the Permanent Court of International Justice, which ruled that, when the Council made a unanimous decision, it must be accepted. Nonetheless, Britain, Iraq and Turkey ratified a separate treaty on 5 June 1926 that mostly followed the decision of the Council and also assigned Mosul to Iraq. It was agreed that Iraq could still apply for League membership within 25 years and that the mandate would end upon its admission.\nVilnius.\nAfter the First World War, Poland and Lithuania both regained their independence but soon became immersed in territorial disputes. During the Polish\u2013Soviet War, Lithuania signed the Moscow Peace Treaty with the Soviet Russia that laid out Lithuania's frontiers. This agreement gave Lithuanians control of the city of Vilnius (, ), the old Lithuanian capital, but a city with a majority Polish population. This heightened tension between Lithuania and Poland and led to fears that they would resume the Polish\u2013Lithuanian War, and on 7 October 1920, the League negotiated the Suwa\u0142ki Agreement establishing a cease-fire and a demarcation line between the two nations. On 9 October 1920, General Lucjan \u017beligowski, commanding a Polish military force in contravention of the Suwa\u0142ki Agreement, took the city and established the Republic of Central Lithuania.\nAfter a request for assistance from Lithuania, the League of Nations Council called for Poland's withdrawal from the area. The Polish government indicated they would comply, but instead reinforced the city with more Polish troops. This prompted the League to decide that the future of Vilnius should be determined by its residents in a plebiscite and that the Polish forces should withdraw and be replaced by an international force organised by the League. The plan was met with resistance in Poland, Lithuania, and the Soviet Russia, which opposed any international force in Lithuania. In March 1921, the League abandoned plans for the plebiscite. After unsuccessful proposals by Paul Hymans to create a federation between Poland and Lithuania, which was intended as a reincarnation of the former Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth which the two nations had shared before losing their independence, Vilnius and the surrounding area was formally annexed by Poland in March 1922. After Lithuania took over the Klaip\u0117da Region, the Allied Conference set the frontier between Lithuania and Poland, leaving Vilnius within Poland, on 14 March 1923. Lithuanian authorities refused to accept the decision, and officially remained in a state of war with Poland until 1927. It was not until the 1938 Polish ultimatum that Lithuania restored diplomatic relations with Poland and thus \"de facto\" accepted the borders.\nColombia and Peru.\nThere were several border conflicts between Colombia and Peru in the early part of the 20th century, and in 1922, their governments signed the Salom\u00f3n-Lozano Treaty in an attempt to resolve them. As part of this treaty, the border town of Leticia and its surrounding area was ceded from Peru to Colombia, giving Colombia access to the Amazon River. On 1 September 1932, business leaders from Peruvian rubber and sugar industries who had lost land, as a result, organised an armed takeover of Leticia. At first, the Peruvian government did not recognise the military takeover, but President of Peru Luis S\u00e1nchez Cerro decided to resist a Colombian re-occupation. The Peruvian Army occupied Leticia, leading to an armed conflict between the two nations. After months of diplomatic negotiations, the governments accepted mediation by the League of Nations, and their representatives presented their cases before the Council. A provisional peace agreement, signed by both parties in May 1933, provided for the League to assume control of the disputed territory while bilateral negotiations proceeded. In May 1934, a final peace agreement was signed, resulting in the return of Leticia to Colombia, a formal apology from Peru for the 1932 invasion, demilitarisation of the area around Leticia, free navigation on the Amazon and Putumayo Rivers, and a pledge of non-aggression.\nSaar.\nSaar was a province formed from parts of Prussia and the Rhenish Palatinate and placed under League control by the Treaty of Versailles. A plebiscite was to be held after fifteen years of League rule to determine whether the province should belong to Germany or France. When the referendum was held in 1935, 90.3 per cent of voters supported becoming part of Germany, which was quickly approved by the League of Nations Council.\nOther conflicts.\nIn addition to territorial disputes, the League also tried to intervene in other conflicts between and within nations. Among its successes were its fight against the international trade in opium and sexual slavery, and its work to alleviate the plight of refugees, particularly in Turkey in the period up to 1926. One of its innovations in this latter area was the 1922 introduction of the Nansen passport, which was the first internationally recognised identity card for stateless refugees.\nGreece and Bulgaria.\nAfter an incident involving sentries on the Greek-Bulgarian border in October 1925, fighting began between the two countries. Three days after the initial incident, Greek troops invaded Bulgaria. The Bulgarian government ordered its troops to make only token resistance, and evacuated between ten thousand and fifteen thousand people from the border region, trusting the League to settle the dispute. The League condemned the Greek invasion, and called for both Greek withdrawal and compensation to Bulgaria.\nLiberia.\nFollowing accusations of forced labour on the large American-owned Firestone rubber plantation and American accusations of slave trading, the Liberian government asked the League to launch an investigation. The resulting commission was jointly appointed by the League, the United States, and Liberia. In 1930, a League report confirmed the presence of slavery and forced labour. The report implicated many government officials in the selling of contract labour and recommended that they be replaced by Europeans or Americans, which generated anger within Liberia and led to the resignation of President Charles D. B. King and his vice-president. The Liberian government outlawed forced labour and slavery and asked for American help in social reforms.\nMukden Incident.\nThe Mukden Incident, also known as the \"Manchurian Incident\", was a decisive setback that weakened the League because its major members refused to tackle Japanese aggression. Japan itself withdrew.\nUnder the agreed terms of the Twenty-One Demands with China, the Japanese government had the right to station its troops in the area around the South Manchurian Railway, a major trade route between China and Korea (then a Japanese colony), in the Chinese region of Manchuria. In September 1931, a section of the railway was lightly damaged by the Japanese Kwantung Army as a pretext for an invasion of Manchuria. The Japanese army claimed that Chinese soldiers had sabotaged the railway and in apparent retaliation (acting contrary to orders from Tokyo) occupied all of Manchuria. They renamed the area Manchukuo, and on 9 March 1932 set up a puppet government, with Puyi, the final emperor of China, as its nominal head of state.\nThe League of Nations sent observers. The Lytton Report appeared a year later (October 1932). It refused to recognise Manchukuo and demanded Manchuria be returned to China. The report passed 42\u20131 in the Assembly in 1933 (only Japan voting against), but instead of removing its troops from China, Japan withdrew from the League. In the end, as British historian Charles Mowat argued, collective security was dead:\nThe League and the ideas of collective security and the rule of law were defeated; partly because of indifference and of sympathy with the aggressor, but partly because the League powers were unprepared, preoccupied with other matters, and too slow to perceive the scale of Japanese ambitions.\nChaco War.\nThe League failed to prevent the 1932 war between Bolivia and Paraguay over the arid Gran Chaco region. Although the region was sparsely populated, it contained the Paraguay River, which would have given either landlocked country access to the Atlantic Ocean, and there was also speculation, later proved incorrect, that the Chaco would be a rich source of petroleum. Border skirmishes throughout the late 1920s culminated in an all-out war in 1932 when the Bolivian army attacked the Paraguayans at Fort Carlos Antonio L\u00f3pez at Lake Pitiantuta. The war was a disaster for both sides, causing 57,000 casualties for Bolivia, whose population was around three million, and 36,000 dead for Paraguay, whose population was approximately one million. It also brought both countries to the brink of economic disaster. By the time a ceasefire was negotiated on 12 June 1935, Paraguay had seized control of most of the region, as was later recognised by the 1938 truce.\nInitially, both sides refused to allow the League to conduct an inquiry until November 1933, over a year after the start of the war. As a result, the League did not formally invoke Article 16 to apply sanctions. The Pan-American Conference offered to mediate and the League deferred to the conference, but the warring sides ignored the conference. Eventually (without going through Article 16), an arms embargo was enacted by several members of the League (plus non-League members the United States and Brazil), but several neighbouring states ignored the embargo rendering it ineffective. In November 1934, the League demanded that both sides withdraw and undergo arbitration. Bolivia accepted, but Paraguay by then had taken control of all of the disputed area. Paraguay rejected arbitration and quit the League.\nItalian invasion of Abyssinia.\nIn October 1935, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini sent 400,000 troops to invade Abyssinia (Ethiopia). Marshal Pietro Badoglio led the campaign from November 1935, ordering bombing, the use of chemical weapons such as mustard gas, and the poisoning of water supplies, against targets which included undefended villages and medical facilities. The modern Italian Army defeated the poorly armed Abyssinians and captured Addis Ababa in May 1936, forcing Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie to flee to exile in England.\nThe League of Nations condemned Italy's aggression and imposed economic sanctions in November 1935, but the sanctions were largely ineffective since they did not ban the sale of oil or close the Suez Canal (controlled by Britain). As Stanley Baldwin, the British Prime Minister, later observed, this was ultimately because no one had the military forces on hand to withstand an Italian attack. In October 1935, the US president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, invoked the recently passed Neutrality Acts and placed an embargo on arms and munitions to both sides, but extended a further \"moral embargo\" to the belligerent Italians, including other trade items. On 5 October and later on 29 February 1936, the United States endeavoured, with limited success, to limit its exports of oil and other materials to normal peacetime levels. The League sanctions were lifted on 4 July 1936, but by that point, Italy had already gained control of the urban areas of Abyssinia.\nThe Hoare\u2013Laval Pact of December 1935 was an attempt by the British Foreign Secretary Samuel Hoare and the French Prime Minister Pierre Laval to end the conflict in Abyssinia by proposing to partition the country into an Italian sector and an Abyssinian sector. Mussolini was prepared to agree to the pact, but news of the deal leaked out. Both the British and French public vehemently protested against it, describing it as a sell-out of Abyssinia. Hoare and Laval were forced to resign, and the British and French governments dissociated themselves from the two men. In June 1936, although there was no precedent for a head of state addressing the Assembly of the League of Nations in person, Haile Selassie spoke to the Assembly, appealing for its help in protecting his country.\nThe Abyssinian crisis showed how the League could be influenced by the self-interest of its members; one of the reasons why the sanctions were not very harsh was that both Britain and France feared the prospect of driving Mussolini and Adolf Hitler into an alliance.\nSpanish Civil War.\nOn 17 July 1936, the Spanish Army launched a coup d'\u00e9tat, leading to a prolonged armed conflict between Spanish Republicans (the elected leftist national government) and the Nationalists (conservative, anti-communist rebels who included most officers of the Spanish Army). Julio \u00c1lvarez del Vayo, the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, appealed to the League in September 1936 for arms to defend Spain's territorial integrity and political independence. The League members would not intervene in the Spanish Civil War nor prevent foreign intervention in the conflict. Adolf Hitler and Mussolini aided General Francisco Franco's Nationalists, while the Soviet Union helped the Spanish Republic. In February 1937, the League did ban foreign volunteers, but this was in practice a symbolic move. The result was a Nationalist victory in 1939 and confirmation to all observers that the League was ineffective in dealing with a major issue.\nSecond Sino-Japanese War.\nFollowing a long record of instigating localised conflicts throughout the 1930s, Japan began a full-scale invasion of China on 7 July 1937. On 12 September, the Chinese representative, Wellington Koo, appealed to the League for international intervention. Western countries were sympathetic to the Chinese in their struggle, particularly in their stubborn defence of Shanghai, a city with a substantial number of foreigners. The League was unable to provide any practical measures; on 4 October, it turned the case over to the Nine Power Treaty Conference.\nSoviet invasion of Finland.\nThe Nazi-Soviet Pact of 23 August 1939 contained secret protocols outlining spheres of interest. Finland and the Baltic states, as well as eastern Poland, fell into the Soviet sphere. After invading Poland on 17 September 1939, on 30 November the Soviets invaded Finland. Then \"the League of Nations for the first time expelled a member who had violated the Covenant.\" The League action of 14 December 1939, stung, because the Soviet Union became \"the only League member ever to suffer such an indignity\".\nFailure of disarmament.\nArticle 8 of the Covenant gave the League the task of reducing \"armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the enforcement by common action of international obligations\". Haakon Ikonomou argues that the Disarmament Section was a major failure. It was distrusted by the great powers, and given little autonomy by the Secretariat. Its mediocre staffers generated information that was unreliable and caused unrealistic expectations in the general public.\nSuccesses.\nThe League scored some successes, including the 1925 Conference for the Supervision of the International Trade in Arms and Ammunition and in Implements of War. It started to collect international arms data. Most important was the passage in 1925 of the Geneva protocol banning poison gas in war. It reflected strong worldwide public opinion, although the United States did not ratify it until 1975.\nFailures.\nThe League had numerous failures and shortfalls. In 1921, it set up the Temporary Mixed Commission on Armaments to explore possibilities for disarmament. It was made up not of government representatives but of famous individuals. They rarely agreed. Proposals ranged from abolishing chemical warfare and strategic bombing to the limitation of more conventional weapons, such as tanks.\n1923 Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance.\nThe 1923 Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance was an unsuccessful proposal made by the League of Nations to address the issue of disarmament and security in Europe after World War I. It was rejected by the British government in 1924 and was never adopted. The Draft Treaty was an early attempt by the League to create a system of collective security and disarmament, leading the League to pursue alternative approaches that also ultimately failed to gain traction.\nGeneva Protocol of 1924.\nA draft treaty was assembled in 1923 that made aggressive war illegal and bound the member states to defend victims of aggression by force. Since the onus of responsibility would, in practice, be on the great powers of the League, it was vetoed by Great Britain, who feared that this pledge would strain its own commitment to police its British Empire.\nThe \"Geneva Protocol for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes\" was a proposal by British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and his French counterpart \u00c9douard Herriot. It set up compulsory arbitration of disputes and created a method to determine the aggressor in international conflicts. All legal disputes between nations would be submitted to the World Court. It called for a disarmament conference in 1925. Any government that refused to comply in a dispute would be named an aggressor. Any victim of aggression was to receive immediate assistance from League members.\nBritish Conservatives condemned the proposal for fear that it would lead to conflict with the United States, which also opposed the proposal. The British Dominions strongly opposed it. The Conservatives came to power in Britain and in March 1925 the proposal was shelved and never reintroduced.\nWorld Disarmament Conference.\nThe Allied powers were also under obligation by the Treaty of Versailles to attempt to disarm, and the armament restrictions imposed on the defeated countries had been described as the first step toward worldwide disarmament. The League Covenant assigned the League the task of creating a disarmament plan for each state, but the Council devolved this responsibility to a special commission set up in 1926 to prepare for the 1932\u20131934 World Disarmament Conference. Members of the League held different views towards the issue. The French were reluctant to reduce their armaments without a guarantee of military help if they were attacked; Poland and Czechoslovakia felt vulnerable to attack from the west and wanted the League's response to aggression against its members to be strengthened before they disarmed. Without this guarantee, they would not reduce armaments because they felt the risk of attack from Germany was too great. Fear of attack increased as Germany regained its strength after the First World War, especially after Adolf Hitler gained power and became German Chancellor in 1933. In particular, Germany's attempts to overturn the Treaty of Versailles and the reconstruction of the German military made France increasingly unwilling to disarm.\nThe World Disarmament Conference was convened by the League of Nations in Geneva in 1932, with representatives from 60 states. It was a failure. A one-year moratorium on the expansion of armaments, later extended by a few months, was proposed at the start of the conference. The Disarmament Commission obtained initial agreement from France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Britain to limit the size of their navies but no final agreement was reached. Ultimately, the Commission failed to halt the military build-up by Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan during the 1930s.\nHelpless during buildup to World War II.\nThe League was mostly silent in the face of major events leading to the Second World War, such as Hitler's remilitarisation of the Rhineland, occupation of the Sudetenland and \"Anschluss\" of Austria, which had been forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In fact, League members themselves re-armed. In 1933, Japan simply withdrew from the League rather than submit to its judgement, as did Germany the same year (using the failure of the World Disarmament Conference to agree to arms parity between France and Germany as a pretext), Italy in 1937, and Spain in 1939. The final significant act of the League was to expel the Soviet Union in December 1939 after it invaded Finland.\nEconomic policies.\nInternational taxation.\nThe intellectual foundation of the modern international taxation regime was set with a 1923 report prepared by prominent political economists and tax law experts for the League of Nations. The report formulated \"general principles\" to avoid the adverse effects of double taxation and encourage free trade, international capital flows, and economic growth. For example, the report tried to set guidelines for resolving who would be allowed to tax a resident or citizen of one state when that individual earned income in another state. Prior to the publication of the report, these kinds of questions were primarily decided through unilateral state decisions or bilateral tax treaties.\nGeneral weaknesses.\nThe onset of the Second World War demonstrated that the League had failed in its primary purpose, the prevention of another world war. There were a variety of reasons for this failure, many connected to general weaknesses within the organisation. Additionally, the power of the League was limited by the United States' refusal to join.\nOrigins and structure.\nThe origins of the League as an organisation created by the Allied powers as part of the peace settlement to end the First World War led to it being viewed as a \"League of Victors\". The League's neutrality tended to manifest itself as indecision. It required a unanimous vote of nine, later fifteen, Council members to enact a resolution; hence, conclusive and effective action was difficult, if not impossible. It was also slow in coming to its decisions, as certain ones required the unanimous consent of the entire Assembly. This problem mainly stemmed from the fact that the primary members of the League of Nations were not willing to accept the possibility of their fate being decided by other countries and (by enforcing unanimous voting) had effectively given themselves veto power.\nGlobal representation.\nRepresentation at the League was often a problem. Though it was intended to encompass all nations, many never joined, or their period of membership was short. The most conspicuous absentee was the United States. President Woodrow Wilson had been a driving force behind the League's formation and strongly influenced the form it took, but the US Senate voted not to join on 19 November 1919. Ruth Henig has suggested that, had the United States become a member, it would have also provided support to France and Britain, possibly making France feel more secure, and so encouraging France and Britain to co-operate more fully regarding Germany, thus making the rise to power of the Nazi Party less likely. Conversely, Henig acknowledges that if the US had been a member, its reluctance to engage in war with European states or to enact economic sanctions might have hampered the ability of the League to deal with international incidents. The structure of the US federal government might also have made its membership problematic, as its representatives at the League would only be able to answer on behalf of the executive branch, certain League decisions such as to go to war, would always require prior approval of the legislative branch regardless of the outcome of any floor vote even.\nIn January 1920, when the League was born, Germany was not permitted to join because it was seen as having been the aggressor in the First World War. Soviet Russia was also initially excluded because Communist regimes were not welcomed and membership would have been initially dubious due to the ongoing Russian Civil War in which both sides claimed to be the legitimate government of the country. The League was further weakened when major powers left in the 1930s. Japan began as a permanent member of the Council since the country was an Allied Power in the First World War but withdrew in 1933 after the League voiced opposition to its occupation of Manchuria. Italy also began as a permanent member of the council. However the League staunchly opposed Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1934. When the war ended in an Italian conquest, the League refused to recognise Italian sovereignty over Ethiopia, prompting the Italian-Fascist government to withdraw from the organisation altogether in 1937. Though neutral during World War I, Spain (then still a kingdom) also began as a permanent member of the council, but withdrew in 1939 after the Spanish Civil War ended in a victory for the Nationalists. Though world opinion was much more divided over the Spanish Civil War than the conflicts involving Japan and Italy, the general perception leaned in favour of the Republican cause. The League had accepted Germany, also as a permanent member of the council, in 1926, deeming it to have become a \"peace-loving country\" under the Weimar Republic. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Adolf Hitler withdrew Germany almost immediately.\nCollective security.\nAnother important weakness grew from the contradiction between the idea of collective security that formed the basis of the League and international relations between individual states. The League's collective security system required nations to act, if necessary, against states they considered friendly, and in a way that might endanger their national interests, to support states for which they had no normal affinity. This weakness was exposed during the Abyssinia Crisis, when Britain and France had to balance maintaining the security they had attempted to create for themselves in Europe \"to defend against the enemies of internal order\", in which Italy's support played a pivotal role, with their obligations to Abyssinia as a member of the League.\nOn 23 June 1936, in the wake of the collapse of League efforts to restrain Italy's war against Abyssinia, the British Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, told the House of Commons that collective security had <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nUltimately, Britain and France both abandoned the concept of collective security in favour of appeasement in the face of growing German militarism under Hitler.\nIn this context, the League of Nations was also the institution where the first international debate on terrorism took place following the 1934 assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in Marseille, France. This debate established precedents regarding global surveillance (in the form of routine international sharing of surveillance data), the punishment of terrorists as an international (rather than national) matter, and the right of a nation to conduct military attacks within another nation as a response to international terrorism. Many of these concepts are detectable in the discourse of terrorism among states after 9/11.\nAmerican diplomatic historian Samuel Flagg Bemis originally supported the League, but after two decades changed his mind:\nThe League of Nations has been a disappointing failure... It has been a failure, not because the United States did not join it; but because the great powers have been unwilling to apply sanctions except where it suited their individual national interests to do so, and because Democracy, on which the original concepts of the League rested for support, has collapsed over half the world.\nPacifism, disarmament and radio.\nThe League of Nations lacked an armed force of its own and depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, which they were very unwilling to do. Its two most important members, Britain and France, were reluctant to use sanctions and even more reluctant to resort to military action on behalf of the League. Immediately after the First World War, pacifism became a strong force among both the people and governments of the two countries. The British Conservatives were especially tepid to the League and preferred, when in government, to negotiate treaties without the involvement of that organisation. Moreover, the League's advocacy of disarmament for Britain, France, and its other members, while at the same time advocating collective security, meant that the League was depriving itself of the only forceful means by which it could uphold its authority.\nDavid Goodman argues that the 1936 League of Nations Convention on the Use of Broadcasting in the Cause of Peace tried to create the standards for a liberal international public sphere. The Convention encouraged friendly radio broadcasts to other nations. It called for League prohibitions on international broadcasts containing hostile speech and false claims. It tried to draw the line between liberal and illiberal policies in communications, and emphasised the dangers of nationalist chauvinism. With Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia active on the radio, its liberal goals were ignored, while liberals warned that the code represented restraints on free speech.\nDemise and legacy.\nAs the situation in Europe escalated into war, the Assembly transferred enough power to the Secretary General on 30 September 1938 and 14 December 1939 to allow the League to continue to exist legally and carry on reduced operations. The headquarters of the League, the Palace of Nations, remained unoccupied for nearly six years until the Second World War ended.\nAt the 1943 Tehran Conference, the Allied powers agreed to create a new body to replace the League: the United Nations. Many League bodies, such as the International Labour Organization, continued to function and eventually became affiliated with the UN. The designers of the structures of the United Nations intended to make it more effective than the League.\nThe final session of the League of Nations concluded on 18 April 1946 in Geneva. Delegates from 34 nations attended the assembly. This session concerned itself with liquidating the League: it transferred assets worth approximately $22,000,000 (U.S.) in 1946 (including the Palace of Nations and the League's archives) to the UN, returned reserve funds to the nations that had supplied them, and settled the debts of the League. Robert Cecil, addressing the final session, said:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Let us boldly state that aggression wherever it occurs and however it may be defended, is an international crime, that it is the duty of every peace-loving state to resent it and employ whatever force is necessary to crush it, that the machinery of the Charter, no less than the machinery of the Covenant, is sufficient for this purpose if properly used, and that every well-disposed citizen of every state should be ready to undergo any sacrifice in order to maintain peace ... I venture to impress upon my hearers that the great work of peace is resting not only on the narrow interests of our own nations, but even more on those great principles of right and wrong which nations, like individuals, depend.\nThe League is dead. Long live the United Nations.\nThe Assembly passed a resolution that \"With effect from the day following the close of the present session of the Assembly [i.e., April 19], the League of Nations shall cease to exist except for the sole purpose of the liquidation of its affairs as provided in the present resolution.\" A Board of Liquidation consisting of nine persons from different countries spent the next 15 months overseeing the transfer of the League's assets and functions to the United Nations or specialised bodies, finally dissolving itself on 31 July 1947. The archive of the League of Nations was transferred to the United Nations Office at Geneva and is now an entry in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.\nIn the Assembly's last session in 1946, Philip Noel-Baker (representing the United Kingdom) remarked that failure to act as soon as a great power had invaded another state had ultimately doomed the League: \"We know the World War began in Manchuria 15 years ago...Manchuria, Abyssinia, Munich have killed another great illusion, the belief that appeasement, seeking the national interest at the expense of others, individual action, secret bargains, could bring us peace.\"\nIn the past few decades, by research using the League Archives at Geneva, historians have reviewed the legacy of the League of Nations as the United Nations has faced similar troubles to those of the interwar period. Current consensus views that, even though the League failed to achieve its ultimate goal of world peace, it did manage to build new roads towards expanding the rule of law across the globe; strengthened the concept of collective security, giving a voice to smaller nations; helped to raise awareness to problems like epidemics, slavery, child labour, colonial tyranny, refugee crises and general working conditions through its numerous commissions and committees; and paved the way for new forms of statehood, as the mandate system put the colonial powers under international observation. Erez Manela situated the League as a catalyst for transforming the postwar global order into one critical of the arrangements of empire. Alternatively, Laura Robson & Joe Maiolo posit the argument that the Mandate System under the League was a re-vitalised form of imperialism that placed former colonies under the ownership of greater powers.\nProfessor David Kennedy portrays the League as a unique moment when international affairs were \"institutionalised\", as opposed to the pre\u2013First World War methods of law and politics.\nThe principal Allies in the Second World War (the UK, the USSR, France, the U.S., and the Republic of China) became permanent members of the United Nations Security Council in 1946; in 1971, the People's Republic of China replaced the Republic of China (then only in control of Taiwan) as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and in 1991 the Russian Federation assumed the seat of the dissolved USSR. Decisions of the Security Council are binding on all members of the UN, and unanimous decisions are not required, unlike in the League Council. Only the five permanent members of the Security Council can wield a veto to protect their vital interests.\nLeague of Nations archives.\nThe League of Nations archives is a collection of the League's records and documents. It consists of approximately 15 million pages of content dating from the inception of the League of Nations in 1919 extending through its dissolution in 1946. It is located at the United Nations Office at Geneva. In 2017, the UN Library & Archives Geneva launched the Total Digital Access to the League of Nations Archives Project (LONTAD), with the intention of preserving, digitising, and providing online access to the League of Nations archives. It was completed in 2022.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nGeneral and cited references.\nSurveys.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nLeague topics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nRelated topics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistoriography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "26748": "Switzerland\nCountry in Central Europe\nSwitzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is geographically divided among the Swiss Plateau, the Alps and the Jura; the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory, whereas most of the country's nearly 9 million people are concentrated on the plateau, which hosts its largest cities and economic centres, including Zurich, Geneva, and Lausanne. \nSwitzerland is a federal republic composed of 26 cantons, with federal authorities based in Bern. It has four main linguistic and cultural regions: German, French, Italian and Romansh. Although most Swiss are German-speaking, national identity is fairly cohesive, being rooted in a common historical background, shared values such as federalism and direct democracy, and Alpine symbolism. Swiss identity transcends language, ethnicity, and religion, leading to Switzerland being described as a (\"nation of volition\") rather than a nation state.\nSwitzerland originates from the Old Swiss Confederacy established in the Late Middle Ages as a defensive and commercial alliance; the Federal Charter of 1291 is considered the country's founding document. The confederation steadily expanded and consolidated despite external threats and internal political and religious strife. Swiss independence from the Holy Roman Empire was formally recognised in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The confederation was among the first and few republics of the early modern period, and the only one besides San Marino to survive the Napoleonic Wars. \nSwitzerland remained a network of self-governing states until 1798, when revolutionary France invaded and imposed the centralist Helvetic Republic. Napoleon abolished the republic in 1803 and reinstated a confederation. Following the Napoleonic Wars, Switzerland restored its pre-revolutionary system, but by 1830 faced growing division and conflict between liberal and conservative movements; this culminated in a new constitution in 1848 that established the current federal system and enshrined principles such as individual rights, separation of powers, and parliamentary bicameralism. \nSwitzerland has maintained a policy of armed neutrality since the 16th century and has not fought an international war since 1815. It joined the United Nations only in 2002 but pursues an active foreign policy that includes frequent involvement in peace building and global governance. Switzerland is the birthplace of the Red Cross and hosts the headquarters or offices of most major international institutions, including the WTO, the WHO, the ILO, FIFA, the WEF, and the UN. It is a founding member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) but not part of the European Union (EU), the European Economic Area, or the eurozone; however, it participates in the European single market and the Schengen Area. \nSwitzerland is among the world's most developed countries, with the highest nominal wealth per adult and the eighth-highest gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. It performs highly on several international metrics, including economic competitiveness, democratic governance, and press freedom. Zurich, Geneva and Basel rank among the highest in quality of life, albeit with some of the highest costs of living. Switzerland holds an international reputation for its established banking sector and for its specialized industries in watchmaking and chocolate production.\nEtymology.\nThe English name \"Switzerland\" is a portmanteau of \"Switzer\", an obsolete term for a Swiss person which was in use during the 16th to 19th centuries, and \"land\". The English adjective \"Swiss\" is a loanword from French ', also in use since the 16th century. The name \"Switzer\" is from the Alemannic ', in origin an inhabitant of \"Schwyz\" and its associated territory, one of the cantons which formed the nucleus of the Old Swiss Confederacy. The Swiss began to adopt the name for themselves after the Swabian War of 1499, used alongside the term for \"Confederates\", (literally: \"comrades by oath\"), used since the 14th century. The data code for Switzerland, CH, is derived from Latin (\"Helvetic Confederation\").\nThe toponym \"Schwyz\" itself was first attested in 972, as Old High German ', perhaps related to ' 'to burn' (cf. Old Norse 'to singe, burn'), referring to the area of forest that was burned and cleared to build. The name was extended to the area dominated by the canton, and after the Swabian War of 1499 gradually came to be used for the entire Confederation. The Swiss German name of the country, ', is homophonous to that of the canton and the settlement, but distinguished by the use of the definite article (' for the Confederation, but simply \"\" for the canton and the town). The long [i\u02d0] of Swiss German is historically and still often today spelled \u27e8y\u27e9 rather than \u27e8ii\u27e9, preserving the original identity of the two names even in writing.\nThe Latin name was neologised and introduced gradually after the formation of the federal state in 1848, harking back to the Napoleonic Helvetic Republic. It appeared on coins from 1879, inscribed on the Federal Palace in 1902 and after 1948 used in the official seal (e.g., the ISO banking code \"CHF\" for the Swiss franc, the Swiss postage stamps ('HELVETIA') and the country top-level domain \".ch\", are both taken from the state's Latin name). is derived from the \"Helvetii\", a Gaulish tribe living on the Swiss Plateau before the Roman era.\n\"Helvetia\" appeared as a national personification of the Swiss confederacy in the 17th century in a 1672 play by Johann Caspar Weissenbach.\nHistory.\nThe state of Switzerland took its present form with the adoption of the Swiss Federal Constitution in 1848. Switzerland's precursors established a defensive alliance in 1291, forming a loose confederation that persisted for centuries.\nBeginnings.\nThe oldest traces of hominid existence in Switzerland date to about 150,000 years ago. The oldest known farming settlements in Switzerland, which were found at G\u00e4chlingen, date to around 5300 BC.\nThe earliest known tribes formed the Hallstatt and La T\u00e8ne cultures, named after the archaeological site of La T\u00e8ne on the north side of Lake Neuch\u00e2tel. La T\u00e8ne culture developed and flourished during the late Iron Age from around 450 BC, possibly influenced by Greek and Etruscan civilisations. One of the most prominent La T\u00e8ne tribes were the Helvetii, who primarily occupied the Swiss Plateau, alongside the Rhaetians in the eastern regions. Facing pressures from Germanic tribes, in 58 BC, the Helvetii, influenced by Orgetorix, a wealthy aristocrat, decided to abandon the Swiss Plateau for better opportunities in western Gallia. After Orgetorix's mysterious death, the tribe continued their migration but was decisively defeated by Julius Caesar's armies at the Battle of Bibracte, in present-day eastern France. Following their defeat, the Helvetii were forced by Caesar to return to their original lands, where they were subjected to stringent restrictions on their autonomy and movements. In 15 BC, Tiberius (later the second Roman emperor) and his brother Drusus conquered the Alps, integrating them into the Roman Empire. The area occupied by the Helvetii first became part of Rome's Gallia Belgica province and then of its Germania Superior province. The eastern portion of modern Switzerland was integrated into the Roman province of Raetia. Sometime around the start of the Common Era, the Romans maintained a large camp called Vindonissa, now a ruin at the confluence of the Aare and Reuss rivers, near the town of Windisch.\nThe first and second century AD was an age of prosperity on the Swiss Plateau. Towns such as Aventicum, Iulia Equestris and Augusta Raurica reached a remarkable size, while hundreds of agricultural estates (Villae rusticae) were established in the countryside.\nAround 260 AD, the fall of the Agri Decumates territory north of the Rhine transformed today's Switzerland into a frontier land of the Empire. Repeated raids by the Alamanni tribes provoked the ruin of the Roman towns and economy, forcing the population to shelter near Roman fortresses, like the Castrum Rauracense near Augusta Raurica. The Empire built another line of defence at the north border (the so-called Donau-Iller-Rhine-Limes). At the end of the fourth century, the increased Germanic pressure forced the Romans to abandon the linear defence concept. The Swiss Plateau was finally open to Germanic tribes.\nIn the Early Middle Ages, from the end of the fourth century, the western extent of modern-day Switzerland was part of the territory of the Kings of the Burgundians, who introduced the French language to the area. The Alemanni settled the Swiss Plateau in the fifth century and the valleys of the Alps in the eighth century, forming Alemannia. Modern-day Switzerland was then divided between the kingdoms of Alemannia and Burgundy. The entire region became part of the expanding Frankish Empire in the sixth century, following Clovis I's victory over the Alemanni at Tolbiac in 504 AD, and later Frankish domination of the Burgundians.\nThroughout the rest of the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries, Swiss regions continued under Frankish hegemony (Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties) but after its extension under Charlemagne, the Frankish Empire was divided by the Treaty of Verdun in 843. The territories of present-day Switzerland became divided into Middle Francia and East Francia until they were reunified under the Holy Roman Empire around 1000\u00a0AD.\nIn the 10th century, as the rule of the Carolingians waned, Magyars destroyed Basel in 917 and St. Gallen in 926. In response, Henry the Fowler, the then ruler of East Francia, decreed the fortification of key settlements to defend against these invasions. Large villages and towns, including strategic locations like Zurich and St.Gallen, were fortified. This initiative led to the development of what were essentially early urban strongholds and city governments in Eastern Switzerland.\nBy 1200, the Swiss Plateau comprised the dominions of the houses of Savoy, Z\u00e4hringer, Habsburg, and Kyburg. Some regions (Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, later known as ) were accorded the Imperial immediacy to grant the empire direct control over the mountain passes. With the extinction of its male line in 1263, the Kyburg dynasty fell in AD 1264. The Habsburgs under King Rudolph I (Holy Roman Emperor in 1273) laid claim to the Kyburg lands and annexed them, extending their territory to the eastern Swiss Plateau.\nOld Swiss Confederacy.\nThe Old Swiss Confederacy was an alliance among the valley communities of the central Alps. The Confederacy was governed by nobles and patricians of various cantons who facilitated management of common interests and ensured peace on mountain trade routes. The Federal Charter of 1291 is considered the confederacy's founding document, even though similar alliances likely existed decades earlier. The document was agreed among the rural communes of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden.\nBy 1353, the three original cantons had joined with the cantons of Glarus and Zug and the Lucerne, Zurich and Bern city-states to form the \"Old Confederacy\" of eight states that obtained through the end of the 15th century. The expansion led to increased power and wealth for the confederation. By 1460, the confederates controlled most of the territory south and west of the Rhine to the Alps and the Jura mountains, and the University of Basel was founded (with a faculty of medicine) establishing a tradition of chemical and medical research. This increased after victories against the Habsburgs (Battle of Sempach, Battle of N\u00e4fels), over Charles the Bold of Burgundy during the 1470s, and the success of the Swiss mercenaries. The Swiss victory in the Swabian War against the Swabian League of Emperor Maximilian I in 1499 amounted to \"de facto\" independence within the Holy Roman Empire. In 1501, Basel and Schaffhausen joined the Old Swiss Confederacy.\nThe Confederacy acquired a reputation of invincibility during these earlier wars, but expansion of the confederation suffered a setback in 1515 with the Swiss defeat in the Battle of Marignano. This ended the so-called \"heroic\" epoch of Swiss history. The success of Zwingli's Reformation in some cantons led to inter-cantonal religious conflicts in 1529 and 1531 (Wars of Kappel). It was not until more than one hundred years after these internal wars that, in 1648, under the Peace of Westphalia, European countries recognised Switzerland's independence from the Holy Roman Empire and its neutrality.\nDuring the Early Modern period of Swiss history, the growing authoritarianism of the patriciate families combined with a financial crisis in the wake of the Thirty Years' War led to the Swiss peasant war of 1653. In the background to this struggle, the conflict between Catholic and Protestant cantons persisted, erupting in further violence at the First War of Villmergen, in 1656, and the Toggenburg War (or Second War of Villmergen), in 1712.\nNapoleonic era.\nIn 1798, the revolutionary French government invaded Switzerland and imposed a new unified constitution. This centralised the government of the country, effectively abolishing the cantons: moreover, M\u00fclhausen left Switzerland and the Valtellina valley became part of the Cisalpine Republic. The new regime, known as the Helvetic Republic, was highly unpopular. An invading foreign army had imposed and destroyed centuries of tradition, making Switzerland nothing more than a French satellite state. The fierce French suppression of the Nidwalden Revolt in September 1798 was an example of the oppressive presence of the French Army and the local population's resistance to the occupation.\nWhen war broke out between France and its rivals, Russian and Austrian forces invaded Switzerland. The Swiss refused to fight alongside the French in the name of the Helvetic Republic. In 1803 Napoleon organised a meeting of the leading Swiss politicians from both sides in Paris. The Act of Mediation was the result, which largely restored Swiss autonomy and introduced a Confederation of 19 cantons. Henceforth, much of Swiss politics would concern balancing the cantons' tradition of self-rule with the need for a central government.\nIn 1815, the Congress of Vienna fully re-established Swiss independence, and the European powers recognised permanent Swiss neutrality. Swiss troops served foreign governments until 1860 when they fought in the siege of Gaeta. The treaty allowed Switzerland to increase its territory, with the admission of the cantons of Valais, Neuch\u00e2tel and Geneva. Switzerland's borders saw only minor adjustments thereafter.\nFederal state.\nThe restoration of power to the patriciate was only temporary. After a period of unrest with repeated violent clashes, such as the Z\u00fcriputsch of 1839, civil war (the \"Sonderbundskrieg\") broke out in 1847 when some Catholic cantons tried to set up a separate alliance (the \"Sonderbund\"). The war lasted less than a month, causing fewer than 100 casualties, most of which were through friendly fire. The Sonderbundskrieg had a significant impact on the psychology and society of Switzerland.\nThe war convinced most Swiss of the need for unity and strength. Swiss from all strata of society, whether Catholic or Protestant, from the liberal or conservative current, realised that the cantons would profit more from merging their economic and religious interests.\nThus, while the rest of Europe saw revolutionary uprisings, the Swiss drew up a constitution that provided for a federal layout, much of it inspired by the American example. This constitution provided central authority while leaving the cantons the right to self-government on local issues. Giving credit to those who favoured the power of the cantons (the Sonderbund Kantone), the national assembly was divided between an upper house (the Council of States, two representatives per canton) and a lower house (the National Council, with representatives elected from across the country). Referendums were made mandatory for any amendments. This new constitution ended the legal power of nobility in Switzerland.\nA single system of weights and measures was introduced, and in 1850 the Swiss franc became the Swiss single currency, complemented by the WIR franc in 1934. Article 11 of the constitution forbade sending troops to serve abroad, marking the end of foreign service. It came with the expectation of serving the Holy See, and the Swiss were still obliged to serve Francis II of the Two Sicilies with Swiss Guards present at the siege of Gaeta in 1860.\nAn important clause of the constitution was that it could be entirely rewritten, if necessary, thus enabling it to evolve as a whole rather than being modified one amendment at a time.\nThis need soon proved itself when the rise in population and the Industrial Revolution that followed led to calls to modify the constitution accordingly. The population rejected an early draft in 1872, but modifications led to its acceptance in 1874. It introduced the facultative referendum for laws at the federal level. It also established federal responsibility for defence, trade, and legal matters.\nIn 1891, the constitution was revised with uncommonly strong elements of direct democracy, which remain unique today.\nModern history.\nSwitzerland was not invaded during either of the world wars. During World War I, Switzerland was home to the revolutionary and founder of the Soviet Union Vladimir Illych Ulyanov (Vladimir Lenin) who remained there until 1917. Swiss neutrality was seriously questioned by the short-lived Grimm\u2013Hoffmann affair in 1917. In 1920, Switzerland joined the League of Nations, which was based in Geneva, after it was exempted from military requirements.\nDuring World War II, detailed invasion plans were drawn up by the Germans, but Switzerland was never attacked. Switzerland was able to remain independent through a combination of military deterrence, concessions to Germany, and good fortune, as larger events during the war intervened. General Henri Guisan, appointed the commander-in-chief for the duration of the war ordered a general mobilisation of the armed forces. The Swiss military strategy changed from static defence at the borders to organised long-term attrition and withdrawal to strong, well-stockpiled positions high in the Alps, known as the Reduit. Switzerland was an important base for espionage by both sides and often mediated communications between the Axis and Allied powers.\nSwitzerland's trade was blockaded by both the Allies and the Axis. Economic cooperation and extension of credit to Nazi Germany varied according to the perceived likelihood of invasion and the availability of other trading partners. Concessions reached a peak after a crucial rail link through Vichy France was severed in 1942, leaving Switzerland (together with Liechtenstein) entirely isolated from the wider world by Axis-controlled territory. Over the course of the war, Switzerland interned over 300,000 refugees aided by the International Red Cross, based in Geneva. Strict immigration and asylum policies and the financial relationships with Nazi Germany raised controversy, only at the end of the 20th century.\nDuring the war, the Swiss Air Force engaged aircraft of both sides, shooting down 11 intruding Luftwaffe planes in May and June 1940, then forcing down other intruders after a change of policy following threats from Germany. Over 100 Allied bombers and their crews were interned. Between 1940 and 1945, Switzerland was bombed by the Allies, causing fatalities and property damage. Among the cities and towns bombed were Basel, Brusio, Chiasso, Cornol, Geneva, Koblenz, Niederweningen, Rafz, Renens, Samedan, Schaffhausen, Stein am Rhein, T\u00e4gerwilen, Thayngen, Vals, and Zurich. Allied forces maintained that the bombings, which violated the 96th Article of War, resulted from navigation errors, equipment failure, weather conditions, and pilot errors. The Swiss expressed fear and concern that the bombings were intended to put pressure on Switzerland to end economic cooperation and neutrality with Nazi Germany. Court-martial proceedings took place in England. The US paid SFR 62M for reparations.\nSwitzerland's attitude towards refugees was complicated and controversial; over the course of the war, it admitted as many as 300,000 refugees while refusing tens of thousands more, including Jews persecuted by the Nazis.\nAfter the war, the Swiss government exported credits through the charitable fund known as the and donated to the Marshall Plan to help Europe's recovery, efforts that ultimately benefited the Swiss economy.\nDuring the Cold War, Swiss authorities considered the construction of a Swiss nuclear bomb. Leading nuclear physicists at the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich such as Paul Scherrer made this a realistic possibility. In 1988, the Paul Scherrer Institute was founded in his name to explore the therapeutic uses of neutron scattering technologies. Financial problems with the defence budget and ethical considerations prevented the substantial funds from being allocated, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 was seen as a valid alternative. Plans for building nuclear weapons were dropped by 1988. Switzerland joined the Council of Europe in 1963.\nSwitzerland was the last Western republic (the Principality of Liechtenstein followed in 1984) to grant women the right to vote. Some Swiss cantons approved this in 1959, while at the federal level, it was achieved in 1971 and, after resistance, in the last canton Appenzell Innerrhoden (one of only two remaining \"Landsgemeinde\", along with Glarus) in 1990. After obtaining suffrage at the federal level, women quickly rose in political significance. The first woman on the seven-member Federal Council executive was Elisabeth Kopp, who served from 1984 to 1989, and the first female president was Ruth Dreifuss in 1999.\nIn 1979 areas from the canton of Bern attained independence from the Bernese, forming the new canton of Jura. On 18 April 1999, the Swiss population and the cantons voted in favour of a completely revised federal constitution.\nIn 2002 Switzerland became a full member of the United Nations, leaving Vatican City as the last widely recognised state without full UN membership. Switzerland is a founding member of the EFTA but not the European Economic Area (EEA). An application for membership in the European Union was sent in May 1992, but did not advance since rejecting the EEA in December 1992 when Switzerland conducted a referendum on the EEA. Several referendums on the EU issue ensued; due to opposition from the citizens, the membership application was withdrawn. Nonetheless, Swiss law is gradually changing to conform with that of the EU, and the government signed bilateral agreements with the European Union. Switzerland, together with Liechtenstein, has been surrounded by the EU since Austria's entry in 1995. On 5 June 2005, Swiss voters agreed by a 55% majority to join the Schengen treaty, a result that EU commentators regarded as a sign of support. In September 2020, a referendum calling for a vote to end the pact that allowed a free movement of people from the European Union was introduced by the Swiss People's Party (SVP). However, voters rejected the attempt to retake control of immigration, defeating the motion by a roughly 63%\u201337% margin.\nOn 9 February 2014, 50.3% of Swiss voters approved a ballot initiative launched by the Swiss People's Party (SVP/UDC) to restrict immigration. This initiative was mostly backed by rural (57.6% approval) and suburban groups (51.2% approval), and isolated towns (51.3% approval) as well as by a strong majority (69.2% approval) in Ticino, while metropolitan centres (58.5% rejection) and the French-speaking part (58.5% rejection) rejected it. In December 2016, a political compromise with the EU was attained that eliminated quotas on EU citizens, but still allowed favourable treatment of Swiss-based job applicants. On 27 September 2020, 62% of Swiss voters rejected the anti-free movement referendum by SVP.\nGeography.\nExtending across the north and south side of the Alps in west-central Europe, Switzerland encompasses diverse landscapes and climates across its .\nSwitzerland lies between latitudes 45\u00b0 and 48\u00b0 N, and longitudes 5\u00b0 and 11\u00b0 E. It contains three basic topographical areas: the Swiss Alps to the south, the Swiss Plateau or Central Plateau, and the Jura mountains on the west. The Alps are a mountain range running across the central and south of the country, constituting about 60% of the country's area. The majority of the population live on the Swiss Plateau. The Swiss Alps host many glaciers, covering . From these originate the headwaters of several major rivers, such as the Rhine, Inn, Ticino and Rh\u00f4ne, which flow in the four cardinal directions, spreading across Europe. The hydrographic network includes several of the largest bodies of fresh water in Central and Western Europe, among which are Lake Geneva (Lac L\u00e9man in French), Lake Constance (Bodensee in German) and Lake Maggiore. Switzerland has more than 1500 lakes and contains 6% of Europe's freshwater stock. Lakes and glaciers cover about 6% of the national territory. Lake Geneva is the largest lake and is shared with France. The Rh\u00f4ne is both the main source and outflow of Lake Geneva. Lake Constance is the second largest and, like Lake Geneva, an intermediate step by the Rhine at the border with Austria and Germany. While the Rh\u00f4ne flows into the Mediterranean Sea at the French Camargue region and the Rhine flows into the North Sea at Rotterdam, about apart, both springs are only about apart in the Swiss Alps. 90% of Switzerland's 65,000-kilometre-long network of rivers and streams have been straightened, dammed, canalized or channeled underground, in an effort to prevent natural disasters such as flooding, landslides, and avalanches. 80% of all Swiss drinking water comes from groundwater sources.\nForty-eight mountains are or higher in height. At , Monte Rosa is the highest, although the Matterhorn () is the best known. Both are located within the Pennine Alps in the canton of Valais, on the border with Italy. The section of the Bernese Alps above the deep glacial Lauterbrunnen valley, containing 72 waterfalls, is well known for the Jungfrau () Eiger and M\u00f6nch peaks, and its many picturesque valleys. In the southeast the long Engadin Valley, encompassing St. Moritz, is also well known; the highest peak in the neighbouring Bernina Alps is Piz Bernina ().\nThe Swiss Plateau has greater open and hilly landscapes, partly forested, partly open pastures, usually with grazing herds or vegetable and fruit fields, but it is still hilly. Large lakes and the biggest Swiss cities are found there.\nSwitzerland contains two small enclaves: B\u00fcsingen belongs to Germany, while Campione d'Italia belongs to Italy. Switzerland has no exclaves.\nClimate.\nThe Swiss climate is generally temperate, but can vary greatly across localities, from glacial conditions on the mountaintops to the near-Mediterranean climate at Switzerland's southern tip. Some valley areas in the southern part of Switzerland offer cold-hardy palm trees. Summers tend to be warm and humid at times with periodic rainfall, ideal for pastures/grazing. The less humid winters in the mountains may see weeks-long intervals of stable conditions. At the same time, the lower lands tend to suffer from inversion during such periods, hiding the sun.\nA weather phenomenon known as the f\u00f6hn (with an identical effect to the chinook wind) can occur any time and is characterised by an unexpectedly warm wind, bringing low relative humidity air to the north of the Alps during rainfall periods on the south-facing slopes. This works both ways across the alps but is more efficient if blowing from the south due to the steeper step for oncoming wind. Valleys running south to north trigger the best effect. The driest conditions persist in all inner alpine valleys that receive less rain because arriving clouds lose a lot of their moisture content while crossing the mountains before reaching these areas. Large alpine areas such as Graub\u00fcnden remain drier than pre-alpine areas, and as in the main valley of the Valais, wine grapes are grown there.\nThe wettest conditions persist in the high Alps and in the Ticino canton, which has much sun yet heavy bursts of rain from time to time. Precipitation tends to be spread moderately throughout the year, with a peak in summer. Autumn is the driest season, winter receives less precipitation than summer, yet the weather patterns in Switzerland are not in a stable climate system. They can vary from year to year with no strict and predictable periods.\nEnvironment.\nSwitzerland contains two terrestrial ecoregions: Western European broadleaf forests and Alps conifer and mixed forests.\nSwitzerland's many small valleys separated by high mountains often host unique ecologies. The mountainous regions themselves offer a rich range of plants not found at other altitudes. The climatic, geological and topographical conditions of the alpine region make for a fragile ecosystem that is particularly sensitive to climate change. According to the 2014 Environmental Performance Index, Switzerland ranks first among 132 nations in safeguarding the environment, due to its high scores on environmental public health, its heavy reliance on renewable sources of energy (hydropower and geothermal energy), and its level of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2020 it was ranked third out of 180 countries. The country pledged to cut GHG emissions by 50% by 2030 compared to the level of 1990 and plans to reach zero emissions by 2050.\nHowever, access to biocapacity in Switzerland is far lower than the world average. In 2016, Switzerland had 1.0 hectares of biocapacity per person within its territory, 40 per cent less than world average of 1.6. In contrast, in 2016, Swiss consumption required 4.6 hectares of biocapacity \u2013 their ecological footprint, 4.6 times as much as Swiss territory can support. The remainder comes from other countries and the shared resources (such as the atmosphere impacted by greenhouse gas emissions). Switzerland had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 3.53/10, ranking it 150th globally out of 172 countries.\nSwitzerland ranked 9th in the Environmental Performance Index for 2024. It scored well in parameters including air pollution, sanitation and drinking water, waste management, and climate change mitigation.\nUrbanisation.\nAbout 85% of the population live in urban areas. Switzerland went from a largely rural country to an urban one from 1930 to 2000. After 1935 urban development claimed as much of the Swiss landscape as it did during the prior 2,000 years. Urban sprawl affects the plateau, the Jura and the Alpine foothills, raising concerns about land use. During the 21st century, population growth in urban areas is higher than in the countryside.\nSwitzerland has a dense network of complementary large, medium and small towns. The plateau is densely populated with about 400 people per km2 and the landscape shows uninterrupted signs of human presence. The weight of the largest metropolitan areas \u2013 Zurich, Geneva\u2013Lausanne, Basel and Bern \u2013 tend to increase. The importance of these urban areas is greater than their population suggests. These urban centers are recognised for their high quality of life.\nThe average population density in 2019 was . In the largest canton by area, Graub\u00fcnden, lying entirely in the Alps, population density falls to . In the canton of Zurich, with its large urban capital, the density is .\nGovernment and politics.\nThe Federal Constitution adopted in 1848 is the legal foundation of Switzerland's federal state. It is regularly modified by referendum and has been completely revised twice, in 1874 and 1999. The constitution outlines rights of individuals and citizen participation in public affairs, divides the powers between the confederation and the cantons and defines federal jurisdiction and authority. Three main bodies govern on the federal level: the Federal Assembly (legislative), the Federal Council (executive) and the federal courts (judicial).\nFederal Assembly.\nThe Federal Assembly is the parliament of Switzerland. It consists of two houses: The Council of States has 46 members, two from each canton and one from each half-canton. The National Council has 200 members, apportioned to reflect the population of each canton, and elected by proportional representation within each canton. Members of both houses serve for four years and work part-time (\"Milizsystem\"). When both houses are in joint session, they are known collectively as the Federal Assembly. Through optional referendums, citizens may challenge any law passed by parliament.\nFederal Council.\nThe Federal Council is the Swiss executive. It leads the federal administration and serves as a collective head of state. It is a collegial body of seven members, elected to four-year terms by the Federal Assembly, which oversees the council. Each member leads a department of the federal government. Each year, one member of the Council is elected President of the Confederation by the Assembly, with the presidency traditionally rotating between members. The President chairs and represents the government, but has no additional powers and remains the head of their department.\nThe government has been a coalition of the four major political parties since 1959, each party having a number of seats that roughly reflects its share of the electorate and representation in the federal parliament. This distribution is called the \"magic formula\". Since 2003, the seven seats in the Federal Council have been distributed as follows:\nSupreme Court.\nThe function of the Federal Supreme Court is to hear appeals against rulings of cantonal or federal courts. The judges are elected by the Federal Assembly for six-year terms.\nDirect democracy.\nDirect democracy and federalism are hallmarks of the Swiss political system defined in the Swiss constitution. The Swiss people are subject to three legal jurisdictions: the municipal, cantonal and federal levels. At the federal level, popular rights include the right to submit a federal initiative and a referendum, both of which may overturn parliamentary decisions.\nThere are three types of federal referendum in Switzerland: \nThe Federal Council and the Federal Assembly can supplement a popular initiative with a counterproposal. Voters must then indicate their preference if both proposals are accepted. \nCantons.\nThe Swiss Confederation consists of 26 cantons. The cantons are federated states, with permanent constitutional status and a high degree of independence relative to the subnational divisions of most countries. Under the Federal Constitution, all 26 cantons are equal in status, except that six (referred to often as the half-cantons) are represented by one councillor instead of two in the Council of States and have only half a cantonal vote with respect to the required cantonal majority in referendums on constitutional amendments. Each canton has its own constitution and its own parliament, government, police and courts. However, considerable differences define the individual cantons, particularly in terms of population and geographical area. Their populations vary between 16,003 (Appenzell Innerrhoden) and 1,487,969 (Zurich), and their area between (Basel-Stadt) and (Grisons).\nMunicipalities.\nAs of 2018 the cantons comprised 2,222 municipalities.\nFederal City.\nUntil 1848, the loosely coupled Confederation did not have a central political organisation. Issues thought to affect the whole Confederation were the subject of periodic meetings in various locations.\nIn 1848, the federal constitution provided that details concerning federal institutions, such as their locations, should be addressed by the Federal Assembly (BV 1848 Art. 108). Thus on 28 November 1848, the Federal Assembly voted in the majority to locate the seat of government in Bern and, as a prototypical federal compromise, to assign other federal institutions, such as the Federal Polytechnical School (1854, the later ETH) to Zurich, and other institutions to Lucerne, such as the later SUVA (1912) and the Federal Insurance Court (1917). Other federal institutions were subsequently attributed to Lausanne (Federal Supreme Court in 1872, and EPFL in 1969), Bellinzona (Federal Criminal Court, 2004), and St. Gallen (Federal Administrative Court and Federal Patent Court, 2012).\nThe 1999 Constitution does not mention a Federal City and the Federal Council has yet to address the matter. Thus no city in Switzerland has the \"official\" status either of capital or of Federal City. Nevertheless, Bern is commonly referred to as \"Federal City\" (, , ).\nForeign relations and international institutions.\nTraditionally, Switzerland avoids alliances that might entail military, political, or direct economic action and has been neutral since the end of its expansion in 1515. Its policy of neutrality was internationally recognised at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Swiss neutrality has been questioned at times. In 2002 Switzerland became a full member of the United Nations. It was the first state to join it by referendum. Switzerland maintains diplomatic relations with almost all countries and historically has served as an intermediary between other states. Switzerland is not a member of the European Union; the Swiss people have consistently rejected membership since the early 1990s. However, Switzerland does participate in the Schengen Area.\nMany international institutions have headquarters in Switzerland, in part because of its policy of neutrality. Geneva is the birthplace of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the Geneva Conventions and, since 2006, hosts the United Nations Human Rights Council. Even though Switzerland is one of the most recent countries to join the United Nations, the Palace of Nations in Geneva is the second biggest centre for the United Nations after the headquarters in New York. Switzerland was a founding member and hosted the League of Nations.\nApart from the United Nations headquarters, the Swiss Confederation is host to many UN agencies, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and about 200 other international organisations, including the World Trade Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization. The annual meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos bring together business and political leaders from Switzerland and foreign countries to discuss important issues. The headquarters of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) moved to Basel in 1930.\nMany sports federations and organisations are located in the country, including the International Handball Federation in Basel, the International Basketball Federation in Geneva, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) in Nyon, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) and the International Ice Hockey Federation both in Zurich, the International Cycling Union in Aigle, and the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne.\nSwitzerland became a member of the United Nations Security Council for the 2023\u20132024 period. According to the 2024 Global Peace Index, Switzerland is the 6th most peaceful country in the world.\nSwitzerland and the European Union.\nAlthough not a member, Switzerland maintains relationships with the EU and European countries through bilateral agreements. The Swiss have brought their economic practices largely into conformity with those of the EU, in an effort to compete internationally. EU membership faces considerable negative popular sentiment. It is opposed by the conservative SVP party, the largest party in the National Council, and not advocated by several other political parties. The membership application was formally withdrawn in 2016. The western French-speaking areas and the urban regions of the rest of the country tend to be more pro-EU, but do not form a significant share of the population.\nAn Integration Office operates under the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Economic Affairs. Seven bilateral agreements liberalised trade ties, taking effect in 2001. This first series of bilateral agreements included the free movement of persons. A second series of agreements covering nine areas was signed in 2004, including the Schengen Treaty and the Dublin Convention.\nIn 2006, a referendum approved 1 billion francs of supportive investment in Southern and Central European countries in support of positive ties to the EU as a whole. A further referendum will be needed to approve 300 million francs to support Romania and Bulgaria and their recent admission.\nThe Swiss have faced EU and international pressure to reduce banking secrecy and raise tax rates to parity with the EU. Preparatory discussions involved four areas: the electricity market, participation in project Galileo, cooperating with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and certificates of origin for food products.\nSwitzerland is a member of the Schengen passport-free zone. Land border checkpoints monitor goods movements, but not people.\nMilitary.\nThe Swiss Armed Forces, including the Land Forces and the Air Force, are composed mostly of conscripts, male citizens aged from 20 to 34 (in exceptional cases up to 50) years. Being a landlocked country, Switzerland has no navy; however, on lakes bordering neighbouring countries, armed boats patrol. Swiss citizens are prohibited from serving in foreign armies, except for the Swiss Guards of the Vatican, or if they are dual citizens of a foreign country and reside there.\nThe Swiss militia system stipulates that soldiers keep their army-issued equipment, including fully automatic personal weapons, at home. Women can serve voluntarily. Men usually receive military conscription orders for training at the age of 18. About two-thirds of young Swiss are found suitable for service; for the others, various forms of alternative service are available. Annually, approximately 20,000 persons are trained in recruit centres for 18 to 21 weeks. The reform \"Army XXI\" was adopted by popular vote in 2003, replacing \"Army 95\", reducing the rolls from 400,000 to about 200,000. Of those, 120,000 are active in periodic Army training, and 80,000 are non-training reserves.\nThe newest reform of the military, (WEA; English: Further development of the Army), started in 2018 and was expected to reduce the number of army personnel to 100,000 by the end of 2022.\nOverall, three general mobilisations have been declared to ensure the integrity and neutrality of Switzerland. The first mobilisation was held in response to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870\u201371; while the second was in response to the First World War outbreak in August 1914; the third mobilisation took place in September 1939 in response to the German attack on Poland.\nBecause of its neutrality policy, the Swiss army does not take part in armed conflicts in other countries but joins some peacekeeping missions. Since 2000 the armed force department has maintained the Onyx intelligence gathering system to monitor satellite communications.\nGun politics in Switzerland are unique in Europe in that 2\u20133.5\u00a0million guns are in the hands of civilians, giving the nation an estimate of 28\u201341 guns per 100 people. As per the Small Arms Survey, only 324,484 guns are owned by the military. Only 143,372 are in the hands of soldiers. However, ammunition is no longer issued.\nEconomy and labour law.\nSwitzerland has a stable, prosperous and high-tech economy. It is the world's wealthiest country per capita in multiple rankings. The country ranks as one of the least corrupt countries in the world, while its banking sector is rated as \"one of the most corrupt in the world\". It has the world's twentieth largest economy by nominal GDP and the thirty-eighth largest by purchasing power parity. As of 2021, it is the thirteenth largest exporter, and the fifth largest per capita. Zurich and Geneva are regarded as global cities, ranked as Alpha and Beta respectively. Basel is the capital of Switzerland's pharmaceutical industry, hosting Novartis, Roche, and many other players. It is one of the world's most important centres for the life sciences industry.\nSwitzerland had the second-highest global rating in the Index of Economic Freedom 2023, while also providing significant public services. On a per capita basis, nominal GDP is higher than those of the larger Western and Central European economies and Japan, while adjusted for purchasing power, Switzerland ranked 11th in 2017, fifth in 2018, and ninth in 2020.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nThe 2016 World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report ranked Switzerland's economy as the world's most competitive; as of 2019, it ranks fifth globally. The European Union labeled it Europe's most innovative country. Switzerland has been ranked the most innovative country in the Global Innovation Index in 2024, as it had done in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019. It ranked 20th of 189 countries in the Ease of Doing Business Index. Switzerland's slow growth in the 1990s and the early 2000s increased support for economic reforms and harmonisation with the European Union. In 2020, IMD placed Switzerland first in attracting skilled workers.\nFor much of the 20th century, Switzerland was the wealthiest country in Europe by a considerable margin (per capita GDP). Switzerland has one of the world's largest account balances as a percentage of GDP. In 2018, the canton of Basel-City had the highest GDP per capita, ahead of Zug and Geneva. According to Credit Suisse, only about 37% of residents own their own homes, one of the lowest rates of home ownership in Europe. Housing and food price levels were 171% and 145% of the EU-25 index in 2007, compared to 113% and 104% in Germany.\nSwitzerland is home to several large multinational corporations. The largest by revenue are Glencore, Gunvor, Nestl\u00e9, Mediterranean Shipping Company, Novartis, Hoffmann-La Roche, ABB, Mercuria Energy Group and Adecco. Also, notable are UBS, Zurich Insurance, Richemont, Credit Suisse, Barry Callebaut, Swiss Re, Rolex, Tetra Pak, Swatch Group and Swiss International Air Lines.\nSwitzerland's most important economic sector is manufacturing. Manufactured products include specialty chemicals, health and pharmaceutical goods, scientific and precision measuring instruments and musical instruments. The largest exported goods are chemicals (34% of exported goods), machines/electronics (20.9%), and precision instruments/watches (16.9%). The service sector \u2013 especially banking and insurance, commodities trading, tourism, and international organisations \u2013 is another important industry for Switzerland. Exported services amount to a third of exports.\nAgricultural protectionism\u2014a rare exception to Switzerland's free trade policies\u2014contributes to high food prices. Product market liberalisation is lagging behind many EU countries according to the OECD. Apart from agriculture, economic and trade barriers between the European Union and Switzerland are minimal, and Switzerland has free trade agreements with many countries. Switzerland is a member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).\nSwitzerland is considered as the \"land of Cooperatives\" with the ten largest cooperative companies accounting for more than 11% of GDP in 2018. They include Migros and Coop, the two largest retail companies in Switzerland.\nTaxation and government spending.\nSwitzerland is a tax haven. The private sector economy dominates. It features low tax rates; tax revenue to GDP ratio is one of the smallest of developed countries. The Swiss Federal budget reached 62.8 billion Swiss francs in 2010, 11.35% of GDP; however, canton and municipality budgets are not counted as part of the federal budget. Total government spending is closer to 33.8% of GDP. The main sources of income for the federal government are the value-added tax (33% of tax revenue) and the direct federal tax (29%). The main areas of expenditure are in social welfare and finance/taxes. The expenditures of the Swiss Confederation have been growing from 7% of GDP in 1960 to 9.7% in 1990 and 10.7% in 2010. While the social welfare and finance sectors and tax grew from 35% in 1990 to 48.2% in 2010, a significant reduction of expenditures has been occurring in agriculture and national defence; from 26.5% to 12.4% (estimation for the year 2015).\nLabour force.\nSlightly more than 5 million people work in Switzerland; about 25% of employees belonged to a trade union in 2004. Switzerland has a more flexible labor market than neighbouring countries and the unemployment rate is consistently low. The unemployment rate increased from 1.7% in June 2000 to 4.4% in December 2009. It then decreased to 3.2% in 2014 and held steady for several years, before further dropping to 2.5% in 2018 and 2.3% in 2019; in 2023 it had reached a 20-year low of 2%. Population growth (from net immigration) reached 0.52% of population in 2004, increased in the following years before falling to 0.54% again in 2017. The foreign citizen population was 28.9% in 2015, about the same as in Australia.\nIn 2016, the median monthly gross income in Switzerland was 6,502 francs per month (equivalent to US$6,597 per month). After rent, taxes and pension contributions, plus spending on goods and services, the average household has about 15% of its gross income left for savings. Though 61% of the population made less than the mean income, income inequality is relatively low with a Gini coefficient of 29.7, placing Switzerland among the top 20 countries. In 2015, the richest 1% owned 35% of the wealth. Wealth inequality increased through 2019.\nAbout 8.2% of the population live below the national poverty line, defined in Switzerland as earning less than CHF3,990 per month for a household of two adults and two children, and a further 15% are at risk of poverty. Single-parent families, those with no post-compulsory education and those out of work are among the most likely to live below the poverty line. Although work is considered a way out of poverty, some 4.3% are considered working poor. One in ten jobs in Switzerland is considered low-paid; roughly 12% of Swiss workers hold such jobs, many of them women and foreigners.\nEducation and science.\nEducation in Switzerland is diverse, because the constitution of Switzerland delegates the operation for the school system to the cantons. Public and private schools are available, including many private international schools.\nPrimary education.\nThe minimum age for primary school is about six years, but most cantons provide a free \"children's school\" starting at age four or five. Primary school continues until grade four, five or six, depending on the school. Traditionally, the first foreign language in school was one of the other Swiss languages, although in 2000, English was elevated in a few cantons. At the end of primary school or at the beginning of secondary school, pupils are assigned according to their capacities into one of several sections (often three). The fastest learners are taught advanced classes to prepare for further studies and the matura, while other students receive an education adapted to their needs.\nTertiary education.\nSwitzerland hosts 12 universities, ten of which are maintained at cantonal level and usually offer non-technical subjects. It ranked 87th on the 2019 Academic Ranking of World Universities. The largest is the University of Zurich with nearly 25,000 students. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) and the University of Zurich are listed 20th and 54th respectively, on the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities.\nThe federal government sponsors two institutes: the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) in Zurich, founded in 1855 and the (EPFL) in Lausanne, founded in 1969, formerly associated with the University of Lausanne.\nEight of the world's ten best hotel schools are located in Switzerland. In addition, various universities of applied sciences are available. In business and management studies, the University of St. Gallen, (HSG) is ranked 329th in the world according to QS World University Rankings and the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), was ranked first in open programmes worldwide\".\" Switzerland has the second highest rate (almost 18% in 2003) of foreign students in tertiary education, after Australia (slightly over 18%).\nThe Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, located in Geneva, is continental Europe's oldest graduate school of international and development studies. It is widely held to be one of its most prestigious.\nScience.\nSwitzerland is among the countries with the highest number of Nobel laureates, both in total and per capita; of the 28 Swiss nationals who have won the Nobel Prize, 23 were recognised in the sciences. Among the most famous is Albert Einstein, who became a Swiss citizen in 1901 and developed his theory of special relativity in Bern. Among the Nobel laureates born or nautralised in Switzerland are Vladimir Prelog, Heinrich Rohrer, Richard Ernst, Edmond Fischer, Rolf Zinkernagel, Kurt W\u00fcthrich and Jacques Dubochet. Over 100 laureates across all fields have a relationship to Switzerland. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded nine times to organisations headquartered in Switzerland.\nGeneva and the nearby French department of Ain co-host the world's largest laboratory, CERN, dedicated to particle physics research. Another important research centre is the Paul Scherrer Institute, which conducts multi-disciplinary research in the natural and engineering sciences. \nNotable Swiss inventions include lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), diazepam (Valium), Velcro, and the scanning tunnelling microscope (which earned inventors Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics. Auguste Piccard became the first person to enter the Stratosphere with his pressurised hydrogen ballon, while his son Jacques Piccard became one of the first people to explore the deepest known part of the world's ocean (along with American Don Walsh).\nThe Swiss Space Office has been involved in various space technologies and programmes. It was one of the 10 founders of the European Space Agency in 1975 and is the seventh largest contributor to the ESA budget. In the private sector, several companies participate in the space industry, such as Oerlikon Space and Maxon Motors.\nEnergy.\nElectricity generated in Switzerland is 56% from hydroelectricity and 39% from nuclear power, producing negligible CO2. On 18 May 2003, two anti-nuclear referendums were defeated: \"Moratorium Plus\", aimed at forbidding the building of new nuclear power plants (41.6% supported), and Electricity Without Nuclear (33.7% supported) after a moratorium expired in 2000. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, in 2011 the government announced plans to end the use of nuclear energy in the following 20 to 30 years. In November 2016, Swiss voters rejected a Green Party referendum to accelerate the phaseout of nuclear power (45.8% supported). The Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) is responsible for energy supply and energy use within the Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC). The agency supports the 2000-watt society initiative to cut the nation's energy use by more than half by 2050.\nTransport.\nThe densest rail network in Europe spans and carried 614 million passengers in 2023. In 2015, each Swiss resident travelled on average by rail, more than any other European country. Virtually 100% of the network is electrified. 60% of the network is operated by the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB\u00a0CFF\u00a0FFS). Besides the second largest standard gauge railway company, BLS AG, two railways companies operate on narrow gauge networks: the Rhaetian Railway (RhB) in Graub\u00fcnden, which includes some World Heritage lines, and the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn (MGB), which co-operates with RhB the Glacier Express between Zermatt and St. Moritz/Davos. Switzerland operates the world's longest and deepest railway tunnel and the first flat, low-level route through the Alps, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the largest part of the New Railway Link through the Alps (NRLA) project.\nSwitzerland has a publicly managed, toll-free road network financed by highway permits as well as vehicle and petrol taxes. The Swiss autobahn/autoroute system requires the annual purchase of a vignette (toll sticker)\u2014for 40 Swiss francs\u2014to use its roadways, including passenger cars and trucks. The Swiss autobahn/autoroute network stretches for and has one of the highest motorway densities in the world.\nZurich Airport is Switzerland's largest international flight gateway; it handled 22.8\u00a0million passengers in 2012. The other international airports are Geneva Airport (13.9\u00a0million passengers in 2012), EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg (located in France), Bern Airport, Lugano Airport, St. Gallen-Altenrhein Airport and Sion Airport. Swiss International Air Lines is the flag carrier. Its main hub is Zurich, but it is legally domiciled in Basel.\nEnvironment.\nSwitzerland has one of the best environmental records among developed nations. It is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol. With Mexico and South Korea, it forms the Environmental Integrity Group (EIG).\nThe country is active in recycling and anti-littering programs and is one of the world's top recyclers, recovering 66% to 96% of recyclable materials, varying across the country. The 2014 Global Green Economy Index placed Switzerland among the top 10 green economies.\nSwitzerland has an economic system for garbage disposal, which is based mostly on recycling and energy-producing incinerators. As in other European countries, the illegal disposal of garbage is heavily fined. In almost all Swiss municipalities, mandatory stickers or dedicated garbage bags allow the identification of disposable garbage.\nDemographics.\nIn common with other developed countries, the Swiss population increased rapidly during the industrial era, quadrupling between 1800 and 1990, and it has continued to grow.\nThe population is about 9 million (2023 est.). Population growth is projected to continue to 2035, due mostly to immigration. Like most of Europe, Switzerland faces an ageing population, with a fertility rate close to replacement level. Switzerland has one of the world's oldest populations, with an average age of 44.5 years.\nAccording to the World Factbook, ethnic groups in Switzerland are as follows: Swiss 69.2%, German 4.2%, Italian 3.2%, Portuguese 2.5%, French 2.1%, Kosovan 1.1%, Turkish 1%, other 16.7% (2020 est). The Council of Europe figures suggest a population of around 30,000 Romani people in the country.\nImmigration.\nIn 2023, resident foreigners made up 26.3% of Switzerland's population. Most of these (83%) were from European countries. Italy provided the largest single group of foreigners, providing 14.7% of total foreign population, followed closely by Germany (14.0%), Portugal (11.7%), France (6.6%), Kosovo (5.1%), Spain (3.9%), Turkey (3.1%), North Macedonia (3.1%), Serbia (2.8%), Austria (2.0%), United Kingdom (1.9%), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1.3%) and Croatia (1.3%). Immigrants from Sri Lanka (1.3%), most of them former Tamil refugees, were the largest group of Asian origin (7.9%).\n2021 figures show that 39.5% (compared to 34.7% in 2012) of the permanent resident population aged 15 or over (around 2.89\u00a0million), had an immigrant background. 38% of the population with an immigrant background (1.1\u00a0million) held Swiss citizenship.\nIn the 2000s, domestic and international institutions expressed concern about what was perceived as an increase in xenophobia. In reply to one critical report, the Federal Council noted that \"racism unfortunately is present in Switzerland\", but stated that the high proportion of foreign citizens in the country, as well as the generally successful integration of foreigners, underlined Switzerland's openness. A follow-up study conducted in 2018 reported that 59% considered racism a serious problem in Switzerland. The proportion of the population that claimed to have been targeted by racial discrimination increased from 10% in 2014 to almost 17% in 2018, according to the Federal Statistical Office.\nLargest cities.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nLanguages.\nSwitzerland has four national languages: mainly German (spoken natively by 62.8% of the population in 2016); French (22.9%) spoken natively in the west; and Italian (8.2%) spoken natively in the south. The fourth national language, Romansh (0.5%), is a Romance language spoken locally in the southeastern trilingual canton of Grisons, and is designated by Article 4 of the Federal Constitution as a national language along with German, French, and Italian. In Article 70 it is mentioned as an official language if the authorities communicate with persons who speak Romansh. However, federal laws and other official acts do not need to be decreed in Romansh.\nIn 2016, the languages most spoken at home among permanent residents aged 15 and older were Swiss German (59.4%), French (23.5%), Standard German (10.6%), and Italian (8.5%). Other languages spoken at home included English (5.0%), Portuguese (3.8%), Albanian (3.0%), Spanish (2.6%) and Serbian and Croatian (2.5%). 6.9% reported speaking another language at home. In 2014 almost two-thirds (64.4%) of the permanent resident population indicated speaking more than one language regularly.\nThe federal government is obliged to communicate in the official languages, and in the federal parliament simultaneous translation is provided from and into German, French and Italian.\nAside from the official forms of their respective languages, the four linguistic regions of Switzerland also have local dialectal forms. The role played by dialects in each linguistic region varies dramatically: in German-speaking regions, Swiss German dialects have become more prevalent since the second half of the 20th century, especially in the media, and are used as an everyday language for many, while the Swiss variety of Standard German is almost always used instead of dialect for written communication (cf. diglossic usage of a language). Conversely, in the French-speaking regions, local Franco-Proven\u00e7al dialects have almost disappeared (only 6.3% of the population of Valais, 3.9% of Fribourg, and 3.1% of Jura still spoke dialects at the end of the 20th century), while in the Italian-speaking regions, the use of Lombard dialects is mostly limited to family settings and casual conversation.\nThe principal official languages have terms not used outside of Switzerland, known as Helvetisms. German Helvetisms are, roughly speaking, a large group of words typical of Swiss Standard German that do not appear in Standard German, nor in other German dialects. These include terms from Switzerland's surrounding language cultures (German \"Billett\" from French), from similar terms in another language (Italian \"azione\" used not only as \"act\" but also as \"discount\" from German \"Aktion\"). Swiss French, while generally close to the French of France, also contains some Helvetisms. The most frequent characteristics of Helvetisms are in vocabulary, phrases, and pronunciation, although certain Helvetisms denote themselves as special in syntax and orthography. Duden, the comprehensive German dictionary, contains about 3000 Helvetisms. Current French dictionaries, such as the Petit Larousse, include several hundred Helvetisms; notably, Swiss French uses different terms than that of France for the numbers 70 (\"septante\") and 90 (\"nonante\") and often 80 (\"huitante\") as well.\nLearning one of the other national languages is compulsory for all Swiss pupils, hence many Swiss are supposed to be at least bilingual, especially those belonging to linguistic minority groups. Because the largest part of Switzerland is German-speaking, many French, Italian, and Romansh speakers migrating to the rest of Switzerland and the children of those non-German-speaking Swiss born within the rest of Switzerland speak German. While learning one of the other national languages at school is important, most Swiss learn English to communicate with Swiss speakers of other languages, as it is perceived as a neutral means of communication. English often functions as the de facto lingua franca.\nHealth.\nSwiss residents are required to buy health insurance from private insurance companies, which in turn are required to accept every applicant. While the cost of the system is among the highest, its health outcomes compare well with other European countries; patients have been reported as in general, highly satisfied with it. In 2012, life expectancy at birth was 80.4 years for men and 84.7 years for women \u2013 the world's highest. However, spending on health at 11.4% of GDP (2010) is on par with Germany and France (11.6%) and other European countries, but notably less than the US (17.6%). From 1990, costs steadily increased.\nIt is estimated that one out of six Swiss persons suffers from mental illness.\nAccording to a survey conducted by Addiction Switzerland, fourteen per cent of men and 6.5% of women between 20 and 24 reported consuming cannabis in the past 30 days in 2020, and 4 Swiss cities were listed among the top 10 European cities for cocaine use as measured in wastewater, down from 5 in 2018.\nCulture.\nSwiss culture is characterised by diversity, which is reflected in diverse traditional customs. A region may be in some ways culturally connected to the neighbouring country that shares its language, all rooted in western European culture. The linguistically isolated Romansh culture in Graub\u00fcnden in eastern Switzerland constitutes an exception. It survives only in the upper valleys of the Rhine and the Inn and strives to maintain its rare linguistic tradition.\nSwitzerland is home to notable contributors to literature, art, architecture, music and sciences. In addition, the country attracted creatives during times of unrest or war. Some 1000 museums are found in the country.\nAmong the most important cultural performances held annually are the Pal\u00e9o Festival, Lucerne Festival, the Montreux Jazz Festival, the Locarno International Film Festival and Art Basel.\nAlpine symbolism played an essential role in shaping Swiss history and the Swiss national identity. Many alpine areas and ski resorts attract visitors for winter sports as well as hiking and mountain biking in summer. The quieter seasons are spring and autumn. A traditional pastoral culture predominates in many areas, and small farms are omnipresent in rural areas. Folk art is nurtured in organisations across the country. Switzerland most directly in appears in music, dance, poetry, wood carving, and embroidery. The alphorn, a trumpet-like musical instrument made of wood has joined yodeling and the accordion as epitomes of traditional Swiss music.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nChristianity is the predominant religion according to national surveys of Swiss Federal Statistical Office (about 67% of resident population in 2016\u20132018 and 75% of Swiss citizens), divided between the Catholic Church (35.8% of the population), the Swiss Reformed Church (23.8%), further Protestant churches (2.2%), Eastern Orthodoxy (2.5%), and other Christian denominations (2.2%).\nSwitzerland has no official state religion, though most of the cantons (except Geneva and Neuch\u00e2tel) recognise official churches, either the Catholic Church or the Swiss Reformed Church. These churches, and in some cantons the Old Catholic Church and Jewish congregations, are financed by official taxation of members. In 2020, the Roman Catholic Church had 3,048,475 registered and church tax paying members (corresponding to 35.2% of the total population), while the Swiss Reformed Church had 2,015,816 members (23.3% of the total population).\n26.3% of Swiss permanent residents are not affiliated with a religious community.\nAs of 2020, according to a national survey conducted by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, Christian minority communities included Neo-Pietism (0.5%), Pentecostalism (0.4%, mostly incorporated in the Schweizer Pfingstmission), Apostolic communities (0.3%), other Protestant denominations (1.1%, including Methodism), the Old Catholic Church (0.1%), other Christian denominations (0.3%). Non-Christian religions are Islam (5.3%), Hinduism (0.6%), Buddhism (0.5%), Judaism (0.25%) and others (0.4%).\nHistorically, the country was about evenly balanced between Catholic and Protestant, in a complex patchwork. During the Reformation Switzerland became home to many reformers. Geneva converted to Protestantism in 1536, just before John Calvin arrived. In 1541, he founded the \"Republic of Geneva\" on his own ideals. It became known internationally as the \"Protestant Rome\" and housed such reformers as Theodore Beza, William Farel or Pierre Viret. Zurich became another reform stronghold around the same time, with Huldrych Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger taking the lead. Anabaptists Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel also operated there. They were later joined by the fleeing Peter Martyr Vermigli and Hans Denck. Other centres included Basel (Andreas Karlstadt and Johannes Oecolampadius), Bern (Berchtold Haller and Niklaus Manuel), and St. Gallen (Joachim Vadian). One canton, Appenzell, was officially divided into Catholic and Protestant sections in 1597. The larger cities and their cantons (Bern, Geneva, Lausanne, Zurich and Basel) used to be predominantly Protestant. Central Switzerland, the Valais, the Ticino, Appenzell Innerrhodes, the Jura, and Fribourg are traditionally Catholic.\nThe Swiss Constitution of 1848, under the recent impression of the clashes of Catholic vs Protestant cantons that culminated in the Sonderbundskrieg, consciously defines a consociational state, allowing the peaceful co-existence of Catholics and Protestants. A 1980 initiative calling for the complete separation of church and state was rejected by 78.9% of the voters. Some traditionally Protestant cantons and cities nowadays have a slight Catholic majority, because since about 1970 a steadily growing minority were not affiliated with any religious body (21.4% in Switzerland, 2012) especially in traditionally Protestant regions, such as Basel-City (42%), canton of Neuch\u00e2tel (38%), canton of Geneva (35%), canton of Vaud (26%), or Zurich city (city: >25%; canton: 23%).\nLiterature.\nThe earliest forms of literature were in German, reflecting the language's early predominance. In the 18th century, French became fashionable in Bern and elsewhere, while the influence of the French-speaking allies and subject lands increased.\nAmong the classic authors of Swiss literature are Jeremias Gotthelf (1797\u20131854) and Gottfried Keller (1819\u20131890); later writers are Max Frisch (1911\u20131991) and Friedrich D\u00fcrrenmatt (1921\u20131990), whose (\"\") was released as a Hollywood film in 2001, starring Jack Nicholson.\nFamous French-speaking writers were Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712\u20131778) and Germaine de Sta\u00ebl (1766\u20131817). More recent authors include Charles Ferdinand Ramuz (1878\u20131947), whose novels describe the lives of peasants and mountain dwellers, set in a harsh environment, and Blaise Cendrars (born Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Sauser, 1887\u20131961). Italian and Romansh-speaking authors also contributed to the Swiss literary landscape, generally in proportion to their number.\nProbably the most famous Swiss literary creation, \"Heidi\", the story of an orphan girl who lives with her grandfather in the Alps, is one of the most popular children's books and has come to be a symbol of Switzerland. Her creator, Johanna Spyri (1827\u20131901), wrote a number of books on similar themes.\nMedia.\nFreedom of the press and the right to free expression is guaranteed in the constitution. The Swiss News Agency (SNA) broadcasts information in three of the four national languages\u2014on politics, economics, society and culture. The SNA supplies almost all Swiss media and foreign media with its reporting.\nIn Switzerland, the most influential newspapers include the German-language and \"Neue Z\u00fcrcher Zeitung\", as well as the French-language \"Le Temps\". Additionally, almost every city has at least one local newspaper published in the predominant local language.\nThe government exerts greater control over broadcast media than print media, especially due to financing and licensing. The Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, whose name was recently changed to SRG SSR, is charged with the production and distribution of radio and television content. SRG SSR studios are distributed across the various language regions. Radio content is produced in six central and four regional studios while video media are produced in Geneva, Zurich, Basel, and Lugano. An extensive cable network allows most Swiss to access content from neighbouring countries.\nSports.\nSkiing, snowboarding and mountaineering are among the most popular sports, reflecting the nature of the country Winter sports are practised by natives and visitors. The bobsleigh was invented in St. Moritz. The first world ski championships were held in M\u00fcrren (1931) and St. Moritz (1934). The latter town hosted the second Winter Olympic Games in 1928 and the fifth edition in 1948. Among its most successful skiers and world champions are Pirmin Zurbriggen and Didier Cuche.\nThe most prominently watched sports in Switzerland are football and ice hockey.\nThe headquarters of the international football's and ice hockey's governing bodies, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) and International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) are located in Zurich. Many other headquarters of international sports federations are located in Switzerland. For example, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), IOC's Olympic Museum and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) are located in Lausanne.\nSwitzerland hosted the 1954 FIFA World Cup and was the joint host, with Austria, of the UEFA Euro 2008 tournament. The Swiss Super League is the nation's professional football club league. Europe's highest football pitch, at above sea level, is located in Switzerland, the \"Ottmar Hitzfeld Stadium\".\nMany Swiss follow ice hockey and support one of the 12 teams of the National League, which is the most attended league in Europe. In 2009, Switzerland hosted the IIHF World Championship for the tenth time. It also became World Vice-Champion in 2013 and 2018. Its numerous lakes make Switzerland an attractive sailing destination. The largest, Lake Geneva, is the home of the sailing team Alinghi which was the first European team to win the America's Cup in 2003 and which successfully defended the title in 2007.\nSwiss tennis player Roger Federer is widely regarded as among the sport's greatest players. He won 20 Grand Slam tournaments overall including a record 8 Wimbledon titles. He won six ATP Finals. He was ranked no. 1 in the ATP rankings for a record 237 consecutive weeks. He ended 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009 ranked no. 1. Fellow Swiss players Martina Hingis and Stan Wawrinka also won multiple Grand Slam titles. Switzerland won the Davis Cup title in 2014.\nMotorsport racecourses and events were banned in Switzerland following the 1955 Le Mans disaster with exceptions for events such as hillclimbing. The country continued to produce successful racing drivers such as Clay Regazzoni, S\u00e9bastien Buemi, Jo Siffert, Dominique Aegerter, successful World Touring Car Championship driver Alain Menu, 2014 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Marcel F\u00e4ssler and 2015 24 Hours N\u00fcrburgring winner Nico M\u00fcller. Switzerland also won the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport in 2007\u201308 with driver Neel Jani. Swiss motorcycle racer Thomas L\u00fcthi won the 2005 MotoGP World Championship in the 125cc category. In June 2007 the Swiss National Council, one house of the Federal Assembly of Switzerland, voted to overturn the ban, however the other house, the Swiss Council of States rejected the change and the ban remains in place.\nTraditional sports include Swiss wrestling or , a tradition from the rural central cantons and considered the national sport by some. Hornussen is another indigenous Swiss sport, which is like a cross between baseball and golf. is the Swiss variant of stone put, a competition in throwing a heavy stone. Practised only among the alpine population since prehistoric times, it is recorded to have taken place in Basel in the 13th century. It is central to the Unspunnenfest, first held in 1805, with its symbol the 83.5 stone named .\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine is multifaceted. While dishes such as fondue, raclette or r\u00f6sti are omnipresent, each region developed its gastronomy according to the varieties of climate and language, for example, , engl.: sliced meat Zurich style. Traditional Swiss cuisine uses ingredients similar to those in other European countries, as well as unique dairy products and cheeses such as Gruy\u00e8re or Emmental, produced in the valleys of Gruy\u00e8res and Emmental. The number of fine-dining establishments is high, particularly in western Switzerland.\nChocolate has been made in Switzerland since the 18th century. Its reputation grew at the end of the 19th century with the invention of modern techniques such as conching and tempering, which enabled higher quality. Another breakthrough was the invention of solid milk chocolate in 1875 by Daniel Peter. The Swiss are the world's largest chocolate consumers.\nThe most popular alcoholic drink is wine. Switzerland is notable for its variety of grape varieties, reflecting the large variations in terroirs. Swiss wine is produced mainly in Valais, Vaud (Lavaux), Geneva and Ticino, with a small majority of white wines. Vineyards have been cultivated in Switzerland since the Roman era, even though traces of a more ancient origin can be found. The most widespread varieties are the Chasselas (called Fendant in Valais) and Pinot Noir. Merlot is the main variety produced in Ticino.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "981": "Alps\nMajor mountain range in central Europe\nThe Alps () are some of the highest and most extensive mountain ranges in Europe, stretching approximately across eight Alpine countries (from west to east): Monaco, France, Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria and Slovenia.\nThe Alpine arch extends from Nice on the western Mediterranean to Trieste on the Adriatic and Vienna at the beginning of the Pannonian Basin. The mountains were formed over tens of millions of years as the African and Eurasian tectonic plates collided. Extreme shortening caused by the event resulted in marine sedimentary rocks rising by thrusting and folding into high mountain peaks such as Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn.\nMont Blanc spans the French\u2013Italian border, and at is the highest mountain in the Alps. The Alpine region area contains 82 peaks higher than .\nThe altitude and size of the range affect the climate in Europe; in the mountains, precipitation levels vary greatly and climatic conditions consist of distinct zones. Wildlife such as ibex live in the higher peaks to elevations of , and plants such as edelweiss grow in rocky areas in lower elevations as well as in higher elevations.\nEvidence of human habitation in the Alps goes back to the Palaeolithic era. A mummified man (\"\u00d6tzi\"), determined to be 5,000 years old, was discovered on a glacier at the Austrian\u2013Italian border in 1991.\nBy the 6th century BC, the Celtic La T\u00e8ne culture was well established. Hannibal notably crossed the Alps with a herd of elephants, and the Romans had settlements in the region. In 1800, Napoleon crossed one of the mountain passes with an army of 40,000. The 18th and 19th centuries saw an influx of naturalists, writers, and artists, in particular, the Romanticists, followed by the golden age of alpinism as mountaineers began to ascend the peaks of the Alps.\nThe Alpine region has a strong cultural identity. Traditional practices such as farming, cheesemaking, and woodworking still thrive in Alpine villages. However, the tourist industry began to grow early in the 20th century and expanded significantly after World War II, eventually becoming the dominant industry by the end of the century.\nThe Winter Olympic Games have been hosted in the Swiss, French, Italian, Austrian and German Alps. As of 2010,[ [update]] the region is home to 14\u00a0million people and has 120\u00a0million annual visitors.\nEtymology and toponymy.\nThe English word \"Alps\" comes from the Latin \"Alpes\".\nThe Latin word \"Alpes\" could possibly come from the adjective \"albus\" (\"white\"), or could possibly come from the Greek goddess Alphito, whose name is related to \"alphita\", the \"white flour\"; \"alphos\", a dull white leprosy; and finally the Proto-Indo-European word *alb\u02b0\u00f3s. Similarly, the river god Alpheus is also supposed to derive from the Greek \"alphos\" and means whitish.\nIn his commentary on the \"Aeneid\" of Virgil, the late fourth-century grammarian Maurus Servius Honoratus says that all high mountains are called \"Alpes\" by Celts.\nAccording to the \"Oxford English Dictionary\", the Latin \"Alpes\" might derive from a pre-Indo-European word *\"alb\" \"hill\"; \"Albania\" is a related derivation. Albania, the name of the region known as the country of Albania, has been used as a name for several mountainous areas across Europe.\nIn Roman times, \"Albania\" was a name for the eastern Caucasus, while in the English languages \"Albania\" (or \"Albany\") was occasionally used as a name for Scotland, although it is more likely derived from the Latin word \"albus\", the colour white.\nIn modern languages the term \"alp\", \"alm\", \"albe\" or \"alpe\" refers to a grazing pastures in the alpine regions below the glaciers, not the peaks.\nAn \"alp\" refers to a high mountain pasture, typically near or above the tree line, where cows and other livestock are taken to be grazed during the summer months and where huts and hay barns can be found, sometimes constituting tiny hamlets. Therefore, the term \"the Alps\", as a reference to the mountains, is a misnomer. The term for the mountain peaks varies by nation and language: words such as \"Horn\", \"Kogel\", \"Kopf\", \"Gipfel\", \"Spitze\", \"Stock\", and \"Berg\" are used in German-speaking regions; \"Mont\", \"Pic\", \"T\u00eate\", \"Pointe\", \"Dent\", \"Roche\", and \"Aiguille\" in French-speaking regions; and \"Monte\", \"Picco\", \"Corno\", \"Punta\", \"Pizzo\", or \"Cima\" in Italian-speaking regions.\nGeography.\nThe Alps are a crescent shaped geographic feature of central Europe that ranges in an arc (curved line) from east to west and is in width. The mean height of the mountain peaks is . The range stretches from the Mediterranean Sea north above the Po basin, extending through France from Grenoble, and stretching eastward through mid and southern Switzerland. The range continues onward toward Vienna, Austria, and southeast to the Adriatic Sea and Slovenia.\nTo the south it dips into northern Italy and to the north extends to the southern border of Bavaria in Germany. In areas like Chiasso, Switzerland, and Allg\u00e4u, Bavaria, the demarcation between the mountain range and the flatlands are clear; in other places such as Geneva, the demarcation is less clear.\nThe Alps are found in the following countries: Austria (28.7% of the range's area), Italy (27.2%), France (21.4%), Switzerland (13.2%), Germany (5.8%), Slovenia (3.6%), Liechtenstein (0.08%) and Monaco (0.001%).\nThe highest portion of the range is divided by the glacial trough of the Rh\u00f4ne valley, from Mont Blanc to the Matterhorn and Monte Rosa on the southern side, and the Bernese Alps on the northern. The peaks in the easterly portion of the range, in Austria and Slovenia, are smaller than those in the central and western portions.\nThe variances in nomenclature in the region spanned by the Alps make classification of the mountains and subregions difficult, but a general classification is that of the Eastern Alps and Western Alps with the divide between the two occurring in eastern Switzerland according to geologist Stefan Schmid, near the Spl\u00fcgen Pass.\nThe highest peaks of the Western Alps and Eastern Alps, respectively, are Mont Blanc, at , and Piz Bernina, at . The second-highest major peaks are Monte Rosa, at , and Ortler, at , respectively.\nA series of lower mountain ranges run parallel to the main chain of the Alps, including the French Prealps in France and the Jura Mountains in Switzerland and France. The secondary chain of the Alps follows the watershed from the Mediterranean Sea to the Wienerwald, passing over many of the highest and most well-known peaks in the Alps. From the Colle di Cadibona to Col de Tende it runs westwards, before turning to the northwest and then, near the Colle della Maddalena, to the north. Upon reaching the Swiss border, the line of the main chain heads approximately east-northeast, a heading it follows until its end near Vienna.\nThe northeast end of the Alpine arc, directly on the Danube, which flows into the Black Sea, is the Leopoldsberg near Vienna. In contrast, the southeastern part of the Alps ends on the Adriatic Sea in the area around Trieste towards Duino and Barcola.\nPasses.\nThe Alps have been crossed for war and commerce, and by pilgrims, students, and tourists. Crossing routes by road, train, or foot are known as \"passes\", and usually consist of depressions in the mountains in which a valley leads from the plains and hilly pre-mountainous zones. Merchant traffic was supported by pack animals such as mules. In the late Middle Ages heavy carts and sleighs were in use on the alpine passes.\nIn the medieval period hospices were established by religious orders at the summits of many of the main passes. The most important passes are the Col de l'Iseran (the highest), the Col Agnel, the Brenner Pass, the Mont-Cenis, the Great St. Bernard Pass, the Col de Tende, the Gotthard Pass, the Semmering Pass, the Simplon Pass, and the Stelvio Pass.\nCrossing the Italian-Austrian border, the Brenner Pass separates the \u00d6tztal Alps and Zillertal Alps and has been in use as a trading route since the 14th century. The lowest of the Alpine passes at is the Semmering crossing from Lower Austria to Styria. It has been in continuous use since the 12th century when a hospice was built there. A railroad with a tunnel long was built along the route of the pass in the mid-19th century. With a summit of , the Great St Bernard Pass is one of the highest in the Alps, crossing the Italian-Swiss border east of the Pennine Alps along the flanks of Mont Blanc. The pass was used by Napoleon Bonaparte to cross 40,000 troops in 1800.\nThe Mont Cenis pass has been a major commercial and military road between Western Europe and Italy. The pass was crossed by many troops on their way to the Italian peninsula. From Constantine I, Pepin the Short and Charlemagne to Henry IV, Napol\u00e9on and more recently the German Gebirgsj\u00e4gers during World War II. \nIn the 18th century the principal passes of the Alps were modernized by engineers to speed up passenger and freight transport. The Mont Cenis pass has been supplanted by the Fr\u00e9jus Rail Tunnel opening in 1871, while the Fr\u00e9jus Road Tunnel opened 1980. Railway lines could not be built in the Alps without tunnels and bridges. Apart from the Mont Cenis railway tunnel the Semmering railway tunnel and the Gotthard railway tunnel were built between 1854 and 1882. By the early 19th century eight trans-alpine railway lines had been put into operation.\nThe Saint Gotthard Pass crosses from Central Switzerland to Ticino. In 1882 the Saint Gotthard Railway Tunnel was opened connecting Lucerne in Switzerland, with Milan in Italy. 98 years later followed Gotthard Road Tunnel ( long) connecting the A2 motorway in G\u00f6schenen on the north side with Airolo on the south side, exactly like the railway tunnel.\nOn 1 June 2016 the world's longest railway tunnel, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, was opened, which connects Erstfeld in canton of Uri with Bodio in canton of Ticino by two single tubes of .\nIt is the first tunnel that traverses the Alps on a flat route.\nFrom 11 December 2016, it has been part of the regular railway timetable and used hourly as standard ride between Basel/Lucerne/Zurich and Bellinzona/Lugano/Milan.\nThe highest pass in the alps is the Col de l'Iseran in Savoy (France) at , followed by the Stelvio Pass in northern Italy at ; the road was built in the 1820s.\nHighest mountains.\nThe Union Internationale des Associations d'Alpinisme (UIAA) has defined a list of 82 \"official\" Alpine summits that reach at least . The list includes not only mountains, but also subpeaks with little prominence that are considered important mountaineering objectives. Below are listed the 29 \"four-thousanders\" with at least of prominence.\nWhile Mont Blanc was first climbed in 1786 and the Jungfrau in 1811, most of the Alpine four-thousanders were climbed during the second half of the 19th century, notably Piz Bernina (1850), the Dom (1858), the Grand Combin (1859), the Weisshorn (1861) and the Barre des \u00c9crins (1864); the ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865 marked the end of the golden age of alpinism. Karl Blodig (1859\u20131956) was among the first to successfully climb all the major 4,000\u00a0m peaks. He completed his series of ascents in 1911. Many of the big Alpine three-thousanders were climbed in the early 19th century, notably the Grossglockner (1800) and the Ortler (1804), although some of them were climbed only much later, such at Mont Pelvoux (1848), Monte Viso (1861) and La Meije (1877).\nThe first British Mont Blanc ascent by a man was in 1788; the first ascent by a woman was in 1808. By the mid-1850s Swiss mountaineers had ascended most of the peaks and were eagerly sought as mountain guides. Edward Whymper reached the top of the Matterhorn in 1865 (after seven attempts), and in 1938 the last of the six great north faces of the Alps was climbed with the first ascent of the Eiger \"Nordwand\" (north face of the Eiger).\nGeology and orogeny.\nImportant geological concepts were established as naturalists began studying the rock formations of the Alps in the 18th century. In the mid-19th century, the now-defunct idea of geosynclines was used to explain the presence of \"folded\" mountain chains. This theory was replaced in the mid-20th century by the theory of plate tectonics.\nThe formation of the Alps (the Alpine orogeny) was an episodic process that began about 300\u00a0million years ago. In the Paleozoic Era the Pangaean supercontinent consisted of a single tectonic plate; it broke into separate plates during the Mesozoic Era and the Tethys sea developed between Laurasia and Gondwana during the Jurassic Period. The Tethys was later squeezed between colliding plates causing the formation of mountain ranges called the Alpide belt, from Gibraltar through the Himalayas to Indonesia\u2014a process that began at the end of the Mesozoic and continues into the present. The formation of the Alps was a segment of this orogenic process, caused by the collision between the African and the Eurasian plates that began in the late Cretaceous Period.\nUnder extreme compressive stresses and pressure, marine sedimentary rocks were uplifted, forming characteristic recumbent folds, and thrust faults. As the rising peaks underwent erosion, a layer of marine flysch sediments was deposited in the foreland basin, and the sediments became involved in younger folds as the orogeny progressed. Coarse sediments from the continual uplift and erosion were later deposited in foreland areas north of the Alps. These regions in Switzerland and Bavaria are well-developed, containing classic examples of flysch, which is sedimentary rock formed during mountain building.\nThe Alpine orogeny occurred in ongoing cycles through to the Paleogene causing differences in folded structures, with a late-stage orogeny causing the development of the Jura Mountains. A series of tectonic events in the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods caused different paleogeographic regions. The Alps are subdivided by different lithology (rock composition) and nappe structures according to the orogenic events that affected them. The geological subdivision differentiates the Western, Eastern Alps, and Southern Alps: the Helveticum in the north, the Penninicum and Austroalpine system in the centre and, south of the Periadriatic Seam, the Southern Alpine system.\nAccording to geologist Stefan Schmid, because the Western Alps underwent a metamorphic event in the Cenozoic Era while the Austroalpine peaks underwent an event in the Cretaceous Period, the two areas show distinct differences in nappe formations. Flysch deposits in the Southern Alps of Lombardy probably occurred in the Cretaceous or later.\nPeaks in France, Italy and Switzerland lie in the \"Houilli\u00e8re zone\", which consists of basement with sediments from the Mesozoic Era. High \"massifs\" with external sedimentary cover are more common in the Western Alps and were affected by Neogene Period thin-skinned thrusting whereas the Eastern Alps have comparatively few high peaked massifs. Similarly the peaks in eastern Switzerland extending to western Austria (Helvetic nappes) consist of thin-skinned sedimentary folding that detached from former basement rock.\nIn simple terms, the structure of the Alps consists of layers of rock of European, African, and oceanic (Tethyan) origin. The bottom nappe structure is of continental European origin, above which are stacked marine sediment nappes, topped off by nappes derived from the African plate. The Matterhorn is an example of the ongoing orogeny and shows evidence of great folding. The tip of the mountain consists of gneisses from the African plate; the base of the peak, below the glaciated area, consists of European basement rock. The sequence of Tethyan marine sediments and their oceanic basement is sandwiched between rock derived from the African and European plates.\nThe core regions of the Alpine orogenic belt have been folded and fractured in such a manner that erosion produced the characteristic steep vertical peaks of the Swiss Alps that rise seemingly straight out of the foreland areas. Peaks such as Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn, and high peaks in the Pennine Alps, the Brian\u00e7onnais, and Hohe Tauern consist of layers of rock from the various orogenies including exposures of basement rock.\nDue to the ever-present geologic instability, earthquakes continue in the Alps to this day. Typically, the largest earthquakes in the alps have been between magnitude 6 and 7 on the Richter scale. Geodetic measurements show ongoing topographic uplift at rates of up to about 2.5\u00a0mm per year in the North, Western and Central Alps, and at ~1\u00a0mm per year in the Eastern and South-Western Alps. The underlying mechanisms that jointly drive the present-day uplift pattern are the isostatic rebound due to the melting of the last glacial maximum ice-cap or long-term erosion, detachment of the Western Alpine subducting slab, mantle convection as well as ongoing horizontal convergence between Africa and Europe, but their relative contributions to the uplift of the Alps are difficult to quantify and likely to vary significantly in space and time.\nMinerals.\nThe Alps are a source of minerals that have been mined for thousands of years. In the 8th to 6th centuries, BC during the Hallstatt culture, Celtic tribes mined copper; later the Romans mined gold for coins in the Bad Gastein area. Erzberg in Styria furnishes high-quality iron ore for the steel industry. Crystals, such as cinnabar, amethyst, and quartz, are found throughout much of the Alpine region. The cinnabar deposits in Slovenia are a notable source of cinnabar pigments.\nAlpine crystals have been studied and collected for hundreds of years and began to be classified in the 18th century. Leonhard Euler studied the shapes of crystals, and by the 19th-century crystal hunting was common in Alpine regions. David Friedrich Wiser amassed a collection of 8000 crystals that he studied and documented. In the 20th century Robert Parker wrote a well-known work about the rock crystals of the Swiss Alps; at the same period a commission was established to control and standardize the naming of Alpine minerals.\nGlaciers.\nIn the Miocene Epoch the mountains underwent severe erosion because of glaciation, which was noted in the mid-19th century by naturalist Louis Agassiz who presented a paper proclaiming the Alps were covered in ice at various intervals\u2014a theory he formed when studying rocks near his Neuch\u00e2tel home which he believed originated to the west in the Bernese Oberland. Because of his work he came to be known as the \"father of the ice-age concept\" although other naturalists before him put forth similar ideas.\nAgassiz studied glacier movement in the 1840s at the Unteraar Glacier where he found the glacier moved per year, more rapidly in the middle than at the edges. His work was continued by other scientists and now a permanent laboratory exists inside a glacier under the Jungfraujoch, devoted exclusively to the study of Alpine glaciers.\nGlaciers pick up rocks and sediment with them as they flow. This causes erosion and the formation of valleys over time. The Inn valley is an example of a valley carved by glaciers during the ice ages with a typical terraced structure caused by erosion. Eroded rocks from the most recent ice age lie at the bottom of the valley while the top of the valley consists of erosion from earlier ice ages. Glacial valleys have characteristically steep walls (reliefs); valleys with lower reliefs and talus slopes are remnants of glacial troughs or previously infilled valleys. Moraines, piles of rock picked up during the movement of the glacier, accumulate at edges, centre, and the terminus of glaciers.\nAlpine glaciers can be straight rivers of ice, long sweeping rivers, spread in a fan-like shape (Piedmont glaciers), and curtains of ice that hang from vertical slopes of the mountain peaks. The stress of the movement causes the ice to break and crack loudly, perhaps explaining why the mountains were believed to be home to dragons in the medieval period. The cracking creates unpredictable and dangerous crevasses, often invisible under new snowfall, which causes the greatest danger to mountaineers.\nGlaciers end in ice caves (the Rh\u00f4ne Glacier), by trailing into a lake or river, or by shedding snowmelt on a meadow. Sometimes a piece of glacier will detach or break resulting in flooding, property damage, and loss of life.\nHigh levels of precipitation cause the glaciers to descend to permafrost levels in some areas whereas in other, more arid regions, glaciers remain above about the level. The of the Alps covered by glaciers in 1876 had shrunk to by 1973, resulting in decreased river run-off levels. Forty percent of the glaciation in Austria has disappeared since 1850, and 30% of that in Switzerland.\nAlthough the Alpine topography shows marked glacial morphologies, the mechanisms by which glacial reshaping occurs are unclear. Numerical modeling suggests that glacial erosion propagates from low elevations to high elevations leading to an early increase of local relief followed by lowering of the mean orogen elevation.\nRivers and lakes.\nThe Alps provide lowland Europe with drinking water, irrigation, and hydroelectric power. Although the area is only about 11% of the surface area of Europe, the Alps provide up to 90% of water to lowland Europe, particularly to arid areas and during the summer months. Cities such as Milan depend on 80% of water from Alpine runoff. Water from the rivers is used in at least 550 hydroelectricity power plants, considering only those producing at least 10MW of electricity.\nMajor European rivers flow from the Alps, such as the Rhine, the Rh\u00f4ne, the Inn, and the Po, all of which have headwaters in the Alps and flow into neighbouring countries, finally emptying into the North Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Adriatic Sea and the Black Sea. Other rivers such as the Danube have major tributaries flowing into them that originate in the Alps.\nThe Rh\u00f4ne is second to the Nile as a freshwater source to the Mediterranean Sea; the river begins as glacial meltwater, flows into Lake Geneva, and from there to France where one of its uses is to cool nuclear power plants. The Rhine originates in a area in Switzerland and represents almost 60% of water exported from the country. Tributary valleys, some of which are complicated, channel water to the main valleys which can experience flooding during the snowmelt season when rapid runoff causes debris torrents and swollen rivers.\nThe rivers form lakes, such as Lake Geneva, a crescent-shaped lake crossing the Swiss border with Lausanne on the Swiss side and the town of Evian-les-Bains on the French side. In Germany, the medieval St. Bartholomew's chapel was built on the south side of the K\u00f6nigssee, accessible only by boat or by climbing over the abutting peaks.\nAdditionally, the Alps have led to the creation of large lakes in Italy. For instance, the Sarca, the primary inflow of Lake Garda, originates in the Italian Alps. The Italian Lakes are a popular tourist destination since the Roman Era for their mild climate.\nScientists have been studying the impact of climate change and water use. For example, each year more water is diverted from rivers for snowmaking in the ski resorts, the effect of which is yet unknown. Furthermore, the decrease of glaciated areas combined with a succession of winters with lower-than-expected precipitation may have a future impact on the rivers in the Alps as well as an effect on the water availability to the lowlands.\nClimate.\nThe Alps are a classic example of what happens when a temperate area at lower altitude gives way to higher-elevation terrain. Elevations around the world that have cold climates similar to those of the polar regions have been called Alpine. A rise from sea level into the upper regions of the atmosphere causes the temperature to decrease (see adiabatic lapse rate). The effect of mountain chains on prevailing winds is to carry warm air belonging to the lower region into an upper zone, where it expands in volume at the cost of a proportionate loss of temperature, often accompanied by precipitation in the form of snow or rain. The height of the Alps is sufficient to divide the weather patterns in Europe into a wet north and dry south because moisture is sucked from the air as it flows over the high peaks.\nThe severe weather in the Alps has been studied since the 18th century; particularly the weather patterns such as the seasonal foehn wind. Numerous weather stations were placed in the mountains early in the early 20th century, providing continuous data for climatologists. Some of the valleys are quite arid such as the Aosta Valley in Italy, the Maurienne in France, the Valais in Switzerland, and northern Tyrol.\nThe areas that are not arid and receive high precipitation experience periodic flooding from rapid snowmelt and runoff. The mean precipitation in the Alps ranges from a low of per year to per year, with the higher levels occurring at high altitudes. At altitudes between , snowfall begins in November and accumulates through to April or May when the melt begins. Snow lines vary from , above which the snow is permanent and the temperatures hover around the freezing point even during July and August. High-water levels in streams and rivers peak in June and July when the snow is still melting at the higher altitudes.\nThe Alps are split into five climatic zones, each with different vegetation. The climate, plant life, and animal life vary among the different sections or zones of the mountains. The lowest zone is the colline zone, which exists between , depending on the location. The montane zone extends from , followed by the sub-Alpine zone from . The Alpine zone, extending from tree line to the snow line, is followed by the glacial zone, which covers the glaciated areas of the mountain. Climatic conditions show variances within the same zones; for example, weather conditions at the head of a mountain valley, extending directly from the peaks, are colder and more severe than those at the mouth of a valley which tend to be less severe and receive less snowfall.\nVarious models of climate change have been projected into the 22nd century for the Alps, with an expectation that a trend toward increased temperatures will have an effect on snowfall, snowpack, glaciation, and river runoff. Significant changes, of both natural and anthropogenic origins, have already been diagnosed from observations, including a 5.6% reduction per decade in snow cover duration over the last 50\u2009years, which also highlights climate change adaptation needs due to impacts on the climate and regional socio-economic activities.<ref name=\"10.1038/s41558-022-01575-3\"></ref>\nEcology.\nFlora.\nThirteen thousand species of plants have been identified in the Alpine regions. Alpine plants are grouped by habitat and soil type which can be limestone or non-calcareous. The habitats range from meadows, bogs, and woodland (deciduous and coniferous) areas to soil-less scree and moraines, and rock faces and ridges. A natural vegetation limit with altitude is given by the presence of the chief deciduous trees\u2014oak, beech, ash and sycamore maple. These do not reach the same elevation, nor are they often found growing together, but their upper limit corresponds accurately enough to the change from a temperate to a colder climate that is further proved by a change in the presence of wild herbaceous vegetation. This limit usually lies about above the sea on the north side of the Alps, but on the southern slopes it often rises to , sometimes even to .\nAbove the forestry, there is often a band of dwarf pine trees (\"Pinus mugo\"), which is in turn superseded by \"Alpenrosen\", dwarf shrubs, typically \"Rhododendron ferrugineum\" (on acid soils) or \"Rhododendron hirsutum\" (on alkaline soils). Although Alpenrose prefers acidic soil, the plants are found throughout the region. Above the tree line is the area defined as \"alpine\" where in the alpine meadow plants are found that have adapted well to harsh conditions of cold temperatures, aridity, and high altitudes. The alpine area fluctuates greatly because of regional fluctuations in tree lines.\nAlpine plants such as the Alpine gentian grow in abundance in areas such as the meadows above the Lauterbrunnental. Gentians are named after the Illyrian king Gentius, and 40 species of the early-spring blooming flower grow in the Alps, in a range of . Writing about the gentians in Switzerland D. H. Lawrence described them as \"darkening the day-time, torch-like with the smoking blueness of Pluto's gloom.\" Gentians tend to \"appear\" repeatedly as the spring blooming takes place at progressively later dates, moving from the lower altitude to the higher altitude meadows where the snow melts much later than in the valleys. On the highest rocky ledges, the spring flowers bloom in the summer.\nAt these higher altitudes, the plants tend to form isolated cushions. In the Alps, several species of flowering plants have been recorded above , including \"Ranunculus glacialis\", \"Androsace alpina\" and \"Saxifraga biflora\". \"Eritrichium nanum\", commonly known as the King of the Alps, is the most elusive of the alpine flowers, growing on rocky ridges at . Perhaps the best known of the alpine plants is Edelweiss which grows in rocky areas and can be found at altitudes as low as and as high as . The plants that grow at the highest altitudes have adapted to conditions by specialization such as growing in rock screes that give protection from winds.\nThe extreme and stressful climatic conditions give way to the growth of plant species with secondary metabolites important for medicinal purposes. \"Origanum vulgare\", \"Prunella vulgaris\", \"Solanum nigrum\", and \"Urtica dioica\" are some of the more useful medicinal species found in the Alps.\nHuman interference has nearly exterminated the trees in many areas, and, except for the beech forests of the Austrian Alps, forests of deciduous trees are rarely found after the extreme deforestation between the 17th and 19th centuries. The vegetation has changed since the second half of the 20th century, as the high alpine meadows cease to be harvested for hay or used for grazing which eventually might result in a regrowth of the forest. In some areas, the modern practice of building ski runs by mechanical means has destroyed the underlying tundra from which the plant life cannot recover during the non-skiing months, whereas areas that still practice a natural \"piste\" type of ski slope building preserve the fragile underlayers.\nFauna.\nThe Alps are a habitat for 30,000 species of wildlife, ranging from the tiniest snow fleas to brown bears, many of which have made adaptations to the harsh cold conditions and high altitudes to the point that some only survive in specific micro-climates either directly above or below the snow line.\nThe largest mammal to live in the highest altitudes are the alpine ibex, which have been sighted as high as . The ibex live in caves and descend to eat the succulent alpine grasses. Classified as antelopes, chamois are smaller than ibex and found throughout the Alps, living above the tree line and are common in the entire alpine range. Areas of the eastern Alps are still home to brown bears. In Switzerland the canton of Bern was named for the bears but the last bear is recorded as having been killed in 1792 above Kleine Scheidegg by three hunters from Grindelwald.\nMany rodents such as voles live underground. Marmots live almost exclusively above the tree line as high as . They hibernate in large groups to provide warmth, and can be found in all areas of the Alps, in large colonies they build beneath the alpine pastures. Golden eagles and bearded vultures are the largest birds to be found in the Alps; they nest high on rocky ledges and can be found at altitudes of . The most common bird is the alpine chough which can be found scavenging at climber's huts or the Jungfraujoch, a high-altitude tourist destination.\nReptiles such as adders and vipers live up to the snow line; because they cannot bear the cold temperatures they hibernate underground and soak up the warmth on rocky ledges. The high-altitude Alpine salamanders have adapted to living above the snow line by giving birth to fully developed young rather than laying eggs. Brown trout can be found in the streams up to the snow line. Molluscs such as the wood snail live up the snow line. Popularly gathered as food, the snails are now protected.\nSeveral species of moths live in the Alps, some of which are believed to have evolved in the same habitat up to 120\u00a0million years ago, long before the Alps were created. Blue butterflies can commonly be seen drinking from the snowmelt; some species of blues fly as high as . The butterflies tend to be large, such as those from the swallowtail \"Parnassius\" family, with a habitat that ranges to . Twelve species of beetles have habitats up to the snow line; the most beautiful and formerly collected for its colours but now protected is \"Rosalia alpina\". Spiders, such as the large wolf spider, live above the snow line and can be seen as high as . Scorpions can be found in the Italian Alps.\nSome of the species of moths and insects show evidence of having been indigenous to the area from as long ago as the Alpine orogeny. In \u00c9mosson in Valais, Switzerland, dinosaur tracks were found in the 1970s, dating probably from the Triassic Period.\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nWhen the ice melted after the W\u00fcrm glaciation, Paleolithic settlements were established along the lake shores and in cave systems. Evidence of human habitation has been found in caves near the Vercors Cave System, close to Grenoble and Echirolles. In Austria, the Mondsee lake shows evidence of houses built on piles. Standing stones have been found in the Alpine areas of France and Italy. About 200,000 drawings and etchings have been documented, and are known as the Rock Drawings in Valcamonica.\nA mummy of a Neolithic human, known as \u00d6tzi, was discovered on the Similaun. His clothing lets modern people assume that he was an alpine farmer, while the location and manner of his death suggests that \u00d6tzi was traveling. Analysis of the mitochondrial DNA of \u00d6tzi, has shown that he belongs to the K1 subclade. His remains and personal belongings are on exhibit at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, South Tyrol, Italy.\nFrom the 13th to the 6th century BC much of the Alps was settled by the Germanic peoples, Lombards, Alemanni, Bavarii, and Franks. Celt tribes settled in modern-day Switzerland between 1500 and 1000 BC. The Raeti lived in the eastern regions, while the west was occupied by the Helvetii and the Allobroges settled in the Rh\u00f4ne valley and in Savoy. The Ligures and Adriatic Veneti lived in Northwest Italy and Triveneto respectively. The Celts mined salt in areas such as Salzburg, where evidence was found of the Hallstatt culture. By the 6th century BC the La T\u00e8ne culture was well established in the region, and became known for high quality Celtic art.\nBetween 430 and 400 BC prolonged warfare in the Alps resulted in the devastation of agricultural land and human settlements, ultimately triggering the enslavement of men, women, and children, goods had to be imported as a result. The Etruscan civilization responded to raids by the Massalia and acquired absolute control over the Alpine trade routes. Aggressors in modern-day Italy were dealt with and an alliance was formed with the Celts. The grip of the Etruscan settlements broke down, as the Roman political system expanded, so as to take control over Alpine trade routes that connected human settlements in the Alps with settlements in the Mediterranean.\nDuring the Second Punic War in 218 BC, the Carthage general Hannibal initiated one of the most celebrated achievements of any military force in ancient warfare, recorded as Hannibal crossing the Alps. The Roman people built roads along the Alpine mountain passes, which continued to be used through the medieval period. Roman road markers can still be found on the Alpine mountain passes.\nDuring the Gallic Wars in 58 BC Julius Caesar defeated the Helvetii. The Rhaetian continued to resist but their territory was eventually conquered when the Romans crossed the Danube valley and defeated the Brigantes. The Romans built settlements in the Alps. In towns such as Aosta, Martigny, Lausanne, and Partenkirchen remains of villas, arenas, and temples have been discovered.\nChristianity, feudalism, and Napoleonic wars.\nChristianity was established in the Alps by the Roman people. Monasteries and churches were constructed, even at high Alpine altitudes. The Franks expanded their Carolingian Empire, while the Baiuvarii introduced feudalism in the eastern Alps. The construction of castles in the Alps supported the growing number of dukedoms and kingdoms. Castello del Buonconsiglio in Trento, still has intricate frescoes, and excellent examples of Gothic art. The Ch\u00e2teau de Chillon is preserved as an example of medieval architecture. There are several important alpine saints and one such one is Saint Maurice. Much of the medieval period was a time of power struggles between competing dynasties such as the House of Savoy, the Visconti of Milan, and the House of Habsburg.\nThe Great St Bernard Hospice, built in the 9th or 10th centuries, at the summit of the Great Saint Bernard Pass was a shelter for humans and destination for pilgrims. In 1291, to protect themselves from incursions by the House of Habsburg, four Alpine cantons drew up the Federal Charter of 1291, which is considered to be a declaration of independence from neighboring kingdoms. After a series of battles fought in the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, more cantons joined the confederacy and by the 16th century, Switzerland was established as a sovereign state.\nIn the Alps, the War of the Spanish Succession fallout resulted in a 1713 treaty, part of the Peace of Utrecht, which relocated the Western Alps border along the watersheds. Historically, the Alps were used to determine the borders of political and administrative gangs, but the Peace of Utrecht was the first significant body of treaty that considered geographical conditions. The Alps were carved up and borders were agreed, so that enclaves in the Alps could be eliminated.\nDuring the Napoleonic Wars in the late 18th century and early 19th century, Napoleon annexed territory formerly controlled by the House of Habsburg, and the House of Savoy. In 1798, the Helvetic Republic was established, two years later an army across the Great St Bernard Pass. In 1799 the Russian imperial military engaged the revolutionary French army in the Alps, this episode has been recorded as significant achievement in mountain warfare. In October 1799 the troops commanded by Alexander Suvorov were surrounded in the Alps by much larger French troops. The Russian troops broke out, mauled the French troops, and retreated through the Panix Pass.\nAfter the fall of Napoleon, many alpine countries developed heavy protections to prevent further invasion. Thus, Savoy built a series of fortifications to protect the major alpine passes, such as the col du Mont-Cenis, which was crossed by Charlemagne to obliterate the Lombards.\nIn the 19th century, the monasteries built in the Alps to shelter humans became tourist destinations. The Benedictines had built monasteries in Lucerne, and Oberammergau. The Cistercians built their temple at Lake Constance. Meanwhile, the Augustinians maintained abbeys in Savoy and one in Interlaken.\nExploration.\nRadiocarbon-dated charcoal placed around 50,000 years ago was found in the \"Drachloch\" (Dragon's Hole) cave above the village of Vattis in the canton of St. Gallen, proving that the high peaks were visited by prehistoric people. Seven bear skulls from the cave may have been buried by the same prehistoric people. The peaks, however, were mostly ignored except for a few notable examples, and long left to the exclusive attention of the people of the adjoining valleys. The mountain peaks were seen as terrifying, the abode of dragons and demons, to the point that people blindfolded themselves to cross the Alpine passes. The glaciers remained a mystery and many still believed the highest areas to be inhabited by dragons.\nCharles VII of France ordered his chamberlain to climb Mont Aiguille in 1356. The knight reached the summit of Rocciamelone where he left a bronze triptych of three crosses, a feat which he conducted with the use of ladders to traverse the ice. In 1492, Antoine de Ville climbed Mont Aiguille, without reaching the summit, an experience he described as \"horrifying and terrifying.\" Leonardo da Vinci was fascinated by variations of light in the higher altitudes, and climbed a mountain\u2014scholars are uncertain which one; some believe it may have been Monte Rosa. From his description of a \"blue like that of a gentian\" sky it is thought that he reached a significantly high altitude. In the 18th century four Chamonix men almost made the summit of Mont Blanc but were overcome by altitude sickness and snowblindness.\nConrad Gessner was the first naturalist to ascend the mountains in the 16th century, to study them, writing that in the mountains he found the \"theatre of the Lord\". By the 19th century more naturalists began to arrive to explore, study and conquer the high peaks. Two men who first explored the regions of ice and snow were Horace-B\u00e9n\u00e9dict de Saussure (1740\u20131799) in the Pennine Alps, and the Benedictine monk of Disentis Placidus a Spescha (1752\u20131833). Born in Geneva, Saussure was enamoured with the mountains from an early age; he left a law career to become a naturalist and spent many years trekking through the Bernese Oberland, the Savoy, the Piedmont and Valais, studying the glaciers and geology, as he became an early proponent of the theory of rock upheaval. Saussure, in 1787, was a member of the third ascent of Mont Blanc\u2014today the summits of all the peaks have been climbed.\nThe Romantics and Alpinists.\nAlbrecht von Haller's poem \"Die Alpen\", published in 1732 described the mountains as an area of mythical purity. Jean-Jacques Rousseau presented the Alps as a place of allure and beauty, in his novel \"Julie, or the New Heloise\", published in 1761. Later the first wave of Romanticism such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and J. M. W. Turner came to admire the Alpine scenery; Wordsworth visited the area in 1790, writing of his experiences in \"The Prelude\" (1799). Schiller later wrote the play \"William Tell\" (1804), which tells the story of the legendary Swiss marksman William Tell as part of the greater Swiss struggle for independence from the Habsburg Empire in the early 14th century. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Alpine countries began to see an influx of poets, artists, and musicians, as visitors came to experience the sublime effects of monumental nature.\nIn 1816, Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary Shelley visited Geneva and all three were inspired by the scenery in their writings. During these visits Shelley wrote the poem \"Mont Blanc\", Byron wrote \"The Prisoner of Chillon\" and the dramatic poem \"Manfred\", and Mary Shelley, who found the scenery overwhelming, conceived the idea for the novel \"Frankenstein\" in her villa on the shores of Lake Geneva amid a thunderstorm. When Coleridge travelled to Chamonix, he declaimed, in defiance of Shelley, who had signed himself \"Atheos\" in the guestbook of the Hotel de Londres near Montenvers, \"Who would be, who could be an atheist in this valley of wonders\".\nBy the mid-19th century scientists began to arrive en masse to study the geology and ecology of the region.\nFrom the beginning of the 19th century, the tourism and mountaineering development of the Alps began. In the early years of the \"golden age of alpinism\" initially scientific activities were mixed with sport, for example by the physicist John Tyndall, with the first ascent of the Matterhorn by Edward Whymper being the highlight. In the later years, the \"silver age of alpinism\", the focus was on mountain sports and climbing. The first president of the Alpine Club, John Ball, is considered the discoverer of the Dolomites, which for decades were the focus of climbers like Paul Grohmann, Michael Innerkofler and Angelo Dibona.\nThe Nazis.\nIn autumn 1932, Adolf Hitler commissioned the first of a series of refurbishments, which eventually turned a mountain cottage, later named Berghof, into a fortified citadel. This domestic, but representative, fortification had two small bedrooms, and a full bathroom, planned by the Munich architect and NSDAP member Josef Neumaier. Guests, such as Rudolf Hess, stayed over, sleeping in tents or over the garage.\nThe Alps, Adolf Hitler, and improbable powerful organizations have been subject to crime fiction. The Alps acted as a geographical barrier to Italy, and the Alps for centuries were permeated with established smuggling routes, known as \"green line\". After World War II, members of the Schutzstaffel that feared prosecution as war criminals, known in modern English only as \"SS\", disappeared into a crowd of refugees. Massive numbers of refugees entered Italy illegally, by navigating the Alps.\nUndocumented migrants.\nSmugglers of humans claim that crossing the Alps is less dangerous, or deadly, than traveling 355\u00a0km on water between Tripoli and Lampedusa with a tramp ship (\"carretta del mare\") or a dinghy. Undocumented migrants, visa overstayers, false tourists, asylum seekers, and other clandestine humans, lose their lives crossing the Alps. The exact number of smuggled humans who die a brutal death in the Alps can only be estimated.\nLargest Alpine cities.\nThe largest city within the Alps is the city of Grenoble in France. Other larger and important cities within the Alps with over 100,000 inhabitants are in Tyrol with Bolzano/Bozen (Italy), Trento (Italy) and Innsbruck (Austria). Larger cities outside the Alps are Milan, Verona, Turin (Italy), Munich (Germany), Graz, Vienna, Salzburg (Austria), Ljubljana, Maribor, Kranj (Slovenia), Zurich, Geneva (Switzerland), Nice and Lyon (France).\nCities with over 100,000 inhabitants in the Alps are:\nAlpine people and culture.\nThe population of the region is 14\u00a0million spread across eight countries. On the rim of the mountains, on the plateaus, and on the plains the economy consists of manufacturing and service jobs whereas in the higher altitudes and the mountains farming is still essential to the economy. Farming and forestry continue to be mainstays of Alpine culture, industries that provide for export to the cities and maintain the mountain ecology.\nThe Alpine regions are multicultural and linguistically diverse. Dialects are common and vary from valley to valley and region to region. In the Slavic Alps alone 19 dialects have been identified. Some of the Romance dialects spoken in the French, Swiss and Italian alps of Aosta Valley derive from Arpitan, while the southern part of the western range is related to Occitan; the German dialects derive from Germanic tribal languages. Romansh, spoken by two percent of the population in southeast Switzerland, is an ancient Rhaeto-Romanic language derived from Latin, remnants of ancient Celtic languages and perhaps Etruscan.\nMuch of the Alpine culture is unchanged since the medieval period when skills that guaranteed survival in the mountain valleys and the highest villages became mainstays, leading to strong traditions of carpentry, woodcarving, baking, pastry-making, and cheesemaking.\nFarming has been a traditional occupation for centuries, although it became less dominant in the 20th century with the advent of tourism. Grazing and pasture land are limited because of the steep and rocky topography of the Alps. In mid-June, cows are moved to the highest pastures close to the snowline, where they are watched by herdsmen who stay in the high altitudes often living in stone huts or wooden barns during the summers. Villagers celebrate the day the cows are herded up to the pastures and again when they return in mid-September. The Almabtrieb, Alpabzug, Alpabfahrt, D\u00e9salpes (\"coming down from the alps\") is celebrated by decorating the cows with garlands and enormous cowbells while the farmers dress in traditional costumes.\nCheesemaking is an ancient tradition in most Alpine countries. A wheel of cheese from the Emmental in Switzerland can weigh up to , and the Beaufort in Savoy can weigh up to . Owners of the cows traditionally receive from the cheesemakers a portion about the proportion of the cows' milk from the summer months in the high alps. Haymaking is an important farming activity in mountain villages that have become somewhat mechanized in recent years, although the slopes are so steep that scythes are usually necessary to cut the grass. Hay is normally brought in twice a year, often also on festival days.\nIn the high villages, people live in homes built according to medieval designs that withstand cold winters. The kitchen is separated from the living area (called the \"stube\", the area of the home heated by a stove), and second-floor bedrooms benefit from rising heat. The typical Swiss chalet originated in the Bernese Oberland. Chalets often face south or downhill and are built of solid wood, with a steeply gabled roof to allow accumulated snow to slide off easily. Stairs leading to upper levels are sometimes built on the outside, and balconies are sometimes enclosed.\nFood is passed from the kitchen to the stube, where the dining room table is placed. Some meals are communal, such as fondue, where a pot is set in the middle of the table for each person to dip into. Other meals are still served traditionally on carved wooden plates. Furniture has been traditionally elaborately carved and in many Alpine countries, carpentry skills are passed from generation to generation.\nRoofs are traditionally constructed from Alpine rocks such as pieces of schist, gneiss, or slate. Such chalets are typically found in the higher parts of the valleys, as in the Maurienne valley in Savoy, where the amount of snow during the cold months is important. The inclination of the roof cannot exceed 40%, allowing the snow to stay on top, thereby functioning as insulation from the cold. In the lower areas where the forests are widespread, wooden tiles are traditionally used. Commonly made of Norway spruce, they are called \"tavaillon\".\nIn the German-speaking parts of the Alps (Austria, Bavaria, South Tyrol, Liechtenstein and Switzerland) and also Slovenia, there is a strong tradition of Alpine folk culture. Old traditions are carefully maintained among inhabitants of Alpine areas, even though this is seldom obvious to the visitor: many people are members of cultural associations where the Alpine folk culture is cultivated. At cultural events, traditional folk costume (in German \"Tracht\") is expected: typically lederhosen for men and dirndls for women. Visitors can get a glimpse of the rich customs of the Alps at public Volksfeste. Even when large events feature only a little folk culture, all participants take part with gusto. Good opportunities to see local people celebrating the traditional culture occur at the many fairs, wine festivals, and firefighting festivals which fill weekends in the countryside from spring to autumn. Alpine festivals vary from country to country. Frequently they include music (e.g. the playing of Alpenhorns), dance (e.g. Schuhplattler), sports (e.g. wrestling marches and archery), as well as traditions with pagan roots such as the lighting of fires on Walpurgis Night and Saint John's Eve. Many areas celebrate Fastnacht in the weeks before Lent. Folk costume also continues to be worn for most weddings and festivals.\nTourism.\nThe Alps are one of the more popular tourist destinations in the world with many resorts such as Oberstdorf, in Bavaria, Saalbach in Austria, Davos in Switzerland, Chamonix in France, and Cortina d'Ampezzo in Italy recording more than a million annual visitors. With over 120\u00a0million visitors a year, tourism is integral to the Alpine economy with much of it coming from winter sports, although summer visitors are also an important component.\nThe tourism industry began in the early 19th century when foreigners visited the Alps, travelled to the bases of the mountains to enjoy the scenery, and stayed at the spa-resorts. Large hotels were built during the Belle \u00c9poque; cog-railways, built early in the 20th century, brought tourists to ever-higher elevations, with the Jungfraubahn terminating at the Jungfraujoch, well above the eternal snow-line, after going through a tunnel in Eiger. During this period winter sports were slowly introduced: in 1882 the first figure skating championship was held in St. Moritz, and downhill skiing became a popular sport with English visitors early in the 20th century, as the first ski-lift was installed in 1908 above Grindelwald.\nIn the first half of the 20th century the Olympic Winter Games were held three times in Alpine venues: the 1924 Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France; the 1928 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland; and the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. During World War II the winter games were cancelled but after that time the Winter Games have been held in St. Moritz (1948), Cortina d'Ampezzo (1956), Innsbruck, Austria (1964 and 1976), Grenoble, France, (1968), Albertville, France, (1992), and Turin (2006). In 1930, the \"Lauberhorn Rennen\" (Lauberhorn Race), was run for the first time on the Lauberhorn above Wengen; the equally demanding Hahnenkamm was first run in the same year in Kitzb\u00fchl, Austria. Both races continue to be held each January on successive weekends. The Lauberhorn is the more strenuous downhill race at and poses danger to racers who reach within seconds of leaving the start gate.\nDuring the post-World War I period, ski lifts were built in Swiss and Austrian towns to accommodate winter visitors, and summer tourism continued to be important. By the mid-20th century the popularity of downhill skiing increased greatly as it became more accessible and in the 1970s several new villages were built in France devoted almost exclusively to skiing, such as Les Menuires. Until this point, Austria and Switzerland had been the traditional and more popular destinations for winter sports, and by the end of the 20th century and into the early 21st century, France, Italy, and Tyrol began to see increases in winter visitors. Since the 1980s tourism expansion and easy global access generate grave concerns regarding the loss of traditional Alpine culture and many uncertainties about sustainable development. As a likely result of climatic change, the number of high altitude ski resorts and piste km is in decline since 2015, with snow-making machines installed at many sites.\nTransportation.\nThe region is serviced by of roads used by six million vehicles per year. Train travel is well established in the Alps, with, for instance of track for every in a country such as Switzerland. Most of Europe's highest railways are located there. In 2007, the new L\u00f6tschberg Base Tunnel was opened, which circumvents the 100 years older L\u00f6tschberg Tunnel. With the opening of the Gotthard Base Tunnel on June 1, 2016, it bypasses the Gotthard Tunnel built in the 19th century and realizes the first flat route through the Alps.\nSome high mountain villages are car-free either because of inaccessibility or by choice. Wengen, and Zermatt (in Switzerland) are accessible only by cable car or cog-rail trains. Avoriaz (in France), is car-free, with other Alpine villages considering becoming car-free zones or limiting the number of cars for reasons of sustainability of the fragile Alpine terrain.\nThe lower regions and larger towns of the Alps are well-served by motorways and main roads, but higher mountain passes and byroads, which are amongst the highest in Europe, can be treacherous even in summer due to steep slopes. Many passes are closed in winter. Several airports around the Alps (and some within), as well as long-distance rail links from all neighbouring countries, afford large numbers of travellers easy access.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nWorks cited.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["17926", "981", "26748"], "permutation_1": ["17926", "981", "26748"], "permutation_2": ["17926", "981", "26748"], "permutation_3": ["981", "17926", "26748"]}
{"id": "3hop2__30796_527723_24137", "docs_added": {"5122699": "John Kerry\nAmerican politician and diplomat (born 1943)\nJohn Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician, and diplomat who served as the 68th United States secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 in the administration of Barack Obama. A member of the Forbes family and of the Democratic Party, he previously represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1985 to 2013 and later served as the first U.S. special presidential envoy for climate from 2021 to 2024. Kerry was the Democratic nominee for president of the United States in the 2004 election, narrowly losing to then-incumbent president George W. Bush.\nKerry grew up in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. In 1966, after graduating from Yale University, he enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve, ultimately attaining the rank of lieutenant. During the Vietnam War, Kerry served a brief tour in South Vietnam. While commanding a Swift boat, he sustained three wounds in combat with the Viet Cong, for which he earned three Purple Heart medals. Kerry was also awarded the Silver Star Medal and the Bronze Star Medal for conduct in separate military engagements. After completing his active military service, Kerry returned to the United States and became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. He gained national recognition as an anti-war activist, serving as a spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization. Kerry testified in the Fulbright Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where he described the United States government's policy in Vietnam as the cause of war crimes.\nIn 1972, Kerry entered electoral politics as a Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives in Massachusetts's 5th congressional district, losing to Republican Paul W. Cronin in the general election. He subsequently worked as a radio talk show host and as the executive director of an advocacy organization while attending law school. After a period in private legal practice, he was elected the 66th lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1982. In 1984, Kerry was elected to the United States Senate. In 2004, Kerry won the Democratic presidential nomination alongside Senator John Edwards. He lost the Electoral College and the popular vote by slim margins, winning 251 electors to Bush's 286 and 48.3% of the popular vote to Bush's 50.7%.\nIn January 2013, Kerry was nominated by President Obama to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and was subsequently confirmed by his Senate colleagues. He was U.S. secretary of state throughout the second term of the Obama administration from 2013 to 2017. During his tenure, he initiated the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks and negotiated agreements restricting the nuclear program of Iran, including the 2013 Joint Plan of Action and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In 2015, Kerry signed the Paris Agreement on climate change on behalf of the United States.\nIn January 2021, Kerry returned to government, becoming the first person to hold the position of U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, under President Joe Biden. On March 6, Kerry left this position to work on Biden's 2024 presidential campaign. Kerry was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Biden in May 2024.\nEarly life and education (1943\u20131966).\nJohn Forbes Kerry was born on December 11, 1943, at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado. He is the second of four children born to Richard John Kerry, a U.S. diplomat and lawyer, and Rosemary Forbes, a nurse and social activist. His father was raised Catholic (John's paternal grandparents were Austro-Hungarian Jewish immigrants who converted to Catholicism) and his mother was Episcopalian. He was raised with an elder sister Margaret, a younger sister Diana, and a younger brother Cameron. The children were raised in their father's Catholic faith, and John served as an altar boy.\nKerry was originally considered a military brat, until his father was discharged from the Army Air Corps in 1944. Kerry lived in Groton, Massachusetts his first year and Millis, Massachusetts afterwards before moving to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. at age seven, when his father took a position in the Department of the Navy's Office of General Counsel and soon became a diplomat in the State Department's Bureau of United Nations Affairs.\nAs members of the Forbes and Dudley\u2013Winthrop families, his maternal extended family enjoyed great wealth. Kerry's parents themselves were considered upper-middle class. They turned to his wealthy great-aunt, Clara Winthrop, who paid for his attendance at elite boarding schools, such as Institut Montana Zugerberg, in Zug, Switzerland. Through his maternal ancestry, Kerry also descends from Rev. James McGregor who was among the first 500 Scots-Irish immigrants to Boston Harbor in the 18th century.\nAt the age of ten, Kerry's father took a position as the U.S. Attorney for Berlin. When Kerry was twelve, he crossed into the Soviet Occupation Zone to visit Hitler's bunker and ride through the Brandenburg Gate. \nIn 1957, his father was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway, and Kerry was sent back to the United States to attend boarding school. He first attended the Fessenden School in Newton, Massachusetts, and later St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, where he learned skills in public speaking and began developing an interest in politics. Kerry founded the John Winant Society at St. Paul's to debate the issues of the day; the Society still exists there. In 1960, while at St. Paul's, he played bass in a minor rock band called The Electras with six of his classmates. The band had about five hundred copies of one album printed in 1961, which they sold some of at dances at the school; it was made available on streaming platforms many years later.\nIn 1962, Kerry attended Yale University, majoring in political science and residing in Jonathan Edwards College. By that year, his parents returned to Groton. While at Yale, Kerry briefly dated Janet Auchincloss, the younger half-sister of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Through Auchincloss, Kerry was invited to a day of sailing with then-President John F. Kennedy and his family.\nKerry played on the varsity Yale Bulldogs men's soccer team, earning his only letter in his senior year. He also played freshman and junior varsity hockey and, in his senior year, junior varsity lacrosse. In addition, he was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity and took flying lessons.\nIn his sophomore year, Kerry became the chairman of the Liberal Party of the Yale Political Union, and a year later he served as president of the union. Amongst his influential teachers in this period was Professor H. Bradford Westerfield, who was himself a former president of the Political Union. His involvement with the Political Union gave him an opportunity to be involved with important issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and the New Frontier program. He also became a member of Skull and Bones Society, and traveled to Switzerland through AIESEC Yale.\nUnder the guidance of the speaking coach and history professor Rollin G. Osterweis, Kerry won many debates against other college students from across the nation. In March 1965, as the Vietnam War escalated, he won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that was critical of U.S. foreign policy. In the speech he said, \"It is the spectre of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism and thus, it is self-defeating.\"\nKerry graduated from Yale with a bachelor of arts degree in 1966. Overall, he had below-average grades, graduating with a cumulative average of 76 over his four years. His freshman-year average was a 71, but he improved to an 81 average for his senior year. He never received an \"A\" during his time at Yale; his highest grade was an 89.\nMilitary service (1966\u20131970).\nDuty on USS \"Gridley\".\nOn February 18, 1966, Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserve. He began his active duty military service on August 19, 1966. After completing 16 weeks of Officer Candidate School at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island, Kerry received his officer's commission on December 16, 1966. During the 2004 election, Kerry posted his military records at his website, and permitted reporters to inspect his medical records. In 2005, Kerry released his military and medical records to the representatives of three news organizations, but has not authorized full public access to those records.\nDuring his tour on the guided missile frigate , Kerry requested duty in South Vietnam, listing as his first preference a position as the commander of a Fast Patrol Craft (PCF), also known as a \"Swift boat\". These boats have aluminum hulls and have little or no armor, but are heavily armed and rely on speed. \"I didn't really want to get involved in the war,\" Kerry said in a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. \"When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing.\" However, his second choice of billet was on a river patrol boat, or \"PBR\", which at the time was serving a more dangerous duty on the rivers of Vietnam.\nMilitary honors.\nDuring the night of December 2 and early morning of December 3, 1968, Kerry was in charge of a small boat operating near a peninsula north of Cam Ranh Bay together with a Swift boat (PCF-60). According to Kerry and the two crewmen who accompanied him that night, Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis, they surprised a group of Vietnamese men unloading sampans at a river crossing, who began running and failed to obey an order to stop. As the men fled, Kerry and his crew opened fire on the sampans and destroyed them, then rapidly left. During this encounter, Kerry received a shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow. It was for this injury that Kerry received his first Purple Heart Medal.\nKerry received his second Purple Heart for a wound received in action on the B\u1ed3 \u0110\u1ec1 River on February 20, 1969. The plan had been for the Swift boats to be accompanied by support helicopters. On the way up the Bo De, however, the helicopters were attacked. As the Swift boats reached the C\u1eeda L\u1edbn River, Kerry's boat was hit by a B-40 rocket (rocket propelled grenade round), and a piece of shrapnel hit Kerry's left leg, wounding him. Thereafter, enemy fire ceased and his boat reached the Gulf of Thailand safely. Kerry continues to have shrapnel embedded in his left thigh because the doctors that first treated him decided to remove the damaged tissue and close the wound with sutures rather than make a wide opening to remove the shrapnel. Although wounded like several others earlier that day, Kerry did not lose any time off from duty.\nSilver Star.\nEight days later, on February 28, 1969, came the events for which Kerry was awarded his Silver Star Medal. On this occasion, Kerry was in tactical command of his Swift boat and two other Swift boats during a combat operation. Their mission on the Duong Keo River included bringing an underwater demolition team and dozens of South Vietnamese Marines to destroy enemy sampans, structures and bunkers as described in the story \"The Death Of PCF 43\". Running into heavy small arms fire from the river banks, Kerry \"directed the units to turn to the beach and charge the Viet Cong positions\" and he \"expertly directed\" his boat's fire causing the enemy to flee while at the same time coordinating the insertion of the ninety South Vietnamese troops (according to the original medal citation signed by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt). Moving a short distance upstream, Kerry's boat was the target of a B-40 rocket round; Kerry charged the enemy positions and as his boat hove to and beached, a Viet Cong (\"VC\") insurgent armed with a rocket launcher emerged from a spider hole and ran. While the boat's gunner opened fire, wounding the VC in the leg, and while the other boats approached and offered cover fire, Kerry jumped from the boat to pursue the VC insurgent, subsequently killing him and capturing his loaded rocket launcher.\nKerry's commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander George Elliott, stated to Douglas Brinkley in 2003 that he did not know whether to court-martial Kerry for beaching the boat without orders or give him a medal for saving the crew. Elliott recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, and Zumwalt flew into An Thoi to personally award medals to Kerry and the rest of the sailors involved in the mission. The Navy's account of Kerry's actions is presented in the original signed by Zumwalt. The engagement was documented in an after-action report, a press release written on March 1, 1969, and a historical summary dated March 17, 1969.\nBronze Star.\nOn March 13, 1969, on the B\u00e1i H\u00e1p River, Kerry was in charge of one of five Swift boats that were returning to their base after performing an Operation Sealords mission to transport South Vietnamese troops from the garrison at C\u00e1i N\u01b0\u1edbc and MIKE Force advisors for a raid on a Vietcong camp located on the Rach Dong Cung canal. Earlier in the day, Kerry received a slight shrapnel wound in the buttocks from blowing up a rice bunker. Debarking some but not all of the passengers at a small village, the boats approached a fishing weir; one group of boats went around to the left of the weir, hugging the shore, and a group with Kerry's PCF-94 boat went around to the right, along the shoreline. A mine was detonated directly beneath the lead boat, PCF-3, as it crossed the weir to the left, lifting PCF-3 \"about 2\u20133 ft out of water\".\nJames Rassmann, a Green Beret advisor who was aboard Kerry's PCF-94, was knocked overboard when, according to witnesses and the documentation of the event, a mine or rocket exploded close to the boat. According to the documentation for the event, Kerry's arm was injured when he was thrown against a bulkhead during the explosion. PCF 94 returned to the scene and Kerry rescued Rassmann who was receiving sniper fire from the water. Kerry received the Bronze Star Medal with Combat \"V\" for \"heroic achievement\", for his actions during this incident; he also received his third Purple Heart.\nReturn from Vietnam.\nAfter Kerry's third qualifying wound, he was entitled per Navy regulations to reassignment away from combat duties. Kerry's preferred choice for reassignment was as a military aide in Boston, New York City or Washington, D.C. On April 11, 1969, he reported to the Brooklyn-based Atlantic Military Sea Transportation Service, where he would remain on active duty for the following year as a personal aide to an officer, Rear Admiral Walter Schlech. On January 1, 1970, Kerry was temporarily promoted to full lieutenant. Kerry had agreed to an extension of his active duty obligation from December 1969 to August 1970 in order to perform Swift Boat duty. John Kerry was on active duty in the United States Navy from August 1966 until January 1970. He continued to serve in the Naval Reserve until February 1978.\n\"Swiftboating\" controversy.\nWith the continuing controversy that had surrounded the military service of George W. Bush since the 2000 presidential election (when he was accused of having used his father's political influence to gain entrance to the Texas Air National Guard, thereby protecting himself from conscription into the United States Army, and possible service in the Vietnam War), John Kerry's contrasting status as a decorated Vietnam War veteran posed a problem for Bush's re-election campaign, which Republicans sought to counter by calling Kerry's war record into question. As the presidential campaign of 2004 developed, approximately 250 members of a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT, later renamed Swift Vets and POWs for Truth) opposed Kerry's campaign. The group held press conferences, ran ads and endorsed a book questioning Kerry's service record and his military awards. The group included several members of Kerry's unit, such as Larry Thurlow, who commanded a swift boat alongside of Kerry's, and Stephen Gardner, who served on Kerry's boat. The campaign inspired the widely used political pejorative '\"swiftboating,\" to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. Most of Kerry's former crewmates have stated that SBVT's allegations are false.\nAnti-war activism (1970\u20131971).\nAfter returning to the United States, Kerry moved to Waltham, Massachusetts and joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Then numbering about 20,000, VVAW was considered by some (including the administration of President Richard Nixon) to be an effective, if controversial, component of the antiwar movement. Kerry participated in the \"Winter Soldier Investigation\" conducted by VVAW of U.S. atrocities in Vietnam, and he appears in a film by that name that documents the investigation. According to Nixon Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, \"I didn't approve of what he did, but I understood the protesters quite well\", and he declined two requests from the Navy to court martial Reserve Lieutenant Kerry over his antiwar activity.\nOn April 22, 1971, Kerry appeared before a U.S. Senate committee hearing on proposals relating to ending the war. The day after this testimony, Kerry participated in a demonstration with thousands of other veterans in which he and other Vietnam War veterans threw their medals and service ribbons over a fence erected at the front steps of the United States Capitol building to dramatize their opposition to the war. Jack Smith, a Marine, read a statement explaining why the veterans were returning their military awards to the government. For more than two hours, almost 1,000 angry veterans tossed their medals, ribbons, hats, jackets, and military papers over the fence. Each veteran gave his or her name, hometown, branch of service and a statement. Kerry threw some of his own decorations and awards as well as some given to him by other veterans to throw. As Kerry threw his decorations over the fence, his statement was: \"I'm not doing this for any violent reasons, but for peace and justice, and to try and make this country wake up once and for all.\"\nKerry was arrested on May 30, 1971, during a VVAW march to honor American POWs held captive by North Vietnam. The march was planned as a multi-day event from Concord to Boston, and while in Lexington, participants tried to camp on the village green. At 2:30a.m., local and state police arrested 441 demonstrators, including Kerry, for trespassing. All were given the Miranda Warning and were hauled away on school buses to spend the night at the Lexington Public Works Garage. Kerry and the other protesters later paid a $5 fine, and were released. The mass arrests caused a community backlash and ended up giving positive coverage to the VVAW.\nEarly political career (1972\u20131985).\n1972 congressional election.\nIn 1970, Kerry had considered running for Congress in the Democratic primary against hawkish Democrat Philip J. Philbin of Massachusetts's 3rd congressional district, but deferred in favor of Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest and anti-war activist, who went on to defeat Philbin. In February 1972, Kerry's wife bought a house in Worcester, with Kerry intending to run against the 4th district's aging thirteen-term incumbent Democrat, Harold Donohue. The couple never moved in. After Republican Congressman F. Bradford Morse of the neighboring 5th district announced his retirement and then resignation to become Under-Secretary-General for Political and General Assembly Affairs at the United Nations, the couple instead rented an apartment in Lowell, so that Kerry could run to succeed him.\nIncluding Kerry, the Democratic primary race had 10 candidates, including attorney Paul J. Sheehy, State Representative Anthony R. DiFruscia, John J. Desmond and Robert B. Kennedy. Kerry ran a \"very expensive, sophisticated campaign\", financed by out-of-state backers and supported by many young volunteers. DiFruscia's campaign headquarters shared the same building as Kerry's. On the eve of the September 19 primary, police found Kerry's younger brother Cameron and campaign field director Thomas J. Vallely, breaking into where the building's telephone lines were located. They were arrested and charged with \"breaking and entering with the intent to commit grand larceny\", but the charges were dropped a year later. DiFruscia alleged that the two were trying to disrupt his get-out-the vote efforts. Vallely and Cameron Kerry maintained that they were only checking their own telephone lines because they had received an anonymous call warning that the Kerry lines would be cut.\nDespite the arrests, Kerry won the primary with 20,771 votes (27.56%). Sheehy came second with 15,641 votes (20.75%), followed by DiFruscia with 12,222 votes (16.22%), Desmond with 10,213 votes (13.55%) and Kennedy with 5,632 votes (7.47%). The remaining 10,891 votes were split amongst the other five candidates, with 1970 nominee Richard Williams coming last with just 1,706 votes (2.26%).\nIn the general election, Kerry was initially favored to defeat the Republican candidate, former State Representative Paul W. Cronin, and conservative Democrat Roger P. Durkin, who ran as an Independent. A week after the primary, one poll put Kerry 26-points ahead of Cronin. His campaign called for a national health insurance system, discounted prescription drugs for the unemployed, a jobs program to clean up the Merrimack River and rent controls in Lowell and Lawrence. A major obstacle, however, was the district's leading newspaper, the conservative \"The Sun\". The paper editorialized against him. It also ran critical news stories about his out-of-state contributions and his \"carpetbagging\", because he had only moved into the district in April. Subsequently, released \"Watergate\" Oval Office tape recordings of the Nixon White House showed that defeating Kerry's candidacy had attracted the personal attention of President Nixon. Kerry himself asserts that Nixon sent operatives to Lowell to help derail his campaign.\nThe race was the most expensive for Congress in the country that year and four days before the general election, Durkin withdrew and endorsed Cronin, hoping to see Kerry defeated. The week before, a poll had put Kerry 10 points ahead of Cronin, with Durkin at 13%. In the final days of the campaign, Kerry sensed that it was \"slipping away\" and Cronin emerged victorious by 110,970 votes (53.45%) to Kerry's 92,847 (44.72%). After his defeat, Kerry lamented in a letter to supporters that \"for two solid weeks, [\"The Sun\"] called me un-American, New Left antiwar agitator, unpatriotic, and labeled me every other 'un-' and 'anti-' that they could find. It's hard to believe that one newspaper could be so powerful, but they were.\" He later felt that his failure to respond directly to \"The Sun\"'s attacks cost him the race.\nLaw career.\nAfter Kerry's 1972 defeat, he and his wife bought a house in the Belvidere section of Lowell, Massachusetts, entering a decade which his brother Cameron later called \"the years in exile\". He spent some time working as a fundraiser for the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE), an international humanitarian organization. In September 1973, he entered Boston College Law School. While studying, Kerry worked as a talk radio host on WBZ and, in July 1974, was named executive director of Mass Action, a Massachusetts advocacy association.\nKerry received his juris doctor (J.D.) from Boston College in 1976. While in law school he had been a student prosecutor in the office of the District Attorney of Middlesex County, John J. Droney. After passing the bar exam and being admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1976, he went to work in that office as a full-time prosecutor and moved to Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.\nIn January 1977, Droney promoted him to First Assistant District Attorney, essentially making Kerry his campaign and media surrogate because Droney was afflicted with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease). As First Assistant, Kerry tried cases, which included winning convictions in a high-profile rape case and a murder. He also played a role in administering the office, including initiating the creation of special white-collar and organized crime units, creating programs to address the problems of rape and other crime victims and witnesses, and managing trial calendars to reflect case priorities. In 1978, Kerry launched a criminal investigation against Senator Edward Brooke, regarding \"misstatements\" in his first divorce trial. The inquiry ended with no charges being brought after investigators and prosecutors determined that Brooke's misstatements were pertinent to the case, but were not material enough to have affected the outcome.\nDroney's health was poor and Kerry had decided to run for his position in the 1978 election should Droney drop out. However, Droney was re-elected and his health improved; he went on to re-assume many of the duties that he had delegated to Kerry. Kerry thus decided to leave, departing in 1979 with assistant DA Roanne Sragow to set up their own law firm. Kerry also worked as a commentator for WCVB-TV and co-founded a bakery, Kilvert & Forbes Ltd., with businessman and former Kennedy aide K. Dun Gifford.\nLieutenant Governor of Massachusetts.\nIn the 1982 Massachusetts gubernatorial election, Lieutenant Governor Thomas P. O'Neill III declined to seek a third term, instead deciding to run for governor of Massachusetts. Kerry declared his candidacy, entering the primary election alongside Massachusetts Secretary of Environmental Affairs Evelyn Murphy, State Senator Samuel Rotondi, State Representative Lou Nickinello, and Lois Pines.\nKerry won the nomination with 325,890 votes (29%) to Murphy's 286,378 (25.48%), Rotondi's 228,086 (20.29%), Nickinello's 150,829 (13.42%) and Pines' 132,734 (11.81%). In the concurrent gubernatorial primary, former Governor Michael Dukakis defeated O'Neill and incumbent Governor Edward J. King. The Dukakis and Kerry ticket defeated the Republican ticket of John W. Sears and Leon Lombardi in the general election by 1,219,109 votes (61.92%) to 749,679 (38.08%).\nAs Lieutenant Governor, Kerry led meetings of the Massachusetts Governor's Council. Dukakis also delegated other tasks to Kerry, including serving as the state's liaison to the Federal government of the United States. He was also active on environmental issues, including combating acid rain.\n1984 U.S. Senate election.\nThe junior U.S. senator from Massachusetts, Paul Tsongas, announced in 1984 that he would be stepping down for health reasons. Kerry ran, and as in his 1982 race for Lieutenant Governor, he did not receive the endorsement of the party regulars at the state Democratic convention. Congressman James Shannon, a favorite of House Speaker Tip O'Neill, was the early favorite to win the nomination, and he \"won broad establishment support and led in early polling\". Again as in 1982, however, Kerry prevailed in a close primary.\nIn his general election campaign, Kerry promised to mix liberalism with tight budget controls. He defeated Republican Ray Shamie despite a nationwide landslide for the re-election of Republican President Ronald Reagan, for whom Massachusetts voted by a narrow margin. In his victory speech, Kerry asserted that his win meant that the people of Massachusetts \"emphatically reject the politics of selfishness and the notion that women must be treated as second-class citizens\".\nTsongas resigned on January 2, 1985, one day before the end of his term. Dukakis appointed Kerry to fill the vacancy, giving him seniority over other new senators who were sworn in on January 3, the scheduled start of their new terms.\nU.S. Senate (1985\u20132013).\nIran\u2013Contra hearings.\nOn April 18, 1985, a few months after taking his Senate seat, Kerry and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa traveled to Nicaragua and met the country's president, Daniel Ortega. Although Ortega had won internationally certified elections, the trip was criticized because Ortega and his leftist Sandinista government had strong ties to Cuba and the USSR and were accused of human rights abuses. The Sandinista government was opposed by the right-wing CIA-backed rebels known as the Contras. While in Nicaragua, Kerry and Harkin talked to people on both sides of the conflict. Through the senators, Ortega offered a cease-fire agreement in exchange for the U.S. dropping support of the Contras. The offer was denounced by the Reagan administration as a \"propaganda initiative\" designed to influence a House vote on a $14million Contra aid package, but Kerry said \"I am willing... to take the risk in the effort to put to test the good faith of the Sandinistas.\" The House voted down the Contra aid, but Ortega flew to Moscow to accept a $200million loan the next day, which in part prompted the House to pass a larger $27million aid package six weeks later.\nMeanwhile, Kerry's staff began their own investigations and, on October 14, issued a report that exposed illegal activities on the part of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who had set up a private network involving the National Security Council and the CIA to deliver military equipment to right-wing Nicaraguan rebels (Contras). In effect, North and certain members of the President's administration were accused by Kerry's report of illegally funding and supplying armed militants without the authorization of Congress. Kerry's staff investigation, based on a year-long inquiry and interviews with fifty unnamed sources, is said to raise \"serious questions about whether the United States has abided by the law in its handling of the contras over the past three years\".\nThe Kerry Committee report found that \"the Contra drug links included... payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies.\" The U.S. State Department paid over $806,000 to known drug traffickers to carry humanitarian assistance to the Contras. Kerry's findings provoked little reaction in the media and official Washington.\nThe Kerry report was a precursor to the Iran\u2013Contra affair. On May 4, 1989, North was convicted of charges relating to the Iran/Contra controversy, including three felonies. On September 16, 1991, however, North's convictions were overturned on appeal.\nGeorge H. W. Bush administration.\nOn November 15, 1988, at a businessmen's breakfast in East Lynn, Massachusetts, Kerry made a joke about then-President-elect George H. W. Bush and his running mate, saying \"if Bush is shot, the Secret Service has orders to shoot Dan Quayle.\" He apologized the following day.\nDuring their investigation of General Manuel Noriega, the \"de facto\" ruler of Panama, Kerry's staff found reason to believe that the Pakistan-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) had facilitated Noriega's drug trafficking and money laundering. This led to a separate inquiry into BCCI, and as a result, banking regulators shut down BCCI in 1991. In December 1992, Kerry and Senator Hank Brown, a Republican from Colorado, released \"The BCCI Affair\", a report on the BCCI scandal. The report showed that the bank was crooked and was working with terrorists, including Abu Nidal. It blasted the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, the Customs Service, the Federal Reserve Bank, as well as influential lobbyists and the CIA.\nKerry was criticized by some Democrats for having pursued his own party members, including former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, although Republicans said he should have pressed against some Democrats even harder. The BCCI scandal was later turned over to the Manhattan District Attorney's office.\nPrecursors to presidential bid.\nIn 1996, Kerry faced a difficult re-election fight against Governor William Weld, a popular Republican incumbent who had been re-elected in 1994 with 71% of the vote. The race was covered nationwide as one of the most closely watched Senate races that year. Kerry and Weld held several debates and negotiated a campaign spending cap of $6.9million at Kerry's Beacon Hill townhouse. Both candidates spent more than the cap, with each camp accusing the other of being first to break the agreement. During the campaign, Kerry spoke briefly at the 1996 Democratic National Convention. Kerry won re-election with 52 percent to Weld's 45 percent.\nIn the 2000 presidential election, Kerry found himself close to being chosen as the vice presidential running mate.\nA release from the presidential campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Al Gore listed Kerry on the short list to be selected as the vice-presidential nominee, along with North Carolina Senator John Edwards, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt, New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. Gore ultimately chose Lieberman.\n\"You get stuck in Iraq\" controversy.\nOn October 30, 2006, Kerry was a headline speaker at a campaign rally being held for Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. Speaking to an audience composed mainly of college students, Kerry said, \"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.\"\nThe day after he made the remark, leaders from both sides of the political spectrum criticized Kerry's remarks, which he said were a botched joke. Republicans including President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain and then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, said that Kerry's comments were insulting to American military forces fighting in Iraq. Democratic Representative Harold Ford Jr. called on Kerry to apologize.\nKerry initially stated: \"I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy\". Kerry also responded to criticism from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.\nKerry said that he had intended the remark as a jab at President Bush, and described the remarks as a \"botched joke\", having inadvertently left out the key word \"us\" (which would have been, \"If you don't, you get \"us\" stuck in Iraq\"), as well as leaving the phrase \"just ask President Bush\" off of the end of the sentence. In Kerry's prepared remarks, which he released during the ensuing media frenzy, the corresponding line was \"...you end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush\". He also said that from the context of the speech which, prior to the \"stuck in Iraq\" line, made several specific references to Bush and elements of his biography, that Kerry was referring to President Bush and not American troops in general.\nAfter two days of media coverage, citing a desire not to be a diversion, Kerry apologized to those who took offense at what he called the misinterpretation of his comment.\nAfghanistan and Pakistan.\nA \"Washington Post\" report in May 2011 stated that Kerry \"has emerged in the past few years as an important envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan during times of crisis\", as he undertook another trip to the two countries. The killing of Osama bin Laden \"has generated perhaps the most important crossroads yet\", the report continued, as the senator spoke at a press conference and prepared to fly from Kabul to Pakistan. Among matters discussed during the May visit to Pakistan, under the general rubric of \"recalibrating\" the bilateral relationship, Kerry sought and retrieved from the Pakistanis the tail-section of the U.S. helicopter which had had to be abandoned at Abbottabad during the bin Laden strike. In 2013, Kerry met with Pakistan's army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to discuss the peace process with the Taliban in Afghanistan.\nVoting record.\nOverall.\nMost analyses place Kerry's voting record on the left within the Senate Democratic caucus. During the 2004 presidential election he was portrayed as a staunch liberal by conservative groups and the Bush campaign, who often noted that in 2003 Kerry was rated the top Senate liberal by \"National Journal\". However, that rating was based only upon voting on legislation within that past year. In fact, in terms of career voting records, the \"National Journal\" found that Kerry is the 11th most liberal member of the Senate. Most analyses find that Kerry is at least slightly more liberal than the typical Democratic Senator. Kerry has stated that he opposes privatizing Social Security, supports abortion rights for adult women and minors, supports same-sex marriage, opposes capital punishment except for terrorists, supports most gun control laws, and is generally a supporter of trade agreements. In some of these, as in the case of abortion, Kerry distinguishes his personal views as in line with his Catholic faith, but believes that separation of church and state demands that he not legislate his religious beliefs upon those who do not share those beliefs. Kerry supported the North American Free Trade Agreement and Most Favored Nation status for China, but opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement.\nIn July 1997, Kerry joined his Senate colleagues in voting against ratification of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming without greenhouse gas emissions limits on nations deemed developing, including India and China. Since then, Kerry has attacked President Bush, charging him with opposition to international efforts to combat global warming.\nOn October 1, 2008, Kerry voted for Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, also known as the TARP bailout.\nIraq.\nIn the lead up to the Iraq War, Kerry said on October 9, 2002; \"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.\" Bush relied on that resolution in ordering the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Kerry also gave a January 23, 2003, speech to Georgetown University saying \"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator; leading an oppressive regime he presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.\" Kerry did, however, warn that the administration should exhaust its diplomatic avenues before launching war: \"Mr. President, do not rush to war, take the time to build the coalition, because it's not winning the war that's hard, it's winning the peace that's hard.\"\nAfter the invasion of Iraq, when no weapons of mass destruction were found, Kerry strongly criticized Bush, contending that he had misled the country: \"When the President of the United States looks at you and tells you something, there should be some trust.\"\nLibya.\nIn 2011, Kerry supported American military action in Libya.\nLeadership.\nKerry chaired the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs from 1991 to 1993. The committee's report, which Kerry endorsed, stated there was \"no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia\". In 1994 the Senate passed a resolution, sponsored by Kerry and fellow Vietnam veteran John McCain, that called for an end to the existing trade embargo against Vietnam; it was intended to pave the way for normalization. In 1995, President Bill Clinton normalized diplomatic relations with the country of Vietnam.\nKerry was the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 1987 to 1989. He was reelected to the Senate in 1990, 1996 (after winning re-election against the then-Governor of Massachusetts Republican William Weld), 2002, and 2008. In January 2009, Kerry replaced Joe Biden as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.\nAs a role model for campus leaders across the nation and strong advocate for global development, Kerry was honored by the Millennium Campus Network (MCN) as a Global Generation Award winner in 2011.\nCommittee assignments.\nDuring his tenure, Kerry served on four Senate committees and nine subcommittees:\nSeniority.\nFrom the beginning of the 113th United States Congress until his resignation, Kerry ranked as the 7th most senior U.S. Senator. Due to the longevity of Ted Kennedy's service, Kerry was the most senior \"junior Senator\" in the 111th United States Congress. On Tuesday, August 25, 2009, Kerry became the senior senator from Massachusetts following Ted Kennedy's death.\nSponsorship of legislation.\nAreas of concern in the bills Kerry introduced into the Senate included small business concerns, education, terrorism, veterans' and POW/MIA issues, and marine resource protection. A full list of Kerry's sponsored legislation was available on his Senate web site.\nDuring his Senate career, Kerry was primary sponsor of the following bills (excluding resolutions and amendments sponsored). This table does not count bills which Kerry co-sponsored.\nA chronological list of various bills and resolutions sponsored by Kerry follows.\n2004 presidential campaign.\nIn the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries, John Kerry defeated several Democratic rivals, including Sen. John Edwards (D-North Carolina), former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and retired Army General Wesley Clark. His victory in the Iowa caucuses is widely believed to be the tipping point where Kerry revived his sagging campaign in New Hampshire and the February 3, 2004, primary states like Arizona, South Carolina and New Mexico. Kerry then went on to win landslide victories in Nevada and Wisconsin. Kerry thus won the Democratic nomination to run for President of the United States against incumbent George W. Bush. On July 6, 2004, he announced his selection of John Edwards as his running mate. Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who was Kerry's 2004 campaign adviser, wrote an article in \"Time\" magazine claiming that after the election, Kerry had said that he wished he had never picked Edwards, and that the two have since stopped speaking to each other. In a subsequent appearance on ABC's \"This Week\", Kerry refused to respond to Shrum's allegation, calling it a \"ridiculous waste of time\".\nDuring his bid to be elected president in 2004, Kerry frequently criticized President George W. Bush for starting the Iraq War. While Kerry had initially voted in support of authorizing President Bush to use force in dealing with Saddam Hussein, he voted against an $87billion supplemental appropriations bill to pay for the subsequent war. His statement on March 16, 2004, \"I actually did vote for the $87billion before I voted against it\", helped the Bush campaign to paint him as a flip-flopper and has been cited as contributing to Kerry's defeat.\nOn November 3, 2004, Kerry conceded the race. Kerry won 59.03 million votes, or 48.3 percent of the popular vote; Bush won 62.04 million votes, or 50.7 percent of the popular vote. Kerry carried states with a total of 252 electoral votes. One Kerry elector voted for Kerry's running mate, Edwards, so in the final tally Kerry had 251 electoral votes to Bush's 286. He was the first Democrat since Michael Dukakis in 1988 to lose the popular vote in a presidential election, and until Kamala Harris's loss in 2024, he was the most recent Democrat to do so.\nSubsequent presidential-election activities.\nImmediately after the 2004 election, some Democrats mentioned Kerry as a possible contender for the 2008 Democratic nomination. His brother had said such a campaign was \"conceivable\", and Kerry himself reportedly said at a farewell party for his 2004 campaign staff, \"There's always another four years\".\nKerry established a separate political action committee, Keeping America's Promise, which declared as its mandate \"A Democratic Congress will restore accountability to Washington and help change a disastrous course in Iraq\", and raised money and channeled contributions to Democratic candidates in state and federal races. Through Keeping America's Promise in 2005, Kerry raised over $5.5million for other Democrats up and down the ballot. Through his campaign account and his political action committee, the Kerry campaign operation generated more than $10million for various party committees and 179 candidates for the U.S. House, Senate, state and local offices in 42 states focusing on the midterm elections during the 2006 election cycle. \"Cumulatively, John Kerry has done as much if not more than any other individual senator\", Hassan Nemazee, the national finance chairman of the DSCC said.\nOn January 10, 2008, Kerry endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama for president. He was mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate for Senator Obama, although fellow Senator Joe Biden was eventually chosen. After Biden's acceptance of the vice presidential nomination, speculation arose that John Kerry would be a candidate for Secretary of State in the Obama administration. However, Senator Hillary Clinton was offered the position.\nDuring the 2012 Obama reelection campaign, Kerry participated in one-on-one debate prep with the president, impersonating the Republican candidate Mitt Romney.\nSecretary of State (2013\u20132017).\nNomination and confirmation.\nOn December 15, 2012, several news outlets reported that President Barack Obama would nominate Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, after Susan Rice, widely seen as Obama's preferred choice, withdrew her name from consideration citing a politicized confirmation process following criticism of her response to the 2012 Benghazi attack. On December 21, Obama proposed the nomination, which received positive commentary. His confirmation hearing took place on January 24, 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the same panel where he first testified in 1971. The committee unanimously voted to approve him on January 29, 2013, and the same day the full Senate confirmed him on a vote of 94\u20133. In a letter to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Kerry announced his resignation from the Senate effective February 1.\nTenure.\nKerry was sworn in as Secretary of State on February 1, 2013.\nWhile serving as the Secretary of State, Kerry spoke in the French language on several occasions in his official capacity.\nAfter six months of rigorous diplomacy within the Middle East, Kerry was able to have Israeli and Palestinian negotiators agree to start the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks. Senior U.S. officials stated the two sides were able to meet on July 30, 2013, at the State Department without American mediators following a dinner the previous evening hosted by Kerry.\nOn September 27, 2013, he met with the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the P5+1 and Iran summit, which eventually led to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. It was the highest-level direct contact between the United States and Iran in the last six years, and made him the first U.S. Secretary of State to have met with his Iranian counterpart since 1979 Iranian Revolution.\nIn the State Department, Kerry quickly earned a reputation \"for being aloof, keeping to himself, and not bothering to read staff memos\". Career State Department officials complained that power became too centralized under Kerry's leadership, which slowed department operations when Kerry was on frequent overseas trips. Others in State described Kerry as having \"a kind of diplomatic attention deficit disorder\" as he shifted from topic to topic instead of focusing on long-term strategy. When asked whether he was traveling too much, he responded, \"Hell no. I'm not slowing down.\" Despite Kerry's early achievements, morale at State was lower than under Hillary Clinton, according to department employees. However, after Kerry's first six months in the State Department, a Gallup poll found he had high approval ratings among Americans as Secretary of State. After a year, another poll showed Kerry's favorability continued to rise. Less than two years into Kerry's term, the Foreign Policy Magazine's 2014 Ivory Tower survey of international relations scholars asked, \"Who was the most effective U.S. Secretary of State in the past 50 years?\"; John Kerry and Lawrence Eagleburger tied for 11th place out of the 15 confirmed Secretaries of State in that period.\nIn January 2014, having met with Vatican Secretary of State Archbishop Pietro Parolin, Kerry said: \"We touched on just about every major issue that we are both working on, that are issues of concern to all of us. First of all, we talked at great length about Syria, and I was particularly appreciative for the Archbishop's raising this issue, and equally grateful for the Holy Father's comments\u00a0\u2013 the Pope's comments yesterday regarding his support for the GenevaII process. We welcome that support. It is very important to have broad support, and I know that the Pope is particularly concerned about the massive numbers of displaced human beings and the violence that has taken over 130,000 lives.\"\nKerry expressed support for Israel's right to defend itself during the 2014 Israel\u2013Gaza conflict.\nKerry said the United States supported the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen because Saudi Arabia, an ally, was threatened \"very directly\" by the takeover of neighboring Yemen by the Houthis, but noted that the United States would not reflexively support Saudi Arabia's proxy wars against Iran.\nOn December 28, 2016, soon after United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 passed 14\u20130 with the U.S. abstaining, Kerry joined the rest of the U.N. Security Council in strongly criticizing Israel's settlement policies in a speech. His speech and criticisms met negative reactions from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while UK Prime Minister Theresa May distanced the UK from Kerry's strongly worded speech in what appeared to be an attempt to build bridges with the incoming Trump administration. Kerry's speech received positive reactions from Arab nations, but some criticized his remarks as too little, too late from the outgoing administration.\nSyria.\nFollowing the August 21, 2013, chemical weapons attack on the Ghouta suburbs of Damascus attributed to Syrian government forces, Kerry became a leading advocate for the use of military force against the Syrian government for what he called \"a despot's brutal and flagrant use of chemical weapons\".\nOn September 9, in response to a reporter's question about whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could avert a military strike, Kerry said \"He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that. But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done, obviously.\" This unscripted remark initiated a process that would lead to Syria agreeing to relinquish and destroy its chemical weapons arsenal, as Russia treated Kerry's statement as a serious proposal. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia would work \"immediately\" to convince Syria relinquish and destroy its large chemical weapons arsenal. Syria quickly welcomed this proposal and on September 14, the UN formally accepted Syria's application to join the convention banning chemical weapons, and separately, the U.S. and Russia agreed on a plan to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons by the middle of 2014, leading Kerry to declare on July 20, 2014: \"we struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out\". On September 28, the UN Security Council passed a resolution ordering the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons and condemning the August 21 Ghouta attack.\nLatin America.\nIn a speech before the Organization of American States in November 2013, Kerry remarked that the era of the Monroe Doctrine was over. He went on to explain, \"The relationship that we seek and that we have worked hard to foster is not about a United States declaration about how and when it will intervene in the affairs of other American states. It's about all of our countries viewing one another as equals, sharing responsibilities, cooperating on security issues, and adhering not to doctrine, but to the decisions that we make as partners to advance the values and the interests that we share.\"\nEnvironmentalism.\nIn April 2016, he signed the Paris Climate Accords at the United Nations in New York.\nOn November 11, 2016, Kerry became the first Secretary of State and highest-ranking U.S. official to date to visit Antarctica. Kerry spent two days on the continent meeting with researchers and staying overnight at McMurdo Station.\nIn 1994, Kerry led opposition to continued funding for the Integral Fast Reactor, which resulted in the end of funding for the project. However, in light of increasing concerns regarding climate change, in 2017 Kerry reversed his position on nuclear power, saying \"Given this challenge we face today, and given the progress of fourth generation nuclear: go for it. No other alternative, zero emissions.\"\nGlobal Connect initiative.\nIn September 2015, the U.S. Department of State unveiled a new initiative called \"Global Connect\" which sought to provide internet access to more than 1.5 billion people around the world within five years. In 2016, in partnership with OPIC, Kerry announced an investment of $171million to enable \"a low-cost and rapidly scalable wireless broadband network in India\". OPIC's financing is aimed at helping its Indian Partner, Tikona Digital Networks, to provide Internet through wireless technology.\nOut of government (2017\u20132021).\nKerry retired from his diplomatic work following the end of the Obama administration on January 20, 2017. He did not attend Donald Trump's inauguration on that day, and the following day took part in the 2017 Women's March in Washington, D.C.\nKerry has taken a strong stand against Trump policies and joined in filing a brief arguing against Trump's executive order banning entry of persons from seven Muslim countries. In November 2018, in a \"Guardian Live\" conversation with Andrew Rawnsley, sponsored by \"The Guardian\" at London's Central Hall, Kerry discussed several issues which have developed further since his tenure as Secretary of State, including migration into Europe and climate change.\nOn December 5, 2019, Kerry endorsed Joe Biden's bid for the Democratic nomination for president, saying \"He'll be ready on day one to put back together the country and the world that Donald Trump has broken apart\" and asserting that \"Joe will defeat Donald Trump next November. He's the candidate with the wisdom and standing to fix what Trump has broken, to restore our place in the world, and improve the lives of working people here at home.\"\nFollowing retirement from government service, Kerry signed an agreement with Simon & Schuster for publishing his planned memoirs, dealing with his life and career in government. In September 2018, he published \"Every Day Is Extra\".\nLeaked audiotape.\nOn April 25, 2021, \"The New York Times\" published content from a leaked audiotape of a three-hour taped conversation between economist Saeed Leylaz and Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. The taped conversation was connected to an oral history project, known as \"In the Islamic Republic the military field rules\", which documents the work of Iran's current administration. The tape was obtained by the London-based news channel Iran International.\nIn the tape, which the \"Times\" referred to as \"extraordinary\", Zarif reveals that then-Secretary of State Kerry told him that Israel attacked Iranian assets in Syria, \"at least 200 times\". Although the tape has not been verified, the spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry did not deny its validity.\nNineteen Republican senators signed a letter asking President Biden to investigate Zarif's claim. On April 27, 2021, Republicans called on Kerry to resign from the Biden administration's National Security Council. In a tweet, Kerry denied Zarif's account, writing, \"I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false. This never happened \u2014 either when I was Secretary of State or since.\"\nSpecial Presidential Envoy for Climate (2021\u20132024).\nOn November 23, 2020, President-elect Joe Biden's transition team announced that Kerry would be taking a full-time position in the administration, serving as a special envoy for climate; in this role he will be a principal on the National Security Council. Kerry assumed office on January 20, 2021, following Biden's inauguration.\nClimate cooperation with China.\nIn July 2023, John Kerry visited China for advance climate cooperation. The main achievement of the visit was some progress in the fields of: \"methane reduction commitments; reducing China's reliance on coal; China's objections to trade restrictions on solar panel and battery components; and climate finance.\" This was obtained despite many currently existing obstacles to cooperation. The visit was made in the middle of the 2023 Asia heat wave that set a new record of in Sanbu, Xinjiang, China, which Kerry mentioned in particular.\nClimate cooperation with India.\nAt the end of July 2023, John Kerry visited India. Among others he declared, the US will be committed to the target of delivering 100 billion dollars for climate action to low income countries and no future US president can retreat from climate commitment. He criticized Donald Trump for leaving the Paris agreement before.\nClimate cooperation with countries in the Middle East.\nIn June 2023, Kerry made visits to Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. In Israel, he emphasized the need for climate legislation to reach climate targets and reached an agreement about the renewal of \"Memorandum of understanding between Israel and the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Israel is one of the few developed countries which have still not approved a climate law and lags behind other OECD countries in climate action. Israeli environmental protection minister Idit Silman said that Israel intended to go to COP28 \"with an ambitious and applicable climate law and put the State of Israel on the same level as the developed countries of the OECD.\"\nDeparture.\nOn January 13, 2024, at least three sources close to Kerry revealed that he would step down as U.S. climate envoy by the upcoming spring. He told the \"Financial Times\" he planned to stay active in the climate finance space. He officially resigned from his position on March 6, 2024.\nPersonal and family life.\nAncestry.\nKerry's paternal ancestors came from the Fr\u00e4nkel family, which owned a textile factory in Neustadt, Upper Silesia (now Prudnik, Poland), founded by Samuel Fr\u00e4nkel. The Fr\u00e4nkels originated from Hotzenplotz, Austria (now Osoblaha, Czech Republic) and Z\u00fclz, Prussia (now Bia\u0142a Prudnicka, Poland). Kerry's paternal great-grandmother, Mathilda Fr\u00e4nkel, was born in Oberglogau (now G\u0142og\u00f3wek, near Prudnik) and married Benedikt Kohn from Bennisch (now Horn\u00ed Bene\u0161ov). His grandparents, shoe businessman Frederick A. \"Fred\" Kerry and musician Ida L\u00f6we, immigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the U.S. Fred, his wife, and his brother converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1901, and changed their names from Kohn to Kerry. Ida was of remote ancestry of Rabbi Sinai Loew of Worms, brother of Judah Loew ben Bezalel. Fred and Ida Kerry emigrated to the United States in 1905, living at first in Chicago and eventually moving to Brookline, Massachusetts, by 1915. According to \"The New York Times\", \"[the] brother and sister of John Kerry's paternal grandmother, Otto and Jenni Lowe, died in concentration camps\". Kerry's Jewish ancestry was publicly revealed during his 2004 presidential campaign; he has stated that he was unaware of it until a reporter informed him of it in 2003.\nKerry's maternal ancestors were of Scottish and English descent, and his maternal grandparents were James Grant Forbes II of the Forbes family and Margaret Tyndal Winthrop of the Dudley\u2013Winthrop family. Margaret's paternal grandfather Robert Charles Winthrop served as the 22nd Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Robert's father was Governor Thomas Lindall Winthrop. Thomas' father John Still Winthrop was a great-great-grandson of Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop and great-grandson of Governor Thomas Dudley. Through his mother, Kerry is a first cousin once removed of French politician Brice Lalonde.\nMarriages and children.\nKerry was married to Julia Thorne in 1970, and they had two daughters together: documentary filmmaker Alexandra Kerry (born September 5, 1973) and physician Vanessa Kerry (born December 31, 1976).\nAlexandra was born days before Kerry began law school. In 1982, Julia asked Kerry for a separation while she was suffering from severe depression. They were divorced on July 25, 1988, and the marriage was formally annulled in 1997. \"After 14 years as a political wife, I associated politics only with anger, fear and loneliness\", she wrote in \"A Change of Heart\", her book about depression. Thorne later married Richard Charlesworth, an architect, and moved to Bozeman, Montana, where she became active in local environmental groups such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Thorne supported Kerry's 2004 presidential run. She died of cancer on April 27, 2006.\nKerry and his second wife\u2014Portuguese-born businesswoman and philanthropist Teresa Heinz, the widow of Kerry's late Pennsylvania Republican Senate colleague John Heinz\u2014were introduced to each other by Heinz at an Earth Day rally in 1990. Early the following year, Senator Heinz was killed in a plane crash near Lower Merion. Teresa has three sons from her marriage to Heinz, Henry John IV, Andr\u00e9, and Christopher. Heinz and Kerry were married on May 26, 1995, in Nantucket, Massachusetts.\nNet worth.\nThe \"Forbes 400\" survey estimated in 2004 that Teresa Heinz Kerry had a net worth of $750million. However, estimates have frequently varied, ranging from around $165million to as high as $3.2billion, according to a study in the \"Los Angeles Times\". Regardless of which figure is correct, Kerry was the wealthiest U.S. Senator while serving in the Senate. Independent of Heinz, Kerry is wealthy in his own right, and is the beneficiary of at least four trusts inherited from Forbes family relatives, including his mother, Rosemary Forbes Kerry, who died in 2002. \"Forbes\" magazine (named for the Forbes family of publishers, unrelated to Kerry) estimated that if elected, and if Heinz family assets were included, Kerry would have been the third-richest U.S. president in history, when adjusted for inflation. This assessment was based on Heinz's and Kerry's combined assets, but the couple signed a prenuptial agreement that keeps their assets separate. Kerry's financial disclosure form for 2011 put his personal assets in the range of $230,000,000 to $320,000,000, including the assets of his spouse and any dependent children. This included slightly more than $3,000,000 worth of H. J. Heinz Company assets, which increased in value by over $600,000 in 2013 when Berkshire Hathaway announced their intention to purchase the company.\nIn April 2017, Kerry purchased an 18-acre property on the northwest corner of Martha's Vineyard overlooking Vineyard Sound in the town of Chilmark, Massachusetts. The property is located in Seven Gates Farm and according to property records, cost $11.75million for the seven bedroom home.\nReligious beliefs.\nKerry is a Roman Catholic, and is said to have carried a religious rosary, a prayer book, and a St. Christopher medal (the patron saint of travelers) when he campaigned. Discussing his faith, Kerry said: \"I thought of being a priest. I was very religious while at school in Switzerland. I was an altar boy and prayed all the time. I was very centered around the Mass and the church.\" He also said that the Letters of Paul (Apostle Paul) moved him the most, stating that they taught him to \"not feel sorry for myself\".\nKerry told \"Christianity Today\" in October 2004:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I'm a Catholic and I practice, but at the same time I have an open-mindedness to many other expressions of spirituality that come through different religions... I've spent some time reading and thinking about religion and trying to study it, and I've arrived at not so much a sense of the differences, but a sense of the similarities in so many ways.\nHe said that he believed that the Torah, the Quran, and the Bible all share a fundamental story which connects with readers.\nHealth.\nIn 2003, Kerry was diagnosed with and successfully treated for prostate cancer. On May 31, 2015, Kerry broke his right leg in a biking accident in Scionzier, France, and was flown to Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital for recovery. MGH Hip and Knee Replacement Orthopaedic Surgeon Dr. Dennis Burke, who had met Kerry in France and had accompanied him in the plane from France to Boston, set Kerry's right leg on Tuesday, June 2, in a four-hour operation.\nAthletics and sailing.\nIn addition to the sports he played at Yale, Kerry is described by \"Sports Illustrated\", among others, as an \"avid cyclist\", primarily riding on a road bike. Prior to his presidential bid, Kerry had participated in several long-distance rides. During his many campaigns, he was reported to have visited bicycle stores in both his home state and elsewhere. His staff requested recumbent stationary bikes for his hotel rooms. He has also been a snowboarder, windsurfer, and sailor.\nThe \"Boston Herald\" reported on July 23, 2010, that Kerry commissioned construction on a new $7million yacht (a Friendship 75) in New Zealand and moored it in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where the Friendship yacht company is based. The article claimed this allowed him to avoid paying Massachusetts taxes on the property including approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $500. On July 27, Kerry stated he would voluntarily pay $500,000 in Massachusetts taxes on his yacht.\nHonors.\nJohn Kerry was awarded:\nHonorary degrees.\nJohn Kerry has received several honorary degrees in recognition of his service to the United States, These include:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "53825": "New Haven, Connecticut\nNew Haven is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is the third largest city in Connecticut after Bridgeport and Stamford, the largest city in the South Central Connecticut Planning Region, and the principal municipality of Greater New Haven, which had a total population of 864,835 in 2020.\nNew Haven was one of the first planned cities in the U.S. A year after its founding by English Puritans in 1638, eight streets were laid out in a four-by-four grid, creating the \"Nine Square Plan\". The central common block is the New Haven Green, a square at the center of Downtown New Haven. The Green is now a National Historic Landmark, and the \"Nine Square Plan\" is recognized by the American Planning Association as a National Planning Landmark.\nNew Haven is the home of Yale University, New Haven's biggest taxpayer and employer, and an integral part of the city's economy. Health care, professional and financial services and retail trade also contribute to the city's economic activity.\nThe city served as co-capital of Connecticut from 1701 until 1873, when sole governance was transferred to the more centrally located city of Hartford. New Haven has since billed itself as the \"Cultural Capital of Connecticut\" for its supply of established theaters, museums, and music venues. New Haven had the first public tree planting program in the U.S., producing a canopy of mature trees (including some large elms) that gave the city the nickname \"The Elm City\".\nHistory.\nPre-colonial foundation as an independent colony.\nBefore Europeans arrived, the New Haven area was the home of the Quinnipiac tribe of Native Americans, who lived in villages around the harbor and sustained an economy of local fisheries and the farming of maize. The area was briefly visited by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block in 1614. Dutch traders set up a small trading system of beaver pelts with the local inhabitants, but trade was sporadic and the Dutch did not settle permanently in the area.\nIn 1637, a small party of Puritans did a reconnaissance of the New Haven harbor area and wintered over. In April 1638, the main party of five hundred Puritans, who had left the Massachusetts Bay Colony under the leadership of Reverend John Davenport and London merchant Theophilus Eaton, sailed into the harbor. It was their hope to set up a theological community with the government more closely linked to the church than that in Massachusetts, and to exploit the area's potential as a port. The Quinnipiacs, who were under attack by neighboring Pequots, sold their land to the settlers in return for a pledge of protection.\nBy 1640, \"Quinnipiac's\" theocratic government and nine-square grid plan were in place, and the town was renamed New Haven, with 'haven' meaning harbor or port. However, the area to the north remained Quinnipiac until 1678, when it was renamed Hamden. The settlement became the headquarters of the New Haven Colony, distinct from the Connecticut Colony previously established to the north centering on Hartford. Reflecting its theocratic roots, the New Haven Colony forbade the establishment of other churches, whereas the Connecticut Colony permitted them.\nEconomic disaster struck New Haven in 1646, when the town sent its first fully loaded ship of local goods (the \"Great Shippe\") back to England. It never reached its destination, and its disappearance hindered New Haven's development as compared to the rising trade powers of Boston and New Amsterdam (modern day New York City).\nIn 1660, Colony founder John Davenport's wishes were fulfilled, and Hopkins School was founded in New Haven with money from the estate of Edward Hopkins.\nIn 1661, the Regicides who had signed the death warrant of Charles I of England were pursued by Charles II. Two of them, Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe, fled to New Haven for refuge. Davenport arranged for them to hide in the West Rock hills northwest of the town. A third judge, John Dixwell, later joined the others. None of the three were ever returned to England for trial; Dixwell died of old age in New Haven, the others likewise elsewhere in New England.\nAs part of the Connecticut Colony.\nIn 1664, New Haven became part of the Connecticut Colony when the two colonies were merged under political pressure from England. Seeking to establish a new theocracy elsewhere, some members of the New Haven Colony went on to establish Newark, New Jersey.\nNew Haven was made co-capital of Connecticut in 1701, a status it retained until 1873.\nIn 1716, the Collegiate School relocated from Old Saybrook to New Haven, establishing it as a center of learning. In 1718, in response to a large donation from East India Company merchant Elihu Yale, former Governor of Madras, the Collegiate School was renamed Yale College.\nFor over a century, New Haven citizens had fought in the colonial militia alongside regular British forces, including the French and Indian War. As the American Revolution approached, General David Wooster and other influential residents hoped that the conflict with the British parliament could be resolved short of rebellion. On April 23, 1775, Captain Benedict Arnold commanded the Second Company, Governor's Foot Guard, of New Haven to break into the powder house to arm themselves for a three-day march to Cambridge, Massachusetts, an event still celebrated in New Haven as Powder House Day. Other New Haven militia members were on hand to escort George Washington from his overnight stay in New Haven on his way to Cambridge. Contemporary reports, from both sides, remark on the New Haven volunteers' professional military bearing, including uniforms.\nOn July 5, 1779, 2,600 loyalists and British regulars under General William Tryon, governor of New York, landed in New Haven Harbor and raided the town of 3,500. A militia of Yale students had been preparing for battle, and former Yale president and Yale Divinity School professor Naphtali Daggett rode out to confront the Redcoats. Yale president Ezra Stiles recounted in his diary that while he moved furniture in anticipation of battle, he still couldn't quite believe the revolution had begun. New Haven was not torched as the invaders did with Danbury in 1777, or Fairfield and Norwalk a week after the New Haven raid, preserving many of the town's colonial features.\nPost-colonial period and industrialization.\nNew Haven was incorporated as a city in 1784, and Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Constitution and author of the \"Connecticut Compromise\", became the new city's first mayor.\nThe city struck fortune in the late 18th century with the inventions and industrial activity of Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate who remained in New Haven to develop the cotton gin and establish a gun-manufacturing factory in the northern part of the city near the Hamden town line. That area is still known as Whitneyville, and the main road through both towns is known as Whitney Avenue. The factory is now the Eli Whitney Museum, which has a particular emphasis on activities for children and exhibits pertaining to the A. C. Gilbert Company. His factory, along with that of Simeon North, and the lively clock-making and brass hardware sectors, contributed to making early Connecticut a powerful manufacturing economy; so many arms manufacturers sprang up that the state became known as \"The Arsenal of America\". It was in Whitney's gun-manufacturing plant that Samuel Colt invented the automatic revolver in 1836. Many other talented machinists and firearms designers would go on to found successful firearms manufacturing companies in New Haven, including Oliver Winchester and O.F. Mossberg & Sons.\nThe Farmington Canal, created in the early 19th century, was a short-lived transporter of goods into the interior regions of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and ran from New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts.\nNew Haven was to be the site of the first college for African Americans in the United States, but the plan was obstructed by efforts led by Yale Law School founder and former New Haven Mayor David Daggett, who went on to serve as a U.S. Senator and judge on Connecticut's highest court. Daggett denigrated African Americans, denied they were citizens, and presided over the trial of a woman persecuted for trying to admit an African American girl to her boarding school and, having that effort blocked, running a boarding school for African American girls.\nNew Haven was home to one of the important early events in the burgeoning anti-slavery movement when, in 1839, the trial of mutineering Mende tribesmen being transported as slaves on the Spanish slaveship \"Amistad\" was held in New Haven's United States District Court. There is a statue of Joseph Cinqu\u00e9, the informal leader of the slaves, beside City Hall. See \"Museums\" below for more information. Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech on slavery in New Haven in 1860, shortly before he secured the Republican nomination for President.\nThe American Civil War boosted the local economy with wartime purchases of industrial goods, including that of the New Haven Arms Company, which would later become the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. (Winchester would continue to produce arms in New Haven until 2006, and many of the buildings that were a part of the Winchester plant are now a part of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company Historic District). After the war, population grew and doubled by the start of the 20th century, most notably due to the influx of immigrants from southern Europe, particularly Italy. Today, roughly half the populations of East Haven, West Haven, and North Haven are Italian-American. Jewish immigration to New Haven has left an enduring mark on the city. Westville was the center of Jewish life in New Haven, though today many have fanned out to suburban communities such as Woodbridge and Cheshire. Lowell House, the city's first settlement, opened in 1900.\nPost-industrial era and urban redevelopment.\nNew Haven's expansion continued during the two World Wars, with most new inhabitants being African Americans from the American South, and Puerto Ricans. The city reached its peak population after World War II. The area of New Haven is only , encouraging further development of new housing after 1950 in adjacent, suburban towns. Moreover, as in other U.S. cities in the 1950s, New Haven began to suffer white flight of middle-class workers. One author suggested that aggressive redlining and rezoning made it difficult for residents to obtain financing for older, deteriorating urban housing stock, thereby condemning such structures to deterioration.\nIn 1954, then-mayor Richard C. Lee began some of the earliest major urban renewal projects in the United States. Certain sections of downtown New Haven were redeveloped to include museums, new office towers, a hotel, and large shopping complexes. Other parts of the city, particularly the Wooster Square and Fair Haven neighborhoods were affected by the construction of Interstate 95 along the Long Wharf section, Interstate 91, and the Oak Street Connector. The Oak Street Connector (Route 34), running between Interstate 95, downtown, and The Hill neighborhood, was originally intended as a highway to the city's western suburbs but was only completed as a highway to the downtown area, with the area to the west becoming a boulevard (See \"Redevelopment\" below).\nIn 1970, a series of criminal prosecutions against various members of the Black Panther Party took place in New Haven, inciting mass protests on the New Haven Green involving twelve thousand demonstrators and many well-known New Left political activists. (See \"Political Culture\" below for more information). From the 1960s through the early 1990s, some areas of New Haven continued to decline both economically and in terms of population despite attempts to resurrect certain neighborhoods through renewal projects. In conjunction with its declining population, New Haven experienced a steep rise in its crime rate.\nSince approximately 2000, many parts of downtown New Haven have been revitalized with new restaurants, nightlife, and small retail stores. In particular, the area surrounding the New Haven Green has experienced an influx of apartments and condominiums. In addition, two new supermarkets opened to serve downtown's growing residential population: a Stop & Shop opened just west of downtown, while Elm City Market, located one block from the Green, opened in 2011. The recent turnaround of downtown New Haven has received positive press from various periodicals.\nMajor projects include the current construction of a new campus for Gateway Community College downtown, and also a 32-story, 500-unit apartment/retail building called 360 State Street. The 360 State Street project is now occupied and is the largest residential building in Connecticut. A new boathouse and dock is planned for New Haven Harbor, and the linear park Farmington Canal Trail is set to extend into downtown New Haven within the coming year. Additionally, foundation and ramp work to widen I-95 to create a new harbor crossing for New Haven, with an extradosed bridge to replace the 1950s-era Q Bridge, has begun. The city still hopes to redevelop the site of the New Haven Coliseum, which was demolished in 2007.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 18 white firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no black firefighters scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. In the subsequent \"Ricci v. DeStefano\" decision the court found 5\u20134 that New Haven's decision to ignore the test results violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a result, a district court subsequently ordered the city to promote 14 of the white firefighters.\nIn 2010 and 2011, state and federal funds were awarded to Connecticut (and Massachusetts) to construct the Hartford Line, with a southern terminus at New Haven's Union Station and a northern terminus at Springfield's Union Station. According to the White House, \"This corridor [currently] has one train per day connecting communities in Connecticut and Massachusetts to the Northeast Corridor and Vermont. The vision for this corridor is to restore the alignment to its original route via the Knowledge Corridor in western Massachusetts, improving trip time and increasing the population base that can be served.\" Set for construction in 2013, the \"Knowledge Corridor high speed intercity passenger rail\" project will cost approximately $1\u00a0billion, and the ultimate northern terminus for the project is reported to be Montreal in Canada. Train speeds between will reportedly exceed and increase both cities' rail traffic exponentially.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 6.67%, is water.\nNew Haven's best-known geographic features are its large, shallow harbor, and two reddish basalt trap rock ridges which rise to the northeast and northwest of the city core. These trap rocks are known respectively as East Rock and West Rock, and both serve as extensive parks. West Rock has been tunneled through to make way for the east\u2013west passage of the Wilbur Cross Parkway (the only highway tunnel through a natural obstacle in Connecticut), and once served as the hideout of the \"Regicides\" (see: Regicides Trail). Most New Haveners refer to these men as \"The Three Judges\". East Rock features the prominent Soldiers and Sailors war monument on its peak as well as the \"Great/Giant Steps\" which run up the rock's cliffside.\nThe city is drained by three rivers; the West, Mill, and Quinnipiac, named in order from west to east. The West River discharges into West Haven Harbor, while the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers discharge into New Haven Harbor. Both harbors are embayments of Long Island Sound. In addition, several smaller streams flow through the city's neighborhoods, including Wintergreen Brook, the Beaver Ponds Outlet, Wilmot Brook, Belden Brook, and Prospect Creek. Not all of these small streams have continuous flow year-round.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen classification, New Haven experiences a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\"), bordering a hot-summer humid continental climate (\"Dfa\"). The city has hot, humid summers and cool to cold winters. From May to late September, the weather is typically hot and humid, with average temperatures exceeding on 70 days per year. In summer, the Bermuda High creates as southern flow of warm and humid air, with frequent (but brief) thundershowers. October to early December is normally mild to cool late in the season, while early spring (April) can be cool to warm. Winters are more variable, with cool to cold temperatures, mixed with warmer spells, with both rain and snow fall.\nWhile the weather patterns that affect New Haven result from a primarily offshore direction, thus reducing the marine influence of Long Island Sound, the location on Long Island Sound often influences the weather along the coastline compared to inland. During summer heat waves, temperatures may reach or higher on occasion with heat-index values of over . Tropical cyclones have struck New Haven in the past, including 1938 Hurricane (Long Island Express), Hurricane Carol in 1954, Hurricane Gloria in 1985. The hardiness zone is 7a.\nStreetscape.\nNew Haven has a long tradition of urban planning and a purposeful design for the city's layout. The city could be argued to have some of the first preconceived layouts in the country. Upon founding, New Haven was laid out in a grid plan of nine square blocks; the central square was left open, in the tradition of many New England towns, as the city green (a commons area). The city also instituted the first public tree planting program in America. As in other cities, many of the elms that gave New Haven the nickname \"Elm City\" perished in the mid-20th century due to Dutch elm disease, although many have since been replanted. The New Haven Green is currently home to three separate historic churches which speak to the original theocratic nature of the city. The Green remains the social center of the city today. It was named a National Historic Landmark in 1970.\nDowntown New Haven, occupied by nearly 7,000 residents, has a more residential character than most downtowns. The downtown area provides about half of the city's jobs and half of its tax base and in recent years has become filled with dozens of new upscale restaurants, in addition to shops and thousands of apartments and condominium units which subsequently help overall growth of the city.\nNeighborhoods.\nThe city has many distinct neighborhoods. In addition to Downtown, centered on the central business district and the Green, are the following neighborhoods: the west central neighborhoods of Dixwell and Dwight; the southern neighborhoods of The Hill, historic water-front City Point (or Oyster Point), and the harborside district of Long Wharf; the western neighborhoods of Beaver Hills, Edgewood, West River, Westville, Amity, and West Rock-Westhills; East Rock, Cedar Hill, Prospect Hill, and Newhallville in the northern side of town; the east central neighborhoods of Mill River and Wooster Square, an Italian-American neighborhood; Fair Haven, an immigrant community located between the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers; Quinnipiac Meadows and Fair Haven Heights across the Quinnipiac River; and facing the eastern side of the harbor, The Annex and East Shore (or Morris Cove).\nDemographics.\nCensus data.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nThe U.S. Census Bureau reports a 2010 population of 129,779, with 47,094 households and 25,854 families within the city of New Haven. The population density was . There were 52,941 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 42.6% White, 35.4% African American, 0.5% Native American, 4.6% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 12.9% from other races, and 3.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 27.4% of the population. Non-Hispanic Whites were 31.8% of the population in 2010, down from 69.6% in 1970. The city's Latino population is growing rapidly. Previous influxes among ethnic groups have been African-Americans in the postwar era, and Irish, Italian and (to a lesser degree) Slavic peoples in the prewar period.\nAs of the 2010 census, of the 47,094 households, 29.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 27.5% include married couples living together, 22.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 36.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.5% had someone living alone who was 65\u00a0years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40 and the average family size 3.19.\nThe ages of New Haven's residents were 25.4% under the age of 18, 16.4% from 18 to 24, 31.2% from 25 to 44, 16.7% from 45 to 64, and 10.2% who were 65\u00a0years of age or older. The median age was 29\u00a0years, which was significantly lower than the national average. There were 91.8 males per 100 females. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.6 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $29,604, and the median income for a family was $35,950. Median income for males was $33,605, compared with $28,424 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,393. About 20.5% of families and 24.4% of the population were living below the poverty line, including 32.2% of those under age 18 and 17.9% of those age 65 or over.\nOther data.\nIt is estimated that 14% of New Haven residents are pedestrian commuters, ranking it number four by highest percentage in the United States. This is primarily due to New Haven's small area and the presence of Yale University.\nNew Haven is noted for having the highest percentage of Italian American residents of any US city, and is noted for its local style of pizza.\nA study of the demographics of the New Haven metro area, based on age, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity, found that they were the closest of any American city to the national average.\nEconomy.\nNew Haven's economy originally was based in manufacturing, but the postwar period brought rapid industrial decline; the entire Northeast was affected, and medium-sized cities with large working-class populations, like New Haven, were hit particularly hard. Simultaneously, the growth and expansion of Yale University further affected the economic shift. Today, over half (56%) of the city's economy is now made up of services, in particular education and health care; Yale is the city's largest employer, followed by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital. Other large employers include Southern Connecticut State University, Assa Abloy lock manufacturing, the Knights of Columbus headquarters, Higher One, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Covidien and United Illuminating. Clothing stores Gant and Ann Taylor were founded in the city.\nIn 2017, New Haven was ranked by a Verizon study as one of the top 10 cities in America for launching tech startups, and top two in New England.\nIndustry sectors: Agriculture (.6%), Construction and Mining (4.9%), Manufacturing (2.9%), Transportation and Utilities (2.9%), Trade (21.7%), Finance and Real Estate (7.1%), Services (55.9%), Government (4.0%)\nHeadquarters.\nThe Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization and a Fortune 1000 company, is headquartered in New Haven. Amphenol, based in Greater New Haven (Wallingford), is a Fortune 100 company. Eight Courant 100 companies are based in Greater New Haven, with four headquartered in New Haven proper. New Haven-based companies traded on stock exchanges include NewAlliance Bank, the second largest bank in Connecticut and fourth-largest in New England (NYSE: NAL), Higher One Holdings (NYSE: ONE), a financial services firm, United Illuminating, the electricity distributor for southern Connecticut (NYSE: UIL), and Transpro Inc. (AMEX: TPR). The American division of Assa Abloy (one of the world's leading manufacturers of locks) is located in the city. The Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET) began operations in the city as the District Telephone Company of New Haven in 1878; the company remains headquartered in New Haven as a subsidiary of Frontier Communications and provides telephone service for all but two municipalities in Connecticut. SeeClickFix was founded and has been headquartered in the city since 2007. Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company (a candy-making division of the Hershey Company) was formerly located in the city. Achillion Pharmaceuticals and Alexion Pharmaceuticals were also formerly headquartered in New Haven.\nLaw and government.\nPolitical structure.\nNew Haven is governed via the mayor-council system. Connecticut municipalities (like those of neighboring states Massachusetts and Rhode Island) provide nearly all local services (such as fire and rescue, education, snow removal, etc.), as county government has been abolished since 1960.\nNew Haven County merely refers to a grouping of towns and a judicial district, not a governmental entity. New Haven is a member of the South Central Connecticut Regional Council of Governments (SCRCOG), a regional agency created to facilitate coordination between area municipal governments and state and federal agencies, in the absence of county government.\nJustin Elicker is the mayor of New Haven. He was sworn in as the 51st mayor of New Haven on January 1, 2020.\nThe city council, called the Board of Alders, consists of thirty members, each elected from single-member wards. Each of the 30 wards consists of slightly over 4,300 residents; redistricting takes place every ten years.\nThe city is overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2017, of the town's 83,694 voters, 66% were registered as Democrats (\u22124% since 2015), 4% were registered as Republicans (+1%), and 29% were unaffiliated (+3). The board of alders is dominated by Democrats; a Republican has not served as a New Haven alder since 2011.\nNew Haven is served by the New Haven Police Department, which had 443 sworn officers in 2011. The city is also served by the New Haven Fire Department.\nNew Haven lies within Connecticut's 3rd congressional district and has been represented by Rosa DeLauro since 1991. Martin Looney and Gary Holder-Winfield represent New Haven in the Connecticut State Senate, and the city lies within six districts (numbers 92 through 97) of the Connecticut House of Representatives.\nThe Greater New Haven area is served by the New Haven Judicial District Court and the New Haven Superior Court, both headquartered at the New Haven County Courthouse. The federal District Court for the District of Connecticut has a New Haven facility, the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse.\nPolitical history.\nNew Haven is the birthplace of former president George W. Bush, who was born when his father, former president George H. W. Bush, was living in New Haven while a student at Yale. In addition to being the site of the college educations of both Presidents Bush, as Yale students, New Haven was also the temporary home of former presidents William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, and Bill Clinton, as well as Secretary of State John Kerry. President Clinton met his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while the two were students at Yale Law School. Former vice presidents John C. Calhoun and Dick Cheney also studied in New Haven (although the latter did not graduate from Yale). Before the 2008 election, the last time there was not a person with ties to New Haven and Yale on either major party's ticket was 1968. James Hillhouse, a New Haven native, served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate in 1801.\nNew Haven voters overwhelmingly supported Al Gore in the 2000 election, Yale graduate John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. In the 2008 election, New Haven County was third among all Connecticut counties in campaign contributions, after Fairfield and Hartford counties. (Connecticut, in turn, was ranked 14th among all states in total campaign contributions.)\nNew Haven was the subject of \" Who Governs? Democracy and Power in An American City\", a very influential book in political science by preeminent Yale professor Robert A. Dahl, which includes an extensive history of the city and thorough description of its politics in the 1950s. New Haven's theocratic history is also mentioned several times by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic volume on 19th-century American political life, \"Democracy in America\". New Haven was the residence of conservative thinker William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1951, when he wrote his influential \"God and Man at Yale\". William Lee Miller's \"The Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society\" (1966) similarly explores the relationship between local politics in New Haven and national political movements, focusing on Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and urban renewal.\nGeorge Williamson Crawford, a Yale Law School graduate, served as the city's first black corporation counsel from 1954 to 1962, under Mayor Richard C. Lee.\nIn 1970, the New Haven Black Panther trials took place, the largest and longest trials in Connecticut history. Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale and ten other party members were tried for murdering an alleged informant. Beginning on May Day, the city became a center of protest for 12,000 Panther supporters, college students, and New Left activists (including Jean Genet, Benjamin Spock, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and John Froines), who amassed on the New Haven Green, across the street from where the trials were being held. Violent confrontations between the demonstrators and the New Haven Police occurred, and several bombs were set off in the area by radicals. The event became a rallying point for the New Left and critics of the Nixon Administration.\nDuring the summer of 2007, New Haven was the center of protests by anti-immigration groups who opposed the city's program of offering municipal ID cards, known as the Elm City Resident Card, to illegal immigrants. In 2008, the country of Ecuador opened a consulate in New Haven to serve the large Ecuadorean immigrant population in the area. It is the first foreign mission to open in New Haven since Italy opened a consulate (now closed) in the city in 1910.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 20 white and Hispanic firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no blacks scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. On June 29, 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the firefighters, agreeing that they were improperly denied promotion because of their race. The case, \"Ricci v. DeStefano\", became highly publicized and brought national attention to New Haven politics due to the involvement of then-Supreme Court nominee (and Yale Law School graduate) Sonia Sotomayor in a lower court decision.\nGarry Trudeau, creator of the political \"Doonesbury\" comic strip, attended Yale University. There he met fellow student and later Green Party candidate for Congress Charles Pillsbury, a long-time New Haven resident for whom Trudeau's comic strip is named. During his college years, Pillsbury was known by the nickname \"The Doones\". A theory of international law, which argues for a sociological normative approach in regards to jurisprudence, is named the New Haven Approach, after the city. Connecticut US senator Richard Blumenthal is a Yale graduate, as is former Connecticut US Senator Joe Lieberman who also was a New Haven resident for many years, before moving back to his hometown of Stamford.\nCrime.\nCrime increased in the 1990s, with New Haven having one of the ten highest violent crime rates per capita in the United States. In the late 1990s New Haven's crime began to stabilize. The city, adopting a policy of community policing, saw crime rates drop during the 2000s.\nViolent crime levels vary dramatically among New Haven's neighborhoods, with some areas having crime rates in line with the state of Connecticut average, and others having extremely high rates of crime. A 2011 New Haven Health Department report identifies these issues in greater detail.\nIn 2010, New Haven ranked as the 18th most dangerous city in the United States (albeit below the safety benchmark of 200.00 for the second consecutive year). However, according to a completely different analysis conducted by the \"24/7 Wall Street Blog\", in 2011 New Haven had risen to become the fourth most dangerous city in the United States, and was widely cited in the press as such.\nHowever, an analysis by the Regional Data Cooperative for Greater New Haven, Inc., has shown that due to issues of comparative denominators and other factors, such municipality-based rankings can be considered inaccurate. For example, two cities of identical population can cover widely differing land areas, making such analyses irrelevant. The research organization called for comparisons based on neighborhoods, blocks, or standard methodologies (similar to those used by Brookings, DiversityData, and other established institutions), not based on municipalities.\nEducation.\nColleges and universities.\nNew Haven is a notable center for higher education. Yale University, at the heart of downtown, is one of the city's best known features and its largest employer. New Haven is also home to Southern Connecticut State University, part of the Connecticut State University System, and Albertus Magnus College, a private institution. Gateway Community College has a campus in downtown New Haven, formerly located in the Long Wharf district; Gateway consolidated into one campus downtown into a new state-of-the-art campus (on the site of the old Macy's building) and was open for the Fall 2012 semester.\nThere are several institutions immediately outside of New Haven, as well. Quinnipiac University and the Paier College of Art are located just to the north, in the town of Hamden. The University of New Haven is located not in New Haven but in neighboring West Haven.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nNew Haven Public Schools is the school district serving the city. Wilbur Cross High School and Hillhouse High School are New Haven's two largest public secondary schools.\nHopkins School, a private school, was founded in 1660 and is the fifth-oldest educational institution in the United States. New Haven is home to a number of other private schools as well as public magnet schools, including Metropolitan Business Academy, High School in the Community, Hill Regional Career High School, Co-op High School, New Haven Academy, Edgewood Magnet School, ACES Educational Center for the Arts, the Foote School and the Sound School, all of which draw students from New Haven and suburban towns. New Haven is also home to two Achievement First charter schools, Amistad Academy and Elm City College Prep, and to Common Ground, an environmental charter school.\nThe city is renowned for its progressive school lunch programs, and participation in statewide bussing efforts toward increased diversity in schools.\nCulture.\nCuisine.\nLivability.com named New Haven as the Best Foodie City in the country in 2014. There are dozens of Zagat-rated restaurants in New Haven, the most in Connecticut and the third most in New England (after Boston and Cambridge). More than 120 restaurants are located within two blocks of the New Haven Green. The city is home to an eclectic mix of ethnic restaurants and small markets specializing in various foreign foods. Represented cuisines include Malaysian, Ethiopian, Spanish, Belgian, French, Greek, Latin American, Mexican, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Cuban, Peruvian, Syrian/Lebanese, and Turkish.\nNew Haven's greatest culinary claim to fame may be its pizza, which has been claimed to be among the best in the country, or even in the world. New Haven-style pizza, called \"apizza\", made its debut at the iconic Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana (known as Pepe's) in 1925. Apizza is baked in coal- or wood-fired brick ovens, and is notable for its thin crust. Apizza may be red (with a tomato-based sauce) or white (with a sauce of garlic and olive oil), and pies ordered \"plain\" are made without the otherwise customary mozzarella (originally smoked mozzarella, known as \"scamorza\" in Italian). A white clam pie is a well-known specialty of the restaurants on Wooster Street in the Little Italy section of New Haven, including Pepe's and Sally's Apizza (which opened in 1938). Modern Apizza on State Street, which opened in 1934, is also well-known.\nA second New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Louis' Lunch, which is located in a small brick building on Crown Street and has been serving fast food since 1895. Though fiercely debated, the restaurant's founder Louis Lassen is credited by the Library of Congress with inventing the hamburger and steak sandwich. Louis' Lunch broils hamburgers, steak sandwiches and hot dogs vertically in original antique 1898 cast iron stoves using gridirons, patented by local resident Luigi Pieragostini in 1939, that hold the meat in place while it cooks.\nA third New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Miya's, the first sustainable sushi restaurant in the world. Miya's, founded by Chef Yoshiko Lai in 1982, featured the first sustainable seafood-based sushi menu, the first plant-based sushi menu, and the first invasive species menu in the world. Second generation Miya's chef, Bun Lai, is the 2016 White House Champions of Change for Sustainable Seafood and a James Beard Foundation Award nominee. Chef Bun Lai is credited as the first chef in the world for implementing a sustainability paradigm to the cuisine of sushi.\nDuring weekday lunchtime, over 150 lunch carts and food trucks cater to diners around the city. The carts and food trucks cluster at four main points: on Long Wharf Drive, along the city's shoreline with quick access off Interstate 95, by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital in the center of the Hospital Green (Cedar and York streets), by Yale's Trumbull College (Elm and York streets), and on the intersection of Prospect and Sachem streets by the Yale School of Management.\nPopular farmers' markets, managed by the local non-profit CitySeed, set up shop weekly in several neighborhoods, including Westville/Edgewood Park, Fair Haven, Upper State Street, Wooster Square, and Downtown/New Haven Green.\nA large grocery store, the Elm City Market, opened on 360 State Street in New Haven in early fall 2011 and served local produce and groceries to the community. Originally, the market was a member-owned co-op, but debt defaults in August 2014 forced a sale of the business. It is now an employee-owned business; the co-op's previous owners received no equity in the new business.\nIn the past several years, two separate Downtown food tour companies have started offering popular restaurant tours on weekends.\nTaste of New Haven Tours offers several different weekly restaurant/bar tours and a popular pizza, bike, and pints tour. Culinary Walking Tours offers monthly restaurant tours and sponsors an annual Elm City Iron Chef competition.\nTheatre and film.\nThe city hosts numerous theatres and production houses, including the Yale Repertory Theatre, the Long Wharf Theatre, and the Shubert Theatre. There is also theatre activity from the Yale School of Drama, which works through the Yale University Theatre and the student-run Yale Cabaret. Southern Connecticut State University hosts the Lyman Center for the Performing Arts. The shuttered Palace Theatre (opposite the Shubert Theatre) was renovated and reopened as the College Street Music Hall in May 2015. Smaller theatres include the Little Theater on Lincoln Street. Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School also has a theatre on College Street. The theatre is used for student productions, and is the home to weekly services to a local non-denominational church, the City Church New Haven.\nThe Shubert Theatre once premiered many major theatrical productions before their Broadway debuts. Productions that premiered at the Shubert include \"Oklahoma!\" (which was also written in New Haven), \"Carousel\", \"South Pacific\", \"My Fair Lady\", \"The King and I\", and \"The Sound of Music\", and the Tennessee Williams play \"A Streetcar Named Desire\".\nBow Tie Cinemas owns and operates the Criterion Cinemas, the first new movie theater to open in New Haven in over 30 years and the first luxury movie complex in the city's history. The Criterion has seven screens and opened in November 2004, showing a mix of upscale first run commercial and independent film.\nMuseums.\nNew Haven has a variety of museums, many of them associated with Yale. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library features an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible. There is also the Connecticut Children's Museum; the Knights of Columbus museum near that organization's world headquarters; the Peabody Museum of Natural History; the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments; the Eli Whitney Museum (across the town line in Hamden, Connecticut, on Whitney Avenue); the Yale Center for British Art, which houses the largest collection of British art outside the U.K., and the Yale University Art Gallery, the western hemisphere's oldest college art museum. New Haven is also home to the New Haven Museum and Historical Society on Whitney Avenue, which has a library of many primary source treasures dating from Colonial times to the present.\nArtspace on Orange Street is one of several contemporary art galleries around the city, showcasing the work of local, national, and international artists. Others include City Gallery and A. Leaf Gallery in the downtown area. Westville galleries include Kehler Liddell, Jennifer Jane Gallery, and The Hungry Eye. The Erector Square complex in the Fair Haven neighborhood houses, the Parachute Factory gallery along with numerous artist studios, and the complex serves as an active destination during City-Wide Open Studios held yearly in October.\nNew Haven is the home port of a life-size replica of the historical \"Freedom Schooner Amistad\", which is open for tours at Long Wharf pier at certain times during the summer. Also at Long Wharf pier is the \"Quinnipiack\" schooner, offering sailing cruises of the harbor area throughout the summer. The \"Quinnipiack\" also functions as a floating classroom for hundreds of local students.\nMusic.\nThe New Haven Green is the site of many free music concerts, especially during the summer months. These have included the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the July Free Concerts on the Green, and the New Haven Jazz Festival in August. The Jazz Festival, which began in 1982, is one of the longest-running free outdoor festivals in the U.S., until it was canceled for 2007. Headliners such as Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles and Celia Cruz have historically drawn 30,000 to 50,000 fans, filling up the New Haven Green to capacity. The New Haven Jazz Festival was revived in 2008 and has been sponsored since by Jazz Haven.\nNew Haven is home to the concert venue Toad's Place, and a new venue, College Street Music Hall. The city has retained an alternative art and music underground that has helped to influence post-punk era music movements such as indie, college rock and underground hip-hop.\nThe Yale School of Music contributes to the city's music scene by offering hundreds of free concerts throughout the year at venues in and around the Yale campus. Large performances are held in the 2,700-seat Woolsey Hall auditorium, which contains the world's largest symphonic organs, while chamber music and recitals are performed in Sprague Hall.\nHardcore band Hatebreed are from Wallingford, but got their start in New Haven under the name Jasta 14. The band Miracle Legion formed in New Haven in 1983. Folk musicians from New Haven include Loren Mazzacane Connors and Kath Bloom.\nThe Hillhouse Opera Company is a U.S. non-profit opera company based in New Haven that performs in the New Haven area. Founded in 2008 by Victoria Leigh Gardner, Nicole Rodriguez and Jim Coatsworth Hillhouse Opera Company has performed operas as well as opera scenes programs, master classes and concert series. In 2011, the Company professionally staged the works created through the Riverview Opera Project. The Riverview Opera Project created workshops for children and adolescents at Riverview Hospital, Connecticut's only state-funded psychiatric hospital for youth, and helped them to successfully create, produce, and perform four original operas.\nFestivals.\nIn addition to the Jazz Festival (described above), New Haven serves as the home city of the annual International Festival of Arts and Ideas. New Haven's Saint Patrick's Day parade, which began in 1842, is New England's oldest and draws the largest crowds of any one-day spectator event in Connecticut. The St. Andrew the Apostle Italian Festival has taken place in the historic Wooster Square neighborhood every year since 1900. Other parishes in the city celebrate the Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua and a carnival in honor of St. Bernadette Soubirous. New Haven celebrates Powder House Day every April on the New Haven Green to commemorate the city's entrance into the Revolutionary War. The annual Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival commemorates the 1973 planting of 72 Yoshino Japanese cherry blossom trees by the New Haven Historic Commission in collaboration with the New Haven Parks Department and residents of the neighborhood. The Festival now draws well over 5,000 visitors. The Film Fest New Haven has been held annually since 1995.\nNightlife.\nIn the past decade downtown has seen an influx of new restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Large crowds are drawn to the Crown Street area downtown on weekends where many of the restaurants and bars are located. Crown Street between State and High Streets has dozens of establishments, as do nearby Temple and College Streets. Away from downtown, Upper State Street has a number of restaurants and bars popular with local residents and weekend visitors.\nNewspapers and media.\nNew Haven is served by the daily \"New Haven Register\", the weekly \"alternative\" \"New Haven Advocate\" (which is run by Tribune, the corporation owning the \"Hartford Courant\"), the online daily \"New Haven Independent\", and the monthly \"Grand News Community Newspaper.\" Downtown New Haven is covered by an in-depth civic news forum, Design New Haven. The \"Register\" also backs \"PLAY\" magazine, a weekly entertainment publication. The city is also served by several student-run papers, including the \"Yale Daily News\", the weekly \"Yale Herald\" and a humor tabloid, \"Rumpus Magazine\".\nWTNH Channel 8, the ABC affiliate for Connecticut, WCTX Channel 59, the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the state, Connecticut Public Television station WEDY channel 65, a PBS affiliate, and WTXX Channel 34, the IntrigueTV affiliate, broadcast from New Haven. All New York City news and sports team stations broadcast to New Haven County.\nSports and athletics.\nNew Haven has a history of professional sports franchises dating back to the 19th century and has been the home to professional baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer teams\u2014including the New York Giants of the National Football League from 1973 to 1974, who played at the Yale Bowl. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, New Haven consistently had minor league hockey and baseball teams, which played at the New Haven Arena (built in 1926, demolished in 1972), New Haven Coliseum (1972\u20132002), and Yale Field (1928\u2013present).\nWhen John DeStefano, Jr., became mayor of New Haven in 1995, he outlined a plan to transform the city into a major cultural and arts center in the Northeast, which involved investments in programs and projects other than sports franchises. As nearby Bridgeport built new sports facilities, the brutalist New Haven Coliseum rapidly deteriorated. Believing the upkeep on the venue to be a drain of tax dollars, the DeStefano administration closed the Coliseum in 2002; it was demolished in 2007. New Haven's last professional sports team, the New Haven County Cutters, left in 2009. The DeStefano administration did, however, see the construction of the New Haven Athletic Center in 1998, a indoor athletic facility with a seating capacity of over 3,000. The NHAC, built adjacent to Hillhouse High School, is used for New Haven public schools athletics, as well as large-scale area and state sporting events; it is the largest high school indoor sports complex in the state.\nNew Haven was the host of the 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games; then-President Bill Clinton spoke at the opening ceremonies. The city is home to the Pilot Pen International tennis event, which takes place every August at the Connecticut Tennis Center, one of the largest tennis venues in the world. New Haven biannually hosts \"The Game\" between Yale and Harvard, the country's second-oldest college football rivalry. Numerous road races take place in New Haven, including the USATF 20K Championship during the New Haven Road Race.\nGreater New Haven is home to a number of college sports teams. The Yale Bulldogs play Division I college sports, as do the Quinnipiac Bobcats in neighboring Hamden. Division II athletics are played by Southern Connecticut State University and the University of New Haven (actually located in neighboring West Haven), while Albertus Magnus College athletes perform at the Division III level.\nNew Haven is home to many New York Yankees, New York Mets, & Boston Red Sox fans due to the proximity of New York City & Boston.\nWalter Camp, deemed the \"father of American football\", was a New Havener.\nThe New Haven Warriors rugby league team play in the AMNRL. They have a large number of Pacific Islanders playing for them. Their field is located at the West Haven High School's Ken Strong Stadium. They won the 2008 AMNRL Grand Final.\nStructures.\nArchitecture.\nNew Haven has many architectural landmarks dating from every important time period and architectural style in American history. The city has been home to a number of architects and architectural firms that have left their mark on the city including Ithiel Town and Henry Austin in the 19th century and Cesar Pelli, Warren Platner, Kevin Roche, Herbert Newman and Barry Svigals in the 20th. The Yale School of Architecture has fostered this important component of the city's economy. Cass Gilbert, of the Beaux-Arts school, designed New Haven's Union Station and the New Haven Free Public Library and was also commissioned for a City Beautiful plan in 1919. Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, Alexander Jackson Davis, Philip C. Johnson, Gordon Bunshaft, Louis Kahn, James Gamble Rogers, Frank Gehry, Charles Willard Moore, Stefan Behnisch, James Polshek, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen and Robert Venturi all have designed buildings in New Haven. Yale's 1950s-era Ingalls Rink, designed by Eero Saarinen, was included on the \"America's Favorite Architecture\" list created in 2007.\nSeveral residential homes in New Haven were designed by Alice Washburn, a noted female architect whose Colonial Revival style set a standard for homes in the region.\nMany of the city's neighborhoods are well-preserved as walkable \"museums\" of 19th- and 20th-century American architecture, particularly by the New Haven Green, Hillhouse Avenue and other residential sections close to Downtown New Haven. Overall, a large proportion of the city's land area is National (NRHP) historic districts. One of the best sources on local architecture is \"New Haven: Architecture and Urban Design\", by Elizabeth Mills Brown.\nThe five tallest buildings in New Haven are:\nHistoric points of interest.\nMany historical sites exist throughout the city, including 59 properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Of these, nine are among the 60 U.S. National Historic Landmarks in Connecticut. The New Haven Green, one of the National Historic Landmarks, was formed in 1638, and is home to three 19th-century churches. Below the First Church of Christ in New Haven (referred to as the Center Church on the Green) lies a 17th-century crypt, which is open to visitors. Some of the more famous burials include the first wife of Benedict Arnold and the aunt and grandmother of President Rutherford B. Hayes; Hayes visited the crypt while President in 1880. The Old Campus of Yale University is located next to the Green, and includes Connecticut Hall, Yale's oldest building and a National Historic Landmark. The Hillhouse Avenue area, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a part of Yale's campus, has been called a walkable museum, due to its 19th-century mansions and street scape; Charles Dickens is said to have called Hillhouse Avenue \"the most beautiful street in America\" when visiting the city in 1868.\nIn 1660, Edward Whalley (a cousin and friend of Oliver Cromwell) and William Goffe, two English Civil War generals who signed the death warrant of King Charles I, hid in a rock formation in New Haven after having fled England upon the restoration of Charles II to the English throne. They were later joined by a third regicide, John Dixwell. The rock formation, which is now a part of West Rock Park, is known as Judges' Cave, and the path leading to the cave is called the Regicides Trail.\nAfter the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, the Connecticut colonial government ordered the construction of Black Rock Fort (to be built on top of an older 17th-century fort) to protect the port of New Haven. In 1779, during the Battle of New Haven, British soldiers captured Black Rock Fort and burned the barracks to the ground. The fort was reconstructed in 1807 by the federal government (on orders from the Thomas Jefferson administration), and rechristened Fort Nathan Hale, after the Revolutionary War hero who had lived in New Haven. The cannons of Fort Nathan Hale were successful in defying British war ships during the War of 1812. In 1863, during the Civil War, a second Fort Hale was built next to the original, complete with bomb-resistant bunkers and a moat, to defend the city should a Southern raid against New Haven be launched. The United States Congress deeded the site to the state in 1921, and all three versions of the fort have been restored. The site is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and receives thousands of visitors each year.\nGrove Street Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark which lies adjacent to Yale's campus, contains the graves of Roger Sherman, Eli Whitney, Noah Webster, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Charles Goodyear and Walter Camp, among other notable burials. The cemetery is noted for its Egyptian Revival gateway, and is the oldest planned burial ground in the United States. The Union League Club of New Haven building, located on Chapel Street, is notable for not only being a historic Beaux-Arts building, but also is built on the site where Roger Sherman's home once stood; George Washington is known to have stayed at the Sherman residence while President in 1789 (one of three times Washington visited New Haven throughout his lifetime).\nTwo sites pay homage to the time President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft lived in the city, as both a student and later Professor at Yale: a plaque on Prospect Street marks the site where Taft's home formerly stood, and downtown's Taft Apartment Building (formerly the Taft Hotel) bears the name of the former president who resided in the building for eight years before becoming Chief Justice of the United States.\nLighthouse Point Park, a public beach run by the city, was a popular tourist destination during the Roaring Twenties, attracting luminaries of the period such as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. The park remains popular among New Haveners, and is home to the Five Mile Point Lighthouse, constructed in 1847, and the Lighthouse Point Carousel, constructed in 1916. Five Mile Point Light was decommissioned in 1877 following the construction of Southwest Ledge Light at the entrance of the harbor, which remains in service to this day. Both of the lighthouses and the carousel are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nOther historic sites in the city include the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, which stands at the summit of East Rock, the Marsh Botanical Garden, Wooster Square, Dwight Street, Louis' Lunch, and the Farmington Canal, all of which date back to the 19th century. Other historic parks besides the Green include Edgerton Park, Edgewood Park, and East Rock Park, each of which is included on the National Register of Historic Places.\nTransportation.\nRail.\nNew Haven has two railroad stations, connected to New York City and points along the Northeast Corridor by commuter rail, regional rail and inter-city rail. Service is provided by:\nThe city's main railroad station is the historic Beaux-Arts Union Station, which serves Metro-North, Hartford Line, and Shore Line East commuter trains. Approximately 175 trains serve Union Station on weekdays. Union Station is also served by four Amtrak lines: the \"Northeast Regional\" and the high-speed \"Acela Express\" provide service to New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston, and rank as the first and second busiest routes in the country; the New Haven\u2013Springfield Line provides service to Hartford and Springfield, Massachusetts; and the \"Vermonter\" provides service to both Washington, D.C., and Vermont, from the Canada\u2013US border.\nAn additional station, State Street Station, was opened in 2002, providing passengers easier access to downtown New Haven. State Street Station is currently serviced by Shore Line East and Hartford Line trains, plus some peak-hour Metro-North trips.\nBus.\nThe New Haven Division of Connecticut Transit (CT Transit), the state's bus system, is the second largest division in the state with 24 routes. All routes originate from the New Haven Green, making it the central transfer hub of the city. Service is provided to 19 different municipalities throughout Greater New Haven. Bus routes were formerly identified by letters, but as of October 8, 2017, all service was renamed using 200-series numbers, in accordance with a renumbering of CTtransit's statewide services.\nCT Transit's Union Station Shuttle provides free service from Union Station to the New Haven Green and several New Haven parking garages. Peter Pan and Greyhound bus lines have scheduled stops at Union Station, and connections downtown can be made via the Union Station Shuttle. A private company operates the New Haven/Hartford Express which provides commuter bus service to Hartford. The Yale University Shuttle provides free transportation around New Haven for Yale students, faculty, and staff.\nThe New Haven Division buses follow routes that had originally been covered by trolley service. Horse-drawn streetcars began operating in New Haven in the 1860s, and by the mid-1890s all the lines had become electric. In the 1920s and 1930s, some of the trolley lines began to be replaced by bus lines, with the last trolley route converted to bus in 1948. The City of New Haven is in the very early stages of considering the restoration of streetcar (light-rail) service, which has been absent since the postwar period.\nBicycle.\nBikeshare.\nOn February 21, 2018, New Haven officially launched its Bike New Haven bikeshare program. based on dockless technology powered by Noa Technologies At time of launch, the program features 10 docking stations and 100 bikes, spread throughout the urban core; there are plans to reach 30 bike stations and 300 bikes by the end of April 2018. The launch of the New Haven bikeshare program coincided with the launch of Yale University's own bikeshare program, which uses the same technology powered by Noa.\nBike lanes.\nIn 2004, the first bike lane in the city was added to Orange Street, connecting East Rock Park and the East Rock neighborhood to downtown. Since then, bike lanes have also been added to sections of Howard Ave, Elm St, Dixwell Avenue, Water Street, Clinton Avenue and State Street. The city has created recommended bike routes for getting around New Haven, including use of the Canal Trail and the Orange Street lane. As of the end of 2012, bicycle lanes have also been added in both directions on Dixwell Avenue along most of the street from downtown to the Hamden town line, as well as along Howard Avenue from Yale New Haven Hospital to City Point.\nThe city has plans to create two additional bike lanes connecting Union Station with downtown, and the Westville neighborhood with downtown. The city has added dozens of covered bike parking spots at Union Station, in order to facilitate more bike commuting to the station.\nFarmington Canal Greenway.\nThe Farmington Canal Trail is a rail trail that will eventually run continuously from downtown New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts. The scenic trail follows the path of the historic New Haven and Northampton Company and the Farmington Canal. Currently, there is a continuous stretch of the trail from downtown, through Hamden and into Cheshire, making bicycle commuting between New Haven and those suburbs possible. The trail is part of the East Coast Greenway, a proposed bike path that would link every major city on the East Coast from Florida to Maine.\nRoads.\nNew Haven lies at the intersection of Interstate 95 on the coast\u2014which provides access southwards and/or westwards to the western coast of Connecticut and to New York City, and eastwards to the eastern Connecticut shoreline, Rhode Island, and eastern Massachusetts\u2014and Interstate 91, which leads northward to the interior of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont and the Canada\u2013US border. I-95 is notorious for traffic jams increasing with proximity to New York City; on the east side of New Haven it passes over the Quinnipiac River via the Pearl Harbor Memorial, or \"Q Bridge\", which often presents a major bottleneck to traffic. I-91, however, is relatively less congested, except at the intersection with I-95 during peak travel times.\nThe Oak Street Connector (Connecticut Route 34) intersects I-91 at exit 1, just south of the I-95/I-91 interchange, and runs northwest for a few blocks as an expressway spur into downtown before emptying onto surface roads. The Wilbur Cross Parkway (Connecticut Route 15) runs parallel to I-95 west of New Haven, turning northwards as it nears the city and then running northwards parallel to I-91 through the outer rim of New Haven and Hamden, offering an alternative to the I-95/I-91 journey (restricted to non-commercial vehicles). Route 15 in New Haven is the site of the only highway tunnel in the state (officially designated as Heroes Tunnel), running through West Rock, home to West Rock Park and the Three Judges Cave.\nThe city also has several major surface arteries. U.S. Route 1 (Columbus Avenue, Union Avenue, Water Street, Forbes Avenue) runs in an east\u2013west direction south of downtown serving Union Station and leading out of the city to Milford, West Haven, East Haven and Branford. The main road from downtown heading northwest is Whalley Avenue (partly signed as Route 10 and Route 63) leading to Westville and Woodbridge. Heading north towards Hamden, there are two major thoroughfares, Dixwell Avenue and Whitney Avenue. To the northeast are Middletown Avenue (Route 17), which leads to the Montowese section of North Haven, and Foxon Boulevard (Route 80), which leads to the Foxon section of East Haven and to the town of North Branford. To the west is Route 34, which leads to the city of Derby. Other major intracity arteries are Ella Grasso Boulevard (Route 10) west of downtown, and College Street, Temple Street, Church Street, Elm Street, and Grove Street in the downtown area.\nTraffic safety is a major concern for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists in New Haven. In addition to many traffic-related fatalities in the city each year, since 2005, over a dozen Yale students, staff and faculty have been killed or injured in traffic collisions on or near the campus.\nAirport.\nTweed New Haven Airport is located within the city limits east of the business district, straddling the border with neighboring East Haven. Service to approximately 25 cities is provided by Avelo Airlines, which established its first East Coast base at the airport in 2021. Breeze Airways plans to begin operations at Tweed in December 2024, and will provide service to 10 destinations. The airport is currently planning a runway lengthening and new terminal on the East Haven side of the airport.\nBus service between Downtown New Haven and Tweed is available via the CT Transit New Haven Division.\nSeaport.\nNew Haven Harbor is home to the Port of New Haven, a deep-water seaport with three berths capable of hosting vessels and barges as well as the facilities required to handle break bulk cargo. The port has the capacity to load 200 trucks a day from the ground or via loading docks. Providence and Worcester Railroad provides freight rail transportation to the port, with the railroad operating a switch engine for yard movements, a private siding for loading and unloading, and trackage over the Tomlinson Lift Bridge toward the Northeast Corridor. Approximately of inside storage and of outside storage are available at the site. Five shore cranes with a 250-ton capacity and 26 forklifts, each with a 26-ton capacity, are also available.\nOn June 17, 2013, the city commissioned the \"Nathan Hale\", a port security vessel capable of serving search and rescue, firefighting, and constabulary roles.\nInfrastructure.\nHospitals and medicine.\nThe New Haven area supports several medical facilities that are considered some of the best hospitals in the country. There are two major medical centers downtown: Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital has four pavilions, including the Yale \u2013 New Haven Children's Hospital and the Smilow Cancer Hospital; the Hospital of Saint Raphael is several blocks north, and touts its excellent cardiac emergency care program. Smaller downtown health facilities are the Temple Medical Center located downtown on Temple Street, Connecticut Mental Health Center/ across Park Street from Y-NHH, and the Hill Health Center, which serves the working-class Hill neighborhood. A large Veterans Affairs hospital is located in neighboring West Haven. To the west in Milford is Milford Hospital, and to the north in Meriden is the MidState Medical Center.\nIn recent years, Yale and the City of New Haven have been working to build a medical and biotechnology research hub in the city and Greater New Haven region. The city, state and Yale together run Science Park, a large site three blocks northwest of Yale's Science Hill campus. This multi-block site, approximately bordered by Mansfield Street, Division Street, and Shelton Avenue, is the former home of Winchester's and Olin Corporation's 45 large-scale factory buildings. Currently, sections of the site are large-scale parking lots or abandoned structures, but there is also a large remodeled and functioning area of buildings (leased primarily by a private developer) with numerous Yale employees, financial service and biotech companies.\nA second biotechnology district is being planned for the median strip on Frontage Road, on land cleared for the never-built Route 34 extension. As of late 2009, a Pfizer drug-testing clinic, a medical laboratory building serving Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital, and a mixed-use structure containing parking, housing and office space, have been constructed on this corridor. A former SNET telephone building at 300 George Street is being converted into lab space, and has been quite successful so far in attracting biotechnology and medical firms.\nPower supply facilities.\nElectricity for New Haven is generated by a 448\u00a0MW oil and gas-fired generating station located on the shore at New Haven Harbor. PPL Corporation operates a 220\u00a0MW peaking natural gas turbine plant in nearby Wallingford.\nNear New Haven there is the static inverter plant of the HVDC Cross Sound Cable.\nThere are three PureCell Model 400 fuel cells placed in the city of New Haven\u2014one at the New Haven Public Schools and newly constructed Roberto Clemente School, one at the mixed-use 360 State Street building, and one at City Hall. According to Giovanni Zinn of the city's Office of Sustainability, each fuel cell may save the city up to $1 million in energy costs over a decade. The fuel cells were provided by ClearEdge Power, formerly UTC Power. Additional fuel cells are located at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and at the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority (GNHWPCA). Ikea's New Haven facility also utilizes a 250\u00a0kW fuel cell and 940.8\u00a0kW solar array.\nNew Haven recently installed solar panels at 11 city schools with a combined power generation capacity of 1.8 MW. Owned and maintained by Greenskies, the panels allow New Haven to purchase electricity at a discounted rate through a power-purchasing agreement. The panels bring New Haven's solar capacity to 2.8 MW and will help New Haven meet its commitment to powering 100% of its municipal operations through clean energy, which it made in Summer 2017 and reaffirmed in the 2018 New Haven Climate and Sustainability Framework.\nIn popular culture.\nSeveral movies have been filmed in New Haven since 2000, including \"Mona Lisa Smile\" (2003), with Julia Roberts, \"The Life Before Her Eyes\" (2007), with Uma Thurman, and \"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull\" (2008) directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett and Shia LaBeouf. The filming of \"Crystal Skull\" involved an extensive chase sequence through the streets of New Haven. Several downtown streets were closed to traffic and received a \"makeover\" to look like streets of 1957, when the film is set. 500 locals were cast as extras for the film. In \"Everybody's Fine\" (2009), Robert De Niro has a close encounter in what is supposed to be the Denver train station; the scene was filmed in New Haven's Union Station.\n New Haven is mentioned in the song Peace Frog by the Doors, referencing a 1967 incident where vocalist Jim Morrison was arrested for \"attempting to incite a riot\" in the middle of a concert at the New Haven Arena.\nSister cities.\nNew Haven's sister cities are:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSome of these were selected because of historical connection\u2014Freetown because of the \"Amistad\" trial. Others, such as Amalfi and Afula, reflect ethnic groups in New Haven.\nIn 1990, the United Nations named New Haven a \"Peace Messenger City\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "30784578": "Steven Segaloff\nAmerican rower\nSteven C. Segaloff (born July 21, 1970 in New Haven, Connecticut) is an American rowing cox. He finished 5th in the men's eight at the 1996 Summer Olympics.\nLife and career.\nSegaloff attended Cornell University, where he was active on the university's rowing team. He later attended the University of Chicago Law School where he graduated in 2000 with a J.D. He was an associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore from 2000 to 2004, and later became Vice President and General Counsel of National Financial Partners. From 2006 to 2013, Segaloff was Deputy General Counsel at Plainfield Asset Management and from 2013 to 2017 General Counsel at Genesys Global. In November 2017, Segaloff founded his own company Bellnote Partners LLC together with co-founder Carl Sheldon.\nSteven Segaloff was the cox in the United States men's eight, which became world champion in 1994 and won bronze medals in 1993 and 1995. Segaloff won gold at the Pan-American Games in 1995 with the men's eight and with the men's four. He participated in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, where his boat finished fifth."}, "descending_order": ["30784578", "5122699", "53825"], "permutation_1": ["5122699", "30784578", "53825"], "permutation_2": ["30784578", "5122699", "53825"], "permutation_3": ["30784578", "5122699", "53825"]}
{"id": "3hop2__30654_153061_89329", "docs_added": {"50585": "Philadelphia\nLargest city in Pennsylvania, United States\nPhiladelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the sixth-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 1,603,797 in the 2020 census. The city is the urban core of the larger Delaware Valley, also known as the Philadelphia metropolitan area, the nation's eighth-largest metropolitan area and seventh-largest combined statistical area with 6.245 million residents and 7.366 million residents, respectively.\nPhiladelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn, an English Quaker and advocate of religious freedom, and served as the capital of the colonial era Province of Pennsylvania. It then played a historic and vital role during the American Revolution and Revolutionary War. It served as the central meeting place for the nation's Founding Fathers, hosted the First Continental Congress (1774) and the Second Continental Congress, during which the Founders formed the Continental Army, elected George Washington as its commander, and adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. During the Revolutionary War's Philadelphia campaign, the city briefly fell to the British Army, which occupied Philadelphia for nine months from September 1777 to June 1778. \nIn 1787, following the end of the Revolutionary War and establishment of independence, the U.S. Constitution was ratified in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Convention. Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until 1790, and it served as the nation's first capital from May 10, 1775, until December 12, 1776, and on four subsequent occasions until 1800, when construction of the new national capital in Washington, D.C. was completed.\nPhiladelphia maintains extensive contemporary influence in business and industry, culture, sports, and music. With 17 four-year universities and colleges in the city, Philadelphia is one of the nation's leading centers for higher education and academic research. The city is a national cultural center, hosting more outdoor sculptures and murals than any other city in the nation. Fairmount Park, when combined with adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park in the same watershed, is , representing one of the nation's largest and the world's 55th-largest urban park. Philadelphia is known for its arts, culture, cuisine, and colonial and Revolutionary-era history; in 2016, it attracted 42\u00a0million domestic tourists who spent $6.8\u00a0billion, representing $11\u00a0billion in economic impact to the city and its surrounding Pennsylvania counties. With five professional sports teams and one of the nation's most loyal and passionate fan bases, Philadelphia is often ranked as the nation's best city for professional sports fans. The city has a culturally and philanthropically active LGBTQ+ community. Philadelphia also has played an immensely influential historic and ongoing role in the development and evolution of American music, especially R&B, soul, and rock.\nAs of 2023[ [update]], the Philadelphia metropolitan area had a gross metropolitan product of US$557.6 billion and is home to 13 \"Fortune\" 500 corporate headquarters. Metropolitan Philadelphia ranks as one of the nation's Big Five venture capital hubs, facilitated by its geographic proximity to both the entrepreneurial and financial ecosystems of New York City and the federal regulatory environment of Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Philadelphia is also a biotechnology hub. The Philadelphia Stock Exchange, owned by Nasdaq since 2008, is the nation's oldest stock exchange and a global leader in options trading. 30th Street Station, the city's primary rail station, is the third-busiest Amtrak hub in the nation with over 4.1 million passengers in 2023. The city's multimodal transportation and logistics infrastructure includes Philadelphia International Airport, a major transatlantic gateway and transcontinental hub; the rapidly-growing PhilaPort seaport; and Interstate 95, the spine of the north\u2013south highway system along the U.S. East Coast.\nPhiladelphia is a city of many firsts, including the nation's first library (1731), hospital (1751), medical school (1765), national capital (1774), university (by some accounts) (1779), central bank (1781), stock exchange (1790), zoo (1874), and business school (1881). Philadelphia contains 67 National Historic Landmarks, including Independence Hall. From the city's 17th century founding through the present, Philadelphia has been the birthplace or home to an extensive number of prominent and influential Americans.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nNative peoples.\nPrior to the arrival of Europeans in the early 17th century, the Lenape, an Indian tribe also known as the Delaware Indians, lived in the village of Shackamaxon in present-day Philadelphia and the surrounding area. The Lenape historically lived along the Delaware River watershed, western Long Island, and the Lower Hudson Valley. Most Lenape were pushed out of the region during the 18th century as the original Thirteen colonies expanded, which was further exacerbated by losses from intertribal conflicts. Lenape communities were also weakened by newly introduced diseases, mainly smallpox, and conflicts with Europeans. The Iroquois occasionally fought the Lenape. Surviving Lenape moved west into the upper Ohio River basin. Following the American Revolutionary War and the subsequent establishment of the United States, the Lenape began moving further west. In the 1860s, the U.S. federal government sent most remaining Lenape in the eastern United States to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma and surrounding territories as part of the Indian removal policy.\nColonial era.\nEuropeans first entered Philadelphia and the surrounding Delaware Valley in the early 17th century. The first settlements were founded by Dutch colonists, who built Fort Nassau on the Delaware River in 1623 in what is now Brooklawn, New Jersey. The Dutch considered the entire Delaware River valley to be part of their New Netherland colony. In 1638, Swedish settlers led by renegade Dutch established the colony of New Sweden at Fort Christina, located in present-day Wilmington, Delaware, and quickly spread out in the valley. In 1644, New Sweden supported the Susquehannocks in their war against Maryland colonists. In 1648, the Dutch built Fort Beversreede on the west bank of the Delaware, south of the Schuylkill River near the present-day Eastwick section of Philadelphia, to reassert their dominion over the area. The Swedes responded by building Fort Nya Korsholm, or New Korsholm, named after a town in Finland with a Swedish majority.\nIn 1655, a Dutch military campaign led by New Netherland Director-General Peter Stuyvesant took control of the Swedish colony, ending its claim to independence. The Swedish and Finnish settlers continued to have their own militia, religion, and court, and to enjoy substantial autonomy under the Dutch. An English fleet captured the New Netherland colony in 1664, though the situation did not change substantially until 1682, when the area was included in William Penn's charter for Pennsylvania.\nIn 1681, in partial repayment of a debt, Charles II of England granted Penn a charter for what would become the Pennsylvania colony. Despite the royal charter, Penn bought the land from the local Lenape in an effort to establish good terms with the Native Americans and ensure peace for the colony. Penn made a treaty of friendship with Lenape chief Tammany under an elm tree at Shackamaxon, in what is now the city's Fishtown neighborhood. Penn named the city Philadelphia, which is Greek for \"brotherly love\", derived from the Ancient Greek terms \u03c6\u03af\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2 \"ph\u00edlos\" (beloved, dear) and \u1f00\u03b4\u03b5\u03bb\u03c6\u03cc\u03c2 \"adelph\u00f3s\" (brother, brotherly). There were a number of cities named \"Philadelphia\" in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Greek and Roman periods, including modern Ala\u015fehir, mentioned as the site of an early Christian congregation in the Book of Revelation. As a Quaker, Penn had experienced religious persecution and wanted his colony to be a place where anyone could worship freely. This tolerance, which exceeded that of other colonies, led to better relations with the local native tribes and fostered Philadelphia's rapid growth into America's most important city.\nPenn planned a city on the Delaware River to serve as a port and place for government. Hoping that Philadelphia would become more like an English rural town instead of a city, Penn laid out roads on a grid plan to keep houses and businesses spread far apart with areas for gardens and orchards.\nThe city's inhabitants did not follow Penn's plans, however, and instead crowded the present-day Port of Philadelphia on the Delaware River and subdivided and resold their lots. Before Penn left Philadelphia for the final time, he issued the Charter of 1701 establishing it as a city. Though poor at first, Philadelphia became an important trading center with tolerable living conditions by the 1750s. Benjamin Franklin, a leading citizen, helped improve city services and founded new ones that were among the first in the nation, including a fire company, library, and hospital.\nA number of philosophical societies were formed, which were centers of the city's intellectual life, including the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture (1785), the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts (1787), the Academy of Natural Sciences (1812), and the Franklin Institute (1824). These societies developed and financed new industries that attracted skilled and knowledgeable immigrants from Europe.\nAmerican Revolution.\nPhiladelphia's importance and central location in the colonies made it a natural center for America's revolutionaries. By the 1750s, Philadelphia surpassed Boston as the largest city and busiest port in British America, and the second-largest city in the entire British Empire after London. In 1774, as resentment of the British government's policies towards the colonies and support for independence began burgeoning in the colonies, Philadelphia hosted the First Continental Congress at Carpenters' Hall, and 12 of the original 13 colonies sent delegates to the Congress.\nFrom 1775 to 1781, Philadelphia hosted the Second Continental Congress, whose 56 delegated unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence inside what was then called Pennsylvania State House and was later renamed Independence Hall. Written predominantly by Thomas Jefferson from his second-floor apartment on Market Street within walking distance of Independence Hall, the Declaration has been described by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis as \"the most potent and consequential words in American history,\" and its adoption represented a declaration of war against Great Britain. Since the Declaration's July 4, 1776, adoption, its signing has been cited globally and repeatedly by various peoples of the world seeking independence and liberty. It also has been, since its adoption, the basis for annual celebration by Americans; in 1938, this celebration of the Declaration was formalized as Independence Day, one of only eleven designated U.S. federal holidays.\nAfter George Washington's defeat at the Battle of Brandywine in Chadds Ford Township, on September 11, 1777, during the Philadelphia campaign, the revolutionary capital of Philadelphia was defenseless, and the city prepared for what was perceived to be an inevitable British attack. Because bells could easily be recast into munitions, the Liberty Bell, then known as the Pennsylvania State Bell, and bells from two Philadelphia churches, Christ Church and St. Peter's Church, were hastily taken down and transported by heavily guarded wagon train out of the city. The Liberty Bell was taken to Zion German Reformed Church in Northampton Town, which is present-day Allentown, where it was hidden under the church's floor boards for nine months from September 1777 until departure of British forces from Philadelphia in June 1778. Two Revolutionary War battles, the Siege of Fort Mifflin, fought between September 26 and November 16, 1777, and the Battle of Germantown, fought on October 4, 1777, took place within Philadelphia's city limits.\nIn Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation on November 15, 1777. Independence Hall in Philadelphia was the meeting place for the Constitutional Convention, which ratified the Constitution on September 17, 1787, which is now the longest-standing codified national constitution.\nPhiladelphia served as capital of the United States for most of the colonial and early post-colonial period. including for a decade, from 1790 to 1800, while Washington, D.C., was being constructed and prepared to serve as the new national capital, and on five prior occasions between 1776 and 1790. In 1793, the largest yellow fever epidemic in U.S. history killed approximately 4,000 to 5,000 people in Philadelphia, or about ten percent of the city's population at the time. The capital of the United States was moved to Washington, D.C. in 1800 upon completion of the White House and U.S. Capitol buildings.\nThe state capital was moved from Philadelphia to Lancaster in 1799, then ultimately to Harrisburg in 1812. Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until the late 18th century. It also was the nation's financial and cultural center until ultimately being eclipsed in total population by New York City in 1790. In 1816, the city's free Black community founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent Black denomination in the country, and the first Black Episcopal Church. The free Black community also established many schools for its children with the help of Quakers. Large-scale construction projects for new roads, canals, and railroads made Philadelphia the first major industrial city in the United States.\n19th century.\nThroughout the 19th century, Philadelphia hosted a variety of industries and businesses; the largest was the textile industry. Major corporations in the 19th and early 20th centuries included the Baldwin Locomotive Works, William Cramp & Sons Shipbuilding Company, and the Pennsylvania Railroad. Established in 1870, the Philadelphia Conveyancers' Association was chartered by the state in 1871. Along with the U.S. Centennial in 1876, the city's industry was celebrated in the Centennial Exposition, the first official World's fair in the U.S.\nImmigrants, mostly from Ireland and Germany, settled in Philadelphia and the surrounding districts. These immigrants were largely responsible for the first general strike in North America in 1835, in which workers in the city won the ten-hour workday. The city was a destination for thousands of Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine in the 1840s; housing for them was developed south of South Street and later occupied by succeeding immigrants. They established a network of Catholic churches and schools and dominated the Catholic clergy for decades. Anti-Irish, anti-Catholic nativist riots erupted in Philadelphia in 1844. The rise in population of the surrounding districts helped lead to the Act of Consolidation of 1854, which extended the city limits from the of Center City to the roughly of Philadelphia County.\nIn the latter half of the 19th century and leading into the 20th century, immigrants from Russia, Eastern Europe, and Italy, and African Americans from the southern U.S. settled in the city.\nPhiladelphia was represented by the Washington Grays in the American Civil War. The African-American population of Philadelphia increased from 31,699 to 219,559 between 1880 and 1930, largely stemming from the Great Migration from the South.\n20th century.\nBy the 20th century, Philadelphia had an entrenched Republican political machine and a complacent population. In 1910, a general strike shut down the entire city.\nIn 1917, following outrage over the election-year murder of a Philadelphia police officer, the City Council shrank from two houses to just one. In July 1919, Philadelphia was one of more than 36 industrial cities nationally to suffer a race riot during Red Summer in post-World War I unrest as recent immigrants competed with Blacks for jobs. In the 1920s, the public flouting of Prohibition laws, organized crime, mob violence, and corrupt police involvement in illegal activities led to the appointment of Brig. Gen. Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marine Corps as the city's director of public safety, but political pressure still prevented long-term success in fighting crime and corruption.\nIn 1940, non-Hispanic whites constituted 86.8% of the city's population. In 1950, the population peaked at more than two million residents, then began to decline with the restructuring of industry that led to the loss of many middle-class union jobs. In addition, suburbanization enticed many affluent residents to depart the city for its outlying railroad commuting towns and newer housing. The resulting reduction in Philadelphia's tax base and the resources of local government caused the city to struggle through a long period of adjustment, and it approached bankruptcy by the late 1980s.\nIn 1985, the MOVE Bombing of the Cobbs Creek neighborhood by city helicopters occurred, killing 11 and destroying 61 homes.\nRevitalization and gentrification of neighborhoods began in the late 1970s and continues into the 21st century with much of the development occurring in the Center City and University City neighborhoods. But this expanded a shortage of affordable housing in the city. After many manufacturers and businesses left Philadelphia or shut down, the city started attracting service businesses and began to market itself more aggressively as a tourist destination. Contemporary glass-and-granite skyscrapers were built in Center City beginning in the 1980s. Historic areas such as Old City and Society Hill were renovated during the reformist mayoral era of the 1950s through the 1980s, making both areas among the most desirable Center City neighborhoods. Immigrants from around the world began to enter the U.S. through Philadelphia as their gateway, leading to a reversal of the city's population decline between 1950 and 2000, during which it lost about 25 percent of its residents.\n21st century.\nPhiladelphia eventually began experiencing a growth in its population in 2007, which continued with incremental annual increases through the present. A migration pattern has been established from New York City to Philadelphia by residents opting for a large city with relative proximity and a lower cost of living.\nGeography.\nTopography.\nPhiladelphia's geographic center is about 40\u00b0 0\u2032 34\u2033 north latitude and 75\u00b0 8\u2032 0\u2033 west longitude. The 40th parallel north passes through neighborhoods in Northeast Philadelphia, North Philadelphia, and West Philadelphia including Fairmount Park. The city encompasses , of which is land and , or 6%, is water. Natural bodies of water include the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, lakes in Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park, and Cobbs, Wissahickon, and Pennypack creeks. The largest artificial body of water is East Park Reservoir in Fairmount Park.\nThe lowest point is sea level and the highest point is in Chestnut Hill, about above sea level on Summit Street near the intersection of Germantown Avenue and Bethlehem Pike at: 40.07815 N, 75.20747 W. Philadelphia is located on the Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line that separates the Atlantic Plain from the Piedmont. The Schuylkill River's rapids at East Falls were inundated by completion of the dam at Fairmount Water Works.\nThe city is the seat of its own county. The city is bordered by six adjacent counties: Montgomery to the northwest; Bucks to the north and northeast; Burlington County, New Jersey to the east; Camden County, New Jersey to the southeast; Gloucester County, New Jersey to the south; and Delaware County to the southwest.\nCityscape.\nCity planning.\nPhiladelphia was created in the 17th century, following the plan by William Penn's surveyor Thomas Holme. Center City is structured with long, straight streets running nearly due east\u2013west and north\u2013south, forming a grid pattern between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers that is aligned with their courses. The original city plan was designed to allow for easy travel and to keep residences separated by open space that would help prevent the spread of fire. In keeping with the idea of a \"Greene Countrie Towne\", and inspired by the many types of trees that grew in the region, Penn named many of the east\u2013west streets for local trees. Penn planned the creation of five public parks in the city which were renamed in 1824. Centre Square was renamed Penn Square; Northeast Square was renamed Franklin Square; Southeast Square was renamed Washington Square; Southwest Square was renamed Rittenhouse Square; and Northwest Square was renamed Logan Circle/Square. Center City had an estimated 183,240 residents as of 2015[ [update]], making it the second-most populated downtown area in the United States after Midtown Manhattan in New York City.\nPhiladelphia's neighborhoods are divided into six large sections that surround Center City: North Philadelphia, Northeast Philadelphia, South Philadelphia, Southwest Philadelphia, West Philadelphia, and Northwest Philadelphia. The city's geographic boundaries have been largely unchanged since these neighborhoods were consolidated in 1854. However, each of these large areas contains numerous neighborhoods, some of whose boundaries derive from the boroughs, townships, and other communities that constituted Pennsylvania County before their inclusion within the city.\nThe City Planning Commission, tasked with guiding growth and development of the city, has divided the city into 18 planning districts as part of the Philadelphia2035 physical development plan. Much of the city's 1980 zoning code was overhauled from 2007 to 2012 as part of a joint effort between former mayors John F. Street and Michael Nutter. The zoning changes were intended to rectify incorrect zoning maps to facilitate future community development, as the city forecasts an additional 100,000 residents and 40,000 jobs will be added by 2035.\nThe Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) is the largest landlord in Pennsylvania. Established in 1937, the PHA is the nation's fourth-largest housing authority, serving about 81,000 people with affordable housing, while employing 1,400 on a budget of $371\u00a0million. The Philadelphia Parking Authority is responsible for ensuring adequate parking for city residents, businesses, and visitors.\nArchitecture.\nPhiladelphia's architectural history dates back to colonial times and includes a wide range of styles. The earliest structures were constructed with logs, but brick structures were common by 1700. During the 18th century, the cityscape was dominated by Georgian architecture, including Independence Hall and Christ Church.\nIn the first decades of the 19th century, Federal and Greek Revival architecture were the dominant styles produced by Philadelphia architects such as Benjamin Latrobe, William Strickland, John Haviland, John Notman, Thomas Walter, and Samuel Sloan. Frank Furness is considered Philadelphia's greatest architect of the second half of the 19th century. His contemporaries included John McArthur Jr., Addison Hutton, Wilson Eyre, the Wilson Brothers, and Horace Trumbauer. In 1871, construction began on the Second Empire-style Philadelphia City Hall. The Philadelphia Historical Commission was created in 1955 to preserve the cultural and architectural history of the city. The commission maintains the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, adding historic buildings, structures, sites, objects and districts as it sees fit.\nIn 1932, Philadelphia became home to the first modern International Style skyscraper in the United States, the PSFS Building, designed by George Howe and William Lescaze. The City Hall remained the tallest building in the city until 1987 when One Liberty Place was completed. Numerous glass and granite skyscrapers were built in Center City beginning in the late 1980s. In 2007, the Comcast Center surpassed One Liberty Place to become the city's tallest building. The Comcast Technology Center was completed in 2018, reaching a height of , as the tallest building in the United States outside of Manhattan and Chicago.\nFor much of Philadelphia's history, the typical home has been the row house. The row house was introduced to the United States via Philadelphia in the early 19th century and, for a time, row houses built elsewhere in the United States were known as \"Philadelphia rows\". A variety of row houses are found throughout the city, from Federal-style continuous blocks in Old City and Society Hill to Victorian-style homes in North Philadelphia to twin row houses in West Philadelphia. While newer homes have been built recently, much of the housing dates to the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, which has created problems such as urban decay and vacant lots. Some neighborhoods, including Northern Liberties and Society Hill, have been rehabilitated through gentrification.\nParks.\nAs of 2014[ [update]], the city's total park space, including municipal, state, and federal parks in the city, amounts to . Philadelphia's largest park is Fairmount Park, which includes the Philadelphia Zoo and encompasses of the total parkland. Fairmount Park's adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park contains . Fairmount Park, when combined with Wissahickon Valley Park, is one of the largest contiguous urban park areas in the U.S. The two parks, along with the Colonial Revival, Georgian and Federal-style mansions in them, have been listed as one entity on the National Register of Historic Places since 1972.\nClimate.\nWithin the K\u00f6ppen climate classification, Philadelphia falls under the northern periphery of the humid subtropical climate zone (K\u00f6ppen \"Cfa\"). Within the Trewartha climate classification, Philadelphia has a temperate maritime climate (\"Do\") limited to the north by the continental climate (\"Dc\"). Summers are typically hot and muggy. Fall and spring are generally mild, and winter is moderately cold. The plant life hardiness zones are 7a and 7b, reflecting an average annual extreme minimum temperature between .\nSnowfall is highly variable. Some winters have only light snow while others include major snowstorms. The normal seasonal snowfall averages , with rare snowfalls in November or April, and rarely any sustained snow cover. Seasonal snowfall accumulation has ranged from trace amounts in 1972\u201373, to in the winter of 2009\u201310. The city's heaviest single-storm snowfall was , which occurred in January 1996.\nPrecipitation is generally spread throughout the year, with eight to eleven wet days per month, at an average annual rate of , but historically ranging from in 1922 to in 2011. The most rain recorded in one day occurred on July 28, 2013, when fell at Philadelphia International Airport. Philadelphia has a moderately sunny climate with an average of 2,498 hours of sunshine annually. The percentage of sunshine ranges from 47% in December to 61% in June, July, and August.\nThe January daily average temperature is . The temperature frequently rises to during thaws. July averages . Heat waves accompanied by high humidity and heat indices are frequent, with highs reaching or exceeding on 30 days of the year. The average window for freezing temperatures is November 6 to April 2, allowing a growing season of 217 days. Early fall and late winter are generally dry, with February having the lowest average precipitation at . The dewpoint in the summer averages between .\nThe highest recorded temperature was on August 7, 1918. Temperatures at or above are not common, with the last occurrence of such a temperature being July 21, 2019. The lowest officially recorded temperature was on February 9, 1934. Temperatures at or below are rare, with the last such occurrence being January 19, 1994. The record low maximum is on February 10, 1899, and December 30, 1880. The record high minimum is on July 23, 2011, and July 24, 2010.\nTime Series.\nAir quality.\nPhiladelphia County received an ozone grade of F and a 24-hour particle pollution rating of D in the American Lung Association's 2017 State of the Air report, which analyzed data from 2013 to 2015. The city was ranked 22nd for ozone, 20th for short-term particle pollution, and 11th for year-round particle pollution. According to the same report, the city experienced a significant reduction in high ozone days since 2001\u2014from nearly 50 days per year to fewer than 10\u2014along with fewer days of high particle pollution since 2000\u2014from about 19 days per year to about 3\u2014and an approximate 30% reduction in annual levels of particle pollution since 2000.\nFive of the ten largest combined statistical areas (CSAs) were ranked higher for ozone: Los Angeles (1st), New York City (9th), Houston (12th), Dallas (13th), and San Jose, California (18th). Many smaller CSAs were also ranked higher for ozone, including Sacramento (8th), Las Vegas (10th), Denver (11th), El Paso (16th), and Salt Lake City (20th). Only two of those same ten CSAs, San Jose and Los Angeles, were ranked higher than Philadelphia for both year-round and short-term particle pollution.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nAs of the 2020 U.S. Census, there were 1,603,797 people residing in Philadelphia, representing a 1.2% increase from the 2019 census estimate. The racial composition of the city was 39.3% Black alone (42.0% Black alone or in combination), 36.3% White alone (41.9% White alone or in combination), 8.7% Asian alone, 0.4% American Indian and Alaska Native alone, 8.7% some other race, and 6.9% multiracial. 14.9% of residents were Hispanic or Latino.\n34.8% had a bachelor's degree or higher. 23.9% spoke a language other than English at home, the most common of which was Spanish (10.8%). 15.0% of the populations foreign born, roughly half of whom are naturalized U.S. citizens. 3.7% of the population are veterans. The median household income was $52,889 and 22.8% of the population lived in poverty. 49.5% of the population drove alone to work, while 23.2% used public transit, 8.2% carpooled, 7.9% walked, and 7.0% worked from home. The average commute is 31 minutes.\nAfter the 1950 census, when a record high of 2,071,605 was recorded, the city's population began a long decline. The population dropped to a low of 1,488,710 residents in 2006 before beginning to rise again. Between 2006 and 2017, Philadelphia added 92,153 residents. In 2017, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that the racial composition of the city was 41.3% Black (non-Hispanic), 34.9% White (non-Hispanic), 14.1% Hispanic or Latino, 7.1% Asian, 0.4% Native American, 0.05% Pacific Islander, and 2.8% multiracial.\nImmigration and cultural diversity.\nIn addition to the city's economic growth, the city's population has been fueled by foreign immigration. According to The Pew Charitable Trusts, the city's foreign-born population increased by 69% between 2000 and 2016 to constitute nearly 20% of Philadelphia's workforce, and it doubled between 1990 and 2017 to constitute 13.8% of the city's total population, with the top five countries of origin being China by a significant margin followed by the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, India, and Vietnam.\nIrish, Italian, German, Polish, English, Russian, Ukrainian, and French ancestries constitute the largest European ethnic groups in the city. Philadelphia has the second-largest Irish and Italian populations in the United States after New York City. South Philadelphia remains one of the largest Italian neighborhoods in the country and is home to the Italian Market.\nThe Pennsport neighborhood and Gray's Ferry section of South Philadelphia, home to many Mummer clubs, are well known as Irish neighborhoods. The Kensington, Port Richmond, and Fishtown neighborhoods have historically been heavily Irish and Polish. Port Richmond is a center for the Polish-American community in Philadelphia, and it remains a common destination for Polish immigrants. Northeast Philadelphia, although known for its Irish and Irish-American population, is home to a Jewish and Russian population. Mount Airy in Northwest Philadelphia also contains a Jewish community. Nearby Chestnut Hill is historically known as an Anglo-Saxon Protestant community.\nPhiladelphia's Black American population is the fourth-largest in the country after New York City, Chicago, and Houston. West Philadelphia and North Philadelphia are largely African-American neighborhoods, but many are leaving those areas in favor of the Northeast and Southwest sections of Philadelphia. A higher proportion of African-American Muslims reside in Philadelphia than most other major U.S. cities. West Philadelphia and Southwest Philadelphia are home to various Afro-Caribbean and African immigrant communities.\nThe Puerto Rican population in Philadelphia is the second-largest on the U.S. mainland after New York City, and the second-fastest growing after Orlando. Eastern North Philadelphia, particularly Fairhill and surrounding areas to the north and east, has one of the highest concentrations of Puerto Ricans outside Puerto Rico, with many large swaths of blocks being close to 100% Puerto Rican. Puerto Rican and Dominican populations reside in North Philadelphia and the Northeast, and Mexican and Central American populations exist in South Philadelphia. South American migrants were being transported by bus from Texas to Philadelphia beginning in 2022.\nPhiladelphia's Asian American population includes those of Chinese, Indians, Vietnamese, South Koreans, Filipinos, Cambodians, and Indonesians. Over 35,000 Chinese Americans lived in the city in 2015, including a Fuzhounese population. Center City hosts a Chinatown that is served by Chinatown bus lines with service to/from Chinatown, Manhattan. Indians make up the second-largest Asian group in the city of Philadelphia, while making up the largest foreign-born population in the Delaware Valley. A Korean community initially settled in the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Olney; however, the primary Koreatown has subsequently shifted further north, straddling the city's border with adjacent Cheltenham in Montgomery County and Cherry Hill in South Jersey. South Philadelphia is home to Vietnamese-Americans in Little Saigon and Cambodian-Americans in Cambodia Town, as well as Thai-American, Indonesian-American, and Chinese-American communities.\nPhiladelphia's Gay village near Washington Square is home to a concentration of gay and lesbian-friendly businesses, restaurants, and bars.\nReligion.\nIn a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, 68% of the population of the city identified themselves as Christian. Approximately 41% of Christians in the city and area professed attendance at a variety of churches that could be considered Protestant, while 26% professed Catholic beliefs.\nThe Protestant Christian community in Philadelphia is dominated by mainline Protestant denominations including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church in the United States, Presbyterian Church (USA) and American Baptist Churches USA. One of the most prominent mainline Protestant jurisdictions is the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. The African Methodist Episcopal Church was established in Philadelphia. Historically, the city has strong connections to the Quakers, Unitarian Universalism, and the Ethical Culture movement, all of which continue to be represented in the city. The Quaker Friends General Conference is based in Philadelphia. Evangelical Protestants making up less than 15% of the population were also prevalent.\nEvangelical Protestant bodies included the Anglican Church in North America, Lutheran Church\u2014Missouri Synod, Presbyterian Church in America, and National Baptist Convention of America. The Catholic community is primarily served by the Latin Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Eparchy of the United States of America and Canada, though some independent Catholic churches exist throughout Philadelphia and its suburbs. The Latin Church-based jurisdiction is headquartered in the city, and its see is the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. The Ukrainian Catholic jurisdiction is headquartered in Philadelphia, and is seated at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.\nLess than 1% of Philadelphia's Christians were Mormons. The remainder of the Christian demographic is spread among smaller Protestant denominations and the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox among others. The Diocese of Eastern Pennsylvania (Orthodox Church in America) and Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (Ecumenical Patriarchate) divide the Eastern Orthodox in Philadelphia. The Russian Orthodox St. Andrew's Cathedral is in the city.\nThe same study says that other religions collectively compose about 8% of the population, including Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Sikhism. Philadelphia has the fifth-largest Muslim population among U.S. cities. The remaining 24% claimed no religious affiliation.\nThe Philadelphia metropolitan area's Jewish population was estimated at 206,000 in 2001, which was the sixth-largest in the U.S. at that time. Jewish traders were operating in southeastern Pennsylvania long before William Penn. Jews in Philadelphia took a prominent part in the War of Independence. Although the majority of the early Jewish residents were of Portuguese or Spanish descent, some among them had emigrated from Germany and Poland. About the beginning of the 19th century, a number of Jews from the latter countries, finding the services of the Congregation Mickv\u00e9 Israel unfamiliar to them, resolved to form a new congregation which would use the ritual to which they had been accustomed.\nAfrican diasporic religions are practiced in some Latino and Hispanic and Caribbean communities in North and West Philadelphia.\nLanguages.\nAs of 2010[ [update]], 79.12% (1,112,441) of Philadelphia residents age 5 and older spoke English at home as a primary language, while 9.72% (136,688) spoke Spanish, 1.64% (23,075) Chinese, 0.89% (12,499) Vietnamese, 0.77% (10,885) Russian, 0.66% (9,240) French, 0.61% (8,639) other Asian languages, 0.58% (8,217) African languages, 0.56% (7,933) Cambodian (Mon-Khmer), and Italian was spoken as a main language by 0.55% (7,773) of the population over the age of five. In total, 20.88% (293,544) of Philadelphia's population age 5 and older spoke a mother language other than English.\nPoverty.\nPhiladelphia is home to many food poverty programs, of which two of the largest are Philabundance which claims to feed 90000 people per week. and Share Food Program which claims to feed 1 million people per month.\nEconomy.\nPhiladelphia's close geographical and transportation connections to other large metropolitan economies along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States have been cited as offering a significant competitive advantage for business creation and entrepreneurship. The city is the center of economic activity in both Pennsylvania and the four-state Delaware Valley metropolitan region. Five Fortune 500 companies are based in the city. As of 2021[ [update]], the Philadelphia metropolitan area is estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of US$479\u00a0billion, an increase from the $445\u00a0billion calculated by the Bureau of Economic Analysis for 2017, representing the ninth-largest U.S. metropolitan economy.\nPhiladelphia's economic sectors include financial services, health care, biotechnology, information technology, trade and transportation, manufacturing, oil refining, food processing, and tourism. Metropolitan Philadelphia is one of the top five American venture capital hubs, credited to its proximity to New York City's financial and tech and biotechnology ecosystems. Financial activities account for the largest economic sector of the metropolitan area, which is one of the largest health education and research centers in the United States. The city's two largest employers are the federal and city governments. Philadelphia's largest private employer is the University of Pennsylvania followed by Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.\nFinance and corporations.\nThe Philadelphia Stock Exchange, acquired by Nasdaq in 2007, is a global leader in options trading. The city is home to the headquarters of Comcast, the nation's largest multinational telecommunications corporation; insurance conglomerates Cigna, Colonial Penn, and Independence Blue Cross; as well as food services company Aramark, chemical makers FMC Corporation and Rohm and Haas, pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline, Amicus Therapeutics, Spark Therapeutics, apparel retailers Five Below and Urban Outfitters and its subsidiary Anthropologie, automotive parts retailer Pep Boys, and stainless steel producer Carpenter Technology Corporation.\nOther corporation headquarters in the city include RiteAid, Crown Holdings, and Brandywine Realty Trust. The headquarters of Boeing Rotorcraft Systems and its main rotorcraft factory are in the Philadelphia suburb of Ridley Park; The Vanguard Group, and the U.S. headquarters of Siemens Healthineers are headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb. Healthcare conglomerate AmerisourceBergen is located in suburban Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Across the Delaware River in adjacent Camden County, New Jersey, Campbell Soup Company and Subaru USA are both headquartered in Camden, New Jersey, and TD Bank (USA) is headquartered in nearby suburban Cherry Hill, New Jersey.\nTech and biotech.\nPhiladelphia is a hub for information technology and biotechnology. Philadelphia and Pennsylvania are attracting new life sciences ventures. As of 2024, the Delaware Valley ranks as one of the Big Five U.S. venture capital hubs, enabled by its proximity to both the entrepreneurial and financial ecosystems of New York City and to the federal regulatory environment of Washington, D.C.\nTourism.\nPhiladelphia's history attracts many tourists, with the Independence National Historical Park, which includes the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and other historic sites, received over 5\u00a0million visitors in 2016. The city welcomed 42\u00a0million domestic tourists in 2016 who spent $6.8\u00a0billion, generating an estimated $11\u00a0billion in total economic impact in the city and surrounding four counties of Pennsylvania. The annual Naked Bike Ride attracts participants from around the United States and internationally to Philadelphia.\nTrade and transportation.\nPhiladelphia International Airport, a major Transatlantic gateway and transcontinental hub, has undergone a $900\u00a0million infrastructural expansion to increase passenger capacity and augment passenger experience, and the airport continues an ongoing capital expenditure program to upgrade facilities and add further amenities. The Port of Philadelphia, having experienced the highest percentage growth by tonnage loaded in 2017 among major U.S. seaports, has doubled its shipping capacity to accommodate super-sized post-Panamax shipping vessels since 2018. Philadelphia's 30th Street Station is the third-busiest Amtrak rail hub, following Penn Station in Manhattan and Union Station in Washington, D.C., transporting over 4\u00a0million inter-city rail passengers annually.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nEducation in Philadelphia is provided by many private and public institutions. The School District of Philadelphia is the local school district, operating public schools, in all of the city. The Philadelphia School District is the eighth-largest school district in the nation with 142,266 students in 218 traditional public schools and 86 charter schools as of 2014[ [update]].\nThe city's K-12 enrollment in district\u2013run schools dropped from 156,211 students in 2010 to 130,104 students in 2015. During the same time period, the enrollment in charter schools increased from 33,995 students in 2010 to 62,358 students in 2015. This consistent drop in enrollment led the city to close 24 of its public schools in 2013. During the 2014 school year, the city spent an average of $12,570 per pupil, below the average among comparable urban school districts.\nGraduation rates among district-run schools, meanwhile, steadily increased in the ten years from 2005. In 2005, Philadelphia had a district graduation rate of 52%. This number increased to 65% in 2014, still below the national and state averages. Scores on the state's standardized test, the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) trended upward from 2005 to 2011 but subsequently decreased. In 2005, the district-run schools scored an average of 37.4% on math and 35.5% on reading. The city's schools reached their peak scores in 2011 with 59.0% on math and 52.3% on reading. In 2014, the scores dropped significantly to 45.2% on math and 42.0% on reading.\nOf the city's public high schools, including charter schools, only four performed above the national average on the SAT (1497 out of 2400) in 2014: Masterman, Central, Girard Academic Music Program, and MaST Community Charter School. All other district-run schools were below average.\nHigher education.\nMedical and research facilities of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Philadelphia has the third-largest student concentration on the East Coast, with more than 120,000 college and university students enrolled within the city and nearly 300,000 in the metropolitan area. More than 80 colleges, universities, trade, and specialty schools are in the Philadelphia region. One of the founding members of the Association of American Universities is in the city, the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution with claims to be the First university in the United States.\nThe city's largest university by student enrollment is Temple University, followed by Drexel University. The city's nationally ranked research universities comprise the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, Drexel University, and Thomas Jefferson University. Philadelphia is also home to five schools of medicine: Drexel University College of Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Temple University School of Medicine, and Thomas Jefferson University's Sidney Kimmel Medical College. Hospitals, universities, and higher education research institutions in Philadelphia's four congressional districts received more than $252\u00a0million in National Institutes of Health grants in 2015.\nOther institutions of higher learning within the city's borders include:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCulture.\nPhiladelphia is home to many national historical sites that relate to the founding of the United States. Independence National Historical Park is the center of these historical landmarks and one of the country's 22 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, and the Liberty Bell is housed, are among the city's most popular attractions. Other national historic sites include the homes of Edgar Allan Poe and Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and early government buildings, including the First and the Second Bank of the United States, Fort Mifflin, and the Gloria Dei (Old Swedes') Church. Philadelphia alone has 67 National Historic Landmarks, the third most of any city in the country.\nPhiladelphia's major science museums include the Franklin Institute, which contains the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the M\u00fctter Museum, and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. History museums include the National Constitution Center, the Museum of the American Revolution, the Philadelphia History Museum, the National Museum of American Jewish History, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Masonic Library and Museum of Pennsylvania in the Masonic Temple, and the Eastern State Penitentiary. Philadelphia is home to the United States's first zoo and hospital, as well as Fairmount Park, one of America's oldest and largest urban parks, founded in 1855.\nThe city is home to important archival repositories, including the Library Company of Philadelphia, established in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin at 1314 Locust Street, and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, founded in 1814. The Presbyterian Historical Society is the country's oldest denominational historical society, organized in 1852.\nArts.\nThe city is home to multiple art museums, including the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Rodin Museum, which holds the largest collection of work by Auguste Rodin outside France. The city's largest art museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is one of the largest art museums in the world. The long flight of steps to the Art Museum's main entrance became famous after the film \"Rocky\" (1976).\nAnnual events include the Philadelphia Film Festival, held annually each October, the 6abc Dunkin' Donuts Thanksgiving Day Parade, the nation's longest-running continuously held Thanksgiving Day parade, and the Mummers Parade, the nation's longest continuously held folk parade, which is held every New Year's Day predominantly on Broad Street.\nAreas such as South Street and the Old City section of the city have a vibrant night life. The Avenue of the Arts in Center City contains many restaurants and theaters, such as the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, home of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Academy of Music, home of Opera Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Ballet. The Wilma Theatre and the Philadelphia Theatre Company at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre produce a variety of new plays. Several blocks to the east are the Lantern Theater Company at St. Stephens Episcopal Church; and the Walnut Street Theatre, a National Historic Landmark stated to be the oldest and most subscribed-to theatre in the English-speaking world, founded in 1809. In May 2019, the Walnut Street Theatre announced a major expansion to begin in 2020. New Freedom Theatre, Pennsylvania's oldest African-American theatre, is located on North Broad Street.\nPhiladelphia has more public art than any other American city. In 1872, the Association for Public Art, formerly the Fairmount Park Art Association, was created as the first private association in the United States dedicated to integrating public art and urban planning. In 1959, lobbying by the Artists Equity Association helped create the Percent for Art ordinance, the first for a U.S. city. The program, which has funded more than 200 pieces of public art, is administered by the Philadelphia Office of Arts and Culture, the city's art agency. The city has more murals than any other American city, due to the 1984 creation of the Department of Recreation's Mural Arts Program, which seeks to beautify neighborhoods and provide an outlet for graffiti artists. The program has funded more than 2,800 murals by professional, staff and volunteer artists and educated more than 20,000 youth in underserved neighborhoods throughout Philadelphia.\nThe city is home to a number of art organizations, including the regional art advocacy nonprofit Philadelphia Tri-State Artists Equity, the Philadelphia Sketch Club, one of the country's oldest artists' clubs, and The Plastic Club, started by women excluded from the Sketch Club. Many Old City art galleries stay open late on the First Friday event of each month.\nCuisine.\nThe city is known for its hoagies, stromboli, roast pork sandwich, scrapple, soft pretzels, water ice, Irish potato candy, tastykakes, and the cheesesteak sandwich which was developed by Italian immigrants. The Philadelphia area has many establishments that serve cheesesteaks, including restaurants, taverns, delicatessens and pizza parlors. The originator of the thinly-sliced steak sandwich in the 1930s, initially without cheese, is Pat's King of Steaks, which faces its rival Geno's Steaks, founded in 1966, across the intersection of 9th Street and Passyunk Avenue in the Italian Market of South Philadelphia.\nMcGillin's Olde Ale House, opened in 1860 on Drury Street in Center City, is the oldest continuously operated tavern in the city. The City Tavern is a replica of a historic 18th-century building first opened in 1773, demolished in 1854 after a fire, and rebuilt in 1975 on the same site as part of Independence National Historical Park. The tavern offers authentic 18th-century recipes, served in seven period dining rooms, three wine cellar rooms and an outdoor garden.\nThe Reading Terminal Market is a historic food market founded in 1893 in the Reading Terminal building, a designated National Historic Landmark. The enclosed market is one of the oldest and largest markets in the country, hosting over a hundred merchants offering Pennsylvania Dutch specialties, artisan cheese and meat, locally grown groceries, and specialty and ethnic foods.\nDialect.\nThe traditional Philadelphia accent is considered by some linguists to be the most distinctive accent in North America. The Philadelphia dialect, which is spread throughout the Delaware Valley and South Jersey, is part of a larger Mid-Atlantic American English family, a designation that also includes the Baltimore accent. Additionally, it shares many similarities with the New York accent. Owing to over a century of linguistic data collected by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania under sociolinguist William Labov, the Philadelphia dialect has been one of the best-studied forms of American English. The accent is especially found within the Irish American and Italian American working-class neighborhoods. Philadelphia also has its own unique collection of neologisms and slang terms.\nMusic.\nThe Philadelphia Orchestra is generally considered one of the top five orchestras in the United States. The orchestra performs at the Kimmel Center and has a summer concert series at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts. Opera Philadelphia performs at the nation's oldest continually operating opera house\u2014the Academy of Music. The Philadelphia Boys Choir & Chorale has performed its music all over the world. The Philly Pops plays orchestral versions of popular jazz, swing, Broadway, and blues songs at the Kimmel Center and other venues within the mid-Atlantic region. The Curtis Institute of Music is one of the world's premier conservatories and among the most selective institutes of higher education in the nation.\nPhiladelphia has played a prominent role in the music of the United States. The culture of American popular music has been influenced by significant contributions of Philadelphia area musicians and producers, in both the recording and broadcasting industries. In 1952, the teen dance party program called \"Bandstand\" premiered on local television, hosted by Bob Horn. The show was renamed \"American Bandstand\" in 1957, when it began national syndication on ABC, hosted by Dick Clark and produced in Philadelphia until 1964 when it moved to Los Angeles. Promoters marketed youthful musical artists known as teen idols to appeal to the young audience. Philadelphia-born singers, including Frankie Avalon, James Darren, Eddie Fisher, Fabian Forte, Bobby Rydell, and South Philly-raised Chubby Checker, topped the music charts, establishing a clean-cut rock and roll image.\nPhilly soul music of the late 1960s\u20131970s is a highly produced version of soul music which led to later forms of popular music such as disco and urban contemporary rhythm and blues. On July 13, 1985, John F. Kennedy Stadium was the American venue for the Live Aid concert. The city also hosted the Live 8 concert, which attracted about 700,000 people to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on July 2, 2005.\nNotable rock and pop musicians from Philadelphia and its suburbs include Bill Haley & His Comets, Nazz, Todd Rundgren, Hall & Oates, the Hooters, Cinderella, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Ween, Schoolly D, Pink, the Roots, Beanie Sigel, State Property, Lisa \"Left Eye\" Lopes, Meek Mill, Lil Uzi Vert, and others.\nSports.\nPhiladelphia has one of the nation's richest histories in professional sports, dating back to the mid-19th century. Its first professional sports team, the Philadelphia Athletics, a professional baseball team, was founded in 1860. The Athletics were initially an amateur league team that turned professional in 1871. In 1876, the Athletics joined with seven other teams in founding the National League, now the longest continuously operating league in world sports. \nPhiladelphia is one of 12 U.S. cities to have teams in all four major league sports: the Philadelphia Phillies of Major League Baseball (MLB), the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League (NFL), the Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League (NHL), and the Philadelphia 76ers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Phillies, formed in 1883 as the Quakers and renamed in 1884, are the oldest team continuously playing under the same name in the same city in the history of American professional sports.\nThe Philadelphia metro area is also home to the Philadelphia Union of Major League Soccer (MLS), plays their home games at Subaru Park, a soccer-specific stadium in Chester, Pennsylvania.\nPhiladelphia was the second of eight U.S. cities to win titles in all four major leagues, the MLB, NFL, NHL, and NBA. It won a title in soccer in the now-defunct North American Soccer League in 1973. Following the 76ers' victory over the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1983 NBA Finals, however, the city's professional teams and their fans endured 25 years without a championship in any professional sport until the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, defeating the Tampa Bay Rays. This quarter century without a championship for any Philadelphia sports team is sometimes described as the Curse of Billy Penn, a reference to a 1987 decision that permitted One Liberty Place to become the first building in city history to surpass the height of \"William Penn\", a statue installed in 1894 atop City Hall. In 2004, during the city's championship drought, ESPN placed Philadelphia second on its list of \"The Fifteen Most Tortured Sports Cities\". The city's sports fans are often both praised and sometimes derided. In 2011, for instance, \"GQ\" magazine named Eagles and Phillies fans the nation's worst professional sports fans, describing them as the \"Meanest Fans in America\" in summarizing repeated incidents of their drunken behavior and long history of booing.\nAfter the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, nine years passed without a championship until the Eagles won their first Super Bowl following the 2017 season, defeating the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII. Seven seasons later, following the 2024 season, the Eagles won their second Super Bowl, defeating the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX. \nMajor professional sports teams that originated in Philadelphia, which later moved to other cities, include the Golden State Warriors basketball team, which played in Philadelphia from 1946 to 1962 and the Oakland Athletics baseball team, which was originally the Philadelphia Athletics and played in Philadelphia from 1901 to 1954.\nPhiladelphia is home to professional, semi-professional, and elite amateur teams in multiple other sports, including cricket, rugby league, and rugby union. Major running events in the city include the Penn Relays, the Philadelphia Marathon, and the Broad Street Run. The Collegiate Rugby Championship is played annually each June at Talen Energy Stadium in Chester.\nThe city also has a rich history in rowing, which has been popular in Philadelphia since the 18th century. On Boathouse Row, a symbol of Philadelphia's rich rowing history, each Big Five member has its own boathouse. Philadelphia hosts numerous local and collegiate rowing clubs and competitions, including the annual Dad Vail Regatta, the largest intercollegiate rowing event in North America with more than 100 participating U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities; the annual Stotesbury Cup Regatta, which is billed as the world's oldest and largest rowing event for high school students; and the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta. The regattas are held on the Schuylkill River and organized by Schuylkill Navy, an association of area rowing clubs that has produced numerous Olympic rowers.\nThe Philadelphia Spinners were a professional ultimate team in Major League Ultimate (MLU) until 2016. The Spinners were one of the original eight teams of the American Ultimate Disc League (AUDL), which was founded in 2012. They played at Franklin Field and won the inaugural AUDL championship and the final MLU championship in 2016. The MLU was suspended indefinitely by its investors in December 2016. As of 2018[ [update]], the Philadelphia Phoenix continue to play in the AUDL.\nPhiladelphia is home to the Philadelphia Big 5, a group of five NCAA Division I college basketball programs, including La Salle, Penn, Saint Joseph's, Temple, and Villanova universities. The sixth NCAA Division I school in Philadelphia is Drexel University. La Salle won the 1954 championship of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. Villanova won the 1985, 2016, and 2018 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournaments. Philadelphia will be one of the eleven US host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.\nLaw and government.\nPhiladelphia County is a legal nullity. All county functions were assumed by the city in 1952. The city has been coterminous with the county since 1854.\nPhiladelphia's 1952 Home Rule Charter was written by the City Charter Commission, which was created by the Pennsylvania General Assembly in an act of April 1949, and a city ordinance of June 1949. The existing city council received a proposed draft in February 1951, and the electors approved it in an election held in April 1951. The first elections under the new Home Rule Charter were held in November 1951, and the newly elected officials took office in January 1952.\nThe city uses the strong-mayor version of the mayor\u2013council form of government, which is led by one mayor in whom executive authority is vested. The mayor has the authority to appoint and dismiss members of all boards and commissions without the approval of the city council. Elected at-large, the mayor is limited to two consecutive four-year terms, but can run for the position again after an intervening term.\nCourts.\nPhiladelphia County is coterminous with the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas is the trial court of general jurisdiction for the city, hearing felony-level criminal cases and civil suits above the minimum jurisdictional limit of $10,000. The court has appellate jurisdiction over rulings from the Municipal and Traffic Courts, and some administrative agencies and boards. The trial division has 70 commissioned judges elected by the voters, along with about one thousand other employees. The court has a family division with 25 judges and an orphans' court with three judges.\nAs of 2018[ [update]], the city's District Attorney is Larry Krasner, a Democrat. The last Republican to hold the office is Ronald D. Castille, who left in 1991 and later served as the Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court from 2008 to 2014.\nThe Philadelphia Municipal Court handles traffic cases, misdemeanor and felony criminal cases with maximum incarceration of five years, and civil cases involving $12,000 or less ($15,000 in real estate and school tax cases), and all landlord-tenant disputes. The municipal court has 27 judges elected by the voters.\nPennsylvania's three appellate courts also have sittings in Philadelphia. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the court of last resort in the state, regularly hears arguments in Philadelphia City Hall. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania and the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania also sit in Philadelphia several times a year. Judges for these courts are elected at large. The state Supreme Court and Superior Court have deputy prothonotary offices in Philadelphia.\nPhiladelphia is home to the federal United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, both of which are housed in the James A. Byrne United States Courthouse.\nPolitics.\nThe current mayor is Cherelle Parker who won the election in November 2023. Parker's predecessor, Jim Kenney, served two terms from 2016 to January 2024. Parker is a member of the Democratic Party. For over seven decades, since 1952, every Philadelphia mayor has been a Democrat.\nPhiladelphia City Council is the legislative branch which consists of ten council members representing individual districts and seven members elected at-large, all of whom are elected to four-year terms. Democrats are currently the majority and hold 14 seats including nine of the ten districts and five at-large seats. Republicans hold one seat: the Northeast-based Tenth District. The Working Families Party holds two at-large seats making them the council's minority party. The current council president is Kenyatta Johnson.\nPhiladelphia's political structure consists of a system of wards and divisions. There are 66 wards with 11 to 51 divisions each for a total of 1703 divisions. Each division elects two committee people who are supposed to live within the division boundaries, and committee people select a leader for their ward. Democrats and Republicans elect their own committee people every four years. The committee person's role is to serve as a point of contact between voters and party officials and help get out the vote. Most wards are closed which means the ward leader makes sole endorsement decisions; open wards allow committee people to weigh in on these decisions. There are groups such as Open Wards Philadelphia and individuals who are working to elect ward leaders who promote an open ward system.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nPhiladelphia had historically been a bastion of the Republican Party from the American Civil War until the mid-1930s. In 1856, the first Republican National Convention was held at Musical Fund Hall at 808 Locust Street in Philadelphia.\nDemocratic registrations increased after the Great Depression; however, the city was not carried by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt in his landslide victory of 1932, as Pennsylvania was one of only six states won by Republican Herbert Hoover. Voter turnout surged from 600,000 in 1932 to nearly 900,000 in 1936 and Roosevelt carried Philadelphia with over 60% of the vote. Philadelphia has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1936. In 2008, Democrat Barack Obama drew 83% of the city's vote. Obama's win was even larger in 2012, capturing 85% of the vote. In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton won 82% of the vote.\nAs a result of the previously declining population in the city and state, Philadelphia has only three congressional districts of the 18 districts in Pennsylvania, based on the 2010 census apportionment: the 2nd district, represented by Brendan Boyle; the 3rd, represented by Dwight Evans; and the 5th, represented by Mary Gay Scanlon. All three representatives are Democrats, though Republicans still have some support in the city, primarily in the Northeast. Sam Katz ran competitive mayoral races as the Republican nominee in 1999 and 2003, losing to Democrat John Street both times.\nPennsylvania's longest-serving Senator, Arlen Specter, was an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania who opened his first law practice in Philadelphia. Specter served as a Republican from 1981 and as a Democrat from 2009, losing that party's primary in 2010 and leaving office in January 2011. He was assistant counsel on the Warren Commission in 1964 and the city's district attorney from 1966 to 1974.\nPhiladelphia has hosted various national conventions, including in 1848 (Whig), 1856 (Republican), 1872 (Republican), 1900 (Republican), 1936 (Democratic), 1940 (Republican), 1948 (Republican), 1948 (Progressive), 2000 (Republican), and 2016 (Democratic). Philadelphia has been home to one vice president, George M. Dallas, and one general of the American Civil War, George B. McClellan, who won his party's nomination for president but lost in the general election to Abraham Lincoln in 1864. In May 2019, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden chose Philadelphia to be his 2020 U.S. presidential campaign headquarters.\nEnvironmental policy.\n\"Green Cities, Clean Water\" is an environmental policy initiative based in Philadelphia that has shown promising results in mitigating the effects of climate change. The researchers on the policy have stated that despite such promising plans of green infrastructure building, \"the city is forecasted to grow warmer, wetter, and more urbanized over the century, runoff and local temperatures will increase on average throughout the city\". Even though landcover predictive models on the effects of the policy initiative have indicated that green infrastructure could be useful at decreasing the amount of runoff in the city over time, the city government would have to expand its current plans and \"consider the cobenefit of climate change adaptation when planning new projects\" in limiting the scope of city-wide temperature increase.\nPublic safety.\nPolice and law enforcement.\nIn a 2015 report by Pew Charitable Trusts, the police districts with the highest rates of violent crime were Frankford (15th district) and Kensington (24th district) in the Near Northeast, and districts to the North (22nd, 25th, and 35th districts), West (19th district) and Southwest (12th district) of Center City. Each of those seven districts recorded more than a thousand violent crimes in 2014. The lowest rates of violent crime occurred in Center City, South Philadelphia, the Far Northeast, and Roxborough districts, the latter of which includes Manayunk.\nPhiladelphia had 500, 503 according to some sources, murders in 1990, a rate of 31.5 per 100,000. An average of about 400 murders occurred each year for most of the 1990s. The murder count dropped in 2002 to 288, then rose to 406 by 2006, before dropping slightly to 392 in 2007. A few years later, Philadelphia began to see a rapid decline in homicides and violent crime. In 2013, the city had 246 murders, which is a decrease of nearly 40% since 2006.\nIn 2014, 248 homicides were committed. The homicide rate rose to 280 in 2015, then fell slightly to 277 in 2016, before rising again to 317 in 2017. Homicides increased dramatically in the late 2010s/early 2020s, reaching 499 homicides in 2020 and surpassing the 1990 \"record\" in 2021, with 501st murder on November 27 and 510 by the end of the month. Phillie ended the year with 562 murders, an all-time record. It dropped in 2022 to 514, and significantly further again in 2023, to 410.\nIn 2006, Philadelphia's homicide rate of 27.7 per 100,000 people was the highest of the country's 10 most populous cities. In 2012, Philadelphia had the fourth-highest homicide rate among the country's most populous cities. The rate dropped to 16 homicides per 100,000 residents by 2014 placing Philadelphia as the sixth-highest city in the country.\nThe number of shootings in the city has declined significantly since the early years of the 21st century. Shooting incidents peaked at 1,857 in 2006 before declining nearly 44 percent to 1,047 shootings in 2014. Major crimes have decreased gradually since a peak in 2006 when 85,498 major crimes were reported. The number of reported major crimes fell 11 percent in three years to 68,815 occurrences in 2014. Violent crimes, which include homicide, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery, decreased 14 percent in three years to 15,771 occurrences in 2014.\nIn 2014, Philadelphia enacted an ordinance decriminalizing the possession of less than 30 grams of marijuana or eight grams of hashish; the ordinance gave police officers the discretion to treat possession of these amounts as a civil infraction punishable by a $25 ticket, rather than a crime. At the time, Philadelphia was at the largest city in the nation to decriminalize the possession of marijuana. From 2013 to 2018, marijuana arrests in the city dropped by more than 85%. The purchase or sale of marijuana remains a criminal offense in Philadelphia.\nFirefighting.\nThe Philadelphia Fire Department provides fire protection and emergency medical services (EMS). The department's official mission is to protect public safety by quick and professional response to emergencies and the promotion of sound emergency prevention measures. This mandate encompasses all traditional firefighting functions, including fire suppression, with 60 engine companies and 30 ladder companies as well as specialty and support units deployed throughout the city; specialized firefighting units for Philadelphia International Airport and the Port of Philadelphia; investigations conducted by the fire marshal's office to determine the origins of fires and develop preventive strategies; prevention programs to educate the public; and support services including research and planning, management of the fire communications center within the city's 911 system, and operation of the Philadelphia Fire Academy.\nMedia.\nNewspapers.\nPhiladelphia's two major daily newspapers are \"The Philadelphia Inquirer\", first published in 1829\u2014the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the country\u2014and the \"Philadelphia Daily News\", first published in 1925. The \"Daily News\" has been published as an edition of the \"Inquirer\" since 2009. Recent owners of the \"Inquirer\" and \"Daily News\" have included Knight Ridder, The McClatchy Company, and Philadelphia Media Holdings, with the latter organization declaring bankruptcy in 2010. After two years of financial struggle, the newspapers were sold to Interstate General Media in 2012. The two newspapers had a combined daily circulation of 306,831 and a Sunday circulation of 477,313 in 2013[ [update]], the 18th-largest circulation in the country, and their collective website, Philly.com, was ranked 13th in popularity among online U.S. newspapers by Alexa Internet the same year.\nSmaller publications include the \"Philadelphia Tribune\" published five days each week for the African-American community; \"Philadelphia\" magazine, a monthly regional magazine; \"Philadelphia Weekly\", a weekly alternative newspaper; \"Philadelphia Gay News\", a weekly newspaper for the LGBT community; \"The Jewish Exponent\", a weekly newspaper for the Jewish community; \"Al D\u00eda\", a weekly newspaper for the Latino community; and \"Philadelphia Metro\", a free daily newspaper.\nStudent-run newspapers include the University of Pennsylvania's \"The Daily Pennsylvanian\", Temple University's \"The Temple News\", and Drexel University's \"The Triangle\".\nRadio.\nThe first experimental radio license was issued in Philadelphia in August 1912 to St. Joseph's College. The first commercial AM radio stations began broadcasting in 1922: first WIP, then owned by Gimbels department store, followed by WFIL, then owned by Strawbridge & Clothier department store, and WOO, a defunct station owned by Wanamaker's department store, as well as WCAU and WDAS.\nAs of 2018[ [update]], the FCC lists 28 FM and 11 AM stations for Philadelphia. As of December 2017, the ten highest-rated stations in Philadelphia were adult contemporary WBEB-FM (101.1), sports talk WIP-FM (94.1), classic rock WMGK-FM (102.9), urban adult contemporary WDAS-FM (105.3), classic hits WOGL-FM (98.1), album-oriented rock WMMR-FM (93.3), country music WXTU-FM (92.5), all-news KYW-AM (1060), talk radio WHYY-FM (90.9), and urban adult contemporary WRNB-FM (100.3). Philadelphia is served by three non-commercial public radio stations: WHYY-FM (NPR), WRTI-FM (classical and jazz), and WXPN-FM (adult alternative music).\nTelevision.\nIn the 1930s, W3XE, an experimental station owned by Philco, launched as Philadelphia's first television station. In 1939, the station became the nation's first NBC's first affiliate, and later became KYW-TV, the Philadelphia television market's CBS affiliate. In 1952, WFIL, later renamed WPVI, premiered the television show \"Bandstand\", which later became the nationally broadcast \"American Bandstand\" hosted by Dick Clark. In the 1960s, WCAU-TV, WFIL-TV, and WHYY-TV were founded.\nEach of the nation's commercial networks has an affiliate in Philadelphia: KYW-TV 3 (CBS), WPVI-TV 6 (ABC), WCAU 10 (NBC), WPHL-TV 17 (The CW with MyNetworkTV on DT2), WFPA-CD 28 (UniM\u00e1s), WTXF-TV 29 (Fox), WPSG 57 (Independent), WWSI 62 (Telemundo), and WUVP-DT 65 (Univision). The region is served also by public broadcasting stations WPPT-TV in Philadelphia, WHYY-TV in Wilmington, Delaware and Philadelphia, WLVT-TV in the Lehigh Valley, and NJTV in New Jersey.\nSince September 2024, Philadelphia is the nation's largest television market where at least one of the six English networks are shown at a station not owned by a particular network's associated parent company. The major Spanish language networks are Univision (WUVP-DT), UniM\u00e1s (WFPA-CD), and Telemundo (WWSI-TV).\nAs of 2023, the Philadelphia media market is the fifth-largest in North America with over 7.8 million viewers\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nPhiladelphia is served by SEPTA, which operates buses, trains, rapid transit (as both subways and elevated trains), trolleys, and trackless trolleys (electric buses) throughout Philadelphia, the four Pennsylvania suburban counties of Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery, in addition to service to Mercer County, New Jersey (Trenton) and New Castle County, Delaware (Wilmington and Newark, Delaware). The city's subway system consists of two routes: the subway section of the Market\u2013Frankford Line running east\u2013west under Market Street which opened in 1905 to the west and 1908 to the east of City Hall, and the Broad Street Line running north\u2013south beneath Broad Street which opened in stages from 1928 to 1938.\nBeginning in the 1980s, large sections of the SEPTA Regional Rail service to the far suburbs of Philadelphia were discontinued due to a lack of funding for equipment and infrastructure maintenance.\nPhiladelphia's 30th Street Station is a major railroad station on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor with 4.4\u00a0million passengers in 2017 making it the third-busiest station in the country after New York City's Pennsylvania Station and Washington's Union Station. 30th Street Station offers access to Amtrak, SEPTA, and NJ Transit lines. Over 12\u00a0million SEPTA and NJ Transit rail commuters use the station each year, and more than 100,000 people on an average weekday.\nThe PATCO Speedline provides rapid transit service to Camden, Collingswood, Westmont, Haddonfield, Woodcrest (Cherry Hill), Ashland (Voorhees), and Lindenwold, New Jersey, from stations on Locust Street between 16th and 15th, 13th and 12th, and 10th and 9th streets, and on Market Street at 8th Street.\nAirports.\nPhiladelphia is served by two airports. Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), the larger of the two, is south-southwest of Center City on the boundary with Delaware County, and provides scheduled domestic and international air service. As of 2023, Philadelphia International Airport is the 21st-busiest airport in the nation with over 13.6 million passengers. It is also among the world's busiest airports measured by traffic movements, including takeoffs and landings. Over 30\u00a0million passengers pass through the airport annually on 25 airlines, including all major domestic carriers. The airport has nearly 500 daily departures to over 120 destinations worldwide. SEPTA's Airport Line provides direct service between Center City railroad stations and Philadelphia International Airport.\nPhiladelphia's second major airport, Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE), is a general aviation relief airport in Northeast Philadelphia, which provides general and corporate aviation.\nRoads.\nWilliam Penn planned Philadelphia with numbered streets traversing north and south, and streets named for trees, including Chestnut, Walnut, and Mulberry (since renamed Arch Streets, traversing east and west. The two main streets were named Broad Street, the north\u2013south artery, later designated Pennsylvania Route 611, and High Street, the east\u2013west artery, which was later renamed Market Street, converging at Centre Square which later became the site of City Hall.\nInterstate 95, also known as the Delaware Expressway, traverses the southern and eastern edges of the city along the Delaware River as the main north\u2013south controlled-access highway, and connects Philadelphia with Newark, New Jersey and New York City to the north and Baltimore and Washington, D.C. to the south. The city is served by Interstate 76, also known as the Schuylkill Expressway, which runs along the Schuylkill River, intersecting the Pennsylvania Turnpike at King of Prussia and providing access to Harrisburg and points west. Interstate 676, also known as Vine Street Expressway, links I-95 and I-76 through Center City, running below street level between the eastbound and westbound lanes of Vine Street. Entrance and exit ramps for the Benjamin Franklin Bridge are near the eastern end of the expressway just west of the I-95 interchange.\nRoosevelt Boulevard and Expressway, also known as U.S. 1, connects Northeast Philadelphia with Center City via I-76 through Fairmount Park. Woodhaven Road, also known as Route 63, and Cottman Avenue, also known as Route 73, serve the neighborhoods of Northeast Philadelphia, running between I-95 and the Roosevelt Boulevard. Fort Washington Expressway, also known as Route 309, extends north from the city's northern border, serving Montgomery and Bucks Counties. U.S. Route 30, also known as Lancaster Avenue, extends west from West Philadelphia to Lancaster.\nInterstate 476, locally called the Blue Route, traverses Delaware County, bypassing the city to the west and serving the city's western suburbs, providing a direct route to Allentown, the Poconos, and points north. Interstate 276, the Pennsylvania Turnpike's Delaware River extension, is a bypass and commuter route north of the city, which links to the New Jersey Turnpike and New York City.\nDelaware River Port Authority operates four bridges in the Philadelphia area, each of which cross the Delaware River to South Jersey: Walt Whitman Bridge (I-76), the Benjamin Franklin Bridge (I-676 and U.S. 30), Betsy Ross Bridge (New Jersey Route 90), and Commodore Barry Bridge (U.S. 322 in Delaware County, south of the city. The Burlington County Bridge Commission maintains two additional bridges that cross the Delaware River. Tacony\u2013Palmyra Bridge connects PA Route 73 in the Tacony section of Northeast Philadelphia with New Jersey Route 73 in Palmyra in Burlington County. Burlington\u2013Bristol Bridge connects NJ Route 413/U.S. Route 130 in Burlington, New Jersey with PA Route 413/U.S. 13 in Bristol Township, north of Philadelphia.\nBus service.\nThe Greyhound terminal is at 1001 Filbert Street (at 10th Street) in Center City, southeast of the Pennsylvania Convention Center and south of Chinatown. Several other bus operators provide service at the Greyhound terminal including Fullington Trailways, Martz Trailways, Peter Pan Bus Lines, and NJ Transit buses.\nOther intercity bus services include Megabus with stops at 30th Street Station and the visitor center for Independence Hall, BoltBus (operated by Greyhound) at 30th Street Station, OurBus at various stops in the city.\nRail.\nSince the early days of rail transportation in the United States, Philadelphia has served as a hub for several major rail companies, particularly the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Railroad. The Pennsylvania Railroad first operated Broad Street Station, then 30th Street Station and Suburban Station, and the Reading Railroad operated Reading Terminal, now part of the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The two companies also operated competing commuter rail systems in the area. The two systems now operate as a single system under the control of SEPTA, the regional transit authority. Additionally, the PATCO Speedline subway system and NJ Transit's Atlantic City Line operate successor services to South Jersey.\nIn 1911, Philadelphia had nearly 4,000 electric trolleys running on 86 lines. In 2005, SEPTA reintroduced trolley service to the Girard Avenue Line, Route 15. SEPTA operates six subway-surface trolleys that run on street-level tracks in West Philadelphia and subway tunnels in Center City, along with two surface trolleys in adjacent suburbs.\nPhiladelphia is a regional hub of the federally-owned Amtrak system, with 30th Street Station being a primary stop on the Washington-Boston Northeast Corridor and the Keystone Corridor to Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. 30th Street also serves as a major station for services via the Pennsylvania Railroad's former Pennsylvania Main Line to Chicago. As of 2018[ [update]], 30th Street is Amtrak's third-busiest station in the country, after New York City and Washington.\nUtilities.\nWater purity and availability.\nIn 1815, Philadelphia began sourcing its water via the Fairmount Water Works on the Schuylkill River, the nation's first major urban water supply system. In 1909, the Water Works was decommissioned as the city transitioned to modern sand filtration methods. Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) provides drinking water, wastewater collection, and stormwater services for Philadelphia, as well as surrounding counties. PWD draws about 57 percent of its drinking water from the Delaware River and the balance from the Schuylkill River. The city has two filtration plants on the Schuylkill River and one on the Delaware River. The three plants can treat up to 546\u00a0million gallons of water per day, while the total storage capacity of the combined plant and distribution system exceeds one billion gallons. The wastewater system consists of three water pollution control plants, 21 pumping stations, and about of sewers.\nElectricity.\nExelon subsidiary PECO Energy Company, founded as the Brush Electric Light Company of Philadelphia in 1881 and renamed Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) in 1902, provides electricity to about 1.6\u00a0million customers and more than 500,000 natural gas customers in the southeastern Pennsylvania area including the city of Philadelphia and most of its suburbs. PECO is the largest electric and natural gas utility in the state with 472 power substations and nearly of electric transmission and distribution lines and of natural gas transmission, distribution, and service lines.\nNatural gas.\nPhiladelphia Gas Works (PGW), overseen by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, is the nation's largest municipally-owned natural gas utility. PGW serves over 500,000 homes and businesses in the Philadelphia area. Founded in 1836, the company came under city ownership in 1987 and has been providing the majority of gas distributed within city limits. In 2014, the City Council refused to conduct hearings on a $1.86\u00a0billion sale of PGW, part of a two-year effort that was proposed by the mayor. The refusal led to the prospective buyer terminating its offer.\nTelecommunications.\nSoutheastern Pennsylvania was assigned the 215 area code in 1947 when the North American Numbering Plan of the Bell System went into effect. The geographic area covered by the code was split nearly in half in 1994 when area code 610 was created, with the city and its northern suburbs retaining 215. Overlay area code 267 was added to the 215 service area in 1997, and 484 was added to the 610 area in 1999. A plan in 2001 to introduce a third overlay code to both service areas, area code 445 to 215 and area code 835 to 610, was delayed and later rescinded. Area code 445 was implemented as an overlay for area codes 215 and 267 starting on February 3, 2018.\nSister cities.\nPhiladelphia also has three partnership cities or regions:\nPhiladelphia has eight official sister cities as designated by the Citizen Diplomacy International (CDI) of Philadelphia: Philadelphia has dedicated landmarks to its sister cities. The Sister Cities Park, a site of at 18th and Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Logan Square, was dedicated in June 1976. The park was built to commemorate Philadelphia's first two sister city relationships, with Tel Aviv and Florence. Toru\u0144 Triangle, honoring the sister city relationship with Toru\u0144, Poland, was constructed in 1976, west of the United Way building at 18th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Sister Cities Park was redesigned and reopened in 2012, featuring an interactive fountain honoring Philadelphia's sister and partnership cities, a caf\u00e9 and visitor center, children's play area, outdoor garden, boat pond, and a pavilion built to environmentally friendly standards.\nThe Chinatown Gate, erected in 1984 and crafted by artisans from Tianjin, stands astride 10th Street, on the north side of its intersection with Arch Street, as a symbol of the sister city relationship. The CDI of Philadelphia has participated in the U.S. Department of State's \"Partners for Peace\" project with Mosul, Iraq, and in accepting visiting delegations from dozens of other countries.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nclass=\"wikitable succession-box noprint\" style=\"margin:0.5em auto; font-size:small;clear:both;\"", "570934": "Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church\nHistoric church in Pennsylvania, United States\nThe Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is a historic church and congregation which is located at 419 South 6th Street in Center City Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The congregation, founded in 1794, is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal congregation in the nation.\nIts present church, completed in 1890, is the oldest church property in the United States to be continuously owned by African Americans. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972.\nHistory of the congregation.\nThe church was proposed in 1791 by members of the Free African Society of Philadelphia, including Absalom Jones, out of a desire to create a space for autonomous African-American worship and community in the city. The desire to create the church was strengthened in 1792, after African-American members of St. George's Methodist Church walked out due to racial segregation in the worship services. Leading roles in the founding were played by Richard Allen, who arranged the purchase of the church's site and its construction, and Absalom Jones, who raised funds among both black and white Philadelphia residents (including then-President George Washington). Mother Bethel was one of the first African-American churches in the United States, dedicated July 29, 1794, by Bishop Francis Asbury.\nOn October 12, 1794, Reverend Robert Blackwell announced that the congregation was received in full fellowship in the Methodist Episcopal Church.\nIn 1816, Rev. Richard Allen brought together other black Methodist congregations from the region to organize the new African Methodist Episcopal Church denomination. He was elected bishop of this denomination. After the American Civil War, its missionaries went to the South to help freedmen and planted many new churches in the region.\nIn 1838, the building was damaged during the riots that followed the destruction of Pennsylvania Hall.\nAllen and his wife, Sarah Allen are both buried in the present church's crypt. The current church building was constructed in 1888\u20131890, and it has been designated a National Historic Landmark.\nOn October 25, 2009, \"The Great Gathering\" took place at St. George's Church in which the community of Mother Bethel AME and St. George's congregations gathered for Sunday worship at St. George's for the first time since the historic walkout. The Rev. Dr. Mark Kelly Tyler preached for this service.\nBuilding history.\nThe property was acquired for the new congregation in 1794. Its first building was a frame structure originally used as a blacksmith's shop, which was hauled to the site.\nThis building was later replaced by frame structures in 1805 and 1841. The 1841 church was reported to have a tunnel connecting it with a nearby Quaker meetinghouse to facilitate the movements of fugitive slaves.\nThe present building, which was completed in 1890, is a three-story masonry structure with Romanesque styling. Its large round-arch windows are adorned with stained glass from Germany.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "9775667": "Tom Ferrick\nTom Ferrick, Jr. (1949) is an editor, reporter and columnist long active in print and web journalism in Philadelphia. Until 2013, he was senior editor of Metropolis, a local news and information Web site based in Philadelphia that he founded in 2009. Prior to that, he was a reporter, editor and columnist for \"The Philadelphia Inquirer\". After being a columnist there since 1998, he left the newspaper in 2008. He has spent nearly 40 years as a journalist, focusing mostly on government.\nHe is married to Sharon Sexton; they have two children. Born in South Philadelphia, he attended Temple University in the late 1960s. Although he did not graduate, he made many contributions to the school newspaper, The \"Temple News\".\nFerrick got a job with a since-disbanded news service, the United Press International, in Philadelphia and later in Harrisburg. In 1976, he was hired as a Statehouse reporter in Harrisburg for the \"Inquirer\" and climbed through a series of reporting and editing positions, including City Hall bureau chief, poverty reporter, political writer, deputy editor, and special-projects writer. He was a Richard Burke Memorial Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania in 1996 [3]. He has recently been active in the Great Expectations Project, a partnership between UPenn and the \"Inquirer\", which has held public forums throughout Philadelphia to accumulate voters' opinions Projekt to the 2007 Philadelphia mayoral race.\nIn 2014, he was interim editor of the news website AxisPhilly. In 2015, he was chief reporter/columnist for The Next Mayor Project, a joint project of Philly.com and the \"Inquirer\" and \"Daily News\". He regularly writes editorials for the \"Daily News,\" and has won two state Associated Press Managing Editor Awards for his editorials.\nHe has won numerous local, state and national awards for his work, including the George Polk Award, an Associated Press Managing Editors Award, a World Hunger Award and, in 2008, the Hal Hovey Award, given by Governing Magazine for excellence in coverage of government and politics. He was on a team of \"Inquirer\" reporters who covered the nuclear accident at the Three Mile Island plant, coverage that received a Pulitzer Prize. In 2005, he was named one of \"Pennsylvania's Most Influential Reporters\" by the Pennsylvania political news website PoliticsPA.\nHis father, for whom Ferrick is named, was a major league pitcher for five teams from 1941 through 1952.\nFerrick is also a lecturer in journalism at Bryn Mawr College.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["570934", "9775667", "50585"], "permutation_1": ["50585", "9775667", "570934"], "permutation_2": ["50585", "570934", "9775667"], "permutation_3": ["50585", "570934", "9775667"]}
{"id": "3hop1__469478_15840_36014", "docs_added": {"5980863": "Sunman (video game)\nSunman is an unreleased action video game developed by EIM and planned to be published by Sunsoft for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1992. Despite being mostly complete, it was never commercially released.\nGameplay.\nThe gameplay is similar to Sunsoft's Batman games, \"Batman\" and \"\", in that the character can run, jump, punch, and duck, although in this game the player can also fly simply by pushing up. There are also some side scrolling flying levels where the player can shoot laser/heat vision from Sunman's eyes. The game is divided into five stages, each made up of one to four areas, with a boss at the end of each stage.\nHistory.\nThe game features a superhero, named \"Sunman\". He is reminiscent of Superman with his cape, and flying abilities - furthermore, the game's title screen is similar to the Superman logo. Sunsoft's involvement with other DC Comics character licenses lead some to speculate that \"Sunman\" was intended to be a Superman game, but DC for whatever reason decided not to go along and the game had some changes made to lose the likeness. In an interview with planner/director Kenji Eno, it was confirmed that this was originally intended to be a Superman game.\nThe game was obtained by The Lost Levels, a website that specializes in unreleased and prototype video games, from a European collector without any information on what it was. It was to much surprise that the game could be functionally played through from start to finish. The game was made available for play as a ROM for use with an NES emulator. The early, rough prototype of the ROM was also made for release on The Lost Levels, and it indeed had sprites of Superman as the original sprites for the main character, and the background music played in-game replaced with John Williams's Superman Theme. Another unreleased Sunsoft cart in the US can be made to confirm that this was indeed \"Superman\" originally, as the levels are identical to \"Sunman\", but they are in a less finished form, and the player is able to skip levels by pausing and pressing the select button.\nIn February 2014, a ROM hack was released by a user with the pseudonym Pacnsacdave of a full \"Sunman\" to \"Superman\" NES conversion. The hack changes the title screen, cutscenes, and sprites to those of the actual Superman prototype ROM. It is unlicensed by Nintendo despite being marked as \"Licensed by Nintendo\" on the title screen.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "28314": "Super Nintendo Entertainment System\nHome video game console\nThe Super Nintendo Entertainment System, commonly shortened to Super Nintendo, Super NES or SNES, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in Europe and Oceania and 1993 in South America. In Japan, it is called the In South Korea, it is called the Super Comboy and was distributed by Hyundai Electronics. The system was released in Brazil on August 30, 1993, by Playtronic. In Russia and CIS, the system was distributed by Steepler from 1994 until 1996. Although each version is essentially the same, several forms of regional lockout prevent cartridges for one version from being used in other versions.\nThe Super NES is Nintendo's second programmable home console, following the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The console introduced advanced graphics and sound capabilities compared with other systems at the time, like the Sega Genesis. It was designed to accommodate the ongoing development of a variety of enhancement chips integrated into game cartridges to be more competitive into the next generation.\nThe Super NES received largely positive reviews and was a global success, becoming the best-selling console of the 16-bit era after launching relatively late and facing intense competition from Sega's Genesis console in North America and Europe. Overlapping the NES's 61.9\u00a0million unit sales, the Super NES remained popular well into the 32-bit era, with 49.1\u00a0million units sold worldwide by the time it was discontinued in 2003. It continues to be popular among collectors and retro gamers, with new homebrew games and Nintendo's emulated rereleases, such as on the Virtual Console, the Super NES Classic Edition, Nintendo Switch Online; as well as several non-console emulators which operate on a desktop computer or mobile device, such as Snes9x.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nTo compete with the popular Family Computer in Japan, NEC Home Electronics launched the PC Engine in 1987, and Sega followed suit with the Mega Drive in 1988. The two platforms were later launched in North America in 1989 as the TurboGrafx-16 and the Sega Genesis respectively. Both systems were built on 16-bit architectures and offered improved graphics and sound over the 8-bit NES. It took several years for Sega's system to become successful. Bill Mensch, the co-creator of the 8-bit MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor and founder of the Western Design Center (WDC), gave Ricoh the exclusive right to supply 8-bit and 16-bit WDC microprocessors for the new system. Meanwhile, Sony engineer Ken Kutaragi reached an agreement with Nintendo to design the console's sound chip without notifying his supervisors, who were enraged when they discovered the project; though Kutaragi was nearly fired, then-CEO Norio Ohga intervened in support of the project and gave him permission to complete it.\nOn September 9, 1987, then-Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi revealed the development of the Super Famicom in the newspaper \"Kyoto Shimbun\". On August 30, 1988, in an interview with \"TOUCH Magazine\", Yamauchi announced the development of \"Super Mario Bros. 4\", \"Dragon Quest V\", three original games, and he projected sales of 3 million units of the upcoming console. \"Famicom Hissyoubon\" magazine speculated that Yamauchi's early announcement was probably made to forestall Christmas shopping for the PC Engine, and relayed Enix's clarification that it was waiting on sales figures to select either PC Engine or Super Famicom for its next \"Dragon Quest\" game. The magazine and Enix both expressed a strong interest in networking as a standard platform feature. The console was demonstrated to the Japanese press on November 21, 1988, and again on July 28, 1989.\nLaunch.\nDesigned by Masayuki Uemura, the designer of the original Famicom, the Super Famicom was released in Japan on Wednesday, November 21, 1990, for \u00a5. It was an instant success. Nintendo's initial shipment of 300,000 units sold out within hours, and the resulting social disturbance led the Japanese government to ask video game manufacturers to schedule future console releases on weekends. This gained the attention of the yakuza criminal organizations, so the devices were shipped at night to avoid robbery.\nWith the Super Famicom quickly outselling its rivals, Nintendo reasserted itself as the leader of the Japanese console market. Nintendo's success was partially due to the retention of most of its key third-party developers, including Capcom, Konami, Tecmo, Square, Koei, and Enix.\nNintendo released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, a redesigned version of the Super Famicom, in North America for US$. It began shipping in limited quantities on August 23, 1991, with an official nationwide release date of September 9, 1991. The Super NES was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland in April 1992 for \u00a3.\nMost of the PAL region versions of the console use the Japanese Super Famicom design, except for labeling and the length of the joypad leads. The Playtronic Super NES in Brazil, although PAL-M, uses the North American design. Both the NES and Super NES were released in Brazil in 1993 by Playtronic, a joint venture between the toy company Estrela and consumer electronics company Gradiente.\nThe Super NES and Super Famicom launched with few games, but these games were well received. In Japan, only two games were initially available: \"Super Mario World\" and \"F-Zero\". \"Bombuzal\" was released during the launch week. In North America, \"Super Mario World\" was launched as a bundle with the console; other launch games include \"F-Zero\", \"Pilotwings\" (both of which demonstrate the console's Mode 7 pseudo-3D rendering), \"SimCity\", and \"Gradius III\".\nConsole wars.\nThe rivalry between Nintendo and Sega was described as one of the most notable console wars in video game history, in which Sega positioned the Genesis as the \"cool\" console, with games aimed at older audiences, and aggressive advertisements that occasionally attacked the competition. Nintendo scored an early public-relations advantage by securing the first console conversion of Capcom's arcade hit \"Street Fighter II\" for Super NES, which took more than a year to make the transition to the Genesis. Though the Genesis had a two-year lead to launch time, a much larger library of games, and a lower price point, it only represented an estimated 60% of the American 16-bit console market in June 1992, and neither console could maintain a definitive lead for several years. \"Donkey Kong Country\" is said to have helped establish the Super NES's market prominence in the latter years of the 16-bit generation, and for a time, maintain against the PlayStation and Saturn. According to Nintendo, the company had sold more than 20\u00a0million Super NES units in the U.S. According to a 2014 Wedbush Securities report based on NPD sales data, the Super NES outsold the Genesis in the U.S. market by 1.5 million units.\nChanges in policy.\nDuring the NES era, Nintendo maintained exclusive control over games released for the system \u2013 the company had to approve every game, each third-party developer could only release up to five games per year (but some third parties got around this by using different names, such as Konami's \"Ultra Games\" brand), those games could not be released on another console within two years, and Nintendo was the exclusive manufacturer and supplier of NES cartridges. Competition from Sega's console brought an end to this practice; in 1991, Acclaim Entertainment began releasing games for both platforms, with most of Nintendo's other licensees following suit over the next several years; Capcom (which licensed some games to Sega instead of producing them directly) and Square were the most notable holdouts.\nNintendo continued to carefully review submitted games, scoring them on a 40-point scale and allocating marketing resources accordingly. Each region performed separate evaluations. Nintendo of America also maintained a policy that, among other things, limited the amount of violence in the games on its systems. The surprise arcade hit \"Mortal Kombat\" (1992), a gory fighting game with huge splashes of blood and graphically violent fatality moves, was heavily censored by Nintendo. Because the Genesis version allowed for an uncensored version via cheat code, it outsold the censored Super NES version by a ratio of nearly three to one.\nU.S. Senators Herb Kohl and Joe Lieberman convened a Congressional hearing on December 9, 1993, to investigate the marketing of violent video games to children. Though Nintendo took the high ground with moderate success, the hearings led to the creation of the Interactive Digital Software Association and the Entertainment Software Rating Board and the inclusion of ratings on all video games. With these ratings in place, Nintendo decided its censorship policies were no longer needed.\n32-bit era and beyond.\nWhile other companies were moving on to 32-bit systems, Rare and Nintendo proved that the Super NES was still a strong contender in the market. In November 1994, Rare released \"Donkey Kong Country\", a platform game featuring 3D models and textures pre-rendered on Silicon Graphics workstations. With its detailed graphics, fluid animation, and high-quality music, \"Donkey Kong Country\" rivals the aesthetic quality of games that were being released on newer 32-bit CD-based consoles. In the last 45 days of 1994, 6.1\u00a0million copies were sold, making it the fastest-selling video game in history to that date. This game conveyed that early 32-bit systems had little to offer over the Super NES, and proved the market for the more advanced consoles of the near future. According to TRSTS reports, two of the top five bestselling games in the U.S. for December 1996 are Super NES games.\nIn October 1997, Nintendo released a redesigned model of the Super NES (the SNS-101 model referred to as \"New-Style Super NES\") in North America for US$, with some units including the pack-in game \"\". Like the earlier New-Style NES (model NES-101), this is slimmer and lighter than its predecessor, but it lacks S-Video and RGB output, and it is among the last major Super NES-related releases in the region. A similarly redesigned Super Famicom Jr. was released in Japan at around the same time. The redesign stayed out of Europe.\nNintendo ceased production of the Super NES in North America in 1999, about two years after releasing \"Kirby's Dream Land 3\" (its final second-party game in the US) on November 27, 1997, and one year after releasing \"Frogger\" (its final third-party game in the US) in 1998. In Japan, Nintendo continued production of both the Family Computer and the Super Famicom until September 25, 2003, and new games were produced until the year 2000, ending with the release of \"Metal Slader Glory Director's Cut\" on November 29, 2000.\nMany popular Super NES games were ported to the Game Boy Advance, which has similar video capabilities. In 2005, Nintendo announced that Super NES games would be made available for download via the Wii's Virtual Console service. On October 31, 2007, Nintendo Co., Ltd. announced that it would no longer repair Family Computer or Super Famicom systems due to an increasing shortage of the necessary parts. On March 3, 2016, Nintendo Co., Ltd. announced that it would bring Super NES games to the New Nintendo 3DS and New Nintendo 3DS XL (and later the New Nintendo 2DS XL) via its eShop download service. At the Nintendo Direct event on September 4, 2019, Nintendo announced that it would be bringing select Super NES games to the Nintendo Switch Online platform.\nHardware.\nTechnical specifications.\nThe 16-bit design of the Super NES incorporates graphics and sound co-processors that perform tiling and simulated 3D effects, a palette of 32,768 colors, and 8-channel ADPCM audio. These base platform features, plus the ability to dramatically extend them all through substantial chip upgrades inside of each cartridge, represent a leap over the 8-bit NES generation and some significant advantages over 16-bit competitors such as the Genesis.\nCPU and RAM.\nThe CPU is a Ricoh 5A22, a derivative of the 16-bit WDC 65C816 microprocessor. In NTSC regions, its nominal clock speed is 3.58 MHz will slow to either 2.68\u00a0MHz or 1.79\u00a0MHz when accessing some slower peripherals.\nThis CPU has an 8-bit data bus and two address buses. The 24-bit \"Bus\u00a0A\" is designated for general accesses, and the 8-bit \"Bus\u00a0B\" can access support chip registers such as the video and audio co-processors.\nThe WDC 65C816 supports an 8-channel DMA unit, an 8-bit parallel I/O port a controller port interface circuits allowing serial and parallel access to controller data, a 16-bit multiplication and division unit, and circuitry for generating non-maskable interrupts on V-blank and IRQ interrupts on calculated screen positions.\nEarly revisions of the 5A22 used in SHVC boards are prone to spontaneous failure which can produce a variety of symptoms including graphics glitches in Mode 7, a black screen on power-on, or improperly reading the controllers. The first revision 5A22 has a fatal bug in the DMA controller that can crash games; this was corrected in subsequent revisions.\nThe console contains 128KB of general-purpose \"work\" RAM, which is separate from the 64KB dedicated to the video subsystem and the 64KB dedicated to the audio subsystem.\nVideo.\nThe Picture Processing Unit (PPU) consists of two closely tied IC packages. It contains 64KB of SRAM for video data, 544 bytes of object attribute memory (OAM) for sprite data, and 256\u00a0\u00d7\u00a015 bits of color generator RAM (CGRAM) for palette data. This CGRAM provisions up to 256 colors, chosen from the 15-bit RGB color space, from a palette of 32,768 colors. The PPU is clocked by the same signal as the CPU and generates a pixel every two or four cycles.\nAudio.\nThe S-SMP audio subsystem consisted of a 16-bit digital signal processor (DSP) to sequence the mix samples, an 8-bit SPC700 CPU to drive the DSP and 64KB of dedicated PSRAM. It was designed by Ken Kutaragi and produced by Sony and is completely independent from the rest of the system. It is clocked at a nominal 24.576\u00a0MHz in both NTSC and PAL systems. It is capable of stereo sound, composed from eight voices generated using 16-bit audio samples compressed using BRR and capable of applying effects such as echo. On early revisions of the motherboard the S-SMP audio system was spread across four chips: the DSP, the CPU, and two RAM modules. On later revisions, the sound hardware consolidated to a single chip, the S-APU.\nRegional lockout.\nNintendo employed several types of regional lockout, including both physical and hardware incompatibilities.\nPhysically, the cartridges are shaped differently for different regions. North American cartridges have a rectangular bottom with inset grooves matching protruding tabs in the console, and other regions' cartridges are narrower with a smooth curve on the front and no grooves. The physical incompatibility can be overcome with the use of various adapters, or through modification of the console.\nInternally, a regional lockout chip (CIC) within the console and in each cartridge prevents the PAL region games from being played on Japanese or North American consoles and vice versa. The Japanese and North American machines have the same region chip. This can be overcome through the use of adapters, typically by inserting the imported cartridge in one slot and a cartridge with the correct region chip in a second slot. Alternatively, disconnecting one pin of the console's lockout chip will prevent it from locking the console; hardware in later games can detect this situation, so it became common to install a switch to reconnect the lockout chip as needed.\nPAL consoles face another incompatibility when playing out-of-region cartridges: the NTSC video standard specifies video at 60\u00a0Hz but PAL operates at 50\u00a0Hz, resulting in an approximately 16.7% slower framerate. PAL's higher resolution results in letterboxing of the output image. Some commercial PAL region releases exhibit this same problem and, therefore, can be played in NTSC systems without issue, but other games will face a 20% speedup if played in an NTSC console. To mostly correct this issue, a switch can be added to place the Super NES PPU into a 60\u00a0Hz mode supported by most newer PAL televisions. Later games will detect this setting and refuse to run, requiring the switch to be thrown only after the check completes.\nCasing.\nAll models of the Super NES control deck are predominantly gray, of slightly different shades. The original North American version, designed by Nintendo of America industrial designer Lance Barr (who previously redesigned the Famicom to become the NES), has a boxy design with purple sliding switches and a dark gray eject lever. The loading bay surface is curved, both to invite interaction and to prevent food or drinks from being placed on the console and spilling as with the flat-surfaced NES. The Japanese and European versions are more rounded, with darker gray accents and buttons.\nAll versions incorporate a top-loading slot for game cartridges, although the shape of the slot differs between regions to match the different shapes of the cartridges. The MULTI OUT connector (later used on the Nintendo 64 and GameCube) can output composite video, S-Video and RGB signals, as well as RF with an external RF modulator. Original versions additionally include a 28-pin expansion port under a small cover on the bottom of the unit and a standard RF output with channel selection switch on the back; the redesigned models output composite video only, requiring an external modulator for RF.\nThe Nintendo Super System (NSS) is an arcade system for retail preview of 11 particular Super NES games in the United States, similar to the PlayChoice-10 for NES games. It consists of slightly modified Super NES hardware with a menu interface and 25-inch monitor, that allows gameplay for a certain amount of time depending on game credits. Manufacturing of this model was discontinued in 1992.\nRedesigned model.\nA cost-reduced version of the console, referred to as the New-Style Super NES (model SNS-101) in North America and as the in Japan, was released late in the platform's lifespan; designed by Barr, it incorporates design elements from both the original North American and Japanese/European console models but in a smaller form factor. Unlike the original console models, the redesigned model is virtually identical across both regions save for the color palette (the North American model receiving purple buttons and the Japanese model receiving grey buttons). The redesign did not receive a release in Europe.\nExternally, the power and reset buttons were moved to the left-hand side of the console while the cartridge eject button and power LED indicator were omitted. Internally, the redesigned model consolidates the console's hardware into a system-on-chip (SoC) design. The redesigned console lacks the bottom expansion slot, rendering it incompatible with the Japan-exclusive Satellaview add-on.\nFor AV output, the redesigned console features the same multi-out port used on the original models. Unlike the latter models, the former's AV port only supports composite video output natively as support for RGB video and S-Video was disabled internally; however, they can be restored via a \"relatively simple\" modification. The internal RF modulator was also removed, requiring an external one for such output if needed. Due to the SoC design, it is highly sought after by Super NES/Famicom enthusiasts since its RGB video quality (if restored) is improved over earlier internal revisions of the console.\nThe redesigned console first released in October 1997 in North America, where it originally retailed for US$99.95 in a bundle with \"\";\nit was subsequently released in Japan on March 27, 1998, where it retailed for \u00a57,800. Nintendo marketed it as an entry-level gamer's system for consumers who were apprehensive about the higher price of newer systems such as the Nintendo 64. Nintendo also introduced a slightly altered controller for it, with the console's logo replaced by an embossed Nintendo logo.\nYellowing.\nThe ABS plastic used in the casing of some older Super NES and Super Famicom consoles is particularly susceptible to oxidation with exposure to air. This, along with the particularly light color of the original plastic, causes affected consoles to quickly become yellow; if the sections of the casing came from different batches of plastic, a \"two-tone\" effect results. This issue may be reversed with a method called Retrobrighting, where a mixture of chemicals is applied to the case and exposed to UV light.\nGame cartridge.\nSuper NES games are distributed on ROM cartridges, officially referred to as Game Pak in most Western regions, and as in Japan and parts of Latin America. Though the Super NES can address 128\u00a0Mbit, only 117.75\u00a0Mbit are actually available for cartridge use. A fairly normal mapping could easily address up to 95\u00a0Mbit of ROM data (48\u00a0Mbit at FastROM speed) with 8\u00a0Mbit of battery-backed RAM. Most available memory access controllers only support mappings of up to 32\u00a0Mbit. The largest games released (\"Tales of Phantasia\" and \"Star Ocean\") contain 48\u00a0Mbit of ROM data, and the smallest games contain only 2\u00a0Mbit.\nCartridges may also contain battery-backed SRAM to save the game state, extra working RAM, custom coprocessors, or any other hardware that will not exceed the maximum current rating of the console.\nGames.\n1757 Super NES games were officially released: 717 in North America (plus 4 championship cartridges), 521 in Europe, 1,448 in Japan, 231 on Satellaview, and 13 on Sufami Turbo. Many Super NES games have been called some of the greatest video games of all time, such as \"Super Mario World\" (1990), \"\" (1991), \"Final Fantasy VI\" (1994), \"Donkey Kong Country\" (1994), \"EarthBound\" (1994), \"Super Metroid\" (1994), \"Chrono Trigger\" (1995) and \"Yoshi's Island\" (1995). Many Super NES games have been rereleased several times, including on the Virtual Console, Super NES Classic Edition, and the classic games service on Nintendo Switch Online. All Game Boy games are playable with the Super Game Boy add-on.\nPeripherals.\nThe Super NES controller design expands on that of the NES, with A, B, X, and Y face buttons in a diamond arrangement, and two shoulder buttons. Lance Barr created its ergonomic design, and he later adapted it in 1993 for the NES-039 \"dogbone\" controller. The Japanese and PAL region versions incorporated the four colors of the face buttons into the system's logo. The North American version's buttons were colored to match the redesigned console; the X and Y buttons are lavender with concave faces, and the A and B buttons are purple with convex faces. Several later controller designs have elements from the Super NES controller, including the PlayStation, Dreamcast, Xbox, and Wii Classic Controller. This face button layout is on future Nintendo systems since the Nintendo DS.\nSeveral peripherals add to the functionality of the Super NES. Some are required by certain games, such as the Super Scope light gun, and the Super NES Mouse for a point and click interface. Various third-parties, under license from Nintendo, released multitap adapters connecting up to five controllers into a single console, starting with the Super Multitap by Hudson Soft in conjunction with the \"Super Bomberman\" series. Specialized third-party controllers, such as the AsciiPad and Super Advantage (the successor to the NES Advantage) by Asciiware, and the Capcom Fighter Power Stick, an arcade-like joystick controller by Capcom designed specifically for \"Street Fighter II\". Unusual controllers include the BatterUP baseball bat, the Life Fitness Entertainment System (an exercise bike controller with built-in monitoring software), the TeeV Golf golf club, and the Justifier (a revolver-shaped light gun made by Konami for \"Lethal Enforcers\").\nThough Nintendo never released an adapter for playing NES games on the Super NES, the Super Game Boy adapter cartridge allows games designed for Nintendo's portable Game Boy system to be played on the Super NES. The Super Game Boy touts several feature enhancements over the Game Boy, including palette substitution, custom screen borders, and access to the Super NES console's features by specially enhanced Game Boy games. Japan also saw the release of the Super Game Boy 2, which adds a communication port to enable a second Game Boy to connect for multiplayer games.\nLike the NES before it, the Super NES has unlicensed third-party peripherals, including a new version of the Game Genie cheat cartridge designed for use with Super NES games.\nSoon after the release of the Super NES, companies began marketing backup devices such as the Super Wildcard, Super Pro Fighter Q, and Game Doctor. These devices create a backup of a cartridge, and can be used to play illicit ROM images or to copy games, violating copyright laws in many jurisdictions.\nThe Japan-only Satellaview is a satellite modem attached to the Super Famicom's expansion port and connected to the St.GIGA satellite radio station from April 23, 1995, to June 30, 2000. Satellaview subscribers could download gaming news and specially designed games, which were frequently either remakes of or sequels to older Famicom games, and released in installments. In the United States, the relatively short-lived XBAND allowed users to connect to a network via a dial-up modem to compete against other players around the country.\nNintendo attempted partnerships with Sony and then Philips, to develop CD-ROM-based peripheral prototypes for the console to compete with the TurboGrafx-CD and Sega CD. Sony produced the PlayStation (a brand name the company would use for their later independently produced console), a Super NES console with a built-in CD-ROM drive that never made it past the prototype phase. The Philips project was canceled without a prototype but Philips retained the contractual right to develop games based on Nintendo franchises, which it published for its CD-i multimedia console.\nEnhancement chips.\nAs part of the overall plan for the Super NES, rather than include an expensive CPU that would still become obsolete in a few years, the hardware designers made it easy to interface special coprocessor chips to the console, just like the MMC chips used for most NES games. This is most often characterized by 16 additional pins on the cartridge card edge.\nThe Super FX is a RISC CPU designed to perform functions that the main CPU can not feasibly do. The chip is primarily used to create 3D game worlds made with polygons, texture mapping and light source shading. The chip can also be used to enhance 2D games.\nThe Nintendo fixed-point digital signal processor (DSP) chip allowed fast vector-based calculations, bitmap conversions, both 2D and 3D coordinate transformations, and other functions. Four revisions of the chip exist, each physically identical but with different microcode. The DSP-1 version, including the later 1A and 1B bug fix revisions, is used most often; the DSP-2, DSP-3, and DSP-4 are used in only one game each.\nSimilar to the 5A22 CPU in the console, the SA-1 chip contains a 65C816 processor core clocked at 10.7\u00a0MHz, a memory mapper, DMA, decompression and bitplane conversion circuitry, several programmable timers, and CIC region lockout functionality.\nIn Japan, games could be downloaded cheaper than standard cartridges, from Nintendo Power kiosks onto special cartridges containing flash memory and a MegaChips MX15001TFC chip. The chip manages communication with the kiosks to download ROM images and has an initial menu to select a game. Some were published both in cartridge and download form, and others were download only. The service closed on February 8, 2007.\nMany cartridges contain other enhancement chips, most of which were created for use by a single company in a few games.\nReception and legacy.\nApproximately 49.1\u00a0million Super NES consoles were sold worldwide, with 23.35\u00a0million of those units sold in the Americas and 17.17\u00a0million in Japan. Although it could not quite repeat the success of the NES, which sold 61.91\u00a0million units worldwide, the Super NES was the best-selling console of its era.\nIn a 1997 year-end review, a team of five \"Electronic Gaming Monthly\" editors gave the Super NES scores of 5.5, 8.0, 7.0, 7.0, and 8.0. Though they criticized how few new games were coming out for the system and how dated its graphics were compared to current generation consoles, they regarded its selection of must-have games to be still unsurpassed. Additionally noting that used Super NES games were readily available in bargain bins, most of them still recommended buying a Super NES. In 2007, \"GameTrailers\" named the Super NES as the second-best console of all time (only behind the PlayStation 2) in their list of top ten consoles that \"left their mark on the history of gaming\", citing its graphics, sound, and library of top-quality games. In 2015, they also named it the best Nintendo console of all time, saying, \"The list of games we love from this console completely annihilates any other roster from the Big N.\" Technology columnist Don Reisinger proclaimed \"The SNES is the greatest console of all time\" in January 2008, citing the quality of the games and the console's dramatic improvement over its predecessor; fellow technology columnist Will Greenwald replied with a more nuanced view, giving the Super NES top marks with his heart, the NES with his head, and the PlayStation (for its controller) with his hands. GamingExcellence also gave the Super NES first place in 2008, declaring it \"simply the most timeless system ever created\" with many games that stand the test of time and citing its innovation in controller design, graphics capabilities, and game storytelling. At the same time, GameDaily rated it fifth of the ten greatest consoles for its graphics, audio, controllers, and games. In 2009, \"IGN\" named the Super NES the fourth-best video game console, complimenting its audio and number of AAA games.\nEmulation.\nSNES emulation began with VSMC in 1994, and Super Pasofami became the first working emulator in 1996. During that time, two competing emulation projects, Snes96 and Snes97, merged to form Snes9x. In 1997, ZSNES development began. In 2004, Bsnes development began with the goal of preservation through maximal accuracy and compatibility, and was later renamed to Higan.\nNintendo of America maintained its stance against the distribution of SNES ROM image files and the use of emulators, as it had with the NES before, saying they represent copyright infringement. Emulation proponents assert that the discontinued hardware production constitutes abandonware status, the owners' right to make a personal backup, space shifting for private use, the development of homebrew games, the frailty of ROM cartridges and consoles, and the lack of certain foreign imports. Nintendo designed a hobbyist development system for the SNES, but never released it.\nUnofficial SNES emulation is available on virtually all platforms, including Android, iOS, game consoles, and PDAs. Individual games have been bundled with official dedicated emulators on some GameCube discs, and Nintendo's Virtual Console service for the Wii introduced diverse and officially licensed SNES emulation.\nThe Super NES Classic Edition was released in September 2017 following the NES Classic Edition. This emulation-based mini-console, which is physically modeled after the North American and European versions of the SNES, is bundled with two SNES-style controllers and 21 games, including the unreleased \"Star Fox 2\".\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18944028": "Nintendo Entertainment System\nHome video game console\nThe Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on July 15, 1983, as the It was released in US test markets as the redesigned NES in October 1985, and fully launched in the US the following year. The NES was distributed in Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia throughout the 1980s under various names. As a third-generation console, it mainly competed with Sega's Master System.\nThe NES was designed by Masayuki Uemura. Nintendo's president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, called for a simple, cheap console that could run arcade games on cartridges. The controller design was reused from Nintendo's portable Game & Watch hardware. The western model was redesigned to resemble a video cassette recorder. Nintendo released add-ons such as the NES Zapper light gun for several shooting games, and R.O.B, a toy robot accessory.\nThe NES is regarded as one of the most influential consoles. It helped revitalise the American gaming industry following the video game crash of 1983, and pioneered a now-standard business model of licensing third-party developers to produce and distribute games. The NES features several influential games, including \"Super Mario Bros.\" (1985), \"The Legend of Zelda\" (1986), \"Metroid\" (1986) and \"Mega Man\" (1987), which became major franchises.\nThe NES dominated Japanese and North American markets, but initially underperformed in Europe, where it faced strong competition from the Sega Master System and microcomputers. With 61.91\u00a0million units sold, it is one of the best-selling consoles. It was succeeded in 1990 by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.\nHistory.\nBackground.\nThe video game industry experienced rapid growth and popularity from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, marked by the golden age of arcade games and the second generation of consoles. Games like \"Space Invaders\" (1978) became a phenomenon across arcades worldwide, while home consoles such as the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision gained footholds in the American market. Many companies emerged to capitalise on the growing industry, including the playing card manufacturer Nintendo.\nHiroshi Yamauchi, who had been Nintendo's president since 1949, realised that breakthroughs in the electronics industry meant that entertainment products could be produced at lower prices. Companies such as Atari and Magnavox were already selling gaming devices for use with television sets, to moderate success. Yamauchi negotiated a licence with Magnavox to sell its game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. Since Nintendo's operation was not yet sophisticated enough to design its own hardware, Yamauchi forged an alliance with Mitsubishi Electric and hired several Sharp Electronics employees to assist in developing the Color TV-Game 6 in Japan. This was followed by a more successful sequel, the Color TV-Game 15, and the handheld Game & Watch series. The successes of these machines gave Yamauchi the confidence to expand Nintendo's influence in the fledgling video game industry.\nIn 1978, Yamauchi split Nintendo into separate research and development divisions. He appointed Masayuki Uemura as head of Nintendo Research & Development 2, a division that focused solely on hardware. Yamauchi, through extensive discussions with Uemura and other engineers, recognised the potential of the developing console beyond gaming. He envisioned a home-computer system disguised as a toy, which could significantly expand Nintendo's reach if it became popular with children. This popularity would drive demand for games, with Nintendo as the sole provider. Indeed, by 1980 several systems had already been released in Japan by both American and Japanese companies. Yamauchi tasked Uemura with developing a system that would be superior to its competitors and difficult to replicate for at least a year. Uemura's main challenge was economic rather than technological; Yamauchi wanted the system to be affordable enough for widespread household adoption, aiming for a price of \u00a59,800 (less than $75) compared to existing machines priced at \u00a530,000 to \u00a550,000 ($200 to $350). The new system had to outperform other systems, both Japanese and American, while being significantly more affordable.\nInception.\nAs development progressed on the new video game system, engineers sought Yamauchi's guidance on its features. They questioned whether to include a disk drive, keyboard, data port, as well as the potential for a modem, expanded memory, and other computer-like capabilities. Yamauchi ultimately instructed Uemura to prioritise simplicity and affordability, omitting these peripherals entirely. Game cartridges, which Uemura saw as \"less intimidating\" to consumers, were chosen as the format. The team designed the system with 2,000 bytes of random-access memory (RAM), significantly more than Atari's 256 bytes. Larger cartridges also allowed for far more complex games, with thirty-two times the code capacity of Atari cartridges.\nThe console's hardware was largely based on arcade video games, particularly the hardware for Namco's \"Galaxian\" (1979) and Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\", with the goal of matching their powerful sprite and scrolling capabilities in a home system. A test model was constructed in October 1982 to verify the functionality of the hardware, and work began on programming tools. Because 65xx CPUs had not been manufactured or sold in Japan by that time, no cross-development software was available and it had to be developed from scratch. Early Famicom games were written on a NEC PC-8001 computer. LEDs on a grid were used with a digitizer to design graphics as no such software design tools existed at that time.\nThe codename for the project was \"GameCom\", but Masayuki Uemura's wife proposed the name \"Famicom\", arguing that \"In Japan, 'pasokon' is used to mean a personal computer, but it is neither a home nor personal computer. Perhaps we could say it is a family computer.\" Meanwhile, Hiroshi Yamauchi decided that the console should use a red and white theme after seeing a billboard for DX Antenna (a Japanese antenna manufacturer) which used those colors.\nDevelopment.\nThe Famicom was influenced by the ColecoVision, Coleco's competition against the Atari 2600 in the United States; the ColecoVision's top-seller was a port of Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\". The project's chief manager Takao Sawano brought a ColecoVision home to his family, impressed by its smooth graphics, which contrasts with the flicker and slowdown commonly seen on Atari 2600 games. Uemura said the ColecoVision set the bar for the Famicom. They wanted to surpass it and match the more powerful \"Donkey Kong\" arcade hardware; they took a \"Donkey Kong\" arcade cabinet to chip manufacturer Ricoh for analysis, which led to Ricoh producing the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) chip for the NES.\nOriginal plans called for the Famicom's cartridges to be the size of a cassette tape, but ultimately they ended up being twice as big. Careful design attention was paid to the cartridge connectors because loose and faulty connections often plagued arcade machines. As it necessitated 60 connection lines for the memory and expansion, Nintendo decided to produce its own connectors.\nThe controllers are hard-wired to the console with no connectors for cost reasons. The controller designs were reused from the Game & Watch machines, although the Famicom design team originally wanted to use arcade-style joysticks, even dismantling some from American game consoles to see how they worked. There were concerns regarding the durability of the joystick design and that children might step on joysticks on the floor. Katsuya Nakawaka attached a Game & Watch D-pad to the Famicom prototype and found that it was easy to use and caused no discomfort. Ultimately though, they installed a 15-pin expansion port on the front of the console so that an optional arcade-style joystick could be used.\nGunpei Yokoi suggested an eject lever, which was not necessary, but he believed that children could be entertained by pressing it. Uemura adopted his idea. Uemura added a microphone to the second controller with the idea that it could be used to make players\u2019 voices sound through the TV speaker.\nJapanese release.\nThe console was released on July 15, 1983, as the for \u00a5 () with three ports of Nintendo's successful arcade games \"Donkey Kong\", \"Donkey Kong Jr.\", and \"Popeye\". The Famicom was slow to gather success; a bad chip set caused the early revisions to crash. Following a product recall and a reissue with a new motherboard, the Famicom's popularity soared, becoming the bestselling game console in Japan by the end of 1984 in what came to be called the \"Famicom Boom\".\nNintendo launched the system with only first-party games, but after being approached by Namco and Hudson Soft in 1984, agreed to produce third-party games for a 30% fee for console licensing and production costs. This rate continued in the industry for consoles and digital storefront into the 21st century.\nNorth American release.\nNintendo targeted the North American market, entering distribution negotiations with Atari, Inc. to release a redesigned Famicom with Atari's name as the Nintendo Advanced Video Gaming System. The deal was set to be finalized and signed at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in June 1983. However, Atari discovered at that show that its competitor Coleco was illegally demonstrating its Coleco Adam computer with Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\" game. This violation of Atari's exclusive license with Nintendo to publish the game for its own computer systems delayed the implementation of Nintendo's game console marketing contract with Atari. Atari's CEO Ray Kassar was fired the next month, so the deal went nowhere, and Nintendo decided to market its system on its own.\nSubsequent plans for the Nintendo Advanced Video System likewise never materialized. It was privately demonstrated as a repackaged Famicom console featuring a keyboard, cassette data recorder, wireless joystick controller, and a special BASIC cartridge. By the beginning of 1985, more than 2.5\u00a0million Famicom units had been sold in Japan, and Nintendo soon announced plans to release it in North America as the Advanced Video Entertainment System (AVS) that year. The American video game press was skeptical that the console could have any success in the region, as the industry was still recovering from the video game crash of 1983. The March 1985 issue of \"Electronic Games\" magazine stated that \"the videogame market in America has virtually disappeared\" and that \"this could be a miscalculation on Nintendo's part\".\nThe Famicom hardware first made its North American debut in the arcades, in the form of the Nintendo VS. System in 1984. The system's success in arcades paved the way for the official release of the NES console. With US retailers refusing to stock game consoles, Yamauchi realized there was still a market for video games in the arcades, so he introduced the Famicom to North America through the arcade industry. The VS. System became a major success in North American arcades, becoming the highest-grossing arcade machine of 1985 in the United States. By the time the NES launched, nearly 100,000 VS. Systems had been sold to American arcades. The success of the VS. System gave Nintendo the confidence to release the Famicom in North America as a video game console, for which there was growing interest due to Nintendo's positive reputation in the arcades. It also gave Nintendo the opportunity to test new games as VS. Paks in the arcades, to determine which games to release for the NES launch.\nAt the 1985 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of the Famicom: a stripped-down and cost-reduced redesign of the Advanced Video System (AVS), having abandoned the home computer approach. Nintendo purposefully designed the system to avoid resembling a video game console and avoided terms associated with game consoles. Marketing manager Gail Tilden chose the term \"Game Pak\" for cartridges, \"Control Deck\" for the console, and \"Entertainment System\" for the whole platform. Renamed the \"Nintendo Entertainment System\" (\"NES\"), the new and cost-reduced version lacked most of the upscale features added in the AVS but retained many of its audiophile-inspired design elements, such as the grey colour scheme and boxy form factor. Disappointed with the cosmetically raw prototype part they received from Japan, which they nicknamed \"the lunchbox\", Nintendo of America designers Lance Barr and Don James added the two-tone gray, the black stripe, and the red lettering. To obscure the video game connotation, the NES replaced the top-loading cartridge slot of the Famicom and AVS with a front-loading chamber for software cartridges that kept the inserted cartridge out of view, reminiscent of a video cassette recorder. The Famicom's pair of hard-wired controllers and the AVS's wireless controllers were replaced with two custom 7-pin sockets for detachable wired controllers.\nAt June 1985's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of its Famicom, with a new case redesigned by Lance Barr and featuring a \"zero insertion force\" cartridge slot. The change from a top-loader in the Famicom to a front-loader was to make the new console more like a video cassette recorder, which had grown in popularity by 1985, and differentiate the unit from past video game consoles. Additionally, Uemura explained that Nintendo developers had feared that the console's electronics might face electrostatic hazards in dry American states such as Arizona and Texas, and a front-loading design would be safer if children handled the console carelessly.\nThis was deployed as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Nintendo seeded these first systems to limited American test markets starting in New York City on October 18, 1985, and followed up in Los Angeles in February 1986; the American nationwide release came on September 27, 1986. Nintendo released 17 launch games: \"10-Yard Fight\", \"Baseball\", \"Clu Clu Land\", \"Duck Hunt\", \"Excitebike\", \"Golf\", \"Gyromite\", \"Hogan's Alley\", \"Ice Climber\", \"Kung Fu\", \"Pinball\", \"Soccer\", \"Stack-Up\", \"Super Mario Bros.\", \"Tennis\", \"Wild Gunman\", and \"Wrecking Crew\". Nintendo contracted Worlds of Wonder to distribute the console physically. WoW salesman Jim Whims distinctly recalled delivering an ultimatum: \"if you want to sell Teddy Ruxpin and you want to sell Lazer Tag, you're gonna sell Nintendo as well. And if you feel that strongly about it, then you ought to just resign the line now.\" This marketing tactic led to the NES' financial success in North America in its first year; Nintendo of America would later terminate the contract and hired the company's sales staff (whom Atari offered them in 1983), while taking on physical distribution of the console itself.\nThe system's launch represented not only a new product, but also a reframing of the severely damaged home video game market in North America. The 1983 video game crash had occurred in large part due to a lack of consumer and retailer confidence in video games, which had been partially due to confusion and misrepresentation in video game marketing. Prior to the NES, the packaging of many video games presented bombastic artwork which did not represent a game's actual graphics. Furthermore, a single game such as \"Pac-Man\" appeared across consoles with substantial variations in graphics, sound, and general quality. In contrast, Nintendo's marketing strategy aimed to regain consumer and retailer confidence by delivering a singular platform whose graphics could be represented truthfully and whose qualities were clearly defined.\nTo differentiate Nintendo's new home platform from the perception of a troubled and shallow video game market still reeling from the 1983 crash, the company freshened its product nomenclature and established a strict product approval and licensing policy. The overall platform is referred to as \"Entertainment System\" instead of a \"video game system\", is centered upon a machine called a \"Control Deck\" instead of a \"console\", and features software cartridges called \"Game Paks\" instead of \"video games\". This allowed Nintendo to gain more traction in selling the system in toy stores. To deter production of games which had not been licensed by Nintendo, and to prevent copying, the 10NES lockout chip system acts as a lock-and-key coupling of each Game Pak and Control Deck. The packaging of the launch lineup of NES games bear pictures of close representations of actual onscreen graphics. To reduce consumer confusion, symbols on the games' packaging clearly indicate the genre of the game. A seal of quality is on all licensed game and accessory packaging. The initial seal states, \"This seal is your assurance that Nintendo has approved and guaranteed the quality of this product\". This text was later changed to \"Official Nintendo Seal of Quality\".\nUnlike with the Famicom, Nintendo of America marketed the console primarily to children, instituting a strict policy of censoring profanity, sexual, religious, or political content. The most famous example is Lucasfilm Games's attempts to port the comedy-horror game \"Maniac Mansion\" to the NES, which Nintendo insisted be considerably watered down.\nThe optional Robotic Operating Buddy, or R.O.B., was part of a marketing plan to portray the NES's technology as being novel and sophisticated when compared to previous game consoles, and to portray its position as being within reach of the better established toy market. Though at first, the American public exhibited limited excitement for the console itself, peripherals such as the light gun and R.O.B. attracted extensive attention.\nOther markets.\nIn Europe and Oceania, the NES was released in two separate marketing regions. The first consisted of mainland Europe (excluding Italy) where distribution was handled by several different companies, with Nintendo responsible for manufacturing. The NES saw an early launch in Europe in 1986 although most of the European countries received the console in 1987. The release in Scandinavia was on September 1, 1986, where it was released by Bergsala. In the Netherlands, it was released in the last quarter of 1987 and was distributed by Bandai BV. In France, it was released in October 1987, and in Spain most likely in 1988 through distributor Spaco. Also in 1987, Mattel handled distribution for the second region, consisting of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Australia and New Zealand. In other European countries, distribution was taken over by smaller companies like Bienengr\u00e4ber in Germany, ASD in France, Concentra in Portugal, Itochu in Greece and Cyprus, Stadlbauer in Austria, Switzerland and the former Eastern Bloc. In Poland, the NES had its release on October 6, 1994 along with the SNES and the Game Boy. In November 1994, Nintendo signed an agreement with Steepler to permit the continued sale of the Dendy, an unauthorized hardware clone of the Famicom, in Russia in exchange for also distributing the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo anticipated the NES would have a 25 per cent share in these countries, and saw particular potential in the United Kingdom. It sold modestly in Europe, however.\nIn Brazil, the console was released late in 1993 by Playtronic, even after the SNES. But the Brazilian market had been dominated by unlicensed NES clones \u2013 both locally made, and smuggled from Taiwan. One of the most successful local clones was the Phantom System, manufactured by Gradiente, which licensed Nintendo products in the country for the following decade. The sales of officially licensed products were low, due to the cloning, the quite late official launch, and the high prices of Nintendo's licensed products.\nOutside of Japan, regions in greater Asia received an \"Asian version\" of the front-loader NES though imported Famicom systems were prevalent. Due to import restrictions, NES consoles in India and South Korea were rebranded and distributed by local licensees. The Indian version is called the \"Samurai Electronic TV Game System\" and the Korean version is called the \"Hyundai Comboy\". The console sold very poorly in India due to affordability and a lack of consumer awareness.\nBundles and redesigns.\nFor its complete North American release, the Nintendo Entertainment System was progressively released over the ensuing years in several different bundles, beginning with the Deluxe Set, the Basic Set, the Action Set, and the Power Set. The Deluxe Set was launched in the 1985 test markets, retailing at US$, including R.O.B., a light gun called the NES Zapper, two controllers, and the two Game Paks \"Gyromite\" and \"Duck Hunt\". The Control Deck bundle was first released in 1987 at $ with no game, and $ bundled with the \"Super Mario Bros.\" cartridge. The Action Set, released April 14, 1988, for $, has the Control Deck, two controllers, an NES Zapper, and a dual Game Pak containing both \"Super Mario Bros.\" and \"Duck Hunt\".\nThe Power Set of 1989 includes the console, two game controllers, an NES Zapper, a Power Pad, and a triple Game Pak containing \"Super Mario Bros\", \"Duck Hunt\", and \"World Class Track Meet\". In 1990, a Sports Set bundle was released, including the console, an NES Satellite infrared wireless multitap adapter, four game controllers, and a dual Game Pak containing \"Super Spike V'Ball\" and \"Nintendo World Cup\". Two more bundle packages were later released with the original model NES console. In 1992, the Challenge Set was released for $ with the console, two controllers, and a \"Super Mario Bros. 3\" Game Pak. The Basic Set retailed at US$; it included only the console and two controllers, and no pack-in game. Instead, it contained a book called the \"Official Nintendo Player's Guide\", which contained detailed information for every NES game made up to that point.\nFinally, the console was redesigned for the Australian, North American, and Japanese markets, including the New-Style NES, or NES-101, and one redesigned \"dogbone\" game controller. In Australia, this console revision was released with a cartridge compiling \"Super Mario Bros\", \"Tetris\", and \"Nintendo World Cup\". Released in October 1993 in North America and 1994 in Australia, this final bundle retailed for $ and A$ (A$ with the pack-in game) respectively, and was discontinued with the NES in 1995.\nDiscontinuation.\nOn August 14, 1995, Nintendo discontinued the Nintendo Entertainment System in both North America and Europe. In North America, replacements for the original front-loading NES were available for $ in exchange for a broken system until at least December 1996, under Nintendo's Power Swap program. The Game Boy and Super NES were covered for $ and $ respectively.\nOn May 30, 2003, Nintendo announced the discontinuation of the Famicom in September alongside the Super Famicom and the disk rewriting services for the Famicom Disk System. The last Famicom, serial number HN11033309, was manufactured on September 25; it was kept by Nintendo and subsequently loaned to the organizers of Level X, a video game exhibition held from December 4, 2003, to February 8, 2004, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, for a Famicom retrospective in commemoration of the console's 20th anniversary. Nintendo offered repair service for the Famicom in Japan until 2007, when it was discontinued due to a shortage of available parts.\nHardware.\nConfigurations.\nAlthough all versions of the Famicom and NES include essentially similar hardware, they vary in physical characteristics. The original Famicom's design is predominantly white plastic, with dark red trim; it featured a top-loading cartridge slot, grooves on both sides of the deck in which the hardwired game controllers could be placed when not in use, and a 15-pin expansion port located on the unit's front panel for accessories. In contrast, the design of the original NES features a more subdued gray, black, and red color scheme; it includes a front-loading cartridge slot covered by a small, hinged door that can be opened to insert or remove a cartridge and closed at other times, and an expansion port on the bottom of the unit. Compared to the Famicom, the NES includes the 10NES lockout chip and incorporates a matching chip validation check in its cartridge connector.\nIn late 1993, Nintendo introduced a redesigned version of the Famicom and NES (officially named the New Famicom in Japan and the New-Style NES in the US) to complement the Super Famicom and SNES, to prolong interest in the console, and to reduce costs. The redesigned NES features a top-loading cartridge slot and omits the 10NES lockout chip to avoid reliability issues with the original console; the redesign also omits AV output. Conversely, the redesigned Famicom features such output and introduces detachable game controllers, though the microphone functionality is omitted as a result. The redesigned Famicom and NES models are cosmetically similar aside from the presence of a cartridge \"bump\" on the NES model, which the Famicom model lacks to accommodate its shorter cartridges and the RAM Adapter for the Famicom Disk System.\nSharp Corporation produced three licensed variants of the Famicom in Japan, all of which prominently display the shortened moniker rather than the official name, Family Computer. One variant was a television set with an integrated Famicom; originally released in 1983 as the My Computer TV in and models, it was later released in the United States in 1989 as a 19-inch model named the Video Game Television. Another variant is the Twin Famicom console released in 1986 to combine a Famicom with a Famicom Disk System. Sharp then produced the Famicom Titler in 1989. Intended for video capture and production, it features internal RGB video generation and video output via S-Video, plus inputs for adding subtitles and voice-overs.\nHardware clones.\nA thriving market of unlicensed NES hardware clones emerged during the climax of the console's popularity. Initially, such clones were popular in markets with weak copyright law and where Nintendo issue it's systems after famiclones become well known across specific region, making legal products hard to market or create brand awareness. In particular, the Dendy (), an unlicensed hardware clone produced in Taiwan and sold in the former Soviet Union by Steepler, emerged as the most popular video game console of its time in that setting and it enjoyed a degree of fame roughly equivalent to that experienced by the NES/Famicom in North America and Japan, eventually selling 6 million units. Poland had a similar story with Pegasus distributed by Bobmark International which sold more than 1 million units. In China, a place where many of these clones were manufactured, the media reported 30 million units sold until late 1995. A range of Famicom clones was marketed in Latin America during the late 1980s and 1990s with the name Family Game, resembling the original hardware design. Thailand got Family FR brand famiclones, Brazil a superior to the original Phantom System, the Micro Genius (Simplified Chinese: \u5c0f\u5929\u624d) was marketed in Southeast Asia as an alternative to the Famicom; Ending-Man Terminator enjoyed popularity in European Eastern Bloc, parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America. It happened that these clones reached countries with very good copyright law and high awareness of the Nintendo brand such as Power Player Super Joy III in US.\nThe unlicensed clone market has flourished following Nintendo's discontinuation of the NES. Some of the more exotic of these resulting systems surpass the functionality of the original hardware, such as a portable system with a color LCD (PocketFami). Others have been produced for certain specialized markets, such as a rather primitive personal computer with a keyboard and basic word processing software. These unauthorized clones have been helped by the invention of the so-called NES-on-a-chip.\nAs was the case with unlicensed games, Nintendo has typically gone to the courts to prohibit the manufacture and sale of unlicensed cloned hardware. Many of the clone vendors have included built-in copies of licensed Nintendo software, which constitutes copyright infringement in most countries.\nDesign flaws.\nNintendo's design styling for US release was made deliberately different from that of other game consoles. Nintendo wanted to distinguish its product from those of competitors and to avoid the generally poor reputation that game consoles had acquired following the video game crash of 1983. One result of this philosophy is to disguise the cartridge slot design as a front-loading zero-insertion force (ZIF) cartridge socket, designed to resemble the front-loading mechanism of a VCR. The socket works well when both the connector and the cartridges are clean and the pins on the connector are new. However, the socket is not truly zero-insertion force. When a user inserts the cartridge into the NES, the force of pressing the cartridge into place bends the contact pins slightly and presses the cartridge's ROM board back into the cartridge. Frequent insertion and removal of cartridges wears out the pins, and the ZIF design proved more prone to interference by dirt and dust than an industry-standard card edge connector.\nThe design problems were exacerbated by Nintendo's choice of materials. The console slot nickel connector springs wear due to design and the game cartridge's brass plated nickel connectors are also prone to tarnishing and oxidation. Nintendo sought to fix these problems by redesigning the next generation Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) as a top loader similar to the Famicom. Many players try to alleviate issues in the game caused by this corrosion by blowing into the cartridges, then reinserting them, which actually speeds up the tarnishing due to moisture. One way to slow down the tarnishing process and extend the life of the cartridges is to use isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs.\nUsers have attempted to solve these problems by blowing air onto the cartridge connectors, inserting the cartridge just far enough to get the ZIF to lower, licking the edge connector, slapping the side of the system after inserting a cartridge, shifting the cartridge from side to side after insertion, pushing the ZIF up and down repeatedly, holding the ZIF down lower than it should have been, and cleaning the connectors with alcohol. Many frequently used methods to fix this problem actually risk damaging gaming cartridges or the system. In 1989, Nintendo released an official NES Cleaning Kit to help users clean malfunctioning cartridges and consoles.\nIn response to these hardware flaws, \"Nintendo Authorized Repair Centers\" sprang up across the U.S. According to Nintendo, the authorization program was designed to ensure that the machines were properly repaired. Nintendo would ship the necessary replacement parts only to shops that had enrolled in the authorization program.\nWith the release of the top-loading NES-101 (New-Style NES) in 1993 toward the end of the NES's lifespan, Nintendo resolved the problems by switching to a standard card edge connector and eliminating the lockout chip. All of the Famicom systems use standard card edge connectors, as do Nintendo's two subsequent game consoles, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Nintendo 64.\nLockout.\nThe Famicom as released in Japan contains no lockout hardware, which led to unlicensed cartridges (both legitimate and bootleg) becoming extremely common throughout Japan and East Asia. Nintendo tried to promote its \"Seal of Quality\" in these regions to identify licensed games to combat bootlegs, but bootleg Famicom games continued to be produced even after Nintendo moved production onto the Super Famicom, effectively extending the lifetime of the Famicom.\nThe original NES released for Western countries in 1985 contains the 10NES lockout chip, which prevents it from running cartridges unapproved by Nintendo. The inclusion of the 10NES was a direct influence from the 1983 video game crash in North America, partially caused by a market flooded with uncontrolled publishing of games of poor quality for the home consoles. Nintendo did not want to see that happen with the NES and used the lockout chip to restrict games to only those they licensed and approved for the system. This means of protection worked in combination with the Nintendo \"Seal of Quality\", which a developer had to acquire before they would be able to have access to the required 10NES information prior to publication of their game.\nInitially, the 10NES chip proved a significant barrier to unlicensed developers seeking to develop and sell games for the console. However, hobbyists in later years discovered that disassembling the NES and cutting the fourth pin of the lockout chip would change the chip's mode of operation from \"lock\" to \"key\", removing all effects and greatly improving the console's ability to play legal games, bootlegs, and converted imports.\nOriginal NES consoles sold in different regions have different lockout chips, thereby enforcing regional lockout (regardless of TV signal compatibility). Such regions include North America; most of continental Europe (PAL-B); Asia; and the British Isles, Italy, and Australasia (PAL-A).\nProblems with the 10NES lockout chip frequently result in one of the console's most common issues: the blinking red power light, in which the system appears to turn itself on and off repeatedly because the 10NES would reset the console once per second. The lockout chip required constant communication with the chip in the game to work. Dirty, aging, and bent connectors often disrupt the communication, resulting in the blink effect. In other cases, the console turns on but only displays a solid white, gray, or green screen.\nTechnical specifications.\nThe console's main central processing unit (CPU) was produced by Ricoh, which manufactured different versions between NTSC and PAL regions; NTSC consoles have a 2A03 clocked at 1.79\u00a0MHzTooltip megahertz, and PAL consoles have a 2A07 clocked at 1.66\u00a0MHz. Both CPUs are unlicensed variants of the MOS Technology 6502, an 8-bit microprocessor prevalent in contemporary home computers and consoles; Nintendo ostensibly disabled the 6502's binary-coded decimal mode on them to avoid patent infringement against or licensing fees towards MOS Technology, which was owned by then-rival Commodore International. The CPU has access to 2\u00a0KBTooltip kilobyte of onboard work RAMTooltip random-access memory.\nThe console's graphics are handled by a Ricoh 2C02, a processor known as the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) that is clocked at 5.37\u00a0MHz. A derivative of the Texas Instruments TMS9918\u2014a video display controller used in the ColecoVision\u2014the PPU features 2\u00a0KB of video RAM, 256\u00a0bytes of on-die \"object attribute memory\" (OAM) to store sprite display information on up to 64 sprites, and 28\u00a0bytes of RAM to store information on the YIQ-based color palette; the console can display up to 25 colors simultaneously out of 54 usable colors.\nThe console's standard display resolution is 256 \u00d7 240 pixels, though video output options vary between models. The original Famicom features only radio frequency (RF) modulator output, and the NES additionally supports composite video via RCA connectors. The redesigned Famicom omits the RF modulator entirely, only outputting composite video via a proprietary \"multi-out\" connector first introduced on the Super Famicom/SNES; conversely, the redesigned NES features RF modulator output only, though a version of the model including the \"multi-out\" connector was produced in rare quantities.\nThe console produces sound via an audio processing unit (APU) integrated into the processor. It supports a total of five sound channels: two pulse wave channels, one triangle wave channel, one white noise channel, and one DPCMTooltip differential pulse-code modulation channel for sample playback. Audio playback speed is dependent on the CPU clock rate, which is set by a crystal oscillator.\nAccessories.\nControllers.\nThe game controller for both the NES and the Famicom has an oblong brick-like design with a simple four button layout: two round buttons labeled \"A\" and \"B\", a \"START\" button, and a \"SELECT\" button. Additionally, the controllers use the cross-shaped D-pad, designed by Nintendo employee Gunpei Yokoi for Nintendo Game & Watch systems, to replace the bulkier joysticks on controllers of earlier gaming consoles.\nThe original model Famicom features two game controllers, both of which are hardwired to the back of the console. The second controller lacks the START and SELECT button, featuring a small microphone instead; however, few games use this feature. The earliest produced Famicom units have square A and B buttons; issues with them getting stuck when pressed down led Nintendo to change their shape to a circular design in subsequent units following the console's recall.\nInstead of the Famicom's hardwired controllers, the NES has two proprietary seven-pin ports on the front of the console to support detachable controllers and third-party peripherals. The controllers bundled with the NES are identical and include the START and SELECT buttons, lacking the microphone on the original Famicom's second controller. The cables for NES controllers are also generally three times longer than their Famicom counterparts.\nSeveral special controllers are intended for use with specific games, though are not commonly used. Such peripherals include the NES Zapper (a light gun), R.O.B. (a toy robot), and the Power Pad (a dance pad). The original Famicom has a deepened DA-15 expansion port on the front of the unit to accommodate them.\nTwo official advanced controllers were produced for the NES: the NES Advantage, an arcade controller produced by Asciiware and licensed by Nintendo of America; and the NES Max, a controller with grip handles and a \"cycloid\" sliding-disc D-pad in place of the traditional one. Both controllers have a \"Turbo\" feature, which simulates multiple rapid button presses, for the A and B buttons; the NES Max has manually pressed Turbo buttons, and the NES Advantage offers toggle buttons for Turbo functionality along with knobs that adjust the firing rate of each button. The latter also includes a \"Slow\" button that rapidly pauses games, though this function is not intended for games that invoke a pause menu or screen.\nThe standard game controller was redesigned upon the introduction of the redesigned console. Though the original button layout was retained, the shape of the redesigned controller\u2014nicknamed the \"dog bone\" controller\u2014resembles that of the Super Famicom and SNES. It retained NES-style detachable controller ports.\nThe original NES controller has become one of the most recognizable symbols of the console. Nintendo has mimicked the look of the controller in several other products, from promotional merchandise to limited edition versions of the Game Boy Advance.\nJapanese accessories.\nFew of the numerous peripheral devices and software packages for the Famicom were released outside Japan.\nThe Famicom 3D System, an active shutter 3D headset peripheral released in 1987, enabled the ability to play stereoscopic video games. It was a commercial failure and never released outside Japan; users described the headset as bulky and uncomfortable. Seven games are compatible with the glasses, with three of them developed by Square; two titles received worldwide releases as \"Rad Racer\" and \"The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner\".\n\"Family BASIC\" is an implementation of BASIC for the Famicom, packaged with a keyboard. Similar in concept to the Atari 2600 \"BASIC\" cartridge, it allows the user to write programs, especially games, which can be saved on an included cassette recorder. Nintendo of America rejected releasing \"Famicom BASIC\" in the US in favor of its primary marketing demographic of children.\nThe Famicom Modem connected a Famicom to a now defunct proprietary network in Japan which provided content such as financial services. A dial-up modem was never released for the NES after a partnership with Fidelity Investments.\nFamicom Disk System.\nBy 1986, the cost and size limitations of ROM chips used in the Famicom's ROM cartridges were apparent, with no new advancements present to address them. With this in mind, Nintendo looked at the personal computer (PC) market, where the floppy disk was gaining wide adoption as a computer data storage medium. Partnering with Mitsumi to develop a floppy disk add-on for the Famicom based on the latter's Quick Disk format, Nintendo officially released it as the Family Computer Disk System in Japan on February 21, 1986, at a retail price of \u00a515,000.\nThe advantages of the format (called \"Disk Card\") were apparent on launch. It has more than triple the data storage capacity of the then-largest cartridge (used for \"Super Mario Bros.\") and introduced game save capability and lower production costs compared to cartridges, which resulted in lower retail prices for consumers. The add-on also has a new wavetable synthesis sound channel and more data storage for the Famicom's audio sample channel. Taking advantage of the disk's re-writability, Nintendo set up Disk Writer interactive kiosks at retail stores throughout Japan; at each kiosk, consumers could buy new games to rewrite onto their old disks or onto new disks. Disk Fax kiosks allowed players to submit their high scores on special blue disks for contests and rankings, predating the online leaderboard by several years.\nAlthough Nintendo committed to exclusively releasing games on the Disk System after its release, numerous external issues plagued its long-term viability. Just four months after launch, Capcom released a Famicom port of \"Makaimura\" (known as \"Ghosts 'n Goblins\" in the U.S.) on a cartridge with more data storage capacity than what was possible on Disk Cards, nullifying one of the Disk System's major advantages by using discrete logic chips to perform bank switching. Nintendo also demanded half of the copyright ownership for each game it selected for release on the Disk System, resulting in developers electing to remain on cartridge instead as the latter gained functionality previously considered unique to the former. Developers disliked the lower profit margin of the Disk Writer kiosks, and retailers complained of their use of valuable space as demand for the format waned.\nUsage of a floppy disk-based medium brought about further complications; Disk Cards were more fragile than cartridges and were prone to data corruption from magnetic exposure. Their unreliability was exacerbated by their lack of a shutter, which Nintendo substituted with a wax sleeve and clear keep case to reduce costs; blue disks and later Disk Cards included shutters. The rubber belt-based disk drives were also unreliable, with cryptic error codes complicating troubleshooting; even when fully functional, players accustomed to cartridges were annoyed with the introduction of loading times and disk flipping. Furthermore, the rewritable nature of the format resulted in rampant software piracy, with Nintendo's attempts at anti-piracy measures quickly defeated.\nThough selling close to two million units for all of 1986, Nintendo only managed to increase the total to 4.4\u00a0million units by 1990, falling well short of internal projections. By then, the Disk System was rendered obsolete due to advancements in ROM cartridge production: memory mapping chips for expanded data storage capacity, battery-backed SRAMTooltip static random-access memory for game saving, and declining overall production costs. Nintendo alluded to a Western release for the Disk System, going so far as to successfully file a U.S. patent for it and having the Famicom's cartridge pins used by its RAM Adapter for enhanced audio rerouted to the NES's little-used bottom expansion port. However, such a release never materialized due to its reception in Japan. Most of its games were re-released with workarounds on cartridge for both the Famicom and NES, without the enhanced audio. Although the last game for the Disk System was released in December 1992, Nintendo continued repair and rewrite services for it until September 2003.\nNES Test Station.\nThe NES Test Station diagnostics machine was introduced in 1988. It is an NES-based unit designed for testing NES hardware, components, and games. It was only provided for use in World of Nintendo boutiques as part of the Nintendo World Class Service program. Visitors were to bring items to test with the station, and could be assisted by a store technician or employee.\nThe NES Test Station's front has a Game Pak slot and connectors for testing various components (AC adapter, RF switch, Audio/Video cable, NES Control Deck, accessories and games), with a centrally-located selector knob to choose which component to test. The unit itself weighs approximately 11.7 pounds without a TV. It connects to a television via a combined A/V and RF Switch cable. By actuating the green button, a user can toggle between an A/V Cable or RF Switch connection. The television it is connected to (typically 11\" to 14\") is meant to be placed atop it.\nIn 1991, Nintendo provided an add-on called the \"Super NES Counter Tester\" that tests Super NES components and games. The Super NES Counter Tester is a standard Control Deck on a metal fixture with the connection from the back of the unit re-routed to the front. These connections may be made directly to the test station or to the TV, depending on what is to be tested.\nGames.\nGame Pak.\nThe NES uses a 72-pin design, as compared with 60 pins on the Famicom. To reduce costs and inventory, some early games released in North America are simply Famicom cartridges attached to an adapter to fit inside the NES hardware. Early NES cartridges are held together with five small slotted screws. Games released after 1987 were redesigned slightly to incorporate two plastic clips molded into the plastic itself, removing the need for the top two screws.\nThe back of the cartridge bears a label with handling instructions. Production and software revision codes were imprinted as stamps on the back label to correspond with the software version and producer. All licensed NTSC and PAL cartridges are a standard shade of gray plastic, with the exception of \"The Legend of Zelda\" and ', which were manufactured in gold-plastic carts. Unlicensed carts were produced in black, robin egg blue, and gold, and are all slightly different shapes than standard NES cartridges. Nintendo also produced yellow-plastic carts for internal use at Nintendo Service Centers, although these \"test carts\" were never made available for purchase. All licensed US cartridges were made by Nintendo, Konami, and Acclaim. For promotion of ', Capcom sent 150 limited-edition gold NES cartridges with the original game, featuring the \"Remastered\" art as the sticker, to different gaming news agencies. The instruction label on the back includes the opening lyric from the show's theme song, \"Life is like a hurricane\".\nFamicom cartridges are shaped slightly differently. Unlike NES games, official Famicom cartridges were produced in many colors of plastic. Adapters, similar in design to the popular accessory Game Genie, are available that allow Famicom games to be played on an NES. In Japan, several companies manufactured the cartridges for the Famicom. This allowed these companies to develop customized chips designed for specific purposes, such as superior sound and graphics.\nThird-party licensing.\nNintendo's near monopoly on the home video game market left it with a dominant influence over the industry. Unlike Atari, which never actively pursued third-party developers (and even went to court in an attempt to force Activision to cease production of Atari 2600 games), Nintendo had anticipated and encouraged the involvement of third-party software developers, though strictly on Nintendo's terms. Some of the Nintendo platform-control measures were adopted in a less stringent way by later console manufacturers such as Sega, Sony, and Microsoft.\nTo this end, a 10NES authentication chip is in every console and in every licensed cartridge. If the console's chip can not detect a counterpart chip inside the cartridge, the game does not load. Nintendo portrayed these measures as intended to protect the public against poor-quality games, and placed a golden seal of approval on all licensed games released for the system.\nNintendo found success with Japanese arcade manufacturers such as Konami, Capcom, Taito, and Namco, which signed on as third-party developers. However, they found resistance with US game developers including Atari Games, Activision, Electronic Arts, and Epyx refusing Nintendo's one-sided terms. Acclaim Entertainment, a fledgling game publisher founded by former Activision employees, was the first major third-party licensee in the United States to sign on with Nintendo in late 1987. Atari Games (through Tengen) and Activision signed on soon after.\nNintendo was not as restrictive as Sega, which did not permit third-party publishing until Mediagenic in late summer 1988. Nintendo's intention was to reserve a large part of NES game revenue for itself. Nintendo required that it be the sole manufacturer of all cartridges, and that the publisher had to pay in full before the cartridges for that game be produced. Cartridges could not be returned to Nintendo, so publishers assumed all the risk. As a result, some publishers lost more money due to distress sales of remaining inventory at the end of the NES era than they ever earned in profits from sales of the games. Because Nintendo controlled the production of all cartridges, it was able to enforce strict rules on its third-party developers, who were required to sign a contract that would obligate them to develop exclusively for the system, order at least 10,000 cartridges, and only make five games per year. The global 1988 shortage of DRAM and ROM chips reportedly caused Nintendo to only permit an average of 25% of publishers' requests for cartridges, with some receiving much higher amounts and others almost none. GameSpy noted that Nintendo's \"iron-clad terms\" made the company many enemies during the 1980s. Some developers tried to circumvent the five game limit by creating additional company brands like Konami's Ultra Games label; others tried circumventing the 10NES chip.\nNintendo was accused of antitrust violations because of the strict licensing requirements. The United States Department of Justice and several states began probing Nintendo's business practices, leading to the involvement of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC conducted an extensive investigation which included interviewing hundreds of retailers. During the FTC probe, Nintendo changed the terms of its publisher licensing agreements to eliminate the two-year rule and other restrictive terms. Nintendo and the FTC settled the case in April 1991, with Nintendo required to send vouchers giving a $5 discount off to a new game, to every person that had purchased an NES game between June 1988 and December 1990. GameSpy remarked that Nintendo's punishment was particularly weak given the case's findings, although it has been speculated that the FTC did not want to damage the video game industry in the United States.\nWith the NES near the end of its life, many third-party publishers such as Electronic Arts supported upstart competing consoles with less strict licensing terms such as the Sega Genesis and then the PlayStation, which eroded and then took over Nintendo's dominance in the home console market, respectively. Consoles from Nintendo's rivals in the post-SNES era had always enjoyed much stronger third-party support than Nintendo, which relied more heavily on first-party games.\nUnlicensed games.\nCompanies that refused to pay the licensing fee or were rejected by Nintendo found ways to circumvent the console's authentication system. Most of these companies created circuits that use a voltage spike to temporarily disable the 10NES chip. A few unlicensed games released in Europe and Australia are in the form of a dongle to connect to a licensed game, to use the licensed game's 10NES chip for authentication. To combat unlicensed games, Nintendo of America threatened retailers who sold them with losing their supply of licensed games, and multiple revisions were made to the NES PCBs to prevent unlicensed games from working.\nAtari Games took a different approach with its line of NES products, Tengen. The company attempted to reverse engineer the lockout chip to develop its own \"Rabbit\" chip. Tengen also obtained a description of the lockout chip from the United States Patent and Trademark Office by falsely claiming that it was required to defend against present infringement claims. Nintendo successfully sued Tengen for copyright infringement. Tengen's antitrust claims against Nintendo were never decided.\nColor Dreams made Christian video games under the subsidiary name Wisdom Tree. Historian Steven Kent wrote, \"Wisdom Tree presented Nintendo with a prickly situation. The general public did not seem to pay close attention to the court battle with Atari Games, and industry analysts were impressed with Nintendo's legal acumen; but going after a tiny company that published innocuous religious games was another story.\"\nGame rentals.\nAs the Nintendo Entertainment System grew in popularity and entered millions of American homes, some small video rental shops began buying their own copies of NES games, and renting them out to customers for around the same price as a video cassette rental for a few days. Nintendo received no profit from the practice beyond the initial cost of their game, and unlike movie rentals, a newly released game could hit store shelves and be available for rent on the same day. Nintendo took steps to stop game rentals, but did not take any formal legal action until Blockbuster Video began to make game rentals a large-scale service. Nintendo claimed that allowing customers to rent games would significantly hurt sales and drive up the cost of games. Nintendo lost the lawsuit, but did win on a claim of copyright infringement. Blockbuster was banned from including photocopies of original, copyrighted instruction booklets with its rented games. In compliance with the ruling, Blockbuster produced original short instructions\u2014usually in the form of a small booklet, card, or label stuck on the back of the rental box\u2014that explained the game's basic premise and controls. Video rental shops continued the practice of renting video games.\nReception.\nBy 1988, industry observers stated that the NES's popularity had grown so quickly that the market for Nintendo cartridges was larger than that for all home computer software. \"Compute!\" reported in 1989 that Nintendo had sold seven million NES systems in 1988 alone, almost as many as the number of Commodore 64s sold in its first five years. \"Computer game makers [are] scared stiff\", the magazine said, stating that Nintendo's popularity caused most competitors to have poor sales during the previous Christmas and resulted in serious financial problems for some.\nIn June 1989, Nintendo of America's vice president of marketing Peter Main, said that the Famicom was present in 37% of Japan's households. By 1990, 30% of American households owned the NES, compared to 23% for all personal computers. By 1990, the NES had outsold all previously released consoles worldwide. The slogan for this brand was \"It can't be beaten\". The Nintendo Entertainment System was not available in the Soviet Union.\nIn the early 1990s, gamers predicted that competition from technologically superior systems such as the 16-bit Sega Genesis would mean the immediate end of the NES's dominance. Instead, during the first year of Nintendo's successor console the Super Famicom (named Super Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan), the Famicom remained the second highest-selling video game console in Japan, outselling the newer and more powerful NEC PC Engine and Sega Mega Drive by a wide margin. The console remained popular in Japan and North America until late 1993, when the demand for new NES software abruptly plummeted. The final licensed Famicom game released in Japan is \"Takahashi Meijin no B\u014dken Jima IV (Adventure Island IV)\", in North America is \"Wario's Woods\", and in Europe is \"The Lion King\" in 1995. In the wake of ever decreasing sales and the lack of new games, Nintendo of America officially discontinued the NES by 1995. Nintendo produced new Famicom units in Japan until September 25, 2003, and continued to repair Famicom consoles until October 31, 2007, attributing the discontinuation of support to insufficient supplies of parts.\nThe NES was initially not as successful in Europe during the late 1980s, when it was outsold by the Master System in the United Kingdom. By 1990, the Master System was the highest-selling console in Europe, though the NES was beginning to have a fast-growing user base in the United Kingdom. During the early 1990s, NES sales caught up with and narrowly overtook the Master System overall in Western Europe, though the Master System maintained its lead in several markets such as the United Kingdom, Belgium and Spain.\nLegacy.\nThe NES was released two years after the video game crash of 1983, when many retailers and adult consumers regarded electronic games as a passing fad, so many believed at first that the NES would soon fade. Before the NES and Famicom, Nintendo was known as a moderately successful Japanese toy and playing card manufacturer, but the consoles' popularity helped the company grow into an internationally recognized name almost synonymous with video games as Atari had been, and set the stage for Japanese dominance of the video game industry. With the NES, Nintendo also changed the relationship between console manufacturers and third-party software developers by restricting developers from publishing and distributing software without licensed approval. This led to higher-quality games, which helped change the attitude of a public that had grown weary from poorly produced games for earlier systems.\nThe NES hardware design is also very influential. Nintendo chose the name \"Nintendo Entertainment System\" for the US market and redesigned the system so it would not give the appearance of a child's toy. The front-loading cartridge input allowed it to be used more easily in a TV stand with other entertainment devices, such as a videocassette recorder.\nThe system's hardware limitations led to design principles that still influence the development of modern video games. Many prominent game franchises originated on the NES, including Nintendo's own \"Super Mario Bros.\",| \"The Legend of Zelda\" and \"Metroid\", Capcom's \"Mega Man\" franchise, Konami's \"Castlevania\" franchise, Square's \"Final Fantasy\",| and Enix's \"Dragon Quest\"| franchises.\nNES imagery, especially its controller, has become a popular motif for a variety of products, including Nintendo's Game Boy Advance.\nAt the Tokyo Game Show in 2023, the \"Famicom\" was bestowed \"The Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Award\" in honour of the console's influence and laying down the foundations for the games industry.\nThe NES library includes some influential games. \"Super Mario Bros.\" is the forerunner of side-scrolling games, while \"The Legend of Zelda\" had mostly influenced action-adventure games and helped popularizing the save data in video games. Other two influential games are \"Metroid\" and \"Castlevania II\", which had established the metroidvania genre.\nIn 2011, \"IGN\" named the NES the greatest video game console of all time.\nEmulation.\nThe NES can be emulated on many other systems. The first emulator was the Japanese-only Pasofami. It was soon followed by iNES, which is available in English and is cross-platform, in 1996. It was described as being the first NES emulation software that could be used by a non-expert. The first version of NESticle, an unofficial MS-DOS-based emulator, was released on April 3, 1997. Nintendo offers licensed emulation of some NES games via its Virtual Console service for the Wii, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U, and via its Nintendo Switch Online service.\nRe-release.\nOn July 14, 2016, Nintendo announced the November 2016 launch of a miniature replica of the NES, named the Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition in the United States and Nintendo Classic Mini: Nintendo Entertainment System in Europe and Australia. The emulation-based console includes 30 permanently bundled games from the vintage NES library, including the \"Super Mario Bros.\" series and \"The Legend of Zelda\" series. The system has HDMI display output and a new replica controller, which can also connect to the Wii Remote for use with Virtual Console games. It was discontinued in North America on April 13, 2017, and worldwide on April 15, 2017. However, Nintendo announced in September 2017 that the NES Classic Mini would return to production on June 29, 2018, only to be discontinued again permanently by December of that year.\nNotes.\nTransliterations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["5980863", "18944028", "28314"], "permutation_1": ["5980863", "18944028", "28314"], "permutation_2": ["18944028", "5980863", "28314"], "permutation_3": ["18944028", "5980863", "28314"]}
{"id": "3hop2__30796_732692_24137", "docs_added": {"5122699": "John Kerry\nAmerican politician and diplomat (born 1943)\nJohn Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician, and diplomat who served as the 68th United States secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 in the administration of Barack Obama. A member of the Forbes family and of the Democratic Party, he previously represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1985 to 2013 and later served as the first U.S. special presidential envoy for climate from 2021 to 2024. Kerry was the Democratic nominee for president of the United States in the 2004 election, narrowly losing to then-incumbent president George W. Bush.\nKerry grew up in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. In 1966, after graduating from Yale University, he enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve, ultimately attaining the rank of lieutenant. During the Vietnam War, Kerry served a brief tour in South Vietnam. While commanding a Swift boat, he sustained three wounds in combat with the Viet Cong, for which he earned three Purple Heart medals. Kerry was also awarded the Silver Star Medal and the Bronze Star Medal for conduct in separate military engagements. After completing his active military service, Kerry returned to the United States and became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. He gained national recognition as an anti-war activist, serving as a spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization. Kerry testified in the Fulbright Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where he described the United States government's policy in Vietnam as the cause of war crimes.\nIn 1972, Kerry entered electoral politics as a Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives in Massachusetts's 5th congressional district, losing to Republican Paul W. Cronin in the general election. He subsequently worked as a radio talk show host and as the executive director of an advocacy organization while attending law school. After a period in private legal practice, he was elected the 66th lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1982. In 1984, Kerry was elected to the United States Senate. In 2004, Kerry won the Democratic presidential nomination alongside Senator John Edwards. He lost the Electoral College and the popular vote by slim margins, winning 251 electors to Bush's 286 and 48.3% of the popular vote to Bush's 50.7%.\nIn January 2013, Kerry was nominated by President Obama to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and was subsequently confirmed by his Senate colleagues. He was U.S. secretary of state throughout the second term of the Obama administration from 2013 to 2017. During his tenure, he initiated the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks and negotiated agreements restricting the nuclear program of Iran, including the 2013 Joint Plan of Action and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In 2015, Kerry signed the Paris Agreement on climate change on behalf of the United States.\nIn January 2021, Kerry returned to government, becoming the first person to hold the position of U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, under President Joe Biden. On March 6, Kerry left this position to work on Biden's 2024 presidential campaign. Kerry was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Biden in May 2024.\nEarly life and education (1943\u20131966).\nJohn Forbes Kerry was born on December 11, 1943, at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado. He is the second of four children born to Richard John Kerry, a U.S. diplomat and lawyer, and Rosemary Forbes, a nurse and social activist. His father was raised Catholic (John's paternal grandparents were Austro-Hungarian Jewish immigrants who converted to Catholicism) and his mother was Episcopalian. He was raised with an elder sister Margaret, a younger sister Diana, and a younger brother Cameron. The children were raised in their father's Catholic faith, and John served as an altar boy.\nKerry was originally considered a military brat, until his father was discharged from the Army Air Corps in 1944. Kerry lived in Groton, Massachusetts his first year and Millis, Massachusetts afterwards before moving to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. at age seven, when his father took a position in the Department of the Navy's Office of General Counsel and soon became a diplomat in the State Department's Bureau of United Nations Affairs.\nAs members of the Forbes and Dudley\u2013Winthrop families, his maternal extended family enjoyed great wealth. Kerry's parents themselves were considered upper-middle class. They turned to his wealthy great-aunt, Clara Winthrop, who paid for his attendance at elite boarding schools, such as Institut Montana Zugerberg, in Zug, Switzerland. Through his maternal ancestry, Kerry also descends from Rev. James McGregor who was among the first 500 Scots-Irish immigrants to Boston Harbor in the 18th century.\nAt the age of ten, Kerry's father took a position as the U.S. Attorney for Berlin. When Kerry was twelve, he crossed into the Soviet Occupation Zone to visit Hitler's bunker and ride through the Brandenburg Gate. \nIn 1957, his father was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway, and Kerry was sent back to the United States to attend boarding school. He first attended the Fessenden School in Newton, Massachusetts, and later St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, where he learned skills in public speaking and began developing an interest in politics. Kerry founded the John Winant Society at St. Paul's to debate the issues of the day; the Society still exists there. In 1960, while at St. Paul's, he played bass in a minor rock band called The Electras with six of his classmates. The band had about five hundred copies of one album printed in 1961, which they sold some of at dances at the school; it was made available on streaming platforms many years later.\nIn 1962, Kerry attended Yale University, majoring in political science and residing in Jonathan Edwards College. By that year, his parents returned to Groton. While at Yale, Kerry briefly dated Janet Auchincloss, the younger half-sister of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Through Auchincloss, Kerry was invited to a day of sailing with then-President John F. Kennedy and his family.\nKerry played on the varsity Yale Bulldogs men's soccer team, earning his only letter in his senior year. He also played freshman and junior varsity hockey and, in his senior year, junior varsity lacrosse. In addition, he was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity and took flying lessons.\nIn his sophomore year, Kerry became the chairman of the Liberal Party of the Yale Political Union, and a year later he served as president of the union. Amongst his influential teachers in this period was Professor H. Bradford Westerfield, who was himself a former president of the Political Union. His involvement with the Political Union gave him an opportunity to be involved with important issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and the New Frontier program. He also became a member of Skull and Bones Society, and traveled to Switzerland through AIESEC Yale.\nUnder the guidance of the speaking coach and history professor Rollin G. Osterweis, Kerry won many debates against other college students from across the nation. In March 1965, as the Vietnam War escalated, he won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that was critical of U.S. foreign policy. In the speech he said, \"It is the spectre of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism and thus, it is self-defeating.\"\nKerry graduated from Yale with a bachelor of arts degree in 1966. Overall, he had below-average grades, graduating with a cumulative average of 76 over his four years. His freshman-year average was a 71, but he improved to an 81 average for his senior year. He never received an \"A\" during his time at Yale; his highest grade was an 89.\nMilitary service (1966\u20131970).\nDuty on USS \"Gridley\".\nOn February 18, 1966, Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserve. He began his active duty military service on August 19, 1966. After completing 16 weeks of Officer Candidate School at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island, Kerry received his officer's commission on December 16, 1966. During the 2004 election, Kerry posted his military records at his website, and permitted reporters to inspect his medical records. In 2005, Kerry released his military and medical records to the representatives of three news organizations, but has not authorized full public access to those records.\nDuring his tour on the guided missile frigate , Kerry requested duty in South Vietnam, listing as his first preference a position as the commander of a Fast Patrol Craft (PCF), also known as a \"Swift boat\". These boats have aluminum hulls and have little or no armor, but are heavily armed and rely on speed. \"I didn't really want to get involved in the war,\" Kerry said in a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. \"When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing.\" However, his second choice of billet was on a river patrol boat, or \"PBR\", which at the time was serving a more dangerous duty on the rivers of Vietnam.\nMilitary honors.\nDuring the night of December 2 and early morning of December 3, 1968, Kerry was in charge of a small boat operating near a peninsula north of Cam Ranh Bay together with a Swift boat (PCF-60). According to Kerry and the two crewmen who accompanied him that night, Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis, they surprised a group of Vietnamese men unloading sampans at a river crossing, who began running and failed to obey an order to stop. As the men fled, Kerry and his crew opened fire on the sampans and destroyed them, then rapidly left. During this encounter, Kerry received a shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow. It was for this injury that Kerry received his first Purple Heart Medal.\nKerry received his second Purple Heart for a wound received in action on the B\u1ed3 \u0110\u1ec1 River on February 20, 1969. The plan had been for the Swift boats to be accompanied by support helicopters. On the way up the Bo De, however, the helicopters were attacked. As the Swift boats reached the C\u1eeda L\u1edbn River, Kerry's boat was hit by a B-40 rocket (rocket propelled grenade round), and a piece of shrapnel hit Kerry's left leg, wounding him. Thereafter, enemy fire ceased and his boat reached the Gulf of Thailand safely. Kerry continues to have shrapnel embedded in his left thigh because the doctors that first treated him decided to remove the damaged tissue and close the wound with sutures rather than make a wide opening to remove the shrapnel. Although wounded like several others earlier that day, Kerry did not lose any time off from duty.\nSilver Star.\nEight days later, on February 28, 1969, came the events for which Kerry was awarded his Silver Star Medal. On this occasion, Kerry was in tactical command of his Swift boat and two other Swift boats during a combat operation. Their mission on the Duong Keo River included bringing an underwater demolition team and dozens of South Vietnamese Marines to destroy enemy sampans, structures and bunkers as described in the story \"The Death Of PCF 43\". Running into heavy small arms fire from the river banks, Kerry \"directed the units to turn to the beach and charge the Viet Cong positions\" and he \"expertly directed\" his boat's fire causing the enemy to flee while at the same time coordinating the insertion of the ninety South Vietnamese troops (according to the original medal citation signed by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt). Moving a short distance upstream, Kerry's boat was the target of a B-40 rocket round; Kerry charged the enemy positions and as his boat hove to and beached, a Viet Cong (\"VC\") insurgent armed with a rocket launcher emerged from a spider hole and ran. While the boat's gunner opened fire, wounding the VC in the leg, and while the other boats approached and offered cover fire, Kerry jumped from the boat to pursue the VC insurgent, subsequently killing him and capturing his loaded rocket launcher.\nKerry's commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander George Elliott, stated to Douglas Brinkley in 2003 that he did not know whether to court-martial Kerry for beaching the boat without orders or give him a medal for saving the crew. Elliott recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, and Zumwalt flew into An Thoi to personally award medals to Kerry and the rest of the sailors involved in the mission. The Navy's account of Kerry's actions is presented in the original signed by Zumwalt. The engagement was documented in an after-action report, a press release written on March 1, 1969, and a historical summary dated March 17, 1969.\nBronze Star.\nOn March 13, 1969, on the B\u00e1i H\u00e1p River, Kerry was in charge of one of five Swift boats that were returning to their base after performing an Operation Sealords mission to transport South Vietnamese troops from the garrison at C\u00e1i N\u01b0\u1edbc and MIKE Force advisors for a raid on a Vietcong camp located on the Rach Dong Cung canal. Earlier in the day, Kerry received a slight shrapnel wound in the buttocks from blowing up a rice bunker. Debarking some but not all of the passengers at a small village, the boats approached a fishing weir; one group of boats went around to the left of the weir, hugging the shore, and a group with Kerry's PCF-94 boat went around to the right, along the shoreline. A mine was detonated directly beneath the lead boat, PCF-3, as it crossed the weir to the left, lifting PCF-3 \"about 2\u20133 ft out of water\".\nJames Rassmann, a Green Beret advisor who was aboard Kerry's PCF-94, was knocked overboard when, according to witnesses and the documentation of the event, a mine or rocket exploded close to the boat. According to the documentation for the event, Kerry's arm was injured when he was thrown against a bulkhead during the explosion. PCF 94 returned to the scene and Kerry rescued Rassmann who was receiving sniper fire from the water. Kerry received the Bronze Star Medal with Combat \"V\" for \"heroic achievement\", for his actions during this incident; he also received his third Purple Heart.\nReturn from Vietnam.\nAfter Kerry's third qualifying wound, he was entitled per Navy regulations to reassignment away from combat duties. Kerry's preferred choice for reassignment was as a military aide in Boston, New York City or Washington, D.C. On April 11, 1969, he reported to the Brooklyn-based Atlantic Military Sea Transportation Service, where he would remain on active duty for the following year as a personal aide to an officer, Rear Admiral Walter Schlech. On January 1, 1970, Kerry was temporarily promoted to full lieutenant. Kerry had agreed to an extension of his active duty obligation from December 1969 to August 1970 in order to perform Swift Boat duty. John Kerry was on active duty in the United States Navy from August 1966 until January 1970. He continued to serve in the Naval Reserve until February 1978.\n\"Swiftboating\" controversy.\nWith the continuing controversy that had surrounded the military service of George W. Bush since the 2000 presidential election (when he was accused of having used his father's political influence to gain entrance to the Texas Air National Guard, thereby protecting himself from conscription into the United States Army, and possible service in the Vietnam War), John Kerry's contrasting status as a decorated Vietnam War veteran posed a problem for Bush's re-election campaign, which Republicans sought to counter by calling Kerry's war record into question. As the presidential campaign of 2004 developed, approximately 250 members of a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT, later renamed Swift Vets and POWs for Truth) opposed Kerry's campaign. The group held press conferences, ran ads and endorsed a book questioning Kerry's service record and his military awards. The group included several members of Kerry's unit, such as Larry Thurlow, who commanded a swift boat alongside of Kerry's, and Stephen Gardner, who served on Kerry's boat. The campaign inspired the widely used political pejorative '\"swiftboating,\" to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. Most of Kerry's former crewmates have stated that SBVT's allegations are false.\nAnti-war activism (1970\u20131971).\nAfter returning to the United States, Kerry moved to Waltham, Massachusetts and joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Then numbering about 20,000, VVAW was considered by some (including the administration of President Richard Nixon) to be an effective, if controversial, component of the antiwar movement. Kerry participated in the \"Winter Soldier Investigation\" conducted by VVAW of U.S. atrocities in Vietnam, and he appears in a film by that name that documents the investigation. According to Nixon Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, \"I didn't approve of what he did, but I understood the protesters quite well\", and he declined two requests from the Navy to court martial Reserve Lieutenant Kerry over his antiwar activity.\nOn April 22, 1971, Kerry appeared before a U.S. Senate committee hearing on proposals relating to ending the war. The day after this testimony, Kerry participated in a demonstration with thousands of other veterans in which he and other Vietnam War veterans threw their medals and service ribbons over a fence erected at the front steps of the United States Capitol building to dramatize their opposition to the war. Jack Smith, a Marine, read a statement explaining why the veterans were returning their military awards to the government. For more than two hours, almost 1,000 angry veterans tossed their medals, ribbons, hats, jackets, and military papers over the fence. Each veteran gave his or her name, hometown, branch of service and a statement. Kerry threw some of his own decorations and awards as well as some given to him by other veterans to throw. As Kerry threw his decorations over the fence, his statement was: \"I'm not doing this for any violent reasons, but for peace and justice, and to try and make this country wake up once and for all.\"\nKerry was arrested on May 30, 1971, during a VVAW march to honor American POWs held captive by North Vietnam. The march was planned as a multi-day event from Concord to Boston, and while in Lexington, participants tried to camp on the village green. At 2:30a.m., local and state police arrested 441 demonstrators, including Kerry, for trespassing. All were given the Miranda Warning and were hauled away on school buses to spend the night at the Lexington Public Works Garage. Kerry and the other protesters later paid a $5 fine, and were released. The mass arrests caused a community backlash and ended up giving positive coverage to the VVAW.\nEarly political career (1972\u20131985).\n1972 congressional election.\nIn 1970, Kerry had considered running for Congress in the Democratic primary against hawkish Democrat Philip J. Philbin of Massachusetts's 3rd congressional district, but deferred in favor of Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest and anti-war activist, who went on to defeat Philbin. In February 1972, Kerry's wife bought a house in Worcester, with Kerry intending to run against the 4th district's aging thirteen-term incumbent Democrat, Harold Donohue. The couple never moved in. After Republican Congressman F. Bradford Morse of the neighboring 5th district announced his retirement and then resignation to become Under-Secretary-General for Political and General Assembly Affairs at the United Nations, the couple instead rented an apartment in Lowell, so that Kerry could run to succeed him.\nIncluding Kerry, the Democratic primary race had 10 candidates, including attorney Paul J. Sheehy, State Representative Anthony R. DiFruscia, John J. Desmond and Robert B. Kennedy. Kerry ran a \"very expensive, sophisticated campaign\", financed by out-of-state backers and supported by many young volunteers. DiFruscia's campaign headquarters shared the same building as Kerry's. On the eve of the September 19 primary, police found Kerry's younger brother Cameron and campaign field director Thomas J. Vallely, breaking into where the building's telephone lines were located. They were arrested and charged with \"breaking and entering with the intent to commit grand larceny\", but the charges were dropped a year later. DiFruscia alleged that the two were trying to disrupt his get-out-the vote efforts. Vallely and Cameron Kerry maintained that they were only checking their own telephone lines because they had received an anonymous call warning that the Kerry lines would be cut.\nDespite the arrests, Kerry won the primary with 20,771 votes (27.56%). Sheehy came second with 15,641 votes (20.75%), followed by DiFruscia with 12,222 votes (16.22%), Desmond with 10,213 votes (13.55%) and Kennedy with 5,632 votes (7.47%). The remaining 10,891 votes were split amongst the other five candidates, with 1970 nominee Richard Williams coming last with just 1,706 votes (2.26%).\nIn the general election, Kerry was initially favored to defeat the Republican candidate, former State Representative Paul W. Cronin, and conservative Democrat Roger P. Durkin, who ran as an Independent. A week after the primary, one poll put Kerry 26-points ahead of Cronin. His campaign called for a national health insurance system, discounted prescription drugs for the unemployed, a jobs program to clean up the Merrimack River and rent controls in Lowell and Lawrence. A major obstacle, however, was the district's leading newspaper, the conservative \"The Sun\". The paper editorialized against him. It also ran critical news stories about his out-of-state contributions and his \"carpetbagging\", because he had only moved into the district in April. Subsequently, released \"Watergate\" Oval Office tape recordings of the Nixon White House showed that defeating Kerry's candidacy had attracted the personal attention of President Nixon. Kerry himself asserts that Nixon sent operatives to Lowell to help derail his campaign.\nThe race was the most expensive for Congress in the country that year and four days before the general election, Durkin withdrew and endorsed Cronin, hoping to see Kerry defeated. The week before, a poll had put Kerry 10 points ahead of Cronin, with Durkin at 13%. In the final days of the campaign, Kerry sensed that it was \"slipping away\" and Cronin emerged victorious by 110,970 votes (53.45%) to Kerry's 92,847 (44.72%). After his defeat, Kerry lamented in a letter to supporters that \"for two solid weeks, [\"The Sun\"] called me un-American, New Left antiwar agitator, unpatriotic, and labeled me every other 'un-' and 'anti-' that they could find. It's hard to believe that one newspaper could be so powerful, but they were.\" He later felt that his failure to respond directly to \"The Sun\"'s attacks cost him the race.\nLaw career.\nAfter Kerry's 1972 defeat, he and his wife bought a house in the Belvidere section of Lowell, Massachusetts, entering a decade which his brother Cameron later called \"the years in exile\". He spent some time working as a fundraiser for the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE), an international humanitarian organization. In September 1973, he entered Boston College Law School. While studying, Kerry worked as a talk radio host on WBZ and, in July 1974, was named executive director of Mass Action, a Massachusetts advocacy association.\nKerry received his juris doctor (J.D.) from Boston College in 1976. While in law school he had been a student prosecutor in the office of the District Attorney of Middlesex County, John J. Droney. After passing the bar exam and being admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1976, he went to work in that office as a full-time prosecutor and moved to Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.\nIn January 1977, Droney promoted him to First Assistant District Attorney, essentially making Kerry his campaign and media surrogate because Droney was afflicted with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease). As First Assistant, Kerry tried cases, which included winning convictions in a high-profile rape case and a murder. He also played a role in administering the office, including initiating the creation of special white-collar and organized crime units, creating programs to address the problems of rape and other crime victims and witnesses, and managing trial calendars to reflect case priorities. In 1978, Kerry launched a criminal investigation against Senator Edward Brooke, regarding \"misstatements\" in his first divorce trial. The inquiry ended with no charges being brought after investigators and prosecutors determined that Brooke's misstatements were pertinent to the case, but were not material enough to have affected the outcome.\nDroney's health was poor and Kerry had decided to run for his position in the 1978 election should Droney drop out. However, Droney was re-elected and his health improved; he went on to re-assume many of the duties that he had delegated to Kerry. Kerry thus decided to leave, departing in 1979 with assistant DA Roanne Sragow to set up their own law firm. Kerry also worked as a commentator for WCVB-TV and co-founded a bakery, Kilvert & Forbes Ltd., with businessman and former Kennedy aide K. Dun Gifford.\nLieutenant Governor of Massachusetts.\nIn the 1982 Massachusetts gubernatorial election, Lieutenant Governor Thomas P. O'Neill III declined to seek a third term, instead deciding to run for governor of Massachusetts. Kerry declared his candidacy, entering the primary election alongside Massachusetts Secretary of Environmental Affairs Evelyn Murphy, State Senator Samuel Rotondi, State Representative Lou Nickinello, and Lois Pines.\nKerry won the nomination with 325,890 votes (29%) to Murphy's 286,378 (25.48%), Rotondi's 228,086 (20.29%), Nickinello's 150,829 (13.42%) and Pines' 132,734 (11.81%). In the concurrent gubernatorial primary, former Governor Michael Dukakis defeated O'Neill and incumbent Governor Edward J. King. The Dukakis and Kerry ticket defeated the Republican ticket of John W. Sears and Leon Lombardi in the general election by 1,219,109 votes (61.92%) to 749,679 (38.08%).\nAs Lieutenant Governor, Kerry led meetings of the Massachusetts Governor's Council. Dukakis also delegated other tasks to Kerry, including serving as the state's liaison to the Federal government of the United States. He was also active on environmental issues, including combating acid rain.\n1984 U.S. Senate election.\nThe junior U.S. senator from Massachusetts, Paul Tsongas, announced in 1984 that he would be stepping down for health reasons. Kerry ran, and as in his 1982 race for Lieutenant Governor, he did not receive the endorsement of the party regulars at the state Democratic convention. Congressman James Shannon, a favorite of House Speaker Tip O'Neill, was the early favorite to win the nomination, and he \"won broad establishment support and led in early polling\". Again as in 1982, however, Kerry prevailed in a close primary.\nIn his general election campaign, Kerry promised to mix liberalism with tight budget controls. He defeated Republican Ray Shamie despite a nationwide landslide for the re-election of Republican President Ronald Reagan, for whom Massachusetts voted by a narrow margin. In his victory speech, Kerry asserted that his win meant that the people of Massachusetts \"emphatically reject the politics of selfishness and the notion that women must be treated as second-class citizens\".\nTsongas resigned on January 2, 1985, one day before the end of his term. Dukakis appointed Kerry to fill the vacancy, giving him seniority over other new senators who were sworn in on January 3, the scheduled start of their new terms.\nU.S. Senate (1985\u20132013).\nIran\u2013Contra hearings.\nOn April 18, 1985, a few months after taking his Senate seat, Kerry and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa traveled to Nicaragua and met the country's president, Daniel Ortega. Although Ortega had won internationally certified elections, the trip was criticized because Ortega and his leftist Sandinista government had strong ties to Cuba and the USSR and were accused of human rights abuses. The Sandinista government was opposed by the right-wing CIA-backed rebels known as the Contras. While in Nicaragua, Kerry and Harkin talked to people on both sides of the conflict. Through the senators, Ortega offered a cease-fire agreement in exchange for the U.S. dropping support of the Contras. The offer was denounced by the Reagan administration as a \"propaganda initiative\" designed to influence a House vote on a $14million Contra aid package, but Kerry said \"I am willing... to take the risk in the effort to put to test the good faith of the Sandinistas.\" The House voted down the Contra aid, but Ortega flew to Moscow to accept a $200million loan the next day, which in part prompted the House to pass a larger $27million aid package six weeks later.\nMeanwhile, Kerry's staff began their own investigations and, on October 14, issued a report that exposed illegal activities on the part of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who had set up a private network involving the National Security Council and the CIA to deliver military equipment to right-wing Nicaraguan rebels (Contras). In effect, North and certain members of the President's administration were accused by Kerry's report of illegally funding and supplying armed militants without the authorization of Congress. Kerry's staff investigation, based on a year-long inquiry and interviews with fifty unnamed sources, is said to raise \"serious questions about whether the United States has abided by the law in its handling of the contras over the past three years\".\nThe Kerry Committee report found that \"the Contra drug links included... payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies.\" The U.S. State Department paid over $806,000 to known drug traffickers to carry humanitarian assistance to the Contras. Kerry's findings provoked little reaction in the media and official Washington.\nThe Kerry report was a precursor to the Iran\u2013Contra affair. On May 4, 1989, North was convicted of charges relating to the Iran/Contra controversy, including three felonies. On September 16, 1991, however, North's convictions were overturned on appeal.\nGeorge H. W. Bush administration.\nOn November 15, 1988, at a businessmen's breakfast in East Lynn, Massachusetts, Kerry made a joke about then-President-elect George H. W. Bush and his running mate, saying \"if Bush is shot, the Secret Service has orders to shoot Dan Quayle.\" He apologized the following day.\nDuring their investigation of General Manuel Noriega, the \"de facto\" ruler of Panama, Kerry's staff found reason to believe that the Pakistan-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) had facilitated Noriega's drug trafficking and money laundering. This led to a separate inquiry into BCCI, and as a result, banking regulators shut down BCCI in 1991. In December 1992, Kerry and Senator Hank Brown, a Republican from Colorado, released \"The BCCI Affair\", a report on the BCCI scandal. The report showed that the bank was crooked and was working with terrorists, including Abu Nidal. It blasted the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, the Customs Service, the Federal Reserve Bank, as well as influential lobbyists and the CIA.\nKerry was criticized by some Democrats for having pursued his own party members, including former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, although Republicans said he should have pressed against some Democrats even harder. The BCCI scandal was later turned over to the Manhattan District Attorney's office.\nPrecursors to presidential bid.\nIn 1996, Kerry faced a difficult re-election fight against Governor William Weld, a popular Republican incumbent who had been re-elected in 1994 with 71% of the vote. The race was covered nationwide as one of the most closely watched Senate races that year. Kerry and Weld held several debates and negotiated a campaign spending cap of $6.9million at Kerry's Beacon Hill townhouse. Both candidates spent more than the cap, with each camp accusing the other of being first to break the agreement. During the campaign, Kerry spoke briefly at the 1996 Democratic National Convention. Kerry won re-election with 52 percent to Weld's 45 percent.\nIn the 2000 presidential election, Kerry found himself close to being chosen as the vice presidential running mate.\nA release from the presidential campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Al Gore listed Kerry on the short list to be selected as the vice-presidential nominee, along with North Carolina Senator John Edwards, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt, New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. Gore ultimately chose Lieberman.\n\"You get stuck in Iraq\" controversy.\nOn October 30, 2006, Kerry was a headline speaker at a campaign rally being held for Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. Speaking to an audience composed mainly of college students, Kerry said, \"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.\"\nThe day after he made the remark, leaders from both sides of the political spectrum criticized Kerry's remarks, which he said were a botched joke. Republicans including President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain and then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, said that Kerry's comments were insulting to American military forces fighting in Iraq. Democratic Representative Harold Ford Jr. called on Kerry to apologize.\nKerry initially stated: \"I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy\". Kerry also responded to criticism from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.\nKerry said that he had intended the remark as a jab at President Bush, and described the remarks as a \"botched joke\", having inadvertently left out the key word \"us\" (which would have been, \"If you don't, you get \"us\" stuck in Iraq\"), as well as leaving the phrase \"just ask President Bush\" off of the end of the sentence. In Kerry's prepared remarks, which he released during the ensuing media frenzy, the corresponding line was \"...you end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush\". He also said that from the context of the speech which, prior to the \"stuck in Iraq\" line, made several specific references to Bush and elements of his biography, that Kerry was referring to President Bush and not American troops in general.\nAfter two days of media coverage, citing a desire not to be a diversion, Kerry apologized to those who took offense at what he called the misinterpretation of his comment.\nAfghanistan and Pakistan.\nA \"Washington Post\" report in May 2011 stated that Kerry \"has emerged in the past few years as an important envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan during times of crisis\", as he undertook another trip to the two countries. The killing of Osama bin Laden \"has generated perhaps the most important crossroads yet\", the report continued, as the senator spoke at a press conference and prepared to fly from Kabul to Pakistan. Among matters discussed during the May visit to Pakistan, under the general rubric of \"recalibrating\" the bilateral relationship, Kerry sought and retrieved from the Pakistanis the tail-section of the U.S. helicopter which had had to be abandoned at Abbottabad during the bin Laden strike. In 2013, Kerry met with Pakistan's army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to discuss the peace process with the Taliban in Afghanistan.\nVoting record.\nOverall.\nMost analyses place Kerry's voting record on the left within the Senate Democratic caucus. During the 2004 presidential election he was portrayed as a staunch liberal by conservative groups and the Bush campaign, who often noted that in 2003 Kerry was rated the top Senate liberal by \"National Journal\". However, that rating was based only upon voting on legislation within that past year. In fact, in terms of career voting records, the \"National Journal\" found that Kerry is the 11th most liberal member of the Senate. Most analyses find that Kerry is at least slightly more liberal than the typical Democratic Senator. Kerry has stated that he opposes privatizing Social Security, supports abortion rights for adult women and minors, supports same-sex marriage, opposes capital punishment except for terrorists, supports most gun control laws, and is generally a supporter of trade agreements. In some of these, as in the case of abortion, Kerry distinguishes his personal views as in line with his Catholic faith, but believes that separation of church and state demands that he not legislate his religious beliefs upon those who do not share those beliefs. Kerry supported the North American Free Trade Agreement and Most Favored Nation status for China, but opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement.\nIn July 1997, Kerry joined his Senate colleagues in voting against ratification of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming without greenhouse gas emissions limits on nations deemed developing, including India and China. Since then, Kerry has attacked President Bush, charging him with opposition to international efforts to combat global warming.\nOn October 1, 2008, Kerry voted for Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, also known as the TARP bailout.\nIraq.\nIn the lead up to the Iraq War, Kerry said on October 9, 2002; \"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.\" Bush relied on that resolution in ordering the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Kerry also gave a January 23, 2003, speech to Georgetown University saying \"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator; leading an oppressive regime he presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.\" Kerry did, however, warn that the administration should exhaust its diplomatic avenues before launching war: \"Mr. President, do not rush to war, take the time to build the coalition, because it's not winning the war that's hard, it's winning the peace that's hard.\"\nAfter the invasion of Iraq, when no weapons of mass destruction were found, Kerry strongly criticized Bush, contending that he had misled the country: \"When the President of the United States looks at you and tells you something, there should be some trust.\"\nLibya.\nIn 2011, Kerry supported American military action in Libya.\nLeadership.\nKerry chaired the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs from 1991 to 1993. The committee's report, which Kerry endorsed, stated there was \"no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia\". In 1994 the Senate passed a resolution, sponsored by Kerry and fellow Vietnam veteran John McCain, that called for an end to the existing trade embargo against Vietnam; it was intended to pave the way for normalization. In 1995, President Bill Clinton normalized diplomatic relations with the country of Vietnam.\nKerry was the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 1987 to 1989. He was reelected to the Senate in 1990, 1996 (after winning re-election against the then-Governor of Massachusetts Republican William Weld), 2002, and 2008. In January 2009, Kerry replaced Joe Biden as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.\nAs a role model for campus leaders across the nation and strong advocate for global development, Kerry was honored by the Millennium Campus Network (MCN) as a Global Generation Award winner in 2011.\nCommittee assignments.\nDuring his tenure, Kerry served on four Senate committees and nine subcommittees:\nSeniority.\nFrom the beginning of the 113th United States Congress until his resignation, Kerry ranked as the 7th most senior U.S. Senator. Due to the longevity of Ted Kennedy's service, Kerry was the most senior \"junior Senator\" in the 111th United States Congress. On Tuesday, August 25, 2009, Kerry became the senior senator from Massachusetts following Ted Kennedy's death.\nSponsorship of legislation.\nAreas of concern in the bills Kerry introduced into the Senate included small business concerns, education, terrorism, veterans' and POW/MIA issues, and marine resource protection. A full list of Kerry's sponsored legislation was available on his Senate web site.\nDuring his Senate career, Kerry was primary sponsor of the following bills (excluding resolutions and amendments sponsored). This table does not count bills which Kerry co-sponsored.\nA chronological list of various bills and resolutions sponsored by Kerry follows.\n2004 presidential campaign.\nIn the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries, John Kerry defeated several Democratic rivals, including Sen. John Edwards (D-North Carolina), former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and retired Army General Wesley Clark. His victory in the Iowa caucuses is widely believed to be the tipping point where Kerry revived his sagging campaign in New Hampshire and the February 3, 2004, primary states like Arizona, South Carolina and New Mexico. Kerry then went on to win landslide victories in Nevada and Wisconsin. Kerry thus won the Democratic nomination to run for President of the United States against incumbent George W. Bush. On July 6, 2004, he announced his selection of John Edwards as his running mate. Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who was Kerry's 2004 campaign adviser, wrote an article in \"Time\" magazine claiming that after the election, Kerry had said that he wished he had never picked Edwards, and that the two have since stopped speaking to each other. In a subsequent appearance on ABC's \"This Week\", Kerry refused to respond to Shrum's allegation, calling it a \"ridiculous waste of time\".\nDuring his bid to be elected president in 2004, Kerry frequently criticized President George W. Bush for starting the Iraq War. While Kerry had initially voted in support of authorizing President Bush to use force in dealing with Saddam Hussein, he voted against an $87billion supplemental appropriations bill to pay for the subsequent war. His statement on March 16, 2004, \"I actually did vote for the $87billion before I voted against it\", helped the Bush campaign to paint him as a flip-flopper and has been cited as contributing to Kerry's defeat.\nOn November 3, 2004, Kerry conceded the race. Kerry won 59.03 million votes, or 48.3 percent of the popular vote; Bush won 62.04 million votes, or 50.7 percent of the popular vote. Kerry carried states with a total of 252 electoral votes. One Kerry elector voted for Kerry's running mate, Edwards, so in the final tally Kerry had 251 electoral votes to Bush's 286. He was the first Democrat since Michael Dukakis in 1988 to lose the popular vote in a presidential election, and until Kamala Harris's loss in 2024, he was the most recent Democrat to do so.\nSubsequent presidential-election activities.\nImmediately after the 2004 election, some Democrats mentioned Kerry as a possible contender for the 2008 Democratic nomination. His brother had said such a campaign was \"conceivable\", and Kerry himself reportedly said at a farewell party for his 2004 campaign staff, \"There's always another four years\".\nKerry established a separate political action committee, Keeping America's Promise, which declared as its mandate \"A Democratic Congress will restore accountability to Washington and help change a disastrous course in Iraq\", and raised money and channeled contributions to Democratic candidates in state and federal races. Through Keeping America's Promise in 2005, Kerry raised over $5.5million for other Democrats up and down the ballot. Through his campaign account and his political action committee, the Kerry campaign operation generated more than $10million for various party committees and 179 candidates for the U.S. House, Senate, state and local offices in 42 states focusing on the midterm elections during the 2006 election cycle. \"Cumulatively, John Kerry has done as much if not more than any other individual senator\", Hassan Nemazee, the national finance chairman of the DSCC said.\nOn January 10, 2008, Kerry endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama for president. He was mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate for Senator Obama, although fellow Senator Joe Biden was eventually chosen. After Biden's acceptance of the vice presidential nomination, speculation arose that John Kerry would be a candidate for Secretary of State in the Obama administration. However, Senator Hillary Clinton was offered the position.\nDuring the 2012 Obama reelection campaign, Kerry participated in one-on-one debate prep with the president, impersonating the Republican candidate Mitt Romney.\nSecretary of State (2013\u20132017).\nNomination and confirmation.\nOn December 15, 2012, several news outlets reported that President Barack Obama would nominate Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, after Susan Rice, widely seen as Obama's preferred choice, withdrew her name from consideration citing a politicized confirmation process following criticism of her response to the 2012 Benghazi attack. On December 21, Obama proposed the nomination, which received positive commentary. His confirmation hearing took place on January 24, 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the same panel where he first testified in 1971. The committee unanimously voted to approve him on January 29, 2013, and the same day the full Senate confirmed him on a vote of 94\u20133. In a letter to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Kerry announced his resignation from the Senate effective February 1.\nTenure.\nKerry was sworn in as Secretary of State on February 1, 2013.\nWhile serving as the Secretary of State, Kerry spoke in the French language on several occasions in his official capacity.\nAfter six months of rigorous diplomacy within the Middle East, Kerry was able to have Israeli and Palestinian negotiators agree to start the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks. Senior U.S. officials stated the two sides were able to meet on July 30, 2013, at the State Department without American mediators following a dinner the previous evening hosted by Kerry.\nOn September 27, 2013, he met with the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the P5+1 and Iran summit, which eventually led to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. It was the highest-level direct contact between the United States and Iran in the last six years, and made him the first U.S. Secretary of State to have met with his Iranian counterpart since 1979 Iranian Revolution.\nIn the State Department, Kerry quickly earned a reputation \"for being aloof, keeping to himself, and not bothering to read staff memos\". Career State Department officials complained that power became too centralized under Kerry's leadership, which slowed department operations when Kerry was on frequent overseas trips. Others in State described Kerry as having \"a kind of diplomatic attention deficit disorder\" as he shifted from topic to topic instead of focusing on long-term strategy. When asked whether he was traveling too much, he responded, \"Hell no. I'm not slowing down.\" Despite Kerry's early achievements, morale at State was lower than under Hillary Clinton, according to department employees. However, after Kerry's first six months in the State Department, a Gallup poll found he had high approval ratings among Americans as Secretary of State. After a year, another poll showed Kerry's favorability continued to rise. Less than two years into Kerry's term, the Foreign Policy Magazine's 2014 Ivory Tower survey of international relations scholars asked, \"Who was the most effective U.S. Secretary of State in the past 50 years?\"; John Kerry and Lawrence Eagleburger tied for 11th place out of the 15 confirmed Secretaries of State in that period.\nIn January 2014, having met with Vatican Secretary of State Archbishop Pietro Parolin, Kerry said: \"We touched on just about every major issue that we are both working on, that are issues of concern to all of us. First of all, we talked at great length about Syria, and I was particularly appreciative for the Archbishop's raising this issue, and equally grateful for the Holy Father's comments\u00a0\u2013 the Pope's comments yesterday regarding his support for the GenevaII process. We welcome that support. It is very important to have broad support, and I know that the Pope is particularly concerned about the massive numbers of displaced human beings and the violence that has taken over 130,000 lives.\"\nKerry expressed support for Israel's right to defend itself during the 2014 Israel\u2013Gaza conflict.\nKerry said the United States supported the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen because Saudi Arabia, an ally, was threatened \"very directly\" by the takeover of neighboring Yemen by the Houthis, but noted that the United States would not reflexively support Saudi Arabia's proxy wars against Iran.\nOn December 28, 2016, soon after United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 passed 14\u20130 with the U.S. abstaining, Kerry joined the rest of the U.N. Security Council in strongly criticizing Israel's settlement policies in a speech. His speech and criticisms met negative reactions from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while UK Prime Minister Theresa May distanced the UK from Kerry's strongly worded speech in what appeared to be an attempt to build bridges with the incoming Trump administration. Kerry's speech received positive reactions from Arab nations, but some criticized his remarks as too little, too late from the outgoing administration.\nSyria.\nFollowing the August 21, 2013, chemical weapons attack on the Ghouta suburbs of Damascus attributed to Syrian government forces, Kerry became a leading advocate for the use of military force against the Syrian government for what he called \"a despot's brutal and flagrant use of chemical weapons\".\nOn September 9, in response to a reporter's question about whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could avert a military strike, Kerry said \"He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that. But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done, obviously.\" This unscripted remark initiated a process that would lead to Syria agreeing to relinquish and destroy its chemical weapons arsenal, as Russia treated Kerry's statement as a serious proposal. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia would work \"immediately\" to convince Syria relinquish and destroy its large chemical weapons arsenal. Syria quickly welcomed this proposal and on September 14, the UN formally accepted Syria's application to join the convention banning chemical weapons, and separately, the U.S. and Russia agreed on a plan to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons by the middle of 2014, leading Kerry to declare on July 20, 2014: \"we struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out\". On September 28, the UN Security Council passed a resolution ordering the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons and condemning the August 21 Ghouta attack.\nLatin America.\nIn a speech before the Organization of American States in November 2013, Kerry remarked that the era of the Monroe Doctrine was over. He went on to explain, \"The relationship that we seek and that we have worked hard to foster is not about a United States declaration about how and when it will intervene in the affairs of other American states. It's about all of our countries viewing one another as equals, sharing responsibilities, cooperating on security issues, and adhering not to doctrine, but to the decisions that we make as partners to advance the values and the interests that we share.\"\nEnvironmentalism.\nIn April 2016, he signed the Paris Climate Accords at the United Nations in New York.\nOn November 11, 2016, Kerry became the first Secretary of State and highest-ranking U.S. official to date to visit Antarctica. Kerry spent two days on the continent meeting with researchers and staying overnight at McMurdo Station.\nIn 1994, Kerry led opposition to continued funding for the Integral Fast Reactor, which resulted in the end of funding for the project. However, in light of increasing concerns regarding climate change, in 2017 Kerry reversed his position on nuclear power, saying \"Given this challenge we face today, and given the progress of fourth generation nuclear: go for it. No other alternative, zero emissions.\"\nGlobal Connect initiative.\nIn September 2015, the U.S. Department of State unveiled a new initiative called \"Global Connect\" which sought to provide internet access to more than 1.5 billion people around the world within five years. In 2016, in partnership with OPIC, Kerry announced an investment of $171million to enable \"a low-cost and rapidly scalable wireless broadband network in India\". OPIC's financing is aimed at helping its Indian Partner, Tikona Digital Networks, to provide Internet through wireless technology.\nOut of government (2017\u20132021).\nKerry retired from his diplomatic work following the end of the Obama administration on January 20, 2017. He did not attend Donald Trump's inauguration on that day, and the following day took part in the 2017 Women's March in Washington, D.C.\nKerry has taken a strong stand against Trump policies and joined in filing a brief arguing against Trump's executive order banning entry of persons from seven Muslim countries. In November 2018, in a \"Guardian Live\" conversation with Andrew Rawnsley, sponsored by \"The Guardian\" at London's Central Hall, Kerry discussed several issues which have developed further since his tenure as Secretary of State, including migration into Europe and climate change.\nOn December 5, 2019, Kerry endorsed Joe Biden's bid for the Democratic nomination for president, saying \"He'll be ready on day one to put back together the country and the world that Donald Trump has broken apart\" and asserting that \"Joe will defeat Donald Trump next November. He's the candidate with the wisdom and standing to fix what Trump has broken, to restore our place in the world, and improve the lives of working people here at home.\"\nFollowing retirement from government service, Kerry signed an agreement with Simon & Schuster for publishing his planned memoirs, dealing with his life and career in government. In September 2018, he published \"Every Day Is Extra\".\nLeaked audiotape.\nOn April 25, 2021, \"The New York Times\" published content from a leaked audiotape of a three-hour taped conversation between economist Saeed Leylaz and Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. The taped conversation was connected to an oral history project, known as \"In the Islamic Republic the military field rules\", which documents the work of Iran's current administration. The tape was obtained by the London-based news channel Iran International.\nIn the tape, which the \"Times\" referred to as \"extraordinary\", Zarif reveals that then-Secretary of State Kerry told him that Israel attacked Iranian assets in Syria, \"at least 200 times\". Although the tape has not been verified, the spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry did not deny its validity.\nNineteen Republican senators signed a letter asking President Biden to investigate Zarif's claim. On April 27, 2021, Republicans called on Kerry to resign from the Biden administration's National Security Council. In a tweet, Kerry denied Zarif's account, writing, \"I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false. This never happened \u2014 either when I was Secretary of State or since.\"\nSpecial Presidential Envoy for Climate (2021\u20132024).\nOn November 23, 2020, President-elect Joe Biden's transition team announced that Kerry would be taking a full-time position in the administration, serving as a special envoy for climate; in this role he will be a principal on the National Security Council. Kerry assumed office on January 20, 2021, following Biden's inauguration.\nClimate cooperation with China.\nIn July 2023, John Kerry visited China for advance climate cooperation. The main achievement of the visit was some progress in the fields of: \"methane reduction commitments; reducing China's reliance on coal; China's objections to trade restrictions on solar panel and battery components; and climate finance.\" This was obtained despite many currently existing obstacles to cooperation. The visit was made in the middle of the 2023 Asia heat wave that set a new record of in Sanbu, Xinjiang, China, which Kerry mentioned in particular.\nClimate cooperation with India.\nAt the end of July 2023, John Kerry visited India. Among others he declared, the US will be committed to the target of delivering 100 billion dollars for climate action to low income countries and no future US president can retreat from climate commitment. He criticized Donald Trump for leaving the Paris agreement before.\nClimate cooperation with countries in the Middle East.\nIn June 2023, Kerry made visits to Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. In Israel, he emphasized the need for climate legislation to reach climate targets and reached an agreement about the renewal of \"Memorandum of understanding between Israel and the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Israel is one of the few developed countries which have still not approved a climate law and lags behind other OECD countries in climate action. Israeli environmental protection minister Idit Silman said that Israel intended to go to COP28 \"with an ambitious and applicable climate law and put the State of Israel on the same level as the developed countries of the OECD.\"\nDeparture.\nOn January 13, 2024, at least three sources close to Kerry revealed that he would step down as U.S. climate envoy by the upcoming spring. He told the \"Financial Times\" he planned to stay active in the climate finance space. He officially resigned from his position on March 6, 2024.\nPersonal and family life.\nAncestry.\nKerry's paternal ancestors came from the Fr\u00e4nkel family, which owned a textile factory in Neustadt, Upper Silesia (now Prudnik, Poland), founded by Samuel Fr\u00e4nkel. The Fr\u00e4nkels originated from Hotzenplotz, Austria (now Osoblaha, Czech Republic) and Z\u00fclz, Prussia (now Bia\u0142a Prudnicka, Poland). Kerry's paternal great-grandmother, Mathilda Fr\u00e4nkel, was born in Oberglogau (now G\u0142og\u00f3wek, near Prudnik) and married Benedikt Kohn from Bennisch (now Horn\u00ed Bene\u0161ov). His grandparents, shoe businessman Frederick A. \"Fred\" Kerry and musician Ida L\u00f6we, immigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the U.S. Fred, his wife, and his brother converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1901, and changed their names from Kohn to Kerry. Ida was of remote ancestry of Rabbi Sinai Loew of Worms, brother of Judah Loew ben Bezalel. Fred and Ida Kerry emigrated to the United States in 1905, living at first in Chicago and eventually moving to Brookline, Massachusetts, by 1915. According to \"The New York Times\", \"[the] brother and sister of John Kerry's paternal grandmother, Otto and Jenni Lowe, died in concentration camps\". Kerry's Jewish ancestry was publicly revealed during his 2004 presidential campaign; he has stated that he was unaware of it until a reporter informed him of it in 2003.\nKerry's maternal ancestors were of Scottish and English descent, and his maternal grandparents were James Grant Forbes II of the Forbes family and Margaret Tyndal Winthrop of the Dudley\u2013Winthrop family. Margaret's paternal grandfather Robert Charles Winthrop served as the 22nd Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Robert's father was Governor Thomas Lindall Winthrop. Thomas' father John Still Winthrop was a great-great-grandson of Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop and great-grandson of Governor Thomas Dudley. Through his mother, Kerry is a first cousin once removed of French politician Brice Lalonde.\nMarriages and children.\nKerry was married to Julia Thorne in 1970, and they had two daughters together: documentary filmmaker Alexandra Kerry (born September 5, 1973) and physician Vanessa Kerry (born December 31, 1976).\nAlexandra was born days before Kerry began law school. In 1982, Julia asked Kerry for a separation while she was suffering from severe depression. They were divorced on July 25, 1988, and the marriage was formally annulled in 1997. \"After 14 years as a political wife, I associated politics only with anger, fear and loneliness\", she wrote in \"A Change of Heart\", her book about depression. Thorne later married Richard Charlesworth, an architect, and moved to Bozeman, Montana, where she became active in local environmental groups such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Thorne supported Kerry's 2004 presidential run. She died of cancer on April 27, 2006.\nKerry and his second wife\u2014Portuguese-born businesswoman and philanthropist Teresa Heinz, the widow of Kerry's late Pennsylvania Republican Senate colleague John Heinz\u2014were introduced to each other by Heinz at an Earth Day rally in 1990. Early the following year, Senator Heinz was killed in a plane crash near Lower Merion. Teresa has three sons from her marriage to Heinz, Henry John IV, Andr\u00e9, and Christopher. Heinz and Kerry were married on May 26, 1995, in Nantucket, Massachusetts.\nNet worth.\nThe \"Forbes 400\" survey estimated in 2004 that Teresa Heinz Kerry had a net worth of $750million. However, estimates have frequently varied, ranging from around $165million to as high as $3.2billion, according to a study in the \"Los Angeles Times\". Regardless of which figure is correct, Kerry was the wealthiest U.S. Senator while serving in the Senate. Independent of Heinz, Kerry is wealthy in his own right, and is the beneficiary of at least four trusts inherited from Forbes family relatives, including his mother, Rosemary Forbes Kerry, who died in 2002. \"Forbes\" magazine (named for the Forbes family of publishers, unrelated to Kerry) estimated that if elected, and if Heinz family assets were included, Kerry would have been the third-richest U.S. president in history, when adjusted for inflation. This assessment was based on Heinz's and Kerry's combined assets, but the couple signed a prenuptial agreement that keeps their assets separate. Kerry's financial disclosure form for 2011 put his personal assets in the range of $230,000,000 to $320,000,000, including the assets of his spouse and any dependent children. This included slightly more than $3,000,000 worth of H. J. Heinz Company assets, which increased in value by over $600,000 in 2013 when Berkshire Hathaway announced their intention to purchase the company.\nIn April 2017, Kerry purchased an 18-acre property on the northwest corner of Martha's Vineyard overlooking Vineyard Sound in the town of Chilmark, Massachusetts. The property is located in Seven Gates Farm and according to property records, cost $11.75million for the seven bedroom home.\nReligious beliefs.\nKerry is a Roman Catholic, and is said to have carried a religious rosary, a prayer book, and a St. Christopher medal (the patron saint of travelers) when he campaigned. Discussing his faith, Kerry said: \"I thought of being a priest. I was very religious while at school in Switzerland. I was an altar boy and prayed all the time. I was very centered around the Mass and the church.\" He also said that the Letters of Paul (Apostle Paul) moved him the most, stating that they taught him to \"not feel sorry for myself\".\nKerry told \"Christianity Today\" in October 2004:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I'm a Catholic and I practice, but at the same time I have an open-mindedness to many other expressions of spirituality that come through different religions... I've spent some time reading and thinking about religion and trying to study it, and I've arrived at not so much a sense of the differences, but a sense of the similarities in so many ways.\nHe said that he believed that the Torah, the Quran, and the Bible all share a fundamental story which connects with readers.\nHealth.\nIn 2003, Kerry was diagnosed with and successfully treated for prostate cancer. On May 31, 2015, Kerry broke his right leg in a biking accident in Scionzier, France, and was flown to Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital for recovery. MGH Hip and Knee Replacement Orthopaedic Surgeon Dr. Dennis Burke, who had met Kerry in France and had accompanied him in the plane from France to Boston, set Kerry's right leg on Tuesday, June 2, in a four-hour operation.\nAthletics and sailing.\nIn addition to the sports he played at Yale, Kerry is described by \"Sports Illustrated\", among others, as an \"avid cyclist\", primarily riding on a road bike. Prior to his presidential bid, Kerry had participated in several long-distance rides. During his many campaigns, he was reported to have visited bicycle stores in both his home state and elsewhere. His staff requested recumbent stationary bikes for his hotel rooms. He has also been a snowboarder, windsurfer, and sailor.\nThe \"Boston Herald\" reported on July 23, 2010, that Kerry commissioned construction on a new $7million yacht (a Friendship 75) in New Zealand and moored it in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where the Friendship yacht company is based. The article claimed this allowed him to avoid paying Massachusetts taxes on the property including approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $500. On July 27, Kerry stated he would voluntarily pay $500,000 in Massachusetts taxes on his yacht.\nHonors.\nJohn Kerry was awarded:\nHonorary degrees.\nJohn Kerry has received several honorary degrees in recognition of his service to the United States, These include:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "53825": "New Haven, Connecticut\nNew Haven is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is the third largest city in Connecticut after Bridgeport and Stamford, the largest city in the South Central Connecticut Planning Region, and the principal municipality of Greater New Haven, which had a total population of 864,835 in 2020.\nNew Haven was one of the first planned cities in the U.S. A year after its founding by English Puritans in 1638, eight streets were laid out in a four-by-four grid, creating the \"Nine Square Plan\". The central common block is the New Haven Green, a square at the center of Downtown New Haven. The Green is now a National Historic Landmark, and the \"Nine Square Plan\" is recognized by the American Planning Association as a National Planning Landmark.\nNew Haven is the home of Yale University, New Haven's biggest taxpayer and employer, and an integral part of the city's economy. Health care, professional and financial services and retail trade also contribute to the city's economic activity.\nThe city served as co-capital of Connecticut from 1701 until 1873, when sole governance was transferred to the more centrally located city of Hartford. New Haven has since billed itself as the \"Cultural Capital of Connecticut\" for its supply of established theaters, museums, and music venues. New Haven had the first public tree planting program in the U.S., producing a canopy of mature trees (including some large elms) that gave the city the nickname \"The Elm City\".\nHistory.\nPre-colonial foundation as an independent colony.\nBefore Europeans arrived, the New Haven area was the home of the Quinnipiac tribe of Native Americans, who lived in villages around the harbor and sustained an economy of local fisheries and the farming of maize. The area was briefly visited by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block in 1614. Dutch traders set up a small trading system of beaver pelts with the local inhabitants, but trade was sporadic and the Dutch did not settle permanently in the area.\nIn 1637, a small party of Puritans did a reconnaissance of the New Haven harbor area and wintered over. In April 1638, the main party of five hundred Puritans, who had left the Massachusetts Bay Colony under the leadership of Reverend John Davenport and London merchant Theophilus Eaton, sailed into the harbor. It was their hope to set up a theological community with the government more closely linked to the church than that in Massachusetts, and to exploit the area's potential as a port. The Quinnipiacs, who were under attack by neighboring Pequots, sold their land to the settlers in return for a pledge of protection.\nBy 1640, \"Quinnipiac's\" theocratic government and nine-square grid plan were in place, and the town was renamed New Haven, with 'haven' meaning harbor or port. However, the area to the north remained Quinnipiac until 1678, when it was renamed Hamden. The settlement became the headquarters of the New Haven Colony, distinct from the Connecticut Colony previously established to the north centering on Hartford. Reflecting its theocratic roots, the New Haven Colony forbade the establishment of other churches, whereas the Connecticut Colony permitted them.\nEconomic disaster struck New Haven in 1646, when the town sent its first fully loaded ship of local goods (the \"Great Shippe\") back to England. It never reached its destination, and its disappearance hindered New Haven's development as compared to the rising trade powers of Boston and New Amsterdam (modern day New York City).\nIn 1660, Colony founder John Davenport's wishes were fulfilled, and Hopkins School was founded in New Haven with money from the estate of Edward Hopkins.\nIn 1661, the Regicides who had signed the death warrant of Charles I of England were pursued by Charles II. Two of them, Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe, fled to New Haven for refuge. Davenport arranged for them to hide in the West Rock hills northwest of the town. A third judge, John Dixwell, later joined the others. None of the three were ever returned to England for trial; Dixwell died of old age in New Haven, the others likewise elsewhere in New England.\nAs part of the Connecticut Colony.\nIn 1664, New Haven became part of the Connecticut Colony when the two colonies were merged under political pressure from England. Seeking to establish a new theocracy elsewhere, some members of the New Haven Colony went on to establish Newark, New Jersey.\nNew Haven was made co-capital of Connecticut in 1701, a status it retained until 1873.\nIn 1716, the Collegiate School relocated from Old Saybrook to New Haven, establishing it as a center of learning. In 1718, in response to a large donation from East India Company merchant Elihu Yale, former Governor of Madras, the Collegiate School was renamed Yale College.\nFor over a century, New Haven citizens had fought in the colonial militia alongside regular British forces, including the French and Indian War. As the American Revolution approached, General David Wooster and other influential residents hoped that the conflict with the British parliament could be resolved short of rebellion. On April 23, 1775, Captain Benedict Arnold commanded the Second Company, Governor's Foot Guard, of New Haven to break into the powder house to arm themselves for a three-day march to Cambridge, Massachusetts, an event still celebrated in New Haven as Powder House Day. Other New Haven militia members were on hand to escort George Washington from his overnight stay in New Haven on his way to Cambridge. Contemporary reports, from both sides, remark on the New Haven volunteers' professional military bearing, including uniforms.\nOn July 5, 1779, 2,600 loyalists and British regulars under General William Tryon, governor of New York, landed in New Haven Harbor and raided the town of 3,500. A militia of Yale students had been preparing for battle, and former Yale president and Yale Divinity School professor Naphtali Daggett rode out to confront the Redcoats. Yale president Ezra Stiles recounted in his diary that while he moved furniture in anticipation of battle, he still couldn't quite believe the revolution had begun. New Haven was not torched as the invaders did with Danbury in 1777, or Fairfield and Norwalk a week after the New Haven raid, preserving many of the town's colonial features.\nPost-colonial period and industrialization.\nNew Haven was incorporated as a city in 1784, and Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Constitution and author of the \"Connecticut Compromise\", became the new city's first mayor.\nThe city struck fortune in the late 18th century with the inventions and industrial activity of Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate who remained in New Haven to develop the cotton gin and establish a gun-manufacturing factory in the northern part of the city near the Hamden town line. That area is still known as Whitneyville, and the main road through both towns is known as Whitney Avenue. The factory is now the Eli Whitney Museum, which has a particular emphasis on activities for children and exhibits pertaining to the A. C. Gilbert Company. His factory, along with that of Simeon North, and the lively clock-making and brass hardware sectors, contributed to making early Connecticut a powerful manufacturing economy; so many arms manufacturers sprang up that the state became known as \"The Arsenal of America\". It was in Whitney's gun-manufacturing plant that Samuel Colt invented the automatic revolver in 1836. Many other talented machinists and firearms designers would go on to found successful firearms manufacturing companies in New Haven, including Oliver Winchester and O.F. Mossberg & Sons.\nThe Farmington Canal, created in the early 19th century, was a short-lived transporter of goods into the interior regions of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and ran from New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts.\nNew Haven was to be the site of the first college for African Americans in the United States, but the plan was obstructed by efforts led by Yale Law School founder and former New Haven Mayor David Daggett, who went on to serve as a U.S. Senator and judge on Connecticut's highest court. Daggett denigrated African Americans, denied they were citizens, and presided over the trial of a woman persecuted for trying to admit an African American girl to her boarding school and, having that effort blocked, running a boarding school for African American girls.\nNew Haven was home to one of the important early events in the burgeoning anti-slavery movement when, in 1839, the trial of mutineering Mende tribesmen being transported as slaves on the Spanish slaveship \"Amistad\" was held in New Haven's United States District Court. There is a statue of Joseph Cinqu\u00e9, the informal leader of the slaves, beside City Hall. See \"Museums\" below for more information. Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech on slavery in New Haven in 1860, shortly before he secured the Republican nomination for President.\nThe American Civil War boosted the local economy with wartime purchases of industrial goods, including that of the New Haven Arms Company, which would later become the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. (Winchester would continue to produce arms in New Haven until 2006, and many of the buildings that were a part of the Winchester plant are now a part of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company Historic District). After the war, population grew and doubled by the start of the 20th century, most notably due to the influx of immigrants from southern Europe, particularly Italy. Today, roughly half the populations of East Haven, West Haven, and North Haven are Italian-American. Jewish immigration to New Haven has left an enduring mark on the city. Westville was the center of Jewish life in New Haven, though today many have fanned out to suburban communities such as Woodbridge and Cheshire. Lowell House, the city's first settlement, opened in 1900.\nPost-industrial era and urban redevelopment.\nNew Haven's expansion continued during the two World Wars, with most new inhabitants being African Americans from the American South, and Puerto Ricans. The city reached its peak population after World War II. The area of New Haven is only , encouraging further development of new housing after 1950 in adjacent, suburban towns. Moreover, as in other U.S. cities in the 1950s, New Haven began to suffer white flight of middle-class workers. One author suggested that aggressive redlining and rezoning made it difficult for residents to obtain financing for older, deteriorating urban housing stock, thereby condemning such structures to deterioration.\nIn 1954, then-mayor Richard C. Lee began some of the earliest major urban renewal projects in the United States. Certain sections of downtown New Haven were redeveloped to include museums, new office towers, a hotel, and large shopping complexes. Other parts of the city, particularly the Wooster Square and Fair Haven neighborhoods were affected by the construction of Interstate 95 along the Long Wharf section, Interstate 91, and the Oak Street Connector. The Oak Street Connector (Route 34), running between Interstate 95, downtown, and The Hill neighborhood, was originally intended as a highway to the city's western suburbs but was only completed as a highway to the downtown area, with the area to the west becoming a boulevard (See \"Redevelopment\" below).\nIn 1970, a series of criminal prosecutions against various members of the Black Panther Party took place in New Haven, inciting mass protests on the New Haven Green involving twelve thousand demonstrators and many well-known New Left political activists. (See \"Political Culture\" below for more information). From the 1960s through the early 1990s, some areas of New Haven continued to decline both economically and in terms of population despite attempts to resurrect certain neighborhoods through renewal projects. In conjunction with its declining population, New Haven experienced a steep rise in its crime rate.\nSince approximately 2000, many parts of downtown New Haven have been revitalized with new restaurants, nightlife, and small retail stores. In particular, the area surrounding the New Haven Green has experienced an influx of apartments and condominiums. In addition, two new supermarkets opened to serve downtown's growing residential population: a Stop & Shop opened just west of downtown, while Elm City Market, located one block from the Green, opened in 2011. The recent turnaround of downtown New Haven has received positive press from various periodicals.\nMajor projects include the current construction of a new campus for Gateway Community College downtown, and also a 32-story, 500-unit apartment/retail building called 360 State Street. The 360 State Street project is now occupied and is the largest residential building in Connecticut. A new boathouse and dock is planned for New Haven Harbor, and the linear park Farmington Canal Trail is set to extend into downtown New Haven within the coming year. Additionally, foundation and ramp work to widen I-95 to create a new harbor crossing for New Haven, with an extradosed bridge to replace the 1950s-era Q Bridge, has begun. The city still hopes to redevelop the site of the New Haven Coliseum, which was demolished in 2007.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 18 white firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no black firefighters scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. In the subsequent \"Ricci v. DeStefano\" decision the court found 5\u20134 that New Haven's decision to ignore the test results violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a result, a district court subsequently ordered the city to promote 14 of the white firefighters.\nIn 2010 and 2011, state and federal funds were awarded to Connecticut (and Massachusetts) to construct the Hartford Line, with a southern terminus at New Haven's Union Station and a northern terminus at Springfield's Union Station. According to the White House, \"This corridor [currently] has one train per day connecting communities in Connecticut and Massachusetts to the Northeast Corridor and Vermont. The vision for this corridor is to restore the alignment to its original route via the Knowledge Corridor in western Massachusetts, improving trip time and increasing the population base that can be served.\" Set for construction in 2013, the \"Knowledge Corridor high speed intercity passenger rail\" project will cost approximately $1\u00a0billion, and the ultimate northern terminus for the project is reported to be Montreal in Canada. Train speeds between will reportedly exceed and increase both cities' rail traffic exponentially.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 6.67%, is water.\nNew Haven's best-known geographic features are its large, shallow harbor, and two reddish basalt trap rock ridges which rise to the northeast and northwest of the city core. These trap rocks are known respectively as East Rock and West Rock, and both serve as extensive parks. West Rock has been tunneled through to make way for the east\u2013west passage of the Wilbur Cross Parkway (the only highway tunnel through a natural obstacle in Connecticut), and once served as the hideout of the \"Regicides\" (see: Regicides Trail). Most New Haveners refer to these men as \"The Three Judges\". East Rock features the prominent Soldiers and Sailors war monument on its peak as well as the \"Great/Giant Steps\" which run up the rock's cliffside.\nThe city is drained by three rivers; the West, Mill, and Quinnipiac, named in order from west to east. The West River discharges into West Haven Harbor, while the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers discharge into New Haven Harbor. Both harbors are embayments of Long Island Sound. In addition, several smaller streams flow through the city's neighborhoods, including Wintergreen Brook, the Beaver Ponds Outlet, Wilmot Brook, Belden Brook, and Prospect Creek. Not all of these small streams have continuous flow year-round.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen classification, New Haven experiences a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\"), bordering a hot-summer humid continental climate (\"Dfa\"). The city has hot, humid summers and cool to cold winters. From May to late September, the weather is typically hot and humid, with average temperatures exceeding on 70 days per year. In summer, the Bermuda High creates as southern flow of warm and humid air, with frequent (but brief) thundershowers. October to early December is normally mild to cool late in the season, while early spring (April) can be cool to warm. Winters are more variable, with cool to cold temperatures, mixed with warmer spells, with both rain and snow fall.\nWhile the weather patterns that affect New Haven result from a primarily offshore direction, thus reducing the marine influence of Long Island Sound, the location on Long Island Sound often influences the weather along the coastline compared to inland. During summer heat waves, temperatures may reach or higher on occasion with heat-index values of over . Tropical cyclones have struck New Haven in the past, including 1938 Hurricane (Long Island Express), Hurricane Carol in 1954, Hurricane Gloria in 1985. The hardiness zone is 7a.\nStreetscape.\nNew Haven has a long tradition of urban planning and a purposeful design for the city's layout. The city could be argued to have some of the first preconceived layouts in the country. Upon founding, New Haven was laid out in a grid plan of nine square blocks; the central square was left open, in the tradition of many New England towns, as the city green (a commons area). The city also instituted the first public tree planting program in America. As in other cities, many of the elms that gave New Haven the nickname \"Elm City\" perished in the mid-20th century due to Dutch elm disease, although many have since been replanted. The New Haven Green is currently home to three separate historic churches which speak to the original theocratic nature of the city. The Green remains the social center of the city today. It was named a National Historic Landmark in 1970.\nDowntown New Haven, occupied by nearly 7,000 residents, has a more residential character than most downtowns. The downtown area provides about half of the city's jobs and half of its tax base and in recent years has become filled with dozens of new upscale restaurants, in addition to shops and thousands of apartments and condominium units which subsequently help overall growth of the city.\nNeighborhoods.\nThe city has many distinct neighborhoods. In addition to Downtown, centered on the central business district and the Green, are the following neighborhoods: the west central neighborhoods of Dixwell and Dwight; the southern neighborhoods of The Hill, historic water-front City Point (or Oyster Point), and the harborside district of Long Wharf; the western neighborhoods of Beaver Hills, Edgewood, West River, Westville, Amity, and West Rock-Westhills; East Rock, Cedar Hill, Prospect Hill, and Newhallville in the northern side of town; the east central neighborhoods of Mill River and Wooster Square, an Italian-American neighborhood; Fair Haven, an immigrant community located between the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers; Quinnipiac Meadows and Fair Haven Heights across the Quinnipiac River; and facing the eastern side of the harbor, The Annex and East Shore (or Morris Cove).\nDemographics.\nCensus data.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nThe U.S. Census Bureau reports a 2010 population of 129,779, with 47,094 households and 25,854 families within the city of New Haven. The population density was . There were 52,941 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 42.6% White, 35.4% African American, 0.5% Native American, 4.6% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 12.9% from other races, and 3.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 27.4% of the population. Non-Hispanic Whites were 31.8% of the population in 2010, down from 69.6% in 1970. The city's Latino population is growing rapidly. Previous influxes among ethnic groups have been African-Americans in the postwar era, and Irish, Italian and (to a lesser degree) Slavic peoples in the prewar period.\nAs of the 2010 census, of the 47,094 households, 29.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 27.5% include married couples living together, 22.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 36.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.5% had someone living alone who was 65\u00a0years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40 and the average family size 3.19.\nThe ages of New Haven's residents were 25.4% under the age of 18, 16.4% from 18 to 24, 31.2% from 25 to 44, 16.7% from 45 to 64, and 10.2% who were 65\u00a0years of age or older. The median age was 29\u00a0years, which was significantly lower than the national average. There were 91.8 males per 100 females. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.6 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $29,604, and the median income for a family was $35,950. Median income for males was $33,605, compared with $28,424 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,393. About 20.5% of families and 24.4% of the population were living below the poverty line, including 32.2% of those under age 18 and 17.9% of those age 65 or over.\nOther data.\nIt is estimated that 14% of New Haven residents are pedestrian commuters, ranking it number four by highest percentage in the United States. This is primarily due to New Haven's small area and the presence of Yale University.\nNew Haven is noted for having the highest percentage of Italian American residents of any US city, and is noted for its local style of pizza.\nA study of the demographics of the New Haven metro area, based on age, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity, found that they were the closest of any American city to the national average.\nEconomy.\nNew Haven's economy originally was based in manufacturing, but the postwar period brought rapid industrial decline; the entire Northeast was affected, and medium-sized cities with large working-class populations, like New Haven, were hit particularly hard. Simultaneously, the growth and expansion of Yale University further affected the economic shift. Today, over half (56%) of the city's economy is now made up of services, in particular education and health care; Yale is the city's largest employer, followed by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital. Other large employers include Southern Connecticut State University, Assa Abloy lock manufacturing, the Knights of Columbus headquarters, Higher One, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Covidien and United Illuminating. Clothing stores Gant and Ann Taylor were founded in the city.\nIn 2017, New Haven was ranked by a Verizon study as one of the top 10 cities in America for launching tech startups, and top two in New England.\nIndustry sectors: Agriculture (.6%), Construction and Mining (4.9%), Manufacturing (2.9%), Transportation and Utilities (2.9%), Trade (21.7%), Finance and Real Estate (7.1%), Services (55.9%), Government (4.0%)\nHeadquarters.\nThe Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization and a Fortune 1000 company, is headquartered in New Haven. Amphenol, based in Greater New Haven (Wallingford), is a Fortune 100 company. Eight Courant 100 companies are based in Greater New Haven, with four headquartered in New Haven proper. New Haven-based companies traded on stock exchanges include NewAlliance Bank, the second largest bank in Connecticut and fourth-largest in New England (NYSE: NAL), Higher One Holdings (NYSE: ONE), a financial services firm, United Illuminating, the electricity distributor for southern Connecticut (NYSE: UIL), and Transpro Inc. (AMEX: TPR). The American division of Assa Abloy (one of the world's leading manufacturers of locks) is located in the city. The Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET) began operations in the city as the District Telephone Company of New Haven in 1878; the company remains headquartered in New Haven as a subsidiary of Frontier Communications and provides telephone service for all but two municipalities in Connecticut. SeeClickFix was founded and has been headquartered in the city since 2007. Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company (a candy-making division of the Hershey Company) was formerly located in the city. Achillion Pharmaceuticals and Alexion Pharmaceuticals were also formerly headquartered in New Haven.\nLaw and government.\nPolitical structure.\nNew Haven is governed via the mayor-council system. Connecticut municipalities (like those of neighboring states Massachusetts and Rhode Island) provide nearly all local services (such as fire and rescue, education, snow removal, etc.), as county government has been abolished since 1960.\nNew Haven County merely refers to a grouping of towns and a judicial district, not a governmental entity. New Haven is a member of the South Central Connecticut Regional Council of Governments (SCRCOG), a regional agency created to facilitate coordination between area municipal governments and state and federal agencies, in the absence of county government.\nJustin Elicker is the mayor of New Haven. He was sworn in as the 51st mayor of New Haven on January 1, 2020.\nThe city council, called the Board of Alders, consists of thirty members, each elected from single-member wards. Each of the 30 wards consists of slightly over 4,300 residents; redistricting takes place every ten years.\nThe city is overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2017, of the town's 83,694 voters, 66% were registered as Democrats (\u22124% since 2015), 4% were registered as Republicans (+1%), and 29% were unaffiliated (+3). The board of alders is dominated by Democrats; a Republican has not served as a New Haven alder since 2011.\nNew Haven is served by the New Haven Police Department, which had 443 sworn officers in 2011. The city is also served by the New Haven Fire Department.\nNew Haven lies within Connecticut's 3rd congressional district and has been represented by Rosa DeLauro since 1991. Martin Looney and Gary Holder-Winfield represent New Haven in the Connecticut State Senate, and the city lies within six districts (numbers 92 through 97) of the Connecticut House of Representatives.\nThe Greater New Haven area is served by the New Haven Judicial District Court and the New Haven Superior Court, both headquartered at the New Haven County Courthouse. The federal District Court for the District of Connecticut has a New Haven facility, the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse.\nPolitical history.\nNew Haven is the birthplace of former president George W. Bush, who was born when his father, former president George H. W. Bush, was living in New Haven while a student at Yale. In addition to being the site of the college educations of both Presidents Bush, as Yale students, New Haven was also the temporary home of former presidents William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, and Bill Clinton, as well as Secretary of State John Kerry. President Clinton met his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while the two were students at Yale Law School. Former vice presidents John C. Calhoun and Dick Cheney also studied in New Haven (although the latter did not graduate from Yale). Before the 2008 election, the last time there was not a person with ties to New Haven and Yale on either major party's ticket was 1968. James Hillhouse, a New Haven native, served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate in 1801.\nNew Haven voters overwhelmingly supported Al Gore in the 2000 election, Yale graduate John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. In the 2008 election, New Haven County was third among all Connecticut counties in campaign contributions, after Fairfield and Hartford counties. (Connecticut, in turn, was ranked 14th among all states in total campaign contributions.)\nNew Haven was the subject of \" Who Governs? Democracy and Power in An American City\", a very influential book in political science by preeminent Yale professor Robert A. Dahl, which includes an extensive history of the city and thorough description of its politics in the 1950s. New Haven's theocratic history is also mentioned several times by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic volume on 19th-century American political life, \"Democracy in America\". New Haven was the residence of conservative thinker William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1951, when he wrote his influential \"God and Man at Yale\". William Lee Miller's \"The Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society\" (1966) similarly explores the relationship between local politics in New Haven and national political movements, focusing on Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and urban renewal.\nGeorge Williamson Crawford, a Yale Law School graduate, served as the city's first black corporation counsel from 1954 to 1962, under Mayor Richard C. Lee.\nIn 1970, the New Haven Black Panther trials took place, the largest and longest trials in Connecticut history. Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale and ten other party members were tried for murdering an alleged informant. Beginning on May Day, the city became a center of protest for 12,000 Panther supporters, college students, and New Left activists (including Jean Genet, Benjamin Spock, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and John Froines), who amassed on the New Haven Green, across the street from where the trials were being held. Violent confrontations between the demonstrators and the New Haven Police occurred, and several bombs were set off in the area by radicals. The event became a rallying point for the New Left and critics of the Nixon Administration.\nDuring the summer of 2007, New Haven was the center of protests by anti-immigration groups who opposed the city's program of offering municipal ID cards, known as the Elm City Resident Card, to illegal immigrants. In 2008, the country of Ecuador opened a consulate in New Haven to serve the large Ecuadorean immigrant population in the area. It is the first foreign mission to open in New Haven since Italy opened a consulate (now closed) in the city in 1910.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 20 white and Hispanic firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no blacks scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. On June 29, 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the firefighters, agreeing that they were improperly denied promotion because of their race. The case, \"Ricci v. DeStefano\", became highly publicized and brought national attention to New Haven politics due to the involvement of then-Supreme Court nominee (and Yale Law School graduate) Sonia Sotomayor in a lower court decision.\nGarry Trudeau, creator of the political \"Doonesbury\" comic strip, attended Yale University. There he met fellow student and later Green Party candidate for Congress Charles Pillsbury, a long-time New Haven resident for whom Trudeau's comic strip is named. During his college years, Pillsbury was known by the nickname \"The Doones\". A theory of international law, which argues for a sociological normative approach in regards to jurisprudence, is named the New Haven Approach, after the city. Connecticut US senator Richard Blumenthal is a Yale graduate, as is former Connecticut US Senator Joe Lieberman who also was a New Haven resident for many years, before moving back to his hometown of Stamford.\nCrime.\nCrime increased in the 1990s, with New Haven having one of the ten highest violent crime rates per capita in the United States. In the late 1990s New Haven's crime began to stabilize. The city, adopting a policy of community policing, saw crime rates drop during the 2000s.\nViolent crime levels vary dramatically among New Haven's neighborhoods, with some areas having crime rates in line with the state of Connecticut average, and others having extremely high rates of crime. A 2011 New Haven Health Department report identifies these issues in greater detail.\nIn 2010, New Haven ranked as the 18th most dangerous city in the United States (albeit below the safety benchmark of 200.00 for the second consecutive year). However, according to a completely different analysis conducted by the \"24/7 Wall Street Blog\", in 2011 New Haven had risen to become the fourth most dangerous city in the United States, and was widely cited in the press as such.\nHowever, an analysis by the Regional Data Cooperative for Greater New Haven, Inc., has shown that due to issues of comparative denominators and other factors, such municipality-based rankings can be considered inaccurate. For example, two cities of identical population can cover widely differing land areas, making such analyses irrelevant. The research organization called for comparisons based on neighborhoods, blocks, or standard methodologies (similar to those used by Brookings, DiversityData, and other established institutions), not based on municipalities.\nEducation.\nColleges and universities.\nNew Haven is a notable center for higher education. Yale University, at the heart of downtown, is one of the city's best known features and its largest employer. New Haven is also home to Southern Connecticut State University, part of the Connecticut State University System, and Albertus Magnus College, a private institution. Gateway Community College has a campus in downtown New Haven, formerly located in the Long Wharf district; Gateway consolidated into one campus downtown into a new state-of-the-art campus (on the site of the old Macy's building) and was open for the Fall 2012 semester.\nThere are several institutions immediately outside of New Haven, as well. Quinnipiac University and the Paier College of Art are located just to the north, in the town of Hamden. The University of New Haven is located not in New Haven but in neighboring West Haven.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nNew Haven Public Schools is the school district serving the city. Wilbur Cross High School and Hillhouse High School are New Haven's two largest public secondary schools.\nHopkins School, a private school, was founded in 1660 and is the fifth-oldest educational institution in the United States. New Haven is home to a number of other private schools as well as public magnet schools, including Metropolitan Business Academy, High School in the Community, Hill Regional Career High School, Co-op High School, New Haven Academy, Edgewood Magnet School, ACES Educational Center for the Arts, the Foote School and the Sound School, all of which draw students from New Haven and suburban towns. New Haven is also home to two Achievement First charter schools, Amistad Academy and Elm City College Prep, and to Common Ground, an environmental charter school.\nThe city is renowned for its progressive school lunch programs, and participation in statewide bussing efforts toward increased diversity in schools.\nCulture.\nCuisine.\nLivability.com named New Haven as the Best Foodie City in the country in 2014. There are dozens of Zagat-rated restaurants in New Haven, the most in Connecticut and the third most in New England (after Boston and Cambridge). More than 120 restaurants are located within two blocks of the New Haven Green. The city is home to an eclectic mix of ethnic restaurants and small markets specializing in various foreign foods. Represented cuisines include Malaysian, Ethiopian, Spanish, Belgian, French, Greek, Latin American, Mexican, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Cuban, Peruvian, Syrian/Lebanese, and Turkish.\nNew Haven's greatest culinary claim to fame may be its pizza, which has been claimed to be among the best in the country, or even in the world. New Haven-style pizza, called \"apizza\", made its debut at the iconic Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana (known as Pepe's) in 1925. Apizza is baked in coal- or wood-fired brick ovens, and is notable for its thin crust. Apizza may be red (with a tomato-based sauce) or white (with a sauce of garlic and olive oil), and pies ordered \"plain\" are made without the otherwise customary mozzarella (originally smoked mozzarella, known as \"scamorza\" in Italian). A white clam pie is a well-known specialty of the restaurants on Wooster Street in the Little Italy section of New Haven, including Pepe's and Sally's Apizza (which opened in 1938). Modern Apizza on State Street, which opened in 1934, is also well-known.\nA second New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Louis' Lunch, which is located in a small brick building on Crown Street and has been serving fast food since 1895. Though fiercely debated, the restaurant's founder Louis Lassen is credited by the Library of Congress with inventing the hamburger and steak sandwich. Louis' Lunch broils hamburgers, steak sandwiches and hot dogs vertically in original antique 1898 cast iron stoves using gridirons, patented by local resident Luigi Pieragostini in 1939, that hold the meat in place while it cooks.\nA third New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Miya's, the first sustainable sushi restaurant in the world. Miya's, founded by Chef Yoshiko Lai in 1982, featured the first sustainable seafood-based sushi menu, the first plant-based sushi menu, and the first invasive species menu in the world. Second generation Miya's chef, Bun Lai, is the 2016 White House Champions of Change for Sustainable Seafood and a James Beard Foundation Award nominee. Chef Bun Lai is credited as the first chef in the world for implementing a sustainability paradigm to the cuisine of sushi.\nDuring weekday lunchtime, over 150 lunch carts and food trucks cater to diners around the city. The carts and food trucks cluster at four main points: on Long Wharf Drive, along the city's shoreline with quick access off Interstate 95, by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital in the center of the Hospital Green (Cedar and York streets), by Yale's Trumbull College (Elm and York streets), and on the intersection of Prospect and Sachem streets by the Yale School of Management.\nPopular farmers' markets, managed by the local non-profit CitySeed, set up shop weekly in several neighborhoods, including Westville/Edgewood Park, Fair Haven, Upper State Street, Wooster Square, and Downtown/New Haven Green.\nA large grocery store, the Elm City Market, opened on 360 State Street in New Haven in early fall 2011 and served local produce and groceries to the community. Originally, the market was a member-owned co-op, but debt defaults in August 2014 forced a sale of the business. It is now an employee-owned business; the co-op's previous owners received no equity in the new business.\nIn the past several years, two separate Downtown food tour companies have started offering popular restaurant tours on weekends.\nTaste of New Haven Tours offers several different weekly restaurant/bar tours and a popular pizza, bike, and pints tour. Culinary Walking Tours offers monthly restaurant tours and sponsors an annual Elm City Iron Chef competition.\nTheatre and film.\nThe city hosts numerous theatres and production houses, including the Yale Repertory Theatre, the Long Wharf Theatre, and the Shubert Theatre. There is also theatre activity from the Yale School of Drama, which works through the Yale University Theatre and the student-run Yale Cabaret. Southern Connecticut State University hosts the Lyman Center for the Performing Arts. The shuttered Palace Theatre (opposite the Shubert Theatre) was renovated and reopened as the College Street Music Hall in May 2015. Smaller theatres include the Little Theater on Lincoln Street. Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School also has a theatre on College Street. The theatre is used for student productions, and is the home to weekly services to a local non-denominational church, the City Church New Haven.\nThe Shubert Theatre once premiered many major theatrical productions before their Broadway debuts. Productions that premiered at the Shubert include \"Oklahoma!\" (which was also written in New Haven), \"Carousel\", \"South Pacific\", \"My Fair Lady\", \"The King and I\", and \"The Sound of Music\", and the Tennessee Williams play \"A Streetcar Named Desire\".\nBow Tie Cinemas owns and operates the Criterion Cinemas, the first new movie theater to open in New Haven in over 30 years and the first luxury movie complex in the city's history. The Criterion has seven screens and opened in November 2004, showing a mix of upscale first run commercial and independent film.\nMuseums.\nNew Haven has a variety of museums, many of them associated with Yale. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library features an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible. There is also the Connecticut Children's Museum; the Knights of Columbus museum near that organization's world headquarters; the Peabody Museum of Natural History; the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments; the Eli Whitney Museum (across the town line in Hamden, Connecticut, on Whitney Avenue); the Yale Center for British Art, which houses the largest collection of British art outside the U.K., and the Yale University Art Gallery, the western hemisphere's oldest college art museum. New Haven is also home to the New Haven Museum and Historical Society on Whitney Avenue, which has a library of many primary source treasures dating from Colonial times to the present.\nArtspace on Orange Street is one of several contemporary art galleries around the city, showcasing the work of local, national, and international artists. Others include City Gallery and A. Leaf Gallery in the downtown area. Westville galleries include Kehler Liddell, Jennifer Jane Gallery, and The Hungry Eye. The Erector Square complex in the Fair Haven neighborhood houses, the Parachute Factory gallery along with numerous artist studios, and the complex serves as an active destination during City-Wide Open Studios held yearly in October.\nNew Haven is the home port of a life-size replica of the historical \"Freedom Schooner Amistad\", which is open for tours at Long Wharf pier at certain times during the summer. Also at Long Wharf pier is the \"Quinnipiack\" schooner, offering sailing cruises of the harbor area throughout the summer. The \"Quinnipiack\" also functions as a floating classroom for hundreds of local students.\nMusic.\nThe New Haven Green is the site of many free music concerts, especially during the summer months. These have included the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the July Free Concerts on the Green, and the New Haven Jazz Festival in August. The Jazz Festival, which began in 1982, is one of the longest-running free outdoor festivals in the U.S., until it was canceled for 2007. Headliners such as Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles and Celia Cruz have historically drawn 30,000 to 50,000 fans, filling up the New Haven Green to capacity. The New Haven Jazz Festival was revived in 2008 and has been sponsored since by Jazz Haven.\nNew Haven is home to the concert venue Toad's Place, and a new venue, College Street Music Hall. The city has retained an alternative art and music underground that has helped to influence post-punk era music movements such as indie, college rock and underground hip-hop.\nThe Yale School of Music contributes to the city's music scene by offering hundreds of free concerts throughout the year at venues in and around the Yale campus. Large performances are held in the 2,700-seat Woolsey Hall auditorium, which contains the world's largest symphonic organs, while chamber music and recitals are performed in Sprague Hall.\nHardcore band Hatebreed are from Wallingford, but got their start in New Haven under the name Jasta 14. The band Miracle Legion formed in New Haven in 1983. Folk musicians from New Haven include Loren Mazzacane Connors and Kath Bloom.\nThe Hillhouse Opera Company is a U.S. non-profit opera company based in New Haven that performs in the New Haven area. Founded in 2008 by Victoria Leigh Gardner, Nicole Rodriguez and Jim Coatsworth Hillhouse Opera Company has performed operas as well as opera scenes programs, master classes and concert series. In 2011, the Company professionally staged the works created through the Riverview Opera Project. The Riverview Opera Project created workshops for children and adolescents at Riverview Hospital, Connecticut's only state-funded psychiatric hospital for youth, and helped them to successfully create, produce, and perform four original operas.\nFestivals.\nIn addition to the Jazz Festival (described above), New Haven serves as the home city of the annual International Festival of Arts and Ideas. New Haven's Saint Patrick's Day parade, which began in 1842, is New England's oldest and draws the largest crowds of any one-day spectator event in Connecticut. The St. Andrew the Apostle Italian Festival has taken place in the historic Wooster Square neighborhood every year since 1900. Other parishes in the city celebrate the Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua and a carnival in honor of St. Bernadette Soubirous. New Haven celebrates Powder House Day every April on the New Haven Green to commemorate the city's entrance into the Revolutionary War. The annual Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival commemorates the 1973 planting of 72 Yoshino Japanese cherry blossom trees by the New Haven Historic Commission in collaboration with the New Haven Parks Department and residents of the neighborhood. The Festival now draws well over 5,000 visitors. The Film Fest New Haven has been held annually since 1995.\nNightlife.\nIn the past decade downtown has seen an influx of new restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Large crowds are drawn to the Crown Street area downtown on weekends where many of the restaurants and bars are located. Crown Street between State and High Streets has dozens of establishments, as do nearby Temple and College Streets. Away from downtown, Upper State Street has a number of restaurants and bars popular with local residents and weekend visitors.\nNewspapers and media.\nNew Haven is served by the daily \"New Haven Register\", the weekly \"alternative\" \"New Haven Advocate\" (which is run by Tribune, the corporation owning the \"Hartford Courant\"), the online daily \"New Haven Independent\", and the monthly \"Grand News Community Newspaper.\" Downtown New Haven is covered by an in-depth civic news forum, Design New Haven. The \"Register\" also backs \"PLAY\" magazine, a weekly entertainment publication. The city is also served by several student-run papers, including the \"Yale Daily News\", the weekly \"Yale Herald\" and a humor tabloid, \"Rumpus Magazine\".\nWTNH Channel 8, the ABC affiliate for Connecticut, WCTX Channel 59, the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the state, Connecticut Public Television station WEDY channel 65, a PBS affiliate, and WTXX Channel 34, the IntrigueTV affiliate, broadcast from New Haven. All New York City news and sports team stations broadcast to New Haven County.\nSports and athletics.\nNew Haven has a history of professional sports franchises dating back to the 19th century and has been the home to professional baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer teams\u2014including the New York Giants of the National Football League from 1973 to 1974, who played at the Yale Bowl. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, New Haven consistently had minor league hockey and baseball teams, which played at the New Haven Arena (built in 1926, demolished in 1972), New Haven Coliseum (1972\u20132002), and Yale Field (1928\u2013present).\nWhen John DeStefano, Jr., became mayor of New Haven in 1995, he outlined a plan to transform the city into a major cultural and arts center in the Northeast, which involved investments in programs and projects other than sports franchises. As nearby Bridgeport built new sports facilities, the brutalist New Haven Coliseum rapidly deteriorated. Believing the upkeep on the venue to be a drain of tax dollars, the DeStefano administration closed the Coliseum in 2002; it was demolished in 2007. New Haven's last professional sports team, the New Haven County Cutters, left in 2009. The DeStefano administration did, however, see the construction of the New Haven Athletic Center in 1998, a indoor athletic facility with a seating capacity of over 3,000. The NHAC, built adjacent to Hillhouse High School, is used for New Haven public schools athletics, as well as large-scale area and state sporting events; it is the largest high school indoor sports complex in the state.\nNew Haven was the host of the 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games; then-President Bill Clinton spoke at the opening ceremonies. The city is home to the Pilot Pen International tennis event, which takes place every August at the Connecticut Tennis Center, one of the largest tennis venues in the world. New Haven biannually hosts \"The Game\" between Yale and Harvard, the country's second-oldest college football rivalry. Numerous road races take place in New Haven, including the USATF 20K Championship during the New Haven Road Race.\nGreater New Haven is home to a number of college sports teams. The Yale Bulldogs play Division I college sports, as do the Quinnipiac Bobcats in neighboring Hamden. Division II athletics are played by Southern Connecticut State University and the University of New Haven (actually located in neighboring West Haven), while Albertus Magnus College athletes perform at the Division III level.\nNew Haven is home to many New York Yankees, New York Mets, & Boston Red Sox fans due to the proximity of New York City & Boston.\nWalter Camp, deemed the \"father of American football\", was a New Havener.\nThe New Haven Warriors rugby league team play in the AMNRL. They have a large number of Pacific Islanders playing for them. Their field is located at the West Haven High School's Ken Strong Stadium. They won the 2008 AMNRL Grand Final.\nStructures.\nArchitecture.\nNew Haven has many architectural landmarks dating from every important time period and architectural style in American history. The city has been home to a number of architects and architectural firms that have left their mark on the city including Ithiel Town and Henry Austin in the 19th century and Cesar Pelli, Warren Platner, Kevin Roche, Herbert Newman and Barry Svigals in the 20th. The Yale School of Architecture has fostered this important component of the city's economy. Cass Gilbert, of the Beaux-Arts school, designed New Haven's Union Station and the New Haven Free Public Library and was also commissioned for a City Beautiful plan in 1919. Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, Alexander Jackson Davis, Philip C. Johnson, Gordon Bunshaft, Louis Kahn, James Gamble Rogers, Frank Gehry, Charles Willard Moore, Stefan Behnisch, James Polshek, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen and Robert Venturi all have designed buildings in New Haven. Yale's 1950s-era Ingalls Rink, designed by Eero Saarinen, was included on the \"America's Favorite Architecture\" list created in 2007.\nSeveral residential homes in New Haven were designed by Alice Washburn, a noted female architect whose Colonial Revival style set a standard for homes in the region.\nMany of the city's neighborhoods are well-preserved as walkable \"museums\" of 19th- and 20th-century American architecture, particularly by the New Haven Green, Hillhouse Avenue and other residential sections close to Downtown New Haven. Overall, a large proportion of the city's land area is National (NRHP) historic districts. One of the best sources on local architecture is \"New Haven: Architecture and Urban Design\", by Elizabeth Mills Brown.\nThe five tallest buildings in New Haven are:\nHistoric points of interest.\nMany historical sites exist throughout the city, including 59 properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Of these, nine are among the 60 U.S. National Historic Landmarks in Connecticut. The New Haven Green, one of the National Historic Landmarks, was formed in 1638, and is home to three 19th-century churches. Below the First Church of Christ in New Haven (referred to as the Center Church on the Green) lies a 17th-century crypt, which is open to visitors. Some of the more famous burials include the first wife of Benedict Arnold and the aunt and grandmother of President Rutherford B. Hayes; Hayes visited the crypt while President in 1880. The Old Campus of Yale University is located next to the Green, and includes Connecticut Hall, Yale's oldest building and a National Historic Landmark. The Hillhouse Avenue area, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a part of Yale's campus, has been called a walkable museum, due to its 19th-century mansions and street scape; Charles Dickens is said to have called Hillhouse Avenue \"the most beautiful street in America\" when visiting the city in 1868.\nIn 1660, Edward Whalley (a cousin and friend of Oliver Cromwell) and William Goffe, two English Civil War generals who signed the death warrant of King Charles I, hid in a rock formation in New Haven after having fled England upon the restoration of Charles II to the English throne. They were later joined by a third regicide, John Dixwell. The rock formation, which is now a part of West Rock Park, is known as Judges' Cave, and the path leading to the cave is called the Regicides Trail.\nAfter the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, the Connecticut colonial government ordered the construction of Black Rock Fort (to be built on top of an older 17th-century fort) to protect the port of New Haven. In 1779, during the Battle of New Haven, British soldiers captured Black Rock Fort and burned the barracks to the ground. The fort was reconstructed in 1807 by the federal government (on orders from the Thomas Jefferson administration), and rechristened Fort Nathan Hale, after the Revolutionary War hero who had lived in New Haven. The cannons of Fort Nathan Hale were successful in defying British war ships during the War of 1812. In 1863, during the Civil War, a second Fort Hale was built next to the original, complete with bomb-resistant bunkers and a moat, to defend the city should a Southern raid against New Haven be launched. The United States Congress deeded the site to the state in 1921, and all three versions of the fort have been restored. The site is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and receives thousands of visitors each year.\nGrove Street Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark which lies adjacent to Yale's campus, contains the graves of Roger Sherman, Eli Whitney, Noah Webster, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Charles Goodyear and Walter Camp, among other notable burials. The cemetery is noted for its Egyptian Revival gateway, and is the oldest planned burial ground in the United States. The Union League Club of New Haven building, located on Chapel Street, is notable for not only being a historic Beaux-Arts building, but also is built on the site where Roger Sherman's home once stood; George Washington is known to have stayed at the Sherman residence while President in 1789 (one of three times Washington visited New Haven throughout his lifetime).\nTwo sites pay homage to the time President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft lived in the city, as both a student and later Professor at Yale: a plaque on Prospect Street marks the site where Taft's home formerly stood, and downtown's Taft Apartment Building (formerly the Taft Hotel) bears the name of the former president who resided in the building for eight years before becoming Chief Justice of the United States.\nLighthouse Point Park, a public beach run by the city, was a popular tourist destination during the Roaring Twenties, attracting luminaries of the period such as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. The park remains popular among New Haveners, and is home to the Five Mile Point Lighthouse, constructed in 1847, and the Lighthouse Point Carousel, constructed in 1916. Five Mile Point Light was decommissioned in 1877 following the construction of Southwest Ledge Light at the entrance of the harbor, which remains in service to this day. Both of the lighthouses and the carousel are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nOther historic sites in the city include the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, which stands at the summit of East Rock, the Marsh Botanical Garden, Wooster Square, Dwight Street, Louis' Lunch, and the Farmington Canal, all of which date back to the 19th century. Other historic parks besides the Green include Edgerton Park, Edgewood Park, and East Rock Park, each of which is included on the National Register of Historic Places.\nTransportation.\nRail.\nNew Haven has two railroad stations, connected to New York City and points along the Northeast Corridor by commuter rail, regional rail and inter-city rail. Service is provided by:\nThe city's main railroad station is the historic Beaux-Arts Union Station, which serves Metro-North, Hartford Line, and Shore Line East commuter trains. Approximately 175 trains serve Union Station on weekdays. Union Station is also served by four Amtrak lines: the \"Northeast Regional\" and the high-speed \"Acela Express\" provide service to New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston, and rank as the first and second busiest routes in the country; the New Haven\u2013Springfield Line provides service to Hartford and Springfield, Massachusetts; and the \"Vermonter\" provides service to both Washington, D.C., and Vermont, from the Canada\u2013US border.\nAn additional station, State Street Station, was opened in 2002, providing passengers easier access to downtown New Haven. State Street Station is currently serviced by Shore Line East and Hartford Line trains, plus some peak-hour Metro-North trips.\nBus.\nThe New Haven Division of Connecticut Transit (CT Transit), the state's bus system, is the second largest division in the state with 24 routes. All routes originate from the New Haven Green, making it the central transfer hub of the city. Service is provided to 19 different municipalities throughout Greater New Haven. Bus routes were formerly identified by letters, but as of October 8, 2017, all service was renamed using 200-series numbers, in accordance with a renumbering of CTtransit's statewide services.\nCT Transit's Union Station Shuttle provides free service from Union Station to the New Haven Green and several New Haven parking garages. Peter Pan and Greyhound bus lines have scheduled stops at Union Station, and connections downtown can be made via the Union Station Shuttle. A private company operates the New Haven/Hartford Express which provides commuter bus service to Hartford. The Yale University Shuttle provides free transportation around New Haven for Yale students, faculty, and staff.\nThe New Haven Division buses follow routes that had originally been covered by trolley service. Horse-drawn streetcars began operating in New Haven in the 1860s, and by the mid-1890s all the lines had become electric. In the 1920s and 1930s, some of the trolley lines began to be replaced by bus lines, with the last trolley route converted to bus in 1948. The City of New Haven is in the very early stages of considering the restoration of streetcar (light-rail) service, which has been absent since the postwar period.\nBicycle.\nBikeshare.\nOn February 21, 2018, New Haven officially launched its Bike New Haven bikeshare program. based on dockless technology powered by Noa Technologies At time of launch, the program features 10 docking stations and 100 bikes, spread throughout the urban core; there are plans to reach 30 bike stations and 300 bikes by the end of April 2018. The launch of the New Haven bikeshare program coincided with the launch of Yale University's own bikeshare program, which uses the same technology powered by Noa.\nBike lanes.\nIn 2004, the first bike lane in the city was added to Orange Street, connecting East Rock Park and the East Rock neighborhood to downtown. Since then, bike lanes have also been added to sections of Howard Ave, Elm St, Dixwell Avenue, Water Street, Clinton Avenue and State Street. The city has created recommended bike routes for getting around New Haven, including use of the Canal Trail and the Orange Street lane. As of the end of 2012, bicycle lanes have also been added in both directions on Dixwell Avenue along most of the street from downtown to the Hamden town line, as well as along Howard Avenue from Yale New Haven Hospital to City Point.\nThe city has plans to create two additional bike lanes connecting Union Station with downtown, and the Westville neighborhood with downtown. The city has added dozens of covered bike parking spots at Union Station, in order to facilitate more bike commuting to the station.\nFarmington Canal Greenway.\nThe Farmington Canal Trail is a rail trail that will eventually run continuously from downtown New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts. The scenic trail follows the path of the historic New Haven and Northampton Company and the Farmington Canal. Currently, there is a continuous stretch of the trail from downtown, through Hamden and into Cheshire, making bicycle commuting between New Haven and those suburbs possible. The trail is part of the East Coast Greenway, a proposed bike path that would link every major city on the East Coast from Florida to Maine.\nRoads.\nNew Haven lies at the intersection of Interstate 95 on the coast\u2014which provides access southwards and/or westwards to the western coast of Connecticut and to New York City, and eastwards to the eastern Connecticut shoreline, Rhode Island, and eastern Massachusetts\u2014and Interstate 91, which leads northward to the interior of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont and the Canada\u2013US border. I-95 is notorious for traffic jams increasing with proximity to New York City; on the east side of New Haven it passes over the Quinnipiac River via the Pearl Harbor Memorial, or \"Q Bridge\", which often presents a major bottleneck to traffic. I-91, however, is relatively less congested, except at the intersection with I-95 during peak travel times.\nThe Oak Street Connector (Connecticut Route 34) intersects I-91 at exit 1, just south of the I-95/I-91 interchange, and runs northwest for a few blocks as an expressway spur into downtown before emptying onto surface roads. The Wilbur Cross Parkway (Connecticut Route 15) runs parallel to I-95 west of New Haven, turning northwards as it nears the city and then running northwards parallel to I-91 through the outer rim of New Haven and Hamden, offering an alternative to the I-95/I-91 journey (restricted to non-commercial vehicles). Route 15 in New Haven is the site of the only highway tunnel in the state (officially designated as Heroes Tunnel), running through West Rock, home to West Rock Park and the Three Judges Cave.\nThe city also has several major surface arteries. U.S. Route 1 (Columbus Avenue, Union Avenue, Water Street, Forbes Avenue) runs in an east\u2013west direction south of downtown serving Union Station and leading out of the city to Milford, West Haven, East Haven and Branford. The main road from downtown heading northwest is Whalley Avenue (partly signed as Route 10 and Route 63) leading to Westville and Woodbridge. Heading north towards Hamden, there are two major thoroughfares, Dixwell Avenue and Whitney Avenue. To the northeast are Middletown Avenue (Route 17), which leads to the Montowese section of North Haven, and Foxon Boulevard (Route 80), which leads to the Foxon section of East Haven and to the town of North Branford. To the west is Route 34, which leads to the city of Derby. Other major intracity arteries are Ella Grasso Boulevard (Route 10) west of downtown, and College Street, Temple Street, Church Street, Elm Street, and Grove Street in the downtown area.\nTraffic safety is a major concern for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists in New Haven. In addition to many traffic-related fatalities in the city each year, since 2005, over a dozen Yale students, staff and faculty have been killed or injured in traffic collisions on or near the campus.\nAirport.\nTweed New Haven Airport is located within the city limits east of the business district, straddling the border with neighboring East Haven. Service to approximately 25 cities is provided by Avelo Airlines, which established its first East Coast base at the airport in 2021. Breeze Airways plans to begin operations at Tweed in December 2024, and will provide service to 10 destinations. The airport is currently planning a runway lengthening and new terminal on the East Haven side of the airport.\nBus service between Downtown New Haven and Tweed is available via the CT Transit New Haven Division.\nSeaport.\nNew Haven Harbor is home to the Port of New Haven, a deep-water seaport with three berths capable of hosting vessels and barges as well as the facilities required to handle break bulk cargo. The port has the capacity to load 200 trucks a day from the ground or via loading docks. Providence and Worcester Railroad provides freight rail transportation to the port, with the railroad operating a switch engine for yard movements, a private siding for loading and unloading, and trackage over the Tomlinson Lift Bridge toward the Northeast Corridor. Approximately of inside storage and of outside storage are available at the site. Five shore cranes with a 250-ton capacity and 26 forklifts, each with a 26-ton capacity, are also available.\nOn June 17, 2013, the city commissioned the \"Nathan Hale\", a port security vessel capable of serving search and rescue, firefighting, and constabulary roles.\nInfrastructure.\nHospitals and medicine.\nThe New Haven area supports several medical facilities that are considered some of the best hospitals in the country. There are two major medical centers downtown: Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital has four pavilions, including the Yale \u2013 New Haven Children's Hospital and the Smilow Cancer Hospital; the Hospital of Saint Raphael is several blocks north, and touts its excellent cardiac emergency care program. Smaller downtown health facilities are the Temple Medical Center located downtown on Temple Street, Connecticut Mental Health Center/ across Park Street from Y-NHH, and the Hill Health Center, which serves the working-class Hill neighborhood. A large Veterans Affairs hospital is located in neighboring West Haven. To the west in Milford is Milford Hospital, and to the north in Meriden is the MidState Medical Center.\nIn recent years, Yale and the City of New Haven have been working to build a medical and biotechnology research hub in the city and Greater New Haven region. The city, state and Yale together run Science Park, a large site three blocks northwest of Yale's Science Hill campus. This multi-block site, approximately bordered by Mansfield Street, Division Street, and Shelton Avenue, is the former home of Winchester's and Olin Corporation's 45 large-scale factory buildings. Currently, sections of the site are large-scale parking lots or abandoned structures, but there is also a large remodeled and functioning area of buildings (leased primarily by a private developer) with numerous Yale employees, financial service and biotech companies.\nA second biotechnology district is being planned for the median strip on Frontage Road, on land cleared for the never-built Route 34 extension. As of late 2009, a Pfizer drug-testing clinic, a medical laboratory building serving Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital, and a mixed-use structure containing parking, housing and office space, have been constructed on this corridor. A former SNET telephone building at 300 George Street is being converted into lab space, and has been quite successful so far in attracting biotechnology and medical firms.\nPower supply facilities.\nElectricity for New Haven is generated by a 448\u00a0MW oil and gas-fired generating station located on the shore at New Haven Harbor. PPL Corporation operates a 220\u00a0MW peaking natural gas turbine plant in nearby Wallingford.\nNear New Haven there is the static inverter plant of the HVDC Cross Sound Cable.\nThere are three PureCell Model 400 fuel cells placed in the city of New Haven\u2014one at the New Haven Public Schools and newly constructed Roberto Clemente School, one at the mixed-use 360 State Street building, and one at City Hall. According to Giovanni Zinn of the city's Office of Sustainability, each fuel cell may save the city up to $1 million in energy costs over a decade. The fuel cells were provided by ClearEdge Power, formerly UTC Power. Additional fuel cells are located at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and at the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority (GNHWPCA). Ikea's New Haven facility also utilizes a 250\u00a0kW fuel cell and 940.8\u00a0kW solar array.\nNew Haven recently installed solar panels at 11 city schools with a combined power generation capacity of 1.8 MW. Owned and maintained by Greenskies, the panels allow New Haven to purchase electricity at a discounted rate through a power-purchasing agreement. The panels bring New Haven's solar capacity to 2.8 MW and will help New Haven meet its commitment to powering 100% of its municipal operations through clean energy, which it made in Summer 2017 and reaffirmed in the 2018 New Haven Climate and Sustainability Framework.\nIn popular culture.\nSeveral movies have been filmed in New Haven since 2000, including \"Mona Lisa Smile\" (2003), with Julia Roberts, \"The Life Before Her Eyes\" (2007), with Uma Thurman, and \"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull\" (2008) directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett and Shia LaBeouf. The filming of \"Crystal Skull\" involved an extensive chase sequence through the streets of New Haven. Several downtown streets were closed to traffic and received a \"makeover\" to look like streets of 1957, when the film is set. 500 locals were cast as extras for the film. In \"Everybody's Fine\" (2009), Robert De Niro has a close encounter in what is supposed to be the Denver train station; the scene was filmed in New Haven's Union Station.\n New Haven is mentioned in the song Peace Frog by the Doors, referencing a 1967 incident where vocalist Jim Morrison was arrested for \"attempting to incite a riot\" in the middle of a concert at the New Haven Arena.\nSister cities.\nNew Haven's sister cities are:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSome of these were selected because of historical connection\u2014Freetown because of the \"Amistad\" trial. Others, such as Amalfi and Afula, reflect ethnic groups in New Haven.\nIn 1990, the United Nations named New Haven a \"Peace Messenger City\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "6460441": "Thayer Scudder\nAmerican anthropologist\nThayer Scudder (born 1930, New Haven, Connecticut), an American social anthropologist, is an Anthropology Professor Emeritus at the California Institute of Technology. Educated at Harvard University (AB 1952, PhD 1960), he did a postdoctorate in African Studies, Anthropology and Ecology at the London School of Economics, followed by positions with the Rhodes-Livingston Institute for Social Research in Northern Rhodesia 1956-1957 and again in 1962\u20131963, and a post at the American University in Cairo in 1961\u20131962. He joined the Caltech faculty in that year. His work on socioeconomic issues and infrastructure development associated with river basin development, forced relocation, and refugee reintegration has made him a world leader in these fields. Large dams are one of the world's most controversial, divisive and expensive development issues, and Scudder is a leading expert on dams and relocation effects. His 2005 book \"The Future of Large Dams\" covers aspects of large dams and development including economics, politics, environmental risk, energy, agriculture, and human displacement and resettlement. He has undertaken studies on sustainable resource use in Africa, India, Nepal, Jordan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and the United States, and served on a number of independent review panels for dam projects in Africa and Asia. He is a former commissioner on the World Commission on Dams.\nIn addition to expertise and special interest in regional development, irrigated and rainfed agriculture, pioneer settlement, community-based natural resource management, and impacts of large-scale river basin development projects on low income populations, Scudder has focused on systematic long-term studies of low income human communities. The most classic of his long-term studies has been carried out with anthropologist Elizabeth Colson among the Gwembe Tonga of Zambia.\nAuthor Jacques Leslie devotes a third of his narrative nonfiction book \"Deep Water: The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment\" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005) to a portrait of Scudder. The section includes a visit to the Zambian resettlement village where many Gwembe Tonga now live and follows Scudder as he inspects dam projects in Lesotho and Botswana."}, "descending_order": ["6460441", "5122699", "53825"], "permutation_1": ["6460441", "5122699", "53825"], "permutation_2": ["5122699", "6460441", "53825"], "permutation_3": ["53825", "5122699", "6460441"]}
{"id": "3hop2__30654_144337_89329", "docs_added": {"19617": "Margaret Mead\nAmerican cultural anthropologist (1901\u20131978)\nMargaret Mead (December 16, 1901 \u2013 November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist, author and speaker, who appeared frequently in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s.\nShe earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard College of Columbia University and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia. Mead served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1975.\nMead was a communicator of anthropology in modern American and Western culture and was often controversial as an academic. Her reports detailing the attitudes towards sex in South Pacific and Southeast Asian traditional cultures influenced the 1960s sexual revolution. She was a proponent of broadening sexual conventions within the context of Western cultural traditions.\nEarly life and education.\nMargaret Mead, the first of five children, was born in Philadelphia but raised in nearby Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Her father, Edward Sherwood Mead, was a professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and her mother, Emily (n\u00e9e Fogg) Mead, was a sociologist who studied Italian immigrants. Her sister Katharine (1906\u20131907) died at the age of nine months. That was a traumatic event for Mead, who had named the girl, and thoughts of her lost sister permeated her daydreams for many years. \nHer family moved frequently and so her early education was directed by her grandmother until, at age 11, she was enrolled by her family at Buckingham Friends School in Lahaska, Pennsylvania. Her family owned the Longland farm from 1912 to 1926. Born into a family of various religious outlooks, she searched for a form of religion that gave an expression of the faith with which she had been formally acquainted, Christianity. In doing so, she found the rituals of the Episcopal Church to fit the expression of religion she was seeking. Mead studied one year, 1919, at DePauw University, then transferred to Barnard College.\nMead earned her bachelor's degree from Barnard in 1923, began studying with professors Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict at Columbia University, and earned her master's degree in 1924. Mead set out in 1925 to do fieldwork in Samoa. In 1926, she joined the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, as assistant curator. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1929.\nPersonal life.\nMead was married three times. After a six-year engagement, she married her first husband (1923\u20131928), Luther Cressman, an American theology student who later became an anthropologist. Before departing for Samoa in 1925, Mead had a short affair with the linguist Edward Sapir, a close friend of her instructor Ruth Benedict. However, Sapir's conservative stances about marriage and women's roles were unacceptable to Mead, and as Mead left to do field work in Samoa, they separated permanently. Mead received news of Sapir's remarriage while she was living in Samoa. There, she later burned their correspondence on a beach. Between 1925 and 1926, she was in Samoa from where on the return boat she met Reo Fortune, a New Zealander headed to Cambridge, England, to study psychology. They were married in 1928, after Mead's divorce from Cressman. Mead dismissively characterized her union with her first husband as \"my student marriage\" in her 1972 autobiography \"Blackberry Winter\", a sobriquet with which Cressman took vigorous issue. Mead's third and longest-lasting marriage (1936\u20131950) was to the British anthropologist Gregory Bateson with whom she had a daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson, who would also become an anthropologist. She readily acknowledged that Bateson was the husband she loved the most. She was devastated when he left her and remained his loving friend ever afterward. She kept his photograph by her bedside wherever she traveled, including beside her hospital deathbed. \nMead's pediatrician was Benjamin Spock, whose subsequent writings on child rearing incorporated some of Mead's own practices and beliefs acquired from her ethnological field observations which she shared with him; in particular, breastfeeding on the baby's demand, rather than by a schedule. \nMead also had an exceptionally close relationship with Ruth Benedict, one of her instructors. In her memoir about her parents, \"With a Daughter's Eye\", Mary Catherine Bateson strongly implies that the relationship between Benedict and Mead was partly sexual. Mead never openly identified herself as lesbian or bisexual. In her writings, she proposed that it is to be expected that an individual's sexual orientation may evolve throughout life.\nShe spent her last years in a close personal and professional collaboration with the anthropologist Rhoda Metraux with whom she lived from 1955 until her death in 1978. Letters between the two published in 2006 with the permission of Mead's daughter clearly express a romantic relationship.\nMead had two sisters, Elizabeth and Priscilla, and a brother, Richard. Elizabeth Mead (1909\u20131983), an artist and teacher, married the cartoonist William Steig, and Priscilla Mead (1911\u20131959) married the author Leo Rosten. Mead's brother, Richard, was a professor. Mead was also the aunt of Jeremy Steig.\nCareer and later life.\nDuring World War II, Mead along with other social scientist like Gregory Bateson and Ruth Benedict, took on several different responsibilities. In 1940, Mead joined the Committee for National Morale. In 1941, she also contributed to an essay that was released in the Applied Anthropology, which created strategies to help produce propaganda with the intent of raising national morale. In 1942, Mead served as the executive director of the Committee on Food Habits of the National Research Council, which served to gather data on American citizens ability to get food and their overall diet during the war. During World War II, Mead also served on the Institute for Intercultural Studies (IIS), whose prime objective was to research the \u201cnational character\u201d of the Axis powers to try and foster peace between the two sides. She was curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History from 1946 to 1969. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1948, the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1975, and the American Philosophical Society in 1977. She taught at The New School and Columbia University, where she was an adjunct professor from 1954 to 1978 and a professor of anthropology and chair of the Division of Social Sciences at Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus from 1968 to 1970, founding their anthropology department. In 1970, she joined the faculty of the University of Rhode Island as a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Anthropology.\nFollowing Ruth Benedict's example, Mead focused her research on problems of child rearing, personality, and culture. She served as president of the Society for Applied Anthropology in 1950 and of the American Anthropological Association in 1960. In the mid-1960s, Mead joined forces with the communications theorist Rudolf Modley in jointly establishing an organization called Glyphs Inc., whose goal was to create a universal graphic symbol language to be understood by any members of culture, no matter how \"primitive.\" In the 1960s, Mead served as the Vice President of the New York Academy of Sciences. She held various positions in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, notably president in 1975 and chair of the executive committee of the board of directors in 1976. She was a recognizable figure in academia and usually wore a distinctive cape and carried a walking stick.\nMead was a key participant in the Macy conferences on cybernetics and an editor of their proceedings. Mead's address to the inaugural conference of the American Society for Cybernetics was instrumental in the development of second-order cybernetics.\nMead was featured on two record albums published by Folkways Records. The first, released in 1959, \"An Interview With Margaret Mead\", explored the topics of morals and anthropology. In 1971, she was included in a compilation of talks by prominent women, \"But the Women Rose, Vol. 2: Voices of Women in American History\".\nShe is credited with the pluralization of the term \"semiotics\".\nIn 1948 Mead was quoted in \"News Chronicle\" as supporting the deployment of Iban mercenaries to the Malayan Emergency, arguing that using Ibans (Dyaks) who enjoyed headhunting was no worse than deploying white troops who had been taught that killing was wrong.\nIn later life, Mead was a mentor to many young anthropologists and sociologists, including Jean Houston, author Gail Sheehy, John Langston Gwaltney, Roger Sandall, filmmaker Timothy Asch, and anthropologist Susan C. Scrimshaw, who later received the 1985 Margaret Mead Award for her research on cultural factors affecting public health delivery.\nIn 1972, Mead was one of the two rapporteurs from NGOs to the UN Conference on the Human Environment. In 1976, she was a key participant at UN Habitat I, the first UN forum on human settlements.\nMead died of pancreatic cancer on November 15, 1978, and is buried at Trinity Episcopal Church Cemetery, Buckingham, Pennsylvania.\nWork.\n\"Coming of Age in Samoa\" (1928).\nMead's first ethnographic work described the life of Samoan girls and women on the island of Tau in the Manu'a Archipelago in 1926. The book includes analyses of how children were raised and educated, sex relations, dance, development of personality, conflict, and how women matured into old age. Mead explicitly sought to contrast adolescence in Samoa with that in America, which she characterized as difficult, constrained, and awkward. In the foreword to \"Coming of Age in Samoa\", Mead's advisor, Franz Boas, wrote of the book's significance:\nCourtesy, modesty, good manners, conformity to definite ethical standards are universal, but what constitutes courtesy, modesty, very good manners, and definite ethical standards is not universal. It is instructive to know that standards differ in the most unexpected ways.\nIn this way, the book tackled the question of nature versus nurture, whether adolescence and its associated developments were a difficult biological transition for all humans or whether they were cultural processes shaped in particular societies. Mead believed childhood, adolescence, gender, and sex relations were largely driven by cultural practices and expressions.\nMead's findings suggested that the community ignores both boys and girls until they are about 15 or 16. Before then, children have little social standing within the community. Mead also found that marriage is regarded as a social and economic arrangement in which wealth, rank, and job skills of the husband and wife are taken into consideration. Aside from marriage, Mead identified two types of sex relations: love affairs and adultery. The exceptions to these practices include women married to chiefs and young women who hold the title of taupo, a ceremonial princess, whose virginity was required. Mead described Samoan youth as often having free, experimental, and open sexual relationships, including homosexual relationships, which was at odds with mainstream American norms around sexuality.\nIn 1970, National Educational Television produced a documentary in commemoration of the 40th anniversary Mead's first expedition to New Guinea. Through the eyes of Mead on her final visit to the village of Peri, the film records how the role of the anthropologist has changed in the forty years since 1928.\nCriticism by Derek Freeman.\nAfter her death, Mead's Samoan research was criticized by the anthropologist Derek Freeman, who published a book arguing against many of Mead's conclusions in \"Coming of Age in Samoa\". Freeman argued that Mead had misunderstood Samoan culture when she argued that Samoan culture did not place many restrictions on youths' sexual explorations. Freeman argued instead that Samoan culture prized female chastity and virginity and that Mead had been misled by her female Samoan informants. Freeman found that the Samoan islanders whom Mead had depicted in such utopian terms were intensely competitive and had murder and rape rates higher than those in the United States. Furthermore, the men were intensely sexually jealous, which contrasted sharply with Mead's depiction of \"free love\" among the Samoans.\nFreeman's book was controversial in its turn and was met with considerable backlash and harsh criticism from the anthropology community, but it was received enthusiastically by communities of scientists who believed that sexual mores were more or less universal across cultures. Later in 1983, a special session of Mead's supporters in the American Anthropological Association (to which Freeman was not invited) declared it to be \"poorly written, unscientific, irresponsible and misleading.\" Some anthropologists who studied Samoan culture argued in favor of Freeman's findings and contradicted those of Mead, but others argued that Freeman's work did not invalidate Mead's work because Samoan culture had been changed by the integration of Christianity in the decades between Mead's and Freeman's fieldwork periods.\nEleanor Leacock traveled to Samoa in 1985 and undertook research among the youth living in urban areas. The research results indicate that the assertions of Derek Freeman were seriously flawed. Leacock pointed out that Mead's famous Samoan fieldwork was undertaken on an outer island that had not been colonialized. Freeman, meanwhile, had undertaken fieldwork in an urban slum plagued by drug abuse, structural unemployment, and gang violence.\nMead was careful to shield the identity of all her subjects for confidentiality, but Freeman found and interviewed one of her original participants, and Freeman reported that she admitted to having willfully misled Mead. She said that she and her friends were having fun with Mead and telling her stories.\nIn 1996, the author Martin Orans examined Mead's notes preserved at the Library of Congress and credits her for leaving all of her recorded data available to the general public. Orans points out that Freeman's basic criticisms, that Mead was duped by ceremonial virgin Fa'apua'a Fa'amu, who later swore to Freeman that she had played a joke on Mead, were equivocal for several reasons. Mead was well aware of the forms and frequency of Samoan joking, she provided a careful account of the sexual restrictions on ceremonial virgins that corresponds to Fa'apua'a Fa'auma'a's account to Freeman, and Mead's notes make clear that she had reached her conclusions about Samoan sexuality before meeting Fa'apua'a Fa'amu. Orans points out that Mead's data support several different conclusions and that Mead's conclusions hinge on an interpretive, rather than positivist, approach to culture. Orans went on to point out concerning Mead's work elsewhere that her own notes do not support her published conclusive claims. Evaluating Mead's work in Samoa from a positivist stance, Orans's assessment of the controversy was that Mead did not formulate her research agenda in scientific terms and that \"her work may properly be damned with the harshest scientific criticism of all, that it is 'not even wrong'.\"\nOn the whole, anthropologists have rejected the notion that Mead's conclusions rested on the validity of a single interview with a single person and find instead that Mead based her conclusions on the sum of her observations and interviews during her time in Samoa and that the status of the single interview did not falsify her work. Others such as Orans maintained that even though Freeman's critique was invalid, Mead's study was not sufficiently scientifically rigorous to support the conclusions she drew.\nIn 1999, Freeman published another book, \"The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research\", including previously unavailable material. In his obituary in \"The New York Times\", John Shaw stated that Freeman's thesis, though upsetting many, had by the time of his death generally gained widespread acceptance. Recent work has nonetheless challenged Freeman's critique. A frequent criticism of Freeman is that he regularly misrepresented Mead's research and views. In a 2009 evaluation of the debate, anthropologist Paul Shankman concluded:\nThere is now a large body of criticism of Freeman's work from a number of perspectives in which Mead, Samoa, and anthropology appear in a very different light than they do in Freeman's work. Indeed, the immense significance that Freeman gave his critique looks like 'much ado about nothing' to many of his critics.\nWhile nurture-oriented anthropologists are more inclined to agree with Mead's conclusions, some non-anthropologists who take a nature-oriented approach follow Freeman's lead, such as Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, biologist Richard Dawkins, evolutionary psychologist David Buss, science writer Matt Ridley, classicist Mary Lefkowitz.\nIn her 2015 book \"Galileo's Middle Finger\", Alice Dreger argues that Freeman's accusations were unfounded and misleading. A detailed review of the controversy by Paul Shankman, published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2009, supports the contention that Mead's research was essentially correct and concludes that Freeman cherry-picked his data and misrepresented both Mead and Samoan culture.\nA survey of 301 anthropology faculty in the United States in 2016 had two thirds agreeing with a statement that Mead \"romanticizes the sexual freedom of Samoan adolescents\" and half agreeing that it was ideologically motivated.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Visible anchor/styles.css\" />\"Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies\" (1935).\nMead's \"Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies\" became influential within the feminist movement since it claimed that females are dominant in the Tchambuli (now spelled Chambri) Lake region of the Sepik basin of Papua New Guinea (in the western Pacific) without causing any special problems. The lack of male dominance may have been the result of the Australian administration's outlawing of warfare. According to contemporary research, males are dominant throughout Melanesia. Others have argued that there is still much cultural variation throughout Melanesia, especially in the large island of New Guinea. Moreover, anthropologists often overlook the significance of networks of political influence among females. The formal male-dominated institutions typical of some areas of high population density were not, for example, present in the same way in Oksapmin, West Sepik Province, a more sparsely-populated area. Cultural patterns there were different from, say, Mount Hagen. They were closer to those described by Mead.\nMead stated that the Arapesh people, also in the Sepik, were pacifists, but she noted that they on occasion engage in warfare. Her observations about the sharing of garden plots among the Arapesh, the egalitarian emphasis in child rearing, and her documentation of predominantly peaceful relations among relatives are very different from the \"big man\" displays of dominance that were documented in more stratified New Guinea cultures, such as by Andrew Strathern. They are a different cultural pattern.\nIn brief, her comparative study revealed a full range of contrasting gender roles:\nDeborah Gewertz (1981) studied the Chambri (called Tchambuli by Mead) in 1974\u20131975 and found no evidence of such gender roles. Gewertz states that as far back in history as there is evidence (1850s), Chambri men dominated the women, controlled their produce, and made all important political decisions. In later years, there has been a diligent search for societies in which women dominate men or for signs of such past societies, but none has been found (Bamberger 1974). Jessie Bernard criticised Mead's interpretations of her findings and argued that Mead's descriptions were subjective. Bernard argues that Mead claimed the Mundugumor women were temperamentally identical to men, but her reports indicate that there were in fact sex differences; Mundugumor women hazed each other less than men hazed each other and made efforts to make themselves physically desirable to others, married women had fewer affairs than married men, women were not taught to use weapons, women were used less as hostages and Mundugumor men engaged in physical fights more often than women. In contrast, the Arapesh were also described as equal in temperament, but Bernard states that Mead's own writings indicate that men physically fought over women, yet women did not fight over men. The Arapesh also seemed to have some conception of sex differences in temperament, as they would sometimes describe a woman as acting like a particularly quarrelsome man. Bernard also questioned if the behaviour of men and women in those societies differed as much from Western behaviour as Mead claimed. Bernard argued that some of her descriptions could be equally descriptive of a Western context.\nDespite its feminist roots, Mead's work on women and men was also criticized by Betty Friedan on the basis that it contributes to infantilizing women.\nOther research areas.\nIn 1926, there was much debate about race and intelligence. Mead felt the methodologies involved in the experimental psychology research supporting arguments of racial superiority in intelligence were substantially flawed. In \"The Methodology of Racial Testing: Its Significance for Sociology,\" Mead proposes that there are three problems with testing for racial differences in intelligence. First, there are concerns with the ability to validly equate one's test score with what Mead refers to as \"racial admixture\" or how much \"Negro or Indian blood\" an individual possesses. She also considers whether that information is relevant when interpreting IQ scores. Mead remarks that a genealogical method could be considered valid if it could be \"subjected to extensive verification.\" In addition, the experiment would need a steady control group to establish whether racial admixture was actually affecting intelligence scores. Next, Mead argues that it is difficult to measure the effect that social status has on the results of a person's intelligence test. She meant that environment (family structure, socioeconomic status, and exposure to language, etc.) has too much influence on an individual to attribute inferior scores solely to a physical characteristic such as race. Then, Mead adds that language barriers sometimes create the biggest problem of all. Similarly, Stephen J. Gould finds three main problems with intelligence testing in his 1981 book \"The Mismeasure of Man\" that relate to Mead's view of the problem of determining whether there are racial differences in intelligence.\nIn 1929, Mead and Fortune visited Manus, now the northernmost province of Papua New Guinea, and traveled there by boat from Rabaul. She amply describes her stay there in her autobiography, and it is mentioned in her 1984 biography by Jane Howard. On Manus, she studied the Manus people of the south coast village of Peri. \"Over the next five decades Mead would come back oftener to Peri than to any other field site of her career.'\nMead has been credited with persuading the American Jewish Committee to sponsor a project to study European Jewish villages, \"shtetls\", in which a team of researchers would conduct mass interviews with Jewish immigrants living in New York City. The resulting book, widely cited for decades, allegedly created the Jewish mother stereotype, a mother intensely loving but controlling to the point of smothering and engendering guilt in her children through the suffering she professed to undertake for their sakes.\nMead worked for the RAND Corporation, a US Air Force military-funded private research organization, from 1948 to 1950 to study Russian culture and attitudes toward authority.\nAs an Anglican Christian, Mead played a considerable part in the drafting of the 1979 American Episcopal Book of Common Prayer.\nLegacy.\nIn the 1967 musical \"Hair\", her name is given to a transvestite \"tourist\" disturbing the show with the song \"My Conviction.\"\nIn 1976, Mead was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.\nOn January 19, 1979, U.S. President Jimmy Carter announced that he was awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously to Mead. UN Ambassador Andrew Young presented the award to Mead's daughter at a special program honoring her contributions that was sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History, where she spent many years of her career. The citation read:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Margaret Mead was both a student of civilization and an exemplar of it. To a public of millions, she brought the central insight of cultural anthropology: that varying cultural patterns express an underlying human unity. She mastered her discipline, but she also transcended it. Intrepid, independent, plain spoken, fearless, she remains a model for the young and a teacher from whom all may learn.\nIn 1979, the Supersisters trading card set was produced and distributed; one of the cards featured Mead's name and picture.\nThe U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp of face value 32\u00a2 on May 28, 1998, as part of the Celebrate the Century stamp sheet series.\nThe Margaret Mead Award is awarded in her honor jointly by the Society for Applied Anthropology and the American Anthropological Association, for significant works in communicating anthropology to the general public.\nIn addition, there are several schools named after Mead in the United States: a junior high school in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, an elementary school in Sammamish, Washington and another in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, New York.\nThe 2014 novel \"Euphoria\" by Lily King is a fictionalized account of Mead's love/marital relationships with fellow anthropologists Reo Fortune and Gregory Bateson in New Guinea before World War II.\nPublications.\nNote: See also \"Margaret Mead: The Complete Bibliography 1925\u20131975\", Joan Gordan, ed., The Hague: Mouton.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "50585": "Philadelphia\nLargest city in Pennsylvania, United States\nPhiladelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the sixth-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 1,603,797 in the 2020 census. The city is the urban core of the larger Delaware Valley, also known as the Philadelphia metropolitan area, the nation's eighth-largest metropolitan area and seventh-largest combined statistical area with 6.245 million residents and 7.366 million residents, respectively.\nPhiladelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn, an English Quaker and advocate of religious freedom, and served as the capital of the colonial era Province of Pennsylvania. It then played a historic and vital role during the American Revolution and Revolutionary War. It served as the central meeting place for the nation's Founding Fathers, hosted the First Continental Congress (1774) and the Second Continental Congress, during which the Founders formed the Continental Army, elected George Washington as its commander, and adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. During the Revolutionary War's Philadelphia campaign, the city briefly fell to the British Army, which occupied Philadelphia for nine months from September 1777 to June 1778. \nIn 1787, following the end of the Revolutionary War and establishment of independence, the U.S. Constitution was ratified in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Convention. Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until 1790, and it served as the nation's first capital from May 10, 1775, until December 12, 1776, and on four subsequent occasions until 1800, when construction of the new national capital in Washington, D.C. was completed.\nPhiladelphia maintains extensive contemporary influence in business and industry, culture, sports, and music. With 17 four-year universities and colleges in the city, Philadelphia is one of the nation's leading centers for higher education and academic research. The city is a national cultural center, hosting more outdoor sculptures and murals than any other city in the nation. Fairmount Park, when combined with adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park in the same watershed, is , representing one of the nation's largest and the world's 55th-largest urban park. Philadelphia is known for its arts, culture, cuisine, and colonial and Revolutionary-era history; in 2016, it attracted 42\u00a0million domestic tourists who spent $6.8\u00a0billion, representing $11\u00a0billion in economic impact to the city and its surrounding Pennsylvania counties. With five professional sports teams and one of the nation's most loyal and passionate fan bases, Philadelphia is often ranked as the nation's best city for professional sports fans. The city has a culturally and philanthropically active LGBTQ+ community. Philadelphia also has played an immensely influential historic and ongoing role in the development and evolution of American music, especially R&B, soul, and rock.\nAs of 2023[ [update]], the Philadelphia metropolitan area had a gross metropolitan product of US$557.6 billion and is home to 13 \"Fortune\" 500 corporate headquarters. Metropolitan Philadelphia ranks as one of the nation's Big Five venture capital hubs, facilitated by its geographic proximity to both the entrepreneurial and financial ecosystems of New York City and the federal regulatory environment of Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Philadelphia is also a biotechnology hub. The Philadelphia Stock Exchange, owned by Nasdaq since 2008, is the nation's oldest stock exchange and a global leader in options trading. 30th Street Station, the city's primary rail station, is the third-busiest Amtrak hub in the nation with over 4.1 million passengers in 2023. The city's multimodal transportation and logistics infrastructure includes Philadelphia International Airport, a major transatlantic gateway and transcontinental hub; the rapidly-growing PhilaPort seaport; and Interstate 95, the spine of the north\u2013south highway system along the U.S. East Coast.\nPhiladelphia is a city of many firsts, including the nation's first library (1731), hospital (1751), medical school (1765), national capital (1774), university (by some accounts) (1779), central bank (1781), stock exchange (1790), zoo (1874), and business school (1881). Philadelphia contains 67 National Historic Landmarks, including Independence Hall. From the city's 17th century founding through the present, Philadelphia has been the birthplace or home to an extensive number of prominent and influential Americans.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nNative peoples.\nPrior to the arrival of Europeans in the early 17th century, the Lenape, an Indian tribe also known as the Delaware Indians, lived in the village of Shackamaxon in present-day Philadelphia and the surrounding area. The Lenape historically lived along the Delaware River watershed, western Long Island, and the Lower Hudson Valley. Most Lenape were pushed out of the region during the 18th century as the original Thirteen colonies expanded, which was further exacerbated by losses from intertribal conflicts. Lenape communities were also weakened by newly introduced diseases, mainly smallpox, and conflicts with Europeans. The Iroquois occasionally fought the Lenape. Surviving Lenape moved west into the upper Ohio River basin. Following the American Revolutionary War and the subsequent establishment of the United States, the Lenape began moving further west. In the 1860s, the U.S. federal government sent most remaining Lenape in the eastern United States to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma and surrounding territories as part of the Indian removal policy.\nColonial era.\nEuropeans first entered Philadelphia and the surrounding Delaware Valley in the early 17th century. The first settlements were founded by Dutch colonists, who built Fort Nassau on the Delaware River in 1623 in what is now Brooklawn, New Jersey. The Dutch considered the entire Delaware River valley to be part of their New Netherland colony. In 1638, Swedish settlers led by renegade Dutch established the colony of New Sweden at Fort Christina, located in present-day Wilmington, Delaware, and quickly spread out in the valley. In 1644, New Sweden supported the Susquehannocks in their war against Maryland colonists. In 1648, the Dutch built Fort Beversreede on the west bank of the Delaware, south of the Schuylkill River near the present-day Eastwick section of Philadelphia, to reassert their dominion over the area. The Swedes responded by building Fort Nya Korsholm, or New Korsholm, named after a town in Finland with a Swedish majority.\nIn 1655, a Dutch military campaign led by New Netherland Director-General Peter Stuyvesant took control of the Swedish colony, ending its claim to independence. The Swedish and Finnish settlers continued to have their own militia, religion, and court, and to enjoy substantial autonomy under the Dutch. An English fleet captured the New Netherland colony in 1664, though the situation did not change substantially until 1682, when the area was included in William Penn's charter for Pennsylvania.\nIn 1681, in partial repayment of a debt, Charles II of England granted Penn a charter for what would become the Pennsylvania colony. Despite the royal charter, Penn bought the land from the local Lenape in an effort to establish good terms with the Native Americans and ensure peace for the colony. Penn made a treaty of friendship with Lenape chief Tammany under an elm tree at Shackamaxon, in what is now the city's Fishtown neighborhood. Penn named the city Philadelphia, which is Greek for \"brotherly love\", derived from the Ancient Greek terms \u03c6\u03af\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2 \"ph\u00edlos\" (beloved, dear) and \u1f00\u03b4\u03b5\u03bb\u03c6\u03cc\u03c2 \"adelph\u00f3s\" (brother, brotherly). There were a number of cities named \"Philadelphia\" in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Greek and Roman periods, including modern Ala\u015fehir, mentioned as the site of an early Christian congregation in the Book of Revelation. As a Quaker, Penn had experienced religious persecution and wanted his colony to be a place where anyone could worship freely. This tolerance, which exceeded that of other colonies, led to better relations with the local native tribes and fostered Philadelphia's rapid growth into America's most important city.\nPenn planned a city on the Delaware River to serve as a port and place for government. Hoping that Philadelphia would become more like an English rural town instead of a city, Penn laid out roads on a grid plan to keep houses and businesses spread far apart with areas for gardens and orchards.\nThe city's inhabitants did not follow Penn's plans, however, and instead crowded the present-day Port of Philadelphia on the Delaware River and subdivided and resold their lots. Before Penn left Philadelphia for the final time, he issued the Charter of 1701 establishing it as a city. Though poor at first, Philadelphia became an important trading center with tolerable living conditions by the 1750s. Benjamin Franklin, a leading citizen, helped improve city services and founded new ones that were among the first in the nation, including a fire company, library, and hospital.\nA number of philosophical societies were formed, which were centers of the city's intellectual life, including the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture (1785), the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts (1787), the Academy of Natural Sciences (1812), and the Franklin Institute (1824). These societies developed and financed new industries that attracted skilled and knowledgeable immigrants from Europe.\nAmerican Revolution.\nPhiladelphia's importance and central location in the colonies made it a natural center for America's revolutionaries. By the 1750s, Philadelphia surpassed Boston as the largest city and busiest port in British America, and the second-largest city in the entire British Empire after London. In 1774, as resentment of the British government's policies towards the colonies and support for independence began burgeoning in the colonies, Philadelphia hosted the First Continental Congress at Carpenters' Hall, and 12 of the original 13 colonies sent delegates to the Congress.\nFrom 1775 to 1781, Philadelphia hosted the Second Continental Congress, whose 56 delegated unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence inside what was then called Pennsylvania State House and was later renamed Independence Hall. Written predominantly by Thomas Jefferson from his second-floor apartment on Market Street within walking distance of Independence Hall, the Declaration has been described by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis as \"the most potent and consequential words in American history,\" and its adoption represented a declaration of war against Great Britain. Since the Declaration's July 4, 1776, adoption, its signing has been cited globally and repeatedly by various peoples of the world seeking independence and liberty. It also has been, since its adoption, the basis for annual celebration by Americans; in 1938, this celebration of the Declaration was formalized as Independence Day, one of only eleven designated U.S. federal holidays.\nAfter George Washington's defeat at the Battle of Brandywine in Chadds Ford Township, on September 11, 1777, during the Philadelphia campaign, the revolutionary capital of Philadelphia was defenseless, and the city prepared for what was perceived to be an inevitable British attack. Because bells could easily be recast into munitions, the Liberty Bell, then known as the Pennsylvania State Bell, and bells from two Philadelphia churches, Christ Church and St. Peter's Church, were hastily taken down and transported by heavily guarded wagon train out of the city. The Liberty Bell was taken to Zion German Reformed Church in Northampton Town, which is present-day Allentown, where it was hidden under the church's floor boards for nine months from September 1777 until departure of British forces from Philadelphia in June 1778. Two Revolutionary War battles, the Siege of Fort Mifflin, fought between September 26 and November 16, 1777, and the Battle of Germantown, fought on October 4, 1777, took place within Philadelphia's city limits.\nIn Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation on November 15, 1777. Independence Hall in Philadelphia was the meeting place for the Constitutional Convention, which ratified the Constitution on September 17, 1787, which is now the longest-standing codified national constitution.\nPhiladelphia served as capital of the United States for most of the colonial and early post-colonial period. including for a decade, from 1790 to 1800, while Washington, D.C., was being constructed and prepared to serve as the new national capital, and on five prior occasions between 1776 and 1790. In 1793, the largest yellow fever epidemic in U.S. history killed approximately 4,000 to 5,000 people in Philadelphia, or about ten percent of the city's population at the time. The capital of the United States was moved to Washington, D.C. in 1800 upon completion of the White House and U.S. Capitol buildings.\nThe state capital was moved from Philadelphia to Lancaster in 1799, then ultimately to Harrisburg in 1812. Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until the late 18th century. It also was the nation's financial and cultural center until ultimately being eclipsed in total population by New York City in 1790. In 1816, the city's free Black community founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent Black denomination in the country, and the first Black Episcopal Church. The free Black community also established many schools for its children with the help of Quakers. Large-scale construction projects for new roads, canals, and railroads made Philadelphia the first major industrial city in the United States.\n19th century.\nThroughout the 19th century, Philadelphia hosted a variety of industries and businesses; the largest was the textile industry. Major corporations in the 19th and early 20th centuries included the Baldwin Locomotive Works, William Cramp & Sons Shipbuilding Company, and the Pennsylvania Railroad. Established in 1870, the Philadelphia Conveyancers' Association was chartered by the state in 1871. Along with the U.S. Centennial in 1876, the city's industry was celebrated in the Centennial Exposition, the first official World's fair in the U.S.\nImmigrants, mostly from Ireland and Germany, settled in Philadelphia and the surrounding districts. These immigrants were largely responsible for the first general strike in North America in 1835, in which workers in the city won the ten-hour workday. The city was a destination for thousands of Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine in the 1840s; housing for them was developed south of South Street and later occupied by succeeding immigrants. They established a network of Catholic churches and schools and dominated the Catholic clergy for decades. Anti-Irish, anti-Catholic nativist riots erupted in Philadelphia in 1844. The rise in population of the surrounding districts helped lead to the Act of Consolidation of 1854, which extended the city limits from the of Center City to the roughly of Philadelphia County.\nIn the latter half of the 19th century and leading into the 20th century, immigrants from Russia, Eastern Europe, and Italy, and African Americans from the southern U.S. settled in the city.\nPhiladelphia was represented by the Washington Grays in the American Civil War. The African-American population of Philadelphia increased from 31,699 to 219,559 between 1880 and 1930, largely stemming from the Great Migration from the South.\n20th century.\nBy the 20th century, Philadelphia had an entrenched Republican political machine and a complacent population. In 1910, a general strike shut down the entire city.\nIn 1917, following outrage over the election-year murder of a Philadelphia police officer, the City Council shrank from two houses to just one. In July 1919, Philadelphia was one of more than 36 industrial cities nationally to suffer a race riot during Red Summer in post-World War I unrest as recent immigrants competed with Blacks for jobs. In the 1920s, the public flouting of Prohibition laws, organized crime, mob violence, and corrupt police involvement in illegal activities led to the appointment of Brig. Gen. Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marine Corps as the city's director of public safety, but political pressure still prevented long-term success in fighting crime and corruption.\nIn 1940, non-Hispanic whites constituted 86.8% of the city's population. In 1950, the population peaked at more than two million residents, then began to decline with the restructuring of industry that led to the loss of many middle-class union jobs. In addition, suburbanization enticed many affluent residents to depart the city for its outlying railroad commuting towns and newer housing. The resulting reduction in Philadelphia's tax base and the resources of local government caused the city to struggle through a long period of adjustment, and it approached bankruptcy by the late 1980s.\nIn 1985, the MOVE Bombing of the Cobbs Creek neighborhood by city helicopters occurred, killing 11 and destroying 61 homes.\nRevitalization and gentrification of neighborhoods began in the late 1970s and continues into the 21st century with much of the development occurring in the Center City and University City neighborhoods. But this expanded a shortage of affordable housing in the city. After many manufacturers and businesses left Philadelphia or shut down, the city started attracting service businesses and began to market itself more aggressively as a tourist destination. Contemporary glass-and-granite skyscrapers were built in Center City beginning in the 1980s. Historic areas such as Old City and Society Hill were renovated during the reformist mayoral era of the 1950s through the 1980s, making both areas among the most desirable Center City neighborhoods. Immigrants from around the world began to enter the U.S. through Philadelphia as their gateway, leading to a reversal of the city's population decline between 1950 and 2000, during which it lost about 25 percent of its residents.\n21st century.\nPhiladelphia eventually began experiencing a growth in its population in 2007, which continued with incremental annual increases through the present. A migration pattern has been established from New York City to Philadelphia by residents opting for a large city with relative proximity and a lower cost of living.\nGeography.\nTopography.\nPhiladelphia's geographic center is about 40\u00b0 0\u2032 34\u2033 north latitude and 75\u00b0 8\u2032 0\u2033 west longitude. The 40th parallel north passes through neighborhoods in Northeast Philadelphia, North Philadelphia, and West Philadelphia including Fairmount Park. The city encompasses , of which is land and , or 6%, is water. Natural bodies of water include the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, lakes in Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park, and Cobbs, Wissahickon, and Pennypack creeks. The largest artificial body of water is East Park Reservoir in Fairmount Park.\nThe lowest point is sea level and the highest point is in Chestnut Hill, about above sea level on Summit Street near the intersection of Germantown Avenue and Bethlehem Pike at: 40.07815 N, 75.20747 W. Philadelphia is located on the Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line that separates the Atlantic Plain from the Piedmont. The Schuylkill River's rapids at East Falls were inundated by completion of the dam at Fairmount Water Works.\nThe city is the seat of its own county. The city is bordered by six adjacent counties: Montgomery to the northwest; Bucks to the north and northeast; Burlington County, New Jersey to the east; Camden County, New Jersey to the southeast; Gloucester County, New Jersey to the south; and Delaware County to the southwest.\nCityscape.\nCity planning.\nPhiladelphia was created in the 17th century, following the plan by William Penn's surveyor Thomas Holme. Center City is structured with long, straight streets running nearly due east\u2013west and north\u2013south, forming a grid pattern between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers that is aligned with their courses. The original city plan was designed to allow for easy travel and to keep residences separated by open space that would help prevent the spread of fire. In keeping with the idea of a \"Greene Countrie Towne\", and inspired by the many types of trees that grew in the region, Penn named many of the east\u2013west streets for local trees. Penn planned the creation of five public parks in the city which were renamed in 1824. Centre Square was renamed Penn Square; Northeast Square was renamed Franklin Square; Southeast Square was renamed Washington Square; Southwest Square was renamed Rittenhouse Square; and Northwest Square was renamed Logan Circle/Square. Center City had an estimated 183,240 residents as of 2015[ [update]], making it the second-most populated downtown area in the United States after Midtown Manhattan in New York City.\nPhiladelphia's neighborhoods are divided into six large sections that surround Center City: North Philadelphia, Northeast Philadelphia, South Philadelphia, Southwest Philadelphia, West Philadelphia, and Northwest Philadelphia. The city's geographic boundaries have been largely unchanged since these neighborhoods were consolidated in 1854. However, each of these large areas contains numerous neighborhoods, some of whose boundaries derive from the boroughs, townships, and other communities that constituted Pennsylvania County before their inclusion within the city.\nThe City Planning Commission, tasked with guiding growth and development of the city, has divided the city into 18 planning districts as part of the Philadelphia2035 physical development plan. Much of the city's 1980 zoning code was overhauled from 2007 to 2012 as part of a joint effort between former mayors John F. Street and Michael Nutter. The zoning changes were intended to rectify incorrect zoning maps to facilitate future community development, as the city forecasts an additional 100,000 residents and 40,000 jobs will be added by 2035.\nThe Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) is the largest landlord in Pennsylvania. Established in 1937, the PHA is the nation's fourth-largest housing authority, serving about 81,000 people with affordable housing, while employing 1,400 on a budget of $371\u00a0million. The Philadelphia Parking Authority is responsible for ensuring adequate parking for city residents, businesses, and visitors.\nArchitecture.\nPhiladelphia's architectural history dates back to colonial times and includes a wide range of styles. The earliest structures were constructed with logs, but brick structures were common by 1700. During the 18th century, the cityscape was dominated by Georgian architecture, including Independence Hall and Christ Church.\nIn the first decades of the 19th century, Federal and Greek Revival architecture were the dominant styles produced by Philadelphia architects such as Benjamin Latrobe, William Strickland, John Haviland, John Notman, Thomas Walter, and Samuel Sloan. Frank Furness is considered Philadelphia's greatest architect of the second half of the 19th century. His contemporaries included John McArthur Jr., Addison Hutton, Wilson Eyre, the Wilson Brothers, and Horace Trumbauer. In 1871, construction began on the Second Empire-style Philadelphia City Hall. The Philadelphia Historical Commission was created in 1955 to preserve the cultural and architectural history of the city. The commission maintains the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, adding historic buildings, structures, sites, objects and districts as it sees fit.\nIn 1932, Philadelphia became home to the first modern International Style skyscraper in the United States, the PSFS Building, designed by George Howe and William Lescaze. The City Hall remained the tallest building in the city until 1987 when One Liberty Place was completed. Numerous glass and granite skyscrapers were built in Center City beginning in the late 1980s. In 2007, the Comcast Center surpassed One Liberty Place to become the city's tallest building. The Comcast Technology Center was completed in 2018, reaching a height of , as the tallest building in the United States outside of Manhattan and Chicago.\nFor much of Philadelphia's history, the typical home has been the row house. The row house was introduced to the United States via Philadelphia in the early 19th century and, for a time, row houses built elsewhere in the United States were known as \"Philadelphia rows\". A variety of row houses are found throughout the city, from Federal-style continuous blocks in Old City and Society Hill to Victorian-style homes in North Philadelphia to twin row houses in West Philadelphia. While newer homes have been built recently, much of the housing dates to the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, which has created problems such as urban decay and vacant lots. Some neighborhoods, including Northern Liberties and Society Hill, have been rehabilitated through gentrification.\nParks.\nAs of 2014[ [update]], the city's total park space, including municipal, state, and federal parks in the city, amounts to . Philadelphia's largest park is Fairmount Park, which includes the Philadelphia Zoo and encompasses of the total parkland. Fairmount Park's adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park contains . Fairmount Park, when combined with Wissahickon Valley Park, is one of the largest contiguous urban park areas in the U.S. The two parks, along with the Colonial Revival, Georgian and Federal-style mansions in them, have been listed as one entity on the National Register of Historic Places since 1972.\nClimate.\nWithin the K\u00f6ppen climate classification, Philadelphia falls under the northern periphery of the humid subtropical climate zone (K\u00f6ppen \"Cfa\"). Within the Trewartha climate classification, Philadelphia has a temperate maritime climate (\"Do\") limited to the north by the continental climate (\"Dc\"). Summers are typically hot and muggy. Fall and spring are generally mild, and winter is moderately cold. The plant life hardiness zones are 7a and 7b, reflecting an average annual extreme minimum temperature between .\nSnowfall is highly variable. Some winters have only light snow while others include major snowstorms. The normal seasonal snowfall averages , with rare snowfalls in November or April, and rarely any sustained snow cover. Seasonal snowfall accumulation has ranged from trace amounts in 1972\u201373, to in the winter of 2009\u201310. The city's heaviest single-storm snowfall was , which occurred in January 1996.\nPrecipitation is generally spread throughout the year, with eight to eleven wet days per month, at an average annual rate of , but historically ranging from in 1922 to in 2011. The most rain recorded in one day occurred on July 28, 2013, when fell at Philadelphia International Airport. Philadelphia has a moderately sunny climate with an average of 2,498 hours of sunshine annually. The percentage of sunshine ranges from 47% in December to 61% in June, July, and August.\nThe January daily average temperature is . The temperature frequently rises to during thaws. July averages . Heat waves accompanied by high humidity and heat indices are frequent, with highs reaching or exceeding on 30 days of the year. The average window for freezing temperatures is November 6 to April 2, allowing a growing season of 217 days. Early fall and late winter are generally dry, with February having the lowest average precipitation at . The dewpoint in the summer averages between .\nThe highest recorded temperature was on August 7, 1918. Temperatures at or above are not common, with the last occurrence of such a temperature being July 21, 2019. The lowest officially recorded temperature was on February 9, 1934. Temperatures at or below are rare, with the last such occurrence being January 19, 1994. The record low maximum is on February 10, 1899, and December 30, 1880. The record high minimum is on July 23, 2011, and July 24, 2010.\nTime Series.\nAir quality.\nPhiladelphia County received an ozone grade of F and a 24-hour particle pollution rating of D in the American Lung Association's 2017 State of the Air report, which analyzed data from 2013 to 2015. The city was ranked 22nd for ozone, 20th for short-term particle pollution, and 11th for year-round particle pollution. According to the same report, the city experienced a significant reduction in high ozone days since 2001\u2014from nearly 50 days per year to fewer than 10\u2014along with fewer days of high particle pollution since 2000\u2014from about 19 days per year to about 3\u2014and an approximate 30% reduction in annual levels of particle pollution since 2000.\nFive of the ten largest combined statistical areas (CSAs) were ranked higher for ozone: Los Angeles (1st), New York City (9th), Houston (12th), Dallas (13th), and San Jose, California (18th). Many smaller CSAs were also ranked higher for ozone, including Sacramento (8th), Las Vegas (10th), Denver (11th), El Paso (16th), and Salt Lake City (20th). Only two of those same ten CSAs, San Jose and Los Angeles, were ranked higher than Philadelphia for both year-round and short-term particle pollution.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nAs of the 2020 U.S. Census, there were 1,603,797 people residing in Philadelphia, representing a 1.2% increase from the 2019 census estimate. The racial composition of the city was 39.3% Black alone (42.0% Black alone or in combination), 36.3% White alone (41.9% White alone or in combination), 8.7% Asian alone, 0.4% American Indian and Alaska Native alone, 8.7% some other race, and 6.9% multiracial. 14.9% of residents were Hispanic or Latino.\n34.8% had a bachelor's degree or higher. 23.9% spoke a language other than English at home, the most common of which was Spanish (10.8%). 15.0% of the populations foreign born, roughly half of whom are naturalized U.S. citizens. 3.7% of the population are veterans. The median household income was $52,889 and 22.8% of the population lived in poverty. 49.5% of the population drove alone to work, while 23.2% used public transit, 8.2% carpooled, 7.9% walked, and 7.0% worked from home. The average commute is 31 minutes.\nAfter the 1950 census, when a record high of 2,071,605 was recorded, the city's population began a long decline. The population dropped to a low of 1,488,710 residents in 2006 before beginning to rise again. Between 2006 and 2017, Philadelphia added 92,153 residents. In 2017, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that the racial composition of the city was 41.3% Black (non-Hispanic), 34.9% White (non-Hispanic), 14.1% Hispanic or Latino, 7.1% Asian, 0.4% Native American, 0.05% Pacific Islander, and 2.8% multiracial.\nImmigration and cultural diversity.\nIn addition to the city's economic growth, the city's population has been fueled by foreign immigration. According to The Pew Charitable Trusts, the city's foreign-born population increased by 69% between 2000 and 2016 to constitute nearly 20% of Philadelphia's workforce, and it doubled between 1990 and 2017 to constitute 13.8% of the city's total population, with the top five countries of origin being China by a significant margin followed by the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, India, and Vietnam.\nIrish, Italian, German, Polish, English, Russian, Ukrainian, and French ancestries constitute the largest European ethnic groups in the city. Philadelphia has the second-largest Irish and Italian populations in the United States after New York City. South Philadelphia remains one of the largest Italian neighborhoods in the country and is home to the Italian Market.\nThe Pennsport neighborhood and Gray's Ferry section of South Philadelphia, home to many Mummer clubs, are well known as Irish neighborhoods. The Kensington, Port Richmond, and Fishtown neighborhoods have historically been heavily Irish and Polish. Port Richmond is a center for the Polish-American community in Philadelphia, and it remains a common destination for Polish immigrants. Northeast Philadelphia, although known for its Irish and Irish-American population, is home to a Jewish and Russian population. Mount Airy in Northwest Philadelphia also contains a Jewish community. Nearby Chestnut Hill is historically known as an Anglo-Saxon Protestant community.\nPhiladelphia's Black American population is the fourth-largest in the country after New York City, Chicago, and Houston. West Philadelphia and North Philadelphia are largely African-American neighborhoods, but many are leaving those areas in favor of the Northeast and Southwest sections of Philadelphia. A higher proportion of African-American Muslims reside in Philadelphia than most other major U.S. cities. West Philadelphia and Southwest Philadelphia are home to various Afro-Caribbean and African immigrant communities.\nThe Puerto Rican population in Philadelphia is the second-largest on the U.S. mainland after New York City, and the second-fastest growing after Orlando. Eastern North Philadelphia, particularly Fairhill and surrounding areas to the north and east, has one of the highest concentrations of Puerto Ricans outside Puerto Rico, with many large swaths of blocks being close to 100% Puerto Rican. Puerto Rican and Dominican populations reside in North Philadelphia and the Northeast, and Mexican and Central American populations exist in South Philadelphia. South American migrants were being transported by bus from Texas to Philadelphia beginning in 2022.\nPhiladelphia's Asian American population includes those of Chinese, Indians, Vietnamese, South Koreans, Filipinos, Cambodians, and Indonesians. Over 35,000 Chinese Americans lived in the city in 2015, including a Fuzhounese population. Center City hosts a Chinatown that is served by Chinatown bus lines with service to/from Chinatown, Manhattan. Indians make up the second-largest Asian group in the city of Philadelphia, while making up the largest foreign-born population in the Delaware Valley. A Korean community initially settled in the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Olney; however, the primary Koreatown has subsequently shifted further north, straddling the city's border with adjacent Cheltenham in Montgomery County and Cherry Hill in South Jersey. South Philadelphia is home to Vietnamese-Americans in Little Saigon and Cambodian-Americans in Cambodia Town, as well as Thai-American, Indonesian-American, and Chinese-American communities.\nPhiladelphia's Gay village near Washington Square is home to a concentration of gay and lesbian-friendly businesses, restaurants, and bars.\nReligion.\nIn a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, 68% of the population of the city identified themselves as Christian. Approximately 41% of Christians in the city and area professed attendance at a variety of churches that could be considered Protestant, while 26% professed Catholic beliefs.\nThe Protestant Christian community in Philadelphia is dominated by mainline Protestant denominations including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church in the United States, Presbyterian Church (USA) and American Baptist Churches USA. One of the most prominent mainline Protestant jurisdictions is the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. The African Methodist Episcopal Church was established in Philadelphia. Historically, the city has strong connections to the Quakers, Unitarian Universalism, and the Ethical Culture movement, all of which continue to be represented in the city. The Quaker Friends General Conference is based in Philadelphia. Evangelical Protestants making up less than 15% of the population were also prevalent.\nEvangelical Protestant bodies included the Anglican Church in North America, Lutheran Church\u2014Missouri Synod, Presbyterian Church in America, and National Baptist Convention of America. The Catholic community is primarily served by the Latin Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Eparchy of the United States of America and Canada, though some independent Catholic churches exist throughout Philadelphia and its suburbs. The Latin Church-based jurisdiction is headquartered in the city, and its see is the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. The Ukrainian Catholic jurisdiction is headquartered in Philadelphia, and is seated at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.\nLess than 1% of Philadelphia's Christians were Mormons. The remainder of the Christian demographic is spread among smaller Protestant denominations and the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox among others. The Diocese of Eastern Pennsylvania (Orthodox Church in America) and Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (Ecumenical Patriarchate) divide the Eastern Orthodox in Philadelphia. The Russian Orthodox St. Andrew's Cathedral is in the city.\nThe same study says that other religions collectively compose about 8% of the population, including Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Sikhism. Philadelphia has the fifth-largest Muslim population among U.S. cities. The remaining 24% claimed no religious affiliation.\nThe Philadelphia metropolitan area's Jewish population was estimated at 206,000 in 2001, which was the sixth-largest in the U.S. at that time. Jewish traders were operating in southeastern Pennsylvania long before William Penn. Jews in Philadelphia took a prominent part in the War of Independence. Although the majority of the early Jewish residents were of Portuguese or Spanish descent, some among them had emigrated from Germany and Poland. About the beginning of the 19th century, a number of Jews from the latter countries, finding the services of the Congregation Mickv\u00e9 Israel unfamiliar to them, resolved to form a new congregation which would use the ritual to which they had been accustomed.\nAfrican diasporic religions are practiced in some Latino and Hispanic and Caribbean communities in North and West Philadelphia.\nLanguages.\nAs of 2010[ [update]], 79.12% (1,112,441) of Philadelphia residents age 5 and older spoke English at home as a primary language, while 9.72% (136,688) spoke Spanish, 1.64% (23,075) Chinese, 0.89% (12,499) Vietnamese, 0.77% (10,885) Russian, 0.66% (9,240) French, 0.61% (8,639) other Asian languages, 0.58% (8,217) African languages, 0.56% (7,933) Cambodian (Mon-Khmer), and Italian was spoken as a main language by 0.55% (7,773) of the population over the age of five. In total, 20.88% (293,544) of Philadelphia's population age 5 and older spoke a mother language other than English.\nPoverty.\nPhiladelphia is home to many food poverty programs, of which two of the largest are Philabundance which claims to feed 90000 people per week. and Share Food Program which claims to feed 1 million people per month.\nEconomy.\nPhiladelphia's close geographical and transportation connections to other large metropolitan economies along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States have been cited as offering a significant competitive advantage for business creation and entrepreneurship. The city is the center of economic activity in both Pennsylvania and the four-state Delaware Valley metropolitan region. Five Fortune 500 companies are based in the city. As of 2021[ [update]], the Philadelphia metropolitan area is estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of US$479\u00a0billion, an increase from the $445\u00a0billion calculated by the Bureau of Economic Analysis for 2017, representing the ninth-largest U.S. metropolitan economy.\nPhiladelphia's economic sectors include financial services, health care, biotechnology, information technology, trade and transportation, manufacturing, oil refining, food processing, and tourism. Metropolitan Philadelphia is one of the top five American venture capital hubs, credited to its proximity to New York City's financial and tech and biotechnology ecosystems. Financial activities account for the largest economic sector of the metropolitan area, which is one of the largest health education and research centers in the United States. The city's two largest employers are the federal and city governments. Philadelphia's largest private employer is the University of Pennsylvania followed by Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.\nFinance and corporations.\nThe Philadelphia Stock Exchange, acquired by Nasdaq in 2007, is a global leader in options trading. The city is home to the headquarters of Comcast, the nation's largest multinational telecommunications corporation; insurance conglomerates Cigna, Colonial Penn, and Independence Blue Cross; as well as food services company Aramark, chemical makers FMC Corporation and Rohm and Haas, pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline, Amicus Therapeutics, Spark Therapeutics, apparel retailers Five Below and Urban Outfitters and its subsidiary Anthropologie, automotive parts retailer Pep Boys, and stainless steel producer Carpenter Technology Corporation.\nOther corporation headquarters in the city include RiteAid, Crown Holdings, and Brandywine Realty Trust. The headquarters of Boeing Rotorcraft Systems and its main rotorcraft factory are in the Philadelphia suburb of Ridley Park; The Vanguard Group, and the U.S. headquarters of Siemens Healthineers are headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb. Healthcare conglomerate AmerisourceBergen is located in suburban Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Across the Delaware River in adjacent Camden County, New Jersey, Campbell Soup Company and Subaru USA are both headquartered in Camden, New Jersey, and TD Bank (USA) is headquartered in nearby suburban Cherry Hill, New Jersey.\nTech and biotech.\nPhiladelphia is a hub for information technology and biotechnology. Philadelphia and Pennsylvania are attracting new life sciences ventures. As of 2024, the Delaware Valley ranks as one of the Big Five U.S. venture capital hubs, enabled by its proximity to both the entrepreneurial and financial ecosystems of New York City and to the federal regulatory environment of Washington, D.C.\nTourism.\nPhiladelphia's history attracts many tourists, with the Independence National Historical Park, which includes the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and other historic sites, received over 5\u00a0million visitors in 2016. The city welcomed 42\u00a0million domestic tourists in 2016 who spent $6.8\u00a0billion, generating an estimated $11\u00a0billion in total economic impact in the city and surrounding four counties of Pennsylvania. The annual Naked Bike Ride attracts participants from around the United States and internationally to Philadelphia.\nTrade and transportation.\nPhiladelphia International Airport, a major Transatlantic gateway and transcontinental hub, has undergone a $900\u00a0million infrastructural expansion to increase passenger capacity and augment passenger experience, and the airport continues an ongoing capital expenditure program to upgrade facilities and add further amenities. The Port of Philadelphia, having experienced the highest percentage growth by tonnage loaded in 2017 among major U.S. seaports, has doubled its shipping capacity to accommodate super-sized post-Panamax shipping vessels since 2018. Philadelphia's 30th Street Station is the third-busiest Amtrak rail hub, following Penn Station in Manhattan and Union Station in Washington, D.C., transporting over 4\u00a0million inter-city rail passengers annually.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nEducation in Philadelphia is provided by many private and public institutions. The School District of Philadelphia is the local school district, operating public schools, in all of the city. The Philadelphia School District is the eighth-largest school district in the nation with 142,266 students in 218 traditional public schools and 86 charter schools as of 2014[ [update]].\nThe city's K-12 enrollment in district\u2013run schools dropped from 156,211 students in 2010 to 130,104 students in 2015. During the same time period, the enrollment in charter schools increased from 33,995 students in 2010 to 62,358 students in 2015. This consistent drop in enrollment led the city to close 24 of its public schools in 2013. During the 2014 school year, the city spent an average of $12,570 per pupil, below the average among comparable urban school districts.\nGraduation rates among district-run schools, meanwhile, steadily increased in the ten years from 2005. In 2005, Philadelphia had a district graduation rate of 52%. This number increased to 65% in 2014, still below the national and state averages. Scores on the state's standardized test, the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) trended upward from 2005 to 2011 but subsequently decreased. In 2005, the district-run schools scored an average of 37.4% on math and 35.5% on reading. The city's schools reached their peak scores in 2011 with 59.0% on math and 52.3% on reading. In 2014, the scores dropped significantly to 45.2% on math and 42.0% on reading.\nOf the city's public high schools, including charter schools, only four performed above the national average on the SAT (1497 out of 2400) in 2014: Masterman, Central, Girard Academic Music Program, and MaST Community Charter School. All other district-run schools were below average.\nHigher education.\nMedical and research facilities of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Philadelphia has the third-largest student concentration on the East Coast, with more than 120,000 college and university students enrolled within the city and nearly 300,000 in the metropolitan area. More than 80 colleges, universities, trade, and specialty schools are in the Philadelphia region. One of the founding members of the Association of American Universities is in the city, the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution with claims to be the First university in the United States.\nThe city's largest university by student enrollment is Temple University, followed by Drexel University. The city's nationally ranked research universities comprise the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, Drexel University, and Thomas Jefferson University. Philadelphia is also home to five schools of medicine: Drexel University College of Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Temple University School of Medicine, and Thomas Jefferson University's Sidney Kimmel Medical College. Hospitals, universities, and higher education research institutions in Philadelphia's four congressional districts received more than $252\u00a0million in National Institutes of Health grants in 2015.\nOther institutions of higher learning within the city's borders include:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCulture.\nPhiladelphia is home to many national historical sites that relate to the founding of the United States. Independence National Historical Park is the center of these historical landmarks and one of the country's 22 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, and the Liberty Bell is housed, are among the city's most popular attractions. Other national historic sites include the homes of Edgar Allan Poe and Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and early government buildings, including the First and the Second Bank of the United States, Fort Mifflin, and the Gloria Dei (Old Swedes') Church. Philadelphia alone has 67 National Historic Landmarks, the third most of any city in the country.\nPhiladelphia's major science museums include the Franklin Institute, which contains the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the M\u00fctter Museum, and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. History museums include the National Constitution Center, the Museum of the American Revolution, the Philadelphia History Museum, the National Museum of American Jewish History, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Masonic Library and Museum of Pennsylvania in the Masonic Temple, and the Eastern State Penitentiary. Philadelphia is home to the United States's first zoo and hospital, as well as Fairmount Park, one of America's oldest and largest urban parks, founded in 1855.\nThe city is home to important archival repositories, including the Library Company of Philadelphia, established in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin at 1314 Locust Street, and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, founded in 1814. The Presbyterian Historical Society is the country's oldest denominational historical society, organized in 1852.\nArts.\nThe city is home to multiple art museums, including the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Rodin Museum, which holds the largest collection of work by Auguste Rodin outside France. The city's largest art museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is one of the largest art museums in the world. The long flight of steps to the Art Museum's main entrance became famous after the film \"Rocky\" (1976).\nAnnual events include the Philadelphia Film Festival, held annually each October, the 6abc Dunkin' Donuts Thanksgiving Day Parade, the nation's longest-running continuously held Thanksgiving Day parade, and the Mummers Parade, the nation's longest continuously held folk parade, which is held every New Year's Day predominantly on Broad Street.\nAreas such as South Street and the Old City section of the city have a vibrant night life. The Avenue of the Arts in Center City contains many restaurants and theaters, such as the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, home of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Academy of Music, home of Opera Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Ballet. The Wilma Theatre and the Philadelphia Theatre Company at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre produce a variety of new plays. Several blocks to the east are the Lantern Theater Company at St. Stephens Episcopal Church; and the Walnut Street Theatre, a National Historic Landmark stated to be the oldest and most subscribed-to theatre in the English-speaking world, founded in 1809. In May 2019, the Walnut Street Theatre announced a major expansion to begin in 2020. New Freedom Theatre, Pennsylvania's oldest African-American theatre, is located on North Broad Street.\nPhiladelphia has more public art than any other American city. In 1872, the Association for Public Art, formerly the Fairmount Park Art Association, was created as the first private association in the United States dedicated to integrating public art and urban planning. In 1959, lobbying by the Artists Equity Association helped create the Percent for Art ordinance, the first for a U.S. city. The program, which has funded more than 200 pieces of public art, is administered by the Philadelphia Office of Arts and Culture, the city's art agency. The city has more murals than any other American city, due to the 1984 creation of the Department of Recreation's Mural Arts Program, which seeks to beautify neighborhoods and provide an outlet for graffiti artists. The program has funded more than 2,800 murals by professional, staff and volunteer artists and educated more than 20,000 youth in underserved neighborhoods throughout Philadelphia.\nThe city is home to a number of art organizations, including the regional art advocacy nonprofit Philadelphia Tri-State Artists Equity, the Philadelphia Sketch Club, one of the country's oldest artists' clubs, and The Plastic Club, started by women excluded from the Sketch Club. Many Old City art galleries stay open late on the First Friday event of each month.\nCuisine.\nThe city is known for its hoagies, stromboli, roast pork sandwich, scrapple, soft pretzels, water ice, Irish potato candy, tastykakes, and the cheesesteak sandwich which was developed by Italian immigrants. The Philadelphia area has many establishments that serve cheesesteaks, including restaurants, taverns, delicatessens and pizza parlors. The originator of the thinly-sliced steak sandwich in the 1930s, initially without cheese, is Pat's King of Steaks, which faces its rival Geno's Steaks, founded in 1966, across the intersection of 9th Street and Passyunk Avenue in the Italian Market of South Philadelphia.\nMcGillin's Olde Ale House, opened in 1860 on Drury Street in Center City, is the oldest continuously operated tavern in the city. The City Tavern is a replica of a historic 18th-century building first opened in 1773, demolished in 1854 after a fire, and rebuilt in 1975 on the same site as part of Independence National Historical Park. The tavern offers authentic 18th-century recipes, served in seven period dining rooms, three wine cellar rooms and an outdoor garden.\nThe Reading Terminal Market is a historic food market founded in 1893 in the Reading Terminal building, a designated National Historic Landmark. The enclosed market is one of the oldest and largest markets in the country, hosting over a hundred merchants offering Pennsylvania Dutch specialties, artisan cheese and meat, locally grown groceries, and specialty and ethnic foods.\nDialect.\nThe traditional Philadelphia accent is considered by some linguists to be the most distinctive accent in North America. The Philadelphia dialect, which is spread throughout the Delaware Valley and South Jersey, is part of a larger Mid-Atlantic American English family, a designation that also includes the Baltimore accent. Additionally, it shares many similarities with the New York accent. Owing to over a century of linguistic data collected by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania under sociolinguist William Labov, the Philadelphia dialect has been one of the best-studied forms of American English. The accent is especially found within the Irish American and Italian American working-class neighborhoods. Philadelphia also has its own unique collection of neologisms and slang terms.\nMusic.\nThe Philadelphia Orchestra is generally considered one of the top five orchestras in the United States. The orchestra performs at the Kimmel Center and has a summer concert series at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts. Opera Philadelphia performs at the nation's oldest continually operating opera house\u2014the Academy of Music. The Philadelphia Boys Choir & Chorale has performed its music all over the world. The Philly Pops plays orchestral versions of popular jazz, swing, Broadway, and blues songs at the Kimmel Center and other venues within the mid-Atlantic region. The Curtis Institute of Music is one of the world's premier conservatories and among the most selective institutes of higher education in the nation.\nPhiladelphia has played a prominent role in the music of the United States. The culture of American popular music has been influenced by significant contributions of Philadelphia area musicians and producers, in both the recording and broadcasting industries. In 1952, the teen dance party program called \"Bandstand\" premiered on local television, hosted by Bob Horn. The show was renamed \"American Bandstand\" in 1957, when it began national syndication on ABC, hosted by Dick Clark and produced in Philadelphia until 1964 when it moved to Los Angeles. Promoters marketed youthful musical artists known as teen idols to appeal to the young audience. Philadelphia-born singers, including Frankie Avalon, James Darren, Eddie Fisher, Fabian Forte, Bobby Rydell, and South Philly-raised Chubby Checker, topped the music charts, establishing a clean-cut rock and roll image.\nPhilly soul music of the late 1960s\u20131970s is a highly produced version of soul music which led to later forms of popular music such as disco and urban contemporary rhythm and blues. On July 13, 1985, John F. Kennedy Stadium was the American venue for the Live Aid concert. The city also hosted the Live 8 concert, which attracted about 700,000 people to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on July 2, 2005.\nNotable rock and pop musicians from Philadelphia and its suburbs include Bill Haley & His Comets, Nazz, Todd Rundgren, Hall & Oates, the Hooters, Cinderella, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Ween, Schoolly D, Pink, the Roots, Beanie Sigel, State Property, Lisa \"Left Eye\" Lopes, Meek Mill, Lil Uzi Vert, and others.\nSports.\nPhiladelphia has one of the nation's richest histories in professional sports, dating back to the mid-19th century. Its first professional sports team, the Philadelphia Athletics, a professional baseball team, was founded in 1860. The Athletics were initially an amateur league team that turned professional in 1871. In 1876, the Athletics joined with seven other teams in founding the National League, now the longest continuously operating league in world sports. \nPhiladelphia is one of 12 U.S. cities to have teams in all four major league sports: the Philadelphia Phillies of Major League Baseball (MLB), the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League (NFL), the Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League (NHL), and the Philadelphia 76ers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Phillies, formed in 1883 as the Quakers and renamed in 1884, are the oldest team continuously playing under the same name in the same city in the history of American professional sports.\nThe Philadelphia metro area is also home to the Philadelphia Union of Major League Soccer (MLS), plays their home games at Subaru Park, a soccer-specific stadium in Chester, Pennsylvania.\nPhiladelphia was the second of eight U.S. cities to win titles in all four major leagues, the MLB, NFL, NHL, and NBA. It won a title in soccer in the now-defunct North American Soccer League in 1973. Following the 76ers' victory over the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1983 NBA Finals, however, the city's professional teams and their fans endured 25 years without a championship in any professional sport until the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, defeating the Tampa Bay Rays. This quarter century without a championship for any Philadelphia sports team is sometimes described as the Curse of Billy Penn, a reference to a 1987 decision that permitted One Liberty Place to become the first building in city history to surpass the height of \"William Penn\", a statue installed in 1894 atop City Hall. In 2004, during the city's championship drought, ESPN placed Philadelphia second on its list of \"The Fifteen Most Tortured Sports Cities\". The city's sports fans are often both praised and sometimes derided. In 2011, for instance, \"GQ\" magazine named Eagles and Phillies fans the nation's worst professional sports fans, describing them as the \"Meanest Fans in America\" in summarizing repeated incidents of their drunken behavior and long history of booing.\nAfter the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, nine years passed without a championship until the Eagles won their first Super Bowl following the 2017 season, defeating the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII. Seven seasons later, following the 2024 season, the Eagles won their second Super Bowl, defeating the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX. \nMajor professional sports teams that originated in Philadelphia, which later moved to other cities, include the Golden State Warriors basketball team, which played in Philadelphia from 1946 to 1962 and the Oakland Athletics baseball team, which was originally the Philadelphia Athletics and played in Philadelphia from 1901 to 1954.\nPhiladelphia is home to professional, semi-professional, and elite amateur teams in multiple other sports, including cricket, rugby league, and rugby union. Major running events in the city include the Penn Relays, the Philadelphia Marathon, and the Broad Street Run. The Collegiate Rugby Championship is played annually each June at Talen Energy Stadium in Chester.\nThe city also has a rich history in rowing, which has been popular in Philadelphia since the 18th century. On Boathouse Row, a symbol of Philadelphia's rich rowing history, each Big Five member has its own boathouse. Philadelphia hosts numerous local and collegiate rowing clubs and competitions, including the annual Dad Vail Regatta, the largest intercollegiate rowing event in North America with more than 100 participating U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities; the annual Stotesbury Cup Regatta, which is billed as the world's oldest and largest rowing event for high school students; and the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta. The regattas are held on the Schuylkill River and organized by Schuylkill Navy, an association of area rowing clubs that has produced numerous Olympic rowers.\nThe Philadelphia Spinners were a professional ultimate team in Major League Ultimate (MLU) until 2016. The Spinners were one of the original eight teams of the American Ultimate Disc League (AUDL), which was founded in 2012. They played at Franklin Field and won the inaugural AUDL championship and the final MLU championship in 2016. The MLU was suspended indefinitely by its investors in December 2016. As of 2018[ [update]], the Philadelphia Phoenix continue to play in the AUDL.\nPhiladelphia is home to the Philadelphia Big 5, a group of five NCAA Division I college basketball programs, including La Salle, Penn, Saint Joseph's, Temple, and Villanova universities. The sixth NCAA Division I school in Philadelphia is Drexel University. La Salle won the 1954 championship of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. Villanova won the 1985, 2016, and 2018 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournaments. Philadelphia will be one of the eleven US host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.\nLaw and government.\nPhiladelphia County is a legal nullity. All county functions were assumed by the city in 1952. The city has been coterminous with the county since 1854.\nPhiladelphia's 1952 Home Rule Charter was written by the City Charter Commission, which was created by the Pennsylvania General Assembly in an act of April 1949, and a city ordinance of June 1949. The existing city council received a proposed draft in February 1951, and the electors approved it in an election held in April 1951. The first elections under the new Home Rule Charter were held in November 1951, and the newly elected officials took office in January 1952.\nThe city uses the strong-mayor version of the mayor\u2013council form of government, which is led by one mayor in whom executive authority is vested. The mayor has the authority to appoint and dismiss members of all boards and commissions without the approval of the city council. Elected at-large, the mayor is limited to two consecutive four-year terms, but can run for the position again after an intervening term.\nCourts.\nPhiladelphia County is coterminous with the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas is the trial court of general jurisdiction for the city, hearing felony-level criminal cases and civil suits above the minimum jurisdictional limit of $10,000. The court has appellate jurisdiction over rulings from the Municipal and Traffic Courts, and some administrative agencies and boards. The trial division has 70 commissioned judges elected by the voters, along with about one thousand other employees. The court has a family division with 25 judges and an orphans' court with three judges.\nAs of 2018[ [update]], the city's District Attorney is Larry Krasner, a Democrat. The last Republican to hold the office is Ronald D. Castille, who left in 1991 and later served as the Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court from 2008 to 2014.\nThe Philadelphia Municipal Court handles traffic cases, misdemeanor and felony criminal cases with maximum incarceration of five years, and civil cases involving $12,000 or less ($15,000 in real estate and school tax cases), and all landlord-tenant disputes. The municipal court has 27 judges elected by the voters.\nPennsylvania's three appellate courts also have sittings in Philadelphia. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the court of last resort in the state, regularly hears arguments in Philadelphia City Hall. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania and the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania also sit in Philadelphia several times a year. Judges for these courts are elected at large. The state Supreme Court and Superior Court have deputy prothonotary offices in Philadelphia.\nPhiladelphia is home to the federal United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, both of which are housed in the James A. Byrne United States Courthouse.\nPolitics.\nThe current mayor is Cherelle Parker who won the election in November 2023. Parker's predecessor, Jim Kenney, served two terms from 2016 to January 2024. Parker is a member of the Democratic Party. For over seven decades, since 1952, every Philadelphia mayor has been a Democrat.\nPhiladelphia City Council is the legislative branch which consists of ten council members representing individual districts and seven members elected at-large, all of whom are elected to four-year terms. Democrats are currently the majority and hold 14 seats including nine of the ten districts and five at-large seats. Republicans hold one seat: the Northeast-based Tenth District. The Working Families Party holds two at-large seats making them the council's minority party. The current council president is Kenyatta Johnson.\nPhiladelphia's political structure consists of a system of wards and divisions. There are 66 wards with 11 to 51 divisions each for a total of 1703 divisions. Each division elects two committee people who are supposed to live within the division boundaries, and committee people select a leader for their ward. Democrats and Republicans elect their own committee people every four years. The committee person's role is to serve as a point of contact between voters and party officials and help get out the vote. Most wards are closed which means the ward leader makes sole endorsement decisions; open wards allow committee people to weigh in on these decisions. There are groups such as Open Wards Philadelphia and individuals who are working to elect ward leaders who promote an open ward system.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nPhiladelphia had historically been a bastion of the Republican Party from the American Civil War until the mid-1930s. In 1856, the first Republican National Convention was held at Musical Fund Hall at 808 Locust Street in Philadelphia.\nDemocratic registrations increased after the Great Depression; however, the city was not carried by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt in his landslide victory of 1932, as Pennsylvania was one of only six states won by Republican Herbert Hoover. Voter turnout surged from 600,000 in 1932 to nearly 900,000 in 1936 and Roosevelt carried Philadelphia with over 60% of the vote. Philadelphia has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1936. In 2008, Democrat Barack Obama drew 83% of the city's vote. Obama's win was even larger in 2012, capturing 85% of the vote. In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton won 82% of the vote.\nAs a result of the previously declining population in the city and state, Philadelphia has only three congressional districts of the 18 districts in Pennsylvania, based on the 2010 census apportionment: the 2nd district, represented by Brendan Boyle; the 3rd, represented by Dwight Evans; and the 5th, represented by Mary Gay Scanlon. All three representatives are Democrats, though Republicans still have some support in the city, primarily in the Northeast. Sam Katz ran competitive mayoral races as the Republican nominee in 1999 and 2003, losing to Democrat John Street both times.\nPennsylvania's longest-serving Senator, Arlen Specter, was an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania who opened his first law practice in Philadelphia. Specter served as a Republican from 1981 and as a Democrat from 2009, losing that party's primary in 2010 and leaving office in January 2011. He was assistant counsel on the Warren Commission in 1964 and the city's district attorney from 1966 to 1974.\nPhiladelphia has hosted various national conventions, including in 1848 (Whig), 1856 (Republican), 1872 (Republican), 1900 (Republican), 1936 (Democratic), 1940 (Republican), 1948 (Republican), 1948 (Progressive), 2000 (Republican), and 2016 (Democratic). Philadelphia has been home to one vice president, George M. Dallas, and one general of the American Civil War, George B. McClellan, who won his party's nomination for president but lost in the general election to Abraham Lincoln in 1864. In May 2019, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden chose Philadelphia to be his 2020 U.S. presidential campaign headquarters.\nEnvironmental policy.\n\"Green Cities, Clean Water\" is an environmental policy initiative based in Philadelphia that has shown promising results in mitigating the effects of climate change. The researchers on the policy have stated that despite such promising plans of green infrastructure building, \"the city is forecasted to grow warmer, wetter, and more urbanized over the century, runoff and local temperatures will increase on average throughout the city\". Even though landcover predictive models on the effects of the policy initiative have indicated that green infrastructure could be useful at decreasing the amount of runoff in the city over time, the city government would have to expand its current plans and \"consider the cobenefit of climate change adaptation when planning new projects\" in limiting the scope of city-wide temperature increase.\nPublic safety.\nPolice and law enforcement.\nIn a 2015 report by Pew Charitable Trusts, the police districts with the highest rates of violent crime were Frankford (15th district) and Kensington (24th district) in the Near Northeast, and districts to the North (22nd, 25th, and 35th districts), West (19th district) and Southwest (12th district) of Center City. Each of those seven districts recorded more than a thousand violent crimes in 2014. The lowest rates of violent crime occurred in Center City, South Philadelphia, the Far Northeast, and Roxborough districts, the latter of which includes Manayunk.\nPhiladelphia had 500, 503 according to some sources, murders in 1990, a rate of 31.5 per 100,000. An average of about 400 murders occurred each year for most of the 1990s. The murder count dropped in 2002 to 288, then rose to 406 by 2006, before dropping slightly to 392 in 2007. A few years later, Philadelphia began to see a rapid decline in homicides and violent crime. In 2013, the city had 246 murders, which is a decrease of nearly 40% since 2006.\nIn 2014, 248 homicides were committed. The homicide rate rose to 280 in 2015, then fell slightly to 277 in 2016, before rising again to 317 in 2017. Homicides increased dramatically in the late 2010s/early 2020s, reaching 499 homicides in 2020 and surpassing the 1990 \"record\" in 2021, with 501st murder on November 27 and 510 by the end of the month. Phillie ended the year with 562 murders, an all-time record. It dropped in 2022 to 514, and significantly further again in 2023, to 410.\nIn 2006, Philadelphia's homicide rate of 27.7 per 100,000 people was the highest of the country's 10 most populous cities. In 2012, Philadelphia had the fourth-highest homicide rate among the country's most populous cities. The rate dropped to 16 homicides per 100,000 residents by 2014 placing Philadelphia as the sixth-highest city in the country.\nThe number of shootings in the city has declined significantly since the early years of the 21st century. Shooting incidents peaked at 1,857 in 2006 before declining nearly 44 percent to 1,047 shootings in 2014. Major crimes have decreased gradually since a peak in 2006 when 85,498 major crimes were reported. The number of reported major crimes fell 11 percent in three years to 68,815 occurrences in 2014. Violent crimes, which include homicide, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery, decreased 14 percent in three years to 15,771 occurrences in 2014.\nIn 2014, Philadelphia enacted an ordinance decriminalizing the possession of less than 30 grams of marijuana or eight grams of hashish; the ordinance gave police officers the discretion to treat possession of these amounts as a civil infraction punishable by a $25 ticket, rather than a crime. At the time, Philadelphia was at the largest city in the nation to decriminalize the possession of marijuana. From 2013 to 2018, marijuana arrests in the city dropped by more than 85%. The purchase or sale of marijuana remains a criminal offense in Philadelphia.\nFirefighting.\nThe Philadelphia Fire Department provides fire protection and emergency medical services (EMS). The department's official mission is to protect public safety by quick and professional response to emergencies and the promotion of sound emergency prevention measures. This mandate encompasses all traditional firefighting functions, including fire suppression, with 60 engine companies and 30 ladder companies as well as specialty and support units deployed throughout the city; specialized firefighting units for Philadelphia International Airport and the Port of Philadelphia; investigations conducted by the fire marshal's office to determine the origins of fires and develop preventive strategies; prevention programs to educate the public; and support services including research and planning, management of the fire communications center within the city's 911 system, and operation of the Philadelphia Fire Academy.\nMedia.\nNewspapers.\nPhiladelphia's two major daily newspapers are \"The Philadelphia Inquirer\", first published in 1829\u2014the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the country\u2014and the \"Philadelphia Daily News\", first published in 1925. The \"Daily News\" has been published as an edition of the \"Inquirer\" since 2009. Recent owners of the \"Inquirer\" and \"Daily News\" have included Knight Ridder, The McClatchy Company, and Philadelphia Media Holdings, with the latter organization declaring bankruptcy in 2010. After two years of financial struggle, the newspapers were sold to Interstate General Media in 2012. The two newspapers had a combined daily circulation of 306,831 and a Sunday circulation of 477,313 in 2013[ [update]], the 18th-largest circulation in the country, and their collective website, Philly.com, was ranked 13th in popularity among online U.S. newspapers by Alexa Internet the same year.\nSmaller publications include the \"Philadelphia Tribune\" published five days each week for the African-American community; \"Philadelphia\" magazine, a monthly regional magazine; \"Philadelphia Weekly\", a weekly alternative newspaper; \"Philadelphia Gay News\", a weekly newspaper for the LGBT community; \"The Jewish Exponent\", a weekly newspaper for the Jewish community; \"Al D\u00eda\", a weekly newspaper for the Latino community; and \"Philadelphia Metro\", a free daily newspaper.\nStudent-run newspapers include the University of Pennsylvania's \"The Daily Pennsylvanian\", Temple University's \"The Temple News\", and Drexel University's \"The Triangle\".\nRadio.\nThe first experimental radio license was issued in Philadelphia in August 1912 to St. Joseph's College. The first commercial AM radio stations began broadcasting in 1922: first WIP, then owned by Gimbels department store, followed by WFIL, then owned by Strawbridge & Clothier department store, and WOO, a defunct station owned by Wanamaker's department store, as well as WCAU and WDAS.\nAs of 2018[ [update]], the FCC lists 28 FM and 11 AM stations for Philadelphia. As of December 2017, the ten highest-rated stations in Philadelphia were adult contemporary WBEB-FM (101.1), sports talk WIP-FM (94.1), classic rock WMGK-FM (102.9), urban adult contemporary WDAS-FM (105.3), classic hits WOGL-FM (98.1), album-oriented rock WMMR-FM (93.3), country music WXTU-FM (92.5), all-news KYW-AM (1060), talk radio WHYY-FM (90.9), and urban adult contemporary WRNB-FM (100.3). Philadelphia is served by three non-commercial public radio stations: WHYY-FM (NPR), WRTI-FM (classical and jazz), and WXPN-FM (adult alternative music).\nTelevision.\nIn the 1930s, W3XE, an experimental station owned by Philco, launched as Philadelphia's first television station. In 1939, the station became the nation's first NBC's first affiliate, and later became KYW-TV, the Philadelphia television market's CBS affiliate. In 1952, WFIL, later renamed WPVI, premiered the television show \"Bandstand\", which later became the nationally broadcast \"American Bandstand\" hosted by Dick Clark. In the 1960s, WCAU-TV, WFIL-TV, and WHYY-TV were founded.\nEach of the nation's commercial networks has an affiliate in Philadelphia: KYW-TV 3 (CBS), WPVI-TV 6 (ABC), WCAU 10 (NBC), WPHL-TV 17 (The CW with MyNetworkTV on DT2), WFPA-CD 28 (UniM\u00e1s), WTXF-TV 29 (Fox), WPSG 57 (Independent), WWSI 62 (Telemundo), and WUVP-DT 65 (Univision). The region is served also by public broadcasting stations WPPT-TV in Philadelphia, WHYY-TV in Wilmington, Delaware and Philadelphia, WLVT-TV in the Lehigh Valley, and NJTV in New Jersey.\nSince September 2024, Philadelphia is the nation's largest television market where at least one of the six English networks are shown at a station not owned by a particular network's associated parent company. The major Spanish language networks are Univision (WUVP-DT), UniM\u00e1s (WFPA-CD), and Telemundo (WWSI-TV).\nAs of 2023, the Philadelphia media market is the fifth-largest in North America with over 7.8 million viewers\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nPhiladelphia is served by SEPTA, which operates buses, trains, rapid transit (as both subways and elevated trains), trolleys, and trackless trolleys (electric buses) throughout Philadelphia, the four Pennsylvania suburban counties of Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery, in addition to service to Mercer County, New Jersey (Trenton) and New Castle County, Delaware (Wilmington and Newark, Delaware). The city's subway system consists of two routes: the subway section of the Market\u2013Frankford Line running east\u2013west under Market Street which opened in 1905 to the west and 1908 to the east of City Hall, and the Broad Street Line running north\u2013south beneath Broad Street which opened in stages from 1928 to 1938.\nBeginning in the 1980s, large sections of the SEPTA Regional Rail service to the far suburbs of Philadelphia were discontinued due to a lack of funding for equipment and infrastructure maintenance.\nPhiladelphia's 30th Street Station is a major railroad station on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor with 4.4\u00a0million passengers in 2017 making it the third-busiest station in the country after New York City's Pennsylvania Station and Washington's Union Station. 30th Street Station offers access to Amtrak, SEPTA, and NJ Transit lines. Over 12\u00a0million SEPTA and NJ Transit rail commuters use the station each year, and more than 100,000 people on an average weekday.\nThe PATCO Speedline provides rapid transit service to Camden, Collingswood, Westmont, Haddonfield, Woodcrest (Cherry Hill), Ashland (Voorhees), and Lindenwold, New Jersey, from stations on Locust Street between 16th and 15th, 13th and 12th, and 10th and 9th streets, and on Market Street at 8th Street.\nAirports.\nPhiladelphia is served by two airports. Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), the larger of the two, is south-southwest of Center City on the boundary with Delaware County, and provides scheduled domestic and international air service. As of 2023, Philadelphia International Airport is the 21st-busiest airport in the nation with over 13.6 million passengers. It is also among the world's busiest airports measured by traffic movements, including takeoffs and landings. Over 30\u00a0million passengers pass through the airport annually on 25 airlines, including all major domestic carriers. The airport has nearly 500 daily departures to over 120 destinations worldwide. SEPTA's Airport Line provides direct service between Center City railroad stations and Philadelphia International Airport.\nPhiladelphia's second major airport, Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE), is a general aviation relief airport in Northeast Philadelphia, which provides general and corporate aviation.\nRoads.\nWilliam Penn planned Philadelphia with numbered streets traversing north and south, and streets named for trees, including Chestnut, Walnut, and Mulberry (since renamed Arch Streets, traversing east and west. The two main streets were named Broad Street, the north\u2013south artery, later designated Pennsylvania Route 611, and High Street, the east\u2013west artery, which was later renamed Market Street, converging at Centre Square which later became the site of City Hall.\nInterstate 95, also known as the Delaware Expressway, traverses the southern and eastern edges of the city along the Delaware River as the main north\u2013south controlled-access highway, and connects Philadelphia with Newark, New Jersey and New York City to the north and Baltimore and Washington, D.C. to the south. The city is served by Interstate 76, also known as the Schuylkill Expressway, which runs along the Schuylkill River, intersecting the Pennsylvania Turnpike at King of Prussia and providing access to Harrisburg and points west. Interstate 676, also known as Vine Street Expressway, links I-95 and I-76 through Center City, running below street level between the eastbound and westbound lanes of Vine Street. Entrance and exit ramps for the Benjamin Franklin Bridge are near the eastern end of the expressway just west of the I-95 interchange.\nRoosevelt Boulevard and Expressway, also known as U.S. 1, connects Northeast Philadelphia with Center City via I-76 through Fairmount Park. Woodhaven Road, also known as Route 63, and Cottman Avenue, also known as Route 73, serve the neighborhoods of Northeast Philadelphia, running between I-95 and the Roosevelt Boulevard. Fort Washington Expressway, also known as Route 309, extends north from the city's northern border, serving Montgomery and Bucks Counties. U.S. Route 30, also known as Lancaster Avenue, extends west from West Philadelphia to Lancaster.\nInterstate 476, locally called the Blue Route, traverses Delaware County, bypassing the city to the west and serving the city's western suburbs, providing a direct route to Allentown, the Poconos, and points north. Interstate 276, the Pennsylvania Turnpike's Delaware River extension, is a bypass and commuter route north of the city, which links to the New Jersey Turnpike and New York City.\nDelaware River Port Authority operates four bridges in the Philadelphia area, each of which cross the Delaware River to South Jersey: Walt Whitman Bridge (I-76), the Benjamin Franklin Bridge (I-676 and U.S. 30), Betsy Ross Bridge (New Jersey Route 90), and Commodore Barry Bridge (U.S. 322 in Delaware County, south of the city. The Burlington County Bridge Commission maintains two additional bridges that cross the Delaware River. Tacony\u2013Palmyra Bridge connects PA Route 73 in the Tacony section of Northeast Philadelphia with New Jersey Route 73 in Palmyra in Burlington County. Burlington\u2013Bristol Bridge connects NJ Route 413/U.S. Route 130 in Burlington, New Jersey with PA Route 413/U.S. 13 in Bristol Township, north of Philadelphia.\nBus service.\nThe Greyhound terminal is at 1001 Filbert Street (at 10th Street) in Center City, southeast of the Pennsylvania Convention Center and south of Chinatown. Several other bus operators provide service at the Greyhound terminal including Fullington Trailways, Martz Trailways, Peter Pan Bus Lines, and NJ Transit buses.\nOther intercity bus services include Megabus with stops at 30th Street Station and the visitor center for Independence Hall, BoltBus (operated by Greyhound) at 30th Street Station, OurBus at various stops in the city.\nRail.\nSince the early days of rail transportation in the United States, Philadelphia has served as a hub for several major rail companies, particularly the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Railroad. The Pennsylvania Railroad first operated Broad Street Station, then 30th Street Station and Suburban Station, and the Reading Railroad operated Reading Terminal, now part of the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The two companies also operated competing commuter rail systems in the area. The two systems now operate as a single system under the control of SEPTA, the regional transit authority. Additionally, the PATCO Speedline subway system and NJ Transit's Atlantic City Line operate successor services to South Jersey.\nIn 1911, Philadelphia had nearly 4,000 electric trolleys running on 86 lines. In 2005, SEPTA reintroduced trolley service to the Girard Avenue Line, Route 15. SEPTA operates six subway-surface trolleys that run on street-level tracks in West Philadelphia and subway tunnels in Center City, along with two surface trolleys in adjacent suburbs.\nPhiladelphia is a regional hub of the federally-owned Amtrak system, with 30th Street Station being a primary stop on the Washington-Boston Northeast Corridor and the Keystone Corridor to Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. 30th Street also serves as a major station for services via the Pennsylvania Railroad's former Pennsylvania Main Line to Chicago. As of 2018[ [update]], 30th Street is Amtrak's third-busiest station in the country, after New York City and Washington.\nUtilities.\nWater purity and availability.\nIn 1815, Philadelphia began sourcing its water via the Fairmount Water Works on the Schuylkill River, the nation's first major urban water supply system. In 1909, the Water Works was decommissioned as the city transitioned to modern sand filtration methods. Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) provides drinking water, wastewater collection, and stormwater services for Philadelphia, as well as surrounding counties. PWD draws about 57 percent of its drinking water from the Delaware River and the balance from the Schuylkill River. The city has two filtration plants on the Schuylkill River and one on the Delaware River. The three plants can treat up to 546\u00a0million gallons of water per day, while the total storage capacity of the combined plant and distribution system exceeds one billion gallons. The wastewater system consists of three water pollution control plants, 21 pumping stations, and about of sewers.\nElectricity.\nExelon subsidiary PECO Energy Company, founded as the Brush Electric Light Company of Philadelphia in 1881 and renamed Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) in 1902, provides electricity to about 1.6\u00a0million customers and more than 500,000 natural gas customers in the southeastern Pennsylvania area including the city of Philadelphia and most of its suburbs. PECO is the largest electric and natural gas utility in the state with 472 power substations and nearly of electric transmission and distribution lines and of natural gas transmission, distribution, and service lines.\nNatural gas.\nPhiladelphia Gas Works (PGW), overseen by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, is the nation's largest municipally-owned natural gas utility. PGW serves over 500,000 homes and businesses in the Philadelphia area. Founded in 1836, the company came under city ownership in 1987 and has been providing the majority of gas distributed within city limits. In 2014, the City Council refused to conduct hearings on a $1.86\u00a0billion sale of PGW, part of a two-year effort that was proposed by the mayor. The refusal led to the prospective buyer terminating its offer.\nTelecommunications.\nSoutheastern Pennsylvania was assigned the 215 area code in 1947 when the North American Numbering Plan of the Bell System went into effect. The geographic area covered by the code was split nearly in half in 1994 when area code 610 was created, with the city and its northern suburbs retaining 215. Overlay area code 267 was added to the 215 service area in 1997, and 484 was added to the 610 area in 1999. A plan in 2001 to introduce a third overlay code to both service areas, area code 445 to 215 and area code 835 to 610, was delayed and later rescinded. Area code 445 was implemented as an overlay for area codes 215 and 267 starting on February 3, 2018.\nSister cities.\nPhiladelphia also has three partnership cities or regions:\nPhiladelphia has eight official sister cities as designated by the Citizen Diplomacy International (CDI) of Philadelphia: Philadelphia has dedicated landmarks to its sister cities. The Sister Cities Park, a site of at 18th and Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Logan Square, was dedicated in June 1976. The park was built to commemorate Philadelphia's first two sister city relationships, with Tel Aviv and Florence. Toru\u0144 Triangle, honoring the sister city relationship with Toru\u0144, Poland, was constructed in 1976, west of the United Way building at 18th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Sister Cities Park was redesigned and reopened in 2012, featuring an interactive fountain honoring Philadelphia's sister and partnership cities, a caf\u00e9 and visitor center, children's play area, outdoor garden, boat pond, and a pavilion built to environmentally friendly standards.\nThe Chinatown Gate, erected in 1984 and crafted by artisans from Tianjin, stands astride 10th Street, on the north side of its intersection with Arch Street, as a symbol of the sister city relationship. The CDI of Philadelphia has participated in the U.S. Department of State's \"Partners for Peace\" project with Mosul, Iraq, and in accepting visiting delegations from dozens of other countries.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nclass=\"wikitable succession-box noprint\" style=\"margin:0.5em auto; font-size:small;clear:both;\"", "570934": "Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church\nHistoric church in Pennsylvania, United States\nThe Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is a historic church and congregation which is located at 419 South 6th Street in Center City Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The congregation, founded in 1794, is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal congregation in the nation.\nIts present church, completed in 1890, is the oldest church property in the United States to be continuously owned by African Americans. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972.\nHistory of the congregation.\nThe church was proposed in 1791 by members of the Free African Society of Philadelphia, including Absalom Jones, out of a desire to create a space for autonomous African-American worship and community in the city. The desire to create the church was strengthened in 1792, after African-American members of St. George's Methodist Church walked out due to racial segregation in the worship services. Leading roles in the founding were played by Richard Allen, who arranged the purchase of the church's site and its construction, and Absalom Jones, who raised funds among both black and white Philadelphia residents (including then-President George Washington). Mother Bethel was one of the first African-American churches in the United States, dedicated July 29, 1794, by Bishop Francis Asbury.\nOn October 12, 1794, Reverend Robert Blackwell announced that the congregation was received in full fellowship in the Methodist Episcopal Church.\nIn 1816, Rev. Richard Allen brought together other black Methodist congregations from the region to organize the new African Methodist Episcopal Church denomination. He was elected bishop of this denomination. After the American Civil War, its missionaries went to the South to help freedmen and planted many new churches in the region.\nIn 1838, the building was damaged during the riots that followed the destruction of Pennsylvania Hall.\nAllen and his wife, Sarah Allen are both buried in the present church's crypt. The current church building was constructed in 1888\u20131890, and it has been designated a National Historic Landmark.\nOn October 25, 2009, \"The Great Gathering\" took place at St. George's Church in which the community of Mother Bethel AME and St. George's congregations gathered for Sunday worship at St. George's for the first time since the historic walkout. The Rev. Dr. Mark Kelly Tyler preached for this service.\nBuilding history.\nThe property was acquired for the new congregation in 1794. Its first building was a frame structure originally used as a blacksmith's shop, which was hauled to the site.\nThis building was later replaced by frame structures in 1805 and 1841. The 1841 church was reported to have a tunnel connecting it with a nearby Quaker meetinghouse to facilitate the movements of fugitive slaves.\nThe present building, which was completed in 1890, is a three-story masonry structure with Romanesque styling. Its large round-arch windows are adorned with stained glass from Germany.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["570934", "19617", "50585"], "permutation_1": ["19617", "50585", "570934"], "permutation_2": ["570934", "19617", "50585"], "permutation_3": ["50585", "570934", "19617"]}
{"id": "3hop1__20961_87850_52731", "docs_added": {"40509": "1824 United States presidential election\nPresidential elections were held in the United States from October 26 to December 2, 1824. Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and William Crawford were the primary contenders for the presidency. The result of the election was inconclusive, as no candidate won a majority of the electoral vote. In the election for vice president, John C. Calhoun was elected with a comfortable majority of the vote. Because none of the candidates for president garnered an electoral vote majority, the U.S. House of Representatives, under the provisions of the Twelfth Amendment, held a contingent election. On February 9, 1825, the House voted (with each state delegation casting one vote) to elect John Quincy Adams as president, ultimately giving the election to him.\nThe Democratic-Republican Party had won six consecutive presidential elections and by 1824 was the only national political party. However, as the election approached, the presence of multiple viable candidates resulted in there being multiple nominations by the contending factions, signaling the splintering of the party and an end to the Era of Good Feelings, as well as the First Party System.\nAdams won New England, Jackson and Adams split the mid-Atlantic states, Jackson and Clay split the Western states, and Jackson and Crawford split the Southern states. Jackson finished with a plurality of the popular vote (there was no popular vote in six states including New York, the most populous state), and also of the electoral vote (due to the Three-fifths Compromise), while the other three candidates each finished with a significant share of the votes. Clay, who had finished fourth, was eliminated. Adams was the first son of a former president to become president.\nThis is one of two presidential elections (along with the 1800 election) that have been decided in the House. It is also one of five elections in which the winner did not achieve at least a plurality of the national popular vote and the only election in which the candidate who received the most electoral votes from the Electoral College did not win the election. It is also, to date, the election with the lowest popular vote percentage for an elected president (32.7%).\nBackground.\nThe Era of Good Feelings, associated with the administration of President James Monroe, was a time of reduced emphasis on political party identity. With the Federalists discredited, Democratic-Republicans adopted some key Federalist economic programs and institutions. The economic nationalism of the Era of Good Feelings that would authorize the Tariff of 1816 and incorporate the Second Bank of the United States portended abandonment of the Jeffersonian political formula for strict construction of the Constitution, limited central government, and primacy of Southern slaveholding interests.\nAn unintended consequence of wide single-party identification was reduced party discipline. Rather than political harmony, factions arose within the party. Monroe attempted to improve discipline by appointing leading statesmen to his Cabinet, including Secretary of State John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, Secretary of the Treasury William H. Crawford of Georgia, and Secretary of War John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. General Andrew Jackson of Tennessee led high-profile military missions. Only House Speaker Henry Clay of Kentucky held political power independent of Monroe. He refused to join the cabinet and remained critical of the administration.\nTwo key events, the Panic of 1819 and the Missouri crisis of 1820, influenced and reshaped politics. The economic downturn broadly harmed workers, the sectional disputes over slavery expansion raised tensions, and both events plus other factors drove demand for increased democratic control. Social disaffection would help motivate revival of rivalrous political parties in the near future, though these had not yet formed by the time of the 1824 election.\nNominations.\nCandidates who withdrew before election.\nThe previous competition between the Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party collapsed after the War of 1812 due to the disintegration of the Federalists' popular appeal. President James Monroe of the Democratic-Republicans was able to run effectively unopposed in the 1820 election. Like previous presidents who had been elected to two terms, Monroe declined to seek re-nomination for a third term. The presidential nomination was thus left wide open within the Democratic-Republican Party, the only remaining major national political entity.\nDuring the first year of Monroe's second term, it was said that 17 names had been mentioned as possible candidates, although formal nominations did not occur until late December. Among these possible candidates, William H. Crawford was seen as the most formidable, with many observers anticipating that John Quincy Adams would be his primary rival, and Henry Clay regarded as a likely outside contender. Crawford, a native of the Georgia frontier, was physically imposing and a powerful political figure. He was the first president pro tem of the Senate to be elected continuingly and had nearly beaten Monroe for the party nomination in 1816. As Secretary of the Treasury, he had helped to reorganized the nation's finances after the War of 1812 and establish the Second Bank of the United States. As such, he came to be seen as the treasury candidate.\nCrawford cultivated a strong base of support for the nomination, especially among influential political figures who could manage the congressional caucus and had, in the words of William Lowndes, his own \"Organized Party\" (the Old Republicans). Opponents accused him of consolidating power through the Tenure of Office Act of 1820, which required financial officeholders to be reappointed every four years. In creating a web of support among self-interested agents, Crawford became a man suspected of deliberately contriving his own election, something feared by all others. Despite these accusations, his supporters believed that he was not the conniving, maneuvering self-seeker his rivals branded him to be. It is impossible to know for certain, however, as little of his personal correspondence survives.\nCalhoun and Lowndes.\nThe first people to be publicly nominated as candidates were Calhoun and Lowndes. Calhoun had been clashing with Crawford since the spring of 1820, when the latter began a retrenchment campaign in response to the Panic of 1819. Calhoun and his partisans viewed the effort as designed to emasculate the Department of War and discredit its secretary, especially as Congress failed to pass similar proposed reductions in the civil list.\nCalhoun, up until this point a staunch nationalist, shared many policy positions with Adams. Though claiming to prefer Adams, he feared that Adams could not defeat Crawford in the Southern and Middle states. Therefore, it fell upon him to challenge the assumption that Crawford was the favorite of the Southeast, hopefully defeating Crawford and his radicals. Overestimating his popularity, Calhoun believed that he could build a solid core of support by appealing to the economic interests of the two most powerful states, New York and Pennsylvania, and by consolidating his home base in the Southeast. In particular, he focused on Pennsylvania, where he made relations with the Family Party\u2014a group of young Republican politicians in Philadelphia, led by George M. Dallas and Samuel D. Ingham, who opposed the state's Republican leaders that favored Crawford. In December, he was apparently nominated by the faction, and later that month, a group of congressmen, mainly from Pennsylvania, called on him in Washington and formally invited him to become a candidate, which he accepted after \"some hesitation.\"\nBefore the nomination, he had informed Lowndes of his intention to run for president early in his stay at Calhoun's residence in Washington, which began in December 1821. Lowndes, while having spoken positively of the other men, assured Calhoun he preferred his election. However, during Lowndes' journey to Washington, and without his knowledge, lowcountry moderates in the South Carolina legislature made an unprecedented move by attempting to nominate Lowndes. This effort was led by James Hamilton Jr., the Charleston delegation, and others from the tidewater parishes and Middle District counties east of the Broad River. They called a caucus of the legislature, which met in the hall of representatives on December 18, with about 2/3 of both houses in attendance. Opposition to the motion consisted primarily of upcountry partisans of Calhoun who, caught off guard, argued for delay, declaring the proposal premature and condemning the very idea that a single small state should attempt to name a president for the whole nation. While recognizing Calhoun's credentials, Lowndes' supporters argued that he was a more nationally prominent figure who would be more acceptable to citizens across the country. The motion to recommend Lowndes for president narrowly passed, 58 to 54, embarrassing Calhoun's campaign.\nThe two men agreed not to alter their plans. Calhoun would enter the race as planned, while Lowndes would neither decline the nomination nor encourage an active campaign on his behalf, but follow the course dictated by his health. As this would most likely result in a voyage abroad, effectively removing Lowndes from further consideration, the difficulty presented by his nomination would be resolved, and supporters could transfer their backing to Calhoun. Despite this, his supporters remained insistent on his candidacy and encouraged him to stay. Lowndes died on October 27, 1822, en route to a recuperative visit to England. The next month the legislature transferred their nomination to Calhoun. Later, in February 1824, Dallas gave his support to Jackson's presidential campaign, with Calhoun as his running mate.\nClinton, King, Thompson, and Tompkins.\nWhile Republicans in Northern states wished to support a man of their own, many were reluctant to rally behind Adams. By early 1823, critics among his supporters complained that Adams was \"too fastidious and reserved,\" failing to engage in the political collaboration expected of a leader. They argued that presidents were no longer chosen purely on merit but rather through the influence of politicians and newspapers. His perceived \"indifference\" simply served to \"chill and depress the kind feeling and fair exertions of his friends.\"\nRather than endure such a leader, many potential supporters began searching for an alternative Northern candidate, though this effort ultimately proved fruitless. Rufus King was too old and also unwilling. Vice President Daniel D. Tompkins had long-since been dismissed as a viable successor to Monroe due to a combination of health problems and a financial dispute with the federal government, and he formally ruled himself out of making a presidential run at the start of 1824. Secretary of the navy Smith Thompson, believing his New York ties might make him a viable option, delayed accepting a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court for eight months before being persuaded that he stood no chance of the presidency. Clinton, while having been supported by a small minority for president in 1820, suffered from the memory of his past involvements with Federalists, and in 1822 had become too electorally weak to compete, let alone win New York presidentially against the state's political machine.\nLegislature nominations.\nThe \"Niles' Weekly Register\", reporting on Washington politics in its January 26, 1822, issue, reported the names of Calhoun, Thompson, Clinton, Lowndes, Tompkins, Adams, Clay, and Crawford as being put forth as candidates. The newspaper also reported that \"one or two others are casually spoken of\" but did not identify them. Lowndes' nomination had sparked intense speculation in Washington during the first week of the new year, concerned with the ramifications of the way Lowndes had been nominated. In a letter to his wife, Lowndes stated, \"The House is in terrible confusion. I thought when I came here that the question was in fact confined to two persons Mr Crawford and Mr Adams. Now we have all the Secretaries and at least two who are not secretaries named...\"\nThat year, Kentucky and Missouri legislature caucuses nominated Clay, and Tennessee nominated Jackson. In January 1823, a meeting of Ohio legislators approved resolutions naming Clay. In early 1823, the legislatures of Massachusetts and Maine stated a preference for Adams but did not make a formal nomination, as they wished to ensure party unity nationwide. In January 1824, a caucus in the Mississippi legislature divided evenly between supporting Adams and Jackson. In Rhode Island, the \"State Junta\" initially committed itself in early 1824 to supporting the caucus candidate but soon realized they could not sway public opinion against Adams. Consequently, they refrained from pressing for Crawford out of fear of jeopardizing their state ticket. In early 1824, the Connecticut legislature nominated Adams. In March 1824, a state party convention at Harrisburg nominated Jackson. In June 1824, the New Hampshire legislature nominated Adams.\nThe legislatures of Maine, New York, Virginia, and Georgia were in favor of the Congressional nominating caucus.\nCongressional nominating caucus.\nWhile not always popular, in past elections the party had relied on a congressional caucus, sometimes referred to as the \"King Caucus,\" to nominate their presidential candidates, a process that had consistently succeeded in identifying the party favorite. Now, however, there was no certainty that the caucus would work again. Proponents, many of whom supported William H. Crawford, argued that it was essential for maintaining the stability of the republic and ensuring party unity on the presidential question. Opponents, including some of Crawford's own supporters, criticized the process as limiting the people's choice and effectively predetermining the outcome of the popular election.\nThe strongest opposition came from Jacksonians. They viewed it as emblematic of the insider manipulation they sought to dismantle. On the other hand, New England Republicans, drawn to traditional party practices, had no such objection, and about 20 were believed to be willing to support Crawford if they could not have Adams, until Adams declared he would not accept a nomination for any office from a congressional caucus. In most delegations there were one or two representatives who, if left to themselves, were willing to attend the caucus. Crawford hoped to secure more than the 65 ballots that Monroe had obtained in 1816.\nIn early February 1824, a majority of congressmen signed a public statement that they would not attend a nominating caucus. They believed that by refusing to attend instead of killing it, the caucus system would collapse on its own. On February 14, the caucus nominated Crawford for president and Albert Gallatin for vice president, but only 66 of the 240 Democratic-Republican members of Congress attended the caucus, which was viewed as a meeting of a special interest that wanted to pass itself off as representative of the whole Democratic-Republican Party. Gallatin had not sought the vice presidential nomination and soon withdrew at Crawford's request. Gallatin was also dissatisfied with repeated attacks on his credibility made by the other candidates. He was replaced by North Carolina senator Nathaniel Macon.\nAdams sought to have Jackson be his vice-presidential running mate and Louisa Adams hosted a ball in honor of the Battle of New Orleans' ninth anniversary. He had supported Jackson during his invasion of Florida while Clay and Crawford opposed him, causing Jackson to oppose them. Clay supporters in the Tennessee legislature nominated Jackson for president in 1822, as an attempt to weaken Crawford in the state.\nMartin Van Buren and his political machine supported Crawford in New York. During the selection of New York's electors Van Buren was able to deny Clay enough support to prevent him from being eligible for the contingent election.\nGeneral election.\nCandidates.\nAll four candidates were nominated by at least one state legislature. Andrew Jackson was recruited to run for the office of the president by the state legislature of Tennessee. Jackson did not seek the task of running for president. Instead, he wished to retire to his estate on the outskirts of Nashville, called the Hermitage.\nCampaign.\nCandidates drew voter support by different states and sections. Adams dominated the popular vote in New England and won some support elsewhere, Clay dominated his home state of Kentucky and won pluralities in two neighboring states, and Crawford won the Virginia vote overwhelmingly and polled well in North Carolina. Jackson had geographically the broadest support, though there were heavy vote concentrations in his home state of Tennessee and in Pennsylvania and populous areas where even he ran poorly.\nPolicy played a reduced role in the election, though positions on tariffs and internal improvements did create significant disagreements. Both Adams and Jackson supporters backed Secretary of War John C. Calhoun of South Carolina for vice president. He easily secured the majority of electoral votes for that office. In reality, Calhoun was vehemently opposed to nearly all of Adams's policies, but he did nothing to dissuade Adams supporters from voting for him for vice president, partly because he was even more vehemently opposed to the prospect of a Clay presidency, and partly because he had a long-standing personal enmity with Crawford.\nThe campaigning for presidential election of 1824 took many forms. Contrafacta, or well known songs and tunes whose lyrics have been altered, were used to promote political agendas and presidential candidates. Below can be found a sound clip featuring \"Hunters of Kentucky\", a tune written by Samuel Woodsworth in 1815 under the title \"The Unfortunate Miss Bailey\". Contrafacta such as this one, which promoted Andrew Jackson as a national hero, have been a long-standing tradition in presidential elections. Another form of campaigning during this election was through newsprint. Political cartoons and partisan writings were best circulated among the voting public through newspapers. Presidential candidate John C. Calhoun was one of the candidates most directly involved through his participation in the publishing of the newspaper \"The Patriot\" as a member of the editorial staff. This was a sure way to promote his own political agendas and campaign. In contrast, most candidates involved in early 19th century elections did not run their own political campaigns. Instead it was left to volunteer citizens and partisans to speak on their behalf.\nResults.\nThe 1824 presidential election marked the final collapse of the Republican-Federalist political framework. The electoral map confirmed the candidates' sectional support, with Adams winning in New England, Jackson having wide voter appeal, Clay attracting votes from the West, and Crawford attracting votes from the eastern South. Jackson earned only a plurality of electoral votes. Thus, the presidential election was decided by the House of Representatives, which elected John Quincy Adams on the first ballot. John C. Calhoun, supported by Adams and Jackson, easily won the vice presidency, not requiring a contingent election in the Senate.\nJackson's electoral college plurality was the result of the Three-fifths Compromise. The electoral college results would have been 83 for Adams and 77 for Jackson without the inflated electoral count of slaveholding states. Crawford likewise benefited in this regard, as all but eight of his electoral votes were from slave states, while Clay's electoral votes were split relatively evenly (20 from the free states of New York and Ohio, 17 from the slave states of Kentucky and Missouri); without the Three-fifths Compromise, Crawford would have finished last in the electoral college, and Clay would have entered the contingent election at his expense.\nResults by state.\nElections in this period were vastly different from modern-day presidential elections. The actual presidential candidates were rarely mentioned on tickets and voters were voting for particular electors who were pledged to a particular candidate. There was sometimes confusion as to who a particular elector was actually pledged to. Results are reported as the highest result for an elector for any given candidate. For example, if three Jackson electors received 100, 50, and 25 votes, Jackson would be recorded as having 100 votes. Confusion surrounding the way results are reported may lead to discrepancies between the sum of all state results and national results.\nVice presidential electoral vote breakdown by ticket.\nClose states.\nStates where the margin of victory was under 1%:\nStates where the margin of victory was under 5%:\nStates where the margin of victory was under 10%:\n1825 contingent election.\nAs no presidential candidate had won an absolute electoral vote majority, the responsibility for electing a new president devolved upon the U.S. House of Representatives, which held a contingent election on February 9, 1825. As prescribed by the Twelfth Amendment, the House was limited to choosing from among the three candidates who received the most electoral votes: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and William Crawford; Henry Clay, who had finished fourth, was eliminated. Each state delegation, voting \"en bloc\", had a single vote. There were 24 states at the time, thus an absolute majority of 13 votes was required for victory.\nClay detested Jackson and had said of him, \"I cannot believe that killing 2,500 Englishmen at New Orleans qualifies for the various, difficult, and complicated duties of the Chief Magistracy.\" Moreover, Clay's American System was closer to Adams's position on tariffs and internal improvements than Jackson's. Even if Clay had wished to align with Crawford over Jackson, which was highly unlikely in any event since Clay's policy differences with Crawford were even deeper, especially on matters of the tariff, Crawford had been in poor health, and no path to victory was evident.\nDaniel Pope Cook, Illinois' sole representative, was anti-slavery and gave his support to Adams. James Buchanan attempted to make a compromise with Clay in which Jackson would make him Secretary of State in exchange for his support. Clay instead gave his support to Adams and was able to have the Kentucky, Missouri, and Ohio delegations support him. Illinois, Louisiana, and Maryland, which Jackson won during the election, had their delegations support Adams.\nVan Buren attempted to have New York's delegation be divided between Adams and Crawford in order to increase its power and make a deal with one of them. However, Stephen Van Rensselaer, a Federalist allied with Van Buren, voted for Adams. Van Buren stated that Van Rensselaer found a ballot for Adams on the floor while Van Rensselaer, in his letter to Governor DeWitt Clinton, stated that he voted for Adams as he was bound to win and that he wanted to shorten \"the long agony\". Van Buren supported Jackson during the 1828 election and aided in Calhoun's selection as vice president.\nIgnoring the nonbinding directive of the Kentucky legislature that its House delegation choose Jackson, the delegation voted 8\u20134 for Adams instead. Thus, Adams was elected president on the first ballot, with 13 states, followed by Jackson with seven, and Crawford with four.\nAftermath.\nAdams' victory shocked Jackson, who, as the winner of a plurality of both the popular and electoral votes, expected the House to choose him. Not long before the contingent House election, an anonymous statement appeared in a Philadelphia paper, called the \"Columbian Observer\". The statement, said to be from a member of Congress, essentially accused Clay of selling Adams his support for the office of Secretary of State. No formal investigation was conducted, so the matter was neither confirmed nor denied. When Clay was indeed offered the position after Adams was victorious, he opted to accept and continue to support the administration he voted for, knowing that declining the position would not have helped to dispel the rumors brought against him. Jackson referred to Clay as the \"Judas of the West\".\nBy appointing Clay his Secretary of State, President Adams essentially declared him heir to the presidency, as Adams and his three predecessors had all served as Secretary of State. Jackson and his followers accused Adams and Clay of striking a \"corrupt bargain\", and the Jacksonians would campaign on this claim for the next four years, ultimately helping Jackson defeat Adams in 1828. Ironically, Adams offered Jackson a position in his Cabinet as Secretary of War, which Jackson declined to accept.\nAdams' supporters controlled the U.S. House of Representatives after the 1824\u201325 elections and obtained the speakership for John W. Taylor. Adams' relationship with Calhoun deteriorated, with Calhoun opposing Clay's appointment as Secretary of State due to his own presidential ambitions. In June 1826, Calhoun gave his support to Jackson for the 1828 election.\nElectoral College selection.\n! Method of choosing electors\n! State(s)\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "27552742": "Law of the United States\n \nThe law of the United States comprises many levels of codified and uncodified forms of law, of which the supreme law is the nation's Constitution, which prescribes the foundation of the federal government of the United States, as well as various civil liberties. The Constitution sets out the boundaries of federal law, which consists of Acts of Congress, treaties ratified by the Senate, regulations promulgated by the executive branch, and case law originating from the federal judiciary. The United States Code is the official compilation and codification of general and permanent federal statutory law.\nThe Constitution provides that it, as well as federal laws and treaties that are made pursuant to it, preempt conflicting state and territorial laws in the 50 U.S. states and in the territories. However, the scope of federal preemption is limited because the scope of federal power is not universal. In the dual sovereign system of American federalism (actually tripartite because of the presence of Indian reservations), states are the plenary sovereigns, each with their own constitution, while the federal sovereign possesses only the limited supreme authority enumerated in the Constitution. Indeed, states may grant their citizens broader rights than the federal Constitution as long as they do not infringe on any federal constitutional rights. Thus U.S. law (especially the actual \"living law\" of contract, tort, property, probate, criminal and family law, experienced by citizens on a day-to-day basis) consists primarily of state law, which, while sometimes harmonized, can and does vary greatly from one state to the next. Even in areas governed by federal law, state law is often supplemented, rather than preempted.\nAt both the federal and state levels, with the exception of the legal system of Louisiana, the law of the United States is largely derived from the common law system of English law, which was in force in British America at the time of the American Revolutionary War. However, American law has diverged greatly from its English ancestor both in terms of substance and procedure and has incorporated a number of civil law innovations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nGeneral overview.\nSources of law.\nIn the United States, the law is derived from five sources: constitutional law, statutory law, treaties, administrative regulations, and the common law (which includes case law).\nConstitutionality.\nIf Congress enacts a statute that conflicts with the Constitution, state or federal courts may rule that law to be unconstitutional and declare it invalid.\nNotably, a statute does not automatically disappear merely because it has been found unconstitutional; it may, however, be deleted by a subsequent statute. Many federal and state statutes have remained on the books for decades after they were ruled to be unconstitutional. However, under the principle of \"stare decisis\", a lower court that enforces a statute of a kind previously declared unconstitutional will risk reversal by the Supreme Court. Conversely, any court that refuses to enforce a statute previously held by higher courts to be constitutional will risk reversal by the Supreme Court.\nAmerican common law.\nThe United States and most Commonwealth countries are heirs to the common law legal tradition of English law. Certain practices traditionally allowed under English common law were expressly outlawed by the Constitution, such as bills of attainder and general search warrants.\nAs common law courts, U.S. courts have inherited the principle of \"stare decisis\". American judges, like common law judges elsewhere, not only apply the law, they also make the law, to the extent that their decisions in the cases before them become precedent for decisions in future cases.\nThe actual substance of English law was formally \"received\" into the United States in several ways. First, all U.S. states except Louisiana have enacted \"reception statutes\" which generally state that the common law of England (particularly judge-made law) is the law of the state to the extent that it is not repugnant to domestic law or indigenous conditions. Some reception statutes impose a specific cutoff date for reception, such as the date of a colony's founding, while others are deliberately vague. Thus, contemporary U.S. courts often cite pre-Revolution cases when discussing the evolution of an ancient judge-made common law principle into its modern form, such as the heightened duty of care traditionally imposed upon common carriers.\nSecond, a small number of important British statutes in effect at the time of the Revolution have been independently reenacted by U.S. states. Two examples are the Statute of Frauds (still widely known in the U.S. by that name) and the Statute of 13 Elizabeth (the ancestor of the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act). Such English statutes are still regularly cited in contemporary American cases interpreting their modern American descendants.\nDespite the presence of reception statutes, much of \"contemporary\" American common law has diverged significantly from English common law. Although the courts of the various Commonwealth nations are often influenced by each other's rulings, American courts rarely follow post-Revolution precedents from England or the British Commonwealth.\nEarly on, American courts, even after the Revolution, often did cite contemporary English cases, because appellate decisions from many American courts were not regularly reported until the mid-19th century. Lawyers and judges used English legal materials to fill the gap. Citations to English decisions gradually disappeared during the 19th century as American courts developed their own principles to resolve the legal problems of the American people. The number of published volumes of American reports soared from eighteen in 1810 to over 8,000 by 1910. By 1879 one of the delegates to the California constitutional convention was already complaining: \"Now, when we require them to state the reasons for a decision, we do not mean they shall write a hundred pages of detail. We [do] not mean that they shall include the small cases, and impose on the country all this fine judicial literature, for the Lord knows we have got enough of that already.\"\nToday, in the words of Stanford law professor Lawrence M. Friedman: \"American cases rarely cite foreign materials. Courts occasionally cite a British classic or two, a famous old case, or a nod to Blackstone; but current British law almost never gets any mention.\" Foreign law has never been cited as binding precedent, but as a reflection of the shared values of Anglo-American civilization or even Western civilization in general.\nLevels of law.\nFederal law.\nFederal law originates with the Constitution, which gives Congress the power to enact statutes for certain limited purposes like regulating interstate commerce. The United States Code is the official compilation and codification of the general and permanent federal statutes. Many statutes give executive branch agencies the power to create regulations, which are published in the Federal Register and codified into the Code of Federal Regulations. From 1984 to 2024, regulations generally also carried the force of law under the \"Chevron\" doctrine, but are now subject only to a lesser form of judicial deference known as \"Skidmore\" deference. Many lawsuits turn on the meaning of a federal statute or regulation, and judicial interpretations of such meaning carry legal force under the principle of \"stare decisis\".\nDuring the 18th and 19th centuries, federal law traditionally focused on areas where there was an express grant of power to the federal government in the federal Constitution, like the military, money, foreign relations (especially international treaties), tariffs, intellectual property (specifically patents and copyrights), and mail. Since the start of the 20th century, broad interpretations of the Commerce and Spending Clauses of the Constitution have enabled federal law to expand into areas like aviation, telecommunications, railroads, pharmaceuticals, antitrust, and trademarks. In some areas, like aviation and railroads, the federal government has developed a comprehensive scheme that preempts virtually all state law, while in others, like family law, a relatively small number of federal statutes (generally covering interstate and international situations) interacts with a much larger body of state law. In areas like antitrust, trademark, and employment law, there are powerful laws at both the federal and state levels that coexist with each other. In a handful of areas like insurance, Congress has enacted laws expressly refusing to regulate them as long as the states have laws regulating them (see, e.g., the McCarran\u2013Ferguson Act).\nStatutes.\nAfter the president signs a bill into law (or Congress enacts it over the president's veto), it is delivered to the Office of the Federal Register (OFR) of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) where it is assigned a law number, and prepared for publication as a slip law. Public laws, but not private laws, are also given legal statutory citation by the OFR. At the end of each session of Congress, the slip laws are compiled into bound volumes called the United States Statutes at Large, and they are known as session laws. The Statutes at Large present a chronological arrangement of the laws in the exact order that they have been enacted.\nPublic laws are incorporated into the United States Code, which is a codification of all general and permanent laws of the United States. The main edition is published every six years by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the House of Representatives, and cumulative supplements are published annually. The U.S. Code is arranged by subject matter, and it shows the present status of laws (with amendments already incorporated in the text) that have been amended on one or more occasions.\nRegulations.\nCongress often enacts statutes that grant broad rulemaking authority to federal agencies. Often, Congress is simply too gridlocked to draft detailed statutes that explain how the agency should react to every possible situation, or Congress believes the agency's technical specialists are best equipped to deal with particular fact situations as they arise. Therefore, federal agencies are authorized to promulgate regulations. Under the principle of \"Chevron\" deference, regulations normally carry the force of law as long as they are based on a reasonable interpretation of the relevant statutes.\nRegulations are adopted pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Regulations are first proposed and published in the Federal Register (FR or Fed. Reg.) and subject to a public comment period. Eventually, after a period for public comment and revisions based on comments received, a final version is published in the Federal Register. The regulations are codified and incorporated into the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) which is published once a year on a rolling schedule.\nBesides regulations formally promulgated under the APA, federal agencies also frequently promulgate an enormous amount of forms, manuals, policy statements, letters, and rulings. These documents may be considered by a court as persuasive authority as to how a particular statute or regulation may be interpreted (known as \"Skidmore\" deference), but are not entitled to \"Chevron\" deference.\nCommon law, case law, and precedent.\nUnlike the situation with the states, there is no plenary reception statute at the federal level that continued the common law and thereby granted federal courts the power to formulate legal precedent like their English predecessors. Federal courts are solely creatures of the federal Constitution and the federal Judiciary Acts. However, it is universally accepted that the Founding Fathers of the United States, by vesting \"judicial power\" into the Supreme Court and the inferior federal courts in Article Three of the United States Constitution, thereby vested in them the implied judicial power of common law courts to formulate persuasive precedent; this power was widely accepted, understood, and recognized by the Founding Fathers at the time the Constitution was ratified. Several legal scholars have argued that the federal judicial power to decide \"cases or controversies\" necessarily includes the power to decide the precedential effect of those cases and controversies.\nThe difficult question is whether federal judicial power extends to formulating binding precedent through strict adherence to the rule of \"stare decisis\". This is where the act of deciding a case becomes a limited form of lawmaking in itself, in that an appellate court's rulings will thereby bind itself and lower courts in future cases (and therefore also implicitly binds all persons within the court's jurisdiction). Prior to a major change to federal court rules in 2007, about one-fifth of federal appellate cases were published and thereby became binding precedents, while the rest were unpublished and bound only the parties to each case.\nAs federal judge Alex Kozinski has pointed out, binding precedent as we know it today simply did not exist at the time the Constitution was framed. Judicial decisions were not consistently, accurately, and faithfully reported on both sides of the Atlantic (reporters often simply rewrote or failed to publish decisions which they disliked), and the United Kingdom lacked a coherent court hierarchy prior to the end of the 19th century. Furthermore, English judges in the eighteenth century subscribed to now-obsolete natural law theories of law, by which law was believed to have an existence independent of what individual judges said. Judges saw themselves as merely declaring the law which had always theoretically existed, and not as making the law. Therefore, a judge could reject another judge's opinion as simply an incorrect statement of the law, in the way that scientists regularly reject each other's conclusions as incorrect statements of the laws of science.\nIn turn, according to Kozinski's analysis, the contemporary rule of binding precedent became possible in the U.S. in the nineteenth century only after the creation of a clear court hierarchy (under the Judiciary Acts), and the beginning of regular \"verbatim\" publication of U.S. appellate decisions by West Publishing. The rule gradually developed, case-by-case, as an extension of the judiciary's public policy of effective judicial administration (that is, in order to efficiently exercise the judicial power). The rule of binding precedent is generally justified today as a matter of public policy, first, as a matter of fundamental fairness, and second, because in the absence of case law, it would be completely unworkable for every minor issue in every legal case to be briefed, argued, and decided from first principles (such as relevant statutes, constitutional provisions, and underlying public policies), which in turn would create hopeless inefficiency, instability, and unpredictability, and thereby undermine the rule of law. The contemporary form of the rule is descended from Justice Louis Brandeis's \"landmark dissent in 1932's \"Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co\".\", which \"catalogued the Court's actual overruling practices in such a powerful manner that his attendant stare decisis analysis immediately assumed canonical authority.\" \nHere is a typical exposition of how public policy supports the rule of binding precedent in a 2008 majority opinion signed by Justice Breyer:\nJustice Brandeis once observed that \"in most matters it is more important that the applicable rule of law be settled than that it be settled right.\" \"Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co.\" [...] To overturn a decision settling one such matter simply because we might believe that decision is no longer \"right\" would inevitably reflect a willingness to reconsider others. And that willingness could itself threaten to substitute disruption, confusion, and uncertainty for necessary legal stability. We have not found here any factors that might overcome these considerations.\nIt is now sometimes possible, over time, for a line of precedents to drift from the express language of any underlying statutory or constitutional texts until the courts' decisions establish doctrines that were not considered by the texts' drafters. This trend has been strongly evident in federal substantive due process and Commerce Clause decisions. Originalists and political conservatives, such as Associate Justice Antonin Scalia have criticized this trend as anti-democratic.\nUnder the doctrine of \"Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins\" (1938), there is \"no general federal common law\". Although federal courts can create federal common law in the form of case law, such law must be linked one way or another to the interpretation of a particular federal constitutional provision, statute, or regulation (which was either enacted as part of the Constitution or pursuant to constitutional authority). Federal courts lack the plenary power possessed by state courts to simply make up law, which the latter are able to do in the absence of constitutional or statutory provisions replacing the common law. Only in a few narrow limited areas, like maritime law, has the Constitution expressly authorized the continuation of English common law at the federal level (meaning that in those areas federal courts can continue to make law as they see fit, subject to the limitations of \"stare decisis\").\nThe other major implication of the \"Erie\" doctrine is that federal courts cannot dictate the content of state law when there is no federal issue (and thus no federal supremacy issue) in a case. When hearing claims under state law pursuant to diversity jurisdiction, federal trial courts \"must\" apply the statutory and decisional law of the state in which they sit, as if they were a court of that state, even if they believe that the relevant state law is irrational or just bad public policy. \nUnder \"Erie\", such federal deference to state law applies only in one direction: state courts are not bound by federal interpretations of state law. Similarly, state courts are also not bound by most federal interpretations of federal law. In the vast majority of state courts, interpretations of federal law from federal courts of appeals and district courts can be cited as persuasive authority, but state courts are not bound by those interpretations. The U.S. Supreme Court has never squarely addressed the issue, but has signaled in dicta that it sides with this rule. Therefore, in those states, there is only one federal court that binds all state courts as to the interpretation of federal law and the federal Constitution: the U.S. Supreme Court itself.\nState and territory law.\nThe fifty American states are separate sovereigns, with their own state constitutions, state governments, and state courts. All states have a legislative branch which enacts state statutes, an executive branch that promulgates state regulations pursuant to statutory authorization, and a judicial branch that applies, interprets, and occasionally overturns both state statutes and regulations, as well as local ordinances. They retain plenary power to make laws covering anything not preempted by the federal Constitution, federal statutes, or international treaties ratified by the federal Senate. Normally, state supreme courts are the final interpreters of state constitutions and state law, unless their interpretation itself presents a federal issue, in which case a decision may be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by way of a petition for writ of certiorari. State laws have dramatically diverged in the centuries since independence, to the extent that the United States cannot be regarded as one legal system as to the majority of types of law traditionally under state control, but must be regarded as 50 \"separate\" systems of tort law, family law, property law, contract law, criminal law, and so on.\nMost cases are litigated in state courts and involve claims and defenses under state laws. In a 2018 report, the National Center for State Courts' Court Statistics Project found that state trial courts received 83.8\u00a0million newly filed cases in 2018, which consisted of 44.4\u00a0million traffic cases, 17.0\u00a0million criminal cases, 16.4\u00a0million civil cases, 4.7\u00a0million domestic relations cases, and 1.2\u00a0million juvenile cases. In 2018, state appellate courts received 234,000 new cases. By way of comparison, all federal district courts in 2016 together received only about 274,552 new civil cases, 79,787 new criminal cases, and 833,515 bankruptcy cases, while federal appellate courts received 53,649 new cases.\nTerritorial legal systems.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nLocal law.\nStates have delegated lawmaking powers to thousands of agencies, townships, counties, cities, and special districts. And all the state constitutions, statutes and regulations (as well as all the ordinances and regulations promulgated by local entities) are subject to judicial interpretation like their federal counterparts.\nIt is common for residents of major U.S. metropolitan areas to live under six or more layers of special districts as well as a town or city, and a county or township (in addition to the federal and state governments). Thus, at any given time, the average American citizen is subject to the rules and regulations of several dozen different agencies at the federal, state, and local levels, depending upon one's current location and behavior.\nLegal subjects.\nAmerican lawyers draw a fundamental distinction between procedural law (which controls the procedure by which legal rights and duties are vindicated) and substantive law (the actual substance of law, which is usually expressed in the form of various legal rights and duties). (The remainder of this article requires the reader to be already familiar with the contents of the separate article on state law.) \nCriminal law and procedure.\nCriminal law involves the prosecution by the state of wrongful acts which are considered to be so serious that they are a breach of the sovereign's peace (and cannot be deterred or remedied by mere lawsuits between private parties). Generally, crimes can result in incarceration, but torts (see below) cannot. The majority of the crimes committed in the United States are prosecuted and punished at the state level. Federal criminal law focuses on areas specifically relevant to the federal government like evading payment of federal income tax, mail theft, or physical attacks on federal officials, as well as interstate crimes like drug trafficking and wire fraud.\nAll states have somewhat similar laws in regard to \"higher crimes\" (or felonies), such as murder and rape, although penalties for these crimes may vary from state to state. Capital punishment is permitted in some states but not others. Three strikes laws in certain states impose harsh penalties on repeat offenders.\nSome states distinguish between two levels: felonies and misdemeanors (minor crimes). Generally, most felony convictions result in lengthy prison sentences as well as subsequent probation, large fines, and orders to pay restitution directly to victims; while misdemeanors may lead to a year or less in jail and a substantial fine. To simplify the prosecution of traffic violations and other relatively minor crimes, some states have added a third level, infractions. These may result in fines and sometimes the loss of one's driver's license, but no jail time.\nOn average, only three percent of criminal cases are resolved by jury trial; 97 percent are terminated either by plea bargaining or dismissal of the charges.\nFor public welfare offenses where the state is punishing merely risky (as opposed to injurious) behavior, there is significant diversity across the various states. For example, punishments for drunk driving varied greatly prior to 1990. State laws dealing with drug crimes still vary widely, with some states treating possession of small amounts of drugs as a misdemeanor offense or as a medical issue and others categorizing the same offense as a serious felony.\nThe law of criminal procedure in the United States consists of a massive overlay of federal constitutional case law interwoven with the federal and state statutes that actually provide the foundation for the creation and operation of law enforcement agencies and prison systems as well as the proceedings in criminal trials. Due to the perennial inability of legislatures in the U.S. to enact statutes that would actually force law enforcement officers to respect the constitutional rights of criminal suspects and convicts, the federal judiciary gradually developed the exclusionary rule as a method to enforce such rights. In turn, the exclusionary rule spawned a family of judge-made remedies for the abuse of law enforcement powers, of which the most famous is the Miranda warning. The writ of \"habeas corpus\" is often used by suspects and convicts to challenge their detention, while the Third Enforcement Act and \"Bivens\" actions are used by suspects to recover tort damages for police brutality.\nCivil procedure.\nThe law of civil procedure governs process in all judicial proceedings involving lawsuits between private parties. Traditional common law pleading was replaced by code pleading in 27 states after New York enacted the Field Code in 1850 and code pleading in turn was subsequently replaced again in most states by modern notice pleading during the 20th century. The old English division between common law and equity courts was abolished in the federal courts by the adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 1938; it has also been independently abolished by legislative acts in nearly all states. The Delaware Court of Chancery is the most prominent of the small number of remaining equity courts.\nThirty-five states have adopted rules of civil procedure modeled after the FRCP (including rule numbers). However, in doing so, they had to make some modifications to account for the fact that state courts have broad general jurisdiction while federal courts have relatively limited jurisdiction.\nNew York, Illinois, and California are the most significant states that have not adopted the FRCP. Furthermore, all three states continue to maintain most of their civil procedure laws in the form of codified statutes enacted by the state legislature, as opposed to court rules promulgated by the state supreme court, on the ground that the latter are undemocratic. But certain key portions of their civil procedure laws have been modified by their legislatures to bring them closer to federal civil procedure.\nGenerally, American civil procedure has several notable features, including extensive pretrial discovery, heavy reliance on live testimony obtained at deposition or elicited in front of a jury, and aggressive pretrial \"law and motion\" practice designed to result in a pretrial disposition (that is, summary judgment) or a settlement. U.S. courts pioneered the concept of the opt-out class action, by which the burden falls on class members to notify the court that they do not wish to be bound by the judgment, as opposed to opt-in class actions, where class members must join into the class. Another unique feature is the so-called American Rule under which parties generally bear their own attorneys' fees (as opposed to the English Rule of \"loser pays\"), though American legislators and courts have carved out numerous exceptions.\nContract law.\nContract law covers obligations established by agreement (express or implied) between private parties. Generally, contract law in transactions involving the sale of goods has become highly standardized nationwide as a result of the widespread adoption of the Uniform Commercial Code. However, there is still significant diversity in the interpretation of other kinds of contracts, depending upon the extent to which a given state has codified its common law of contracts or adopted portions of the Restatement (Second) of Contracts.\nParties are permitted to agree to arbitrate disputes arising from their contracts. Under the Federal Arbitration Act (which has been interpreted to cover \"all\" contracts arising under federal or state law), arbitration clauses are generally enforceable unless the party resisting arbitration can show unconscionability or fraud or something else which undermines the entire contract.\nTort law.\nTort law generally covers any civil action between private parties arising from wrongful acts that amount to a breach of general obligations imposed by law and not by contract. This broad family of civil wrongs involves interference \"with person, property, reputation, or commercial or social advantage.\"\nTort law covers the entire imaginable spectrum of wrongs that humans can inflict upon each other, and it partially overlaps with wrongs also punishable by criminal law. It is primarily a matter of state law and is usually developed through case law from state appellate courts; it is rarely a matter of federal law, although some federal statutes, such as the Volunteer Protection Act and the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, limit the liability of people who commit torts under state law. State tort-related statutes focus on discrete issues such as authorizing wrongful death claims (which did not exist at common law). Although the American Law Institute has attempted to standardize tort law through the development of several versions of the Restatement of Torts, many states have chosen to adopt only certain sections of the Restatements and to reject others. Thus, because of its immense size and diversity, American tort law cannot be easily summarized.\nFor example, a few jurisdictions allow actions for negligent infliction of emotional distress even in the absence of physical injury to the plaintiff, but most do not. For any particular tort, states differ on the causes of action, types and scope of remedies, statutes of limitations, and the amount of specificity with which one must plead the cause. With practically any aspect of tort law, there is a \"majority rule\" adhered to by most states, and one or more \"minority rules.\"\nNotably, the most broadly influential innovation of 20th-century American tort law was the rule of strict liability for defective products, which originated with judicial glosses on the law of warranty. In 1963, Roger J. Traynor of the Supreme Court of California threw away legal fictions based on warranties and imposed strict liability for defective products as a matter of public policy in the landmark case of \"Greenman v. Yuba Power Products\". The American Law Institute subsequently adopted a slightly different version of the \"Greenman\" rule in Section 402A of the \"Restatement (Second) of Torts\", which was published in 1964 and was very influential throughout the United States. Outside the U.S., the rule was adopted by the European Economic Community in the Product Liability Directive of July 1985, by Australia in July 1992, and by Japan in June 1994.\nBy the 1990s, the avalanche of American cases resulting from \"Greenman\" and Section 402A had become so complicated that another restatement was needed, which occurred with the 1997 publication of the \"Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability\".\nProperty law.\nHistorically, American property law has been heavily influenced by English land law, and is therefore concerned with real property first and personal property second. It is also primarily a matter of state law, and the level of interstate diversity in the law of property is much more substantial than in contract and tort. Efforts by both the American Law Institute and the Uniform Law Commission to reduce such interstate diversity were spectacular failures. \nThe majority of states use a title recording system (coupled with privately provided title insurance) to manage title to real property, although title registration (\"Torrens\" title) is also allowed in a small minority of states. Title to personal property is usually not registered, with the notable exceptions of motor vehicles (through a state department of motor vehicles or equivalent), bicycles (in certain cities and counties), and some types of firearms (in certain states).\nFamily law.\nIn the United States, family law governs relationships between adults, and relationships between parents and their children. As a discrete area of law worthy of its own specialists and law professors, American family law is relatively young in comparison to European family law; it did not take flight until the no-fault divorce revolution of the 1960s. Before the 1950s, widespread religious, legal, and social prohibitions against divorce in the United States meant that divorces were rare, were often seen as fact-driven matters (meaning that they were perceived as turning on each case's facts and not broadly generalizable legal principles), and rarely went up on appeal. The rise of no-fault divorce caused divorce litigation to shift away from the question of who was at fault for the collapse of the marital relationship and to focus instead on issues such as division of property, spousal support, and child support. \nFamily cases are traditionally a matter of state law and are virtually always heard only in state courts. Certain kinds of contract, tort, and property civil actions involving state law issues can be heard in federal courts under diversity jurisdiction, but federal courts decline to hear family cases under the \"domestic relations exception\" to diversity jurisdiction. \nAlthough family cases are heard in state courts, there has been a trend towards federalization of certain specific issues in family law. State courts and the lawyers who practice before them must be aware of federal income tax and bankruptcy implications of a divorce judgment, federal constitutional rights to abortion and paternity, and federal statutes governing interstate child custody disputes and interstate child support enforcement.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "19468510": "United States House of Representatives\nLower house of the US Congress\nThe United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Article One of the U.S. Constitution to pass or defeat federal legislation, known as bills. Those that are also passed by the Senate are sent to the president for signature or veto. The House's exclusive powers include initiating all revenue bills, impeaching federal officers, and electing the president if no candidate receives a majority of votes in the Electoral College.\nMembers of the House serve a fixed term of two years, with each seat up for election before the start of the next Congress. Special elections also occur when a seat is vacated early enough. The House's composition was established by Article One of the United States Constitution. The House is composed of representatives who, pursuant to the Uniform Congressional District Act, sit in single member congressional districts allocated to each state on the basis of population as measured by the United States census, with each district having at least a single representative, provided that that state is entitled to them. Since its inception in 1789, all representatives have been directly elected. Although suffrage was initially limited, it gradually widened, particularly after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment and the civil rights movement. \nSince 1913, the number of voting representatives has been at 435 pursuant to the Apportionment Act of 1911. The Reapportionment Act of 1929 capped the size of the House at 435. However, the number was temporarily increased from 1959 until 1963 to 437 following the admissions of Alaska and Hawaii to the Union.\nIn addition, five non-voting delegates represent the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories of Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. A non-voting resident commissioner, serving a four-year term, represents the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. As of the 2020 census, the largest delegation was California, with 52 representatives. Six states have only one representative apiece: Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming.\nThe House meets in the south wing of the United States Capitol. The rules of the House generally address a two-party system, with a majority party in government, and a minority party in opposition. The presiding officer is the speaker of the House, who is elected by the members thereof. Other floor leaders are chosen by the Democratic Caucus or the Republican Conference, depending on whichever party has the most voting members.\nHistory.\n18th century.\nUnder the Articles of Confederation, the Congress of the Confederation was a unicameral body with equal representation for each state, which meant that any state could veto most actions. \nAfter eight years of a more limited confederal government under the Articles, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and other Founding Fathers initiated the Constitutional Convention, which convened in Philadelphia from May 25 to September 17, 1787, and received the Confederation Congress's sanction to \"amend the Articles of Confederation\". All states except Rhode Island agreed to send delegates.\nCongress's structure was a contentious issue among the founders during the convention. Edmund Randolph's Virginia Plan called for bicameral legislature with proportional representation in the House and equal state representation in the Senate.\nThe House is commonly referred to as the lower house and the Senate the upper house, although the United States Constitution does not use that terminology. Both houses' approval is necessary for the passage of legislation. The Virginia Plan drew the support of delegates from several large states, including Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and called for representation based on population. The smaller states, however, favored the New Jersey Plan, which called for a unicameral Congress with equal representation for the states.\nThe Convention ultimately reached the Connecticut Compromise or Great Compromise, under which the House of Representatives would provide representation proportional to each state's population, and the Senate would provide equal representation amongst the states. In 1788, the Constitution was ratified, and it was implemented on March 4, 1789. \nLess than a month later, on April 1, 1789, the U.S. House convened for the first time in New York City, which was then the nation's capital. In 1790, the capital was moved back to Philadelphia, and the House met there from 1790 until 1800 when construction of the new national capitol in Washington, D.C. was completed.\n19th century.\nDuring the first half of the 19th century, the House was frequently in conflict with the U.S. Senate over regionally divisive issues, including slavery. The North was much more populous than the South, and therefore dominated the House of Representatives. However, the North held no such advantage in the Senate, where the equal representation of states prevailed.\nRegional conflict was most pronounced over the issue of slavery. One example of a provision repeatedly supported by the House but blocked by the Senate was the Wilmot Proviso, which sought to ban slavery in the land gained during the Mexican\u2013American War. Conflict over slavery and other issues persisted until the Civil War (1861\u20131865), which began soon after several southern states attempted to secede from the Union. The Civil War culminated in the South's defeat and in the abolition of slavery. Since all southern senators except Andrew Johnson resigned their seats at the beginning of the war, the Senate did not hold the balance of power between North and South during the war.\nDuring the Reconstruction that followed, the Republican Party held large majorities, which many Americans associated with the Union's victory in the Civil War and the ending of slavery. The Reconstruction period ended in about 1877; the ensuing era, known as the Gilded Age, was marked by sharp political divisions in the electorate. The Democratic Party and Republican Party each held majorities in the House at various times.\nThe late 19th and early 20th centuries also saw a dramatic increase in the power of the speaker of the House. The rise of the speaker's influence began in the 1890s, during the tenure of Republican Thomas Brackett Reed. \"Czar Reed\", as he was nicknamed, attempted to put into effect his view that \"The best system is to have one party govern and the other party watch.\" The leadership structure of the House also developed during approximately the same period, with the positions of majority leader and minority leader being created in 1899. While the minority leader was the head of the minority party, the majority leader remained subordinate to the speaker.\n20th century.\nThe speakership reached its zenith during the term of Republican Joseph Gurney Cannon, from 1903 to 1911. The speaker's powers included chairmanship of the influential Rules Committee and the ability to appoint members of other House committees. However, these powers were curtailed in the \"Revolution of 1910\" because of the efforts of Democrats and dissatisfied Republicans who opposed Cannon's heavy-handed tactics.\nThe Democratic Party dominated the House of Representatives during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration between 1933 and 1945, often winning over two-thirds of the seats. Both Democrats and Republicans were in power at various times during the next decade. The Democratic Party maintained control of the House from 1955 until 1995. In the mid-1970s, members passed major reforms that strengthened the power of subscommittees at the expense of committee chairs and allowed party leaders to nominate committee chairs. These actions were taken to undermine the seniority system, and to reduce the ability of a small number of senior members to obstruct legislation they did not favor. There was also a shift from the 1990s to greater control of the legislative program by the majority party; the power of party leaders (especially the speaker) grew considerably. \nAccording to historian Julian E. Zelizer, the majority Democrats minimized the number of staff positions available to the minority Republicans, kept them out of decision-making, and gerrymandered their home districts. Republican Newt Gingrich argued American democracy was being ruined by the Democrats' tactics and that the GOP had to destroy the system before it could be saved. Cooperation in governance, says Zelizer, would have to be put aside until they deposed Speaker Wright and regained power. Gingrich brought an ethics complaint which led to Wright's resignation in 1989. Gingrich gained support from the media and good government forces in his crusade to persuade Americans that the system was, in Gingrich's words, \"morally, intellectually and spiritually corrupt\". Gingrich followed Wright's successor, Democrat Tom Foley, as speaker after the Republican Revolution of 1994 gave his party control of the House.\nGingrich attempted to pass a major legislative program, the Contract with America and made major reforms of the House, notably reducing the tenure of committee chairs to three two-year terms. Many elements of the Contract did not pass Congress, were vetoed by President Bill Clinton, or were substantially altered in negotiations with Clinton. After Republicans held control in the 1996 election, however, Clinton and the Gingrich-led House agreed on the first balanced federal budget in decades, along with a substantial tax cut.\n21st century.\nRepublicans held on to the House until 2006, when the Democrats won control and Nancy Pelosi was subsequently elected by the House as the first female speaker. \nRepublicans retook the House in 2010 elections with the largest shift of political power between the parties since the 1938 elections. Republicans held the House until Democrats retook it in the 2018 elections, which became the largest shift of power to the Democrats since the 1970s. In the 2022 elections, Republicans took back control of the House, winning a slim majority.\nIn November 2024, House speaker Mike Johnson announced that the House would have women-only spaces following the election of Sarah McBride\nMembership, qualifications, and apportionment.\nApportionments.\nUnder Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, seats in the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states by population, as determined by the census conducted every ten years. Each state is entitled to at least one representative, however small its population.\nThe only constitutional rule relating to the size of the House states: \"The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative.\" Congress regularly increased the size of the House to account for population growth until it fixed the number of voting House members at 435 in 1911. In 1959, upon the admission of Alaska and Hawaii, the number was temporarily increased to 437 (seating one representative from each of those states without changing existing apportionment), and returned to 435 four years later, after the reapportionment consequent to the 1960 census.\nThe Constitution does not provide for the representation of the District of Columbia or of territories. The District of Columbia and the territories of Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are each represented by one non-voting delegate. Puerto Rico elects a resident commissioner, but other than having a four-year term, the resident commissioner's role is identical to the delegates from the other territories. The five delegates and resident commissioner may participate in debates; before 2011, they were also allowed to vote in committees and the Committee of the Whole when their votes would not be decisive.\nRedistricting.\nStates entitled to more than one representative are divided into single-member districts. This has been a federal statutory requirement since 1967 pursuant to the act titled An Act For the relief of Doctor Ricardo Vallejo Samala and to provide for congressional redistricting. Before that law, general ticket representation was used by some states.\nStates typically redraw district boundaries after each census, though they may do so at other times, such as the 2003 Texas redistricting. Each state determines its own district boundaries, either through legislation or through non-partisan panels. Malapportionment is unconstitutional and districts must be approximately equal in population (see \"Wesberry v. Sanders\"). Additionally, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits redistricting plans that are intended to, or have the effect of, discriminating against racial or language minority voters. Aside from malapportionment and discrimination against racial or language minorities, federal courts have allowed state legislatures to engage in gerrymandering to benefit political parties or incumbents. In a 1984 case, \"Davis v. Bandemer\", the Supreme Court held that gerrymandered districts could be struck down based on the Equal Protection Clause, but the Court did not articulate a standard for when districts are impermissibly gerrymandered. However, the Court overruled Davis in 2004 in \"Vieth v. Jubelirer\", and Court precedent holds gerrymandering to be a political question. According to calculations made by Burt Neuborne using criteria set forth by the American Political Science Association, only about 40 seats, less than 10% of the House membership, are chosen through a genuinely contested electoral process, given partisan gerrymandering.\nQualifications.\nArticle I, Section 2 of the Constitution sets three qualifications for representatives. Each representative must: (1) be at least twenty-five (25) years old; (2) have been a citizen of the United States for the past seven years; and (3) be (at the time of the election) an inhabitant of the state they represent. Members are not required to live in the districts they represent, but they traditionally do. The age and citizenship qualifications for representatives are less than those for senators. The constitutional requirements of Article I, Section 2 for election to Congress are the maximum requirements that can be imposed on a candidate. Therefore, Article I, Section 5, which permits each House to be the judge of the qualifications of its own members does not permit either House to establish additional qualifications. Likewise, a state could not establish additional qualifications. William C. C. Claiborne served in the House below the minimum age of 25.\nDisqualification: under the Fourteenth Amendment, a federal or state officer who takes the requisite oath to support the Constitution, but later engages in rebellion or aids the enemies of the United States, is disqualified from becoming a representative. This post\u2013Civil War provision was intended to prevent those who sided with the Confederacy from serving. However, disqualified individuals may serve if they gain the consent of two-thirds of both houses of Congress.\nElections.\nElections for representatives are held in every even-numbered year, on Election Day the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Pursuant to the Uniform Congressional District Act, representatives must be elected from single-member districts. After a census is taken (in a year ending in 0), the year ending in 2 is the first year in which elections for U.S. House districts are based on that census (with the Congress based on those districts starting its term on the following January 3). As there is no legislation at the federal level mandating one particular system for elections to the House, systems are set at the state level. As of 2022, first-past-the-post or plurality voting is used in 46 states, electing 412 representatives, ranked-choice or instant-runoff voting in two states (Alaska and Maine), electing 3 representatives, and two-round system in two states (Georgia and Louisiana), electing 20 representatives. Elected representatives serve a two-year term, with no term limit.\nIn most states, major party candidates for each district are nominated in partisan primary elections, typically held in spring to late summer. In some states, the Republican and Democratic parties choose their candidates for each district in their political conventions in spring or early summer, which often use unanimous voice votes to reflect either confidence in the incumbent or the result of bargaining in earlier private discussions. Exceptions can result in so-called floor fights\u2014convention votes by delegates, with outcomes that can be hard to predict. Especially if a convention is closely divided, a losing candidate may contend further by meeting the conditions for a primary election. The courts generally do not consider ballot access rules for independent and third party candidates to be additional qualifications for holding office and no federal statutes regulate ballot access. As a result, the process to gain ballot access varies greatly from state to state, and in the case of a third party in the United States may be affected by results of previous years' elections.\nIn 1967, Congress passed the Uniform Congressional District Act, which requires all representatives to be elected from single-member-districts. Following the \"Wesberry v. Sanders\" decision, Congress was motivated by fears that courts would impose at-large plurality districts on states that did not redistrict to comply with the new mandates for districts roughly equal in population, and Congress also sought to prevent attempts by southern states to use such voting systems to dilute the vote of racial minorities. Several states have used multi-member districts in the past, although only two states (Hawaii and New Mexico) used multi-member districts in 1967. Louisiana is unique in that it holds an all-party primary election on the general Election Day with a subsequent runoff election between the top two finishers (regardless of party) if no candidate received a majority in the primary. The states of Washington and California use a similar (though not identical) system to that used by Louisiana.\nSeats vacated during a term are filled through special elections, unless the vacancy occurs closer to the next general election date than a pre-established deadline. The term of a member chosen in a special election usually begins the next day, or as soon as the results are certified.\nNon-voting delegates.\nHistorically, many territories have sent non-voting delegates to the House. While their role has fluctuated over the years, today they have many of the same privileges as voting members, have a voice in committees, and can introduce bills on the floor, but cannot vote on the ultimate passage of bills. Presently, the District of Columbia and the five inhabited U.S. territories each elect a delegate. A seventh delegate, representing the Cherokee Nation, has been formally proposed but has not yet been seated. An eighth delegate, representing the Choctaw Nation is guaranteed by treaty but has not yet been proposed. Additionally, some territories may choose to also elect shadow representatives, though these are not official members of the House and are separate individuals from their official delegates.\nTerms.\nRepresentatives and delegates serve for two-year terms, while a resident commissioner (a kind of delegate) serves for four years. A term starts on January 3 following the election in November. The U.S. Constitution requires that vacancies in the House be filled with a special election. The term of the replacement member expires on the date that the original member's would have expired.\nThe Constitution permits the House to expel a member with a two-thirds vote. In the history of the United States, only six members have been expelled from the House; in 1861, three were removed for supporting the Confederate states' secession: Democrats John Bullock Clark of Missouri, John William Reid of Missouri, and Henry Cornelius Burnett of Kentucky. Democrat Michael Myers of Pennsylvania was expelled after his criminal conviction for accepting bribes in 1980, Democrat James Traficant of Ohio was expelled in 2002 following his conviction for corruption, and Republican George Santos was expelled in 2023 after he was implicated in fraud by both a federal indictment and a House Ethics Committee investigation.\nThe House also has the power to formally censure or reprimand its members; censure or reprimand of a member requires only a simple majority, and does not remove that member from office.\nComparison to the Senate.\nAs a check on the regional, popular, and rapidly changing politics of the House, the Senate has several distinct powers. For example, the \"advice and consent\" powers (such as the power to approve treaties and confirm members of the Cabinet) are a sole Senate privilege. The House, however, has the exclusive power to initiate bills for raising revenue, to impeach officials, and to choose the president if a presidential candidate fails to get a majority of the Electoral College votes. Both House and Senate confirmation is now required to fill a vacancy if the vice presidency is vacant, according to the provisions of the Twenty-fifth Amendment. The Senate and House are further differentiated by term lengths and the number of districts represented: the Senate has longer terms of six years, fewer members (currently one hundred, two for each state), and (in all but seven delegations) larger constituencies per member.\nSalary and benefits.\nSalaries.\nSince December 2014, the annual salary of each representative is $174,000, the same as it is for each member of the Senate. The speaker of the House and the majority and minority leaders earn more: $223,500 for the speaker and $193,400 for their party leaders (the same as Senate leaders). A cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) increase takes effect annually unless Congress votes not to accept it. Congress sets members' salaries; however, the Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits a change in salary (but not COLA) from taking effect until after the next election of the whole House. Representatives are eligible for retirement benefits after serving for five years. Outside pay is limited to 15% of congressional pay, and certain types of income involving a fiduciary responsibility or personal endorsement are prohibited. Salaries are not for life, only during active term.\nTitles.\nRepresentatives use the prefix \"The Honorable\" before their names. A member of the House is referred to as a \"representative\", \"congressman\", or \"congresswoman\".\nRepresentatives are usually identified in the media and other sources by party and state, and sometimes by congressional district, or a major city or community within their district. For example, Democratic representative Nancy Pelosi, who represents California's 11th congressional district within San Francisco, may be identified as \"D\u2013California\", \"D\u2013California\u201311\" or \"D\u2013San Francisco\".\n\"Member of congress\" is occasionally abbreviated as either \"MOC\" or \"MC\" (similar to MP). However, the abbreviation \"Rep.\" for Representative is more common, as it avoids confusion as to whether they are a member of the House or the Senate.\nPension.\nAll members of Congress are automatically enrolled in the Federal Employees Retirement System, a pension system also used for federal civil servants, except the formula for calculating Congress members' pension results in a 70% higher pension than other federal employees based on the first 20 years of service. They become eligible to receive benefits after five years of service (two and one-half terms in the House). The FERS is composed of three elements:\nMembers of Congress may retire with full benefits at age 62 after five years of service, at age 50 after 20 years of service, and at any age after 25 years of service. With an average age of 58, the US House of Representatives is older than comparable chambers in Russia and the other G7 nations.\nTax deductions.\nMembers of Congress are permitted to deduct up to $3,000 of living expenses per year incurred while living away from their district or home state.\nHealth benefits.\nBefore 2014, members of Congress and their staff had access to essentially the same health benefits as federal civil servants; they could voluntarily enroll in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), an employer-sponsored health insurance program, and were eligible to participate in other programs, such as the Federal Flexible Spending Account Program (FSAFEDS).\nHowever, Section 1312(d)(3)(D) of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) provided that the only health plans that the federal government can make available to members of Congress and certain congressional staff are those created under the ACA or offered through a health care exchange. The Office of Personnel Management promulgated a final rule to comply with Section 1312(d)(3)(D). Under the rule, effective January 1, 2014, members and designated staff are no longer able to purchase FEHBP plans as active employees. However, if members enroll in a health plan offered through a Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) exchange, they remain eligible for an employer contribution toward coverage, and members and designated staff eligible for retirement may enroll in a FEHBP plan upon retirement.\nThe ACA and the final rule do not affect members' or staffers' eligibility for Medicare benefits. The ACA and the final rule also do not affect members' and staffers' eligibility for other health benefits related to federal employment, so members and staff are eligible to participate in FSAFEDS (which has three options within the program), the Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program, and the Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program.\nThe Office of the Attending Physician at the U.S. Capitol provides members with health care for an annual fee. The attending physician provides routine exams, consultations, and certain diagnostics, and may write prescriptions (although the office does not dispense them). The office does not provide vision or dental care.\nMembers (but not their dependents, and not former members) may also receive medical and emergency dental care at military treatment facilities. There is no charge for outpatient care if it is provided in the National Capital Region, but members are billed at full reimbursement rates (set by the Department of Defense) for inpatient care. (Outside the National Capital Region, charges are at full reimbursement rates for both inpatient and outpatient care).\nPersonnel, mail and office expenses.\nHouse members are eligible for a Member's Representational Allowance (MRA) to support them in their official and representational duties to their district. The MRA is calculated based on three components: one for personnel, one for official office expenses and one for official or franked mail. The personnel allowance is the same for all members; the office and mail allowances vary based on the members' district's distance from Washington, D.C., the cost of office space in the member's district, and the number of non-business addresses in their district. These three components are used to calculate a single MRA that can fund any expense\u2014even though each component is calculated individually, the franking allowance can be used to pay for personnel expenses if the member so chooses. In 2011 this allowance averaged $1.4\u00a0million per member, and ranged from $1.35 to $1.67\u00a0million.\nThe Personnel allowance was $944,671 per member in 2010. Each member may employ no more than 18 permanent employees. Members' employees' salary is capped at $168,411 as of 2009.\nTravel allowance.\nBefore being sworn into office, each member-elect and one staffer can be paid for one round trip between their home in their congressional district and Washington, D.C., for organization caucuses. Members are allowed \"a sum for travel based on the following formula: 64 times the rate per mile ... multiplied by the mileage between Washington, DC, and the furthest point in a Member's district, plus 10%.\" As of January 2012[ [update]] the rate ranges from based on distance ranges between D.C. and the member's district.\nOfficers.\nMember officials.\nThe party with a majority of seats in the House is known as the majority party. The next-largest party is the minority party. The speaker, committee chairs, and some other officials are generally from the majority party; they have counterparts (for instance, the \"ranking members\" of committees) in the minority party.\nThe Constitution provides that the House may choose its own speaker. Although not explicitly required by the Constitution, every speaker has been a member of the House. The Constitution does not specify the duties and powers of the speaker, which are instead regulated by the rules and customs of the House. Speakers have a role both as a leader of the House and the leader of their party (which need not be the majority party; theoretically, a member of the minority party could be elected as speaker with the support of a fraction of members of the majority party). Under the Presidential Succession Act (1947), the speaker is second in the line of presidential succession after the vice president.\nThe speaker is the presiding officer of the House but does not preside over every debate. Instead, they delegate the responsibility of presiding to other members in most cases. The presiding officer sits in a chair in the front of the House chamber. The powers of the presiding officer are extensive; one important power is that of controlling the order in which members of the House speak. No member may make a speech or a motion unless they have first been recognized by the presiding officer. Moreover, the presiding officer may rule on a \"point of order\" (a member's objection that a rule has been breached); the decision is subject to appeal to the whole House.\nSpeakers serve as chairs of their party's steering committee, which is responsible for assigning party members to other House committees. The speaker chooses the chairs of standing committees, appoints most of the members of the Rules Committee, appoints all members of conference committees, and determines which committees consider bills.\nEach party elects a floor leader, who is known as the majority leader or minority leader. The minority leader heads their party in the House, and the majority leader is their party's second-highest-ranking official, behind the speaker. Party leaders decide what legislation members of their party should either support or oppose.\nEach party also elects a Whip, who works to ensure that the party's members vote as the party leadership desires. The majority whip in the House of Representatives is Tom Emmer, who is a member of the Republican Party. The minority whip is Katherine Clark, who is a member of the Democratic Party. The whip is supported by chief deputy whips\nAfter the whips, the next ranking official in the House party's leadership is the party conference chair (styled as the Republican conference chair and Democratic caucus chair).\nAfter the conference chair, there are differences between each party's subsequent leadership ranks. After the Democratic caucus chair is the campaign committee chair (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee), then the co-chairs of the Steering Committee. For the Republicans it is the chair of the House Republican Policy Committee, followed by the campaign committee chairman (styled as the National Republican Congressional Committee).\nThe chairs of House committees, particularly influential standing committees such as Appropriations, Ways and Means, and Rules, are powerful but not officially part of the House leadership hierarchy. Until the post of majority leader was created, the chair of Ways and Means was the \"de facto\" majority leader.\nLeadership and partisanship.\nWhen the presidency and Senate are controlled by a different party from the one controlling the House, the speaker can become the \"de facto\" \"leader of the opposition\". Some notable examples include Tip O'Neill in the 1980s, Newt Gingrich in the 1990s, John Boehner in the early 2010s, and Nancy Pelosi in the late 2000s and again in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Since the speaker is a partisan officer with substantial power to control the business of the House, the position is often used for partisan advantage.\nIn the instance when the presidency and both Houses of Congress are controlled by one party, the speaker normally takes a low profile and defers to the president. For that situation the House minority leader can play the role of a \"de facto\" \"leader of the opposition\", often more so than the Senate minority leader, due to the more partisan nature of the House and the greater role of leadership.\nNon-member officials.\nThe House is also served by several officials who are not members. The House's chief such officer is the clerk, who maintains public records, prepares documents, and oversees junior officials, including pages until the discontinuation of House pages in 2011. The clerk also presides over the House at the beginning of each new Congress pending the election of a speaker. Another officer is the chief administrative officer, responsible for the day-to-day administrative support to the House of Representatives. This includes everything from payroll to foodservice.\nThe position of chief administrative officer (CAO) was created by the 104th Congress following the 1994 mid-term elections, replacing the positions of doorkeeper and director of non-legislative and financial services (created by the previous congress to administer the non-partisan functions of the House). The CAO also assumed some of the responsibilities of the House Information Services, which previously had been controlled directly by the Committee on House Administration, then headed by Representative Charlie Rose of North Carolina, along with the House \"Folding Room\".\nThe chaplain leads the House in prayer at the opening of the day. The sergeant at arms is the House's chief law enforcement officer and maintains order and security on House premises. Finally, routine police work is handled by the United States Capitol Police, which is supervised by the Capitol Police Board, a body to which the sergeant at arms belongs, and chairs in even-numbered years.\nProcedure.\nDaily procedures.\nLike the Senate, the House of Representatives meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. At one end of the chamber of the House is a rostrum from which the speaker, Speaker pro tempore, or (when in Committee of the Whole House) the chair presides. The lower tiers of the rostrum are used by clerks and other officials. A table in front of the rostrum is used by the official reporters. Members' seats are arranged in the chamber in a semicircular pattern facing the rostrum and are divided by a wide central aisle. By tradition, Democrats sit on the left of the center aisle, while Republicans sit on the right, facing the presiding officer's chair. Sittings are normally held on weekdays; meetings on Saturdays and Sundays are rare. Sittings of the House are generally open to the public; visitors must obtain a House Gallery pass from a congressional office. Sittings are broadcast live on television and have been streamed live on C-SPAN since March 19, 1979, and on \"HouseLive\", the official streaming service operated by the Clerk, since the early 2010s.\nThe procedure of the House depends not only on the rules, but also on a variety of customs, precedents, and traditions. In many cases, the House waives some of its stricter rules (including time limits on debates) by unanimous consent. A member may block a unanimous consent agreement, but objections are rare. The presiding officer, the speaker of the House enforces the rules of the House, and may warn members who deviate from them. The speaker uses a gavel to maintain order. Legislation to be considered by the House is placed in a box called the hopper.\nIn one of its first resolutions, the U.S. House of Representatives established the Office of the Sergeant at Arms. In an American tradition adopted from English custom in 1789 by the first speaker of the House, Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania, the Mace of the United States House of Representatives is used to open all sessions of the House. It is also used during the inaugural ceremonies for all presidents of the United States. For daily sessions of the House, the sergeant at arms carries the mace ahead of the speaker in procession to the rostrum. It is placed on a green marble pedestal to the speaker's right. When the House is in committee, the mace is moved to a pedestal next to the desk of the Sergeant at Arms.\nThe Constitution provides that a majority of the House constitutes a quorum to do business. Under the rules and customs of the House, a quorum is always assumed present unless a quorum call explicitly demonstrates otherwise. House rules prevent a member from making a point of order that a quorum is not present unless a question is being voted on. The presiding officer does not accept a point of order of no quorum during general debate, or when a question is not before the House.\nDuring debates, a member may speak only if called upon by the presiding officer. The presiding officer decides which members to recognize, and can therefore control the course of debate. All speeches must be addressed to the presiding officer, using the words \"Mr. Speaker\" or \"Madam Speaker\". Only the presiding officer may be directly addressed in speeches; other members must be referred to in the third person. In most cases, members do not refer to each other only by name, but also by state, using forms such as \"the gentleman from Virginia\", \"the distinguished gentlewoman from California\", or \"my distinguished friend from Alabama\".\nThere are 448 permanent seats on the House Floor and four tables, two on each side. These tables are occupied by members of the committee that have brought a bill to the floor for consideration and by the party leadership. Members address the House from microphones at any table or \"the well\", the area immediately in front of the rostrum.\nPassage of legislation.\nUnder the U.S. Constitution, the House of Representatives determines the rules according to which it passes legislation. Any of the rules can be changed with each new Congress, but in practice each new session amends a standing set of rules built up over the history of the body in an early resolution published for public inspection. Before legislation reaches the floor of the House, the Rules Committee normally passes a rule to govern debate on that measure (which then must be passed by the full House before it becomes effective). For instance, the committee determines if amendments to the bill are permitted. An \"open rule\" permits all germane amendments, but a \"closed rule\" restricts or even prohibits amendment. Debate on a bill is generally restricted to one hour, equally divided between the majority and minority parties. Each side is led during the debate by a \"floor manager\", who allocates debate time to members who wish to speak. On contentious matters, many members may wish to speak; thus, a member may receive as little as one minute, or even thirty seconds, to make their point.\nWhen debate concludes, the motion is put to a vote. In many cases, the House votes by voice vote; the presiding officer puts the question, and members respond either \"yea!\" or \"aye!\" (in favor of the motion) or \"nay!\" or \"no!\" (against the motion). The presiding officer then announces the result of the voice vote. A member may, however, challenge the presiding officer's assessment and \"request the yeas and nays\" or \"request a recorded vote\". The request may be granted only if it is seconded by one-fifth of the members present. Traditionally, however, members of Congress second requests for recorded votes as a matter of courtesy. Some votes are always recorded, such as those on the annual budget.\nA recorded vote may be taken in one of three different ways. One is electronically. Members use a personal identification card to record their votes at 46 voting stations in the chamber. Votes are usually held in this way. A second mode of recorded vote is by teller. Members hand in colored cards to indicate their votes: green for \"yea\", red for \"nay\", and orange for \"present\" (i.e., to abstain). Teller votes are normally held only when electronic voting breaks down. Finally, the House may conduct a roll call vote. The Clerk reads the list of members of the House, each of whom announces their vote when their name is called. This procedure is only used rarely (and usually for ceremonial occasions, such as for the election of a speaker) because of the time consumed by calling over four hundred names.\nVoting traditionally lasts for, at most, fifteen minutes, but it may be extended if the leadership needs to \"whip\" more members into alignment. The 2003 vote on the prescription drug benefit was open for three hours, from 3:00 to 6:00\u00a0a.m., to receive four additional votes, three of which were necessary to pass the legislation. The 2005 vote on the Central American Free Trade Agreement was open for one hour, from 11:00\u00a0p.m. to midnight. An October 2005 vote on facilitating refinery construction was kept open for forty minutes.\nPresiding officers may vote like other members. They may not, however, vote twice in the event of a tie; rather, a tie vote defeats the motion.\nCommittees and caucuses.\nThe House uses committees and their subcommittees for a variety of purposes, including the review of bills and the oversight of the executive branch. The appointment of committee members is formally made by the whole House, but the choice of members is actually made by the political parties. Generally, each party honors the preferences of individual members, giving priority on the basis of seniority. Historically, membership on committees has been in rough proportion to the party's strength in the House, with two exceptions: on the Rules Committee, the majority party fills nine of the thirteen seats; and on the Ethics Committee, each party has an equal number of seats. However, when party control in the House is closely divided, extra seats on committees are sometimes allocated to the majority party. In the 109th Congress, for example, the Republicans controlled about 53% of the House, but had 54% of the Appropriations Committee members, 55% of the members on the Energy and Commerce Committee, and 58% of the members on the Judiciary Committee.\nThe largest committee of the House is the Committee of the Whole, which, as its name suggests, consists of all members of the House. The Committee meets in the House chamber; it may consider and amend bills, but may not grant them final passage. Generally, the debate procedures of the Committee of the Whole are more flexible than those of the House itself. One advantage of the Committee of the Whole is its ability to include otherwise non-voting members of Congress.\nMost committee work is performed by twenty standing committees, each of which has jurisdiction over a specific set of issues, such as Agriculture or Foreign Affairs. Each standing committee considers, amends, and reports bills that fall under its jurisdiction. Committees have extensive powers with regard to bills; they may block legislation from reaching the floor of the House. Standing committees also oversee the departments and agencies of the executive branch. In discharging their duties, standing committees have the power to hold hearings and to subpoena witnesses and evidence.\nThe House also has one permanent committee that is not a standing committee, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and occasionally may establish temporary or advisory committees, such as the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. This latter committee, created in the 110th Congress and reauthorized for the 111th, has no jurisdiction over legislation and must be chartered anew at the start of every Congress. The House also appoints members to serve on joint committees, which include members of the Senate and House. Some joint committees oversee independent government bodies; for instance, the Joint Committee on the Library oversees the Library of Congress. Other joint committees serve to make advisory reports; for example, there exists a Joint Committee on Taxation. Bills and nominees are not referred to joint committees. Hence, the power of joint committees is considerably lower than those of standing committees.\nEach House committee and subcommittee is led by a chairman (always a member of the majority party). From 1910 to the 1970s, committee chairs were powerful. Woodrow Wilson in his classic study, suggested:Power is nowhere concentrated; it is rather deliberately and of set policy scattered amongst many small chiefs. It is divided up, as it were, into forty-seven seigniories, in each of which a Standing Committee is the court-baron and its chairman lord-proprietor. These petty barons, some of them not a little powerful, but none of them within the reach of the full powers of rule, may at will exercise almost despotic sway within their own shires, and may sometimes threaten to convulse even the realm itself.\nFrom 1910 to 1975 committee and subcommittee chairmanship was determined purely by seniority; members of Congress sometimes had to wait 30 years to get one, but their chairship was independent of party leadership. The rules were changed in 1975 to permit party caucuses to elect chairs, shifting power upward to the party leaders. In 1995, Republicans under Newt Gingrich set a limit of three two-year terms for committee chairs. The chairman's powers are extensive; he controls the committee/subcommittee agenda, and may prevent the committee from dealing with a bill. The senior member of the minority party is known as the Ranking Member. In some committees like Appropriations, partisan disputes are few.\nLegislative functions.\nMost bills may be introduced in either House of Congress. However, the Constitution states, \"All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.\" Because of the Origination Clause, the Senate cannot initiate bills imposing taxes. This provision barring the Senate from introducing revenue bills is based on the practice of the British Parliament, in which only the House of Commons may originate such measures. Furthermore, congressional tradition holds that the House of Representatives originates appropriation bills.\nAlthough it cannot originate revenue bills, the Senate retains the power to amend or reject them. Woodrow Wilson wrote the following about appropriations bills:\n[T]he constitutional prerogative of the House has been held to apply to all the general appropriations bills, and the Senate's right to amend these has been allowed the widest possible scope. The upper house may add to them what it pleases; may go altogether outside of their original provisions and tack to them entirely new features of legislation, altering not only the amounts but even the objects of expenditure, and making out of the materials sent them by the popular chamber measures of an almost totally new character.\nThe approval of the Senate and the House of Representatives is required for a bill to become law. Both Houses must pass the same version of the bill; if there are differences, they may be resolved by a conference committee, which includes members of both bodies. For the stages through which bills pass in the Senate, see Act of Congress.\nThe president may veto a bill passed by the House and Senate. If they do, the bill does not become law unless each House, by a two-thirds vote, votes to override the veto.\nChecks and balances.\nThe Constitution provides that the Senate's \"advice and consent\" is necessary for the president to make appointments and to ratify treaties. Thus, with its potential to frustrate presidential appointments, the Senate is more powerful than the House.\nThe Constitution empowers the House of Representatives to impeach federal officials for \"Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors\" and empowers the Senate to try such impeachments. The House may approve \"articles of impeachment\" by a simple majority vote; however, a two-thirds vote is required for conviction in the Senate. A convicted official is automatically removed from office and may be disqualified from holding future office under the United States. No further punishment is permitted during the impeachment proceedings; however, the party may face criminal penalties in a normal court of law.\nIn U.S. history, the House of Representatives has impeached seventeen officials, seven who were convicted. Another, Richard Nixon, resigned after the House Judiciary Committee passed articles of impeachment but before a formal impeachment vote by the full House. Only three U.S. presidents have ever been impeached: Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump in 2019 and in 2021. The trials of Johnson, Clinton, and Trump all ended in acquittal; in Johnson's case, the Senate fell one vote short of the two-thirds majority required for conviction.\nUnder the Twelfth Amendment, the House has the power to elect the president if no presidential candidate receives a majority of votes in the Electoral College. The Twelfth Amendment requires the House to choose from the three candidates with the highest numbers of electoral votes. The Constitution provides that \"the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote\". It is rare for no presidential candidate to receive a majority of electoral votes. In U.S. history, the House has only had to choose a president twice. In the 1800 election, which was held before adoption of the Twelfth Amendment, it elected Thomas Jefferson over Aaron Burr. In the 1824 election, it elected John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson and William H. Crawford. If no vice presidential candidate receives a majority of the electoral votes, the Senate elects the vice president from the two candidates with the highest numbers of electoral votes.\nLatest election results and party standings.\nAs of \u00a01, 2025[ [update]]\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources and further reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nSurveys.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["19468510", "40509", "27552742"], "permutation_1": ["27552742", "40509", "19468510"], "permutation_2": ["27552742", "19468510", "40509"], "permutation_3": ["40509", "27552742", "19468510"]}
{"id": "3hop1__484597_23998_21435", "docs_added": {"53825": "New Haven, Connecticut\nNew Haven is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is the third largest city in Connecticut after Bridgeport and Stamford, the largest city in the South Central Connecticut Planning Region, and the principal municipality of Greater New Haven, which had a total population of 864,835 in 2020.\nNew Haven was one of the first planned cities in the U.S. A year after its founding by English Puritans in 1638, eight streets were laid out in a four-by-four grid, creating the \"Nine Square Plan\". The central common block is the New Haven Green, a square at the center of Downtown New Haven. The Green is now a National Historic Landmark, and the \"Nine Square Plan\" is recognized by the American Planning Association as a National Planning Landmark.\nNew Haven is the home of Yale University, New Haven's biggest taxpayer and employer, and an integral part of the city's economy. Health care, professional and financial services and retail trade also contribute to the city's economic activity.\nThe city served as co-capital of Connecticut from 1701 until 1873, when sole governance was transferred to the more centrally located city of Hartford. New Haven has since billed itself as the \"Cultural Capital of Connecticut\" for its supply of established theaters, museums, and music venues. New Haven had the first public tree planting program in the U.S., producing a canopy of mature trees (including some large elms) that gave the city the nickname \"The Elm City\".\nHistory.\nPre-colonial foundation as an independent colony.\nBefore Europeans arrived, the New Haven area was the home of the Quinnipiac tribe of Native Americans, who lived in villages around the harbor and sustained an economy of local fisheries and the farming of maize. The area was briefly visited by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block in 1614. Dutch traders set up a small trading system of beaver pelts with the local inhabitants, but trade was sporadic and the Dutch did not settle permanently in the area.\nIn 1637, a small party of Puritans did a reconnaissance of the New Haven harbor area and wintered over. In April 1638, the main party of five hundred Puritans, who had left the Massachusetts Bay Colony under the leadership of Reverend John Davenport and London merchant Theophilus Eaton, sailed into the harbor. It was their hope to set up a theological community with the government more closely linked to the church than that in Massachusetts, and to exploit the area's potential as a port. The Quinnipiacs, who were under attack by neighboring Pequots, sold their land to the settlers in return for a pledge of protection.\nBy 1640, \"Quinnipiac's\" theocratic government and nine-square grid plan were in place, and the town was renamed New Haven, with 'haven' meaning harbor or port. However, the area to the north remained Quinnipiac until 1678, when it was renamed Hamden. The settlement became the headquarters of the New Haven Colony, distinct from the Connecticut Colony previously established to the north centering on Hartford. Reflecting its theocratic roots, the New Haven Colony forbade the establishment of other churches, whereas the Connecticut Colony permitted them.\nEconomic disaster struck New Haven in 1646, when the town sent its first fully loaded ship of local goods (the \"Great Shippe\") back to England. It never reached its destination, and its disappearance hindered New Haven's development as compared to the rising trade powers of Boston and New Amsterdam (modern day New York City).\nIn 1660, Colony founder John Davenport's wishes were fulfilled, and Hopkins School was founded in New Haven with money from the estate of Edward Hopkins.\nIn 1661, the Regicides who had signed the death warrant of Charles I of England were pursued by Charles II. Two of them, Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe, fled to New Haven for refuge. Davenport arranged for them to hide in the West Rock hills northwest of the town. A third judge, John Dixwell, later joined the others. None of the three were ever returned to England for trial; Dixwell died of old age in New Haven, the others likewise elsewhere in New England.\nAs part of the Connecticut Colony.\nIn 1664, New Haven became part of the Connecticut Colony when the two colonies were merged under political pressure from England. Seeking to establish a new theocracy elsewhere, some members of the New Haven Colony went on to establish Newark, New Jersey.\nNew Haven was made co-capital of Connecticut in 1701, a status it retained until 1873.\nIn 1716, the Collegiate School relocated from Old Saybrook to New Haven, establishing it as a center of learning. In 1718, in response to a large donation from East India Company merchant Elihu Yale, former Governor of Madras, the Collegiate School was renamed Yale College.\nFor over a century, New Haven citizens had fought in the colonial militia alongside regular British forces, including the French and Indian War. As the American Revolution approached, General David Wooster and other influential residents hoped that the conflict with the British parliament could be resolved short of rebellion. On April 23, 1775, Captain Benedict Arnold commanded the Second Company, Governor's Foot Guard, of New Haven to break into the powder house to arm themselves for a three-day march to Cambridge, Massachusetts, an event still celebrated in New Haven as Powder House Day. Other New Haven militia members were on hand to escort George Washington from his overnight stay in New Haven on his way to Cambridge. Contemporary reports, from both sides, remark on the New Haven volunteers' professional military bearing, including uniforms.\nOn July 5, 1779, 2,600 loyalists and British regulars under General William Tryon, governor of New York, landed in New Haven Harbor and raided the town of 3,500. A militia of Yale students had been preparing for battle, and former Yale president and Yale Divinity School professor Naphtali Daggett rode out to confront the Redcoats. Yale president Ezra Stiles recounted in his diary that while he moved furniture in anticipation of battle, he still couldn't quite believe the revolution had begun. New Haven was not torched as the invaders did with Danbury in 1777, or Fairfield and Norwalk a week after the New Haven raid, preserving many of the town's colonial features.\nPost-colonial period and industrialization.\nNew Haven was incorporated as a city in 1784, and Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Constitution and author of the \"Connecticut Compromise\", became the new city's first mayor.\nThe city struck fortune in the late 18th century with the inventions and industrial activity of Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate who remained in New Haven to develop the cotton gin and establish a gun-manufacturing factory in the northern part of the city near the Hamden town line. That area is still known as Whitneyville, and the main road through both towns is known as Whitney Avenue. The factory is now the Eli Whitney Museum, which has a particular emphasis on activities for children and exhibits pertaining to the A. C. Gilbert Company. His factory, along with that of Simeon North, and the lively clock-making and brass hardware sectors, contributed to making early Connecticut a powerful manufacturing economy; so many arms manufacturers sprang up that the state became known as \"The Arsenal of America\". It was in Whitney's gun-manufacturing plant that Samuel Colt invented the automatic revolver in 1836. Many other talented machinists and firearms designers would go on to found successful firearms manufacturing companies in New Haven, including Oliver Winchester and O.F. Mossberg & Sons.\nThe Farmington Canal, created in the early 19th century, was a short-lived transporter of goods into the interior regions of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and ran from New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts.\nNew Haven was to be the site of the first college for African Americans in the United States, but the plan was obstructed by efforts led by Yale Law School founder and former New Haven Mayor David Daggett, who went on to serve as a U.S. Senator and judge on Connecticut's highest court. Daggett denigrated African Americans, denied they were citizens, and presided over the trial of a woman persecuted for trying to admit an African American girl to her boarding school and, having that effort blocked, running a boarding school for African American girls.\nNew Haven was home to one of the important early events in the burgeoning anti-slavery movement when, in 1839, the trial of mutineering Mende tribesmen being transported as slaves on the Spanish slaveship \"Amistad\" was held in New Haven's United States District Court. There is a statue of Joseph Cinqu\u00e9, the informal leader of the slaves, beside City Hall. See \"Museums\" below for more information. Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech on slavery in New Haven in 1860, shortly before he secured the Republican nomination for President.\nThe American Civil War boosted the local economy with wartime purchases of industrial goods, including that of the New Haven Arms Company, which would later become the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. (Winchester would continue to produce arms in New Haven until 2006, and many of the buildings that were a part of the Winchester plant are now a part of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company Historic District). After the war, population grew and doubled by the start of the 20th century, most notably due to the influx of immigrants from southern Europe, particularly Italy. Today, roughly half the populations of East Haven, West Haven, and North Haven are Italian-American. Jewish immigration to New Haven has left an enduring mark on the city. Westville was the center of Jewish life in New Haven, though today many have fanned out to suburban communities such as Woodbridge and Cheshire. Lowell House, the city's first settlement, opened in 1900.\nPost-industrial era and urban redevelopment.\nNew Haven's expansion continued during the two World Wars, with most new inhabitants being African Americans from the American South, and Puerto Ricans. The city reached its peak population after World War II. The area of New Haven is only , encouraging further development of new housing after 1950 in adjacent, suburban towns. Moreover, as in other U.S. cities in the 1950s, New Haven began to suffer white flight of middle-class workers. One author suggested that aggressive redlining and rezoning made it difficult for residents to obtain financing for older, deteriorating urban housing stock, thereby condemning such structures to deterioration.\nIn 1954, then-mayor Richard C. Lee began some of the earliest major urban renewal projects in the United States. Certain sections of downtown New Haven were redeveloped to include museums, new office towers, a hotel, and large shopping complexes. Other parts of the city, particularly the Wooster Square and Fair Haven neighborhoods were affected by the construction of Interstate 95 along the Long Wharf section, Interstate 91, and the Oak Street Connector. The Oak Street Connector (Route 34), running between Interstate 95, downtown, and The Hill neighborhood, was originally intended as a highway to the city's western suburbs but was only completed as a highway to the downtown area, with the area to the west becoming a boulevard (See \"Redevelopment\" below).\nIn 1970, a series of criminal prosecutions against various members of the Black Panther Party took place in New Haven, inciting mass protests on the New Haven Green involving twelve thousand demonstrators and many well-known New Left political activists. (See \"Political Culture\" below for more information). From the 1960s through the early 1990s, some areas of New Haven continued to decline both economically and in terms of population despite attempts to resurrect certain neighborhoods through renewal projects. In conjunction with its declining population, New Haven experienced a steep rise in its crime rate.\nSince approximately 2000, many parts of downtown New Haven have been revitalized with new restaurants, nightlife, and small retail stores. In particular, the area surrounding the New Haven Green has experienced an influx of apartments and condominiums. In addition, two new supermarkets opened to serve downtown's growing residential population: a Stop & Shop opened just west of downtown, while Elm City Market, located one block from the Green, opened in 2011. The recent turnaround of downtown New Haven has received positive press from various periodicals.\nMajor projects include the current construction of a new campus for Gateway Community College downtown, and also a 32-story, 500-unit apartment/retail building called 360 State Street. The 360 State Street project is now occupied and is the largest residential building in Connecticut. A new boathouse and dock is planned for New Haven Harbor, and the linear park Farmington Canal Trail is set to extend into downtown New Haven within the coming year. Additionally, foundation and ramp work to widen I-95 to create a new harbor crossing for New Haven, with an extradosed bridge to replace the 1950s-era Q Bridge, has begun. The city still hopes to redevelop the site of the New Haven Coliseum, which was demolished in 2007.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 18 white firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no black firefighters scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. In the subsequent \"Ricci v. DeStefano\" decision the court found 5\u20134 that New Haven's decision to ignore the test results violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a result, a district court subsequently ordered the city to promote 14 of the white firefighters.\nIn 2010 and 2011, state and federal funds were awarded to Connecticut (and Massachusetts) to construct the Hartford Line, with a southern terminus at New Haven's Union Station and a northern terminus at Springfield's Union Station. According to the White House, \"This corridor [currently] has one train per day connecting communities in Connecticut and Massachusetts to the Northeast Corridor and Vermont. The vision for this corridor is to restore the alignment to its original route via the Knowledge Corridor in western Massachusetts, improving trip time and increasing the population base that can be served.\" Set for construction in 2013, the \"Knowledge Corridor high speed intercity passenger rail\" project will cost approximately $1\u00a0billion, and the ultimate northern terminus for the project is reported to be Montreal in Canada. Train speeds between will reportedly exceed and increase both cities' rail traffic exponentially.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 6.67%, is water.\nNew Haven's best-known geographic features are its large, shallow harbor, and two reddish basalt trap rock ridges which rise to the northeast and northwest of the city core. These trap rocks are known respectively as East Rock and West Rock, and both serve as extensive parks. West Rock has been tunneled through to make way for the east\u2013west passage of the Wilbur Cross Parkway (the only highway tunnel through a natural obstacle in Connecticut), and once served as the hideout of the \"Regicides\" (see: Regicides Trail). Most New Haveners refer to these men as \"The Three Judges\". East Rock features the prominent Soldiers and Sailors war monument on its peak as well as the \"Great/Giant Steps\" which run up the rock's cliffside.\nThe city is drained by three rivers; the West, Mill, and Quinnipiac, named in order from west to east. The West River discharges into West Haven Harbor, while the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers discharge into New Haven Harbor. Both harbors are embayments of Long Island Sound. In addition, several smaller streams flow through the city's neighborhoods, including Wintergreen Brook, the Beaver Ponds Outlet, Wilmot Brook, Belden Brook, and Prospect Creek. Not all of these small streams have continuous flow year-round.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen classification, New Haven experiences a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\"), bordering a hot-summer humid continental climate (\"Dfa\"). The city has hot, humid summers and cool to cold winters. From May to late September, the weather is typically hot and humid, with average temperatures exceeding on 70 days per year. In summer, the Bermuda High creates as southern flow of warm and humid air, with frequent (but brief) thundershowers. October to early December is normally mild to cool late in the season, while early spring (April) can be cool to warm. Winters are more variable, with cool to cold temperatures, mixed with warmer spells, with both rain and snow fall.\nWhile the weather patterns that affect New Haven result from a primarily offshore direction, thus reducing the marine influence of Long Island Sound, the location on Long Island Sound often influences the weather along the coastline compared to inland. During summer heat waves, temperatures may reach or higher on occasion with heat-index values of over . Tropical cyclones have struck New Haven in the past, including 1938 Hurricane (Long Island Express), Hurricane Carol in 1954, Hurricane Gloria in 1985. The hardiness zone is 7a.\nStreetscape.\nNew Haven has a long tradition of urban planning and a purposeful design for the city's layout. The city could be argued to have some of the first preconceived layouts in the country. Upon founding, New Haven was laid out in a grid plan of nine square blocks; the central square was left open, in the tradition of many New England towns, as the city green (a commons area). The city also instituted the first public tree planting program in America. As in other cities, many of the elms that gave New Haven the nickname \"Elm City\" perished in the mid-20th century due to Dutch elm disease, although many have since been replanted. The New Haven Green is currently home to three separate historic churches which speak to the original theocratic nature of the city. The Green remains the social center of the city today. It was named a National Historic Landmark in 1970.\nDowntown New Haven, occupied by nearly 7,000 residents, has a more residential character than most downtowns. The downtown area provides about half of the city's jobs and half of its tax base and in recent years has become filled with dozens of new upscale restaurants, in addition to shops and thousands of apartments and condominium units which subsequently help overall growth of the city.\nNeighborhoods.\nThe city has many distinct neighborhoods. In addition to Downtown, centered on the central business district and the Green, are the following neighborhoods: the west central neighborhoods of Dixwell and Dwight; the southern neighborhoods of The Hill, historic water-front City Point (or Oyster Point), and the harborside district of Long Wharf; the western neighborhoods of Beaver Hills, Edgewood, West River, Westville, Amity, and West Rock-Westhills; East Rock, Cedar Hill, Prospect Hill, and Newhallville in the northern side of town; the east central neighborhoods of Mill River and Wooster Square, an Italian-American neighborhood; Fair Haven, an immigrant community located between the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers; Quinnipiac Meadows and Fair Haven Heights across the Quinnipiac River; and facing the eastern side of the harbor, The Annex and East Shore (or Morris Cove).\nDemographics.\nCensus data.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nThe U.S. Census Bureau reports a 2010 population of 129,779, with 47,094 households and 25,854 families within the city of New Haven. The population density was . There were 52,941 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 42.6% White, 35.4% African American, 0.5% Native American, 4.6% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 12.9% from other races, and 3.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 27.4% of the population. Non-Hispanic Whites were 31.8% of the population in 2010, down from 69.6% in 1970. The city's Latino population is growing rapidly. Previous influxes among ethnic groups have been African-Americans in the postwar era, and Irish, Italian and (to a lesser degree) Slavic peoples in the prewar period.\nAs of the 2010 census, of the 47,094 households, 29.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 27.5% include married couples living together, 22.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 36.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.5% had someone living alone who was 65\u00a0years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40 and the average family size 3.19.\nThe ages of New Haven's residents were 25.4% under the age of 18, 16.4% from 18 to 24, 31.2% from 25 to 44, 16.7% from 45 to 64, and 10.2% who were 65\u00a0years of age or older. The median age was 29\u00a0years, which was significantly lower than the national average. There were 91.8 males per 100 females. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.6 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $29,604, and the median income for a family was $35,950. Median income for males was $33,605, compared with $28,424 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,393. About 20.5% of families and 24.4% of the population were living below the poverty line, including 32.2% of those under age 18 and 17.9% of those age 65 or over.\nOther data.\nIt is estimated that 14% of New Haven residents are pedestrian commuters, ranking it number four by highest percentage in the United States. This is primarily due to New Haven's small area and the presence of Yale University.\nNew Haven is noted for having the highest percentage of Italian American residents of any US city, and is noted for its local style of pizza.\nA study of the demographics of the New Haven metro area, based on age, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity, found that they were the closest of any American city to the national average.\nEconomy.\nNew Haven's economy originally was based in manufacturing, but the postwar period brought rapid industrial decline; the entire Northeast was affected, and medium-sized cities with large working-class populations, like New Haven, were hit particularly hard. Simultaneously, the growth and expansion of Yale University further affected the economic shift. Today, over half (56%) of the city's economy is now made up of services, in particular education and health care; Yale is the city's largest employer, followed by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital. Other large employers include Southern Connecticut State University, Assa Abloy lock manufacturing, the Knights of Columbus headquarters, Higher One, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Covidien and United Illuminating. Clothing stores Gant and Ann Taylor were founded in the city.\nIn 2017, New Haven was ranked by a Verizon study as one of the top 10 cities in America for launching tech startups, and top two in New England.\nIndustry sectors: Agriculture (.6%), Construction and Mining (4.9%), Manufacturing (2.9%), Transportation and Utilities (2.9%), Trade (21.7%), Finance and Real Estate (7.1%), Services (55.9%), Government (4.0%)\nHeadquarters.\nThe Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization and a Fortune 1000 company, is headquartered in New Haven. Amphenol, based in Greater New Haven (Wallingford), is a Fortune 100 company. Eight Courant 100 companies are based in Greater New Haven, with four headquartered in New Haven proper. New Haven-based companies traded on stock exchanges include NewAlliance Bank, the second largest bank in Connecticut and fourth-largest in New England (NYSE: NAL), Higher One Holdings (NYSE: ONE), a financial services firm, United Illuminating, the electricity distributor for southern Connecticut (NYSE: UIL), and Transpro Inc. (AMEX: TPR). The American division of Assa Abloy (one of the world's leading manufacturers of locks) is located in the city. The Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET) began operations in the city as the District Telephone Company of New Haven in 1878; the company remains headquartered in New Haven as a subsidiary of Frontier Communications and provides telephone service for all but two municipalities in Connecticut. SeeClickFix was founded and has been headquartered in the city since 2007. Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company (a candy-making division of the Hershey Company) was formerly located in the city. Achillion Pharmaceuticals and Alexion Pharmaceuticals were also formerly headquartered in New Haven.\nLaw and government.\nPolitical structure.\nNew Haven is governed via the mayor-council system. Connecticut municipalities (like those of neighboring states Massachusetts and Rhode Island) provide nearly all local services (such as fire and rescue, education, snow removal, etc.), as county government has been abolished since 1960.\nNew Haven County merely refers to a grouping of towns and a judicial district, not a governmental entity. New Haven is a member of the South Central Connecticut Regional Council of Governments (SCRCOG), a regional agency created to facilitate coordination between area municipal governments and state and federal agencies, in the absence of county government.\nJustin Elicker is the mayor of New Haven. He was sworn in as the 51st mayor of New Haven on January 1, 2020.\nThe city council, called the Board of Alders, consists of thirty members, each elected from single-member wards. Each of the 30 wards consists of slightly over 4,300 residents; redistricting takes place every ten years.\nThe city is overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2017, of the town's 83,694 voters, 66% were registered as Democrats (\u22124% since 2015), 4% were registered as Republicans (+1%), and 29% were unaffiliated (+3). The board of alders is dominated by Democrats; a Republican has not served as a New Haven alder since 2011.\nNew Haven is served by the New Haven Police Department, which had 443 sworn officers in 2011. The city is also served by the New Haven Fire Department.\nNew Haven lies within Connecticut's 3rd congressional district and has been represented by Rosa DeLauro since 1991. Martin Looney and Gary Holder-Winfield represent New Haven in the Connecticut State Senate, and the city lies within six districts (numbers 92 through 97) of the Connecticut House of Representatives.\nThe Greater New Haven area is served by the New Haven Judicial District Court and the New Haven Superior Court, both headquartered at the New Haven County Courthouse. The federal District Court for the District of Connecticut has a New Haven facility, the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse.\nPolitical history.\nNew Haven is the birthplace of former president George W. Bush, who was born when his father, former president George H. W. Bush, was living in New Haven while a student at Yale. In addition to being the site of the college educations of both Presidents Bush, as Yale students, New Haven was also the temporary home of former presidents William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, and Bill Clinton, as well as Secretary of State John Kerry. President Clinton met his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while the two were students at Yale Law School. Former vice presidents John C. Calhoun and Dick Cheney also studied in New Haven (although the latter did not graduate from Yale). Before the 2008 election, the last time there was not a person with ties to New Haven and Yale on either major party's ticket was 1968. James Hillhouse, a New Haven native, served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate in 1801.\nNew Haven voters overwhelmingly supported Al Gore in the 2000 election, Yale graduate John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. In the 2008 election, New Haven County was third among all Connecticut counties in campaign contributions, after Fairfield and Hartford counties. (Connecticut, in turn, was ranked 14th among all states in total campaign contributions.)\nNew Haven was the subject of \" Who Governs? Democracy and Power in An American City\", a very influential book in political science by preeminent Yale professor Robert A. Dahl, which includes an extensive history of the city and thorough description of its politics in the 1950s. New Haven's theocratic history is also mentioned several times by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic volume on 19th-century American political life, \"Democracy in America\". New Haven was the residence of conservative thinker William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1951, when he wrote his influential \"God and Man at Yale\". William Lee Miller's \"The Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society\" (1966) similarly explores the relationship between local politics in New Haven and national political movements, focusing on Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and urban renewal.\nGeorge Williamson Crawford, a Yale Law School graduate, served as the city's first black corporation counsel from 1954 to 1962, under Mayor Richard C. Lee.\nIn 1970, the New Haven Black Panther trials took place, the largest and longest trials in Connecticut history. Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale and ten other party members were tried for murdering an alleged informant. Beginning on May Day, the city became a center of protest for 12,000 Panther supporters, college students, and New Left activists (including Jean Genet, Benjamin Spock, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and John Froines), who amassed on the New Haven Green, across the street from where the trials were being held. Violent confrontations between the demonstrators and the New Haven Police occurred, and several bombs were set off in the area by radicals. The event became a rallying point for the New Left and critics of the Nixon Administration.\nDuring the summer of 2007, New Haven was the center of protests by anti-immigration groups who opposed the city's program of offering municipal ID cards, known as the Elm City Resident Card, to illegal immigrants. In 2008, the country of Ecuador opened a consulate in New Haven to serve the large Ecuadorean immigrant population in the area. It is the first foreign mission to open in New Haven since Italy opened a consulate (now closed) in the city in 1910.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 20 white and Hispanic firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no blacks scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. On June 29, 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the firefighters, agreeing that they were improperly denied promotion because of their race. The case, \"Ricci v. DeStefano\", became highly publicized and brought national attention to New Haven politics due to the involvement of then-Supreme Court nominee (and Yale Law School graduate) Sonia Sotomayor in a lower court decision.\nGarry Trudeau, creator of the political \"Doonesbury\" comic strip, attended Yale University. There he met fellow student and later Green Party candidate for Congress Charles Pillsbury, a long-time New Haven resident for whom Trudeau's comic strip is named. During his college years, Pillsbury was known by the nickname \"The Doones\". A theory of international law, which argues for a sociological normative approach in regards to jurisprudence, is named the New Haven Approach, after the city. Connecticut US senator Richard Blumenthal is a Yale graduate, as is former Connecticut US Senator Joe Lieberman who also was a New Haven resident for many years, before moving back to his hometown of Stamford.\nCrime.\nCrime increased in the 1990s, with New Haven having one of the ten highest violent crime rates per capita in the United States. In the late 1990s New Haven's crime began to stabilize. The city, adopting a policy of community policing, saw crime rates drop during the 2000s.\nViolent crime levels vary dramatically among New Haven's neighborhoods, with some areas having crime rates in line with the state of Connecticut average, and others having extremely high rates of crime. A 2011 New Haven Health Department report identifies these issues in greater detail.\nIn 2010, New Haven ranked as the 18th most dangerous city in the United States (albeit below the safety benchmark of 200.00 for the second consecutive year). However, according to a completely different analysis conducted by the \"24/7 Wall Street Blog\", in 2011 New Haven had risen to become the fourth most dangerous city in the United States, and was widely cited in the press as such.\nHowever, an analysis by the Regional Data Cooperative for Greater New Haven, Inc., has shown that due to issues of comparative denominators and other factors, such municipality-based rankings can be considered inaccurate. For example, two cities of identical population can cover widely differing land areas, making such analyses irrelevant. The research organization called for comparisons based on neighborhoods, blocks, or standard methodologies (similar to those used by Brookings, DiversityData, and other established institutions), not based on municipalities.\nEducation.\nColleges and universities.\nNew Haven is a notable center for higher education. Yale University, at the heart of downtown, is one of the city's best known features and its largest employer. New Haven is also home to Southern Connecticut State University, part of the Connecticut State University System, and Albertus Magnus College, a private institution. Gateway Community College has a campus in downtown New Haven, formerly located in the Long Wharf district; Gateway consolidated into one campus downtown into a new state-of-the-art campus (on the site of the old Macy's building) and was open for the Fall 2012 semester.\nThere are several institutions immediately outside of New Haven, as well. Quinnipiac University and the Paier College of Art are located just to the north, in the town of Hamden. The University of New Haven is located not in New Haven but in neighboring West Haven.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nNew Haven Public Schools is the school district serving the city. Wilbur Cross High School and Hillhouse High School are New Haven's two largest public secondary schools.\nHopkins School, a private school, was founded in 1660 and is the fifth-oldest educational institution in the United States. New Haven is home to a number of other private schools as well as public magnet schools, including Metropolitan Business Academy, High School in the Community, Hill Regional Career High School, Co-op High School, New Haven Academy, Edgewood Magnet School, ACES Educational Center for the Arts, the Foote School and the Sound School, all of which draw students from New Haven and suburban towns. New Haven is also home to two Achievement First charter schools, Amistad Academy and Elm City College Prep, and to Common Ground, an environmental charter school.\nThe city is renowned for its progressive school lunch programs, and participation in statewide bussing efforts toward increased diversity in schools.\nCulture.\nCuisine.\nLivability.com named New Haven as the Best Foodie City in the country in 2014. There are dozens of Zagat-rated restaurants in New Haven, the most in Connecticut and the third most in New England (after Boston and Cambridge). More than 120 restaurants are located within two blocks of the New Haven Green. The city is home to an eclectic mix of ethnic restaurants and small markets specializing in various foreign foods. Represented cuisines include Malaysian, Ethiopian, Spanish, Belgian, French, Greek, Latin American, Mexican, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Cuban, Peruvian, Syrian/Lebanese, and Turkish.\nNew Haven's greatest culinary claim to fame may be its pizza, which has been claimed to be among the best in the country, or even in the world. New Haven-style pizza, called \"apizza\", made its debut at the iconic Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana (known as Pepe's) in 1925. Apizza is baked in coal- or wood-fired brick ovens, and is notable for its thin crust. Apizza may be red (with a tomato-based sauce) or white (with a sauce of garlic and olive oil), and pies ordered \"plain\" are made without the otherwise customary mozzarella (originally smoked mozzarella, known as \"scamorza\" in Italian). A white clam pie is a well-known specialty of the restaurants on Wooster Street in the Little Italy section of New Haven, including Pepe's and Sally's Apizza (which opened in 1938). Modern Apizza on State Street, which opened in 1934, is also well-known.\nA second New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Louis' Lunch, which is located in a small brick building on Crown Street and has been serving fast food since 1895. Though fiercely debated, the restaurant's founder Louis Lassen is credited by the Library of Congress with inventing the hamburger and steak sandwich. Louis' Lunch broils hamburgers, steak sandwiches and hot dogs vertically in original antique 1898 cast iron stoves using gridirons, patented by local resident Luigi Pieragostini in 1939, that hold the meat in place while it cooks.\nA third New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Miya's, the first sustainable sushi restaurant in the world. Miya's, founded by Chef Yoshiko Lai in 1982, featured the first sustainable seafood-based sushi menu, the first plant-based sushi menu, and the first invasive species menu in the world. Second generation Miya's chef, Bun Lai, is the 2016 White House Champions of Change for Sustainable Seafood and a James Beard Foundation Award nominee. Chef Bun Lai is credited as the first chef in the world for implementing a sustainability paradigm to the cuisine of sushi.\nDuring weekday lunchtime, over 150 lunch carts and food trucks cater to diners around the city. The carts and food trucks cluster at four main points: on Long Wharf Drive, along the city's shoreline with quick access off Interstate 95, by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital in the center of the Hospital Green (Cedar and York streets), by Yale's Trumbull College (Elm and York streets), and on the intersection of Prospect and Sachem streets by the Yale School of Management.\nPopular farmers' markets, managed by the local non-profit CitySeed, set up shop weekly in several neighborhoods, including Westville/Edgewood Park, Fair Haven, Upper State Street, Wooster Square, and Downtown/New Haven Green.\nA large grocery store, the Elm City Market, opened on 360 State Street in New Haven in early fall 2011 and served local produce and groceries to the community. Originally, the market was a member-owned co-op, but debt defaults in August 2014 forced a sale of the business. It is now an employee-owned business; the co-op's previous owners received no equity in the new business.\nIn the past several years, two separate Downtown food tour companies have started offering popular restaurant tours on weekends.\nTaste of New Haven Tours offers several different weekly restaurant/bar tours and a popular pizza, bike, and pints tour. Culinary Walking Tours offers monthly restaurant tours and sponsors an annual Elm City Iron Chef competition.\nTheatre and film.\nThe city hosts numerous theatres and production houses, including the Yale Repertory Theatre, the Long Wharf Theatre, and the Shubert Theatre. There is also theatre activity from the Yale School of Drama, which works through the Yale University Theatre and the student-run Yale Cabaret. Southern Connecticut State University hosts the Lyman Center for the Performing Arts. The shuttered Palace Theatre (opposite the Shubert Theatre) was renovated and reopened as the College Street Music Hall in May 2015. Smaller theatres include the Little Theater on Lincoln Street. Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School also has a theatre on College Street. The theatre is used for student productions, and is the home to weekly services to a local non-denominational church, the City Church New Haven.\nThe Shubert Theatre once premiered many major theatrical productions before their Broadway debuts. Productions that premiered at the Shubert include \"Oklahoma!\" (which was also written in New Haven), \"Carousel\", \"South Pacific\", \"My Fair Lady\", \"The King and I\", and \"The Sound of Music\", and the Tennessee Williams play \"A Streetcar Named Desire\".\nBow Tie Cinemas owns and operates the Criterion Cinemas, the first new movie theater to open in New Haven in over 30 years and the first luxury movie complex in the city's history. The Criterion has seven screens and opened in November 2004, showing a mix of upscale first run commercial and independent film.\nMuseums.\nNew Haven has a variety of museums, many of them associated with Yale. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library features an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible. There is also the Connecticut Children's Museum; the Knights of Columbus museum near that organization's world headquarters; the Peabody Museum of Natural History; the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments; the Eli Whitney Museum (across the town line in Hamden, Connecticut, on Whitney Avenue); the Yale Center for British Art, which houses the largest collection of British art outside the U.K., and the Yale University Art Gallery, the western hemisphere's oldest college art museum. New Haven is also home to the New Haven Museum and Historical Society on Whitney Avenue, which has a library of many primary source treasures dating from Colonial times to the present.\nArtspace on Orange Street is one of several contemporary art galleries around the city, showcasing the work of local, national, and international artists. Others include City Gallery and A. Leaf Gallery in the downtown area. Westville galleries include Kehler Liddell, Jennifer Jane Gallery, and The Hungry Eye. The Erector Square complex in the Fair Haven neighborhood houses, the Parachute Factory gallery along with numerous artist studios, and the complex serves as an active destination during City-Wide Open Studios held yearly in October.\nNew Haven is the home port of a life-size replica of the historical \"Freedom Schooner Amistad\", which is open for tours at Long Wharf pier at certain times during the summer. Also at Long Wharf pier is the \"Quinnipiack\" schooner, offering sailing cruises of the harbor area throughout the summer. The \"Quinnipiack\" also functions as a floating classroom for hundreds of local students.\nMusic.\nThe New Haven Green is the site of many free music concerts, especially during the summer months. These have included the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the July Free Concerts on the Green, and the New Haven Jazz Festival in August. The Jazz Festival, which began in 1982, is one of the longest-running free outdoor festivals in the U.S., until it was canceled for 2007. Headliners such as Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles and Celia Cruz have historically drawn 30,000 to 50,000 fans, filling up the New Haven Green to capacity. The New Haven Jazz Festival was revived in 2008 and has been sponsored since by Jazz Haven.\nNew Haven is home to the concert venue Toad's Place, and a new venue, College Street Music Hall. The city has retained an alternative art and music underground that has helped to influence post-punk era music movements such as indie, college rock and underground hip-hop.\nThe Yale School of Music contributes to the city's music scene by offering hundreds of free concerts throughout the year at venues in and around the Yale campus. Large performances are held in the 2,700-seat Woolsey Hall auditorium, which contains the world's largest symphonic organs, while chamber music and recitals are performed in Sprague Hall.\nHardcore band Hatebreed are from Wallingford, but got their start in New Haven under the name Jasta 14. The band Miracle Legion formed in New Haven in 1983. Folk musicians from New Haven include Loren Mazzacane Connors and Kath Bloom.\nThe Hillhouse Opera Company is a U.S. non-profit opera company based in New Haven that performs in the New Haven area. Founded in 2008 by Victoria Leigh Gardner, Nicole Rodriguez and Jim Coatsworth Hillhouse Opera Company has performed operas as well as opera scenes programs, master classes and concert series. In 2011, the Company professionally staged the works created through the Riverview Opera Project. The Riverview Opera Project created workshops for children and adolescents at Riverview Hospital, Connecticut's only state-funded psychiatric hospital for youth, and helped them to successfully create, produce, and perform four original operas.\nFestivals.\nIn addition to the Jazz Festival (described above), New Haven serves as the home city of the annual International Festival of Arts and Ideas. New Haven's Saint Patrick's Day parade, which began in 1842, is New England's oldest and draws the largest crowds of any one-day spectator event in Connecticut. The St. Andrew the Apostle Italian Festival has taken place in the historic Wooster Square neighborhood every year since 1900. Other parishes in the city celebrate the Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua and a carnival in honor of St. Bernadette Soubirous. New Haven celebrates Powder House Day every April on the New Haven Green to commemorate the city's entrance into the Revolutionary War. The annual Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival commemorates the 1973 planting of 72 Yoshino Japanese cherry blossom trees by the New Haven Historic Commission in collaboration with the New Haven Parks Department and residents of the neighborhood. The Festival now draws well over 5,000 visitors. The Film Fest New Haven has been held annually since 1995.\nNightlife.\nIn the past decade downtown has seen an influx of new restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Large crowds are drawn to the Crown Street area downtown on weekends where many of the restaurants and bars are located. Crown Street between State and High Streets has dozens of establishments, as do nearby Temple and College Streets. Away from downtown, Upper State Street has a number of restaurants and bars popular with local residents and weekend visitors.\nNewspapers and media.\nNew Haven is served by the daily \"New Haven Register\", the weekly \"alternative\" \"New Haven Advocate\" (which is run by Tribune, the corporation owning the \"Hartford Courant\"), the online daily \"New Haven Independent\", and the monthly \"Grand News Community Newspaper.\" Downtown New Haven is covered by an in-depth civic news forum, Design New Haven. The \"Register\" also backs \"PLAY\" magazine, a weekly entertainment publication. The city is also served by several student-run papers, including the \"Yale Daily News\", the weekly \"Yale Herald\" and a humor tabloid, \"Rumpus Magazine\".\nWTNH Channel 8, the ABC affiliate for Connecticut, WCTX Channel 59, the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the state, Connecticut Public Television station WEDY channel 65, a PBS affiliate, and WTXX Channel 34, the IntrigueTV affiliate, broadcast from New Haven. All New York City news and sports team stations broadcast to New Haven County.\nSports and athletics.\nNew Haven has a history of professional sports franchises dating back to the 19th century and has been the home to professional baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer teams\u2014including the New York Giants of the National Football League from 1973 to 1974, who played at the Yale Bowl. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, New Haven consistently had minor league hockey and baseball teams, which played at the New Haven Arena (built in 1926, demolished in 1972), New Haven Coliseum (1972\u20132002), and Yale Field (1928\u2013present).\nWhen John DeStefano, Jr., became mayor of New Haven in 1995, he outlined a plan to transform the city into a major cultural and arts center in the Northeast, which involved investments in programs and projects other than sports franchises. As nearby Bridgeport built new sports facilities, the brutalist New Haven Coliseum rapidly deteriorated. Believing the upkeep on the venue to be a drain of tax dollars, the DeStefano administration closed the Coliseum in 2002; it was demolished in 2007. New Haven's last professional sports team, the New Haven County Cutters, left in 2009. The DeStefano administration did, however, see the construction of the New Haven Athletic Center in 1998, a indoor athletic facility with a seating capacity of over 3,000. The NHAC, built adjacent to Hillhouse High School, is used for New Haven public schools athletics, as well as large-scale area and state sporting events; it is the largest high school indoor sports complex in the state.\nNew Haven was the host of the 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games; then-President Bill Clinton spoke at the opening ceremonies. The city is home to the Pilot Pen International tennis event, which takes place every August at the Connecticut Tennis Center, one of the largest tennis venues in the world. New Haven biannually hosts \"The Game\" between Yale and Harvard, the country's second-oldest college football rivalry. Numerous road races take place in New Haven, including the USATF 20K Championship during the New Haven Road Race.\nGreater New Haven is home to a number of college sports teams. The Yale Bulldogs play Division I college sports, as do the Quinnipiac Bobcats in neighboring Hamden. Division II athletics are played by Southern Connecticut State University and the University of New Haven (actually located in neighboring West Haven), while Albertus Magnus College athletes perform at the Division III level.\nNew Haven is home to many New York Yankees, New York Mets, & Boston Red Sox fans due to the proximity of New York City & Boston.\nWalter Camp, deemed the \"father of American football\", was a New Havener.\nThe New Haven Warriors rugby league team play in the AMNRL. They have a large number of Pacific Islanders playing for them. Their field is located at the West Haven High School's Ken Strong Stadium. They won the 2008 AMNRL Grand Final.\nStructures.\nArchitecture.\nNew Haven has many architectural landmarks dating from every important time period and architectural style in American history. The city has been home to a number of architects and architectural firms that have left their mark on the city including Ithiel Town and Henry Austin in the 19th century and Cesar Pelli, Warren Platner, Kevin Roche, Herbert Newman and Barry Svigals in the 20th. The Yale School of Architecture has fostered this important component of the city's economy. Cass Gilbert, of the Beaux-Arts school, designed New Haven's Union Station and the New Haven Free Public Library and was also commissioned for a City Beautiful plan in 1919. Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, Alexander Jackson Davis, Philip C. Johnson, Gordon Bunshaft, Louis Kahn, James Gamble Rogers, Frank Gehry, Charles Willard Moore, Stefan Behnisch, James Polshek, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen and Robert Venturi all have designed buildings in New Haven. Yale's 1950s-era Ingalls Rink, designed by Eero Saarinen, was included on the \"America's Favorite Architecture\" list created in 2007.\nSeveral residential homes in New Haven were designed by Alice Washburn, a noted female architect whose Colonial Revival style set a standard for homes in the region.\nMany of the city's neighborhoods are well-preserved as walkable \"museums\" of 19th- and 20th-century American architecture, particularly by the New Haven Green, Hillhouse Avenue and other residential sections close to Downtown New Haven. Overall, a large proportion of the city's land area is National (NRHP) historic districts. One of the best sources on local architecture is \"New Haven: Architecture and Urban Design\", by Elizabeth Mills Brown.\nThe five tallest buildings in New Haven are:\nHistoric points of interest.\nMany historical sites exist throughout the city, including 59 properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Of these, nine are among the 60 U.S. National Historic Landmarks in Connecticut. The New Haven Green, one of the National Historic Landmarks, was formed in 1638, and is home to three 19th-century churches. Below the First Church of Christ in New Haven (referred to as the Center Church on the Green) lies a 17th-century crypt, which is open to visitors. Some of the more famous burials include the first wife of Benedict Arnold and the aunt and grandmother of President Rutherford B. Hayes; Hayes visited the crypt while President in 1880. The Old Campus of Yale University is located next to the Green, and includes Connecticut Hall, Yale's oldest building and a National Historic Landmark. The Hillhouse Avenue area, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a part of Yale's campus, has been called a walkable museum, due to its 19th-century mansions and street scape; Charles Dickens is said to have called Hillhouse Avenue \"the most beautiful street in America\" when visiting the city in 1868.\nIn 1660, Edward Whalley (a cousin and friend of Oliver Cromwell) and William Goffe, two English Civil War generals who signed the death warrant of King Charles I, hid in a rock formation in New Haven after having fled England upon the restoration of Charles II to the English throne. They were later joined by a third regicide, John Dixwell. The rock formation, which is now a part of West Rock Park, is known as Judges' Cave, and the path leading to the cave is called the Regicides Trail.\nAfter the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, the Connecticut colonial government ordered the construction of Black Rock Fort (to be built on top of an older 17th-century fort) to protect the port of New Haven. In 1779, during the Battle of New Haven, British soldiers captured Black Rock Fort and burned the barracks to the ground. The fort was reconstructed in 1807 by the federal government (on orders from the Thomas Jefferson administration), and rechristened Fort Nathan Hale, after the Revolutionary War hero who had lived in New Haven. The cannons of Fort Nathan Hale were successful in defying British war ships during the War of 1812. In 1863, during the Civil War, a second Fort Hale was built next to the original, complete with bomb-resistant bunkers and a moat, to defend the city should a Southern raid against New Haven be launched. The United States Congress deeded the site to the state in 1921, and all three versions of the fort have been restored. The site is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and receives thousands of visitors each year.\nGrove Street Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark which lies adjacent to Yale's campus, contains the graves of Roger Sherman, Eli Whitney, Noah Webster, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Charles Goodyear and Walter Camp, among other notable burials. The cemetery is noted for its Egyptian Revival gateway, and is the oldest planned burial ground in the United States. The Union League Club of New Haven building, located on Chapel Street, is notable for not only being a historic Beaux-Arts building, but also is built on the site where Roger Sherman's home once stood; George Washington is known to have stayed at the Sherman residence while President in 1789 (one of three times Washington visited New Haven throughout his lifetime).\nTwo sites pay homage to the time President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft lived in the city, as both a student and later Professor at Yale: a plaque on Prospect Street marks the site where Taft's home formerly stood, and downtown's Taft Apartment Building (formerly the Taft Hotel) bears the name of the former president who resided in the building for eight years before becoming Chief Justice of the United States.\nLighthouse Point Park, a public beach run by the city, was a popular tourist destination during the Roaring Twenties, attracting luminaries of the period such as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. The park remains popular among New Haveners, and is home to the Five Mile Point Lighthouse, constructed in 1847, and the Lighthouse Point Carousel, constructed in 1916. Five Mile Point Light was decommissioned in 1877 following the construction of Southwest Ledge Light at the entrance of the harbor, which remains in service to this day. Both of the lighthouses and the carousel are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nOther historic sites in the city include the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, which stands at the summit of East Rock, the Marsh Botanical Garden, Wooster Square, Dwight Street, Louis' Lunch, and the Farmington Canal, all of which date back to the 19th century. Other historic parks besides the Green include Edgerton Park, Edgewood Park, and East Rock Park, each of which is included on the National Register of Historic Places.\nTransportation.\nRail.\nNew Haven has two railroad stations, connected to New York City and points along the Northeast Corridor by commuter rail, regional rail and inter-city rail. Service is provided by:\nThe city's main railroad station is the historic Beaux-Arts Union Station, which serves Metro-North, Hartford Line, and Shore Line East commuter trains. Approximately 175 trains serve Union Station on weekdays. Union Station is also served by four Amtrak lines: the \"Northeast Regional\" and the high-speed \"Acela Express\" provide service to New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston, and rank as the first and second busiest routes in the country; the New Haven\u2013Springfield Line provides service to Hartford and Springfield, Massachusetts; and the \"Vermonter\" provides service to both Washington, D.C., and Vermont, from the Canada\u2013US border.\nAn additional station, State Street Station, was opened in 2002, providing passengers easier access to downtown New Haven. State Street Station is currently serviced by Shore Line East and Hartford Line trains, plus some peak-hour Metro-North trips.\nBus.\nThe New Haven Division of Connecticut Transit (CT Transit), the state's bus system, is the second largest division in the state with 24 routes. All routes originate from the New Haven Green, making it the central transfer hub of the city. Service is provided to 19 different municipalities throughout Greater New Haven. Bus routes were formerly identified by letters, but as of October 8, 2017, all service was renamed using 200-series numbers, in accordance with a renumbering of CTtransit's statewide services.\nCT Transit's Union Station Shuttle provides free service from Union Station to the New Haven Green and several New Haven parking garages. Peter Pan and Greyhound bus lines have scheduled stops at Union Station, and connections downtown can be made via the Union Station Shuttle. A private company operates the New Haven/Hartford Express which provides commuter bus service to Hartford. The Yale University Shuttle provides free transportation around New Haven for Yale students, faculty, and staff.\nThe New Haven Division buses follow routes that had originally been covered by trolley service. Horse-drawn streetcars began operating in New Haven in the 1860s, and by the mid-1890s all the lines had become electric. In the 1920s and 1930s, some of the trolley lines began to be replaced by bus lines, with the last trolley route converted to bus in 1948. The City of New Haven is in the very early stages of considering the restoration of streetcar (light-rail) service, which has been absent since the postwar period.\nBicycle.\nBikeshare.\nOn February 21, 2018, New Haven officially launched its Bike New Haven bikeshare program. based on dockless technology powered by Noa Technologies At time of launch, the program features 10 docking stations and 100 bikes, spread throughout the urban core; there are plans to reach 30 bike stations and 300 bikes by the end of April 2018. The launch of the New Haven bikeshare program coincided with the launch of Yale University's own bikeshare program, which uses the same technology powered by Noa.\nBike lanes.\nIn 2004, the first bike lane in the city was added to Orange Street, connecting East Rock Park and the East Rock neighborhood to downtown. Since then, bike lanes have also been added to sections of Howard Ave, Elm St, Dixwell Avenue, Water Street, Clinton Avenue and State Street. The city has created recommended bike routes for getting around New Haven, including use of the Canal Trail and the Orange Street lane. As of the end of 2012, bicycle lanes have also been added in both directions on Dixwell Avenue along most of the street from downtown to the Hamden town line, as well as along Howard Avenue from Yale New Haven Hospital to City Point.\nThe city has plans to create two additional bike lanes connecting Union Station with downtown, and the Westville neighborhood with downtown. The city has added dozens of covered bike parking spots at Union Station, in order to facilitate more bike commuting to the station.\nFarmington Canal Greenway.\nThe Farmington Canal Trail is a rail trail that will eventually run continuously from downtown New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts. The scenic trail follows the path of the historic New Haven and Northampton Company and the Farmington Canal. Currently, there is a continuous stretch of the trail from downtown, through Hamden and into Cheshire, making bicycle commuting between New Haven and those suburbs possible. The trail is part of the East Coast Greenway, a proposed bike path that would link every major city on the East Coast from Florida to Maine.\nRoads.\nNew Haven lies at the intersection of Interstate 95 on the coast\u2014which provides access southwards and/or westwards to the western coast of Connecticut and to New York City, and eastwards to the eastern Connecticut shoreline, Rhode Island, and eastern Massachusetts\u2014and Interstate 91, which leads northward to the interior of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont and the Canada\u2013US border. I-95 is notorious for traffic jams increasing with proximity to New York City; on the east side of New Haven it passes over the Quinnipiac River via the Pearl Harbor Memorial, or \"Q Bridge\", which often presents a major bottleneck to traffic. I-91, however, is relatively less congested, except at the intersection with I-95 during peak travel times.\nThe Oak Street Connector (Connecticut Route 34) intersects I-91 at exit 1, just south of the I-95/I-91 interchange, and runs northwest for a few blocks as an expressway spur into downtown before emptying onto surface roads. The Wilbur Cross Parkway (Connecticut Route 15) runs parallel to I-95 west of New Haven, turning northwards as it nears the city and then running northwards parallel to I-91 through the outer rim of New Haven and Hamden, offering an alternative to the I-95/I-91 journey (restricted to non-commercial vehicles). Route 15 in New Haven is the site of the only highway tunnel in the state (officially designated as Heroes Tunnel), running through West Rock, home to West Rock Park and the Three Judges Cave.\nThe city also has several major surface arteries. U.S. Route 1 (Columbus Avenue, Union Avenue, Water Street, Forbes Avenue) runs in an east\u2013west direction south of downtown serving Union Station and leading out of the city to Milford, West Haven, East Haven and Branford. The main road from downtown heading northwest is Whalley Avenue (partly signed as Route 10 and Route 63) leading to Westville and Woodbridge. Heading north towards Hamden, there are two major thoroughfares, Dixwell Avenue and Whitney Avenue. To the northeast are Middletown Avenue (Route 17), which leads to the Montowese section of North Haven, and Foxon Boulevard (Route 80), which leads to the Foxon section of East Haven and to the town of North Branford. To the west is Route 34, which leads to the city of Derby. Other major intracity arteries are Ella Grasso Boulevard (Route 10) west of downtown, and College Street, Temple Street, Church Street, Elm Street, and Grove Street in the downtown area.\nTraffic safety is a major concern for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists in New Haven. In addition to many traffic-related fatalities in the city each year, since 2005, over a dozen Yale students, staff and faculty have been killed or injured in traffic collisions on or near the campus.\nAirport.\nTweed New Haven Airport is located within the city limits east of the business district, straddling the border with neighboring East Haven. Service to approximately 25 cities is provided by Avelo Airlines, which established its first East Coast base at the airport in 2021. Breeze Airways plans to begin operations at Tweed in December 2024, and will provide service to 10 destinations. The airport is currently planning a runway lengthening and new terminal on the East Haven side of the airport.\nBus service between Downtown New Haven and Tweed is available via the CT Transit New Haven Division.\nSeaport.\nNew Haven Harbor is home to the Port of New Haven, a deep-water seaport with three berths capable of hosting vessels and barges as well as the facilities required to handle break bulk cargo. The port has the capacity to load 200 trucks a day from the ground or via loading docks. Providence and Worcester Railroad provides freight rail transportation to the port, with the railroad operating a switch engine for yard movements, a private siding for loading and unloading, and trackage over the Tomlinson Lift Bridge toward the Northeast Corridor. Approximately of inside storage and of outside storage are available at the site. Five shore cranes with a 250-ton capacity and 26 forklifts, each with a 26-ton capacity, are also available.\nOn June 17, 2013, the city commissioned the \"Nathan Hale\", a port security vessel capable of serving search and rescue, firefighting, and constabulary roles.\nInfrastructure.\nHospitals and medicine.\nThe New Haven area supports several medical facilities that are considered some of the best hospitals in the country. There are two major medical centers downtown: Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital has four pavilions, including the Yale \u2013 New Haven Children's Hospital and the Smilow Cancer Hospital; the Hospital of Saint Raphael is several blocks north, and touts its excellent cardiac emergency care program. Smaller downtown health facilities are the Temple Medical Center located downtown on Temple Street, Connecticut Mental Health Center/ across Park Street from Y-NHH, and the Hill Health Center, which serves the working-class Hill neighborhood. A large Veterans Affairs hospital is located in neighboring West Haven. To the west in Milford is Milford Hospital, and to the north in Meriden is the MidState Medical Center.\nIn recent years, Yale and the City of New Haven have been working to build a medical and biotechnology research hub in the city and Greater New Haven region. The city, state and Yale together run Science Park, a large site three blocks northwest of Yale's Science Hill campus. This multi-block site, approximately bordered by Mansfield Street, Division Street, and Shelton Avenue, is the former home of Winchester's and Olin Corporation's 45 large-scale factory buildings. Currently, sections of the site are large-scale parking lots or abandoned structures, but there is also a large remodeled and functioning area of buildings (leased primarily by a private developer) with numerous Yale employees, financial service and biotech companies.\nA second biotechnology district is being planned for the median strip on Frontage Road, on land cleared for the never-built Route 34 extension. As of late 2009, a Pfizer drug-testing clinic, a medical laboratory building serving Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital, and a mixed-use structure containing parking, housing and office space, have been constructed on this corridor. A former SNET telephone building at 300 George Street is being converted into lab space, and has been quite successful so far in attracting biotechnology and medical firms.\nPower supply facilities.\nElectricity for New Haven is generated by a 448\u00a0MW oil and gas-fired generating station located on the shore at New Haven Harbor. PPL Corporation operates a 220\u00a0MW peaking natural gas turbine plant in nearby Wallingford.\nNear New Haven there is the static inverter plant of the HVDC Cross Sound Cable.\nThere are three PureCell Model 400 fuel cells placed in the city of New Haven\u2014one at the New Haven Public Schools and newly constructed Roberto Clemente School, one at the mixed-use 360 State Street building, and one at City Hall. According to Giovanni Zinn of the city's Office of Sustainability, each fuel cell may save the city up to $1 million in energy costs over a decade. The fuel cells were provided by ClearEdge Power, formerly UTC Power. Additional fuel cells are located at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and at the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority (GNHWPCA). Ikea's New Haven facility also utilizes a 250\u00a0kW fuel cell and 940.8\u00a0kW solar array.\nNew Haven recently installed solar panels at 11 city schools with a combined power generation capacity of 1.8 MW. Owned and maintained by Greenskies, the panels allow New Haven to purchase electricity at a discounted rate through a power-purchasing agreement. The panels bring New Haven's solar capacity to 2.8 MW and will help New Haven meet its commitment to powering 100% of its municipal operations through clean energy, which it made in Summer 2017 and reaffirmed in the 2018 New Haven Climate and Sustainability Framework.\nIn popular culture.\nSeveral movies have been filmed in New Haven since 2000, including \"Mona Lisa Smile\" (2003), with Julia Roberts, \"The Life Before Her Eyes\" (2007), with Uma Thurman, and \"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull\" (2008) directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett and Shia LaBeouf. The filming of \"Crystal Skull\" involved an extensive chase sequence through the streets of New Haven. Several downtown streets were closed to traffic and received a \"makeover\" to look like streets of 1957, when the film is set. 500 locals were cast as extras for the film. In \"Everybody's Fine\" (2009), Robert De Niro has a close encounter in what is supposed to be the Denver train station; the scene was filmed in New Haven's Union Station.\n New Haven is mentioned in the song Peace Frog by the Doors, referencing a 1967 incident where vocalist Jim Morrison was arrested for \"attempting to incite a riot\" in the middle of a concert at the New Haven Arena.\nSister cities.\nNew Haven's sister cities are:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSome of these were selected because of historical connection\u2014Freetown because of the \"Amistad\" trial. Others, such as Amalfi and Afula, reflect ethnic groups in New Haven.\nIn 1990, the United Nations named New Haven a \"Peace Messenger City\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "6072259": "Hezekiah Augur\nAmerican sculptor and inventor (1791\u20131858)\nHezekiah Augur (February 21, 1791 \u2013 January 10, 1858) was an early American sculptor and inventor. He was a self-taught sculptor and, unlike many other 19th-century American sculptors, did not travel to Europe, but spent his entire career in New Haven.\nLife.\nAugur was born in New Haven, Connecticut. The son of a carpenter, he learned his trade as a woodcarver, carving table legs and other furniture ornament. Borrowing $2,000 from his father, he was invited to join a grocery store business venture. Three years later he discovered, to his shock and amazement, that not only was his money gone, but that he owed his partners $7,000. While thus engaged he invented a lace-making machine that lifted the financial burdens that he had assumed and thus allowed him to take up carving full-time. Around that time he also invented a machine for carving piano legs. He switched to marble later in his career, being among the first native born Americans to do so. Chauncey Ives studied briefly with Augur.\nWorks.\nAugur's bust of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Ellsworth (c. 1837) is housed in the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the United States United States Capitol. A portrait of Alexander Metcalf Fisher (c. 1827) and a neo-classical grouping, \"Jephthah and His Daughter\" (c. 1832), are in the Yale University art collection, and in 1833 Auger received an honorary degree from Yale University. He died on January 10, 1858, in New Haven and is buried in Grove Street Cemetery. He was a member of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences.\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "34273": "Yale University\nPrivate university in New Haven, Connecticut, US\n \nYale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution.\nYale was established as the Collegiate School in 1701 by Congregationalist clergy of the Connecticut Colony. Originally restricted to instructing ministers in theology and sacred languages, the school's curriculum expanded, incorporating humanities and sciences by the time of the American Revolution. In the 19th century, the college expanded into graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first PhD in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887. Yale's faculty and student populations grew rapidly after 1890 due to the expansion of the physical campus and its scientific research programs.\nYale is organized into fifteen constituent schools, including the original undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and Yale Law School. While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each school's faculty oversees its curriculum and degree programs. In addition to a central campus in downtown New Haven, the university owns athletic facilities in western New Haven, a campus in West Haven, and forests and nature preserves throughout New England. As of 2023[ [update]], the university's endowment was valued at $, the third largest of any educational institution. The Yale University Library, serving all constituent schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States. Student athletes compete in intercollegiate sports as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I Ivy League conference.\nAs of \u00a02024[ [update]], 68 Nobel laureates, 5 Fields medalists, 4 Abel Prize laureates, and 3 Turing Award winners have been affiliated with Yale University. In addition, Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including 5 U.S. presidents, 10 Founding Fathers, 19 U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 31 living billionaires, 54 college founders and presidents, many heads of state, cabinet members and governors. Hundreds of members of Congress and many U.S. diplomats, 96 MacArthur Fellows, 263 Rhodes Scholars, 123 Marshall Scholars, 81 Gates Cambridge Scholars, 102 Guggenheim Fellows and 9 Mitchell Scholars have been affiliated with the university. Yale's current faculty include 67 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 55 members of the National Academy of Medicine, 8 members of the National Academy of Engineering, and 193 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.\nHistory.\nEarly history of Yale College.\nOrigins.\nYale traces its beginnings to \"An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School\", a would-be charter passed in New Haven by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut on October 9, 1701. The Act was an effort to create an institution to train ministers and lay leadership. Soon after, a group of ten Congregational ministers, Samuel Andrew, Thomas Buckingham, Israel Chauncy, Samuel Mather (nephew of Increase Mather), Rev. James Noyes II (son of James Noyes), James Pierpont, Abraham Pierson, Noadiah Russell, Joseph Webb, and Timothy Woodbridge, all Harvard alumni, met in the study of Reverend Samuel Russell, in Branford, to donate books to form the school's library. The group, led by James Pierpont, is now known as \"The Founders\".\nKnown from its origin as the \"Collegiate School\", the institution opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson, who is considered Yale's first president. Pierson lived in Killingworth. The school moved to Saybrook in 1703, when the first treasurer of Yale, Nathaniel Lynde, donated land and a building. In 1716, it moved to New Haven.\nMeanwhile, there was a rift forming at Harvard between its sixth president, Increase Mather, and the rest of the Harvard clergy, whom Mather viewed as increasingly liberal, ecclesiastically lax, and overly broad in Church polity. The feud caused the Mathers to champion the Collegiate School in the hope it would maintain the Puritan religious orthodoxy in a way Harvard had not. Rev. Jason Haven, minister at the First Church and Parish in Dedham, Massachusetts, had been considered for the presidency on account of his orthodox theology and \"Neatness dignity and purity of Style [which] surpass those of all that have been mentioned\", but was passed over due to his \"very Valetudinary and infirm State of Health\".\nNaming and development.\nIn 1718, at the behest of either Rector Samuel Andrew or the colony's Governor Gurdon Saltonstall, Cotton Mather contacted the Boston-born businessman Elihu Yale to ask for money to construct a new building for the college. Through the persuasion of Jeremiah Dummer, Yale, who had made a fortune in Madras while working for the East India Company as the first president of Fort St. George, donated nine bales of goods, which were sold for more than \u00a3560, a substantial sum of money. Cotton Mather suggested the school change its name to \"Yale College\". The name Yale is the Anglicized spelling of the Welsh name I\u00e2l, which had been used for the family estate at Plas yn I\u00e2l, near Llandegla, Wales.\nMeanwhile, a Harvard graduate working in England convinced 180 prominent intellectuals to donate books to Yale. The 1714 shipment of 500 books represented the best of modern English literature, science, philosophy and theology. It had a profound effect on intellectuals at Yale. Undergraduate Jonathan Edwards discovered John Locke's works and developed his \"new divinity\". In 1722 the rector and six friends, who had a study group to discuss the new ideas, announced they had given up Calvinism, become Arminians, and joined the Church of England. They were ordained in England and returned to the colonies as missionaries for the Anglican faith. Thomas Clapp became president in 1745, and while he attempted to return the college to Calvinist orthodoxy, did not close the library. Other students found Deist books in the library.\nCurriculum.\nYale College undergraduates follow a liberal arts curriculum with departmental majors and is organized into a social system of residential colleges.\nYale was swept up by the great intellectual movements of the period\u2014the Great Awakening and Enlightenment\u2014due to the religious and scientific interests of presidents Thomas Clap and Ezra Stiles. They were instrumental in developing the scientific curriculum while dealing with wars, student tumults, graffiti, \"irrelevance\" of curricula, desperate need for endowment and disagreements with the Connecticut legislature.\nSerious American students of theology and divinity, particularly in New England, regarded Hebrew as a classical language, along with Greek and Latin, and essential for study of the Old Testament in the original. Reverend Stiles, president from 1778 to 1795, brought with him his interest in Hebrew as a vehicle for studying ancient Biblical texts in their original language, requiring all freshmen to study Hebrew (in contrast to Harvard, where only upperclassmen were required to study it) and is responsible for the Hebrew phrase \u05d0\u05d5\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u05d5\u05ea\u05de\u05d9\u05dd (Urim and Thummim) on the Yale seal. A 1746 graduate of Yale, Stiles came to the college with experience in education, having played an integral role in founding Brown University. Stiles' greatest challenge occurred in 1779 when British forces occupied New Haven and threatened to raze the college. However, Yale graduate Edmund Fanning, secretary to the British general in command of the occupation, intervened and the college was saved. In 1803, Fanning was granted an honorary degree LL.D..\nStudents.\nAs the only college in Connecticut from 1701 to 1823, Yale educated the sons of the elite. Punishable offenses included cardplaying, tavern-going, destruction of college property, and acts of disobedience. Harvard was distinctive for the stability and maturity of its tutor corps, while Yale had youth and zeal.\nThe emphasis on classics gave rise to private student societies, open only by invitation, which arose as forums for discussions of scholarship, literature and politics. The first were debating societies: Crotonia in 1738, Linonia in 1753 and Brothers in Unity in 1768. Linonia and Brothers in Unity continue to exist; commemorations to them can be found with names given to campus structures, like Brothers in Unity Courtyard in Branford College.\n19th century.\nThe Yale Report of 1828 was a dogmatic defense of the Latin and Greek curriculum against critics who wanted more courses in modern languages, math and science. Unlike higher education in Europe, there was no national curriculum for U.S. colleges and universities. In the competition for students and financial support, college leaders strove to keep current with demands for innovation. At the same time, they realized a significant portion of students and prospective students demanded a classical background. The report meant the classics would not be abandoned. During this period, institutions experimented with changes in the curriculum, often resulting in a dual-track curriculum. In the decentralized environment of U.S. higher education, balancing change with tradition was a common challenge. A group of professors at Yale and New Haven Congregationalist ministers articulated a conservative response to the changes brought by Victorian culture. They concentrated on developing a person possessed of religious values strong enough to sufficiently resist temptations from within, yet flexible enough to adjust to the 'isms' (professionalism, materialism, individualism, and consumerism) tempting them from without. William Graham Sumner, professor from 1872 to 1909, taught in the emerging disciplines of economics and sociology to overflowing classrooms. Sumner bested President Noah Porter, who disliked the social sciences and wanted Yale to lock into its traditions of classical education. Porter objected to Sumner's use of a textbook by Herbert Spencer that espoused agnostic materialism because it might harm students.\nUntil 1887, the legal name of the university was \"The President and Fellows of Yale College, in New Haven\". In 1887, under an act passed by the Connecticut General Assembly, Yale was renamed \"Yale University\".\nSports and debate.\nThe Revolutionary War soldier Nathan Hale (Yale 1773) was the archetype of the Yale ideal in the early 19th\u00a0century: a manly yet aristocratic scholar, well-versed in knowledge and sports, and a patriot who \"regretted\" that he \"had but one life to lose\" for his country. Western painter Frederic Remington (Yale 1900) was an artist whose heroes gloried in the combat and tests of strength in the Wild West. The fictional, turn-of-the-20th-century Yale man Frank Merriwell embodied this same heroic ideal without racial prejudice, and his fictional successor Dink Stover in the novel \"Stover at Yale\" (1912) questioned the business mentality that had become prevalent at the school. Increasingly students turned to athletic stars as their heroes, especially since winning the big game became the goal of the student body, the alumni, and the team itself.\nAlong with Harvard and Princeton, Yale students rejected British concepts about 'amateurism' and constructed athletic programs that were uniquely American. The Harvard\u2013Yale football rivalry began in 1875. Between 1892, when Harvard and Yale met in one of the first intercollegiate debates, and in 1909 (year of the first Triangular Debate of Harvard/Yale/Princeton) the rhetoric, symbolism, and metaphors used in athletics were used to frame these debates. Debates were covered on front pages of college newspapers and emphasized in yearbooks, and team members received the equivalent of athletic letters for their jackets. There were rallies to send off teams to matches, but they never attained the broad appeal athletics enjoyed. One reason may be that debates do not have a clear winner, because scoring is subjective. With late 19th-century concerns about the impact of modern life on the body, athletics offered hope that neither the individual nor society was coming apart.\nIn 1909\u201310, football faced a crisis resulting from the failure of the reforms of 1905\u201306, which sought to solve the problem of serious injuries. There was a mood of alarm and mistrust, and, while the crisis was developing, the presidents of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton developed a project to reform the sport and forestall possible radical changes forced by government. Presidents Arthur Hadley of Yale, A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard, and Woodrow Wilson of Princeton worked to develop moderate reforms to reduce injuries. Their attempts, however, were reduced by rebellion against the rules committee and formation of the Intercollegiate Athletic Association. While the big three had attempted to operate independently of the majority, the changes pushed did reduce injuries.\nExpansion.\nStarting with the addition of the Yale School of Medicine in 1810, the college expanded gradually, establishing the Yale Divinity School in 1822, Yale Law School in 1822, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1847, the now-defunct Sheffield Scientific School in 1847, and the Yale School of Fine Arts in 1869. In 1887, under the presidency of Timothy Dwight V, Yale College was renamed to Yale University, and the former name was applied only to the undergraduate college. The university would continue to expand into the 20th and 21st centuries, adding the Yale School of Music in 1894, the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies in 1900, the Yale School of Public Health in 1915, the Yale School of Architecture in 1916, the Yale School of Nursing 1923, the Yale School of Drama in 1955, the Yale School of Management in 1976, and the Jackson School of Global Affairs in 2022. The Sheffield Scientific School would also reorganize its relationship with the university to teach only undergraduate courses.\nExpansion caused controversy about Yale's new roles. Noah Porter, a moral philosopher, was president from 1871 to 1886. During an age of expansion in higher education, Porter resisted the rise of the new research university, claiming an eager embrace of its ideals would corrupt undergraduate education. Historian George Levesque argues Porter was not a simple-minded reactionary, uncritically committed to tradition, but a principled and selective conservative. Levesque says he did not endorse everything old or reject everything new; rather, he sought to apply long-established ethical and pedagogical principles to a changing culture. Levesque concludes, noting he may have misunderstood some of the challenges, but he correctly anticipated the enduring tensions that have accompanied the emergence of the modern university.\n20th century.\nMedicine.\nMilton Winternitz led the Yale School of Medicine as its dean from 1920 to 1935. Dedicated to the new scientific medicine established in Germany, he was equally fervent about \"social medicine\" and the study of humans in their environment. He established the \"Yale System\" of teaching, with few lectures and fewer exams, and strengthened the full-time faculty system; he created the graduate-level Yale School of Nursing and the psychiatry department and built new buildings. Progress toward his plans for an Institute of Human Relations, envisioned as a refuge where social scientists would collaborate with biological scientists in a holistic study of humankind, lasted only a few years before resentful antisemitic colleagues drove him to resign.\nFaculty.\nBefore World War II, most elite university faculties counted among their numbers few, if any, Jews, blacks, women, or other minorities; Yale was no exception. By 1980, this condition had been altered dramatically, as numerous members of those groups held faculty positions. Almost all members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences\u2014and some members of other faculties\u2014teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually.\nWomen.\nIn 1793, Lucinda Foote passed the entrance exams for Yale College, but was rejected by the president on the basis of her gender. Women studied at Yale from 1892, in graduate-level programs at the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The first seven women to earn PhDs received their degrees in 1894: Elizabeth Deering Hanscom, Cornelia H. B. Rogers, Sara Bulkley Rogers, Margaretta Palmer, Mary Augusta Scott, Laura Johnson Wylie, and Charlotte Fitch Roberts. There is a portrait of them in Sterling Memorial Library, painted by Brenda Zlamany.\nIn 1966, Yale began discussions with its sister school Vassar College about merging to foster coeducation at the undergraduate level. Vassar, then all-female and part of the Seven Sisters\u2014elite higher education schools that served as sister institutions to the Ivy League when nearly all Ivy League institutions still only admitted men\u2014tentatively accepted, but then declined the invitation. Both schools introduced coeducation independently in 1969. Amy Solomon was the first woman to register as a Yale undergraduate; she was the first woman at Yale to join an undergraduate society, St. Anthony Hall. The undergraduate class of 1973 was the first to have women starting from freshman year; all undergraduate women were housed in Vanderbilt Hall.\nA decade into co-education, student assault and harassment by faculty became the impetus for the trailblazing lawsuit \"Alexander v. Yale\". In the 1970s, a group of students and a faculty member sued Yale for its failure to curtail sexual harassment, especially by male faculty. The case was partly built from a 1977 report authored by plaintiff Ann Olivarius, \"A report to the Yale Corporation from the Yale Undergraduate Women's Caucus\". This case was the first to use Title IX to argue and establish that sexual harassment of female students can be considered illegal sex discrimination. The plaintiffs were Olivarius, Ronni Alexander, Margery Reifler, Pamela Price, and Lisa E. Stone. They were joined by Yale classics professor John \"Jack\" J. Winkler. The lawsuit, brought partly by Catharine MacKinnon, alleged rape, fondling, and offers of higher grades for sex by faculty, including Keith Brion, professor of flute and director of bands, political science professor Raymond Duvall, English professor Michael Cooke, and coach of the field hockey team, Richard Kentwell. While unsuccessful in the courts, the legal reasoning changed the landscape of sex discrimination law and resulted in the establishment of Yale's Grievance Board and Women's Center. In 2011 a Title IX complaint was filed against Yale by students and graduates, including editors of Yale's feminist magazine \"Broad Recognition\", alleging the university had a hostile sexual climate. In response, the university formed a Title IX steering committee to address complaints of sexual misconduct. Afterwards, universities and colleges throughout the U.S. also established sexual harassment grievance procedures.\nClass.\nYale instituted policies in the early 20th century designed to maintain the proportion of white Protestants from notable families in the student body (see \"numerus clausus\") and eliminated such preferences, beginning with the class of 1970.\n21st century.\nIn 2006, Yale and Peking University (PKU) established a Joint Undergraduate Program in Beijing, an exchange program allowing Yale students to spend a semester living and studying with PKU honor students. In July 2012, the Yale University-PKU Program ended due to weak participation.\nIn 2007 outgoing Yale President Rick Levin characterized Yale's institutional priorities: \"First, among the nation's finest research universities, Yale is distinctively committed to excellence in undergraduate education. Second, in our graduate and professional schools, as well as in Yale College, we are committed to the education of leaders.\"\nIn 2009, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair picked Yale as one location\u2014the others being Britain's Durham University and Universiti Teknologi Mara\u2014for the Tony Blair Faith Foundation's United States Faith and Globalization Initiative. As of 2009, former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo is the director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and teaches an undergraduate seminar, \"Debating Globalization\". As of 2009, former presidential candidate and DNC chair Howard Dean teaches a residential college seminar, \"Understanding Politics and Politicians\". Also in 2009, an alliance was formed among Yale, University College London, and both schools' affiliated hospital complexes to conduct research focused on the direct improvement of patient care\u2014a field known as translational medicine. President Richard Levin noted that Yale has hundreds of other partnerships across the world, but \"no existing collaboration matches the scale of the new partnership with UCL\". In August 2013, a new partnership with the National University of Singapore led to the opening of Yale-NUS College in Singapore, a joint effort to create a new liberal arts college in Asia featuring a curriculum including Western and Asian traditions.\nIn 2017, having been suggested for decades, Yale University renamed Calhoun College, named for slave owner, anti-abolitionist, and white supremacist Vice President John C. Calhoun. It is now Hopper College, after Grace Hopper.\nIn 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd protests, the #CancelYale tag was used on social media to demand that Elihu Yale's name be removed from Yale University. Much of the support originated from right-wing pundits such as Mike Cernovich and Ann Coulter, who intended to satirize what they perceived as the excesses of cancel culture. Yale spent most of his professional career in the employ of the East India Company (EIC), serving as the governor of the Presidency of Fort St. George in modern-day Chennai. The EIC, including Yale himself, was involved in the Indian Ocean slave trade, though the extent of Yale's involvement in slavery remains debated.\nHis singularly large donation led critics to argue Yale University relied on money derived from slavery for its first scholarships and endowments.\nIn 2020, the U.S. Justice Department sued Yale for alleged discrimination against Asian and white candidates, through affirmative action admission policies. In 2021, under the new Biden administration, the Justice Department withdrew the lawsuit. The group, Students for Fair Admissions, later won a similar lawsuit against Harvard.\nIn April 2024, Yale students joined other campuses across the United States in protests against the Gaza war. The student protestors demanded that Yale University divest from military weapons companies with ties to Israel's war on Gaza. Over 50 people were arrested at protests in and around Beinecke Plaza, and protests continued during the summer and in the new academic year starting September 2024. Undergraduate students \"overwhelmingly\" voted in a December referendum to call for divestment. \nAlumni in politics.\nThe \"Boston Globe\" wrote in 2002 that \"if there's one school that can lay claim to educating the nation's top national leaders over the past three decades, it's Yale\". Yale alumni were represented on the Democratic or Republican ticket in every U.S. presidential election between 1972 and 2004. Yale-educated presidents since the end of the Vietnam War include Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, and major-party nominees include Hillary Clinton (2016), John Kerry (2004), Joseph Lieberman (vice president, 2000), and Sargent Shriver (vice president, 1972). Other alumni who have made serious bids for the presidency include Amy Klobuchar (2020), Tom Steyer (2020), Ben Carson (2016), Howard Dean (2004), Gary Hart (1984 and 1988), Paul Tsongas (1992), Pat Robertson (1988) and Jerry Brown (1976, 1980, 1992).\nSeveral explanations have been offered for Yale's representation since the end of the Vietnam War. Sources note the spirit of campus activism that has existed at Yale since the 1960s, and the intellectual influence of Reverend William Sloane Coffin on future candidates. Yale President Levin attributes the run to Yale's focus on creating \"a laboratory for future leaders\", an institutional priority that began during the tenure of Yale Presidents Alfred Whitney Griswold and Kingman Brewster. Richard H. Brodhead, former dean of Yale College and now president of Duke University, stated: \"We do give very significant attention to orientation to the community in our admissions, and there is a very strong tradition of volunteerism at Yale\". Yale historian Gaddis Smith notes \"an ethos of organized activity\" at Yale during the 20th century that led Kerry to lead the Yale Political Union's Liberal Party, George Pataki the Conservative Party, and Lieberman to manage the \"Yale Daily News\". Camille Paglia points to a history of networking and elitism: \"It has to do with a web of friendships and affiliations built up in school\". CNN suggests that George W. Bush benefited from preferential admissions policies for the \"son and grandson of alumni\", and for a \"member of a politically influential family\". Elisabeth Bumiller and James Fallows credit the culture of community that exists between students, faculty, and administration, which downplays self-interest and reinforces commitment to others.\nDuring the 1988 presidential election, George H. W. Bush (Yale '48) derided Michael Dukakis for having \"foreign-policy views born in Harvard Yard's boutique\". When challenged on the distinction between Dukakis's Harvard connection and his Yale background, he said that, unlike Harvard, Yale's reputation was \"so diffuse, there isn't a symbol, I don't think, in the Yale situation, any symbolism in it\" and said Yale did not share Harvard's reputation for \"liberalism and elitism\". In 2004 Howard Dean stated, \"In some ways, I consider myself separate from the other three (Yale) candidates of 2004. Yale changed so much between the class of '68 and the class of '71. My class was the first class to have women in it; it was the first class to have a significant effort to recruit African Americans. It was an extraordinary time, and in that span of time is the change of an entire generation\".\nAdministration and organization.\nLeadership.\nThe President and Fellows of Yale College, also known as the Yale Corporation, or board of trustees, is the governing body of the university and consists of thirteen standing committees with separate responsibilities outlined in the by-laws. The corporation has 19 members: three \"ex officio\" members, ten successor trustees, and six elected alumni fellows. The university has three major academic components: Yale College (the undergraduate program), the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the twelve professional schools.\nYale's former president Richard C. Levin was, at the time, one of the highest paid university presidents in the United States with a 2008 salary of $. Yale's succeeding president Peter Salovey ranks 40th with a 2020 salary of $.\nThe Yale Provost's Office and similar executive positions have launched several women into prominent university executive positions. In 1977, Provost Hanna Holborn Gray was appointed interim president of Yale and later went on to become president of the University of Chicago, being the first woman to hold either position at each respective school. In 1994, Provost Judith Rodin became the first permanent female president of an Ivy League institution at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2002, Provost Alison Richard became the vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge. In 2003, the dean of the Divinity School, Rebecca Chopp, was appointed president of Colgate University and later went on to serve as the president of Swarthmore College in 2009, and then the first female chancellor of the University of Denver in 2014. In 2004, Provost Dr. Susan Hockfield became the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2004, Dean of the Nursing school, Catherine Gilliss, was appointed the dean of Duke University's School of Nursing and vice chancellor for nursing affairs. In 2007, Deputy Provost H. Kim Bottomly was named president of Wellesley College.\nSimilar examples for men who have served in Yale leadership positions can also be found. In 2004, Dean of Yale College Richard H. Brodhead was appointed as the president of Duke University. In 2008, Provost Andrew Hamilton was confirmed to be the vice chancellor of the University of Oxford.\nStaff and labor unions.\nYale University staff are represented by several different unions. Clerical and technical workers are represented by Local 34, and service and maintenance workers are represented by Local 35, both of the same union affiliate UNITE HERE. Unlike similar institutions, Yale has consistently refused to recognize its graduate student union, Local 33 (another affiliate of UNITE HERE), citing claims that the union's elections were undemocratic and how graduate students are not employees; the move to not recognize the union has been criticized by the American Federation of Teachers. In addition, officers of the Yale University Police Department are represented by the Yale Police Benevolent Association, which affiliated in 2005 with the Connecticut Organization for Public Safety Employees. Yale security officers joined the International Union of Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America in late 2010, even though the Yale administration contested the election. In October 2014, after deliberation, Yale security decided to form a new union, the Yale University Security Officers Association, which has since represented the campus security officers.\nYale has a history of difficult and prolonged labor negotiations, often culminating in strikes. There have been at least eight strikes since 1968, and \"The New York Times\" wrote that Yale has a reputation as having the worst record of labor tension of any university in the U.S. Moreover, Yale has been accused by the AFL\u2013CIO of failing to treat workers with respect, as well as not renewing contracts with professors over involvement in campus labor issues. Yale has responded to strikes with claims over mediocre union participation and the benefits of their contracts.\nCampus.\nYale's central campus in downtown New Haven covers and comprises its main, historic campus and a medical campus adjacent to the Yale\u2013New Haven Hospital. In western New Haven, the university holds of athletic facilities, including the Yale Golf Course. In 2008, Yale purchased the 17-building, former Bayer HealthCare complex in West Haven, Connecticut, the buildings of which are now used as laboratory and research space. Yale also owns seven forests in Connecticut, Vermont, and New Hampshire\u2014the largest of which is the Yale-Myers Forest in Connecticut's Quiet Corner\u2014and nature preserves including Horse Island.\nYale is noted for its largely Collegiate Gothic campus as well as several iconic modern buildings commonly discussed in architectural history survey courses: Louis Kahn's Yale Art Gallery and Center for British Art, Eero Saarinen's Ingalls Rink and Ezra Stiles and Morse Colleges, and Paul Rudolph's Art & Architecture Building. Yale also owns and has restored many noteworthy 19th-century mansions along Hillhouse Avenue, which was considered the most beautiful street in America by Charles Dickens when he visited the United States in the 1840s. In 2011, \"Travel + Leisure\" listed the Yale campus as one of the most beautiful in the United States.\nMany of Yale's buildings were constructed in the Collegiate Gothic architecture style from 1917 to 1931, financed largely by Edward S. Harkness, including the Yale Drama School. Stone sculpture built into the walls of the buildings portray contemporary college personalities, such as a writer, an athlete, a tea-drinking socialite, and a student who has fallen asleep while reading. Similarly, the decorative friezes on the buildings depict contemporary scenes, like a policemen chasing a robber and arresting a prostitute (on the wall of the Law School), or a student relaxing with a mug of beer and a cigarette. The architect, James Gamble Rogers, faux-aged these buildings by splashing the walls with acid, deliberately breaking their leaded glass windows and repairing them in the style of the Middle Ages, and creating niches for decorative statuary but leaving them empty to simulate loss or theft over the ages. In fact, the buildings merely simulate Middle Ages architecture, for though they appear to be constructed of solid stone blocks in the authentic manner, most actually have steel framing as was commonly used in 1930. One exception is Harkness Tower, tall, which was originally a free-standing stone structure. It was reinforced in 1964 to allow the installation of the Yale Memorial Carillon.\nOther examples of the Gothic style are on the Old Campus by architects like Henry Austin, Charles C. Haight and Russell Sturgis. Several are associated with members of the Vanderbilt family, including Vanderbilt Hall, Phelps Hall, St. Anthony Hall (a commission for member Frederick William Vanderbilt), the Mason, Sloane and Osborn laboratories, dormitories for the Sheffield Scientific School (the engineering and sciences school at Yale until 1956) and elements of Silliman College, the largest residential college.\nThe oldest building on campus, Connecticut Hall (built in 1750), is in the Georgian style. Georgian-style buildings erected from 1929 to 1933 include Timothy Dwight College, Pierson College, and Davenport College, except the latter's east, York Street fa\u00e7ade, which was constructed in the Gothic style to coordinate with adjacent structures.\nThe Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, is one of the largest buildings in the world reserved exclusively for the preservation of rare books and manuscripts. The library includes a six-story above-ground tower of book stacks, filled with 180,000 volumes, that is surrounded by large translucent Vermont marble panels and a steel and granite truss. The panels act as windows and subdue direct sunlight while also diffusing the light in warm hues throughout the interior. Near the library is a sunken courtyard with sculptures by Isamu Noguchi that are said to represent time (the pyramid), the sun (the circle), and chance (the cube). The library is located near the center of the university in Hewitt Quadrangle, which is now more commonly referred to as \"Beinecke Plaza\".\nAlumnus Eero Saarinen, Finnish-American architect of such notable structures as the Gateway Arch in St.\u00a0Louis, Washington Dulles International Airport main terminal, Bell Labs Holmdel Complex and the CBS Building in Manhattan, designed Ingalls Rink, dedicated in 1959, as well as the residential colleges Ezra Stiles and Morse. These latter were modeled after the medieval Italian hill town of San Gimignano\u2014a prototype chosen for the town's pedestrian-friendly milieu and fortress-like stone towers. These tower forms at Yale act in counterpoint to the college's many Gothic spires and Georgian cupolas.\nThe athletic field complex is partially in New Haven, and partially in West Haven.\nNotable nonresidential campus buildings.\nNotable nonresidential campus buildings and landmarks include Battell Chapel, Beinecke Rare Book Library, Harkness Tower, Humanities Quadrangle, Ingalls Rink, Kline Biology Tower, Osborne Memorial Laboratories, Payne Whitney Gymnasium, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Sterling Hall of Medicine, Sterling Law Buildings, Sterling Memorial Library, Woolsey Hall, Yale Center for British Art, Yale University Art Gallery, Yale Art & Architecture Building, and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London.\nYale's secret society buildings (some of which are called \"tombs\") were built to be private yet unmistakable. A diversity of architectural styles is represented: Berzelius, Donn Barber in an austere cube with classical detailing (erected in 1908 or 1910); Book and Snake, Louis R. Metcalfe in a Greek Ionic style (erected in 1901); Elihu, architect unknown but built in a Colonial style (constructed on an early 17th-century foundation although the building is from the 18th century); Mace and Chain, in a late colonial, early Victorian style (built in 1823). (Interior moulding is said to have belonged to Benedict Arnold); Manuscript Society, King-lui Wu with Dan Kiley responsible for landscaping and Josef Albers for the brickwork intaglio mural. Building constructed in a mid-century modern style; Scroll and Key, Richard Morris Hunt in a Moorish- or Islamic-inspired Beaux-Arts style (erected 1869\u201370); Skull and Bones, possibly Alexander Jackson Davis or Henry Austin in an Egypto-Doric style utilizing Brownstone (in 1856 the first wing was completed, in 1903 the second wing, 1911 the Neo-Gothic towers in rear garden were completed); St. Elmo, (former tomb) Kenneth M. Murchison, 1912, designs inspired by Elizabethan manor. Current location, brick colonial; and Wolf's Head, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, erected 1923\u20131924, Collegiate Gothic.\nSustainability.\nYale's Office of Sustainability develops and implements sustainability practices at Yale. Yale is committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 10% below 1990 levels by 2020. As part of this commitment, the university allocates renewable energy credits to offset some of the energy used by residential colleges. Eleven campus buildings are candidates for LEED design and certification. Yale Sustainable Food Project initiated the introduction of local, organic vegetables, fruits, and beef to all residential college dining halls. Yale was listed as a Campus Sustainability Leader on the Sustainable Endowments Institute's College Sustainability Report Card 2008, and received a \"B+\" grade overall. Yale is a member of the Ivy Plus Sustainability Consortium, through which it has committed to best-practice sharing and the ongoing exchange of campus sustainability solutions along with other member institutions.\nRelationship with New Haven.\nYale is the largest taxpayer and employer in the City of New Haven, and has often buoyed the city's economy and communities. Yale, however, has consistently opposed paying a tax on its academic property. Yale's Art Galleries, along with many other university resources, are free and openly accessible. Yale also funds the New Haven Promise program, paying full tuition for eligible students from New Haven public schools.\nTown\u2013gown relations.\nYale has a complicated relationship with its home city; for example, thousands of students volunteer every year in myriad community organizations, but city officials, who decry Yale's exemption from local property taxes, have long pressed the university to do more to help. Under President Levin, Yale has financially supported many of New Haven's efforts to reinvigorate the city. Evidence suggests that the town and gown relationships are mutually beneficial. Still, the economic power of the university increased dramatically with its financial success amid a decline in the local economy.\nCampus safety.\nSeveral campus safety strategies have been pioneered at Yale. The first campus police force was founded at Yale in 1894, when the university contracted city police officers to exclusively cover the campus. Later hired by the university, the officers were originally brought in to quell unrest between students and city residents and curb destructive student behavior. In addition to the Yale Police Department, a variety of safety services are available including blue phones, a safety escort, and 24-hour shuttle service.\nIn the 1970s and 1980s, poverty and violent crime rose in New Haven, dampening Yale's student and faculty recruiting efforts. Between 1990 and 2006, New Haven's crime rate fell by half, helped by a community policing strategy by the New Haven Police and Yale's campus became the safest among peer schools.\nIn 2004, the national non-profit watchdog group Security on Campus filed a complaint with the U.S.\u00a0Department of Education, accusing Yale of under-reporting rape and sexual assaults.\nIn April 2021, Yale announced that it will require students to receive a COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of being on campus during the fall 2021 term.\nAcademics.\nAdmissions.\nUndergraduate admission to Yale College is considered \"most selective\" by \"U.S. News\". In 2022, Yale accepted 2,234 students to the Class of 2026 out of 50,015 applicants, for an acceptance rate of 4.46%. 98% of students graduate within six years.\nThrough its program of need-based financial aid, Yale commits to meet the full demonstrated financial need of all applicants, and the university is need-blind for both domestic and international applicants. Most financial aid is in the form of grants and scholarships that do not need to be paid back to the university, and the average need-based aid grant for the Class of 2017 was $. 15% of Yale College students are expected to have no parental contribution, and about 50% receive some form of financial aid. About 16% of the Class of 2013 had some form of student loan debt at graduation, with an average debt of $ among borrowers. For 2019, Yale ranked second in enrollment of recipients of the National Merit $2,500 Scholarship (140 scholars).\nHalf of all Yale undergraduates are women, more than 39% are ethnic minority U.S. citizens (19% are underrepresented minorities), and 10.5% are international students. 55% attended public schools and 45% attended private, religious, or international schools, and 97% of students were in the top 10% of their high school class. Every year, Yale College also admits a small group of non-traditional students through the Eli Whitney Students Program.\nCollections.\nYale University Library, which holds over 15\u00a0million volumes, is the second-largest university collection in the United States. The main library, Sterling Memorial Library, contains about 4\u00a0million volumes, and other holdings are dispersed at subject and location libraries.\nRare books are found in several Yale collections. The Beinecke Rare Book Library has a large collection of rare books and manuscripts. The Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library includes important historical medical texts, including an impressive collection of rare books, as well as historical medical instruments. The Lewis Walpole Library contains the largest collection of 18th\u2011century British literary works. The Elizabethan Club, technically a private organization, makes its Elizabethan folios and first editions available to qualified researchers through Yale.\nYale's museum collections are also of international stature. The Yale University Art Gallery, the country's first university-affiliated art museum, contains more than 200,000 works, including Old Masters and important collections of modern art, in the Swartwout and Kahn buildings. The latter, Louis Kahn's first large-scale American work (1953), was renovated and reopened in December 2006. The Yale Center for British Art, the largest collection of British art outside of the UK, grew from a gift of Paul Mellon and is housed in another Kahn-designed building.\nThe Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven is used by school children and contains research collections in anthropology, archaeology, and the natural environment.\nThe Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments, affiliated with the Yale School of Music, is perhaps the least-known of Yale's collections because its hours of opening are restricted.\nThe museums once housed the artifacts brought to the United States from Peru by Yale history professor Hiram Bingham in his Yale-financed expedition to Machu Picchu in 1912\u2014when the removal of such artifacts was legal. The artifacts were restored to Peru in 2012.\nRankings.\nThe \"U.S. News & World Report\" ranked Yale third among U.S. national universities for 2016, as it had for each of the previous sixteen years. Yale University is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education.\nInternationally, Yale was ranked 11th in the 2016 Academic Ranking of World Universities, tenth in the 2016\u201317 Nature Index for quality of scientific research output, and tenth in the 2016 CWUR World University Rankings. The university was also ranked sixth in the 2016 Times Higher Education (THE) Global University Employability Rankings and eighth in the Academic World Reputation Rankings. In 2019, it ranked 27th among the universities around the world by \"SCImago Institutions Rankings\".\nFaculty, research, and intellectual traditions.\nYale is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU) and is classified among \"R1: Doctoral Universities\u2014Very high research activity\". The National Science Foundation ranked Yale 15th among American universities for research and development expenditures in 2021 with $.\nYale's current faculty include 67 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 55 members of the National Academy of Medicine, 8 members of the National Academy of Engineering, and 187 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The college is, after normalization for institution size, the tenth-largest baccalaureate source of doctoral degree recipients in the United States, and the largest such source within the Ivy League. It also is a top 10 (ranked seventh) baccalaureate source (after normalization for the number of graduates) of some of the most notable scientists (Nobel, Fields, Turing prizes, or membership in National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, or National Academy of Medicine).\nYale's English and Comparative Literature departments were part of the New Criticism movement. Of the New Critics, Robert Penn Warren, W.K. Wimsatt, and Cleanth Brooks were all Yale faculty. Later, the Yale Comparative literature department became a center of American deconstruction. Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, taught at the department of comparative literature from the late 1970s to mid-1980s. Several other Yale faculty members were also associated with deconstruction, forming the so-called \"Yale School\". These included Paul de Man who taught in the Departments of Comparative Literature and French, J.\u00a0Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartman (both taught in the Departments of English and Comparative Literature), and Harold Bloom (English), whose theoretical position was always somewhat specific, and who ultimately took a very different path from the rest of this group. Yale's history department has also originated important intellectual trends. Historians C.\u00a0Vann Woodward and David Brion Davis are credited with beginning in the 1960s and 1970s an important stream of southern historians; likewise, David Montgomery, a labor historian, advised many of the current generation of labor historians in the country. Yale's Music School and department fostered the growth of Music Theory in the latter half of the 20th\u00a0century. The \"Journal of Music Theory\" was founded there in 1957; Allen Forte and David Lewin were influential teachers and scholars.\nSince the late 1960s, Yale produces social sciences and policy research through its Yale Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS).\nIn addition to eminent faculty members, Yale research relies heavily on the presence of roughly 1200 Postdocs from various national and international origin working in the multiple laboratories in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and professional schools of the university. The university progressively recognized this working force with the recent creation of the Office for Postdoctoral Affairs and the Yale Postdoctoral Association.\nCampus life.\nYale is a research university, with the majority of its students in the graduate and professional schools. Undergraduates, or Yale College students, come from a variety of ethnic, national, socioeconomic, and personal backgrounds. Of the 2010\u20132011 freshman class, 10% are non\u2011U.S. citizens, while 54% went to public high schools. The median family income of Yale students is $, with 57% of students coming from the top 10% highest-earning families and 16% from the bottom 60%.\nResidential colleges.\nYale's residential college system was established in 1933 by Edward S. Harkness, who admired the social intimacy of Oxford and Cambridge and donated significant funds to found similar colleges at Yale and Harvard. Though Yale's colleges resemble their English precursors organizationally and architecturally, they are dependent entities of Yale College and have limited autonomy. The colleges are led by a head and an academic dean, who reside in the college, and university faculty and affiliates constitute each college's fellowship. Colleges offer their own seminars, social events, and speaking engagements known as \"Master's Teas\", but do not contain programs of study or academic departments. All other undergraduate courses are taught by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and are open to members of any college.\nAll undergraduates are members of a college, to which they are assigned before their freshman year, and 85 percent live in the college quadrangle or a college-affiliated dormitory. While the majority of upperclassman live in the colleges, most on-campus freshmen live on the Old Campus, the university's oldest precinct.\nWhile Harkness' original colleges were Georgian Revival or Collegiate Gothic in style, two colleges constructed in the 1960s, Morse and Ezra Stiles Colleges, have modernist designs. All twelve college quadrangles are organized around a courtyard, and each has a dining hall, courtyard, library, common room, and a range of student facilities. The twelve colleges are named for important alumni or significant places in university history. In 2017, the university opened two new colleges near Science Hill.\nCalhoun College.\nSince the 1960s, John C. Calhoun's white supremacist beliefs and pro-slavery leadership had prompted calls to rename the college or remove its tributes to Calhoun. The racially motivated church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, led to renewed calls in the summer of 2015 for Calhoun College, one of 12 residential colleges at the time, to be renamed. In July 2015 students signed a petition calling for the name change. They argued in the petition that\u2014while Calhoun was respected in the 19th century as an \"extraordinary American statesman\"\u2014he was \"one of the most prolific defenders of slavery and white supremacy\" in the history of the United States. In August 2015, Yale President Peter Salovey addressed the Freshman Class of 2019 in which he responded to the racial tensions but explained why the college would not be renamed. He described Calhoun as \"a notable political theorist, a vice president to two different U.S. presidents, a secretary of war and of state, and a congressman and senator representing South Carolina\". He acknowledged that Calhoun also \"believed that the highest forms of civilization depend on involuntary servitude. Not only that, but he also believed that the races he thought to be inferior, black people in particular, ought to be subjected to it for the sake of their own best interests.\" Student activism about this issue increased in the fall of 2015, and included further protests sparked by controversy surrounding an administrator's comments on the potential positive and negative implications of students who wear Halloween costumes that are culturally sensitive. Campus-wide discussions expanded to include critical discussion of the experiences of women of color on campus, and the realities of racism in undergraduate life. The protests were sensationalized by the media and led to the labelling of some students as being members of Generation Snowflake.\nIn April 2016, Salovey announced that \"despite decades of vigorous alumni and student protests\", Calhoun's name will remain on the Yale residential college explaining that it is preferable for Yale students to live in Calhoun's \"shadow\" so they will be \"better prepared to rise to the challenges of the present and the future\". He claimed that if they removed Calhoun's name, it would \"obscure\" his \"legacy of slavery rather than addressing it\". \"Yale is part of that history\" and \"We cannot erase American history, but we can confront it, teach it and learn from it.\" One change that will be issued is the title of \"master\" for faculty members who serve as residential college leaders will be renamed to \"head of college\" due to its connotation of slavery.\nDespite this apparently conclusive reasoning, Salovey announced that Calhoun College would be renamed for groundbreaking computer scientist Grace Hopper in February 2017. This renaming decision received a range of responses from Yale students and alumni. In his 2019 book \"Assault on American Excellence\", former Dean of Yale Law School Anthony T. Kronman criticized the title and name changes and the lack of support from Salovey for the Christakises, who were targeted by the student activists. Other members of the university community disagreed with Kronman's positions.\nStudent organizations.\nIn 2024, Yale had 526 registered undergraduate student organizations, plus hundreds of others for graduate students.\nThe university hosts a variety of student journals, magazines, and newspapers. The \"Yale Literary Magazine\", founded in February 1836, is the oldest student literary magazine in the United States. Established in 1872, \"The Yale Record\" is the world's oldest college humor magazine. Newspapers include the \"Yale Daily News\", which was first published in 1878, and the weekly \"Yale Herald\", which was first published in 1986. The \"Yale Journal of Medicine & Law\" is a biannual magazine that explores the intersection of law and medicine.\nDwight Hall, an independent, non-profit community service organization, oversees more than 2,000 Yale undergraduates working on more than 70 community service initiatives in New Haven. The Yale College Council runs several agencies that oversee campus wide activities and student services. The Yale Dramatic Association and Bulldog Productions cater to the theater and film communities, respectively. In addition, the Yale Drama Coalition serves to coordinate between and provide resources for the various Sudler Fund sponsored theater productions which run each weekend. WYBC Yale Radio is the campus's radio station, owned and operated by students. While students used to broadcast on AM and FM frequencies, they now have an Internet-only stream.\nThe Yale College Council (YCC) serves as the campus's undergraduate student government. All registered student organizations are regulated and funded by a subsidiary organization of the YCC, known as the Undergraduate Organizations Funding Committee (UOFC). The Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS) serves as Yale's graduate and professional student government.\nThe Yale Political Union (YPU) is a debate society founded in 1934 to host student discussions on a wide variety of topics. It is advised by alumni political leaders such as John Kerry and George Pataki.\nThe Yale International Relations Association (YIRA) functions as the umbrella organization for the university's top-ranked Model UN team. YIRA also has a Europe-based offshoot, Yale Model Government Europe, other Model UN conferences such as YMUN, YMUN Korea, YMUN Taiwan and Yale Model African Union (YMAU), the Yale Review of International Studies (YRIS), and educational programs such as the Yale International Relations Leadership Institute and Hemispheres.\nThe campus includes several fraternities and sororities. The campus features at least 18 a\u00a0cappella groups, the most famous of which is The Whiffenpoofs, which from its founding in 1909 until 2018 was made up solely of senior men.\nThe Elizabethan Club, a social club, has a membership of undergraduates, graduates, faculty and staff with literary or artistic interests. Membership is by invitation. Members and their guests may enter the \"Lizzie's\" premises for conversation and tea. The club owns first editions of a Shakespeare Folio, several Shakespeare Quartos, and a first edition of Milton's \"Paradise Lost\", among other important literary texts.\nSecret societies.\nYale's secret societies include Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key, Wolf's Head, Book and Snake, Elihu, Berzelius, St.\u00a0Elmo, Manuscript, Brothers in Unity, Linonia, St. Anthony Hall, Shabtai, Myth and Sword, Daughters of Sovereign Government (DSG), Mace and Chain, ISO, Spade and Grave, and Sage and Chalice, among others. The two oldest existing honor societies are the Aurelian (1910) and the Torch Honor Society (1916).\nThese are akin to Harvard finals clubs, Princeton eating clubs, and senior societies at University of Pennsylvania.\nTraditions.\nYale seniors at graduation smash clay pipes underfoot to symbolize passage from their \"bright college years\", though in recent history the pipes have been replaced with \"bubble pipes\". (\"Bright College Years\", the university's alma mater, was penned in 1881 by Henry Durand, Class of 1881, to the tune of \"Die Wacht am Rhein\".) Yale's student tour guides tell visitors that students consider it good luck to rub the toe of the statue of Theodore Dwight Woolsey on Old Campus; however, actual students rarely do so. In the second half of the 20th century Bladderball, a campus-wide game played with a large inflatable ball, became a popular tradition but was banned by administration due to safety concerns. In spite of administration opposition, students revived the game in 2009, 2011, and 2014.\nAthletics.\nYale supports 35 varsity athletic teams that compete in the Ivy League Conference, the Eastern College Athletic Conference, and the New England Intercollegiate Sailing Association. Yale athletic teams compete intercollegiately at the NCAA Division\u00a0I level. Like other members of the Ivy League, Yale does not offer athletic scholarships.\nYale has numerous athletic facilities, including the Yale Bowl (the nation's first natural \"bowl\" stadium, and prototype for such stadiums as the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the Rose Bowl), located at The Walter Camp Field athletic complex, and the Payne Whitney Gymnasium, the second-largest indoor athletic complex in the world.\nIn 1970, the NCAA banned Yale from participating in all NCAA sports for two years, in reaction to Yale\u2014against the wishes of the NCAA\u2014playing its Jewish center Jack Langer in college games after Langer had played for Team United States at the 1969 Maccabiah Games in Israel with the approval of Yale President Kingman Brewster. The decision impacted 300 Yale students, every Yale student on its sports teams, over the next two years.\nIn 2016, the men's basketball team won the Ivy League Championship title for the first time in 54 years, earning a spot in the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. In the first round of the tournament, the Bulldogs beat the Baylor Bears 79\u201375 in the school's first-ever tournament win.\nIn May 2018, the men's lacrosse team defeated the Duke Blue Devils to claim their first-ever NCAA Division I Men's Lacrosse Championship, and were the first Ivy League school to win the title since the Princeton Tigers in 2001.\nYale crew is the oldest collegiate athletic team in America, and won Olympic Games Gold Medal for men's eights in 1924 and 1956. The Yale Corinthian Yacht Club, founded in 1881, is the oldest collegiate sailing club in the world. October 21, 2000, marked the dedication of Yale's fourth new boathouse in 157\u00a0years of collegiate rowing. The Gilder Boathouse is named to honor former Olympic rower Virginia Gilder\u00a0'79 and her father Richard Gilder\u00a0'54, who gave $ towards the $ project. Yale also maintains the Gales Ferry site where the heavyweight men's team trains for the Yale-Harvard Boat Race.\nIn 1896, Yale and Johns Hopkins played the first known ice hockey game in the United States. Since 2006, the school's ice hockey clubs have played a commemorative game.\nYale students claim to have invented Frisbee, by tossing empty Frisbie Pie Company tins.\nYale athletics are supported by the Yale Precision Marching Band. \"Precision\" is used here ironically; the band is a scatter-style band that runs wildly between formations rather than actually marching. The band attends every home football game and many away, as well as most hockey and basketball games throughout the winter.\nYale intramural sports are also a significant aspect of student life. Students compete for their respective residential colleges, fostering a friendly rivalry. The year is divided into fall, winter, and spring seasons, each of which includes about 10 different sports. About half the sports are coeducational. At the end of the year, the residential college with the most points (not all sports count equally) wins the Tyng Cup.\nSong.\nNotable among the songs commonly played and sung at events such as commencement, convocation, alumni gatherings, and athletic games is the alma mater, \"Bright College Years\". Despite its popularity, \"Boola Boola\" is not the official fight song, albeit being the origin of the university's unofficial motto. The official Yale fight song, \"Bulldog\" was written by Cole Porter during his undergraduate days and is sung after touchdowns during a football game. Additionally, two other songs, \"Down the Field\" by C.W. O'Conner, and \"Bingo Eli Yale\", also by Cole Porter, are still sung at football games. According to \"College Fight Songs: An Annotated Anthology\" published in 1998, \"Down the Field\" ranks as the fourth-greatest fight song of all time.\nMascot.\nThe school mascot is \"Handsome Dan\", the Yale bulldog, and the Yale fight song contains the refrain, \"Bulldog, bulldog, bow wow wow\". The school color, since 1894, is Yale Blue. Yale's Handsome Dan is believed to be the first college mascot in America, having been established in 1889.\nMental health.\nYale has faced significant criticism for its handling of student mental health on campus. Suicidal and depressed students say that Yale forced them to medically withdraw rather than provide them with academic accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and in 2018 the Ruderman Family Foundation ranked Yale as having the worst mental health policies in the Ivy League.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nDear Yale, I loved being here. I only wish I could've had some time. I needed time to work things out and to wait for new medication to kick in, but I couldn't do it in school, and I couldn't bear the thought of having to leave for a full year, or of leaving and never being readmitted. Love, Luchang.\nLuchang Wang, posted on Facebook in 2015 shortly before her death\nStudents at Yale say that the university's policies force them to hide their depression and avoid seeking help, for fear of being forced to leave. One prominent case was the suicide of Luchang Wang in 2015, who died by suicide after making a Facebook post saying that she needed time to deal with her mental health issues, but could not deal with being forced to medically withdraw for an entire year with an uncertain chance of being readmitted. Wang had previously withdrawn from school due to mental health issues, and was afraid of being forced to withdraw again, as a second readmission attempt would be considerably more difficult for her. A friend of Wang said that she routinely lied to her university therapist to avoid being kicked out, and another student said that many at Yale lie to their counselors as \"there's no clear standard established that says exactly what students will get involuntarily hospitalized or withdrawn for\". In response, the university convened a commission to evaluate their readmission policies after a mental health withdrawal, renaming the process to \"reinstatement\" as well as eliminating the $ reapplication fee.\nFor students that do seek help, waitlists for therapy can be months long, with individual counselling sessions only 30 minutes in length. In 2022, after a Washington Post article about their medical withdrawal policies, the school increased the number of mental health clinicians on campus from 51 to 60 as well as promised further changes. In 2023, after a lawsuit was filed against the school for what the plaintiffs described as discrimination, the university changed the name of a \"medical withdrawal\" to a \"medical leave of absence\" saying that the \"leave of absence\" terminology would allow students to remain on Yale's insurance while away from the school. The new policy also allowed for students on a leave of absence to participate in extracurricular clubs and visit campus, something a student on medical withdrawal was banned from doing. A representative of Yale also said that the criticism of their policies \"misrepresents our efforts and unwavering commitment to supporting our students, whose well-being and success are our primary focus\" and that \"the mental health of our students is a very, very high priority\".\nAfter the death of undergraduate student Rachael Shaw Rosenbaum by suicide, an organization called Elis for Rachael was formed, advocating for mental health-related reforms. The group has sued Yale, demanding changes.\nNotable people.\nBenefactors.\nYale has had many financial supporters, but some stand out by the magnitude or timeliness of their contributions. Among those who have made large donations commemorated at the university are: Elihu Yale, Jeremiah Dummer, the Vanderbilt family, the Harkness family (Edward, Anna, and William), the Beinecke family (Edwin, Frederick, and Walter), John William Sterling, Payne Whitney, Joseph Earl Sheffield, Paul Mellon, Charles B.\u00a0G. Murphy, Joseph Tsai, William K. Lanman, and Stephen Schwarzman. The Yale Class of 1954, led by Richard Gilder, donated $ in commemoration of their 50th\u00a0reunion. Charles B. Johnson, a 1954 graduate of Yale College, pledged a $ gift in 2013 to support the construction of two new residential colleges. The colleges have been named respectively in honor of Pauli Murray and Benjamin Franklin. A $ contribution by Stephen Adams enabled the Yale School of Music to become tuition-free and the Adams Center for Musical Arts to be built, while a $ contribution by David Geffen enabled the Yale School of Drama (renamed the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale) to become tuition-free as well.\nNotable alumni.\nYale has produced many distinguished alumni in various fields, in both the public and private sectors. According to 2020 data, around 71% of undergraduates join the workforce, while 17% attend graduate or professional schools. Yale graduates have been recipients of 263 Rhodes Scholarships, 123 Marshall Scholarships, 67 Truman Scholarships, 21 Churchill Scholarships, and 9 Mitchell Scholarships. The university is the 2nd largest producer of Fulbright Scholars, with 1,244 in its history and 89 MacArthur Fellows. The U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs ranked Yale fifth among research institutions producing the most 2020\u20132021 Fulbright Scholars. 31 living billionaires are alumni.\nOne of the most popular undergraduate majors is political science, with many going on to serve in government and politics. Former presidents who attended for undergrad include William Howard Taft, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush while former presidents Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton attended Yale Law School. Vice president JD Vance graduated from Yale Law School. Former vice president and influential antebellum era politician John C. Calhoun also graduated from Yale. Former world leaders include Italian prime minister Mario Monti, Turkish prime minister Tansu \u00c7iller, South Korean prime minister Lee Hong-koo, Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, German president Karl Carstens, Philippine president Jos\u00e9 Paciano Laurel, Latvian president Valdis Zatlers, Taiwanese premier Jiang Yi-huah, and Malawian president Peter Mutharika, among others. Prominent royals who graduated are Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, and Olympia Bonaparte, Princess Napol\u00e9on.\nAlumni have had considerable presence in U.S. government in all three branches. On the U.S. Supreme Court, 19 justices have been alumni, including current Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh. Alumni have been U.S. Senators, including current senators Michael Bennet, Richard Blumenthal, Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown, Chris Coons, Amy Klobuchar, Sheldon Whitehouse. Current and former cabinet members include Secretaries of State John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Cyrus Vance, and Dean Acheson; U.S. Secretaries of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, Robert Rubin, Nicholas F. Brady, Steven Mnuchin, and Janet Yellen; U.S. Attorneys General Nicholas Katzenbach, Edwin Meese, John Ashcroft, and Edward H. Levi; and many others. Peace Corps founder and American diplomat Sargent Shriver and public official and urban planner Robert Moses are Yale alumni.\nYale has produced numerous award-winning authors and influential writers, like Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Sinclair Lewis and Pulitzer Prize winners Stephen Vincent Ben\u00e9t, Thornton Wilder, Doug Wright, and David McCullough. Academy Award winning actors, actresses, and directors include Jodie Foster, Paul Newman, Meryl Streep, Elia Kazan, George Roy Hill, Lupita Nyong'o, Oliver Stone, and Frances McDormand. Alumni from Yale have also made notable contributions to both music and the arts. Leading American composer from the 20th century Charles Ives, Broadway composer Cole Porter, Grammy award winner David Lang, multi-Tony Award winner Composer and Musicologist Maury Yeston, and award-winning jazz pianist and composer Vijay Iyer all hail from Yale. Hugo Boss Prize winner Matthew Barney, famed American sculptor Richard Serra, President Barack Obama presidential portrait painter Kehinde Wiley, MacArthur Fellows and contemporary artists Tschabalala Self, Titus Kaphar, Richard Whitten, and Sarah Sze, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Garry Trudeau, and National Medal of Arts photorealist painter Chuck Close all graduated from Yale. Additional alumni include architect and Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Maya Lin, Pritzker Prize winner Norman Foster, and Gateway Arch designer Eero Saarinen. Journalists and pundits include Dick Cavett, Chris Cuomo, Anderson Cooper, William F. Buckley Jr., Blake Hounshell, and Fareed Zakaria.\nIn business, Yale has had numerous alumni and former students go on to become founders of influential business, like William Boeing (Boeing, United Airlines), Briton Hadden and Henry Luce (\"Time Magazine\"), Stephen A. Schwarzman (Blackstone Group), Frederick W. Smith (FedEx), Juan Trippe (Pan Am), Harold Stanley (Morgan Stanley), Bing Gordon (Electronic Arts), and Ben Silbermann (Pinterest). Other business people from Yale include former chairman and CEO of Sears Holdings Edward Lampert, former Time Warner president Jeffrey Bewkes, former PepsiCo chairperson and CEO Indra Nooyi, sports agent Donald Dell, and investor/philanthropist Sir John Templeton,\nAlumni distinguished in academia include literary critic and historian Henry Louis Gates, economists Irving Fischer, Mahbub ul Haq, and Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman; Nobel Prize in Physics laureates Ernest Lawrence and Murray Gell-Mann; Fields Medalist John G. Thompson; Human Genome Project leader and National Institutes of Health director Francis S. Collins; brain surgery pioneer Harvey Cushing; pioneering computer scientist Grace Hopper; influential mathematician and chemist Josiah Willard Gibbs; National Women's Hall of Fame inductee and biochemist Florence B. Seibert; Turing Award recipient Ron Rivest; inventors Samuel F.B. Morse and Eli Whitney; Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate John B. Goodenough; lexicographer Noah Webster; and theologians Jonathan Edwards and Reinhold Niebuhr.\nIn the sporting arena, alumni include baseball players Ron Darling and Craig Breslow who in the major leagues played with fellow Yale alum Ryan Lavarnway and baseball executives Theo Epstein and George Weiss; football players Calvin Hill, Gary Fenick, Amos Alonzo Stagg, and \"the Father of American Football\" Walter Camp; ice hockey players Chris Higgins and Olympian Helen Resor; Olympic figure skating champions Sarah Hughes and Nathan Chen; nine-time U.S. Squash men's champion Julian Illingworth; Olympic swimmer Don Schollander; Olympic rowers Josh West and Rusty Wailes; Olympic sailor Stuart McNay; Olympic runner Frank Shorter; and others.\nIn fiction and popular culture.\nYale University is a cultural referent as an institution that produces some of the most elite members of society and its grounds, alumni, and students have been prominently portrayed in fiction and U.S. popular culture. For example, Owen Johnson's novel \"Stover at Yale\" follows the college career of Dink Stover, and Frank Merriwell, the model for all later juvenile sports fiction, plays football, baseball, crew, and track at Yale while solving mysteries and righting wrongs. Yale University also is mentioned in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel \"The Great Gatsby\". The narrator, Nick Carraway, wrote a series of editorials for the \"Yale News\", and Tom Buchanan was \"one of the most powerful ends that ever played football\" for Yale.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["6072259", "34273", "53825"], "permutation_1": ["34273", "6072259", "53825"], "permutation_2": ["53825", "34273", "6072259"], "permutation_3": ["34273", "53825", "6072259"]}
{"id": "3hop1__159612_22372_8206", "docs_added": {"49749": "Bern\nFederal city of Switzerland\nBern (), or Berne (), is the \"de facto\" capital of Switzerland, referred to as the \"federal city\". With a population of about 146,000 (as of 2024[ [update]]), Bern is the fifth-most populous city in Switzerland, behind Z\u00fcrich, Geneva, Basel and Lausanne. The Bern agglomeration, which includes 36 municipalities, had a population of 406,900 in 2014. The metropolitan area had a population of 660,000 in 2000.\nBern is also the capital of the canton of Bern, the second-most populous of Switzerland's cantons. The official language is German, but the main spoken language is the local variant of the Alemannic Swiss German dialect, Bernese German. In 1983, the historic old town (in ) in the centre of Bern became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is notably surrounded by the Aare, a major river of the Swiss Plateau.\nAlthough fortified settlements were established since antiquity, the medieval city proper was founded by the Z\u00e4hringer ruling family, probably in 1191 by Berthold V, Duke of Z\u00e4hringen. Bern was made a free imperial city in 1218 and, in 1353, it joined the Swiss Confederacy, becoming one of its eight early cantons. Since then, Bern became a large city-state and a prominent actor of Swiss history by pursuing a policy of sovereign territorial expansion. Since the 15th century, the city was progressively rebuilt and acquired its current characteristics. Bern was made the Federal City in 1848. From about 5,000 inhabitants in the 15th century, the city passed the 100,000 mark in the 1920s.\nEtymology.\nThe etymology of the name \"Bern\" is uncertain. According to the local legend, based on folk etymology, Berthold V, Duke of Z\u00e4hringen, the founder of the city of Bern, vowed to name the city after the first animal he met on the hunt, and this turned out to be a bear. It has long been considered likely that the city was named after the Italian city of Verona, which at the time was known as \"Bern\" in Middle High German. The city was sometimes referred to as \"Bern im \u00dcechtland\" to distinguish it from Verona. As a result of the finding of the Bern zinc tablet in the 1980s, it is now more common to assume that the city was named after a pre-existing toponym of Celtic origin, possibly \"*berna\" \"cleft\". The bear was the heraldic animal of the seal and coat of arms of Bern from at least the 1220s. The earliest reference to the keeping of live bears in the \"B\u00e4rengraben\" dates to the 1440s.\nHistory.\nEarly history.\nNo archaeological evidence that indicates a settlement on the site of today's city centre prior to the 12th century has been found so far. In antiquity, a Celtic \"oppidum\" stood on the \"Engehalbinsel\" (peninsula) north of Bern, fortified since the second century BC (late La T\u00e8ne period), thought to be one of the 12 \"oppida\" of the Helvetii mentioned by Caesar. During the Roman era, a Gallo-Roman \"vicus\" was on the same site. The Bern zinc tablet has the name \"Brenodor\" (\"dwelling of Breno\"). In the Early Middle Ages, a settlement in B\u00fcmpliz, now a city district of Bern, was some from the medieval city.\nThe medieval city is a foundation of the Z\u00e4hringer ruling family, which rose to power in Upper Burgundy in the 12th century. According to 14th-century historiography (\"Cronica de Berno\", 1309), Bern was founded in 1191 by Berthold V, Duke of Z\u00e4hringen.\nIn 1218, after Berthold died without an heir, Bern was made a free imperial city by the \"Goldene Handfeste\" of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II.\nOld Swiss Confederacy.\nIn 1353, Bern joined the Swiss Confederacy, becoming the eighth canton of the formative period of 1353 to 1481.\nBern invaded and conquered Aargau in 1415 and Vaud in 1536, as well as other smaller territories, thereby becoming the largest city-state north of the Alps. By the 18th century, it comprised most of what is today the canton of Bern and the canton of Vaud.\nThe city grew out towards the west of the boundaries of the peninsula formed by the river Aare. The \"Zytglogge\" tower marked the western boundary of the city from 1191 until 1256, when the \"K\u00e4figturm\" took over this role until 1345. It was succeeded by the \"Christoffelturm\" (formerly located closer to the site of the modern-day railway station) until 1622. During the Thirty Years' War, two new fortifications \u2013 the so-called big and small \"Schanze\" (entrenchments) \u2013 were built to protect the whole area of the peninsula.\nAfter a major blaze in 1405, the city's original wooden buildings were gradually replaced by half-timbered houses, and subsequently the sandstone buildings which came to be characteristic for the Old Town. Despite waves of pestilence that hit Europe in the 14th century, the city continued to grow, mainly due to immigration from the surrounding countryside.\nDuring the 18th century, the city of Bern was at one point the largest shareholder in the South Sea Company, a British joint-stock company which was involved in the Atlantic slave trade. From 1689 to 3 March 1798 in the town was printed, in French, the biweekly newspaper \"Gazette de Berne\", which reflected the opinions of Bern, usually hostile to the politics of Pre-revolutionary France.\nModern history.\nBern was occupied by French troops in 1798 during the French Revolutionary Wars, when it was stripped of parts of its territories. It regained control of the Bernese Oberland in 1802, and following the Congress of Vienna of 1814, it newly acquired the Bernese Jura. At this time, it once again became the largest canton of the Confederacy as it stood during the Restoration and until the secession of the canton of Jura in 1979.\nOn 28 November 1848, during the revolutions that year, a majority of the new Swiss Federal Assembly deputies chose Bern as the Federal City (seat of the government) of the newly created Swiss federal state, ahead of Z\u00fcrich and Lucerne. Bern was chosen as not to concentrate all the power in the economic powerhouse of Z\u00fcrich, while Catholic and conservative Lucerne had been part of the Sonderbund during the war a year before. In addition, Bern had a more central location and was supported by the French-speaking cantons due to proximity to them. However, the constitution doesn't define Bern as official capital of Switzerland, but as the seat of government.\nA number of congresses of the socialist First and Second Internationals were held in Bern, particularly during World War I when Switzerland was neutral; see Bern International.\nThe city's population rose from about 5,000 in the 15th century to about 12,000 by 1800 and to above 60,000 by 1900, passing the 100,000 mark during the 1920s. Population peaked during the 1960s at 165,000 and has since decreased slightly, to below 130,000 by 2000. As of September 2017, the resident population stood at 142,349, of which 100,000 were Swiss citizens and 42,349 (31%) resident foreigners. A further estimated 350,000 people live in the immediate urban agglomeration.\nGeography and climate.\nTopography.\nBern lies on the Swiss plateau in the canton of Bern, slightly west of the centre of Switzerland and north of the Bernese Alps. The countryside around Bern was formed by glaciers during the most recent ice age. The two mountains closest to Bern are Gurten with a height of and Bantiger with a height of . The site of the old observatory in Bern is the point of origin of the CH1903 coordinate system at .\nThe city was originally built on a hilly peninsula surrounded by the river Aare, but outgrew natural boundaries by the 19th century. A number of bridges have been built to allow the city to expand beyond the Aare.\nBern is built on very uneven ground. An elevation difference of up to 60 metres exists between the inner city districts on the Aare (Matte, Marzili) and the higher ones (Kirchenfeld, L\u00e4nggasse).\nBern has an area, as of 2013[ [update]], of . Of this area, or 18.2% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 33.3% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 46.0% is settled (buildings or roads), or 2.1% is either rivers or lakes, and or 0.3% is unproductive land.\nOf the developed area of Bern, 3.1% consists of industrial buildings, 22.3% housing and other buildings, and 12.9% is devoted to transport infrastructure. Power and water infrastructure, as well as other special developed areas, made up 1.2% of the city, while another 6.5% consists of parks, green belts, and sports fields.\nOf Bern's total land area, 32.8% is heavily forested. Of the agricultural land, 13.3% is used for growing crops and 4.4% is designated to be used as pasture. Local rivers and streams provide all the water in the municipality.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen Climate Classification, Bern has an oceanic climate (\"Cfb\") closely bordering on a humid continental climate (\"Dfb\").\nThe closest weather station near Bern is located in the municipality of Zollikofen, about north of the city centre. The warmest month for Bern is July, with a daily mean temperature of , and a daily maximum temperature of . The highest temperature recorded at Bern / Zollikofen is , recorded in August 2003. On average, a temperature of or above is recorded 40.7 days per year, and 6 days per year with a temperature of or above at Zollikofen, and the warmest day reaches an average of .\nThere are 103.7 days of air frost, and 22.3 ice days per year at Bern (Zollikofen) for the period of 1981\u20132010, as well as 14.1 days of snowfall, 36.7 days of snow cover per year and the average amount of snow measured per year is . On average, January is the coldest month, with a daily mean temperature of , and a daily minimum temperature of . The lowest temperature ever recorded at Bern (Zollikofen) was , recorded in February 1929, and typically the coldest temperature of the year reaches an average of for the period of 1981\u20132010.\nPolitics.\nSubdivisions.\nThe municipality is administratively subdivided into six districts (\"Stadtteile\"), each of which consists of several quarters (\"Quartiere\").\nGovernment.\nThe Municipal Council (de: Gemeinderat, fr: conseil municipal) constitutes the executive government of the City of Bern and operates as a collegiate authority. It is composed of five councillors (, ), each presiding over a directorate (de: \"Direktion\", fr: \"direction\") comprising several departments and bureaus. The president of the executive department acts as mayor (de: \"Stadtpr\u00e4sident/-pr\u00e4sidentin\", fr: \"Le Maire\"). In the mandate period (\"Legislatur\") 2025\u20132028, the Municipal Council is presided by \"Stadtpr\u00e4sidentin\" Marieke Kruit. Departmental tasks, coordination measures and implementation of laws decreed by the City Council are carried by the Municipal Council. The regular election of the Municipal Council by any inhabitant valid to vote is held every four years. Any resident of Bern allowed to vote can be elected as a member of the Municipal Council. Contrary to most other municipalities, the executive government in Bern is selected by means of a system of Proporz. The mayor is elected as such as well by public election while the heads of the other directorates are assigned by the collegiate. The executive body holds its meetings in the Erlacherhof, built by architect Albrecht St\u00fcrler after 1747.\nAs of 2025[ [update]], Bern's Municipal Council is made up of two representatives of the SP (Social Democratic Party), and one each of GFL (\"Gr\u00fcne Freie Liste\" a.k.a. Green Free List), GB (Green Alliance of Bern) and GLP (Green Liberal Party), giving the left parties a very strong majority of four out of five seats. The last regular election was held on 24 November 2024.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nDr. Claudia Mannhart is City Chronicler (\"Stadtschreiberin\"). She was elected by the Municipal Council in 2021.\nParliament.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nThe City Council (de: Stadtrat, fr: Conseil de ville) holds legislative power. It is made up of 80 members, with elections held every four years. The City Council decrees regulations and by-laws that are executed by the Municipal Council and the administration. The delegates are selected by means of a system of proportional representation.\nThe sessions of the City Council are public. Unlike members of the Municipal Council, members of the City Council are not politicians by profession, and they are paid a fee based on their attendance. Any resident of Bern allowed to vote can be elected as a member of the City Council. The parliament holds its meetings in the \"Stadthaus\" (Town Hall).\nThe last regular election of the City Council was held on 29 November 2020 for the mandate period (, ) from 2021 to 2024. The City Council consist of 23 (-1) members of the Social Democratic Party (SP/PS) including two seats by the junior party \"JUSO\", 11 (+3) Green Liberal Party (glp/pvl) including two member of its junior party \"jglp\", 10 (+1) Green Alliance of Bern (GB), 8 (-1) The Liberals (FDP/PLR) including one seat by its junior partner \"JF / DL\", 7 (-2) Swiss People's Party (SVP/UDC), 7 (-1) \"Gr\u00fcne Freie Liste (GFL)\" (Green Free List), 3 (+1) \"Junge Alternative (JA!)\" (or Young Alternatives), 3 (+1) Alternative Linke Bern (AL), 2 (-1) Conservative Democratic Party (BDP/PBD), 2 (-) Christian Democratic People's Party (CVP/PDC), 2 (-) Evangelical People's Party (EVP/PEV), 1 (-) Swiss Party of Labour (PdA), and 1 \"Gr\u00fcne alternative Partei (GaP)\" (or Green alternative Party).\nNational elections.\nNational Council.\nIn the 2019 federal election for the Swiss National Council the most popular party was the PS which received 28.7% (-5.6) of the vote. The next five most popular parties were the Green Party (25.2%, +7.9), the pvl (13.5%, +4.1), the UDC (9.5%, -2.9), PLR (4.2%, -2.8), and the BDP/PBD (7.0%). In the federal election a total of 49,030 votes were cast, and the voter turnout was 56%.\nIn the 2015 federal election for the Swiss National Council the most popular party was the PS which received 34.3% of the vote. The next five most popular parties were the Green Party (17.4%), the UDC (12.4%), and the FDP/PLR (9.9%), glp/pvl (9.4%), and the BDP/PBD (7.0%). In the federal election, a total of 48,556 voters were cast, and the voter turnout was 56.0%.\nInternational relations.\nTwin and sister cities.\nThe Municipal Council of the city of Bern decided against having twinned cities except for a temporary (during the UEFA Euro 2008) cooperation with the Austrian city Salzburg.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>Bern has a population (as of December 2020[ [update]]) of . About 34% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the 10 years between 2000 and 2010, the population changed at a rate of 0.6%. Migration accounted for 1.3%, while births and deaths accounted for \u22122.1%.\nMost of the population (as of 2000[ [update]]) speaks German (104,465 or 81.2%) as their first language, Italian is the second most common (5,062 or 3.9%) and French is the third (4,671 or 3.6%). There are 171 people who speak Romansh.\nAs of 2008[ [update]], the population was 47.5% male and 52.5% female. The population was made up of 44,032 Swiss men (35.4% of the population) and 15,092 (12.1%) non-Swiss men. There were 51,531 Swiss women (41.4%) and 13,726 (11.0%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality, 39,008 or about 30.3% were born in Bern and lived there in 2000. There were 27,573 or 21.4% who were born in the same canton, while 25,818 or 20.1% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 27,812 or 21.6% were born outside of Switzerland.\nAs of 2000[ [update]], children and teenagers (0\u201319 years old) make up 15.1% of the population, while adults (20\u201364 years old) make up 65% and seniors (over 64 years old) make up 19.9%.\nAs of 2000[ [update]], there were 59,948 people who were single and never married in the municipality. There were 49,873 married individuals, 9,345 widows or widowers and 9,468 individuals who are divorced.\nAs of 2000[ [update]], there were 67,115 private households in the municipality, and an average of 1.8 persons per household. There were 34,981 households that consist of only one person and 1,592 households with five or more people. In 2000[ [update]], a total of 65,538 apartments (90.6% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 5,352 apartments (7.4%) were seasonally occupied and 1,444 apartments (2.0%) were empty. As of 2009[ [update]], the construction rate of new housing units was 1.2 new units per 1000 residents.\nAs of 2003[ [update]] the average price to rent an average apartment in Bern was 1108.92 Swiss francs (CHF) per month (US$890, \u00a3500, \u20ac710 approx. exchange rate from 2003). The average rate for a one-room apartment was 619.82 CHF (US$500, \u00a3280, \u20ac400), a two-room apartment was about 879.36 CHF (US$700, \u00a3400, \u20ac560), a three-room apartment was about 1040.54 CHF (US$830, \u00a3470, \u20ac670) and a six or more room apartment cost an average of 2094.80 CHF (US$1680, \u00a3940, \u20ac1340). The average apartment price in Bern was 99.4% of the national average of 1116 CHF. The vacancy rate for the municipality, in 2010[ [update]], was 0.45%.\nHistoric population.\nThe historical population is given in the following chart:\nReligion.\nFrom the 2000 census[ [update]], 60,455 or 47.0% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church, while 31,510 or 24.5% were members of the Catholic Church. Of the rest of the population, there were 1,874 members of an Orthodox church (or about 1.46% of the population), there were 229 persons (or about 0.18% of the population) who belonged to the Christ Catholic Church, and there were 5,531 persons (or about 4.30% of the population) who belonged to another Christian religion. There were 324 persons (or about 0.25% of the population) who were Jewish, and 4,907 (or about 3.81% of the population) who were Muslim. There were 629 persons who were Buddhist, 1,430 persons who were Hindu and 177 persons who belonged to another religion. 16,363 (or about 12.72% of the population) belonged to no religion, are agnostic or atheist, and 7,855 persons (or about 6.11% of the population) did not answer the question. On 14 December 2014 the Haus der Religionen was inaugurated.\nMain sights.\nThe structure of Bern's city centre is largely medieval and has been recognised by UNESCO as a Cultural World Heritage Site. Perhaps its most famous sight is the \"Zytglogge\" (Bernese German for \"Time Bell\"), an elaborate medieval clock tower with moving puppets. It also has an impressive 15th century Gothic cathedral, the \"M\u00fcnster\", and a 15th-century town hall. Thanks to of arcades, the old town boasts one of the longest covered shopping promenades in Europe.\nSince the 16th century, the city has had a bear pit, the \"B\u00e4rengraben\", at the far end of the Nydeggbr\u00fccke to house its heraldic animals. The four bears are now kept in an open-air enclosure nearby, and two other young bears, a present by the Russian president, are kept in D\u00e4hlh\u00f6lzli zoo.\nThe Federal Palace (Bundeshaus), built from 1857 to 1902, which houses the national parliament, government and part of the federal administration, can also be visited.\nAlbert Einstein lived in a flat at the Kramgasse 49, the site of the Einsteinhaus, from 1903 to 1905, the year in which the \"Annus Mirabilis\" papers were published.\nThe Rose Garden (\"Rosengarten\"), from which a scenic panoramic view of the medieval town centre can be enjoyed, is a well-kept Rosarium on a hill, converted into a park from a former cemetery in 1913.\nThere are eleven Renaissance allegorical statues on public fountains in the Old Town. Nearly all the 16th-century fountains, except the Z\u00e4hringer fountain, which was created by Hans Hiltbrand, are the work of the Fribourg master Hans Gieng. One of the more interesting fountains is the Kindlifresserbrunnen (Bernese German: \"Child Eater Fountain\"), which is claimed to represent a Jew, the Greek god Chronos, or a Fastnacht figure meant to frighten disobedient children.\nBern's most recent sight is the set of fountains in front of the Federal Palace. It was inaugurated on 1 August 2004.\nThe Universal Postal Union is situated in Bern.\nHeritage sites of national significance.\nBern is home to 114 Swiss heritage sites of national significance.\nIt includes the entire Old Town, which is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and many sites within and around it. Some of the most notable in the Old Town include the Cathedral which was started in 1421 and is the tallest cathedral in Switzerland, the Zytglogge and K\u00e4figturm towers, which mark two successive expansions of the Old Town, and the Holy Ghost Church, which is one of the largest Swiss Reformed churches in Switzerland. Within the Old Town, there are eleven 16th-century fountains, most attributed to Hans Gieng, that are on the list.\nOutside the Old Town the heritage sites include the B\u00e4rengraben, the Gewerbeschule Bern (1937), the Eidgen\u00f6ssisches Archiv f\u00fcr Denkmalpflege, the Kirchenfeld mansion district (after 1881), the Thunplatzbrunnen, the Federal Mint building, the Federal Archives, the Swiss National Library, the Historical Museum (1894), Alpine Museum, Museum of Communication and Natural History Museum.\nCulture.\nCinemas.\nBern has several dozen cinemas. As is customary in German Switzerland, films are generally in German. Some films in select cinemas are shown in their original language with German and French subtitles.\nMusic events.\nThe \"Musikpreis des Kantons Bern\" is an annual musical event where \"Outstanding musicians which styles shape the Bern music scene\" are honored.\nSports.\nBern was the site of the 1954 FIFA World Cup Final, in which West Germany upset the Hungarian Golden Team 3\u20132. The football team BSC Young Boys is based in Bern at the Stadion Wankdorf, which also was one of the venues for the 2008 UEFA European Championship, in which it hosted three matches.\nFC Breitenrain Bern, founded in 1994, also play in Bern.\nSC Bern is the major ice hockey team of Bern which plays in the PostFinance Arena. They compete in the National League (NL), the highest league in Switzerland. The team has ranked highest in attendance for a European hockey team for more than a decade. PostFinance Arena was the main host of the 2009 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship, including the opening game and the final of the tournament.\nPostFinance Arena was also the host of the 2011 European Figure Skate Championships.\nBern Cardinals is the baseball and softball team of Bern, which plays at the Allmend.\nBern Grizzlies is the American football club in Bern (since 1985) and plays in the top level Nationalliga A (American football) at Athletics Arena Wankdorf. The Grizzlies have been Swiss Bowl champion six times.\nBern was a candidate to host the 2010 Winter Olympics, but withdrew its bid in September 2002 after a referendum was passed that showed that the bid was not supported by locals. Those games were eventually awarded to Vancouver, British Columbia.\nRC Bern is the local rugby club (since 1972) and plays at the Allmend. The ladies team was founded in 1995.\nThe locality of Bremgartenwald was home to the Bremgarten Circuit, the Grand Prix motor racing course that at one time hosted the Swiss Grand Prix.\nBern Bears is an NGO Basketball Club since 2010 in city of Bern.\nThe Swiss Grand Prix was held on the Circuit Bremgarten street track from 1950 to 1954, with MotoGP also running their Swiss motorcycle Grand Prix from 1949 to 1954. The circuit eventually fell into disrepair after Switzerland banned motorsports after the 1955 Le Mans Disaster, but they made an amendment in 2015 to host electric racing, which is how the Swiss ePrix happened in 2019.\nEconomy.\nAs of \u00a02010[ [update]], Bern had an unemployment rate of 3.3%. As of 2008[ [update]], there were 259 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 59 businesses involved in this sector. 16,413 people were employed in the secondary sector and there were 950 businesses in this sector. 135,973 people were employed in the tertiary sector, with 7,654 businesses in this sector.\nIn 2008[ [update]] the total number of full-time equivalent jobs was 125,037. The number of jobs in the primary sector was 203, of which 184 were in agriculture and 19 were in forestry or lumber production. The number of jobs in the secondary sector was 15,476 of which 7,650 or (49.4%) were in manufacturing, 51 or (0.3%) were in mining and 6,389 (41.3%) were in construction. The number of jobs in the tertiary sector was 109,358. In the tertiary sector; 11,396 or 10.4% were in wholesale or retail sales or the repair of motor vehicles, 10,293 or 9.4% were in the movement and storage of goods, 5,090 or 4.7% were in a hotel or restaurant, 7,302 or 6.7% were in the information industry, 8,437 or 7.7% were the insurance or financial industry, 10,660 or 9.7% were technical professionals or scientists, 5,338 or 4.9% were in education and 17,903 or 16.4% were in health care.\nIn 2000[ [update]], there were 94,367 workers who commuted into the municipality and 16,424 workers who commuted away. The municipality is a net importer of workers, with about 5.7 workers entering the municipality for every one leaving. Of the working population, 50.6% used public transport to get to work, and 20.6% used a private car.\nEducation.\nThe University of Bern, whose buildings are mainly located in the \"L\u00e4nggasse\" quarter, is located in Bern, as well as the University of Applied Sciences (\"Fachhochschule\") and several vocations schools.\nIn Bern, about 50,418 or (39.2%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 24,311 or (18.9%) have completed additional higher education (either university or a \"Fachhochschule\"). Of the 24,311 who completed tertiary schooling, 51.6% were Swiss men, 33.0% were Swiss women, 8.9% were non-Swiss men and 6.5% were non-Swiss women.\nThe canton of Bern school system provides one year of non-obligatory kindergarten, followed by six years of primary school. This is followed by three years of obligatory lower secondary school where the pupils are separated according to ability and aptitude. Following the lower secondary pupils may attend additional schooling or they may enter an apprenticeship.\nDuring the 2009\u201310 school year, there were a total of 10,979 pupils attending classes in Bern. There were 89 kindergarten classes with a total of 1,641 pupils in the municipality. Of the kindergarten pupils, 32.4% were permanent or temporary residents of Switzerland (not citizens) and 40.2% have a different mother language than the classroom language. The municipality had 266 primary classes and 5,040 pupils. Of the primary pupils, 30.1% were permanent or temporary residents of Switzerland (not citizens) and 35.7% have a different mother language than the classroom language. During the same year, there were 151 lower secondary classes with a total of 2,581 pupils. There were 28.7% who were permanent or temporary residents of Switzerland (not citizens) and 32.7% have a different mother language than the classroom language.\nNotable schools in Bern include Gymnasium Neufeld.\nBern is home to 8 libraries. These libraries include; the Schweiz. Nationalbibliothek/ Biblioth\u00e8que nationale suisse, the \"Universit\u00e4tsbibliothek Bern\", the \"Kornhausbibliotheken Bern\", the \"BFH Wirtschaft und Verwaltung Bern\", the \"BFH Gesundheit\", the \"BFH Soziale Arbeit\", the \"Hochschule der K\u00fcnste Bern, Gestaltung und Kunst\" and the \"Hochschule der K\u00fcnste Bern, Musikbibliothek\". There was a combined total (as of 2008[ [update]]) of 10,308,336 books or other media in the libraries, and in the same year a total of 2,627,973 items were loaned out.\nAs of 2000[ [update]], there were 9,045 pupils in Bern who came from another municipality, while 1,185 residents attended schools outside the municipality.\nTransport.\nPublic transport.\nBern is served by a dense network of trains, trams, trolleybuses, and conventional motorbuses. The Bern S-Bahn is Switzerland's second busiest.\nBern is the centre of the Libero tariff network, which covers the cantons of Bern and Solothurn and includes the towns of Biel/Bienne, Solothurn, and Thun. The network allows easy and coordinated travel on all modes of public transport, such as trains, PostAuto buses, trams, buses (trolleybuses and motorbuses) and others, regardless of transport operator. Fares are based on the number of zones in a journey. The central part of Bern, (excluding \"B\u00fcmpliz\", \"Betlehem\", \"Bottigen\", \"Br\u00fcnnen\", and \"Riedbach\" in the west of the municipality), is part of the fare zone \"100\".\nThe city is well served by railways, with the extensive S-Bahn network and many regional and international connections. Bern's central railway station (\"Bahnhof Bern\") is Switzerland's second busiest station (164,800 passengers per weekday in 2022), and is the main transport hub in the region.\nA funicular railway called the Marzilibahn leads from the \"Marzili\" district to the Federal Palace. With a length of , it is the second shortest public railway in Europe after the Zagreb funicular.\nRoad traffic.\nSeveral Aare bridges connect the old parts of the city with the newer districts outside of the peninsula.\nBern is well connected to other cities by several motorways (A1, A12, A6).\nAirport.\nBern Airport (colloquially called \"Bern-Belp\" or \"Belpmoos\") located outside the city near the town of Belp, as of March 2021 mostly serves general aviation and charter flights. Zurich Airport, Geneva Airport and EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg serve as gateways for air traffic, all reachable in less than two hours by train or car from Bern.\nBicycle transport.\nThe city has made efforts to make Bern the \"bicycle capital\" of Switzerland through the creation of better infrastructure, such as dedicated cycle paths. PubliBike operates a bike-sharing system.\nNotes and references.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "26748": "Switzerland\nCountry in Central Europe\nSwitzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is geographically divided among the Swiss Plateau, the Alps and the Jura; the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory, whereas most of the country's nearly 9 million people are concentrated on the plateau, which hosts its largest cities and economic centres, including Zurich, Geneva, and Lausanne. \nSwitzerland is a federal republic composed of 26 cantons, with federal authorities based in Bern. It has four main linguistic and cultural regions: German, French, Italian and Romansh. Although most Swiss are German-speaking, national identity is fairly cohesive, being rooted in a common historical background, shared values such as federalism and direct democracy, and Alpine symbolism. Swiss identity transcends language, ethnicity, and religion, leading to Switzerland being described as a (\"nation of volition\") rather than a nation state.\nSwitzerland originates from the Old Swiss Confederacy established in the Late Middle Ages as a defensive and commercial alliance; the Federal Charter of 1291 is considered the country's founding document. The confederation steadily expanded and consolidated despite external threats and internal political and religious strife. Swiss independence from the Holy Roman Empire was formally recognised in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The confederation was among the first and few republics of the early modern period, and the only one besides San Marino to survive the Napoleonic Wars. \nSwitzerland remained a network of self-governing states until 1798, when revolutionary France invaded and imposed the centralist Helvetic Republic. Napoleon abolished the republic in 1803 and reinstated a confederation. Following the Napoleonic Wars, Switzerland restored its pre-revolutionary system, but by 1830 faced growing division and conflict between liberal and conservative movements; this culminated in a new constitution in 1848 that established the current federal system and enshrined principles such as individual rights, separation of powers, and parliamentary bicameralism. \nSwitzerland has maintained a policy of armed neutrality since the 16th century and has not fought an international war since 1815. It joined the United Nations only in 2002 but pursues an active foreign policy that includes frequent involvement in peace building and global governance. Switzerland is the birthplace of the Red Cross and hosts the headquarters or offices of most major international institutions, including the WTO, the WHO, the ILO, FIFA, the WEF, and the UN. It is a founding member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) but not part of the European Union (EU), the European Economic Area, or the eurozone; however, it participates in the European single market and the Schengen Area. \nSwitzerland is among the world's most developed countries, with the highest nominal wealth per adult and the eighth-highest gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. It performs highly on several international metrics, including economic competitiveness, democratic governance, and press freedom. Zurich, Geneva and Basel rank among the highest in quality of life, albeit with some of the highest costs of living. Switzerland holds an international reputation for its established banking sector and for its specialized industries in watchmaking and chocolate production.\nEtymology.\nThe English name \"Switzerland\" is a portmanteau of \"Switzer\", an obsolete term for a Swiss person which was in use during the 16th to 19th centuries, and \"land\". The English adjective \"Swiss\" is a loanword from French ', also in use since the 16th century. The name \"Switzer\" is from the Alemannic ', in origin an inhabitant of \"Schwyz\" and its associated territory, one of the cantons which formed the nucleus of the Old Swiss Confederacy. The Swiss began to adopt the name for themselves after the Swabian War of 1499, used alongside the term for \"Confederates\", (literally: \"comrades by oath\"), used since the 14th century. The data code for Switzerland, CH, is derived from Latin (\"Helvetic Confederation\").\nThe toponym \"Schwyz\" itself was first attested in 972, as Old High German ', perhaps related to ' 'to burn' (cf. Old Norse 'to singe, burn'), referring to the area of forest that was burned and cleared to build. The name was extended to the area dominated by the canton, and after the Swabian War of 1499 gradually came to be used for the entire Confederation. The Swiss German name of the country, ', is homophonous to that of the canton and the settlement, but distinguished by the use of the definite article (' for the Confederation, but simply \"\" for the canton and the town). The long [i\u02d0] of Swiss German is historically and still often today spelled \u27e8y\u27e9 rather than \u27e8ii\u27e9, preserving the original identity of the two names even in writing.\nThe Latin name was neologised and introduced gradually after the formation of the federal state in 1848, harking back to the Napoleonic Helvetic Republic. It appeared on coins from 1879, inscribed on the Federal Palace in 1902 and after 1948 used in the official seal (e.g., the ISO banking code \"CHF\" for the Swiss franc, the Swiss postage stamps ('HELVETIA') and the country top-level domain \".ch\", are both taken from the state's Latin name). is derived from the \"Helvetii\", a Gaulish tribe living on the Swiss Plateau before the Roman era.\n\"Helvetia\" appeared as a national personification of the Swiss confederacy in the 17th century in a 1672 play by Johann Caspar Weissenbach.\nHistory.\nThe state of Switzerland took its present form with the adoption of the Swiss Federal Constitution in 1848. Switzerland's precursors established a defensive alliance in 1291, forming a loose confederation that persisted for centuries.\nBeginnings.\nThe oldest traces of hominid existence in Switzerland date to about 150,000 years ago. The oldest known farming settlements in Switzerland, which were found at G\u00e4chlingen, date to around 5300 BC.\nThe earliest known tribes formed the Hallstatt and La T\u00e8ne cultures, named after the archaeological site of La T\u00e8ne on the north side of Lake Neuch\u00e2tel. La T\u00e8ne culture developed and flourished during the late Iron Age from around 450 BC, possibly influenced by Greek and Etruscan civilisations. One of the most prominent La T\u00e8ne tribes were the Helvetii, who primarily occupied the Swiss Plateau, alongside the Rhaetians in the eastern regions. Facing pressures from Germanic tribes, in 58 BC, the Helvetii, influenced by Orgetorix, a wealthy aristocrat, decided to abandon the Swiss Plateau for better opportunities in western Gallia. After Orgetorix's mysterious death, the tribe continued their migration but was decisively defeated by Julius Caesar's armies at the Battle of Bibracte, in present-day eastern France. Following their defeat, the Helvetii were forced by Caesar to return to their original lands, where they were subjected to stringent restrictions on their autonomy and movements. In 15 BC, Tiberius (later the second Roman emperor) and his brother Drusus conquered the Alps, integrating them into the Roman Empire. The area occupied by the Helvetii first became part of Rome's Gallia Belgica province and then of its Germania Superior province. The eastern portion of modern Switzerland was integrated into the Roman province of Raetia. Sometime around the start of the Common Era, the Romans maintained a large camp called Vindonissa, now a ruin at the confluence of the Aare and Reuss rivers, near the town of Windisch.\nThe first and second century AD was an age of prosperity on the Swiss Plateau. Towns such as Aventicum, Iulia Equestris and Augusta Raurica reached a remarkable size, while hundreds of agricultural estates (Villae rusticae) were established in the countryside.\nAround 260 AD, the fall of the Agri Decumates territory north of the Rhine transformed today's Switzerland into a frontier land of the Empire. Repeated raids by the Alamanni tribes provoked the ruin of the Roman towns and economy, forcing the population to shelter near Roman fortresses, like the Castrum Rauracense near Augusta Raurica. The Empire built another line of defence at the north border (the so-called Donau-Iller-Rhine-Limes). At the end of the fourth century, the increased Germanic pressure forced the Romans to abandon the linear defence concept. The Swiss Plateau was finally open to Germanic tribes.\nIn the Early Middle Ages, from the end of the fourth century, the western extent of modern-day Switzerland was part of the territory of the Kings of the Burgundians, who introduced the French language to the area. The Alemanni settled the Swiss Plateau in the fifth century and the valleys of the Alps in the eighth century, forming Alemannia. Modern-day Switzerland was then divided between the kingdoms of Alemannia and Burgundy. The entire region became part of the expanding Frankish Empire in the sixth century, following Clovis I's victory over the Alemanni at Tolbiac in 504 AD, and later Frankish domination of the Burgundians.\nThroughout the rest of the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries, Swiss regions continued under Frankish hegemony (Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties) but after its extension under Charlemagne, the Frankish Empire was divided by the Treaty of Verdun in 843. The territories of present-day Switzerland became divided into Middle Francia and East Francia until they were reunified under the Holy Roman Empire around 1000\u00a0AD.\nIn the 10th century, as the rule of the Carolingians waned, Magyars destroyed Basel in 917 and St. Gallen in 926. In response, Henry the Fowler, the then ruler of East Francia, decreed the fortification of key settlements to defend against these invasions. Large villages and towns, including strategic locations like Zurich and St.Gallen, were fortified. This initiative led to the development of what were essentially early urban strongholds and city governments in Eastern Switzerland.\nBy 1200, the Swiss Plateau comprised the dominions of the houses of Savoy, Z\u00e4hringer, Habsburg, and Kyburg. Some regions (Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, later known as ) were accorded the Imperial immediacy to grant the empire direct control over the mountain passes. With the extinction of its male line in 1263, the Kyburg dynasty fell in AD 1264. The Habsburgs under King Rudolph I (Holy Roman Emperor in 1273) laid claim to the Kyburg lands and annexed them, extending their territory to the eastern Swiss Plateau.\nOld Swiss Confederacy.\nThe Old Swiss Confederacy was an alliance among the valley communities of the central Alps. The Confederacy was governed by nobles and patricians of various cantons who facilitated management of common interests and ensured peace on mountain trade routes. The Federal Charter of 1291 is considered the confederacy's founding document, even though similar alliances likely existed decades earlier. The document was agreed among the rural communes of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden.\nBy 1353, the three original cantons had joined with the cantons of Glarus and Zug and the Lucerne, Zurich and Bern city-states to form the \"Old Confederacy\" of eight states that obtained through the end of the 15th century. The expansion led to increased power and wealth for the confederation. By 1460, the confederates controlled most of the territory south and west of the Rhine to the Alps and the Jura mountains, and the University of Basel was founded (with a faculty of medicine) establishing a tradition of chemical and medical research. This increased after victories against the Habsburgs (Battle of Sempach, Battle of N\u00e4fels), over Charles the Bold of Burgundy during the 1470s, and the success of the Swiss mercenaries. The Swiss victory in the Swabian War against the Swabian League of Emperor Maximilian I in 1499 amounted to \"de facto\" independence within the Holy Roman Empire. In 1501, Basel and Schaffhausen joined the Old Swiss Confederacy.\nThe Confederacy acquired a reputation of invincibility during these earlier wars, but expansion of the confederation suffered a setback in 1515 with the Swiss defeat in the Battle of Marignano. This ended the so-called \"heroic\" epoch of Swiss history. The success of Zwingli's Reformation in some cantons led to inter-cantonal religious conflicts in 1529 and 1531 (Wars of Kappel). It was not until more than one hundred years after these internal wars that, in 1648, under the Peace of Westphalia, European countries recognised Switzerland's independence from the Holy Roman Empire and its neutrality.\nDuring the Early Modern period of Swiss history, the growing authoritarianism of the patriciate families combined with a financial crisis in the wake of the Thirty Years' War led to the Swiss peasant war of 1653. In the background to this struggle, the conflict between Catholic and Protestant cantons persisted, erupting in further violence at the First War of Villmergen, in 1656, and the Toggenburg War (or Second War of Villmergen), in 1712.\nNapoleonic era.\nIn 1798, the revolutionary French government invaded Switzerland and imposed a new unified constitution. This centralised the government of the country, effectively abolishing the cantons: moreover, M\u00fclhausen left Switzerland and the Valtellina valley became part of the Cisalpine Republic. The new regime, known as the Helvetic Republic, was highly unpopular. An invading foreign army had imposed and destroyed centuries of tradition, making Switzerland nothing more than a French satellite state. The fierce French suppression of the Nidwalden Revolt in September 1798 was an example of the oppressive presence of the French Army and the local population's resistance to the occupation.\nWhen war broke out between France and its rivals, Russian and Austrian forces invaded Switzerland. The Swiss refused to fight alongside the French in the name of the Helvetic Republic. In 1803 Napoleon organised a meeting of the leading Swiss politicians from both sides in Paris. The Act of Mediation was the result, which largely restored Swiss autonomy and introduced a Confederation of 19 cantons. Henceforth, much of Swiss politics would concern balancing the cantons' tradition of self-rule with the need for a central government.\nIn 1815, the Congress of Vienna fully re-established Swiss independence, and the European powers recognised permanent Swiss neutrality. Swiss troops served foreign governments until 1860 when they fought in the siege of Gaeta. The treaty allowed Switzerland to increase its territory, with the admission of the cantons of Valais, Neuch\u00e2tel and Geneva. Switzerland's borders saw only minor adjustments thereafter.\nFederal state.\nThe restoration of power to the patriciate was only temporary. After a period of unrest with repeated violent clashes, such as the Z\u00fcriputsch of 1839, civil war (the \"Sonderbundskrieg\") broke out in 1847 when some Catholic cantons tried to set up a separate alliance (the \"Sonderbund\"). The war lasted less than a month, causing fewer than 100 casualties, most of which were through friendly fire. The Sonderbundskrieg had a significant impact on the psychology and society of Switzerland.\nThe war convinced most Swiss of the need for unity and strength. Swiss from all strata of society, whether Catholic or Protestant, from the liberal or conservative current, realised that the cantons would profit more from merging their economic and religious interests.\nThus, while the rest of Europe saw revolutionary uprisings, the Swiss drew up a constitution that provided for a federal layout, much of it inspired by the American example. This constitution provided central authority while leaving the cantons the right to self-government on local issues. Giving credit to those who favoured the power of the cantons (the Sonderbund Kantone), the national assembly was divided between an upper house (the Council of States, two representatives per canton) and a lower house (the National Council, with representatives elected from across the country). Referendums were made mandatory for any amendments. This new constitution ended the legal power of nobility in Switzerland.\nA single system of weights and measures was introduced, and in 1850 the Swiss franc became the Swiss single currency, complemented by the WIR franc in 1934. Article 11 of the constitution forbade sending troops to serve abroad, marking the end of foreign service. It came with the expectation of serving the Holy See, and the Swiss were still obliged to serve Francis II of the Two Sicilies with Swiss Guards present at the siege of Gaeta in 1860.\nAn important clause of the constitution was that it could be entirely rewritten, if necessary, thus enabling it to evolve as a whole rather than being modified one amendment at a time.\nThis need soon proved itself when the rise in population and the Industrial Revolution that followed led to calls to modify the constitution accordingly. The population rejected an early draft in 1872, but modifications led to its acceptance in 1874. It introduced the facultative referendum for laws at the federal level. It also established federal responsibility for defence, trade, and legal matters.\nIn 1891, the constitution was revised with uncommonly strong elements of direct democracy, which remain unique today.\nModern history.\nSwitzerland was not invaded during either of the world wars. During World War I, Switzerland was home to the revolutionary and founder of the Soviet Union Vladimir Illych Ulyanov (Vladimir Lenin) who remained there until 1917. Swiss neutrality was seriously questioned by the short-lived Grimm\u2013Hoffmann affair in 1917. In 1920, Switzerland joined the League of Nations, which was based in Geneva, after it was exempted from military requirements.\nDuring World War II, detailed invasion plans were drawn up by the Germans, but Switzerland was never attacked. Switzerland was able to remain independent through a combination of military deterrence, concessions to Germany, and good fortune, as larger events during the war intervened. General Henri Guisan, appointed the commander-in-chief for the duration of the war ordered a general mobilisation of the armed forces. The Swiss military strategy changed from static defence at the borders to organised long-term attrition and withdrawal to strong, well-stockpiled positions high in the Alps, known as the Reduit. Switzerland was an important base for espionage by both sides and often mediated communications between the Axis and Allied powers.\nSwitzerland's trade was blockaded by both the Allies and the Axis. Economic cooperation and extension of credit to Nazi Germany varied according to the perceived likelihood of invasion and the availability of other trading partners. Concessions reached a peak after a crucial rail link through Vichy France was severed in 1942, leaving Switzerland (together with Liechtenstein) entirely isolated from the wider world by Axis-controlled territory. Over the course of the war, Switzerland interned over 300,000 refugees aided by the International Red Cross, based in Geneva. Strict immigration and asylum policies and the financial relationships with Nazi Germany raised controversy, only at the end of the 20th century.\nDuring the war, the Swiss Air Force engaged aircraft of both sides, shooting down 11 intruding Luftwaffe planes in May and June 1940, then forcing down other intruders after a change of policy following threats from Germany. Over 100 Allied bombers and their crews were interned. Between 1940 and 1945, Switzerland was bombed by the Allies, causing fatalities and property damage. Among the cities and towns bombed were Basel, Brusio, Chiasso, Cornol, Geneva, Koblenz, Niederweningen, Rafz, Renens, Samedan, Schaffhausen, Stein am Rhein, T\u00e4gerwilen, Thayngen, Vals, and Zurich. Allied forces maintained that the bombings, which violated the 96th Article of War, resulted from navigation errors, equipment failure, weather conditions, and pilot errors. The Swiss expressed fear and concern that the bombings were intended to put pressure on Switzerland to end economic cooperation and neutrality with Nazi Germany. Court-martial proceedings took place in England. The US paid SFR 62M for reparations.\nSwitzerland's attitude towards refugees was complicated and controversial; over the course of the war, it admitted as many as 300,000 refugees while refusing tens of thousands more, including Jews persecuted by the Nazis.\nAfter the war, the Swiss government exported credits through the charitable fund known as the and donated to the Marshall Plan to help Europe's recovery, efforts that ultimately benefited the Swiss economy.\nDuring the Cold War, Swiss authorities considered the construction of a Swiss nuclear bomb. Leading nuclear physicists at the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich such as Paul Scherrer made this a realistic possibility. In 1988, the Paul Scherrer Institute was founded in his name to explore the therapeutic uses of neutron scattering technologies. Financial problems with the defence budget and ethical considerations prevented the substantial funds from being allocated, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 was seen as a valid alternative. Plans for building nuclear weapons were dropped by 1988. Switzerland joined the Council of Europe in 1963.\nSwitzerland was the last Western republic (the Principality of Liechtenstein followed in 1984) to grant women the right to vote. Some Swiss cantons approved this in 1959, while at the federal level, it was achieved in 1971 and, after resistance, in the last canton Appenzell Innerrhoden (one of only two remaining \"Landsgemeinde\", along with Glarus) in 1990. After obtaining suffrage at the federal level, women quickly rose in political significance. The first woman on the seven-member Federal Council executive was Elisabeth Kopp, who served from 1984 to 1989, and the first female president was Ruth Dreifuss in 1999.\nIn 1979 areas from the canton of Bern attained independence from the Bernese, forming the new canton of Jura. On 18 April 1999, the Swiss population and the cantons voted in favour of a completely revised federal constitution.\nIn 2002 Switzerland became a full member of the United Nations, leaving Vatican City as the last widely recognised state without full UN membership. Switzerland is a founding member of the EFTA but not the European Economic Area (EEA). An application for membership in the European Union was sent in May 1992, but did not advance since rejecting the EEA in December 1992 when Switzerland conducted a referendum on the EEA. Several referendums on the EU issue ensued; due to opposition from the citizens, the membership application was withdrawn. Nonetheless, Swiss law is gradually changing to conform with that of the EU, and the government signed bilateral agreements with the European Union. Switzerland, together with Liechtenstein, has been surrounded by the EU since Austria's entry in 1995. On 5 June 2005, Swiss voters agreed by a 55% majority to join the Schengen treaty, a result that EU commentators regarded as a sign of support. In September 2020, a referendum calling for a vote to end the pact that allowed a free movement of people from the European Union was introduced by the Swiss People's Party (SVP). However, voters rejected the attempt to retake control of immigration, defeating the motion by a roughly 63%\u201337% margin.\nOn 9 February 2014, 50.3% of Swiss voters approved a ballot initiative launched by the Swiss People's Party (SVP/UDC) to restrict immigration. This initiative was mostly backed by rural (57.6% approval) and suburban groups (51.2% approval), and isolated towns (51.3% approval) as well as by a strong majority (69.2% approval) in Ticino, while metropolitan centres (58.5% rejection) and the French-speaking part (58.5% rejection) rejected it. In December 2016, a political compromise with the EU was attained that eliminated quotas on EU citizens, but still allowed favourable treatment of Swiss-based job applicants. On 27 September 2020, 62% of Swiss voters rejected the anti-free movement referendum by SVP.\nGeography.\nExtending across the north and south side of the Alps in west-central Europe, Switzerland encompasses diverse landscapes and climates across its .\nSwitzerland lies between latitudes 45\u00b0 and 48\u00b0 N, and longitudes 5\u00b0 and 11\u00b0 E. It contains three basic topographical areas: the Swiss Alps to the south, the Swiss Plateau or Central Plateau, and the Jura mountains on the west. The Alps are a mountain range running across the central and south of the country, constituting about 60% of the country's area. The majority of the population live on the Swiss Plateau. The Swiss Alps host many glaciers, covering . From these originate the headwaters of several major rivers, such as the Rhine, Inn, Ticino and Rh\u00f4ne, which flow in the four cardinal directions, spreading across Europe. The hydrographic network includes several of the largest bodies of fresh water in Central and Western Europe, among which are Lake Geneva (Lac L\u00e9man in French), Lake Constance (Bodensee in German) and Lake Maggiore. Switzerland has more than 1500 lakes and contains 6% of Europe's freshwater stock. Lakes and glaciers cover about 6% of the national territory. Lake Geneva is the largest lake and is shared with France. The Rh\u00f4ne is both the main source and outflow of Lake Geneva. Lake Constance is the second largest and, like Lake Geneva, an intermediate step by the Rhine at the border with Austria and Germany. While the Rh\u00f4ne flows into the Mediterranean Sea at the French Camargue region and the Rhine flows into the North Sea at Rotterdam, about apart, both springs are only about apart in the Swiss Alps. 90% of Switzerland's 65,000-kilometre-long network of rivers and streams have been straightened, dammed, canalized or channeled underground, in an effort to prevent natural disasters such as flooding, landslides, and avalanches. 80% of all Swiss drinking water comes from groundwater sources.\nForty-eight mountains are or higher in height. At , Monte Rosa is the highest, although the Matterhorn () is the best known. Both are located within the Pennine Alps in the canton of Valais, on the border with Italy. The section of the Bernese Alps above the deep glacial Lauterbrunnen valley, containing 72 waterfalls, is well known for the Jungfrau () Eiger and M\u00f6nch peaks, and its many picturesque valleys. In the southeast the long Engadin Valley, encompassing St. Moritz, is also well known; the highest peak in the neighbouring Bernina Alps is Piz Bernina ().\nThe Swiss Plateau has greater open and hilly landscapes, partly forested, partly open pastures, usually with grazing herds or vegetable and fruit fields, but it is still hilly. Large lakes and the biggest Swiss cities are found there.\nSwitzerland contains two small enclaves: B\u00fcsingen belongs to Germany, while Campione d'Italia belongs to Italy. Switzerland has no exclaves.\nClimate.\nThe Swiss climate is generally temperate, but can vary greatly across localities, from glacial conditions on the mountaintops to the near-Mediterranean climate at Switzerland's southern tip. Some valley areas in the southern part of Switzerland offer cold-hardy palm trees. Summers tend to be warm and humid at times with periodic rainfall, ideal for pastures/grazing. The less humid winters in the mountains may see weeks-long intervals of stable conditions. At the same time, the lower lands tend to suffer from inversion during such periods, hiding the sun.\nA weather phenomenon known as the f\u00f6hn (with an identical effect to the chinook wind) can occur any time and is characterised by an unexpectedly warm wind, bringing low relative humidity air to the north of the Alps during rainfall periods on the south-facing slopes. This works both ways across the alps but is more efficient if blowing from the south due to the steeper step for oncoming wind. Valleys running south to north trigger the best effect. The driest conditions persist in all inner alpine valleys that receive less rain because arriving clouds lose a lot of their moisture content while crossing the mountains before reaching these areas. Large alpine areas such as Graub\u00fcnden remain drier than pre-alpine areas, and as in the main valley of the Valais, wine grapes are grown there.\nThe wettest conditions persist in the high Alps and in the Ticino canton, which has much sun yet heavy bursts of rain from time to time. Precipitation tends to be spread moderately throughout the year, with a peak in summer. Autumn is the driest season, winter receives less precipitation than summer, yet the weather patterns in Switzerland are not in a stable climate system. They can vary from year to year with no strict and predictable periods.\nEnvironment.\nSwitzerland contains two terrestrial ecoregions: Western European broadleaf forests and Alps conifer and mixed forests.\nSwitzerland's many small valleys separated by high mountains often host unique ecologies. The mountainous regions themselves offer a rich range of plants not found at other altitudes. The climatic, geological and topographical conditions of the alpine region make for a fragile ecosystem that is particularly sensitive to climate change. According to the 2014 Environmental Performance Index, Switzerland ranks first among 132 nations in safeguarding the environment, due to its high scores on environmental public health, its heavy reliance on renewable sources of energy (hydropower and geothermal energy), and its level of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2020 it was ranked third out of 180 countries. The country pledged to cut GHG emissions by 50% by 2030 compared to the level of 1990 and plans to reach zero emissions by 2050.\nHowever, access to biocapacity in Switzerland is far lower than the world average. In 2016, Switzerland had 1.0 hectares of biocapacity per person within its territory, 40 per cent less than world average of 1.6. In contrast, in 2016, Swiss consumption required 4.6 hectares of biocapacity \u2013 their ecological footprint, 4.6 times as much as Swiss territory can support. The remainder comes from other countries and the shared resources (such as the atmosphere impacted by greenhouse gas emissions). Switzerland had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 3.53/10, ranking it 150th globally out of 172 countries.\nSwitzerland ranked 9th in the Environmental Performance Index for 2024. It scored well in parameters including air pollution, sanitation and drinking water, waste management, and climate change mitigation.\nUrbanisation.\nAbout 85% of the population live in urban areas. Switzerland went from a largely rural country to an urban one from 1930 to 2000. After 1935 urban development claimed as much of the Swiss landscape as it did during the prior 2,000 years. Urban sprawl affects the plateau, the Jura and the Alpine foothills, raising concerns about land use. During the 21st century, population growth in urban areas is higher than in the countryside.\nSwitzerland has a dense network of complementary large, medium and small towns. The plateau is densely populated with about 400 people per km2 and the landscape shows uninterrupted signs of human presence. The weight of the largest metropolitan areas \u2013 Zurich, Geneva\u2013Lausanne, Basel and Bern \u2013 tend to increase. The importance of these urban areas is greater than their population suggests. These urban centers are recognised for their high quality of life.\nThe average population density in 2019 was . In the largest canton by area, Graub\u00fcnden, lying entirely in the Alps, population density falls to . In the canton of Zurich, with its large urban capital, the density is .\nGovernment and politics.\nThe Federal Constitution adopted in 1848 is the legal foundation of Switzerland's federal state. It is regularly modified by referendum and has been completely revised twice, in 1874 and 1999. The constitution outlines rights of individuals and citizen participation in public affairs, divides the powers between the confederation and the cantons and defines federal jurisdiction and authority. Three main bodies govern on the federal level: the Federal Assembly (legislative), the Federal Council (executive) and the federal courts (judicial).\nFederal Assembly.\nThe Federal Assembly is the parliament of Switzerland. It consists of two houses: The Council of States has 46 members, two from each canton and one from each half-canton. The National Council has 200 members, apportioned to reflect the population of each canton, and elected by proportional representation within each canton. Members of both houses serve for four years and work part-time (\"Milizsystem\"). When both houses are in joint session, they are known collectively as the Federal Assembly. Through optional referendums, citizens may challenge any law passed by parliament.\nFederal Council.\nThe Federal Council is the Swiss executive. It leads the federal administration and serves as a collective head of state. It is a collegial body of seven members, elected to four-year terms by the Federal Assembly, which oversees the council. Each member leads a department of the federal government. Each year, one member of the Council is elected President of the Confederation by the Assembly, with the presidency traditionally rotating between members. The President chairs and represents the government, but has no additional powers and remains the head of their department.\nThe government has been a coalition of the four major political parties since 1959, each party having a number of seats that roughly reflects its share of the electorate and representation in the federal parliament. This distribution is called the \"magic formula\". Since 2003, the seven seats in the Federal Council have been distributed as follows:\nSupreme Court.\nThe function of the Federal Supreme Court is to hear appeals against rulings of cantonal or federal courts. The judges are elected by the Federal Assembly for six-year terms.\nDirect democracy.\nDirect democracy and federalism are hallmarks of the Swiss political system defined in the Swiss constitution. The Swiss people are subject to three legal jurisdictions: the municipal, cantonal and federal levels. At the federal level, popular rights include the right to submit a federal initiative and a referendum, both of which may overturn parliamentary decisions.\nThere are three types of federal referendum in Switzerland: \nThe Federal Council and the Federal Assembly can supplement a popular initiative with a counterproposal. Voters must then indicate their preference if both proposals are accepted. \nCantons.\nThe Swiss Confederation consists of 26 cantons. The cantons are federated states, with permanent constitutional status and a high degree of independence relative to the subnational divisions of most countries. Under the Federal Constitution, all 26 cantons are equal in status, except that six (referred to often as the half-cantons) are represented by one councillor instead of two in the Council of States and have only half a cantonal vote with respect to the required cantonal majority in referendums on constitutional amendments. Each canton has its own constitution and its own parliament, government, police and courts. However, considerable differences define the individual cantons, particularly in terms of population and geographical area. Their populations vary between 16,003 (Appenzell Innerrhoden) and 1,487,969 (Zurich), and their area between (Basel-Stadt) and (Grisons).\nMunicipalities.\nAs of 2018 the cantons comprised 2,222 municipalities.\nFederal City.\nUntil 1848, the loosely coupled Confederation did not have a central political organisation. Issues thought to affect the whole Confederation were the subject of periodic meetings in various locations.\nIn 1848, the federal constitution provided that details concerning federal institutions, such as their locations, should be addressed by the Federal Assembly (BV 1848 Art. 108). Thus on 28 November 1848, the Federal Assembly voted in the majority to locate the seat of government in Bern and, as a prototypical federal compromise, to assign other federal institutions, such as the Federal Polytechnical School (1854, the later ETH) to Zurich, and other institutions to Lucerne, such as the later SUVA (1912) and the Federal Insurance Court (1917). Other federal institutions were subsequently attributed to Lausanne (Federal Supreme Court in 1872, and EPFL in 1969), Bellinzona (Federal Criminal Court, 2004), and St. Gallen (Federal Administrative Court and Federal Patent Court, 2012).\nThe 1999 Constitution does not mention a Federal City and the Federal Council has yet to address the matter. Thus no city in Switzerland has the \"official\" status either of capital or of Federal City. Nevertheless, Bern is commonly referred to as \"Federal City\" (, , ).\nForeign relations and international institutions.\nTraditionally, Switzerland avoids alliances that might entail military, political, or direct economic action and has been neutral since the end of its expansion in 1515. Its policy of neutrality was internationally recognised at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Swiss neutrality has been questioned at times. In 2002 Switzerland became a full member of the United Nations. It was the first state to join it by referendum. Switzerland maintains diplomatic relations with almost all countries and historically has served as an intermediary between other states. Switzerland is not a member of the European Union; the Swiss people have consistently rejected membership since the early 1990s. However, Switzerland does participate in the Schengen Area.\nMany international institutions have headquarters in Switzerland, in part because of its policy of neutrality. Geneva is the birthplace of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the Geneva Conventions and, since 2006, hosts the United Nations Human Rights Council. Even though Switzerland is one of the most recent countries to join the United Nations, the Palace of Nations in Geneva is the second biggest centre for the United Nations after the headquarters in New York. Switzerland was a founding member and hosted the League of Nations.\nApart from the United Nations headquarters, the Swiss Confederation is host to many UN agencies, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and about 200 other international organisations, including the World Trade Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization. The annual meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos bring together business and political leaders from Switzerland and foreign countries to discuss important issues. The headquarters of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) moved to Basel in 1930.\nMany sports federations and organisations are located in the country, including the International Handball Federation in Basel, the International Basketball Federation in Geneva, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) in Nyon, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) and the International Ice Hockey Federation both in Zurich, the International Cycling Union in Aigle, and the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne.\nSwitzerland became a member of the United Nations Security Council for the 2023\u20132024 period. According to the 2024 Global Peace Index, Switzerland is the 6th most peaceful country in the world.\nSwitzerland and the European Union.\nAlthough not a member, Switzerland maintains relationships with the EU and European countries through bilateral agreements. The Swiss have brought their economic practices largely into conformity with those of the EU, in an effort to compete internationally. EU membership faces considerable negative popular sentiment. It is opposed by the conservative SVP party, the largest party in the National Council, and not advocated by several other political parties. The membership application was formally withdrawn in 2016. The western French-speaking areas and the urban regions of the rest of the country tend to be more pro-EU, but do not form a significant share of the population.\nAn Integration Office operates under the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Economic Affairs. Seven bilateral agreements liberalised trade ties, taking effect in 2001. This first series of bilateral agreements included the free movement of persons. A second series of agreements covering nine areas was signed in 2004, including the Schengen Treaty and the Dublin Convention.\nIn 2006, a referendum approved 1 billion francs of supportive investment in Southern and Central European countries in support of positive ties to the EU as a whole. A further referendum will be needed to approve 300 million francs to support Romania and Bulgaria and their recent admission.\nThe Swiss have faced EU and international pressure to reduce banking secrecy and raise tax rates to parity with the EU. Preparatory discussions involved four areas: the electricity market, participation in project Galileo, cooperating with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and certificates of origin for food products.\nSwitzerland is a member of the Schengen passport-free zone. Land border checkpoints monitor goods movements, but not people.\nMilitary.\nThe Swiss Armed Forces, including the Land Forces and the Air Force, are composed mostly of conscripts, male citizens aged from 20 to 34 (in exceptional cases up to 50) years. Being a landlocked country, Switzerland has no navy; however, on lakes bordering neighbouring countries, armed boats patrol. Swiss citizens are prohibited from serving in foreign armies, except for the Swiss Guards of the Vatican, or if they are dual citizens of a foreign country and reside there.\nThe Swiss militia system stipulates that soldiers keep their army-issued equipment, including fully automatic personal weapons, at home. Women can serve voluntarily. Men usually receive military conscription orders for training at the age of 18. About two-thirds of young Swiss are found suitable for service; for the others, various forms of alternative service are available. Annually, approximately 20,000 persons are trained in recruit centres for 18 to 21 weeks. The reform \"Army XXI\" was adopted by popular vote in 2003, replacing \"Army 95\", reducing the rolls from 400,000 to about 200,000. Of those, 120,000 are active in periodic Army training, and 80,000 are non-training reserves.\nThe newest reform of the military, (WEA; English: Further development of the Army), started in 2018 and was expected to reduce the number of army personnel to 100,000 by the end of 2022.\nOverall, three general mobilisations have been declared to ensure the integrity and neutrality of Switzerland. The first mobilisation was held in response to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870\u201371; while the second was in response to the First World War outbreak in August 1914; the third mobilisation took place in September 1939 in response to the German attack on Poland.\nBecause of its neutrality policy, the Swiss army does not take part in armed conflicts in other countries but joins some peacekeeping missions. Since 2000 the armed force department has maintained the Onyx intelligence gathering system to monitor satellite communications.\nGun politics in Switzerland are unique in Europe in that 2\u20133.5\u00a0million guns are in the hands of civilians, giving the nation an estimate of 28\u201341 guns per 100 people. As per the Small Arms Survey, only 324,484 guns are owned by the military. Only 143,372 are in the hands of soldiers. However, ammunition is no longer issued.\nEconomy and labour law.\nSwitzerland has a stable, prosperous and high-tech economy. It is the world's wealthiest country per capita in multiple rankings. The country ranks as one of the least corrupt countries in the world, while its banking sector is rated as \"one of the most corrupt in the world\". It has the world's twentieth largest economy by nominal GDP and the thirty-eighth largest by purchasing power parity. As of 2021, it is the thirteenth largest exporter, and the fifth largest per capita. Zurich and Geneva are regarded as global cities, ranked as Alpha and Beta respectively. Basel is the capital of Switzerland's pharmaceutical industry, hosting Novartis, Roche, and many other players. It is one of the world's most important centres for the life sciences industry.\nSwitzerland had the second-highest global rating in the Index of Economic Freedom 2023, while also providing significant public services. On a per capita basis, nominal GDP is higher than those of the larger Western and Central European economies and Japan, while adjusted for purchasing power, Switzerland ranked 11th in 2017, fifth in 2018, and ninth in 2020.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nThe 2016 World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report ranked Switzerland's economy as the world's most competitive; as of 2019, it ranks fifth globally. The European Union labeled it Europe's most innovative country. Switzerland has been ranked the most innovative country in the Global Innovation Index in 2024, as it had done in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019. It ranked 20th of 189 countries in the Ease of Doing Business Index. Switzerland's slow growth in the 1990s and the early 2000s increased support for economic reforms and harmonisation with the European Union. In 2020, IMD placed Switzerland first in attracting skilled workers.\nFor much of the 20th century, Switzerland was the wealthiest country in Europe by a considerable margin (per capita GDP). Switzerland has one of the world's largest account balances as a percentage of GDP. In 2018, the canton of Basel-City had the highest GDP per capita, ahead of Zug and Geneva. According to Credit Suisse, only about 37% of residents own their own homes, one of the lowest rates of home ownership in Europe. Housing and food price levels were 171% and 145% of the EU-25 index in 2007, compared to 113% and 104% in Germany.\nSwitzerland is home to several large multinational corporations. The largest by revenue are Glencore, Gunvor, Nestl\u00e9, Mediterranean Shipping Company, Novartis, Hoffmann-La Roche, ABB, Mercuria Energy Group and Adecco. Also, notable are UBS, Zurich Insurance, Richemont, Credit Suisse, Barry Callebaut, Swiss Re, Rolex, Tetra Pak, Swatch Group and Swiss International Air Lines.\nSwitzerland's most important economic sector is manufacturing. Manufactured products include specialty chemicals, health and pharmaceutical goods, scientific and precision measuring instruments and musical instruments. The largest exported goods are chemicals (34% of exported goods), machines/electronics (20.9%), and precision instruments/watches (16.9%). The service sector \u2013 especially banking and insurance, commodities trading, tourism, and international organisations \u2013 is another important industry for Switzerland. Exported services amount to a third of exports.\nAgricultural protectionism\u2014a rare exception to Switzerland's free trade policies\u2014contributes to high food prices. Product market liberalisation is lagging behind many EU countries according to the OECD. Apart from agriculture, economic and trade barriers between the European Union and Switzerland are minimal, and Switzerland has free trade agreements with many countries. Switzerland is a member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).\nSwitzerland is considered as the \"land of Cooperatives\" with the ten largest cooperative companies accounting for more than 11% of GDP in 2018. They include Migros and Coop, the two largest retail companies in Switzerland.\nTaxation and government spending.\nSwitzerland is a tax haven. The private sector economy dominates. It features low tax rates; tax revenue to GDP ratio is one of the smallest of developed countries. The Swiss Federal budget reached 62.8 billion Swiss francs in 2010, 11.35% of GDP; however, canton and municipality budgets are not counted as part of the federal budget. Total government spending is closer to 33.8% of GDP. The main sources of income for the federal government are the value-added tax (33% of tax revenue) and the direct federal tax (29%). The main areas of expenditure are in social welfare and finance/taxes. The expenditures of the Swiss Confederation have been growing from 7% of GDP in 1960 to 9.7% in 1990 and 10.7% in 2010. While the social welfare and finance sectors and tax grew from 35% in 1990 to 48.2% in 2010, a significant reduction of expenditures has been occurring in agriculture and national defence; from 26.5% to 12.4% (estimation for the year 2015).\nLabour force.\nSlightly more than 5 million people work in Switzerland; about 25% of employees belonged to a trade union in 2004. Switzerland has a more flexible labor market than neighbouring countries and the unemployment rate is consistently low. The unemployment rate increased from 1.7% in June 2000 to 4.4% in December 2009. It then decreased to 3.2% in 2014 and held steady for several years, before further dropping to 2.5% in 2018 and 2.3% in 2019; in 2023 it had reached a 20-year low of 2%. Population growth (from net immigration) reached 0.52% of population in 2004, increased in the following years before falling to 0.54% again in 2017. The foreign citizen population was 28.9% in 2015, about the same as in Australia.\nIn 2016, the median monthly gross income in Switzerland was 6,502 francs per month (equivalent to US$6,597 per month). After rent, taxes and pension contributions, plus spending on goods and services, the average household has about 15% of its gross income left for savings. Though 61% of the population made less than the mean income, income inequality is relatively low with a Gini coefficient of 29.7, placing Switzerland among the top 20 countries. In 2015, the richest 1% owned 35% of the wealth. Wealth inequality increased through 2019.\nAbout 8.2% of the population live below the national poverty line, defined in Switzerland as earning less than CHF3,990 per month for a household of two adults and two children, and a further 15% are at risk of poverty. Single-parent families, those with no post-compulsory education and those out of work are among the most likely to live below the poverty line. Although work is considered a way out of poverty, some 4.3% are considered working poor. One in ten jobs in Switzerland is considered low-paid; roughly 12% of Swiss workers hold such jobs, many of them women and foreigners.\nEducation and science.\nEducation in Switzerland is diverse, because the constitution of Switzerland delegates the operation for the school system to the cantons. Public and private schools are available, including many private international schools.\nPrimary education.\nThe minimum age for primary school is about six years, but most cantons provide a free \"children's school\" starting at age four or five. Primary school continues until grade four, five or six, depending on the school. Traditionally, the first foreign language in school was one of the other Swiss languages, although in 2000, English was elevated in a few cantons. At the end of primary school or at the beginning of secondary school, pupils are assigned according to their capacities into one of several sections (often three). The fastest learners are taught advanced classes to prepare for further studies and the matura, while other students receive an education adapted to their needs.\nTertiary education.\nSwitzerland hosts 12 universities, ten of which are maintained at cantonal level and usually offer non-technical subjects. It ranked 87th on the 2019 Academic Ranking of World Universities. The largest is the University of Zurich with nearly 25,000 students. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) and the University of Zurich are listed 20th and 54th respectively, on the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities.\nThe federal government sponsors two institutes: the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) in Zurich, founded in 1855 and the (EPFL) in Lausanne, founded in 1969, formerly associated with the University of Lausanne.\nEight of the world's ten best hotel schools are located in Switzerland. In addition, various universities of applied sciences are available. In business and management studies, the University of St. Gallen, (HSG) is ranked 329th in the world according to QS World University Rankings and the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), was ranked first in open programmes worldwide\".\" Switzerland has the second highest rate (almost 18% in 2003) of foreign students in tertiary education, after Australia (slightly over 18%).\nThe Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, located in Geneva, is continental Europe's oldest graduate school of international and development studies. It is widely held to be one of its most prestigious.\nScience.\nSwitzerland is among the countries with the highest number of Nobel laureates, both in total and per capita; of the 28 Swiss nationals who have won the Nobel Prize, 23 were recognised in the sciences. Among the most famous is Albert Einstein, who became a Swiss citizen in 1901 and developed his theory of special relativity in Bern. Among the Nobel laureates born or nautralised in Switzerland are Vladimir Prelog, Heinrich Rohrer, Richard Ernst, Edmond Fischer, Rolf Zinkernagel, Kurt W\u00fcthrich and Jacques Dubochet. Over 100 laureates across all fields have a relationship to Switzerland. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded nine times to organisations headquartered in Switzerland.\nGeneva and the nearby French department of Ain co-host the world's largest laboratory, CERN, dedicated to particle physics research. Another important research centre is the Paul Scherrer Institute, which conducts multi-disciplinary research in the natural and engineering sciences. \nNotable Swiss inventions include lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), diazepam (Valium), Velcro, and the scanning tunnelling microscope (which earned inventors Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics. Auguste Piccard became the first person to enter the Stratosphere with his pressurised hydrogen ballon, while his son Jacques Piccard became one of the first people to explore the deepest known part of the world's ocean (along with American Don Walsh).\nThe Swiss Space Office has been involved in various space technologies and programmes. It was one of the 10 founders of the European Space Agency in 1975 and is the seventh largest contributor to the ESA budget. In the private sector, several companies participate in the space industry, such as Oerlikon Space and Maxon Motors.\nEnergy.\nElectricity generated in Switzerland is 56% from hydroelectricity and 39% from nuclear power, producing negligible CO2. On 18 May 2003, two anti-nuclear referendums were defeated: \"Moratorium Plus\", aimed at forbidding the building of new nuclear power plants (41.6% supported), and Electricity Without Nuclear (33.7% supported) after a moratorium expired in 2000. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, in 2011 the government announced plans to end the use of nuclear energy in the following 20 to 30 years. In November 2016, Swiss voters rejected a Green Party referendum to accelerate the phaseout of nuclear power (45.8% supported). The Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) is responsible for energy supply and energy use within the Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC). The agency supports the 2000-watt society initiative to cut the nation's energy use by more than half by 2050.\nTransport.\nThe densest rail network in Europe spans and carried 614 million passengers in 2023. In 2015, each Swiss resident travelled on average by rail, more than any other European country. Virtually 100% of the network is electrified. 60% of the network is operated by the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB\u00a0CFF\u00a0FFS). Besides the second largest standard gauge railway company, BLS AG, two railways companies operate on narrow gauge networks: the Rhaetian Railway (RhB) in Graub\u00fcnden, which includes some World Heritage lines, and the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn (MGB), which co-operates with RhB the Glacier Express between Zermatt and St. Moritz/Davos. Switzerland operates the world's longest and deepest railway tunnel and the first flat, low-level route through the Alps, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the largest part of the New Railway Link through the Alps (NRLA) project.\nSwitzerland has a publicly managed, toll-free road network financed by highway permits as well as vehicle and petrol taxes. The Swiss autobahn/autoroute system requires the annual purchase of a vignette (toll sticker)\u2014for 40 Swiss francs\u2014to use its roadways, including passenger cars and trucks. The Swiss autobahn/autoroute network stretches for and has one of the highest motorway densities in the world.\nZurich Airport is Switzerland's largest international flight gateway; it handled 22.8\u00a0million passengers in 2012. The other international airports are Geneva Airport (13.9\u00a0million passengers in 2012), EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg (located in France), Bern Airport, Lugano Airport, St. Gallen-Altenrhein Airport and Sion Airport. Swiss International Air Lines is the flag carrier. Its main hub is Zurich, but it is legally domiciled in Basel.\nEnvironment.\nSwitzerland has one of the best environmental records among developed nations. It is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol. With Mexico and South Korea, it forms the Environmental Integrity Group (EIG).\nThe country is active in recycling and anti-littering programs and is one of the world's top recyclers, recovering 66% to 96% of recyclable materials, varying across the country. The 2014 Global Green Economy Index placed Switzerland among the top 10 green economies.\nSwitzerland has an economic system for garbage disposal, which is based mostly on recycling and energy-producing incinerators. As in other European countries, the illegal disposal of garbage is heavily fined. In almost all Swiss municipalities, mandatory stickers or dedicated garbage bags allow the identification of disposable garbage.\nDemographics.\nIn common with other developed countries, the Swiss population increased rapidly during the industrial era, quadrupling between 1800 and 1990, and it has continued to grow.\nThe population is about 9 million (2023 est.). Population growth is projected to continue to 2035, due mostly to immigration. Like most of Europe, Switzerland faces an ageing population, with a fertility rate close to replacement level. Switzerland has one of the world's oldest populations, with an average age of 44.5 years.\nAccording to the World Factbook, ethnic groups in Switzerland are as follows: Swiss 69.2%, German 4.2%, Italian 3.2%, Portuguese 2.5%, French 2.1%, Kosovan 1.1%, Turkish 1%, other 16.7% (2020 est). The Council of Europe figures suggest a population of around 30,000 Romani people in the country.\nImmigration.\nIn 2023, resident foreigners made up 26.3% of Switzerland's population. Most of these (83%) were from European countries. Italy provided the largest single group of foreigners, providing 14.7% of total foreign population, followed closely by Germany (14.0%), Portugal (11.7%), France (6.6%), Kosovo (5.1%), Spain (3.9%), Turkey (3.1%), North Macedonia (3.1%), Serbia (2.8%), Austria (2.0%), United Kingdom (1.9%), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1.3%) and Croatia (1.3%). Immigrants from Sri Lanka (1.3%), most of them former Tamil refugees, were the largest group of Asian origin (7.9%).\n2021 figures show that 39.5% (compared to 34.7% in 2012) of the permanent resident population aged 15 or over (around 2.89\u00a0million), had an immigrant background. 38% of the population with an immigrant background (1.1\u00a0million) held Swiss citizenship.\nIn the 2000s, domestic and international institutions expressed concern about what was perceived as an increase in xenophobia. In reply to one critical report, the Federal Council noted that \"racism unfortunately is present in Switzerland\", but stated that the high proportion of foreign citizens in the country, as well as the generally successful integration of foreigners, underlined Switzerland's openness. A follow-up study conducted in 2018 reported that 59% considered racism a serious problem in Switzerland. The proportion of the population that claimed to have been targeted by racial discrimination increased from 10% in 2014 to almost 17% in 2018, according to the Federal Statistical Office.\nLargest cities.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nLanguages.\nSwitzerland has four national languages: mainly German (spoken natively by 62.8% of the population in 2016); French (22.9%) spoken natively in the west; and Italian (8.2%) spoken natively in the south. The fourth national language, Romansh (0.5%), is a Romance language spoken locally in the southeastern trilingual canton of Grisons, and is designated by Article 4 of the Federal Constitution as a national language along with German, French, and Italian. In Article 70 it is mentioned as an official language if the authorities communicate with persons who speak Romansh. However, federal laws and other official acts do not need to be decreed in Romansh.\nIn 2016, the languages most spoken at home among permanent residents aged 15 and older were Swiss German (59.4%), French (23.5%), Standard German (10.6%), and Italian (8.5%). Other languages spoken at home included English (5.0%), Portuguese (3.8%), Albanian (3.0%), Spanish (2.6%) and Serbian and Croatian (2.5%). 6.9% reported speaking another language at home. In 2014 almost two-thirds (64.4%) of the permanent resident population indicated speaking more than one language regularly.\nThe federal government is obliged to communicate in the official languages, and in the federal parliament simultaneous translation is provided from and into German, French and Italian.\nAside from the official forms of their respective languages, the four linguistic regions of Switzerland also have local dialectal forms. The role played by dialects in each linguistic region varies dramatically: in German-speaking regions, Swiss German dialects have become more prevalent since the second half of the 20th century, especially in the media, and are used as an everyday language for many, while the Swiss variety of Standard German is almost always used instead of dialect for written communication (cf. diglossic usage of a language). Conversely, in the French-speaking regions, local Franco-Proven\u00e7al dialects have almost disappeared (only 6.3% of the population of Valais, 3.9% of Fribourg, and 3.1% of Jura still spoke dialects at the end of the 20th century), while in the Italian-speaking regions, the use of Lombard dialects is mostly limited to family settings and casual conversation.\nThe principal official languages have terms not used outside of Switzerland, known as Helvetisms. German Helvetisms are, roughly speaking, a large group of words typical of Swiss Standard German that do not appear in Standard German, nor in other German dialects. These include terms from Switzerland's surrounding language cultures (German \"Billett\" from French), from similar terms in another language (Italian \"azione\" used not only as \"act\" but also as \"discount\" from German \"Aktion\"). Swiss French, while generally close to the French of France, also contains some Helvetisms. The most frequent characteristics of Helvetisms are in vocabulary, phrases, and pronunciation, although certain Helvetisms denote themselves as special in syntax and orthography. Duden, the comprehensive German dictionary, contains about 3000 Helvetisms. Current French dictionaries, such as the Petit Larousse, include several hundred Helvetisms; notably, Swiss French uses different terms than that of France for the numbers 70 (\"septante\") and 90 (\"nonante\") and often 80 (\"huitante\") as well.\nLearning one of the other national languages is compulsory for all Swiss pupils, hence many Swiss are supposed to be at least bilingual, especially those belonging to linguistic minority groups. Because the largest part of Switzerland is German-speaking, many French, Italian, and Romansh speakers migrating to the rest of Switzerland and the children of those non-German-speaking Swiss born within the rest of Switzerland speak German. While learning one of the other national languages at school is important, most Swiss learn English to communicate with Swiss speakers of other languages, as it is perceived as a neutral means of communication. English often functions as the de facto lingua franca.\nHealth.\nSwiss residents are required to buy health insurance from private insurance companies, which in turn are required to accept every applicant. While the cost of the system is among the highest, its health outcomes compare well with other European countries; patients have been reported as in general, highly satisfied with it. In 2012, life expectancy at birth was 80.4 years for men and 84.7 years for women \u2013 the world's highest. However, spending on health at 11.4% of GDP (2010) is on par with Germany and France (11.6%) and other European countries, but notably less than the US (17.6%). From 1990, costs steadily increased.\nIt is estimated that one out of six Swiss persons suffers from mental illness.\nAccording to a survey conducted by Addiction Switzerland, fourteen per cent of men and 6.5% of women between 20 and 24 reported consuming cannabis in the past 30 days in 2020, and 4 Swiss cities were listed among the top 10 European cities for cocaine use as measured in wastewater, down from 5 in 2018.\nCulture.\nSwiss culture is characterised by diversity, which is reflected in diverse traditional customs. A region may be in some ways culturally connected to the neighbouring country that shares its language, all rooted in western European culture. The linguistically isolated Romansh culture in Graub\u00fcnden in eastern Switzerland constitutes an exception. It survives only in the upper valleys of the Rhine and the Inn and strives to maintain its rare linguistic tradition.\nSwitzerland is home to notable contributors to literature, art, architecture, music and sciences. In addition, the country attracted creatives during times of unrest or war. Some 1000 museums are found in the country.\nAmong the most important cultural performances held annually are the Pal\u00e9o Festival, Lucerne Festival, the Montreux Jazz Festival, the Locarno International Film Festival and Art Basel.\nAlpine symbolism played an essential role in shaping Swiss history and the Swiss national identity. Many alpine areas and ski resorts attract visitors for winter sports as well as hiking and mountain biking in summer. The quieter seasons are spring and autumn. A traditional pastoral culture predominates in many areas, and small farms are omnipresent in rural areas. Folk art is nurtured in organisations across the country. Switzerland most directly in appears in music, dance, poetry, wood carving, and embroidery. The alphorn, a trumpet-like musical instrument made of wood has joined yodeling and the accordion as epitomes of traditional Swiss music.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nChristianity is the predominant religion according to national surveys of Swiss Federal Statistical Office (about 67% of resident population in 2016\u20132018 and 75% of Swiss citizens), divided between the Catholic Church (35.8% of the population), the Swiss Reformed Church (23.8%), further Protestant churches (2.2%), Eastern Orthodoxy (2.5%), and other Christian denominations (2.2%).\nSwitzerland has no official state religion, though most of the cantons (except Geneva and Neuch\u00e2tel) recognise official churches, either the Catholic Church or the Swiss Reformed Church. These churches, and in some cantons the Old Catholic Church and Jewish congregations, are financed by official taxation of members. In 2020, the Roman Catholic Church had 3,048,475 registered and church tax paying members (corresponding to 35.2% of the total population), while the Swiss Reformed Church had 2,015,816 members (23.3% of the total population).\n26.3% of Swiss permanent residents are not affiliated with a religious community.\nAs of 2020, according to a national survey conducted by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, Christian minority communities included Neo-Pietism (0.5%), Pentecostalism (0.4%, mostly incorporated in the Schweizer Pfingstmission), Apostolic communities (0.3%), other Protestant denominations (1.1%, including Methodism), the Old Catholic Church (0.1%), other Christian denominations (0.3%). Non-Christian religions are Islam (5.3%), Hinduism (0.6%), Buddhism (0.5%), Judaism (0.25%) and others (0.4%).\nHistorically, the country was about evenly balanced between Catholic and Protestant, in a complex patchwork. During the Reformation Switzerland became home to many reformers. Geneva converted to Protestantism in 1536, just before John Calvin arrived. In 1541, he founded the \"Republic of Geneva\" on his own ideals. It became known internationally as the \"Protestant Rome\" and housed such reformers as Theodore Beza, William Farel or Pierre Viret. Zurich became another reform stronghold around the same time, with Huldrych Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger taking the lead. Anabaptists Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel also operated there. They were later joined by the fleeing Peter Martyr Vermigli and Hans Denck. Other centres included Basel (Andreas Karlstadt and Johannes Oecolampadius), Bern (Berchtold Haller and Niklaus Manuel), and St. Gallen (Joachim Vadian). One canton, Appenzell, was officially divided into Catholic and Protestant sections in 1597. The larger cities and their cantons (Bern, Geneva, Lausanne, Zurich and Basel) used to be predominantly Protestant. Central Switzerland, the Valais, the Ticino, Appenzell Innerrhodes, the Jura, and Fribourg are traditionally Catholic.\nThe Swiss Constitution of 1848, under the recent impression of the clashes of Catholic vs Protestant cantons that culminated in the Sonderbundskrieg, consciously defines a consociational state, allowing the peaceful co-existence of Catholics and Protestants. A 1980 initiative calling for the complete separation of church and state was rejected by 78.9% of the voters. Some traditionally Protestant cantons and cities nowadays have a slight Catholic majority, because since about 1970 a steadily growing minority were not affiliated with any religious body (21.4% in Switzerland, 2012) especially in traditionally Protestant regions, such as Basel-City (42%), canton of Neuch\u00e2tel (38%), canton of Geneva (35%), canton of Vaud (26%), or Zurich city (city: >25%; canton: 23%).\nLiterature.\nThe earliest forms of literature were in German, reflecting the language's early predominance. In the 18th century, French became fashionable in Bern and elsewhere, while the influence of the French-speaking allies and subject lands increased.\nAmong the classic authors of Swiss literature are Jeremias Gotthelf (1797\u20131854) and Gottfried Keller (1819\u20131890); later writers are Max Frisch (1911\u20131991) and Friedrich D\u00fcrrenmatt (1921\u20131990), whose (\"\") was released as a Hollywood film in 2001, starring Jack Nicholson.\nFamous French-speaking writers were Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712\u20131778) and Germaine de Sta\u00ebl (1766\u20131817). More recent authors include Charles Ferdinand Ramuz (1878\u20131947), whose novels describe the lives of peasants and mountain dwellers, set in a harsh environment, and Blaise Cendrars (born Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Sauser, 1887\u20131961). Italian and Romansh-speaking authors also contributed to the Swiss literary landscape, generally in proportion to their number.\nProbably the most famous Swiss literary creation, \"Heidi\", the story of an orphan girl who lives with her grandfather in the Alps, is one of the most popular children's books and has come to be a symbol of Switzerland. Her creator, Johanna Spyri (1827\u20131901), wrote a number of books on similar themes.\nMedia.\nFreedom of the press and the right to free expression is guaranteed in the constitution. The Swiss News Agency (SNA) broadcasts information in three of the four national languages\u2014on politics, economics, society and culture. The SNA supplies almost all Swiss media and foreign media with its reporting.\nIn Switzerland, the most influential newspapers include the German-language and \"Neue Z\u00fcrcher Zeitung\", as well as the French-language \"Le Temps\". Additionally, almost every city has at least one local newspaper published in the predominant local language.\nThe government exerts greater control over broadcast media than print media, especially due to financing and licensing. The Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, whose name was recently changed to SRG SSR, is charged with the production and distribution of radio and television content. SRG SSR studios are distributed across the various language regions. Radio content is produced in six central and four regional studios while video media are produced in Geneva, Zurich, Basel, and Lugano. An extensive cable network allows most Swiss to access content from neighbouring countries.\nSports.\nSkiing, snowboarding and mountaineering are among the most popular sports, reflecting the nature of the country Winter sports are practised by natives and visitors. The bobsleigh was invented in St. Moritz. The first world ski championships were held in M\u00fcrren (1931) and St. Moritz (1934). The latter town hosted the second Winter Olympic Games in 1928 and the fifth edition in 1948. Among its most successful skiers and world champions are Pirmin Zurbriggen and Didier Cuche.\nThe most prominently watched sports in Switzerland are football and ice hockey.\nThe headquarters of the international football's and ice hockey's governing bodies, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) and International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) are located in Zurich. Many other headquarters of international sports federations are located in Switzerland. For example, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), IOC's Olympic Museum and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) are located in Lausanne.\nSwitzerland hosted the 1954 FIFA World Cup and was the joint host, with Austria, of the UEFA Euro 2008 tournament. The Swiss Super League is the nation's professional football club league. Europe's highest football pitch, at above sea level, is located in Switzerland, the \"Ottmar Hitzfeld Stadium\".\nMany Swiss follow ice hockey and support one of the 12 teams of the National League, which is the most attended league in Europe. In 2009, Switzerland hosted the IIHF World Championship for the tenth time. It also became World Vice-Champion in 2013 and 2018. Its numerous lakes make Switzerland an attractive sailing destination. The largest, Lake Geneva, is the home of the sailing team Alinghi which was the first European team to win the America's Cup in 2003 and which successfully defended the title in 2007.\nSwiss tennis player Roger Federer is widely regarded as among the sport's greatest players. He won 20 Grand Slam tournaments overall including a record 8 Wimbledon titles. He won six ATP Finals. He was ranked no. 1 in the ATP rankings for a record 237 consecutive weeks. He ended 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009 ranked no. 1. Fellow Swiss players Martina Hingis and Stan Wawrinka also won multiple Grand Slam titles. Switzerland won the Davis Cup title in 2014.\nMotorsport racecourses and events were banned in Switzerland following the 1955 Le Mans disaster with exceptions for events such as hillclimbing. The country continued to produce successful racing drivers such as Clay Regazzoni, S\u00e9bastien Buemi, Jo Siffert, Dominique Aegerter, successful World Touring Car Championship driver Alain Menu, 2014 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Marcel F\u00e4ssler and 2015 24 Hours N\u00fcrburgring winner Nico M\u00fcller. Switzerland also won the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport in 2007\u201308 with driver Neel Jani. Swiss motorcycle racer Thomas L\u00fcthi won the 2005 MotoGP World Championship in the 125cc category. In June 2007 the Swiss National Council, one house of the Federal Assembly of Switzerland, voted to overturn the ban, however the other house, the Swiss Council of States rejected the change and the ban remains in place.\nTraditional sports include Swiss wrestling or , a tradition from the rural central cantons and considered the national sport by some. Hornussen is another indigenous Swiss sport, which is like a cross between baseball and golf. is the Swiss variant of stone put, a competition in throwing a heavy stone. Practised only among the alpine population since prehistoric times, it is recorded to have taken place in Basel in the 13th century. It is central to the Unspunnenfest, first held in 1805, with its symbol the 83.5 stone named .\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine is multifaceted. While dishes such as fondue, raclette or r\u00f6sti are omnipresent, each region developed its gastronomy according to the varieties of climate and language, for example, , engl.: sliced meat Zurich style. Traditional Swiss cuisine uses ingredients similar to those in other European countries, as well as unique dairy products and cheeses such as Gruy\u00e8re or Emmental, produced in the valleys of Gruy\u00e8res and Emmental. The number of fine-dining establishments is high, particularly in western Switzerland.\nChocolate has been made in Switzerland since the 18th century. Its reputation grew at the end of the 19th century with the invention of modern techniques such as conching and tempering, which enabled higher quality. Another breakthrough was the invention of solid milk chocolate in 1875 by Daniel Peter. The Swiss are the world's largest chocolate consumers.\nThe most popular alcoholic drink is wine. Switzerland is notable for its variety of grape varieties, reflecting the large variations in terroirs. Swiss wine is produced mainly in Valais, Vaud (Lavaux), Geneva and Ticino, with a small majority of white wines. Vineyards have been cultivated in Switzerland since the Roman era, even though traces of a more ancient origin can be found. The most widespread varieties are the Chasselas (called Fendant in Valais) and Pinot Noir. Merlot is the main variety produced in Ticino.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "17926": "League of Nations\n20th-century international organisation, predecessor to the United Nations\nThe League of Nations (LN or LoN; , SdN) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. The main organisation ceased operations on 18 April 1946 when many of its components were relocated into the new United Nations (UN) which was created in the aftermath of the Second World War. As the template for modern global governance, the League profoundly shaped the modern world.\nThe League's primary goals were stated in its eponymous Covenant. They included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration. Its other concerns included labour conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, human and drug trafficking, the arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in Europe. The Covenant of the League of Nations was signed on 28 June 1919 as Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, and it became effective with the rest of the Treaty on 10 January 1920. Australia was granted the right to participate as an autonomous member nation, marking the start of Australian independence on the global stage. The first meeting of the Council of the League took place on 16 January 1920, and the first meeting of the Assembly of the League took place on 15 November 1920. In 1919, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role as the leading architect of the League.\nThe diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift from the preceding hundred years. The League lacked its own armed force and depended on the victorious Allied Powers of World War I (Britain, France, Italy and Japan were the initial permanent members of the Council) to enforce its resolutions, keep to its economic sanctions, or provide an army when needed. The Great Powers were often reluctant to do so. Sanctions could hurt League members, so they were reluctant to comply with them. During the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, when the League accused Italian soldiers of targeting International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement medical tents, Benito Mussolini responded that \"the League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out.\"\nAt its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935, it had 58 members. After some notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930s. Its credibility was weakened because the United States never joined. Japan and Germany left in 1933, Italy left in 1937, and Spain left in 1939. The Soviet Union only joined in 1934 and was expelled in 1939 after invading Finland. Furthermore, the League demonstrated an irresolute approach to sanction enforcement for fear it might only spark further conflict, further decreasing its credibility. One example of this hesitancy was the Abyssinia Crisis, in which Italy's sanctions were only limited from the outset (coal and oil were not restricted), and later altogether abandoned despite Italy being declared the aggressors in the conflict. The onset of the Second World War in 1939 showed that the League had failed its primary purpose: to prevent another world war. It was largely inactive until its abolition. The League lasted for 26 years; the United Nations effectively replaced it in 1945, inheriting several agencies and organisations founded by the League, with the League itself formally dissolving the following year.\nCurrent scholarly consensus views that, even though the League failed to achieve its main goal of world peace, it did manage to build new roads towards expanding the rule of law across the globe; strengthened the concept of collective security, gave a voice to smaller nations; fostered economic stabilisation and financial stability, especially in Central Europe in the 1920s; helped to raise awareness of problems such as epidemics, slavery, child labour, colonial tyranny, refugee crises and general working conditions through its numerous commissions and committees; and paved the way for new forms of statehood, as the mandate system put the colonial powers under international observation. Professor David Kennedy portrays the League as a unique moment when international affairs were \"institutionalised\", as opposed to the pre\u2013First World War methods of law and politics.\nOrigins.\nBackground.\nThe concept of a peaceful community of nations had been proposed as early as 1795, when Immanuel Kant's \"\" outlined the idea of a league of nations to control conflict and promote peace between states. Kant argued for the establishment of a peaceful world community, not in a sense of a global government, but in the hope that each state would declare itself a free state that respects its citizens and welcomes foreign visitors as fellow rational beings, thus promoting peaceful society worldwide. International co-operation to promote collective security originated in the Concert of Europe that developed after the Napoleonic Wars in the 19th century in an attempt to maintain the \"status quo\" between European states and so avoid war.\nBy 1910, international law developed, with the first Geneva Conventions establishing laws dealing with humanitarian relief during wartime, and the international Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 governing rules of war and the peaceful settlement of international disputes. Theodore Roosevelt at the acceptance for his Nobel Prize in 1910, said: \"it would be a masterstroke if those great powers honestly bent on peace would form a League of Peace.\"\nOne small forerunner of the League of Nations, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), was formed by the peace activists William Randal Cremer and Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Passy in 1889 (and still exists as an international body focused on the world's various elected legislative bodies). The IPU was founded with an international scope, with a third of the members of parliaments (in the 24 countries that had parliaments) serving as members of the IPU by 1914. Its foundational aims were to encourage governments to solve international disputes by peaceful means. Annual conferences were established to help governments refine the process of international arbitration. Its structure was designed as a council headed by a president, which would later be reflected in the structure of the League.\nPlans and proposals.\nAt the start of the First World War, the first schemes for an international organisation to prevent future wars began to gain considerable public support, particularly in Great Britain and the United States. Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, a British political scientist, coined the term \"League of Nations\" in 1914 and drafted a scheme for its organisation. Together with Lord Bryce, he played a leading role in the founding of the group of internationalist pacifists known as the Bryce Group, later the League of Nations Union. The group became steadily more influential among the public and as a pressure group within the then-governing Liberal Party. In Dickinson's 1915 pamphlet \"After the War\" he wrote of his \"League of Peace\" as being essentially an organisation for arbitration and conciliation. He felt that the secret diplomacy of the early twentieth century had brought about war, and thus, could write that, \"the impossibility of war, I believe, would be increased in proportion as the issues of foreign policy should be known to and controlled by public opinion.\" The 'Proposals' of the Bryce Group were circulated widely, both in England and the US, where they had a profound influence on the nascent international movement.\nIn January 1915, a peace conference directed by Jane Addams was held in the neutral United States. The delegates adopted a platform calling for creation of international bodies with administrative and legislative powers to develop a \"permanent league of neutral nations\" to work for peace and disarmament. Within months, a call was made for an international women's conference to be held in The Hague. Coordinated by Mia Boissevain, Aletta Jacobs and Rosa Manus, the congress, which opened on 28 April 1915 was attended by 1,136 participants from neutral nations, and resulted in the establishment of an organisation which would become the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). At the close of the conference, two delegations of women were dispatched to meet European heads of state over the next several months. They secured agreement from reluctant foreign ministers, who overall felt that such a body would be ineffective, but agreed to participate in or not impede creation of a neutral mediating body, if other nations agreed and if President Woodrow Wilson would initiate a body. In the midst of the War, Wilson refused.\nIn 1915, a body similar to the Bryce Group was set up in the United States, led by former president William Howard Taft. It was called the League to Enforce Peace. It advocated the use of arbitration in conflict resolution and the imposition of sanctions on aggressive countries. None of these early organisations envisioned a continuously functioning body; with the exception of the Fabian Society in England, they maintained a legalistic approach that would limit the international body to a court of justice. The Fabians were the first to argue for a \"council\" of states, necessarily the Great Powers, who would adjudicate world affairs, and for the creation of a permanent secretariat to enhance international co-operation across a range of activities.\nIn the course of the diplomatic efforts surrounding World War I, both sides had to clarify their long-term war aims. By 1916 in Britain, fighting on the side of the Allies, and in the neutral United States, long-range thinkers had begun to design a unified international organisation to prevent future wars. Historian Peter Yearwood argues that when the new coalition government of David Lloyd George took power in December 1916, there was widespread discussion among intellectuals and diplomats of the desirability of establishing such an organisation. When Lloyd George was challenged by Wilson to state his position with an eye on the postwar situation, he endorsed such an organisation. Wilson himself included in his Fourteen Points in January 1918 a \"league of nations to ensure peace and justice.\" British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, argued that, as a condition of durable peace, \"behind international law, and behind all treaty arrangements for preventing or limiting hostilities, some form of international sanction should be devised which would give pause to the hardiest aggressor.\"\nThe war had had a profound impact, affecting the social, political and economic systems of Europe and inflicting psychological and physical damage. Several empires collapsed: first the Russian Empire in February 1917, followed by the German Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empire. Anti-war sentiment rose across the world; the First World War was described as \"the war to end all wars\", and its possible causes were vigorously investigated. The causes identified included arms races, alliances, militaristic nationalism, secret diplomacy, and the freedom of sovereign states to enter into war for their own benefit. One proposed remedy was the creation of an international organisation whose aim was to prevent future war through disarmament, open diplomacy, international co-operation, restrictions on the right to wage war, and penalties that made war unattractive.\nIn London Balfour commissioned the first official report into the matter in early 1918, under the initiative of Lord Robert Cecil. The British committee was finally appointed in February 1918. It was led by Walter Phillimore (and became known as the Phillimore Committee), but also included Eyre Crowe, William Tyrrell, and Cecil Hurst. The recommendations of the so-called Phillimore Commission included the establishment of a \"Conference of Allied States\" that would arbitrate disputes and impose sanctions on offending states. The proposals were approved by the British government, and much of the commission's results were later incorporated into the Covenant of the League of Nations.\nThe French authorities also drafted a much more far-reaching proposal in June 1918; they advocated annual meetings of a council to settle all disputes, as well as an \"international army\" to enforce its decisions.\nAmerican President Woodrow Wilson instructed Edward M. House to draft a US plan which reflected Wilson's own idealistic views (first articulated in the Fourteen Points of January 1918), as well as the work of the Phillimore Commission. The outcome of House's work and Wilson's own first draft proposed the termination of \"unethical\" state behaviour, including forms of espionage and dishonesty. Methods of compulsion against recalcitrant states would include severe measures, such as \"blockading and closing the frontiers of that power to commerce or intercourse with any part of the world and to use any force that may be necessary...\"\nThe two principal drafters and architects of the covenant of the League of Nations were the British politician Lord Robert Cecil and the South African statesman Jan Smuts. Smuts's proposals included the creation of a council of the great powers as permanent members and a non-permanent selection of the minor states. He also proposed the creation of a mandate system for captured colonies of the Central Powers during the war. Cecil focused on the administrative side and proposed annual council meetings and quadrennial meetings for the Assembly of all members. He also argued for a large and permanent secretariat to carry out the League's administrative duties.\nAccording to historian Patricia Clavin, Cecil and the British continued their leadership of the development of a rules-based global order into the 1920s and 1930s, with a primary focus on the League of Nations. The British goal was to systematise and normalise the economic and social relations between states, markets, and civil society. They gave priority to business and banking issues, but also considered the needs of ordinary women, children and the family as well. They moved beyond high-level intellectual discussions, and set up local organisations to support the League. The British were particularly active in setting up junior branches for secondary students.\nThe League of Nations was relatively more universal and inclusive in its membership and structure than previous international organisations, but the organisation enshrined racial hierarchy by curtailing the right to self-determination and prevented decolonisation.\nEstablishment.\nAt the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Wilson, Cecil and Smuts all put forward their draft proposals. After lengthy negotiations between the delegates, the Hurst\u2013Miller draft was finally produced as a basis for the Covenant. After more negotiation and compromise, the delegates finally approved of the proposal to create the League of Nations (, ) on 25 January 1919. The final Covenant of the League of Nations was drafted by a special commission, and the League was established by Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919.\nFrench women's rights advocates invited international feminists to participate in a parallel conference to the Paris Conference in hopes that they could gain permission to participate in the official conference. The Inter-Allied Women's Conference asked to be allowed to submit suggestions to the peace negotiations and commissions and were granted the right to sit on commissions dealing specifically with women and children. Though they asked for enfranchisement and full legal protection under the law equal with men, those rights were ignored. Women won the right to serve in all capacities, including as staff or delegates in the League of Nations organisation. They also won a declaration that member nations should prevent trafficking of women and children and should equally support humane conditions for children, women and men labourers. At the Z\u00fcrich Peace Conference held between 17 and 19 May 1919, the women of the WILPF condemned the terms of the Treaty of Versailles for both its punitive measures, as well as its failure to provide for condemnation of violence and exclusion of women from civil and political participation. Upon reading the Rules of Procedure for the League of Nations, Catherine Marshall, a British suffragist, discovered that the guidelines were completely undemocratic and they were modified based on her suggestion.\nThe League would be made up of a Assembly (representing all member states), a Council (with membership limited to major powers), and a permanent Secretariat. Member states were expected to \"respect and preserve as against external aggression\" the territorial integrity of other members and to disarm \"to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.\" All states were required to submit complaints for arbitration or judicial inquiry before going to war. The Council would create a Permanent Court of International Justice to make judgements on the disputes.\nDespite Wilson's efforts to establish and promote the League, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1919, the United States never joined. Senate Republicans led by Henry Cabot Lodge wanted a League with the reservation that only Congress could take the U.S. into war. Lodge gained a majority of Senators and Wilson refused to allow a compromise. The Senate voted on the ratification on 19 March 1920, and the 49\u201335 vote fell short of the needed 2/3 majority.\nThe League held its first council meeting in Paris on 16 January 1920, six days after the Versailles Treaty and the Covenant of the League of Nations came into force. On 1 November 1920, the headquarters of the League was moved from London to Geneva, where the first General Assembly was held on 15 November 1920. Geneva made sense as an ideal city for the League, since Switzerland had been a neutral country for centuries and was already the headquarters for the International Red Cross. Its strong democracy and location in central Europe made it a good choice for the nations of the world. Support for Geneva as the selection came from Swiss Federal Councillor Gustave Ador and economist William Rappard. The Palais Wilson on Geneva's western lakeshore, named after Woodrow Wilson, was the League's first permanent home.\nMission.\nThe covenant had ambiguities, as Carole Fink points out. There was not a good fit between Wilson's \"revolutionary conception of the League as a solid replacement for a corrupt alliance system, a guardian of international order, and protector of small states,\" versus Lloyd George's desire for a \"cheap, self-enforcing, peace, such as had been maintained by the old and more fluid Concert of Europe.\"\nFurthermore, the League, according to Carole Fink, was, \"deliberately excluded from such great-power prerogatives as freedom of the seas and naval disarmament, the Monroe Doctrine and the internal affairs of the French and British empires, and inter-Allied debts and German reparations, not to mention the Allied intervention and the settlement of borders with Soviet Russia.\"\nAlthough the United States never joined, unofficial observers became more and more involved, especially in the 1930s. American philanthropies became heavily involved, especially the Rockefeller Foundation. It made major grants designed to build up the technical expertise of the League staff. Ludovic Tourn\u00e8s argues that by the 1930s the foundations had changed the League from a \"Parliament of Nations\" to a modern think tank that used specialised expertise to provide an in-depth impartial analysis of international issues.\nLanguages and symbols.\nThe official languages of the League of Nations were French and English.\nDuring the 1939 New York World's Fair, a semi-official flag and emblem for the League of Nations emerged: two five-pointed stars within a blue pentagon. They symbolised the Earth's five continents and \"five races\". A bow at the top displayed the English name (\"League of Nations\"), while another at the bottom showed the French (\"Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 des Nations\").\nMembership.\nThe League consisted of 42 founding members in November 1920. Six other states joined in its founding year (by December 1920), and seven more joined by September 1924, bringing the League's size to 55. Costa Rica withdrew in December 1924, making it the member to have most quickly withdrawn, and Brazil became the first founding member to withdraw in June 1926. Germany (under the Weimar Republic) was admitted to the League of Nations through a resolution passed on 8 September 1926. The League's size remained at 54 for the next five years.\nThrough the first half of the 1930s, six more states joined, including Iraq in 1932 (newly independent from a League of Nations mandate) and the Soviet Union on 18 September 1934, but the Empire of Japan and Germany (under Hitler) withdrew in 1933. This marked the League's largest extent at 58 member states.\nIn December 1920, Argentina quit (being absent from all sessions and votes) without formally withdrawing, on rejection of an Argentine resolution that all sovereign states would be admitted to the League. It resumed its participation in September 1933.\nThe League's membership declined through the second half of the 1930s as it weakened. Between 1935 and the start of World War II in Europe in September 1939, only Egypt joined (becoming the last state to join), 11 members left, and 3 members ceased to exist or fell under military occupation (Ethiopia, Austria, and Czechoslovakia). The Soviet Union was expelled on 14 December 1939 for invading Finland, as one of the last acts of the League before it ceased functioning.\nOrganization.\n \nPermanent organs.\nThe main constitutional organs of the League were the Assembly, the council, and the Permanent Secretariat. It also had two essential wings: the Permanent Court of International Justice and the International Labour Organization. In addition, there were several auxiliary agencies and bodies. Each organ's budget was allocated by the Assembly (the League was supported financially by its member states).\nThe relations between the assembly and the council and the competencies of each were for the most part not explicitly defined. Each body could deal with any matter within the sphere of competence of the league or affecting peace in the world. Particular questions or tasks might be referred to either.\nUnanimity was required for the decisions of both the assembly and the council, except in matters of procedure and some other specific cases such as the admission of new members. This requirement was a reflection of the league's belief in the sovereignty of its component nations; the league sought a solution by consent, not by dictation. In case of a dispute, the consent of the parties to the dispute was not required for unanimity.\nThe Permanent Secretariat, established at the seat of the League at Geneva, comprised a body of experts in various spheres under the direction of the general secretary. Its principal sections were Political, Financial and Economics, Transit, Minorities and Administration (administering the Saar and Danzig), Mandates, Disarmament, Health, Social (Opium and Traffic in Women and Children), Intellectual Cooperation and International Bureaux, Legal, and Information. The staff of the Secretariat was responsible for preparing the agenda for the Council and the Assembly and publishing reports of the meetings and other routine matters, effectively acting as the League's civil service. In 1931 the staff numbered 707.\nThe Assembly consisted of representatives of all members of the League, with each state allowed up to three representatives and one vote. It met in Geneva and, after its initial sessions in 1920, it convened once a year in September. The special functions of the Assembly included the admission of new members, the periodical election of non-permanent members to the council, the election with the Council of the judges of the Permanent Court, and control of the budget. In practice, the Assembly was the general directing force of League activities.\nThe Council acted as a type of executive body directing the Assembly's business. It began with four permanent members \u2013 Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan \u2013 and four non-permanent members that were elected by the Assembly for a three-year term. The first non-permanent members were Belgium, Brazil, Greece, and Spain.\nThe composition of the Council was changed several times. The number of non-permanent members was first increased to six on 22 September 1922 and to nine on 8 September 1926. Werner Dankwort of Germany pushed for his country to join the League; joining in 1926, Germany became the fifth permanent member of the Council. Later, after Germany and Japan both left the League, the number of non-permanent seats was increased from nine to eleven, and the Soviet Union was made a permanent member giving the council a total of fifteen members. The Council met, on average, five times a year and in extraordinary sessions when required. In total, 107 sessions were held between 1920 and 1939.\nOther bodies.\nThe League oversaw the Permanent Court of International Justice and several other agencies and commissions created to deal with pressing international problems. These included the Disarmament Commission, the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Mandates Commission, the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation (precursor to UNESCO), the Permanent Central Opium Board, the Commission for Refugees, the Slavery Commission, and the Economic and Financial Organization. Three of these institutions were transferred to the United Nations after the Second World War: the International Labour Organization, the Permanent Court of International Justice (as the International Court of Justice), and the Health Organisation (restructured as the World Health Organization).\nThe Permanent Court of International Justice was provided for by the Covenant, but not established by it. The Council and the Assembly established its constitution. Its judges were elected by the Council and the Assembly, and its budget was provided by the latter. The Court was to hear and decide any international dispute which the parties concerned submitted to it. It might also give an advisory opinion on any dispute or question referred to it by the council or the Assembly. The Court was open to all the nations of the world under certain broad conditions.\nThe International Labour Organization was created in 1919 on the basis of Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles. The ILO, although having the same members as the League and being subject to the budget control of the Assembly, was an autonomous organisation with its own Governing Body, its own General Conference and its own Secretariat. Its constitution differed from that of the League: representation had been accorded not only to governments but also to representatives of employers' and workers' organisations. Albert Thomas was its first director.\nThe ILO successfully restricted the addition of lead to paint, and convinced several countries to adopt an eight-hour work day and forty-eight-hour working week. It also campaigned to end child labour, increase the rights of women in the workplace, and make shipowners liable for accidents involving seamen. After the demise of the League, the ILO became an agency of the United Nations in 1946.\nThe League's Health Organisation had three bodies: the Health Bureau, containing permanent officials of the League; the General Advisory Council or Conference, an executive section consisting of medical experts; and the Health Committee. In practice, the Paris-based Office international d'hygi\u00e8ne publique (OIHP) founded in 1907 after the International Sanitary Conferences, was discharging most of the practical health-related questions, and its relations with the League's Health Committee were often conflictual. The Health Committee's purpose was to conduct inquiries, oversee the operation of the League's health work, and prepare work to be presented to the council. This body focused on ending leprosy, malaria, and yellow fever, the latter two by starting an international campaign to exterminate mosquitoes. The Health Organisation also worked successfully with the government of the Soviet Union to prevent typhus epidemics, including organising a large education campaign.\nLinked with health, but also commercial concerns, was the topic of narcotics control. Introduced by the second International Opium Convention, the Permanent Central Opium Board had to supervise the statistical reports on trade in opium, morphine, cocaine and heroin. The board also established a system of import certificates and export authorisations for the legal international trade in narcotics.\nThe League of Nations had devoted serious attention to the question of international intellectual cooperation since its creation. The First Assembly in December 1920 recommended that the Council take action aiming at the international organisation of intellectual work, which it did by adopting a report presented by the Fifth Committee of the Second Assembly and inviting a committee on intellectual co-operation to meet in Geneva in August 1922. The French philosopher Henri Bergson became the first chairman of the committee. The work of the committee included: an inquiry into the conditions of intellectual life, assistance to countries where intellectual life was endangered, creation of national committees for intellectual cooperation, cooperation with international intellectual organisations, protection of intellectual property, inter-university co-operation, co-ordination of bibliographical work and international interchange of publications, and international co-operation in archaeological research.\nThe Slavery Commission sought to eradicate slavery and slave trading across the world, and fought forced prostitution. Its main success was through pressing the governments who administered mandated countries to end slavery in those countries. The League secured a commitment from Ethiopia to end slavery as a condition of membership in 1923, and worked with Liberia to abolish forced labour and intertribal slavery. The United Kingdom had not supported Ethiopian membership of the League on the grounds that \"Ethiopia had not reached a state of civilisation and internal security sufficient to warrant her admission.\"\nThe League also succeeded in reducing the death rate of workers constructing the Tanganyika railway from 55 to 4 per cent. Records were kept to control slavery, prostitution, and the trafficking of women and children. Partly as a result of pressure brought by the League of Nations, Afghanistan abolished slavery in 1923, Iraq in 1924, Nepal in 1926, Transjordan and Persia in 1929, Bahrain in 1937, and Ethiopia in 1942.\nLed by Fridtjof Nansen, the Commission for Refugees was established on 27 June 1921 to look after the interests of refugees, including overseeing their repatriation and, when necessary, resettlement. At the end of the First World War, there were two to three million ex-prisoners of war from various nations dispersed throughout Russia; within two years of the commission's foundation, it had helped 425,000 of them return home. It established camps in Turkey in 1922 to aid the country with an ongoing refugee crisis, helping to prevent the spread of cholera, smallpox and dysentery as well as feeding the refugees in the camps. It also established the Nansen passport as a means of identification for stateless people.\nThe Committee for the Study of the Legal Status of Women sought to inquire into the status of women all over the world. It was formed in 1937, and later became part of the United Nations as the Commission on the Status of Women.\nThe Covenant of the League said little about economics. Nonetheless, in 1920 the Council of the League called for a financial conference. The First Assembly at Geneva provided for the appointment of an Economic and Financial Advisory Committee to provide information to the conference. In 1923, a permanent Economic and Financial Organisation came into being. The existing bilateral treaty regime was integrated into the League where the most-favoured-nation norm was codified and the League took on responsibilities related to international oversight and standardisation.\nMandates.\nAt the end of the First World War, the Allied Powers were confronted with the question of the disposal of the former German colonies in Africa and the Pacific, and the several Arabic-speaking provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Many British and French leaders wanted to annex colonies of the defeated Central Powers, but U.S. President Woodrow Wilson strongly insisted that instead of annexation, these territories should be assisted under League of Nations supervision in achieving self-governance and eventual independence depending on the inhabitants' choices.\nThe Paris Peace Conference compromised with Wilson by adopting the principle that these territories should be administered by different governments on behalf of the League \u2013 a system of national responsibility subject to international supervision. This plan, defined as the mandate system, was adopted by the \"Council of Ten\" (the heads of government and foreign ministers of the main Allied Powers: Britain, France, the United States, Italy, and Japan) on 30 January 1919 and transmitted to the League of Nations.\nLeague of Nations mandates were established under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. The Permanent Mandates Commission supervised League of Nations mandates, and also organised plebiscites in disputed territories so that residents could decide which country they would join. There were three mandate classifications: A, B and C.\nThe A mandates (applied to parts of the old Ottoman Empire) were \"certain communities\" that had <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Article 22\nThe B mandates were applied to the former German colonies that the League took responsibility for after the First World War. These were described as \"peoples\" that the League said were <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Article 22\nSouth West Africa and certain South Pacific Islands were administered by League members under C mandates. These were classified as \"territories\" <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Article 22\nMandatory powers.\nThe territories were governed by mandatory powers, such as the United Kingdom in the case of the Mandate of Palestine, and the Union of South Africa in the case of South-West Africa, until the territories were deemed capable of self-government. Fourteen mandate territories were divided up among seven mandatory powers: the United Kingdom, the Union of South Africa, France, Belgium, New Zealand, Australia and Japan. With the exception of the Kingdom of Iraq, which joined the League on 3 October 1932, most of these territories did not begin to gain their independence until after the Second World War, in a process that did not end until 1990. Following the demise of the League, most of the remaining mandates became United Nations Trust Territories.\nIn addition to the mandates, the League itself governed the Territory of the Saar Basin for 15 years, before it was returned to Germany following a plebiscite, and the Free City of Danzig (now Gda\u0144sk, Poland) from 15 November 1920 to 1 September 1939.\nResolving territorial disputes.\nThe aftermath of the First World War left many issues to be settled, including the exact position of national boundaries and which country particular regions would join. Most of these questions were handled by the victorious Allied Powers in bodies such as the Allied Supreme Council. The Allied Powers tended to refer only particularly difficult matters to the League. This meant that, during the early interwar period, the League played little part in resolving the turmoil resulting from the war. The questions the League considered in its early years included those designated by the Paris Peace treaties.\nAs the League developed, its role expanded, and by the middle of the 1920s it had become the centre of international activity. This change can be seen in the relationship between the League and non-members. The United States and the Soviet Union, for example, increasingly worked with the League. During the second half of the 1920s, France, Britain and Germany were all using the League of Nations as the focus of their diplomatic activity, and each of their foreign secretaries attended League meetings at Geneva during this period. They also used the League's machinery to try to improve relations and settle their differences.\n\u00c5land Islands.\n\u00c5land is a collection of around 6,500 islands in the Baltic Sea, midway between Sweden and Finland. The islands are almost exclusively Swedish-speaking, but in 1809, the \u00c5land Islands, along with Finland, were taken by Imperial Russia. In December 1917, during the turmoil of the Russian October Revolution, Finland declared its independence, but most of the \u00c5landers wished to rejoin Sweden. The Finnish government considered the islands to be a part of their new nation, as the Russians had included \u00c5land in the Grand Duchy of Finland, formed in 1809. By 1920, the dispute had escalated to the point that there was danger of war. The British government referred the problem to the League of Nations Council, but Finland would not let the League intervene, as they considered it an internal matter. The League created a small panel to decide if it should investigate the matter and, with an affirmative response, a neutral commission was created. In June 1921, the League announced its decision: the islands were to remain a part of Finland, but with guaranteed protection of the islanders, including demilitarisation. With Sweden's reluctant agreement, this became the first European international agreement concluded directly through the League.\nUpper Silesia.\nThe Allied powers referred the problem of Upper Silesia to the League after they had been unable to resolve the territorial dispute between Poland and Germany. In 1919 Poland voiced a claim to Upper Silesia, which had been part of Prussia. The Treaty of Versailles had recommended a plebiscite in Upper Silesia to determine whether the territory should become part of Germany or Poland. Complaints about the attitude of the German authorities led to rioting and eventually to the first two Silesian Uprisings (1919 and 1920). A plebiscite took place on 20 March 1921, with 59.6 per cent (around 500,000) of the votes cast in favour of joining Germany, but Poland claimed the conditions surrounding it had been unfair. This result led to the Third Silesian Uprising in 1921.\nOn 12 August 1921, the League was asked to settle the matter; the Council created a commission with representatives from Belgium, Brazil, China and Spain to study the situation. The committee recommended that Upper Silesia be divided between Poland and Germany according to the preferences shown in the plebiscite and that the two sides should decide the details of the interaction between the two areas \u2013 for example, whether goods should pass freely over the border due to the economic and industrial interdependence of the two areas. In November 1921, a conference was held in Geneva to negotiate a convention between Germany and Poland. A final settlement was reached, after five meetings, in which most of the area was given to Germany, but with the Polish section containing the majority of the region's mineral resources and much of its industry. When this agreement became public in May 1922, bitter resentment was expressed in Germany, but the treaty was still ratified by both countries. The settlement produced peace in the area until the beginning of the Second World War.\nAlbania.\nThe frontiers of the Principality of Albania had not been set during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, as they were left for the League to decide. They had not yet been determined by September 1921, creating an unstable situation. Greek troops conducted military operations in the south of Albania. Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslav) forces became engaged, after clashes with Albanian tribesmen, in the northern part of the country. The League sent a commission of representatives from various powers to the region. In November 1921, the League decided that the frontiers of Albania should be the same as they had been in 1913, with three minor changes that favoured Yugoslavia. Yugoslav forces withdrew a few weeks later, albeit under protest.\nThe borders of Albania again became the cause of international conflict when Italian General Enrico Tellini and four of his assistants were ambushed and killed on 27 August 1923 while marking out the newly decided border between Greece and Albania. Italian leader Benito Mussolini was incensed and demanded that a commission investigate the incident within five days. Whatever the results of the investigation, Mussolini insisted that the Greek government pay Italy Lire\u00a050 million in reparations. The Greeks said they would not pay unless it was proved that the crime was committed by Greeks.\nMussolini sent a warship to shell the Greek island of Corfu, and Italian forces occupied the island on 31 August 1923. This contravened the League of Nations Covenant, so Greece appealed to the League to deal with the situation. The Allied Powers agreed (at Mussolini's insistence) that the Conference of Ambassadors should be responsible for resolving the dispute because it was the conference that had appointed General Tellini. The League of Nations Council examined the dispute, but then passed on their findings to the Conference of Ambassadors to make the final decision. The conference accepted most of the League's recommendations, forcing Greece to pay fifty million lire to Italy, even though those who committed the crime were never discovered. Italian forces then withdrew from Corfu.\nMemel.\nThe port city of Memel (now Klaip\u0117da) and the surrounding area, with a predominantly German population, was under provisional Entente control according to Article 99 of the Treaty of Versailles. The French and Polish governments favoured turning Memel into an international city, while Lithuania wanted to annex the area. By 1923, the fate of the area had still not been decided, prompting Lithuanian forces to invade in January 1923 and seize the port. After the Allied Powers failed to reach an agreement with Lithuania, they referred the matter to the League of Nations. In December 1923, the League of Nations Council appointed a Commission of Inquiry. The commission chose to cede Memel to Lithuania and give the area autonomous rights. The Klaip\u0117da Convention was approved by the Council on 14 March 1924, and then by the Allied Powers and Lithuania. In 1939 Germany retook the region following the rise of the Nazis and an ultimatum to Lithuania, demanding the return of the region under threat of war. The League of Nations failed to prevent the secession of the Memel region to Germany.\nHatay.\nWith League oversight, the Sanjak of Alexandretta in the French Mandate of Syria was given autonomy in 1937. Renamed Hatay, its parliament declared independence as the Republic of Hatay in September 1938, after elections the previous month. It was annexed by Turkey with French consent in mid-1939.\nMosul.\nThe League resolved a dispute between the Kingdom of Iraq and the Republic of Turkey over control of the former Ottoman province of Mosul in 1926. According to the British, who had been awarded a League of Nations mandate over Iraq in 1920 and therefore represented Iraq in its foreign affairs, Mosul belonged to Iraq; on the other hand, the new Turkish republic claimed the province as part of its historic heartland. A League of Nations Commission of Inquiry, with Belgian, Hungarian and Swedish members, was sent to the region in 1924; it found that the people of Mosul did not want to be part of either Turkey or Iraq, but if they had to choose, they would pick Iraq. In 1925, the commission recommended that the region stay part of Iraq, under the condition that the British hold the mandate over Iraq for another 25 years, to ensure the autonomous rights of the Kurdish population. The League Council adopted the recommendation and decided on 16 December 1925 to award Mosul to Iraq. Although Turkey had accepted League of Nations arbitration in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), it rejected the decision, questioning the Council's authority. The matter was referred to the Permanent Court of International Justice, which ruled that, when the Council made a unanimous decision, it must be accepted. Nonetheless, Britain, Iraq and Turkey ratified a separate treaty on 5 June 1926 that mostly followed the decision of the Council and also assigned Mosul to Iraq. It was agreed that Iraq could still apply for League membership within 25 years and that the mandate would end upon its admission.\nVilnius.\nAfter the First World War, Poland and Lithuania both regained their independence but soon became immersed in territorial disputes. During the Polish\u2013Soviet War, Lithuania signed the Moscow Peace Treaty with the Soviet Russia that laid out Lithuania's frontiers. This agreement gave Lithuanians control of the city of Vilnius (, ), the old Lithuanian capital, but a city with a majority Polish population. This heightened tension between Lithuania and Poland and led to fears that they would resume the Polish\u2013Lithuanian War, and on 7 October 1920, the League negotiated the Suwa\u0142ki Agreement establishing a cease-fire and a demarcation line between the two nations. On 9 October 1920, General Lucjan \u017beligowski, commanding a Polish military force in contravention of the Suwa\u0142ki Agreement, took the city and established the Republic of Central Lithuania.\nAfter a request for assistance from Lithuania, the League of Nations Council called for Poland's withdrawal from the area. The Polish government indicated they would comply, but instead reinforced the city with more Polish troops. This prompted the League to decide that the future of Vilnius should be determined by its residents in a plebiscite and that the Polish forces should withdraw and be replaced by an international force organised by the League. The plan was met with resistance in Poland, Lithuania, and the Soviet Russia, which opposed any international force in Lithuania. In March 1921, the League abandoned plans for the plebiscite. After unsuccessful proposals by Paul Hymans to create a federation between Poland and Lithuania, which was intended as a reincarnation of the former Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth which the two nations had shared before losing their independence, Vilnius and the surrounding area was formally annexed by Poland in March 1922. After Lithuania took over the Klaip\u0117da Region, the Allied Conference set the frontier between Lithuania and Poland, leaving Vilnius within Poland, on 14 March 1923. Lithuanian authorities refused to accept the decision, and officially remained in a state of war with Poland until 1927. It was not until the 1938 Polish ultimatum that Lithuania restored diplomatic relations with Poland and thus \"de facto\" accepted the borders.\nColombia and Peru.\nThere were several border conflicts between Colombia and Peru in the early part of the 20th century, and in 1922, their governments signed the Salom\u00f3n-Lozano Treaty in an attempt to resolve them. As part of this treaty, the border town of Leticia and its surrounding area was ceded from Peru to Colombia, giving Colombia access to the Amazon River. On 1 September 1932, business leaders from Peruvian rubber and sugar industries who had lost land, as a result, organised an armed takeover of Leticia. At first, the Peruvian government did not recognise the military takeover, but President of Peru Luis S\u00e1nchez Cerro decided to resist a Colombian re-occupation. The Peruvian Army occupied Leticia, leading to an armed conflict between the two nations. After months of diplomatic negotiations, the governments accepted mediation by the League of Nations, and their representatives presented their cases before the Council. A provisional peace agreement, signed by both parties in May 1933, provided for the League to assume control of the disputed territory while bilateral negotiations proceeded. In May 1934, a final peace agreement was signed, resulting in the return of Leticia to Colombia, a formal apology from Peru for the 1932 invasion, demilitarisation of the area around Leticia, free navigation on the Amazon and Putumayo Rivers, and a pledge of non-aggression.\nSaar.\nSaar was a province formed from parts of Prussia and the Rhenish Palatinate and placed under League control by the Treaty of Versailles. A plebiscite was to be held after fifteen years of League rule to determine whether the province should belong to Germany or France. When the referendum was held in 1935, 90.3 per cent of voters supported becoming part of Germany, which was quickly approved by the League of Nations Council.\nOther conflicts.\nIn addition to territorial disputes, the League also tried to intervene in other conflicts between and within nations. Among its successes were its fight against the international trade in opium and sexual slavery, and its work to alleviate the plight of refugees, particularly in Turkey in the period up to 1926. One of its innovations in this latter area was the 1922 introduction of the Nansen passport, which was the first internationally recognised identity card for stateless refugees.\nGreece and Bulgaria.\nAfter an incident involving sentries on the Greek-Bulgarian border in October 1925, fighting began between the two countries. Three days after the initial incident, Greek troops invaded Bulgaria. The Bulgarian government ordered its troops to make only token resistance, and evacuated between ten thousand and fifteen thousand people from the border region, trusting the League to settle the dispute. The League condemned the Greek invasion, and called for both Greek withdrawal and compensation to Bulgaria.\nLiberia.\nFollowing accusations of forced labour on the large American-owned Firestone rubber plantation and American accusations of slave trading, the Liberian government asked the League to launch an investigation. The resulting commission was jointly appointed by the League, the United States, and Liberia. In 1930, a League report confirmed the presence of slavery and forced labour. The report implicated many government officials in the selling of contract labour and recommended that they be replaced by Europeans or Americans, which generated anger within Liberia and led to the resignation of President Charles D. B. King and his vice-president. The Liberian government outlawed forced labour and slavery and asked for American help in social reforms.\nMukden Incident.\nThe Mukden Incident, also known as the \"Manchurian Incident\", was a decisive setback that weakened the League because its major members refused to tackle Japanese aggression. Japan itself withdrew.\nUnder the agreed terms of the Twenty-One Demands with China, the Japanese government had the right to station its troops in the area around the South Manchurian Railway, a major trade route between China and Korea (then a Japanese colony), in the Chinese region of Manchuria. In September 1931, a section of the railway was lightly damaged by the Japanese Kwantung Army as a pretext for an invasion of Manchuria. The Japanese army claimed that Chinese soldiers had sabotaged the railway and in apparent retaliation (acting contrary to orders from Tokyo) occupied all of Manchuria. They renamed the area Manchukuo, and on 9 March 1932 set up a puppet government, with Puyi, the final emperor of China, as its nominal head of state.\nThe League of Nations sent observers. The Lytton Report appeared a year later (October 1932). It refused to recognise Manchukuo and demanded Manchuria be returned to China. The report passed 42\u20131 in the Assembly in 1933 (only Japan voting against), but instead of removing its troops from China, Japan withdrew from the League. In the end, as British historian Charles Mowat argued, collective security was dead:\nThe League and the ideas of collective security and the rule of law were defeated; partly because of indifference and of sympathy with the aggressor, but partly because the League powers were unprepared, preoccupied with other matters, and too slow to perceive the scale of Japanese ambitions.\nChaco War.\nThe League failed to prevent the 1932 war between Bolivia and Paraguay over the arid Gran Chaco region. Although the region was sparsely populated, it contained the Paraguay River, which would have given either landlocked country access to the Atlantic Ocean, and there was also speculation, later proved incorrect, that the Chaco would be a rich source of petroleum. Border skirmishes throughout the late 1920s culminated in an all-out war in 1932 when the Bolivian army attacked the Paraguayans at Fort Carlos Antonio L\u00f3pez at Lake Pitiantuta. The war was a disaster for both sides, causing 57,000 casualties for Bolivia, whose population was around three million, and 36,000 dead for Paraguay, whose population was approximately one million. It also brought both countries to the brink of economic disaster. By the time a ceasefire was negotiated on 12 June 1935, Paraguay had seized control of most of the region, as was later recognised by the 1938 truce.\nInitially, both sides refused to allow the League to conduct an inquiry until November 1933, over a year after the start of the war. As a result, the League did not formally invoke Article 16 to apply sanctions. The Pan-American Conference offered to mediate and the League deferred to the conference, but the warring sides ignored the conference. Eventually (without going through Article 16), an arms embargo was enacted by several members of the League (plus non-League members the United States and Brazil), but several neighbouring states ignored the embargo rendering it ineffective. In November 1934, the League demanded that both sides withdraw and undergo arbitration. Bolivia accepted, but Paraguay by then had taken control of all of the disputed area. Paraguay rejected arbitration and quit the League.\nItalian invasion of Abyssinia.\nIn October 1935, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini sent 400,000 troops to invade Abyssinia (Ethiopia). Marshal Pietro Badoglio led the campaign from November 1935, ordering bombing, the use of chemical weapons such as mustard gas, and the poisoning of water supplies, against targets which included undefended villages and medical facilities. The modern Italian Army defeated the poorly armed Abyssinians and captured Addis Ababa in May 1936, forcing Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie to flee to exile in England.\nThe League of Nations condemned Italy's aggression and imposed economic sanctions in November 1935, but the sanctions were largely ineffective since they did not ban the sale of oil or close the Suez Canal (controlled by Britain). As Stanley Baldwin, the British Prime Minister, later observed, this was ultimately because no one had the military forces on hand to withstand an Italian attack. In October 1935, the US president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, invoked the recently passed Neutrality Acts and placed an embargo on arms and munitions to both sides, but extended a further \"moral embargo\" to the belligerent Italians, including other trade items. On 5 October and later on 29 February 1936, the United States endeavoured, with limited success, to limit its exports of oil and other materials to normal peacetime levels. The League sanctions were lifted on 4 July 1936, but by that point, Italy had already gained control of the urban areas of Abyssinia.\nThe Hoare\u2013Laval Pact of December 1935 was an attempt by the British Foreign Secretary Samuel Hoare and the French Prime Minister Pierre Laval to end the conflict in Abyssinia by proposing to partition the country into an Italian sector and an Abyssinian sector. Mussolini was prepared to agree to the pact, but news of the deal leaked out. Both the British and French public vehemently protested against it, describing it as a sell-out of Abyssinia. Hoare and Laval were forced to resign, and the British and French governments dissociated themselves from the two men. In June 1936, although there was no precedent for a head of state addressing the Assembly of the League of Nations in person, Haile Selassie spoke to the Assembly, appealing for its help in protecting his country.\nThe Abyssinian crisis showed how the League could be influenced by the self-interest of its members; one of the reasons why the sanctions were not very harsh was that both Britain and France feared the prospect of driving Mussolini and Adolf Hitler into an alliance.\nSpanish Civil War.\nOn 17 July 1936, the Spanish Army launched a coup d'\u00e9tat, leading to a prolonged armed conflict between Spanish Republicans (the elected leftist national government) and the Nationalists (conservative, anti-communist rebels who included most officers of the Spanish Army). Julio \u00c1lvarez del Vayo, the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, appealed to the League in September 1936 for arms to defend Spain's territorial integrity and political independence. The League members would not intervene in the Spanish Civil War nor prevent foreign intervention in the conflict. Adolf Hitler and Mussolini aided General Francisco Franco's Nationalists, while the Soviet Union helped the Spanish Republic. In February 1937, the League did ban foreign volunteers, but this was in practice a symbolic move. The result was a Nationalist victory in 1939 and confirmation to all observers that the League was ineffective in dealing with a major issue.\nSecond Sino-Japanese War.\nFollowing a long record of instigating localised conflicts throughout the 1930s, Japan began a full-scale invasion of China on 7 July 1937. On 12 September, the Chinese representative, Wellington Koo, appealed to the League for international intervention. Western countries were sympathetic to the Chinese in their struggle, particularly in their stubborn defence of Shanghai, a city with a substantial number of foreigners. The League was unable to provide any practical measures; on 4 October, it turned the case over to the Nine Power Treaty Conference.\nSoviet invasion of Finland.\nThe Nazi-Soviet Pact of 23 August 1939 contained secret protocols outlining spheres of interest. Finland and the Baltic states, as well as eastern Poland, fell into the Soviet sphere. After invading Poland on 17 September 1939, on 30 November the Soviets invaded Finland. Then \"the League of Nations for the first time expelled a member who had violated the Covenant.\" The League action of 14 December 1939, stung, because the Soviet Union became \"the only League member ever to suffer such an indignity\".\nFailure of disarmament.\nArticle 8 of the Covenant gave the League the task of reducing \"armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the enforcement by common action of international obligations\". Haakon Ikonomou argues that the Disarmament Section was a major failure. It was distrusted by the great powers, and given little autonomy by the Secretariat. Its mediocre staffers generated information that was unreliable and caused unrealistic expectations in the general public.\nSuccesses.\nThe League scored some successes, including the 1925 Conference for the Supervision of the International Trade in Arms and Ammunition and in Implements of War. It started to collect international arms data. Most important was the passage in 1925 of the Geneva protocol banning poison gas in war. It reflected strong worldwide public opinion, although the United States did not ratify it until 1975.\nFailures.\nThe League had numerous failures and shortfalls. In 1921, it set up the Temporary Mixed Commission on Armaments to explore possibilities for disarmament. It was made up not of government representatives but of famous individuals. They rarely agreed. Proposals ranged from abolishing chemical warfare and strategic bombing to the limitation of more conventional weapons, such as tanks.\n1923 Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance.\nThe 1923 Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance was an unsuccessful proposal made by the League of Nations to address the issue of disarmament and security in Europe after World War I. It was rejected by the British government in 1924 and was never adopted. The Draft Treaty was an early attempt by the League to create a system of collective security and disarmament, leading the League to pursue alternative approaches that also ultimately failed to gain traction.\nGeneva Protocol of 1924.\nA draft treaty was assembled in 1923 that made aggressive war illegal and bound the member states to defend victims of aggression by force. Since the onus of responsibility would, in practice, be on the great powers of the League, it was vetoed by Great Britain, who feared that this pledge would strain its own commitment to police its British Empire.\nThe \"Geneva Protocol for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes\" was a proposal by British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and his French counterpart \u00c9douard Herriot. It set up compulsory arbitration of disputes and created a method to determine the aggressor in international conflicts. All legal disputes between nations would be submitted to the World Court. It called for a disarmament conference in 1925. Any government that refused to comply in a dispute would be named an aggressor. Any victim of aggression was to receive immediate assistance from League members.\nBritish Conservatives condemned the proposal for fear that it would lead to conflict with the United States, which also opposed the proposal. The British Dominions strongly opposed it. The Conservatives came to power in Britain and in March 1925 the proposal was shelved and never reintroduced.\nWorld Disarmament Conference.\nThe Allied powers were also under obligation by the Treaty of Versailles to attempt to disarm, and the armament restrictions imposed on the defeated countries had been described as the first step toward worldwide disarmament. The League Covenant assigned the League the task of creating a disarmament plan for each state, but the Council devolved this responsibility to a special commission set up in 1926 to prepare for the 1932\u20131934 World Disarmament Conference. Members of the League held different views towards the issue. The French were reluctant to reduce their armaments without a guarantee of military help if they were attacked; Poland and Czechoslovakia felt vulnerable to attack from the west and wanted the League's response to aggression against its members to be strengthened before they disarmed. Without this guarantee, they would not reduce armaments because they felt the risk of attack from Germany was too great. Fear of attack increased as Germany regained its strength after the First World War, especially after Adolf Hitler gained power and became German Chancellor in 1933. In particular, Germany's attempts to overturn the Treaty of Versailles and the reconstruction of the German military made France increasingly unwilling to disarm.\nThe World Disarmament Conference was convened by the League of Nations in Geneva in 1932, with representatives from 60 states. It was a failure. A one-year moratorium on the expansion of armaments, later extended by a few months, was proposed at the start of the conference. The Disarmament Commission obtained initial agreement from France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Britain to limit the size of their navies but no final agreement was reached. Ultimately, the Commission failed to halt the military build-up by Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan during the 1930s.\nHelpless during buildup to World War II.\nThe League was mostly silent in the face of major events leading to the Second World War, such as Hitler's remilitarisation of the Rhineland, occupation of the Sudetenland and \"Anschluss\" of Austria, which had been forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In fact, League members themselves re-armed. In 1933, Japan simply withdrew from the League rather than submit to its judgement, as did Germany the same year (using the failure of the World Disarmament Conference to agree to arms parity between France and Germany as a pretext), Italy in 1937, and Spain in 1939. The final significant act of the League was to expel the Soviet Union in December 1939 after it invaded Finland.\nEconomic policies.\nInternational taxation.\nThe intellectual foundation of the modern international taxation regime was set with a 1923 report prepared by prominent political economists and tax law experts for the League of Nations. The report formulated \"general principles\" to avoid the adverse effects of double taxation and encourage free trade, international capital flows, and economic growth. For example, the report tried to set guidelines for resolving who would be allowed to tax a resident or citizen of one state when that individual earned income in another state. Prior to the publication of the report, these kinds of questions were primarily decided through unilateral state decisions or bilateral tax treaties.\nGeneral weaknesses.\nThe onset of the Second World War demonstrated that the League had failed in its primary purpose, the prevention of another world war. There were a variety of reasons for this failure, many connected to general weaknesses within the organisation. Additionally, the power of the League was limited by the United States' refusal to join.\nOrigins and structure.\nThe origins of the League as an organisation created by the Allied powers as part of the peace settlement to end the First World War led to it being viewed as a \"League of Victors\". The League's neutrality tended to manifest itself as indecision. It required a unanimous vote of nine, later fifteen, Council members to enact a resolution; hence, conclusive and effective action was difficult, if not impossible. It was also slow in coming to its decisions, as certain ones required the unanimous consent of the entire Assembly. This problem mainly stemmed from the fact that the primary members of the League of Nations were not willing to accept the possibility of their fate being decided by other countries and (by enforcing unanimous voting) had effectively given themselves veto power.\nGlobal representation.\nRepresentation at the League was often a problem. Though it was intended to encompass all nations, many never joined, or their period of membership was short. The most conspicuous absentee was the United States. President Woodrow Wilson had been a driving force behind the League's formation and strongly influenced the form it took, but the US Senate voted not to join on 19 November 1919. Ruth Henig has suggested that, had the United States become a member, it would have also provided support to France and Britain, possibly making France feel more secure, and so encouraging France and Britain to co-operate more fully regarding Germany, thus making the rise to power of the Nazi Party less likely. Conversely, Henig acknowledges that if the US had been a member, its reluctance to engage in war with European states or to enact economic sanctions might have hampered the ability of the League to deal with international incidents. The structure of the US federal government might also have made its membership problematic, as its representatives at the League would only be able to answer on behalf of the executive branch, certain League decisions such as to go to war, would always require prior approval of the legislative branch regardless of the outcome of any floor vote even.\nIn January 1920, when the League was born, Germany was not permitted to join because it was seen as having been the aggressor in the First World War. Soviet Russia was also initially excluded because Communist regimes were not welcomed and membership would have been initially dubious due to the ongoing Russian Civil War in which both sides claimed to be the legitimate government of the country. The League was further weakened when major powers left in the 1930s. Japan began as a permanent member of the Council since the country was an Allied Power in the First World War but withdrew in 1933 after the League voiced opposition to its occupation of Manchuria. Italy also began as a permanent member of the council. However the League staunchly opposed Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1934. When the war ended in an Italian conquest, the League refused to recognise Italian sovereignty over Ethiopia, prompting the Italian-Fascist government to withdraw from the organisation altogether in 1937. Though neutral during World War I, Spain (then still a kingdom) also began as a permanent member of the council, but withdrew in 1939 after the Spanish Civil War ended in a victory for the Nationalists. Though world opinion was much more divided over the Spanish Civil War than the conflicts involving Japan and Italy, the general perception leaned in favour of the Republican cause. The League had accepted Germany, also as a permanent member of the council, in 1926, deeming it to have become a \"peace-loving country\" under the Weimar Republic. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Adolf Hitler withdrew Germany almost immediately.\nCollective security.\nAnother important weakness grew from the contradiction between the idea of collective security that formed the basis of the League and international relations between individual states. The League's collective security system required nations to act, if necessary, against states they considered friendly, and in a way that might endanger their national interests, to support states for which they had no normal affinity. This weakness was exposed during the Abyssinia Crisis, when Britain and France had to balance maintaining the security they had attempted to create for themselves in Europe \"to defend against the enemies of internal order\", in which Italy's support played a pivotal role, with their obligations to Abyssinia as a member of the League.\nOn 23 June 1936, in the wake of the collapse of League efforts to restrain Italy's war against Abyssinia, the British Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, told the House of Commons that collective security had <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nUltimately, Britain and France both abandoned the concept of collective security in favour of appeasement in the face of growing German militarism under Hitler.\nIn this context, the League of Nations was also the institution where the first international debate on terrorism took place following the 1934 assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in Marseille, France. This debate established precedents regarding global surveillance (in the form of routine international sharing of surveillance data), the punishment of terrorists as an international (rather than national) matter, and the right of a nation to conduct military attacks within another nation as a response to international terrorism. Many of these concepts are detectable in the discourse of terrorism among states after 9/11.\nAmerican diplomatic historian Samuel Flagg Bemis originally supported the League, but after two decades changed his mind:\nThe League of Nations has been a disappointing failure... It has been a failure, not because the United States did not join it; but because the great powers have been unwilling to apply sanctions except where it suited their individual national interests to do so, and because Democracy, on which the original concepts of the League rested for support, has collapsed over half the world.\nPacifism, disarmament and radio.\nThe League of Nations lacked an armed force of its own and depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, which they were very unwilling to do. Its two most important members, Britain and France, were reluctant to use sanctions and even more reluctant to resort to military action on behalf of the League. Immediately after the First World War, pacifism became a strong force among both the people and governments of the two countries. The British Conservatives were especially tepid to the League and preferred, when in government, to negotiate treaties without the involvement of that organisation. Moreover, the League's advocacy of disarmament for Britain, France, and its other members, while at the same time advocating collective security, meant that the League was depriving itself of the only forceful means by which it could uphold its authority.\nDavid Goodman argues that the 1936 League of Nations Convention on the Use of Broadcasting in the Cause of Peace tried to create the standards for a liberal international public sphere. The Convention encouraged friendly radio broadcasts to other nations. It called for League prohibitions on international broadcasts containing hostile speech and false claims. It tried to draw the line between liberal and illiberal policies in communications, and emphasised the dangers of nationalist chauvinism. With Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia active on the radio, its liberal goals were ignored, while liberals warned that the code represented restraints on free speech.\nDemise and legacy.\nAs the situation in Europe escalated into war, the Assembly transferred enough power to the Secretary General on 30 September 1938 and 14 December 1939 to allow the League to continue to exist legally and carry on reduced operations. The headquarters of the League, the Palace of Nations, remained unoccupied for nearly six years until the Second World War ended.\nAt the 1943 Tehran Conference, the Allied powers agreed to create a new body to replace the League: the United Nations. Many League bodies, such as the International Labour Organization, continued to function and eventually became affiliated with the UN. The designers of the structures of the United Nations intended to make it more effective than the League.\nThe final session of the League of Nations concluded on 18 April 1946 in Geneva. Delegates from 34 nations attended the assembly. This session concerned itself with liquidating the League: it transferred assets worth approximately $22,000,000 (U.S.) in 1946 (including the Palace of Nations and the League's archives) to the UN, returned reserve funds to the nations that had supplied them, and settled the debts of the League. Robert Cecil, addressing the final session, said:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Let us boldly state that aggression wherever it occurs and however it may be defended, is an international crime, that it is the duty of every peace-loving state to resent it and employ whatever force is necessary to crush it, that the machinery of the Charter, no less than the machinery of the Covenant, is sufficient for this purpose if properly used, and that every well-disposed citizen of every state should be ready to undergo any sacrifice in order to maintain peace ... I venture to impress upon my hearers that the great work of peace is resting not only on the narrow interests of our own nations, but even more on those great principles of right and wrong which nations, like individuals, depend.\nThe League is dead. Long live the United Nations.\nThe Assembly passed a resolution that \"With effect from the day following the close of the present session of the Assembly [i.e., April 19], the League of Nations shall cease to exist except for the sole purpose of the liquidation of its affairs as provided in the present resolution.\" A Board of Liquidation consisting of nine persons from different countries spent the next 15 months overseeing the transfer of the League's assets and functions to the United Nations or specialised bodies, finally dissolving itself on 31 July 1947. The archive of the League of Nations was transferred to the United Nations Office at Geneva and is now an entry in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.\nIn the Assembly's last session in 1946, Philip Noel-Baker (representing the United Kingdom) remarked that failure to act as soon as a great power had invaded another state had ultimately doomed the League: \"We know the World War began in Manchuria 15 years ago...Manchuria, Abyssinia, Munich have killed another great illusion, the belief that appeasement, seeking the national interest at the expense of others, individual action, secret bargains, could bring us peace.\"\nIn the past few decades, by research using the League Archives at Geneva, historians have reviewed the legacy of the League of Nations as the United Nations has faced similar troubles to those of the interwar period. Current consensus views that, even though the League failed to achieve its ultimate goal of world peace, it did manage to build new roads towards expanding the rule of law across the globe; strengthened the concept of collective security, giving a voice to smaller nations; helped to raise awareness to problems like epidemics, slavery, child labour, colonial tyranny, refugee crises and general working conditions through its numerous commissions and committees; and paved the way for new forms of statehood, as the mandate system put the colonial powers under international observation. Erez Manela situated the League as a catalyst for transforming the postwar global order into one critical of the arrangements of empire. Alternatively, Laura Robson & Joe Maiolo posit the argument that the Mandate System under the League was a re-vitalised form of imperialism that placed former colonies under the ownership of greater powers.\nProfessor David Kennedy portrays the League as a unique moment when international affairs were \"institutionalised\", as opposed to the pre\u2013First World War methods of law and politics.\nThe principal Allies in the Second World War (the UK, the USSR, France, the U.S., and the Republic of China) became permanent members of the United Nations Security Council in 1946; in 1971, the People's Republic of China replaced the Republic of China (then only in control of Taiwan) as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and in 1991 the Russian Federation assumed the seat of the dissolved USSR. Decisions of the Security Council are binding on all members of the UN, and unanimous decisions are not required, unlike in the League Council. Only the five permanent members of the Security Council can wield a veto to protect their vital interests.\nLeague of Nations archives.\nThe League of Nations archives is a collection of the League's records and documents. It consists of approximately 15 million pages of content dating from the inception of the League of Nations in 1919 extending through its dissolution in 1946. It is located at the United Nations Office at Geneva. In 2017, the UN Library & Archives Geneva launched the Total Digital Access to the League of Nations Archives Project (LONTAD), with the intention of preserving, digitising, and providing online access to the League of Nations archives. It was completed in 2022.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nGeneral and cited references.\nSurveys.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nLeague topics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nRelated topics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistoriography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["17926", "26748", "49749"], "permutation_1": ["49749", "26748", "17926"], "permutation_2": ["26748", "17926", "49749"], "permutation_3": ["17926", "49749", "26748"]}
{"id": "3hop2__30654_75297_89329", "docs_added": {"31979": "United States Capitol\nMeeting place of the United States Congress\nThe United States Capitol, often called the Capitol or the Capitol Building, is the seat of the United States Congress, the legislative branch of the federal government. It is located on Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Although no longer at the geographic center of the national capital, the U.S. Capitol forms the origin point for the street-numbering system of the district as well as its four quadrants. Like the principal buildings of the executive and judicial branches, the Capitol is built in a neoclassical style and has a white exterior.\nCentral sections of the present building were completed in 1800. These were partly destroyed in the 1814 Burning of Washington, then were fully restored within five years. The building was enlarged in the 1850s by extending the wings for the chambers for the bicameral legislature, the House of Representatives in the south wing and the Senate in the north wing. The massive dome was completed around 1866 just after the American Civil War. The east front portico was extended in 1958. The building's Visitors Center was opened in the early 21st century.\nBoth its east and west elevations are formally referred to as \"fronts\", although only the east front was intended for the reception of visitors and dignitaries, while the west front is now used for presidential inauguration ceremonies. The building and grounds are overseen by the architect of the Capitol, who also oversees the surrounding Capitol Complex.\nHistory.\n18th century.\nPrior to establishing the nation's capital in Washington, D.C., the United States Congress and its predecessors met at Independence Hall and Congress Hall in Philadelphia, Federal Hall in New York City, and five additional locations: York, Pennsylvania, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the Maryland State House in Annapolis, Maryland, and Nassau Hall in Princeton, New Jersey, and Trenton, New Jersey. In September 1774, the First Continental Congress brought together delegates from the colonies in Philadelphia, followed by the Second Continental Congress, which met from May 1775 to March 1781.\nAfter adopting the Articles of Confederation in York, Pennsylvania, the Congress of the Confederation was formed and convened in Philadelphia from March 1781 until June 1783, when a mob of angry soldiers converged upon Independence Hall, demanding payment for their service during the American Revolutionary War. Congress requested that John Dickinson, the Governor of Pennsylvania, call up the militia to defend Congress from attacks by the protesters. In what became known as the Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783, Dickinson sympathized with the protesters and refused to remove them from Philadelphia. As a result, Congress was forced to flee to Princeton, New Jersey, on June 21, 1783, and met in Annapolis, Maryland, and Trenton, New Jersey, before ending up in New York City.\nThe U.S. Congress was established upon ratification of the U.S. Constitution and formally began on March 4, 1789. New York City remained home to Congress until July 1790, when the Residence Act was passed to pave the way for a permanent capital. The decision of where to locate the capital was contentious, but Alexander Hamilton helped broker a compromise in which the federal government would take on war debt incurred during the American Revolutionary War, in exchange for support from northern states for locating the capital along the Potomac River. As part of the legislation, Philadelphia was chosen as a temporary capital for ten years (until December 1800), until the nation's capital in Washington, D.C., would be ready.\nPierre L'Enfant was charged with creating the city plan for the new capital city and the major public buildings. The Congress House would be built on Jenkins Hill, now known as Capitol Hill, which L'Enfant described as a \"pedestal awaiting a monument.\" L'Enfant connected Congress House with the President's House via Pennsylvania Avenue with a width set at 160 feet, identical to the narrowest points of the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es in Paris. Westwards was a 400-foot-wide (122 m) garden-lined \"grand avenue\" containing a public walk (later known as the National Mall) that would travel for about 1 mile (1.6\u00a0km) along the east\u2013west line.\nThe term \"Capitol\" (from Latin \"Capitolium\") originally denoted the Capitoline Hill in Rome and the Temple of Jupiter that stood on its summit. The Roman Capitol was sometimes misconceived of as a meeting place for senators, and this led the term to be applied to legislative buildings; the first such building was the Williamsburg Capitol in Virginia. Thomas Jefferson had sat here as a member of the House of Burgesses, and it was he who applied the name \"Capitol\" to what on L'Enfant's plan had been called the \"Congress House\". \"Capitol\" has since become a general term for government buildings, especially in the United States. It is often confused with \"capital\"; one, however, denotes a building or complex of buildings, while the other denotes a city.\nL'Enfant secured the lease of quarries at Wigginton Island and along Aquia Creek in Virginia for use in the foundations and outer walls of the Capitol in November 1791. Surveying was under way soon after the Jefferson conference plan for the Capitol was accepted. On September 18, 1793, President Washington, along with eight other Freemasons dressed in masonic regalia, laid the cornerstone, which was made by silversmith Caleb Bentley.\nIn early 1792, after Pierre L'Enfant was dismissed from the federal city project, Jefferson proposed a design competition to solicit designs for the Capitol and the \"President's House\", and set a four-month deadline. The prize for the competition was $500 and a lot in the Federal City. At least ten individuals submitted designs for the Capitol; however the drawings were regarded as crude and amateurish, reflecting the level of architectural skill present in the United States at the time. \nThe most promising of the submissions was by Stephen Hallet, a trained French architect who was a draftsman to Pierre L'Enfant on the city plan. However, Hallet's designs were overly fancy, with too much French influence, and were deemed too costly. \nHowever, the design did incorporate the concept for a \"great circular room and dome\" which had originated with L'Enfant. John Trumbull was given a tour of \"Jenkins Hill\" by L'Enfant himself and confirmed this in his autobiography years later.\nOn January 31, 1793, a late entry by amateur architect William Thornton was submitted, and was met with praise for its \"Grandeur, Simplicity, and Beauty\" by Washington, along with praise from Jefferson. Thornton was inspired by the east front of the Louvre, as well as the Paris Pantheon for the center portion of the design. Thornton's design was officially approved in a letter dated April 5, 1793, from Washington, and Thornton served as the first architect of the Capitol (and later first superintendent of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office). In an effort to console Hallet, the commissioners appointed him to review Thornton's plans, develop cost estimates, and serve as superintendent of construction. Hallet proceeded to pick apart and make drastic changes to Thornton's design, which he saw as costly to build and problematic. \nIn July 1793, Jefferson convened a five-member commission, bringing Hallet and Thornton together, along with James Hoban (winning architect of the \"President's Palace\") to address problems with and revise Thornton's plan. Hallet suggested changes to the floor plan, which could be fitted within the exterior design by Thornton. The revised plan was accepted, except that Secretary Jefferson and President Washington insisted on an open recess in the center of the East front, which was part of Thornton's original plan.\nThe original design by Thornton was later significantly altered by Benjamin Henry Latrobe, and later Charles Bulfinch. The current cast-iron dome and the House's new southern extension and Senate new northern wing were designed by Thomas Ustick Walter and August Schoenborn, a German immigrant, in the 1850s, and were completed under the supervision of Edward Clark.\nConstruction proceeded with Hallet working under supervision of James Hoban, who was also busy working on construction of the \"President's House\" (also later known as the \"Executive Mansion\"). Despite the wishes of Jefferson and the President, Hallet went ahead anyway and modified Thornton's design for the East Front and created a square central court that projected from the center, with flanking wings which would house the legislative bodies. Hallet was dismissed by Secretary Jefferson on November 15, 1794. George Hadfield was hired on October 15, 1795, as Superintendent of Construction, but resigned three years later in May 1798, because of his dissatisfaction with Thornton's plan and quality of work done thus far.\n19th century.\nThe Senate (north) wing was completed in 1800. The Senate and House shared quarters in the north wing until a temporary wooden pavilion was erected on the future site of the House wing which served for a few years for the Representatives to meet in, until the House of Representatives (south) wing was finally completed in 1811, with a covered wooden temporary walkway connecting the two wings with the Congressional chambers where the future center section with rotunda and dome would eventually be. However, the House of Representatives moved early into their House wing in 1807. Though the Senate wing building was incomplete, the Capitol held its first session of the U.S. Congress with both chambers in session on November 17, 1800. The National Legislature was moved to Washington prematurely, at the urging of President John Adams, in hopes of securing enough Southern votes in the Electoral College to be re-elected for a second term as president.\nIn March 1803, James Madison appointed Benjamin Henry Latrobe to the position of \"Surveyor of Public Buildings\", with the principal responsibility of completing construction of the Capitol's south and north wings. Work on the north wing began in November 1806. Although occupied for only six years, it had suffered from falling plaster, rotting floors and a leaking roof. Instead of repairing it, Latrobe demolished, redesigned and rebuilt the interiors within the existing brick and sandstone walls. Notably, Latrobe designed the Supreme Court and Senate chambers. The former was a particular architectural achievement; the size and structure of its vaulted, semi-circular ceiling was then unprecedented in the United States.\nFor several decades, beginning when the federal government moved to Washington in the fall of 1800, the Capitol building was used for Sunday religious services as well as for governmental functions. The first services were conducted in the \"hall\" of the House in the north wing of the building. In 1801 the House moved to temporary quarters in the south wing, called the \"Oven\", which it vacated in 1804, returning to the north wing for three years. Then, from 1807 to 1857, they were held in the then-House Chamber (now called Statuary Hall). When held in the House chamber, the Speaker's podium was used as the preacher's pulpit. According to the U.S. Library of Congress exhibit \"Religion and the Founding of the American Republic\":\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />It is no exaggeration to say that on Sundays in Washington during the administrations of Thomas Jefferson (1801\u20131809) and of James Madison (1809\u20131817) the state became the church. Within a year of his inauguration, Jefferson began attending church services in the chamber of the House of Representatives. Madison followed Jefferson's example, although unlike Jefferson, who rode on horseback to church in the Capitol, Madison came in a coach and four. Worship services in the House\u00a0\u2013 a practice that continued until after the Civil War\u00a0\u2013 were acceptable to Jefferson because they were nondiscriminatory and voluntary. Preachers of every Protestant denomination appeared. (Catholic priests began officiating in 1826.) As early as January 1806 a female evangelist, Dorothy Ripley, delivered a camp meeting-style exhortation in the House to Jefferson, Vice President Aaron Burr, and a \"crowded audience\".\nNot long after the completion of both wings, the Capitol was partially burned by the British on August 24, 1814, during the War of 1812. After the fires, Latrobe was rehired as Architect of the Capitol to oversee restoration works.\nGeorge Bomford and Joseph Gardner Swift, both military engineers, were called upon to help rebuild the Capitol. Reconstruction began in 1815 and included redesigned chambers for both Senate and House wings (now sides), which were completed by 1819. During the reconstruction, Congress met in the Old Brick Capitol, a temporary structure financed by local investors. Construction continued through to 1826, with the addition of the center section with front steps and columned portico and an interior Rotunda rising above the first low dome of the Capitol. Latrobe is principally connected with the original construction and many innovative interior features; his successor Bulfinch also played a major role, such as design of the first low dome covered in copper.\nBy 1850, it became clear that the Capitol could not accommodate the growing number of legislators arriving from newly admitted states. A new design competition was held, and President Millard Fillmore appointed Philadelphia architect Thomas U. Walter to carry out the expansion. Two new wings were added: a new chamber for the House of Representatives on the south side, and a new chamber for the Senate on the north.\nWhen the Capitol was expanded in the 1850s, some of the construction labor was carried out by slaves \"who cut the logs, laid the stones and baked the bricks\". The original plan was to use workers brought in from Europe. However, there was a poor response to recruitment efforts; African Americans, some free and some enslaved, along with Scottish stonemasons, comprised most of the workforce.\nCapitol dome.\nThe 1850 expansion more than doubled the length of the United States Capitol; it dwarfed the original, timber-framed, copper-sheeted, low dome of 1818, designed by Charles Bulfinch which was no longer in proportion with the increased size of the building. In 1855, the decision was made to tear it down and replace it with the \"wedding-cake style\" cast-iron dome that stands today. Also designed by Thomas U. Walter, the new dome would stand three times the height of the original dome and in diameter, yet had to be supported on the existing masonry piers.\nLike Mansart's dome at Les Invalides in Paris (which he had visited in 1838), Walter's dome is double, with a large oculus in the inner dome, through which is seen \"The Apotheosis of Washington\" painted on a shell suspended from the supporting ribs, which also support the visible exterior structure and the tholos that supports the \"Statue of Freedom\", a colossal statue that was raised to the top of the dome in 1863. The statue invokes the goddesses Minerva or Athena. The cast iron for the dome weighs . The dome's cast iron frame was supplied and constructed by the iron foundry Janes, Fowler, Kirtland & Co. The thirty-six Corinthian columns that surround the base of the dome were provided by the Baltimore ironworks of Poole & Hunt.\nWhen the Capitol's new dome was finally completed, its massive visual weight, in turn, overpowered the proportions of the columns of the East Portico, built in 1828.\n20th century.\nIn 1904, the East Front of the Capitol building was rebuilt, following a design of the architects Carr\u00e8re and Hastings, who designed the Russell Senate and Cannon House office buildings earlier that year.\nIn 1958, the next major expansion to the Capitol started, with a extension of the East Portico. In 1960, two years into the project, the dome underwent a restoration. A marble duplicate of the sandstone East Front was built from the old Front. In 1962, a connecting extension repurposed what had been an outside wall as an inside wall. In the process, the original sandstone Corinthian columns were removed and replaced with marble. It was not until 1984 that landscape designer Russell Page created a suitable setting for them in a large meadow at the U.S. National Arboretum in northeast Washington as the National Capitol Columns, where they were combined with a reflecting pool into an ensemble that reminds some visitors of the ruins of Persepolis, in Persia.\nBesides the columns, two hundred tons of the original stone were removed in several hundred blocks, which were first stored on site at the Capitol, and then stored in an unused yard at the Capitol Power Plant until 1975. The same year, the power plant was renovated and expanded in accordance with legislation passed in 1970, and the stones fell to the Commission on the Extension of the United States Capitol. As this body was long-defunct, responsibility for the material passed to the House and Senate office building commissions. These commissions then arranged for the National Park Service to store the debris at the back of a NPS maintenance yard in Rock Creek Park.\nWith the permission of the speaker of the House, the United States Capitol Historical Society has periodically mined the blocks for sandstone since 1975. The stone removed is used to make commemorative bookends, which are still sold to support the Capitol Historical Society. By 1982, more than $20,000 (nearly $60,000 adjusted) had been raised through such sales. Unpursued uses for the stones proposed by the Capitol Historical Society have included their sale as cornerstones in new housing developments.\nOn December 19, 1960, the Capitol was declared a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service. The building was ranked No. 6 in a 2007 survey conducted for the American Institute of Architects' \"America's Favorite Architecture\" list.\nThe Capitol draws heavily from other notable buildings, especially churches and landmarks in Europe, including the dome of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican and St. Paul's Cathedral in London. On the roofs of the Senate and House Chambers are flagpoles that fly the U.S. flag when either is in session. On September 18, 1993, to commemorate the Capitol's bicentennial, the Masonic ritual cornerstone laying with George Washington was reenacted. U.S. senator Strom Thurmond was one of the Freemason politicians who took part in the ceremony.\n21st century.\nOn June 20, 2000, ground was broken for the Capitol Visitor Center, which opened on December 2, 2008. From 2001 through 2008, the East Front of the Capitol (site of most presidential inaugurations until Ronald Reagan began a new tradition in 1981) was the site of construction for this massive underground complex, designed to facilitate a more orderly entrance for visitors to the Capitol. Prior to the center being built, visitors to the Capitol had to line up in the basement of the Cannon House Office Building or the Russell Senate Office Building. The new underground facility provides a grand entrance hall, a visitors theater, room for exhibits, and dining and restroom facilities, in addition to space for building necessities such as a service tunnel.\nA large-scale Capitol dome restoration project, the first extensive such work since 1959\u20131960, began in 2014, with completion scheduled before the 2017 presidential inauguration. As of 2012, $20\u00a0million in work around the skirt of the dome had been completed, but other deterioration, including at least 1,300 cracks in the brittle iron that have led to rusting and seepage inside, needed to be addressed. Before the August 2012 recess, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to spend $61\u00a0million to repair the exterior of the dome. The House wanted to spend less on government operations, but in late 2013, it was announced that renovations would take place over two years, starting in spring 2014.\nIn 2014, extensive scaffolding was erected, enclosing and obscuring the dome. All exterior scaffolding was removed by mid-September 2016.\nWith the increased use of technologies such as the Internet, a bid tendering process was approved in 2002 for a contract to install the multidirectional radio communication network for Wi-Fi and mobile-phone within the Capitol Building and annexes, followed by the new Capitol Visitor Center. The winning bidder was an Israeli company called Foxcom which has since changed its name and been acquired by Corning Incorporated.\nInterior.\nThe Capitol building is marked by its central dome above a rotunda in the central section of the structure (which also includes the older original smaller center flanked by the two original (designed 1793, occupied 1800) smaller two wings (inner north and inner south) containing the two original smaller meeting chambers for the Senate and the House of Representatives (between 1800 and late 1850s) and then flanked by two further extended (newer) wings, one also for each chamber of the larger, more populous Congress: the new north wing is the Senate chamber and the new south wing is the House of Representatives chamber. Above these newer chambers are galleries where visitors can watch the Senate and House of Representatives. It is an example of neoclassical architecture.\nTunnels and internal subways connect the Capitol building with the Congressional office buildings in the Capitol Complex. All rooms in the Capitol are designated as either S (for Senate) or H (for House), depending on whether they are in the Senate or House wing of the Capitol.\nArt.\nSince 1856, the Capitol has featured some the most prominent art in the United States, including Italian American artist Constantino Brumidi, whose murals are located in the hallways of the first floor of the Senate side of the Capitol. The murals, known as the Brumidi Corridors, reflect great moments and people in United States history. Among the original works are those depicting Benjamin Franklin, John Fitch, Robert Fulton, and events such as the Cession of Louisiana. Also decorating the walls are animals, insects and natural flora indigenous to the United States. Brumidi's design left many spaces open so future events in United States history could be added. Among those added are the \"Spirit of St. Louis\", the Moon landing, and the Space Shuttle \"Challenger\" crew.\nBrumidi also worked within the Rotunda. He painted \"The Apotheosis of Washington\" beneath the top of the dome, and also the \"Frieze of American History\". \"The Apotheosis of Washington\" was completed in 11 months and painted by Brumidi while suspended nearly in the air. It is said to be the first attempt by the United States to deify a founding father. Washington is depicted surrounded by 13 maidens in an inner ring with many Greek and Roman gods and goddesses below him in a second ring. The frieze is located around the inside of the base of the dome and is a chronological, pictorial history of the United States from the landing of Christopher Columbus to the Wright Brothers's flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The frieze was started in 1878 and was not completed until 1953. The frieze was therefore painted by four different artists: Brumidi, Filippo Costaggini, Charles Ayer Whipple, and Allyn Cox. The final scenes depicted in the fresco had not yet occurred when Brumidi began his \"Frieze of the United States History\".\nWithin the Rotunda there are eight large paintings about the development of the United States as a nation. On the east side are four paintings depicting major events in the discovery of America. On the west are four paintings depicting the founding of the United States. The east side paintings include \"The Baptism of Pocahontas\" by John Gadsby Chapman, \"The Embarkation of the Pilgrims\" by Robert Walter Weir, \"The Discovery of the Mississippi\" by William Henry Powell, and \"The Landing of Columbus\" by John Vanderlyn. The paintings on the west side are by John Trumbull: \"Declaration of Independence\", \"Surrender of General Burgoyne\", \"Surrender of Lord Cornwallis\", and \"General George Washington Resigning His Commission\". Trumbull was a contemporary of the United States' founding fathers and a participant in the American Revolutionary War; he painted a self-portrait into \"Surrender of Lord Cornwallis\".\n\"First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln\", an 1864 painting by Francis Bicknell Carpenter, hangs over the west staircase in the Senate wing.\nThe Capitol also houses the National Statuary Hall Collection, comprising two statues donated by each of the fifty states to honor persons notable in their histories. One of the most notable statues in the National Statuary Hall is a bronze statue of King Kamehameha donated by the state of Hawaii upon its accession to the union in 1959. The statue's extraordinary weight of raised concerns that it might come crashing through the floor, so it was moved to Emancipation Hall of the new Capitol Visitor Center. The 100th, and last statue for the collection, that of Po'pay from the state of New Mexico, was added on September 22, 2005. It was the first statue moved into the Emancipation Hall.\nCrypt.\nOn the ground floor is an area known as the Crypt. It was intended to be the burial place of George Washington, with a ringed balustrade at the center of the Rotunda above looking down to his tomb. However, under the stipulations of his last will, Washington was buried at Mount Vernon. The Crypt houses exhibits on the history of the Capitol. A compass star inlaid in the floor marks the point at which Washington, D.C. is divided into its four quadrants and is the basis for how addresses in Washington, D.C., are designated (NE, NW, SE, or SW).\nGutzon Borglum's massive \"Abraham Lincoln Bust\" is housed in the crypt. The sculptor had a fascination with large-scale art and themes of heroic nationalism, and carved the piece from a six-ton block of marble. Borglum carved the bust in 1908; it was donated to the Congress by Eugene Meyer Jr. and accepted by the Joint Committee on the Library the same year. The pedestal was specially designed by the sculptor and installed in 1911. The bust and pedestal were on display in the Rotunda until 1979 when, after a rearrangement of all the sculptures in the Rotunda, they were placed in the Crypt. Borglum was a patriot and believed the \"monuments we have built are not our own\"; he looked to create art that was \"American, drawn from American sources, memorializing American achievement\", according to a 1908 interview article. Borglum's depiction of Lincoln was so accurate that Robert Todd Lincoln, the president's son, praised the bust as \"the most extraordinarily good portrait of my father I have ever seen\". Supposedly, according to legend, the marble head remains unfinished (missing the left ear) to symbolize Lincoln's unfinished life.\nFeatures.\nA statue of John C. Calhoun is located at one end of the room near the Old Supreme Court Chamber. On the right leg of the statue, a mark from a bullet fired during the 1998 shooting incident is clearly visible. The bullet also left a mark on the cape, located on the back right side of the statue.\nThirteen presidents have lain in state in the Rotunda for public viewing, most recently Jimmy Carter. The tomb meant for Washington stored the catafalque which is used to support coffins lying in state or honor in the Capitol. The catafalque now on display in the Exhibition Hall of the Capitol Visitor Center was used for President Lincoln.\nThe Hall of Columns is located on the House side of the Capitol, home to twenty-eight fluted columns and statues from the National Statuary Hall Collection. In the basement of the Capitol building in a utility room are two marble bathtubs, which are all that remain of the once elaborate Senate baths. These baths were a spa-like facility designed for members of Congress and their guests before many buildings in the city had modern plumbing. The facilities included several bathtubs, a barbershop, and a massage parlor.\nA steep metal staircase, totaling 365 steps, leads from the basement to an outdoor walkway on top of the Capitol's dome. The number of steps represents each day of the year. Also in the basement, the weekly Jummah prayer is held on Fridays by Muslim staffers.\nHeight.\nContrary to a popular myth, building height laws have never referred to the height of the Capitol building, which rises to . Indeed, the Capitol is only the fourth-tallest structure in Washington.\nHouse Chamber.\nThe House of Representatives Chamber has 448 permanent seats. Unlike senators, representatives do not have assigned seats. The chamber is large enough to accommodate members of all three branches of the federal government and invited guests for joint sessions of Congress such as the State of the Union speech and other events.\nThe Chamber is adorned with relief portraits of famous lawmakers and lawgivers throughout Western and Near Eastern history. The United States national motto \"In God We Trust\" is written over the tribune below the clock and above the United States flag. Of the twenty-three relief portraits, only Moses is sculpted from a full front view and is located across from the dais where the Speaker of the House ceremonially sits.\nIn order, clockwise around the chamber:\nThere is a quote by statesman Daniel Webster etched in the marble of the chamber, as stated: \"Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered.\"\nSenate Chamber.\nThe current Senate Chamber opened in 1859 and is adorned with white marble busts of the former Presidents of the Senate (Vice presidents).\nOld Chambers.\nStatuary Hall.\nThe National Statuary Hall is a chamber in the United States Capitol devoted to sculptures of prominent Americans. The hall, also known as the Old Hall of the House, is a large, two-story, semicircular room with a second story gallery along the curved perimeter. It is located immediately south of the Rotunda. It was the meeting place of the U.S. House of Representatives for nearly 50 years (1807\u20131857). After a few years of disuse, in 1864, it was repurposed as a statuary hall.\nOld Senate and Supreme Court Chambers.\nThe Old Senate Chamber is a room in the United States Capitol that was the legislative chamber of the United States Senate from 1810 to 1859, and served as the Supreme Court chamber from 1860 until 1935.\nThis room was originally the lower half of the Old Senate Chamber from 1800 to 1806. After division of the chamber in two levels, this room was used from 1806 until 1860 as the Supreme Court Chamber. In 1860, the Supreme Court began using the newly vacated Old Senate Chamber. In 1935, the Supreme Court vacated the Capitol Building and began meeting in the newly constructed United States Supreme Court Building across the street.\nExterior.\nLandscaping.\nThe Capitol Grounds cover approximately 274 acres (1.11\u00a0km2), with the grounds proper consisting mostly of lawns, walkways, streets, drives, and planting areas. Several monumental sculptures used to be located on the east facade and lawn of the Capitol including \"The Rescue\" and \"George Washington\". The current grounds were designed by noted American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who planned the expansion and landscaping performed from 1874 to 1892. In 1875, as one of his first recommendations, Olmsted proposed the construction of the marble terraces on the north, west, and south sides of the building creating an enveloping base. This addressed issues with the placement of the original structure; it had been built too far westwards on the crest of the hill and gave the appearance as if the building might slide into the marshy terrain below. \nOlmsted also designed the Summerhouse, the open-air brick building that sits just north of the Capitol. Three arches open into the hexagonal structure, which encloses a fountain and twenty-two brick chairs. A fourth wall holds a small window which looks onto an artificial grotto. Built between 1879 and 1881, the Summerhouse was intended to answer complaints that visitors to the Capitol had no place to sit and no place to obtain water for their horses and themselves. Modern drinking fountains have since replaced Olmsted's fountain for the latter purpose. Olmsted intended to build a second, matching Summerhouse on the southern side of the Capitol, but congressional objections led to the project's cancellation.\nFlag.\nUp to four U.S. flags can be seen flying over the Capitol. Two flagpoles are located at the base of the dome on the East and West sides. These flagpoles have flown the flag day and night since World War I. The other two flagpoles are above the North (Senate) and South (House of Representatives) wings of the building, and fly only when the chamber below is in session. The flag above the House of Representatives is raised and lowered by House pages. The flag above the United States Senate is raised and lowered by Senate Doorkeepers. To raise the flag, Doorkeepers access the roof of the Capitol from the Senate Sergeant at Arms's office. Several auxiliary flagpoles, to the west of the dome and not visible from the ground, are used to meet congressional requests for flags flown over the Capitol. Constituents pay for U.S. flags flown over the Capitol to commemorate a variety of events such as the death of a veteran family member.\nMajor events.\nThe Capitol and the grounds of Capitol Hill have played host to major events, including presidential inaugurations, which are held every four years. During an inauguration, the front of the Capitol is outfitted with a platform and a grand staircase. Annual events at the Capitol include Independence Day celebrations, and the National Memorial Day Concert.\nThe general public has paid respect to a number of individuals lying in state at the Capitol, including numerous former presidents, senators, and other officials. Other Americans lying in honor include Officers Jacob Chestnut and John Gibson, the two officers killed in the 1998 shooting incident. Chestnut was the first African American ever to lie in honor in the Capitol. The public also paid respect to Rosa Parks, an icon of the civil rights movement, at the Capitol in 2005. She was the first woman and second African American to lie in honor in the Capitol. In February 2018, the evangelical Rev. Billy Graham became the fourth private citizen to lie in honor in the Rotunda.\nOn September 24, 2015, Pope Francis gave a joint address to Congress, the first Pope to do so.\nSecurity.\nThe U.S. Capitol is believed to have been the intended target of United Airlines Flight 93, one of the four planes that were hijacked in the September 11 attacks. The plane crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after passengers tried to regain control of the plane from the hijackers.\nSince the September 11 attacks, the roads and grounds around the Capitol have undergone dramatic changes. The United States Capitol Police have also installed checkpoints to inspect vehicles at specific locations around Capitol Hill, and have closed a section of one street indefinitely. The level of screening employed varies. On the main east\u2013west thoroughfares of Constitution and Independence Avenues, barricades are implanted in the roads that can be raised in the event of an emergency. Trucks larger than pickups are interdicted by the Capitol Police and are instructed to use other routes. On the checkpoints at the shorter cross streets, the barriers are typically kept in a permanent \"emergency\" position, and only vehicles with special permits are allowed to pass. All Capitol visitors are screened by a magnetometer, and all items that visitors may bring inside the building are screened by an x-ray device. In both chambers, gas masks are located underneath the chairs in each chamber for members to use in case of emergency. Structures ranging from scores of Jersey barriers to hundreds of ornamental bollards have been erected to obstruct the path of any vehicles that might stray from the designated roadways.\nAfter the January 6 United States Capitol attack, security increased again. Additional security fences were installed around the perimeter, and National Guard troops were deployed to bolster security.\nCapitol Visitor Center.\nThe United States Capitol Visitor Center (CVC), located below the East Front of the Capitol and its plaza, between the Capitol building and 1st Street East, opened on December 2, 2008. The CVC provides a single security checkpoint for all visitors, including those with disabilities, and an expansion space for the US Congress.\nThe complex contains of space below ground on three floors, and offers visitors a food court, restrooms, and educational exhibits, including an 11-foot scale model of the Capitol dome. It also features skylights affording views of the actual dome. Long in the planning stages, construction began in the fall of 2001, following the killing of two Capitol police officers in 1998. The estimated final cost of constructing the CVC was $621\u00a0million.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "50585": "Philadelphia\nLargest city in Pennsylvania, United States\nPhiladelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the sixth-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 1,603,797 in the 2020 census. The city is the urban core of the larger Delaware Valley, also known as the Philadelphia metropolitan area, the nation's eighth-largest metropolitan area and seventh-largest combined statistical area with 6.245 million residents and 7.366 million residents, respectively.\nPhiladelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn, an English Quaker and advocate of religious freedom, and served as the capital of the colonial era Province of Pennsylvania. It then played a historic and vital role during the American Revolution and Revolutionary War. It served as the central meeting place for the nation's Founding Fathers, hosted the First Continental Congress (1774) and the Second Continental Congress, during which the Founders formed the Continental Army, elected George Washington as its commander, and adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. During the Revolutionary War's Philadelphia campaign, the city briefly fell to the British Army, which occupied Philadelphia for nine months from September 1777 to June 1778. \nIn 1787, following the end of the Revolutionary War and establishment of independence, the U.S. Constitution was ratified in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Convention. Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until 1790, and it served as the nation's first capital from May 10, 1775, until December 12, 1776, and on four subsequent occasions until 1800, when construction of the new national capital in Washington, D.C. was completed.\nPhiladelphia maintains extensive contemporary influence in business and industry, culture, sports, and music. With 17 four-year universities and colleges in the city, Philadelphia is one of the nation's leading centers for higher education and academic research. The city is a national cultural center, hosting more outdoor sculptures and murals than any other city in the nation. Fairmount Park, when combined with adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park in the same watershed, is , representing one of the nation's largest and the world's 55th-largest urban park. Philadelphia is known for its arts, culture, cuisine, and colonial and Revolutionary-era history; in 2016, it attracted 42\u00a0million domestic tourists who spent $6.8\u00a0billion, representing $11\u00a0billion in economic impact to the city and its surrounding Pennsylvania counties. With five professional sports teams and one of the nation's most loyal and passionate fan bases, Philadelphia is often ranked as the nation's best city for professional sports fans. The city has a culturally and philanthropically active LGBTQ+ community. Philadelphia also has played an immensely influential historic and ongoing role in the development and evolution of American music, especially R&B, soul, and rock.\nAs of 2023[ [update]], the Philadelphia metropolitan area had a gross metropolitan product of US$557.6 billion and is home to 13 \"Fortune\" 500 corporate headquarters. Metropolitan Philadelphia ranks as one of the nation's Big Five venture capital hubs, facilitated by its geographic proximity to both the entrepreneurial and financial ecosystems of New York City and the federal regulatory environment of Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Philadelphia is also a biotechnology hub. The Philadelphia Stock Exchange, owned by Nasdaq since 2008, is the nation's oldest stock exchange and a global leader in options trading. 30th Street Station, the city's primary rail station, is the third-busiest Amtrak hub in the nation with over 4.1 million passengers in 2023. The city's multimodal transportation and logistics infrastructure includes Philadelphia International Airport, a major transatlantic gateway and transcontinental hub; the rapidly-growing PhilaPort seaport; and Interstate 95, the spine of the north\u2013south highway system along the U.S. East Coast.\nPhiladelphia is a city of many firsts, including the nation's first library (1731), hospital (1751), medical school (1765), national capital (1774), university (by some accounts) (1779), central bank (1781), stock exchange (1790), zoo (1874), and business school (1881). Philadelphia contains 67 National Historic Landmarks, including Independence Hall. From the city's 17th century founding through the present, Philadelphia has been the birthplace or home to an extensive number of prominent and influential Americans.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nNative peoples.\nPrior to the arrival of Europeans in the early 17th century, the Lenape, an Indian tribe also known as the Delaware Indians, lived in the village of Shackamaxon in present-day Philadelphia and the surrounding area. The Lenape historically lived along the Delaware River watershed, western Long Island, and the Lower Hudson Valley. Most Lenape were pushed out of the region during the 18th century as the original Thirteen colonies expanded, which was further exacerbated by losses from intertribal conflicts. Lenape communities were also weakened by newly introduced diseases, mainly smallpox, and conflicts with Europeans. The Iroquois occasionally fought the Lenape. Surviving Lenape moved west into the upper Ohio River basin. Following the American Revolutionary War and the subsequent establishment of the United States, the Lenape began moving further west. In the 1860s, the U.S. federal government sent most remaining Lenape in the eastern United States to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma and surrounding territories as part of the Indian removal policy.\nColonial era.\nEuropeans first entered Philadelphia and the surrounding Delaware Valley in the early 17th century. The first settlements were founded by Dutch colonists, who built Fort Nassau on the Delaware River in 1623 in what is now Brooklawn, New Jersey. The Dutch considered the entire Delaware River valley to be part of their New Netherland colony. In 1638, Swedish settlers led by renegade Dutch established the colony of New Sweden at Fort Christina, located in present-day Wilmington, Delaware, and quickly spread out in the valley. In 1644, New Sweden supported the Susquehannocks in their war against Maryland colonists. In 1648, the Dutch built Fort Beversreede on the west bank of the Delaware, south of the Schuylkill River near the present-day Eastwick section of Philadelphia, to reassert their dominion over the area. The Swedes responded by building Fort Nya Korsholm, or New Korsholm, named after a town in Finland with a Swedish majority.\nIn 1655, a Dutch military campaign led by New Netherland Director-General Peter Stuyvesant took control of the Swedish colony, ending its claim to independence. The Swedish and Finnish settlers continued to have their own militia, religion, and court, and to enjoy substantial autonomy under the Dutch. An English fleet captured the New Netherland colony in 1664, though the situation did not change substantially until 1682, when the area was included in William Penn's charter for Pennsylvania.\nIn 1681, in partial repayment of a debt, Charles II of England granted Penn a charter for what would become the Pennsylvania colony. Despite the royal charter, Penn bought the land from the local Lenape in an effort to establish good terms with the Native Americans and ensure peace for the colony. Penn made a treaty of friendship with Lenape chief Tammany under an elm tree at Shackamaxon, in what is now the city's Fishtown neighborhood. Penn named the city Philadelphia, which is Greek for \"brotherly love\", derived from the Ancient Greek terms \u03c6\u03af\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2 \"ph\u00edlos\" (beloved, dear) and \u1f00\u03b4\u03b5\u03bb\u03c6\u03cc\u03c2 \"adelph\u00f3s\" (brother, brotherly). There were a number of cities named \"Philadelphia\" in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Greek and Roman periods, including modern Ala\u015fehir, mentioned as the site of an early Christian congregation in the Book of Revelation. As a Quaker, Penn had experienced religious persecution and wanted his colony to be a place where anyone could worship freely. This tolerance, which exceeded that of other colonies, led to better relations with the local native tribes and fostered Philadelphia's rapid growth into America's most important city.\nPenn planned a city on the Delaware River to serve as a port and place for government. Hoping that Philadelphia would become more like an English rural town instead of a city, Penn laid out roads on a grid plan to keep houses and businesses spread far apart with areas for gardens and orchards.\nThe city's inhabitants did not follow Penn's plans, however, and instead crowded the present-day Port of Philadelphia on the Delaware River and subdivided and resold their lots. Before Penn left Philadelphia for the final time, he issued the Charter of 1701 establishing it as a city. Though poor at first, Philadelphia became an important trading center with tolerable living conditions by the 1750s. Benjamin Franklin, a leading citizen, helped improve city services and founded new ones that were among the first in the nation, including a fire company, library, and hospital.\nA number of philosophical societies were formed, which were centers of the city's intellectual life, including the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture (1785), the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts (1787), the Academy of Natural Sciences (1812), and the Franklin Institute (1824). These societies developed and financed new industries that attracted skilled and knowledgeable immigrants from Europe.\nAmerican Revolution.\nPhiladelphia's importance and central location in the colonies made it a natural center for America's revolutionaries. By the 1750s, Philadelphia surpassed Boston as the largest city and busiest port in British America, and the second-largest city in the entire British Empire after London. In 1774, as resentment of the British government's policies towards the colonies and support for independence began burgeoning in the colonies, Philadelphia hosted the First Continental Congress at Carpenters' Hall, and 12 of the original 13 colonies sent delegates to the Congress.\nFrom 1775 to 1781, Philadelphia hosted the Second Continental Congress, whose 56 delegated unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence inside what was then called Pennsylvania State House and was later renamed Independence Hall. Written predominantly by Thomas Jefferson from his second-floor apartment on Market Street within walking distance of Independence Hall, the Declaration has been described by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis as \"the most potent and consequential words in American history,\" and its adoption represented a declaration of war against Great Britain. Since the Declaration's July 4, 1776, adoption, its signing has been cited globally and repeatedly by various peoples of the world seeking independence and liberty. It also has been, since its adoption, the basis for annual celebration by Americans; in 1938, this celebration of the Declaration was formalized as Independence Day, one of only eleven designated U.S. federal holidays.\nAfter George Washington's defeat at the Battle of Brandywine in Chadds Ford Township, on September 11, 1777, during the Philadelphia campaign, the revolutionary capital of Philadelphia was defenseless, and the city prepared for what was perceived to be an inevitable British attack. Because bells could easily be recast into munitions, the Liberty Bell, then known as the Pennsylvania State Bell, and bells from two Philadelphia churches, Christ Church and St. Peter's Church, were hastily taken down and transported by heavily guarded wagon train out of the city. The Liberty Bell was taken to Zion German Reformed Church in Northampton Town, which is present-day Allentown, where it was hidden under the church's floor boards for nine months from September 1777 until departure of British forces from Philadelphia in June 1778. Two Revolutionary War battles, the Siege of Fort Mifflin, fought between September 26 and November 16, 1777, and the Battle of Germantown, fought on October 4, 1777, took place within Philadelphia's city limits.\nIn Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation on November 15, 1777. Independence Hall in Philadelphia was the meeting place for the Constitutional Convention, which ratified the Constitution on September 17, 1787, which is now the longest-standing codified national constitution.\nPhiladelphia served as capital of the United States for most of the colonial and early post-colonial period. including for a decade, from 1790 to 1800, while Washington, D.C., was being constructed and prepared to serve as the new national capital, and on five prior occasions between 1776 and 1790. In 1793, the largest yellow fever epidemic in U.S. history killed approximately 4,000 to 5,000 people in Philadelphia, or about ten percent of the city's population at the time. The capital of the United States was moved to Washington, D.C. in 1800 upon completion of the White House and U.S. Capitol buildings.\nThe state capital was moved from Philadelphia to Lancaster in 1799, then ultimately to Harrisburg in 1812. Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until the late 18th century. It also was the nation's financial and cultural center until ultimately being eclipsed in total population by New York City in 1790. In 1816, the city's free Black community founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent Black denomination in the country, and the first Black Episcopal Church. The free Black community also established many schools for its children with the help of Quakers. Large-scale construction projects for new roads, canals, and railroads made Philadelphia the first major industrial city in the United States.\n19th century.\nThroughout the 19th century, Philadelphia hosted a variety of industries and businesses; the largest was the textile industry. Major corporations in the 19th and early 20th centuries included the Baldwin Locomotive Works, William Cramp & Sons Shipbuilding Company, and the Pennsylvania Railroad. Established in 1870, the Philadelphia Conveyancers' Association was chartered by the state in 1871. Along with the U.S. Centennial in 1876, the city's industry was celebrated in the Centennial Exposition, the first official World's fair in the U.S.\nImmigrants, mostly from Ireland and Germany, settled in Philadelphia and the surrounding districts. These immigrants were largely responsible for the first general strike in North America in 1835, in which workers in the city won the ten-hour workday. The city was a destination for thousands of Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine in the 1840s; housing for them was developed south of South Street and later occupied by succeeding immigrants. They established a network of Catholic churches and schools and dominated the Catholic clergy for decades. Anti-Irish, anti-Catholic nativist riots erupted in Philadelphia in 1844. The rise in population of the surrounding districts helped lead to the Act of Consolidation of 1854, which extended the city limits from the of Center City to the roughly of Philadelphia County.\nIn the latter half of the 19th century and leading into the 20th century, immigrants from Russia, Eastern Europe, and Italy, and African Americans from the southern U.S. settled in the city.\nPhiladelphia was represented by the Washington Grays in the American Civil War. The African-American population of Philadelphia increased from 31,699 to 219,559 between 1880 and 1930, largely stemming from the Great Migration from the South.\n20th century.\nBy the 20th century, Philadelphia had an entrenched Republican political machine and a complacent population. In 1910, a general strike shut down the entire city.\nIn 1917, following outrage over the election-year murder of a Philadelphia police officer, the City Council shrank from two houses to just one. In July 1919, Philadelphia was one of more than 36 industrial cities nationally to suffer a race riot during Red Summer in post-World War I unrest as recent immigrants competed with Blacks for jobs. In the 1920s, the public flouting of Prohibition laws, organized crime, mob violence, and corrupt police involvement in illegal activities led to the appointment of Brig. Gen. Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marine Corps as the city's director of public safety, but political pressure still prevented long-term success in fighting crime and corruption.\nIn 1940, non-Hispanic whites constituted 86.8% of the city's population. In 1950, the population peaked at more than two million residents, then began to decline with the restructuring of industry that led to the loss of many middle-class union jobs. In addition, suburbanization enticed many affluent residents to depart the city for its outlying railroad commuting towns and newer housing. The resulting reduction in Philadelphia's tax base and the resources of local government caused the city to struggle through a long period of adjustment, and it approached bankruptcy by the late 1980s.\nIn 1985, the MOVE Bombing of the Cobbs Creek neighborhood by city helicopters occurred, killing 11 and destroying 61 homes.\nRevitalization and gentrification of neighborhoods began in the late 1970s and continues into the 21st century with much of the development occurring in the Center City and University City neighborhoods. But this expanded a shortage of affordable housing in the city. After many manufacturers and businesses left Philadelphia or shut down, the city started attracting service businesses and began to market itself more aggressively as a tourist destination. Contemporary glass-and-granite skyscrapers were built in Center City beginning in the 1980s. Historic areas such as Old City and Society Hill were renovated during the reformist mayoral era of the 1950s through the 1980s, making both areas among the most desirable Center City neighborhoods. Immigrants from around the world began to enter the U.S. through Philadelphia as their gateway, leading to a reversal of the city's population decline between 1950 and 2000, during which it lost about 25 percent of its residents.\n21st century.\nPhiladelphia eventually began experiencing a growth in its population in 2007, which continued with incremental annual increases through the present. A migration pattern has been established from New York City to Philadelphia by residents opting for a large city with relative proximity and a lower cost of living.\nGeography.\nTopography.\nPhiladelphia's geographic center is about 40\u00b0 0\u2032 34\u2033 north latitude and 75\u00b0 8\u2032 0\u2033 west longitude. The 40th parallel north passes through neighborhoods in Northeast Philadelphia, North Philadelphia, and West Philadelphia including Fairmount Park. The city encompasses , of which is land and , or 6%, is water. Natural bodies of water include the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, lakes in Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park, and Cobbs, Wissahickon, and Pennypack creeks. The largest artificial body of water is East Park Reservoir in Fairmount Park.\nThe lowest point is sea level and the highest point is in Chestnut Hill, about above sea level on Summit Street near the intersection of Germantown Avenue and Bethlehem Pike at: 40.07815 N, 75.20747 W. Philadelphia is located on the Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line that separates the Atlantic Plain from the Piedmont. The Schuylkill River's rapids at East Falls were inundated by completion of the dam at Fairmount Water Works.\nThe city is the seat of its own county. The city is bordered by six adjacent counties: Montgomery to the northwest; Bucks to the north and northeast; Burlington County, New Jersey to the east; Camden County, New Jersey to the southeast; Gloucester County, New Jersey to the south; and Delaware County to the southwest.\nCityscape.\nCity planning.\nPhiladelphia was created in the 17th century, following the plan by William Penn's surveyor Thomas Holme. Center City is structured with long, straight streets running nearly due east\u2013west and north\u2013south, forming a grid pattern between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers that is aligned with their courses. The original city plan was designed to allow for easy travel and to keep residences separated by open space that would help prevent the spread of fire. In keeping with the idea of a \"Greene Countrie Towne\", and inspired by the many types of trees that grew in the region, Penn named many of the east\u2013west streets for local trees. Penn planned the creation of five public parks in the city which were renamed in 1824. Centre Square was renamed Penn Square; Northeast Square was renamed Franklin Square; Southeast Square was renamed Washington Square; Southwest Square was renamed Rittenhouse Square; and Northwest Square was renamed Logan Circle/Square. Center City had an estimated 183,240 residents as of 2015[ [update]], making it the second-most populated downtown area in the United States after Midtown Manhattan in New York City.\nPhiladelphia's neighborhoods are divided into six large sections that surround Center City: North Philadelphia, Northeast Philadelphia, South Philadelphia, Southwest Philadelphia, West Philadelphia, and Northwest Philadelphia. The city's geographic boundaries have been largely unchanged since these neighborhoods were consolidated in 1854. However, each of these large areas contains numerous neighborhoods, some of whose boundaries derive from the boroughs, townships, and other communities that constituted Pennsylvania County before their inclusion within the city.\nThe City Planning Commission, tasked with guiding growth and development of the city, has divided the city into 18 planning districts as part of the Philadelphia2035 physical development plan. Much of the city's 1980 zoning code was overhauled from 2007 to 2012 as part of a joint effort between former mayors John F. Street and Michael Nutter. The zoning changes were intended to rectify incorrect zoning maps to facilitate future community development, as the city forecasts an additional 100,000 residents and 40,000 jobs will be added by 2035.\nThe Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) is the largest landlord in Pennsylvania. Established in 1937, the PHA is the nation's fourth-largest housing authority, serving about 81,000 people with affordable housing, while employing 1,400 on a budget of $371\u00a0million. The Philadelphia Parking Authority is responsible for ensuring adequate parking for city residents, businesses, and visitors.\nArchitecture.\nPhiladelphia's architectural history dates back to colonial times and includes a wide range of styles. The earliest structures were constructed with logs, but brick structures were common by 1700. During the 18th century, the cityscape was dominated by Georgian architecture, including Independence Hall and Christ Church.\nIn the first decades of the 19th century, Federal and Greek Revival architecture were the dominant styles produced by Philadelphia architects such as Benjamin Latrobe, William Strickland, John Haviland, John Notman, Thomas Walter, and Samuel Sloan. Frank Furness is considered Philadelphia's greatest architect of the second half of the 19th century. His contemporaries included John McArthur Jr., Addison Hutton, Wilson Eyre, the Wilson Brothers, and Horace Trumbauer. In 1871, construction began on the Second Empire-style Philadelphia City Hall. The Philadelphia Historical Commission was created in 1955 to preserve the cultural and architectural history of the city. The commission maintains the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, adding historic buildings, structures, sites, objects and districts as it sees fit.\nIn 1932, Philadelphia became home to the first modern International Style skyscraper in the United States, the PSFS Building, designed by George Howe and William Lescaze. The City Hall remained the tallest building in the city until 1987 when One Liberty Place was completed. Numerous glass and granite skyscrapers were built in Center City beginning in the late 1980s. In 2007, the Comcast Center surpassed One Liberty Place to become the city's tallest building. The Comcast Technology Center was completed in 2018, reaching a height of , as the tallest building in the United States outside of Manhattan and Chicago.\nFor much of Philadelphia's history, the typical home has been the row house. The row house was introduced to the United States via Philadelphia in the early 19th century and, for a time, row houses built elsewhere in the United States were known as \"Philadelphia rows\". A variety of row houses are found throughout the city, from Federal-style continuous blocks in Old City and Society Hill to Victorian-style homes in North Philadelphia to twin row houses in West Philadelphia. While newer homes have been built recently, much of the housing dates to the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, which has created problems such as urban decay and vacant lots. Some neighborhoods, including Northern Liberties and Society Hill, have been rehabilitated through gentrification.\nParks.\nAs of 2014[ [update]], the city's total park space, including municipal, state, and federal parks in the city, amounts to . Philadelphia's largest park is Fairmount Park, which includes the Philadelphia Zoo and encompasses of the total parkland. Fairmount Park's adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park contains . Fairmount Park, when combined with Wissahickon Valley Park, is one of the largest contiguous urban park areas in the U.S. The two parks, along with the Colonial Revival, Georgian and Federal-style mansions in them, have been listed as one entity on the National Register of Historic Places since 1972.\nClimate.\nWithin the K\u00f6ppen climate classification, Philadelphia falls under the northern periphery of the humid subtropical climate zone (K\u00f6ppen \"Cfa\"). Within the Trewartha climate classification, Philadelphia has a temperate maritime climate (\"Do\") limited to the north by the continental climate (\"Dc\"). Summers are typically hot and muggy. Fall and spring are generally mild, and winter is moderately cold. The plant life hardiness zones are 7a and 7b, reflecting an average annual extreme minimum temperature between .\nSnowfall is highly variable. Some winters have only light snow while others include major snowstorms. The normal seasonal snowfall averages , with rare snowfalls in November or April, and rarely any sustained snow cover. Seasonal snowfall accumulation has ranged from trace amounts in 1972\u201373, to in the winter of 2009\u201310. The city's heaviest single-storm snowfall was , which occurred in January 1996.\nPrecipitation is generally spread throughout the year, with eight to eleven wet days per month, at an average annual rate of , but historically ranging from in 1922 to in 2011. The most rain recorded in one day occurred on July 28, 2013, when fell at Philadelphia International Airport. Philadelphia has a moderately sunny climate with an average of 2,498 hours of sunshine annually. The percentage of sunshine ranges from 47% in December to 61% in June, July, and August.\nThe January daily average temperature is . The temperature frequently rises to during thaws. July averages . Heat waves accompanied by high humidity and heat indices are frequent, with highs reaching or exceeding on 30 days of the year. The average window for freezing temperatures is November 6 to April 2, allowing a growing season of 217 days. Early fall and late winter are generally dry, with February having the lowest average precipitation at . The dewpoint in the summer averages between .\nThe highest recorded temperature was on August 7, 1918. Temperatures at or above are not common, with the last occurrence of such a temperature being July 21, 2019. The lowest officially recorded temperature was on February 9, 1934. Temperatures at or below are rare, with the last such occurrence being January 19, 1994. The record low maximum is on February 10, 1899, and December 30, 1880. The record high minimum is on July 23, 2011, and July 24, 2010.\nTime Series.\nAir quality.\nPhiladelphia County received an ozone grade of F and a 24-hour particle pollution rating of D in the American Lung Association's 2017 State of the Air report, which analyzed data from 2013 to 2015. The city was ranked 22nd for ozone, 20th for short-term particle pollution, and 11th for year-round particle pollution. According to the same report, the city experienced a significant reduction in high ozone days since 2001\u2014from nearly 50 days per year to fewer than 10\u2014along with fewer days of high particle pollution since 2000\u2014from about 19 days per year to about 3\u2014and an approximate 30% reduction in annual levels of particle pollution since 2000.\nFive of the ten largest combined statistical areas (CSAs) were ranked higher for ozone: Los Angeles (1st), New York City (9th), Houston (12th), Dallas (13th), and San Jose, California (18th). Many smaller CSAs were also ranked higher for ozone, including Sacramento (8th), Las Vegas (10th), Denver (11th), El Paso (16th), and Salt Lake City (20th). Only two of those same ten CSAs, San Jose and Los Angeles, were ranked higher than Philadelphia for both year-round and short-term particle pollution.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nAs of the 2020 U.S. Census, there were 1,603,797 people residing in Philadelphia, representing a 1.2% increase from the 2019 census estimate. The racial composition of the city was 39.3% Black alone (42.0% Black alone or in combination), 36.3% White alone (41.9% White alone or in combination), 8.7% Asian alone, 0.4% American Indian and Alaska Native alone, 8.7% some other race, and 6.9% multiracial. 14.9% of residents were Hispanic or Latino.\n34.8% had a bachelor's degree or higher. 23.9% spoke a language other than English at home, the most common of which was Spanish (10.8%). 15.0% of the populations foreign born, roughly half of whom are naturalized U.S. citizens. 3.7% of the population are veterans. The median household income was $52,889 and 22.8% of the population lived in poverty. 49.5% of the population drove alone to work, while 23.2% used public transit, 8.2% carpooled, 7.9% walked, and 7.0% worked from home. The average commute is 31 minutes.\nAfter the 1950 census, when a record high of 2,071,605 was recorded, the city's population began a long decline. The population dropped to a low of 1,488,710 residents in 2006 before beginning to rise again. Between 2006 and 2017, Philadelphia added 92,153 residents. In 2017, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that the racial composition of the city was 41.3% Black (non-Hispanic), 34.9% White (non-Hispanic), 14.1% Hispanic or Latino, 7.1% Asian, 0.4% Native American, 0.05% Pacific Islander, and 2.8% multiracial.\nImmigration and cultural diversity.\nIn addition to the city's economic growth, the city's population has been fueled by foreign immigration. According to The Pew Charitable Trusts, the city's foreign-born population increased by 69% between 2000 and 2016 to constitute nearly 20% of Philadelphia's workforce, and it doubled between 1990 and 2017 to constitute 13.8% of the city's total population, with the top five countries of origin being China by a significant margin followed by the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, India, and Vietnam.\nIrish, Italian, German, Polish, English, Russian, Ukrainian, and French ancestries constitute the largest European ethnic groups in the city. Philadelphia has the second-largest Irish and Italian populations in the United States after New York City. South Philadelphia remains one of the largest Italian neighborhoods in the country and is home to the Italian Market.\nThe Pennsport neighborhood and Gray's Ferry section of South Philadelphia, home to many Mummer clubs, are well known as Irish neighborhoods. The Kensington, Port Richmond, and Fishtown neighborhoods have historically been heavily Irish and Polish. Port Richmond is a center for the Polish-American community in Philadelphia, and it remains a common destination for Polish immigrants. Northeast Philadelphia, although known for its Irish and Irish-American population, is home to a Jewish and Russian population. Mount Airy in Northwest Philadelphia also contains a Jewish community. Nearby Chestnut Hill is historically known as an Anglo-Saxon Protestant community.\nPhiladelphia's Black American population is the fourth-largest in the country after New York City, Chicago, and Houston. West Philadelphia and North Philadelphia are largely African-American neighborhoods, but many are leaving those areas in favor of the Northeast and Southwest sections of Philadelphia. A higher proportion of African-American Muslims reside in Philadelphia than most other major U.S. cities. West Philadelphia and Southwest Philadelphia are home to various Afro-Caribbean and African immigrant communities.\nThe Puerto Rican population in Philadelphia is the second-largest on the U.S. mainland after New York City, and the second-fastest growing after Orlando. Eastern North Philadelphia, particularly Fairhill and surrounding areas to the north and east, has one of the highest concentrations of Puerto Ricans outside Puerto Rico, with many large swaths of blocks being close to 100% Puerto Rican. Puerto Rican and Dominican populations reside in North Philadelphia and the Northeast, and Mexican and Central American populations exist in South Philadelphia. South American migrants were being transported by bus from Texas to Philadelphia beginning in 2022.\nPhiladelphia's Asian American population includes those of Chinese, Indians, Vietnamese, South Koreans, Filipinos, Cambodians, and Indonesians. Over 35,000 Chinese Americans lived in the city in 2015, including a Fuzhounese population. Center City hosts a Chinatown that is served by Chinatown bus lines with service to/from Chinatown, Manhattan. Indians make up the second-largest Asian group in the city of Philadelphia, while making up the largest foreign-born population in the Delaware Valley. A Korean community initially settled in the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Olney; however, the primary Koreatown has subsequently shifted further north, straddling the city's border with adjacent Cheltenham in Montgomery County and Cherry Hill in South Jersey. South Philadelphia is home to Vietnamese-Americans in Little Saigon and Cambodian-Americans in Cambodia Town, as well as Thai-American, Indonesian-American, and Chinese-American communities.\nPhiladelphia's Gay village near Washington Square is home to a concentration of gay and lesbian-friendly businesses, restaurants, and bars.\nReligion.\nIn a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, 68% of the population of the city identified themselves as Christian. Approximately 41% of Christians in the city and area professed attendance at a variety of churches that could be considered Protestant, while 26% professed Catholic beliefs.\nThe Protestant Christian community in Philadelphia is dominated by mainline Protestant denominations including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church in the United States, Presbyterian Church (USA) and American Baptist Churches USA. One of the most prominent mainline Protestant jurisdictions is the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. The African Methodist Episcopal Church was established in Philadelphia. Historically, the city has strong connections to the Quakers, Unitarian Universalism, and the Ethical Culture movement, all of which continue to be represented in the city. The Quaker Friends General Conference is based in Philadelphia. Evangelical Protestants making up less than 15% of the population were also prevalent.\nEvangelical Protestant bodies included the Anglican Church in North America, Lutheran Church\u2014Missouri Synod, Presbyterian Church in America, and National Baptist Convention of America. The Catholic community is primarily served by the Latin Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Eparchy of the United States of America and Canada, though some independent Catholic churches exist throughout Philadelphia and its suburbs. The Latin Church-based jurisdiction is headquartered in the city, and its see is the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. The Ukrainian Catholic jurisdiction is headquartered in Philadelphia, and is seated at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.\nLess than 1% of Philadelphia's Christians were Mormons. The remainder of the Christian demographic is spread among smaller Protestant denominations and the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox among others. The Diocese of Eastern Pennsylvania (Orthodox Church in America) and Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (Ecumenical Patriarchate) divide the Eastern Orthodox in Philadelphia. The Russian Orthodox St. Andrew's Cathedral is in the city.\nThe same study says that other religions collectively compose about 8% of the population, including Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Sikhism. Philadelphia has the fifth-largest Muslim population among U.S. cities. The remaining 24% claimed no religious affiliation.\nThe Philadelphia metropolitan area's Jewish population was estimated at 206,000 in 2001, which was the sixth-largest in the U.S. at that time. Jewish traders were operating in southeastern Pennsylvania long before William Penn. Jews in Philadelphia took a prominent part in the War of Independence. Although the majority of the early Jewish residents were of Portuguese or Spanish descent, some among them had emigrated from Germany and Poland. About the beginning of the 19th century, a number of Jews from the latter countries, finding the services of the Congregation Mickv\u00e9 Israel unfamiliar to them, resolved to form a new congregation which would use the ritual to which they had been accustomed.\nAfrican diasporic religions are practiced in some Latino and Hispanic and Caribbean communities in North and West Philadelphia.\nLanguages.\nAs of 2010[ [update]], 79.12% (1,112,441) of Philadelphia residents age 5 and older spoke English at home as a primary language, while 9.72% (136,688) spoke Spanish, 1.64% (23,075) Chinese, 0.89% (12,499) Vietnamese, 0.77% (10,885) Russian, 0.66% (9,240) French, 0.61% (8,639) other Asian languages, 0.58% (8,217) African languages, 0.56% (7,933) Cambodian (Mon-Khmer), and Italian was spoken as a main language by 0.55% (7,773) of the population over the age of five. In total, 20.88% (293,544) of Philadelphia's population age 5 and older spoke a mother language other than English.\nPoverty.\nPhiladelphia is home to many food poverty programs, of which two of the largest are Philabundance which claims to feed 90000 people per week. and Share Food Program which claims to feed 1 million people per month.\nEconomy.\nPhiladelphia's close geographical and transportation connections to other large metropolitan economies along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States have been cited as offering a significant competitive advantage for business creation and entrepreneurship. The city is the center of economic activity in both Pennsylvania and the four-state Delaware Valley metropolitan region. Five Fortune 500 companies are based in the city. As of 2021[ [update]], the Philadelphia metropolitan area is estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of US$479\u00a0billion, an increase from the $445\u00a0billion calculated by the Bureau of Economic Analysis for 2017, representing the ninth-largest U.S. metropolitan economy.\nPhiladelphia's economic sectors include financial services, health care, biotechnology, information technology, trade and transportation, manufacturing, oil refining, food processing, and tourism. Metropolitan Philadelphia is one of the top five American venture capital hubs, credited to its proximity to New York City's financial and tech and biotechnology ecosystems. Financial activities account for the largest economic sector of the metropolitan area, which is one of the largest health education and research centers in the United States. The city's two largest employers are the federal and city governments. Philadelphia's largest private employer is the University of Pennsylvania followed by Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.\nFinance and corporations.\nThe Philadelphia Stock Exchange, acquired by Nasdaq in 2007, is a global leader in options trading. The city is home to the headquarters of Comcast, the nation's largest multinational telecommunications corporation; insurance conglomerates Cigna, Colonial Penn, and Independence Blue Cross; as well as food services company Aramark, chemical makers FMC Corporation and Rohm and Haas, pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline, Amicus Therapeutics, Spark Therapeutics, apparel retailers Five Below and Urban Outfitters and its subsidiary Anthropologie, automotive parts retailer Pep Boys, and stainless steel producer Carpenter Technology Corporation.\nOther corporation headquarters in the city include RiteAid, Crown Holdings, and Brandywine Realty Trust. The headquarters of Boeing Rotorcraft Systems and its main rotorcraft factory are in the Philadelphia suburb of Ridley Park; The Vanguard Group, and the U.S. headquarters of Siemens Healthineers are headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb. Healthcare conglomerate AmerisourceBergen is located in suburban Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Across the Delaware River in adjacent Camden County, New Jersey, Campbell Soup Company and Subaru USA are both headquartered in Camden, New Jersey, and TD Bank (USA) is headquartered in nearby suburban Cherry Hill, New Jersey.\nTech and biotech.\nPhiladelphia is a hub for information technology and biotechnology. Philadelphia and Pennsylvania are attracting new life sciences ventures. As of 2024, the Delaware Valley ranks as one of the Big Five U.S. venture capital hubs, enabled by its proximity to both the entrepreneurial and financial ecosystems of New York City and to the federal regulatory environment of Washington, D.C.\nTourism.\nPhiladelphia's history attracts many tourists, with the Independence National Historical Park, which includes the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and other historic sites, received over 5\u00a0million visitors in 2016. The city welcomed 42\u00a0million domestic tourists in 2016 who spent $6.8\u00a0billion, generating an estimated $11\u00a0billion in total economic impact in the city and surrounding four counties of Pennsylvania. The annual Naked Bike Ride attracts participants from around the United States and internationally to Philadelphia.\nTrade and transportation.\nPhiladelphia International Airport, a major Transatlantic gateway and transcontinental hub, has undergone a $900\u00a0million infrastructural expansion to increase passenger capacity and augment passenger experience, and the airport continues an ongoing capital expenditure program to upgrade facilities and add further amenities. The Port of Philadelphia, having experienced the highest percentage growth by tonnage loaded in 2017 among major U.S. seaports, has doubled its shipping capacity to accommodate super-sized post-Panamax shipping vessels since 2018. Philadelphia's 30th Street Station is the third-busiest Amtrak rail hub, following Penn Station in Manhattan and Union Station in Washington, D.C., transporting over 4\u00a0million inter-city rail passengers annually.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nEducation in Philadelphia is provided by many private and public institutions. The School District of Philadelphia is the local school district, operating public schools, in all of the city. The Philadelphia School District is the eighth-largest school district in the nation with 142,266 students in 218 traditional public schools and 86 charter schools as of 2014[ [update]].\nThe city's K-12 enrollment in district\u2013run schools dropped from 156,211 students in 2010 to 130,104 students in 2015. During the same time period, the enrollment in charter schools increased from 33,995 students in 2010 to 62,358 students in 2015. This consistent drop in enrollment led the city to close 24 of its public schools in 2013. During the 2014 school year, the city spent an average of $12,570 per pupil, below the average among comparable urban school districts.\nGraduation rates among district-run schools, meanwhile, steadily increased in the ten years from 2005. In 2005, Philadelphia had a district graduation rate of 52%. This number increased to 65% in 2014, still below the national and state averages. Scores on the state's standardized test, the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) trended upward from 2005 to 2011 but subsequently decreased. In 2005, the district-run schools scored an average of 37.4% on math and 35.5% on reading. The city's schools reached their peak scores in 2011 with 59.0% on math and 52.3% on reading. In 2014, the scores dropped significantly to 45.2% on math and 42.0% on reading.\nOf the city's public high schools, including charter schools, only four performed above the national average on the SAT (1497 out of 2400) in 2014: Masterman, Central, Girard Academic Music Program, and MaST Community Charter School. All other district-run schools were below average.\nHigher education.\nMedical and research facilities of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Philadelphia has the third-largest student concentration on the East Coast, with more than 120,000 college and university students enrolled within the city and nearly 300,000 in the metropolitan area. More than 80 colleges, universities, trade, and specialty schools are in the Philadelphia region. One of the founding members of the Association of American Universities is in the city, the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution with claims to be the First university in the United States.\nThe city's largest university by student enrollment is Temple University, followed by Drexel University. The city's nationally ranked research universities comprise the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, Drexel University, and Thomas Jefferson University. Philadelphia is also home to five schools of medicine: Drexel University College of Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Temple University School of Medicine, and Thomas Jefferson University's Sidney Kimmel Medical College. Hospitals, universities, and higher education research institutions in Philadelphia's four congressional districts received more than $252\u00a0million in National Institutes of Health grants in 2015.\nOther institutions of higher learning within the city's borders include:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCulture.\nPhiladelphia is home to many national historical sites that relate to the founding of the United States. Independence National Historical Park is the center of these historical landmarks and one of the country's 22 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, and the Liberty Bell is housed, are among the city's most popular attractions. Other national historic sites include the homes of Edgar Allan Poe and Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and early government buildings, including the First and the Second Bank of the United States, Fort Mifflin, and the Gloria Dei (Old Swedes') Church. Philadelphia alone has 67 National Historic Landmarks, the third most of any city in the country.\nPhiladelphia's major science museums include the Franklin Institute, which contains the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the M\u00fctter Museum, and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. History museums include the National Constitution Center, the Museum of the American Revolution, the Philadelphia History Museum, the National Museum of American Jewish History, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Masonic Library and Museum of Pennsylvania in the Masonic Temple, and the Eastern State Penitentiary. Philadelphia is home to the United States's first zoo and hospital, as well as Fairmount Park, one of America's oldest and largest urban parks, founded in 1855.\nThe city is home to important archival repositories, including the Library Company of Philadelphia, established in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin at 1314 Locust Street, and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, founded in 1814. The Presbyterian Historical Society is the country's oldest denominational historical society, organized in 1852.\nArts.\nThe city is home to multiple art museums, including the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Rodin Museum, which holds the largest collection of work by Auguste Rodin outside France. The city's largest art museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is one of the largest art museums in the world. The long flight of steps to the Art Museum's main entrance became famous after the film \"Rocky\" (1976).\nAnnual events include the Philadelphia Film Festival, held annually each October, the 6abc Dunkin' Donuts Thanksgiving Day Parade, the nation's longest-running continuously held Thanksgiving Day parade, and the Mummers Parade, the nation's longest continuously held folk parade, which is held every New Year's Day predominantly on Broad Street.\nAreas such as South Street and the Old City section of the city have a vibrant night life. The Avenue of the Arts in Center City contains many restaurants and theaters, such as the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, home of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Academy of Music, home of Opera Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Ballet. The Wilma Theatre and the Philadelphia Theatre Company at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre produce a variety of new plays. Several blocks to the east are the Lantern Theater Company at St. Stephens Episcopal Church; and the Walnut Street Theatre, a National Historic Landmark stated to be the oldest and most subscribed-to theatre in the English-speaking world, founded in 1809. In May 2019, the Walnut Street Theatre announced a major expansion to begin in 2020. New Freedom Theatre, Pennsylvania's oldest African-American theatre, is located on North Broad Street.\nPhiladelphia has more public art than any other American city. In 1872, the Association for Public Art, formerly the Fairmount Park Art Association, was created as the first private association in the United States dedicated to integrating public art and urban planning. In 1959, lobbying by the Artists Equity Association helped create the Percent for Art ordinance, the first for a U.S. city. The program, which has funded more than 200 pieces of public art, is administered by the Philadelphia Office of Arts and Culture, the city's art agency. The city has more murals than any other American city, due to the 1984 creation of the Department of Recreation's Mural Arts Program, which seeks to beautify neighborhoods and provide an outlet for graffiti artists. The program has funded more than 2,800 murals by professional, staff and volunteer artists and educated more than 20,000 youth in underserved neighborhoods throughout Philadelphia.\nThe city is home to a number of art organizations, including the regional art advocacy nonprofit Philadelphia Tri-State Artists Equity, the Philadelphia Sketch Club, one of the country's oldest artists' clubs, and The Plastic Club, started by women excluded from the Sketch Club. Many Old City art galleries stay open late on the First Friday event of each month.\nCuisine.\nThe city is known for its hoagies, stromboli, roast pork sandwich, scrapple, soft pretzels, water ice, Irish potato candy, tastykakes, and the cheesesteak sandwich which was developed by Italian immigrants. The Philadelphia area has many establishments that serve cheesesteaks, including restaurants, taverns, delicatessens and pizza parlors. The originator of the thinly-sliced steak sandwich in the 1930s, initially without cheese, is Pat's King of Steaks, which faces its rival Geno's Steaks, founded in 1966, across the intersection of 9th Street and Passyunk Avenue in the Italian Market of South Philadelphia.\nMcGillin's Olde Ale House, opened in 1860 on Drury Street in Center City, is the oldest continuously operated tavern in the city. The City Tavern is a replica of a historic 18th-century building first opened in 1773, demolished in 1854 after a fire, and rebuilt in 1975 on the same site as part of Independence National Historical Park. The tavern offers authentic 18th-century recipes, served in seven period dining rooms, three wine cellar rooms and an outdoor garden.\nThe Reading Terminal Market is a historic food market founded in 1893 in the Reading Terminal building, a designated National Historic Landmark. The enclosed market is one of the oldest and largest markets in the country, hosting over a hundred merchants offering Pennsylvania Dutch specialties, artisan cheese and meat, locally grown groceries, and specialty and ethnic foods.\nDialect.\nThe traditional Philadelphia accent is considered by some linguists to be the most distinctive accent in North America. The Philadelphia dialect, which is spread throughout the Delaware Valley and South Jersey, is part of a larger Mid-Atlantic American English family, a designation that also includes the Baltimore accent. Additionally, it shares many similarities with the New York accent. Owing to over a century of linguistic data collected by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania under sociolinguist William Labov, the Philadelphia dialect has been one of the best-studied forms of American English. The accent is especially found within the Irish American and Italian American working-class neighborhoods. Philadelphia also has its own unique collection of neologisms and slang terms.\nMusic.\nThe Philadelphia Orchestra is generally considered one of the top five orchestras in the United States. The orchestra performs at the Kimmel Center and has a summer concert series at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts. Opera Philadelphia performs at the nation's oldest continually operating opera house\u2014the Academy of Music. The Philadelphia Boys Choir & Chorale has performed its music all over the world. The Philly Pops plays orchestral versions of popular jazz, swing, Broadway, and blues songs at the Kimmel Center and other venues within the mid-Atlantic region. The Curtis Institute of Music is one of the world's premier conservatories and among the most selective institutes of higher education in the nation.\nPhiladelphia has played a prominent role in the music of the United States. The culture of American popular music has been influenced by significant contributions of Philadelphia area musicians and producers, in both the recording and broadcasting industries. In 1952, the teen dance party program called \"Bandstand\" premiered on local television, hosted by Bob Horn. The show was renamed \"American Bandstand\" in 1957, when it began national syndication on ABC, hosted by Dick Clark and produced in Philadelphia until 1964 when it moved to Los Angeles. Promoters marketed youthful musical artists known as teen idols to appeal to the young audience. Philadelphia-born singers, including Frankie Avalon, James Darren, Eddie Fisher, Fabian Forte, Bobby Rydell, and South Philly-raised Chubby Checker, topped the music charts, establishing a clean-cut rock and roll image.\nPhilly soul music of the late 1960s\u20131970s is a highly produced version of soul music which led to later forms of popular music such as disco and urban contemporary rhythm and blues. On July 13, 1985, John F. Kennedy Stadium was the American venue for the Live Aid concert. The city also hosted the Live 8 concert, which attracted about 700,000 people to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on July 2, 2005.\nNotable rock and pop musicians from Philadelphia and its suburbs include Bill Haley & His Comets, Nazz, Todd Rundgren, Hall & Oates, the Hooters, Cinderella, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Ween, Schoolly D, Pink, the Roots, Beanie Sigel, State Property, Lisa \"Left Eye\" Lopes, Meek Mill, Lil Uzi Vert, and others.\nSports.\nPhiladelphia has one of the nation's richest histories in professional sports, dating back to the mid-19th century. Its first professional sports team, the Philadelphia Athletics, a professional baseball team, was founded in 1860. The Athletics were initially an amateur league team that turned professional in 1871. In 1876, the Athletics joined with seven other teams in founding the National League, now the longest continuously operating league in world sports. \nPhiladelphia is one of 12 U.S. cities to have teams in all four major league sports: the Philadelphia Phillies of Major League Baseball (MLB), the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League (NFL), the Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League (NHL), and the Philadelphia 76ers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Phillies, formed in 1883 as the Quakers and renamed in 1884, are the oldest team continuously playing under the same name in the same city in the history of American professional sports.\nThe Philadelphia metro area is also home to the Philadelphia Union of Major League Soccer (MLS), plays their home games at Subaru Park, a soccer-specific stadium in Chester, Pennsylvania.\nPhiladelphia was the second of eight U.S. cities to win titles in all four major leagues, the MLB, NFL, NHL, and NBA. It won a title in soccer in the now-defunct North American Soccer League in 1973. Following the 76ers' victory over the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1983 NBA Finals, however, the city's professional teams and their fans endured 25 years without a championship in any professional sport until the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, defeating the Tampa Bay Rays. This quarter century without a championship for any Philadelphia sports team is sometimes described as the Curse of Billy Penn, a reference to a 1987 decision that permitted One Liberty Place to become the first building in city history to surpass the height of \"William Penn\", a statue installed in 1894 atop City Hall. In 2004, during the city's championship drought, ESPN placed Philadelphia second on its list of \"The Fifteen Most Tortured Sports Cities\". The city's sports fans are often both praised and sometimes derided. In 2011, for instance, \"GQ\" magazine named Eagles and Phillies fans the nation's worst professional sports fans, describing them as the \"Meanest Fans in America\" in summarizing repeated incidents of their drunken behavior and long history of booing.\nAfter the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, nine years passed without a championship until the Eagles won their first Super Bowl following the 2017 season, defeating the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII. Seven seasons later, following the 2024 season, the Eagles won their second Super Bowl, defeating the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX. \nMajor professional sports teams that originated in Philadelphia, which later moved to other cities, include the Golden State Warriors basketball team, which played in Philadelphia from 1946 to 1962 and the Oakland Athletics baseball team, which was originally the Philadelphia Athletics and played in Philadelphia from 1901 to 1954.\nPhiladelphia is home to professional, semi-professional, and elite amateur teams in multiple other sports, including cricket, rugby league, and rugby union. Major running events in the city include the Penn Relays, the Philadelphia Marathon, and the Broad Street Run. The Collegiate Rugby Championship is played annually each June at Talen Energy Stadium in Chester.\nThe city also has a rich history in rowing, which has been popular in Philadelphia since the 18th century. On Boathouse Row, a symbol of Philadelphia's rich rowing history, each Big Five member has its own boathouse. Philadelphia hosts numerous local and collegiate rowing clubs and competitions, including the annual Dad Vail Regatta, the largest intercollegiate rowing event in North America with more than 100 participating U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities; the annual Stotesbury Cup Regatta, which is billed as the world's oldest and largest rowing event for high school students; and the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta. The regattas are held on the Schuylkill River and organized by Schuylkill Navy, an association of area rowing clubs that has produced numerous Olympic rowers.\nThe Philadelphia Spinners were a professional ultimate team in Major League Ultimate (MLU) until 2016. The Spinners were one of the original eight teams of the American Ultimate Disc League (AUDL), which was founded in 2012. They played at Franklin Field and won the inaugural AUDL championship and the final MLU championship in 2016. The MLU was suspended indefinitely by its investors in December 2016. As of 2018[ [update]], the Philadelphia Phoenix continue to play in the AUDL.\nPhiladelphia is home to the Philadelphia Big 5, a group of five NCAA Division I college basketball programs, including La Salle, Penn, Saint Joseph's, Temple, and Villanova universities. The sixth NCAA Division I school in Philadelphia is Drexel University. La Salle won the 1954 championship of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. Villanova won the 1985, 2016, and 2018 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournaments. Philadelphia will be one of the eleven US host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.\nLaw and government.\nPhiladelphia County is a legal nullity. All county functions were assumed by the city in 1952. The city has been coterminous with the county since 1854.\nPhiladelphia's 1952 Home Rule Charter was written by the City Charter Commission, which was created by the Pennsylvania General Assembly in an act of April 1949, and a city ordinance of June 1949. The existing city council received a proposed draft in February 1951, and the electors approved it in an election held in April 1951. The first elections under the new Home Rule Charter were held in November 1951, and the newly elected officials took office in January 1952.\nThe city uses the strong-mayor version of the mayor\u2013council form of government, which is led by one mayor in whom executive authority is vested. The mayor has the authority to appoint and dismiss members of all boards and commissions without the approval of the city council. Elected at-large, the mayor is limited to two consecutive four-year terms, but can run for the position again after an intervening term.\nCourts.\nPhiladelphia County is coterminous with the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas is the trial court of general jurisdiction for the city, hearing felony-level criminal cases and civil suits above the minimum jurisdictional limit of $10,000. The court has appellate jurisdiction over rulings from the Municipal and Traffic Courts, and some administrative agencies and boards. The trial division has 70 commissioned judges elected by the voters, along with about one thousand other employees. The court has a family division with 25 judges and an orphans' court with three judges.\nAs of 2018[ [update]], the city's District Attorney is Larry Krasner, a Democrat. The last Republican to hold the office is Ronald D. Castille, who left in 1991 and later served as the Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court from 2008 to 2014.\nThe Philadelphia Municipal Court handles traffic cases, misdemeanor and felony criminal cases with maximum incarceration of five years, and civil cases involving $12,000 or less ($15,000 in real estate and school tax cases), and all landlord-tenant disputes. The municipal court has 27 judges elected by the voters.\nPennsylvania's three appellate courts also have sittings in Philadelphia. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the court of last resort in the state, regularly hears arguments in Philadelphia City Hall. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania and the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania also sit in Philadelphia several times a year. Judges for these courts are elected at large. The state Supreme Court and Superior Court have deputy prothonotary offices in Philadelphia.\nPhiladelphia is home to the federal United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, both of which are housed in the James A. Byrne United States Courthouse.\nPolitics.\nThe current mayor is Cherelle Parker who won the election in November 2023. Parker's predecessor, Jim Kenney, served two terms from 2016 to January 2024. Parker is a member of the Democratic Party. For over seven decades, since 1952, every Philadelphia mayor has been a Democrat.\nPhiladelphia City Council is the legislative branch which consists of ten council members representing individual districts and seven members elected at-large, all of whom are elected to four-year terms. Democrats are currently the majority and hold 14 seats including nine of the ten districts and five at-large seats. Republicans hold one seat: the Northeast-based Tenth District. The Working Families Party holds two at-large seats making them the council's minority party. The current council president is Kenyatta Johnson.\nPhiladelphia's political structure consists of a system of wards and divisions. There are 66 wards with 11 to 51 divisions each for a total of 1703 divisions. Each division elects two committee people who are supposed to live within the division boundaries, and committee people select a leader for their ward. Democrats and Republicans elect their own committee people every four years. The committee person's role is to serve as a point of contact between voters and party officials and help get out the vote. Most wards are closed which means the ward leader makes sole endorsement decisions; open wards allow committee people to weigh in on these decisions. There are groups such as Open Wards Philadelphia and individuals who are working to elect ward leaders who promote an open ward system.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nPhiladelphia had historically been a bastion of the Republican Party from the American Civil War until the mid-1930s. In 1856, the first Republican National Convention was held at Musical Fund Hall at 808 Locust Street in Philadelphia.\nDemocratic registrations increased after the Great Depression; however, the city was not carried by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt in his landslide victory of 1932, as Pennsylvania was one of only six states won by Republican Herbert Hoover. Voter turnout surged from 600,000 in 1932 to nearly 900,000 in 1936 and Roosevelt carried Philadelphia with over 60% of the vote. Philadelphia has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1936. In 2008, Democrat Barack Obama drew 83% of the city's vote. Obama's win was even larger in 2012, capturing 85% of the vote. In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton won 82% of the vote.\nAs a result of the previously declining population in the city and state, Philadelphia has only three congressional districts of the 18 districts in Pennsylvania, based on the 2010 census apportionment: the 2nd district, represented by Brendan Boyle; the 3rd, represented by Dwight Evans; and the 5th, represented by Mary Gay Scanlon. All three representatives are Democrats, though Republicans still have some support in the city, primarily in the Northeast. Sam Katz ran competitive mayoral races as the Republican nominee in 1999 and 2003, losing to Democrat John Street both times.\nPennsylvania's longest-serving Senator, Arlen Specter, was an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania who opened his first law practice in Philadelphia. Specter served as a Republican from 1981 and as a Democrat from 2009, losing that party's primary in 2010 and leaving office in January 2011. He was assistant counsel on the Warren Commission in 1964 and the city's district attorney from 1966 to 1974.\nPhiladelphia has hosted various national conventions, including in 1848 (Whig), 1856 (Republican), 1872 (Republican), 1900 (Republican), 1936 (Democratic), 1940 (Republican), 1948 (Republican), 1948 (Progressive), 2000 (Republican), and 2016 (Democratic). Philadelphia has been home to one vice president, George M. Dallas, and one general of the American Civil War, George B. McClellan, who won his party's nomination for president but lost in the general election to Abraham Lincoln in 1864. In May 2019, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden chose Philadelphia to be his 2020 U.S. presidential campaign headquarters.\nEnvironmental policy.\n\"Green Cities, Clean Water\" is an environmental policy initiative based in Philadelphia that has shown promising results in mitigating the effects of climate change. The researchers on the policy have stated that despite such promising plans of green infrastructure building, \"the city is forecasted to grow warmer, wetter, and more urbanized over the century, runoff and local temperatures will increase on average throughout the city\". Even though landcover predictive models on the effects of the policy initiative have indicated that green infrastructure could be useful at decreasing the amount of runoff in the city over time, the city government would have to expand its current plans and \"consider the cobenefit of climate change adaptation when planning new projects\" in limiting the scope of city-wide temperature increase.\nPublic safety.\nPolice and law enforcement.\nIn a 2015 report by Pew Charitable Trusts, the police districts with the highest rates of violent crime were Frankford (15th district) and Kensington (24th district) in the Near Northeast, and districts to the North (22nd, 25th, and 35th districts), West (19th district) and Southwest (12th district) of Center City. Each of those seven districts recorded more than a thousand violent crimes in 2014. The lowest rates of violent crime occurred in Center City, South Philadelphia, the Far Northeast, and Roxborough districts, the latter of which includes Manayunk.\nPhiladelphia had 500, 503 according to some sources, murders in 1990, a rate of 31.5 per 100,000. An average of about 400 murders occurred each year for most of the 1990s. The murder count dropped in 2002 to 288, then rose to 406 by 2006, before dropping slightly to 392 in 2007. A few years later, Philadelphia began to see a rapid decline in homicides and violent crime. In 2013, the city had 246 murders, which is a decrease of nearly 40% since 2006.\nIn 2014, 248 homicides were committed. The homicide rate rose to 280 in 2015, then fell slightly to 277 in 2016, before rising again to 317 in 2017. Homicides increased dramatically in the late 2010s/early 2020s, reaching 499 homicides in 2020 and surpassing the 1990 \"record\" in 2021, with 501st murder on November 27 and 510 by the end of the month. Phillie ended the year with 562 murders, an all-time record. It dropped in 2022 to 514, and significantly further again in 2023, to 410.\nIn 2006, Philadelphia's homicide rate of 27.7 per 100,000 people was the highest of the country's 10 most populous cities. In 2012, Philadelphia had the fourth-highest homicide rate among the country's most populous cities. The rate dropped to 16 homicides per 100,000 residents by 2014 placing Philadelphia as the sixth-highest city in the country.\nThe number of shootings in the city has declined significantly since the early years of the 21st century. Shooting incidents peaked at 1,857 in 2006 before declining nearly 44 percent to 1,047 shootings in 2014. Major crimes have decreased gradually since a peak in 2006 when 85,498 major crimes were reported. The number of reported major crimes fell 11 percent in three years to 68,815 occurrences in 2014. Violent crimes, which include homicide, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery, decreased 14 percent in three years to 15,771 occurrences in 2014.\nIn 2014, Philadelphia enacted an ordinance decriminalizing the possession of less than 30 grams of marijuana or eight grams of hashish; the ordinance gave police officers the discretion to treat possession of these amounts as a civil infraction punishable by a $25 ticket, rather than a crime. At the time, Philadelphia was at the largest city in the nation to decriminalize the possession of marijuana. From 2013 to 2018, marijuana arrests in the city dropped by more than 85%. The purchase or sale of marijuana remains a criminal offense in Philadelphia.\nFirefighting.\nThe Philadelphia Fire Department provides fire protection and emergency medical services (EMS). The department's official mission is to protect public safety by quick and professional response to emergencies and the promotion of sound emergency prevention measures. This mandate encompasses all traditional firefighting functions, including fire suppression, with 60 engine companies and 30 ladder companies as well as specialty and support units deployed throughout the city; specialized firefighting units for Philadelphia International Airport and the Port of Philadelphia; investigations conducted by the fire marshal's office to determine the origins of fires and develop preventive strategies; prevention programs to educate the public; and support services including research and planning, management of the fire communications center within the city's 911 system, and operation of the Philadelphia Fire Academy.\nMedia.\nNewspapers.\nPhiladelphia's two major daily newspapers are \"The Philadelphia Inquirer\", first published in 1829\u2014the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the country\u2014and the \"Philadelphia Daily News\", first published in 1925. The \"Daily News\" has been published as an edition of the \"Inquirer\" since 2009. Recent owners of the \"Inquirer\" and \"Daily News\" have included Knight Ridder, The McClatchy Company, and Philadelphia Media Holdings, with the latter organization declaring bankruptcy in 2010. After two years of financial struggle, the newspapers were sold to Interstate General Media in 2012. The two newspapers had a combined daily circulation of 306,831 and a Sunday circulation of 477,313 in 2013[ [update]], the 18th-largest circulation in the country, and their collective website, Philly.com, was ranked 13th in popularity among online U.S. newspapers by Alexa Internet the same year.\nSmaller publications include the \"Philadelphia Tribune\" published five days each week for the African-American community; \"Philadelphia\" magazine, a monthly regional magazine; \"Philadelphia Weekly\", a weekly alternative newspaper; \"Philadelphia Gay News\", a weekly newspaper for the LGBT community; \"The Jewish Exponent\", a weekly newspaper for the Jewish community; \"Al D\u00eda\", a weekly newspaper for the Latino community; and \"Philadelphia Metro\", a free daily newspaper.\nStudent-run newspapers include the University of Pennsylvania's \"The Daily Pennsylvanian\", Temple University's \"The Temple News\", and Drexel University's \"The Triangle\".\nRadio.\nThe first experimental radio license was issued in Philadelphia in August 1912 to St. Joseph's College. The first commercial AM radio stations began broadcasting in 1922: first WIP, then owned by Gimbels department store, followed by WFIL, then owned by Strawbridge & Clothier department store, and WOO, a defunct station owned by Wanamaker's department store, as well as WCAU and WDAS.\nAs of 2018[ [update]], the FCC lists 28 FM and 11 AM stations for Philadelphia. As of December 2017, the ten highest-rated stations in Philadelphia were adult contemporary WBEB-FM (101.1), sports talk WIP-FM (94.1), classic rock WMGK-FM (102.9), urban adult contemporary WDAS-FM (105.3), classic hits WOGL-FM (98.1), album-oriented rock WMMR-FM (93.3), country music WXTU-FM (92.5), all-news KYW-AM (1060), talk radio WHYY-FM (90.9), and urban adult contemporary WRNB-FM (100.3). Philadelphia is served by three non-commercial public radio stations: WHYY-FM (NPR), WRTI-FM (classical and jazz), and WXPN-FM (adult alternative music).\nTelevision.\nIn the 1930s, W3XE, an experimental station owned by Philco, launched as Philadelphia's first television station. In 1939, the station became the nation's first NBC's first affiliate, and later became KYW-TV, the Philadelphia television market's CBS affiliate. In 1952, WFIL, later renamed WPVI, premiered the television show \"Bandstand\", which later became the nationally broadcast \"American Bandstand\" hosted by Dick Clark. In the 1960s, WCAU-TV, WFIL-TV, and WHYY-TV were founded.\nEach of the nation's commercial networks has an affiliate in Philadelphia: KYW-TV 3 (CBS), WPVI-TV 6 (ABC), WCAU 10 (NBC), WPHL-TV 17 (The CW with MyNetworkTV on DT2), WFPA-CD 28 (UniM\u00e1s), WTXF-TV 29 (Fox), WPSG 57 (Independent), WWSI 62 (Telemundo), and WUVP-DT 65 (Univision). The region is served also by public broadcasting stations WPPT-TV in Philadelphia, WHYY-TV in Wilmington, Delaware and Philadelphia, WLVT-TV in the Lehigh Valley, and NJTV in New Jersey.\nSince September 2024, Philadelphia is the nation's largest television market where at least one of the six English networks are shown at a station not owned by a particular network's associated parent company. The major Spanish language networks are Univision (WUVP-DT), UniM\u00e1s (WFPA-CD), and Telemundo (WWSI-TV).\nAs of 2023, the Philadelphia media market is the fifth-largest in North America with over 7.8 million viewers\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nPhiladelphia is served by SEPTA, which operates buses, trains, rapid transit (as both subways and elevated trains), trolleys, and trackless trolleys (electric buses) throughout Philadelphia, the four Pennsylvania suburban counties of Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery, in addition to service to Mercer County, New Jersey (Trenton) and New Castle County, Delaware (Wilmington and Newark, Delaware). The city's subway system consists of two routes: the subway section of the Market\u2013Frankford Line running east\u2013west under Market Street which opened in 1905 to the west and 1908 to the east of City Hall, and the Broad Street Line running north\u2013south beneath Broad Street which opened in stages from 1928 to 1938.\nBeginning in the 1980s, large sections of the SEPTA Regional Rail service to the far suburbs of Philadelphia were discontinued due to a lack of funding for equipment and infrastructure maintenance.\nPhiladelphia's 30th Street Station is a major railroad station on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor with 4.4\u00a0million passengers in 2017 making it the third-busiest station in the country after New York City's Pennsylvania Station and Washington's Union Station. 30th Street Station offers access to Amtrak, SEPTA, and NJ Transit lines. Over 12\u00a0million SEPTA and NJ Transit rail commuters use the station each year, and more than 100,000 people on an average weekday.\nThe PATCO Speedline provides rapid transit service to Camden, Collingswood, Westmont, Haddonfield, Woodcrest (Cherry Hill), Ashland (Voorhees), and Lindenwold, New Jersey, from stations on Locust Street between 16th and 15th, 13th and 12th, and 10th and 9th streets, and on Market Street at 8th Street.\nAirports.\nPhiladelphia is served by two airports. Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), the larger of the two, is south-southwest of Center City on the boundary with Delaware County, and provides scheduled domestic and international air service. As of 2023, Philadelphia International Airport is the 21st-busiest airport in the nation with over 13.6 million passengers. It is also among the world's busiest airports measured by traffic movements, including takeoffs and landings. Over 30\u00a0million passengers pass through the airport annually on 25 airlines, including all major domestic carriers. The airport has nearly 500 daily departures to over 120 destinations worldwide. SEPTA's Airport Line provides direct service between Center City railroad stations and Philadelphia International Airport.\nPhiladelphia's second major airport, Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE), is a general aviation relief airport in Northeast Philadelphia, which provides general and corporate aviation.\nRoads.\nWilliam Penn planned Philadelphia with numbered streets traversing north and south, and streets named for trees, including Chestnut, Walnut, and Mulberry (since renamed Arch Streets, traversing east and west. The two main streets were named Broad Street, the north\u2013south artery, later designated Pennsylvania Route 611, and High Street, the east\u2013west artery, which was later renamed Market Street, converging at Centre Square which later became the site of City Hall.\nInterstate 95, also known as the Delaware Expressway, traverses the southern and eastern edges of the city along the Delaware River as the main north\u2013south controlled-access highway, and connects Philadelphia with Newark, New Jersey and New York City to the north and Baltimore and Washington, D.C. to the south. The city is served by Interstate 76, also known as the Schuylkill Expressway, which runs along the Schuylkill River, intersecting the Pennsylvania Turnpike at King of Prussia and providing access to Harrisburg and points west. Interstate 676, also known as Vine Street Expressway, links I-95 and I-76 through Center City, running below street level between the eastbound and westbound lanes of Vine Street. Entrance and exit ramps for the Benjamin Franklin Bridge are near the eastern end of the expressway just west of the I-95 interchange.\nRoosevelt Boulevard and Expressway, also known as U.S. 1, connects Northeast Philadelphia with Center City via I-76 through Fairmount Park. Woodhaven Road, also known as Route 63, and Cottman Avenue, also known as Route 73, serve the neighborhoods of Northeast Philadelphia, running between I-95 and the Roosevelt Boulevard. Fort Washington Expressway, also known as Route 309, extends north from the city's northern border, serving Montgomery and Bucks Counties. U.S. Route 30, also known as Lancaster Avenue, extends west from West Philadelphia to Lancaster.\nInterstate 476, locally called the Blue Route, traverses Delaware County, bypassing the city to the west and serving the city's western suburbs, providing a direct route to Allentown, the Poconos, and points north. Interstate 276, the Pennsylvania Turnpike's Delaware River extension, is a bypass and commuter route north of the city, which links to the New Jersey Turnpike and New York City.\nDelaware River Port Authority operates four bridges in the Philadelphia area, each of which cross the Delaware River to South Jersey: Walt Whitman Bridge (I-76), the Benjamin Franklin Bridge (I-676 and U.S. 30), Betsy Ross Bridge (New Jersey Route 90), and Commodore Barry Bridge (U.S. 322 in Delaware County, south of the city. The Burlington County Bridge Commission maintains two additional bridges that cross the Delaware River. Tacony\u2013Palmyra Bridge connects PA Route 73 in the Tacony section of Northeast Philadelphia with New Jersey Route 73 in Palmyra in Burlington County. Burlington\u2013Bristol Bridge connects NJ Route 413/U.S. Route 130 in Burlington, New Jersey with PA Route 413/U.S. 13 in Bristol Township, north of Philadelphia.\nBus service.\nThe Greyhound terminal is at 1001 Filbert Street (at 10th Street) in Center City, southeast of the Pennsylvania Convention Center and south of Chinatown. Several other bus operators provide service at the Greyhound terminal including Fullington Trailways, Martz Trailways, Peter Pan Bus Lines, and NJ Transit buses.\nOther intercity bus services include Megabus with stops at 30th Street Station and the visitor center for Independence Hall, BoltBus (operated by Greyhound) at 30th Street Station, OurBus at various stops in the city.\nRail.\nSince the early days of rail transportation in the United States, Philadelphia has served as a hub for several major rail companies, particularly the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Railroad. The Pennsylvania Railroad first operated Broad Street Station, then 30th Street Station and Suburban Station, and the Reading Railroad operated Reading Terminal, now part of the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The two companies also operated competing commuter rail systems in the area. The two systems now operate as a single system under the control of SEPTA, the regional transit authority. Additionally, the PATCO Speedline subway system and NJ Transit's Atlantic City Line operate successor services to South Jersey.\nIn 1911, Philadelphia had nearly 4,000 electric trolleys running on 86 lines. In 2005, SEPTA reintroduced trolley service to the Girard Avenue Line, Route 15. SEPTA operates six subway-surface trolleys that run on street-level tracks in West Philadelphia and subway tunnels in Center City, along with two surface trolleys in adjacent suburbs.\nPhiladelphia is a regional hub of the federally-owned Amtrak system, with 30th Street Station being a primary stop on the Washington-Boston Northeast Corridor and the Keystone Corridor to Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. 30th Street also serves as a major station for services via the Pennsylvania Railroad's former Pennsylvania Main Line to Chicago. As of 2018[ [update]], 30th Street is Amtrak's third-busiest station in the country, after New York City and Washington.\nUtilities.\nWater purity and availability.\nIn 1815, Philadelphia began sourcing its water via the Fairmount Water Works on the Schuylkill River, the nation's first major urban water supply system. In 1909, the Water Works was decommissioned as the city transitioned to modern sand filtration methods. Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) provides drinking water, wastewater collection, and stormwater services for Philadelphia, as well as surrounding counties. PWD draws about 57 percent of its drinking water from the Delaware River and the balance from the Schuylkill River. The city has two filtration plants on the Schuylkill River and one on the Delaware River. The three plants can treat up to 546\u00a0million gallons of water per day, while the total storage capacity of the combined plant and distribution system exceeds one billion gallons. The wastewater system consists of three water pollution control plants, 21 pumping stations, and about of sewers.\nElectricity.\nExelon subsidiary PECO Energy Company, founded as the Brush Electric Light Company of Philadelphia in 1881 and renamed Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) in 1902, provides electricity to about 1.6\u00a0million customers and more than 500,000 natural gas customers in the southeastern Pennsylvania area including the city of Philadelphia and most of its suburbs. PECO is the largest electric and natural gas utility in the state with 472 power substations and nearly of electric transmission and distribution lines and of natural gas transmission, distribution, and service lines.\nNatural gas.\nPhiladelphia Gas Works (PGW), overseen by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, is the nation's largest municipally-owned natural gas utility. PGW serves over 500,000 homes and businesses in the Philadelphia area. Founded in 1836, the company came under city ownership in 1987 and has been providing the majority of gas distributed within city limits. In 2014, the City Council refused to conduct hearings on a $1.86\u00a0billion sale of PGW, part of a two-year effort that was proposed by the mayor. The refusal led to the prospective buyer terminating its offer.\nTelecommunications.\nSoutheastern Pennsylvania was assigned the 215 area code in 1947 when the North American Numbering Plan of the Bell System went into effect. The geographic area covered by the code was split nearly in half in 1994 when area code 610 was created, with the city and its northern suburbs retaining 215. Overlay area code 267 was added to the 215 service area in 1997, and 484 was added to the 610 area in 1999. A plan in 2001 to introduce a third overlay code to both service areas, area code 445 to 215 and area code 835 to 610, was delayed and later rescinded. Area code 445 was implemented as an overlay for area codes 215 and 267 starting on February 3, 2018.\nSister cities.\nPhiladelphia also has three partnership cities or regions:\nPhiladelphia has eight official sister cities as designated by the Citizen Diplomacy International (CDI) of Philadelphia: Philadelphia has dedicated landmarks to its sister cities. The Sister Cities Park, a site of at 18th and Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Logan Square, was dedicated in June 1976. The park was built to commemorate Philadelphia's first two sister city relationships, with Tel Aviv and Florence. Toru\u0144 Triangle, honoring the sister city relationship with Toru\u0144, Poland, was constructed in 1976, west of the United Way building at 18th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Sister Cities Park was redesigned and reopened in 2012, featuring an interactive fountain honoring Philadelphia's sister and partnership cities, a caf\u00e9 and visitor center, children's play area, outdoor garden, boat pond, and a pavilion built to environmentally friendly standards.\nThe Chinatown Gate, erected in 1984 and crafted by artisans from Tianjin, stands astride 10th Street, on the north side of its intersection with Arch Street, as a symbol of the sister city relationship. The CDI of Philadelphia has participated in the U.S. Department of State's \"Partners for Peace\" project with Mosul, Iraq, and in accepting visiting delegations from dozens of other countries.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nclass=\"wikitable succession-box noprint\" style=\"margin:0.5em auto; font-size:small;clear:both;\"", "570934": "Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church\nHistoric church in Pennsylvania, United States\nThe Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is a historic church and congregation which is located at 419 South 6th Street in Center City Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The congregation, founded in 1794, is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal congregation in the nation.\nIts present church, completed in 1890, is the oldest church property in the United States to be continuously owned by African Americans. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972.\nHistory of the congregation.\nThe church was proposed in 1791 by members of the Free African Society of Philadelphia, including Absalom Jones, out of a desire to create a space for autonomous African-American worship and community in the city. The desire to create the church was strengthened in 1792, after African-American members of St. George's Methodist Church walked out due to racial segregation in the worship services. Leading roles in the founding were played by Richard Allen, who arranged the purchase of the church's site and its construction, and Absalom Jones, who raised funds among both black and white Philadelphia residents (including then-President George Washington). Mother Bethel was one of the first African-American churches in the United States, dedicated July 29, 1794, by Bishop Francis Asbury.\nOn October 12, 1794, Reverend Robert Blackwell announced that the congregation was received in full fellowship in the Methodist Episcopal Church.\nIn 1816, Rev. Richard Allen brought together other black Methodist congregations from the region to organize the new African Methodist Episcopal Church denomination. He was elected bishop of this denomination. After the American Civil War, its missionaries went to the South to help freedmen and planted many new churches in the region.\nIn 1838, the building was damaged during the riots that followed the destruction of Pennsylvania Hall.\nAllen and his wife, Sarah Allen are both buried in the present church's crypt. The current church building was constructed in 1888\u20131890, and it has been designated a National Historic Landmark.\nOn October 25, 2009, \"The Great Gathering\" took place at St. George's Church in which the community of Mother Bethel AME and St. George's congregations gathered for Sunday worship at St. George's for the first time since the historic walkout. The Rev. Dr. Mark Kelly Tyler preached for this service.\nBuilding history.\nThe property was acquired for the new congregation in 1794. Its first building was a frame structure originally used as a blacksmith's shop, which was hauled to the site.\nThis building was later replaced by frame structures in 1805 and 1841. The 1841 church was reported to have a tunnel connecting it with a nearby Quaker meetinghouse to facilitate the movements of fugitive slaves.\nThe present building, which was completed in 1890, is a three-story masonry structure with Romanesque styling. Its large round-arch windows are adorned with stained glass from Germany.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["570934", "31979", "50585"], "permutation_1": ["31979", "50585", "570934"], "permutation_2": ["570934", "31979", "50585"], "permutation_3": ["570934", "50585", "31979"]}
{"id": "3hop1__161478_71250_135051", "docs_added": {"30570": "Trajan\nRoman emperor from AD 98 to 117\nTrajan ( ; born Marcus Ulpius Traianus, 18 September\u00a053\u00a0\u2013\u00a0c.\u20099 August\u00a0117) was a Roman emperor from AD\u00a098 to 117, remembered as the second of the Five Good Emperors of the Nerva\u2013Antonine dynasty. He was a philanthropic ruler and a successful soldier-emperor who presided over one of the greatest military expansions in Roman history, during which, by the time of his death, the Roman Empire reached its maximum territorial extent. He was given the title of ('the best') by the Roman Senate.\nTrajan was born in the of Italica in the present-day Andalusian province of Seville in southern Spain, an Italic settlement in Hispania Baetica; his came from the town of Tuder in the Umbria region of central Italy. His namesake father, Marcus Ulpius Traianus, was a general and distinguished senator. Trajan rose to prominence during the reign of Domitian; in AD 89, serving as a in , he supported the emperor against a revolt on the Rhine led by Antonius Saturninus. He then served as governor of Germania and Pannonia. In September 96, Domitian was succeeded by the elderly and childless Nerva, who proved to be unpopular with the army. After a revolt by members of the Praetorian Guard, Nerva decided to adopt as his heir and successor the more popular Trajan, who had distinguished himself in military campaigns against Germanic tribes.\nAs emperor of Rome, Trajan oversaw the construction of building projects such as the forum named after him, the introduction of social welfare policies such as the , and new military conquests. He annexed Nabataea and Dacia, and his war against the Parthian Empire ended with the incorporation of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria as Roman provinces. In August AD\u00a0117, while sailing back to Rome, Trajan fell ill and died of a stroke in the city of Selinus. He was deified by the senate and his successor Hadrian (Trajan's cousin). According to historical tradition, Trajan's ashes were entombed in a small room beneath Trajan's Column.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nSources.\nAn account of the Dacian Wars, the \"Commentarii de bellis Dacicis\", written by Trajan himself or a ghostwriter and modelled after Caesar's \"Commentarii de Bello Gallico\", is lost with the exception of one sentence. Only fragments remain of the \"Getica\", a book by Trajan's personal physician Titus Statilius Criton. The \"Parthica\", a 17-volume account of the Parthian Wars written by Arrian, has met a similar fate. Book68 in Greek author Cassius Dio's \"Roman History\", which survives mostly as Byzantine abridgements and epitomes, is the main source for the political history of Trajan's rule. Besides this, Pliny the Younger's \"Panegyricus\" and Dio Chrysostom's orations are the best surviving contemporary sources. Both are adulatory perorations, typical of the High Imperial period, that describe an idealized monarch and an equally idealized view of Trajan's rule, and concern themselves more with ideology than with fact.\nThe 10th volume of Pliny's letters contains his correspondence with Trajan, which deals with various aspects of imperial Roman government. It is generally agreed that Pliny, being part of the emperor's inner circle, provides a unique and valuable source of information through his letters with Trajan, the only surviving correspondence between a governor and his emperor. However, it has been argued that Pliny's correspondence with Trajan is neither intimate nor candid, but rather an exchange of official mail in which Pliny's stance borders on the servile. Some authors have even proposed that much of the text was written and/or edited by Trajan's Imperial secretary, his \"ab epistulis\". Given the scarcity of literary sources, discussion of Trajan and his rule in modern historiography cannot avoid speculation. Non-literary sources such as archaeology, epigraphy, and numismatics are also useful for reconstructing his reign.\nEarly life.\nMarcus Ulpius Traianus was born on 18 September AD53 in the Roman province of Hispania Baetica (in what is now Andalusia in modern Spain), in the \"municipium\" of Italica (now in the municipal area of Santiponce, in the outskirts of Seville), a Roman colony established in 206BC by Scipio Africanus. At the time of Trajan's birth it was a small town, without baths, theatre and amphitheatre, and with a very narrow territory under its direct administration. Trajan's year of birth is not reliably attested and may instead have been AD 56.\nThe epitome of Cassius Dio's Roman history describes Trajan as \"an Iberian and neither an Italian nor even an Italiote\", but this claim is contradicted by other ancient sources and rejected by modern scholars, who have reconstructed Trajan's Italic lineage. Appian states that Trajan's hometown of Italica was settled by and named after Italic veterans who fought in Spain under Scipio, and new settlers arrived there from Italy in the following centuries. Among the Italic settlers were the Ulpii and the Traii, who were either part of the original colonists or arrived as late as the end of the 1st century BC. Their original home, according to the description of Trajan as \"Ulpius Traianus ex urbe Tudertina\" in the Epitome de Caesaribus, was the town of Tuder (Todi) in the Umbria region of central Italy. This is confirmed by archeology, with epigraphic evidence placing both the Ulpii and the Traii in Umbria generally and Tuder specifically, and by linguistic studies of the family names \"Ulpius\" and \"Traius\" which show that both are of Osco-Umbrian origin. \nIt is unknown whether Trajan's ancestors were Roman citizens or not at their arrival in Spain. They would have certainly possessed Roman citizenship in case they arrived after the Social War (91\u201387 BC), when Tuder became a municipium of Roman citizens. In Spain they may well have intermarried with native Iberians, in which case they would have lost their citizenship. Had they lacked or lost the status of Roman citizens, they would have achieved it or recovered it when Italica became a municipium with Latin rights in the mid-1st century BC.\nTrajan's paternal grandfather Ulpius married a Traia. Their son, Trajan's namesake father Marcus Ulpius Traianus, was born at Italica during the reign of Tiberius and became a prominent senator and general, commanding the Legio X Fretensis under Vespasian in the First Jewish-Roman War. Trajan's mother was Marcia, a Roman noblewoman of the gens Marcia and a sister-in-law of the second Flavian Emperor Titus. Little is known of her. Her father is believed to be Quintus Marcius Barea Sura. Her mother was Antonia Furnilla, daughter of Aulus Antonius Rufus and Furnia. Trajan owned some lands called \"Figlinae Marcianae\" in Ameria, another Umbrian town, located near both Tuder and Reate (the home of the Flavian dynasty) and believed to be the home of Marcia's family.\nThe line of the Ulpii continued long after Trajan's death. His elder sister was Ulpia Marciana, and his niece was Salonia Matidia. Very little is known about Trajan's early formative years, but it is thought likely that he spent his first months or years in Italica before moving to Rome and then, perhaps at around eight or nine years of age, he almost certainly would have returned temporarily to Italica with his father during Trajanus's governorship of Baetica (ca. 64\u201365). The lack of a strong local power base, caused by the size of the town from which they came, made it necessary for the Ulpii (and for the Aelii, the other important senatorial family of Italica with whom they were allied) to weave local alliances, in the Baetica (with the Annii, the Ucubi and perhaps the Dasumii from Corduba), the Tarraconense and the Narbonense, here above all through Pompeia Plotina, Trajan's wife. Many of these alliances were made not in Spain, but in Rome. The family home in Rome, the Domus Traiana, was on the Aventine Hill; excavations under the Piazza del Tempio di Diana found remains thought to be of the family's large suburban villa, with evidence of highly decorated rooms.\nMilitary career.\nAs a young man Trajan rose through the ranks of the Roman army, serving in some of the most contested parts of the empire's frontier. In 76\u201377, his father was Governor of Syria (\"Legatus pro praetore Syriae\"), where Trajan himself remained as \"Tribunus legionis\". From there, after his father's replacement, he seems to have been transferred to an unspecified Rhine province, and Pliny implies that he engaged in active combat duty during both commissions.\nIn about 86, Trajan's cousin Aelius Afer died, leaving his young children Hadrian and Paulina orphans. Trajan and his colleague Publius Acilius Attianus became co-guardians of the two children. Trajan, in his late thirties, was created ordinary consul for the year 91. This early appointment may reflect the prominence of his father's career, as his father had been instrumental to the ascent of the ruling Flavian dynasty, held consular rank himself and had just been made a patrician. Around this time Trajan brought the architect and engineer Apollodorus of Damascus with him to Rome, and married Pompeia Plotina, a noblewoman from the Roman settlement at N\u00eemes; the marriage ultimately remained childless.\nThe historian Cassius Dio later noted that Trajan was a lover of young men, in contrast to the usual bisexual activity that was common among upper-class Roman men of the period. The emperor Julian also made a sardonic reference to his predecessor's sexual preference, stating that Zeus himself would have had to be on guard had his Ganymede come within Trajan's vicinity. This distaste reflected a change of mores that began with the Severan dynasty, Trajan's putative lovers included the future emperor, Hadrian, pages of the imperial household, the actor Pylades, a dancer called Apolaustus, Lucius Licinius Sura, and Trajan's predecessor Nerva. Cassius Dio also relates that Trajan made an ally out of Abgar VII on account of the latter's beautiful son, Arbandes, who would then dance for Trajan at a banquet.\nThe details of Trajan's early military career are obscure, save for the fact that in 89, as legate of Legio VII Gemina in Hispania Tarraconensis, he supported Domitian against an attempted coup by Lucius Antonius Saturninus, the governor of Germania Superior. Trajan probably remained in the region after the revolt was quashed, to engage with the Chatti who had sided with Saturninus, before returning the VII Gemina legion to Legio in Hispania Tarraconensis. In 91 he held a consulate with Acilius Glabrio, a rarity in that neither consul was a member of the ruling dynasty. He held an unspecified consular commission as governor of either Pannonia or Germania Superior, or possibly both. Pliny\u00a0\u2013\u00a0who seems to deliberately avoid offering details that would stress personal attachment between Trajan and the \"tyrant\" Domitian\u00a0\u2013\u00a0attributes to him, at the time, various (and unspecified) feats of arms.\nRise to power.\nDomitian's successor, Nerva, was unpopular with the army, and had been forced by his Praetorian Prefect Casperius Aelianus to execute Domitian's killers. Nerva needed the army's support to avoid being ousted. He accomplished this in the summer of 97 by naming Trajan as his adoptive son and successor, claiming that this was entirely due to Trajan's outstanding military merits. There are hints, however, in contemporary literary sources that Trajan's adoption was imposed on Nerva. Pliny implied as much when he wrote that, although an emperor could not be coerced into doing something, if this was the way in which Trajan was raised to power, then it was worth it. Alice K\u00f6nig argues that the notion of a natural continuity between Nerva's and Trajan's reigns was an \"ex post facto\" fiction developed by authors writing under Trajan, including Tacitus and Pliny.\nAccording to the \"Historia Augusta\", the future Emperor Hadrian brought word to Trajan of his adoption. Trajan retained Hadrian on the Rhine frontier as a military tribune, and Hadrian thus became privy to the circle of friends and relations with whom Trajan surrounded himself. Among them was Lucius Licinius Sura, a Roman senator born in Spain and the governor of Germania Inferior, who was Trajan's personal friend and became an official adviser of the Emperor. Sura was highly influential, and was appointed consul for a third term in 107. Some senators may have resented Sura's activities as a kingmaker and \u00e9minence grise, among them the historian Tacitus, who acknowledged Sura's military and oratorical talents, but compared his rapacity and devious ways to those of Vespasian's \u00e9minence grise Licinius Mucianus. Sura is said to have informed Hadrian in 108 that he had been chosen as Trajan's imperial heir.\nAs governor of Upper Germany (Germania Superior) during Nerva's reign, Trajan received the impressive title of \"Germanicus\" for his skilful management and rule of the volatile Imperial province. When Nerva died on 28 January 98, Trajan succeeded to the role of emperor without any outward adverse incident. The fact that he chose not to hasten towards Rome, but made a lengthy tour of inspection on the Rhine and Danube frontiers, may suggest that he was unsure of his position, both in Rome and with the armies at the front. Alternatively, Trajan's keen military mind understood the importance of strengthening the empire's frontiers. His vision for future conquests required the diligent improvement of surveillance networks, defences and transport along the Danube. Prior to his frontier tours, Trajan ordered his Prefect Aelianus to attend him in Germany, where he was apparently executed forthwith (\"put out of the way\"), and his now-vacant post taken by Attius Suburanus. Trajan's accession, therefore, could qualify more as a successful coup than an orderly succession.\nRoman emperor.\nOn his entry to Rome, Trajan granted the plebs a direct gift of money. The traditional donative to the troops, however, was reduced by half. There remained the issue of the strained relations between the emperor and the Senate, especially after the supposed bloodiness that had marked Domitian's reign and his dealings with the Curia. By feigning reluctance to hold power, Trajan was able to start building a consensus around him in the Senate. His belated ceremonial entry into Rome in 99 was notably understated, something on which Pliny the Younger elaborated. By not openly supporting Domitian's preference for equestrian officers, Trajan appeared to conform to the idea (developed by Pliny) that an emperor derived his legitimacy from his adherence to traditional hierarchies and senatorial morals. Therefore, he could point to the allegedly republican character of his rule.\nIn a speech at the inauguration of his third consulship, on 1January 100, Trajan exhorted the senate to share the care-taking of the empire with him\u00a0\u2013\u00a0an event later celebrated on a coin. In reality, Trajan did not share power in any meaningful way with the senate, something that Pliny admits candidly: \"[E]verything depends on the whims of a single man who, on behalf of the common welfare, has taken upon himself all functions and all tasks\". One of the most significant trends of his reign was his encroachment on the senate's sphere of authority, such as his decision to make the senatorial provinces of Achaea and Bithynia into imperial ones in order to deal with the inordinate spending on public works by local magnates and the general mismanagement of provincial affairs by various proconsuls appointed by the Senate.\n\"Optimus princeps\".\nIn the formula developed by Pliny, however, Trajan was a \"good\" emperor in that, by himself, he approved or blamed the same things that the Senate would have approved or blamed. If in reality Trajan was an autocrat, his deferential behavior towards his peers qualified him to be viewed as a virtuous monarch. The idea is that Trajan wielded autocratic power through \"moderatio\" instead of \"contumacia\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0moderation instead of insolence. In short, according to the ethics for autocracy developed by most political writers of the Imperial Roman Age, Trajan was a good ruler in that he ruled less by fear, and more by acting as a role model, for, according to Pliny, \"men learn better from examples\". Eventually, Trajan's popularity among his peers was such that the Roman Senate bestowed upon him the honorific of \"optimus\", meaning \"the best\", which appears on coins from 105 on. This title had mostly to do with Trajan's role as benefactor, such as in the case of his returning confiscated property. The epithet \"optimus princeps\" had already been used for the emperors since the late republic, but Trajan was the only one officially honoured by the title.\nPliny states that Trajan's ideal role was a conservative one, argued as well by the orations of Dio Chrysostom\u2014in particular his four \"Orations on Kingship\", composed early during Trajan's reign. Dio, as a Greek notable and intellectual with friends in high places, and possibly an official friend to the emperor (\"amicus caesaris\"), saw Trajan as a defender of the \"status quo\". In his third kingship oration, Dio describes an ideal king ruling by means of \"friendship\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0that is, through patronage and a network of local notables who act as mediators between the ruled and the ruler. Dio's notion of being \"friend\" to Trajan (or any other Roman emperor), however, was that of an \"informal\" arrangement, that involved no formal entry of such \"friends\" into the Roman administration. Trajan ingratiated himself with the Greek intellectual elite by recalling to Rome many (including Dio) who had been exiled by Domitian, and by returning (in a process begun by Nerva) a great deal of private property that Domitian had confiscated. He also had good dealings with Plutarch, who, as a notable of Delphi, seems to have been favoured by the decisions taken on behalf of his home-place by one of Trajan's legates, who had arbitrated a boundary dispute between Delphi and its neighbouring cities.\nHowever, it was clear to Trajan that Greek intellectuals and notables were to be regarded as tools for local administration, and not be allowed to fancy themselves in a privileged position. As Pliny said in one of his letters at the time, it was official policy that Greek civic elites be treated according to their status as notionally free but not put on an equal footing with their Roman rulers. When the city of Apamea complained of an audit of its accounts by Pliny, alleging its \"free\" status as a Roman colony, Trajan replied by writing that it was by his own wish that such inspections had been ordered. Concern about independent local political activity is seen in Trajan's decision to forbid Nicomedia from having a corps of firemen (\"If people assemble for a common purpose... they soon turn it into a political society\", Trajan wrote to Pliny) as well as in his and Pliny's fears about excessive civic generosities by local notables such as distribution of money or gifts.\nPliny's letters suggest that Trajan and his aides were as much bored as they were alarmed by the claims of Dio and other Greek notables to political influence based on what they saw as their \"special connection\" to their Roman overlords. Pliny tells of Dio of Prusa placing a statue of Trajan in a building complex where Dio's wife and son were buried \u2013 therefore incurring a charge of treason for placing the emperor's statue near a grave. Trajan, however, dropped the charge. Nevertheless, while the office of \"corrector\" was intended as a tool to curb any hint of independent political activity among local notables in the Greek cities, the \"correctores\" themselves were all men of the highest social standing entrusted with an exceptional commission. The post seems to have been conceived partly as a reward for senators who had chosen to make a career solely on the emperor's behalf. Therefore, in reality the post was conceived as a means for \"taming\" both Greek notables and Roman senators. It must be added that, although Trajan was wary of the civic oligarchies in the Greek cities, he also admitted into the senate a number of prominent Eastern notables already slated for promotion during Domitian's reign by reserving for them one of the twenty posts open each year for minor magistrates (the \"vigintiviri\"). Such must be the case of the Galatian notable and \"leading member of the Greek community\" (according to one inscription) Gaius Julius Severus, who was a descendant of several Hellenistic dynasts and client kings.\nSeverus was the grandfather of the prominent general Gaius Julius Quadratus Bassus, consul in 105. Other prominent Eastern senators included Gaius Julius Alexander Berenicianus, a descendant of Herod the Great, suffect consul in 116. Trajan created at least fourteen new senators from the Greek-speaking half of the empire, an unprecedented recruitment number that opens to question the issue of the \"traditionally Roman\" character of his reign, as well as the \"Hellenism\" of his successor Hadrian. But then Trajan's new Eastern senators were mostly very powerful and very wealthy men with more than local influence and much interconnected by marriage, so that many of them were not altogether \"new\" to the Senate. On the local level, among the lower section of the Eastern propertied, the alienation of most Greek notables and intellectuals towards Roman rule, and the fact that the Romans were seen by most such Greek notables as aliens, persisted well after Trajan's reign. One of Trajan's senatorial creations from the East, the Athenian Gaius Julius Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappos, a member of the Royal House of Commagene, left behind him a funeral monument on the Mouseion Hill that was later disparagingly described by Pausanias as \"a monument built to a Syrian man\".\nGreek-Roman relations.\nAs a senatorial Emperor, Trajan was inclined to choose his local base of political support from among the members of the ruling urban oligarchies. In the West, that meant local senatorial families like his own. In the East, that meant the families of Greek notables. The Greeks, though, had their own memories of independence\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and a commonly acknowledged sense of cultural superiority\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and, instead of seeing themselves as Roman, disdained Roman rule. What the Greek oligarchies wanted from Rome was, above all, to be left in peace, to be allowed to exert their right to self-government (i.e., to be excluded from the provincial government, as was Italy) and to concentrate on their local interests. This was something the Romans were not disposed to do as from their perspective the Greek notables were shunning their responsibilities in regard to the management of Imperial affairs\u00a0\u2013\u00a0primarily in failing to keep the common people under control, thus creating the need for the Roman governor to intervene. An excellent example of this Greek alienation was the personal role played by Dio of Prusa in his relationship with Trajan. Dio is described by Philostratus as Trajan's close friend, and Trajan as supposedly engaging publicly in conversations with Dio.\nNevertheless, as a Greek local magnate with a taste for costly building projects and pretensions of being an important political agent for Rome, Dio of Prusa was actually a target for one of Trajan's authoritarian innovations: the appointing of imperial \"correctores\" to audit the civic finances of the technically free Greek cities. The main goal was to curb the overenthusiastic spending on public works that served to channel ancient rivalries between neighbouring cities. As Pliny wrote to Trajan, this had as its most visible consequence a trail of unfinished or ill-kept public utilities. Competition among Greek cities and their ruling oligarchies was mainly for marks of pre-eminence, especially for titles bestowed by the Roman emperor. Such titles were ordered in a ranking system that determined how the cities were to be outwardly treated by Rome. The usual form that such rivalries took was that of grandiose building plans, giving the cities the opportunity to vie with each other over \"extravagant, needless... structures that would make a show\". A side effect of such extravagant spending was that junior and thus less wealthy members of the local oligarchies felt disinclined to present themselves to fill posts as local magistrates, positions that involved ever-increasing personal expense. Roman authorities liked to play the Greek cities against one another\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something of which Dio of Prusa was fully aware:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />[B]y their public acts [the Roman governors] have branded you as a pack of fools, yes, they treat you just like children, for we often offer children the most trivial things in place of things of greatest worth [...] In place of justice, in place of the freedom of the cities from spoliation or from the seizure of the private possessions of their inhabitants, in place of their refraining from insulting you [...] your governors hand you titles, and call you 'first' either by word of mouth or in writing; that done, they may thenceforth with impunity treat you as being the very last!\"These same Roman authorities had also an interest in assuring the cities' solvency and therefore ready collection of Imperial taxes. Last but not least, inordinate spending on civic buildings was not only a means to achieve local superiority, but also a means for the local Greek elites to maintain a separate cultural identity\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something expressed in the contemporary rise of the Second Sophistic; this \"cultural patriotism\" acted as a kind of substitute for the loss of political independence, and as such was shunned by Roman authorities. As Trajan himself wrote to Pliny: \"These poor Greeks all love a gymnasium... they will have to content with one that suits their real needs\". The first known \"corrector\" was charged with a commission \"to deal with the situation of the free cities\", as it was felt that the old method of \"ad hoc\" intervention by the Emperor and/or the proconsuls had not been enough to curb the pretensions of the Greek notables. It is noteworthy that an embassy from Dio's city of Prusa was not favourably received by Trajan, and that this had to do with Dio's chief objective, which was to elevate Prusa to the status of a free city, an \"independent\" city-state exempt from paying taxes to Rome. Eventually, Dio gained for Prusa the right to become the head of the assize-district, conventus (meaning that Prusans did not have to travel to be judged by the Roman governor), but \"eleutheria\" (freedom, in the sense of full political autonomy) was denied.\nEventually, it fell to Pliny, as imperial governor of Bithynia in AD110, to deal with the consequences of the financial mess wrought by Dio and his fellow civic officials. \"It's well established that [the cities' finances] are in a state of disorder\", Pliny once wrote to Trajan, plans for unnecessary works made in collusion with local contractors being identified as one of the main problems. One of the compensatory measures proposed by Pliny expressed a thoroughly Roman conservative position: as the cities' financial solvency depended on the councilmen's purses, it was necessary to have more councilmen on the local city councils. According to Pliny, the best way to achieve this was to lower the minimum age for holding a seat on the council, making it possible for more sons of the established oligarchical families to join and thus contribute to civic spending; this was seen as preferable to enrolling non-noble wealthy upstarts. Such an increase in the number of council members was granted to Dio's city of Prusa, to the dismay of existing councilmen who felt their status lowered. A similar situation existed in Claudiopolis, where a public bath was built with the proceeds from the entrance fees paid by \"supernumerary\" members of the council, enrolled with Trajan's permission. According to the Digest, Trajan decreed that when a city magistrate promised to achieve a particular public building, his heirs inherited responsibility for its completion.\nBuilding projects.\nTrajan was a prolific builder. Many of his buildings were designed and erected by the gifted architect Apollodorus of Damascus, including a massive bridge over the Danube, which the Roman army and its reinforcements could use regardless of weather; the Danube sometimes froze over in winter, but seldom enough to bear the passage of a party of soldiers. Trajan's works at the Iron Gates region of the Danube created or enlarged the boardwalk road cut into the cliff-face along the Iron Gate's gorge. A canal was built between the Danube's Kasajna tributary and Ducis Pratum, circumventing rapids and cataracts.\nTrajan's Forum Traiani was Rome's largest forum. It was built to commemorate his victories in Dacia, and was largely financed from that campaign's loot. To accommodate it, parts of the Capitoline and Quirinal Hills had to be removed, the latter enlarging a clear area first established by Domitian. Apollodorus of Damascus' \"magnificent\" design incorporated a Triumphal arch entrance, a forum space approximately 120 m long and 90m wide, surrounded by peristyles: a monumentally sized basilica: and later, Trajan's Column and libraries. It was started in AD 107, dedicated on 1 January 112, and remained in use for at least 500 years. It still drew admiration when Emperor Constantius II visited Rome in the fourth century. It accommodated Trajan's Market, and an adjacent brick market.\nTrajan was also a prolific builder of triumphal arches, many of which survive. He built roads, such as the Via Traiana, an extension of the Via Appia from Beneventum to Brundisium and the Via Traiana Nova, a mostly military road between Damascus and Aila, which Rome employed in its annexation of Nabataea and founding of Arabia Province.\nSome historians attribute the construction or reconstruction of Old Cairo's Roman fortress (also known as \"Babylon Fort\") to Trajan, and the building of a canal between the River Nile and the Red Sea. In Egypt, Trajan was \"quite active\" in constructing and embellishing buildings. He is portrayed, together with Domitian, on the propylon of the Temple of Hathor at Dendera. His cartouche also appears in the column shafts of the Temple of Khnum at Esna.\nHe built palatial villas outside Rome at Arcinazzo, at Centumcellae and at Talamone.\nHe also built a bath complex as well as the Aqua Traiana.\nGames.\nTrajan invested heavily in the provision of popular amusements. He carried out a \"massive reconstruction\" of the Circus Maximus, which was already the empire's biggest and best appointed circuit for the immensely popular sport of chariot racing. The Circus also hosted religious theatrical spectacles and games, and public processions on a grand scale. Trajan's reconstruction, completed by 103, was modestly described by Trajan himself as \"adequate\" for the Roman people. It replaced flammable wooden seating tiers with stone, and increased the Circus' already vast capacity by about 5,000 seats. Its lofty, elevated Imperial viewing box was rebuilt among the seating tiers, so that spectators could see their emperor sharing their enjoyment of the races, alongside his family and images of the gods,\nAt some time during 108 or 109, Trajan held 123 days of games to celebrate his Dacian victory. They involved \"fully 10,000\" gladiators and the slaughter of thousands, \"possibly tens of thousands,\" of animals, both wild and domestic. Trajan's careful management of public spectacles led the orator Fronto to congratulate him for paying equal attention to public entertainments and more serious issues, acknowledging that \"neglect of serious matters can cause greater damage, but neglect of amusements greater discontent\". State-funded public entertainments helped to maintain contentment among the populace; the more \"serious matter\" of the corn dole aimed to satisfy individuals.\nChristians.\nDuring the period of peace that followed the Dacian war, Trajan exchanged letters with Pliny the Younger on how best to deal with the Christians of Pontus. Trajan told Pliny to continue prosecutions of Christians if they merited that, but not to accept anonymous or malicious denunciations. He considered this to be in the interests of justice, and to reflect \"the spirit of the age\". Non-citizens who admitted to being Christians and refused to recant were to be executed \"for obstinacy\". Citizens were sent to Rome for trial.\nFurther tests faced by Christians in Pontus are alluded to in correspondence between Pliny the Younger, governor of the Roman province of Bithynia and Pontus, and Emperor Trajan. Writing from Pontus in about AD 112, Pliny reported that the \"contagion\" of Christianity threatened everyone, regardless of gender, age, or rank. Pliny gave those accused of being Christians opportunity to deny it, and those who would not, he executed. Any who cursed Christ or recited a prayer to the gods or to Trajan\u2019s statue were released. Pliny acknowledged that these were things that \"those who are really Christians cannot be made to do.\"\nCurrency and welfare.\nIn 107, Trajan devalued the Roman currency, decreasing the silver content of the denarius from 93.5% to 89.0%\u00a0\u2013\u00a0the actual silver weight dropping from 3.04grams to 2.88grams. This devaluation, along with the massive amounts of gold and silver acquired through his Dacian wars, allowed Trajan to mint many more denarii than his predecessors. He also withdrew from circulation silver denarii minted before Nero's devaluation. Trajan's devaluation may have had a political intent, enabling planned increases in civil and military spending. Trajan formalised the alimenta, a welfare program that helped orphans and poor children throughout Italy by providing cash, food and subsidized education. The program was supported out of Dacian War booty, estate taxes and philanthropy. The alimenta also relied indirectly on mortgages secured against Italian farms (\"fundi\"). Registered landowners received a lump sum from the imperial treasury, and in return were expected to repay an annual sum to support the alimentary fund.\nMilitary campaigns.\nConquest of Dacia.\nThe earliest of Trajan's conquests were Rome's two wars against Dacia, an area that had troubled Roman politics for over a decade in regard to the unstable peace negotiated by Domitian's ministers with the powerful Dacian king Decebalus. Dacia would be reduced by Trajan's Rome to a client kingdom in the first war (101\u2013102), followed by a second war that ended in actual incorporation into the Empire of the trans-Danube border group of Dacia. According to the provisions of Decebalus's earlier treaty with Rome, made in the time of Domitian, Decebalus was acknowledged as \"rex amicus\", that is, client king; in exchange for accepting client status, he received from Rome both a generous stipend and a steady supply of technical experts. The treaty seems to have allowed Roman troops the right of passage through the Dacian kingdom in order to attack the Marcomanni, Quadi and Sarmatians. However, senatorial opinion never forgave Domitian for paying what was seen as tribute to a barbarian king. Unlike the Germanic tribes, the Dacian kingdom was an organized state capable of developing alliances of its own, thus making it a strategic threat and giving Trajan a strong motive to attack it.\nIn May of 101, Trajan launched his first campaign into the Dacian kingdom, crossing to the northern bank of the Danube and defeating the Dacian army at Tapae (see Second Battle of Tapae), near the Iron Gates of Transylvania. It was not a decisive victory, however. Trajan's troops took heavy losses in the encounter, and he put off further campaigning for the year in order to regroup and reinforce his army. Nevertheless, the battle was considered a Roman victory and Trajan strived to ultimately consolidate his position, including other major engagements, as well as the capture of Decebalus' sister as depicted on Trajan's Column.\nThe following winter, Decebalus took the initiative by launching a counter-attack across the Danube further downstream, supported by Sarmatian cavalry, forcing Trajan to come to the aid of the troops in his rearguard. The Dacians and their allies were repulsed after two battles in Moesia, at Nicopolis ad Istrum and Adamclisi. Trajan's army then advanced further into Dacian territory, and, a year later, forced Decebalus to submit. He had to renounce claim to some regions of his kingdom, return runaways from Rome then under his protection (most of them technical experts), and surrender all his war machines. Trajan returned to Rome in triumph and was granted the title \"Dacicus\". The peace of 102 had returned Decebalus to the condition of more or less harmless client king; however, he soon began to rearm, to again harbour Roman runaways, and to pressure his Western neighbours, the Iazyges Sarmatians, into allying themselves with him. Through his efforts to develop an anti-Roman bloc, Decebalus prevented Trajan from treating Dacia as a protectorate instead of an outright conquest. In 104, Decebalus devised an attempt on Trajan's life by means of some Roman deserters, a plan that failed. Decebalus also took prisoner Trajan's legate Longinus, who eventually poisoned himself while in custody. Finally, in 105, Decebalus undertook an invasion of Roman-occupied territory north of the Danube.\nPrior to the campaign, Trajan had raised two entirely new legions: II Traiana\u00a0\u2013\u00a0which, however, may have been posted in the East, at the Syrian port of Laodicea\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and XXX Ulpia Victrix, which was posted to Brigetio, in Pannonia. By 105, the concentration of Roman troops assembled in the middle and lower Danube amounted to fourteen legions (up from nine in 101)\u00a0\u2013\u00a0about half of the entire Roman army. Even after the Dacian wars, the Danube frontier would permanently replace the Rhine as the main military axis of the Roman Empire. Including auxiliaries, the number of Roman troops engaged on both campaigns was between 150,000 and 175,000, while Decebalus could dispose of up to 200,000. Other estimates for the Roman forces involved in Trajan's second Dacian War cite around 86,000 for active campaigning with large reserves retained in the proximal provinces, and potentially much lower numbers around 50,000 for Decebalus' depleted forces and absent allies.\nIn a fierce campaign that seems to have consisted mostly of static warfare, the Dacians, devoid of manoeuvring room, kept to their network of fortresses, which the Romans sought systematically to storm (see also Second Dacian War). The Romans gradually tightened their grip around Decebalus' stronghold in Sarmizegetusa Regia, which they finally took and destroyed. A controversial scene on Trajan's column just before the fall of Sarmizegetusa Regia suggests that Decebalus may have offered poison to his remaining men as an alternative option to capture or death while trying to flee the besieged capital with him. Decebalus fled but, when later cornered by Roman cavalry, committed suicide. His severed head, brought to Trajan by the cavalryman Tiberius Claudius Maximus, was later exhibited in Rome on the steps leading up to the Capitol and thrown on the Gemonian stairs. The famous Dacian treasures were not found in the captured capital and their whereabouts were only revealed when a Dacian nobleman called Bikilis was captured. Decebalus\u2019 treasures had been buried under a temporarily diverted river and the captive workers executed to retain the secret. Staggering amounts of gold and silver were found and packed off to fill Rome's coffers.\nTrajan built a new city, Colonia Ulpia Traiana Augusta Dacica Sarmizegetusa, on another site (north of the hill citadel holding the previous Dacian capital), although bearing the same full name, Sarmizegetusa. This capital city was conceived as a purely civilian administrative centre and was provided the usual Romanized administrative apparatus (decurions, aediles, etc.). Urban life in Roman Dacia seems to have been restricted to Roman colonists, mostly military veterans; there is no extant evidence for the existence in the province of peregrine cities. Native Dacians continued to live in scattered rural settlements, according to their own ways. In another arrangement with no parallels in any other Roman province, the existing quasi-urban Dacian settlements disappeared after the Roman conquest.\nA number of unorganized urban settlements (\"vici\") developed around military encampments in Dacia proper \u2013 the most important being Apulum \u2013 but were only acknowledged as cities proper well after Trajan's reign. The main regional effort of urbanization was concentrated by Trajan at the rearguard, in Moesia, where he created the new cities of Nicopolis ad Istrum and Marcianopolis. A vicus was also created around the Tropaeum Traianum. The garrison city of Oescus received the status of Roman colony after its legionary garrison was redeployed. The fact that these former Danubian outposts had ceased to be frontier bases and were now in the deep rear acted as an inducement to their urbanization and development. Not all of Dacia was permanently occupied. After the post-Trajanic evacuation of lands across the lower Danube, land extending from the Danube to the inner arch of the Carpathian Mountains, including Transylvania, the Metaliferi Mountains and Oltenia was absorbed into the Roman province, which eventually took the form of an \"excrescence\" with ill-defined limits, stretching from the Danube northwards to the Carpathians. This may have been intended as a basis for further expansion within Eastern Europe, as the Romans believed the region to be much more geographically \"flattened\", and thus easier to traverse, than it actually was; they also underestimated the distance from those vaguely defined borders to the ocean.\nDefence of the province was entrusted to a single legion, the XIII Gemina, stationed at Apulum, which functioned as an advance guard that could, in case of need, strike either west or east at the Sarmatians living at the borders. Therefore, the indefensible character of the province did not appear to be a problem for Trajan, as the province was conceived more as a sally-base for further attacks. Even in the absence of further Roman expansion, the value of the province depended on Roman overall strength: while Rome was strong, the Dacian salient was an instrument of military and diplomatic control over the Danubian lands; when Rome was weak, as during the Crisis of the Third Century, the province became a liability and was eventually abandoned. Trajan resettled Dacia with Romans and annexed it as a province of the Roman Empire. Aside from their enormous booty (over half a million slaves, according to John Lydus), Trajan's Dacian campaigns benefited the Empire's finances through the acquisition of Dacia's gold mines, managed by an imperial procurator of equestrian rank (\"procurator aurariarum\"). On the other hand, commercial agricultural exploitation on the villa model, based on the centralized management of a huge landed estate by a single owner (\"fundus\") was poorly developed. Therefore, use of slave labor in the province itself seems to have been relatively undeveloped, and epigraphic evidence points to work in the gold mines being conducted by means of labor contracts (\"locatio conductio rei\") and seasonal wage-earning. The victory was commemorated by the construction both of the 102 cenotaph generally known as the Tropaeum Traiani in Moesia, as well of the much later (113) Trajan's Column in Rome, the latter depicting in stone carved bas-reliefs the Dacian Wars' most important moments.\nNabataean annexation.\nIn 106, Rabbel II Soter, one of Rome's client kings, died. This event might have prompted the annexation of the Nabataean Kingdom, but the manner and the formal reasons for the annexation are unclear. Some epigraphic evidence suggests a military operation, with forces from Syria and Egypt. What is known is that by 107, Roman legions were stationed in the area around Petra and Bosra, as is shown by a papyrus found in Egypt. The furthest south the Romans occupied (or, better, garrisoned, adopting a policy of having garrisons at key points in the desert) was Hegra, over south-west of Petra. The empire gained what became the province of Arabia Petraea (modern southern Jordan and northwest Saudi Arabia). At this time, a Roman road (\"Via Traiana Nova\") was built from Aila (now Aqaba) in Limes Arabicus to Bosrah. As Nabataea was the last client kingdom in Asia west of the Euphrates, the annexation meant that the entire Roman East had been provincialized, completing a trend towards direct rule that had begun under the Flavians.\nParthian campaign.\nIn 113, Trajan embarked on his last campaign, provoked by Parthia's decision to put an unacceptable king on the throne of Armenia, a kingdom over which the two great empires had shared hegemony since the time of Nero some fifty years earlier. Trajan, already in Syria early in 113, consistently refused to accept diplomatic approaches from the Parthians intended to settle the Armenian imbroglio peacefully. As the surviving literary accounts of Trajan's Parthian War are fragmentary and scattered, it is difficult to assign them a proper context, something that has led to a long-running controversy about its precise happenings and ultimate aims.\nCause of the war.\nModern historians advance the possibility that Trajan's decision to wage war against Parthia had economic motives: after Trajan's annexation of Arabia, he built a new road, Via Traiana Nova, that went from Bostra to Aila on the Red Sea. That meant that Charax on the Persian Gulf was the sole remaining western terminus of the Indian trade route outside direct Roman control, and such control was important in order to lower import prices and to limit the supposed drain of precious metals created by the deficit in Roman trade with the Far East. That Charax traded with the Roman Empire, there can be no doubt, as its actual connections with merchants from Palmyra during the period are well documented in a contemporary Palmyrene epigraph, which tells of various Palmyrene citizens honoured for holding office in Charax. Also, Charax's rulers' domains at the time possibly included the Bahrain islands, which offered the possibility of extending Roman hegemony into the Persian Gulf itself. (A Palmyrene citizen held office as satrap over the islands shortly after Trajan's death, though the appointment was made by a Parthian king of Charax.) The rationale behind Trajan's campaign, in this case, was one of breaking down a system of Far Eastern trade through small Semitic (\"Arab\") cities under Parthia's control and to put it under Roman control instead.\nIn his Dacian conquests, Trajan had already resorted to Syrian auxiliary units, whose veterans, along with Syrian traders, had an important role in the subsequent colonization of Dacia. He had recruited Palmyrene units into his army, including a camel unit, therefore apparently procuring Palmyrene support to his ultimate goal of annexing Charax. It has even been ventured that, when earlier in his campaign Trajan annexed Armenia, he was bound to annex the whole of Mesopotamia lest the Parthians interrupt the flux of trade from the Persian Gulf and/or foment trouble at the Roman frontier on the Danube. Other historians reject these motives, as the supposed Parthian \"control\" over the maritime Far Eastern trade route was, at best, conjectural and based on a selective reading of Chinese sources\u00a0\u2013\u00a0trade by land through Parthia seems to have been unhampered by Parthian authorities and left solely to the devices of private enterprise. Commercial activity in second century Mesopotamia seems to have been a general phenomenon, shared by many peoples within and without the Roman Empire, with no sign of a concerted Imperial policy towards it.\nAs in the case of the \"alimenta\", scholars like Moses Finley and Paul Veyne have considered the idea that a foreign trade policy underlay Trajan's war to be anachronistic; according to these scholars, the concern of Roman leaders with the trade in far eastern luxuries\u00a0\u2013\u00a0besides collecting toll taxes and customs\u00a0\u2013\u00a0was moral in nature, because contemporary Roman mores frowned upon the \"softness\" of luxuries. In the absence of conclusive evidence, trade between Rome and India might have been far more balanced, in terms of quantities of precious metals exchanged: one of our sources for the notion of the Roman gold drain\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Pliny's the Younger's uncle Pliny the Elder\u00a0\u2013\u00a0had earlier described the Gangetic Plains as one of the gold sources for the Roman Empire. Accordingly \u2013 in a controversial book on the Roman economy \u2013 Finley considers Trajan's \"badly miscalculated and expensive assault on Parthia\" to be an example of the many Roman \"commercial wars\" that had in common the fact of existing only in the books of modern historians.\nThe alternative view is to see the campaign as triggered by the lure of territorial annexation and prestige, the sole motive ascribed by Cassius Dio. As far as territorial conquest involved tax-collecting, especially of the 25% tax levied on all goods entering the Roman Empire, the \"tetarte\", one can say that Trajan's Parthian War had an \"economic\" motive. Also, there was the propaganda value of an Eastern conquest that would emulate, in Roman fashion, those of Alexander the Great. The fact that emissaries from the Kushan Empire might have attended to the commemorative ceremonies for the Dacian War may have kindled in some Greco-Roman intellectuals like Plutarch\u00a0\u2013\u00a0who wrote about only 70,000 Roman soldiers being necessary to a conquest of India \u00a0\u2013\u00a0as well as in Trajan's closer associates, speculative dreams about the booty to be obtained by reproducing Macedonian Eastern conquests. There could also be Trajan's idea to use an ambitious blueprint of conquests as a way to emphasize quasi-divine status, such as with his cultivated association, in coins and monuments, to Hercules.\nAlso, it is possible that the attachment of Trajan to an expansionist policy was supported by a powerful circle of conservative senators from Hispania committed to a policy of imperial expansion, first among them being the all-powerful Licinius Sura. Alternatively, one can explain the campaign by the fact that, for the Romans, their empire was in principle unlimited, and that Trajan only took advantage of an opportunity to make idea and reality coincide. Finally, there are other modern historians who think that Trajan's original aims were purely military and strategic: to assure a more defensible Eastern frontier for the Roman Empire, crossing Northern Mesopotamia along the course of the Khabur River in order to offer cover to a Roman Armenia. This interpretation is backed by the fact that all subsequent Roman wars against Parthia would aim at establishing a Roman presence deep into Parthia itself. It is possible that during the onset of Trajan's military experience, as a young tribune, he had witnessed engagement with the Parthians; so any strategic vision was grounded in a tactical awareness of what was needed to tackle Parthia.\nCourse of the war.\nThe campaign was carefully planned in advance: ten legions were concentrated in the Eastern theatre; since 111, the correspondence of Pliny the Younger witnesses to the fact that provincial authorities in Bithynia had to organize supplies for passing troops, and local city councils and their individual members had to shoulder part of the increased expenses by supplying troops themselves. The intended campaign, therefore, was immensely costly from its very beginning. Trajan marched first on Armenia, deposed the Parthian-appointed king, Parthamasiris (who was afterwards murdered while kept in the custody of Roman troops in an unclear incident, later described by Fronto as a breach of Roman good faith), and annexed it to the Roman Empire as a province, receiving in passing the acknowledgement of Roman hegemony by various tribes in the Caucasus and on the Eastern coast of the Black Sea\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a process that kept him busy until the end of 114. At the same time, a Roman column under the legate Lusius Quietus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0an outstanding cavalry general who had signalled himself during the Dacian Wars by commanding a unit from his native Mauretania\u00a0\u2013\u00a0crossed the Araxes river from Armenia into Media Atropatene and the land of the Mardians (present-day Ghilan). It is possible that Quietus' campaign had as its goal the extending of the newer, more defensible Roman border eastwards towards the Caspian Sea and northwards to the foothills of the Caucasus. This newer, more \"rational\" frontier, depended, however, on an increased, permanent Roman presence east of the Euphrates.\nThe chronology of subsequent events is uncertain, but it is generally believed that early in 115 Trajan launched a Mesopotamian campaign, marching down towards the Taurus mountains in order to consolidate territory between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. He placed permanent garrisons along the way to secure the territory. While Trajan moved from west to east, Lusius Quietus moved with his army from the Caspian Sea towards the west, both armies performing a successful pincer movement, whose apparent result was to establish a Roman presence into the Parthian Empire proper, with Trajan taking the northern Mesopotamian cities of Nisibis and Batnae and organizing a province of Mesopotamia, including the Kingdom of Osrhoene\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where King Abgar VII submitted to Trajan publicly\u00a0\u2013\u00a0as a Roman protectorate. This process seems to have been completed at the beginning of 116, when coins were issued announcing that Armenia and Mesopotamia had been put under the authority of the Roman people. The area between the Khabur River and the mountains around Singara seems to have been considered as the new frontier, and as such received a road surrounded by fortresses.\nAfter wintering in Antioch during 115/116 \u00a0\u2013\u00a0and, according to literary sources, barely escaping from a violent earthquake that claimed the life of one of the consuls, Marcus Pedo Virgilianus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Trajan again took to the field in 116, with a view to the conquest of the whole of Mesopotamia, an overambitious goal that eventually backfired on the results of his entire campaign. According to some modern historians, the aim of the campaign of 116 was to achieve a \"pre-emptive demonstration\" aiming not toward the conquest of Parthia, but for tighter Roman control over the Eastern trade route. However, the overall scarcity of manpower for the Roman military establishment meant that the campaign was doomed from the start. It is noteworthy that no new legions were raised by Trajan before the Parthian campaign, maybe because the sources of new citizen recruits were already over-exploited.\nAs far as the sources allow a description of this campaign, it seems that one Roman division crossed the Tigris into Adiabene, sweeping south and capturing Adenystrae; a second followed the river south, capturing Babylon; Trajan himself sailed down the Euphrates from Dura-Europos\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where a triumphal arch was erected in his honour\u00a0\u2013\u00a0through Ozogardana, where he erected a \"tribunal\" still to be seen at the time of Julian the Apostate's campaigns in the same area. Having come to the narrow strip of land between the Euphrates and the Tigris, he then dragged his fleet overland into the Tigris, capturing Seleucia and finally the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon. He continued southward to the Persian Gulf, when, after escaping with his fleet a tidal bore on the Tigris, he received the submission of Athambelus, the ruler of Charax. He declared Babylon a new province of the Empire and had his statue erected on the shore of the Persian Gulf, after which he sent the Senate a laurelled letter declaring the war to be at a close and bemoaning that he was too old to go on any further and repeat the conquests of Alexander the Great. Since Charax was a \"de facto\" independent kingdom whose connections to Palmyra were described above, Trajan's bid for the Persian Gulf may have coincided with Palmyrene interests in the region. Another hypothesis is that the rulers of Charax had expansionist designs on Parthian Babylon, giving them a rationale for alliance with Trajan. The Parthian city of Susa was apparently also occupied by the Romans.\nAccording to late literary sources (not backed by numismatic or inscriptional evidence) a province of Assyria was also proclaimed, apparently covering the territory of Adiabene. Some measures seem to have been considered regarding the fiscal administration of Indian trade\u00a0\u2013\u00a0or simply about the payment of customs (\"portoria\") on goods traded on the Euphrates and Tigris. It is possible that it was this \"streamlining\" of the administration of the newly conquered lands according to the standard pattern of Roman provincial administration in tax collecting, requisitions and the handling of local potentates' prerogatives, that triggered later resistance against Trajan. According to some modern historians, Trajan might have busied himself during his stay on the Persian Gulf with ordering raids on the Parthian coasts, as well as probing into extending Roman suzerainty over the mountaineer tribes holding the passes across the Zagros Mountains into the Iranian plateau eastward, as well as establishing some sort of direct contact between Rome and the Kushan Empire. No attempt was made to expand into the Iranian Plateau itself, where the Roman army, with its relative weakness in cavalry, would have been at a disadvantage.\nTrajan left the Persian Gulf for Babylon\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where he intended to offer sacrifice to Alexander in the house where he had died in 323BC\u00a0\u2013\u00a0 But a revolt led by Sanatruces, a nephew of the Parthian king Osroes I who had retained a cavalry force, possibly strengthened by the addition of Saka archers, imperilled Roman positions in Mesopotamia and Armenia. Trajan sought to deal with this by forsaking direct Roman rule in Parthia proper, at least partially. Trajan sent two armies towards Northern Mesopotamia: the first, under Lusius Quietus, recovered Nisibis and Edessa from the rebels, probably having King Abgarus deposed and killed in the process, with Quietus probably earning the right to receive the honors of a senator of praetorian rank (\"adlectus inter praetorios\"). The second army, however, under Appius Maximus Santra (probably a governor of Macedonia) was defeated and Santra killed.\nLater in 116, Trajan, with the assistance of Quietus and two other legates, Marcus Erucius Clarus and Tiberius Julius Alexander Julianus, defeated a Parthian army in a battle where Sanatruces was killed (possibly with the assistance of Osroes' son and Sanatruces' cousin, Parthamaspates, whom Trajan wooed successfully). After re-taking and burning Seleucia, Trajan then formally deposed Osroes, putting Parthamaspates on the throne as client ruler. This event was commemorated in a coin as the reduction of Parthia to client kingdom status: , \"a king is given to the Parthians\". That done, Trajan retreated north in order to retain what he could of the new provinces of Armenia\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where he had already accepted an armistice in exchange for surrendering part of the territory to Sanatruces' son Vologeses\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and Mesopotamia. It was at this point that Trajan's health started to fail him. The fortress city of Hatra, on the Tigris in his rear, continued to hold out against repeated Roman assaults. He was personally present at the siege, and it is possible that he suffered a heat stroke while in the blazing heat.\nDiaspora revolt.\nAbout this same time (AD 116\u2013117), Jews in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire\u2014Egypt, Cyprus, and Cyrene, which was likely the original trouble hotspot\u2014rebelled in what appears to have been an ethnic and religious uprising against the local populations, later known as the Diaspora Revolt. Additionally, Jewish communities in Northern Mesopotamia revolted, likely as part of a broader resistance against Roman occupation. Trajan had to withdraw his army to suppress these revolts, a move he considered a temporary setback. He never returned to command, delegating Eastern operations to Lusius Quietus, who was appointed governor of Judaea in early 117 and likely dealt with Jewish unrest there. Quietus discharged his commissions successfully, leading rabbinic sources to name the conflict in Judaea the \"Kitos War,\" with \"Kitus\" being a corruption of \"Quietus\". Whether or not the Diaspora revolt included Judea proper, or only the Jewish Eastern diaspora, remains doubtful in the absence of clear epigraphic and archaeological evidence. What is certain is that there was an increased Roman military presence in Judea at the time.\nQuietus was promised a consulate in the following year (118) for his victories, but he was killed before this could occur, during the bloody purge that opened Hadrian's reign, in which Quietus and three other former consuls were sentenced to death after being tried on a vague charge of conspiracy by the (secret) court of the Praetorian Prefect Attianus. It has been thought that Quietus and his colleagues were executed on Hadrian's direct orders, for fear of their popular standing with the army and their close connections to Trajan. In contrast, the next prominent Roman figure in charge of the repression of the Jewish revolt, the equestrian Quintus Marcius Turbo, who had dealt with the rebel leader from Cyrene, Loukuas, retained Hadrian's trust, eventually becoming his Praetorian Prefect. As all four consulars were senators of the highest standing and as such generally regarded as able to take imperial power (\"capaces imperii\"), Hadrian seems to have decided to forestall these prospective rivals.\nDeath and succession.\nEarly in 117, Trajan grew ill and set sail for Italy. His health declined throughout the spring and summer of 117, possibly acknowledged to the public by the display of a bronze portrait-bust at the public baths of Ancyra, showing an aged and emaciated man, though the identification with Trajan is disputed. He reached Selinus, where he suddenly died, shortly before 11 August. Trajan in person could have lawfully nominated Hadrian as his successor, but Dio claims that Trajan's wife, Pompeia Plotina, assured Hadrian's succession by keeping Trajan's death a secret, long enough for her to produce and sign a document attesting to Hadrian's adoption as son and successor. Dio, who tells this narrative, offers his father\u00a0\u2013\u00a0the governor of Cilicia Apronianus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0as a source, so his narrative may be based on contemporary rumour. It may also reflect male Roman displeasure that an empress\u00a0\u2013\u00a0let alone any woman\u00a0\u2013\u00a0 could presume to meddle in Rome's political affairs.\nHadrian held an ambiguous position during Trajan's reign. After commanding Legio I Minervia during the Dacian Wars, he had been relieved from front-line duties at the decisive stage of the Second Dacian War, being sent to govern the newly created province of Pannonia Inferior. He had pursued a senatorial career without particular distinction and had not been officially adopted by Trajan although he received from him decorations and other marks of distinction that made him hope for the succession. He received no post after his 108 consulate and no further honours other than being made Archon eponymos for Athens in 111/112. He probably did not take part in the Parthian War. Literary sources relate that Trajan had considered others, such as the jurist Lucius Neratius Priscus, as heir. Hadrian, who was eventually entrusted with the governorship of Syria at the time of Trajan's death, was Trajan's cousin and was married to Trajan's grandniece, which all made him as good as heir designate. Hadrian seems to have been well connected to the powerful and influential coterie of Spanish senators at Trajan's court, through his ties to Plotina and the Prefect Attianus. His refusal to sustain Trajan's senatorial and expansionist policy during his own reign may account for the \"crass hostility\" shown him by literary sources.\nHadrian's first major act as emperor was to abandon Mesopotamia as too costly and distant to defend, and to restore Armenia and Osrhoene to Parthian hegemony, under Rome's suzerainty. The Parthian campaign had been an enormous setback to Trajan's policy, proof that Rome had overstretched its capacity to sustain an ambitious program of conquest. According to the \"Historia Augusta\", Hadrian claimed to follow the precedent set by Cato the Elder towards the Macedonians, who \"were to be set free because they could not be protected\" \u2013 something Birley sees as an unconvincing precedent. Other territories conquered by Trajan were retained. According to a well-established historical tradition, Trajan's ashes were placed within the small cella that still survives at the base of Trajan's column. In some modern scholarship, his ashes were more likely interred near his column, in a mausoleum, temple or tomb built for his cult as a \"divus\" of the Roman state.\nLegacy.\nAncient sources on Trajan's personality and accomplishments are unanimously positive. Pliny the Younger, for example, celebrates Trajan in his panegyric as a wise and just emperor and a moral man. Cassius Dio added that he always remained dignified and fair. A third-century emperor, Decius, even received from the Senate the name Trajan as a decoration. In the Later Roman Empire, following the setbacks of the third century, Trajan, together with Augustus, became the paragon of the most positive traits of the Imperial order. Emperors in the 4th century were honoured by the Senate with the acclamation \"Felicior Augusto, Melior Traiano\" (\"May you be more fortunate than Augustus and better than Trajan\"). The fourth-century emperor Constantine I is credited with calling him a \"plant upon every wall\" for the many buildings bearing inscriptions with his name.\nIconography.\nAll Roman emperors until Trajan, except Nero who occasionally wore sideburns, were depicted clean-shaven, according to the fashion introduced among the Romans by Scipio Africanus (236\u00a0\u2013\u00a0183 BC). This Imperial fashion was changed by Trajan's successor Hadrian who made beards fashionable for emperors.\nAfter Rome.\nDuring the Middle Ages, some theologians such as Thomas Aquinas discussed Trajan as an example of a virtuous pagan. In the \"Divine Comedy\", Dante, following this legend, sees the spirit of Trajan in the Heaven of Jupiter with other historical and mythological persons noted for their justice. Also, a mural of Trajan stopping to provide justice for a poor widow is present in the first terrace of Purgatory as a lesson to those who are purged for being proud.\n<poem>\nI noticed that the inner bank of the curve...\nWas of white marble, and so decorated\nWith carvings that not only Polycletus\nBut nature herself would there be put to shame...\nThere was recorded the high glory\nOf that ruler of Rome whose worth\nMoved Gregory to his great victory;\nI mean by this the Emperor Trajan;\nAnd at his bridle a poor widow\nWhose attitude bespoke tears and grief...\nThe wretched woman, in the midst of all this,\nSeemed to be saying: 'Lord, avenge my son,\nWho is dead, so that my heart is broken..'\nSo he said: 'Now be comforted, for I must\nCarry out my duty before I go on:\nJustice requires it and pity holds me back.'\n\"Dante, The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio X, ll. 32 f. and 73 f.\"\n</poem>\nIn the Renaissance, Machiavelli, speaking on the advantages of adoptive succession over heredity, mentioned the five successive good emperors \"from Nerva to Marcus\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a trope out of which the 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon popularized the notion of the Five Good Emperors, of whom Trajan was the second.\nIn the 18th century, King Charles III of Spain commissioned Anton Raphael Mengs to paint \"The Triumph of Trajan\" on the ceiling of the banquet hall of the Royal Palace of Madrid\u00a0\u2013\u00a0considered among the best works of this artist.\nIt was only during the Enlightenment that this legacy began to be contested, when Edward Gibbon expressed doubts about the militarized character of Trajan's reign in contrast to the \"moderate\" practices of his immediate successors. Mommsen adopted a divided stance towards Trajan, at some point of his posthumously published lectures even speaking about his \"vainglory\" (\"Scheinglorie\"). Mommsen also speaks of Trajan's \"insatiable, unlimited lust for conquest\". Although Mommsen had no liking for Trajan's successor Hadrian\u00a0\u2013\u00a0\"a repellent manner, and a venomous, envious and malicious nature\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0he admitted that Hadrian, in renouncing Trajan's conquests, was \"doing what the situation clearly required\".\nIt was exactly this military character of Trajan's reign that attracted his early twentieth-century biographer, the Italian historian Roberto Paribeni, who in his 1927 two-volume biography \"Optimus Princeps\" described Trajan's reign as the acme of the Roman principate, which he saw as Italy's patrimony. Following in Paribeni's footsteps, the German historian Alfred Heuss saw in Trajan \"the accomplished human embodiment of the imperial title\" (\"die ideale Verk\u00f6rperung des humanen Kaiserbegriffs\"). Trajan's first English-language biography by Julian Bennett is also a positive one in that it assumes that Trajan was an active policy-maker concerned with the management of the empire as a whole\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something his reviewer Lendon considers an anachronistic outlook that sees in the Roman emperor a kind of modern administrator.\nDuring the 1980s, the Romanian historian Eugen Cizek took a more nuanced view as he described the changes in the \"personal\" ideology of Trajan's reign, stressing the fact that it became ever more autocratic and militarized, especially after 112 and towards the Parthian War (as \"only an universal monarch, a \"kosmocrator\", could dictate his law to the East\"). The biography by the German historian Karl Strobel stresses the continuity between Domitian's and Trajan's reigns, saying that Trajan's rule followed the same autocratic and sacred character as Domitian's, culminating in a failed Parthian adventure intended as the crown of his personal achievement. It is in modern French historiography that Trajan's reputation becomes most markedly deflated: Paul Petit writes about Trajan's portraits as a \"lowbrow boor with a taste for booze and boys\". For Paul Veyne, what is to be retained from Trajan's \"stylish\" qualities was that he was the last Roman emperor to think of the empire as a purely Italian and Rome-centred hegemony of conquest. In contrast, his successor Hadrian would stress the notion of the empire as ecumenical and of the emperor as universal benefactor and not \"kosmocrator\".\nIn Romanian culture.\nIn Romania, Trajan (Romanian: \"Traian\") is regarded as one of the founders of the Romanian nation and a historical figure of great importance to the Romanian people and culture. This is due to his orchestration of the Dacian Wars that led to the foundation of the Daco-Roman culture and the Latin-based Romanian language. The creation of Roman Dacia is therefore seen in the country as the ethnogenesis of the Romanian nation.\nIn Jewish legend.\nIn the Jewish homiletical works, such as \"Esther Rabbah\", Trajan is described with the epitaph \"may his bones be crushed\" (). The same epitaph is also used for Hadrian.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1313668": "Military history of France\nAspect of French history\nThe military history of France encompasses an immense panorama of conflicts and struggles extending for more than 2,000 years across areas including modern France, Europe, and a variety of regions throughout the world.\nAccording to historian Niall Ferguson, France is the most successful military power in history. It participated in 50 of the 125 major European wars that have been fought since 1495; more than any other European state. The first major recorded wars in the territory of modern-day France itself revolved around the Gallo-Roman conflict that predominated from 60 BC to 50 BC. The Romans eventually emerged victorious through the campaigns of Julius Caesar. After the decline of the Roman Empire, a Germanic tribe known as the Franks took control of Gaul by defeating competing tribes. The \"land of Francia\", from which France gets its name, had high points of expansion under kings Clovis I and Charlemagne, who established the nucleus of the future French state. In the Middle Ages, rivalries with England prompted major conflicts such as the Norman Conquest and the Hundred Years' War. With an increasingly centralized monarchy, the first standing army since Roman times, and the use of artillery, France expelled the English from its territory and came out of the Middle Ages as the most powerful nation in Europe, only to lose that status to the Holy Roman Empire and Spain following defeat in the Italian Wars. The Wars of Religion crippled France in the late 16th century, but a major victory over Spain in the Thirty Years' War made France the most powerful nation on the continent once more. In parallel, France developed its first colonial empire in Asia, Africa, and in the Americas. Under Louis XIV France achieved military supremacy over its rivals, but escalating conflicts against increasingly powerful enemy coalitions checked French ambitions and left the kingdom bankrupt at the opening of the 18th century.\nResurgent French armies secured victories in dynastic conflicts against the Spanish, Polish, and Austrian crowns. At the same time, France was fending off attacks on its colonies. As the 18th century advanced, global competition with Great Britain led to the Seven Years' War, where France lost its North American holdings. Consolation came in the form of dominance in Europe and the American Revolutionary War, where extensive French aid in the form of money and arms, and the direct participation of its army and navy led to the independence of the United States. Internal political upheaval eventually led to 23 years of nearly continuous conflict in the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. France reached the zenith of its power during this period, dominating the European continent in an unprecedented fashion under Napoleon Bonaparte. However, France was ultimately defeated in 1815, and its borders were restored to the same ones it controlled before the Revolution. The rest of the 19th century witnessed the growth of the Second French colonial empire as well as French interventions in Belgium, Spain, and Mexico. Other major wars were fought against Russia in the Crimea, Austria in Italy, and Prussia within France itself.\nFollowing defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, Franco-German rivalry erupted again in the First World War. France and its allies were victorious this time. Social, political, and economic upheaval in the wake of the conflict led to the Second World War, in which France and the Allies were defeated in the Battle of France and almost half of the country was placed under German military occupation for more than four years. The Allies, including the Free French Forces led by a government in exile, eventually emerged victorious over the Axis Powers. As a result, France secured an occupation zone in Germany and a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. The imperative of avoiding a third Franco-German conflict on the scale of the first two world wars paved the way for European integration starting in the 1950s. France became a nuclear power and, since the late 20th century, has cooperated closely with NATO, the United States and European partners.\nDominant themes.\nHistorian Niall Ferguson argues that France is the most belligerent military power in history. It participated in 50 of the 125 major European wars fought since 1495; more than any other European state. It is followed by Austria which fought in 47 of them; Spain in 44; and England in 43. Out of the 169 most important world battles fought since 387 BC, France has won 109, lost 49 and drawn 10.\nIn the last few centuries, French strategic thinking has sometimes been driven by the need to attain or preserve the so-called \"natural frontiers,\" which are the Pyrenees to the southwest, the Alps to the southeast, and the Rhine River to the east. Starting with Clovis, 1,500 years of warfare and diplomacy has witnessed the accomplishment of most of these objectives. Warfare with other European powers was not always determined by these considerations, and often rulers of France extended their continental authority far beyond these barriers, most notably under Charlemagne, Louis XIV, and Napoleon. These periods of incessant conflict were characterized by their own standards and conventions, but all required strong central leadership in order to permit the extension of French rule. Important military rivalries in human history have come about as a result of conflict between French peoples and other European powers. Anglo-French rivalry, for prestige in Europe and around the world, continued for centuries, while the more recent Franco-German rivalry required two world wars to stabilize.\nStarting in the early 16th century, much of France's military efforts were dedicated to securing its overseas possessions and putting down dissent among both French colonists and native populations. French troops were spread all across its empire, primarily to deal with the local population. The French colonial empire ultimately disintegrated after the failed attempt to subdue Algerian nationalists in the late 1950s, a failure that led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic. Since World War II, France's efforts have been directed at maintaining its status as a great power and its influence on the UN Security Council. France has also been instrumental in attempting to unite the armed forces of Europe for their own defense in order to both balance the power of Russia and to lessen European military dependence on the United States. For example, France withdrew from NATO in 1966 over complaints that its role in the organization was being subordinated to the demands of the United States. French objectives in this era have undergone major shifts. Unencumbered by continental wars or intricate alliances, France now deploys its military forces as part of international peacekeeping operations, security enforcers in former colonies, or maintains them combat ready and mobilized to respond to threats from rogue states. France is a nuclear power with the largest nuclear arsenal in Europe, and its nuclear capabilities, just like its conventional forces, have been restructured to rapidly deal with emerging threats.\nEarly period.\nAround 390 BC, the Gallic chieftain Brennus made his own way through the Alps, defeated the Romans in the Battle of the Allia and sacked Rome for several months. The Gallic invasion left Rome weakened and encouraged several subdued Italian tribes to rebel. One by one, over the course of the next 50 years, these tribes were defeated and brought back under Roman dominion. Meanwhile, the Gauls would continue to harass the region until 345 BC, when they entered into a formal treaty with Rome. But Romans and Gauls would maintain an adversarial relationship for the next several centuries and the Gauls would remain a threat in Italia.\nAround 125 BC, the south of France is conquered by the Romans who called this region \"Provincia Romana\" (\"Roman Province\"), which evolved into the name Provence in French. Brennus' sack of Rome was still remembered by Romans, when Julius Caesar conquered the remainder of Gaul. Initially Caesar met with little Gallic resistance: the 60 or so tribes that made up Gaul were unable to unite and defeat the Roman army, something Caesar exploited by pitting one tribe against another. In 58 BC, Caesar defeated the Germanic tribe of the Suebi, which was led by Ariovistus. The following year he conquered the Belgian Gauls after claiming that they were conspiring against Rome. The string of victories continued in a naval triumph against the Veneti in 56 BC. In 53 BC, a united Gallic resistance movement under Vercingetorix emerged for the first time. Caesar laid siege to the fortified city of Avaricum (Bourges) and broke through the defenses after 25 days, with only 800 out of the 40,000 inhabitants managing to escape. He then besieged Gergovia, Vercingetorix's home town, and suffered one of the worst defeats in his career when he had to retreat to suppress a revolt in another part of Gaul. After returning, Caesar surrounded Vercingetorix at Alesia in 52 BC. The townspeople were starved into submission and Caesar's unique defensive earthworks, protruding towards the city and away from it in order to stop a massive Gallic relief force, eventually forced Vercingetorix to surrender. The Gallic Wars were over.\nGallo-Roman culture settled over the region in the next few centuries, but as Roman power weakened in the 4th and 5th centuries AD, a Germanic tribe, the Franks, overran large areas that today form modern France. Under King Clovis I in the late 5th and early 6th centuries, Frankish dominions quadrupled as they managed to defeat successive opponents for control of Gaul. In 486 the Frankish armies under Clovis triumphed over Syagrius, the last Roman official in Northern Gaul, at the Battle of Soissons. In 491 Clovis defeated Thuringians east of his territories. In 496 he overcame the Alamanni at the Battle of Tolbiac. In 507 he scored the most impressive victory in his career, prevailing at the Battle of Vouill\u00e9 against the Visigoths, who were led by Alaric II, the conqueror of Spain.\nFollowing Clovis, territorial divisions in the Frankish domain sparked intense rivalry between the western part of the kingdom, Neustria, and the eastern part, Austrasia. The two were sometimes united under one king, but from the 6th to the 8th centuries they often warred against each other. Early in the 8th century, the Franks were preoccupied with Islamic invasions across the Pyrenees and up the Rhone Valley. Two key battles during this period were the Battle of Toulouse and the Battle of Tours, both won by the Franks, and both instrumental in slowing Islamic incursions.\nUnder Charlemagne the Franks reached the height of their power. After campaigns against Lombards, Avars, Saxons, and Basques, the resulting Carolingian Empire stretched from the Pyrenees to Central Germany, from the North Sea to the Adriatic. In 800 the Pope made Charlemagne Emperor of the West in return for protection of the Church. The Carolingian Empire was a conscious effort to recreate a central administration modeled on that of the Roman Empire, but the motivations behind military expansion differed. Charlemagne hoped to provide his nobles an incentive to fight by encouraging looting on campaign. Plunder and spoils of war were stronger temptations than imperial expansion, and several regions were invaded over and over in order to bolster the coffers of Frankish nobility. Cavalry dominated the battlefields, and while the high costs associated with equipping horses and horse-riders helped limit their numbers, Carolingian armies maintained an average size of 20,000 during peacetime by recruiting infantry from imperial territories near theaters of operation, swelling to more with the levies called upon when at war. The Empire lasted from 800 to 843, when, following Frankish tradition, it was split between the sons of Louis the Pious by the Treaty of Verdun.\nMiddle Ages.\nMilitary history during this period paralleled the rise and eventual fall of the armored knight. Following Charlemagne and the breakdown of the Frankish Empire due to civil war and ceaseless Viking incursions, the larger and more logistically difficult to maintain infantry-based armies were abandoned in favor of cavalry supplemented by an improvement in armor: leather and steel, steel helmets, coats of mail, and even full armor added to the defensive capabilities of mounted forces. A smaller and more mobile elite cavalry force quickly grew to be the most important component of armies within French territories and most of the rest of Europe, with the shock charge they provided becoming the standard tactic on the battlefield when it was invented in the 11th century. At the same time, the development of agricultural techniques allowed the nations of Western Europe to radically increase food production, facilitating the growth of a particularly large aristocracy under Capetian France. The rise of castles, which began in France during the 10th century, was partly caused by the inability of centralized authorities to control these emerging dukes and aristocrats. While all vassals and knights were in theory bound to fight for their sovereign when called upon, this period was marked by many feudal local and regional lords using the knights and levied conscripts below them to fight amongst each other, often in defiance or even outright rebellion towards their sovereign. After campaigns designed for plundering, attacking and defending, castles became the dominant feature of medieval warfare.\nDuring the Crusades, there were in fact too many armored knights in France for the land to support. Some scholars believe that one of the driving forces behind the Crusades was an attempt by such landless knights to find land overseas, without causing the type of internecine warfare that would largely damage France's increasing military strength. However, such historiographical work on the Crusades is being challenged and rejected by a large part of the historical community. The ultimate motivation or motivations for any one individual are difficult to know, but regardless, nobles and knights from France generally formed very sizeable contingents of crusading expeditions. Crusaders were so predominantly French that the word \"crusader\" in the Arabic language is simply known as \"Al-Franj\" or \"The Franks\" and Old French became the lingua franca of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.\nIn the 11th century, French knights wore knee-length mail and carried long lances and swords. The Norman knights fielded at the Battle of Hastings were more than a match for English forces, and their victory simply cemented their power and influence. Between 1202 and 1343, France reduced England's holdings on the continent to a few small provinces through a series of conflicts including the Bouvines Campaign (1202-1214), the Saintonge War (1242) and the War of Saint-Sardos (1324).\nImprovements in armor over the centuries led to the establishment of plate armor by the 14th century, which was further developed more rigorously in the 15th century. However, by the late 14th century and the early 15th century, socioeconomic calamities such as the Black Death, and political crises such as the Jacquerie peasant revolt, and especially the Armagnac-Burgundian Civil War combined with numerous English invasions, all led to French military power declining during the first two phases of the Hundred Years' War. New weapons, including artillery, and tactics seemingly made the knight more of a sitting target than an effective battle force, but the often-praised longbowmen had little to do with the English success. Poor coordination or rough and soft, muddy terrain led to a number of bungled French assaults. The slaughter of knights at the Battle of Agincourt best exemplified this carnage. The French were able to field a much larger army of men-at-arms than their English counterparts, who had many longbowmen. Despite this, the French suffered about 6,000 casualties compared to a few hundred for the English because the narrow terrain prevented the tactical envelopments envisioned in recently discovered French plans for the battle. The French suffered a similar defeat at the Battle of the Golden Spurs against Flemish militia in 1302. When knights were allowed to effectively deploy and attack their opponents in the open field, however, they could be more useful, as at Cassel in 1328 or, even more decisively, at Bouvines in 1214, and Patay in 1429.\nPopular conceptions of the third and final phase of the Hundred Years War are often dominated by the exploits of Joan of Arc, but French resurgence was rooted in multiple factors. A major step was taken by King Charles VII, who created the \"Compagnies d'ordonnance\"\u2014cavalry units with 20 companies of 600 men each\u2014and launched the first standing army for a dynastic state in the Western world. The \"Compagnies\" gave the French a considerable edge in professionalism and discipline, being composed of paid full-time professional soldiers, at a time when the allegiances of the aristocratic knights would often shift to the opposing side. Strong French counterattacks turned the tide of the war. The important victories of Orl\u00e9ans, Patay, Formigny and Castillon allowed the French to win back all English continental territories, except Calais, which was later captured by the French.\nEquipment of medieval French sergeants was based on their property:\n\"Ancien R\u00e9gime\".\nThe French Renaissance and the beginning of the \"Ancien R\u00e9gime\", normally marked by the reign of Francis I, saw the nation become far more unified under the monarch. The power of the nobles was diminished as a national army was created. With England expelled from the continent and being consumed by the Wars of the Roses, France's main rival was the Holy Roman Empire. This threat to France became alarming in 1516 when Charles V became the king of Spain, and grew worse when Charles was also elected Holy Roman Emperor in 1519. France was all but surrounded as Germany, Spain, and the Low Countries were controlled by the Habsburgs. The lengthy Italian Wars that took place during this period eventually resulted in defeat for France and established Catholic Spain, which formed a branch of the Habsburg holdings, as the most powerful nation in Europe, with their dreaded \"tercios\" dominating the European battlefield well into the Thirty Years War. Later in the 16th century, France was weakened internally by the Wars of Religion. As nobles managed to raise their own private armies, these conflicts between Huguenots and Catholics all but demolished centralization and monarchical authority, precluding France from remaining a powerful force in European affairs. On the battlefield, the religious conflicts highlighted the influence of the gendarmes, heavy cavalry units that comprised the majority of cavalrymen attached to the main field armies. The pride of the royal cavalry, gendarme companies were often attached to the main royal army in hopes of inflicting a decisive defeat on Huguenot forces, although secondary detachments were also used for scouting and intercepting enemy troops.\nAfter the Wars of Religion, France could do little to challenge the dominance of the Holy Roman Empire, although the empire itself faced several problems. From the east it was facing intense warfare against Ottoman Empire, with which France formed an alliance. The vast Habsburg empire also proved impossible to manage effectively, and the crown was soon divided between the Spanish and Austrian holdings. In 1568, the Dutch declared independence, launching a war that would last for decades and would illustrate the weaknesses of Habsburg power. In the 17th century, the religious violence that had beset France a century earlier began to tear the empire apart. At first France sat on the sidelines, but under Cardinal Richelieu it saw an opportunity to advance its own interests at the expense of the Habsburgs. Despite France's staunch Catholicism, it intervened on the side of the Protestants. The Thirty Years' War was long and extremely bloody, but France and its allies came out victorious, under the leadership of the legendary commanders Cond\u00e9 and Turenne, beginning a long line of unparalleled French marshals who would help usher in a new era of military strategy. After their victory, France emerged as the sole dominant European power under the reign of Louis XIV. In parallel, French explorers, such as Jacques Cartier or Samuel de Champlain, claimed lands in the Americas for France, paving the way for the expansion of the French colonial empire.\nThe long reign of Louis XIV saw a series of conflicts: the War of Devolution, the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the Reunions, the Nine Years War, and the War of the Spanish Succession. Few of these wars were either clear victories or definite defeats, but French borders expanded steadily anyway. The west bank of the Rhine, much of the Spanish Netherlands, and a good deal of Luxembourg were annexed while the War of the Spanish Succession saw the grandson of Louis placed on the throne of Spain. The French strategic situation, however, changed decisively with the Glorious Revolution in England, which replaced a pro-French king with an enemy of Louis, the Dutch William of Orange. After a period of two centuries seeing only rare hostilities with France, England now became a consistent enemy again, and remained so until the 19th century. To stop French advances, England formed coalitions with several other European powers, most notably the Habsburgs. While these armies had difficulties against the French on land, the British Royal Navy dominated the seas, and France lost many of its colonial holdings. The British economy also became Europe's most powerful, and British money funded the campaigns of their continental allies.\nWars in this era consisted mostly of sieges and movements that were rarely decisive, prompting the French military engineer Vauban to design an intricate network of fortifications for the defense of France. The armies of Louis XIV were some of the most impressive in French history, their quality reflecting militaristic as well political developments. In the mid-17th century, royal power reasserted itself and the army became a tool through which the King could wield authority, replacing older systems of mercenary units and the private forces of recalcitrant nobles. Military administration also made gigantic progress as food supply, clothing, equipment, and armaments were provided in a regularity never before equaled. In fact, the French embedded this standardization by becoming the first army to give their soldiers national uniforms in the 1680s and 1690s.\nThe 18th century saw France remain the dominant power in Europe, but begin to falter largely because of internal problems. The country engaged in a long series of wars, such as the War of the Quadruple Alliance, the War of the Polish Succession, and the War of the Austrian Succession, but these conflicts gained France little. Meanwhile, Britain's power steadily increased, and a new force, Prussia, became a major threat. This change in the balance of power led to the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756, when France and the Habsburgs forged an alliance after centuries of animosity. This alliance proved less than effective in the Seven Years' War, but in the American Revolutionary War, the French helped inflict a major defeat on the British.\nRevolutionary France.\nThe French Revolution, true to its name, revolutionized nearly all aspects of French and European life. The powerful sociopolitical forces unleashed by a people seeking libert\u00e9, \u00e9galit\u00e9, and fraternit\u00e9 made certain that even warfare was not spared this upheaval. 18th-century armies\u2014with their rigid protocols, static operational strategy, unenthusiastic soldiers, and aristocratic officer classes\u2014underwent massive remodeling as the French monarchy and nobility gave way to liberal assemblies obsessed with external threats. In 1790 the officer corps was opened to all classes and a new generation of lower birth soldiers rose rapidly in the ranks during the following wars. The fundamental shifts in warfare that occurred during the period have prompted scholars to identify the era as the beginning of \"modern war\".\nIn 1791 the Legislative Assembly passed the \"Drill-Book\" legislation, implementing a series of infantry doctrines created by French theorists because of their defeat by the Prussians in the Seven Years' War. The new developments hoped to exploit the intrinsic bravery of the French soldier, made even more powerful by the explosive nationalist forces of the Revolution. The changes also placed a faith on the ordinary soldier that would be completely unacceptable in earlier times; French troops were expected to harass the enemy and remain loyal enough to not desert, a benefit other Ancien R\u00e9gime armies did not have.\nFollowing the declaration of war in 1792, an imposing array of enemies converging on French borders prompted the government in Paris to adopt radical measures. August 23, 1793, would become a historic day in military history; on that date the National Convention called a lev\u00e9e en masse, or mass conscription, for the first time in human history. By summer of the following year, conscription made some 500,000 men available for service and the French began to deal blows to their European enemies.\nArmies during the Revolution became noticeably larger than their Holy Roman counterparts, and combined with the new enthusiasm of the troops, the tactical and strategic opportunities became profound. By 1797 the French had defeated the First Coalition, occupied the Low Countries, the west bank of the Rhine, and Northern Italy, objectives which had defied the Valois and Bourbon dynasties for centuries. Unsatisfied with the results, many European powers formed a Second Coalition, but by 1801 this too had been decisively beaten. Another key aspect of French success was the changes wrought in the officer classes. Traditionally, European armies left major command positions to those who could be trusted, namely, the aristocracy. The hectic nature of the French Revolution, however, tore apart France's old army, meaning new men were required to become officers and commanders.\nBesides opening a flood of tactical and strategic opportunities, the Revolutionary Wars also laid the foundation for modern military theory. Later authors that wrote about \"nations in arms\" drew inspiration from the French Revolution, in which dire circumstances seemingly mobilized the entire French nation for war and incorporated nationalism into the fabric of military history. Although the reality of war in the France of 1795 would be different from that in the France of 1915, conceptions and mentalities of war evolved significantly. Clausewitz correctly analyzed the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras to give posterity a thorough and complete theory of war that emphasized struggles between nations occurring everywhere, from the battlefield to the legislative assemblies, and to the very way that people think. War now emerged as a vast panorama of physical and psychological forces heading for victory or defeat.\nNapoleonic France.\nThe Napoleonic Era saw French power and influence reach immense heights, even though the period of domination was relatively brief. In the century and a half preceding the Revolutionary Era, France had transformed demographic leverage to military and political weight; the French population was 19 million in 1700, but this had grown to over 29 million in 1800, much higher than that of most other European powers. These numbers permitted France to raise armies at a rapid pace should the need arise. Furthermore, military innovations carried out during the Revolution and the Consulate, evidenced by improvements in artillery and cavalry capabilities on top of better army and staff organization, gave the French army a decisive advantage in the initial stages of the Napoleonic Wars. Another ingredient of success was Napoleon Bonaparte himself\u2014intelligent, charismatic, and a military genius, Napoleon absorbed the latest military theories of the day and applied them in the battlefield with deadly effect.\nNapoleon inherited an army that was based on conscription and used huge masses of poorly trained troops, which could usually be readily replaced. By 1805 the French Army was a truly lethal force, with many in its ranks veterans of the French Revolutionary Wars. Two years of constant drilling for an invasion of England helped to build a well-trained, well-led army. The Imperial Guard served as an example for the rest of the army and consisted of Napoleon's best handpicked soldiers. Napoleon's huge losses suffered during the disastrous Russian campaign would have destroyed any professional commander of the day, but those losses were quickly replaced with new draftees. After Napoleon, nations planned for huge armies with professional leadership and a constant supply of new soldiers, which had huge human costs when improved weapons like the rifled musket replaced the inaccurate muskets of Napoleon's day during the American Civil War.\nThis large size came at a cost, as the logistics of feeding a huge army made them especially dependent on supplies. Most armies of the day relied on the supply-convoy system established during the Thirty Years' War by Gustavus Adolphus. This limited mobility, since the soldiers had to wait for the convoys, but it did keep possibly mutinous troops from deserting, and thus helped preserve an army's composure. However, Napoleon's armies were so large that feeding them using the old method proved ineffective, and consequently, French troops were allowed to live off the land. Infused with new concepts of nation and service. Napoleon often attempted to wage decisive, quick campaigns so that he could allow his men to live off the land. The French army did use a convoy system, but it was stocked with very few days worth of food; Napoleon's troops were expected to march quickly, effect a decision on the battlefield, then disperse to feed. For the Russian campaign, the French did store 24 days' worth of food before beginning active operations, but this campaign was the exception, not the rule.\nNapoleon's biggest influence in the military sphere was in the conduct of warfare. Weapons and technology remained largely static through the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras, but 18th-century operational strategy underwent massive restructuring. Sieges became infrequent to the point of near-irrelevance, a new emphasis arose towards the destruction of enemy armies as well as their outmaneuvering, and invasions of enemy territory occurred over broader fronts, thus introducing a plethora of strategic opportunities that made wars costlier and, just as importantly, more decisive. Defeat for a European power now meant much more than losing isolated enclaves. Near-Carthaginian treaties intertwined whole national efforts\u2014social, political, economic, and militaristic\u2014into gargantuan collisions that severely upset international conventions as understood at the time. Napoleon's initial success sowed the seeds for his downfall. Not used to such catastrophic defeats in the rigid power system of 18th-century Europe, many nations found existence under the French yoke difficult, sparking revolts, wars, and general instability that plagued the continent until 1815, when the forces of reaction finally triumphed at the Battle of Waterloo.\nFrench colonial empire.\nThe history of French colonial imperialism can be divided in two major eras: the first from the early 17th century to the middle of the 18th century, and the second from the early 19th century to the middle of the 20th century. In the first phase of expansion, France concentrated its efforts mainly in North America, the Caribbean and India, setting up commercial ventures that were backed by military force. Following defeat in the Seven Years' War, France lost its possessions in North America and India, but it did manage to keep the wealthy Caribbean islands of Saint-Domingue, Guadeloupe, and Martinique.\nThe second stage began with the conquest of Algeria in 1830, then with the establishment of French Indochina (covering modern Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) and a string of military victories in the Scramble for Africa, where it established control over regions covering much of West Africa, Central Africa and Maghreb. In 1914 France had an empire stretching over (6,000,000 mile\u00b2) of land and about 110 million people. Following victory in World War I, Togo and most of Cameroon were also added to the French possessions, and Syria and Lebanon became French mandates. For most of the period from 1870 to 1945, France was territorially the third largest nation on Earth, after Britain and Russia (later the Soviet Union), and had the most overseas possessions following Britain. Following the Second World War, France struggled to preserve French territories but wound up losing the First Indochina War (the precursor to the Vietnam War) and granting independence to Algeria after a long war. Today, France still maintains a number of overseas territories, but their collective size is barely a shadow of the old French colonial empire.\nFrom 1815.\nAfter the exile of Napoleon, the freshly restored Bourbon monarchy helped the absolute Bourbon king of Spain to recover his throne during the French intervention in Spain in 1823. To restore the prestige of the French monarchy, disputed by the Revolution and the First Empire, Charles X engaged in the military conquest of Algeria in 1830. This marked the beginning of a new expansion of the French colonial empire throughout the 19th century. In that century, France remained a major force in continental affairs. After the 1830 July Revolution, the liberal king Louis Philippe I victoriously supported the Spanish and Belgian liberals in 1831. The French later inflicted a defeat on the Habsburgs in the Franco-Austrian War of 1859, a victory which led to the unification of Italy in 1861, after having triumphed over Russia with other allies in the Crimean War 1854\u201356. Detrimentally, however, the French army emerged from these victories in an overconfident and complacent state. France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War led to the loss of Alsace-Lorraine and the creation of a united German Empire, both results representing major failures in long-term French foreign policy and sparking a vengeful, nationalist revanchism meant to earn back former territories. The Dreyfus Affair, however, mitigated these nationalist tendencies by prompting public skepticism about the competence of the military.\nFirst World War.\nIn World War I, the French, with their allies, managed to hold the Western front and to counterattack on the Eastern front and in the colonies until the final defeat of the Central Powers and their allies. After major conflicts such as the Battle of the Frontiers, the First Battle of the Marne, the Battle of Verdun, and the Second Battle of the Aisne\u2014the last resulting in tremendous loss of life and mutiny within the army\u2014the French proved to be enough of a cohesive fighting force to counterattack and defeat the Germans at the Second Battle of the Marne, the first in what would become a string of Allied victories that ended the war. The Treaty of Versailles eventually returned Alsace-Lorraine to France. The French military, civilian and material losses during the First World War were huge. With more than 1.3 million military fatalities and more than 4.6 million wounded, France suffered the second highest Allied losses, after Russia. As a result, France was adamant on the payment of reparations by Germany. The organised failure of the Weimar Republic to pay reparations led to the Occupation of the Ruhr by French and Belgian forces.\nSecond World War.\nA variety of factors\u2014ranging from smaller industrial base to low population growth and obsolete military doctrines\u2014crippled the French effort at the outset of World War II. The Germans won the Battle of France in 1940 despite the French often having better planes and tanks than their opponents whereas they were lacking modern weaponry for the infantry, the main problem although was the unexistant doctrine to synchronize the tanks alongside the plane, as tanks were not used as a primary force but rather as support for infantry, without planning an anti-air protection for them. their use as primary force were made in very rare occasion, when commanded by Charles de Gaulle for example, only a tank crew division commander by the time of 1940.\nPrior to the Battle of France, there were sentiments among many Allied soldiers, French and British, of pointless repetition; they viewed the war with dread since they had already beaten the Germans once, and images of that first major conflict were still poignant in military circles. The costs of World War I along with the now stale doctrine employed by the French Army (while the Germans were developing a doctrine which stressed initiative from junior commanders and combining different arms, the French sought to minimize casualties through a rigorously controlled type of battle and a top down command structure) forced the French to look for more defensive measures. The Maginot Line was the result of these deliberations: the French originally allocated three billion francs for the project, but by 1935 seven billion had been spent. The Maginot Line succeeded in holding off the German attack. However, while the French thought that the main weight of the German attack would arrive through central Belgium, and accordingly deployed their forces here, the assault actually came further south in the Ardennes forest. The Third Republic collapsed in the ensuing conflict.\nAfter the defeat, Vichy France cooperated with the Axis powers until 1944. Charles de Gaulle exhorted the French people to join the allied armies, while the French Vichy forces participated in direct action against Allied forces, inflicting casualties in some cases.\nThe Normandy landings in that year were the first step towards the eventual liberation of France. The Free French Forces, under de Gaulle, had participated widely throughout previous campaigns, and their large size made them notable at the end of the war. As early as the winter of 1943, the Free French already had nearly 260,000 soldiers, and these numbers only grew as the war progressed. The French Resistance had also a significant contribution, participating also actively in the liberation of France. At the end of the war, France was given one of four occupation zones in Germany, in Berlin and Austria.\nPost-1945 warfare.\nFollowing the 1939\u201345 war, decolonization spread through the former European empires.\nFollowing the First Indochina War, they withdrew from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The military also tried to keep control of Algeria during the Algerian War, when French forces attempted to defeat the Algerian rebels. Despite its military victory, France granted independence to Algerians. French Algeria was home to over a million of settlers (known as Pieds-Noirs), de Gaulle's decision to grant independence to Algeria, almost led to a civil war, supported by various Pied-Noir, Harki and nationalist factions, including the FAF and the OAS. Related to and during the Algerian war France participated in the Suez Crisis with Israel and the UK.\nBy 1960 France had lost its direct military influence over all of its former colonies in Africa and Indochina. Nonetheless, several colonies in the Pacific, Caribbean, Indian Oceans and South America remain French territory to this day and France kept a form of indirect political influence in Africa colloquially known as the \"Fran\u00e7afrique\".\nAs President of the French Republic, Charles de Gaulle oversaw the development of French atomic weapons and promoted a foreign policy independent of U.S. influence. He also withdrew France from the NATO military command in 1966\u2014although remaining a member of the western alliance. The effect of withdrawal was reduced by continued cooperation between the French military and NATO, though France did not formally rejoin the NATO military command until 2009.\nFrance intervened in various post-colonial conflicts, supporting former colonies (Western Sahara War, Shaba II, Chadian\u2013Libyan conflict, Djiboutian Civil War), NATO peacekeeping missions in war-torn countries (UNPROFOR, KFOR, UNAMIR) and many humanitarian missions.\nAs a nuclear power and having some of the best trained and best equipped forces in the world, the French military has now met some of its primary objectives which are the defense of national territory, the protection of French interests abroad, and the maintenance of global stability. Conflicts indicative of these objectives are the Gulf War in 1991\u2014when France sent 18,000 troops, 60 combat aircraft, 120 helicopters, and 40 tanks\u2014and Mission H\u00e9racl\u00e8s in the War in Afghanistan, along with recent interventions in Africa.\nAfrican interventions during the early 21st century include peacekeeping actions in C\u00f4te d'Ivoire, which involved brief direct fighting between the French and Ivorian armies in 2004; under the mandate of Nicolas Sarkozy, French forces returned to C\u00f4te d'Ivoire in 2011 to remove the Ivorian president. In the same year, France played a pivotal role in the 2011 military intervention in Libya against Muammar Gaddafi. The year after, France intervened in Mali during that country's civil war, as Islamist militants appeared to threaten the south after seizing control of the arid north. Changes in the government of France, including Socialist Fran\u00e7ois Hollande becoming president in 2012 after years of center-right governance, have done little to alter Paris' foreign policy in Africa.\nHollande also proposed French military involvement in the Syrian civil war in the wake of chemical attacks French intelligence reports linked to the forces of President Bashar al-Assad in mid-2013.\nFrance has encouraged military cooperation at an EU level, starting with the formation of the Franco-German Brigade in 1987 and Eurocorps in 1992, based in Strasbourg. In 2009 a battalion of German light infantry was moved to Alsace, the first time German troops had been stationed in France since the Nazi occupation of World War II. This process has not been immune to budget cuts\u2014in October 2013 France announced the closure of her last infantry regiment in Germany, thus marking the end of a major presence across the Rhine although both countries will maintain around 500 troops on each other's territory. As fellow members of the UN Security Council with many interests and problems in common, the UK and France have a long history of bilateral collaboration. This has occurred both at government level and in industrial programmes like the SEPECAT Jaguar whilst corporate mergers have seen Thales and MBDA emerge as major defence companies spanning both countries. The financial crisis of 2007\u201308 led to renewed pressure on military budgets and the \"austerity alliance\" enshrined in the Lancaster House Treaties of 2010. These promised close integration in both procurement and at an operational level, reaching into the most sensitive areas such as nuclear warheads.\nTopical subjects.\nFrench Air and Space Force.\nThe Arm\u00e9e de l'Air became one of the first professional air forces in the world when it was founded in 1909. The French took active interest in developing their air force and had the first fighter pilots of World War I. During the interwar years, however, particularly in the 1930s, the technical quality fell when compared with the Luftwaffe, which crushed both the French and British air forces during the Battle of France. In the post\u2013World War II era, the French made a concerted and successful effort to develop a homegrown aircraft industry. Dassault Aviation led the way forward with their unique and effective delta-wing designs, which formed the basis for the famous Mirage series of jet fighters. The Mirage repeatedly demonstrated its deadly abilities in the Six-Day War and the Gulf War, becoming one of the most popular and well-sold aircraft in the history of military aviation along the way. Currently, the French are awaiting the A400M military transport aircraft, which is still in developmental stages, and the integration of the new Rafale multi-role jet fighter, whose first squadron of 20 aircraft became operational in 2006 at Saint-Dizier. In 2020 it was renamed the Arm\u00e9e de l'Air et de l'Espace, or French Air and Space Force.\nFrench Navy.\nMedieval fleets, in France as elsewhere, were almost entirely composed of merchant ships enlisted into naval service in time of war, but the early beginnings of the French naval history goes back to that era. The first battle of the French Navy was the battle of Arnemuiden (23 September 1338), where it defeated the English Navy. The battle of Arnemuiden was also the first naval battle using artillery. It was later defeated by an Anglo-Flemish fleet at the Battle of Sluys and, with Castilian help, managed to beat the English at La Rochelle\u2014both battles playing a crucial role in the development of the Hundred Years War. However, the navy did not become a consistent instrument of national power until the 17th century with Louis XIV. Under the tutelage of the \"Sun King,\" the French Navy was well financed and equipped, managing to resoundingly defeat a combined Spanish-Dutch fleet at the Battle of Palermo in 1676 during the Franco-Dutch War, although, along with the English navy, it suffered several strategic reversals against the Dutch, who were led by the brilliant Michiel de Ruyter. It scored several early victories in the Nine Years War against the Royal Navy and the Dutch Navy. Financial difficulties, however, allowed the English and the Dutch to regain the initiative at sea.\nA perennial problem for the French Navy was the strategic priorities of France, which were first and foremost tied to its European ambitions. This reality meant that the army was often treated better than the navy, and as a result, the latter suffered in training and operational performance. The 18th century saw the beginning of the Royal Navy's domination, which managed to inflict a number of significant defeats on the French. However, in a very impressive effort, a French fleet under de Grasse managed to defeat a British fleet at the Battle of the Chesapeake in 1781, ensuring that the Franco-American ground forces would win the ongoing Siege of Yorktown. Beyond that, and Suffren's impressive campaigns against the British in India, there was not much more good news. The French Revolution all but crippled the French Navy, and efforts to make it into a powerful force under Napoleon were dashed at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, where the British all but annihilated a combined Franco-Spanish fleet. The disaster guaranteed British naval domination until the end of the Napoleonic wars.\nLater in the 19th century, the navy recovered and became the second finest in the world after the Royal Navy. It conducted a successful blockade of Mexico in the Pastry War of 1838 and obliterated the Chinese navy at the Battle of Foochow in 1884. It also served as an effective link between the growing parts of the French empire. The navy performed well during World War I, in which it mainly protected the naval lanes in the Mediterranean Sea. At the onset of the war, the French had a large fleet in the Mediterranean whive no less than seven battleship & six heavy cruiser . French defeats in the early stages of World War II, however, forced the British to attack the French fleet moored at Mers-el-Kebir in order to prevent the threat she fall to the Germans, the remaining of French fleet scuttled herself at Toulon for prevent the 7th Panzer Division to capture the fleet, two years later .\nCurrently, French naval doctrine calls for two aircraft carriers, but the French currently only have one, the \"Charles de Gaulle\", due to restructuring. The navy is in the midst of some technological and procurement changes; newer submarines are under construction and Rafale aircraft (the naval version) are currently replacing older aircraft.\nForeign Legion.\nThe Foreign Legion was created in 1831 by French king Louis-Philippe to allow the incorporation of foreign nationals into the French Army. Over the past century and a half, it has gone on to become one of the most recognizable and lauded military units in the world. The Legion had a very difficult start; there were few non-commissioned officers, many of the soldiers could not speak French, and pay was often irregular. The Legion was soon transferred to fight in Algeria, performing moderately successfully given its condition. On August 17, 1835, the commander of the Legion, Colonel Joseph Bernelle, decided to amalgamate all the battalions so that no nationality was exclusively confined to a particular battalion; this helped ensure that the Legion did not fragment into factions.\nFollowing participation in Africa and in the Carlist Wars in Spain, the Legion fought in the Crimean War and the Franco-Austrian War, where they performed heroically at the Battle of Magenta, before earning even more glory during the French intervention in Mexico. On April 30, 1863, a company of 65 legionnaires was ambushed by 2,000 Mexican troops at the Hacienda Camar\u00f3n; in the resulting Battle of Camar\u00f3n, the legionnaires resisted bravely for several hours and inflicted 300\u2013500 casualties on the Mexicans while 62 of them died and three were captured. One of the Mexican commanders, impressed by the memorable intransigence he had just witnessed, characterized the Legion in a way they've been known ever since, \"These are not men, but devils!\"\nIn World War I, the Legion demonstrated that it was a highly capable unit in modern warfare. It suffered 11,000 casualties in the Western Front while conducting brilliant defenses and spirited counter-attacks. Following the debacle in the Battle of France in 1940, the Legion was split between those who supported the Vichy government and those who joined the Free French under de Gaulle. At the Battle of Bir Hakeim in 1942, the Free French 13th Legion Demi-Brigade doggedly defended its positions against a combined Italian-German offensive and seriously delayed Rommel's attacks towards Tobruk. The Legion eventually returned to Europe and fought until the end of the Second World War in 1945. It later fought in the First Indochina War against the Viet Minh. At the climactic Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, French forces, many of them legionnaires, were completely surrounded by a large Vietnamese army and were defeated after two months of tenacious fighting. French withdrawal from Algeria led to the collapse of the French colonial empire. The legionnaires were mostly used in colonial interventions, so the destruction of the empire prompted questions about their status. Ultimately, the Legion was allowed to exist and participated as a rapid reaction force in many places throughout Africa and around the world.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nWorks cited.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "25507": "Roman Empire\nTerritory ruled by Rome and period of Roman history\nThe Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Romans conquered most of this during the Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of effective sole rule in 27\u00a0BC. The western empire collapsed in 476\u00a0AD, but the eastern empire lasted until the fall of Constantinople in 1453.\nBy 100\u00a0BC, the city of Rome had expanded its rule from the Italian peninsula to most of the Mediterranean and beyond. However, it was severely destabilised by civil wars and political conflicts, which culminated in the victory of Octavian over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31\u00a0BC, and the subsequent conquest of the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt. In 27\u00a0BC, the Roman Senate granted Octavian overarching military power () and the new title of \"Augustus\", marking his accession as the first Roman emperor. The vast Roman territories were organized into senatorial provinces, governed by proconsuls who were appointed by lot annually, and imperial provinces, which belonged to the emperor but were governed by legates.\nThe first two centuries of the Empire saw a period of unprecedented stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana (lit.\u2009'Roman Peace'). Rome reached its greatest territorial extent under Trajan (r.\u200998\u00a0\u2013\u00a0117\u00a0AD), but a period of increasing trouble and decline began under Commodus (r.\u2009180\u00a0\u2013\u00a0192). In the 3rd century, the Empire underwent a 49-year crisis that threatened its existence due to civil war, plagues and barbarian invasions. The Gallic and Palmyrene empires broke away from the state and a series of short-lived emperors led the Empire, which was later reunified under Aurelian (r.\u2009270\u00a0\u2013\u00a0275). The civil wars ended with the victory of Diocletian (r.\u2009284\u00a0\u2013\u00a0305), who set up two different imperial courts in the Greek East and Latin West. Constantine the Great (r.\u2009306\u00a0\u2013\u00a0337), the first Christian emperor, moved the imperial seat from Rome to Byzantium in 330, and renamed it Constantinople. The Migration Period, involving large invasions by Germanic peoples and by the Huns of Attila, led to the decline of the Western Roman Empire. With the fall of Ravenna to the Germanic Herulians and the deposition of Romulus Augustus in 476 by Odoacer, the Western Empire finally collapsed. The Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire survived for another millennium with Constantinople as its sole capital, until the city's fall in 1453.\nDue to the Empire's extent and endurance, its institutions and culture had a lasting influence on the development of language, religion, art, architecture, literature, philosophy, law, and forms of government across its territories. Latin evolved into the Romance languages while Medieval Greek became the language of the East. The Empire's adoption of Christianity resulted in the formation of medieval Christendom. Roman and Greek art had a profound impact on the Italian Renaissance. Rome's architectural tradition served as the basis for Romanesque, Renaissance and Neoclassical architecture, influencing Islamic architecture. The rediscovery of classical science and technology (which formed the basis for Islamic science) in medieval Europe contributed to the Scientific Renaissance and Scientific Revolution. Many modern legal systems, such as the Napoleonic Code, descend from Roman law. Rome's republican institutions have influenced the Italian city-state republics of the medieval period, the early United States, and modern democratic republics.\nHistory.\nTransition from Republic to Empire.\nRome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the Roman Republic in the 6th century BC, though not outside the Italian Peninsula until the 3rd century BC. Thus, it was an \"empire\" (a great power) long before it had an emperor. The Republic was not a nation-state in the modern sense, but a network of self-ruled towns (with varying degrees of independence from the Senate) and provinces administered by military commanders. It was governed by annually elected magistrates (Roman consuls above all) in conjunction with the Senate. The 1st century BC was a time of political and military upheaval, which ultimately led to rule by emperors. The consuls' military power rested in the Roman legal concept of \"imperium\", meaning \"command\" (typically in a military sense). Occasionally, successful consuls or generals were given the honorary title \"imperator\" (commander); this is the origin of the word \"emperor\", since this title was always bestowed to the early emperors.\nRome suffered a long series of internal conflicts, conspiracies, and civil wars from the late second century BC (see Crisis of the Roman Republic) while greatly extending its power beyond Italy. In 44 BC Julius Caesar was briefly perpetual dictator before being assassinated by a faction that opposed his concentration of power. This faction was driven from Rome and defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC by Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son Octavian. Antony and Octavian divided the Roman world between them, but this did not last long. Octavian's forces defeated those of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. In 27 BC the Senate gave him the title \"Augustus\" (\"venerated\") and made him \"princeps\" (\"foremost\") with proconsular \"imperium\", thus beginning the Principate, the first epoch of Roman imperial history. Although the republic stood in name, Augustus had all meaningful authority. During his 40-year rule, a new constitutional order emerged so that, upon his death, Tiberius would succeed him as the new \"de facto\" monarch.\n\"Pax Romana\".\nThe 200 years that began with Augustus's rule is traditionally regarded as the \"Pax Romana\" (\"Roman Peace\"). The cohesion of the empire was furthered by a degree of social stability and economic prosperity that Rome had never before experienced. Uprisings in the provinces were infrequent and put down \"mercilessly and swiftly\". The success of Augustus in establishing principles of dynastic succession was limited by his outliving a number of talented potential heirs. The Julio-Claudian dynasty lasted for four more emperors\u2014Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero\u2014before it yielded in 69 AD to the strife-torn Year of the Four Emperors, from which Vespasian emerged as the victor. Vespasian became the founder of the brief Flavian dynasty, followed by the Nerva\u2013Antonine dynasty which produced the \"Five Good Emperors\": Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius.\nTransition from classical to late antiquity.\nIn the view of contemporary Greek historian Cassius Dio, the accession of Commodus in 180 marked the descent \"from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron\", a comment which has led some historians, notably Edward Gibbon, to take Commodus' reign as the beginning of the Empire's decline.\nIn 212, during the reign of Caracalla, Roman citizenship was granted to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. The Severan dynasty was tumultuous; an emperor's reign was ended routinely by his murder or execution and, following its collapse, the Empire was engulfed by the Crisis of the Third Century, a period of invasions, civil strife, economic disorder, and plague. In defining historical epochs, this crisis sometimes marks the transition from Classical to Late Antiquity. Aurelian (r.\u2009270\u00a0\u2013\u00a0275) stabilised the empire militarily and Diocletian reorganised and restored much of it in 285. Diocletian's reign brought the empire's most concerted effort against the perceived threat of Christianity, the \"Great Persecution\".\nDiocletian divided the empire into four regions, each ruled by a separate tetrarch. Confident that he fixed the disorder plaguing Rome, he abdicated along with his co-emperor, but the Tetrarchy collapsed shortly after. Order was eventually restored by Constantine the Great, who became the first emperor to convert to Christianity, and who established Constantinople as the new capital of the Eastern Empire. During the decades of the Constantinian and Valentinian dynasties, the empire was divided along an east\u2013west axis, with dual power centres in Constantinople and Rome. Julian, who under the influence of his adviser Mardonius attempted to restore Classical Roman and Hellenistic religion, only briefly interrupted the succession of Christian emperors. Theodosius I, the last emperor to rule over both East and West, died in 395 after making Christianity the state religion.\nFall in the West and survival in the East.\nThe Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate in the early 5th century. The Romans fought off all invaders, most famously Attila, but the empire had assimilated so many Germanic peoples of dubious loyalty to Rome that the empire started to dismember itself. Most chronologies place the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476, when Romulus Augustulus was forced to abdicate to the Germanic warlord Odoacer.\nOdoacer ended the Western Empire by declaring Zeno sole emperor and placing himself as Zeno's nominal subordinate. In reality, Italy was ruled by Odoacer alone. The Eastern Roman Empire, called the Byzantine Empire by later historians, continued until the reign of Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Roman emperor. He died in battle in 1453 against Mehmed II and his Ottoman forces during the siege of Constantinople. Mehmed II adopted the title of \"caesar\" in an attempt to claim a connection to the former Empire. His claim was soon recognized by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, but not by European monarchs.\nGeography and demography.\nThe Roman Empire was one of the largest in history, with contiguous territories throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The Latin phrase \"imperium sine fine\" (\"empire without end\") expressed the ideology that neither time nor space limited the Empire. In Virgil's \"Aeneid\", limitless empire is said to be granted to the Romans by Jupiter. This claim of universal dominion was renewed when the Empire came under Christian rule in the 4th century. In addition to annexing large regions, the Romans directly altered their geography, for example cutting down entire forests.\nRoman expansion was mostly accomplished under the Republic, though parts of northern Europe were conquered in the 1st century, when Roman control in Europe, Africa, and Asia was strengthened. Under Augustus, a \"global map of the known world\" was displayed for the first time in public at Rome, coinciding with the creation of the most comprehensive political geography that survives from antiquity, the \"Geography\" of Strabo. When Augustus died, the account of his achievements (\"Res Gestae\") prominently featured the geographical cataloguing of the Empire. Geography alongside meticulous written records were central concerns of Roman Imperial administration.\nThe Empire reached its largest expanse under Trajan (r.\u200998\u00a0\u2013\u00a0117), encompassing 5 million km2. The traditional population estimate of 55\u201360 million inhabitants accounted for between one-sixth and one-fourth of the world's total population and made it the most populous unified political entity in the West until the mid-19th century. Recent demographic studies have argued for a population peak from 70 million to more than 100 million. Each of the three largest cities in the Empire\u2014Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch\u2014was almost twice the size of any European city at the beginning of the 17th century.\nAs the historian Christopher Kelly described it:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Then the empire stretched from Hadrian's Wall in drizzle-soaked northern England to the sun-baked banks of the Euphrates in Syria; from the great Rhine\u2013Danube river system, which snaked across the fertile, flat lands of Europe from the Low Countries to the Black Sea, to the rich plains of the North African coast and the luxuriant gash of the Nile Valley in Egypt. The empire completely circled the Mediterranean\u00a0... referred to by its conquerors as \"mare nostrum\"\u2014'our sea'.\nTrajan's successor Hadrian adopted a policy of maintaining rather than expanding the empire. Borders (\"fines\") were marked, and the frontiers (\"limites\") patrolled. The most heavily fortified borders were the most unstable. Hadrian's Wall, which separated the Roman world from what was perceived as an ever-present barbarian threat, is the primary surviving monument of this effort.\nLanguages.\nLatin and Greek were the main languages of the Empire, but the Empire was deliberately multilingual. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill says \"The main desire of the Roman government was to make itself understood\". At the start of the Empire, knowledge of Greek was useful to pass as educated nobility and knowledge of Latin was useful for a career in the military, government, or law. Bilingual inscriptions indicate the everyday interpenetration of the two languages.\nLatin and Greek's mutual linguistic and cultural influence is a complex topic. Latin words incorporated into Greek were very common by the early imperial era, especially for military, administration, and trade and commerce matters. Greek grammar, literature, poetry and philosophy shaped Latin language and culture.\nThere was never a legal requirement for Latin in the Empire, but it represented a certain status. High standards of Latin, \"Latinitas\", started with the advent of Latin literature. Due to the flexible language policy of the Empire, a natural competition of language emerged that spurred \"Latinitas\", to defend Latin against the stronger cultural influence of Greek. Over time Latin usage was used to project power and a higher social class. Most of the emperors were bilingual but had a preference for Latin in the public sphere for political reasons, a \"rule\" that first started during the Punic Wars. Different emperors up until Justinian would attempt to require the use of Latin in various sections of the administration but there is no evidence that a linguistic imperialism existed during the early Empire.\nAfter all freeborn inhabitants were universally enfranchised in 212, many Roman citizens would have lacked a knowledge of Latin. The wide use of Koine Greek was what enabled the spread of Christianity and reflects its role as the lingua franca of the Mediterranean during the time of the Empire. Following Diocletian's reforms in the 3rd century CE, there was a decline in the knowledge of Greek in the west. Spoken Latin later fragmented into the incipient romance languages in the 7th century CE following the collapse of the Empire's west.\nThe dominance of Latin and Greek among the literate elite obscure the continuity of other spoken languages within the Empire. Latin, referred to in its spoken form as Vulgar Latin, gradually replaced Celtic and Italic languages. References to interpreters indicate the continuing use of local languages, particularly in Egypt with Coptic, and in military settings along the Rhine and Danube. Roman jurists also show a concern for local languages such as Punic, Gaulish, and Aramaic in assuring the correct understanding of laws and oaths. In Africa, Libyco-Berber and Punic were used in inscriptions into the 2nd century. In Syria, Palmyrene soldiers used their dialect of Aramaic for inscriptions, an exception to the rule that Latin was the language of the military. The last reference to Gaulish was between 560 and 575. The emergent Gallo-Romance languages would then be shaped by Gaulish. Proto-Basque or Aquitanian evolved with Latin loan words to modern Basque. The Thracian language, as were several now-extinct languages in Anatolia, are attested in Imperial-era inscriptions.\nSociety.\nThe Empire was remarkably multicultural, with \"astonishing cohesive capacity\" to create shared identity while encompassing diverse peoples. Public monuments and communal spaces open to all\u2014such as forums, amphitheatres, racetracks and baths\u2014helped foster a sense of \"Romanness\".\nRoman society had multiple, overlapping social hierarchies. The civil war preceding Augustus caused upheaval, but did not effect an immediate redistribution of wealth and social power. From the perspective of the lower classes, a peak was merely added to the social pyramid. Personal relationships\u2014patronage, friendship (\"amicitia\"), family, marriage\u2014continued to influence politics. By the time of Nero, however, it was not unusual to find a former slave who was richer than a freeborn citizen, or an equestrian who exercised greater power than a senator.\nThe blurring of the Republic's more rigid hierarchies led to increased social mobility, both upward and downward, to a greater extent than all other well-documented ancient societies. Women, freedmen, and slaves had opportunities to profit and exercise influence in ways previously less available to them. Social life, particularly for those whose personal resources were limited, was further fostered by a proliferation of voluntary associations and confraternities (\"collegia\" and \"sodalitates\"): professional and trade guilds, veterans' groups, religious sodalities, drinking and dining clubs, performing troupes, and burial societies.\nLegal status.\nAccording to the jurist Gaius, the essential distinction in the Roman \"law of persons\" was that all humans were either free (\"liberi\") or slaves (\"servi\"). The legal status of free persons was further defined by their citizenship. Most citizens held limited rights (such as the \"ius Latinum\", \"Latin right\"), but were entitled to legal protections and privileges not enjoyed by non-citizens. Free people not considered citizens, but living within the Roman world, were \"peregrini\", non-Romans. In 212, the \"Constitutio Antoniniana\" extended citizenship to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. This legal egalitarianism required a far-reaching revision of existing laws that distinguished between citizens and non-citizens.\nWomen in Roman law.\nFreeborn Roman women were considered citizens, but did not vote, hold political office, or serve in the military. A mother's citizen status determined that of her children, as indicated by the phrase \"ex duobus civibus Romanis natos\" (\"children born of two Roman citizens\"). A Roman woman kept her own family name (\"nomen\") for life. Children most often took the father's name, with some exceptions. Women could own property, enter contracts, and engage in business. Inscriptions throughout the Empire honour women as benefactors in funding public works, an indication they could hold considerable fortunes.\nThe archaic \"manus\" marriage in which the woman was subject to her husband's authority was largely abandoned by the Imperial era, and a married woman retained ownership of any property she brought into the marriage. Technically she remained under her father's legal authority, even though she moved into her husband's home, but when her father died she became legally emancipated. This arrangement was a factor in the degree of independence Roman women enjoyed compared to many other cultures up to the modern period: although she had to answer to her father in legal matters, she was free of his direct scrutiny in daily life, and her husband had no legal power over her. Although it was a point of pride to be a \"one-man woman\" (\"univira\") who had married only once, there was little stigma attached to divorce, nor to speedy remarriage after being widowed or divorced. Girls had equal inheritance rights with boys if their father died without leaving a will. A mother's right to own and dispose of property, including setting the terms of her will, gave her enormous influence over her sons into adulthood.\nAs part of the Augustan programme to restore traditional morality and social order, moral legislation attempted to regulate conduct as a means of promoting \"family values\". Adultery was criminalized, and defined broadly as an illicit sex act (\"stuprum\") between a male citizen and a married woman, or between a married woman and any man other than her husband. That is, a double standard was in place: a married woman could have sex only with her husband, but a married man did not commit adultery if he had sex with a prostitute or person of marginalized status. Childbearing was encouraged: a woman who had given birth to three children was granted symbolic honours and greater legal freedom (the \"ius trium liberorum\").\nSlaves and the law.\nAt the time of Augustus, as many as 35% of the people in Roman Italy were slaves, making Rome one of five historical \"slave societies\" in which slaves constituted at least a fifth of the population and played a major role in the economy. Slavery was a complex institution that supported traditional Roman social structures as well as contributing economic utility. In urban settings, slaves might be professionals such as teachers, physicians, chefs, and accountants; the majority of slaves provided trained or unskilled labour. Agriculture and industry, such as milling and mining, relied on the exploitation of slaves. Outside Italy, slaves were on average an estimated 10 to 20% of the population, sparse in Roman Egypt but more concentrated in some Greek areas. Expanding Roman ownership of arable land and industries affected preexisting practices of slavery in the provinces. Although slavery has often been regarded as waning in the 3rd and 4th centuries, it remained an integral part of Roman society until gradually ceasing in the 6th and 7th centuries with the disintegration of the complex Imperial economy.\nLaws pertaining to slavery were \"extremely intricate\". Slaves were considered property and had no legal personhood. They could be subjected to forms of corporal punishment not normally exercised on citizens, sexual exploitation, torture, and summary execution. A slave could not as a matter of law be raped; a slave's rapist had to be prosecuted by the owner for property damage under the Aquilian Law. Slaves had no right to the form of legal marriage called \"conubium\", but their unions were sometimes recognized. Technically, a slave could not own property, but a slave who conducted business might be given access to an individual fund (\"peculium\") that he could use, depending on the degree of trust and co-operation between owner and slave. Within a household or workplace, a hierarchy of slaves might exist, with one slave acting as the master of others. Talented slaves might accumulate a large enough \"peculium\" to justify their freedom, or be manumitted for services rendered. Manumission had become frequent enough that in 2 BC a law (\"Lex Fufia Caninia\") limited the number of slaves an owner was allowed to free in his will.\nFollowing the Servile Wars of the Republic, legislation under Augustus and his successors shows a driving concern for controlling the threat of rebellions through limiting the size of work groups, and for hunting down fugitive slaves. Over time slaves gained increased legal protection, including the right to file complaints against their masters. A bill of sale might contain a clause stipulating that the slave could not be employed for prostitution, as prostitutes in ancient Rome were often slaves. The burgeoning trade in eunuchs in the late 1st century prompted legislation that prohibited the castration of a slave against his will \"for lust or gain\".\nRoman slavery was not based on race. Generally, slaves in Italy were indigenous Italians, with a minority of foreigners (including both slaves and freedmen) estimated at 5% of the total in the capital at its peak, where their number was largest. Foreign slaves had higher mortality and lower birth rates than natives and were sometimes even subjected to mass expulsions. The average recorded age at death for the slaves of the city of Rome was seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females).\nDuring the period of republican expansionism when slavery had become pervasive, war captives were a main source of slaves. The range of ethnicities among slaves to some extent reflected that of the armies Rome defeated in war, and the conquest of Greece brought a number of highly skilled and educated slaves. Slaves were also traded in markets and sometimes sold by pirates. Infant abandonment and self-enslavement among the poor were other sources. \"Vernae\", by contrast, were \"homegrown\" slaves born to female slaves within the household, estate or farm. Although they had no special legal status, an owner who mistreated or failed to care for his \"vernae\" faced social disapproval, as they were considered part of the family household and in some cases might actually be the children of free males in the family.\nFreedmen.\nRome differed from Greek city-states in allowing freed slaves to become citizens; any future children of a freedman were born free, with full rights of citizenship. After manumission, a slave who had belonged to a Roman citizen enjoyed active political freedom (\"libertas\"), including the right to vote. His former master became his patron (\"patronus\"): the two continued to have customary and legal obligations to each other. A freedman was not entitled to hold public office or the highest state priesthoods, but could play a priestly role. He could not marry a woman from a senatorial family, nor achieve legitimate senatorial rank himself, but during the early Empire, freedmen held key positions in the government bureaucracy, so much so that Hadrian limited their participation by law. The rise of successful freedmen\u2014through political influence or wealth\u2014is a characteristic of early Imperial society. The prosperity of a high-achieving group of freedmen is attested by .\nCensus rank.\nThe Latin word \"ordo\" (plural \"ordines\") is translated variously and inexactly into English as \"class, order, rank\". One purpose of the Roman census was to determine the \"ordo\" to which an individual belonged. Two of the highest \"ordines\" in Rome were the senatorial and equestrian. Outside Rome, cities or colonies were led by decurions, also known as \"curiales.\"\n\"Senator\" was not itself an elected office in ancient Rome; an individual gained admission to the Senate after he had been elected to and served at least one term as an executive magistrate. A senator also had to meet a minimum property requirement of 1 million \"sestertii\". Not all men who qualified for the \"ordo senatorius\" chose to take a Senate seat, which required legal domicile at Rome. Emperors often filled vacancies in the 600-member body by appointment. A senator's son belonged to the \"ordo senatorius\", but he had to qualify on his own merits for admission to the Senate. A senator could be removed for violating moral standards.\nIn the time of Nero, senators were still primarily from Italy, with some from the Iberian peninsula and southern France; men from the Greek-speaking provinces of the East began to be added under Vespasian. The first senator from the easternmost province, Cappadocia, was admitted under Marcus Aurelius. By the Severan dynasty (193\u2013235), Italians made up less than half the Senate. During the 3rd century, domicile at Rome became impractical, and inscriptions attest to senators who were active in politics and munificence in their homeland (\"patria\").\nSenators were the traditional governing class who rose through the \"cursus honorum\", the political career track, but equestrians often possessed greater wealth and political power. Membership in the equestrian order was based on property; in Rome's early days, \"equites\" or knights had been distinguished by their ability to serve as mounted warriors, but cavalry service was a separate function in the Empire. A census valuation of 400,000 sesterces and three generations of free birth qualified a man as an equestrian. The census of 28 BC uncovered large numbers of men who qualified, and in 14 AD, a thousand equestrians were registered at C\u00e1diz and Padua alone. Equestrians rose through a military career track (\"tres militiae\") to become highly placed prefects and procurators within the Imperial administration.\nThe rise of provincial men to the senatorial and equestrian orders is an aspect of social mobility in the early Empire. Roman aristocracy was based on competition, and unlike later European nobility, a Roman family could not maintain its position merely through hereditary succession or having title to lands. Admission to the higher \"ordines\" brought distinction and privileges, but also responsibilities. In antiquity, a city depended on its leading citizens to fund public works, events, and services (\"munera\"). Maintaining one's rank required massive personal expenditures. Decurions were so vital for the functioning of cities that in the later Empire, as the ranks of the town councils became depleted, those who had risen to the Senate were encouraged to return to their hometowns, in an effort to sustain civic life.\nIn the later Empire, the \"dignitas\" (\"worth, esteem\") that attended on senatorial or equestrian rank was refined further with titles such as \"vir illustris\" (\"illustrious man\"). The appellation \"clarissimus\" (Greek \"lamprotatos\") was used to designate the \"dignitas\" of certain senators and their immediate family, including women. \"Grades\" of equestrian status proliferated.\nUnequal justice.\nAs the republican principle of citizens' equality under the law faded, the symbolic and social privileges of the upper classes led to an informal division of Roman society into those who had acquired greater honours (\"honestiores\") and humbler folk (\"humiliores\"). In general, \"honestiores\" were the members of the three higher \"orders\", along with certain military officers. The granting of universal citizenship in 212 seems to have increased the competitive urge among the upper classes to have their superiority affirmed, particularly within the justice system. Sentencing depended on the judgment of the presiding official as to the relative \"worth\" (\"dignitas\") of the defendant: an \"honestior\" could pay a fine for a crime for which an \"humilior\" might receive a scourging.\nExecution, which was an infrequent legal penalty for free men under the Republic, could be quick and relatively painless for \"honestiores\", while \"humiliores\" might suffer the kinds of torturous death previously reserved for slaves, such as crucifixion and condemnation to the beasts. In the early Empire, those who converted to Christianity could lose their standing as \"honestiores\", especially if they declined to fulfil religious responsibilities, and thus became subject to punishments that created the conditions of martyrdom.\nGovernment and military.\nThe three major elements of the Imperial state were the central government, the military, and the provincial government. The military established control of a territory through war, but after a city or people was brought under treaty, the mission turned to policing: protecting Roman citizens, agricultural fields, and religious sites. The Romans lacked sufficient manpower or resources to rule through force alone. Cooperation with local elites was necessary to maintain order, collect information, and extract revenue. The Romans often exploited internal political divisions.\nCommunities with demonstrated loyalty to Rome retained their own laws, could collect their own taxes locally, and in exceptional cases were exempt from Roman taxation. Legal privileges and relative independence incentivized compliance. Roman government was thus limited, but efficient in its use of available resources.\nCentral government.\nThe Imperial cult of ancient Rome identified emperors and some members of their families with divinely sanctioned authority (\"auctoritas\"). The rite of apotheosis (also called \"consecratio\") signified the deceased emperor's deification. The dominance of the emperor was based on the consolidation of powers from several republican offices. The emperor made himself the central religious authority as \"pontifex maximus\", and centralized the right to declare war, ratify treaties, and negotiate with foreign leaders. While these functions were clearly defined during the Principate, the emperor's powers over time became less constitutional and more monarchical, culminating in the Dominate.\nThe emperor was the ultimate authority in policy- and decision-making, but in the early Principate, he was expected to be accessible and deal personally with official business and petitions. A bureaucracy formed around him only gradually. The Julio-Claudian emperors relied on an informal body of advisors that included not only senators and equestrians, but trusted slaves and freedmen. After Nero, the influence of the latter was regarded with suspicion, and the emperor's council (\"consilium\") became subject to official appointment for greater transparency. Though the Senate took a lead in policy discussions until the end of the Antonine dynasty, equestrians played an increasingly important role in the \"consilium\". The women of the emperor's family often intervened directly in his decisions.\nAccess to the emperor might be gained at the daily reception (\"salutatio\"), a development of the traditional homage a client paid to his patron; public banquets hosted at the palace; and religious ceremonies. The common people who lacked this access could manifest their approval or displeasure as a group at games. By the 4th century, the Christian emperors became remote figureheads who issued general rulings, no longer responding to individual petitions. Although the Senate could do little short of assassination and open rebellion to contravene the will of the emperor, it retained its symbolic political centrality. The Senate legitimated the emperor's rule, and the emperor employed senators as legates (\"legati\"): generals, diplomats, and administrators.\nThe practical source of an emperor's power and authority was the military. The legionaries were paid by the Imperial treasury, and swore an annual oath of loyalty to the emperor. Most emperors chose a successor, usually a close family member or adopted heir. The new emperor had to seek a swift acknowledgement of his status and authority to stabilize the political landscape. No emperor could hope to survive without the allegiance of the Praetorian Guard and the legions. To secure their loyalty, several emperors paid the \"donativum\", a monetary reward. In theory, the Senate was entitled to choose the new emperor, but did so mindful of acclamation by the army or Praetorians.\nMilitary.\nAfter the Punic Wars, the Roman army comprised professional soldiers who volunteered for 20 years of active duty and five as reserves. The transition to a professional military began during the late Republic and was one of the many profound shifts away from republicanism, under which an army of conscript citizens defended the homeland against a specific threat. The Romans expanded their war machine by \"organizing the communities that they conquered in Italy into a system that generated huge reservoirs of manpower for their army\". By Imperial times, military service was a full-time career. The pervasiveness of military garrisons throughout the Empire was a major influence in the process of Romanization.\nThe primary mission of the military of the early empire was to preserve the Pax Romana. The three major divisions of the military were:\nThrough his military reforms, which included consolidating or disbanding units of questionable loyalty, Augustus regularized the legion. A legion was organized into ten cohorts, each of which comprised six centuries, with a century further made up of ten squads (\"contubernia\"); the exact size of the Imperial legion, which was likely determined by logistics, has been estimated to range from 4,800 to 5,280. After Germanic tribes wiped out three legions in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, the number of legions was increased from 25 to around 30. The army had about 300,000 soldiers in the 1st century, and under 400,000 in the 2nd, \"significantly smaller\" than the collective armed forces of the conquered territories. No more than 2% of adult males living in the Empire served in the Imperial army. Augustus also created the Praetorian Guard: nine cohorts, ostensibly to maintain the public peace, which were garrisoned in Italy. Better paid than the legionaries, the Praetorians served only sixteen years.\nThe \"auxilia\" were recruited from among the non-citizens. Organized in smaller units of roughly cohort strength, they were paid less than the legionaries, and after 25 years of service were rewarded with Roman citizenship, also extended to their sons. According to Tacitus there were roughly as many auxiliaries as there were legionaries\u2014thus, around 125,000 men, implying approximately 250 auxiliary regiments. The Roman cavalry of the earliest Empire were primarily from Celtic, Hispanic or Germanic areas. Several aspects of training and equipment derived from the Celts.\nThe Roman navy not only aided in the supply and transport of the legions but also in the protection of the frontiers along the rivers Rhine and Danube. Another duty was protecting maritime trade against pirates. It patrolled the Mediterranean, parts of the North Atlantic coasts, and the Black Sea. Nevertheless, the army was considered the senior and more prestigious branch.\nProvincial government.\nAn annexed territory became a Roman province in three steps: making a register of cities, taking a census, and surveying the land. Further government recordkeeping included births and deaths, real estate transactions, taxes, and juridical proceedings. In the 1st and 2nd centuries, the central government sent out around 160 officials annually to govern outside Italy. Among these officials were the Roman governors: magistrates elected at Rome who in the name of the Roman people governed senatorial provinces; or governors, usually of equestrian rank, who held their \"imperium\" on behalf of the emperor in imperial provinces, most notably Roman Egypt. A governor had to make himself accessible to the people he governed, but he could delegate various duties. His staff, however, was minimal: his official attendants (\"apparitores\"), including lictors, heralds, messengers, scribes, and bodyguards; legates, both civil and military, usually of equestrian rank; and friends who accompanied him unofficially.\nOther officials were appointed as supervisors of government finances. Separating fiscal responsibility from justice and administration was a reform of the Imperial era, to avoid provincial governors and tax farmers exploiting local populations for personal gain. Equestrian procurators, whose authority was originally \"extra-judicial and extra-constitutional\", managed both state-owned property and the personal property of the emperor (\"res privata\"). Because Roman government officials were few, a provincial who needed help with a legal dispute or criminal case might seek out any Roman perceived to have some official capacity.\nIn the High Empire, Italy was legally distinguished from the provinces, and along with some favored provincial communities, enjoyed immunity from the property tax and poll tax. However, under the Emperor Diocletian, Italy lost these privileges and was subdivided into provinces.\nLaw.\nRoman courts held original jurisdiction over cases involving Roman citizens throughout the empire, but there were too few judicial functionaries to impose Roman law uniformly in the provinces. Most parts of the Eastern Empire already had well-established law codes and juridical procedures. Generally, it was Roman policy to respect the \"mos regionis\" (\"regional tradition\" or \"law of the land\") and to regard local laws as a source of legal precedent and social stability. The compatibility of Roman and local law was thought to reflect an underlying \"ius gentium\", the \"law of nations\" or international law regarded as common and customary. If provincial law conflicted with Roman law or custom, Roman courts heard appeals, and the emperor held final decision-making authority.\nIn the West, law had been administered on a highly localized or tribal basis, and private property rights may have been a novelty of the Roman era, particularly among Celts. Roman law facilitated the acquisition of wealth by a pro-Roman elite. The extension of universal citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Empire in 212 required the uniform application of Roman law, replacing local law codes that had applied to non-citizens. Diocletian's efforts to stabilize the Empire after the Crisis of the Third Century included two major compilations of law in four years, the \"Codex Gregorianus\" and the \"Codex Hermogenianus\", to guide provincial administrators in setting consistent legal standards.\nThe pervasiveness of Roman law throughout Western Europe enormously influenced the Western legal tradition, reflected by continued use of Latin legal terminology in modern law.\nTaxation.\nTaxation under the Empire amounted to about 5% of its gross product. The typical tax rate for individuals ranged from 2 to 5%. The tax code was \"bewildering\" in its complicated system of direct and indirect taxes, some paid in cash and some in kind. Taxes might be specific to a province, or kinds of properties such as fisheries; they might be temporary. Tax collection was justified by the need to maintain the military, and taxpayers sometimes got a refund if the army captured a surplus of booty. In-kind taxes were accepted from less-monetized areas, particularly those who could supply grain or goods to army camps.\nThe primary source of direct tax revenue was individuals, who paid a poll tax and a tax on their land, construed as a tax on its produce or productive capacity. Tax obligations were determined by the census: each head of household provided a headcount of his household, as well as an accounting of his property. A major source of indirect-tax revenue was the \"portoria\", customs and tolls on trade, including among provinces. Towards the end of his reign, Augustus instituted a 4% tax on the sale of slaves, which Nero shifted from the purchaser to the dealers, who responded by raising their prices. An owner who manumitted a slave paid a \"freedom tax\", calculated at 5% of value. An inheritance tax of 5% was assessed when Roman citizens above a certain net worth left property to anyone outside their immediate family. Revenues from the estate tax and from an auction tax went towards the veterans' pension fund (\"aerarium militare\").\nLow taxes helped the Roman aristocracy increase their wealth, which equalled or exceeded the revenues of the central government. An emperor sometimes replenished his treasury by confiscating the estates of the \"super-rich\", but in the later period, the resistance of the wealthy to paying taxes was one of the factors contributing to the collapse of the Empire.\nEconomy.\nThe Empire is best thought of as a network of regional economies, based on a form of \"political capitalism\" in which the state regulated commerce to assure its own revenues. Economic growth, though not comparable to modern economies, was greater than that of most other societies prior to industrialization. Territorial conquests permitted a large-scale reorganization of land use that resulted in agricultural surplus and specialization, particularly in north Africa. Some cities were known for particular industries. The scale of urban building indicates a significant construction industry. Papyri preserve complex accounting methods that suggest elements of economic rationalism, and the Empire was highly monetized. Although the means of communication and transport were limited in antiquity, transportation in the 1st and 2nd centuries expanded greatly, and trade routes connected regional economies. The supply contracts for the army drew on local suppliers near the base (\"castrum\"), throughout the province, and across provincial borders.\nEconomic historians vary in their calculations of the gross domestic product during the Principate. In the sample years of 14, 100, and 150 AD, estimates of per capita GDP range from 166 to 380 \"HS\". The GDP per capita of Italy is estimated as 40 to 66% higher than in the rest of the Empire, due to tax transfers from the provinces and the concentration of elite income.\nEconomic dynamism resulted in social mobility. Although aristocratic values permeated traditional elite society, wealth requirements for rank indicate a strong tendency towards plutocracy. Prestige could be obtained through investing one's wealth in grand estates or townhouses, luxury items, public entertainments, funerary monuments, and religious dedications. Guilds (\"collegia\") and corporations (\"corpora\") provided support for individuals to succeed through networking. \"There can be little doubt that the lower classes of ... provincial towns of the Roman Empire enjoyed a high standard of living not equaled again in Western Europe until the 19th century\". Households in the top 1.5% of income distribution captured about 20% of income. The \"vast majority\" produced more than half of the total income, but lived near subsistence.\nCurrency and banking.\nThe early Empire was monetized to a near-universal extent, using money as a way to express prices and debts. The \"sestertius\" (English \"sesterces\", symbolized as \"HS\") was the basic unit of reckoning value into the 4th century, though the silver \"denarius\", worth four sesterces, was also used beginning in the Severan dynasty. The smallest coin commonly circulated was the bronze \"as\", one-tenth \"denarius\". Bullion and ingots seem not to have counted as \"pecunia\" (\"money\") and were used only on the frontiers. Romans in the first and second centuries counted coins, rather than weighing them\u2014an indication that the coin was valued on its face. This tendency towards fiat money led to the debasement of Roman coinage in the later Empire. The standardization of money throughout the Empire promoted trade and market integration. The high amount of metal coinage in circulation increased the money supply for trading or saving.\nRome had no central bank, and regulation of the banking system was minimal. Banks of classical antiquity typically kept less in reserves than the full total of customers' deposits. A typical bank had fairly limited capital, and often only one principal. Seneca assumes that anyone involved in Roman commerce needs access to credit. A professional deposit banker received and held deposits for a fixed or indefinite term, and lent money to third parties. The senatorial elite were involved heavily in private lending, both as creditors and borrowers. The holder of a debt could use it as a means of payment by transferring it to another party, without cash changing hands. Although it has sometimes been thought that ancient Rome lacked documentary transactions, the system of banks throughout the Empire permitted the exchange of large sums without physically transferring coins, in part because of the risks of moving large amounts of cash. Only one serious credit shortage is known to have occurred in the early Empire, in 33 AD; generally, available capital exceeded the amount needed by borrowers. The central government itself did not borrow money, and without public debt had to fund deficits from cash reserves.\nEmperors of the Antonine and Severan dynasties debased the currency, particularly the \"denarius\", under the pressures of meeting military payrolls. Sudden inflation under Commodus damaged the credit market. In the mid-200s, the supply of specie contracted sharply. Conditions during the Crisis of the Third Century\u2014such as reductions in long-distance trade, disruption of mining operations, and the physical transfer of gold coinage outside the empire by invading enemies\u2014greatly diminished the money supply and the banking sector. Although Roman coinage had long been fiat money or fiduciary currency, general economic anxieties came to a head under Aurelian, and bankers lost confidence in coins. Despite Diocletian's introduction of the gold \"solidus\" and monetary reforms, the credit market of the Empire never recovered its former robustness.\nMining and metallurgy.\nThe main mining regions of the Empire were the Iberian Peninsula (silver, copper, lead, iron and gold); Gaul (gold, silver, iron); Britain (mainly iron, lead, tin), the Danubian provinces (gold, iron); Macedonia and Thrace (gold, silver); and Asia Minor (gold, silver, iron, tin). Intensive large-scale mining\u2014of alluvial deposits, and by means of open-cast mining and underground mining\u2014took place from the reign of Augustus up to the early 3rd century, when the instability of the Empire disrupted production.\nHydraulic mining allowed base and precious metals to be extracted on a proto-industrial scale. The total annual iron output is estimated at 82,500\u00a0tonnes. Copper and lead production levels were unmatched until the Industrial Revolution. At its peak around the mid-2nd century, the Roman silver stock is estimated at 10,000\u00a0t, five to ten times larger than the combined silver mass of medieval Europe and the Caliphate around 800\u00a0AD. As an indication of the scale of Roman metal production, lead pollution in the Greenland ice sheet quadrupled over prehistoric levels during the Imperial era and dropped thereafter.\nTransportation and communication.\nThe Empire completely encircled the Mediterranean, which they called \"our sea\" (\"Mare Nostrum\"). Roman sailing vessels navigated the Mediterranean as well as major rivers. Transport by water was preferred where possible, as moving commodities by land was more difficult. Vehicles, wheels, and ships indicate the existence of a great number of skilled woodworkers.\nLand transport utilized the advanced system of Roman roads, called \"viae\". These roads were primarily built for military purposes, but also served commercial ends. The in-kind taxes paid by communities included the provision of personnel, animals, or vehicles for the \"cursus publicus\", the state mail and transport service established by Augustus. Relay stations were located along the roads every seven to twelve Roman miles, and tended to grow into villages or trading posts. A \"mansio\" (plural \"mansiones\") was a privately run service station franchised by the imperial bureaucracy for the \"cursus publicus\". The distance between \"mansiones\" was determined by how far a wagon could travel in a day. Carts were usually pulled by mules, travelling about 4\u00a0mph.\nTrade and commodities.\nRoman provinces traded among themselves, but trade extended outside the frontiers to regions as far away as China and India. Chinese trade was mostly conducted overland through middle men along the Silk Road; Indian trade also occurred by sea from Egyptian ports. The main commodity was grain. Also traded were olive oil, foodstuffs, \"garum\" (fish sauce), slaves, ore and manufactured metal objects, fibres and textiles, timber, pottery, glassware, marble, papyrus, spices and \"materia medica\", ivory, pearls, and gemstones. Though most provinces could produce wine, regional varietals were desirable and wine was a central trade good.\nLabour and occupations.\nInscriptions record 268 different occupations in Rome and 85 in Pompeii. Professional associations or trade guilds (\"collegia\") are attested for a wide range of occupations, some quite specialized.\nWork performed by slaves falls into five general categories: domestic, with epitaphs recording at least 55 different household jobs; imperial or public service; urban crafts and services; agriculture; and mining. Convicts provided much of the labour in the mines or quarries, where conditions were notoriously brutal. In practice, there was little division of labour between slave and free, and most workers were illiterate and without special skills. The greatest number of common labourers were employed in agriculture: in Italian industrial farming (\"latifundia\"), these may have been mostly slaves, but elsewhere slave farm labour was probably less important.\nTextile and clothing production was a major source of employment. Both textiles and finished garments were traded and products were often named for peoples or towns, like a fashion \"label\". Better ready-to-wear was exported by local businessmen (\"negotiatores\" or \"mercatores\"). Finished garments might be retailed by their sales agents, by \"vestiarii\" (clothing dealers), or peddled by itinerant merchants. The fullers (\"fullones\") and dye workers (\"coloratores\") had their own guilds. \"Centonarii\" were guild workers who specialized in textile production and the recycling of old clothes into pieced goods.\nArchitecture and engineering.\nThe chief Roman contributions to architecture were the arch, vault, and dome. Some Roman structures still stand today, due in part to sophisticated methods of making cements and concrete. Roman temples developed Etruscan and Greek forms, with some distinctive elements. Roman roads are considered the most advanced built until the early 19th century.\nRoman bridges were among the first large and lasting bridges, built from stone (and in most cases concrete) with the arch as the basic structure. The largest Roman bridge was Trajan's bridge over the lower Danube, constructed by Apollodorus of Damascus, which remained for over a millennium the longest bridge to have been built. The Romans built many dams and reservoirs for water collection, such as the Subiaco Dams, two of which fed the Anio Novus, one of the largest aqueducts of Rome.\nThe Romans constructed numerous aqueducts. \"De aquaeductu\", a treatise by Frontinus, who served as water commissioner, reflects the administrative importance placed on the water supply. Masonry channels carried water along a precise gradient, using gravity alone. It was then collected in tanks and fed through pipes to public fountains, baths, toilets, or industrial sites. The main aqueducts in Rome were the Aqua Claudia and the Aqua Marcia. The complex system built to supply Constantinople had its most distant supply drawn from over 120\u00a0km away along a route of more than 336\u00a0km. Roman aqueducts were built to remarkably fine tolerance, and to a technological standard not equalled until modern times. The Romans also used aqueducts in their extensive mining operations across the empire.\nInsulated glazing (or \"double glazing\") was used in the construction of public baths. Elite housing in cooler climates might have hypocausts, a form of central heating. The Romans were the first culture to assemble all essential components of the much later steam engine: the crank and connecting rod system, Hero's aeolipile (generating steam power), the cylinder and piston (in metal force pumps), non-return valves (in water pumps), and gearing (in water mills and clocks).\nDaily life.\nCity and country.\nThe city was viewed as fostering civilization by being \"properly designed, ordered, and adorned\". Augustus undertook a vast building programme in Rome, supported public displays of art that expressed imperial ideology, and reorganized the city into neighbourhoods \"(vici)\" administered at the local level with police and firefighting services. A focus of Augustan monumental architecture was the Campus Martius, an open area outside the city centre: the Altar of Augustan Peace () was located there, as was an obelisk imported from Egypt that formed the pointer (\"gnomon\") of a horologium. With its public gardens, the Campus was among the most attractive places in Rome to visit.\nCity planning and urban lifestyles was influenced by the Greeks early on, and in the Eastern Empire, Roman rule shaped the development of cities that already had a strong Hellenistic character. Cities such as Athens, Aphrodisias, Ephesus and Gerasa tailored city planning and architecture to imperial ideals, while expressing their individual identity and regional preeminence. In areas inhabited by Celtic-speaking peoples, Rome encouraged the development of urban centres with stone temples, forums, monumental fountains, and amphitheatres, often on or near the sites of preexisting walled settlements known as \"oppida\". Urbanization in Roman Africa expanded on Greek and Punic coastal cities.\nThe network of cities (, \"municipia\", \"civitates\" or in Greek terms \"poleis\") was a primary cohesive force during the Pax Romana. Romans of the 1st and 2nd centuries were encouraged to \"inculcate the habits of peacetime\". As the classicist Clifford Ando noted:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Most of the cultural appurtenances popularly associated with imperial culture\u2014public cult and its games and civic banquets, competitions for artists, speakers, and athletes, as well as the funding of the great majority of public buildings and public display of art\u2014were financed by private individuals, whose expenditures in this regard helped to justify their economic power and legal and provincial privileges.\nIn the city of Rome, most people lived in multistory apartment buildings (\"insulae\") that were often squalid firetraps. Public facilities\u2014such as baths (\"thermae\"), toilets with running water (\"latrinae\"), basins or elaborate fountains (\"nymphea\") delivering fresh water, and large-scale entertainments such as chariot races and gladiator combat\u2014were aimed primarily at the common people. \nThe public baths served hygienic, social and cultural functions. Bathing was the focus of daily socializing. Roman baths were distinguished by a series of rooms that offered communal bathing in three temperatures, with amenities that might include an exercise room, sauna, exfoliation spa, ball court, or outdoor swimming pool. Baths had hypocaust heating: the floors were suspended over hot-air channels. Public baths were part of urban culture throughout the provinces, but in the late 4th century, individual tubs began to replace communal bathing. Christians were advised to go to the baths only for hygiene.\nRich families from Rome usually had two or more houses: a townhouse (\"domus\") and at least one luxury home (\"villa\") outside the city. The \"domus\" was a privately owned single-family house, and might be furnished with a private bath (\"balneum\"), but it was not a place to retreat from public life. Although some neighbourhoods show a higher concentration of such houses, they were not segregated enclaves. The \"domus\" was meant to be visible and accessible. The atrium served as a reception hall in which the \"paterfamilias\" (head of household) met with clients every morning. It was a centre of family religious rites, containing a shrine and images of family ancestors. The houses were located on busy public roads, and ground-level spaces were often rented out as shops (\"tabernae\"). In addition to a kitchen garden\u2014windowboxes might substitute in the \"insulae\"\u2014townhouses typically enclosed a peristyle garden.\nThe villa by contrast was an escape from the city, and in literature represents a lifestyle that balances intellectual and artistic interests (\"otium\") with an appreciation of nature and agriculture. Ideally a villa commanded a view or vista, carefully framed by the architectural design. \nAugustus' programme of urban renewal, and the growth of Rome's population to as many as one million, was accompanied by nostalgia for rural life. Poetry idealized the lives of farmers and shepherds. Interior decorating often featured painted gardens, fountains, landscapes, vegetative ornament, and animals, rendered accurately enough to be identified by species. On a more practical level, the central government took an active interest in supporting agriculture. Producing food was the priority of land use. Larger farms (\"latifundia\") achieved an economy of scale that sustained urban life. Small farmers benefited from the development of local markets in towns and trade centres. Agricultural techniques such as crop rotation and selective breeding were disseminated throughout the Empire, and new crops were introduced from one province to another.\nMaintaining an affordable food supply to the city of Rome had become a major political issue in the late Republic, when the state began to provide a grain dole (Cura Annonae) to citizens who registered for it (about 200,000\u2013250,000 adult males in Rome). The dole cost at least 15% of state revenues, but improved living conditions among the lower classes, and subsidized the rich by allowing workers to spend more of their earnings on the wine and olive oil produced on estates. The grain dole also had symbolic value: it affirmed the emperor's position as universal benefactor, and the right of citizens to share in \"the fruits of conquest\". The \"annona\", public facilities, and spectacular entertainments mitigated the otherwise dreary living conditions of lower-class Romans, and kept social unrest in check. The satirist Juvenal, however, saw \"bread and circuses\" (\"panem et circenses\") as emblematic of the loss of republican political liberty:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The public has long since cast off its cares: the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things: bread and circuses.\nHealth and disease.\nEpidemics were common in the ancient world, and occasional pandemics in the Empire killed millions. The Roman population was unhealthy. About 20 percent\u2014a large percentage by ancient standards\u2014lived in cities, Rome being the largest. The cities were a \"demographic sink\": the death rate exceeded the birth rate and constant immigration was necessary to maintain the population. Average lifespan is estimated at the mid-twenties, and perhaps more than half of children died before reaching adulthood. Dense urban populations and poor sanitation contributed to disease. Land and sea connections facilitated and sped the transfer of infectious diseases across the empire's territories. The rich were not immune; only two of emperor Marcus Aurelius's fourteen children are known to have reached adulthood.\nThe importance of a good diet to health was recognized by medical writers such as Galen (2nd century). Views on nutrition were influenced by beliefs like humoral theory. A good indicator of nutrition and disease burden is average height: the average Roman was shorter in stature than the population of pre-Roman Italian societies and medieval Europe.\nFood and dining.\nMost apartments in Rome lacked kitchens, though a charcoal brazier could be used for rudimentary cookery. Prepared food was sold at pubs and bars, inns, and food stalls (\"tabernae\", \"cauponae\", \"popinae\", \"thermopolia\"). Carryout and restaurants were for the lower classes; fine dining appeared only at dinner parties in wealthy homes with a chef (\"archimagirus\") and kitchen staff, or banquets hosted by social clubs (\"collegia\").\nMost Romans consumed at least 70% of their daily calories in the form of cereals and legumes. \"Puls\" (pottage) was considered the food of the Romans, and could be elaborated to produce dishes similar to polenta or risotto. Urban populations and the military preferred bread. By the reign of Aurelian, the state had begun to distribute the \"annona\" as a daily ration of bread baked in state factories, and added olive oil, wine, and pork to the dole.\nRoman literature focuses on the dining habits of the upper classes, for whom the evening meal (\"cena\") had important social functions. Guests were entertained in a finely decorated dining room (\"triclinium\") furnished with couches. By the late Republic, women dined, reclined, and drank wine along with men. The poet Martial describes a dinner, beginning with the \"gustatio\" (\"tasting\" or \"appetizer\") salad. The main course was kid, beans, greens, a chicken, and leftover ham, followed by a dessert of fruit and wine. Roman \"foodies\" indulged in wild game, fowl such as peacock and flamingo, large fish (mullet was especially prized), and shellfish. Luxury ingredients were imported from the far reaches of empire. A book-length collection of Roman recipes is attributed to Apicius, a name for several figures in antiquity that became synonymous with \"gourmet\".\nRefined cuisine could be moralized as a sign of either civilized progress or decadent decline. Most often, because of the importance of landowning in Roman culture, produce\u2014cereals, legumes, vegetables, and fruit\u2014were considered more civilized foods than meat. The Mediterranean staples of bread, wine, and oil were sacralized by Roman Christianity, while Germanic meat consumption became a mark of paganism. Some philosophers and Christians resisted the demands of the body and the pleasures of food, and adopted fasting as an ideal. Food became simpler in general as urban life in the West diminished and trade routes were disrupted; the Church formally discouraged gluttony, and hunting and pastoralism were seen as simple and virtuous.\nSpectacles.\nWhen Juvenal complained that the Roman people had exchanged their political liberty for \"bread and circuses\", he was referring to the state-provided grain dole and the \"circenses\", events held in the entertainment venue called a \"circus\". The largest such venue in Rome was the Circus Maximus, the setting of horse races, chariot races, the equestrian Troy Game, staged beast hunts (\"venationes\"), athletic contests, gladiator combat, and historical re-enactments. From earliest times, several religious festivals had featured games (\"ludi\"), primarily horse and chariot races (\"ludi circenses\"). The races retained religious significance in connection with agriculture, initiation, and the cycle of birth and death.\nUnder Augustus, public entertainments were presented on 77 days of the year; by the reign of Marcus Aurelius, this had expanded to 135. Circus games were preceded by an elaborate parade (\"pompa circensis\") that ended at the venue. Competitive events were held also in smaller venues such as the amphitheatre, which became the characteristic Roman spectacle venue, and stadium. Greek-style athletics included footraces, boxing, wrestling, and the pancratium. Aquatic displays, such as the mock sea battle (\"naumachia\") and a form of \"water ballet\", were presented in engineered pools. State-supported theatrical events (\"ludi scaenici\") took place on temple steps or in grand stone theatres, or in the smaller enclosed theatre called an \"odeon\".\nCircuses were the largest structure regularly built in the Roman world. The Flavian Amphitheatre, better known as the Colosseum, became the regular arena for blood sports in Rome. Many Roman amphitheatres, circuses and theatres built in cities outside Italy are visible as ruins today. The local ruling elite were responsible for sponsoring spectacles and arena events, which both enhanced their status and drained their resources. The physical arrangement of the amphitheatre represented the order of Roman society: the emperor in his opulent box; senators and equestrians in reserved advantageous seats; women seated at a remove from the action; slaves given the worst places, and everybody else in-between. The crowd could call for an outcome by booing or cheering, but the emperor had the final say. Spectacles could quickly become sites of social and political protest, and emperors sometimes had to deploy force to put down crowd unrest, most notoriously at the Nika riots in 532.\nThe chariot teams were known by the colours they wore. Fan loyalty was fierce and at times erupted into sports riots. Racing was perilous, but charioteers were among the most celebrated and well-compensated athletes. Circuses were designed to ensure that no team had an unfair advantage and to minimize collisions (\"naufragia\"), which were nonetheless frequent and satisfying to the crowd. The races retained a magical aura through their early association with chthonic rituals: circus images were considered protective or lucky, curse tablets have been found buried at the site of racetracks, and charioteers were often suspected of sorcery. Chariot racing continued into the Byzantine period under imperial sponsorship, but the decline of cities in the 6th and 7th centuries led to its eventual demise.\nThe Romans thought gladiator contests had originated with funeral games and sacrifices. Some of the earliest styles of gladiator fighting had ethnic designations such as \"Thracian\" or \"Gallic\". The staged combats were considered , \"services, offerings, benefactions\", initially distinct from the festival games (\"ludi\"). To mark the opening of the Colosseum, Titus presented 100 days of arena events, with 3,000 gladiators competing on a single day. Roman fascination with gladiators is indicated by how widely they are depicted on mosaics, wall paintings, lamps, and in graffiti. Gladiators were trained combatants who might be slaves, convicts, or free volunteers. Death was not a necessary or even desirable outcome in matches between these highly skilled fighters, whose training was costly and time-consuming. By contrast, \"noxii\" were convicts sentenced to the arena with little or no training, often unarmed, and with no expectation of survival; physical suffering and humiliation were considered appropriate retributive justice. These executions were sometimes staged or ritualized as re-enactments of myths, and amphitheatres were equipped with elaborate stage machinery to create special effects.\nModern scholars have found the pleasure Romans took in the \"theatre of life and death\" difficult to understand. Pliny the Younger rationalized gladiator spectacles as good for the people, \"to inspire them to face honourable wounds and despise death, by exhibiting love of glory and desire for victory\". Some Romans such as Seneca were critical of the brutal spectacles, but found virtue in the courage and dignity of the defeated fighter\u2014an attitude that finds its fullest expression with the Christians martyred in the arena. Tertullian considered deaths in the arena to be nothing more than a dressed-up form of human sacrifice. Even martyr literature, however, offers \"detailed, indeed luxuriant, descriptions of bodily suffering\", and became a popular genre at times indistinguishable from fiction.\nRecreation.\nThe singular \"ludus\", \"play, game, sport, training\", had a wide range of meanings such as \"word play\", \"theatrical performance\", \"board game\", \"primary school\", and even \"gladiator training school\" (as in \"Ludus Magnus\"). Activities for children and young people in the Empire included hoop rolling and knucklebones (\"astragali\" or \"jacks\"). Girls had dolls made of wood, terracotta, and especially bone and ivory. Ball games include trigon and harpastum. People of all ages played board games, including \"latrunculi\" (\"Raiders\") and \"XII scripta\" (\"Twelve Marks\"). A game referred to as \"alea\" (dice) or \"tabula\" (the board) may have been similar to backgammon. Dicing as a form of gambling was disapproved of, but was a popular pastime during the festival of the Saturnalia.\nAfter adolescence, most physical training for males was of a military nature. The Campus Martius originally was an exercise field where young men learned horsemanship and warfare. Hunting was also considered an appropriate pastime. According to Plutarch, conservative Romans disapproved of Greek-style athletics that promoted a fine body for its own sake, and condemned Nero's efforts to encourage Greek-style athletic games. Some women trained as gymnasts and dancers, and a rare few as female gladiators. The \"Bikini Girls\" mosaic shows young women engaging in routines comparable to rhythmic gymnastics. Women were encouraged to maintain health through activities such as playing ball, swimming, walking, or reading aloud (as a breathing exercise).\nClothing.\nIn a status-conscious society like that of the Romans, clothing and personal adornment indicated the etiquette of interacting with the wearer. Wearing the correct clothing reflected a society in good order. There is little direct evidence of how Romans dressed in daily life, since portraiture may show the subject in clothing with symbolic value, and surviving textiles are rare.\nThe toga was the distinctive national garment of the male citizen, but it was heavy and impractical, worn mainly for conducting political or court business and religious rites. It was a \"vast expanse\" of semi-circular white wool that could not be put on and draped correctly without assistance. The drapery became more intricate and structured over time. The \"toga praetexta\", with a purple or purplish-red stripe representing inviolability, was worn by children who had not come of age, curule magistrates, and state priests. Only the emperor could wear an all-purple toga (\"toga picta\").\nOrdinary clothing was dark or colourful. The basic garment for all Romans, regardless of gender or wealth, was the simple sleeved tunic, with length differing by wearer. The tunics of poor people and labouring slaves were made from coarse wool in natural, dull shades; finer tunics were made of lightweight wool or linen. A man of the senatorial or equestrian order wore a tunic with two purple stripes (\"clavi\") woven vertically: the wider the stripe, the higher the wearer's status. Other garments could be layered over the tunic. Common male attire also included cloaks, and in some regions, trousers. In the 2nd century, emperors and elite men are often portrayed wearing the pallium, an originally Greek mantle; women are also portrayed in the pallium. Tertullian considered the pallium an appropriate garment both for Christians, in contrast to the toga, and for educated people.\nRoman clothing styles changed over time. In the Dominate, clothing worn by both soldiers and bureaucrats became highly decorated with geometrical patterns, stylized plant motifs, and in more elaborate examples, human or animal figures. Courtiers of the later Empire wore elaborate silk robes. The militarization of Roman society, and the waning of urban life, affected fashion: heavy military-style belts were worn by bureaucrats as well as soldiers, and the toga was abandoned, replaced by the pallium as a garment embodying social unity.\nArts.\nGreek art had a profound influence on Roman art. Public art\u2014including sculpture, monuments such as victory columns or triumphal arches, and the iconography on coins\u2014is often analysed for historical or ideological significance. In the private sphere, artistic objects were made for religious dedications, funerary commemoration, domestic use, and commerce. The wealthy advertised their appreciation of culture through artwork and decorative arts in their homes. Despite the value placed on art, even famous artists were of low social status, partly as they worked with their hands.\nPortraiture.\nPortraiture, which survives mainly in sculpture, was the most copious form of imperial art. Portraits during the Augustan period utilize classical proportions, evolving later into a mixture of realism and idealism. Republican portraits were characterized by verism, but as early as the 2nd century BC, Greek heroic nudity was adopted for conquering generals. Imperial portrait sculptures may model a mature head atop a youthful nude or semi-nude body with perfect musculature. Clothed in the toga or military regalia, the body communicates rank or role, not individual characteristics. \nPortraiture in painting is represented primarily by the Fayum mummy portraits, which evoke Egyptian and Roman traditions of commemorating the dead with realistic painting. Marble portrait sculpture were painted, but traces have rarely survived.\nSculpture and sarcophagi.\nExamples of Roman sculpture survive abundantly, though often in damaged or fragmentary condition, including freestanding statuary in marble, bronze and terracotta, and reliefs from public buildings and monuments. Niches in amphitheatres were originally filled with statues, as were formal gardens. Temples housed cult images of deities, often by famed sculptors.\nElaborately carved marble and limestone sarcophagi are characteristic of the 2nd to 4th centuries. Sarcophagus relief has been called the \"richest single source of Roman iconography\", depicting mythological scenes or Jewish/Christian imagery as well as the deceased's life.\nPainting.\nInitial Roman painting drew from Etruscan and Greek models and techniques. Examples of Roman paintings can be found in palaces, catacombs and villas. Much of what is known of Roman painting is from the interior decoration of private homes, particularly as preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius. In addition to decorative borders and panels with geometric or vegetative motifs, wall painting depicts scenes from mythology and theatre, landscapes and gardens, spectacles, everyday life, and erotic art.\nMosaic.\nMosaics are among the most enduring of Roman decorative arts, and are found on floors and other architectural features. The most common is the tessellated mosaic, formed from uniform pieces \"(tesserae)\" of materials such as stone and glass. \"Opus sectile\" is a related technique in which flat stone, usually coloured marble, is cut precisely into shapes from which geometric or figurative patterns are formed. This more difficult technique became especially popular for luxury surfaces in the 4th century (e.g. the Basilica of Junius Bassus).\nFigurative mosaics share many themes with painting, and in some cases use almost identical compositions. Geometric patterns and mythological scenes occur throughout the Empire. In North Africa, a particularly rich source of mosaics, homeowners often chose scenes of life on their estates, hunting, agriculture, and local wildlife. Plentiful and major examples of Roman mosaics come also from present-day Turkey (particularly the (Antioch mosaics), Italy, southern France, Spain, and Portugal.\nDecorative arts.\nDecorative arts for luxury consumers included fine pottery, silver and bronze vessels and implements, and glassware. Pottery manufacturing was economically important, as were the glass and metalworking industries. Imports stimulated new regional centres of production. Southern Gaul became a leading producer of the finer red-gloss pottery (\"terra sigillata\") that was a major trade good in 1st-century Europe. Glassblowing was regarded by the Romans as originating in Syria in the 1st century BC, and by the 3rd century, Egypt and the Rhineland had become noted for fine glass.\nPerforming arts.\nIn Roman tradition, borrowed from the Greeks, literary theatre was performed by all-male troupes that used face masks with exaggerated facial expressions to portray emotion. Female roles were played by men in drag (\"travesti\"). Roman literary theatre tradition is represented in Latin literature by the tragedies of Seneca, for example.\nMore popular than literary theatre was the genre-defying \"mimus\" theatre, which featured scripted scenarios with free improvisation, risqu\u00e9 language and sex scenes, action sequences, and political satire, along with dance, juggling, acrobatics, tightrope walking, striptease, and dancing bears. Unlike literary theatre, \"mimus\" was played without masks, and encouraged stylistic realism. Female roles were performed by women. \"Mimus\" was related to \"pantomimus\", an early form of story ballet that contained no spoken dialogue but rather a sung libretto, often mythological, either tragic or comic.\nAlthough sometimes regarded as foreign, music and dance existed in Rome from earliest times. Music was customary at funerals, and the \"tibia\", a woodwind instrument, was played at sacrifices. Song \"(carmen)\" was integral to almost every social occasion. Music was thought to reflect the orderliness of the cosmos. Various woodwinds and \"brass\" instruments were played, as were stringed instruments such as the \"cithara\", and percussion. The \"cornu\", a long tubular metal wind instrument, was used for military signals and on parade. These instruments spread throughout the provinces and are widely depicted in Roman art. The hydraulic pipe organ \"(hydraulis)\" was \"one of the most significant technical and musical achievements of antiquity\", and accompanied gladiator games and events in the amphitheatre. Although certain dances were seen at times as non-Roman or unmanly, dancing was embedded in religious rituals of archaic Rome. Ecstatic dancing was a feature of the mystery religions, particularly the cults of Cybele and Isis. In the secular realm, dancing girls from Syria and Cadiz were extremely popular.\nLike gladiators, entertainers were legally \"infames\", technically free but little better than slaves. \"Stars\", however, could enjoy considerable wealth and celebrity, and mingled socially and often sexually with the elite. Performers supported each other by forming guilds, and several memorials for theatre members survive. Theatre and dance were often condemned by Christian polemicists in the later Empire.\nLiteracy, books, and education.\nEstimates of the average literacy rate range from 5 to over 30%. The Roman obsession with documents and inscriptions indicates the value placed on the written word. Laws and edicts were posted as well as read out. Illiterate Roman subjects could have a government scribe (\"scriba\") read or write their official documents for them. The military produced extensive written records. The Babylonian Talmud declared \"if all seas were ink, all reeds were pen, all skies parchment, and all men scribes, they would be unable to set down the full scope of the Roman government's concerns\".\nNumeracy was necessary for commerce. Slaves were numerate and literate in significant numbers; some were highly educated. Graffiti and low-quality inscriptions with misspellings and solecisms indicate casual literacy among non-elites.\nThe Romans had an extensive priestly archive, and inscriptions appear throughout the Empire in connection with votives dedicated by ordinary people, as well as \"magic spells\" (e.g. the Greek Magical Papyri).\nBooks were expensive, since each copy had to be written out on a papyrus roll (\"volumen\") by scribes. The codex\u2014pages bound to a spine\u2014was still a novelty in the 1st century, but by the end of the 3rd century was replacing the \"volumen\". Commercial book production was established by the late Republic, and by the 1st century certain neighbourhoods of Rome and Western provincial cities were known for their bookshops. The quality of editing varied wildly, and plagiarism or forgery were common, since there was no copyright law.\nCollectors amassed personal libraries, and a fine library was part of the cultivated leisure (\"otium\") associated with the villa lifestyle. Significant collections might attract \"in-house\" scholars, and an individual benefactor might endow a community with a library (as Pliny the Younger did in Comum). Imperial libraries were open to users on a limited basis, and represented a literary canon. Books considered subversive might be publicly burned, and Domitian crucified copyists for reproducing works deemed treasonous.\nLiterary texts were often shared aloud at meals or with reading groups. Public readings (\"recitationes\") expanded from the 1st through the 3rd century, giving rise to \"consumer literature\" for entertainment. Illustrated books, including erotica, were popular, but are poorly represented by extant fragments.\nLiteracy began to decline during the Crisis of the Third Century. The emperor Julian banned Christians from teaching the classical curriculum, but the Church Fathers and other Christians adopted Latin and Greek literature, philosophy and science in biblical interpretation. As the Western Roman Empire declined, reading became rarer even for those within the Church hierarchy, although it continued in the Byzantine Empire.\nEducation.\nTraditional Roman education was moral and practical. Stories were meant to instil Roman values (\"mores maiorum\"). Parents were expected to act as role models, and working parents passed their skills to their children, who might also enter apprenticeships. Young children were attended by a pedagogue, usually a Greek slave or former slave, who kept the child safe, taught self-discipline and public behaviour, attended class and helped with tutoring.\nFormal education was available only to families who could pay for it; lack of state support contributed to low literacy. Primary education in reading, writing, and arithmetic might take place at home if parents hired or bought a teacher. Other children attended \"public\" schools organized by a schoolmaster (\"ludimagister\") paid by parents. \"Vernae\" (homeborn slave children) might share in-home or public schooling. Boys and girls received primary education generally from ages 7 to 12, but classes were not segregated by grade or age. Most schools employed corporal punishment. For the socially ambitious, education in Greek as well as Latin was necessary. Schools became more numerous during the Empire, increasing educational opportunities.\nAt the age of 14, upperclass males made their rite of passage into adulthood, and began to learn leadership roles through mentoring from a senior family member or family friend. Higher education was provided by \"grammatici\" or \"rhetores\". The \"grammaticus\" or \"grammarian\" taught mainly Greek and Latin literature, with history, geography, philosophy or mathematics treated as explications of the text. With the rise of Augustus, contemporary Latin authors such as Virgil and Livy also became part of the curriculum. The \"rhetor\" was a teacher of oratory or public speaking. The art of speaking (\"ars dicendi\") was highly prized, and \"eloquentia\" (\"speaking ability, eloquence\") was considered the \"glue\" of civilized society. Rhetoric was not so much a body of knowledge (though it required a command of the literary canon) as it was a mode of expression that distinguished those who held social power. The ancient model of rhetorical training\u2014\"restraint, coolness under pressure, modesty, and good humour\"\u2014endured into the 18th century as a Western educational ideal.\nIn Latin, \"illiteratus\" could mean both \"unable to read and write\" and \"lacking in cultural awareness or sophistication\". Higher education promoted career advancement. Urban elites throughout the Empire shared a literary culture imbued with Greek educational ideals (\"paideia\"). Hellenistic cities sponsored schools of higher learning to express cultural achievement. Young Roman men often went abroad to study rhetoric and philosophy, mostly to Athens. The curriculum in the East was more likely to include music and physical training. On the Hellenistic model, Vespasian endowed chairs of grammar, Latin and Greek rhetoric, and philosophy at Rome, and gave secondary teachers special exemptions from taxes and legal penalties. In the Eastern Empire, Berytus (present-day Beirut) was unusual in offering a Latin education, and became famous for its school of Roman law. The cultural movement known as the Second Sophistic (1st\u20133rd century AD) promoted the assimilation of Greek and Roman social, educational, and esthetic values.\nLiterate women ranged from cultured aristocrats to girls trained to be calligraphers and scribes. The ideal woman in Augustan love poetry was educated and well-versed in the arts. Education seems to have been standard for daughters of the senatorial and equestrian orders. An educated wife was an asset for the socially ambitious household.\nLiterature.\nLiterature under Augustus, along with that of the Republic, has been viewed as the \"Golden Age\" of Latin literature, embodying classical ideals. The three most influential Classical Latin poets\u2014Virgil, Horace, and Ovid\u2014belong to this period. Virgil's \"Aeneid\" was a national epic in the manner of the Homeric epics of Greece. Horace perfected the use of Greek lyric metres in Latin verse. Ovid's erotic poetry was enormously popular, but ran afoul of Augustan morality, contributing to his exile. Ovid's \"Metamorphoses\" wove together Greco-Roman mythology; his versions of Greek myths became a primary source of later classical mythology, and his work was hugely influential on medieval literature. The early Principate produced satirists such as Persius and Juvenal.\nThe mid-1st through mid-2nd century has conventionally been called the \"Silver Age\" of Latin literature. The three leading writers\u2014Seneca, Lucan, and Petronius\u2014committed suicide after incurring Nero's displeasure. Epigrammatist and social observer Martial and the epic poet Statius, whose poetry collection \"Silvae\" influenced Renaissance literature, wrote during the reign of Domitian. Other authors of the Silver Age included Pliny the Elder, author of the encyclopedic \"Natural History\"; his nephew, Pliny the Younger; and the historian Tacitus.\nThe principal Latin prose author of the Augustan age is the historian Livy, whose account of Rome's founding became the most familiar version in modern-era literature. \"The Twelve Caesars\" by Suetonius is a primary source for imperial biography. Among Imperial historians who wrote in Greek are Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Josephus, and Cassius Dio. Other major Greek authors of the Empire include the biographer Plutarch, the geographer Strabo, and the rhetorician and satirist Lucian.\nFrom the 2nd to the 4th centuries, Christian authors were in active dialogue with the classical tradition. Tertullian was one of the earliest prose authors with a distinctly Christian voice. After the conversion of Constantine, Latin literature is dominated by the Christian perspective. In the late 4th century, Jerome produced the Latin translation of the Bible that became authoritative as the Vulgate. Around that same time, Augustine wrote \"The City of God against the Pagans\", considered \"a masterpiece of Western culture\".\nIn contrast to the unity of Classical Latin, the literary esthetic of late antiquity has a tessellated quality. A continuing interest in the religious traditions of Rome prior to Christian dominion is found into the 5th century, with the \"Saturnalia\" of Macrobius and \"The Marriage of Philology and Mercury\" of Martianus Capella. Latin poets of late antiquity include Ausonius, Prudentius, Claudian, and Sidonius Apollinaris.\nReligion.\nThe Romans thought of themselves as highly religious, and attributed their success to their collective piety (\"pietas\") and good relations with the gods (\"pax deorum\"). The archaic religion believed to have come from the earliest kings of Rome was the foundation of the \"mos maiorum\", \"the way of the ancestors\", central to Roman identity.\nRoman religion was practical and contractual, based on the principle of \"do ut des\", \"I give that you might give\". Religion depended on knowledge and the correct practice of prayer, ritual, and sacrifice, not on faith or dogma, although Latin literature preserves learned speculation on the nature of the divine. For ordinary Romans, religion was a part of daily life. Each home had a household shrine to offer prayers and libations to the family's domestic deities. Neighbourhood shrines and sacred places such as springs and groves dotted the city. The Roman calendar was structured around religious observances; as many as 135 days were devoted to religious festivals and games (\"ludi\").\nIn the wake of the Republic's collapse, state religion adapted to support the new regime. Augustus justified one-man rule with a vast programme of religious revivalism and reform. Public vows now were directed at the wellbeing of the emperor. So-called \"emperor worship\" expanded on a grand scale the traditional veneration of the ancestral dead and of the \"Genius\", the divine tutelary of every individual. Upon death, an emperor could be made a state divinity (\"divus\") by vote of the Senate. The Roman imperial cult, influenced by Hellenistic ruler cult, became one of the major ways Rome advertised its presence in the provinces and cultivated shared cultural identity. Cultural precedent in the Eastern provinces facilitated a rapid dissemination of Imperial cult, extending as far as Najran, in present-day Saudi Arabia. Rejection of the state religion became tantamount to treason.\nThe Romans are known for the great number of deities they honoured. As the Romans extended their territories, their general policy was to promote stability among diverse peoples by absorbing local deities and cults rather than eradicating them, building temples that framed local theology within Roman religion. Inscriptions throughout the Empire record the side-by-side worship of local and Roman deities, including dedications made by Romans to local gods. By the height of the Empire, numerous syncretic or reinterpreted gods were cultivated, among them cults of Cybele, Isis, Epona, and of solar gods such as Mithras and Sol Invictus, found as far north as Roman Britain. Because Romans had never been obligated to cultivate one god or cult only, religious tolerance was not an issue.\nMystery religions, which offered initiates salvation in the afterlife, were a matter of personal choice, practiced in addition to one's family rites and public religion. The mysteries, however, involved exclusive oaths and secrecy, which conservative Romans viewed with suspicion as characteristic of \"magic\", conspiracy (\"coniuratio\"), and subversive activity. Thus, sporadic and sometimes brutal attempts were made to suppress religionists. In Gaul, the power of the druids was checked, first by forbidding Roman citizens to belong to the order, and then by banning druidism altogether. However, Celtic traditions were reinterpreted within the context of Imperial theology, and a new Gallo-Roman religion coalesced; its capital at the Sanctuary of the Three Gauls established precedent for Western cult as a form of Roman-provincial identity. The monotheistic rigour of Judaism posed difficulties for Roman policy that led at times to compromise and granting of special exemptions. Tertullian noted that Judaism, unlike Christianity, was considered a \"religio licita\", \"legitimate religion\". The Jewish\u2013Roman wars resulted from political as well as religious conflicts; the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD led to the sacking of the Second Temple and the dispersal of Jewish political power (see Jewish diaspora).\nChristianity emerged in Roman Judaea as a Jewish religious sect in the 1st century and gradually spread out of Jerusalem throughout the Empire and beyond. Imperially authorized persecutions were limited and sporadic, with martyrdoms occurring most often under the authority of local officials. Tacitus reports that after the Great Fire of Rome in AD\u00a064, the emperor attempted to deflect blame from himself onto the Christians. A major persecution occurred under the emperor Domitian and a persecution in 177 took place at Lugdunum, the Gallo-Roman religious capital. A letter from Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia, describes his persecution and executions of Christians. The Decian persecution of 246\u2013251 seriously threatened the Christian Church, but ultimately strengthened Christian defiance. Diocletian undertook the most severe persecution of Christians, from 303 to 311.\nFrom the 2nd century onward, the Church Fathers condemned the diverse religions practiced throughout the Empire as \"pagan\". In the early 4th century, Constantine I became the first emperor to convert to Christianity. He supported the Church financially and made laws that favored it, but the new religion was already successful, having moved from less than 50,000 to over a million adherents between 150 and 250. Constantine and his successors banned public sacrifice while tolerating other traditional practices. Constantine never engaged in a purge, there were no \"pagan martyrs\" during his reign, and people who had not converted to Christianity remained in important positions at court. Julian attempted to revive traditional public sacrifice and Hellenistic religion, but met Christian resistance and lack of popular support.\nChristians of the 4th century believed the conversion of Constantine showed that Christianity had triumphed over paganism (in Heaven) and little further action besides such rhetoric was necessary. Thus, their focus shifted towards heresy. According to Peter Brown, \"In most areas, polytheists were not molested, and apart from a few ugly incidents of local violence, Jewish communities also enjoyed a century of stable, even privileged, existence\". There were anti-pagan laws, but they were not generally enforced; through the 6th century, centers of paganism existed in Athens, Gaza, Alexandria, and elsewhere.\nAccording to recent Jewish scholarship, toleration of the Jews was maintained under Christian emperors. This did not extend to heretics: Theodosius I made multiple laws and acted against alternate forms of Christianity, and heretics were persecuted and killed by both the government and the church throughout Late Antiquity. Non-Christians were not persecuted until the 6th century. Rome's original religious hierarchy and ritual influenced Christian forms, and many pre-Christian practices survived in Christian festivals and local traditions.\nLegacy.\nSeveral states claimed to be the Roman Empire's successor. The Holy Roman Empire was established in 800 when Pope Leo\u00a0III crowned Charlemagne as Roman emperor. The Russian Tsardom, as inheritor of the Byzantine Empire's Orthodox Christian tradition, counted itself the Third Rome (Constantinople having been the second), in accordance with the concept of translatio imperii. The last Eastern Roman titular, Andreas Palaiologos, sold the title of Emperor of Constantinople to Charles VIII of France; upon Charles' death, Palaiologos reclaimed the title and on his death granted it to Ferdinand and Isabella and their successors, who never used it. When the Ottomans, who based their state on the Byzantine model, took Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed\u00a0II established his capital there and claimed to sit on the throne of the Roman Empire. He even launched an invasion of Otranto with the purpose of re-uniting the Empire, which was aborted by his death. In the medieval West, \"Roman\" came to mean the church and the Catholic Pope. The Greek form Romaioi remained attached to the Greek-speaking Christian population of the Byzantine Empire and is still used by Greeks.\nThe Roman Empire's control of the Italian Peninsula influenced Italian nationalism and the unification of Italy (\"Risorgimento\") in 1861. \nIn the United States, the founders were educated in the classical tradition, and used classical models for landmarks in Washington, D.C.. The founders saw Athenian democracy and Roman republicanism as models for the mixed constitution, but regarded the emperor as a figure of tyranny.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nstyle=\"width:100%\""}, "descending_order": ["25507", "30570", "1313668"], "permutation_1": ["25507", "1313668", "30570"], "permutation_2": ["30570", "1313668", "25507"], "permutation_3": ["30570", "1313668", "25507"]}
{"id": "3hop1__42860_42467_91253", "docs_added": {"55212": "Newton's laws of motion\nLaws in physics about force and motion\n<templatestyles src=\"Hlist/styles.css\"/>\nNewton's laws of motion are three physical laws that describe the relationship between the motion of an object and the forces acting on it. These laws, which provide the basis for Newtonian mechanics, can be paraphrased as follows:\nThe three laws of motion were first stated by Isaac Newton in his \"Philosophi\u00e6 Naturalis Principia Mathematica\" (\"Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy\"), originally published in 1687. Newton used them to investigate and explain the motion of many physical objects and systems. In the time since Newton, new insights, especially around the concept of energy, built the field of classical mechanics on his foundations. Limitations to Newton's laws have also been discovered; new theories are necessary when objects move at very high speeds (special relativity), are very massive (general relativity), or are very small (quantum mechanics).\nPrerequisites.\nNewton's laws are often stated in terms of \"point\" or \"particle\" masses, that is, bodies whose volume is negligible. This is a reasonable approximation for real bodies when the motion of internal parts can be neglected, and when the separation between bodies is much larger than the size of each. For instance, the Earth and the Sun can both be approximated as pointlike when considering the orbit of the former around the latter, but the Earth is not pointlike when considering activities on its surface.\nThe mathematical description of motion, or kinematics, is based on the idea of specifying positions using numerical coordinates. Movement is represented by these numbers changing over time: a body's trajectory is represented by a function that assigns to each value of a time variable the values of all the position coordinates. The simplest case is one-dimensional, that is, when a body is constrained to move only along a straight line. Its position can then be given by a single number, indicating where it is relative to some chosen reference point. For example, a body might be free to slide along a track that runs left to right, and so its location can be specified by its distance from a convenient zero point, or origin, with negative numbers indicating positions to the left and positive numbers indicating positions to the right. If the body's location as a function of time is formula_1, then its average velocity over the time interval from formula_2 to formula_3 is formula_4Here, the Greek letter formula_5 (delta) is used, per tradition, to mean \"change in\". A positive average velocity means that the position coordinate formula_6 increases over the interval in question, a negative average velocity indicates a net decrease over that interval, and an average velocity of zero means that the body ends the time interval in the same place as it began. Calculus gives the means to define an \"instantaneous\" velocity, a measure of a body's speed and direction of movement at a single moment of time, rather than over an interval. One notation for the instantaneous velocity is to replace formula_5 with the symbol formula_8, for example,formula_9This denotes that the instantaneous velocity is the derivative of the position with respect to time. It can roughly be thought of as the ratio between an infinitesimally small change in position formula_10 to the infinitesimally small time interval formula_11 over which it occurs. More carefully, the velocity and all other derivatives can be defined using the concept of a limit. A function formula_12 has a limit of formula_13 at a given input value formula_2 if the difference between formula_15 and formula_13 can be made arbitrarily small by choosing an input sufficiently close to formula_2. One writes, formula_18Instantaneous velocity can be defined as the limit of the average velocity as the time interval shrinks to zero:formula_19 \"Acceleration\" is to velocity as velocity is to position: it is the derivative of the velocity with respect to time. Acceleration can likewise be defined as a limit:formula_20Consequently, the acceleration is the \"second derivative\" of position, often written formula_21.\nPosition, when thought of as a displacement from an origin point, is a vector: a quantity with both magnitude and direction.1 Velocity and acceleration are vector quantities as well. The mathematical tools of vector algebra provide the means to describe motion in two, three or more dimensions. Vectors are often denoted with an arrow, as in formula_22, or in bold typeface, such as formula_23. Often, vectors are represented visually as arrows, with the direction of the vector being the direction of the arrow, and the magnitude of the vector indicated by the length of the arrow. Numerically, a vector can be represented as a list; for example, a body's velocity vector might be formula_24, indicating that it is moving at 3 metres per second along the horizontal axis and 4 metres per second along the vertical axis. The same motion described in a different coordinate system will be represented by different numbers, and vector algebra can be used to translate between these alternatives.4 \nThe study of mechanics is complicated by the fact that household words like \"energy\" are used with a technical meaning. Moreover, words which are synonymous in everyday speech are not so in physics: \"force\" is not the same as \"power\" or \"pressure\", for example, and \"mass\" has a different meaning than \"weight\". The physics concept of \"force\" makes quantitative the everyday idea of a push or a pull. Forces in Newtonian mechanics are often due to strings and ropes, friction, muscle effort, gravity, and so forth. Like displacement, velocity, and acceleration, force is a vector quantity.\nLaws.\nFirst law.\nTranslated from Latin, Newton's first law reads,\n\"Every object perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed thereon.\"\nNewton's first law expresses the principle of inertia: the natural behavior of a body is to move in a straight line at constant speed. A body's motion preserves the status quo, but external forces can perturb this.\nThe modern understanding of Newton's first law is that no inertial observer is privileged over any other. The concept of an inertial observer makes quantitative the everyday idea of feeling no effects of motion. For example, a person standing on the ground watching a train go past is an inertial observer. If the observer on the ground sees the train moving smoothly in a straight line at a constant speed, then a passenger sitting on the train will also be an inertial observer: the train passenger \"feels\" no motion. The principle expressed by Newton's first law is that there is no way to say which inertial observer is \"really\" moving and which is \"really\" standing still. One observer's state of rest is another observer's state of uniform motion in a straight line, and no experiment can deem either point of view to be correct or incorrect. There is no absolute standard of rest. Newton himself believed that absolute space and time existed, but that the only measures of space or time accessible to experiment are relative.\n\"The change of motion of an object is proportional to the force impressed; and is made in the direction of the straight line in which the force is impressed.\"114\nSecond law.\nBy \"motion\", Newton meant the quantity now called momentum, which depends upon the amount of matter contained in a body, the speed at which that body is moving, and the direction in which it is moving. In modern notation, the momentum of a body is the product of its mass and its velocity:\nformula_25\nwhere all three quantities can change over time.\nIn common cases the mass formula_26 does not change with time and the derivative acts only upon the velocity. Then force equals the product of the mass and the time derivative of the velocity, which is the acceleration:\nformula_27\nAs the acceleration is the second derivative of position with respect to time, this can also be written\nformula_28\nNewton's second law, in modern form, states that the time derivative of the momentum is the force:4.1\nformula_29\nWhen applied to systems of variable mass, the equation above is only valid only for a fixed set of particles. Applying the derivative as in \nformula_30\ncan lead to incorrect results. For example, the momentum of a water jet system must include the momentum of the ejected water:\nformula_31\n The forces acting on a body add as vectors, and so the total force on a body depends upon both the magnitudes and the directions of the individual forces. When the net force on a body is equal to zero, then by Newton's second law, the body does not accelerate, and it is said to be in mechanical equilibrium. A state of mechanical equilibrium is \"stable\" if, when the position of the body is changed slightly, the body remains near that equilibrium. Otherwise, the equilibrium is \"unstable.\"\nA common visual representation of forces acting in concert is the free body diagram, which schematically portrays a body of interest and the forces applied to it by outside influences. For example, a free body diagram of a block sitting upon an inclined plane can illustrate the combination of gravitational force, \"normal\" force, friction, and string tension.\nNewton's second law is sometimes presented as a \"definition\" of force, i.e., a force is that which exists when an inertial observer sees a body accelerating. This is sometimes regarded as a potential tautology \u2014 acceleration implies force, force implies acceleration. However, Newton's second law not only merely defines the force by the acceleration: forces exist as separate from the acceleration produced by the force in a particular system. The same force that is identified as producing acceleration to an object can then be applied to any other object, and the resulting accelerations (coming from that same force) will always be inversely proportional to the mass of the object. What Newton's Second Law states is that all the effect of a force onto a system can be reduced to two pieces of information: the magnitude of the force, and it's direction, and then goes on to specify what the effect is.\nBeyond that, an equation detailing the force might also be specified, like Newton's law of universal gravitation. By inserting such an expression for formula_32 into Newton's second law, an equation with predictive power can be written. Newton's second law has also been regarded as setting out a research program for physics, establishing that important goals of the subject are to identify the forces present in nature and to catalogue the constituents of matter.13412-2\nHowever, forces can often be measured directly with no acceleration being involved, such as through weighing scales. By postulating a physical object that can be directly measured independently from acceleration, Newton made a objective physical statement with the second law alone, the predictions of which can be verified even if no force law is given.\n\"To every action, there is always opposed an equal reaction; or, the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.\"116\nThird law.\nOverly brief paraphrases of the third law, like \"action equals reaction\" might have caused confusion among generations of students: the \"action\" and \"reaction\" apply to different bodies. For example, consider a book at rest on a table. The Earth's gravity pulls down upon the book. The \"reaction\" to that \"action\" is \"not\" the support force from the table holding up the book, but the gravitational pull of the book acting on the Earth.\nNewton's third law relates to a more fundamental principle, the conservation of momentum. The latter remains true even in cases where Newton's statement does not, for instance when force fields as well as material bodies carry momentum, and when momentum is defined properly, in quantum mechanics as well. In Newtonian mechanics, if two bodies have momenta formula_33 and formula_34 respectively, then the total momentum of the pair is formula_35, and the rate of change of formula_36 is formula_37 By Newton's second law, the first term is the total force upon the first body, and the second term is the total force upon the second body. If the two bodies are isolated from outside influences, the only force upon the first body can be that from the second, and vice versa. By Newton's third law, these forces have equal magnitude but opposite direction, so they cancel when added, and formula_36 is constant. Alternatively, if formula_36 is known to be constant, it follows that the forces have equal magnitude and opposite direction.\nCandidates for additional laws.\nVarious sources have proposed elevating other ideas used in classical mechanics to the status of Newton's laws. For example, in Newtonian mechanics, the total mass of a body made by bringing together two smaller bodies is the sum of their individual masses. Frank Wilczek has suggested calling attention to this assumption by designating it \"Newton's Zeroth Law\". Another candidate for a \"zeroth law\" is the fact that at any instant, a body reacts to the forces applied to it at that instant. Likewise, the idea that forces add like vectors (or in other words obey the superposition principle), and the idea that forces change the energy of a body, have both been described as a \"fourth law\".\nMoreover, some texts organize the basic ideas of Newtonian mechanics into different postulates, other than the three laws as commonly phrased, with the goal of being more clear about what is empirically observed and what is true by definition.9\nExamples.\nThe study of the behavior of massive bodies using Newton's laws is known as Newtonian mechanics. Some example problems in Newtonian mechanics are particularly noteworthy for conceptual or historical reasons.\nUniformly accelerated motion.\nIf a body falls from rest near the surface of the Earth, then in the absence of air resistance, it will accelerate at a constant rate. This is known as free fall. The speed attained during free fall is proportional to the elapsed time, and the distance traveled is proportional to the square of the elapsed time. Importantly, the acceleration is the same for all bodies, independently of their mass. This follows from combining Newton's second law of motion with his law of universal gravitation. The latter states that the magnitude of the gravitational force from the Earth upon the body is\nformula_40\nwhere formula_26 is the mass of the falling body, formula_42 is the mass of the Earth, formula_43 is Newton's constant, and formula_44 is the distance from the center of the Earth to the body's location, which is very nearly the radius of the Earth. Setting this equal to formula_45, the body's mass formula_26 cancels from both sides of the equation, leaving an acceleration that depends upon formula_43, formula_42, and formula_44, and formula_44 can be taken to be constant. This particular value of acceleration is typically denoted formula_51:\nformula_52\nIf the body is not released from rest but instead launched upwards and/or horizontally with nonzero velocity, then free fall becomes projectile motion. When air resistance can be neglected, projectiles follow parabola-shaped trajectories, because gravity affects the body's vertical motion and not its horizontal. At the peak of the projectile's trajectory, its vertical velocity is zero, but its acceleration is formula_51 downwards, as it is at all times. Setting the wrong vector equal to zero is a common confusion among physics students.\nUniform circular motion.\nWhen a body is in uniform circular motion, the force on it changes the direction of its motion but not its speed. For a body moving in a circle of radius formula_44 at a constant speed formula_55, its acceleration has a magnitudeformula_56and is directed toward the center of the circle. The force required to sustain this acceleration, called the centripetal force, is therefore also directed toward the center of the circle and has magnitude formula_57. Many orbits, such as that of the Moon around the Earth, can be approximated by uniform circular motion. In such cases, the centripetal force is gravity, and by Newton's law of universal gravitation has magnitude formula_58, where formula_42 is the mass of the larger body being orbited. Therefore, the mass of a body can be calculated from observations of another body orbiting around it.130\nNewton's cannonball is a thought experiment that interpolates between projectile motion and uniform circular motion. A cannonball that is lobbed weakly off the edge of a tall cliff will hit the ground in the same amount of time as if it were dropped from rest, because the force of gravity only affects the cannonball's momentum in the downward direction, and its effect is not diminished by horizontal movement. If the cannonball is launched with a greater initial horizontal velocity, then it will travel farther before it hits the ground, but it will still hit the ground in the same amount of time. However, if the cannonball is launched with an even larger initial velocity, then the curvature of the Earth becomes significant: the ground itself will curve away from the falling cannonball. A very fast cannonball will fall away from the inertial straight-line trajectory at the same rate that the Earth curves away beneath it; in other words, it will be in orbit (imagining that it is not slowed by air resistance or obstacles).\nHarmonic motion.\nConsider a body of mass formula_26 able to move along the formula_61 axis, and suppose an equilibrium point exists at the position formula_62. That is, at formula_62, the net force upon the body is the zero vector, and by Newton's second law, the body will not accelerate. If the force upon the body is proportional to the displacement from the equilibrium point, and directed to the equilibrium point, then the body will perform simple harmonic motion. Writing the force as formula_64, Newton's second law becomes\nformula_65\nThis differential equation has the solution\nformula_66\nwhere the frequency formula_67 is equal to formula_68, and the constants formula_69 and formula_70 can be calculated knowing, for example, the position and velocity the body has at a given time, like formula_71.\nOne reason that the harmonic oscillator is a conceptually important example is that it is good approximation for many systems near a stable mechanical equilibrium. For example, a pendulum has a stable equilibrium in the vertical position: if motionless there, it will remain there, and if pushed slightly, it will swing back and forth. Neglecting air resistance and friction in the pivot, the force upon the pendulum is gravity, and Newton's second law becomes formula_72where formula_13 is the length of the pendulum and formula_74 is its angle from the vertical. When the angle formula_74 is small, the sine of formula_74 is nearly equal to formula_74 (see small-angle approximation), and so this expression simplifies to the equation for a simple harmonic oscillator with frequency formula_78.\nA harmonic oscillator can be \"damped,\" often by friction or viscous drag, in which case energy bleeds out of the oscillator and the amplitude of the oscillations decreases over time. Also, a harmonic oscillator can be \"driven\" by an applied force, which can lead to the phenomenon of resonance.\nObjects with variable mass.\nNewtonian physics treats matter as being neither created nor destroyed, though it may be rearranged. It can be the case that an object of interest gains or loses mass because matter is added to or removed from it. In such a situation, Newton's laws can be applied to the individual pieces of matter, keeping track of which pieces belong to the object of interest over time. For instance, if a rocket of mass formula_79, moving at velocity formula_80, ejects matter at a velocity formula_81 relative to the rocket, then\nformula_82\nwhere formula_32 is the net external force (e.g., a planet's gravitational pull).\nFan and sail.\nThe fan and sail example is a situation studied in discussions of Newton's third law. In the situation, a fan is attached to a cart or a sailboat and blows on its sail. From the third law, one would reason that the force of the air pushing in one direction would cancel out the force done by the fan on the sail, leaving the entire apparatus stationary. However, because the system is not entirely enclosed, there are conditions in which the vessel will move; for example, if the sail is built in a manner that redirects the majority of the airflow back towards the fan, the net force will result in the vessel moving forward.\nWork and energy.\nThe concept of energy was developed after Newton's time, but it has become an inseparable part of what is considered \"Newtonian\" physics. Energy can broadly be classified into kinetic, due to a body's motion, and potential, due to a body's position relative to others. Thermal energy, the energy carried by heat flow, is a type of kinetic energy not associated with the macroscopic motion of objects but instead with the movements of the atoms and molecules of which they are made. According to the work-energy theorem, when a force acts upon a body while that body moves along the line of the force, the force does \"work\" upon the body, and the amount of work done is equal to the change in the body's kinetic energy. In many cases of interest, the net work done by a force when a body moves in a closed loop \u2014 starting at a point, moving along some trajectory, and returning to the initial point \u2014 is zero. If this is the case, then the force can be written in terms of the gradient of a function called a scalar potential:303\nformula_84\nThis is true for many forces including that of gravity, but not for friction; indeed, almost any problem in a mechanics textbook that does not involve friction can be expressed in this way.19 The fact that the force can be written in this way can be understood from the conservation of energy. Without friction to dissipate a body's energy into heat, the body's energy will trade between potential and (non-thermal) kinetic forms while the total amount remains constant. Any gain of kinetic energy, which occurs when the net force on the body accelerates it to a higher speed, must be accompanied by a loss of potential energy. So, the net force upon the body is determined by the manner in which the potential energy decreases.\nRigid-body motion and rotation.\nA rigid body is an object whose size is too large to neglect and which maintains the same shape over time. In Newtonian mechanics, the motion of a rigid body is often understood by separating it into movement of the body's center of mass and movement around the center of mass.\nCenter of mass.\nSignificant aspects of the motion of an extended body can be understood by imagining the mass of that body concentrated to a single point, known as the center of mass. The location of a body's center of mass depends upon how that body's material is distributed. For a collection of pointlike objects with masses formula_85 at positions formula_86, the center of mass is located at formula_87 where formula_42 is the total mass of the collection. In the absence of a net external force, the center of mass moves at a constant speed in a straight line. This applies, for example, to a collision between two bodies. If the total external force is not zero, then the center of mass changes velocity as though it were a point body of mass formula_42. This follows from the fact that the internal forces within the collection, the forces that the objects exert upon each other, occur in balanced pairs by Newton's third law. In a system of two bodies with one much more massive than the other, the center of mass will approximately coincide with the location of the more massive body.\nRotational analogues of Newton's laws.\nWhen Newton's laws are applied to rotating extended bodies, they lead to new quantities that are analogous to those invoked in the original laws. The analogue of mass is the moment of inertia, the counterpart of momentum is angular momentum, and the counterpart of force is torque.\nAngular momentum is calculated with respect to a reference point. If the displacement vector from a reference point to a body is formula_90 and the body has momentum formula_36, then the body's angular momentum with respect to that point is, using the vector cross product, formula_92 Taking the time derivative of the angular momentum gives formula_93 The first term vanishes because formula_94 and formula_95 point in the same direction. The remaining term is the torque, formula_96 When the torque is zero, the angular momentum is constant, just as when the force is zero, the momentum is constant. The torque can vanish even when the force is non-zero, if the body is located at the reference point (formula_97) or if the force formula_32 and the displacement vector formula_90 are directed along the same line.\nThe angular momentum of a collection of point masses, and thus of an extended body, is found by adding the contributions from each of the points. This provides a means to characterize a body's rotation about an axis, by adding up the angular momenta of its individual pieces. The result depends on the chosen axis, the shape of the body, and the rate of rotation.28\nMulti-body gravitational system.\nNewton's law of universal gravitation states that any body attracts any other body along the straight line connecting them. The size of the attracting force is proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Finding the shape of the orbits that an inverse-square force law will produce is known as the Kepler problem. The Kepler problem can be solved in multiple ways, including by demonstrating that the Laplace\u2013Runge\u2013Lenz vector is constant, or by applying a duality transformation to a 2-dimensional harmonic oscillator. However it is solved, the result is that orbits will be conic sections, that is, ellipses (including circles), parabolas, or hyperbolas. The eccentricity of the orbit, and thus the type of conic section, is determined by the energy and the angular momentum of the orbiting body. Planets do not have sufficient energy to escape the Sun, and so their orbits are ellipses, to a good approximation; because the planets pull on one another, actual orbits are not exactly conic sections.\nIf a third mass is added, the Kepler problem becomes the three-body problem, which in general has no exact solution in closed form. That is, there is no way to start from the differential equations implied by Newton's laws and, after a finite sequence of standard mathematical operations, obtain equations that express the three bodies' motions over time. Numerical methods can be applied to obtain useful, albeit approximate, results for the three-body problem. The positions and velocities of the bodies can be stored in variables within a computer's memory; Newton's laws are used to calculate how the velocities will change over a short interval of time, and knowing the velocities, the changes of position over that time interval can be computed. This process is looped to calculate, approximately, the bodies' trajectories. Generally speaking, the shorter the time interval, the more accurate the approximation.\nChaos and unpredictability.\nNonlinear dynamics.\nNewton's laws of motion allow the possibility of chaos. That is, qualitatively speaking, physical systems obeying Newton's laws can exhibit sensitive dependence upon their initial conditions: a slight change of the position or velocity of one part of a system can lead to the whole system behaving in a radically different way within a short time. Noteworthy examples include the three-body problem, the double pendulum, dynamical billiards, and the Fermi\u2013Pasta\u2013Ulam\u2013Tsingou problem.\nNewton's laws can be applied to fluids by considering a fluid as composed of infinitesimal pieces, each exerting forces upon neighboring pieces. The Euler momentum equation is an expression of Newton's second law adapted to fluid dynamics. A fluid is described by a velocity field, i.e., a function formula_100 that assigns a velocity vector to each point in space and time. A small object being carried along by the fluid flow can change velocity for two reasons: first, because the velocity field at its position is changing over time, and second, because it moves to a new location where the velocity field has a different value. Consequently, when Newton's second law is applied to an infinitesimal portion of fluid, the acceleration formula_101 has two terms, a combination known as a \"total\" or \"material\" derivative. The mass of an infinitesimal portion depends upon the fluid density, and there is a net force upon it if the fluid pressure varies from one side of it to another. Accordingly, formula_102 becomes\nformula_103\nwhere formula_104 is the density, formula_105 is the pressure, and formula_106 stands for an external influence like a gravitational pull. Incorporating the effect of viscosity turns the Euler equation into a Navier\u2013Stokes equation:\nformula_107\nwhere formula_108 is the kinematic viscosity.\nSingularities.\nIt is mathematically possible for a collection of point masses, moving in accord with Newton's laws, to launch some of themselves away so forcefully that they fly off to infinity in a finite time. This unphysical behavior, known as a \"noncollision singularity\", depends upon the masses being pointlike and able to approach one another arbitrarily closely, as well as the lack of a relativistic speed limit in Newtonian physics.\nIt is not yet known whether or not the Euler and Navier\u2013Stokes equations exhibit the analogous behavior of initially smooth solutions \"blowing up\" in finite time. The question of existence and smoothness of Navier\u2013Stokes solutions is one of the Millennium Prize Problems.\nRelation to other formulations of classical physics.\nClassical mechanics can be mathematically formulated in multiple different ways, other than the \"Newtonian\" description (which itself, of course, incorporates contributions from others both before and after Newton). The physical content of these different formulations is the same as the Newtonian, but they provide different insights and facilitate different types of calculations. For example, Lagrangian mechanics helps make apparent the connection between symmetries and conservation laws, and it is useful when calculating the motion of constrained bodies, like a mass restricted to move along a curving track or on the surface of a sphere. Hamiltonian mechanics is convenient for statistical physics, leads to further insight about symmetry, and can be developed into sophisticated techniques for perturbation theory. Due to the breadth of these topics, the discussion here will be confined to concise treatments of how they reformulate Newton's laws of motion.\nLagrangian.\nLagrangian mechanics differs from the Newtonian formulation by considering entire trajectories at once rather than predicting a body's motion at a single instant.109 It is traditional in Lagrangian mechanics to denote position with formula_109 and velocity with formula_110. The simplest example is a massive point particle, the Lagrangian for which can be written as the difference between its kinetic and potential energies:\nformula_111\nwhere the kinetic energy is\nformula_112\nand the potential energy is some function of the position, formula_113. The physical path that the particle will take between an initial point formula_114 and a final point formula_115 is the path for which the integral of the Lagrangian is \"stationary\". That is, the physical path has the property that small perturbations of it will, to a first approximation, not change the integral of the Lagrangian. Calculus of variations provides the mathematical tools for finding this path.485 Applying the calculus of variations to the task of finding the path yields the Euler\u2013Lagrange equation for the particle,\nformula_116\nEvaluating the partial derivatives of the Lagrangian gives\nformula_117\nwhich is a restatement of Newton's second law. The left-hand side is the time derivative of the momentum, and the right-hand side is the force, represented in terms of the potential energy.737\nLandau and Lifshitz argue that the Lagrangian formulation makes the conceptual content of classical mechanics more clear than starting with Newton's laws. Lagrangian mechanics provides a convenient framework in which to prove Noether's theorem, which relates symmetries and conservation laws. The conservation of momentum can be derived by applying Noether's theorem to a Lagrangian for a multi-particle system, and so, Newton's third law is a theorem rather than an assumption.124\nHamiltonian.\nIn Hamiltonian mechanics, the dynamics of a system are represented by a function called the Hamiltonian, which in many cases of interest is equal to the total energy of the system.742 The Hamiltonian is a function of the positions and the momenta of all the bodies making up the system, and it may also depend explicitly upon time. The time derivatives of the position and momentum variables are given by partial derivatives of the Hamiltonian, via Hamilton's equations.203 The simplest example is a point mass formula_26 constrained to move in a straight line, under the effect of a potential. Writing formula_109 for the position coordinate and formula_120 for the body's momentum, the Hamiltonian is\nformula_121\nIn this example, Hamilton's equations are\nformula_122\nand\nformula_123\nEvaluating these partial derivatives, the former equation becomes\nformula_124\nwhich reproduces the familiar statement that a body's momentum is the product of its mass and velocity. The time derivative of the momentum is\nformula_125\nwhich, upon identifying the negative derivative of the potential with the force, is just Newton's second law once again.742\nAs in the Lagrangian formulation, in Hamiltonian mechanics the conservation of momentum can be derived using Noether's theorem, making Newton's third law an idea that is deduced rather than assumed.251\nAmong the proposals to reform the standard introductory-physics curriculum is one that teaches the concept of energy before that of force, essentially \"introductory Hamiltonian mechanics\".\nHamilton\u2013Jacobi.\nThe Hamilton\u2013Jacobi equation provides yet another formulation of classical mechanics, one which makes it mathematically analogous to wave optics.284 This formulation also uses Hamiltonian functions, but in a different way than the formulation described above. The paths taken by bodies or collections of bodies are deduced from a function formula_126 of positions formula_127 and time formula_128. The Hamiltonian is incorporated into the Hamilton\u2013Jacobi equation, a differential equation for formula_129. Bodies move over time in such a way that their trajectories are perpendicular to the surfaces of constant formula_129, analogously to how a light ray propagates in the direction perpendicular to its wavefront. This is simplest to express for the case of a single point mass, in which formula_129 is a function formula_132, and the point mass moves in the direction along which formula_129 changes most steeply. In other words, the momentum of the point mass is the gradient of formula_129:\nformula_135\nThe Hamilton\u2013Jacobi equation for a point mass is\nformula_136\nThe relation to Newton's laws can be seen by considering a point mass moving in a time-independent potential formula_137, in which case the Hamilton\u2013Jacobi equation becomes\nformula_138\nTaking the gradient of both sides, this becomes\nformula_139\nInterchanging the order of the partial derivatives on the left-hand side, and using the power and chain rules on the first term on the right-hand side,\nformula_140\nGathering together the terms that depend upon the gradient of formula_129,\nformula_142\nThis is another re-expression of Newton's second law. The expression in brackets is a \"total\" or \"material\" derivative as mentioned above, in which the first term indicates how the function being differentiated changes over time at a fixed location, and the second term captures how a moving particle will see different values of that function as it travels from place to place:\nformula_143\nRelation to other physical theories.\nThermodynamics and statistical physics.\nIn statistical physics, the kinetic theory of gases applies Newton's laws of motion to large numbers (typically on the order of the Avogadro number) of particles. Kinetic theory can explain, for example, the pressure that a gas exerts upon the container holding it as the aggregate of many impacts of atoms, each imparting a tiny amount of momentum.62\nThe Langevin equation is a special case of Newton's second law, adapted for the case of describing a small object bombarded stochastically by even smaller ones.235 It can be writtenformula_144where formula_145 is a drag coefficient and formula_146 is a force that varies randomly from instant to instant, representing the net effect of collisions with the surrounding particles. This is used to model Brownian motion.\nElectromagnetism.\nNewton's three laws can be applied to phenomena involving electricity and magnetism, though subtleties and caveats exist.\nCoulomb's law for the electric force between two stationary, electrically charged bodies has much the same mathematical form as Newton's law of universal gravitation: the force is proportional to the product of the charges, inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them, and directed along the straight line between them. The Coulomb force that a charge formula_147 exerts upon a charge formula_148 is equal in magnitude to the force that formula_148 exerts upon formula_147, and it points in the exact opposite direction. Coulomb's law is thus consistent with Newton's third law.\nElectromagnetism treats forces as produced by \"fields\" acting upon charges. The Lorentz force law provides an expression for the force upon a charged body that can be plugged into Newton's second law in order to calculate its acceleration.85 According to the Lorentz force law, a charged body in an electric field experiences a force in the direction of that field, a force proportional to its charge formula_109 and to the strength of the electric field. In addition, a \"moving\" charged body in a magnetic field experiences a force that is also proportional to its charge, in a direction perpendicular to both the field and the body's direction of motion. Using the vector cross product,formula_152\nIf the electric field vanishes (formula_153), then the force will be perpendicular to the charge's motion, just as in the case of uniform circular motion studied above, and the charge will circle (or more generally move in a helix) around the magnetic field lines at the cyclotron frequency formula_154.222 Mass spectrometry works by applying electric and/or magnetic fields to moving charges and measuring the resulting acceleration, which by the Lorentz force law yields the mass-to-charge ratio.\nCollections of charged bodies do not always obey Newton's third law: there can be a change of one body's momentum without a compensatory change in the momentum of another. The discrepancy is accounted for by momentum carried by the electromagnetic field itself. The momentum per unit volume of the electromagnetic field is proportional to the Poynting vector.\nThere is subtle conceptual conflict between electromagnetism and Newton's first law: Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism predicts that electromagnetic waves will travel through empty space at a constant, definite speed. Thus, some inertial observers seemingly have a privileged status over the others, namely those who measure the speed of light and find it to be the value predicted by the Maxwell equations. In other words, light provides an absolute standard for speed, yet the principle of inertia holds that there should be no such standard. This tension is resolved in the theory of special relativity, which revises the notions of \"space\" and \"time\" in such a way that all inertial observers will agree upon the speed of light in vacuum.\nSpecial relativity.\nIn special relativity, the rule that Wilczek called \"Newton's Zeroth Law\" breaks down: the mass of a composite object is not merely the sum of the masses of the individual pieces.33 Newton's first law, inertial motion, remains true. A form of Newton's second law, that force is the rate of change of momentum, also holds, as does the conservation of momentum. However, the definition of momentum is modified. Among the consequences of this is the fact that the more quickly a body moves, the harder it is to accelerate, and so, no matter how much force is applied, a body cannot be accelerated to the speed of light. Depending on the problem at hand, momentum in special relativity can be represented as a three-dimensional vector, formula_155, where formula_26 is the body's rest mass and formula_145 is the Lorentz factor, which depends upon the body's speed. Alternatively, momentum and force can be represented as four-vectors.107\nNewton's third law must be modified in special relativity. The third law refers to the forces between two bodies at the same moment in time, and a key feature of special relativity is that simultaneity is relative. Events that happen at the same time relative to one observer can happen at different times relative to another. So, in a given observer's frame of reference, action and reaction may not be exactly opposite, and the total momentum of interacting bodies may not be conserved. The conservation of momentum is restored by including the momentum stored in the field that describes the bodies' interaction.\nNewtonian mechanics is a good approximation to special relativity when the speeds involved are small compared to that of light.131\nGeneral relativity.\nGeneral relativity is a theory of gravity that advances beyond that of Newton. In general relativity, the gravitational force of Newtonian mechanics is reimagined as curvature of spacetime. A curved path like an orbit, attributed to a gravitational force in Newtonian mechanics, is not the result of a force deflecting a body from an ideal straight-line path, but rather the body's attempt to fall freely through a background that is itself curved by the presence of other masses. A remark by John Archibald Wheeler that has become proverbial among physicists summarizes the theory: \"Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve.\" Wheeler himself thought of this reciprocal relationship as a modern, generalized form of Newton's third law. The relation between matter distribution and spacetime curvature is given by the Einstein field equations, which require tensor calculus to express.43\nThe Newtonian theory of gravity is a good approximation to the predictions of general relativity when gravitational effects are weak and objects are moving slowly compared to the speed of light.327\nQuantum mechanics.\nQuantum mechanics is a theory of physics originally developed in order to understand microscopic phenomena: behavior at the scale of molecules, atoms or subatomic particles. Generally and loosely speaking, the smaller a system is, the more an adequate mathematical model will require understanding quantum effects. The conceptual underpinning of quantum physics is very different from that of classical physics. Instead of thinking about quantities like position, momentum, and energy as properties that an object \"has\", one considers what result might \"appear\" when a measurement of a chosen type is performed. Quantum mechanics allows the physicist to calculate the probability that a chosen measurement will elicit a particular result. The expectation value for a measurement is the average of the possible results it might yield, weighted by their probabilities of occurrence.\nThe Ehrenfest theorem provides a connection between quantum expectation values and Newton's second law, a connection that is necessarily inexact, as quantum physics is fundamentally different from classical. In quantum physics, position and momentum are represented by mathematical entities known as Hermitian operators, and the Born rule is used to calculate the expectation values of a position measurement or a momentum measurement. These expectation values will generally change over time; that is, depending on the time at which (for example) a position measurement is performed, the probabilities for its different possible outcomes will vary. The Ehrenfest theorem says, roughly speaking, that the equations describing how these expectation values change over time have a form reminiscent of Newton's second law. However, the more pronounced quantum effects are in a given situation, the more difficult it is to derive meaningful conclusions from this resemblance.\nHistory.\nThe concepts invoked in Newton's laws of motion \u2014 mass, velocity, momentum, force \u2014 have predecessors in earlier work, and the content of Newtonian physics was further developed after Newton's time. Newton combined knowledge of celestial motions with the study of events on Earth and showed that one theory of mechanics could encompass both.\nAs noted by scholar I. Bernard Cohen, Newton's work was more than a mere synthesis of previous results, as he selected certain ideas and further transformed them, with each in a new form that was useful to him, while at the same time proving false of certain basic or fundamental principles of scientists such as Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Ren\u00e9 Descartes, and Nicolaus Copernicus. He approached natural philosophy with mathematics in a completely novel way, in that instead of a preconceived natural philosophy, his style was to begin with a mathematical construct, and build on from there, comparing it to the real world to show that his system accurately accounted for it.\nAntiquity and medieval background.\nAristotle and \"violent\" motion.\nThe subject of physics is often traced back to Aristotle, but the history of the concepts involved is obscured by multiple factors. An exact correspondence between Aristotelian and modern concepts is not simple to establish: Aristotle did not clearly distinguish what we would call speed and force, used the same term for density and viscosity, and conceived of motion as always through a medium, rather than through space. In addition, some concepts often termed \"Aristotelian\" might better be attributed to his followers and commentators upon him. These commentators found that Aristotelian physics had difficulty explaining projectile motion. Aristotle divided motion into two types: \"natural\" and \"violent\". The \"natural\" motion of terrestrial solid matter was to fall downwards, whereas a \"violent\" motion could push a body sideways. Moreover, in Aristotelian physics, a \"violent\" motion requires an immediate cause; separated from the cause of its \"violent\" motion, a body would revert to its \"natural\" behavior. Yet, a javelin continues moving after it leaves the thrower's hand. Aristotle concluded that the air around the javelin must be imparted with the ability to move the javelin forward. \nPhiloponus and impetus.\nJohn Philoponus, a Byzantine Greek thinker active during the sixth century, found this absurd: the same medium, air, was somehow responsible both for sustaining motion and for impeding it. If Aristotle's idea were true, Philoponus said, armies would launch weapons by blowing upon them with bellows. Philoponus argued that setting a body into motion imparted a quality, impetus, that would be contained within the body itself. As long as its impetus was sustained, the body would continue to move. In the following centuries, versions of impetus theory were advanced by individuals including Nur ad-Din al-Bitruji, Avicenna, Abu'l-Barak\u0101t al-Baghd\u0101d\u012b, John Buridan, and Albert of Saxony. In retrospect, the idea of impetus can be seen as a forerunner of the modern concept of momentum. The intuition that objects move according to some kind of impetus persists in many students of introductory physics.\nInertia and the first law.\nThe French philosopher Ren\u00e9 Descartes introduced the concept of inertia by way of his \"laws of nature\" in \"The World\" (\"Trait\u00e9 du monde et de la lumi\u00e8re\") written 1629\u201333. However, \"The World\" purported a heliocentric worldview, and in 1633 this view had given rise a great conflict between Galileo Galilei and the Roman Catholic Inquisition. Descartes knew about this controversy and did not wish to get involved. \"The World\" was not published until 1664, ten years after his death.\nThe modern concept of inertia is credited to Galileo. Based on his experiments, Galileo concluded that the \"natural\" behavior of a moving body was to keep moving, until something else interfered with it. In \"Two New Sciences\" (1638) Galileo wrote:<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Imagine any particle projected along a horizontal plane without friction; then we know, from what has been more fully explained in the preceding pages, that this particle will move along this same plane with a motion which is uniform and perpetual, provided the plane has no limits.Galileo recognized that in projectile motion, the Earth's gravity affects vertical but not horizontal motion. However, Galileo's idea of inertia was not exactly the one that would be codified into Newton's first law. Galileo thought that a body moving a long distance inertially would follow the curve of the Earth. This idea was corrected by Isaac Beeckman, Descartes, and Pierre Gassendi, who recognized that inertial motion should be motion in a straight line. Descartes published his laws of nature (laws of motion) with this correction in \"Principles of Philosophy\" (\"Principia Philosophiae\") in 1644, with the heliocentric part toned down.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />First Law of Nature: Each thing when left to itself continues in the same state; so any moving body goes on moving until something stops it.<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Second Law of Nature: Each moving thing if left to itself moves in a straight line; so any body moving in a circle always tends to move away from the centre of the circle.\nAccording to American philosopher Richard J. Blackwell, Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens had worked out his own, concise version of the law in 1656. It was not published until 1703, eight years after his death, in the opening paragraph of \"De Motu Corporum ex Percussione\".\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Hypothesis I: Any body already in motion will continue to move perpetually with the same speed and in a straight line unless it is impeded.\nAccording to Huygens, this law was already known by Galileo and Descartes among others.\nForce and the second law.\nChristiaan Huygens, in his \"Horologium Oscillatorium\" (1673), put forth the hypothesis that \"By the action of gravity, whatever its sources, it happens that bodies are moved by a motion composed both of a uniform motion in one direction or another and of a motion downward due to gravity.\" Newton's second law generalized this hypothesis from gravity to all forces.\nOne important characteristic of Newtonian physics is that forces can act at a distance without requiring physical contact. For example, the Sun and the Earth pull on each other gravitationally, despite being separated by millions of kilometres. This contrasts with the idea, championed by Descartes among others, that the Sun's gravity held planets in orbit by swirling them in a vortex of transparent matter, \"aether\". Newton considered aetherial explanations of force but ultimately rejected them. The study of magnetism by William Gilbert and others created a precedent for thinking of \"immaterial\" forces, and unable to find a quantitatively satisfactory explanation of his law of gravity in terms of an aetherial model, Newton eventually declared, \"I feign no hypotheses\": whether or not a model like Descartes's vortices could be found to underlie the \"Principia\"'s theories of motion and gravity, the first grounds for judging them must be the successful predictions they made. And indeed, since Newton's time every attempt at such a model has failed.\nMomentum conservation and the third law.\nJohannes Kepler suggested that gravitational attractions were reciprocal \u2014 that, for example, the Moon pulls on the Earth while the Earth pulls on the Moon \u2014 but he did not argue that such pairs are equal and opposite. In his \"Principles of Philosophy\" (1644), Descartes introduced the idea that during a collision between bodies, a \"quantity of motion\" remains unchanged. Descartes defined this quantity somewhat imprecisely by adding up the products of the speed and \"size\" of each body, where \"size\" for him incorporated both volume and surface area. Moreover, Descartes thought of the universe as a plenum, that is, filled with matter, so all motion required a body to displace a medium as it moved. \nDuring the 1650s, Huygens studied collisions between hard spheres and deduced a principle that is now identified as the conservation of momentum. Christopher Wren would later deduce the same rules for elastic collisions that Huygens had, and John Wallis would apply momentum conservation to study inelastic collisions. Newton cited the work of Huygens, Wren, and Wallis to support the validity of his third law.\nNewton arrived at his set of three laws incrementally. In a 1684 manuscript written to Huygens, he listed four laws: the principle of inertia, the change of motion by force, a statement about relative motion that would today be called Galilean invariance, and the rule that interactions between bodies do not change the motion of their center of mass. In a later manuscript, Newton added a law of action and reaction, while saying that this law and the law regarding the center of mass implied one another. Newton probably settled on the presentation in the \"Principia,\" with three primary laws and then other statements reduced to corollaries, during 1685.\nAfter the \"Principia\".\nNewton expressed his second law by saying that the force on a body is proportional to its change of motion, or momentum. By the time he wrote the \"Principia,\" he had already developed calculus (which he called \"the science of fluxions\"), but in the \"Principia\" he made no explicit use of it, perhaps because he believed geometrical arguments in the tradition of Euclid to be more rigorous.15 Consequently, the \"Principia\" does not express acceleration as the second derivative of position, and so it does not give the second law as formula_158. This form of the second law was written (for the special case of constant force) at least as early as 1716, by Jakob Hermann; Leonhard Euler would employ it as a basic premise in the 1740s. Euler pioneered the study of rigid bodies and established the basic theory of fluid dynamics. Pierre-Simon Laplace's five-volume \"Trait\u00e9 de m\u00e9canique c\u00e9leste\" (1798\u20131825) forsook geometry and developed mechanics purely through algebraic expressions, while resolving questions that the \"Principia\" had left open, like a full theory of the tides.\nThe concept of energy became a key part of Newtonian mechanics in the post-Newton period. Huygens' solution of the collision of hard spheres showed that in that case, not only is momentum conserved, but kinetic energy is as well (or, rather, a quantity that in retrospect we can identify as one-half the total kinetic energy). The question of what is conserved during all other processes, like inelastic collisions and motion slowed by friction, was not resolved until the 19th century. Debates on this topic overlapped with philosophical disputes between the metaphysical views of Newton and Leibniz, and variants of the term \"force\" were sometimes used to denote what we would call types of energy. For example, in 1742, \u00c9milie du Ch\u00e2telet wrote, \"Dead force consists of a simple tendency to motion: such is that of a spring ready to relax; living force is that which a body has when it is in actual motion.\" In modern terminology, \"dead force\" and \"living force\" correspond to potential energy and kinetic energy respectively. Conservation of energy was not established as a universal principle until it was understood that the energy of mechanical work can be dissipated into heat. With the concept of energy given a solid grounding, Newton's laws could then be derived within formulations of classical mechanics that put energy first, as in the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations described above.\nModern presentations of Newton's laws use the mathematics of vectors, a topic that was not developed until the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Vector algebra, pioneered by Josiah Willard Gibbs and Oliver Heaviside, stemmed from and largely supplanted the earlier system of quaternions invented by William Rowan Hamilton.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "10902": "Force\nInfluence that can change motion of an object\n<templatestyles src=\"Hlist/styles.css\"/>\nA force is an influence that can cause an object to change its velocity unless counterbalanced by other forces. The concept of force makes the everyday notion of pushing or pulling mathematically precise. Because the magnitude and direction of a force are both important, force is a vector quantity. The SI unit of force is the newton (N), and force is often represented by the symbol F.\nForce plays an important role in classical mechanics. The concept of force is central to all three of Newton's laws of motion. Types of forces often encountered in classical mechanics include elastic, frictional, contact or \"normal\" forces, and gravitational. The rotational version of force is torque, which produces changes in the rotational speed of an object. In an extended body, each part applies forces on the adjacent parts; the distribution of such forces through the body is the internal mechanical stress. In the case of multiple forces, if the net force on an extended body is zero the body is in equilibrium. \nIn modern physics, which includes relativity and quantum mechanics, the laws governing motion are revised to rely on fundamental interactions as the ultimate origin of force. However, the understanding of force provided by classical mechanics is useful for practical purposes.\nDevelopment of the concept.\nPhilosophers in antiquity used the concept of force in the study of stationary and moving objects and simple machines, but thinkers such as Aristotle and Archimedes retained fundamental errors in understanding force. In part, this was due to an incomplete understanding of the sometimes non-obvious force of friction and a consequently inadequate view of the nature of natural motion. A fundamental error was the belief that a force is required to maintain motion, even at a constant velocity. Most of the previous misunderstandings about motion and force were eventually corrected by Galileo Galilei and Sir Isaac Newton. With his mathematical insight, Newton formulated laws of motion that were not improved for over two hundred years.\nBy the early 20th century, Einstein developed a theory of relativity that correctly predicted the action of forces on objects with increasing momenta near the speed of light and also provided insight into the forces produced by gravitation and inertia. With modern insights into quantum mechanics and technology that can accelerate particles close to the speed of light, particle physics has devised a Standard Model to describe forces between particles smaller than atoms. The Standard Model predicts that exchanged particles called gauge bosons are the fundamental means by which forces are emitted and absorbed. Only four main interactions are known: in order of decreasing strength, they are: strong, electromagnetic, weak, and gravitational. High-energy particle physics observations made during the 1970s and 1980s confirmed that the weak and electromagnetic forces are expressions of a more fundamental electroweak interaction.\nPre-Newtonian concepts.\nSince antiquity the concept of force has been recognized as integral to the functioning of each of the simple machines. The mechanical advantage given by a simple machine allowed for less force to be used in exchange for that force acting over a greater distance for the same amount of work. Analysis of the characteristics of forces ultimately culminated in the work of Archimedes who was especially famous for formulating a treatment of buoyant forces inherent in fluids.\nAristotle provided a philosophical discussion of the concept of a force as an integral part of Aristotelian cosmology. In Aristotle's view, the terrestrial sphere contained four elements that come to rest at different \"natural places\" therein. Aristotle believed that motionless objects on Earth, those composed mostly of the elements earth and water, were in their natural place when on the ground, and that they stay that way if left alone. He distinguished between the innate tendency of objects to find their \"natural place\" (e.g., for heavy bodies to fall), which led to \"natural motion\", and unnatural or forced motion, which required continued application of a force. This theory, based on the everyday experience of how objects move, such as the constant application of a force needed to keep a cart moving, had conceptual trouble accounting for the behavior of projectiles, such as the flight of arrows. An archer causes the arrow to move at the start of the flight, and it then sails through the air even though no discernible efficient cause acts upon it. Aristotle was aware of this problem and proposed that the air displaced through the projectile's path carries the projectile to its target. This explanation requires a continuous medium such as air to sustain the motion.\nThough Aristotelian physics was criticized as early as the 6th century, its shortcomings would not be corrected until the 17th century work of Galileo Galilei, who was influenced by the late medieval idea that objects in forced motion carried an innate force of impetus. Galileo constructed an experiment in which stones and cannonballs were both rolled down an incline to disprove the Aristotelian theory of motion. He showed that the bodies were accelerated by gravity to an extent that was independent of their mass and argued that objects retain their velocity unless acted on by a force, for example friction. Galileo's idea that force is needed to change motion rather than to sustain it, further improved upon by Isaac Beeckman, Ren\u00e9 Descartes, and Pierre Gassendi, became a key principle of Newtonian physics.\nIn the early 17th century, before Newton's \"Principia\", the term \"force\" () was applied to many physical and non-physical phenomena, e.g., for an acceleration of a point. The product of a point mass and the square of its velocity was named (live force) by Leibniz. The modern concept of force corresponds to Newton's (accelerating force).\nNewtonian mechanics.\nSir Isaac Newton described the motion of all objects using the concepts of inertia and force. In 1687, Newton published his magnum opus, \"Philosophi\u00e6 Naturalis Principia Mathematica\". In this work Newton set out three laws of motion that have dominated the way forces are described in physics to this day. The precise ways in which Newton's laws are expressed have evolved in step with new mathematical approaches.\nFirst law.\nNewton's first law of motion states that the natural behavior of an object at rest is to continue being at rest, and the natural behavior of an object moving at constant speed in a straight line is to continue moving at that constant speed along that straight line. The latter follows from the former because of the principle that the laws of physics are the same for all inertial observers, i.e., all observers who do not feel themselves to be in motion. An observer moving in tandem with an object will see it as being at rest. So, its natural behavior will be to remain at rest with respect to that observer, which means that an observer who sees it moving at constant speed in a straight line will see it continuing to do so.\nSecond law.\nAccording to the first law, motion at constant speed in a straight line does not need a cause. It is \"change\" in motion that requires a cause, and Newton's second law gives the quantitative relationship between force and change of motion.\nNewton's second law states that the net force acting upon an object is equal to the rate at which its momentum changes with time. If the mass of the object is constant, this law implies that the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the net force acting on the object, is in the direction of the net force, and is inversely proportional to the mass of the object.\nA modern statement of Newton's second law is a vector equation:\nformula_1\nwhere formula_2 is the momentum of the system, and formula_3 is the net (vector sum) force.399 If a body is in equilibrium, there is zero \"net\" force by definition (balanced forces may be present nevertheless). In contrast, the second law states that if there is an \"unbalanced\" force acting on an object it will result in the object's momentum changing over time.\nIn common engineering applications the mass in a system remains constant allowing as simple algebraic form for the second law. By the definition of momentum,\nformula_4\nwhere \"m\" is the mass and formula_5 is the velocity. If Newton's second law is applied to a system of constant mass, \"m\" may be moved outside the derivative operator. The equation then becomes\nformula_6\nBy substituting the definition of acceleration, the algebraic version of Newton's second law is derived:\nformula_7\nThird law.\nWhenever one body exerts a force on another, the latter simultaneously exerts an equal and opposite force on the first. In vector form, if formula_8 is the force of body 1 on body 2 and formula_9 that of body 2 on body 1, then\nformula_10\nThis law is sometimes referred to as the \"action-reaction law\", with formula_11 called the \"action\" and formula_12 the \"reaction\".\nNewton's Third Law is a result of applying symmetry to situations where forces can be attributed to the presence of different objects. The third law means that all forces are \"interactions\" between different bodies. and thus that there is no such thing as a unidirectional force or a force that acts on only one body.\nIn a system composed of object 1 and object 2, the net force on the system due to their mutual interactions is zero:\nformula_13\nMore generally, in a closed system of particles, all internal forces are balanced. The particles may accelerate with respect to each other but the center of mass of the system will not accelerate. If an external force acts on the system, it will make the center of mass accelerate in proportion to the magnitude of the external force divided by the mass of the system.\nCombining Newton's Second and Third Laws, it is possible to show that the linear momentum of a system is conserved in any closed system. In a system of two particles, if formula_14 is the momentum of object 1 and formula_15 the momentum of object 2, then\nformula_16\nUsing similar arguments, this can be generalized to a system with an arbitrary number of particles. In general, as long as all forces are due to the interaction of objects with mass, it is possible to define a system such that net momentum is never lost nor gained.ch.12\nDefining \"force\".\nSome textbooks use Newton's second law as a \"definition\" of force. However, for the equation formula_17 for a constant mass formula_18 to then have any predictive content, it must be combined with further information. Moreover, inferring that a force is present because a body is accelerating is only valid in an inertial frame of reference. The question of which aspects of Newton's laws to take as definitions and which to regard as holding physical content has been answered in various ways, which ultimately do not affect how the theory is used in practice. Notable physicists, philosophers and mathematicians who have sought a more explicit definition of the concept of force include Ernst Mach and Walter Noll.\nCombining forces.\nForces act in a particular direction and have sizes dependent upon how strong the push or pull is. Because of these characteristics, forces are classified as \"vector quantities\". This means that forces follow a different set of mathematical rules than physical quantities that do not have direction (denoted scalar quantities). For example, when determining what happens when two forces act on the same object, it is necessary to know both the magnitude and the direction of both forces to calculate the result. If both of these pieces of information are not known for each force, the situation is ambiguous.\nHistorically, forces were first quantitatively investigated in conditions of static equilibrium where several forces canceled each other out. Such experiments demonstrate the crucial properties that forces are additive vector quantities: they have magnitude and direction. When two forces act on a point particle, the resulting force, the \"resultant\" (also called the \"net force\"), can be determined by following the parallelogram rule of vector addition: the addition of two vectors represented by sides of a parallelogram, gives an equivalent resultant vector that is equal in magnitude and direction to the transversal of the parallelogram. The magnitude of the resultant varies from the difference of the magnitudes of the two forces to their sum, depending on the angle between their lines of action.ch.12\nFree-body diagrams can be used as a convenient way to keep track of forces acting on a system. Ideally, these diagrams are drawn with the angles and relative magnitudes of the force vectors preserved so that graphical vector addition can be done to determine the net force.\nAs well as being added, forces can also be resolved into independent components at right angles to each other. A horizontal force pointing northeast can therefore be split into two forces, one pointing north, and one pointing east. Summing these component forces using vector addition yields the original force. Resolving force vectors into components of a set of basis vectors is often a more mathematically clean way to describe forces than using magnitudes and directions. This is because, for orthogonal components, the components of the vector sum are uniquely determined by the scalar addition of the components of the individual vectors. Orthogonal components are independent of each other because forces acting at ninety degrees to each other have no effect on the magnitude or direction of the other. Choosing a set of orthogonal basis vectors is often done by considering what set of basis vectors will make the mathematics most convenient. Choosing a basis vector that is in the same direction as one of the forces is desirable, since that force would then have only one non-zero component. Orthogonal force vectors can be three-dimensional with the third component being at right angles to the other two.ch.12\nEquilibrium.\nWhen all the forces that act upon an object are balanced, then the object is said to be in a state of equilibrium. Hence, equilibrium occurs when the resultant force acting on a point particle is zero (that is, the vector sum of all forces is zero). When dealing with an extended body, it is also necessary that the net torque be zero. A body is in \"static equilibrium\" with respect to a frame of reference if it at rest and not accelerating, whereas a body in \"dynamic equilibrium\" is moving at a constant speed in a straight line, i.e., moving but not accelerating. What one observer sees as static equilibrium, another can see as dynamic equilibrium and vice versa.\nStatic.\nStatic equilibrium was understood well before the invention of classical mechanics. Objects that are not accelerating have zero net force acting on them.\nThe simplest case of static equilibrium occurs when two forces are equal in magnitude but opposite in direction. For example, an object on a level surface is pulled (attracted) downward toward the center of the Earth by the force of gravity. At the same time, a force is applied by the surface that resists the downward force with equal upward force (called a normal force). The situation produces zero net force and hence no acceleration.\nPushing against an object that rests on a frictional surface can result in a situation where the object does not move because the applied force is opposed by static friction, generated between the object and the table surface. For a situation with no movement, the static friction force \"exactly\" balances the applied force resulting in no acceleration. The static friction increases or decreases in response to the applied force up to an upper limit determined by the characteristics of the contact between the surface and the object.\nA static equilibrium between two forces is the most usual way of measuring forces, using simple devices such as weighing scales and spring balances. For example, an object suspended on a vertical spring scale experiences the force of gravity acting on the object balanced by a force applied by the \"spring reaction force\", which equals the object's weight. Using such tools, some quantitative force laws were discovered: that the force of gravity is proportional to volume for objects of constant density (widely exploited for millennia to define standard weights); Archimedes' principle for buoyancy; Archimedes' analysis of the lever; Boyle's law for gas pressure; and Hooke's law for springs. These were all formulated and experimentally verified before Isaac Newton expounded his three laws of motion.ch.12\nDynamic.\nDynamic equilibrium was first described by Galileo who noticed that certain assumptions of Aristotelian physics were contradicted by observations and logic. Galileo realized that simple velocity addition demands that the concept of an \"absolute rest frame\" did not exist. Galileo concluded that motion in a constant velocity was completely equivalent to rest. This was contrary to Aristotle's notion of a \"natural state\" of rest that objects with mass naturally approached. Simple experiments showed that Galileo's understanding of the equivalence of constant velocity and rest were correct. For example, if a mariner dropped a cannonball from the crow's nest of a ship moving at a constant velocity, Aristotelian physics would have the cannonball fall straight down while the ship moved beneath it. Thus, in an Aristotelian universe, the falling cannonball would land behind the foot of the mast of a moving ship. When this experiment is actually conducted, the cannonball always falls at the foot of the mast, as if the cannonball knows to travel with the ship despite being separated from it. Since there is no forward horizontal force being applied on the cannonball as it falls, the only conclusion left is that the cannonball continues to move with the same velocity as the boat as it falls. Thus, no force is required to keep the cannonball moving at the constant forward velocity.\nMoreover, any object traveling at a constant velocity must be subject to zero net force (resultant force). This is the definition of dynamic equilibrium: when all the forces on an object balance but it still moves at a constant velocity. A simple case of dynamic equilibrium occurs in constant velocity motion across a surface with kinetic friction. In such a situation, a force is applied in the direction of motion while the kinetic friction force exactly opposes the applied force. This results in zero net force, but since the object started with a non-zero velocity, it continues to move with a non-zero velocity. Aristotle misinterpreted this motion as being caused by the applied force. When kinetic friction is taken into consideration it is clear that there is no net force causing constant velocity motion.ch.12\nExamples of forces in classical mechanics.\nSome forces are consequences of the fundamental ones. In such situations, idealized models can be used to gain physical insight. For example, each solid object is considered a rigid body.\nGravitational force or Gravity.\nWhat we now call gravity was not identified as a universal force until the work of Isaac Newton. Before Newton, the tendency for objects to fall towards the Earth was not understood to be related to the motions of celestial objects. Galileo was instrumental in describing the characteristics of falling objects by determining that the acceleration of every object in free-fall was constant and independent of the mass of the object. Today, this acceleration due to gravity towards the surface of the Earth is usually designated as formula_19 and has a magnitude of about 9.81 meters per second squared (this measurement is taken from sea level and may vary depending on location), and points toward the center of the Earth. This observation means that the force of gravity on an object at the Earth's surface is directly proportional to the object's mass. Thus an object that has a mass of formula_18 will experience a force:\nformula_21\nFor an object in free-fall, this force is unopposed and the net force on the object is its weight. For objects not in free-fall, the force of gravity is opposed by the reaction forces applied by their supports. For example, a person standing on the ground experiences zero net force, since a normal force (a reaction force) is exerted by the ground upward on the person that counterbalances his weight that is directed downward.ch.12\nNewton's contribution to gravitational theory was to unify the motions of heavenly bodies, which Aristotle had assumed were in a natural state of constant motion, with falling motion observed on the Earth. He proposed a law of gravity that could account for the celestial motions that had been described earlier using Kepler's laws of planetary motion.\nNewton came to realize that the effects of gravity might be observed in different ways at larger distances. In particular, Newton determined that the acceleration of the Moon around the Earth could be ascribed to the same force of gravity if the acceleration due to gravity decreased as an inverse square law. Further, Newton realized that the acceleration of a body due to gravity is proportional to the mass of the other attracting body. Combining these ideas gives a formula that relates the mass (formula_22) and the radius (formula_23) of the Earth to the gravitational acceleration:\nformula_24\nwhere formula_25 is the distance between the two objects' centers of mass and formula_26 is the unit vector pointed in the direction away from the center of the first object toward the center of the second object.\nThis formula was powerful enough to stand as the basis for all subsequent descriptions of motion within the Solar System until the 20th century. During that time, sophisticated methods of perturbation analysis were invented to calculate the deviations of orbits due to the influence of multiple bodies on a planet, moon, comet, or asteroid. The formalism was exact enough to allow mathematicians to predict the existence of the planet Neptune before it was observed.\nElectromagnetic.\nThe electrostatic force was first described in 1784 by Coulomb as a force that existed intrinsically between two charges. The properties of the electrostatic force were that it varied as an inverse square law directed in the radial direction, was both attractive and repulsive (there was intrinsic polarity), was independent of the mass of the charged objects, and followed the superposition principle. Coulomb's law unifies all these observations into one succinct statement.\nSubsequent mathematicians and physicists found the construct of the \"electric field\" to be useful for determining the electrostatic force on an electric charge at any point in space. The electric field was based on using a hypothetical \"test charge\" anywhere in space and then using Coulomb's Law to determine the electrostatic force. Thus the electric field anywhere in space is defined as\nformula_27\nwhere formula_28 is the magnitude of the hypothetical test charge. Similarly, the idea of the \"magnetic field\" was introduced to express how magnets can influence one another at a distance. The Lorentz force law gives the force upon a body with charge formula_28 due to electric and magnetic fields:\nformula_30\nwhere formula_3 is the electromagnetic force, formula_32 is the electric field at the body's location, formula_33 is the magnetic field, and formula_5 is the velocity of the particle. The magnetic contribution to the Lorentz force is the cross product of the velocity vector with the magnetic field.\nThe origin of electric and magnetic fields would not be fully explained until 1864 when James Clerk Maxwell unified a number of earlier theories into a set of 20 scalar equations, which were later reformulated into 4 vector equations by Oliver Heaviside and Josiah Willard Gibbs. These \"Maxwell's equations\" fully described the sources of the fields as being stationary and moving charges, and the interactions of the fields themselves. This led Maxwell to discover that electric and magnetic fields could be \"self-generating\" through a wave that traveled at a speed that he calculated to be the speed of light. This insight united the nascent fields of electromagnetic theory with optics and led directly to a complete description of the electromagnetic spectrum.\nNormal.\nWhen objects are in contact, the force directly between them is called the normal force, the component of the total force in the system exerted normal to the interface between the objects. The normal force is closely related to Newton's third law. The normal force, for example, is responsible for the structural integrity of tables and floors as well as being the force that responds whenever an external force pushes on a solid object. An example of the normal force in action is the impact force on an object crashing into an immobile surface.ch.12\nFriction.\nFriction is a force that opposes relative motion of two bodies. At the macroscopic scale, the frictional force is directly related to the normal force at the point of contact. There are two broad classifications of frictional forces: static friction and kinetic friction.\nThe static friction force (formula_35) will exactly oppose forces applied to an object parallel to a surface up to the limit specified by the coefficient of static friction (formula_36) multiplied by the normal force (formula_37). In other words, the magnitude of the static friction force satisfies the inequality:\nformula_38\nThe kinetic friction force (formula_39) is typically independent of both the forces applied and the movement of the object. Thus, the magnitude of the force equals:\nformula_40\nwhere formula_41 is the coefficient of kinetic friction. The coefficient of kinetic friction is normally less than the coefficient of static friction.\nTension.\nTension forces can be modeled using ideal strings that are massless, frictionless, unbreakable, and do not stretch. They can be combined with ideal pulleys, which allow ideal strings to switch physical direction. Ideal strings transmit tension forces instantaneously in action\u2013reaction pairs so that if two objects are connected by an ideal string, any force directed along the string by the first object is accompanied by a force directed along the string in the opposite direction by the second object. By connecting the same string multiple times to the same object through the use of a configuration that uses movable pulleys, the tension force on a load can be multiplied. For every string that acts on a load, another factor of the tension force in the string acts on the load. Such machines allow a mechanical advantage for a corresponding increase in the length of displaced string needed to move the load. These tandem effects result ultimately in the conservation of mechanical energy since the work done on the load is the same no matter how complicated the machine.ch.12\nSpring.\nA simple elastic force acts to return a spring to its natural length. An ideal spring is taken to be massless, frictionless, unbreakable, and infinitely stretchable. Such springs exert forces that push when contracted, or pull when extended, in proportion to the displacement of the spring from its equilibrium position. This linear relationship was described by Robert Hooke in 1676, for whom Hooke's law is named. If formula_42 is the displacement, the force exerted by an ideal spring equals:\nformula_43\nwhere formula_44 is the spring constant (or force constant), which is particular to the spring. The minus sign accounts for the tendency of the force to act in opposition to the applied load.ch.12\nCentripetal.\nFor an object in uniform circular motion, the net force acting on the object equals:\nformula_45\nwhere formula_18 is the mass of the object, formula_47 is the velocity of the object and formula_25 is the distance to the center of the circular path and formula_49 is the unit vector pointing in the radial direction outwards from the center. This means that the net force felt by the object is always directed toward the center of the curving path. Such forces act perpendicular to the velocity vector associated with the motion of an object, and therefore do not change the speed of the object (magnitude of the velocity), but only the direction of the velocity vector. More generally, the net force that accelerates an object can be resolved into a component that is perpendicular to the path, and one that is tangential to the path. This yields both the tangential force, which accelerates the object by either slowing it down or speeding it up, and the radial (centripetal) force, which changes its direction.ch.12\nContinuum mechanics.\nNewton's laws and Newtonian mechanics in general were first developed to describe how forces affect idealized point particles rather than three-dimensional objects. In real life, matter has extended structure and forces that act on one part of an object might affect other parts of an object. For situations where lattice holding together the atoms in an object is able to flow, contract, expand, or otherwise change shape, the theories of continuum mechanics describe the way forces affect the material. For example, in extended fluids, differences in pressure result in forces being directed along the pressure gradients as follows:\nformula_50\nwhere formula_51 is the volume of the object in the fluid and formula_52 is the scalar function that describes the pressure at all locations in space. Pressure gradients and differentials result in the buoyant force for fluids suspended in gravitational fields, winds in atmospheric science, and the lift associated with aerodynamics and flight.ch.12\nA specific instance of such a force that is associated with dynamic pressure is fluid resistance: a body force that resists the motion of an object through a fluid due to viscosity. For so-called \"Stokes' drag\" the force is approximately proportional to the velocity, but opposite in direction:\nformula_53\nwhere:\nMore formally, forces in continuum mechanics are fully described by a stress tensor with terms that are roughly defined as\nformula_56\nwhere formula_57 is the relevant cross-sectional area for the volume for which the stress tensor is being calculated. This formalism includes pressure terms associated with forces that act normal to the cross-sectional area (the matrix diagonals of the tensor) as well as shear terms associated with forces that act parallel to the cross-sectional area (the off-diagonal elements). The stress tensor accounts for forces that cause all strains (deformations) including also tensile stresses and compressions.\nFictitious.\nThere are forces that are frame dependent, meaning that they appear due to the adoption of non-Newtonian (that is, non-inertial) reference frames. Such forces include the centrifugal force and the Coriolis force. These forces are considered fictitious because they do not exist in frames of reference that are not accelerating.ch.12 Because these forces are not genuine they are also referred to as \"pseudo forces\".\nIn general relativity, gravity becomes a fictitious force that arises in situations where spacetime deviates from a flat geometry.\nConcepts derived from force.\nRotation and torque.\nForces that cause extended objects to rotate are associated with torques. Mathematically, the torque of a force formula_3 is defined relative to an arbitrary reference point as the cross product:\nformula_59\nwhere formula_60 is the position vector of the force application point relative to the reference point.\nTorque is the rotation equivalent of force in the same way that angle is the rotational equivalent for position, angular velocity for velocity, and angular momentum for momentum. As a consequence of Newton's first law of motion, there exists rotational inertia that ensures that all bodies maintain their angular momentum unless acted upon by an unbalanced torque. Likewise, Newton's second law of motion can be used to derive an analogous equation for the instantaneous angular acceleration of the rigid body:\nformula_61\nwhere\nThis provides a definition for the moment of inertia, which is the rotational equivalent for mass. In more advanced treatments of mechanics, where the rotation over a time interval is described, the moment of inertia must be substituted by the tensor that, when properly analyzed, fully determines the characteristics of rotations including precession and nutation.\nEquivalently, the differential form of Newton's Second Law provides an alternative definition of torque:\nformula_64\nwhere formula_65 is the angular momentum of the particle.\nNewton's Third Law of Motion requires that all objects exerting torques themselves experience equal and opposite torques, and therefore also directly implies the conservation of angular momentum for closed systems that experience rotations and revolutions through the action of internal torques.\nYank.\nThe yank is defined as the rate of change of force\nformula_66\nThe term is used in biomechanical analysis, athletic assessment and robotic control. The second (\"tug\"), third (\"snatch\"), fourth (\"shake\"), and higher derivatives are rarely used.\nKinematic integrals.\nForces can be used to define a number of physical concepts by integrating with respect to kinematic variables. For example, integrating with respect to time gives the definition of impulse:\nformula_67\nwhich by Newton's Second Law must be equivalent to the change in momentum (yielding the Impulse momentum theorem).\nSimilarly, integrating with respect to position gives a definition for the work done by a force:\nformula_68\nwhich is equivalent to changes in kinetic energy (yielding the work energy theorem).\nPower \"P\" is the rate of change d\"W\"/d\"t\" of the work \"W\", as the trajectory is extended by a position change formula_69 in a time interval d\"t\":\nformula_70\nso\nformula_71\nwith formula_72 the velocity.\nPotential energy.\nInstead of a force, often the mathematically related concept of a potential energy field is used. For instance, the gravitational force acting upon an object can be seen as the action of the gravitational field that is present at the object's location. Restating mathematically the definition of energy (via the definition of work), a potential scalar field formula_73 is defined as that field whose gradient is equal and opposite to the force produced at every point:\nformula_74\nForces can be classified as conservative or nonconservative. Conservative forces are equivalent to the gradient of a potential while nonconservative forces are not.ch.12\nConservation.\nA conservative force that acts on a closed system has an associated mechanical work that allows energy to convert only between kinetic or potential forms. This means that for a closed system, the net mechanical energy is conserved whenever a conservative force acts on the system. The force, therefore, is related directly to the difference in potential energy between two different locations in space, and can be considered to be an artifact of the potential field in the same way that the direction and amount of a flow of water can be considered to be an artifact of the contour map of the elevation of an area.ch.12\nConservative forces include gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the spring force. Each of these forces has models that are dependent on a position often given as a radial vector formula_60 emanating from spherically symmetric potentials. Examples of this follow:\nFor gravity:\nformula_76\nwhere formula_77 is the gravitational constant, and formula_78 is the mass of object \"n\".\nFor electrostatic forces:\nformula_79\nwhere formula_80 is electric permittivity of free space, and formula_81 is the electric charge of object \"n\".\nFor spring forces:\nformula_82\nwhere formula_44 is the spring constant.ch.12\nFor certain physical scenarios, it is impossible to model forces as being due to a simple gradient of potentials. This is often due a macroscopic statistical average of microstates. For example, static friction is caused by the gradients of numerous electrostatic potentials between the atoms, but manifests as a force model that is independent of any macroscale position vector. Nonconservative forces other than friction include other contact forces, tension, compression, and drag. For any sufficiently detailed description, all these forces are the results of conservative ones since each of these macroscopic forces are the net results of the gradients of microscopic potentials.ch.12\nThe connection between macroscopic nonconservative forces and microscopic conservative forces is described by detailed treatment with statistical mechanics. In macroscopic closed systems, nonconservative forces act to change the internal energies of the system, and are often associated with the transfer of heat. According to the Second law of thermodynamics, nonconservative forces necessarily result in energy transformations within closed systems from ordered to more random conditions as entropy increases.ch.12\nUnits.\nThe SI unit of force is the newton (symbol N), which is the force required to accelerate a one kilogram mass at a rate of one meter per second squared, or kg\u00b7m\u00b7s\u22122.The corresponding CGS unit is the dyne, the force required to accelerate a one gram mass by one centimeter per second squared, or g\u00b7cm\u00b7s\u22122. A newton is thus equal to 100,000\u00a0dynes.\nThe gravitational foot-pound-second English unit of force is the pound-force (lbf), defined as the force exerted by gravity on a pound-mass in the standard gravitational field of 9.80665\u00a0m\u00b7s\u22122. The pound-force provides an alternative unit of mass: one slug is the mass that will accelerate by one foot per second squared when acted on by one pound-force. An alternative unit of force in a different foot\u2013pound\u2013second system, the absolute fps system, is the poundal, defined as the force required to accelerate a one-pound mass at a rate of one foot per second squared.\nThe pound-force has a metric counterpart, less commonly used than the newton: the kilogram-force (kgf) (sometimes kilopond), is the force exerted by standard gravity on one kilogram of mass. The kilogram-force leads to an alternate, but rarely used unit of mass: the metric slug (sometimes mug or hyl) is that mass that accelerates at 1\u00a0m\u00b7s\u22122 when subjected to a force of 1\u00a0kgf. The kilogram-force is not a part of the modern SI system, and is generally deprecated, sometimes used for expressing aircraft weight, jet thrust, bicycle spoke tension, torque wrench settings and engine output torque.\n See also \"Ton-force\".\nRevisions of the force concept.\nAt the beginning of the 20th century, new physical ideas emerged to explain experimental results in astronomical and submicroscopic realms. As discussed below, relativity alters the definition of momentum and quantum mechanics reuses the concept of \"force\" in microscopic contexts where Newton's laws do not apply directly.\nSpecial theory of relativity.\nIn the special theory of relativity, mass and energy are equivalent (as can be seen by calculating the work required to accelerate an object). When an object's velocity increases, so does its energy and hence its mass equivalent (inertia). It thus requires more force to accelerate it the same amount than it did at a lower velocity. Newton's Second Law,\nformula_84\nremains valid because it is a mathematical definition. But for momentum to be conserved at relativistic relative velocity, formula_47, momentum must be redefined as:\nformula_86\nwhere formula_87 is the rest mass and formula_88 the speed of light.\nThe expression relating force and acceleration for a particle with constant non-zero rest mass formula_18 moving in the formula_90 direction at velocity formula_47 is:\nformula_92\nwhere\nformula_93\nis called the Lorentz factor. The Lorentz factor increases steeply as the relative velocity approaches the speed of light. Consequently, the greater and greater force must be applied to produce the same acceleration at extreme velocity. The relative velocity cannot reach formula_88.\u00a715\u20138\nIf formula_47 is very small compared to formula_88, then formula_97 is very close to 1 and\nformula_98\nis a close approximation. Even for use in relativity, one can restore the form of\nformula_99\nthrough the use of four-vectors. This relation is correct in relativity when formula_100 is the four-force, formula_18 is the invariant mass, and formula_102 is the four-acceleration.\nThe \"general\" theory of relativity incorporates a more radical departure from the Newtonian way of thinking about force, specifically gravitational force. This reimagining of the nature of gravity is described more fully below.\nQuantum mechanics.\nQuantum mechanics is a theory of physics originally developed in order to understand microscopic phenomena: behavior at the scale of molecules, atoms or subatomic particles. Generally and loosely speaking, the smaller a system is, the more an adequate mathematical model will require understanding quantum effects. The conceptual underpinning of quantum physics is different from that of classical physics. Instead of thinking about quantities like position, momentum, and energy as properties that an object \"has\", one considers what result might \"appear\" when a measurement of a chosen type is performed. Quantum mechanics allows the physicist to calculate the probability that a chosen measurement will elicit a particular result. The expectation value for a measurement is the average of the possible results it might yield, weighted by their probabilities of occurrence.\nIn quantum mechanics, interactions are typically described in terms of energy rather than force. The Ehrenfest theorem provides a connection between quantum expectation values and the classical concept of force, a connection that is necessarily inexact, as quantum physics is fundamentally different from classical. In quantum physics, the Born rule is used to calculate the expectation values of a position measurement or a momentum measurement. These expectation values will generally change over time; that is, depending on the time at which (for example) a position measurement is performed, the probabilities for its different possible outcomes will vary. The Ehrenfest theorem says, roughly speaking, that the equations describing how these expectation values change over time have a form reminiscent of Newton's second law, with a force defined as the negative derivative of the potential energy. However, the more pronounced quantum effects are in a given situation, the more difficult it is to derive meaningful conclusions from this resemblance.\nQuantum mechanics also introduces two new constraints that interact with forces at the submicroscopic scale and which are especially important for atoms. Despite the strong attraction of the nucleus, the uncertainty principle limits the minimum extent of an electron probability distribution and the Pauli exclusion principle prevents electrons from sharing the same probability distribution. This gives rise to an emergent pressure known as degeneracy pressure. The dynamic equilibrium between the degeneracy pressure and the attractive electromagnetic force give atoms, molecules, liquids, and solids stability.\nQuantum field theory.\nIn modern particle physics, forces and the acceleration of particles are explained as a mathematical by-product of exchange of momentum-carrying gauge bosons. With the development of quantum field theory and general relativity, it was realized that force is a redundant concept arising from conservation of momentum (4-momentum in relativity and momentum of virtual particles in quantum electrodynamics). The conservation of momentum can be directly derived from the homogeneity or symmetry of space and so is usually considered more fundamental than the concept of a force. Thus the currently known fundamental forces are considered more accurately to be \"fundamental interactions\".\nWhile sophisticated mathematical descriptions are needed to predict, in full detail, the result of such interactions, there is a conceptually simple way to describe them through the use of Feynman diagrams. In a Feynman diagram, each matter particle is represented as a straight line (see world line) traveling through time, which normally increases up or to the right in the diagram. Matter and anti-matter particles are identical except for their direction of propagation through the Feynman diagram. World lines of particles intersect at interaction vertices, and the Feynman diagram represents any force arising from an interaction as occurring at the vertex with an associated instantaneous change in the direction of the particle world lines. Gauge bosons are emitted away from the vertex as wavy lines and, in the case of virtual particle exchange, are absorbed at an adjacent vertex. The utility of Feynman diagrams is that other types of physical phenomena that are part of the general picture of fundamental interactions but are conceptually separate from forces can also be described using the same rules. For example, a Feynman diagram can describe in succinct detail how a neutron decays into an electron, proton, and antineutrino, an interaction mediated by the same gauge boson that is responsible for the weak nuclear force.\nFundamental interactions.\nAll of the known forces of the universe are classified into four fundamental interactions. The strong and the weak forces act only at very short distances, and are responsible for the interactions between subatomic particles, including nucleons and compound nuclei. The electromagnetic force acts between electric charges, and the gravitational force acts between masses. All other forces in nature derive from these four fundamental interactions operating within quantum mechanics, including the constraints introduced by the Schr\u00f6dinger equation and the Pauli exclusion principle. For example, friction is a manifestation of the electromagnetic force acting between atoms of two surfaces. The forces in springs, modeled by Hooke's law, are also the result of electromagnetic forces. Centrifugal forces are acceleration forces that arise simply from the acceleration of rotating frames of reference.\nThe fundamental theories for forces developed from the unification of different ideas. For example, Newton's universal theory of gravitation showed that the force responsible for objects falling near the surface of the Earth is also the force responsible for the falling of celestial bodies about the Earth (the Moon) and around the Sun (the planets). Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell demonstrated that electric and magnetic forces were unified through a theory of electromagnetism. In the 20th century, the development of quantum mechanics led to a modern understanding that the first three fundamental forces (all except gravity) are manifestations of matter (fermions) interacting by exchanging virtual particles called gauge bosons. This Standard Model of particle physics assumes a similarity between the forces and led scientists to predict the unification of the weak and electromagnetic forces in electroweak theory, which was subsequently confirmed by observation.\nGravitational.\nNewton's law of gravitation is an example of \"action at a distance\": one body, like the Sun, exerts an influence upon any other body, like the Earth, no matter how far apart they are. Moreover, this action at a distance is \"instantaneous.\" According to Newton's theory, the one body shifting position changes the gravitational pulls felt by all other bodies, all at the same instant of time. Albert Einstein recognized that this was inconsistent with special relativity and its prediction that influences cannot travel faster than the speed of light. So, he sought a new theory of gravitation that would be relativistically consistent. Mercury's orbit did not match that predicted by Newton's law of gravitation. Some astrophysicists predicted the existence of an undiscovered planet (Vulcan) that could explain the discrepancies. When Einstein formulated his theory of general relativity (GR) he focused on Mercury's problematic orbit and found that his theory added a correction, which could account for the discrepancy. This was the first time that Newton's theory of gravity had been shown to be inexact.\nSince then, general relativity has been acknowledged as the theory that best explains gravity. In GR, gravitation is not viewed as a force, but rather, objects moving freely in gravitational fields travel under their own inertia in straight lines through curved spacetime \u2013 defined as the shortest spacetime path between two spacetime events. From the perspective of the object, all motion occurs as if there were no gravitation whatsoever. It is only when observing the motion in a global sense that the curvature of spacetime can be observed and the force is inferred from the object's curved path. Thus, the straight line path in spacetime is seen as a curved line in space, and it is called the \"ballistic trajectory\" of the object. For example, a basketball thrown from the ground moves in a parabola, as it is in a uniform gravitational field. Its spacetime trajectory is almost a straight line, slightly curved (with the radius of curvature of the order of few light-years). The time derivative of the changing momentum of the object is what we label as \"gravitational force\".\nElectromagnetic.\nMaxwell's equations and the set of techniques built around them adequately describe a wide range of physics involving force in electricity and magnetism. This classical theory already includes relativity effects. Understanding quantized electromagnetic interactions between elementary particles requires quantum electrodynamics (or QED). In QED, photons are fundamental exchange particles, describing all interactions relating to electromagnetism including the electromagnetic force.\nStrong nuclear.\nThere are two \"nuclear forces\", which today are usually described as interactions that take place in quantum theories of particle physics. The strong nuclear force is the force responsible for the structural integrity of atomic nuclei, and gains its name from its ability to overpower the electromagnetic repulsion between protons.\nThe strong force is today understood to represent the interactions between quarks and gluons as detailed by the theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). The strong force is the fundamental force mediated by gluons, acting upon quarks, antiquarks, and the gluons themselves. The strong force only acts \"directly\" upon elementary particles. A residual is observed between hadrons (notably, the nucleons in atomic nuclei), known as the nuclear force. Here the strong force acts indirectly, transmitted as gluons that form part of the virtual pi and rho mesons, the classical transmitters of the nuclear force. The failure of many searches for free quarks has shown that the elementary particles affected are not directly observable. This phenomenon is called color confinement.232\nWeak nuclear.\nUnique among the fundamental interactions, the weak nuclear force creates no bound states. The weak force is due to the exchange of the heavy W and Z bosons. Since the weak force is mediated by two types of bosons, it can be divided into two types of interaction or \"vertices\" \u2014 charged current, involving the electrically charged W+ and W\u2212 bosons, and neutral current, involving electrically neutral Z0 bosons. The most familiar effect of weak interaction is beta decay (of neutrons in atomic nuclei) and the associated radioactivity. This is a type of charged-current interaction. The word \"weak\" derives from the fact that the field strength is some 1013 times less than that of the strong force. Still, it is stronger than gravity over short distances. A consistent electroweak theory has also been developed, which shows that electromagnetic forces and the weak force are indistinguishable at a temperatures in excess of approximately . Such temperatures occurred in the plasma collisions in the early moments of the Big Bang.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "19694": "Mercury (planet)\nFirst planet from the Sun\nMercury is the first planet from the Sun and the smallest in the Solar System. In English, it is named after the ancient Roman god (Mercury), god of commerce and communication, and the messenger of the gods. Mercury is classified as a terrestrial planet, with roughly the same surface gravity as Mars. The surface of Mercury is heavily cratered, as a result of countless impact events that have accumulated over billions of years. Its largest crater, Caloris Planitia, has a diameter of , which is about one-third the diameter of the planet (). Similarly to the Earth's Moon, Mercury's surface displays an expansive rupes system generated from thrust faults and bright ray systems formed by impact event remnants.\nMercury's sidereal year (88.0 Earth days) and sidereal day (58.65 Earth days) are in a 3:2 ratio. This relationship is called spin\u2013orbit resonance, and \"sidereal\" here means \"relative to the stars\". Consequently, one solar day (sunrise to sunrise) on Mercury lasts for around 176 Earth days: twice the planet's sidereal year. This means that one side of Mercury will remain in sunlight for one Mercurian year of 88 Earth days; while during the next orbit, that side will be in darkness all the time until the next sunrise after another 88 Earth days.\nCombined with its high orbital eccentricity, the planet's surface has widely varying sunlight intensity and temperature, with the equatorial regions ranging from at night to during sunlight. Due to the very small axial tilt, the planet's poles are permanently shadowed. This strongly suggests that water ice could be present in the craters. Above the planet's surface is an extremely tenuous exosphere and a faint magnetic field that is strong enough to deflect solar winds. Mercury has no natural satellites.\nAs of the early 2020s, many broad details of Mercury's geological history are still under investigation or pending data from space probes. Like other planets in the Solar System, Mercury was formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago. Its mantle is highly homogeneous, which suggests that Mercury had a magma ocean early in its history, like the Moon. According to current models, Mercury may have a solid silicate crust and mantle overlying a solid outer core, a deeper liquid core layer, and a solid inner core. There are many competing hypotheses about Mercury's origins and development, some of which incorporate collision with planetesimals and rock vaporization.\nNomenclature.\nHistorically, humans knew Mercury by different names depending on whether it was an evening star or a morning star. By about 350 BC, the ancient Greeks had realized the two stars were one. They knew the planet as , meaning \"twinkling\", and , for its fleeting motion, a name that is retained in modern [[Greek language|Greek]] ( ). The Romans named the planet after the swift-footed Roman messenger god, [[Mercury (mythology)|Mercury]] (Latin ), whom they equated with the Greek Hermes, because it moves across the sky faster than any other planet, though some associated the planet with [[Apollo]] instead, as detailed by [[Pliny the Elder]]. The [[astronomical symbol]] for Mercury is a stylized version of Hermes' [[caduceus]]; a [[Christian cross]] was added in the 16th century:[[File:Mercury symbol (fixed width).svg|16px|\u263f]].\nPhysical characteristics.\n[[File:Terrestrial planet size comparisons-2.jpg|thumb|upright=1.4|Mercury to scale among the [[Inner Solar System]] [[planetary-mass object]]s beside the Sun, arranged by the order of their orbits outward from the Sun (from left: Mercury, [[Venus]],\n[[Earth]], the [[Moon]], [[Mars]] and [[Ceres (dwarf planet)|Ceres]])]]\nMercury is one of four [[terrestrial planet]]s in the [[Solar System]], which means it is a rocky body like Earth. It is the smallest planet in the Solar System, with an [[equator]]ial [[radius]] of . Mercury is also [[list of Solar System objects by radius|smaller]]\u2014albeit more massive\u2014than the largest [[natural satellite]]s in the Solar System, [[Ganymede (moon)|Ganymede]] and [[Titan (moon)|Titan]]. Mercury consists of approximately 70% metallic and 30% [[silicate]] material.\nInternal structure.\n[[File:Mercury with magnetic field.svg|left|thumb|upright=1.6|Mercury's internal structure and magnetic field]]\nMercury appears to have a solid silicate [[Crust (geology)|crust]] and mantle overlying a solid, metallic outer core layer, a deeper liquid core layer, and a solid inner core. The composition of the iron-rich core remains uncertain, but it likely contains nickel, silicon and perhaps sulfur and carbon, plus trace amounts of other elements. The planet's density is the second highest in the Solar System at 5.427\u00a0g/cm3, only slightly less than Earth's density of 5.515\u00a0g/cm3. If the effect of [[gravitational compression]] were to be factored out from both planets, the materials of which Mercury is made would be denser than those of Earth, with an uncompressed density of 5.3\u00a0g/cm3 versus Earth's 4.4\u00a0g/cm3. Mercury's density can be used to infer details of its inner structure. Although Earth's high density results appreciably from gravitational compression, particularly at the [[planetary core|core]], Mercury is much smaller and its inner regions are not as compressed. Therefore, for it to have such a high density, its core must be large and rich in iron.\nThe radius of Mercury's core is estimated to be , based on interior models constrained to be consistent with a [[moment of inertia factor]] of . Hence, Mercury's core occupies about 57% of its volume; for Earth this proportion is 17%. Research published in 2007 suggests that Mercury has a molten core. The mantle-crust layer is in total thick. Projections differ as to the size of the crust specifically; data from the \"Mariner 10\" and \"MESSENGER\" probes suggests a thickness of , whereas an [[Airy isostacy]] model suggests a thickness of . One distinctive feature of Mercury's surface is the presence of numerous narrow ridges, extending up to several hundred kilometers in length. It is thought that these were formed as Mercury's core and mantle cooled and contracted at a time when the crust had already solidified.\nMercury's core has a higher iron content than that of any other planet in the Solar System, and several theories have been proposed to explain this. The most widely accepted theory is that Mercury originally had a metal\u2013silicate ratio similar to common [[chondrite]] meteorites, thought to be typical of the Solar System's rocky matter, and a mass approximately 2.25 times its current mass. Early in the Solar System's history, Mercury may have been struck by a [[planetesimal]] of approximately <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1\u20446 Mercury's mass and several thousand kilometers across. The impact would have stripped away much of the original crust and mantle, leaving the core behind as a relatively major component. A similar process, known as the [[giant impact hypothesis]], has been proposed to explain the formation of Earth's Moon.\nAlternatively, Mercury may have formed from the [[solar nebula]] before the Sun's energy output had stabilized. It would initially have had twice its present mass, but as the [[protostar|protosun]] contracted, temperatures near Mercury could have been between 2,500 and 3,500\u00a0K and possibly even as high as 10,000\u00a0K. Much of Mercury's surface rock could have been vaporized at such temperatures, forming an atmosphere of \"rock vapor\" that could have been carried away by the [[solar wind]]. A third hypothesis proposes that the solar nebula caused [[drag (physics)|drag]] on the particles from which Mercury was [[Accretion (astrophysics)|accreting]], which meant that lighter particles were lost from the accreting material and not gathered by Mercury.\nEach hypothesis predicts a different surface composition, and two space missions have been tasked with making observations of this composition. The first \"[[MESSENGER]]\", which ended in 2015, found higher-than-expected potassium and sulfur levels on the surface, suggesting that the giant impact hypothesis and vaporization of the crust and mantle did not occur because said potassium and sulfur would have been driven off by the extreme heat of these events. \"[[BepiColombo]]\", which will arrive at Mercury in 2025, will make observations to test these hypotheses. The findings so far would seem to favor the third hypothesis; however, further analysis of the data is needed.\nSurface geology.\nMercury's surface is similar in appearance to that of the Moon, showing extensive [[Lunar mare|mare]]-like plains and heavy cratering, indicating that it has been geologically inactive for billions of years. It is more [[heterogeneous]] than the surface of [[Mars]] or the Moon, both of which contain significant stretches of similar geology, such as [[Lunar mare|maria]] and plateaus. [[Albedo]] features are areas of markedly different reflectivity, which include impact craters, the resulting ejecta, and [[ray system]]s. Larger albedo features correspond to higher reflectivity plains. Mercury has \"[[wrinkle-ridge]]s\" (dorsa), Moon-like [[highland]]s, mountains (montes), plains (planitiae), escarpments (rupes), and valleys ([[Vallis (planetary geology)|valles]]).\n[[File:Unmasking the Secrets of Mercury.jpg|thumb|left|[[MESSENGER#Scientific instruments|MASCS]] spectrum scan of Mercury's surface by \"MESSENGER\"]]\nThe planet's mantle is chemically heterogeneous, suggesting the planet went through a [[magma ocean]] phase early in its history. Crystallization of minerals and convective overturn resulted in a layered, chemically heterogeneous crust with large-scale variations in chemical composition observed on the surface. The crust is low in iron but high in sulfur, resulting from the stronger early [[Chemical reduction|chemically reducing]] conditions than is found on other terrestrial planets. The surface is dominated by iron-poor [[pyroxene]] and [[olivine]], as represented by [[enstatite]] and [[forsterite]], respectively, along with sodium-rich [[plagioclase]] and minerals of mixed magnesium, calcium, and iron-sulfide. The less reflective regions of the crust are high in carbon, most likely in the form of graphite.\nNames for features on Mercury come from a variety of sources and are set according to the [[IAU]] [[planetary nomenclature]] system. Names coming from people are limited to the deceased. Craters are named for artists, musicians, painters, and authors who have made outstanding or fundamental contributions to their field. Ridges, or dorsa, are named for scientists who have contributed to the study of Mercury. Depressions or [[fossa (geology)|fossae]] are named for works of architecture. Montes are named for the word \"hot\" in a variety of languages. [[Plain]]s or planitiae are named for [[Mercury (god)|Mercury]] in various languages. [[Escarpment]]s or [[rup\u0113s]] are named for ships of scientific expeditions. Valleys or valles are named for abandoned cities, towns, or settlements of antiquity.\nImpact basins and craters.\n[[File:PIA19421-Mercury-Craters-MunchSanderPoe-20150416.jpg|thumb|left|Enhanced-color image of craters [[Munch (crater)|Munch]] (left), [[Sander (crater)|Sander]] (center), and [[Poe (crater)|Poe]] (right) amid volcanic plains (orange) near [[Caloris Basin]]]]\nMercury was heavily bombarded by comets and [[asteroid]]s during and shortly following its formation 4.6 billion years ago, as well as during a possibly separate subsequent episode called the [[Late Heavy Bombardment]] that ended 3.8 billion years ago. Mercury received impacts over its entire surface during this period of intense crater formation, facilitated by the lack of any [[atmosphere]] to slow impactors down. During this time Mercury was [[volcano|volcanically]] active; basins were filled by [[magma]], producing smooth plains similar to the maria found on the Moon. One of the most unusual craters is [[Apollodorus (crater)|Apollodorus]], or \"the Spider\", which hosts a series of radiating troughs extending outwards from its impact site.\n[[Craters on Mercury]] range in diameter from small bowl-shaped cavities to [[multi-ringed impact basin]]s hundreds of kilometers across. They appear in all states of degradation, from relatively fresh rayed craters to highly degraded crater remnants. Mercurian craters differ subtly from lunar craters in that the area blanketed by their ejecta is much smaller, a consequence of Mercury's stronger surface gravity. According to [[International Astronomical Union]] rules, each new crater must be named after an artist who was famous for more than fifty years, and dead for more than three years, before the date the crater is named.\nThe largest known crater is [[Caloris Planitia]], or Caloris Basin, with a diameter of . The impact that created the Caloris Basin was so powerful that it caused [[lava]] eruptions and left a concentric mountainous ring ~ tall surrounding the [[impact crater]]. The floor of the Caloris Basin is filled by a geologically distinct flat plain, broken up by ridges and fractures in a roughly polygonal pattern. It is not clear whether they were volcanic lava flows induced by the impact or a large sheet of impact melt.\nAt the [[antipodes|antipode]] of the Caloris Basin is a large region of unusual, hilly terrain known as the \"Weird Terrain\". One hypothesis for its origin is that shock waves generated during the Caloris impact traveled around Mercury, converging at the basin's antipode (180 degrees away). The resulting high stresses fractured the surface. Alternatively, it has been suggested that this terrain formed as a result of the convergence of ejecta at this basin's antipode.\n[[File:EW1027346412Gnomap.png|thumb|Tolstoj basin is along the bottom of this image of Mercury's limb]]\nOverall, 46 impact basins have been identified. A notable basin is the -wide, multi-ring [[Tolstoj Basin]] that has an ejecta blanket extending up to from its rim and a floor that has been filled by smooth plains materials. [[Beethoven Basin]] has a similar-sized ejecta blanket and a -diameter rim. Like the Moon, the surface of Mercury has likely incurred the effects of [[space weathering]] processes, including solar wind and [[micrometeorite]] impacts.\nPlains.\nThere are two geologically distinct plains regions on Mercury. Gently rolling, hilly [[Inter-crater plains on Mercury|plains in the regions between craters]] are Mercury's oldest visible surfaces, predating the heavily cratered terrain. These inter-crater plains appear to have obliterated many earlier craters, and show a general paucity of smaller craters below about in diameter.\nSmooth plains are widespread flat areas that fill depressions of various sizes and bear a strong resemblance to lunar maria. Unlike lunar maria, the smooth plains of Mercury have the same albedo as the older inter-crater plains. Despite a lack of unequivocally volcanic characteristics, the localization and rounded, lobate shape of these plains strongly support volcanic origins. All the smooth plains of Mercury formed significantly later than the Caloris basin, as evidenced by appreciably smaller crater densities than on the Caloris ejecta blanket.\nCompressional features.\nAn unusual feature of Mercury's surface is the numerous compression folds, or [[rupes]], that crisscross the plains. These exist on the Moon, but are much more prominent on Mercury. As Mercury's interior cooled, it contracted and its surface began to deform, creating [[wrinkle ridge]]s and [[lobate scarp]]s associated with [[thrust fault]]s. The scarps can reach lengths of and heights of . These compressional features can be seen on top of other features, such as craters and smooth plains, indicating they are more recent. Mapping of the features has suggested a total shrinkage of Mercury's radius in the range of ~. Most activity along the major thrust systems probably ended about 3.6\u20133.7\u00a0billion years ago. Small-scale thrust fault scarps have been found, tens of meters in height and with lengths in the range of a few kilometers, that appear to be less than 50 million years old, indicating that compression of the interior and consequent surface geological activity continue to the present.\nVolcanism.\n[[File:Picasso crater.png|thumb|[[Picasso (crater)|Picasso crater]]\u2014the large arc-shaped pit located on the eastern side of its floor is postulated to have formed when subsurface magma subsided or drained, causing the surface to collapse into the resulting void.]]\nThere is evidence for [[pyroclastic flow]]s on Mercury from low-profile [[shield volcano]]es. Fifty-one pyroclastic deposits have been identified, where 90% of them are found within impact craters. A study of the degradation state of the impact craters that host pyroclastic deposits suggests that pyroclastic activity occurred on Mercury over a prolonged interval.\nA \"rimless depression\" inside the southwest rim of the Caloris Basin consists of at least nine overlapping volcanic vents, each individually up to in diameter. It is thus a \"[[compound volcano]]\". The vent floors are at least below their brinks and they bear a closer resemblance to volcanic craters sculpted by explosive eruptions or modified by collapse into void spaces created by magma withdrawal back down into a conduit. Scientists could not quantify the age of the volcanic complex system but reported that it could be on the order of a billion years.\nSurface conditions and exosphere.\n[[File:North pole of Mercury -- NASA.jpg|thumb|Composite of the north pole of Mercury, where NASA confirmed the discovery of a large volume of water ice, in permanently dark craters that are found there.]]\nThe surface temperature of Mercury ranges from . It never rises above 180\u00a0K at the poles, due to the absence of an atmosphere and a steep temperature gradient between the equator and the poles. At [[perihelion]], the equatorial [[subsolar point]] is located at latitude 0\u00b0W or 180\u00b0W, and it climbs to a temperature of about . During [[aphelion]], this occurs at 90\u00b0 or 270\u00b0W and reaches only . On the dark side of the planet, temperatures average . The intensity of [[sunlight]] on Mercury's surface ranges between 4.59 and 10.61 times the [[solar constant]] (1,370 W\u00b7m\u22122).\nAlthough daylight temperatures at the surface of Mercury are generally extremely high, observations strongly suggest that ice (frozen water) exists on Mercury. The floors of deep craters at the poles are never exposed to direct sunlight, and temperatures there remain below 102\u00a0K, far lower than the global average. This creates a [[Cold trap (astronomy)|cold trap]] where ice can accumulate. Water ice strongly reflects [[radar]], and observations by the 70-meter [[Goldstone Solar System Radar]] and the [[Very Large Array|VLA]] in the early 1990s revealed that there are patches of high radar [[Reflection (physics)|reflection]] near the poles. Although ice was not the only possible cause of these reflective regions, astronomers thought it to be the most likely explanation. The presence of [[ice|water ice]] was confirmed using \"MESSENGER\" images of craters at the north pole.\nThe icy crater regions are estimated to contain about 1014\u20131015\u00a0kg of ice, and may be covered by a layer of [[regolith]] that inhibits [[Sublimation (phase transition)|sublimation]]. By comparison, the [[Antarctica|Antarctic]] ice sheet on Earth has a mass of about 4\u00d71018\u00a0kg, and Mars's south polar cap contains about 1016\u00a0kg of water. The origin of the ice on Mercury is not yet known, but the two most likely sources are from [[outgassing]] of water from the planet's interior and deposition by impacts of comets.\nMercury is too small and hot for its [[gravity]] to retain any significant [[atmosphere]] over long periods of time; it does have a tenuous surface-bounded [[exosphere]] at a surface pressure of less than approximately 0.5\u00a0nPa (0.005 picobars). It includes [[hydrogen]], [[helium]], [[oxygen]], [[sodium]], [[calcium]], [[potassium]], [[magnesium]], [[silicon]], and [[hydroxide]], among others. This exosphere is not stable\u2014atoms are continuously lost and replenished from a variety of sources. [[Hydrogen atom]]s and [[helium atom]]s probably come from the solar wind, [[diffusion|diffusing]] into Mercury's [[magnetosphere]] before later escaping back into space. The [[radioactive decay]] of elements within Mercury's crust is another source of helium, as well as sodium and potassium. Water vapor is present, released by a combination of processes such as comets striking its surface, [[sputtering]] creating water out of hydrogen from the solar wind and oxygen from rock, and sublimation from reservoirs of water ice in the permanently shadowed polar craters. The detection of high amounts of water-related ions like O+, OH\u2212, and [[hydronium|H3O+]] was a surprise. Because of the quantities of these ions that were detected in Mercury's space environment, scientists surmise that these molecules were blasted from the surface or exosphere by the solar wind.\nSodium, potassium, and calcium were discovered in the atmosphere during the 1980s\u20131990s, and are thought to result primarily from the vaporization of surface rock struck by micrometeorite impacts including presently from [[Comet Encke]]. In 2008, magnesium was discovered by \"MESSENGER\". Studies indicate that, at times, sodium emissions are localized at points that correspond to the planet's magnetic poles. This would indicate an interaction between the magnetosphere and the planet's surface.\nAccording to NASA, Mercury is not a suitable planet for Earth-like life. It has a [[exosphere|surface boundary exosphere]] instead of a layered atmosphere, extreme temperatures, and high solar radiation. It is unlikely that any living beings can withstand those conditions. Some parts of the subsurface of Mercury may have been [[Planetary habitability|habitable]], and perhaps [[life form]]s, albeit likely primitive [[microorganism]]s, may have existed on the planet.\nMagnetic field and magnetosphere.\n[[File:Mercury Magnetic Field NASA.jpg|thumb|Graph showing relative strength of Mercury's magnetic field]]\nDespite its small size and slow 59-day-long rotation, Mercury has a significant, and apparently global, [[magnetic field]]. According to measurements taken by \"Mariner 10\", it is about 1.1% the strength of [[Earth's magnetic field|Earth's]]. The magnetic-field strength at Mercury's equator is about 300 [[Tesla (unit)|nT]]. Like that of Earth, Mercury's magnetic field is [[dipolar]] and nearly aligned with the planet's spin axis (10\u00b0 dipolar tilt, compared to 11\u00b0 for Earth). Measurements from both the \"Mariner 10\" and \"MESSENGER\" space probes have indicated that the strength and shape of the magnetic field are stable.\nIt is likely that this magnetic field is generated by a [[Dynamo theory|dynamo]] effect, in a manner similar to the magnetic field of Earth. This dynamo effect would result from the circulation of the planet's iron-rich liquid core. Particularly strong [[tidal heating]] effects caused by the planet's high orbital eccentricity would serve to keep part of the core in the liquid state necessary for this dynamo effect.\nMercury's magnetic field is strong enough to deflect the solar wind around the planet, creating a magnetosphere. The planet's magnetosphere, though small enough to fit within Earth, is strong enough to trap solar wind [[plasma (physics)|plasma]]. This contributes to the space weathering of the planet's surface. Observations taken by the \"Mariner 10\" spacecraft detected this low energy plasma in the magnetosphere of the planet's nightside. Bursts of energetic particles in the planet's magnetotail indicate a dynamic quality to the planet's magnetosphere.\nDuring its second flyby of the planet on October 6, 2008, \"MESSENGER\" discovered that Mercury's magnetic field can be extremely \"leaky\". The spacecraft encountered magnetic \"tornadoes\"\u2014twisted bundles of magnetic fields connecting the planetary magnetic field to interplanetary space\u2014that were up to 800 km wide or a third of the radius of the planet. These twisted magnetic flux tubes, technically known as [[flux transfer event]]s, form open windows in the planet's magnetic shield through which the solar wind may enter and directly impact Mercury's surface via [[magnetic reconnection]]. This also occurs in Earth's magnetic field. The \"MESSENGER\" observations showed the reconnection rate was ten times higher at Mercury, but its proximity to the Sun only accounts for about a third of the reconnection rate observed by \"MESSENGER\".\nOrbit, rotation, and longitude.\nMercury has the most [[Orbital eccentricity|eccentric]] orbit of all the planets in the Solar System; its eccentricity is 0.21 with its distance from the Sun ranging from . It takes 87.969 Earth days to complete an orbit. The diagram illustrates the effects of the eccentricity, showing Mercury's orbit overlaid with a circular orbit having the same [[semi-major axis]]. Mercury's higher velocity when it is near perihelion is clear from the greater distance it covers in each 5-day interval. In the diagram, the varying distance of Mercury to the Sun is represented by the size of the planet, which is inversely proportional to Mercury's distance from the Sun.\nThis varying distance to the Sun leads to Mercury's surface being flexed by [[tidal bulge]]s raised by the [[Sun]] that are about 17 times stronger than the Moon's on Earth. Combined with a 3:2 [[#Spin-orbit resonance|spin\u2013orbit resonance]] of the planet's rotation around its axis, it also results in complex variations of the surface temperature. The resonance makes a single [[solar day]] (the length between two [[meridian (astronomy)|meridian]] transits of the Sun) on Mercury last exactly two Mercury years, or about 176 Earth days.\nMercury's orbit is inclined by 7 degrees to the plane of Earth's orbit (the [[ecliptic]]), the largest of all eight known solar planets. As a result, [[transits of Mercury]] across the face of the Sun can only occur when the planet is crossing the plane of the ecliptic at the time it lies between Earth and the Sun, which is in May or November. This occurs about every seven years on average.\nMercury's [[axial tilt]] is almost zero, with the best measured value as low as 0.027 degrees. This is significantly smaller than that of [[Jupiter]], which has the second smallest axial tilt of all planets at 3.1 degrees. This means that to an observer at Mercury's poles, the center of the Sun never rises more than 2.1 [[arcminutes]] above the horizon. By comparison, the [[angular size]] of the Sun as seen from Mercury ranges from <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1+1\u20444 to 2 degrees across.\nAt certain points on Mercury's surface, an observer would be able to see the Sun peek up a little more than two-thirds of the way over the horizon, then reverse and set before rising again, all within the same [[Extraterrestrial skies#Mercury|Mercurian day]]. This is because approximately four Earth days before perihelion, Mercury's angular [[orbital speed|orbital velocity]] equals its angular [[rotational velocity]] so that the Sun's [[improper motion|apparent motion]] ceases; closer to perihelion, Mercury's angular orbital velocity then exceeds the angular rotational velocity. Thus, to a hypothetical observer on Mercury, the Sun appears to move in a [[apparent retrograde motion|retrograde]] direction. Four Earth days after perihelion, the Sun's normal apparent motion resumes. A similar effect would have occurred if Mercury had been in synchronous rotation: the alternating gain and loss of rotation over a revolution would have caused a libration of 23.65\u00b0 in longitude.\nFor the same reason, there are two points on Mercury's equator, 180 degrees apart in [[longitude]], at either of which, around perihelion in alternate Mercurian years (once a Mercurian day), the Sun passes overhead, then reverses its apparent motion and passes overhead again, then reverses a second time and passes overhead a third time, taking a total of about 16 Earth-days for this entire process. In the other alternate Mercurian years, the same thing happens at the other of these two points. The amplitude of the retrograde motion is small, so the overall effect is that, for two or three weeks, the Sun is almost stationary overhead, and is at its most brilliant because Mercury is at perihelion, its closest to the Sun. This prolonged exposure to the Sun at its brightest makes these two points the hottest places on Mercury. Maximum temperature occurs when the Sun is at an angle of about 25 degrees past noon due to [[Diurnal temperature variation#Temperature lag|diurnal temperature lag]], at 0.4 Mercury days and 0.8 Mercury years past sunrise. Conversely, there are two other points on the equator, 90 degrees of longitude apart from the first ones, where the Sun passes overhead only when the planet is at aphelion in alternate years, when the apparent motion of the Sun in Mercury's sky is relatively rapid. These points, which are the ones on the equator where the apparent retrograde motion of the Sun happens when it is crossing the horizon as described in the preceding paragraph, receive much less solar heat than the first ones described above.\nMercury attains an inferior conjunction (nearest approach to Earth) every 116 Earth days on average, but this interval can range from 105 days to 129 days due to the planet's eccentric orbit. Mercury can come as near as to Earth, and that is slowly declining: The next approach to within is in 2679, and to within in 4487, but it will not be closer to Earth than until 28,622. Its period of retrograde motion as seen from Earth can vary from 8 to 15 days on either side of an inferior conjunction. This large range arises from the planet's high orbital eccentricity. Essentially, because Mercury is closest to the Sun, when taking an average over time, Mercury is most often the closest planet to the Earth, and\u2014in that measure\u2014it is the closest planet to each of the other planets in the Solar System.\nLongitude convention.\nThe longitude convention for Mercury puts the zero of longitude at one of the two hottest points on the surface, as described above. However, when this area was first visited, by \"Mariner 10\", this zero meridian was in darkness, so it was impossible to select a feature on the surface to define the exact position of the meridian. Therefore, a small crater further west was chosen, called [[Hun Kal]], which provides the exact reference point for measuring longitude. The center of Hun Kal defines the 20\u00b0\u00a0west meridian. A 1970 International Astronomical Union resolution suggests that longitudes be measured positively in the westerly direction on Mercury. The two hottest places on the equator are therefore at longitudes 0\u00b0\u00a0W and 180\u00b0\u00a0W, and the coolest points on the equator are at longitudes 90\u00b0\u00a0W and 270\u00b0\u00a0W. However, the \"MESSENGER\" project uses an east-positive convention.\nSpin-orbit resonance.\n[[File:Mercury's orbital resonance.svg|thumb|After one orbit, Mercury has rotated 1.5 times, so after two complete orbits the same hemisphere is again illuminated.]]\nFor many years it was thought that Mercury was synchronously [[tidally locked]] with the Sun, [[rotating]] once for each orbit and always keeping the same face directed towards the Sun, in the same way that the same side of the Moon always faces Earth. Radar observations in 1965 proved that the planet has a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance, rotating three times for every two revolutions around the Sun. The eccentricity of Mercury's orbit makes this resonance stable\u2014at perihelion, when the solar tide is strongest, the Sun is nearly stationary in Mercury's sky.\nThe 3:2 resonant tidal locking is stabilized by the variance of the tidal force along Mercury's eccentric orbit, acting on a permanent dipole component of Mercury's mass distribution. In a circular orbit there is no such variance, so the only resonance stabilized in such an orbit is at 1:1 (e.g., Earth\u2013Moon), when the tidal force, stretching a body along the \"center-body\" line, exerts a torque that aligns the body's axis of least inertia (the \"longest\" axis, and the axis of the aforementioned dipole) to always point at the center. However, with noticeable eccentricity, like that of Mercury's orbit, the tidal force has a maximum at perihelion and therefore stabilizes resonances, like 3:2, ensuring that the planet points its axis of least inertia roughly at the Sun when passing through perihelion.\nThe original reason astronomers thought it was synchronously locked was that, whenever Mercury was best placed for observation, it was always nearly at the same point in its 3:2 resonance, hence showing the same face. This is because, coincidentally, Mercury's rotation period is almost exactly half of its synodic period with respect to Earth. Due to Mercury's 3:2 spin-orbit resonance, a solar day lasts about 176 Earth days. A [[sidereal day]] (the period of rotation) lasts about 58.7 Earth days.\nSimulations indicate that the orbital eccentricity of Mercury varies [[chaos theory|chaotically]] from nearly zero (circular) to more than 0.45 over millions of years due to [[Perturbation (astronomy)|perturbations]] from the other planets. This was thought to explain Mercury's 3:2 spin-orbit resonance (rather than the more usual 1:1), because this state is more likely to arise during a period of high eccentricity. However, accurate modeling based on a realistic model of tidal response has demonstrated that Mercury was captured into the 3:2 spin-orbit state at a very early stage of its history, within 20 (more likely, 10) million years after its formation.\nNumerical simulations show that a future [[Secular resonance|secular]] [[Orbital resonance|orbital resonant]] interaction with the perihelion of Jupiter may cause the eccentricity of Mercury's orbit to increase to the point where there is a 1% chance that the orbit will be destabilized in the next five billion years. If this happens, Mercury may fall into the Sun, collide with Venus, be ejected from the Solar System, or even disrupt the rest of the inner Solar System.\nAdvance of perihelion.\n[[File:Drehung der Apsidenlinie light.svg|right|thumb|[[Apsidal precession]] of Mercury's orbit]]\nIn 1859, the French mathematician and astronomer [[Urbain Le Verrier]] reported that the slow [[precession]] of Mercury's orbit around the Sun could not be completely explained by [[Newtonian mechanics]] and perturbations by the known planets. He suggested, among possible explanations, that another planet (or perhaps instead a series of smaller \"corpuscules\") might exist in an orbit even closer to the Sun than that of Mercury, to account for this perturbation. Other explanations considered included a slight oblateness of the Sun. The success of the search for [[Neptune]] based on its perturbations of the orbit of [[Uranus]] led astronomers to place faith in this possible explanation, and the hypothetical planet was named [[Vulcan (hypothetical planet)|Vulcan]], but no such planet was ever found.\nThe observed [[perihelion precession]] of Mercury is 5,600 [[arcseconds]] (1.5556\u00b0) per century relative to Earth, or per century relative to the inertial [[International Celestial Reference Frame|ICRF]]. Newtonian mechanics, taking into account all the effects from the other planets and including 0.0254 arcseconds per century due to the oblateness of the Sun, predicts a precession of 5,557 arcseconds (1.5436\u00b0) per century relative to Earth, or per century relative to ICRF. In the early 20th century, [[Albert Einstein]]'s [[general theory of relativity]] provided the explanation for the observed precession, by formalizing gravitation as being mediated by the curvature of spacetime. The effect is small: just per century (or 0.43 arcsecond per year, or 0.1035 arcsecond per orbital period) for Mercury; it therefore requires a little over 12.5 million orbits, or 3 million years, for a full excess turn. Similar, but much smaller, effects exist for other Solar System bodies: 8.6247 arcseconds per century for Venus, 3.8387 for Earth, 1.351 for Mars, and 10.05 for [[1566 Icarus]].\nObservation.\n[[File:Mercury.jpg|thumb|Image mosaic by \"Mariner 10\", 1974]]\nMercury's [[apparent magnitude]] is calculated to vary between \u22122.48 (brighter than [[Sirius]]) around [[superior conjunction]] and +7.25 (below the limit of naked-eye visibility) around [[inferior conjunction]]. The mean apparent magnitude is 0.23 while the standard deviation of 1.78 is the largest of any planet. The mean apparent magnitude at superior conjunction is \u22121.89 while that at inferior conjunction is +5.93. Observation of Mercury is complicated by its proximity to the Sun, as it is lost in the Sun's glare for much of the time. Mercury can be observed for only a brief period during either morning or evening twilight.\nGround-based telescope observations of Mercury reveal only an illuminated partial disk with limited detail. The [[Hubble Space Telescope]] cannot observe Mercury at all, due to safety procedures that prevent its pointing too close to the Sun. Because the shift of 0.15 revolutions of Earth in a Mercurian year makes up a seven-Mercurian-year cycle (0.15 \u00d7 7 \u2248 1.0), in the seventh Mercurian year, Mercury follows almost exactly (earlier by 7 days) the sequence of phenomena it showed seven Mercurian years before.\nLike the Moon and Venus, Mercury exhibits [[Lunar phase|phases]] as seen from Earth. It is \"new\" at [[inferior conjunction]] and \"full\" at superior conjunction. The planet is rendered invisible from Earth on both of these occasions because of its being obscured by the Sun, except at its new phase during a transit. Mercury is technically brightest as seen from Earth when it is at a full phase. Although Mercury is farthest from Earth when it is full, the greater illuminated area that is visible and the [[opposition effect|opposition brightness surge]] more than compensates for the distance. The opposite is true for Venus, which appears brightest when it is a [[crescent]], because it is much closer to Earth than when [[gibbous]].\n[[File:PIA19247-Mercury-NPolarRegion-Messenger20150316.jpg|thumb|left|False-color map showing the maximum temperatures of the north polar region]]\n[[File:Mercury Venus Moon over San Jose 08 Jan 2024.png|thumb|right|Mercury (lower left) as seen from [[San Jose, California]] with Venus and the Moon.]]\nMercury is best observed at the first and last quarter, although they are phases of lesser brightness. The first and last quarter phases occur at greatest [[elongation (astronomy)|elongation]] east and west of the Sun, respectively. At both of these times, Mercury's separation from the Sun ranges anywhere from 17.9\u00b0 at perihelion to 27.8\u00b0 at aphelion. At greatest \"western\" elongation, Mercury rises at its earliest before sunrise, and at greatest \"eastern\" elongation, it sets at its latest after sunset.\n[[File:PIA19422-Mercury-CarnegieRupes-MDIS-MLA-20150416.jpg|thumb|right|False-color image of [[Carnegie Rupes]], a tectonic landform\u2014high terrain (red); low (blue).]]\nMercury is more often and easily visible from the [[Southern Hemisphere]] than from the [[Northern Hemisphere|Northern]]. This is because Mercury's maximum western elongation occurs only during early autumn in the Southern Hemisphere, whereas its greatest eastern elongation happens only during late winter in the Southern Hemisphere. In both of these cases, the angle at which the planet's orbit intersects the horizon is maximized, allowing it to rise several hours before sunrise in the former instance and not set until several hours after sundown in the latter from southern mid-latitudes, such as Argentina and South Africa.\nAn alternate method for viewing Mercury involves observing the planet with a [[telescope]] during daylight hours when conditions are clear, ideally when it is at its greatest elongation. This allows the planet to be found easily, even when using telescopes with apertures. However, great care must be taken to obstruct the Sun from sight because of the extreme risk for eye damage. This method bypasses the limitation of twilight observing when the ecliptic is located at a low elevation (e.g. on autumn evenings). The planet is higher in the sky and less atmospheric effects affect the view of the planet. Mercury can be viewed as close as 4\u00b0 to the Sun near superior conjunction when it is almost at its brightest.\nMercury can, like several other planets and the brightest stars, be seen during a total [[solar eclipse]].\nObservation history.\nAncient astronomers.\n[[File:Mercury-bonatti.png|thumb|Mercury, from \"Liber astronomiae\", 1550]]\nThe earliest known recorded observations of Mercury are from the [[MUL.APIN]] tablets. These observations were most likely made by an [[Assyria]]n astronomer around the 14th century BC. The [[cuneiform]] name used to designate Mercury on the MUL.APIN tablets is transcribed as UDU.IDIM.GU\\U4.UD (\"the jumping planet\"). [[Babylonian astronomy|Babylonian records]] of Mercury date back to the 1st millennium BC. The [[Babylonia]]ns called the planet [[Nabu]] after the messenger to the gods in [[Babylonian mythology|their mythology]].\nThe [[Greeks in Egypt|Greco]]-[[Ancient Egypt|Egyptian]] astronomer [[Ptolemy]] wrote about the possibility of planetary transits across the face of the Sun in his work \"Planetary Hypotheses\". He suggested that no transits had been observed either because planets such as Mercury were too small to see, or because transits were too infrequent.\n[[File:Shatir500.jpg|thumb|left|[[Ibn al-Shatir]]'s model for the appearances of Mercury, showing the multiplication of [[epicycles]] using the [[Tusi couple]], thus eliminating the Ptolemaic eccentrics and [[equant]].]]\nIn [[ancient China]], Mercury was known as \"the Hour Star\" (\"Chen-xing\" ). It was associated with the direction north and the phase of water in the [[Five Phases]] system of metaphysics. Modern [[Chinese culture|Chinese]], [[Korean culture|Korean]], [[Japanese culture|Japanese]] and [[Vietnamese culture|Vietnamese]] cultures refer to the planet literally as the \"water star\" (), based on the [[Five elements (Chinese philosophy)|Five elements]]. [[Hindu mythology]] used the name [[Budha]] for Mercury, and this god was thought to preside over Wednesday. The god [[Odin]] (or Woden) of [[Germanic paganism]] was associated with the planet Mercury and Wednesday. The [[Maya civilization|Maya]] may have represented Mercury as an owl (or possibly four owls; two for the morning aspect and two for the evening) that served as a messenger to the [[underworld]]. Mercury was sometimes known as [[Stilbon (mythology)|Stilbon]] ([[Greek language|Greek]]: \u03a3\u03c4\u03af\u03bb\u03b2\u03c9\u03bd) meaning 'the shining, glittering'.\nIn [[medieval Islamic astronomy]], the [[Al-Andalus|Andalusian]] astronomer [[Ab\u016b Ish\u0101q Ibr\u0101h\u012bm al-Zarq\u0101l\u012b]] in the 11th century described the [[deferent]] of Mercury's [[geocentric orbit]] as being oval, like an egg or a [[Pine nut|pignon]], although this insight did not influence his astronomical theory or his astronomical calculations. In the 12th century, [[Ibn Bajjah]] observed \"two planets as black spots on the face of the Sun\", which was later suggested as the transit of Mercury and/or Venus by the [[Maragheh observatory|Maragha]] astronomer [[Qotb al-Din Shirazi]] in the 13th century. Most such medieval reports of transits were later taken as observations of [[sunspot]]s.\nIn India, the [[Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics|Kerala school]] astronomer [[Nilakantha Somayaji]] in the 15th century developed a partially heliocentric planetary model in which Mercury orbits the Sun, which in turn orbits Earth, similar to the [[Tychonic system]] later proposed by [[Tycho Brahe]] in the late 16th century.\nGround-based telescopic research.\nThe first telescopic observations of Mercury were made by [[Thomas Harriot]] and [[Galileo]] from 1610. In 1612, [[Simon Marius]] observed the brightness of Mercury varied with the planet's orbital position and concluded it had phases \"in the same way as Venus and the Moon\". In 1631, [[Pierre Gassendi]] made the first telescopic observations of the transit of a planet across the Sun when he saw a transit of Mercury predicted by [[Johannes Kepler]]. In 1639, [[Giovanni Zupi]] used a telescope to discover that the planet had orbital phases similar to Venus and the Moon. The observation demonstrated conclusively that Mercury orbited the Sun.\nA rare event in astronomy is the passage of one planet in front of another ([[occultation]]), as seen from Earth. Mercury and Venus occult each other every few centuries, and the event of May 28, 1737, is the only one historically observed, having been seen by [[John Bevis]] at the [[Royal Greenwich Observatory]]. The next occultation of Mercury by Venus will be on December 3, 2133.\nThe difficulties inherent in observing Mercury meant that it was far less studied than the other planets. In 1800, [[Johann Schr\u00f6ter]] made observations of surface features, claiming to have observed mountains. [[Friedrich Bessel]] used Schr\u00f6ter's drawings to erroneously estimate the rotation period as 24 hours and an axial tilt of 70\u00b0. In the 1880s, [[Giovanni Schiaparelli]] mapped the planet more accurately, and suggested that Mercury's rotational period was 88 days, the same as its orbital period due to tidal locking. This phenomenon is known as [[synchronous rotation]]. The effort to map the surface of Mercury was continued by [[Eugenios Antoniadi]], who published a book in 1934 that included both maps and his own observations. Many of the planet's surface features, particularly the [[List of albedo features on Mercury|albedo features]], take their names from Antoniadi's map.\nIn June 1962, Soviet scientists at the [[Institute of Radio-engineering and Electronics]] of the [[USSR Academy of Sciences]], led by [[Vladimir Kotelnikov]], became the first to bounce a radar signal off Mercury and receive it, starting radar observations of the planet. Three years later, radar observations by Americans [[Gordon H. Pettengill]] and Rolf B. Dyce, using the [[Arecibo radio telescope]] in [[Puerto Rico]], showed conclusively that the planet's rotational period was about 59 days. The theory that Mercury's rotation was synchronous had become widely held, and it was a surprise to astronomers when these radio observations were announced. If Mercury were tidally locked, its dark face would be extremely cold, but measurements of radio emission revealed that it was much hotter than expected. Astronomers were reluctant to drop the synchronous rotation theory and proposed alternative mechanisms such as powerful heat-distributing winds to explain the observations.\nIn 1965, Italian astronomer [[Giuseppe Colombo]] noted that the rotation value was about two-thirds of Mercury's orbital period, and proposed that the planet's orbital and rotational periods were locked into a 3:2 rather than a 1:1 resonance. Data from \"Mariner 10\" subsequently confirmed this view. This means that Schiaparelli's and Antoniadi's maps were not \"wrong\". Instead, the astronomers saw the same features during every \"second\" orbit and recorded them, but disregarded those seen in the meantime, when Mercury's other face was toward the Sun, because the orbital geometry meant that these observations were made under poor viewing conditions.\nGround-based optical observations did not shed much further light on Mercury, but radio astronomers using interferometry at microwave wavelengths, a technique that enables removal of the solar radiation, were able to discern physical and chemical characteristics of the subsurface layers to a depth of several meters. Not until the first space probe flew past Mercury did many of its most fundamental morphological properties become known. Moreover, technological advances have led to improved ground-based observations. In 2000, high-resolution [[lucky imaging]] observations were conducted by the [[Mount Wilson Observatory]] Hale telescope. They provided the first views that resolved surface features on the parts of Mercury that were not imaged in the \"Mariner 10\" mission. Most of the planet has been mapped by the Arecibo radar telescope, with resolution, including polar deposits in shadowed craters of what may be water ice.\nResearch with space probes.\n[[File:MESSENGER Assembly.jpg|thumb|left|\"MESSENGER\" being prepared for launch]]\n[[File:PIA18389-MarsCuriosityRover-MercuryTransitsSun-20140603.gif|thumb|Mercury transiting the [[Sun]] as viewed by the Mars rover [[Curiosity (rover)|\"Curiosity\"]] (June 3, 2014).]]\nReaching Mercury from Earth poses significant technical challenges, because it orbits so much closer to the Sun than Earth. A Mercury-bound spacecraft launched from Earth must travel over into the Sun's gravitational [[potential well]]. Mercury has an [[orbital speed]] of , whereas Earth's orbital speed is . Therefore, the spacecraft must make a larger change in [[velocity]] ([[delta-v]]) to get to Mercury and then enter orbit, as compared to the delta-v required for, say, [[Exploration of Mars|Mars planetary missions]].\nThe [[potential energy]] liberated by moving down the Sun's potential well becomes [[kinetic energy]], requiring a delta-v change to do anything other than pass by Mercury. Some portion of this [[delta-v budget]] can be provided from a [[gravity assist]] during one or more fly-bys of Venus. To land safely or enter a stable orbit the spacecraft would rely entirely on rocket motors. [[Aerobraking]] is ruled out because Mercury has a negligible atmosphere. A trip to Mercury requires more rocket fuel than that required to [[escape velocity|escape]] the Solar System completely. As a result, only three space probes have visited it so far. A proposed alternative approach would use a [[solar sail]] to attain a Mercury-synchronous orbit around the Sun.\n\"Mariner 10\".\n[[File:Mariner 10.jpg|thumb|\"Mariner 10\", the first probe to visit Mercury]]\nThe first spacecraft to visit Mercury was NASA's \"Mariner 10\" (1974\u20131975). The spacecraft used the gravity of Venus to adjust its orbital velocity so that it could approach Mercury, making it both the first spacecraft to use this gravitational \"slingshot\" effect and the first NASA mission to visit multiple planets. \"Mariner 10\" provided the first close-up images of Mercury's surface, which immediately showed its heavily cratered nature, and revealed many other types of geological features, such as the giant scarps that were later ascribed to the effect of the planet shrinking slightly as its iron core cools. Unfortunately, the same face of the planet was lit at each of \"Mariner 10\"'s close approaches. This made close observation of both sides of the planet impossible, and resulted in the mapping of less than 45% of the planet's surface.\nThe spacecraft made three close approaches to Mercury, the closest of which took it to within of the surface. At the first close approach, instruments detected a magnetic field, to the great surprise of planetary geologists\u2014Mercury's rotation was expected to be much too slow to generate a significant [[dynamo]] effect. The second close approach was primarily used for imaging, but at the third approach, extensive magnetic data were obtained. The data revealed that the planet's magnetic field is much like Earth's, which deflects the solar wind around the planet. For many years after the \"Mariner 10\" encounters, the origin of Mercury's magnetic field remained the subject of several competing theories.\nOn March 24, 1975, just eight days after its final close approach, \"Mariner 10\" ran out of fuel. Because its orbit could no longer be accurately controlled, mission controllers instructed the probe to shut down. \"Mariner 10\" is thought to be still orbiting the Sun, passing close to Mercury every few months.\n\"MESSENGER\".\n[[File:Details of MESSENGER's Impact Location.jpg|thumb|Estimated details of the impact of \"MESSENGER\" on April 30, 2015]]\nA second NASA mission to Mercury, named \"MESSENGER\" (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging), was launched on August 3, 2004. It made a fly-by of Earth in August 2005, and of Venus in October 2006 and June 2007 to place it onto the correct trajectory to reach an orbit around Mercury. A first fly-by of Mercury occurred on January 14, 2008, a second on October 6, 2008, and a third on September 29, 2009. Most of the hemisphere not imaged by \"Mariner 10\" was mapped during these fly-bys. The probe successfully entered an elliptical orbit around the planet on March 18, 2011. The first orbital image of Mercury was obtained on March 29, 2011. The probe finished a one-year mapping mission, and then entered a one-year extended mission into 2013. In addition to continued observations and mapping of Mercury, \"MESSENGER\" observed the 2012 [[solar maximum]].\n[[File:MercuryTopo.png|thumb|right|Topography of Mercury based on MDIS (Mercury Dual Imaging System) data]] The mission was designed to clear up six key issues: Mercury's high density, its geological history, the nature of its magnetic field, the structure of its core, whether it has ice at its poles, and where its tenuous atmosphere comes from. To this end, the probe carried imaging devices that gathered much-higher-resolution images of much more of Mercury than \"Mariner 10\", assorted [[spectrometer]]s to determine the abundances of elements in the crust, and [[magnetometer]]s and devices to measure velocities of charged particles. Measurements of changes in the probe's orbital velocity were expected to be used to infer details of the planet's interior structure. \"MESSENGER\"'s final maneuver was on April 24, 2015, and it crashed into Mercury's surface on April 30, 2015. The spacecraft's impact with Mercury occurred at 3:26:01\u00a0p.m. [[Eastern Time Zone|EDT]] on April 30, 2015, leaving a crater estimated to be in diameter.\n\"BepiColombo\".\nThe [[European Space Agency]] and the [[Japanese Space Agency]] developed and launched a joint mission called \"BepiColombo\", which will orbit Mercury with two probes: one to map the planet and the other to study its magnetosphere. Launched on October 20, 2018, \"BepiColombo\" is expected to reach Mercury in 2025. It will release a magnetometer probe into an elliptical orbit, then chemical rockets will fire to deposit the mapper probe into a circular orbit. Both probes will operate for one terrestrial year. The mapper probe carries an array of spectrometers similar to those on \"MESSENGER\", and will study the planet at many different wavelengths including [[infrared]], [[ultraviolet]], [[X-ray]] and [[gamma ray]]. \"BepiColombo\" conducted the first of its six planned Mercury flybys on October 1, 2021, and the sixth was completed on January 9, 2025. The spacecraft will enter the planet's orbit in 2026.\n\"Perseverance\" rover.\nOn March 5, 2024, NASA released images of transits of the moon [[Deimos (moon)|Deimos]], the moon [[Phobos (moon)|Phobos]] and the planet Mercury as viewed by the \"Perseverance\" rover on the planet Mars.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n[[Category:Mercury (planet)| ]]\n[[Category:Planets of the Solar System]]\n[[Category:Terrestrial planets]]\n[[Category:Astronomical objects known since antiquity]]\n[[Category:Solar System]]"}, "descending_order": ["19694", "10902", "55212"], "permutation_1": ["55212", "19694", "10902"], "permutation_2": ["10902", "19694", "55212"], "permutation_3": ["10902", "19694", "55212"]}
{"id": "3hop2__30654_144905_89329", "docs_added": {"31242942": "George Pocheptsov\nAmerican painter\nGeorge Oleg Pocheptsov VII (born January 29, 1992) is an American painter, draughtsman and entrepreneur.\nLife and career.\nEarly life.\nGeorge Pocheptsov, who is sometimes also referred to as \"Georgie\", was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1992 to Ukrainian parents. When Pocheptsov was eleven months old, his father was diagnosed with brain cancer; and he died in 1995, at the age of forty. \nHe began painting before he could speak, and never had any formal arts education prior to college. While in high school, he began to work on sculpture, as well as painting. While in college, he focused more on his studies, but would still paint in his spare time.\nCollections and acquisitions.\nIn recent years, Pocheptsov has been commissioned to create paintings for Colin Powell, Hillary Clinton, Celine Dion, Alain Ducasse, Michael Jordan, among other famous collectors. He was commissioned to create \"sculptured canvas,\" a self-defined technique, for the Mitchell Camera Museum in London and for the United Nations' 60th anniversary exhibition.\nPocheptsov was also invited to Geneva, Switzerland for a book titled \"The Arts and Copyright\" in which he was featured as an artistic figure.\nInternationally, Pocheptsov has been featured in museums and galleries in England, France, Korea, South Africa, the Netherlands, Russia, Japan, and Ukraine.\nAppearance in popular culture.\nThe media and prominent art collectors refer to Pocheptsov as a child prodigy, especially in the earlier part of his life. Pocheptsov art career appears in magazines and newspapers such as \"The New York Times\", \"Time\", \"People\", \"Parents\", \"The Washingtonian\", \"US Art\", \"Art and Antiques\", \"Art News\", \"Architectural Digest\", \"Southern Living\", \"Spirit of the Carolinas\", among other publications.\nA documentary film detailing Pocheptsov\u2019s life titled, \"A Brush with Destiny\", won four Emmy Awards.\nPhilanthropy and charitable work.\nPocheptsov has used his art career to fund charitable contributions to several charities. In many cases, Pocheptsov donates artwork to a charitable organization, and this artwork is subsequently auctioned at a gala or fundraiser to benefit the charity. Pocheptsov has donated at least five million dollars worth of his art to charity. Just a few examples of the many charities supported, include the America\u2019s Promise Alliance by Colin Powell, Georgetown University Pediatrics, Duke University Pediatrics, Adam Walsh Child Resource Center, Habitat for Humanity, the American Cancer Society, The Brain Tumor Awareness Organization, and many others. Overall, he supports between thirty and sixty charities each year. As another means to support a cause, in 2004, Pocheptsov was commissioned to create an official United States postage stamp for the Brain Tumor Awareness Organization.\nPersonal life.\nPocheptsov graduated from Harvard University in 2014.\nHe speaks fluent Russian, Ukrainian, French, and English. He is also proficient in Latin.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "50585": "Philadelphia\nLargest city in Pennsylvania, United States\nPhiladelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the sixth-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 1,603,797 in the 2020 census. The city is the urban core of the larger Delaware Valley, also known as the Philadelphia metropolitan area, the nation's eighth-largest metropolitan area and seventh-largest combined statistical area with 6.245 million residents and 7.366 million residents, respectively.\nPhiladelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn, an English Quaker and advocate of religious freedom, and served as the capital of the colonial era Province of Pennsylvania. It then played a historic and vital role during the American Revolution and Revolutionary War. It served as the central meeting place for the nation's Founding Fathers, hosted the First Continental Congress (1774) and the Second Continental Congress, during which the Founders formed the Continental Army, elected George Washington as its commander, and adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. During the Revolutionary War's Philadelphia campaign, the city briefly fell to the British Army, which occupied Philadelphia for nine months from September 1777 to June 1778. \nIn 1787, following the end of the Revolutionary War and establishment of independence, the U.S. Constitution was ratified in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Convention. Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until 1790, and it served as the nation's first capital from May 10, 1775, until December 12, 1776, and on four subsequent occasions until 1800, when construction of the new national capital in Washington, D.C. was completed.\nPhiladelphia maintains extensive contemporary influence in business and industry, culture, sports, and music. With 17 four-year universities and colleges in the city, Philadelphia is one of the nation's leading centers for higher education and academic research. The city is a national cultural center, hosting more outdoor sculptures and murals than any other city in the nation. Fairmount Park, when combined with adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park in the same watershed, is , representing one of the nation's largest and the world's 55th-largest urban park. Philadelphia is known for its arts, culture, cuisine, and colonial and Revolutionary-era history; in 2016, it attracted 42\u00a0million domestic tourists who spent $6.8\u00a0billion, representing $11\u00a0billion in economic impact to the city and its surrounding Pennsylvania counties. With five professional sports teams and one of the nation's most loyal and passionate fan bases, Philadelphia is often ranked as the nation's best city for professional sports fans. The city has a culturally and philanthropically active LGBTQ+ community. Philadelphia also has played an immensely influential historic and ongoing role in the development and evolution of American music, especially R&B, soul, and rock.\nAs of 2023[ [update]], the Philadelphia metropolitan area had a gross metropolitan product of US$557.6 billion and is home to 13 \"Fortune\" 500 corporate headquarters. Metropolitan Philadelphia ranks as one of the nation's Big Five venture capital hubs, facilitated by its geographic proximity to both the entrepreneurial and financial ecosystems of New York City and the federal regulatory environment of Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Philadelphia is also a biotechnology hub. The Philadelphia Stock Exchange, owned by Nasdaq since 2008, is the nation's oldest stock exchange and a global leader in options trading. 30th Street Station, the city's primary rail station, is the third-busiest Amtrak hub in the nation with over 4.1 million passengers in 2023. The city's multimodal transportation and logistics infrastructure includes Philadelphia International Airport, a major transatlantic gateway and transcontinental hub; the rapidly-growing PhilaPort seaport; and Interstate 95, the spine of the north\u2013south highway system along the U.S. East Coast.\nPhiladelphia is a city of many firsts, including the nation's first library (1731), hospital (1751), medical school (1765), national capital (1774), university (by some accounts) (1779), central bank (1781), stock exchange (1790), zoo (1874), and business school (1881). Philadelphia contains 67 National Historic Landmarks, including Independence Hall. From the city's 17th century founding through the present, Philadelphia has been the birthplace or home to an extensive number of prominent and influential Americans.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nNative peoples.\nPrior to the arrival of Europeans in the early 17th century, the Lenape, an Indian tribe also known as the Delaware Indians, lived in the village of Shackamaxon in present-day Philadelphia and the surrounding area. The Lenape historically lived along the Delaware River watershed, western Long Island, and the Lower Hudson Valley. Most Lenape were pushed out of the region during the 18th century as the original Thirteen colonies expanded, which was further exacerbated by losses from intertribal conflicts. Lenape communities were also weakened by newly introduced diseases, mainly smallpox, and conflicts with Europeans. The Iroquois occasionally fought the Lenape. Surviving Lenape moved west into the upper Ohio River basin. Following the American Revolutionary War and the subsequent establishment of the United States, the Lenape began moving further west. In the 1860s, the U.S. federal government sent most remaining Lenape in the eastern United States to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma and surrounding territories as part of the Indian removal policy.\nColonial era.\nEuropeans first entered Philadelphia and the surrounding Delaware Valley in the early 17th century. The first settlements were founded by Dutch colonists, who built Fort Nassau on the Delaware River in 1623 in what is now Brooklawn, New Jersey. The Dutch considered the entire Delaware River valley to be part of their New Netherland colony. In 1638, Swedish settlers led by renegade Dutch established the colony of New Sweden at Fort Christina, located in present-day Wilmington, Delaware, and quickly spread out in the valley. In 1644, New Sweden supported the Susquehannocks in their war against Maryland colonists. In 1648, the Dutch built Fort Beversreede on the west bank of the Delaware, south of the Schuylkill River near the present-day Eastwick section of Philadelphia, to reassert their dominion over the area. The Swedes responded by building Fort Nya Korsholm, or New Korsholm, named after a town in Finland with a Swedish majority.\nIn 1655, a Dutch military campaign led by New Netherland Director-General Peter Stuyvesant took control of the Swedish colony, ending its claim to independence. The Swedish and Finnish settlers continued to have their own militia, religion, and court, and to enjoy substantial autonomy under the Dutch. An English fleet captured the New Netherland colony in 1664, though the situation did not change substantially until 1682, when the area was included in William Penn's charter for Pennsylvania.\nIn 1681, in partial repayment of a debt, Charles II of England granted Penn a charter for what would become the Pennsylvania colony. Despite the royal charter, Penn bought the land from the local Lenape in an effort to establish good terms with the Native Americans and ensure peace for the colony. Penn made a treaty of friendship with Lenape chief Tammany under an elm tree at Shackamaxon, in what is now the city's Fishtown neighborhood. Penn named the city Philadelphia, which is Greek for \"brotherly love\", derived from the Ancient Greek terms \u03c6\u03af\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2 \"ph\u00edlos\" (beloved, dear) and \u1f00\u03b4\u03b5\u03bb\u03c6\u03cc\u03c2 \"adelph\u00f3s\" (brother, brotherly). There were a number of cities named \"Philadelphia\" in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Greek and Roman periods, including modern Ala\u015fehir, mentioned as the site of an early Christian congregation in the Book of Revelation. As a Quaker, Penn had experienced religious persecution and wanted his colony to be a place where anyone could worship freely. This tolerance, which exceeded that of other colonies, led to better relations with the local native tribes and fostered Philadelphia's rapid growth into America's most important city.\nPenn planned a city on the Delaware River to serve as a port and place for government. Hoping that Philadelphia would become more like an English rural town instead of a city, Penn laid out roads on a grid plan to keep houses and businesses spread far apart with areas for gardens and orchards.\nThe city's inhabitants did not follow Penn's plans, however, and instead crowded the present-day Port of Philadelphia on the Delaware River and subdivided and resold their lots. Before Penn left Philadelphia for the final time, he issued the Charter of 1701 establishing it as a city. Though poor at first, Philadelphia became an important trading center with tolerable living conditions by the 1750s. Benjamin Franklin, a leading citizen, helped improve city services and founded new ones that were among the first in the nation, including a fire company, library, and hospital.\nA number of philosophical societies were formed, which were centers of the city's intellectual life, including the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture (1785), the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts (1787), the Academy of Natural Sciences (1812), and the Franklin Institute (1824). These societies developed and financed new industries that attracted skilled and knowledgeable immigrants from Europe.\nAmerican Revolution.\nPhiladelphia's importance and central location in the colonies made it a natural center for America's revolutionaries. By the 1750s, Philadelphia surpassed Boston as the largest city and busiest port in British America, and the second-largest city in the entire British Empire after London. In 1774, as resentment of the British government's policies towards the colonies and support for independence began burgeoning in the colonies, Philadelphia hosted the First Continental Congress at Carpenters' Hall, and 12 of the original 13 colonies sent delegates to the Congress.\nFrom 1775 to 1781, Philadelphia hosted the Second Continental Congress, whose 56 delegated unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence inside what was then called Pennsylvania State House and was later renamed Independence Hall. Written predominantly by Thomas Jefferson from his second-floor apartment on Market Street within walking distance of Independence Hall, the Declaration has been described by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis as \"the most potent and consequential words in American history,\" and its adoption represented a declaration of war against Great Britain. Since the Declaration's July 4, 1776, adoption, its signing has been cited globally and repeatedly by various peoples of the world seeking independence and liberty. It also has been, since its adoption, the basis for annual celebration by Americans; in 1938, this celebration of the Declaration was formalized as Independence Day, one of only eleven designated U.S. federal holidays.\nAfter George Washington's defeat at the Battle of Brandywine in Chadds Ford Township, on September 11, 1777, during the Philadelphia campaign, the revolutionary capital of Philadelphia was defenseless, and the city prepared for what was perceived to be an inevitable British attack. Because bells could easily be recast into munitions, the Liberty Bell, then known as the Pennsylvania State Bell, and bells from two Philadelphia churches, Christ Church and St. Peter's Church, were hastily taken down and transported by heavily guarded wagon train out of the city. The Liberty Bell was taken to Zion German Reformed Church in Northampton Town, which is present-day Allentown, where it was hidden under the church's floor boards for nine months from September 1777 until departure of British forces from Philadelphia in June 1778. Two Revolutionary War battles, the Siege of Fort Mifflin, fought between September 26 and November 16, 1777, and the Battle of Germantown, fought on October 4, 1777, took place within Philadelphia's city limits.\nIn Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation on November 15, 1777. Independence Hall in Philadelphia was the meeting place for the Constitutional Convention, which ratified the Constitution on September 17, 1787, which is now the longest-standing codified national constitution.\nPhiladelphia served as capital of the United States for most of the colonial and early post-colonial period. including for a decade, from 1790 to 1800, while Washington, D.C., was being constructed and prepared to serve as the new national capital, and on five prior occasions between 1776 and 1790. In 1793, the largest yellow fever epidemic in U.S. history killed approximately 4,000 to 5,000 people in Philadelphia, or about ten percent of the city's population at the time. The capital of the United States was moved to Washington, D.C. in 1800 upon completion of the White House and U.S. Capitol buildings.\nThe state capital was moved from Philadelphia to Lancaster in 1799, then ultimately to Harrisburg in 1812. Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until the late 18th century. It also was the nation's financial and cultural center until ultimately being eclipsed in total population by New York City in 1790. In 1816, the city's free Black community founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent Black denomination in the country, and the first Black Episcopal Church. The free Black community also established many schools for its children with the help of Quakers. Large-scale construction projects for new roads, canals, and railroads made Philadelphia the first major industrial city in the United States.\n19th century.\nThroughout the 19th century, Philadelphia hosted a variety of industries and businesses; the largest was the textile industry. Major corporations in the 19th and early 20th centuries included the Baldwin Locomotive Works, William Cramp & Sons Shipbuilding Company, and the Pennsylvania Railroad. Established in 1870, the Philadelphia Conveyancers' Association was chartered by the state in 1871. Along with the U.S. Centennial in 1876, the city's industry was celebrated in the Centennial Exposition, the first official World's fair in the U.S.\nImmigrants, mostly from Ireland and Germany, settled in Philadelphia and the surrounding districts. These immigrants were largely responsible for the first general strike in North America in 1835, in which workers in the city won the ten-hour workday. The city was a destination for thousands of Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine in the 1840s; housing for them was developed south of South Street and later occupied by succeeding immigrants. They established a network of Catholic churches and schools and dominated the Catholic clergy for decades. Anti-Irish, anti-Catholic nativist riots erupted in Philadelphia in 1844. The rise in population of the surrounding districts helped lead to the Act of Consolidation of 1854, which extended the city limits from the of Center City to the roughly of Philadelphia County.\nIn the latter half of the 19th century and leading into the 20th century, immigrants from Russia, Eastern Europe, and Italy, and African Americans from the southern U.S. settled in the city.\nPhiladelphia was represented by the Washington Grays in the American Civil War. The African-American population of Philadelphia increased from 31,699 to 219,559 between 1880 and 1930, largely stemming from the Great Migration from the South.\n20th century.\nBy the 20th century, Philadelphia had an entrenched Republican political machine and a complacent population. In 1910, a general strike shut down the entire city.\nIn 1917, following outrage over the election-year murder of a Philadelphia police officer, the City Council shrank from two houses to just one. In July 1919, Philadelphia was one of more than 36 industrial cities nationally to suffer a race riot during Red Summer in post-World War I unrest as recent immigrants competed with Blacks for jobs. In the 1920s, the public flouting of Prohibition laws, organized crime, mob violence, and corrupt police involvement in illegal activities led to the appointment of Brig. Gen. Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marine Corps as the city's director of public safety, but political pressure still prevented long-term success in fighting crime and corruption.\nIn 1940, non-Hispanic whites constituted 86.8% of the city's population. In 1950, the population peaked at more than two million residents, then began to decline with the restructuring of industry that led to the loss of many middle-class union jobs. In addition, suburbanization enticed many affluent residents to depart the city for its outlying railroad commuting towns and newer housing. The resulting reduction in Philadelphia's tax base and the resources of local government caused the city to struggle through a long period of adjustment, and it approached bankruptcy by the late 1980s.\nIn 1985, the MOVE Bombing of the Cobbs Creek neighborhood by city helicopters occurred, killing 11 and destroying 61 homes.\nRevitalization and gentrification of neighborhoods began in the late 1970s and continues into the 21st century with much of the development occurring in the Center City and University City neighborhoods. But this expanded a shortage of affordable housing in the city. After many manufacturers and businesses left Philadelphia or shut down, the city started attracting service businesses and began to market itself more aggressively as a tourist destination. Contemporary glass-and-granite skyscrapers were built in Center City beginning in the 1980s. Historic areas such as Old City and Society Hill were renovated during the reformist mayoral era of the 1950s through the 1980s, making both areas among the most desirable Center City neighborhoods. Immigrants from around the world began to enter the U.S. through Philadelphia as their gateway, leading to a reversal of the city's population decline between 1950 and 2000, during which it lost about 25 percent of its residents.\n21st century.\nPhiladelphia eventually began experiencing a growth in its population in 2007, which continued with incremental annual increases through the present. A migration pattern has been established from New York City to Philadelphia by residents opting for a large city with relative proximity and a lower cost of living.\nGeography.\nTopography.\nPhiladelphia's geographic center is about 40\u00b0 0\u2032 34\u2033 north latitude and 75\u00b0 8\u2032 0\u2033 west longitude. The 40th parallel north passes through neighborhoods in Northeast Philadelphia, North Philadelphia, and West Philadelphia including Fairmount Park. The city encompasses , of which is land and , or 6%, is water. Natural bodies of water include the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, lakes in Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park, and Cobbs, Wissahickon, and Pennypack creeks. The largest artificial body of water is East Park Reservoir in Fairmount Park.\nThe lowest point is sea level and the highest point is in Chestnut Hill, about above sea level on Summit Street near the intersection of Germantown Avenue and Bethlehem Pike at: 40.07815 N, 75.20747 W. Philadelphia is located on the Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line that separates the Atlantic Plain from the Piedmont. The Schuylkill River's rapids at East Falls were inundated by completion of the dam at Fairmount Water Works.\nThe city is the seat of its own county. The city is bordered by six adjacent counties: Montgomery to the northwest; Bucks to the north and northeast; Burlington County, New Jersey to the east; Camden County, New Jersey to the southeast; Gloucester County, New Jersey to the south; and Delaware County to the southwest.\nCityscape.\nCity planning.\nPhiladelphia was created in the 17th century, following the plan by William Penn's surveyor Thomas Holme. Center City is structured with long, straight streets running nearly due east\u2013west and north\u2013south, forming a grid pattern between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers that is aligned with their courses. The original city plan was designed to allow for easy travel and to keep residences separated by open space that would help prevent the spread of fire. In keeping with the idea of a \"Greene Countrie Towne\", and inspired by the many types of trees that grew in the region, Penn named many of the east\u2013west streets for local trees. Penn planned the creation of five public parks in the city which were renamed in 1824. Centre Square was renamed Penn Square; Northeast Square was renamed Franklin Square; Southeast Square was renamed Washington Square; Southwest Square was renamed Rittenhouse Square; and Northwest Square was renamed Logan Circle/Square. Center City had an estimated 183,240 residents as of 2015[ [update]], making it the second-most populated downtown area in the United States after Midtown Manhattan in New York City.\nPhiladelphia's neighborhoods are divided into six large sections that surround Center City: North Philadelphia, Northeast Philadelphia, South Philadelphia, Southwest Philadelphia, West Philadelphia, and Northwest Philadelphia. The city's geographic boundaries have been largely unchanged since these neighborhoods were consolidated in 1854. However, each of these large areas contains numerous neighborhoods, some of whose boundaries derive from the boroughs, townships, and other communities that constituted Pennsylvania County before their inclusion within the city.\nThe City Planning Commission, tasked with guiding growth and development of the city, has divided the city into 18 planning districts as part of the Philadelphia2035 physical development plan. Much of the city's 1980 zoning code was overhauled from 2007 to 2012 as part of a joint effort between former mayors John F. Street and Michael Nutter. The zoning changes were intended to rectify incorrect zoning maps to facilitate future community development, as the city forecasts an additional 100,000 residents and 40,000 jobs will be added by 2035.\nThe Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) is the largest landlord in Pennsylvania. Established in 1937, the PHA is the nation's fourth-largest housing authority, serving about 81,000 people with affordable housing, while employing 1,400 on a budget of $371\u00a0million. The Philadelphia Parking Authority is responsible for ensuring adequate parking for city residents, businesses, and visitors.\nArchitecture.\nPhiladelphia's architectural history dates back to colonial times and includes a wide range of styles. The earliest structures were constructed with logs, but brick structures were common by 1700. During the 18th century, the cityscape was dominated by Georgian architecture, including Independence Hall and Christ Church.\nIn the first decades of the 19th century, Federal and Greek Revival architecture were the dominant styles produced by Philadelphia architects such as Benjamin Latrobe, William Strickland, John Haviland, John Notman, Thomas Walter, and Samuel Sloan. Frank Furness is considered Philadelphia's greatest architect of the second half of the 19th century. His contemporaries included John McArthur Jr., Addison Hutton, Wilson Eyre, the Wilson Brothers, and Horace Trumbauer. In 1871, construction began on the Second Empire-style Philadelphia City Hall. The Philadelphia Historical Commission was created in 1955 to preserve the cultural and architectural history of the city. The commission maintains the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, adding historic buildings, structures, sites, objects and districts as it sees fit.\nIn 1932, Philadelphia became home to the first modern International Style skyscraper in the United States, the PSFS Building, designed by George Howe and William Lescaze. The City Hall remained the tallest building in the city until 1987 when One Liberty Place was completed. Numerous glass and granite skyscrapers were built in Center City beginning in the late 1980s. In 2007, the Comcast Center surpassed One Liberty Place to become the city's tallest building. The Comcast Technology Center was completed in 2018, reaching a height of , as the tallest building in the United States outside of Manhattan and Chicago.\nFor much of Philadelphia's history, the typical home has been the row house. The row house was introduced to the United States via Philadelphia in the early 19th century and, for a time, row houses built elsewhere in the United States were known as \"Philadelphia rows\". A variety of row houses are found throughout the city, from Federal-style continuous blocks in Old City and Society Hill to Victorian-style homes in North Philadelphia to twin row houses in West Philadelphia. While newer homes have been built recently, much of the housing dates to the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, which has created problems such as urban decay and vacant lots. Some neighborhoods, including Northern Liberties and Society Hill, have been rehabilitated through gentrification.\nParks.\nAs of 2014[ [update]], the city's total park space, including municipal, state, and federal parks in the city, amounts to . Philadelphia's largest park is Fairmount Park, which includes the Philadelphia Zoo and encompasses of the total parkland. Fairmount Park's adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park contains . Fairmount Park, when combined with Wissahickon Valley Park, is one of the largest contiguous urban park areas in the U.S. The two parks, along with the Colonial Revival, Georgian and Federal-style mansions in them, have been listed as one entity on the National Register of Historic Places since 1972.\nClimate.\nWithin the K\u00f6ppen climate classification, Philadelphia falls under the northern periphery of the humid subtropical climate zone (K\u00f6ppen \"Cfa\"). Within the Trewartha climate classification, Philadelphia has a temperate maritime climate (\"Do\") limited to the north by the continental climate (\"Dc\"). Summers are typically hot and muggy. Fall and spring are generally mild, and winter is moderately cold. The plant life hardiness zones are 7a and 7b, reflecting an average annual extreme minimum temperature between .\nSnowfall is highly variable. Some winters have only light snow while others include major snowstorms. The normal seasonal snowfall averages , with rare snowfalls in November or April, and rarely any sustained snow cover. Seasonal snowfall accumulation has ranged from trace amounts in 1972\u201373, to in the winter of 2009\u201310. The city's heaviest single-storm snowfall was , which occurred in January 1996.\nPrecipitation is generally spread throughout the year, with eight to eleven wet days per month, at an average annual rate of , but historically ranging from in 1922 to in 2011. The most rain recorded in one day occurred on July 28, 2013, when fell at Philadelphia International Airport. Philadelphia has a moderately sunny climate with an average of 2,498 hours of sunshine annually. The percentage of sunshine ranges from 47% in December to 61% in June, July, and August.\nThe January daily average temperature is . The temperature frequently rises to during thaws. July averages . Heat waves accompanied by high humidity and heat indices are frequent, with highs reaching or exceeding on 30 days of the year. The average window for freezing temperatures is November 6 to April 2, allowing a growing season of 217 days. Early fall and late winter are generally dry, with February having the lowest average precipitation at . The dewpoint in the summer averages between .\nThe highest recorded temperature was on August 7, 1918. Temperatures at or above are not common, with the last occurrence of such a temperature being July 21, 2019. The lowest officially recorded temperature was on February 9, 1934. Temperatures at or below are rare, with the last such occurrence being January 19, 1994. The record low maximum is on February 10, 1899, and December 30, 1880. The record high minimum is on July 23, 2011, and July 24, 2010.\nTime Series.\nAir quality.\nPhiladelphia County received an ozone grade of F and a 24-hour particle pollution rating of D in the American Lung Association's 2017 State of the Air report, which analyzed data from 2013 to 2015. The city was ranked 22nd for ozone, 20th for short-term particle pollution, and 11th for year-round particle pollution. According to the same report, the city experienced a significant reduction in high ozone days since 2001\u2014from nearly 50 days per year to fewer than 10\u2014along with fewer days of high particle pollution since 2000\u2014from about 19 days per year to about 3\u2014and an approximate 30% reduction in annual levels of particle pollution since 2000.\nFive of the ten largest combined statistical areas (CSAs) were ranked higher for ozone: Los Angeles (1st), New York City (9th), Houston (12th), Dallas (13th), and San Jose, California (18th). Many smaller CSAs were also ranked higher for ozone, including Sacramento (8th), Las Vegas (10th), Denver (11th), El Paso (16th), and Salt Lake City (20th). Only two of those same ten CSAs, San Jose and Los Angeles, were ranked higher than Philadelphia for both year-round and short-term particle pollution.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nAs of the 2020 U.S. Census, there were 1,603,797 people residing in Philadelphia, representing a 1.2% increase from the 2019 census estimate. The racial composition of the city was 39.3% Black alone (42.0% Black alone or in combination), 36.3% White alone (41.9% White alone or in combination), 8.7% Asian alone, 0.4% American Indian and Alaska Native alone, 8.7% some other race, and 6.9% multiracial. 14.9% of residents were Hispanic or Latino.\n34.8% had a bachelor's degree or higher. 23.9% spoke a language other than English at home, the most common of which was Spanish (10.8%). 15.0% of the populations foreign born, roughly half of whom are naturalized U.S. citizens. 3.7% of the population are veterans. The median household income was $52,889 and 22.8% of the population lived in poverty. 49.5% of the population drove alone to work, while 23.2% used public transit, 8.2% carpooled, 7.9% walked, and 7.0% worked from home. The average commute is 31 minutes.\nAfter the 1950 census, when a record high of 2,071,605 was recorded, the city's population began a long decline. The population dropped to a low of 1,488,710 residents in 2006 before beginning to rise again. Between 2006 and 2017, Philadelphia added 92,153 residents. In 2017, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that the racial composition of the city was 41.3% Black (non-Hispanic), 34.9% White (non-Hispanic), 14.1% Hispanic or Latino, 7.1% Asian, 0.4% Native American, 0.05% Pacific Islander, and 2.8% multiracial.\nImmigration and cultural diversity.\nIn addition to the city's economic growth, the city's population has been fueled by foreign immigration. According to The Pew Charitable Trusts, the city's foreign-born population increased by 69% between 2000 and 2016 to constitute nearly 20% of Philadelphia's workforce, and it doubled between 1990 and 2017 to constitute 13.8% of the city's total population, with the top five countries of origin being China by a significant margin followed by the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, India, and Vietnam.\nIrish, Italian, German, Polish, English, Russian, Ukrainian, and French ancestries constitute the largest European ethnic groups in the city. Philadelphia has the second-largest Irish and Italian populations in the United States after New York City. South Philadelphia remains one of the largest Italian neighborhoods in the country and is home to the Italian Market.\nThe Pennsport neighborhood and Gray's Ferry section of South Philadelphia, home to many Mummer clubs, are well known as Irish neighborhoods. The Kensington, Port Richmond, and Fishtown neighborhoods have historically been heavily Irish and Polish. Port Richmond is a center for the Polish-American community in Philadelphia, and it remains a common destination for Polish immigrants. Northeast Philadelphia, although known for its Irish and Irish-American population, is home to a Jewish and Russian population. Mount Airy in Northwest Philadelphia also contains a Jewish community. Nearby Chestnut Hill is historically known as an Anglo-Saxon Protestant community.\nPhiladelphia's Black American population is the fourth-largest in the country after New York City, Chicago, and Houston. West Philadelphia and North Philadelphia are largely African-American neighborhoods, but many are leaving those areas in favor of the Northeast and Southwest sections of Philadelphia. A higher proportion of African-American Muslims reside in Philadelphia than most other major U.S. cities. West Philadelphia and Southwest Philadelphia are home to various Afro-Caribbean and African immigrant communities.\nThe Puerto Rican population in Philadelphia is the second-largest on the U.S. mainland after New York City, and the second-fastest growing after Orlando. Eastern North Philadelphia, particularly Fairhill and surrounding areas to the north and east, has one of the highest concentrations of Puerto Ricans outside Puerto Rico, with many large swaths of blocks being close to 100% Puerto Rican. Puerto Rican and Dominican populations reside in North Philadelphia and the Northeast, and Mexican and Central American populations exist in South Philadelphia. South American migrants were being transported by bus from Texas to Philadelphia beginning in 2022.\nPhiladelphia's Asian American population includes those of Chinese, Indians, Vietnamese, South Koreans, Filipinos, Cambodians, and Indonesians. Over 35,000 Chinese Americans lived in the city in 2015, including a Fuzhounese population. Center City hosts a Chinatown that is served by Chinatown bus lines with service to/from Chinatown, Manhattan. Indians make up the second-largest Asian group in the city of Philadelphia, while making up the largest foreign-born population in the Delaware Valley. A Korean community initially settled in the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Olney; however, the primary Koreatown has subsequently shifted further north, straddling the city's border with adjacent Cheltenham in Montgomery County and Cherry Hill in South Jersey. South Philadelphia is home to Vietnamese-Americans in Little Saigon and Cambodian-Americans in Cambodia Town, as well as Thai-American, Indonesian-American, and Chinese-American communities.\nPhiladelphia's Gay village near Washington Square is home to a concentration of gay and lesbian-friendly businesses, restaurants, and bars.\nReligion.\nIn a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, 68% of the population of the city identified themselves as Christian. Approximately 41% of Christians in the city and area professed attendance at a variety of churches that could be considered Protestant, while 26% professed Catholic beliefs.\nThe Protestant Christian community in Philadelphia is dominated by mainline Protestant denominations including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church in the United States, Presbyterian Church (USA) and American Baptist Churches USA. One of the most prominent mainline Protestant jurisdictions is the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. The African Methodist Episcopal Church was established in Philadelphia. Historically, the city has strong connections to the Quakers, Unitarian Universalism, and the Ethical Culture movement, all of which continue to be represented in the city. The Quaker Friends General Conference is based in Philadelphia. Evangelical Protestants making up less than 15% of the population were also prevalent.\nEvangelical Protestant bodies included the Anglican Church in North America, Lutheran Church\u2014Missouri Synod, Presbyterian Church in America, and National Baptist Convention of America. The Catholic community is primarily served by the Latin Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Eparchy of the United States of America and Canada, though some independent Catholic churches exist throughout Philadelphia and its suburbs. The Latin Church-based jurisdiction is headquartered in the city, and its see is the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. The Ukrainian Catholic jurisdiction is headquartered in Philadelphia, and is seated at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.\nLess than 1% of Philadelphia's Christians were Mormons. The remainder of the Christian demographic is spread among smaller Protestant denominations and the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox among others. The Diocese of Eastern Pennsylvania (Orthodox Church in America) and Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (Ecumenical Patriarchate) divide the Eastern Orthodox in Philadelphia. The Russian Orthodox St. Andrew's Cathedral is in the city.\nThe same study says that other religions collectively compose about 8% of the population, including Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Sikhism. Philadelphia has the fifth-largest Muslim population among U.S. cities. The remaining 24% claimed no religious affiliation.\nThe Philadelphia metropolitan area's Jewish population was estimated at 206,000 in 2001, which was the sixth-largest in the U.S. at that time. Jewish traders were operating in southeastern Pennsylvania long before William Penn. Jews in Philadelphia took a prominent part in the War of Independence. Although the majority of the early Jewish residents were of Portuguese or Spanish descent, some among them had emigrated from Germany and Poland. About the beginning of the 19th century, a number of Jews from the latter countries, finding the services of the Congregation Mickv\u00e9 Israel unfamiliar to them, resolved to form a new congregation which would use the ritual to which they had been accustomed.\nAfrican diasporic religions are practiced in some Latino and Hispanic and Caribbean communities in North and West Philadelphia.\nLanguages.\nAs of 2010[ [update]], 79.12% (1,112,441) of Philadelphia residents age 5 and older spoke English at home as a primary language, while 9.72% (136,688) spoke Spanish, 1.64% (23,075) Chinese, 0.89% (12,499) Vietnamese, 0.77% (10,885) Russian, 0.66% (9,240) French, 0.61% (8,639) other Asian languages, 0.58% (8,217) African languages, 0.56% (7,933) Cambodian (Mon-Khmer), and Italian was spoken as a main language by 0.55% (7,773) of the population over the age of five. In total, 20.88% (293,544) of Philadelphia's population age 5 and older spoke a mother language other than English.\nPoverty.\nPhiladelphia is home to many food poverty programs, of which two of the largest are Philabundance which claims to feed 90000 people per week. and Share Food Program which claims to feed 1 million people per month.\nEconomy.\nPhiladelphia's close geographical and transportation connections to other large metropolitan economies along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States have been cited as offering a significant competitive advantage for business creation and entrepreneurship. The city is the center of economic activity in both Pennsylvania and the four-state Delaware Valley metropolitan region. Five Fortune 500 companies are based in the city. As of 2021[ [update]], the Philadelphia metropolitan area is estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of US$479\u00a0billion, an increase from the $445\u00a0billion calculated by the Bureau of Economic Analysis for 2017, representing the ninth-largest U.S. metropolitan economy.\nPhiladelphia's economic sectors include financial services, health care, biotechnology, information technology, trade and transportation, manufacturing, oil refining, food processing, and tourism. Metropolitan Philadelphia is one of the top five American venture capital hubs, credited to its proximity to New York City's financial and tech and biotechnology ecosystems. Financial activities account for the largest economic sector of the metropolitan area, which is one of the largest health education and research centers in the United States. The city's two largest employers are the federal and city governments. Philadelphia's largest private employer is the University of Pennsylvania followed by Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.\nFinance and corporations.\nThe Philadelphia Stock Exchange, acquired by Nasdaq in 2007, is a global leader in options trading. The city is home to the headquarters of Comcast, the nation's largest multinational telecommunications corporation; insurance conglomerates Cigna, Colonial Penn, and Independence Blue Cross; as well as food services company Aramark, chemical makers FMC Corporation and Rohm and Haas, pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline, Amicus Therapeutics, Spark Therapeutics, apparel retailers Five Below and Urban Outfitters and its subsidiary Anthropologie, automotive parts retailer Pep Boys, and stainless steel producer Carpenter Technology Corporation.\nOther corporation headquarters in the city include RiteAid, Crown Holdings, and Brandywine Realty Trust. The headquarters of Boeing Rotorcraft Systems and its main rotorcraft factory are in the Philadelphia suburb of Ridley Park; The Vanguard Group, and the U.S. headquarters of Siemens Healthineers are headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb. Healthcare conglomerate AmerisourceBergen is located in suburban Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Across the Delaware River in adjacent Camden County, New Jersey, Campbell Soup Company and Subaru USA are both headquartered in Camden, New Jersey, and TD Bank (USA) is headquartered in nearby suburban Cherry Hill, New Jersey.\nTech and biotech.\nPhiladelphia is a hub for information technology and biotechnology. Philadelphia and Pennsylvania are attracting new life sciences ventures. As of 2024, the Delaware Valley ranks as one of the Big Five U.S. venture capital hubs, enabled by its proximity to both the entrepreneurial and financial ecosystems of New York City and to the federal regulatory environment of Washington, D.C.\nTourism.\nPhiladelphia's history attracts many tourists, with the Independence National Historical Park, which includes the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and other historic sites, received over 5\u00a0million visitors in 2016. The city welcomed 42\u00a0million domestic tourists in 2016 who spent $6.8\u00a0billion, generating an estimated $11\u00a0billion in total economic impact in the city and surrounding four counties of Pennsylvania. The annual Naked Bike Ride attracts participants from around the United States and internationally to Philadelphia.\nTrade and transportation.\nPhiladelphia International Airport, a major Transatlantic gateway and transcontinental hub, has undergone a $900\u00a0million infrastructural expansion to increase passenger capacity and augment passenger experience, and the airport continues an ongoing capital expenditure program to upgrade facilities and add further amenities. The Port of Philadelphia, having experienced the highest percentage growth by tonnage loaded in 2017 among major U.S. seaports, has doubled its shipping capacity to accommodate super-sized post-Panamax shipping vessels since 2018. Philadelphia's 30th Street Station is the third-busiest Amtrak rail hub, following Penn Station in Manhattan and Union Station in Washington, D.C., transporting over 4\u00a0million inter-city rail passengers annually.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nEducation in Philadelphia is provided by many private and public institutions. The School District of Philadelphia is the local school district, operating public schools, in all of the city. The Philadelphia School District is the eighth-largest school district in the nation with 142,266 students in 218 traditional public schools and 86 charter schools as of 2014[ [update]].\nThe city's K-12 enrollment in district\u2013run schools dropped from 156,211 students in 2010 to 130,104 students in 2015. During the same time period, the enrollment in charter schools increased from 33,995 students in 2010 to 62,358 students in 2015. This consistent drop in enrollment led the city to close 24 of its public schools in 2013. During the 2014 school year, the city spent an average of $12,570 per pupil, below the average among comparable urban school districts.\nGraduation rates among district-run schools, meanwhile, steadily increased in the ten years from 2005. In 2005, Philadelphia had a district graduation rate of 52%. This number increased to 65% in 2014, still below the national and state averages. Scores on the state's standardized test, the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) trended upward from 2005 to 2011 but subsequently decreased. In 2005, the district-run schools scored an average of 37.4% on math and 35.5% on reading. The city's schools reached their peak scores in 2011 with 59.0% on math and 52.3% on reading. In 2014, the scores dropped significantly to 45.2% on math and 42.0% on reading.\nOf the city's public high schools, including charter schools, only four performed above the national average on the SAT (1497 out of 2400) in 2014: Masterman, Central, Girard Academic Music Program, and MaST Community Charter School. All other district-run schools were below average.\nHigher education.\nMedical and research facilities of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Philadelphia has the third-largest student concentration on the East Coast, with more than 120,000 college and university students enrolled within the city and nearly 300,000 in the metropolitan area. More than 80 colleges, universities, trade, and specialty schools are in the Philadelphia region. One of the founding members of the Association of American Universities is in the city, the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution with claims to be the First university in the United States.\nThe city's largest university by student enrollment is Temple University, followed by Drexel University. The city's nationally ranked research universities comprise the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, Drexel University, and Thomas Jefferson University. Philadelphia is also home to five schools of medicine: Drexel University College of Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Temple University School of Medicine, and Thomas Jefferson University's Sidney Kimmel Medical College. Hospitals, universities, and higher education research institutions in Philadelphia's four congressional districts received more than $252\u00a0million in National Institutes of Health grants in 2015.\nOther institutions of higher learning within the city's borders include:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCulture.\nPhiladelphia is home to many national historical sites that relate to the founding of the United States. Independence National Historical Park is the center of these historical landmarks and one of the country's 22 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, and the Liberty Bell is housed, are among the city's most popular attractions. Other national historic sites include the homes of Edgar Allan Poe and Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and early government buildings, including the First and the Second Bank of the United States, Fort Mifflin, and the Gloria Dei (Old Swedes') Church. Philadelphia alone has 67 National Historic Landmarks, the third most of any city in the country.\nPhiladelphia's major science museums include the Franklin Institute, which contains the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the M\u00fctter Museum, and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. History museums include the National Constitution Center, the Museum of the American Revolution, the Philadelphia History Museum, the National Museum of American Jewish History, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Masonic Library and Museum of Pennsylvania in the Masonic Temple, and the Eastern State Penitentiary. Philadelphia is home to the United States's first zoo and hospital, as well as Fairmount Park, one of America's oldest and largest urban parks, founded in 1855.\nThe city is home to important archival repositories, including the Library Company of Philadelphia, established in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin at 1314 Locust Street, and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, founded in 1814. The Presbyterian Historical Society is the country's oldest denominational historical society, organized in 1852.\nArts.\nThe city is home to multiple art museums, including the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Rodin Museum, which holds the largest collection of work by Auguste Rodin outside France. The city's largest art museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is one of the largest art museums in the world. The long flight of steps to the Art Museum's main entrance became famous after the film \"Rocky\" (1976).\nAnnual events include the Philadelphia Film Festival, held annually each October, the 6abc Dunkin' Donuts Thanksgiving Day Parade, the nation's longest-running continuously held Thanksgiving Day parade, and the Mummers Parade, the nation's longest continuously held folk parade, which is held every New Year's Day predominantly on Broad Street.\nAreas such as South Street and the Old City section of the city have a vibrant night life. The Avenue of the Arts in Center City contains many restaurants and theaters, such as the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, home of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Academy of Music, home of Opera Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Ballet. The Wilma Theatre and the Philadelphia Theatre Company at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre produce a variety of new plays. Several blocks to the east are the Lantern Theater Company at St. Stephens Episcopal Church; and the Walnut Street Theatre, a National Historic Landmark stated to be the oldest and most subscribed-to theatre in the English-speaking world, founded in 1809. In May 2019, the Walnut Street Theatre announced a major expansion to begin in 2020. New Freedom Theatre, Pennsylvania's oldest African-American theatre, is located on North Broad Street.\nPhiladelphia has more public art than any other American city. In 1872, the Association for Public Art, formerly the Fairmount Park Art Association, was created as the first private association in the United States dedicated to integrating public art and urban planning. In 1959, lobbying by the Artists Equity Association helped create the Percent for Art ordinance, the first for a U.S. city. The program, which has funded more than 200 pieces of public art, is administered by the Philadelphia Office of Arts and Culture, the city's art agency. The city has more murals than any other American city, due to the 1984 creation of the Department of Recreation's Mural Arts Program, which seeks to beautify neighborhoods and provide an outlet for graffiti artists. The program has funded more than 2,800 murals by professional, staff and volunteer artists and educated more than 20,000 youth in underserved neighborhoods throughout Philadelphia.\nThe city is home to a number of art organizations, including the regional art advocacy nonprofit Philadelphia Tri-State Artists Equity, the Philadelphia Sketch Club, one of the country's oldest artists' clubs, and The Plastic Club, started by women excluded from the Sketch Club. Many Old City art galleries stay open late on the First Friday event of each month.\nCuisine.\nThe city is known for its hoagies, stromboli, roast pork sandwich, scrapple, soft pretzels, water ice, Irish potato candy, tastykakes, and the cheesesteak sandwich which was developed by Italian immigrants. The Philadelphia area has many establishments that serve cheesesteaks, including restaurants, taverns, delicatessens and pizza parlors. The originator of the thinly-sliced steak sandwich in the 1930s, initially without cheese, is Pat's King of Steaks, which faces its rival Geno's Steaks, founded in 1966, across the intersection of 9th Street and Passyunk Avenue in the Italian Market of South Philadelphia.\nMcGillin's Olde Ale House, opened in 1860 on Drury Street in Center City, is the oldest continuously operated tavern in the city. The City Tavern is a replica of a historic 18th-century building first opened in 1773, demolished in 1854 after a fire, and rebuilt in 1975 on the same site as part of Independence National Historical Park. The tavern offers authentic 18th-century recipes, served in seven period dining rooms, three wine cellar rooms and an outdoor garden.\nThe Reading Terminal Market is a historic food market founded in 1893 in the Reading Terminal building, a designated National Historic Landmark. The enclosed market is one of the oldest and largest markets in the country, hosting over a hundred merchants offering Pennsylvania Dutch specialties, artisan cheese and meat, locally grown groceries, and specialty and ethnic foods.\nDialect.\nThe traditional Philadelphia accent is considered by some linguists to be the most distinctive accent in North America. The Philadelphia dialect, which is spread throughout the Delaware Valley and South Jersey, is part of a larger Mid-Atlantic American English family, a designation that also includes the Baltimore accent. Additionally, it shares many similarities with the New York accent. Owing to over a century of linguistic data collected by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania under sociolinguist William Labov, the Philadelphia dialect has been one of the best-studied forms of American English. The accent is especially found within the Irish American and Italian American working-class neighborhoods. Philadelphia also has its own unique collection of neologisms and slang terms.\nMusic.\nThe Philadelphia Orchestra is generally considered one of the top five orchestras in the United States. The orchestra performs at the Kimmel Center and has a summer concert series at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts. Opera Philadelphia performs at the nation's oldest continually operating opera house\u2014the Academy of Music. The Philadelphia Boys Choir & Chorale has performed its music all over the world. The Philly Pops plays orchestral versions of popular jazz, swing, Broadway, and blues songs at the Kimmel Center and other venues within the mid-Atlantic region. The Curtis Institute of Music is one of the world's premier conservatories and among the most selective institutes of higher education in the nation.\nPhiladelphia has played a prominent role in the music of the United States. The culture of American popular music has been influenced by significant contributions of Philadelphia area musicians and producers, in both the recording and broadcasting industries. In 1952, the teen dance party program called \"Bandstand\" premiered on local television, hosted by Bob Horn. The show was renamed \"American Bandstand\" in 1957, when it began national syndication on ABC, hosted by Dick Clark and produced in Philadelphia until 1964 when it moved to Los Angeles. Promoters marketed youthful musical artists known as teen idols to appeal to the young audience. Philadelphia-born singers, including Frankie Avalon, James Darren, Eddie Fisher, Fabian Forte, Bobby Rydell, and South Philly-raised Chubby Checker, topped the music charts, establishing a clean-cut rock and roll image.\nPhilly soul music of the late 1960s\u20131970s is a highly produced version of soul music which led to later forms of popular music such as disco and urban contemporary rhythm and blues. On July 13, 1985, John F. Kennedy Stadium was the American venue for the Live Aid concert. The city also hosted the Live 8 concert, which attracted about 700,000 people to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on July 2, 2005.\nNotable rock and pop musicians from Philadelphia and its suburbs include Bill Haley & His Comets, Nazz, Todd Rundgren, Hall & Oates, the Hooters, Cinderella, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Ween, Schoolly D, Pink, the Roots, Beanie Sigel, State Property, Lisa \"Left Eye\" Lopes, Meek Mill, Lil Uzi Vert, and others.\nSports.\nPhiladelphia has one of the nation's richest histories in professional sports, dating back to the mid-19th century. Its first professional sports team, the Philadelphia Athletics, a professional baseball team, was founded in 1860. The Athletics were initially an amateur league team that turned professional in 1871. In 1876, the Athletics joined with seven other teams in founding the National League, now the longest continuously operating league in world sports. \nPhiladelphia is one of 12 U.S. cities to have teams in all four major league sports: the Philadelphia Phillies of Major League Baseball (MLB), the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League (NFL), the Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League (NHL), and the Philadelphia 76ers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Phillies, formed in 1883 as the Quakers and renamed in 1884, are the oldest team continuously playing under the same name in the same city in the history of American professional sports.\nThe Philadelphia metro area is also home to the Philadelphia Union of Major League Soccer (MLS), plays their home games at Subaru Park, a soccer-specific stadium in Chester, Pennsylvania.\nPhiladelphia was the second of eight U.S. cities to win titles in all four major leagues, the MLB, NFL, NHL, and NBA. It won a title in soccer in the now-defunct North American Soccer League in 1973. Following the 76ers' victory over the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1983 NBA Finals, however, the city's professional teams and their fans endured 25 years without a championship in any professional sport until the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, defeating the Tampa Bay Rays. This quarter century without a championship for any Philadelphia sports team is sometimes described as the Curse of Billy Penn, a reference to a 1987 decision that permitted One Liberty Place to become the first building in city history to surpass the height of \"William Penn\", a statue installed in 1894 atop City Hall. In 2004, during the city's championship drought, ESPN placed Philadelphia second on its list of \"The Fifteen Most Tortured Sports Cities\". The city's sports fans are often both praised and sometimes derided. In 2011, for instance, \"GQ\" magazine named Eagles and Phillies fans the nation's worst professional sports fans, describing them as the \"Meanest Fans in America\" in summarizing repeated incidents of their drunken behavior and long history of booing.\nAfter the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, nine years passed without a championship until the Eagles won their first Super Bowl following the 2017 season, defeating the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII. Seven seasons later, following the 2024 season, the Eagles won their second Super Bowl, defeating the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX. \nMajor professional sports teams that originated in Philadelphia, which later moved to other cities, include the Golden State Warriors basketball team, which played in Philadelphia from 1946 to 1962 and the Oakland Athletics baseball team, which was originally the Philadelphia Athletics and played in Philadelphia from 1901 to 1954.\nPhiladelphia is home to professional, semi-professional, and elite amateur teams in multiple other sports, including cricket, rugby league, and rugby union. Major running events in the city include the Penn Relays, the Philadelphia Marathon, and the Broad Street Run. The Collegiate Rugby Championship is played annually each June at Talen Energy Stadium in Chester.\nThe city also has a rich history in rowing, which has been popular in Philadelphia since the 18th century. On Boathouse Row, a symbol of Philadelphia's rich rowing history, each Big Five member has its own boathouse. Philadelphia hosts numerous local and collegiate rowing clubs and competitions, including the annual Dad Vail Regatta, the largest intercollegiate rowing event in North America with more than 100 participating U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities; the annual Stotesbury Cup Regatta, which is billed as the world's oldest and largest rowing event for high school students; and the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta. The regattas are held on the Schuylkill River and organized by Schuylkill Navy, an association of area rowing clubs that has produced numerous Olympic rowers.\nThe Philadelphia Spinners were a professional ultimate team in Major League Ultimate (MLU) until 2016. The Spinners were one of the original eight teams of the American Ultimate Disc League (AUDL), which was founded in 2012. They played at Franklin Field and won the inaugural AUDL championship and the final MLU championship in 2016. The MLU was suspended indefinitely by its investors in December 2016. As of 2018[ [update]], the Philadelphia Phoenix continue to play in the AUDL.\nPhiladelphia is home to the Philadelphia Big 5, a group of five NCAA Division I college basketball programs, including La Salle, Penn, Saint Joseph's, Temple, and Villanova universities. The sixth NCAA Division I school in Philadelphia is Drexel University. La Salle won the 1954 championship of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. Villanova won the 1985, 2016, and 2018 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournaments. Philadelphia will be one of the eleven US host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.\nLaw and government.\nPhiladelphia County is a legal nullity. All county functions were assumed by the city in 1952. The city has been coterminous with the county since 1854.\nPhiladelphia's 1952 Home Rule Charter was written by the City Charter Commission, which was created by the Pennsylvania General Assembly in an act of April 1949, and a city ordinance of June 1949. The existing city council received a proposed draft in February 1951, and the electors approved it in an election held in April 1951. The first elections under the new Home Rule Charter were held in November 1951, and the newly elected officials took office in January 1952.\nThe city uses the strong-mayor version of the mayor\u2013council form of government, which is led by one mayor in whom executive authority is vested. The mayor has the authority to appoint and dismiss members of all boards and commissions without the approval of the city council. Elected at-large, the mayor is limited to two consecutive four-year terms, but can run for the position again after an intervening term.\nCourts.\nPhiladelphia County is coterminous with the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas is the trial court of general jurisdiction for the city, hearing felony-level criminal cases and civil suits above the minimum jurisdictional limit of $10,000. The court has appellate jurisdiction over rulings from the Municipal and Traffic Courts, and some administrative agencies and boards. The trial division has 70 commissioned judges elected by the voters, along with about one thousand other employees. The court has a family division with 25 judges and an orphans' court with three judges.\nAs of 2018[ [update]], the city's District Attorney is Larry Krasner, a Democrat. The last Republican to hold the office is Ronald D. Castille, who left in 1991 and later served as the Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court from 2008 to 2014.\nThe Philadelphia Municipal Court handles traffic cases, misdemeanor and felony criminal cases with maximum incarceration of five years, and civil cases involving $12,000 or less ($15,000 in real estate and school tax cases), and all landlord-tenant disputes. The municipal court has 27 judges elected by the voters.\nPennsylvania's three appellate courts also have sittings in Philadelphia. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the court of last resort in the state, regularly hears arguments in Philadelphia City Hall. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania and the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania also sit in Philadelphia several times a year. Judges for these courts are elected at large. The state Supreme Court and Superior Court have deputy prothonotary offices in Philadelphia.\nPhiladelphia is home to the federal United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, both of which are housed in the James A. Byrne United States Courthouse.\nPolitics.\nThe current mayor is Cherelle Parker who won the election in November 2023. Parker's predecessor, Jim Kenney, served two terms from 2016 to January 2024. Parker is a member of the Democratic Party. For over seven decades, since 1952, every Philadelphia mayor has been a Democrat.\nPhiladelphia City Council is the legislative branch which consists of ten council members representing individual districts and seven members elected at-large, all of whom are elected to four-year terms. Democrats are currently the majority and hold 14 seats including nine of the ten districts and five at-large seats. Republicans hold one seat: the Northeast-based Tenth District. The Working Families Party holds two at-large seats making them the council's minority party. The current council president is Kenyatta Johnson.\nPhiladelphia's political structure consists of a system of wards and divisions. There are 66 wards with 11 to 51 divisions each for a total of 1703 divisions. Each division elects two committee people who are supposed to live within the division boundaries, and committee people select a leader for their ward. Democrats and Republicans elect their own committee people every four years. The committee person's role is to serve as a point of contact between voters and party officials and help get out the vote. Most wards are closed which means the ward leader makes sole endorsement decisions; open wards allow committee people to weigh in on these decisions. There are groups such as Open Wards Philadelphia and individuals who are working to elect ward leaders who promote an open ward system.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nPhiladelphia had historically been a bastion of the Republican Party from the American Civil War until the mid-1930s. In 1856, the first Republican National Convention was held at Musical Fund Hall at 808 Locust Street in Philadelphia.\nDemocratic registrations increased after the Great Depression; however, the city was not carried by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt in his landslide victory of 1932, as Pennsylvania was one of only six states won by Republican Herbert Hoover. Voter turnout surged from 600,000 in 1932 to nearly 900,000 in 1936 and Roosevelt carried Philadelphia with over 60% of the vote. Philadelphia has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1936. In 2008, Democrat Barack Obama drew 83% of the city's vote. Obama's win was even larger in 2012, capturing 85% of the vote. In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton won 82% of the vote.\nAs a result of the previously declining population in the city and state, Philadelphia has only three congressional districts of the 18 districts in Pennsylvania, based on the 2010 census apportionment: the 2nd district, represented by Brendan Boyle; the 3rd, represented by Dwight Evans; and the 5th, represented by Mary Gay Scanlon. All three representatives are Democrats, though Republicans still have some support in the city, primarily in the Northeast. Sam Katz ran competitive mayoral races as the Republican nominee in 1999 and 2003, losing to Democrat John Street both times.\nPennsylvania's longest-serving Senator, Arlen Specter, was an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania who opened his first law practice in Philadelphia. Specter served as a Republican from 1981 and as a Democrat from 2009, losing that party's primary in 2010 and leaving office in January 2011. He was assistant counsel on the Warren Commission in 1964 and the city's district attorney from 1966 to 1974.\nPhiladelphia has hosted various national conventions, including in 1848 (Whig), 1856 (Republican), 1872 (Republican), 1900 (Republican), 1936 (Democratic), 1940 (Republican), 1948 (Republican), 1948 (Progressive), 2000 (Republican), and 2016 (Democratic). Philadelphia has been home to one vice president, George M. Dallas, and one general of the American Civil War, George B. McClellan, who won his party's nomination for president but lost in the general election to Abraham Lincoln in 1864. In May 2019, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden chose Philadelphia to be his 2020 U.S. presidential campaign headquarters.\nEnvironmental policy.\n\"Green Cities, Clean Water\" is an environmental policy initiative based in Philadelphia that has shown promising results in mitigating the effects of climate change. The researchers on the policy have stated that despite such promising plans of green infrastructure building, \"the city is forecasted to grow warmer, wetter, and more urbanized over the century, runoff and local temperatures will increase on average throughout the city\". Even though landcover predictive models on the effects of the policy initiative have indicated that green infrastructure could be useful at decreasing the amount of runoff in the city over time, the city government would have to expand its current plans and \"consider the cobenefit of climate change adaptation when planning new projects\" in limiting the scope of city-wide temperature increase.\nPublic safety.\nPolice and law enforcement.\nIn a 2015 report by Pew Charitable Trusts, the police districts with the highest rates of violent crime were Frankford (15th district) and Kensington (24th district) in the Near Northeast, and districts to the North (22nd, 25th, and 35th districts), West (19th district) and Southwest (12th district) of Center City. Each of those seven districts recorded more than a thousand violent crimes in 2014. The lowest rates of violent crime occurred in Center City, South Philadelphia, the Far Northeast, and Roxborough districts, the latter of which includes Manayunk.\nPhiladelphia had 500, 503 according to some sources, murders in 1990, a rate of 31.5 per 100,000. An average of about 400 murders occurred each year for most of the 1990s. The murder count dropped in 2002 to 288, then rose to 406 by 2006, before dropping slightly to 392 in 2007. A few years later, Philadelphia began to see a rapid decline in homicides and violent crime. In 2013, the city had 246 murders, which is a decrease of nearly 40% since 2006.\nIn 2014, 248 homicides were committed. The homicide rate rose to 280 in 2015, then fell slightly to 277 in 2016, before rising again to 317 in 2017. Homicides increased dramatically in the late 2010s/early 2020s, reaching 499 homicides in 2020 and surpassing the 1990 \"record\" in 2021, with 501st murder on November 27 and 510 by the end of the month. Phillie ended the year with 562 murders, an all-time record. It dropped in 2022 to 514, and significantly further again in 2023, to 410.\nIn 2006, Philadelphia's homicide rate of 27.7 per 100,000 people was the highest of the country's 10 most populous cities. In 2012, Philadelphia had the fourth-highest homicide rate among the country's most populous cities. The rate dropped to 16 homicides per 100,000 residents by 2014 placing Philadelphia as the sixth-highest city in the country.\nThe number of shootings in the city has declined significantly since the early years of the 21st century. Shooting incidents peaked at 1,857 in 2006 before declining nearly 44 percent to 1,047 shootings in 2014. Major crimes have decreased gradually since a peak in 2006 when 85,498 major crimes were reported. The number of reported major crimes fell 11 percent in three years to 68,815 occurrences in 2014. Violent crimes, which include homicide, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery, decreased 14 percent in three years to 15,771 occurrences in 2014.\nIn 2014, Philadelphia enacted an ordinance decriminalizing the possession of less than 30 grams of marijuana or eight grams of hashish; the ordinance gave police officers the discretion to treat possession of these amounts as a civil infraction punishable by a $25 ticket, rather than a crime. At the time, Philadelphia was at the largest city in the nation to decriminalize the possession of marijuana. From 2013 to 2018, marijuana arrests in the city dropped by more than 85%. The purchase or sale of marijuana remains a criminal offense in Philadelphia.\nFirefighting.\nThe Philadelphia Fire Department provides fire protection and emergency medical services (EMS). The department's official mission is to protect public safety by quick and professional response to emergencies and the promotion of sound emergency prevention measures. This mandate encompasses all traditional firefighting functions, including fire suppression, with 60 engine companies and 30 ladder companies as well as specialty and support units deployed throughout the city; specialized firefighting units for Philadelphia International Airport and the Port of Philadelphia; investigations conducted by the fire marshal's office to determine the origins of fires and develop preventive strategies; prevention programs to educate the public; and support services including research and planning, management of the fire communications center within the city's 911 system, and operation of the Philadelphia Fire Academy.\nMedia.\nNewspapers.\nPhiladelphia's two major daily newspapers are \"The Philadelphia Inquirer\", first published in 1829\u2014the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the country\u2014and the \"Philadelphia Daily News\", first published in 1925. The \"Daily News\" has been published as an edition of the \"Inquirer\" since 2009. Recent owners of the \"Inquirer\" and \"Daily News\" have included Knight Ridder, The McClatchy Company, and Philadelphia Media Holdings, with the latter organization declaring bankruptcy in 2010. After two years of financial struggle, the newspapers were sold to Interstate General Media in 2012. The two newspapers had a combined daily circulation of 306,831 and a Sunday circulation of 477,313 in 2013[ [update]], the 18th-largest circulation in the country, and their collective website, Philly.com, was ranked 13th in popularity among online U.S. newspapers by Alexa Internet the same year.\nSmaller publications include the \"Philadelphia Tribune\" published five days each week for the African-American community; \"Philadelphia\" magazine, a monthly regional magazine; \"Philadelphia Weekly\", a weekly alternative newspaper; \"Philadelphia Gay News\", a weekly newspaper for the LGBT community; \"The Jewish Exponent\", a weekly newspaper for the Jewish community; \"Al D\u00eda\", a weekly newspaper for the Latino community; and \"Philadelphia Metro\", a free daily newspaper.\nStudent-run newspapers include the University of Pennsylvania's \"The Daily Pennsylvanian\", Temple University's \"The Temple News\", and Drexel University's \"The Triangle\".\nRadio.\nThe first experimental radio license was issued in Philadelphia in August 1912 to St. Joseph's College. The first commercial AM radio stations began broadcasting in 1922: first WIP, then owned by Gimbels department store, followed by WFIL, then owned by Strawbridge & Clothier department store, and WOO, a defunct station owned by Wanamaker's department store, as well as WCAU and WDAS.\nAs of 2018[ [update]], the FCC lists 28 FM and 11 AM stations for Philadelphia. As of December 2017, the ten highest-rated stations in Philadelphia were adult contemporary WBEB-FM (101.1), sports talk WIP-FM (94.1), classic rock WMGK-FM (102.9), urban adult contemporary WDAS-FM (105.3), classic hits WOGL-FM (98.1), album-oriented rock WMMR-FM (93.3), country music WXTU-FM (92.5), all-news KYW-AM (1060), talk radio WHYY-FM (90.9), and urban adult contemporary WRNB-FM (100.3). Philadelphia is served by three non-commercial public radio stations: WHYY-FM (NPR), WRTI-FM (classical and jazz), and WXPN-FM (adult alternative music).\nTelevision.\nIn the 1930s, W3XE, an experimental station owned by Philco, launched as Philadelphia's first television station. In 1939, the station became the nation's first NBC's first affiliate, and later became KYW-TV, the Philadelphia television market's CBS affiliate. In 1952, WFIL, later renamed WPVI, premiered the television show \"Bandstand\", which later became the nationally broadcast \"American Bandstand\" hosted by Dick Clark. In the 1960s, WCAU-TV, WFIL-TV, and WHYY-TV were founded.\nEach of the nation's commercial networks has an affiliate in Philadelphia: KYW-TV 3 (CBS), WPVI-TV 6 (ABC), WCAU 10 (NBC), WPHL-TV 17 (The CW with MyNetworkTV on DT2), WFPA-CD 28 (UniM\u00e1s), WTXF-TV 29 (Fox), WPSG 57 (Independent), WWSI 62 (Telemundo), and WUVP-DT 65 (Univision). The region is served also by public broadcasting stations WPPT-TV in Philadelphia, WHYY-TV in Wilmington, Delaware and Philadelphia, WLVT-TV in the Lehigh Valley, and NJTV in New Jersey.\nSince September 2024, Philadelphia is the nation's largest television market where at least one of the six English networks are shown at a station not owned by a particular network's associated parent company. The major Spanish language networks are Univision (WUVP-DT), UniM\u00e1s (WFPA-CD), and Telemundo (WWSI-TV).\nAs of 2023, the Philadelphia media market is the fifth-largest in North America with over 7.8 million viewers\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nPhiladelphia is served by SEPTA, which operates buses, trains, rapid transit (as both subways and elevated trains), trolleys, and trackless trolleys (electric buses) throughout Philadelphia, the four Pennsylvania suburban counties of Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery, in addition to service to Mercer County, New Jersey (Trenton) and New Castle County, Delaware (Wilmington and Newark, Delaware). The city's subway system consists of two routes: the subway section of the Market\u2013Frankford Line running east\u2013west under Market Street which opened in 1905 to the west and 1908 to the east of City Hall, and the Broad Street Line running north\u2013south beneath Broad Street which opened in stages from 1928 to 1938.\nBeginning in the 1980s, large sections of the SEPTA Regional Rail service to the far suburbs of Philadelphia were discontinued due to a lack of funding for equipment and infrastructure maintenance.\nPhiladelphia's 30th Street Station is a major railroad station on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor with 4.4\u00a0million passengers in 2017 making it the third-busiest station in the country after New York City's Pennsylvania Station and Washington's Union Station. 30th Street Station offers access to Amtrak, SEPTA, and NJ Transit lines. Over 12\u00a0million SEPTA and NJ Transit rail commuters use the station each year, and more than 100,000 people on an average weekday.\nThe PATCO Speedline provides rapid transit service to Camden, Collingswood, Westmont, Haddonfield, Woodcrest (Cherry Hill), Ashland (Voorhees), and Lindenwold, New Jersey, from stations on Locust Street between 16th and 15th, 13th and 12th, and 10th and 9th streets, and on Market Street at 8th Street.\nAirports.\nPhiladelphia is served by two airports. Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), the larger of the two, is south-southwest of Center City on the boundary with Delaware County, and provides scheduled domestic and international air service. As of 2023, Philadelphia International Airport is the 21st-busiest airport in the nation with over 13.6 million passengers. It is also among the world's busiest airports measured by traffic movements, including takeoffs and landings. Over 30\u00a0million passengers pass through the airport annually on 25 airlines, including all major domestic carriers. The airport has nearly 500 daily departures to over 120 destinations worldwide. SEPTA's Airport Line provides direct service between Center City railroad stations and Philadelphia International Airport.\nPhiladelphia's second major airport, Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE), is a general aviation relief airport in Northeast Philadelphia, which provides general and corporate aviation.\nRoads.\nWilliam Penn planned Philadelphia with numbered streets traversing north and south, and streets named for trees, including Chestnut, Walnut, and Mulberry (since renamed Arch Streets, traversing east and west. The two main streets were named Broad Street, the north\u2013south artery, later designated Pennsylvania Route 611, and High Street, the east\u2013west artery, which was later renamed Market Street, converging at Centre Square which later became the site of City Hall.\nInterstate 95, also known as the Delaware Expressway, traverses the southern and eastern edges of the city along the Delaware River as the main north\u2013south controlled-access highway, and connects Philadelphia with Newark, New Jersey and New York City to the north and Baltimore and Washington, D.C. to the south. The city is served by Interstate 76, also known as the Schuylkill Expressway, which runs along the Schuylkill River, intersecting the Pennsylvania Turnpike at King of Prussia and providing access to Harrisburg and points west. Interstate 676, also known as Vine Street Expressway, links I-95 and I-76 through Center City, running below street level between the eastbound and westbound lanes of Vine Street. Entrance and exit ramps for the Benjamin Franklin Bridge are near the eastern end of the expressway just west of the I-95 interchange.\nRoosevelt Boulevard and Expressway, also known as U.S. 1, connects Northeast Philadelphia with Center City via I-76 through Fairmount Park. Woodhaven Road, also known as Route 63, and Cottman Avenue, also known as Route 73, serve the neighborhoods of Northeast Philadelphia, running between I-95 and the Roosevelt Boulevard. Fort Washington Expressway, also known as Route 309, extends north from the city's northern border, serving Montgomery and Bucks Counties. U.S. Route 30, also known as Lancaster Avenue, extends west from West Philadelphia to Lancaster.\nInterstate 476, locally called the Blue Route, traverses Delaware County, bypassing the city to the west and serving the city's western suburbs, providing a direct route to Allentown, the Poconos, and points north. Interstate 276, the Pennsylvania Turnpike's Delaware River extension, is a bypass and commuter route north of the city, which links to the New Jersey Turnpike and New York City.\nDelaware River Port Authority operates four bridges in the Philadelphia area, each of which cross the Delaware River to South Jersey: Walt Whitman Bridge (I-76), the Benjamin Franklin Bridge (I-676 and U.S. 30), Betsy Ross Bridge (New Jersey Route 90), and Commodore Barry Bridge (U.S. 322 in Delaware County, south of the city. The Burlington County Bridge Commission maintains two additional bridges that cross the Delaware River. Tacony\u2013Palmyra Bridge connects PA Route 73 in the Tacony section of Northeast Philadelphia with New Jersey Route 73 in Palmyra in Burlington County. Burlington\u2013Bristol Bridge connects NJ Route 413/U.S. Route 130 in Burlington, New Jersey with PA Route 413/U.S. 13 in Bristol Township, north of Philadelphia.\nBus service.\nThe Greyhound terminal is at 1001 Filbert Street (at 10th Street) in Center City, southeast of the Pennsylvania Convention Center and south of Chinatown. Several other bus operators provide service at the Greyhound terminal including Fullington Trailways, Martz Trailways, Peter Pan Bus Lines, and NJ Transit buses.\nOther intercity bus services include Megabus with stops at 30th Street Station and the visitor center for Independence Hall, BoltBus (operated by Greyhound) at 30th Street Station, OurBus at various stops in the city.\nRail.\nSince the early days of rail transportation in the United States, Philadelphia has served as a hub for several major rail companies, particularly the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Railroad. The Pennsylvania Railroad first operated Broad Street Station, then 30th Street Station and Suburban Station, and the Reading Railroad operated Reading Terminal, now part of the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The two companies also operated competing commuter rail systems in the area. The two systems now operate as a single system under the control of SEPTA, the regional transit authority. Additionally, the PATCO Speedline subway system and NJ Transit's Atlantic City Line operate successor services to South Jersey.\nIn 1911, Philadelphia had nearly 4,000 electric trolleys running on 86 lines. In 2005, SEPTA reintroduced trolley service to the Girard Avenue Line, Route 15. SEPTA operates six subway-surface trolleys that run on street-level tracks in West Philadelphia and subway tunnels in Center City, along with two surface trolleys in adjacent suburbs.\nPhiladelphia is a regional hub of the federally-owned Amtrak system, with 30th Street Station being a primary stop on the Washington-Boston Northeast Corridor and the Keystone Corridor to Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. 30th Street also serves as a major station for services via the Pennsylvania Railroad's former Pennsylvania Main Line to Chicago. As of 2018[ [update]], 30th Street is Amtrak's third-busiest station in the country, after New York City and Washington.\nUtilities.\nWater purity and availability.\nIn 1815, Philadelphia began sourcing its water via the Fairmount Water Works on the Schuylkill River, the nation's first major urban water supply system. In 1909, the Water Works was decommissioned as the city transitioned to modern sand filtration methods. Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) provides drinking water, wastewater collection, and stormwater services for Philadelphia, as well as surrounding counties. PWD draws about 57 percent of its drinking water from the Delaware River and the balance from the Schuylkill River. The city has two filtration plants on the Schuylkill River and one on the Delaware River. The three plants can treat up to 546\u00a0million gallons of water per day, while the total storage capacity of the combined plant and distribution system exceeds one billion gallons. The wastewater system consists of three water pollution control plants, 21 pumping stations, and about of sewers.\nElectricity.\nExelon subsidiary PECO Energy Company, founded as the Brush Electric Light Company of Philadelphia in 1881 and renamed Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) in 1902, provides electricity to about 1.6\u00a0million customers and more than 500,000 natural gas customers in the southeastern Pennsylvania area including the city of Philadelphia and most of its suburbs. PECO is the largest electric and natural gas utility in the state with 472 power substations and nearly of electric transmission and distribution lines and of natural gas transmission, distribution, and service lines.\nNatural gas.\nPhiladelphia Gas Works (PGW), overseen by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, is the nation's largest municipally-owned natural gas utility. PGW serves over 500,000 homes and businesses in the Philadelphia area. Founded in 1836, the company came under city ownership in 1987 and has been providing the majority of gas distributed within city limits. In 2014, the City Council refused to conduct hearings on a $1.86\u00a0billion sale of PGW, part of a two-year effort that was proposed by the mayor. The refusal led to the prospective buyer terminating its offer.\nTelecommunications.\nSoutheastern Pennsylvania was assigned the 215 area code in 1947 when the North American Numbering Plan of the Bell System went into effect. The geographic area covered by the code was split nearly in half in 1994 when area code 610 was created, with the city and its northern suburbs retaining 215. Overlay area code 267 was added to the 215 service area in 1997, and 484 was added to the 610 area in 1999. A plan in 2001 to introduce a third overlay code to both service areas, area code 445 to 215 and area code 835 to 610, was delayed and later rescinded. Area code 445 was implemented as an overlay for area codes 215 and 267 starting on February 3, 2018.\nSister cities.\nPhiladelphia also has three partnership cities or regions:\nPhiladelphia has eight official sister cities as designated by the Citizen Diplomacy International (CDI) of Philadelphia: Philadelphia has dedicated landmarks to its sister cities. The Sister Cities Park, a site of at 18th and Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Logan Square, was dedicated in June 1976. The park was built to commemorate Philadelphia's first two sister city relationships, with Tel Aviv and Florence. Toru\u0144 Triangle, honoring the sister city relationship with Toru\u0144, Poland, was constructed in 1976, west of the United Way building at 18th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Sister Cities Park was redesigned and reopened in 2012, featuring an interactive fountain honoring Philadelphia's sister and partnership cities, a caf\u00e9 and visitor center, children's play area, outdoor garden, boat pond, and a pavilion built to environmentally friendly standards.\nThe Chinatown Gate, erected in 1984 and crafted by artisans from Tianjin, stands astride 10th Street, on the north side of its intersection with Arch Street, as a symbol of the sister city relationship. The CDI of Philadelphia has participated in the U.S. Department of State's \"Partners for Peace\" project with Mosul, Iraq, and in accepting visiting delegations from dozens of other countries.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nclass=\"wikitable succession-box noprint\" style=\"margin:0.5em auto; font-size:small;clear:both;\"", "570934": "Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church\nHistoric church in Pennsylvania, United States\nThe Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is a historic church and congregation which is located at 419 South 6th Street in Center City Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The congregation, founded in 1794, is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal congregation in the nation.\nIts present church, completed in 1890, is the oldest church property in the United States to be continuously owned by African Americans. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972.\nHistory of the congregation.\nThe church was proposed in 1791 by members of the Free African Society of Philadelphia, including Absalom Jones, out of a desire to create a space for autonomous African-American worship and community in the city. The desire to create the church was strengthened in 1792, after African-American members of St. George's Methodist Church walked out due to racial segregation in the worship services. Leading roles in the founding were played by Richard Allen, who arranged the purchase of the church's site and its construction, and Absalom Jones, who raised funds among both black and white Philadelphia residents (including then-President George Washington). Mother Bethel was one of the first African-American churches in the United States, dedicated July 29, 1794, by Bishop Francis Asbury.\nOn October 12, 1794, Reverend Robert Blackwell announced that the congregation was received in full fellowship in the Methodist Episcopal Church.\nIn 1816, Rev. Richard Allen brought together other black Methodist congregations from the region to organize the new African Methodist Episcopal Church denomination. He was elected bishop of this denomination. After the American Civil War, its missionaries went to the South to help freedmen and planted many new churches in the region.\nIn 1838, the building was damaged during the riots that followed the destruction of Pennsylvania Hall.\nAllen and his wife, Sarah Allen are both buried in the present church's crypt. The current church building was constructed in 1888\u20131890, and it has been designated a National Historic Landmark.\nOn October 25, 2009, \"The Great Gathering\" took place at St. George's Church in which the community of Mother Bethel AME and St. George's congregations gathered for Sunday worship at St. George's for the first time since the historic walkout. The Rev. Dr. Mark Kelly Tyler preached for this service.\nBuilding history.\nThe property was acquired for the new congregation in 1794. Its first building was a frame structure originally used as a blacksmith's shop, which was hauled to the site.\nThis building was later replaced by frame structures in 1805 and 1841. The 1841 church was reported to have a tunnel connecting it with a nearby Quaker meetinghouse to facilitate the movements of fugitive slaves.\nThe present building, which was completed in 1890, is a three-story masonry structure with Romanesque styling. Its large round-arch windows are adorned with stained glass from Germany.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["570934", "31242942", "50585"], "permutation_1": ["31242942", "50585", "570934"], "permutation_2": ["31242942", "570934", "50585"], "permutation_3": ["31242942", "50585", "570934"]}
{"id": "3hop1__536452_15840_36014", "docs_added": {"20083467": "Pinball Quest\n1989 video game\nPinball Quest is a 1989 pinball video game developed by Tose and published by Jaleco. Released for the Nintendo Entertainment System, \"Pinball Quest\" was unusual at the time of its release for its \"unique\" mash-up of pinball and role-playing game (RPG) mechanics, and it is considered the \"first ever RPG pinball game\".\nGameplay.\nThe game includes four modes: a story-driven \"RPG mode\" as well as \"Circus,\" \"Viva! Golf,\" and \"Pop! Pop!\"\nCircus (a slot machine-themed game) and Viva! Golf (a whack-a-mole-style game) are additional single-player modes. Pop! Pop! is a sports-themed multiplayer mode that can be played by up to 4 players.\nRPG mode.\nIn RPG mode, the player controls the silver pinball and progresses through a six-level castle to rescue Princess Bali from Beezelbub, the \"Dark Lord of the Machine\". As in traditional pinball, flippers are used to keep the ball in the playfield and accomplish objectives, such as hitting targets or defeating an enemy. \nDuring gameplay, the player earns gold which can be spent at the Black Market, a store run by imps. At the Black Market, players can purchase upgraded flippers and stoppers.\nBelow are the six \"RPG mode\" stages and the notable characters or features in each stage as listed in the instruction manual.\nReception.\nRetrospective reviews of \"Pinball Quest\" focus on the novelty of its RPG elements. The game has been called a \"curious mix of genres\", with some reviewers describing it in more extreme terms, stating it is \"among the most bizarre genre hybrids in the history of video games\" and a \"baffling experiment\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "28314": "Super Nintendo Entertainment System\nHome video game console\nThe Super Nintendo Entertainment System, commonly shortened to Super Nintendo, Super NES or SNES, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in Europe and Oceania and 1993 in South America. In Japan, it is called the In South Korea, it is called the Super Comboy and was distributed by Hyundai Electronics. The system was released in Brazil on August 30, 1993, by Playtronic. In Russia and CIS, the system was distributed by Steepler from 1994 until 1996. Although each version is essentially the same, several forms of regional lockout prevent cartridges for one version from being used in other versions.\nThe Super NES is Nintendo's second programmable home console, following the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The console introduced advanced graphics and sound capabilities compared with other systems at the time, like the Sega Genesis. It was designed to accommodate the ongoing development of a variety of enhancement chips integrated into game cartridges to be more competitive into the next generation.\nThe Super NES received largely positive reviews and was a global success, becoming the best-selling console of the 16-bit era after launching relatively late and facing intense competition from Sega's Genesis console in North America and Europe. Overlapping the NES's 61.9\u00a0million unit sales, the Super NES remained popular well into the 32-bit era, with 49.1\u00a0million units sold worldwide by the time it was discontinued in 2003. It continues to be popular among collectors and retro gamers, with new homebrew games and Nintendo's emulated rereleases, such as on the Virtual Console, the Super NES Classic Edition, Nintendo Switch Online; as well as several non-console emulators which operate on a desktop computer or mobile device, such as Snes9x.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nTo compete with the popular Family Computer in Japan, NEC Home Electronics launched the PC Engine in 1987, and Sega followed suit with the Mega Drive in 1988. The two platforms were later launched in North America in 1989 as the TurboGrafx-16 and the Sega Genesis respectively. Both systems were built on 16-bit architectures and offered improved graphics and sound over the 8-bit NES. It took several years for Sega's system to become successful. Bill Mensch, the co-creator of the 8-bit MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor and founder of the Western Design Center (WDC), gave Ricoh the exclusive right to supply 8-bit and 16-bit WDC microprocessors for the new system. Meanwhile, Sony engineer Ken Kutaragi reached an agreement with Nintendo to design the console's sound chip without notifying his supervisors, who were enraged when they discovered the project; though Kutaragi was nearly fired, then-CEO Norio Ohga intervened in support of the project and gave him permission to complete it.\nOn September 9, 1987, then-Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi revealed the development of the Super Famicom in the newspaper \"Kyoto Shimbun\". On August 30, 1988, in an interview with \"TOUCH Magazine\", Yamauchi announced the development of \"Super Mario Bros. 4\", \"Dragon Quest V\", three original games, and he projected sales of 3 million units of the upcoming console. \"Famicom Hissyoubon\" magazine speculated that Yamauchi's early announcement was probably made to forestall Christmas shopping for the PC Engine, and relayed Enix's clarification that it was waiting on sales figures to select either PC Engine or Super Famicom for its next \"Dragon Quest\" game. The magazine and Enix both expressed a strong interest in networking as a standard platform feature. The console was demonstrated to the Japanese press on November 21, 1988, and again on July 28, 1989.\nLaunch.\nDesigned by Masayuki Uemura, the designer of the original Famicom, the Super Famicom was released in Japan on Wednesday, November 21, 1990, for \u00a5. It was an instant success. Nintendo's initial shipment of 300,000 units sold out within hours, and the resulting social disturbance led the Japanese government to ask video game manufacturers to schedule future console releases on weekends. This gained the attention of the yakuza criminal organizations, so the devices were shipped at night to avoid robbery.\nWith the Super Famicom quickly outselling its rivals, Nintendo reasserted itself as the leader of the Japanese console market. Nintendo's success was partially due to the retention of most of its key third-party developers, including Capcom, Konami, Tecmo, Square, Koei, and Enix.\nNintendo released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, a redesigned version of the Super Famicom, in North America for US$. It began shipping in limited quantities on August 23, 1991, with an official nationwide release date of September 9, 1991. The Super NES was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland in April 1992 for \u00a3.\nMost of the PAL region versions of the console use the Japanese Super Famicom design, except for labeling and the length of the joypad leads. The Playtronic Super NES in Brazil, although PAL-M, uses the North American design. Both the NES and Super NES were released in Brazil in 1993 by Playtronic, a joint venture between the toy company Estrela and consumer electronics company Gradiente.\nThe Super NES and Super Famicom launched with few games, but these games were well received. In Japan, only two games were initially available: \"Super Mario World\" and \"F-Zero\". \"Bombuzal\" was released during the launch week. In North America, \"Super Mario World\" was launched as a bundle with the console; other launch games include \"F-Zero\", \"Pilotwings\" (both of which demonstrate the console's Mode 7 pseudo-3D rendering), \"SimCity\", and \"Gradius III\".\nConsole wars.\nThe rivalry between Nintendo and Sega was described as one of the most notable console wars in video game history, in which Sega positioned the Genesis as the \"cool\" console, with games aimed at older audiences, and aggressive advertisements that occasionally attacked the competition. Nintendo scored an early public-relations advantage by securing the first console conversion of Capcom's arcade hit \"Street Fighter II\" for Super NES, which took more than a year to make the transition to the Genesis. Though the Genesis had a two-year lead to launch time, a much larger library of games, and a lower price point, it only represented an estimated 60% of the American 16-bit console market in June 1992, and neither console could maintain a definitive lead for several years. \"Donkey Kong Country\" is said to have helped establish the Super NES's market prominence in the latter years of the 16-bit generation, and for a time, maintain against the PlayStation and Saturn. According to Nintendo, the company had sold more than 20\u00a0million Super NES units in the U.S. According to a 2014 Wedbush Securities report based on NPD sales data, the Super NES outsold the Genesis in the U.S. market by 1.5 million units.\nChanges in policy.\nDuring the NES era, Nintendo maintained exclusive control over games released for the system \u2013 the company had to approve every game, each third-party developer could only release up to five games per year (but some third parties got around this by using different names, such as Konami's \"Ultra Games\" brand), those games could not be released on another console within two years, and Nintendo was the exclusive manufacturer and supplier of NES cartridges. Competition from Sega's console brought an end to this practice; in 1991, Acclaim Entertainment began releasing games for both platforms, with most of Nintendo's other licensees following suit over the next several years; Capcom (which licensed some games to Sega instead of producing them directly) and Square were the most notable holdouts.\nNintendo continued to carefully review submitted games, scoring them on a 40-point scale and allocating marketing resources accordingly. Each region performed separate evaluations. Nintendo of America also maintained a policy that, among other things, limited the amount of violence in the games on its systems. The surprise arcade hit \"Mortal Kombat\" (1992), a gory fighting game with huge splashes of blood and graphically violent fatality moves, was heavily censored by Nintendo. Because the Genesis version allowed for an uncensored version via cheat code, it outsold the censored Super NES version by a ratio of nearly three to one.\nU.S. Senators Herb Kohl and Joe Lieberman convened a Congressional hearing on December 9, 1993, to investigate the marketing of violent video games to children. Though Nintendo took the high ground with moderate success, the hearings led to the creation of the Interactive Digital Software Association and the Entertainment Software Rating Board and the inclusion of ratings on all video games. With these ratings in place, Nintendo decided its censorship policies were no longer needed.\n32-bit era and beyond.\nWhile other companies were moving on to 32-bit systems, Rare and Nintendo proved that the Super NES was still a strong contender in the market. In November 1994, Rare released \"Donkey Kong Country\", a platform game featuring 3D models and textures pre-rendered on Silicon Graphics workstations. With its detailed graphics, fluid animation, and high-quality music, \"Donkey Kong Country\" rivals the aesthetic quality of games that were being released on newer 32-bit CD-based consoles. In the last 45 days of 1994, 6.1\u00a0million copies were sold, making it the fastest-selling video game in history to that date. This game conveyed that early 32-bit systems had little to offer over the Super NES, and proved the market for the more advanced consoles of the near future. According to TRSTS reports, two of the top five bestselling games in the U.S. for December 1996 are Super NES games.\nIn October 1997, Nintendo released a redesigned model of the Super NES (the SNS-101 model referred to as \"New-Style Super NES\") in North America for US$, with some units including the pack-in game \"\". Like the earlier New-Style NES (model NES-101), this is slimmer and lighter than its predecessor, but it lacks S-Video and RGB output, and it is among the last major Super NES-related releases in the region. A similarly redesigned Super Famicom Jr. was released in Japan at around the same time. The redesign stayed out of Europe.\nNintendo ceased production of the Super NES in North America in 1999, about two years after releasing \"Kirby's Dream Land 3\" (its final second-party game in the US) on November 27, 1997, and one year after releasing \"Frogger\" (its final third-party game in the US) in 1998. In Japan, Nintendo continued production of both the Family Computer and the Super Famicom until September 25, 2003, and new games were produced until the year 2000, ending with the release of \"Metal Slader Glory Director's Cut\" on November 29, 2000.\nMany popular Super NES games were ported to the Game Boy Advance, which has similar video capabilities. In 2005, Nintendo announced that Super NES games would be made available for download via the Wii's Virtual Console service. On October 31, 2007, Nintendo Co., Ltd. announced that it would no longer repair Family Computer or Super Famicom systems due to an increasing shortage of the necessary parts. On March 3, 2016, Nintendo Co., Ltd. announced that it would bring Super NES games to the New Nintendo 3DS and New Nintendo 3DS XL (and later the New Nintendo 2DS XL) via its eShop download service. At the Nintendo Direct event on September 4, 2019, Nintendo announced that it would be bringing select Super NES games to the Nintendo Switch Online platform.\nHardware.\nTechnical specifications.\nThe 16-bit design of the Super NES incorporates graphics and sound co-processors that perform tiling and simulated 3D effects, a palette of 32,768 colors, and 8-channel ADPCM audio. These base platform features, plus the ability to dramatically extend them all through substantial chip upgrades inside of each cartridge, represent a leap over the 8-bit NES generation and some significant advantages over 16-bit competitors such as the Genesis.\nCPU and RAM.\nThe CPU is a Ricoh 5A22, a derivative of the 16-bit WDC 65C816 microprocessor. In NTSC regions, its nominal clock speed is 3.58 MHz will slow to either 2.68\u00a0MHz or 1.79\u00a0MHz when accessing some slower peripherals.\nThis CPU has an 8-bit data bus and two address buses. The 24-bit \"Bus\u00a0A\" is designated for general accesses, and the 8-bit \"Bus\u00a0B\" can access support chip registers such as the video and audio co-processors.\nThe WDC 65C816 supports an 8-channel DMA unit, an 8-bit parallel I/O port a controller port interface circuits allowing serial and parallel access to controller data, a 16-bit multiplication and division unit, and circuitry for generating non-maskable interrupts on V-blank and IRQ interrupts on calculated screen positions.\nEarly revisions of the 5A22 used in SHVC boards are prone to spontaneous failure which can produce a variety of symptoms including graphics glitches in Mode 7, a black screen on power-on, or improperly reading the controllers. The first revision 5A22 has a fatal bug in the DMA controller that can crash games; this was corrected in subsequent revisions.\nThe console contains 128KB of general-purpose \"work\" RAM, which is separate from the 64KB dedicated to the video subsystem and the 64KB dedicated to the audio subsystem.\nVideo.\nThe Picture Processing Unit (PPU) consists of two closely tied IC packages. It contains 64KB of SRAM for video data, 544 bytes of object attribute memory (OAM) for sprite data, and 256\u00a0\u00d7\u00a015 bits of color generator RAM (CGRAM) for palette data. This CGRAM provisions up to 256 colors, chosen from the 15-bit RGB color space, from a palette of 32,768 colors. The PPU is clocked by the same signal as the CPU and generates a pixel every two or four cycles.\nAudio.\nThe S-SMP audio subsystem consisted of a 16-bit digital signal processor (DSP) to sequence the mix samples, an 8-bit SPC700 CPU to drive the DSP and 64KB of dedicated PSRAM. It was designed by Ken Kutaragi and produced by Sony and is completely independent from the rest of the system. It is clocked at a nominal 24.576\u00a0MHz in both NTSC and PAL systems. It is capable of stereo sound, composed from eight voices generated using 16-bit audio samples compressed using BRR and capable of applying effects such as echo. On early revisions of the motherboard the S-SMP audio system was spread across four chips: the DSP, the CPU, and two RAM modules. On later revisions, the sound hardware consolidated to a single chip, the S-APU.\nRegional lockout.\nNintendo employed several types of regional lockout, including both physical and hardware incompatibilities.\nPhysically, the cartridges are shaped differently for different regions. North American cartridges have a rectangular bottom with inset grooves matching protruding tabs in the console, and other regions' cartridges are narrower with a smooth curve on the front and no grooves. The physical incompatibility can be overcome with the use of various adapters, or through modification of the console.\nInternally, a regional lockout chip (CIC) within the console and in each cartridge prevents the PAL region games from being played on Japanese or North American consoles and vice versa. The Japanese and North American machines have the same region chip. This can be overcome through the use of adapters, typically by inserting the imported cartridge in one slot and a cartridge with the correct region chip in a second slot. Alternatively, disconnecting one pin of the console's lockout chip will prevent it from locking the console; hardware in later games can detect this situation, so it became common to install a switch to reconnect the lockout chip as needed.\nPAL consoles face another incompatibility when playing out-of-region cartridges: the NTSC video standard specifies video at 60\u00a0Hz but PAL operates at 50\u00a0Hz, resulting in an approximately 16.7% slower framerate. PAL's higher resolution results in letterboxing of the output image. Some commercial PAL region releases exhibit this same problem and, therefore, can be played in NTSC systems without issue, but other games will face a 20% speedup if played in an NTSC console. To mostly correct this issue, a switch can be added to place the Super NES PPU into a 60\u00a0Hz mode supported by most newer PAL televisions. Later games will detect this setting and refuse to run, requiring the switch to be thrown only after the check completes.\nCasing.\nAll models of the Super NES control deck are predominantly gray, of slightly different shades. The original North American version, designed by Nintendo of America industrial designer Lance Barr (who previously redesigned the Famicom to become the NES), has a boxy design with purple sliding switches and a dark gray eject lever. The loading bay surface is curved, both to invite interaction and to prevent food or drinks from being placed on the console and spilling as with the flat-surfaced NES. The Japanese and European versions are more rounded, with darker gray accents and buttons.\nAll versions incorporate a top-loading slot for game cartridges, although the shape of the slot differs between regions to match the different shapes of the cartridges. The MULTI OUT connector (later used on the Nintendo 64 and GameCube) can output composite video, S-Video and RGB signals, as well as RF with an external RF modulator. Original versions additionally include a 28-pin expansion port under a small cover on the bottom of the unit and a standard RF output with channel selection switch on the back; the redesigned models output composite video only, requiring an external modulator for RF.\nThe Nintendo Super System (NSS) is an arcade system for retail preview of 11 particular Super NES games in the United States, similar to the PlayChoice-10 for NES games. It consists of slightly modified Super NES hardware with a menu interface and 25-inch monitor, that allows gameplay for a certain amount of time depending on game credits. Manufacturing of this model was discontinued in 1992.\nRedesigned model.\nA cost-reduced version of the console, referred to as the New-Style Super NES (model SNS-101) in North America and as the in Japan, was released late in the platform's lifespan; designed by Barr, it incorporates design elements from both the original North American and Japanese/European console models but in a smaller form factor. Unlike the original console models, the redesigned model is virtually identical across both regions save for the color palette (the North American model receiving purple buttons and the Japanese model receiving grey buttons). The redesign did not receive a release in Europe.\nExternally, the power and reset buttons were moved to the left-hand side of the console while the cartridge eject button and power LED indicator were omitted. Internally, the redesigned model consolidates the console's hardware into a system-on-chip (SoC) design. The redesigned console lacks the bottom expansion slot, rendering it incompatible with the Japan-exclusive Satellaview add-on.\nFor AV output, the redesigned console features the same multi-out port used on the original models. Unlike the latter models, the former's AV port only supports composite video output natively as support for RGB video and S-Video was disabled internally; however, they can be restored via a \"relatively simple\" modification. The internal RF modulator was also removed, requiring an external one for such output if needed. Due to the SoC design, it is highly sought after by Super NES/Famicom enthusiasts since its RGB video quality (if restored) is improved over earlier internal revisions of the console.\nThe redesigned console first released in October 1997 in North America, where it originally retailed for US$99.95 in a bundle with \"\";\nit was subsequently released in Japan on March 27, 1998, where it retailed for \u00a57,800. Nintendo marketed it as an entry-level gamer's system for consumers who were apprehensive about the higher price of newer systems such as the Nintendo 64. Nintendo also introduced a slightly altered controller for it, with the console's logo replaced by an embossed Nintendo logo.\nYellowing.\nThe ABS plastic used in the casing of some older Super NES and Super Famicom consoles is particularly susceptible to oxidation with exposure to air. This, along with the particularly light color of the original plastic, causes affected consoles to quickly become yellow; if the sections of the casing came from different batches of plastic, a \"two-tone\" effect results. This issue may be reversed with a method called Retrobrighting, where a mixture of chemicals is applied to the case and exposed to UV light.\nGame cartridge.\nSuper NES games are distributed on ROM cartridges, officially referred to as Game Pak in most Western regions, and as in Japan and parts of Latin America. Though the Super NES can address 128\u00a0Mbit, only 117.75\u00a0Mbit are actually available for cartridge use. A fairly normal mapping could easily address up to 95\u00a0Mbit of ROM data (48\u00a0Mbit at FastROM speed) with 8\u00a0Mbit of battery-backed RAM. Most available memory access controllers only support mappings of up to 32\u00a0Mbit. The largest games released (\"Tales of Phantasia\" and \"Star Ocean\") contain 48\u00a0Mbit of ROM data, and the smallest games contain only 2\u00a0Mbit.\nCartridges may also contain battery-backed SRAM to save the game state, extra working RAM, custom coprocessors, or any other hardware that will not exceed the maximum current rating of the console.\nGames.\n1757 Super NES games were officially released: 717 in North America (plus 4 championship cartridges), 521 in Europe, 1,448 in Japan, 231 on Satellaview, and 13 on Sufami Turbo. Many Super NES games have been called some of the greatest video games of all time, such as \"Super Mario World\" (1990), \"\" (1991), \"Final Fantasy VI\" (1994), \"Donkey Kong Country\" (1994), \"EarthBound\" (1994), \"Super Metroid\" (1994), \"Chrono Trigger\" (1995) and \"Yoshi's Island\" (1995). Many Super NES games have been rereleased several times, including on the Virtual Console, Super NES Classic Edition, and the classic games service on Nintendo Switch Online. All Game Boy games are playable with the Super Game Boy add-on.\nPeripherals.\nThe Super NES controller design expands on that of the NES, with A, B, X, and Y face buttons in a diamond arrangement, and two shoulder buttons. Lance Barr created its ergonomic design, and he later adapted it in 1993 for the NES-039 \"dogbone\" controller. The Japanese and PAL region versions incorporated the four colors of the face buttons into the system's logo. The North American version's buttons were colored to match the redesigned console; the X and Y buttons are lavender with concave faces, and the A and B buttons are purple with convex faces. Several later controller designs have elements from the Super NES controller, including the PlayStation, Dreamcast, Xbox, and Wii Classic Controller. This face button layout is on future Nintendo systems since the Nintendo DS.\nSeveral peripherals add to the functionality of the Super NES. Some are required by certain games, such as the Super Scope light gun, and the Super NES Mouse for a point and click interface. Various third-parties, under license from Nintendo, released multitap adapters connecting up to five controllers into a single console, starting with the Super Multitap by Hudson Soft in conjunction with the \"Super Bomberman\" series. Specialized third-party controllers, such as the AsciiPad and Super Advantage (the successor to the NES Advantage) by Asciiware, and the Capcom Fighter Power Stick, an arcade-like joystick controller by Capcom designed specifically for \"Street Fighter II\". Unusual controllers include the BatterUP baseball bat, the Life Fitness Entertainment System (an exercise bike controller with built-in monitoring software), the TeeV Golf golf club, and the Justifier (a revolver-shaped light gun made by Konami for \"Lethal Enforcers\").\nThough Nintendo never released an adapter for playing NES games on the Super NES, the Super Game Boy adapter cartridge allows games designed for Nintendo's portable Game Boy system to be played on the Super NES. The Super Game Boy touts several feature enhancements over the Game Boy, including palette substitution, custom screen borders, and access to the Super NES console's features by specially enhanced Game Boy games. Japan also saw the release of the Super Game Boy 2, which adds a communication port to enable a second Game Boy to connect for multiplayer games.\nLike the NES before it, the Super NES has unlicensed third-party peripherals, including a new version of the Game Genie cheat cartridge designed for use with Super NES games.\nSoon after the release of the Super NES, companies began marketing backup devices such as the Super Wildcard, Super Pro Fighter Q, and Game Doctor. These devices create a backup of a cartridge, and can be used to play illicit ROM images or to copy games, violating copyright laws in many jurisdictions.\nThe Japan-only Satellaview is a satellite modem attached to the Super Famicom's expansion port and connected to the St.GIGA satellite radio station from April 23, 1995, to June 30, 2000. Satellaview subscribers could download gaming news and specially designed games, which were frequently either remakes of or sequels to older Famicom games, and released in installments. In the United States, the relatively short-lived XBAND allowed users to connect to a network via a dial-up modem to compete against other players around the country.\nNintendo attempted partnerships with Sony and then Philips, to develop CD-ROM-based peripheral prototypes for the console to compete with the TurboGrafx-CD and Sega CD. Sony produced the PlayStation (a brand name the company would use for their later independently produced console), a Super NES console with a built-in CD-ROM drive that never made it past the prototype phase. The Philips project was canceled without a prototype but Philips retained the contractual right to develop games based on Nintendo franchises, which it published for its CD-i multimedia console.\nEnhancement chips.\nAs part of the overall plan for the Super NES, rather than include an expensive CPU that would still become obsolete in a few years, the hardware designers made it easy to interface special coprocessor chips to the console, just like the MMC chips used for most NES games. This is most often characterized by 16 additional pins on the cartridge card edge.\nThe Super FX is a RISC CPU designed to perform functions that the main CPU can not feasibly do. The chip is primarily used to create 3D game worlds made with polygons, texture mapping and light source shading. The chip can also be used to enhance 2D games.\nThe Nintendo fixed-point digital signal processor (DSP) chip allowed fast vector-based calculations, bitmap conversions, both 2D and 3D coordinate transformations, and other functions. Four revisions of the chip exist, each physically identical but with different microcode. The DSP-1 version, including the later 1A and 1B bug fix revisions, is used most often; the DSP-2, DSP-3, and DSP-4 are used in only one game each.\nSimilar to the 5A22 CPU in the console, the SA-1 chip contains a 65C816 processor core clocked at 10.7\u00a0MHz, a memory mapper, DMA, decompression and bitplane conversion circuitry, several programmable timers, and CIC region lockout functionality.\nIn Japan, games could be downloaded cheaper than standard cartridges, from Nintendo Power kiosks onto special cartridges containing flash memory and a MegaChips MX15001TFC chip. The chip manages communication with the kiosks to download ROM images and has an initial menu to select a game. Some were published both in cartridge and download form, and others were download only. The service closed on February 8, 2007.\nMany cartridges contain other enhancement chips, most of which were created for use by a single company in a few games.\nReception and legacy.\nApproximately 49.1\u00a0million Super NES consoles were sold worldwide, with 23.35\u00a0million of those units sold in the Americas and 17.17\u00a0million in Japan. Although it could not quite repeat the success of the NES, which sold 61.91\u00a0million units worldwide, the Super NES was the best-selling console of its era.\nIn a 1997 year-end review, a team of five \"Electronic Gaming Monthly\" editors gave the Super NES scores of 5.5, 8.0, 7.0, 7.0, and 8.0. Though they criticized how few new games were coming out for the system and how dated its graphics were compared to current generation consoles, they regarded its selection of must-have games to be still unsurpassed. Additionally noting that used Super NES games were readily available in bargain bins, most of them still recommended buying a Super NES. In 2007, \"GameTrailers\" named the Super NES as the second-best console of all time (only behind the PlayStation 2) in their list of top ten consoles that \"left their mark on the history of gaming\", citing its graphics, sound, and library of top-quality games. In 2015, they also named it the best Nintendo console of all time, saying, \"The list of games we love from this console completely annihilates any other roster from the Big N.\" Technology columnist Don Reisinger proclaimed \"The SNES is the greatest console of all time\" in January 2008, citing the quality of the games and the console's dramatic improvement over its predecessor; fellow technology columnist Will Greenwald replied with a more nuanced view, giving the Super NES top marks with his heart, the NES with his head, and the PlayStation (for its controller) with his hands. GamingExcellence also gave the Super NES first place in 2008, declaring it \"simply the most timeless system ever created\" with many games that stand the test of time and citing its innovation in controller design, graphics capabilities, and game storytelling. At the same time, GameDaily rated it fifth of the ten greatest consoles for its graphics, audio, controllers, and games. In 2009, \"IGN\" named the Super NES the fourth-best video game console, complimenting its audio and number of AAA games.\nEmulation.\nSNES emulation began with VSMC in 1994, and Super Pasofami became the first working emulator in 1996. During that time, two competing emulation projects, Snes96 and Snes97, merged to form Snes9x. In 1997, ZSNES development began. In 2004, Bsnes development began with the goal of preservation through maximal accuracy and compatibility, and was later renamed to Higan.\nNintendo of America maintained its stance against the distribution of SNES ROM image files and the use of emulators, as it had with the NES before, saying they represent copyright infringement. Emulation proponents assert that the discontinued hardware production constitutes abandonware status, the owners' right to make a personal backup, space shifting for private use, the development of homebrew games, the frailty of ROM cartridges and consoles, and the lack of certain foreign imports. Nintendo designed a hobbyist development system for the SNES, but never released it.\nUnofficial SNES emulation is available on virtually all platforms, including Android, iOS, game consoles, and PDAs. Individual games have been bundled with official dedicated emulators on some GameCube discs, and Nintendo's Virtual Console service for the Wii introduced diverse and officially licensed SNES emulation.\nThe Super NES Classic Edition was released in September 2017 following the NES Classic Edition. This emulation-based mini-console, which is physically modeled after the North American and European versions of the SNES, is bundled with two SNES-style controllers and 21 games, including the unreleased \"Star Fox 2\".\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18944028": "Nintendo Entertainment System\nHome video game console\nThe Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on July 15, 1983, as the It was released in US test markets as the redesigned NES in October 1985, and fully launched in the US the following year. The NES was distributed in Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia throughout the 1980s under various names. As a third-generation console, it mainly competed with Sega's Master System.\nThe NES was designed by Masayuki Uemura. Nintendo's president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, called for a simple, cheap console that could run arcade games on cartridges. The controller design was reused from Nintendo's portable Game & Watch hardware. The western model was redesigned to resemble a video cassette recorder. Nintendo released add-ons such as the NES Zapper light gun for several shooting games, and R.O.B, a toy robot accessory.\nThe NES is regarded as one of the most influential consoles. It helped revitalise the American gaming industry following the video game crash of 1983, and pioneered a now-standard business model of licensing third-party developers to produce and distribute games. The NES features several influential games, including \"Super Mario Bros.\" (1985), \"The Legend of Zelda\" (1986), \"Metroid\" (1986) and \"Mega Man\" (1987), which became major franchises.\nThe NES dominated Japanese and North American markets, but initially underperformed in Europe, where it faced strong competition from the Sega Master System and microcomputers. With 61.91\u00a0million units sold, it is one of the best-selling consoles. It was succeeded in 1990 by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.\nHistory.\nBackground.\nThe video game industry experienced rapid growth and popularity from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, marked by the golden age of arcade games and the second generation of consoles. Games like \"Space Invaders\" (1978) became a phenomenon across arcades worldwide, while home consoles such as the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision gained footholds in the American market. Many companies emerged to capitalise on the growing industry, including the playing card manufacturer Nintendo.\nHiroshi Yamauchi, who had been Nintendo's president since 1949, realised that breakthroughs in the electronics industry meant that entertainment products could be produced at lower prices. Companies such as Atari and Magnavox were already selling gaming devices for use with television sets, to moderate success. Yamauchi negotiated a licence with Magnavox to sell its game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. Since Nintendo's operation was not yet sophisticated enough to design its own hardware, Yamauchi forged an alliance with Mitsubishi Electric and hired several Sharp Electronics employees to assist in developing the Color TV-Game 6 in Japan. This was followed by a more successful sequel, the Color TV-Game 15, and the handheld Game & Watch series. The successes of these machines gave Yamauchi the confidence to expand Nintendo's influence in the fledgling video game industry.\nIn 1978, Yamauchi split Nintendo into separate research and development divisions. He appointed Masayuki Uemura as head of Nintendo Research & Development 2, a division that focused solely on hardware. Yamauchi, through extensive discussions with Uemura and other engineers, recognised the potential of the developing console beyond gaming. He envisioned a home-computer system disguised as a toy, which could significantly expand Nintendo's reach if it became popular with children. This popularity would drive demand for games, with Nintendo as the sole provider. Indeed, by 1980 several systems had already been released in Japan by both American and Japanese companies. Yamauchi tasked Uemura with developing a system that would be superior to its competitors and difficult to replicate for at least a year. Uemura's main challenge was economic rather than technological; Yamauchi wanted the system to be affordable enough for widespread household adoption, aiming for a price of \u00a59,800 (less than $75) compared to existing machines priced at \u00a530,000 to \u00a550,000 ($200 to $350). The new system had to outperform other systems, both Japanese and American, while being significantly more affordable.\nInception.\nAs development progressed on the new video game system, engineers sought Yamauchi's guidance on its features. They questioned whether to include a disk drive, keyboard, data port, as well as the potential for a modem, expanded memory, and other computer-like capabilities. Yamauchi ultimately instructed Uemura to prioritise simplicity and affordability, omitting these peripherals entirely. Game cartridges, which Uemura saw as \"less intimidating\" to consumers, were chosen as the format. The team designed the system with 2,000 bytes of random-access memory (RAM), significantly more than Atari's 256 bytes. Larger cartridges also allowed for far more complex games, with thirty-two times the code capacity of Atari cartridges.\nThe console's hardware was largely based on arcade video games, particularly the hardware for Namco's \"Galaxian\" (1979) and Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\", with the goal of matching their powerful sprite and scrolling capabilities in a home system. A test model was constructed in October 1982 to verify the functionality of the hardware, and work began on programming tools. Because 65xx CPUs had not been manufactured or sold in Japan by that time, no cross-development software was available and it had to be developed from scratch. Early Famicom games were written on a NEC PC-8001 computer. LEDs on a grid were used with a digitizer to design graphics as no such software design tools existed at that time.\nThe codename for the project was \"GameCom\", but Masayuki Uemura's wife proposed the name \"Famicom\", arguing that \"In Japan, 'pasokon' is used to mean a personal computer, but it is neither a home nor personal computer. Perhaps we could say it is a family computer.\" Meanwhile, Hiroshi Yamauchi decided that the console should use a red and white theme after seeing a billboard for DX Antenna (a Japanese antenna manufacturer) which used those colors.\nDevelopment.\nThe Famicom was influenced by the ColecoVision, Coleco's competition against the Atari 2600 in the United States; the ColecoVision's top-seller was a port of Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\". The project's chief manager Takao Sawano brought a ColecoVision home to his family, impressed by its smooth graphics, which contrasts with the flicker and slowdown commonly seen on Atari 2600 games. Uemura said the ColecoVision set the bar for the Famicom. They wanted to surpass it and match the more powerful \"Donkey Kong\" arcade hardware; they took a \"Donkey Kong\" arcade cabinet to chip manufacturer Ricoh for analysis, which led to Ricoh producing the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) chip for the NES.\nOriginal plans called for the Famicom's cartridges to be the size of a cassette tape, but ultimately they ended up being twice as big. Careful design attention was paid to the cartridge connectors because loose and faulty connections often plagued arcade machines. As it necessitated 60 connection lines for the memory and expansion, Nintendo decided to produce its own connectors.\nThe controllers are hard-wired to the console with no connectors for cost reasons. The controller designs were reused from the Game & Watch machines, although the Famicom design team originally wanted to use arcade-style joysticks, even dismantling some from American game consoles to see how they worked. There were concerns regarding the durability of the joystick design and that children might step on joysticks on the floor. Katsuya Nakawaka attached a Game & Watch D-pad to the Famicom prototype and found that it was easy to use and caused no discomfort. Ultimately though, they installed a 15-pin expansion port on the front of the console so that an optional arcade-style joystick could be used.\nGunpei Yokoi suggested an eject lever, which was not necessary, but he believed that children could be entertained by pressing it. Uemura adopted his idea. Uemura added a microphone to the second controller with the idea that it could be used to make players\u2019 voices sound through the TV speaker.\nJapanese release.\nThe console was released on July 15, 1983, as the for \u00a5 () with three ports of Nintendo's successful arcade games \"Donkey Kong\", \"Donkey Kong Jr.\", and \"Popeye\". The Famicom was slow to gather success; a bad chip set caused the early revisions to crash. Following a product recall and a reissue with a new motherboard, the Famicom's popularity soared, becoming the bestselling game console in Japan by the end of 1984 in what came to be called the \"Famicom Boom\".\nNintendo launched the system with only first-party games, but after being approached by Namco and Hudson Soft in 1984, agreed to produce third-party games for a 30% fee for console licensing and production costs. This rate continued in the industry for consoles and digital storefront into the 21st century.\nNorth American release.\nNintendo targeted the North American market, entering distribution negotiations with Atari, Inc. to release a redesigned Famicom with Atari's name as the Nintendo Advanced Video Gaming System. The deal was set to be finalized and signed at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in June 1983. However, Atari discovered at that show that its competitor Coleco was illegally demonstrating its Coleco Adam computer with Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\" game. This violation of Atari's exclusive license with Nintendo to publish the game for its own computer systems delayed the implementation of Nintendo's game console marketing contract with Atari. Atari's CEO Ray Kassar was fired the next month, so the deal went nowhere, and Nintendo decided to market its system on its own.\nSubsequent plans for the Nintendo Advanced Video System likewise never materialized. It was privately demonstrated as a repackaged Famicom console featuring a keyboard, cassette data recorder, wireless joystick controller, and a special BASIC cartridge. By the beginning of 1985, more than 2.5\u00a0million Famicom units had been sold in Japan, and Nintendo soon announced plans to release it in North America as the Advanced Video Entertainment System (AVS) that year. The American video game press was skeptical that the console could have any success in the region, as the industry was still recovering from the video game crash of 1983. The March 1985 issue of \"Electronic Games\" magazine stated that \"the videogame market in America has virtually disappeared\" and that \"this could be a miscalculation on Nintendo's part\".\nThe Famicom hardware first made its North American debut in the arcades, in the form of the Nintendo VS. System in 1984. The system's success in arcades paved the way for the official release of the NES console. With US retailers refusing to stock game consoles, Yamauchi realized there was still a market for video games in the arcades, so he introduced the Famicom to North America through the arcade industry. The VS. System became a major success in North American arcades, becoming the highest-grossing arcade machine of 1985 in the United States. By the time the NES launched, nearly 100,000 VS. Systems had been sold to American arcades. The success of the VS. System gave Nintendo the confidence to release the Famicom in North America as a video game console, for which there was growing interest due to Nintendo's positive reputation in the arcades. It also gave Nintendo the opportunity to test new games as VS. Paks in the arcades, to determine which games to release for the NES launch.\nAt the 1985 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of the Famicom: a stripped-down and cost-reduced redesign of the Advanced Video System (AVS), having abandoned the home computer approach. Nintendo purposefully designed the system to avoid resembling a video game console and avoided terms associated with game consoles. Marketing manager Gail Tilden chose the term \"Game Pak\" for cartridges, \"Control Deck\" for the console, and \"Entertainment System\" for the whole platform. Renamed the \"Nintendo Entertainment System\" (\"NES\"), the new and cost-reduced version lacked most of the upscale features added in the AVS but retained many of its audiophile-inspired design elements, such as the grey colour scheme and boxy form factor. Disappointed with the cosmetically raw prototype part they received from Japan, which they nicknamed \"the lunchbox\", Nintendo of America designers Lance Barr and Don James added the two-tone gray, the black stripe, and the red lettering. To obscure the video game connotation, the NES replaced the top-loading cartridge slot of the Famicom and AVS with a front-loading chamber for software cartridges that kept the inserted cartridge out of view, reminiscent of a video cassette recorder. The Famicom's pair of hard-wired controllers and the AVS's wireless controllers were replaced with two custom 7-pin sockets for detachable wired controllers.\nAt June 1985's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of its Famicom, with a new case redesigned by Lance Barr and featuring a \"zero insertion force\" cartridge slot. The change from a top-loader in the Famicom to a front-loader was to make the new console more like a video cassette recorder, which had grown in popularity by 1985, and differentiate the unit from past video game consoles. Additionally, Uemura explained that Nintendo developers had feared that the console's electronics might face electrostatic hazards in dry American states such as Arizona and Texas, and a front-loading design would be safer if children handled the console carelessly.\nThis was deployed as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Nintendo seeded these first systems to limited American test markets starting in New York City on October 18, 1985, and followed up in Los Angeles in February 1986; the American nationwide release came on September 27, 1986. Nintendo released 17 launch games: \"10-Yard Fight\", \"Baseball\", \"Clu Clu Land\", \"Duck Hunt\", \"Excitebike\", \"Golf\", \"Gyromite\", \"Hogan's Alley\", \"Ice Climber\", \"Kung Fu\", \"Pinball\", \"Soccer\", \"Stack-Up\", \"Super Mario Bros.\", \"Tennis\", \"Wild Gunman\", and \"Wrecking Crew\". Nintendo contracted Worlds of Wonder to distribute the console physically. WoW salesman Jim Whims distinctly recalled delivering an ultimatum: \"if you want to sell Teddy Ruxpin and you want to sell Lazer Tag, you're gonna sell Nintendo as well. And if you feel that strongly about it, then you ought to just resign the line now.\" This marketing tactic led to the NES' financial success in North America in its first year; Nintendo of America would later terminate the contract and hired the company's sales staff (whom Atari offered them in 1983), while taking on physical distribution of the console itself.\nThe system's launch represented not only a new product, but also a reframing of the severely damaged home video game market in North America. The 1983 video game crash had occurred in large part due to a lack of consumer and retailer confidence in video games, which had been partially due to confusion and misrepresentation in video game marketing. Prior to the NES, the packaging of many video games presented bombastic artwork which did not represent a game's actual graphics. Furthermore, a single game such as \"Pac-Man\" appeared across consoles with substantial variations in graphics, sound, and general quality. In contrast, Nintendo's marketing strategy aimed to regain consumer and retailer confidence by delivering a singular platform whose graphics could be represented truthfully and whose qualities were clearly defined.\nTo differentiate Nintendo's new home platform from the perception of a troubled and shallow video game market still reeling from the 1983 crash, the company freshened its product nomenclature and established a strict product approval and licensing policy. The overall platform is referred to as \"Entertainment System\" instead of a \"video game system\", is centered upon a machine called a \"Control Deck\" instead of a \"console\", and features software cartridges called \"Game Paks\" instead of \"video games\". This allowed Nintendo to gain more traction in selling the system in toy stores. To deter production of games which had not been licensed by Nintendo, and to prevent copying, the 10NES lockout chip system acts as a lock-and-key coupling of each Game Pak and Control Deck. The packaging of the launch lineup of NES games bear pictures of close representations of actual onscreen graphics. To reduce consumer confusion, symbols on the games' packaging clearly indicate the genre of the game. A seal of quality is on all licensed game and accessory packaging. The initial seal states, \"This seal is your assurance that Nintendo has approved and guaranteed the quality of this product\". This text was later changed to \"Official Nintendo Seal of Quality\".\nUnlike with the Famicom, Nintendo of America marketed the console primarily to children, instituting a strict policy of censoring profanity, sexual, religious, or political content. The most famous example is Lucasfilm Games's attempts to port the comedy-horror game \"Maniac Mansion\" to the NES, which Nintendo insisted be considerably watered down.\nThe optional Robotic Operating Buddy, or R.O.B., was part of a marketing plan to portray the NES's technology as being novel and sophisticated when compared to previous game consoles, and to portray its position as being within reach of the better established toy market. Though at first, the American public exhibited limited excitement for the console itself, peripherals such as the light gun and R.O.B. attracted extensive attention.\nOther markets.\nIn Europe and Oceania, the NES was released in two separate marketing regions. The first consisted of mainland Europe (excluding Italy) where distribution was handled by several different companies, with Nintendo responsible for manufacturing. The NES saw an early launch in Europe in 1986 although most of the European countries received the console in 1987. The release in Scandinavia was on September 1, 1986, where it was released by Bergsala. In the Netherlands, it was released in the last quarter of 1987 and was distributed by Bandai BV. In France, it was released in October 1987, and in Spain most likely in 1988 through distributor Spaco. Also in 1987, Mattel handled distribution for the second region, consisting of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Australia and New Zealand. In other European countries, distribution was taken over by smaller companies like Bienengr\u00e4ber in Germany, ASD in France, Concentra in Portugal, Itochu in Greece and Cyprus, Stadlbauer in Austria, Switzerland and the former Eastern Bloc. In Poland, the NES had its release on October 6, 1994 along with the SNES and the Game Boy. In November 1994, Nintendo signed an agreement with Steepler to permit the continued sale of the Dendy, an unauthorized hardware clone of the Famicom, in Russia in exchange for also distributing the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo anticipated the NES would have a 25 per cent share in these countries, and saw particular potential in the United Kingdom. It sold modestly in Europe, however.\nIn Brazil, the console was released late in 1993 by Playtronic, even after the SNES. But the Brazilian market had been dominated by unlicensed NES clones \u2013 both locally made, and smuggled from Taiwan. One of the most successful local clones was the Phantom System, manufactured by Gradiente, which licensed Nintendo products in the country for the following decade. The sales of officially licensed products were low, due to the cloning, the quite late official launch, and the high prices of Nintendo's licensed products.\nOutside of Japan, regions in greater Asia received an \"Asian version\" of the front-loader NES though imported Famicom systems were prevalent. Due to import restrictions, NES consoles in India and South Korea were rebranded and distributed by local licensees. The Indian version is called the \"Samurai Electronic TV Game System\" and the Korean version is called the \"Hyundai Comboy\". The console sold very poorly in India due to affordability and a lack of consumer awareness.\nBundles and redesigns.\nFor its complete North American release, the Nintendo Entertainment System was progressively released over the ensuing years in several different bundles, beginning with the Deluxe Set, the Basic Set, the Action Set, and the Power Set. The Deluxe Set was launched in the 1985 test markets, retailing at US$, including R.O.B., a light gun called the NES Zapper, two controllers, and the two Game Paks \"Gyromite\" and \"Duck Hunt\". The Control Deck bundle was first released in 1987 at $ with no game, and $ bundled with the \"Super Mario Bros.\" cartridge. The Action Set, released April 14, 1988, for $, has the Control Deck, two controllers, an NES Zapper, and a dual Game Pak containing both \"Super Mario Bros.\" and \"Duck Hunt\".\nThe Power Set of 1989 includes the console, two game controllers, an NES Zapper, a Power Pad, and a triple Game Pak containing \"Super Mario Bros\", \"Duck Hunt\", and \"World Class Track Meet\". In 1990, a Sports Set bundle was released, including the console, an NES Satellite infrared wireless multitap adapter, four game controllers, and a dual Game Pak containing \"Super Spike V'Ball\" and \"Nintendo World Cup\". Two more bundle packages were later released with the original model NES console. In 1992, the Challenge Set was released for $ with the console, two controllers, and a \"Super Mario Bros. 3\" Game Pak. The Basic Set retailed at US$; it included only the console and two controllers, and no pack-in game. Instead, it contained a book called the \"Official Nintendo Player's Guide\", which contained detailed information for every NES game made up to that point.\nFinally, the console was redesigned for the Australian, North American, and Japanese markets, including the New-Style NES, or NES-101, and one redesigned \"dogbone\" game controller. In Australia, this console revision was released with a cartridge compiling \"Super Mario Bros\", \"Tetris\", and \"Nintendo World Cup\". Released in October 1993 in North America and 1994 in Australia, this final bundle retailed for $ and A$ (A$ with the pack-in game) respectively, and was discontinued with the NES in 1995.\nDiscontinuation.\nOn August 14, 1995, Nintendo discontinued the Nintendo Entertainment System in both North America and Europe. In North America, replacements for the original front-loading NES were available for $ in exchange for a broken system until at least December 1996, under Nintendo's Power Swap program. The Game Boy and Super NES were covered for $ and $ respectively.\nOn May 30, 2003, Nintendo announced the discontinuation of the Famicom in September alongside the Super Famicom and the disk rewriting services for the Famicom Disk System. The last Famicom, serial number HN11033309, was manufactured on September 25; it was kept by Nintendo and subsequently loaned to the organizers of Level X, a video game exhibition held from December 4, 2003, to February 8, 2004, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, for a Famicom retrospective in commemoration of the console's 20th anniversary. Nintendo offered repair service for the Famicom in Japan until 2007, when it was discontinued due to a shortage of available parts.\nHardware.\nConfigurations.\nAlthough all versions of the Famicom and NES include essentially similar hardware, they vary in physical characteristics. The original Famicom's design is predominantly white plastic, with dark red trim; it featured a top-loading cartridge slot, grooves on both sides of the deck in which the hardwired game controllers could be placed when not in use, and a 15-pin expansion port located on the unit's front panel for accessories. In contrast, the design of the original NES features a more subdued gray, black, and red color scheme; it includes a front-loading cartridge slot covered by a small, hinged door that can be opened to insert or remove a cartridge and closed at other times, and an expansion port on the bottom of the unit. Compared to the Famicom, the NES includes the 10NES lockout chip and incorporates a matching chip validation check in its cartridge connector.\nIn late 1993, Nintendo introduced a redesigned version of the Famicom and NES (officially named the New Famicom in Japan and the New-Style NES in the US) to complement the Super Famicom and SNES, to prolong interest in the console, and to reduce costs. The redesigned NES features a top-loading cartridge slot and omits the 10NES lockout chip to avoid reliability issues with the original console; the redesign also omits AV output. Conversely, the redesigned Famicom features such output and introduces detachable game controllers, though the microphone functionality is omitted as a result. The redesigned Famicom and NES models are cosmetically similar aside from the presence of a cartridge \"bump\" on the NES model, which the Famicom model lacks to accommodate its shorter cartridges and the RAM Adapter for the Famicom Disk System.\nSharp Corporation produced three licensed variants of the Famicom in Japan, all of which prominently display the shortened moniker rather than the official name, Family Computer. One variant was a television set with an integrated Famicom; originally released in 1983 as the My Computer TV in and models, it was later released in the United States in 1989 as a 19-inch model named the Video Game Television. Another variant is the Twin Famicom console released in 1986 to combine a Famicom with a Famicom Disk System. Sharp then produced the Famicom Titler in 1989. Intended for video capture and production, it features internal RGB video generation and video output via S-Video, plus inputs for adding subtitles and voice-overs.\nHardware clones.\nA thriving market of unlicensed NES hardware clones emerged during the climax of the console's popularity. Initially, such clones were popular in markets with weak copyright law and where Nintendo issue it's systems after famiclones become well known across specific region, making legal products hard to market or create brand awareness. In particular, the Dendy (), an unlicensed hardware clone produced in Taiwan and sold in the former Soviet Union by Steepler, emerged as the most popular video game console of its time in that setting and it enjoyed a degree of fame roughly equivalent to that experienced by the NES/Famicom in North America and Japan, eventually selling 6 million units. Poland had a similar story with Pegasus distributed by Bobmark International which sold more than 1 million units. In China, a place where many of these clones were manufactured, the media reported 30 million units sold until late 1995. A range of Famicom clones was marketed in Latin America during the late 1980s and 1990s with the name Family Game, resembling the original hardware design. Thailand got Family FR brand famiclones, Brazil a superior to the original Phantom System, the Micro Genius (Simplified Chinese: \u5c0f\u5929\u624d) was marketed in Southeast Asia as an alternative to the Famicom; Ending-Man Terminator enjoyed popularity in European Eastern Bloc, parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America. It happened that these clones reached countries with very good copyright law and high awareness of the Nintendo brand such as Power Player Super Joy III in US.\nThe unlicensed clone market has flourished following Nintendo's discontinuation of the NES. Some of the more exotic of these resulting systems surpass the functionality of the original hardware, such as a portable system with a color LCD (PocketFami). Others have been produced for certain specialized markets, such as a rather primitive personal computer with a keyboard and basic word processing software. These unauthorized clones have been helped by the invention of the so-called NES-on-a-chip.\nAs was the case with unlicensed games, Nintendo has typically gone to the courts to prohibit the manufacture and sale of unlicensed cloned hardware. Many of the clone vendors have included built-in copies of licensed Nintendo software, which constitutes copyright infringement in most countries.\nDesign flaws.\nNintendo's design styling for US release was made deliberately different from that of other game consoles. Nintendo wanted to distinguish its product from those of competitors and to avoid the generally poor reputation that game consoles had acquired following the video game crash of 1983. One result of this philosophy is to disguise the cartridge slot design as a front-loading zero-insertion force (ZIF) cartridge socket, designed to resemble the front-loading mechanism of a VCR. The socket works well when both the connector and the cartridges are clean and the pins on the connector are new. However, the socket is not truly zero-insertion force. When a user inserts the cartridge into the NES, the force of pressing the cartridge into place bends the contact pins slightly and presses the cartridge's ROM board back into the cartridge. Frequent insertion and removal of cartridges wears out the pins, and the ZIF design proved more prone to interference by dirt and dust than an industry-standard card edge connector.\nThe design problems were exacerbated by Nintendo's choice of materials. The console slot nickel connector springs wear due to design and the game cartridge's brass plated nickel connectors are also prone to tarnishing and oxidation. Nintendo sought to fix these problems by redesigning the next generation Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) as a top loader similar to the Famicom. Many players try to alleviate issues in the game caused by this corrosion by blowing into the cartridges, then reinserting them, which actually speeds up the tarnishing due to moisture. One way to slow down the tarnishing process and extend the life of the cartridges is to use isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs.\nUsers have attempted to solve these problems by blowing air onto the cartridge connectors, inserting the cartridge just far enough to get the ZIF to lower, licking the edge connector, slapping the side of the system after inserting a cartridge, shifting the cartridge from side to side after insertion, pushing the ZIF up and down repeatedly, holding the ZIF down lower than it should have been, and cleaning the connectors with alcohol. Many frequently used methods to fix this problem actually risk damaging gaming cartridges or the system. In 1989, Nintendo released an official NES Cleaning Kit to help users clean malfunctioning cartridges and consoles.\nIn response to these hardware flaws, \"Nintendo Authorized Repair Centers\" sprang up across the U.S. According to Nintendo, the authorization program was designed to ensure that the machines were properly repaired. Nintendo would ship the necessary replacement parts only to shops that had enrolled in the authorization program.\nWith the release of the top-loading NES-101 (New-Style NES) in 1993 toward the end of the NES's lifespan, Nintendo resolved the problems by switching to a standard card edge connector and eliminating the lockout chip. All of the Famicom systems use standard card edge connectors, as do Nintendo's two subsequent game consoles, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Nintendo 64.\nLockout.\nThe Famicom as released in Japan contains no lockout hardware, which led to unlicensed cartridges (both legitimate and bootleg) becoming extremely common throughout Japan and East Asia. Nintendo tried to promote its \"Seal of Quality\" in these regions to identify licensed games to combat bootlegs, but bootleg Famicom games continued to be produced even after Nintendo moved production onto the Super Famicom, effectively extending the lifetime of the Famicom.\nThe original NES released for Western countries in 1985 contains the 10NES lockout chip, which prevents it from running cartridges unapproved by Nintendo. The inclusion of the 10NES was a direct influence from the 1983 video game crash in North America, partially caused by a market flooded with uncontrolled publishing of games of poor quality for the home consoles. Nintendo did not want to see that happen with the NES and used the lockout chip to restrict games to only those they licensed and approved for the system. This means of protection worked in combination with the Nintendo \"Seal of Quality\", which a developer had to acquire before they would be able to have access to the required 10NES information prior to publication of their game.\nInitially, the 10NES chip proved a significant barrier to unlicensed developers seeking to develop and sell games for the console. However, hobbyists in later years discovered that disassembling the NES and cutting the fourth pin of the lockout chip would change the chip's mode of operation from \"lock\" to \"key\", removing all effects and greatly improving the console's ability to play legal games, bootlegs, and converted imports.\nOriginal NES consoles sold in different regions have different lockout chips, thereby enforcing regional lockout (regardless of TV signal compatibility). Such regions include North America; most of continental Europe (PAL-B); Asia; and the British Isles, Italy, and Australasia (PAL-A).\nProblems with the 10NES lockout chip frequently result in one of the console's most common issues: the blinking red power light, in which the system appears to turn itself on and off repeatedly because the 10NES would reset the console once per second. The lockout chip required constant communication with the chip in the game to work. Dirty, aging, and bent connectors often disrupt the communication, resulting in the blink effect. In other cases, the console turns on but only displays a solid white, gray, or green screen.\nTechnical specifications.\nThe console's main central processing unit (CPU) was produced by Ricoh, which manufactured different versions between NTSC and PAL regions; NTSC consoles have a 2A03 clocked at 1.79\u00a0MHzTooltip megahertz, and PAL consoles have a 2A07 clocked at 1.66\u00a0MHz. Both CPUs are unlicensed variants of the MOS Technology 6502, an 8-bit microprocessor prevalent in contemporary home computers and consoles; Nintendo ostensibly disabled the 6502's binary-coded decimal mode on them to avoid patent infringement against or licensing fees towards MOS Technology, which was owned by then-rival Commodore International. The CPU has access to 2\u00a0KBTooltip kilobyte of onboard work RAMTooltip random-access memory.\nThe console's graphics are handled by a Ricoh 2C02, a processor known as the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) that is clocked at 5.37\u00a0MHz. A derivative of the Texas Instruments TMS9918\u2014a video display controller used in the ColecoVision\u2014the PPU features 2\u00a0KB of video RAM, 256\u00a0bytes of on-die \"object attribute memory\" (OAM) to store sprite display information on up to 64 sprites, and 28\u00a0bytes of RAM to store information on the YIQ-based color palette; the console can display up to 25 colors simultaneously out of 54 usable colors.\nThe console's standard display resolution is 256 \u00d7 240 pixels, though video output options vary between models. The original Famicom features only radio frequency (RF) modulator output, and the NES additionally supports composite video via RCA connectors. The redesigned Famicom omits the RF modulator entirely, only outputting composite video via a proprietary \"multi-out\" connector first introduced on the Super Famicom/SNES; conversely, the redesigned NES features RF modulator output only, though a version of the model including the \"multi-out\" connector was produced in rare quantities.\nThe console produces sound via an audio processing unit (APU) integrated into the processor. It supports a total of five sound channels: two pulse wave channels, one triangle wave channel, one white noise channel, and one DPCMTooltip differential pulse-code modulation channel for sample playback. Audio playback speed is dependent on the CPU clock rate, which is set by a crystal oscillator.\nAccessories.\nControllers.\nThe game controller for both the NES and the Famicom has an oblong brick-like design with a simple four button layout: two round buttons labeled \"A\" and \"B\", a \"START\" button, and a \"SELECT\" button. Additionally, the controllers use the cross-shaped D-pad, designed by Nintendo employee Gunpei Yokoi for Nintendo Game & Watch systems, to replace the bulkier joysticks on controllers of earlier gaming consoles.\nThe original model Famicom features two game controllers, both of which are hardwired to the back of the console. The second controller lacks the START and SELECT button, featuring a small microphone instead; however, few games use this feature. The earliest produced Famicom units have square A and B buttons; issues with them getting stuck when pressed down led Nintendo to change their shape to a circular design in subsequent units following the console's recall.\nInstead of the Famicom's hardwired controllers, the NES has two proprietary seven-pin ports on the front of the console to support detachable controllers and third-party peripherals. The controllers bundled with the NES are identical and include the START and SELECT buttons, lacking the microphone on the original Famicom's second controller. The cables for NES controllers are also generally three times longer than their Famicom counterparts.\nSeveral special controllers are intended for use with specific games, though are not commonly used. Such peripherals include the NES Zapper (a light gun), R.O.B. (a toy robot), and the Power Pad (a dance pad). The original Famicom has a deepened DA-15 expansion port on the front of the unit to accommodate them.\nTwo official advanced controllers were produced for the NES: the NES Advantage, an arcade controller produced by Asciiware and licensed by Nintendo of America; and the NES Max, a controller with grip handles and a \"cycloid\" sliding-disc D-pad in place of the traditional one. Both controllers have a \"Turbo\" feature, which simulates multiple rapid button presses, for the A and B buttons; the NES Max has manually pressed Turbo buttons, and the NES Advantage offers toggle buttons for Turbo functionality along with knobs that adjust the firing rate of each button. The latter also includes a \"Slow\" button that rapidly pauses games, though this function is not intended for games that invoke a pause menu or screen.\nThe standard game controller was redesigned upon the introduction of the redesigned console. Though the original button layout was retained, the shape of the redesigned controller\u2014nicknamed the \"dog bone\" controller\u2014resembles that of the Super Famicom and SNES. It retained NES-style detachable controller ports.\nThe original NES controller has become one of the most recognizable symbols of the console. Nintendo has mimicked the look of the controller in several other products, from promotional merchandise to limited edition versions of the Game Boy Advance.\nJapanese accessories.\nFew of the numerous peripheral devices and software packages for the Famicom were released outside Japan.\nThe Famicom 3D System, an active shutter 3D headset peripheral released in 1987, enabled the ability to play stereoscopic video games. It was a commercial failure and never released outside Japan; users described the headset as bulky and uncomfortable. Seven games are compatible with the glasses, with three of them developed by Square; two titles received worldwide releases as \"Rad Racer\" and \"The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner\".\n\"Family BASIC\" is an implementation of BASIC for the Famicom, packaged with a keyboard. Similar in concept to the Atari 2600 \"BASIC\" cartridge, it allows the user to write programs, especially games, which can be saved on an included cassette recorder. Nintendo of America rejected releasing \"Famicom BASIC\" in the US in favor of its primary marketing demographic of children.\nThe Famicom Modem connected a Famicom to a now defunct proprietary network in Japan which provided content such as financial services. A dial-up modem was never released for the NES after a partnership with Fidelity Investments.\nFamicom Disk System.\nBy 1986, the cost and size limitations of ROM chips used in the Famicom's ROM cartridges were apparent, with no new advancements present to address them. With this in mind, Nintendo looked at the personal computer (PC) market, where the floppy disk was gaining wide adoption as a computer data storage medium. Partnering with Mitsumi to develop a floppy disk add-on for the Famicom based on the latter's Quick Disk format, Nintendo officially released it as the Family Computer Disk System in Japan on February 21, 1986, at a retail price of \u00a515,000.\nThe advantages of the format (called \"Disk Card\") were apparent on launch. It has more than triple the data storage capacity of the then-largest cartridge (used for \"Super Mario Bros.\") and introduced game save capability and lower production costs compared to cartridges, which resulted in lower retail prices for consumers. The add-on also has a new wavetable synthesis sound channel and more data storage for the Famicom's audio sample channel. Taking advantage of the disk's re-writability, Nintendo set up Disk Writer interactive kiosks at retail stores throughout Japan; at each kiosk, consumers could buy new games to rewrite onto their old disks or onto new disks. Disk Fax kiosks allowed players to submit their high scores on special blue disks for contests and rankings, predating the online leaderboard by several years.\nAlthough Nintendo committed to exclusively releasing games on the Disk System after its release, numerous external issues plagued its long-term viability. Just four months after launch, Capcom released a Famicom port of \"Makaimura\" (known as \"Ghosts 'n Goblins\" in the U.S.) on a cartridge with more data storage capacity than what was possible on Disk Cards, nullifying one of the Disk System's major advantages by using discrete logic chips to perform bank switching. Nintendo also demanded half of the copyright ownership for each game it selected for release on the Disk System, resulting in developers electing to remain on cartridge instead as the latter gained functionality previously considered unique to the former. Developers disliked the lower profit margin of the Disk Writer kiosks, and retailers complained of their use of valuable space as demand for the format waned.\nUsage of a floppy disk-based medium brought about further complications; Disk Cards were more fragile than cartridges and were prone to data corruption from magnetic exposure. Their unreliability was exacerbated by their lack of a shutter, which Nintendo substituted with a wax sleeve and clear keep case to reduce costs; blue disks and later Disk Cards included shutters. The rubber belt-based disk drives were also unreliable, with cryptic error codes complicating troubleshooting; even when fully functional, players accustomed to cartridges were annoyed with the introduction of loading times and disk flipping. Furthermore, the rewritable nature of the format resulted in rampant software piracy, with Nintendo's attempts at anti-piracy measures quickly defeated.\nThough selling close to two million units for all of 1986, Nintendo only managed to increase the total to 4.4\u00a0million units by 1990, falling well short of internal projections. By then, the Disk System was rendered obsolete due to advancements in ROM cartridge production: memory mapping chips for expanded data storage capacity, battery-backed SRAMTooltip static random-access memory for game saving, and declining overall production costs. Nintendo alluded to a Western release for the Disk System, going so far as to successfully file a U.S. patent for it and having the Famicom's cartridge pins used by its RAM Adapter for enhanced audio rerouted to the NES's little-used bottom expansion port. However, such a release never materialized due to its reception in Japan. Most of its games were re-released with workarounds on cartridge for both the Famicom and NES, without the enhanced audio. Although the last game for the Disk System was released in December 1992, Nintendo continued repair and rewrite services for it until September 2003.\nNES Test Station.\nThe NES Test Station diagnostics machine was introduced in 1988. It is an NES-based unit designed for testing NES hardware, components, and games. It was only provided for use in World of Nintendo boutiques as part of the Nintendo World Class Service program. Visitors were to bring items to test with the station, and could be assisted by a store technician or employee.\nThe NES Test Station's front has a Game Pak slot and connectors for testing various components (AC adapter, RF switch, Audio/Video cable, NES Control Deck, accessories and games), with a centrally-located selector knob to choose which component to test. The unit itself weighs approximately 11.7 pounds without a TV. It connects to a television via a combined A/V and RF Switch cable. By actuating the green button, a user can toggle between an A/V Cable or RF Switch connection. The television it is connected to (typically 11\" to 14\") is meant to be placed atop it.\nIn 1991, Nintendo provided an add-on called the \"Super NES Counter Tester\" that tests Super NES components and games. The Super NES Counter Tester is a standard Control Deck on a metal fixture with the connection from the back of the unit re-routed to the front. These connections may be made directly to the test station or to the TV, depending on what is to be tested.\nGames.\nGame Pak.\nThe NES uses a 72-pin design, as compared with 60 pins on the Famicom. To reduce costs and inventory, some early games released in North America are simply Famicom cartridges attached to an adapter to fit inside the NES hardware. Early NES cartridges are held together with five small slotted screws. Games released after 1987 were redesigned slightly to incorporate two plastic clips molded into the plastic itself, removing the need for the top two screws.\nThe back of the cartridge bears a label with handling instructions. Production and software revision codes were imprinted as stamps on the back label to correspond with the software version and producer. All licensed NTSC and PAL cartridges are a standard shade of gray plastic, with the exception of \"The Legend of Zelda\" and ', which were manufactured in gold-plastic carts. Unlicensed carts were produced in black, robin egg blue, and gold, and are all slightly different shapes than standard NES cartridges. Nintendo also produced yellow-plastic carts for internal use at Nintendo Service Centers, although these \"test carts\" were never made available for purchase. All licensed US cartridges were made by Nintendo, Konami, and Acclaim. For promotion of ', Capcom sent 150 limited-edition gold NES cartridges with the original game, featuring the \"Remastered\" art as the sticker, to different gaming news agencies. The instruction label on the back includes the opening lyric from the show's theme song, \"Life is like a hurricane\".\nFamicom cartridges are shaped slightly differently. Unlike NES games, official Famicom cartridges were produced in many colors of plastic. Adapters, similar in design to the popular accessory Game Genie, are available that allow Famicom games to be played on an NES. In Japan, several companies manufactured the cartridges for the Famicom. This allowed these companies to develop customized chips designed for specific purposes, such as superior sound and graphics.\nThird-party licensing.\nNintendo's near monopoly on the home video game market left it with a dominant influence over the industry. Unlike Atari, which never actively pursued third-party developers (and even went to court in an attempt to force Activision to cease production of Atari 2600 games), Nintendo had anticipated and encouraged the involvement of third-party software developers, though strictly on Nintendo's terms. Some of the Nintendo platform-control measures were adopted in a less stringent way by later console manufacturers such as Sega, Sony, and Microsoft.\nTo this end, a 10NES authentication chip is in every console and in every licensed cartridge. If the console's chip can not detect a counterpart chip inside the cartridge, the game does not load. Nintendo portrayed these measures as intended to protect the public against poor-quality games, and placed a golden seal of approval on all licensed games released for the system.\nNintendo found success with Japanese arcade manufacturers such as Konami, Capcom, Taito, and Namco, which signed on as third-party developers. However, they found resistance with US game developers including Atari Games, Activision, Electronic Arts, and Epyx refusing Nintendo's one-sided terms. Acclaim Entertainment, a fledgling game publisher founded by former Activision employees, was the first major third-party licensee in the United States to sign on with Nintendo in late 1987. Atari Games (through Tengen) and Activision signed on soon after.\nNintendo was not as restrictive as Sega, which did not permit third-party publishing until Mediagenic in late summer 1988. Nintendo's intention was to reserve a large part of NES game revenue for itself. Nintendo required that it be the sole manufacturer of all cartridges, and that the publisher had to pay in full before the cartridges for that game be produced. Cartridges could not be returned to Nintendo, so publishers assumed all the risk. As a result, some publishers lost more money due to distress sales of remaining inventory at the end of the NES era than they ever earned in profits from sales of the games. Because Nintendo controlled the production of all cartridges, it was able to enforce strict rules on its third-party developers, who were required to sign a contract that would obligate them to develop exclusively for the system, order at least 10,000 cartridges, and only make five games per year. The global 1988 shortage of DRAM and ROM chips reportedly caused Nintendo to only permit an average of 25% of publishers' requests for cartridges, with some receiving much higher amounts and others almost none. GameSpy noted that Nintendo's \"iron-clad terms\" made the company many enemies during the 1980s. Some developers tried to circumvent the five game limit by creating additional company brands like Konami's Ultra Games label; others tried circumventing the 10NES chip.\nNintendo was accused of antitrust violations because of the strict licensing requirements. The United States Department of Justice and several states began probing Nintendo's business practices, leading to the involvement of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC conducted an extensive investigation which included interviewing hundreds of retailers. During the FTC probe, Nintendo changed the terms of its publisher licensing agreements to eliminate the two-year rule and other restrictive terms. Nintendo and the FTC settled the case in April 1991, with Nintendo required to send vouchers giving a $5 discount off to a new game, to every person that had purchased an NES game between June 1988 and December 1990. GameSpy remarked that Nintendo's punishment was particularly weak given the case's findings, although it has been speculated that the FTC did not want to damage the video game industry in the United States.\nWith the NES near the end of its life, many third-party publishers such as Electronic Arts supported upstart competing consoles with less strict licensing terms such as the Sega Genesis and then the PlayStation, which eroded and then took over Nintendo's dominance in the home console market, respectively. Consoles from Nintendo's rivals in the post-SNES era had always enjoyed much stronger third-party support than Nintendo, which relied more heavily on first-party games.\nUnlicensed games.\nCompanies that refused to pay the licensing fee or were rejected by Nintendo found ways to circumvent the console's authentication system. Most of these companies created circuits that use a voltage spike to temporarily disable the 10NES chip. A few unlicensed games released in Europe and Australia are in the form of a dongle to connect to a licensed game, to use the licensed game's 10NES chip for authentication. To combat unlicensed games, Nintendo of America threatened retailers who sold them with losing their supply of licensed games, and multiple revisions were made to the NES PCBs to prevent unlicensed games from working.\nAtari Games took a different approach with its line of NES products, Tengen. The company attempted to reverse engineer the lockout chip to develop its own \"Rabbit\" chip. Tengen also obtained a description of the lockout chip from the United States Patent and Trademark Office by falsely claiming that it was required to defend against present infringement claims. Nintendo successfully sued Tengen for copyright infringement. Tengen's antitrust claims against Nintendo were never decided.\nColor Dreams made Christian video games under the subsidiary name Wisdom Tree. Historian Steven Kent wrote, \"Wisdom Tree presented Nintendo with a prickly situation. The general public did not seem to pay close attention to the court battle with Atari Games, and industry analysts were impressed with Nintendo's legal acumen; but going after a tiny company that published innocuous religious games was another story.\"\nGame rentals.\nAs the Nintendo Entertainment System grew in popularity and entered millions of American homes, some small video rental shops began buying their own copies of NES games, and renting them out to customers for around the same price as a video cassette rental for a few days. Nintendo received no profit from the practice beyond the initial cost of their game, and unlike movie rentals, a newly released game could hit store shelves and be available for rent on the same day. Nintendo took steps to stop game rentals, but did not take any formal legal action until Blockbuster Video began to make game rentals a large-scale service. Nintendo claimed that allowing customers to rent games would significantly hurt sales and drive up the cost of games. Nintendo lost the lawsuit, but did win on a claim of copyright infringement. Blockbuster was banned from including photocopies of original, copyrighted instruction booklets with its rented games. In compliance with the ruling, Blockbuster produced original short instructions\u2014usually in the form of a small booklet, card, or label stuck on the back of the rental box\u2014that explained the game's basic premise and controls. Video rental shops continued the practice of renting video games.\nReception.\nBy 1988, industry observers stated that the NES's popularity had grown so quickly that the market for Nintendo cartridges was larger than that for all home computer software. \"Compute!\" reported in 1989 that Nintendo had sold seven million NES systems in 1988 alone, almost as many as the number of Commodore 64s sold in its first five years. \"Computer game makers [are] scared stiff\", the magazine said, stating that Nintendo's popularity caused most competitors to have poor sales during the previous Christmas and resulted in serious financial problems for some.\nIn June 1989, Nintendo of America's vice president of marketing Peter Main, said that the Famicom was present in 37% of Japan's households. By 1990, 30% of American households owned the NES, compared to 23% for all personal computers. By 1990, the NES had outsold all previously released consoles worldwide. The slogan for this brand was \"It can't be beaten\". The Nintendo Entertainment System was not available in the Soviet Union.\nIn the early 1990s, gamers predicted that competition from technologically superior systems such as the 16-bit Sega Genesis would mean the immediate end of the NES's dominance. Instead, during the first year of Nintendo's successor console the Super Famicom (named Super Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan), the Famicom remained the second highest-selling video game console in Japan, outselling the newer and more powerful NEC PC Engine and Sega Mega Drive by a wide margin. The console remained popular in Japan and North America until late 1993, when the demand for new NES software abruptly plummeted. The final licensed Famicom game released in Japan is \"Takahashi Meijin no B\u014dken Jima IV (Adventure Island IV)\", in North America is \"Wario's Woods\", and in Europe is \"The Lion King\" in 1995. In the wake of ever decreasing sales and the lack of new games, Nintendo of America officially discontinued the NES by 1995. Nintendo produced new Famicom units in Japan until September 25, 2003, and continued to repair Famicom consoles until October 31, 2007, attributing the discontinuation of support to insufficient supplies of parts.\nThe NES was initially not as successful in Europe during the late 1980s, when it was outsold by the Master System in the United Kingdom. By 1990, the Master System was the highest-selling console in Europe, though the NES was beginning to have a fast-growing user base in the United Kingdom. During the early 1990s, NES sales caught up with and narrowly overtook the Master System overall in Western Europe, though the Master System maintained its lead in several markets such as the United Kingdom, Belgium and Spain.\nLegacy.\nThe NES was released two years after the video game crash of 1983, when many retailers and adult consumers regarded electronic games as a passing fad, so many believed at first that the NES would soon fade. Before the NES and Famicom, Nintendo was known as a moderately successful Japanese toy and playing card manufacturer, but the consoles' popularity helped the company grow into an internationally recognized name almost synonymous with video games as Atari had been, and set the stage for Japanese dominance of the video game industry. With the NES, Nintendo also changed the relationship between console manufacturers and third-party software developers by restricting developers from publishing and distributing software without licensed approval. This led to higher-quality games, which helped change the attitude of a public that had grown weary from poorly produced games for earlier systems.\nThe NES hardware design is also very influential. Nintendo chose the name \"Nintendo Entertainment System\" for the US market and redesigned the system so it would not give the appearance of a child's toy. The front-loading cartridge input allowed it to be used more easily in a TV stand with other entertainment devices, such as a videocassette recorder.\nThe system's hardware limitations led to design principles that still influence the development of modern video games. Many prominent game franchises originated on the NES, including Nintendo's own \"Super Mario Bros.\",| \"The Legend of Zelda\" and \"Metroid\", Capcom's \"Mega Man\" franchise, Konami's \"Castlevania\" franchise, Square's \"Final Fantasy\",| and Enix's \"Dragon Quest\"| franchises.\nNES imagery, especially its controller, has become a popular motif for a variety of products, including Nintendo's Game Boy Advance.\nAt the Tokyo Game Show in 2023, the \"Famicom\" was bestowed \"The Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Award\" in honour of the console's influence and laying down the foundations for the games industry.\nThe NES library includes some influential games. \"Super Mario Bros.\" is the forerunner of side-scrolling games, while \"The Legend of Zelda\" had mostly influenced action-adventure games and helped popularizing the save data in video games. Other two influential games are \"Metroid\" and \"Castlevania II\", which had established the metroidvania genre.\nIn 2011, \"IGN\" named the NES the greatest video game console of all time.\nEmulation.\nThe NES can be emulated on many other systems. The first emulator was the Japanese-only Pasofami. It was soon followed by iNES, which is available in English and is cross-platform, in 1996. It was described as being the first NES emulation software that could be used by a non-expert. The first version of NESticle, an unofficial MS-DOS-based emulator, was released on April 3, 1997. Nintendo offers licensed emulation of some NES games via its Virtual Console service for the Wii, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U, and via its Nintendo Switch Online service.\nRe-release.\nOn July 14, 2016, Nintendo announced the November 2016 launch of a miniature replica of the NES, named the Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition in the United States and Nintendo Classic Mini: Nintendo Entertainment System in Europe and Australia. The emulation-based console includes 30 permanently bundled games from the vintage NES library, including the \"Super Mario Bros.\" series and \"The Legend of Zelda\" series. The system has HDMI display output and a new replica controller, which can also connect to the Wii Remote for use with Virtual Console games. It was discontinued in North America on April 13, 2017, and worldwide on April 15, 2017. However, Nintendo announced in September 2017 that the NES Classic Mini would return to production on June 29, 2018, only to be discontinued again permanently by December of that year.\nNotes.\nTransliterations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["18944028", "20083467", "28314"], "permutation_1": ["28314", "20083467", "18944028"], "permutation_2": ["20083467", "28314", "18944028"], "permutation_3": ["18944028", "28314", "20083467"]}
{"id": "3hop1__581349_355553_476740", "docs_added": {"41770159": "Angels of the Apocalypse\nAngels of the Apocalypse is the second full-length album by Timo Tolkki's Finnish metal opera project Avalon, released on May 16, 2014 in Europe and four days later in North America.\nIt is the second part of the trilogy created by Tolkki, written as a prequel to the previous album \"The Land of New Hope\".\nAs with the previous effort, several heavy metal singers were invited to play the characters of the story of the album, with female vocalist Elize Ryd of Amaranthe reprising her role and Floor Jansen (Nightwish, ReVamp) playing the main character. The rest of the cast includes Fabio Lione (Rhapsody of Fire, Angra), David DeFeis (Virgin Steele), Simone Simons (Epica), Caterina Nix (solo Chilean singer who is having her debut album produced by Timo Tolkki) and Zachary Stevens (ex-Savatage, Circle II Circle).\nBackground and recording.\nThe album started to be composed in August 2013 in Greece, to where Timo travelled to seek inspiration.\nIn October 2013, Timo Tolkki launched a news website for the project in which he announced the album, which was provisionally titled \"Avalon II\". Tolkki also announced he would be working with former Stratovarius bandmates Tuomo Lassila (drums) and Antti Ikonen (keyboards).\nIn late January, Tolkki revealed the name of the album and the remaining singers. Timo also announced that there will be a contest for guitar and keyboard players, with the winners getting a chance to perform a solo with him in one of the songs.\nOnce again, the artwork was created by French artist Stanis W. Decker.\nTimo stated he created some songs with a specific singer in mind. The title-track will clock around 10:00. He also described the music of the album as \"darker and heavier\" than its predecessor, which was necessary due to the \"Apocalyptic scenes described in the lyrics\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "10163748": "The House of Atreus Act I\nThe House of Atreus Act I, released in 1999, is the ninth studio album by the American heavy metal band Virgin Steele. It has the subtitle \"A Barbaric-Romantic Opera\". This album is the first part of a metal opera inspired by the Oresteia, a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus which concerns the end of the curse on the House of Atreus. The music was intended to be the soundtrack for theatrical shows, with actors impersonating the characters of the tragedy. The metal opera was actually performed under the name \"Klytaimnestra \u2013 The House Of Atreus\" in European theatres from 1999 to 2001, with the production of the Memmingen Opera House company and Landestheater Production.\nThe song \"The Fire God\" first appears on the 1986 Piledriver LP \"Stay Ugly\".\nTrack listing.\nAll songs by David DeFeis except tracks 5, 7, 8, 15 and 18 by DeFeis / Ed Pursino", "19360420": "David DeFeis\nAmerican heavy metal singer\nDavid DeFeis (born January 4, 1961) is an American singer, songwriter and producer. He is the main composer, leader and sole constant member of the heavy metal band Virgin Steele.\nBiography.\nDeFeis comes from a theatrical family: his father is a Shakespearian actor who runs the theatre company \"The Arena Players Theatre\" while his sister Doreen is a gifted opera singer who performs all over Europe.\nA big fan of European classical music, at 9\u201310 years old he was introduced to rock music by hearing the band Stalk, with his brother Damon (on organ and piano) and his sister Danae (on vocals), playing in the basement beneath his room. Damon DeFeis was later in the band Creation with future Kiss drummer Eric Carr, and died in the Gulliver's nightclub fire in 1974. \nHe began piano lessons at the age of eight. By age eleven, he began his career with Long Island's local heavy metal band Phoenix.\nAt 16 years old, he met for the first time his future partner Edward Pursino when DeFeis's band at the time, Mountain Ash, was auditioning for a gig at the high school dance. Mountain Ash was mainly a Black Sabbath cover band and, after the performance of the song \"War Pigs\", Pursino came over and introduced himself to DeFeis.\nAt the beginning of the 1980s, together with Jack Starr and Joey Ayvazian, he started the first line-up of the band Virgin Steele. They debuted in 1982 with the song \"Children of the Storm\" included in the compilation \"U.S. Metal Vol. II\". \nIn 1985, the guitarist Edward Pursino replaced Starr. Among the years, in their longtime relationship in Virgin Steele, DeFeis and Pursino released a lot of heavy metal classics such as the albums: \"Noble Savage\", \"Invictus\", \"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part I\", \"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part II\".\nDeFeis collects swords: his collection includes more than 20 items. In studio, sometimes he uses his swords to create particular effects for the Virgin Steele songs, and during the concerts he usually burns a sword on stage.\nVoice and musical style.\nDeFeis is a classically trained pianist, with a bachelor's degree in composition from S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook. As vocalist, he is self-taught, possessing around four octaves and a four notes: E2-B6. He said he was very much influenced by guitar players like Jimmy Page, Brian May and Eddie Van Halen, because he wanted to do with his voice what they did with their guitars. He is also influenced by rock singers like Freddie Mercury, Robert Plant, David Coverdale, Ronnie James Dio and Ian Gillan.\nThe major part of the lyrics DeFeis writes are mythological, dealing with subjects from especially Greek, Sumerian and Christian mythology. All of them are based on real life in some form or another.\nMetal opera and theatre.\nBetween the end of the 1990s and the 2000s (decade), he wrote music for actors based on the Oresteia and the Greek myths related by Aeschylus. According with German artists Walter Weyers and Martina Krawulsky, with the name \"Klytaimnestra\": \"The House of Atreus\" Metal Opera (musically available on the Virgin Steele's albums \"The House of Atreus Act I\", \"The House of Atreus Act II\") was performed on stage in Germany theaters by Landestheater Production.\nThe premiere of \"Klytaimnestra\" in Memmingen, June 5, 1999, has been the first ever regular musical theatre show based on heavy metal concepts.\nAfter \"Klytaimnestra\" success, David DeFeis & Landestheater Production extracted a second metal opera musical, named \"The Rebels\", from the previous Virgin Steele's albums of the Marriage of Heaven and Hell trilogy (\"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part I\", \"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part II\", \"Invictus\").\nIn 2003, the same team released a third Metal Opera, named \"Lilith\", based on the material of album \"Visions of Eden\". \"Visions of Eden\" was later on published in CD in 2006.\nProducer.\nDeFeis owns his personal recording studio called: \"The Hammer of Zeus\" (sometimes also called \"The Wrecking Ball Of Thor\").\nVirgin Steele's albums are produced by DeFeis.\nHe also produced albums released by other artists such as: \"Out of the Darkness\" and \"No Turning Back\" by Jack Starr, \"Nightmare Theatre\" by Exorcist, \"Stay Ugly\" by Piledriver, \"The Sign of the Jackal\" by Damien Thorn, \"Sin Will Find You Out\" by Original Sin.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "10164207": "The House of Atreus Act II\nThe House of Atreus Act II, released in 2000, is the tenth studio album by the American heavy metal band Virgin Steele. It was released as a double CD album. This album is the second and final part of a metal opera inspired by the Oresteia, a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus which concerns the end of the curse on the House of Atreus. The music was intended to be the soundtrack for theatrical shows, with actors impersonating the characters of the tragedy. The metal opera was actually performed under the name \"Klytaimnestra \u2013 The House of Atreus\" in European theatres from 1999 to 2001, with the production of the Memmingen Opera House company and Landestheater Production.\nIn 2019, \"Metal Hammer\" ranked it as the 12th best power metal album of all time.\nTrack listing.\nAll songs by David DeFeis except tracks 3, 8, 10, 23 by DeFeis / Edward Pursino.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "80577": "Atreus\nKing of Mycenae, father of Agamemnon and Menelaus\nIn Greek mythology, Atreus (, lit.\u2009'fearless') was a king of Mycenae in the Peloponnese, the son of Pelops and Hippodamia, and the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus. His descendants became known collectively as the Atreidae ( \"Atreidai\").\nAtreus and his twin brother Thyestes were exiled by their father for murdering their half-brother Chrysippus in their desire for the throne of Olympia. They took refuge in Mycenae, where they ascended to the throne in the absence of King Eurystheus, who was fighting the Heracleidae. Eurystheus had meant for their stewardship to be temporary, but it became permanent after his death in battle, which ended the rule of the Perseid dynasty in Mycenae.\nAccording to most ancient sources, Atreus was the father of Pleisthenes, but in some lyric poets (Ibycus, Bacchylides) Pleisthenides (son of Pleisthenes) is used as an alternative name for Atreus himself.\nNomenclature.\n'Atreides' () is a patronymic form of Atreus which refers to one of his sons\u2014Agamemnon or Menelaus. The plural forms, deriving from the Latin , itself from Ancient Greek 'Atreidai' (), refer to both sons collectively. 'Atreides' is commonly used to translate both the singular and plural form to English. The term can also be used for the more distant descendants of Atreus, also known as the 'House of Atreus' or the 'Atreid dynasty'. It has been suggested that the name \"Attarsiya\", belonging to an Ahhiyawan king of 1400 BC, may be the Hittite rendition of the Greek name.\nThe House of Atreus.\nTantalus.\nThe 'House of Atreus' begins with Tantalus. Tantalus, the son of Zeus and the maiden Pluto, enjoyed cordial relations with the gods until he decided to slay his son Pelops and feed him to the gods as a test of their omniscience. Most of the gods, as they sat down to dinner with Tantalus, immediately understood what had happened, and, because they knew the nature of the meat they were served, were appalled and did not partake. But Demeter, who was distracted due to the abduction by Hades of her daughter Persephone, obliviously ate Pelops's shoulder. The gods threw Tantalus into the underworld to spend eternity standing in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches. Whenever he reaches for the fruit, the branches raise his intended meal from his grasp. Whenever he bends down to get a drink, the water recedes before he can drink. Thus is derived the word \"tantalizing\" in English. The gods brought Pelops back to life, replacing the bone in his shoulder with a bit of ivory with the help of Hephaestus, thus marking the family forever afterwards.\nPelops and Hippodamia.\nPelops married Hippodamia after winning a chariot race against her father, King Oenomaus, by arranging for the sabotage of his would-be-father-in-law's chariot which resulted in his death, at which point the story diverges into multiple versions. The sabotage was arranged by Myrtilus, a servant of the king who was killed by Pelops for one of three reasons: 1) because he had been promised the right to take Hippodamia's virginity, which Pelops retracted; 2) because he attempted to rape her, or; 3) because Pelops did not wish to share the credit for the victory. As Myrtilus died, he cursed Pelops and his line, further adding to the house's curse.\nAtreus and Thyestes.\nPelops and Hippodamia had many sons; two of them were Atreus and Thyestes. Depending on myth versions, they murdered Chrysippus, who was their half-brother. Because of the murder, Hippodamia, Atreus, and Thyestes were banished to Mycenae, where Hippodamia is said to have hanged herself.\nAtreus vowed to sacrifice his best lamb to Artemis. Upon searching his flock, however, Atreus discovered a golden lamb which he gave to his wife, Aerope, to hide from the goddess. She gave it to Thyestes, her lover and Atreus' brother, who then persuaded Atreus to agree that whoever had the lamb should be king. Thyestes produced the lamb and claimed the throne.\nAtreus retook the throne using advice he received from Zeus, who sent Hermes to him, advising him to make Thyestes agree that if the sun rose in the west and set in the east, the throne of the kingdom should be given back to Atreus. Thyestes agreed, but then Helios did exactly that, rising where he usually set and setting where he usually rose, not standing the injustice of Thyestes' usurpation. The people then bowed to the man who had managed to reverse the circuit of the Sun.\nAtreus then learned of Thyestes' and Aerope's adultery and plotted revenge. He killed Thyestes' sons and cooked them, save their hands and feet. He tricked Thyestes into eating the flesh of his own sons and then taunted him with their hands and feet. Thyestes was forced into exile for eating human flesh. Thyestes responded by asking an oracle what to do, who advised him to have a son by his daughter, Pelopia, who would then kill Atreus. However, when their son Aegisthus was first born, he was abandoned by his mother, who was ashamed of the incestuous act. A shepherd found the infant Aegisthus and gave him to Atreus, who raised him as his own son. Only as he entered adulthood did Thyestes reveal the truth to Aegisthus, that he was both father and grandfather to the boy. Aegisthus then killed Atreus, although not before Atreus and Aerope had had two sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus, and a daughter Anaxibia.\nAgamemnon married Clytemnestra, and Menelaus married Helen, her famously attractive sister. Helen later left Sparta with Paris of Troy, and Menelaus called on all of his wife's former suitors to help him take her back.\nAgamemnon, Iphigenia, Clytemnestra, Aegisthus, Orestes and Electra.\nPrior to sailing off to war against Troy, Agamemnon had angered the goddess Artemis because he had killed a sacred deer in a sacred grove, and had then boasted that he was a better hunter than she was. When the time came, Artemis stilled the winds so that Agamemnon's fleet could not sail. A prophet named Calchas told him that in order to appease Artemis, Agamemnon would have to sacrifice the most precious thing that had come to his possession in the year he killed the sacred deer. This was his first-born daughter, Iphigenia. He sent word home for her to come (in some versions of the story on the pretense that she was to be married to Achilles). Iphigenia accepted her father's choice and was honored to be a part of the war. Clytemnestra tried to stop Iphigenia but was sent away. After doing the deed, Agamemnon's fleet was able to get under way.\nWhile he was fighting the Trojans, his wife Clytemnestra, enraged by the murder of her daughter, began an affair with Aegisthus. When Agamemnon returned home he brought with him a new concubine, the doomed prophetess, Cassandra. Upon his arrival that evening, before the great banquet she had prepared, Clytemnestra drew a bath for him and when he came out of the bath, she put the royal purple robe on him which had no opening for his head. He was confused and tangled up. Clytemnestra then stabbed him to death.\nAgamemnon's only son, Orestes, was quite young when his mother killed his father. He was sent into exile. In some versions he was sent away by Clytemnestra to avoid having him present during the murder of Agamemnon; in others his sister Electra herself rescued the infant Orestes and sent him away to protect him from their mother. In both versions he was the legitimate heir apparent and as such a potential danger to his usurper uncle.\nGoaded by his sister Electra, Orestes swore revenge. He knew it was his duty to avenge his father's death, but saw also that in doing so he would have to kill his mother. He was torn between avenging his father and sparing his mother. 'It was a son's duty to kill his father's murderers, a duty that came before all others. But a son who killed his mother was abhorrent to gods and to men'.\nWhen he prayed to Apollo, the god advised him to kill his mother. Orestes realized that he must work out the curse on his house, exact vengeance and pay with his own ruin. After Orestes murdered Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, he wandered the land with guilt in his heart. After many years, with Apollo by his side, he pleaded to Athena. No descendant of Atreus had ever done so noble an act and 'neither he nor any descendant of his would ever again be driven into evil by the irresistible power of the past.' Thus Orestes ended the curse of the House of Atreus.\nThis story is the major plot line of Aeschylus's trilogy \"The Oresteia\".\nClassical references.\nPlato in his dialogue \"The Statesman\" tells a \"famous tale\" that \"the sun and the stars once rose in the west, and set in the east, and that the god reversed their motion, and gave them that which they now have as a testimony to the right of Atreus.\" Virgil, in book IV of the \"Aeneid\", refers to the House of Atreus and specifically Orestes in describing the death of Dido.\nHittite records.\nThere is a possible reference to Atreus in a Hittite text known as the \"Indictment of Madduwatta\". The indictment describes several army clashes between the Greeks and the Hittites which took place around the late 15th or early 14th centuries BC. The Greek leader was a man called Attarsiya, and some scholars have speculated that Attarsiya or Attarissiya was the Hittite way of writing the Greek name Atreus. Other scholars argue that even though the name is probably Greek (since the man is described as an Ahhiyawa) and related to Atreus, the person carrying the name is not necessarily identical to the famous Atreus.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "157180": "Oresteia\nTrilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus\nThe Oresteia () is a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus in the 5th century BCE, concerning the murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra, the murder of Clytemnestra by Orestes, the trial of Orestes, the end of the curse on the House of Atreus and the pacification of the Furies (also called Erinyes or Eumenides).\nThe \"Oresteia\" trilogy consists of three plays: \"Agamemnon\", \"The Libation Bearers\", and \"The Eumenides\". It shows how the Greek gods interacted with the characters and influenced their decisions pertaining to events and disputes. The only extant example of an ancient Greek theatre trilogy, the \"Oresteia\" won first prize at the Dionysia festival in 458 BCE. The principal themes of the trilogy include the contrast between revenge and justice, as well as the transition from personal vendetta to organized litigation. \"Oresteia\" originally included a satyr play, \"Proteus\" (), following the tragic trilogy, but all except a single line of \"Proteus\" has been lost.\n\"Agamemnon\".\n\"Agamemnon\" (, \"Agam\u00e9mn\u014dn\") is the first of the three plays within the \"Oresteia\" trilogy. It details the homecoming of Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, from the Trojan War. After ten years of warfare, and Troy fallen, all of Greece could lay claim to the victory. Waiting at home for Agamemnon is his wife, Queen Clytemnestra, who has been plotting his murder. She desires his death to avenge the sacrifice of her daughter Iphigenia, to exterminate the only thing hindering her from taking the crown, and to finally be able to publicly embrace her good-time lover Aegisthus.\nThe play opens with a watchman looking down and over the sea, reporting that he has been lying restless \"like a dog\" for a year, waiting to see some sort of signal confirming a Greek victory in Troy. He laments the fortunes of the house, but promises to keep silent: \"A huge ox has stepped onto my tongue.\" The watchman sees a light far off in the distance\u2014a bonfire signaling Troy's fall\u2014and is overjoyed at the victory and hopes for the hasty return of his king, as the house has \"wallowed\" in his absence. Clytemnestra is introduced to the audience, and she declares that there will be celebrations and sacrifices throughout the city as Agamemnon and his army return.\nUpon the return of Agamemnon, his wife laments in full view of Argos how horrible the wait for her husband and King has been. After her soliloquy, Clytemnestra pleads with and persuades Agamemnon to walk on the robes laid out for him. This is a very ominous moment in the play, as loyalties and motives are questioned. The King's new concubine, Cassandra, is now introduced, and this immediately spawns hatred from the queen, Clytemnestra. Cassandra is ordered out of her chariot and to the altar, where, once she is alone, she begins predicting the death of Agamemnon and her own shared fate.\nInside the house, a cry is heard: Agamemnon has been stabbed in the bathtub. The chorus separates from one another and rambles to themselves, proving their cowardice, when another final cry is heard. When the doors are finally opened, Clytemnestra is seen standing over the dead bodies of Agamemnon and Cassandra. Clytemnestra describes the murder in detail to the chorus, showing no sign of remorse or regret. Suddenly, the exiled lover of Clytemnestra, Aegisthus, bursts into the palace to take his place next to her. Aegisthus proudly states that he devised the plan to murder Agamemnon and claim revenge for his father (the father of Aegisthus, Thyestes, was tricked into eating two of his sons by his brother Atreus, the father of Agamemnon). Clytemnestra claims that she and Aegisthus now have all the power, and they re-enter the palace with the doors closing behind them.\nLike most Greek tragedies, \"Agamemnon\" is a morally complex play. Agamemnon may be an admired veteran of the Trojan War but it is made clear that many do not approve of the way he sacrificed his daughter, Iphigenia. Many citizens resent Agamemnon because they lost their sons and husbands in the war he initiated. Similarly, Clytemnestra is both her husband's murderer and her daughter's avenger; Aeschylus continues to explore the fundamental moral quandary of vengeance and \"justified\" bloodshed in \"The Libation Bearers\" and \"The Eumenides\".\n\"The Libation Bearers\".\nIn \"The Libation Bearers\" (, \"Cho\u0113ph\u00f3roi\")\u2014the second play of Aeschylus' \"Oresteia\" trilogy\u2014many years after the murder of Agamemnon, his son Orestes returns to Argos with his cousin Pylades to exact vengeance on Clytemnestra, as an order from Apollo, for killing Agamemnon. Upon arriving, Orestes reunites with his sister Electra at Agamemnon's grave, while she was there bringing libations to Agamemnon in an attempt to stop Clytemnestra's bad dreams. Shortly after the reunion, both Orestes and Electra, influenced by the Chorus, come up with a plan to kill both Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.\nOrestes then goes to the palace door, where he is greeted by Clytemnestra. He pretends he is a stranger and tells Clytemnestra that he (Orestes) is dead, causing her to send for Aegisthus. Unrecognized, Orestes is then able to enter the palace, where he then kills Aegisthus, who was without a guard due to the intervention of the chorus in relaying Clytemnestra's message. Clytemnestra then enters the room. Orestes hesitates to kill her, but Pylades reminds him of Apollo's orders, and he eventually follows through. Consequently, after committing the matricide, Orestes is now the target of the Furies' merciless wrath and has no choice but to flee from the palace.\nChorus.\nThe Chorus in \"The Libation Bearers\" is distinctly different from the one in \"Agamemnon.\" From \"Agamemnon\" to \"The Libation Bearers\", the Chorus switches from a collection of old, Argive men, to foreign slave women.p.\u00a046-48 Furthermore, the Chorus in \"Agamemnon\" possessed a fearful voice, characterized by their critical commentary on the events and characters of the play. Despite this, they play a passive role and do not influence the plot.p.\u00a047-48 In contrast, \"The Libation Bearers\"' Chorus desire vengeance, and influence both Electra's and Orestes' actions, shepherding Orestes towards revenge.p.\u00a048-52\n\"The Eumenides\".\nThe final play of the \"Oresteia\", called \"The Eumenides\" (, \"Eumen\u00eddes\"), illustrates how the sequence of events in the trilogy ends up in the development of social order or a proper judicial system in Athenian society. In this play, Orestes is hunted and tormented by the Furies, a trio of goddesses known to be the instruments of justice, who are also referred to as the \"Gracious Ones\" (\"Eumenides\"). They relentlessly pursue Orestes for the killing of his mother. Through the intervention of Apollo, Orestes is able to escape them for a brief moment while they are asleep and escape to Athens under the protection of Hermes. Seeing the Furies asleep, Clytemnestra's ghost comes to wake them up to obtain justice on her son Orestes for killing her.\nAfter waking up, the Furies hunt Orestes again and when they find him, Orestes pleads to the goddess Athena for help. She responds by setting up a trial for him in Athens on the Areopagus. This trial is made up of a group of twelve Athenian citizens and is supervised by Athena. Here Orestes is used as a trial dummy by Athena to set-up the first courtroom trial. He is also the object of the Furies, Apollo, and Athena. After the trial comes to an end, the votes are tied. Athena casts the deciding vote and determines that Orestes will not be killed. This does not sit well with the Furies but Athena eventually persuades them to accept the decision; instead of violently retaliating against wrongdoers, become a constructive force of vigilance in Athens. She then changes their names from the Furies to \"the Eumenides\" which means \"the Gracious Ones\". Athena then ultimately rules that all trials must henceforth be settled in court rather than being carried out personally.\n\"Proteus\".\n\"Proteus\" (, \"Pr\u014dteus\"), the satyr play which originally followed the first three plays of \"The Oresteia\", is lost except for a two-line fragment preserved by Athenaeus. It is widely believed to have been based on the story told in Book IV of Homer's \"Odyssey\", where Menelaus, Agamemnon's brother, tries to return home from Troy and finds himself on an island off Egypt, \"whither he seems to have been carried by the storm described in \"Agam.674\"\".\nThe title character, \"the deathless Egyptian Proteus\", the Old Man of the Sea, is described in Homer as having been visited by Menelaus, who sought to learn his future. Proteus tells Menelaus of the death of Agamemnon at the hands of Aegisthus and the fates of Ajax the Lesser and Odysseus at sea. Proteus is compelled to tell Menelaus how to reach home from the island of Pharos: <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The satyrs who may have found themselves on the island as a result of shipwreck . . . perhaps gave assistance to Menelaus and escaped with him, though he may have had difficulty in ensuring that they keep their hands off Helen.\nThe only extant fragment that has been definitively attributed to \"Proteus\" was translated by Herbert Weir Smyth: <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nIn 2002, Theatre Kingston mounted a production of \"The Oresteia\" and included a new reconstruction of \"Proteus\" based on the episode in \"The Odyssey\" and loosely arranged according to the structure of extant satyr plays.\nThemes.\nJustice through retaliation.\nRetaliation is seen in the \"Oresteia\" to cascade. In \"Agamemnon\", it is mentioned that Agamemnon had to sacrifice his innocent daughter Iphigenia to shift the wind for his voyage to Troy. This caused Clytemnestra to plot revenge on Agamemnon. She found a new lover Aegisthus and when Agamemnon returned to Argos from the Trojan War, Clytemnestra killed him by stabbing him in the bathtub and went on to inherit his throne. The death of Agamemnon thus sparks anger in Orestes and Electra; they plot matricide (the death of their mother Clytemnestra) in the next play, \"Libation Bearers\". Through much pressure from Electra and his cousin Pylades, Orestes kills Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus. Consequently, Orestes is hunted down by the Furies in the third play \"The Eumenides\". Even after he escapes, Clytemnestra's spirit comes back to rally them again so that they can kill Orestes and obtain vengeance for her. However, this cycle of retaliation comes to a stop near the end of \"The Eumenides\" when Athena decides to introduce a new legal system for dealing out justice.\nJustice through the law.\nJustice through the law is achieved in \"The Eumenides\". After Orestes begged Athena for deliverance from the Furies, she granted him his request in the form of a trial. Rather than forgiving Orestes directly, Athena put him to trial to find a just answer to the question of his innocence. This is the first example of proper litigation in the trilogy and illuminates the change from emotional retaliation to civilized decisions regarding alleged crimes. Instead of allowing the Furies to torture Orestes, she decided that she would have both the Furies and Orestes plead their case before she decided on the verdict. In addition, Athena set up how the verdict would be decided. By creating this blueprint, the future of revenge-killings and the merciless hunting of the Furies would be eliminated from Greece. The trial sets the foundation for future litigation. Aeschylus, through his jury trial, was able to create and maintain a social commentary about the limitations of revenge crimes and reiterate the importance of trials. \"The Oresteia\", as a whole, stands as a representation of the evolution of justice in Ancient Greece.\nRevenge.\nRevenge is a principal motivator for most characters in \"Oresteia\". The theme starts in \"Agamemnon\" with Clytemnestra, who murders her husband, Agamemnon, in order to obtain vengeance for his sacrificing of their daughter, Iphigenia. The death of Cassandra, the princess of Troy, taken captive by Agamemnon in order to fill a place as a concubine, can also be seen as an act of revenge for taking another woman as well as the life of Iphigenia. Later on, in \"The Libation Bearers\", Orestes and Electra (siblings and remaining children of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra) succeed in killing their mother to avenge their father's death. In \"The Eumenides\", the Furies\u2014goddesses of vengeance\u2014seek to take revenge on Orestes for the murder of his mother. It is also discovered that the god Apollo played a part in the act of vengeance toward Clytemnestra through Orestes. The cycle of revenge is seen to be broken when Orestes is not killed by the Furies, but is instead given his freedom and deemed innocent by the goddess Athena.\nMother-right and father-right.\nTo the anthropologist Johann Jakob Bachofen (\"Das Mutterrecht\", 1861), the \"Oresteia\" shows Ancient Greece's transition from \"hetaerism\" (polyamory) to monogamy; and from \"mother-right\" (matriarchal lineage) to \"father-right\" (patriarchal lineage). According to Bachofen, religious laws changed in this period: the Apollo and Athena of \"The Eumenides\" present the patriarchal view. The Furies contrast what they call \"gods of new descent\" with the view that matricide is more serious than the killing of men. With Athena acquitting Orestes, and the Furies working for the new gods, \"The Eumenides\" shows the newfound dominance of father-right over mother-right.\nBachofen's interpretation was influential among Marxists and feminists. Feminist Simone de Beauvoir wrote in \"The Second Sex\" (1949) that the tribunal saw Orestes as son of Agamemnon before being son of Clytemnestra. In \"The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State\" (1884), Marxist Friedrich Engels praises Bachofen's \"correct interpretation\". Nonetheless, he sees it as \"pure mysticism\" by Bachofen to see the change in divine perspectives as the cause of the change in Greek society. Instead, Engels considers economic factors\u2014the creation of private property\u2014and the \"natural sexual behaviour\" of men and women. For the feminist Kate Millett, the latter factor is mistaken, and \"The Eumenides\" is important in documenting the state's arguments for repression of women.\nMatricide and femininity.\nElectra's role in the murder of her mother has been hotly contested by scholars throughout time. Many view Electra's by-proxy killing of her mother as a representation of daughter-inflicted matricide.\nPsychoanalyst Carl Jung attributes her behavior to what he coined as the \"Electra complex\" the jealousy of the daughter towards the mother for her sexual engagement with the father. Sigmund Freud disagreed with this claim, noting that the \"Oedipus complex\" cannot be applied directly to the female sex, since"}, "descending_order": ["10163748", "10164207", "80577", "157180", "19360420", "41770159"], "permutation_1": ["10163748", "157180", "80577", "41770159", "19360420", "10164207"], "permutation_2": ["41770159", "80577", "10163748", "19360420", "157180", "10164207"], "permutation_3": ["41770159", "19360420", "10164207", "80577", "157180", "10163748"]}
{"id": "3hop1__239036_15840_36014", "docs_added": {"28314": "Super Nintendo Entertainment System\nHome video game console\nThe Super Nintendo Entertainment System, commonly shortened to Super Nintendo, Super NES or SNES, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in Europe and Oceania and 1993 in South America. In Japan, it is called the In South Korea, it is called the Super Comboy and was distributed by Hyundai Electronics. The system was released in Brazil on August 30, 1993, by Playtronic. In Russia and CIS, the system was distributed by Steepler from 1994 until 1996. Although each version is essentially the same, several forms of regional lockout prevent cartridges for one version from being used in other versions.\nThe Super NES is Nintendo's second programmable home console, following the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The console introduced advanced graphics and sound capabilities compared with other systems at the time, like the Sega Genesis. It was designed to accommodate the ongoing development of a variety of enhancement chips integrated into game cartridges to be more competitive into the next generation.\nThe Super NES received largely positive reviews and was a global success, becoming the best-selling console of the 16-bit era after launching relatively late and facing intense competition from Sega's Genesis console in North America and Europe. Overlapping the NES's 61.9\u00a0million unit sales, the Super NES remained popular well into the 32-bit era, with 49.1\u00a0million units sold worldwide by the time it was discontinued in 2003. It continues to be popular among collectors and retro gamers, with new homebrew games and Nintendo's emulated rereleases, such as on the Virtual Console, the Super NES Classic Edition, Nintendo Switch Online; as well as several non-console emulators which operate on a desktop computer or mobile device, such as Snes9x.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nTo compete with the popular Family Computer in Japan, NEC Home Electronics launched the PC Engine in 1987, and Sega followed suit with the Mega Drive in 1988. The two platforms were later launched in North America in 1989 as the TurboGrafx-16 and the Sega Genesis respectively. Both systems were built on 16-bit architectures and offered improved graphics and sound over the 8-bit NES. It took several years for Sega's system to become successful. Bill Mensch, the co-creator of the 8-bit MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor and founder of the Western Design Center (WDC), gave Ricoh the exclusive right to supply 8-bit and 16-bit WDC microprocessors for the new system. Meanwhile, Sony engineer Ken Kutaragi reached an agreement with Nintendo to design the console's sound chip without notifying his supervisors, who were enraged when they discovered the project; though Kutaragi was nearly fired, then-CEO Norio Ohga intervened in support of the project and gave him permission to complete it.\nOn September 9, 1987, then-Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi revealed the development of the Super Famicom in the newspaper \"Kyoto Shimbun\". On August 30, 1988, in an interview with \"TOUCH Magazine\", Yamauchi announced the development of \"Super Mario Bros. 4\", \"Dragon Quest V\", three original games, and he projected sales of 3 million units of the upcoming console. \"Famicom Hissyoubon\" magazine speculated that Yamauchi's early announcement was probably made to forestall Christmas shopping for the PC Engine, and relayed Enix's clarification that it was waiting on sales figures to select either PC Engine or Super Famicom for its next \"Dragon Quest\" game. The magazine and Enix both expressed a strong interest in networking as a standard platform feature. The console was demonstrated to the Japanese press on November 21, 1988, and again on July 28, 1989.\nLaunch.\nDesigned by Masayuki Uemura, the designer of the original Famicom, the Super Famicom was released in Japan on Wednesday, November 21, 1990, for \u00a5. It was an instant success. Nintendo's initial shipment of 300,000 units sold out within hours, and the resulting social disturbance led the Japanese government to ask video game manufacturers to schedule future console releases on weekends. This gained the attention of the yakuza criminal organizations, so the devices were shipped at night to avoid robbery.\nWith the Super Famicom quickly outselling its rivals, Nintendo reasserted itself as the leader of the Japanese console market. Nintendo's success was partially due to the retention of most of its key third-party developers, including Capcom, Konami, Tecmo, Square, Koei, and Enix.\nNintendo released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, a redesigned version of the Super Famicom, in North America for US$. It began shipping in limited quantities on August 23, 1991, with an official nationwide release date of September 9, 1991. The Super NES was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland in April 1992 for \u00a3.\nMost of the PAL region versions of the console use the Japanese Super Famicom design, except for labeling and the length of the joypad leads. The Playtronic Super NES in Brazil, although PAL-M, uses the North American design. Both the NES and Super NES were released in Brazil in 1993 by Playtronic, a joint venture between the toy company Estrela and consumer electronics company Gradiente.\nThe Super NES and Super Famicom launched with few games, but these games were well received. In Japan, only two games were initially available: \"Super Mario World\" and \"F-Zero\". \"Bombuzal\" was released during the launch week. In North America, \"Super Mario World\" was launched as a bundle with the console; other launch games include \"F-Zero\", \"Pilotwings\" (both of which demonstrate the console's Mode 7 pseudo-3D rendering), \"SimCity\", and \"Gradius III\".\nConsole wars.\nThe rivalry between Nintendo and Sega was described as one of the most notable console wars in video game history, in which Sega positioned the Genesis as the \"cool\" console, with games aimed at older audiences, and aggressive advertisements that occasionally attacked the competition. Nintendo scored an early public-relations advantage by securing the first console conversion of Capcom's arcade hit \"Street Fighter II\" for Super NES, which took more than a year to make the transition to the Genesis. Though the Genesis had a two-year lead to launch time, a much larger library of games, and a lower price point, it only represented an estimated 60% of the American 16-bit console market in June 1992, and neither console could maintain a definitive lead for several years. \"Donkey Kong Country\" is said to have helped establish the Super NES's market prominence in the latter years of the 16-bit generation, and for a time, maintain against the PlayStation and Saturn. According to Nintendo, the company had sold more than 20\u00a0million Super NES units in the U.S. According to a 2014 Wedbush Securities report based on NPD sales data, the Super NES outsold the Genesis in the U.S. market by 1.5 million units.\nChanges in policy.\nDuring the NES era, Nintendo maintained exclusive control over games released for the system \u2013 the company had to approve every game, each third-party developer could only release up to five games per year (but some third parties got around this by using different names, such as Konami's \"Ultra Games\" brand), those games could not be released on another console within two years, and Nintendo was the exclusive manufacturer and supplier of NES cartridges. Competition from Sega's console brought an end to this practice; in 1991, Acclaim Entertainment began releasing games for both platforms, with most of Nintendo's other licensees following suit over the next several years; Capcom (which licensed some games to Sega instead of producing them directly) and Square were the most notable holdouts.\nNintendo continued to carefully review submitted games, scoring them on a 40-point scale and allocating marketing resources accordingly. Each region performed separate evaluations. Nintendo of America also maintained a policy that, among other things, limited the amount of violence in the games on its systems. The surprise arcade hit \"Mortal Kombat\" (1992), a gory fighting game with huge splashes of blood and graphically violent fatality moves, was heavily censored by Nintendo. Because the Genesis version allowed for an uncensored version via cheat code, it outsold the censored Super NES version by a ratio of nearly three to one.\nU.S. Senators Herb Kohl and Joe Lieberman convened a Congressional hearing on December 9, 1993, to investigate the marketing of violent video games to children. Though Nintendo took the high ground with moderate success, the hearings led to the creation of the Interactive Digital Software Association and the Entertainment Software Rating Board and the inclusion of ratings on all video games. With these ratings in place, Nintendo decided its censorship policies were no longer needed.\n32-bit era and beyond.\nWhile other companies were moving on to 32-bit systems, Rare and Nintendo proved that the Super NES was still a strong contender in the market. In November 1994, Rare released \"Donkey Kong Country\", a platform game featuring 3D models and textures pre-rendered on Silicon Graphics workstations. With its detailed graphics, fluid animation, and high-quality music, \"Donkey Kong Country\" rivals the aesthetic quality of games that were being released on newer 32-bit CD-based consoles. In the last 45 days of 1994, 6.1\u00a0million copies were sold, making it the fastest-selling video game in history to that date. This game conveyed that early 32-bit systems had little to offer over the Super NES, and proved the market for the more advanced consoles of the near future. According to TRSTS reports, two of the top five bestselling games in the U.S. for December 1996 are Super NES games.\nIn October 1997, Nintendo released a redesigned model of the Super NES (the SNS-101 model referred to as \"New-Style Super NES\") in North America for US$, with some units including the pack-in game \"\". Like the earlier New-Style NES (model NES-101), this is slimmer and lighter than its predecessor, but it lacks S-Video and RGB output, and it is among the last major Super NES-related releases in the region. A similarly redesigned Super Famicom Jr. was released in Japan at around the same time. The redesign stayed out of Europe.\nNintendo ceased production of the Super NES in North America in 1999, about two years after releasing \"Kirby's Dream Land 3\" (its final second-party game in the US) on November 27, 1997, and one year after releasing \"Frogger\" (its final third-party game in the US) in 1998. In Japan, Nintendo continued production of both the Family Computer and the Super Famicom until September 25, 2003, and new games were produced until the year 2000, ending with the release of \"Metal Slader Glory Director's Cut\" on November 29, 2000.\nMany popular Super NES games were ported to the Game Boy Advance, which has similar video capabilities. In 2005, Nintendo announced that Super NES games would be made available for download via the Wii's Virtual Console service. On October 31, 2007, Nintendo Co., Ltd. announced that it would no longer repair Family Computer or Super Famicom systems due to an increasing shortage of the necessary parts. On March 3, 2016, Nintendo Co., Ltd. announced that it would bring Super NES games to the New Nintendo 3DS and New Nintendo 3DS XL (and later the New Nintendo 2DS XL) via its eShop download service. At the Nintendo Direct event on September 4, 2019, Nintendo announced that it would be bringing select Super NES games to the Nintendo Switch Online platform.\nHardware.\nTechnical specifications.\nThe 16-bit design of the Super NES incorporates graphics and sound co-processors that perform tiling and simulated 3D effects, a palette of 32,768 colors, and 8-channel ADPCM audio. These base platform features, plus the ability to dramatically extend them all through substantial chip upgrades inside of each cartridge, represent a leap over the 8-bit NES generation and some significant advantages over 16-bit competitors such as the Genesis.\nCPU and RAM.\nThe CPU is a Ricoh 5A22, a derivative of the 16-bit WDC 65C816 microprocessor. In NTSC regions, its nominal clock speed is 3.58 MHz will slow to either 2.68\u00a0MHz or 1.79\u00a0MHz when accessing some slower peripherals.\nThis CPU has an 8-bit data bus and two address buses. The 24-bit \"Bus\u00a0A\" is designated for general accesses, and the 8-bit \"Bus\u00a0B\" can access support chip registers such as the video and audio co-processors.\nThe WDC 65C816 supports an 8-channel DMA unit, an 8-bit parallel I/O port a controller port interface circuits allowing serial and parallel access to controller data, a 16-bit multiplication and division unit, and circuitry for generating non-maskable interrupts on V-blank and IRQ interrupts on calculated screen positions.\nEarly revisions of the 5A22 used in SHVC boards are prone to spontaneous failure which can produce a variety of symptoms including graphics glitches in Mode 7, a black screen on power-on, or improperly reading the controllers. The first revision 5A22 has a fatal bug in the DMA controller that can crash games; this was corrected in subsequent revisions.\nThe console contains 128KB of general-purpose \"work\" RAM, which is separate from the 64KB dedicated to the video subsystem and the 64KB dedicated to the audio subsystem.\nVideo.\nThe Picture Processing Unit (PPU) consists of two closely tied IC packages. It contains 64KB of SRAM for video data, 544 bytes of object attribute memory (OAM) for sprite data, and 256\u00a0\u00d7\u00a015 bits of color generator RAM (CGRAM) for palette data. This CGRAM provisions up to 256 colors, chosen from the 15-bit RGB color space, from a palette of 32,768 colors. The PPU is clocked by the same signal as the CPU and generates a pixel every two or four cycles.\nAudio.\nThe S-SMP audio subsystem consisted of a 16-bit digital signal processor (DSP) to sequence the mix samples, an 8-bit SPC700 CPU to drive the DSP and 64KB of dedicated PSRAM. It was designed by Ken Kutaragi and produced by Sony and is completely independent from the rest of the system. It is clocked at a nominal 24.576\u00a0MHz in both NTSC and PAL systems. It is capable of stereo sound, composed from eight voices generated using 16-bit audio samples compressed using BRR and capable of applying effects such as echo. On early revisions of the motherboard the S-SMP audio system was spread across four chips: the DSP, the CPU, and two RAM modules. On later revisions, the sound hardware consolidated to a single chip, the S-APU.\nRegional lockout.\nNintendo employed several types of regional lockout, including both physical and hardware incompatibilities.\nPhysically, the cartridges are shaped differently for different regions. North American cartridges have a rectangular bottom with inset grooves matching protruding tabs in the console, and other regions' cartridges are narrower with a smooth curve on the front and no grooves. The physical incompatibility can be overcome with the use of various adapters, or through modification of the console.\nInternally, a regional lockout chip (CIC) within the console and in each cartridge prevents the PAL region games from being played on Japanese or North American consoles and vice versa. The Japanese and North American machines have the same region chip. This can be overcome through the use of adapters, typically by inserting the imported cartridge in one slot and a cartridge with the correct region chip in a second slot. Alternatively, disconnecting one pin of the console's lockout chip will prevent it from locking the console; hardware in later games can detect this situation, so it became common to install a switch to reconnect the lockout chip as needed.\nPAL consoles face another incompatibility when playing out-of-region cartridges: the NTSC video standard specifies video at 60\u00a0Hz but PAL operates at 50\u00a0Hz, resulting in an approximately 16.7% slower framerate. PAL's higher resolution results in letterboxing of the output image. Some commercial PAL region releases exhibit this same problem and, therefore, can be played in NTSC systems without issue, but other games will face a 20% speedup if played in an NTSC console. To mostly correct this issue, a switch can be added to place the Super NES PPU into a 60\u00a0Hz mode supported by most newer PAL televisions. Later games will detect this setting and refuse to run, requiring the switch to be thrown only after the check completes.\nCasing.\nAll models of the Super NES control deck are predominantly gray, of slightly different shades. The original North American version, designed by Nintendo of America industrial designer Lance Barr (who previously redesigned the Famicom to become the NES), has a boxy design with purple sliding switches and a dark gray eject lever. The loading bay surface is curved, both to invite interaction and to prevent food or drinks from being placed on the console and spilling as with the flat-surfaced NES. The Japanese and European versions are more rounded, with darker gray accents and buttons.\nAll versions incorporate a top-loading slot for game cartridges, although the shape of the slot differs between regions to match the different shapes of the cartridges. The MULTI OUT connector (later used on the Nintendo 64 and GameCube) can output composite video, S-Video and RGB signals, as well as RF with an external RF modulator. Original versions additionally include a 28-pin expansion port under a small cover on the bottom of the unit and a standard RF output with channel selection switch on the back; the redesigned models output composite video only, requiring an external modulator for RF.\nThe Nintendo Super System (NSS) is an arcade system for retail preview of 11 particular Super NES games in the United States, similar to the PlayChoice-10 for NES games. It consists of slightly modified Super NES hardware with a menu interface and 25-inch monitor, that allows gameplay for a certain amount of time depending on game credits. Manufacturing of this model was discontinued in 1992.\nRedesigned model.\nA cost-reduced version of the console, referred to as the New-Style Super NES (model SNS-101) in North America and as the in Japan, was released late in the platform's lifespan; designed by Barr, it incorporates design elements from both the original North American and Japanese/European console models but in a smaller form factor. Unlike the original console models, the redesigned model is virtually identical across both regions save for the color palette (the North American model receiving purple buttons and the Japanese model receiving grey buttons). The redesign did not receive a release in Europe.\nExternally, the power and reset buttons were moved to the left-hand side of the console while the cartridge eject button and power LED indicator were omitted. Internally, the redesigned model consolidates the console's hardware into a system-on-chip (SoC) design. The redesigned console lacks the bottom expansion slot, rendering it incompatible with the Japan-exclusive Satellaview add-on.\nFor AV output, the redesigned console features the same multi-out port used on the original models. Unlike the latter models, the former's AV port only supports composite video output natively as support for RGB video and S-Video was disabled internally; however, they can be restored via a \"relatively simple\" modification. The internal RF modulator was also removed, requiring an external one for such output if needed. Due to the SoC design, it is highly sought after by Super NES/Famicom enthusiasts since its RGB video quality (if restored) is improved over earlier internal revisions of the console.\nThe redesigned console first released in October 1997 in North America, where it originally retailed for US$99.95 in a bundle with \"\";\nit was subsequently released in Japan on March 27, 1998, where it retailed for \u00a57,800. Nintendo marketed it as an entry-level gamer's system for consumers who were apprehensive about the higher price of newer systems such as the Nintendo 64. Nintendo also introduced a slightly altered controller for it, with the console's logo replaced by an embossed Nintendo logo.\nYellowing.\nThe ABS plastic used in the casing of some older Super NES and Super Famicom consoles is particularly susceptible to oxidation with exposure to air. This, along with the particularly light color of the original plastic, causes affected consoles to quickly become yellow; if the sections of the casing came from different batches of plastic, a \"two-tone\" effect results. This issue may be reversed with a method called Retrobrighting, where a mixture of chemicals is applied to the case and exposed to UV light.\nGame cartridge.\nSuper NES games are distributed on ROM cartridges, officially referred to as Game Pak in most Western regions, and as in Japan and parts of Latin America. Though the Super NES can address 128\u00a0Mbit, only 117.75\u00a0Mbit are actually available for cartridge use. A fairly normal mapping could easily address up to 95\u00a0Mbit of ROM data (48\u00a0Mbit at FastROM speed) with 8\u00a0Mbit of battery-backed RAM. Most available memory access controllers only support mappings of up to 32\u00a0Mbit. The largest games released (\"Tales of Phantasia\" and \"Star Ocean\") contain 48\u00a0Mbit of ROM data, and the smallest games contain only 2\u00a0Mbit.\nCartridges may also contain battery-backed SRAM to save the game state, extra working RAM, custom coprocessors, or any other hardware that will not exceed the maximum current rating of the console.\nGames.\n1757 Super NES games were officially released: 717 in North America (plus 4 championship cartridges), 521 in Europe, 1,448 in Japan, 231 on Satellaview, and 13 on Sufami Turbo. Many Super NES games have been called some of the greatest video games of all time, such as \"Super Mario World\" (1990), \"\" (1991), \"Final Fantasy VI\" (1994), \"Donkey Kong Country\" (1994), \"EarthBound\" (1994), \"Super Metroid\" (1994), \"Chrono Trigger\" (1995) and \"Yoshi's Island\" (1995). Many Super NES games have been rereleased several times, including on the Virtual Console, Super NES Classic Edition, and the classic games service on Nintendo Switch Online. All Game Boy games are playable with the Super Game Boy add-on.\nPeripherals.\nThe Super NES controller design expands on that of the NES, with A, B, X, and Y face buttons in a diamond arrangement, and two shoulder buttons. Lance Barr created its ergonomic design, and he later adapted it in 1993 for the NES-039 \"dogbone\" controller. The Japanese and PAL region versions incorporated the four colors of the face buttons into the system's logo. The North American version's buttons were colored to match the redesigned console; the X and Y buttons are lavender with concave faces, and the A and B buttons are purple with convex faces. Several later controller designs have elements from the Super NES controller, including the PlayStation, Dreamcast, Xbox, and Wii Classic Controller. This face button layout is on future Nintendo systems since the Nintendo DS.\nSeveral peripherals add to the functionality of the Super NES. Some are required by certain games, such as the Super Scope light gun, and the Super NES Mouse for a point and click interface. Various third-parties, under license from Nintendo, released multitap adapters connecting up to five controllers into a single console, starting with the Super Multitap by Hudson Soft in conjunction with the \"Super Bomberman\" series. Specialized third-party controllers, such as the AsciiPad and Super Advantage (the successor to the NES Advantage) by Asciiware, and the Capcom Fighter Power Stick, an arcade-like joystick controller by Capcom designed specifically for \"Street Fighter II\". Unusual controllers include the BatterUP baseball bat, the Life Fitness Entertainment System (an exercise bike controller with built-in monitoring software), the TeeV Golf golf club, and the Justifier (a revolver-shaped light gun made by Konami for \"Lethal Enforcers\").\nThough Nintendo never released an adapter for playing NES games on the Super NES, the Super Game Boy adapter cartridge allows games designed for Nintendo's portable Game Boy system to be played on the Super NES. The Super Game Boy touts several feature enhancements over the Game Boy, including palette substitution, custom screen borders, and access to the Super NES console's features by specially enhanced Game Boy games. Japan also saw the release of the Super Game Boy 2, which adds a communication port to enable a second Game Boy to connect for multiplayer games.\nLike the NES before it, the Super NES has unlicensed third-party peripherals, including a new version of the Game Genie cheat cartridge designed for use with Super NES games.\nSoon after the release of the Super NES, companies began marketing backup devices such as the Super Wildcard, Super Pro Fighter Q, and Game Doctor. These devices create a backup of a cartridge, and can be used to play illicit ROM images or to copy games, violating copyright laws in many jurisdictions.\nThe Japan-only Satellaview is a satellite modem attached to the Super Famicom's expansion port and connected to the St.GIGA satellite radio station from April 23, 1995, to June 30, 2000. Satellaview subscribers could download gaming news and specially designed games, which were frequently either remakes of or sequels to older Famicom games, and released in installments. In the United States, the relatively short-lived XBAND allowed users to connect to a network via a dial-up modem to compete against other players around the country.\nNintendo attempted partnerships with Sony and then Philips, to develop CD-ROM-based peripheral prototypes for the console to compete with the TurboGrafx-CD and Sega CD. Sony produced the PlayStation (a brand name the company would use for their later independently produced console), a Super NES console with a built-in CD-ROM drive that never made it past the prototype phase. The Philips project was canceled without a prototype but Philips retained the contractual right to develop games based on Nintendo franchises, which it published for its CD-i multimedia console.\nEnhancement chips.\nAs part of the overall plan for the Super NES, rather than include an expensive CPU that would still become obsolete in a few years, the hardware designers made it easy to interface special coprocessor chips to the console, just like the MMC chips used for most NES games. This is most often characterized by 16 additional pins on the cartridge card edge.\nThe Super FX is a RISC CPU designed to perform functions that the main CPU can not feasibly do. The chip is primarily used to create 3D game worlds made with polygons, texture mapping and light source shading. The chip can also be used to enhance 2D games.\nThe Nintendo fixed-point digital signal processor (DSP) chip allowed fast vector-based calculations, bitmap conversions, both 2D and 3D coordinate transformations, and other functions. Four revisions of the chip exist, each physically identical but with different microcode. The DSP-1 version, including the later 1A and 1B bug fix revisions, is used most often; the DSP-2, DSP-3, and DSP-4 are used in only one game each.\nSimilar to the 5A22 CPU in the console, the SA-1 chip contains a 65C816 processor core clocked at 10.7\u00a0MHz, a memory mapper, DMA, decompression and bitplane conversion circuitry, several programmable timers, and CIC region lockout functionality.\nIn Japan, games could be downloaded cheaper than standard cartridges, from Nintendo Power kiosks onto special cartridges containing flash memory and a MegaChips MX15001TFC chip. The chip manages communication with the kiosks to download ROM images and has an initial menu to select a game. Some were published both in cartridge and download form, and others were download only. The service closed on February 8, 2007.\nMany cartridges contain other enhancement chips, most of which were created for use by a single company in a few games.\nReception and legacy.\nApproximately 49.1\u00a0million Super NES consoles were sold worldwide, with 23.35\u00a0million of those units sold in the Americas and 17.17\u00a0million in Japan. Although it could not quite repeat the success of the NES, which sold 61.91\u00a0million units worldwide, the Super NES was the best-selling console of its era.\nIn a 1997 year-end review, a team of five \"Electronic Gaming Monthly\" editors gave the Super NES scores of 5.5, 8.0, 7.0, 7.0, and 8.0. Though they criticized how few new games were coming out for the system and how dated its graphics were compared to current generation consoles, they regarded its selection of must-have games to be still unsurpassed. Additionally noting that used Super NES games were readily available in bargain bins, most of them still recommended buying a Super NES. In 2007, \"GameTrailers\" named the Super NES as the second-best console of all time (only behind the PlayStation 2) in their list of top ten consoles that \"left their mark on the history of gaming\", citing its graphics, sound, and library of top-quality games. In 2015, they also named it the best Nintendo console of all time, saying, \"The list of games we love from this console completely annihilates any other roster from the Big N.\" Technology columnist Don Reisinger proclaimed \"The SNES is the greatest console of all time\" in January 2008, citing the quality of the games and the console's dramatic improvement over its predecessor; fellow technology columnist Will Greenwald replied with a more nuanced view, giving the Super NES top marks with his heart, the NES with his head, and the PlayStation (for its controller) with his hands. GamingExcellence also gave the Super NES first place in 2008, declaring it \"simply the most timeless system ever created\" with many games that stand the test of time and citing its innovation in controller design, graphics capabilities, and game storytelling. At the same time, GameDaily rated it fifth of the ten greatest consoles for its graphics, audio, controllers, and games. In 2009, \"IGN\" named the Super NES the fourth-best video game console, complimenting its audio and number of AAA games.\nEmulation.\nSNES emulation began with VSMC in 1994, and Super Pasofami became the first working emulator in 1996. During that time, two competing emulation projects, Snes96 and Snes97, merged to form Snes9x. In 1997, ZSNES development began. In 2004, Bsnes development began with the goal of preservation through maximal accuracy and compatibility, and was later renamed to Higan.\nNintendo of America maintained its stance against the distribution of SNES ROM image files and the use of emulators, as it had with the NES before, saying they represent copyright infringement. Emulation proponents assert that the discontinued hardware production constitutes abandonware status, the owners' right to make a personal backup, space shifting for private use, the development of homebrew games, the frailty of ROM cartridges and consoles, and the lack of certain foreign imports. Nintendo designed a hobbyist development system for the SNES, but never released it.\nUnofficial SNES emulation is available on virtually all platforms, including Android, iOS, game consoles, and PDAs. Individual games have been bundled with official dedicated emulators on some GameCube discs, and Nintendo's Virtual Console service for the Wii introduced diverse and officially licensed SNES emulation.\nThe Super NES Classic Edition was released in September 2017 following the NES Classic Edition. This emulation-based mini-console, which is physically modeled after the North American and European versions of the SNES, is bundled with two SNES-style controllers and 21 games, including the unreleased \"Star Fox 2\".\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4884522": "Xexyz\n1988 video game\nXexyz (pronounced zeks'-zees/zeks'-iz), known in Japan as , is a 1988 video game published by Hudson Soft for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The game was released in Japan on August 26, 1988, and saw a North American release sometime in April 1990. The game was never released in Europe and the game is not playable on PAL consoles.\nThe story takes place in the post-apocalyptic year of 2777, after Earth has been devastated by nuclear war and natural disasters, with the island nation of Xexyz now being threatened by alien robots.\nThe Japanese Famicom version is based on the tales of Urashima Tar\u014d, features cutscenes throughout the game, a choice of three endings and has minor graphical differences in some of the NPCs.\nGameplay.\nThe game revolves around the main character Apollo, who progresses through the game in an alternating format that switches between platform, side-scrolling action (similar to the \"Super Mario Bros.\" series) and side-scrolling shooter action (similar to Konami's \"Gradius\" series). The goal of the game is to destroy the evil Goruza, rescue Princess Maria, and save the planet.\nIn the platforming levels, defeated enemies drop life ('L' blocks) or money ('E' blocks) power-ups. Apollo can collect the currency of the land ('Balls'/'E Ball') in order to exchange it for power-ups and information, as well as access to minigames. Vendors are scattered throughout the platforming levels through doors or hidden gates. In the shooter levels, the player can obtain 'S' and 'P' items that upgrade speed and weapons, respectively.\nPlatformer gameplay.\nThe odd-numbered stages in the game (1, 3, 5, etc.) utilize mostly platform-style gameplay. These stages work in the familiar manner; the character progresses at his/her own pace, picking up new weapons and power-ups along the way. To leave the initial area of each of these levels the player has to collect a \"force star\" by defeating an enemy found in a hidden room. Once this star is obtained the character is able to enter the \"mechanical castle\" in the region. The mechanical castles, being mazelike indoor environments full of robots and machines, stand in stark contrast to the earlier parts of each level, which are organic outdoor environments. Each mechanical castle also has a brief auto-scrolling shooter segment through which the player must pass; these segments foreshadow the imminent transition to the following even-numbered stages. The segments in question consist of a sequence of corridors, at the end of which are two doors; choosing the wrong door loops the player back. Finally, at the very end of each mechanical castle, there is a door leading to a boss fight. The boss fights are set against a solid black background and Apollo must fight while standing on a controllable floating platform.\nSide-scrolling shooter gameplay.\nFor the even-numbered stages (2, 4, 6, etc.) the character is prompted to jump into a vehicle (a different one each time) and take part in an auto-scrolling \"Gradius\"-like level ending with a boss fight.\nBoss fights.\nIn the transition area after the platform-style levels, prior to the boss fight, Apollo is prompted to jump on a platform that lets him float. After moving into a previously out-of-reach door, the fight begins.\nIn side-scrolling shooter areas, the player simply appears in a boss area in the ship they played the level in.\nThe fights consist of a black area where the player fights a giant robot/ship. Their attack pattern, resembling that of a manic shooter, is repetitive and avoidable; the player shoots the boss with either their conventional weapon or the in-ship weapon.\nTube Shooter gameplay.\nThe final level is a \"fixed\" shooter. More specifically, it is a \"tube shooter\" where the player approaches the last boss's fortress and attempts to destroy it. Apollo, in a more enhanced ship than any seen before, rotates from the sides of the screen to the bottom, shooting at the center while avoiding enemy fire.\nWeapons and items.\nApollo receives weapons and items from a goddess character to help him on his way. All weapons can be powered up by visiting a shop that specializes in powering up weapons, or by talking to the goddess character a second time.\nReception.\n\"Xexyz\" was met with generally positive reception from critics, but public reception in Japan was mixed; in a poll taken by \"Family Computer Magazine\", it received a score of 18.38 out of 30.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18944028": "Nintendo Entertainment System\nHome video game console\nThe Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on July 15, 1983, as the It was released in US test markets as the redesigned NES in October 1985, and fully launched in the US the following year. The NES was distributed in Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia throughout the 1980s under various names. As a third-generation console, it mainly competed with Sega's Master System.\nThe NES was designed by Masayuki Uemura. Nintendo's president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, called for a simple, cheap console that could run arcade games on cartridges. The controller design was reused from Nintendo's portable Game & Watch hardware. The western model was redesigned to resemble a video cassette recorder. Nintendo released add-ons such as the NES Zapper light gun for several shooting games, and R.O.B, a toy robot accessory.\nThe NES is regarded as one of the most influential consoles. It helped revitalise the American gaming industry following the video game crash of 1983, and pioneered a now-standard business model of licensing third-party developers to produce and distribute games. The NES features several influential games, including \"Super Mario Bros.\" (1985), \"The Legend of Zelda\" (1986), \"Metroid\" (1986) and \"Mega Man\" (1987), which became major franchises.\nThe NES dominated Japanese and North American markets, but initially underperformed in Europe, where it faced strong competition from the Sega Master System and microcomputers. With 61.91\u00a0million units sold, it is one of the best-selling consoles. It was succeeded in 1990 by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.\nHistory.\nBackground.\nThe video game industry experienced rapid growth and popularity from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, marked by the golden age of arcade games and the second generation of consoles. Games like \"Space Invaders\" (1978) became a phenomenon across arcades worldwide, while home consoles such as the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision gained footholds in the American market. Many companies emerged to capitalise on the growing industry, including the playing card manufacturer Nintendo.\nHiroshi Yamauchi, who had been Nintendo's president since 1949, realised that breakthroughs in the electronics industry meant that entertainment products could be produced at lower prices. Companies such as Atari and Magnavox were already selling gaming devices for use with television sets, to moderate success. Yamauchi negotiated a licence with Magnavox to sell its game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. Since Nintendo's operation was not yet sophisticated enough to design its own hardware, Yamauchi forged an alliance with Mitsubishi Electric and hired several Sharp Electronics employees to assist in developing the Color TV-Game 6 in Japan. This was followed by a more successful sequel, the Color TV-Game 15, and the handheld Game & Watch series. The successes of these machines gave Yamauchi the confidence to expand Nintendo's influence in the fledgling video game industry.\nIn 1978, Yamauchi split Nintendo into separate research and development divisions. He appointed Masayuki Uemura as head of Nintendo Research & Development 2, a division that focused solely on hardware. Yamauchi, through extensive discussions with Uemura and other engineers, recognised the potential of the developing console beyond gaming. He envisioned a home-computer system disguised as a toy, which could significantly expand Nintendo's reach if it became popular with children. This popularity would drive demand for games, with Nintendo as the sole provider. Indeed, by 1980 several systems had already been released in Japan by both American and Japanese companies. Yamauchi tasked Uemura with developing a system that would be superior to its competitors and difficult to replicate for at least a year. Uemura's main challenge was economic rather than technological; Yamauchi wanted the system to be affordable enough for widespread household adoption, aiming for a price of \u00a59,800 (less than $75) compared to existing machines priced at \u00a530,000 to \u00a550,000 ($200 to $350). The new system had to outperform other systems, both Japanese and American, while being significantly more affordable.\nInception.\nAs development progressed on the new video game system, engineers sought Yamauchi's guidance on its features. They questioned whether to include a disk drive, keyboard, data port, as well as the potential for a modem, expanded memory, and other computer-like capabilities. Yamauchi ultimately instructed Uemura to prioritise simplicity and affordability, omitting these peripherals entirely. Game cartridges, which Uemura saw as \"less intimidating\" to consumers, were chosen as the format. The team designed the system with 2,000 bytes of random-access memory (RAM), significantly more than Atari's 256 bytes. Larger cartridges also allowed for far more complex games, with thirty-two times the code capacity of Atari cartridges.\nThe console's hardware was largely based on arcade video games, particularly the hardware for Namco's \"Galaxian\" (1979) and Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\", with the goal of matching their powerful sprite and scrolling capabilities in a home system. A test model was constructed in October 1982 to verify the functionality of the hardware, and work began on programming tools. Because 65xx CPUs had not been manufactured or sold in Japan by that time, no cross-development software was available and it had to be developed from scratch. Early Famicom games were written on a NEC PC-8001 computer. LEDs on a grid were used with a digitizer to design graphics as no such software design tools existed at that time.\nThe codename for the project was \"GameCom\", but Masayuki Uemura's wife proposed the name \"Famicom\", arguing that \"In Japan, 'pasokon' is used to mean a personal computer, but it is neither a home nor personal computer. Perhaps we could say it is a family computer.\" Meanwhile, Hiroshi Yamauchi decided that the console should use a red and white theme after seeing a billboard for DX Antenna (a Japanese antenna manufacturer) which used those colors.\nDevelopment.\nThe Famicom was influenced by the ColecoVision, Coleco's competition against the Atari 2600 in the United States; the ColecoVision's top-seller was a port of Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\". The project's chief manager Takao Sawano brought a ColecoVision home to his family, impressed by its smooth graphics, which contrasts with the flicker and slowdown commonly seen on Atari 2600 games. Uemura said the ColecoVision set the bar for the Famicom. They wanted to surpass it and match the more powerful \"Donkey Kong\" arcade hardware; they took a \"Donkey Kong\" arcade cabinet to chip manufacturer Ricoh for analysis, which led to Ricoh producing the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) chip for the NES.\nOriginal plans called for the Famicom's cartridges to be the size of a cassette tape, but ultimately they ended up being twice as big. Careful design attention was paid to the cartridge connectors because loose and faulty connections often plagued arcade machines. As it necessitated 60 connection lines for the memory and expansion, Nintendo decided to produce its own connectors.\nThe controllers are hard-wired to the console with no connectors for cost reasons. The controller designs were reused from the Game & Watch machines, although the Famicom design team originally wanted to use arcade-style joysticks, even dismantling some from American game consoles to see how they worked. There were concerns regarding the durability of the joystick design and that children might step on joysticks on the floor. Katsuya Nakawaka attached a Game & Watch D-pad to the Famicom prototype and found that it was easy to use and caused no discomfort. Ultimately though, they installed a 15-pin expansion port on the front of the console so that an optional arcade-style joystick could be used.\nGunpei Yokoi suggested an eject lever, which was not necessary, but he believed that children could be entertained by pressing it. Uemura adopted his idea. Uemura added a microphone to the second controller with the idea that it could be used to make players\u2019 voices sound through the TV speaker.\nJapanese release.\nThe console was released on July 15, 1983, as the for \u00a5 () with three ports of Nintendo's successful arcade games \"Donkey Kong\", \"Donkey Kong Jr.\", and \"Popeye\". The Famicom was slow to gather success; a bad chip set caused the early revisions to crash. Following a product recall and a reissue with a new motherboard, the Famicom's popularity soared, becoming the bestselling game console in Japan by the end of 1984 in what came to be called the \"Famicom Boom\".\nNintendo launched the system with only first-party games, but after being approached by Namco and Hudson Soft in 1984, agreed to produce third-party games for a 30% fee for console licensing and production costs. This rate continued in the industry for consoles and digital storefront into the 21st century.\nNorth American release.\nNintendo targeted the North American market, entering distribution negotiations with Atari, Inc. to release a redesigned Famicom with Atari's name as the Nintendo Advanced Video Gaming System. The deal was set to be finalized and signed at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in June 1983. However, Atari discovered at that show that its competitor Coleco was illegally demonstrating its Coleco Adam computer with Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\" game. This violation of Atari's exclusive license with Nintendo to publish the game for its own computer systems delayed the implementation of Nintendo's game console marketing contract with Atari. Atari's CEO Ray Kassar was fired the next month, so the deal went nowhere, and Nintendo decided to market its system on its own.\nSubsequent plans for the Nintendo Advanced Video System likewise never materialized. It was privately demonstrated as a repackaged Famicom console featuring a keyboard, cassette data recorder, wireless joystick controller, and a special BASIC cartridge. By the beginning of 1985, more than 2.5\u00a0million Famicom units had been sold in Japan, and Nintendo soon announced plans to release it in North America as the Advanced Video Entertainment System (AVS) that year. The American video game press was skeptical that the console could have any success in the region, as the industry was still recovering from the video game crash of 1983. The March 1985 issue of \"Electronic Games\" magazine stated that \"the videogame market in America has virtually disappeared\" and that \"this could be a miscalculation on Nintendo's part\".\nThe Famicom hardware first made its North American debut in the arcades, in the form of the Nintendo VS. System in 1984. The system's success in arcades paved the way for the official release of the NES console. With US retailers refusing to stock game consoles, Yamauchi realized there was still a market for video games in the arcades, so he introduced the Famicom to North America through the arcade industry. The VS. System became a major success in North American arcades, becoming the highest-grossing arcade machine of 1985 in the United States. By the time the NES launched, nearly 100,000 VS. Systems had been sold to American arcades. The success of the VS. System gave Nintendo the confidence to release the Famicom in North America as a video game console, for which there was growing interest due to Nintendo's positive reputation in the arcades. It also gave Nintendo the opportunity to test new games as VS. Paks in the arcades, to determine which games to release for the NES launch.\nAt the 1985 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of the Famicom: a stripped-down and cost-reduced redesign of the Advanced Video System (AVS), having abandoned the home computer approach. Nintendo purposefully designed the system to avoid resembling a video game console and avoided terms associated with game consoles. Marketing manager Gail Tilden chose the term \"Game Pak\" for cartridges, \"Control Deck\" for the console, and \"Entertainment System\" for the whole platform. Renamed the \"Nintendo Entertainment System\" (\"NES\"), the new and cost-reduced version lacked most of the upscale features added in the AVS but retained many of its audiophile-inspired design elements, such as the grey colour scheme and boxy form factor. Disappointed with the cosmetically raw prototype part they received from Japan, which they nicknamed \"the lunchbox\", Nintendo of America designers Lance Barr and Don James added the two-tone gray, the black stripe, and the red lettering. To obscure the video game connotation, the NES replaced the top-loading cartridge slot of the Famicom and AVS with a front-loading chamber for software cartridges that kept the inserted cartridge out of view, reminiscent of a video cassette recorder. The Famicom's pair of hard-wired controllers and the AVS's wireless controllers were replaced with two custom 7-pin sockets for detachable wired controllers.\nAt June 1985's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of its Famicom, with a new case redesigned by Lance Barr and featuring a \"zero insertion force\" cartridge slot. The change from a top-loader in the Famicom to a front-loader was to make the new console more like a video cassette recorder, which had grown in popularity by 1985, and differentiate the unit from past video game consoles. Additionally, Uemura explained that Nintendo developers had feared that the console's electronics might face electrostatic hazards in dry American states such as Arizona and Texas, and a front-loading design would be safer if children handled the console carelessly.\nThis was deployed as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Nintendo seeded these first systems to limited American test markets starting in New York City on October 18, 1985, and followed up in Los Angeles in February 1986; the American nationwide release came on September 27, 1986. Nintendo released 17 launch games: \"10-Yard Fight\", \"Baseball\", \"Clu Clu Land\", \"Duck Hunt\", \"Excitebike\", \"Golf\", \"Gyromite\", \"Hogan's Alley\", \"Ice Climber\", \"Kung Fu\", \"Pinball\", \"Soccer\", \"Stack-Up\", \"Super Mario Bros.\", \"Tennis\", \"Wild Gunman\", and \"Wrecking Crew\". Nintendo contracted Worlds of Wonder to distribute the console physically. WoW salesman Jim Whims distinctly recalled delivering an ultimatum: \"if you want to sell Teddy Ruxpin and you want to sell Lazer Tag, you're gonna sell Nintendo as well. And if you feel that strongly about it, then you ought to just resign the line now.\" This marketing tactic led to the NES' financial success in North America in its first year; Nintendo of America would later terminate the contract and hired the company's sales staff (whom Atari offered them in 1983), while taking on physical distribution of the console itself.\nThe system's launch represented not only a new product, but also a reframing of the severely damaged home video game market in North America. The 1983 video game crash had occurred in large part due to a lack of consumer and retailer confidence in video games, which had been partially due to confusion and misrepresentation in video game marketing. Prior to the NES, the packaging of many video games presented bombastic artwork which did not represent a game's actual graphics. Furthermore, a single game such as \"Pac-Man\" appeared across consoles with substantial variations in graphics, sound, and general quality. In contrast, Nintendo's marketing strategy aimed to regain consumer and retailer confidence by delivering a singular platform whose graphics could be represented truthfully and whose qualities were clearly defined.\nTo differentiate Nintendo's new home platform from the perception of a troubled and shallow video game market still reeling from the 1983 crash, the company freshened its product nomenclature and established a strict product approval and licensing policy. The overall platform is referred to as \"Entertainment System\" instead of a \"video game system\", is centered upon a machine called a \"Control Deck\" instead of a \"console\", and features software cartridges called \"Game Paks\" instead of \"video games\". This allowed Nintendo to gain more traction in selling the system in toy stores. To deter production of games which had not been licensed by Nintendo, and to prevent copying, the 10NES lockout chip system acts as a lock-and-key coupling of each Game Pak and Control Deck. The packaging of the launch lineup of NES games bear pictures of close representations of actual onscreen graphics. To reduce consumer confusion, symbols on the games' packaging clearly indicate the genre of the game. A seal of quality is on all licensed game and accessory packaging. The initial seal states, \"This seal is your assurance that Nintendo has approved and guaranteed the quality of this product\". This text was later changed to \"Official Nintendo Seal of Quality\".\nUnlike with the Famicom, Nintendo of America marketed the console primarily to children, instituting a strict policy of censoring profanity, sexual, religious, or political content. The most famous example is Lucasfilm Games's attempts to port the comedy-horror game \"Maniac Mansion\" to the NES, which Nintendo insisted be considerably watered down.\nThe optional Robotic Operating Buddy, or R.O.B., was part of a marketing plan to portray the NES's technology as being novel and sophisticated when compared to previous game consoles, and to portray its position as being within reach of the better established toy market. Though at first, the American public exhibited limited excitement for the console itself, peripherals such as the light gun and R.O.B. attracted extensive attention.\nOther markets.\nIn Europe and Oceania, the NES was released in two separate marketing regions. The first consisted of mainland Europe (excluding Italy) where distribution was handled by several different companies, with Nintendo responsible for manufacturing. The NES saw an early launch in Europe in 1986 although most of the European countries received the console in 1987. The release in Scandinavia was on September 1, 1986, where it was released by Bergsala. In the Netherlands, it was released in the last quarter of 1987 and was distributed by Bandai BV. In France, it was released in October 1987, and in Spain most likely in 1988 through distributor Spaco. Also in 1987, Mattel handled distribution for the second region, consisting of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Australia and New Zealand. In other European countries, distribution was taken over by smaller companies like Bienengr\u00e4ber in Germany, ASD in France, Concentra in Portugal, Itochu in Greece and Cyprus, Stadlbauer in Austria, Switzerland and the former Eastern Bloc. In Poland, the NES had its release on October 6, 1994 along with the SNES and the Game Boy. In November 1994, Nintendo signed an agreement with Steepler to permit the continued sale of the Dendy, an unauthorized hardware clone of the Famicom, in Russia in exchange for also distributing the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo anticipated the NES would have a 25 per cent share in these countries, and saw particular potential in the United Kingdom. It sold modestly in Europe, however.\nIn Brazil, the console was released late in 1993 by Playtronic, even after the SNES. But the Brazilian market had been dominated by unlicensed NES clones \u2013 both locally made, and smuggled from Taiwan. One of the most successful local clones was the Phantom System, manufactured by Gradiente, which licensed Nintendo products in the country for the following decade. The sales of officially licensed products were low, due to the cloning, the quite late official launch, and the high prices of Nintendo's licensed products.\nOutside of Japan, regions in greater Asia received an \"Asian version\" of the front-loader NES though imported Famicom systems were prevalent. Due to import restrictions, NES consoles in India and South Korea were rebranded and distributed by local licensees. The Indian version is called the \"Samurai Electronic TV Game System\" and the Korean version is called the \"Hyundai Comboy\". The console sold very poorly in India due to affordability and a lack of consumer awareness.\nBundles and redesigns.\nFor its complete North American release, the Nintendo Entertainment System was progressively released over the ensuing years in several different bundles, beginning with the Deluxe Set, the Basic Set, the Action Set, and the Power Set. The Deluxe Set was launched in the 1985 test markets, retailing at US$, including R.O.B., a light gun called the NES Zapper, two controllers, and the two Game Paks \"Gyromite\" and \"Duck Hunt\". The Control Deck bundle was first released in 1987 at $ with no game, and $ bundled with the \"Super Mario Bros.\" cartridge. The Action Set, released April 14, 1988, for $, has the Control Deck, two controllers, an NES Zapper, and a dual Game Pak containing both \"Super Mario Bros.\" and \"Duck Hunt\".\nThe Power Set of 1989 includes the console, two game controllers, an NES Zapper, a Power Pad, and a triple Game Pak containing \"Super Mario Bros\", \"Duck Hunt\", and \"World Class Track Meet\". In 1990, a Sports Set bundle was released, including the console, an NES Satellite infrared wireless multitap adapter, four game controllers, and a dual Game Pak containing \"Super Spike V'Ball\" and \"Nintendo World Cup\". Two more bundle packages were later released with the original model NES console. In 1992, the Challenge Set was released for $ with the console, two controllers, and a \"Super Mario Bros. 3\" Game Pak. The Basic Set retailed at US$; it included only the console and two controllers, and no pack-in game. Instead, it contained a book called the \"Official Nintendo Player's Guide\", which contained detailed information for every NES game made up to that point.\nFinally, the console was redesigned for the Australian, North American, and Japanese markets, including the New-Style NES, or NES-101, and one redesigned \"dogbone\" game controller. In Australia, this console revision was released with a cartridge compiling \"Super Mario Bros\", \"Tetris\", and \"Nintendo World Cup\". Released in October 1993 in North America and 1994 in Australia, this final bundle retailed for $ and A$ (A$ with the pack-in game) respectively, and was discontinued with the NES in 1995.\nDiscontinuation.\nOn August 14, 1995, Nintendo discontinued the Nintendo Entertainment System in both North America and Europe. In North America, replacements for the original front-loading NES were available for $ in exchange for a broken system until at least December 1996, under Nintendo's Power Swap program. The Game Boy and Super NES were covered for $ and $ respectively.\nOn May 30, 2003, Nintendo announced the discontinuation of the Famicom in September alongside the Super Famicom and the disk rewriting services for the Famicom Disk System. The last Famicom, serial number HN11033309, was manufactured on September 25; it was kept by Nintendo and subsequently loaned to the organizers of Level X, a video game exhibition held from December 4, 2003, to February 8, 2004, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, for a Famicom retrospective in commemoration of the console's 20th anniversary. Nintendo offered repair service for the Famicom in Japan until 2007, when it was discontinued due to a shortage of available parts.\nHardware.\nConfigurations.\nAlthough all versions of the Famicom and NES include essentially similar hardware, they vary in physical characteristics. The original Famicom's design is predominantly white plastic, with dark red trim; it featured a top-loading cartridge slot, grooves on both sides of the deck in which the hardwired game controllers could be placed when not in use, and a 15-pin expansion port located on the unit's front panel for accessories. In contrast, the design of the original NES features a more subdued gray, black, and red color scheme; it includes a front-loading cartridge slot covered by a small, hinged door that can be opened to insert or remove a cartridge and closed at other times, and an expansion port on the bottom of the unit. Compared to the Famicom, the NES includes the 10NES lockout chip and incorporates a matching chip validation check in its cartridge connector.\nIn late 1993, Nintendo introduced a redesigned version of the Famicom and NES (officially named the New Famicom in Japan and the New-Style NES in the US) to complement the Super Famicom and SNES, to prolong interest in the console, and to reduce costs. The redesigned NES features a top-loading cartridge slot and omits the 10NES lockout chip to avoid reliability issues with the original console; the redesign also omits AV output. Conversely, the redesigned Famicom features such output and introduces detachable game controllers, though the microphone functionality is omitted as a result. The redesigned Famicom and NES models are cosmetically similar aside from the presence of a cartridge \"bump\" on the NES model, which the Famicom model lacks to accommodate its shorter cartridges and the RAM Adapter for the Famicom Disk System.\nSharp Corporation produced three licensed variants of the Famicom in Japan, all of which prominently display the shortened moniker rather than the official name, Family Computer. One variant was a television set with an integrated Famicom; originally released in 1983 as the My Computer TV in and models, it was later released in the United States in 1989 as a 19-inch model named the Video Game Television. Another variant is the Twin Famicom console released in 1986 to combine a Famicom with a Famicom Disk System. Sharp then produced the Famicom Titler in 1989. Intended for video capture and production, it features internal RGB video generation and video output via S-Video, plus inputs for adding subtitles and voice-overs.\nHardware clones.\nA thriving market of unlicensed NES hardware clones emerged during the climax of the console's popularity. Initially, such clones were popular in markets with weak copyright law and where Nintendo issue it's systems after famiclones become well known across specific region, making legal products hard to market or create brand awareness. In particular, the Dendy (), an unlicensed hardware clone produced in Taiwan and sold in the former Soviet Union by Steepler, emerged as the most popular video game console of its time in that setting and it enjoyed a degree of fame roughly equivalent to that experienced by the NES/Famicom in North America and Japan, eventually selling 6 million units. Poland had a similar story with Pegasus distributed by Bobmark International which sold more than 1 million units. In China, a place where many of these clones were manufactured, the media reported 30 million units sold until late 1995. A range of Famicom clones was marketed in Latin America during the late 1980s and 1990s with the name Family Game, resembling the original hardware design. Thailand got Family FR brand famiclones, Brazil a superior to the original Phantom System, the Micro Genius (Simplified Chinese: \u5c0f\u5929\u624d) was marketed in Southeast Asia as an alternative to the Famicom; Ending-Man Terminator enjoyed popularity in European Eastern Bloc, parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America. It happened that these clones reached countries with very good copyright law and high awareness of the Nintendo brand such as Power Player Super Joy III in US.\nThe unlicensed clone market has flourished following Nintendo's discontinuation of the NES. Some of the more exotic of these resulting systems surpass the functionality of the original hardware, such as a portable system with a color LCD (PocketFami). Others have been produced for certain specialized markets, such as a rather primitive personal computer with a keyboard and basic word processing software. These unauthorized clones have been helped by the invention of the so-called NES-on-a-chip.\nAs was the case with unlicensed games, Nintendo has typically gone to the courts to prohibit the manufacture and sale of unlicensed cloned hardware. Many of the clone vendors have included built-in copies of licensed Nintendo software, which constitutes copyright infringement in most countries.\nDesign flaws.\nNintendo's design styling for US release was made deliberately different from that of other game consoles. Nintendo wanted to distinguish its product from those of competitors and to avoid the generally poor reputation that game consoles had acquired following the video game crash of 1983. One result of this philosophy is to disguise the cartridge slot design as a front-loading zero-insertion force (ZIF) cartridge socket, designed to resemble the front-loading mechanism of a VCR. The socket works well when both the connector and the cartridges are clean and the pins on the connector are new. However, the socket is not truly zero-insertion force. When a user inserts the cartridge into the NES, the force of pressing the cartridge into place bends the contact pins slightly and presses the cartridge's ROM board back into the cartridge. Frequent insertion and removal of cartridges wears out the pins, and the ZIF design proved more prone to interference by dirt and dust than an industry-standard card edge connector.\nThe design problems were exacerbated by Nintendo's choice of materials. The console slot nickel connector springs wear due to design and the game cartridge's brass plated nickel connectors are also prone to tarnishing and oxidation. Nintendo sought to fix these problems by redesigning the next generation Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) as a top loader similar to the Famicom. Many players try to alleviate issues in the game caused by this corrosion by blowing into the cartridges, then reinserting them, which actually speeds up the tarnishing due to moisture. One way to slow down the tarnishing process and extend the life of the cartridges is to use isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs.\nUsers have attempted to solve these problems by blowing air onto the cartridge connectors, inserting the cartridge just far enough to get the ZIF to lower, licking the edge connector, slapping the side of the system after inserting a cartridge, shifting the cartridge from side to side after insertion, pushing the ZIF up and down repeatedly, holding the ZIF down lower than it should have been, and cleaning the connectors with alcohol. Many frequently used methods to fix this problem actually risk damaging gaming cartridges or the system. In 1989, Nintendo released an official NES Cleaning Kit to help users clean malfunctioning cartridges and consoles.\nIn response to these hardware flaws, \"Nintendo Authorized Repair Centers\" sprang up across the U.S. According to Nintendo, the authorization program was designed to ensure that the machines were properly repaired. Nintendo would ship the necessary replacement parts only to shops that had enrolled in the authorization program.\nWith the release of the top-loading NES-101 (New-Style NES) in 1993 toward the end of the NES's lifespan, Nintendo resolved the problems by switching to a standard card edge connector and eliminating the lockout chip. All of the Famicom systems use standard card edge connectors, as do Nintendo's two subsequent game consoles, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Nintendo 64.\nLockout.\nThe Famicom as released in Japan contains no lockout hardware, which led to unlicensed cartridges (both legitimate and bootleg) becoming extremely common throughout Japan and East Asia. Nintendo tried to promote its \"Seal of Quality\" in these regions to identify licensed games to combat bootlegs, but bootleg Famicom games continued to be produced even after Nintendo moved production onto the Super Famicom, effectively extending the lifetime of the Famicom.\nThe original NES released for Western countries in 1985 contains the 10NES lockout chip, which prevents it from running cartridges unapproved by Nintendo. The inclusion of the 10NES was a direct influence from the 1983 video game crash in North America, partially caused by a market flooded with uncontrolled publishing of games of poor quality for the home consoles. Nintendo did not want to see that happen with the NES and used the lockout chip to restrict games to only those they licensed and approved for the system. This means of protection worked in combination with the Nintendo \"Seal of Quality\", which a developer had to acquire before they would be able to have access to the required 10NES information prior to publication of their game.\nInitially, the 10NES chip proved a significant barrier to unlicensed developers seeking to develop and sell games for the console. However, hobbyists in later years discovered that disassembling the NES and cutting the fourth pin of the lockout chip would change the chip's mode of operation from \"lock\" to \"key\", removing all effects and greatly improving the console's ability to play legal games, bootlegs, and converted imports.\nOriginal NES consoles sold in different regions have different lockout chips, thereby enforcing regional lockout (regardless of TV signal compatibility). Such regions include North America; most of continental Europe (PAL-B); Asia; and the British Isles, Italy, and Australasia (PAL-A).\nProblems with the 10NES lockout chip frequently result in one of the console's most common issues: the blinking red power light, in which the system appears to turn itself on and off repeatedly because the 10NES would reset the console once per second. The lockout chip required constant communication with the chip in the game to work. Dirty, aging, and bent connectors often disrupt the communication, resulting in the blink effect. In other cases, the console turns on but only displays a solid white, gray, or green screen.\nTechnical specifications.\nThe console's main central processing unit (CPU) was produced by Ricoh, which manufactured different versions between NTSC and PAL regions; NTSC consoles have a 2A03 clocked at 1.79\u00a0MHzTooltip megahertz, and PAL consoles have a 2A07 clocked at 1.66\u00a0MHz. Both CPUs are unlicensed variants of the MOS Technology 6502, an 8-bit microprocessor prevalent in contemporary home computers and consoles; Nintendo ostensibly disabled the 6502's binary-coded decimal mode on them to avoid patent infringement against or licensing fees towards MOS Technology, which was owned by then-rival Commodore International. The CPU has access to 2\u00a0KBTooltip kilobyte of onboard work RAMTooltip random-access memory.\nThe console's graphics are handled by a Ricoh 2C02, a processor known as the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) that is clocked at 5.37\u00a0MHz. A derivative of the Texas Instruments TMS9918\u2014a video display controller used in the ColecoVision\u2014the PPU features 2\u00a0KB of video RAM, 256\u00a0bytes of on-die \"object attribute memory\" (OAM) to store sprite display information on up to 64 sprites, and 28\u00a0bytes of RAM to store information on the YIQ-based color palette; the console can display up to 25 colors simultaneously out of 54 usable colors.\nThe console's standard display resolution is 256 \u00d7 240 pixels, though video output options vary between models. The original Famicom features only radio frequency (RF) modulator output, and the NES additionally supports composite video via RCA connectors. The redesigned Famicom omits the RF modulator entirely, only outputting composite video via a proprietary \"multi-out\" connector first introduced on the Super Famicom/SNES; conversely, the redesigned NES features RF modulator output only, though a version of the model including the \"multi-out\" connector was produced in rare quantities.\nThe console produces sound via an audio processing unit (APU) integrated into the processor. It supports a total of five sound channels: two pulse wave channels, one triangle wave channel, one white noise channel, and one DPCMTooltip differential pulse-code modulation channel for sample playback. Audio playback speed is dependent on the CPU clock rate, which is set by a crystal oscillator.\nAccessories.\nControllers.\nThe game controller for both the NES and the Famicom has an oblong brick-like design with a simple four button layout: two round buttons labeled \"A\" and \"B\", a \"START\" button, and a \"SELECT\" button. Additionally, the controllers use the cross-shaped D-pad, designed by Nintendo employee Gunpei Yokoi for Nintendo Game & Watch systems, to replace the bulkier joysticks on controllers of earlier gaming consoles.\nThe original model Famicom features two game controllers, both of which are hardwired to the back of the console. The second controller lacks the START and SELECT button, featuring a small microphone instead; however, few games use this feature. The earliest produced Famicom units have square A and B buttons; issues with them getting stuck when pressed down led Nintendo to change their shape to a circular design in subsequent units following the console's recall.\nInstead of the Famicom's hardwired controllers, the NES has two proprietary seven-pin ports on the front of the console to support detachable controllers and third-party peripherals. The controllers bundled with the NES are identical and include the START and SELECT buttons, lacking the microphone on the original Famicom's second controller. The cables for NES controllers are also generally three times longer than their Famicom counterparts.\nSeveral special controllers are intended for use with specific games, though are not commonly used. Such peripherals include the NES Zapper (a light gun), R.O.B. (a toy robot), and the Power Pad (a dance pad). The original Famicom has a deepened DA-15 expansion port on the front of the unit to accommodate them.\nTwo official advanced controllers were produced for the NES: the NES Advantage, an arcade controller produced by Asciiware and licensed by Nintendo of America; and the NES Max, a controller with grip handles and a \"cycloid\" sliding-disc D-pad in place of the traditional one. Both controllers have a \"Turbo\" feature, which simulates multiple rapid button presses, for the A and B buttons; the NES Max has manually pressed Turbo buttons, and the NES Advantage offers toggle buttons for Turbo functionality along with knobs that adjust the firing rate of each button. The latter also includes a \"Slow\" button that rapidly pauses games, though this function is not intended for games that invoke a pause menu or screen.\nThe standard game controller was redesigned upon the introduction of the redesigned console. Though the original button layout was retained, the shape of the redesigned controller\u2014nicknamed the \"dog bone\" controller\u2014resembles that of the Super Famicom and SNES. It retained NES-style detachable controller ports.\nThe original NES controller has become one of the most recognizable symbols of the console. Nintendo has mimicked the look of the controller in several other products, from promotional merchandise to limited edition versions of the Game Boy Advance.\nJapanese accessories.\nFew of the numerous peripheral devices and software packages for the Famicom were released outside Japan.\nThe Famicom 3D System, an active shutter 3D headset peripheral released in 1987, enabled the ability to play stereoscopic video games. It was a commercial failure and never released outside Japan; users described the headset as bulky and uncomfortable. Seven games are compatible with the glasses, with three of them developed by Square; two titles received worldwide releases as \"Rad Racer\" and \"The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner\".\n\"Family BASIC\" is an implementation of BASIC for the Famicom, packaged with a keyboard. Similar in concept to the Atari 2600 \"BASIC\" cartridge, it allows the user to write programs, especially games, which can be saved on an included cassette recorder. Nintendo of America rejected releasing \"Famicom BASIC\" in the US in favor of its primary marketing demographic of children.\nThe Famicom Modem connected a Famicom to a now defunct proprietary network in Japan which provided content such as financial services. A dial-up modem was never released for the NES after a partnership with Fidelity Investments.\nFamicom Disk System.\nBy 1986, the cost and size limitations of ROM chips used in the Famicom's ROM cartridges were apparent, with no new advancements present to address them. With this in mind, Nintendo looked at the personal computer (PC) market, where the floppy disk was gaining wide adoption as a computer data storage medium. Partnering with Mitsumi to develop a floppy disk add-on for the Famicom based on the latter's Quick Disk format, Nintendo officially released it as the Family Computer Disk System in Japan on February 21, 1986, at a retail price of \u00a515,000.\nThe advantages of the format (called \"Disk Card\") were apparent on launch. It has more than triple the data storage capacity of the then-largest cartridge (used for \"Super Mario Bros.\") and introduced game save capability and lower production costs compared to cartridges, which resulted in lower retail prices for consumers. The add-on also has a new wavetable synthesis sound channel and more data storage for the Famicom's audio sample channel. Taking advantage of the disk's re-writability, Nintendo set up Disk Writer interactive kiosks at retail stores throughout Japan; at each kiosk, consumers could buy new games to rewrite onto their old disks or onto new disks. Disk Fax kiosks allowed players to submit their high scores on special blue disks for contests and rankings, predating the online leaderboard by several years.\nAlthough Nintendo committed to exclusively releasing games on the Disk System after its release, numerous external issues plagued its long-term viability. Just four months after launch, Capcom released a Famicom port of \"Makaimura\" (known as \"Ghosts 'n Goblins\" in the U.S.) on a cartridge with more data storage capacity than what was possible on Disk Cards, nullifying one of the Disk System's major advantages by using discrete logic chips to perform bank switching. Nintendo also demanded half of the copyright ownership for each game it selected for release on the Disk System, resulting in developers electing to remain on cartridge instead as the latter gained functionality previously considered unique to the former. Developers disliked the lower profit margin of the Disk Writer kiosks, and retailers complained of their use of valuable space as demand for the format waned.\nUsage of a floppy disk-based medium brought about further complications; Disk Cards were more fragile than cartridges and were prone to data corruption from magnetic exposure. Their unreliability was exacerbated by their lack of a shutter, which Nintendo substituted with a wax sleeve and clear keep case to reduce costs; blue disks and later Disk Cards included shutters. The rubber belt-based disk drives were also unreliable, with cryptic error codes complicating troubleshooting; even when fully functional, players accustomed to cartridges were annoyed with the introduction of loading times and disk flipping. Furthermore, the rewritable nature of the format resulted in rampant software piracy, with Nintendo's attempts at anti-piracy measures quickly defeated.\nThough selling close to two million units for all of 1986, Nintendo only managed to increase the total to 4.4\u00a0million units by 1990, falling well short of internal projections. By then, the Disk System was rendered obsolete due to advancements in ROM cartridge production: memory mapping chips for expanded data storage capacity, battery-backed SRAMTooltip static random-access memory for game saving, and declining overall production costs. Nintendo alluded to a Western release for the Disk System, going so far as to successfully file a U.S. patent for it and having the Famicom's cartridge pins used by its RAM Adapter for enhanced audio rerouted to the NES's little-used bottom expansion port. However, such a release never materialized due to its reception in Japan. Most of its games were re-released with workarounds on cartridge for both the Famicom and NES, without the enhanced audio. Although the last game for the Disk System was released in December 1992, Nintendo continued repair and rewrite services for it until September 2003.\nNES Test Station.\nThe NES Test Station diagnostics machine was introduced in 1988. It is an NES-based unit designed for testing NES hardware, components, and games. It was only provided for use in World of Nintendo boutiques as part of the Nintendo World Class Service program. Visitors were to bring items to test with the station, and could be assisted by a store technician or employee.\nThe NES Test Station's front has a Game Pak slot and connectors for testing various components (AC adapter, RF switch, Audio/Video cable, NES Control Deck, accessories and games), with a centrally-located selector knob to choose which component to test. The unit itself weighs approximately 11.7 pounds without a TV. It connects to a television via a combined A/V and RF Switch cable. By actuating the green button, a user can toggle between an A/V Cable or RF Switch connection. The television it is connected to (typically 11\" to 14\") is meant to be placed atop it.\nIn 1991, Nintendo provided an add-on called the \"Super NES Counter Tester\" that tests Super NES components and games. The Super NES Counter Tester is a standard Control Deck on a metal fixture with the connection from the back of the unit re-routed to the front. These connections may be made directly to the test station or to the TV, depending on what is to be tested.\nGames.\nGame Pak.\nThe NES uses a 72-pin design, as compared with 60 pins on the Famicom. To reduce costs and inventory, some early games released in North America are simply Famicom cartridges attached to an adapter to fit inside the NES hardware. Early NES cartridges are held together with five small slotted screws. Games released after 1987 were redesigned slightly to incorporate two plastic clips molded into the plastic itself, removing the need for the top two screws.\nThe back of the cartridge bears a label with handling instructions. Production and software revision codes were imprinted as stamps on the back label to correspond with the software version and producer. All licensed NTSC and PAL cartridges are a standard shade of gray plastic, with the exception of \"The Legend of Zelda\" and ', which were manufactured in gold-plastic carts. Unlicensed carts were produced in black, robin egg blue, and gold, and are all slightly different shapes than standard NES cartridges. Nintendo also produced yellow-plastic carts for internal use at Nintendo Service Centers, although these \"test carts\" were never made available for purchase. All licensed US cartridges were made by Nintendo, Konami, and Acclaim. For promotion of ', Capcom sent 150 limited-edition gold NES cartridges with the original game, featuring the \"Remastered\" art as the sticker, to different gaming news agencies. The instruction label on the back includes the opening lyric from the show's theme song, \"Life is like a hurricane\".\nFamicom cartridges are shaped slightly differently. Unlike NES games, official Famicom cartridges were produced in many colors of plastic. Adapters, similar in design to the popular accessory Game Genie, are available that allow Famicom games to be played on an NES. In Japan, several companies manufactured the cartridges for the Famicom. This allowed these companies to develop customized chips designed for specific purposes, such as superior sound and graphics.\nThird-party licensing.\nNintendo's near monopoly on the home video game market left it with a dominant influence over the industry. Unlike Atari, which never actively pursued third-party developers (and even went to court in an attempt to force Activision to cease production of Atari 2600 games), Nintendo had anticipated and encouraged the involvement of third-party software developers, though strictly on Nintendo's terms. Some of the Nintendo platform-control measures were adopted in a less stringent way by later console manufacturers such as Sega, Sony, and Microsoft.\nTo this end, a 10NES authentication chip is in every console and in every licensed cartridge. If the console's chip can not detect a counterpart chip inside the cartridge, the game does not load. Nintendo portrayed these measures as intended to protect the public against poor-quality games, and placed a golden seal of approval on all licensed games released for the system.\nNintendo found success with Japanese arcade manufacturers such as Konami, Capcom, Taito, and Namco, which signed on as third-party developers. However, they found resistance with US game developers including Atari Games, Activision, Electronic Arts, and Epyx refusing Nintendo's one-sided terms. Acclaim Entertainment, a fledgling game publisher founded by former Activision employees, was the first major third-party licensee in the United States to sign on with Nintendo in late 1987. Atari Games (through Tengen) and Activision signed on soon after.\nNintendo was not as restrictive as Sega, which did not permit third-party publishing until Mediagenic in late summer 1988. Nintendo's intention was to reserve a large part of NES game revenue for itself. Nintendo required that it be the sole manufacturer of all cartridges, and that the publisher had to pay in full before the cartridges for that game be produced. Cartridges could not be returned to Nintendo, so publishers assumed all the risk. As a result, some publishers lost more money due to distress sales of remaining inventory at the end of the NES era than they ever earned in profits from sales of the games. Because Nintendo controlled the production of all cartridges, it was able to enforce strict rules on its third-party developers, who were required to sign a contract that would obligate them to develop exclusively for the system, order at least 10,000 cartridges, and only make five games per year. The global 1988 shortage of DRAM and ROM chips reportedly caused Nintendo to only permit an average of 25% of publishers' requests for cartridges, with some receiving much higher amounts and others almost none. GameSpy noted that Nintendo's \"iron-clad terms\" made the company many enemies during the 1980s. Some developers tried to circumvent the five game limit by creating additional company brands like Konami's Ultra Games label; others tried circumventing the 10NES chip.\nNintendo was accused of antitrust violations because of the strict licensing requirements. The United States Department of Justice and several states began probing Nintendo's business practices, leading to the involvement of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC conducted an extensive investigation which included interviewing hundreds of retailers. During the FTC probe, Nintendo changed the terms of its publisher licensing agreements to eliminate the two-year rule and other restrictive terms. Nintendo and the FTC settled the case in April 1991, with Nintendo required to send vouchers giving a $5 discount off to a new game, to every person that had purchased an NES game between June 1988 and December 1990. GameSpy remarked that Nintendo's punishment was particularly weak given the case's findings, although it has been speculated that the FTC did not want to damage the video game industry in the United States.\nWith the NES near the end of its life, many third-party publishers such as Electronic Arts supported upstart competing consoles with less strict licensing terms such as the Sega Genesis and then the PlayStation, which eroded and then took over Nintendo's dominance in the home console market, respectively. Consoles from Nintendo's rivals in the post-SNES era had always enjoyed much stronger third-party support than Nintendo, which relied more heavily on first-party games.\nUnlicensed games.\nCompanies that refused to pay the licensing fee or were rejected by Nintendo found ways to circumvent the console's authentication system. Most of these companies created circuits that use a voltage spike to temporarily disable the 10NES chip. A few unlicensed games released in Europe and Australia are in the form of a dongle to connect to a licensed game, to use the licensed game's 10NES chip for authentication. To combat unlicensed games, Nintendo of America threatened retailers who sold them with losing their supply of licensed games, and multiple revisions were made to the NES PCBs to prevent unlicensed games from working.\nAtari Games took a different approach with its line of NES products, Tengen. The company attempted to reverse engineer the lockout chip to develop its own \"Rabbit\" chip. Tengen also obtained a description of the lockout chip from the United States Patent and Trademark Office by falsely claiming that it was required to defend against present infringement claims. Nintendo successfully sued Tengen for copyright infringement. Tengen's antitrust claims against Nintendo were never decided.\nColor Dreams made Christian video games under the subsidiary name Wisdom Tree. Historian Steven Kent wrote, \"Wisdom Tree presented Nintendo with a prickly situation. The general public did not seem to pay close attention to the court battle with Atari Games, and industry analysts were impressed with Nintendo's legal acumen; but going after a tiny company that published innocuous religious games was another story.\"\nGame rentals.\nAs the Nintendo Entertainment System grew in popularity and entered millions of American homes, some small video rental shops began buying their own copies of NES games, and renting them out to customers for around the same price as a video cassette rental for a few days. Nintendo received no profit from the practice beyond the initial cost of their game, and unlike movie rentals, a newly released game could hit store shelves and be available for rent on the same day. Nintendo took steps to stop game rentals, but did not take any formal legal action until Blockbuster Video began to make game rentals a large-scale service. Nintendo claimed that allowing customers to rent games would significantly hurt sales and drive up the cost of games. Nintendo lost the lawsuit, but did win on a claim of copyright infringement. Blockbuster was banned from including photocopies of original, copyrighted instruction booklets with its rented games. In compliance with the ruling, Blockbuster produced original short instructions\u2014usually in the form of a small booklet, card, or label stuck on the back of the rental box\u2014that explained the game's basic premise and controls. Video rental shops continued the practice of renting video games.\nReception.\nBy 1988, industry observers stated that the NES's popularity had grown so quickly that the market for Nintendo cartridges was larger than that for all home computer software. \"Compute!\" reported in 1989 that Nintendo had sold seven million NES systems in 1988 alone, almost as many as the number of Commodore 64s sold in its first five years. \"Computer game makers [are] scared stiff\", the magazine said, stating that Nintendo's popularity caused most competitors to have poor sales during the previous Christmas and resulted in serious financial problems for some.\nIn June 1989, Nintendo of America's vice president of marketing Peter Main, said that the Famicom was present in 37% of Japan's households. By 1990, 30% of American households owned the NES, compared to 23% for all personal computers. By 1990, the NES had outsold all previously released consoles worldwide. The slogan for this brand was \"It can't be beaten\". The Nintendo Entertainment System was not available in the Soviet Union.\nIn the early 1990s, gamers predicted that competition from technologically superior systems such as the 16-bit Sega Genesis would mean the immediate end of the NES's dominance. Instead, during the first year of Nintendo's successor console the Super Famicom (named Super Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan), the Famicom remained the second highest-selling video game console in Japan, outselling the newer and more powerful NEC PC Engine and Sega Mega Drive by a wide margin. The console remained popular in Japan and North America until late 1993, when the demand for new NES software abruptly plummeted. The final licensed Famicom game released in Japan is \"Takahashi Meijin no B\u014dken Jima IV (Adventure Island IV)\", in North America is \"Wario's Woods\", and in Europe is \"The Lion King\" in 1995. In the wake of ever decreasing sales and the lack of new games, Nintendo of America officially discontinued the NES by 1995. Nintendo produced new Famicom units in Japan until September 25, 2003, and continued to repair Famicom consoles until October 31, 2007, attributing the discontinuation of support to insufficient supplies of parts.\nThe NES was initially not as successful in Europe during the late 1980s, when it was outsold by the Master System in the United Kingdom. By 1990, the Master System was the highest-selling console in Europe, though the NES was beginning to have a fast-growing user base in the United Kingdom. During the early 1990s, NES sales caught up with and narrowly overtook the Master System overall in Western Europe, though the Master System maintained its lead in several markets such as the United Kingdom, Belgium and Spain.\nLegacy.\nThe NES was released two years after the video game crash of 1983, when many retailers and adult consumers regarded electronic games as a passing fad, so many believed at first that the NES would soon fade. Before the NES and Famicom, Nintendo was known as a moderately successful Japanese toy and playing card manufacturer, but the consoles' popularity helped the company grow into an internationally recognized name almost synonymous with video games as Atari had been, and set the stage for Japanese dominance of the video game industry. With the NES, Nintendo also changed the relationship between console manufacturers and third-party software developers by restricting developers from publishing and distributing software without licensed approval. This led to higher-quality games, which helped change the attitude of a public that had grown weary from poorly produced games for earlier systems.\nThe NES hardware design is also very influential. Nintendo chose the name \"Nintendo Entertainment System\" for the US market and redesigned the system so it would not give the appearance of a child's toy. The front-loading cartridge input allowed it to be used more easily in a TV stand with other entertainment devices, such as a videocassette recorder.\nThe system's hardware limitations led to design principles that still influence the development of modern video games. Many prominent game franchises originated on the NES, including Nintendo's own \"Super Mario Bros.\",| \"The Legend of Zelda\" and \"Metroid\", Capcom's \"Mega Man\" franchise, Konami's \"Castlevania\" franchise, Square's \"Final Fantasy\",| and Enix's \"Dragon Quest\"| franchises.\nNES imagery, especially its controller, has become a popular motif for a variety of products, including Nintendo's Game Boy Advance.\nAt the Tokyo Game Show in 2023, the \"Famicom\" was bestowed \"The Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Award\" in honour of the console's influence and laying down the foundations for the games industry.\nThe NES library includes some influential games. \"Super Mario Bros.\" is the forerunner of side-scrolling games, while \"The Legend of Zelda\" had mostly influenced action-adventure games and helped popularizing the save data in video games. Other two influential games are \"Metroid\" and \"Castlevania II\", which had established the metroidvania genre.\nIn 2011, \"IGN\" named the NES the greatest video game console of all time.\nEmulation.\nThe NES can be emulated on many other systems. The first emulator was the Japanese-only Pasofami. It was soon followed by iNES, which is available in English and is cross-platform, in 1996. It was described as being the first NES emulation software that could be used by a non-expert. The first version of NESticle, an unofficial MS-DOS-based emulator, was released on April 3, 1997. Nintendo offers licensed emulation of some NES games via its Virtual Console service for the Wii, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U, and via its Nintendo Switch Online service.\nRe-release.\nOn July 14, 2016, Nintendo announced the November 2016 launch of a miniature replica of the NES, named the Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition in the United States and Nintendo Classic Mini: Nintendo Entertainment System in Europe and Australia. The emulation-based console includes 30 permanently bundled games from the vintage NES library, including the \"Super Mario Bros.\" series and \"The Legend of Zelda\" series. The system has HDMI display output and a new replica controller, which can also connect to the Wii Remote for use with Virtual Console games. It was discontinued in North America on April 13, 2017, and worldwide on April 15, 2017. However, Nintendo announced in September 2017 that the NES Classic Mini would return to production on June 29, 2018, only to be discontinued again permanently by December of that year.\nNotes.\nTransliterations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["18944028", "4884522", "28314"], "permutation_1": ["28314", "18944028", "4884522"], "permutation_2": ["4884522", "18944028", "28314"], "permutation_3": ["28314", "4884522", "18944028"]}
{"id": "3hop1__418091_15840_36014", "docs_added": {"28314": "Super Nintendo Entertainment System\nHome video game console\nThe Super Nintendo Entertainment System, commonly shortened to Super Nintendo, Super NES or SNES, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in Europe and Oceania and 1993 in South America. In Japan, it is called the In South Korea, it is called the Super Comboy and was distributed by Hyundai Electronics. The system was released in Brazil on August 30, 1993, by Playtronic. In Russia and CIS, the system was distributed by Steepler from 1994 until 1996. Although each version is essentially the same, several forms of regional lockout prevent cartridges for one version from being used in other versions.\nThe Super NES is Nintendo's second programmable home console, following the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The console introduced advanced graphics and sound capabilities compared with other systems at the time, like the Sega Genesis. It was designed to accommodate the ongoing development of a variety of enhancement chips integrated into game cartridges to be more competitive into the next generation.\nThe Super NES received largely positive reviews and was a global success, becoming the best-selling console of the 16-bit era after launching relatively late and facing intense competition from Sega's Genesis console in North America and Europe. Overlapping the NES's 61.9\u00a0million unit sales, the Super NES remained popular well into the 32-bit era, with 49.1\u00a0million units sold worldwide by the time it was discontinued in 2003. It continues to be popular among collectors and retro gamers, with new homebrew games and Nintendo's emulated rereleases, such as on the Virtual Console, the Super NES Classic Edition, Nintendo Switch Online; as well as several non-console emulators which operate on a desktop computer or mobile device, such as Snes9x.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nTo compete with the popular Family Computer in Japan, NEC Home Electronics launched the PC Engine in 1987, and Sega followed suit with the Mega Drive in 1988. The two platforms were later launched in North America in 1989 as the TurboGrafx-16 and the Sega Genesis respectively. Both systems were built on 16-bit architectures and offered improved graphics and sound over the 8-bit NES. It took several years for Sega's system to become successful. Bill Mensch, the co-creator of the 8-bit MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor and founder of the Western Design Center (WDC), gave Ricoh the exclusive right to supply 8-bit and 16-bit WDC microprocessors for the new system. Meanwhile, Sony engineer Ken Kutaragi reached an agreement with Nintendo to design the console's sound chip without notifying his supervisors, who were enraged when they discovered the project; though Kutaragi was nearly fired, then-CEO Norio Ohga intervened in support of the project and gave him permission to complete it.\nOn September 9, 1987, then-Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi revealed the development of the Super Famicom in the newspaper \"Kyoto Shimbun\". On August 30, 1988, in an interview with \"TOUCH Magazine\", Yamauchi announced the development of \"Super Mario Bros. 4\", \"Dragon Quest V\", three original games, and he projected sales of 3 million units of the upcoming console. \"Famicom Hissyoubon\" magazine speculated that Yamauchi's early announcement was probably made to forestall Christmas shopping for the PC Engine, and relayed Enix's clarification that it was waiting on sales figures to select either PC Engine or Super Famicom for its next \"Dragon Quest\" game. The magazine and Enix both expressed a strong interest in networking as a standard platform feature. The console was demonstrated to the Japanese press on November 21, 1988, and again on July 28, 1989.\nLaunch.\nDesigned by Masayuki Uemura, the designer of the original Famicom, the Super Famicom was released in Japan on Wednesday, November 21, 1990, for \u00a5. It was an instant success. Nintendo's initial shipment of 300,000 units sold out within hours, and the resulting social disturbance led the Japanese government to ask video game manufacturers to schedule future console releases on weekends. This gained the attention of the yakuza criminal organizations, so the devices were shipped at night to avoid robbery.\nWith the Super Famicom quickly outselling its rivals, Nintendo reasserted itself as the leader of the Japanese console market. Nintendo's success was partially due to the retention of most of its key third-party developers, including Capcom, Konami, Tecmo, Square, Koei, and Enix.\nNintendo released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, a redesigned version of the Super Famicom, in North America for US$. It began shipping in limited quantities on August 23, 1991, with an official nationwide release date of September 9, 1991. The Super NES was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland in April 1992 for \u00a3.\nMost of the PAL region versions of the console use the Japanese Super Famicom design, except for labeling and the length of the joypad leads. The Playtronic Super NES in Brazil, although PAL-M, uses the North American design. Both the NES and Super NES were released in Brazil in 1993 by Playtronic, a joint venture between the toy company Estrela and consumer electronics company Gradiente.\nThe Super NES and Super Famicom launched with few games, but these games were well received. In Japan, only two games were initially available: \"Super Mario World\" and \"F-Zero\". \"Bombuzal\" was released during the launch week. In North America, \"Super Mario World\" was launched as a bundle with the console; other launch games include \"F-Zero\", \"Pilotwings\" (both of which demonstrate the console's Mode 7 pseudo-3D rendering), \"SimCity\", and \"Gradius III\".\nConsole wars.\nThe rivalry between Nintendo and Sega was described as one of the most notable console wars in video game history, in which Sega positioned the Genesis as the \"cool\" console, with games aimed at older audiences, and aggressive advertisements that occasionally attacked the competition. Nintendo scored an early public-relations advantage by securing the first console conversion of Capcom's arcade hit \"Street Fighter II\" for Super NES, which took more than a year to make the transition to the Genesis. Though the Genesis had a two-year lead to launch time, a much larger library of games, and a lower price point, it only represented an estimated 60% of the American 16-bit console market in June 1992, and neither console could maintain a definitive lead for several years. \"Donkey Kong Country\" is said to have helped establish the Super NES's market prominence in the latter years of the 16-bit generation, and for a time, maintain against the PlayStation and Saturn. According to Nintendo, the company had sold more than 20\u00a0million Super NES units in the U.S. According to a 2014 Wedbush Securities report based on NPD sales data, the Super NES outsold the Genesis in the U.S. market by 1.5 million units.\nChanges in policy.\nDuring the NES era, Nintendo maintained exclusive control over games released for the system \u2013 the company had to approve every game, each third-party developer could only release up to five games per year (but some third parties got around this by using different names, such as Konami's \"Ultra Games\" brand), those games could not be released on another console within two years, and Nintendo was the exclusive manufacturer and supplier of NES cartridges. Competition from Sega's console brought an end to this practice; in 1991, Acclaim Entertainment began releasing games for both platforms, with most of Nintendo's other licensees following suit over the next several years; Capcom (which licensed some games to Sega instead of producing them directly) and Square were the most notable holdouts.\nNintendo continued to carefully review submitted games, scoring them on a 40-point scale and allocating marketing resources accordingly. Each region performed separate evaluations. Nintendo of America also maintained a policy that, among other things, limited the amount of violence in the games on its systems. The surprise arcade hit \"Mortal Kombat\" (1992), a gory fighting game with huge splashes of blood and graphically violent fatality moves, was heavily censored by Nintendo. Because the Genesis version allowed for an uncensored version via cheat code, it outsold the censored Super NES version by a ratio of nearly three to one.\nU.S. Senators Herb Kohl and Joe Lieberman convened a Congressional hearing on December 9, 1993, to investigate the marketing of violent video games to children. Though Nintendo took the high ground with moderate success, the hearings led to the creation of the Interactive Digital Software Association and the Entertainment Software Rating Board and the inclusion of ratings on all video games. With these ratings in place, Nintendo decided its censorship policies were no longer needed.\n32-bit era and beyond.\nWhile other companies were moving on to 32-bit systems, Rare and Nintendo proved that the Super NES was still a strong contender in the market. In November 1994, Rare released \"Donkey Kong Country\", a platform game featuring 3D models and textures pre-rendered on Silicon Graphics workstations. With its detailed graphics, fluid animation, and high-quality music, \"Donkey Kong Country\" rivals the aesthetic quality of games that were being released on newer 32-bit CD-based consoles. In the last 45 days of 1994, 6.1\u00a0million copies were sold, making it the fastest-selling video game in history to that date. This game conveyed that early 32-bit systems had little to offer over the Super NES, and proved the market for the more advanced consoles of the near future. According to TRSTS reports, two of the top five bestselling games in the U.S. for December 1996 are Super NES games.\nIn October 1997, Nintendo released a redesigned model of the Super NES (the SNS-101 model referred to as \"New-Style Super NES\") in North America for US$, with some units including the pack-in game \"\". Like the earlier New-Style NES (model NES-101), this is slimmer and lighter than its predecessor, but it lacks S-Video and RGB output, and it is among the last major Super NES-related releases in the region. A similarly redesigned Super Famicom Jr. was released in Japan at around the same time. The redesign stayed out of Europe.\nNintendo ceased production of the Super NES in North America in 1999, about two years after releasing \"Kirby's Dream Land 3\" (its final second-party game in the US) on November 27, 1997, and one year after releasing \"Frogger\" (its final third-party game in the US) in 1998. In Japan, Nintendo continued production of both the Family Computer and the Super Famicom until September 25, 2003, and new games were produced until the year 2000, ending with the release of \"Metal Slader Glory Director's Cut\" on November 29, 2000.\nMany popular Super NES games were ported to the Game Boy Advance, which has similar video capabilities. In 2005, Nintendo announced that Super NES games would be made available for download via the Wii's Virtual Console service. On October 31, 2007, Nintendo Co., Ltd. announced that it would no longer repair Family Computer or Super Famicom systems due to an increasing shortage of the necessary parts. On March 3, 2016, Nintendo Co., Ltd. announced that it would bring Super NES games to the New Nintendo 3DS and New Nintendo 3DS XL (and later the New Nintendo 2DS XL) via its eShop download service. At the Nintendo Direct event on September 4, 2019, Nintendo announced that it would be bringing select Super NES games to the Nintendo Switch Online platform.\nHardware.\nTechnical specifications.\nThe 16-bit design of the Super NES incorporates graphics and sound co-processors that perform tiling and simulated 3D effects, a palette of 32,768 colors, and 8-channel ADPCM audio. These base platform features, plus the ability to dramatically extend them all through substantial chip upgrades inside of each cartridge, represent a leap over the 8-bit NES generation and some significant advantages over 16-bit competitors such as the Genesis.\nCPU and RAM.\nThe CPU is a Ricoh 5A22, a derivative of the 16-bit WDC 65C816 microprocessor. In NTSC regions, its nominal clock speed is 3.58 MHz will slow to either 2.68\u00a0MHz or 1.79\u00a0MHz when accessing some slower peripherals.\nThis CPU has an 8-bit data bus and two address buses. The 24-bit \"Bus\u00a0A\" is designated for general accesses, and the 8-bit \"Bus\u00a0B\" can access support chip registers such as the video and audio co-processors.\nThe WDC 65C816 supports an 8-channel DMA unit, an 8-bit parallel I/O port a controller port interface circuits allowing serial and parallel access to controller data, a 16-bit multiplication and division unit, and circuitry for generating non-maskable interrupts on V-blank and IRQ interrupts on calculated screen positions.\nEarly revisions of the 5A22 used in SHVC boards are prone to spontaneous failure which can produce a variety of symptoms including graphics glitches in Mode 7, a black screen on power-on, or improperly reading the controllers. The first revision 5A22 has a fatal bug in the DMA controller that can crash games; this was corrected in subsequent revisions.\nThe console contains 128KB of general-purpose \"work\" RAM, which is separate from the 64KB dedicated to the video subsystem and the 64KB dedicated to the audio subsystem.\nVideo.\nThe Picture Processing Unit (PPU) consists of two closely tied IC packages. It contains 64KB of SRAM for video data, 544 bytes of object attribute memory (OAM) for sprite data, and 256\u00a0\u00d7\u00a015 bits of color generator RAM (CGRAM) for palette data. This CGRAM provisions up to 256 colors, chosen from the 15-bit RGB color space, from a palette of 32,768 colors. The PPU is clocked by the same signal as the CPU and generates a pixel every two or four cycles.\nAudio.\nThe S-SMP audio subsystem consisted of a 16-bit digital signal processor (DSP) to sequence the mix samples, an 8-bit SPC700 CPU to drive the DSP and 64KB of dedicated PSRAM. It was designed by Ken Kutaragi and produced by Sony and is completely independent from the rest of the system. It is clocked at a nominal 24.576\u00a0MHz in both NTSC and PAL systems. It is capable of stereo sound, composed from eight voices generated using 16-bit audio samples compressed using BRR and capable of applying effects such as echo. On early revisions of the motherboard the S-SMP audio system was spread across four chips: the DSP, the CPU, and two RAM modules. On later revisions, the sound hardware consolidated to a single chip, the S-APU.\nRegional lockout.\nNintendo employed several types of regional lockout, including both physical and hardware incompatibilities.\nPhysically, the cartridges are shaped differently for different regions. North American cartridges have a rectangular bottom with inset grooves matching protruding tabs in the console, and other regions' cartridges are narrower with a smooth curve on the front and no grooves. The physical incompatibility can be overcome with the use of various adapters, or through modification of the console.\nInternally, a regional lockout chip (CIC) within the console and in each cartridge prevents the PAL region games from being played on Japanese or North American consoles and vice versa. The Japanese and North American machines have the same region chip. This can be overcome through the use of adapters, typically by inserting the imported cartridge in one slot and a cartridge with the correct region chip in a second slot. Alternatively, disconnecting one pin of the console's lockout chip will prevent it from locking the console; hardware in later games can detect this situation, so it became common to install a switch to reconnect the lockout chip as needed.\nPAL consoles face another incompatibility when playing out-of-region cartridges: the NTSC video standard specifies video at 60\u00a0Hz but PAL operates at 50\u00a0Hz, resulting in an approximately 16.7% slower framerate. PAL's higher resolution results in letterboxing of the output image. Some commercial PAL region releases exhibit this same problem and, therefore, can be played in NTSC systems without issue, but other games will face a 20% speedup if played in an NTSC console. To mostly correct this issue, a switch can be added to place the Super NES PPU into a 60\u00a0Hz mode supported by most newer PAL televisions. Later games will detect this setting and refuse to run, requiring the switch to be thrown only after the check completes.\nCasing.\nAll models of the Super NES control deck are predominantly gray, of slightly different shades. The original North American version, designed by Nintendo of America industrial designer Lance Barr (who previously redesigned the Famicom to become the NES), has a boxy design with purple sliding switches and a dark gray eject lever. The loading bay surface is curved, both to invite interaction and to prevent food or drinks from being placed on the console and spilling as with the flat-surfaced NES. The Japanese and European versions are more rounded, with darker gray accents and buttons.\nAll versions incorporate a top-loading slot for game cartridges, although the shape of the slot differs between regions to match the different shapes of the cartridges. The MULTI OUT connector (later used on the Nintendo 64 and GameCube) can output composite video, S-Video and RGB signals, as well as RF with an external RF modulator. Original versions additionally include a 28-pin expansion port under a small cover on the bottom of the unit and a standard RF output with channel selection switch on the back; the redesigned models output composite video only, requiring an external modulator for RF.\nThe Nintendo Super System (NSS) is an arcade system for retail preview of 11 particular Super NES games in the United States, similar to the PlayChoice-10 for NES games. It consists of slightly modified Super NES hardware with a menu interface and 25-inch monitor, that allows gameplay for a certain amount of time depending on game credits. Manufacturing of this model was discontinued in 1992.\nRedesigned model.\nA cost-reduced version of the console, referred to as the New-Style Super NES (model SNS-101) in North America and as the in Japan, was released late in the platform's lifespan; designed by Barr, it incorporates design elements from both the original North American and Japanese/European console models but in a smaller form factor. Unlike the original console models, the redesigned model is virtually identical across both regions save for the color palette (the North American model receiving purple buttons and the Japanese model receiving grey buttons). The redesign did not receive a release in Europe.\nExternally, the power and reset buttons were moved to the left-hand side of the console while the cartridge eject button and power LED indicator were omitted. Internally, the redesigned model consolidates the console's hardware into a system-on-chip (SoC) design. The redesigned console lacks the bottom expansion slot, rendering it incompatible with the Japan-exclusive Satellaview add-on.\nFor AV output, the redesigned console features the same multi-out port used on the original models. Unlike the latter models, the former's AV port only supports composite video output natively as support for RGB video and S-Video was disabled internally; however, they can be restored via a \"relatively simple\" modification. The internal RF modulator was also removed, requiring an external one for such output if needed. Due to the SoC design, it is highly sought after by Super NES/Famicom enthusiasts since its RGB video quality (if restored) is improved over earlier internal revisions of the console.\nThe redesigned console first released in October 1997 in North America, where it originally retailed for US$99.95 in a bundle with \"\";\nit was subsequently released in Japan on March 27, 1998, where it retailed for \u00a57,800. Nintendo marketed it as an entry-level gamer's system for consumers who were apprehensive about the higher price of newer systems such as the Nintendo 64. Nintendo also introduced a slightly altered controller for it, with the console's logo replaced by an embossed Nintendo logo.\nYellowing.\nThe ABS plastic used in the casing of some older Super NES and Super Famicom consoles is particularly susceptible to oxidation with exposure to air. This, along with the particularly light color of the original plastic, causes affected consoles to quickly become yellow; if the sections of the casing came from different batches of plastic, a \"two-tone\" effect results. This issue may be reversed with a method called Retrobrighting, where a mixture of chemicals is applied to the case and exposed to UV light.\nGame cartridge.\nSuper NES games are distributed on ROM cartridges, officially referred to as Game Pak in most Western regions, and as in Japan and parts of Latin America. Though the Super NES can address 128\u00a0Mbit, only 117.75\u00a0Mbit are actually available for cartridge use. A fairly normal mapping could easily address up to 95\u00a0Mbit of ROM data (48\u00a0Mbit at FastROM speed) with 8\u00a0Mbit of battery-backed RAM. Most available memory access controllers only support mappings of up to 32\u00a0Mbit. The largest games released (\"Tales of Phantasia\" and \"Star Ocean\") contain 48\u00a0Mbit of ROM data, and the smallest games contain only 2\u00a0Mbit.\nCartridges may also contain battery-backed SRAM to save the game state, extra working RAM, custom coprocessors, or any other hardware that will not exceed the maximum current rating of the console.\nGames.\n1757 Super NES games were officially released: 717 in North America (plus 4 championship cartridges), 521 in Europe, 1,448 in Japan, 231 on Satellaview, and 13 on Sufami Turbo. Many Super NES games have been called some of the greatest video games of all time, such as \"Super Mario World\" (1990), \"\" (1991), \"Final Fantasy VI\" (1994), \"Donkey Kong Country\" (1994), \"EarthBound\" (1994), \"Super Metroid\" (1994), \"Chrono Trigger\" (1995) and \"Yoshi's Island\" (1995). Many Super NES games have been rereleased several times, including on the Virtual Console, Super NES Classic Edition, and the classic games service on Nintendo Switch Online. All Game Boy games are playable with the Super Game Boy add-on.\nPeripherals.\nThe Super NES controller design expands on that of the NES, with A, B, X, and Y face buttons in a diamond arrangement, and two shoulder buttons. Lance Barr created its ergonomic design, and he later adapted it in 1993 for the NES-039 \"dogbone\" controller. The Japanese and PAL region versions incorporated the four colors of the face buttons into the system's logo. The North American version's buttons were colored to match the redesigned console; the X and Y buttons are lavender with concave faces, and the A and B buttons are purple with convex faces. Several later controller designs have elements from the Super NES controller, including the PlayStation, Dreamcast, Xbox, and Wii Classic Controller. This face button layout is on future Nintendo systems since the Nintendo DS.\nSeveral peripherals add to the functionality of the Super NES. Some are required by certain games, such as the Super Scope light gun, and the Super NES Mouse for a point and click interface. Various third-parties, under license from Nintendo, released multitap adapters connecting up to five controllers into a single console, starting with the Super Multitap by Hudson Soft in conjunction with the \"Super Bomberman\" series. Specialized third-party controllers, such as the AsciiPad and Super Advantage (the successor to the NES Advantage) by Asciiware, and the Capcom Fighter Power Stick, an arcade-like joystick controller by Capcom designed specifically for \"Street Fighter II\". Unusual controllers include the BatterUP baseball bat, the Life Fitness Entertainment System (an exercise bike controller with built-in monitoring software), the TeeV Golf golf club, and the Justifier (a revolver-shaped light gun made by Konami for \"Lethal Enforcers\").\nThough Nintendo never released an adapter for playing NES games on the Super NES, the Super Game Boy adapter cartridge allows games designed for Nintendo's portable Game Boy system to be played on the Super NES. The Super Game Boy touts several feature enhancements over the Game Boy, including palette substitution, custom screen borders, and access to the Super NES console's features by specially enhanced Game Boy games. Japan also saw the release of the Super Game Boy 2, which adds a communication port to enable a second Game Boy to connect for multiplayer games.\nLike the NES before it, the Super NES has unlicensed third-party peripherals, including a new version of the Game Genie cheat cartridge designed for use with Super NES games.\nSoon after the release of the Super NES, companies began marketing backup devices such as the Super Wildcard, Super Pro Fighter Q, and Game Doctor. These devices create a backup of a cartridge, and can be used to play illicit ROM images or to copy games, violating copyright laws in many jurisdictions.\nThe Japan-only Satellaview is a satellite modem attached to the Super Famicom's expansion port and connected to the St.GIGA satellite radio station from April 23, 1995, to June 30, 2000. Satellaview subscribers could download gaming news and specially designed games, which were frequently either remakes of or sequels to older Famicom games, and released in installments. In the United States, the relatively short-lived XBAND allowed users to connect to a network via a dial-up modem to compete against other players around the country.\nNintendo attempted partnerships with Sony and then Philips, to develop CD-ROM-based peripheral prototypes for the console to compete with the TurboGrafx-CD and Sega CD. Sony produced the PlayStation (a brand name the company would use for their later independently produced console), a Super NES console with a built-in CD-ROM drive that never made it past the prototype phase. The Philips project was canceled without a prototype but Philips retained the contractual right to develop games based on Nintendo franchises, which it published for its CD-i multimedia console.\nEnhancement chips.\nAs part of the overall plan for the Super NES, rather than include an expensive CPU that would still become obsolete in a few years, the hardware designers made it easy to interface special coprocessor chips to the console, just like the MMC chips used for most NES games. This is most often characterized by 16 additional pins on the cartridge card edge.\nThe Super FX is a RISC CPU designed to perform functions that the main CPU can not feasibly do. The chip is primarily used to create 3D game worlds made with polygons, texture mapping and light source shading. The chip can also be used to enhance 2D games.\nThe Nintendo fixed-point digital signal processor (DSP) chip allowed fast vector-based calculations, bitmap conversions, both 2D and 3D coordinate transformations, and other functions. Four revisions of the chip exist, each physically identical but with different microcode. The DSP-1 version, including the later 1A and 1B bug fix revisions, is used most often; the DSP-2, DSP-3, and DSP-4 are used in only one game each.\nSimilar to the 5A22 CPU in the console, the SA-1 chip contains a 65C816 processor core clocked at 10.7\u00a0MHz, a memory mapper, DMA, decompression and bitplane conversion circuitry, several programmable timers, and CIC region lockout functionality.\nIn Japan, games could be downloaded cheaper than standard cartridges, from Nintendo Power kiosks onto special cartridges containing flash memory and a MegaChips MX15001TFC chip. The chip manages communication with the kiosks to download ROM images and has an initial menu to select a game. Some were published both in cartridge and download form, and others were download only. The service closed on February 8, 2007.\nMany cartridges contain other enhancement chips, most of which were created for use by a single company in a few games.\nReception and legacy.\nApproximately 49.1\u00a0million Super NES consoles were sold worldwide, with 23.35\u00a0million of those units sold in the Americas and 17.17\u00a0million in Japan. Although it could not quite repeat the success of the NES, which sold 61.91\u00a0million units worldwide, the Super NES was the best-selling console of its era.\nIn a 1997 year-end review, a team of five \"Electronic Gaming Monthly\" editors gave the Super NES scores of 5.5, 8.0, 7.0, 7.0, and 8.0. Though they criticized how few new games were coming out for the system and how dated its graphics were compared to current generation consoles, they regarded its selection of must-have games to be still unsurpassed. Additionally noting that used Super NES games were readily available in bargain bins, most of them still recommended buying a Super NES. In 2007, \"GameTrailers\" named the Super NES as the second-best console of all time (only behind the PlayStation 2) in their list of top ten consoles that \"left their mark on the history of gaming\", citing its graphics, sound, and library of top-quality games. In 2015, they also named it the best Nintendo console of all time, saying, \"The list of games we love from this console completely annihilates any other roster from the Big N.\" Technology columnist Don Reisinger proclaimed \"The SNES is the greatest console of all time\" in January 2008, citing the quality of the games and the console's dramatic improvement over its predecessor; fellow technology columnist Will Greenwald replied with a more nuanced view, giving the Super NES top marks with his heart, the NES with his head, and the PlayStation (for its controller) with his hands. GamingExcellence also gave the Super NES first place in 2008, declaring it \"simply the most timeless system ever created\" with many games that stand the test of time and citing its innovation in controller design, graphics capabilities, and game storytelling. At the same time, GameDaily rated it fifth of the ten greatest consoles for its graphics, audio, controllers, and games. In 2009, \"IGN\" named the Super NES the fourth-best video game console, complimenting its audio and number of AAA games.\nEmulation.\nSNES emulation began with VSMC in 1994, and Super Pasofami became the first working emulator in 1996. During that time, two competing emulation projects, Snes96 and Snes97, merged to form Snes9x. In 1997, ZSNES development began. In 2004, Bsnes development began with the goal of preservation through maximal accuracy and compatibility, and was later renamed to Higan.\nNintendo of America maintained its stance against the distribution of SNES ROM image files and the use of emulators, as it had with the NES before, saying they represent copyright infringement. Emulation proponents assert that the discontinued hardware production constitutes abandonware status, the owners' right to make a personal backup, space shifting for private use, the development of homebrew games, the frailty of ROM cartridges and consoles, and the lack of certain foreign imports. Nintendo designed a hobbyist development system for the SNES, but never released it.\nUnofficial SNES emulation is available on virtually all platforms, including Android, iOS, game consoles, and PDAs. Individual games have been bundled with official dedicated emulators on some GameCube discs, and Nintendo's Virtual Console service for the Wii introduced diverse and officially licensed SNES emulation.\nThe Super NES Classic Edition was released in September 2017 following the NES Classic Edition. This emulation-based mini-console, which is physically modeled after the North American and European versions of the SNES, is bundled with two SNES-style controllers and 21 games, including the unreleased \"Star Fox 2\".\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "14013625": "Bigfoot (video game)\n1990 video game\nBigfoot is a racing video game released in July 1990 for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was developed by Beam Software and published by Acclaim. The game was advertised by the legendary monster truck of the same name in the cartoon segment of the 1990 television show, \"Video Power\", titled \"The Power Team\". The show also often used sound effects for the actions of not only Bigfoot, but others as well.\nGameplay.\nThe gameplay involves racing monster trucks including the title truck, Bigfoot (blue). The computer controlled trucks are green (The Growler), and yellow (The Charger). The player begins competing against The Growler, but if the computer's truck runs out of money it will forfeit the race and be replaced with The Charger. Should The Charger run out of money it will be replaced with a second green vehicle and so on. It was not uncommon for a skilled player to be challenged by three to four different monster trucks during the game. In two player mode the 2nd player's truck is red. The object of the game is to advance to the next level (race) with incurring the least amount of damage as possible. The levels consist of car crushing, mud bog, tractor pull, hill climb, and the later levels are a combination of everything except the sled pull, simply called a drag race. To advance to the next event the player must complete a \"cross country\" race collecting money, points, etc. without damaging the truck.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18944028": "Nintendo Entertainment System\nHome video game console\nThe Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on July 15, 1983, as the It was released in US test markets as the redesigned NES in October 1985, and fully launched in the US the following year. The NES was distributed in Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia throughout the 1980s under various names. As a third-generation console, it mainly competed with Sega's Master System.\nThe NES was designed by Masayuki Uemura. Nintendo's president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, called for a simple, cheap console that could run arcade games on cartridges. The controller design was reused from Nintendo's portable Game & Watch hardware. The western model was redesigned to resemble a video cassette recorder. Nintendo released add-ons such as the NES Zapper light gun for several shooting games, and R.O.B, a toy robot accessory.\nThe NES is regarded as one of the most influential consoles. It helped revitalise the American gaming industry following the video game crash of 1983, and pioneered a now-standard business model of licensing third-party developers to produce and distribute games. The NES features several influential games, including \"Super Mario Bros.\" (1985), \"The Legend of Zelda\" (1986), \"Metroid\" (1986) and \"Mega Man\" (1987), which became major franchises.\nThe NES dominated Japanese and North American markets, but initially underperformed in Europe, where it faced strong competition from the Sega Master System and microcomputers. With 61.91\u00a0million units sold, it is one of the best-selling consoles. It was succeeded in 1990 by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.\nHistory.\nBackground.\nThe video game industry experienced rapid growth and popularity from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, marked by the golden age of arcade games and the second generation of consoles. Games like \"Space Invaders\" (1978) became a phenomenon across arcades worldwide, while home consoles such as the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision gained footholds in the American market. Many companies emerged to capitalise on the growing industry, including the playing card manufacturer Nintendo.\nHiroshi Yamauchi, who had been Nintendo's president since 1949, realised that breakthroughs in the electronics industry meant that entertainment products could be produced at lower prices. Companies such as Atari and Magnavox were already selling gaming devices for use with television sets, to moderate success. Yamauchi negotiated a licence with Magnavox to sell its game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. Since Nintendo's operation was not yet sophisticated enough to design its own hardware, Yamauchi forged an alliance with Mitsubishi Electric and hired several Sharp Electronics employees to assist in developing the Color TV-Game 6 in Japan. This was followed by a more successful sequel, the Color TV-Game 15, and the handheld Game & Watch series. The successes of these machines gave Yamauchi the confidence to expand Nintendo's influence in the fledgling video game industry.\nIn 1978, Yamauchi split Nintendo into separate research and development divisions. He appointed Masayuki Uemura as head of Nintendo Research & Development 2, a division that focused solely on hardware. Yamauchi, through extensive discussions with Uemura and other engineers, recognised the potential of the developing console beyond gaming. He envisioned a home-computer system disguised as a toy, which could significantly expand Nintendo's reach if it became popular with children. This popularity would drive demand for games, with Nintendo as the sole provider. Indeed, by 1980 several systems had already been released in Japan by both American and Japanese companies. Yamauchi tasked Uemura with developing a system that would be superior to its competitors and difficult to replicate for at least a year. Uemura's main challenge was economic rather than technological; Yamauchi wanted the system to be affordable enough for widespread household adoption, aiming for a price of \u00a59,800 (less than $75) compared to existing machines priced at \u00a530,000 to \u00a550,000 ($200 to $350). The new system had to outperform other systems, both Japanese and American, while being significantly more affordable.\nInception.\nAs development progressed on the new video game system, engineers sought Yamauchi's guidance on its features. They questioned whether to include a disk drive, keyboard, data port, as well as the potential for a modem, expanded memory, and other computer-like capabilities. Yamauchi ultimately instructed Uemura to prioritise simplicity and affordability, omitting these peripherals entirely. Game cartridges, which Uemura saw as \"less intimidating\" to consumers, were chosen as the format. The team designed the system with 2,000 bytes of random-access memory (RAM), significantly more than Atari's 256 bytes. Larger cartridges also allowed for far more complex games, with thirty-two times the code capacity of Atari cartridges.\nThe console's hardware was largely based on arcade video games, particularly the hardware for Namco's \"Galaxian\" (1979) and Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\", with the goal of matching their powerful sprite and scrolling capabilities in a home system. A test model was constructed in October 1982 to verify the functionality of the hardware, and work began on programming tools. Because 65xx CPUs had not been manufactured or sold in Japan by that time, no cross-development software was available and it had to be developed from scratch. Early Famicom games were written on a NEC PC-8001 computer. LEDs on a grid were used with a digitizer to design graphics as no such software design tools existed at that time.\nThe codename for the project was \"GameCom\", but Masayuki Uemura's wife proposed the name \"Famicom\", arguing that \"In Japan, 'pasokon' is used to mean a personal computer, but it is neither a home nor personal computer. Perhaps we could say it is a family computer.\" Meanwhile, Hiroshi Yamauchi decided that the console should use a red and white theme after seeing a billboard for DX Antenna (a Japanese antenna manufacturer) which used those colors.\nDevelopment.\nThe Famicom was influenced by the ColecoVision, Coleco's competition against the Atari 2600 in the United States; the ColecoVision's top-seller was a port of Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\". The project's chief manager Takao Sawano brought a ColecoVision home to his family, impressed by its smooth graphics, which contrasts with the flicker and slowdown commonly seen on Atari 2600 games. Uemura said the ColecoVision set the bar for the Famicom. They wanted to surpass it and match the more powerful \"Donkey Kong\" arcade hardware; they took a \"Donkey Kong\" arcade cabinet to chip manufacturer Ricoh for analysis, which led to Ricoh producing the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) chip for the NES.\nOriginal plans called for the Famicom's cartridges to be the size of a cassette tape, but ultimately they ended up being twice as big. Careful design attention was paid to the cartridge connectors because loose and faulty connections often plagued arcade machines. As it necessitated 60 connection lines for the memory and expansion, Nintendo decided to produce its own connectors.\nThe controllers are hard-wired to the console with no connectors for cost reasons. The controller designs were reused from the Game & Watch machines, although the Famicom design team originally wanted to use arcade-style joysticks, even dismantling some from American game consoles to see how they worked. There were concerns regarding the durability of the joystick design and that children might step on joysticks on the floor. Katsuya Nakawaka attached a Game & Watch D-pad to the Famicom prototype and found that it was easy to use and caused no discomfort. Ultimately though, they installed a 15-pin expansion port on the front of the console so that an optional arcade-style joystick could be used.\nGunpei Yokoi suggested an eject lever, which was not necessary, but he believed that children could be entertained by pressing it. Uemura adopted his idea. Uemura added a microphone to the second controller with the idea that it could be used to make players\u2019 voices sound through the TV speaker.\nJapanese release.\nThe console was released on July 15, 1983, as the for \u00a5 () with three ports of Nintendo's successful arcade games \"Donkey Kong\", \"Donkey Kong Jr.\", and \"Popeye\". The Famicom was slow to gather success; a bad chip set caused the early revisions to crash. Following a product recall and a reissue with a new motherboard, the Famicom's popularity soared, becoming the bestselling game console in Japan by the end of 1984 in what came to be called the \"Famicom Boom\".\nNintendo launched the system with only first-party games, but after being approached by Namco and Hudson Soft in 1984, agreed to produce third-party games for a 30% fee for console licensing and production costs. This rate continued in the industry for consoles and digital storefront into the 21st century.\nNorth American release.\nNintendo targeted the North American market, entering distribution negotiations with Atari, Inc. to release a redesigned Famicom with Atari's name as the Nintendo Advanced Video Gaming System. The deal was set to be finalized and signed at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in June 1983. However, Atari discovered at that show that its competitor Coleco was illegally demonstrating its Coleco Adam computer with Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\" game. This violation of Atari's exclusive license with Nintendo to publish the game for its own computer systems delayed the implementation of Nintendo's game console marketing contract with Atari. Atari's CEO Ray Kassar was fired the next month, so the deal went nowhere, and Nintendo decided to market its system on its own.\nSubsequent plans for the Nintendo Advanced Video System likewise never materialized. It was privately demonstrated as a repackaged Famicom console featuring a keyboard, cassette data recorder, wireless joystick controller, and a special BASIC cartridge. By the beginning of 1985, more than 2.5\u00a0million Famicom units had been sold in Japan, and Nintendo soon announced plans to release it in North America as the Advanced Video Entertainment System (AVS) that year. The American video game press was skeptical that the console could have any success in the region, as the industry was still recovering from the video game crash of 1983. The March 1985 issue of \"Electronic Games\" magazine stated that \"the videogame market in America has virtually disappeared\" and that \"this could be a miscalculation on Nintendo's part\".\nThe Famicom hardware first made its North American debut in the arcades, in the form of the Nintendo VS. System in 1984. The system's success in arcades paved the way for the official release of the NES console. With US retailers refusing to stock game consoles, Yamauchi realized there was still a market for video games in the arcades, so he introduced the Famicom to North America through the arcade industry. The VS. System became a major success in North American arcades, becoming the highest-grossing arcade machine of 1985 in the United States. By the time the NES launched, nearly 100,000 VS. Systems had been sold to American arcades. The success of the VS. System gave Nintendo the confidence to release the Famicom in North America as a video game console, for which there was growing interest due to Nintendo's positive reputation in the arcades. It also gave Nintendo the opportunity to test new games as VS. Paks in the arcades, to determine which games to release for the NES launch.\nAt the 1985 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of the Famicom: a stripped-down and cost-reduced redesign of the Advanced Video System (AVS), having abandoned the home computer approach. Nintendo purposefully designed the system to avoid resembling a video game console and avoided terms associated with game consoles. Marketing manager Gail Tilden chose the term \"Game Pak\" for cartridges, \"Control Deck\" for the console, and \"Entertainment System\" for the whole platform. Renamed the \"Nintendo Entertainment System\" (\"NES\"), the new and cost-reduced version lacked most of the upscale features added in the AVS but retained many of its audiophile-inspired design elements, such as the grey colour scheme and boxy form factor. Disappointed with the cosmetically raw prototype part they received from Japan, which they nicknamed \"the lunchbox\", Nintendo of America designers Lance Barr and Don James added the two-tone gray, the black stripe, and the red lettering. To obscure the video game connotation, the NES replaced the top-loading cartridge slot of the Famicom and AVS with a front-loading chamber for software cartridges that kept the inserted cartridge out of view, reminiscent of a video cassette recorder. The Famicom's pair of hard-wired controllers and the AVS's wireless controllers were replaced with two custom 7-pin sockets for detachable wired controllers.\nAt June 1985's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of its Famicom, with a new case redesigned by Lance Barr and featuring a \"zero insertion force\" cartridge slot. The change from a top-loader in the Famicom to a front-loader was to make the new console more like a video cassette recorder, which had grown in popularity by 1985, and differentiate the unit from past video game consoles. Additionally, Uemura explained that Nintendo developers had feared that the console's electronics might face electrostatic hazards in dry American states such as Arizona and Texas, and a front-loading design would be safer if children handled the console carelessly.\nThis was deployed as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Nintendo seeded these first systems to limited American test markets starting in New York City on October 18, 1985, and followed up in Los Angeles in February 1986; the American nationwide release came on September 27, 1986. Nintendo released 17 launch games: \"10-Yard Fight\", \"Baseball\", \"Clu Clu Land\", \"Duck Hunt\", \"Excitebike\", \"Golf\", \"Gyromite\", \"Hogan's Alley\", \"Ice Climber\", \"Kung Fu\", \"Pinball\", \"Soccer\", \"Stack-Up\", \"Super Mario Bros.\", \"Tennis\", \"Wild Gunman\", and \"Wrecking Crew\". Nintendo contracted Worlds of Wonder to distribute the console physically. WoW salesman Jim Whims distinctly recalled delivering an ultimatum: \"if you want to sell Teddy Ruxpin and you want to sell Lazer Tag, you're gonna sell Nintendo as well. And if you feel that strongly about it, then you ought to just resign the line now.\" This marketing tactic led to the NES' financial success in North America in its first year; Nintendo of America would later terminate the contract and hired the company's sales staff (whom Atari offered them in 1983), while taking on physical distribution of the console itself.\nThe system's launch represented not only a new product, but also a reframing of the severely damaged home video game market in North America. The 1983 video game crash had occurred in large part due to a lack of consumer and retailer confidence in video games, which had been partially due to confusion and misrepresentation in video game marketing. Prior to the NES, the packaging of many video games presented bombastic artwork which did not represent a game's actual graphics. Furthermore, a single game such as \"Pac-Man\" appeared across consoles with substantial variations in graphics, sound, and general quality. In contrast, Nintendo's marketing strategy aimed to regain consumer and retailer confidence by delivering a singular platform whose graphics could be represented truthfully and whose qualities were clearly defined.\nTo differentiate Nintendo's new home platform from the perception of a troubled and shallow video game market still reeling from the 1983 crash, the company freshened its product nomenclature and established a strict product approval and licensing policy. The overall platform is referred to as \"Entertainment System\" instead of a \"video game system\", is centered upon a machine called a \"Control Deck\" instead of a \"console\", and features software cartridges called \"Game Paks\" instead of \"video games\". This allowed Nintendo to gain more traction in selling the system in toy stores. To deter production of games which had not been licensed by Nintendo, and to prevent copying, the 10NES lockout chip system acts as a lock-and-key coupling of each Game Pak and Control Deck. The packaging of the launch lineup of NES games bear pictures of close representations of actual onscreen graphics. To reduce consumer confusion, symbols on the games' packaging clearly indicate the genre of the game. A seal of quality is on all licensed game and accessory packaging. The initial seal states, \"This seal is your assurance that Nintendo has approved and guaranteed the quality of this product\". This text was later changed to \"Official Nintendo Seal of Quality\".\nUnlike with the Famicom, Nintendo of America marketed the console primarily to children, instituting a strict policy of censoring profanity, sexual, religious, or political content. The most famous example is Lucasfilm Games's attempts to port the comedy-horror game \"Maniac Mansion\" to the NES, which Nintendo insisted be considerably watered down.\nThe optional Robotic Operating Buddy, or R.O.B., was part of a marketing plan to portray the NES's technology as being novel and sophisticated when compared to previous game consoles, and to portray its position as being within reach of the better established toy market. Though at first, the American public exhibited limited excitement for the console itself, peripherals such as the light gun and R.O.B. attracted extensive attention.\nOther markets.\nIn Europe and Oceania, the NES was released in two separate marketing regions. The first consisted of mainland Europe (excluding Italy) where distribution was handled by several different companies, with Nintendo responsible for manufacturing. The NES saw an early launch in Europe in 1986 although most of the European countries received the console in 1987. The release in Scandinavia was on September 1, 1986, where it was released by Bergsala. In the Netherlands, it was released in the last quarter of 1987 and was distributed by Bandai BV. In France, it was released in October 1987, and in Spain most likely in 1988 through distributor Spaco. Also in 1987, Mattel handled distribution for the second region, consisting of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Australia and New Zealand. In other European countries, distribution was taken over by smaller companies like Bienengr\u00e4ber in Germany, ASD in France, Concentra in Portugal, Itochu in Greece and Cyprus, Stadlbauer in Austria, Switzerland and the former Eastern Bloc. In Poland, the NES had its release on October 6, 1994 along with the SNES and the Game Boy. In November 1994, Nintendo signed an agreement with Steepler to permit the continued sale of the Dendy, an unauthorized hardware clone of the Famicom, in Russia in exchange for also distributing the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo anticipated the NES would have a 25 per cent share in these countries, and saw particular potential in the United Kingdom. It sold modestly in Europe, however.\nIn Brazil, the console was released late in 1993 by Playtronic, even after the SNES. But the Brazilian market had been dominated by unlicensed NES clones \u2013 both locally made, and smuggled from Taiwan. One of the most successful local clones was the Phantom System, manufactured by Gradiente, which licensed Nintendo products in the country for the following decade. The sales of officially licensed products were low, due to the cloning, the quite late official launch, and the high prices of Nintendo's licensed products.\nOutside of Japan, regions in greater Asia received an \"Asian version\" of the front-loader NES though imported Famicom systems were prevalent. Due to import restrictions, NES consoles in India and South Korea were rebranded and distributed by local licensees. The Indian version is called the \"Samurai Electronic TV Game System\" and the Korean version is called the \"Hyundai Comboy\". The console sold very poorly in India due to affordability and a lack of consumer awareness.\nBundles and redesigns.\nFor its complete North American release, the Nintendo Entertainment System was progressively released over the ensuing years in several different bundles, beginning with the Deluxe Set, the Basic Set, the Action Set, and the Power Set. The Deluxe Set was launched in the 1985 test markets, retailing at US$, including R.O.B., a light gun called the NES Zapper, two controllers, and the two Game Paks \"Gyromite\" and \"Duck Hunt\". The Control Deck bundle was first released in 1987 at $ with no game, and $ bundled with the \"Super Mario Bros.\" cartridge. The Action Set, released April 14, 1988, for $, has the Control Deck, two controllers, an NES Zapper, and a dual Game Pak containing both \"Super Mario Bros.\" and \"Duck Hunt\".\nThe Power Set of 1989 includes the console, two game controllers, an NES Zapper, a Power Pad, and a triple Game Pak containing \"Super Mario Bros\", \"Duck Hunt\", and \"World Class Track Meet\". In 1990, a Sports Set bundle was released, including the console, an NES Satellite infrared wireless multitap adapter, four game controllers, and a dual Game Pak containing \"Super Spike V'Ball\" and \"Nintendo World Cup\". Two more bundle packages were later released with the original model NES console. In 1992, the Challenge Set was released for $ with the console, two controllers, and a \"Super Mario Bros. 3\" Game Pak. The Basic Set retailed at US$; it included only the console and two controllers, and no pack-in game. Instead, it contained a book called the \"Official Nintendo Player's Guide\", which contained detailed information for every NES game made up to that point.\nFinally, the console was redesigned for the Australian, North American, and Japanese markets, including the New-Style NES, or NES-101, and one redesigned \"dogbone\" game controller. In Australia, this console revision was released with a cartridge compiling \"Super Mario Bros\", \"Tetris\", and \"Nintendo World Cup\". Released in October 1993 in North America and 1994 in Australia, this final bundle retailed for $ and A$ (A$ with the pack-in game) respectively, and was discontinued with the NES in 1995.\nDiscontinuation.\nOn August 14, 1995, Nintendo discontinued the Nintendo Entertainment System in both North America and Europe. In North America, replacements for the original front-loading NES were available for $ in exchange for a broken system until at least December 1996, under Nintendo's Power Swap program. The Game Boy and Super NES were covered for $ and $ respectively.\nOn May 30, 2003, Nintendo announced the discontinuation of the Famicom in September alongside the Super Famicom and the disk rewriting services for the Famicom Disk System. The last Famicom, serial number HN11033309, was manufactured on September 25; it was kept by Nintendo and subsequently loaned to the organizers of Level X, a video game exhibition held from December 4, 2003, to February 8, 2004, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, for a Famicom retrospective in commemoration of the console's 20th anniversary. Nintendo offered repair service for the Famicom in Japan until 2007, when it was discontinued due to a shortage of available parts.\nHardware.\nConfigurations.\nAlthough all versions of the Famicom and NES include essentially similar hardware, they vary in physical characteristics. The original Famicom's design is predominantly white plastic, with dark red trim; it featured a top-loading cartridge slot, grooves on both sides of the deck in which the hardwired game controllers could be placed when not in use, and a 15-pin expansion port located on the unit's front panel for accessories. In contrast, the design of the original NES features a more subdued gray, black, and red color scheme; it includes a front-loading cartridge slot covered by a small, hinged door that can be opened to insert or remove a cartridge and closed at other times, and an expansion port on the bottom of the unit. Compared to the Famicom, the NES includes the 10NES lockout chip and incorporates a matching chip validation check in its cartridge connector.\nIn late 1993, Nintendo introduced a redesigned version of the Famicom and NES (officially named the New Famicom in Japan and the New-Style NES in the US) to complement the Super Famicom and SNES, to prolong interest in the console, and to reduce costs. The redesigned NES features a top-loading cartridge slot and omits the 10NES lockout chip to avoid reliability issues with the original console; the redesign also omits AV output. Conversely, the redesigned Famicom features such output and introduces detachable game controllers, though the microphone functionality is omitted as a result. The redesigned Famicom and NES models are cosmetically similar aside from the presence of a cartridge \"bump\" on the NES model, which the Famicom model lacks to accommodate its shorter cartridges and the RAM Adapter for the Famicom Disk System.\nSharp Corporation produced three licensed variants of the Famicom in Japan, all of which prominently display the shortened moniker rather than the official name, Family Computer. One variant was a television set with an integrated Famicom; originally released in 1983 as the My Computer TV in and models, it was later released in the United States in 1989 as a 19-inch model named the Video Game Television. Another variant is the Twin Famicom console released in 1986 to combine a Famicom with a Famicom Disk System. Sharp then produced the Famicom Titler in 1989. Intended for video capture and production, it features internal RGB video generation and video output via S-Video, plus inputs for adding subtitles and voice-overs.\nHardware clones.\nA thriving market of unlicensed NES hardware clones emerged during the climax of the console's popularity. Initially, such clones were popular in markets with weak copyright law and where Nintendo issue it's systems after famiclones become well known across specific region, making legal products hard to market or create brand awareness. In particular, the Dendy (), an unlicensed hardware clone produced in Taiwan and sold in the former Soviet Union by Steepler, emerged as the most popular video game console of its time in that setting and it enjoyed a degree of fame roughly equivalent to that experienced by the NES/Famicom in North America and Japan, eventually selling 6 million units. Poland had a similar story with Pegasus distributed by Bobmark International which sold more than 1 million units. In China, a place where many of these clones were manufactured, the media reported 30 million units sold until late 1995. A range of Famicom clones was marketed in Latin America during the late 1980s and 1990s with the name Family Game, resembling the original hardware design. Thailand got Family FR brand famiclones, Brazil a superior to the original Phantom System, the Micro Genius (Simplified Chinese: \u5c0f\u5929\u624d) was marketed in Southeast Asia as an alternative to the Famicom; Ending-Man Terminator enjoyed popularity in European Eastern Bloc, parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America. It happened that these clones reached countries with very good copyright law and high awareness of the Nintendo brand such as Power Player Super Joy III in US.\nThe unlicensed clone market has flourished following Nintendo's discontinuation of the NES. Some of the more exotic of these resulting systems surpass the functionality of the original hardware, such as a portable system with a color LCD (PocketFami). Others have been produced for certain specialized markets, such as a rather primitive personal computer with a keyboard and basic word processing software. These unauthorized clones have been helped by the invention of the so-called NES-on-a-chip.\nAs was the case with unlicensed games, Nintendo has typically gone to the courts to prohibit the manufacture and sale of unlicensed cloned hardware. Many of the clone vendors have included built-in copies of licensed Nintendo software, which constitutes copyright infringement in most countries.\nDesign flaws.\nNintendo's design styling for US release was made deliberately different from that of other game consoles. Nintendo wanted to distinguish its product from those of competitors and to avoid the generally poor reputation that game consoles had acquired following the video game crash of 1983. One result of this philosophy is to disguise the cartridge slot design as a front-loading zero-insertion force (ZIF) cartridge socket, designed to resemble the front-loading mechanism of a VCR. The socket works well when both the connector and the cartridges are clean and the pins on the connector are new. However, the socket is not truly zero-insertion force. When a user inserts the cartridge into the NES, the force of pressing the cartridge into place bends the contact pins slightly and presses the cartridge's ROM board back into the cartridge. Frequent insertion and removal of cartridges wears out the pins, and the ZIF design proved more prone to interference by dirt and dust than an industry-standard card edge connector.\nThe design problems were exacerbated by Nintendo's choice of materials. The console slot nickel connector springs wear due to design and the game cartridge's brass plated nickel connectors are also prone to tarnishing and oxidation. Nintendo sought to fix these problems by redesigning the next generation Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) as a top loader similar to the Famicom. Many players try to alleviate issues in the game caused by this corrosion by blowing into the cartridges, then reinserting them, which actually speeds up the tarnishing due to moisture. One way to slow down the tarnishing process and extend the life of the cartridges is to use isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs.\nUsers have attempted to solve these problems by blowing air onto the cartridge connectors, inserting the cartridge just far enough to get the ZIF to lower, licking the edge connector, slapping the side of the system after inserting a cartridge, shifting the cartridge from side to side after insertion, pushing the ZIF up and down repeatedly, holding the ZIF down lower than it should have been, and cleaning the connectors with alcohol. Many frequently used methods to fix this problem actually risk damaging gaming cartridges or the system. In 1989, Nintendo released an official NES Cleaning Kit to help users clean malfunctioning cartridges and consoles.\nIn response to these hardware flaws, \"Nintendo Authorized Repair Centers\" sprang up across the U.S. According to Nintendo, the authorization program was designed to ensure that the machines were properly repaired. Nintendo would ship the necessary replacement parts only to shops that had enrolled in the authorization program.\nWith the release of the top-loading NES-101 (New-Style NES) in 1993 toward the end of the NES's lifespan, Nintendo resolved the problems by switching to a standard card edge connector and eliminating the lockout chip. All of the Famicom systems use standard card edge connectors, as do Nintendo's two subsequent game consoles, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Nintendo 64.\nLockout.\nThe Famicom as released in Japan contains no lockout hardware, which led to unlicensed cartridges (both legitimate and bootleg) becoming extremely common throughout Japan and East Asia. Nintendo tried to promote its \"Seal of Quality\" in these regions to identify licensed games to combat bootlegs, but bootleg Famicom games continued to be produced even after Nintendo moved production onto the Super Famicom, effectively extending the lifetime of the Famicom.\nThe original NES released for Western countries in 1985 contains the 10NES lockout chip, which prevents it from running cartridges unapproved by Nintendo. The inclusion of the 10NES was a direct influence from the 1983 video game crash in North America, partially caused by a market flooded with uncontrolled publishing of games of poor quality for the home consoles. Nintendo did not want to see that happen with the NES and used the lockout chip to restrict games to only those they licensed and approved for the system. This means of protection worked in combination with the Nintendo \"Seal of Quality\", which a developer had to acquire before they would be able to have access to the required 10NES information prior to publication of their game.\nInitially, the 10NES chip proved a significant barrier to unlicensed developers seeking to develop and sell games for the console. However, hobbyists in later years discovered that disassembling the NES and cutting the fourth pin of the lockout chip would change the chip's mode of operation from \"lock\" to \"key\", removing all effects and greatly improving the console's ability to play legal games, bootlegs, and converted imports.\nOriginal NES consoles sold in different regions have different lockout chips, thereby enforcing regional lockout (regardless of TV signal compatibility). Such regions include North America; most of continental Europe (PAL-B); Asia; and the British Isles, Italy, and Australasia (PAL-A).\nProblems with the 10NES lockout chip frequently result in one of the console's most common issues: the blinking red power light, in which the system appears to turn itself on and off repeatedly because the 10NES would reset the console once per second. The lockout chip required constant communication with the chip in the game to work. Dirty, aging, and bent connectors often disrupt the communication, resulting in the blink effect. In other cases, the console turns on but only displays a solid white, gray, or green screen.\nTechnical specifications.\nThe console's main central processing unit (CPU) was produced by Ricoh, which manufactured different versions between NTSC and PAL regions; NTSC consoles have a 2A03 clocked at 1.79\u00a0MHzTooltip megahertz, and PAL consoles have a 2A07 clocked at 1.66\u00a0MHz. Both CPUs are unlicensed variants of the MOS Technology 6502, an 8-bit microprocessor prevalent in contemporary home computers and consoles; Nintendo ostensibly disabled the 6502's binary-coded decimal mode on them to avoid patent infringement against or licensing fees towards MOS Technology, which was owned by then-rival Commodore International. The CPU has access to 2\u00a0KBTooltip kilobyte of onboard work RAMTooltip random-access memory.\nThe console's graphics are handled by a Ricoh 2C02, a processor known as the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) that is clocked at 5.37\u00a0MHz. A derivative of the Texas Instruments TMS9918\u2014a video display controller used in the ColecoVision\u2014the PPU features 2\u00a0KB of video RAM, 256\u00a0bytes of on-die \"object attribute memory\" (OAM) to store sprite display information on up to 64 sprites, and 28\u00a0bytes of RAM to store information on the YIQ-based color palette; the console can display up to 25 colors simultaneously out of 54 usable colors.\nThe console's standard display resolution is 256 \u00d7 240 pixels, though video output options vary between models. The original Famicom features only radio frequency (RF) modulator output, and the NES additionally supports composite video via RCA connectors. The redesigned Famicom omits the RF modulator entirely, only outputting composite video via a proprietary \"multi-out\" connector first introduced on the Super Famicom/SNES; conversely, the redesigned NES features RF modulator output only, though a version of the model including the \"multi-out\" connector was produced in rare quantities.\nThe console produces sound via an audio processing unit (APU) integrated into the processor. It supports a total of five sound channels: two pulse wave channels, one triangle wave channel, one white noise channel, and one DPCMTooltip differential pulse-code modulation channel for sample playback. Audio playback speed is dependent on the CPU clock rate, which is set by a crystal oscillator.\nAccessories.\nControllers.\nThe game controller for both the NES and the Famicom has an oblong brick-like design with a simple four button layout: two round buttons labeled \"A\" and \"B\", a \"START\" button, and a \"SELECT\" button. Additionally, the controllers use the cross-shaped D-pad, designed by Nintendo employee Gunpei Yokoi for Nintendo Game & Watch systems, to replace the bulkier joysticks on controllers of earlier gaming consoles.\nThe original model Famicom features two game controllers, both of which are hardwired to the back of the console. The second controller lacks the START and SELECT button, featuring a small microphone instead; however, few games use this feature. The earliest produced Famicom units have square A and B buttons; issues with them getting stuck when pressed down led Nintendo to change their shape to a circular design in subsequent units following the console's recall.\nInstead of the Famicom's hardwired controllers, the NES has two proprietary seven-pin ports on the front of the console to support detachable controllers and third-party peripherals. The controllers bundled with the NES are identical and include the START and SELECT buttons, lacking the microphone on the original Famicom's second controller. The cables for NES controllers are also generally three times longer than their Famicom counterparts.\nSeveral special controllers are intended for use with specific games, though are not commonly used. Such peripherals include the NES Zapper (a light gun), R.O.B. (a toy robot), and the Power Pad (a dance pad). The original Famicom has a deepened DA-15 expansion port on the front of the unit to accommodate them.\nTwo official advanced controllers were produced for the NES: the NES Advantage, an arcade controller produced by Asciiware and licensed by Nintendo of America; and the NES Max, a controller with grip handles and a \"cycloid\" sliding-disc D-pad in place of the traditional one. Both controllers have a \"Turbo\" feature, which simulates multiple rapid button presses, for the A and B buttons; the NES Max has manually pressed Turbo buttons, and the NES Advantage offers toggle buttons for Turbo functionality along with knobs that adjust the firing rate of each button. The latter also includes a \"Slow\" button that rapidly pauses games, though this function is not intended for games that invoke a pause menu or screen.\nThe standard game controller was redesigned upon the introduction of the redesigned console. Though the original button layout was retained, the shape of the redesigned controller\u2014nicknamed the \"dog bone\" controller\u2014resembles that of the Super Famicom and SNES. It retained NES-style detachable controller ports.\nThe original NES controller has become one of the most recognizable symbols of the console. Nintendo has mimicked the look of the controller in several other products, from promotional merchandise to limited edition versions of the Game Boy Advance.\nJapanese accessories.\nFew of the numerous peripheral devices and software packages for the Famicom were released outside Japan.\nThe Famicom 3D System, an active shutter 3D headset peripheral released in 1987, enabled the ability to play stereoscopic video games. It was a commercial failure and never released outside Japan; users described the headset as bulky and uncomfortable. Seven games are compatible with the glasses, with three of them developed by Square; two titles received worldwide releases as \"Rad Racer\" and \"The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner\".\n\"Family BASIC\" is an implementation of BASIC for the Famicom, packaged with a keyboard. Similar in concept to the Atari 2600 \"BASIC\" cartridge, it allows the user to write programs, especially games, which can be saved on an included cassette recorder. Nintendo of America rejected releasing \"Famicom BASIC\" in the US in favor of its primary marketing demographic of children.\nThe Famicom Modem connected a Famicom to a now defunct proprietary network in Japan which provided content such as financial services. A dial-up modem was never released for the NES after a partnership with Fidelity Investments.\nFamicom Disk System.\nBy 1986, the cost and size limitations of ROM chips used in the Famicom's ROM cartridges were apparent, with no new advancements present to address them. With this in mind, Nintendo looked at the personal computer (PC) market, where the floppy disk was gaining wide adoption as a computer data storage medium. Partnering with Mitsumi to develop a floppy disk add-on for the Famicom based on the latter's Quick Disk format, Nintendo officially released it as the Family Computer Disk System in Japan on February 21, 1986, at a retail price of \u00a515,000.\nThe advantages of the format (called \"Disk Card\") were apparent on launch. It has more than triple the data storage capacity of the then-largest cartridge (used for \"Super Mario Bros.\") and introduced game save capability and lower production costs compared to cartridges, which resulted in lower retail prices for consumers. The add-on also has a new wavetable synthesis sound channel and more data storage for the Famicom's audio sample channel. Taking advantage of the disk's re-writability, Nintendo set up Disk Writer interactive kiosks at retail stores throughout Japan; at each kiosk, consumers could buy new games to rewrite onto their old disks or onto new disks. Disk Fax kiosks allowed players to submit their high scores on special blue disks for contests and rankings, predating the online leaderboard by several years.\nAlthough Nintendo committed to exclusively releasing games on the Disk System after its release, numerous external issues plagued its long-term viability. Just four months after launch, Capcom released a Famicom port of \"Makaimura\" (known as \"Ghosts 'n Goblins\" in the U.S.) on a cartridge with more data storage capacity than what was possible on Disk Cards, nullifying one of the Disk System's major advantages by using discrete logic chips to perform bank switching. Nintendo also demanded half of the copyright ownership for each game it selected for release on the Disk System, resulting in developers electing to remain on cartridge instead as the latter gained functionality previously considered unique to the former. Developers disliked the lower profit margin of the Disk Writer kiosks, and retailers complained of their use of valuable space as demand for the format waned.\nUsage of a floppy disk-based medium brought about further complications; Disk Cards were more fragile than cartridges and were prone to data corruption from magnetic exposure. Their unreliability was exacerbated by their lack of a shutter, which Nintendo substituted with a wax sleeve and clear keep case to reduce costs; blue disks and later Disk Cards included shutters. The rubber belt-based disk drives were also unreliable, with cryptic error codes complicating troubleshooting; even when fully functional, players accustomed to cartridges were annoyed with the introduction of loading times and disk flipping. Furthermore, the rewritable nature of the format resulted in rampant software piracy, with Nintendo's attempts at anti-piracy measures quickly defeated.\nThough selling close to two million units for all of 1986, Nintendo only managed to increase the total to 4.4\u00a0million units by 1990, falling well short of internal projections. By then, the Disk System was rendered obsolete due to advancements in ROM cartridge production: memory mapping chips for expanded data storage capacity, battery-backed SRAMTooltip static random-access memory for game saving, and declining overall production costs. Nintendo alluded to a Western release for the Disk System, going so far as to successfully file a U.S. patent for it and having the Famicom's cartridge pins used by its RAM Adapter for enhanced audio rerouted to the NES's little-used bottom expansion port. However, such a release never materialized due to its reception in Japan. Most of its games were re-released with workarounds on cartridge for both the Famicom and NES, without the enhanced audio. Although the last game for the Disk System was released in December 1992, Nintendo continued repair and rewrite services for it until September 2003.\nNES Test Station.\nThe NES Test Station diagnostics machine was introduced in 1988. It is an NES-based unit designed for testing NES hardware, components, and games. It was only provided for use in World of Nintendo boutiques as part of the Nintendo World Class Service program. Visitors were to bring items to test with the station, and could be assisted by a store technician or employee.\nThe NES Test Station's front has a Game Pak slot and connectors for testing various components (AC adapter, RF switch, Audio/Video cable, NES Control Deck, accessories and games), with a centrally-located selector knob to choose which component to test. The unit itself weighs approximately 11.7 pounds without a TV. It connects to a television via a combined A/V and RF Switch cable. By actuating the green button, a user can toggle between an A/V Cable or RF Switch connection. The television it is connected to (typically 11\" to 14\") is meant to be placed atop it.\nIn 1991, Nintendo provided an add-on called the \"Super NES Counter Tester\" that tests Super NES components and games. The Super NES Counter Tester is a standard Control Deck on a metal fixture with the connection from the back of the unit re-routed to the front. These connections may be made directly to the test station or to the TV, depending on what is to be tested.\nGames.\nGame Pak.\nThe NES uses a 72-pin design, as compared with 60 pins on the Famicom. To reduce costs and inventory, some early games released in North America are simply Famicom cartridges attached to an adapter to fit inside the NES hardware. Early NES cartridges are held together with five small slotted screws. Games released after 1987 were redesigned slightly to incorporate two plastic clips molded into the plastic itself, removing the need for the top two screws.\nThe back of the cartridge bears a label with handling instructions. Production and software revision codes were imprinted as stamps on the back label to correspond with the software version and producer. All licensed NTSC and PAL cartridges are a standard shade of gray plastic, with the exception of \"The Legend of Zelda\" and ', which were manufactured in gold-plastic carts. Unlicensed carts were produced in black, robin egg blue, and gold, and are all slightly different shapes than standard NES cartridges. Nintendo also produced yellow-plastic carts for internal use at Nintendo Service Centers, although these \"test carts\" were never made available for purchase. All licensed US cartridges were made by Nintendo, Konami, and Acclaim. For promotion of ', Capcom sent 150 limited-edition gold NES cartridges with the original game, featuring the \"Remastered\" art as the sticker, to different gaming news agencies. The instruction label on the back includes the opening lyric from the show's theme song, \"Life is like a hurricane\".\nFamicom cartridges are shaped slightly differently. Unlike NES games, official Famicom cartridges were produced in many colors of plastic. Adapters, similar in design to the popular accessory Game Genie, are available that allow Famicom games to be played on an NES. In Japan, several companies manufactured the cartridges for the Famicom. This allowed these companies to develop customized chips designed for specific purposes, such as superior sound and graphics.\nThird-party licensing.\nNintendo's near monopoly on the home video game market left it with a dominant influence over the industry. Unlike Atari, which never actively pursued third-party developers (and even went to court in an attempt to force Activision to cease production of Atari 2600 games), Nintendo had anticipated and encouraged the involvement of third-party software developers, though strictly on Nintendo's terms. Some of the Nintendo platform-control measures were adopted in a less stringent way by later console manufacturers such as Sega, Sony, and Microsoft.\nTo this end, a 10NES authentication chip is in every console and in every licensed cartridge. If the console's chip can not detect a counterpart chip inside the cartridge, the game does not load. Nintendo portrayed these measures as intended to protect the public against poor-quality games, and placed a golden seal of approval on all licensed games released for the system.\nNintendo found success with Japanese arcade manufacturers such as Konami, Capcom, Taito, and Namco, which signed on as third-party developers. However, they found resistance with US game developers including Atari Games, Activision, Electronic Arts, and Epyx refusing Nintendo's one-sided terms. Acclaim Entertainment, a fledgling game publisher founded by former Activision employees, was the first major third-party licensee in the United States to sign on with Nintendo in late 1987. Atari Games (through Tengen) and Activision signed on soon after.\nNintendo was not as restrictive as Sega, which did not permit third-party publishing until Mediagenic in late summer 1988. Nintendo's intention was to reserve a large part of NES game revenue for itself. Nintendo required that it be the sole manufacturer of all cartridges, and that the publisher had to pay in full before the cartridges for that game be produced. Cartridges could not be returned to Nintendo, so publishers assumed all the risk. As a result, some publishers lost more money due to distress sales of remaining inventory at the end of the NES era than they ever earned in profits from sales of the games. Because Nintendo controlled the production of all cartridges, it was able to enforce strict rules on its third-party developers, who were required to sign a contract that would obligate them to develop exclusively for the system, order at least 10,000 cartridges, and only make five games per year. The global 1988 shortage of DRAM and ROM chips reportedly caused Nintendo to only permit an average of 25% of publishers' requests for cartridges, with some receiving much higher amounts and others almost none. GameSpy noted that Nintendo's \"iron-clad terms\" made the company many enemies during the 1980s. Some developers tried to circumvent the five game limit by creating additional company brands like Konami's Ultra Games label; others tried circumventing the 10NES chip.\nNintendo was accused of antitrust violations because of the strict licensing requirements. The United States Department of Justice and several states began probing Nintendo's business practices, leading to the involvement of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC conducted an extensive investigation which included interviewing hundreds of retailers. During the FTC probe, Nintendo changed the terms of its publisher licensing agreements to eliminate the two-year rule and other restrictive terms. Nintendo and the FTC settled the case in April 1991, with Nintendo required to send vouchers giving a $5 discount off to a new game, to every person that had purchased an NES game between June 1988 and December 1990. GameSpy remarked that Nintendo's punishment was particularly weak given the case's findings, although it has been speculated that the FTC did not want to damage the video game industry in the United States.\nWith the NES near the end of its life, many third-party publishers such as Electronic Arts supported upstart competing consoles with less strict licensing terms such as the Sega Genesis and then the PlayStation, which eroded and then took over Nintendo's dominance in the home console market, respectively. Consoles from Nintendo's rivals in the post-SNES era had always enjoyed much stronger third-party support than Nintendo, which relied more heavily on first-party games.\nUnlicensed games.\nCompanies that refused to pay the licensing fee or were rejected by Nintendo found ways to circumvent the console's authentication system. Most of these companies created circuits that use a voltage spike to temporarily disable the 10NES chip. A few unlicensed games released in Europe and Australia are in the form of a dongle to connect to a licensed game, to use the licensed game's 10NES chip for authentication. To combat unlicensed games, Nintendo of America threatened retailers who sold them with losing their supply of licensed games, and multiple revisions were made to the NES PCBs to prevent unlicensed games from working.\nAtari Games took a different approach with its line of NES products, Tengen. The company attempted to reverse engineer the lockout chip to develop its own \"Rabbit\" chip. Tengen also obtained a description of the lockout chip from the United States Patent and Trademark Office by falsely claiming that it was required to defend against present infringement claims. Nintendo successfully sued Tengen for copyright infringement. Tengen's antitrust claims against Nintendo were never decided.\nColor Dreams made Christian video games under the subsidiary name Wisdom Tree. Historian Steven Kent wrote, \"Wisdom Tree presented Nintendo with a prickly situation. The general public did not seem to pay close attention to the court battle with Atari Games, and industry analysts were impressed with Nintendo's legal acumen; but going after a tiny company that published innocuous religious games was another story.\"\nGame rentals.\nAs the Nintendo Entertainment System grew in popularity and entered millions of American homes, some small video rental shops began buying their own copies of NES games, and renting them out to customers for around the same price as a video cassette rental for a few days. Nintendo received no profit from the practice beyond the initial cost of their game, and unlike movie rentals, a newly released game could hit store shelves and be available for rent on the same day. Nintendo took steps to stop game rentals, but did not take any formal legal action until Blockbuster Video began to make game rentals a large-scale service. Nintendo claimed that allowing customers to rent games would significantly hurt sales and drive up the cost of games. Nintendo lost the lawsuit, but did win on a claim of copyright infringement. Blockbuster was banned from including photocopies of original, copyrighted instruction booklets with its rented games. In compliance with the ruling, Blockbuster produced original short instructions\u2014usually in the form of a small booklet, card, or label stuck on the back of the rental box\u2014that explained the game's basic premise and controls. Video rental shops continued the practice of renting video games.\nReception.\nBy 1988, industry observers stated that the NES's popularity had grown so quickly that the market for Nintendo cartridges was larger than that for all home computer software. \"Compute!\" reported in 1989 that Nintendo had sold seven million NES systems in 1988 alone, almost as many as the number of Commodore 64s sold in its first five years. \"Computer game makers [are] scared stiff\", the magazine said, stating that Nintendo's popularity caused most competitors to have poor sales during the previous Christmas and resulted in serious financial problems for some.\nIn June 1989, Nintendo of America's vice president of marketing Peter Main, said that the Famicom was present in 37% of Japan's households. By 1990, 30% of American households owned the NES, compared to 23% for all personal computers. By 1990, the NES had outsold all previously released consoles worldwide. The slogan for this brand was \"It can't be beaten\". The Nintendo Entertainment System was not available in the Soviet Union.\nIn the early 1990s, gamers predicted that competition from technologically superior systems such as the 16-bit Sega Genesis would mean the immediate end of the NES's dominance. Instead, during the first year of Nintendo's successor console the Super Famicom (named Super Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan), the Famicom remained the second highest-selling video game console in Japan, outselling the newer and more powerful NEC PC Engine and Sega Mega Drive by a wide margin. The console remained popular in Japan and North America until late 1993, when the demand for new NES software abruptly plummeted. The final licensed Famicom game released in Japan is \"Takahashi Meijin no B\u014dken Jima IV (Adventure Island IV)\", in North America is \"Wario's Woods\", and in Europe is \"The Lion King\" in 1995. In the wake of ever decreasing sales and the lack of new games, Nintendo of America officially discontinued the NES by 1995. Nintendo produced new Famicom units in Japan until September 25, 2003, and continued to repair Famicom consoles until October 31, 2007, attributing the discontinuation of support to insufficient supplies of parts.\nThe NES was initially not as successful in Europe during the late 1980s, when it was outsold by the Master System in the United Kingdom. By 1990, the Master System was the highest-selling console in Europe, though the NES was beginning to have a fast-growing user base in the United Kingdom. During the early 1990s, NES sales caught up with and narrowly overtook the Master System overall in Western Europe, though the Master System maintained its lead in several markets such as the United Kingdom, Belgium and Spain.\nLegacy.\nThe NES was released two years after the video game crash of 1983, when many retailers and adult consumers regarded electronic games as a passing fad, so many believed at first that the NES would soon fade. Before the NES and Famicom, Nintendo was known as a moderately successful Japanese toy and playing card manufacturer, but the consoles' popularity helped the company grow into an internationally recognized name almost synonymous with video games as Atari had been, and set the stage for Japanese dominance of the video game industry. With the NES, Nintendo also changed the relationship between console manufacturers and third-party software developers by restricting developers from publishing and distributing software without licensed approval. This led to higher-quality games, which helped change the attitude of a public that had grown weary from poorly produced games for earlier systems.\nThe NES hardware design is also very influential. Nintendo chose the name \"Nintendo Entertainment System\" for the US market and redesigned the system so it would not give the appearance of a child's toy. The front-loading cartridge input allowed it to be used more easily in a TV stand with other entertainment devices, such as a videocassette recorder.\nThe system's hardware limitations led to design principles that still influence the development of modern video games. Many prominent game franchises originated on the NES, including Nintendo's own \"Super Mario Bros.\",| \"The Legend of Zelda\" and \"Metroid\", Capcom's \"Mega Man\" franchise, Konami's \"Castlevania\" franchise, Square's \"Final Fantasy\",| and Enix's \"Dragon Quest\"| franchises.\nNES imagery, especially its controller, has become a popular motif for a variety of products, including Nintendo's Game Boy Advance.\nAt the Tokyo Game Show in 2023, the \"Famicom\" was bestowed \"The Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Award\" in honour of the console's influence and laying down the foundations for the games industry.\nThe NES library includes some influential games. \"Super Mario Bros.\" is the forerunner of side-scrolling games, while \"The Legend of Zelda\" had mostly influenced action-adventure games and helped popularizing the save data in video games. Other two influential games are \"Metroid\" and \"Castlevania II\", which had established the metroidvania genre.\nIn 2011, \"IGN\" named the NES the greatest video game console of all time.\nEmulation.\nThe NES can be emulated on many other systems. The first emulator was the Japanese-only Pasofami. It was soon followed by iNES, which is available in English and is cross-platform, in 1996. It was described as being the first NES emulation software that could be used by a non-expert. The first version of NESticle, an unofficial MS-DOS-based emulator, was released on April 3, 1997. Nintendo offers licensed emulation of some NES games via its Virtual Console service for the Wii, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U, and via its Nintendo Switch Online service.\nRe-release.\nOn July 14, 2016, Nintendo announced the November 2016 launch of a miniature replica of the NES, named the Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition in the United States and Nintendo Classic Mini: Nintendo Entertainment System in Europe and Australia. The emulation-based console includes 30 permanently bundled games from the vintage NES library, including the \"Super Mario Bros.\" series and \"The Legend of Zelda\" series. The system has HDMI display output and a new replica controller, which can also connect to the Wii Remote for use with Virtual Console games. It was discontinued in North America on April 13, 2017, and worldwide on April 15, 2017. However, Nintendo announced in September 2017 that the NES Classic Mini would return to production on June 29, 2018, only to be discontinued again permanently by December of that year.\nNotes.\nTransliterations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["18944028", "14013625", "28314"], "permutation_1": ["18944028", "14013625", "28314"], "permutation_2": ["14013625", "28314", "18944028"], "permutation_3": ["14013625", "28314", "18944028"]}
{"id": "3hop2__160165_280480_606586", "docs_added": {"2948394": "Logan, Lawrence County, Missouri\nUnincorporated community in Missouri, U.S.\nLogan is an unincorporated community in eastern Lawrence County, Missouri, United States. It is located off U.S. Route 60, one mile northeast of Marionville. Several homes are located there.\nLogan was platted in 1870. The community has the name of William and Hetty E. Logan, original owners of the town site. A post office called Logan was established in 1871, and remained in operation until 1955.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "150708": "Monett, Missouri\nMonett is the most-populous city in Barry and Lawrence counties in the U.S. state of Missouri. The city is located in the Ozarks, just south of Interstate 44 between Joplin and Springfield. According to the 2020 census, the population of the town was estimated to be 9,576 individuals.\nHistory.\nSouthwest Missouri, including the area of what is now Monett, was inhabited by Native Americans of the Osage Nation until their forced removal to Indian Territory.\nSettlement: 1870-1900.\nMonett was created as a railroad town by the St. Louis\u2013San Francisco Railway (\"Frisco Line\"), which was extended into the area in 1870, and a branch line going to Paris, Texas, was built. Both lines are still in existence and operated by the BNSF Railway. During this time the area went through several names including Kings Prairie Depot, Plymouth, Plymouth Junction (when the southern branch was built in 1880), Gonten (named for the local postmaster because the Post Service said there were other Plymouths); and finally, Monett in 1887 when the area was formally platted and the Monett name was applied to the post office. It was named for Henry Monett who was a popular general station agent for various railroads including the New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad (\"Nickel Plate Railroad\") before becoming an agent for the New York Central Railroad shortly before his death at the age of 35 in 1888.\nThe community was very much noted for being a rail town and had a Harvey House operating at the Frisco train station from 1896 until 1930. The community in the Ozark Mountains also had a thriving fruit business and was nicknamed the \"Strawberry Capital of the Midwest.\" The Ozark Fruit Growers Association building, which was built in 1927, is part of the Downtown Monett Historic District and is on the National Register of Historic Places.\nThe David W. Courdin House, Downtown Monett Historic District, and Waldensian Church and Cemetery of Stone Prairie are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nIn 1894, a lynching and race riot took place in Monett before the violence spread to Pierce City and other southwestern Missouri towns. Monett became a sundown town, banning African Americans from living or staying there after dark, with a sign across the main street saying: \"Nigger, don't let the sun go down.\" A newspaper in another Missouri town reported in 1906 that \"Monett, Pierce City, Rogers, Ark., and several other towns around here have driven the negros out.\" When Pierce City drove out its African American population in an act of ethnic cleansing, the \"St. Louis Post-Dispatch\" said the town had been \"Monettized\".\n20th century.\nFrom about 1908 through 1911, Monett investors led by L. B. Durnil and U. S. Barnsley sought to build an airplane. Their most successful attempt was the DeChenne airplane. The DeChenne airplane gave its first public demonstration flight in Monett on July 4, 1911, flown by Monett pharmacist Logan McKee. It then made an exhibition tour in Oklahoma and Texas.\nThe population had reached 4,177 by 1910, due in large part to the railroad and its roundhouse. By 1937, a promotional pamphlet reported one out of eight people in Monett worked for the railroad.\nIn a postwar industrialization effort, the Monett Industrial Development Corporation brought light industry to the town, further diversifying the local and broader economy. This diversification nearly doubled the population during the century, to 7,396 by 2000.\n21st century.\nThrough a combination of private investment and public resources, numerous restoration and revitalization projects have been undertaken in the historic downtown to restore its architectural quality, upgrade the infrastructure, drive local business success, and improve the quality of life.\nIn 2018, Missouri Governor Eric Greitens and Senator Roy Blunt announced an \"Opportunity Zone\" in Monett, allocating state and federal tax incentives for businesses that invest in the areas designated. In 2018, Monett adopted the complete streets policy, the 39th city in Missouri to do so.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2020 census.\nThe 2020 United States census counted 9,576 people, 3,246 households, and 2,193 families in Monett. The population density was 1,089.4 per square mile (420.6/km2). There were 3,537 housing units at an average density of 402.4 per square mile (155.3/km2). The racial makeup was 68.8% (6,588) white, 0.29% (28) black or African-American, 1.99% (191) Native American, 3.94% (377) Asian, 0.46% (44) Pacific Islander, 12.95% (1,240) from other races, and 11.57% (1,108) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race was 32.4% (2,925) of the population.\nOf the 3,246 households, 35.5% had children under the age of 18; 46.9% were married couples living together; 28.9% had a female householder with no husband present. Of all households, 26.4% consisted of individuals and 10.9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.8 and the average family size was 3.3.\n26.1% of the population was under the age of 18, 8.2% from 18 to 24, 28.5% from 25 to 44, 17.3% from 45 to 64, and 14.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 33.6 years. For every 100 females, the population had 111.1 males. For every 100 females ages 18 and older, there were 103.5 males.\nThe 2016-2020 5-year American Community Survey estimates show that the median household income was $39,435 (with a margin of error of +/- $4,302) and the median family income was $45,522 (+/- $7,363). Males had a median income of $30,238 (+/- $2,467) versus $22,928 (+/- $3,920) for females. The median income for those above 16 years old was $26,624 (+/- $1,764). Approximately, 11.1% of families and 17.8% of the population were below the poverty line, including 23.2% of those under the age of 18 and 8.2% of those ages 65 or over.\n2010 census.\nAs of the census of 2010, there were 8,873 people, 3,405 households, and 2,282 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 3,828 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 86.8% White, 0.8% African American, 0.9% Native American, 1.0% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 8.5% from other races, and 1.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 19.0% of the population.\nThere were 3,405 households, of which 36.8% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 48.8% were married couples living together, 12.7% had a female householder with no husband present, 5.6% had a male householder with no wife present, and 33.0% were non-families. 27.9% of all households were made up of individuals, and 11.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.57 and the average family size was 3.12.\nThe median age in the city was 34 years. 27.8% of residents were under the age of 18; 9% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 26.6% were from 25 to 44; 22.1% were from 45 to 64; and 14.5% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 48.1% male and 51.9% female.\n2000 census.\nAs of the census of 2000, there were 7,396 people, 2,904 households, and 1,916 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 3,130 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 89.45% White, 2.00% African American, 0.82% Native American, 0.62% Asian, 0.11% Pacific Islander, 7.82% from other races, and 0.96% from two or more races.\nThere were 2,904 households, out of which 32.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 51.2% were married couples living together, 10.7% had a female householder with no husband present, and 34.0% were non-families. 29.4% of all households were made up of individuals, and 15.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.49 and the average family size was 3.08.\nIn the city the population was spread out, with 26.5% under the age of 18, 9.7% from 18 to 24, 27.3% from 25 to 44, 18.9% from 45 to 64, and 17.6% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females, there were 91.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 86.8 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $30,764, and the median income for a family was $36,858. Males had a median income of $26,150 versus $18,211 for females. The per capita income for the city was $17,048. About 9.2% of families and 15.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 25.4% of those under age 18 and 7.8% of those age 65 or over.\nEconomy.\nMonett's economy is based on manufacturing, financial services, software, retail, and education. This community is driven primarily by its industrial sector. Several key businesses in town include Jack Henry & Associates, CoxHealth, Tyson Foods, Miracle Recreation Equipment Company, Schreiber Foods, Hydro Aluminum, International Dehydrated Foods, Miracle, Architectural Systems Inc., EFCO, and WinTech.\nThe town has seen rapid growth over the last two decades. More recently, heavy investment into Monett's Historical Downtown has brought new life to many businesses, and the area's cultural scene.\nMonett is a part of the Southwest Missouri Council of Governments (SMCOG), providing urban planning and economic development resources for the ten-county region around the Springfield metropolitan area, Missouri.\nTransportation.\nHighways.\nMonett is at the crossroads of U.S. Route 60 and Missouri Route 37, connecting the town to Interstate 44 and the metropolitan areas of Joplin, Springfield and Northwest Arkansas.\nAirport.\nThe Monett Municipal Airport (HFJ) is a public-use airport, registering 18,100 aircraft operations annually in 2008. In the 2012 economic impact study conducted by the Missouri Department of Transportation, The Airport ranked 9th in the state of Missouri with a total output of 13.1 million dollars annually.\nRailroads.\nMonett was once a thriving depot used by the St. Louis\u2013San Francisco Railway, today it is served by the BNSF Railway and the Arkansas and Missouri Railroad.\nEducation.\nPublic.\nMonett is part of the Monett R-1 School District. The district has the following schools:\nMissouri Schools for the Severely Disabled (MSSD) is a state-operated program serving Missouri students with severe disabilities in the greater Monett area at:\nPrivate.\nThe private schools in Monett include Berean Christian Academy and St. Lawrence Catholic Elementary.\nHigher education.\nDowntown Monett is home to a satellite campus of Drury University.\nLibrary.\nMonett has a public library, a branch of the Barry-Lawrence Regional Library.\nCulture.\nSouthwest Missouri is a close collection of cities, towns, and communities in the heart of the Ozarks; the majority of these are located between the metropolitan areas of Joplin and Springfield and the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers area.\nHospitals.\nCox Monett Hospital, part of CoxHealth, built in 2021\nGeography.\nMonett is located at (36.923725, -93.922332).\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and is water.\nClimate.\nThe climate is characterized by relatively high temperatures and evenly distributed precipitation throughout the year. The K\u00f6ppen Climate Classification subtype for this climate is \"Cfa\" (Humid Subtropical Climate).\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "19571": "Missouri\nU.S. state\nMissouri (\"see pronunciation\") is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it borders Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas to the south and Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska to the west. In the south are the Ozarks, a forested highland, providing timber, minerals, and recreation. At 1.5 billion years old, the St. Francois Mountains are among the oldest in the world. The Missouri River, after which the state is named, flows through the center and into the Mississippi River, which makes up the eastern border. With over six million residents, it is the 19th-most populous state of the country. The largest urban areas are St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, and Columbia. The capital is Jefferson City.\nHumans have inhabited present-day Missouri for at least 12,000 years. The Mississippian culture, which emerged in the ninth century, built cities with pyramidal and other ceremonial mounds before declining in the 14th century. The Indigenous Osage and Missouria nations inhabited the area when European people arrived in the 17th century. The French incorporated the territory into Louisiana, founding Ste. Genevieve in 1735 and St. Louis in 1764. After a brief period of Spanish rule, the United States acquired Missouri as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Americans from the Upland South rushed into the new Missouri Territory, taking advantage of its productive agricultural plains; Missouri played a central role in the westward expansion of the United States. Missouri was admitted as a slave state as part of the Missouri Compromise of 1820. As a border state, Missouri's role in the American Civil War was complex, and it was subject to rival governments, raids, and guerilla warfare. After the war, both Greater St. Louis and the Kansas City metropolitan area became large centers of industrialization and business. \nToday the state is divided into 114 counties and the independent city of St. Louis. Missouri has been called the \"Mother of the West\", the \"Cave State\", and the \"Show Me State\". Its culture blends elements of the Midwestern and Southern United States. It is the birthplace of the musical genres ragtime, Kansas City jazz and St. Louis blues. The well-known Kansas City-style barbecue, and the lesser-known St. Louis-style barbecue, can be found across the state and beyond.\nMissouri is a major center of beer brewing and has some of the most permissive alcohol laws in the U.S. It is home to Anheuser-Busch, the world's largest beer producer, and produces Missouri wine, especially in the Missouri Rhineland. Outside the state's major cities, popular tourist destinations include the Lake of the Ozarks, Table Rock Lake and Branson. Some of the largest companies based in the state include Cerner, Express Scripts, Monsanto, Emerson Electric, Edward Jones, H&R Block, Wells Fargo Advisors, Centene Corporation, and O'Reilly Auto Parts. Well-known universities in Missouri include the University of Missouri, Saint Louis University, and Washington University in St. Louis.\nEtymology and pronunciation.\nThe state is named for the Missouri River, which was named after the indigenous Missouria, a Siouan-language tribe. French colonists adapted a form of the Illinois language-name for the people: \"Wimihsoorita\". Their name means \"One who has dugout canoes\".\nThe name \"Missouri\" has several different pronunciations even among its present-day inhabitants, the two most common being and . Further pronunciations also exist in Missouri or elsewhere in the United States, involving the realization of the medial consonant as either or ; the vowel in the second syllable as either or ; and the third syllable as or . Any combination of these phonetic realizations may be observed coming from speakers of American English. In British Received Pronunciation, the preferred variant is , with being a possible alternative.\nDonald M. Lance, a professor of English at the University of Missouri, stated that no pronunciation could be declared correct, nor could any be clearly defined as native or outsider, rural or urban, southern or northern, educated or otherwise. Politicians often employ multiple pronunciations, even during a single speech, to appeal to a greater number of listeners. In informal contexts respellings of the state's name, such as \"Missour-\"ee\"\" or \"Missour-\"uh\"\", are occasionally used to distinguish pronunciations phonetically.\nNicknames.\nThere is no official state nickname. However, Missouri's unofficial nickname is the \"Show Me State\", which appears on its license plates. This phrase has several origins. One is popularly ascribed to a speech by Congressman Willard Vandiver in 1899, who declared that \"I come from a state that raises corn and cotton, cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I'm from Missouri, and you have got to show me.\" This is in keeping with the saying \"I'm from Missouri\", which means \"I'm skeptical of the matter and not easily convinced.\" However, according to researchers, the phrase \"show me\" was already in use before the 1890s. Another one states that it is a reference to Missouri miners who were taken to Leadville, Colorado, to replace striking workers. Since the new miners were unfamiliar with the mining methods, they required frequent instruction. Pit bosses began saying, \"That man is from Missouri. You'll have to show him.\".\nOther nicknames for Missouri include \"The Lead State\", \"The Bullion State\", \"The Ozark State\", \"The Mother of the West\", \"The Iron Mountain State\", and \"Pennsylvania of the West\". It is also known as the \"Cave State\" because there are more than 7,300 recorded caves in the state (second to Tennessee). Perry County is the county with the most caves and the single longest cave.\nThe official state motto is \"Salus Populi Suprema Lex Esto\", Latin for \"Let the welfare of the people be the supreme law.\"\nHistory.\nEarly history.\nArchaeological excavations along river valleys have shown continuous habitation since about 9000 BCE. Beginning before 1000 CE, the people of the Mississippian culture created regional political centers at present-day St. Louis and across the Mississippi River at Cahokia, near present-day Collinsville, Illinois. Their large cities included thousands of individual residences. Still, they are known for their surviving massive earthwork mounds, built for religious, political and social reasons, in platform, ridgetop and conical shapes. Cahokia was the center of a regional trading network that reached from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. The civilization declined by 1400 CE, and most descendants left the area long before the arrival of Europeans. St. Louis was at one time known as Mound City by the European Americans because of the numerous surviving prehistoric mounds since lost to urban development. The Mississippian culture left mounds throughout the middle Mississippi and Ohio river valleys, extending into the southeast and the upper river.\nThe land that became the state of Missouri was part of numerous different territories, possessed changing and often indeterminate borders, and had many different Native American and European names between the 1600s and statehood. For much of the first half of the 1700s, the west bank of the Mississippi River that would become Missouri was mostly uninhabited, something of a no man's land that kept peace between the Illinois on the east bank of the Mississippi River and to the North, and the Osage and Missouri Indians of the lower Missouri Valley. In the early 1700s, French traders and missionaries explored the whole of the Mississippi Valley, and named the region \"Louisiana\". Around the same time, a different group of French Canadians established five villages on the east bank of the Mississippi River and identified their settlements as being in le pays des Illinois, \"the country of the Illinois\". When settlers of French Canadian descent began crossing the Mississippi River to establish settlements such as Ste. Genevieve, they continued to identify their settlements as being in the Illinois Country. At the same time, the French settlements on both sides of the Mississippi River were part of the French province of Louisiana. To distinguish the settlements in the Middle Mississippi Valley from French settlements in the lower Mississippi Valley around New Orleans, French officials and inhabitants referred to the Middle Mississippi Valley as La Haute Louisiane, \"The High Louisiana\", or \"Upper Louisiana\".\nThe first European settlers were mostly ethnic French Canadians, who created their first settlement in Missouri at present-day Ste. Genevieve, about south of St. Louis. They had migrated in about 1750 from the Illinois Country. They came from colonial villages on the east side of the Mississippi River, where soils were becoming exhausted and there was insufficient river bottom land for the growing population. The early Missouri settlements included many enslaved Africans and Native Americans, and slave labor was central to both commercial agriculture and the fur trade. Sainte-Genevi\u00e8ve became a thriving agricultural center, producing enough surplus wheat, corn and tobacco to ship tons of grain annually downriver to Lower Louisiana for trade. Grain production in the Illinois Country was critical to the survival of Lower Louisiana and especially the city of New Orleans.\nSt. Louis was founded on February 14, 1764, by French fur traders Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent, Pierre Lacl\u00e8de, and Auguste Chouteau. From 1764 to 1803, European control of the area west of the Mississippi to the northernmost part of the Missouri River basin, called Louisiana, was assumed by the Spanish as part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, due to Treaty of Fontainebleau (in order to have Spain join with France in the war against England). The arrival of the Spanish in St. Louis was in September 1767.\nSt. Louis became the center of a regional fur trade with Native American tribes that extended up the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, dominating the regional economy for decades. Trading partners of major firms shipped their furs from St. Louis by river down to New Orleans for export to Europe. They provided a variety of goods to traders for sale and trade with their Native American clients. The fur trade and associated businesses made St. Louis an early financial center and provided the wealth for some to build fine houses and import luxury items. Its location near the confluence of the Illinois River meant it also handled produce from the agricultural areas. River traffic and trade along the Mississippi were integral to the state's economy. As the area's first major city, St. Louis expanded greatly after the invention of the steamboat and the increased river trade.\n19th century.\nNapoleon Bonaparte had gained Louisiana for French ownership from Spain in 1800 under the Treaty of San Ildefonso after it had been a Spanish colony since 1762, but the treaty was kept secret. Louisiana remained nominally under Spanish control until a transfer of power to France on November 30, 1803, just three weeks before the cession to the United States.\nPart of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase by the United States, Missouri earned the nickname \"Gateway to the West\" because it served as a significant departure point for expeditions and settlers heading to the West during the 19th century. St. Charles, just west of St. Louis, was the starting point and the return destination of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which ascended the Missouri River in 1804, to explore the western lands to the Pacific Ocean. For decades, St. Louis was a major supply point for parties of settlers heading west.\nAs many of the early settlers in western Missouri migrated from the Upper South, they brought enslaved African Americans as agricultural laborers, and they desired to continue their culture and the institution of slavery. They settled predominantly in 17 counties along the Missouri River, in an area of flatlands that enabled plantation agriculture and became known as \"Little Dixie\".\nThe state was rocked by the 1811\u201312 New Madrid earthquakes. Casualties were few due to the sparse population.\nAdmission as a state in 1821.\nIn 1821, the former Missouri Territory was admitted as a slave state, under the Missouri Compromise, and with a temporary state capital in St. Charles. In 1826, the capital was shifted to its permanent location of Jefferson City, also on the Missouri River.\nOriginally the state's western border was a straight line, defined as the meridian passing through the Kawsmouth, the point where the Kansas River enters the Missouri River. The river has moved since this designation. This line is known as the Osage Boundary. In 1836 the Platte Purchase was added to the northwest corner of the state after purchase of the land from the native tribes, making the Missouri River the border north of the Kansas River. This addition increased the land area of what was already the largest state in the Union at the time (about to Virginia's 65,000 square miles, which then included West Virginia).\nIn the early 1830s, Mormon migrants from northern states and Canada began settling near Independence and areas just north of there. Conflicts over religion and slavery arose between the 'old settlers' (mainly from the South) and the Mormons (mainly from the North). The Mormon War erupted in 1838. By 1839, with the help of an \"Extermination Order\" by Governor Lilburn Boggs, the old settlers forcibly expelled the Mormons from Missouri and confiscated their lands.\nConflicts over slavery exacerbated border tensions among the states and territories. From 1838 to 1839, a border dispute with Iowa over the so-called Honey Lands resulted in both states' calling-up of militias along the border.\nWith increasing migration, from the 1830s to the 1860s, Missouri's population almost doubled with every decade. Most newcomers were American-born, but many Irish and German immigrants arrived in the late 1840s and 1850s. As a majority were Catholic, they set up their own religious institutions in the state, which had been mostly Protestant. Many settled in cities, creating a regional and then state network of Catholic churches and schools. 19th-century German immigrants created the wine industry along the Missouri River and the beer industry in St. Louis.\nWhile many German immigrants were strongly anti-slavery, many Irish immigrants living in cities were pro-slavery, fearing that liberating African-American slaves would create a glut of unskilled labor, driving wages down.\nMost Missouri farmers practiced subsistence farming before the American Civil War. The majority of those who held slaves had fewer than five each. Planters, defined by some historians as those holding 20 slaves or more, were concentrated in the counties known as \"Little Dixie\", in the central part of the state along the Missouri River. The tensions over slavery chiefly had to do with the future of the state and nation. In 1860, enslaved African Americans made up less than 10% of the state's population of 1,182,012. In order to control the flooding of farmland and low-lying villages along the Mississippi, the state had completed construction of of levees along the river by 1860.\nAmerican Civil War.\nAfter the secession of Southern states began in 1861, the Missouri legislature called for the election of a special convention on secession. This convention voted against secession, but also qualified their support of the Union. In the aftermath of Battle of Fort Sumter Pro-Southern Governor Claiborne F. Jackson ordered the mobilization of several hundred members of the state militia who had gathered in a camp in St. Louis for training. In secret, he also requested Confederate arms and artillery to help take the St. Louis Arsenal. Alarmed at this action, and discovering the Confederate aid, General Nathaniel Lyon struck first, encircling the camp and forcing the state troops to surrender. Lyon directed his soldiers, largely non-English-speaking German immigrants, to march the prisoners through the streets, and this led to riot by pro-secession citizens. While it is disputed how it started, this riot led to violence and Union soldiers killed by St. Louis civilians. The event as a whole, is called the Camp Jackson Affair.\nThese events sharpened the divisions within the state. Governor Jackson appointed Sterling Price, president of the convention on secession, as head of the new Missouri State Guard. In the face of Union General Lyon's rapid advance through the state, Jackson and Price were forced to flee the capital of Jefferson City on June 14, 1861. In Neosho, Missouri, Jackson called the state legislature into session to call for secession. However, the elected legislative body was split between pro-Union and pro-Confederate. As such, few of the pro-unionist attended the session called in Neosho, and the ordinance of secession was quickly adopted. The Confederacy recognized Missouri secession on October 30, 1861.\nWith the elected governor absent from the capital and the legislators largely dispersed, the state convention was reassembled with most of its members present, save twenty who fled south with Jackson's forces. The convention declared all offices vacant and installed Hamilton Gamble as the new governor of Missouri. President Lincoln's administration immediately recognized Gamble's government as the legal Missouri government. The federal government's decision enabled raising pro-Union militia forces for service within the state and volunteer regiments for the Union Army.\nFighting ensued between Union forces and a combined army of General Price's Missouri State Guard and Confederate troops from Arkansas and Texas under General Ben McCulloch. After winning victories at the battle of Wilson's Creek and the siege of Lexington, Missouri and suffering losses elsewhere, the Confederate forces retreated to Arkansas and later Marshall, Texas, in the face of a largely reinforced Union Army.\nThough regular Confederate troops staged some large-scale raids into Missouri, the fighting in the state for the next three years consisted chiefly of guerrilla warfare. \"Citizen soldiers\" or insurgents such as Captain William Quantrill, Frank and Jesse James, the Younger brothers, and William T. Anderson made use of quick, small-unit tactics. Pioneered by the Missouri Partisan Rangers, such insurgencies also arose in portions of the Confederacy occupied by the Union during the Civil War. Historians have portrayed stories of the James brothers' outlaw years as an American \"Robin Hood\" myth. The vigilante activities of the Bald Knobbers of the Ozarks in the 1880s were an unofficial continuation of insurgent mentality long after the official end of the war, and they are a favorite theme in Branson's self-image.\nReconstruction period and later 19th century.\nMissouri remained electorally competitive during the Jim Crow era, and did not disenfranchise African Americans, who comprised less than 10% of the state's population from 1870 to 1960. In particular, Missouri never implemented a poll tax as a requirement to vote.\nHowever, Missouri did enact racial segregation. Democratic President Harry S. Truman grew up in Missouri, where segregation was practiced and largely accepted. Truman would later issue Executive Order 9981 in July 1948, prohibiting racial segregation in the armed forces.\n20th century.\nThe Progressive Era (1890s to 1920s) saw numerous prominent leaders from Missouri trying to end corruption and modernize politics, government, and society. Joseph \"Holy Joe\" Folk was a key leader who made a strong appeal to the middle class and rural evangelical Protestants. Folk was elected governor as a progressive reformer and Democrat in the 1904 election. He promoted what he called \"the Missouri Idea\", the concept of Missouri as a leader in public morality through popular control of law and strict enforcement. He successfully conducted antitrust prosecutions, ended free railroad passes for state officials, extended bribery statutes, improved election laws, required formal registration for lobbyists, made racetrack gambling illegal and enforced the Sunday-closing law. He helped enact Progressive legislation, including an initiative and referendum provision, regulation of elections, education, employment and child labor, railroads, food, business, and public utilities. Several efficiency-oriented examiner boards and commissions were established during Folk's administration, including many agricultural boards and the Missouri library commission.\nBetween the Civil War and the end of World War II, Missouri transitioned from a rural economy to a hybrid industrial-service-agricultural economy as the Midwest rapidly industrialized. The expansion of railroads to the West transformed Kansas City into a major transportation hub within the nation. The growth of the Texas cattle industry along with this increased rail infrastructure and the invention of the refrigerated boxcar also made Kansas City a major meatpacking center, as large cattle drives from Texas brought herds of cattle to Dodge City and other Kansas towns. There, the cattle were loaded onto trains destined for Kansas City, where they were butchered and distributed to the eastern markets. The first half of the 20th century was the height of Kansas City's prominence, and its downtown became a showcase for stylish Art Deco skyscrapers as construction boomed.\nIn 1930, there was a diphtheria epidemic in the area around Springfield, which killed approximately 100 people. Serum was rushed to the area, and medical personnel stopped the epidemic.\nDuring the mid-1950s and 1960s, St. Louis and Kansas City suffered deindustrialization and loss of jobs in railroads and manufacturing, as did other Midwestern industrial cities. St. Charles claims to be the site of the first interstate highway project in 1956. Such highway construction made it easy for middle-class residents to leave the city for newer housing developed in the suburbs, often former farmland where land was available at lower prices. These major cities have gone through decades of readjustment to develop different economies and adjust to demographic changes. Suburban areas have developed separate job markets, both in knowledge industries and services, such as major retail malls.\n21st century.\nIn 2014, Missouri received national attention for the protests and riots that followed the shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer of Ferguson, which led Governor Jay Nixon to call out the Missouri National Guard. A grand jury declined to indict the officer, and the U.S. Department of Justice concluded, after careful investigation, that the police officer legitimately feared for his safety. However, in a separate investigation, the Department of Justice also found that the Ferguson Police Department and the City of Ferguson relied on unconstitutional practices in order to balance the city's budget through racially motivated excessive fines and punishments, that the Ferguson police \"had used excessive and dangerous force and had disproportionately targeted blacks,\" and that the municipal court \"emphasized revenue over public safety, leading to routine breaches of citizens' constitutional guarantees of due process and equal protection under the law.\"\nA series of student protests at the University of Missouri against what the protesters viewed as poor response by the administration to racist incidents on campus began in September 2015.\nOn June 7, 2017, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People issued a warning to prospective African-American travelers to Missouri. This is the first NAACP warning ever covering an entire state. According to a 2018 report by the Missouri Attorney General's office, for the past 18 years, \"African Americans, Hispanics and other people of color are disproportionately affected by stops, searches and arrests.\" The same report found that the biggest discrepancy was in 2017, when \"black motorists were 85% more likely to be pulled over in traffic stops\".\nIn 2018, the USDA announced its plans to relocate Economic Research Service (ERS) and National Institute of Food & Agriculture (NIFA) to Kansas City. They have since decided on a specific location in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. With the addition of the KC Streetcar project and construction of the Sprint Center Arena, the downtown area in KC has attracted investment in new offices, hotels, and residential complexes. Both Kansas City and St. Louis are undergoing a rebirth in their downtown areas with the addition of the new Power & Light (KC) and Ballpark Village (STL) districts and the renovation of existing historical buildings in each downtown area. The 2019 announcement of an MLS expansion team in St. Louis is driving even more development in the downtown west area of St. Louis. Kansas City has experienced a boom in population, with new developments such as Three Light apartments being centered in Downtown Kansas City, as well as suburban development in the Northland.\nGeography.\nMissouri borders eight different states, a figure equaled only by its neighbor, Tennessee. Missouri is bounded by Iowa on the north; by Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee across the Mississippi River on the east; on the south by Arkansas; and by Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska (the last across the Missouri River) on the west. Whereas the northern and southern boundaries are straight lines, the Missouri Bootheel extends south between the St. Francis and the Mississippi rivers. The two largest rivers are the Mississippi (which defines the eastern boundary of the state) and the Missouri River (which flows from west to east through the state), essentially connecting the two largest metros of Kansas City and St. Louis.\nAlthough today it is usually considered part of the Midwest, Missouri was historically seen by many as a border state, chiefly because of the settlement of migrants from the South and its status as a slave state before the Civil War, balanced by the influence of St. Louis. The counties that made up \"Little Dixie\" were those along the Missouri River in the center of the state, settled by Southern migrants who held the greatest concentration of slaves.\nIn 2005, Missouri received 16,695,000 visitors to its national parks and other recreational areas totaling , giving it $7.41\u00a0million in annual revenues, 26.6% of its operating expenditures.\nTopography.\nNorth of, and in some cases just south of, the Missouri River lie the Northern Plains that stretch into Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. Here, rolling hills remain from the glaciation that once extended from the Canadian Shield to the Missouri River. Missouri has many large river bluffs along the Mississippi, Missouri, and Meramec Rivers. Southern Missouri rises to the Ozark Mountains, a dissected plateau surrounding the Precambrian igneous St. Francois Mountains. This region also hosts karst topography characterized by high limestone content with the formation of sinkholes and caves.\nThe southeastern part of the state is known as the Missouri Bootheel region, which is part of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain or Mississippi embayment. This region is the lowest, flattest, warmest, and wettest part of the state. It is also among the poorest, as the economy there is mostly agricultural. It is also the most fertile, with cotton and rice crops predominant. The Bootheel was the epicenter of the four New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811 and 1812.\nClimate.\nMissouri generally has a humid continental climate with cool, sometimes cold, winters and hot, humid, and wet summers. In the southern part of the state, particularly in the Bootheel, the climate becomes humid subtropical. Located in the interior United States, Missouri often experiences extreme temperatures. Without high mountains or oceans nearby to moderate temperature, its climate is alternately influenced by air from the cold Arctic and the hot and humid Gulf of Mexico. Missouri's highest recorded temperature is at Warsaw and Union on July 14, 1954, while the lowest recorded temperature is also at Warsaw on February 13, 1905.\nLocated in Tornado Alley, Missouri also receives extreme weather in the form of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. On May 22, 2011, a massive EF-5 tornado killed 158 people and destroyed roughly one-third of the city of Joplin. The tornado caused an estimated $1\u20133\u00a0billion in damages, killed 159 people and injured more than a thousand. It was the first EF5 to hit the state since 1957 and the deadliest in the U.S. since 1947, making it the seventh deadliest tornado in American history and 27th deadliest in the world. St. Louis and its suburbs also have a history of experiencing particularly severe tornadoes, the most recent one of note being an EF4 that damaged Lambert-St. Louis International Airport on April 22, 2011. One of the worst tornadoes in American history struck St. Louis on May 27, 1896, killing at least 255 people and causing $10\u00a0million in damage (equivalent to $3.9\u00a0billion in 2009 or $ in today's dollars).\nWildlife.\nMissouri is home to diverse flora and fauna, including several endemic species. There is a large amount of fresh water present due to the Mississippi River, Missouri River, Table Rock Lake and Lake of the Ozarks, with numerous smaller tributary rivers, streams, and lakes. North of the Missouri River, the state is primarily rolling hills of the Great Plains, whereas south of the Missouri River, the state is dominated by the Oak-Hickory Central U.S. hardwood forest.\nForests.\nRecreational and commercial uses of public forests, including grazing, logging, and mining, increased after World WarII. Fishermen, hikers, campers, and others started lobbying to protect forest areas with a \"wilderness character\". During the 1930s and 1940s, Aldo Leopold, Arthur Carhart and Bob Marshall developed a \"wilderness\" policy for the Forest Service. Their efforts bore fruit with the Wilderness Act of 1964, which designated wilderness areas \"where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by men, where man himself is a visitor and does not remain.\" This included second growth public forests like the Mark Twain National Forest.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nThe United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Missouri was 6,137,428 on July 1, 2019, a 2.48% increase since the 2010 United States census.\nMissouri had a population of 5,988,927, according to the 2010 census; an increase of 137,525 (2.3 percent) since the year 2010. From 2010 to 2018, this includes a natural increase of 137,564 people since the last census (480,763 births less 343,199 deaths) and an increase of 88,088 people due to net migration into the state. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 50,450 people, and migration within the country produced a net increase of 37,638 people. More than half of Missourians (3,294,936 people, or 55.0%) live within the state's two largest metropolitan areas\u2014St. Louis and Kansas City. The state's population density of 86.9 people per square mile in 2009, was also closer to the national average (86.8 in 2009) than any other state. The top countries of origin for Missouri's immigrants in 2018 were Mexico, China, India, Vietnam and Bosnia and Herzegovina.\nAccording to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 5,992 homeless people in Missouri.\nThe U.S. census of 2010 found that the population center of the United States is in Texas County, while the 2000 census found the mean population center to be in Phelps County. The center of population of Missouri is in Osage County, in the city of Westphalia.\nIn 2004, the population included 194,000 foreign-born people (3.4 percent of the state population).\nThe five largest ancestry groups in Missouri are: German (27.4 percent), Irish (14.8 percent), English (10.2 percent), American (8.5 percent) and French (3.7 percent).\nGerman Americans are an ancestry group present throughout Missouri. African Americans are a substantial part of the population in St. Louis (56.6% of African Americans in the state lived in St. Louis or St. Louis County as of the 2010 census), Kansas City, Boone County and in the southeastern Bootheel and some parts of the Missouri River Valley, where plantation agriculture was once important. Missouri Creoles of French ancestry are concentrated in the Mississippi River Valley south of St. Louis (see Missouri French). Kansas City is home to large and growing immigrant communities from Latin America esp. Mexico and Colombia, Africa (i.e. Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria), and Southeast Asia including China and the Philippines; and Europe like the former Yugoslavia (see Bosnian American). A notable Cherokee Indian population exists in Missouri, and 30,518 identified as being Native American alone in 2020, while 152,917 did in combination with one or more other races.\nIn 2004, 6.6 percent of the state's population was reported as younger than5, 25.5 percent younger than 18, and 13.5 percent 65 or older. Females were approximately 51.4 percent of the population. 81.3 percent of Missouri residents were high school graduates (more than the national average), and 21.6 percent had a bachelor's degree or higher. 3.4 percent of Missourians were foreign-born, and 5.1 percent reported speaking a language other than English at home.\nIn 2010, there were 2,349,955 households in Missouri, with 2.45 people per household. The homeownership rate was 70.0 percent, and the median value of an owner-occupied housing unit was $137,700. The median household income for 2010 was $46,262, or $24,724 per capita. There was 14.0 percent (1,018,118) of Missourians living below the poverty line in 2010.\nThe mean commute time to work was 23.8 minutes.\nBirth data.\nIn 2011, 28.1% of Missouri's population younger than age1 were minorities.\n\"Note: Births in table do not add up, because Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race, giving a higher overall number.\"\nLanguage.\nThe vast majority of people in Missouri speak English. Approximately 5.1% of the population reported speaking a language other than English at home. The Spanish language is spoken in small Latino communities in the St. Louis and Kansas City Metro areas.\nMissouri is home to an endangered dialect of the French language known as Missouri French. Speakers of the dialect, who call themselves \"Cr\u00e9oles\", are descendants of the French pioneers who settled the area then known as the Illinois Country beginning in the late 17th century. It developed in isolation from French speakers in Canada and Louisiana, becoming quite distinct from the varieties of Canadian French and Louisiana French. Once widely spoken throughout the area, Missouri French is now nearly extinct, with only a few elderly speakers able to use it.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nAccording to a Pew Research study conducted in 2014, 80% of Missourians identify with a religion. 77% affiliate with Christianity and its various denominations and the other 3% are adherents of non-Christian religions. The remaining 20% have no religion, with 2% specifically identifying as atheists and 3% identifying as agnostics (the other 15% do not identify as \"anything in particular\").\nThe religious demographics of Missouri are as follows:\nThe largest denominations by number of adherents in 2010 were the Southern Baptist Convention with 749,685; the Roman Catholic Church with 724,315; and the United Methodist Church with 226,409.\nAmong the other denominations there are approximately 93,000 Mormons in 253 congregations, 25,000 Jewish adherents in 21 synagogues, 12,000 Muslims in 39 masjids, 7,000 Buddhists in 34 temples, 20,000 Hindus in 17 temples, 2,500 Unitarians in nine congregations, 2,000 of the Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith in 17 temples, five Sikh temples, a Zoroastrian temple, a Jain temple and an uncounted number of neopagans.\nSeveral religious organizations have headquarters in Missouri, including the Lutheran Church\u2013Missouri Synod, which has its headquarters in Kirkwood, as well as the United Pentecostal Church International in Hazelwood, both outside St. Louis.\nIndependence, near Kansas City, is the headquarters for the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), the Church of Christ (Temple Lot) and the group Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This area and other parts of Missouri are also of significant religious and historical importance to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which maintains several sites and visitor centers.\nSpringfield is the headquarters of the Assemblies of God USA and the Baptist Bible Fellowship International. The General Association of General Baptists has its headquarters in Poplar Bluff. The Unity Church is headquartered in Unity Village. Springfield is particularly known as a Christian center in the state and is considered by some to be a \"buckle\" of the Bible Belt.\nThe Hindu Temple of St. Louis is the largest Hindu Temple in Missouri, serving more than 14,000 Hindus.\nEconomy.\nThe U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis estimated Missouri's gross state product was $422\u00a0billion in 2023. Per capita personal income in 2023 was $61,302, ranking 34th in the nation. Major industries include agriculture, aerospace, transportation equipment, food processing, chemicals, printing/publishing, electrical equipment, light manufacturing, and financial services.\nThe agriculture products of the state are beef, soybeans, pork, dairy products, hay, corn, poultry, sorghum, cotton, rice, and eggs. Missouri is ranked 6th in the nation for the production of hogs and 7th for cattle. Missouri is ranked in the top five states in the nation for production of soy beans, and it is ranked fourth in the nation for the production of rice. In 2001, there were 108,000 farms, the second-largest number in any state after Texas. Missouri actively promotes its rapidly growing wine industry. According to the Missouri Partnership, Missouri's agriculture industry contributes $33\u00a0billion in GDP to Missouri's economy, and generates $88\u00a0billion in sales and more than 378,000 jobs.\nMissouri has vast quantities of limestone. Other resources mined are lead, coal, and crushed stone. Missouri produces the most lead of all the states. Most of the lead mines are in the central eastern portion of the state. Missouri also ranks first or near first in the production of lime, a key ingredient in Portland cement.\nMissouri also has a growing science, agricultural technology, and biotechnology field. Monsanto, formerly one of the largest biotech companies in America, was based in St. Louis until it was acquired by Bayer AG in 2018. It is now part of the Crop Science Division of Bayer Corporation, Bayer's U.S. subsidiary.\nTourism, services, and wholesale/retail trade follow manufacturing in importance\u2014tourism benefits from the many rivers, lakes, caves, parks, etc., throughout the state. In addition to a network of state parks, Missouri is home to Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis and the Ozark National Scenic Riverways. A much-visited show cave is Meramec Caverns in Stanton.\nMissouri is the only state in the Union to have two Federal Reserve Banks: one in Kansas City (serving western Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado, northern New Mexico, and Wyoming) and one in St. Louis (serving eastern Missouri, southern Illinois, southern Indiana, western Kentucky, western Tennessee, northern Mississippi, and all of Arkansas).\nThe state's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in April 2017 was 3.9 percent. In 2017, Missouri became a right-to-work state, but in August 2018, Missouri voters rejected a right-to-work law with 67% to 33%.\nTaxation.\nPersonal income is taxed in ten different earning brackets, ranging from 1.5% to 6.0%. Missouri's sales tax rate for most items is 4.225%, with some additional local levies. More than 2,500 Missouri local governments rely on property taxes levied on real property (real estate) and personal property.\nMost personal property is exempt, except for motorized vehicles. Exempt real estate includes property owned by governments and property used as nonprofit cemeteries, exclusively for religious worship, for schools and colleges, and purely charitable purposes. There is no inheritance tax and limited Missouri estate tax related to federal estate tax collection.\nIn 2017, the Tax Foundation rated Missouri as having the 5th-best corporate tax index, and the 15th-best overall tax climate. Missouri's corporate income tax rate is 6.25%; however, 50% of federal income tax payments may be deducted before computing taxable income, leading to an effective rate of 5.2%.\nEnergy.\nIn 2012, Missouri had roughly 22,000 MW of installed electricity generation capacity. In 2011, 82% of Missouri's electricity was generated by coal. Ten percent was generated from the state's only nuclear power plant, the Callaway Plant in Callaway County, northeast of Jefferson City. Five percent was generated by natural gas. One percent was generated by hydroelectric sources, such as the dams for Truman Lake and Lake of the Ozarks. Missouri has a small but growing amount of wind and solar power\u2014wind capacity increased from 309 MW in 2009 to 459 MW in 2011, while photovoltaics have increased from 0.2 MW to 1.3 MW over the same period. As of 2016, Missouri's solar installations had reached 141 MW.\nOil wells in Missouri produced 120,000 barrels of crude oil in fiscal 2012. There are no oil refineries in Missouri.\nTransportation.\nAirports.\nMissouri has two major airport hubs: St. Louis Lambert International Airport and Kansas City International Airport. Southern Missouri has the Springfield\u2013Branson National Airport (SGF) with multiple non-stop destinations. Residents of Mid-Missouri use Columbia Regional Airport (COU) to fly to Chicago (ORD), Dallas (DFW) or Denver (DEN).\nRail.\n<templatestyles src=\"Routemap/styles.css\"/>\nTwo of the nation's three busiest rail centers are in Missouri. Kansas City is a major railroad hub for BNSF Railway, Norfolk Southern Railway, Kansas City Southern Railway, and Union Pacific Railroad, and every class1 railroad serves Missouri. Kansas City is the second-largest freight rail center in the U.S. (but is first in the amount of tonnage handled). Like Kansas City, St. Louis is a major destination for train freight. Springfield remains an operational hub for BNSF Railway.\nAmtrak passenger trains serve Kansas City, La Plata, Jefferson City, St. Louis, Lee's Summit, Independence, Warrensburg, Hermann, Washington, Kirkwood, Sedalia, and Poplar Bluff. A proposed high-speed rail route in Missouri as part of the Chicago Hub Network has received $31\u00a0million in funding.\nThe only urban light rail/subway system operating in Missouri is MetroLink, which connects the city of St. Louis with suburbs in Illinois and St. Louis County. It is one of the largest systems (by track mileage) in the United States. The KC Streetcar in downtown Kansas City opened in May 2016.\nThe Gateway Multimodal Transportation Center in St. Louis is the largest active multi-use transportation center in the state. It is in downtown St. Louis, next to the historic Union Station complex. It serves as a hub center/station for MetroLink, the MetroBus regional bus system, Greyhound, Amtrak, and taxi services.\nIn 2018, a Missouri Hyperloop was proposed to connect St. Louis, Kansas City, and Columbia, reducing travel time across the entire state to around a half hour. The project stalled in December, 2023, with the shutdown of the corporate partner Hyperloop One.\nBus.\nMany cities have regular fixed-route systems, and many rural counties have rural public transit services. Greyhound and Trailways provide inter-city bus service in Missouri. Megabus serves St. Louis, but discontinued service to Columbia and Kansas City in 2015.\nRivers.\nThe Mississippi River and Missouri River are commercially navigable over their entire lengths in Missouri. The Missouri was channelized through dredging and jetties, and the Mississippi was given a series of locks and dams to avoid rocks and deepen the river. St. Louis is a major destination for barge traffic on the Mississippi.\nRoads.\nFollowing the passage of Amendment 3 in late 2004, the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) began its Smoother, Safer, Sooner road-building program with a goal of bringing of highways up to good condition by December 2007. From 2006 to 2011 traffic deaths have decreased annually from 1,257 in 2005, to 1,096 in 2006, to 992 in 2007, to 960 in 2008, to 878 in 2009, to 821 in 2010, to 786 in 2011.\nGovernment and politics.\nThe Constitution of Missouri, the fourth constitution for the state, was adopted in 1945. It provides for three branches of government: the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. The legislative branch consists of two bodies: the House of Representatives and the Senate. These bodies comprise the Missouri General Assembly.\nThe House of Representatives has 163 members apportioned based on the last decennial census. The Senate consists of 34 members from districts of approximately equal populations. The judicial department comprises the Supreme Court of Missouri, which has seven judges, the Missouri Court of Appeals (an intermediate appellate court divided into three districts), sitting in Kansas City, St. Louis, and Springfield, and 45 Circuit Courts which function as local trial courts. The executive branch is headed by the Governor of Missouri and includes five other statewide elected offices. Following the departure from office of State Auditor Nicole Galloway on January 9, 2023, there are no Democrats holding statewide elected positions in Missouri.\nHarry S Truman (1884\u20131972), the 33rd President of the United States (Democrat, 1945\u20131953), was born in Lamar. He was a judge in Jackson County and then represented the state in the United States Senate for ten years, before being elected vice-president in 1944. He lived in Independence after retiring as president in 1953.\nIn a 2020 study, Missouri was ranked as 48th on the Cost of Voting Index with only Texas and Georgia ranking higher.\nMissouri retains the death penalty. Authorized methods of execution include the gas chamber. Abortion in Missouri is legal as a result of 2024 Missouri Amendment 3.\nFormer status as a political bellwether.\nPrior to 2008, Missouri had been widely regarded as a bellwether in American politics, often making it a swing state. The state had a longer stretch of supporting the winning presidential candidate than any other state, having voted for the winning candidate in every election from 1904 to 2004 with a single exception: 1956 when Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson of neighboring Illinois lost the election despite carrying Missouri. However, since 2000, Missouri has always voted for the Republican Presidential candidate, with the last Democrat winning the state being Bill Clinton in 1996. Missouri voted for John McCain and Mitt Romney over Democrat Barack Obama of neighboring Illinois, despite Obama being elected to the Presidency in both 2008 and 2012. Missouri voted for Mitt Romney by nearly 10% in 2012 and voted for Donald Trump by over 18% in 2016 and 2024, and 15% in 2020.\nOn October 24, 2012, there were 4,190,936 registered voters. At the state level, both Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill and Democratic Governor Jay Nixon were re-elected.\nOn November 3, 2020, there were 4,318,758 registered voters, with 3,026,028 voting (70.1%). By this time, the state had favored more Republican candidates for federal offices. The offices held by Democratic party officials a decade before were subsequently held by Republican Senator Josh Hawley and Republican Governor Mike Parson.\nMissouri's accuracy rate for the last 29 presidential elections is now 89.66%. This percentage is on par with that of Ohio, which has voted for the winner of every presidential election since 1896, except in 1944, 1960 and 2020. \nLaissez-faire alcohol and tobacco laws.\nMissouri has been known for its population's generally \"stalwart, conservative, noncredulous\" attitude toward regulatory regimes, which is one of the origins of the state's unofficial nickname, the \"Show-Me State\". As a result, and combined with the fact that Missouri is one of America's leading alcohol states, regulation of alcohol and tobacco in Missouri is among the most laissez-faire in America. For 2013, the annual \"Freedom in the 50 States\" study prepared by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University ranked Missouri as #3 in America for alcohol freedom and #1 for tobacco freedom (#7 for freedom overall). The study notes that Missouri's \"alcohol regime is one of the least restrictive in the United States, with no blue laws and taxes well below average\", and that \"Missouri ranks best in the nation on tobacco freedom\".\nMissouri law makes it \"an improper employment practice\" for an employer to refuse to hire, to fire, or otherwise to disadvantage any person because that person lawfully uses alcohol or tobacco products outside of work.\nWith a large German immigrant population and the development of a brewing industry, Missouri always has had among the most permissive alcohol laws in the United States. It has never enacted statewide prohibition. Missouri voters rejected prohibition in three separate referendums in 1910, 1912, and 1918. Alcohol regulation did not begin in Missouri until 1934.\nToday, alcohol laws are controlled by the state government, and local jurisdictions are prohibited from going beyond those state laws. Missouri has no statewide open container law or prohibition on drinking in public, no alcohol-related blue laws, no local option, no precise locations for selling liquor by the package (allowing even drug stores and filling stations to sell any kind of liquor), and no differentiation of laws based on alcohol percentage. State law protects persons from arrest or criminal penalty for public intoxication.\nMissouri law expressly prohibits any jurisdiction from going dry. Missouri law also expressly allows parents and guardians to serve alcohol to their children. The Power & Light District in Kansas City is one of the few places in the United States where a state law explicitly allows persons over 21 to possess and consume open containers of alcohol in the street (as long as the beverage is in a plastic cup).\nAs for tobacco (as of July 2016), Missouri has the lowest cigarette excise taxes in the United States, at 17 cents per pack, and the state electorate voted in 2002, 2006, 2012, and twice in 2016 to keep it that way. In 2007, \"Forbes\" named Missouri's largest metropolitan area, St. Louis, America's \"best city for smokers\".\nAccording to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2008 Missouri had the fourth highest percentage of adult smokers among U.S. states, at 24.5%. Although federal law prohibits the sale of tobacco to persons under 21, tobacco products can be distributed to persons under 21 by family members on private property.\nNo statewide smoking ban ever has been seriously entertained before the Missouri General Assembly, and in October 2008, a statewide survey by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services found that only 27.5% of Missourians support a statewide ban on smoking in all bars and restaurants. Missouri state law permits restaurants seating less than 50 people, bars, bowling alleys, and billiard parlors to decide their own smoking policies, without limitation.\nCannabis laws.\nIn 2014, a Republican-led legislature and Democratic governor Jay Nixon enacted a series of laws to partially decriminalize possession of cannabis by making first-time possession of up to 10 grams no longer punishable with jail time and legalizing CBD oil. In November 2018, 66% of voters approved a constitutional amendment that established a right to medical marijuana and a system for licensing, regulating, and taxing medical marijuana.\nCounties.\nMissouri has 114 counties and one independent city, St. Louis, which is Missouri's most densely populated\u20145,140 people per square mile.\nThe largest counties by population are St. Louis (996,726), Jackson (698,895), and St. Charles (395,504). Worth County is the smallest (2,057).\nThe largest counties by size are Texas (1,179 square miles) and Shannon (1,004). Worth County is the smallest (266).\nCities and towns.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nJefferson City is the capital city of Missouri, while the state's five largest cities are Kansas City, St. Louis, Springfield, Columbia, and Independence.\nSt. Louis is the principal city of the largest metropolitan area in Missouri, composed of 17 counties and the independent city of St. Louis; eight of its counties are in Illinois. As of 2022, St. Louis was the 21st-largest metropolitan area in the nation with 2.80\u00a0million people. If ranked using Combined Statistical Area, it is also the 21st-largest with 2.91 million people in 2022. Some of the major cities making up the St. Louis metro area in Missouri are O'Fallon, St. Charles, St. Peters, Florissant, Chesterfield, Wentzville, Wildwood, University City, Ballwin, and Kirkwood.\nKansas City is Missouri's largest city and the principal city of the fourteen-county Kansas City Metropolitan Statistical Area, including five counties in the state of Kansas. As of 2022, it was the 31st-largest metropolitan area in the U.S., with 2.21\u00a0million people. In the Combined Statistical Area in 2022, it ranked 29th with 2.55\u00a0million. Some of the other major cities comprising the Kansas City metro area in Missouri include Independence, Lee's Summit, Blue Springs, Liberty, Raytown, Gladstone, Grandview, and Belton.\nSpringfield is Missouri's third-largest city and the principal city of the Springfield-Branson Metropolitan Area, which has a population of 549,423 and includes seven counties in southwestern Missouri. Branson is a major tourist attraction in the Ozarks in southwest Missouri. Some of the other major cities comprising the Springfield-Branson metro area include Nixa, Ozark, and Republic.\nEducation.\nMissouri State Board of Education.\nThe Missouri State Board of Education has general authority over all public education in the state of Missouri. It is made up of eight citizens appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Missouri Senate.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nEducation is compulsory from ages seven to seventeen. It is required that any parent, guardian, or another person with custody of a child between the ages of seven and seventeen, the compulsory attendance age for the district, must ensure the child is enrolled in and regularly attends public, private, parochial school, home school or a combination of schools for the full term of the school year. Compulsory attendance also ends when children complete sixteen credits in high school.\nChildren in Missouri between the ages of five and seven are not required to be enrolled in school. However, if they are enrolled in a public school, their parent, guardian, or custodian must ensure they regularly attend.\nMissouri schools are commonly but not exclusively divided into three tiers of primary and secondary education: elementary school, middle school or junior high school and high school. The public school system includes kindergarten to 12th grade. District territories are often complex in structure. In some cases, elementary, middle, and junior high schools of a single district feed into high schools in another district. As another example, special education and related services for students in the twenty-two school districts of St. Louis County are provided by staff employed by a special school district, a local education agency that serves students county-wide. High school athletics and competitions are governed by the Missouri State High School Activities Association (MSHSAA).\nHomeschooling is legal in Missouri and is an option to meet the compulsory education requirement. It is neither monitored nor regulated by the state's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.\nAnother gifted school is the Missouri Academy of Science, Mathematics and Computing, which is at the Northwest Missouri State University.\nColleges and universities.\nThe University of Missouri System is Missouri's statewide public university system. The flagship institution and largest university in the state is the University of Missouri in Columbia. The others in the system are University of Missouri\u2013Kansas City, University of Missouri\u2013St. Louis, and Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla.\nDuring the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the state established a series of normal schools in each region of the state, originally named after the geographic districts: Northeast Missouri State University (now Truman State University) (1867), Central Missouri State University (now the University of Central Missouri) (1871), Southeast Missouri State University (1873), Southwest Missouri State University (now Missouri State University) (1905), Northwest Missouri State University (1905), Missouri Western State University (1915), Maryville University (1872) and Missouri Southern State University (1937). Lincoln University and Harris\u2013Stowe State University were established in the mid-nineteenth century and are historically black colleges and universities.\nAmong private institutions Washington University in St. Louis and Saint Louis University are two top ranked schools in the US. There are numerous junior colleges, trade schools, church universities and other private universities in the state. A.T. Still University was the first osteopathic medical school in the world. Hannibal\u2013LaGrange University in Hannibal, Missouri, was one of the first colleges west of the Mississippi (founded 1858 in LaGrange, Missouri, and moved to Hannibal in 1928).\nThe state funds a $3000, renewable merit-based scholarship, Bright Flight, given to the top three percent of Missouri high school graduates who attend a university in-state.\nThe 19th-century border wars between Missouri and Kansas have continued as a sports rivalry between the University of Missouri and University of Kansas. The rivalry was chiefly expressed through football and basketball games between the two universities, but since Missouri left the Big 12 Conference in 2012, the teams no longer regularly play one another. It was the oldest college rivalry west of the Mississippi River and the second-oldest in the nation. Each year when the universities met to play, the game was coined the \"Border War\". Following the game, an exchange occurred where the winner took a historic Indian War Drum, which had been passed back and forth for decades. Though Missouri and Kansas no longer have an annual game after the University of Missouri moved to the Southeastern Conference, rivalry still exists between them.\nCulture.\nMusic.\nMany well-known musicians were born or have lived in Missouri. These include guitarist and rock pioneer Chuck Berry, singer and actress Josephine Baker, \"Queen of Rock\" Tina Turner, pop singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow, Michael McDonald of the Doobie Brothers, rap producer Metro Boomin, and rappers Nelly, Chingy, and Akon, all of whom are either current or former residents of St. Louis.\nCountry singers from Missouri include Perryville native Chris Janson, New Franklin native Sara Evans, Cantwell native Ferlin Husky, West Plains native Porter Wagoner, Tyler Farr of Garden City, and Mora native Leroy Van Dyke, along with bluegrass musician Rhonda Vincent, a native of Greentop. Rapper Eminem was born in St. Joseph and also lived in Savannah and Kansas City. Ragtime composer Scott Joplin lived in St. Louis and Sedalia. Jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker lived in Kansas City. Rock and Roll singer Steve Walsh of the group Kansas was born in St. Louis and grew up in St. Joseph.\nThe Kansas City Symphony and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra are the state's major orchestras. The latter is the nation's second-oldest symphony orchestra and achieved prominence in recent years under conductor Leonard Slatkin. Branson is well known for its music theaters, most of which bear the name of a star performer or musical group.\nLiterature.\nMissouri is the native state of Mark Twain. His novels \"The Adventures of Tom Sawyer\" and \"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn\" are set in his boyhood hometown of Hannibal. Authors Kate Chopin, T. S. Eliot and Tennessee Williams were from St. Louis. Kansas City-born writer William Least Heat-Moon resides in Rocheport. He is best known for \"Blue Highways\", a chronicle of his travels to small towns across America, which was on The New York Times Bestseller list for 42 weeks in 1982\u20131983. Novelist Daniel Woodrell, known for depicting life in the Missouri Ozarks, was born in Springfield and lives in West Plains.\nSports.\nMissouri hosted the 1904 Summer Olympics at St. Louis, the first time the games were hosted in the United States.\nProfessional major league teams:\nFormer professional major league teams:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["2948394", "19571", "150708"], "permutation_1": ["2948394", "19571", "150708"], "permutation_2": ["150708", "19571", "2948394"], "permutation_3": ["150708", "19571", "2948394"]}
{"id": "3hop2__30796_473969_24137", "docs_added": {"5122699": "John Kerry\nAmerican politician and diplomat (born 1943)\nJohn Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician, and diplomat who served as the 68th United States secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 in the administration of Barack Obama. A member of the Forbes family and of the Democratic Party, he previously represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1985 to 2013 and later served as the first U.S. special presidential envoy for climate from 2021 to 2024. Kerry was the Democratic nominee for president of the United States in the 2004 election, narrowly losing to then-incumbent president George W. Bush.\nKerry grew up in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. In 1966, after graduating from Yale University, he enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve, ultimately attaining the rank of lieutenant. During the Vietnam War, Kerry served a brief tour in South Vietnam. While commanding a Swift boat, he sustained three wounds in combat with the Viet Cong, for which he earned three Purple Heart medals. Kerry was also awarded the Silver Star Medal and the Bronze Star Medal for conduct in separate military engagements. After completing his active military service, Kerry returned to the United States and became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. He gained national recognition as an anti-war activist, serving as a spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization. Kerry testified in the Fulbright Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where he described the United States government's policy in Vietnam as the cause of war crimes.\nIn 1972, Kerry entered electoral politics as a Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives in Massachusetts's 5th congressional district, losing to Republican Paul W. Cronin in the general election. He subsequently worked as a radio talk show host and as the executive director of an advocacy organization while attending law school. After a period in private legal practice, he was elected the 66th lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1982. In 1984, Kerry was elected to the United States Senate. In 2004, Kerry won the Democratic presidential nomination alongside Senator John Edwards. He lost the Electoral College and the popular vote by slim margins, winning 251 electors to Bush's 286 and 48.3% of the popular vote to Bush's 50.7%.\nIn January 2013, Kerry was nominated by President Obama to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and was subsequently confirmed by his Senate colleagues. He was U.S. secretary of state throughout the second term of the Obama administration from 2013 to 2017. During his tenure, he initiated the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks and negotiated agreements restricting the nuclear program of Iran, including the 2013 Joint Plan of Action and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In 2015, Kerry signed the Paris Agreement on climate change on behalf of the United States.\nIn January 2021, Kerry returned to government, becoming the first person to hold the position of U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, under President Joe Biden. On March 6, Kerry left this position to work on Biden's 2024 presidential campaign. Kerry was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Biden in May 2024.\nEarly life and education (1943\u20131966).\nJohn Forbes Kerry was born on December 11, 1943, at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado. He is the second of four children born to Richard John Kerry, a U.S. diplomat and lawyer, and Rosemary Forbes, a nurse and social activist. His father was raised Catholic (John's paternal grandparents were Austro-Hungarian Jewish immigrants who converted to Catholicism) and his mother was Episcopalian. He was raised with an elder sister Margaret, a younger sister Diana, and a younger brother Cameron. The children were raised in their father's Catholic faith, and John served as an altar boy.\nKerry was originally considered a military brat, until his father was discharged from the Army Air Corps in 1944. Kerry lived in Groton, Massachusetts his first year and Millis, Massachusetts afterwards before moving to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. at age seven, when his father took a position in the Department of the Navy's Office of General Counsel and soon became a diplomat in the State Department's Bureau of United Nations Affairs.\nAs members of the Forbes and Dudley\u2013Winthrop families, his maternal extended family enjoyed great wealth. Kerry's parents themselves were considered upper-middle class. They turned to his wealthy great-aunt, Clara Winthrop, who paid for his attendance at elite boarding schools, such as Institut Montana Zugerberg, in Zug, Switzerland. Through his maternal ancestry, Kerry also descends from Rev. James McGregor who was among the first 500 Scots-Irish immigrants to Boston Harbor in the 18th century.\nAt the age of ten, Kerry's father took a position as the U.S. Attorney for Berlin. When Kerry was twelve, he crossed into the Soviet Occupation Zone to visit Hitler's bunker and ride through the Brandenburg Gate. \nIn 1957, his father was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway, and Kerry was sent back to the United States to attend boarding school. He first attended the Fessenden School in Newton, Massachusetts, and later St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, where he learned skills in public speaking and began developing an interest in politics. Kerry founded the John Winant Society at St. Paul's to debate the issues of the day; the Society still exists there. In 1960, while at St. Paul's, he played bass in a minor rock band called The Electras with six of his classmates. The band had about five hundred copies of one album printed in 1961, which they sold some of at dances at the school; it was made available on streaming platforms many years later.\nIn 1962, Kerry attended Yale University, majoring in political science and residing in Jonathan Edwards College. By that year, his parents returned to Groton. While at Yale, Kerry briefly dated Janet Auchincloss, the younger half-sister of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Through Auchincloss, Kerry was invited to a day of sailing with then-President John F. Kennedy and his family.\nKerry played on the varsity Yale Bulldogs men's soccer team, earning his only letter in his senior year. He also played freshman and junior varsity hockey and, in his senior year, junior varsity lacrosse. In addition, he was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity and took flying lessons.\nIn his sophomore year, Kerry became the chairman of the Liberal Party of the Yale Political Union, and a year later he served as president of the union. Amongst his influential teachers in this period was Professor H. Bradford Westerfield, who was himself a former president of the Political Union. His involvement with the Political Union gave him an opportunity to be involved with important issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and the New Frontier program. He also became a member of Skull and Bones Society, and traveled to Switzerland through AIESEC Yale.\nUnder the guidance of the speaking coach and history professor Rollin G. Osterweis, Kerry won many debates against other college students from across the nation. In March 1965, as the Vietnam War escalated, he won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that was critical of U.S. foreign policy. In the speech he said, \"It is the spectre of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism and thus, it is self-defeating.\"\nKerry graduated from Yale with a bachelor of arts degree in 1966. Overall, he had below-average grades, graduating with a cumulative average of 76 over his four years. His freshman-year average was a 71, but he improved to an 81 average for his senior year. He never received an \"A\" during his time at Yale; his highest grade was an 89.\nMilitary service (1966\u20131970).\nDuty on USS \"Gridley\".\nOn February 18, 1966, Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserve. He began his active duty military service on August 19, 1966. After completing 16 weeks of Officer Candidate School at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island, Kerry received his officer's commission on December 16, 1966. During the 2004 election, Kerry posted his military records at his website, and permitted reporters to inspect his medical records. In 2005, Kerry released his military and medical records to the representatives of three news organizations, but has not authorized full public access to those records.\nDuring his tour on the guided missile frigate , Kerry requested duty in South Vietnam, listing as his first preference a position as the commander of a Fast Patrol Craft (PCF), also known as a \"Swift boat\". These boats have aluminum hulls and have little or no armor, but are heavily armed and rely on speed. \"I didn't really want to get involved in the war,\" Kerry said in a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. \"When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing.\" However, his second choice of billet was on a river patrol boat, or \"PBR\", which at the time was serving a more dangerous duty on the rivers of Vietnam.\nMilitary honors.\nDuring the night of December 2 and early morning of December 3, 1968, Kerry was in charge of a small boat operating near a peninsula north of Cam Ranh Bay together with a Swift boat (PCF-60). According to Kerry and the two crewmen who accompanied him that night, Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis, they surprised a group of Vietnamese men unloading sampans at a river crossing, who began running and failed to obey an order to stop. As the men fled, Kerry and his crew opened fire on the sampans and destroyed them, then rapidly left. During this encounter, Kerry received a shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow. It was for this injury that Kerry received his first Purple Heart Medal.\nKerry received his second Purple Heart for a wound received in action on the B\u1ed3 \u0110\u1ec1 River on February 20, 1969. The plan had been for the Swift boats to be accompanied by support helicopters. On the way up the Bo De, however, the helicopters were attacked. As the Swift boats reached the C\u1eeda L\u1edbn River, Kerry's boat was hit by a B-40 rocket (rocket propelled grenade round), and a piece of shrapnel hit Kerry's left leg, wounding him. Thereafter, enemy fire ceased and his boat reached the Gulf of Thailand safely. Kerry continues to have shrapnel embedded in his left thigh because the doctors that first treated him decided to remove the damaged tissue and close the wound with sutures rather than make a wide opening to remove the shrapnel. Although wounded like several others earlier that day, Kerry did not lose any time off from duty.\nSilver Star.\nEight days later, on February 28, 1969, came the events for which Kerry was awarded his Silver Star Medal. On this occasion, Kerry was in tactical command of his Swift boat and two other Swift boats during a combat operation. Their mission on the Duong Keo River included bringing an underwater demolition team and dozens of South Vietnamese Marines to destroy enemy sampans, structures and bunkers as described in the story \"The Death Of PCF 43\". Running into heavy small arms fire from the river banks, Kerry \"directed the units to turn to the beach and charge the Viet Cong positions\" and he \"expertly directed\" his boat's fire causing the enemy to flee while at the same time coordinating the insertion of the ninety South Vietnamese troops (according to the original medal citation signed by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt). Moving a short distance upstream, Kerry's boat was the target of a B-40 rocket round; Kerry charged the enemy positions and as his boat hove to and beached, a Viet Cong (\"VC\") insurgent armed with a rocket launcher emerged from a spider hole and ran. While the boat's gunner opened fire, wounding the VC in the leg, and while the other boats approached and offered cover fire, Kerry jumped from the boat to pursue the VC insurgent, subsequently killing him and capturing his loaded rocket launcher.\nKerry's commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander George Elliott, stated to Douglas Brinkley in 2003 that he did not know whether to court-martial Kerry for beaching the boat without orders or give him a medal for saving the crew. Elliott recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, and Zumwalt flew into An Thoi to personally award medals to Kerry and the rest of the sailors involved in the mission. The Navy's account of Kerry's actions is presented in the original signed by Zumwalt. The engagement was documented in an after-action report, a press release written on March 1, 1969, and a historical summary dated March 17, 1969.\nBronze Star.\nOn March 13, 1969, on the B\u00e1i H\u00e1p River, Kerry was in charge of one of five Swift boats that were returning to their base after performing an Operation Sealords mission to transport South Vietnamese troops from the garrison at C\u00e1i N\u01b0\u1edbc and MIKE Force advisors for a raid on a Vietcong camp located on the Rach Dong Cung canal. Earlier in the day, Kerry received a slight shrapnel wound in the buttocks from blowing up a rice bunker. Debarking some but not all of the passengers at a small village, the boats approached a fishing weir; one group of boats went around to the left of the weir, hugging the shore, and a group with Kerry's PCF-94 boat went around to the right, along the shoreline. A mine was detonated directly beneath the lead boat, PCF-3, as it crossed the weir to the left, lifting PCF-3 \"about 2\u20133 ft out of water\".\nJames Rassmann, a Green Beret advisor who was aboard Kerry's PCF-94, was knocked overboard when, according to witnesses and the documentation of the event, a mine or rocket exploded close to the boat. According to the documentation for the event, Kerry's arm was injured when he was thrown against a bulkhead during the explosion. PCF 94 returned to the scene and Kerry rescued Rassmann who was receiving sniper fire from the water. Kerry received the Bronze Star Medal with Combat \"V\" for \"heroic achievement\", for his actions during this incident; he also received his third Purple Heart.\nReturn from Vietnam.\nAfter Kerry's third qualifying wound, he was entitled per Navy regulations to reassignment away from combat duties. Kerry's preferred choice for reassignment was as a military aide in Boston, New York City or Washington, D.C. On April 11, 1969, he reported to the Brooklyn-based Atlantic Military Sea Transportation Service, where he would remain on active duty for the following year as a personal aide to an officer, Rear Admiral Walter Schlech. On January 1, 1970, Kerry was temporarily promoted to full lieutenant. Kerry had agreed to an extension of his active duty obligation from December 1969 to August 1970 in order to perform Swift Boat duty. John Kerry was on active duty in the United States Navy from August 1966 until January 1970. He continued to serve in the Naval Reserve until February 1978.\n\"Swiftboating\" controversy.\nWith the continuing controversy that had surrounded the military service of George W. Bush since the 2000 presidential election (when he was accused of having used his father's political influence to gain entrance to the Texas Air National Guard, thereby protecting himself from conscription into the United States Army, and possible service in the Vietnam War), John Kerry's contrasting status as a decorated Vietnam War veteran posed a problem for Bush's re-election campaign, which Republicans sought to counter by calling Kerry's war record into question. As the presidential campaign of 2004 developed, approximately 250 members of a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT, later renamed Swift Vets and POWs for Truth) opposed Kerry's campaign. The group held press conferences, ran ads and endorsed a book questioning Kerry's service record and his military awards. The group included several members of Kerry's unit, such as Larry Thurlow, who commanded a swift boat alongside of Kerry's, and Stephen Gardner, who served on Kerry's boat. The campaign inspired the widely used political pejorative '\"swiftboating,\" to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. Most of Kerry's former crewmates have stated that SBVT's allegations are false.\nAnti-war activism (1970\u20131971).\nAfter returning to the United States, Kerry moved to Waltham, Massachusetts and joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Then numbering about 20,000, VVAW was considered by some (including the administration of President Richard Nixon) to be an effective, if controversial, component of the antiwar movement. Kerry participated in the \"Winter Soldier Investigation\" conducted by VVAW of U.S. atrocities in Vietnam, and he appears in a film by that name that documents the investigation. According to Nixon Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, \"I didn't approve of what he did, but I understood the protesters quite well\", and he declined two requests from the Navy to court martial Reserve Lieutenant Kerry over his antiwar activity.\nOn April 22, 1971, Kerry appeared before a U.S. Senate committee hearing on proposals relating to ending the war. The day after this testimony, Kerry participated in a demonstration with thousands of other veterans in which he and other Vietnam War veterans threw their medals and service ribbons over a fence erected at the front steps of the United States Capitol building to dramatize their opposition to the war. Jack Smith, a Marine, read a statement explaining why the veterans were returning their military awards to the government. For more than two hours, almost 1,000 angry veterans tossed their medals, ribbons, hats, jackets, and military papers over the fence. Each veteran gave his or her name, hometown, branch of service and a statement. Kerry threw some of his own decorations and awards as well as some given to him by other veterans to throw. As Kerry threw his decorations over the fence, his statement was: \"I'm not doing this for any violent reasons, but for peace and justice, and to try and make this country wake up once and for all.\"\nKerry was arrested on May 30, 1971, during a VVAW march to honor American POWs held captive by North Vietnam. The march was planned as a multi-day event from Concord to Boston, and while in Lexington, participants tried to camp on the village green. At 2:30a.m., local and state police arrested 441 demonstrators, including Kerry, for trespassing. All were given the Miranda Warning and were hauled away on school buses to spend the night at the Lexington Public Works Garage. Kerry and the other protesters later paid a $5 fine, and were released. The mass arrests caused a community backlash and ended up giving positive coverage to the VVAW.\nEarly political career (1972\u20131985).\n1972 congressional election.\nIn 1970, Kerry had considered running for Congress in the Democratic primary against hawkish Democrat Philip J. Philbin of Massachusetts's 3rd congressional district, but deferred in favor of Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest and anti-war activist, who went on to defeat Philbin. In February 1972, Kerry's wife bought a house in Worcester, with Kerry intending to run against the 4th district's aging thirteen-term incumbent Democrat, Harold Donohue. The couple never moved in. After Republican Congressman F. Bradford Morse of the neighboring 5th district announced his retirement and then resignation to become Under-Secretary-General for Political and General Assembly Affairs at the United Nations, the couple instead rented an apartment in Lowell, so that Kerry could run to succeed him.\nIncluding Kerry, the Democratic primary race had 10 candidates, including attorney Paul J. Sheehy, State Representative Anthony R. DiFruscia, John J. Desmond and Robert B. Kennedy. Kerry ran a \"very expensive, sophisticated campaign\", financed by out-of-state backers and supported by many young volunteers. DiFruscia's campaign headquarters shared the same building as Kerry's. On the eve of the September 19 primary, police found Kerry's younger brother Cameron and campaign field director Thomas J. Vallely, breaking into where the building's telephone lines were located. They were arrested and charged with \"breaking and entering with the intent to commit grand larceny\", but the charges were dropped a year later. DiFruscia alleged that the two were trying to disrupt his get-out-the vote efforts. Vallely and Cameron Kerry maintained that they were only checking their own telephone lines because they had received an anonymous call warning that the Kerry lines would be cut.\nDespite the arrests, Kerry won the primary with 20,771 votes (27.56%). Sheehy came second with 15,641 votes (20.75%), followed by DiFruscia with 12,222 votes (16.22%), Desmond with 10,213 votes (13.55%) and Kennedy with 5,632 votes (7.47%). The remaining 10,891 votes were split amongst the other five candidates, with 1970 nominee Richard Williams coming last with just 1,706 votes (2.26%).\nIn the general election, Kerry was initially favored to defeat the Republican candidate, former State Representative Paul W. Cronin, and conservative Democrat Roger P. Durkin, who ran as an Independent. A week after the primary, one poll put Kerry 26-points ahead of Cronin. His campaign called for a national health insurance system, discounted prescription drugs for the unemployed, a jobs program to clean up the Merrimack River and rent controls in Lowell and Lawrence. A major obstacle, however, was the district's leading newspaper, the conservative \"The Sun\". The paper editorialized against him. It also ran critical news stories about his out-of-state contributions and his \"carpetbagging\", because he had only moved into the district in April. Subsequently, released \"Watergate\" Oval Office tape recordings of the Nixon White House showed that defeating Kerry's candidacy had attracted the personal attention of President Nixon. Kerry himself asserts that Nixon sent operatives to Lowell to help derail his campaign.\nThe race was the most expensive for Congress in the country that year and four days before the general election, Durkin withdrew and endorsed Cronin, hoping to see Kerry defeated. The week before, a poll had put Kerry 10 points ahead of Cronin, with Durkin at 13%. In the final days of the campaign, Kerry sensed that it was \"slipping away\" and Cronin emerged victorious by 110,970 votes (53.45%) to Kerry's 92,847 (44.72%). After his defeat, Kerry lamented in a letter to supporters that \"for two solid weeks, [\"The Sun\"] called me un-American, New Left antiwar agitator, unpatriotic, and labeled me every other 'un-' and 'anti-' that they could find. It's hard to believe that one newspaper could be so powerful, but they were.\" He later felt that his failure to respond directly to \"The Sun\"'s attacks cost him the race.\nLaw career.\nAfter Kerry's 1972 defeat, he and his wife bought a house in the Belvidere section of Lowell, Massachusetts, entering a decade which his brother Cameron later called \"the years in exile\". He spent some time working as a fundraiser for the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE), an international humanitarian organization. In September 1973, he entered Boston College Law School. While studying, Kerry worked as a talk radio host on WBZ and, in July 1974, was named executive director of Mass Action, a Massachusetts advocacy association.\nKerry received his juris doctor (J.D.) from Boston College in 1976. While in law school he had been a student prosecutor in the office of the District Attorney of Middlesex County, John J. Droney. After passing the bar exam and being admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1976, he went to work in that office as a full-time prosecutor and moved to Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.\nIn January 1977, Droney promoted him to First Assistant District Attorney, essentially making Kerry his campaign and media surrogate because Droney was afflicted with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease). As First Assistant, Kerry tried cases, which included winning convictions in a high-profile rape case and a murder. He also played a role in administering the office, including initiating the creation of special white-collar and organized crime units, creating programs to address the problems of rape and other crime victims and witnesses, and managing trial calendars to reflect case priorities. In 1978, Kerry launched a criminal investigation against Senator Edward Brooke, regarding \"misstatements\" in his first divorce trial. The inquiry ended with no charges being brought after investigators and prosecutors determined that Brooke's misstatements were pertinent to the case, but were not material enough to have affected the outcome.\nDroney's health was poor and Kerry had decided to run for his position in the 1978 election should Droney drop out. However, Droney was re-elected and his health improved; he went on to re-assume many of the duties that he had delegated to Kerry. Kerry thus decided to leave, departing in 1979 with assistant DA Roanne Sragow to set up their own law firm. Kerry also worked as a commentator for WCVB-TV and co-founded a bakery, Kilvert & Forbes Ltd., with businessman and former Kennedy aide K. Dun Gifford.\nLieutenant Governor of Massachusetts.\nIn the 1982 Massachusetts gubernatorial election, Lieutenant Governor Thomas P. O'Neill III declined to seek a third term, instead deciding to run for governor of Massachusetts. Kerry declared his candidacy, entering the primary election alongside Massachusetts Secretary of Environmental Affairs Evelyn Murphy, State Senator Samuel Rotondi, State Representative Lou Nickinello, and Lois Pines.\nKerry won the nomination with 325,890 votes (29%) to Murphy's 286,378 (25.48%), Rotondi's 228,086 (20.29%), Nickinello's 150,829 (13.42%) and Pines' 132,734 (11.81%). In the concurrent gubernatorial primary, former Governor Michael Dukakis defeated O'Neill and incumbent Governor Edward J. King. The Dukakis and Kerry ticket defeated the Republican ticket of John W. Sears and Leon Lombardi in the general election by 1,219,109 votes (61.92%) to 749,679 (38.08%).\nAs Lieutenant Governor, Kerry led meetings of the Massachusetts Governor's Council. Dukakis also delegated other tasks to Kerry, including serving as the state's liaison to the Federal government of the United States. He was also active on environmental issues, including combating acid rain.\n1984 U.S. Senate election.\nThe junior U.S. senator from Massachusetts, Paul Tsongas, announced in 1984 that he would be stepping down for health reasons. Kerry ran, and as in his 1982 race for Lieutenant Governor, he did not receive the endorsement of the party regulars at the state Democratic convention. Congressman James Shannon, a favorite of House Speaker Tip O'Neill, was the early favorite to win the nomination, and he \"won broad establishment support and led in early polling\". Again as in 1982, however, Kerry prevailed in a close primary.\nIn his general election campaign, Kerry promised to mix liberalism with tight budget controls. He defeated Republican Ray Shamie despite a nationwide landslide for the re-election of Republican President Ronald Reagan, for whom Massachusetts voted by a narrow margin. In his victory speech, Kerry asserted that his win meant that the people of Massachusetts \"emphatically reject the politics of selfishness and the notion that women must be treated as second-class citizens\".\nTsongas resigned on January 2, 1985, one day before the end of his term. Dukakis appointed Kerry to fill the vacancy, giving him seniority over other new senators who were sworn in on January 3, the scheduled start of their new terms.\nU.S. Senate (1985\u20132013).\nIran\u2013Contra hearings.\nOn April 18, 1985, a few months after taking his Senate seat, Kerry and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa traveled to Nicaragua and met the country's president, Daniel Ortega. Although Ortega had won internationally certified elections, the trip was criticized because Ortega and his leftist Sandinista government had strong ties to Cuba and the USSR and were accused of human rights abuses. The Sandinista government was opposed by the right-wing CIA-backed rebels known as the Contras. While in Nicaragua, Kerry and Harkin talked to people on both sides of the conflict. Through the senators, Ortega offered a cease-fire agreement in exchange for the U.S. dropping support of the Contras. The offer was denounced by the Reagan administration as a \"propaganda initiative\" designed to influence a House vote on a $14million Contra aid package, but Kerry said \"I am willing... to take the risk in the effort to put to test the good faith of the Sandinistas.\" The House voted down the Contra aid, but Ortega flew to Moscow to accept a $200million loan the next day, which in part prompted the House to pass a larger $27million aid package six weeks later.\nMeanwhile, Kerry's staff began their own investigations and, on October 14, issued a report that exposed illegal activities on the part of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who had set up a private network involving the National Security Council and the CIA to deliver military equipment to right-wing Nicaraguan rebels (Contras). In effect, North and certain members of the President's administration were accused by Kerry's report of illegally funding and supplying armed militants without the authorization of Congress. Kerry's staff investigation, based on a year-long inquiry and interviews with fifty unnamed sources, is said to raise \"serious questions about whether the United States has abided by the law in its handling of the contras over the past three years\".\nThe Kerry Committee report found that \"the Contra drug links included... payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies.\" The U.S. State Department paid over $806,000 to known drug traffickers to carry humanitarian assistance to the Contras. Kerry's findings provoked little reaction in the media and official Washington.\nThe Kerry report was a precursor to the Iran\u2013Contra affair. On May 4, 1989, North was convicted of charges relating to the Iran/Contra controversy, including three felonies. On September 16, 1991, however, North's convictions were overturned on appeal.\nGeorge H. W. Bush administration.\nOn November 15, 1988, at a businessmen's breakfast in East Lynn, Massachusetts, Kerry made a joke about then-President-elect George H. W. Bush and his running mate, saying \"if Bush is shot, the Secret Service has orders to shoot Dan Quayle.\" He apologized the following day.\nDuring their investigation of General Manuel Noriega, the \"de facto\" ruler of Panama, Kerry's staff found reason to believe that the Pakistan-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) had facilitated Noriega's drug trafficking and money laundering. This led to a separate inquiry into BCCI, and as a result, banking regulators shut down BCCI in 1991. In December 1992, Kerry and Senator Hank Brown, a Republican from Colorado, released \"The BCCI Affair\", a report on the BCCI scandal. The report showed that the bank was crooked and was working with terrorists, including Abu Nidal. It blasted the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, the Customs Service, the Federal Reserve Bank, as well as influential lobbyists and the CIA.\nKerry was criticized by some Democrats for having pursued his own party members, including former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, although Republicans said he should have pressed against some Democrats even harder. The BCCI scandal was later turned over to the Manhattan District Attorney's office.\nPrecursors to presidential bid.\nIn 1996, Kerry faced a difficult re-election fight against Governor William Weld, a popular Republican incumbent who had been re-elected in 1994 with 71% of the vote. The race was covered nationwide as one of the most closely watched Senate races that year. Kerry and Weld held several debates and negotiated a campaign spending cap of $6.9million at Kerry's Beacon Hill townhouse. Both candidates spent more than the cap, with each camp accusing the other of being first to break the agreement. During the campaign, Kerry spoke briefly at the 1996 Democratic National Convention. Kerry won re-election with 52 percent to Weld's 45 percent.\nIn the 2000 presidential election, Kerry found himself close to being chosen as the vice presidential running mate.\nA release from the presidential campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Al Gore listed Kerry on the short list to be selected as the vice-presidential nominee, along with North Carolina Senator John Edwards, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt, New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. Gore ultimately chose Lieberman.\n\"You get stuck in Iraq\" controversy.\nOn October 30, 2006, Kerry was a headline speaker at a campaign rally being held for Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. Speaking to an audience composed mainly of college students, Kerry said, \"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.\"\nThe day after he made the remark, leaders from both sides of the political spectrum criticized Kerry's remarks, which he said were a botched joke. Republicans including President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain and then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, said that Kerry's comments were insulting to American military forces fighting in Iraq. Democratic Representative Harold Ford Jr. called on Kerry to apologize.\nKerry initially stated: \"I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy\". Kerry also responded to criticism from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.\nKerry said that he had intended the remark as a jab at President Bush, and described the remarks as a \"botched joke\", having inadvertently left out the key word \"us\" (which would have been, \"If you don't, you get \"us\" stuck in Iraq\"), as well as leaving the phrase \"just ask President Bush\" off of the end of the sentence. In Kerry's prepared remarks, which he released during the ensuing media frenzy, the corresponding line was \"...you end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush\". He also said that from the context of the speech which, prior to the \"stuck in Iraq\" line, made several specific references to Bush and elements of his biography, that Kerry was referring to President Bush and not American troops in general.\nAfter two days of media coverage, citing a desire not to be a diversion, Kerry apologized to those who took offense at what he called the misinterpretation of his comment.\nAfghanistan and Pakistan.\nA \"Washington Post\" report in May 2011 stated that Kerry \"has emerged in the past few years as an important envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan during times of crisis\", as he undertook another trip to the two countries. The killing of Osama bin Laden \"has generated perhaps the most important crossroads yet\", the report continued, as the senator spoke at a press conference and prepared to fly from Kabul to Pakistan. Among matters discussed during the May visit to Pakistan, under the general rubric of \"recalibrating\" the bilateral relationship, Kerry sought and retrieved from the Pakistanis the tail-section of the U.S. helicopter which had had to be abandoned at Abbottabad during the bin Laden strike. In 2013, Kerry met with Pakistan's army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to discuss the peace process with the Taliban in Afghanistan.\nVoting record.\nOverall.\nMost analyses place Kerry's voting record on the left within the Senate Democratic caucus. During the 2004 presidential election he was portrayed as a staunch liberal by conservative groups and the Bush campaign, who often noted that in 2003 Kerry was rated the top Senate liberal by \"National Journal\". However, that rating was based only upon voting on legislation within that past year. In fact, in terms of career voting records, the \"National Journal\" found that Kerry is the 11th most liberal member of the Senate. Most analyses find that Kerry is at least slightly more liberal than the typical Democratic Senator. Kerry has stated that he opposes privatizing Social Security, supports abortion rights for adult women and minors, supports same-sex marriage, opposes capital punishment except for terrorists, supports most gun control laws, and is generally a supporter of trade agreements. In some of these, as in the case of abortion, Kerry distinguishes his personal views as in line with his Catholic faith, but believes that separation of church and state demands that he not legislate his religious beliefs upon those who do not share those beliefs. Kerry supported the North American Free Trade Agreement and Most Favored Nation status for China, but opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement.\nIn July 1997, Kerry joined his Senate colleagues in voting against ratification of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming without greenhouse gas emissions limits on nations deemed developing, including India and China. Since then, Kerry has attacked President Bush, charging him with opposition to international efforts to combat global warming.\nOn October 1, 2008, Kerry voted for Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, also known as the TARP bailout.\nIraq.\nIn the lead up to the Iraq War, Kerry said on October 9, 2002; \"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.\" Bush relied on that resolution in ordering the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Kerry also gave a January 23, 2003, speech to Georgetown University saying \"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator; leading an oppressive regime he presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.\" Kerry did, however, warn that the administration should exhaust its diplomatic avenues before launching war: \"Mr. President, do not rush to war, take the time to build the coalition, because it's not winning the war that's hard, it's winning the peace that's hard.\"\nAfter the invasion of Iraq, when no weapons of mass destruction were found, Kerry strongly criticized Bush, contending that he had misled the country: \"When the President of the United States looks at you and tells you something, there should be some trust.\"\nLibya.\nIn 2011, Kerry supported American military action in Libya.\nLeadership.\nKerry chaired the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs from 1991 to 1993. The committee's report, which Kerry endorsed, stated there was \"no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia\". In 1994 the Senate passed a resolution, sponsored by Kerry and fellow Vietnam veteran John McCain, that called for an end to the existing trade embargo against Vietnam; it was intended to pave the way for normalization. In 1995, President Bill Clinton normalized diplomatic relations with the country of Vietnam.\nKerry was the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 1987 to 1989. He was reelected to the Senate in 1990, 1996 (after winning re-election against the then-Governor of Massachusetts Republican William Weld), 2002, and 2008. In January 2009, Kerry replaced Joe Biden as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.\nAs a role model for campus leaders across the nation and strong advocate for global development, Kerry was honored by the Millennium Campus Network (MCN) as a Global Generation Award winner in 2011.\nCommittee assignments.\nDuring his tenure, Kerry served on four Senate committees and nine subcommittees:\nSeniority.\nFrom the beginning of the 113th United States Congress until his resignation, Kerry ranked as the 7th most senior U.S. Senator. Due to the longevity of Ted Kennedy's service, Kerry was the most senior \"junior Senator\" in the 111th United States Congress. On Tuesday, August 25, 2009, Kerry became the senior senator from Massachusetts following Ted Kennedy's death.\nSponsorship of legislation.\nAreas of concern in the bills Kerry introduced into the Senate included small business concerns, education, terrorism, veterans' and POW/MIA issues, and marine resource protection. A full list of Kerry's sponsored legislation was available on his Senate web site.\nDuring his Senate career, Kerry was primary sponsor of the following bills (excluding resolutions and amendments sponsored). This table does not count bills which Kerry co-sponsored.\nA chronological list of various bills and resolutions sponsored by Kerry follows.\n2004 presidential campaign.\nIn the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries, John Kerry defeated several Democratic rivals, including Sen. John Edwards (D-North Carolina), former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and retired Army General Wesley Clark. His victory in the Iowa caucuses is widely believed to be the tipping point where Kerry revived his sagging campaign in New Hampshire and the February 3, 2004, primary states like Arizona, South Carolina and New Mexico. Kerry then went on to win landslide victories in Nevada and Wisconsin. Kerry thus won the Democratic nomination to run for President of the United States against incumbent George W. Bush. On July 6, 2004, he announced his selection of John Edwards as his running mate. Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who was Kerry's 2004 campaign adviser, wrote an article in \"Time\" magazine claiming that after the election, Kerry had said that he wished he had never picked Edwards, and that the two have since stopped speaking to each other. In a subsequent appearance on ABC's \"This Week\", Kerry refused to respond to Shrum's allegation, calling it a \"ridiculous waste of time\".\nDuring his bid to be elected president in 2004, Kerry frequently criticized President George W. Bush for starting the Iraq War. While Kerry had initially voted in support of authorizing President Bush to use force in dealing with Saddam Hussein, he voted against an $87billion supplemental appropriations bill to pay for the subsequent war. His statement on March 16, 2004, \"I actually did vote for the $87billion before I voted against it\", helped the Bush campaign to paint him as a flip-flopper and has been cited as contributing to Kerry's defeat.\nOn November 3, 2004, Kerry conceded the race. Kerry won 59.03 million votes, or 48.3 percent of the popular vote; Bush won 62.04 million votes, or 50.7 percent of the popular vote. Kerry carried states with a total of 252 electoral votes. One Kerry elector voted for Kerry's running mate, Edwards, so in the final tally Kerry had 251 electoral votes to Bush's 286. He was the first Democrat since Michael Dukakis in 1988 to lose the popular vote in a presidential election, and until Kamala Harris's loss in 2024, he was the most recent Democrat to do so.\nSubsequent presidential-election activities.\nImmediately after the 2004 election, some Democrats mentioned Kerry as a possible contender for the 2008 Democratic nomination. His brother had said such a campaign was \"conceivable\", and Kerry himself reportedly said at a farewell party for his 2004 campaign staff, \"There's always another four years\".\nKerry established a separate political action committee, Keeping America's Promise, which declared as its mandate \"A Democratic Congress will restore accountability to Washington and help change a disastrous course in Iraq\", and raised money and channeled contributions to Democratic candidates in state and federal races. Through Keeping America's Promise in 2005, Kerry raised over $5.5million for other Democrats up and down the ballot. Through his campaign account and his political action committee, the Kerry campaign operation generated more than $10million for various party committees and 179 candidates for the U.S. House, Senate, state and local offices in 42 states focusing on the midterm elections during the 2006 election cycle. \"Cumulatively, John Kerry has done as much if not more than any other individual senator\", Hassan Nemazee, the national finance chairman of the DSCC said.\nOn January 10, 2008, Kerry endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama for president. He was mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate for Senator Obama, although fellow Senator Joe Biden was eventually chosen. After Biden's acceptance of the vice presidential nomination, speculation arose that John Kerry would be a candidate for Secretary of State in the Obama administration. However, Senator Hillary Clinton was offered the position.\nDuring the 2012 Obama reelection campaign, Kerry participated in one-on-one debate prep with the president, impersonating the Republican candidate Mitt Romney.\nSecretary of State (2013\u20132017).\nNomination and confirmation.\nOn December 15, 2012, several news outlets reported that President Barack Obama would nominate Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, after Susan Rice, widely seen as Obama's preferred choice, withdrew her name from consideration citing a politicized confirmation process following criticism of her response to the 2012 Benghazi attack. On December 21, Obama proposed the nomination, which received positive commentary. His confirmation hearing took place on January 24, 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the same panel where he first testified in 1971. The committee unanimously voted to approve him on January 29, 2013, and the same day the full Senate confirmed him on a vote of 94\u20133. In a letter to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Kerry announced his resignation from the Senate effective February 1.\nTenure.\nKerry was sworn in as Secretary of State on February 1, 2013.\nWhile serving as the Secretary of State, Kerry spoke in the French language on several occasions in his official capacity.\nAfter six months of rigorous diplomacy within the Middle East, Kerry was able to have Israeli and Palestinian negotiators agree to start the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks. Senior U.S. officials stated the two sides were able to meet on July 30, 2013, at the State Department without American mediators following a dinner the previous evening hosted by Kerry.\nOn September 27, 2013, he met with the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the P5+1 and Iran summit, which eventually led to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. It was the highest-level direct contact between the United States and Iran in the last six years, and made him the first U.S. Secretary of State to have met with his Iranian counterpart since 1979 Iranian Revolution.\nIn the State Department, Kerry quickly earned a reputation \"for being aloof, keeping to himself, and not bothering to read staff memos\". Career State Department officials complained that power became too centralized under Kerry's leadership, which slowed department operations when Kerry was on frequent overseas trips. Others in State described Kerry as having \"a kind of diplomatic attention deficit disorder\" as he shifted from topic to topic instead of focusing on long-term strategy. When asked whether he was traveling too much, he responded, \"Hell no. I'm not slowing down.\" Despite Kerry's early achievements, morale at State was lower than under Hillary Clinton, according to department employees. However, after Kerry's first six months in the State Department, a Gallup poll found he had high approval ratings among Americans as Secretary of State. After a year, another poll showed Kerry's favorability continued to rise. Less than two years into Kerry's term, the Foreign Policy Magazine's 2014 Ivory Tower survey of international relations scholars asked, \"Who was the most effective U.S. Secretary of State in the past 50 years?\"; John Kerry and Lawrence Eagleburger tied for 11th place out of the 15 confirmed Secretaries of State in that period.\nIn January 2014, having met with Vatican Secretary of State Archbishop Pietro Parolin, Kerry said: \"We touched on just about every major issue that we are both working on, that are issues of concern to all of us. First of all, we talked at great length about Syria, and I was particularly appreciative for the Archbishop's raising this issue, and equally grateful for the Holy Father's comments\u00a0\u2013 the Pope's comments yesterday regarding his support for the GenevaII process. We welcome that support. It is very important to have broad support, and I know that the Pope is particularly concerned about the massive numbers of displaced human beings and the violence that has taken over 130,000 lives.\"\nKerry expressed support for Israel's right to defend itself during the 2014 Israel\u2013Gaza conflict.\nKerry said the United States supported the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen because Saudi Arabia, an ally, was threatened \"very directly\" by the takeover of neighboring Yemen by the Houthis, but noted that the United States would not reflexively support Saudi Arabia's proxy wars against Iran.\nOn December 28, 2016, soon after United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 passed 14\u20130 with the U.S. abstaining, Kerry joined the rest of the U.N. Security Council in strongly criticizing Israel's settlement policies in a speech. His speech and criticisms met negative reactions from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while UK Prime Minister Theresa May distanced the UK from Kerry's strongly worded speech in what appeared to be an attempt to build bridges with the incoming Trump administration. Kerry's speech received positive reactions from Arab nations, but some criticized his remarks as too little, too late from the outgoing administration.\nSyria.\nFollowing the August 21, 2013, chemical weapons attack on the Ghouta suburbs of Damascus attributed to Syrian government forces, Kerry became a leading advocate for the use of military force against the Syrian government for what he called \"a despot's brutal and flagrant use of chemical weapons\".\nOn September 9, in response to a reporter's question about whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could avert a military strike, Kerry said \"He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that. But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done, obviously.\" This unscripted remark initiated a process that would lead to Syria agreeing to relinquish and destroy its chemical weapons arsenal, as Russia treated Kerry's statement as a serious proposal. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia would work \"immediately\" to convince Syria relinquish and destroy its large chemical weapons arsenal. Syria quickly welcomed this proposal and on September 14, the UN formally accepted Syria's application to join the convention banning chemical weapons, and separately, the U.S. and Russia agreed on a plan to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons by the middle of 2014, leading Kerry to declare on July 20, 2014: \"we struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out\". On September 28, the UN Security Council passed a resolution ordering the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons and condemning the August 21 Ghouta attack.\nLatin America.\nIn a speech before the Organization of American States in November 2013, Kerry remarked that the era of the Monroe Doctrine was over. He went on to explain, \"The relationship that we seek and that we have worked hard to foster is not about a United States declaration about how and when it will intervene in the affairs of other American states. It's about all of our countries viewing one another as equals, sharing responsibilities, cooperating on security issues, and adhering not to doctrine, but to the decisions that we make as partners to advance the values and the interests that we share.\"\nEnvironmentalism.\nIn April 2016, he signed the Paris Climate Accords at the United Nations in New York.\nOn November 11, 2016, Kerry became the first Secretary of State and highest-ranking U.S. official to date to visit Antarctica. Kerry spent two days on the continent meeting with researchers and staying overnight at McMurdo Station.\nIn 1994, Kerry led opposition to continued funding for the Integral Fast Reactor, which resulted in the end of funding for the project. However, in light of increasing concerns regarding climate change, in 2017 Kerry reversed his position on nuclear power, saying \"Given this challenge we face today, and given the progress of fourth generation nuclear: go for it. No other alternative, zero emissions.\"\nGlobal Connect initiative.\nIn September 2015, the U.S. Department of State unveiled a new initiative called \"Global Connect\" which sought to provide internet access to more than 1.5 billion people around the world within five years. In 2016, in partnership with OPIC, Kerry announced an investment of $171million to enable \"a low-cost and rapidly scalable wireless broadband network in India\". OPIC's financing is aimed at helping its Indian Partner, Tikona Digital Networks, to provide Internet through wireless technology.\nOut of government (2017\u20132021).\nKerry retired from his diplomatic work following the end of the Obama administration on January 20, 2017. He did not attend Donald Trump's inauguration on that day, and the following day took part in the 2017 Women's March in Washington, D.C.\nKerry has taken a strong stand against Trump policies and joined in filing a brief arguing against Trump's executive order banning entry of persons from seven Muslim countries. In November 2018, in a \"Guardian Live\" conversation with Andrew Rawnsley, sponsored by \"The Guardian\" at London's Central Hall, Kerry discussed several issues which have developed further since his tenure as Secretary of State, including migration into Europe and climate change.\nOn December 5, 2019, Kerry endorsed Joe Biden's bid for the Democratic nomination for president, saying \"He'll be ready on day one to put back together the country and the world that Donald Trump has broken apart\" and asserting that \"Joe will defeat Donald Trump next November. He's the candidate with the wisdom and standing to fix what Trump has broken, to restore our place in the world, and improve the lives of working people here at home.\"\nFollowing retirement from government service, Kerry signed an agreement with Simon & Schuster for publishing his planned memoirs, dealing with his life and career in government. In September 2018, he published \"Every Day Is Extra\".\nLeaked audiotape.\nOn April 25, 2021, \"The New York Times\" published content from a leaked audiotape of a three-hour taped conversation between economist Saeed Leylaz and Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. The taped conversation was connected to an oral history project, known as \"In the Islamic Republic the military field rules\", which documents the work of Iran's current administration. The tape was obtained by the London-based news channel Iran International.\nIn the tape, which the \"Times\" referred to as \"extraordinary\", Zarif reveals that then-Secretary of State Kerry told him that Israel attacked Iranian assets in Syria, \"at least 200 times\". Although the tape has not been verified, the spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry did not deny its validity.\nNineteen Republican senators signed a letter asking President Biden to investigate Zarif's claim. On April 27, 2021, Republicans called on Kerry to resign from the Biden administration's National Security Council. In a tweet, Kerry denied Zarif's account, writing, \"I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false. This never happened \u2014 either when I was Secretary of State or since.\"\nSpecial Presidential Envoy for Climate (2021\u20132024).\nOn November 23, 2020, President-elect Joe Biden's transition team announced that Kerry would be taking a full-time position in the administration, serving as a special envoy for climate; in this role he will be a principal on the National Security Council. Kerry assumed office on January 20, 2021, following Biden's inauguration.\nClimate cooperation with China.\nIn July 2023, John Kerry visited China for advance climate cooperation. The main achievement of the visit was some progress in the fields of: \"methane reduction commitments; reducing China's reliance on coal; China's objections to trade restrictions on solar panel and battery components; and climate finance.\" This was obtained despite many currently existing obstacles to cooperation. The visit was made in the middle of the 2023 Asia heat wave that set a new record of in Sanbu, Xinjiang, China, which Kerry mentioned in particular.\nClimate cooperation with India.\nAt the end of July 2023, John Kerry visited India. Among others he declared, the US will be committed to the target of delivering 100 billion dollars for climate action to low income countries and no future US president can retreat from climate commitment. He criticized Donald Trump for leaving the Paris agreement before.\nClimate cooperation with countries in the Middle East.\nIn June 2023, Kerry made visits to Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. In Israel, he emphasized the need for climate legislation to reach climate targets and reached an agreement about the renewal of \"Memorandum of understanding between Israel and the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Israel is one of the few developed countries which have still not approved a climate law and lags behind other OECD countries in climate action. Israeli environmental protection minister Idit Silman said that Israel intended to go to COP28 \"with an ambitious and applicable climate law and put the State of Israel on the same level as the developed countries of the OECD.\"\nDeparture.\nOn January 13, 2024, at least three sources close to Kerry revealed that he would step down as U.S. climate envoy by the upcoming spring. He told the \"Financial Times\" he planned to stay active in the climate finance space. He officially resigned from his position on March 6, 2024.\nPersonal and family life.\nAncestry.\nKerry's paternal ancestors came from the Fr\u00e4nkel family, which owned a textile factory in Neustadt, Upper Silesia (now Prudnik, Poland), founded by Samuel Fr\u00e4nkel. The Fr\u00e4nkels originated from Hotzenplotz, Austria (now Osoblaha, Czech Republic) and Z\u00fclz, Prussia (now Bia\u0142a Prudnicka, Poland). Kerry's paternal great-grandmother, Mathilda Fr\u00e4nkel, was born in Oberglogau (now G\u0142og\u00f3wek, near Prudnik) and married Benedikt Kohn from Bennisch (now Horn\u00ed Bene\u0161ov). His grandparents, shoe businessman Frederick A. \"Fred\" Kerry and musician Ida L\u00f6we, immigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the U.S. Fred, his wife, and his brother converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1901, and changed their names from Kohn to Kerry. Ida was of remote ancestry of Rabbi Sinai Loew of Worms, brother of Judah Loew ben Bezalel. Fred and Ida Kerry emigrated to the United States in 1905, living at first in Chicago and eventually moving to Brookline, Massachusetts, by 1915. According to \"The New York Times\", \"[the] brother and sister of John Kerry's paternal grandmother, Otto and Jenni Lowe, died in concentration camps\". Kerry's Jewish ancestry was publicly revealed during his 2004 presidential campaign; he has stated that he was unaware of it until a reporter informed him of it in 2003.\nKerry's maternal ancestors were of Scottish and English descent, and his maternal grandparents were James Grant Forbes II of the Forbes family and Margaret Tyndal Winthrop of the Dudley\u2013Winthrop family. Margaret's paternal grandfather Robert Charles Winthrop served as the 22nd Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Robert's father was Governor Thomas Lindall Winthrop. Thomas' father John Still Winthrop was a great-great-grandson of Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop and great-grandson of Governor Thomas Dudley. Through his mother, Kerry is a first cousin once removed of French politician Brice Lalonde.\nMarriages and children.\nKerry was married to Julia Thorne in 1970, and they had two daughters together: documentary filmmaker Alexandra Kerry (born September 5, 1973) and physician Vanessa Kerry (born December 31, 1976).\nAlexandra was born days before Kerry began law school. In 1982, Julia asked Kerry for a separation while she was suffering from severe depression. They were divorced on July 25, 1988, and the marriage was formally annulled in 1997. \"After 14 years as a political wife, I associated politics only with anger, fear and loneliness\", she wrote in \"A Change of Heart\", her book about depression. Thorne later married Richard Charlesworth, an architect, and moved to Bozeman, Montana, where she became active in local environmental groups such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Thorne supported Kerry's 2004 presidential run. She died of cancer on April 27, 2006.\nKerry and his second wife\u2014Portuguese-born businesswoman and philanthropist Teresa Heinz, the widow of Kerry's late Pennsylvania Republican Senate colleague John Heinz\u2014were introduced to each other by Heinz at an Earth Day rally in 1990. Early the following year, Senator Heinz was killed in a plane crash near Lower Merion. Teresa has three sons from her marriage to Heinz, Henry John IV, Andr\u00e9, and Christopher. Heinz and Kerry were married on May 26, 1995, in Nantucket, Massachusetts.\nNet worth.\nThe \"Forbes 400\" survey estimated in 2004 that Teresa Heinz Kerry had a net worth of $750million. However, estimates have frequently varied, ranging from around $165million to as high as $3.2billion, according to a study in the \"Los Angeles Times\". Regardless of which figure is correct, Kerry was the wealthiest U.S. Senator while serving in the Senate. Independent of Heinz, Kerry is wealthy in his own right, and is the beneficiary of at least four trusts inherited from Forbes family relatives, including his mother, Rosemary Forbes Kerry, who died in 2002. \"Forbes\" magazine (named for the Forbes family of publishers, unrelated to Kerry) estimated that if elected, and if Heinz family assets were included, Kerry would have been the third-richest U.S. president in history, when adjusted for inflation. This assessment was based on Heinz's and Kerry's combined assets, but the couple signed a prenuptial agreement that keeps their assets separate. Kerry's financial disclosure form for 2011 put his personal assets in the range of $230,000,000 to $320,000,000, including the assets of his spouse and any dependent children. This included slightly more than $3,000,000 worth of H. J. Heinz Company assets, which increased in value by over $600,000 in 2013 when Berkshire Hathaway announced their intention to purchase the company.\nIn April 2017, Kerry purchased an 18-acre property on the northwest corner of Martha's Vineyard overlooking Vineyard Sound in the town of Chilmark, Massachusetts. The property is located in Seven Gates Farm and according to property records, cost $11.75million for the seven bedroom home.\nReligious beliefs.\nKerry is a Roman Catholic, and is said to have carried a religious rosary, a prayer book, and a St. Christopher medal (the patron saint of travelers) when he campaigned. Discussing his faith, Kerry said: \"I thought of being a priest. I was very religious while at school in Switzerland. I was an altar boy and prayed all the time. I was very centered around the Mass and the church.\" He also said that the Letters of Paul (Apostle Paul) moved him the most, stating that they taught him to \"not feel sorry for myself\".\nKerry told \"Christianity Today\" in October 2004:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I'm a Catholic and I practice, but at the same time I have an open-mindedness to many other expressions of spirituality that come through different religions... I've spent some time reading and thinking about religion and trying to study it, and I've arrived at not so much a sense of the differences, but a sense of the similarities in so many ways.\nHe said that he believed that the Torah, the Quran, and the Bible all share a fundamental story which connects with readers.\nHealth.\nIn 2003, Kerry was diagnosed with and successfully treated for prostate cancer. On May 31, 2015, Kerry broke his right leg in a biking accident in Scionzier, France, and was flown to Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital for recovery. MGH Hip and Knee Replacement Orthopaedic Surgeon Dr. Dennis Burke, who had met Kerry in France and had accompanied him in the plane from France to Boston, set Kerry's right leg on Tuesday, June 2, in a four-hour operation.\nAthletics and sailing.\nIn addition to the sports he played at Yale, Kerry is described by \"Sports Illustrated\", among others, as an \"avid cyclist\", primarily riding on a road bike. Prior to his presidential bid, Kerry had participated in several long-distance rides. During his many campaigns, he was reported to have visited bicycle stores in both his home state and elsewhere. His staff requested recumbent stationary bikes for his hotel rooms. He has also been a snowboarder, windsurfer, and sailor.\nThe \"Boston Herald\" reported on July 23, 2010, that Kerry commissioned construction on a new $7million yacht (a Friendship 75) in New Zealand and moored it in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where the Friendship yacht company is based. The article claimed this allowed him to avoid paying Massachusetts taxes on the property including approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $500. On July 27, Kerry stated he would voluntarily pay $500,000 in Massachusetts taxes on his yacht.\nHonors.\nJohn Kerry was awarded:\nHonorary degrees.\nJohn Kerry has received several honorary degrees in recognition of his service to the United States, These include:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "27945430": "George Townsend (baseball)\nAmerican baseball player (1867\u20131930)\nGeorge Hodgson Townsend (June 4, 1867 in Hartsdale, New York \u2013 March 15, 1930 in New Haven, Connecticut), nicknamed \"Sleepy\", was an American baseball player who played catcher in the Major Leagues from 1887 to 1891. He played for the Philadelphia Athletics and Baltimore Orioles.", "53825": "New Haven, Connecticut\nNew Haven is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is the third largest city in Connecticut after Bridgeport and Stamford, the largest city in the South Central Connecticut Planning Region, and the principal municipality of Greater New Haven, which had a total population of 864,835 in 2020.\nNew Haven was one of the first planned cities in the U.S. A year after its founding by English Puritans in 1638, eight streets were laid out in a four-by-four grid, creating the \"Nine Square Plan\". The central common block is the New Haven Green, a square at the center of Downtown New Haven. The Green is now a National Historic Landmark, and the \"Nine Square Plan\" is recognized by the American Planning Association as a National Planning Landmark.\nNew Haven is the home of Yale University, New Haven's biggest taxpayer and employer, and an integral part of the city's economy. Health care, professional and financial services and retail trade also contribute to the city's economic activity.\nThe city served as co-capital of Connecticut from 1701 until 1873, when sole governance was transferred to the more centrally located city of Hartford. New Haven has since billed itself as the \"Cultural Capital of Connecticut\" for its supply of established theaters, museums, and music venues. New Haven had the first public tree planting program in the U.S., producing a canopy of mature trees (including some large elms) that gave the city the nickname \"The Elm City\".\nHistory.\nPre-colonial foundation as an independent colony.\nBefore Europeans arrived, the New Haven area was the home of the Quinnipiac tribe of Native Americans, who lived in villages around the harbor and sustained an economy of local fisheries and the farming of maize. The area was briefly visited by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block in 1614. Dutch traders set up a small trading system of beaver pelts with the local inhabitants, but trade was sporadic and the Dutch did not settle permanently in the area.\nIn 1637, a small party of Puritans did a reconnaissance of the New Haven harbor area and wintered over. In April 1638, the main party of five hundred Puritans, who had left the Massachusetts Bay Colony under the leadership of Reverend John Davenport and London merchant Theophilus Eaton, sailed into the harbor. It was their hope to set up a theological community with the government more closely linked to the church than that in Massachusetts, and to exploit the area's potential as a port. The Quinnipiacs, who were under attack by neighboring Pequots, sold their land to the settlers in return for a pledge of protection.\nBy 1640, \"Quinnipiac's\" theocratic government and nine-square grid plan were in place, and the town was renamed New Haven, with 'haven' meaning harbor or port. However, the area to the north remained Quinnipiac until 1678, when it was renamed Hamden. The settlement became the headquarters of the New Haven Colony, distinct from the Connecticut Colony previously established to the north centering on Hartford. Reflecting its theocratic roots, the New Haven Colony forbade the establishment of other churches, whereas the Connecticut Colony permitted them.\nEconomic disaster struck New Haven in 1646, when the town sent its first fully loaded ship of local goods (the \"Great Shippe\") back to England. It never reached its destination, and its disappearance hindered New Haven's development as compared to the rising trade powers of Boston and New Amsterdam (modern day New York City).\nIn 1660, Colony founder John Davenport's wishes were fulfilled, and Hopkins School was founded in New Haven with money from the estate of Edward Hopkins.\nIn 1661, the Regicides who had signed the death warrant of Charles I of England were pursued by Charles II. Two of them, Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe, fled to New Haven for refuge. Davenport arranged for them to hide in the West Rock hills northwest of the town. A third judge, John Dixwell, later joined the others. None of the three were ever returned to England for trial; Dixwell died of old age in New Haven, the others likewise elsewhere in New England.\nAs part of the Connecticut Colony.\nIn 1664, New Haven became part of the Connecticut Colony when the two colonies were merged under political pressure from England. Seeking to establish a new theocracy elsewhere, some members of the New Haven Colony went on to establish Newark, New Jersey.\nNew Haven was made co-capital of Connecticut in 1701, a status it retained until 1873.\nIn 1716, the Collegiate School relocated from Old Saybrook to New Haven, establishing it as a center of learning. In 1718, in response to a large donation from East India Company merchant Elihu Yale, former Governor of Madras, the Collegiate School was renamed Yale College.\nFor over a century, New Haven citizens had fought in the colonial militia alongside regular British forces, including the French and Indian War. As the American Revolution approached, General David Wooster and other influential residents hoped that the conflict with the British parliament could be resolved short of rebellion. On April 23, 1775, Captain Benedict Arnold commanded the Second Company, Governor's Foot Guard, of New Haven to break into the powder house to arm themselves for a three-day march to Cambridge, Massachusetts, an event still celebrated in New Haven as Powder House Day. Other New Haven militia members were on hand to escort George Washington from his overnight stay in New Haven on his way to Cambridge. Contemporary reports, from both sides, remark on the New Haven volunteers' professional military bearing, including uniforms.\nOn July 5, 1779, 2,600 loyalists and British regulars under General William Tryon, governor of New York, landed in New Haven Harbor and raided the town of 3,500. A militia of Yale students had been preparing for battle, and former Yale president and Yale Divinity School professor Naphtali Daggett rode out to confront the Redcoats. Yale president Ezra Stiles recounted in his diary that while he moved furniture in anticipation of battle, he still couldn't quite believe the revolution had begun. New Haven was not torched as the invaders did with Danbury in 1777, or Fairfield and Norwalk a week after the New Haven raid, preserving many of the town's colonial features.\nPost-colonial period and industrialization.\nNew Haven was incorporated as a city in 1784, and Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Constitution and author of the \"Connecticut Compromise\", became the new city's first mayor.\nThe city struck fortune in the late 18th century with the inventions and industrial activity of Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate who remained in New Haven to develop the cotton gin and establish a gun-manufacturing factory in the northern part of the city near the Hamden town line. That area is still known as Whitneyville, and the main road through both towns is known as Whitney Avenue. The factory is now the Eli Whitney Museum, which has a particular emphasis on activities for children and exhibits pertaining to the A. C. Gilbert Company. His factory, along with that of Simeon North, and the lively clock-making and brass hardware sectors, contributed to making early Connecticut a powerful manufacturing economy; so many arms manufacturers sprang up that the state became known as \"The Arsenal of America\". It was in Whitney's gun-manufacturing plant that Samuel Colt invented the automatic revolver in 1836. Many other talented machinists and firearms designers would go on to found successful firearms manufacturing companies in New Haven, including Oliver Winchester and O.F. Mossberg & Sons.\nThe Farmington Canal, created in the early 19th century, was a short-lived transporter of goods into the interior regions of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and ran from New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts.\nNew Haven was to be the site of the first college for African Americans in the United States, but the plan was obstructed by efforts led by Yale Law School founder and former New Haven Mayor David Daggett, who went on to serve as a U.S. Senator and judge on Connecticut's highest court. Daggett denigrated African Americans, denied they were citizens, and presided over the trial of a woman persecuted for trying to admit an African American girl to her boarding school and, having that effort blocked, running a boarding school for African American girls.\nNew Haven was home to one of the important early events in the burgeoning anti-slavery movement when, in 1839, the trial of mutineering Mende tribesmen being transported as slaves on the Spanish slaveship \"Amistad\" was held in New Haven's United States District Court. There is a statue of Joseph Cinqu\u00e9, the informal leader of the slaves, beside City Hall. See \"Museums\" below for more information. Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech on slavery in New Haven in 1860, shortly before he secured the Republican nomination for President.\nThe American Civil War boosted the local economy with wartime purchases of industrial goods, including that of the New Haven Arms Company, which would later become the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. (Winchester would continue to produce arms in New Haven until 2006, and many of the buildings that were a part of the Winchester plant are now a part of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company Historic District). After the war, population grew and doubled by the start of the 20th century, most notably due to the influx of immigrants from southern Europe, particularly Italy. Today, roughly half the populations of East Haven, West Haven, and North Haven are Italian-American. Jewish immigration to New Haven has left an enduring mark on the city. Westville was the center of Jewish life in New Haven, though today many have fanned out to suburban communities such as Woodbridge and Cheshire. Lowell House, the city's first settlement, opened in 1900.\nPost-industrial era and urban redevelopment.\nNew Haven's expansion continued during the two World Wars, with most new inhabitants being African Americans from the American South, and Puerto Ricans. The city reached its peak population after World War II. The area of New Haven is only , encouraging further development of new housing after 1950 in adjacent, suburban towns. Moreover, as in other U.S. cities in the 1950s, New Haven began to suffer white flight of middle-class workers. One author suggested that aggressive redlining and rezoning made it difficult for residents to obtain financing for older, deteriorating urban housing stock, thereby condemning such structures to deterioration.\nIn 1954, then-mayor Richard C. Lee began some of the earliest major urban renewal projects in the United States. Certain sections of downtown New Haven were redeveloped to include museums, new office towers, a hotel, and large shopping complexes. Other parts of the city, particularly the Wooster Square and Fair Haven neighborhoods were affected by the construction of Interstate 95 along the Long Wharf section, Interstate 91, and the Oak Street Connector. The Oak Street Connector (Route 34), running between Interstate 95, downtown, and The Hill neighborhood, was originally intended as a highway to the city's western suburbs but was only completed as a highway to the downtown area, with the area to the west becoming a boulevard (See \"Redevelopment\" below).\nIn 1970, a series of criminal prosecutions against various members of the Black Panther Party took place in New Haven, inciting mass protests on the New Haven Green involving twelve thousand demonstrators and many well-known New Left political activists. (See \"Political Culture\" below for more information). From the 1960s through the early 1990s, some areas of New Haven continued to decline both economically and in terms of population despite attempts to resurrect certain neighborhoods through renewal projects. In conjunction with its declining population, New Haven experienced a steep rise in its crime rate.\nSince approximately 2000, many parts of downtown New Haven have been revitalized with new restaurants, nightlife, and small retail stores. In particular, the area surrounding the New Haven Green has experienced an influx of apartments and condominiums. In addition, two new supermarkets opened to serve downtown's growing residential population: a Stop & Shop opened just west of downtown, while Elm City Market, located one block from the Green, opened in 2011. The recent turnaround of downtown New Haven has received positive press from various periodicals.\nMajor projects include the current construction of a new campus for Gateway Community College downtown, and also a 32-story, 500-unit apartment/retail building called 360 State Street. The 360 State Street project is now occupied and is the largest residential building in Connecticut. A new boathouse and dock is planned for New Haven Harbor, and the linear park Farmington Canal Trail is set to extend into downtown New Haven within the coming year. Additionally, foundation and ramp work to widen I-95 to create a new harbor crossing for New Haven, with an extradosed bridge to replace the 1950s-era Q Bridge, has begun. The city still hopes to redevelop the site of the New Haven Coliseum, which was demolished in 2007.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 18 white firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no black firefighters scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. In the subsequent \"Ricci v. DeStefano\" decision the court found 5\u20134 that New Haven's decision to ignore the test results violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a result, a district court subsequently ordered the city to promote 14 of the white firefighters.\nIn 2010 and 2011, state and federal funds were awarded to Connecticut (and Massachusetts) to construct the Hartford Line, with a southern terminus at New Haven's Union Station and a northern terminus at Springfield's Union Station. According to the White House, \"This corridor [currently] has one train per day connecting communities in Connecticut and Massachusetts to the Northeast Corridor and Vermont. The vision for this corridor is to restore the alignment to its original route via the Knowledge Corridor in western Massachusetts, improving trip time and increasing the population base that can be served.\" Set for construction in 2013, the \"Knowledge Corridor high speed intercity passenger rail\" project will cost approximately $1\u00a0billion, and the ultimate northern terminus for the project is reported to be Montreal in Canada. Train speeds between will reportedly exceed and increase both cities' rail traffic exponentially.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 6.67%, is water.\nNew Haven's best-known geographic features are its large, shallow harbor, and two reddish basalt trap rock ridges which rise to the northeast and northwest of the city core. These trap rocks are known respectively as East Rock and West Rock, and both serve as extensive parks. West Rock has been tunneled through to make way for the east\u2013west passage of the Wilbur Cross Parkway (the only highway tunnel through a natural obstacle in Connecticut), and once served as the hideout of the \"Regicides\" (see: Regicides Trail). Most New Haveners refer to these men as \"The Three Judges\". East Rock features the prominent Soldiers and Sailors war monument on its peak as well as the \"Great/Giant Steps\" which run up the rock's cliffside.\nThe city is drained by three rivers; the West, Mill, and Quinnipiac, named in order from west to east. The West River discharges into West Haven Harbor, while the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers discharge into New Haven Harbor. Both harbors are embayments of Long Island Sound. In addition, several smaller streams flow through the city's neighborhoods, including Wintergreen Brook, the Beaver Ponds Outlet, Wilmot Brook, Belden Brook, and Prospect Creek. Not all of these small streams have continuous flow year-round.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen classification, New Haven experiences a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\"), bordering a hot-summer humid continental climate (\"Dfa\"). The city has hot, humid summers and cool to cold winters. From May to late September, the weather is typically hot and humid, with average temperatures exceeding on 70 days per year. In summer, the Bermuda High creates as southern flow of warm and humid air, with frequent (but brief) thundershowers. October to early December is normally mild to cool late in the season, while early spring (April) can be cool to warm. Winters are more variable, with cool to cold temperatures, mixed with warmer spells, with both rain and snow fall.\nWhile the weather patterns that affect New Haven result from a primarily offshore direction, thus reducing the marine influence of Long Island Sound, the location on Long Island Sound often influences the weather along the coastline compared to inland. During summer heat waves, temperatures may reach or higher on occasion with heat-index values of over . Tropical cyclones have struck New Haven in the past, including 1938 Hurricane (Long Island Express), Hurricane Carol in 1954, Hurricane Gloria in 1985. The hardiness zone is 7a.\nStreetscape.\nNew Haven has a long tradition of urban planning and a purposeful design for the city's layout. The city could be argued to have some of the first preconceived layouts in the country. Upon founding, New Haven was laid out in a grid plan of nine square blocks; the central square was left open, in the tradition of many New England towns, as the city green (a commons area). The city also instituted the first public tree planting program in America. As in other cities, many of the elms that gave New Haven the nickname \"Elm City\" perished in the mid-20th century due to Dutch elm disease, although many have since been replanted. The New Haven Green is currently home to three separate historic churches which speak to the original theocratic nature of the city. The Green remains the social center of the city today. It was named a National Historic Landmark in 1970.\nDowntown New Haven, occupied by nearly 7,000 residents, has a more residential character than most downtowns. The downtown area provides about half of the city's jobs and half of its tax base and in recent years has become filled with dozens of new upscale restaurants, in addition to shops and thousands of apartments and condominium units which subsequently help overall growth of the city.\nNeighborhoods.\nThe city has many distinct neighborhoods. In addition to Downtown, centered on the central business district and the Green, are the following neighborhoods: the west central neighborhoods of Dixwell and Dwight; the southern neighborhoods of The Hill, historic water-front City Point (or Oyster Point), and the harborside district of Long Wharf; the western neighborhoods of Beaver Hills, Edgewood, West River, Westville, Amity, and West Rock-Westhills; East Rock, Cedar Hill, Prospect Hill, and Newhallville in the northern side of town; the east central neighborhoods of Mill River and Wooster Square, an Italian-American neighborhood; Fair Haven, an immigrant community located between the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers; Quinnipiac Meadows and Fair Haven Heights across the Quinnipiac River; and facing the eastern side of the harbor, The Annex and East Shore (or Morris Cove).\nDemographics.\nCensus data.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nThe U.S. Census Bureau reports a 2010 population of 129,779, with 47,094 households and 25,854 families within the city of New Haven. The population density was . There were 52,941 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 42.6% White, 35.4% African American, 0.5% Native American, 4.6% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 12.9% from other races, and 3.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 27.4% of the population. Non-Hispanic Whites were 31.8% of the population in 2010, down from 69.6% in 1970. The city's Latino population is growing rapidly. Previous influxes among ethnic groups have been African-Americans in the postwar era, and Irish, Italian and (to a lesser degree) Slavic peoples in the prewar period.\nAs of the 2010 census, of the 47,094 households, 29.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 27.5% include married couples living together, 22.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 36.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.5% had someone living alone who was 65\u00a0years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40 and the average family size 3.19.\nThe ages of New Haven's residents were 25.4% under the age of 18, 16.4% from 18 to 24, 31.2% from 25 to 44, 16.7% from 45 to 64, and 10.2% who were 65\u00a0years of age or older. The median age was 29\u00a0years, which was significantly lower than the national average. There were 91.8 males per 100 females. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.6 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $29,604, and the median income for a family was $35,950. Median income for males was $33,605, compared with $28,424 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,393. About 20.5% of families and 24.4% of the population were living below the poverty line, including 32.2% of those under age 18 and 17.9% of those age 65 or over.\nOther data.\nIt is estimated that 14% of New Haven residents are pedestrian commuters, ranking it number four by highest percentage in the United States. This is primarily due to New Haven's small area and the presence of Yale University.\nNew Haven is noted for having the highest percentage of Italian American residents of any US city, and is noted for its local style of pizza.\nA study of the demographics of the New Haven metro area, based on age, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity, found that they were the closest of any American city to the national average.\nEconomy.\nNew Haven's economy originally was based in manufacturing, but the postwar period brought rapid industrial decline; the entire Northeast was affected, and medium-sized cities with large working-class populations, like New Haven, were hit particularly hard. Simultaneously, the growth and expansion of Yale University further affected the economic shift. Today, over half (56%) of the city's economy is now made up of services, in particular education and health care; Yale is the city's largest employer, followed by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital. Other large employers include Southern Connecticut State University, Assa Abloy lock manufacturing, the Knights of Columbus headquarters, Higher One, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Covidien and United Illuminating. Clothing stores Gant and Ann Taylor were founded in the city.\nIn 2017, New Haven was ranked by a Verizon study as one of the top 10 cities in America for launching tech startups, and top two in New England.\nIndustry sectors: Agriculture (.6%), Construction and Mining (4.9%), Manufacturing (2.9%), Transportation and Utilities (2.9%), Trade (21.7%), Finance and Real Estate (7.1%), Services (55.9%), Government (4.0%)\nHeadquarters.\nThe Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization and a Fortune 1000 company, is headquartered in New Haven. Amphenol, based in Greater New Haven (Wallingford), is a Fortune 100 company. Eight Courant 100 companies are based in Greater New Haven, with four headquartered in New Haven proper. New Haven-based companies traded on stock exchanges include NewAlliance Bank, the second largest bank in Connecticut and fourth-largest in New England (NYSE: NAL), Higher One Holdings (NYSE: ONE), a financial services firm, United Illuminating, the electricity distributor for southern Connecticut (NYSE: UIL), and Transpro Inc. (AMEX: TPR). The American division of Assa Abloy (one of the world's leading manufacturers of locks) is located in the city. The Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET) began operations in the city as the District Telephone Company of New Haven in 1878; the company remains headquartered in New Haven as a subsidiary of Frontier Communications and provides telephone service for all but two municipalities in Connecticut. SeeClickFix was founded and has been headquartered in the city since 2007. Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company (a candy-making division of the Hershey Company) was formerly located in the city. Achillion Pharmaceuticals and Alexion Pharmaceuticals were also formerly headquartered in New Haven.\nLaw and government.\nPolitical structure.\nNew Haven is governed via the mayor-council system. Connecticut municipalities (like those of neighboring states Massachusetts and Rhode Island) provide nearly all local services (such as fire and rescue, education, snow removal, etc.), as county government has been abolished since 1960.\nNew Haven County merely refers to a grouping of towns and a judicial district, not a governmental entity. New Haven is a member of the South Central Connecticut Regional Council of Governments (SCRCOG), a regional agency created to facilitate coordination between area municipal governments and state and federal agencies, in the absence of county government.\nJustin Elicker is the mayor of New Haven. He was sworn in as the 51st mayor of New Haven on January 1, 2020.\nThe city council, called the Board of Alders, consists of thirty members, each elected from single-member wards. Each of the 30 wards consists of slightly over 4,300 residents; redistricting takes place every ten years.\nThe city is overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2017, of the town's 83,694 voters, 66% were registered as Democrats (\u22124% since 2015), 4% were registered as Republicans (+1%), and 29% were unaffiliated (+3). The board of alders is dominated by Democrats; a Republican has not served as a New Haven alder since 2011.\nNew Haven is served by the New Haven Police Department, which had 443 sworn officers in 2011. The city is also served by the New Haven Fire Department.\nNew Haven lies within Connecticut's 3rd congressional district and has been represented by Rosa DeLauro since 1991. Martin Looney and Gary Holder-Winfield represent New Haven in the Connecticut State Senate, and the city lies within six districts (numbers 92 through 97) of the Connecticut House of Representatives.\nThe Greater New Haven area is served by the New Haven Judicial District Court and the New Haven Superior Court, both headquartered at the New Haven County Courthouse. The federal District Court for the District of Connecticut has a New Haven facility, the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse.\nPolitical history.\nNew Haven is the birthplace of former president George W. Bush, who was born when his father, former president George H. W. Bush, was living in New Haven while a student at Yale. In addition to being the site of the college educations of both Presidents Bush, as Yale students, New Haven was also the temporary home of former presidents William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, and Bill Clinton, as well as Secretary of State John Kerry. President Clinton met his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while the two were students at Yale Law School. Former vice presidents John C. Calhoun and Dick Cheney also studied in New Haven (although the latter did not graduate from Yale). Before the 2008 election, the last time there was not a person with ties to New Haven and Yale on either major party's ticket was 1968. James Hillhouse, a New Haven native, served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate in 1801.\nNew Haven voters overwhelmingly supported Al Gore in the 2000 election, Yale graduate John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. In the 2008 election, New Haven County was third among all Connecticut counties in campaign contributions, after Fairfield and Hartford counties. (Connecticut, in turn, was ranked 14th among all states in total campaign contributions.)\nNew Haven was the subject of \" Who Governs? Democracy and Power in An American City\", a very influential book in political science by preeminent Yale professor Robert A. Dahl, which includes an extensive history of the city and thorough description of its politics in the 1950s. New Haven's theocratic history is also mentioned several times by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic volume on 19th-century American political life, \"Democracy in America\". New Haven was the residence of conservative thinker William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1951, when he wrote his influential \"God and Man at Yale\". William Lee Miller's \"The Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society\" (1966) similarly explores the relationship between local politics in New Haven and national political movements, focusing on Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and urban renewal.\nGeorge Williamson Crawford, a Yale Law School graduate, served as the city's first black corporation counsel from 1954 to 1962, under Mayor Richard C. Lee.\nIn 1970, the New Haven Black Panther trials took place, the largest and longest trials in Connecticut history. Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale and ten other party members were tried for murdering an alleged informant. Beginning on May Day, the city became a center of protest for 12,000 Panther supporters, college students, and New Left activists (including Jean Genet, Benjamin Spock, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and John Froines), who amassed on the New Haven Green, across the street from where the trials were being held. Violent confrontations between the demonstrators and the New Haven Police occurred, and several bombs were set off in the area by radicals. The event became a rallying point for the New Left and critics of the Nixon Administration.\nDuring the summer of 2007, New Haven was the center of protests by anti-immigration groups who opposed the city's program of offering municipal ID cards, known as the Elm City Resident Card, to illegal immigrants. In 2008, the country of Ecuador opened a consulate in New Haven to serve the large Ecuadorean immigrant population in the area. It is the first foreign mission to open in New Haven since Italy opened a consulate (now closed) in the city in 1910.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 20 white and Hispanic firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no blacks scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. On June 29, 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the firefighters, agreeing that they were improperly denied promotion because of their race. The case, \"Ricci v. DeStefano\", became highly publicized and brought national attention to New Haven politics due to the involvement of then-Supreme Court nominee (and Yale Law School graduate) Sonia Sotomayor in a lower court decision.\nGarry Trudeau, creator of the political \"Doonesbury\" comic strip, attended Yale University. There he met fellow student and later Green Party candidate for Congress Charles Pillsbury, a long-time New Haven resident for whom Trudeau's comic strip is named. During his college years, Pillsbury was known by the nickname \"The Doones\". A theory of international law, which argues for a sociological normative approach in regards to jurisprudence, is named the New Haven Approach, after the city. Connecticut US senator Richard Blumenthal is a Yale graduate, as is former Connecticut US Senator Joe Lieberman who also was a New Haven resident for many years, before moving back to his hometown of Stamford.\nCrime.\nCrime increased in the 1990s, with New Haven having one of the ten highest violent crime rates per capita in the United States. In the late 1990s New Haven's crime began to stabilize. The city, adopting a policy of community policing, saw crime rates drop during the 2000s.\nViolent crime levels vary dramatically among New Haven's neighborhoods, with some areas having crime rates in line with the state of Connecticut average, and others having extremely high rates of crime. A 2011 New Haven Health Department report identifies these issues in greater detail.\nIn 2010, New Haven ranked as the 18th most dangerous city in the United States (albeit below the safety benchmark of 200.00 for the second consecutive year). However, according to a completely different analysis conducted by the \"24/7 Wall Street Blog\", in 2011 New Haven had risen to become the fourth most dangerous city in the United States, and was widely cited in the press as such.\nHowever, an analysis by the Regional Data Cooperative for Greater New Haven, Inc., has shown that due to issues of comparative denominators and other factors, such municipality-based rankings can be considered inaccurate. For example, two cities of identical population can cover widely differing land areas, making such analyses irrelevant. The research organization called for comparisons based on neighborhoods, blocks, or standard methodologies (similar to those used by Brookings, DiversityData, and other established institutions), not based on municipalities.\nEducation.\nColleges and universities.\nNew Haven is a notable center for higher education. Yale University, at the heart of downtown, is one of the city's best known features and its largest employer. New Haven is also home to Southern Connecticut State University, part of the Connecticut State University System, and Albertus Magnus College, a private institution. Gateway Community College has a campus in downtown New Haven, formerly located in the Long Wharf district; Gateway consolidated into one campus downtown into a new state-of-the-art campus (on the site of the old Macy's building) and was open for the Fall 2012 semester.\nThere are several institutions immediately outside of New Haven, as well. Quinnipiac University and the Paier College of Art are located just to the north, in the town of Hamden. The University of New Haven is located not in New Haven but in neighboring West Haven.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nNew Haven Public Schools is the school district serving the city. Wilbur Cross High School and Hillhouse High School are New Haven's two largest public secondary schools.\nHopkins School, a private school, was founded in 1660 and is the fifth-oldest educational institution in the United States. New Haven is home to a number of other private schools as well as public magnet schools, including Metropolitan Business Academy, High School in the Community, Hill Regional Career High School, Co-op High School, New Haven Academy, Edgewood Magnet School, ACES Educational Center for the Arts, the Foote School and the Sound School, all of which draw students from New Haven and suburban towns. New Haven is also home to two Achievement First charter schools, Amistad Academy and Elm City College Prep, and to Common Ground, an environmental charter school.\nThe city is renowned for its progressive school lunch programs, and participation in statewide bussing efforts toward increased diversity in schools.\nCulture.\nCuisine.\nLivability.com named New Haven as the Best Foodie City in the country in 2014. There are dozens of Zagat-rated restaurants in New Haven, the most in Connecticut and the third most in New England (after Boston and Cambridge). More than 120 restaurants are located within two blocks of the New Haven Green. The city is home to an eclectic mix of ethnic restaurants and small markets specializing in various foreign foods. Represented cuisines include Malaysian, Ethiopian, Spanish, Belgian, French, Greek, Latin American, Mexican, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Cuban, Peruvian, Syrian/Lebanese, and Turkish.\nNew Haven's greatest culinary claim to fame may be its pizza, which has been claimed to be among the best in the country, or even in the world. New Haven-style pizza, called \"apizza\", made its debut at the iconic Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana (known as Pepe's) in 1925. Apizza is baked in coal- or wood-fired brick ovens, and is notable for its thin crust. Apizza may be red (with a tomato-based sauce) or white (with a sauce of garlic and olive oil), and pies ordered \"plain\" are made without the otherwise customary mozzarella (originally smoked mozzarella, known as \"scamorza\" in Italian). A white clam pie is a well-known specialty of the restaurants on Wooster Street in the Little Italy section of New Haven, including Pepe's and Sally's Apizza (which opened in 1938). Modern Apizza on State Street, which opened in 1934, is also well-known.\nA second New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Louis' Lunch, which is located in a small brick building on Crown Street and has been serving fast food since 1895. Though fiercely debated, the restaurant's founder Louis Lassen is credited by the Library of Congress with inventing the hamburger and steak sandwich. Louis' Lunch broils hamburgers, steak sandwiches and hot dogs vertically in original antique 1898 cast iron stoves using gridirons, patented by local resident Luigi Pieragostini in 1939, that hold the meat in place while it cooks.\nA third New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Miya's, the first sustainable sushi restaurant in the world. Miya's, founded by Chef Yoshiko Lai in 1982, featured the first sustainable seafood-based sushi menu, the first plant-based sushi menu, and the first invasive species menu in the world. Second generation Miya's chef, Bun Lai, is the 2016 White House Champions of Change for Sustainable Seafood and a James Beard Foundation Award nominee. Chef Bun Lai is credited as the first chef in the world for implementing a sustainability paradigm to the cuisine of sushi.\nDuring weekday lunchtime, over 150 lunch carts and food trucks cater to diners around the city. The carts and food trucks cluster at four main points: on Long Wharf Drive, along the city's shoreline with quick access off Interstate 95, by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital in the center of the Hospital Green (Cedar and York streets), by Yale's Trumbull College (Elm and York streets), and on the intersection of Prospect and Sachem streets by the Yale School of Management.\nPopular farmers' markets, managed by the local non-profit CitySeed, set up shop weekly in several neighborhoods, including Westville/Edgewood Park, Fair Haven, Upper State Street, Wooster Square, and Downtown/New Haven Green.\nA large grocery store, the Elm City Market, opened on 360 State Street in New Haven in early fall 2011 and served local produce and groceries to the community. Originally, the market was a member-owned co-op, but debt defaults in August 2014 forced a sale of the business. It is now an employee-owned business; the co-op's previous owners received no equity in the new business.\nIn the past several years, two separate Downtown food tour companies have started offering popular restaurant tours on weekends.\nTaste of New Haven Tours offers several different weekly restaurant/bar tours and a popular pizza, bike, and pints tour. Culinary Walking Tours offers monthly restaurant tours and sponsors an annual Elm City Iron Chef competition.\nTheatre and film.\nThe city hosts numerous theatres and production houses, including the Yale Repertory Theatre, the Long Wharf Theatre, and the Shubert Theatre. There is also theatre activity from the Yale School of Drama, which works through the Yale University Theatre and the student-run Yale Cabaret. Southern Connecticut State University hosts the Lyman Center for the Performing Arts. The shuttered Palace Theatre (opposite the Shubert Theatre) was renovated and reopened as the College Street Music Hall in May 2015. Smaller theatres include the Little Theater on Lincoln Street. Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School also has a theatre on College Street. The theatre is used for student productions, and is the home to weekly services to a local non-denominational church, the City Church New Haven.\nThe Shubert Theatre once premiered many major theatrical productions before their Broadway debuts. Productions that premiered at the Shubert include \"Oklahoma!\" (which was also written in New Haven), \"Carousel\", \"South Pacific\", \"My Fair Lady\", \"The King and I\", and \"The Sound of Music\", and the Tennessee Williams play \"A Streetcar Named Desire\".\nBow Tie Cinemas owns and operates the Criterion Cinemas, the first new movie theater to open in New Haven in over 30 years and the first luxury movie complex in the city's history. The Criterion has seven screens and opened in November 2004, showing a mix of upscale first run commercial and independent film.\nMuseums.\nNew Haven has a variety of museums, many of them associated with Yale. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library features an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible. There is also the Connecticut Children's Museum; the Knights of Columbus museum near that organization's world headquarters; the Peabody Museum of Natural History; the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments; the Eli Whitney Museum (across the town line in Hamden, Connecticut, on Whitney Avenue); the Yale Center for British Art, which houses the largest collection of British art outside the U.K., and the Yale University Art Gallery, the western hemisphere's oldest college art museum. New Haven is also home to the New Haven Museum and Historical Society on Whitney Avenue, which has a library of many primary source treasures dating from Colonial times to the present.\nArtspace on Orange Street is one of several contemporary art galleries around the city, showcasing the work of local, national, and international artists. Others include City Gallery and A. Leaf Gallery in the downtown area. Westville galleries include Kehler Liddell, Jennifer Jane Gallery, and The Hungry Eye. The Erector Square complex in the Fair Haven neighborhood houses, the Parachute Factory gallery along with numerous artist studios, and the complex serves as an active destination during City-Wide Open Studios held yearly in October.\nNew Haven is the home port of a life-size replica of the historical \"Freedom Schooner Amistad\", which is open for tours at Long Wharf pier at certain times during the summer. Also at Long Wharf pier is the \"Quinnipiack\" schooner, offering sailing cruises of the harbor area throughout the summer. The \"Quinnipiack\" also functions as a floating classroom for hundreds of local students.\nMusic.\nThe New Haven Green is the site of many free music concerts, especially during the summer months. These have included the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the July Free Concerts on the Green, and the New Haven Jazz Festival in August. The Jazz Festival, which began in 1982, is one of the longest-running free outdoor festivals in the U.S., until it was canceled for 2007. Headliners such as Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles and Celia Cruz have historically drawn 30,000 to 50,000 fans, filling up the New Haven Green to capacity. The New Haven Jazz Festival was revived in 2008 and has been sponsored since by Jazz Haven.\nNew Haven is home to the concert venue Toad's Place, and a new venue, College Street Music Hall. The city has retained an alternative art and music underground that has helped to influence post-punk era music movements such as indie, college rock and underground hip-hop.\nThe Yale School of Music contributes to the city's music scene by offering hundreds of free concerts throughout the year at venues in and around the Yale campus. Large performances are held in the 2,700-seat Woolsey Hall auditorium, which contains the world's largest symphonic organs, while chamber music and recitals are performed in Sprague Hall.\nHardcore band Hatebreed are from Wallingford, but got their start in New Haven under the name Jasta 14. The band Miracle Legion formed in New Haven in 1983. Folk musicians from New Haven include Loren Mazzacane Connors and Kath Bloom.\nThe Hillhouse Opera Company is a U.S. non-profit opera company based in New Haven that performs in the New Haven area. Founded in 2008 by Victoria Leigh Gardner, Nicole Rodriguez and Jim Coatsworth Hillhouse Opera Company has performed operas as well as opera scenes programs, master classes and concert series. In 2011, the Company professionally staged the works created through the Riverview Opera Project. The Riverview Opera Project created workshops for children and adolescents at Riverview Hospital, Connecticut's only state-funded psychiatric hospital for youth, and helped them to successfully create, produce, and perform four original operas.\nFestivals.\nIn addition to the Jazz Festival (described above), New Haven serves as the home city of the annual International Festival of Arts and Ideas. New Haven's Saint Patrick's Day parade, which began in 1842, is New England's oldest and draws the largest crowds of any one-day spectator event in Connecticut. The St. Andrew the Apostle Italian Festival has taken place in the historic Wooster Square neighborhood every year since 1900. Other parishes in the city celebrate the Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua and a carnival in honor of St. Bernadette Soubirous. New Haven celebrates Powder House Day every April on the New Haven Green to commemorate the city's entrance into the Revolutionary War. The annual Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival commemorates the 1973 planting of 72 Yoshino Japanese cherry blossom trees by the New Haven Historic Commission in collaboration with the New Haven Parks Department and residents of the neighborhood. The Festival now draws well over 5,000 visitors. The Film Fest New Haven has been held annually since 1995.\nNightlife.\nIn the past decade downtown has seen an influx of new restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Large crowds are drawn to the Crown Street area downtown on weekends where many of the restaurants and bars are located. Crown Street between State and High Streets has dozens of establishments, as do nearby Temple and College Streets. Away from downtown, Upper State Street has a number of restaurants and bars popular with local residents and weekend visitors.\nNewspapers and media.\nNew Haven is served by the daily \"New Haven Register\", the weekly \"alternative\" \"New Haven Advocate\" (which is run by Tribune, the corporation owning the \"Hartford Courant\"), the online daily \"New Haven Independent\", and the monthly \"Grand News Community Newspaper.\" Downtown New Haven is covered by an in-depth civic news forum, Design New Haven. The \"Register\" also backs \"PLAY\" magazine, a weekly entertainment publication. The city is also served by several student-run papers, including the \"Yale Daily News\", the weekly \"Yale Herald\" and a humor tabloid, \"Rumpus Magazine\".\nWTNH Channel 8, the ABC affiliate for Connecticut, WCTX Channel 59, the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the state, Connecticut Public Television station WEDY channel 65, a PBS affiliate, and WTXX Channel 34, the IntrigueTV affiliate, broadcast from New Haven. All New York City news and sports team stations broadcast to New Haven County.\nSports and athletics.\nNew Haven has a history of professional sports franchises dating back to the 19th century and has been the home to professional baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer teams\u2014including the New York Giants of the National Football League from 1973 to 1974, who played at the Yale Bowl. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, New Haven consistently had minor league hockey and baseball teams, which played at the New Haven Arena (built in 1926, demolished in 1972), New Haven Coliseum (1972\u20132002), and Yale Field (1928\u2013present).\nWhen John DeStefano, Jr., became mayor of New Haven in 1995, he outlined a plan to transform the city into a major cultural and arts center in the Northeast, which involved investments in programs and projects other than sports franchises. As nearby Bridgeport built new sports facilities, the brutalist New Haven Coliseum rapidly deteriorated. Believing the upkeep on the venue to be a drain of tax dollars, the DeStefano administration closed the Coliseum in 2002; it was demolished in 2007. New Haven's last professional sports team, the New Haven County Cutters, left in 2009. The DeStefano administration did, however, see the construction of the New Haven Athletic Center in 1998, a indoor athletic facility with a seating capacity of over 3,000. The NHAC, built adjacent to Hillhouse High School, is used for New Haven public schools athletics, as well as large-scale area and state sporting events; it is the largest high school indoor sports complex in the state.\nNew Haven was the host of the 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games; then-President Bill Clinton spoke at the opening ceremonies. The city is home to the Pilot Pen International tennis event, which takes place every August at the Connecticut Tennis Center, one of the largest tennis venues in the world. New Haven biannually hosts \"The Game\" between Yale and Harvard, the country's second-oldest college football rivalry. Numerous road races take place in New Haven, including the USATF 20K Championship during the New Haven Road Race.\nGreater New Haven is home to a number of college sports teams. The Yale Bulldogs play Division I college sports, as do the Quinnipiac Bobcats in neighboring Hamden. Division II athletics are played by Southern Connecticut State University and the University of New Haven (actually located in neighboring West Haven), while Albertus Magnus College athletes perform at the Division III level.\nNew Haven is home to many New York Yankees, New York Mets, & Boston Red Sox fans due to the proximity of New York City & Boston.\nWalter Camp, deemed the \"father of American football\", was a New Havener.\nThe New Haven Warriors rugby league team play in the AMNRL. They have a large number of Pacific Islanders playing for them. Their field is located at the West Haven High School's Ken Strong Stadium. They won the 2008 AMNRL Grand Final.\nStructures.\nArchitecture.\nNew Haven has many architectural landmarks dating from every important time period and architectural style in American history. The city has been home to a number of architects and architectural firms that have left their mark on the city including Ithiel Town and Henry Austin in the 19th century and Cesar Pelli, Warren Platner, Kevin Roche, Herbert Newman and Barry Svigals in the 20th. The Yale School of Architecture has fostered this important component of the city's economy. Cass Gilbert, of the Beaux-Arts school, designed New Haven's Union Station and the New Haven Free Public Library and was also commissioned for a City Beautiful plan in 1919. Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, Alexander Jackson Davis, Philip C. Johnson, Gordon Bunshaft, Louis Kahn, James Gamble Rogers, Frank Gehry, Charles Willard Moore, Stefan Behnisch, James Polshek, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen and Robert Venturi all have designed buildings in New Haven. Yale's 1950s-era Ingalls Rink, designed by Eero Saarinen, was included on the \"America's Favorite Architecture\" list created in 2007.\nSeveral residential homes in New Haven were designed by Alice Washburn, a noted female architect whose Colonial Revival style set a standard for homes in the region.\nMany of the city's neighborhoods are well-preserved as walkable \"museums\" of 19th- and 20th-century American architecture, particularly by the New Haven Green, Hillhouse Avenue and other residential sections close to Downtown New Haven. Overall, a large proportion of the city's land area is National (NRHP) historic districts. One of the best sources on local architecture is \"New Haven: Architecture and Urban Design\", by Elizabeth Mills Brown.\nThe five tallest buildings in New Haven are:\nHistoric points of interest.\nMany historical sites exist throughout the city, including 59 properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Of these, nine are among the 60 U.S. National Historic Landmarks in Connecticut. The New Haven Green, one of the National Historic Landmarks, was formed in 1638, and is home to three 19th-century churches. Below the First Church of Christ in New Haven (referred to as the Center Church on the Green) lies a 17th-century crypt, which is open to visitors. Some of the more famous burials include the first wife of Benedict Arnold and the aunt and grandmother of President Rutherford B. Hayes; Hayes visited the crypt while President in 1880. The Old Campus of Yale University is located next to the Green, and includes Connecticut Hall, Yale's oldest building and a National Historic Landmark. The Hillhouse Avenue area, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a part of Yale's campus, has been called a walkable museum, due to its 19th-century mansions and street scape; Charles Dickens is said to have called Hillhouse Avenue \"the most beautiful street in America\" when visiting the city in 1868.\nIn 1660, Edward Whalley (a cousin and friend of Oliver Cromwell) and William Goffe, two English Civil War generals who signed the death warrant of King Charles I, hid in a rock formation in New Haven after having fled England upon the restoration of Charles II to the English throne. They were later joined by a third regicide, John Dixwell. The rock formation, which is now a part of West Rock Park, is known as Judges' Cave, and the path leading to the cave is called the Regicides Trail.\nAfter the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, the Connecticut colonial government ordered the construction of Black Rock Fort (to be built on top of an older 17th-century fort) to protect the port of New Haven. In 1779, during the Battle of New Haven, British soldiers captured Black Rock Fort and burned the barracks to the ground. The fort was reconstructed in 1807 by the federal government (on orders from the Thomas Jefferson administration), and rechristened Fort Nathan Hale, after the Revolutionary War hero who had lived in New Haven. The cannons of Fort Nathan Hale were successful in defying British war ships during the War of 1812. In 1863, during the Civil War, a second Fort Hale was built next to the original, complete with bomb-resistant bunkers and a moat, to defend the city should a Southern raid against New Haven be launched. The United States Congress deeded the site to the state in 1921, and all three versions of the fort have been restored. The site is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and receives thousands of visitors each year.\nGrove Street Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark which lies adjacent to Yale's campus, contains the graves of Roger Sherman, Eli Whitney, Noah Webster, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Charles Goodyear and Walter Camp, among other notable burials. The cemetery is noted for its Egyptian Revival gateway, and is the oldest planned burial ground in the United States. The Union League Club of New Haven building, located on Chapel Street, is notable for not only being a historic Beaux-Arts building, but also is built on the site where Roger Sherman's home once stood; George Washington is known to have stayed at the Sherman residence while President in 1789 (one of three times Washington visited New Haven throughout his lifetime).\nTwo sites pay homage to the time President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft lived in the city, as both a student and later Professor at Yale: a plaque on Prospect Street marks the site where Taft's home formerly stood, and downtown's Taft Apartment Building (formerly the Taft Hotel) bears the name of the former president who resided in the building for eight years before becoming Chief Justice of the United States.\nLighthouse Point Park, a public beach run by the city, was a popular tourist destination during the Roaring Twenties, attracting luminaries of the period such as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. The park remains popular among New Haveners, and is home to the Five Mile Point Lighthouse, constructed in 1847, and the Lighthouse Point Carousel, constructed in 1916. Five Mile Point Light was decommissioned in 1877 following the construction of Southwest Ledge Light at the entrance of the harbor, which remains in service to this day. Both of the lighthouses and the carousel are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nOther historic sites in the city include the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, which stands at the summit of East Rock, the Marsh Botanical Garden, Wooster Square, Dwight Street, Louis' Lunch, and the Farmington Canal, all of which date back to the 19th century. Other historic parks besides the Green include Edgerton Park, Edgewood Park, and East Rock Park, each of which is included on the National Register of Historic Places.\nTransportation.\nRail.\nNew Haven has two railroad stations, connected to New York City and points along the Northeast Corridor by commuter rail, regional rail and inter-city rail. Service is provided by:\nThe city's main railroad station is the historic Beaux-Arts Union Station, which serves Metro-North, Hartford Line, and Shore Line East commuter trains. Approximately 175 trains serve Union Station on weekdays. Union Station is also served by four Amtrak lines: the \"Northeast Regional\" and the high-speed \"Acela Express\" provide service to New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston, and rank as the first and second busiest routes in the country; the New Haven\u2013Springfield Line provides service to Hartford and Springfield, Massachusetts; and the \"Vermonter\" provides service to both Washington, D.C., and Vermont, from the Canada\u2013US border.\nAn additional station, State Street Station, was opened in 2002, providing passengers easier access to downtown New Haven. State Street Station is currently serviced by Shore Line East and Hartford Line trains, plus some peak-hour Metro-North trips.\nBus.\nThe New Haven Division of Connecticut Transit (CT Transit), the state's bus system, is the second largest division in the state with 24 routes. All routes originate from the New Haven Green, making it the central transfer hub of the city. Service is provided to 19 different municipalities throughout Greater New Haven. Bus routes were formerly identified by letters, but as of October 8, 2017, all service was renamed using 200-series numbers, in accordance with a renumbering of CTtransit's statewide services.\nCT Transit's Union Station Shuttle provides free service from Union Station to the New Haven Green and several New Haven parking garages. Peter Pan and Greyhound bus lines have scheduled stops at Union Station, and connections downtown can be made via the Union Station Shuttle. A private company operates the New Haven/Hartford Express which provides commuter bus service to Hartford. The Yale University Shuttle provides free transportation around New Haven for Yale students, faculty, and staff.\nThe New Haven Division buses follow routes that had originally been covered by trolley service. Horse-drawn streetcars began operating in New Haven in the 1860s, and by the mid-1890s all the lines had become electric. In the 1920s and 1930s, some of the trolley lines began to be replaced by bus lines, with the last trolley route converted to bus in 1948. The City of New Haven is in the very early stages of considering the restoration of streetcar (light-rail) service, which has been absent since the postwar period.\nBicycle.\nBikeshare.\nOn February 21, 2018, New Haven officially launched its Bike New Haven bikeshare program. based on dockless technology powered by Noa Technologies At time of launch, the program features 10 docking stations and 100 bikes, spread throughout the urban core; there are plans to reach 30 bike stations and 300 bikes by the end of April 2018. The launch of the New Haven bikeshare program coincided with the launch of Yale University's own bikeshare program, which uses the same technology powered by Noa.\nBike lanes.\nIn 2004, the first bike lane in the city was added to Orange Street, connecting East Rock Park and the East Rock neighborhood to downtown. Since then, bike lanes have also been added to sections of Howard Ave, Elm St, Dixwell Avenue, Water Street, Clinton Avenue and State Street. The city has created recommended bike routes for getting around New Haven, including use of the Canal Trail and the Orange Street lane. As of the end of 2012, bicycle lanes have also been added in both directions on Dixwell Avenue along most of the street from downtown to the Hamden town line, as well as along Howard Avenue from Yale New Haven Hospital to City Point.\nThe city has plans to create two additional bike lanes connecting Union Station with downtown, and the Westville neighborhood with downtown. The city has added dozens of covered bike parking spots at Union Station, in order to facilitate more bike commuting to the station.\nFarmington Canal Greenway.\nThe Farmington Canal Trail is a rail trail that will eventually run continuously from downtown New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts. The scenic trail follows the path of the historic New Haven and Northampton Company and the Farmington Canal. Currently, there is a continuous stretch of the trail from downtown, through Hamden and into Cheshire, making bicycle commuting between New Haven and those suburbs possible. The trail is part of the East Coast Greenway, a proposed bike path that would link every major city on the East Coast from Florida to Maine.\nRoads.\nNew Haven lies at the intersection of Interstate 95 on the coast\u2014which provides access southwards and/or westwards to the western coast of Connecticut and to New York City, and eastwards to the eastern Connecticut shoreline, Rhode Island, and eastern Massachusetts\u2014and Interstate 91, which leads northward to the interior of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont and the Canada\u2013US border. I-95 is notorious for traffic jams increasing with proximity to New York City; on the east side of New Haven it passes over the Quinnipiac River via the Pearl Harbor Memorial, or \"Q Bridge\", which often presents a major bottleneck to traffic. I-91, however, is relatively less congested, except at the intersection with I-95 during peak travel times.\nThe Oak Street Connector (Connecticut Route 34) intersects I-91 at exit 1, just south of the I-95/I-91 interchange, and runs northwest for a few blocks as an expressway spur into downtown before emptying onto surface roads. The Wilbur Cross Parkway (Connecticut Route 15) runs parallel to I-95 west of New Haven, turning northwards as it nears the city and then running northwards parallel to I-91 through the outer rim of New Haven and Hamden, offering an alternative to the I-95/I-91 journey (restricted to non-commercial vehicles). Route 15 in New Haven is the site of the only highway tunnel in the state (officially designated as Heroes Tunnel), running through West Rock, home to West Rock Park and the Three Judges Cave.\nThe city also has several major surface arteries. U.S. Route 1 (Columbus Avenue, Union Avenue, Water Street, Forbes Avenue) runs in an east\u2013west direction south of downtown serving Union Station and leading out of the city to Milford, West Haven, East Haven and Branford. The main road from downtown heading northwest is Whalley Avenue (partly signed as Route 10 and Route 63) leading to Westville and Woodbridge. Heading north towards Hamden, there are two major thoroughfares, Dixwell Avenue and Whitney Avenue. To the northeast are Middletown Avenue (Route 17), which leads to the Montowese section of North Haven, and Foxon Boulevard (Route 80), which leads to the Foxon section of East Haven and to the town of North Branford. To the west is Route 34, which leads to the city of Derby. Other major intracity arteries are Ella Grasso Boulevard (Route 10) west of downtown, and College Street, Temple Street, Church Street, Elm Street, and Grove Street in the downtown area.\nTraffic safety is a major concern for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists in New Haven. In addition to many traffic-related fatalities in the city each year, since 2005, over a dozen Yale students, staff and faculty have been killed or injured in traffic collisions on or near the campus.\nAirport.\nTweed New Haven Airport is located within the city limits east of the business district, straddling the border with neighboring East Haven. Service to approximately 25 cities is provided by Avelo Airlines, which established its first East Coast base at the airport in 2021. Breeze Airways plans to begin operations at Tweed in December 2024, and will provide service to 10 destinations. The airport is currently planning a runway lengthening and new terminal on the East Haven side of the airport.\nBus service between Downtown New Haven and Tweed is available via the CT Transit New Haven Division.\nSeaport.\nNew Haven Harbor is home to the Port of New Haven, a deep-water seaport with three berths capable of hosting vessels and barges as well as the facilities required to handle break bulk cargo. The port has the capacity to load 200 trucks a day from the ground or via loading docks. Providence and Worcester Railroad provides freight rail transportation to the port, with the railroad operating a switch engine for yard movements, a private siding for loading and unloading, and trackage over the Tomlinson Lift Bridge toward the Northeast Corridor. Approximately of inside storage and of outside storage are available at the site. Five shore cranes with a 250-ton capacity and 26 forklifts, each with a 26-ton capacity, are also available.\nOn June 17, 2013, the city commissioned the \"Nathan Hale\", a port security vessel capable of serving search and rescue, firefighting, and constabulary roles.\nInfrastructure.\nHospitals and medicine.\nThe New Haven area supports several medical facilities that are considered some of the best hospitals in the country. There are two major medical centers downtown: Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital has four pavilions, including the Yale \u2013 New Haven Children's Hospital and the Smilow Cancer Hospital; the Hospital of Saint Raphael is several blocks north, and touts its excellent cardiac emergency care program. Smaller downtown health facilities are the Temple Medical Center located downtown on Temple Street, Connecticut Mental Health Center/ across Park Street from Y-NHH, and the Hill Health Center, which serves the working-class Hill neighborhood. A large Veterans Affairs hospital is located in neighboring West Haven. To the west in Milford is Milford Hospital, and to the north in Meriden is the MidState Medical Center.\nIn recent years, Yale and the City of New Haven have been working to build a medical and biotechnology research hub in the city and Greater New Haven region. The city, state and Yale together run Science Park, a large site three blocks northwest of Yale's Science Hill campus. This multi-block site, approximately bordered by Mansfield Street, Division Street, and Shelton Avenue, is the former home of Winchester's and Olin Corporation's 45 large-scale factory buildings. Currently, sections of the site are large-scale parking lots or abandoned structures, but there is also a large remodeled and functioning area of buildings (leased primarily by a private developer) with numerous Yale employees, financial service and biotech companies.\nA second biotechnology district is being planned for the median strip on Frontage Road, on land cleared for the never-built Route 34 extension. As of late 2009, a Pfizer drug-testing clinic, a medical laboratory building serving Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital, and a mixed-use structure containing parking, housing and office space, have been constructed on this corridor. A former SNET telephone building at 300 George Street is being converted into lab space, and has been quite successful so far in attracting biotechnology and medical firms.\nPower supply facilities.\nElectricity for New Haven is generated by a 448\u00a0MW oil and gas-fired generating station located on the shore at New Haven Harbor. PPL Corporation operates a 220\u00a0MW peaking natural gas turbine plant in nearby Wallingford.\nNear New Haven there is the static inverter plant of the HVDC Cross Sound Cable.\nThere are three PureCell Model 400 fuel cells placed in the city of New Haven\u2014one at the New Haven Public Schools and newly constructed Roberto Clemente School, one at the mixed-use 360 State Street building, and one at City Hall. According to Giovanni Zinn of the city's Office of Sustainability, each fuel cell may save the city up to $1 million in energy costs over a decade. The fuel cells were provided by ClearEdge Power, formerly UTC Power. Additional fuel cells are located at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and at the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority (GNHWPCA). Ikea's New Haven facility also utilizes a 250\u00a0kW fuel cell and 940.8\u00a0kW solar array.\nNew Haven recently installed solar panels at 11 city schools with a combined power generation capacity of 1.8 MW. Owned and maintained by Greenskies, the panels allow New Haven to purchase electricity at a discounted rate through a power-purchasing agreement. The panels bring New Haven's solar capacity to 2.8 MW and will help New Haven meet its commitment to powering 100% of its municipal operations through clean energy, which it made in Summer 2017 and reaffirmed in the 2018 New Haven Climate and Sustainability Framework.\nIn popular culture.\nSeveral movies have been filmed in New Haven since 2000, including \"Mona Lisa Smile\" (2003), with Julia Roberts, \"The Life Before Her Eyes\" (2007), with Uma Thurman, and \"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull\" (2008) directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett and Shia LaBeouf. The filming of \"Crystal Skull\" involved an extensive chase sequence through the streets of New Haven. Several downtown streets were closed to traffic and received a \"makeover\" to look like streets of 1957, when the film is set. 500 locals were cast as extras for the film. In \"Everybody's Fine\" (2009), Robert De Niro has a close encounter in what is supposed to be the Denver train station; the scene was filmed in New Haven's Union Station.\n New Haven is mentioned in the song Peace Frog by the Doors, referencing a 1967 incident where vocalist Jim Morrison was arrested for \"attempting to incite a riot\" in the middle of a concert at the New Haven Arena.\nSister cities.\nNew Haven's sister cities are:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSome of these were selected because of historical connection\u2014Freetown because of the \"Amistad\" trial. Others, such as Amalfi and Afula, reflect ethnic groups in New Haven.\nIn 1990, the United Nations named New Haven a \"Peace Messenger City\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["5122699", "27945430", "53825"], "permutation_1": ["53825", "5122699", "27945430"], "permutation_2": ["53825", "27945430", "5122699"], "permutation_3": ["27945430", "5122699", "53825"]}
{"id": "3hop2__30796_484597_24137", "docs_added": {"5122699": "John Kerry\nAmerican politician and diplomat (born 1943)\nJohn Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician, and diplomat who served as the 68th United States secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 in the administration of Barack Obama. A member of the Forbes family and of the Democratic Party, he previously represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1985 to 2013 and later served as the first U.S. special presidential envoy for climate from 2021 to 2024. Kerry was the Democratic nominee for president of the United States in the 2004 election, narrowly losing to then-incumbent president George W. Bush.\nKerry grew up in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. In 1966, after graduating from Yale University, he enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve, ultimately attaining the rank of lieutenant. During the Vietnam War, Kerry served a brief tour in South Vietnam. While commanding a Swift boat, he sustained three wounds in combat with the Viet Cong, for which he earned three Purple Heart medals. Kerry was also awarded the Silver Star Medal and the Bronze Star Medal for conduct in separate military engagements. After completing his active military service, Kerry returned to the United States and became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. He gained national recognition as an anti-war activist, serving as a spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization. Kerry testified in the Fulbright Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where he described the United States government's policy in Vietnam as the cause of war crimes.\nIn 1972, Kerry entered electoral politics as a Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives in Massachusetts's 5th congressional district, losing to Republican Paul W. Cronin in the general election. He subsequently worked as a radio talk show host and as the executive director of an advocacy organization while attending law school. After a period in private legal practice, he was elected the 66th lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1982. In 1984, Kerry was elected to the United States Senate. In 2004, Kerry won the Democratic presidential nomination alongside Senator John Edwards. He lost the Electoral College and the popular vote by slim margins, winning 251 electors to Bush's 286 and 48.3% of the popular vote to Bush's 50.7%.\nIn January 2013, Kerry was nominated by President Obama to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and was subsequently confirmed by his Senate colleagues. He was U.S. secretary of state throughout the second term of the Obama administration from 2013 to 2017. During his tenure, he initiated the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks and negotiated agreements restricting the nuclear program of Iran, including the 2013 Joint Plan of Action and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In 2015, Kerry signed the Paris Agreement on climate change on behalf of the United States.\nIn January 2021, Kerry returned to government, becoming the first person to hold the position of U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, under President Joe Biden. On March 6, Kerry left this position to work on Biden's 2024 presidential campaign. Kerry was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Biden in May 2024.\nEarly life and education (1943\u20131966).\nJohn Forbes Kerry was born on December 11, 1943, at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado. He is the second of four children born to Richard John Kerry, a U.S. diplomat and lawyer, and Rosemary Forbes, a nurse and social activist. His father was raised Catholic (John's paternal grandparents were Austro-Hungarian Jewish immigrants who converted to Catholicism) and his mother was Episcopalian. He was raised with an elder sister Margaret, a younger sister Diana, and a younger brother Cameron. The children were raised in their father's Catholic faith, and John served as an altar boy.\nKerry was originally considered a military brat, until his father was discharged from the Army Air Corps in 1944. Kerry lived in Groton, Massachusetts his first year and Millis, Massachusetts afterwards before moving to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. at age seven, when his father took a position in the Department of the Navy's Office of General Counsel and soon became a diplomat in the State Department's Bureau of United Nations Affairs.\nAs members of the Forbes and Dudley\u2013Winthrop families, his maternal extended family enjoyed great wealth. Kerry's parents themselves were considered upper-middle class. They turned to his wealthy great-aunt, Clara Winthrop, who paid for his attendance at elite boarding schools, such as Institut Montana Zugerberg, in Zug, Switzerland. Through his maternal ancestry, Kerry also descends from Rev. James McGregor who was among the first 500 Scots-Irish immigrants to Boston Harbor in the 18th century.\nAt the age of ten, Kerry's father took a position as the U.S. Attorney for Berlin. When Kerry was twelve, he crossed into the Soviet Occupation Zone to visit Hitler's bunker and ride through the Brandenburg Gate. \nIn 1957, his father was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway, and Kerry was sent back to the United States to attend boarding school. He first attended the Fessenden School in Newton, Massachusetts, and later St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, where he learned skills in public speaking and began developing an interest in politics. Kerry founded the John Winant Society at St. Paul's to debate the issues of the day; the Society still exists there. In 1960, while at St. Paul's, he played bass in a minor rock band called The Electras with six of his classmates. The band had about five hundred copies of one album printed in 1961, which they sold some of at dances at the school; it was made available on streaming platforms many years later.\nIn 1962, Kerry attended Yale University, majoring in political science and residing in Jonathan Edwards College. By that year, his parents returned to Groton. While at Yale, Kerry briefly dated Janet Auchincloss, the younger half-sister of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Through Auchincloss, Kerry was invited to a day of sailing with then-President John F. Kennedy and his family.\nKerry played on the varsity Yale Bulldogs men's soccer team, earning his only letter in his senior year. He also played freshman and junior varsity hockey and, in his senior year, junior varsity lacrosse. In addition, he was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity and took flying lessons.\nIn his sophomore year, Kerry became the chairman of the Liberal Party of the Yale Political Union, and a year later he served as president of the union. Amongst his influential teachers in this period was Professor H. Bradford Westerfield, who was himself a former president of the Political Union. His involvement with the Political Union gave him an opportunity to be involved with important issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and the New Frontier program. He also became a member of Skull and Bones Society, and traveled to Switzerland through AIESEC Yale.\nUnder the guidance of the speaking coach and history professor Rollin G. Osterweis, Kerry won many debates against other college students from across the nation. In March 1965, as the Vietnam War escalated, he won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that was critical of U.S. foreign policy. In the speech he said, \"It is the spectre of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism and thus, it is self-defeating.\"\nKerry graduated from Yale with a bachelor of arts degree in 1966. Overall, he had below-average grades, graduating with a cumulative average of 76 over his four years. His freshman-year average was a 71, but he improved to an 81 average for his senior year. He never received an \"A\" during his time at Yale; his highest grade was an 89.\nMilitary service (1966\u20131970).\nDuty on USS \"Gridley\".\nOn February 18, 1966, Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserve. He began his active duty military service on August 19, 1966. After completing 16 weeks of Officer Candidate School at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island, Kerry received his officer's commission on December 16, 1966. During the 2004 election, Kerry posted his military records at his website, and permitted reporters to inspect his medical records. In 2005, Kerry released his military and medical records to the representatives of three news organizations, but has not authorized full public access to those records.\nDuring his tour on the guided missile frigate , Kerry requested duty in South Vietnam, listing as his first preference a position as the commander of a Fast Patrol Craft (PCF), also known as a \"Swift boat\". These boats have aluminum hulls and have little or no armor, but are heavily armed and rely on speed. \"I didn't really want to get involved in the war,\" Kerry said in a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. \"When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing.\" However, his second choice of billet was on a river patrol boat, or \"PBR\", which at the time was serving a more dangerous duty on the rivers of Vietnam.\nMilitary honors.\nDuring the night of December 2 and early morning of December 3, 1968, Kerry was in charge of a small boat operating near a peninsula north of Cam Ranh Bay together with a Swift boat (PCF-60). According to Kerry and the two crewmen who accompanied him that night, Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis, they surprised a group of Vietnamese men unloading sampans at a river crossing, who began running and failed to obey an order to stop. As the men fled, Kerry and his crew opened fire on the sampans and destroyed them, then rapidly left. During this encounter, Kerry received a shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow. It was for this injury that Kerry received his first Purple Heart Medal.\nKerry received his second Purple Heart for a wound received in action on the B\u1ed3 \u0110\u1ec1 River on February 20, 1969. The plan had been for the Swift boats to be accompanied by support helicopters. On the way up the Bo De, however, the helicopters were attacked. As the Swift boats reached the C\u1eeda L\u1edbn River, Kerry's boat was hit by a B-40 rocket (rocket propelled grenade round), and a piece of shrapnel hit Kerry's left leg, wounding him. Thereafter, enemy fire ceased and his boat reached the Gulf of Thailand safely. Kerry continues to have shrapnel embedded in his left thigh because the doctors that first treated him decided to remove the damaged tissue and close the wound with sutures rather than make a wide opening to remove the shrapnel. Although wounded like several others earlier that day, Kerry did not lose any time off from duty.\nSilver Star.\nEight days later, on February 28, 1969, came the events for which Kerry was awarded his Silver Star Medal. On this occasion, Kerry was in tactical command of his Swift boat and two other Swift boats during a combat operation. Their mission on the Duong Keo River included bringing an underwater demolition team and dozens of South Vietnamese Marines to destroy enemy sampans, structures and bunkers as described in the story \"The Death Of PCF 43\". Running into heavy small arms fire from the river banks, Kerry \"directed the units to turn to the beach and charge the Viet Cong positions\" and he \"expertly directed\" his boat's fire causing the enemy to flee while at the same time coordinating the insertion of the ninety South Vietnamese troops (according to the original medal citation signed by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt). Moving a short distance upstream, Kerry's boat was the target of a B-40 rocket round; Kerry charged the enemy positions and as his boat hove to and beached, a Viet Cong (\"VC\") insurgent armed with a rocket launcher emerged from a spider hole and ran. While the boat's gunner opened fire, wounding the VC in the leg, and while the other boats approached and offered cover fire, Kerry jumped from the boat to pursue the VC insurgent, subsequently killing him and capturing his loaded rocket launcher.\nKerry's commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander George Elliott, stated to Douglas Brinkley in 2003 that he did not know whether to court-martial Kerry for beaching the boat without orders or give him a medal for saving the crew. Elliott recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, and Zumwalt flew into An Thoi to personally award medals to Kerry and the rest of the sailors involved in the mission. The Navy's account of Kerry's actions is presented in the original signed by Zumwalt. The engagement was documented in an after-action report, a press release written on March 1, 1969, and a historical summary dated March 17, 1969.\nBronze Star.\nOn March 13, 1969, on the B\u00e1i H\u00e1p River, Kerry was in charge of one of five Swift boats that were returning to their base after performing an Operation Sealords mission to transport South Vietnamese troops from the garrison at C\u00e1i N\u01b0\u1edbc and MIKE Force advisors for a raid on a Vietcong camp located on the Rach Dong Cung canal. Earlier in the day, Kerry received a slight shrapnel wound in the buttocks from blowing up a rice bunker. Debarking some but not all of the passengers at a small village, the boats approached a fishing weir; one group of boats went around to the left of the weir, hugging the shore, and a group with Kerry's PCF-94 boat went around to the right, along the shoreline. A mine was detonated directly beneath the lead boat, PCF-3, as it crossed the weir to the left, lifting PCF-3 \"about 2\u20133 ft out of water\".\nJames Rassmann, a Green Beret advisor who was aboard Kerry's PCF-94, was knocked overboard when, according to witnesses and the documentation of the event, a mine or rocket exploded close to the boat. According to the documentation for the event, Kerry's arm was injured when he was thrown against a bulkhead during the explosion. PCF 94 returned to the scene and Kerry rescued Rassmann who was receiving sniper fire from the water. Kerry received the Bronze Star Medal with Combat \"V\" for \"heroic achievement\", for his actions during this incident; he also received his third Purple Heart.\nReturn from Vietnam.\nAfter Kerry's third qualifying wound, he was entitled per Navy regulations to reassignment away from combat duties. Kerry's preferred choice for reassignment was as a military aide in Boston, New York City or Washington, D.C. On April 11, 1969, he reported to the Brooklyn-based Atlantic Military Sea Transportation Service, where he would remain on active duty for the following year as a personal aide to an officer, Rear Admiral Walter Schlech. On January 1, 1970, Kerry was temporarily promoted to full lieutenant. Kerry had agreed to an extension of his active duty obligation from December 1969 to August 1970 in order to perform Swift Boat duty. John Kerry was on active duty in the United States Navy from August 1966 until January 1970. He continued to serve in the Naval Reserve until February 1978.\n\"Swiftboating\" controversy.\nWith the continuing controversy that had surrounded the military service of George W. Bush since the 2000 presidential election (when he was accused of having used his father's political influence to gain entrance to the Texas Air National Guard, thereby protecting himself from conscription into the United States Army, and possible service in the Vietnam War), John Kerry's contrasting status as a decorated Vietnam War veteran posed a problem for Bush's re-election campaign, which Republicans sought to counter by calling Kerry's war record into question. As the presidential campaign of 2004 developed, approximately 250 members of a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT, later renamed Swift Vets and POWs for Truth) opposed Kerry's campaign. The group held press conferences, ran ads and endorsed a book questioning Kerry's service record and his military awards. The group included several members of Kerry's unit, such as Larry Thurlow, who commanded a swift boat alongside of Kerry's, and Stephen Gardner, who served on Kerry's boat. The campaign inspired the widely used political pejorative '\"swiftboating,\" to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. Most of Kerry's former crewmates have stated that SBVT's allegations are false.\nAnti-war activism (1970\u20131971).\nAfter returning to the United States, Kerry moved to Waltham, Massachusetts and joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Then numbering about 20,000, VVAW was considered by some (including the administration of President Richard Nixon) to be an effective, if controversial, component of the antiwar movement. Kerry participated in the \"Winter Soldier Investigation\" conducted by VVAW of U.S. atrocities in Vietnam, and he appears in a film by that name that documents the investigation. According to Nixon Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, \"I didn't approve of what he did, but I understood the protesters quite well\", and he declined two requests from the Navy to court martial Reserve Lieutenant Kerry over his antiwar activity.\nOn April 22, 1971, Kerry appeared before a U.S. Senate committee hearing on proposals relating to ending the war. The day after this testimony, Kerry participated in a demonstration with thousands of other veterans in which he and other Vietnam War veterans threw their medals and service ribbons over a fence erected at the front steps of the United States Capitol building to dramatize their opposition to the war. Jack Smith, a Marine, read a statement explaining why the veterans were returning their military awards to the government. For more than two hours, almost 1,000 angry veterans tossed their medals, ribbons, hats, jackets, and military papers over the fence. Each veteran gave his or her name, hometown, branch of service and a statement. Kerry threw some of his own decorations and awards as well as some given to him by other veterans to throw. As Kerry threw his decorations over the fence, his statement was: \"I'm not doing this for any violent reasons, but for peace and justice, and to try and make this country wake up once and for all.\"\nKerry was arrested on May 30, 1971, during a VVAW march to honor American POWs held captive by North Vietnam. The march was planned as a multi-day event from Concord to Boston, and while in Lexington, participants tried to camp on the village green. At 2:30a.m., local and state police arrested 441 demonstrators, including Kerry, for trespassing. All were given the Miranda Warning and were hauled away on school buses to spend the night at the Lexington Public Works Garage. Kerry and the other protesters later paid a $5 fine, and were released. The mass arrests caused a community backlash and ended up giving positive coverage to the VVAW.\nEarly political career (1972\u20131985).\n1972 congressional election.\nIn 1970, Kerry had considered running for Congress in the Democratic primary against hawkish Democrat Philip J. Philbin of Massachusetts's 3rd congressional district, but deferred in favor of Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest and anti-war activist, who went on to defeat Philbin. In February 1972, Kerry's wife bought a house in Worcester, with Kerry intending to run against the 4th district's aging thirteen-term incumbent Democrat, Harold Donohue. The couple never moved in. After Republican Congressman F. Bradford Morse of the neighboring 5th district announced his retirement and then resignation to become Under-Secretary-General for Political and General Assembly Affairs at the United Nations, the couple instead rented an apartment in Lowell, so that Kerry could run to succeed him.\nIncluding Kerry, the Democratic primary race had 10 candidates, including attorney Paul J. Sheehy, State Representative Anthony R. DiFruscia, John J. Desmond and Robert B. Kennedy. Kerry ran a \"very expensive, sophisticated campaign\", financed by out-of-state backers and supported by many young volunteers. DiFruscia's campaign headquarters shared the same building as Kerry's. On the eve of the September 19 primary, police found Kerry's younger brother Cameron and campaign field director Thomas J. Vallely, breaking into where the building's telephone lines were located. They were arrested and charged with \"breaking and entering with the intent to commit grand larceny\", but the charges were dropped a year later. DiFruscia alleged that the two were trying to disrupt his get-out-the vote efforts. Vallely and Cameron Kerry maintained that they were only checking their own telephone lines because they had received an anonymous call warning that the Kerry lines would be cut.\nDespite the arrests, Kerry won the primary with 20,771 votes (27.56%). Sheehy came second with 15,641 votes (20.75%), followed by DiFruscia with 12,222 votes (16.22%), Desmond with 10,213 votes (13.55%) and Kennedy with 5,632 votes (7.47%). The remaining 10,891 votes were split amongst the other five candidates, with 1970 nominee Richard Williams coming last with just 1,706 votes (2.26%).\nIn the general election, Kerry was initially favored to defeat the Republican candidate, former State Representative Paul W. Cronin, and conservative Democrat Roger P. Durkin, who ran as an Independent. A week after the primary, one poll put Kerry 26-points ahead of Cronin. His campaign called for a national health insurance system, discounted prescription drugs for the unemployed, a jobs program to clean up the Merrimack River and rent controls in Lowell and Lawrence. A major obstacle, however, was the district's leading newspaper, the conservative \"The Sun\". The paper editorialized against him. It also ran critical news stories about his out-of-state contributions and his \"carpetbagging\", because he had only moved into the district in April. Subsequently, released \"Watergate\" Oval Office tape recordings of the Nixon White House showed that defeating Kerry's candidacy had attracted the personal attention of President Nixon. Kerry himself asserts that Nixon sent operatives to Lowell to help derail his campaign.\nThe race was the most expensive for Congress in the country that year and four days before the general election, Durkin withdrew and endorsed Cronin, hoping to see Kerry defeated. The week before, a poll had put Kerry 10 points ahead of Cronin, with Durkin at 13%. In the final days of the campaign, Kerry sensed that it was \"slipping away\" and Cronin emerged victorious by 110,970 votes (53.45%) to Kerry's 92,847 (44.72%). After his defeat, Kerry lamented in a letter to supporters that \"for two solid weeks, [\"The Sun\"] called me un-American, New Left antiwar agitator, unpatriotic, and labeled me every other 'un-' and 'anti-' that they could find. It's hard to believe that one newspaper could be so powerful, but they were.\" He later felt that his failure to respond directly to \"The Sun\"'s attacks cost him the race.\nLaw career.\nAfter Kerry's 1972 defeat, he and his wife bought a house in the Belvidere section of Lowell, Massachusetts, entering a decade which his brother Cameron later called \"the years in exile\". He spent some time working as a fundraiser for the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE), an international humanitarian organization. In September 1973, he entered Boston College Law School. While studying, Kerry worked as a talk radio host on WBZ and, in July 1974, was named executive director of Mass Action, a Massachusetts advocacy association.\nKerry received his juris doctor (J.D.) from Boston College in 1976. While in law school he had been a student prosecutor in the office of the District Attorney of Middlesex County, John J. Droney. After passing the bar exam and being admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1976, he went to work in that office as a full-time prosecutor and moved to Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.\nIn January 1977, Droney promoted him to First Assistant District Attorney, essentially making Kerry his campaign and media surrogate because Droney was afflicted with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease). As First Assistant, Kerry tried cases, which included winning convictions in a high-profile rape case and a murder. He also played a role in administering the office, including initiating the creation of special white-collar and organized crime units, creating programs to address the problems of rape and other crime victims and witnesses, and managing trial calendars to reflect case priorities. In 1978, Kerry launched a criminal investigation against Senator Edward Brooke, regarding \"misstatements\" in his first divorce trial. The inquiry ended with no charges being brought after investigators and prosecutors determined that Brooke's misstatements were pertinent to the case, but were not material enough to have affected the outcome.\nDroney's health was poor and Kerry had decided to run for his position in the 1978 election should Droney drop out. However, Droney was re-elected and his health improved; he went on to re-assume many of the duties that he had delegated to Kerry. Kerry thus decided to leave, departing in 1979 with assistant DA Roanne Sragow to set up their own law firm. Kerry also worked as a commentator for WCVB-TV and co-founded a bakery, Kilvert & Forbes Ltd., with businessman and former Kennedy aide K. Dun Gifford.\nLieutenant Governor of Massachusetts.\nIn the 1982 Massachusetts gubernatorial election, Lieutenant Governor Thomas P. O'Neill III declined to seek a third term, instead deciding to run for governor of Massachusetts. Kerry declared his candidacy, entering the primary election alongside Massachusetts Secretary of Environmental Affairs Evelyn Murphy, State Senator Samuel Rotondi, State Representative Lou Nickinello, and Lois Pines.\nKerry won the nomination with 325,890 votes (29%) to Murphy's 286,378 (25.48%), Rotondi's 228,086 (20.29%), Nickinello's 150,829 (13.42%) and Pines' 132,734 (11.81%). In the concurrent gubernatorial primary, former Governor Michael Dukakis defeated O'Neill and incumbent Governor Edward J. King. The Dukakis and Kerry ticket defeated the Republican ticket of John W. Sears and Leon Lombardi in the general election by 1,219,109 votes (61.92%) to 749,679 (38.08%).\nAs Lieutenant Governor, Kerry led meetings of the Massachusetts Governor's Council. Dukakis also delegated other tasks to Kerry, including serving as the state's liaison to the Federal government of the United States. He was also active on environmental issues, including combating acid rain.\n1984 U.S. Senate election.\nThe junior U.S. senator from Massachusetts, Paul Tsongas, announced in 1984 that he would be stepping down for health reasons. Kerry ran, and as in his 1982 race for Lieutenant Governor, he did not receive the endorsement of the party regulars at the state Democratic convention. Congressman James Shannon, a favorite of House Speaker Tip O'Neill, was the early favorite to win the nomination, and he \"won broad establishment support and led in early polling\". Again as in 1982, however, Kerry prevailed in a close primary.\nIn his general election campaign, Kerry promised to mix liberalism with tight budget controls. He defeated Republican Ray Shamie despite a nationwide landslide for the re-election of Republican President Ronald Reagan, for whom Massachusetts voted by a narrow margin. In his victory speech, Kerry asserted that his win meant that the people of Massachusetts \"emphatically reject the politics of selfishness and the notion that women must be treated as second-class citizens\".\nTsongas resigned on January 2, 1985, one day before the end of his term. Dukakis appointed Kerry to fill the vacancy, giving him seniority over other new senators who were sworn in on January 3, the scheduled start of their new terms.\nU.S. Senate (1985\u20132013).\nIran\u2013Contra hearings.\nOn April 18, 1985, a few months after taking his Senate seat, Kerry and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa traveled to Nicaragua and met the country's president, Daniel Ortega. Although Ortega had won internationally certified elections, the trip was criticized because Ortega and his leftist Sandinista government had strong ties to Cuba and the USSR and were accused of human rights abuses. The Sandinista government was opposed by the right-wing CIA-backed rebels known as the Contras. While in Nicaragua, Kerry and Harkin talked to people on both sides of the conflict. Through the senators, Ortega offered a cease-fire agreement in exchange for the U.S. dropping support of the Contras. The offer was denounced by the Reagan administration as a \"propaganda initiative\" designed to influence a House vote on a $14million Contra aid package, but Kerry said \"I am willing... to take the risk in the effort to put to test the good faith of the Sandinistas.\" The House voted down the Contra aid, but Ortega flew to Moscow to accept a $200million loan the next day, which in part prompted the House to pass a larger $27million aid package six weeks later.\nMeanwhile, Kerry's staff began their own investigations and, on October 14, issued a report that exposed illegal activities on the part of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who had set up a private network involving the National Security Council and the CIA to deliver military equipment to right-wing Nicaraguan rebels (Contras). In effect, North and certain members of the President's administration were accused by Kerry's report of illegally funding and supplying armed militants without the authorization of Congress. Kerry's staff investigation, based on a year-long inquiry and interviews with fifty unnamed sources, is said to raise \"serious questions about whether the United States has abided by the law in its handling of the contras over the past three years\".\nThe Kerry Committee report found that \"the Contra drug links included... payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies.\" The U.S. State Department paid over $806,000 to known drug traffickers to carry humanitarian assistance to the Contras. Kerry's findings provoked little reaction in the media and official Washington.\nThe Kerry report was a precursor to the Iran\u2013Contra affair. On May 4, 1989, North was convicted of charges relating to the Iran/Contra controversy, including three felonies. On September 16, 1991, however, North's convictions were overturned on appeal.\nGeorge H. W. Bush administration.\nOn November 15, 1988, at a businessmen's breakfast in East Lynn, Massachusetts, Kerry made a joke about then-President-elect George H. W. Bush and his running mate, saying \"if Bush is shot, the Secret Service has orders to shoot Dan Quayle.\" He apologized the following day.\nDuring their investigation of General Manuel Noriega, the \"de facto\" ruler of Panama, Kerry's staff found reason to believe that the Pakistan-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) had facilitated Noriega's drug trafficking and money laundering. This led to a separate inquiry into BCCI, and as a result, banking regulators shut down BCCI in 1991. In December 1992, Kerry and Senator Hank Brown, a Republican from Colorado, released \"The BCCI Affair\", a report on the BCCI scandal. The report showed that the bank was crooked and was working with terrorists, including Abu Nidal. It blasted the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, the Customs Service, the Federal Reserve Bank, as well as influential lobbyists and the CIA.\nKerry was criticized by some Democrats for having pursued his own party members, including former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, although Republicans said he should have pressed against some Democrats even harder. The BCCI scandal was later turned over to the Manhattan District Attorney's office.\nPrecursors to presidential bid.\nIn 1996, Kerry faced a difficult re-election fight against Governor William Weld, a popular Republican incumbent who had been re-elected in 1994 with 71% of the vote. The race was covered nationwide as one of the most closely watched Senate races that year. Kerry and Weld held several debates and negotiated a campaign spending cap of $6.9million at Kerry's Beacon Hill townhouse. Both candidates spent more than the cap, with each camp accusing the other of being first to break the agreement. During the campaign, Kerry spoke briefly at the 1996 Democratic National Convention. Kerry won re-election with 52 percent to Weld's 45 percent.\nIn the 2000 presidential election, Kerry found himself close to being chosen as the vice presidential running mate.\nA release from the presidential campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Al Gore listed Kerry on the short list to be selected as the vice-presidential nominee, along with North Carolina Senator John Edwards, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt, New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. Gore ultimately chose Lieberman.\n\"You get stuck in Iraq\" controversy.\nOn October 30, 2006, Kerry was a headline speaker at a campaign rally being held for Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. Speaking to an audience composed mainly of college students, Kerry said, \"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.\"\nThe day after he made the remark, leaders from both sides of the political spectrum criticized Kerry's remarks, which he said were a botched joke. Republicans including President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain and then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, said that Kerry's comments were insulting to American military forces fighting in Iraq. Democratic Representative Harold Ford Jr. called on Kerry to apologize.\nKerry initially stated: \"I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy\". Kerry also responded to criticism from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.\nKerry said that he had intended the remark as a jab at President Bush, and described the remarks as a \"botched joke\", having inadvertently left out the key word \"us\" (which would have been, \"If you don't, you get \"us\" stuck in Iraq\"), as well as leaving the phrase \"just ask President Bush\" off of the end of the sentence. In Kerry's prepared remarks, which he released during the ensuing media frenzy, the corresponding line was \"...you end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush\". He also said that from the context of the speech which, prior to the \"stuck in Iraq\" line, made several specific references to Bush and elements of his biography, that Kerry was referring to President Bush and not American troops in general.\nAfter two days of media coverage, citing a desire not to be a diversion, Kerry apologized to those who took offense at what he called the misinterpretation of his comment.\nAfghanistan and Pakistan.\nA \"Washington Post\" report in May 2011 stated that Kerry \"has emerged in the past few years as an important envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan during times of crisis\", as he undertook another trip to the two countries. The killing of Osama bin Laden \"has generated perhaps the most important crossroads yet\", the report continued, as the senator spoke at a press conference and prepared to fly from Kabul to Pakistan. Among matters discussed during the May visit to Pakistan, under the general rubric of \"recalibrating\" the bilateral relationship, Kerry sought and retrieved from the Pakistanis the tail-section of the U.S. helicopter which had had to be abandoned at Abbottabad during the bin Laden strike. In 2013, Kerry met with Pakistan's army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to discuss the peace process with the Taliban in Afghanistan.\nVoting record.\nOverall.\nMost analyses place Kerry's voting record on the left within the Senate Democratic caucus. During the 2004 presidential election he was portrayed as a staunch liberal by conservative groups and the Bush campaign, who often noted that in 2003 Kerry was rated the top Senate liberal by \"National Journal\". However, that rating was based only upon voting on legislation within that past year. In fact, in terms of career voting records, the \"National Journal\" found that Kerry is the 11th most liberal member of the Senate. Most analyses find that Kerry is at least slightly more liberal than the typical Democratic Senator. Kerry has stated that he opposes privatizing Social Security, supports abortion rights for adult women and minors, supports same-sex marriage, opposes capital punishment except for terrorists, supports most gun control laws, and is generally a supporter of trade agreements. In some of these, as in the case of abortion, Kerry distinguishes his personal views as in line with his Catholic faith, but believes that separation of church and state demands that he not legislate his religious beliefs upon those who do not share those beliefs. Kerry supported the North American Free Trade Agreement and Most Favored Nation status for China, but opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement.\nIn July 1997, Kerry joined his Senate colleagues in voting against ratification of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming without greenhouse gas emissions limits on nations deemed developing, including India and China. Since then, Kerry has attacked President Bush, charging him with opposition to international efforts to combat global warming.\nOn October 1, 2008, Kerry voted for Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, also known as the TARP bailout.\nIraq.\nIn the lead up to the Iraq War, Kerry said on October 9, 2002; \"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.\" Bush relied on that resolution in ordering the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Kerry also gave a January 23, 2003, speech to Georgetown University saying \"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator; leading an oppressive regime he presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.\" Kerry did, however, warn that the administration should exhaust its diplomatic avenues before launching war: \"Mr. President, do not rush to war, take the time to build the coalition, because it's not winning the war that's hard, it's winning the peace that's hard.\"\nAfter the invasion of Iraq, when no weapons of mass destruction were found, Kerry strongly criticized Bush, contending that he had misled the country: \"When the President of the United States looks at you and tells you something, there should be some trust.\"\nLibya.\nIn 2011, Kerry supported American military action in Libya.\nLeadership.\nKerry chaired the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs from 1991 to 1993. The committee's report, which Kerry endorsed, stated there was \"no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia\". In 1994 the Senate passed a resolution, sponsored by Kerry and fellow Vietnam veteran John McCain, that called for an end to the existing trade embargo against Vietnam; it was intended to pave the way for normalization. In 1995, President Bill Clinton normalized diplomatic relations with the country of Vietnam.\nKerry was the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 1987 to 1989. He was reelected to the Senate in 1990, 1996 (after winning re-election against the then-Governor of Massachusetts Republican William Weld), 2002, and 2008. In January 2009, Kerry replaced Joe Biden as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.\nAs a role model for campus leaders across the nation and strong advocate for global development, Kerry was honored by the Millennium Campus Network (MCN) as a Global Generation Award winner in 2011.\nCommittee assignments.\nDuring his tenure, Kerry served on four Senate committees and nine subcommittees:\nSeniority.\nFrom the beginning of the 113th United States Congress until his resignation, Kerry ranked as the 7th most senior U.S. Senator. Due to the longevity of Ted Kennedy's service, Kerry was the most senior \"junior Senator\" in the 111th United States Congress. On Tuesday, August 25, 2009, Kerry became the senior senator from Massachusetts following Ted Kennedy's death.\nSponsorship of legislation.\nAreas of concern in the bills Kerry introduced into the Senate included small business concerns, education, terrorism, veterans' and POW/MIA issues, and marine resource protection. A full list of Kerry's sponsored legislation was available on his Senate web site.\nDuring his Senate career, Kerry was primary sponsor of the following bills (excluding resolutions and amendments sponsored). This table does not count bills which Kerry co-sponsored.\nA chronological list of various bills and resolutions sponsored by Kerry follows.\n2004 presidential campaign.\nIn the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries, John Kerry defeated several Democratic rivals, including Sen. John Edwards (D-North Carolina), former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and retired Army General Wesley Clark. His victory in the Iowa caucuses is widely believed to be the tipping point where Kerry revived his sagging campaign in New Hampshire and the February 3, 2004, primary states like Arizona, South Carolina and New Mexico. Kerry then went on to win landslide victories in Nevada and Wisconsin. Kerry thus won the Democratic nomination to run for President of the United States against incumbent George W. Bush. On July 6, 2004, he announced his selection of John Edwards as his running mate. Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who was Kerry's 2004 campaign adviser, wrote an article in \"Time\" magazine claiming that after the election, Kerry had said that he wished he had never picked Edwards, and that the two have since stopped speaking to each other. In a subsequent appearance on ABC's \"This Week\", Kerry refused to respond to Shrum's allegation, calling it a \"ridiculous waste of time\".\nDuring his bid to be elected president in 2004, Kerry frequently criticized President George W. Bush for starting the Iraq War. While Kerry had initially voted in support of authorizing President Bush to use force in dealing with Saddam Hussein, he voted against an $87billion supplemental appropriations bill to pay for the subsequent war. His statement on March 16, 2004, \"I actually did vote for the $87billion before I voted against it\", helped the Bush campaign to paint him as a flip-flopper and has been cited as contributing to Kerry's defeat.\nOn November 3, 2004, Kerry conceded the race. Kerry won 59.03 million votes, or 48.3 percent of the popular vote; Bush won 62.04 million votes, or 50.7 percent of the popular vote. Kerry carried states with a total of 252 electoral votes. One Kerry elector voted for Kerry's running mate, Edwards, so in the final tally Kerry had 251 electoral votes to Bush's 286. He was the first Democrat since Michael Dukakis in 1988 to lose the popular vote in a presidential election, and until Kamala Harris's loss in 2024, he was the most recent Democrat to do so.\nSubsequent presidential-election activities.\nImmediately after the 2004 election, some Democrats mentioned Kerry as a possible contender for the 2008 Democratic nomination. His brother had said such a campaign was \"conceivable\", and Kerry himself reportedly said at a farewell party for his 2004 campaign staff, \"There's always another four years\".\nKerry established a separate political action committee, Keeping America's Promise, which declared as its mandate \"A Democratic Congress will restore accountability to Washington and help change a disastrous course in Iraq\", and raised money and channeled contributions to Democratic candidates in state and federal races. Through Keeping America's Promise in 2005, Kerry raised over $5.5million for other Democrats up and down the ballot. Through his campaign account and his political action committee, the Kerry campaign operation generated more than $10million for various party committees and 179 candidates for the U.S. House, Senate, state and local offices in 42 states focusing on the midterm elections during the 2006 election cycle. \"Cumulatively, John Kerry has done as much if not more than any other individual senator\", Hassan Nemazee, the national finance chairman of the DSCC said.\nOn January 10, 2008, Kerry endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama for president. He was mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate for Senator Obama, although fellow Senator Joe Biden was eventually chosen. After Biden's acceptance of the vice presidential nomination, speculation arose that John Kerry would be a candidate for Secretary of State in the Obama administration. However, Senator Hillary Clinton was offered the position.\nDuring the 2012 Obama reelection campaign, Kerry participated in one-on-one debate prep with the president, impersonating the Republican candidate Mitt Romney.\nSecretary of State (2013\u20132017).\nNomination and confirmation.\nOn December 15, 2012, several news outlets reported that President Barack Obama would nominate Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, after Susan Rice, widely seen as Obama's preferred choice, withdrew her name from consideration citing a politicized confirmation process following criticism of her response to the 2012 Benghazi attack. On December 21, Obama proposed the nomination, which received positive commentary. His confirmation hearing took place on January 24, 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the same panel where he first testified in 1971. The committee unanimously voted to approve him on January 29, 2013, and the same day the full Senate confirmed him on a vote of 94\u20133. In a letter to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Kerry announced his resignation from the Senate effective February 1.\nTenure.\nKerry was sworn in as Secretary of State on February 1, 2013.\nWhile serving as the Secretary of State, Kerry spoke in the French language on several occasions in his official capacity.\nAfter six months of rigorous diplomacy within the Middle East, Kerry was able to have Israeli and Palestinian negotiators agree to start the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks. Senior U.S. officials stated the two sides were able to meet on July 30, 2013, at the State Department without American mediators following a dinner the previous evening hosted by Kerry.\nOn September 27, 2013, he met with the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the P5+1 and Iran summit, which eventually led to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. It was the highest-level direct contact between the United States and Iran in the last six years, and made him the first U.S. Secretary of State to have met with his Iranian counterpart since 1979 Iranian Revolution.\nIn the State Department, Kerry quickly earned a reputation \"for being aloof, keeping to himself, and not bothering to read staff memos\". Career State Department officials complained that power became too centralized under Kerry's leadership, which slowed department operations when Kerry was on frequent overseas trips. Others in State described Kerry as having \"a kind of diplomatic attention deficit disorder\" as he shifted from topic to topic instead of focusing on long-term strategy. When asked whether he was traveling too much, he responded, \"Hell no. I'm not slowing down.\" Despite Kerry's early achievements, morale at State was lower than under Hillary Clinton, according to department employees. However, after Kerry's first six months in the State Department, a Gallup poll found he had high approval ratings among Americans as Secretary of State. After a year, another poll showed Kerry's favorability continued to rise. Less than two years into Kerry's term, the Foreign Policy Magazine's 2014 Ivory Tower survey of international relations scholars asked, \"Who was the most effective U.S. Secretary of State in the past 50 years?\"; John Kerry and Lawrence Eagleburger tied for 11th place out of the 15 confirmed Secretaries of State in that period.\nIn January 2014, having met with Vatican Secretary of State Archbishop Pietro Parolin, Kerry said: \"We touched on just about every major issue that we are both working on, that are issues of concern to all of us. First of all, we talked at great length about Syria, and I was particularly appreciative for the Archbishop's raising this issue, and equally grateful for the Holy Father's comments\u00a0\u2013 the Pope's comments yesterday regarding his support for the GenevaII process. We welcome that support. It is very important to have broad support, and I know that the Pope is particularly concerned about the massive numbers of displaced human beings and the violence that has taken over 130,000 lives.\"\nKerry expressed support for Israel's right to defend itself during the 2014 Israel\u2013Gaza conflict.\nKerry said the United States supported the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen because Saudi Arabia, an ally, was threatened \"very directly\" by the takeover of neighboring Yemen by the Houthis, but noted that the United States would not reflexively support Saudi Arabia's proxy wars against Iran.\nOn December 28, 2016, soon after United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 passed 14\u20130 with the U.S. abstaining, Kerry joined the rest of the U.N. Security Council in strongly criticizing Israel's settlement policies in a speech. His speech and criticisms met negative reactions from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while UK Prime Minister Theresa May distanced the UK from Kerry's strongly worded speech in what appeared to be an attempt to build bridges with the incoming Trump administration. Kerry's speech received positive reactions from Arab nations, but some criticized his remarks as too little, too late from the outgoing administration.\nSyria.\nFollowing the August 21, 2013, chemical weapons attack on the Ghouta suburbs of Damascus attributed to Syrian government forces, Kerry became a leading advocate for the use of military force against the Syrian government for what he called \"a despot's brutal and flagrant use of chemical weapons\".\nOn September 9, in response to a reporter's question about whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could avert a military strike, Kerry said \"He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that. But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done, obviously.\" This unscripted remark initiated a process that would lead to Syria agreeing to relinquish and destroy its chemical weapons arsenal, as Russia treated Kerry's statement as a serious proposal. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia would work \"immediately\" to convince Syria relinquish and destroy its large chemical weapons arsenal. Syria quickly welcomed this proposal and on September 14, the UN formally accepted Syria's application to join the convention banning chemical weapons, and separately, the U.S. and Russia agreed on a plan to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons by the middle of 2014, leading Kerry to declare on July 20, 2014: \"we struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out\". On September 28, the UN Security Council passed a resolution ordering the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons and condemning the August 21 Ghouta attack.\nLatin America.\nIn a speech before the Organization of American States in November 2013, Kerry remarked that the era of the Monroe Doctrine was over. He went on to explain, \"The relationship that we seek and that we have worked hard to foster is not about a United States declaration about how and when it will intervene in the affairs of other American states. It's about all of our countries viewing one another as equals, sharing responsibilities, cooperating on security issues, and adhering not to doctrine, but to the decisions that we make as partners to advance the values and the interests that we share.\"\nEnvironmentalism.\nIn April 2016, he signed the Paris Climate Accords at the United Nations in New York.\nOn November 11, 2016, Kerry became the first Secretary of State and highest-ranking U.S. official to date to visit Antarctica. Kerry spent two days on the continent meeting with researchers and staying overnight at McMurdo Station.\nIn 1994, Kerry led opposition to continued funding for the Integral Fast Reactor, which resulted in the end of funding for the project. However, in light of increasing concerns regarding climate change, in 2017 Kerry reversed his position on nuclear power, saying \"Given this challenge we face today, and given the progress of fourth generation nuclear: go for it. No other alternative, zero emissions.\"\nGlobal Connect initiative.\nIn September 2015, the U.S. Department of State unveiled a new initiative called \"Global Connect\" which sought to provide internet access to more than 1.5 billion people around the world within five years. In 2016, in partnership with OPIC, Kerry announced an investment of $171million to enable \"a low-cost and rapidly scalable wireless broadband network in India\". OPIC's financing is aimed at helping its Indian Partner, Tikona Digital Networks, to provide Internet through wireless technology.\nOut of government (2017\u20132021).\nKerry retired from his diplomatic work following the end of the Obama administration on January 20, 2017. He did not attend Donald Trump's inauguration on that day, and the following day took part in the 2017 Women's March in Washington, D.C.\nKerry has taken a strong stand against Trump policies and joined in filing a brief arguing against Trump's executive order banning entry of persons from seven Muslim countries. In November 2018, in a \"Guardian Live\" conversation with Andrew Rawnsley, sponsored by \"The Guardian\" at London's Central Hall, Kerry discussed several issues which have developed further since his tenure as Secretary of State, including migration into Europe and climate change.\nOn December 5, 2019, Kerry endorsed Joe Biden's bid for the Democratic nomination for president, saying \"He'll be ready on day one to put back together the country and the world that Donald Trump has broken apart\" and asserting that \"Joe will defeat Donald Trump next November. He's the candidate with the wisdom and standing to fix what Trump has broken, to restore our place in the world, and improve the lives of working people here at home.\"\nFollowing retirement from government service, Kerry signed an agreement with Simon & Schuster for publishing his planned memoirs, dealing with his life and career in government. In September 2018, he published \"Every Day Is Extra\".\nLeaked audiotape.\nOn April 25, 2021, \"The New York Times\" published content from a leaked audiotape of a three-hour taped conversation between economist Saeed Leylaz and Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. The taped conversation was connected to an oral history project, known as \"In the Islamic Republic the military field rules\", which documents the work of Iran's current administration. The tape was obtained by the London-based news channel Iran International.\nIn the tape, which the \"Times\" referred to as \"extraordinary\", Zarif reveals that then-Secretary of State Kerry told him that Israel attacked Iranian assets in Syria, \"at least 200 times\". Although the tape has not been verified, the spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry did not deny its validity.\nNineteen Republican senators signed a letter asking President Biden to investigate Zarif's claim. On April 27, 2021, Republicans called on Kerry to resign from the Biden administration's National Security Council. In a tweet, Kerry denied Zarif's account, writing, \"I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false. This never happened \u2014 either when I was Secretary of State or since.\"\nSpecial Presidential Envoy for Climate (2021\u20132024).\nOn November 23, 2020, President-elect Joe Biden's transition team announced that Kerry would be taking a full-time position in the administration, serving as a special envoy for climate; in this role he will be a principal on the National Security Council. Kerry assumed office on January 20, 2021, following Biden's inauguration.\nClimate cooperation with China.\nIn July 2023, John Kerry visited China for advance climate cooperation. The main achievement of the visit was some progress in the fields of: \"methane reduction commitments; reducing China's reliance on coal; China's objections to trade restrictions on solar panel and battery components; and climate finance.\" This was obtained despite many currently existing obstacles to cooperation. The visit was made in the middle of the 2023 Asia heat wave that set a new record of in Sanbu, Xinjiang, China, which Kerry mentioned in particular.\nClimate cooperation with India.\nAt the end of July 2023, John Kerry visited India. Among others he declared, the US will be committed to the target of delivering 100 billion dollars for climate action to low income countries and no future US president can retreat from climate commitment. He criticized Donald Trump for leaving the Paris agreement before.\nClimate cooperation with countries in the Middle East.\nIn June 2023, Kerry made visits to Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. In Israel, he emphasized the need for climate legislation to reach climate targets and reached an agreement about the renewal of \"Memorandum of understanding between Israel and the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Israel is one of the few developed countries which have still not approved a climate law and lags behind other OECD countries in climate action. Israeli environmental protection minister Idit Silman said that Israel intended to go to COP28 \"with an ambitious and applicable climate law and put the State of Israel on the same level as the developed countries of the OECD.\"\nDeparture.\nOn January 13, 2024, at least three sources close to Kerry revealed that he would step down as U.S. climate envoy by the upcoming spring. He told the \"Financial Times\" he planned to stay active in the climate finance space. He officially resigned from his position on March 6, 2024.\nPersonal and family life.\nAncestry.\nKerry's paternal ancestors came from the Fr\u00e4nkel family, which owned a textile factory in Neustadt, Upper Silesia (now Prudnik, Poland), founded by Samuel Fr\u00e4nkel. The Fr\u00e4nkels originated from Hotzenplotz, Austria (now Osoblaha, Czech Republic) and Z\u00fclz, Prussia (now Bia\u0142a Prudnicka, Poland). Kerry's paternal great-grandmother, Mathilda Fr\u00e4nkel, was born in Oberglogau (now G\u0142og\u00f3wek, near Prudnik) and married Benedikt Kohn from Bennisch (now Horn\u00ed Bene\u0161ov). His grandparents, shoe businessman Frederick A. \"Fred\" Kerry and musician Ida L\u00f6we, immigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the U.S. Fred, his wife, and his brother converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1901, and changed their names from Kohn to Kerry. Ida was of remote ancestry of Rabbi Sinai Loew of Worms, brother of Judah Loew ben Bezalel. Fred and Ida Kerry emigrated to the United States in 1905, living at first in Chicago and eventually moving to Brookline, Massachusetts, by 1915. According to \"The New York Times\", \"[the] brother and sister of John Kerry's paternal grandmother, Otto and Jenni Lowe, died in concentration camps\". Kerry's Jewish ancestry was publicly revealed during his 2004 presidential campaign; he has stated that he was unaware of it until a reporter informed him of it in 2003.\nKerry's maternal ancestors were of Scottish and English descent, and his maternal grandparents were James Grant Forbes II of the Forbes family and Margaret Tyndal Winthrop of the Dudley\u2013Winthrop family. Margaret's paternal grandfather Robert Charles Winthrop served as the 22nd Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Robert's father was Governor Thomas Lindall Winthrop. Thomas' father John Still Winthrop was a great-great-grandson of Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop and great-grandson of Governor Thomas Dudley. Through his mother, Kerry is a first cousin once removed of French politician Brice Lalonde.\nMarriages and children.\nKerry was married to Julia Thorne in 1970, and they had two daughters together: documentary filmmaker Alexandra Kerry (born September 5, 1973) and physician Vanessa Kerry (born December 31, 1976).\nAlexandra was born days before Kerry began law school. In 1982, Julia asked Kerry for a separation while she was suffering from severe depression. They were divorced on July 25, 1988, and the marriage was formally annulled in 1997. \"After 14 years as a political wife, I associated politics only with anger, fear and loneliness\", she wrote in \"A Change of Heart\", her book about depression. Thorne later married Richard Charlesworth, an architect, and moved to Bozeman, Montana, where she became active in local environmental groups such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Thorne supported Kerry's 2004 presidential run. She died of cancer on April 27, 2006.\nKerry and his second wife\u2014Portuguese-born businesswoman and philanthropist Teresa Heinz, the widow of Kerry's late Pennsylvania Republican Senate colleague John Heinz\u2014were introduced to each other by Heinz at an Earth Day rally in 1990. Early the following year, Senator Heinz was killed in a plane crash near Lower Merion. Teresa has three sons from her marriage to Heinz, Henry John IV, Andr\u00e9, and Christopher. Heinz and Kerry were married on May 26, 1995, in Nantucket, Massachusetts.\nNet worth.\nThe \"Forbes 400\" survey estimated in 2004 that Teresa Heinz Kerry had a net worth of $750million. However, estimates have frequently varied, ranging from around $165million to as high as $3.2billion, according to a study in the \"Los Angeles Times\". Regardless of which figure is correct, Kerry was the wealthiest U.S. Senator while serving in the Senate. Independent of Heinz, Kerry is wealthy in his own right, and is the beneficiary of at least four trusts inherited from Forbes family relatives, including his mother, Rosemary Forbes Kerry, who died in 2002. \"Forbes\" magazine (named for the Forbes family of publishers, unrelated to Kerry) estimated that if elected, and if Heinz family assets were included, Kerry would have been the third-richest U.S. president in history, when adjusted for inflation. This assessment was based on Heinz's and Kerry's combined assets, but the couple signed a prenuptial agreement that keeps their assets separate. Kerry's financial disclosure form for 2011 put his personal assets in the range of $230,000,000 to $320,000,000, including the assets of his spouse and any dependent children. This included slightly more than $3,000,000 worth of H. J. Heinz Company assets, which increased in value by over $600,000 in 2013 when Berkshire Hathaway announced their intention to purchase the company.\nIn April 2017, Kerry purchased an 18-acre property on the northwest corner of Martha's Vineyard overlooking Vineyard Sound in the town of Chilmark, Massachusetts. The property is located in Seven Gates Farm and according to property records, cost $11.75million for the seven bedroom home.\nReligious beliefs.\nKerry is a Roman Catholic, and is said to have carried a religious rosary, a prayer book, and a St. Christopher medal (the patron saint of travelers) when he campaigned. Discussing his faith, Kerry said: \"I thought of being a priest. I was very religious while at school in Switzerland. I was an altar boy and prayed all the time. I was very centered around the Mass and the church.\" He also said that the Letters of Paul (Apostle Paul) moved him the most, stating that they taught him to \"not feel sorry for myself\".\nKerry told \"Christianity Today\" in October 2004:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I'm a Catholic and I practice, but at the same time I have an open-mindedness to many other expressions of spirituality that come through different religions... I've spent some time reading and thinking about religion and trying to study it, and I've arrived at not so much a sense of the differences, but a sense of the similarities in so many ways.\nHe said that he believed that the Torah, the Quran, and the Bible all share a fundamental story which connects with readers.\nHealth.\nIn 2003, Kerry was diagnosed with and successfully treated for prostate cancer. On May 31, 2015, Kerry broke his right leg in a biking accident in Scionzier, France, and was flown to Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital for recovery. MGH Hip and Knee Replacement Orthopaedic Surgeon Dr. Dennis Burke, who had met Kerry in France and had accompanied him in the plane from France to Boston, set Kerry's right leg on Tuesday, June 2, in a four-hour operation.\nAthletics and sailing.\nIn addition to the sports he played at Yale, Kerry is described by \"Sports Illustrated\", among others, as an \"avid cyclist\", primarily riding on a road bike. Prior to his presidential bid, Kerry had participated in several long-distance rides. During his many campaigns, he was reported to have visited bicycle stores in both his home state and elsewhere. His staff requested recumbent stationary bikes for his hotel rooms. He has also been a snowboarder, windsurfer, and sailor.\nThe \"Boston Herald\" reported on July 23, 2010, that Kerry commissioned construction on a new $7million yacht (a Friendship 75) in New Zealand and moored it in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where the Friendship yacht company is based. The article claimed this allowed him to avoid paying Massachusetts taxes on the property including approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $500. On July 27, Kerry stated he would voluntarily pay $500,000 in Massachusetts taxes on his yacht.\nHonors.\nJohn Kerry was awarded:\nHonorary degrees.\nJohn Kerry has received several honorary degrees in recognition of his service to the United States, These include:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "53825": "New Haven, Connecticut\nNew Haven is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is the third largest city in Connecticut after Bridgeport and Stamford, the largest city in the South Central Connecticut Planning Region, and the principal municipality of Greater New Haven, which had a total population of 864,835 in 2020.\nNew Haven was one of the first planned cities in the U.S. A year after its founding by English Puritans in 1638, eight streets were laid out in a four-by-four grid, creating the \"Nine Square Plan\". The central common block is the New Haven Green, a square at the center of Downtown New Haven. The Green is now a National Historic Landmark, and the \"Nine Square Plan\" is recognized by the American Planning Association as a National Planning Landmark.\nNew Haven is the home of Yale University, New Haven's biggest taxpayer and employer, and an integral part of the city's economy. Health care, professional and financial services and retail trade also contribute to the city's economic activity.\nThe city served as co-capital of Connecticut from 1701 until 1873, when sole governance was transferred to the more centrally located city of Hartford. New Haven has since billed itself as the \"Cultural Capital of Connecticut\" for its supply of established theaters, museums, and music venues. New Haven had the first public tree planting program in the U.S., producing a canopy of mature trees (including some large elms) that gave the city the nickname \"The Elm City\".\nHistory.\nPre-colonial foundation as an independent colony.\nBefore Europeans arrived, the New Haven area was the home of the Quinnipiac tribe of Native Americans, who lived in villages around the harbor and sustained an economy of local fisheries and the farming of maize. The area was briefly visited by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block in 1614. Dutch traders set up a small trading system of beaver pelts with the local inhabitants, but trade was sporadic and the Dutch did not settle permanently in the area.\nIn 1637, a small party of Puritans did a reconnaissance of the New Haven harbor area and wintered over. In April 1638, the main party of five hundred Puritans, who had left the Massachusetts Bay Colony under the leadership of Reverend John Davenport and London merchant Theophilus Eaton, sailed into the harbor. It was their hope to set up a theological community with the government more closely linked to the church than that in Massachusetts, and to exploit the area's potential as a port. The Quinnipiacs, who were under attack by neighboring Pequots, sold their land to the settlers in return for a pledge of protection.\nBy 1640, \"Quinnipiac's\" theocratic government and nine-square grid plan were in place, and the town was renamed New Haven, with 'haven' meaning harbor or port. However, the area to the north remained Quinnipiac until 1678, when it was renamed Hamden. The settlement became the headquarters of the New Haven Colony, distinct from the Connecticut Colony previously established to the north centering on Hartford. Reflecting its theocratic roots, the New Haven Colony forbade the establishment of other churches, whereas the Connecticut Colony permitted them.\nEconomic disaster struck New Haven in 1646, when the town sent its first fully loaded ship of local goods (the \"Great Shippe\") back to England. It never reached its destination, and its disappearance hindered New Haven's development as compared to the rising trade powers of Boston and New Amsterdam (modern day New York City).\nIn 1660, Colony founder John Davenport's wishes were fulfilled, and Hopkins School was founded in New Haven with money from the estate of Edward Hopkins.\nIn 1661, the Regicides who had signed the death warrant of Charles I of England were pursued by Charles II. Two of them, Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe, fled to New Haven for refuge. Davenport arranged for them to hide in the West Rock hills northwest of the town. A third judge, John Dixwell, later joined the others. None of the three were ever returned to England for trial; Dixwell died of old age in New Haven, the others likewise elsewhere in New England.\nAs part of the Connecticut Colony.\nIn 1664, New Haven became part of the Connecticut Colony when the two colonies were merged under political pressure from England. Seeking to establish a new theocracy elsewhere, some members of the New Haven Colony went on to establish Newark, New Jersey.\nNew Haven was made co-capital of Connecticut in 1701, a status it retained until 1873.\nIn 1716, the Collegiate School relocated from Old Saybrook to New Haven, establishing it as a center of learning. In 1718, in response to a large donation from East India Company merchant Elihu Yale, former Governor of Madras, the Collegiate School was renamed Yale College.\nFor over a century, New Haven citizens had fought in the colonial militia alongside regular British forces, including the French and Indian War. As the American Revolution approached, General David Wooster and other influential residents hoped that the conflict with the British parliament could be resolved short of rebellion. On April 23, 1775, Captain Benedict Arnold commanded the Second Company, Governor's Foot Guard, of New Haven to break into the powder house to arm themselves for a three-day march to Cambridge, Massachusetts, an event still celebrated in New Haven as Powder House Day. Other New Haven militia members were on hand to escort George Washington from his overnight stay in New Haven on his way to Cambridge. Contemporary reports, from both sides, remark on the New Haven volunteers' professional military bearing, including uniforms.\nOn July 5, 1779, 2,600 loyalists and British regulars under General William Tryon, governor of New York, landed in New Haven Harbor and raided the town of 3,500. A militia of Yale students had been preparing for battle, and former Yale president and Yale Divinity School professor Naphtali Daggett rode out to confront the Redcoats. Yale president Ezra Stiles recounted in his diary that while he moved furniture in anticipation of battle, he still couldn't quite believe the revolution had begun. New Haven was not torched as the invaders did with Danbury in 1777, or Fairfield and Norwalk a week after the New Haven raid, preserving many of the town's colonial features.\nPost-colonial period and industrialization.\nNew Haven was incorporated as a city in 1784, and Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Constitution and author of the \"Connecticut Compromise\", became the new city's first mayor.\nThe city struck fortune in the late 18th century with the inventions and industrial activity of Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate who remained in New Haven to develop the cotton gin and establish a gun-manufacturing factory in the northern part of the city near the Hamden town line. That area is still known as Whitneyville, and the main road through both towns is known as Whitney Avenue. The factory is now the Eli Whitney Museum, which has a particular emphasis on activities for children and exhibits pertaining to the A. C. Gilbert Company. His factory, along with that of Simeon North, and the lively clock-making and brass hardware sectors, contributed to making early Connecticut a powerful manufacturing economy; so many arms manufacturers sprang up that the state became known as \"The Arsenal of America\". It was in Whitney's gun-manufacturing plant that Samuel Colt invented the automatic revolver in 1836. Many other talented machinists and firearms designers would go on to found successful firearms manufacturing companies in New Haven, including Oliver Winchester and O.F. Mossberg & Sons.\nThe Farmington Canal, created in the early 19th century, was a short-lived transporter of goods into the interior regions of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and ran from New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts.\nNew Haven was to be the site of the first college for African Americans in the United States, but the plan was obstructed by efforts led by Yale Law School founder and former New Haven Mayor David Daggett, who went on to serve as a U.S. Senator and judge on Connecticut's highest court. Daggett denigrated African Americans, denied they were citizens, and presided over the trial of a woman persecuted for trying to admit an African American girl to her boarding school and, having that effort blocked, running a boarding school for African American girls.\nNew Haven was home to one of the important early events in the burgeoning anti-slavery movement when, in 1839, the trial of mutineering Mende tribesmen being transported as slaves on the Spanish slaveship \"Amistad\" was held in New Haven's United States District Court. There is a statue of Joseph Cinqu\u00e9, the informal leader of the slaves, beside City Hall. See \"Museums\" below for more information. Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech on slavery in New Haven in 1860, shortly before he secured the Republican nomination for President.\nThe American Civil War boosted the local economy with wartime purchases of industrial goods, including that of the New Haven Arms Company, which would later become the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. (Winchester would continue to produce arms in New Haven until 2006, and many of the buildings that were a part of the Winchester plant are now a part of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company Historic District). After the war, population grew and doubled by the start of the 20th century, most notably due to the influx of immigrants from southern Europe, particularly Italy. Today, roughly half the populations of East Haven, West Haven, and North Haven are Italian-American. Jewish immigration to New Haven has left an enduring mark on the city. Westville was the center of Jewish life in New Haven, though today many have fanned out to suburban communities such as Woodbridge and Cheshire. Lowell House, the city's first settlement, opened in 1900.\nPost-industrial era and urban redevelopment.\nNew Haven's expansion continued during the two World Wars, with most new inhabitants being African Americans from the American South, and Puerto Ricans. The city reached its peak population after World War II. The area of New Haven is only , encouraging further development of new housing after 1950 in adjacent, suburban towns. Moreover, as in other U.S. cities in the 1950s, New Haven began to suffer white flight of middle-class workers. One author suggested that aggressive redlining and rezoning made it difficult for residents to obtain financing for older, deteriorating urban housing stock, thereby condemning such structures to deterioration.\nIn 1954, then-mayor Richard C. Lee began some of the earliest major urban renewal projects in the United States. Certain sections of downtown New Haven were redeveloped to include museums, new office towers, a hotel, and large shopping complexes. Other parts of the city, particularly the Wooster Square and Fair Haven neighborhoods were affected by the construction of Interstate 95 along the Long Wharf section, Interstate 91, and the Oak Street Connector. The Oak Street Connector (Route 34), running between Interstate 95, downtown, and The Hill neighborhood, was originally intended as a highway to the city's western suburbs but was only completed as a highway to the downtown area, with the area to the west becoming a boulevard (See \"Redevelopment\" below).\nIn 1970, a series of criminal prosecutions against various members of the Black Panther Party took place in New Haven, inciting mass protests on the New Haven Green involving twelve thousand demonstrators and many well-known New Left political activists. (See \"Political Culture\" below for more information). From the 1960s through the early 1990s, some areas of New Haven continued to decline both economically and in terms of population despite attempts to resurrect certain neighborhoods through renewal projects. In conjunction with its declining population, New Haven experienced a steep rise in its crime rate.\nSince approximately 2000, many parts of downtown New Haven have been revitalized with new restaurants, nightlife, and small retail stores. In particular, the area surrounding the New Haven Green has experienced an influx of apartments and condominiums. In addition, two new supermarkets opened to serve downtown's growing residential population: a Stop & Shop opened just west of downtown, while Elm City Market, located one block from the Green, opened in 2011. The recent turnaround of downtown New Haven has received positive press from various periodicals.\nMajor projects include the current construction of a new campus for Gateway Community College downtown, and also a 32-story, 500-unit apartment/retail building called 360 State Street. The 360 State Street project is now occupied and is the largest residential building in Connecticut. A new boathouse and dock is planned for New Haven Harbor, and the linear park Farmington Canal Trail is set to extend into downtown New Haven within the coming year. Additionally, foundation and ramp work to widen I-95 to create a new harbor crossing for New Haven, with an extradosed bridge to replace the 1950s-era Q Bridge, has begun. The city still hopes to redevelop the site of the New Haven Coliseum, which was demolished in 2007.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 18 white firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no black firefighters scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. In the subsequent \"Ricci v. DeStefano\" decision the court found 5\u20134 that New Haven's decision to ignore the test results violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a result, a district court subsequently ordered the city to promote 14 of the white firefighters.\nIn 2010 and 2011, state and federal funds were awarded to Connecticut (and Massachusetts) to construct the Hartford Line, with a southern terminus at New Haven's Union Station and a northern terminus at Springfield's Union Station. According to the White House, \"This corridor [currently] has one train per day connecting communities in Connecticut and Massachusetts to the Northeast Corridor and Vermont. The vision for this corridor is to restore the alignment to its original route via the Knowledge Corridor in western Massachusetts, improving trip time and increasing the population base that can be served.\" Set for construction in 2013, the \"Knowledge Corridor high speed intercity passenger rail\" project will cost approximately $1\u00a0billion, and the ultimate northern terminus for the project is reported to be Montreal in Canada. Train speeds between will reportedly exceed and increase both cities' rail traffic exponentially.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 6.67%, is water.\nNew Haven's best-known geographic features are its large, shallow harbor, and two reddish basalt trap rock ridges which rise to the northeast and northwest of the city core. These trap rocks are known respectively as East Rock and West Rock, and both serve as extensive parks. West Rock has been tunneled through to make way for the east\u2013west passage of the Wilbur Cross Parkway (the only highway tunnel through a natural obstacle in Connecticut), and once served as the hideout of the \"Regicides\" (see: Regicides Trail). Most New Haveners refer to these men as \"The Three Judges\". East Rock features the prominent Soldiers and Sailors war monument on its peak as well as the \"Great/Giant Steps\" which run up the rock's cliffside.\nThe city is drained by three rivers; the West, Mill, and Quinnipiac, named in order from west to east. The West River discharges into West Haven Harbor, while the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers discharge into New Haven Harbor. Both harbors are embayments of Long Island Sound. In addition, several smaller streams flow through the city's neighborhoods, including Wintergreen Brook, the Beaver Ponds Outlet, Wilmot Brook, Belden Brook, and Prospect Creek. Not all of these small streams have continuous flow year-round.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen classification, New Haven experiences a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\"), bordering a hot-summer humid continental climate (\"Dfa\"). The city has hot, humid summers and cool to cold winters. From May to late September, the weather is typically hot and humid, with average temperatures exceeding on 70 days per year. In summer, the Bermuda High creates as southern flow of warm and humid air, with frequent (but brief) thundershowers. October to early December is normally mild to cool late in the season, while early spring (April) can be cool to warm. Winters are more variable, with cool to cold temperatures, mixed with warmer spells, with both rain and snow fall.\nWhile the weather patterns that affect New Haven result from a primarily offshore direction, thus reducing the marine influence of Long Island Sound, the location on Long Island Sound often influences the weather along the coastline compared to inland. During summer heat waves, temperatures may reach or higher on occasion with heat-index values of over . Tropical cyclones have struck New Haven in the past, including 1938 Hurricane (Long Island Express), Hurricane Carol in 1954, Hurricane Gloria in 1985. The hardiness zone is 7a.\nStreetscape.\nNew Haven has a long tradition of urban planning and a purposeful design for the city's layout. The city could be argued to have some of the first preconceived layouts in the country. Upon founding, New Haven was laid out in a grid plan of nine square blocks; the central square was left open, in the tradition of many New England towns, as the city green (a commons area). The city also instituted the first public tree planting program in America. As in other cities, many of the elms that gave New Haven the nickname \"Elm City\" perished in the mid-20th century due to Dutch elm disease, although many have since been replanted. The New Haven Green is currently home to three separate historic churches which speak to the original theocratic nature of the city. The Green remains the social center of the city today. It was named a National Historic Landmark in 1970.\nDowntown New Haven, occupied by nearly 7,000 residents, has a more residential character than most downtowns. The downtown area provides about half of the city's jobs and half of its tax base and in recent years has become filled with dozens of new upscale restaurants, in addition to shops and thousands of apartments and condominium units which subsequently help overall growth of the city.\nNeighborhoods.\nThe city has many distinct neighborhoods. In addition to Downtown, centered on the central business district and the Green, are the following neighborhoods: the west central neighborhoods of Dixwell and Dwight; the southern neighborhoods of The Hill, historic water-front City Point (or Oyster Point), and the harborside district of Long Wharf; the western neighborhoods of Beaver Hills, Edgewood, West River, Westville, Amity, and West Rock-Westhills; East Rock, Cedar Hill, Prospect Hill, and Newhallville in the northern side of town; the east central neighborhoods of Mill River and Wooster Square, an Italian-American neighborhood; Fair Haven, an immigrant community located between the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers; Quinnipiac Meadows and Fair Haven Heights across the Quinnipiac River; and facing the eastern side of the harbor, The Annex and East Shore (or Morris Cove).\nDemographics.\nCensus data.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nThe U.S. Census Bureau reports a 2010 population of 129,779, with 47,094 households and 25,854 families within the city of New Haven. The population density was . There were 52,941 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 42.6% White, 35.4% African American, 0.5% Native American, 4.6% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 12.9% from other races, and 3.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 27.4% of the population. Non-Hispanic Whites were 31.8% of the population in 2010, down from 69.6% in 1970. The city's Latino population is growing rapidly. Previous influxes among ethnic groups have been African-Americans in the postwar era, and Irish, Italian and (to a lesser degree) Slavic peoples in the prewar period.\nAs of the 2010 census, of the 47,094 households, 29.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 27.5% include married couples living together, 22.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 36.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.5% had someone living alone who was 65\u00a0years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40 and the average family size 3.19.\nThe ages of New Haven's residents were 25.4% under the age of 18, 16.4% from 18 to 24, 31.2% from 25 to 44, 16.7% from 45 to 64, and 10.2% who were 65\u00a0years of age or older. The median age was 29\u00a0years, which was significantly lower than the national average. There were 91.8 males per 100 females. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.6 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $29,604, and the median income for a family was $35,950. Median income for males was $33,605, compared with $28,424 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,393. About 20.5% of families and 24.4% of the population were living below the poverty line, including 32.2% of those under age 18 and 17.9% of those age 65 or over.\nOther data.\nIt is estimated that 14% of New Haven residents are pedestrian commuters, ranking it number four by highest percentage in the United States. This is primarily due to New Haven's small area and the presence of Yale University.\nNew Haven is noted for having the highest percentage of Italian American residents of any US city, and is noted for its local style of pizza.\nA study of the demographics of the New Haven metro area, based on age, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity, found that they were the closest of any American city to the national average.\nEconomy.\nNew Haven's economy originally was based in manufacturing, but the postwar period brought rapid industrial decline; the entire Northeast was affected, and medium-sized cities with large working-class populations, like New Haven, were hit particularly hard. Simultaneously, the growth and expansion of Yale University further affected the economic shift. Today, over half (56%) of the city's economy is now made up of services, in particular education and health care; Yale is the city's largest employer, followed by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital. Other large employers include Southern Connecticut State University, Assa Abloy lock manufacturing, the Knights of Columbus headquarters, Higher One, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Covidien and United Illuminating. Clothing stores Gant and Ann Taylor were founded in the city.\nIn 2017, New Haven was ranked by a Verizon study as one of the top 10 cities in America for launching tech startups, and top two in New England.\nIndustry sectors: Agriculture (.6%), Construction and Mining (4.9%), Manufacturing (2.9%), Transportation and Utilities (2.9%), Trade (21.7%), Finance and Real Estate (7.1%), Services (55.9%), Government (4.0%)\nHeadquarters.\nThe Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization and a Fortune 1000 company, is headquartered in New Haven. Amphenol, based in Greater New Haven (Wallingford), is a Fortune 100 company. Eight Courant 100 companies are based in Greater New Haven, with four headquartered in New Haven proper. New Haven-based companies traded on stock exchanges include NewAlliance Bank, the second largest bank in Connecticut and fourth-largest in New England (NYSE: NAL), Higher One Holdings (NYSE: ONE), a financial services firm, United Illuminating, the electricity distributor for southern Connecticut (NYSE: UIL), and Transpro Inc. (AMEX: TPR). The American division of Assa Abloy (one of the world's leading manufacturers of locks) is located in the city. The Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET) began operations in the city as the District Telephone Company of New Haven in 1878; the company remains headquartered in New Haven as a subsidiary of Frontier Communications and provides telephone service for all but two municipalities in Connecticut. SeeClickFix was founded and has been headquartered in the city since 2007. Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company (a candy-making division of the Hershey Company) was formerly located in the city. Achillion Pharmaceuticals and Alexion Pharmaceuticals were also formerly headquartered in New Haven.\nLaw and government.\nPolitical structure.\nNew Haven is governed via the mayor-council system. Connecticut municipalities (like those of neighboring states Massachusetts and Rhode Island) provide nearly all local services (such as fire and rescue, education, snow removal, etc.), as county government has been abolished since 1960.\nNew Haven County merely refers to a grouping of towns and a judicial district, not a governmental entity. New Haven is a member of the South Central Connecticut Regional Council of Governments (SCRCOG), a regional agency created to facilitate coordination between area municipal governments and state and federal agencies, in the absence of county government.\nJustin Elicker is the mayor of New Haven. He was sworn in as the 51st mayor of New Haven on January 1, 2020.\nThe city council, called the Board of Alders, consists of thirty members, each elected from single-member wards. Each of the 30 wards consists of slightly over 4,300 residents; redistricting takes place every ten years.\nThe city is overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2017, of the town's 83,694 voters, 66% were registered as Democrats (\u22124% since 2015), 4% were registered as Republicans (+1%), and 29% were unaffiliated (+3). The board of alders is dominated by Democrats; a Republican has not served as a New Haven alder since 2011.\nNew Haven is served by the New Haven Police Department, which had 443 sworn officers in 2011. The city is also served by the New Haven Fire Department.\nNew Haven lies within Connecticut's 3rd congressional district and has been represented by Rosa DeLauro since 1991. Martin Looney and Gary Holder-Winfield represent New Haven in the Connecticut State Senate, and the city lies within six districts (numbers 92 through 97) of the Connecticut House of Representatives.\nThe Greater New Haven area is served by the New Haven Judicial District Court and the New Haven Superior Court, both headquartered at the New Haven County Courthouse. The federal District Court for the District of Connecticut has a New Haven facility, the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse.\nPolitical history.\nNew Haven is the birthplace of former president George W. Bush, who was born when his father, former president George H. W. Bush, was living in New Haven while a student at Yale. In addition to being the site of the college educations of both Presidents Bush, as Yale students, New Haven was also the temporary home of former presidents William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, and Bill Clinton, as well as Secretary of State John Kerry. President Clinton met his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while the two were students at Yale Law School. Former vice presidents John C. Calhoun and Dick Cheney also studied in New Haven (although the latter did not graduate from Yale). Before the 2008 election, the last time there was not a person with ties to New Haven and Yale on either major party's ticket was 1968. James Hillhouse, a New Haven native, served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate in 1801.\nNew Haven voters overwhelmingly supported Al Gore in the 2000 election, Yale graduate John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. In the 2008 election, New Haven County was third among all Connecticut counties in campaign contributions, after Fairfield and Hartford counties. (Connecticut, in turn, was ranked 14th among all states in total campaign contributions.)\nNew Haven was the subject of \" Who Governs? Democracy and Power in An American City\", a very influential book in political science by preeminent Yale professor Robert A. Dahl, which includes an extensive history of the city and thorough description of its politics in the 1950s. New Haven's theocratic history is also mentioned several times by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic volume on 19th-century American political life, \"Democracy in America\". New Haven was the residence of conservative thinker William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1951, when he wrote his influential \"God and Man at Yale\". William Lee Miller's \"The Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society\" (1966) similarly explores the relationship between local politics in New Haven and national political movements, focusing on Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and urban renewal.\nGeorge Williamson Crawford, a Yale Law School graduate, served as the city's first black corporation counsel from 1954 to 1962, under Mayor Richard C. Lee.\nIn 1970, the New Haven Black Panther trials took place, the largest and longest trials in Connecticut history. Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale and ten other party members were tried for murdering an alleged informant. Beginning on May Day, the city became a center of protest for 12,000 Panther supporters, college students, and New Left activists (including Jean Genet, Benjamin Spock, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and John Froines), who amassed on the New Haven Green, across the street from where the trials were being held. Violent confrontations between the demonstrators and the New Haven Police occurred, and several bombs were set off in the area by radicals. The event became a rallying point for the New Left and critics of the Nixon Administration.\nDuring the summer of 2007, New Haven was the center of protests by anti-immigration groups who opposed the city's program of offering municipal ID cards, known as the Elm City Resident Card, to illegal immigrants. In 2008, the country of Ecuador opened a consulate in New Haven to serve the large Ecuadorean immigrant population in the area. It is the first foreign mission to open in New Haven since Italy opened a consulate (now closed) in the city in 1910.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 20 white and Hispanic firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no blacks scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. On June 29, 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the firefighters, agreeing that they were improperly denied promotion because of their race. The case, \"Ricci v. DeStefano\", became highly publicized and brought national attention to New Haven politics due to the involvement of then-Supreme Court nominee (and Yale Law School graduate) Sonia Sotomayor in a lower court decision.\nGarry Trudeau, creator of the political \"Doonesbury\" comic strip, attended Yale University. There he met fellow student and later Green Party candidate for Congress Charles Pillsbury, a long-time New Haven resident for whom Trudeau's comic strip is named. During his college years, Pillsbury was known by the nickname \"The Doones\". A theory of international law, which argues for a sociological normative approach in regards to jurisprudence, is named the New Haven Approach, after the city. Connecticut US senator Richard Blumenthal is a Yale graduate, as is former Connecticut US Senator Joe Lieberman who also was a New Haven resident for many years, before moving back to his hometown of Stamford.\nCrime.\nCrime increased in the 1990s, with New Haven having one of the ten highest violent crime rates per capita in the United States. In the late 1990s New Haven's crime began to stabilize. The city, adopting a policy of community policing, saw crime rates drop during the 2000s.\nViolent crime levels vary dramatically among New Haven's neighborhoods, with some areas having crime rates in line with the state of Connecticut average, and others having extremely high rates of crime. A 2011 New Haven Health Department report identifies these issues in greater detail.\nIn 2010, New Haven ranked as the 18th most dangerous city in the United States (albeit below the safety benchmark of 200.00 for the second consecutive year). However, according to a completely different analysis conducted by the \"24/7 Wall Street Blog\", in 2011 New Haven had risen to become the fourth most dangerous city in the United States, and was widely cited in the press as such.\nHowever, an analysis by the Regional Data Cooperative for Greater New Haven, Inc., has shown that due to issues of comparative denominators and other factors, such municipality-based rankings can be considered inaccurate. For example, two cities of identical population can cover widely differing land areas, making such analyses irrelevant. The research organization called for comparisons based on neighborhoods, blocks, or standard methodologies (similar to those used by Brookings, DiversityData, and other established institutions), not based on municipalities.\nEducation.\nColleges and universities.\nNew Haven is a notable center for higher education. Yale University, at the heart of downtown, is one of the city's best known features and its largest employer. New Haven is also home to Southern Connecticut State University, part of the Connecticut State University System, and Albertus Magnus College, a private institution. Gateway Community College has a campus in downtown New Haven, formerly located in the Long Wharf district; Gateway consolidated into one campus downtown into a new state-of-the-art campus (on the site of the old Macy's building) and was open for the Fall 2012 semester.\nThere are several institutions immediately outside of New Haven, as well. Quinnipiac University and the Paier College of Art are located just to the north, in the town of Hamden. The University of New Haven is located not in New Haven but in neighboring West Haven.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nNew Haven Public Schools is the school district serving the city. Wilbur Cross High School and Hillhouse High School are New Haven's two largest public secondary schools.\nHopkins School, a private school, was founded in 1660 and is the fifth-oldest educational institution in the United States. New Haven is home to a number of other private schools as well as public magnet schools, including Metropolitan Business Academy, High School in the Community, Hill Regional Career High School, Co-op High School, New Haven Academy, Edgewood Magnet School, ACES Educational Center for the Arts, the Foote School and the Sound School, all of which draw students from New Haven and suburban towns. New Haven is also home to two Achievement First charter schools, Amistad Academy and Elm City College Prep, and to Common Ground, an environmental charter school.\nThe city is renowned for its progressive school lunch programs, and participation in statewide bussing efforts toward increased diversity in schools.\nCulture.\nCuisine.\nLivability.com named New Haven as the Best Foodie City in the country in 2014. There are dozens of Zagat-rated restaurants in New Haven, the most in Connecticut and the third most in New England (after Boston and Cambridge). More than 120 restaurants are located within two blocks of the New Haven Green. The city is home to an eclectic mix of ethnic restaurants and small markets specializing in various foreign foods. Represented cuisines include Malaysian, Ethiopian, Spanish, Belgian, French, Greek, Latin American, Mexican, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Cuban, Peruvian, Syrian/Lebanese, and Turkish.\nNew Haven's greatest culinary claim to fame may be its pizza, which has been claimed to be among the best in the country, or even in the world. New Haven-style pizza, called \"apizza\", made its debut at the iconic Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana (known as Pepe's) in 1925. Apizza is baked in coal- or wood-fired brick ovens, and is notable for its thin crust. Apizza may be red (with a tomato-based sauce) or white (with a sauce of garlic and olive oil), and pies ordered \"plain\" are made without the otherwise customary mozzarella (originally smoked mozzarella, known as \"scamorza\" in Italian). A white clam pie is a well-known specialty of the restaurants on Wooster Street in the Little Italy section of New Haven, including Pepe's and Sally's Apizza (which opened in 1938). Modern Apizza on State Street, which opened in 1934, is also well-known.\nA second New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Louis' Lunch, which is located in a small brick building on Crown Street and has been serving fast food since 1895. Though fiercely debated, the restaurant's founder Louis Lassen is credited by the Library of Congress with inventing the hamburger and steak sandwich. Louis' Lunch broils hamburgers, steak sandwiches and hot dogs vertically in original antique 1898 cast iron stoves using gridirons, patented by local resident Luigi Pieragostini in 1939, that hold the meat in place while it cooks.\nA third New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Miya's, the first sustainable sushi restaurant in the world. Miya's, founded by Chef Yoshiko Lai in 1982, featured the first sustainable seafood-based sushi menu, the first plant-based sushi menu, and the first invasive species menu in the world. Second generation Miya's chef, Bun Lai, is the 2016 White House Champions of Change for Sustainable Seafood and a James Beard Foundation Award nominee. Chef Bun Lai is credited as the first chef in the world for implementing a sustainability paradigm to the cuisine of sushi.\nDuring weekday lunchtime, over 150 lunch carts and food trucks cater to diners around the city. The carts and food trucks cluster at four main points: on Long Wharf Drive, along the city's shoreline with quick access off Interstate 95, by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital in the center of the Hospital Green (Cedar and York streets), by Yale's Trumbull College (Elm and York streets), and on the intersection of Prospect and Sachem streets by the Yale School of Management.\nPopular farmers' markets, managed by the local non-profit CitySeed, set up shop weekly in several neighborhoods, including Westville/Edgewood Park, Fair Haven, Upper State Street, Wooster Square, and Downtown/New Haven Green.\nA large grocery store, the Elm City Market, opened on 360 State Street in New Haven in early fall 2011 and served local produce and groceries to the community. Originally, the market was a member-owned co-op, but debt defaults in August 2014 forced a sale of the business. It is now an employee-owned business; the co-op's previous owners received no equity in the new business.\nIn the past several years, two separate Downtown food tour companies have started offering popular restaurant tours on weekends.\nTaste of New Haven Tours offers several different weekly restaurant/bar tours and a popular pizza, bike, and pints tour. Culinary Walking Tours offers monthly restaurant tours and sponsors an annual Elm City Iron Chef competition.\nTheatre and film.\nThe city hosts numerous theatres and production houses, including the Yale Repertory Theatre, the Long Wharf Theatre, and the Shubert Theatre. There is also theatre activity from the Yale School of Drama, which works through the Yale University Theatre and the student-run Yale Cabaret. Southern Connecticut State University hosts the Lyman Center for the Performing Arts. The shuttered Palace Theatre (opposite the Shubert Theatre) was renovated and reopened as the College Street Music Hall in May 2015. Smaller theatres include the Little Theater on Lincoln Street. Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School also has a theatre on College Street. The theatre is used for student productions, and is the home to weekly services to a local non-denominational church, the City Church New Haven.\nThe Shubert Theatre once premiered many major theatrical productions before their Broadway debuts. Productions that premiered at the Shubert include \"Oklahoma!\" (which was also written in New Haven), \"Carousel\", \"South Pacific\", \"My Fair Lady\", \"The King and I\", and \"The Sound of Music\", and the Tennessee Williams play \"A Streetcar Named Desire\".\nBow Tie Cinemas owns and operates the Criterion Cinemas, the first new movie theater to open in New Haven in over 30 years and the first luxury movie complex in the city's history. The Criterion has seven screens and opened in November 2004, showing a mix of upscale first run commercial and independent film.\nMuseums.\nNew Haven has a variety of museums, many of them associated with Yale. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library features an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible. There is also the Connecticut Children's Museum; the Knights of Columbus museum near that organization's world headquarters; the Peabody Museum of Natural History; the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments; the Eli Whitney Museum (across the town line in Hamden, Connecticut, on Whitney Avenue); the Yale Center for British Art, which houses the largest collection of British art outside the U.K., and the Yale University Art Gallery, the western hemisphere's oldest college art museum. New Haven is also home to the New Haven Museum and Historical Society on Whitney Avenue, which has a library of many primary source treasures dating from Colonial times to the present.\nArtspace on Orange Street is one of several contemporary art galleries around the city, showcasing the work of local, national, and international artists. Others include City Gallery and A. Leaf Gallery in the downtown area. Westville galleries include Kehler Liddell, Jennifer Jane Gallery, and The Hungry Eye. The Erector Square complex in the Fair Haven neighborhood houses, the Parachute Factory gallery along with numerous artist studios, and the complex serves as an active destination during City-Wide Open Studios held yearly in October.\nNew Haven is the home port of a life-size replica of the historical \"Freedom Schooner Amistad\", which is open for tours at Long Wharf pier at certain times during the summer. Also at Long Wharf pier is the \"Quinnipiack\" schooner, offering sailing cruises of the harbor area throughout the summer. The \"Quinnipiack\" also functions as a floating classroom for hundreds of local students.\nMusic.\nThe New Haven Green is the site of many free music concerts, especially during the summer months. These have included the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the July Free Concerts on the Green, and the New Haven Jazz Festival in August. The Jazz Festival, which began in 1982, is one of the longest-running free outdoor festivals in the U.S., until it was canceled for 2007. Headliners such as Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles and Celia Cruz have historically drawn 30,000 to 50,000 fans, filling up the New Haven Green to capacity. The New Haven Jazz Festival was revived in 2008 and has been sponsored since by Jazz Haven.\nNew Haven is home to the concert venue Toad's Place, and a new venue, College Street Music Hall. The city has retained an alternative art and music underground that has helped to influence post-punk era music movements such as indie, college rock and underground hip-hop.\nThe Yale School of Music contributes to the city's music scene by offering hundreds of free concerts throughout the year at venues in and around the Yale campus. Large performances are held in the 2,700-seat Woolsey Hall auditorium, which contains the world's largest symphonic organs, while chamber music and recitals are performed in Sprague Hall.\nHardcore band Hatebreed are from Wallingford, but got their start in New Haven under the name Jasta 14. The band Miracle Legion formed in New Haven in 1983. Folk musicians from New Haven include Loren Mazzacane Connors and Kath Bloom.\nThe Hillhouse Opera Company is a U.S. non-profit opera company based in New Haven that performs in the New Haven area. Founded in 2008 by Victoria Leigh Gardner, Nicole Rodriguez and Jim Coatsworth Hillhouse Opera Company has performed operas as well as opera scenes programs, master classes and concert series. In 2011, the Company professionally staged the works created through the Riverview Opera Project. The Riverview Opera Project created workshops for children and adolescents at Riverview Hospital, Connecticut's only state-funded psychiatric hospital for youth, and helped them to successfully create, produce, and perform four original operas.\nFestivals.\nIn addition to the Jazz Festival (described above), New Haven serves as the home city of the annual International Festival of Arts and Ideas. New Haven's Saint Patrick's Day parade, which began in 1842, is New England's oldest and draws the largest crowds of any one-day spectator event in Connecticut. The St. Andrew the Apostle Italian Festival has taken place in the historic Wooster Square neighborhood every year since 1900. Other parishes in the city celebrate the Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua and a carnival in honor of St. Bernadette Soubirous. New Haven celebrates Powder House Day every April on the New Haven Green to commemorate the city's entrance into the Revolutionary War. The annual Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival commemorates the 1973 planting of 72 Yoshino Japanese cherry blossom trees by the New Haven Historic Commission in collaboration with the New Haven Parks Department and residents of the neighborhood. The Festival now draws well over 5,000 visitors. The Film Fest New Haven has been held annually since 1995.\nNightlife.\nIn the past decade downtown has seen an influx of new restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Large crowds are drawn to the Crown Street area downtown on weekends where many of the restaurants and bars are located. Crown Street between State and High Streets has dozens of establishments, as do nearby Temple and College Streets. Away from downtown, Upper State Street has a number of restaurants and bars popular with local residents and weekend visitors.\nNewspapers and media.\nNew Haven is served by the daily \"New Haven Register\", the weekly \"alternative\" \"New Haven Advocate\" (which is run by Tribune, the corporation owning the \"Hartford Courant\"), the online daily \"New Haven Independent\", and the monthly \"Grand News Community Newspaper.\" Downtown New Haven is covered by an in-depth civic news forum, Design New Haven. The \"Register\" also backs \"PLAY\" magazine, a weekly entertainment publication. The city is also served by several student-run papers, including the \"Yale Daily News\", the weekly \"Yale Herald\" and a humor tabloid, \"Rumpus Magazine\".\nWTNH Channel 8, the ABC affiliate for Connecticut, WCTX Channel 59, the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the state, Connecticut Public Television station WEDY channel 65, a PBS affiliate, and WTXX Channel 34, the IntrigueTV affiliate, broadcast from New Haven. All New York City news and sports team stations broadcast to New Haven County.\nSports and athletics.\nNew Haven has a history of professional sports franchises dating back to the 19th century and has been the home to professional baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer teams\u2014including the New York Giants of the National Football League from 1973 to 1974, who played at the Yale Bowl. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, New Haven consistently had minor league hockey and baseball teams, which played at the New Haven Arena (built in 1926, demolished in 1972), New Haven Coliseum (1972\u20132002), and Yale Field (1928\u2013present).\nWhen John DeStefano, Jr., became mayor of New Haven in 1995, he outlined a plan to transform the city into a major cultural and arts center in the Northeast, which involved investments in programs and projects other than sports franchises. As nearby Bridgeport built new sports facilities, the brutalist New Haven Coliseum rapidly deteriorated. Believing the upkeep on the venue to be a drain of tax dollars, the DeStefano administration closed the Coliseum in 2002; it was demolished in 2007. New Haven's last professional sports team, the New Haven County Cutters, left in 2009. The DeStefano administration did, however, see the construction of the New Haven Athletic Center in 1998, a indoor athletic facility with a seating capacity of over 3,000. The NHAC, built adjacent to Hillhouse High School, is used for New Haven public schools athletics, as well as large-scale area and state sporting events; it is the largest high school indoor sports complex in the state.\nNew Haven was the host of the 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games; then-President Bill Clinton spoke at the opening ceremonies. The city is home to the Pilot Pen International tennis event, which takes place every August at the Connecticut Tennis Center, one of the largest tennis venues in the world. New Haven biannually hosts \"The Game\" between Yale and Harvard, the country's second-oldest college football rivalry. Numerous road races take place in New Haven, including the USATF 20K Championship during the New Haven Road Race.\nGreater New Haven is home to a number of college sports teams. The Yale Bulldogs play Division I college sports, as do the Quinnipiac Bobcats in neighboring Hamden. Division II athletics are played by Southern Connecticut State University and the University of New Haven (actually located in neighboring West Haven), while Albertus Magnus College athletes perform at the Division III level.\nNew Haven is home to many New York Yankees, New York Mets, & Boston Red Sox fans due to the proximity of New York City & Boston.\nWalter Camp, deemed the \"father of American football\", was a New Havener.\nThe New Haven Warriors rugby league team play in the AMNRL. They have a large number of Pacific Islanders playing for them. Their field is located at the West Haven High School's Ken Strong Stadium. They won the 2008 AMNRL Grand Final.\nStructures.\nArchitecture.\nNew Haven has many architectural landmarks dating from every important time period and architectural style in American history. The city has been home to a number of architects and architectural firms that have left their mark on the city including Ithiel Town and Henry Austin in the 19th century and Cesar Pelli, Warren Platner, Kevin Roche, Herbert Newman and Barry Svigals in the 20th. The Yale School of Architecture has fostered this important component of the city's economy. Cass Gilbert, of the Beaux-Arts school, designed New Haven's Union Station and the New Haven Free Public Library and was also commissioned for a City Beautiful plan in 1919. Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, Alexander Jackson Davis, Philip C. Johnson, Gordon Bunshaft, Louis Kahn, James Gamble Rogers, Frank Gehry, Charles Willard Moore, Stefan Behnisch, James Polshek, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen and Robert Venturi all have designed buildings in New Haven. Yale's 1950s-era Ingalls Rink, designed by Eero Saarinen, was included on the \"America's Favorite Architecture\" list created in 2007.\nSeveral residential homes in New Haven were designed by Alice Washburn, a noted female architect whose Colonial Revival style set a standard for homes in the region.\nMany of the city's neighborhoods are well-preserved as walkable \"museums\" of 19th- and 20th-century American architecture, particularly by the New Haven Green, Hillhouse Avenue and other residential sections close to Downtown New Haven. Overall, a large proportion of the city's land area is National (NRHP) historic districts. One of the best sources on local architecture is \"New Haven: Architecture and Urban Design\", by Elizabeth Mills Brown.\nThe five tallest buildings in New Haven are:\nHistoric points of interest.\nMany historical sites exist throughout the city, including 59 properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Of these, nine are among the 60 U.S. National Historic Landmarks in Connecticut. The New Haven Green, one of the National Historic Landmarks, was formed in 1638, and is home to three 19th-century churches. Below the First Church of Christ in New Haven (referred to as the Center Church on the Green) lies a 17th-century crypt, which is open to visitors. Some of the more famous burials include the first wife of Benedict Arnold and the aunt and grandmother of President Rutherford B. Hayes; Hayes visited the crypt while President in 1880. The Old Campus of Yale University is located next to the Green, and includes Connecticut Hall, Yale's oldest building and a National Historic Landmark. The Hillhouse Avenue area, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a part of Yale's campus, has been called a walkable museum, due to its 19th-century mansions and street scape; Charles Dickens is said to have called Hillhouse Avenue \"the most beautiful street in America\" when visiting the city in 1868.\nIn 1660, Edward Whalley (a cousin and friend of Oliver Cromwell) and William Goffe, two English Civil War generals who signed the death warrant of King Charles I, hid in a rock formation in New Haven after having fled England upon the restoration of Charles II to the English throne. They were later joined by a third regicide, John Dixwell. The rock formation, which is now a part of West Rock Park, is known as Judges' Cave, and the path leading to the cave is called the Regicides Trail.\nAfter the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, the Connecticut colonial government ordered the construction of Black Rock Fort (to be built on top of an older 17th-century fort) to protect the port of New Haven. In 1779, during the Battle of New Haven, British soldiers captured Black Rock Fort and burned the barracks to the ground. The fort was reconstructed in 1807 by the federal government (on orders from the Thomas Jefferson administration), and rechristened Fort Nathan Hale, after the Revolutionary War hero who had lived in New Haven. The cannons of Fort Nathan Hale were successful in defying British war ships during the War of 1812. In 1863, during the Civil War, a second Fort Hale was built next to the original, complete with bomb-resistant bunkers and a moat, to defend the city should a Southern raid against New Haven be launched. The United States Congress deeded the site to the state in 1921, and all three versions of the fort have been restored. The site is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and receives thousands of visitors each year.\nGrove Street Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark which lies adjacent to Yale's campus, contains the graves of Roger Sherman, Eli Whitney, Noah Webster, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Charles Goodyear and Walter Camp, among other notable burials. The cemetery is noted for its Egyptian Revival gateway, and is the oldest planned burial ground in the United States. The Union League Club of New Haven building, located on Chapel Street, is notable for not only being a historic Beaux-Arts building, but also is built on the site where Roger Sherman's home once stood; George Washington is known to have stayed at the Sherman residence while President in 1789 (one of three times Washington visited New Haven throughout his lifetime).\nTwo sites pay homage to the time President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft lived in the city, as both a student and later Professor at Yale: a plaque on Prospect Street marks the site where Taft's home formerly stood, and downtown's Taft Apartment Building (formerly the Taft Hotel) bears the name of the former president who resided in the building for eight years before becoming Chief Justice of the United States.\nLighthouse Point Park, a public beach run by the city, was a popular tourist destination during the Roaring Twenties, attracting luminaries of the period such as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. The park remains popular among New Haveners, and is home to the Five Mile Point Lighthouse, constructed in 1847, and the Lighthouse Point Carousel, constructed in 1916. Five Mile Point Light was decommissioned in 1877 following the construction of Southwest Ledge Light at the entrance of the harbor, which remains in service to this day. Both of the lighthouses and the carousel are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nOther historic sites in the city include the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, which stands at the summit of East Rock, the Marsh Botanical Garden, Wooster Square, Dwight Street, Louis' Lunch, and the Farmington Canal, all of which date back to the 19th century. Other historic parks besides the Green include Edgerton Park, Edgewood Park, and East Rock Park, each of which is included on the National Register of Historic Places.\nTransportation.\nRail.\nNew Haven has two railroad stations, connected to New York City and points along the Northeast Corridor by commuter rail, regional rail and inter-city rail. Service is provided by:\nThe city's main railroad station is the historic Beaux-Arts Union Station, which serves Metro-North, Hartford Line, and Shore Line East commuter trains. Approximately 175 trains serve Union Station on weekdays. Union Station is also served by four Amtrak lines: the \"Northeast Regional\" and the high-speed \"Acela Express\" provide service to New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston, and rank as the first and second busiest routes in the country; the New Haven\u2013Springfield Line provides service to Hartford and Springfield, Massachusetts; and the \"Vermonter\" provides service to both Washington, D.C., and Vermont, from the Canada\u2013US border.\nAn additional station, State Street Station, was opened in 2002, providing passengers easier access to downtown New Haven. State Street Station is currently serviced by Shore Line East and Hartford Line trains, plus some peak-hour Metro-North trips.\nBus.\nThe New Haven Division of Connecticut Transit (CT Transit), the state's bus system, is the second largest division in the state with 24 routes. All routes originate from the New Haven Green, making it the central transfer hub of the city. Service is provided to 19 different municipalities throughout Greater New Haven. Bus routes were formerly identified by letters, but as of October 8, 2017, all service was renamed using 200-series numbers, in accordance with a renumbering of CTtransit's statewide services.\nCT Transit's Union Station Shuttle provides free service from Union Station to the New Haven Green and several New Haven parking garages. Peter Pan and Greyhound bus lines have scheduled stops at Union Station, and connections downtown can be made via the Union Station Shuttle. A private company operates the New Haven/Hartford Express which provides commuter bus service to Hartford. The Yale University Shuttle provides free transportation around New Haven for Yale students, faculty, and staff.\nThe New Haven Division buses follow routes that had originally been covered by trolley service. Horse-drawn streetcars began operating in New Haven in the 1860s, and by the mid-1890s all the lines had become electric. In the 1920s and 1930s, some of the trolley lines began to be replaced by bus lines, with the last trolley route converted to bus in 1948. The City of New Haven is in the very early stages of considering the restoration of streetcar (light-rail) service, which has been absent since the postwar period.\nBicycle.\nBikeshare.\nOn February 21, 2018, New Haven officially launched its Bike New Haven bikeshare program. based on dockless technology powered by Noa Technologies At time of launch, the program features 10 docking stations and 100 bikes, spread throughout the urban core; there are plans to reach 30 bike stations and 300 bikes by the end of April 2018. The launch of the New Haven bikeshare program coincided with the launch of Yale University's own bikeshare program, which uses the same technology powered by Noa.\nBike lanes.\nIn 2004, the first bike lane in the city was added to Orange Street, connecting East Rock Park and the East Rock neighborhood to downtown. Since then, bike lanes have also been added to sections of Howard Ave, Elm St, Dixwell Avenue, Water Street, Clinton Avenue and State Street. The city has created recommended bike routes for getting around New Haven, including use of the Canal Trail and the Orange Street lane. As of the end of 2012, bicycle lanes have also been added in both directions on Dixwell Avenue along most of the street from downtown to the Hamden town line, as well as along Howard Avenue from Yale New Haven Hospital to City Point.\nThe city has plans to create two additional bike lanes connecting Union Station with downtown, and the Westville neighborhood with downtown. The city has added dozens of covered bike parking spots at Union Station, in order to facilitate more bike commuting to the station.\nFarmington Canal Greenway.\nThe Farmington Canal Trail is a rail trail that will eventually run continuously from downtown New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts. The scenic trail follows the path of the historic New Haven and Northampton Company and the Farmington Canal. Currently, there is a continuous stretch of the trail from downtown, through Hamden and into Cheshire, making bicycle commuting between New Haven and those suburbs possible. The trail is part of the East Coast Greenway, a proposed bike path that would link every major city on the East Coast from Florida to Maine.\nRoads.\nNew Haven lies at the intersection of Interstate 95 on the coast\u2014which provides access southwards and/or westwards to the western coast of Connecticut and to New York City, and eastwards to the eastern Connecticut shoreline, Rhode Island, and eastern Massachusetts\u2014and Interstate 91, which leads northward to the interior of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont and the Canada\u2013US border. I-95 is notorious for traffic jams increasing with proximity to New York City; on the east side of New Haven it passes over the Quinnipiac River via the Pearl Harbor Memorial, or \"Q Bridge\", which often presents a major bottleneck to traffic. I-91, however, is relatively less congested, except at the intersection with I-95 during peak travel times.\nThe Oak Street Connector (Connecticut Route 34) intersects I-91 at exit 1, just south of the I-95/I-91 interchange, and runs northwest for a few blocks as an expressway spur into downtown before emptying onto surface roads. The Wilbur Cross Parkway (Connecticut Route 15) runs parallel to I-95 west of New Haven, turning northwards as it nears the city and then running northwards parallel to I-91 through the outer rim of New Haven and Hamden, offering an alternative to the I-95/I-91 journey (restricted to non-commercial vehicles). Route 15 in New Haven is the site of the only highway tunnel in the state (officially designated as Heroes Tunnel), running through West Rock, home to West Rock Park and the Three Judges Cave.\nThe city also has several major surface arteries. U.S. Route 1 (Columbus Avenue, Union Avenue, Water Street, Forbes Avenue) runs in an east\u2013west direction south of downtown serving Union Station and leading out of the city to Milford, West Haven, East Haven and Branford. The main road from downtown heading northwest is Whalley Avenue (partly signed as Route 10 and Route 63) leading to Westville and Woodbridge. Heading north towards Hamden, there are two major thoroughfares, Dixwell Avenue and Whitney Avenue. To the northeast are Middletown Avenue (Route 17), which leads to the Montowese section of North Haven, and Foxon Boulevard (Route 80), which leads to the Foxon section of East Haven and to the town of North Branford. To the west is Route 34, which leads to the city of Derby. Other major intracity arteries are Ella Grasso Boulevard (Route 10) west of downtown, and College Street, Temple Street, Church Street, Elm Street, and Grove Street in the downtown area.\nTraffic safety is a major concern for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists in New Haven. In addition to many traffic-related fatalities in the city each year, since 2005, over a dozen Yale students, staff and faculty have been killed or injured in traffic collisions on or near the campus.\nAirport.\nTweed New Haven Airport is located within the city limits east of the business district, straddling the border with neighboring East Haven. Service to approximately 25 cities is provided by Avelo Airlines, which established its first East Coast base at the airport in 2021. Breeze Airways plans to begin operations at Tweed in December 2024, and will provide service to 10 destinations. The airport is currently planning a runway lengthening and new terminal on the East Haven side of the airport.\nBus service between Downtown New Haven and Tweed is available via the CT Transit New Haven Division.\nSeaport.\nNew Haven Harbor is home to the Port of New Haven, a deep-water seaport with three berths capable of hosting vessels and barges as well as the facilities required to handle break bulk cargo. The port has the capacity to load 200 trucks a day from the ground or via loading docks. Providence and Worcester Railroad provides freight rail transportation to the port, with the railroad operating a switch engine for yard movements, a private siding for loading and unloading, and trackage over the Tomlinson Lift Bridge toward the Northeast Corridor. Approximately of inside storage and of outside storage are available at the site. Five shore cranes with a 250-ton capacity and 26 forklifts, each with a 26-ton capacity, are also available.\nOn June 17, 2013, the city commissioned the \"Nathan Hale\", a port security vessel capable of serving search and rescue, firefighting, and constabulary roles.\nInfrastructure.\nHospitals and medicine.\nThe New Haven area supports several medical facilities that are considered some of the best hospitals in the country. There are two major medical centers downtown: Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital has four pavilions, including the Yale \u2013 New Haven Children's Hospital and the Smilow Cancer Hospital; the Hospital of Saint Raphael is several blocks north, and touts its excellent cardiac emergency care program. Smaller downtown health facilities are the Temple Medical Center located downtown on Temple Street, Connecticut Mental Health Center/ across Park Street from Y-NHH, and the Hill Health Center, which serves the working-class Hill neighborhood. A large Veterans Affairs hospital is located in neighboring West Haven. To the west in Milford is Milford Hospital, and to the north in Meriden is the MidState Medical Center.\nIn recent years, Yale and the City of New Haven have been working to build a medical and biotechnology research hub in the city and Greater New Haven region. The city, state and Yale together run Science Park, a large site three blocks northwest of Yale's Science Hill campus. This multi-block site, approximately bordered by Mansfield Street, Division Street, and Shelton Avenue, is the former home of Winchester's and Olin Corporation's 45 large-scale factory buildings. Currently, sections of the site are large-scale parking lots or abandoned structures, but there is also a large remodeled and functioning area of buildings (leased primarily by a private developer) with numerous Yale employees, financial service and biotech companies.\nA second biotechnology district is being planned for the median strip on Frontage Road, on land cleared for the never-built Route 34 extension. As of late 2009, a Pfizer drug-testing clinic, a medical laboratory building serving Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital, and a mixed-use structure containing parking, housing and office space, have been constructed on this corridor. A former SNET telephone building at 300 George Street is being converted into lab space, and has been quite successful so far in attracting biotechnology and medical firms.\nPower supply facilities.\nElectricity for New Haven is generated by a 448\u00a0MW oil and gas-fired generating station located on the shore at New Haven Harbor. PPL Corporation operates a 220\u00a0MW peaking natural gas turbine plant in nearby Wallingford.\nNear New Haven there is the static inverter plant of the HVDC Cross Sound Cable.\nThere are three PureCell Model 400 fuel cells placed in the city of New Haven\u2014one at the New Haven Public Schools and newly constructed Roberto Clemente School, one at the mixed-use 360 State Street building, and one at City Hall. According to Giovanni Zinn of the city's Office of Sustainability, each fuel cell may save the city up to $1 million in energy costs over a decade. The fuel cells were provided by ClearEdge Power, formerly UTC Power. Additional fuel cells are located at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and at the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority (GNHWPCA). Ikea's New Haven facility also utilizes a 250\u00a0kW fuel cell and 940.8\u00a0kW solar array.\nNew Haven recently installed solar panels at 11 city schools with a combined power generation capacity of 1.8 MW. Owned and maintained by Greenskies, the panels allow New Haven to purchase electricity at a discounted rate through a power-purchasing agreement. The panels bring New Haven's solar capacity to 2.8 MW and will help New Haven meet its commitment to powering 100% of its municipal operations through clean energy, which it made in Summer 2017 and reaffirmed in the 2018 New Haven Climate and Sustainability Framework.\nIn popular culture.\nSeveral movies have been filmed in New Haven since 2000, including \"Mona Lisa Smile\" (2003), with Julia Roberts, \"The Life Before Her Eyes\" (2007), with Uma Thurman, and \"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull\" (2008) directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett and Shia LaBeouf. The filming of \"Crystal Skull\" involved an extensive chase sequence through the streets of New Haven. Several downtown streets were closed to traffic and received a \"makeover\" to look like streets of 1957, when the film is set. 500 locals were cast as extras for the film. In \"Everybody's Fine\" (2009), Robert De Niro has a close encounter in what is supposed to be the Denver train station; the scene was filmed in New Haven's Union Station.\n New Haven is mentioned in the song Peace Frog by the Doors, referencing a 1967 incident where vocalist Jim Morrison was arrested for \"attempting to incite a riot\" in the middle of a concert at the New Haven Arena.\nSister cities.\nNew Haven's sister cities are:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSome of these were selected because of historical connection\u2014Freetown because of the \"Amistad\" trial. Others, such as Amalfi and Afula, reflect ethnic groups in New Haven.\nIn 1990, the United Nations named New Haven a \"Peace Messenger City\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "6072259": "Hezekiah Augur\nAmerican sculptor and inventor (1791\u20131858)\nHezekiah Augur (February 21, 1791 \u2013 January 10, 1858) was an early American sculptor and inventor. He was a self-taught sculptor and, unlike many other 19th-century American sculptors, did not travel to Europe, but spent his entire career in New Haven.\nLife.\nAugur was born in New Haven, Connecticut. The son of a carpenter, he learned his trade as a woodcarver, carving table legs and other furniture ornament. Borrowing $2,000 from his father, he was invited to join a grocery store business venture. Three years later he discovered, to his shock and amazement, that not only was his money gone, but that he owed his partners $7,000. While thus engaged he invented a lace-making machine that lifted the financial burdens that he had assumed and thus allowed him to take up carving full-time. Around that time he also invented a machine for carving piano legs. He switched to marble later in his career, being among the first native born Americans to do so. Chauncey Ives studied briefly with Augur.\nWorks.\nAugur's bust of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Ellsworth (c. 1837) is housed in the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the United States United States Capitol. A portrait of Alexander Metcalf Fisher (c. 1827) and a neo-classical grouping, \"Jephthah and His Daughter\" (c. 1832), are in the Yale University art collection, and in 1833 Auger received an honorary degree from Yale University. He died on January 10, 1858, in New Haven and is buried in Grove Street Cemetery. He was a member of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences.\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["6072259", "5122699", "53825"], "permutation_1": ["5122699", "53825", "6072259"], "permutation_2": ["5122699", "53825", "6072259"], "permutation_3": ["53825", "5122699", "6072259"]}
{"id": "3hop1__162189_35178_826724", "docs_added": {"204260": "Hafez\nPersian poet and mystic (1325\u20131390)\n (), known by his pen name Hafez ( lit.\u2009'the memorizer' due to his memorization of the entire Quran; 1325\u20131390) or Hafiz, was a Persian lyric poet whose collected works are regarded by many Iranians as one of the highest pinnacles of Persian literature. His works are often found in the homes of Persian speakers, who learn his poems by heart and use them as everyday proverbs and sayings. His life and poems have become the subjects of much analysis, commentary, and interpretation, influencing post-14th century Persian writing more than any other Persian author.\nHafez is best known for his \"Div\u0101n\", a collection of his surviving poems probably compiled after his death. His works can be described as \"antinomian\" and with the medieval use of the term \"theosophical\"; the term \"theosophy\" in the 13th and 14th centuries was used to indicate mystical work by \"authors only inspired by the Islamic holy books\" (as distinguished from theology). Hafez primarily wrote in the literary genre of lyric poetry or ghazals, which is the ideal style for expressing the ecstasy of divine inspiration in the mystical form of love poems. He was a Sufi.\nThemes of his ghazals include the beloved, faith and exposing hypocrisy. In his ghazals, he deals with love, wine and taverns, all presenting religious ecstasy and freedom from restraint, whether in actual worldly release or in the voice of the lover. His influence on Persian speakers appears in divination by his poems (, somewhat similar to the Roman tradition of \"Sortes Vergilianae\") and in the frequent use of his poems in Persian traditional music, visual art and Persian calligraphy. His tomb is located in his birthplace of Shiraz. Adaptations, imitations, and translations of his poems exist in all major languages.\nLife.\nHafez was born in Shiraz, Iran. Few details of his life are known. Accounts of his early life rely upon traditional anecdotes. Early \"tazkiras\" (biographical sketches) mentioning Hafez are generally considered unreliable. At an early age, he memorized the Quran. He was given the title of \"Hafez\", which he later used as his pen name. The preface of his Div\u0101n, in which his early life is discussed, was written by an unknown contemporary whose name may have been Mo\u1e25ammad Goland\u0101m. Two of the most highly regarded modern editions of Hafez's \"Div\u0101n\" are compiled by Allame Mohammad Qazvini and Q\u0101sem Ghani (495 ghazals) and by Parviz Natel-Khanlari (486 ghazals). Hafez was a Sufi Muslim.\nModern scholars generally agree that he was born either in 1315 or 1317. According to an account by Jami, Hafez died in 1390. He was supported by patronage from several successive local regimes: Shah Abu Ishaq, who came to power while Hafez was in his teens; Timur at the end of his life; and even the strict ruler Shah Mubariz ud-Din Muhammad (Mubariz Muzaffar). Though his work flourished most under the 27-year rule of Jalal ud-Din Shah Shuja (Shah Shuja), it is claimed H\u0101fez briefly fell out of favor with Shah Shuja for mocking inferior poets (Shah Shuja wrote poetry himself and may have taken the comments personally), forcing H\u0101fez to flee from Shiraz to Isfahan and Yazd, however, no historical evidence is available. Hafez also exchanged letters and poetry with Ghiyasuddin Azam Shah, the Sultan of Bengal, who invited him to Sonargaon though he could not make it. Hafez was also a contemporary of the famous Sunni Shaf'iite theologian Adud al-Din al-Iji - who he praised as one of the five notables of Farz. \nTwenty years after his death, a tomb was erected to honor Hafez in the Musalla Gardens in Shiraz. The current mausoleum was designed by Andr\u00e9 Godard, a French archeologist and architect, in the late 1930s, and the tomb is raised on a dais amidst rose gardens, water channels, and orange trees. Inside, Hafez's alabaster sarcophagus bears the inscription of two of his poems.\nLegends.\nMany semi-miraculous mythical tales were woven around Hafez after his death. It is said that by listening to his father's recitations, Hafez had accomplished the task of learning the Quran by heart at an early age (that is the meaning of the word \"Hafez\"). At the same time, he is said to have known by heart the works of Rumi, Saadi, Attar Neyshapuri, and Nizami Ganjavi.\nAccording to one tradition, before meeting his self-chosen Sufi master Hajji Zayn al-Attar, Hafez had been working in a bakery, delivering bread to a wealthy quarter of the town. There, he first saw Shakh-e Nabat, a woman of great beauty, to whom some of his poems are addressed. Ravished by her beauty but knowing that his love for her would not be requited, he allegedly held his first mystic vigil in his desire to realize this union. Still, he encountered a being of surpassing beauty who identified himself as an angel, and his further attempts at union became mystic; a pursuit of spiritual union with the divine. \nAt 60, he is said to have begun a chilla-nashini, a 40-day-and-night vigil by sitting in a circle that he had drawn for himself. On the 40th day, he once again met with Zayn al-Attar on what is known to be their fortieth anniversary and was offered a cup of Shirazi wine. It was there where he is said to have attained \"Cosmic Consciousness\". He hints at this episode in one of his verses in which he advises the reader to attain \"clarity of wine\" by letting it \"sit for 40 days\".\nIn one tale, Timur angrily summoned Hafez to account for one of his verses:\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nSamarkand was Timur's capital and Bukhara was the kingdom's finest city. \"With the blows of my lustrous sword\", Timur complained, \"I have subjugated most of the habitable globe... to embellish Samarkand and Bokhara, the seats of my government; and you would sell them for the black mole of some girl in Shiraz!\"\nHafez, the tale goes, bowed deeply and replied, \"Alas, O Prince, it is this prodigality which is the cause of the misery in which you find me\". So surprised and pleased was Timur with this response that he dismissed Hafez with handsome gifts.\nInfluence.\nIntellectual and artistic legacy.\nHafez was acclaimed throughout the Islamic world during his lifetime, with other Persian poets imitating his work, and offers of patronage from Baghdad to India.\nHis work was first translated into English in 1771 by William Jones. It would leave a mark on such Western writers as Thoreau, Goethe, W. B. Yeats, in his prose anthology book of essays, \"Discoveries\", as well as gaining a positive reception within West Bengal, in India, among some of the most prolific religious leaders and poets in this province, Debendranath Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore's father, who knew Persian and used to recite from Hafez's Divans and in this line, Gurudev himself, who, during his visit to Persia in 1932, also made a homage visit to Hafez's tomb in Shiraz and Ralph Waldo Emerson (the last referred to him as \"a poet's poet\"). Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has his character Sherlock Holmes state that \"there is as much sense in Hafiz as in Horace, and as much knowledge of the world\" (in A Case of Identity). Friedrich Engels mentioned him in an 1853 letter to Karl Marx.\nThere is no definitive version of his collected works (or \"D\u012bv\u0101n\"); editions vary from 573 to 994 poems. Only since the 1940s has a sustained scholarly attempt (by Mas'ud Farzad, Qasim Ghani and others in Iran) been made to authenticate his work and to remove errors introduced by later copyists and censors. However, the reliability of such work has been questioned, and in the words of H\u0101fez scholar Iraj Bashiri, \"there remains little hope from there (i.e., Iran) for an authenticated diwan\".\nIn contemporary Iranian culture.\nHafez is the most popular poet in Iran. His works can be found in almost every Iranian home. In fact, October 12 is celebrated as Hafez Day in Iran.\nHis tomb is \"crowded with devotees\" who visit the site and the atmosphere is \"festive\" with visitors singing and reciting their favorite Hafez poems.\nMany Iranians use Divan of Hafez for bibliomancy. Iranian families usually have a \"Divan\" in their house, and when they get together during the Nowruz or Yald\u0101 Night, they open it to a random page and read the poem on it, which they believe to be an indication of things that will happen in the future.\nIn Iranian music.\nIn the genre of Persian traditional music, Hafez, along with Saadi Shirazi, have been the most popular poets in the art of \u0101v\u0101z, non-metered form of singing. Also the form 'S\u0101qi-N\u0101meh' in the radif of Persian music is based on the same title by Hafez. A number of contemporary composers such as Parviz Meshkatian (Sheydaie), Hossein Alizadeh (Ahu-ye Vahshi), Mohammad Reza Lotfi (Golest\u0101n), and Siamak Aghaie (Y\u0101d B\u0101d) have composed metric songs (tasnif) based on ghazals of Hafez which have become very popular in the genre of classical music. Hayedeh performed the song \"Padeshah-e Khooban\", with music by Farid Zoland. The Ottoman composer Buhurizade Mustafa Itri composed his magnum opus Neva K\u00e2r based upon one of Hafez's poems. The Polish composer Karol Szymanowski composed The Love Songs of Hafiz based upon a German translation of Hafez poems.\nIn Afghan music.\nMany Afghan singers, including Ahmad Zahir and Abdul Rahim Sarban, have composed songs such as \"Ay Padeshah-e Khooban\", \"Gar-Zulfe Parayshanat\".\nInterpretation.\nThe question of whether his work is to be interpreted literally, mystically, or both has been a source of contention among western scholars. On the one hand, some of his early readers such as William Jones saw in him a conventional lyricist similar to European love poets such as Petrarch. Others scholars such as Henry Wilberforce Clarke saw him as purely a poet of didactic, ecstatic mysticism in the manner of Rumi, a view that a minority of twentieth century critics and literary historians have come to challenge. Ralph Waldo Emerson rejected the Sufistic view of wine in Hafez's poems.\nThis confusion stems from the fact that, early in Persian literary history, the poetic vocabulary was usurped by mystics, who believed that the ineffable could be better approached in poetry than in prose. In composing poems of mystic content, they imbued every word and image with mystical undertones, causing mysticism and lyricism to converge into a single tradition. As a result, no fourteenth-century Persian poet could write a lyrical poem without having a flavor of mysticism forced on it by the poetic vocabulary itself. While some poets, such as Ubayd Zakani, attempted to distance themselves from this fused mystical-lyrical tradition by writing satires, Hafez embraced the fusion and thrived on it. Wheeler Thackston has said of this that Hafez \"sang a rare blend of human and mystic love so balanced... that it is impossible to separate one from the other\".\nFor reasons such as that, the history of the translation of H\u0101fez is fraught with complications, and few translations into western languages have been wholly successful.\nOne of the figurative gestures for which he is most famous (and which is among the most difficult to translate) is \"\u012bh\u0101m\" or artful punning. Thus, a word such as \"gowhar\", which could mean both \"essence, truth\" and \"pearl\", would take on \"both\" meanings at once as in a phrase such as \"a pearl/essential truth outside the shell of superficial existence\".\nHafez often took advantage of the aforementioned lack of distinction between lyrical, mystical, and panegyric writing by using highly intellectualized, elaborate metaphors and images to suggest multiple possible meanings. For example, a couplet from one of Hafez's poems reads:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nThe cypress tree is a symbol both of the beloved and of a regal presence; the nightingale and birdsong evoke the traditional setting for human love. The \"lessons of spiritual stations\" suggest, obviously, a mystical undertone as well (though the word for \"spiritual\" could also be translated as \"intrinsically meaningful\"). Therefore, the words could signify at once a prince addressing his devoted followers, a lover courting a beloved, and the reception of spiritual wisdom.\nSatire, religion, and politics.\nThough Hafez is well known for his poetry, he is less commonly recognized for his intellectual and political contributions. A defining feature of Hafez' poetry is its ironic tone and the theme of hypocrisy, widely believed to be a critique of the religious and ruling establishments of the time. Persian satire developed during the 14th century, within the courts of the Mongol Empire. In this period, Hafez and other notable early satirists, such as Ubayd Zakani, produced a body of work that has since become a template for the use of satire as a political device. Many of his critiques are believed to be targeted at the rule of Mubariz al-Din Muhammad, specifically, towards the disintegration of important public and private institutions.\nHis work, particularly his imaginative references to monasteries, convents, Shahneh, and muhtasib, ignored the religious taboos of his period, and he found humor in some of his society's religious doctrines. Employing humor polemically has since become a common practice in Iranian public discourse and satire is now perhaps the de facto language of Iranian social commentary. Hafez had been influenced by ancient Iran and Zoroastrian religion and the terminology of this religion has been consistently used in his poems. Examples are \"Mogh\", \"Mogh-bache\", \"Jamshid\" etc. Moreover it seems that he has had the aspiration of reviving this religion. In some verses he explicitly shows his interest to this issue. As an example in a verse he says: \"in the garden, renew the rituals of Zoroastrian religion...now that Nimrood fire have grown tulips\". In another verse he says: \"the reason I am loved in the magis circle...is the eternal fire that is my soul\".\nModern English editions.\nA standard modern English edition of Hafez is \"Faces of Love\" (2012) translated by Dick Davis for Penguin Classics. \"Beloved: 81 poems from Hafez\" (Bloodaxe Books, 2018) translated by Mario Petrucci, is a recent English selection, noted by Fatemeh Keshavarz (Roshan Institute for Persian studies, University of Maryland) for preserving \"that audacious and multilayered richness one finds in the originals\".\nPeter Avery translated a complete edition of Hafez in English, \"The Collected Lyrics of Hafiz of Shiraz\", published in 2007. It was awarded Iran's Farabi prize. Avery's translations are published with notes explaining allusions in the text and filling in what the poets would have expected their readers to know. An abridged version exists, titled \"Hafiz of Shiraz: Thirty Poems: An Introduction to the Sufi Master\".\nCertain English-language poems have been incorrectly attributed to Hafez. The American poet Daniel Ladinsky has published a number of volumes of poetry that describes its contents as \"poems inspired by Hafiz\" or \"poems of Hafiz\" or \"renderings of Hafiz.\" Some readers have understood this to mean that they are translations of poems written by Hafiz. However, the author has acknowledged that these are original poems inspired by Hafiz and they are not translations of Hafiz poems.\nDivan-e-Hafez.\nDivan Hafez is a book containing all the remaining poems of Hafez. Most of these poems are in Persian and the most crucial part of this Divan is ghazals. There are poems in other poetic formats such as piece, ode, Masnavi and quatrain in this Divan.\nThere is no evidence that most of Hafez's poems were destroyed. In addition, Hafez was very famous during his lifetime; Therefore, the small number of poetry in the court indicates that he was not a prolific poet.\nHafez's Divan was probably compiled for the first time by Mohammad Glendam after his death. Of course, some unconfirmed reports indicate that Hafez published his court in AH 770 (1368). that is, edited more than twenty years before his death.\nDeath and the tomb.\nThe year of Hafez's death is AH 791 (1389). Hafez was buried in the prayer hall of Shiraz called hafezieh. In AH 855 (1451), after the conquest of Shiraz by Abolghasem Babar Teymouri, they built a tomb under the command of his minister, Maulana Mohammad Mamaei.\nPoems by Hafez.\nThe number in the edition by Muhammad Qazvini and Qasem Ghani (1941) is given, as well as that of Parviz N\u0101tel-Kh\u0101nlari (2nd ed. 1983):\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nEnglish translations of Poetry by Hafez\nPersian texts and resources\nEnglish language resources\nOther", "35413648": "Khosrowabad, Tehran\nCity in Tehran province, Iran\nKhosrowabad () is a city in, and the capital of, Jajrud District of Pardis County, Tehran province, Iran. It also serves as the administrative center for Jajrud Rural District.\nDemographics.\nPopulation.\nAt the time of the 2006 National Census, Khosrowabad's population was 1,180 in 386 households, when it was a village in Siyahrud Rural District of the Central District of Tehran County. The following census in 2011 counted 799 people in 250 households. The 2016 census measured the population of the village as 1,083 people in 340 households, by which time most of the rural district had been separated from the county in the establishment of Pardis County. Khosrowabad was transferred to Jajrud Rural District created in the new Jajrud District. It was the most populous village in its rural district.\nAfter the census, Khosrowabad was elevated to the status of a city.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "14653": "Iran\nCountry in West Asia\nIran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Turkey to the northwest and Iraq to the west, Azerbaijan, Armenia, the Caspian Sea, and Turkmenistan to the north, Afghanistan to the east, Pakistan to the southeast, the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south. With a multi-ethnic population of nearly 86 million in an area of , Iran ranks 17th globally in both geographic size and population. It is the sixth-largest country entirely in Asia and one of the world's most mountainous countries. Officially an Islamic republic, Iran is divided into five regions with 31 provinces. Tehran is the nation's capital, largest city and financial centre.\nA cradle of civilisation, Iran has been inhabited since the Lower Palaeolithic. The large part of Iran was first unified as a political entity by the Medes under Cyaxares in the seventh century BC, and reached its territorial height in the sixth century BC, when Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Empire, one of the largest in ancient history. Alexander the Great conquered the empire in the fourth century BC. An Iranian rebellion established the Parthian Empire in the third century BC and liberated the country, which was succeeded by the Sasanian Empire in the third century AD. Ancient Iran saw some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, religion and central government. The Sasanian era is considered a golden age in the history of Iranian civilisation. Muslims conquered the region in the seventh century AD, leading to Iran's Islamisation. The literature, philosophy, mathematics, medicine, astronomy and art which had blossomed during the Sasanian era were renewed during the Islamic Golden Age and Persian Renaissance, when a series of Iranian Muslim dynasties ended Arab rule, revived the Persian language and ruled the country until the Seljuk and Mongol conquests of the 11th to 14th centuries.\nIn the 16th century, the native Safavid dynasty re-established a unified Iranian state with Twelver Shi'ism as the official religion. During the Afsharid Empire in the 18th century, Iran was a leading world power, but this was no longer the case after the Qajars took power in the 1790s. The early 20th century saw the Persian Constitutional Revolution and the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty by Reza Shah the Great, who ousted the last Qajar shah in 1925. Attempts by Mohammad Mosaddegh to nationalise the oil industry led to an Anglo-American coup in 1953. After the Iranian Revolution, the monarchy was overthrown in 1979 and the Islamic Republic of Iran was established by Ruhollah Khomeini, who became the country's first Supreme Leader. In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, sparking the eight-year-long Iran\u2013Iraq War, which ended in stalemate.\nIran is officially governed as a unitary Islamic republic with a presidential system, with ultimate authority vested in a Supreme Leader. The government is authoritarian and has attracted widespread criticism for its significant violations of human rights and civil liberties. Iran is a major regional power, due to its large reserves of fossil fuels, including the world's second largest natural gas supply, third largest proven oil reserves, its geopolitically significant location, military capabilities, cultural hegemony, regional influence, and role as the world's focal point of Shia Islam. The Iranian economy is the world's 23rd-largest by PPP. Iran is a founding member of the United Nations, OIC, OPEC, and ECO as well as a current member of the NAM, SCO, and BRICS. Iran is home to 28 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the 10th highest in the world, and ranks 5th in Intangible Cultural Heritage, or human treasures.\nEtymology.\nThe term \"Iran\" 'the land of the Aryans' derives from Middle Persian , first attested in a 3rd-century inscription at Naqsh-e Rostam, with the accompanying Parthian inscription using , in reference to the Iranians. and are oblique plural forms of gentilic nouns \"\u0113r-\" (Middle Persian) and \"ary-\" (Parthian), deriving from Proto-Iranian language \"*arya-\" (meaning 'Aryan', i.e. of the Iranians), recognised as a derivative of Proto-Indo-European language \"*ar-yo-\", meaning 'one who assembles (skilfully)'. According to Iranian mythology, the name comes from Iraj, a legendary king.\nIran was referred to as \"Persia\" by the West, due to Greek historians who referred to all of Iran as , meaning 'the land of the Persians'. \"Persia\" is the Fars province in southwest Iran, the 4th largest province, also known as \"P\u00e2rs\". The Persian \"F\u00e2rs\" (\u0641\u0627\u0631\u0633), derived from the earlier form \"P\u00e2rs\" (\u067e\u0627\u0631\u0633), which is in turn derived from \"P\u00e2rs\u00e2\" (Old Persian: \ud800\udfb1\ud800\udfa0\ud800\udfbc\ud800\udfbf). Due to Fars' historical importance, \"Persia\" originated from this territory through Greek in around 550 BC, and Westerners referred to the entire country as \"Persia\", until 1935, when Reza Shah requested the international community to use its native and original name, \"Iran\"; Iranians called their nation \"Iran\" since at least 1000 BC. Today, both \"Iran\" and \"Persia\" are used culturally, while \"Iran\" remains mandatory in official use.\nThe Persian pronunciation of \"Iran\" is . Commonwealth English pronunciations of \"Iran\" are listed in the \"Oxford English Dictionary\" as and , while American English dictionaries provide pronunciations which map to , or . The \"Cambridge Dictionary\" lists as the British pronunciation and as the American pronunciation. Voice of America's pronunciation guide provides .\nHistory.\nIran is home to one of the world's oldest continuous major civilisations, with historical and urban settlements dating back to 4000 BC. The western part of the Iranian plateau participated in the traditional ancient Near East with Elam (3200\u2013539 BC), and later with other peoples such as the Kassites, Mannaeans, and Gutians. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel called the Persians the \"first Historical People\". The Iranian Empire began in the Iron Age with the rise of the Medes, who unified Iran as a nation and empire in 625 BC. The Achaemenid Empire (550\u2013330 BC), founded by Cyrus the Great, was the largest empire the world had seen, spanning from the Balkans to North Africa and Central Asia. They were succeeded by the Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian Empires, who governed Iran for almost 1,000 years, making Iran a leading power once again. Persia's arch-rival during this time was the Roman Empire and its successor, the Byzantine Empire.\nIran endured invasions by the Macedonians, Arabs, Turks, and Mongols. Despite these invasions, Iran continually reasserted its national identity and developed as a distinct political and cultural entity. The Muslim conquest of Persia (632\u2013654) ended the Sasanian Empire and marked a turning point in Iranian history, leading to the Islamisation of Iran from the eighth to tenth centuries and the decline of Zoroastrianism. However, the achievements of prior Persian civilisations were absorbed into the new Islamic polity. Iran suffered invasions by nomadic tribes during the Late Middle Ages and early modern period, negatively impacting the region. Iran was reunified as an independent state in 1501 by the Safavid dynasty, which established Shia Islam as the empire's official religion, marking another turning point in the history of Islam. Iran functioned again as a leading world power, especially in rivalry with the Ottoman Empire. In the 19th century, Iran lost significant territories in the Caucasus to the Russian Empire following the Russo-Persian Wars.\nIran remained a monarchy until the 1979 Iranian Revolution, when it officially became an Islamic republic on 1 April 1979. Since then, Iran has experienced significant political, social, and economic changes. The establishment of the \"Islamic Republic of Iran\" led to the restructuring of its political system, with Ayatollah Khomeini as the Supreme Leader. Iran's foreign relations have been shaped by the Iran\u2013Iraq War (1980\u20131988), ongoing tensions with the United States, and its nuclear programme, which has been a point of contention in international diplomacy.\nSince the 1990s.\nIn 1989, Akbar Rafsanjani concentrated on a pro-business policy of rebuilding the economy without breaking with the ideology of the revolution. He supported a free market domestically, favouring privatisation of state industries and a moderate position internationally. In 1997, Rafsanjani was succeeded by moderate reformist Mohammad Khatami, whose government advocated freedom of expression, constructive diplomatic relations with Asia and the European Union, and an economic policy that supported a free market and foreign investment.\nThe 2005 presidential election brought conservative populist and nationalist candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power. He was known for his hardline views, nuclearisation, and hostility towards Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UK, the US and other states. He was the first president to be summoned by the parliament to answer questions regarding his presidency. In 2013, centrist and reformist Hassan Rouhani was elected president. In domestic policy, he encouraged personal freedom, free access to information, and improved women's rights. He improved Iran's diplomatic relations through exchanging conciliatory letters. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was reached in Vienna in 2015, between Iran, the P5+1 (UN Security Council + Germany) and the EU. The negotiations centred around ending the economic sanctions in exchange for Iran's restriction in producing enriched uranium. In 2018, however, the US under Trump Administration withdrew from the deal and new sanctions were imposed. This nulled the economic provisions, left the agreement in jeopardy, and brought Iran to nuclear threshold status. In 2020, IRGC general, Qasem Soleimani, the 2nd-most powerful person in Iran, was assassinated by the US, heightening tensions between them. Iran retaliated against US airbases in Iraq, the largest ballistic missile attack ever on Americans; 110 sustained brain injuries.\nHardliner Ebrahim Raisi ran for president again in 2021, succeeding Hassan Rouhani. During Raisi's term, Iran intensified uranium enrichment, hindered international inspections, joined SCO and BRICS, supported Russia in its invasion of Ukraine and restored diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia. In April 2024, Israel's airstrike on an Iranian consulate, killed an IRGC commander. Iran retaliated with UAVs, cruise and ballistic missiles; 9 hit Israel. Western and Jordanian military helped Israel down some Iranian drones. It was the largest drone strike in history, biggest missile attack in Iranian history, its first ever direct attack on Israel and the first time since 1991, Israel was directly attacked by a state force. This occurred during heightened tensions amid the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. In May 2024, President Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash, and Iran held a presidential election in June, when reformist and former Minister of Health, Masoud Pezeshkian, was elected to office. On 1 October 2024, Iran launched about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for assassinations of Ismail Haniyeh, Hassan Nasrallah and Abbas Nilforoushan. On 27 October, Israel responded to that attack by strikes on a missile defence system in the Iranian region of Isfahan.\nGeography.\nIran has an area of . It is the sixth-largest country entirely in Asia and the second-largest in West Asia. It lies between latitudes 24\u00b0 and 40\u00b0 N, and longitudes 44\u00b0 and 64\u00b0 E. It is bordered to the northwest by Armenia (), the Azeri exclave of Nakhchivan (), and the Republic of Azerbaijan (); to the north by the Caspian Sea; to the northeast by Turkmenistan (); to the east by Afghanistan () and Pakistan (); to the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman; and to the west by Iraq () and Turkey ().\nIran is in a seismically active area. On average, an earthquake of magnitude seven on the Richter scale occurs once every ten years. Most earthquakes are shallow-focus and can be very devastating, such as the 2003 Bam earthquake.\nIran consists of the Iranian Plateau. It is one of the world's most mountainous countries; its landscape is dominated by rugged mountain ranges that separate basins or plateaus. The populous west part is the most mountainous, with ranges such as the Caucasus, Zagros, and Alborz, the last containing Mount Damavand, Iran's highest point, at , which is the highest volcano in Asia. Iran's mountains have impacted its politics and economics for centuries.\nThe north part is covered by the lush lowland Caspian Hyrcanian forests, near the southern shores of the Caspian Sea. The east part consists mostly of desert basins, such as the Kavir Desert, which is the country's largest desert, and the Lut Desert, as well as salt lakes. The Lut Desert is the hottest recorded spot on the Earth's surface, with 70.7\u00a0\u00b0C recorded in 2005. The only large plains are found along the coast of the Caspian and at the north end of the Persian Gulf, where the country borders the mouth of the Arvand river. Smaller, discontinuous plains are found along the remaining coast of the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman.\nIslands.\nIranian islands are mainly located in the Persian Gulf. Iran has 102 islands in Urmia Lake, 427 in Aras River, several in Anzali Lagoon, Ashurade Island in the Caspian Sea, Sheytan Island in the Oman Sea and other inland islands. Iran has an uninhabited island at the far end of the Gulf of Oman, near Pakistan. A few islands can be visited by tourists. Most are owned by the military or used for wildlife protection, and entry is prohibited or requires a permit.\nIran took control of Bumusa, and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs in 1971, in the Strait of Hormuz between the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. Despite the islands being small and having little natural resources or population, they are highly valuable for their strategic location. Although the United Arab Emirates claims sovereignty, it has consistently been met with a strong response from Iran, based on their historical and cultural background. Iran has full control over the islands.\nKish island, as a free trade zone, is touted as a consumer's paradise, with malls, shopping centres, tourist attractions, and luxury hotels. Qeshm is the largest island in Iran, and a UNESCO Global Geopark since 2016. Its salt cave, Namakdan, is the largest in the world, and one of the world's longest caves.\nClimate.\nIran's climate is diverse, ranging from arid and semi-arid, to subtropical along the Caspian coast and northern forests. On the north edge of the country, temperatures rarely fall below freezing and the area remains humid. Summer temperatures rarely exceed . Annual precipitation is in the east part of the plain and more than in the west part. The UN Resident Coordinator for Iran, has said that \"Water scarcity poses the most severe human security challenge in Iran today\".\nTo the west, settlements in the Zagros basin experience lower temperatures, severe winters with freezing average daily temperatures and heavy snowfall. The east and central basins are arid, with less than of rain and have occasional deserts. Average summer temperatures rarely exceed . The southern coastal plains of the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman have mild winters, and very humid and hot summers. The annual precipitation ranges from .\nBiodiversity.\nMore than one-tenth of the country is forested. About 120 million hectares of forests and fields are government-owned for national exploitation. Iran's forests can be divided into five vegetation regions: Hyrcanian region which forms the green belt of the north side of the country; the Turan region, which are mainly scattered in the centre of Iran; Zagros region, which mainly contains oak forests in the west; the Persian Gulf region, which is scattered in the southern coastal belt; the Arasbarani region, which contains rare and unique species. More than 8,200 plant species are grown. The land covered by natural flora is four times that of Europe's. There are over 200 protected areas to preserve biodiversity and wildlife, with over 30 being national parks.\nIran's living fauna includes 34 bat species, Indian grey mongoose, small Indian mongoose, golden jackal, Indian wolf, foxes, striped hyena, leopard, Eurasian lynx, brown bear and Asian black bear. Ungulate species include wild boar, urial, Armenian mouflon, red deer, and goitered gazelle. One of the most famous animals is the critically endangered Asiatic cheetah, which survives only in Iran. Iran lost all its Asiatic lions and the extinct Caspian tigers by the early 20th century. Domestic ungulates are represented by sheep, goat, cattle, horse, water buffalo, donkey and camel. Bird species like pheasant, partridge, stork, eagles and falcons are native.\nGovernment and politics.\nSupreme Leader.\nThe Supreme Leader, \"Rahbar\", Leader of the Revolution or Supreme Leadership Authority, is the head of state and responsible for supervision of policy. The president has limited power compared to the Rahbar. Key ministers are selected with the Rahbar's agreement and they have the ultimate say on foreign policy. The Rahbar is directly involved in ministerial appointments for Defence, Intelligence and Foreign Affairs, as well as other top ministries after submission of candidates from the president.\nRegional policy is directly controlled by the Rahbar, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' task limited to protocol and ceremonial occasions. Ambassadors to Arab countries, for example, are chosen by the Quds Force, which directly reports to the Rahbar. The Rahbar can order laws to be amended. Setad was estimated at $95\u00a0billion in 2013 by Reuters, accounts of which are secret even to the parliament.\nThe Rahbar is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, controls military intelligence and security operations, and has sole power to declare war or peace. The heads of the judiciary, state radio and television networks, commanders of the police and military, and the members of the Guardian Council are all appointed by the Rahbar.\nThe Assembly of Experts is responsible for electing the Rahbar, and has the power to dismiss him on the basis of qualifications and popular esteem. To date, the Assembly of Experts has not challenged any of the Rahbar's decisions nor attempted to dismiss him. The previous head of the judicial system, Sadeq Larijani, appointed by the Rahbar, said that it is illegal for the Assembly of Experts to supervise the Rahbar. Many believe the Assembly of Experts has become a ceremonial body without any real power. In February 2025,\u00a0 the New York Times reported that according to Karim Sadjadpour, an expert on Iran at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, there exist in the Islamic Republic of Iran two parallel regimes. One which is ruled by the military and intelligence forces, who report to the Rahbar, and \"who oversee the nuclear programme and regional proxies and are tasked with repression, hostage taking and assassinations\u201d. The other ruled by diplomats and politicians \"who are authorized to speak to Western media and officials\" and have minimal knowledge of Iran's nuclear programme.\nThe political system is based on the country's constitution. Iran ranked 154th in the 2022 \"The Economist Democracy Index\". Juan Jos\u00e9 Linz wrote in 2000 that \"the Iranian regime combines the ideological bent of totalitarianism with the limited pluralism of authoritarianism\".\nPresident.\nThe President is head of government and the second highest-ranking authority, after the Supreme Leader. The President is elected by universal suffrage for 4 years. Before elections, nominees to become a presidential candidate must be approved by the Guardian Council. The Council's members are chosen by the Leader, with the Leader having the power to dismiss the president. The President can only be re-elected for one term. The president is the deputy commander-in-chief of the Army, the head of Supreme National Security Council, and has the power to declare a state of emergency after passage by the parliament.\nThe President is responsible for the implementation of the constitution, and for the exercise of executive powers in implementing the decrees and general policies as outlined by the Rahbar, except for matters directly related to the Rahbar, who has the final say. The President functions as the executive of affairs such as signing treaties and other international agreements, and administering national planning, budget, and state employment affairs, all as approved by the Rahbar.\nThe President appoints ministers, subject to the approval of the Parliament, and the Rahbar, who can dismiss or reinstate any minister. The President supervises the Council of Ministers, coordinates government decisions, and selects government policies to be placed before the legislature. Eight Vice Presidents serve under the President, as well as a cabinet of 22 ministers, all appointed by the president.\nGuardian Council.\nPresidential and parliamentary candidates must be approved by the 12-member Guardian Council (all members of which are appointed by the Leader) or the Leader, before running to ensure their allegiance. The Leader rarely does the vetting, but has the power to do so, in which case additional approval of the Guardian Council is not needed. The Leader can revert the decisions of the Guardian Council.\nThe constitution gives the council three mandates: veto power over legislation passed by the parliament, supervision of elections and approving or disqualifying candidates seeking to run in local, parliamentary, presidential, or Assembly of Experts elections. The council can nullify a law based on two accounts: being against Sharia (Islamic law), or being against the constitution.\nSupreme National Security Council.\nThe Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) is at the top of the foreign policy decisions process. The council was formed during the 1989 Iranian constitutional referendum for the protection and support of national interests, the revolution, territorial integrity and national sovereignty. It is mandated by Article 176 of the Constitution to be presided over by the President.\nThe Leader selects the secretary of the Supreme Council, and the decisions of the council are effective after the confirmation by the Leader. The SNSC formulates nuclear policy, and would become effective if they are confirmed by the Leader.\nLegislature.\nThe legislature, known as the Islamic Consultative Assembly (ICA), Iranian Parliament or \"Majles\", is a unicameral body comprising 290 members elected for four-years. It drafts legislation, ratifies international treaties, and approves the national budget. All parliamentary candidates and legislation from the assembly must be approved by the Guardian Council. The Guardian Council can and has dismissed elected members of the parliament. The parliament has no legal status without the Guardian Council, and the Council holds absolute veto power over legislation.\nThe Expediency Discernment Council has the authority to mediate disputes between Parliament and the Guardian Council, and serves as an advisory body to the Supreme Leader, making it one of the most powerful governing bodies in Iran.\nThe Parliament has 207 constituencies, including the 5 reserved seats for religious minorities. The remaining 202 are territorial, each covering one or more of Iran's counties.\nLaw.\nIran uses the Sharia law as its legal system, with elements of Civil law. The Supreme Leader appoints the head of the Supreme Court and chief public prosecutor. There are several types of courts, including public courts that deal with civil and criminal cases, and revolutionary courts which deal with certain offences, such as crimes against national security. The decisions of the revolutionary courts are final and cannot be appealed.\nThe Chief Justice is the head of the judicial system and responsible for its administration and supervision. He is the highest judge of the Supreme Court of Iran. The Chief Justice nominates candidates to serve as minister of justice, and the President selects one. The Chief Justice can serve for two five-year terms.\nThe Special Clerical Court handles crimes allegedly committed by clerics, although it has taken on cases involving laypeople. The Special Clerical Court functions independently of the regular judicial framework and is accountable only to the Rahbar. The Court's rulings are final and cannot be appealed. The Assembly of Experts, which meets for one week annually, comprises 86 \"virtuous and learned\" clerics elected by adult suffrage for 8-year terms.\nAdministrative divisions.\nIran is subdivided into thirty-one provinces ( \"ost\u00e2n\"), each governed from a local centre, usually the largest local city, which is called the capital (Persian: , \"markaz\") of that province. The provincial authority is headed by a governor-general ( \"ost\u00e2nd\u00e2r\"), who is appointed by the Minister of the Interior subject to approval of the cabinet.\nForeign relations.\nIran maintains diplomatic relations with 165 countries, but not the United States and Israel\u2014a state which Iran derecognised in 1979.\nIran has an adversarial relationship with Saudi Arabia due to different political ideologies. Iran and Turkey have been involved in modern proxy conflicts such as in Syria, Libya, and the South Caucasus. However, they have shared common interests, such as the issue of Kurdish separatism and the Qatar diplomatic crisis. Iran has a close and strong relationship with Tajikistan. Iran has deep economic relations and alliance with Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, with Syria often described as Iran's \"closest ally\".\nRussia is a key trading partner, especially in regard to its excess oil reserves. Both share a close economic and military alliance, and are subject to heavy sanctions by Western nations. Iran is the only country in Western Asia that has been invited to join the CSTO, the Russia-based international treaty organisation that parallels NATO.\nRelations between Iran and China are strong economically; they have developed a friendly, economic and strategic relationship. In 2021, Iran and China signed a 25-year cooperation agreement that will strengthen the relations between the two countries and would include \"political, strategic and economic\" components. Iran-China relations dates back to at least 200 BC and possibly earlier. Iran is one of the few countries in the world that has a good relationship with both North and South Korea.\nIn December 2024, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, a close ally of Iran, was a severe setback for the political influence of Iran in the region.\nIran is a member of dozens of international organisations, including the G-15, G-24, G-77, IAEA, IBRD, IDA, NAM, IDB, IFC, ILO, IMF, IMO, Interpol, OIC, OPEC, WHO, and the UN, and currently has observer status at the WTO.\nMilitary.\nThe military is organised under a unified structure, the Islamic Republic of Iran Armed Forces, comprising the Islamic Republic of Iran Army, which includes the Ground Forces, Air Defence Force, Air Force, and Navy; the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which consists of the Ground Forces, Aerospace Force, Navy, Quds Force, and Basij; and the Law Enforcement Command (Faraja), which serves an analogous function to a gendarme. While the IRIAF protects the country's sovereignty in a traditional capacity, the IRGC is mandated to ensure the integrity of the Republic, against foreign interference, coups, and internal riots. Since 1925, it is mandatory for all male citizen aged 18 to serve around 14 months in the IRIAF or IRGC.\nIran has over 610,000 active troops and around 350,000 reservists, totalling over 1 million military personnel, one of the world's highest percentage of citizens with military training. The Basij\",\" a paramilitary volunteer militia within the IRGC, has over 20 million members, 600,000 available for immediate call-up, 300,000 reservists, and a million that could be mobilised when necessary. Faraja, the Iranian uniformed police force, has over 260,000 active personnel. Most statistical organisations do not include the Basij and Faraja in their ratings report.\nExcluding the Basij and Faraja, Iran has been identified as a major military power, owing it to the size and capabilities of its armed forces. It possesses the world's 14th strongest military. It ranks 13th globally in terms of overall military strength, 7th in the number of active military personnel, and 9th in the size of both its ground force and armoured force. Iran's armed forces are the largest in West Asia and comprise the greatest Army Aviation fleet in the Middle East. Iran is among the top 15 countries in terms of military budget. In 2021, its military spending increased for the first time in four years, to $24.6 billion, 2.3% of the national GDP. Funding for the IRGC accounted for 34% of Iran's total military spending in 2021.\nSince the Revolution, to overcome foreign embargoes, Iran has developed a domestic military industry capable of producing indigenous tanks, armoured personnel carriers, missiles, submarines, missile destroyer, radar systems, helicopters, naval vessels, and fighter planes. Official announcements have highlighted the development of advanced weaponry, particularly in rocketry. Consequently, Iran has the largest and most diverse ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East and is only the 5th country in the world with hypersonic missile technology. It is the world's 6th missile power. Iran designs and produces a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and is considered a global leader and superpower in drone warfare and technology. It is one of the world's five countries with cyberwarfare capabilities and is identified as \"one of the most active players in the international cyber arena\". Iran is an key exporter of arms since 2000s.\nFollowing Russia's purchase of Iranian drones during the invasion of Ukraine, in November 2023, the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) finalized arrangements to acquire Russian Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets, Mil Mi-28 attack helicopters, air defence and missile systems. The Iranian Navy has had joint exercises with Russia and China.\nNuclear programme.\nIran's nuclear programme dates back to the 1950s. Iran revived it after the Revolution, and its extensive nuclear fuel cycle, including enrichment capabilities, became the subject of intense international negotiations and sanctions. Many countries have expressed concern Iran could divert civilian nuclear technology into a weapons programme. In 2015, Iran and the P5+1 agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan on Action (JCPOA), aiming to end economic sanctions in exchange for restriction in producing enriched uranium.\nIn 2018, however, the US withdrew from the deal under the Trump administration, and reimposed sanctions. This was met with resistance by Iran and other members of the P5+1. A year later, Iran began decreasing its compliance. By 2020, Iran announced it would no longer observe any limit set by the agreement. Progress since then has brought Iran to the nuclear threshold status. As of November 2023[ [update]], Iran had uranium enriched to up to 60% fissile content, close to weapon grade. Some analysts already regard Iran as a de facto nuclear power.\nRegional influence.\nIran's significant influence and foothold, sometimes characterised as the \"Dawn of A New Persian Empire.\" Some analysts associate the Iranian influence to the nation's proud national legacy, empire and history.\nSince the Revolution, Iran has grown its influence across and beyond the region. It has built military forces with a wide network of state and none-state actors, starting with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 1982. The IRGC has been key to Iranian influence, through its Quds Force. The instability in Lebanon (from the 1980s), Iraq (from 2003) and Yemen (from 2014) has allowed Iran to build strong alliances and footholds beyond its borders. Iran has a prominent influence in the social services, education, economy and politics of Lebanon, and Lebanon provides Iran access to the Mediterranean Sea. Hezbollah's strategic successes against Israel, such as its symbolic victory during the 2006 Israel\u2013Hezbollah War, elevated Iran's influence in the Levant and strengthened its appeal across the Muslim World.\nSince the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the arrival of ISIS in the mid-2010s, Iran has financed and trained militia groups in Iraq. Since the Iran-Iraq war in 1980s and the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iran has shaped Iraq's politics. Following Iraq's struggle against ISIS in 2014, companies linked to the IRGC such as Khatam al-Anbiya, started to build roads, power plants, hotels and businesses in Iraq, creating an economic corridor worth around $9 billion before COVID-19. This is expected to grow to $20 billion.\nDuring Yemen's civil war, Iran provided military support to the Houthis, a Zaydi Shiite movement fighting Yemen's Sunni government since 2004. They gained significant power in recent years. Iran has considerable influence in Afghanistan and Pakistan through militant groups such as Liwa Fatemiyoun and Liwa Zainebiyoun.\nIn Syria, Iran has supported President Bashar al-Assad; the two countries are long-standing allies. Iran has provided significant military and economic support to Assad's government, so has a considerable foothold in Syria. Iran has long supported the anti-Israel fronts in North Africa in countries like Algeria and Tunisia, embracing Hamas in part to help undermine the popularity of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Iran's support of Hamas emerged more clearly in later years. According to US intelligence, Iran does not have full control over these state and non-state groups.\nHuman rights and censorship.\nThe Iranian government has been denounced by various international organisations and governments for violating human rights. The government has frequently persecuted and arrested critics of the government. Iranian law does not recognise sexual orientations. Sexual activity between members of the same sex is illegal and is punishable by death. Capital punishment is a legal punishment, and according to the BBC, Iran \"carries out more executions than any other country, except China\". UN Special Rapporteur Javaid Rehman has reported discrimination against several ethnic minorities in Iran. A group of UN experts in 2022 urged Iran to stop \"systematic persecution\" of religious minorities, adding that members of the Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith were arrested, barred from universities, or had their homes demolished.\nCensorship in Iran is ranked among the most extreme worldwide. Iran has strict internet censorship, with the government persistently blocking social media and other sites. Since January 2021, Iranian authorities have blocked a list of social media platforms; Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Telegram, Twitter and YouTube.\nThe 2006 election results were widely disputed, resulting in protests. The 2017\u201318 Iranian protests swept across the country in response to the economic and political situation. It was formally confirmed that thousands of protesters were arrested. The 2019\u201320 Iranian protests started on 15 November in Ahvaz, and spread across the country after the government announced increases in fuel prices of up to 300%. A week-long total Internet shutdown marked one of the most severe Internet blackouts in any country, and the bloodiest governmental crackdown of the protestors. Tens of thousands were arrested and hundreds were killed within a few days according to multiple international observers, including Amnesty International.\nUkraine International Airlines Flight 752, was a scheduled international civilian passenger flight from Tehran to Kyiv, operated by Ukraine International Airlines. On 8 January 2020, the Boeing 737\u2013800 flying the route was shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) shortly after takeoff, killing all 176 occupants on board and leading to protests. An international investigation led to the government admitting to the shootdown, calling it a \"human error\". Another Protests against the government began on 16 September 2022 after a woman named Mahsa Amini died in police custody following her arrest by the Guidance Patrol, known commonly as the \"morality police\".\nEconomy.\nAs of 2024[ [update]], Iran has the world's 19th largest economy (by PPP). It is a mixture of central planning, state ownership of oil and other large enterprises, village agriculture, and small-scale private trading and service ventures. Services contribute the largest percentage of GDP, followed by industry (mining and manufacturing) and agriculture. The economy is characterised by its hydrocarbon sector, in addition to manufacturing and financial services. With 10% of the world's oil reserves and 15% of gas reserves, Iran is an energy superpower. Over 40 industries are directly involved in the Tehran Stock Exchange.\nTehran is the economic powerhouse of Iran. About 30% of Iran's public-sector workforce and 45% of its large industrial firms are located there, and half those firms' employees work for government. The Central Bank of Iran is responsible for developing and maintaining the currency: the Iranian rial. The government does not recognise trade unions other than the Islamic labour councils, which are subject to the approval of employers and the security services. Unemployment was 9% in 2022.\nBudget deficits have been a chronic problem, mostly due to large state subsidies, that include foodstuffs and especially petrol, totalling $100\u00a0billion in 2022 for energy alone. In 2010, the economic reform plan was to cut subsidies gradually and replace them with targeted social assistance. The objective is to move towards free market prices and increase productivity and social justice. The administration continues reform, and indicates it will diversify the oil-reliant economy. Iran has developed a biotechnology, nanotechnology, and pharmaceutical industry. The government is privatising industries.\nIran has leading manufacturing industries in automobile manufacture, transportation, construction materials, home appliances, food and agricultural goods, armaments, pharmaceuticals, information technology, and petrochemicals in the Middle East. Iran is among the world's top five producers of apricots, cherries, cucumbers and gherkins, dates, figs, pistachios, quinces, walnuts, Kiwifruit and watermelons. International sanctions against Iran have damaged the economy. Iran is one of three countries that have not ratified the Paris Agreement to limit climate change, although academics say it would be good for the country.\nIran suffers from high inflation and especially surging food prices. A major contributing factor is the involvement of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the economy, particularly in the agriculture and food sectors but also due to significant spending on the Axis of Resistance which increase the public deficit. \nTourism.\nTourism had been rapidly growing before the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching nearly 9 million foreign visitors in 2019, the world's third fastest-growing tourism destination. In 2022 it expanded its share to 5% of the economy. Iran's tourism experienced a growth of 43% in 2023, attracting 6 million foreign tourists. The government ended visa requirements for 60 countries in 2023.\n98% of visits are for leisure, while 2% are for business, indicating the country's appeal as a tourist destination. Alongside the capital, the most popular tourist destinations are Isfahan, Shiraz and Mashhad. Iran is emerging as a preferred destination for medical tourism. Travellers from other West Asian countries grew 31% in the first seven months of 2023, surpassing Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Domestic tourism is one of the world's largests; Iranian tourists spent $33bn in 2021. Iran projects investment of $32 billion in the tourism sector by 2026.\nAgriculture and fishery.\nRoughly one-third of Iran's total surface area is suited for farmland. Only 12% of the total land area is under cultivation, but less than one-third of the cultivated area is irrigated; the rest is devoted to dryland farming. Some 92% of agricultural products depend on water. The western and northwestern portions of the country have the most fertile soils. Iran's food security index stands at around 96 percent. 3% of the total land area is used for grazing and fodder production. Most of the grazing is done on mostly semi-dry rangeland in mountain areas and on areas surrounding the large deserts of Central Iran. Progressive government efforts and incentives during the 1990s, improved agricultural productivity, helping Iran toward its goal of reestablishing national self-sufficiency in food production.\nAccess to the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and many river basins provides Iran the potential to develop excellent fisheries. The government assumed control of commercial fishing in 1952. Expansion of the fishery infrastructure enabled the country to harvest an estimated 700,000 tons of fish annually from the southern waters. Since the Revolution, increased attention has been focused on producing fish from inland waters. Between 1976 and 2004, the combined take from inland waters by the state and private sectors increased from 1,100 tons to 110,175 tons. Iran is the world's largest producer and exporter of caviar, exporting more than 300 tonnes annually.\nIndustry and services.\nIran is globally ranked 16th in car manufacturing, ahead of the UK, Italy, and Russia. It has outputted 1.188 million cars in 2023, a 12% growth compared to the previous years. Iran has exported various cars to countries such as Venezuela, Russia and Belarus. From 2008 to 2009, Iran leaped to 28th place from 69th in annual industrial production growth rate. Iranian contractors have been awarded several foreign tender contracts in different fields of construction of dams, bridges, roads, buildings, railroads, power generation, and gas, oil and petrochemical industries. As of 2011, some 66 Iranian industrial companies are carrying out projects in 27 countries. Iran exported over $20 billion worth of technical and engineering services over 2001\u20132011. The availability of local raw materials, rich mineral reserves, experienced manpower have all played crucial role in winning the bids.\n45% of large industrial firms are located in Tehran, and almost half of their workers work for government. The Iranian retail industry is largely in the hands of cooperatives, many of them government-sponsored, and of independent retailers in the bazaars. The bulk of food sales occur at street markets, where the Chief Statistics Bureau sets the prices. Iran's main exports are to Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Syria, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Canada, Venezuela, Japan, South Korea and Turkey. Iran's automotive industry is the second most active industry of the country, after its oil and gas industry. Iran Khodro is the largest car manufacturer in the Middle East, and ITMCO is the biggest tractor manufacturer. Iran is the 12th largest automaker in the world. Construction is one of the most important sectors in Iran accounting for 20\u201350% of the total private investment.\nIran is one of the most important mineral producers in the world, ranked among 15 major mineral-rich countries. Iran has become self-sufficient in designing, building and operating dams and power plants. Iran is one of the six countries in the world that manufacture gas- and steam-powered turbines.\nTransport.\nIn 2011 Iran had of roads, of which 73% were paved. In 2008 there were nearly 100 passenger cars for every 1,000 inhabitants.\nTehran Metro is the largest in the Middle East, it carries more than 3 million passengers daily and in 2018, 820 million trips. Trains operate on of track. The country's major port of entry is Bandar Abbas on the Strait of Hormuz. Imported goods are distributed through the country by trucks and freight trains. The Tehran\u2013Bandar Abbas railroad connects Bandar-Abbas to the railroad system of Central Asia, via Tehran and Mashhad. Other major ports include Bandar e-Anzali and Bandar e-Torkeman on the Caspian Sea and Khorramshahr and Bandar-e Emam Khomeyni on the Persian Gulf.\nDozens of cities have airports that serve passenger and cargo planes. Iran Air, the national airline, operates domestic and international flights. All large cities have mass transit systems using buses, and private companies provide bus services between cities. Over a million people work in transport, accounting for 9% of GDP.\nEnergy.\nIran is an energy superpower and petroleum plays a key part. As of 2023[ [update]], Iran produced 4% of the world's crude oil ( per day), which generates US$36bn of export revenue and is the main source of foreign currency. Oil and gas reserves are estimated at 1.2 trn barrels; Iran holds 10% of world oil reserves and 15% for gas. It ranks 3rd in oil reserves and is OPEC's 2nd largest exporter. It has the 2nd largest gas reserves, and 3rd largest natural gas production. In 2019, Iran discovered a southern oil field of 50 bn barrels and in April 2024, the NIOC discovered 10 giant shale oil deposits, totalling 2.6 bn barrels. Iran plans to invest $500 billion in oil by 2025.\nIran manufactures 60\u201370% of its industrial equipment domestically, including turbines, pumps, catalysts, refineries, oil tankers, drilling rigs, offshore platforms, towers, pipes, and exploration instruments. The addition of new hydroelectric stations and streamlining of conventional coal and oil-fired stations increased installed capacity to 33 GW; about 75% was based on natural gas, 18% on oil, and 7% on hydroelectric power. In 2004, Iran opened its first wind-powered and geothermal plants, and the first solar thermal plant began in 2009. Iran is the world's third country to develop GTL technology.\nDemographic trends and intensified industrialisation have caused electric power demand to grow by 8% per year. The government's goal of 53 GW of installed capacity by 2010 is to be reached by bringing on line new gas-fired plants, and adding hydropower and nuclear generation capacity. Iran's first nuclear power plant went online in 2011.\nDespite being an energy superpower as of 2024-2025 Iran suffers from an energy crisis, manifested by many power outages.\nScience and technology.\nIran has made considerable advances in science and technology, despite international sanctions. In the biomedical sciences, Iran's Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics has a UNESCO chair in biology. In 2006, Iranian scientists successfully cloned a sheep at the Royan Research Centre in Tehran. Stem cell research is among the top 10 in the world. Iran ranks 15th in the world in nanotechnologies. Iranian scientists outside Iran have made major scientific contributions. In 1960, Ali Javan co-invented the first gas laser, and fuzzy set theory was introduced by Lotfi A. Zadeh.\nCardiologist Tofy Mussivand invented and developed the first artificial cardiac pump, the precursor of the artificial heart. Furthering research in diabetes, the HbA1c was discovered by Samuel Rahbar. Many papers in string theory are published in Iran. In 2014, Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani became the first woman, and Iranian, to receive the Fields Medal, the highest prize in mathematics.\nIran increased its publication output nearly tenfold from 1996 through 2004, and ranked first in output growth rate, followed by China. According to a study by SCImago in 2012, Iran would rank fourth in research output by 2018, if the trend persisted. The Iranian humanoid robot Sorena 2, which was designed by engineers at the University of Tehran, was unveiled in 2010. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has placed the name of Surena among the five most prominent robots, after analysing its performance. \nAccording to a 2019 study by Isabel Campos-Varela et al., Iran recorded the highest proportion of retracted publications globally, with 15.52 retractions per 10,000 publications. Media reports from 2023 indicate that Iran continues to rank among the countries with the highest retraction rates. Common types of misconduct include fraudulent peer review processes, plagiarism, and data fabrication. Data from the Retraction Watch Leaderboard further highlights that two of the 32 individuals with the highest number of retracted articles worldwide are based in Iran.\nIran was ranked 64th in the Global Innovation Index in 2024.\nIranian Space Agency.\nThe Iranian Space Agency (ISA) was established in 2004. Iran became an orbital-launch-capable nation in 2009, and is a founding member of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Iran placed its domestically built satellite Omid into orbit on the 30th anniversary of the Revolution, in 2009, through its first expendable launch vehicle Safir. It became the 9th country capable of both producing a satellite and sending it into space from a domestically made launcher. Simorgh's launch in 2016, is the successor of Safir.\nIn January 2024, Iran launched the Soraya satellite into its highest orbit yet (750\u00a0km), a new space launch milestone for the country. It was launched by Qaem 100 rocket. Iran also successfully launched 3 indigenous satellites, The Mahda, Kayan and Hatef, into orbit using the Simorgh carrier rocket. It was the first time in country's history that it simultaneously sent three satellites into space. The three satellites are designed for testing advanced satellite subsystems, space-based positioning technology, and narrowband communication.\nIn February 2024, Iran launched its domestically developed imaging satellite, Pars 1, from Russia into orbit. This was the second time since August 2022, when Russia launched another Iranian remote-sensing, Khayyam satellite, into orbit from Kazakhstan, reflecting deep scientific cooperation between the countries.\nTelecommunication.\nIran's telecommunications industry is almost entirely state-owned, dominated by the Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI). As of 2020, 70 million Iranians use high-speed mobile internet. Iran is among the first five countries which have had a growth rate of over 20 percent and the highest level of development in telecommunication. Iran has been awarded the UNESCO special certificate for providing telecommunication services to rural areas.\nGlobally, Iran ranks 75th in mobile internet speed and 153rd in fixed internet speed.\nDemographics.\nIran's population grew rapidly from about 19\u00a0million in 1956 to about 85 million by February 2023. However, Iran's fertility rate has dropped dramatically, from 6.5 children born per woman to about 1.7 two decades later, leading to a population growth rate of about 1.39% as of 2018. Due to its young population, studies project that the growth will continue to slow until it stabilises at around 105\u00a0million by 2050.\nIran hosts one of the largest refugee populations, with almost one million, mostly from Afghanistan and Iraq. According to the Iranian Constitution, the government is required to provide every citizen with access to social security, covering retirement, unemployment, old age, disability, accidents, calamities, health and medical treatment and care services. This is covered by tax revenues and income derived from public contributions.\nThe country has one of the highest urban growth rates in the world. From 1950 to 2002, the urban proportion of the population increased from 27% to 60%. Iran's population is concentrated in its western half, especially in the north, north-west and west.\nTehran, with a population of around 9.4\u00a0million, is Iran's capital and largest city. The country's second most populous city, Mashhad, has a population of around 3.4\u00a0million, and is capital of the province of Razavi Khorasan. Isfahan has a population of around 2.2\u00a0million and is Iran's third most populous city. It is the capital of Isfahan province and was also the third capital of the Safavid Empire.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nEthnic groups.\nEthnic group composition remains a point of debate, mainly regarding the largest and second largest ethnic groups, the Persians and Azerbaijanis, due to the lack of Iranian state censuses based on ethnicity. The World Factbook has estimated that around 79% of the population of Iran is a diverse Indo-European ethno-linguistic group, with Persians (including Mazenderanis and Gilaks) constituting 61% of the population, Kurds 10%, Lurs 6%, and Balochs 2%. Peoples of other ethnolinguistic groups make up the remaining 21%, with Azerbaijanis constituting 16%, Arabs 2%, Turkmens and other Turkic tribes 2%, and others (such as Armenians, Talysh, Georgians, Circassians, Assyrians) 1%.\nThe Library of Congress issued slightly different estimates: 65% Persians (including Mazenderanis, Gilaks, and the Talysh), 16% Azerbaijanis, 7% Kurds, 6% Lurs, 2% Baloch, 1% Turkic tribal groups (including Qashqai and Turkmens), and non-Iranian, non-Turkic groups (including Armenians, Georgians, Assyrians, Circassians, and Arabs) less than 3%.\nEthnic based discrimination is prevalent in Iran. Minorities in Iran have been disproportionately affected by the ongoing crackdown aimed at repressing the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' movement, according to the UN Fact-Finding Mission.\nLanguages.\nMost of the population speaks Persian, the country's official and national language. Others include speakers of other Iranian languages, within the greater Indo-European family, and languages belonging to other ethnicities. The Gilaki and Mazenderani languages are widely spoken in Gilan and Mazenderan, northern Iran. The Talysh language is spoken in parts of Gilan. Varieties of Kurdish are concentrated in the province of Kurdistan and nearby areas. In Khuzestan, several dialects of Persian are spoken. South Iran also houses the Luri and Lari languages.\nAzerbaijani, the most-spoken minority language in the country, and other Turkic languages and dialects are found in various regions, especially Azerbaijan. Notable minority languages include Armenian, Georgian, Neo-Aramaic, and Arabic. Khuzi Arabic is spoken by the Arabs in Khuzestan, and the wider group of Iranian Arabs. Circassian was also once widely spoken by the large Circassian minority, but, due to assimilation, no sizable number of Circassians speak the language anymore.\nPercentages of spoken language continue to be a point of debate, most notably regarding the largest and second largest ethnicities in Iran, the Persians and Azerbaijanis. Percentages given by the CIA's World Factbook include 53% Persian, 16% Azerbaijani, 10% Kurdish, 7% Mazenderani and Gilaki, 7% Luri, 2% Turkmen, 2% Balochi, 2% Arabic, and 2% the remainder Armenian, Georgian, Neo-Aramaic, and Circassian.\nReligion.\nTwelver Shia Islam is the state religion, to which 90\u201395% of Iranians adhere; about 5\u201310% are in the Sunni and Sufi branches of Islam. 96% of Iranians believe in Islam, but 14% identify as not religious.\nThere is a large population of adherents to Yarsanism, a Kurdish indigenous religion, estimated to be over half a million to one million followers. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is not officially recognised and has been subject to official persecution. Since the Revolution, the persecution of Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds has increased. Irreligion is not recognised by the government.\nChristianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and the Sunni branch of Islam are officially recognised by the government and have reserved seats in the Parliament. Iran is home to the largest Jewish community in the Muslim World and the Middle East, outside of Israel. Around 250,000 to 370,000 Christians reside in Iran, and Christianity is the country's largest recognised minority religion, most are of Armenian background, as well as a sizable minority of Assyrians. The Iranian government has supported the rebuilding and renovation of Armenian churches, and has supported the Armenian Monastic Ensembles of Iran. In 2019, the government registered the Vank Cathedral, in Isfahan, as a World Heritage Site. Currently three Armenian churches in Iran have been included in the World Heritage List.\nEducation.\nEducation is highly centralised. K\u201312 is supervised by the Ministry of Education, and higher education is supervised by the Ministry of Science and Technology. Literacy among people aged 15 and older was 86% as of 2016[ [update]], with men (90%) significantly more educated than women (81%). Government expenditure on education is around 4% of GDP.\nThe requirement to enter into higher education is to have a high school diploma and pass the Iranian University Entrance Exam. Many students do a one\u2013two-year course of pre-university. Iran's higher education is sanctioned by different levels of diplomas, including an associate degree in two years, a bachelor's degree in four years, and a master's degree in two years, after which another exam allows the candidate to pursue a doctoral programme.\nHealth.\nHealthcare is provided by the public-governmental system, the private sector, and NGOs.\nIran is the only country in the world with a legal organ trade. Iran has been able to extend public health preventive services through the establishment of an extensive Primary Health Care Network. As a result, child and maternal mortality rates have fallen significantly, and life expectancy at birth has risen. Iran's medical knowledge rank is 17th globally, and 1st in the Middle East and North Africa. In terms of medical science production index, Iran ranks 16th in the world. Iran is fast emerging as a preferred destination for medical tourism.\nThe country faces the common problem of other young demographic nations in the region, which is keeping pace with growth of an already huge demand for various public services. An anticipated increase in the population growth rate will increase the need for public health infrastructures and services. About 90% of Iranians have health insurance.\nCulture.\nArt.\nIran has one of the richest art heritages in history and been strong in many media including architecture, painting, literature, music, metalworking, stonemasonry, weaving, calligraphy and sculpture. At different times, influences from neighbouring civilisations have been important, and latterly Persian art gave and received major influences as part of the wider styles of Islamic art.\nFrom the Achaemenid Empire of 550\u2013330 BC, the courts of successive dynasties led the style of Persian art, and court-sponsored art left many of the most impressive pieces that remain. The Islamic style of dense decoration, geometrically laid out, developed in Iran into an elegant and harmonious style, combining motifs derived from plants with Chinese motifs such as the cloud-band, and often animals represented at a smaller scale. During the Safavid Empire in the 16th century, this style was used across a variety of media, and diffused from the court artists of the king, most being painters.\nBy the time of the Sasanians, Iranian art had a renaissance. During the Middle Ages, Sasanian art played a prominent role in the formation of European and Asian mediaeval art.\nThe Safavid era is known as the Golden Age of Iranian art. Safavid art exerted noticeable influences upon the Ottomans, the Mughals, and the Deccans, and was influential through its fashion and garden architecture on 11th\u201317th-century Europe.\nIran's contemporary art traces its origins to Kamal-ol-molk, a prominent realist painter at the court of the Qajar Empire who affected the norms of painting and adopted a naturalistic style that would compete with photographic works. A new Iranian school of fine art was established by him in 1928, and was followed by the so-called \"coffeehouse\" style of painting. Iran's avant-garde modernists emerged by the arrival of new western influences during World War II. The contemporary art scene originates in the late 1940s, and Tehran's first modern art gallery, Apadana, was opened in 1949 by Mahmud Javadipur, Hosein Kazemi, and Hushang Ajudani. The new movements received official encouragement by the 1950s, which led to the emergence of artists such as Marcos Grigorian.\nArchitecture.\nThe history of architecture in Iran dates back to at least 5,000 BC, with characteristic examples distributed over an area from what is now Turkey and Iraq to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and from the Caucasus to Zanzibar. The Iranians made early use of mathematics, geometry and astronomy in their architecture, yielding a tradition with structural and aesthetic variety. The guiding motif is its cosmic symbolism.\nWithout sudden innovations, and despite the trauma of invasions and cultural shocks, it developed a recognizable style distinct from other regions of the Muslim world. Its virtues are \"a marked feeling for form and scale; structural inventiveness, especially in vault and dome construction; a genius for decoration with a freedom and success not rivalled in any other architecture\". In addition to historic gates, palaces, and mosques, the rapid growth of cities such as Tehran has brought a wave of construction. Iran ranks 7th among UNESCO's list of countries with the most archaeological ruins and attractions from antiquity.\nWorld Heritage Sites.\nIran's rich culture and history is reflected by its 27 World Heritage Sites, ranking 1st in the Middle East, and 10th in the world. These include Persepolis, Naghsh-e Jahan Square, Chogha Zanbil, Pasargadae, Golestan Palace, Arg-e Bam, Behistun Inscription, Shahr-e Sukhteh, Susa, Takht-e Soleyman, Hyrcanian forests, the city of Yazd and more. Iran has 24 Intangible Cultural Heritage, or Human treasures, which ranks 5th worldwide.\nWeaving.\nIran's carpet-weaving has its origins in the Bronze Age and is one of the most distinguished manifestations of Iranian art. Carpet weaving is an essential part of Persian culture and Iranian art. Persian rugs and carpets were woven in parallel by nomadic tribes in village and town workshops, and by royal court manufactories. As such, they represent simultaneous lines of tradition, and reflect the history of Iran, Persian culture, and its various peoples. Although the term \"Persian carpet\" most often refers to pile-woven textiles, flat-woven carpets and rugs like Kilim, Soumak, and embroidered tissues like Suzani are part of the manifold tradition of Persian carpet weaving.\nIran produces three-quarters of the world's handmade carpets, and has 30% of export markets. In 2010, the \"traditional skills of carpet weaving\" in Fars Province and Kashan were inscribed to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List. Within the Oriental rugs produced by the countries of the \"rug belt\", the Persian carpet stands out by the variety and elaborateness of its manifold designs.\nCarpets woven in towns and regional centres like Tabriz, Kerman, Ravar, Neyshabour, Mashhad, Kashan, Isfahan, Nain and Qom are characterized by their specific weaving techniques and use of high-quality materials, colours and patterns. Hand-woven Persian rugs and carpets have been regarded as objects of high artistic value and prestige, since they were mentioned by ancient Greek writers.\nLiterature.\nIran's oldest literary tradition is that of Avestan, the Old Iranian sacred language of the Avesta, which consists of the legendary and religious texts of Zoroastrianism and the ancient Iranian religion. The Persian language was used and developed through Persianate societies in Asia Minor, Central Asia, and South Asia, leaving extensive influences on Ottoman and Mughal literatures, among others. Iran has several famous mediaeval poets, notably Mawlana, Ferdowsi, Hafez, Sa'adi, Omar Khayyam, and Nezami Ganjavi.\nDescribed as one of the great literatures of humanity, including Goethe's assessment of it as one of the four main bodies of world literature, Persian literature has its roots in surviving works of Middle Persian and Old Persian, the latter of which dates back as far as 522\u00a0BCE, the date of the earliest surviving Achaemenid inscription, the Behistun Inscription. The bulk of surviving Persian literature, however, comes from the times following the Muslim conquest in c. 650\u00a0CE. After the Abbasids came to power (750 CE), the Iranians became the scribes and bureaucrats of the Islamic Caliphate and, increasingly, also its writers and poets. The New Persian language literature arose and flourished in Khorasan and Transoxiana because of political reasons, early Iranian dynasties of post-Islamic Iran such as the Tahirids and Samanids being based in Khorasan.\nPhilosophy.\nIranian philosophy can be traced back as far as Old Iranian philosophical traditions and thoughts which originated in ancient Indo-Iranian roots and were influenced by Zarathustra's teachings. Throughout Iranian history and due to remarkable political and social changes such as the Arab and Mongol invasions, a wide spectrum of schools of thoughts showed a variety of views on philosophical questions, extending from Old Iranian and mainly Zoroastrianism-related traditions, to schools appearing in the late pre-Islamic era such as Manicheism and Mazdakism as well as post-Islamic schools.\nThe Cyrus Cylinder is seen as a reflection of the questions and thoughts expressed by Zoroaster and developed in Zoroastrian schools of the Achaemenid era. Post-Islam Iranian philosophy is characterised by different interactions with the Old Iranian philosophy, the Greek philosophy and with the development of Islamic philosophy. The Illumination School and the Transcendent Philosophy are regarded as two of the main philosophical traditions of that era in Iran. Contemporary Iranian philosophy has been limited in its scope by intellectual repression.\nMythology and folklore.\nIranian mythology consists of ancient Iranian folklore and stories of extraordinary beings reflecting on good and evil (Ahura Mazda and Ahriman), actions of the gods, and the exploits of heroes and creatures. The tenth-century Persian poet, Ferdowsi, is the author of the national epic known as the \"Shahnameh\" (\"Book of Kings\"), which is for the most part based on \"Xwad\u0101yn\u0101mag\", a Middle Persian compilation of the history of Iranian kings and heroes, as well as the stories and characters of the Zoroastrian tradition, from the texts of the Avesta, the Denkard, the Vendidad and the Bundahishn. Modern scholars study the myths to shed light on the religious and political institutions of not only Iran but of the Greater Iran, which includes regions of West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, and Transcaucasia where the culture of Iran has had significant influence.\nStorytelling has a significant presence in Iranian folklore and culture. In classical Iran, minstrels performed for their audiences at royal courts and in public theatres. A minstrel was referred to by the Parthians as g\u014ds\u0101n, and by the Sasanians as huniy\u0101gar. Since the Safavid Empire, storytellers and poetry readers appeared at coffeehouses. After the Iranian Revolution, it took until 1985 to found the MCHTH (Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts), a now heavily centralised organisation, supervising all kinds of cultural activities. It held the first scientific meeting on anthropology and folklore in 1990.\nMuseums.\nThe National Museum of Iran in Tehran is the country's most important cultural institution. As the first and biggest museum in Iran, the institution includes the Museum of Ancient Iran and the Museum of the Islamic Era. The National Museum is the world's most important museum in terms of preservation, display and research of archaeological collections of Iran, and ranks as one of the few most prestigious museums globally in terms of volume, diversity and quality of its monuments.\nThere are many other popular museums across the country such as the Golestan Palace (World Heritage Site), The Treasury of National Jewels, Reza Abbasi Museum, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Sa'dabad Complex, The Carpet Museum, Abgineh Museum, Pars Museum, Azerbaijan Museum, Hegmataneh Museum, Susa Museum and more. Around 25 million people visited the museums in 2019.\nMusic and dance.\nIran is the apparent birthplace of the earliest complex instruments, dating to the third millennium\u00a0BC. The use of angular harps have been documented at Madaktu and Kul-e Farah, with the largest collection of Elamite instruments documented at Kul-e Farah. Xenophon's \"Cyropaedia\" mentions singing women at the court of the Achaemenid Empire. Under the Parthian Empire, the \"g\u014ds\u0101n\" (Parthian for 'minstrel') had a prominent role.\nThe history of Sasanian music is better documented than earlier periods and is especially more evident in Avestan texts. By the time of Khosrow II, the Sasanian royal court hosted prominent musicians, namely Azad, Bamshad, Barbad, Nagisa, Ramtin, and Sarkash. Iranian traditional musical instruments include string instruments such as chang (harp), qanun, santur, rud (oud, barbat), tar, dotar, setar, tanbur, and kamanche, wind instruments such as sorna (zurna, karna) and ney, and percussion instruments such as tompak, kus, daf (dayere), and naqare.\nIran's first symphony orchestra, the Tehran Symphony Orchestra, was founded in 1933. By the late 1940s, Ruhollah Khaleqi founded the country's first national music society and established the School of National Music in 1949. Iranian pop music has its origins in the Qajar era. It was significantly developed since the 1950s, using indigenous instruments and forms accompanied by electric guitar and other imported characteristics. Iranian rock emerged in the 1960s and hip hop in the 2000s.\nIran has known dance in the forms of music, play, drama or religious rituals since at least the 6th millennium BC. Artifacts with pictures of dancers were found in archaeological prehistoric sites. Genres of dance vary depending on the area, culture, and language of the local people, and can range from sophisticated reconstructions of refined court dances to energetic folk dances. Each group, region, and historical epoch has specific dance styles associated with it. The earliest researched dance from historic Iran is a dance worshipping Mithra. Ancient Persian dance was significantly researched by Greek historian Herodotus. Iran was occupied by foreign powers, causing a slow disappearance of heritage dance traditions.\nThe Qajar period had an important influence on Persian dance. In this period, a style of dance began to be called \"classical Persian dance\". Dancers performed artistic dances in court for entertainment purposes such as coronations, marriage celebrations, and Norouz celebrations. In the 20th century, the music came to be orchestrated and dance movement and costuming gained a modernistic orientation to the West.\nFashion and clothing.\nThe exact date of the emergence of weaving in Iran is not yet known, but it is likely to coincide with the emergence of civilisation. Ferdowsi and many historians have considered Keyumars to be first to use animals' skin and hair as clothing, while others propose Hushang. Ferdowsi considers Tahmuras to be a kind of textile initiator in Iran. The clothing of ancient Iran took an advanced form, and the fabric and colour of clothing became very important. Depending on the social status, eminence, climate of the region and the season, Persian clothing during the Achaemenian period took various forms. This clothing, in addition to being functional, had an aesthetic role.\nCinema, animation and theatre.\nA third-millennium BC earthen goblet discovered at the Burnt City in southeast Iran depicts what could be the world's oldest example of animation. The earliest attested Iranian examples of visual representations, however, are traced back to the bas-reliefs of Persepolis, the ritual centre of the Achaemenid Empire.\nThe first Iranian filmmaker was probably Mirza Ebrahim (Akkas Bashi), the court photographer of Mozaffar-ed-Din of the Qajar Empire. Mirza Ebrahim obtained a camera and filmed the Qajar ruler's visit to Europe. In 1904, Mirza Ebrahim (Sahhaf Bashi) opened the first public cinema in Tehran. The first Iranian feature film, \"Abi and Rabi\", was a silent comedy directed by Ovanes Ohanian in 1930. The first sound one, \"Lor Girl\", was produced by Ardeshir Irani and Abd-ol-Hosein Sepanta in 1932. Iran's animation industry began by the 1950s and was followed by the establishment of the influential Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults in 1965.\nWith the screening of the films \"Qeysar\" and \"The Cow\", directed by Masoud Kimiai and Dariush Mehrjui respectively in 1969, alternative films set out to establish their status in the film industry and Bahram Beyzai's \"Downpour\" and Nasser Taghvai's \"Tranquility in the Presence of Others\" followed. Attempts to organise a film festival, which had begun in 1954 within the Golrizan Festival, resulted in the festival of Sepas in 1969. It also resulted in the formation of Tehran's World Film Festival in 1973.\nFollowing the Cultural Revolution, a new age emerged in Iranian cinema, starting with \"Long Live!\" by Khosrow Sinai and followed by other directors, such as Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi. Kiarostami, an acclaimed director, planted Iran firmly on the map of world cinema when he won the for \"Taste of Cherry\" in 1997. The presence of Iranian films in prestigious international festivals, such as Cannes, Venice and Berlin, attracted attention to Iranian films. In 2006, 6 films represented Iranian cinema at Berlin; critics considered this a remarkable event in Iranian cinema. Asghar Farhadi, an Iranian director, has received a Golden Globe Award and two Academy Awards, representing Iran for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012 and 2017, with \"A Separation\" and \"The Salesman\". In 2020, Ashkan Rahgozar's \"The Last Fiction\" became the first representative of Iranian animated cinema in the competition section, in Best Animated Feature and Best Picture categories at the Academy Awards.\nThe oldest Iranian initiation of theatre can be traced to ancient epic ceremonial theatres such as \"Sug-e Si\u0101vu\u0691\" (\"mourning of Si\u0101va\u0691\"), as well as dances and theatre narrations of Iranian mythological tales reported by Herodotus and Xenophon. Iran's traditional theatrical genres include Baqq\u0101l-b\u0101zi (\"grocer play\", a form of slapstick comedy), Ruhowzi (or \"Taxt-howzi\", comedy performed over a courtyard pool covered with boards), Si\u0101h-b\u0101zi (the central comedian appears in blackface), S\u0101ye-b\u0101zi (shadow play), Xeyme-\u0691ab-b\u0101zi (marionette), and Arusak-b\u0101zi (puppetry), and Ta'zie (religious tragedy plays).\nThe Roudaki Hall is home to the Tehran Symphony Orchestra, the Tehran Opera Orchestra, and the Iranian National Ballet Company, and was officially renamed \"Vahdat Hall\" after the Revolution.\nMedia.\nIran's largest media corporation is the state-owned IRIB. The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance is responsible for the cultural policy, including activities regarding communications and information.\nMost of the newspapers published in Iran are in Persian, the country's official and national language. The country's most widely circulated periodicals are based in Tehran, among which are \"Etemad\", \"Ettela'at\", \"Kayhan\", \"Hamshahri\", \"Resalat\", and \"Shargh\". \"Tehran Times\", \"Iran Daily\", and \"Financial Tribune\" are among the famous English-language newspapers based in Iran.\nIran ranks 17th among countries by number of Internet users. Google Search is Iran's most widely used search engine and Instagram is the most popular online social networking service. Direct access to many worldwide mainstream websites has been blocked in Iran, including Facebook, which has been blocked since 2009. About 90% of Iran's e-commerce takes place on the Iranian online store Digikala, which has around 750,000 visitors per day and is the most visited online store in the Middle East.\nCuisine.\nIranian main dishes include varieties of kebab, pilaf, stew (khoresh), soup and \u0101sh, and omelette. Lunch and dinner meals are commonly accompanied by side dishes such as plain yogurt or mast-o-khiar, sabzi, salad Shirazi, and torshi, and might follow dishes such as borani, Mirza Qasemi, or kashk e bademjan. In Iranian culture, tea is widely consumed. Iran is the world's seventh major tea producer. One of Iran's most popular desserts is the falude. There is also the popular saffron ice cream, known as \"Bastani Sonnati\" (\"traditional ice cream\"), which is sometimes accompanied with carrot juice. Iran is also famous for its caviar.\nTypical Iranian main dishes are combinations of rice with meat, vegetables and nuts. Herbs are frequently used, along with fruits such as plums, pomegranates, quince, prunes, apricots and raisins. Characteristic Iranian spices and flavourings such as saffron, cardamom, and dried lime and other sources of sour flavoring, cinnamon, turmeric and parsley are mixed and used in various dishes.\nSports.\nIran is the most likely birthplace of polo, locally known as Chogan, with its earliest records attributed to the ancient Medes. Freestyle wrestling is traditionally considered the national sport, and Iran's wrestlers have been world champions many times. Iran's traditional wrestling, called \"ko\u0691ti e pahlev\u0101ni\" (\"heroic wrestling\"), is registered on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Iran's National Olympic Committee was founded in 1947. Wrestlers and weightlifters have achieved the country's highest records at the Olympics. In 1974, Iran became the first country in West Asia to host the Asian Games.\nAs a mountainous country, Iran is a venue for skiing, snowboarding, hiking, rock climbing, and mountain climbing. It is home to ski resorts, the most famous being Tochal, Dizin, and Shemshak. Dizin is the largest, and authorised by FIS to administer international competitions.\nFootball is the most popular sport, with the men's national team having won the Asian Cup three times. The men's team ranks 2nd in Asia and 20th in the FIFA World Rankings as of April 2024[ [update]]. The Azadi Stadium in Tehran is the largest association football stadium in West Asia and on a list of top-20 stadiums in the world. Volleyball is the second most popular sport. Having won the 2011 and 2013 Asian Men's Volleyball Championships, the men's national team is the 2nd strongest in Asia, and 15th in the FIVB World Rankings as of January\u00a02024[ [update]]. Basketball is also popular, with the men's national team having won three Asian Championships since 2007.\nObservances.\nIran's official New Year begins with Nowruz, an ancient Iranian tradition celebrated annually on the vernal equinox and described as the \"Persian New Year\". It was registered on the UNESCO's list of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2009. On the eve of the last Wednesday of the preceding year, as a prelude to Nowruz, the ancient festival of \u0628\u0101r\u0691anbe Suri celebrates \u0100tar (\"fire\") by performing rituals such as jumping over bonfires and lighting fireworks.\nYald\u0101, another ancient tradition, commemorates the ancient goddess Mithra and marks the longest night of the year on the eve of the winter solstice (usually on 20 or 21 December), during which families gather to recite poetry and eat fruits. In some regions of Mazanderan and Markazi, there is a midsummer festival, Tirg\u0101n, which is observed on Tir 13 (2 or 3July) as a celebration of water.\nIslamic annual events such as Ramez\u0101n, Eid e Fetr, and Ruz e \u0100\u0691ur\u0101 are marked by the country's population, Christian traditions such as Noel, elle ye Ruze, and Eid e P\u0101k are observed by the Christian communities, Jewish traditions such as Hanuk\u0101 and Eid e Fatir (Pesah) are observed by the Jewish communities, and Zoroastrian traditions such as Sade and Mehrg\u0101n are observed by the Zoroastrians.\nPublic holidays.\nWith 26, Iran has one of the world's highest number of public holidays. It ranks 1st in the world with the most paid leave days: 52. Iran's official calendar is the Solar Hejri calendar, beginning at the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. Each of the 12 months of the Solar Hejri calendar correspond with a zodiac sign, and the length of each year is solar. Alternatively, the Lunar Hejri calendar is used to indicate Islamic events, and the Gregorian calendar marks international events.\nLegal public holidays based on the Iranian solar calendar include the cultural celebrations of Nowruz (Farvardin 1\u20134; 21\u201324 March) and Sizdebedar (Farvardin 13; 2April), and the political events of Islamic Republic Day (Farvardin 12; 1April), the death of Ruhollah Khomeini (Khordad 14; 4June), the Khordad 15 event (Khordad 15; 5June), the anniversary of the Iranian Revolution (Bahman 22; 10 February), and Oil Nationalisation Day (Esfand 29; 19 March).\nLunar Islamic public holidays include Tasua (Muharram 9), Ashura (Muharram 10), Arba'een (Safar 20), Muhammad's death (Safar 28), the death of Ali al-Ridha (Safar 29 or 30), the birthday of Muhammad (Rabi-al-Awwal 17), the death of Fatimah (Jumada-al-Thani 3), the birthday of Ali (Rajab 13), Muhammad's first revelation (Rajab 27), the birthday of Muhammad al-Mahdi (Sha'ban 15), the death of Ali (Ramadan 21), Eid al-Fitr (Shawwal 1\u20132), the death of Ja'far al-Sadiq (Shawwal 25), Eid al-Qurban (Zulhijja 10), and Eid al-Qadir (Zulhijja 18).\nExplanatory notes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nFootnotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n<templatestyles src=\"Plain navboxes/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["35413648", "204260", "14653"], "permutation_1": ["35413648", "14653", "204260"], "permutation_2": ["14653", "204260", "35413648"], "permutation_3": ["204260", "14653", "35413648"]}
{"id": "3hop2__30796_744084_24137", "docs_added": {"5122699": "John Kerry\nAmerican politician and diplomat (born 1943)\nJohn Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician, and diplomat who served as the 68th United States secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 in the administration of Barack Obama. A member of the Forbes family and of the Democratic Party, he previously represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1985 to 2013 and later served as the first U.S. special presidential envoy for climate from 2021 to 2024. Kerry was the Democratic nominee for president of the United States in the 2004 election, narrowly losing to then-incumbent president George W. Bush.\nKerry grew up in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. In 1966, after graduating from Yale University, he enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve, ultimately attaining the rank of lieutenant. During the Vietnam War, Kerry served a brief tour in South Vietnam. While commanding a Swift boat, he sustained three wounds in combat with the Viet Cong, for which he earned three Purple Heart medals. Kerry was also awarded the Silver Star Medal and the Bronze Star Medal for conduct in separate military engagements. After completing his active military service, Kerry returned to the United States and became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. He gained national recognition as an anti-war activist, serving as a spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization. Kerry testified in the Fulbright Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where he described the United States government's policy in Vietnam as the cause of war crimes.\nIn 1972, Kerry entered electoral politics as a Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives in Massachusetts's 5th congressional district, losing to Republican Paul W. Cronin in the general election. He subsequently worked as a radio talk show host and as the executive director of an advocacy organization while attending law school. After a period in private legal practice, he was elected the 66th lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1982. In 1984, Kerry was elected to the United States Senate. In 2004, Kerry won the Democratic presidential nomination alongside Senator John Edwards. He lost the Electoral College and the popular vote by slim margins, winning 251 electors to Bush's 286 and 48.3% of the popular vote to Bush's 50.7%.\nIn January 2013, Kerry was nominated by President Obama to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and was subsequently confirmed by his Senate colleagues. He was U.S. secretary of state throughout the second term of the Obama administration from 2013 to 2017. During his tenure, he initiated the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks and negotiated agreements restricting the nuclear program of Iran, including the 2013 Joint Plan of Action and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In 2015, Kerry signed the Paris Agreement on climate change on behalf of the United States.\nIn January 2021, Kerry returned to government, becoming the first person to hold the position of U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, under President Joe Biden. On March 6, Kerry left this position to work on Biden's 2024 presidential campaign. Kerry was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Biden in May 2024.\nEarly life and education (1943\u20131966).\nJohn Forbes Kerry was born on December 11, 1943, at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado. He is the second of four children born to Richard John Kerry, a U.S. diplomat and lawyer, and Rosemary Forbes, a nurse and social activist. His father was raised Catholic (John's paternal grandparents were Austro-Hungarian Jewish immigrants who converted to Catholicism) and his mother was Episcopalian. He was raised with an elder sister Margaret, a younger sister Diana, and a younger brother Cameron. The children were raised in their father's Catholic faith, and John served as an altar boy.\nKerry was originally considered a military brat, until his father was discharged from the Army Air Corps in 1944. Kerry lived in Groton, Massachusetts his first year and Millis, Massachusetts afterwards before moving to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. at age seven, when his father took a position in the Department of the Navy's Office of General Counsel and soon became a diplomat in the State Department's Bureau of United Nations Affairs.\nAs members of the Forbes and Dudley\u2013Winthrop families, his maternal extended family enjoyed great wealth. Kerry's parents themselves were considered upper-middle class. They turned to his wealthy great-aunt, Clara Winthrop, who paid for his attendance at elite boarding schools, such as Institut Montana Zugerberg, in Zug, Switzerland. Through his maternal ancestry, Kerry also descends from Rev. James McGregor who was among the first 500 Scots-Irish immigrants to Boston Harbor in the 18th century.\nAt the age of ten, Kerry's father took a position as the U.S. Attorney for Berlin. When Kerry was twelve, he crossed into the Soviet Occupation Zone to visit Hitler's bunker and ride through the Brandenburg Gate. \nIn 1957, his father was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway, and Kerry was sent back to the United States to attend boarding school. He first attended the Fessenden School in Newton, Massachusetts, and later St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, where he learned skills in public speaking and began developing an interest in politics. Kerry founded the John Winant Society at St. Paul's to debate the issues of the day; the Society still exists there. In 1960, while at St. Paul's, he played bass in a minor rock band called The Electras with six of his classmates. The band had about five hundred copies of one album printed in 1961, which they sold some of at dances at the school; it was made available on streaming platforms many years later.\nIn 1962, Kerry attended Yale University, majoring in political science and residing in Jonathan Edwards College. By that year, his parents returned to Groton. While at Yale, Kerry briefly dated Janet Auchincloss, the younger half-sister of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Through Auchincloss, Kerry was invited to a day of sailing with then-President John F. Kennedy and his family.\nKerry played on the varsity Yale Bulldogs men's soccer team, earning his only letter in his senior year. He also played freshman and junior varsity hockey and, in his senior year, junior varsity lacrosse. In addition, he was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity and took flying lessons.\nIn his sophomore year, Kerry became the chairman of the Liberal Party of the Yale Political Union, and a year later he served as president of the union. Amongst his influential teachers in this period was Professor H. Bradford Westerfield, who was himself a former president of the Political Union. His involvement with the Political Union gave him an opportunity to be involved with important issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and the New Frontier program. He also became a member of Skull and Bones Society, and traveled to Switzerland through AIESEC Yale.\nUnder the guidance of the speaking coach and history professor Rollin G. Osterweis, Kerry won many debates against other college students from across the nation. In March 1965, as the Vietnam War escalated, he won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that was critical of U.S. foreign policy. In the speech he said, \"It is the spectre of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism and thus, it is self-defeating.\"\nKerry graduated from Yale with a bachelor of arts degree in 1966. Overall, he had below-average grades, graduating with a cumulative average of 76 over his four years. His freshman-year average was a 71, but he improved to an 81 average for his senior year. He never received an \"A\" during his time at Yale; his highest grade was an 89.\nMilitary service (1966\u20131970).\nDuty on USS \"Gridley\".\nOn February 18, 1966, Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserve. He began his active duty military service on August 19, 1966. After completing 16 weeks of Officer Candidate School at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island, Kerry received his officer's commission on December 16, 1966. During the 2004 election, Kerry posted his military records at his website, and permitted reporters to inspect his medical records. In 2005, Kerry released his military and medical records to the representatives of three news organizations, but has not authorized full public access to those records.\nDuring his tour on the guided missile frigate , Kerry requested duty in South Vietnam, listing as his first preference a position as the commander of a Fast Patrol Craft (PCF), also known as a \"Swift boat\". These boats have aluminum hulls and have little or no armor, but are heavily armed and rely on speed. \"I didn't really want to get involved in the war,\" Kerry said in a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. \"When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing.\" However, his second choice of billet was on a river patrol boat, or \"PBR\", which at the time was serving a more dangerous duty on the rivers of Vietnam.\nMilitary honors.\nDuring the night of December 2 and early morning of December 3, 1968, Kerry was in charge of a small boat operating near a peninsula north of Cam Ranh Bay together with a Swift boat (PCF-60). According to Kerry and the two crewmen who accompanied him that night, Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis, they surprised a group of Vietnamese men unloading sampans at a river crossing, who began running and failed to obey an order to stop. As the men fled, Kerry and his crew opened fire on the sampans and destroyed them, then rapidly left. During this encounter, Kerry received a shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow. It was for this injury that Kerry received his first Purple Heart Medal.\nKerry received his second Purple Heart for a wound received in action on the B\u1ed3 \u0110\u1ec1 River on February 20, 1969. The plan had been for the Swift boats to be accompanied by support helicopters. On the way up the Bo De, however, the helicopters were attacked. As the Swift boats reached the C\u1eeda L\u1edbn River, Kerry's boat was hit by a B-40 rocket (rocket propelled grenade round), and a piece of shrapnel hit Kerry's left leg, wounding him. Thereafter, enemy fire ceased and his boat reached the Gulf of Thailand safely. Kerry continues to have shrapnel embedded in his left thigh because the doctors that first treated him decided to remove the damaged tissue and close the wound with sutures rather than make a wide opening to remove the shrapnel. Although wounded like several others earlier that day, Kerry did not lose any time off from duty.\nSilver Star.\nEight days later, on February 28, 1969, came the events for which Kerry was awarded his Silver Star Medal. On this occasion, Kerry was in tactical command of his Swift boat and two other Swift boats during a combat operation. Their mission on the Duong Keo River included bringing an underwater demolition team and dozens of South Vietnamese Marines to destroy enemy sampans, structures and bunkers as described in the story \"The Death Of PCF 43\". Running into heavy small arms fire from the river banks, Kerry \"directed the units to turn to the beach and charge the Viet Cong positions\" and he \"expertly directed\" his boat's fire causing the enemy to flee while at the same time coordinating the insertion of the ninety South Vietnamese troops (according to the original medal citation signed by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt). Moving a short distance upstream, Kerry's boat was the target of a B-40 rocket round; Kerry charged the enemy positions and as his boat hove to and beached, a Viet Cong (\"VC\") insurgent armed with a rocket launcher emerged from a spider hole and ran. While the boat's gunner opened fire, wounding the VC in the leg, and while the other boats approached and offered cover fire, Kerry jumped from the boat to pursue the VC insurgent, subsequently killing him and capturing his loaded rocket launcher.\nKerry's commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander George Elliott, stated to Douglas Brinkley in 2003 that he did not know whether to court-martial Kerry for beaching the boat without orders or give him a medal for saving the crew. Elliott recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, and Zumwalt flew into An Thoi to personally award medals to Kerry and the rest of the sailors involved in the mission. The Navy's account of Kerry's actions is presented in the original signed by Zumwalt. The engagement was documented in an after-action report, a press release written on March 1, 1969, and a historical summary dated March 17, 1969.\nBronze Star.\nOn March 13, 1969, on the B\u00e1i H\u00e1p River, Kerry was in charge of one of five Swift boats that were returning to their base after performing an Operation Sealords mission to transport South Vietnamese troops from the garrison at C\u00e1i N\u01b0\u1edbc and MIKE Force advisors for a raid on a Vietcong camp located on the Rach Dong Cung canal. Earlier in the day, Kerry received a slight shrapnel wound in the buttocks from blowing up a rice bunker. Debarking some but not all of the passengers at a small village, the boats approached a fishing weir; one group of boats went around to the left of the weir, hugging the shore, and a group with Kerry's PCF-94 boat went around to the right, along the shoreline. A mine was detonated directly beneath the lead boat, PCF-3, as it crossed the weir to the left, lifting PCF-3 \"about 2\u20133 ft out of water\".\nJames Rassmann, a Green Beret advisor who was aboard Kerry's PCF-94, was knocked overboard when, according to witnesses and the documentation of the event, a mine or rocket exploded close to the boat. According to the documentation for the event, Kerry's arm was injured when he was thrown against a bulkhead during the explosion. PCF 94 returned to the scene and Kerry rescued Rassmann who was receiving sniper fire from the water. Kerry received the Bronze Star Medal with Combat \"V\" for \"heroic achievement\", for his actions during this incident; he also received his third Purple Heart.\nReturn from Vietnam.\nAfter Kerry's third qualifying wound, he was entitled per Navy regulations to reassignment away from combat duties. Kerry's preferred choice for reassignment was as a military aide in Boston, New York City or Washington, D.C. On April 11, 1969, he reported to the Brooklyn-based Atlantic Military Sea Transportation Service, where he would remain on active duty for the following year as a personal aide to an officer, Rear Admiral Walter Schlech. On January 1, 1970, Kerry was temporarily promoted to full lieutenant. Kerry had agreed to an extension of his active duty obligation from December 1969 to August 1970 in order to perform Swift Boat duty. John Kerry was on active duty in the United States Navy from August 1966 until January 1970. He continued to serve in the Naval Reserve until February 1978.\n\"Swiftboating\" controversy.\nWith the continuing controversy that had surrounded the military service of George W. Bush since the 2000 presidential election (when he was accused of having used his father's political influence to gain entrance to the Texas Air National Guard, thereby protecting himself from conscription into the United States Army, and possible service in the Vietnam War), John Kerry's contrasting status as a decorated Vietnam War veteran posed a problem for Bush's re-election campaign, which Republicans sought to counter by calling Kerry's war record into question. As the presidential campaign of 2004 developed, approximately 250 members of a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT, later renamed Swift Vets and POWs for Truth) opposed Kerry's campaign. The group held press conferences, ran ads and endorsed a book questioning Kerry's service record and his military awards. The group included several members of Kerry's unit, such as Larry Thurlow, who commanded a swift boat alongside of Kerry's, and Stephen Gardner, who served on Kerry's boat. The campaign inspired the widely used political pejorative '\"swiftboating,\" to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. Most of Kerry's former crewmates have stated that SBVT's allegations are false.\nAnti-war activism (1970\u20131971).\nAfter returning to the United States, Kerry moved to Waltham, Massachusetts and joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Then numbering about 20,000, VVAW was considered by some (including the administration of President Richard Nixon) to be an effective, if controversial, component of the antiwar movement. Kerry participated in the \"Winter Soldier Investigation\" conducted by VVAW of U.S. atrocities in Vietnam, and he appears in a film by that name that documents the investigation. According to Nixon Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, \"I didn't approve of what he did, but I understood the protesters quite well\", and he declined two requests from the Navy to court martial Reserve Lieutenant Kerry over his antiwar activity.\nOn April 22, 1971, Kerry appeared before a U.S. Senate committee hearing on proposals relating to ending the war. The day after this testimony, Kerry participated in a demonstration with thousands of other veterans in which he and other Vietnam War veterans threw their medals and service ribbons over a fence erected at the front steps of the United States Capitol building to dramatize their opposition to the war. Jack Smith, a Marine, read a statement explaining why the veterans were returning their military awards to the government. For more than two hours, almost 1,000 angry veterans tossed their medals, ribbons, hats, jackets, and military papers over the fence. Each veteran gave his or her name, hometown, branch of service and a statement. Kerry threw some of his own decorations and awards as well as some given to him by other veterans to throw. As Kerry threw his decorations over the fence, his statement was: \"I'm not doing this for any violent reasons, but for peace and justice, and to try and make this country wake up once and for all.\"\nKerry was arrested on May 30, 1971, during a VVAW march to honor American POWs held captive by North Vietnam. The march was planned as a multi-day event from Concord to Boston, and while in Lexington, participants tried to camp on the village green. At 2:30a.m., local and state police arrested 441 demonstrators, including Kerry, for trespassing. All were given the Miranda Warning and were hauled away on school buses to spend the night at the Lexington Public Works Garage. Kerry and the other protesters later paid a $5 fine, and were released. The mass arrests caused a community backlash and ended up giving positive coverage to the VVAW.\nEarly political career (1972\u20131985).\n1972 congressional election.\nIn 1970, Kerry had considered running for Congress in the Democratic primary against hawkish Democrat Philip J. Philbin of Massachusetts's 3rd congressional district, but deferred in favor of Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest and anti-war activist, who went on to defeat Philbin. In February 1972, Kerry's wife bought a house in Worcester, with Kerry intending to run against the 4th district's aging thirteen-term incumbent Democrat, Harold Donohue. The couple never moved in. After Republican Congressman F. Bradford Morse of the neighboring 5th district announced his retirement and then resignation to become Under-Secretary-General for Political and General Assembly Affairs at the United Nations, the couple instead rented an apartment in Lowell, so that Kerry could run to succeed him.\nIncluding Kerry, the Democratic primary race had 10 candidates, including attorney Paul J. Sheehy, State Representative Anthony R. DiFruscia, John J. Desmond and Robert B. Kennedy. Kerry ran a \"very expensive, sophisticated campaign\", financed by out-of-state backers and supported by many young volunteers. DiFruscia's campaign headquarters shared the same building as Kerry's. On the eve of the September 19 primary, police found Kerry's younger brother Cameron and campaign field director Thomas J. Vallely, breaking into where the building's telephone lines were located. They were arrested and charged with \"breaking and entering with the intent to commit grand larceny\", but the charges were dropped a year later. DiFruscia alleged that the two were trying to disrupt his get-out-the vote efforts. Vallely and Cameron Kerry maintained that they were only checking their own telephone lines because they had received an anonymous call warning that the Kerry lines would be cut.\nDespite the arrests, Kerry won the primary with 20,771 votes (27.56%). Sheehy came second with 15,641 votes (20.75%), followed by DiFruscia with 12,222 votes (16.22%), Desmond with 10,213 votes (13.55%) and Kennedy with 5,632 votes (7.47%). The remaining 10,891 votes were split amongst the other five candidates, with 1970 nominee Richard Williams coming last with just 1,706 votes (2.26%).\nIn the general election, Kerry was initially favored to defeat the Republican candidate, former State Representative Paul W. Cronin, and conservative Democrat Roger P. Durkin, who ran as an Independent. A week after the primary, one poll put Kerry 26-points ahead of Cronin. His campaign called for a national health insurance system, discounted prescription drugs for the unemployed, a jobs program to clean up the Merrimack River and rent controls in Lowell and Lawrence. A major obstacle, however, was the district's leading newspaper, the conservative \"The Sun\". The paper editorialized against him. It also ran critical news stories about his out-of-state contributions and his \"carpetbagging\", because he had only moved into the district in April. Subsequently, released \"Watergate\" Oval Office tape recordings of the Nixon White House showed that defeating Kerry's candidacy had attracted the personal attention of President Nixon. Kerry himself asserts that Nixon sent operatives to Lowell to help derail his campaign.\nThe race was the most expensive for Congress in the country that year and four days before the general election, Durkin withdrew and endorsed Cronin, hoping to see Kerry defeated. The week before, a poll had put Kerry 10 points ahead of Cronin, with Durkin at 13%. In the final days of the campaign, Kerry sensed that it was \"slipping away\" and Cronin emerged victorious by 110,970 votes (53.45%) to Kerry's 92,847 (44.72%). After his defeat, Kerry lamented in a letter to supporters that \"for two solid weeks, [\"The Sun\"] called me un-American, New Left antiwar agitator, unpatriotic, and labeled me every other 'un-' and 'anti-' that they could find. It's hard to believe that one newspaper could be so powerful, but they were.\" He later felt that his failure to respond directly to \"The Sun\"'s attacks cost him the race.\nLaw career.\nAfter Kerry's 1972 defeat, he and his wife bought a house in the Belvidere section of Lowell, Massachusetts, entering a decade which his brother Cameron later called \"the years in exile\". He spent some time working as a fundraiser for the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE), an international humanitarian organization. In September 1973, he entered Boston College Law School. While studying, Kerry worked as a talk radio host on WBZ and, in July 1974, was named executive director of Mass Action, a Massachusetts advocacy association.\nKerry received his juris doctor (J.D.) from Boston College in 1976. While in law school he had been a student prosecutor in the office of the District Attorney of Middlesex County, John J. Droney. After passing the bar exam and being admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1976, he went to work in that office as a full-time prosecutor and moved to Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.\nIn January 1977, Droney promoted him to First Assistant District Attorney, essentially making Kerry his campaign and media surrogate because Droney was afflicted with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease). As First Assistant, Kerry tried cases, which included winning convictions in a high-profile rape case and a murder. He also played a role in administering the office, including initiating the creation of special white-collar and organized crime units, creating programs to address the problems of rape and other crime victims and witnesses, and managing trial calendars to reflect case priorities. In 1978, Kerry launched a criminal investigation against Senator Edward Brooke, regarding \"misstatements\" in his first divorce trial. The inquiry ended with no charges being brought after investigators and prosecutors determined that Brooke's misstatements were pertinent to the case, but were not material enough to have affected the outcome.\nDroney's health was poor and Kerry had decided to run for his position in the 1978 election should Droney drop out. However, Droney was re-elected and his health improved; he went on to re-assume many of the duties that he had delegated to Kerry. Kerry thus decided to leave, departing in 1979 with assistant DA Roanne Sragow to set up their own law firm. Kerry also worked as a commentator for WCVB-TV and co-founded a bakery, Kilvert & Forbes Ltd., with businessman and former Kennedy aide K. Dun Gifford.\nLieutenant Governor of Massachusetts.\nIn the 1982 Massachusetts gubernatorial election, Lieutenant Governor Thomas P. O'Neill III declined to seek a third term, instead deciding to run for governor of Massachusetts. Kerry declared his candidacy, entering the primary election alongside Massachusetts Secretary of Environmental Affairs Evelyn Murphy, State Senator Samuel Rotondi, State Representative Lou Nickinello, and Lois Pines.\nKerry won the nomination with 325,890 votes (29%) to Murphy's 286,378 (25.48%), Rotondi's 228,086 (20.29%), Nickinello's 150,829 (13.42%) and Pines' 132,734 (11.81%). In the concurrent gubernatorial primary, former Governor Michael Dukakis defeated O'Neill and incumbent Governor Edward J. King. The Dukakis and Kerry ticket defeated the Republican ticket of John W. Sears and Leon Lombardi in the general election by 1,219,109 votes (61.92%) to 749,679 (38.08%).\nAs Lieutenant Governor, Kerry led meetings of the Massachusetts Governor's Council. Dukakis also delegated other tasks to Kerry, including serving as the state's liaison to the Federal government of the United States. He was also active on environmental issues, including combating acid rain.\n1984 U.S. Senate election.\nThe junior U.S. senator from Massachusetts, Paul Tsongas, announced in 1984 that he would be stepping down for health reasons. Kerry ran, and as in his 1982 race for Lieutenant Governor, he did not receive the endorsement of the party regulars at the state Democratic convention. Congressman James Shannon, a favorite of House Speaker Tip O'Neill, was the early favorite to win the nomination, and he \"won broad establishment support and led in early polling\". Again as in 1982, however, Kerry prevailed in a close primary.\nIn his general election campaign, Kerry promised to mix liberalism with tight budget controls. He defeated Republican Ray Shamie despite a nationwide landslide for the re-election of Republican President Ronald Reagan, for whom Massachusetts voted by a narrow margin. In his victory speech, Kerry asserted that his win meant that the people of Massachusetts \"emphatically reject the politics of selfishness and the notion that women must be treated as second-class citizens\".\nTsongas resigned on January 2, 1985, one day before the end of his term. Dukakis appointed Kerry to fill the vacancy, giving him seniority over other new senators who were sworn in on January 3, the scheduled start of their new terms.\nU.S. Senate (1985\u20132013).\nIran\u2013Contra hearings.\nOn April 18, 1985, a few months after taking his Senate seat, Kerry and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa traveled to Nicaragua and met the country's president, Daniel Ortega. Although Ortega had won internationally certified elections, the trip was criticized because Ortega and his leftist Sandinista government had strong ties to Cuba and the USSR and were accused of human rights abuses. The Sandinista government was opposed by the right-wing CIA-backed rebels known as the Contras. While in Nicaragua, Kerry and Harkin talked to people on both sides of the conflict. Through the senators, Ortega offered a cease-fire agreement in exchange for the U.S. dropping support of the Contras. The offer was denounced by the Reagan administration as a \"propaganda initiative\" designed to influence a House vote on a $14million Contra aid package, but Kerry said \"I am willing... to take the risk in the effort to put to test the good faith of the Sandinistas.\" The House voted down the Contra aid, but Ortega flew to Moscow to accept a $200million loan the next day, which in part prompted the House to pass a larger $27million aid package six weeks later.\nMeanwhile, Kerry's staff began their own investigations and, on October 14, issued a report that exposed illegal activities on the part of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who had set up a private network involving the National Security Council and the CIA to deliver military equipment to right-wing Nicaraguan rebels (Contras). In effect, North and certain members of the President's administration were accused by Kerry's report of illegally funding and supplying armed militants without the authorization of Congress. Kerry's staff investigation, based on a year-long inquiry and interviews with fifty unnamed sources, is said to raise \"serious questions about whether the United States has abided by the law in its handling of the contras over the past three years\".\nThe Kerry Committee report found that \"the Contra drug links included... payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies.\" The U.S. State Department paid over $806,000 to known drug traffickers to carry humanitarian assistance to the Contras. Kerry's findings provoked little reaction in the media and official Washington.\nThe Kerry report was a precursor to the Iran\u2013Contra affair. On May 4, 1989, North was convicted of charges relating to the Iran/Contra controversy, including three felonies. On September 16, 1991, however, North's convictions were overturned on appeal.\nGeorge H. W. Bush administration.\nOn November 15, 1988, at a businessmen's breakfast in East Lynn, Massachusetts, Kerry made a joke about then-President-elect George H. W. Bush and his running mate, saying \"if Bush is shot, the Secret Service has orders to shoot Dan Quayle.\" He apologized the following day.\nDuring their investigation of General Manuel Noriega, the \"de facto\" ruler of Panama, Kerry's staff found reason to believe that the Pakistan-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) had facilitated Noriega's drug trafficking and money laundering. This led to a separate inquiry into BCCI, and as a result, banking regulators shut down BCCI in 1991. In December 1992, Kerry and Senator Hank Brown, a Republican from Colorado, released \"The BCCI Affair\", a report on the BCCI scandal. The report showed that the bank was crooked and was working with terrorists, including Abu Nidal. It blasted the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, the Customs Service, the Federal Reserve Bank, as well as influential lobbyists and the CIA.\nKerry was criticized by some Democrats for having pursued his own party members, including former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, although Republicans said he should have pressed against some Democrats even harder. The BCCI scandal was later turned over to the Manhattan District Attorney's office.\nPrecursors to presidential bid.\nIn 1996, Kerry faced a difficult re-election fight against Governor William Weld, a popular Republican incumbent who had been re-elected in 1994 with 71% of the vote. The race was covered nationwide as one of the most closely watched Senate races that year. Kerry and Weld held several debates and negotiated a campaign spending cap of $6.9million at Kerry's Beacon Hill townhouse. Both candidates spent more than the cap, with each camp accusing the other of being first to break the agreement. During the campaign, Kerry spoke briefly at the 1996 Democratic National Convention. Kerry won re-election with 52 percent to Weld's 45 percent.\nIn the 2000 presidential election, Kerry found himself close to being chosen as the vice presidential running mate.\nA release from the presidential campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Al Gore listed Kerry on the short list to be selected as the vice-presidential nominee, along with North Carolina Senator John Edwards, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt, New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. Gore ultimately chose Lieberman.\n\"You get stuck in Iraq\" controversy.\nOn October 30, 2006, Kerry was a headline speaker at a campaign rally being held for Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. Speaking to an audience composed mainly of college students, Kerry said, \"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.\"\nThe day after he made the remark, leaders from both sides of the political spectrum criticized Kerry's remarks, which he said were a botched joke. Republicans including President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain and then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, said that Kerry's comments were insulting to American military forces fighting in Iraq. Democratic Representative Harold Ford Jr. called on Kerry to apologize.\nKerry initially stated: \"I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy\". Kerry also responded to criticism from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.\nKerry said that he had intended the remark as a jab at President Bush, and described the remarks as a \"botched joke\", having inadvertently left out the key word \"us\" (which would have been, \"If you don't, you get \"us\" stuck in Iraq\"), as well as leaving the phrase \"just ask President Bush\" off of the end of the sentence. In Kerry's prepared remarks, which he released during the ensuing media frenzy, the corresponding line was \"...you end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush\". He also said that from the context of the speech which, prior to the \"stuck in Iraq\" line, made several specific references to Bush and elements of his biography, that Kerry was referring to President Bush and not American troops in general.\nAfter two days of media coverage, citing a desire not to be a diversion, Kerry apologized to those who took offense at what he called the misinterpretation of his comment.\nAfghanistan and Pakistan.\nA \"Washington Post\" report in May 2011 stated that Kerry \"has emerged in the past few years as an important envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan during times of crisis\", as he undertook another trip to the two countries. The killing of Osama bin Laden \"has generated perhaps the most important crossroads yet\", the report continued, as the senator spoke at a press conference and prepared to fly from Kabul to Pakistan. Among matters discussed during the May visit to Pakistan, under the general rubric of \"recalibrating\" the bilateral relationship, Kerry sought and retrieved from the Pakistanis the tail-section of the U.S. helicopter which had had to be abandoned at Abbottabad during the bin Laden strike. In 2013, Kerry met with Pakistan's army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to discuss the peace process with the Taliban in Afghanistan.\nVoting record.\nOverall.\nMost analyses place Kerry's voting record on the left within the Senate Democratic caucus. During the 2004 presidential election he was portrayed as a staunch liberal by conservative groups and the Bush campaign, who often noted that in 2003 Kerry was rated the top Senate liberal by \"National Journal\". However, that rating was based only upon voting on legislation within that past year. In fact, in terms of career voting records, the \"National Journal\" found that Kerry is the 11th most liberal member of the Senate. Most analyses find that Kerry is at least slightly more liberal than the typical Democratic Senator. Kerry has stated that he opposes privatizing Social Security, supports abortion rights for adult women and minors, supports same-sex marriage, opposes capital punishment except for terrorists, supports most gun control laws, and is generally a supporter of trade agreements. In some of these, as in the case of abortion, Kerry distinguishes his personal views as in line with his Catholic faith, but believes that separation of church and state demands that he not legislate his religious beliefs upon those who do not share those beliefs. Kerry supported the North American Free Trade Agreement and Most Favored Nation status for China, but opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement.\nIn July 1997, Kerry joined his Senate colleagues in voting against ratification of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming without greenhouse gas emissions limits on nations deemed developing, including India and China. Since then, Kerry has attacked President Bush, charging him with opposition to international efforts to combat global warming.\nOn October 1, 2008, Kerry voted for Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, also known as the TARP bailout.\nIraq.\nIn the lead up to the Iraq War, Kerry said on October 9, 2002; \"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.\" Bush relied on that resolution in ordering the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Kerry also gave a January 23, 2003, speech to Georgetown University saying \"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator; leading an oppressive regime he presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.\" Kerry did, however, warn that the administration should exhaust its diplomatic avenues before launching war: \"Mr. President, do not rush to war, take the time to build the coalition, because it's not winning the war that's hard, it's winning the peace that's hard.\"\nAfter the invasion of Iraq, when no weapons of mass destruction were found, Kerry strongly criticized Bush, contending that he had misled the country: \"When the President of the United States looks at you and tells you something, there should be some trust.\"\nLibya.\nIn 2011, Kerry supported American military action in Libya.\nLeadership.\nKerry chaired the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs from 1991 to 1993. The committee's report, which Kerry endorsed, stated there was \"no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia\". In 1994 the Senate passed a resolution, sponsored by Kerry and fellow Vietnam veteran John McCain, that called for an end to the existing trade embargo against Vietnam; it was intended to pave the way for normalization. In 1995, President Bill Clinton normalized diplomatic relations with the country of Vietnam.\nKerry was the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 1987 to 1989. He was reelected to the Senate in 1990, 1996 (after winning re-election against the then-Governor of Massachusetts Republican William Weld), 2002, and 2008. In January 2009, Kerry replaced Joe Biden as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.\nAs a role model for campus leaders across the nation and strong advocate for global development, Kerry was honored by the Millennium Campus Network (MCN) as a Global Generation Award winner in 2011.\nCommittee assignments.\nDuring his tenure, Kerry served on four Senate committees and nine subcommittees:\nSeniority.\nFrom the beginning of the 113th United States Congress until his resignation, Kerry ranked as the 7th most senior U.S. Senator. Due to the longevity of Ted Kennedy's service, Kerry was the most senior \"junior Senator\" in the 111th United States Congress. On Tuesday, August 25, 2009, Kerry became the senior senator from Massachusetts following Ted Kennedy's death.\nSponsorship of legislation.\nAreas of concern in the bills Kerry introduced into the Senate included small business concerns, education, terrorism, veterans' and POW/MIA issues, and marine resource protection. A full list of Kerry's sponsored legislation was available on his Senate web site.\nDuring his Senate career, Kerry was primary sponsor of the following bills (excluding resolutions and amendments sponsored). This table does not count bills which Kerry co-sponsored.\nA chronological list of various bills and resolutions sponsored by Kerry follows.\n2004 presidential campaign.\nIn the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries, John Kerry defeated several Democratic rivals, including Sen. John Edwards (D-North Carolina), former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and retired Army General Wesley Clark. His victory in the Iowa caucuses is widely believed to be the tipping point where Kerry revived his sagging campaign in New Hampshire and the February 3, 2004, primary states like Arizona, South Carolina and New Mexico. Kerry then went on to win landslide victories in Nevada and Wisconsin. Kerry thus won the Democratic nomination to run for President of the United States against incumbent George W. Bush. On July 6, 2004, he announced his selection of John Edwards as his running mate. Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who was Kerry's 2004 campaign adviser, wrote an article in \"Time\" magazine claiming that after the election, Kerry had said that he wished he had never picked Edwards, and that the two have since stopped speaking to each other. In a subsequent appearance on ABC's \"This Week\", Kerry refused to respond to Shrum's allegation, calling it a \"ridiculous waste of time\".\nDuring his bid to be elected president in 2004, Kerry frequently criticized President George W. Bush for starting the Iraq War. While Kerry had initially voted in support of authorizing President Bush to use force in dealing with Saddam Hussein, he voted against an $87billion supplemental appropriations bill to pay for the subsequent war. His statement on March 16, 2004, \"I actually did vote for the $87billion before I voted against it\", helped the Bush campaign to paint him as a flip-flopper and has been cited as contributing to Kerry's defeat.\nOn November 3, 2004, Kerry conceded the race. Kerry won 59.03 million votes, or 48.3 percent of the popular vote; Bush won 62.04 million votes, or 50.7 percent of the popular vote. Kerry carried states with a total of 252 electoral votes. One Kerry elector voted for Kerry's running mate, Edwards, so in the final tally Kerry had 251 electoral votes to Bush's 286. He was the first Democrat since Michael Dukakis in 1988 to lose the popular vote in a presidential election, and until Kamala Harris's loss in 2024, he was the most recent Democrat to do so.\nSubsequent presidential-election activities.\nImmediately after the 2004 election, some Democrats mentioned Kerry as a possible contender for the 2008 Democratic nomination. His brother had said such a campaign was \"conceivable\", and Kerry himself reportedly said at a farewell party for his 2004 campaign staff, \"There's always another four years\".\nKerry established a separate political action committee, Keeping America's Promise, which declared as its mandate \"A Democratic Congress will restore accountability to Washington and help change a disastrous course in Iraq\", and raised money and channeled contributions to Democratic candidates in state and federal races. Through Keeping America's Promise in 2005, Kerry raised over $5.5million for other Democrats up and down the ballot. Through his campaign account and his political action committee, the Kerry campaign operation generated more than $10million for various party committees and 179 candidates for the U.S. House, Senate, state and local offices in 42 states focusing on the midterm elections during the 2006 election cycle. \"Cumulatively, John Kerry has done as much if not more than any other individual senator\", Hassan Nemazee, the national finance chairman of the DSCC said.\nOn January 10, 2008, Kerry endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama for president. He was mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate for Senator Obama, although fellow Senator Joe Biden was eventually chosen. After Biden's acceptance of the vice presidential nomination, speculation arose that John Kerry would be a candidate for Secretary of State in the Obama administration. However, Senator Hillary Clinton was offered the position.\nDuring the 2012 Obama reelection campaign, Kerry participated in one-on-one debate prep with the president, impersonating the Republican candidate Mitt Romney.\nSecretary of State (2013\u20132017).\nNomination and confirmation.\nOn December 15, 2012, several news outlets reported that President Barack Obama would nominate Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, after Susan Rice, widely seen as Obama's preferred choice, withdrew her name from consideration citing a politicized confirmation process following criticism of her response to the 2012 Benghazi attack. On December 21, Obama proposed the nomination, which received positive commentary. His confirmation hearing took place on January 24, 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the same panel where he first testified in 1971. The committee unanimously voted to approve him on January 29, 2013, and the same day the full Senate confirmed him on a vote of 94\u20133. In a letter to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Kerry announced his resignation from the Senate effective February 1.\nTenure.\nKerry was sworn in as Secretary of State on February 1, 2013.\nWhile serving as the Secretary of State, Kerry spoke in the French language on several occasions in his official capacity.\nAfter six months of rigorous diplomacy within the Middle East, Kerry was able to have Israeli and Palestinian negotiators agree to start the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks. Senior U.S. officials stated the two sides were able to meet on July 30, 2013, at the State Department without American mediators following a dinner the previous evening hosted by Kerry.\nOn September 27, 2013, he met with the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the P5+1 and Iran summit, which eventually led to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. It was the highest-level direct contact between the United States and Iran in the last six years, and made him the first U.S. Secretary of State to have met with his Iranian counterpart since 1979 Iranian Revolution.\nIn the State Department, Kerry quickly earned a reputation \"for being aloof, keeping to himself, and not bothering to read staff memos\". Career State Department officials complained that power became too centralized under Kerry's leadership, which slowed department operations when Kerry was on frequent overseas trips. Others in State described Kerry as having \"a kind of diplomatic attention deficit disorder\" as he shifted from topic to topic instead of focusing on long-term strategy. When asked whether he was traveling too much, he responded, \"Hell no. I'm not slowing down.\" Despite Kerry's early achievements, morale at State was lower than under Hillary Clinton, according to department employees. However, after Kerry's first six months in the State Department, a Gallup poll found he had high approval ratings among Americans as Secretary of State. After a year, another poll showed Kerry's favorability continued to rise. Less than two years into Kerry's term, the Foreign Policy Magazine's 2014 Ivory Tower survey of international relations scholars asked, \"Who was the most effective U.S. Secretary of State in the past 50 years?\"; John Kerry and Lawrence Eagleburger tied for 11th place out of the 15 confirmed Secretaries of State in that period.\nIn January 2014, having met with Vatican Secretary of State Archbishop Pietro Parolin, Kerry said: \"We touched on just about every major issue that we are both working on, that are issues of concern to all of us. First of all, we talked at great length about Syria, and I was particularly appreciative for the Archbishop's raising this issue, and equally grateful for the Holy Father's comments\u00a0\u2013 the Pope's comments yesterday regarding his support for the GenevaII process. We welcome that support. It is very important to have broad support, and I know that the Pope is particularly concerned about the massive numbers of displaced human beings and the violence that has taken over 130,000 lives.\"\nKerry expressed support for Israel's right to defend itself during the 2014 Israel\u2013Gaza conflict.\nKerry said the United States supported the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen because Saudi Arabia, an ally, was threatened \"very directly\" by the takeover of neighboring Yemen by the Houthis, but noted that the United States would not reflexively support Saudi Arabia's proxy wars against Iran.\nOn December 28, 2016, soon after United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 passed 14\u20130 with the U.S. abstaining, Kerry joined the rest of the U.N. Security Council in strongly criticizing Israel's settlement policies in a speech. His speech and criticisms met negative reactions from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while UK Prime Minister Theresa May distanced the UK from Kerry's strongly worded speech in what appeared to be an attempt to build bridges with the incoming Trump administration. Kerry's speech received positive reactions from Arab nations, but some criticized his remarks as too little, too late from the outgoing administration.\nSyria.\nFollowing the August 21, 2013, chemical weapons attack on the Ghouta suburbs of Damascus attributed to Syrian government forces, Kerry became a leading advocate for the use of military force against the Syrian government for what he called \"a despot's brutal and flagrant use of chemical weapons\".\nOn September 9, in response to a reporter's question about whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could avert a military strike, Kerry said \"He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that. But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done, obviously.\" This unscripted remark initiated a process that would lead to Syria agreeing to relinquish and destroy its chemical weapons arsenal, as Russia treated Kerry's statement as a serious proposal. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia would work \"immediately\" to convince Syria relinquish and destroy its large chemical weapons arsenal. Syria quickly welcomed this proposal and on September 14, the UN formally accepted Syria's application to join the convention banning chemical weapons, and separately, the U.S. and Russia agreed on a plan to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons by the middle of 2014, leading Kerry to declare on July 20, 2014: \"we struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out\". On September 28, the UN Security Council passed a resolution ordering the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons and condemning the August 21 Ghouta attack.\nLatin America.\nIn a speech before the Organization of American States in November 2013, Kerry remarked that the era of the Monroe Doctrine was over. He went on to explain, \"The relationship that we seek and that we have worked hard to foster is not about a United States declaration about how and when it will intervene in the affairs of other American states. It's about all of our countries viewing one another as equals, sharing responsibilities, cooperating on security issues, and adhering not to doctrine, but to the decisions that we make as partners to advance the values and the interests that we share.\"\nEnvironmentalism.\nIn April 2016, he signed the Paris Climate Accords at the United Nations in New York.\nOn November 11, 2016, Kerry became the first Secretary of State and highest-ranking U.S. official to date to visit Antarctica. Kerry spent two days on the continent meeting with researchers and staying overnight at McMurdo Station.\nIn 1994, Kerry led opposition to continued funding for the Integral Fast Reactor, which resulted in the end of funding for the project. However, in light of increasing concerns regarding climate change, in 2017 Kerry reversed his position on nuclear power, saying \"Given this challenge we face today, and given the progress of fourth generation nuclear: go for it. No other alternative, zero emissions.\"\nGlobal Connect initiative.\nIn September 2015, the U.S. Department of State unveiled a new initiative called \"Global Connect\" which sought to provide internet access to more than 1.5 billion people around the world within five years. In 2016, in partnership with OPIC, Kerry announced an investment of $171million to enable \"a low-cost and rapidly scalable wireless broadband network in India\". OPIC's financing is aimed at helping its Indian Partner, Tikona Digital Networks, to provide Internet through wireless technology.\nOut of government (2017\u20132021).\nKerry retired from his diplomatic work following the end of the Obama administration on January 20, 2017. He did not attend Donald Trump's inauguration on that day, and the following day took part in the 2017 Women's March in Washington, D.C.\nKerry has taken a strong stand against Trump policies and joined in filing a brief arguing against Trump's executive order banning entry of persons from seven Muslim countries. In November 2018, in a \"Guardian Live\" conversation with Andrew Rawnsley, sponsored by \"The Guardian\" at London's Central Hall, Kerry discussed several issues which have developed further since his tenure as Secretary of State, including migration into Europe and climate change.\nOn December 5, 2019, Kerry endorsed Joe Biden's bid for the Democratic nomination for president, saying \"He'll be ready on day one to put back together the country and the world that Donald Trump has broken apart\" and asserting that \"Joe will defeat Donald Trump next November. He's the candidate with the wisdom and standing to fix what Trump has broken, to restore our place in the world, and improve the lives of working people here at home.\"\nFollowing retirement from government service, Kerry signed an agreement with Simon & Schuster for publishing his planned memoirs, dealing with his life and career in government. In September 2018, he published \"Every Day Is Extra\".\nLeaked audiotape.\nOn April 25, 2021, \"The New York Times\" published content from a leaked audiotape of a three-hour taped conversation between economist Saeed Leylaz and Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. The taped conversation was connected to an oral history project, known as \"In the Islamic Republic the military field rules\", which documents the work of Iran's current administration. The tape was obtained by the London-based news channel Iran International.\nIn the tape, which the \"Times\" referred to as \"extraordinary\", Zarif reveals that then-Secretary of State Kerry told him that Israel attacked Iranian assets in Syria, \"at least 200 times\". Although the tape has not been verified, the spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry did not deny its validity.\nNineteen Republican senators signed a letter asking President Biden to investigate Zarif's claim. On April 27, 2021, Republicans called on Kerry to resign from the Biden administration's National Security Council. In a tweet, Kerry denied Zarif's account, writing, \"I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false. This never happened \u2014 either when I was Secretary of State or since.\"\nSpecial Presidential Envoy for Climate (2021\u20132024).\nOn November 23, 2020, President-elect Joe Biden's transition team announced that Kerry would be taking a full-time position in the administration, serving as a special envoy for climate; in this role he will be a principal on the National Security Council. Kerry assumed office on January 20, 2021, following Biden's inauguration.\nClimate cooperation with China.\nIn July 2023, John Kerry visited China for advance climate cooperation. The main achievement of the visit was some progress in the fields of: \"methane reduction commitments; reducing China's reliance on coal; China's objections to trade restrictions on solar panel and battery components; and climate finance.\" This was obtained despite many currently existing obstacles to cooperation. The visit was made in the middle of the 2023 Asia heat wave that set a new record of in Sanbu, Xinjiang, China, which Kerry mentioned in particular.\nClimate cooperation with India.\nAt the end of July 2023, John Kerry visited India. Among others he declared, the US will be committed to the target of delivering 100 billion dollars for climate action to low income countries and no future US president can retreat from climate commitment. He criticized Donald Trump for leaving the Paris agreement before.\nClimate cooperation with countries in the Middle East.\nIn June 2023, Kerry made visits to Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. In Israel, he emphasized the need for climate legislation to reach climate targets and reached an agreement about the renewal of \"Memorandum of understanding between Israel and the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Israel is one of the few developed countries which have still not approved a climate law and lags behind other OECD countries in climate action. Israeli environmental protection minister Idit Silman said that Israel intended to go to COP28 \"with an ambitious and applicable climate law and put the State of Israel on the same level as the developed countries of the OECD.\"\nDeparture.\nOn January 13, 2024, at least three sources close to Kerry revealed that he would step down as U.S. climate envoy by the upcoming spring. He told the \"Financial Times\" he planned to stay active in the climate finance space. He officially resigned from his position on March 6, 2024.\nPersonal and family life.\nAncestry.\nKerry's paternal ancestors came from the Fr\u00e4nkel family, which owned a textile factory in Neustadt, Upper Silesia (now Prudnik, Poland), founded by Samuel Fr\u00e4nkel. The Fr\u00e4nkels originated from Hotzenplotz, Austria (now Osoblaha, Czech Republic) and Z\u00fclz, Prussia (now Bia\u0142a Prudnicka, Poland). Kerry's paternal great-grandmother, Mathilda Fr\u00e4nkel, was born in Oberglogau (now G\u0142og\u00f3wek, near Prudnik) and married Benedikt Kohn from Bennisch (now Horn\u00ed Bene\u0161ov). His grandparents, shoe businessman Frederick A. \"Fred\" Kerry and musician Ida L\u00f6we, immigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the U.S. Fred, his wife, and his brother converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1901, and changed their names from Kohn to Kerry. Ida was of remote ancestry of Rabbi Sinai Loew of Worms, brother of Judah Loew ben Bezalel. Fred and Ida Kerry emigrated to the United States in 1905, living at first in Chicago and eventually moving to Brookline, Massachusetts, by 1915. According to \"The New York Times\", \"[the] brother and sister of John Kerry's paternal grandmother, Otto and Jenni Lowe, died in concentration camps\". Kerry's Jewish ancestry was publicly revealed during his 2004 presidential campaign; he has stated that he was unaware of it until a reporter informed him of it in 2003.\nKerry's maternal ancestors were of Scottish and English descent, and his maternal grandparents were James Grant Forbes II of the Forbes family and Margaret Tyndal Winthrop of the Dudley\u2013Winthrop family. Margaret's paternal grandfather Robert Charles Winthrop served as the 22nd Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Robert's father was Governor Thomas Lindall Winthrop. Thomas' father John Still Winthrop was a great-great-grandson of Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop and great-grandson of Governor Thomas Dudley. Through his mother, Kerry is a first cousin once removed of French politician Brice Lalonde.\nMarriages and children.\nKerry was married to Julia Thorne in 1970, and they had two daughters together: documentary filmmaker Alexandra Kerry (born September 5, 1973) and physician Vanessa Kerry (born December 31, 1976).\nAlexandra was born days before Kerry began law school. In 1982, Julia asked Kerry for a separation while she was suffering from severe depression. They were divorced on July 25, 1988, and the marriage was formally annulled in 1997. \"After 14 years as a political wife, I associated politics only with anger, fear and loneliness\", she wrote in \"A Change of Heart\", her book about depression. Thorne later married Richard Charlesworth, an architect, and moved to Bozeman, Montana, where she became active in local environmental groups such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Thorne supported Kerry's 2004 presidential run. She died of cancer on April 27, 2006.\nKerry and his second wife\u2014Portuguese-born businesswoman and philanthropist Teresa Heinz, the widow of Kerry's late Pennsylvania Republican Senate colleague John Heinz\u2014were introduced to each other by Heinz at an Earth Day rally in 1990. Early the following year, Senator Heinz was killed in a plane crash near Lower Merion. Teresa has three sons from her marriage to Heinz, Henry John IV, Andr\u00e9, and Christopher. Heinz and Kerry were married on May 26, 1995, in Nantucket, Massachusetts.\nNet worth.\nThe \"Forbes 400\" survey estimated in 2004 that Teresa Heinz Kerry had a net worth of $750million. However, estimates have frequently varied, ranging from around $165million to as high as $3.2billion, according to a study in the \"Los Angeles Times\". Regardless of which figure is correct, Kerry was the wealthiest U.S. Senator while serving in the Senate. Independent of Heinz, Kerry is wealthy in his own right, and is the beneficiary of at least four trusts inherited from Forbes family relatives, including his mother, Rosemary Forbes Kerry, who died in 2002. \"Forbes\" magazine (named for the Forbes family of publishers, unrelated to Kerry) estimated that if elected, and if Heinz family assets were included, Kerry would have been the third-richest U.S. president in history, when adjusted for inflation. This assessment was based on Heinz's and Kerry's combined assets, but the couple signed a prenuptial agreement that keeps their assets separate. Kerry's financial disclosure form for 2011 put his personal assets in the range of $230,000,000 to $320,000,000, including the assets of his spouse and any dependent children. This included slightly more than $3,000,000 worth of H. J. Heinz Company assets, which increased in value by over $600,000 in 2013 when Berkshire Hathaway announced their intention to purchase the company.\nIn April 2017, Kerry purchased an 18-acre property on the northwest corner of Martha's Vineyard overlooking Vineyard Sound in the town of Chilmark, Massachusetts. The property is located in Seven Gates Farm and according to property records, cost $11.75million for the seven bedroom home.\nReligious beliefs.\nKerry is a Roman Catholic, and is said to have carried a religious rosary, a prayer book, and a St. Christopher medal (the patron saint of travelers) when he campaigned. Discussing his faith, Kerry said: \"I thought of being a priest. I was very religious while at school in Switzerland. I was an altar boy and prayed all the time. I was very centered around the Mass and the church.\" He also said that the Letters of Paul (Apostle Paul) moved him the most, stating that they taught him to \"not feel sorry for myself\".\nKerry told \"Christianity Today\" in October 2004:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I'm a Catholic and I practice, but at the same time I have an open-mindedness to many other expressions of spirituality that come through different religions... I've spent some time reading and thinking about religion and trying to study it, and I've arrived at not so much a sense of the differences, but a sense of the similarities in so many ways.\nHe said that he believed that the Torah, the Quran, and the Bible all share a fundamental story which connects with readers.\nHealth.\nIn 2003, Kerry was diagnosed with and successfully treated for prostate cancer. On May 31, 2015, Kerry broke his right leg in a biking accident in Scionzier, France, and was flown to Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital for recovery. MGH Hip and Knee Replacement Orthopaedic Surgeon Dr. Dennis Burke, who had met Kerry in France and had accompanied him in the plane from France to Boston, set Kerry's right leg on Tuesday, June 2, in a four-hour operation.\nAthletics and sailing.\nIn addition to the sports he played at Yale, Kerry is described by \"Sports Illustrated\", among others, as an \"avid cyclist\", primarily riding on a road bike. Prior to his presidential bid, Kerry had participated in several long-distance rides. During his many campaigns, he was reported to have visited bicycle stores in both his home state and elsewhere. His staff requested recumbent stationary bikes for his hotel rooms. He has also been a snowboarder, windsurfer, and sailor.\nThe \"Boston Herald\" reported on July 23, 2010, that Kerry commissioned construction on a new $7million yacht (a Friendship 75) in New Zealand and moored it in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where the Friendship yacht company is based. The article claimed this allowed him to avoid paying Massachusetts taxes on the property including approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $500. On July 27, Kerry stated he would voluntarily pay $500,000 in Massachusetts taxes on his yacht.\nHonors.\nJohn Kerry was awarded:\nHonorary degrees.\nJohn Kerry has received several honorary degrees in recognition of his service to the United States, These include:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "53825": "New Haven, Connecticut\nNew Haven is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is the third largest city in Connecticut after Bridgeport and Stamford, the largest city in the South Central Connecticut Planning Region, and the principal municipality of Greater New Haven, which had a total population of 864,835 in 2020.\nNew Haven was one of the first planned cities in the U.S. A year after its founding by English Puritans in 1638, eight streets were laid out in a four-by-four grid, creating the \"Nine Square Plan\". The central common block is the New Haven Green, a square at the center of Downtown New Haven. The Green is now a National Historic Landmark, and the \"Nine Square Plan\" is recognized by the American Planning Association as a National Planning Landmark.\nNew Haven is the home of Yale University, New Haven's biggest taxpayer and employer, and an integral part of the city's economy. Health care, professional and financial services and retail trade also contribute to the city's economic activity.\nThe city served as co-capital of Connecticut from 1701 until 1873, when sole governance was transferred to the more centrally located city of Hartford. New Haven has since billed itself as the \"Cultural Capital of Connecticut\" for its supply of established theaters, museums, and music venues. New Haven had the first public tree planting program in the U.S., producing a canopy of mature trees (including some large elms) that gave the city the nickname \"The Elm City\".\nHistory.\nPre-colonial foundation as an independent colony.\nBefore Europeans arrived, the New Haven area was the home of the Quinnipiac tribe of Native Americans, who lived in villages around the harbor and sustained an economy of local fisheries and the farming of maize. The area was briefly visited by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block in 1614. Dutch traders set up a small trading system of beaver pelts with the local inhabitants, but trade was sporadic and the Dutch did not settle permanently in the area.\nIn 1637, a small party of Puritans did a reconnaissance of the New Haven harbor area and wintered over. In April 1638, the main party of five hundred Puritans, who had left the Massachusetts Bay Colony under the leadership of Reverend John Davenport and London merchant Theophilus Eaton, sailed into the harbor. It was their hope to set up a theological community with the government more closely linked to the church than that in Massachusetts, and to exploit the area's potential as a port. The Quinnipiacs, who were under attack by neighboring Pequots, sold their land to the settlers in return for a pledge of protection.\nBy 1640, \"Quinnipiac's\" theocratic government and nine-square grid plan were in place, and the town was renamed New Haven, with 'haven' meaning harbor or port. However, the area to the north remained Quinnipiac until 1678, when it was renamed Hamden. The settlement became the headquarters of the New Haven Colony, distinct from the Connecticut Colony previously established to the north centering on Hartford. Reflecting its theocratic roots, the New Haven Colony forbade the establishment of other churches, whereas the Connecticut Colony permitted them.\nEconomic disaster struck New Haven in 1646, when the town sent its first fully loaded ship of local goods (the \"Great Shippe\") back to England. It never reached its destination, and its disappearance hindered New Haven's development as compared to the rising trade powers of Boston and New Amsterdam (modern day New York City).\nIn 1660, Colony founder John Davenport's wishes were fulfilled, and Hopkins School was founded in New Haven with money from the estate of Edward Hopkins.\nIn 1661, the Regicides who had signed the death warrant of Charles I of England were pursued by Charles II. Two of them, Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe, fled to New Haven for refuge. Davenport arranged for them to hide in the West Rock hills northwest of the town. A third judge, John Dixwell, later joined the others. None of the three were ever returned to England for trial; Dixwell died of old age in New Haven, the others likewise elsewhere in New England.\nAs part of the Connecticut Colony.\nIn 1664, New Haven became part of the Connecticut Colony when the two colonies were merged under political pressure from England. Seeking to establish a new theocracy elsewhere, some members of the New Haven Colony went on to establish Newark, New Jersey.\nNew Haven was made co-capital of Connecticut in 1701, a status it retained until 1873.\nIn 1716, the Collegiate School relocated from Old Saybrook to New Haven, establishing it as a center of learning. In 1718, in response to a large donation from East India Company merchant Elihu Yale, former Governor of Madras, the Collegiate School was renamed Yale College.\nFor over a century, New Haven citizens had fought in the colonial militia alongside regular British forces, including the French and Indian War. As the American Revolution approached, General David Wooster and other influential residents hoped that the conflict with the British parliament could be resolved short of rebellion. On April 23, 1775, Captain Benedict Arnold commanded the Second Company, Governor's Foot Guard, of New Haven to break into the powder house to arm themselves for a three-day march to Cambridge, Massachusetts, an event still celebrated in New Haven as Powder House Day. Other New Haven militia members were on hand to escort George Washington from his overnight stay in New Haven on his way to Cambridge. Contemporary reports, from both sides, remark on the New Haven volunteers' professional military bearing, including uniforms.\nOn July 5, 1779, 2,600 loyalists and British regulars under General William Tryon, governor of New York, landed in New Haven Harbor and raided the town of 3,500. A militia of Yale students had been preparing for battle, and former Yale president and Yale Divinity School professor Naphtali Daggett rode out to confront the Redcoats. Yale president Ezra Stiles recounted in his diary that while he moved furniture in anticipation of battle, he still couldn't quite believe the revolution had begun. New Haven was not torched as the invaders did with Danbury in 1777, or Fairfield and Norwalk a week after the New Haven raid, preserving many of the town's colonial features.\nPost-colonial period and industrialization.\nNew Haven was incorporated as a city in 1784, and Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Constitution and author of the \"Connecticut Compromise\", became the new city's first mayor.\nThe city struck fortune in the late 18th century with the inventions and industrial activity of Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate who remained in New Haven to develop the cotton gin and establish a gun-manufacturing factory in the northern part of the city near the Hamden town line. That area is still known as Whitneyville, and the main road through both towns is known as Whitney Avenue. The factory is now the Eli Whitney Museum, which has a particular emphasis on activities for children and exhibits pertaining to the A. C. Gilbert Company. His factory, along with that of Simeon North, and the lively clock-making and brass hardware sectors, contributed to making early Connecticut a powerful manufacturing economy; so many arms manufacturers sprang up that the state became known as \"The Arsenal of America\". It was in Whitney's gun-manufacturing plant that Samuel Colt invented the automatic revolver in 1836. Many other talented machinists and firearms designers would go on to found successful firearms manufacturing companies in New Haven, including Oliver Winchester and O.F. Mossberg & Sons.\nThe Farmington Canal, created in the early 19th century, was a short-lived transporter of goods into the interior regions of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and ran from New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts.\nNew Haven was to be the site of the first college for African Americans in the United States, but the plan was obstructed by efforts led by Yale Law School founder and former New Haven Mayor David Daggett, who went on to serve as a U.S. Senator and judge on Connecticut's highest court. Daggett denigrated African Americans, denied they were citizens, and presided over the trial of a woman persecuted for trying to admit an African American girl to her boarding school and, having that effort blocked, running a boarding school for African American girls.\nNew Haven was home to one of the important early events in the burgeoning anti-slavery movement when, in 1839, the trial of mutineering Mende tribesmen being transported as slaves on the Spanish slaveship \"Amistad\" was held in New Haven's United States District Court. There is a statue of Joseph Cinqu\u00e9, the informal leader of the slaves, beside City Hall. See \"Museums\" below for more information. Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech on slavery in New Haven in 1860, shortly before he secured the Republican nomination for President.\nThe American Civil War boosted the local economy with wartime purchases of industrial goods, including that of the New Haven Arms Company, which would later become the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. (Winchester would continue to produce arms in New Haven until 2006, and many of the buildings that were a part of the Winchester plant are now a part of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company Historic District). After the war, population grew and doubled by the start of the 20th century, most notably due to the influx of immigrants from southern Europe, particularly Italy. Today, roughly half the populations of East Haven, West Haven, and North Haven are Italian-American. Jewish immigration to New Haven has left an enduring mark on the city. Westville was the center of Jewish life in New Haven, though today many have fanned out to suburban communities such as Woodbridge and Cheshire. Lowell House, the city's first settlement, opened in 1900.\nPost-industrial era and urban redevelopment.\nNew Haven's expansion continued during the two World Wars, with most new inhabitants being African Americans from the American South, and Puerto Ricans. The city reached its peak population after World War II. The area of New Haven is only , encouraging further development of new housing after 1950 in adjacent, suburban towns. Moreover, as in other U.S. cities in the 1950s, New Haven began to suffer white flight of middle-class workers. One author suggested that aggressive redlining and rezoning made it difficult for residents to obtain financing for older, deteriorating urban housing stock, thereby condemning such structures to deterioration.\nIn 1954, then-mayor Richard C. Lee began some of the earliest major urban renewal projects in the United States. Certain sections of downtown New Haven were redeveloped to include museums, new office towers, a hotel, and large shopping complexes. Other parts of the city, particularly the Wooster Square and Fair Haven neighborhoods were affected by the construction of Interstate 95 along the Long Wharf section, Interstate 91, and the Oak Street Connector. The Oak Street Connector (Route 34), running between Interstate 95, downtown, and The Hill neighborhood, was originally intended as a highway to the city's western suburbs but was only completed as a highway to the downtown area, with the area to the west becoming a boulevard (See \"Redevelopment\" below).\nIn 1970, a series of criminal prosecutions against various members of the Black Panther Party took place in New Haven, inciting mass protests on the New Haven Green involving twelve thousand demonstrators and many well-known New Left political activists. (See \"Political Culture\" below for more information). From the 1960s through the early 1990s, some areas of New Haven continued to decline both economically and in terms of population despite attempts to resurrect certain neighborhoods through renewal projects. In conjunction with its declining population, New Haven experienced a steep rise in its crime rate.\nSince approximately 2000, many parts of downtown New Haven have been revitalized with new restaurants, nightlife, and small retail stores. In particular, the area surrounding the New Haven Green has experienced an influx of apartments and condominiums. In addition, two new supermarkets opened to serve downtown's growing residential population: a Stop & Shop opened just west of downtown, while Elm City Market, located one block from the Green, opened in 2011. The recent turnaround of downtown New Haven has received positive press from various periodicals.\nMajor projects include the current construction of a new campus for Gateway Community College downtown, and also a 32-story, 500-unit apartment/retail building called 360 State Street. The 360 State Street project is now occupied and is the largest residential building in Connecticut. A new boathouse and dock is planned for New Haven Harbor, and the linear park Farmington Canal Trail is set to extend into downtown New Haven within the coming year. Additionally, foundation and ramp work to widen I-95 to create a new harbor crossing for New Haven, with an extradosed bridge to replace the 1950s-era Q Bridge, has begun. The city still hopes to redevelop the site of the New Haven Coliseum, which was demolished in 2007.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 18 white firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no black firefighters scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. In the subsequent \"Ricci v. DeStefano\" decision the court found 5\u20134 that New Haven's decision to ignore the test results violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a result, a district court subsequently ordered the city to promote 14 of the white firefighters.\nIn 2010 and 2011, state and federal funds were awarded to Connecticut (and Massachusetts) to construct the Hartford Line, with a southern terminus at New Haven's Union Station and a northern terminus at Springfield's Union Station. According to the White House, \"This corridor [currently] has one train per day connecting communities in Connecticut and Massachusetts to the Northeast Corridor and Vermont. The vision for this corridor is to restore the alignment to its original route via the Knowledge Corridor in western Massachusetts, improving trip time and increasing the population base that can be served.\" Set for construction in 2013, the \"Knowledge Corridor high speed intercity passenger rail\" project will cost approximately $1\u00a0billion, and the ultimate northern terminus for the project is reported to be Montreal in Canada. Train speeds between will reportedly exceed and increase both cities' rail traffic exponentially.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 6.67%, is water.\nNew Haven's best-known geographic features are its large, shallow harbor, and two reddish basalt trap rock ridges which rise to the northeast and northwest of the city core. These trap rocks are known respectively as East Rock and West Rock, and both serve as extensive parks. West Rock has been tunneled through to make way for the east\u2013west passage of the Wilbur Cross Parkway (the only highway tunnel through a natural obstacle in Connecticut), and once served as the hideout of the \"Regicides\" (see: Regicides Trail). Most New Haveners refer to these men as \"The Three Judges\". East Rock features the prominent Soldiers and Sailors war monument on its peak as well as the \"Great/Giant Steps\" which run up the rock's cliffside.\nThe city is drained by three rivers; the West, Mill, and Quinnipiac, named in order from west to east. The West River discharges into West Haven Harbor, while the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers discharge into New Haven Harbor. Both harbors are embayments of Long Island Sound. In addition, several smaller streams flow through the city's neighborhoods, including Wintergreen Brook, the Beaver Ponds Outlet, Wilmot Brook, Belden Brook, and Prospect Creek. Not all of these small streams have continuous flow year-round.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen classification, New Haven experiences a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\"), bordering a hot-summer humid continental climate (\"Dfa\"). The city has hot, humid summers and cool to cold winters. From May to late September, the weather is typically hot and humid, with average temperatures exceeding on 70 days per year. In summer, the Bermuda High creates as southern flow of warm and humid air, with frequent (but brief) thundershowers. October to early December is normally mild to cool late in the season, while early spring (April) can be cool to warm. Winters are more variable, with cool to cold temperatures, mixed with warmer spells, with both rain and snow fall.\nWhile the weather patterns that affect New Haven result from a primarily offshore direction, thus reducing the marine influence of Long Island Sound, the location on Long Island Sound often influences the weather along the coastline compared to inland. During summer heat waves, temperatures may reach or higher on occasion with heat-index values of over . Tropical cyclones have struck New Haven in the past, including 1938 Hurricane (Long Island Express), Hurricane Carol in 1954, Hurricane Gloria in 1985. The hardiness zone is 7a.\nStreetscape.\nNew Haven has a long tradition of urban planning and a purposeful design for the city's layout. The city could be argued to have some of the first preconceived layouts in the country. Upon founding, New Haven was laid out in a grid plan of nine square blocks; the central square was left open, in the tradition of many New England towns, as the city green (a commons area). The city also instituted the first public tree planting program in America. As in other cities, many of the elms that gave New Haven the nickname \"Elm City\" perished in the mid-20th century due to Dutch elm disease, although many have since been replanted. The New Haven Green is currently home to three separate historic churches which speak to the original theocratic nature of the city. The Green remains the social center of the city today. It was named a National Historic Landmark in 1970.\nDowntown New Haven, occupied by nearly 7,000 residents, has a more residential character than most downtowns. The downtown area provides about half of the city's jobs and half of its tax base and in recent years has become filled with dozens of new upscale restaurants, in addition to shops and thousands of apartments and condominium units which subsequently help overall growth of the city.\nNeighborhoods.\nThe city has many distinct neighborhoods. In addition to Downtown, centered on the central business district and the Green, are the following neighborhoods: the west central neighborhoods of Dixwell and Dwight; the southern neighborhoods of The Hill, historic water-front City Point (or Oyster Point), and the harborside district of Long Wharf; the western neighborhoods of Beaver Hills, Edgewood, West River, Westville, Amity, and West Rock-Westhills; East Rock, Cedar Hill, Prospect Hill, and Newhallville in the northern side of town; the east central neighborhoods of Mill River and Wooster Square, an Italian-American neighborhood; Fair Haven, an immigrant community located between the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers; Quinnipiac Meadows and Fair Haven Heights across the Quinnipiac River; and facing the eastern side of the harbor, The Annex and East Shore (or Morris Cove).\nDemographics.\nCensus data.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nThe U.S. Census Bureau reports a 2010 population of 129,779, with 47,094 households and 25,854 families within the city of New Haven. The population density was . There were 52,941 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 42.6% White, 35.4% African American, 0.5% Native American, 4.6% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 12.9% from other races, and 3.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 27.4% of the population. Non-Hispanic Whites were 31.8% of the population in 2010, down from 69.6% in 1970. The city's Latino population is growing rapidly. Previous influxes among ethnic groups have been African-Americans in the postwar era, and Irish, Italian and (to a lesser degree) Slavic peoples in the prewar period.\nAs of the 2010 census, of the 47,094 households, 29.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 27.5% include married couples living together, 22.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 36.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.5% had someone living alone who was 65\u00a0years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40 and the average family size 3.19.\nThe ages of New Haven's residents were 25.4% under the age of 18, 16.4% from 18 to 24, 31.2% from 25 to 44, 16.7% from 45 to 64, and 10.2% who were 65\u00a0years of age or older. The median age was 29\u00a0years, which was significantly lower than the national average. There were 91.8 males per 100 females. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.6 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $29,604, and the median income for a family was $35,950. Median income for males was $33,605, compared with $28,424 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,393. About 20.5% of families and 24.4% of the population were living below the poverty line, including 32.2% of those under age 18 and 17.9% of those age 65 or over.\nOther data.\nIt is estimated that 14% of New Haven residents are pedestrian commuters, ranking it number four by highest percentage in the United States. This is primarily due to New Haven's small area and the presence of Yale University.\nNew Haven is noted for having the highest percentage of Italian American residents of any US city, and is noted for its local style of pizza.\nA study of the demographics of the New Haven metro area, based on age, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity, found that they were the closest of any American city to the national average.\nEconomy.\nNew Haven's economy originally was based in manufacturing, but the postwar period brought rapid industrial decline; the entire Northeast was affected, and medium-sized cities with large working-class populations, like New Haven, were hit particularly hard. Simultaneously, the growth and expansion of Yale University further affected the economic shift. Today, over half (56%) of the city's economy is now made up of services, in particular education and health care; Yale is the city's largest employer, followed by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital. Other large employers include Southern Connecticut State University, Assa Abloy lock manufacturing, the Knights of Columbus headquarters, Higher One, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Covidien and United Illuminating. Clothing stores Gant and Ann Taylor were founded in the city.\nIn 2017, New Haven was ranked by a Verizon study as one of the top 10 cities in America for launching tech startups, and top two in New England.\nIndustry sectors: Agriculture (.6%), Construction and Mining (4.9%), Manufacturing (2.9%), Transportation and Utilities (2.9%), Trade (21.7%), Finance and Real Estate (7.1%), Services (55.9%), Government (4.0%)\nHeadquarters.\nThe Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization and a Fortune 1000 company, is headquartered in New Haven. Amphenol, based in Greater New Haven (Wallingford), is a Fortune 100 company. Eight Courant 100 companies are based in Greater New Haven, with four headquartered in New Haven proper. New Haven-based companies traded on stock exchanges include NewAlliance Bank, the second largest bank in Connecticut and fourth-largest in New England (NYSE: NAL), Higher One Holdings (NYSE: ONE), a financial services firm, United Illuminating, the electricity distributor for southern Connecticut (NYSE: UIL), and Transpro Inc. (AMEX: TPR). The American division of Assa Abloy (one of the world's leading manufacturers of locks) is located in the city. The Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET) began operations in the city as the District Telephone Company of New Haven in 1878; the company remains headquartered in New Haven as a subsidiary of Frontier Communications and provides telephone service for all but two municipalities in Connecticut. SeeClickFix was founded and has been headquartered in the city since 2007. Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company (a candy-making division of the Hershey Company) was formerly located in the city. Achillion Pharmaceuticals and Alexion Pharmaceuticals were also formerly headquartered in New Haven.\nLaw and government.\nPolitical structure.\nNew Haven is governed via the mayor-council system. Connecticut municipalities (like those of neighboring states Massachusetts and Rhode Island) provide nearly all local services (such as fire and rescue, education, snow removal, etc.), as county government has been abolished since 1960.\nNew Haven County merely refers to a grouping of towns and a judicial district, not a governmental entity. New Haven is a member of the South Central Connecticut Regional Council of Governments (SCRCOG), a regional agency created to facilitate coordination between area municipal governments and state and federal agencies, in the absence of county government.\nJustin Elicker is the mayor of New Haven. He was sworn in as the 51st mayor of New Haven on January 1, 2020.\nThe city council, called the Board of Alders, consists of thirty members, each elected from single-member wards. Each of the 30 wards consists of slightly over 4,300 residents; redistricting takes place every ten years.\nThe city is overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2017, of the town's 83,694 voters, 66% were registered as Democrats (\u22124% since 2015), 4% were registered as Republicans (+1%), and 29% were unaffiliated (+3). The board of alders is dominated by Democrats; a Republican has not served as a New Haven alder since 2011.\nNew Haven is served by the New Haven Police Department, which had 443 sworn officers in 2011. The city is also served by the New Haven Fire Department.\nNew Haven lies within Connecticut's 3rd congressional district and has been represented by Rosa DeLauro since 1991. Martin Looney and Gary Holder-Winfield represent New Haven in the Connecticut State Senate, and the city lies within six districts (numbers 92 through 97) of the Connecticut House of Representatives.\nThe Greater New Haven area is served by the New Haven Judicial District Court and the New Haven Superior Court, both headquartered at the New Haven County Courthouse. The federal District Court for the District of Connecticut has a New Haven facility, the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse.\nPolitical history.\nNew Haven is the birthplace of former president George W. Bush, who was born when his father, former president George H. W. Bush, was living in New Haven while a student at Yale. In addition to being the site of the college educations of both Presidents Bush, as Yale students, New Haven was also the temporary home of former presidents William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, and Bill Clinton, as well as Secretary of State John Kerry. President Clinton met his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while the two were students at Yale Law School. Former vice presidents John C. Calhoun and Dick Cheney also studied in New Haven (although the latter did not graduate from Yale). Before the 2008 election, the last time there was not a person with ties to New Haven and Yale on either major party's ticket was 1968. James Hillhouse, a New Haven native, served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate in 1801.\nNew Haven voters overwhelmingly supported Al Gore in the 2000 election, Yale graduate John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. In the 2008 election, New Haven County was third among all Connecticut counties in campaign contributions, after Fairfield and Hartford counties. (Connecticut, in turn, was ranked 14th among all states in total campaign contributions.)\nNew Haven was the subject of \" Who Governs? Democracy and Power in An American City\", a very influential book in political science by preeminent Yale professor Robert A. Dahl, which includes an extensive history of the city and thorough description of its politics in the 1950s. New Haven's theocratic history is also mentioned several times by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic volume on 19th-century American political life, \"Democracy in America\". New Haven was the residence of conservative thinker William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1951, when he wrote his influential \"God and Man at Yale\". William Lee Miller's \"The Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society\" (1966) similarly explores the relationship between local politics in New Haven and national political movements, focusing on Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and urban renewal.\nGeorge Williamson Crawford, a Yale Law School graduate, served as the city's first black corporation counsel from 1954 to 1962, under Mayor Richard C. Lee.\nIn 1970, the New Haven Black Panther trials took place, the largest and longest trials in Connecticut history. Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale and ten other party members were tried for murdering an alleged informant. Beginning on May Day, the city became a center of protest for 12,000 Panther supporters, college students, and New Left activists (including Jean Genet, Benjamin Spock, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and John Froines), who amassed on the New Haven Green, across the street from where the trials were being held. Violent confrontations between the demonstrators and the New Haven Police occurred, and several bombs were set off in the area by radicals. The event became a rallying point for the New Left and critics of the Nixon Administration.\nDuring the summer of 2007, New Haven was the center of protests by anti-immigration groups who opposed the city's program of offering municipal ID cards, known as the Elm City Resident Card, to illegal immigrants. In 2008, the country of Ecuador opened a consulate in New Haven to serve the large Ecuadorean immigrant population in the area. It is the first foreign mission to open in New Haven since Italy opened a consulate (now closed) in the city in 1910.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 20 white and Hispanic firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no blacks scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. On June 29, 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the firefighters, agreeing that they were improperly denied promotion because of their race. The case, \"Ricci v. DeStefano\", became highly publicized and brought national attention to New Haven politics due to the involvement of then-Supreme Court nominee (and Yale Law School graduate) Sonia Sotomayor in a lower court decision.\nGarry Trudeau, creator of the political \"Doonesbury\" comic strip, attended Yale University. There he met fellow student and later Green Party candidate for Congress Charles Pillsbury, a long-time New Haven resident for whom Trudeau's comic strip is named. During his college years, Pillsbury was known by the nickname \"The Doones\". A theory of international law, which argues for a sociological normative approach in regards to jurisprudence, is named the New Haven Approach, after the city. Connecticut US senator Richard Blumenthal is a Yale graduate, as is former Connecticut US Senator Joe Lieberman who also was a New Haven resident for many years, before moving back to his hometown of Stamford.\nCrime.\nCrime increased in the 1990s, with New Haven having one of the ten highest violent crime rates per capita in the United States. In the late 1990s New Haven's crime began to stabilize. The city, adopting a policy of community policing, saw crime rates drop during the 2000s.\nViolent crime levels vary dramatically among New Haven's neighborhoods, with some areas having crime rates in line with the state of Connecticut average, and others having extremely high rates of crime. A 2011 New Haven Health Department report identifies these issues in greater detail.\nIn 2010, New Haven ranked as the 18th most dangerous city in the United States (albeit below the safety benchmark of 200.00 for the second consecutive year). However, according to a completely different analysis conducted by the \"24/7 Wall Street Blog\", in 2011 New Haven had risen to become the fourth most dangerous city in the United States, and was widely cited in the press as such.\nHowever, an analysis by the Regional Data Cooperative for Greater New Haven, Inc., has shown that due to issues of comparative denominators and other factors, such municipality-based rankings can be considered inaccurate. For example, two cities of identical population can cover widely differing land areas, making such analyses irrelevant. The research organization called for comparisons based on neighborhoods, blocks, or standard methodologies (similar to those used by Brookings, DiversityData, and other established institutions), not based on municipalities.\nEducation.\nColleges and universities.\nNew Haven is a notable center for higher education. Yale University, at the heart of downtown, is one of the city's best known features and its largest employer. New Haven is also home to Southern Connecticut State University, part of the Connecticut State University System, and Albertus Magnus College, a private institution. Gateway Community College has a campus in downtown New Haven, formerly located in the Long Wharf district; Gateway consolidated into one campus downtown into a new state-of-the-art campus (on the site of the old Macy's building) and was open for the Fall 2012 semester.\nThere are several institutions immediately outside of New Haven, as well. Quinnipiac University and the Paier College of Art are located just to the north, in the town of Hamden. The University of New Haven is located not in New Haven but in neighboring West Haven.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nNew Haven Public Schools is the school district serving the city. Wilbur Cross High School and Hillhouse High School are New Haven's two largest public secondary schools.\nHopkins School, a private school, was founded in 1660 and is the fifth-oldest educational institution in the United States. New Haven is home to a number of other private schools as well as public magnet schools, including Metropolitan Business Academy, High School in the Community, Hill Regional Career High School, Co-op High School, New Haven Academy, Edgewood Magnet School, ACES Educational Center for the Arts, the Foote School and the Sound School, all of which draw students from New Haven and suburban towns. New Haven is also home to two Achievement First charter schools, Amistad Academy and Elm City College Prep, and to Common Ground, an environmental charter school.\nThe city is renowned for its progressive school lunch programs, and participation in statewide bussing efforts toward increased diversity in schools.\nCulture.\nCuisine.\nLivability.com named New Haven as the Best Foodie City in the country in 2014. There are dozens of Zagat-rated restaurants in New Haven, the most in Connecticut and the third most in New England (after Boston and Cambridge). More than 120 restaurants are located within two blocks of the New Haven Green. The city is home to an eclectic mix of ethnic restaurants and small markets specializing in various foreign foods. Represented cuisines include Malaysian, Ethiopian, Spanish, Belgian, French, Greek, Latin American, Mexican, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Cuban, Peruvian, Syrian/Lebanese, and Turkish.\nNew Haven's greatest culinary claim to fame may be its pizza, which has been claimed to be among the best in the country, or even in the world. New Haven-style pizza, called \"apizza\", made its debut at the iconic Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana (known as Pepe's) in 1925. Apizza is baked in coal- or wood-fired brick ovens, and is notable for its thin crust. Apizza may be red (with a tomato-based sauce) or white (with a sauce of garlic and olive oil), and pies ordered \"plain\" are made without the otherwise customary mozzarella (originally smoked mozzarella, known as \"scamorza\" in Italian). A white clam pie is a well-known specialty of the restaurants on Wooster Street in the Little Italy section of New Haven, including Pepe's and Sally's Apizza (which opened in 1938). Modern Apizza on State Street, which opened in 1934, is also well-known.\nA second New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Louis' Lunch, which is located in a small brick building on Crown Street and has been serving fast food since 1895. Though fiercely debated, the restaurant's founder Louis Lassen is credited by the Library of Congress with inventing the hamburger and steak sandwich. Louis' Lunch broils hamburgers, steak sandwiches and hot dogs vertically in original antique 1898 cast iron stoves using gridirons, patented by local resident Luigi Pieragostini in 1939, that hold the meat in place while it cooks.\nA third New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Miya's, the first sustainable sushi restaurant in the world. Miya's, founded by Chef Yoshiko Lai in 1982, featured the first sustainable seafood-based sushi menu, the first plant-based sushi menu, and the first invasive species menu in the world. Second generation Miya's chef, Bun Lai, is the 2016 White House Champions of Change for Sustainable Seafood and a James Beard Foundation Award nominee. Chef Bun Lai is credited as the first chef in the world for implementing a sustainability paradigm to the cuisine of sushi.\nDuring weekday lunchtime, over 150 lunch carts and food trucks cater to diners around the city. The carts and food trucks cluster at four main points: on Long Wharf Drive, along the city's shoreline with quick access off Interstate 95, by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital in the center of the Hospital Green (Cedar and York streets), by Yale's Trumbull College (Elm and York streets), and on the intersection of Prospect and Sachem streets by the Yale School of Management.\nPopular farmers' markets, managed by the local non-profit CitySeed, set up shop weekly in several neighborhoods, including Westville/Edgewood Park, Fair Haven, Upper State Street, Wooster Square, and Downtown/New Haven Green.\nA large grocery store, the Elm City Market, opened on 360 State Street in New Haven in early fall 2011 and served local produce and groceries to the community. Originally, the market was a member-owned co-op, but debt defaults in August 2014 forced a sale of the business. It is now an employee-owned business; the co-op's previous owners received no equity in the new business.\nIn the past several years, two separate Downtown food tour companies have started offering popular restaurant tours on weekends.\nTaste of New Haven Tours offers several different weekly restaurant/bar tours and a popular pizza, bike, and pints tour. Culinary Walking Tours offers monthly restaurant tours and sponsors an annual Elm City Iron Chef competition.\nTheatre and film.\nThe city hosts numerous theatres and production houses, including the Yale Repertory Theatre, the Long Wharf Theatre, and the Shubert Theatre. There is also theatre activity from the Yale School of Drama, which works through the Yale University Theatre and the student-run Yale Cabaret. Southern Connecticut State University hosts the Lyman Center for the Performing Arts. The shuttered Palace Theatre (opposite the Shubert Theatre) was renovated and reopened as the College Street Music Hall in May 2015. Smaller theatres include the Little Theater on Lincoln Street. Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School also has a theatre on College Street. The theatre is used for student productions, and is the home to weekly services to a local non-denominational church, the City Church New Haven.\nThe Shubert Theatre once premiered many major theatrical productions before their Broadway debuts. Productions that premiered at the Shubert include \"Oklahoma!\" (which was also written in New Haven), \"Carousel\", \"South Pacific\", \"My Fair Lady\", \"The King and I\", and \"The Sound of Music\", and the Tennessee Williams play \"A Streetcar Named Desire\".\nBow Tie Cinemas owns and operates the Criterion Cinemas, the first new movie theater to open in New Haven in over 30 years and the first luxury movie complex in the city's history. The Criterion has seven screens and opened in November 2004, showing a mix of upscale first run commercial and independent film.\nMuseums.\nNew Haven has a variety of museums, many of them associated with Yale. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library features an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible. There is also the Connecticut Children's Museum; the Knights of Columbus museum near that organization's world headquarters; the Peabody Museum of Natural History; the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments; the Eli Whitney Museum (across the town line in Hamden, Connecticut, on Whitney Avenue); the Yale Center for British Art, which houses the largest collection of British art outside the U.K., and the Yale University Art Gallery, the western hemisphere's oldest college art museum. New Haven is also home to the New Haven Museum and Historical Society on Whitney Avenue, which has a library of many primary source treasures dating from Colonial times to the present.\nArtspace on Orange Street is one of several contemporary art galleries around the city, showcasing the work of local, national, and international artists. Others include City Gallery and A. Leaf Gallery in the downtown area. Westville galleries include Kehler Liddell, Jennifer Jane Gallery, and The Hungry Eye. The Erector Square complex in the Fair Haven neighborhood houses, the Parachute Factory gallery along with numerous artist studios, and the complex serves as an active destination during City-Wide Open Studios held yearly in October.\nNew Haven is the home port of a life-size replica of the historical \"Freedom Schooner Amistad\", which is open for tours at Long Wharf pier at certain times during the summer. Also at Long Wharf pier is the \"Quinnipiack\" schooner, offering sailing cruises of the harbor area throughout the summer. The \"Quinnipiack\" also functions as a floating classroom for hundreds of local students.\nMusic.\nThe New Haven Green is the site of many free music concerts, especially during the summer months. These have included the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the July Free Concerts on the Green, and the New Haven Jazz Festival in August. The Jazz Festival, which began in 1982, is one of the longest-running free outdoor festivals in the U.S., until it was canceled for 2007. Headliners such as Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles and Celia Cruz have historically drawn 30,000 to 50,000 fans, filling up the New Haven Green to capacity. The New Haven Jazz Festival was revived in 2008 and has been sponsored since by Jazz Haven.\nNew Haven is home to the concert venue Toad's Place, and a new venue, College Street Music Hall. The city has retained an alternative art and music underground that has helped to influence post-punk era music movements such as indie, college rock and underground hip-hop.\nThe Yale School of Music contributes to the city's music scene by offering hundreds of free concerts throughout the year at venues in and around the Yale campus. Large performances are held in the 2,700-seat Woolsey Hall auditorium, which contains the world's largest symphonic organs, while chamber music and recitals are performed in Sprague Hall.\nHardcore band Hatebreed are from Wallingford, but got their start in New Haven under the name Jasta 14. The band Miracle Legion formed in New Haven in 1983. Folk musicians from New Haven include Loren Mazzacane Connors and Kath Bloom.\nThe Hillhouse Opera Company is a U.S. non-profit opera company based in New Haven that performs in the New Haven area. Founded in 2008 by Victoria Leigh Gardner, Nicole Rodriguez and Jim Coatsworth Hillhouse Opera Company has performed operas as well as opera scenes programs, master classes and concert series. In 2011, the Company professionally staged the works created through the Riverview Opera Project. The Riverview Opera Project created workshops for children and adolescents at Riverview Hospital, Connecticut's only state-funded psychiatric hospital for youth, and helped them to successfully create, produce, and perform four original operas.\nFestivals.\nIn addition to the Jazz Festival (described above), New Haven serves as the home city of the annual International Festival of Arts and Ideas. New Haven's Saint Patrick's Day parade, which began in 1842, is New England's oldest and draws the largest crowds of any one-day spectator event in Connecticut. The St. Andrew the Apostle Italian Festival has taken place in the historic Wooster Square neighborhood every year since 1900. Other parishes in the city celebrate the Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua and a carnival in honor of St. Bernadette Soubirous. New Haven celebrates Powder House Day every April on the New Haven Green to commemorate the city's entrance into the Revolutionary War. The annual Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival commemorates the 1973 planting of 72 Yoshino Japanese cherry blossom trees by the New Haven Historic Commission in collaboration with the New Haven Parks Department and residents of the neighborhood. The Festival now draws well over 5,000 visitors. The Film Fest New Haven has been held annually since 1995.\nNightlife.\nIn the past decade downtown has seen an influx of new restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Large crowds are drawn to the Crown Street area downtown on weekends where many of the restaurants and bars are located. Crown Street between State and High Streets has dozens of establishments, as do nearby Temple and College Streets. Away from downtown, Upper State Street has a number of restaurants and bars popular with local residents and weekend visitors.\nNewspapers and media.\nNew Haven is served by the daily \"New Haven Register\", the weekly \"alternative\" \"New Haven Advocate\" (which is run by Tribune, the corporation owning the \"Hartford Courant\"), the online daily \"New Haven Independent\", and the monthly \"Grand News Community Newspaper.\" Downtown New Haven is covered by an in-depth civic news forum, Design New Haven. The \"Register\" also backs \"PLAY\" magazine, a weekly entertainment publication. The city is also served by several student-run papers, including the \"Yale Daily News\", the weekly \"Yale Herald\" and a humor tabloid, \"Rumpus Magazine\".\nWTNH Channel 8, the ABC affiliate for Connecticut, WCTX Channel 59, the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the state, Connecticut Public Television station WEDY channel 65, a PBS affiliate, and WTXX Channel 34, the IntrigueTV affiliate, broadcast from New Haven. All New York City news and sports team stations broadcast to New Haven County.\nSports and athletics.\nNew Haven has a history of professional sports franchises dating back to the 19th century and has been the home to professional baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer teams\u2014including the New York Giants of the National Football League from 1973 to 1974, who played at the Yale Bowl. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, New Haven consistently had minor league hockey and baseball teams, which played at the New Haven Arena (built in 1926, demolished in 1972), New Haven Coliseum (1972\u20132002), and Yale Field (1928\u2013present).\nWhen John DeStefano, Jr., became mayor of New Haven in 1995, he outlined a plan to transform the city into a major cultural and arts center in the Northeast, which involved investments in programs and projects other than sports franchises. As nearby Bridgeport built new sports facilities, the brutalist New Haven Coliseum rapidly deteriorated. Believing the upkeep on the venue to be a drain of tax dollars, the DeStefano administration closed the Coliseum in 2002; it was demolished in 2007. New Haven's last professional sports team, the New Haven County Cutters, left in 2009. The DeStefano administration did, however, see the construction of the New Haven Athletic Center in 1998, a indoor athletic facility with a seating capacity of over 3,000. The NHAC, built adjacent to Hillhouse High School, is used for New Haven public schools athletics, as well as large-scale area and state sporting events; it is the largest high school indoor sports complex in the state.\nNew Haven was the host of the 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games; then-President Bill Clinton spoke at the opening ceremonies. The city is home to the Pilot Pen International tennis event, which takes place every August at the Connecticut Tennis Center, one of the largest tennis venues in the world. New Haven biannually hosts \"The Game\" between Yale and Harvard, the country's second-oldest college football rivalry. Numerous road races take place in New Haven, including the USATF 20K Championship during the New Haven Road Race.\nGreater New Haven is home to a number of college sports teams. The Yale Bulldogs play Division I college sports, as do the Quinnipiac Bobcats in neighboring Hamden. Division II athletics are played by Southern Connecticut State University and the University of New Haven (actually located in neighboring West Haven), while Albertus Magnus College athletes perform at the Division III level.\nNew Haven is home to many New York Yankees, New York Mets, & Boston Red Sox fans due to the proximity of New York City & Boston.\nWalter Camp, deemed the \"father of American football\", was a New Havener.\nThe New Haven Warriors rugby league team play in the AMNRL. They have a large number of Pacific Islanders playing for them. Their field is located at the West Haven High School's Ken Strong Stadium. They won the 2008 AMNRL Grand Final.\nStructures.\nArchitecture.\nNew Haven has many architectural landmarks dating from every important time period and architectural style in American history. The city has been home to a number of architects and architectural firms that have left their mark on the city including Ithiel Town and Henry Austin in the 19th century and Cesar Pelli, Warren Platner, Kevin Roche, Herbert Newman and Barry Svigals in the 20th. The Yale School of Architecture has fostered this important component of the city's economy. Cass Gilbert, of the Beaux-Arts school, designed New Haven's Union Station and the New Haven Free Public Library and was also commissioned for a City Beautiful plan in 1919. Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, Alexander Jackson Davis, Philip C. Johnson, Gordon Bunshaft, Louis Kahn, James Gamble Rogers, Frank Gehry, Charles Willard Moore, Stefan Behnisch, James Polshek, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen and Robert Venturi all have designed buildings in New Haven. Yale's 1950s-era Ingalls Rink, designed by Eero Saarinen, was included on the \"America's Favorite Architecture\" list created in 2007.\nSeveral residential homes in New Haven were designed by Alice Washburn, a noted female architect whose Colonial Revival style set a standard for homes in the region.\nMany of the city's neighborhoods are well-preserved as walkable \"museums\" of 19th- and 20th-century American architecture, particularly by the New Haven Green, Hillhouse Avenue and other residential sections close to Downtown New Haven. Overall, a large proportion of the city's land area is National (NRHP) historic districts. One of the best sources on local architecture is \"New Haven: Architecture and Urban Design\", by Elizabeth Mills Brown.\nThe five tallest buildings in New Haven are:\nHistoric points of interest.\nMany historical sites exist throughout the city, including 59 properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Of these, nine are among the 60 U.S. National Historic Landmarks in Connecticut. The New Haven Green, one of the National Historic Landmarks, was formed in 1638, and is home to three 19th-century churches. Below the First Church of Christ in New Haven (referred to as the Center Church on the Green) lies a 17th-century crypt, which is open to visitors. Some of the more famous burials include the first wife of Benedict Arnold and the aunt and grandmother of President Rutherford B. Hayes; Hayes visited the crypt while President in 1880. The Old Campus of Yale University is located next to the Green, and includes Connecticut Hall, Yale's oldest building and a National Historic Landmark. The Hillhouse Avenue area, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a part of Yale's campus, has been called a walkable museum, due to its 19th-century mansions and street scape; Charles Dickens is said to have called Hillhouse Avenue \"the most beautiful street in America\" when visiting the city in 1868.\nIn 1660, Edward Whalley (a cousin and friend of Oliver Cromwell) and William Goffe, two English Civil War generals who signed the death warrant of King Charles I, hid in a rock formation in New Haven after having fled England upon the restoration of Charles II to the English throne. They were later joined by a third regicide, John Dixwell. The rock formation, which is now a part of West Rock Park, is known as Judges' Cave, and the path leading to the cave is called the Regicides Trail.\nAfter the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, the Connecticut colonial government ordered the construction of Black Rock Fort (to be built on top of an older 17th-century fort) to protect the port of New Haven. In 1779, during the Battle of New Haven, British soldiers captured Black Rock Fort and burned the barracks to the ground. The fort was reconstructed in 1807 by the federal government (on orders from the Thomas Jefferson administration), and rechristened Fort Nathan Hale, after the Revolutionary War hero who had lived in New Haven. The cannons of Fort Nathan Hale were successful in defying British war ships during the War of 1812. In 1863, during the Civil War, a second Fort Hale was built next to the original, complete with bomb-resistant bunkers and a moat, to defend the city should a Southern raid against New Haven be launched. The United States Congress deeded the site to the state in 1921, and all three versions of the fort have been restored. The site is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and receives thousands of visitors each year.\nGrove Street Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark which lies adjacent to Yale's campus, contains the graves of Roger Sherman, Eli Whitney, Noah Webster, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Charles Goodyear and Walter Camp, among other notable burials. The cemetery is noted for its Egyptian Revival gateway, and is the oldest planned burial ground in the United States. The Union League Club of New Haven building, located on Chapel Street, is notable for not only being a historic Beaux-Arts building, but also is built on the site where Roger Sherman's home once stood; George Washington is known to have stayed at the Sherman residence while President in 1789 (one of three times Washington visited New Haven throughout his lifetime).\nTwo sites pay homage to the time President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft lived in the city, as both a student and later Professor at Yale: a plaque on Prospect Street marks the site where Taft's home formerly stood, and downtown's Taft Apartment Building (formerly the Taft Hotel) bears the name of the former president who resided in the building for eight years before becoming Chief Justice of the United States.\nLighthouse Point Park, a public beach run by the city, was a popular tourist destination during the Roaring Twenties, attracting luminaries of the period such as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. The park remains popular among New Haveners, and is home to the Five Mile Point Lighthouse, constructed in 1847, and the Lighthouse Point Carousel, constructed in 1916. Five Mile Point Light was decommissioned in 1877 following the construction of Southwest Ledge Light at the entrance of the harbor, which remains in service to this day. Both of the lighthouses and the carousel are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nOther historic sites in the city include the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, which stands at the summit of East Rock, the Marsh Botanical Garden, Wooster Square, Dwight Street, Louis' Lunch, and the Farmington Canal, all of which date back to the 19th century. Other historic parks besides the Green include Edgerton Park, Edgewood Park, and East Rock Park, each of which is included on the National Register of Historic Places.\nTransportation.\nRail.\nNew Haven has two railroad stations, connected to New York City and points along the Northeast Corridor by commuter rail, regional rail and inter-city rail. Service is provided by:\nThe city's main railroad station is the historic Beaux-Arts Union Station, which serves Metro-North, Hartford Line, and Shore Line East commuter trains. Approximately 175 trains serve Union Station on weekdays. Union Station is also served by four Amtrak lines: the \"Northeast Regional\" and the high-speed \"Acela Express\" provide service to New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston, and rank as the first and second busiest routes in the country; the New Haven\u2013Springfield Line provides service to Hartford and Springfield, Massachusetts; and the \"Vermonter\" provides service to both Washington, D.C., and Vermont, from the Canada\u2013US border.\nAn additional station, State Street Station, was opened in 2002, providing passengers easier access to downtown New Haven. State Street Station is currently serviced by Shore Line East and Hartford Line trains, plus some peak-hour Metro-North trips.\nBus.\nThe New Haven Division of Connecticut Transit (CT Transit), the state's bus system, is the second largest division in the state with 24 routes. All routes originate from the New Haven Green, making it the central transfer hub of the city. Service is provided to 19 different municipalities throughout Greater New Haven. Bus routes were formerly identified by letters, but as of October 8, 2017, all service was renamed using 200-series numbers, in accordance with a renumbering of CTtransit's statewide services.\nCT Transit's Union Station Shuttle provides free service from Union Station to the New Haven Green and several New Haven parking garages. Peter Pan and Greyhound bus lines have scheduled stops at Union Station, and connections downtown can be made via the Union Station Shuttle. A private company operates the New Haven/Hartford Express which provides commuter bus service to Hartford. The Yale University Shuttle provides free transportation around New Haven for Yale students, faculty, and staff.\nThe New Haven Division buses follow routes that had originally been covered by trolley service. Horse-drawn streetcars began operating in New Haven in the 1860s, and by the mid-1890s all the lines had become electric. In the 1920s and 1930s, some of the trolley lines began to be replaced by bus lines, with the last trolley route converted to bus in 1948. The City of New Haven is in the very early stages of considering the restoration of streetcar (light-rail) service, which has been absent since the postwar period.\nBicycle.\nBikeshare.\nOn February 21, 2018, New Haven officially launched its Bike New Haven bikeshare program. based on dockless technology powered by Noa Technologies At time of launch, the program features 10 docking stations and 100 bikes, spread throughout the urban core; there are plans to reach 30 bike stations and 300 bikes by the end of April 2018. The launch of the New Haven bikeshare program coincided with the launch of Yale University's own bikeshare program, which uses the same technology powered by Noa.\nBike lanes.\nIn 2004, the first bike lane in the city was added to Orange Street, connecting East Rock Park and the East Rock neighborhood to downtown. Since then, bike lanes have also been added to sections of Howard Ave, Elm St, Dixwell Avenue, Water Street, Clinton Avenue and State Street. The city has created recommended bike routes for getting around New Haven, including use of the Canal Trail and the Orange Street lane. As of the end of 2012, bicycle lanes have also been added in both directions on Dixwell Avenue along most of the street from downtown to the Hamden town line, as well as along Howard Avenue from Yale New Haven Hospital to City Point.\nThe city has plans to create two additional bike lanes connecting Union Station with downtown, and the Westville neighborhood with downtown. The city has added dozens of covered bike parking spots at Union Station, in order to facilitate more bike commuting to the station.\nFarmington Canal Greenway.\nThe Farmington Canal Trail is a rail trail that will eventually run continuously from downtown New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts. The scenic trail follows the path of the historic New Haven and Northampton Company and the Farmington Canal. Currently, there is a continuous stretch of the trail from downtown, through Hamden and into Cheshire, making bicycle commuting between New Haven and those suburbs possible. The trail is part of the East Coast Greenway, a proposed bike path that would link every major city on the East Coast from Florida to Maine.\nRoads.\nNew Haven lies at the intersection of Interstate 95 on the coast\u2014which provides access southwards and/or westwards to the western coast of Connecticut and to New York City, and eastwards to the eastern Connecticut shoreline, Rhode Island, and eastern Massachusetts\u2014and Interstate 91, which leads northward to the interior of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont and the Canada\u2013US border. I-95 is notorious for traffic jams increasing with proximity to New York City; on the east side of New Haven it passes over the Quinnipiac River via the Pearl Harbor Memorial, or \"Q Bridge\", which often presents a major bottleneck to traffic. I-91, however, is relatively less congested, except at the intersection with I-95 during peak travel times.\nThe Oak Street Connector (Connecticut Route 34) intersects I-91 at exit 1, just south of the I-95/I-91 interchange, and runs northwest for a few blocks as an expressway spur into downtown before emptying onto surface roads. The Wilbur Cross Parkway (Connecticut Route 15) runs parallel to I-95 west of New Haven, turning northwards as it nears the city and then running northwards parallel to I-91 through the outer rim of New Haven and Hamden, offering an alternative to the I-95/I-91 journey (restricted to non-commercial vehicles). Route 15 in New Haven is the site of the only highway tunnel in the state (officially designated as Heroes Tunnel), running through West Rock, home to West Rock Park and the Three Judges Cave.\nThe city also has several major surface arteries. U.S. Route 1 (Columbus Avenue, Union Avenue, Water Street, Forbes Avenue) runs in an east\u2013west direction south of downtown serving Union Station and leading out of the city to Milford, West Haven, East Haven and Branford. The main road from downtown heading northwest is Whalley Avenue (partly signed as Route 10 and Route 63) leading to Westville and Woodbridge. Heading north towards Hamden, there are two major thoroughfares, Dixwell Avenue and Whitney Avenue. To the northeast are Middletown Avenue (Route 17), which leads to the Montowese section of North Haven, and Foxon Boulevard (Route 80), which leads to the Foxon section of East Haven and to the town of North Branford. To the west is Route 34, which leads to the city of Derby. Other major intracity arteries are Ella Grasso Boulevard (Route 10) west of downtown, and College Street, Temple Street, Church Street, Elm Street, and Grove Street in the downtown area.\nTraffic safety is a major concern for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists in New Haven. In addition to many traffic-related fatalities in the city each year, since 2005, over a dozen Yale students, staff and faculty have been killed or injured in traffic collisions on or near the campus.\nAirport.\nTweed New Haven Airport is located within the city limits east of the business district, straddling the border with neighboring East Haven. Service to approximately 25 cities is provided by Avelo Airlines, which established its first East Coast base at the airport in 2021. Breeze Airways plans to begin operations at Tweed in December 2024, and will provide service to 10 destinations. The airport is currently planning a runway lengthening and new terminal on the East Haven side of the airport.\nBus service between Downtown New Haven and Tweed is available via the CT Transit New Haven Division.\nSeaport.\nNew Haven Harbor is home to the Port of New Haven, a deep-water seaport with three berths capable of hosting vessels and barges as well as the facilities required to handle break bulk cargo. The port has the capacity to load 200 trucks a day from the ground or via loading docks. Providence and Worcester Railroad provides freight rail transportation to the port, with the railroad operating a switch engine for yard movements, a private siding for loading and unloading, and trackage over the Tomlinson Lift Bridge toward the Northeast Corridor. Approximately of inside storage and of outside storage are available at the site. Five shore cranes with a 250-ton capacity and 26 forklifts, each with a 26-ton capacity, are also available.\nOn June 17, 2013, the city commissioned the \"Nathan Hale\", a port security vessel capable of serving search and rescue, firefighting, and constabulary roles.\nInfrastructure.\nHospitals and medicine.\nThe New Haven area supports several medical facilities that are considered some of the best hospitals in the country. There are two major medical centers downtown: Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital has four pavilions, including the Yale \u2013 New Haven Children's Hospital and the Smilow Cancer Hospital; the Hospital of Saint Raphael is several blocks north, and touts its excellent cardiac emergency care program. Smaller downtown health facilities are the Temple Medical Center located downtown on Temple Street, Connecticut Mental Health Center/ across Park Street from Y-NHH, and the Hill Health Center, which serves the working-class Hill neighborhood. A large Veterans Affairs hospital is located in neighboring West Haven. To the west in Milford is Milford Hospital, and to the north in Meriden is the MidState Medical Center.\nIn recent years, Yale and the City of New Haven have been working to build a medical and biotechnology research hub in the city and Greater New Haven region. The city, state and Yale together run Science Park, a large site three blocks northwest of Yale's Science Hill campus. This multi-block site, approximately bordered by Mansfield Street, Division Street, and Shelton Avenue, is the former home of Winchester's and Olin Corporation's 45 large-scale factory buildings. Currently, sections of the site are large-scale parking lots or abandoned structures, but there is also a large remodeled and functioning area of buildings (leased primarily by a private developer) with numerous Yale employees, financial service and biotech companies.\nA second biotechnology district is being planned for the median strip on Frontage Road, on land cleared for the never-built Route 34 extension. As of late 2009, a Pfizer drug-testing clinic, a medical laboratory building serving Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital, and a mixed-use structure containing parking, housing and office space, have been constructed on this corridor. A former SNET telephone building at 300 George Street is being converted into lab space, and has been quite successful so far in attracting biotechnology and medical firms.\nPower supply facilities.\nElectricity for New Haven is generated by a 448\u00a0MW oil and gas-fired generating station located on the shore at New Haven Harbor. PPL Corporation operates a 220\u00a0MW peaking natural gas turbine plant in nearby Wallingford.\nNear New Haven there is the static inverter plant of the HVDC Cross Sound Cable.\nThere are three PureCell Model 400 fuel cells placed in the city of New Haven\u2014one at the New Haven Public Schools and newly constructed Roberto Clemente School, one at the mixed-use 360 State Street building, and one at City Hall. According to Giovanni Zinn of the city's Office of Sustainability, each fuel cell may save the city up to $1 million in energy costs over a decade. The fuel cells were provided by ClearEdge Power, formerly UTC Power. Additional fuel cells are located at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and at the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority (GNHWPCA). Ikea's New Haven facility also utilizes a 250\u00a0kW fuel cell and 940.8\u00a0kW solar array.\nNew Haven recently installed solar panels at 11 city schools with a combined power generation capacity of 1.8 MW. Owned and maintained by Greenskies, the panels allow New Haven to purchase electricity at a discounted rate through a power-purchasing agreement. The panels bring New Haven's solar capacity to 2.8 MW and will help New Haven meet its commitment to powering 100% of its municipal operations through clean energy, which it made in Summer 2017 and reaffirmed in the 2018 New Haven Climate and Sustainability Framework.\nIn popular culture.\nSeveral movies have been filmed in New Haven since 2000, including \"Mona Lisa Smile\" (2003), with Julia Roberts, \"The Life Before Her Eyes\" (2007), with Uma Thurman, and \"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull\" (2008) directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett and Shia LaBeouf. The filming of \"Crystal Skull\" involved an extensive chase sequence through the streets of New Haven. Several downtown streets were closed to traffic and received a \"makeover\" to look like streets of 1957, when the film is set. 500 locals were cast as extras for the film. In \"Everybody's Fine\" (2009), Robert De Niro has a close encounter in what is supposed to be the Denver train station; the scene was filmed in New Haven's Union Station.\n New Haven is mentioned in the song Peace Frog by the Doors, referencing a 1967 incident where vocalist Jim Morrison was arrested for \"attempting to incite a riot\" in the middle of a concert at the New Haven Arena.\nSister cities.\nNew Haven's sister cities are:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSome of these were selected because of historical connection\u2014Freetown because of the \"Amistad\" trial. Others, such as Amalfi and Afula, reflect ethnic groups in New Haven.\nIn 1990, the United Nations named New Haven a \"Peace Messenger City\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "4855560": "Loren Mazzacane Connors\nLoren Mazzacane Connors (born October 22, 1949) is an American guitarist who has recorded and performed under several different names: Guitar Roberts, Loren Mazzacane, Loren Mattei, and currently Loren Connors. His music has touched on many genres, but often features an abstract or experimental version of blues and folk styles.\nBiography.\nConnors was born in New Haven, Connecticut, United States, and studied art at Southern Connecticut State University and the University of Cincinnati in the early 1970s, before deciding to pursue music rather than painting.\nBest known as a composer and improviser on acoustic and electric guitar, Connors has released over 50 albums, on commercial record labels such as Family Vineyard, Table of the Elements, Recital and Father Yod as well as on his own Black Label, St. Joan and Daggett self-publishing imprints. They include spare solo and duo blues, ensemble experimental jazz, noise, drones, and avant garde rock.\nAn early champion of his music was Dr. William Ferris, noted blues historian who served as head of the National Endowment for the Arts under the Clinton Administration. Connors made contact with him in the late 1970s, while Dr. Ferris was teaching at Yale University. Although Ferris did not know it at the time, Connors was the janitor who cleaned his office. Many years later, Ferris wrote the liner notes for a sweeping compilation CD set of Connors's seven-inch recordings, called \"Night Through.\"\nFrom 1978 to 1984, Connors recorded a series of mostly solo blues abstractions, releasing them in limited amounts on his Daggett label, later reissued in a joint effort by Byron Coley, Thurston Moore on the Ecstatic Peace label in 1999, mastered by Jim O\u2019Rourke, in part to celebrate Connors's 50th birthday. Cadence Magazine noted at the time that he was \u201csimilar to others in the Advanced Guard of improvising guitarists in that he is trying to extend the boundaries of sound and pitch of acoustic guitar, but he is unique in the utilization of Blues in his work, one could almost say this is Avant Garde Blues.\u201d From 1981 to 1984, Connors released six limited edition albums with folksinger Kath Bloom, including traditional songs and Bloom originals.\nIn the mid-1980s, Connors took a partial break from music and honed his compositional skills by focusing on the art of haiku. He received the 1987 Lafcadio Hearn Award, and he and life partner Suzanne Langille also co-wrote an article on blues and haiku, \"The Dancing Ear,\" published in the Haiku Society of America's journal. (A book of Connors's work from this period, \"Autumn Sun,\" was re-released by Thurston Moore and Byron Coley a couple decades later.) He wrote under the name Loren Mattei, and a music recording from this period, \"Ribbon o' Blues,\" was also released under that name.\nSoon after returning to music, Connors began working with layered tracks. The first of this period was the \"In Pittsburgh\" album, released in 1989, later reissued by the Dexter's Cigar label in 1996. He moved to New York City in 1990, where he continued using the multi-track approach through the 1990s. Langille's vocals were featured on several recordings, and she also helped edit his suites. Many of these releases were on the RoadCone label, managed by Mike Hinds. During this period Connors introduced an abstracted undercurrent of Irish themes and melodic influences, while eschewing formal structure, with the \"Hell\u2019s Kitchen Park\" CD being a hallmark of this added influence.\nSuch 1990s recordings were interspersed with recordings of live performances of guitar duets. The first of those recordings was with Japanese guitarist Keiji Haino, introduced to Connors by WFMU DJ David Newgarten, who then produced the recording, released in 1995. This was followed by the first of several recordings with guitarist Alan Licht in 1996, and with Thurston Moore and others.\nIn the mid-to-late 1990s he led the blues-rock group Haunted House with Langille, Andrew Burnes (of the band San Agustin), and percussionist Neel Murgai. Connors and Langille also joined with San Agustin's David Daniell and Burnes for a recording on the Secretly Canadian label. \nIn the late 1990s, Connors and John Fahey met at a Chicago event, introduced by guitarist Jim O'Rourke. Fahey, who died in 2001, included on his last CD, released posthumously in 2003, a piece called, \"Red Cross, Disciple of Christ Today (for Guitar Roberts),\" referring to Connors's nickname. In the mid-2000s, Connors met and performed with Jandek, a long-time improviser whose unique independence and originality had often been compared to Connors's. He worked very closely with poet Steve Dalachinsky (who died in 2019) and also with multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter.\nFrom 1999 through the present, Connors has focused on extended solo improvisational recordings, including the Departing of a Dream series, his tribute to Miles Davis. His main record label for these recordings has been Family Vineyard, managed by Eric Weddle.\nIn 2003, he composed and recorded a score for the film \"Why Can\u2019t I Stop This Uncontrollable Dancing?\". In 2009, Connors's piece, \u201cAirs No. 3,\u201d appeared in the soundtrack for the French-language film, Le Premier Cercle (\u201cThe Ultimate Heist), by director Laurent Tuel, featuring Jean Reno.\nIn 2012, his composition, \"The Murder of Joan of Arc,\" was used as one of two alternative soundtracks for a reissue by Criterion Collection and Eureka Entertainment of Carl Dreyer's silent film, \"The Passion of Joan of Arc\".\nIn the mid-to-late 2010s, Connors took up painting again, while continuing his music composing and performing. An art show of a series of acrylic paintings on Belgium linen canvas was hosted at the Artists Space in Manhattan in the fall of 2018.\nConnors was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1992. He continues to perform and record. Some of Connors' works are archived at the Blues Archive of the University of Mississippi. The University of South Carolina has a comprehensive archive of Connors' recordings and materials.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["4855560", "5122699", "53825"], "permutation_1": ["53825", "4855560", "5122699"], "permutation_2": ["4855560", "53825", "5122699"], "permutation_3": ["4855560", "53825", "5122699"]}
{"id": "3hop1__465026_35178_686699", "docs_added": {"25270592": "Lilihan carpets and rugs\nArmenians wove Lilihans in Lilihan village in what used to be called Kamareh (now Khomeyn) district in Iran. The term Lilihan is better known in the US, in Europe it is not as widely used.\nStructure.\nAlthough a wide range of carpet and mat sizes are produced, the most common sizes found are 4 x 6 to 8 x 10 feet. The use of a longer pile traditionally appealed to Americans. The Lilihan rugs are executed using the Hamadan (single-wefted) weave, typically this means that they have one heavy cotton weft and are made with thick, first quality wool. The Lilihan rugs are the only fabrics in the Sultanabad region to be single-wefted. Lilihan carpets and rugs are coarsely, but tightly flat woven, making them extremely durable.\nDesign.\nLilihan carpets and rugs are similar to Sarouk rug carpets in colour, style and thickness. According to Leslie Stroh of Rug News, there are about 3000 different designs for Hamadan rugs. This is attributed to 1500 villages in the Hamadan region that each produced two styles of designs. While some geometric patterns can be found amongst Lilihan carpets, the more prevalent designs are traditional floral motifs.\nColour.\nThe pink colour of the weft, distinguishes the Lilihan carpets from all others. Khaki and brown also accentuate the primarily salmon field colour.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />*Neff, Ivan C. and Carol V. Maggs. Dictionary of Oriental Rugs. London: AD. Donker LTD, 1977. ", "35522057": "Qaleh Now-e Khaleseh, Tehran\nCity in Tehran province, Iran\nQaleh Now-e Khaleseh () is a city in, and the capital of, Qaleh Now District of Ray County, Tehran province, Iran. It also serves as the administrative center for Qaleh Now Rural District.\nDemographics.\nPopulation.\nAt the time of the 2006 National Census, Qaleh Now-e Khaleseh's population was 4,718 in 1,195 households, when it was a village in Qaleh Now Rural District of Kahrizak District. The following census in 2011 counted 5,289 people in 1,476 households. The 2016 census measured the population of the village as 5,352 people in 1,584 households, by which time the rural district had been separated from the district in the formation of Qaleh Now District.\nAfter the 2016 census, the village of Qaleh Now-e Khaleseh was elevated to the status of a city.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "14653": "Iran\nCountry in West Asia\nIran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Turkey to the northwest and Iraq to the west, Azerbaijan, Armenia, the Caspian Sea, and Turkmenistan to the north, Afghanistan to the east, Pakistan to the southeast, the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south. With a multi-ethnic population of nearly 86 million in an area of , Iran ranks 17th globally in both geographic size and population. It is the sixth-largest country entirely in Asia and one of the world's most mountainous countries. Officially an Islamic republic, Iran is divided into five regions with 31 provinces. Tehran is the nation's capital, largest city and financial centre.\nA cradle of civilisation, Iran has been inhabited since the Lower Palaeolithic. The large part of Iran was first unified as a political entity by the Medes under Cyaxares in the seventh century BC, and reached its territorial height in the sixth century BC, when Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Empire, one of the largest in ancient history. Alexander the Great conquered the empire in the fourth century BC. An Iranian rebellion established the Parthian Empire in the third century BC and liberated the country, which was succeeded by the Sasanian Empire in the third century AD. Ancient Iran saw some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, religion and central government. The Sasanian era is considered a golden age in the history of Iranian civilisation. Muslims conquered the region in the seventh century AD, leading to Iran's Islamisation. The literature, philosophy, mathematics, medicine, astronomy and art which had blossomed during the Sasanian era were renewed during the Islamic Golden Age and Persian Renaissance, when a series of Iranian Muslim dynasties ended Arab rule, revived the Persian language and ruled the country until the Seljuk and Mongol conquests of the 11th to 14th centuries.\nIn the 16th century, the native Safavid dynasty re-established a unified Iranian state with Twelver Shi'ism as the official religion. During the Afsharid Empire in the 18th century, Iran was a leading world power, but this was no longer the case after the Qajars took power in the 1790s. The early 20th century saw the Persian Constitutional Revolution and the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty by Reza Shah the Great, who ousted the last Qajar shah in 1925. Attempts by Mohammad Mosaddegh to nationalise the oil industry led to an Anglo-American coup in 1953. After the Iranian Revolution, the monarchy was overthrown in 1979 and the Islamic Republic of Iran was established by Ruhollah Khomeini, who became the country's first Supreme Leader. In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, sparking the eight-year-long Iran\u2013Iraq War, which ended in stalemate.\nIran is officially governed as a unitary Islamic republic with a presidential system, with ultimate authority vested in a Supreme Leader. The government is authoritarian and has attracted widespread criticism for its significant violations of human rights and civil liberties. Iran is a major regional power, due to its large reserves of fossil fuels, including the world's second largest natural gas supply, third largest proven oil reserves, its geopolitically significant location, military capabilities, cultural hegemony, regional influence, and role as the world's focal point of Shia Islam. The Iranian economy is the world's 23rd-largest by PPP. Iran is a founding member of the United Nations, OIC, OPEC, and ECO as well as a current member of the NAM, SCO, and BRICS. Iran is home to 28 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the 10th highest in the world, and ranks 5th in Intangible Cultural Heritage, or human treasures.\nEtymology.\nThe term \"Iran\" 'the land of the Aryans' derives from Middle Persian , first attested in a 3rd-century inscription at Naqsh-e Rostam, with the accompanying Parthian inscription using , in reference to the Iranians. and are oblique plural forms of gentilic nouns \"\u0113r-\" (Middle Persian) and \"ary-\" (Parthian), deriving from Proto-Iranian language \"*arya-\" (meaning 'Aryan', i.e. of the Iranians), recognised as a derivative of Proto-Indo-European language \"*ar-yo-\", meaning 'one who assembles (skilfully)'. According to Iranian mythology, the name comes from Iraj, a legendary king.\nIran was referred to as \"Persia\" by the West, due to Greek historians who referred to all of Iran as , meaning 'the land of the Persians'. \"Persia\" is the Fars province in southwest Iran, the 4th largest province, also known as \"P\u00e2rs\". The Persian \"F\u00e2rs\" (\u0641\u0627\u0631\u0633), derived from the earlier form \"P\u00e2rs\" (\u067e\u0627\u0631\u0633), which is in turn derived from \"P\u00e2rs\u00e2\" (Old Persian: \ud800\udfb1\ud800\udfa0\ud800\udfbc\ud800\udfbf). Due to Fars' historical importance, \"Persia\" originated from this territory through Greek in around 550 BC, and Westerners referred to the entire country as \"Persia\", until 1935, when Reza Shah requested the international community to use its native and original name, \"Iran\"; Iranians called their nation \"Iran\" since at least 1000 BC. Today, both \"Iran\" and \"Persia\" are used culturally, while \"Iran\" remains mandatory in official use.\nThe Persian pronunciation of \"Iran\" is . Commonwealth English pronunciations of \"Iran\" are listed in the \"Oxford English Dictionary\" as and , while American English dictionaries provide pronunciations which map to , or . The \"Cambridge Dictionary\" lists as the British pronunciation and as the American pronunciation. Voice of America's pronunciation guide provides .\nHistory.\nIran is home to one of the world's oldest continuous major civilisations, with historical and urban settlements dating back to 4000 BC. The western part of the Iranian plateau participated in the traditional ancient Near East with Elam (3200\u2013539 BC), and later with other peoples such as the Kassites, Mannaeans, and Gutians. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel called the Persians the \"first Historical People\". The Iranian Empire began in the Iron Age with the rise of the Medes, who unified Iran as a nation and empire in 625 BC. The Achaemenid Empire (550\u2013330 BC), founded by Cyrus the Great, was the largest empire the world had seen, spanning from the Balkans to North Africa and Central Asia. They were succeeded by the Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian Empires, who governed Iran for almost 1,000 years, making Iran a leading power once again. Persia's arch-rival during this time was the Roman Empire and its successor, the Byzantine Empire.\nIran endured invasions by the Macedonians, Arabs, Turks, and Mongols. Despite these invasions, Iran continually reasserted its national identity and developed as a distinct political and cultural entity. The Muslim conquest of Persia (632\u2013654) ended the Sasanian Empire and marked a turning point in Iranian history, leading to the Islamisation of Iran from the eighth to tenth centuries and the decline of Zoroastrianism. However, the achievements of prior Persian civilisations were absorbed into the new Islamic polity. Iran suffered invasions by nomadic tribes during the Late Middle Ages and early modern period, negatively impacting the region. Iran was reunified as an independent state in 1501 by the Safavid dynasty, which established Shia Islam as the empire's official religion, marking another turning point in the history of Islam. Iran functioned again as a leading world power, especially in rivalry with the Ottoman Empire. In the 19th century, Iran lost significant territories in the Caucasus to the Russian Empire following the Russo-Persian Wars.\nIran remained a monarchy until the 1979 Iranian Revolution, when it officially became an Islamic republic on 1 April 1979. Since then, Iran has experienced significant political, social, and economic changes. The establishment of the \"Islamic Republic of Iran\" led to the restructuring of its political system, with Ayatollah Khomeini as the Supreme Leader. Iran's foreign relations have been shaped by the Iran\u2013Iraq War (1980\u20131988), ongoing tensions with the United States, and its nuclear programme, which has been a point of contention in international diplomacy.\nSince the 1990s.\nIn 1989, Akbar Rafsanjani concentrated on a pro-business policy of rebuilding the economy without breaking with the ideology of the revolution. He supported a free market domestically, favouring privatisation of state industries and a moderate position internationally. In 1997, Rafsanjani was succeeded by moderate reformist Mohammad Khatami, whose government advocated freedom of expression, constructive diplomatic relations with Asia and the European Union, and an economic policy that supported a free market and foreign investment.\nThe 2005 presidential election brought conservative populist and nationalist candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power. He was known for his hardline views, nuclearisation, and hostility towards Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UK, the US and other states. He was the first president to be summoned by the parliament to answer questions regarding his presidency. In 2013, centrist and reformist Hassan Rouhani was elected president. In domestic policy, he encouraged personal freedom, free access to information, and improved women's rights. He improved Iran's diplomatic relations through exchanging conciliatory letters. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was reached in Vienna in 2015, between Iran, the P5+1 (UN Security Council + Germany) and the EU. The negotiations centred around ending the economic sanctions in exchange for Iran's restriction in producing enriched uranium. In 2018, however, the US under Trump Administration withdrew from the deal and new sanctions were imposed. This nulled the economic provisions, left the agreement in jeopardy, and brought Iran to nuclear threshold status. In 2020, IRGC general, Qasem Soleimani, the 2nd-most powerful person in Iran, was assassinated by the US, heightening tensions between them. Iran retaliated against US airbases in Iraq, the largest ballistic missile attack ever on Americans; 110 sustained brain injuries.\nHardliner Ebrahim Raisi ran for president again in 2021, succeeding Hassan Rouhani. During Raisi's term, Iran intensified uranium enrichment, hindered international inspections, joined SCO and BRICS, supported Russia in its invasion of Ukraine and restored diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia. In April 2024, Israel's airstrike on an Iranian consulate, killed an IRGC commander. Iran retaliated with UAVs, cruise and ballistic missiles; 9 hit Israel. Western and Jordanian military helped Israel down some Iranian drones. It was the largest drone strike in history, biggest missile attack in Iranian history, its first ever direct attack on Israel and the first time since 1991, Israel was directly attacked by a state force. This occurred during heightened tensions amid the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. In May 2024, President Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash, and Iran held a presidential election in June, when reformist and former Minister of Health, Masoud Pezeshkian, was elected to office. On 1 October 2024, Iran launched about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for assassinations of Ismail Haniyeh, Hassan Nasrallah and Abbas Nilforoushan. On 27 October, Israel responded to that attack by strikes on a missile defence system in the Iranian region of Isfahan.\nGeography.\nIran has an area of . It is the sixth-largest country entirely in Asia and the second-largest in West Asia. It lies between latitudes 24\u00b0 and 40\u00b0 N, and longitudes 44\u00b0 and 64\u00b0 E. It is bordered to the northwest by Armenia (), the Azeri exclave of Nakhchivan (), and the Republic of Azerbaijan (); to the north by the Caspian Sea; to the northeast by Turkmenistan (); to the east by Afghanistan () and Pakistan (); to the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman; and to the west by Iraq () and Turkey ().\nIran is in a seismically active area. On average, an earthquake of magnitude seven on the Richter scale occurs once every ten years. Most earthquakes are shallow-focus and can be very devastating, such as the 2003 Bam earthquake.\nIran consists of the Iranian Plateau. It is one of the world's most mountainous countries; its landscape is dominated by rugged mountain ranges that separate basins or plateaus. The populous west part is the most mountainous, with ranges such as the Caucasus, Zagros, and Alborz, the last containing Mount Damavand, Iran's highest point, at , which is the highest volcano in Asia. Iran's mountains have impacted its politics and economics for centuries.\nThe north part is covered by the lush lowland Caspian Hyrcanian forests, near the southern shores of the Caspian Sea. The east part consists mostly of desert basins, such as the Kavir Desert, which is the country's largest desert, and the Lut Desert, as well as salt lakes. The Lut Desert is the hottest recorded spot on the Earth's surface, with 70.7\u00a0\u00b0C recorded in 2005. The only large plains are found along the coast of the Caspian and at the north end of the Persian Gulf, where the country borders the mouth of the Arvand river. Smaller, discontinuous plains are found along the remaining coast of the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman.\nIslands.\nIranian islands are mainly located in the Persian Gulf. Iran has 102 islands in Urmia Lake, 427 in Aras River, several in Anzali Lagoon, Ashurade Island in the Caspian Sea, Sheytan Island in the Oman Sea and other inland islands. Iran has an uninhabited island at the far end of the Gulf of Oman, near Pakistan. A few islands can be visited by tourists. Most are owned by the military or used for wildlife protection, and entry is prohibited or requires a permit.\nIran took control of Bumusa, and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs in 1971, in the Strait of Hormuz between the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. Despite the islands being small and having little natural resources or population, they are highly valuable for their strategic location. Although the United Arab Emirates claims sovereignty, it has consistently been met with a strong response from Iran, based on their historical and cultural background. Iran has full control over the islands.\nKish island, as a free trade zone, is touted as a consumer's paradise, with malls, shopping centres, tourist attractions, and luxury hotels. Qeshm is the largest island in Iran, and a UNESCO Global Geopark since 2016. Its salt cave, Namakdan, is the largest in the world, and one of the world's longest caves.\nClimate.\nIran's climate is diverse, ranging from arid and semi-arid, to subtropical along the Caspian coast and northern forests. On the north edge of the country, temperatures rarely fall below freezing and the area remains humid. Summer temperatures rarely exceed . Annual precipitation is in the east part of the plain and more than in the west part. The UN Resident Coordinator for Iran, has said that \"Water scarcity poses the most severe human security challenge in Iran today\".\nTo the west, settlements in the Zagros basin experience lower temperatures, severe winters with freezing average daily temperatures and heavy snowfall. The east and central basins are arid, with less than of rain and have occasional deserts. Average summer temperatures rarely exceed . The southern coastal plains of the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman have mild winters, and very humid and hot summers. The annual precipitation ranges from .\nBiodiversity.\nMore than one-tenth of the country is forested. About 120 million hectares of forests and fields are government-owned for national exploitation. Iran's forests can be divided into five vegetation regions: Hyrcanian region which forms the green belt of the north side of the country; the Turan region, which are mainly scattered in the centre of Iran; Zagros region, which mainly contains oak forests in the west; the Persian Gulf region, which is scattered in the southern coastal belt; the Arasbarani region, which contains rare and unique species. More than 8,200 plant species are grown. The land covered by natural flora is four times that of Europe's. There are over 200 protected areas to preserve biodiversity and wildlife, with over 30 being national parks.\nIran's living fauna includes 34 bat species, Indian grey mongoose, small Indian mongoose, golden jackal, Indian wolf, foxes, striped hyena, leopard, Eurasian lynx, brown bear and Asian black bear. Ungulate species include wild boar, urial, Armenian mouflon, red deer, and goitered gazelle. One of the most famous animals is the critically endangered Asiatic cheetah, which survives only in Iran. Iran lost all its Asiatic lions and the extinct Caspian tigers by the early 20th century. Domestic ungulates are represented by sheep, goat, cattle, horse, water buffalo, donkey and camel. Bird species like pheasant, partridge, stork, eagles and falcons are native.\nGovernment and politics.\nSupreme Leader.\nThe Supreme Leader, \"Rahbar\", Leader of the Revolution or Supreme Leadership Authority, is the head of state and responsible for supervision of policy. The president has limited power compared to the Rahbar. Key ministers are selected with the Rahbar's agreement and they have the ultimate say on foreign policy. The Rahbar is directly involved in ministerial appointments for Defence, Intelligence and Foreign Affairs, as well as other top ministries after submission of candidates from the president.\nRegional policy is directly controlled by the Rahbar, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' task limited to protocol and ceremonial occasions. Ambassadors to Arab countries, for example, are chosen by the Quds Force, which directly reports to the Rahbar. The Rahbar can order laws to be amended. Setad was estimated at $95\u00a0billion in 2013 by Reuters, accounts of which are secret even to the parliament.\nThe Rahbar is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, controls military intelligence and security operations, and has sole power to declare war or peace. The heads of the judiciary, state radio and television networks, commanders of the police and military, and the members of the Guardian Council are all appointed by the Rahbar.\nThe Assembly of Experts is responsible for electing the Rahbar, and has the power to dismiss him on the basis of qualifications and popular esteem. To date, the Assembly of Experts has not challenged any of the Rahbar's decisions nor attempted to dismiss him. The previous head of the judicial system, Sadeq Larijani, appointed by the Rahbar, said that it is illegal for the Assembly of Experts to supervise the Rahbar. Many believe the Assembly of Experts has become a ceremonial body without any real power. In February 2025,\u00a0 the New York Times reported that according to Karim Sadjadpour, an expert on Iran at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, there exist in the Islamic Republic of Iran two parallel regimes. One which is ruled by the military and intelligence forces, who report to the Rahbar, and \"who oversee the nuclear programme and regional proxies and are tasked with repression, hostage taking and assassinations\u201d. The other ruled by diplomats and politicians \"who are authorized to speak to Western media and officials\" and have minimal knowledge of Iran's nuclear programme.\nThe political system is based on the country's constitution. Iran ranked 154th in the 2022 \"The Economist Democracy Index\". Juan Jos\u00e9 Linz wrote in 2000 that \"the Iranian regime combines the ideological bent of totalitarianism with the limited pluralism of authoritarianism\".\nPresident.\nThe President is head of government and the second highest-ranking authority, after the Supreme Leader. The President is elected by universal suffrage for 4 years. Before elections, nominees to become a presidential candidate must be approved by the Guardian Council. The Council's members are chosen by the Leader, with the Leader having the power to dismiss the president. The President can only be re-elected for one term. The president is the deputy commander-in-chief of the Army, the head of Supreme National Security Council, and has the power to declare a state of emergency after passage by the parliament.\nThe President is responsible for the implementation of the constitution, and for the exercise of executive powers in implementing the decrees and general policies as outlined by the Rahbar, except for matters directly related to the Rahbar, who has the final say. The President functions as the executive of affairs such as signing treaties and other international agreements, and administering national planning, budget, and state employment affairs, all as approved by the Rahbar.\nThe President appoints ministers, subject to the approval of the Parliament, and the Rahbar, who can dismiss or reinstate any minister. The President supervises the Council of Ministers, coordinates government decisions, and selects government policies to be placed before the legislature. Eight Vice Presidents serve under the President, as well as a cabinet of 22 ministers, all appointed by the president.\nGuardian Council.\nPresidential and parliamentary candidates must be approved by the 12-member Guardian Council (all members of which are appointed by the Leader) or the Leader, before running to ensure their allegiance. The Leader rarely does the vetting, but has the power to do so, in which case additional approval of the Guardian Council is not needed. The Leader can revert the decisions of the Guardian Council.\nThe constitution gives the council three mandates: veto power over legislation passed by the parliament, supervision of elections and approving or disqualifying candidates seeking to run in local, parliamentary, presidential, or Assembly of Experts elections. The council can nullify a law based on two accounts: being against Sharia (Islamic law), or being against the constitution.\nSupreme National Security Council.\nThe Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) is at the top of the foreign policy decisions process. The council was formed during the 1989 Iranian constitutional referendum for the protection and support of national interests, the revolution, territorial integrity and national sovereignty. It is mandated by Article 176 of the Constitution to be presided over by the President.\nThe Leader selects the secretary of the Supreme Council, and the decisions of the council are effective after the confirmation by the Leader. The SNSC formulates nuclear policy, and would become effective if they are confirmed by the Leader.\nLegislature.\nThe legislature, known as the Islamic Consultative Assembly (ICA), Iranian Parliament or \"Majles\", is a unicameral body comprising 290 members elected for four-years. It drafts legislation, ratifies international treaties, and approves the national budget. All parliamentary candidates and legislation from the assembly must be approved by the Guardian Council. The Guardian Council can and has dismissed elected members of the parliament. The parliament has no legal status without the Guardian Council, and the Council holds absolute veto power over legislation.\nThe Expediency Discernment Council has the authority to mediate disputes between Parliament and the Guardian Council, and serves as an advisory body to the Supreme Leader, making it one of the most powerful governing bodies in Iran.\nThe Parliament has 207 constituencies, including the 5 reserved seats for religious minorities. The remaining 202 are territorial, each covering one or more of Iran's counties.\nLaw.\nIran uses the Sharia law as its legal system, with elements of Civil law. The Supreme Leader appoints the head of the Supreme Court and chief public prosecutor. There are several types of courts, including public courts that deal with civil and criminal cases, and revolutionary courts which deal with certain offences, such as crimes against national security. The decisions of the revolutionary courts are final and cannot be appealed.\nThe Chief Justice is the head of the judicial system and responsible for its administration and supervision. He is the highest judge of the Supreme Court of Iran. The Chief Justice nominates candidates to serve as minister of justice, and the President selects one. The Chief Justice can serve for two five-year terms.\nThe Special Clerical Court handles crimes allegedly committed by clerics, although it has taken on cases involving laypeople. The Special Clerical Court functions independently of the regular judicial framework and is accountable only to the Rahbar. The Court's rulings are final and cannot be appealed. The Assembly of Experts, which meets for one week annually, comprises 86 \"virtuous and learned\" clerics elected by adult suffrage for 8-year terms.\nAdministrative divisions.\nIran is subdivided into thirty-one provinces ( \"ost\u00e2n\"), each governed from a local centre, usually the largest local city, which is called the capital (Persian: , \"markaz\") of that province. The provincial authority is headed by a governor-general ( \"ost\u00e2nd\u00e2r\"), who is appointed by the Minister of the Interior subject to approval of the cabinet.\nForeign relations.\nIran maintains diplomatic relations with 165 countries, but not the United States and Israel\u2014a state which Iran derecognised in 1979.\nIran has an adversarial relationship with Saudi Arabia due to different political ideologies. Iran and Turkey have been involved in modern proxy conflicts such as in Syria, Libya, and the South Caucasus. However, they have shared common interests, such as the issue of Kurdish separatism and the Qatar diplomatic crisis. Iran has a close and strong relationship with Tajikistan. Iran has deep economic relations and alliance with Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, with Syria often described as Iran's \"closest ally\".\nRussia is a key trading partner, especially in regard to its excess oil reserves. Both share a close economic and military alliance, and are subject to heavy sanctions by Western nations. Iran is the only country in Western Asia that has been invited to join the CSTO, the Russia-based international treaty organisation that parallels NATO.\nRelations between Iran and China are strong economically; they have developed a friendly, economic and strategic relationship. In 2021, Iran and China signed a 25-year cooperation agreement that will strengthen the relations between the two countries and would include \"political, strategic and economic\" components. Iran-China relations dates back to at least 200 BC and possibly earlier. Iran is one of the few countries in the world that has a good relationship with both North and South Korea.\nIn December 2024, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, a close ally of Iran, was a severe setback for the political influence of Iran in the region.\nIran is a member of dozens of international organisations, including the G-15, G-24, G-77, IAEA, IBRD, IDA, NAM, IDB, IFC, ILO, IMF, IMO, Interpol, OIC, OPEC, WHO, and the UN, and currently has observer status at the WTO.\nMilitary.\nThe military is organised under a unified structure, the Islamic Republic of Iran Armed Forces, comprising the Islamic Republic of Iran Army, which includes the Ground Forces, Air Defence Force, Air Force, and Navy; the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which consists of the Ground Forces, Aerospace Force, Navy, Quds Force, and Basij; and the Law Enforcement Command (Faraja), which serves an analogous function to a gendarme. While the IRIAF protects the country's sovereignty in a traditional capacity, the IRGC is mandated to ensure the integrity of the Republic, against foreign interference, coups, and internal riots. Since 1925, it is mandatory for all male citizen aged 18 to serve around 14 months in the IRIAF or IRGC.\nIran has over 610,000 active troops and around 350,000 reservists, totalling over 1 million military personnel, one of the world's highest percentage of citizens with military training. The Basij\",\" a paramilitary volunteer militia within the IRGC, has over 20 million members, 600,000 available for immediate call-up, 300,000 reservists, and a million that could be mobilised when necessary. Faraja, the Iranian uniformed police force, has over 260,000 active personnel. Most statistical organisations do not include the Basij and Faraja in their ratings report.\nExcluding the Basij and Faraja, Iran has been identified as a major military power, owing it to the size and capabilities of its armed forces. It possesses the world's 14th strongest military. It ranks 13th globally in terms of overall military strength, 7th in the number of active military personnel, and 9th in the size of both its ground force and armoured force. Iran's armed forces are the largest in West Asia and comprise the greatest Army Aviation fleet in the Middle East. Iran is among the top 15 countries in terms of military budget. In 2021, its military spending increased for the first time in four years, to $24.6 billion, 2.3% of the national GDP. Funding for the IRGC accounted for 34% of Iran's total military spending in 2021.\nSince the Revolution, to overcome foreign embargoes, Iran has developed a domestic military industry capable of producing indigenous tanks, armoured personnel carriers, missiles, submarines, missile destroyer, radar systems, helicopters, naval vessels, and fighter planes. Official announcements have highlighted the development of advanced weaponry, particularly in rocketry. Consequently, Iran has the largest and most diverse ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East and is only the 5th country in the world with hypersonic missile technology. It is the world's 6th missile power. Iran designs and produces a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and is considered a global leader and superpower in drone warfare and technology. It is one of the world's five countries with cyberwarfare capabilities and is identified as \"one of the most active players in the international cyber arena\". Iran is an key exporter of arms since 2000s.\nFollowing Russia's purchase of Iranian drones during the invasion of Ukraine, in November 2023, the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) finalized arrangements to acquire Russian Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets, Mil Mi-28 attack helicopters, air defence and missile systems. The Iranian Navy has had joint exercises with Russia and China.\nNuclear programme.\nIran's nuclear programme dates back to the 1950s. Iran revived it after the Revolution, and its extensive nuclear fuel cycle, including enrichment capabilities, became the subject of intense international negotiations and sanctions. Many countries have expressed concern Iran could divert civilian nuclear technology into a weapons programme. In 2015, Iran and the P5+1 agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan on Action (JCPOA), aiming to end economic sanctions in exchange for restriction in producing enriched uranium.\nIn 2018, however, the US withdrew from the deal under the Trump administration, and reimposed sanctions. This was met with resistance by Iran and other members of the P5+1. A year later, Iran began decreasing its compliance. By 2020, Iran announced it would no longer observe any limit set by the agreement. Progress since then has brought Iran to the nuclear threshold status. As of November 2023[ [update]], Iran had uranium enriched to up to 60% fissile content, close to weapon grade. Some analysts already regard Iran as a de facto nuclear power.\nRegional influence.\nIran's significant influence and foothold, sometimes characterised as the \"Dawn of A New Persian Empire.\" Some analysts associate the Iranian influence to the nation's proud national legacy, empire and history.\nSince the Revolution, Iran has grown its influence across and beyond the region. It has built military forces with a wide network of state and none-state actors, starting with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 1982. The IRGC has been key to Iranian influence, through its Quds Force. The instability in Lebanon (from the 1980s), Iraq (from 2003) and Yemen (from 2014) has allowed Iran to build strong alliances and footholds beyond its borders. Iran has a prominent influence in the social services, education, economy and politics of Lebanon, and Lebanon provides Iran access to the Mediterranean Sea. Hezbollah's strategic successes against Israel, such as its symbolic victory during the 2006 Israel\u2013Hezbollah War, elevated Iran's influence in the Levant and strengthened its appeal across the Muslim World.\nSince the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the arrival of ISIS in the mid-2010s, Iran has financed and trained militia groups in Iraq. Since the Iran-Iraq war in 1980s and the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iran has shaped Iraq's politics. Following Iraq's struggle against ISIS in 2014, companies linked to the IRGC such as Khatam al-Anbiya, started to build roads, power plants, hotels and businesses in Iraq, creating an economic corridor worth around $9 billion before COVID-19. This is expected to grow to $20 billion.\nDuring Yemen's civil war, Iran provided military support to the Houthis, a Zaydi Shiite movement fighting Yemen's Sunni government since 2004. They gained significant power in recent years. Iran has considerable influence in Afghanistan and Pakistan through militant groups such as Liwa Fatemiyoun and Liwa Zainebiyoun.\nIn Syria, Iran has supported President Bashar al-Assad; the two countries are long-standing allies. Iran has provided significant military and economic support to Assad's government, so has a considerable foothold in Syria. Iran has long supported the anti-Israel fronts in North Africa in countries like Algeria and Tunisia, embracing Hamas in part to help undermine the popularity of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Iran's support of Hamas emerged more clearly in later years. According to US intelligence, Iran does not have full control over these state and non-state groups.\nHuman rights and censorship.\nThe Iranian government has been denounced by various international organisations and governments for violating human rights. The government has frequently persecuted and arrested critics of the government. Iranian law does not recognise sexual orientations. Sexual activity between members of the same sex is illegal and is punishable by death. Capital punishment is a legal punishment, and according to the BBC, Iran \"carries out more executions than any other country, except China\". UN Special Rapporteur Javaid Rehman has reported discrimination against several ethnic minorities in Iran. A group of UN experts in 2022 urged Iran to stop \"systematic persecution\" of religious minorities, adding that members of the Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith were arrested, barred from universities, or had their homes demolished.\nCensorship in Iran is ranked among the most extreme worldwide. Iran has strict internet censorship, with the government persistently blocking social media and other sites. Since January 2021, Iranian authorities have blocked a list of social media platforms; Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Telegram, Twitter and YouTube.\nThe 2006 election results were widely disputed, resulting in protests. The 2017\u201318 Iranian protests swept across the country in response to the economic and political situation. It was formally confirmed that thousands of protesters were arrested. The 2019\u201320 Iranian protests started on 15 November in Ahvaz, and spread across the country after the government announced increases in fuel prices of up to 300%. A week-long total Internet shutdown marked one of the most severe Internet blackouts in any country, and the bloodiest governmental crackdown of the protestors. Tens of thousands were arrested and hundreds were killed within a few days according to multiple international observers, including Amnesty International.\nUkraine International Airlines Flight 752, was a scheduled international civilian passenger flight from Tehran to Kyiv, operated by Ukraine International Airlines. On 8 January 2020, the Boeing 737\u2013800 flying the route was shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) shortly after takeoff, killing all 176 occupants on board and leading to protests. An international investigation led to the government admitting to the shootdown, calling it a \"human error\". Another Protests against the government began on 16 September 2022 after a woman named Mahsa Amini died in police custody following her arrest by the Guidance Patrol, known commonly as the \"morality police\".\nEconomy.\nAs of 2024[ [update]], Iran has the world's 19th largest economy (by PPP). It is a mixture of central planning, state ownership of oil and other large enterprises, village agriculture, and small-scale private trading and service ventures. Services contribute the largest percentage of GDP, followed by industry (mining and manufacturing) and agriculture. The economy is characterised by its hydrocarbon sector, in addition to manufacturing and financial services. With 10% of the world's oil reserves and 15% of gas reserves, Iran is an energy superpower. Over 40 industries are directly involved in the Tehran Stock Exchange.\nTehran is the economic powerhouse of Iran. About 30% of Iran's public-sector workforce and 45% of its large industrial firms are located there, and half those firms' employees work for government. The Central Bank of Iran is responsible for developing and maintaining the currency: the Iranian rial. The government does not recognise trade unions other than the Islamic labour councils, which are subject to the approval of employers and the security services. Unemployment was 9% in 2022.\nBudget deficits have been a chronic problem, mostly due to large state subsidies, that include foodstuffs and especially petrol, totalling $100\u00a0billion in 2022 for energy alone. In 2010, the economic reform plan was to cut subsidies gradually and replace them with targeted social assistance. The objective is to move towards free market prices and increase productivity and social justice. The administration continues reform, and indicates it will diversify the oil-reliant economy. Iran has developed a biotechnology, nanotechnology, and pharmaceutical industry. The government is privatising industries.\nIran has leading manufacturing industries in automobile manufacture, transportation, construction materials, home appliances, food and agricultural goods, armaments, pharmaceuticals, information technology, and petrochemicals in the Middle East. Iran is among the world's top five producers of apricots, cherries, cucumbers and gherkins, dates, figs, pistachios, quinces, walnuts, Kiwifruit and watermelons. International sanctions against Iran have damaged the economy. Iran is one of three countries that have not ratified the Paris Agreement to limit climate change, although academics say it would be good for the country.\nIran suffers from high inflation and especially surging food prices. A major contributing factor is the involvement of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the economy, particularly in the agriculture and food sectors but also due to significant spending on the Axis of Resistance which increase the public deficit. \nTourism.\nTourism had been rapidly growing before the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching nearly 9 million foreign visitors in 2019, the world's third fastest-growing tourism destination. In 2022 it expanded its share to 5% of the economy. Iran's tourism experienced a growth of 43% in 2023, attracting 6 million foreign tourists. The government ended visa requirements for 60 countries in 2023.\n98% of visits are for leisure, while 2% are for business, indicating the country's appeal as a tourist destination. Alongside the capital, the most popular tourist destinations are Isfahan, Shiraz and Mashhad. Iran is emerging as a preferred destination for medical tourism. Travellers from other West Asian countries grew 31% in the first seven months of 2023, surpassing Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Domestic tourism is one of the world's largests; Iranian tourists spent $33bn in 2021. Iran projects investment of $32 billion in the tourism sector by 2026.\nAgriculture and fishery.\nRoughly one-third of Iran's total surface area is suited for farmland. Only 12% of the total land area is under cultivation, but less than one-third of the cultivated area is irrigated; the rest is devoted to dryland farming. Some 92% of agricultural products depend on water. The western and northwestern portions of the country have the most fertile soils. Iran's food security index stands at around 96 percent. 3% of the total land area is used for grazing and fodder production. Most of the grazing is done on mostly semi-dry rangeland in mountain areas and on areas surrounding the large deserts of Central Iran. Progressive government efforts and incentives during the 1990s, improved agricultural productivity, helping Iran toward its goal of reestablishing national self-sufficiency in food production.\nAccess to the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and many river basins provides Iran the potential to develop excellent fisheries. The government assumed control of commercial fishing in 1952. Expansion of the fishery infrastructure enabled the country to harvest an estimated 700,000 tons of fish annually from the southern waters. Since the Revolution, increased attention has been focused on producing fish from inland waters. Between 1976 and 2004, the combined take from inland waters by the state and private sectors increased from 1,100 tons to 110,175 tons. Iran is the world's largest producer and exporter of caviar, exporting more than 300 tonnes annually.\nIndustry and services.\nIran is globally ranked 16th in car manufacturing, ahead of the UK, Italy, and Russia. It has outputted 1.188 million cars in 2023, a 12% growth compared to the previous years. Iran has exported various cars to countries such as Venezuela, Russia and Belarus. From 2008 to 2009, Iran leaped to 28th place from 69th in annual industrial production growth rate. Iranian contractors have been awarded several foreign tender contracts in different fields of construction of dams, bridges, roads, buildings, railroads, power generation, and gas, oil and petrochemical industries. As of 2011, some 66 Iranian industrial companies are carrying out projects in 27 countries. Iran exported over $20 billion worth of technical and engineering services over 2001\u20132011. The availability of local raw materials, rich mineral reserves, experienced manpower have all played crucial role in winning the bids.\n45% of large industrial firms are located in Tehran, and almost half of their workers work for government. The Iranian retail industry is largely in the hands of cooperatives, many of them government-sponsored, and of independent retailers in the bazaars. The bulk of food sales occur at street markets, where the Chief Statistics Bureau sets the prices. Iran's main exports are to Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Syria, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Canada, Venezuela, Japan, South Korea and Turkey. Iran's automotive industry is the second most active industry of the country, after its oil and gas industry. Iran Khodro is the largest car manufacturer in the Middle East, and ITMCO is the biggest tractor manufacturer. Iran is the 12th largest automaker in the world. Construction is one of the most important sectors in Iran accounting for 20\u201350% of the total private investment.\nIran is one of the most important mineral producers in the world, ranked among 15 major mineral-rich countries. Iran has become self-sufficient in designing, building and operating dams and power plants. Iran is one of the six countries in the world that manufacture gas- and steam-powered turbines.\nTransport.\nIn 2011 Iran had of roads, of which 73% were paved. In 2008 there were nearly 100 passenger cars for every 1,000 inhabitants.\nTehran Metro is the largest in the Middle East, it carries more than 3 million passengers daily and in 2018, 820 million trips. Trains operate on of track. The country's major port of entry is Bandar Abbas on the Strait of Hormuz. Imported goods are distributed through the country by trucks and freight trains. The Tehran\u2013Bandar Abbas railroad connects Bandar-Abbas to the railroad system of Central Asia, via Tehran and Mashhad. Other major ports include Bandar e-Anzali and Bandar e-Torkeman on the Caspian Sea and Khorramshahr and Bandar-e Emam Khomeyni on the Persian Gulf.\nDozens of cities have airports that serve passenger and cargo planes. Iran Air, the national airline, operates domestic and international flights. All large cities have mass transit systems using buses, and private companies provide bus services between cities. Over a million people work in transport, accounting for 9% of GDP.\nEnergy.\nIran is an energy superpower and petroleum plays a key part. As of 2023[ [update]], Iran produced 4% of the world's crude oil ( per day), which generates US$36bn of export revenue and is the main source of foreign currency. Oil and gas reserves are estimated at 1.2 trn barrels; Iran holds 10% of world oil reserves and 15% for gas. It ranks 3rd in oil reserves and is OPEC's 2nd largest exporter. It has the 2nd largest gas reserves, and 3rd largest natural gas production. In 2019, Iran discovered a southern oil field of 50 bn barrels and in April 2024, the NIOC discovered 10 giant shale oil deposits, totalling 2.6 bn barrels. Iran plans to invest $500 billion in oil by 2025.\nIran manufactures 60\u201370% of its industrial equipment domestically, including turbines, pumps, catalysts, refineries, oil tankers, drilling rigs, offshore platforms, towers, pipes, and exploration instruments. The addition of new hydroelectric stations and streamlining of conventional coal and oil-fired stations increased installed capacity to 33 GW; about 75% was based on natural gas, 18% on oil, and 7% on hydroelectric power. In 2004, Iran opened its first wind-powered and geothermal plants, and the first solar thermal plant began in 2009. Iran is the world's third country to develop GTL technology.\nDemographic trends and intensified industrialisation have caused electric power demand to grow by 8% per year. The government's goal of 53 GW of installed capacity by 2010 is to be reached by bringing on line new gas-fired plants, and adding hydropower and nuclear generation capacity. Iran's first nuclear power plant went online in 2011.\nDespite being an energy superpower as of 2024-2025 Iran suffers from an energy crisis, manifested by many power outages.\nScience and technology.\nIran has made considerable advances in science and technology, despite international sanctions. In the biomedical sciences, Iran's Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics has a UNESCO chair in biology. In 2006, Iranian scientists successfully cloned a sheep at the Royan Research Centre in Tehran. Stem cell research is among the top 10 in the world. Iran ranks 15th in the world in nanotechnologies. Iranian scientists outside Iran have made major scientific contributions. In 1960, Ali Javan co-invented the first gas laser, and fuzzy set theory was introduced by Lotfi A. Zadeh.\nCardiologist Tofy Mussivand invented and developed the first artificial cardiac pump, the precursor of the artificial heart. Furthering research in diabetes, the HbA1c was discovered by Samuel Rahbar. Many papers in string theory are published in Iran. In 2014, Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani became the first woman, and Iranian, to receive the Fields Medal, the highest prize in mathematics.\nIran increased its publication output nearly tenfold from 1996 through 2004, and ranked first in output growth rate, followed by China. According to a study by SCImago in 2012, Iran would rank fourth in research output by 2018, if the trend persisted. The Iranian humanoid robot Sorena 2, which was designed by engineers at the University of Tehran, was unveiled in 2010. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has placed the name of Surena among the five most prominent robots, after analysing its performance. \nAccording to a 2019 study by Isabel Campos-Varela et al., Iran recorded the highest proportion of retracted publications globally, with 15.52 retractions per 10,000 publications. Media reports from 2023 indicate that Iran continues to rank among the countries with the highest retraction rates. Common types of misconduct include fraudulent peer review processes, plagiarism, and data fabrication. Data from the Retraction Watch Leaderboard further highlights that two of the 32 individuals with the highest number of retracted articles worldwide are based in Iran.\nIran was ranked 64th in the Global Innovation Index in 2024.\nIranian Space Agency.\nThe Iranian Space Agency (ISA) was established in 2004. Iran became an orbital-launch-capable nation in 2009, and is a founding member of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Iran placed its domestically built satellite Omid into orbit on the 30th anniversary of the Revolution, in 2009, through its first expendable launch vehicle Safir. It became the 9th country capable of both producing a satellite and sending it into space from a domestically made launcher. Simorgh's launch in 2016, is the successor of Safir.\nIn January 2024, Iran launched the Soraya satellite into its highest orbit yet (750\u00a0km), a new space launch milestone for the country. It was launched by Qaem 100 rocket. Iran also successfully launched 3 indigenous satellites, The Mahda, Kayan and Hatef, into orbit using the Simorgh carrier rocket. It was the first time in country's history that it simultaneously sent three satellites into space. The three satellites are designed for testing advanced satellite subsystems, space-based positioning technology, and narrowband communication.\nIn February 2024, Iran launched its domestically developed imaging satellite, Pars 1, from Russia into orbit. This was the second time since August 2022, when Russia launched another Iranian remote-sensing, Khayyam satellite, into orbit from Kazakhstan, reflecting deep scientific cooperation between the countries.\nTelecommunication.\nIran's telecommunications industry is almost entirely state-owned, dominated by the Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI). As of 2020, 70 million Iranians use high-speed mobile internet. Iran is among the first five countries which have had a growth rate of over 20 percent and the highest level of development in telecommunication. Iran has been awarded the UNESCO special certificate for providing telecommunication services to rural areas.\nGlobally, Iran ranks 75th in mobile internet speed and 153rd in fixed internet speed.\nDemographics.\nIran's population grew rapidly from about 19\u00a0million in 1956 to about 85 million by February 2023. However, Iran's fertility rate has dropped dramatically, from 6.5 children born per woman to about 1.7 two decades later, leading to a population growth rate of about 1.39% as of 2018. Due to its young population, studies project that the growth will continue to slow until it stabilises at around 105\u00a0million by 2050.\nIran hosts one of the largest refugee populations, with almost one million, mostly from Afghanistan and Iraq. According to the Iranian Constitution, the government is required to provide every citizen with access to social security, covering retirement, unemployment, old age, disability, accidents, calamities, health and medical treatment and care services. This is covered by tax revenues and income derived from public contributions.\nThe country has one of the highest urban growth rates in the world. From 1950 to 2002, the urban proportion of the population increased from 27% to 60%. Iran's population is concentrated in its western half, especially in the north, north-west and west.\nTehran, with a population of around 9.4\u00a0million, is Iran's capital and largest city. The country's second most populous city, Mashhad, has a population of around 3.4\u00a0million, and is capital of the province of Razavi Khorasan. Isfahan has a population of around 2.2\u00a0million and is Iran's third most populous city. It is the capital of Isfahan province and was also the third capital of the Safavid Empire.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nEthnic groups.\nEthnic group composition remains a point of debate, mainly regarding the largest and second largest ethnic groups, the Persians and Azerbaijanis, due to the lack of Iranian state censuses based on ethnicity. The World Factbook has estimated that around 79% of the population of Iran is a diverse Indo-European ethno-linguistic group, with Persians (including Mazenderanis and Gilaks) constituting 61% of the population, Kurds 10%, Lurs 6%, and Balochs 2%. Peoples of other ethnolinguistic groups make up the remaining 21%, with Azerbaijanis constituting 16%, Arabs 2%, Turkmens and other Turkic tribes 2%, and others (such as Armenians, Talysh, Georgians, Circassians, Assyrians) 1%.\nThe Library of Congress issued slightly different estimates: 65% Persians (including Mazenderanis, Gilaks, and the Talysh), 16% Azerbaijanis, 7% Kurds, 6% Lurs, 2% Baloch, 1% Turkic tribal groups (including Qashqai and Turkmens), and non-Iranian, non-Turkic groups (including Armenians, Georgians, Assyrians, Circassians, and Arabs) less than 3%.\nEthnic based discrimination is prevalent in Iran. Minorities in Iran have been disproportionately affected by the ongoing crackdown aimed at repressing the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' movement, according to the UN Fact-Finding Mission.\nLanguages.\nMost of the population speaks Persian, the country's official and national language. Others include speakers of other Iranian languages, within the greater Indo-European family, and languages belonging to other ethnicities. The Gilaki and Mazenderani languages are widely spoken in Gilan and Mazenderan, northern Iran. The Talysh language is spoken in parts of Gilan. Varieties of Kurdish are concentrated in the province of Kurdistan and nearby areas. In Khuzestan, several dialects of Persian are spoken. South Iran also houses the Luri and Lari languages.\nAzerbaijani, the most-spoken minority language in the country, and other Turkic languages and dialects are found in various regions, especially Azerbaijan. Notable minority languages include Armenian, Georgian, Neo-Aramaic, and Arabic. Khuzi Arabic is spoken by the Arabs in Khuzestan, and the wider group of Iranian Arabs. Circassian was also once widely spoken by the large Circassian minority, but, due to assimilation, no sizable number of Circassians speak the language anymore.\nPercentages of spoken language continue to be a point of debate, most notably regarding the largest and second largest ethnicities in Iran, the Persians and Azerbaijanis. Percentages given by the CIA's World Factbook include 53% Persian, 16% Azerbaijani, 10% Kurdish, 7% Mazenderani and Gilaki, 7% Luri, 2% Turkmen, 2% Balochi, 2% Arabic, and 2% the remainder Armenian, Georgian, Neo-Aramaic, and Circassian.\nReligion.\nTwelver Shia Islam is the state religion, to which 90\u201395% of Iranians adhere; about 5\u201310% are in the Sunni and Sufi branches of Islam. 96% of Iranians believe in Islam, but 14% identify as not religious.\nThere is a large population of adherents to Yarsanism, a Kurdish indigenous religion, estimated to be over half a million to one million followers. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is not officially recognised and has been subject to official persecution. Since the Revolution, the persecution of Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds has increased. Irreligion is not recognised by the government.\nChristianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and the Sunni branch of Islam are officially recognised by the government and have reserved seats in the Parliament. Iran is home to the largest Jewish community in the Muslim World and the Middle East, outside of Israel. Around 250,000 to 370,000 Christians reside in Iran, and Christianity is the country's largest recognised minority religion, most are of Armenian background, as well as a sizable minority of Assyrians. The Iranian government has supported the rebuilding and renovation of Armenian churches, and has supported the Armenian Monastic Ensembles of Iran. In 2019, the government registered the Vank Cathedral, in Isfahan, as a World Heritage Site. Currently three Armenian churches in Iran have been included in the World Heritage List.\nEducation.\nEducation is highly centralised. K\u201312 is supervised by the Ministry of Education, and higher education is supervised by the Ministry of Science and Technology. Literacy among people aged 15 and older was 86% as of 2016[ [update]], with men (90%) significantly more educated than women (81%). Government expenditure on education is around 4% of GDP.\nThe requirement to enter into higher education is to have a high school diploma and pass the Iranian University Entrance Exam. Many students do a one\u2013two-year course of pre-university. Iran's higher education is sanctioned by different levels of diplomas, including an associate degree in two years, a bachelor's degree in four years, and a master's degree in two years, after which another exam allows the candidate to pursue a doctoral programme.\nHealth.\nHealthcare is provided by the public-governmental system, the private sector, and NGOs.\nIran is the only country in the world with a legal organ trade. Iran has been able to extend public health preventive services through the establishment of an extensive Primary Health Care Network. As a result, child and maternal mortality rates have fallen significantly, and life expectancy at birth has risen. Iran's medical knowledge rank is 17th globally, and 1st in the Middle East and North Africa. In terms of medical science production index, Iran ranks 16th in the world. Iran is fast emerging as a preferred destination for medical tourism.\nThe country faces the common problem of other young demographic nations in the region, which is keeping pace with growth of an already huge demand for various public services. An anticipated increase in the population growth rate will increase the need for public health infrastructures and services. About 90% of Iranians have health insurance.\nCulture.\nArt.\nIran has one of the richest art heritages in history and been strong in many media including architecture, painting, literature, music, metalworking, stonemasonry, weaving, calligraphy and sculpture. At different times, influences from neighbouring civilisations have been important, and latterly Persian art gave and received major influences as part of the wider styles of Islamic art.\nFrom the Achaemenid Empire of 550\u2013330 BC, the courts of successive dynasties led the style of Persian art, and court-sponsored art left many of the most impressive pieces that remain. The Islamic style of dense decoration, geometrically laid out, developed in Iran into an elegant and harmonious style, combining motifs derived from plants with Chinese motifs such as the cloud-band, and often animals represented at a smaller scale. During the Safavid Empire in the 16th century, this style was used across a variety of media, and diffused from the court artists of the king, most being painters.\nBy the time of the Sasanians, Iranian art had a renaissance. During the Middle Ages, Sasanian art played a prominent role in the formation of European and Asian mediaeval art.\nThe Safavid era is known as the Golden Age of Iranian art. Safavid art exerted noticeable influences upon the Ottomans, the Mughals, and the Deccans, and was influential through its fashion and garden architecture on 11th\u201317th-century Europe.\nIran's contemporary art traces its origins to Kamal-ol-molk, a prominent realist painter at the court of the Qajar Empire who affected the norms of painting and adopted a naturalistic style that would compete with photographic works. A new Iranian school of fine art was established by him in 1928, and was followed by the so-called \"coffeehouse\" style of painting. Iran's avant-garde modernists emerged by the arrival of new western influences during World War II. The contemporary art scene originates in the late 1940s, and Tehran's first modern art gallery, Apadana, was opened in 1949 by Mahmud Javadipur, Hosein Kazemi, and Hushang Ajudani. The new movements received official encouragement by the 1950s, which led to the emergence of artists such as Marcos Grigorian.\nArchitecture.\nThe history of architecture in Iran dates back to at least 5,000 BC, with characteristic examples distributed over an area from what is now Turkey and Iraq to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and from the Caucasus to Zanzibar. The Iranians made early use of mathematics, geometry and astronomy in their architecture, yielding a tradition with structural and aesthetic variety. The guiding motif is its cosmic symbolism.\nWithout sudden innovations, and despite the trauma of invasions and cultural shocks, it developed a recognizable style distinct from other regions of the Muslim world. Its virtues are \"a marked feeling for form and scale; structural inventiveness, especially in vault and dome construction; a genius for decoration with a freedom and success not rivalled in any other architecture\". In addition to historic gates, palaces, and mosques, the rapid growth of cities such as Tehran has brought a wave of construction. Iran ranks 7th among UNESCO's list of countries with the most archaeological ruins and attractions from antiquity.\nWorld Heritage Sites.\nIran's rich culture and history is reflected by its 27 World Heritage Sites, ranking 1st in the Middle East, and 10th in the world. These include Persepolis, Naghsh-e Jahan Square, Chogha Zanbil, Pasargadae, Golestan Palace, Arg-e Bam, Behistun Inscription, Shahr-e Sukhteh, Susa, Takht-e Soleyman, Hyrcanian forests, the city of Yazd and more. Iran has 24 Intangible Cultural Heritage, or Human treasures, which ranks 5th worldwide.\nWeaving.\nIran's carpet-weaving has its origins in the Bronze Age and is one of the most distinguished manifestations of Iranian art. Carpet weaving is an essential part of Persian culture and Iranian art. Persian rugs and carpets were woven in parallel by nomadic tribes in village and town workshops, and by royal court manufactories. As such, they represent simultaneous lines of tradition, and reflect the history of Iran, Persian culture, and its various peoples. Although the term \"Persian carpet\" most often refers to pile-woven textiles, flat-woven carpets and rugs like Kilim, Soumak, and embroidered tissues like Suzani are part of the manifold tradition of Persian carpet weaving.\nIran produces three-quarters of the world's handmade carpets, and has 30% of export markets. In 2010, the \"traditional skills of carpet weaving\" in Fars Province and Kashan were inscribed to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List. Within the Oriental rugs produced by the countries of the \"rug belt\", the Persian carpet stands out by the variety and elaborateness of its manifold designs.\nCarpets woven in towns and regional centres like Tabriz, Kerman, Ravar, Neyshabour, Mashhad, Kashan, Isfahan, Nain and Qom are characterized by their specific weaving techniques and use of high-quality materials, colours and patterns. Hand-woven Persian rugs and carpets have been regarded as objects of high artistic value and prestige, since they were mentioned by ancient Greek writers.\nLiterature.\nIran's oldest literary tradition is that of Avestan, the Old Iranian sacred language of the Avesta, which consists of the legendary and religious texts of Zoroastrianism and the ancient Iranian religion. The Persian language was used and developed through Persianate societies in Asia Minor, Central Asia, and South Asia, leaving extensive influences on Ottoman and Mughal literatures, among others. Iran has several famous mediaeval poets, notably Mawlana, Ferdowsi, Hafez, Sa'adi, Omar Khayyam, and Nezami Ganjavi.\nDescribed as one of the great literatures of humanity, including Goethe's assessment of it as one of the four main bodies of world literature, Persian literature has its roots in surviving works of Middle Persian and Old Persian, the latter of which dates back as far as 522\u00a0BCE, the date of the earliest surviving Achaemenid inscription, the Behistun Inscription. The bulk of surviving Persian literature, however, comes from the times following the Muslim conquest in c. 650\u00a0CE. After the Abbasids came to power (750 CE), the Iranians became the scribes and bureaucrats of the Islamic Caliphate and, increasingly, also its writers and poets. The New Persian language literature arose and flourished in Khorasan and Transoxiana because of political reasons, early Iranian dynasties of post-Islamic Iran such as the Tahirids and Samanids being based in Khorasan.\nPhilosophy.\nIranian philosophy can be traced back as far as Old Iranian philosophical traditions and thoughts which originated in ancient Indo-Iranian roots and were influenced by Zarathustra's teachings. Throughout Iranian history and due to remarkable political and social changes such as the Arab and Mongol invasions, a wide spectrum of schools of thoughts showed a variety of views on philosophical questions, extending from Old Iranian and mainly Zoroastrianism-related traditions, to schools appearing in the late pre-Islamic era such as Manicheism and Mazdakism as well as post-Islamic schools.\nThe Cyrus Cylinder is seen as a reflection of the questions and thoughts expressed by Zoroaster and developed in Zoroastrian schools of the Achaemenid era. Post-Islam Iranian philosophy is characterised by different interactions with the Old Iranian philosophy, the Greek philosophy and with the development of Islamic philosophy. The Illumination School and the Transcendent Philosophy are regarded as two of the main philosophical traditions of that era in Iran. Contemporary Iranian philosophy has been limited in its scope by intellectual repression.\nMythology and folklore.\nIranian mythology consists of ancient Iranian folklore and stories of extraordinary beings reflecting on good and evil (Ahura Mazda and Ahriman), actions of the gods, and the exploits of heroes and creatures. The tenth-century Persian poet, Ferdowsi, is the author of the national epic known as the \"Shahnameh\" (\"Book of Kings\"), which is for the most part based on \"Xwad\u0101yn\u0101mag\", a Middle Persian compilation of the history of Iranian kings and heroes, as well as the stories and characters of the Zoroastrian tradition, from the texts of the Avesta, the Denkard, the Vendidad and the Bundahishn. Modern scholars study the myths to shed light on the religious and political institutions of not only Iran but of the Greater Iran, which includes regions of West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, and Transcaucasia where the culture of Iran has had significant influence.\nStorytelling has a significant presence in Iranian folklore and culture. In classical Iran, minstrels performed for their audiences at royal courts and in public theatres. A minstrel was referred to by the Parthians as g\u014ds\u0101n, and by the Sasanians as huniy\u0101gar. Since the Safavid Empire, storytellers and poetry readers appeared at coffeehouses. After the Iranian Revolution, it took until 1985 to found the MCHTH (Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts), a now heavily centralised organisation, supervising all kinds of cultural activities. It held the first scientific meeting on anthropology and folklore in 1990.\nMuseums.\nThe National Museum of Iran in Tehran is the country's most important cultural institution. As the first and biggest museum in Iran, the institution includes the Museum of Ancient Iran and the Museum of the Islamic Era. The National Museum is the world's most important museum in terms of preservation, display and research of archaeological collections of Iran, and ranks as one of the few most prestigious museums globally in terms of volume, diversity and quality of its monuments.\nThere are many other popular museums across the country such as the Golestan Palace (World Heritage Site), The Treasury of National Jewels, Reza Abbasi Museum, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Sa'dabad Complex, The Carpet Museum, Abgineh Museum, Pars Museum, Azerbaijan Museum, Hegmataneh Museum, Susa Museum and more. Around 25 million people visited the museums in 2019.\nMusic and dance.\nIran is the apparent birthplace of the earliest complex instruments, dating to the third millennium\u00a0BC. The use of angular harps have been documented at Madaktu and Kul-e Farah, with the largest collection of Elamite instruments documented at Kul-e Farah. Xenophon's \"Cyropaedia\" mentions singing women at the court of the Achaemenid Empire. Under the Parthian Empire, the \"g\u014ds\u0101n\" (Parthian for 'minstrel') had a prominent role.\nThe history of Sasanian music is better documented than earlier periods and is especially more evident in Avestan texts. By the time of Khosrow II, the Sasanian royal court hosted prominent musicians, namely Azad, Bamshad, Barbad, Nagisa, Ramtin, and Sarkash. Iranian traditional musical instruments include string instruments such as chang (harp), qanun, santur, rud (oud, barbat), tar, dotar, setar, tanbur, and kamanche, wind instruments such as sorna (zurna, karna) and ney, and percussion instruments such as tompak, kus, daf (dayere), and naqare.\nIran's first symphony orchestra, the Tehran Symphony Orchestra, was founded in 1933. By the late 1940s, Ruhollah Khaleqi founded the country's first national music society and established the School of National Music in 1949. Iranian pop music has its origins in the Qajar era. It was significantly developed since the 1950s, using indigenous instruments and forms accompanied by electric guitar and other imported characteristics. Iranian rock emerged in the 1960s and hip hop in the 2000s.\nIran has known dance in the forms of music, play, drama or religious rituals since at least the 6th millennium BC. Artifacts with pictures of dancers were found in archaeological prehistoric sites. Genres of dance vary depending on the area, culture, and language of the local people, and can range from sophisticated reconstructions of refined court dances to energetic folk dances. Each group, region, and historical epoch has specific dance styles associated with it. The earliest researched dance from historic Iran is a dance worshipping Mithra. Ancient Persian dance was significantly researched by Greek historian Herodotus. Iran was occupied by foreign powers, causing a slow disappearance of heritage dance traditions.\nThe Qajar period had an important influence on Persian dance. In this period, a style of dance began to be called \"classical Persian dance\". Dancers performed artistic dances in court for entertainment purposes such as coronations, marriage celebrations, and Norouz celebrations. In the 20th century, the music came to be orchestrated and dance movement and costuming gained a modernistic orientation to the West.\nFashion and clothing.\nThe exact date of the emergence of weaving in Iran is not yet known, but it is likely to coincide with the emergence of civilisation. Ferdowsi and many historians have considered Keyumars to be first to use animals' skin and hair as clothing, while others propose Hushang. Ferdowsi considers Tahmuras to be a kind of textile initiator in Iran. The clothing of ancient Iran took an advanced form, and the fabric and colour of clothing became very important. Depending on the social status, eminence, climate of the region and the season, Persian clothing during the Achaemenian period took various forms. This clothing, in addition to being functional, had an aesthetic role.\nCinema, animation and theatre.\nA third-millennium BC earthen goblet discovered at the Burnt City in southeast Iran depicts what could be the world's oldest example of animation. The earliest attested Iranian examples of visual representations, however, are traced back to the bas-reliefs of Persepolis, the ritual centre of the Achaemenid Empire.\nThe first Iranian filmmaker was probably Mirza Ebrahim (Akkas Bashi), the court photographer of Mozaffar-ed-Din of the Qajar Empire. Mirza Ebrahim obtained a camera and filmed the Qajar ruler's visit to Europe. In 1904, Mirza Ebrahim (Sahhaf Bashi) opened the first public cinema in Tehran. The first Iranian feature film, \"Abi and Rabi\", was a silent comedy directed by Ovanes Ohanian in 1930. The first sound one, \"Lor Girl\", was produced by Ardeshir Irani and Abd-ol-Hosein Sepanta in 1932. Iran's animation industry began by the 1950s and was followed by the establishment of the influential Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults in 1965.\nWith the screening of the films \"Qeysar\" and \"The Cow\", directed by Masoud Kimiai and Dariush Mehrjui respectively in 1969, alternative films set out to establish their status in the film industry and Bahram Beyzai's \"Downpour\" and Nasser Taghvai's \"Tranquility in the Presence of Others\" followed. Attempts to organise a film festival, which had begun in 1954 within the Golrizan Festival, resulted in the festival of Sepas in 1969. It also resulted in the formation of Tehran's World Film Festival in 1973.\nFollowing the Cultural Revolution, a new age emerged in Iranian cinema, starting with \"Long Live!\" by Khosrow Sinai and followed by other directors, such as Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi. Kiarostami, an acclaimed director, planted Iran firmly on the map of world cinema when he won the for \"Taste of Cherry\" in 1997. The presence of Iranian films in prestigious international festivals, such as Cannes, Venice and Berlin, attracted attention to Iranian films. In 2006, 6 films represented Iranian cinema at Berlin; critics considered this a remarkable event in Iranian cinema. Asghar Farhadi, an Iranian director, has received a Golden Globe Award and two Academy Awards, representing Iran for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012 and 2017, with \"A Separation\" and \"The Salesman\". In 2020, Ashkan Rahgozar's \"The Last Fiction\" became the first representative of Iranian animated cinema in the competition section, in Best Animated Feature and Best Picture categories at the Academy Awards.\nThe oldest Iranian initiation of theatre can be traced to ancient epic ceremonial theatres such as \"Sug-e Si\u0101vu\u0691\" (\"mourning of Si\u0101va\u0691\"), as well as dances and theatre narrations of Iranian mythological tales reported by Herodotus and Xenophon. Iran's traditional theatrical genres include Baqq\u0101l-b\u0101zi (\"grocer play\", a form of slapstick comedy), Ruhowzi (or \"Taxt-howzi\", comedy performed over a courtyard pool covered with boards), Si\u0101h-b\u0101zi (the central comedian appears in blackface), S\u0101ye-b\u0101zi (shadow play), Xeyme-\u0691ab-b\u0101zi (marionette), and Arusak-b\u0101zi (puppetry), and Ta'zie (religious tragedy plays).\nThe Roudaki Hall is home to the Tehran Symphony Orchestra, the Tehran Opera Orchestra, and the Iranian National Ballet Company, and was officially renamed \"Vahdat Hall\" after the Revolution.\nMedia.\nIran's largest media corporation is the state-owned IRIB. The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance is responsible for the cultural policy, including activities regarding communications and information.\nMost of the newspapers published in Iran are in Persian, the country's official and national language. The country's most widely circulated periodicals are based in Tehran, among which are \"Etemad\", \"Ettela'at\", \"Kayhan\", \"Hamshahri\", \"Resalat\", and \"Shargh\". \"Tehran Times\", \"Iran Daily\", and \"Financial Tribune\" are among the famous English-language newspapers based in Iran.\nIran ranks 17th among countries by number of Internet users. Google Search is Iran's most widely used search engine and Instagram is the most popular online social networking service. Direct access to many worldwide mainstream websites has been blocked in Iran, including Facebook, which has been blocked since 2009. About 90% of Iran's e-commerce takes place on the Iranian online store Digikala, which has around 750,000 visitors per day and is the most visited online store in the Middle East.\nCuisine.\nIranian main dishes include varieties of kebab, pilaf, stew (khoresh), soup and \u0101sh, and omelette. Lunch and dinner meals are commonly accompanied by side dishes such as plain yogurt or mast-o-khiar, sabzi, salad Shirazi, and torshi, and might follow dishes such as borani, Mirza Qasemi, or kashk e bademjan. In Iranian culture, tea is widely consumed. Iran is the world's seventh major tea producer. One of Iran's most popular desserts is the falude. There is also the popular saffron ice cream, known as \"Bastani Sonnati\" (\"traditional ice cream\"), which is sometimes accompanied with carrot juice. Iran is also famous for its caviar.\nTypical Iranian main dishes are combinations of rice with meat, vegetables and nuts. Herbs are frequently used, along with fruits such as plums, pomegranates, quince, prunes, apricots and raisins. Characteristic Iranian spices and flavourings such as saffron, cardamom, and dried lime and other sources of sour flavoring, cinnamon, turmeric and parsley are mixed and used in various dishes.\nSports.\nIran is the most likely birthplace of polo, locally known as Chogan, with its earliest records attributed to the ancient Medes. Freestyle wrestling is traditionally considered the national sport, and Iran's wrestlers have been world champions many times. Iran's traditional wrestling, called \"ko\u0691ti e pahlev\u0101ni\" (\"heroic wrestling\"), is registered on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Iran's National Olympic Committee was founded in 1947. Wrestlers and weightlifters have achieved the country's highest records at the Olympics. In 1974, Iran became the first country in West Asia to host the Asian Games.\nAs a mountainous country, Iran is a venue for skiing, snowboarding, hiking, rock climbing, and mountain climbing. It is home to ski resorts, the most famous being Tochal, Dizin, and Shemshak. Dizin is the largest, and authorised by FIS to administer international competitions.\nFootball is the most popular sport, with the men's national team having won the Asian Cup three times. The men's team ranks 2nd in Asia and 20th in the FIFA World Rankings as of April 2024[ [update]]. The Azadi Stadium in Tehran is the largest association football stadium in West Asia and on a list of top-20 stadiums in the world. Volleyball is the second most popular sport. Having won the 2011 and 2013 Asian Men's Volleyball Championships, the men's national team is the 2nd strongest in Asia, and 15th in the FIVB World Rankings as of January\u00a02024[ [update]]. Basketball is also popular, with the men's national team having won three Asian Championships since 2007.\nObservances.\nIran's official New Year begins with Nowruz, an ancient Iranian tradition celebrated annually on the vernal equinox and described as the \"Persian New Year\". It was registered on the UNESCO's list of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2009. On the eve of the last Wednesday of the preceding year, as a prelude to Nowruz, the ancient festival of \u0628\u0101r\u0691anbe Suri celebrates \u0100tar (\"fire\") by performing rituals such as jumping over bonfires and lighting fireworks.\nYald\u0101, another ancient tradition, commemorates the ancient goddess Mithra and marks the longest night of the year on the eve of the winter solstice (usually on 20 or 21 December), during which families gather to recite poetry and eat fruits. In some regions of Mazanderan and Markazi, there is a midsummer festival, Tirg\u0101n, which is observed on Tir 13 (2 or 3July) as a celebration of water.\nIslamic annual events such as Ramez\u0101n, Eid e Fetr, and Ruz e \u0100\u0691ur\u0101 are marked by the country's population, Christian traditions such as Noel, elle ye Ruze, and Eid e P\u0101k are observed by the Christian communities, Jewish traditions such as Hanuk\u0101 and Eid e Fatir (Pesah) are observed by the Jewish communities, and Zoroastrian traditions such as Sade and Mehrg\u0101n are observed by the Zoroastrians.\nPublic holidays.\nWith 26, Iran has one of the world's highest number of public holidays. It ranks 1st in the world with the most paid leave days: 52. Iran's official calendar is the Solar Hejri calendar, beginning at the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. Each of the 12 months of the Solar Hejri calendar correspond with a zodiac sign, and the length of each year is solar. Alternatively, the Lunar Hejri calendar is used to indicate Islamic events, and the Gregorian calendar marks international events.\nLegal public holidays based on the Iranian solar calendar include the cultural celebrations of Nowruz (Farvardin 1\u20134; 21\u201324 March) and Sizdebedar (Farvardin 13; 2April), and the political events of Islamic Republic Day (Farvardin 12; 1April), the death of Ruhollah Khomeini (Khordad 14; 4June), the Khordad 15 event (Khordad 15; 5June), the anniversary of the Iranian Revolution (Bahman 22; 10 February), and Oil Nationalisation Day (Esfand 29; 19 March).\nLunar Islamic public holidays include Tasua (Muharram 9), Ashura (Muharram 10), Arba'een (Safar 20), Muhammad's death (Safar 28), the death of Ali al-Ridha (Safar 29 or 30), the birthday of Muhammad (Rabi-al-Awwal 17), the death of Fatimah (Jumada-al-Thani 3), the birthday of Ali (Rajab 13), Muhammad's first revelation (Rajab 27), the birthday of Muhammad al-Mahdi (Sha'ban 15), the death of Ali (Ramadan 21), Eid al-Fitr (Shawwal 1\u20132), the death of Ja'far al-Sadiq (Shawwal 25), Eid al-Qurban (Zulhijja 10), and Eid al-Qadir (Zulhijja 18).\nExplanatory notes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nFootnotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n<templatestyles src=\"Plain navboxes/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["35522057", "25270592", "14653"], "permutation_1": ["35522057", "14653", "25270592"], "permutation_2": ["25270592", "14653", "35522057"], "permutation_3": ["14653", "35522057", "25270592"]}
{"id": "3hop1__102694_35178_686699", "docs_added": {"35522057": "Qaleh Now-e Khaleseh, Tehran\nCity in Tehran province, Iran\nQaleh Now-e Khaleseh () is a city in, and the capital of, Qaleh Now District of Ray County, Tehran province, Iran. It also serves as the administrative center for Qaleh Now Rural District.\nDemographics.\nPopulation.\nAt the time of the 2006 National Census, Qaleh Now-e Khaleseh's population was 4,718 in 1,195 households, when it was a village in Qaleh Now Rural District of Kahrizak District. The following census in 2011 counted 5,289 people in 1,476 households. The 2016 census measured the population of the village as 5,352 people in 1,584 households, by which time the rural district had been separated from the district in the formation of Qaleh Now District.\nAfter the 2016 census, the village of Qaleh Now-e Khaleseh was elevated to the status of a city.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "14653": "Iran\nCountry in West Asia\nIran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Turkey to the northwest and Iraq to the west, Azerbaijan, Armenia, the Caspian Sea, and Turkmenistan to the north, Afghanistan to the east, Pakistan to the southeast, the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south. With a multi-ethnic population of nearly 86 million in an area of , Iran ranks 17th globally in both geographic size and population. It is the sixth-largest country entirely in Asia and one of the world's most mountainous countries. Officially an Islamic republic, Iran is divided into five regions with 31 provinces. Tehran is the nation's capital, largest city and financial centre.\nA cradle of civilisation, Iran has been inhabited since the Lower Palaeolithic. The large part of Iran was first unified as a political entity by the Medes under Cyaxares in the seventh century BC, and reached its territorial height in the sixth century BC, when Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Empire, one of the largest in ancient history. Alexander the Great conquered the empire in the fourth century BC. An Iranian rebellion established the Parthian Empire in the third century BC and liberated the country, which was succeeded by the Sasanian Empire in the third century AD. Ancient Iran saw some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, religion and central government. The Sasanian era is considered a golden age in the history of Iranian civilisation. Muslims conquered the region in the seventh century AD, leading to Iran's Islamisation. The literature, philosophy, mathematics, medicine, astronomy and art which had blossomed during the Sasanian era were renewed during the Islamic Golden Age and Persian Renaissance, when a series of Iranian Muslim dynasties ended Arab rule, revived the Persian language and ruled the country until the Seljuk and Mongol conquests of the 11th to 14th centuries.\nIn the 16th century, the native Safavid dynasty re-established a unified Iranian state with Twelver Shi'ism as the official religion. During the Afsharid Empire in the 18th century, Iran was a leading world power, but this was no longer the case after the Qajars took power in the 1790s. The early 20th century saw the Persian Constitutional Revolution and the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty by Reza Shah the Great, who ousted the last Qajar shah in 1925. Attempts by Mohammad Mosaddegh to nationalise the oil industry led to an Anglo-American coup in 1953. After the Iranian Revolution, the monarchy was overthrown in 1979 and the Islamic Republic of Iran was established by Ruhollah Khomeini, who became the country's first Supreme Leader. In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, sparking the eight-year-long Iran\u2013Iraq War, which ended in stalemate.\nIran is officially governed as a unitary Islamic republic with a presidential system, with ultimate authority vested in a Supreme Leader. The government is authoritarian and has attracted widespread criticism for its significant violations of human rights and civil liberties. Iran is a major regional power, due to its large reserves of fossil fuels, including the world's second largest natural gas supply, third largest proven oil reserves, its geopolitically significant location, military capabilities, cultural hegemony, regional influence, and role as the world's focal point of Shia Islam. The Iranian economy is the world's 23rd-largest by PPP. Iran is a founding member of the United Nations, OIC, OPEC, and ECO as well as a current member of the NAM, SCO, and BRICS. Iran is home to 28 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the 10th highest in the world, and ranks 5th in Intangible Cultural Heritage, or human treasures.\nEtymology.\nThe term \"Iran\" 'the land of the Aryans' derives from Middle Persian , first attested in a 3rd-century inscription at Naqsh-e Rostam, with the accompanying Parthian inscription using , in reference to the Iranians. and are oblique plural forms of gentilic nouns \"\u0113r-\" (Middle Persian) and \"ary-\" (Parthian), deriving from Proto-Iranian language \"*arya-\" (meaning 'Aryan', i.e. of the Iranians), recognised as a derivative of Proto-Indo-European language \"*ar-yo-\", meaning 'one who assembles (skilfully)'. According to Iranian mythology, the name comes from Iraj, a legendary king.\nIran was referred to as \"Persia\" by the West, due to Greek historians who referred to all of Iran as , meaning 'the land of the Persians'. \"Persia\" is the Fars province in southwest Iran, the 4th largest province, also known as \"P\u00e2rs\". The Persian \"F\u00e2rs\" (\u0641\u0627\u0631\u0633), derived from the earlier form \"P\u00e2rs\" (\u067e\u0627\u0631\u0633), which is in turn derived from \"P\u00e2rs\u00e2\" (Old Persian: \ud800\udfb1\ud800\udfa0\ud800\udfbc\ud800\udfbf). Due to Fars' historical importance, \"Persia\" originated from this territory through Greek in around 550 BC, and Westerners referred to the entire country as \"Persia\", until 1935, when Reza Shah requested the international community to use its native and original name, \"Iran\"; Iranians called their nation \"Iran\" since at least 1000 BC. Today, both \"Iran\" and \"Persia\" are used culturally, while \"Iran\" remains mandatory in official use.\nThe Persian pronunciation of \"Iran\" is . Commonwealth English pronunciations of \"Iran\" are listed in the \"Oxford English Dictionary\" as and , while American English dictionaries provide pronunciations which map to , or . The \"Cambridge Dictionary\" lists as the British pronunciation and as the American pronunciation. Voice of America's pronunciation guide provides .\nHistory.\nIran is home to one of the world's oldest continuous major civilisations, with historical and urban settlements dating back to 4000 BC. The western part of the Iranian plateau participated in the traditional ancient Near East with Elam (3200\u2013539 BC), and later with other peoples such as the Kassites, Mannaeans, and Gutians. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel called the Persians the \"first Historical People\". The Iranian Empire began in the Iron Age with the rise of the Medes, who unified Iran as a nation and empire in 625 BC. The Achaemenid Empire (550\u2013330 BC), founded by Cyrus the Great, was the largest empire the world had seen, spanning from the Balkans to North Africa and Central Asia. They were succeeded by the Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian Empires, who governed Iran for almost 1,000 years, making Iran a leading power once again. Persia's arch-rival during this time was the Roman Empire and its successor, the Byzantine Empire.\nIran endured invasions by the Macedonians, Arabs, Turks, and Mongols. Despite these invasions, Iran continually reasserted its national identity and developed as a distinct political and cultural entity. The Muslim conquest of Persia (632\u2013654) ended the Sasanian Empire and marked a turning point in Iranian history, leading to the Islamisation of Iran from the eighth to tenth centuries and the decline of Zoroastrianism. However, the achievements of prior Persian civilisations were absorbed into the new Islamic polity. Iran suffered invasions by nomadic tribes during the Late Middle Ages and early modern period, negatively impacting the region. Iran was reunified as an independent state in 1501 by the Safavid dynasty, which established Shia Islam as the empire's official religion, marking another turning point in the history of Islam. Iran functioned again as a leading world power, especially in rivalry with the Ottoman Empire. In the 19th century, Iran lost significant territories in the Caucasus to the Russian Empire following the Russo-Persian Wars.\nIran remained a monarchy until the 1979 Iranian Revolution, when it officially became an Islamic republic on 1 April 1979. Since then, Iran has experienced significant political, social, and economic changes. The establishment of the \"Islamic Republic of Iran\" led to the restructuring of its political system, with Ayatollah Khomeini as the Supreme Leader. Iran's foreign relations have been shaped by the Iran\u2013Iraq War (1980\u20131988), ongoing tensions with the United States, and its nuclear programme, which has been a point of contention in international diplomacy.\nSince the 1990s.\nIn 1989, Akbar Rafsanjani concentrated on a pro-business policy of rebuilding the economy without breaking with the ideology of the revolution. He supported a free market domestically, favouring privatisation of state industries and a moderate position internationally. In 1997, Rafsanjani was succeeded by moderate reformist Mohammad Khatami, whose government advocated freedom of expression, constructive diplomatic relations with Asia and the European Union, and an economic policy that supported a free market and foreign investment.\nThe 2005 presidential election brought conservative populist and nationalist candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power. He was known for his hardline views, nuclearisation, and hostility towards Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UK, the US and other states. He was the first president to be summoned by the parliament to answer questions regarding his presidency. In 2013, centrist and reformist Hassan Rouhani was elected president. In domestic policy, he encouraged personal freedom, free access to information, and improved women's rights. He improved Iran's diplomatic relations through exchanging conciliatory letters. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was reached in Vienna in 2015, between Iran, the P5+1 (UN Security Council + Germany) and the EU. The negotiations centred around ending the economic sanctions in exchange for Iran's restriction in producing enriched uranium. In 2018, however, the US under Trump Administration withdrew from the deal and new sanctions were imposed. This nulled the economic provisions, left the agreement in jeopardy, and brought Iran to nuclear threshold status. In 2020, IRGC general, Qasem Soleimani, the 2nd-most powerful person in Iran, was assassinated by the US, heightening tensions between them. Iran retaliated against US airbases in Iraq, the largest ballistic missile attack ever on Americans; 110 sustained brain injuries.\nHardliner Ebrahim Raisi ran for president again in 2021, succeeding Hassan Rouhani. During Raisi's term, Iran intensified uranium enrichment, hindered international inspections, joined SCO and BRICS, supported Russia in its invasion of Ukraine and restored diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia. In April 2024, Israel's airstrike on an Iranian consulate, killed an IRGC commander. Iran retaliated with UAVs, cruise and ballistic missiles; 9 hit Israel. Western and Jordanian military helped Israel down some Iranian drones. It was the largest drone strike in history, biggest missile attack in Iranian history, its first ever direct attack on Israel and the first time since 1991, Israel was directly attacked by a state force. This occurred during heightened tensions amid the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. In May 2024, President Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash, and Iran held a presidential election in June, when reformist and former Minister of Health, Masoud Pezeshkian, was elected to office. On 1 October 2024, Iran launched about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for assassinations of Ismail Haniyeh, Hassan Nasrallah and Abbas Nilforoushan. On 27 October, Israel responded to that attack by strikes on a missile defence system in the Iranian region of Isfahan.\nGeography.\nIran has an area of . It is the sixth-largest country entirely in Asia and the second-largest in West Asia. It lies between latitudes 24\u00b0 and 40\u00b0 N, and longitudes 44\u00b0 and 64\u00b0 E. It is bordered to the northwest by Armenia (), the Azeri exclave of Nakhchivan (), and the Republic of Azerbaijan (); to the north by the Caspian Sea; to the northeast by Turkmenistan (); to the east by Afghanistan () and Pakistan (); to the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman; and to the west by Iraq () and Turkey ().\nIran is in a seismically active area. On average, an earthquake of magnitude seven on the Richter scale occurs once every ten years. Most earthquakes are shallow-focus and can be very devastating, such as the 2003 Bam earthquake.\nIran consists of the Iranian Plateau. It is one of the world's most mountainous countries; its landscape is dominated by rugged mountain ranges that separate basins or plateaus. The populous west part is the most mountainous, with ranges such as the Caucasus, Zagros, and Alborz, the last containing Mount Damavand, Iran's highest point, at , which is the highest volcano in Asia. Iran's mountains have impacted its politics and economics for centuries.\nThe north part is covered by the lush lowland Caspian Hyrcanian forests, near the southern shores of the Caspian Sea. The east part consists mostly of desert basins, such as the Kavir Desert, which is the country's largest desert, and the Lut Desert, as well as salt lakes. The Lut Desert is the hottest recorded spot on the Earth's surface, with 70.7\u00a0\u00b0C recorded in 2005. The only large plains are found along the coast of the Caspian and at the north end of the Persian Gulf, where the country borders the mouth of the Arvand river. Smaller, discontinuous plains are found along the remaining coast of the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman.\nIslands.\nIranian islands are mainly located in the Persian Gulf. Iran has 102 islands in Urmia Lake, 427 in Aras River, several in Anzali Lagoon, Ashurade Island in the Caspian Sea, Sheytan Island in the Oman Sea and other inland islands. Iran has an uninhabited island at the far end of the Gulf of Oman, near Pakistan. A few islands can be visited by tourists. Most are owned by the military or used for wildlife protection, and entry is prohibited or requires a permit.\nIran took control of Bumusa, and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs in 1971, in the Strait of Hormuz between the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. Despite the islands being small and having little natural resources or population, they are highly valuable for their strategic location. Although the United Arab Emirates claims sovereignty, it has consistently been met with a strong response from Iran, based on their historical and cultural background. Iran has full control over the islands.\nKish island, as a free trade zone, is touted as a consumer's paradise, with malls, shopping centres, tourist attractions, and luxury hotels. Qeshm is the largest island in Iran, and a UNESCO Global Geopark since 2016. Its salt cave, Namakdan, is the largest in the world, and one of the world's longest caves.\nClimate.\nIran's climate is diverse, ranging from arid and semi-arid, to subtropical along the Caspian coast and northern forests. On the north edge of the country, temperatures rarely fall below freezing and the area remains humid. Summer temperatures rarely exceed . Annual precipitation is in the east part of the plain and more than in the west part. The UN Resident Coordinator for Iran, has said that \"Water scarcity poses the most severe human security challenge in Iran today\".\nTo the west, settlements in the Zagros basin experience lower temperatures, severe winters with freezing average daily temperatures and heavy snowfall. The east and central basins are arid, with less than of rain and have occasional deserts. Average summer temperatures rarely exceed . The southern coastal plains of the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman have mild winters, and very humid and hot summers. The annual precipitation ranges from .\nBiodiversity.\nMore than one-tenth of the country is forested. About 120 million hectares of forests and fields are government-owned for national exploitation. Iran's forests can be divided into five vegetation regions: Hyrcanian region which forms the green belt of the north side of the country; the Turan region, which are mainly scattered in the centre of Iran; Zagros region, which mainly contains oak forests in the west; the Persian Gulf region, which is scattered in the southern coastal belt; the Arasbarani region, which contains rare and unique species. More than 8,200 plant species are grown. The land covered by natural flora is four times that of Europe's. There are over 200 protected areas to preserve biodiversity and wildlife, with over 30 being national parks.\nIran's living fauna includes 34 bat species, Indian grey mongoose, small Indian mongoose, golden jackal, Indian wolf, foxes, striped hyena, leopard, Eurasian lynx, brown bear and Asian black bear. Ungulate species include wild boar, urial, Armenian mouflon, red deer, and goitered gazelle. One of the most famous animals is the critically endangered Asiatic cheetah, which survives only in Iran. Iran lost all its Asiatic lions and the extinct Caspian tigers by the early 20th century. Domestic ungulates are represented by sheep, goat, cattle, horse, water buffalo, donkey and camel. Bird species like pheasant, partridge, stork, eagles and falcons are native.\nGovernment and politics.\nSupreme Leader.\nThe Supreme Leader, \"Rahbar\", Leader of the Revolution or Supreme Leadership Authority, is the head of state and responsible for supervision of policy. The president has limited power compared to the Rahbar. Key ministers are selected with the Rahbar's agreement and they have the ultimate say on foreign policy. The Rahbar is directly involved in ministerial appointments for Defence, Intelligence and Foreign Affairs, as well as other top ministries after submission of candidates from the president.\nRegional policy is directly controlled by the Rahbar, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' task limited to protocol and ceremonial occasions. Ambassadors to Arab countries, for example, are chosen by the Quds Force, which directly reports to the Rahbar. The Rahbar can order laws to be amended. Setad was estimated at $95\u00a0billion in 2013 by Reuters, accounts of which are secret even to the parliament.\nThe Rahbar is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, controls military intelligence and security operations, and has sole power to declare war or peace. The heads of the judiciary, state radio and television networks, commanders of the police and military, and the members of the Guardian Council are all appointed by the Rahbar.\nThe Assembly of Experts is responsible for electing the Rahbar, and has the power to dismiss him on the basis of qualifications and popular esteem. To date, the Assembly of Experts has not challenged any of the Rahbar's decisions nor attempted to dismiss him. The previous head of the judicial system, Sadeq Larijani, appointed by the Rahbar, said that it is illegal for the Assembly of Experts to supervise the Rahbar. Many believe the Assembly of Experts has become a ceremonial body without any real power. In February 2025,\u00a0 the New York Times reported that according to Karim Sadjadpour, an expert on Iran at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, there exist in the Islamic Republic of Iran two parallel regimes. One which is ruled by the military and intelligence forces, who report to the Rahbar, and \"who oversee the nuclear programme and regional proxies and are tasked with repression, hostage taking and assassinations\u201d. The other ruled by diplomats and politicians \"who are authorized to speak to Western media and officials\" and have minimal knowledge of Iran's nuclear programme.\nThe political system is based on the country's constitution. Iran ranked 154th in the 2022 \"The Economist Democracy Index\". Juan Jos\u00e9 Linz wrote in 2000 that \"the Iranian regime combines the ideological bent of totalitarianism with the limited pluralism of authoritarianism\".\nPresident.\nThe President is head of government and the second highest-ranking authority, after the Supreme Leader. The President is elected by universal suffrage for 4 years. Before elections, nominees to become a presidential candidate must be approved by the Guardian Council. The Council's members are chosen by the Leader, with the Leader having the power to dismiss the president. The President can only be re-elected for one term. The president is the deputy commander-in-chief of the Army, the head of Supreme National Security Council, and has the power to declare a state of emergency after passage by the parliament.\nThe President is responsible for the implementation of the constitution, and for the exercise of executive powers in implementing the decrees and general policies as outlined by the Rahbar, except for matters directly related to the Rahbar, who has the final say. The President functions as the executive of affairs such as signing treaties and other international agreements, and administering national planning, budget, and state employment affairs, all as approved by the Rahbar.\nThe President appoints ministers, subject to the approval of the Parliament, and the Rahbar, who can dismiss or reinstate any minister. The President supervises the Council of Ministers, coordinates government decisions, and selects government policies to be placed before the legislature. Eight Vice Presidents serve under the President, as well as a cabinet of 22 ministers, all appointed by the president.\nGuardian Council.\nPresidential and parliamentary candidates must be approved by the 12-member Guardian Council (all members of which are appointed by the Leader) or the Leader, before running to ensure their allegiance. The Leader rarely does the vetting, but has the power to do so, in which case additional approval of the Guardian Council is not needed. The Leader can revert the decisions of the Guardian Council.\nThe constitution gives the council three mandates: veto power over legislation passed by the parliament, supervision of elections and approving or disqualifying candidates seeking to run in local, parliamentary, presidential, or Assembly of Experts elections. The council can nullify a law based on two accounts: being against Sharia (Islamic law), or being against the constitution.\nSupreme National Security Council.\nThe Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) is at the top of the foreign policy decisions process. The council was formed during the 1989 Iranian constitutional referendum for the protection and support of national interests, the revolution, territorial integrity and national sovereignty. It is mandated by Article 176 of the Constitution to be presided over by the President.\nThe Leader selects the secretary of the Supreme Council, and the decisions of the council are effective after the confirmation by the Leader. The SNSC formulates nuclear policy, and would become effective if they are confirmed by the Leader.\nLegislature.\nThe legislature, known as the Islamic Consultative Assembly (ICA), Iranian Parliament or \"Majles\", is a unicameral body comprising 290 members elected for four-years. It drafts legislation, ratifies international treaties, and approves the national budget. All parliamentary candidates and legislation from the assembly must be approved by the Guardian Council. The Guardian Council can and has dismissed elected members of the parliament. The parliament has no legal status without the Guardian Council, and the Council holds absolute veto power over legislation.\nThe Expediency Discernment Council has the authority to mediate disputes between Parliament and the Guardian Council, and serves as an advisory body to the Supreme Leader, making it one of the most powerful governing bodies in Iran.\nThe Parliament has 207 constituencies, including the 5 reserved seats for religious minorities. The remaining 202 are territorial, each covering one or more of Iran's counties.\nLaw.\nIran uses the Sharia law as its legal system, with elements of Civil law. The Supreme Leader appoints the head of the Supreme Court and chief public prosecutor. There are several types of courts, including public courts that deal with civil and criminal cases, and revolutionary courts which deal with certain offences, such as crimes against national security. The decisions of the revolutionary courts are final and cannot be appealed.\nThe Chief Justice is the head of the judicial system and responsible for its administration and supervision. He is the highest judge of the Supreme Court of Iran. The Chief Justice nominates candidates to serve as minister of justice, and the President selects one. The Chief Justice can serve for two five-year terms.\nThe Special Clerical Court handles crimes allegedly committed by clerics, although it has taken on cases involving laypeople. The Special Clerical Court functions independently of the regular judicial framework and is accountable only to the Rahbar. The Court's rulings are final and cannot be appealed. The Assembly of Experts, which meets for one week annually, comprises 86 \"virtuous and learned\" clerics elected by adult suffrage for 8-year terms.\nAdministrative divisions.\nIran is subdivided into thirty-one provinces ( \"ost\u00e2n\"), each governed from a local centre, usually the largest local city, which is called the capital (Persian: , \"markaz\") of that province. The provincial authority is headed by a governor-general ( \"ost\u00e2nd\u00e2r\"), who is appointed by the Minister of the Interior subject to approval of the cabinet.\nForeign relations.\nIran maintains diplomatic relations with 165 countries, but not the United States and Israel\u2014a state which Iran derecognised in 1979.\nIran has an adversarial relationship with Saudi Arabia due to different political ideologies. Iran and Turkey have been involved in modern proxy conflicts such as in Syria, Libya, and the South Caucasus. However, they have shared common interests, such as the issue of Kurdish separatism and the Qatar diplomatic crisis. Iran has a close and strong relationship with Tajikistan. Iran has deep economic relations and alliance with Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, with Syria often described as Iran's \"closest ally\".\nRussia is a key trading partner, especially in regard to its excess oil reserves. Both share a close economic and military alliance, and are subject to heavy sanctions by Western nations. Iran is the only country in Western Asia that has been invited to join the CSTO, the Russia-based international treaty organisation that parallels NATO.\nRelations between Iran and China are strong economically; they have developed a friendly, economic and strategic relationship. In 2021, Iran and China signed a 25-year cooperation agreement that will strengthen the relations between the two countries and would include \"political, strategic and economic\" components. Iran-China relations dates back to at least 200 BC and possibly earlier. Iran is one of the few countries in the world that has a good relationship with both North and South Korea.\nIn December 2024, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, a close ally of Iran, was a severe setback for the political influence of Iran in the region.\nIran is a member of dozens of international organisations, including the G-15, G-24, G-77, IAEA, IBRD, IDA, NAM, IDB, IFC, ILO, IMF, IMO, Interpol, OIC, OPEC, WHO, and the UN, and currently has observer status at the WTO.\nMilitary.\nThe military is organised under a unified structure, the Islamic Republic of Iran Armed Forces, comprising the Islamic Republic of Iran Army, which includes the Ground Forces, Air Defence Force, Air Force, and Navy; the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which consists of the Ground Forces, Aerospace Force, Navy, Quds Force, and Basij; and the Law Enforcement Command (Faraja), which serves an analogous function to a gendarme. While the IRIAF protects the country's sovereignty in a traditional capacity, the IRGC is mandated to ensure the integrity of the Republic, against foreign interference, coups, and internal riots. Since 1925, it is mandatory for all male citizen aged 18 to serve around 14 months in the IRIAF or IRGC.\nIran has over 610,000 active troops and around 350,000 reservists, totalling over 1 million military personnel, one of the world's highest percentage of citizens with military training. The Basij\",\" a paramilitary volunteer militia within the IRGC, has over 20 million members, 600,000 available for immediate call-up, 300,000 reservists, and a million that could be mobilised when necessary. Faraja, the Iranian uniformed police force, has over 260,000 active personnel. Most statistical organisations do not include the Basij and Faraja in their ratings report.\nExcluding the Basij and Faraja, Iran has been identified as a major military power, owing it to the size and capabilities of its armed forces. It possesses the world's 14th strongest military. It ranks 13th globally in terms of overall military strength, 7th in the number of active military personnel, and 9th in the size of both its ground force and armoured force. Iran's armed forces are the largest in West Asia and comprise the greatest Army Aviation fleet in the Middle East. Iran is among the top 15 countries in terms of military budget. In 2021, its military spending increased for the first time in four years, to $24.6 billion, 2.3% of the national GDP. Funding for the IRGC accounted for 34% of Iran's total military spending in 2021.\nSince the Revolution, to overcome foreign embargoes, Iran has developed a domestic military industry capable of producing indigenous tanks, armoured personnel carriers, missiles, submarines, missile destroyer, radar systems, helicopters, naval vessels, and fighter planes. Official announcements have highlighted the development of advanced weaponry, particularly in rocketry. Consequently, Iran has the largest and most diverse ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East and is only the 5th country in the world with hypersonic missile technology. It is the world's 6th missile power. Iran designs and produces a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and is considered a global leader and superpower in drone warfare and technology. It is one of the world's five countries with cyberwarfare capabilities and is identified as \"one of the most active players in the international cyber arena\". Iran is an key exporter of arms since 2000s.\nFollowing Russia's purchase of Iranian drones during the invasion of Ukraine, in November 2023, the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) finalized arrangements to acquire Russian Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets, Mil Mi-28 attack helicopters, air defence and missile systems. The Iranian Navy has had joint exercises with Russia and China.\nNuclear programme.\nIran's nuclear programme dates back to the 1950s. Iran revived it after the Revolution, and its extensive nuclear fuel cycle, including enrichment capabilities, became the subject of intense international negotiations and sanctions. Many countries have expressed concern Iran could divert civilian nuclear technology into a weapons programme. In 2015, Iran and the P5+1 agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan on Action (JCPOA), aiming to end economic sanctions in exchange for restriction in producing enriched uranium.\nIn 2018, however, the US withdrew from the deal under the Trump administration, and reimposed sanctions. This was met with resistance by Iran and other members of the P5+1. A year later, Iran began decreasing its compliance. By 2020, Iran announced it would no longer observe any limit set by the agreement. Progress since then has brought Iran to the nuclear threshold status. As of November 2023[ [update]], Iran had uranium enriched to up to 60% fissile content, close to weapon grade. Some analysts already regard Iran as a de facto nuclear power.\nRegional influence.\nIran's significant influence and foothold, sometimes characterised as the \"Dawn of A New Persian Empire.\" Some analysts associate the Iranian influence to the nation's proud national legacy, empire and history.\nSince the Revolution, Iran has grown its influence across and beyond the region. It has built military forces with a wide network of state and none-state actors, starting with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 1982. The IRGC has been key to Iranian influence, through its Quds Force. The instability in Lebanon (from the 1980s), Iraq (from 2003) and Yemen (from 2014) has allowed Iran to build strong alliances and footholds beyond its borders. Iran has a prominent influence in the social services, education, economy and politics of Lebanon, and Lebanon provides Iran access to the Mediterranean Sea. Hezbollah's strategic successes against Israel, such as its symbolic victory during the 2006 Israel\u2013Hezbollah War, elevated Iran's influence in the Levant and strengthened its appeal across the Muslim World.\nSince the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the arrival of ISIS in the mid-2010s, Iran has financed and trained militia groups in Iraq. Since the Iran-Iraq war in 1980s and the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iran has shaped Iraq's politics. Following Iraq's struggle against ISIS in 2014, companies linked to the IRGC such as Khatam al-Anbiya, started to build roads, power plants, hotels and businesses in Iraq, creating an economic corridor worth around $9 billion before COVID-19. This is expected to grow to $20 billion.\nDuring Yemen's civil war, Iran provided military support to the Houthis, a Zaydi Shiite movement fighting Yemen's Sunni government since 2004. They gained significant power in recent years. Iran has considerable influence in Afghanistan and Pakistan through militant groups such as Liwa Fatemiyoun and Liwa Zainebiyoun.\nIn Syria, Iran has supported President Bashar al-Assad; the two countries are long-standing allies. Iran has provided significant military and economic support to Assad's government, so has a considerable foothold in Syria. Iran has long supported the anti-Israel fronts in North Africa in countries like Algeria and Tunisia, embracing Hamas in part to help undermine the popularity of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Iran's support of Hamas emerged more clearly in later years. According to US intelligence, Iran does not have full control over these state and non-state groups.\nHuman rights and censorship.\nThe Iranian government has been denounced by various international organisations and governments for violating human rights. The government has frequently persecuted and arrested critics of the government. Iranian law does not recognise sexual orientations. Sexual activity between members of the same sex is illegal and is punishable by death. Capital punishment is a legal punishment, and according to the BBC, Iran \"carries out more executions than any other country, except China\". UN Special Rapporteur Javaid Rehman has reported discrimination against several ethnic minorities in Iran. A group of UN experts in 2022 urged Iran to stop \"systematic persecution\" of religious minorities, adding that members of the Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith were arrested, barred from universities, or had their homes demolished.\nCensorship in Iran is ranked among the most extreme worldwide. Iran has strict internet censorship, with the government persistently blocking social media and other sites. Since January 2021, Iranian authorities have blocked a list of social media platforms; Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Telegram, Twitter and YouTube.\nThe 2006 election results were widely disputed, resulting in protests. The 2017\u201318 Iranian protests swept across the country in response to the economic and political situation. It was formally confirmed that thousands of protesters were arrested. The 2019\u201320 Iranian protests started on 15 November in Ahvaz, and spread across the country after the government announced increases in fuel prices of up to 300%. A week-long total Internet shutdown marked one of the most severe Internet blackouts in any country, and the bloodiest governmental crackdown of the protestors. Tens of thousands were arrested and hundreds were killed within a few days according to multiple international observers, including Amnesty International.\nUkraine International Airlines Flight 752, was a scheduled international civilian passenger flight from Tehran to Kyiv, operated by Ukraine International Airlines. On 8 January 2020, the Boeing 737\u2013800 flying the route was shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) shortly after takeoff, killing all 176 occupants on board and leading to protests. An international investigation led to the government admitting to the shootdown, calling it a \"human error\". Another Protests against the government began on 16 September 2022 after a woman named Mahsa Amini died in police custody following her arrest by the Guidance Patrol, known commonly as the \"morality police\".\nEconomy.\nAs of 2024[ [update]], Iran has the world's 19th largest economy (by PPP). It is a mixture of central planning, state ownership of oil and other large enterprises, village agriculture, and small-scale private trading and service ventures. Services contribute the largest percentage of GDP, followed by industry (mining and manufacturing) and agriculture. The economy is characterised by its hydrocarbon sector, in addition to manufacturing and financial services. With 10% of the world's oil reserves and 15% of gas reserves, Iran is an energy superpower. Over 40 industries are directly involved in the Tehran Stock Exchange.\nTehran is the economic powerhouse of Iran. About 30% of Iran's public-sector workforce and 45% of its large industrial firms are located there, and half those firms' employees work for government. The Central Bank of Iran is responsible for developing and maintaining the currency: the Iranian rial. The government does not recognise trade unions other than the Islamic labour councils, which are subject to the approval of employers and the security services. Unemployment was 9% in 2022.\nBudget deficits have been a chronic problem, mostly due to large state subsidies, that include foodstuffs and especially petrol, totalling $100\u00a0billion in 2022 for energy alone. In 2010, the economic reform plan was to cut subsidies gradually and replace them with targeted social assistance. The objective is to move towards free market prices and increase productivity and social justice. The administration continues reform, and indicates it will diversify the oil-reliant economy. Iran has developed a biotechnology, nanotechnology, and pharmaceutical industry. The government is privatising industries.\nIran has leading manufacturing industries in automobile manufacture, transportation, construction materials, home appliances, food and agricultural goods, armaments, pharmaceuticals, information technology, and petrochemicals in the Middle East. Iran is among the world's top five producers of apricots, cherries, cucumbers and gherkins, dates, figs, pistachios, quinces, walnuts, Kiwifruit and watermelons. International sanctions against Iran have damaged the economy. Iran is one of three countries that have not ratified the Paris Agreement to limit climate change, although academics say it would be good for the country.\nIran suffers from high inflation and especially surging food prices. A major contributing factor is the involvement of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the economy, particularly in the agriculture and food sectors but also due to significant spending on the Axis of Resistance which increase the public deficit. \nTourism.\nTourism had been rapidly growing before the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching nearly 9 million foreign visitors in 2019, the world's third fastest-growing tourism destination. In 2022 it expanded its share to 5% of the economy. Iran's tourism experienced a growth of 43% in 2023, attracting 6 million foreign tourists. The government ended visa requirements for 60 countries in 2023.\n98% of visits are for leisure, while 2% are for business, indicating the country's appeal as a tourist destination. Alongside the capital, the most popular tourist destinations are Isfahan, Shiraz and Mashhad. Iran is emerging as a preferred destination for medical tourism. Travellers from other West Asian countries grew 31% in the first seven months of 2023, surpassing Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Domestic tourism is one of the world's largests; Iranian tourists spent $33bn in 2021. Iran projects investment of $32 billion in the tourism sector by 2026.\nAgriculture and fishery.\nRoughly one-third of Iran's total surface area is suited for farmland. Only 12% of the total land area is under cultivation, but less than one-third of the cultivated area is irrigated; the rest is devoted to dryland farming. Some 92% of agricultural products depend on water. The western and northwestern portions of the country have the most fertile soils. Iran's food security index stands at around 96 percent. 3% of the total land area is used for grazing and fodder production. Most of the grazing is done on mostly semi-dry rangeland in mountain areas and on areas surrounding the large deserts of Central Iran. Progressive government efforts and incentives during the 1990s, improved agricultural productivity, helping Iran toward its goal of reestablishing national self-sufficiency in food production.\nAccess to the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and many river basins provides Iran the potential to develop excellent fisheries. The government assumed control of commercial fishing in 1952. Expansion of the fishery infrastructure enabled the country to harvest an estimated 700,000 tons of fish annually from the southern waters. Since the Revolution, increased attention has been focused on producing fish from inland waters. Between 1976 and 2004, the combined take from inland waters by the state and private sectors increased from 1,100 tons to 110,175 tons. Iran is the world's largest producer and exporter of caviar, exporting more than 300 tonnes annually.\nIndustry and services.\nIran is globally ranked 16th in car manufacturing, ahead of the UK, Italy, and Russia. It has outputted 1.188 million cars in 2023, a 12% growth compared to the previous years. Iran has exported various cars to countries such as Venezuela, Russia and Belarus. From 2008 to 2009, Iran leaped to 28th place from 69th in annual industrial production growth rate. Iranian contractors have been awarded several foreign tender contracts in different fields of construction of dams, bridges, roads, buildings, railroads, power generation, and gas, oil and petrochemical industries. As of 2011, some 66 Iranian industrial companies are carrying out projects in 27 countries. Iran exported over $20 billion worth of technical and engineering services over 2001\u20132011. The availability of local raw materials, rich mineral reserves, experienced manpower have all played crucial role in winning the bids.\n45% of large industrial firms are located in Tehran, and almost half of their workers work for government. The Iranian retail industry is largely in the hands of cooperatives, many of them government-sponsored, and of independent retailers in the bazaars. The bulk of food sales occur at street markets, where the Chief Statistics Bureau sets the prices. Iran's main exports are to Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Syria, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Canada, Venezuela, Japan, South Korea and Turkey. Iran's automotive industry is the second most active industry of the country, after its oil and gas industry. Iran Khodro is the largest car manufacturer in the Middle East, and ITMCO is the biggest tractor manufacturer. Iran is the 12th largest automaker in the world. Construction is one of the most important sectors in Iran accounting for 20\u201350% of the total private investment.\nIran is one of the most important mineral producers in the world, ranked among 15 major mineral-rich countries. Iran has become self-sufficient in designing, building and operating dams and power plants. Iran is one of the six countries in the world that manufacture gas- and steam-powered turbines.\nTransport.\nIn 2011 Iran had of roads, of which 73% were paved. In 2008 there were nearly 100 passenger cars for every 1,000 inhabitants.\nTehran Metro is the largest in the Middle East, it carries more than 3 million passengers daily and in 2018, 820 million trips. Trains operate on of track. The country's major port of entry is Bandar Abbas on the Strait of Hormuz. Imported goods are distributed through the country by trucks and freight trains. The Tehran\u2013Bandar Abbas railroad connects Bandar-Abbas to the railroad system of Central Asia, via Tehran and Mashhad. Other major ports include Bandar e-Anzali and Bandar e-Torkeman on the Caspian Sea and Khorramshahr and Bandar-e Emam Khomeyni on the Persian Gulf.\nDozens of cities have airports that serve passenger and cargo planes. Iran Air, the national airline, operates domestic and international flights. All large cities have mass transit systems using buses, and private companies provide bus services between cities. Over a million people work in transport, accounting for 9% of GDP.\nEnergy.\nIran is an energy superpower and petroleum plays a key part. As of 2023[ [update]], Iran produced 4% of the world's crude oil ( per day), which generates US$36bn of export revenue and is the main source of foreign currency. Oil and gas reserves are estimated at 1.2 trn barrels; Iran holds 10% of world oil reserves and 15% for gas. It ranks 3rd in oil reserves and is OPEC's 2nd largest exporter. It has the 2nd largest gas reserves, and 3rd largest natural gas production. In 2019, Iran discovered a southern oil field of 50 bn barrels and in April 2024, the NIOC discovered 10 giant shale oil deposits, totalling 2.6 bn barrels. Iran plans to invest $500 billion in oil by 2025.\nIran manufactures 60\u201370% of its industrial equipment domestically, including turbines, pumps, catalysts, refineries, oil tankers, drilling rigs, offshore platforms, towers, pipes, and exploration instruments. The addition of new hydroelectric stations and streamlining of conventional coal and oil-fired stations increased installed capacity to 33 GW; about 75% was based on natural gas, 18% on oil, and 7% on hydroelectric power. In 2004, Iran opened its first wind-powered and geothermal plants, and the first solar thermal plant began in 2009. Iran is the world's third country to develop GTL technology.\nDemographic trends and intensified industrialisation have caused electric power demand to grow by 8% per year. The government's goal of 53 GW of installed capacity by 2010 is to be reached by bringing on line new gas-fired plants, and adding hydropower and nuclear generation capacity. Iran's first nuclear power plant went online in 2011.\nDespite being an energy superpower as of 2024-2025 Iran suffers from an energy crisis, manifested by many power outages.\nScience and technology.\nIran has made considerable advances in science and technology, despite international sanctions. In the biomedical sciences, Iran's Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics has a UNESCO chair in biology. In 2006, Iranian scientists successfully cloned a sheep at the Royan Research Centre in Tehran. Stem cell research is among the top 10 in the world. Iran ranks 15th in the world in nanotechnologies. Iranian scientists outside Iran have made major scientific contributions. In 1960, Ali Javan co-invented the first gas laser, and fuzzy set theory was introduced by Lotfi A. Zadeh.\nCardiologist Tofy Mussivand invented and developed the first artificial cardiac pump, the precursor of the artificial heart. Furthering research in diabetes, the HbA1c was discovered by Samuel Rahbar. Many papers in string theory are published in Iran. In 2014, Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani became the first woman, and Iranian, to receive the Fields Medal, the highest prize in mathematics.\nIran increased its publication output nearly tenfold from 1996 through 2004, and ranked first in output growth rate, followed by China. According to a study by SCImago in 2012, Iran would rank fourth in research output by 2018, if the trend persisted. The Iranian humanoid robot Sorena 2, which was designed by engineers at the University of Tehran, was unveiled in 2010. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has placed the name of Surena among the five most prominent robots, after analysing its performance. \nAccording to a 2019 study by Isabel Campos-Varela et al., Iran recorded the highest proportion of retracted publications globally, with 15.52 retractions per 10,000 publications. Media reports from 2023 indicate that Iran continues to rank among the countries with the highest retraction rates. Common types of misconduct include fraudulent peer review processes, plagiarism, and data fabrication. Data from the Retraction Watch Leaderboard further highlights that two of the 32 individuals with the highest number of retracted articles worldwide are based in Iran.\nIran was ranked 64th in the Global Innovation Index in 2024.\nIranian Space Agency.\nThe Iranian Space Agency (ISA) was established in 2004. Iran became an orbital-launch-capable nation in 2009, and is a founding member of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Iran placed its domestically built satellite Omid into orbit on the 30th anniversary of the Revolution, in 2009, through its first expendable launch vehicle Safir. It became the 9th country capable of both producing a satellite and sending it into space from a domestically made launcher. Simorgh's launch in 2016, is the successor of Safir.\nIn January 2024, Iran launched the Soraya satellite into its highest orbit yet (750\u00a0km), a new space launch milestone for the country. It was launched by Qaem 100 rocket. Iran also successfully launched 3 indigenous satellites, The Mahda, Kayan and Hatef, into orbit using the Simorgh carrier rocket. It was the first time in country's history that it simultaneously sent three satellites into space. The three satellites are designed for testing advanced satellite subsystems, space-based positioning technology, and narrowband communication.\nIn February 2024, Iran launched its domestically developed imaging satellite, Pars 1, from Russia into orbit. This was the second time since August 2022, when Russia launched another Iranian remote-sensing, Khayyam satellite, into orbit from Kazakhstan, reflecting deep scientific cooperation between the countries.\nTelecommunication.\nIran's telecommunications industry is almost entirely state-owned, dominated by the Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI). As of 2020, 70 million Iranians use high-speed mobile internet. Iran is among the first five countries which have had a growth rate of over 20 percent and the highest level of development in telecommunication. Iran has been awarded the UNESCO special certificate for providing telecommunication services to rural areas.\nGlobally, Iran ranks 75th in mobile internet speed and 153rd in fixed internet speed.\nDemographics.\nIran's population grew rapidly from about 19\u00a0million in 1956 to about 85 million by February 2023. However, Iran's fertility rate has dropped dramatically, from 6.5 children born per woman to about 1.7 two decades later, leading to a population growth rate of about 1.39% as of 2018. Due to its young population, studies project that the growth will continue to slow until it stabilises at around 105\u00a0million by 2050.\nIran hosts one of the largest refugee populations, with almost one million, mostly from Afghanistan and Iraq. According to the Iranian Constitution, the government is required to provide every citizen with access to social security, covering retirement, unemployment, old age, disability, accidents, calamities, health and medical treatment and care services. This is covered by tax revenues and income derived from public contributions.\nThe country has one of the highest urban growth rates in the world. From 1950 to 2002, the urban proportion of the population increased from 27% to 60%. Iran's population is concentrated in its western half, especially in the north, north-west and west.\nTehran, with a population of around 9.4\u00a0million, is Iran's capital and largest city. The country's second most populous city, Mashhad, has a population of around 3.4\u00a0million, and is capital of the province of Razavi Khorasan. Isfahan has a population of around 2.2\u00a0million and is Iran's third most populous city. It is the capital of Isfahan province and was also the third capital of the Safavid Empire.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nEthnic groups.\nEthnic group composition remains a point of debate, mainly regarding the largest and second largest ethnic groups, the Persians and Azerbaijanis, due to the lack of Iranian state censuses based on ethnicity. The World Factbook has estimated that around 79% of the population of Iran is a diverse Indo-European ethno-linguistic group, with Persians (including Mazenderanis and Gilaks) constituting 61% of the population, Kurds 10%, Lurs 6%, and Balochs 2%. Peoples of other ethnolinguistic groups make up the remaining 21%, with Azerbaijanis constituting 16%, Arabs 2%, Turkmens and other Turkic tribes 2%, and others (such as Armenians, Talysh, Georgians, Circassians, Assyrians) 1%.\nThe Library of Congress issued slightly different estimates: 65% Persians (including Mazenderanis, Gilaks, and the Talysh), 16% Azerbaijanis, 7% Kurds, 6% Lurs, 2% Baloch, 1% Turkic tribal groups (including Qashqai and Turkmens), and non-Iranian, non-Turkic groups (including Armenians, Georgians, Assyrians, Circassians, and Arabs) less than 3%.\nEthnic based discrimination is prevalent in Iran. Minorities in Iran have been disproportionately affected by the ongoing crackdown aimed at repressing the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' movement, according to the UN Fact-Finding Mission.\nLanguages.\nMost of the population speaks Persian, the country's official and national language. Others include speakers of other Iranian languages, within the greater Indo-European family, and languages belonging to other ethnicities. The Gilaki and Mazenderani languages are widely spoken in Gilan and Mazenderan, northern Iran. The Talysh language is spoken in parts of Gilan. Varieties of Kurdish are concentrated in the province of Kurdistan and nearby areas. In Khuzestan, several dialects of Persian are spoken. South Iran also houses the Luri and Lari languages.\nAzerbaijani, the most-spoken minority language in the country, and other Turkic languages and dialects are found in various regions, especially Azerbaijan. Notable minority languages include Armenian, Georgian, Neo-Aramaic, and Arabic. Khuzi Arabic is spoken by the Arabs in Khuzestan, and the wider group of Iranian Arabs. Circassian was also once widely spoken by the large Circassian minority, but, due to assimilation, no sizable number of Circassians speak the language anymore.\nPercentages of spoken language continue to be a point of debate, most notably regarding the largest and second largest ethnicities in Iran, the Persians and Azerbaijanis. Percentages given by the CIA's World Factbook include 53% Persian, 16% Azerbaijani, 10% Kurdish, 7% Mazenderani and Gilaki, 7% Luri, 2% Turkmen, 2% Balochi, 2% Arabic, and 2% the remainder Armenian, Georgian, Neo-Aramaic, and Circassian.\nReligion.\nTwelver Shia Islam is the state religion, to which 90\u201395% of Iranians adhere; about 5\u201310% are in the Sunni and Sufi branches of Islam. 96% of Iranians believe in Islam, but 14% identify as not religious.\nThere is a large population of adherents to Yarsanism, a Kurdish indigenous religion, estimated to be over half a million to one million followers. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is not officially recognised and has been subject to official persecution. Since the Revolution, the persecution of Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds has increased. Irreligion is not recognised by the government.\nChristianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and the Sunni branch of Islam are officially recognised by the government and have reserved seats in the Parliament. Iran is home to the largest Jewish community in the Muslim World and the Middle East, outside of Israel. Around 250,000 to 370,000 Christians reside in Iran, and Christianity is the country's largest recognised minority religion, most are of Armenian background, as well as a sizable minority of Assyrians. The Iranian government has supported the rebuilding and renovation of Armenian churches, and has supported the Armenian Monastic Ensembles of Iran. In 2019, the government registered the Vank Cathedral, in Isfahan, as a World Heritage Site. Currently three Armenian churches in Iran have been included in the World Heritage List.\nEducation.\nEducation is highly centralised. K\u201312 is supervised by the Ministry of Education, and higher education is supervised by the Ministry of Science and Technology. Literacy among people aged 15 and older was 86% as of 2016[ [update]], with men (90%) significantly more educated than women (81%). Government expenditure on education is around 4% of GDP.\nThe requirement to enter into higher education is to have a high school diploma and pass the Iranian University Entrance Exam. Many students do a one\u2013two-year course of pre-university. Iran's higher education is sanctioned by different levels of diplomas, including an associate degree in two years, a bachelor's degree in four years, and a master's degree in two years, after which another exam allows the candidate to pursue a doctoral programme.\nHealth.\nHealthcare is provided by the public-governmental system, the private sector, and NGOs.\nIran is the only country in the world with a legal organ trade. Iran has been able to extend public health preventive services through the establishment of an extensive Primary Health Care Network. As a result, child and maternal mortality rates have fallen significantly, and life expectancy at birth has risen. Iran's medical knowledge rank is 17th globally, and 1st in the Middle East and North Africa. In terms of medical science production index, Iran ranks 16th in the world. Iran is fast emerging as a preferred destination for medical tourism.\nThe country faces the common problem of other young demographic nations in the region, which is keeping pace with growth of an already huge demand for various public services. An anticipated increase in the population growth rate will increase the need for public health infrastructures and services. About 90% of Iranians have health insurance.\nCulture.\nArt.\nIran has one of the richest art heritages in history and been strong in many media including architecture, painting, literature, music, metalworking, stonemasonry, weaving, calligraphy and sculpture. At different times, influences from neighbouring civilisations have been important, and latterly Persian art gave and received major influences as part of the wider styles of Islamic art.\nFrom the Achaemenid Empire of 550\u2013330 BC, the courts of successive dynasties led the style of Persian art, and court-sponsored art left many of the most impressive pieces that remain. The Islamic style of dense decoration, geometrically laid out, developed in Iran into an elegant and harmonious style, combining motifs derived from plants with Chinese motifs such as the cloud-band, and often animals represented at a smaller scale. During the Safavid Empire in the 16th century, this style was used across a variety of media, and diffused from the court artists of the king, most being painters.\nBy the time of the Sasanians, Iranian art had a renaissance. During the Middle Ages, Sasanian art played a prominent role in the formation of European and Asian mediaeval art.\nThe Safavid era is known as the Golden Age of Iranian art. Safavid art exerted noticeable influences upon the Ottomans, the Mughals, and the Deccans, and was influential through its fashion and garden architecture on 11th\u201317th-century Europe.\nIran's contemporary art traces its origins to Kamal-ol-molk, a prominent realist painter at the court of the Qajar Empire who affected the norms of painting and adopted a naturalistic style that would compete with photographic works. A new Iranian school of fine art was established by him in 1928, and was followed by the so-called \"coffeehouse\" style of painting. Iran's avant-garde modernists emerged by the arrival of new western influences during World War II. The contemporary art scene originates in the late 1940s, and Tehran's first modern art gallery, Apadana, was opened in 1949 by Mahmud Javadipur, Hosein Kazemi, and Hushang Ajudani. The new movements received official encouragement by the 1950s, which led to the emergence of artists such as Marcos Grigorian.\nArchitecture.\nThe history of architecture in Iran dates back to at least 5,000 BC, with characteristic examples distributed over an area from what is now Turkey and Iraq to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and from the Caucasus to Zanzibar. The Iranians made early use of mathematics, geometry and astronomy in their architecture, yielding a tradition with structural and aesthetic variety. The guiding motif is its cosmic symbolism.\nWithout sudden innovations, and despite the trauma of invasions and cultural shocks, it developed a recognizable style distinct from other regions of the Muslim world. Its virtues are \"a marked feeling for form and scale; structural inventiveness, especially in vault and dome construction; a genius for decoration with a freedom and success not rivalled in any other architecture\". In addition to historic gates, palaces, and mosques, the rapid growth of cities such as Tehran has brought a wave of construction. Iran ranks 7th among UNESCO's list of countries with the most archaeological ruins and attractions from antiquity.\nWorld Heritage Sites.\nIran's rich culture and history is reflected by its 27 World Heritage Sites, ranking 1st in the Middle East, and 10th in the world. These include Persepolis, Naghsh-e Jahan Square, Chogha Zanbil, Pasargadae, Golestan Palace, Arg-e Bam, Behistun Inscription, Shahr-e Sukhteh, Susa, Takht-e Soleyman, Hyrcanian forests, the city of Yazd and more. Iran has 24 Intangible Cultural Heritage, or Human treasures, which ranks 5th worldwide.\nWeaving.\nIran's carpet-weaving has its origins in the Bronze Age and is one of the most distinguished manifestations of Iranian art. Carpet weaving is an essential part of Persian culture and Iranian art. Persian rugs and carpets were woven in parallel by nomadic tribes in village and town workshops, and by royal court manufactories. As such, they represent simultaneous lines of tradition, and reflect the history of Iran, Persian culture, and its various peoples. Although the term \"Persian carpet\" most often refers to pile-woven textiles, flat-woven carpets and rugs like Kilim, Soumak, and embroidered tissues like Suzani are part of the manifold tradition of Persian carpet weaving.\nIran produces three-quarters of the world's handmade carpets, and has 30% of export markets. In 2010, the \"traditional skills of carpet weaving\" in Fars Province and Kashan were inscribed to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List. Within the Oriental rugs produced by the countries of the \"rug belt\", the Persian carpet stands out by the variety and elaborateness of its manifold designs.\nCarpets woven in towns and regional centres like Tabriz, Kerman, Ravar, Neyshabour, Mashhad, Kashan, Isfahan, Nain and Qom are characterized by their specific weaving techniques and use of high-quality materials, colours and patterns. Hand-woven Persian rugs and carpets have been regarded as objects of high artistic value and prestige, since they were mentioned by ancient Greek writers.\nLiterature.\nIran's oldest literary tradition is that of Avestan, the Old Iranian sacred language of the Avesta, which consists of the legendary and religious texts of Zoroastrianism and the ancient Iranian religion. The Persian language was used and developed through Persianate societies in Asia Minor, Central Asia, and South Asia, leaving extensive influences on Ottoman and Mughal literatures, among others. Iran has several famous mediaeval poets, notably Mawlana, Ferdowsi, Hafez, Sa'adi, Omar Khayyam, and Nezami Ganjavi.\nDescribed as one of the great literatures of humanity, including Goethe's assessment of it as one of the four main bodies of world literature, Persian literature has its roots in surviving works of Middle Persian and Old Persian, the latter of which dates back as far as 522\u00a0BCE, the date of the earliest surviving Achaemenid inscription, the Behistun Inscription. The bulk of surviving Persian literature, however, comes from the times following the Muslim conquest in c. 650\u00a0CE. After the Abbasids came to power (750 CE), the Iranians became the scribes and bureaucrats of the Islamic Caliphate and, increasingly, also its writers and poets. The New Persian language literature arose and flourished in Khorasan and Transoxiana because of political reasons, early Iranian dynasties of post-Islamic Iran such as the Tahirids and Samanids being based in Khorasan.\nPhilosophy.\nIranian philosophy can be traced back as far as Old Iranian philosophical traditions and thoughts which originated in ancient Indo-Iranian roots and were influenced by Zarathustra's teachings. Throughout Iranian history and due to remarkable political and social changes such as the Arab and Mongol invasions, a wide spectrum of schools of thoughts showed a variety of views on philosophical questions, extending from Old Iranian and mainly Zoroastrianism-related traditions, to schools appearing in the late pre-Islamic era such as Manicheism and Mazdakism as well as post-Islamic schools.\nThe Cyrus Cylinder is seen as a reflection of the questions and thoughts expressed by Zoroaster and developed in Zoroastrian schools of the Achaemenid era. Post-Islam Iranian philosophy is characterised by different interactions with the Old Iranian philosophy, the Greek philosophy and with the development of Islamic philosophy. The Illumination School and the Transcendent Philosophy are regarded as two of the main philosophical traditions of that era in Iran. Contemporary Iranian philosophy has been limited in its scope by intellectual repression.\nMythology and folklore.\nIranian mythology consists of ancient Iranian folklore and stories of extraordinary beings reflecting on good and evil (Ahura Mazda and Ahriman), actions of the gods, and the exploits of heroes and creatures. The tenth-century Persian poet, Ferdowsi, is the author of the national epic known as the \"Shahnameh\" (\"Book of Kings\"), which is for the most part based on \"Xwad\u0101yn\u0101mag\", a Middle Persian compilation of the history of Iranian kings and heroes, as well as the stories and characters of the Zoroastrian tradition, from the texts of the Avesta, the Denkard, the Vendidad and the Bundahishn. Modern scholars study the myths to shed light on the religious and political institutions of not only Iran but of the Greater Iran, which includes regions of West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, and Transcaucasia where the culture of Iran has had significant influence.\nStorytelling has a significant presence in Iranian folklore and culture. In classical Iran, minstrels performed for their audiences at royal courts and in public theatres. A minstrel was referred to by the Parthians as g\u014ds\u0101n, and by the Sasanians as huniy\u0101gar. Since the Safavid Empire, storytellers and poetry readers appeared at coffeehouses. After the Iranian Revolution, it took until 1985 to found the MCHTH (Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts), a now heavily centralised organisation, supervising all kinds of cultural activities. It held the first scientific meeting on anthropology and folklore in 1990.\nMuseums.\nThe National Museum of Iran in Tehran is the country's most important cultural institution. As the first and biggest museum in Iran, the institution includes the Museum of Ancient Iran and the Museum of the Islamic Era. The National Museum is the world's most important museum in terms of preservation, display and research of archaeological collections of Iran, and ranks as one of the few most prestigious museums globally in terms of volume, diversity and quality of its monuments.\nThere are many other popular museums across the country such as the Golestan Palace (World Heritage Site), The Treasury of National Jewels, Reza Abbasi Museum, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Sa'dabad Complex, The Carpet Museum, Abgineh Museum, Pars Museum, Azerbaijan Museum, Hegmataneh Museum, Susa Museum and more. Around 25 million people visited the museums in 2019.\nMusic and dance.\nIran is the apparent birthplace of the earliest complex instruments, dating to the third millennium\u00a0BC. The use of angular harps have been documented at Madaktu and Kul-e Farah, with the largest collection of Elamite instruments documented at Kul-e Farah. Xenophon's \"Cyropaedia\" mentions singing women at the court of the Achaemenid Empire. Under the Parthian Empire, the \"g\u014ds\u0101n\" (Parthian for 'minstrel') had a prominent role.\nThe history of Sasanian music is better documented than earlier periods and is especially more evident in Avestan texts. By the time of Khosrow II, the Sasanian royal court hosted prominent musicians, namely Azad, Bamshad, Barbad, Nagisa, Ramtin, and Sarkash. Iranian traditional musical instruments include string instruments such as chang (harp), qanun, santur, rud (oud, barbat), tar, dotar, setar, tanbur, and kamanche, wind instruments such as sorna (zurna, karna) and ney, and percussion instruments such as tompak, kus, daf (dayere), and naqare.\nIran's first symphony orchestra, the Tehran Symphony Orchestra, was founded in 1933. By the late 1940s, Ruhollah Khaleqi founded the country's first national music society and established the School of National Music in 1949. Iranian pop music has its origins in the Qajar era. It was significantly developed since the 1950s, using indigenous instruments and forms accompanied by electric guitar and other imported characteristics. Iranian rock emerged in the 1960s and hip hop in the 2000s.\nIran has known dance in the forms of music, play, drama or religious rituals since at least the 6th millennium BC. Artifacts with pictures of dancers were found in archaeological prehistoric sites. Genres of dance vary depending on the area, culture, and language of the local people, and can range from sophisticated reconstructions of refined court dances to energetic folk dances. Each group, region, and historical epoch has specific dance styles associated with it. The earliest researched dance from historic Iran is a dance worshipping Mithra. Ancient Persian dance was significantly researched by Greek historian Herodotus. Iran was occupied by foreign powers, causing a slow disappearance of heritage dance traditions.\nThe Qajar period had an important influence on Persian dance. In this period, a style of dance began to be called \"classical Persian dance\". Dancers performed artistic dances in court for entertainment purposes such as coronations, marriage celebrations, and Norouz celebrations. In the 20th century, the music came to be orchestrated and dance movement and costuming gained a modernistic orientation to the West.\nFashion and clothing.\nThe exact date of the emergence of weaving in Iran is not yet known, but it is likely to coincide with the emergence of civilisation. Ferdowsi and many historians have considered Keyumars to be first to use animals' skin and hair as clothing, while others propose Hushang. Ferdowsi considers Tahmuras to be a kind of textile initiator in Iran. The clothing of ancient Iran took an advanced form, and the fabric and colour of clothing became very important. Depending on the social status, eminence, climate of the region and the season, Persian clothing during the Achaemenian period took various forms. This clothing, in addition to being functional, had an aesthetic role.\nCinema, animation and theatre.\nA third-millennium BC earthen goblet discovered at the Burnt City in southeast Iran depicts what could be the world's oldest example of animation. The earliest attested Iranian examples of visual representations, however, are traced back to the bas-reliefs of Persepolis, the ritual centre of the Achaemenid Empire.\nThe first Iranian filmmaker was probably Mirza Ebrahim (Akkas Bashi), the court photographer of Mozaffar-ed-Din of the Qajar Empire. Mirza Ebrahim obtained a camera and filmed the Qajar ruler's visit to Europe. In 1904, Mirza Ebrahim (Sahhaf Bashi) opened the first public cinema in Tehran. The first Iranian feature film, \"Abi and Rabi\", was a silent comedy directed by Ovanes Ohanian in 1930. The first sound one, \"Lor Girl\", was produced by Ardeshir Irani and Abd-ol-Hosein Sepanta in 1932. Iran's animation industry began by the 1950s and was followed by the establishment of the influential Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults in 1965.\nWith the screening of the films \"Qeysar\" and \"The Cow\", directed by Masoud Kimiai and Dariush Mehrjui respectively in 1969, alternative films set out to establish their status in the film industry and Bahram Beyzai's \"Downpour\" and Nasser Taghvai's \"Tranquility in the Presence of Others\" followed. Attempts to organise a film festival, which had begun in 1954 within the Golrizan Festival, resulted in the festival of Sepas in 1969. It also resulted in the formation of Tehran's World Film Festival in 1973.\nFollowing the Cultural Revolution, a new age emerged in Iranian cinema, starting with \"Long Live!\" by Khosrow Sinai and followed by other directors, such as Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi. Kiarostami, an acclaimed director, planted Iran firmly on the map of world cinema when he won the for \"Taste of Cherry\" in 1997. The presence of Iranian films in prestigious international festivals, such as Cannes, Venice and Berlin, attracted attention to Iranian films. In 2006, 6 films represented Iranian cinema at Berlin; critics considered this a remarkable event in Iranian cinema. Asghar Farhadi, an Iranian director, has received a Golden Globe Award and two Academy Awards, representing Iran for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012 and 2017, with \"A Separation\" and \"The Salesman\". In 2020, Ashkan Rahgozar's \"The Last Fiction\" became the first representative of Iranian animated cinema in the competition section, in Best Animated Feature and Best Picture categories at the Academy Awards.\nThe oldest Iranian initiation of theatre can be traced to ancient epic ceremonial theatres such as \"Sug-e Si\u0101vu\u0691\" (\"mourning of Si\u0101va\u0691\"), as well as dances and theatre narrations of Iranian mythological tales reported by Herodotus and Xenophon. Iran's traditional theatrical genres include Baqq\u0101l-b\u0101zi (\"grocer play\", a form of slapstick comedy), Ruhowzi (or \"Taxt-howzi\", comedy performed over a courtyard pool covered with boards), Si\u0101h-b\u0101zi (the central comedian appears in blackface), S\u0101ye-b\u0101zi (shadow play), Xeyme-\u0691ab-b\u0101zi (marionette), and Arusak-b\u0101zi (puppetry), and Ta'zie (religious tragedy plays).\nThe Roudaki Hall is home to the Tehran Symphony Orchestra, the Tehran Opera Orchestra, and the Iranian National Ballet Company, and was officially renamed \"Vahdat Hall\" after the Revolution.\nMedia.\nIran's largest media corporation is the state-owned IRIB. The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance is responsible for the cultural policy, including activities regarding communications and information.\nMost of the newspapers published in Iran are in Persian, the country's official and national language. The country's most widely circulated periodicals are based in Tehran, among which are \"Etemad\", \"Ettela'at\", \"Kayhan\", \"Hamshahri\", \"Resalat\", and \"Shargh\". \"Tehran Times\", \"Iran Daily\", and \"Financial Tribune\" are among the famous English-language newspapers based in Iran.\nIran ranks 17th among countries by number of Internet users. Google Search is Iran's most widely used search engine and Instagram is the most popular online social networking service. Direct access to many worldwide mainstream websites has been blocked in Iran, including Facebook, which has been blocked since 2009. About 90% of Iran's e-commerce takes place on the Iranian online store Digikala, which has around 750,000 visitors per day and is the most visited online store in the Middle East.\nCuisine.\nIranian main dishes include varieties of kebab, pilaf, stew (khoresh), soup and \u0101sh, and omelette. Lunch and dinner meals are commonly accompanied by side dishes such as plain yogurt or mast-o-khiar, sabzi, salad Shirazi, and torshi, and might follow dishes such as borani, Mirza Qasemi, or kashk e bademjan. In Iranian culture, tea is widely consumed. Iran is the world's seventh major tea producer. One of Iran's most popular desserts is the falude. There is also the popular saffron ice cream, known as \"Bastani Sonnati\" (\"traditional ice cream\"), which is sometimes accompanied with carrot juice. Iran is also famous for its caviar.\nTypical Iranian main dishes are combinations of rice with meat, vegetables and nuts. Herbs are frequently used, along with fruits such as plums, pomegranates, quince, prunes, apricots and raisins. Characteristic Iranian spices and flavourings such as saffron, cardamom, and dried lime and other sources of sour flavoring, cinnamon, turmeric and parsley are mixed and used in various dishes.\nSports.\nIran is the most likely birthplace of polo, locally known as Chogan, with its earliest records attributed to the ancient Medes. Freestyle wrestling is traditionally considered the national sport, and Iran's wrestlers have been world champions many times. Iran's traditional wrestling, called \"ko\u0691ti e pahlev\u0101ni\" (\"heroic wrestling\"), is registered on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Iran's National Olympic Committee was founded in 1947. Wrestlers and weightlifters have achieved the country's highest records at the Olympics. In 1974, Iran became the first country in West Asia to host the Asian Games.\nAs a mountainous country, Iran is a venue for skiing, snowboarding, hiking, rock climbing, and mountain climbing. It is home to ski resorts, the most famous being Tochal, Dizin, and Shemshak. Dizin is the largest, and authorised by FIS to administer international competitions.\nFootball is the most popular sport, with the men's national team having won the Asian Cup three times. The men's team ranks 2nd in Asia and 20th in the FIFA World Rankings as of April 2024[ [update]]. The Azadi Stadium in Tehran is the largest association football stadium in West Asia and on a list of top-20 stadiums in the world. Volleyball is the second most popular sport. Having won the 2011 and 2013 Asian Men's Volleyball Championships, the men's national team is the 2nd strongest in Asia, and 15th in the FIVB World Rankings as of January\u00a02024[ [update]]. Basketball is also popular, with the men's national team having won three Asian Championships since 2007.\nObservances.\nIran's official New Year begins with Nowruz, an ancient Iranian tradition celebrated annually on the vernal equinox and described as the \"Persian New Year\". It was registered on the UNESCO's list of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2009. On the eve of the last Wednesday of the preceding year, as a prelude to Nowruz, the ancient festival of \u0628\u0101r\u0691anbe Suri celebrates \u0100tar (\"fire\") by performing rituals such as jumping over bonfires and lighting fireworks.\nYald\u0101, another ancient tradition, commemorates the ancient goddess Mithra and marks the longest night of the year on the eve of the winter solstice (usually on 20 or 21 December), during which families gather to recite poetry and eat fruits. In some regions of Mazanderan and Markazi, there is a midsummer festival, Tirg\u0101n, which is observed on Tir 13 (2 or 3July) as a celebration of water.\nIslamic annual events such as Ramez\u0101n, Eid e Fetr, and Ruz e \u0100\u0691ur\u0101 are marked by the country's population, Christian traditions such as Noel, elle ye Ruze, and Eid e P\u0101k are observed by the Christian communities, Jewish traditions such as Hanuk\u0101 and Eid e Fatir (Pesah) are observed by the Jewish communities, and Zoroastrian traditions such as Sade and Mehrg\u0101n are observed by the Zoroastrians.\nPublic holidays.\nWith 26, Iran has one of the world's highest number of public holidays. It ranks 1st in the world with the most paid leave days: 52. Iran's official calendar is the Solar Hejri calendar, beginning at the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. Each of the 12 months of the Solar Hejri calendar correspond with a zodiac sign, and the length of each year is solar. Alternatively, the Lunar Hejri calendar is used to indicate Islamic events, and the Gregorian calendar marks international events.\nLegal public holidays based on the Iranian solar calendar include the cultural celebrations of Nowruz (Farvardin 1\u20134; 21\u201324 March) and Sizdebedar (Farvardin 13; 2April), and the political events of Islamic Republic Day (Farvardin 12; 1April), the death of Ruhollah Khomeini (Khordad 14; 4June), the Khordad 15 event (Khordad 15; 5June), the anniversary of the Iranian Revolution (Bahman 22; 10 February), and Oil Nationalisation Day (Esfand 29; 19 March).\nLunar Islamic public holidays include Tasua (Muharram 9), Ashura (Muharram 10), Arba'een (Safar 20), Muhammad's death (Safar 28), the death of Ali al-Ridha (Safar 29 or 30), the birthday of Muhammad (Rabi-al-Awwal 17), the death of Fatimah (Jumada-al-Thani 3), the birthday of Ali (Rajab 13), Muhammad's first revelation (Rajab 27), the birthday of Muhammad al-Mahdi (Sha'ban 15), the death of Ali (Ramadan 21), Eid al-Fitr (Shawwal 1\u20132), the death of Ja'far al-Sadiq (Shawwal 25), Eid al-Qurban (Zulhijja 10), and Eid al-Qadir (Zulhijja 18).\nExplanatory notes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nFootnotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n<templatestyles src=\"Plain navboxes/styles.css\" />", "32820034": "Javad Hardani\nIranian Paralympic athlete (born 1984)\nJavad Hardani (born 22 March 1984) is a Paralympic athlete from Iran. He competes in throwing events, and is classified F38, a class for athletes with cerebral palsy.\nJavad competed in the 2008 Summer Paralympics where he won the F37/38 discus and finished third in F37/38 javelin. In 2012, at the London Paralympic Games he succeeded in winning a gold medal in the F37/38 discus, breaking the F38 world record in the process.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["35522057", "32820034", "14653"], "permutation_1": ["32820034", "14653", "35522057"], "permutation_2": ["35522057", "32820034", "14653"], "permutation_3": ["32820034", "14653", "35522057"]}
{"id": "3hop1__29341_30907_68437", "docs_added": {"21650": "North Carolina\nU.S. state\nNorth Carolina ( ) is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia to the southwest, and Tennessee to the west. The state is the 28th-largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. Along with South Carolina, it makes up the Carolinas region of the East Coast. At the 2020 census, the state had a population of 10,439,388. Raleigh is the state's capital and Charlotte is its most populous city. The Charlotte metropolitan area, with an estimated population of 2,805,115 in 2023, is the most populous metropolitan area in North Carolina, the 22nd-most populous in the United States, and the largest banking center in the nation after New York City. The Research Triangle, with an estimated population of 2,368,947 in 2023, is the second-most populous combined metropolitan area in the state, 31st-most populous in the United States, and is home to the largest research park in the United States, Research Triangle Park.\nThe earliest evidence of human occupation in North Carolina dates back 10,000 years, found at the Hardaway Site. North Carolina was inhabited by Carolina Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Siouan speaking tribes of Native Americans prior to the arrival of Europeans. King Charles II granted eight lord proprietors a colony they named Carolina after the king and which was established in 1670 with the first permanent settlement at Charles Town (Charleston). Because of the difficulty of governing the entire colony from Charles Town, the colony was eventually divided and North Carolina was established as a royal colony in 1729 and was one of the Thirteen Colonies. The Halifax Resolves resolution adopted by North Carolina on April 12, 1776, was the first formal call for independence from Great Britain among the American Colonies during the American Revolution.\nOn November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the United States Constitution. In the run-up to the American Civil War, North Carolina reluctantly declared its secession from the Union on May 20, 1861, becoming the tenth of eleven states to join the Confederate States of America. Following the Civil War, the state was restored to the Union on July 4, 1868. On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully piloted the world's first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina's Outer Banks. North Carolina often uses the slogan \"First in Flight\" on state license plates to commemorate this achievement, alongside a newer alternative design bearing the slogan \"First in Freedom\" in reference to the Mecklenburg Declaration and Halifax Resolves.\nNorth Carolina is defined by a wide range of elevations and landscapes. From west to east, North Carolina's elevation descends from the Appalachian Mountains to the Piedmont and Atlantic coastal plain. North Carolina's Mount Mitchell at is the highest point in North America east of the Mississippi River. Most of the state falls in the humid subtropical climate zone; however, the western, mountainous part of the state has a subtropical highland climate.\nHistory.\nNative Americans, lost colony, and permanent settlement.\nNorth Carolina was inhabited for at least 10,000 years by succeeding prehistoric Indigenous cultures. The Hardaway Site saw major periods of occupation dating to 10,000 years BCE. Before 200 AD, people were building earthwork platform mounds for ceremonial and religious purposes. Succeeding peoples, including those of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture, established by 1000 AD in the Piedmont and mountain region, continued to build this style of mounds. In contrast to some of the larger centers of the classic Mississippian culture in the area that became known as the western Carolinas, northeastern Georgia, and southeastern Tennessee, most of the larger towns had only one central platform mound. Smaller settlements had none, but were close to more prominent towns. This area became known as the homelands of the historic Cherokee people, who are believed to have migrated over time from the Great Lakes area.\nIn the 500\u2013700 years preceding European contact, the Mississippian culture built elaborate cities and maintained far-flung regional trading networks. Its largest city was Cahokia, which had numerous mounds for different purposes, a highly stratified society, and was located in present-day southwestern Illinois near the Mississippi River. Starting in 1540, the Native polities of the Mississippian culture fell apart and reformed as new groups, such as the Catawba, due to a series of destabilizing events known as the \"Mississippian shatter zone\". Introduction of colonial trading arrangements and hostile native groups from the north such as the Westo Indians hastened changes in an already tenuous regional hierarchy. As described by anthropologist Robbie Ethridge, the Mississippian shatter zone was a time of great instability in what is now the American South, caused by the instability of Mississippian chiefdoms, high mortality from new Eurasian diseases, conversion to an agricultural society and the accompanying population increase, and the emergence of Native \"militaristic slaving societies\".\nHistorically documented tribes in the North Carolina region include the Carolina Algonquian-speaking tribes of the coastal areas, such as the Chowanoc, Roanoke, Pamlico, Machapunga, and Coree, who were the first encountered by the English; the Iroquoian-speaking Meherrin, Cherokee, and Tuscarora of the interior; and Southeastern Siouan-speaking tribes, such as the Cheraw, Waxhaw, Saponi, Waccamaw, Cape Fear Indians, and Catawba of the Piedmont.\nIn the late 16th century, the first Spanish explorers traveling inland recorded meeting Mississippian culture people at Joara, a regional chiefdom near what later developed as Morganton. Records of Hernando de Soto attested to his meeting with them in 1540. In 1567, Captain Juan Pardo led an expedition to claim the area for the Spanish colony and to establish another route to reach silver mines in Mexico. Pardo made a winter base at Joara, which he renamed \"Cuenca\". His expedition built Fort San Juan and left a contingent of 30 Spaniards there, while Pardo traveled further. His forces built and garrisoned five other forts. He returned by a different route to Santa Elena on Parris Island, South Carolina, then a center of Spanish Florida. In the spring of 1568, natives killed all but seventy four of the Spaniards and burned the six forts in the interior, including Fort San Juan. Although the Spanish never returned to the interior, this effort marked the first European attempt at colonization of the interior of what became the United States. A 16th-century journal by Pardo's scribe Bandera, and archaeological findings since 1986 at Joara, have confirmed the settlement.\nAnglo-European settlement.\nIn 1584, Elizabeth I granted a charter to Sir Walter Raleigh, for whom the state capital is named, for land in present-day North Carolina (then part of the territory of Virginia). It was the second American territory that the English attempted to colonize. Raleigh established two colonies on the coast in the late 1580s, but both failed. The colony established in 1587 saw 118 colonists 'disappear' when John White was unable to return from a supply run during battles with the Spanish Armada. The fate of the \"Lost Colony\" of Roanoke Island remains one of the most widely debated mysteries of American history. Two native Chieftains, Manteo and Wanchese, of which the former helped the colonists and the latter was distrustful, had involvement in the colony and even accompanied Raleigh to England on a previous voyage in 1585. Manteo was also the first Indigenous North American to be baptized by English settlers. Upon White's return in 1590, neither native nor Englishman were to be found. Popular theory holds that the colonists either traveled away with or assimilated into local native culture. Virginia Dare, the first English person to be born in North America, was born on Roanoke Island on August 18, 1587; the surrounding Dare County is named for her.\nAs early as 1650, settlers from the Virginia colony had moved into the Albemarle Sound region. By 1663, King Charles\u00a0II of England granted a charter to start a new colony on the North American continent; this would generally establish North Carolina's borders. He named it \"Carolina\" in honor of his father, CharlesI. By 1665, a second charter was issued to attempt to resolve territorial questions. This charter rewarded the Lords Proprietors, eight Englishmen to whom King Charles II granted joint ownership of a tract of land in the state. All of these men either had remained loyal to the Crown or aided Charles's restoration to the English throne after Cromwell. In 1712, owing to disputes over governance, the Carolina colony split into North Carolina and South Carolina. North Carolina became a crown colony in 1729.\nMost of the English colonists had arrived as indentured servants, hiring themselves out as laborers for a fixed period to pay for their passage. In the early years the line between indentured servants and African slaves or laborers was fluid. Some Africans were allowed to earn their freedom before slavery became a lifelong status. Most of the free colored families formed in North Carolina before the Revolution were descended from unions or marriages between free whites and enslaved or free Africans or African-Americans. If the mothers were free, their children were born free. Many had migrated or were descendants of migrants from colonial Virginia. As the flow of indentured laborers to the colony decreased with improving economic conditions in Great Britain, planters imported more slaves, and the state's legal delineations between free and slave status tightened, effectively hardening the latter into a racial caste. Conditions for both slaves and workers worsened as the ranks of the former eclipsed the latter and expansion of farming operations into former Indigenous territories lowered prices. Unable to establish deep water ports such as at Charles Town and Norfolk, the economy's growth and prosperity was thus based on cheap labor and slave plantation systems, devoted primarily to the production of tobacco, then later cotton and textiles.\nIn 1738\u20131739, smallpox caused high fatalities among the Native Americans, who had no immunity to the new disease (it had become endemic over centuries in Europe). According to the historian Russell Thornton, \"The 1738 epidemic was said to have killed one-half of the Cherokee, with other tribes of the area suffering equally.\"\nColonial period.\nAfter the Spanish in the 16th century, the first permanent European settlers of North Carolina were English colonists who migrated south from Virginia. Virginia had grown rapidly and land was less available. Nathaniel Batts was documented as one of the first of these Virginian migrants. He settled south of the Chowan River and east of the Great Dismal Swamp in 1655. By 1663, this northeastern area of the Province of Carolina, known as the Albemarle Settlements, was undergoing full-scale English settlement. During the same period, the English monarch CharlesII gave provincial land grants to the Lords Proprietors, the group of noblemen who had helped restore him to the throne in 1660. These grants were predicated on an agreement that the Lords would use their influence to bring in colonists and establish ports of trade. This new Province of Carolina was named in honor and memory of his father, CharlesI (Latin: \"Carolus\").\nLacking a viable coastal port city due to geography, towns grew at a slower pace and remained small. By the late 17th century, Carolina was essentially two colonies, one centered in the Albemarle region in the north and the other located in the south around Charleston. In 1705 South Carolinian John Lawson purchased land on the Pamlico River and laid out Bath, North Carolina's first town. After returning to England, he published the book A New Voyage to Carolina, which became a travelogue and a marketing piece to encourage new colonists to Carolina. Lawson encouraged Baron Christoph Von Graffenried, the leader of a group of Swiss and German Protestants, to immigrate to Carolina. Von Graffenried purchased land between the Neuse and the Trent Rivers and established the town of New Bern. After an attack on New Bern in which hundreds were killed or injured, Lawson was caught then executed by Tuscarora Indians. A large revolt happened in the state in 1711, known as Cary's Rebellion. In 1712, North Carolina became a separate colony, and in 1729 it became a royal colony, with the exception of the Earl Granville holdings.\nIn June 1718, \"Queen Anne's Revenge\", the flagship of pirate Blackbeard, ran aground at Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina, in present-day Carteret County. After the grounding, her crew and supplies were transferred to smaller ships. In November 1718, after appealing to the governor of North Carolina, who promised safe-haven and a pardon, Blackbeard was killed in an ambush by troops from Virginia. In 1996, Intersal, Inc., a private maritime research firm, discovered the remains of a vessel likely to be the \"Queen Anne's Revenge\", which was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.\nNorth Carolina became one of the Thirteen Colonies and with the territory of South Carolina was originally known as the Province of North Carolina. The northern and southern parts of the original province separated in 1712, with North Carolina becoming a royal colony in 1729. Originally settled by small farmers, sometimes having a few slaves, who were oriented toward subsistence agriculture, the colony lacked large cities or towns. Pirates menaced the coastal settlements, but by 1718 piracy in the Carolinas was on the decline. Growth was strong in the middle of the 18th century, as the economy attracted Scots-Irish, Quaker, English and German immigrants. A majority of the North Carolina colonists generally supported the American Revolution, although there were some Loyalists. Loyalists in North Carolina were fewer in number than in some other colonies such as Georgia, South Carolina, Delaware, and New York.\nDuring colonial times, Edenton served as the state capital beginning in 1722, followed by New Bern becoming the capital in 1766. Construction of Tryon Palace, which served as the residence and offices of the provincial governor William Tryon, began in 1767 and was completed in 1771. In 1788, Raleigh was chosen as the site of the new capital, as its central location protected it from coastal attacks. Officially established in 1792 as both county seat and state capital, the city was named after Sir Walter Raleigh, sponsor of Roanoke, the \"lost colony\" on Roanoke Island. The population of the colony more than quadrupled from 52,000 in 1740 to 270,000 in 1780 from high immigration from Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, plus immigrants from abroad.\nNorth Carolina did not have any printer or print shops until 1749, when the North Carolina Assembly commissioned James Davis from Williamsburg Virginia to act as their official printer. Before this time the laws and legal journals of North Carolina were handwritten and were kept in a largely disorganized manner, prompting the hiring of Davis. Davis settled in New Bern, married, and in 1755 was appointed by Benjamin Franklin as North Carolina's first postmaster. In October of that year the North Carolina Assembly awarded Davis a contract to carry mail between Wilmington, North Carolina and Suffolk, Virginia. He was also active in North Carolina politics as a member of the Assembly and later as the Sheriff. Davis also founded and printed the \"North-Carolina Gazette\", North Carolina's first newspaper, printed in his printing house in New Bern.\nDifferences in the settlement patterns of eastern and western North Carolina, or the Atlantic coastal plain and uplands, affected the political, economic, and social life of the state from the 18th until the 20th century. Eastern North Carolina was settled chiefly by immigrants from rural England and Gaelic speakers from the Scottish Highlands. The Piedmont upcountry and western mountain region of North Carolina was settled chiefly by Scots-Irish, English, and German Protestants, the so-called \"cohee\". Arriving during the mid-to-late 18th century, the Scots-Irish, people of Scottish descent who migrated to and then emigrated from what is today Northern Ireland, were the largest non-English immigrant group before the Revolution; English indentured servants were overwhelmingly the largest immigrant group before the Revolution.\nRevolutionary War.\nDuring the American Revolutionary War, the English and Gaelic speaking Highland Scots of eastern North Carolina tended to remain loyal to the British Crown, because of longstanding business and personal connections with Great Britain. The English, Welsh, Scots-Irish, and German settlers of western North Carolina tended to favor American independence from Britain. British loyalists dubbed the Mecklenburg County area to be 'a hornet's nest' of radicals, birthing the name of the future Charlotte NBA team. On April 12, 1776, the colony became the first to instruct its delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence from the British Crown, through the Halifax Resolves passed by the North Carolina Provincial Congress. The date of this event is memorialized on the state flag and state seal. Throughout the Revolutionary War, fierce guerrilla warfare erupted between bands of pro-independence and pro-British colonists. In some cases the war was also an excuse to settle private grudges and rivalries.\nNorth Carolina had around 7,800 Patriots join the Continental Army under General George Washington; and an additional 10,000 served in local militia units under such leaders as General Nathanael Greene. There was some military action, especially in 1780\u201381. Many Carolinian frontiersmen had moved west over the mountains, into the Washington District (later known as Tennessee), but in 1789, following the Revolution, the state was persuaded to relinquish its claim to the western lands. It ceded them to the national government so the Northwest Territory could be organized and managed nationally.\nA major American victory in the war took place at King's Mountain along the North Carolina\u2013South Carolina border; on October 7, 1780, a force of 1,000 Patriots from western North Carolina (including what is today the state of Tennessee) and southwest Virginia overwhelmed a force of some 1,000 British troops led by Major Patrick Ferguson. Most of the soldiers fighting for the British side in this battle were Carolinians who had remained loyal to the Crown (they were called \"Tories\" or Loyalists). The American victory at King's Mountain gave the advantage to colonists who favored American independence, and it prevented the British Army from recruiting new soldiers from the Tories.\nThe road to Yorktown and America's independence from Great Britain led through North Carolina. As the British Army moved north from victories in Charleston and Camden, South Carolina, the Southern Division of the Continental Army and local militia prepared to meet them. Following General Daniel Morgan's victory over the British Cavalry Commander Banastre Tarleton at the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781, southern commander Nathanael Greene led British Lord Charles Cornwallis across the heartland of North Carolina, and away from the latter's base of supply in Charleston, South Carolina. This campaign is known as \"The Race to the Dan\" or \"The Race for the River\".\nIn the Battle of Cowan's Ford, Cornwallis met resistance along the banks of the Catawba River at Cowan's Ford on February 1, 1781, in an attempt to engage General Morgan's forces during a tactical withdrawal. Morgan had moved to the northern part of the state to combine with General Greene's newly recruited forces. Generals Greene and Cornwallis finally met at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in present-day Greensboro on March 15, 1781. Although the British troops held the field at the end of the battle, their casualties at the hands of the numerically superior Continental Army were crippling. Following this \"Pyrrhic victory\", Cornwallis chose to move to the Virginia coastline to get reinforcements, and to allow the Royal Navy to protect his battered army. This decision would result in Cornwallis' eventual defeat at Yorktown, Virginia, later in 1781. The Patriots' victory there guaranteed American independence. On November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the twelfth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.\nAntebellum period.\nAfter 1800, cotton and tobacco became important export crops. The eastern half of the state, especially the Coastal Plain region, developed a slave society based on a plantation system and slave labor. Planters owning large estates wielded significant political and socio-economic power in antebellum North Carolina. They placed their interests above those of the generally non-slave-holding yeoman farmers of North Carolina. While slaveholding was slightly less concentrated compared to some other Southern states, according to the 1860 census, more than 330,000 people, or 33% of the population out of 992,622 people in total, were enslaved African Americans. They lived and worked chiefly on plantations in the Piedmont and Coastal Plain regions of the state. In addition, 30,463 free people of color lived in the state. They were also mainly concentrated in the eastern coastal plain, especially at port cities such as Wilmington and New Bern, where a variety of jobs were available. Most were descendants from free African Americans who had migrated along with neighbors from Virginia during the 18th century. The majority were the descendants of unions in the working classes between white women, indentured servants or free, and African men, indentured, slave or free.\nAfter the American Revolution, Quakers and Mennonites worked to persuade slaveholders to free their slaves. Some were inspired by their efforts and the language of the Revolution to arrange for manumission of their slaves. The number of free people of color rose markedly in the first couple of decades after the Revolution. Many free people of color migrated to the frontier, along with their European-American neighbors, where the social system was looser. By 1810, nearly three percent of the free population consisted of free people of color, who numbered slightly more than 10,000. The western areas of North Carolina were mainly white families of European descent, especially Scotch-Irish, who operated small subsistence farms. In the early national period, the state became a center of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy, with a strong Whig presence, especially in the western part of the state. After Nat Turner's slave uprising in 1831, North Carolina and other southern states reduced the rights of free blacks. In 1835, the legislature withdrew their right to vote.\nIn mid-century, the state's rural and commercial areas were connected by the construction of a wooden plank road, known as a \"farmer's railroad\", from Fayetteville in the east to Bethania (northwest of Winston-Salem). On October 25, 1836, construction began on the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad to connect the port city of Wilmington with the state capital of Raleigh. In 1840, the state capitol building in Raleigh was completed, and still stands today.\nIn 1849, the North Carolina Railroad was created by act of the legislature to extend that railroad west to Greensboro, High Point, and Charlotte. During the Civil War, the Wilmington-to-Raleigh stretch of the railroad was vital to the Confederate war effort; supplies shipped into Wilmington were moved by rail through Raleigh to the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.\nAmerican Civil War.\nIn 1860, North Carolina was a slave state, in which one-third of the state's total population were African-American slaves. The state did not vote to join the Confederacy until President Abraham Lincoln called on it to invade its sister state, South Carolina, becoming the last or penultimate state to officially join the Confederacy. The title of \"last to join the Confederacy\" has been disputed; although Tennessee's informal secession on May 7, 1861, preceded North Carolina's official secession on May 20, the Tennessee legislature did not formally vote to secede until June 8, 1861.\nAround 125,000 troops from North Carolina served in the Confederate Army, and about 15,000 North Carolina troops (both black and white) served in Union Army regiments, including those who left the state to join Union regiments elsewhere. Over 30,000 North Carolina troops died from combat or disease during the war. Elected in 1862, Governor Zebulon Baird Vance tried to maintain state autonomy against Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Richmond. The state government was reluctant to support the demands of the national government in Richmond, and the state was the scene of only small battles. In 1865, Durham County saw the largest single surrender of Confederate soldiers at Bennett Place, when Joseph E. Johnston surrendered the Army of Tennessee and all remaining Confederate forces still active in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, totalling 89,270 soldiers.\nConfederate troops from all parts of North Carolina served in virtually all the major battles of the Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederacy's most famous army. The largest battle fought in North Carolina was at Bentonville, which was a futile attempt by Confederate General Joseph Johnston to slow Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's advance through the Carolinas in the spring of 1865. In April 1865, after losing the Battle of Morrisville, Johnston surrendered to Sherman at Bennett Place, in what is today Durham. North Carolina's port city of Wilmington, was the last Confederate port to fall to the Union, in February 1865, after the Union won the nearby Second Battle of Fort Fisher, its major defense downriver.\nThe first Confederate soldier to be killed in the Civil War was Private Henry Wyatt from North Carolina, in the Battle of Big Bethel in June 1861. At the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, the 26th North Carolina Regiment participated in Pickett/Pettigrew's Charge and advanced the farthest into Union lines of any Confederate regiment. During the Battle of Chickamauga, the 58th North Carolina Regiment advanced farther than any other regiment on Snodgrass Hill to push back the remaining Union forces from the battlefield. At Appomattox Court House in Virginia in April 1865, the 75th North Carolina Regiment, a cavalry unit, fired the last shots of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the Civil War. The phrase \"First at Bethel, Farthest at Gettysburg and Chickamauga, and Last at Appomattox\", later became used through much of the early 20th century.\nAfter secession, some North Carolinians refused to support the Confederacy. Some of the yeoman farmers chiefly in the state's mountains and western Piedmont region remained neutral during the Civil War, with others covertly supporting the Union cause during the conflict. Approximately 15,000 North Carolinians (both black and white) from across the state enlisted in the Union Army. Numerous slaves also escaped to Union lines, where they became essentially free.\nReconstruction era through late 19th century.\nFollowing the collapse of the Confederacy in 1865, North Carolina, along with other former Confederate States (except Tennessee), was put under direct control by the U.S. military and was relieved of its constitutional government and representation within the United States Congress in what is now referred to as the Reconstruction era. To earn back its rights, the state had to make concessions to Washington, one of which was ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment. Congressional Republicans during Reconstruction, commonly referred to as \"radical Republicans\", constantly pushed for new constitutions for each of the Southern states that emphasized equal rights for African-Americans. In 1868, a constitutional convention restored the state government of North Carolina. Though the Fifteenth Amendment was also adopted that same year, it remained in most cases ineffective for almost a century, not to mention paramilitary groups and their lynching with impunity.\nThe elections in April 1868 following the constitutional convention led to a narrow victory for a Republican-dominated government, with 19 African-Americans holding positions in the North Carolina State Legislature. In attempt to put the reforms into effect, the new Republican Governor William W. Holden declared martial law on any county allegedly not complying with law and order using the passage of the Shoffner Act.\nA Republican Party coalition of black freedmen, northern carpetbaggers and local scalawags controlled state government for three years. The white conservative Democrats regained control of the state legislature in 1870, in part by Ku Klux Klan violence and terrorism at the polls, to suppress black voting. Republicans were elected to the governorship until 1876, when the Red Shirts, a paramilitary organization that arose in 1874 and was allied with the Democratic Party, helped suppress black voting. More than 150 black Americans were murdered in electoral violence in 1876.\nPost\u2013Civil War-debt cycles pushed people to switch from subsistence agriculture to commodity agriculture. Among this time the notorious Crop-Lien system developed and was financially difficult on landless whites and blacks, due to high amounts of usury. Also due to the push for commodity agriculture, the free range was ended. Prior to this time people fenced in their crops and had their livestock feeding on the free range areas. After the ending of the free range people now fenced their animals and had their crops in the open.\nDemocrats were elected to the legislature and governor's office, but the Populists attracted voters displeased with them. In 1896 a biracial, Populist-Republican Fusionist coalition gained the governor's office and passed laws that would extend the voting franchise to blacks and poor whites. The Democrats regained control of the legislature in 1896 and passed laws to impose Jim Crow and racial segregation of public facilities. Voters of North Carolina's 2nd congressional district elected a total of four African-American congressmen through these years of the late 19th century.\nPolitical tensions ran so high a small group of white Democrats in 1898 planned to take over the Wilmington government if their candidates were not elected. In the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, white Democrats led around 2,000 of their supporters that attacked the black newspaper and neighborhood, killed an estimated 60 to 300 people, and ran off the white Republican mayor and aldermen. They installed their own people and elected Alfred M. Waddell as mayor, in the only successful coup d'\u00e9tat in United States history.\nIn 1899, the state legislature passed a new constitution, with requirements for poll taxes and literacy tests for voter registration which disenfranchised most black Americans in the state. Exclusion from voting had wide effects: it meant black Americans could not serve on juries or in any local office. After a decade of white supremacy, many people forgot North Carolina had ever had thriving middle-class black Americans. Black citizens had no political voice in the state until after the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed to enforce their constitutional rights. It was not until 1992 that another African American was elected as a U.S. Representative from North Carolina.\nEarly through mid-20th century.\nAfter the reconstruction era, North Carolina had become a one-party state, dominated by the Democratic Party. The state mainly continued with an economy based on tobacco, cotton textiles and commodity agriculture. Large towns and cities remained in few numbers. However, a major industrial base emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century, in the counties of the Piedmont Triad, based on cotton mills established at the fall line. Railroads were built to connect the new industrializing cities.\nThe state was the site of the first successful controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air flight, by the Wright brothers, near Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903.\nIn the first half of the 20th century, many African Americans left the state to go North for better opportunities, in the Great Migration. Their departure changed the demographic characteristics of many areas.\nNorth Carolina was hard hit by the Great Depression, but the New Deal programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt for cotton and tobacco significantly helped the farmers. After World War\u00a0II, the state's economy grew rapidly, highlighted by the growth of such cities as Charlotte, Raleigh, and Durham in the Piedmont region.\nResearch Triangle Park, established in 1959, serves as the largest research park in the United States. Formed near Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, the Research Triangle metro is a major area of universities and advanced scientific and technical research.\nThe Greensboro sit-ins in 1960 played a crucial role in the Civil Rights Movement to bring full equality to American blacks. By the late 1960s, spurred in part by the increasingly leftward tilt of national Democrats, conservative whites began to vote for Republican national candidates and gradually for more Republicans locally.\nLate 20th century to present.\nSince the 1970s, North Carolina has seen steady increases in population growth. This growth has largely occurred in metropolitan areas located within the Piedmont Crescent, in places such as Charlotte, Concord, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Durham and Raleigh. The Charlotte metropolitan area has experienced large growth mainly due to its finance, banking, and tech industries.\nBy the 1990s, Charlotte had become a major regional and national banking center. Towards Raleigh, North Carolina State, Duke University, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, have helped the Research Triangle area attract an educated workforce and develop more jobs.\nIn 1988, North Carolina gained its first professional sports franchise, the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The hornets team name stems from the American Revolutionary War, when British General Cornwallis described Charlotte as a \"hornet's nest of rebellion\". The Carolina Panthers of the National Football League (NFL) became based in Charlotte as well, with their first season being in 1995. The Carolina Hurricanes of the National Hockey League (NHL) moved to Raleigh in 1997, with their colors being the same as the NC State Wolfpack, who are also located in Raleigh.\nBy the late 20th century and into the early 21st century, economic industries such as technology, pharmaceuticals, banking, food processing, vehicle parts, and tourism started to emerge as North Carolina's main economic drivers. This marked a shift from the state's former main industries of tobacco, textiles, and furniture. Factors that played a role in this shift were globalization, the state's higher education system, national banking, the transformation of agriculture, and new companies moving to the state.\nGeography.\nNorth Carolina is bordered by South Carolina on the south, Georgia on the southwest, Tennessee on the west, Virginia on the north, and the Atlantic Ocean on the east. The United States Census Bureau places North Carolina in the South Atlantic division of the southern region. It has a total area of , of which is land and (9.66%) is water.\nNorth Carolina consists of three main geographic regions: the Atlantic coastal plain, occupying the eastern portion of the state; the central Piedmont region, and the mountain region in the west, which is part of the Appalachian Mountains. The coastal plain consists of more specifically defined areas known as the Outer Banks, a string of sandy, narrow barrier islands separated from the mainland by sounds or inlets, including Albemarle Sound and Pamlico Sound, the native home of the venus flytrap, and the inner coastal plain, where longleaf pine trees are native.\nSo many ships have been lost off Cape Hatteras that the area is known as the \"Graveyard of the Atlantic\"; more than a thousand ships have sunk in these waters since records began in 1526. The most famous of these is the \"Queen Anne's Revenge\" (flagship of the pirate Blackbeard), which went aground in Beaufort Inlet in 1718.\nThe coastal plain transitions to the Piedmont region along the Atlantic Seaboard fall line, the elevation at which waterfalls first appear on streams and rivers. The Piedmont region of central North Carolina is the state's most populous region, containing the six largest cities in the state by population. It consists of gently rolling countryside frequently broken by hills or low mountain ridges. Small, isolated, and deeply eroded mountain ranges and peaks are located in the Piedmont, including the Sauratown Mountains, Pilot Mountain, the Uwharrie Mountains, Crowder's Mountain, King's Pinnacle, the Brushy Mountains, and the South Mountains. The Piedmont ranges from about in elevation in the east to about in the west.\nThe western section of the state is part of the Blue Ridge Mountains of the larger Appalachian Mountain range. Among the subranges of the Blue Ridge Mountains located in the state are the Great Smoky Mountains and the Black Mountains. The Black Mountains are the highest in the eastern United States, and culminate in Mount Mitchell at , the highest point east of the Mississippi River.\nNorth Carolina has 17 major river basins. The five basins west of the Blue Ridge Mountains flow to the Gulf of Mexico, while the remainder flow to the Atlantic Ocean. Of the 17 basins, 11 originate within the state of North Carolina, but only four are contained entirely within the state's border\u2014the Cape Fear, the Neuse, the White Oak, and the Tar\u2013Pamlico basin.\nClimate.\nElevation above sea level is most responsible for temperature change across the state, with the mountainous regions being coolest year-round. The climate is also influenced by the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf Stream, especially in the coastal plain. These influences tend to cause warmer winter temperatures along the coast, where temperatures only occasionally drop below the freezing point at night. The coastal plain averages around of snow or ice annually, and in many years, there may be no snow or ice at all.\nThe Atlantic Ocean exerts less influence on the climate of the Piedmont region, which has hotter summers and colder winters than along the coast, though winters are still mild.\nNorth Carolina experiences severe weather both in summer and in winter, with summer bringing threat of hurricanes, tropical storms, heavy rain, and flooding. Destructive hurricanes that have hit North Carolina include Hurricane Fran, Hurricane Florence, Hurricane Floyd, Hurricane Hugo, and Hurricane Hazel, the latter being the strongest storm ever to make landfall in the state, as a Category4 in 1954. Hurricane Isabel ranks as the most destructive of the 21st century.\nNorth Carolina averages fewer than 20 tornadoes per year, many of them produced by hurricanes or tropical storms along the coastal plain. Tornadoes from thunderstorms are a risk, especially in the eastern part of the state. The western Piedmont is often protected by the mountains, which tend to break up storms as they cross over; the storms will often re-form farther east. A phenomenon known as \"cold-air damming\" often occurs in the northwestern part of the state, which can weaken storms but can also lead to major ice events in winter.\nIn April 2011, the worst tornado outbreak in North Carolina's history occurred. Thirty confirmed tornadoes touched down, mainly in the Eastern Piedmont and Sandhills, killing at least 24 people. In September 2019 Hurricane Dorian hit the area.\nParks and recreation.\nNorth Carolina provides a large range of recreational activities, from swimming at the beach to skiing in the mountains. North Carolina offers fall colors, freshwater and saltwater fishing, hunting, birdwatching, agritourism, ATV trails, ballooning, rock climbing, biking, hiking, skiing, boating and sailing, camping, canoeing, caving (spelunking), gardens, and arboretums. North Carolina has theme parks, aquariums, museums, historic sites, lighthouses, elegant theaters, concert halls, and fine dining.\nNorth Carolinians enjoy outdoor recreation using numerous local bike paths, 34 state parks, and 14 national parks. National Park Service units include the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, the Blue Ridge Parkway, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Cape Lookout National Seashore, Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site at Flat Rock, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site at Manteo, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Great Smoky Mountains Railroad, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park in Greensboro, Moores Creek National Battlefield near Currie in Pender County, the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, Old Salem National Historic Site in Winston-Salem, the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, and Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills.\nNational Forests include Uwharrie National Forest in central North Carolina, Croatan National Forest in Eastern North Carolina, Pisgah National Forest in the western mountains, and Nantahala National Forest in the southwestern part of the state.\nMajor cities.\nIn 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau released the 2023 population estimates for municipalities in North Carolina. Charlotte has the largest population, while Raleigh has the second-largest population in North Carolina.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nMost populous counties.\nAfter the 2020 census, Wake County\u2014with a population of 1,129,410\u2014became the most populous county in the state, overtaking Mecklenburg County\u2014with a population of 1,115,482\u2014by a margin of about 14,000. Both counties are still the only to have populations over one million in North Carolina and the Carolinas region.\nStatistical areas.\nNorth Carolina has four major combined statistical areas (CSA) with a population over 1\u00a0million (as of 2023):\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nThe United States Census Bureau determined the population of North Carolina was 10,439,388 at the 2020 census. Based on numbers in 2012 of the people residing in North Carolina 58.5% were born there; 33.1% were born in another state; 1.0% were born in Puerto Rico, U.S. island areas, or born abroad to American parent(s); and 7.4% were foreign-born.\nAccording to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 9,382 homeless people in North Carolina.\nThe top countries of origin for North Carolina's immigrants were Mexico, India, Honduras, China and El Salvador, as of 2018[ [update]].\nRace and ethnicity.\nAt the 2010 census, the racial composition of North Carolina was: White: 68.5% (65.3% non-Hispanic white, 3.2% White Hispanic), Black or African American: 21.5%, Latin and Hispanic American of any race: 8.4%, some other race: 4.3%, Multiracial American: 2.2%, Asian American: 2.2%, and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander: 1%. In 2020, North Carolina like much of the U.S. experienced a decline in its non-Hispanic white population; at the 2020 census, non-Hispanic whites were 62.2%, Blacks or African Americans 20.5%, American Indian and Alaska Natives 1.2%, Asians 3.3%, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders 0.1%, people from other race 5.9%, and multiracial Americans 6.8%.\nThe majority of the Black American population is concentrated in the urban areas and northeastern part of the state.\nNorth Carolina's Hispanic population has grown rapidly. The Hispanic population more than doubled in size between 1990 and 2000. Many of North Carolina's Hispanic residents are of Mexican descent. Many of North Carolina's newer Latino residents came from Mexico largely to work in agriculture, manufacturing, or on one of North Carolina's military installations.\nThe most common ancestries in North Carolina are African-American, American, German, English, and Irish.\nNorth Carolina has the eighth-largest Native American population in the country. The state is home to eight Native American tribes and four urban Native American organizations.\nLanguages.\nNorth Carolina is home to a spectrum of different dialects of Southern American English and Appalachian English.\nIn 2010, 89.66% (7,750,904) of North Carolina residents age five and older spoke English at home as a primary language, while 6.93% (598,756) spoke Spanish, 0.32% (27,310) French, 0.27% (23,204) German, and Chinese (which includes Mandarin) was spoken as a main language by 0.27% (23,072) of the population five and older. In total, 10.34% (893,735) of North Carolina's population age five and older spoke a mother language other than English. In 2019, 87.7% of the population aged 5 and older spoke English and 12.3% spoke another language. The most common non-English language was Spanish at the 2019 American Community Survey.\nReligion.\nNorth Carolina residents since the colonial era have historically been overwhelmingly Protestant\u2014first Anglican, then Baptist and Methodist. In 2010, the Southern Baptist Convention was the single largest Christian denomination, with 4,241 churches and 1,513,000 members. The second largest in 2024 was the Roman Catholic Church which is organised into two dioceses. In the west is the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte which includes Charlotte and has 530,000 members in 196 parishes. In the east is the Diocese of Raleigh with a total of 80 parishes and nearly 500,000 Catholics. The third largest was the United Methodist Church, with 660,000 members and 1,923 churches. The fourth largest was the Presbyterian Church (USA), with 186,000 members and 710 congregations; this denomination was brought by Scots-Irish immigrants who settled the backcountry in the colonial era. In 2020, the Southern Baptists remained the largest with 1,324,747 adherents, though Methodists and others were collectively overtaken by non/interdenominational Protestants numbering 1,053,564.\nIn 1845, the Baptists split into regional associations of the Northern United States and Southern U.S., over the issue of slavery. These new associations were the Northern Baptist Convention (today the American Baptist Churches USA) and Southern Baptist Convention. By the late 19th century, the largest Protestant denomination in North Carolina were Baptists. After emancipation, black Baptists quickly set up their own independent congregations in North Carolina and other states of the South, as they wanted to be free of white supervision. Black Baptists developed their own state and national associations, such as the National Baptist Convention. Other primarily African American Baptist conventions which grew in the state since the 20th century were the Progressive National Baptist Convention and Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship.\nMethodists (the second largest group among North Carolinian Protestants) were divided along racial lines in the United Methodist Church and African Methodist Episcopal Church. The Methodist tradition tends to be strong in the northern Piedmont, especially in populous Guilford County. Other prominent Protestant groups in North Carolina as of the Pew Research Center's 2014 study were non/interdenominational Protestants and Pentecostalism. The Assemblies of God and Church of God in Christ are the largest Pentecostal denominations operating in the state, while notable minorities include Oneness Pentecostals primarily affiliated with the United Pentecostal Church International.\nThe state also has a special history with the Moravian Church, as settlers of this faith (largely of German origin) settled in the Winston-Salem area in the 18th and 19th centuries. Historically Scots-Irish have had a strong presence in Charlotte and in Scotland County.\nA wide variety of non-Christian faiths are practiced by other residents in the state, including: Judaism, Islam, Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed, Buddhism, and Hinduism. The rapid influx of Northerners and immigrants from Latin America is steadily increasing ethnic and religious diversity within the state. The number of Roman Catholics and Jews in the state has increased, along with general religious diversity as a whole. There are also a substantial number of Quakers in Guilford County and northeastern North Carolina. Many universities and colleges in the state have been founded on religious traditions, and some currently maintain that affiliation, including:\nThe state also has several major seminaries, including the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, and the Hood Theological Seminary (AME Zion) in Salisbury.\nEconomy.\nNorth Carolina's 2018 total gross state product was $496 billion. Based on American Community Survey 2010\u20132014 data, North Carolina's median household income was $46,693. It ranked forty-first out of fifty states plus the District of Columbia for median household income. North Carolina had the fourteenth highest poverty rate in the nation at 17.6%, with 13% of families that were below the poverty line.\nThe state has a very diverse economy because of its great availability of hydroelectric power, its pleasant climate, and its wide variety of soils. The state ranks third among the South Atlantic states in population, but leads the region in industry and agriculture. North Carolina leads the nation in the production of tobacco.\nCharlotte, the state's largest city, is a major textile and trade center. According to a Forbes article written in 2013, employment in the \"Old North State\" has gained many different industry sectors. Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) industries in the area surrounding North Carolina's capital have grown 17.9 percent since 2001. Raleigh ranked the third best city for technology in 2020 due to the state's growing technology sector. In 2010, North Carolina's total gross state product was $424.9 billion, while the state debt in November 2012, according to one source, totaled $2.4 billion, while according to another, was in 2012 $57.8 billion. In 2011, the civilian labor force was at around 4.5 million with employment near 4.1 million.\nNorth Carolina is the leading U.S. state in production of flue-cured tobacco and sweet potatoes, and comes second in the farming of pigs and hogs, trout, and turkeys. In the three most recent USDA surveys (2002, 2007, 2012), North Carolina also ranked second in the production of Christmas trees.\nNorth Carolina has 15 metropolitan areas, and in 2010 was chosen as the third-best state for business by Forbes Magazine, and the second-best state by chief executive officer Magazine. Since 2000, there has been a clear division in the economic growth of North Carolina's urban and rural areas. While North Carolina's urban areas have enjoyed a prosperous economy with steady job growth, low unemployment, and rising wages, many of the state's rural counties have suffered from job loss, rising levels of poverty, and population loss as their manufacturing base has declined. According to one estimate, one-half of North Carolina's 100 counties have lost population since 2010, primarily due to the poor economy in many of North Carolina's rural areas. However, the population of the state's urban areas is steadily increasing.\nArts and culture.\nNorth Carolina has traditions in art, music, and cuisine. The nonprofit arts and culture industry generates $1.2billion in direct economic activity in North Carolina, supporting more than 43,600 full-time equivalent jobs and generating $119million in revenue for local governments and the state of North Carolina. North Carolina established the North Carolina Museum of Art as the first major museum collection in the country to be formed by state legislation and funding and continues to bring millions into the NC economy.\nOne of the more famous arts communities in the state is Seagrove, the handmade-pottery capital of the U.S., where artisans create handcrafted pottery inspired by the same traditions that began in this community more than two hundred years ago.\nMusic.\nNorth Carolina boasts a large number of noteworthy jazz musicians, some among the most important in the history of the genre. These include: John Coltrane, (Hamlet, High Point); Thelonious Monk (Rocky Mount); Billy Taylor (Greenville); Woody Shaw (Laurinburg); Lou Donaldson (Durham); Max Roach (Newland); Tal Farlow (Greensboro); Albert, Jimmy and Percy Heath (Wilmington); Nina Simone (Tryon); and Billy Strayhorn (Hillsborough).\nNorth Carolina is also famous for its tradition of old-time music, and many recordings were made in the early 20th century by folk-song collector Bascom Lamar Lunsford. Musicians such as the North Carolina Ramblers helped solidify the sound of country music in the late 1920s, while the influential bluegrass musician Doc Watson also hailed from North Carolina. Both North and South Carolina are hotbeds for traditional rural blues, especially the style known as the Piedmont blues.\nBen Folds Five originated in Winston-Salem, and Ben Folds still records and resides in Chapel Hill.\nThe British band Pink Floyd is named, in part, after Chapel Hill bluesman Floyd Council.\nThe Research Triangle area has long been a well-known center for folk, rock, metal, jazz and punk. James Taylor grew up around Chapel Hill, and his 1968 song \"Carolina in My Mind\" has been called an unofficial anthem for the state. Other famous musicians from North Carolina include J. Cole, DaBaby, 9th Wonder, Shirley Caesar, Roberta Flack, Clyde McPhatter, Nnenna Freelon, Link Wray, Warren Haynes, Jimmy Herring, Michael Houser, Eric Church, Future Islands, Randy Travis, Ryan Adams, Ronnie Milsap, Anthony Hamilton, The Avett Brothers, Charlie Daniels, and Luke Combs.\nMetal and punk acts such as Corrosion of Conformity, Between the Buried and Me, and Nightmare Sonata are native to North Carolina.\nEDM producer Porter Robinson hails from Chapel Hill.\nNorth Carolina is the home of more \"American Idol\" finalists than any other state: Clay Aiken (season two), Fantasia Barrino (season three), Chris Daughtry (season five), Kellie Pickler (season five), Bucky Covington (season five), Anoop Desai (season eight), Scotty McCreery (season ten), and Caleb Johnson (season thirteen). North Carolina also has the most \"American Idol\" winners with Barrino, McCreery, and Johnson.\nIn the mountains, the Brevard Music Center hosts choral, operatic, orchestral, and solo performances during its annual summer schedule.\nNorth Carolina has five professional opera companies: Opera Carolina in Charlotte, NC Opera in Raleigh, Greensboro Opera in Greensboro, Piedmont Opera in Winston-Salem, and Asheville Lyric Opera in Asheville. Academic conservatories and universities also produce fully staged operas, such as the A. J. Fletcher Opera Institute of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, the Department of Music of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and UNC Greensboro.\nAmong others, there are three high-level symphonic orchestras: NC Symphony in Raleigh, Charlotte Symphony, and Winston-Salem Symphony. The NC Symphony holds the North Carolina Master Chorale. The Carolina Ballet is headquartered in Raleigh, and there is also the Charlotte Ballet.\nThe state boasts three performing arts centers: DPAC in Durham, Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts in Raleigh, and the Blumenthal Performing Art Centers in Charlotte. They feature concerts, operas, recitals, and traveling Broadway musicals.\nShopping.\nNorth Carolina has a variety of shopping choices. SouthPark Mall in Charlotte is the largest and most upscale mall in the Carolinas, featuring multiple luxury tenants with their sole location in the state. Other major malls in Charlotte include Northlake Mall and Carolina Place Mall in nearby suburb Pineville. Other major malls throughout the state include Hanes Mall in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, The Thruway Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Crabtree Valley Mall, North Hills Mall, and Triangle Town Center in Raleigh; Friendly Center and Four Seasons Town Centre in Greensboro; Oak Hollow Mall in High Point; Concord Mills in Concord; Valley Hills Mall in Hickory; Cross Creek Mall in Fayetteville; and The Streets at Southpoint in Durham and Independence Mall in Wilmington, North Carolina, and Tanger Outlets in Charlotte, Nags Head, Blowing Rock, and Mebane, North Carolina.\nCuisine and agriculture.\nA culinary staple of North Carolina is pork barbecue. There are strong regional differences and rivalries over the sauces and methods used in making the barbecue. The common trend across Western North Carolina is the use of premium grade Boston butt. Western North Carolina pork barbecue uses a tomato-based sauce, and only the pork shoulder (dark meat) is used. Western North Carolina barbecue is commonly referred to as Lexington barbecue after the Piedmont Triad town of Lexington, home of the Lexington Barbecue Festival, which attracts more than 100,000 visitors each October. Eastern North Carolina pork barbecue uses a vinegar-and-red-pepper-based sauce and the \"whole hog\" is cooked, thus integrating both white and dark meat.\nKrispy Kreme, an international chain of doughnut stores, was started in North Carolina; the company's headquarters are in Winston-Salem. Pepsi-Cola was first produced in 1898 in New Bern. A regional soft drink, Cheerwine, was created and is still based in the city of Salisbury. Despite its name, the hot sauce Texas Pete was created in North Carolina; its headquarters are also in Winston-Salem. The Hardee's fast-food chain was started in Rocky Mount. Another fast-food chain, Bojangles', was started in Charlotte, and has its corporate headquarters there. A popular North Carolina restaurant chain is Golden Corral. Started in 1973, the chain was founded in Fayetteville, with headquarters located in Raleigh. Popular pickle brand Mount Olive Pickle Company was founded in Mount Olive in 1926. Fast casual burger chain Hwy 55 Burgers, Shakes & Fries also makes its home in Mount Olive. Cook Out, a popular fast-food chain featuring burgers, hot dogs, and milkshakes in a wide variety of flavors, was founded in Greensboro in 1989 and has begun expanding outside North Carolina. In 2013 \"Southern Living\" named Durham\u2013Chapel Hill the South's \"Tastiest City\".\nOver the last decade, North Carolina has become a cultural epicenter and haven for internationally prize-winning wine (Noni Bacca Winery), internationally prized cheeses (Ashe County), \"L'institut International aux Arts Gastronomiques: Conquerront Les Yanks les Truffes, January 15, 2010\" international hub for truffles (Garland Truffles), and beer making, as tobacco land has been converted to grape orchards while state laws regulating alcohol by volume (ABV) in beer allowed a jump from six to fifteen percent. The Yadkin Valley in particular has become a strengthening market for grape production, while Asheville recently won the recognition of being named \"Beer City USA\". Asheville boasts the largest number of breweries per capita of any city in the United States. Recognized and marketed brands of beer in North Carolina include Highland Brewing, Duck Rabbit Brewery, Mother Earth Brewery, Weeping Radish Brewery, Big Boss Brewing, Foothills Brewing, Carolina Brewing Company, Lonerider Brewing, and White Rabbit Brewing Company.\nNorth Carolina has large grazing areas for beef and dairy cattle. Truck farms can be found in North Carolina. A truck farm is a small farm where fruits and vegetables are grown to be sold at local markets. The state's shipping, commercial fishing, and lumber industries are important to its economy. Service industries, including education, health care, private research, and retail trade, are also important. Research Triangle Park, a large industrial complex located in the Raleigh-Durham area, is one of the major centers in the country for electronics and medical research.\nTobacco was one of the first major industries to develop after the Civil War. Many farmers grew some tobacco, and the invention of the cigarette made the product especially popular. Winston-Salem is the birthplace of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR), founded by R. J. Reynolds in 1874 as one of sixteen tobacco companies in the town. By 1914 it was selling 425 million packs of Camels a year. Today it is the second-largest tobacco company in the U.S. (behind Altria Group). RJR is an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Reynolds American Inc., which in turn is 42% owned by British American Tobacco.\nShips named for the state.\nSeveral ships have been named after the state, most famously in the Pacific Ocean theater of World War\u00a0II. Now decommissioned, she is part of the USS \"North Carolina\" Battleship Memorial in Wilmington. Another , a nuclear attack submarine, was commissioned in Wilmington on May 3, 2008.\nState parks.\nThe state maintains a group of protected areas known as the North Carolina State Park System, which is managed by the North Carolina Division of Parks & Recreation (NCDPR), an agency of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (NCDNCR).\nArmed forces installations.\nFort Bragg, near Fayetteville and Southern Pines, is a large and comprehensive military base and is the headquarters of the XVIII Airborne Corps, 82nd Airborne Division, and the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. Serving as the air wing for Fort Bragg is Pope Field, also located near Fayetteville.\nLocated in Jacksonville, Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, combined with nearby bases Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Cherry Point, MCAS New River, Camp Geiger, Camp Johnson, Stone Bay and Courthouse Bay, makes up the largest concentration of Marines and sailors in the world. MCAS Cherry Point is home of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing. Located in Goldsboro, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base is home of the 4th Fighter Wing and 916th Air Refueling Wing. One of the busiest air stations in the United States Coast Guard is located at the Coast Guard Air Station in Elizabeth City. Also stationed in North Carolina is the Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point in Southport.\nOn January 24, 1961, a B-52G broke up in midair and crashed after suffering a severe fuel loss, near Goldsboro, dropping two nuclear bombs in the process without detonation. In 2013, it was revealed that three safety mechanisms on one bomb had failed, leaving just one low-voltage switch preventing detonation.\nTourism.\nCharlotte is the most-visited city in the state, attracting 28.3million visitors in 2018. Area attractions include Carolina Panthers NFL football team and Charlotte Hornets basketball team, Carowinds amusement park, Catawba Two Kings Casino (in nearby Kings Mountain), Charlotte Motor Speedway, U.S. National Whitewater Center, Discovery Place, Great Wolf Lodge, Sea Life Aquarium, Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, Billy Graham Library, Carolinas Aviation Museum, Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, Levine Museum of the New South, McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Mint Museum, and the NASCAR Hall of Fame.\nEvery year the Appalachian Mountains attract several million tourists to the western part of the state, including the historic Biltmore Estate. The scenic Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smoky Mountains National Park are the two most visited national park and unit in the United States with more than 25million visitors in 2013. The City of Asheville is consistently voted as one of the top places to visit and live in the United States, known for its rich art deco architecture, mountain scenery and outdoor activities.\nIn Raleigh, many tourists visit the capital, African American Cultural Complex, Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh, Gregg Museum of Art & Design at NCSU, Haywood Hall House & Gardens, Marbles Kids Museum, North Carolina Museum of Art, North Carolina Museum of History, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, Raleigh City Museum, J. C. Raulston Arboretum, Joel Lane House, Mordecai House, Montfort Hall, and the Pope House Museum. The Carolina Hurricanes NHL hockey team is also located in the city.\nIn the Conover\u2013Hickory area, attractions include Hickory Motor Speedway, RockBarn Golf and Spa, home of the Greater Hickory Classic at Rock Barn; Catawba County Firefighters Museum, the SALT Block, and Valley Hills Mall.\nThe Piedmont Triad, or center of the state, is home to Krispy Kreme, Mayberry, Texas Pete, the Lexington Barbecue Festival, and Moravian cookies. The internationally acclaimed North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro attracts visitors to its animals, plants, and a 57-piece art collection along of shaded pathways in the world's largest-land-area natural-habitat park. Seagrove, in the central portion of the state, attracts many tourists along Pottery Highway (NC Hwy 705). MerleFest in Wilkesboro attracts more than 80,000 people to its four-day music festival; and Wet 'n Wild Emerald Pointe water park in Greensboro is another attraction.\nThe Outer Banks and surrounding beaches attract millions of people to the Atlantic beaches every year.\nThe mainland northeastern part of the state, having recently adopted the name the Inner Banks, is also known as the Albemarle Region, for the Albemarle Settlements, some of the first settlements on North Carolina's portion of the Atlantic Coastal Plain. The region's historic sites are connected by the Historic Albemarle Tour.\nTransportation.\nTransportation systems in North Carolina consist of air, water, road, rail, and public transportation including intercity rail via Amtrak and light rail in Charlotte. North Carolina has the second-largest state highway system in the country as well as the largest ferry system on the East Coast.\nNorth Carolina's airports serve destinations throughout the United States and international destinations in Canada, Europe, Central America, and the Caribbean. In July 2022, Charlotte Douglas International Airport, which serves as the second busiest hub for American Airlines, ranked as the 11th busiest airport in the United States with Raleigh-Durham International Airport, a focus-city for Delta Air Lines and formerly a hub for American Airlines and Midway Airlines, ranked as the 37th busiest airport in the United States.\nNorth Carolina has a growing passenger rail system with Amtrak serving most major cities. Charlotte is also home to North Carolina's only light rail system known as LYNX.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nElementary and secondary public schools are overseen by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. The North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction is the secretary of the North Carolina State Board of Education, but the board, rather than the superintendent, holds most of the legal authority for making public education policy. In 2009, the board's chairman also became the \"chief executive officer\" for the state's school system. North Carolina has 115 public school systems, each of which is overseen by a local school board. A county may have one or more systems within it. The largest school systems in North Carolina are the Wake County Public School System, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Guilford County Schools, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, and Cumberland County Schools. In total there are 2,425 public schools in the state, including over 200 charter schools. North Carolina Schools were segregated until the \"Brown v. Board of Education\" trial and the release of the Pearsall Plan.\nPreviously the SAT was the dominant university entrance examination students took. In 2004 76% of NC high school students took the SAT. In 2012 state law changed which required 11th grade students to take the ACT. The SAT testing rate fell to 46% in 2019. Because students now can take that test for free, the ACT became the dominant university entrance examination. This also caused SAT average scores to rise, as in 1996 North Carolina was 48th nationally in SAT scores, but the profile of students taking the SAT has gotten smaller.\nColleges and universities.\nIn 1795, North Carolina opened the first public university in the United States\u2014the University of North Carolina (now named the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). More than 200 years later, the University of North Carolina System encompasses 16 public universities, which are Appalachian State University, East Carolina University, Elizabeth City State University, Fayetteville State University, North Carolina A&T State University, North Carolina Central University, North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Asheville, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Western Carolina University, and Winston-Salem State University, and one public, boarding high school, the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. Along with its public universities, North Carolina has 58 public community colleges in its community college system. The largest university in North Carolina is currently North Carolina State University, with more than 34,000 students.\nNorth Carolina is also home to many well-known private colleges and universities, including Barton College, Belmont Abbey College (the only Catholic college in the Carolinas), Campbell University, Davidson College, Duke University, Elon University, Guilford College, High Point University, Laurel University, Lees-McRae College, Lenoir-Rhyne University (the only Lutheran university in North Carolina), Livingstone College, Meredith College, Methodist University, Montreat College, North Carolina Wesleyan University, Pfeiffer University, Salem College, Shaw University (the first historically black college or university in the South), University of Mount Olive, Wake Forest University, William Peace University, and Wingate University.\nNorth Carolina is also home to the oldest and largest folk school in the United States, the John C. Campbell Folk School.\nHealth.\nThe residents of North Carolina have a lower life expectancy than the U.S. national average of life expectancy. According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, in 2014, males in North Carolina lived an average of 75.4 years compared to the national average of 76.7 years. Females in North Carolina lived an average of 80.2 years compared to the national average of 81.5 years. Male life expectancy in North Carolina between 1980 and 2014 increased by an average of 6.9 years, slightly higher than the male national average of a 6.7-year increase. Life expectancy for females in North Carolina between 1980 and 2014 increased by 3.2 years, lower than the female national average of a 3.9-year increase.\nUsing 2017\u20132019 data, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation calculated that life expectancy for North Carolina counties ranged from 71.4 years for Swain County to 82.3 years for Orange County. Life expectancy for the state was 78.1 years. The Foundation estimated that life expectancy for the United States as a whole in 2021 was 79.2 years.\nMedia.\nEarly newspapers were established in the eastern part of North Carolina in the mid-18th century. The Fayetteville Observer, established in 1816, is the oldest newspaper still in publication in North Carolina. The Wilmington Star-News, established 1867, is the oldest continuously running newspaper. As of January 1, 2020, there were approximately 240 North Carolina newspapers in publication in the state of North Carolina.\nThe News and Observer was founded in 1871 and is the largest in circulation in the state. In 2006, The Charlotte Observer was acquired by the company, it is the second largest circulating news paper in the state.\nGovernment and politics.\nThe government of North Carolina is divided into three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. These consist of the Council of State (led by the Governor), the bicameral legislature (called the General Assembly), and the state court system (headed by the North Carolina Supreme Court). The state constitution delineates the structure and function of the state government. Most municipalities in North Carolina operate under council\u2013manager governments.\nNorth Carolina's party loyalties have undergone a series of important shifts in the last few years: While the 2010 midterms saw Tarheel voters elect a bicameral Republican majority legislature for the first time in more than a century, North Carolina has also become a Southern swing state in presidential races. Since Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter's comfortable victory in the state in 1976, the state had consistently leaned Republican in presidential elections until Democrat Barack Obama narrowly won the state in 2008. In the 1990s, Democrat Bill Clinton came within a point of winning the state in 1992 and also only narrowly lost the state in 1996. In 2000, Republican George W. Bush easily won the state by more than 13 points.\nBy 2008, demographic shifts, population growth, and increased liberalization in densely populated areas such as the Research Triangle, Charlotte, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Fayetteville, and Asheville, propelled Barack Obama to victory in North Carolina, the first Democrat to win the state since 1976. In 2012, North Carolina was again considered a competitive swing state, with the Democrats even holding their 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. However, Republican Mitt Romney ultimately eked out a two-point win in North Carolina, the only 2012 swing state Obama lost, and one of only two states (along with Indiana) to flip from Obama in 2008 to the GOP in 2012. Furthermore, Republican Donald Trump carried the state in 2016, 2020, and 2024.\nIn 2012, the state elected a Republican governor (Pat McCrory) and lieutenant governor (Dan Forest) for the first time in more than two decades, while also giving the Republicans veto-proof majorities in both the State House of Representatives and the State Senate. Several U.S. House of Representatives seats flipped control in 2012, with the Republicans holding nine seats to the Democrats' four. In the 2014 midterm elections, Republican David Rouzer won the state's 7th congressional district seat, increasing the congressional delegation party split to 10\u20133 in favor of the GOP, a split they retained in subsequent elections until 2020, when it narrowed to 8\u20135 in favor of the GOP. In 2016, despite Donald Trump winning the state, North Carolina voters elected Democrat Roy Cooper as governor, in part due to an unpopular law passed by former governor Pat McCrory known as HB2. Cooper went on to win re-election in 2020, despite Donald Trump narrowly winning the state again against Joe Biden.\nAs a result of the 2020 census, North Carolina gained another seat in the 118th United States Congress, for a total of 14. After the 2024 elections, the state was represented by 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats.\nIn a 2020 study, North Carolina was ranked as the 23rd easiest state for citizens to vote in.\nGerrymandering.\nThe state has been sued for racially gerrymandering the districts, which resulted in minority voting power being diluted in some areas, resulting in skewed representation. In 2000, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina ruled that the 12th congressional district was an illegal racial gerrymander. This was again appealed, now as \"Easley v. Cromartie\". The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Eastern District of North Carolina in 2001 and ruled that the 12th district boundaries were not racially based but was a partisan gerrymander. They said this was a political question that the courts should not rule upon.\nIn 2015, federal courts again ordered redistricting. Two lawsuits challenging the state congressional district map were led by \"two dozen voters, the state Democratic Party, the state chapter of the League of Women Voters, and the interest group Common Cause\". They contend that the redistricting resulted in deliberate under-representation of a substantial portion of voters. This case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in March 2019, which also heard a related partisan gerrymandering case from Maryland.\nOn February 4, 2022, the North Carolina Supreme Court struck down the congressional and state legislative district maps drawn by the GOP-controlled General Assembly on terms of partisan gerrymandering in a 4\u20133 ruling. Later that month, a panel of three former judges chosen by the Wake County Superior Court drew and approved a remedial congressional map after the new map proposed by the General Assembly was struck down by the North Carolina Supreme Court. Though, the state legislative maps proposed by the General Assembly were allowed to be used. The General Assembly would then redraw all three maps for the 2024 elections in the state.\nOn April 28, 2023, the North Carolina Supreme Court\u2014after Republicans gained a majority in the court following the 2022 judicial elections\u2014overturned the same ruling in a 5\u20132 decision, which cleared the way for gerrymandering in the next redistricting cycle. New maps were approved by the General Assembly on October 25, 2023. All three new maps heavily favor the GOP, with allegations of racial bias made against the maps as well.\nIn November 2023, a lawsuit was filed against the North Carolina Senate district map\u2014specifically the 1st and 2nd Senate districts\u2014in the Eastern District of North Carolina, arguing the map violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In December 2023, two lawsuits were filed in the Middle District of North Carolina, with the first challenging the 1st, 6th, 12th, and 14th congressional districts in the map, and the second, challenging multiple specific districts in all three maps, as racial gerrymanders. Both lawsuits were consolidated together in March 2024.\nOn January 26, 2024\u2014regarding the lawsuit currently in the Eastern District of North Carolina\u2014a preliminary injunction to block the current North Carolina Senate district map was denied, citing the \"Purcell\" principle. The ruling was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which upheld the lower court's decision on March 28, 2024. The lawsuit will continue in the district court, but no ruling will be made until after the 2024 elections.\nSports.\nNorth Carolina is home to four major league sports franchises: the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League, the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association, and Charlotte FC of Major League Soccer are based in Charlotte, while the Raleigh-based Carolina Hurricanes play in the National Hockey League. The Panthers and Hurricanes are the only two major professional sports teams that have the same geographical designation while playing in different metropolitan areas. The Hurricanes are the only major professional team from North Carolina to have won a league championship, having captured the Stanley Cup in 2006. North Carolina is also home to two other top-level professional teams \u2014 the Charlotte Hounds of Major League Lacrosse and the North Carolina Courage of the National Women's Soccer League.\nWhile North Carolina has no Major League Baseball team, it does have numerous Minor League Baseball teams, with the highest level of play coming from the Triple-A Charlotte Knights and Durham Bulls. Additionally, North Carolina has minor league teams in other team sports including soccer and ice hockey, most notably North Carolina FC and the Charlotte Checkers, both of which play in the second tier of their respective sports.\nIn addition to professional team sports, North Carolina has a strong affiliation with NASCAR and stock-car racing, with Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord hosting two Cup Series races every year. Charlotte also hosts the NASCAR Hall of Fame, while Concord is the home of several top-flight racing teams, including Hendrick Motorsports, Roush Fenway Racing, GMS Racing, Stewart-Haas Racing, and Chip Ganassi Racing. Numerous other tracks around North Carolina host races from low-tier NASCAR circuits as well.\nGolf is a popular summertime leisure activity, and North Carolina has hosted several important professional golf tournaments. Pinehurst Resort in Pinehurst has hosted a PGA Championship, Ryder Cup, two U.S. Opens, and one U.S. Women's Open. The Wells Fargo Championship is a regular stop on the PGA Tour and is held at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, and Quail Hollow has also played host to the PGA Championship. The Wyndham Championship is played annually in Greensboro at Sedgefield Country Club.\nCollege sports are also popular in North Carolina, with 18 schools competing at the Division I level. The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is headquartered in Greensboro, and both the ACC Football Championship Game (Charlotte) and the ACC men's basketball tournament (Greensboro) were most recently held in North Carolina. Additionally, the city of Charlotte is home to the National Junior College Athletics Association's (NJCAA) headquarters. College basketball is very popular in North Carolina, buoyed by the Tobacco Road rivalries between ACC members North Carolina, Duke, North Carolina State, and Wake Forest. The ACC Championship Game and the Duke's Mayo Bowl are held annually in Charlotte's Bank of America Stadium, featuring teams from the ACC and the Southeastern Conference. Additionally, the state has hosted the NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four on two occasions, in Greensboro in 1974 and in Charlotte in 1994.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1297662": "2004 United States presidential election\nPresidential elections were held in the United States on November 2, 2004. Incumbent Republican President George W. Bush and his running mate, incumbent Vice President Dick Cheney, were re-elected to a second term. They narrowly defeated the Democratic ticket of John Kerry, a senator from Massachusetts, and his running mate John Edwards, a senator from North Carolina.\nBush and Cheney were renominated by their party with no difficulty. Meanwhile, the Democrats engaged in a competitive primary. Kerry emerged as the early-front runner but was faced with serious opposition by former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who briefly surged ahead of Kerry in the polls. Kerry won the first set of primaries in January and re-emerged as the front-runner, and Dean dropped out in February. Kerry clinched his party's nomination in March after a series of primary victories over runner-up Edwards, who he ultimately selected to be his running mate.\nThe September 11 attacks in 2001 decisively reshaped Bush's foreign policy goals and garnered him near-universal support early in his term. However, by 2004 his handling of the war on terror attracted serious debate, particularly over his handling of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Bush presented himself as a decisive leader and attacked Kerry as a \"flip-flopper\". Kerry criticized Bush's conduct of the Iraq War, despite having voted for it himself. Domestic issues were debated as well, including the economy and jobs, health care, abortion, same-sex marriage, and embryonic stem cell research.\nBush won by a narrow margin of 35 electoral votes and took 50.7% of the popular vote. Bush swept the South and the Mountain states and took the crucial swing states of Ohio, Iowa, and New Mexico, the last two flipping Republican. Although Kerry flipped New Hampshire, Bush won both more electoral votes and states than in 2000. Ohio was the tipping-point state, and was considered to be the state that allowed Bush to win reelection. Some aspects of the election process were subject to controversy, although not to the degree seen in the 2000 presidential election. Bush won Florida by a 5% margin, a significant improvement over his razor-thin victory margin in the state four years earlier which led to a legal challenge in \"Bush v. Gore\". This remains the most recent presidential election in which the Republican candidate won Colorado, New Mexico, and Virginia.\nAt the time, Bush received the most popular votes in history, a record which would be broken in 2008. Bush's win was the only Republican popular vote victory during the eight elections from 1992 to 2020. As of 2025, Bush is the only Republican president since 1984 to have won re-election to a consecutive second term.\nBackground.\nGeorge W. Bush won the presidency in 2000 after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in \"Bush v. Gore\" remanded the case to the Florida Supreme Court, which declared there was not sufficient time to hold a recount without violating the U.S. Constitution. Just eight months into his presidency, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, suddenly transformed Bush into a wartime president. Bush's approval ratings surged to near 90%. Within a month, the forces of a coalition led by the United States entered Afghanistan, which had been sheltering Osama bin Laden, suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks. The Taliban had been removed by December, although a long reconstruction would follow.\nThe Bush administration then turned its attention to Iraq and argued the need to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq had become urgent. Among the stated reasons were that Saddam's regime had tried to acquire nuclear material and had not properly accounted for biological and chemical material it was known to have previously possessed. Both the possession of these weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and the failure to account for them, would violate the UN sanctions. The assertion about WMD was hotly advanced by the Bush administration from the beginning, but other major powers including China, France, Germany, and Russia remained unconvinced that Iraq was a threat and refused to allow passage of a UN Security Council resolution to authorize the use of force. Iraq permitted UN weapon inspectors in November 2002, who were continuing their work to assess the WMD claim when the Bush administration decided to proceed with war without UN authorization and told the inspectors to leave the country. The United States invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003, along with a \"coalition of the willing\" that consisted of additional troops from the United Kingdom, and to a lesser extent, from Australia and Poland. Within about three weeks, the invasion caused the collapse of both the Iraqi government and its armed forces; however, the U.S. and allied forces failed to find any weapon of mass destruction in Iraq. Nevertheless, on May 1, Bush landed on the aircraft carrier , in a Lockheed S-3 Viking, where he gave a speech announcing the end of \"major combat operations\" in the Iraq War.\nNominations.\nRepublican nomination.\nBush was able to ward off any serious challenge to the Republican nomination. Senator Lincoln Chafee from Rhode Island considered challenging Bush on an anti-war platform in New Hampshire but decided not to run after the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003. On March 10, 2004, Bush officially attained the number of delegates needed to be nominated at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. He accepted the nomination on September 2, 2004, and retained Vice President Dick Cheney as his running mate. During the convention and throughout the campaign, Bush focused on two themes: defending America against terrorism and building an ownership society. The ownership society included allowing people to invest some of their Social Security in the stock market, increasing home and stock ownership, and encouraging more people to buy their own health insurance.\nDemocratic Party nomination.\nDemocratic primaries.\nThe 2004 Democratic Party presidential primaries took place from January 14 to June 8, 2004, to select the Democratic Party's nominee for president. Before the primaries, Vermont governor Howard Dean was a favorite to win the nomination; however, Massachusetts senator John Kerry won victories in two early races: the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. These wins strengthened Kerry's previously weak campaign. By March 11, Kerry had received enough delegates to win the nomination. Other major candidates included North Carolina senator John Edwards and retired U.S. Army general Wesley Clark. Kerry asked Republican senator John McCain to be his running mate but McCain turned down his offer. On July 6, Kerry selected Edwards as his running mate, shortly before the 2004 Democratic National Convention was held later that month in Boston.\nDemocratic National Convention.\nHeading into the convention, the Kerry\u2013Edwards ticket unveiled its new slogan: a promise to make America \"stronger at home and more respected in the world\". Kerry made his Vietnam War experience the convention's prominent theme. The keynote address at the convention was delivered by Illinois state senator and U.S. Senate candidate and future president Barack Obama; the speech was well received, and it elevated Obama's status within the Democratic Party.\nOther nominations.\nThere were four other presidential tickets on the ballot in a number of states totaling enough electoral votes to have a theoretical possibility of winning a majority in the Electoral College. They were:\nIssues unique to the election.\nElectronic voting machines.\nAhead of the 2004 election, some states implemented electronic voting systems. Critics raised several issues about voting machines, particularly those made by Diebold Election Systems. Cybersecurity professionals found security vulnerabilities in Diebold machines. Voting machines made by several companies were also criticized for their lack of a paper trail, which would have made results easier to verify. Democrats also criticized various executives at Diebold, Inc. (the parent company of Diebold Election Systems) for their support of Bush's campaign, stating that it constituted a conflict of interest. Following these issues, California banned the use of Diebold's AccuVote TSX voting machines for elections in 2004.\nCampaign law changes.\nThe 2004 election was the first to be affected by the campaign finance reforms mandated by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. The act created restrictions on fundraising by political parties and candidates. A large number of independent 527 groups were created to bypass these restrictions. Named for a section of the Internal Revenue Code, these groups were able to raise large amounts of money for various political causes as long as they did not coordinate their activities with political campaigns. Examples of 527s include Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, MoveOn.org, the Media Fund, and America Coming Together. These groups were active throughout the campaign season, spending a record $556 million for all elections in 2004.\nThe Stand by Your Ad provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act required political advertisements on television to include a verbal disclaimer identifying the organization or campaign responsible for the advertisement. This provision was intended to force campaigns to take responsibility for negative advertisements. Campaign strategists criticized this requirement, stating that it would waste time and cause voters to be confused.\nGeneral election campaign.\nCampaign issues.\nBush focused his campaign on national security, presenting himself as a decisive leader and contrasted Kerry as a \"flip-flopper.\" This strategy was designed to convey to American voters the idea that Bush could be trusted to be tough on terrorism while Kerry would be \"uncertain in the face of danger.\" In the final months before the election, Kerry's campaign focused on domestic issues such as the economy and health care. Kerry's campaign managers believed that Kerry had an advantage on domestic issues. Bush's campaign also focused on increasing voter turnout among conservatives. According to one exit poll, people who voted for Bush cited the issues of terrorism and traditional values as the most important factors in their decision. Kerry supporters cited the war in Iraq, the economy and jobs, and health care.\nEconomy.\nTax cuts were passed in 2001 and 2003 under the Bush administration with Bush's support. Kerry voted against these tax cuts. During the 2004 campaign, Bush praised these tax cuts, stating that they helped to grow the economy. On the other hand, Kerry attacked Bush for failing to create jobs under his presidency. Kerry stated that he wanted to reduce the United States budget deficit by capping government spending while ending various tax breaks for businesses. Kerry also supported tax credits for businesses that hire additional workers. Bush attacked Kerry for his economic proposals, stating that they would cause Americans to pay higher taxes. Bush also attacked Kerry for previously supporting tax raises, such as a proposed increase on the federal gas tax.\nForeign policy.\nBush defended the Iraq War, arguing that it was necessary to stop terrorism. He also said that the United States had made progress stopping terrorism in other nations. Bush attacked Kerry for opposing the Iraq War after voting to authorize it in 2002, characterizing the shift as one of many flip-flops by Kerry. Kerry argued that Bush had misled the American public in pursuing the Iraq War, noting that no illegal weapons had been found in Iraq. He said that the Iraq War was a mistake and a diversion from terrorism in other nations such as Afghanistan. After the election, exit polls found that foreign policy concerns were the most important issues for voters.\nHealth care.\nHealth savings accounts (HSAs) were introduced in 2004 as part of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act, signed by Bush in December 2003. As part of his 2004 campaign, Bush supported the expansion of HSAs. He proposed tax cuts to help Americans purchase their own health insurance. He also proposed a plan that would allow small businesses to purchase health insurance in large groups. Kerry's health care proposals included government subsidies for businesses that provide health insurance and the expansion of government-run health care programs. Health policy experts stated that Bush's proposals would have a more limited impact than Kerry's proposals. Kerry also attacked Bush for his policy on stem cell research. In 2001, the Bush administration restricted embryonic stem cell research to existing stem cell lines. Kerry stated that this restriction was a barrier to conducting important research.\nSame-sex marriage.\nIn July 2004, Bush announced his support for a Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, shortly before the Senate voted on the amendment. Although Kerry stated that he opposed same-sex marriage, he also opposed the amendment, saying that the legality of same-sex marriage should be decided by individual states. The Senate vote failed on July 14.\nControversies.\nBush military service controversy.\nDuring the campaign, Bush was accused of failing to fulfill his required service in the Texas Air National Guard. A scandal occurred at CBS News after they aired a segment on \"60 Minutes Wednesday\", introducing what became known as the Killian documents. These documents were allegedly written by Jerry B. Killian, Bush's squadron commander, and they contained various allegations about Bush's service. Serious doubts about the documents' authenticity quickly emerged, leading CBS to appoint a review panel that eventually resulted in the firing of the news producer and other significant staffing changes. The Killian documents were eventually concluded to be forgeries.\nKerry military service controversy.\nKerry was accused by the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth of distorting his military service in Vietnam. The group challenged the legitimacy of each of the combat medals awarded to Kerry by the U.S. Navy, and the disposition of his discharge. The organization spent $22.4 million in advertisements against Kerry. After the election, political analysts described their advertising campaign as effective. The term swiftboating was used during the campaign to describe the organization's negative advertising, which Democrats saw as unfair. It was also used after the campaign to generally describe a harsh attack by a political opponent that is dishonest, personal and unfair.\nPresidential debates.\nThree presidential debates and one vice presidential debate were organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates, and held in the autumn of 2004.\nOsama bin Laden videotape.\nOn October 29, four days before the election, excerpts of a video of Osama bin Laden addressing the American people were broadcast on al Jazeera. In his remarks, bin Laden mentions the September 11 attacks, and taunted Bush over his response to them. In the days following the video's release, Bush's lead over Kerry increased by several points.\nElectoral College forecasts.\nElections analysts and political pundits issue probabilistic forecasts of the composition of the Electoral College. These forecasts use a variety of factors to estimate the likelihood of each candidate winning the Electoral College electors for that state. Most election predictors use the following ratings:\nBelow is a list of states considered by one or more forecast to be competitive; states that are deemed to be \"safe\" or \"solid\" by forecasters \"The Cook Political Report\", \"The New York Times\", and CNN.\n<templatestyles src=\"template:sticky header/styles.css\"/>\nResults.\nSource (Electoral and Popular Vote): Federal Elections Commission Electoral and Popular Vote Summary\nVoting age population: 215,664,000\nPercent of voting age population casting a vote for president: 56.70%\n(a) \"One faithless elector from Minnesota cast an electoral vote for John Edwards (written as John Ewards) for president.\"\n(b) \"In Montana, Karen Sanchirico was listed on the ballot as Nader's running mate, not Camejo. In Alabama, Jan D. Pierce was Nader's running mate. In New York, Nader appeared on two distinct tickets, one with Camejo and one with Pierce.\"\n(c) \"Because Arrin Hawkins, then aged 28, was constitutionally ineligible to serve as vice president, Margaret Trowe replaced her on the ballot in some states. James Harris replaced Calero on certain other states' ballots.\"\nResults by state.\nOf the 3,154 counties/districts/independent cities making returns, Bush won the popular vote in 2,568 (81.42%) while Kerry carried 586 (18.58%). The following table records the official vote tallies for each state as reported by the official Federal Election Commission report. The column labeled \"Margin\" shows Bush's margin of victory over Kerry (the margin is negative for states and districts won by Kerry).\nAlthough Guam has no votes in the Electoral College, it has held a straw poll for its presidential preference since 1980. In 2004, the results were Bush 21,490 (64.1%), Kerry 11,781 (35.1%), Nader 196 (0.58%) and Badnarik 67 (0.2%). Maine and Nebraska each allowed for their electoral votes to be split between candidates. In both states, two electoral votes were awarded to the winner of the statewide race and one electoral vote was awarded to the winner of each congressional district.\nClose states.\nRed font color denotes those won by Republican President George W. Bush; blue denotes states won by Democrat John Kerry.\nStates where margin of victory was under 1% (22 electoral votes):\nStates where margin of victory was more than 1% but less than 5% (93 electoral votes):\nStates where margin of victory was more than 5% but less than 10% (149 electoral votes):\nStatistics.\nCounties with highest percent of vote (Republican)\nCounties with highest percent of vote (Democratic)\nFinance.\nMoney spent\nSource: FEC\n2004 United States Electoral College.\nOne elector in Minnesota cast a ballot for president with the name of \"John Ewards\" [\"sic\"] written on it. The Electoral College officials certified this ballot as a vote for Edwards for president. The remaining nine electors cast ballots for Kerry. All ten electors in the state cast ballots for Edwards for vice president (Edwards's name was spelled correctly on all ballots for vice president). This was the first time in U.S. history that an elector had cast a vote for the same person to be both president and vice president. Electoral balloting in Minnesota was performed by secret ballot, and none of the electors admitted to casting the Edwards vote for president, so it may never be known who the faithless elector was. It is not even known whether the vote for Edwards was deliberate or unintentional; the Republican Secretary of State and several of the Democratic electors have expressed the opinion that this was an accident.\nStatistical analysis.\nDuring the campaign and as the results came in on the night of the election, there was much focus on Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. These three swing states were seen as evenly divided, and with each casting 20 electoral votes or more, they had the power to decide the election. As the final results came in, Kerry took Pennsylvania and then Bush took Florida, focusing all attention on Ohio.\nThe morning after the election, the winner was still undetermined. The result in Ohio would decide the winner, although the results in New Mexico and Iowa were also undetermined. Bush led in Ohio, but the state was still counting provisional ballots. In the afternoon of the day after the election, Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell announced that there were roughly 135,000 provisional ballots remaining. Kerry's campaign believed that it was statistically impossible to erase Bush's lead. Faced with this announcement, Kerry conceded defeat.\nBush became the first Republican to ever win without carrying New Hampshire, and the first to win the popular vote without Vermont and Illinois. This was the last time a president was re-elected to a consecutive term with a higher share of the electoral vote. Bush carried Colorado despite the state being Kerry's birth state. Bush simultaneously lost his own birth state of Connecticut, making this the only election since 1864 where neither candidate carried their birth state. This election was the first time since 1976 that New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, Illinois, Michigan, and California voted for the losing candidate in the popular vote, as well as the first since 1980 that Maryland did so, and the first since 1948 that Delaware did so. Bush's 2.4% popular vote margin is the smallest ever for a re-elected incumbent president, surpassing the 1812 election.\nBush won three states that have not voted Republican since: Virginia, Colorado, and New Mexico. Virginia had voted Republican in every election from 1968 to 2004 but conversely has voted Democratic in every election since 2008. In contrast, this is the last election in which the losing candidate won any of the following states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. This is also the last time a Republican was elected without carrying Maine's 2nd congressional district. This election is the only time in history that every Northeastern state voted Democratic and every former Confederate state voted Republican in the same election. Thus, Bush is the only candidate to win without carrying any Northeastern electoral votes. Furthermore, this was the last election where both major party tickets consisted entirely of white men. This is also the last election where both parties flipped states and is also the most recent year when an incumbent candidate from either party would flip any states, with Bush taking the two which he did not win in 2000, in both New Mexico and Iowa.\nUntil 2024[ [update]], this was the last time Nevada voted for the Republican presidential candidate, and the only presidential election since 1988 in which the Republican nominee won the popular vote with a majority, and it remains the only presidential election since 1984 in which the incumbent Republican president won a second consecutive term. Bush also became the only incumbent president to win consecutive re-election after previously losing the popular vote. Bush is the seventh Republican to have won re-election to a consecutive term, along with Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, William McKinley, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. The 2004 election had the highest turnout rate among eligible voters since 1968. This is one of only four U.S. presidential elections in which the winner did not carry any of the three Rust Belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin; the others were 2000, 1916 and 1884.\nThis was the first presidential election since 1988 where a candidate won a majority of the popular vote. This was the last time a Republican candidate won the national popular vote until Donald Trump in 2024. This remains the most recent presidential election in which both major party candidates flipped at least one state. In addition, this was one of only two elections in the 21st century in which a candidate from either party won fewer than 20 states, with the other being 2024, when Kamala Harris also won 19 states. This is the earliest presidential election of which all four of the presidential and vice presidential candidates of both major parties are still alive, and is the most recent to date in which both major party tickets did not include a woman or person of color. This along with the previous election would be the only ones between 1980 and 2024 where the winner won fewer than 300 electoral votes (or below 55% of the electoral college vote).\nVoter demographics.\nSource: \"CNN\" exit poll ()\nAftermath.\nThis is one of only two U.S. presidential elections, held since the Democrats and Republicans became the two major parties in U.S. politics, in which the winner did not carry any of the three Rust Belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin; the other was 2000, when Bush was first elected.\nVoting problems in Ohio.\nAfter the election, activists and election scholars criticized various issues with the election in Ohio. Long lines at polling places over seven hours were reported. An electronic voting machine erroneously gave thousands of extra votes to Bush. Professor Edward B. Foley stated that he believed that Ohio's voting problems did not affect the outcome.\nObjections and conspiracy theories.\nAfter the election, many blogs published false rumors claiming to show evidence that voter fraud had prevented Kerry from winning. Although the overall result of the election was not challenged by the Kerry campaign, Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb and Libertarian Party presidential candidate Michael Badnarik obtained a recount in Ohio. This recount was completed December 28, 2004, although on January 24, 2007, a jury convicted two Ohio elections officials of selecting precincts to recount where they already knew the hand total would match the machine total, thereby avoiding having to perform a full recount. Independent candidate Ralph Nader obtained a recount in 11 New Hampshire precincts that used Accuvote voting machines.\nAt the official counting of the electoral votes on January 6, an objection was made under the Electoral Count Act (now \u00a0\u00a7\u00a015) to Ohio's electoral votes. Because the motion was supported by at least one member of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the law required that the two houses separate to debate and vote on the objection. In the House of Representatives, the objection was supported by 31 Democrats. It was opposed by 178 Republicans, 88 Democrats and one independent. Not voting were 52 Republicans and 80 Democrats. Four people elected to the House had not yet taken office, and one seat was vacant. In the Senate, it was supported only by its maker, Barbara Boxer, with 74 senators opposed and 25 not voting. During the debate, no Senator argued that the outcome of the election should be changed by either court challenge or revote. Boxer claimed that she had made the motion not to challenge the outcome but \"to cast the light of truth on a flawed system which must be fixed now\".\nKerry would later state that \"the widespread irregularities make it impossible to know for certain that the [Ohio] outcome reflected the will of the voters\". In the same article, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said: \"I'm not confident that the election in Ohio was fairly decided... We know that there was substantial voter suppression, and the machines were not reliable. It should not be a surprise that the Republicans are willing to do things that are unethical to manipulate elections. That's what we suspect has happened.\"\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "5122699": "John Kerry\nAmerican politician and diplomat (born 1943)\nJohn Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician, and diplomat who served as the 68th United States secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 in the administration of Barack Obama. A member of the Forbes family and of the Democratic Party, he previously represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1985 to 2013 and later served as the first U.S. special presidential envoy for climate from 2021 to 2024. Kerry was the Democratic nominee for president of the United States in the 2004 election, narrowly losing to then-incumbent president George W. Bush.\nKerry grew up in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. In 1966, after graduating from Yale University, he enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve, ultimately attaining the rank of lieutenant. During the Vietnam War, Kerry served a brief tour in South Vietnam. While commanding a Swift boat, he sustained three wounds in combat with the Viet Cong, for which he earned three Purple Heart medals. Kerry was also awarded the Silver Star Medal and the Bronze Star Medal for conduct in separate military engagements. After completing his active military service, Kerry returned to the United States and became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. He gained national recognition as an anti-war activist, serving as a spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization. Kerry testified in the Fulbright Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where he described the United States government's policy in Vietnam as the cause of war crimes.\nIn 1972, Kerry entered electoral politics as a Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives in Massachusetts's 5th congressional district, losing to Republican Paul W. Cronin in the general election. He subsequently worked as a radio talk show host and as the executive director of an advocacy organization while attending law school. After a period in private legal practice, he was elected the 66th lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1982. In 1984, Kerry was elected to the United States Senate. In 2004, Kerry won the Democratic presidential nomination alongside Senator John Edwards. He lost the Electoral College and the popular vote by slim margins, winning 251 electors to Bush's 286 and 48.3% of the popular vote to Bush's 50.7%.\nIn January 2013, Kerry was nominated by President Obama to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and was subsequently confirmed by his Senate colleagues. He was U.S. secretary of state throughout the second term of the Obama administration from 2013 to 2017. During his tenure, he initiated the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks and negotiated agreements restricting the nuclear program of Iran, including the 2013 Joint Plan of Action and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In 2015, Kerry signed the Paris Agreement on climate change on behalf of the United States.\nIn January 2021, Kerry returned to government, becoming the first person to hold the position of U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, under President Joe Biden. On March 6, Kerry left this position to work on Biden's 2024 presidential campaign. Kerry was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Biden in May 2024.\nEarly life and education (1943\u20131966).\nJohn Forbes Kerry was born on December 11, 1943, at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado. He is the second of four children born to Richard John Kerry, a U.S. diplomat and lawyer, and Rosemary Forbes, a nurse and social activist. His father was raised Catholic (John's paternal grandparents were Austro-Hungarian Jewish immigrants who converted to Catholicism) and his mother was Episcopalian. He was raised with an elder sister Margaret, a younger sister Diana, and a younger brother Cameron. The children were raised in their father's Catholic faith, and John served as an altar boy.\nKerry was originally considered a military brat, until his father was discharged from the Army Air Corps in 1944. Kerry lived in Groton, Massachusetts his first year and Millis, Massachusetts afterwards before moving to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. at age seven, when his father took a position in the Department of the Navy's Office of General Counsel and soon became a diplomat in the State Department's Bureau of United Nations Affairs.\nAs members of the Forbes and Dudley\u2013Winthrop families, his maternal extended family enjoyed great wealth. Kerry's parents themselves were considered upper-middle class. They turned to his wealthy great-aunt, Clara Winthrop, who paid for his attendance at elite boarding schools, such as Institut Montana Zugerberg, in Zug, Switzerland. Through his maternal ancestry, Kerry also descends from Rev. James McGregor who was among the first 500 Scots-Irish immigrants to Boston Harbor in the 18th century.\nAt the age of ten, Kerry's father took a position as the U.S. Attorney for Berlin. When Kerry was twelve, he crossed into the Soviet Occupation Zone to visit Hitler's bunker and ride through the Brandenburg Gate. \nIn 1957, his father was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway, and Kerry was sent back to the United States to attend boarding school. He first attended the Fessenden School in Newton, Massachusetts, and later St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, where he learned skills in public speaking and began developing an interest in politics. Kerry founded the John Winant Society at St. Paul's to debate the issues of the day; the Society still exists there. In 1960, while at St. Paul's, he played bass in a minor rock band called The Electras with six of his classmates. The band had about five hundred copies of one album printed in 1961, which they sold some of at dances at the school; it was made available on streaming platforms many years later.\nIn 1962, Kerry attended Yale University, majoring in political science and residing in Jonathan Edwards College. By that year, his parents returned to Groton. While at Yale, Kerry briefly dated Janet Auchincloss, the younger half-sister of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Through Auchincloss, Kerry was invited to a day of sailing with then-President John F. Kennedy and his family.\nKerry played on the varsity Yale Bulldogs men's soccer team, earning his only letter in his senior year. He also played freshman and junior varsity hockey and, in his senior year, junior varsity lacrosse. In addition, he was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity and took flying lessons.\nIn his sophomore year, Kerry became the chairman of the Liberal Party of the Yale Political Union, and a year later he served as president of the union. Amongst his influential teachers in this period was Professor H. Bradford Westerfield, who was himself a former president of the Political Union. His involvement with the Political Union gave him an opportunity to be involved with important issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and the New Frontier program. He also became a member of Skull and Bones Society, and traveled to Switzerland through AIESEC Yale.\nUnder the guidance of the speaking coach and history professor Rollin G. Osterweis, Kerry won many debates against other college students from across the nation. In March 1965, as the Vietnam War escalated, he won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that was critical of U.S. foreign policy. In the speech he said, \"It is the spectre of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism and thus, it is self-defeating.\"\nKerry graduated from Yale with a bachelor of arts degree in 1966. Overall, he had below-average grades, graduating with a cumulative average of 76 over his four years. His freshman-year average was a 71, but he improved to an 81 average for his senior year. He never received an \"A\" during his time at Yale; his highest grade was an 89.\nMilitary service (1966\u20131970).\nDuty on USS \"Gridley\".\nOn February 18, 1966, Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserve. He began his active duty military service on August 19, 1966. After completing 16 weeks of Officer Candidate School at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island, Kerry received his officer's commission on December 16, 1966. During the 2004 election, Kerry posted his military records at his website, and permitted reporters to inspect his medical records. In 2005, Kerry released his military and medical records to the representatives of three news organizations, but has not authorized full public access to those records.\nDuring his tour on the guided missile frigate , Kerry requested duty in South Vietnam, listing as his first preference a position as the commander of a Fast Patrol Craft (PCF), also known as a \"Swift boat\". These boats have aluminum hulls and have little or no armor, but are heavily armed and rely on speed. \"I didn't really want to get involved in the war,\" Kerry said in a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. \"When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing.\" However, his second choice of billet was on a river patrol boat, or \"PBR\", which at the time was serving a more dangerous duty on the rivers of Vietnam.\nMilitary honors.\nDuring the night of December 2 and early morning of December 3, 1968, Kerry was in charge of a small boat operating near a peninsula north of Cam Ranh Bay together with a Swift boat (PCF-60). According to Kerry and the two crewmen who accompanied him that night, Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis, they surprised a group of Vietnamese men unloading sampans at a river crossing, who began running and failed to obey an order to stop. As the men fled, Kerry and his crew opened fire on the sampans and destroyed them, then rapidly left. During this encounter, Kerry received a shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow. It was for this injury that Kerry received his first Purple Heart Medal.\nKerry received his second Purple Heart for a wound received in action on the B\u1ed3 \u0110\u1ec1 River on February 20, 1969. The plan had been for the Swift boats to be accompanied by support helicopters. On the way up the Bo De, however, the helicopters were attacked. As the Swift boats reached the C\u1eeda L\u1edbn River, Kerry's boat was hit by a B-40 rocket (rocket propelled grenade round), and a piece of shrapnel hit Kerry's left leg, wounding him. Thereafter, enemy fire ceased and his boat reached the Gulf of Thailand safely. Kerry continues to have shrapnel embedded in his left thigh because the doctors that first treated him decided to remove the damaged tissue and close the wound with sutures rather than make a wide opening to remove the shrapnel. Although wounded like several others earlier that day, Kerry did not lose any time off from duty.\nSilver Star.\nEight days later, on February 28, 1969, came the events for which Kerry was awarded his Silver Star Medal. On this occasion, Kerry was in tactical command of his Swift boat and two other Swift boats during a combat operation. Their mission on the Duong Keo River included bringing an underwater demolition team and dozens of South Vietnamese Marines to destroy enemy sampans, structures and bunkers as described in the story \"The Death Of PCF 43\". Running into heavy small arms fire from the river banks, Kerry \"directed the units to turn to the beach and charge the Viet Cong positions\" and he \"expertly directed\" his boat's fire causing the enemy to flee while at the same time coordinating the insertion of the ninety South Vietnamese troops (according to the original medal citation signed by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt). Moving a short distance upstream, Kerry's boat was the target of a B-40 rocket round; Kerry charged the enemy positions and as his boat hove to and beached, a Viet Cong (\"VC\") insurgent armed with a rocket launcher emerged from a spider hole and ran. While the boat's gunner opened fire, wounding the VC in the leg, and while the other boats approached and offered cover fire, Kerry jumped from the boat to pursue the VC insurgent, subsequently killing him and capturing his loaded rocket launcher.\nKerry's commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander George Elliott, stated to Douglas Brinkley in 2003 that he did not know whether to court-martial Kerry for beaching the boat without orders or give him a medal for saving the crew. Elliott recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, and Zumwalt flew into An Thoi to personally award medals to Kerry and the rest of the sailors involved in the mission. The Navy's account of Kerry's actions is presented in the original signed by Zumwalt. The engagement was documented in an after-action report, a press release written on March 1, 1969, and a historical summary dated March 17, 1969.\nBronze Star.\nOn March 13, 1969, on the B\u00e1i H\u00e1p River, Kerry was in charge of one of five Swift boats that were returning to their base after performing an Operation Sealords mission to transport South Vietnamese troops from the garrison at C\u00e1i N\u01b0\u1edbc and MIKE Force advisors for a raid on a Vietcong camp located on the Rach Dong Cung canal. Earlier in the day, Kerry received a slight shrapnel wound in the buttocks from blowing up a rice bunker. Debarking some but not all of the passengers at a small village, the boats approached a fishing weir; one group of boats went around to the left of the weir, hugging the shore, and a group with Kerry's PCF-94 boat went around to the right, along the shoreline. A mine was detonated directly beneath the lead boat, PCF-3, as it crossed the weir to the left, lifting PCF-3 \"about 2\u20133 ft out of water\".\nJames Rassmann, a Green Beret advisor who was aboard Kerry's PCF-94, was knocked overboard when, according to witnesses and the documentation of the event, a mine or rocket exploded close to the boat. According to the documentation for the event, Kerry's arm was injured when he was thrown against a bulkhead during the explosion. PCF 94 returned to the scene and Kerry rescued Rassmann who was receiving sniper fire from the water. Kerry received the Bronze Star Medal with Combat \"V\" for \"heroic achievement\", for his actions during this incident; he also received his third Purple Heart.\nReturn from Vietnam.\nAfter Kerry's third qualifying wound, he was entitled per Navy regulations to reassignment away from combat duties. Kerry's preferred choice for reassignment was as a military aide in Boston, New York City or Washington, D.C. On April 11, 1969, he reported to the Brooklyn-based Atlantic Military Sea Transportation Service, where he would remain on active duty for the following year as a personal aide to an officer, Rear Admiral Walter Schlech. On January 1, 1970, Kerry was temporarily promoted to full lieutenant. Kerry had agreed to an extension of his active duty obligation from December 1969 to August 1970 in order to perform Swift Boat duty. John Kerry was on active duty in the United States Navy from August 1966 until January 1970. He continued to serve in the Naval Reserve until February 1978.\n\"Swiftboating\" controversy.\nWith the continuing controversy that had surrounded the military service of George W. Bush since the 2000 presidential election (when he was accused of having used his father's political influence to gain entrance to the Texas Air National Guard, thereby protecting himself from conscription into the United States Army, and possible service in the Vietnam War), John Kerry's contrasting status as a decorated Vietnam War veteran posed a problem for Bush's re-election campaign, which Republicans sought to counter by calling Kerry's war record into question. As the presidential campaign of 2004 developed, approximately 250 members of a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT, later renamed Swift Vets and POWs for Truth) opposed Kerry's campaign. The group held press conferences, ran ads and endorsed a book questioning Kerry's service record and his military awards. The group included several members of Kerry's unit, such as Larry Thurlow, who commanded a swift boat alongside of Kerry's, and Stephen Gardner, who served on Kerry's boat. The campaign inspired the widely used political pejorative '\"swiftboating,\" to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. Most of Kerry's former crewmates have stated that SBVT's allegations are false.\nAnti-war activism (1970\u20131971).\nAfter returning to the United States, Kerry moved to Waltham, Massachusetts and joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Then numbering about 20,000, VVAW was considered by some (including the administration of President Richard Nixon) to be an effective, if controversial, component of the antiwar movement. Kerry participated in the \"Winter Soldier Investigation\" conducted by VVAW of U.S. atrocities in Vietnam, and he appears in a film by that name that documents the investigation. According to Nixon Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, \"I didn't approve of what he did, but I understood the protesters quite well\", and he declined two requests from the Navy to court martial Reserve Lieutenant Kerry over his antiwar activity.\nOn April 22, 1971, Kerry appeared before a U.S. Senate committee hearing on proposals relating to ending the war. The day after this testimony, Kerry participated in a demonstration with thousands of other veterans in which he and other Vietnam War veterans threw their medals and service ribbons over a fence erected at the front steps of the United States Capitol building to dramatize their opposition to the war. Jack Smith, a Marine, read a statement explaining why the veterans were returning their military awards to the government. For more than two hours, almost 1,000 angry veterans tossed their medals, ribbons, hats, jackets, and military papers over the fence. Each veteran gave his or her name, hometown, branch of service and a statement. Kerry threw some of his own decorations and awards as well as some given to him by other veterans to throw. As Kerry threw his decorations over the fence, his statement was: \"I'm not doing this for any violent reasons, but for peace and justice, and to try and make this country wake up once and for all.\"\nKerry was arrested on May 30, 1971, during a VVAW march to honor American POWs held captive by North Vietnam. The march was planned as a multi-day event from Concord to Boston, and while in Lexington, participants tried to camp on the village green. At 2:30a.m., local and state police arrested 441 demonstrators, including Kerry, for trespassing. All were given the Miranda Warning and were hauled away on school buses to spend the night at the Lexington Public Works Garage. Kerry and the other protesters later paid a $5 fine, and were released. The mass arrests caused a community backlash and ended up giving positive coverage to the VVAW.\nEarly political career (1972\u20131985).\n1972 congressional election.\nIn 1970, Kerry had considered running for Congress in the Democratic primary against hawkish Democrat Philip J. Philbin of Massachusetts's 3rd congressional district, but deferred in favor of Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest and anti-war activist, who went on to defeat Philbin. In February 1972, Kerry's wife bought a house in Worcester, with Kerry intending to run against the 4th district's aging thirteen-term incumbent Democrat, Harold Donohue. The couple never moved in. After Republican Congressman F. Bradford Morse of the neighboring 5th district announced his retirement and then resignation to become Under-Secretary-General for Political and General Assembly Affairs at the United Nations, the couple instead rented an apartment in Lowell, so that Kerry could run to succeed him.\nIncluding Kerry, the Democratic primary race had 10 candidates, including attorney Paul J. Sheehy, State Representative Anthony R. DiFruscia, John J. Desmond and Robert B. Kennedy. Kerry ran a \"very expensive, sophisticated campaign\", financed by out-of-state backers and supported by many young volunteers. DiFruscia's campaign headquarters shared the same building as Kerry's. On the eve of the September 19 primary, police found Kerry's younger brother Cameron and campaign field director Thomas J. Vallely, breaking into where the building's telephone lines were located. They were arrested and charged with \"breaking and entering with the intent to commit grand larceny\", but the charges were dropped a year later. DiFruscia alleged that the two were trying to disrupt his get-out-the vote efforts. Vallely and Cameron Kerry maintained that they were only checking their own telephone lines because they had received an anonymous call warning that the Kerry lines would be cut.\nDespite the arrests, Kerry won the primary with 20,771 votes (27.56%). Sheehy came second with 15,641 votes (20.75%), followed by DiFruscia with 12,222 votes (16.22%), Desmond with 10,213 votes (13.55%) and Kennedy with 5,632 votes (7.47%). The remaining 10,891 votes were split amongst the other five candidates, with 1970 nominee Richard Williams coming last with just 1,706 votes (2.26%).\nIn the general election, Kerry was initially favored to defeat the Republican candidate, former State Representative Paul W. Cronin, and conservative Democrat Roger P. Durkin, who ran as an Independent. A week after the primary, one poll put Kerry 26-points ahead of Cronin. His campaign called for a national health insurance system, discounted prescription drugs for the unemployed, a jobs program to clean up the Merrimack River and rent controls in Lowell and Lawrence. A major obstacle, however, was the district's leading newspaper, the conservative \"The Sun\". The paper editorialized against him. It also ran critical news stories about his out-of-state contributions and his \"carpetbagging\", because he had only moved into the district in April. Subsequently, released \"Watergate\" Oval Office tape recordings of the Nixon White House showed that defeating Kerry's candidacy had attracted the personal attention of President Nixon. Kerry himself asserts that Nixon sent operatives to Lowell to help derail his campaign.\nThe race was the most expensive for Congress in the country that year and four days before the general election, Durkin withdrew and endorsed Cronin, hoping to see Kerry defeated. The week before, a poll had put Kerry 10 points ahead of Cronin, with Durkin at 13%. In the final days of the campaign, Kerry sensed that it was \"slipping away\" and Cronin emerged victorious by 110,970 votes (53.45%) to Kerry's 92,847 (44.72%). After his defeat, Kerry lamented in a letter to supporters that \"for two solid weeks, [\"The Sun\"] called me un-American, New Left antiwar agitator, unpatriotic, and labeled me every other 'un-' and 'anti-' that they could find. It's hard to believe that one newspaper could be so powerful, but they were.\" He later felt that his failure to respond directly to \"The Sun\"'s attacks cost him the race.\nLaw career.\nAfter Kerry's 1972 defeat, he and his wife bought a house in the Belvidere section of Lowell, Massachusetts, entering a decade which his brother Cameron later called \"the years in exile\". He spent some time working as a fundraiser for the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE), an international humanitarian organization. In September 1973, he entered Boston College Law School. While studying, Kerry worked as a talk radio host on WBZ and, in July 1974, was named executive director of Mass Action, a Massachusetts advocacy association.\nKerry received his juris doctor (J.D.) from Boston College in 1976. While in law school he had been a student prosecutor in the office of the District Attorney of Middlesex County, John J. Droney. After passing the bar exam and being admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1976, he went to work in that office as a full-time prosecutor and moved to Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.\nIn January 1977, Droney promoted him to First Assistant District Attorney, essentially making Kerry his campaign and media surrogate because Droney was afflicted with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease). As First Assistant, Kerry tried cases, which included winning convictions in a high-profile rape case and a murder. He also played a role in administering the office, including initiating the creation of special white-collar and organized crime units, creating programs to address the problems of rape and other crime victims and witnesses, and managing trial calendars to reflect case priorities. In 1978, Kerry launched a criminal investigation against Senator Edward Brooke, regarding \"misstatements\" in his first divorce trial. The inquiry ended with no charges being brought after investigators and prosecutors determined that Brooke's misstatements were pertinent to the case, but were not material enough to have affected the outcome.\nDroney's health was poor and Kerry had decided to run for his position in the 1978 election should Droney drop out. However, Droney was re-elected and his health improved; he went on to re-assume many of the duties that he had delegated to Kerry. Kerry thus decided to leave, departing in 1979 with assistant DA Roanne Sragow to set up their own law firm. Kerry also worked as a commentator for WCVB-TV and co-founded a bakery, Kilvert & Forbes Ltd., with businessman and former Kennedy aide K. Dun Gifford.\nLieutenant Governor of Massachusetts.\nIn the 1982 Massachusetts gubernatorial election, Lieutenant Governor Thomas P. O'Neill III declined to seek a third term, instead deciding to run for governor of Massachusetts. Kerry declared his candidacy, entering the primary election alongside Massachusetts Secretary of Environmental Affairs Evelyn Murphy, State Senator Samuel Rotondi, State Representative Lou Nickinello, and Lois Pines.\nKerry won the nomination with 325,890 votes (29%) to Murphy's 286,378 (25.48%), Rotondi's 228,086 (20.29%), Nickinello's 150,829 (13.42%) and Pines' 132,734 (11.81%). In the concurrent gubernatorial primary, former Governor Michael Dukakis defeated O'Neill and incumbent Governor Edward J. King. The Dukakis and Kerry ticket defeated the Republican ticket of John W. Sears and Leon Lombardi in the general election by 1,219,109 votes (61.92%) to 749,679 (38.08%).\nAs Lieutenant Governor, Kerry led meetings of the Massachusetts Governor's Council. Dukakis also delegated other tasks to Kerry, including serving as the state's liaison to the Federal government of the United States. He was also active on environmental issues, including combating acid rain.\n1984 U.S. Senate election.\nThe junior U.S. senator from Massachusetts, Paul Tsongas, announced in 1984 that he would be stepping down for health reasons. Kerry ran, and as in his 1982 race for Lieutenant Governor, he did not receive the endorsement of the party regulars at the state Democratic convention. Congressman James Shannon, a favorite of House Speaker Tip O'Neill, was the early favorite to win the nomination, and he \"won broad establishment support and led in early polling\". Again as in 1982, however, Kerry prevailed in a close primary.\nIn his general election campaign, Kerry promised to mix liberalism with tight budget controls. He defeated Republican Ray Shamie despite a nationwide landslide for the re-election of Republican President Ronald Reagan, for whom Massachusetts voted by a narrow margin. In his victory speech, Kerry asserted that his win meant that the people of Massachusetts \"emphatically reject the politics of selfishness and the notion that women must be treated as second-class citizens\".\nTsongas resigned on January 2, 1985, one day before the end of his term. Dukakis appointed Kerry to fill the vacancy, giving him seniority over other new senators who were sworn in on January 3, the scheduled start of their new terms.\nU.S. Senate (1985\u20132013).\nIran\u2013Contra hearings.\nOn April 18, 1985, a few months after taking his Senate seat, Kerry and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa traveled to Nicaragua and met the country's president, Daniel Ortega. Although Ortega had won internationally certified elections, the trip was criticized because Ortega and his leftist Sandinista government had strong ties to Cuba and the USSR and were accused of human rights abuses. The Sandinista government was opposed by the right-wing CIA-backed rebels known as the Contras. While in Nicaragua, Kerry and Harkin talked to people on both sides of the conflict. Through the senators, Ortega offered a cease-fire agreement in exchange for the U.S. dropping support of the Contras. The offer was denounced by the Reagan administration as a \"propaganda initiative\" designed to influence a House vote on a $14million Contra aid package, but Kerry said \"I am willing... to take the risk in the effort to put to test the good faith of the Sandinistas.\" The House voted down the Contra aid, but Ortega flew to Moscow to accept a $200million loan the next day, which in part prompted the House to pass a larger $27million aid package six weeks later.\nMeanwhile, Kerry's staff began their own investigations and, on October 14, issued a report that exposed illegal activities on the part of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who had set up a private network involving the National Security Council and the CIA to deliver military equipment to right-wing Nicaraguan rebels (Contras). In effect, North and certain members of the President's administration were accused by Kerry's report of illegally funding and supplying armed militants without the authorization of Congress. Kerry's staff investigation, based on a year-long inquiry and interviews with fifty unnamed sources, is said to raise \"serious questions about whether the United States has abided by the law in its handling of the contras over the past three years\".\nThe Kerry Committee report found that \"the Contra drug links included... payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies.\" The U.S. State Department paid over $806,000 to known drug traffickers to carry humanitarian assistance to the Contras. Kerry's findings provoked little reaction in the media and official Washington.\nThe Kerry report was a precursor to the Iran\u2013Contra affair. On May 4, 1989, North was convicted of charges relating to the Iran/Contra controversy, including three felonies. On September 16, 1991, however, North's convictions were overturned on appeal.\nGeorge H. W. Bush administration.\nOn November 15, 1988, at a businessmen's breakfast in East Lynn, Massachusetts, Kerry made a joke about then-President-elect George H. W. Bush and his running mate, saying \"if Bush is shot, the Secret Service has orders to shoot Dan Quayle.\" He apologized the following day.\nDuring their investigation of General Manuel Noriega, the \"de facto\" ruler of Panama, Kerry's staff found reason to believe that the Pakistan-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) had facilitated Noriega's drug trafficking and money laundering. This led to a separate inquiry into BCCI, and as a result, banking regulators shut down BCCI in 1991. In December 1992, Kerry and Senator Hank Brown, a Republican from Colorado, released \"The BCCI Affair\", a report on the BCCI scandal. The report showed that the bank was crooked and was working with terrorists, including Abu Nidal. It blasted the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, the Customs Service, the Federal Reserve Bank, as well as influential lobbyists and the CIA.\nKerry was criticized by some Democrats for having pursued his own party members, including former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, although Republicans said he should have pressed against some Democrats even harder. The BCCI scandal was later turned over to the Manhattan District Attorney's office.\nPrecursors to presidential bid.\nIn 1996, Kerry faced a difficult re-election fight against Governor William Weld, a popular Republican incumbent who had been re-elected in 1994 with 71% of the vote. The race was covered nationwide as one of the most closely watched Senate races that year. Kerry and Weld held several debates and negotiated a campaign spending cap of $6.9million at Kerry's Beacon Hill townhouse. Both candidates spent more than the cap, with each camp accusing the other of being first to break the agreement. During the campaign, Kerry spoke briefly at the 1996 Democratic National Convention. Kerry won re-election with 52 percent to Weld's 45 percent.\nIn the 2000 presidential election, Kerry found himself close to being chosen as the vice presidential running mate.\nA release from the presidential campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Al Gore listed Kerry on the short list to be selected as the vice-presidential nominee, along with North Carolina Senator John Edwards, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt, New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. Gore ultimately chose Lieberman.\n\"You get stuck in Iraq\" controversy.\nOn October 30, 2006, Kerry was a headline speaker at a campaign rally being held for Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. Speaking to an audience composed mainly of college students, Kerry said, \"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.\"\nThe day after he made the remark, leaders from both sides of the political spectrum criticized Kerry's remarks, which he said were a botched joke. Republicans including President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain and then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, said that Kerry's comments were insulting to American military forces fighting in Iraq. Democratic Representative Harold Ford Jr. called on Kerry to apologize.\nKerry initially stated: \"I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy\". Kerry also responded to criticism from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.\nKerry said that he had intended the remark as a jab at President Bush, and described the remarks as a \"botched joke\", having inadvertently left out the key word \"us\" (which would have been, \"If you don't, you get \"us\" stuck in Iraq\"), as well as leaving the phrase \"just ask President Bush\" off of the end of the sentence. In Kerry's prepared remarks, which he released during the ensuing media frenzy, the corresponding line was \"...you end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush\". He also said that from the context of the speech which, prior to the \"stuck in Iraq\" line, made several specific references to Bush and elements of his biography, that Kerry was referring to President Bush and not American troops in general.\nAfter two days of media coverage, citing a desire not to be a diversion, Kerry apologized to those who took offense at what he called the misinterpretation of his comment.\nAfghanistan and Pakistan.\nA \"Washington Post\" report in May 2011 stated that Kerry \"has emerged in the past few years as an important envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan during times of crisis\", as he undertook another trip to the two countries. The killing of Osama bin Laden \"has generated perhaps the most important crossroads yet\", the report continued, as the senator spoke at a press conference and prepared to fly from Kabul to Pakistan. Among matters discussed during the May visit to Pakistan, under the general rubric of \"recalibrating\" the bilateral relationship, Kerry sought and retrieved from the Pakistanis the tail-section of the U.S. helicopter which had had to be abandoned at Abbottabad during the bin Laden strike. In 2013, Kerry met with Pakistan's army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to discuss the peace process with the Taliban in Afghanistan.\nVoting record.\nOverall.\nMost analyses place Kerry's voting record on the left within the Senate Democratic caucus. During the 2004 presidential election he was portrayed as a staunch liberal by conservative groups and the Bush campaign, who often noted that in 2003 Kerry was rated the top Senate liberal by \"National Journal\". However, that rating was based only upon voting on legislation within that past year. In fact, in terms of career voting records, the \"National Journal\" found that Kerry is the 11th most liberal member of the Senate. Most analyses find that Kerry is at least slightly more liberal than the typical Democratic Senator. Kerry has stated that he opposes privatizing Social Security, supports abortion rights for adult women and minors, supports same-sex marriage, opposes capital punishment except for terrorists, supports most gun control laws, and is generally a supporter of trade agreements. In some of these, as in the case of abortion, Kerry distinguishes his personal views as in line with his Catholic faith, but believes that separation of church and state demands that he not legislate his religious beliefs upon those who do not share those beliefs. Kerry supported the North American Free Trade Agreement and Most Favored Nation status for China, but opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement.\nIn July 1997, Kerry joined his Senate colleagues in voting against ratification of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming without greenhouse gas emissions limits on nations deemed developing, including India and China. Since then, Kerry has attacked President Bush, charging him with opposition to international efforts to combat global warming.\nOn October 1, 2008, Kerry voted for Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, also known as the TARP bailout.\nIraq.\nIn the lead up to the Iraq War, Kerry said on October 9, 2002; \"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.\" Bush relied on that resolution in ordering the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Kerry also gave a January 23, 2003, speech to Georgetown University saying \"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator; leading an oppressive regime he presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.\" Kerry did, however, warn that the administration should exhaust its diplomatic avenues before launching war: \"Mr. President, do not rush to war, take the time to build the coalition, because it's not winning the war that's hard, it's winning the peace that's hard.\"\nAfter the invasion of Iraq, when no weapons of mass destruction were found, Kerry strongly criticized Bush, contending that he had misled the country: \"When the President of the United States looks at you and tells you something, there should be some trust.\"\nLibya.\nIn 2011, Kerry supported American military action in Libya.\nLeadership.\nKerry chaired the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs from 1991 to 1993. The committee's report, which Kerry endorsed, stated there was \"no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia\". In 1994 the Senate passed a resolution, sponsored by Kerry and fellow Vietnam veteran John McCain, that called for an end to the existing trade embargo against Vietnam; it was intended to pave the way for normalization. In 1995, President Bill Clinton normalized diplomatic relations with the country of Vietnam.\nKerry was the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 1987 to 1989. He was reelected to the Senate in 1990, 1996 (after winning re-election against the then-Governor of Massachusetts Republican William Weld), 2002, and 2008. In January 2009, Kerry replaced Joe Biden as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.\nAs a role model for campus leaders across the nation and strong advocate for global development, Kerry was honored by the Millennium Campus Network (MCN) as a Global Generation Award winner in 2011.\nCommittee assignments.\nDuring his tenure, Kerry served on four Senate committees and nine subcommittees:\nSeniority.\nFrom the beginning of the 113th United States Congress until his resignation, Kerry ranked as the 7th most senior U.S. Senator. Due to the longevity of Ted Kennedy's service, Kerry was the most senior \"junior Senator\" in the 111th United States Congress. On Tuesday, August 25, 2009, Kerry became the senior senator from Massachusetts following Ted Kennedy's death.\nSponsorship of legislation.\nAreas of concern in the bills Kerry introduced into the Senate included small business concerns, education, terrorism, veterans' and POW/MIA issues, and marine resource protection. A full list of Kerry's sponsored legislation was available on his Senate web site.\nDuring his Senate career, Kerry was primary sponsor of the following bills (excluding resolutions and amendments sponsored). This table does not count bills which Kerry co-sponsored.\nA chronological list of various bills and resolutions sponsored by Kerry follows.\n2004 presidential campaign.\nIn the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries, John Kerry defeated several Democratic rivals, including Sen. John Edwards (D-North Carolina), former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and retired Army General Wesley Clark. His victory in the Iowa caucuses is widely believed to be the tipping point where Kerry revived his sagging campaign in New Hampshire and the February 3, 2004, primary states like Arizona, South Carolina and New Mexico. Kerry then went on to win landslide victories in Nevada and Wisconsin. Kerry thus won the Democratic nomination to run for President of the United States against incumbent George W. Bush. On July 6, 2004, he announced his selection of John Edwards as his running mate. Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who was Kerry's 2004 campaign adviser, wrote an article in \"Time\" magazine claiming that after the election, Kerry had said that he wished he had never picked Edwards, and that the two have since stopped speaking to each other. In a subsequent appearance on ABC's \"This Week\", Kerry refused to respond to Shrum's allegation, calling it a \"ridiculous waste of time\".\nDuring his bid to be elected president in 2004, Kerry frequently criticized President George W. Bush for starting the Iraq War. While Kerry had initially voted in support of authorizing President Bush to use force in dealing with Saddam Hussein, he voted against an $87billion supplemental appropriations bill to pay for the subsequent war. His statement on March 16, 2004, \"I actually did vote for the $87billion before I voted against it\", helped the Bush campaign to paint him as a flip-flopper and has been cited as contributing to Kerry's defeat.\nOn November 3, 2004, Kerry conceded the race. Kerry won 59.03 million votes, or 48.3 percent of the popular vote; Bush won 62.04 million votes, or 50.7 percent of the popular vote. Kerry carried states with a total of 252 electoral votes. One Kerry elector voted for Kerry's running mate, Edwards, so in the final tally Kerry had 251 electoral votes to Bush's 286. He was the first Democrat since Michael Dukakis in 1988 to lose the popular vote in a presidential election, and until Kamala Harris's loss in 2024, he was the most recent Democrat to do so.\nSubsequent presidential-election activities.\nImmediately after the 2004 election, some Democrats mentioned Kerry as a possible contender for the 2008 Democratic nomination. His brother had said such a campaign was \"conceivable\", and Kerry himself reportedly said at a farewell party for his 2004 campaign staff, \"There's always another four years\".\nKerry established a separate political action committee, Keeping America's Promise, which declared as its mandate \"A Democratic Congress will restore accountability to Washington and help change a disastrous course in Iraq\", and raised money and channeled contributions to Democratic candidates in state and federal races. Through Keeping America's Promise in 2005, Kerry raised over $5.5million for other Democrats up and down the ballot. Through his campaign account and his political action committee, the Kerry campaign operation generated more than $10million for various party committees and 179 candidates for the U.S. House, Senate, state and local offices in 42 states focusing on the midterm elections during the 2006 election cycle. \"Cumulatively, John Kerry has done as much if not more than any other individual senator\", Hassan Nemazee, the national finance chairman of the DSCC said.\nOn January 10, 2008, Kerry endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama for president. He was mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate for Senator Obama, although fellow Senator Joe Biden was eventually chosen. After Biden's acceptance of the vice presidential nomination, speculation arose that John Kerry would be a candidate for Secretary of State in the Obama administration. However, Senator Hillary Clinton was offered the position.\nDuring the 2012 Obama reelection campaign, Kerry participated in one-on-one debate prep with the president, impersonating the Republican candidate Mitt Romney.\nSecretary of State (2013\u20132017).\nNomination and confirmation.\nOn December 15, 2012, several news outlets reported that President Barack Obama would nominate Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, after Susan Rice, widely seen as Obama's preferred choice, withdrew her name from consideration citing a politicized confirmation process following criticism of her response to the 2012 Benghazi attack. On December 21, Obama proposed the nomination, which received positive commentary. His confirmation hearing took place on January 24, 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the same panel where he first testified in 1971. The committee unanimously voted to approve him on January 29, 2013, and the same day the full Senate confirmed him on a vote of 94\u20133. In a letter to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Kerry announced his resignation from the Senate effective February 1.\nTenure.\nKerry was sworn in as Secretary of State on February 1, 2013.\nWhile serving as the Secretary of State, Kerry spoke in the French language on several occasions in his official capacity.\nAfter six months of rigorous diplomacy within the Middle East, Kerry was able to have Israeli and Palestinian negotiators agree to start the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks. Senior U.S. officials stated the two sides were able to meet on July 30, 2013, at the State Department without American mediators following a dinner the previous evening hosted by Kerry.\nOn September 27, 2013, he met with the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the P5+1 and Iran summit, which eventually led to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. It was the highest-level direct contact between the United States and Iran in the last six years, and made him the first U.S. Secretary of State to have met with his Iranian counterpart since 1979 Iranian Revolution.\nIn the State Department, Kerry quickly earned a reputation \"for being aloof, keeping to himself, and not bothering to read staff memos\". Career State Department officials complained that power became too centralized under Kerry's leadership, which slowed department operations when Kerry was on frequent overseas trips. Others in State described Kerry as having \"a kind of diplomatic attention deficit disorder\" as he shifted from topic to topic instead of focusing on long-term strategy. When asked whether he was traveling too much, he responded, \"Hell no. I'm not slowing down.\" Despite Kerry's early achievements, morale at State was lower than under Hillary Clinton, according to department employees. However, after Kerry's first six months in the State Department, a Gallup poll found he had high approval ratings among Americans as Secretary of State. After a year, another poll showed Kerry's favorability continued to rise. Less than two years into Kerry's term, the Foreign Policy Magazine's 2014 Ivory Tower survey of international relations scholars asked, \"Who was the most effective U.S. Secretary of State in the past 50 years?\"; John Kerry and Lawrence Eagleburger tied for 11th place out of the 15 confirmed Secretaries of State in that period.\nIn January 2014, having met with Vatican Secretary of State Archbishop Pietro Parolin, Kerry said: \"We touched on just about every major issue that we are both working on, that are issues of concern to all of us. First of all, we talked at great length about Syria, and I was particularly appreciative for the Archbishop's raising this issue, and equally grateful for the Holy Father's comments\u00a0\u2013 the Pope's comments yesterday regarding his support for the GenevaII process. We welcome that support. It is very important to have broad support, and I know that the Pope is particularly concerned about the massive numbers of displaced human beings and the violence that has taken over 130,000 lives.\"\nKerry expressed support for Israel's right to defend itself during the 2014 Israel\u2013Gaza conflict.\nKerry said the United States supported the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen because Saudi Arabia, an ally, was threatened \"very directly\" by the takeover of neighboring Yemen by the Houthis, but noted that the United States would not reflexively support Saudi Arabia's proxy wars against Iran.\nOn December 28, 2016, soon after United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 passed 14\u20130 with the U.S. abstaining, Kerry joined the rest of the U.N. Security Council in strongly criticizing Israel's settlement policies in a speech. His speech and criticisms met negative reactions from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while UK Prime Minister Theresa May distanced the UK from Kerry's strongly worded speech in what appeared to be an attempt to build bridges with the incoming Trump administration. Kerry's speech received positive reactions from Arab nations, but some criticized his remarks as too little, too late from the outgoing administration.\nSyria.\nFollowing the August 21, 2013, chemical weapons attack on the Ghouta suburbs of Damascus attributed to Syrian government forces, Kerry became a leading advocate for the use of military force against the Syrian government for what he called \"a despot's brutal and flagrant use of chemical weapons\".\nOn September 9, in response to a reporter's question about whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could avert a military strike, Kerry said \"He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that. But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done, obviously.\" This unscripted remark initiated a process that would lead to Syria agreeing to relinquish and destroy its chemical weapons arsenal, as Russia treated Kerry's statement as a serious proposal. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia would work \"immediately\" to convince Syria relinquish and destroy its large chemical weapons arsenal. Syria quickly welcomed this proposal and on September 14, the UN formally accepted Syria's application to join the convention banning chemical weapons, and separately, the U.S. and Russia agreed on a plan to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons by the middle of 2014, leading Kerry to declare on July 20, 2014: \"we struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out\". On September 28, the UN Security Council passed a resolution ordering the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons and condemning the August 21 Ghouta attack.\nLatin America.\nIn a speech before the Organization of American States in November 2013, Kerry remarked that the era of the Monroe Doctrine was over. He went on to explain, \"The relationship that we seek and that we have worked hard to foster is not about a United States declaration about how and when it will intervene in the affairs of other American states. It's about all of our countries viewing one another as equals, sharing responsibilities, cooperating on security issues, and adhering not to doctrine, but to the decisions that we make as partners to advance the values and the interests that we share.\"\nEnvironmentalism.\nIn April 2016, he signed the Paris Climate Accords at the United Nations in New York.\nOn November 11, 2016, Kerry became the first Secretary of State and highest-ranking U.S. official to date to visit Antarctica. Kerry spent two days on the continent meeting with researchers and staying overnight at McMurdo Station.\nIn 1994, Kerry led opposition to continued funding for the Integral Fast Reactor, which resulted in the end of funding for the project. However, in light of increasing concerns regarding climate change, in 2017 Kerry reversed his position on nuclear power, saying \"Given this challenge we face today, and given the progress of fourth generation nuclear: go for it. No other alternative, zero emissions.\"\nGlobal Connect initiative.\nIn September 2015, the U.S. Department of State unveiled a new initiative called \"Global Connect\" which sought to provide internet access to more than 1.5 billion people around the world within five years. In 2016, in partnership with OPIC, Kerry announced an investment of $171million to enable \"a low-cost and rapidly scalable wireless broadband network in India\". OPIC's financing is aimed at helping its Indian Partner, Tikona Digital Networks, to provide Internet through wireless technology.\nOut of government (2017\u20132021).\nKerry retired from his diplomatic work following the end of the Obama administration on January 20, 2017. He did not attend Donald Trump's inauguration on that day, and the following day took part in the 2017 Women's March in Washington, D.C.\nKerry has taken a strong stand against Trump policies and joined in filing a brief arguing against Trump's executive order banning entry of persons from seven Muslim countries. In November 2018, in a \"Guardian Live\" conversation with Andrew Rawnsley, sponsored by \"The Guardian\" at London's Central Hall, Kerry discussed several issues which have developed further since his tenure as Secretary of State, including migration into Europe and climate change.\nOn December 5, 2019, Kerry endorsed Joe Biden's bid for the Democratic nomination for president, saying \"He'll be ready on day one to put back together the country and the world that Donald Trump has broken apart\" and asserting that \"Joe will defeat Donald Trump next November. He's the candidate with the wisdom and standing to fix what Trump has broken, to restore our place in the world, and improve the lives of working people here at home.\"\nFollowing retirement from government service, Kerry signed an agreement with Simon & Schuster for publishing his planned memoirs, dealing with his life and career in government. In September 2018, he published \"Every Day Is Extra\".\nLeaked audiotape.\nOn April 25, 2021, \"The New York Times\" published content from a leaked audiotape of a three-hour taped conversation between economist Saeed Leylaz and Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. The taped conversation was connected to an oral history project, known as \"In the Islamic Republic the military field rules\", which documents the work of Iran's current administration. The tape was obtained by the London-based news channel Iran International.\nIn the tape, which the \"Times\" referred to as \"extraordinary\", Zarif reveals that then-Secretary of State Kerry told him that Israel attacked Iranian assets in Syria, \"at least 200 times\". Although the tape has not been verified, the spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry did not deny its validity.\nNineteen Republican senators signed a letter asking President Biden to investigate Zarif's claim. On April 27, 2021, Republicans called on Kerry to resign from the Biden administration's National Security Council. In a tweet, Kerry denied Zarif's account, writing, \"I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false. This never happened \u2014 either when I was Secretary of State or since.\"\nSpecial Presidential Envoy for Climate (2021\u20132024).\nOn November 23, 2020, President-elect Joe Biden's transition team announced that Kerry would be taking a full-time position in the administration, serving as a special envoy for climate; in this role he will be a principal on the National Security Council. Kerry assumed office on January 20, 2021, following Biden's inauguration.\nClimate cooperation with China.\nIn July 2023, John Kerry visited China for advance climate cooperation. The main achievement of the visit was some progress in the fields of: \"methane reduction commitments; reducing China's reliance on coal; China's objections to trade restrictions on solar panel and battery components; and climate finance.\" This was obtained despite many currently existing obstacles to cooperation. The visit was made in the middle of the 2023 Asia heat wave that set a new record of in Sanbu, Xinjiang, China, which Kerry mentioned in particular.\nClimate cooperation with India.\nAt the end of July 2023, John Kerry visited India. Among others he declared, the US will be committed to the target of delivering 100 billion dollars for climate action to low income countries and no future US president can retreat from climate commitment. He criticized Donald Trump for leaving the Paris agreement before.\nClimate cooperation with countries in the Middle East.\nIn June 2023, Kerry made visits to Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. In Israel, he emphasized the need for climate legislation to reach climate targets and reached an agreement about the renewal of \"Memorandum of understanding between Israel and the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Israel is one of the few developed countries which have still not approved a climate law and lags behind other OECD countries in climate action. Israeli environmental protection minister Idit Silman said that Israel intended to go to COP28 \"with an ambitious and applicable climate law and put the State of Israel on the same level as the developed countries of the OECD.\"\nDeparture.\nOn January 13, 2024, at least three sources close to Kerry revealed that he would step down as U.S. climate envoy by the upcoming spring. He told the \"Financial Times\" he planned to stay active in the climate finance space. He officially resigned from his position on March 6, 2024.\nPersonal and family life.\nAncestry.\nKerry's paternal ancestors came from the Fr\u00e4nkel family, which owned a textile factory in Neustadt, Upper Silesia (now Prudnik, Poland), founded by Samuel Fr\u00e4nkel. The Fr\u00e4nkels originated from Hotzenplotz, Austria (now Osoblaha, Czech Republic) and Z\u00fclz, Prussia (now Bia\u0142a Prudnicka, Poland). Kerry's paternal great-grandmother, Mathilda Fr\u00e4nkel, was born in Oberglogau (now G\u0142og\u00f3wek, near Prudnik) and married Benedikt Kohn from Bennisch (now Horn\u00ed Bene\u0161ov). His grandparents, shoe businessman Frederick A. \"Fred\" Kerry and musician Ida L\u00f6we, immigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the U.S. Fred, his wife, and his brother converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1901, and changed their names from Kohn to Kerry. Ida was of remote ancestry of Rabbi Sinai Loew of Worms, brother of Judah Loew ben Bezalel. Fred and Ida Kerry emigrated to the United States in 1905, living at first in Chicago and eventually moving to Brookline, Massachusetts, by 1915. According to \"The New York Times\", \"[the] brother and sister of John Kerry's paternal grandmother, Otto and Jenni Lowe, died in concentration camps\". Kerry's Jewish ancestry was publicly revealed during his 2004 presidential campaign; he has stated that he was unaware of it until a reporter informed him of it in 2003.\nKerry's maternal ancestors were of Scottish and English descent, and his maternal grandparents were James Grant Forbes II of the Forbes family and Margaret Tyndal Winthrop of the Dudley\u2013Winthrop family. Margaret's paternal grandfather Robert Charles Winthrop served as the 22nd Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Robert's father was Governor Thomas Lindall Winthrop. Thomas' father John Still Winthrop was a great-great-grandson of Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop and great-grandson of Governor Thomas Dudley. Through his mother, Kerry is a first cousin once removed of French politician Brice Lalonde.\nMarriages and children.\nKerry was married to Julia Thorne in 1970, and they had two daughters together: documentary filmmaker Alexandra Kerry (born September 5, 1973) and physician Vanessa Kerry (born December 31, 1976).\nAlexandra was born days before Kerry began law school. In 1982, Julia asked Kerry for a separation while she was suffering from severe depression. They were divorced on July 25, 1988, and the marriage was formally annulled in 1997. \"After 14 years as a political wife, I associated politics only with anger, fear and loneliness\", she wrote in \"A Change of Heart\", her book about depression. Thorne later married Richard Charlesworth, an architect, and moved to Bozeman, Montana, where she became active in local environmental groups such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Thorne supported Kerry's 2004 presidential run. She died of cancer on April 27, 2006.\nKerry and his second wife\u2014Portuguese-born businesswoman and philanthropist Teresa Heinz, the widow of Kerry's late Pennsylvania Republican Senate colleague John Heinz\u2014were introduced to each other by Heinz at an Earth Day rally in 1990. Early the following year, Senator Heinz was killed in a plane crash near Lower Merion. Teresa has three sons from her marriage to Heinz, Henry John IV, Andr\u00e9, and Christopher. Heinz and Kerry were married on May 26, 1995, in Nantucket, Massachusetts.\nNet worth.\nThe \"Forbes 400\" survey estimated in 2004 that Teresa Heinz Kerry had a net worth of $750million. However, estimates have frequently varied, ranging from around $165million to as high as $3.2billion, according to a study in the \"Los Angeles Times\". Regardless of which figure is correct, Kerry was the wealthiest U.S. Senator while serving in the Senate. Independent of Heinz, Kerry is wealthy in his own right, and is the beneficiary of at least four trusts inherited from Forbes family relatives, including his mother, Rosemary Forbes Kerry, who died in 2002. \"Forbes\" magazine (named for the Forbes family of publishers, unrelated to Kerry) estimated that if elected, and if Heinz family assets were included, Kerry would have been the third-richest U.S. president in history, when adjusted for inflation. This assessment was based on Heinz's and Kerry's combined assets, but the couple signed a prenuptial agreement that keeps their assets separate. Kerry's financial disclosure form for 2011 put his personal assets in the range of $230,000,000 to $320,000,000, including the assets of his spouse and any dependent children. This included slightly more than $3,000,000 worth of H. J. Heinz Company assets, which increased in value by over $600,000 in 2013 when Berkshire Hathaway announced their intention to purchase the company.\nIn April 2017, Kerry purchased an 18-acre property on the northwest corner of Martha's Vineyard overlooking Vineyard Sound in the town of Chilmark, Massachusetts. The property is located in Seven Gates Farm and according to property records, cost $11.75million for the seven bedroom home.\nReligious beliefs.\nKerry is a Roman Catholic, and is said to have carried a religious rosary, a prayer book, and a St. Christopher medal (the patron saint of travelers) when he campaigned. Discussing his faith, Kerry said: \"I thought of being a priest. I was very religious while at school in Switzerland. I was an altar boy and prayed all the time. I was very centered around the Mass and the church.\" He also said that the Letters of Paul (Apostle Paul) moved him the most, stating that they taught him to \"not feel sorry for myself\".\nKerry told \"Christianity Today\" in October 2004:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I'm a Catholic and I practice, but at the same time I have an open-mindedness to many other expressions of spirituality that come through different religions... I've spent some time reading and thinking about religion and trying to study it, and I've arrived at not so much a sense of the differences, but a sense of the similarities in so many ways.\nHe said that he believed that the Torah, the Quran, and the Bible all share a fundamental story which connects with readers.\nHealth.\nIn 2003, Kerry was diagnosed with and successfully treated for prostate cancer. On May 31, 2015, Kerry broke his right leg in a biking accident in Scionzier, France, and was flown to Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital for recovery. MGH Hip and Knee Replacement Orthopaedic Surgeon Dr. Dennis Burke, who had met Kerry in France and had accompanied him in the plane from France to Boston, set Kerry's right leg on Tuesday, June 2, in a four-hour operation.\nAthletics and sailing.\nIn addition to the sports he played at Yale, Kerry is described by \"Sports Illustrated\", among others, as an \"avid cyclist\", primarily riding on a road bike. Prior to his presidential bid, Kerry had participated in several long-distance rides. During his many campaigns, he was reported to have visited bicycle stores in both his home state and elsewhere. His staff requested recumbent stationary bikes for his hotel rooms. He has also been a snowboarder, windsurfer, and sailor.\nThe \"Boston Herald\" reported on July 23, 2010, that Kerry commissioned construction on a new $7million yacht (a Friendship 75) in New Zealand and moored it in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where the Friendship yacht company is based. The article claimed this allowed him to avoid paying Massachusetts taxes on the property including approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $500. On July 27, Kerry stated he would voluntarily pay $500,000 in Massachusetts taxes on his yacht.\nHonors.\nJohn Kerry was awarded:\nHonorary degrees.\nJohn Kerry has received several honorary degrees in recognition of his service to the United States, These include:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["5122699", "1297662", "21650"], "permutation_1": ["5122699", "1297662", "21650"], "permutation_2": ["1297662", "5122699", "21650"], "permutation_3": ["1297662", "21650", "5122699"]}
{"id": "3hop1__41219_71250_135051", "docs_added": {"37073": "Civil disobedience\nNonviolent disobedience of the law\nCivil disobedience is the active and professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders, or commands of a government (or any other authority). By some definitions, civil disobedience has to be nonviolent to be called \"civil\". Hence, civil disobedience is sometimes equated with peaceful protests or nonviolent resistance. Henry David Thoreau's essay \"Resistance to Civil Government\", first published in 1849 and then published posthumously in 1866 as \"Civil Disobedience\", popularized the term in the US, although the concept itself was practiced long before this work. \nVarious forms of civil disobedience have been used by prominent activists, such as American women's suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony in the late 19th century, Egyptian nationalist Saad Zaghloul during the 1910s, and Indian nationalist Mahatma Gandhi in 1920s British India as part of his leadership of the Indian independence movement. Martin Luther King Jr.'s and James Bevel's peaceful nonviolent protests during the civil rights movement in the 1960s United States sometimes contained important aspects of civil disobedience. Although civil disobedience is rarely justifiable in court, King regarded civil disobedience to be a display and practice of reverence for law: \"Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law.\"\nHistory.\nAn early depiction of civil disobedience is in Sophocles' play \"Antigone\", in which Antigone, one of the daughters of former King of Thebes, Oedipus, defies Creon, the current King of Thebes, who is trying to stop her from giving her brother Polynices a proper burial. She gives a stirring speech in which she tells him that she must obey her conscience rather than human law. She is not at all afraid of the death he threatens her with (and eventually carries out), but she is afraid of how her conscience will smite her if she does not do this.\nConrad Grebel and Anabaptists advocated civil disobedience to oppression. \u00c9tienne de La Bo\u00e9tie's thought developed in his work \"Discours de la servitude volontaire ou le Contr'un\" (1552) was also taken up by many movements of civil disobedience, which drew from the concept of rebellion to voluntary servitude the foundation of its instrument of struggle. \u00c9tienne de La Bo\u00e9tie was one of the first to theorize and propose the strategy of non-cooperation, and thus a form of nonviolent disobedience, as a really effective weapon.\nIn the lead-up to the Glorious Revolution in Britain\u2014when the 1689 Bill of Rights was documented, the last Catholic monarch was deposed, and male and female joint-co-monarchs elevated\u2014the English Midland Enlightenment developed a manner of voicing objection to a law viewed as illegitimate and then taking the consequences of the law. (For example, they might refuse to swear allegiance to the king, and, as a consequence, accept the prison sentence legally and normally meted out to people who refused to take this oath.) This was focused on the illegitimacy of laws claimed to be \"divine\" in origin, both the \"divine rights of kings\" and \"divine rights of man\", and the legitimacy of laws acknowledged to be made by human beings.\nFollowing the Peterloo massacre of 1819, the poet Percy Shelley wrote the political poem \"The Mask of Anarchy\" later that year, that begins with the images of what he thought to be the unjust forms of authority of his time\u2014and then imagines the stirrings of a new form of social action. According to Ashton Nichols, it is perhaps the first modern statement of the principle of nonviolent protest. A version was taken up by the author Henry David Thoreau in his essay \"Civil Disobedience\", and later by Gandhi in his doctrine of \"Satyagraha\". Gandhi's Satyagraha was partially influenced and inspired by Shelley's nonviolence in protest and political action. In particular, it is known that Gandhi often quoted Shelley's \"Mask of Anarchy\" to vast audiences during the campaign for a free India.\nThoreau's 1849 essay \"Civil Disobedience\", originally titled \"Resistance to Civil Government\", has had a wide influence on many later practitioners of civil disobedience. The driving idea behind the essay is that citizens are morally responsible for their support of aggressors, even when such support is required by law. In the essay, Thoreau explained his reasons for having refused to pay taxes as an act of protest against slavery and against the Mexican\u2013American War. He writes,\nIf I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. See what gross inconsistency is tolerated. I have heard some of my townsmen say, \"I should like to have them order me out to help put down an insurrection of the slaves, or to march to Mexico;\u2014see if I would go;\" and yet these very men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute.\nBy the 1850s, a range of minority groups in the United States: African Americans, Jews, Seventh Day Baptists, Catholics, anti-prohibitionists, racial egalitarians, and others\u2014employed civil disobedience to combat a range of legal measures and public practices that to them promoted ethnic, religious, and racial discrimination. Pro Public and typically peaceful resistance to political power remained an integral tactic in modern American minority rights politics.\nIn Ireland starting from 1879 the Irish \"Land War\" intensified when Irish nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell, in a speech in Ennis proposed that when dealing with tenants who take farms where another tenant was evicted, rather than resorting to violence, everyone in the locality should shun them. Following this Captain Charles Boycott, the land agent of an absentee landlord in County Mayo, Ireland, was subject to social ostracism organized by the Irish Land League in 1880. Boycott attempted to evict eleven tenants from his land. While Parnell's speech did not refer to land agents or landlords, the tactic was applied to Boycott when the alarm was raised about the evictions. Despite the short-term economic hardship to those undertaking this action, Boycott soon found himself isolated \u2013 his workers stopped work in the fields and stables, as well as in his house. Local businessmen stopped trading with him, and the local postman refused to deliver mail. The movement spread throughout Ireland and gave rise to the term to Boycott, and eventually led to legal reform and support for Irish independence.\nEgypt saw a massive implementation on a nation-wide movement starting 1914 and peaking in 1919 as the Egyptian Revolution of 1919. This was then adopted by other peoples who campaigned against European colonial rule from 1920 onwards. Zaghloul Pasha, considered the mastermind behind this massive civil disobedience, was a native middle-class, Azhar graduate, political activist, judge, parliamentary and ex-cabinet minister whose leadership brought Christian and Muslim communities together as well as women into the massive protests. Along with his companions of Wafd Party, who have achieved an independence of Egypt and a first constitution in 1923.\nCivil disobedience is one of the many ways people have revolted against what they deem to be unfair laws. It has been used in many nonviolent resistance movements in India (Mahatma Gandhi's campaigns for independence from the British Empire), in Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution, in early stages of the Bangladeshi independence movement against Pakistani colonialism and in East Germany to oust their Stalinist government. In South Africa during the leftist campaign against the far-right Apartheid regime, in the American civil rights movement against Jim Crow laws, in the Singing Revolution to bring independence to the Baltic countries from the Soviet Union, and more recently with the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia, the 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2013\u20132014 Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine, the 2016\u20132017 Candlelight Revolution in South Korea, and the 2020\u20132021 Belarusian protests, among many other various movements worldwide.\nEtymology.\nHenry David Thoreau's 1849 essay \"Resistance to Civil Government\" was eventually renamed \"Essay on Civil Disobedience\". After his landmark lectures were published in 1866, the term began to appear in numerous sermons and lectures relating to slavery and the war in Mexico. Thus, by the time Thoreau's lectures were first published under the title \"Civil Disobedience\", in 1866, four years after his death, the term had achieved fairly widespread usage.\nIt has been argued that the term \"civil disobedience\" has always suffered from ambiguity and in modern times, become utterly debased. Marshall Cohen notes, \"It has been used to describe everything from bringing a test-case in the federal courts to taking aim at a federal official. Indeed, for Vice President Spiro Agnew it has become a code-word describing the activities of muggers, arsonists, draft evaders, campaign hecklers, campus militants, anti-war demonstrators, juvenile delinquents and political assassins.\"\nLeGrande writes that\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />the formulation of a single all-encompassing definition of the term is extremely difficult, if not impossible. In reviewing the voluminous literature on the subject, the student of civil disobedience rapidly finds himself surrounded by a maze of semantical problems and grammatical niceties. Like Alice in Wonderland, he often finds that specific terminology has no more (or no less) meaning than the individual orator intends it to have.\nHe encourages a distinction between lawful protest demonstration, nonviolent civil disobedience, and violent civil disobedience.\nIn a letter to P.\u00a0K. Rao, dated 10 September 1935, Gandhi disputes that his idea of civil disobedience was derived from the writings of Thoreau:\nThe statement that I had derived my idea of Civil Disobedience from the writings of Thoreau is wrong. The resistance to authority in South Africa was well advanced before I got the essay\u00a0... When I saw the title of Thoreau's great essay, I began to use his phrase to explain our struggle to the English readers. But I found that even \"Civil Disobedience\" failed to convey the full meaning of the struggle. I therefore adopted the phrase \"Civil Resistance.\"\nTheories.\nIn seeking an active form of civil disobedience, one may choose to deliberately break certain laws, such as by forming a peaceful blockade or occupying a facility illegally, though sometimes violence has been known to occur. Often there is an expectation to be attacked or even beaten by the authorities. Protesters often undergo training in advance on how to react to arrest or to attack.\nCivil disobedience is usually defined as pertaining to a citizen's relation to the state and its laws, as distinguished from a constitutional impasse, in which two public agencies, especially two equally sovereign branches of government, conflict. For instance, if the head of government of a country were to refuse to enforce a decision of that country's highest court, it would not be civil disobedience, since the head of government would act in his or her capacity as public official rather than private citizen.\nThis definition is disputed by Thoreau's political philosophy on the conscience vs. the collective. The person is the final judge of right and wrong. More than this, since only people act, only a person can act unjustly. When the government knocks on the door, it is a person in the form of a postman or tax collector whose hand hits the wood. Before Thoreau's imprisonment, when a confused taxman had wondered aloud about how to handle his refusal to pay, Thoreau had advised, \"Resign\". If a man chose to be an agent of injustice, then Thoreau insisted on confronting him with the fact that he was making a choice. He admits that government may express the will of the majority but it may also express nothing more than the will of elite politicians. Even a good form of government is \"liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it\". If a government did express the voice of most people, this would not compel the obedience of those who disagree with what is said. The majority may be powerful but it is not necessarily right.\nIn his 1971 book, \"A Theory of Justice\", John Rawls described civil disobedience as \"a public, non-violent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law usually done with the aim of bringing about change in the law or policies of the government\".\nRonald Dworkin held that there are three types of civil disobedience:\nSome theories of civil disobedience hold that civil disobedience is only justified against governmental entities. Brownlee argues that disobedience in opposition to the decisions of non-governmental agencies such as trade unions, banks, and private universities can be justified if it reflects \"a larger challenge to the legal system that permits those decisions to be taken\". The same principle, she argues, applies to breaches of law in protest against international organizations and foreign governments.\nIt is usually recognized that lawbreaking, if it is not done publicly, at least must be publicly announced to constitute civil disobedience. But Stephen Eilmann argues that if it is necessary to disobey rules that conflict with morality, we might ask why disobedience should take the form of public civil disobedience rather than simply covert lawbreaking. If a lawyer wishes to help a client overcome legal obstacles to securing their natural rights, he might, for instance, find that assisting in fabricating evidence or committing perjury is more effective than open disobedience. This assumes that common morality does not have a prohibition on deceit in such situations. The Fully Informed Jury Association's publication \"A Primer for Prospective Jurors\" notes, \"Think of the dilemma faced by German citizens when Hitler's secret police demanded to know if they were hiding a Jew in their house.\" By this definition, civil disobedience could be traced back to the Book of Exodus, where Shiphrah and Puah refused a direct order of Pharaoh but misrepresented how they did it. (Exodus 1: 15\u201319)\nViolent vs. nonviolent.\nThere have been debates as to whether civil disobedience must necessarily be non-violent. \"Black's Law Dictionary\" includes nonviolence in its definition of civil disobedience. Christian Bay's encyclopedia article states that civil disobedience requires \"carefully chosen and legitimate means\", but holds that they do not have to be non-violent. It has been argued that, while both civil disobedience and civil rebellion are justified by appeal to constitutional defects, rebellion is much more destructive; therefore, the defects justifying rebellion must be much more serious than those justifying disobedience, and if one cannot justify civil rebellion, then one cannot justify a civil disobedient's use of force and violence and refusal to submit to arrest. Civil disobedients' refraining from violence is also said to help preserve society's tolerance of civil disobedience.\nThe philosopher H.\u00a0J. McCloskey argues that \"if violent, intimidatory, coercive disobedience is more effective, it is, other things being equal, more justified than less effective, nonviolent disobedience.\" In his best-selling \"Disobedience and Democracy: Nine Fallacies on Law and Order\", Howard Zinn takes a similar position; Zinn states that while the goals of civil disobedience are generally nonviolent,\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />in the inevitable tension accompanying the transition from a violent world to a non-violent one, the choice of means will almost never be pure, and will involve such complexities that the simple distinction between violence and non-violence does not suffice as a guide\u00a0... the very acts with which we seek to do good cannot escape the imperfections of the world we are trying to change.\nZinn rejects any \"easy and righteous dismissal of violence\", noting that Thoreau, the popularizer of the term civil disobedience, approved of the armed insurrection of John Brown. He also notes that some major civil disobedience campaigns which have been classified as non-violent, such as the Birmingham campaign, have actually included elements of violence.\nRevolutionary vs. non-revolutionary.\nNon-revolutionary civil disobedience is a simple disobedience of laws on the grounds that they are judged \"wrong\" by a person's conscience, or as part of an effort to render certain laws ineffective, to cause their repeal, or to exert pressure to get one's political wishes on some other issue. Revolutionary civil disobedience is more of an active attempt to overthrow a government (or to change cultural traditions, social customs or religious beliefs). Revolution does not have to be political, i.e. \"cultural revolution\", it simply implies sweeping and widespread change to a section of the social fabric. Gandhi's acts have been described as revolutionary civil disobedience. It has been claimed that the Hungarians under Ferenc De\u00e1k directed revolutionary civil disobedience against the Austrian government. Thoreau also wrote of civil disobedience accomplishing \"peaceable revolution\". Howard Zinn, Harvey Wheeler, and others have identified the right espoused in the US Declaration of Independence to \"alter or abolish\" an unjust government to be a principle of civil disobedience.\nCollective vs. solitary.\nThe earliest recorded incidents of collective civil disobedience took place during the Roman Empire. Unarmed Jews gathered in the streets to prevent the installation of pagan images in the Temple in Jerusalem. In modern times, some activists who commit civil disobedience as a group collectively refuse to sign bail until certain demands are met, such as favourable bail conditions, or the release of all the activists. This is a form of jail solidarity. There have also been many instances of solitary civil disobedience, such as that committed by Thoreau, but these sometimes go unnoticed. Thoreau, at the time of his arrest, was not yet a well-known author, and his arrest was not covered in any newspapers in the days, weeks and months after it happened. The tax collector who arrested him rose to higher political office, and Thoreau's essay was not published until after the end of the Mexican War.\nChoices.\nAction.\nCivil disobedients have chosen a variety of different illegal acts. Hugo A. Bedau writes,\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />There is a whole class of acts, undertaken in the name of civil disobedience, which, even if they were widely practiced, would in themselves constitute hardly more than a nuisance (e.g. trespassing at a nuclear-missile installation)\u00a0... Such acts are often just a harassment and, at least to the bystander, somewhat inane\u00a0... The remoteness of the connection between the disobedient act and the objectionable law lays such acts open to the charge of ineffectiveness and absurdity.\nBedau also notes, though, that the very harmlessness of such entirely symbolic illegal protests toward public policy goals may serve a propaganda purpose. Some civil disobedients, such as the proprietors of illegal medical cannabis dispensaries and Voice in the Wilderness, which brought medicine to Iraq without the permission of the US government, directly achieve a desired social goal (such as the provision of medication to the sick) while openly breaking the law. Julia Butterfly Hill lived in Luna, a -tall, 600-year-old California Redwood tree for 738 days, preventing its felling.\nIn cases where the criminalized behaviour is pure speech, civil disobedience can consist simply of engaging in the forbidden speech. An example is WBAI's broadcasting of the bit \"Filthy Words\" from a George Carlin comedy album, which eventually led to the 1978 Supreme Court case of \"FCC v. Pacifica Foundation\". Threatening government officials is a way to express defiance toward the government and unwillingness to stand for its policies. For example, a supporter of some tax deniers in New Hampshire, Edward and Elaine Brown, was arrested for allegedly telling the local city councillors to \"Wise up or die.\"\nMore generally, protesters of particular victimless crimes often see fit to openly commit that crime. Laws against public nudity, for instance, have been protested by going naked in public, and laws against cannabis consumption have been protested by openly possessing it and using it at cannabis rallies.\nSome forms of civil disobedience, such as illegal boycotts, refusals to pay taxes, draft dodging, distributed denial-of-service attacks, and sit-ins, make it more difficult for a system to function. In this way, they might be considered coercive; coercive disobedience has the effect of exposing the enforcement of laws and policies, and it has even operated as an aesthetic strategy in contemporary art practice. Brownlee notes that \"although civil disobedients are constrained in their use of coercion by their conscientious aim to engage in moral dialogue, nevertheless they may find it necessary to employ limited coercion to get their issue onto the table\". The Plowshares organization temporarily closed GCSB Waihopai by padlocking the gates and using sickles to deflate one of the large domes covering two satellite dishes.\nElectronic civil disobedience can include web site defacements, redirects, denial-of-service attacks, information theft and data leaks, illegal web site parodies, virtual sit-ins, and virtual sabotage. It is distinct from other kinds of hacktivism in that the perpetrator openly reveals his identity. Virtual actions rarely succeed in completely shutting down their targets, but they often generate media attention.\nDilemma actions are designed to create a \"response dilemma\" for public authorities \"by forcing them to either concede some public space to protesters or make themselves look absurd or heavy-handed by acting against the protest.\"\nResponse to punishment.\nAs civil disobedience is intentionally breaking the law, people engaging in civil disobedience can expect to be arrested, criminally charged, tried, and legally punished for breaking the law. Protestors have to make choices about how to respond to each of these results. \nAl Sharpton, a civil rights and social justice activist, says that civil disobedients \"must be prepared to say the cause is more important than my freedom\" and not incorrectly believe themselves to have legal immunity or feel a sense of entitlement to break laws without being subject to the ordinary legal punishments for breaking those laws. \nArrest strategies.\nSome disciplines of civil disobedience hold that the protester must submit to arrest and cooperate with the authorities. Others advocate falling limp or resisting arrest, especially when it will hinder the police from effectively responding to a mass protest.\nMany of the same decisions and principles that apply in other criminal investigations and arrests arise also in civil disobedience cases. For example, the suspect may need to decide whether to grant a consent search of his property and whether to talk to police officers. It is generally agreed within the legal community, and is often believed within the activist community, that a suspect's talking to criminal investigators can serve no useful purpose and may be harmful. Some civil disobedients are compelled to respond to investigators' questions, sometimes by a misunderstanding of the legal ramifications or a fear of seeming rude. Also, some civil disobedients seek to use the arrest as an opportunity to make an impression on the officers. Thoreau wrote,\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nTrial strategies.\nSome civil disobedients feel it is incumbent upon them to accept punishment because of their belief in the validity of the social contract, which is held to bind all to obey the laws that a government meeting certain standards of legitimacy has established, or else suffer the penalties set out in the law. Other civil disobedients who favour the existence of government still do not believe in the legitimacy of their particular government or do not believe in the legitimacy of a particular law it has enacted. Anarchistic civil disobedients do not believe in the legitimacy of any government, so see no need to accept punishment for a violation of criminal law.\nPleading guilty.\nAn important decision for civil disobedients is whether to plead guilty. There is much debate on this point, as some believe that it is a civil disobedient's duty to submit to the punishment prescribed by law, while others believe that defending oneself in court will increase the possibility of changing the unjust law. It has also been argued that either choice is compatible with the spirit of civil disobedience. ACT UP's Civil Disobedience Training handbook states that a civil disobedient who pleads guilty is essentially stating, \"Yes, I committed the act of which you accuse me. I don't deny it; in fact, I am proud of it. I feel I did the right thing by violating this particular law; I am guilty as charged\", but that pleading not guilty sends a message of, \"Guilt implies wrong-doing. I feel I have done no wrong. I may have violated some specific laws, but I am guilty of doing no wrong. I, therefore, plead not guilty.\" A plea of no contest is sometimes regarded as a compromise between the two. One defendant accused of illegally protesting nuclear power, when asked to enter his plea, stated, \"I plead for the beauty that surrounds us\"; this is known as a \"creative plea\", and will usually be interpreted as a plea of not guilty.\nWhen the Committee for Non-Violent Action sponsored a protest in August 1957, at the Camp Mercury nuclear test site near Las Vegas, Nevada, 13 of the protesters attempted to enter the test site knowing that they faced arrest. At an announced time, one by one they crossed a line and were immediately arrested. They were put on a bus and taken to the Nye County seat of Tonopah, Nevada, and arraigned for trial before the local Justice of the Peace, that afternoon. A civil rights attorney, Francis Heisler, had volunteered to defend the accused, advising them to plead \"nolo contendere\" rather than guilty or not guilty. They were found guilty and given suspended sentences, conditional on not reentering the test site.\nHoward Zinn writes,\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />There may be many times when protesters \"choose\" to go to jail, as a way of continuing their protest, as a way of reminding their countrymen of injustice. But that is different than the notion that they \"must\" go to jail as part of a rule connected with civil disobedience. The key point is that the spirit of protest should be maintained all the way, whether it is done by remaining in jail, or by evading it. To accept jail penitently as an accession to \"the rules\" is to switch suddenly to a spirit of subservience, to demean the seriousness of the protest\u00a0... In particular, the neo-conservative insistence on a guilty plea should be eliminated.\nSometimes the prosecution proposes a plea bargain to civil disobedients, as in the case of the Camden 28, in which the defendants were offered an opportunity to plead guilty to one misdemeanour count and receive no jail time. In some mass arrest situations, the activists decide to use solidarity tactics to secure the same plea bargain for everyone. \nBut some activists have opted to enter a blind plea, pleading guilty without any plea agreement in place. Mahatma Gandhi pleaded guilty and told the court, \"I am here to\u00a0... submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is a deliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen.\"\nAllocution.\nSome civil disobedience defendants choose to make a defiant speech, or a speech explaining their actions, in allocution. In \"U.S. v. Burgos-Andujar\", a defendant who was involved in a movement to stop military exercises by trespassing on US Navy property argued to the court in allocution that \"the ones who are violating the greater law are the members of the Navy\". As a result, the judge increased her sentence from 40 to 60 days. This action was upheld because, according to the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, her statement suggested a lack of remorse, an attempt to avoid responsibility for her actions, and even a likelihood of repeating her illegal actions. Some of the other allocution speeches given by the protesters complained about mistreatment from government officials.\nTim DeChristopher gave an allocution statement to the court describing the US as \"a place where the rule of law was created through acts of civil disobedience\" and arguing, \"Since those bedrock acts of civil disobedience by our founding fathers, the rule of law in this country has continued to grow closer to our shared higher moral code through the civil disobedience that drew attention to legalized injustice.\"\nTrial strategies.\nSteven Barkan writes that if defendants plead not guilty, \"they must decide whether their primary goal will be to win an acquittal and avoid imprisonment or a fine, or to use the proceedings as a forum to inform the jury and the public of the political circumstances surrounding the case and their reasons for breaking the law via civil disobedience.\" A technical defence may enhance the chances for acquittal but increase the possibility of additional proceedings and of reduced press coverage. During the Vietnam War era, the Chicago Eight used a political defence, but Benjamin Spock used a technical defence. In countries such as the United States, whose laws guarantee the right to a jury trial but do not excuse lawbreaking for political purposes, some civil disobedients seek jury nullification. Over the years, this has been made more difficult by court decisions such as \"Sparf v. United States\", which held that the judge need not inform jurors of their nullification prerogative, and \"United States v. Dougherty\", which held that the judge need not allow defendants to openly seek jury nullification.\nChoices made by the legal system.\nBritish judge Lord Hoffman writes that \"In deciding whether or not to impose punishment, the most important consideration would be whether it would do more harm than good. This means that the objector has no right not to be punished. It is a matter for the state (including the judges) to decide on utilitarian grounds whether to do so or not.\" Hoffman also asserted that while the \"rules of the game\" for civil disobedients were to remain non-violent while breaking the law, the authorities must recognize that demonstrators are acting out of their conscience in pursuit of democracy. \"When it comes to punishment, the court should take into account their personal convictions\", he said.\nChoices made by society.\nIn addition to legal action, civil disobedients may be affected socially. For example, student protesters may be suspended or expelled from school. Civil disobedients may be disowned by or become estranged from their families. Some employers may prefer to hire people who did not engage in civil disobedience or fire employees who do. \nLegal theory.\nGovernments have generally not recognized the legitimacy of civil disobedience or viewed political objectives as an excuse for breaking the law. Specifically, the law usually distinguishes between criminal motive and criminal intent; the offender's motives or purposes may be admirable and praiseworthy, but his intent may still be criminal. For example, a protester may be \"motivated by\" a desire to increase awareness about an injustice and \"intend\" to block traffic on a street, and it is the intention, rather than the motivation, that is criminally significant. Hence the saying that \"if there is any possible justification of civil disobedience, it must come from outside the legal system.\"\nOne theory is that, while disobedience may be helpful, any great amount of it undermines the law by encouraging general disobedience which is neither conscientious nor of social benefit. Therefore, conscientious lawbreakers must be punished. \nCourts have distinguished between two types of civil disobedience: \"Indirect civil disobedience involves violating a law which is not, itself, the object of protest, whereas direct civil disobedience involves protesting the existence of a particular law by breaking that law.\" \nDuring the Vietnam War, courts typically refused to excuse the perpetrators of illegal protests from punishment on the basis of their challenging the legality of the Vietnam War; the courts ruled it was a political question. The necessity defence has sometimes been used as a shadow defence by civil disobedients to deny guilt without denouncing their politically motivated acts, and to present their political beliefs in the courtroom. Court cases such as \"United States v. Schoon\" have greatly curtailed the availability of the political necessity defence. Likewise, when Carter Wentworth was charged for his role in the Clamshell Alliance's 1977 illegal occupation of the Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant, the judge instructed the jury to disregard his competing harms defence, and he was found guilty. Fully Informed Jury Association activists have sometimes handed out educational leaflets inside courthouses despite admonitions not to; according to the association, many of them have escaped prosecution because \"prosecutors have reasoned (correctly) that if they arrest fully informed jury leafleters, the leaflets will have to be given to the leafleter's own jury as evidence.\"\nAlong with giving the offender his just deserts, achieving crime control via incapacitation and deterrence is a major goal of criminal punishment. Brownlee says \"Bringing in deterrence at the level of justification detracts from the law's engagement in a moral dialogue with the offender as a rational person because it focuses attention on the threat of punishment and not the moral reasons to follow this law.\" \nActions that are outside of civil disobedience.\nMichael Bayles argues that if a person violates a law to create a test case as to the constitutionality of a law, and then wins his case, then that act did not constitute civil disobedience. \nBreaking the law for self-gratification, as in the case of a cannabis user who does not direct his act at securing the repeal of amendment of the law, is not civil disobedience. Likewise, a protester who attempts to escape punishment by committing the crime covertly and avoiding attribution, or by denying having committed the crime, or by fleeing the jurisdiction, is generally not called a civil disobedient.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "30570": "Trajan\nRoman emperor from AD 98 to 117\nTrajan ( ; born Marcus Ulpius Traianus, 18 September\u00a053\u00a0\u2013\u00a0c.\u20099 August\u00a0117) was a Roman emperor from AD\u00a098 to 117, remembered as the second of the Five Good Emperors of the Nerva\u2013Antonine dynasty. He was a philanthropic ruler and a successful soldier-emperor who presided over one of the greatest military expansions in Roman history, during which, by the time of his death, the Roman Empire reached its maximum territorial extent. He was given the title of ('the best') by the Roman Senate.\nTrajan was born in the of Italica in the present-day Andalusian province of Seville in southern Spain, an Italic settlement in Hispania Baetica; his came from the town of Tuder in the Umbria region of central Italy. His namesake father, Marcus Ulpius Traianus, was a general and distinguished senator. Trajan rose to prominence during the reign of Domitian; in AD 89, serving as a in , he supported the emperor against a revolt on the Rhine led by Antonius Saturninus. He then served as governor of Germania and Pannonia. In September 96, Domitian was succeeded by the elderly and childless Nerva, who proved to be unpopular with the army. After a revolt by members of the Praetorian Guard, Nerva decided to adopt as his heir and successor the more popular Trajan, who had distinguished himself in military campaigns against Germanic tribes.\nAs emperor of Rome, Trajan oversaw the construction of building projects such as the forum named after him, the introduction of social welfare policies such as the , and new military conquests. He annexed Nabataea and Dacia, and his war against the Parthian Empire ended with the incorporation of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria as Roman provinces. In August AD\u00a0117, while sailing back to Rome, Trajan fell ill and died of a stroke in the city of Selinus. He was deified by the senate and his successor Hadrian (Trajan's cousin). According to historical tradition, Trajan's ashes were entombed in a small room beneath Trajan's Column.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nSources.\nAn account of the Dacian Wars, the \"Commentarii de bellis Dacicis\", written by Trajan himself or a ghostwriter and modelled after Caesar's \"Commentarii de Bello Gallico\", is lost with the exception of one sentence. Only fragments remain of the \"Getica\", a book by Trajan's personal physician Titus Statilius Criton. The \"Parthica\", a 17-volume account of the Parthian Wars written by Arrian, has met a similar fate. Book68 in Greek author Cassius Dio's \"Roman History\", which survives mostly as Byzantine abridgements and epitomes, is the main source for the political history of Trajan's rule. Besides this, Pliny the Younger's \"Panegyricus\" and Dio Chrysostom's orations are the best surviving contemporary sources. Both are adulatory perorations, typical of the High Imperial period, that describe an idealized monarch and an equally idealized view of Trajan's rule, and concern themselves more with ideology than with fact.\nThe 10th volume of Pliny's letters contains his correspondence with Trajan, which deals with various aspects of imperial Roman government. It is generally agreed that Pliny, being part of the emperor's inner circle, provides a unique and valuable source of information through his letters with Trajan, the only surviving correspondence between a governor and his emperor. However, it has been argued that Pliny's correspondence with Trajan is neither intimate nor candid, but rather an exchange of official mail in which Pliny's stance borders on the servile. Some authors have even proposed that much of the text was written and/or edited by Trajan's Imperial secretary, his \"ab epistulis\". Given the scarcity of literary sources, discussion of Trajan and his rule in modern historiography cannot avoid speculation. Non-literary sources such as archaeology, epigraphy, and numismatics are also useful for reconstructing his reign.\nEarly life.\nMarcus Ulpius Traianus was born on 18 September AD53 in the Roman province of Hispania Baetica (in what is now Andalusia in modern Spain), in the \"municipium\" of Italica (now in the municipal area of Santiponce, in the outskirts of Seville), a Roman colony established in 206BC by Scipio Africanus. At the time of Trajan's birth it was a small town, without baths, theatre and amphitheatre, and with a very narrow territory under its direct administration. Trajan's year of birth is not reliably attested and may instead have been AD 56.\nThe epitome of Cassius Dio's Roman history describes Trajan as \"an Iberian and neither an Italian nor even an Italiote\", but this claim is contradicted by other ancient sources and rejected by modern scholars, who have reconstructed Trajan's Italic lineage. Appian states that Trajan's hometown of Italica was settled by and named after Italic veterans who fought in Spain under Scipio, and new settlers arrived there from Italy in the following centuries. Among the Italic settlers were the Ulpii and the Traii, who were either part of the original colonists or arrived as late as the end of the 1st century BC. Their original home, according to the description of Trajan as \"Ulpius Traianus ex urbe Tudertina\" in the Epitome de Caesaribus, was the town of Tuder (Todi) in the Umbria region of central Italy. This is confirmed by archeology, with epigraphic evidence placing both the Ulpii and the Traii in Umbria generally and Tuder specifically, and by linguistic studies of the family names \"Ulpius\" and \"Traius\" which show that both are of Osco-Umbrian origin. \nIt is unknown whether Trajan's ancestors were Roman citizens or not at their arrival in Spain. They would have certainly possessed Roman citizenship in case they arrived after the Social War (91\u201387 BC), when Tuder became a municipium of Roman citizens. In Spain they may well have intermarried with native Iberians, in which case they would have lost their citizenship. Had they lacked or lost the status of Roman citizens, they would have achieved it or recovered it when Italica became a municipium with Latin rights in the mid-1st century BC.\nTrajan's paternal grandfather Ulpius married a Traia. Their son, Trajan's namesake father Marcus Ulpius Traianus, was born at Italica during the reign of Tiberius and became a prominent senator and general, commanding the Legio X Fretensis under Vespasian in the First Jewish-Roman War. Trajan's mother was Marcia, a Roman noblewoman of the gens Marcia and a sister-in-law of the second Flavian Emperor Titus. Little is known of her. Her father is believed to be Quintus Marcius Barea Sura. Her mother was Antonia Furnilla, daughter of Aulus Antonius Rufus and Furnia. Trajan owned some lands called \"Figlinae Marcianae\" in Ameria, another Umbrian town, located near both Tuder and Reate (the home of the Flavian dynasty) and believed to be the home of Marcia's family.\nThe line of the Ulpii continued long after Trajan's death. His elder sister was Ulpia Marciana, and his niece was Salonia Matidia. Very little is known about Trajan's early formative years, but it is thought likely that he spent his first months or years in Italica before moving to Rome and then, perhaps at around eight or nine years of age, he almost certainly would have returned temporarily to Italica with his father during Trajanus's governorship of Baetica (ca. 64\u201365). The lack of a strong local power base, caused by the size of the town from which they came, made it necessary for the Ulpii (and for the Aelii, the other important senatorial family of Italica with whom they were allied) to weave local alliances, in the Baetica (with the Annii, the Ucubi and perhaps the Dasumii from Corduba), the Tarraconense and the Narbonense, here above all through Pompeia Plotina, Trajan's wife. Many of these alliances were made not in Spain, but in Rome. The family home in Rome, the Domus Traiana, was on the Aventine Hill; excavations under the Piazza del Tempio di Diana found remains thought to be of the family's large suburban villa, with evidence of highly decorated rooms.\nMilitary career.\nAs a young man Trajan rose through the ranks of the Roman army, serving in some of the most contested parts of the empire's frontier. In 76\u201377, his father was Governor of Syria (\"Legatus pro praetore Syriae\"), where Trajan himself remained as \"Tribunus legionis\". From there, after his father's replacement, he seems to have been transferred to an unspecified Rhine province, and Pliny implies that he engaged in active combat duty during both commissions.\nIn about 86, Trajan's cousin Aelius Afer died, leaving his young children Hadrian and Paulina orphans. Trajan and his colleague Publius Acilius Attianus became co-guardians of the two children. Trajan, in his late thirties, was created ordinary consul for the year 91. This early appointment may reflect the prominence of his father's career, as his father had been instrumental to the ascent of the ruling Flavian dynasty, held consular rank himself and had just been made a patrician. Around this time Trajan brought the architect and engineer Apollodorus of Damascus with him to Rome, and married Pompeia Plotina, a noblewoman from the Roman settlement at N\u00eemes; the marriage ultimately remained childless.\nThe historian Cassius Dio later noted that Trajan was a lover of young men, in contrast to the usual bisexual activity that was common among upper-class Roman men of the period. The emperor Julian also made a sardonic reference to his predecessor's sexual preference, stating that Zeus himself would have had to be on guard had his Ganymede come within Trajan's vicinity. This distaste reflected a change of mores that began with the Severan dynasty, Trajan's putative lovers included the future emperor, Hadrian, pages of the imperial household, the actor Pylades, a dancer called Apolaustus, Lucius Licinius Sura, and Trajan's predecessor Nerva. Cassius Dio also relates that Trajan made an ally out of Abgar VII on account of the latter's beautiful son, Arbandes, who would then dance for Trajan at a banquet.\nThe details of Trajan's early military career are obscure, save for the fact that in 89, as legate of Legio VII Gemina in Hispania Tarraconensis, he supported Domitian against an attempted coup by Lucius Antonius Saturninus, the governor of Germania Superior. Trajan probably remained in the region after the revolt was quashed, to engage with the Chatti who had sided with Saturninus, before returning the VII Gemina legion to Legio in Hispania Tarraconensis. In 91 he held a consulate with Acilius Glabrio, a rarity in that neither consul was a member of the ruling dynasty. He held an unspecified consular commission as governor of either Pannonia or Germania Superior, or possibly both. Pliny\u00a0\u2013\u00a0who seems to deliberately avoid offering details that would stress personal attachment between Trajan and the \"tyrant\" Domitian\u00a0\u2013\u00a0attributes to him, at the time, various (and unspecified) feats of arms.\nRise to power.\nDomitian's successor, Nerva, was unpopular with the army, and had been forced by his Praetorian Prefect Casperius Aelianus to execute Domitian's killers. Nerva needed the army's support to avoid being ousted. He accomplished this in the summer of 97 by naming Trajan as his adoptive son and successor, claiming that this was entirely due to Trajan's outstanding military merits. There are hints, however, in contemporary literary sources that Trajan's adoption was imposed on Nerva. Pliny implied as much when he wrote that, although an emperor could not be coerced into doing something, if this was the way in which Trajan was raised to power, then it was worth it. Alice K\u00f6nig argues that the notion of a natural continuity between Nerva's and Trajan's reigns was an \"ex post facto\" fiction developed by authors writing under Trajan, including Tacitus and Pliny.\nAccording to the \"Historia Augusta\", the future Emperor Hadrian brought word to Trajan of his adoption. Trajan retained Hadrian on the Rhine frontier as a military tribune, and Hadrian thus became privy to the circle of friends and relations with whom Trajan surrounded himself. Among them was Lucius Licinius Sura, a Roman senator born in Spain and the governor of Germania Inferior, who was Trajan's personal friend and became an official adviser of the Emperor. Sura was highly influential, and was appointed consul for a third term in 107. Some senators may have resented Sura's activities as a kingmaker and \u00e9minence grise, among them the historian Tacitus, who acknowledged Sura's military and oratorical talents, but compared his rapacity and devious ways to those of Vespasian's \u00e9minence grise Licinius Mucianus. Sura is said to have informed Hadrian in 108 that he had been chosen as Trajan's imperial heir.\nAs governor of Upper Germany (Germania Superior) during Nerva's reign, Trajan received the impressive title of \"Germanicus\" for his skilful management and rule of the volatile Imperial province. When Nerva died on 28 January 98, Trajan succeeded to the role of emperor without any outward adverse incident. The fact that he chose not to hasten towards Rome, but made a lengthy tour of inspection on the Rhine and Danube frontiers, may suggest that he was unsure of his position, both in Rome and with the armies at the front. Alternatively, Trajan's keen military mind understood the importance of strengthening the empire's frontiers. His vision for future conquests required the diligent improvement of surveillance networks, defences and transport along the Danube. Prior to his frontier tours, Trajan ordered his Prefect Aelianus to attend him in Germany, where he was apparently executed forthwith (\"put out of the way\"), and his now-vacant post taken by Attius Suburanus. Trajan's accession, therefore, could qualify more as a successful coup than an orderly succession.\nRoman emperor.\nOn his entry to Rome, Trajan granted the plebs a direct gift of money. The traditional donative to the troops, however, was reduced by half. There remained the issue of the strained relations between the emperor and the Senate, especially after the supposed bloodiness that had marked Domitian's reign and his dealings with the Curia. By feigning reluctance to hold power, Trajan was able to start building a consensus around him in the Senate. His belated ceremonial entry into Rome in 99 was notably understated, something on which Pliny the Younger elaborated. By not openly supporting Domitian's preference for equestrian officers, Trajan appeared to conform to the idea (developed by Pliny) that an emperor derived his legitimacy from his adherence to traditional hierarchies and senatorial morals. Therefore, he could point to the allegedly republican character of his rule.\nIn a speech at the inauguration of his third consulship, on 1January 100, Trajan exhorted the senate to share the care-taking of the empire with him\u00a0\u2013\u00a0an event later celebrated on a coin. In reality, Trajan did not share power in any meaningful way with the senate, something that Pliny admits candidly: \"[E]verything depends on the whims of a single man who, on behalf of the common welfare, has taken upon himself all functions and all tasks\". One of the most significant trends of his reign was his encroachment on the senate's sphere of authority, such as his decision to make the senatorial provinces of Achaea and Bithynia into imperial ones in order to deal with the inordinate spending on public works by local magnates and the general mismanagement of provincial affairs by various proconsuls appointed by the Senate.\n\"Optimus princeps\".\nIn the formula developed by Pliny, however, Trajan was a \"good\" emperor in that, by himself, he approved or blamed the same things that the Senate would have approved or blamed. If in reality Trajan was an autocrat, his deferential behavior towards his peers qualified him to be viewed as a virtuous monarch. The idea is that Trajan wielded autocratic power through \"moderatio\" instead of \"contumacia\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0moderation instead of insolence. In short, according to the ethics for autocracy developed by most political writers of the Imperial Roman Age, Trajan was a good ruler in that he ruled less by fear, and more by acting as a role model, for, according to Pliny, \"men learn better from examples\". Eventually, Trajan's popularity among his peers was such that the Roman Senate bestowed upon him the honorific of \"optimus\", meaning \"the best\", which appears on coins from 105 on. This title had mostly to do with Trajan's role as benefactor, such as in the case of his returning confiscated property. The epithet \"optimus princeps\" had already been used for the emperors since the late republic, but Trajan was the only one officially honoured by the title.\nPliny states that Trajan's ideal role was a conservative one, argued as well by the orations of Dio Chrysostom\u2014in particular his four \"Orations on Kingship\", composed early during Trajan's reign. Dio, as a Greek notable and intellectual with friends in high places, and possibly an official friend to the emperor (\"amicus caesaris\"), saw Trajan as a defender of the \"status quo\". In his third kingship oration, Dio describes an ideal king ruling by means of \"friendship\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0that is, through patronage and a network of local notables who act as mediators between the ruled and the ruler. Dio's notion of being \"friend\" to Trajan (or any other Roman emperor), however, was that of an \"informal\" arrangement, that involved no formal entry of such \"friends\" into the Roman administration. Trajan ingratiated himself with the Greek intellectual elite by recalling to Rome many (including Dio) who had been exiled by Domitian, and by returning (in a process begun by Nerva) a great deal of private property that Domitian had confiscated. He also had good dealings with Plutarch, who, as a notable of Delphi, seems to have been favoured by the decisions taken on behalf of his home-place by one of Trajan's legates, who had arbitrated a boundary dispute between Delphi and its neighbouring cities.\nHowever, it was clear to Trajan that Greek intellectuals and notables were to be regarded as tools for local administration, and not be allowed to fancy themselves in a privileged position. As Pliny said in one of his letters at the time, it was official policy that Greek civic elites be treated according to their status as notionally free but not put on an equal footing with their Roman rulers. When the city of Apamea complained of an audit of its accounts by Pliny, alleging its \"free\" status as a Roman colony, Trajan replied by writing that it was by his own wish that such inspections had been ordered. Concern about independent local political activity is seen in Trajan's decision to forbid Nicomedia from having a corps of firemen (\"If people assemble for a common purpose... they soon turn it into a political society\", Trajan wrote to Pliny) as well as in his and Pliny's fears about excessive civic generosities by local notables such as distribution of money or gifts.\nPliny's letters suggest that Trajan and his aides were as much bored as they were alarmed by the claims of Dio and other Greek notables to political influence based on what they saw as their \"special connection\" to their Roman overlords. Pliny tells of Dio of Prusa placing a statue of Trajan in a building complex where Dio's wife and son were buried \u2013 therefore incurring a charge of treason for placing the emperor's statue near a grave. Trajan, however, dropped the charge. Nevertheless, while the office of \"corrector\" was intended as a tool to curb any hint of independent political activity among local notables in the Greek cities, the \"correctores\" themselves were all men of the highest social standing entrusted with an exceptional commission. The post seems to have been conceived partly as a reward for senators who had chosen to make a career solely on the emperor's behalf. Therefore, in reality the post was conceived as a means for \"taming\" both Greek notables and Roman senators. It must be added that, although Trajan was wary of the civic oligarchies in the Greek cities, he also admitted into the senate a number of prominent Eastern notables already slated for promotion during Domitian's reign by reserving for them one of the twenty posts open each year for minor magistrates (the \"vigintiviri\"). Such must be the case of the Galatian notable and \"leading member of the Greek community\" (according to one inscription) Gaius Julius Severus, who was a descendant of several Hellenistic dynasts and client kings.\nSeverus was the grandfather of the prominent general Gaius Julius Quadratus Bassus, consul in 105. Other prominent Eastern senators included Gaius Julius Alexander Berenicianus, a descendant of Herod the Great, suffect consul in 116. Trajan created at least fourteen new senators from the Greek-speaking half of the empire, an unprecedented recruitment number that opens to question the issue of the \"traditionally Roman\" character of his reign, as well as the \"Hellenism\" of his successor Hadrian. But then Trajan's new Eastern senators were mostly very powerful and very wealthy men with more than local influence and much interconnected by marriage, so that many of them were not altogether \"new\" to the Senate. On the local level, among the lower section of the Eastern propertied, the alienation of most Greek notables and intellectuals towards Roman rule, and the fact that the Romans were seen by most such Greek notables as aliens, persisted well after Trajan's reign. One of Trajan's senatorial creations from the East, the Athenian Gaius Julius Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappos, a member of the Royal House of Commagene, left behind him a funeral monument on the Mouseion Hill that was later disparagingly described by Pausanias as \"a monument built to a Syrian man\".\nGreek-Roman relations.\nAs a senatorial Emperor, Trajan was inclined to choose his local base of political support from among the members of the ruling urban oligarchies. In the West, that meant local senatorial families like his own. In the East, that meant the families of Greek notables. The Greeks, though, had their own memories of independence\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and a commonly acknowledged sense of cultural superiority\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and, instead of seeing themselves as Roman, disdained Roman rule. What the Greek oligarchies wanted from Rome was, above all, to be left in peace, to be allowed to exert their right to self-government (i.e., to be excluded from the provincial government, as was Italy) and to concentrate on their local interests. This was something the Romans were not disposed to do as from their perspective the Greek notables were shunning their responsibilities in regard to the management of Imperial affairs\u00a0\u2013\u00a0primarily in failing to keep the common people under control, thus creating the need for the Roman governor to intervene. An excellent example of this Greek alienation was the personal role played by Dio of Prusa in his relationship with Trajan. Dio is described by Philostratus as Trajan's close friend, and Trajan as supposedly engaging publicly in conversations with Dio.\nNevertheless, as a Greek local magnate with a taste for costly building projects and pretensions of being an important political agent for Rome, Dio of Prusa was actually a target for one of Trajan's authoritarian innovations: the appointing of imperial \"correctores\" to audit the civic finances of the technically free Greek cities. The main goal was to curb the overenthusiastic spending on public works that served to channel ancient rivalries between neighbouring cities. As Pliny wrote to Trajan, this had as its most visible consequence a trail of unfinished or ill-kept public utilities. Competition among Greek cities and their ruling oligarchies was mainly for marks of pre-eminence, especially for titles bestowed by the Roman emperor. Such titles were ordered in a ranking system that determined how the cities were to be outwardly treated by Rome. The usual form that such rivalries took was that of grandiose building plans, giving the cities the opportunity to vie with each other over \"extravagant, needless... structures that would make a show\". A side effect of such extravagant spending was that junior and thus less wealthy members of the local oligarchies felt disinclined to present themselves to fill posts as local magistrates, positions that involved ever-increasing personal expense. Roman authorities liked to play the Greek cities against one another\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something of which Dio of Prusa was fully aware:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />[B]y their public acts [the Roman governors] have branded you as a pack of fools, yes, they treat you just like children, for we often offer children the most trivial things in place of things of greatest worth [...] In place of justice, in place of the freedom of the cities from spoliation or from the seizure of the private possessions of their inhabitants, in place of their refraining from insulting you [...] your governors hand you titles, and call you 'first' either by word of mouth or in writing; that done, they may thenceforth with impunity treat you as being the very last!\"These same Roman authorities had also an interest in assuring the cities' solvency and therefore ready collection of Imperial taxes. Last but not least, inordinate spending on civic buildings was not only a means to achieve local superiority, but also a means for the local Greek elites to maintain a separate cultural identity\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something expressed in the contemporary rise of the Second Sophistic; this \"cultural patriotism\" acted as a kind of substitute for the loss of political independence, and as such was shunned by Roman authorities. As Trajan himself wrote to Pliny: \"These poor Greeks all love a gymnasium... they will have to content with one that suits their real needs\". The first known \"corrector\" was charged with a commission \"to deal with the situation of the free cities\", as it was felt that the old method of \"ad hoc\" intervention by the Emperor and/or the proconsuls had not been enough to curb the pretensions of the Greek notables. It is noteworthy that an embassy from Dio's city of Prusa was not favourably received by Trajan, and that this had to do with Dio's chief objective, which was to elevate Prusa to the status of a free city, an \"independent\" city-state exempt from paying taxes to Rome. Eventually, Dio gained for Prusa the right to become the head of the assize-district, conventus (meaning that Prusans did not have to travel to be judged by the Roman governor), but \"eleutheria\" (freedom, in the sense of full political autonomy) was denied.\nEventually, it fell to Pliny, as imperial governor of Bithynia in AD110, to deal with the consequences of the financial mess wrought by Dio and his fellow civic officials. \"It's well established that [the cities' finances] are in a state of disorder\", Pliny once wrote to Trajan, plans for unnecessary works made in collusion with local contractors being identified as one of the main problems. One of the compensatory measures proposed by Pliny expressed a thoroughly Roman conservative position: as the cities' financial solvency depended on the councilmen's purses, it was necessary to have more councilmen on the local city councils. According to Pliny, the best way to achieve this was to lower the minimum age for holding a seat on the council, making it possible for more sons of the established oligarchical families to join and thus contribute to civic spending; this was seen as preferable to enrolling non-noble wealthy upstarts. Such an increase in the number of council members was granted to Dio's city of Prusa, to the dismay of existing councilmen who felt their status lowered. A similar situation existed in Claudiopolis, where a public bath was built with the proceeds from the entrance fees paid by \"supernumerary\" members of the council, enrolled with Trajan's permission. According to the Digest, Trajan decreed that when a city magistrate promised to achieve a particular public building, his heirs inherited responsibility for its completion.\nBuilding projects.\nTrajan was a prolific builder. Many of his buildings were designed and erected by the gifted architect Apollodorus of Damascus, including a massive bridge over the Danube, which the Roman army and its reinforcements could use regardless of weather; the Danube sometimes froze over in winter, but seldom enough to bear the passage of a party of soldiers. Trajan's works at the Iron Gates region of the Danube created or enlarged the boardwalk road cut into the cliff-face along the Iron Gate's gorge. A canal was built between the Danube's Kasajna tributary and Ducis Pratum, circumventing rapids and cataracts.\nTrajan's Forum Traiani was Rome's largest forum. It was built to commemorate his victories in Dacia, and was largely financed from that campaign's loot. To accommodate it, parts of the Capitoline and Quirinal Hills had to be removed, the latter enlarging a clear area first established by Domitian. Apollodorus of Damascus' \"magnificent\" design incorporated a Triumphal arch entrance, a forum space approximately 120 m long and 90m wide, surrounded by peristyles: a monumentally sized basilica: and later, Trajan's Column and libraries. It was started in AD 107, dedicated on 1 January 112, and remained in use for at least 500 years. It still drew admiration when Emperor Constantius II visited Rome in the fourth century. It accommodated Trajan's Market, and an adjacent brick market.\nTrajan was also a prolific builder of triumphal arches, many of which survive. He built roads, such as the Via Traiana, an extension of the Via Appia from Beneventum to Brundisium and the Via Traiana Nova, a mostly military road between Damascus and Aila, which Rome employed in its annexation of Nabataea and founding of Arabia Province.\nSome historians attribute the construction or reconstruction of Old Cairo's Roman fortress (also known as \"Babylon Fort\") to Trajan, and the building of a canal between the River Nile and the Red Sea. In Egypt, Trajan was \"quite active\" in constructing and embellishing buildings. He is portrayed, together with Domitian, on the propylon of the Temple of Hathor at Dendera. His cartouche also appears in the column shafts of the Temple of Khnum at Esna.\nHe built palatial villas outside Rome at Arcinazzo, at Centumcellae and at Talamone.\nHe also built a bath complex as well as the Aqua Traiana.\nGames.\nTrajan invested heavily in the provision of popular amusements. He carried out a \"massive reconstruction\" of the Circus Maximus, which was already the empire's biggest and best appointed circuit for the immensely popular sport of chariot racing. The Circus also hosted religious theatrical spectacles and games, and public processions on a grand scale. Trajan's reconstruction, completed by 103, was modestly described by Trajan himself as \"adequate\" for the Roman people. It replaced flammable wooden seating tiers with stone, and increased the Circus' already vast capacity by about 5,000 seats. Its lofty, elevated Imperial viewing box was rebuilt among the seating tiers, so that spectators could see their emperor sharing their enjoyment of the races, alongside his family and images of the gods,\nAt some time during 108 or 109, Trajan held 123 days of games to celebrate his Dacian victory. They involved \"fully 10,000\" gladiators and the slaughter of thousands, \"possibly tens of thousands,\" of animals, both wild and domestic. Trajan's careful management of public spectacles led the orator Fronto to congratulate him for paying equal attention to public entertainments and more serious issues, acknowledging that \"neglect of serious matters can cause greater damage, but neglect of amusements greater discontent\". State-funded public entertainments helped to maintain contentment among the populace; the more \"serious matter\" of the corn dole aimed to satisfy individuals.\nChristians.\nDuring the period of peace that followed the Dacian war, Trajan exchanged letters with Pliny the Younger on how best to deal with the Christians of Pontus. Trajan told Pliny to continue prosecutions of Christians if they merited that, but not to accept anonymous or malicious denunciations. He considered this to be in the interests of justice, and to reflect \"the spirit of the age\". Non-citizens who admitted to being Christians and refused to recant were to be executed \"for obstinacy\". Citizens were sent to Rome for trial.\nFurther tests faced by Christians in Pontus are alluded to in correspondence between Pliny the Younger, governor of the Roman province of Bithynia and Pontus, and Emperor Trajan. Writing from Pontus in about AD 112, Pliny reported that the \"contagion\" of Christianity threatened everyone, regardless of gender, age, or rank. Pliny gave those accused of being Christians opportunity to deny it, and those who would not, he executed. Any who cursed Christ or recited a prayer to the gods or to Trajan\u2019s statue were released. Pliny acknowledged that these were things that \"those who are really Christians cannot be made to do.\"\nCurrency and welfare.\nIn 107, Trajan devalued the Roman currency, decreasing the silver content of the denarius from 93.5% to 89.0%\u00a0\u2013\u00a0the actual silver weight dropping from 3.04grams to 2.88grams. This devaluation, along with the massive amounts of gold and silver acquired through his Dacian wars, allowed Trajan to mint many more denarii than his predecessors. He also withdrew from circulation silver denarii minted before Nero's devaluation. Trajan's devaluation may have had a political intent, enabling planned increases in civil and military spending. Trajan formalised the alimenta, a welfare program that helped orphans and poor children throughout Italy by providing cash, food and subsidized education. The program was supported out of Dacian War booty, estate taxes and philanthropy. The alimenta also relied indirectly on mortgages secured against Italian farms (\"fundi\"). Registered landowners received a lump sum from the imperial treasury, and in return were expected to repay an annual sum to support the alimentary fund.\nMilitary campaigns.\nConquest of Dacia.\nThe earliest of Trajan's conquests were Rome's two wars against Dacia, an area that had troubled Roman politics for over a decade in regard to the unstable peace negotiated by Domitian's ministers with the powerful Dacian king Decebalus. Dacia would be reduced by Trajan's Rome to a client kingdom in the first war (101\u2013102), followed by a second war that ended in actual incorporation into the Empire of the trans-Danube border group of Dacia. According to the provisions of Decebalus's earlier treaty with Rome, made in the time of Domitian, Decebalus was acknowledged as \"rex amicus\", that is, client king; in exchange for accepting client status, he received from Rome both a generous stipend and a steady supply of technical experts. The treaty seems to have allowed Roman troops the right of passage through the Dacian kingdom in order to attack the Marcomanni, Quadi and Sarmatians. However, senatorial opinion never forgave Domitian for paying what was seen as tribute to a barbarian king. Unlike the Germanic tribes, the Dacian kingdom was an organized state capable of developing alliances of its own, thus making it a strategic threat and giving Trajan a strong motive to attack it.\nIn May of 101, Trajan launched his first campaign into the Dacian kingdom, crossing to the northern bank of the Danube and defeating the Dacian army at Tapae (see Second Battle of Tapae), near the Iron Gates of Transylvania. It was not a decisive victory, however. Trajan's troops took heavy losses in the encounter, and he put off further campaigning for the year in order to regroup and reinforce his army. Nevertheless, the battle was considered a Roman victory and Trajan strived to ultimately consolidate his position, including other major engagements, as well as the capture of Decebalus' sister as depicted on Trajan's Column.\nThe following winter, Decebalus took the initiative by launching a counter-attack across the Danube further downstream, supported by Sarmatian cavalry, forcing Trajan to come to the aid of the troops in his rearguard. The Dacians and their allies were repulsed after two battles in Moesia, at Nicopolis ad Istrum and Adamclisi. Trajan's army then advanced further into Dacian territory, and, a year later, forced Decebalus to submit. He had to renounce claim to some regions of his kingdom, return runaways from Rome then under his protection (most of them technical experts), and surrender all his war machines. Trajan returned to Rome in triumph and was granted the title \"Dacicus\". The peace of 102 had returned Decebalus to the condition of more or less harmless client king; however, he soon began to rearm, to again harbour Roman runaways, and to pressure his Western neighbours, the Iazyges Sarmatians, into allying themselves with him. Through his efforts to develop an anti-Roman bloc, Decebalus prevented Trajan from treating Dacia as a protectorate instead of an outright conquest. In 104, Decebalus devised an attempt on Trajan's life by means of some Roman deserters, a plan that failed. Decebalus also took prisoner Trajan's legate Longinus, who eventually poisoned himself while in custody. Finally, in 105, Decebalus undertook an invasion of Roman-occupied territory north of the Danube.\nPrior to the campaign, Trajan had raised two entirely new legions: II Traiana\u00a0\u2013\u00a0which, however, may have been posted in the East, at the Syrian port of Laodicea\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and XXX Ulpia Victrix, which was posted to Brigetio, in Pannonia. By 105, the concentration of Roman troops assembled in the middle and lower Danube amounted to fourteen legions (up from nine in 101)\u00a0\u2013\u00a0about half of the entire Roman army. Even after the Dacian wars, the Danube frontier would permanently replace the Rhine as the main military axis of the Roman Empire. Including auxiliaries, the number of Roman troops engaged on both campaigns was between 150,000 and 175,000, while Decebalus could dispose of up to 200,000. Other estimates for the Roman forces involved in Trajan's second Dacian War cite around 86,000 for active campaigning with large reserves retained in the proximal provinces, and potentially much lower numbers around 50,000 for Decebalus' depleted forces and absent allies.\nIn a fierce campaign that seems to have consisted mostly of static warfare, the Dacians, devoid of manoeuvring room, kept to their network of fortresses, which the Romans sought systematically to storm (see also Second Dacian War). The Romans gradually tightened their grip around Decebalus' stronghold in Sarmizegetusa Regia, which they finally took and destroyed. A controversial scene on Trajan's column just before the fall of Sarmizegetusa Regia suggests that Decebalus may have offered poison to his remaining men as an alternative option to capture or death while trying to flee the besieged capital with him. Decebalus fled but, when later cornered by Roman cavalry, committed suicide. His severed head, brought to Trajan by the cavalryman Tiberius Claudius Maximus, was later exhibited in Rome on the steps leading up to the Capitol and thrown on the Gemonian stairs. The famous Dacian treasures were not found in the captured capital and their whereabouts were only revealed when a Dacian nobleman called Bikilis was captured. Decebalus\u2019 treasures had been buried under a temporarily diverted river and the captive workers executed to retain the secret. Staggering amounts of gold and silver were found and packed off to fill Rome's coffers.\nTrajan built a new city, Colonia Ulpia Traiana Augusta Dacica Sarmizegetusa, on another site (north of the hill citadel holding the previous Dacian capital), although bearing the same full name, Sarmizegetusa. This capital city was conceived as a purely civilian administrative centre and was provided the usual Romanized administrative apparatus (decurions, aediles, etc.). Urban life in Roman Dacia seems to have been restricted to Roman colonists, mostly military veterans; there is no extant evidence for the existence in the province of peregrine cities. Native Dacians continued to live in scattered rural settlements, according to their own ways. In another arrangement with no parallels in any other Roman province, the existing quasi-urban Dacian settlements disappeared after the Roman conquest.\nA number of unorganized urban settlements (\"vici\") developed around military encampments in Dacia proper \u2013 the most important being Apulum \u2013 but were only acknowledged as cities proper well after Trajan's reign. The main regional effort of urbanization was concentrated by Trajan at the rearguard, in Moesia, where he created the new cities of Nicopolis ad Istrum and Marcianopolis. A vicus was also created around the Tropaeum Traianum. The garrison city of Oescus received the status of Roman colony after its legionary garrison was redeployed. The fact that these former Danubian outposts had ceased to be frontier bases and were now in the deep rear acted as an inducement to their urbanization and development. Not all of Dacia was permanently occupied. After the post-Trajanic evacuation of lands across the lower Danube, land extending from the Danube to the inner arch of the Carpathian Mountains, including Transylvania, the Metaliferi Mountains and Oltenia was absorbed into the Roman province, which eventually took the form of an \"excrescence\" with ill-defined limits, stretching from the Danube northwards to the Carpathians. This may have been intended as a basis for further expansion within Eastern Europe, as the Romans believed the region to be much more geographically \"flattened\", and thus easier to traverse, than it actually was; they also underestimated the distance from those vaguely defined borders to the ocean.\nDefence of the province was entrusted to a single legion, the XIII Gemina, stationed at Apulum, which functioned as an advance guard that could, in case of need, strike either west or east at the Sarmatians living at the borders. Therefore, the indefensible character of the province did not appear to be a problem for Trajan, as the province was conceived more as a sally-base for further attacks. Even in the absence of further Roman expansion, the value of the province depended on Roman overall strength: while Rome was strong, the Dacian salient was an instrument of military and diplomatic control over the Danubian lands; when Rome was weak, as during the Crisis of the Third Century, the province became a liability and was eventually abandoned. Trajan resettled Dacia with Romans and annexed it as a province of the Roman Empire. Aside from their enormous booty (over half a million slaves, according to John Lydus), Trajan's Dacian campaigns benefited the Empire's finances through the acquisition of Dacia's gold mines, managed by an imperial procurator of equestrian rank (\"procurator aurariarum\"). On the other hand, commercial agricultural exploitation on the villa model, based on the centralized management of a huge landed estate by a single owner (\"fundus\") was poorly developed. Therefore, use of slave labor in the province itself seems to have been relatively undeveloped, and epigraphic evidence points to work in the gold mines being conducted by means of labor contracts (\"locatio conductio rei\") and seasonal wage-earning. The victory was commemorated by the construction both of the 102 cenotaph generally known as the Tropaeum Traiani in Moesia, as well of the much later (113) Trajan's Column in Rome, the latter depicting in stone carved bas-reliefs the Dacian Wars' most important moments.\nNabataean annexation.\nIn 106, Rabbel II Soter, one of Rome's client kings, died. This event might have prompted the annexation of the Nabataean Kingdom, but the manner and the formal reasons for the annexation are unclear. Some epigraphic evidence suggests a military operation, with forces from Syria and Egypt. What is known is that by 107, Roman legions were stationed in the area around Petra and Bosra, as is shown by a papyrus found in Egypt. The furthest south the Romans occupied (or, better, garrisoned, adopting a policy of having garrisons at key points in the desert) was Hegra, over south-west of Petra. The empire gained what became the province of Arabia Petraea (modern southern Jordan and northwest Saudi Arabia). At this time, a Roman road (\"Via Traiana Nova\") was built from Aila (now Aqaba) in Limes Arabicus to Bosrah. As Nabataea was the last client kingdom in Asia west of the Euphrates, the annexation meant that the entire Roman East had been provincialized, completing a trend towards direct rule that had begun under the Flavians.\nParthian campaign.\nIn 113, Trajan embarked on his last campaign, provoked by Parthia's decision to put an unacceptable king on the throne of Armenia, a kingdom over which the two great empires had shared hegemony since the time of Nero some fifty years earlier. Trajan, already in Syria early in 113, consistently refused to accept diplomatic approaches from the Parthians intended to settle the Armenian imbroglio peacefully. As the surviving literary accounts of Trajan's Parthian War are fragmentary and scattered, it is difficult to assign them a proper context, something that has led to a long-running controversy about its precise happenings and ultimate aims.\nCause of the war.\nModern historians advance the possibility that Trajan's decision to wage war against Parthia had economic motives: after Trajan's annexation of Arabia, he built a new road, Via Traiana Nova, that went from Bostra to Aila on the Red Sea. That meant that Charax on the Persian Gulf was the sole remaining western terminus of the Indian trade route outside direct Roman control, and such control was important in order to lower import prices and to limit the supposed drain of precious metals created by the deficit in Roman trade with the Far East. That Charax traded with the Roman Empire, there can be no doubt, as its actual connections with merchants from Palmyra during the period are well documented in a contemporary Palmyrene epigraph, which tells of various Palmyrene citizens honoured for holding office in Charax. Also, Charax's rulers' domains at the time possibly included the Bahrain islands, which offered the possibility of extending Roman hegemony into the Persian Gulf itself. (A Palmyrene citizen held office as satrap over the islands shortly after Trajan's death, though the appointment was made by a Parthian king of Charax.) The rationale behind Trajan's campaign, in this case, was one of breaking down a system of Far Eastern trade through small Semitic (\"Arab\") cities under Parthia's control and to put it under Roman control instead.\nIn his Dacian conquests, Trajan had already resorted to Syrian auxiliary units, whose veterans, along with Syrian traders, had an important role in the subsequent colonization of Dacia. He had recruited Palmyrene units into his army, including a camel unit, therefore apparently procuring Palmyrene support to his ultimate goal of annexing Charax. It has even been ventured that, when earlier in his campaign Trajan annexed Armenia, he was bound to annex the whole of Mesopotamia lest the Parthians interrupt the flux of trade from the Persian Gulf and/or foment trouble at the Roman frontier on the Danube. Other historians reject these motives, as the supposed Parthian \"control\" over the maritime Far Eastern trade route was, at best, conjectural and based on a selective reading of Chinese sources\u00a0\u2013\u00a0trade by land through Parthia seems to have been unhampered by Parthian authorities and left solely to the devices of private enterprise. Commercial activity in second century Mesopotamia seems to have been a general phenomenon, shared by many peoples within and without the Roman Empire, with no sign of a concerted Imperial policy towards it.\nAs in the case of the \"alimenta\", scholars like Moses Finley and Paul Veyne have considered the idea that a foreign trade policy underlay Trajan's war to be anachronistic; according to these scholars, the concern of Roman leaders with the trade in far eastern luxuries\u00a0\u2013\u00a0besides collecting toll taxes and customs\u00a0\u2013\u00a0was moral in nature, because contemporary Roman mores frowned upon the \"softness\" of luxuries. In the absence of conclusive evidence, trade between Rome and India might have been far more balanced, in terms of quantities of precious metals exchanged: one of our sources for the notion of the Roman gold drain\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Pliny's the Younger's uncle Pliny the Elder\u00a0\u2013\u00a0had earlier described the Gangetic Plains as one of the gold sources for the Roman Empire. Accordingly \u2013 in a controversial book on the Roman economy \u2013 Finley considers Trajan's \"badly miscalculated and expensive assault on Parthia\" to be an example of the many Roman \"commercial wars\" that had in common the fact of existing only in the books of modern historians.\nThe alternative view is to see the campaign as triggered by the lure of territorial annexation and prestige, the sole motive ascribed by Cassius Dio. As far as territorial conquest involved tax-collecting, especially of the 25% tax levied on all goods entering the Roman Empire, the \"tetarte\", one can say that Trajan's Parthian War had an \"economic\" motive. Also, there was the propaganda value of an Eastern conquest that would emulate, in Roman fashion, those of Alexander the Great. The fact that emissaries from the Kushan Empire might have attended to the commemorative ceremonies for the Dacian War may have kindled in some Greco-Roman intellectuals like Plutarch\u00a0\u2013\u00a0who wrote about only 70,000 Roman soldiers being necessary to a conquest of India \u00a0\u2013\u00a0as well as in Trajan's closer associates, speculative dreams about the booty to be obtained by reproducing Macedonian Eastern conquests. There could also be Trajan's idea to use an ambitious blueprint of conquests as a way to emphasize quasi-divine status, such as with his cultivated association, in coins and monuments, to Hercules.\nAlso, it is possible that the attachment of Trajan to an expansionist policy was supported by a powerful circle of conservative senators from Hispania committed to a policy of imperial expansion, first among them being the all-powerful Licinius Sura. Alternatively, one can explain the campaign by the fact that, for the Romans, their empire was in principle unlimited, and that Trajan only took advantage of an opportunity to make idea and reality coincide. Finally, there are other modern historians who think that Trajan's original aims were purely military and strategic: to assure a more defensible Eastern frontier for the Roman Empire, crossing Northern Mesopotamia along the course of the Khabur River in order to offer cover to a Roman Armenia. This interpretation is backed by the fact that all subsequent Roman wars against Parthia would aim at establishing a Roman presence deep into Parthia itself. It is possible that during the onset of Trajan's military experience, as a young tribune, he had witnessed engagement with the Parthians; so any strategic vision was grounded in a tactical awareness of what was needed to tackle Parthia.\nCourse of the war.\nThe campaign was carefully planned in advance: ten legions were concentrated in the Eastern theatre; since 111, the correspondence of Pliny the Younger witnesses to the fact that provincial authorities in Bithynia had to organize supplies for passing troops, and local city councils and their individual members had to shoulder part of the increased expenses by supplying troops themselves. The intended campaign, therefore, was immensely costly from its very beginning. Trajan marched first on Armenia, deposed the Parthian-appointed king, Parthamasiris (who was afterwards murdered while kept in the custody of Roman troops in an unclear incident, later described by Fronto as a breach of Roman good faith), and annexed it to the Roman Empire as a province, receiving in passing the acknowledgement of Roman hegemony by various tribes in the Caucasus and on the Eastern coast of the Black Sea\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a process that kept him busy until the end of 114. At the same time, a Roman column under the legate Lusius Quietus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0an outstanding cavalry general who had signalled himself during the Dacian Wars by commanding a unit from his native Mauretania\u00a0\u2013\u00a0crossed the Araxes river from Armenia into Media Atropatene and the land of the Mardians (present-day Ghilan). It is possible that Quietus' campaign had as its goal the extending of the newer, more defensible Roman border eastwards towards the Caspian Sea and northwards to the foothills of the Caucasus. This newer, more \"rational\" frontier, depended, however, on an increased, permanent Roman presence east of the Euphrates.\nThe chronology of subsequent events is uncertain, but it is generally believed that early in 115 Trajan launched a Mesopotamian campaign, marching down towards the Taurus mountains in order to consolidate territory between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. He placed permanent garrisons along the way to secure the territory. While Trajan moved from west to east, Lusius Quietus moved with his army from the Caspian Sea towards the west, both armies performing a successful pincer movement, whose apparent result was to establish a Roman presence into the Parthian Empire proper, with Trajan taking the northern Mesopotamian cities of Nisibis and Batnae and organizing a province of Mesopotamia, including the Kingdom of Osrhoene\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where King Abgar VII submitted to Trajan publicly\u00a0\u2013\u00a0as a Roman protectorate. This process seems to have been completed at the beginning of 116, when coins were issued announcing that Armenia and Mesopotamia had been put under the authority of the Roman people. The area between the Khabur River and the mountains around Singara seems to have been considered as the new frontier, and as such received a road surrounded by fortresses.\nAfter wintering in Antioch during 115/116 \u00a0\u2013\u00a0and, according to literary sources, barely escaping from a violent earthquake that claimed the life of one of the consuls, Marcus Pedo Virgilianus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Trajan again took to the field in 116, with a view to the conquest of the whole of Mesopotamia, an overambitious goal that eventually backfired on the results of his entire campaign. According to some modern historians, the aim of the campaign of 116 was to achieve a \"pre-emptive demonstration\" aiming not toward the conquest of Parthia, but for tighter Roman control over the Eastern trade route. However, the overall scarcity of manpower for the Roman military establishment meant that the campaign was doomed from the start. It is noteworthy that no new legions were raised by Trajan before the Parthian campaign, maybe because the sources of new citizen recruits were already over-exploited.\nAs far as the sources allow a description of this campaign, it seems that one Roman division crossed the Tigris into Adiabene, sweeping south and capturing Adenystrae; a second followed the river south, capturing Babylon; Trajan himself sailed down the Euphrates from Dura-Europos\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where a triumphal arch was erected in his honour\u00a0\u2013\u00a0through Ozogardana, where he erected a \"tribunal\" still to be seen at the time of Julian the Apostate's campaigns in the same area. Having come to the narrow strip of land between the Euphrates and the Tigris, he then dragged his fleet overland into the Tigris, capturing Seleucia and finally the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon. He continued southward to the Persian Gulf, when, after escaping with his fleet a tidal bore on the Tigris, he received the submission of Athambelus, the ruler of Charax. He declared Babylon a new province of the Empire and had his statue erected on the shore of the Persian Gulf, after which he sent the Senate a laurelled letter declaring the war to be at a close and bemoaning that he was too old to go on any further and repeat the conquests of Alexander the Great. Since Charax was a \"de facto\" independent kingdom whose connections to Palmyra were described above, Trajan's bid for the Persian Gulf may have coincided with Palmyrene interests in the region. Another hypothesis is that the rulers of Charax had expansionist designs on Parthian Babylon, giving them a rationale for alliance with Trajan. The Parthian city of Susa was apparently also occupied by the Romans.\nAccording to late literary sources (not backed by numismatic or inscriptional evidence) a province of Assyria was also proclaimed, apparently covering the territory of Adiabene. Some measures seem to have been considered regarding the fiscal administration of Indian trade\u00a0\u2013\u00a0or simply about the payment of customs (\"portoria\") on goods traded on the Euphrates and Tigris. It is possible that it was this \"streamlining\" of the administration of the newly conquered lands according to the standard pattern of Roman provincial administration in tax collecting, requisitions and the handling of local potentates' prerogatives, that triggered later resistance against Trajan. According to some modern historians, Trajan might have busied himself during his stay on the Persian Gulf with ordering raids on the Parthian coasts, as well as probing into extending Roman suzerainty over the mountaineer tribes holding the passes across the Zagros Mountains into the Iranian plateau eastward, as well as establishing some sort of direct contact between Rome and the Kushan Empire. No attempt was made to expand into the Iranian Plateau itself, where the Roman army, with its relative weakness in cavalry, would have been at a disadvantage.\nTrajan left the Persian Gulf for Babylon\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where he intended to offer sacrifice to Alexander in the house where he had died in 323BC\u00a0\u2013\u00a0 But a revolt led by Sanatruces, a nephew of the Parthian king Osroes I who had retained a cavalry force, possibly strengthened by the addition of Saka archers, imperilled Roman positions in Mesopotamia and Armenia. Trajan sought to deal with this by forsaking direct Roman rule in Parthia proper, at least partially. Trajan sent two armies towards Northern Mesopotamia: the first, under Lusius Quietus, recovered Nisibis and Edessa from the rebels, probably having King Abgarus deposed and killed in the process, with Quietus probably earning the right to receive the honors of a senator of praetorian rank (\"adlectus inter praetorios\"). The second army, however, under Appius Maximus Santra (probably a governor of Macedonia) was defeated and Santra killed.\nLater in 116, Trajan, with the assistance of Quietus and two other legates, Marcus Erucius Clarus and Tiberius Julius Alexander Julianus, defeated a Parthian army in a battle where Sanatruces was killed (possibly with the assistance of Osroes' son and Sanatruces' cousin, Parthamaspates, whom Trajan wooed successfully). After re-taking and burning Seleucia, Trajan then formally deposed Osroes, putting Parthamaspates on the throne as client ruler. This event was commemorated in a coin as the reduction of Parthia to client kingdom status: , \"a king is given to the Parthians\". That done, Trajan retreated north in order to retain what he could of the new provinces of Armenia\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where he had already accepted an armistice in exchange for surrendering part of the territory to Sanatruces' son Vologeses\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and Mesopotamia. It was at this point that Trajan's health started to fail him. The fortress city of Hatra, on the Tigris in his rear, continued to hold out against repeated Roman assaults. He was personally present at the siege, and it is possible that he suffered a heat stroke while in the blazing heat.\nDiaspora revolt.\nAbout this same time (AD 116\u2013117), Jews in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire\u2014Egypt, Cyprus, and Cyrene, which was likely the original trouble hotspot\u2014rebelled in what appears to have been an ethnic and religious uprising against the local populations, later known as the Diaspora Revolt. Additionally, Jewish communities in Northern Mesopotamia revolted, likely as part of a broader resistance against Roman occupation. Trajan had to withdraw his army to suppress these revolts, a move he considered a temporary setback. He never returned to command, delegating Eastern operations to Lusius Quietus, who was appointed governor of Judaea in early 117 and likely dealt with Jewish unrest there. Quietus discharged his commissions successfully, leading rabbinic sources to name the conflict in Judaea the \"Kitos War,\" with \"Kitus\" being a corruption of \"Quietus\". Whether or not the Diaspora revolt included Judea proper, or only the Jewish Eastern diaspora, remains doubtful in the absence of clear epigraphic and archaeological evidence. What is certain is that there was an increased Roman military presence in Judea at the time.\nQuietus was promised a consulate in the following year (118) for his victories, but he was killed before this could occur, during the bloody purge that opened Hadrian's reign, in which Quietus and three other former consuls were sentenced to death after being tried on a vague charge of conspiracy by the (secret) court of the Praetorian Prefect Attianus. It has been thought that Quietus and his colleagues were executed on Hadrian's direct orders, for fear of their popular standing with the army and their close connections to Trajan. In contrast, the next prominent Roman figure in charge of the repression of the Jewish revolt, the equestrian Quintus Marcius Turbo, who had dealt with the rebel leader from Cyrene, Loukuas, retained Hadrian's trust, eventually becoming his Praetorian Prefect. As all four consulars were senators of the highest standing and as such generally regarded as able to take imperial power (\"capaces imperii\"), Hadrian seems to have decided to forestall these prospective rivals.\nDeath and succession.\nEarly in 117, Trajan grew ill and set sail for Italy. His health declined throughout the spring and summer of 117, possibly acknowledged to the public by the display of a bronze portrait-bust at the public baths of Ancyra, showing an aged and emaciated man, though the identification with Trajan is disputed. He reached Selinus, where he suddenly died, shortly before 11 August. Trajan in person could have lawfully nominated Hadrian as his successor, but Dio claims that Trajan's wife, Pompeia Plotina, assured Hadrian's succession by keeping Trajan's death a secret, long enough for her to produce and sign a document attesting to Hadrian's adoption as son and successor. Dio, who tells this narrative, offers his father\u00a0\u2013\u00a0the governor of Cilicia Apronianus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0as a source, so his narrative may be based on contemporary rumour. It may also reflect male Roman displeasure that an empress\u00a0\u2013\u00a0let alone any woman\u00a0\u2013\u00a0 could presume to meddle in Rome's political affairs.\nHadrian held an ambiguous position during Trajan's reign. After commanding Legio I Minervia during the Dacian Wars, he had been relieved from front-line duties at the decisive stage of the Second Dacian War, being sent to govern the newly created province of Pannonia Inferior. He had pursued a senatorial career without particular distinction and had not been officially adopted by Trajan although he received from him decorations and other marks of distinction that made him hope for the succession. He received no post after his 108 consulate and no further honours other than being made Archon eponymos for Athens in 111/112. He probably did not take part in the Parthian War. Literary sources relate that Trajan had considered others, such as the jurist Lucius Neratius Priscus, as heir. Hadrian, who was eventually entrusted with the governorship of Syria at the time of Trajan's death, was Trajan's cousin and was married to Trajan's grandniece, which all made him as good as heir designate. Hadrian seems to have been well connected to the powerful and influential coterie of Spanish senators at Trajan's court, through his ties to Plotina and the Prefect Attianus. His refusal to sustain Trajan's senatorial and expansionist policy during his own reign may account for the \"crass hostility\" shown him by literary sources.\nHadrian's first major act as emperor was to abandon Mesopotamia as too costly and distant to defend, and to restore Armenia and Osrhoene to Parthian hegemony, under Rome's suzerainty. The Parthian campaign had been an enormous setback to Trajan's policy, proof that Rome had overstretched its capacity to sustain an ambitious program of conquest. According to the \"Historia Augusta\", Hadrian claimed to follow the precedent set by Cato the Elder towards the Macedonians, who \"were to be set free because they could not be protected\" \u2013 something Birley sees as an unconvincing precedent. Other territories conquered by Trajan were retained. According to a well-established historical tradition, Trajan's ashes were placed within the small cella that still survives at the base of Trajan's column. In some modern scholarship, his ashes were more likely interred near his column, in a mausoleum, temple or tomb built for his cult as a \"divus\" of the Roman state.\nLegacy.\nAncient sources on Trajan's personality and accomplishments are unanimously positive. Pliny the Younger, for example, celebrates Trajan in his panegyric as a wise and just emperor and a moral man. Cassius Dio added that he always remained dignified and fair. A third-century emperor, Decius, even received from the Senate the name Trajan as a decoration. In the Later Roman Empire, following the setbacks of the third century, Trajan, together with Augustus, became the paragon of the most positive traits of the Imperial order. Emperors in the 4th century were honoured by the Senate with the acclamation \"Felicior Augusto, Melior Traiano\" (\"May you be more fortunate than Augustus and better than Trajan\"). The fourth-century emperor Constantine I is credited with calling him a \"plant upon every wall\" for the many buildings bearing inscriptions with his name.\nIconography.\nAll Roman emperors until Trajan, except Nero who occasionally wore sideburns, were depicted clean-shaven, according to the fashion introduced among the Romans by Scipio Africanus (236\u00a0\u2013\u00a0183 BC). This Imperial fashion was changed by Trajan's successor Hadrian who made beards fashionable for emperors.\nAfter Rome.\nDuring the Middle Ages, some theologians such as Thomas Aquinas discussed Trajan as an example of a virtuous pagan. In the \"Divine Comedy\", Dante, following this legend, sees the spirit of Trajan in the Heaven of Jupiter with other historical and mythological persons noted for their justice. Also, a mural of Trajan stopping to provide justice for a poor widow is present in the first terrace of Purgatory as a lesson to those who are purged for being proud.\n<poem>\nI noticed that the inner bank of the curve...\nWas of white marble, and so decorated\nWith carvings that not only Polycletus\nBut nature herself would there be put to shame...\nThere was recorded the high glory\nOf that ruler of Rome whose worth\nMoved Gregory to his great victory;\nI mean by this the Emperor Trajan;\nAnd at his bridle a poor widow\nWhose attitude bespoke tears and grief...\nThe wretched woman, in the midst of all this,\nSeemed to be saying: 'Lord, avenge my son,\nWho is dead, so that my heart is broken..'\nSo he said: 'Now be comforted, for I must\nCarry out my duty before I go on:\nJustice requires it and pity holds me back.'\n\"Dante, The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio X, ll. 32 f. and 73 f.\"\n</poem>\nIn the Renaissance, Machiavelli, speaking on the advantages of adoptive succession over heredity, mentioned the five successive good emperors \"from Nerva to Marcus\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a trope out of which the 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon popularized the notion of the Five Good Emperors, of whom Trajan was the second.\nIn the 18th century, King Charles III of Spain commissioned Anton Raphael Mengs to paint \"The Triumph of Trajan\" on the ceiling of the banquet hall of the Royal Palace of Madrid\u00a0\u2013\u00a0considered among the best works of this artist.\nIt was only during the Enlightenment that this legacy began to be contested, when Edward Gibbon expressed doubts about the militarized character of Trajan's reign in contrast to the \"moderate\" practices of his immediate successors. Mommsen adopted a divided stance towards Trajan, at some point of his posthumously published lectures even speaking about his \"vainglory\" (\"Scheinglorie\"). Mommsen also speaks of Trajan's \"insatiable, unlimited lust for conquest\". Although Mommsen had no liking for Trajan's successor Hadrian\u00a0\u2013\u00a0\"a repellent manner, and a venomous, envious and malicious nature\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0he admitted that Hadrian, in renouncing Trajan's conquests, was \"doing what the situation clearly required\".\nIt was exactly this military character of Trajan's reign that attracted his early twentieth-century biographer, the Italian historian Roberto Paribeni, who in his 1927 two-volume biography \"Optimus Princeps\" described Trajan's reign as the acme of the Roman principate, which he saw as Italy's patrimony. Following in Paribeni's footsteps, the German historian Alfred Heuss saw in Trajan \"the accomplished human embodiment of the imperial title\" (\"die ideale Verk\u00f6rperung des humanen Kaiserbegriffs\"). Trajan's first English-language biography by Julian Bennett is also a positive one in that it assumes that Trajan was an active policy-maker concerned with the management of the empire as a whole\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something his reviewer Lendon considers an anachronistic outlook that sees in the Roman emperor a kind of modern administrator.\nDuring the 1980s, the Romanian historian Eugen Cizek took a more nuanced view as he described the changes in the \"personal\" ideology of Trajan's reign, stressing the fact that it became ever more autocratic and militarized, especially after 112 and towards the Parthian War (as \"only an universal monarch, a \"kosmocrator\", could dictate his law to the East\"). The biography by the German historian Karl Strobel stresses the continuity between Domitian's and Trajan's reigns, saying that Trajan's rule followed the same autocratic and sacred character as Domitian's, culminating in a failed Parthian adventure intended as the crown of his personal achievement. It is in modern French historiography that Trajan's reputation becomes most markedly deflated: Paul Petit writes about Trajan's portraits as a \"lowbrow boor with a taste for booze and boys\". For Paul Veyne, what is to be retained from Trajan's \"stylish\" qualities was that he was the last Roman emperor to think of the empire as a purely Italian and Rome-centred hegemony of conquest. In contrast, his successor Hadrian would stress the notion of the empire as ecumenical and of the emperor as universal benefactor and not \"kosmocrator\".\nIn Romanian culture.\nIn Romania, Trajan (Romanian: \"Traian\") is regarded as one of the founders of the Romanian nation and a historical figure of great importance to the Romanian people and culture. This is due to his orchestration of the Dacian Wars that led to the foundation of the Daco-Roman culture and the Latin-based Romanian language. The creation of Roman Dacia is therefore seen in the country as the ethnogenesis of the Romanian nation.\nIn Jewish legend.\nIn the Jewish homiletical works, such as \"Esther Rabbah\", Trajan is described with the epitaph \"may his bones be crushed\" (). The same epitaph is also used for Hadrian.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "25507": "Roman Empire\nTerritory ruled by Rome and period of Roman history\nThe Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Romans conquered most of this during the Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of effective sole rule in 27\u00a0BC. The western empire collapsed in 476\u00a0AD, but the eastern empire lasted until the fall of Constantinople in 1453.\nBy 100\u00a0BC, the city of Rome had expanded its rule from the Italian peninsula to most of the Mediterranean and beyond. However, it was severely destabilised by civil wars and political conflicts, which culminated in the victory of Octavian over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31\u00a0BC, and the subsequent conquest of the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt. In 27\u00a0BC, the Roman Senate granted Octavian overarching military power () and the new title of \"Augustus\", marking his accession as the first Roman emperor. The vast Roman territories were organized into senatorial provinces, governed by proconsuls who were appointed by lot annually, and imperial provinces, which belonged to the emperor but were governed by legates.\nThe first two centuries of the Empire saw a period of unprecedented stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana (lit.\u2009'Roman Peace'). Rome reached its greatest territorial extent under Trajan (r.\u200998\u00a0\u2013\u00a0117\u00a0AD), but a period of increasing trouble and decline began under Commodus (r.\u2009180\u00a0\u2013\u00a0192). In the 3rd century, the Empire underwent a 49-year crisis that threatened its existence due to civil war, plagues and barbarian invasions. The Gallic and Palmyrene empires broke away from the state and a series of short-lived emperors led the Empire, which was later reunified under Aurelian (r.\u2009270\u00a0\u2013\u00a0275). The civil wars ended with the victory of Diocletian (r.\u2009284\u00a0\u2013\u00a0305), who set up two different imperial courts in the Greek East and Latin West. Constantine the Great (r.\u2009306\u00a0\u2013\u00a0337), the first Christian emperor, moved the imperial seat from Rome to Byzantium in 330, and renamed it Constantinople. The Migration Period, involving large invasions by Germanic peoples and by the Huns of Attila, led to the decline of the Western Roman Empire. With the fall of Ravenna to the Germanic Herulians and the deposition of Romulus Augustus in 476 by Odoacer, the Western Empire finally collapsed. The Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire survived for another millennium with Constantinople as its sole capital, until the city's fall in 1453.\nDue to the Empire's extent and endurance, its institutions and culture had a lasting influence on the development of language, religion, art, architecture, literature, philosophy, law, and forms of government across its territories. Latin evolved into the Romance languages while Medieval Greek became the language of the East. The Empire's adoption of Christianity resulted in the formation of medieval Christendom. Roman and Greek art had a profound impact on the Italian Renaissance. Rome's architectural tradition served as the basis for Romanesque, Renaissance and Neoclassical architecture, influencing Islamic architecture. The rediscovery of classical science and technology (which formed the basis for Islamic science) in medieval Europe contributed to the Scientific Renaissance and Scientific Revolution. Many modern legal systems, such as the Napoleonic Code, descend from Roman law. Rome's republican institutions have influenced the Italian city-state republics of the medieval period, the early United States, and modern democratic republics.\nHistory.\nTransition from Republic to Empire.\nRome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the Roman Republic in the 6th century BC, though not outside the Italian Peninsula until the 3rd century BC. Thus, it was an \"empire\" (a great power) long before it had an emperor. The Republic was not a nation-state in the modern sense, but a network of self-ruled towns (with varying degrees of independence from the Senate) and provinces administered by military commanders. It was governed by annually elected magistrates (Roman consuls above all) in conjunction with the Senate. The 1st century BC was a time of political and military upheaval, which ultimately led to rule by emperors. The consuls' military power rested in the Roman legal concept of \"imperium\", meaning \"command\" (typically in a military sense). Occasionally, successful consuls or generals were given the honorary title \"imperator\" (commander); this is the origin of the word \"emperor\", since this title was always bestowed to the early emperors.\nRome suffered a long series of internal conflicts, conspiracies, and civil wars from the late second century BC (see Crisis of the Roman Republic) while greatly extending its power beyond Italy. In 44 BC Julius Caesar was briefly perpetual dictator before being assassinated by a faction that opposed his concentration of power. This faction was driven from Rome and defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC by Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son Octavian. Antony and Octavian divided the Roman world between them, but this did not last long. Octavian's forces defeated those of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. In 27 BC the Senate gave him the title \"Augustus\" (\"venerated\") and made him \"princeps\" (\"foremost\") with proconsular \"imperium\", thus beginning the Principate, the first epoch of Roman imperial history. Although the republic stood in name, Augustus had all meaningful authority. During his 40-year rule, a new constitutional order emerged so that, upon his death, Tiberius would succeed him as the new \"de facto\" monarch.\n\"Pax Romana\".\nThe 200 years that began with Augustus's rule is traditionally regarded as the \"Pax Romana\" (\"Roman Peace\"). The cohesion of the empire was furthered by a degree of social stability and economic prosperity that Rome had never before experienced. Uprisings in the provinces were infrequent and put down \"mercilessly and swiftly\". The success of Augustus in establishing principles of dynastic succession was limited by his outliving a number of talented potential heirs. The Julio-Claudian dynasty lasted for four more emperors\u2014Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero\u2014before it yielded in 69 AD to the strife-torn Year of the Four Emperors, from which Vespasian emerged as the victor. Vespasian became the founder of the brief Flavian dynasty, followed by the Nerva\u2013Antonine dynasty which produced the \"Five Good Emperors\": Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius.\nTransition from classical to late antiquity.\nIn the view of contemporary Greek historian Cassius Dio, the accession of Commodus in 180 marked the descent \"from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron\", a comment which has led some historians, notably Edward Gibbon, to take Commodus' reign as the beginning of the Empire's decline.\nIn 212, during the reign of Caracalla, Roman citizenship was granted to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. The Severan dynasty was tumultuous; an emperor's reign was ended routinely by his murder or execution and, following its collapse, the Empire was engulfed by the Crisis of the Third Century, a period of invasions, civil strife, economic disorder, and plague. In defining historical epochs, this crisis sometimes marks the transition from Classical to Late Antiquity. Aurelian (r.\u2009270\u00a0\u2013\u00a0275) stabilised the empire militarily and Diocletian reorganised and restored much of it in 285. Diocletian's reign brought the empire's most concerted effort against the perceived threat of Christianity, the \"Great Persecution\".\nDiocletian divided the empire into four regions, each ruled by a separate tetrarch. Confident that he fixed the disorder plaguing Rome, he abdicated along with his co-emperor, but the Tetrarchy collapsed shortly after. Order was eventually restored by Constantine the Great, who became the first emperor to convert to Christianity, and who established Constantinople as the new capital of the Eastern Empire. During the decades of the Constantinian and Valentinian dynasties, the empire was divided along an east\u2013west axis, with dual power centres in Constantinople and Rome. Julian, who under the influence of his adviser Mardonius attempted to restore Classical Roman and Hellenistic religion, only briefly interrupted the succession of Christian emperors. Theodosius I, the last emperor to rule over both East and West, died in 395 after making Christianity the state religion.\nFall in the West and survival in the East.\nThe Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate in the early 5th century. The Romans fought off all invaders, most famously Attila, but the empire had assimilated so many Germanic peoples of dubious loyalty to Rome that the empire started to dismember itself. Most chronologies place the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476, when Romulus Augustulus was forced to abdicate to the Germanic warlord Odoacer.\nOdoacer ended the Western Empire by declaring Zeno sole emperor and placing himself as Zeno's nominal subordinate. In reality, Italy was ruled by Odoacer alone. The Eastern Roman Empire, called the Byzantine Empire by later historians, continued until the reign of Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Roman emperor. He died in battle in 1453 against Mehmed II and his Ottoman forces during the siege of Constantinople. Mehmed II adopted the title of \"caesar\" in an attempt to claim a connection to the former Empire. His claim was soon recognized by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, but not by European monarchs.\nGeography and demography.\nThe Roman Empire was one of the largest in history, with contiguous territories throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The Latin phrase \"imperium sine fine\" (\"empire without end\") expressed the ideology that neither time nor space limited the Empire. In Virgil's \"Aeneid\", limitless empire is said to be granted to the Romans by Jupiter. This claim of universal dominion was renewed when the Empire came under Christian rule in the 4th century. In addition to annexing large regions, the Romans directly altered their geography, for example cutting down entire forests.\nRoman expansion was mostly accomplished under the Republic, though parts of northern Europe were conquered in the 1st century, when Roman control in Europe, Africa, and Asia was strengthened. Under Augustus, a \"global map of the known world\" was displayed for the first time in public at Rome, coinciding with the creation of the most comprehensive political geography that survives from antiquity, the \"Geography\" of Strabo. When Augustus died, the account of his achievements (\"Res Gestae\") prominently featured the geographical cataloguing of the Empire. Geography alongside meticulous written records were central concerns of Roman Imperial administration.\nThe Empire reached its largest expanse under Trajan (r.\u200998\u00a0\u2013\u00a0117), encompassing 5 million km2. The traditional population estimate of 55\u201360 million inhabitants accounted for between one-sixth and one-fourth of the world's total population and made it the most populous unified political entity in the West until the mid-19th century. Recent demographic studies have argued for a population peak from 70 million to more than 100 million. Each of the three largest cities in the Empire\u2014Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch\u2014was almost twice the size of any European city at the beginning of the 17th century.\nAs the historian Christopher Kelly described it:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Then the empire stretched from Hadrian's Wall in drizzle-soaked northern England to the sun-baked banks of the Euphrates in Syria; from the great Rhine\u2013Danube river system, which snaked across the fertile, flat lands of Europe from the Low Countries to the Black Sea, to the rich plains of the North African coast and the luxuriant gash of the Nile Valley in Egypt. The empire completely circled the Mediterranean\u00a0... referred to by its conquerors as \"mare nostrum\"\u2014'our sea'.\nTrajan's successor Hadrian adopted a policy of maintaining rather than expanding the empire. Borders (\"fines\") were marked, and the frontiers (\"limites\") patrolled. The most heavily fortified borders were the most unstable. Hadrian's Wall, which separated the Roman world from what was perceived as an ever-present barbarian threat, is the primary surviving monument of this effort.\nLanguages.\nLatin and Greek were the main languages of the Empire, but the Empire was deliberately multilingual. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill says \"The main desire of the Roman government was to make itself understood\". At the start of the Empire, knowledge of Greek was useful to pass as educated nobility and knowledge of Latin was useful for a career in the military, government, or law. Bilingual inscriptions indicate the everyday interpenetration of the two languages.\nLatin and Greek's mutual linguistic and cultural influence is a complex topic. Latin words incorporated into Greek were very common by the early imperial era, especially for military, administration, and trade and commerce matters. Greek grammar, literature, poetry and philosophy shaped Latin language and culture.\nThere was never a legal requirement for Latin in the Empire, but it represented a certain status. High standards of Latin, \"Latinitas\", started with the advent of Latin literature. Due to the flexible language policy of the Empire, a natural competition of language emerged that spurred \"Latinitas\", to defend Latin against the stronger cultural influence of Greek. Over time Latin usage was used to project power and a higher social class. Most of the emperors were bilingual but had a preference for Latin in the public sphere for political reasons, a \"rule\" that first started during the Punic Wars. Different emperors up until Justinian would attempt to require the use of Latin in various sections of the administration but there is no evidence that a linguistic imperialism existed during the early Empire.\nAfter all freeborn inhabitants were universally enfranchised in 212, many Roman citizens would have lacked a knowledge of Latin. The wide use of Koine Greek was what enabled the spread of Christianity and reflects its role as the lingua franca of the Mediterranean during the time of the Empire. Following Diocletian's reforms in the 3rd century CE, there was a decline in the knowledge of Greek in the west. Spoken Latin later fragmented into the incipient romance languages in the 7th century CE following the collapse of the Empire's west.\nThe dominance of Latin and Greek among the literate elite obscure the continuity of other spoken languages within the Empire. Latin, referred to in its spoken form as Vulgar Latin, gradually replaced Celtic and Italic languages. References to interpreters indicate the continuing use of local languages, particularly in Egypt with Coptic, and in military settings along the Rhine and Danube. Roman jurists also show a concern for local languages such as Punic, Gaulish, and Aramaic in assuring the correct understanding of laws and oaths. In Africa, Libyco-Berber and Punic were used in inscriptions into the 2nd century. In Syria, Palmyrene soldiers used their dialect of Aramaic for inscriptions, an exception to the rule that Latin was the language of the military. The last reference to Gaulish was between 560 and 575. The emergent Gallo-Romance languages would then be shaped by Gaulish. Proto-Basque or Aquitanian evolved with Latin loan words to modern Basque. The Thracian language, as were several now-extinct languages in Anatolia, are attested in Imperial-era inscriptions.\nSociety.\nThe Empire was remarkably multicultural, with \"astonishing cohesive capacity\" to create shared identity while encompassing diverse peoples. Public monuments and communal spaces open to all\u2014such as forums, amphitheatres, racetracks and baths\u2014helped foster a sense of \"Romanness\".\nRoman society had multiple, overlapping social hierarchies. The civil war preceding Augustus caused upheaval, but did not effect an immediate redistribution of wealth and social power. From the perspective of the lower classes, a peak was merely added to the social pyramid. Personal relationships\u2014patronage, friendship (\"amicitia\"), family, marriage\u2014continued to influence politics. By the time of Nero, however, it was not unusual to find a former slave who was richer than a freeborn citizen, or an equestrian who exercised greater power than a senator.\nThe blurring of the Republic's more rigid hierarchies led to increased social mobility, both upward and downward, to a greater extent than all other well-documented ancient societies. Women, freedmen, and slaves had opportunities to profit and exercise influence in ways previously less available to them. Social life, particularly for those whose personal resources were limited, was further fostered by a proliferation of voluntary associations and confraternities (\"collegia\" and \"sodalitates\"): professional and trade guilds, veterans' groups, religious sodalities, drinking and dining clubs, performing troupes, and burial societies.\nLegal status.\nAccording to the jurist Gaius, the essential distinction in the Roman \"law of persons\" was that all humans were either free (\"liberi\") or slaves (\"servi\"). The legal status of free persons was further defined by their citizenship. Most citizens held limited rights (such as the \"ius Latinum\", \"Latin right\"), but were entitled to legal protections and privileges not enjoyed by non-citizens. Free people not considered citizens, but living within the Roman world, were \"peregrini\", non-Romans. In 212, the \"Constitutio Antoniniana\" extended citizenship to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. This legal egalitarianism required a far-reaching revision of existing laws that distinguished between citizens and non-citizens.\nWomen in Roman law.\nFreeborn Roman women were considered citizens, but did not vote, hold political office, or serve in the military. A mother's citizen status determined that of her children, as indicated by the phrase \"ex duobus civibus Romanis natos\" (\"children born of two Roman citizens\"). A Roman woman kept her own family name (\"nomen\") for life. Children most often took the father's name, with some exceptions. Women could own property, enter contracts, and engage in business. Inscriptions throughout the Empire honour women as benefactors in funding public works, an indication they could hold considerable fortunes.\nThe archaic \"manus\" marriage in which the woman was subject to her husband's authority was largely abandoned by the Imperial era, and a married woman retained ownership of any property she brought into the marriage. Technically she remained under her father's legal authority, even though she moved into her husband's home, but when her father died she became legally emancipated. This arrangement was a factor in the degree of independence Roman women enjoyed compared to many other cultures up to the modern period: although she had to answer to her father in legal matters, she was free of his direct scrutiny in daily life, and her husband had no legal power over her. Although it was a point of pride to be a \"one-man woman\" (\"univira\") who had married only once, there was little stigma attached to divorce, nor to speedy remarriage after being widowed or divorced. Girls had equal inheritance rights with boys if their father died without leaving a will. A mother's right to own and dispose of property, including setting the terms of her will, gave her enormous influence over her sons into adulthood.\nAs part of the Augustan programme to restore traditional morality and social order, moral legislation attempted to regulate conduct as a means of promoting \"family values\". Adultery was criminalized, and defined broadly as an illicit sex act (\"stuprum\") between a male citizen and a married woman, or between a married woman and any man other than her husband. That is, a double standard was in place: a married woman could have sex only with her husband, but a married man did not commit adultery if he had sex with a prostitute or person of marginalized status. Childbearing was encouraged: a woman who had given birth to three children was granted symbolic honours and greater legal freedom (the \"ius trium liberorum\").\nSlaves and the law.\nAt the time of Augustus, as many as 35% of the people in Roman Italy were slaves, making Rome one of five historical \"slave societies\" in which slaves constituted at least a fifth of the population and played a major role in the economy. Slavery was a complex institution that supported traditional Roman social structures as well as contributing economic utility. In urban settings, slaves might be professionals such as teachers, physicians, chefs, and accountants; the majority of slaves provided trained or unskilled labour. Agriculture and industry, such as milling and mining, relied on the exploitation of slaves. Outside Italy, slaves were on average an estimated 10 to 20% of the population, sparse in Roman Egypt but more concentrated in some Greek areas. Expanding Roman ownership of arable land and industries affected preexisting practices of slavery in the provinces. Although slavery has often been regarded as waning in the 3rd and 4th centuries, it remained an integral part of Roman society until gradually ceasing in the 6th and 7th centuries with the disintegration of the complex Imperial economy.\nLaws pertaining to slavery were \"extremely intricate\". Slaves were considered property and had no legal personhood. They could be subjected to forms of corporal punishment not normally exercised on citizens, sexual exploitation, torture, and summary execution. A slave could not as a matter of law be raped; a slave's rapist had to be prosecuted by the owner for property damage under the Aquilian Law. Slaves had no right to the form of legal marriage called \"conubium\", but their unions were sometimes recognized. Technically, a slave could not own property, but a slave who conducted business might be given access to an individual fund (\"peculium\") that he could use, depending on the degree of trust and co-operation between owner and slave. Within a household or workplace, a hierarchy of slaves might exist, with one slave acting as the master of others. Talented slaves might accumulate a large enough \"peculium\" to justify their freedom, or be manumitted for services rendered. Manumission had become frequent enough that in 2 BC a law (\"Lex Fufia Caninia\") limited the number of slaves an owner was allowed to free in his will.\nFollowing the Servile Wars of the Republic, legislation under Augustus and his successors shows a driving concern for controlling the threat of rebellions through limiting the size of work groups, and for hunting down fugitive slaves. Over time slaves gained increased legal protection, including the right to file complaints against their masters. A bill of sale might contain a clause stipulating that the slave could not be employed for prostitution, as prostitutes in ancient Rome were often slaves. The burgeoning trade in eunuchs in the late 1st century prompted legislation that prohibited the castration of a slave against his will \"for lust or gain\".\nRoman slavery was not based on race. Generally, slaves in Italy were indigenous Italians, with a minority of foreigners (including both slaves and freedmen) estimated at 5% of the total in the capital at its peak, where their number was largest. Foreign slaves had higher mortality and lower birth rates than natives and were sometimes even subjected to mass expulsions. The average recorded age at death for the slaves of the city of Rome was seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females).\nDuring the period of republican expansionism when slavery had become pervasive, war captives were a main source of slaves. The range of ethnicities among slaves to some extent reflected that of the armies Rome defeated in war, and the conquest of Greece brought a number of highly skilled and educated slaves. Slaves were also traded in markets and sometimes sold by pirates. Infant abandonment and self-enslavement among the poor were other sources. \"Vernae\", by contrast, were \"homegrown\" slaves born to female slaves within the household, estate or farm. Although they had no special legal status, an owner who mistreated or failed to care for his \"vernae\" faced social disapproval, as they were considered part of the family household and in some cases might actually be the children of free males in the family.\nFreedmen.\nRome differed from Greek city-states in allowing freed slaves to become citizens; any future children of a freedman were born free, with full rights of citizenship. After manumission, a slave who had belonged to a Roman citizen enjoyed active political freedom (\"libertas\"), including the right to vote. His former master became his patron (\"patronus\"): the two continued to have customary and legal obligations to each other. A freedman was not entitled to hold public office or the highest state priesthoods, but could play a priestly role. He could not marry a woman from a senatorial family, nor achieve legitimate senatorial rank himself, but during the early Empire, freedmen held key positions in the government bureaucracy, so much so that Hadrian limited their participation by law. The rise of successful freedmen\u2014through political influence or wealth\u2014is a characteristic of early Imperial society. The prosperity of a high-achieving group of freedmen is attested by .\nCensus rank.\nThe Latin word \"ordo\" (plural \"ordines\") is translated variously and inexactly into English as \"class, order, rank\". One purpose of the Roman census was to determine the \"ordo\" to which an individual belonged. Two of the highest \"ordines\" in Rome were the senatorial and equestrian. Outside Rome, cities or colonies were led by decurions, also known as \"curiales.\"\n\"Senator\" was not itself an elected office in ancient Rome; an individual gained admission to the Senate after he had been elected to and served at least one term as an executive magistrate. A senator also had to meet a minimum property requirement of 1 million \"sestertii\". Not all men who qualified for the \"ordo senatorius\" chose to take a Senate seat, which required legal domicile at Rome. Emperors often filled vacancies in the 600-member body by appointment. A senator's son belonged to the \"ordo senatorius\", but he had to qualify on his own merits for admission to the Senate. A senator could be removed for violating moral standards.\nIn the time of Nero, senators were still primarily from Italy, with some from the Iberian peninsula and southern France; men from the Greek-speaking provinces of the East began to be added under Vespasian. The first senator from the easternmost province, Cappadocia, was admitted under Marcus Aurelius. By the Severan dynasty (193\u2013235), Italians made up less than half the Senate. During the 3rd century, domicile at Rome became impractical, and inscriptions attest to senators who were active in politics and munificence in their homeland (\"patria\").\nSenators were the traditional governing class who rose through the \"cursus honorum\", the political career track, but equestrians often possessed greater wealth and political power. Membership in the equestrian order was based on property; in Rome's early days, \"equites\" or knights had been distinguished by their ability to serve as mounted warriors, but cavalry service was a separate function in the Empire. A census valuation of 400,000 sesterces and three generations of free birth qualified a man as an equestrian. The census of 28 BC uncovered large numbers of men who qualified, and in 14 AD, a thousand equestrians were registered at C\u00e1diz and Padua alone. Equestrians rose through a military career track (\"tres militiae\") to become highly placed prefects and procurators within the Imperial administration.\nThe rise of provincial men to the senatorial and equestrian orders is an aspect of social mobility in the early Empire. Roman aristocracy was based on competition, and unlike later European nobility, a Roman family could not maintain its position merely through hereditary succession or having title to lands. Admission to the higher \"ordines\" brought distinction and privileges, but also responsibilities. In antiquity, a city depended on its leading citizens to fund public works, events, and services (\"munera\"). Maintaining one's rank required massive personal expenditures. Decurions were so vital for the functioning of cities that in the later Empire, as the ranks of the town councils became depleted, those who had risen to the Senate were encouraged to return to their hometowns, in an effort to sustain civic life.\nIn the later Empire, the \"dignitas\" (\"worth, esteem\") that attended on senatorial or equestrian rank was refined further with titles such as \"vir illustris\" (\"illustrious man\"). The appellation \"clarissimus\" (Greek \"lamprotatos\") was used to designate the \"dignitas\" of certain senators and their immediate family, including women. \"Grades\" of equestrian status proliferated.\nUnequal justice.\nAs the republican principle of citizens' equality under the law faded, the symbolic and social privileges of the upper classes led to an informal division of Roman society into those who had acquired greater honours (\"honestiores\") and humbler folk (\"humiliores\"). In general, \"honestiores\" were the members of the three higher \"orders\", along with certain military officers. The granting of universal citizenship in 212 seems to have increased the competitive urge among the upper classes to have their superiority affirmed, particularly within the justice system. Sentencing depended on the judgment of the presiding official as to the relative \"worth\" (\"dignitas\") of the defendant: an \"honestior\" could pay a fine for a crime for which an \"humilior\" might receive a scourging.\nExecution, which was an infrequent legal penalty for free men under the Republic, could be quick and relatively painless for \"honestiores\", while \"humiliores\" might suffer the kinds of torturous death previously reserved for slaves, such as crucifixion and condemnation to the beasts. In the early Empire, those who converted to Christianity could lose their standing as \"honestiores\", especially if they declined to fulfil religious responsibilities, and thus became subject to punishments that created the conditions of martyrdom.\nGovernment and military.\nThe three major elements of the Imperial state were the central government, the military, and the provincial government. The military established control of a territory through war, but after a city or people was brought under treaty, the mission turned to policing: protecting Roman citizens, agricultural fields, and religious sites. The Romans lacked sufficient manpower or resources to rule through force alone. Cooperation with local elites was necessary to maintain order, collect information, and extract revenue. The Romans often exploited internal political divisions.\nCommunities with demonstrated loyalty to Rome retained their own laws, could collect their own taxes locally, and in exceptional cases were exempt from Roman taxation. Legal privileges and relative independence incentivized compliance. Roman government was thus limited, but efficient in its use of available resources.\nCentral government.\nThe Imperial cult of ancient Rome identified emperors and some members of their families with divinely sanctioned authority (\"auctoritas\"). The rite of apotheosis (also called \"consecratio\") signified the deceased emperor's deification. The dominance of the emperor was based on the consolidation of powers from several republican offices. The emperor made himself the central religious authority as \"pontifex maximus\", and centralized the right to declare war, ratify treaties, and negotiate with foreign leaders. While these functions were clearly defined during the Principate, the emperor's powers over time became less constitutional and more monarchical, culminating in the Dominate.\nThe emperor was the ultimate authority in policy- and decision-making, but in the early Principate, he was expected to be accessible and deal personally with official business and petitions. A bureaucracy formed around him only gradually. The Julio-Claudian emperors relied on an informal body of advisors that included not only senators and equestrians, but trusted slaves and freedmen. After Nero, the influence of the latter was regarded with suspicion, and the emperor's council (\"consilium\") became subject to official appointment for greater transparency. Though the Senate took a lead in policy discussions until the end of the Antonine dynasty, equestrians played an increasingly important role in the \"consilium\". The women of the emperor's family often intervened directly in his decisions.\nAccess to the emperor might be gained at the daily reception (\"salutatio\"), a development of the traditional homage a client paid to his patron; public banquets hosted at the palace; and religious ceremonies. The common people who lacked this access could manifest their approval or displeasure as a group at games. By the 4th century, the Christian emperors became remote figureheads who issued general rulings, no longer responding to individual petitions. Although the Senate could do little short of assassination and open rebellion to contravene the will of the emperor, it retained its symbolic political centrality. The Senate legitimated the emperor's rule, and the emperor employed senators as legates (\"legati\"): generals, diplomats, and administrators.\nThe practical source of an emperor's power and authority was the military. The legionaries were paid by the Imperial treasury, and swore an annual oath of loyalty to the emperor. Most emperors chose a successor, usually a close family member or adopted heir. The new emperor had to seek a swift acknowledgement of his status and authority to stabilize the political landscape. No emperor could hope to survive without the allegiance of the Praetorian Guard and the legions. To secure their loyalty, several emperors paid the \"donativum\", a monetary reward. In theory, the Senate was entitled to choose the new emperor, but did so mindful of acclamation by the army or Praetorians.\nMilitary.\nAfter the Punic Wars, the Roman army comprised professional soldiers who volunteered for 20 years of active duty and five as reserves. The transition to a professional military began during the late Republic and was one of the many profound shifts away from republicanism, under which an army of conscript citizens defended the homeland against a specific threat. The Romans expanded their war machine by \"organizing the communities that they conquered in Italy into a system that generated huge reservoirs of manpower for their army\". By Imperial times, military service was a full-time career. The pervasiveness of military garrisons throughout the Empire was a major influence in the process of Romanization.\nThe primary mission of the military of the early empire was to preserve the Pax Romana. The three major divisions of the military were:\nThrough his military reforms, which included consolidating or disbanding units of questionable loyalty, Augustus regularized the legion. A legion was organized into ten cohorts, each of which comprised six centuries, with a century further made up of ten squads (\"contubernia\"); the exact size of the Imperial legion, which was likely determined by logistics, has been estimated to range from 4,800 to 5,280. After Germanic tribes wiped out three legions in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, the number of legions was increased from 25 to around 30. The army had about 300,000 soldiers in the 1st century, and under 400,000 in the 2nd, \"significantly smaller\" than the collective armed forces of the conquered territories. No more than 2% of adult males living in the Empire served in the Imperial army. Augustus also created the Praetorian Guard: nine cohorts, ostensibly to maintain the public peace, which were garrisoned in Italy. Better paid than the legionaries, the Praetorians served only sixteen years.\nThe \"auxilia\" were recruited from among the non-citizens. Organized in smaller units of roughly cohort strength, they were paid less than the legionaries, and after 25 years of service were rewarded with Roman citizenship, also extended to their sons. According to Tacitus there were roughly as many auxiliaries as there were legionaries\u2014thus, around 125,000 men, implying approximately 250 auxiliary regiments. The Roman cavalry of the earliest Empire were primarily from Celtic, Hispanic or Germanic areas. Several aspects of training and equipment derived from the Celts.\nThe Roman navy not only aided in the supply and transport of the legions but also in the protection of the frontiers along the rivers Rhine and Danube. Another duty was protecting maritime trade against pirates. It patrolled the Mediterranean, parts of the North Atlantic coasts, and the Black Sea. Nevertheless, the army was considered the senior and more prestigious branch.\nProvincial government.\nAn annexed territory became a Roman province in three steps: making a register of cities, taking a census, and surveying the land. Further government recordkeeping included births and deaths, real estate transactions, taxes, and juridical proceedings. In the 1st and 2nd centuries, the central government sent out around 160 officials annually to govern outside Italy. Among these officials were the Roman governors: magistrates elected at Rome who in the name of the Roman people governed senatorial provinces; or governors, usually of equestrian rank, who held their \"imperium\" on behalf of the emperor in imperial provinces, most notably Roman Egypt. A governor had to make himself accessible to the people he governed, but he could delegate various duties. His staff, however, was minimal: his official attendants (\"apparitores\"), including lictors, heralds, messengers, scribes, and bodyguards; legates, both civil and military, usually of equestrian rank; and friends who accompanied him unofficially.\nOther officials were appointed as supervisors of government finances. Separating fiscal responsibility from justice and administration was a reform of the Imperial era, to avoid provincial governors and tax farmers exploiting local populations for personal gain. Equestrian procurators, whose authority was originally \"extra-judicial and extra-constitutional\", managed both state-owned property and the personal property of the emperor (\"res privata\"). Because Roman government officials were few, a provincial who needed help with a legal dispute or criminal case might seek out any Roman perceived to have some official capacity.\nIn the High Empire, Italy was legally distinguished from the provinces, and along with some favored provincial communities, enjoyed immunity from the property tax and poll tax. However, under the Emperor Diocletian, Italy lost these privileges and was subdivided into provinces.\nLaw.\nRoman courts held original jurisdiction over cases involving Roman citizens throughout the empire, but there were too few judicial functionaries to impose Roman law uniformly in the provinces. Most parts of the Eastern Empire already had well-established law codes and juridical procedures. Generally, it was Roman policy to respect the \"mos regionis\" (\"regional tradition\" or \"law of the land\") and to regard local laws as a source of legal precedent and social stability. The compatibility of Roman and local law was thought to reflect an underlying \"ius gentium\", the \"law of nations\" or international law regarded as common and customary. If provincial law conflicted with Roman law or custom, Roman courts heard appeals, and the emperor held final decision-making authority.\nIn the West, law had been administered on a highly localized or tribal basis, and private property rights may have been a novelty of the Roman era, particularly among Celts. Roman law facilitated the acquisition of wealth by a pro-Roman elite. The extension of universal citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Empire in 212 required the uniform application of Roman law, replacing local law codes that had applied to non-citizens. Diocletian's efforts to stabilize the Empire after the Crisis of the Third Century included two major compilations of law in four years, the \"Codex Gregorianus\" and the \"Codex Hermogenianus\", to guide provincial administrators in setting consistent legal standards.\nThe pervasiveness of Roman law throughout Western Europe enormously influenced the Western legal tradition, reflected by continued use of Latin legal terminology in modern law.\nTaxation.\nTaxation under the Empire amounted to about 5% of its gross product. The typical tax rate for individuals ranged from 2 to 5%. The tax code was \"bewildering\" in its complicated system of direct and indirect taxes, some paid in cash and some in kind. Taxes might be specific to a province, or kinds of properties such as fisheries; they might be temporary. Tax collection was justified by the need to maintain the military, and taxpayers sometimes got a refund if the army captured a surplus of booty. In-kind taxes were accepted from less-monetized areas, particularly those who could supply grain or goods to army camps.\nThe primary source of direct tax revenue was individuals, who paid a poll tax and a tax on their land, construed as a tax on its produce or productive capacity. Tax obligations were determined by the census: each head of household provided a headcount of his household, as well as an accounting of his property. A major source of indirect-tax revenue was the \"portoria\", customs and tolls on trade, including among provinces. Towards the end of his reign, Augustus instituted a 4% tax on the sale of slaves, which Nero shifted from the purchaser to the dealers, who responded by raising their prices. An owner who manumitted a slave paid a \"freedom tax\", calculated at 5% of value. An inheritance tax of 5% was assessed when Roman citizens above a certain net worth left property to anyone outside their immediate family. Revenues from the estate tax and from an auction tax went towards the veterans' pension fund (\"aerarium militare\").\nLow taxes helped the Roman aristocracy increase their wealth, which equalled or exceeded the revenues of the central government. An emperor sometimes replenished his treasury by confiscating the estates of the \"super-rich\", but in the later period, the resistance of the wealthy to paying taxes was one of the factors contributing to the collapse of the Empire.\nEconomy.\nThe Empire is best thought of as a network of regional economies, based on a form of \"political capitalism\" in which the state regulated commerce to assure its own revenues. Economic growth, though not comparable to modern economies, was greater than that of most other societies prior to industrialization. Territorial conquests permitted a large-scale reorganization of land use that resulted in agricultural surplus and specialization, particularly in north Africa. Some cities were known for particular industries. The scale of urban building indicates a significant construction industry. Papyri preserve complex accounting methods that suggest elements of economic rationalism, and the Empire was highly monetized. Although the means of communication and transport were limited in antiquity, transportation in the 1st and 2nd centuries expanded greatly, and trade routes connected regional economies. The supply contracts for the army drew on local suppliers near the base (\"castrum\"), throughout the province, and across provincial borders.\nEconomic historians vary in their calculations of the gross domestic product during the Principate. In the sample years of 14, 100, and 150 AD, estimates of per capita GDP range from 166 to 380 \"HS\". The GDP per capita of Italy is estimated as 40 to 66% higher than in the rest of the Empire, due to tax transfers from the provinces and the concentration of elite income.\nEconomic dynamism resulted in social mobility. Although aristocratic values permeated traditional elite society, wealth requirements for rank indicate a strong tendency towards plutocracy. Prestige could be obtained through investing one's wealth in grand estates or townhouses, luxury items, public entertainments, funerary monuments, and religious dedications. Guilds (\"collegia\") and corporations (\"corpora\") provided support for individuals to succeed through networking. \"There can be little doubt that the lower classes of ... provincial towns of the Roman Empire enjoyed a high standard of living not equaled again in Western Europe until the 19th century\". Households in the top 1.5% of income distribution captured about 20% of income. The \"vast majority\" produced more than half of the total income, but lived near subsistence.\nCurrency and banking.\nThe early Empire was monetized to a near-universal extent, using money as a way to express prices and debts. The \"sestertius\" (English \"sesterces\", symbolized as \"HS\") was the basic unit of reckoning value into the 4th century, though the silver \"denarius\", worth four sesterces, was also used beginning in the Severan dynasty. The smallest coin commonly circulated was the bronze \"as\", one-tenth \"denarius\". Bullion and ingots seem not to have counted as \"pecunia\" (\"money\") and were used only on the frontiers. Romans in the first and second centuries counted coins, rather than weighing them\u2014an indication that the coin was valued on its face. This tendency towards fiat money led to the debasement of Roman coinage in the later Empire. The standardization of money throughout the Empire promoted trade and market integration. The high amount of metal coinage in circulation increased the money supply for trading or saving.\nRome had no central bank, and regulation of the banking system was minimal. Banks of classical antiquity typically kept less in reserves than the full total of customers' deposits. A typical bank had fairly limited capital, and often only one principal. Seneca assumes that anyone involved in Roman commerce needs access to credit. A professional deposit banker received and held deposits for a fixed or indefinite term, and lent money to third parties. The senatorial elite were involved heavily in private lending, both as creditors and borrowers. The holder of a debt could use it as a means of payment by transferring it to another party, without cash changing hands. Although it has sometimes been thought that ancient Rome lacked documentary transactions, the system of banks throughout the Empire permitted the exchange of large sums without physically transferring coins, in part because of the risks of moving large amounts of cash. Only one serious credit shortage is known to have occurred in the early Empire, in 33 AD; generally, available capital exceeded the amount needed by borrowers. The central government itself did not borrow money, and without public debt had to fund deficits from cash reserves.\nEmperors of the Antonine and Severan dynasties debased the currency, particularly the \"denarius\", under the pressures of meeting military payrolls. Sudden inflation under Commodus damaged the credit market. In the mid-200s, the supply of specie contracted sharply. Conditions during the Crisis of the Third Century\u2014such as reductions in long-distance trade, disruption of mining operations, and the physical transfer of gold coinage outside the empire by invading enemies\u2014greatly diminished the money supply and the banking sector. Although Roman coinage had long been fiat money or fiduciary currency, general economic anxieties came to a head under Aurelian, and bankers lost confidence in coins. Despite Diocletian's introduction of the gold \"solidus\" and monetary reforms, the credit market of the Empire never recovered its former robustness.\nMining and metallurgy.\nThe main mining regions of the Empire were the Iberian Peninsula (silver, copper, lead, iron and gold); Gaul (gold, silver, iron); Britain (mainly iron, lead, tin), the Danubian provinces (gold, iron); Macedonia and Thrace (gold, silver); and Asia Minor (gold, silver, iron, tin). Intensive large-scale mining\u2014of alluvial deposits, and by means of open-cast mining and underground mining\u2014took place from the reign of Augustus up to the early 3rd century, when the instability of the Empire disrupted production.\nHydraulic mining allowed base and precious metals to be extracted on a proto-industrial scale. The total annual iron output is estimated at 82,500\u00a0tonnes. Copper and lead production levels were unmatched until the Industrial Revolution. At its peak around the mid-2nd century, the Roman silver stock is estimated at 10,000\u00a0t, five to ten times larger than the combined silver mass of medieval Europe and the Caliphate around 800\u00a0AD. As an indication of the scale of Roman metal production, lead pollution in the Greenland ice sheet quadrupled over prehistoric levels during the Imperial era and dropped thereafter.\nTransportation and communication.\nThe Empire completely encircled the Mediterranean, which they called \"our sea\" (\"Mare Nostrum\"). Roman sailing vessels navigated the Mediterranean as well as major rivers. Transport by water was preferred where possible, as moving commodities by land was more difficult. Vehicles, wheels, and ships indicate the existence of a great number of skilled woodworkers.\nLand transport utilized the advanced system of Roman roads, called \"viae\". These roads were primarily built for military purposes, but also served commercial ends. The in-kind taxes paid by communities included the provision of personnel, animals, or vehicles for the \"cursus publicus\", the state mail and transport service established by Augustus. Relay stations were located along the roads every seven to twelve Roman miles, and tended to grow into villages or trading posts. A \"mansio\" (plural \"mansiones\") was a privately run service station franchised by the imperial bureaucracy for the \"cursus publicus\". The distance between \"mansiones\" was determined by how far a wagon could travel in a day. Carts were usually pulled by mules, travelling about 4\u00a0mph.\nTrade and commodities.\nRoman provinces traded among themselves, but trade extended outside the frontiers to regions as far away as China and India. Chinese trade was mostly conducted overland through middle men along the Silk Road; Indian trade also occurred by sea from Egyptian ports. The main commodity was grain. Also traded were olive oil, foodstuffs, \"garum\" (fish sauce), slaves, ore and manufactured metal objects, fibres and textiles, timber, pottery, glassware, marble, papyrus, spices and \"materia medica\", ivory, pearls, and gemstones. Though most provinces could produce wine, regional varietals were desirable and wine was a central trade good.\nLabour and occupations.\nInscriptions record 268 different occupations in Rome and 85 in Pompeii. Professional associations or trade guilds (\"collegia\") are attested for a wide range of occupations, some quite specialized.\nWork performed by slaves falls into five general categories: domestic, with epitaphs recording at least 55 different household jobs; imperial or public service; urban crafts and services; agriculture; and mining. Convicts provided much of the labour in the mines or quarries, where conditions were notoriously brutal. In practice, there was little division of labour between slave and free, and most workers were illiterate and without special skills. The greatest number of common labourers were employed in agriculture: in Italian industrial farming (\"latifundia\"), these may have been mostly slaves, but elsewhere slave farm labour was probably less important.\nTextile and clothing production was a major source of employment. Both textiles and finished garments were traded and products were often named for peoples or towns, like a fashion \"label\". Better ready-to-wear was exported by local businessmen (\"negotiatores\" or \"mercatores\"). Finished garments might be retailed by their sales agents, by \"vestiarii\" (clothing dealers), or peddled by itinerant merchants. The fullers (\"fullones\") and dye workers (\"coloratores\") had their own guilds. \"Centonarii\" were guild workers who specialized in textile production and the recycling of old clothes into pieced goods.\nArchitecture and engineering.\nThe chief Roman contributions to architecture were the arch, vault, and dome. Some Roman structures still stand today, due in part to sophisticated methods of making cements and concrete. Roman temples developed Etruscan and Greek forms, with some distinctive elements. Roman roads are considered the most advanced built until the early 19th century.\nRoman bridges were among the first large and lasting bridges, built from stone (and in most cases concrete) with the arch as the basic structure. The largest Roman bridge was Trajan's bridge over the lower Danube, constructed by Apollodorus of Damascus, which remained for over a millennium the longest bridge to have been built. The Romans built many dams and reservoirs for water collection, such as the Subiaco Dams, two of which fed the Anio Novus, one of the largest aqueducts of Rome.\nThe Romans constructed numerous aqueducts. \"De aquaeductu\", a treatise by Frontinus, who served as water commissioner, reflects the administrative importance placed on the water supply. Masonry channels carried water along a precise gradient, using gravity alone. It was then collected in tanks and fed through pipes to public fountains, baths, toilets, or industrial sites. The main aqueducts in Rome were the Aqua Claudia and the Aqua Marcia. The complex system built to supply Constantinople had its most distant supply drawn from over 120\u00a0km away along a route of more than 336\u00a0km. Roman aqueducts were built to remarkably fine tolerance, and to a technological standard not equalled until modern times. The Romans also used aqueducts in their extensive mining operations across the empire.\nInsulated glazing (or \"double glazing\") was used in the construction of public baths. Elite housing in cooler climates might have hypocausts, a form of central heating. The Romans were the first culture to assemble all essential components of the much later steam engine: the crank and connecting rod system, Hero's aeolipile (generating steam power), the cylinder and piston (in metal force pumps), non-return valves (in water pumps), and gearing (in water mills and clocks).\nDaily life.\nCity and country.\nThe city was viewed as fostering civilization by being \"properly designed, ordered, and adorned\". Augustus undertook a vast building programme in Rome, supported public displays of art that expressed imperial ideology, and reorganized the city into neighbourhoods \"(vici)\" administered at the local level with police and firefighting services. A focus of Augustan monumental architecture was the Campus Martius, an open area outside the city centre: the Altar of Augustan Peace () was located there, as was an obelisk imported from Egypt that formed the pointer (\"gnomon\") of a horologium. With its public gardens, the Campus was among the most attractive places in Rome to visit.\nCity planning and urban lifestyles was influenced by the Greeks early on, and in the Eastern Empire, Roman rule shaped the development of cities that already had a strong Hellenistic character. Cities such as Athens, Aphrodisias, Ephesus and Gerasa tailored city planning and architecture to imperial ideals, while expressing their individual identity and regional preeminence. In areas inhabited by Celtic-speaking peoples, Rome encouraged the development of urban centres with stone temples, forums, monumental fountains, and amphitheatres, often on or near the sites of preexisting walled settlements known as \"oppida\". Urbanization in Roman Africa expanded on Greek and Punic coastal cities.\nThe network of cities (, \"municipia\", \"civitates\" or in Greek terms \"poleis\") was a primary cohesive force during the Pax Romana. Romans of the 1st and 2nd centuries were encouraged to \"inculcate the habits of peacetime\". As the classicist Clifford Ando noted:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Most of the cultural appurtenances popularly associated with imperial culture\u2014public cult and its games and civic banquets, competitions for artists, speakers, and athletes, as well as the funding of the great majority of public buildings and public display of art\u2014were financed by private individuals, whose expenditures in this regard helped to justify their economic power and legal and provincial privileges.\nIn the city of Rome, most people lived in multistory apartment buildings (\"insulae\") that were often squalid firetraps. Public facilities\u2014such as baths (\"thermae\"), toilets with running water (\"latrinae\"), basins or elaborate fountains (\"nymphea\") delivering fresh water, and large-scale entertainments such as chariot races and gladiator combat\u2014were aimed primarily at the common people. \nThe public baths served hygienic, social and cultural functions. Bathing was the focus of daily socializing. Roman baths were distinguished by a series of rooms that offered communal bathing in three temperatures, with amenities that might include an exercise room, sauna, exfoliation spa, ball court, or outdoor swimming pool. Baths had hypocaust heating: the floors were suspended over hot-air channels. Public baths were part of urban culture throughout the provinces, but in the late 4th century, individual tubs began to replace communal bathing. Christians were advised to go to the baths only for hygiene.\nRich families from Rome usually had two or more houses: a townhouse (\"domus\") and at least one luxury home (\"villa\") outside the city. The \"domus\" was a privately owned single-family house, and might be furnished with a private bath (\"balneum\"), but it was not a place to retreat from public life. Although some neighbourhoods show a higher concentration of such houses, they were not segregated enclaves. The \"domus\" was meant to be visible and accessible. The atrium served as a reception hall in which the \"paterfamilias\" (head of household) met with clients every morning. It was a centre of family religious rites, containing a shrine and images of family ancestors. The houses were located on busy public roads, and ground-level spaces were often rented out as shops (\"tabernae\"). In addition to a kitchen garden\u2014windowboxes might substitute in the \"insulae\"\u2014townhouses typically enclosed a peristyle garden.\nThe villa by contrast was an escape from the city, and in literature represents a lifestyle that balances intellectual and artistic interests (\"otium\") with an appreciation of nature and agriculture. Ideally a villa commanded a view or vista, carefully framed by the architectural design. \nAugustus' programme of urban renewal, and the growth of Rome's population to as many as one million, was accompanied by nostalgia for rural life. Poetry idealized the lives of farmers and shepherds. Interior decorating often featured painted gardens, fountains, landscapes, vegetative ornament, and animals, rendered accurately enough to be identified by species. On a more practical level, the central government took an active interest in supporting agriculture. Producing food was the priority of land use. Larger farms (\"latifundia\") achieved an economy of scale that sustained urban life. Small farmers benefited from the development of local markets in towns and trade centres. Agricultural techniques such as crop rotation and selective breeding were disseminated throughout the Empire, and new crops were introduced from one province to another.\nMaintaining an affordable food supply to the city of Rome had become a major political issue in the late Republic, when the state began to provide a grain dole (Cura Annonae) to citizens who registered for it (about 200,000\u2013250,000 adult males in Rome). The dole cost at least 15% of state revenues, but improved living conditions among the lower classes, and subsidized the rich by allowing workers to spend more of their earnings on the wine and olive oil produced on estates. The grain dole also had symbolic value: it affirmed the emperor's position as universal benefactor, and the right of citizens to share in \"the fruits of conquest\". The \"annona\", public facilities, and spectacular entertainments mitigated the otherwise dreary living conditions of lower-class Romans, and kept social unrest in check. The satirist Juvenal, however, saw \"bread and circuses\" (\"panem et circenses\") as emblematic of the loss of republican political liberty:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The public has long since cast off its cares: the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things: bread and circuses.\nHealth and disease.\nEpidemics were common in the ancient world, and occasional pandemics in the Empire killed millions. The Roman population was unhealthy. About 20 percent\u2014a large percentage by ancient standards\u2014lived in cities, Rome being the largest. The cities were a \"demographic sink\": the death rate exceeded the birth rate and constant immigration was necessary to maintain the population. Average lifespan is estimated at the mid-twenties, and perhaps more than half of children died before reaching adulthood. Dense urban populations and poor sanitation contributed to disease. Land and sea connections facilitated and sped the transfer of infectious diseases across the empire's territories. The rich were not immune; only two of emperor Marcus Aurelius's fourteen children are known to have reached adulthood.\nThe importance of a good diet to health was recognized by medical writers such as Galen (2nd century). Views on nutrition were influenced by beliefs like humoral theory. A good indicator of nutrition and disease burden is average height: the average Roman was shorter in stature than the population of pre-Roman Italian societies and medieval Europe.\nFood and dining.\nMost apartments in Rome lacked kitchens, though a charcoal brazier could be used for rudimentary cookery. Prepared food was sold at pubs and bars, inns, and food stalls (\"tabernae\", \"cauponae\", \"popinae\", \"thermopolia\"). Carryout and restaurants were for the lower classes; fine dining appeared only at dinner parties in wealthy homes with a chef (\"archimagirus\") and kitchen staff, or banquets hosted by social clubs (\"collegia\").\nMost Romans consumed at least 70% of their daily calories in the form of cereals and legumes. \"Puls\" (pottage) was considered the food of the Romans, and could be elaborated to produce dishes similar to polenta or risotto. Urban populations and the military preferred bread. By the reign of Aurelian, the state had begun to distribute the \"annona\" as a daily ration of bread baked in state factories, and added olive oil, wine, and pork to the dole.\nRoman literature focuses on the dining habits of the upper classes, for whom the evening meal (\"cena\") had important social functions. Guests were entertained in a finely decorated dining room (\"triclinium\") furnished with couches. By the late Republic, women dined, reclined, and drank wine along with men. The poet Martial describes a dinner, beginning with the \"gustatio\" (\"tasting\" or \"appetizer\") salad. The main course was kid, beans, greens, a chicken, and leftover ham, followed by a dessert of fruit and wine. Roman \"foodies\" indulged in wild game, fowl such as peacock and flamingo, large fish (mullet was especially prized), and shellfish. Luxury ingredients were imported from the far reaches of empire. A book-length collection of Roman recipes is attributed to Apicius, a name for several figures in antiquity that became synonymous with \"gourmet\".\nRefined cuisine could be moralized as a sign of either civilized progress or decadent decline. Most often, because of the importance of landowning in Roman culture, produce\u2014cereals, legumes, vegetables, and fruit\u2014were considered more civilized foods than meat. The Mediterranean staples of bread, wine, and oil were sacralized by Roman Christianity, while Germanic meat consumption became a mark of paganism. Some philosophers and Christians resisted the demands of the body and the pleasures of food, and adopted fasting as an ideal. Food became simpler in general as urban life in the West diminished and trade routes were disrupted; the Church formally discouraged gluttony, and hunting and pastoralism were seen as simple and virtuous.\nSpectacles.\nWhen Juvenal complained that the Roman people had exchanged their political liberty for \"bread and circuses\", he was referring to the state-provided grain dole and the \"circenses\", events held in the entertainment venue called a \"circus\". The largest such venue in Rome was the Circus Maximus, the setting of horse races, chariot races, the equestrian Troy Game, staged beast hunts (\"venationes\"), athletic contests, gladiator combat, and historical re-enactments. From earliest times, several religious festivals had featured games (\"ludi\"), primarily horse and chariot races (\"ludi circenses\"). The races retained religious significance in connection with agriculture, initiation, and the cycle of birth and death.\nUnder Augustus, public entertainments were presented on 77 days of the year; by the reign of Marcus Aurelius, this had expanded to 135. Circus games were preceded by an elaborate parade (\"pompa circensis\") that ended at the venue. Competitive events were held also in smaller venues such as the amphitheatre, which became the characteristic Roman spectacle venue, and stadium. Greek-style athletics included footraces, boxing, wrestling, and the pancratium. Aquatic displays, such as the mock sea battle (\"naumachia\") and a form of \"water ballet\", were presented in engineered pools. State-supported theatrical events (\"ludi scaenici\") took place on temple steps or in grand stone theatres, or in the smaller enclosed theatre called an \"odeon\".\nCircuses were the largest structure regularly built in the Roman world. The Flavian Amphitheatre, better known as the Colosseum, became the regular arena for blood sports in Rome. Many Roman amphitheatres, circuses and theatres built in cities outside Italy are visible as ruins today. The local ruling elite were responsible for sponsoring spectacles and arena events, which both enhanced their status and drained their resources. The physical arrangement of the amphitheatre represented the order of Roman society: the emperor in his opulent box; senators and equestrians in reserved advantageous seats; women seated at a remove from the action; slaves given the worst places, and everybody else in-between. The crowd could call for an outcome by booing or cheering, but the emperor had the final say. Spectacles could quickly become sites of social and political protest, and emperors sometimes had to deploy force to put down crowd unrest, most notoriously at the Nika riots in 532.\nThe chariot teams were known by the colours they wore. Fan loyalty was fierce and at times erupted into sports riots. Racing was perilous, but charioteers were among the most celebrated and well-compensated athletes. Circuses were designed to ensure that no team had an unfair advantage and to minimize collisions (\"naufragia\"), which were nonetheless frequent and satisfying to the crowd. The races retained a magical aura through their early association with chthonic rituals: circus images were considered protective or lucky, curse tablets have been found buried at the site of racetracks, and charioteers were often suspected of sorcery. Chariot racing continued into the Byzantine period under imperial sponsorship, but the decline of cities in the 6th and 7th centuries led to its eventual demise.\nThe Romans thought gladiator contests had originated with funeral games and sacrifices. Some of the earliest styles of gladiator fighting had ethnic designations such as \"Thracian\" or \"Gallic\". The staged combats were considered , \"services, offerings, benefactions\", initially distinct from the festival games (\"ludi\"). To mark the opening of the Colosseum, Titus presented 100 days of arena events, with 3,000 gladiators competing on a single day. Roman fascination with gladiators is indicated by how widely they are depicted on mosaics, wall paintings, lamps, and in graffiti. Gladiators were trained combatants who might be slaves, convicts, or free volunteers. Death was not a necessary or even desirable outcome in matches between these highly skilled fighters, whose training was costly and time-consuming. By contrast, \"noxii\" were convicts sentenced to the arena with little or no training, often unarmed, and with no expectation of survival; physical suffering and humiliation were considered appropriate retributive justice. These executions were sometimes staged or ritualized as re-enactments of myths, and amphitheatres were equipped with elaborate stage machinery to create special effects.\nModern scholars have found the pleasure Romans took in the \"theatre of life and death\" difficult to understand. Pliny the Younger rationalized gladiator spectacles as good for the people, \"to inspire them to face honourable wounds and despise death, by exhibiting love of glory and desire for victory\". Some Romans such as Seneca were critical of the brutal spectacles, but found virtue in the courage and dignity of the defeated fighter\u2014an attitude that finds its fullest expression with the Christians martyred in the arena. Tertullian considered deaths in the arena to be nothing more than a dressed-up form of human sacrifice. Even martyr literature, however, offers \"detailed, indeed luxuriant, descriptions of bodily suffering\", and became a popular genre at times indistinguishable from fiction.\nRecreation.\nThe singular \"ludus\", \"play, game, sport, training\", had a wide range of meanings such as \"word play\", \"theatrical performance\", \"board game\", \"primary school\", and even \"gladiator training school\" (as in \"Ludus Magnus\"). Activities for children and young people in the Empire included hoop rolling and knucklebones (\"astragali\" or \"jacks\"). Girls had dolls made of wood, terracotta, and especially bone and ivory. Ball games include trigon and harpastum. People of all ages played board games, including \"latrunculi\" (\"Raiders\") and \"XII scripta\" (\"Twelve Marks\"). A game referred to as \"alea\" (dice) or \"tabula\" (the board) may have been similar to backgammon. Dicing as a form of gambling was disapproved of, but was a popular pastime during the festival of the Saturnalia.\nAfter adolescence, most physical training for males was of a military nature. The Campus Martius originally was an exercise field where young men learned horsemanship and warfare. Hunting was also considered an appropriate pastime. According to Plutarch, conservative Romans disapproved of Greek-style athletics that promoted a fine body for its own sake, and condemned Nero's efforts to encourage Greek-style athletic games. Some women trained as gymnasts and dancers, and a rare few as female gladiators. The \"Bikini Girls\" mosaic shows young women engaging in routines comparable to rhythmic gymnastics. Women were encouraged to maintain health through activities such as playing ball, swimming, walking, or reading aloud (as a breathing exercise).\nClothing.\nIn a status-conscious society like that of the Romans, clothing and personal adornment indicated the etiquette of interacting with the wearer. Wearing the correct clothing reflected a society in good order. There is little direct evidence of how Romans dressed in daily life, since portraiture may show the subject in clothing with symbolic value, and surviving textiles are rare.\nThe toga was the distinctive national garment of the male citizen, but it was heavy and impractical, worn mainly for conducting political or court business and religious rites. It was a \"vast expanse\" of semi-circular white wool that could not be put on and draped correctly without assistance. The drapery became more intricate and structured over time. The \"toga praetexta\", with a purple or purplish-red stripe representing inviolability, was worn by children who had not come of age, curule magistrates, and state priests. Only the emperor could wear an all-purple toga (\"toga picta\").\nOrdinary clothing was dark or colourful. The basic garment for all Romans, regardless of gender or wealth, was the simple sleeved tunic, with length differing by wearer. The tunics of poor people and labouring slaves were made from coarse wool in natural, dull shades; finer tunics were made of lightweight wool or linen. A man of the senatorial or equestrian order wore a tunic with two purple stripes (\"clavi\") woven vertically: the wider the stripe, the higher the wearer's status. Other garments could be layered over the tunic. Common male attire also included cloaks, and in some regions, trousers. In the 2nd century, emperors and elite men are often portrayed wearing the pallium, an originally Greek mantle; women are also portrayed in the pallium. Tertullian considered the pallium an appropriate garment both for Christians, in contrast to the toga, and for educated people.\nRoman clothing styles changed over time. In the Dominate, clothing worn by both soldiers and bureaucrats became highly decorated with geometrical patterns, stylized plant motifs, and in more elaborate examples, human or animal figures. Courtiers of the later Empire wore elaborate silk robes. The militarization of Roman society, and the waning of urban life, affected fashion: heavy military-style belts were worn by bureaucrats as well as soldiers, and the toga was abandoned, replaced by the pallium as a garment embodying social unity.\nArts.\nGreek art had a profound influence on Roman art. Public art\u2014including sculpture, monuments such as victory columns or triumphal arches, and the iconography on coins\u2014is often analysed for historical or ideological significance. In the private sphere, artistic objects were made for religious dedications, funerary commemoration, domestic use, and commerce. The wealthy advertised their appreciation of culture through artwork and decorative arts in their homes. Despite the value placed on art, even famous artists were of low social status, partly as they worked with their hands.\nPortraiture.\nPortraiture, which survives mainly in sculpture, was the most copious form of imperial art. Portraits during the Augustan period utilize classical proportions, evolving later into a mixture of realism and idealism. Republican portraits were characterized by verism, but as early as the 2nd century BC, Greek heroic nudity was adopted for conquering generals. Imperial portrait sculptures may model a mature head atop a youthful nude or semi-nude body with perfect musculature. Clothed in the toga or military regalia, the body communicates rank or role, not individual characteristics. \nPortraiture in painting is represented primarily by the Fayum mummy portraits, which evoke Egyptian and Roman traditions of commemorating the dead with realistic painting. Marble portrait sculpture were painted, but traces have rarely survived.\nSculpture and sarcophagi.\nExamples of Roman sculpture survive abundantly, though often in damaged or fragmentary condition, including freestanding statuary in marble, bronze and terracotta, and reliefs from public buildings and monuments. Niches in amphitheatres were originally filled with statues, as were formal gardens. Temples housed cult images of deities, often by famed sculptors.\nElaborately carved marble and limestone sarcophagi are characteristic of the 2nd to 4th centuries. Sarcophagus relief has been called the \"richest single source of Roman iconography\", depicting mythological scenes or Jewish/Christian imagery as well as the deceased's life.\nPainting.\nInitial Roman painting drew from Etruscan and Greek models and techniques. Examples of Roman paintings can be found in palaces, catacombs and villas. Much of what is known of Roman painting is from the interior decoration of private homes, particularly as preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius. In addition to decorative borders and panels with geometric or vegetative motifs, wall painting depicts scenes from mythology and theatre, landscapes and gardens, spectacles, everyday life, and erotic art.\nMosaic.\nMosaics are among the most enduring of Roman decorative arts, and are found on floors and other architectural features. The most common is the tessellated mosaic, formed from uniform pieces \"(tesserae)\" of materials such as stone and glass. \"Opus sectile\" is a related technique in which flat stone, usually coloured marble, is cut precisely into shapes from which geometric or figurative patterns are formed. This more difficult technique became especially popular for luxury surfaces in the 4th century (e.g. the Basilica of Junius Bassus).\nFigurative mosaics share many themes with painting, and in some cases use almost identical compositions. Geometric patterns and mythological scenes occur throughout the Empire. In North Africa, a particularly rich source of mosaics, homeowners often chose scenes of life on their estates, hunting, agriculture, and local wildlife. Plentiful and major examples of Roman mosaics come also from present-day Turkey (particularly the (Antioch mosaics), Italy, southern France, Spain, and Portugal.\nDecorative arts.\nDecorative arts for luxury consumers included fine pottery, silver and bronze vessels and implements, and glassware. Pottery manufacturing was economically important, as were the glass and metalworking industries. Imports stimulated new regional centres of production. Southern Gaul became a leading producer of the finer red-gloss pottery (\"terra sigillata\") that was a major trade good in 1st-century Europe. Glassblowing was regarded by the Romans as originating in Syria in the 1st century BC, and by the 3rd century, Egypt and the Rhineland had become noted for fine glass.\nPerforming arts.\nIn Roman tradition, borrowed from the Greeks, literary theatre was performed by all-male troupes that used face masks with exaggerated facial expressions to portray emotion. Female roles were played by men in drag (\"travesti\"). Roman literary theatre tradition is represented in Latin literature by the tragedies of Seneca, for example.\nMore popular than literary theatre was the genre-defying \"mimus\" theatre, which featured scripted scenarios with free improvisation, risqu\u00e9 language and sex scenes, action sequences, and political satire, along with dance, juggling, acrobatics, tightrope walking, striptease, and dancing bears. Unlike literary theatre, \"mimus\" was played without masks, and encouraged stylistic realism. Female roles were performed by women. \"Mimus\" was related to \"pantomimus\", an early form of story ballet that contained no spoken dialogue but rather a sung libretto, often mythological, either tragic or comic.\nAlthough sometimes regarded as foreign, music and dance existed in Rome from earliest times. Music was customary at funerals, and the \"tibia\", a woodwind instrument, was played at sacrifices. Song \"(carmen)\" was integral to almost every social occasion. Music was thought to reflect the orderliness of the cosmos. Various woodwinds and \"brass\" instruments were played, as were stringed instruments such as the \"cithara\", and percussion. The \"cornu\", a long tubular metal wind instrument, was used for military signals and on parade. These instruments spread throughout the provinces and are widely depicted in Roman art. The hydraulic pipe organ \"(hydraulis)\" was \"one of the most significant technical and musical achievements of antiquity\", and accompanied gladiator games and events in the amphitheatre. Although certain dances were seen at times as non-Roman or unmanly, dancing was embedded in religious rituals of archaic Rome. Ecstatic dancing was a feature of the mystery religions, particularly the cults of Cybele and Isis. In the secular realm, dancing girls from Syria and Cadiz were extremely popular.\nLike gladiators, entertainers were legally \"infames\", technically free but little better than slaves. \"Stars\", however, could enjoy considerable wealth and celebrity, and mingled socially and often sexually with the elite. Performers supported each other by forming guilds, and several memorials for theatre members survive. Theatre and dance were often condemned by Christian polemicists in the later Empire.\nLiteracy, books, and education.\nEstimates of the average literacy rate range from 5 to over 30%. The Roman obsession with documents and inscriptions indicates the value placed on the written word. Laws and edicts were posted as well as read out. Illiterate Roman subjects could have a government scribe (\"scriba\") read or write their official documents for them. The military produced extensive written records. The Babylonian Talmud declared \"if all seas were ink, all reeds were pen, all skies parchment, and all men scribes, they would be unable to set down the full scope of the Roman government's concerns\".\nNumeracy was necessary for commerce. Slaves were numerate and literate in significant numbers; some were highly educated. Graffiti and low-quality inscriptions with misspellings and solecisms indicate casual literacy among non-elites.\nThe Romans had an extensive priestly archive, and inscriptions appear throughout the Empire in connection with votives dedicated by ordinary people, as well as \"magic spells\" (e.g. the Greek Magical Papyri).\nBooks were expensive, since each copy had to be written out on a papyrus roll (\"volumen\") by scribes. The codex\u2014pages bound to a spine\u2014was still a novelty in the 1st century, but by the end of the 3rd century was replacing the \"volumen\". Commercial book production was established by the late Republic, and by the 1st century certain neighbourhoods of Rome and Western provincial cities were known for their bookshops. The quality of editing varied wildly, and plagiarism or forgery were common, since there was no copyright law.\nCollectors amassed personal libraries, and a fine library was part of the cultivated leisure (\"otium\") associated with the villa lifestyle. Significant collections might attract \"in-house\" scholars, and an individual benefactor might endow a community with a library (as Pliny the Younger did in Comum). Imperial libraries were open to users on a limited basis, and represented a literary canon. Books considered subversive might be publicly burned, and Domitian crucified copyists for reproducing works deemed treasonous.\nLiterary texts were often shared aloud at meals or with reading groups. Public readings (\"recitationes\") expanded from the 1st through the 3rd century, giving rise to \"consumer literature\" for entertainment. Illustrated books, including erotica, were popular, but are poorly represented by extant fragments.\nLiteracy began to decline during the Crisis of the Third Century. The emperor Julian banned Christians from teaching the classical curriculum, but the Church Fathers and other Christians adopted Latin and Greek literature, philosophy and science in biblical interpretation. As the Western Roman Empire declined, reading became rarer even for those within the Church hierarchy, although it continued in the Byzantine Empire.\nEducation.\nTraditional Roman education was moral and practical. Stories were meant to instil Roman values (\"mores maiorum\"). Parents were expected to act as role models, and working parents passed their skills to their children, who might also enter apprenticeships. Young children were attended by a pedagogue, usually a Greek slave or former slave, who kept the child safe, taught self-discipline and public behaviour, attended class and helped with tutoring.\nFormal education was available only to families who could pay for it; lack of state support contributed to low literacy. Primary education in reading, writing, and arithmetic might take place at home if parents hired or bought a teacher. Other children attended \"public\" schools organized by a schoolmaster (\"ludimagister\") paid by parents. \"Vernae\" (homeborn slave children) might share in-home or public schooling. Boys and girls received primary education generally from ages 7 to 12, but classes were not segregated by grade or age. Most schools employed corporal punishment. For the socially ambitious, education in Greek as well as Latin was necessary. Schools became more numerous during the Empire, increasing educational opportunities.\nAt the age of 14, upperclass males made their rite of passage into adulthood, and began to learn leadership roles through mentoring from a senior family member or family friend. Higher education was provided by \"grammatici\" or \"rhetores\". The \"grammaticus\" or \"grammarian\" taught mainly Greek and Latin literature, with history, geography, philosophy or mathematics treated as explications of the text. With the rise of Augustus, contemporary Latin authors such as Virgil and Livy also became part of the curriculum. The \"rhetor\" was a teacher of oratory or public speaking. The art of speaking (\"ars dicendi\") was highly prized, and \"eloquentia\" (\"speaking ability, eloquence\") was considered the \"glue\" of civilized society. Rhetoric was not so much a body of knowledge (though it required a command of the literary canon) as it was a mode of expression that distinguished those who held social power. The ancient model of rhetorical training\u2014\"restraint, coolness under pressure, modesty, and good humour\"\u2014endured into the 18th century as a Western educational ideal.\nIn Latin, \"illiteratus\" could mean both \"unable to read and write\" and \"lacking in cultural awareness or sophistication\". Higher education promoted career advancement. Urban elites throughout the Empire shared a literary culture imbued with Greek educational ideals (\"paideia\"). Hellenistic cities sponsored schools of higher learning to express cultural achievement. Young Roman men often went abroad to study rhetoric and philosophy, mostly to Athens. The curriculum in the East was more likely to include music and physical training. On the Hellenistic model, Vespasian endowed chairs of grammar, Latin and Greek rhetoric, and philosophy at Rome, and gave secondary teachers special exemptions from taxes and legal penalties. In the Eastern Empire, Berytus (present-day Beirut) was unusual in offering a Latin education, and became famous for its school of Roman law. The cultural movement known as the Second Sophistic (1st\u20133rd century AD) promoted the assimilation of Greek and Roman social, educational, and esthetic values.\nLiterate women ranged from cultured aristocrats to girls trained to be calligraphers and scribes. The ideal woman in Augustan love poetry was educated and well-versed in the arts. Education seems to have been standard for daughters of the senatorial and equestrian orders. An educated wife was an asset for the socially ambitious household.\nLiterature.\nLiterature under Augustus, along with that of the Republic, has been viewed as the \"Golden Age\" of Latin literature, embodying classical ideals. The three most influential Classical Latin poets\u2014Virgil, Horace, and Ovid\u2014belong to this period. Virgil's \"Aeneid\" was a national epic in the manner of the Homeric epics of Greece. Horace perfected the use of Greek lyric metres in Latin verse. Ovid's erotic poetry was enormously popular, but ran afoul of Augustan morality, contributing to his exile. Ovid's \"Metamorphoses\" wove together Greco-Roman mythology; his versions of Greek myths became a primary source of later classical mythology, and his work was hugely influential on medieval literature. The early Principate produced satirists such as Persius and Juvenal.\nThe mid-1st through mid-2nd century has conventionally been called the \"Silver Age\" of Latin literature. The three leading writers\u2014Seneca, Lucan, and Petronius\u2014committed suicide after incurring Nero's displeasure. Epigrammatist and social observer Martial and the epic poet Statius, whose poetry collection \"Silvae\" influenced Renaissance literature, wrote during the reign of Domitian. Other authors of the Silver Age included Pliny the Elder, author of the encyclopedic \"Natural History\"; his nephew, Pliny the Younger; and the historian Tacitus.\nThe principal Latin prose author of the Augustan age is the historian Livy, whose account of Rome's founding became the most familiar version in modern-era literature. \"The Twelve Caesars\" by Suetonius is a primary source for imperial biography. Among Imperial historians who wrote in Greek are Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Josephus, and Cassius Dio. Other major Greek authors of the Empire include the biographer Plutarch, the geographer Strabo, and the rhetorician and satirist Lucian.\nFrom the 2nd to the 4th centuries, Christian authors were in active dialogue with the classical tradition. Tertullian was one of the earliest prose authors with a distinctly Christian voice. After the conversion of Constantine, Latin literature is dominated by the Christian perspective. In the late 4th century, Jerome produced the Latin translation of the Bible that became authoritative as the Vulgate. Around that same time, Augustine wrote \"The City of God against the Pagans\", considered \"a masterpiece of Western culture\".\nIn contrast to the unity of Classical Latin, the literary esthetic of late antiquity has a tessellated quality. A continuing interest in the religious traditions of Rome prior to Christian dominion is found into the 5th century, with the \"Saturnalia\" of Macrobius and \"The Marriage of Philology and Mercury\" of Martianus Capella. Latin poets of late antiquity include Ausonius, Prudentius, Claudian, and Sidonius Apollinaris.\nReligion.\nThe Romans thought of themselves as highly religious, and attributed their success to their collective piety (\"pietas\") and good relations with the gods (\"pax deorum\"). The archaic religion believed to have come from the earliest kings of Rome was the foundation of the \"mos maiorum\", \"the way of the ancestors\", central to Roman identity.\nRoman religion was practical and contractual, based on the principle of \"do ut des\", \"I give that you might give\". Religion depended on knowledge and the correct practice of prayer, ritual, and sacrifice, not on faith or dogma, although Latin literature preserves learned speculation on the nature of the divine. For ordinary Romans, religion was a part of daily life. Each home had a household shrine to offer prayers and libations to the family's domestic deities. Neighbourhood shrines and sacred places such as springs and groves dotted the city. The Roman calendar was structured around religious observances; as many as 135 days were devoted to religious festivals and games (\"ludi\").\nIn the wake of the Republic's collapse, state religion adapted to support the new regime. Augustus justified one-man rule with a vast programme of religious revivalism and reform. Public vows now were directed at the wellbeing of the emperor. So-called \"emperor worship\" expanded on a grand scale the traditional veneration of the ancestral dead and of the \"Genius\", the divine tutelary of every individual. Upon death, an emperor could be made a state divinity (\"divus\") by vote of the Senate. The Roman imperial cult, influenced by Hellenistic ruler cult, became one of the major ways Rome advertised its presence in the provinces and cultivated shared cultural identity. Cultural precedent in the Eastern provinces facilitated a rapid dissemination of Imperial cult, extending as far as Najran, in present-day Saudi Arabia. Rejection of the state religion became tantamount to treason.\nThe Romans are known for the great number of deities they honoured. As the Romans extended their territories, their general policy was to promote stability among diverse peoples by absorbing local deities and cults rather than eradicating them, building temples that framed local theology within Roman religion. Inscriptions throughout the Empire record the side-by-side worship of local and Roman deities, including dedications made by Romans to local gods. By the height of the Empire, numerous syncretic or reinterpreted gods were cultivated, among them cults of Cybele, Isis, Epona, and of solar gods such as Mithras and Sol Invictus, found as far north as Roman Britain. Because Romans had never been obligated to cultivate one god or cult only, religious tolerance was not an issue.\nMystery religions, which offered initiates salvation in the afterlife, were a matter of personal choice, practiced in addition to one's family rites and public religion. The mysteries, however, involved exclusive oaths and secrecy, which conservative Romans viewed with suspicion as characteristic of \"magic\", conspiracy (\"coniuratio\"), and subversive activity. Thus, sporadic and sometimes brutal attempts were made to suppress religionists. In Gaul, the power of the druids was checked, first by forbidding Roman citizens to belong to the order, and then by banning druidism altogether. However, Celtic traditions were reinterpreted within the context of Imperial theology, and a new Gallo-Roman religion coalesced; its capital at the Sanctuary of the Three Gauls established precedent for Western cult as a form of Roman-provincial identity. The monotheistic rigour of Judaism posed difficulties for Roman policy that led at times to compromise and granting of special exemptions. Tertullian noted that Judaism, unlike Christianity, was considered a \"religio licita\", \"legitimate religion\". The Jewish\u2013Roman wars resulted from political as well as religious conflicts; the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD led to the sacking of the Second Temple and the dispersal of Jewish political power (see Jewish diaspora).\nChristianity emerged in Roman Judaea as a Jewish religious sect in the 1st century and gradually spread out of Jerusalem throughout the Empire and beyond. Imperially authorized persecutions were limited and sporadic, with martyrdoms occurring most often under the authority of local officials. Tacitus reports that after the Great Fire of Rome in AD\u00a064, the emperor attempted to deflect blame from himself onto the Christians. A major persecution occurred under the emperor Domitian and a persecution in 177 took place at Lugdunum, the Gallo-Roman religious capital. A letter from Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia, describes his persecution and executions of Christians. The Decian persecution of 246\u2013251 seriously threatened the Christian Church, but ultimately strengthened Christian defiance. Diocletian undertook the most severe persecution of Christians, from 303 to 311.\nFrom the 2nd century onward, the Church Fathers condemned the diverse religions practiced throughout the Empire as \"pagan\". In the early 4th century, Constantine I became the first emperor to convert to Christianity. He supported the Church financially and made laws that favored it, but the new religion was already successful, having moved from less than 50,000 to over a million adherents between 150 and 250. Constantine and his successors banned public sacrifice while tolerating other traditional practices. Constantine never engaged in a purge, there were no \"pagan martyrs\" during his reign, and people who had not converted to Christianity remained in important positions at court. Julian attempted to revive traditional public sacrifice and Hellenistic religion, but met Christian resistance and lack of popular support.\nChristians of the 4th century believed the conversion of Constantine showed that Christianity had triumphed over paganism (in Heaven) and little further action besides such rhetoric was necessary. Thus, their focus shifted towards heresy. According to Peter Brown, \"In most areas, polytheists were not molested, and apart from a few ugly incidents of local violence, Jewish communities also enjoyed a century of stable, even privileged, existence\". There were anti-pagan laws, but they were not generally enforced; through the 6th century, centers of paganism existed in Athens, Gaza, Alexandria, and elsewhere.\nAccording to recent Jewish scholarship, toleration of the Jews was maintained under Christian emperors. This did not extend to heretics: Theodosius I made multiple laws and acted against alternate forms of Christianity, and heretics were persecuted and killed by both the government and the church throughout Late Antiquity. Non-Christians were not persecuted until the 6th century. Rome's original religious hierarchy and ritual influenced Christian forms, and many pre-Christian practices survived in Christian festivals and local traditions.\nLegacy.\nSeveral states claimed to be the Roman Empire's successor. The Holy Roman Empire was established in 800 when Pope Leo\u00a0III crowned Charlemagne as Roman emperor. The Russian Tsardom, as inheritor of the Byzantine Empire's Orthodox Christian tradition, counted itself the Third Rome (Constantinople having been the second), in accordance with the concept of translatio imperii. The last Eastern Roman titular, Andreas Palaiologos, sold the title of Emperor of Constantinople to Charles VIII of France; upon Charles' death, Palaiologos reclaimed the title and on his death granted it to Ferdinand and Isabella and their successors, who never used it. When the Ottomans, who based their state on the Byzantine model, took Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed\u00a0II established his capital there and claimed to sit on the throne of the Roman Empire. He even launched an invasion of Otranto with the purpose of re-uniting the Empire, which was aborted by his death. In the medieval West, \"Roman\" came to mean the church and the Catholic Pope. The Greek form Romaioi remained attached to the Greek-speaking Christian population of the Byzantine Empire and is still used by Greeks.\nThe Roman Empire's control of the Italian Peninsula influenced Italian nationalism and the unification of Italy (\"Risorgimento\") in 1861. \nIn the United States, the founders were educated in the classical tradition, and used classical models for landmarks in Washington, D.C.. The founders saw Athenian democracy and Roman republicanism as models for the mixed constitution, but regarded the emperor as a figure of tyranny.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nstyle=\"width:100%\""}, "descending_order": ["37073", "25507", "30570"], "permutation_1": ["25507", "30570", "37073"], "permutation_2": ["25507", "37073", "30570"], "permutation_3": ["25507", "37073", "30570"]}
{"id": "3hop1__663927_355553_476740", "docs_added": {"6793462": "Visions of Eden\nVisions of Eden is the eleventh album by American heavy metal band Virgin Steele, released on September 8, 2006, via Sanctuary Records. The album is subtitled \"The Lilith Project \u2013 A Barbaric Romantic Movie of the Mind\". It is a concept album based on Gnostic beliefs, which critically revisits the traditional Christian mythology about the creation of the Earth and the Biblical accounts of Adam and Eve.\nThe story revolves around Lilith, the first wife of Adam and a symbol of female strength and independence. Representing the female side of the true, higher god, she suffers under the lusting, jealous Demiurge who represents the Christian god, and as an emancipated woman who could not get along with the dominant Adam stands in stark contrast to Eve. Adam's second wife is portrayed as a docile, subservient partner created by the demiurge at the request of Adam, who could not cope with an independent woman on equal footing with him.\nRegarding \"Visions of Eden\", frontman David DeFeis declared: \"What it really is, is the soundtrack for a major motion picture that has yet to be made! And by the hammer of Zeus, I will make this film one day. I call this work a Barbaric Romantic movie of the mind.\".\nIn 2003, prior to the album release, the concept was performed on the theater stage by Landestheater Schwaben under the name \"Lilith\" (as were the previous Virgin Steele titles \"The House of Atreus Act I\" and \"The House of Atreus Act II\").\nOn February 17, 2017, the album was reissued as a double CD containing a remixed version and a remastered recording of the original mix.\nTrack listing.\nAll songs written by David DeFeis\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "41770159": "Angels of the Apocalypse\nAngels of the Apocalypse is the second full-length album by Timo Tolkki's Finnish metal opera project Avalon, released on May 16, 2014 in Europe and four days later in North America.\nIt is the second part of the trilogy created by Tolkki, written as a prequel to the previous album \"The Land of New Hope\".\nAs with the previous effort, several heavy metal singers were invited to play the characters of the story of the album, with female vocalist Elize Ryd of Amaranthe reprising her role and Floor Jansen (Nightwish, ReVamp) playing the main character. The rest of the cast includes Fabio Lione (Rhapsody of Fire, Angra), David DeFeis (Virgin Steele), Simone Simons (Epica), Caterina Nix (solo Chilean singer who is having her debut album produced by Timo Tolkki) and Zachary Stevens (ex-Savatage, Circle II Circle).\nBackground and recording.\nThe album started to be composed in August 2013 in Greece, to where Timo travelled to seek inspiration.\nIn October 2013, Timo Tolkki launched a news website for the project in which he announced the album, which was provisionally titled \"Avalon II\". Tolkki also announced he would be working with former Stratovarius bandmates Tuomo Lassila (drums) and Antti Ikonen (keyboards).\nIn late January, Tolkki revealed the name of the album and the remaining singers. Timo also announced that there will be a contest for guitar and keyboard players, with the winners getting a chance to perform a solo with him in one of the songs.\nOnce again, the artwork was created by French artist Stanis W. Decker.\nTimo stated he created some songs with a specific singer in mind. The title-track will clock around 10:00. He also described the music of the album as \"darker and heavier\" than its predecessor, which was necessary due to the \"Apocalyptic scenes described in the lyrics\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "19360420": "David DeFeis\nAmerican heavy metal singer\nDavid DeFeis (born January 4, 1961) is an American singer, songwriter and producer. He is the main composer, leader and sole constant member of the heavy metal band Virgin Steele.\nBiography.\nDeFeis comes from a theatrical family: his father is a Shakespearian actor who runs the theatre company \"The Arena Players Theatre\" while his sister Doreen is a gifted opera singer who performs all over Europe.\nA big fan of European classical music, at 9\u201310 years old he was introduced to rock music by hearing the band Stalk, with his brother Damon (on organ and piano) and his sister Danae (on vocals), playing in the basement beneath his room. Damon DeFeis was later in the band Creation with future Kiss drummer Eric Carr, and died in the Gulliver's nightclub fire in 1974. \nHe began piano lessons at the age of eight. By age eleven, he began his career with Long Island's local heavy metal band Phoenix.\nAt 16 years old, he met for the first time his future partner Edward Pursino when DeFeis's band at the time, Mountain Ash, was auditioning for a gig at the high school dance. Mountain Ash was mainly a Black Sabbath cover band and, after the performance of the song \"War Pigs\", Pursino came over and introduced himself to DeFeis.\nAt the beginning of the 1980s, together with Jack Starr and Joey Ayvazian, he started the first line-up of the band Virgin Steele. They debuted in 1982 with the song \"Children of the Storm\" included in the compilation \"U.S. Metal Vol. II\". \nIn 1985, the guitarist Edward Pursino replaced Starr. Among the years, in their longtime relationship in Virgin Steele, DeFeis and Pursino released a lot of heavy metal classics such as the albums: \"Noble Savage\", \"Invictus\", \"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part I\", \"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part II\".\nDeFeis collects swords: his collection includes more than 20 items. In studio, sometimes he uses his swords to create particular effects for the Virgin Steele songs, and during the concerts he usually burns a sword on stage.\nVoice and musical style.\nDeFeis is a classically trained pianist, with a bachelor's degree in composition from S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook. As vocalist, he is self-taught, possessing around four octaves and a four notes: E2-B6. He said he was very much influenced by guitar players like Jimmy Page, Brian May and Eddie Van Halen, because he wanted to do with his voice what they did with their guitars. He is also influenced by rock singers like Freddie Mercury, Robert Plant, David Coverdale, Ronnie James Dio and Ian Gillan.\nThe major part of the lyrics DeFeis writes are mythological, dealing with subjects from especially Greek, Sumerian and Christian mythology. All of them are based on real life in some form or another.\nMetal opera and theatre.\nBetween the end of the 1990s and the 2000s (decade), he wrote music for actors based on the Oresteia and the Greek myths related by Aeschylus. According with German artists Walter Weyers and Martina Krawulsky, with the name \"Klytaimnestra\": \"The House of Atreus\" Metal Opera (musically available on the Virgin Steele's albums \"The House of Atreus Act I\", \"The House of Atreus Act II\") was performed on stage in Germany theaters by Landestheater Production.\nThe premiere of \"Klytaimnestra\" in Memmingen, June 5, 1999, has been the first ever regular musical theatre show based on heavy metal concepts.\nAfter \"Klytaimnestra\" success, David DeFeis & Landestheater Production extracted a second metal opera musical, named \"The Rebels\", from the previous Virgin Steele's albums of the Marriage of Heaven and Hell trilogy (\"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part I\", \"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part II\", \"Invictus\").\nIn 2003, the same team released a third Metal Opera, named \"Lilith\", based on the material of album \"Visions of Eden\". \"Visions of Eden\" was later on published in CD in 2006.\nProducer.\nDeFeis owns his personal recording studio called: \"The Hammer of Zeus\" (sometimes also called \"The Wrecking Ball Of Thor\").\nVirgin Steele's albums are produced by DeFeis.\nHe also produced albums released by other artists such as: \"Out of the Darkness\" and \"No Turning Back\" by Jack Starr, \"Nightmare Theatre\" by Exorcist, \"Stay Ugly\" by Piledriver, \"The Sign of the Jackal\" by Damien Thorn, \"Sin Will Find You Out\" by Original Sin.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "41779106": "Eden (South African band)\nSouth African band\nEden is a South African pop band. Originally made up of Jay, Paulo, Johan, and Sean, the band debuted during the popular South African Aardklop Festival followed by a tour all over South Africa releasing their album \"In\" in 1997. After Sean Else left in 2006, the boy band continued as a trio. Since 2003, the band has released three more albums, \"Point of No Return\" (2003), \"Eden\" (2006) and \"Knie\u00eb Lam\" (2008), a live DVD \"Live at The Mardi Gras\" (2008) and a compilation album Dekade (2009). They are signed to Coleske Artists.\nThe debut was with the limited edition album release titled \"In\" on the local label Volstruis Plate. The official national debut release was the album \"Point of No Return\" on Select Music / Jukebox Records / Coleske Artists / Sony Music / Sheer. It was a huge hit that went three times platinum in South Africa The self-titled album \"Eden\" on Coleske Artists went double platinum. Eden sings a variety of power pop and soft melody ballads, both in Afrikaans language and in English, the latter mostly comprising covers of well-known hits.\nAwards.\nEden has won many music awards including:\nSolo projects.\nIn 2011, the band announced that it was taking a hiatus, allowing each individual member to pursue various projects, with the agreement that this was not a break-up and that the band would come together for a new album later on.\nBand members have been known to be very active with their side projects in their fields of expertise.\nJay (Jaco du Plessis).\nJaco du Plessis also known by the stage name Jay is the most visible and media-savvy of the band. Considered a sex symbol, he has performed on stage with international acts like The Corrs, Bono, Ronan Keating and Westlife. He has also developed a very successful solo singing career. His beginnings were with theatre. Then he took part as a solo act, and won the annual South African \"Crescendo\" award for Afrikaans music organised by ATKV (the Afrikaans Language and Culture Association, in Afrikaans Afrikaanse Taal- en Kultuurvereniging). The win was jointly with another contestant named Joe Niemand. Following that, he released a solo album that earned two nominations for the local GMT Awards winning the title for \"Best Pop Album\".\nStage and theatre.\nHe was very active on stage in theatrical performances. His debut was with Neil Lessick in the musical \"Let's Rock\" in 1999 as a lead singer and was an actor under study for South African State Theatre production of \"Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat\". Immediately after that he appeared in \"The Rocky Horror Picture Show\", a member of the DooWah Boys and a lead role in pantomime in \"A Lad in a Lamp\" for which he was nominated for an acting prize. Years later he would appear yet again in Janice Honeyman's local remake of \"Aladdin\".\nAlbum \"SOLO\".\nIn 2010, with his band Eden taking a break, Jaco du Plessis released a popular solo album titled \"SOLO\", that sold more than 40,000 copies and gained platinum status in South Africa. the album was in the making for three years starting 2007, with most materials written by Ewald Coleske with additional co-writing by Jay and Reana Nel. Some materials were also contributed by Dewald Wasserfall and by Johan Vorster, the latter his colleague in Eden.\nThe debut single was \"Is ek nie die een\". Nitable tracks were \"Melanie\" also used in \"Platteland\", and two duets with Lianie May. Jay was awarded as a solo act two Tempo Awards by the popular \"Huisgenoot\" magazine for \"Best Pop Album\" and for \"Song of the Year\" for his single solo release \"Melanie\". Music video for \"Toe Stop My Hart\" was nominated for Huisgenoot Tempo award for \"Best Music Video of the Year\". Jay was also nominated for two South African Music Awards (SAMA) nominations in 2010 for \"Best Pop Album\" and \"Best Newcomer\" (as a solo act).\nStarting 2011, he concentrated his efforts with Eden, in preparation for their big launch with the massive album success \"Point of No Return'.\nDuo Jay en Lianie May.\nBesides his solo and band acts, Jay has also cooperated with the South African singer Lianie May forming a duet called Jay en Lianie. They had released a 2012 joint duets album together called \"Bonnie en Clyde\" including 16 tracks most notably the songs \"Toe Stop my Hart\" and \"In a Moment Like This\".\nIn \"Platteland\".\nJaco du Plessis also took part in a major South African musical drama film \"Platteland\" co-written by Deon Opperman and by Sean Else, an earlier member of Eden who also produced and directed the film. The film premiered on screen on 12 November 2011. Jay plays in the film the role of Jakes Ferreira, the son of Mike Ferreira which is played by singer, songwriter and actor Steve Hofmeyr. The film also stars Lianie May as Riana van Niekerk and Bok van Blerk as Dirk Pretorius. The song \"Melanie\" sung by Jay is on the soundtrack and one of the contemporary music hits woven in the storyline of \"Platteland\" with other popular tunes included \"Tyd om te Trek\" from Bok van Blerk, \"Vergeet My Nie\" by Lianie May, \"Pa en Seun\" by Steve Hofmeyr and Bok van Blerk and \"Sweet Dreams\" by Karlien van Jaarsveld.\nCommercial endorsements.\nHe has signed a contract with the brand \"Lee Cooper\" and is the official face of the firm for its jeans wear and perfume series in South Africa.\nAlbum \"#DisHoeOnsRol\".\nIn 2013, he released a new solo album titled \"#DisHoeOnsRol\".\nJohan (Johan Vorster).\nJohan Vorster, the vocalist and songwriter of the band started music very early and studied piano and guitar. He studied music at Universiteit van Potchefstroom and joined the boy band Eden in the late 1990s writing most of the band's big hits including \"Is Jy Bang\", \"54 5de Straat\" and \"Lyf teen Lyf\".\nSongwriting and producing / Mozi Records.\nIn 2005, he co-founded Mozi Records with Sean Else, a fellow band member. Bok van Blerk was signed to the label. Vorster co-wrote and co-produced most of the album \"De la Rey\" with Sean Else and Johan Rautenbach which became the biggest selling original Afrikaans record of all time. Johan was the co-writer of the van Blerk song \"De la Rey\". The song was mentioned on the front page of the \"New York Times\" because of its controversial content. He also co-wrote and produced Bok van Blerk's second album, \"Tyd om te Trek\", an album that won the SAMA (South African Music Award) for best-selling album in South-Africa for 2009/2010.\nIn 2006 Mozi Records signed their first female artist, Lianie May. Vorster co-wrote and co-produced her album, also writing the song \"Jy soen my nie meer nie\". Her album became the most sold album by an Afrikaans female artist. It won the SAMA (South African Music Award) for the top selling album. In 2008, Vorster won the Huisgenoot Tempo award for \"Songwriter of the Year\" for the song.\nSports anthems.\nVorster teamed up with Coleske Artists and Sean Else as co-writer for the song \"Ons vir Jou Suid-Afrika\" used for 2007 Rugby World Cup. South Africa won the championship trophy earning the album the Huisgenoot Tempo award for \"Best Afrikaans Compilation Album\". Johan and Coleske Artists co-wrote and produced the new album \"Rugby is Groot\" for the 2011 Rugby World Cup campaign.\nSongwriting and producing / Johan Vorster Songs.\nWhile at Mozi Records, he established his own \"Johan Vorster Songs\" publishing firm in 2009, holding all rights to his songs. In the second half of 2010, he resigned from Mozi Records, continuing on his own with his record company and publishing house, Johan Vorster Songs. The firm also includes Andre Odendaal developing and directing film and theatre projects and Jenny Griesel as media and marketing specialist.\nIn 2010, he signed Karlien van Jaarsveld to his new company. With her album \"Jakkals trou met wolf se vrou\" with the label, she won the Huisgenoot Tempo award for \"Best Newcomer\" in 2011.\nIn 2012, he signed Dewald Wasserfall, and wrote the hit song \"Eendag as ons groot is\" which has reached number 1 on the charts of several radio stations. Johan Vorster Songs has also exclusively signed Lisa Katzke and as a joint venture with Coleske Artists, Jannie Moolman.\nVorster wrote for the duo Lianie en Jay, notably \"Toe Stop My Hart\". Johan has also written \"Juliet\" performed by Steve Hofmeyr, \"Net voor die storm kom\" performed by Theuns Jordaan, \"'n Vrou wild dit hoor\" by Bobby Van Jaarsveld co-winner of the Ghoema 2013 \"Song of the Year\" award and \"Melanie\" performed by his Eden team colleague Jay (Jaco du Plessis) winning the Huisgenoot Tempo award for \"Song of the Year\" in 2011.\nWith Coleske Artists, Johan wrote tens of chart topping songs and produced the \"Afrikaans is Groot\" compilation albums series.\nMusicals and films.\nVorster also co-wrote the musical score for the locally produced musicals, \"Ons vir Jou\", \"Jock of the bushveld\" and \"Shaka Zulu \u2013 The Musical\", a theatre piece about the rise and fall of the legendary Shaka Zulu, that got staged in the Nelson Mandela Theatre and the State Theatre in Pretoria in 2008, 2009 and 2010.\nHe wrote most of the musical score for the South African Afrikaans film \"Platteland\" released in November 2011, featuring, Lianie May, Bok vam Blerk, Karlien and Jay. He produced a follow-up musical film \"As Jy Sing\" released in November 2013.\nPaulo (Paulo Azevedo).\nPaulo Azevedo born in Cape Town is a formally trained singer and musician who also plays the piano, guitar and saxophone. He studied computer programming at Kaapse Technikon, established as a young man his own sound, lighting and staging company and after school hours sang at various venues during his youth. He was a founding member of the band with Didi Kriel and began writing some materials. Fascinated by the success of American and British boy bands, soon others joined in to render it a four-piece band. He also has expertise as a sound engineer and has cooperated with various artists like Mathys Roets, Danie Niehaus, Johannes Kerkorrel and the Coleske-broers. He also does stage production and has toured with various artists.\nSean Else.\nSean Else obtained his diploma in Drama at the Technikon Pretoria (now known as the Tshwane University of Technology). Starting his career off as an actor, he appeared in numerous award-winning stage productions and also appeared in more than 30 films and television series.\nSean was one of the founding members of Eden. After leaving the band in 2006, he started his own record label and production company, Mozi Records/Mozi Films with his songwriting partner, Johan Vorster.\nHe found and co-produced the multi-platinum-selling artists, Bok Van Blerk and Lianie May. He also found and co-produced the up-and- coming artist, Vaughan Gardiner. These artists' sensational achievements include numerous awards, amongst others, the South African Music Award for top selling artist in 2009 to Lianie May and in 2010 to Bok Van Blerk. As songwriter, Sean partnered on many hit songs, including: \u201cDe La Rey\u201d, \"Ons Vir Jou Suid-Afrika\", \"Tyd Om Te Trek\" and \"Die Kaplyn\". Music videos for these songs, which Sean produced and directed, have also won Sean numerous \u201cMusic Video of the Year\u201d awards.\nSean was also the producer and co-director of big theatre hit shows, \"My Vrou se Man se Vrou\" (Run For Your Wife by Ray Cooney), \"My Boetie se Sussie se Ou\" (Caught in the Net by Ray Cooney) and \"As die Kat weg is... \"\nSean was also co-writer with the award-winning playwright, Deon Opperman, on the musicals, \"Ons Vir Jou\", \"Shaka Zulu\", \"Jock of the Bushveld\" and \"Lied van my hart\". \"Ons Vir Jou\" became the most successful Afrikaans musical ever. Due to popular demand it returned to the stage for the third time in three years in June 2012.\nSean's aim and goal throughout his whole career has been to make feature films and in 2011 he formed his film production company, Collective Dream Films and co-wrote, co-produced, directed and edited his first feature film, \"Platteland\". The film starred the biggest selling stars in South Africa. On its opening weekend it became the biggest grossing Afrikaans film ever. The film was the highest grossing South African film in 2011.\nIn January 2012 Sean and his partners purchased the old Waterfront Studios in Cape Town and their vision and aims are to use their knowledge and understanding to produce local and international films and television series. Their recent productions include: \"Spud 2\" (starring John Cleese) and \"The Perfect Wave\" (starring Scott Eastwood). He has also written and directed the critically acclaimed feature films, \"Blood and Glory\" and \"'n Man soos my Pa\u201d\nWith his partner (Rudy Halgryn) at Collective Dream Films, they branched out and opened offices in London and Mauritius as well where Sean continues his creation of film and television content and has several international projects in active development.\nDiscography of Eden.\nAlbums\nCompilation albums\nDVD (live)\nDiscography: Members of Eden.\nJay (Jaco du Plessis)\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "38469034": "Eden (Australian band)\nAustralian dark wave band\nEden is a dark wave band that was formed in Melbourne, Australia, in 1987, by Sean Bowley, Pieter Bourke and Ross Healy.\nHistory.\nEden's first gig was at the Baden Powell Hotel, Prahran, they soon performed at other pubs in Melbourne's alternative music scene. In 1990 they issued their debut five-track extended play, \"The Light Between Worlds\", on the Scottish label Nightshift Records. The lead track, \"Shallow Mists\", was co-written by Bourke, Bowley and Healy. They released a single, \"Searching for Angels Hands\", which broadened their audience by a performance on national pop music TV series, \"Countdown Revolution\". The single was also co-written by Bourke, Bowley and Healy.\nIn 1992 Eden released a full-length studio album, \"Gateway to the Mysteries\", on the English label Third Mind Records and in Australia on Elysium Records via Shock Records. Bourke's last recorded output with Eden was a six-track EP, \"Healingbow\", released in 1993 on Projekt Records.\nDrummer Peter Barrett, keyboardist Paul Machlis and bassist Ewan McArthur joined Eden for their second studio album \"Fire & Rain\", released in 1995. Allmusic's Ned Raggett found the new line-up's music to be \"a less eclectic but no less intriguing sonic palette, extending the goth/psych tendencies of Bowley's particular muse to their logical conclusions.\"\nEden Today.\nEden re-formed in 2015 in Melbourne, Australia and once again established themselves as regular performers in the alternative scene. The distinctive Eden sound, this iteration delivered by a lineup comprising Sean Bowley (6 & 12 string guitars, Matthew Sigley (bass, drum machine and keyboards), Andrew Kutzer (6 string guitar) culminated in the release of 'The Edge of Winter' LP in June 2017 at Wave-Gotik-Treffen (WGT) in Leipzig, Germany where Eden performed with a showcase of bands including The Mission, Skinny Puppy and She Past Away http://www.wave-gotik-treffen.de/english/bands.php. \nSince 2018, core members of Eden have comprised Sean Bowley (vocals, 6 & 12 string guitars) and Anthony Cornish (6 & 12 string guitarist, keyboards, drum machine). The EDEN-REVENANT synergy forms the core of a continually evolving Eden.\nIn May 2020 Eden release their new LP 'East of the Stars'. Eden will launch the album with a performance at Wave-Gotik-Treffen 2020 in Leipzig, Germany. Joining the EDEN lineup is Steven Burrows (former member of And Also the Trees) on bass. The band will also perform Netherlands, Belgium and Greece as part of their 'East of the Stars' tour.\nDiscography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nEden Official Website\n at AllMusic", "54673214": "Exit Eden\nMultinational symphonic metal band\nExit Eden is a symphonic metal supergroup that performs cover versions of well-known pop and rock songs, as well as releasing original songs (starting with their second album \"Femmes Fatales\").\nHistory.\nThe band was formed in 2017 by the American singer Amanda Somerville (Avantasia, Alice Cooper, Epica, HDK, Kiske/Somerville, Aina, Trillium), the Brazilian singer Marina La Torraca (Phantom Elite), the French singer Cl\u00e9mentine Delauney (Visions of Atlantis, ex-Serenity) and the German-American singer Anna Brunner (League of Distortion). The band started posting in July 2017, in YouTube the first metal-cover clips from their debut album \"Rhapsodies in Black\", which reached thousands of views within a few days and hit No. 15 in the German album charts.\nSeveral musicians, sound engineers and producers from the metal scene, like Simone Simons (Epica), Hardy Krech, Mark Nissen, Johannes Braun (Kissin' Dynamite), Jim M\u00fcller (Kissin' Dynamite), Sascha Paeth (Avantasia, Edguy, Kamelot), Evan K (Mystic Prophecy) have cooperated for the album release. Live musicians have included Evan K (guitars) and Mark Moody (keyboards)\nOn 20 October 2023, Somerville released a statement, in which she announced new material for an upcoming release and that she would step down from the band to focus on her three children. The other members confirmed that they will continue without replacing her. Four days later, Exit Eden released their new single \"Run!\". \"Femme Fatales\", the band's second studio album was released on January 12, 2024 and contained the band's own songs for the first time.", "41292605": "Cl\u00e9mentine Delauney\nFrench singer\nCl\u00e9mentine Delauney (born 11 February 1987) is a French singer with a soprano vocal range who is currently singing for the symphonic metal bands Visions of Atlantis and Exit Eden. Previously she was the female backing vocalist for Austrian symphonic power metal band Serenity and the vocalist of French philharmonic metal band Whyzdom.\nCareer.\nAt the age of 16, Clementine Delauney began her musical education at the Ma\u00eetrise de l'Op\u00e9ra in Lyon.\nIn late 2010 she joined Whyzdom as their lead vocalist, but never appears on any record of the band, because the singer left the band in early 2012 before they began recording the second album \"Blind?\"\nBack in 2011 Delauney also guest-sang on Serenity's \"Out of the Dark\" tour before being introduced as a permanent member in December 2013. Together with Serenity, she released the album \"War of Ages\" and the resulting music video \"Wings of Madness\" in 2013. In the same year it was announced that Cl\u00e9mentine Delauney was leaving the band and would join the Austrian band Visions Of Atlantis, in which she is still active.\nDelauney performed alongside French operatic metal band Melted Space between 2013 and 2016. She can also be heard on the albums \"The Great Lie\" (released 2015) and \"Darkening Light\" (released 2018) as lead and background singer.\nIn 2017, the Frenchwoman founded the international metal band Exit Eden together with the 3 singers Amanda Somerville (Avantasia, Trillium), Marina La Torraca (Phantom Elite) and Anna Brunner (League of Distortion). On 4 August 2017 the four released their debut album, \"Rhapsodies in Black\", via Napalm Records. Together the band had a few shows, including at Wacken Open Air 2018.\nDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, Clementine Delauney launched her Patreon page in 2021. Since then she has been providing exclusive insights into the worlds of Visions of Atlantis and Exit Eden, but also into her personal artistic life. She has already released her first solo song \"The Violence Within\" via the platform.\nVisions of Atlantis.\nOn 6 December 2013 it was announced via the Visions of Atlantis Facebook page that Cl\u00e9mentine Delauney has joined the band as the new lead vocalist, along with Siegfried Samer (who was replaced by Michele Guaitoli at the end of 2018).\nVarious live performances followed before the release of the \"Old Routes \u2013 New Waters\" EP in 2016, on which Delauney and Samer re-recorded some of the band's biggest hits.\nThe band's sixth album \"The Deep & the Dark\" followed in 2018, to which she contributed as lead singer and the main lyricist, together with singer Siegfried Samer.\nApart from writing the lyrics, Delauney is also responsible for the broad thematic universe of Visions of Atlantis, including concepts for music videos, photo shoots and costumes, which she showcased in the following years with the studio albums \"Wanderers\" (released 30 August 2019) and \"Pirates\" (released 13 May 2022). On 20 March 2024 it was announced a new album called \"Pirates II \u2013 Armada\" will be released in July 2024. Alongside with this announcement the first single, \"Armada\" was released via Napalm Records. This single was followed by two more, \"Monster\" and \"Tonight I'm Alive\" before the ninth studio album was released on 5 July 2024.\nExit Eden.\nIn 2017, Cl\u00e9mentine Delauney announced that she is part of the music project Exit Eden.\nTogether with Amanda Somerville, Marina La Torraca and Anna Brunner, the four cover well-known pop songs as metal versions. The debut album Rhapsodies in Black was released on 4 August 2017 via Napalm Records.\nDelauney made several appearances with Exit Eden, including at Wacken Open Air 2018.\nThe music video \"Run!\" was released on 24 October 2023. The band's second studio album \"Femmes Fatales\" was released on 12 January 2024 and contained the band's own songs for the first time.\nDiscography.\nVisions of Atlantis.\nLive albums\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "13342808": "West of Eden (band)\nSwedish folk rock band\nWest of Eden is a folk rock band from Gothenburg, Sweden.\nThe band was formed in 1995 by spouses Jenny and Martin Schaub after they returned from a trip to Dublin, where they fell in love with Celtic folk music. They are the lead vocalists and main songwriters. Martin also plays multiple instruments, produces the albums and arranges and conducts string and brass sections. The band has released thirteen studio albums to date. Their repertoire consists mainly of original songs with influences from Irish and Scottish folk music. The sound is characterised by mostly acoustic instruments like violin, accordion and whistle. After initially being more oriented towards pop, they now fall under the genre of folk rock. In addition to Sweden, they have toured England, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, the  Netherlands and China. \nAll lyrics are in English, with the exception of the songs on the 2021 album \"Taube\", which is Swedish. The album contains interpretations of songs written by Evert Taube (1890 \u2013 1976), whom is a legend in Sweden and also hails from Gothenburg.\nThroughout the years, many \"Guests of Eden\" have appeared on the albums. Notable names are (alphabetically) Ron Block, Duncan Chisholm, Steph Geremia, Jarlath Henderson, Filip Jers, Christian Kjellvander, John McCusker, Michael McGoldrick, Damien O'Kane, Kate Rusby, Heidi Talbot, but also former or future band members David Ekh, \u00d8yvind Eriksen and P\u00e4r \u00d6jerot appeared as a guest. In 2018, the band covered Timo R\u00e4is\u00e4nens \"Eld & Aceton\", translated into English by Jenny Schaub as \"Hope, Faith, Theft\" and performed the song with him in 2019. \nEach year West of Eden perform Christmas concerts called Celtic Christmas. Sometimes other artists join the band, like Duncan Chisholm, Triona Marshall (touring member of The Chieftains) or Heidi Talbot.\nJenny & Martin Schaub musical.\nIn 2021, Gothenburg celebrated its 400th anniversary. Martin and Jenny Schaub created a \nmusical, called \"Silverhj\u00e4rtats hemlighet\" ('The Secret of the Silver Heart'), that depicts the city's history and is set in three eras: the 16th century, 1916 and the present day. It featured Timo R\u00e4is\u00e4nen, Maia Hirasawa, Jos\u00e9 Gonzalez and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "430072": "Foreigner (band)\nBritish-American rock band\nForeigner is a British-American rock band formed in New York City in 1976 by guitarist Mick Jones, vocalist Lou Gramm, drummer Dennis Elliott, keyboardist Al Greenwood, bassist"}, "descending_order": ["6793462", "41779106", "38469034", "54673214", "41292605", "13342808", "430072", "19360420", "41770159"], "permutation_1": ["13342808", "54673214", "38469034", "6793462", "41770159", "19360420", "41292605", "41779106", "430072"], "permutation_2": ["6793462", "41292605", "54673214", "19360420", "41770159", "41779106", "38469034", "13342808", "430072"], "permutation_3": ["13342808", "430072", "41779106", "19360420", "6793462", "41770159", "54673214", "41292605", "38469034"]}
{"id": "3hop1__836699_15840_36014", "docs_added": {"28314": "Super Nintendo Entertainment System\nHome video game console\nThe Super Nintendo Entertainment System, commonly shortened to Super Nintendo, Super NES or SNES, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in Europe and Oceania and 1993 in South America. In Japan, it is called the In South Korea, it is called the Super Comboy and was distributed by Hyundai Electronics. The system was released in Brazil on August 30, 1993, by Playtronic. In Russia and CIS, the system was distributed by Steepler from 1994 until 1996. Although each version is essentially the same, several forms of regional lockout prevent cartridges for one version from being used in other versions.\nThe Super NES is Nintendo's second programmable home console, following the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The console introduced advanced graphics and sound capabilities compared with other systems at the time, like the Sega Genesis. It was designed to accommodate the ongoing development of a variety of enhancement chips integrated into game cartridges to be more competitive into the next generation.\nThe Super NES received largely positive reviews and was a global success, becoming the best-selling console of the 16-bit era after launching relatively late and facing intense competition from Sega's Genesis console in North America and Europe. Overlapping the NES's 61.9\u00a0million unit sales, the Super NES remained popular well into the 32-bit era, with 49.1\u00a0million units sold worldwide by the time it was discontinued in 2003. It continues to be popular among collectors and retro gamers, with new homebrew games and Nintendo's emulated rereleases, such as on the Virtual Console, the Super NES Classic Edition, Nintendo Switch Online; as well as several non-console emulators which operate on a desktop computer or mobile device, such as Snes9x.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nTo compete with the popular Family Computer in Japan, NEC Home Electronics launched the PC Engine in 1987, and Sega followed suit with the Mega Drive in 1988. The two platforms were later launched in North America in 1989 as the TurboGrafx-16 and the Sega Genesis respectively. Both systems were built on 16-bit architectures and offered improved graphics and sound over the 8-bit NES. It took several years for Sega's system to become successful. Bill Mensch, the co-creator of the 8-bit MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor and founder of the Western Design Center (WDC), gave Ricoh the exclusive right to supply 8-bit and 16-bit WDC microprocessors for the new system. Meanwhile, Sony engineer Ken Kutaragi reached an agreement with Nintendo to design the console's sound chip without notifying his supervisors, who were enraged when they discovered the project; though Kutaragi was nearly fired, then-CEO Norio Ohga intervened in support of the project and gave him permission to complete it.\nOn September 9, 1987, then-Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi revealed the development of the Super Famicom in the newspaper \"Kyoto Shimbun\". On August 30, 1988, in an interview with \"TOUCH Magazine\", Yamauchi announced the development of \"Super Mario Bros. 4\", \"Dragon Quest V\", three original games, and he projected sales of 3 million units of the upcoming console. \"Famicom Hissyoubon\" magazine speculated that Yamauchi's early announcement was probably made to forestall Christmas shopping for the PC Engine, and relayed Enix's clarification that it was waiting on sales figures to select either PC Engine or Super Famicom for its next \"Dragon Quest\" game. The magazine and Enix both expressed a strong interest in networking as a standard platform feature. The console was demonstrated to the Japanese press on November 21, 1988, and again on July 28, 1989.\nLaunch.\nDesigned by Masayuki Uemura, the designer of the original Famicom, the Super Famicom was released in Japan on Wednesday, November 21, 1990, for \u00a5. It was an instant success. Nintendo's initial shipment of 300,000 units sold out within hours, and the resulting social disturbance led the Japanese government to ask video game manufacturers to schedule future console releases on weekends. This gained the attention of the yakuza criminal organizations, so the devices were shipped at night to avoid robbery.\nWith the Super Famicom quickly outselling its rivals, Nintendo reasserted itself as the leader of the Japanese console market. Nintendo's success was partially due to the retention of most of its key third-party developers, including Capcom, Konami, Tecmo, Square, Koei, and Enix.\nNintendo released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, a redesigned version of the Super Famicom, in North America for US$. It began shipping in limited quantities on August 23, 1991, with an official nationwide release date of September 9, 1991. The Super NES was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland in April 1992 for \u00a3.\nMost of the PAL region versions of the console use the Japanese Super Famicom design, except for labeling and the length of the joypad leads. The Playtronic Super NES in Brazil, although PAL-M, uses the North American design. Both the NES and Super NES were released in Brazil in 1993 by Playtronic, a joint venture between the toy company Estrela and consumer electronics company Gradiente.\nThe Super NES and Super Famicom launched with few games, but these games were well received. In Japan, only two games were initially available: \"Super Mario World\" and \"F-Zero\". \"Bombuzal\" was released during the launch week. In North America, \"Super Mario World\" was launched as a bundle with the console; other launch games include \"F-Zero\", \"Pilotwings\" (both of which demonstrate the console's Mode 7 pseudo-3D rendering), \"SimCity\", and \"Gradius III\".\nConsole wars.\nThe rivalry between Nintendo and Sega was described as one of the most notable console wars in video game history, in which Sega positioned the Genesis as the \"cool\" console, with games aimed at older audiences, and aggressive advertisements that occasionally attacked the competition. Nintendo scored an early public-relations advantage by securing the first console conversion of Capcom's arcade hit \"Street Fighter II\" for Super NES, which took more than a year to make the transition to the Genesis. Though the Genesis had a two-year lead to launch time, a much larger library of games, and a lower price point, it only represented an estimated 60% of the American 16-bit console market in June 1992, and neither console could maintain a definitive lead for several years. \"Donkey Kong Country\" is said to have helped establish the Super NES's market prominence in the latter years of the 16-bit generation, and for a time, maintain against the PlayStation and Saturn. According to Nintendo, the company had sold more than 20\u00a0million Super NES units in the U.S. According to a 2014 Wedbush Securities report based on NPD sales data, the Super NES outsold the Genesis in the U.S. market by 1.5 million units.\nChanges in policy.\nDuring the NES era, Nintendo maintained exclusive control over games released for the system \u2013 the company had to approve every game, each third-party developer could only release up to five games per year (but some third parties got around this by using different names, such as Konami's \"Ultra Games\" brand), those games could not be released on another console within two years, and Nintendo was the exclusive manufacturer and supplier of NES cartridges. Competition from Sega's console brought an end to this practice; in 1991, Acclaim Entertainment began releasing games for both platforms, with most of Nintendo's other licensees following suit over the next several years; Capcom (which licensed some games to Sega instead of producing them directly) and Square were the most notable holdouts.\nNintendo continued to carefully review submitted games, scoring them on a 40-point scale and allocating marketing resources accordingly. Each region performed separate evaluations. Nintendo of America also maintained a policy that, among other things, limited the amount of violence in the games on its systems. The surprise arcade hit \"Mortal Kombat\" (1992), a gory fighting game with huge splashes of blood and graphically violent fatality moves, was heavily censored by Nintendo. Because the Genesis version allowed for an uncensored version via cheat code, it outsold the censored Super NES version by a ratio of nearly three to one.\nU.S. Senators Herb Kohl and Joe Lieberman convened a Congressional hearing on December 9, 1993, to investigate the marketing of violent video games to children. Though Nintendo took the high ground with moderate success, the hearings led to the creation of the Interactive Digital Software Association and the Entertainment Software Rating Board and the inclusion of ratings on all video games. With these ratings in place, Nintendo decided its censorship policies were no longer needed.\n32-bit era and beyond.\nWhile other companies were moving on to 32-bit systems, Rare and Nintendo proved that the Super NES was still a strong contender in the market. In November 1994, Rare released \"Donkey Kong Country\", a platform game featuring 3D models and textures pre-rendered on Silicon Graphics workstations. With its detailed graphics, fluid animation, and high-quality music, \"Donkey Kong Country\" rivals the aesthetic quality of games that were being released on newer 32-bit CD-based consoles. In the last 45 days of 1994, 6.1\u00a0million copies were sold, making it the fastest-selling video game in history to that date. This game conveyed that early 32-bit systems had little to offer over the Super NES, and proved the market for the more advanced consoles of the near future. According to TRSTS reports, two of the top five bestselling games in the U.S. for December 1996 are Super NES games.\nIn October 1997, Nintendo released a redesigned model of the Super NES (the SNS-101 model referred to as \"New-Style Super NES\") in North America for US$, with some units including the pack-in game \"\". Like the earlier New-Style NES (model NES-101), this is slimmer and lighter than its predecessor, but it lacks S-Video and RGB output, and it is among the last major Super NES-related releases in the region. A similarly redesigned Super Famicom Jr. was released in Japan at around the same time. The redesign stayed out of Europe.\nNintendo ceased production of the Super NES in North America in 1999, about two years after releasing \"Kirby's Dream Land 3\" (its final second-party game in the US) on November 27, 1997, and one year after releasing \"Frogger\" (its final third-party game in the US) in 1998. In Japan, Nintendo continued production of both the Family Computer and the Super Famicom until September 25, 2003, and new games were produced until the year 2000, ending with the release of \"Metal Slader Glory Director's Cut\" on November 29, 2000.\nMany popular Super NES games were ported to the Game Boy Advance, which has similar video capabilities. In 2005, Nintendo announced that Super NES games would be made available for download via the Wii's Virtual Console service. On October 31, 2007, Nintendo Co., Ltd. announced that it would no longer repair Family Computer or Super Famicom systems due to an increasing shortage of the necessary parts. On March 3, 2016, Nintendo Co., Ltd. announced that it would bring Super NES games to the New Nintendo 3DS and New Nintendo 3DS XL (and later the New Nintendo 2DS XL) via its eShop download service. At the Nintendo Direct event on September 4, 2019, Nintendo announced that it would be bringing select Super NES games to the Nintendo Switch Online platform.\nHardware.\nTechnical specifications.\nThe 16-bit design of the Super NES incorporates graphics and sound co-processors that perform tiling and simulated 3D effects, a palette of 32,768 colors, and 8-channel ADPCM audio. These base platform features, plus the ability to dramatically extend them all through substantial chip upgrades inside of each cartridge, represent a leap over the 8-bit NES generation and some significant advantages over 16-bit competitors such as the Genesis.\nCPU and RAM.\nThe CPU is a Ricoh 5A22, a derivative of the 16-bit WDC 65C816 microprocessor. In NTSC regions, its nominal clock speed is 3.58 MHz will slow to either 2.68\u00a0MHz or 1.79\u00a0MHz when accessing some slower peripherals.\nThis CPU has an 8-bit data bus and two address buses. The 24-bit \"Bus\u00a0A\" is designated for general accesses, and the 8-bit \"Bus\u00a0B\" can access support chip registers such as the video and audio co-processors.\nThe WDC 65C816 supports an 8-channel DMA unit, an 8-bit parallel I/O port a controller port interface circuits allowing serial and parallel access to controller data, a 16-bit multiplication and division unit, and circuitry for generating non-maskable interrupts on V-blank and IRQ interrupts on calculated screen positions.\nEarly revisions of the 5A22 used in SHVC boards are prone to spontaneous failure which can produce a variety of symptoms including graphics glitches in Mode 7, a black screen on power-on, or improperly reading the controllers. The first revision 5A22 has a fatal bug in the DMA controller that can crash games; this was corrected in subsequent revisions.\nThe console contains 128KB of general-purpose \"work\" RAM, which is separate from the 64KB dedicated to the video subsystem and the 64KB dedicated to the audio subsystem.\nVideo.\nThe Picture Processing Unit (PPU) consists of two closely tied IC packages. It contains 64KB of SRAM for video data, 544 bytes of object attribute memory (OAM) for sprite data, and 256\u00a0\u00d7\u00a015 bits of color generator RAM (CGRAM) for palette data. This CGRAM provisions up to 256 colors, chosen from the 15-bit RGB color space, from a palette of 32,768 colors. The PPU is clocked by the same signal as the CPU and generates a pixel every two or four cycles.\nAudio.\nThe S-SMP audio subsystem consisted of a 16-bit digital signal processor (DSP) to sequence the mix samples, an 8-bit SPC700 CPU to drive the DSP and 64KB of dedicated PSRAM. It was designed by Ken Kutaragi and produced by Sony and is completely independent from the rest of the system. It is clocked at a nominal 24.576\u00a0MHz in both NTSC and PAL systems. It is capable of stereo sound, composed from eight voices generated using 16-bit audio samples compressed using BRR and capable of applying effects such as echo. On early revisions of the motherboard the S-SMP audio system was spread across four chips: the DSP, the CPU, and two RAM modules. On later revisions, the sound hardware consolidated to a single chip, the S-APU.\nRegional lockout.\nNintendo employed several types of regional lockout, including both physical and hardware incompatibilities.\nPhysically, the cartridges are shaped differently for different regions. North American cartridges have a rectangular bottom with inset grooves matching protruding tabs in the console, and other regions' cartridges are narrower with a smooth curve on the front and no grooves. The physical incompatibility can be overcome with the use of various adapters, or through modification of the console.\nInternally, a regional lockout chip (CIC) within the console and in each cartridge prevents the PAL region games from being played on Japanese or North American consoles and vice versa. The Japanese and North American machines have the same region chip. This can be overcome through the use of adapters, typically by inserting the imported cartridge in one slot and a cartridge with the correct region chip in a second slot. Alternatively, disconnecting one pin of the console's lockout chip will prevent it from locking the console; hardware in later games can detect this situation, so it became common to install a switch to reconnect the lockout chip as needed.\nPAL consoles face another incompatibility when playing out-of-region cartridges: the NTSC video standard specifies video at 60\u00a0Hz but PAL operates at 50\u00a0Hz, resulting in an approximately 16.7% slower framerate. PAL's higher resolution results in letterboxing of the output image. Some commercial PAL region releases exhibit this same problem and, therefore, can be played in NTSC systems without issue, but other games will face a 20% speedup if played in an NTSC console. To mostly correct this issue, a switch can be added to place the Super NES PPU into a 60\u00a0Hz mode supported by most newer PAL televisions. Later games will detect this setting and refuse to run, requiring the switch to be thrown only after the check completes.\nCasing.\nAll models of the Super NES control deck are predominantly gray, of slightly different shades. The original North American version, designed by Nintendo of America industrial designer Lance Barr (who previously redesigned the Famicom to become the NES), has a boxy design with purple sliding switches and a dark gray eject lever. The loading bay surface is curved, both to invite interaction and to prevent food or drinks from being placed on the console and spilling as with the flat-surfaced NES. The Japanese and European versions are more rounded, with darker gray accents and buttons.\nAll versions incorporate a top-loading slot for game cartridges, although the shape of the slot differs between regions to match the different shapes of the cartridges. The MULTI OUT connector (later used on the Nintendo 64 and GameCube) can output composite video, S-Video and RGB signals, as well as RF with an external RF modulator. Original versions additionally include a 28-pin expansion port under a small cover on the bottom of the unit and a standard RF output with channel selection switch on the back; the redesigned models output composite video only, requiring an external modulator for RF.\nThe Nintendo Super System (NSS) is an arcade system for retail preview of 11 particular Super NES games in the United States, similar to the PlayChoice-10 for NES games. It consists of slightly modified Super NES hardware with a menu interface and 25-inch monitor, that allows gameplay for a certain amount of time depending on game credits. Manufacturing of this model was discontinued in 1992.\nRedesigned model.\nA cost-reduced version of the console, referred to as the New-Style Super NES (model SNS-101) in North America and as the in Japan, was released late in the platform's lifespan; designed by Barr, it incorporates design elements from both the original North American and Japanese/European console models but in a smaller form factor. Unlike the original console models, the redesigned model is virtually identical across both regions save for the color palette (the North American model receiving purple buttons and the Japanese model receiving grey buttons). The redesign did not receive a release in Europe.\nExternally, the power and reset buttons were moved to the left-hand side of the console while the cartridge eject button and power LED indicator were omitted. Internally, the redesigned model consolidates the console's hardware into a system-on-chip (SoC) design. The redesigned console lacks the bottom expansion slot, rendering it incompatible with the Japan-exclusive Satellaview add-on.\nFor AV output, the redesigned console features the same multi-out port used on the original models. Unlike the latter models, the former's AV port only supports composite video output natively as support for RGB video and S-Video was disabled internally; however, they can be restored via a \"relatively simple\" modification. The internal RF modulator was also removed, requiring an external one for such output if needed. Due to the SoC design, it is highly sought after by Super NES/Famicom enthusiasts since its RGB video quality (if restored) is improved over earlier internal revisions of the console.\nThe redesigned console first released in October 1997 in North America, where it originally retailed for US$99.95 in a bundle with \"\";\nit was subsequently released in Japan on March 27, 1998, where it retailed for \u00a57,800. Nintendo marketed it as an entry-level gamer's system for consumers who were apprehensive about the higher price of newer systems such as the Nintendo 64. Nintendo also introduced a slightly altered controller for it, with the console's logo replaced by an embossed Nintendo logo.\nYellowing.\nThe ABS plastic used in the casing of some older Super NES and Super Famicom consoles is particularly susceptible to oxidation with exposure to air. This, along with the particularly light color of the original plastic, causes affected consoles to quickly become yellow; if the sections of the casing came from different batches of plastic, a \"two-tone\" effect results. This issue may be reversed with a method called Retrobrighting, where a mixture of chemicals is applied to the case and exposed to UV light.\nGame cartridge.\nSuper NES games are distributed on ROM cartridges, officially referred to as Game Pak in most Western regions, and as in Japan and parts of Latin America. Though the Super NES can address 128\u00a0Mbit, only 117.75\u00a0Mbit are actually available for cartridge use. A fairly normal mapping could easily address up to 95\u00a0Mbit of ROM data (48\u00a0Mbit at FastROM speed) with 8\u00a0Mbit of battery-backed RAM. Most available memory access controllers only support mappings of up to 32\u00a0Mbit. The largest games released (\"Tales of Phantasia\" and \"Star Ocean\") contain 48\u00a0Mbit of ROM data, and the smallest games contain only 2\u00a0Mbit.\nCartridges may also contain battery-backed SRAM to save the game state, extra working RAM, custom coprocessors, or any other hardware that will not exceed the maximum current rating of the console.\nGames.\n1757 Super NES games were officially released: 717 in North America (plus 4 championship cartridges), 521 in Europe, 1,448 in Japan, 231 on Satellaview, and 13 on Sufami Turbo. Many Super NES games have been called some of the greatest video games of all time, such as \"Super Mario World\" (1990), \"\" (1991), \"Final Fantasy VI\" (1994), \"Donkey Kong Country\" (1994), \"EarthBound\" (1994), \"Super Metroid\" (1994), \"Chrono Trigger\" (1995) and \"Yoshi's Island\" (1995). Many Super NES games have been rereleased several times, including on the Virtual Console, Super NES Classic Edition, and the classic games service on Nintendo Switch Online. All Game Boy games are playable with the Super Game Boy add-on.\nPeripherals.\nThe Super NES controller design expands on that of the NES, with A, B, X, and Y face buttons in a diamond arrangement, and two shoulder buttons. Lance Barr created its ergonomic design, and he later adapted it in 1993 for the NES-039 \"dogbone\" controller. The Japanese and PAL region versions incorporated the four colors of the face buttons into the system's logo. The North American version's buttons were colored to match the redesigned console; the X and Y buttons are lavender with concave faces, and the A and B buttons are purple with convex faces. Several later controller designs have elements from the Super NES controller, including the PlayStation, Dreamcast, Xbox, and Wii Classic Controller. This face button layout is on future Nintendo systems since the Nintendo DS.\nSeveral peripherals add to the functionality of the Super NES. Some are required by certain games, such as the Super Scope light gun, and the Super NES Mouse for a point and click interface. Various third-parties, under license from Nintendo, released multitap adapters connecting up to five controllers into a single console, starting with the Super Multitap by Hudson Soft in conjunction with the \"Super Bomberman\" series. Specialized third-party controllers, such as the AsciiPad and Super Advantage (the successor to the NES Advantage) by Asciiware, and the Capcom Fighter Power Stick, an arcade-like joystick controller by Capcom designed specifically for \"Street Fighter II\". Unusual controllers include the BatterUP baseball bat, the Life Fitness Entertainment System (an exercise bike controller with built-in monitoring software), the TeeV Golf golf club, and the Justifier (a revolver-shaped light gun made by Konami for \"Lethal Enforcers\").\nThough Nintendo never released an adapter for playing NES games on the Super NES, the Super Game Boy adapter cartridge allows games designed for Nintendo's portable Game Boy system to be played on the Super NES. The Super Game Boy touts several feature enhancements over the Game Boy, including palette substitution, custom screen borders, and access to the Super NES console's features by specially enhanced Game Boy games. Japan also saw the release of the Super Game Boy 2, which adds a communication port to enable a second Game Boy to connect for multiplayer games.\nLike the NES before it, the Super NES has unlicensed third-party peripherals, including a new version of the Game Genie cheat cartridge designed for use with Super NES games.\nSoon after the release of the Super NES, companies began marketing backup devices such as the Super Wildcard, Super Pro Fighter Q, and Game Doctor. These devices create a backup of a cartridge, and can be used to play illicit ROM images or to copy games, violating copyright laws in many jurisdictions.\nThe Japan-only Satellaview is a satellite modem attached to the Super Famicom's expansion port and connected to the St.GIGA satellite radio station from April 23, 1995, to June 30, 2000. Satellaview subscribers could download gaming news and specially designed games, which were frequently either remakes of or sequels to older Famicom games, and released in installments. In the United States, the relatively short-lived XBAND allowed users to connect to a network via a dial-up modem to compete against other players around the country.\nNintendo attempted partnerships with Sony and then Philips, to develop CD-ROM-based peripheral prototypes for the console to compete with the TurboGrafx-CD and Sega CD. Sony produced the PlayStation (a brand name the company would use for their later independently produced console), a Super NES console with a built-in CD-ROM drive that never made it past the prototype phase. The Philips project was canceled without a prototype but Philips retained the contractual right to develop games based on Nintendo franchises, which it published for its CD-i multimedia console.\nEnhancement chips.\nAs part of the overall plan for the Super NES, rather than include an expensive CPU that would still become obsolete in a few years, the hardware designers made it easy to interface special coprocessor chips to the console, just like the MMC chips used for most NES games. This is most often characterized by 16 additional pins on the cartridge card edge.\nThe Super FX is a RISC CPU designed to perform functions that the main CPU can not feasibly do. The chip is primarily used to create 3D game worlds made with polygons, texture mapping and light source shading. The chip can also be used to enhance 2D games.\nThe Nintendo fixed-point digital signal processor (DSP) chip allowed fast vector-based calculations, bitmap conversions, both 2D and 3D coordinate transformations, and other functions. Four revisions of the chip exist, each physically identical but with different microcode. The DSP-1 version, including the later 1A and 1B bug fix revisions, is used most often; the DSP-2, DSP-3, and DSP-4 are used in only one game each.\nSimilar to the 5A22 CPU in the console, the SA-1 chip contains a 65C816 processor core clocked at 10.7\u00a0MHz, a memory mapper, DMA, decompression and bitplane conversion circuitry, several programmable timers, and CIC region lockout functionality.\nIn Japan, games could be downloaded cheaper than standard cartridges, from Nintendo Power kiosks onto special cartridges containing flash memory and a MegaChips MX15001TFC chip. The chip manages communication with the kiosks to download ROM images and has an initial menu to select a game. Some were published both in cartridge and download form, and others were download only. The service closed on February 8, 2007.\nMany cartridges contain other enhancement chips, most of which were created for use by a single company in a few games.\nReception and legacy.\nApproximately 49.1\u00a0million Super NES consoles were sold worldwide, with 23.35\u00a0million of those units sold in the Americas and 17.17\u00a0million in Japan. Although it could not quite repeat the success of the NES, which sold 61.91\u00a0million units worldwide, the Super NES was the best-selling console of its era.\nIn a 1997 year-end review, a team of five \"Electronic Gaming Monthly\" editors gave the Super NES scores of 5.5, 8.0, 7.0, 7.0, and 8.0. Though they criticized how few new games were coming out for the system and how dated its graphics were compared to current generation consoles, they regarded its selection of must-have games to be still unsurpassed. Additionally noting that used Super NES games were readily available in bargain bins, most of them still recommended buying a Super NES. In 2007, \"GameTrailers\" named the Super NES as the second-best console of all time (only behind the PlayStation 2) in their list of top ten consoles that \"left their mark on the history of gaming\", citing its graphics, sound, and library of top-quality games. In 2015, they also named it the best Nintendo console of all time, saying, \"The list of games we love from this console completely annihilates any other roster from the Big N.\" Technology columnist Don Reisinger proclaimed \"The SNES is the greatest console of all time\" in January 2008, citing the quality of the games and the console's dramatic improvement over its predecessor; fellow technology columnist Will Greenwald replied with a more nuanced view, giving the Super NES top marks with his heart, the NES with his head, and the PlayStation (for its controller) with his hands. GamingExcellence also gave the Super NES first place in 2008, declaring it \"simply the most timeless system ever created\" with many games that stand the test of time and citing its innovation in controller design, graphics capabilities, and game storytelling. At the same time, GameDaily rated it fifth of the ten greatest consoles for its graphics, audio, controllers, and games. In 2009, \"IGN\" named the Super NES the fourth-best video game console, complimenting its audio and number of AAA games.\nEmulation.\nSNES emulation began with VSMC in 1994, and Super Pasofami became the first working emulator in 1996. During that time, two competing emulation projects, Snes96 and Snes97, merged to form Snes9x. In 1997, ZSNES development began. In 2004, Bsnes development began with the goal of preservation through maximal accuracy and compatibility, and was later renamed to Higan.\nNintendo of America maintained its stance against the distribution of SNES ROM image files and the use of emulators, as it had with the NES before, saying they represent copyright infringement. Emulation proponents assert that the discontinued hardware production constitutes abandonware status, the owners' right to make a personal backup, space shifting for private use, the development of homebrew games, the frailty of ROM cartridges and consoles, and the lack of certain foreign imports. Nintendo designed a hobbyist development system for the SNES, but never released it.\nUnofficial SNES emulation is available on virtually all platforms, including Android, iOS, game consoles, and PDAs. Individual games have been bundled with official dedicated emulators on some GameCube discs, and Nintendo's Virtual Console service for the Wii introduced diverse and officially licensed SNES emulation.\nThe Super NES Classic Edition was released in September 2017 following the NES Classic Edition. This emulation-based mini-console, which is physically modeled after the North American and European versions of the SNES, is bundled with two SNES-style controllers and 21 games, including the unreleased \"Star Fox 2\".\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2176065": "Nightshade (1992 video game)\nNightshade, fully titled Nightshade Part 1: The Claws of Sutekh onscreen, is an action-adventure video game released in 1992 for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was developed by Beam Software and published by Ultra Games. The game was meant to be the first part in a series, but no sequels were ever made; however, it served as the basis for Beam Software's Super NES video game adaptation of \"\"Shadowrun\".\"\nIt was released on the Nintendo Switch for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers in December 2020.\nPlot.\nThe game takes place in a fictional urban city called Metro City. As the story unfolds, the city's local superhero named Vortex is outnumbered by gangs and killed. With the city's protector murdered, crime grows rapidly. Soon enough, the city's crime lords start fighting over control of the city, until a villain named Waldo P. Schmeer (More commonly known as Sutekh) takes control, combining all the gangs into one. With the city completely overrun by Sutekh and the other crime lords (Rat King, Goliath, Lord Muck, and Ninja Mistress), it is soon devoured in crime. A vigilante named Mark (alias Nightshade) decides to step up and take the law into his own hands, vowing to rid Metro City of crime.\nOutside of the occasional violence, the game is actually somewhat light in tone (even Nightshade himself is constantly being called \"Lampshade\" or \"Nightcart\" by everybody) and rife with various popular culture references. The ending gives credit to people for the \"bad jokes.\"\nGameplay.\nThe game had a unique feature; along with the action sequences and point-and-click game elements, there was a \"popularity meter\" that would go up or down as Nightshade performed good deeds well or poorly. Higher popularity meant greater recognition by everyday citizens of Metro City and allowed Nightshade access to more areas.\nThe game also included fighting segments that required quick button responses.\nDevelopment.\nAccording to Pauli Kidd, who served as the director, writer and lead designer, she was not allowed to put a battery-backed ROM to allow save files. To work around this issue, Kidd and the other developers decided that Sutekh would throw Nightshade into a deathtrap, inspired by various James Bond movies.\nKidd spoke on the genesis of the title stating \"We had been commissioned to do an adventure game, these guys wanted a gumshoe, 1930s, film noir kind of thing...on the last day I hooked up with a very talented programmer called Jef Kamenek...we took a look and thought yeah this is fine but it lacks something so we sat down together and said why don't we do this as a comedy ? So what I did was rewrite all the dialog as comedy dialog\"\nThe first four traps each had a solution and Nightshade would escape back onto the streets of Metro City (minus some popularity points). The final one does not, and the player would have to start over from the beginning of the game. Additionally the game begins with Nightshade tied to a chair, next to which Sutekh has placed a small bomb. While technically not a deathtrap (the bomb, if not escaped on time, does not do lethal damage) this introduces the trap-escape/problem-solving element early on.\nReception.\nThe game was received poorly for its complicated, yet not adjustable controls. \nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18944028": "Nintendo Entertainment System\nHome video game console\nThe Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on July 15, 1983, as the It was released in US test markets as the redesigned NES in October 1985, and fully launched in the US the following year. The NES was distributed in Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia throughout the 1980s under various names. As a third-generation console, it mainly competed with Sega's Master System.\nThe NES was designed by Masayuki Uemura. Nintendo's president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, called for a simple, cheap console that could run arcade games on cartridges. The controller design was reused from Nintendo's portable Game & Watch hardware. The western model was redesigned to resemble a video cassette recorder. Nintendo released add-ons such as the NES Zapper light gun for several shooting games, and R.O.B, a toy robot accessory.\nThe NES is regarded as one of the most influential consoles. It helped revitalise the American gaming industry following the video game crash of 1983, and pioneered a now-standard business model of licensing third-party developers to produce and distribute games. The NES features several influential games, including \"Super Mario Bros.\" (1985), \"The Legend of Zelda\" (1986), \"Metroid\" (1986) and \"Mega Man\" (1987), which became major franchises.\nThe NES dominated Japanese and North American markets, but initially underperformed in Europe, where it faced strong competition from the Sega Master System and microcomputers. With 61.91\u00a0million units sold, it is one of the best-selling consoles. It was succeeded in 1990 by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.\nHistory.\nBackground.\nThe video game industry experienced rapid growth and popularity from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, marked by the golden age of arcade games and the second generation of consoles. Games like \"Space Invaders\" (1978) became a phenomenon across arcades worldwide, while home consoles such as the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision gained footholds in the American market. Many companies emerged to capitalise on the growing industry, including the playing card manufacturer Nintendo.\nHiroshi Yamauchi, who had been Nintendo's president since 1949, realised that breakthroughs in the electronics industry meant that entertainment products could be produced at lower prices. Companies such as Atari and Magnavox were already selling gaming devices for use with television sets, to moderate success. Yamauchi negotiated a licence with Magnavox to sell its game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. Since Nintendo's operation was not yet sophisticated enough to design its own hardware, Yamauchi forged an alliance with Mitsubishi Electric and hired several Sharp Electronics employees to assist in developing the Color TV-Game 6 in Japan. This was followed by a more successful sequel, the Color TV-Game 15, and the handheld Game & Watch series. The successes of these machines gave Yamauchi the confidence to expand Nintendo's influence in the fledgling video game industry.\nIn 1978, Yamauchi split Nintendo into separate research and development divisions. He appointed Masayuki Uemura as head of Nintendo Research & Development 2, a division that focused solely on hardware. Yamauchi, through extensive discussions with Uemura and other engineers, recognised the potential of the developing console beyond gaming. He envisioned a home-computer system disguised as a toy, which could significantly expand Nintendo's reach if it became popular with children. This popularity would drive demand for games, with Nintendo as the sole provider. Indeed, by 1980 several systems had already been released in Japan by both American and Japanese companies. Yamauchi tasked Uemura with developing a system that would be superior to its competitors and difficult to replicate for at least a year. Uemura's main challenge was economic rather than technological; Yamauchi wanted the system to be affordable enough for widespread household adoption, aiming for a price of \u00a59,800 (less than $75) compared to existing machines priced at \u00a530,000 to \u00a550,000 ($200 to $350). The new system had to outperform other systems, both Japanese and American, while being significantly more affordable.\nInception.\nAs development progressed on the new video game system, engineers sought Yamauchi's guidance on its features. They questioned whether to include a disk drive, keyboard, data port, as well as the potential for a modem, expanded memory, and other computer-like capabilities. Yamauchi ultimately instructed Uemura to prioritise simplicity and affordability, omitting these peripherals entirely. Game cartridges, which Uemura saw as \"less intimidating\" to consumers, were chosen as the format. The team designed the system with 2,000 bytes of random-access memory (RAM), significantly more than Atari's 256 bytes. Larger cartridges also allowed for far more complex games, with thirty-two times the code capacity of Atari cartridges.\nThe console's hardware was largely based on arcade video games, particularly the hardware for Namco's \"Galaxian\" (1979) and Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\", with the goal of matching their powerful sprite and scrolling capabilities in a home system. A test model was constructed in October 1982 to verify the functionality of the hardware, and work began on programming tools. Because 65xx CPUs had not been manufactured or sold in Japan by that time, no cross-development software was available and it had to be developed from scratch. Early Famicom games were written on a NEC PC-8001 computer. LEDs on a grid were used with a digitizer to design graphics as no such software design tools existed at that time.\nThe codename for the project was \"GameCom\", but Masayuki Uemura's wife proposed the name \"Famicom\", arguing that \"In Japan, 'pasokon' is used to mean a personal computer, but it is neither a home nor personal computer. Perhaps we could say it is a family computer.\" Meanwhile, Hiroshi Yamauchi decided that the console should use a red and white theme after seeing a billboard for DX Antenna (a Japanese antenna manufacturer) which used those colors.\nDevelopment.\nThe Famicom was influenced by the ColecoVision, Coleco's competition against the Atari 2600 in the United States; the ColecoVision's top-seller was a port of Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\". The project's chief manager Takao Sawano brought a ColecoVision home to his family, impressed by its smooth graphics, which contrasts with the flicker and slowdown commonly seen on Atari 2600 games. Uemura said the ColecoVision set the bar for the Famicom. They wanted to surpass it and match the more powerful \"Donkey Kong\" arcade hardware; they took a \"Donkey Kong\" arcade cabinet to chip manufacturer Ricoh for analysis, which led to Ricoh producing the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) chip for the NES.\nOriginal plans called for the Famicom's cartridges to be the size of a cassette tape, but ultimately they ended up being twice as big. Careful design attention was paid to the cartridge connectors because loose and faulty connections often plagued arcade machines. As it necessitated 60 connection lines for the memory and expansion, Nintendo decided to produce its own connectors.\nThe controllers are hard-wired to the console with no connectors for cost reasons. The controller designs were reused from the Game & Watch machines, although the Famicom design team originally wanted to use arcade-style joysticks, even dismantling some from American game consoles to see how they worked. There were concerns regarding the durability of the joystick design and that children might step on joysticks on the floor. Katsuya Nakawaka attached a Game & Watch D-pad to the Famicom prototype and found that it was easy to use and caused no discomfort. Ultimately though, they installed a 15-pin expansion port on the front of the console so that an optional arcade-style joystick could be used.\nGunpei Yokoi suggested an eject lever, which was not necessary, but he believed that children could be entertained by pressing it. Uemura adopted his idea. Uemura added a microphone to the second controller with the idea that it could be used to make players\u2019 voices sound through the TV speaker.\nJapanese release.\nThe console was released on July 15, 1983, as the for \u00a5 () with three ports of Nintendo's successful arcade games \"Donkey Kong\", \"Donkey Kong Jr.\", and \"Popeye\". The Famicom was slow to gather success; a bad chip set caused the early revisions to crash. Following a product recall and a reissue with a new motherboard, the Famicom's popularity soared, becoming the bestselling game console in Japan by the end of 1984 in what came to be called the \"Famicom Boom\".\nNintendo launched the system with only first-party games, but after being approached by Namco and Hudson Soft in 1984, agreed to produce third-party games for a 30% fee for console licensing and production costs. This rate continued in the industry for consoles and digital storefront into the 21st century.\nNorth American release.\nNintendo targeted the North American market, entering distribution negotiations with Atari, Inc. to release a redesigned Famicom with Atari's name as the Nintendo Advanced Video Gaming System. The deal was set to be finalized and signed at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in June 1983. However, Atari discovered at that show that its competitor Coleco was illegally demonstrating its Coleco Adam computer with Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\" game. This violation of Atari's exclusive license with Nintendo to publish the game for its own computer systems delayed the implementation of Nintendo's game console marketing contract with Atari. Atari's CEO Ray Kassar was fired the next month, so the deal went nowhere, and Nintendo decided to market its system on its own.\nSubsequent plans for the Nintendo Advanced Video System likewise never materialized. It was privately demonstrated as a repackaged Famicom console featuring a keyboard, cassette data recorder, wireless joystick controller, and a special BASIC cartridge. By the beginning of 1985, more than 2.5\u00a0million Famicom units had been sold in Japan, and Nintendo soon announced plans to release it in North America as the Advanced Video Entertainment System (AVS) that year. The American video game press was skeptical that the console could have any success in the region, as the industry was still recovering from the video game crash of 1983. The March 1985 issue of \"Electronic Games\" magazine stated that \"the videogame market in America has virtually disappeared\" and that \"this could be a miscalculation on Nintendo's part\".\nThe Famicom hardware first made its North American debut in the arcades, in the form of the Nintendo VS. System in 1984. The system's success in arcades paved the way for the official release of the NES console. With US retailers refusing to stock game consoles, Yamauchi realized there was still a market for video games in the arcades, so he introduced the Famicom to North America through the arcade industry. The VS. System became a major success in North American arcades, becoming the highest-grossing arcade machine of 1985 in the United States. By the time the NES launched, nearly 100,000 VS. Systems had been sold to American arcades. The success of the VS. System gave Nintendo the confidence to release the Famicom in North America as a video game console, for which there was growing interest due to Nintendo's positive reputation in the arcades. It also gave Nintendo the opportunity to test new games as VS. Paks in the arcades, to determine which games to release for the NES launch.\nAt the 1985 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of the Famicom: a stripped-down and cost-reduced redesign of the Advanced Video System (AVS), having abandoned the home computer approach. Nintendo purposefully designed the system to avoid resembling a video game console and avoided terms associated with game consoles. Marketing manager Gail Tilden chose the term \"Game Pak\" for cartridges, \"Control Deck\" for the console, and \"Entertainment System\" for the whole platform. Renamed the \"Nintendo Entertainment System\" (\"NES\"), the new and cost-reduced version lacked most of the upscale features added in the AVS but retained many of its audiophile-inspired design elements, such as the grey colour scheme and boxy form factor. Disappointed with the cosmetically raw prototype part they received from Japan, which they nicknamed \"the lunchbox\", Nintendo of America designers Lance Barr and Don James added the two-tone gray, the black stripe, and the red lettering. To obscure the video game connotation, the NES replaced the top-loading cartridge slot of the Famicom and AVS with a front-loading chamber for software cartridges that kept the inserted cartridge out of view, reminiscent of a video cassette recorder. The Famicom's pair of hard-wired controllers and the AVS's wireless controllers were replaced with two custom 7-pin sockets for detachable wired controllers.\nAt June 1985's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of its Famicom, with a new case redesigned by Lance Barr and featuring a \"zero insertion force\" cartridge slot. The change from a top-loader in the Famicom to a front-loader was to make the new console more like a video cassette recorder, which had grown in popularity by 1985, and differentiate the unit from past video game consoles. Additionally, Uemura explained that Nintendo developers had feared that the console's electronics might face electrostatic hazards in dry American states such as Arizona and Texas, and a front-loading design would be safer if children handled the console carelessly.\nThis was deployed as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Nintendo seeded these first systems to limited American test markets starting in New York City on October 18, 1985, and followed up in Los Angeles in February 1986; the American nationwide release came on September 27, 1986. Nintendo released 17 launch games: \"10-Yard Fight\", \"Baseball\", \"Clu Clu Land\", \"Duck Hunt\", \"Excitebike\", \"Golf\", \"Gyromite\", \"Hogan's Alley\", \"Ice Climber\", \"Kung Fu\", \"Pinball\", \"Soccer\", \"Stack-Up\", \"Super Mario Bros.\", \"Tennis\", \"Wild Gunman\", and \"Wrecking Crew\". Nintendo contracted Worlds of Wonder to distribute the console physically. WoW salesman Jim Whims distinctly recalled delivering an ultimatum: \"if you want to sell Teddy Ruxpin and you want to sell Lazer Tag, you're gonna sell Nintendo as well. And if you feel that strongly about it, then you ought to just resign the line now.\" This marketing tactic led to the NES' financial success in North America in its first year; Nintendo of America would later terminate the contract and hired the company's sales staff (whom Atari offered them in 1983), while taking on physical distribution of the console itself.\nThe system's launch represented not only a new product, but also a reframing of the severely damaged home video game market in North America. The 1983 video game crash had occurred in large part due to a lack of consumer and retailer confidence in video games, which had been partially due to confusion and misrepresentation in video game marketing. Prior to the NES, the packaging of many video games presented bombastic artwork which did not represent a game's actual graphics. Furthermore, a single game such as \"Pac-Man\" appeared across consoles with substantial variations in graphics, sound, and general quality. In contrast, Nintendo's marketing strategy aimed to regain consumer and retailer confidence by delivering a singular platform whose graphics could be represented truthfully and whose qualities were clearly defined.\nTo differentiate Nintendo's new home platform from the perception of a troubled and shallow video game market still reeling from the 1983 crash, the company freshened its product nomenclature and established a strict product approval and licensing policy. The overall platform is referred to as \"Entertainment System\" instead of a \"video game system\", is centered upon a machine called a \"Control Deck\" instead of a \"console\", and features software cartridges called \"Game Paks\" instead of \"video games\". This allowed Nintendo to gain more traction in selling the system in toy stores. To deter production of games which had not been licensed by Nintendo, and to prevent copying, the 10NES lockout chip system acts as a lock-and-key coupling of each Game Pak and Control Deck. The packaging of the launch lineup of NES games bear pictures of close representations of actual onscreen graphics. To reduce consumer confusion, symbols on the games' packaging clearly indicate the genre of the game. A seal of quality is on all licensed game and accessory packaging. The initial seal states, \"This seal is your assurance that Nintendo has approved and guaranteed the quality of this product\". This text was later changed to \"Official Nintendo Seal of Quality\".\nUnlike with the Famicom, Nintendo of America marketed the console primarily to children, instituting a strict policy of censoring profanity, sexual, religious, or political content. The most famous example is Lucasfilm Games's attempts to port the comedy-horror game \"Maniac Mansion\" to the NES, which Nintendo insisted be considerably watered down.\nThe optional Robotic Operating Buddy, or R.O.B., was part of a marketing plan to portray the NES's technology as being novel and sophisticated when compared to previous game consoles, and to portray its position as being within reach of the better established toy market. Though at first, the American public exhibited limited excitement for the console itself, peripherals such as the light gun and R.O.B. attracted extensive attention.\nOther markets.\nIn Europe and Oceania, the NES was released in two separate marketing regions. The first consisted of mainland Europe (excluding Italy) where distribution was handled by several different companies, with Nintendo responsible for manufacturing. The NES saw an early launch in Europe in 1986 although most of the European countries received the console in 1987. The release in Scandinavia was on September 1, 1986, where it was released by Bergsala. In the Netherlands, it was released in the last quarter of 1987 and was distributed by Bandai BV. In France, it was released in October 1987, and in Spain most likely in 1988 through distributor Spaco. Also in 1987, Mattel handled distribution for the second region, consisting of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Australia and New Zealand. In other European countries, distribution was taken over by smaller companies like Bienengr\u00e4ber in Germany, ASD in France, Concentra in Portugal, Itochu in Greece and Cyprus, Stadlbauer in Austria, Switzerland and the former Eastern Bloc. In Poland, the NES had its release on October 6, 1994 along with the SNES and the Game Boy. In November 1994, Nintendo signed an agreement with Steepler to permit the continued sale of the Dendy, an unauthorized hardware clone of the Famicom, in Russia in exchange for also distributing the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo anticipated the NES would have a 25 per cent share in these countries, and saw particular potential in the United Kingdom. It sold modestly in Europe, however.\nIn Brazil, the console was released late in 1993 by Playtronic, even after the SNES. But the Brazilian market had been dominated by unlicensed NES clones \u2013 both locally made, and smuggled from Taiwan. One of the most successful local clones was the Phantom System, manufactured by Gradiente, which licensed Nintendo products in the country for the following decade. The sales of officially licensed products were low, due to the cloning, the quite late official launch, and the high prices of Nintendo's licensed products.\nOutside of Japan, regions in greater Asia received an \"Asian version\" of the front-loader NES though imported Famicom systems were prevalent. Due to import restrictions, NES consoles in India and South Korea were rebranded and distributed by local licensees. The Indian version is called the \"Samurai Electronic TV Game System\" and the Korean version is called the \"Hyundai Comboy\". The console sold very poorly in India due to affordability and a lack of consumer awareness.\nBundles and redesigns.\nFor its complete North American release, the Nintendo Entertainment System was progressively released over the ensuing years in several different bundles, beginning with the Deluxe Set, the Basic Set, the Action Set, and the Power Set. The Deluxe Set was launched in the 1985 test markets, retailing at US$, including R.O.B., a light gun called the NES Zapper, two controllers, and the two Game Paks \"Gyromite\" and \"Duck Hunt\". The Control Deck bundle was first released in 1987 at $ with no game, and $ bundled with the \"Super Mario Bros.\" cartridge. The Action Set, released April 14, 1988, for $, has the Control Deck, two controllers, an NES Zapper, and a dual Game Pak containing both \"Super Mario Bros.\" and \"Duck Hunt\".\nThe Power Set of 1989 includes the console, two game controllers, an NES Zapper, a Power Pad, and a triple Game Pak containing \"Super Mario Bros\", \"Duck Hunt\", and \"World Class Track Meet\". In 1990, a Sports Set bundle was released, including the console, an NES Satellite infrared wireless multitap adapter, four game controllers, and a dual Game Pak containing \"Super Spike V'Ball\" and \"Nintendo World Cup\". Two more bundle packages were later released with the original model NES console. In 1992, the Challenge Set was released for $ with the console, two controllers, and a \"Super Mario Bros. 3\" Game Pak. The Basic Set retailed at US$; it included only the console and two controllers, and no pack-in game. Instead, it contained a book called the \"Official Nintendo Player's Guide\", which contained detailed information for every NES game made up to that point.\nFinally, the console was redesigned for the Australian, North American, and Japanese markets, including the New-Style NES, or NES-101, and one redesigned \"dogbone\" game controller. In Australia, this console revision was released with a cartridge compiling \"Super Mario Bros\", \"Tetris\", and \"Nintendo World Cup\". Released in October 1993 in North America and 1994 in Australia, this final bundle retailed for $ and A$ (A$ with the pack-in game) respectively, and was discontinued with the NES in 1995.\nDiscontinuation.\nOn August 14, 1995, Nintendo discontinued the Nintendo Entertainment System in both North America and Europe. In North America, replacements for the original front-loading NES were available for $ in exchange for a broken system until at least December 1996, under Nintendo's Power Swap program. The Game Boy and Super NES were covered for $ and $ respectively.\nOn May 30, 2003, Nintendo announced the discontinuation of the Famicom in September alongside the Super Famicom and the disk rewriting services for the Famicom Disk System. The last Famicom, serial number HN11033309, was manufactured on September 25; it was kept by Nintendo and subsequently loaned to the organizers of Level X, a video game exhibition held from December 4, 2003, to February 8, 2004, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, for a Famicom retrospective in commemoration of the console's 20th anniversary. Nintendo offered repair service for the Famicom in Japan until 2007, when it was discontinued due to a shortage of available parts.\nHardware.\nConfigurations.\nAlthough all versions of the Famicom and NES include essentially similar hardware, they vary in physical characteristics. The original Famicom's design is predominantly white plastic, with dark red trim; it featured a top-loading cartridge slot, grooves on both sides of the deck in which the hardwired game controllers could be placed when not in use, and a 15-pin expansion port located on the unit's front panel for accessories. In contrast, the design of the original NES features a more subdued gray, black, and red color scheme; it includes a front-loading cartridge slot covered by a small, hinged door that can be opened to insert or remove a cartridge and closed at other times, and an expansion port on the bottom of the unit. Compared to the Famicom, the NES includes the 10NES lockout chip and incorporates a matching chip validation check in its cartridge connector.\nIn late 1993, Nintendo introduced a redesigned version of the Famicom and NES (officially named the New Famicom in Japan and the New-Style NES in the US) to complement the Super Famicom and SNES, to prolong interest in the console, and to reduce costs. The redesigned NES features a top-loading cartridge slot and omits the 10NES lockout chip to avoid reliability issues with the original console; the redesign also omits AV output. Conversely, the redesigned Famicom features such output and introduces detachable game controllers, though the microphone functionality is omitted as a result. The redesigned Famicom and NES models are cosmetically similar aside from the presence of a cartridge \"bump\" on the NES model, which the Famicom model lacks to accommodate its shorter cartridges and the RAM Adapter for the Famicom Disk System.\nSharp Corporation produced three licensed variants of the Famicom in Japan, all of which prominently display the shortened moniker rather than the official name, Family Computer. One variant was a television set with an integrated Famicom; originally released in 1983 as the My Computer TV in and models, it was later released in the United States in 1989 as a 19-inch model named the Video Game Television. Another variant is the Twin Famicom console released in 1986 to combine a Famicom with a Famicom Disk System. Sharp then produced the Famicom Titler in 1989. Intended for video capture and production, it features internal RGB video generation and video output via S-Video, plus inputs for adding subtitles and voice-overs.\nHardware clones.\nA thriving market of unlicensed NES hardware clones emerged during the climax of the console's popularity. Initially, such clones were popular in markets with weak copyright law and where Nintendo issue it's systems after famiclones become well known across specific region, making legal products hard to market or create brand awareness. In particular, the Dendy (), an unlicensed hardware clone produced in Taiwan and sold in the former Soviet Union by Steepler, emerged as the most popular video game console of its time in that setting and it enjoyed a degree of fame roughly equivalent to that experienced by the NES/Famicom in North America and Japan, eventually selling 6 million units. Poland had a similar story with Pegasus distributed by Bobmark International which sold more than 1 million units. In China, a place where many of these clones were manufactured, the media reported 30 million units sold until late 1995. A range of Famicom clones was marketed in Latin America during the late 1980s and 1990s with the name Family Game, resembling the original hardware design. Thailand got Family FR brand famiclones, Brazil a superior to the original Phantom System, the Micro Genius (Simplified Chinese: \u5c0f\u5929\u624d) was marketed in Southeast Asia as an alternative to the Famicom; Ending-Man Terminator enjoyed popularity in European Eastern Bloc, parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America. It happened that these clones reached countries with very good copyright law and high awareness of the Nintendo brand such as Power Player Super Joy III in US.\nThe unlicensed clone market has flourished following Nintendo's discontinuation of the NES. Some of the more exotic of these resulting systems surpass the functionality of the original hardware, such as a portable system with a color LCD (PocketFami). Others have been produced for certain specialized markets, such as a rather primitive personal computer with a keyboard and basic word processing software. These unauthorized clones have been helped by the invention of the so-called NES-on-a-chip.\nAs was the case with unlicensed games, Nintendo has typically gone to the courts to prohibit the manufacture and sale of unlicensed cloned hardware. Many of the clone vendors have included built-in copies of licensed Nintendo software, which constitutes copyright infringement in most countries.\nDesign flaws.\nNintendo's design styling for US release was made deliberately different from that of other game consoles. Nintendo wanted to distinguish its product from those of competitors and to avoid the generally poor reputation that game consoles had acquired following the video game crash of 1983. One result of this philosophy is to disguise the cartridge slot design as a front-loading zero-insertion force (ZIF) cartridge socket, designed to resemble the front-loading mechanism of a VCR. The socket works well when both the connector and the cartridges are clean and the pins on the connector are new. However, the socket is not truly zero-insertion force. When a user inserts the cartridge into the NES, the force of pressing the cartridge into place bends the contact pins slightly and presses the cartridge's ROM board back into the cartridge. Frequent insertion and removal of cartridges wears out the pins, and the ZIF design proved more prone to interference by dirt and dust than an industry-standard card edge connector.\nThe design problems were exacerbated by Nintendo's choice of materials. The console slot nickel connector springs wear due to design and the game cartridge's brass plated nickel connectors are also prone to tarnishing and oxidation. Nintendo sought to fix these problems by redesigning the next generation Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) as a top loader similar to the Famicom. Many players try to alleviate issues in the game caused by this corrosion by blowing into the cartridges, then reinserting them, which actually speeds up the tarnishing due to moisture. One way to slow down the tarnishing process and extend the life of the cartridges is to use isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs.\nUsers have attempted to solve these problems by blowing air onto the cartridge connectors, inserting the cartridge just far enough to get the ZIF to lower, licking the edge connector, slapping the side of the system after inserting a cartridge, shifting the cartridge from side to side after insertion, pushing the ZIF up and down repeatedly, holding the ZIF down lower than it should have been, and cleaning the connectors with alcohol. Many frequently used methods to fix this problem actually risk damaging gaming cartridges or the system. In 1989, Nintendo released an official NES Cleaning Kit to help users clean malfunctioning cartridges and consoles.\nIn response to these hardware flaws, \"Nintendo Authorized Repair Centers\" sprang up across the U.S. According to Nintendo, the authorization program was designed to ensure that the machines were properly repaired. Nintendo would ship the necessary replacement parts only to shops that had enrolled in the authorization program.\nWith the release of the top-loading NES-101 (New-Style NES) in 1993 toward the end of the NES's lifespan, Nintendo resolved the problems by switching to a standard card edge connector and eliminating the lockout chip. All of the Famicom systems use standard card edge connectors, as do Nintendo's two subsequent game consoles, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Nintendo 64.\nLockout.\nThe Famicom as released in Japan contains no lockout hardware, which led to unlicensed cartridges (both legitimate and bootleg) becoming extremely common throughout Japan and East Asia. Nintendo tried to promote its \"Seal of Quality\" in these regions to identify licensed games to combat bootlegs, but bootleg Famicom games continued to be produced even after Nintendo moved production onto the Super Famicom, effectively extending the lifetime of the Famicom.\nThe original NES released for Western countries in 1985 contains the 10NES lockout chip, which prevents it from running cartridges unapproved by Nintendo. The inclusion of the 10NES was a direct influence from the 1983 video game crash in North America, partially caused by a market flooded with uncontrolled publishing of games of poor quality for the home consoles. Nintendo did not want to see that happen with the NES and used the lockout chip to restrict games to only those they licensed and approved for the system. This means of protection worked in combination with the Nintendo \"Seal of Quality\", which a developer had to acquire before they would be able to have access to the required 10NES information prior to publication of their game.\nInitially, the 10NES chip proved a significant barrier to unlicensed developers seeking to develop and sell games for the console. However, hobbyists in later years discovered that disassembling the NES and cutting the fourth pin of the lockout chip would change the chip's mode of operation from \"lock\" to \"key\", removing all effects and greatly improving the console's ability to play legal games, bootlegs, and converted imports.\nOriginal NES consoles sold in different regions have different lockout chips, thereby enforcing regional lockout (regardless of TV signal compatibility). Such regions include North America; most of continental Europe (PAL-B); Asia; and the British Isles, Italy, and Australasia (PAL-A).\nProblems with the 10NES lockout chip frequently result in one of the console's most common issues: the blinking red power light, in which the system appears to turn itself on and off repeatedly because the 10NES would reset the console once per second. The lockout chip required constant communication with the chip in the game to work. Dirty, aging, and bent connectors often disrupt the communication, resulting in the blink effect. In other cases, the console turns on but only displays a solid white, gray, or green screen.\nTechnical specifications.\nThe console's main central processing unit (CPU) was produced by Ricoh, which manufactured different versions between NTSC and PAL regions; NTSC consoles have a 2A03 clocked at 1.79\u00a0MHzTooltip megahertz, and PAL consoles have a 2A07 clocked at 1.66\u00a0MHz. Both CPUs are unlicensed variants of the MOS Technology 6502, an 8-bit microprocessor prevalent in contemporary home computers and consoles; Nintendo ostensibly disabled the 6502's binary-coded decimal mode on them to avoid patent infringement against or licensing fees towards MOS Technology, which was owned by then-rival Commodore International. The CPU has access to 2\u00a0KBTooltip kilobyte of onboard work RAMTooltip random-access memory.\nThe console's graphics are handled by a Ricoh 2C02, a processor known as the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) that is clocked at 5.37\u00a0MHz. A derivative of the Texas Instruments TMS9918\u2014a video display controller used in the ColecoVision\u2014the PPU features 2\u00a0KB of video RAM, 256\u00a0bytes of on-die \"object attribute memory\" (OAM) to store sprite display information on up to 64 sprites, and 28\u00a0bytes of RAM to store information on the YIQ-based color palette; the console can display up to 25 colors simultaneously out of 54 usable colors.\nThe console's standard display resolution is 256 \u00d7 240 pixels, though video output options vary between models. The original Famicom features only radio frequency (RF) modulator output, and the NES additionally supports composite video via RCA connectors. The redesigned Famicom omits the RF modulator entirely, only outputting composite video via a proprietary \"multi-out\" connector first introduced on the Super Famicom/SNES; conversely, the redesigned NES features RF modulator output only, though a version of the model including the \"multi-out\" connector was produced in rare quantities.\nThe console produces sound via an audio processing unit (APU) integrated into the processor. It supports a total of five sound channels: two pulse wave channels, one triangle wave channel, one white noise channel, and one DPCMTooltip differential pulse-code modulation channel for sample playback. Audio playback speed is dependent on the CPU clock rate, which is set by a crystal oscillator.\nAccessories.\nControllers.\nThe game controller for both the NES and the Famicom has an oblong brick-like design with a simple four button layout: two round buttons labeled \"A\" and \"B\", a \"START\" button, and a \"SELECT\" button. Additionally, the controllers use the cross-shaped D-pad, designed by Nintendo employee Gunpei Yokoi for Nintendo Game & Watch systems, to replace the bulkier joysticks on controllers of earlier gaming consoles.\nThe original model Famicom features two game controllers, both of which are hardwired to the back of the console. The second controller lacks the START and SELECT button, featuring a small microphone instead; however, few games use this feature. The earliest produced Famicom units have square A and B buttons; issues with them getting stuck when pressed down led Nintendo to change their shape to a circular design in subsequent units following the console's recall.\nInstead of the Famicom's hardwired controllers, the NES has two proprietary seven-pin ports on the front of the console to support detachable controllers and third-party peripherals. The controllers bundled with the NES are identical and include the START and SELECT buttons, lacking the microphone on the original Famicom's second controller. The cables for NES controllers are also generally three times longer than their Famicom counterparts.\nSeveral special controllers are intended for use with specific games, though are not commonly used. Such peripherals include the NES Zapper (a light gun), R.O.B. (a toy robot), and the Power Pad (a dance pad). The original Famicom has a deepened DA-15 expansion port on the front of the unit to accommodate them.\nTwo official advanced controllers were produced for the NES: the NES Advantage, an arcade controller produced by Asciiware and licensed by Nintendo of America; and the NES Max, a controller with grip handles and a \"cycloid\" sliding-disc D-pad in place of the traditional one. Both controllers have a \"Turbo\" feature, which simulates multiple rapid button presses, for the A and B buttons; the NES Max has manually pressed Turbo buttons, and the NES Advantage offers toggle buttons for Turbo functionality along with knobs that adjust the firing rate of each button. The latter also includes a \"Slow\" button that rapidly pauses games, though this function is not intended for games that invoke a pause menu or screen.\nThe standard game controller was redesigned upon the introduction of the redesigned console. Though the original button layout was retained, the shape of the redesigned controller\u2014nicknamed the \"dog bone\" controller\u2014resembles that of the Super Famicom and SNES. It retained NES-style detachable controller ports.\nThe original NES controller has become one of the most recognizable symbols of the console. Nintendo has mimicked the look of the controller in several other products, from promotional merchandise to limited edition versions of the Game Boy Advance.\nJapanese accessories.\nFew of the numerous peripheral devices and software packages for the Famicom were released outside Japan.\nThe Famicom 3D System, an active shutter 3D headset peripheral released in 1987, enabled the ability to play stereoscopic video games. It was a commercial failure and never released outside Japan; users described the headset as bulky and uncomfortable. Seven games are compatible with the glasses, with three of them developed by Square; two titles received worldwide releases as \"Rad Racer\" and \"The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner\".\n\"Family BASIC\" is an implementation of BASIC for the Famicom, packaged with a keyboard. Similar in concept to the Atari 2600 \"BASIC\" cartridge, it allows the user to write programs, especially games, which can be saved on an included cassette recorder. Nintendo of America rejected releasing \"Famicom BASIC\" in the US in favor of its primary marketing demographic of children.\nThe Famicom Modem connected a Famicom to a now defunct proprietary network in Japan which provided content such as financial services. A dial-up modem was never released for the NES after a partnership with Fidelity Investments.\nFamicom Disk System.\nBy 1986, the cost and size limitations of ROM chips used in the Famicom's ROM cartridges were apparent, with no new advancements present to address them. With this in mind, Nintendo looked at the personal computer (PC) market, where the floppy disk was gaining wide adoption as a computer data storage medium. Partnering with Mitsumi to develop a floppy disk add-on for the Famicom based on the latter's Quick Disk format, Nintendo officially released it as the Family Computer Disk System in Japan on February 21, 1986, at a retail price of \u00a515,000.\nThe advantages of the format (called \"Disk Card\") were apparent on launch. It has more than triple the data storage capacity of the then-largest cartridge (used for \"Super Mario Bros.\") and introduced game save capability and lower production costs compared to cartridges, which resulted in lower retail prices for consumers. The add-on also has a new wavetable synthesis sound channel and more data storage for the Famicom's audio sample channel. Taking advantage of the disk's re-writability, Nintendo set up Disk Writer interactive kiosks at retail stores throughout Japan; at each kiosk, consumers could buy new games to rewrite onto their old disks or onto new disks. Disk Fax kiosks allowed players to submit their high scores on special blue disks for contests and rankings, predating the online leaderboard by several years.\nAlthough Nintendo committed to exclusively releasing games on the Disk System after its release, numerous external issues plagued its long-term viability. Just four months after launch, Capcom released a Famicom port of \"Makaimura\" (known as \"Ghosts 'n Goblins\" in the U.S.) on a cartridge with more data storage capacity than what was possible on Disk Cards, nullifying one of the Disk System's major advantages by using discrete logic chips to perform bank switching. Nintendo also demanded half of the copyright ownership for each game it selected for release on the Disk System, resulting in developers electing to remain on cartridge instead as the latter gained functionality previously considered unique to the former. Developers disliked the lower profit margin of the Disk Writer kiosks, and retailers complained of their use of valuable space as demand for the format waned.\nUsage of a floppy disk-based medium brought about further complications; Disk Cards were more fragile than cartridges and were prone to data corruption from magnetic exposure. Their unreliability was exacerbated by their lack of a shutter, which Nintendo substituted with a wax sleeve and clear keep case to reduce costs; blue disks and later Disk Cards included shutters. The rubber belt-based disk drives were also unreliable, with cryptic error codes complicating troubleshooting; even when fully functional, players accustomed to cartridges were annoyed with the introduction of loading times and disk flipping. Furthermore, the rewritable nature of the format resulted in rampant software piracy, with Nintendo's attempts at anti-piracy measures quickly defeated.\nThough selling close to two million units for all of 1986, Nintendo only managed to increase the total to 4.4\u00a0million units by 1990, falling well short of internal projections. By then, the Disk System was rendered obsolete due to advancements in ROM cartridge production: memory mapping chips for expanded data storage capacity, battery-backed SRAMTooltip static random-access memory for game saving, and declining overall production costs. Nintendo alluded to a Western release for the Disk System, going so far as to successfully file a U.S. patent for it and having the Famicom's cartridge pins used by its RAM Adapter for enhanced audio rerouted to the NES's little-used bottom expansion port. However, such a release never materialized due to its reception in Japan. Most of its games were re-released with workarounds on cartridge for both the Famicom and NES, without the enhanced audio. Although the last game for the Disk System was released in December 1992, Nintendo continued repair and rewrite services for it until September 2003.\nNES Test Station.\nThe NES Test Station diagnostics machine was introduced in 1988. It is an NES-based unit designed for testing NES hardware, components, and games. It was only provided for use in World of Nintendo boutiques as part of the Nintendo World Class Service program. Visitors were to bring items to test with the station, and could be assisted by a store technician or employee.\nThe NES Test Station's front has a Game Pak slot and connectors for testing various components (AC adapter, RF switch, Audio/Video cable, NES Control Deck, accessories and games), with a centrally-located selector knob to choose which component to test. The unit itself weighs approximately 11.7 pounds without a TV. It connects to a television via a combined A/V and RF Switch cable. By actuating the green button, a user can toggle between an A/V Cable or RF Switch connection. The television it is connected to (typically 11\" to 14\") is meant to be placed atop it.\nIn 1991, Nintendo provided an add-on called the \"Super NES Counter Tester\" that tests Super NES components and games. The Super NES Counter Tester is a standard Control Deck on a metal fixture with the connection from the back of the unit re-routed to the front. These connections may be made directly to the test station or to the TV, depending on what is to be tested.\nGames.\nGame Pak.\nThe NES uses a 72-pin design, as compared with 60 pins on the Famicom. To reduce costs and inventory, some early games released in North America are simply Famicom cartridges attached to an adapter to fit inside the NES hardware. Early NES cartridges are held together with five small slotted screws. Games released after 1987 were redesigned slightly to incorporate two plastic clips molded into the plastic itself, removing the need for the top two screws.\nThe back of the cartridge bears a label with handling instructions. Production and software revision codes were imprinted as stamps on the back label to correspond with the software version and producer. All licensed NTSC and PAL cartridges are a standard shade of gray plastic, with the exception of \"The Legend of Zelda\" and ', which were manufactured in gold-plastic carts. Unlicensed carts were produced in black, robin egg blue, and gold, and are all slightly different shapes than standard NES cartridges. Nintendo also produced yellow-plastic carts for internal use at Nintendo Service Centers, although these \"test carts\" were never made available for purchase. All licensed US cartridges were made by Nintendo, Konami, and Acclaim. For promotion of ', Capcom sent 150 limited-edition gold NES cartridges with the original game, featuring the \"Remastered\" art as the sticker, to different gaming news agencies. The instruction label on the back includes the opening lyric from the show's theme song, \"Life is like a hurricane\".\nFamicom cartridges are shaped slightly differently. Unlike NES games, official Famicom cartridges were produced in many colors of plastic. Adapters, similar in design to the popular accessory Game Genie, are available that allow Famicom games to be played on an NES. In Japan, several companies manufactured the cartridges for the Famicom. This allowed these companies to develop customized chips designed for specific purposes, such as superior sound and graphics.\nThird-party licensing.\nNintendo's near monopoly on the home video game market left it with a dominant influence over the industry. Unlike Atari, which never actively pursued third-party developers (and even went to court in an attempt to force Activision to cease production of Atari 2600 games), Nintendo had anticipated and encouraged the involvement of third-party software developers, though strictly on Nintendo's terms. Some of the Nintendo platform-control measures were adopted in a less stringent way by later console manufacturers such as Sega, Sony, and Microsoft.\nTo this end, a 10NES authentication chip is in every console and in every licensed cartridge. If the console's chip can not detect a counterpart chip inside the cartridge, the game does not load. Nintendo portrayed these measures as intended to protect the public against poor-quality games, and placed a golden seal of approval on all licensed games released for the system.\nNintendo found success with Japanese arcade manufacturers such as Konami, Capcom, Taito, and Namco, which signed on as third-party developers. However, they found resistance with US game developers including Atari Games, Activision, Electronic Arts, and Epyx refusing Nintendo's one-sided terms. Acclaim Entertainment, a fledgling game publisher founded by former Activision employees, was the first major third-party licensee in the United States to sign on with Nintendo in late 1987. Atari Games (through Tengen) and Activision signed on soon after.\nNintendo was not as restrictive as Sega, which did not permit third-party publishing until Mediagenic in late summer 1988. Nintendo's intention was to reserve a large part of NES game revenue for itself. Nintendo required that it be the sole manufacturer of all cartridges, and that the publisher had to pay in full before the cartridges for that game be produced. Cartridges could not be returned to Nintendo, so publishers assumed all the risk. As a result, some publishers lost more money due to distress sales of remaining inventory at the end of the NES era than they ever earned in profits from sales of the games. Because Nintendo controlled the production of all cartridges, it was able to enforce strict rules on its third-party developers, who were required to sign a contract that would obligate them to develop exclusively for the system, order at least 10,000 cartridges, and only make five games per year. The global 1988 shortage of DRAM and ROM chips reportedly caused Nintendo to only permit an average of 25% of publishers' requests for cartridges, with some receiving much higher amounts and others almost none. GameSpy noted that Nintendo's \"iron-clad terms\" made the company many enemies during the 1980s. Some developers tried to circumvent the five game limit by creating additional company brands like Konami's Ultra Games label; others tried circumventing the 10NES chip.\nNintendo was accused of antitrust violations because of the strict licensing requirements. The United States Department of Justice and several states began probing Nintendo's business practices, leading to the involvement of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC conducted an extensive investigation which included interviewing hundreds of retailers. During the FTC probe, Nintendo changed the terms of its publisher licensing agreements to eliminate the two-year rule and other restrictive terms. Nintendo and the FTC settled the case in April 1991, with Nintendo required to send vouchers giving a $5 discount off to a new game, to every person that had purchased an NES game between June 1988 and December 1990. GameSpy remarked that Nintendo's punishment was particularly weak given the case's findings, although it has been speculated that the FTC did not want to damage the video game industry in the United States.\nWith the NES near the end of its life, many third-party publishers such as Electronic Arts supported upstart competing consoles with less strict licensing terms such as the Sega Genesis and then the PlayStation, which eroded and then took over Nintendo's dominance in the home console market, respectively. Consoles from Nintendo's rivals in the post-SNES era had always enjoyed much stronger third-party support than Nintendo, which relied more heavily on first-party games.\nUnlicensed games.\nCompanies that refused to pay the licensing fee or were rejected by Nintendo found ways to circumvent the console's authentication system. Most of these companies created circuits that use a voltage spike to temporarily disable the 10NES chip. A few unlicensed games released in Europe and Australia are in the form of a dongle to connect to a licensed game, to use the licensed game's 10NES chip for authentication. To combat unlicensed games, Nintendo of America threatened retailers who sold them with losing their supply of licensed games, and multiple revisions were made to the NES PCBs to prevent unlicensed games from working.\nAtari Games took a different approach with its line of NES products, Tengen. The company attempted to reverse engineer the lockout chip to develop its own \"Rabbit\" chip. Tengen also obtained a description of the lockout chip from the United States Patent and Trademark Office by falsely claiming that it was required to defend against present infringement claims. Nintendo successfully sued Tengen for copyright infringement. Tengen's antitrust claims against Nintendo were never decided.\nColor Dreams made Christian video games under the subsidiary name Wisdom Tree. Historian Steven Kent wrote, \"Wisdom Tree presented Nintendo with a prickly situation. The general public did not seem to pay close attention to the court battle with Atari Games, and industry analysts were impressed with Nintendo's legal acumen; but going after a tiny company that published innocuous religious games was another story.\"\nGame rentals.\nAs the Nintendo Entertainment System grew in popularity and entered millions of American homes, some small video rental shops began buying their own copies of NES games, and renting them out to customers for around the same price as a video cassette rental for a few days. Nintendo received no profit from the practice beyond the initial cost of their game, and unlike movie rentals, a newly released game could hit store shelves and be available for rent on the same day. Nintendo took steps to stop game rentals, but did not take any formal legal action until Blockbuster Video began to make game rentals a large-scale service. Nintendo claimed that allowing customers to rent games would significantly hurt sales and drive up the cost of games. Nintendo lost the lawsuit, but did win on a claim of copyright infringement. Blockbuster was banned from including photocopies of original, copyrighted instruction booklets with its rented games. In compliance with the ruling, Blockbuster produced original short instructions\u2014usually in the form of a small booklet, card, or label stuck on the back of the rental box\u2014that explained the game's basic premise and controls. Video rental shops continued the practice of renting video games.\nReception.\nBy 1988, industry observers stated that the NES's popularity had grown so quickly that the market for Nintendo cartridges was larger than that for all home computer software. \"Compute!\" reported in 1989 that Nintendo had sold seven million NES systems in 1988 alone, almost as many as the number of Commodore 64s sold in its first five years. \"Computer game makers [are] scared stiff\", the magazine said, stating that Nintendo's popularity caused most competitors to have poor sales during the previous Christmas and resulted in serious financial problems for some.\nIn June 1989, Nintendo of America's vice president of marketing Peter Main, said that the Famicom was present in 37% of Japan's households. By 1990, 30% of American households owned the NES, compared to 23% for all personal computers. By 1990, the NES had outsold all previously released consoles worldwide. The slogan for this brand was \"It can't be beaten\". The Nintendo Entertainment System was not available in the Soviet Union.\nIn the early 1990s, gamers predicted that competition from technologically superior systems such as the 16-bit Sega Genesis would mean the immediate end of the NES's dominance. Instead, during the first year of Nintendo's successor console the Super Famicom (named Super Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan), the Famicom remained the second highest-selling video game console in Japan, outselling the newer and more powerful NEC PC Engine and Sega Mega Drive by a wide margin. The console remained popular in Japan and North America until late 1993, when the demand for new NES software abruptly plummeted. The final licensed Famicom game released in Japan is \"Takahashi Meijin no B\u014dken Jima IV (Adventure Island IV)\", in North America is \"Wario's Woods\", and in Europe is \"The Lion King\" in 1995. In the wake of ever decreasing sales and the lack of new games, Nintendo of America officially discontinued the NES by 1995. Nintendo produced new Famicom units in Japan until September 25, 2003, and continued to repair Famicom consoles until October 31, 2007, attributing the discontinuation of support to insufficient supplies of parts.\nThe NES was initially not as successful in Europe during the late 1980s, when it was outsold by the Master System in the United Kingdom. By 1990, the Master System was the highest-selling console in Europe, though the NES was beginning to have a fast-growing user base in the United Kingdom. During the early 1990s, NES sales caught up with and narrowly overtook the Master System overall in Western Europe, though the Master System maintained its lead in several markets such as the United Kingdom, Belgium and Spain.\nLegacy.\nThe NES was released two years after the video game crash of 1983, when many retailers and adult consumers regarded electronic games as a passing fad, so many believed at first that the NES would soon fade. Before the NES and Famicom, Nintendo was known as a moderately successful Japanese toy and playing card manufacturer, but the consoles' popularity helped the company grow into an internationally recognized name almost synonymous with video games as Atari had been, and set the stage for Japanese dominance of the video game industry. With the NES, Nintendo also changed the relationship between console manufacturers and third-party software developers by restricting developers from publishing and distributing software without licensed approval. This led to higher-quality games, which helped change the attitude of a public that had grown weary from poorly produced games for earlier systems.\nThe NES hardware design is also very influential. Nintendo chose the name \"Nintendo Entertainment System\" for the US market and redesigned the system so it would not give the appearance of a child's toy. The front-loading cartridge input allowed it to be used more easily in a TV stand with other entertainment devices, such as a videocassette recorder.\nThe system's hardware limitations led to design principles that still influence the development of modern video games. Many prominent game franchises originated on the NES, including Nintendo's own \"Super Mario Bros.\",| \"The Legend of Zelda\" and \"Metroid\", Capcom's \"Mega Man\" franchise, Konami's \"Castlevania\" franchise, Square's \"Final Fantasy\",| and Enix's \"Dragon Quest\"| franchises.\nNES imagery, especially its controller, has become a popular motif for a variety of products, including Nintendo's Game Boy Advance.\nAt the Tokyo Game Show in 2023, the \"Famicom\" was bestowed \"The Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Award\" in honour of the console's influence and laying down the foundations for the games industry.\nThe NES library includes some influential games. \"Super Mario Bros.\" is the forerunner of side-scrolling games, while \"The Legend of Zelda\" had mostly influenced action-adventure games and helped popularizing the save data in video games. Other two influential games are \"Metroid\" and \"Castlevania II\", which had established the metroidvania genre.\nIn 2011, \"IGN\" named the NES the greatest video game console of all time.\nEmulation.\nThe NES can be emulated on many other systems. The first emulator was the Japanese-only Pasofami. It was soon followed by iNES, which is available in English and is cross-platform, in 1996. It was described as being the first NES emulation software that could be used by a non-expert. The first version of NESticle, an unofficial MS-DOS-based emulator, was released on April 3, 1997. Nintendo offers licensed emulation of some NES games via its Virtual Console service for the Wii, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U, and via its Nintendo Switch Online service.\nRe-release.\nOn July 14, 2016, Nintendo announced the November 2016 launch of a miniature replica of the NES, named the Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition in the United States and Nintendo Classic Mini: Nintendo Entertainment System in Europe and Australia. The emulation-based console includes 30 permanently bundled games from the vintage NES library, including the \"Super Mario Bros.\" series and \"The Legend of Zelda\" series. The system has HDMI display output and a new replica controller, which can also connect to the Wii Remote for use with Virtual Console games. It was discontinued in North America on April 13, 2017, and worldwide on April 15, 2017. However, Nintendo announced in September 2017 that the NES Classic Mini would return to production on June 29, 2018, only to be discontinued again permanently by December of that year.\nNotes.\nTransliterations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["2176065", "18944028", "28314"], "permutation_1": ["18944028", "28314", "2176065"], "permutation_2": ["2176065", "18944028", "28314"], "permutation_3": ["28314", "18944028", "2176065"]}
{"id": "3hop1__29341_30907_24622", "docs_added": {"5122699": "John Kerry\nAmerican politician and diplomat (born 1943)\nJohn Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician, and diplomat who served as the 68th United States secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 in the administration of Barack Obama. A member of the Forbes family and of the Democratic Party, he previously represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1985 to 2013 and later served as the first U.S. special presidential envoy for climate from 2021 to 2024. Kerry was the Democratic nominee for president of the United States in the 2004 election, narrowly losing to then-incumbent president George W. Bush.\nKerry grew up in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. In 1966, after graduating from Yale University, he enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve, ultimately attaining the rank of lieutenant. During the Vietnam War, Kerry served a brief tour in South Vietnam. While commanding a Swift boat, he sustained three wounds in combat with the Viet Cong, for which he earned three Purple Heart medals. Kerry was also awarded the Silver Star Medal and the Bronze Star Medal for conduct in separate military engagements. After completing his active military service, Kerry returned to the United States and became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. He gained national recognition as an anti-war activist, serving as a spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization. Kerry testified in the Fulbright Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where he described the United States government's policy in Vietnam as the cause of war crimes.\nIn 1972, Kerry entered electoral politics as a Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives in Massachusetts's 5th congressional district, losing to Republican Paul W. Cronin in the general election. He subsequently worked as a radio talk show host and as the executive director of an advocacy organization while attending law school. After a period in private legal practice, he was elected the 66th lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1982. In 1984, Kerry was elected to the United States Senate. In 2004, Kerry won the Democratic presidential nomination alongside Senator John Edwards. He lost the Electoral College and the popular vote by slim margins, winning 251 electors to Bush's 286 and 48.3% of the popular vote to Bush's 50.7%.\nIn January 2013, Kerry was nominated by President Obama to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and was subsequently confirmed by his Senate colleagues. He was U.S. secretary of state throughout the second term of the Obama administration from 2013 to 2017. During his tenure, he initiated the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks and negotiated agreements restricting the nuclear program of Iran, including the 2013 Joint Plan of Action and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In 2015, Kerry signed the Paris Agreement on climate change on behalf of the United States.\nIn January 2021, Kerry returned to government, becoming the first person to hold the position of U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, under President Joe Biden. On March 6, Kerry left this position to work on Biden's 2024 presidential campaign. Kerry was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Biden in May 2024.\nEarly life and education (1943\u20131966).\nJohn Forbes Kerry was born on December 11, 1943, at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado. He is the second of four children born to Richard John Kerry, a U.S. diplomat and lawyer, and Rosemary Forbes, a nurse and social activist. His father was raised Catholic (John's paternal grandparents were Austro-Hungarian Jewish immigrants who converted to Catholicism) and his mother was Episcopalian. He was raised with an elder sister Margaret, a younger sister Diana, and a younger brother Cameron. The children were raised in their father's Catholic faith, and John served as an altar boy.\nKerry was originally considered a military brat, until his father was discharged from the Army Air Corps in 1944. Kerry lived in Groton, Massachusetts his first year and Millis, Massachusetts afterwards before moving to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. at age seven, when his father took a position in the Department of the Navy's Office of General Counsel and soon became a diplomat in the State Department's Bureau of United Nations Affairs.\nAs members of the Forbes and Dudley\u2013Winthrop families, his maternal extended family enjoyed great wealth. Kerry's parents themselves were considered upper-middle class. They turned to his wealthy great-aunt, Clara Winthrop, who paid for his attendance at elite boarding schools, such as Institut Montana Zugerberg, in Zug, Switzerland. Through his maternal ancestry, Kerry also descends from Rev. James McGregor who was among the first 500 Scots-Irish immigrants to Boston Harbor in the 18th century.\nAt the age of ten, Kerry's father took a position as the U.S. Attorney for Berlin. When Kerry was twelve, he crossed into the Soviet Occupation Zone to visit Hitler's bunker and ride through the Brandenburg Gate. \nIn 1957, his father was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway, and Kerry was sent back to the United States to attend boarding school. He first attended the Fessenden School in Newton, Massachusetts, and later St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, where he learned skills in public speaking and began developing an interest in politics. Kerry founded the John Winant Society at St. Paul's to debate the issues of the day; the Society still exists there. In 1960, while at St. Paul's, he played bass in a minor rock band called The Electras with six of his classmates. The band had about five hundred copies of one album printed in 1961, which they sold some of at dances at the school; it was made available on streaming platforms many years later.\nIn 1962, Kerry attended Yale University, majoring in political science and residing in Jonathan Edwards College. By that year, his parents returned to Groton. While at Yale, Kerry briefly dated Janet Auchincloss, the younger half-sister of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Through Auchincloss, Kerry was invited to a day of sailing with then-President John F. Kennedy and his family.\nKerry played on the varsity Yale Bulldogs men's soccer team, earning his only letter in his senior year. He also played freshman and junior varsity hockey and, in his senior year, junior varsity lacrosse. In addition, he was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity and took flying lessons.\nIn his sophomore year, Kerry became the chairman of the Liberal Party of the Yale Political Union, and a year later he served as president of the union. Amongst his influential teachers in this period was Professor H. Bradford Westerfield, who was himself a former president of the Political Union. His involvement with the Political Union gave him an opportunity to be involved with important issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and the New Frontier program. He also became a member of Skull and Bones Society, and traveled to Switzerland through AIESEC Yale.\nUnder the guidance of the speaking coach and history professor Rollin G. Osterweis, Kerry won many debates against other college students from across the nation. In March 1965, as the Vietnam War escalated, he won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that was critical of U.S. foreign policy. In the speech he said, \"It is the spectre of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism and thus, it is self-defeating.\"\nKerry graduated from Yale with a bachelor of arts degree in 1966. Overall, he had below-average grades, graduating with a cumulative average of 76 over his four years. His freshman-year average was a 71, but he improved to an 81 average for his senior year. He never received an \"A\" during his time at Yale; his highest grade was an 89.\nMilitary service (1966\u20131970).\nDuty on USS \"Gridley\".\nOn February 18, 1966, Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserve. He began his active duty military service on August 19, 1966. After completing 16 weeks of Officer Candidate School at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island, Kerry received his officer's commission on December 16, 1966. During the 2004 election, Kerry posted his military records at his website, and permitted reporters to inspect his medical records. In 2005, Kerry released his military and medical records to the representatives of three news organizations, but has not authorized full public access to those records.\nDuring his tour on the guided missile frigate , Kerry requested duty in South Vietnam, listing as his first preference a position as the commander of a Fast Patrol Craft (PCF), also known as a \"Swift boat\". These boats have aluminum hulls and have little or no armor, but are heavily armed and rely on speed. \"I didn't really want to get involved in the war,\" Kerry said in a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. \"When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing.\" However, his second choice of billet was on a river patrol boat, or \"PBR\", which at the time was serving a more dangerous duty on the rivers of Vietnam.\nMilitary honors.\nDuring the night of December 2 and early morning of December 3, 1968, Kerry was in charge of a small boat operating near a peninsula north of Cam Ranh Bay together with a Swift boat (PCF-60). According to Kerry and the two crewmen who accompanied him that night, Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis, they surprised a group of Vietnamese men unloading sampans at a river crossing, who began running and failed to obey an order to stop. As the men fled, Kerry and his crew opened fire on the sampans and destroyed them, then rapidly left. During this encounter, Kerry received a shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow. It was for this injury that Kerry received his first Purple Heart Medal.\nKerry received his second Purple Heart for a wound received in action on the B\u1ed3 \u0110\u1ec1 River on February 20, 1969. The plan had been for the Swift boats to be accompanied by support helicopters. On the way up the Bo De, however, the helicopters were attacked. As the Swift boats reached the C\u1eeda L\u1edbn River, Kerry's boat was hit by a B-40 rocket (rocket propelled grenade round), and a piece of shrapnel hit Kerry's left leg, wounding him. Thereafter, enemy fire ceased and his boat reached the Gulf of Thailand safely. Kerry continues to have shrapnel embedded in his left thigh because the doctors that first treated him decided to remove the damaged tissue and close the wound with sutures rather than make a wide opening to remove the shrapnel. Although wounded like several others earlier that day, Kerry did not lose any time off from duty.\nSilver Star.\nEight days later, on February 28, 1969, came the events for which Kerry was awarded his Silver Star Medal. On this occasion, Kerry was in tactical command of his Swift boat and two other Swift boats during a combat operation. Their mission on the Duong Keo River included bringing an underwater demolition team and dozens of South Vietnamese Marines to destroy enemy sampans, structures and bunkers as described in the story \"The Death Of PCF 43\". Running into heavy small arms fire from the river banks, Kerry \"directed the units to turn to the beach and charge the Viet Cong positions\" and he \"expertly directed\" his boat's fire causing the enemy to flee while at the same time coordinating the insertion of the ninety South Vietnamese troops (according to the original medal citation signed by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt). Moving a short distance upstream, Kerry's boat was the target of a B-40 rocket round; Kerry charged the enemy positions and as his boat hove to and beached, a Viet Cong (\"VC\") insurgent armed with a rocket launcher emerged from a spider hole and ran. While the boat's gunner opened fire, wounding the VC in the leg, and while the other boats approached and offered cover fire, Kerry jumped from the boat to pursue the VC insurgent, subsequently killing him and capturing his loaded rocket launcher.\nKerry's commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander George Elliott, stated to Douglas Brinkley in 2003 that he did not know whether to court-martial Kerry for beaching the boat without orders or give him a medal for saving the crew. Elliott recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, and Zumwalt flew into An Thoi to personally award medals to Kerry and the rest of the sailors involved in the mission. The Navy's account of Kerry's actions is presented in the original signed by Zumwalt. The engagement was documented in an after-action report, a press release written on March 1, 1969, and a historical summary dated March 17, 1969.\nBronze Star.\nOn March 13, 1969, on the B\u00e1i H\u00e1p River, Kerry was in charge of one of five Swift boats that were returning to their base after performing an Operation Sealords mission to transport South Vietnamese troops from the garrison at C\u00e1i N\u01b0\u1edbc and MIKE Force advisors for a raid on a Vietcong camp located on the Rach Dong Cung canal. Earlier in the day, Kerry received a slight shrapnel wound in the buttocks from blowing up a rice bunker. Debarking some but not all of the passengers at a small village, the boats approached a fishing weir; one group of boats went around to the left of the weir, hugging the shore, and a group with Kerry's PCF-94 boat went around to the right, along the shoreline. A mine was detonated directly beneath the lead boat, PCF-3, as it crossed the weir to the left, lifting PCF-3 \"about 2\u20133 ft out of water\".\nJames Rassmann, a Green Beret advisor who was aboard Kerry's PCF-94, was knocked overboard when, according to witnesses and the documentation of the event, a mine or rocket exploded close to the boat. According to the documentation for the event, Kerry's arm was injured when he was thrown against a bulkhead during the explosion. PCF 94 returned to the scene and Kerry rescued Rassmann who was receiving sniper fire from the water. Kerry received the Bronze Star Medal with Combat \"V\" for \"heroic achievement\", for his actions during this incident; he also received his third Purple Heart.\nReturn from Vietnam.\nAfter Kerry's third qualifying wound, he was entitled per Navy regulations to reassignment away from combat duties. Kerry's preferred choice for reassignment was as a military aide in Boston, New York City or Washington, D.C. On April 11, 1969, he reported to the Brooklyn-based Atlantic Military Sea Transportation Service, where he would remain on active duty for the following year as a personal aide to an officer, Rear Admiral Walter Schlech. On January 1, 1970, Kerry was temporarily promoted to full lieutenant. Kerry had agreed to an extension of his active duty obligation from December 1969 to August 1970 in order to perform Swift Boat duty. John Kerry was on active duty in the United States Navy from August 1966 until January 1970. He continued to serve in the Naval Reserve until February 1978.\n\"Swiftboating\" controversy.\nWith the continuing controversy that had surrounded the military service of George W. Bush since the 2000 presidential election (when he was accused of having used his father's political influence to gain entrance to the Texas Air National Guard, thereby protecting himself from conscription into the United States Army, and possible service in the Vietnam War), John Kerry's contrasting status as a decorated Vietnam War veteran posed a problem for Bush's re-election campaign, which Republicans sought to counter by calling Kerry's war record into question. As the presidential campaign of 2004 developed, approximately 250 members of a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT, later renamed Swift Vets and POWs for Truth) opposed Kerry's campaign. The group held press conferences, ran ads and endorsed a book questioning Kerry's service record and his military awards. The group included several members of Kerry's unit, such as Larry Thurlow, who commanded a swift boat alongside of Kerry's, and Stephen Gardner, who served on Kerry's boat. The campaign inspired the widely used political pejorative '\"swiftboating,\" to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. Most of Kerry's former crewmates have stated that SBVT's allegations are false.\nAnti-war activism (1970\u20131971).\nAfter returning to the United States, Kerry moved to Waltham, Massachusetts and joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Then numbering about 20,000, VVAW was considered by some (including the administration of President Richard Nixon) to be an effective, if controversial, component of the antiwar movement. Kerry participated in the \"Winter Soldier Investigation\" conducted by VVAW of U.S. atrocities in Vietnam, and he appears in a film by that name that documents the investigation. According to Nixon Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, \"I didn't approve of what he did, but I understood the protesters quite well\", and he declined two requests from the Navy to court martial Reserve Lieutenant Kerry over his antiwar activity.\nOn April 22, 1971, Kerry appeared before a U.S. Senate committee hearing on proposals relating to ending the war. The day after this testimony, Kerry participated in a demonstration with thousands of other veterans in which he and other Vietnam War veterans threw their medals and service ribbons over a fence erected at the front steps of the United States Capitol building to dramatize their opposition to the war. Jack Smith, a Marine, read a statement explaining why the veterans were returning their military awards to the government. For more than two hours, almost 1,000 angry veterans tossed their medals, ribbons, hats, jackets, and military papers over the fence. Each veteran gave his or her name, hometown, branch of service and a statement. Kerry threw some of his own decorations and awards as well as some given to him by other veterans to throw. As Kerry threw his decorations over the fence, his statement was: \"I'm not doing this for any violent reasons, but for peace and justice, and to try and make this country wake up once and for all.\"\nKerry was arrested on May 30, 1971, during a VVAW march to honor American POWs held captive by North Vietnam. The march was planned as a multi-day event from Concord to Boston, and while in Lexington, participants tried to camp on the village green. At 2:30a.m., local and state police arrested 441 demonstrators, including Kerry, for trespassing. All were given the Miranda Warning and were hauled away on school buses to spend the night at the Lexington Public Works Garage. Kerry and the other protesters later paid a $5 fine, and were released. The mass arrests caused a community backlash and ended up giving positive coverage to the VVAW.\nEarly political career (1972\u20131985).\n1972 congressional election.\nIn 1970, Kerry had considered running for Congress in the Democratic primary against hawkish Democrat Philip J. Philbin of Massachusetts's 3rd congressional district, but deferred in favor of Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest and anti-war activist, who went on to defeat Philbin. In February 1972, Kerry's wife bought a house in Worcester, with Kerry intending to run against the 4th district's aging thirteen-term incumbent Democrat, Harold Donohue. The couple never moved in. After Republican Congressman F. Bradford Morse of the neighboring 5th district announced his retirement and then resignation to become Under-Secretary-General for Political and General Assembly Affairs at the United Nations, the couple instead rented an apartment in Lowell, so that Kerry could run to succeed him.\nIncluding Kerry, the Democratic primary race had 10 candidates, including attorney Paul J. Sheehy, State Representative Anthony R. DiFruscia, John J. Desmond and Robert B. Kennedy. Kerry ran a \"very expensive, sophisticated campaign\", financed by out-of-state backers and supported by many young volunteers. DiFruscia's campaign headquarters shared the same building as Kerry's. On the eve of the September 19 primary, police found Kerry's younger brother Cameron and campaign field director Thomas J. Vallely, breaking into where the building's telephone lines were located. They were arrested and charged with \"breaking and entering with the intent to commit grand larceny\", but the charges were dropped a year later. DiFruscia alleged that the two were trying to disrupt his get-out-the vote efforts. Vallely and Cameron Kerry maintained that they were only checking their own telephone lines because they had received an anonymous call warning that the Kerry lines would be cut.\nDespite the arrests, Kerry won the primary with 20,771 votes (27.56%). Sheehy came second with 15,641 votes (20.75%), followed by DiFruscia with 12,222 votes (16.22%), Desmond with 10,213 votes (13.55%) and Kennedy with 5,632 votes (7.47%). The remaining 10,891 votes were split amongst the other five candidates, with 1970 nominee Richard Williams coming last with just 1,706 votes (2.26%).\nIn the general election, Kerry was initially favored to defeat the Republican candidate, former State Representative Paul W. Cronin, and conservative Democrat Roger P. Durkin, who ran as an Independent. A week after the primary, one poll put Kerry 26-points ahead of Cronin. His campaign called for a national health insurance system, discounted prescription drugs for the unemployed, a jobs program to clean up the Merrimack River and rent controls in Lowell and Lawrence. A major obstacle, however, was the district's leading newspaper, the conservative \"The Sun\". The paper editorialized against him. It also ran critical news stories about his out-of-state contributions and his \"carpetbagging\", because he had only moved into the district in April. Subsequently, released \"Watergate\" Oval Office tape recordings of the Nixon White House showed that defeating Kerry's candidacy had attracted the personal attention of President Nixon. Kerry himself asserts that Nixon sent operatives to Lowell to help derail his campaign.\nThe race was the most expensive for Congress in the country that year and four days before the general election, Durkin withdrew and endorsed Cronin, hoping to see Kerry defeated. The week before, a poll had put Kerry 10 points ahead of Cronin, with Durkin at 13%. In the final days of the campaign, Kerry sensed that it was \"slipping away\" and Cronin emerged victorious by 110,970 votes (53.45%) to Kerry's 92,847 (44.72%). After his defeat, Kerry lamented in a letter to supporters that \"for two solid weeks, [\"The Sun\"] called me un-American, New Left antiwar agitator, unpatriotic, and labeled me every other 'un-' and 'anti-' that they could find. It's hard to believe that one newspaper could be so powerful, but they were.\" He later felt that his failure to respond directly to \"The Sun\"'s attacks cost him the race.\nLaw career.\nAfter Kerry's 1972 defeat, he and his wife bought a house in the Belvidere section of Lowell, Massachusetts, entering a decade which his brother Cameron later called \"the years in exile\". He spent some time working as a fundraiser for the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE), an international humanitarian organization. In September 1973, he entered Boston College Law School. While studying, Kerry worked as a talk radio host on WBZ and, in July 1974, was named executive director of Mass Action, a Massachusetts advocacy association.\nKerry received his juris doctor (J.D.) from Boston College in 1976. While in law school he had been a student prosecutor in the office of the District Attorney of Middlesex County, John J. Droney. After passing the bar exam and being admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1976, he went to work in that office as a full-time prosecutor and moved to Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.\nIn January 1977, Droney promoted him to First Assistant District Attorney, essentially making Kerry his campaign and media surrogate because Droney was afflicted with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease). As First Assistant, Kerry tried cases, which included winning convictions in a high-profile rape case and a murder. He also played a role in administering the office, including initiating the creation of special white-collar and organized crime units, creating programs to address the problems of rape and other crime victims and witnesses, and managing trial calendars to reflect case priorities. In 1978, Kerry launched a criminal investigation against Senator Edward Brooke, regarding \"misstatements\" in his first divorce trial. The inquiry ended with no charges being brought after investigators and prosecutors determined that Brooke's misstatements were pertinent to the case, but were not material enough to have affected the outcome.\nDroney's health was poor and Kerry had decided to run for his position in the 1978 election should Droney drop out. However, Droney was re-elected and his health improved; he went on to re-assume many of the duties that he had delegated to Kerry. Kerry thus decided to leave, departing in 1979 with assistant DA Roanne Sragow to set up their own law firm. Kerry also worked as a commentator for WCVB-TV and co-founded a bakery, Kilvert & Forbes Ltd., with businessman and former Kennedy aide K. Dun Gifford.\nLieutenant Governor of Massachusetts.\nIn the 1982 Massachusetts gubernatorial election, Lieutenant Governor Thomas P. O'Neill III declined to seek a third term, instead deciding to run for governor of Massachusetts. Kerry declared his candidacy, entering the primary election alongside Massachusetts Secretary of Environmental Affairs Evelyn Murphy, State Senator Samuel Rotondi, State Representative Lou Nickinello, and Lois Pines.\nKerry won the nomination with 325,890 votes (29%) to Murphy's 286,378 (25.48%), Rotondi's 228,086 (20.29%), Nickinello's 150,829 (13.42%) and Pines' 132,734 (11.81%). In the concurrent gubernatorial primary, former Governor Michael Dukakis defeated O'Neill and incumbent Governor Edward J. King. The Dukakis and Kerry ticket defeated the Republican ticket of John W. Sears and Leon Lombardi in the general election by 1,219,109 votes (61.92%) to 749,679 (38.08%).\nAs Lieutenant Governor, Kerry led meetings of the Massachusetts Governor's Council. Dukakis also delegated other tasks to Kerry, including serving as the state's liaison to the Federal government of the United States. He was also active on environmental issues, including combating acid rain.\n1984 U.S. Senate election.\nThe junior U.S. senator from Massachusetts, Paul Tsongas, announced in 1984 that he would be stepping down for health reasons. Kerry ran, and as in his 1982 race for Lieutenant Governor, he did not receive the endorsement of the party regulars at the state Democratic convention. Congressman James Shannon, a favorite of House Speaker Tip O'Neill, was the early favorite to win the nomination, and he \"won broad establishment support and led in early polling\". Again as in 1982, however, Kerry prevailed in a close primary.\nIn his general election campaign, Kerry promised to mix liberalism with tight budget controls. He defeated Republican Ray Shamie despite a nationwide landslide for the re-election of Republican President Ronald Reagan, for whom Massachusetts voted by a narrow margin. In his victory speech, Kerry asserted that his win meant that the people of Massachusetts \"emphatically reject the politics of selfishness and the notion that women must be treated as second-class citizens\".\nTsongas resigned on January 2, 1985, one day before the end of his term. Dukakis appointed Kerry to fill the vacancy, giving him seniority over other new senators who were sworn in on January 3, the scheduled start of their new terms.\nU.S. Senate (1985\u20132013).\nIran\u2013Contra hearings.\nOn April 18, 1985, a few months after taking his Senate seat, Kerry and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa traveled to Nicaragua and met the country's president, Daniel Ortega. Although Ortega had won internationally certified elections, the trip was criticized because Ortega and his leftist Sandinista government had strong ties to Cuba and the USSR and were accused of human rights abuses. The Sandinista government was opposed by the right-wing CIA-backed rebels known as the Contras. While in Nicaragua, Kerry and Harkin talked to people on both sides of the conflict. Through the senators, Ortega offered a cease-fire agreement in exchange for the U.S. dropping support of the Contras. The offer was denounced by the Reagan administration as a \"propaganda initiative\" designed to influence a House vote on a $14million Contra aid package, but Kerry said \"I am willing... to take the risk in the effort to put to test the good faith of the Sandinistas.\" The House voted down the Contra aid, but Ortega flew to Moscow to accept a $200million loan the next day, which in part prompted the House to pass a larger $27million aid package six weeks later.\nMeanwhile, Kerry's staff began their own investigations and, on October 14, issued a report that exposed illegal activities on the part of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who had set up a private network involving the National Security Council and the CIA to deliver military equipment to right-wing Nicaraguan rebels (Contras). In effect, North and certain members of the President's administration were accused by Kerry's report of illegally funding and supplying armed militants without the authorization of Congress. Kerry's staff investigation, based on a year-long inquiry and interviews with fifty unnamed sources, is said to raise \"serious questions about whether the United States has abided by the law in its handling of the contras over the past three years\".\nThe Kerry Committee report found that \"the Contra drug links included... payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies.\" The U.S. State Department paid over $806,000 to known drug traffickers to carry humanitarian assistance to the Contras. Kerry's findings provoked little reaction in the media and official Washington.\nThe Kerry report was a precursor to the Iran\u2013Contra affair. On May 4, 1989, North was convicted of charges relating to the Iran/Contra controversy, including three felonies. On September 16, 1991, however, North's convictions were overturned on appeal.\nGeorge H. W. Bush administration.\nOn November 15, 1988, at a businessmen's breakfast in East Lynn, Massachusetts, Kerry made a joke about then-President-elect George H. W. Bush and his running mate, saying \"if Bush is shot, the Secret Service has orders to shoot Dan Quayle.\" He apologized the following day.\nDuring their investigation of General Manuel Noriega, the \"de facto\" ruler of Panama, Kerry's staff found reason to believe that the Pakistan-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) had facilitated Noriega's drug trafficking and money laundering. This led to a separate inquiry into BCCI, and as a result, banking regulators shut down BCCI in 1991. In December 1992, Kerry and Senator Hank Brown, a Republican from Colorado, released \"The BCCI Affair\", a report on the BCCI scandal. The report showed that the bank was crooked and was working with terrorists, including Abu Nidal. It blasted the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, the Customs Service, the Federal Reserve Bank, as well as influential lobbyists and the CIA.\nKerry was criticized by some Democrats for having pursued his own party members, including former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, although Republicans said he should have pressed against some Democrats even harder. The BCCI scandal was later turned over to the Manhattan District Attorney's office.\nPrecursors to presidential bid.\nIn 1996, Kerry faced a difficult re-election fight against Governor William Weld, a popular Republican incumbent who had been re-elected in 1994 with 71% of the vote. The race was covered nationwide as one of the most closely watched Senate races that year. Kerry and Weld held several debates and negotiated a campaign spending cap of $6.9million at Kerry's Beacon Hill townhouse. Both candidates spent more than the cap, with each camp accusing the other of being first to break the agreement. During the campaign, Kerry spoke briefly at the 1996 Democratic National Convention. Kerry won re-election with 52 percent to Weld's 45 percent.\nIn the 2000 presidential election, Kerry found himself close to being chosen as the vice presidential running mate.\nA release from the presidential campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Al Gore listed Kerry on the short list to be selected as the vice-presidential nominee, along with North Carolina Senator John Edwards, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt, New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. Gore ultimately chose Lieberman.\n\"You get stuck in Iraq\" controversy.\nOn October 30, 2006, Kerry was a headline speaker at a campaign rally being held for Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. Speaking to an audience composed mainly of college students, Kerry said, \"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.\"\nThe day after he made the remark, leaders from both sides of the political spectrum criticized Kerry's remarks, which he said were a botched joke. Republicans including President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain and then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, said that Kerry's comments were insulting to American military forces fighting in Iraq. Democratic Representative Harold Ford Jr. called on Kerry to apologize.\nKerry initially stated: \"I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy\". Kerry also responded to criticism from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.\nKerry said that he had intended the remark as a jab at President Bush, and described the remarks as a \"botched joke\", having inadvertently left out the key word \"us\" (which would have been, \"If you don't, you get \"us\" stuck in Iraq\"), as well as leaving the phrase \"just ask President Bush\" off of the end of the sentence. In Kerry's prepared remarks, which he released during the ensuing media frenzy, the corresponding line was \"...you end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush\". He also said that from the context of the speech which, prior to the \"stuck in Iraq\" line, made several specific references to Bush and elements of his biography, that Kerry was referring to President Bush and not American troops in general.\nAfter two days of media coverage, citing a desire not to be a diversion, Kerry apologized to those who took offense at what he called the misinterpretation of his comment.\nAfghanistan and Pakistan.\nA \"Washington Post\" report in May 2011 stated that Kerry \"has emerged in the past few years as an important envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan during times of crisis\", as he undertook another trip to the two countries. The killing of Osama bin Laden \"has generated perhaps the most important crossroads yet\", the report continued, as the senator spoke at a press conference and prepared to fly from Kabul to Pakistan. Among matters discussed during the May visit to Pakistan, under the general rubric of \"recalibrating\" the bilateral relationship, Kerry sought and retrieved from the Pakistanis the tail-section of the U.S. helicopter which had had to be abandoned at Abbottabad during the bin Laden strike. In 2013, Kerry met with Pakistan's army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to discuss the peace process with the Taliban in Afghanistan.\nVoting record.\nOverall.\nMost analyses place Kerry's voting record on the left within the Senate Democratic caucus. During the 2004 presidential election he was portrayed as a staunch liberal by conservative groups and the Bush campaign, who often noted that in 2003 Kerry was rated the top Senate liberal by \"National Journal\". However, that rating was based only upon voting on legislation within that past year. In fact, in terms of career voting records, the \"National Journal\" found that Kerry is the 11th most liberal member of the Senate. Most analyses find that Kerry is at least slightly more liberal than the typical Democratic Senator. Kerry has stated that he opposes privatizing Social Security, supports abortion rights for adult women and minors, supports same-sex marriage, opposes capital punishment except for terrorists, supports most gun control laws, and is generally a supporter of trade agreements. In some of these, as in the case of abortion, Kerry distinguishes his personal views as in line with his Catholic faith, but believes that separation of church and state demands that he not legislate his religious beliefs upon those who do not share those beliefs. Kerry supported the North American Free Trade Agreement and Most Favored Nation status for China, but opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement.\nIn July 1997, Kerry joined his Senate colleagues in voting against ratification of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming without greenhouse gas emissions limits on nations deemed developing, including India and China. Since then, Kerry has attacked President Bush, charging him with opposition to international efforts to combat global warming.\nOn October 1, 2008, Kerry voted for Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, also known as the TARP bailout.\nIraq.\nIn the lead up to the Iraq War, Kerry said on October 9, 2002; \"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.\" Bush relied on that resolution in ordering the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Kerry also gave a January 23, 2003, speech to Georgetown University saying \"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator; leading an oppressive regime he presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.\" Kerry did, however, warn that the administration should exhaust its diplomatic avenues before launching war: \"Mr. President, do not rush to war, take the time to build the coalition, because it's not winning the war that's hard, it's winning the peace that's hard.\"\nAfter the invasion of Iraq, when no weapons of mass destruction were found, Kerry strongly criticized Bush, contending that he had misled the country: \"When the President of the United States looks at you and tells you something, there should be some trust.\"\nLibya.\nIn 2011, Kerry supported American military action in Libya.\nLeadership.\nKerry chaired the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs from 1991 to 1993. The committee's report, which Kerry endorsed, stated there was \"no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia\". In 1994 the Senate passed a resolution, sponsored by Kerry and fellow Vietnam veteran John McCain, that called for an end to the existing trade embargo against Vietnam; it was intended to pave the way for normalization. In 1995, President Bill Clinton normalized diplomatic relations with the country of Vietnam.\nKerry was the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 1987 to 1989. He was reelected to the Senate in 1990, 1996 (after winning re-election against the then-Governor of Massachusetts Republican William Weld), 2002, and 2008. In January 2009, Kerry replaced Joe Biden as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.\nAs a role model for campus leaders across the nation and strong advocate for global development, Kerry was honored by the Millennium Campus Network (MCN) as a Global Generation Award winner in 2011.\nCommittee assignments.\nDuring his tenure, Kerry served on four Senate committees and nine subcommittees:\nSeniority.\nFrom the beginning of the 113th United States Congress until his resignation, Kerry ranked as the 7th most senior U.S. Senator. Due to the longevity of Ted Kennedy's service, Kerry was the most senior \"junior Senator\" in the 111th United States Congress. On Tuesday, August 25, 2009, Kerry became the senior senator from Massachusetts following Ted Kennedy's death.\nSponsorship of legislation.\nAreas of concern in the bills Kerry introduced into the Senate included small business concerns, education, terrorism, veterans' and POW/MIA issues, and marine resource protection. A full list of Kerry's sponsored legislation was available on his Senate web site.\nDuring his Senate career, Kerry was primary sponsor of the following bills (excluding resolutions and amendments sponsored). This table does not count bills which Kerry co-sponsored.\nA chronological list of various bills and resolutions sponsored by Kerry follows.\n2004 presidential campaign.\nIn the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries, John Kerry defeated several Democratic rivals, including Sen. John Edwards (D-North Carolina), former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and retired Army General Wesley Clark. His victory in the Iowa caucuses is widely believed to be the tipping point where Kerry revived his sagging campaign in New Hampshire and the February 3, 2004, primary states like Arizona, South Carolina and New Mexico. Kerry then went on to win landslide victories in Nevada and Wisconsin. Kerry thus won the Democratic nomination to run for President of the United States against incumbent George W. Bush. On July 6, 2004, he announced his selection of John Edwards as his running mate. Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who was Kerry's 2004 campaign adviser, wrote an article in \"Time\" magazine claiming that after the election, Kerry had said that he wished he had never picked Edwards, and that the two have since stopped speaking to each other. In a subsequent appearance on ABC's \"This Week\", Kerry refused to respond to Shrum's allegation, calling it a \"ridiculous waste of time\".\nDuring his bid to be elected president in 2004, Kerry frequently criticized President George W. Bush for starting the Iraq War. While Kerry had initially voted in support of authorizing President Bush to use force in dealing with Saddam Hussein, he voted against an $87billion supplemental appropriations bill to pay for the subsequent war. His statement on March 16, 2004, \"I actually did vote for the $87billion before I voted against it\", helped the Bush campaign to paint him as a flip-flopper and has been cited as contributing to Kerry's defeat.\nOn November 3, 2004, Kerry conceded the race. Kerry won 59.03 million votes, or 48.3 percent of the popular vote; Bush won 62.04 million votes, or 50.7 percent of the popular vote. Kerry carried states with a total of 252 electoral votes. One Kerry elector voted for Kerry's running mate, Edwards, so in the final tally Kerry had 251 electoral votes to Bush's 286. He was the first Democrat since Michael Dukakis in 1988 to lose the popular vote in a presidential election, and until Kamala Harris's loss in 2024, he was the most recent Democrat to do so.\nSubsequent presidential-election activities.\nImmediately after the 2004 election, some Democrats mentioned Kerry as a possible contender for the 2008 Democratic nomination. His brother had said such a campaign was \"conceivable\", and Kerry himself reportedly said at a farewell party for his 2004 campaign staff, \"There's always another four years\".\nKerry established a separate political action committee, Keeping America's Promise, which declared as its mandate \"A Democratic Congress will restore accountability to Washington and help change a disastrous course in Iraq\", and raised money and channeled contributions to Democratic candidates in state and federal races. Through Keeping America's Promise in 2005, Kerry raised over $5.5million for other Democrats up and down the ballot. Through his campaign account and his political action committee, the Kerry campaign operation generated more than $10million for various party committees and 179 candidates for the U.S. House, Senate, state and local offices in 42 states focusing on the midterm elections during the 2006 election cycle. \"Cumulatively, John Kerry has done as much if not more than any other individual senator\", Hassan Nemazee, the national finance chairman of the DSCC said.\nOn January 10, 2008, Kerry endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama for president. He was mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate for Senator Obama, although fellow Senator Joe Biden was eventually chosen. After Biden's acceptance of the vice presidential nomination, speculation arose that John Kerry would be a candidate for Secretary of State in the Obama administration. However, Senator Hillary Clinton was offered the position.\nDuring the 2012 Obama reelection campaign, Kerry participated in one-on-one debate prep with the president, impersonating the Republican candidate Mitt Romney.\nSecretary of State (2013\u20132017).\nNomination and confirmation.\nOn December 15, 2012, several news outlets reported that President Barack Obama would nominate Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, after Susan Rice, widely seen as Obama's preferred choice, withdrew her name from consideration citing a politicized confirmation process following criticism of her response to the 2012 Benghazi attack. On December 21, Obama proposed the nomination, which received positive commentary. His confirmation hearing took place on January 24, 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the same panel where he first testified in 1971. The committee unanimously voted to approve him on January 29, 2013, and the same day the full Senate confirmed him on a vote of 94\u20133. In a letter to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Kerry announced his resignation from the Senate effective February 1.\nTenure.\nKerry was sworn in as Secretary of State on February 1, 2013.\nWhile serving as the Secretary of State, Kerry spoke in the French language on several occasions in his official capacity.\nAfter six months of rigorous diplomacy within the Middle East, Kerry was able to have Israeli and Palestinian negotiators agree to start the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks. Senior U.S. officials stated the two sides were able to meet on July 30, 2013, at the State Department without American mediators following a dinner the previous evening hosted by Kerry.\nOn September 27, 2013, he met with the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the P5+1 and Iran summit, which eventually led to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. It was the highest-level direct contact between the United States and Iran in the last six years, and made him the first U.S. Secretary of State to have met with his Iranian counterpart since 1979 Iranian Revolution.\nIn the State Department, Kerry quickly earned a reputation \"for being aloof, keeping to himself, and not bothering to read staff memos\". Career State Department officials complained that power became too centralized under Kerry's leadership, which slowed department operations when Kerry was on frequent overseas trips. Others in State described Kerry as having \"a kind of diplomatic attention deficit disorder\" as he shifted from topic to topic instead of focusing on long-term strategy. When asked whether he was traveling too much, he responded, \"Hell no. I'm not slowing down.\" Despite Kerry's early achievements, morale at State was lower than under Hillary Clinton, according to department employees. However, after Kerry's first six months in the State Department, a Gallup poll found he had high approval ratings among Americans as Secretary of State. After a year, another poll showed Kerry's favorability continued to rise. Less than two years into Kerry's term, the Foreign Policy Magazine's 2014 Ivory Tower survey of international relations scholars asked, \"Who was the most effective U.S. Secretary of State in the past 50 years?\"; John Kerry and Lawrence Eagleburger tied for 11th place out of the 15 confirmed Secretaries of State in that period.\nIn January 2014, having met with Vatican Secretary of State Archbishop Pietro Parolin, Kerry said: \"We touched on just about every major issue that we are both working on, that are issues of concern to all of us. First of all, we talked at great length about Syria, and I was particularly appreciative for the Archbishop's raising this issue, and equally grateful for the Holy Father's comments\u00a0\u2013 the Pope's comments yesterday regarding his support for the GenevaII process. We welcome that support. It is very important to have broad support, and I know that the Pope is particularly concerned about the massive numbers of displaced human beings and the violence that has taken over 130,000 lives.\"\nKerry expressed support for Israel's right to defend itself during the 2014 Israel\u2013Gaza conflict.\nKerry said the United States supported the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen because Saudi Arabia, an ally, was threatened \"very directly\" by the takeover of neighboring Yemen by the Houthis, but noted that the United States would not reflexively support Saudi Arabia's proxy wars against Iran.\nOn December 28, 2016, soon after United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 passed 14\u20130 with the U.S. abstaining, Kerry joined the rest of the U.N. Security Council in strongly criticizing Israel's settlement policies in a speech. His speech and criticisms met negative reactions from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while UK Prime Minister Theresa May distanced the UK from Kerry's strongly worded speech in what appeared to be an attempt to build bridges with the incoming Trump administration. Kerry's speech received positive reactions from Arab nations, but some criticized his remarks as too little, too late from the outgoing administration.\nSyria.\nFollowing the August 21, 2013, chemical weapons attack on the Ghouta suburbs of Damascus attributed to Syrian government forces, Kerry became a leading advocate for the use of military force against the Syrian government for what he called \"a despot's brutal and flagrant use of chemical weapons\".\nOn September 9, in response to a reporter's question about whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could avert a military strike, Kerry said \"He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that. But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done, obviously.\" This unscripted remark initiated a process that would lead to Syria agreeing to relinquish and destroy its chemical weapons arsenal, as Russia treated Kerry's statement as a serious proposal. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia would work \"immediately\" to convince Syria relinquish and destroy its large chemical weapons arsenal. Syria quickly welcomed this proposal and on September 14, the UN formally accepted Syria's application to join the convention banning chemical weapons, and separately, the U.S. and Russia agreed on a plan to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons by the middle of 2014, leading Kerry to declare on July 20, 2014: \"we struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out\". On September 28, the UN Security Council passed a resolution ordering the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons and condemning the August 21 Ghouta attack.\nLatin America.\nIn a speech before the Organization of American States in November 2013, Kerry remarked that the era of the Monroe Doctrine was over. He went on to explain, \"The relationship that we seek and that we have worked hard to foster is not about a United States declaration about how and when it will intervene in the affairs of other American states. It's about all of our countries viewing one another as equals, sharing responsibilities, cooperating on security issues, and adhering not to doctrine, but to the decisions that we make as partners to advance the values and the interests that we share.\"\nEnvironmentalism.\nIn April 2016, he signed the Paris Climate Accords at the United Nations in New York.\nOn November 11, 2016, Kerry became the first Secretary of State and highest-ranking U.S. official to date to visit Antarctica. Kerry spent two days on the continent meeting with researchers and staying overnight at McMurdo Station.\nIn 1994, Kerry led opposition to continued funding for the Integral Fast Reactor, which resulted in the end of funding for the project. However, in light of increasing concerns regarding climate change, in 2017 Kerry reversed his position on nuclear power, saying \"Given this challenge we face today, and given the progress of fourth generation nuclear: go for it. No other alternative, zero emissions.\"\nGlobal Connect initiative.\nIn September 2015, the U.S. Department of State unveiled a new initiative called \"Global Connect\" which sought to provide internet access to more than 1.5 billion people around the world within five years. In 2016, in partnership with OPIC, Kerry announced an investment of $171million to enable \"a low-cost and rapidly scalable wireless broadband network in India\". OPIC's financing is aimed at helping its Indian Partner, Tikona Digital Networks, to provide Internet through wireless technology.\nOut of government (2017\u20132021).\nKerry retired from his diplomatic work following the end of the Obama administration on January 20, 2017. He did not attend Donald Trump's inauguration on that day, and the following day took part in the 2017 Women's March in Washington, D.C.\nKerry has taken a strong stand against Trump policies and joined in filing a brief arguing against Trump's executive order banning entry of persons from seven Muslim countries. In November 2018, in a \"Guardian Live\" conversation with Andrew Rawnsley, sponsored by \"The Guardian\" at London's Central Hall, Kerry discussed several issues which have developed further since his tenure as Secretary of State, including migration into Europe and climate change.\nOn December 5, 2019, Kerry endorsed Joe Biden's bid for the Democratic nomination for president, saying \"He'll be ready on day one to put back together the country and the world that Donald Trump has broken apart\" and asserting that \"Joe will defeat Donald Trump next November. He's the candidate with the wisdom and standing to fix what Trump has broken, to restore our place in the world, and improve the lives of working people here at home.\"\nFollowing retirement from government service, Kerry signed an agreement with Simon & Schuster for publishing his planned memoirs, dealing with his life and career in government. In September 2018, he published \"Every Day Is Extra\".\nLeaked audiotape.\nOn April 25, 2021, \"The New York Times\" published content from a leaked audiotape of a three-hour taped conversation between economist Saeed Leylaz and Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. The taped conversation was connected to an oral history project, known as \"In the Islamic Republic the military field rules\", which documents the work of Iran's current administration. The tape was obtained by the London-based news channel Iran International.\nIn the tape, which the \"Times\" referred to as \"extraordinary\", Zarif reveals that then-Secretary of State Kerry told him that Israel attacked Iranian assets in Syria, \"at least 200 times\". Although the tape has not been verified, the spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry did not deny its validity.\nNineteen Republican senators signed a letter asking President Biden to investigate Zarif's claim. On April 27, 2021, Republicans called on Kerry to resign from the Biden administration's National Security Council. In a tweet, Kerry denied Zarif's account, writing, \"I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false. This never happened \u2014 either when I was Secretary of State or since.\"\nSpecial Presidential Envoy for Climate (2021\u20132024).\nOn November 23, 2020, President-elect Joe Biden's transition team announced that Kerry would be taking a full-time position in the administration, serving as a special envoy for climate; in this role he will be a principal on the National Security Council. Kerry assumed office on January 20, 2021, following Biden's inauguration.\nClimate cooperation with China.\nIn July 2023, John Kerry visited China for advance climate cooperation. The main achievement of the visit was some progress in the fields of: \"methane reduction commitments; reducing China's reliance on coal; China's objections to trade restrictions on solar panel and battery components; and climate finance.\" This was obtained despite many currently existing obstacles to cooperation. The visit was made in the middle of the 2023 Asia heat wave that set a new record of in Sanbu, Xinjiang, China, which Kerry mentioned in particular.\nClimate cooperation with India.\nAt the end of July 2023, John Kerry visited India. Among others he declared, the US will be committed to the target of delivering 100 billion dollars for climate action to low income countries and no future US president can retreat from climate commitment. He criticized Donald Trump for leaving the Paris agreement before.\nClimate cooperation with countries in the Middle East.\nIn June 2023, Kerry made visits to Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. In Israel, he emphasized the need for climate legislation to reach climate targets and reached an agreement about the renewal of \"Memorandum of understanding between Israel and the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Israel is one of the few developed countries which have still not approved a climate law and lags behind other OECD countries in climate action. Israeli environmental protection minister Idit Silman said that Israel intended to go to COP28 \"with an ambitious and applicable climate law and put the State of Israel on the same level as the developed countries of the OECD.\"\nDeparture.\nOn January 13, 2024, at least three sources close to Kerry revealed that he would step down as U.S. climate envoy by the upcoming spring. He told the \"Financial Times\" he planned to stay active in the climate finance space. He officially resigned from his position on March 6, 2024.\nPersonal and family life.\nAncestry.\nKerry's paternal ancestors came from the Fr\u00e4nkel family, which owned a textile factory in Neustadt, Upper Silesia (now Prudnik, Poland), founded by Samuel Fr\u00e4nkel. The Fr\u00e4nkels originated from Hotzenplotz, Austria (now Osoblaha, Czech Republic) and Z\u00fclz, Prussia (now Bia\u0142a Prudnicka, Poland). Kerry's paternal great-grandmother, Mathilda Fr\u00e4nkel, was born in Oberglogau (now G\u0142og\u00f3wek, near Prudnik) and married Benedikt Kohn from Bennisch (now Horn\u00ed Bene\u0161ov). His grandparents, shoe businessman Frederick A. \"Fred\" Kerry and musician Ida L\u00f6we, immigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the U.S. Fred, his wife, and his brother converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1901, and changed their names from Kohn to Kerry. Ida was of remote ancestry of Rabbi Sinai Loew of Worms, brother of Judah Loew ben Bezalel. Fred and Ida Kerry emigrated to the United States in 1905, living at first in Chicago and eventually moving to Brookline, Massachusetts, by 1915. According to \"The New York Times\", \"[the] brother and sister of John Kerry's paternal grandmother, Otto and Jenni Lowe, died in concentration camps\". Kerry's Jewish ancestry was publicly revealed during his 2004 presidential campaign; he has stated that he was unaware of it until a reporter informed him of it in 2003.\nKerry's maternal ancestors were of Scottish and English descent, and his maternal grandparents were James Grant Forbes II of the Forbes family and Margaret Tyndal Winthrop of the Dudley\u2013Winthrop family. Margaret's paternal grandfather Robert Charles Winthrop served as the 22nd Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Robert's father was Governor Thomas Lindall Winthrop. Thomas' father John Still Winthrop was a great-great-grandson of Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop and great-grandson of Governor Thomas Dudley. Through his mother, Kerry is a first cousin once removed of French politician Brice Lalonde.\nMarriages and children.\nKerry was married to Julia Thorne in 1970, and they had two daughters together: documentary filmmaker Alexandra Kerry (born September 5, 1973) and physician Vanessa Kerry (born December 31, 1976).\nAlexandra was born days before Kerry began law school. In 1982, Julia asked Kerry for a separation while she was suffering from severe depression. They were divorced on July 25, 1988, and the marriage was formally annulled in 1997. \"After 14 years as a political wife, I associated politics only with anger, fear and loneliness\", she wrote in \"A Change of Heart\", her book about depression. Thorne later married Richard Charlesworth, an architect, and moved to Bozeman, Montana, where she became active in local environmental groups such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Thorne supported Kerry's 2004 presidential run. She died of cancer on April 27, 2006.\nKerry and his second wife\u2014Portuguese-born businesswoman and philanthropist Teresa Heinz, the widow of Kerry's late Pennsylvania Republican Senate colleague John Heinz\u2014were introduced to each other by Heinz at an Earth Day rally in 1990. Early the following year, Senator Heinz was killed in a plane crash near Lower Merion. Teresa has three sons from her marriage to Heinz, Henry John IV, Andr\u00e9, and Christopher. Heinz and Kerry were married on May 26, 1995, in Nantucket, Massachusetts.\nNet worth.\nThe \"Forbes 400\" survey estimated in 2004 that Teresa Heinz Kerry had a net worth of $750million. However, estimates have frequently varied, ranging from around $165million to as high as $3.2billion, according to a study in the \"Los Angeles Times\". Regardless of which figure is correct, Kerry was the wealthiest U.S. Senator while serving in the Senate. Independent of Heinz, Kerry is wealthy in his own right, and is the beneficiary of at least four trusts inherited from Forbes family relatives, including his mother, Rosemary Forbes Kerry, who died in 2002. \"Forbes\" magazine (named for the Forbes family of publishers, unrelated to Kerry) estimated that if elected, and if Heinz family assets were included, Kerry would have been the third-richest U.S. president in history, when adjusted for inflation. This assessment was based on Heinz's and Kerry's combined assets, but the couple signed a prenuptial agreement that keeps their assets separate. Kerry's financial disclosure form for 2011 put his personal assets in the range of $230,000,000 to $320,000,000, including the assets of his spouse and any dependent children. This included slightly more than $3,000,000 worth of H. J. Heinz Company assets, which increased in value by over $600,000 in 2013 when Berkshire Hathaway announced their intention to purchase the company.\nIn April 2017, Kerry purchased an 18-acre property on the northwest corner of Martha's Vineyard overlooking Vineyard Sound in the town of Chilmark, Massachusetts. The property is located in Seven Gates Farm and according to property records, cost $11.75million for the seven bedroom home.\nReligious beliefs.\nKerry is a Roman Catholic, and is said to have carried a religious rosary, a prayer book, and a St. Christopher medal (the patron saint of travelers) when he campaigned. Discussing his faith, Kerry said: \"I thought of being a priest. I was very religious while at school in Switzerland. I was an altar boy and prayed all the time. I was very centered around the Mass and the church.\" He also said that the Letters of Paul (Apostle Paul) moved him the most, stating that they taught him to \"not feel sorry for myself\".\nKerry told \"Christianity Today\" in October 2004:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I'm a Catholic and I practice, but at the same time I have an open-mindedness to many other expressions of spirituality that come through different religions... I've spent some time reading and thinking about religion and trying to study it, and I've arrived at not so much a sense of the differences, but a sense of the similarities in so many ways.\nHe said that he believed that the Torah, the Quran, and the Bible all share a fundamental story which connects with readers.\nHealth.\nIn 2003, Kerry was diagnosed with and successfully treated for prostate cancer. On May 31, 2015, Kerry broke his right leg in a biking accident in Scionzier, France, and was flown to Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital for recovery. MGH Hip and Knee Replacement Orthopaedic Surgeon Dr. Dennis Burke, who had met Kerry in France and had accompanied him in the plane from France to Boston, set Kerry's right leg on Tuesday, June 2, in a four-hour operation.\nAthletics and sailing.\nIn addition to the sports he played at Yale, Kerry is described by \"Sports Illustrated\", among others, as an \"avid cyclist\", primarily riding on a road bike. Prior to his presidential bid, Kerry had participated in several long-distance rides. During his many campaigns, he was reported to have visited bicycle stores in both his home state and elsewhere. His staff requested recumbent stationary bikes for his hotel rooms. He has also been a snowboarder, windsurfer, and sailor.\nThe \"Boston Herald\" reported on July 23, 2010, that Kerry commissioned construction on a new $7million yacht (a Friendship 75) in New Zealand and moored it in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where the Friendship yacht company is based. The article claimed this allowed him to avoid paying Massachusetts taxes on the property including approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $500. On July 27, Kerry stated he would voluntarily pay $500,000 in Massachusetts taxes on his yacht.\nHonors.\nJohn Kerry was awarded:\nHonorary degrees.\nJohn Kerry has received several honorary degrees in recognition of his service to the United States, These include:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "1297662": "2004 United States presidential election\nPresidential elections were held in the United States on November 2, 2004. Incumbent Republican President George W. Bush and his running mate, incumbent Vice President Dick Cheney, were re-elected to a second term. They narrowly defeated the Democratic ticket of John Kerry, a senator from Massachusetts, and his running mate John Edwards, a senator from North Carolina.\nBush and Cheney were renominated by their party with no difficulty. Meanwhile, the Democrats engaged in a competitive primary. Kerry emerged as the early-front runner but was faced with serious opposition by former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who briefly surged ahead of Kerry in the polls. Kerry won the first set of primaries in January and re-emerged as the front-runner, and Dean dropped out in February. Kerry clinched his party's nomination in March after a series of primary victories over runner-up Edwards, who he ultimately selected to be his running mate.\nThe September 11 attacks in 2001 decisively reshaped Bush's foreign policy goals and garnered him near-universal support early in his term. However, by 2004 his handling of the war on terror attracted serious debate, particularly over his handling of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Bush presented himself as a decisive leader and attacked Kerry as a \"flip-flopper\". Kerry criticized Bush's conduct of the Iraq War, despite having voted for it himself. Domestic issues were debated as well, including the economy and jobs, health care, abortion, same-sex marriage, and embryonic stem cell research.\nBush won by a narrow margin of 35 electoral votes and took 50.7% of the popular vote. Bush swept the South and the Mountain states and took the crucial swing states of Ohio, Iowa, and New Mexico, the last two flipping Republican. Although Kerry flipped New Hampshire, Bush won both more electoral votes and states than in 2000. Ohio was the tipping-point state, and was considered to be the state that allowed Bush to win reelection. Some aspects of the election process were subject to controversy, although not to the degree seen in the 2000 presidential election. Bush won Florida by a 5% margin, a significant improvement over his razor-thin victory margin in the state four years earlier which led to a legal challenge in \"Bush v. Gore\". This remains the most recent presidential election in which the Republican candidate won Colorado, New Mexico, and Virginia.\nAt the time, Bush received the most popular votes in history, a record which would be broken in 2008. Bush's win was the only Republican popular vote victory during the eight elections from 1992 to 2020. As of 2025, Bush is the only Republican president since 1984 to have won re-election to a consecutive second term.\nBackground.\nGeorge W. Bush won the presidency in 2000 after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in \"Bush v. Gore\" remanded the case to the Florida Supreme Court, which declared there was not sufficient time to hold a recount without violating the U.S. Constitution. Just eight months into his presidency, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, suddenly transformed Bush into a wartime president. Bush's approval ratings surged to near 90%. Within a month, the forces of a coalition led by the United States entered Afghanistan, which had been sheltering Osama bin Laden, suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks. The Taliban had been removed by December, although a long reconstruction would follow.\nThe Bush administration then turned its attention to Iraq and argued the need to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq had become urgent. Among the stated reasons were that Saddam's regime had tried to acquire nuclear material and had not properly accounted for biological and chemical material it was known to have previously possessed. Both the possession of these weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and the failure to account for them, would violate the UN sanctions. The assertion about WMD was hotly advanced by the Bush administration from the beginning, but other major powers including China, France, Germany, and Russia remained unconvinced that Iraq was a threat and refused to allow passage of a UN Security Council resolution to authorize the use of force. Iraq permitted UN weapon inspectors in November 2002, who were continuing their work to assess the WMD claim when the Bush administration decided to proceed with war without UN authorization and told the inspectors to leave the country. The United States invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003, along with a \"coalition of the willing\" that consisted of additional troops from the United Kingdom, and to a lesser extent, from Australia and Poland. Within about three weeks, the invasion caused the collapse of both the Iraqi government and its armed forces; however, the U.S. and allied forces failed to find any weapon of mass destruction in Iraq. Nevertheless, on May 1, Bush landed on the aircraft carrier , in a Lockheed S-3 Viking, where he gave a speech announcing the end of \"major combat operations\" in the Iraq War.\nNominations.\nRepublican nomination.\nBush was able to ward off any serious challenge to the Republican nomination. Senator Lincoln Chafee from Rhode Island considered challenging Bush on an anti-war platform in New Hampshire but decided not to run after the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003. On March 10, 2004, Bush officially attained the number of delegates needed to be nominated at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. He accepted the nomination on September 2, 2004, and retained Vice President Dick Cheney as his running mate. During the convention and throughout the campaign, Bush focused on two themes: defending America against terrorism and building an ownership society. The ownership society included allowing people to invest some of their Social Security in the stock market, increasing home and stock ownership, and encouraging more people to buy their own health insurance.\nDemocratic Party nomination.\nDemocratic primaries.\nThe 2004 Democratic Party presidential primaries took place from January 14 to June 8, 2004, to select the Democratic Party's nominee for president. Before the primaries, Vermont governor Howard Dean was a favorite to win the nomination; however, Massachusetts senator John Kerry won victories in two early races: the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. These wins strengthened Kerry's previously weak campaign. By March 11, Kerry had received enough delegates to win the nomination. Other major candidates included North Carolina senator John Edwards and retired U.S. Army general Wesley Clark. Kerry asked Republican senator John McCain to be his running mate but McCain turned down his offer. On July 6, Kerry selected Edwards as his running mate, shortly before the 2004 Democratic National Convention was held later that month in Boston.\nDemocratic National Convention.\nHeading into the convention, the Kerry\u2013Edwards ticket unveiled its new slogan: a promise to make America \"stronger at home and more respected in the world\". Kerry made his Vietnam War experience the convention's prominent theme. The keynote address at the convention was delivered by Illinois state senator and U.S. Senate candidate and future president Barack Obama; the speech was well received, and it elevated Obama's status within the Democratic Party.\nOther nominations.\nThere were four other presidential tickets on the ballot in a number of states totaling enough electoral votes to have a theoretical possibility of winning a majority in the Electoral College. They were:\nIssues unique to the election.\nElectronic voting machines.\nAhead of the 2004 election, some states implemented electronic voting systems. Critics raised several issues about voting machines, particularly those made by Diebold Election Systems. Cybersecurity professionals found security vulnerabilities in Diebold machines. Voting machines made by several companies were also criticized for their lack of a paper trail, which would have made results easier to verify. Democrats also criticized various executives at Diebold, Inc. (the parent company of Diebold Election Systems) for their support of Bush's campaign, stating that it constituted a conflict of interest. Following these issues, California banned the use of Diebold's AccuVote TSX voting machines for elections in 2004.\nCampaign law changes.\nThe 2004 election was the first to be affected by the campaign finance reforms mandated by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. The act created restrictions on fundraising by political parties and candidates. A large number of independent 527 groups were created to bypass these restrictions. Named for a section of the Internal Revenue Code, these groups were able to raise large amounts of money for various political causes as long as they did not coordinate their activities with political campaigns. Examples of 527s include Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, MoveOn.org, the Media Fund, and America Coming Together. These groups were active throughout the campaign season, spending a record $556 million for all elections in 2004.\nThe Stand by Your Ad provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act required political advertisements on television to include a verbal disclaimer identifying the organization or campaign responsible for the advertisement. This provision was intended to force campaigns to take responsibility for negative advertisements. Campaign strategists criticized this requirement, stating that it would waste time and cause voters to be confused.\nGeneral election campaign.\nCampaign issues.\nBush focused his campaign on national security, presenting himself as a decisive leader and contrasted Kerry as a \"flip-flopper.\" This strategy was designed to convey to American voters the idea that Bush could be trusted to be tough on terrorism while Kerry would be \"uncertain in the face of danger.\" In the final months before the election, Kerry's campaign focused on domestic issues such as the economy and health care. Kerry's campaign managers believed that Kerry had an advantage on domestic issues. Bush's campaign also focused on increasing voter turnout among conservatives. According to one exit poll, people who voted for Bush cited the issues of terrorism and traditional values as the most important factors in their decision. Kerry supporters cited the war in Iraq, the economy and jobs, and health care.\nEconomy.\nTax cuts were passed in 2001 and 2003 under the Bush administration with Bush's support. Kerry voted against these tax cuts. During the 2004 campaign, Bush praised these tax cuts, stating that they helped to grow the economy. On the other hand, Kerry attacked Bush for failing to create jobs under his presidency. Kerry stated that he wanted to reduce the United States budget deficit by capping government spending while ending various tax breaks for businesses. Kerry also supported tax credits for businesses that hire additional workers. Bush attacked Kerry for his economic proposals, stating that they would cause Americans to pay higher taxes. Bush also attacked Kerry for previously supporting tax raises, such as a proposed increase on the federal gas tax.\nForeign policy.\nBush defended the Iraq War, arguing that it was necessary to stop terrorism. He also said that the United States had made progress stopping terrorism in other nations. Bush attacked Kerry for opposing the Iraq War after voting to authorize it in 2002, characterizing the shift as one of many flip-flops by Kerry. Kerry argued that Bush had misled the American public in pursuing the Iraq War, noting that no illegal weapons had been found in Iraq. He said that the Iraq War was a mistake and a diversion from terrorism in other nations such as Afghanistan. After the election, exit polls found that foreign policy concerns were the most important issues for voters.\nHealth care.\nHealth savings accounts (HSAs) were introduced in 2004 as part of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act, signed by Bush in December 2003. As part of his 2004 campaign, Bush supported the expansion of HSAs. He proposed tax cuts to help Americans purchase their own health insurance. He also proposed a plan that would allow small businesses to purchase health insurance in large groups. Kerry's health care proposals included government subsidies for businesses that provide health insurance and the expansion of government-run health care programs. Health policy experts stated that Bush's proposals would have a more limited impact than Kerry's proposals. Kerry also attacked Bush for his policy on stem cell research. In 2001, the Bush administration restricted embryonic stem cell research to existing stem cell lines. Kerry stated that this restriction was a barrier to conducting important research.\nSame-sex marriage.\nIn July 2004, Bush announced his support for a Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, shortly before the Senate voted on the amendment. Although Kerry stated that he opposed same-sex marriage, he also opposed the amendment, saying that the legality of same-sex marriage should be decided by individual states. The Senate vote failed on July 14.\nControversies.\nBush military service controversy.\nDuring the campaign, Bush was accused of failing to fulfill his required service in the Texas Air National Guard. A scandal occurred at CBS News after they aired a segment on \"60 Minutes Wednesday\", introducing what became known as the Killian documents. These documents were allegedly written by Jerry B. Killian, Bush's squadron commander, and they contained various allegations about Bush's service. Serious doubts about the documents' authenticity quickly emerged, leading CBS to appoint a review panel that eventually resulted in the firing of the news producer and other significant staffing changes. The Killian documents were eventually concluded to be forgeries.\nKerry military service controversy.\nKerry was accused by the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth of distorting his military service in Vietnam. The group challenged the legitimacy of each of the combat medals awarded to Kerry by the U.S. Navy, and the disposition of his discharge. The organization spent $22.4 million in advertisements against Kerry. After the election, political analysts described their advertising campaign as effective. The term swiftboating was used during the campaign to describe the organization's negative advertising, which Democrats saw as unfair. It was also used after the campaign to generally describe a harsh attack by a political opponent that is dishonest, personal and unfair.\nPresidential debates.\nThree presidential debates and one vice presidential debate were organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates, and held in the autumn of 2004.\nOsama bin Laden videotape.\nOn October 29, four days before the election, excerpts of a video of Osama bin Laden addressing the American people were broadcast on al Jazeera. In his remarks, bin Laden mentions the September 11 attacks, and taunted Bush over his response to them. In the days following the video's release, Bush's lead over Kerry increased by several points.\nElectoral College forecasts.\nElections analysts and political pundits issue probabilistic forecasts of the composition of the Electoral College. These forecasts use a variety of factors to estimate the likelihood of each candidate winning the Electoral College electors for that state. Most election predictors use the following ratings:\nBelow is a list of states considered by one or more forecast to be competitive; states that are deemed to be \"safe\" or \"solid\" by forecasters \"The Cook Political Report\", \"The New York Times\", and CNN.\n<templatestyles src=\"template:sticky header/styles.css\"/>\nResults.\nSource (Electoral and Popular Vote): Federal Elections Commission Electoral and Popular Vote Summary\nVoting age population: 215,664,000\nPercent of voting age population casting a vote for president: 56.70%\n(a) \"One faithless elector from Minnesota cast an electoral vote for John Edwards (written as John Ewards) for president.\"\n(b) \"In Montana, Karen Sanchirico was listed on the ballot as Nader's running mate, not Camejo. In Alabama, Jan D. Pierce was Nader's running mate. In New York, Nader appeared on two distinct tickets, one with Camejo and one with Pierce.\"\n(c) \"Because Arrin Hawkins, then aged 28, was constitutionally ineligible to serve as vice president, Margaret Trowe replaced her on the ballot in some states. James Harris replaced Calero on certain other states' ballots.\"\nResults by state.\nOf the 3,154 counties/districts/independent cities making returns, Bush won the popular vote in 2,568 (81.42%) while Kerry carried 586 (18.58%). The following table records the official vote tallies for each state as reported by the official Federal Election Commission report. The column labeled \"Margin\" shows Bush's margin of victory over Kerry (the margin is negative for states and districts won by Kerry).\nAlthough Guam has no votes in the Electoral College, it has held a straw poll for its presidential preference since 1980. In 2004, the results were Bush 21,490 (64.1%), Kerry 11,781 (35.1%), Nader 196 (0.58%) and Badnarik 67 (0.2%). Maine and Nebraska each allowed for their electoral votes to be split between candidates. In both states, two electoral votes were awarded to the winner of the statewide race and one electoral vote was awarded to the winner of each congressional district.\nClose states.\nRed font color denotes those won by Republican President George W. Bush; blue denotes states won by Democrat John Kerry.\nStates where margin of victory was under 1% (22 electoral votes):\nStates where margin of victory was more than 1% but less than 5% (93 electoral votes):\nStates where margin of victory was more than 5% but less than 10% (149 electoral votes):\nStatistics.\nCounties with highest percent of vote (Republican)\nCounties with highest percent of vote (Democratic)\nFinance.\nMoney spent\nSource: FEC\n2004 United States Electoral College.\nOne elector in Minnesota cast a ballot for president with the name of \"John Ewards\" [\"sic\"] written on it. The Electoral College officials certified this ballot as a vote for Edwards for president. The remaining nine electors cast ballots for Kerry. All ten electors in the state cast ballots for Edwards for vice president (Edwards's name was spelled correctly on all ballots for vice president). This was the first time in U.S. history that an elector had cast a vote for the same person to be both president and vice president. Electoral balloting in Minnesota was performed by secret ballot, and none of the electors admitted to casting the Edwards vote for president, so it may never be known who the faithless elector was. It is not even known whether the vote for Edwards was deliberate or unintentional; the Republican Secretary of State and several of the Democratic electors have expressed the opinion that this was an accident.\nStatistical analysis.\nDuring the campaign and as the results came in on the night of the election, there was much focus on Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. These three swing states were seen as evenly divided, and with each casting 20 electoral votes or more, they had the power to decide the election. As the final results came in, Kerry took Pennsylvania and then Bush took Florida, focusing all attention on Ohio.\nThe morning after the election, the winner was still undetermined. The result in Ohio would decide the winner, although the results in New Mexico and Iowa were also undetermined. Bush led in Ohio, but the state was still counting provisional ballots. In the afternoon of the day after the election, Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell announced that there were roughly 135,000 provisional ballots remaining. Kerry's campaign believed that it was statistically impossible to erase Bush's lead. Faced with this announcement, Kerry conceded defeat.\nBush became the first Republican to ever win without carrying New Hampshire, and the first to win the popular vote without Vermont and Illinois. This was the last time a president was re-elected to a consecutive term with a higher share of the electoral vote. Bush carried Colorado despite the state being Kerry's birth state. Bush simultaneously lost his own birth state of Connecticut, making this the only election since 1864 where neither candidate carried their birth state. This election was the first time since 1976 that New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, Illinois, Michigan, and California voted for the losing candidate in the popular vote, as well as the first since 1980 that Maryland did so, and the first since 1948 that Delaware did so. Bush's 2.4% popular vote margin is the smallest ever for a re-elected incumbent president, surpassing the 1812 election.\nBush won three states that have not voted Republican since: Virginia, Colorado, and New Mexico. Virginia had voted Republican in every election from 1968 to 2004 but conversely has voted Democratic in every election since 2008. In contrast, this is the last election in which the losing candidate won any of the following states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. This is also the last time a Republican was elected without carrying Maine's 2nd congressional district. This election is the only time in history that every Northeastern state voted Democratic and every former Confederate state voted Republican in the same election. Thus, Bush is the only candidate to win without carrying any Northeastern electoral votes. Furthermore, this was the last election where both major party tickets consisted entirely of white men. This is also the last election where both parties flipped states and is also the most recent year when an incumbent candidate from either party would flip any states, with Bush taking the two which he did not win in 2000, in both New Mexico and Iowa.\nUntil 2024[ [update]], this was the last time Nevada voted for the Republican presidential candidate, and the only presidential election since 1988 in which the Republican nominee won the popular vote with a majority, and it remains the only presidential election since 1984 in which the incumbent Republican president won a second consecutive term. Bush also became the only incumbent president to win consecutive re-election after previously losing the popular vote. Bush is the seventh Republican to have won re-election to a consecutive term, along with Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, William McKinley, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. The 2004 election had the highest turnout rate among eligible voters since 1968. This is one of only four U.S. presidential elections in which the winner did not carry any of the three Rust Belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin; the others were 2000, 1916 and 1884.\nThis was the first presidential election since 1988 where a candidate won a majority of the popular vote. This was the last time a Republican candidate won the national popular vote until Donald Trump in 2024. This remains the most recent presidential election in which both major party candidates flipped at least one state. In addition, this was one of only two elections in the 21st century in which a candidate from either party won fewer than 20 states, with the other being 2024, when Kamala Harris also won 19 states. This is the earliest presidential election of which all four of the presidential and vice presidential candidates of both major parties are still alive, and is the most recent to date in which both major party tickets did not include a woman or person of color. This along with the previous election would be the only ones between 1980 and 2024 where the winner won fewer than 300 electoral votes (or below 55% of the electoral college vote).\nVoter demographics.\nSource: \"CNN\" exit poll ()\nAftermath.\nThis is one of only two U.S. presidential elections, held since the Democrats and Republicans became the two major parties in U.S. politics, in which the winner did not carry any of the three Rust Belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin; the other was 2000, when Bush was first elected.\nVoting problems in Ohio.\nAfter the election, activists and election scholars criticized various issues with the election in Ohio. Long lines at polling places over seven hours were reported. An electronic voting machine erroneously gave thousands of extra votes to Bush. Professor Edward B. Foley stated that he believed that Ohio's voting problems did not affect the outcome.\nObjections and conspiracy theories.\nAfter the election, many blogs published false rumors claiming to show evidence that voter fraud had prevented Kerry from winning. Although the overall result of the election was not challenged by the Kerry campaign, Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb and Libertarian Party presidential candidate Michael Badnarik obtained a recount in Ohio. This recount was completed December 28, 2004, although on January 24, 2007, a jury convicted two Ohio elections officials of selecting precincts to recount where they already knew the hand total would match the machine total, thereby avoiding having to perform a full recount. Independent candidate Ralph Nader obtained a recount in 11 New Hampshire precincts that used Accuvote voting machines.\nAt the official counting of the electoral votes on January 6, an objection was made under the Electoral Count Act (now \u00a0\u00a7\u00a015) to Ohio's electoral votes. Because the motion was supported by at least one member of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the law required that the two houses separate to debate and vote on the objection. In the House of Representatives, the objection was supported by 31 Democrats. It was opposed by 178 Republicans, 88 Democrats and one independent. Not voting were 52 Republicans and 80 Democrats. Four people elected to the House had not yet taken office, and one seat was vacant. In the Senate, it was supported only by its maker, Barbara Boxer, with 74 senators opposed and 25 not voting. During the debate, no Senator argued that the outcome of the election should be changed by either court challenge or revote. Boxer claimed that she had made the motion not to challenge the outcome but \"to cast the light of truth on a flawed system which must be fixed now\".\nKerry would later state that \"the widespread irregularities make it impossible to know for certain that the [Ohio] outcome reflected the will of the voters\". In the same article, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said: \"I'm not confident that the election in Ohio was fairly decided... We know that there was substantial voter suppression, and the machines were not reliable. It should not be a surprise that the Republicans are willing to do things that are unethical to manipulate elections. That's what we suspect has happened.\"\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21650": "North Carolina\nU.S. state\nNorth Carolina ( ) is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia to the southwest, and Tennessee to the west. The state is the 28th-largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. Along with South Carolina, it makes up the Carolinas region of the East Coast. At the 2020 census, the state had a population of 10,439,388. Raleigh is the state's capital and Charlotte is its most populous city. The Charlotte metropolitan area, with an estimated population of 2,805,115 in 2023, is the most populous metropolitan area in North Carolina, the 22nd-most populous in the United States, and the largest banking center in the nation after New York City. The Research Triangle, with an estimated population of 2,368,947 in 2023, is the second-most populous combined metropolitan area in the state, 31st-most populous in the United States, and is home to the largest research park in the United States, Research Triangle Park.\nThe earliest evidence of human occupation in North Carolina dates back 10,000 years, found at the Hardaway Site. North Carolina was inhabited by Carolina Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Siouan speaking tribes of Native Americans prior to the arrival of Europeans. King Charles II granted eight lord proprietors a colony they named Carolina after the king and which was established in 1670 with the first permanent settlement at Charles Town (Charleston). Because of the difficulty of governing the entire colony from Charles Town, the colony was eventually divided and North Carolina was established as a royal colony in 1729 and was one of the Thirteen Colonies. The Halifax Resolves resolution adopted by North Carolina on April 12, 1776, was the first formal call for independence from Great Britain among the American Colonies during the American Revolution.\nOn November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the United States Constitution. In the run-up to the American Civil War, North Carolina reluctantly declared its secession from the Union on May 20, 1861, becoming the tenth of eleven states to join the Confederate States of America. Following the Civil War, the state was restored to the Union on July 4, 1868. On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully piloted the world's first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina's Outer Banks. North Carolina often uses the slogan \"First in Flight\" on state license plates to commemorate this achievement, alongside a newer alternative design bearing the slogan \"First in Freedom\" in reference to the Mecklenburg Declaration and Halifax Resolves.\nNorth Carolina is defined by a wide range of elevations and landscapes. From west to east, North Carolina's elevation descends from the Appalachian Mountains to the Piedmont and Atlantic coastal plain. North Carolina's Mount Mitchell at is the highest point in North America east of the Mississippi River. Most of the state falls in the humid subtropical climate zone; however, the western, mountainous part of the state has a subtropical highland climate.\nHistory.\nNative Americans, lost colony, and permanent settlement.\nNorth Carolina was inhabited for at least 10,000 years by succeeding prehistoric Indigenous cultures. The Hardaway Site saw major periods of occupation dating to 10,000 years BCE. Before 200 AD, people were building earthwork platform mounds for ceremonial and religious purposes. Succeeding peoples, including those of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture, established by 1000 AD in the Piedmont and mountain region, continued to build this style of mounds. In contrast to some of the larger centers of the classic Mississippian culture in the area that became known as the western Carolinas, northeastern Georgia, and southeastern Tennessee, most of the larger towns had only one central platform mound. Smaller settlements had none, but were close to more prominent towns. This area became known as the homelands of the historic Cherokee people, who are believed to have migrated over time from the Great Lakes area.\nIn the 500\u2013700 years preceding European contact, the Mississippian culture built elaborate cities and maintained far-flung regional trading networks. Its largest city was Cahokia, which had numerous mounds for different purposes, a highly stratified society, and was located in present-day southwestern Illinois near the Mississippi River. Starting in 1540, the Native polities of the Mississippian culture fell apart and reformed as new groups, such as the Catawba, due to a series of destabilizing events known as the \"Mississippian shatter zone\". Introduction of colonial trading arrangements and hostile native groups from the north such as the Westo Indians hastened changes in an already tenuous regional hierarchy. As described by anthropologist Robbie Ethridge, the Mississippian shatter zone was a time of great instability in what is now the American South, caused by the instability of Mississippian chiefdoms, high mortality from new Eurasian diseases, conversion to an agricultural society and the accompanying population increase, and the emergence of Native \"militaristic slaving societies\".\nHistorically documented tribes in the North Carolina region include the Carolina Algonquian-speaking tribes of the coastal areas, such as the Chowanoc, Roanoke, Pamlico, Machapunga, and Coree, who were the first encountered by the English; the Iroquoian-speaking Meherrin, Cherokee, and Tuscarora of the interior; and Southeastern Siouan-speaking tribes, such as the Cheraw, Waxhaw, Saponi, Waccamaw, Cape Fear Indians, and Catawba of the Piedmont.\nIn the late 16th century, the first Spanish explorers traveling inland recorded meeting Mississippian culture people at Joara, a regional chiefdom near what later developed as Morganton. Records of Hernando de Soto attested to his meeting with them in 1540. In 1567, Captain Juan Pardo led an expedition to claim the area for the Spanish colony and to establish another route to reach silver mines in Mexico. Pardo made a winter base at Joara, which he renamed \"Cuenca\". His expedition built Fort San Juan and left a contingent of 30 Spaniards there, while Pardo traveled further. His forces built and garrisoned five other forts. He returned by a different route to Santa Elena on Parris Island, South Carolina, then a center of Spanish Florida. In the spring of 1568, natives killed all but seventy four of the Spaniards and burned the six forts in the interior, including Fort San Juan. Although the Spanish never returned to the interior, this effort marked the first European attempt at colonization of the interior of what became the United States. A 16th-century journal by Pardo's scribe Bandera, and archaeological findings since 1986 at Joara, have confirmed the settlement.\nAnglo-European settlement.\nIn 1584, Elizabeth I granted a charter to Sir Walter Raleigh, for whom the state capital is named, for land in present-day North Carolina (then part of the territory of Virginia). It was the second American territory that the English attempted to colonize. Raleigh established two colonies on the coast in the late 1580s, but both failed. The colony established in 1587 saw 118 colonists 'disappear' when John White was unable to return from a supply run during battles with the Spanish Armada. The fate of the \"Lost Colony\" of Roanoke Island remains one of the most widely debated mysteries of American history. Two native Chieftains, Manteo and Wanchese, of which the former helped the colonists and the latter was distrustful, had involvement in the colony and even accompanied Raleigh to England on a previous voyage in 1585. Manteo was also the first Indigenous North American to be baptized by English settlers. Upon White's return in 1590, neither native nor Englishman were to be found. Popular theory holds that the colonists either traveled away with or assimilated into local native culture. Virginia Dare, the first English person to be born in North America, was born on Roanoke Island on August 18, 1587; the surrounding Dare County is named for her.\nAs early as 1650, settlers from the Virginia colony had moved into the Albemarle Sound region. By 1663, King Charles\u00a0II of England granted a charter to start a new colony on the North American continent; this would generally establish North Carolina's borders. He named it \"Carolina\" in honor of his father, CharlesI. By 1665, a second charter was issued to attempt to resolve territorial questions. This charter rewarded the Lords Proprietors, eight Englishmen to whom King Charles II granted joint ownership of a tract of land in the state. All of these men either had remained loyal to the Crown or aided Charles's restoration to the English throne after Cromwell. In 1712, owing to disputes over governance, the Carolina colony split into North Carolina and South Carolina. North Carolina became a crown colony in 1729.\nMost of the English colonists had arrived as indentured servants, hiring themselves out as laborers for a fixed period to pay for their passage. In the early years the line between indentured servants and African slaves or laborers was fluid. Some Africans were allowed to earn their freedom before slavery became a lifelong status. Most of the free colored families formed in North Carolina before the Revolution were descended from unions or marriages between free whites and enslaved or free Africans or African-Americans. If the mothers were free, their children were born free. Many had migrated or were descendants of migrants from colonial Virginia. As the flow of indentured laborers to the colony decreased with improving economic conditions in Great Britain, planters imported more slaves, and the state's legal delineations between free and slave status tightened, effectively hardening the latter into a racial caste. Conditions for both slaves and workers worsened as the ranks of the former eclipsed the latter and expansion of farming operations into former Indigenous territories lowered prices. Unable to establish deep water ports such as at Charles Town and Norfolk, the economy's growth and prosperity was thus based on cheap labor and slave plantation systems, devoted primarily to the production of tobacco, then later cotton and textiles.\nIn 1738\u20131739, smallpox caused high fatalities among the Native Americans, who had no immunity to the new disease (it had become endemic over centuries in Europe). According to the historian Russell Thornton, \"The 1738 epidemic was said to have killed one-half of the Cherokee, with other tribes of the area suffering equally.\"\nColonial period.\nAfter the Spanish in the 16th century, the first permanent European settlers of North Carolina were English colonists who migrated south from Virginia. Virginia had grown rapidly and land was less available. Nathaniel Batts was documented as one of the first of these Virginian migrants. He settled south of the Chowan River and east of the Great Dismal Swamp in 1655. By 1663, this northeastern area of the Province of Carolina, known as the Albemarle Settlements, was undergoing full-scale English settlement. During the same period, the English monarch CharlesII gave provincial land grants to the Lords Proprietors, the group of noblemen who had helped restore him to the throne in 1660. These grants were predicated on an agreement that the Lords would use their influence to bring in colonists and establish ports of trade. This new Province of Carolina was named in honor and memory of his father, CharlesI (Latin: \"Carolus\").\nLacking a viable coastal port city due to geography, towns grew at a slower pace and remained small. By the late 17th century, Carolina was essentially two colonies, one centered in the Albemarle region in the north and the other located in the south around Charleston. In 1705 South Carolinian John Lawson purchased land on the Pamlico River and laid out Bath, North Carolina's first town. After returning to England, he published the book A New Voyage to Carolina, which became a travelogue and a marketing piece to encourage new colonists to Carolina. Lawson encouraged Baron Christoph Von Graffenried, the leader of a group of Swiss and German Protestants, to immigrate to Carolina. Von Graffenried purchased land between the Neuse and the Trent Rivers and established the town of New Bern. After an attack on New Bern in which hundreds were killed or injured, Lawson was caught then executed by Tuscarora Indians. A large revolt happened in the state in 1711, known as Cary's Rebellion. In 1712, North Carolina became a separate colony, and in 1729 it became a royal colony, with the exception of the Earl Granville holdings.\nIn June 1718, \"Queen Anne's Revenge\", the flagship of pirate Blackbeard, ran aground at Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina, in present-day Carteret County. After the grounding, her crew and supplies were transferred to smaller ships. In November 1718, after appealing to the governor of North Carolina, who promised safe-haven and a pardon, Blackbeard was killed in an ambush by troops from Virginia. In 1996, Intersal, Inc., a private maritime research firm, discovered the remains of a vessel likely to be the \"Queen Anne's Revenge\", which was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.\nNorth Carolina became one of the Thirteen Colonies and with the territory of South Carolina was originally known as the Province of North Carolina. The northern and southern parts of the original province separated in 1712, with North Carolina becoming a royal colony in 1729. Originally settled by small farmers, sometimes having a few slaves, who were oriented toward subsistence agriculture, the colony lacked large cities or towns. Pirates menaced the coastal settlements, but by 1718 piracy in the Carolinas was on the decline. Growth was strong in the middle of the 18th century, as the economy attracted Scots-Irish, Quaker, English and German immigrants. A majority of the North Carolina colonists generally supported the American Revolution, although there were some Loyalists. Loyalists in North Carolina were fewer in number than in some other colonies such as Georgia, South Carolina, Delaware, and New York.\nDuring colonial times, Edenton served as the state capital beginning in 1722, followed by New Bern becoming the capital in 1766. Construction of Tryon Palace, which served as the residence and offices of the provincial governor William Tryon, began in 1767 and was completed in 1771. In 1788, Raleigh was chosen as the site of the new capital, as its central location protected it from coastal attacks. Officially established in 1792 as both county seat and state capital, the city was named after Sir Walter Raleigh, sponsor of Roanoke, the \"lost colony\" on Roanoke Island. The population of the colony more than quadrupled from 52,000 in 1740 to 270,000 in 1780 from high immigration from Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, plus immigrants from abroad.\nNorth Carolina did not have any printer or print shops until 1749, when the North Carolina Assembly commissioned James Davis from Williamsburg Virginia to act as their official printer. Before this time the laws and legal journals of North Carolina were handwritten and were kept in a largely disorganized manner, prompting the hiring of Davis. Davis settled in New Bern, married, and in 1755 was appointed by Benjamin Franklin as North Carolina's first postmaster. In October of that year the North Carolina Assembly awarded Davis a contract to carry mail between Wilmington, North Carolina and Suffolk, Virginia. He was also active in North Carolina politics as a member of the Assembly and later as the Sheriff. Davis also founded and printed the \"North-Carolina Gazette\", North Carolina's first newspaper, printed in his printing house in New Bern.\nDifferences in the settlement patterns of eastern and western North Carolina, or the Atlantic coastal plain and uplands, affected the political, economic, and social life of the state from the 18th until the 20th century. Eastern North Carolina was settled chiefly by immigrants from rural England and Gaelic speakers from the Scottish Highlands. The Piedmont upcountry and western mountain region of North Carolina was settled chiefly by Scots-Irish, English, and German Protestants, the so-called \"cohee\". Arriving during the mid-to-late 18th century, the Scots-Irish, people of Scottish descent who migrated to and then emigrated from what is today Northern Ireland, were the largest non-English immigrant group before the Revolution; English indentured servants were overwhelmingly the largest immigrant group before the Revolution.\nRevolutionary War.\nDuring the American Revolutionary War, the English and Gaelic speaking Highland Scots of eastern North Carolina tended to remain loyal to the British Crown, because of longstanding business and personal connections with Great Britain. The English, Welsh, Scots-Irish, and German settlers of western North Carolina tended to favor American independence from Britain. British loyalists dubbed the Mecklenburg County area to be 'a hornet's nest' of radicals, birthing the name of the future Charlotte NBA team. On April 12, 1776, the colony became the first to instruct its delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence from the British Crown, through the Halifax Resolves passed by the North Carolina Provincial Congress. The date of this event is memorialized on the state flag and state seal. Throughout the Revolutionary War, fierce guerrilla warfare erupted between bands of pro-independence and pro-British colonists. In some cases the war was also an excuse to settle private grudges and rivalries.\nNorth Carolina had around 7,800 Patriots join the Continental Army under General George Washington; and an additional 10,000 served in local militia units under such leaders as General Nathanael Greene. There was some military action, especially in 1780\u201381. Many Carolinian frontiersmen had moved west over the mountains, into the Washington District (later known as Tennessee), but in 1789, following the Revolution, the state was persuaded to relinquish its claim to the western lands. It ceded them to the national government so the Northwest Territory could be organized and managed nationally.\nA major American victory in the war took place at King's Mountain along the North Carolina\u2013South Carolina border; on October 7, 1780, a force of 1,000 Patriots from western North Carolina (including what is today the state of Tennessee) and southwest Virginia overwhelmed a force of some 1,000 British troops led by Major Patrick Ferguson. Most of the soldiers fighting for the British side in this battle were Carolinians who had remained loyal to the Crown (they were called \"Tories\" or Loyalists). The American victory at King's Mountain gave the advantage to colonists who favored American independence, and it prevented the British Army from recruiting new soldiers from the Tories.\nThe road to Yorktown and America's independence from Great Britain led through North Carolina. As the British Army moved north from victories in Charleston and Camden, South Carolina, the Southern Division of the Continental Army and local militia prepared to meet them. Following General Daniel Morgan's victory over the British Cavalry Commander Banastre Tarleton at the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781, southern commander Nathanael Greene led British Lord Charles Cornwallis across the heartland of North Carolina, and away from the latter's base of supply in Charleston, South Carolina. This campaign is known as \"The Race to the Dan\" or \"The Race for the River\".\nIn the Battle of Cowan's Ford, Cornwallis met resistance along the banks of the Catawba River at Cowan's Ford on February 1, 1781, in an attempt to engage General Morgan's forces during a tactical withdrawal. Morgan had moved to the northern part of the state to combine with General Greene's newly recruited forces. Generals Greene and Cornwallis finally met at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in present-day Greensboro on March 15, 1781. Although the British troops held the field at the end of the battle, their casualties at the hands of the numerically superior Continental Army were crippling. Following this \"Pyrrhic victory\", Cornwallis chose to move to the Virginia coastline to get reinforcements, and to allow the Royal Navy to protect his battered army. This decision would result in Cornwallis' eventual defeat at Yorktown, Virginia, later in 1781. The Patriots' victory there guaranteed American independence. On November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the twelfth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.\nAntebellum period.\nAfter 1800, cotton and tobacco became important export crops. The eastern half of the state, especially the Coastal Plain region, developed a slave society based on a plantation system and slave labor. Planters owning large estates wielded significant political and socio-economic power in antebellum North Carolina. They placed their interests above those of the generally non-slave-holding yeoman farmers of North Carolina. While slaveholding was slightly less concentrated compared to some other Southern states, according to the 1860 census, more than 330,000 people, or 33% of the population out of 992,622 people in total, were enslaved African Americans. They lived and worked chiefly on plantations in the Piedmont and Coastal Plain regions of the state. In addition, 30,463 free people of color lived in the state. They were also mainly concentrated in the eastern coastal plain, especially at port cities such as Wilmington and New Bern, where a variety of jobs were available. Most were descendants from free African Americans who had migrated along with neighbors from Virginia during the 18th century. The majority were the descendants of unions in the working classes between white women, indentured servants or free, and African men, indentured, slave or free.\nAfter the American Revolution, Quakers and Mennonites worked to persuade slaveholders to free their slaves. Some were inspired by their efforts and the language of the Revolution to arrange for manumission of their slaves. The number of free people of color rose markedly in the first couple of decades after the Revolution. Many free people of color migrated to the frontier, along with their European-American neighbors, where the social system was looser. By 1810, nearly three percent of the free population consisted of free people of color, who numbered slightly more than 10,000. The western areas of North Carolina were mainly white families of European descent, especially Scotch-Irish, who operated small subsistence farms. In the early national period, the state became a center of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy, with a strong Whig presence, especially in the western part of the state. After Nat Turner's slave uprising in 1831, North Carolina and other southern states reduced the rights of free blacks. In 1835, the legislature withdrew their right to vote.\nIn mid-century, the state's rural and commercial areas were connected by the construction of a wooden plank road, known as a \"farmer's railroad\", from Fayetteville in the east to Bethania (northwest of Winston-Salem). On October 25, 1836, construction began on the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad to connect the port city of Wilmington with the state capital of Raleigh. In 1840, the state capitol building in Raleigh was completed, and still stands today.\nIn 1849, the North Carolina Railroad was created by act of the legislature to extend that railroad west to Greensboro, High Point, and Charlotte. During the Civil War, the Wilmington-to-Raleigh stretch of the railroad was vital to the Confederate war effort; supplies shipped into Wilmington were moved by rail through Raleigh to the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.\nAmerican Civil War.\nIn 1860, North Carolina was a slave state, in which one-third of the state's total population were African-American slaves. The state did not vote to join the Confederacy until President Abraham Lincoln called on it to invade its sister state, South Carolina, becoming the last or penultimate state to officially join the Confederacy. The title of \"last to join the Confederacy\" has been disputed; although Tennessee's informal secession on May 7, 1861, preceded North Carolina's official secession on May 20, the Tennessee legislature did not formally vote to secede until June 8, 1861.\nAround 125,000 troops from North Carolina served in the Confederate Army, and about 15,000 North Carolina troops (both black and white) served in Union Army regiments, including those who left the state to join Union regiments elsewhere. Over 30,000 North Carolina troops died from combat or disease during the war. Elected in 1862, Governor Zebulon Baird Vance tried to maintain state autonomy against Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Richmond. The state government was reluctant to support the demands of the national government in Richmond, and the state was the scene of only small battles. In 1865, Durham County saw the largest single surrender of Confederate soldiers at Bennett Place, when Joseph E. Johnston surrendered the Army of Tennessee and all remaining Confederate forces still active in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, totalling 89,270 soldiers.\nConfederate troops from all parts of North Carolina served in virtually all the major battles of the Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederacy's most famous army. The largest battle fought in North Carolina was at Bentonville, which was a futile attempt by Confederate General Joseph Johnston to slow Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's advance through the Carolinas in the spring of 1865. In April 1865, after losing the Battle of Morrisville, Johnston surrendered to Sherman at Bennett Place, in what is today Durham. North Carolina's port city of Wilmington, was the last Confederate port to fall to the Union, in February 1865, after the Union won the nearby Second Battle of Fort Fisher, its major defense downriver.\nThe first Confederate soldier to be killed in the Civil War was Private Henry Wyatt from North Carolina, in the Battle of Big Bethel in June 1861. At the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, the 26th North Carolina Regiment participated in Pickett/Pettigrew's Charge and advanced the farthest into Union lines of any Confederate regiment. During the Battle of Chickamauga, the 58th North Carolina Regiment advanced farther than any other regiment on Snodgrass Hill to push back the remaining Union forces from the battlefield. At Appomattox Court House in Virginia in April 1865, the 75th North Carolina Regiment, a cavalry unit, fired the last shots of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the Civil War. The phrase \"First at Bethel, Farthest at Gettysburg and Chickamauga, and Last at Appomattox\", later became used through much of the early 20th century.\nAfter secession, some North Carolinians refused to support the Confederacy. Some of the yeoman farmers chiefly in the state's mountains and western Piedmont region remained neutral during the Civil War, with others covertly supporting the Union cause during the conflict. Approximately 15,000 North Carolinians (both black and white) from across the state enlisted in the Union Army. Numerous slaves also escaped to Union lines, where they became essentially free.\nReconstruction era through late 19th century.\nFollowing the collapse of the Confederacy in 1865, North Carolina, along with other former Confederate States (except Tennessee), was put under direct control by the U.S. military and was relieved of its constitutional government and representation within the United States Congress in what is now referred to as the Reconstruction era. To earn back its rights, the state had to make concessions to Washington, one of which was ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment. Congressional Republicans during Reconstruction, commonly referred to as \"radical Republicans\", constantly pushed for new constitutions for each of the Southern states that emphasized equal rights for African-Americans. In 1868, a constitutional convention restored the state government of North Carolina. Though the Fifteenth Amendment was also adopted that same year, it remained in most cases ineffective for almost a century, not to mention paramilitary groups and their lynching with impunity.\nThe elections in April 1868 following the constitutional convention led to a narrow victory for a Republican-dominated government, with 19 African-Americans holding positions in the North Carolina State Legislature. In attempt to put the reforms into effect, the new Republican Governor William W. Holden declared martial law on any county allegedly not complying with law and order using the passage of the Shoffner Act.\nA Republican Party coalition of black freedmen, northern carpetbaggers and local scalawags controlled state government for three years. The white conservative Democrats regained control of the state legislature in 1870, in part by Ku Klux Klan violence and terrorism at the polls, to suppress black voting. Republicans were elected to the governorship until 1876, when the Red Shirts, a paramilitary organization that arose in 1874 and was allied with the Democratic Party, helped suppress black voting. More than 150 black Americans were murdered in electoral violence in 1876.\nPost\u2013Civil War-debt cycles pushed people to switch from subsistence agriculture to commodity agriculture. Among this time the notorious Crop-Lien system developed and was financially difficult on landless whites and blacks, due to high amounts of usury. Also due to the push for commodity agriculture, the free range was ended. Prior to this time people fenced in their crops and had their livestock feeding on the free range areas. After the ending of the free range people now fenced their animals and had their crops in the open.\nDemocrats were elected to the legislature and governor's office, but the Populists attracted voters displeased with them. In 1896 a biracial, Populist-Republican Fusionist coalition gained the governor's office and passed laws that would extend the voting franchise to blacks and poor whites. The Democrats regained control of the legislature in 1896 and passed laws to impose Jim Crow and racial segregation of public facilities. Voters of North Carolina's 2nd congressional district elected a total of four African-American congressmen through these years of the late 19th century.\nPolitical tensions ran so high a small group of white Democrats in 1898 planned to take over the Wilmington government if their candidates were not elected. In the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, white Democrats led around 2,000 of their supporters that attacked the black newspaper and neighborhood, killed an estimated 60 to 300 people, and ran off the white Republican mayor and aldermen. They installed their own people and elected Alfred M. Waddell as mayor, in the only successful coup d'\u00e9tat in United States history.\nIn 1899, the state legislature passed a new constitution, with requirements for poll taxes and literacy tests for voter registration which disenfranchised most black Americans in the state. Exclusion from voting had wide effects: it meant black Americans could not serve on juries or in any local office. After a decade of white supremacy, many people forgot North Carolina had ever had thriving middle-class black Americans. Black citizens had no political voice in the state until after the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed to enforce their constitutional rights. It was not until 1992 that another African American was elected as a U.S. Representative from North Carolina.\nEarly through mid-20th century.\nAfter the reconstruction era, North Carolina had become a one-party state, dominated by the Democratic Party. The state mainly continued with an economy based on tobacco, cotton textiles and commodity agriculture. Large towns and cities remained in few numbers. However, a major industrial base emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century, in the counties of the Piedmont Triad, based on cotton mills established at the fall line. Railroads were built to connect the new industrializing cities.\nThe state was the site of the first successful controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air flight, by the Wright brothers, near Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903.\nIn the first half of the 20th century, many African Americans left the state to go North for better opportunities, in the Great Migration. Their departure changed the demographic characteristics of many areas.\nNorth Carolina was hard hit by the Great Depression, but the New Deal programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt for cotton and tobacco significantly helped the farmers. After World War\u00a0II, the state's economy grew rapidly, highlighted by the growth of such cities as Charlotte, Raleigh, and Durham in the Piedmont region.\nResearch Triangle Park, established in 1959, serves as the largest research park in the United States. Formed near Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, the Research Triangle metro is a major area of universities and advanced scientific and technical research.\nThe Greensboro sit-ins in 1960 played a crucial role in the Civil Rights Movement to bring full equality to American blacks. By the late 1960s, spurred in part by the increasingly leftward tilt of national Democrats, conservative whites began to vote for Republican national candidates and gradually for more Republicans locally.\nLate 20th century to present.\nSince the 1970s, North Carolina has seen steady increases in population growth. This growth has largely occurred in metropolitan areas located within the Piedmont Crescent, in places such as Charlotte, Concord, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Durham and Raleigh. The Charlotte metropolitan area has experienced large growth mainly due to its finance, banking, and tech industries.\nBy the 1990s, Charlotte had become a major regional and national banking center. Towards Raleigh, North Carolina State, Duke University, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, have helped the Research Triangle area attract an educated workforce and develop more jobs.\nIn 1988, North Carolina gained its first professional sports franchise, the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The hornets team name stems from the American Revolutionary War, when British General Cornwallis described Charlotte as a \"hornet's nest of rebellion\". The Carolina Panthers of the National Football League (NFL) became based in Charlotte as well, with their first season being in 1995. The Carolina Hurricanes of the National Hockey League (NHL) moved to Raleigh in 1997, with their colors being the same as the NC State Wolfpack, who are also located in Raleigh.\nBy the late 20th century and into the early 21st century, economic industries such as technology, pharmaceuticals, banking, food processing, vehicle parts, and tourism started to emerge as North Carolina's main economic drivers. This marked a shift from the state's former main industries of tobacco, textiles, and furniture. Factors that played a role in this shift were globalization, the state's higher education system, national banking, the transformation of agriculture, and new companies moving to the state.\nGeography.\nNorth Carolina is bordered by South Carolina on the south, Georgia on the southwest, Tennessee on the west, Virginia on the north, and the Atlantic Ocean on the east. The United States Census Bureau places North Carolina in the South Atlantic division of the southern region. It has a total area of , of which is land and (9.66%) is water.\nNorth Carolina consists of three main geographic regions: the Atlantic coastal plain, occupying the eastern portion of the state; the central Piedmont region, and the mountain region in the west, which is part of the Appalachian Mountains. The coastal plain consists of more specifically defined areas known as the Outer Banks, a string of sandy, narrow barrier islands separated from the mainland by sounds or inlets, including Albemarle Sound and Pamlico Sound, the native home of the venus flytrap, and the inner coastal plain, where longleaf pine trees are native.\nSo many ships have been lost off Cape Hatteras that the area is known as the \"Graveyard of the Atlantic\"; more than a thousand ships have sunk in these waters since records began in 1526. The most famous of these is the \"Queen Anne's Revenge\" (flagship of the pirate Blackbeard), which went aground in Beaufort Inlet in 1718.\nThe coastal plain transitions to the Piedmont region along the Atlantic Seaboard fall line, the elevation at which waterfalls first appear on streams and rivers. The Piedmont region of central North Carolina is the state's most populous region, containing the six largest cities in the state by population. It consists of gently rolling countryside frequently broken by hills or low mountain ridges. Small, isolated, and deeply eroded mountain ranges and peaks are located in the Piedmont, including the Sauratown Mountains, Pilot Mountain, the Uwharrie Mountains, Crowder's Mountain, King's Pinnacle, the Brushy Mountains, and the South Mountains. The Piedmont ranges from about in elevation in the east to about in the west.\nThe western section of the state is part of the Blue Ridge Mountains of the larger Appalachian Mountain range. Among the subranges of the Blue Ridge Mountains located in the state are the Great Smoky Mountains and the Black Mountains. The Black Mountains are the highest in the eastern United States, and culminate in Mount Mitchell at , the highest point east of the Mississippi River.\nNorth Carolina has 17 major river basins. The five basins west of the Blue Ridge Mountains flow to the Gulf of Mexico, while the remainder flow to the Atlantic Ocean. Of the 17 basins, 11 originate within the state of North Carolina, but only four are contained entirely within the state's border\u2014the Cape Fear, the Neuse, the White Oak, and the Tar\u2013Pamlico basin.\nClimate.\nElevation above sea level is most responsible for temperature change across the state, with the mountainous regions being coolest year-round. The climate is also influenced by the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf Stream, especially in the coastal plain. These influences tend to cause warmer winter temperatures along the coast, where temperatures only occasionally drop below the freezing point at night. The coastal plain averages around of snow or ice annually, and in many years, there may be no snow or ice at all.\nThe Atlantic Ocean exerts less influence on the climate of the Piedmont region, which has hotter summers and colder winters than along the coast, though winters are still mild.\nNorth Carolina experiences severe weather both in summer and in winter, with summer bringing threat of hurricanes, tropical storms, heavy rain, and flooding. Destructive hurricanes that have hit North Carolina include Hurricane Fran, Hurricane Florence, Hurricane Floyd, Hurricane Hugo, and Hurricane Hazel, the latter being the strongest storm ever to make landfall in the state, as a Category4 in 1954. Hurricane Isabel ranks as the most destructive of the 21st century.\nNorth Carolina averages fewer than 20 tornadoes per year, many of them produced by hurricanes or tropical storms along the coastal plain. Tornadoes from thunderstorms are a risk, especially in the eastern part of the state. The western Piedmont is often protected by the mountains, which tend to break up storms as they cross over; the storms will often re-form farther east. A phenomenon known as \"cold-air damming\" often occurs in the northwestern part of the state, which can weaken storms but can also lead to major ice events in winter.\nIn April 2011, the worst tornado outbreak in North Carolina's history occurred. Thirty confirmed tornadoes touched down, mainly in the Eastern Piedmont and Sandhills, killing at least 24 people. In September 2019 Hurricane Dorian hit the area.\nParks and recreation.\nNorth Carolina provides a large range of recreational activities, from swimming at the beach to skiing in the mountains. North Carolina offers fall colors, freshwater and saltwater fishing, hunting, birdwatching, agritourism, ATV trails, ballooning, rock climbing, biking, hiking, skiing, boating and sailing, camping, canoeing, caving (spelunking), gardens, and arboretums. North Carolina has theme parks, aquariums, museums, historic sites, lighthouses, elegant theaters, concert halls, and fine dining.\nNorth Carolinians enjoy outdoor recreation using numerous local bike paths, 34 state parks, and 14 national parks. National Park Service units include the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, the Blue Ridge Parkway, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Cape Lookout National Seashore, Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site at Flat Rock, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site at Manteo, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Great Smoky Mountains Railroad, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park in Greensboro, Moores Creek National Battlefield near Currie in Pender County, the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, Old Salem National Historic Site in Winston-Salem, the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, and Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills.\nNational Forests include Uwharrie National Forest in central North Carolina, Croatan National Forest in Eastern North Carolina, Pisgah National Forest in the western mountains, and Nantahala National Forest in the southwestern part of the state.\nMajor cities.\nIn 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau released the 2023 population estimates for municipalities in North Carolina. Charlotte has the largest population, while Raleigh has the second-largest population in North Carolina.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nMost populous counties.\nAfter the 2020 census, Wake County\u2014with a population of 1,129,410\u2014became the most populous county in the state, overtaking Mecklenburg County\u2014with a population of 1,115,482\u2014by a margin of about 14,000. Both counties are still the only to have populations over one million in North Carolina and the Carolinas region.\nStatistical areas.\nNorth Carolina has four major combined statistical areas (CSA) with a population over 1\u00a0million (as of 2023):\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nThe United States Census Bureau determined the population of North Carolina was 10,439,388 at the 2020 census. Based on numbers in 2012 of the people residing in North Carolina 58.5% were born there; 33.1% were born in another state; 1.0% were born in Puerto Rico, U.S. island areas, or born abroad to American parent(s); and 7.4% were foreign-born.\nAccording to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 9,382 homeless people in North Carolina.\nThe top countries of origin for North Carolina's immigrants were Mexico, India, Honduras, China and El Salvador, as of 2018[ [update]].\nRace and ethnicity.\nAt the 2010 census, the racial composition of North Carolina was: White: 68.5% (65.3% non-Hispanic white, 3.2% White Hispanic), Black or African American: 21.5%, Latin and Hispanic American of any race: 8.4%, some other race: 4.3%, Multiracial American: 2.2%, Asian American: 2.2%, and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander: 1%. In 2020, North Carolina like much of the U.S. experienced a decline in its non-Hispanic white population; at the 2020 census, non-Hispanic whites were 62.2%, Blacks or African Americans 20.5%, American Indian and Alaska Natives 1.2%, Asians 3.3%, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders 0.1%, people from other race 5.9%, and multiracial Americans 6.8%.\nThe majority of the Black American population is concentrated in the urban areas and northeastern part of the state.\nNorth Carolina's Hispanic population has grown rapidly. The Hispanic population more than doubled in size between 1990 and 2000. Many of North Carolina's Hispanic residents are of Mexican descent. Many of North Carolina's newer Latino residents came from Mexico largely to work in agriculture, manufacturing, or on one of North Carolina's military installations.\nThe most common ancestries in North Carolina are African-American, American, German, English, and Irish.\nNorth Carolina has the eighth-largest Native American population in the country. The state is home to eight Native American tribes and four urban Native American organizations.\nLanguages.\nNorth Carolina is home to a spectrum of different dialects of Southern American English and Appalachian English.\nIn 2010, 89.66% (7,750,904) of North Carolina residents age five and older spoke English at home as a primary language, while 6.93% (598,756) spoke Spanish, 0.32% (27,310) French, 0.27% (23,204) German, and Chinese (which includes Mandarin) was spoken as a main language by 0.27% (23,072) of the population five and older. In total, 10.34% (893,735) of North Carolina's population age five and older spoke a mother language other than English. In 2019, 87.7% of the population aged 5 and older spoke English and 12.3% spoke another language. The most common non-English language was Spanish at the 2019 American Community Survey.\nReligion.\nNorth Carolina residents since the colonial era have historically been overwhelmingly Protestant\u2014first Anglican, then Baptist and Methodist. In 2010, the Southern Baptist Convention was the single largest Christian denomination, with 4,241 churches and 1,513,000 members. The second largest in 2024 was the Roman Catholic Church which is organised into two dioceses. In the west is the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte which includes Charlotte and has 530,000 members in 196 parishes. In the east is the Diocese of Raleigh with a total of 80 parishes and nearly 500,000 Catholics. The third largest was the United Methodist Church, with 660,000 members and 1,923 churches. The fourth largest was the Presbyterian Church (USA), with 186,000 members and 710 congregations; this denomination was brought by Scots-Irish immigrants who settled the backcountry in the colonial era. In 2020, the Southern Baptists remained the largest with 1,324,747 adherents, though Methodists and others were collectively overtaken by non/interdenominational Protestants numbering 1,053,564.\nIn 1845, the Baptists split into regional associations of the Northern United States and Southern U.S., over the issue of slavery. These new associations were the Northern Baptist Convention (today the American Baptist Churches USA) and Southern Baptist Convention. By the late 19th century, the largest Protestant denomination in North Carolina were Baptists. After emancipation, black Baptists quickly set up their own independent congregations in North Carolina and other states of the South, as they wanted to be free of white supervision. Black Baptists developed their own state and national associations, such as the National Baptist Convention. Other primarily African American Baptist conventions which grew in the state since the 20th century were the Progressive National Baptist Convention and Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship.\nMethodists (the second largest group among North Carolinian Protestants) were divided along racial lines in the United Methodist Church and African Methodist Episcopal Church. The Methodist tradition tends to be strong in the northern Piedmont, especially in populous Guilford County. Other prominent Protestant groups in North Carolina as of the Pew Research Center's 2014 study were non/interdenominational Protestants and Pentecostalism. The Assemblies of God and Church of God in Christ are the largest Pentecostal denominations operating in the state, while notable minorities include Oneness Pentecostals primarily affiliated with the United Pentecostal Church International.\nThe state also has a special history with the Moravian Church, as settlers of this faith (largely of German origin) settled in the Winston-Salem area in the 18th and 19th centuries. Historically Scots-Irish have had a strong presence in Charlotte and in Scotland County.\nA wide variety of non-Christian faiths are practiced by other residents in the state, including: Judaism, Islam, Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed, Buddhism, and Hinduism. The rapid influx of Northerners and immigrants from Latin America is steadily increasing ethnic and religious diversity within the state. The number of Roman Catholics and Jews in the state has increased, along with general religious diversity as a whole. There are also a substantial number of Quakers in Guilford County and northeastern North Carolina. Many universities and colleges in the state have been founded on religious traditions, and some currently maintain that affiliation, including:\nThe state also has several major seminaries, including the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, and the Hood Theological Seminary (AME Zion) in Salisbury.\nEconomy.\nNorth Carolina's 2018 total gross state product was $496 billion. Based on American Community Survey 2010\u20132014 data, North Carolina's median household income was $46,693. It ranked forty-first out of fifty states plus the District of Columbia for median household income. North Carolina had the fourteenth highest poverty rate in the nation at 17.6%, with 13% of families that were below the poverty line.\nThe state has a very diverse economy because of its great availability of hydroelectric power, its pleasant climate, and its wide variety of soils. The state ranks third among the South Atlantic states in population, but leads the region in industry and agriculture. North Carolina leads the nation in the production of tobacco.\nCharlotte, the state's largest city, is a major textile and trade center. According to a Forbes article written in 2013, employment in the \"Old North State\" has gained many different industry sectors. Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) industries in the area surrounding North Carolina's capital have grown 17.9 percent since 2001. Raleigh ranked the third best city for technology in 2020 due to the state's growing technology sector. In 2010, North Carolina's total gross state product was $424.9 billion, while the state debt in November 2012, according to one source, totaled $2.4 billion, while according to another, was in 2012 $57.8 billion. In 2011, the civilian labor force was at around 4.5 million with employment near 4.1 million.\nNorth Carolina is the leading U.S. state in production of flue-cured tobacco and sweet potatoes, and comes second in the farming of pigs and hogs, trout, and turkeys. In the three most recent USDA surveys (2002, 2007, 2012), North Carolina also ranked second in the production of Christmas trees.\nNorth Carolina has 15 metropolitan areas, and in 2010 was chosen as the third-best state for business by Forbes Magazine, and the second-best state by chief executive officer Magazine. Since 2000, there has been a clear division in the economic growth of North Carolina's urban and rural areas. While North Carolina's urban areas have enjoyed a prosperous economy with steady job growth, low unemployment, and rising wages, many of the state's rural counties have suffered from job loss, rising levels of poverty, and population loss as their manufacturing base has declined. According to one estimate, one-half of North Carolina's 100 counties have lost population since 2010, primarily due to the poor economy in many of North Carolina's rural areas. However, the population of the state's urban areas is steadily increasing.\nArts and culture.\nNorth Carolina has traditions in art, music, and cuisine. The nonprofit arts and culture industry generates $1.2billion in direct economic activity in North Carolina, supporting more than 43,600 full-time equivalent jobs and generating $119million in revenue for local governments and the state of North Carolina. North Carolina established the North Carolina Museum of Art as the first major museum collection in the country to be formed by state legislation and funding and continues to bring millions into the NC economy.\nOne of the more famous arts communities in the state is Seagrove, the handmade-pottery capital of the U.S., where artisans create handcrafted pottery inspired by the same traditions that began in this community more than two hundred years ago.\nMusic.\nNorth Carolina boasts a large number of noteworthy jazz musicians, some among the most important in the history of the genre. These include: John Coltrane, (Hamlet, High Point); Thelonious Monk (Rocky Mount); Billy Taylor (Greenville); Woody Shaw (Laurinburg); Lou Donaldson (Durham); Max Roach (Newland); Tal Farlow (Greensboro); Albert, Jimmy and Percy Heath (Wilmington); Nina Simone (Tryon); and Billy Strayhorn (Hillsborough).\nNorth Carolina is also famous for its tradition of old-time music, and many recordings were made in the early 20th century by folk-song collector Bascom Lamar Lunsford. Musicians such as the North Carolina Ramblers helped solidify the sound of country music in the late 1920s, while the influential bluegrass musician Doc Watson also hailed from North Carolina. Both North and South Carolina are hotbeds for traditional rural blues, especially the style known as the Piedmont blues.\nBen Folds Five originated in Winston-Salem, and Ben Folds still records and resides in Chapel Hill.\nThe British band Pink Floyd is named, in part, after Chapel Hill bluesman Floyd Council.\nThe Research Triangle area has long been a well-known center for folk, rock, metal, jazz and punk. James Taylor grew up around Chapel Hill, and his 1968 song \"Carolina in My Mind\" has been called an unofficial anthem for the state. Other famous musicians from North Carolina include J. Cole, DaBaby, 9th Wonder, Shirley Caesar, Roberta Flack, Clyde McPhatter, Nnenna Freelon, Link Wray, Warren Haynes, Jimmy Herring, Michael Houser, Eric Church, Future Islands, Randy Travis, Ryan Adams, Ronnie Milsap, Anthony Hamilton, The Avett Brothers, Charlie Daniels, and Luke Combs.\nMetal and punk acts such as Corrosion of Conformity, Between the Buried and Me, and Nightmare Sonata are native to North Carolina.\nEDM producer Porter Robinson hails from Chapel Hill.\nNorth Carolina is the home of more \"American Idol\" finalists than any other state: Clay Aiken (season two), Fantasia Barrino (season three), Chris Daughtry (season five), Kellie Pickler (season five), Bucky Covington (season five), Anoop Desai (season eight), Scotty McCreery (season ten), and Caleb Johnson (season thirteen). North Carolina also has the most \"American Idol\" winners with Barrino, McCreery, and Johnson.\nIn the mountains, the Brevard Music Center hosts choral, operatic, orchestral, and solo performances during its annual summer schedule.\nNorth Carolina has five professional opera companies: Opera Carolina in Charlotte, NC Opera in Raleigh, Greensboro Opera in Greensboro, Piedmont Opera in Winston-Salem, and Asheville Lyric Opera in Asheville. Academic conservatories and universities also produce fully staged operas, such as the A. J. Fletcher Opera Institute of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, the Department of Music of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and UNC Greensboro.\nAmong others, there are three high-level symphonic orchestras: NC Symphony in Raleigh, Charlotte Symphony, and Winston-Salem Symphony. The NC Symphony holds the North Carolina Master Chorale. The Carolina Ballet is headquartered in Raleigh, and there is also the Charlotte Ballet.\nThe state boasts three performing arts centers: DPAC in Durham, Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts in Raleigh, and the Blumenthal Performing Art Centers in Charlotte. They feature concerts, operas, recitals, and traveling Broadway musicals.\nShopping.\nNorth Carolina has a variety of shopping choices. SouthPark Mall in Charlotte is the largest and most upscale mall in the Carolinas, featuring multiple luxury tenants with their sole location in the state. Other major malls in Charlotte include Northlake Mall and Carolina Place Mall in nearby suburb Pineville. Other major malls throughout the state include Hanes Mall in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, The Thruway Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Crabtree Valley Mall, North Hills Mall, and Triangle Town Center in Raleigh; Friendly Center and Four Seasons Town Centre in Greensboro; Oak Hollow Mall in High Point; Concord Mills in Concord; Valley Hills Mall in Hickory; Cross Creek Mall in Fayetteville; and The Streets at Southpoint in Durham and Independence Mall in Wilmington, North Carolina, and Tanger Outlets in Charlotte, Nags Head, Blowing Rock, and Mebane, North Carolina.\nCuisine and agriculture.\nA culinary staple of North Carolina is pork barbecue. There are strong regional differences and rivalries over the sauces and methods used in making the barbecue. The common trend across Western North Carolina is the use of premium grade Boston butt. Western North Carolina pork barbecue uses a tomato-based sauce, and only the pork shoulder (dark meat) is used. Western North Carolina barbecue is commonly referred to as Lexington barbecue after the Piedmont Triad town of Lexington, home of the Lexington Barbecue Festival, which attracts more than 100,000 visitors each October. Eastern North Carolina pork barbecue uses a vinegar-and-red-pepper-based sauce and the \"whole hog\" is cooked, thus integrating both white and dark meat.\nKrispy Kreme, an international chain of doughnut stores, was started in North Carolina; the company's headquarters are in Winston-Salem. Pepsi-Cola was first produced in 1898 in New Bern. A regional soft drink, Cheerwine, was created and is still based in the city of Salisbury. Despite its name, the hot sauce Texas Pete was created in North Carolina; its headquarters are also in Winston-Salem. The Hardee's fast-food chain was started in Rocky Mount. Another fast-food chain, Bojangles', was started in Charlotte, and has its corporate headquarters there. A popular North Carolina restaurant chain is Golden Corral. Started in 1973, the chain was founded in Fayetteville, with headquarters located in Raleigh. Popular pickle brand Mount Olive Pickle Company was founded in Mount Olive in 1926. Fast casual burger chain Hwy 55 Burgers, Shakes & Fries also makes its home in Mount Olive. Cook Out, a popular fast-food chain featuring burgers, hot dogs, and milkshakes in a wide variety of flavors, was founded in Greensboro in 1989 and has begun expanding outside North Carolina. In 2013 \"Southern Living\" named Durham\u2013Chapel Hill the South's \"Tastiest City\".\nOver the last decade, North Carolina has become a cultural epicenter and haven for internationally prize-winning wine (Noni Bacca Winery), internationally prized cheeses (Ashe County), \"L'institut International aux Arts Gastronomiques: Conquerront Les Yanks les Truffes, January 15, 2010\" international hub for truffles (Garland Truffles), and beer making, as tobacco land has been converted to grape orchards while state laws regulating alcohol by volume (ABV) in beer allowed a jump from six to fifteen percent. The Yadkin Valley in particular has become a strengthening market for grape production, while Asheville recently won the recognition of being named \"Beer City USA\". Asheville boasts the largest number of breweries per capita of any city in the United States. Recognized and marketed brands of beer in North Carolina include Highland Brewing, Duck Rabbit Brewery, Mother Earth Brewery, Weeping Radish Brewery, Big Boss Brewing, Foothills Brewing, Carolina Brewing Company, Lonerider Brewing, and White Rabbit Brewing Company.\nNorth Carolina has large grazing areas for beef and dairy cattle. Truck farms can be found in North Carolina. A truck farm is a small farm where fruits and vegetables are grown to be sold at local markets. The state's shipping, commercial fishing, and lumber industries are important to its economy. Service industries, including education, health care, private research, and retail trade, are also important. Research Triangle Park, a large industrial complex located in the Raleigh-Durham area, is one of the major centers in the country for electronics and medical research.\nTobacco was one of the first major industries to develop after the Civil War. Many farmers grew some tobacco, and the invention of the cigarette made the product especially popular. Winston-Salem is the birthplace of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR), founded by R. J. Reynolds in 1874 as one of sixteen tobacco companies in the town. By 1914 it was selling 425 million packs of Camels a year. Today it is the second-largest tobacco company in the U.S. (behind Altria Group). RJR is an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Reynolds American Inc., which in turn is 42% owned by British American Tobacco.\nShips named for the state.\nSeveral ships have been named after the state, most famously in the Pacific Ocean theater of World War\u00a0II. Now decommissioned, she is part of the USS \"North Carolina\" Battleship Memorial in Wilmington. Another , a nuclear attack submarine, was commissioned in Wilmington on May 3, 2008.\nState parks.\nThe state maintains a group of protected areas known as the North Carolina State Park System, which is managed by the North Carolina Division of Parks & Recreation (NCDPR), an agency of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (NCDNCR).\nArmed forces installations.\nFort Bragg, near Fayetteville and Southern Pines, is a large and comprehensive military base and is the headquarters of the XVIII Airborne Corps, 82nd Airborne Division, and the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. Serving as the air wing for Fort Bragg is Pope Field, also located near Fayetteville.\nLocated in Jacksonville, Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, combined with nearby bases Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Cherry Point, MCAS New River, Camp Geiger, Camp Johnson, Stone Bay and Courthouse Bay, makes up the largest concentration of Marines and sailors in the world. MCAS Cherry Point is home of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing. Located in Goldsboro, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base is home of the 4th Fighter Wing and 916th Air Refueling Wing. One of the busiest air stations in the United States Coast Guard is located at the Coast Guard Air Station in Elizabeth City. Also stationed in North Carolina is the Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point in Southport.\nOn January 24, 1961, a B-52G broke up in midair and crashed after suffering a severe fuel loss, near Goldsboro, dropping two nuclear bombs in the process without detonation. In 2013, it was revealed that three safety mechanisms on one bomb had failed, leaving just one low-voltage switch preventing detonation.\nTourism.\nCharlotte is the most-visited city in the state, attracting 28.3million visitors in 2018. Area attractions include Carolina Panthers NFL football team and Charlotte Hornets basketball team, Carowinds amusement park, Catawba Two Kings Casino (in nearby Kings Mountain), Charlotte Motor Speedway, U.S. National Whitewater Center, Discovery Place, Great Wolf Lodge, Sea Life Aquarium, Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, Billy Graham Library, Carolinas Aviation Museum, Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, Levine Museum of the New South, McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Mint Museum, and the NASCAR Hall of Fame.\nEvery year the Appalachian Mountains attract several million tourists to the western part of the state, including the historic Biltmore Estate. The scenic Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smoky Mountains National Park are the two most visited national park and unit in the United States with more than 25million visitors in 2013. The City of Asheville is consistently voted as one of the top places to visit and live in the United States, known for its rich art deco architecture, mountain scenery and outdoor activities.\nIn Raleigh, many tourists visit the capital, African American Cultural Complex, Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh, Gregg Museum of Art & Design at NCSU, Haywood Hall House & Gardens, Marbles Kids Museum, North Carolina Museum of Art, North Carolina Museum of History, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, Raleigh City Museum, J. C. Raulston Arboretum, Joel Lane House, Mordecai House, Montfort Hall, and the Pope House Museum. The Carolina Hurricanes NHL hockey team is also located in the city.\nIn the Conover\u2013Hickory area, attractions include Hickory Motor Speedway, RockBarn Golf and Spa, home of the Greater Hickory Classic at Rock Barn; Catawba County Firefighters Museum, the SALT Block, and Valley Hills Mall.\nThe Piedmont Triad, or center of the state, is home to Krispy Kreme, Mayberry, Texas Pete, the Lexington Barbecue Festival, and Moravian cookies. The internationally acclaimed North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro attracts visitors to its animals, plants, and a 57-piece art collection along of shaded pathways in the world's largest-land-area natural-habitat park. Seagrove, in the central portion of the state, attracts many tourists along Pottery Highway (NC Hwy 705). MerleFest in Wilkesboro attracts more than 80,000 people to its four-day music festival; and Wet 'n Wild Emerald Pointe water park in Greensboro is another attraction.\nThe Outer Banks and surrounding beaches attract millions of people to the Atlantic beaches every year.\nThe mainland northeastern part of the state, having recently adopted the name the Inner Banks, is also known as the Albemarle Region, for the Albemarle Settlements, some of the first settlements on North Carolina's portion of the Atlantic Coastal Plain. The region's historic sites are connected by the Historic Albemarle Tour.\nTransportation.\nTransportation systems in North Carolina consist of air, water, road, rail, and public transportation including intercity rail via Amtrak and light rail in Charlotte. North Carolina has the second-largest state highway system in the country as well as the largest ferry system on the East Coast.\nNorth Carolina's airports serve destinations throughout the United States and international destinations in Canada, Europe, Central America, and the Caribbean. In July 2022, Charlotte Douglas International Airport, which serves as the second busiest hub for American Airlines, ranked as the 11th busiest airport in the United States with Raleigh-Durham International Airport, a focus-city for Delta Air Lines and formerly a hub for American Airlines and Midway Airlines, ranked as the 37th busiest airport in the United States.\nNorth Carolina has a growing passenger rail system with Amtrak serving most major cities. Charlotte is also home to North Carolina's only light rail system known as LYNX.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nElementary and secondary public schools are overseen by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. The North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction is the secretary of the North Carolina State Board of Education, but the board, rather than the superintendent, holds most of the legal authority for making public education policy. In 2009, the board's chairman also became the \"chief executive officer\" for the state's school system. North Carolina has 115 public school systems, each of which is overseen by a local school board. A county may have one or more systems within it. The largest school systems in North Carolina are the Wake County Public School System, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Guilford County Schools, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, and Cumberland County Schools. In total there are 2,425 public schools in the state, including over 200 charter schools. North Carolina Schools were segregated until the \"Brown v. Board of Education\" trial and the release of the Pearsall Plan.\nPreviously the SAT was the dominant university entrance examination students took. In 2004 76% of NC high school students took the SAT. In 2012 state law changed which required 11th grade students to take the ACT. The SAT testing rate fell to 46% in 2019. Because students now can take that test for free, the ACT became the dominant university entrance examination. This also caused SAT average scores to rise, as in 1996 North Carolina was 48th nationally in SAT scores, but the profile of students taking the SAT has gotten smaller.\nColleges and universities.\nIn 1795, North Carolina opened the first public university in the United States\u2014the University of North Carolina (now named the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). More than 200 years later, the University of North Carolina System encompasses 16 public universities, which are Appalachian State University, East Carolina University, Elizabeth City State University, Fayetteville State University, North Carolina A&T State University, North Carolina Central University, North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Asheville, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Western Carolina University, and Winston-Salem State University, and one public, boarding high school, the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. Along with its public universities, North Carolina has 58 public community colleges in its community college system. The largest university in North Carolina is currently North Carolina State University, with more than 34,000 students.\nNorth Carolina is also home to many well-known private colleges and universities, including Barton College, Belmont Abbey College (the only Catholic college in the Carolinas), Campbell University, Davidson College, Duke University, Elon University, Guilford College, High Point University, Laurel University, Lees-McRae College, Lenoir-Rhyne University (the only Lutheran university in North Carolina), Livingstone College, Meredith College, Methodist University, Montreat College, North Carolina Wesleyan University, Pfeiffer University, Salem College, Shaw University (the first historically black college or university in the South), University of Mount Olive, Wake Forest University, William Peace University, and Wingate University.\nNorth Carolina is also home to the oldest and largest folk school in the United States, the John C. Campbell Folk School.\nHealth.\nThe residents of North Carolina have a lower life expectancy than the U.S. national average of life expectancy. According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, in 2014, males in North Carolina lived an average of 75.4 years compared to the national average of 76.7 years. Females in North Carolina lived an average of 80.2 years compared to the national average of 81.5 years. Male life expectancy in North Carolina between 1980 and 2014 increased by an average of 6.9 years, slightly higher than the male national average of a 6.7-year increase. Life expectancy for females in North Carolina between 1980 and 2014 increased by 3.2 years, lower than the female national average of a 3.9-year increase.\nUsing 2017\u20132019 data, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation calculated that life expectancy for North Carolina counties ranged from 71.4 years for Swain County to 82.3 years for Orange County. Life expectancy for the state was 78.1 years. The Foundation estimated that life expectancy for the United States as a whole in 2021 was 79.2 years.\nMedia.\nEarly newspapers were established in the eastern part of North Carolina in the mid-18th century. The Fayetteville Observer, established in 1816, is the oldest newspaper still in publication in North Carolina. The Wilmington Star-News, established 1867, is the oldest continuously running newspaper. As of January 1, 2020, there were approximately 240 North Carolina newspapers in publication in the state of North Carolina.\nThe News and Observer was founded in 1871 and is the largest in circulation in the state. In 2006, The Charlotte Observer was acquired by the company, it is the second largest circulating news paper in the state.\nGovernment and politics.\nThe government of North Carolina is divided into three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. These consist of the Council of State (led by the Governor), the bicameral legislature (called the General Assembly), and the state court system (headed by the North Carolina Supreme Court). The state constitution delineates the structure and function of the state government. Most municipalities in North Carolina operate under council\u2013manager governments.\nNorth Carolina's party loyalties have undergone a series of important shifts in the last few years: While the 2010 midterms saw Tarheel voters elect a bicameral Republican majority legislature for the first time in more than a century, North Carolina has also become a Southern swing state in presidential races. Since Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter's comfortable victory in the state in 1976, the state had consistently leaned Republican in presidential elections until Democrat Barack Obama narrowly won the state in 2008. In the 1990s, Democrat Bill Clinton came within a point of winning the state in 1992 and also only narrowly lost the state in 1996. In 2000, Republican George W. Bush easily won the state by more than 13 points.\nBy 2008, demographic shifts, population growth, and increased liberalization in densely populated areas such as the Research Triangle, Charlotte, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Fayetteville, and Asheville, propelled Barack Obama to victory in North Carolina, the first Democrat to win the state since 1976. In 2012, North Carolina was again considered a competitive swing state, with the Democrats even holding their 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. However, Republican Mitt Romney ultimately eked out a two-point win in North Carolina, the only 2012 swing state Obama lost, and one of only two states (along with Indiana) to flip from Obama in 2008 to the GOP in 2012. Furthermore, Republican Donald Trump carried the state in 2016, 2020, and 2024.\nIn 2012, the state elected a Republican governor (Pat McCrory) and lieutenant governor (Dan Forest) for the first time in more than two decades, while also giving the Republicans veto-proof majorities in both the State House of Representatives and the State Senate. Several U.S. House of Representatives seats flipped control in 2012, with the Republicans holding nine seats to the Democrats' four. In the 2014 midterm elections, Republican David Rouzer won the state's 7th congressional district seat, increasing the congressional delegation party split to 10\u20133 in favor of the GOP, a split they retained in subsequent elections until 2020, when it narrowed to 8\u20135 in favor of the GOP. In 2016, despite Donald Trump winning the state, North Carolina voters elected Democrat Roy Cooper as governor, in part due to an unpopular law passed by former governor Pat McCrory known as HB2. Cooper went on to win re-election in 2020, despite Donald Trump narrowly winning the state again against Joe Biden.\nAs a result of the 2020 census, North Carolina gained another seat in the 118th United States Congress, for a total of 14. After the 2024 elections, the state was represented by 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats.\nIn a 2020 study, North Carolina was ranked as the 23rd easiest state for citizens to vote in.\nGerrymandering.\nThe state has been sued for racially gerrymandering the districts, which resulted in minority voting power being diluted in some areas, resulting in skewed representation. In 2000, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina ruled that the 12th congressional district was an illegal racial gerrymander. This was again appealed, now as \"Easley v. Cromartie\". The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Eastern District of North Carolina in 2001 and ruled that the 12th district boundaries were not racially based but was a partisan gerrymander. They said this was a political question that the courts should not rule upon.\nIn 2015, federal courts again ordered redistricting. Two lawsuits challenging the state congressional district map were led by \"two dozen voters, the state Democratic Party, the state chapter of the League of Women Voters, and the interest group Common Cause\". They contend that the redistricting resulted in deliberate under-representation of a substantial portion of voters. This case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in March 2019, which also heard a related partisan gerrymandering case from Maryland.\nOn February 4, 2022, the North Carolina Supreme Court struck down the congressional and state legislative district maps drawn by the GOP-controlled General Assembly on terms of partisan gerrymandering in a 4\u20133 ruling. Later that month, a panel of three former judges chosen by the Wake County Superior Court drew and approved a remedial congressional map after the new map proposed by the General Assembly was struck down by the North Carolina Supreme Court. Though, the state legislative maps proposed by the General Assembly were allowed to be used. The General Assembly would then redraw all three maps for the 2024 elections in the state.\nOn April 28, 2023, the North Carolina Supreme Court\u2014after Republicans gained a majority in the court following the 2022 judicial elections\u2014overturned the same ruling in a 5\u20132 decision, which cleared the way for gerrymandering in the next redistricting cycle. New maps were approved by the General Assembly on October 25, 2023. All three new maps heavily favor the GOP, with allegations of racial bias made against the maps as well.\nIn November 2023, a lawsuit was filed against the North Carolina Senate district map\u2014specifically the 1st and 2nd Senate districts\u2014in the Eastern District of North Carolina, arguing the map violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In December 2023, two lawsuits were filed in the Middle District of North Carolina, with the first challenging the 1st, 6th, 12th, and 14th congressional districts in the map, and the second, challenging multiple specific districts in all three maps, as racial gerrymanders. Both lawsuits were consolidated together in March 2024.\nOn January 26, 2024\u2014regarding the lawsuit currently in the Eastern District of North Carolina\u2014a preliminary injunction to block the current North Carolina Senate district map was denied, citing the \"Purcell\" principle. The ruling was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which upheld the lower court's decision on March 28, 2024. The lawsuit will continue in the district court, but no ruling will be made until after the 2024 elections.\nSports.\nNorth Carolina is home to four major league sports franchises: the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League, the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association, and Charlotte FC of Major League Soccer are based in Charlotte, while the Raleigh-based Carolina Hurricanes play in the National Hockey League. The Panthers and Hurricanes are the only two major professional sports teams that have the same geographical designation while playing in different metropolitan areas. The Hurricanes are the only major professional team from North Carolina to have won a league championship, having captured the Stanley Cup in 2006. North Carolina is also home to two other top-level professional teams \u2014 the Charlotte Hounds of Major League Lacrosse and the North Carolina Courage of the National Women's Soccer League.\nWhile North Carolina has no Major League Baseball team, it does have numerous Minor League Baseball teams, with the highest level of play coming from the Triple-A Charlotte Knights and Durham Bulls. Additionally, North Carolina has minor league teams in other team sports including soccer and ice hockey, most notably North Carolina FC and the Charlotte Checkers, both of which play in the second tier of their respective sports.\nIn addition to professional team sports, North Carolina has a strong affiliation with NASCAR and stock-car racing, with Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord hosting two Cup Series races every year. Charlotte also hosts the NASCAR Hall of Fame, while Concord is the home of several top-flight racing teams, including Hendrick Motorsports, Roush Fenway Racing, GMS Racing, Stewart-Haas Racing, and Chip Ganassi Racing. Numerous other tracks around North Carolina host races from low-tier NASCAR circuits as well.\nGolf is a popular summertime leisure activity, and North Carolina has hosted several important professional golf tournaments. Pinehurst Resort in Pinehurst has hosted a PGA Championship, Ryder Cup, two U.S. Opens, and one U.S. Women's Open. The Wells Fargo Championship is a regular stop on the PGA Tour and is held at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, and Quail Hollow has also played host to the PGA Championship. The Wyndham Championship is played annually in Greensboro at Sedgefield Country Club.\nCollege sports are also popular in North Carolina, with 18 schools competing at the Division I level. The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is headquartered in Greensboro, and both the ACC Football Championship Game (Charlotte) and the ACC men's basketball tournament (Greensboro) were most recently held in North Carolina. Additionally, the city of Charlotte is home to the National Junior College Athletics Association's (NJCAA) headquarters. College basketball is very popular in North Carolina, buoyed by the Tobacco Road rivalries between ACC members North Carolina, Duke, North Carolina State, and Wake Forest. The ACC Championship Game and the Duke's Mayo Bowl are held annually in Charlotte's Bank of America Stadium, featuring teams from the ACC and the Southeastern Conference. Additionally, the state has hosted the NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four on two occasions, in Greensboro in 1974 and in Charlotte in 1994.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["5122699", "1297662", "21650"], "permutation_1": ["1297662", "21650", "5122699"], "permutation_2": ["5122699", "21650", "1297662"], "permutation_3": ["21650", "1297662", "5122699"]}
{"id": "3hop1__789772_355553_476740", "docs_added": {"19360387": "Noble Savage (album)\nNoble Savage is the third studio album of the American heavy metal band Virgin Steele, released in 1985 by Cobra Records.\nDevelopment.\nBefore the recording of \"Noble Savage\", original guitarist Jack Starr resigned from the band and was replaced by Edward Pursino, an old friend of band frontman David DeFeis, whose guitar playing immediately fit very well with Virgin Steele's music and style. Pursino's contribution came also in the form of new musical ideas and compositions, and he is still a mainstay in Virgin Steele's line-up. DeFeis considers this album one of the most important in the history of the band.\n\"Noble Savage\" was the first album where the band was completely satisfied with its music and sound. It is also the first album on which the current musical style of the band is fully manifested, containing grandiose compositions with multi-layered keyboard sound and more sophisticated arrangements. \"Noble Savage\" has become one of the most popular Virgin Steele albums and it includes the songs \"We Rule the Night\" and \"Noble Savage\", which the band still plays in concert.\nReissues.\n\"Noble Savage\" was reissued in 1997 on CD by Noise Records with six bonus tracks. The remastered edition of 2008 by Dockyard 1 added two other extra tracks. In May 2011, the album was reissued once more by Steamhammer Records, a subsidiary of SPV, with the same track list as the 1997 release, but with an added bonus CD containing 13 additional tracks.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "41770159": "Angels of the Apocalypse\nAngels of the Apocalypse is the second full-length album by Timo Tolkki's Finnish metal opera project Avalon, released on May 16, 2014 in Europe and four days later in North America.\nIt is the second part of the trilogy created by Tolkki, written as a prequel to the previous album \"The Land of New Hope\".\nAs with the previous effort, several heavy metal singers were invited to play the characters of the story of the album, with female vocalist Elize Ryd of Amaranthe reprising her role and Floor Jansen (Nightwish, ReVamp) playing the main character. The rest of the cast includes Fabio Lione (Rhapsody of Fire, Angra), David DeFeis (Virgin Steele), Simone Simons (Epica), Caterina Nix (solo Chilean singer who is having her debut album produced by Timo Tolkki) and Zachary Stevens (ex-Savatage, Circle II Circle).\nBackground and recording.\nThe album started to be composed in August 2013 in Greece, to where Timo travelled to seek inspiration.\nIn October 2013, Timo Tolkki launched a news website for the project in which he announced the album, which was provisionally titled \"Avalon II\". Tolkki also announced he would be working with former Stratovarius bandmates Tuomo Lassila (drums) and Antti Ikonen (keyboards).\nIn late January, Tolkki revealed the name of the album and the remaining singers. Timo also announced that there will be a contest for guitar and keyboard players, with the winners getting a chance to perform a solo with him in one of the songs.\nOnce again, the artwork was created by French artist Stanis W. Decker.\nTimo stated he created some songs with a specific singer in mind. The title-track will clock around 10:00. He also described the music of the album as \"darker and heavier\" than its predecessor, which was necessary due to the \"Apocalyptic scenes described in the lyrics\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "19360420": "David DeFeis\nAmerican heavy metal singer\nDavid DeFeis (born January 4, 1961) is an American singer, songwriter and producer. He is the main composer, leader and sole constant member of the heavy metal band Virgin Steele.\nBiography.\nDeFeis comes from a theatrical family: his father is a Shakespearian actor who runs the theatre company \"The Arena Players Theatre\" while his sister Doreen is a gifted opera singer who performs all over Europe.\nA big fan of European classical music, at 9\u201310 years old he was introduced to rock music by hearing the band Stalk, with his brother Damon (on organ and piano) and his sister Danae (on vocals), playing in the basement beneath his room. Damon DeFeis was later in the band Creation with future Kiss drummer Eric Carr, and died in the Gulliver's nightclub fire in 1974. \nHe began piano lessons at the age of eight. By age eleven, he began his career with Long Island's local heavy metal band Phoenix.\nAt 16 years old, he met for the first time his future partner Edward Pursino when DeFeis's band at the time, Mountain Ash, was auditioning for a gig at the high school dance. Mountain Ash was mainly a Black Sabbath cover band and, after the performance of the song \"War Pigs\", Pursino came over and introduced himself to DeFeis.\nAt the beginning of the 1980s, together with Jack Starr and Joey Ayvazian, he started the first line-up of the band Virgin Steele. They debuted in 1982 with the song \"Children of the Storm\" included in the compilation \"U.S. Metal Vol. II\". \nIn 1985, the guitarist Edward Pursino replaced Starr. Among the years, in their longtime relationship in Virgin Steele, DeFeis and Pursino released a lot of heavy metal classics such as the albums: \"Noble Savage\", \"Invictus\", \"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part I\", \"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part II\".\nDeFeis collects swords: his collection includes more than 20 items. In studio, sometimes he uses his swords to create particular effects for the Virgin Steele songs, and during the concerts he usually burns a sword on stage.\nVoice and musical style.\nDeFeis is a classically trained pianist, with a bachelor's degree in composition from S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook. As vocalist, he is self-taught, possessing around four octaves and a four notes: E2-B6. He said he was very much influenced by guitar players like Jimmy Page, Brian May and Eddie Van Halen, because he wanted to do with his voice what they did with their guitars. He is also influenced by rock singers like Freddie Mercury, Robert Plant, David Coverdale, Ronnie James Dio and Ian Gillan.\nThe major part of the lyrics DeFeis writes are mythological, dealing with subjects from especially Greek, Sumerian and Christian mythology. All of them are based on real life in some form or another.\nMetal opera and theatre.\nBetween the end of the 1990s and the 2000s (decade), he wrote music for actors based on the Oresteia and the Greek myths related by Aeschylus. According with German artists Walter Weyers and Martina Krawulsky, with the name \"Klytaimnestra\": \"The House of Atreus\" Metal Opera (musically available on the Virgin Steele's albums \"The House of Atreus Act I\", \"The House of Atreus Act II\") was performed on stage in Germany theaters by Landestheater Production.\nThe premiere of \"Klytaimnestra\" in Memmingen, June 5, 1999, has been the first ever regular musical theatre show based on heavy metal concepts.\nAfter \"Klytaimnestra\" success, David DeFeis & Landestheater Production extracted a second metal opera musical, named \"The Rebels\", from the previous Virgin Steele's albums of the Marriage of Heaven and Hell trilogy (\"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part I\", \"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part II\", \"Invictus\").\nIn 2003, the same team released a third Metal Opera, named \"Lilith\", based on the material of album \"Visions of Eden\". \"Visions of Eden\" was later on published in CD in 2006.\nProducer.\nDeFeis owns his personal recording studio called: \"The Hammer of Zeus\" (sometimes also called \"The Wrecking Ball Of Thor\").\nVirgin Steele's albums are produced by DeFeis.\nHe also produced albums released by other artists such as: \"Out of the Darkness\" and \"No Turning Back\" by Jack Starr, \"Nightmare Theatre\" by Exorcist, \"Stay Ugly\" by Piledriver, \"The Sign of the Jackal\" by Damien Thorn, \"Sin Will Find You Out\" by Original Sin.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "37197642": "Savages (band)\nEnglish rock band\nSavages are an English rock band that formed in 2011 in London. Their debut album, \"Silence Yourself\" was released on 6 May 2013 via Matador Records. It reached number 19 in the UK Albums Chart in May 2013, and was critically acclaimed. It peaked at number 5 on the Irish and the UK Independent Albums Chart, and at number 13 on the US \"Billboard\" Independent Albums chart. The band's second album \"Adore Life\", was released on 22 January 2016. Both albums were nominated for the Mercury Prize, in 2013 and 2016 respectively.\nThe band has not released new music since 2016 or performed live since 2017.\nHistory.\nSavages are a rock band from London. The band's guitarist Gemma Thompson had come up with the name for the band and had been discussing the idea with singer Jehnny Beth for almost a year. Thompson says the band's name was derived from books, such as \"Lord of the Flies\", that she read when she was younger. The band was eventually formed in October 2011 and they had their first gig in January 2012, supporting rock band British Sea Power. Their manager John Best also manages Sigur Ros. \"The Observer\" has said of Savages: \"it's not exactly sexy, it's not funny and they're not going to be rolling around in mud like the Slits. But it's the closest thing to art that \"post-punk\"... has offered in a while\". The \"New Musical Express\" described their performances as \"frottage-inducingly intense affairs\".\nThe group's first released tracks, a double A-side in June 2012, were \"Flying to Berlin\" and \"Husbands\" on the Pop Noire label. \"The Guardian\" wrote: \"Husbands makes us dream of what it must have been like to have been around to hear, in real time, the debut releases by Public Image Ltd, Magazine, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Joy Division, to feel, as those incredible records hit the shops, that unearthly power and sense of a transmission from a satellite reality.\" In October, their concert at the CMJ Music Marathon in New York received good reviews. The \"Chicago Reader\" noted that their set was \"influenced by Siouxsie & the Banshees, but with an anthemic quality that makes me think of PJ Harvey and heavy doses of the rhythmic jaggedness and angularity of British postpunk.\" The group expressed their liking for these bands, and added: \"We listened to a lot of different music [...] Our influences are male and female in equal measure.\" \nOn 9 December 2012, the BBC announced that the band had been nominated for the Sound of 2013 poll.\nThe band's first album, \"Silence Yourself\", was released on 6 May 2013 via Beth's own label Pop Noire and Matador Records.\nSavages played on the second day of the Coachella Music and Arts Festival in 2013 and were well received by reviewers. In 2014 the band, together with the Japanese art-rock four-piece Bo Ningen, performed \"Words To The Blind\", a sonic poem where both bands play simultaneously.\nOn two occasions the band asked local choreographers in London and New York City to perform a dance piece on a 30-minute version of their track \u2018Dead Nature\u2019 in the middle of the crowd. In a Pop Matters interview with Guy Mankowski the band discussed how at another of their events at the Ministry of Sound the crowd were placed around the musicians in order to \u2018create total immersion and intimacy\u2019.\n\"Husbands\" was featured during the end credits of the 2015 science fiction film \"Ex Machina\".\nIn July 2015, Savages, A Dead Forest Index and choreographer/dance artist Fernanda Mu\u00f1oz-Newsome created two nights of performance as part of \"Station to Station: A 30-day Happening\" at the Barbican Centre in London. The performances took place in the Barbican Gallery and incorporated music, poetry, dance and the interplay of light and darkness. The performances were recorded and released on vinyl at Station to Station.\nIn November 2016, the band curated their own program during the tenth Anniversary Edition of Le Guess Who? Festival in Utrecht, The Netherlands. The program included performances by Beak, Tim Hecker, Jessy Lanza, Bo Ningen and Hannah Peel.\nThe band's second album \"Adore Life\", was released on 22 January 2016 via Matador Records. The band then went on a world tour in support of the album, wrapping in July 2017 at Presqu'\u00eele de Malsaucy in Belfort, France. The band has not performed together or released new material since then, with each member instead focusing on other projects.\nSide projects.\nBeth released her first solo album \"To Love Is to Live\" in June 2020. She also actively teamed up with other musicians, such as the Strokes' frontman Julian Casablancas; as duet singer for a Sort Sol and Lydia Lunch cover, \"Boy/Girl\", Trentem\u00f8ller; as featured artist in the song \"Complicated\" and as singer-songwriter for the song \"River in Me\", and Damon Albarn of Gorillaz; as featured artist, in the second single from album \"Humanz\", \"We Got the Power\" and with IDLES for their song \"Ne Touche Pas Moi\" on their 2020 album Ultra Mono. In 2017, she revealed a collaboration with Primal Scream front man Bobby Gillespie for her upcoming solo works. The two later made a studio album together, \"Utopian Ashes\", in 2021.\nHassan formed an experimental electronic duo with fellow bassist Kendra Frost as Kite Base in 2015. The band released their debut album, \"Latent Whispers\", in May 2017. Together with Milton, Hassan also formed Otomo X, an experimental collaborative group with London-based DJ and producer Martin Dubka. Milton and Hassan also formed a duo, 180dB, in 2018. Their debut single, \"Road Trip,\" featured former Perfect Pussy vocalist Meredith Graves and Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner. Hassan began her solo project, Esya, in 2019.\nIn June 2017, Thompson announced the introduction recordings/sketches of her solo project, Bashan, formed over several years whilst recording and touring extensively with Savages. She also worked with filmmaker and director Nick Ebeling, completing her first score for a 2016 American documentary film \"Along For The Ride\", which premiered at Venice Film Festival in 2016.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "10054454": "Conway Savage\nAustralian musician (1960\u20132018)\nConway Victor Savage (27 July 1960 \u2013 2 September 2018) was an Australian rock musician. He was a member of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, providing piano, organ & backing vocals from 1990 to 2017.\nSavage released solo albums entitled \"Nothing Broken\" (2000) & \"Wrong Man's Hands\" (2004) as well as a compilation called \"Rare Songs & Performances 1989\u20132004\". He also collaborated with other artists such as Suzie Higgie for \"Soon Will Be Tomorrow\" in 1998 & \"Quickie For Ducky\" by Amanda Fox & Robert Tickner in 2007.\nBiography.\nConway Victor Savage was born on 27 July 1960 and grew up in country Victoria where his parents were publicans. His brother, Frank Savage, is a part-time rock music cabaret singer and builder. His niece, Cash Savage, is the lead singer of the band Cash Savage and the Last Drinks. Savage began playing piano in his early teens in the dining room of one of the pubs his parents owned. He later recalled \"I just really enjoyed it ... I could just sit down and play it and play it \u2013 it's a beautiful relaxation, until this day. But it wasn't like I was playing in the pub for nickels and dimes or anything. I was really embarrassed about it and I kept it pretty quiet\".\nFrom 1980 to 1981, Savage was on piano and backing vocals in Happy Orphans, with Jim White on drums. He was also in Scrap Museum over a similar time period. From 1982 to 1986 he was in a country music band, The Feral Dinosaurs, again with White. Other members of that group were Nick Danyi on saxophone and vocals; Dave Last on double bass and vocals; and Jim Shugg on guitar (ex-People with Chairs up Their Noses). The group issued a track, \"Blue Day\", on a various artists' compilation album, \"Asleep at the Wheel\" (1984). A single, \"Ramblin' Man\", followed before they released an extended play, \"You've all Got a Home to Go To\", in December 1985. Also in the 1980s he played in the Melbourne-based country-rock band, Dust on the Bible, with his sister-in-law Jane (Frank's wife) as lead vocalist. In 1988, with Last, he formed Dave Last and The Legendary Boy Kings, which included Bruce Kane on drums; Manny Markogiannakos on guitar; and Shane Walsh on bass.\nIn 1989 Conway Savage joined Dave Graney and the White Buffaloes on keyboards and played with them for all of that year, including recording the album My Life On The Plains for Fire Records. It was recorded at Sing Sing Studios in Richmond, Melbourne and was produced by Phil Vinall from the UK. Other members of the band included Rod Hayward on guitar and Chris Walsh ex of the Moodists (as were Dave Graney and Clare Moore). Savage joined Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds in 1990 on piano, organ and backing vocals to promote their sixth album, \"The Good Son\" (April 1990). He has since appeared on their studio albums including \"Henry's Dream\" (April 1992), \"Let Love In\" (April 1994), \"Murder Ballads\" (February 1996), \"The Boatman's Call\" (March 1997), \"No More Shall We Part\" (April 2001) and \"Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus\" (September 2004). In October 1995 Conway contributed lead vocals for \"The Willow Garden\", a B-side of the single, \"Where the Wild Roses Grow\". Due to the overall minimal piano parts on the band's fourteenth release, \"Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!\" (March 2008), Conway was used on backing vocals and hand claps.\nThrough the late 1980s and into the 1990s, he also guested on albums and singles for various fellow Australian musicians, including Kim Salmon, Dave Graney (\"My Life on the Plain\", 1989), David McComb (\"The Message\" EP, 1991), Spencer P. Jones (\"Rumour of Death\", 1994), and Robert Forster (\"I Had a New York Girlfriend\", 1995). Savage started to record his own solo material from late 1992, when he released a self-titled four-track EP. He provided lead vocals, piano and organ; and was assisted by fellow Bad Seeds members: Martyn P. Casey on bass guitar; and Mick Harvey on drums, guitar and backing vocals.\nIn late 1995, he linked up with singer-songwriter-guitarist Suzie Higgie (of Falling Joys) for the collaborative album \"Soon Will Be Tomorrow\". It was produced by Higgie's husband Matt Crosbie. Its release was delayed until after Falling Joys disbanded and appeared in June 1998 on Anchor & Hope, distributed by Shock Records. Liz Armitage of \"Canberra Times\" described the album as an \"almost country-medieval record\". Australian musicologist Ian McFarlane felt it was \"a low-key and low-fi album of soft-hued country 'n' blues tunes\" containing \"sparse folk/pop tunes and quiet love songs\". The duo toured to promote the album.\nSavage released his debut full-length album \"Nothing Broken\" on his own label, Beheaded Communications, in 2000. He used Casey and Harvey; together with Charlie Owen on banjo and guitars (acoustic and electric); and Tony Wyzenbeek on harmonica. It was co-produced by Savage and his engineer, Dave McCluney. The musicians were recorded without Savage's vocals, which were added later, but just a piano guide track. A reviewer at 16horsepower.com felt \"This somewhat blindfolded approach to the songs, results in a fresh, impromptu feel to this stately, contemplative album. Spontaneity has always been an essential element in the recording process for Savage, and this daring approach is vindicated once more\". In August 2002 it was re-released in Europe by Cargo Records.\nSavage's next solo album \"Wrong Man's Hands\", released in 2004, was recorded from late 2003 to early the next year on an 8-track in a room above the Union Club Hotel, Fitzroy, with members of Melbourne band The Stream, Amanda Fox and Robert Tickner. He admitted that he used a little James Joyce in one of his lyrics \"but please don't sue me\u00a0... I probably owe you the price of a cup of coffee\u00a0... some of his words drifted into my imagination with the songs and next thing they \u2013 they just fitted like a glove and I just went with it\". Savage's 2005 compilation album \"Rare Songs & Performances 1989\u20132004\" traced his various studio and live material recorded in Australia and Europe. Guest musicians include Casey, Fox, Harvey, Jones, Tickner, and White.\nSavage, Fox and Tickner issued a collaborative album \"Quickie for Duckie\" in 2007, which was followed by Savage's solo effort \"Live in Ireland\" the next year. It had been recorded live at the Glens Centre Manorhamilton, Leitrim on 18 October 2008. \"NME\"'s Edwin McFee noted that Savage's vocals are \"a bit like sand and glue. He may not be blessed with the purest set of pipes, but his quivering, piano-led renditions of songs from his last four albums frame his ragged, whiskey-soaked vocals perfectly\".\nIn 2010, Savage, Fox and Tickner issued the six-track EP \"Pussy's Bow\", which had been recorded in Ireland's Tumbleweed Studios in Dundalk in the previous August. Recording engineers were Derek Turner and Jason Varley; while Savage supplied lead vocals, piano and keyboards; Fox was on organ, accordion, percussion and backing vocals; and Tickner delivered guitars and backing vocals. I-94 Bar's Barman reviewed the EP \"If, like me, you think of him principally as Nick Cave's piano player, then you need to take a deeper dive ... [it] blows away some of the preconceptions of him as solely a country artist or (gasp) a Goth ... [it] is nothing but a record of contrasting moods. And a very good one\".\nSavage underwent medical and surgical treatment for a brain tumour in Brooklyn, NY in 2017. He died, aged 58, on 2 September 2018. \n\"Ghosteen\" (2019), the Bad Seeds' seventeenth album, was dedicated to Savage.\nDiscography.\nConway Savage is credited with: organ, piano, keyboards, backing vocals, guitar, hand clapping, composer, producer.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "53808293": "Cash Savage and the Last Drinks\nAustralian band from Melbourne\nCash Savage and the Last Drinks is an Australian band from Melbourne, formed in 2008 by singer and guitarist Cash Savage. Currently, the lineup also includes guitarists Joe White and Dougal Shaw, fiddlist Kat Mear, percussionist Rene Mancuso, keyboardist Roshan Khozouei and bassist Nick Finch. They have released five studio albums and one live album: \"Wolf\" (2010), \"The Hypnotiser\" (2013), \"One of Us\" (2016), \"Good Citizens\" (2018), \"Live at Hamer Hall\" (2020) and \"So This is Love\" (2023).\nHistory.\n2008\u20132014: Formation and \"Wolf\" and \"The Hypnotiser\".\nSinger and songwriter Cash Savage grew up in Port Albert, in the Gippsland region of Victoria, and is the eldest of five children. Born into a musical family, Savage's uncle was Conway Savage, a veteran Australian rock musician and keyboardist for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Savage began playing gigs around Melbourne at age 17.\nIn 2008, Savage formed the Last Drinks as her backing band, with no fixed line-up, but instead including whoever was available to play on any given night. A self-released, self-titled EP was released in 2008. Savage credits Fitzroy venue The Old Bar as the band's spiritual home. In 2010, the band released \"Wolf\".\nThe band's line-up was solidified in 2013, and they recorded \"The Hypnotiser\" at Head Gap Studios in Preston, Victoria, produced by Nick Finch (Graveyard Train) and engineered by Nao Anzai. The album was featured in year-end critic lists by Triple R, PBS 106.7FM, and Beat Magazine. \"I\u2019m in Love\" was nominated for Best Song at the Music Victoria Awards of 2013.\n2015\u2013present: \"One of Us\" and \"Good Citizens\".\nIn 2015, the band was signed to independent Australian label Mistletone Records to release its third studio album, \"One of Us\" (2016). The album's lyrical content reflects a tumultuous personal period for Savage. Upon its release, \"One of Us\" received very favourable critical reviews from publications such as the Sydney Morning Herald, the Herald Sun, and Beat Magazine, and was named Album of the Week by Triple R. The album's success saw the band tour Europe in 2015 and 2016, playing shows and festivals in Czech Republic, France, Poland, Netherlands and Austria.\nFollowing their first international tour, the band received distribution for their 2nd and 3rd albums across Europe by Beast Records.\n2020\u2013present: \"Live at Hamer Hall\" and \"So This is Love \".\nIn 2020, in between lockdowns, Cash Savage &The Last Drinks were asked to perform at Melbourne\u2019s iconic Hamer Hall to cameras and no audience. The show was so powerful that it was pressed as a live album by Glitterhouse Records in Germany, and Mistletone in Australia.\nReflecting on the Hamer Hall performance, Cash stated; \u201cThere were mixed emotions going into this performance. Melbourne had fared well through the first lockdown, and as we were rehearsing for this, it felt like we were going to come out of it okay. By the time we performed, it was the very beginnings of the second wave. \n\u201cHaving the opportunity to play Hamer Hall was huge. It was an adjustment of expectations to think of it as a gig with no audience. We decided to make this something different \u2014 not a gig with no audience \u2014 its own thing. A performance in one movement. No gaps, no empty space. No back and forth with the crowd. Just us. \nWe didn\u2019t intend on releasing it when we recorded it. It was performed for the moment.\u201d \nOn the 28 April 2023, Cash Savage and the Last Drinks released their fifth studio album \"So This is Love\" through Mistletone in Australia and Glitterhouse in Germany. Rough trade said about the album - 'The theme of fragility runs through the album like a faultline. Fragile mental health, a fragile economy, the fragility of the environment and our personal relationships, all on the brink of collapse, threatening to crack under pressure; this is the fraught territory So This Is Love inhabits, and fearlessly explores. The opening three songs of the album flow into each other with increasing urgency, declaring the gravity of the situation. True to the album title, Cash Savage delves deep and with ferocious honesty into what love means to her, as a queer woman coming to terms with a marriage breakup and a mental breakdown. \u201cAll love will end, all love will change form\u201d, Cash observes. \u201cIf you experience deep love, you don\u2019t judge it as a failure if it doesn\u2019t last. You can love someone after they die, you can love someone in a different way.\u201d Romantic love, family love, the bonds of friendship, self-love and the affectionate intimacy of spending the night with someone are some of the forms that love takes, as the stories of So This Is Love unfold'.\nAwards and nominations.\nARIA Music Awards.\nThe ARIA Music Awards is an annual awards ceremony held by the Australian Recording Industry Association. \n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Awards table/styles.css\" />\nMusic Victoria Awards.\nThe Music Victoria Awards (previously known as The Age EG Awards and The Age Music Victoria Awards) are an annual awards night celebrating Victorian music.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Awards table/styles.css\" />\n! scope=\"col\" | Year\n! scope=\"col\" | Nominee / work\n! scope=\"col\" | Award\n! scope=\"col\" | Result\n! Ref.\nNational Live Music Awards.\nThe National Live Music Awards (NLMAs) commenced in 2016 to recognise contributions to the live music industry in Australia.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Awards table/styles.css\" />\n! scope=\"col\" | Year\n! scope=\"col\" | Nominee / work\n! scope=\"col\" | Award\n! scope=\"col\" | Result\n! Ref.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "36170949": "Tiwa Savage\nNigerian singer and songwriter (born 1980)\nTiwatope Omolara Savage (born 5 February 1980), known professionally as Tiwa Savage , is a Nigerian singer, songwriter and actress. Savage sings in English, Nigerian Pidgin and Yoruba; her music is a blend of afrobeats, R&B, afropop, pop and hip-hop. Savage's contributions to the Nigerian music industry have earned her several achievements.\nBorn in Isale Eko, she relocated to London at the age of 11 for her secondary education. Five years later, she began her music career doing backup vocals for artists such as George Michael and Mary J. Blige. After participating in the UK edition of \"The X Factor\" and graduating from Berklee College of Music, Savage signed a publishing deal with Sony/ATV Music Publishing in 2009. Inspired by the growth of the Nigerian music industry, Savage moved back to Nigeria and signed with Mavin Records in 2012. She made an appearance on the label's 2012 compilation album \"Solar Plexus\".\nHer debut studio album \"Once Upon a Time\" was released on 3 July 2013. It was supported by seven singles: \"Kele Kele Love\", \"Love Me (3x)\", \"Without My Heart\", \"Ife Wa Gbona\", \"Folarin\", \"Olorun Mi\" and \"Eminado\". The album was nominated for Best Album of the Year at the 2014 Nigeria Entertainment Awards and for Best R&B/Pop Album at The Headies 2014. On 19 December 2015, Savage released her second studio album \"R.E.D\", which yielded the singles \"My Darlin\" and \"Standing Ovation\". The tracks \"All Over\" and \"Ma Lo\" served as singles from Savage's six-track debut extended play (EP), \"Sugarcane\", which was released in September 2017. \"R.E.D\" and \"Sugarcane\" have both been nominated for Best Album at the Nigeria Entertainment Awards.\nIn November 2018, Savage won Best African Act at the 2018 MTV Europe Music Awards, becoming the first woman to win the category. In May 2019, she announced her record deal with Universal Music Group and exit from Mavin Records. Savage's third studio album \"Celia\", which was released in August 2020, yielded the singles \"Attention\", \"Dangerous Love\", \"Koroba\", and \"Temptation\". Her second extended play \"Water & Garri\", which blends Afrobeat with soulful R&B, was released on 20 August 2021. In March 2022, Savage announced the Water & Garri North American Tour in support of the EP.\nLife and career.\n1980\u20132009: Early life, career beginnings and songwriting.\nTiwatope Savage was born on 5 February 1980, in Isale Eko, Lagos State, Nigeria. Her family relocated to London when she was 11 years old. While attending secondary school, she was a trombone player for her school's orchestra band. Savage graduated with a degree in accounting from the University of Kent, and started working at The Royal Bank of Scotland. She did backup vocals for English singer George Michael at the age of 16, and lent vocals to other musicians such as Mary J. Blige, Chaka Khan, Blu Cantrell, Emma Bunton, Kelly Clarkson, Andrea Bocelli and Ms. Dynamite. Savage enrolled at Berklee College of Music and graduated with a degree in professional music in 2007. While reminiscing about her experiences there, she said she was motivated by the drive and passion of the younger students. She also said she needed the school's atmosphere.\nIn 2006, Savage participated in the UK edition of \"The X Factor\" and advanced to the final 24 but ended up being the 12th person to be evicted. While participating, she had difficulty dealing with the limelight. She said, \"You have to always realize that people are watching. When I got the bad news that I wasn't getting through [to the final 12] it was a really painful time. But you still have to learn how to hold that until you get home. Because you don't want to just let everything out. People admire you and want to see that you're strong; they don't want to see you breaking down.\"\nIn 2009, Savage signed a publishing deal with Sony/ATV Music Publishing. The deal allowed her to write for Babyface, Kat Deluna, Fantasia, Monica and M\u00fda. She has received songwriting credits for her contribution to Monica's soul-tinged ballad \"Catch Me\". Her collaboration with Fantasia on the song \"Collard Greens & Cornbread\" earned the American recording artist a Grammy nomination in 2010. Savage wrote Jaicko's \"Oh Yeah\", featuring Snoop Dogg, and Deluna's \"Push Push\", featuring Akon. She performed background vocals on Whitney Houston's album \"I Look to You\" (2009). Inspired by the growth of the Nigerian music industry, Savage moved back to Nigeria and signed with Mavin Records in 2012.\n2010\u20132013: \"Once Upon a Time\", record deal and endorsements.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nThis album is straight from my heart and it's something that I've worked so tirelessly for."}, "descending_order": ["37197642", "10054454", "19360387", "53808293", "36170949", "19360420", "41770159"], "permutation_1": ["53808293", "10054454", "19360420", "37197642", "19360387", "36170949", "41770159"], "permutation_2": ["36170949", "53808293", "41770159", "19360387", "10054454", "37197642", "19360420"], "permutation_3": ["53808293", "37197642", "41770159", "19360387", "10054454", "36170949", "19360420"]}
{"id": "3hop2__30654_145289_89329", "docs_added": {"50585": "Philadelphia\nLargest city in Pennsylvania, United States\nPhiladelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the sixth-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 1,603,797 in the 2020 census. The city is the urban core of the larger Delaware Valley, also known as the Philadelphia metropolitan area, the nation's eighth-largest metropolitan area and seventh-largest combined statistical area with 6.245 million residents and 7.366 million residents, respectively.\nPhiladelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn, an English Quaker and advocate of religious freedom, and served as the capital of the colonial era Province of Pennsylvania. It then played a historic and vital role during the American Revolution and Revolutionary War. It served as the central meeting place for the nation's Founding Fathers, hosted the First Continental Congress (1774) and the Second Continental Congress, during which the Founders formed the Continental Army, elected George Washington as its commander, and adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. During the Revolutionary War's Philadelphia campaign, the city briefly fell to the British Army, which occupied Philadelphia for nine months from September 1777 to June 1778. \nIn 1787, following the end of the Revolutionary War and establishment of independence, the U.S. Constitution was ratified in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Convention. Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until 1790, and it served as the nation's first capital from May 10, 1775, until December 12, 1776, and on four subsequent occasions until 1800, when construction of the new national capital in Washington, D.C. was completed.\nPhiladelphia maintains extensive contemporary influence in business and industry, culture, sports, and music. With 17 four-year universities and colleges in the city, Philadelphia is one of the nation's leading centers for higher education and academic research. The city is a national cultural center, hosting more outdoor sculptures and murals than any other city in the nation. Fairmount Park, when combined with adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park in the same watershed, is , representing one of the nation's largest and the world's 55th-largest urban park. Philadelphia is known for its arts, culture, cuisine, and colonial and Revolutionary-era history; in 2016, it attracted 42\u00a0million domestic tourists who spent $6.8\u00a0billion, representing $11\u00a0billion in economic impact to the city and its surrounding Pennsylvania counties. With five professional sports teams and one of the nation's most loyal and passionate fan bases, Philadelphia is often ranked as the nation's best city for professional sports fans. The city has a culturally and philanthropically active LGBTQ+ community. Philadelphia also has played an immensely influential historic and ongoing role in the development and evolution of American music, especially R&B, soul, and rock.\nAs of 2023[ [update]], the Philadelphia metropolitan area had a gross metropolitan product of US$557.6 billion and is home to 13 \"Fortune\" 500 corporate headquarters. Metropolitan Philadelphia ranks as one of the nation's Big Five venture capital hubs, facilitated by its geographic proximity to both the entrepreneurial and financial ecosystems of New York City and the federal regulatory environment of Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Philadelphia is also a biotechnology hub. The Philadelphia Stock Exchange, owned by Nasdaq since 2008, is the nation's oldest stock exchange and a global leader in options trading. 30th Street Station, the city's primary rail station, is the third-busiest Amtrak hub in the nation with over 4.1 million passengers in 2023. The city's multimodal transportation and logistics infrastructure includes Philadelphia International Airport, a major transatlantic gateway and transcontinental hub; the rapidly-growing PhilaPort seaport; and Interstate 95, the spine of the north\u2013south highway system along the U.S. East Coast.\nPhiladelphia is a city of many firsts, including the nation's first library (1731), hospital (1751), medical school (1765), national capital (1774), university (by some accounts) (1779), central bank (1781), stock exchange (1790), zoo (1874), and business school (1881). Philadelphia contains 67 National Historic Landmarks, including Independence Hall. From the city's 17th century founding through the present, Philadelphia has been the birthplace or home to an extensive number of prominent and influential Americans.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nNative peoples.\nPrior to the arrival of Europeans in the early 17th century, the Lenape, an Indian tribe also known as the Delaware Indians, lived in the village of Shackamaxon in present-day Philadelphia and the surrounding area. The Lenape historically lived along the Delaware River watershed, western Long Island, and the Lower Hudson Valley. Most Lenape were pushed out of the region during the 18th century as the original Thirteen colonies expanded, which was further exacerbated by losses from intertribal conflicts. Lenape communities were also weakened by newly introduced diseases, mainly smallpox, and conflicts with Europeans. The Iroquois occasionally fought the Lenape. Surviving Lenape moved west into the upper Ohio River basin. Following the American Revolutionary War and the subsequent establishment of the United States, the Lenape began moving further west. In the 1860s, the U.S. federal government sent most remaining Lenape in the eastern United States to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma and surrounding territories as part of the Indian removal policy.\nColonial era.\nEuropeans first entered Philadelphia and the surrounding Delaware Valley in the early 17th century. The first settlements were founded by Dutch colonists, who built Fort Nassau on the Delaware River in 1623 in what is now Brooklawn, New Jersey. The Dutch considered the entire Delaware River valley to be part of their New Netherland colony. In 1638, Swedish settlers led by renegade Dutch established the colony of New Sweden at Fort Christina, located in present-day Wilmington, Delaware, and quickly spread out in the valley. In 1644, New Sweden supported the Susquehannocks in their war against Maryland colonists. In 1648, the Dutch built Fort Beversreede on the west bank of the Delaware, south of the Schuylkill River near the present-day Eastwick section of Philadelphia, to reassert their dominion over the area. The Swedes responded by building Fort Nya Korsholm, or New Korsholm, named after a town in Finland with a Swedish majority.\nIn 1655, a Dutch military campaign led by New Netherland Director-General Peter Stuyvesant took control of the Swedish colony, ending its claim to independence. The Swedish and Finnish settlers continued to have their own militia, religion, and court, and to enjoy substantial autonomy under the Dutch. An English fleet captured the New Netherland colony in 1664, though the situation did not change substantially until 1682, when the area was included in William Penn's charter for Pennsylvania.\nIn 1681, in partial repayment of a debt, Charles II of England granted Penn a charter for what would become the Pennsylvania colony. Despite the royal charter, Penn bought the land from the local Lenape in an effort to establish good terms with the Native Americans and ensure peace for the colony. Penn made a treaty of friendship with Lenape chief Tammany under an elm tree at Shackamaxon, in what is now the city's Fishtown neighborhood. Penn named the city Philadelphia, which is Greek for \"brotherly love\", derived from the Ancient Greek terms \u03c6\u03af\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2 \"ph\u00edlos\" (beloved, dear) and \u1f00\u03b4\u03b5\u03bb\u03c6\u03cc\u03c2 \"adelph\u00f3s\" (brother, brotherly). There were a number of cities named \"Philadelphia\" in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Greek and Roman periods, including modern Ala\u015fehir, mentioned as the site of an early Christian congregation in the Book of Revelation. As a Quaker, Penn had experienced religious persecution and wanted his colony to be a place where anyone could worship freely. This tolerance, which exceeded that of other colonies, led to better relations with the local native tribes and fostered Philadelphia's rapid growth into America's most important city.\nPenn planned a city on the Delaware River to serve as a port and place for government. Hoping that Philadelphia would become more like an English rural town instead of a city, Penn laid out roads on a grid plan to keep houses and businesses spread far apart with areas for gardens and orchards.\nThe city's inhabitants did not follow Penn's plans, however, and instead crowded the present-day Port of Philadelphia on the Delaware River and subdivided and resold their lots. Before Penn left Philadelphia for the final time, he issued the Charter of 1701 establishing it as a city. Though poor at first, Philadelphia became an important trading center with tolerable living conditions by the 1750s. Benjamin Franklin, a leading citizen, helped improve city services and founded new ones that were among the first in the nation, including a fire company, library, and hospital.\nA number of philosophical societies were formed, which were centers of the city's intellectual life, including the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture (1785), the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts (1787), the Academy of Natural Sciences (1812), and the Franklin Institute (1824). These societies developed and financed new industries that attracted skilled and knowledgeable immigrants from Europe.\nAmerican Revolution.\nPhiladelphia's importance and central location in the colonies made it a natural center for America's revolutionaries. By the 1750s, Philadelphia surpassed Boston as the largest city and busiest port in British America, and the second-largest city in the entire British Empire after London. In 1774, as resentment of the British government's policies towards the colonies and support for independence began burgeoning in the colonies, Philadelphia hosted the First Continental Congress at Carpenters' Hall, and 12 of the original 13 colonies sent delegates to the Congress.\nFrom 1775 to 1781, Philadelphia hosted the Second Continental Congress, whose 56 delegated unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence inside what was then called Pennsylvania State House and was later renamed Independence Hall. Written predominantly by Thomas Jefferson from his second-floor apartment on Market Street within walking distance of Independence Hall, the Declaration has been described by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis as \"the most potent and consequential words in American history,\" and its adoption represented a declaration of war against Great Britain. Since the Declaration's July 4, 1776, adoption, its signing has been cited globally and repeatedly by various peoples of the world seeking independence and liberty. It also has been, since its adoption, the basis for annual celebration by Americans; in 1938, this celebration of the Declaration was formalized as Independence Day, one of only eleven designated U.S. federal holidays.\nAfter George Washington's defeat at the Battle of Brandywine in Chadds Ford Township, on September 11, 1777, during the Philadelphia campaign, the revolutionary capital of Philadelphia was defenseless, and the city prepared for what was perceived to be an inevitable British attack. Because bells could easily be recast into munitions, the Liberty Bell, then known as the Pennsylvania State Bell, and bells from two Philadelphia churches, Christ Church and St. Peter's Church, were hastily taken down and transported by heavily guarded wagon train out of the city. The Liberty Bell was taken to Zion German Reformed Church in Northampton Town, which is present-day Allentown, where it was hidden under the church's floor boards for nine months from September 1777 until departure of British forces from Philadelphia in June 1778. Two Revolutionary War battles, the Siege of Fort Mifflin, fought between September 26 and November 16, 1777, and the Battle of Germantown, fought on October 4, 1777, took place within Philadelphia's city limits.\nIn Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation on November 15, 1777. Independence Hall in Philadelphia was the meeting place for the Constitutional Convention, which ratified the Constitution on September 17, 1787, which is now the longest-standing codified national constitution.\nPhiladelphia served as capital of the United States for most of the colonial and early post-colonial period. including for a decade, from 1790 to 1800, while Washington, D.C., was being constructed and prepared to serve as the new national capital, and on five prior occasions between 1776 and 1790. In 1793, the largest yellow fever epidemic in U.S. history killed approximately 4,000 to 5,000 people in Philadelphia, or about ten percent of the city's population at the time. The capital of the United States was moved to Washington, D.C. in 1800 upon completion of the White House and U.S. Capitol buildings.\nThe state capital was moved from Philadelphia to Lancaster in 1799, then ultimately to Harrisburg in 1812. Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until the late 18th century. It also was the nation's financial and cultural center until ultimately being eclipsed in total population by New York City in 1790. In 1816, the city's free Black community founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent Black denomination in the country, and the first Black Episcopal Church. The free Black community also established many schools for its children with the help of Quakers. Large-scale construction projects for new roads, canals, and railroads made Philadelphia the first major industrial city in the United States.\n19th century.\nThroughout the 19th century, Philadelphia hosted a variety of industries and businesses; the largest was the textile industry. Major corporations in the 19th and early 20th centuries included the Baldwin Locomotive Works, William Cramp & Sons Shipbuilding Company, and the Pennsylvania Railroad. Established in 1870, the Philadelphia Conveyancers' Association was chartered by the state in 1871. Along with the U.S. Centennial in 1876, the city's industry was celebrated in the Centennial Exposition, the first official World's fair in the U.S.\nImmigrants, mostly from Ireland and Germany, settled in Philadelphia and the surrounding districts. These immigrants were largely responsible for the first general strike in North America in 1835, in which workers in the city won the ten-hour workday. The city was a destination for thousands of Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine in the 1840s; housing for them was developed south of South Street and later occupied by succeeding immigrants. They established a network of Catholic churches and schools and dominated the Catholic clergy for decades. Anti-Irish, anti-Catholic nativist riots erupted in Philadelphia in 1844. The rise in population of the surrounding districts helped lead to the Act of Consolidation of 1854, which extended the city limits from the of Center City to the roughly of Philadelphia County.\nIn the latter half of the 19th century and leading into the 20th century, immigrants from Russia, Eastern Europe, and Italy, and African Americans from the southern U.S. settled in the city.\nPhiladelphia was represented by the Washington Grays in the American Civil War. The African-American population of Philadelphia increased from 31,699 to 219,559 between 1880 and 1930, largely stemming from the Great Migration from the South.\n20th century.\nBy the 20th century, Philadelphia had an entrenched Republican political machine and a complacent population. In 1910, a general strike shut down the entire city.\nIn 1917, following outrage over the election-year murder of a Philadelphia police officer, the City Council shrank from two houses to just one. In July 1919, Philadelphia was one of more than 36 industrial cities nationally to suffer a race riot during Red Summer in post-World War I unrest as recent immigrants competed with Blacks for jobs. In the 1920s, the public flouting of Prohibition laws, organized crime, mob violence, and corrupt police involvement in illegal activities led to the appointment of Brig. Gen. Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marine Corps as the city's director of public safety, but political pressure still prevented long-term success in fighting crime and corruption.\nIn 1940, non-Hispanic whites constituted 86.8% of the city's population. In 1950, the population peaked at more than two million residents, then began to decline with the restructuring of industry that led to the loss of many middle-class union jobs. In addition, suburbanization enticed many affluent residents to depart the city for its outlying railroad commuting towns and newer housing. The resulting reduction in Philadelphia's tax base and the resources of local government caused the city to struggle through a long period of adjustment, and it approached bankruptcy by the late 1980s.\nIn 1985, the MOVE Bombing of the Cobbs Creek neighborhood by city helicopters occurred, killing 11 and destroying 61 homes.\nRevitalization and gentrification of neighborhoods began in the late 1970s and continues into the 21st century with much of the development occurring in the Center City and University City neighborhoods. But this expanded a shortage of affordable housing in the city. After many manufacturers and businesses left Philadelphia or shut down, the city started attracting service businesses and began to market itself more aggressively as a tourist destination. Contemporary glass-and-granite skyscrapers were built in Center City beginning in the 1980s. Historic areas such as Old City and Society Hill were renovated during the reformist mayoral era of the 1950s through the 1980s, making both areas among the most desirable Center City neighborhoods. Immigrants from around the world began to enter the U.S. through Philadelphia as their gateway, leading to a reversal of the city's population decline between 1950 and 2000, during which it lost about 25 percent of its residents.\n21st century.\nPhiladelphia eventually began experiencing a growth in its population in 2007, which continued with incremental annual increases through the present. A migration pattern has been established from New York City to Philadelphia by residents opting for a large city with relative proximity and a lower cost of living.\nGeography.\nTopography.\nPhiladelphia's geographic center is about 40\u00b0 0\u2032 34\u2033 north latitude and 75\u00b0 8\u2032 0\u2033 west longitude. The 40th parallel north passes through neighborhoods in Northeast Philadelphia, North Philadelphia, and West Philadelphia including Fairmount Park. The city encompasses , of which is land and , or 6%, is water. Natural bodies of water include the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, lakes in Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park, and Cobbs, Wissahickon, and Pennypack creeks. The largest artificial body of water is East Park Reservoir in Fairmount Park.\nThe lowest point is sea level and the highest point is in Chestnut Hill, about above sea level on Summit Street near the intersection of Germantown Avenue and Bethlehem Pike at: 40.07815 N, 75.20747 W. Philadelphia is located on the Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line that separates the Atlantic Plain from the Piedmont. The Schuylkill River's rapids at East Falls were inundated by completion of the dam at Fairmount Water Works.\nThe city is the seat of its own county. The city is bordered by six adjacent counties: Montgomery to the northwest; Bucks to the north and northeast; Burlington County, New Jersey to the east; Camden County, New Jersey to the southeast; Gloucester County, New Jersey to the south; and Delaware County to the southwest.\nCityscape.\nCity planning.\nPhiladelphia was created in the 17th century, following the plan by William Penn's surveyor Thomas Holme. Center City is structured with long, straight streets running nearly due east\u2013west and north\u2013south, forming a grid pattern between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers that is aligned with their courses. The original city plan was designed to allow for easy travel and to keep residences separated by open space that would help prevent the spread of fire. In keeping with the idea of a \"Greene Countrie Towne\", and inspired by the many types of trees that grew in the region, Penn named many of the east\u2013west streets for local trees. Penn planned the creation of five public parks in the city which were renamed in 1824. Centre Square was renamed Penn Square; Northeast Square was renamed Franklin Square; Southeast Square was renamed Washington Square; Southwest Square was renamed Rittenhouse Square; and Northwest Square was renamed Logan Circle/Square. Center City had an estimated 183,240 residents as of 2015[ [update]], making it the second-most populated downtown area in the United States after Midtown Manhattan in New York City.\nPhiladelphia's neighborhoods are divided into six large sections that surround Center City: North Philadelphia, Northeast Philadelphia, South Philadelphia, Southwest Philadelphia, West Philadelphia, and Northwest Philadelphia. The city's geographic boundaries have been largely unchanged since these neighborhoods were consolidated in 1854. However, each of these large areas contains numerous neighborhoods, some of whose boundaries derive from the boroughs, townships, and other communities that constituted Pennsylvania County before their inclusion within the city.\nThe City Planning Commission, tasked with guiding growth and development of the city, has divided the city into 18 planning districts as part of the Philadelphia2035 physical development plan. Much of the city's 1980 zoning code was overhauled from 2007 to 2012 as part of a joint effort between former mayors John F. Street and Michael Nutter. The zoning changes were intended to rectify incorrect zoning maps to facilitate future community development, as the city forecasts an additional 100,000 residents and 40,000 jobs will be added by 2035.\nThe Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) is the largest landlord in Pennsylvania. Established in 1937, the PHA is the nation's fourth-largest housing authority, serving about 81,000 people with affordable housing, while employing 1,400 on a budget of $371\u00a0million. The Philadelphia Parking Authority is responsible for ensuring adequate parking for city residents, businesses, and visitors.\nArchitecture.\nPhiladelphia's architectural history dates back to colonial times and includes a wide range of styles. The earliest structures were constructed with logs, but brick structures were common by 1700. During the 18th century, the cityscape was dominated by Georgian architecture, including Independence Hall and Christ Church.\nIn the first decades of the 19th century, Federal and Greek Revival architecture were the dominant styles produced by Philadelphia architects such as Benjamin Latrobe, William Strickland, John Haviland, John Notman, Thomas Walter, and Samuel Sloan. Frank Furness is considered Philadelphia's greatest architect of the second half of the 19th century. His contemporaries included John McArthur Jr., Addison Hutton, Wilson Eyre, the Wilson Brothers, and Horace Trumbauer. In 1871, construction began on the Second Empire-style Philadelphia City Hall. The Philadelphia Historical Commission was created in 1955 to preserve the cultural and architectural history of the city. The commission maintains the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, adding historic buildings, structures, sites, objects and districts as it sees fit.\nIn 1932, Philadelphia became home to the first modern International Style skyscraper in the United States, the PSFS Building, designed by George Howe and William Lescaze. The City Hall remained the tallest building in the city until 1987 when One Liberty Place was completed. Numerous glass and granite skyscrapers were built in Center City beginning in the late 1980s. In 2007, the Comcast Center surpassed One Liberty Place to become the city's tallest building. The Comcast Technology Center was completed in 2018, reaching a height of , as the tallest building in the United States outside of Manhattan and Chicago.\nFor much of Philadelphia's history, the typical home has been the row house. The row house was introduced to the United States via Philadelphia in the early 19th century and, for a time, row houses built elsewhere in the United States were known as \"Philadelphia rows\". A variety of row houses are found throughout the city, from Federal-style continuous blocks in Old City and Society Hill to Victorian-style homes in North Philadelphia to twin row houses in West Philadelphia. While newer homes have been built recently, much of the housing dates to the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, which has created problems such as urban decay and vacant lots. Some neighborhoods, including Northern Liberties and Society Hill, have been rehabilitated through gentrification.\nParks.\nAs of 2014[ [update]], the city's total park space, including municipal, state, and federal parks in the city, amounts to . Philadelphia's largest park is Fairmount Park, which includes the Philadelphia Zoo and encompasses of the total parkland. Fairmount Park's adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park contains . Fairmount Park, when combined with Wissahickon Valley Park, is one of the largest contiguous urban park areas in the U.S. The two parks, along with the Colonial Revival, Georgian and Federal-style mansions in them, have been listed as one entity on the National Register of Historic Places since 1972.\nClimate.\nWithin the K\u00f6ppen climate classification, Philadelphia falls under the northern periphery of the humid subtropical climate zone (K\u00f6ppen \"Cfa\"). Within the Trewartha climate classification, Philadelphia has a temperate maritime climate (\"Do\") limited to the north by the continental climate (\"Dc\"). Summers are typically hot and muggy. Fall and spring are generally mild, and winter is moderately cold. The plant life hardiness zones are 7a and 7b, reflecting an average annual extreme minimum temperature between .\nSnowfall is highly variable. Some winters have only light snow while others include major snowstorms. The normal seasonal snowfall averages , with rare snowfalls in November or April, and rarely any sustained snow cover. Seasonal snowfall accumulation has ranged from trace amounts in 1972\u201373, to in the winter of 2009\u201310. The city's heaviest single-storm snowfall was , which occurred in January 1996.\nPrecipitation is generally spread throughout the year, with eight to eleven wet days per month, at an average annual rate of , but historically ranging from in 1922 to in 2011. The most rain recorded in one day occurred on July 28, 2013, when fell at Philadelphia International Airport. Philadelphia has a moderately sunny climate with an average of 2,498 hours of sunshine annually. The percentage of sunshine ranges from 47% in December to 61% in June, July, and August.\nThe January daily average temperature is . The temperature frequently rises to during thaws. July averages . Heat waves accompanied by high humidity and heat indices are frequent, with highs reaching or exceeding on 30 days of the year. The average window for freezing temperatures is November 6 to April 2, allowing a growing season of 217 days. Early fall and late winter are generally dry, with February having the lowest average precipitation at . The dewpoint in the summer averages between .\nThe highest recorded temperature was on August 7, 1918. Temperatures at or above are not common, with the last occurrence of such a temperature being July 21, 2019. The lowest officially recorded temperature was on February 9, 1934. Temperatures at or below are rare, with the last such occurrence being January 19, 1994. The record low maximum is on February 10, 1899, and December 30, 1880. The record high minimum is on July 23, 2011, and July 24, 2010.\nTime Series.\nAir quality.\nPhiladelphia County received an ozone grade of F and a 24-hour particle pollution rating of D in the American Lung Association's 2017 State of the Air report, which analyzed data from 2013 to 2015. The city was ranked 22nd for ozone, 20th for short-term particle pollution, and 11th for year-round particle pollution. According to the same report, the city experienced a significant reduction in high ozone days since 2001\u2014from nearly 50 days per year to fewer than 10\u2014along with fewer days of high particle pollution since 2000\u2014from about 19 days per year to about 3\u2014and an approximate 30% reduction in annual levels of particle pollution since 2000.\nFive of the ten largest combined statistical areas (CSAs) were ranked higher for ozone: Los Angeles (1st), New York City (9th), Houston (12th), Dallas (13th), and San Jose, California (18th). Many smaller CSAs were also ranked higher for ozone, including Sacramento (8th), Las Vegas (10th), Denver (11th), El Paso (16th), and Salt Lake City (20th). Only two of those same ten CSAs, San Jose and Los Angeles, were ranked higher than Philadelphia for both year-round and short-term particle pollution.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nAs of the 2020 U.S. Census, there were 1,603,797 people residing in Philadelphia, representing a 1.2% increase from the 2019 census estimate. The racial composition of the city was 39.3% Black alone (42.0% Black alone or in combination), 36.3% White alone (41.9% White alone or in combination), 8.7% Asian alone, 0.4% American Indian and Alaska Native alone, 8.7% some other race, and 6.9% multiracial. 14.9% of residents were Hispanic or Latino.\n34.8% had a bachelor's degree or higher. 23.9% spoke a language other than English at home, the most common of which was Spanish (10.8%). 15.0% of the populations foreign born, roughly half of whom are naturalized U.S. citizens. 3.7% of the population are veterans. The median household income was $52,889 and 22.8% of the population lived in poverty. 49.5% of the population drove alone to work, while 23.2% used public transit, 8.2% carpooled, 7.9% walked, and 7.0% worked from home. The average commute is 31 minutes.\nAfter the 1950 census, when a record high of 2,071,605 was recorded, the city's population began a long decline. The population dropped to a low of 1,488,710 residents in 2006 before beginning to rise again. Between 2006 and 2017, Philadelphia added 92,153 residents. In 2017, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that the racial composition of the city was 41.3% Black (non-Hispanic), 34.9% White (non-Hispanic), 14.1% Hispanic or Latino, 7.1% Asian, 0.4% Native American, 0.05% Pacific Islander, and 2.8% multiracial.\nImmigration and cultural diversity.\nIn addition to the city's economic growth, the city's population has been fueled by foreign immigration. According to The Pew Charitable Trusts, the city's foreign-born population increased by 69% between 2000 and 2016 to constitute nearly 20% of Philadelphia's workforce, and it doubled between 1990 and 2017 to constitute 13.8% of the city's total population, with the top five countries of origin being China by a significant margin followed by the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, India, and Vietnam.\nIrish, Italian, German, Polish, English, Russian, Ukrainian, and French ancestries constitute the largest European ethnic groups in the city. Philadelphia has the second-largest Irish and Italian populations in the United States after New York City. South Philadelphia remains one of the largest Italian neighborhoods in the country and is home to the Italian Market.\nThe Pennsport neighborhood and Gray's Ferry section of South Philadelphia, home to many Mummer clubs, are well known as Irish neighborhoods. The Kensington, Port Richmond, and Fishtown neighborhoods have historically been heavily Irish and Polish. Port Richmond is a center for the Polish-American community in Philadelphia, and it remains a common destination for Polish immigrants. Northeast Philadelphia, although known for its Irish and Irish-American population, is home to a Jewish and Russian population. Mount Airy in Northwest Philadelphia also contains a Jewish community. Nearby Chestnut Hill is historically known as an Anglo-Saxon Protestant community.\nPhiladelphia's Black American population is the fourth-largest in the country after New York City, Chicago, and Houston. West Philadelphia and North Philadelphia are largely African-American neighborhoods, but many are leaving those areas in favor of the Northeast and Southwest sections of Philadelphia. A higher proportion of African-American Muslims reside in Philadelphia than most other major U.S. cities. West Philadelphia and Southwest Philadelphia are home to various Afro-Caribbean and African immigrant communities.\nThe Puerto Rican population in Philadelphia is the second-largest on the U.S. mainland after New York City, and the second-fastest growing after Orlando. Eastern North Philadelphia, particularly Fairhill and surrounding areas to the north and east, has one of the highest concentrations of Puerto Ricans outside Puerto Rico, with many large swaths of blocks being close to 100% Puerto Rican. Puerto Rican and Dominican populations reside in North Philadelphia and the Northeast, and Mexican and Central American populations exist in South Philadelphia. South American migrants were being transported by bus from Texas to Philadelphia beginning in 2022.\nPhiladelphia's Asian American population includes those of Chinese, Indians, Vietnamese, South Koreans, Filipinos, Cambodians, and Indonesians. Over 35,000 Chinese Americans lived in the city in 2015, including a Fuzhounese population. Center City hosts a Chinatown that is served by Chinatown bus lines with service to/from Chinatown, Manhattan. Indians make up the second-largest Asian group in the city of Philadelphia, while making up the largest foreign-born population in the Delaware Valley. A Korean community initially settled in the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Olney; however, the primary Koreatown has subsequently shifted further north, straddling the city's border with adjacent Cheltenham in Montgomery County and Cherry Hill in South Jersey. South Philadelphia is home to Vietnamese-Americans in Little Saigon and Cambodian-Americans in Cambodia Town, as well as Thai-American, Indonesian-American, and Chinese-American communities.\nPhiladelphia's Gay village near Washington Square is home to a concentration of gay and lesbian-friendly businesses, restaurants, and bars.\nReligion.\nIn a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, 68% of the population of the city identified themselves as Christian. Approximately 41% of Christians in the city and area professed attendance at a variety of churches that could be considered Protestant, while 26% professed Catholic beliefs.\nThe Protestant Christian community in Philadelphia is dominated by mainline Protestant denominations including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church in the United States, Presbyterian Church (USA) and American Baptist Churches USA. One of the most prominent mainline Protestant jurisdictions is the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. The African Methodist Episcopal Church was established in Philadelphia. Historically, the city has strong connections to the Quakers, Unitarian Universalism, and the Ethical Culture movement, all of which continue to be represented in the city. The Quaker Friends General Conference is based in Philadelphia. Evangelical Protestants making up less than 15% of the population were also prevalent.\nEvangelical Protestant bodies included the Anglican Church in North America, Lutheran Church\u2014Missouri Synod, Presbyterian Church in America, and National Baptist Convention of America. The Catholic community is primarily served by the Latin Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Eparchy of the United States of America and Canada, though some independent Catholic churches exist throughout Philadelphia and its suburbs. The Latin Church-based jurisdiction is headquartered in the city, and its see is the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. The Ukrainian Catholic jurisdiction is headquartered in Philadelphia, and is seated at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.\nLess than 1% of Philadelphia's Christians were Mormons. The remainder of the Christian demographic is spread among smaller Protestant denominations and the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox among others. The Diocese of Eastern Pennsylvania (Orthodox Church in America) and Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (Ecumenical Patriarchate) divide the Eastern Orthodox in Philadelphia. The Russian Orthodox St. Andrew's Cathedral is in the city.\nThe same study says that other religions collectively compose about 8% of the population, including Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Sikhism. Philadelphia has the fifth-largest Muslim population among U.S. cities. The remaining 24% claimed no religious affiliation.\nThe Philadelphia metropolitan area's Jewish population was estimated at 206,000 in 2001, which was the sixth-largest in the U.S. at that time. Jewish traders were operating in southeastern Pennsylvania long before William Penn. Jews in Philadelphia took a prominent part in the War of Independence. Although the majority of the early Jewish residents were of Portuguese or Spanish descent, some among them had emigrated from Germany and Poland. About the beginning of the 19th century, a number of Jews from the latter countries, finding the services of the Congregation Mickv\u00e9 Israel unfamiliar to them, resolved to form a new congregation which would use the ritual to which they had been accustomed.\nAfrican diasporic religions are practiced in some Latino and Hispanic and Caribbean communities in North and West Philadelphia.\nLanguages.\nAs of 2010[ [update]], 79.12% (1,112,441) of Philadelphia residents age 5 and older spoke English at home as a primary language, while 9.72% (136,688) spoke Spanish, 1.64% (23,075) Chinese, 0.89% (12,499) Vietnamese, 0.77% (10,885) Russian, 0.66% (9,240) French, 0.61% (8,639) other Asian languages, 0.58% (8,217) African languages, 0.56% (7,933) Cambodian (Mon-Khmer), and Italian was spoken as a main language by 0.55% (7,773) of the population over the age of five. In total, 20.88% (293,544) of Philadelphia's population age 5 and older spoke a mother language other than English.\nPoverty.\nPhiladelphia is home to many food poverty programs, of which two of the largest are Philabundance which claims to feed 90000 people per week. and Share Food Program which claims to feed 1 million people per month.\nEconomy.\nPhiladelphia's close geographical and transportation connections to other large metropolitan economies along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States have been cited as offering a significant competitive advantage for business creation and entrepreneurship. The city is the center of economic activity in both Pennsylvania and the four-state Delaware Valley metropolitan region. Five Fortune 500 companies are based in the city. As of 2021[ [update]], the Philadelphia metropolitan area is estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of US$479\u00a0billion, an increase from the $445\u00a0billion calculated by the Bureau of Economic Analysis for 2017, representing the ninth-largest U.S. metropolitan economy.\nPhiladelphia's economic sectors include financial services, health care, biotechnology, information technology, trade and transportation, manufacturing, oil refining, food processing, and tourism. Metropolitan Philadelphia is one of the top five American venture capital hubs, credited to its proximity to New York City's financial and tech and biotechnology ecosystems. Financial activities account for the largest economic sector of the metropolitan area, which is one of the largest health education and research centers in the United States. The city's two largest employers are the federal and city governments. Philadelphia's largest private employer is the University of Pennsylvania followed by Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.\nFinance and corporations.\nThe Philadelphia Stock Exchange, acquired by Nasdaq in 2007, is a global leader in options trading. The city is home to the headquarters of Comcast, the nation's largest multinational telecommunications corporation; insurance conglomerates Cigna, Colonial Penn, and Independence Blue Cross; as well as food services company Aramark, chemical makers FMC Corporation and Rohm and Haas, pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline, Amicus Therapeutics, Spark Therapeutics, apparel retailers Five Below and Urban Outfitters and its subsidiary Anthropologie, automotive parts retailer Pep Boys, and stainless steel producer Carpenter Technology Corporation.\nOther corporation headquarters in the city include RiteAid, Crown Holdings, and Brandywine Realty Trust. The headquarters of Boeing Rotorcraft Systems and its main rotorcraft factory are in the Philadelphia suburb of Ridley Park; The Vanguard Group, and the U.S. headquarters of Siemens Healthineers are headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb. Healthcare conglomerate AmerisourceBergen is located in suburban Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Across the Delaware River in adjacent Camden County, New Jersey, Campbell Soup Company and Subaru USA are both headquartered in Camden, New Jersey, and TD Bank (USA) is headquartered in nearby suburban Cherry Hill, New Jersey.\nTech and biotech.\nPhiladelphia is a hub for information technology and biotechnology. Philadelphia and Pennsylvania are attracting new life sciences ventures. As of 2024, the Delaware Valley ranks as one of the Big Five U.S. venture capital hubs, enabled by its proximity to both the entrepreneurial and financial ecosystems of New York City and to the federal regulatory environment of Washington, D.C.\nTourism.\nPhiladelphia's history attracts many tourists, with the Independence National Historical Park, which includes the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and other historic sites, received over 5\u00a0million visitors in 2016. The city welcomed 42\u00a0million domestic tourists in 2016 who spent $6.8\u00a0billion, generating an estimated $11\u00a0billion in total economic impact in the city and surrounding four counties of Pennsylvania. The annual Naked Bike Ride attracts participants from around the United States and internationally to Philadelphia.\nTrade and transportation.\nPhiladelphia International Airport, a major Transatlantic gateway and transcontinental hub, has undergone a $900\u00a0million infrastructural expansion to increase passenger capacity and augment passenger experience, and the airport continues an ongoing capital expenditure program to upgrade facilities and add further amenities. The Port of Philadelphia, having experienced the highest percentage growth by tonnage loaded in 2017 among major U.S. seaports, has doubled its shipping capacity to accommodate super-sized post-Panamax shipping vessels since 2018. Philadelphia's 30th Street Station is the third-busiest Amtrak rail hub, following Penn Station in Manhattan and Union Station in Washington, D.C., transporting over 4\u00a0million inter-city rail passengers annually.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nEducation in Philadelphia is provided by many private and public institutions. The School District of Philadelphia is the local school district, operating public schools, in all of the city. The Philadelphia School District is the eighth-largest school district in the nation with 142,266 students in 218 traditional public schools and 86 charter schools as of 2014[ [update]].\nThe city's K-12 enrollment in district\u2013run schools dropped from 156,211 students in 2010 to 130,104 students in 2015. During the same time period, the enrollment in charter schools increased from 33,995 students in 2010 to 62,358 students in 2015. This consistent drop in enrollment led the city to close 24 of its public schools in 2013. During the 2014 school year, the city spent an average of $12,570 per pupil, below the average among comparable urban school districts.\nGraduation rates among district-run schools, meanwhile, steadily increased in the ten years from 2005. In 2005, Philadelphia had a district graduation rate of 52%. This number increased to 65% in 2014, still below the national and state averages. Scores on the state's standardized test, the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) trended upward from 2005 to 2011 but subsequently decreased. In 2005, the district-run schools scored an average of 37.4% on math and 35.5% on reading. The city's schools reached their peak scores in 2011 with 59.0% on math and 52.3% on reading. In 2014, the scores dropped significantly to 45.2% on math and 42.0% on reading.\nOf the city's public high schools, including charter schools, only four performed above the national average on the SAT (1497 out of 2400) in 2014: Masterman, Central, Girard Academic Music Program, and MaST Community Charter School. All other district-run schools were below average.\nHigher education.\nMedical and research facilities of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Philadelphia has the third-largest student concentration on the East Coast, with more than 120,000 college and university students enrolled within the city and nearly 300,000 in the metropolitan area. More than 80 colleges, universities, trade, and specialty schools are in the Philadelphia region. One of the founding members of the Association of American Universities is in the city, the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution with claims to be the First university in the United States.\nThe city's largest university by student enrollment is Temple University, followed by Drexel University. The city's nationally ranked research universities comprise the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, Drexel University, and Thomas Jefferson University. Philadelphia is also home to five schools of medicine: Drexel University College of Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Temple University School of Medicine, and Thomas Jefferson University's Sidney Kimmel Medical College. Hospitals, universities, and higher education research institutions in Philadelphia's four congressional districts received more than $252\u00a0million in National Institutes of Health grants in 2015.\nOther institutions of higher learning within the city's borders include:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCulture.\nPhiladelphia is home to many national historical sites that relate to the founding of the United States. Independence National Historical Park is the center of these historical landmarks and one of the country's 22 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, and the Liberty Bell is housed, are among the city's most popular attractions. Other national historic sites include the homes of Edgar Allan Poe and Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and early government buildings, including the First and the Second Bank of the United States, Fort Mifflin, and the Gloria Dei (Old Swedes') Church. Philadelphia alone has 67 National Historic Landmarks, the third most of any city in the country.\nPhiladelphia's major science museums include the Franklin Institute, which contains the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the M\u00fctter Museum, and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. History museums include the National Constitution Center, the Museum of the American Revolution, the Philadelphia History Museum, the National Museum of American Jewish History, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Masonic Library and Museum of Pennsylvania in the Masonic Temple, and the Eastern State Penitentiary. Philadelphia is home to the United States's first zoo and hospital, as well as Fairmount Park, one of America's oldest and largest urban parks, founded in 1855.\nThe city is home to important archival repositories, including the Library Company of Philadelphia, established in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin at 1314 Locust Street, and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, founded in 1814. The Presbyterian Historical Society is the country's oldest denominational historical society, organized in 1852.\nArts.\nThe city is home to multiple art museums, including the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Rodin Museum, which holds the largest collection of work by Auguste Rodin outside France. The city's largest art museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is one of the largest art museums in the world. The long flight of steps to the Art Museum's main entrance became famous after the film \"Rocky\" (1976).\nAnnual events include the Philadelphia Film Festival, held annually each October, the 6abc Dunkin' Donuts Thanksgiving Day Parade, the nation's longest-running continuously held Thanksgiving Day parade, and the Mummers Parade, the nation's longest continuously held folk parade, which is held every New Year's Day predominantly on Broad Street.\nAreas such as South Street and the Old City section of the city have a vibrant night life. The Avenue of the Arts in Center City contains many restaurants and theaters, such as the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, home of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Academy of Music, home of Opera Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Ballet. The Wilma Theatre and the Philadelphia Theatre Company at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre produce a variety of new plays. Several blocks to the east are the Lantern Theater Company at St. Stephens Episcopal Church; and the Walnut Street Theatre, a National Historic Landmark stated to be the oldest and most subscribed-to theatre in the English-speaking world, founded in 1809. In May 2019, the Walnut Street Theatre announced a major expansion to begin in 2020. New Freedom Theatre, Pennsylvania's oldest African-American theatre, is located on North Broad Street.\nPhiladelphia has more public art than any other American city. In 1872, the Association for Public Art, formerly the Fairmount Park Art Association, was created as the first private association in the United States dedicated to integrating public art and urban planning. In 1959, lobbying by the Artists Equity Association helped create the Percent for Art ordinance, the first for a U.S. city. The program, which has funded more than 200 pieces of public art, is administered by the Philadelphia Office of Arts and Culture, the city's art agency. The city has more murals than any other American city, due to the 1984 creation of the Department of Recreation's Mural Arts Program, which seeks to beautify neighborhoods and provide an outlet for graffiti artists. The program has funded more than 2,800 murals by professional, staff and volunteer artists and educated more than 20,000 youth in underserved neighborhoods throughout Philadelphia.\nThe city is home to a number of art organizations, including the regional art advocacy nonprofit Philadelphia Tri-State Artists Equity, the Philadelphia Sketch Club, one of the country's oldest artists' clubs, and The Plastic Club, started by women excluded from the Sketch Club. Many Old City art galleries stay open late on the First Friday event of each month.\nCuisine.\nThe city is known for its hoagies, stromboli, roast pork sandwich, scrapple, soft pretzels, water ice, Irish potato candy, tastykakes, and the cheesesteak sandwich which was developed by Italian immigrants. The Philadelphia area has many establishments that serve cheesesteaks, including restaurants, taverns, delicatessens and pizza parlors. The originator of the thinly-sliced steak sandwich in the 1930s, initially without cheese, is Pat's King of Steaks, which faces its rival Geno's Steaks, founded in 1966, across the intersection of 9th Street and Passyunk Avenue in the Italian Market of South Philadelphia.\nMcGillin's Olde Ale House, opened in 1860 on Drury Street in Center City, is the oldest continuously operated tavern in the city. The City Tavern is a replica of a historic 18th-century building first opened in 1773, demolished in 1854 after a fire, and rebuilt in 1975 on the same site as part of Independence National Historical Park. The tavern offers authentic 18th-century recipes, served in seven period dining rooms, three wine cellar rooms and an outdoor garden.\nThe Reading Terminal Market is a historic food market founded in 1893 in the Reading Terminal building, a designated National Historic Landmark. The enclosed market is one of the oldest and largest markets in the country, hosting over a hundred merchants offering Pennsylvania Dutch specialties, artisan cheese and meat, locally grown groceries, and specialty and ethnic foods.\nDialect.\nThe traditional Philadelphia accent is considered by some linguists to be the most distinctive accent in North America. The Philadelphia dialect, which is spread throughout the Delaware Valley and South Jersey, is part of a larger Mid-Atlantic American English family, a designation that also includes the Baltimore accent. Additionally, it shares many similarities with the New York accent. Owing to over a century of linguistic data collected by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania under sociolinguist William Labov, the Philadelphia dialect has been one of the best-studied forms of American English. The accent is especially found within the Irish American and Italian American working-class neighborhoods. Philadelphia also has its own unique collection of neologisms and slang terms.\nMusic.\nThe Philadelphia Orchestra is generally considered one of the top five orchestras in the United States. The orchestra performs at the Kimmel Center and has a summer concert series at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts. Opera Philadelphia performs at the nation's oldest continually operating opera house\u2014the Academy of Music. The Philadelphia Boys Choir & Chorale has performed its music all over the world. The Philly Pops plays orchestral versions of popular jazz, swing, Broadway, and blues songs at the Kimmel Center and other venues within the mid-Atlantic region. The Curtis Institute of Music is one of the world's premier conservatories and among the most selective institutes of higher education in the nation.\nPhiladelphia has played a prominent role in the music of the United States. The culture of American popular music has been influenced by significant contributions of Philadelphia area musicians and producers, in both the recording and broadcasting industries. In 1952, the teen dance party program called \"Bandstand\" premiered on local television, hosted by Bob Horn. The show was renamed \"American Bandstand\" in 1957, when it began national syndication on ABC, hosted by Dick Clark and produced in Philadelphia until 1964 when it moved to Los Angeles. Promoters marketed youthful musical artists known as teen idols to appeal to the young audience. Philadelphia-born singers, including Frankie Avalon, James Darren, Eddie Fisher, Fabian Forte, Bobby Rydell, and South Philly-raised Chubby Checker, topped the music charts, establishing a clean-cut rock and roll image.\nPhilly soul music of the late 1960s\u20131970s is a highly produced version of soul music which led to later forms of popular music such as disco and urban contemporary rhythm and blues. On July 13, 1985, John F. Kennedy Stadium was the American venue for the Live Aid concert. The city also hosted the Live 8 concert, which attracted about 700,000 people to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on July 2, 2005.\nNotable rock and pop musicians from Philadelphia and its suburbs include Bill Haley & His Comets, Nazz, Todd Rundgren, Hall & Oates, the Hooters, Cinderella, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Ween, Schoolly D, Pink, the Roots, Beanie Sigel, State Property, Lisa \"Left Eye\" Lopes, Meek Mill, Lil Uzi Vert, and others.\nSports.\nPhiladelphia has one of the nation's richest histories in professional sports, dating back to the mid-19th century. Its first professional sports team, the Philadelphia Athletics, a professional baseball team, was founded in 1860. The Athletics were initially an amateur league team that turned professional in 1871. In 1876, the Athletics joined with seven other teams in founding the National League, now the longest continuously operating league in world sports. \nPhiladelphia is one of 12 U.S. cities to have teams in all four major league sports: the Philadelphia Phillies of Major League Baseball (MLB), the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League (NFL), the Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League (NHL), and the Philadelphia 76ers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Phillies, formed in 1883 as the Quakers and renamed in 1884, are the oldest team continuously playing under the same name in the same city in the history of American professional sports.\nThe Philadelphia metro area is also home to the Philadelphia Union of Major League Soccer (MLS), plays their home games at Subaru Park, a soccer-specific stadium in Chester, Pennsylvania.\nPhiladelphia was the second of eight U.S. cities to win titles in all four major leagues, the MLB, NFL, NHL, and NBA. It won a title in soccer in the now-defunct North American Soccer League in 1973. Following the 76ers' victory over the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1983 NBA Finals, however, the city's professional teams and their fans endured 25 years without a championship in any professional sport until the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, defeating the Tampa Bay Rays. This quarter century without a championship for any Philadelphia sports team is sometimes described as the Curse of Billy Penn, a reference to a 1987 decision that permitted One Liberty Place to become the first building in city history to surpass the height of \"William Penn\", a statue installed in 1894 atop City Hall. In 2004, during the city's championship drought, ESPN placed Philadelphia second on its list of \"The Fifteen Most Tortured Sports Cities\". The city's sports fans are often both praised and sometimes derided. In 2011, for instance, \"GQ\" magazine named Eagles and Phillies fans the nation's worst professional sports fans, describing them as the \"Meanest Fans in America\" in summarizing repeated incidents of their drunken behavior and long history of booing.\nAfter the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, nine years passed without a championship until the Eagles won their first Super Bowl following the 2017 season, defeating the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII. Seven seasons later, following the 2024 season, the Eagles won their second Super Bowl, defeating the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX. \nMajor professional sports teams that originated in Philadelphia, which later moved to other cities, include the Golden State Warriors basketball team, which played in Philadelphia from 1946 to 1962 and the Oakland Athletics baseball team, which was originally the Philadelphia Athletics and played in Philadelphia from 1901 to 1954.\nPhiladelphia is home to professional, semi-professional, and elite amateur teams in multiple other sports, including cricket, rugby league, and rugby union. Major running events in the city include the Penn Relays, the Philadelphia Marathon, and the Broad Street Run. The Collegiate Rugby Championship is played annually each June at Talen Energy Stadium in Chester.\nThe city also has a rich history in rowing, which has been popular in Philadelphia since the 18th century. On Boathouse Row, a symbol of Philadelphia's rich rowing history, each Big Five member has its own boathouse. Philadelphia hosts numerous local and collegiate rowing clubs and competitions, including the annual Dad Vail Regatta, the largest intercollegiate rowing event in North America with more than 100 participating U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities; the annual Stotesbury Cup Regatta, which is billed as the world's oldest and largest rowing event for high school students; and the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta. The regattas are held on the Schuylkill River and organized by Schuylkill Navy, an association of area rowing clubs that has produced numerous Olympic rowers.\nThe Philadelphia Spinners were a professional ultimate team in Major League Ultimate (MLU) until 2016. The Spinners were one of the original eight teams of the American Ultimate Disc League (AUDL), which was founded in 2012. They played at Franklin Field and won the inaugural AUDL championship and the final MLU championship in 2016. The MLU was suspended indefinitely by its investors in December 2016. As of 2018[ [update]], the Philadelphia Phoenix continue to play in the AUDL.\nPhiladelphia is home to the Philadelphia Big 5, a group of five NCAA Division I college basketball programs, including La Salle, Penn, Saint Joseph's, Temple, and Villanova universities. The sixth NCAA Division I school in Philadelphia is Drexel University. La Salle won the 1954 championship of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. Villanova won the 1985, 2016, and 2018 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournaments. Philadelphia will be one of the eleven US host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.\nLaw and government.\nPhiladelphia County is a legal nullity. All county functions were assumed by the city in 1952. The city has been coterminous with the county since 1854.\nPhiladelphia's 1952 Home Rule Charter was written by the City Charter Commission, which was created by the Pennsylvania General Assembly in an act of April 1949, and a city ordinance of June 1949. The existing city council received a proposed draft in February 1951, and the electors approved it in an election held in April 1951. The first elections under the new Home Rule Charter were held in November 1951, and the newly elected officials took office in January 1952.\nThe city uses the strong-mayor version of the mayor\u2013council form of government, which is led by one mayor in whom executive authority is vested. The mayor has the authority to appoint and dismiss members of all boards and commissions without the approval of the city council. Elected at-large, the mayor is limited to two consecutive four-year terms, but can run for the position again after an intervening term.\nCourts.\nPhiladelphia County is coterminous with the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas is the trial court of general jurisdiction for the city, hearing felony-level criminal cases and civil suits above the minimum jurisdictional limit of $10,000. The court has appellate jurisdiction over rulings from the Municipal and Traffic Courts, and some administrative agencies and boards. The trial division has 70 commissioned judges elected by the voters, along with about one thousand other employees. The court has a family division with 25 judges and an orphans' court with three judges.\nAs of 2018[ [update]], the city's District Attorney is Larry Krasner, a Democrat. The last Republican to hold the office is Ronald D. Castille, who left in 1991 and later served as the Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court from 2008 to 2014.\nThe Philadelphia Municipal Court handles traffic cases, misdemeanor and felony criminal cases with maximum incarceration of five years, and civil cases involving $12,000 or less ($15,000 in real estate and school tax cases), and all landlord-tenant disputes. The municipal court has 27 judges elected by the voters.\nPennsylvania's three appellate courts also have sittings in Philadelphia. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the court of last resort in the state, regularly hears arguments in Philadelphia City Hall. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania and the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania also sit in Philadelphia several times a year. Judges for these courts are elected at large. The state Supreme Court and Superior Court have deputy prothonotary offices in Philadelphia.\nPhiladelphia is home to the federal United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, both of which are housed in the James A. Byrne United States Courthouse.\nPolitics.\nThe current mayor is Cherelle Parker who won the election in November 2023. Parker's predecessor, Jim Kenney, served two terms from 2016 to January 2024. Parker is a member of the Democratic Party. For over seven decades, since 1952, every Philadelphia mayor has been a Democrat.\nPhiladelphia City Council is the legislative branch which consists of ten council members representing individual districts and seven members elected at-large, all of whom are elected to four-year terms. Democrats are currently the majority and hold 14 seats including nine of the ten districts and five at-large seats. Republicans hold one seat: the Northeast-based Tenth District. The Working Families Party holds two at-large seats making them the council's minority party. The current council president is Kenyatta Johnson.\nPhiladelphia's political structure consists of a system of wards and divisions. There are 66 wards with 11 to 51 divisions each for a total of 1703 divisions. Each division elects two committee people who are supposed to live within the division boundaries, and committee people select a leader for their ward. Democrats and Republicans elect their own committee people every four years. The committee person's role is to serve as a point of contact between voters and party officials and help get out the vote. Most wards are closed which means the ward leader makes sole endorsement decisions; open wards allow committee people to weigh in on these decisions. There are groups such as Open Wards Philadelphia and individuals who are working to elect ward leaders who promote an open ward system.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nPhiladelphia had historically been a bastion of the Republican Party from the American Civil War until the mid-1930s. In 1856, the first Republican National Convention was held at Musical Fund Hall at 808 Locust Street in Philadelphia.\nDemocratic registrations increased after the Great Depression; however, the city was not carried by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt in his landslide victory of 1932, as Pennsylvania was one of only six states won by Republican Herbert Hoover. Voter turnout surged from 600,000 in 1932 to nearly 900,000 in 1936 and Roosevelt carried Philadelphia with over 60% of the vote. Philadelphia has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1936. In 2008, Democrat Barack Obama drew 83% of the city's vote. Obama's win was even larger in 2012, capturing 85% of the vote. In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton won 82% of the vote.\nAs a result of the previously declining population in the city and state, Philadelphia has only three congressional districts of the 18 districts in Pennsylvania, based on the 2010 census apportionment: the 2nd district, represented by Brendan Boyle; the 3rd, represented by Dwight Evans; and the 5th, represented by Mary Gay Scanlon. All three representatives are Democrats, though Republicans still have some support in the city, primarily in the Northeast. Sam Katz ran competitive mayoral races as the Republican nominee in 1999 and 2003, losing to Democrat John Street both times.\nPennsylvania's longest-serving Senator, Arlen Specter, was an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania who opened his first law practice in Philadelphia. Specter served as a Republican from 1981 and as a Democrat from 2009, losing that party's primary in 2010 and leaving office in January 2011. He was assistant counsel on the Warren Commission in 1964 and the city's district attorney from 1966 to 1974.\nPhiladelphia has hosted various national conventions, including in 1848 (Whig), 1856 (Republican), 1872 (Republican), 1900 (Republican), 1936 (Democratic), 1940 (Republican), 1948 (Republican), 1948 (Progressive), 2000 (Republican), and 2016 (Democratic). Philadelphia has been home to one vice president, George M. Dallas, and one general of the American Civil War, George B. McClellan, who won his party's nomination for president but lost in the general election to Abraham Lincoln in 1864. In May 2019, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden chose Philadelphia to be his 2020 U.S. presidential campaign headquarters.\nEnvironmental policy.\n\"Green Cities, Clean Water\" is an environmental policy initiative based in Philadelphia that has shown promising results in mitigating the effects of climate change. The researchers on the policy have stated that despite such promising plans of green infrastructure building, \"the city is forecasted to grow warmer, wetter, and more urbanized over the century, runoff and local temperatures will increase on average throughout the city\". Even though landcover predictive models on the effects of the policy initiative have indicated that green infrastructure could be useful at decreasing the amount of runoff in the city over time, the city government would have to expand its current plans and \"consider the cobenefit of climate change adaptation when planning new projects\" in limiting the scope of city-wide temperature increase.\nPublic safety.\nPolice and law enforcement.\nIn a 2015 report by Pew Charitable Trusts, the police districts with the highest rates of violent crime were Frankford (15th district) and Kensington (24th district) in the Near Northeast, and districts to the North (22nd, 25th, and 35th districts), West (19th district) and Southwest (12th district) of Center City. Each of those seven districts recorded more than a thousand violent crimes in 2014. The lowest rates of violent crime occurred in Center City, South Philadelphia, the Far Northeast, and Roxborough districts, the latter of which includes Manayunk.\nPhiladelphia had 500, 503 according to some sources, murders in 1990, a rate of 31.5 per 100,000. An average of about 400 murders occurred each year for most of the 1990s. The murder count dropped in 2002 to 288, then rose to 406 by 2006, before dropping slightly to 392 in 2007. A few years later, Philadelphia began to see a rapid decline in homicides and violent crime. In 2013, the city had 246 murders, which is a decrease of nearly 40% since 2006.\nIn 2014, 248 homicides were committed. The homicide rate rose to 280 in 2015, then fell slightly to 277 in 2016, before rising again to 317 in 2017. Homicides increased dramatically in the late 2010s/early 2020s, reaching 499 homicides in 2020 and surpassing the 1990 \"record\" in 2021, with 501st murder on November 27 and 510 by the end of the month. Phillie ended the year with 562 murders, an all-time record. It dropped in 2022 to 514, and significantly further again in 2023, to 410.\nIn 2006, Philadelphia's homicide rate of 27.7 per 100,000 people was the highest of the country's 10 most populous cities. In 2012, Philadelphia had the fourth-highest homicide rate among the country's most populous cities. The rate dropped to 16 homicides per 100,000 residents by 2014 placing Philadelphia as the sixth-highest city in the country.\nThe number of shootings in the city has declined significantly since the early years of the 21st century. Shooting incidents peaked at 1,857 in 2006 before declining nearly 44 percent to 1,047 shootings in 2014. Major crimes have decreased gradually since a peak in 2006 when 85,498 major crimes were reported. The number of reported major crimes fell 11 percent in three years to 68,815 occurrences in 2014. Violent crimes, which include homicide, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery, decreased 14 percent in three years to 15,771 occurrences in 2014.\nIn 2014, Philadelphia enacted an ordinance decriminalizing the possession of less than 30 grams of marijuana or eight grams of hashish; the ordinance gave police officers the discretion to treat possession of these amounts as a civil infraction punishable by a $25 ticket, rather than a crime. At the time, Philadelphia was at the largest city in the nation to decriminalize the possession of marijuana. From 2013 to 2018, marijuana arrests in the city dropped by more than 85%. The purchase or sale of marijuana remains a criminal offense in Philadelphia.\nFirefighting.\nThe Philadelphia Fire Department provides fire protection and emergency medical services (EMS). The department's official mission is to protect public safety by quick and professional response to emergencies and the promotion of sound emergency prevention measures. This mandate encompasses all traditional firefighting functions, including fire suppression, with 60 engine companies and 30 ladder companies as well as specialty and support units deployed throughout the city; specialized firefighting units for Philadelphia International Airport and the Port of Philadelphia; investigations conducted by the fire marshal's office to determine the origins of fires and develop preventive strategies; prevention programs to educate the public; and support services including research and planning, management of the fire communications center within the city's 911 system, and operation of the Philadelphia Fire Academy.\nMedia.\nNewspapers.\nPhiladelphia's two major daily newspapers are \"The Philadelphia Inquirer\", first published in 1829\u2014the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the country\u2014and the \"Philadelphia Daily News\", first published in 1925. The \"Daily News\" has been published as an edition of the \"Inquirer\" since 2009. Recent owners of the \"Inquirer\" and \"Daily News\" have included Knight Ridder, The McClatchy Company, and Philadelphia Media Holdings, with the latter organization declaring bankruptcy in 2010. After two years of financial struggle, the newspapers were sold to Interstate General Media in 2012. The two newspapers had a combined daily circulation of 306,831 and a Sunday circulation of 477,313 in 2013[ [update]], the 18th-largest circulation in the country, and their collective website, Philly.com, was ranked 13th in popularity among online U.S. newspapers by Alexa Internet the same year.\nSmaller publications include the \"Philadelphia Tribune\" published five days each week for the African-American community; \"Philadelphia\" magazine, a monthly regional magazine; \"Philadelphia Weekly\", a weekly alternative newspaper; \"Philadelphia Gay News\", a weekly newspaper for the LGBT community; \"The Jewish Exponent\", a weekly newspaper for the Jewish community; \"Al D\u00eda\", a weekly newspaper for the Latino community; and \"Philadelphia Metro\", a free daily newspaper.\nStudent-run newspapers include the University of Pennsylvania's \"The Daily Pennsylvanian\", Temple University's \"The Temple News\", and Drexel University's \"The Triangle\".\nRadio.\nThe first experimental radio license was issued in Philadelphia in August 1912 to St. Joseph's College. The first commercial AM radio stations began broadcasting in 1922: first WIP, then owned by Gimbels department store, followed by WFIL, then owned by Strawbridge & Clothier department store, and WOO, a defunct station owned by Wanamaker's department store, as well as WCAU and WDAS.\nAs of 2018[ [update]], the FCC lists 28 FM and 11 AM stations for Philadelphia. As of December 2017, the ten highest-rated stations in Philadelphia were adult contemporary WBEB-FM (101.1), sports talk WIP-FM (94.1), classic rock WMGK-FM (102.9), urban adult contemporary WDAS-FM (105.3), classic hits WOGL-FM (98.1), album-oriented rock WMMR-FM (93.3), country music WXTU-FM (92.5), all-news KYW-AM (1060), talk radio WHYY-FM (90.9), and urban adult contemporary WRNB-FM (100.3). Philadelphia is served by three non-commercial public radio stations: WHYY-FM (NPR), WRTI-FM (classical and jazz), and WXPN-FM (adult alternative music).\nTelevision.\nIn the 1930s, W3XE, an experimental station owned by Philco, launched as Philadelphia's first television station. In 1939, the station became the nation's first NBC's first affiliate, and later became KYW-TV, the Philadelphia television market's CBS affiliate. In 1952, WFIL, later renamed WPVI, premiered the television show \"Bandstand\", which later became the nationally broadcast \"American Bandstand\" hosted by Dick Clark. In the 1960s, WCAU-TV, WFIL-TV, and WHYY-TV were founded.\nEach of the nation's commercial networks has an affiliate in Philadelphia: KYW-TV 3 (CBS), WPVI-TV 6 (ABC), WCAU 10 (NBC), WPHL-TV 17 (The CW with MyNetworkTV on DT2), WFPA-CD 28 (UniM\u00e1s), WTXF-TV 29 (Fox), WPSG 57 (Independent), WWSI 62 (Telemundo), and WUVP-DT 65 (Univision). The region is served also by public broadcasting stations WPPT-TV in Philadelphia, WHYY-TV in Wilmington, Delaware and Philadelphia, WLVT-TV in the Lehigh Valley, and NJTV in New Jersey.\nSince September 2024, Philadelphia is the nation's largest television market where at least one of the six English networks are shown at a station not owned by a particular network's associated parent company. The major Spanish language networks are Univision (WUVP-DT), UniM\u00e1s (WFPA-CD), and Telemundo (WWSI-TV).\nAs of 2023, the Philadelphia media market is the fifth-largest in North America with over 7.8 million viewers\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nPhiladelphia is served by SEPTA, which operates buses, trains, rapid transit (as both subways and elevated trains), trolleys, and trackless trolleys (electric buses) throughout Philadelphia, the four Pennsylvania suburban counties of Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery, in addition to service to Mercer County, New Jersey (Trenton) and New Castle County, Delaware (Wilmington and Newark, Delaware). The city's subway system consists of two routes: the subway section of the Market\u2013Frankford Line running east\u2013west under Market Street which opened in 1905 to the west and 1908 to the east of City Hall, and the Broad Street Line running north\u2013south beneath Broad Street which opened in stages from 1928 to 1938.\nBeginning in the 1980s, large sections of the SEPTA Regional Rail service to the far suburbs of Philadelphia were discontinued due to a lack of funding for equipment and infrastructure maintenance.\nPhiladelphia's 30th Street Station is a major railroad station on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor with 4.4\u00a0million passengers in 2017 making it the third-busiest station in the country after New York City's Pennsylvania Station and Washington's Union Station. 30th Street Station offers access to Amtrak, SEPTA, and NJ Transit lines. Over 12\u00a0million SEPTA and NJ Transit rail commuters use the station each year, and more than 100,000 people on an average weekday.\nThe PATCO Speedline provides rapid transit service to Camden, Collingswood, Westmont, Haddonfield, Woodcrest (Cherry Hill), Ashland (Voorhees), and Lindenwold, New Jersey, from stations on Locust Street between 16th and 15th, 13th and 12th, and 10th and 9th streets, and on Market Street at 8th Street.\nAirports.\nPhiladelphia is served by two airports. Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), the larger of the two, is south-southwest of Center City on the boundary with Delaware County, and provides scheduled domestic and international air service. As of 2023, Philadelphia International Airport is the 21st-busiest airport in the nation with over 13.6 million passengers. It is also among the world's busiest airports measured by traffic movements, including takeoffs and landings. Over 30\u00a0million passengers pass through the airport annually on 25 airlines, including all major domestic carriers. The airport has nearly 500 daily departures to over 120 destinations worldwide. SEPTA's Airport Line provides direct service between Center City railroad stations and Philadelphia International Airport.\nPhiladelphia's second major airport, Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE), is a general aviation relief airport in Northeast Philadelphia, which provides general and corporate aviation.\nRoads.\nWilliam Penn planned Philadelphia with numbered streets traversing north and south, and streets named for trees, including Chestnut, Walnut, and Mulberry (since renamed Arch Streets, traversing east and west. The two main streets were named Broad Street, the north\u2013south artery, later designated Pennsylvania Route 611, and High Street, the east\u2013west artery, which was later renamed Market Street, converging at Centre Square which later became the site of City Hall.\nInterstate 95, also known as the Delaware Expressway, traverses the southern and eastern edges of the city along the Delaware River as the main north\u2013south controlled-access highway, and connects Philadelphia with Newark, New Jersey and New York City to the north and Baltimore and Washington, D.C. to the south. The city is served by Interstate 76, also known as the Schuylkill Expressway, which runs along the Schuylkill River, intersecting the Pennsylvania Turnpike at King of Prussia and providing access to Harrisburg and points west. Interstate 676, also known as Vine Street Expressway, links I-95 and I-76 through Center City, running below street level between the eastbound and westbound lanes of Vine Street. Entrance and exit ramps for the Benjamin Franklin Bridge are near the eastern end of the expressway just west of the I-95 interchange.\nRoosevelt Boulevard and Expressway, also known as U.S. 1, connects Northeast Philadelphia with Center City via I-76 through Fairmount Park. Woodhaven Road, also known as Route 63, and Cottman Avenue, also known as Route 73, serve the neighborhoods of Northeast Philadelphia, running between I-95 and the Roosevelt Boulevard. Fort Washington Expressway, also known as Route 309, extends north from the city's northern border, serving Montgomery and Bucks Counties. U.S. Route 30, also known as Lancaster Avenue, extends west from West Philadelphia to Lancaster.\nInterstate 476, locally called the Blue Route, traverses Delaware County, bypassing the city to the west and serving the city's western suburbs, providing a direct route to Allentown, the Poconos, and points north. Interstate 276, the Pennsylvania Turnpike's Delaware River extension, is a bypass and commuter route north of the city, which links to the New Jersey Turnpike and New York City.\nDelaware River Port Authority operates four bridges in the Philadelphia area, each of which cross the Delaware River to South Jersey: Walt Whitman Bridge (I-76), the Benjamin Franklin Bridge (I-676 and U.S. 30), Betsy Ross Bridge (New Jersey Route 90), and Commodore Barry Bridge (U.S. 322 in Delaware County, south of the city. The Burlington County Bridge Commission maintains two additional bridges that cross the Delaware River. Tacony\u2013Palmyra Bridge connects PA Route 73 in the Tacony section of Northeast Philadelphia with New Jersey Route 73 in Palmyra in Burlington County. Burlington\u2013Bristol Bridge connects NJ Route 413/U.S. Route 130 in Burlington, New Jersey with PA Route 413/U.S. 13 in Bristol Township, north of Philadelphia.\nBus service.\nThe Greyhound terminal is at 1001 Filbert Street (at 10th Street) in Center City, southeast of the Pennsylvania Convention Center and south of Chinatown. Several other bus operators provide service at the Greyhound terminal including Fullington Trailways, Martz Trailways, Peter Pan Bus Lines, and NJ Transit buses.\nOther intercity bus services include Megabus with stops at 30th Street Station and the visitor center for Independence Hall, BoltBus (operated by Greyhound) at 30th Street Station, OurBus at various stops in the city.\nRail.\nSince the early days of rail transportation in the United States, Philadelphia has served as a hub for several major rail companies, particularly the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Railroad. The Pennsylvania Railroad first operated Broad Street Station, then 30th Street Station and Suburban Station, and the Reading Railroad operated Reading Terminal, now part of the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The two companies also operated competing commuter rail systems in the area. The two systems now operate as a single system under the control of SEPTA, the regional transit authority. Additionally, the PATCO Speedline subway system and NJ Transit's Atlantic City Line operate successor services to South Jersey.\nIn 1911, Philadelphia had nearly 4,000 electric trolleys running on 86 lines. In 2005, SEPTA reintroduced trolley service to the Girard Avenue Line, Route 15. SEPTA operates six subway-surface trolleys that run on street-level tracks in West Philadelphia and subway tunnels in Center City, along with two surface trolleys in adjacent suburbs.\nPhiladelphia is a regional hub of the federally-owned Amtrak system, with 30th Street Station being a primary stop on the Washington-Boston Northeast Corridor and the Keystone Corridor to Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. 30th Street also serves as a major station for services via the Pennsylvania Railroad's former Pennsylvania Main Line to Chicago. As of 2018[ [update]], 30th Street is Amtrak's third-busiest station in the country, after New York City and Washington.\nUtilities.\nWater purity and availability.\nIn 1815, Philadelphia began sourcing its water via the Fairmount Water Works on the Schuylkill River, the nation's first major urban water supply system. In 1909, the Water Works was decommissioned as the city transitioned to modern sand filtration methods. Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) provides drinking water, wastewater collection, and stormwater services for Philadelphia, as well as surrounding counties. PWD draws about 57 percent of its drinking water from the Delaware River and the balance from the Schuylkill River. The city has two filtration plants on the Schuylkill River and one on the Delaware River. The three plants can treat up to 546\u00a0million gallons of water per day, while the total storage capacity of the combined plant and distribution system exceeds one billion gallons. The wastewater system consists of three water pollution control plants, 21 pumping stations, and about of sewers.\nElectricity.\nExelon subsidiary PECO Energy Company, founded as the Brush Electric Light Company of Philadelphia in 1881 and renamed Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) in 1902, provides electricity to about 1.6\u00a0million customers and more than 500,000 natural gas customers in the southeastern Pennsylvania area including the city of Philadelphia and most of its suburbs. PECO is the largest electric and natural gas utility in the state with 472 power substations and nearly of electric transmission and distribution lines and of natural gas transmission, distribution, and service lines.\nNatural gas.\nPhiladelphia Gas Works (PGW), overseen by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, is the nation's largest municipally-owned natural gas utility. PGW serves over 500,000 homes and businesses in the Philadelphia area. Founded in 1836, the company came under city ownership in 1987 and has been providing the majority of gas distributed within city limits. In 2014, the City Council refused to conduct hearings on a $1.86\u00a0billion sale of PGW, part of a two-year effort that was proposed by the mayor. The refusal led to the prospective buyer terminating its offer.\nTelecommunications.\nSoutheastern Pennsylvania was assigned the 215 area code in 1947 when the North American Numbering Plan of the Bell System went into effect. The geographic area covered by the code was split nearly in half in 1994 when area code 610 was created, with the city and its northern suburbs retaining 215. Overlay area code 267 was added to the 215 service area in 1997, and 484 was added to the 610 area in 1999. A plan in 2001 to introduce a third overlay code to both service areas, area code 445 to 215 and area code 835 to 610, was delayed and later rescinded. Area code 445 was implemented as an overlay for area codes 215 and 267 starting on February 3, 2018.\nSister cities.\nPhiladelphia also has three partnership cities or regions:\nPhiladelphia has eight official sister cities as designated by the Citizen Diplomacy International (CDI) of Philadelphia: Philadelphia has dedicated landmarks to its sister cities. The Sister Cities Park, a site of at 18th and Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Logan Square, was dedicated in June 1976. The park was built to commemorate Philadelphia's first two sister city relationships, with Tel Aviv and Florence. Toru\u0144 Triangle, honoring the sister city relationship with Toru\u0144, Poland, was constructed in 1976, west of the United Way building at 18th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Sister Cities Park was redesigned and reopened in 2012, featuring an interactive fountain honoring Philadelphia's sister and partnership cities, a caf\u00e9 and visitor center, children's play area, outdoor garden, boat pond, and a pavilion built to environmentally friendly standards.\nThe Chinatown Gate, erected in 1984 and crafted by artisans from Tianjin, stands astride 10th Street, on the north side of its intersection with Arch Street, as a symbol of the sister city relationship. The CDI of Philadelphia has participated in the U.S. Department of State's \"Partners for Peace\" project with Mosul, Iraq, and in accepting visiting delegations from dozens of other countries.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nclass=\"wikitable succession-box noprint\" style=\"margin:0.5em auto; font-size:small;clear:both;\"", "570934": "Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church\nHistoric church in Pennsylvania, United States\nThe Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is a historic church and congregation which is located at 419 South 6th Street in Center City Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The congregation, founded in 1794, is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal congregation in the nation.\nIts present church, completed in 1890, is the oldest church property in the United States to be continuously owned by African Americans. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972.\nHistory of the congregation.\nThe church was proposed in 1791 by members of the Free African Society of Philadelphia, including Absalom Jones, out of a desire to create a space for autonomous African-American worship and community in the city. The desire to create the church was strengthened in 1792, after African-American members of St. George's Methodist Church walked out due to racial segregation in the worship services. Leading roles in the founding were played by Richard Allen, who arranged the purchase of the church's site and its construction, and Absalom Jones, who raised funds among both black and white Philadelphia residents (including then-President George Washington). Mother Bethel was one of the first African-American churches in the United States, dedicated July 29, 1794, by Bishop Francis Asbury.\nOn October 12, 1794, Reverend Robert Blackwell announced that the congregation was received in full fellowship in the Methodist Episcopal Church.\nIn 1816, Rev. Richard Allen brought together other black Methodist congregations from the region to organize the new African Methodist Episcopal Church denomination. He was elected bishop of this denomination. After the American Civil War, its missionaries went to the South to help freedmen and planted many new churches in the region.\nIn 1838, the building was damaged during the riots that followed the destruction of Pennsylvania Hall.\nAllen and his wife, Sarah Allen are both buried in the present church's crypt. The current church building was constructed in 1888\u20131890, and it has been designated a National Historic Landmark.\nOn October 25, 2009, \"The Great Gathering\" took place at St. George's Church in which the community of Mother Bethel AME and St. George's congregations gathered for Sunday worship at St. George's for the first time since the historic walkout. The Rev. Dr. Mark Kelly Tyler preached for this service.\nBuilding history.\nThe property was acquired for the new congregation in 1794. Its first building was a frame structure originally used as a blacksmith's shop, which was hauled to the site.\nThis building was later replaced by frame structures in 1805 and 1841. The 1841 church was reported to have a tunnel connecting it with a nearby Quaker meetinghouse to facilitate the movements of fugitive slaves.\nThe present building, which was completed in 1890, is a three-story masonry structure with Romanesque styling. Its large round-arch windows are adorned with stained glass from Germany.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "25554733": "Sandy Eisenberg Sasso\nAmerican writer\nSandy Eisenberg Sasso (born January 29, 1947) is the first woman to have been ordained a rabbi in Reconstructionist Judaism. She was ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia, on May 19, 1974. She is also the author of many children's books on religious topics.\nBiography.\nYouth and early life.\nSasso was born in 1947 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In her youth, she was very involved in her Philadelphia Reform congregation and began to consider entering the rabbinate at 16 years old, though she knew that such a role had never been open to women. During this period she studied at Gratz College.\nRabbinical school.\nIn the fall of 1969, Sasso joined the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College's second class of rabbinical students. While in school, Sandy Eisenberg married her classmate, Dennis Sasso, making them the first rabbinical couple in Jewish history. As one of the few women rabbinical students, Sasso naturally became a leader in defining women's changing roles within Judaism. Sasso holds title to many firsts as a female rabbi.\nRabbinical life.\nSasso served as rabbi of the Manhattan Reconstructionist Congregation and, from 1977 until 2013, as rabbi along with her husband at the congregation Beth-El Zedeck in Indianapolis, making the Sassos the world's first couple to serve jointly as rabbis.\nSasso appeared in a 2005 documentary, titled \"And the Gates Opened: Women in the Rabbinate,\" which features stories of and interviews with her, rabbi Sally Priesand, and rabbi Amy Eilberg.\nOn December 6, 2010, at Temple Reyim in Newton, Massachusetts, Sandy Eisenberg Sasso met for the first time with Sally Priesand, the first Reform female rabbi, Amy Eilberg, the first Conservative female rabbi, and Sara Hurwitz, considered by some to be the first Orthodox female rabbi. They and approximately 30 other women rabbis lit Hanukkah candles and then spoke about their experiences in an open forum.\nOn June 3, 2012, Priesand, Sasso, Eilberg, and Hurwitz met again, this time at Monmouth Reform Temple at a celebration honoring the four first women rabbis to be ordained in their respective movements, and the 40th anniversary of Priesand's ordination.\nIn May 2013, Sasso retired as senior rabbi of Beth-El Zedeck.\nAwards and honors.\nSasso has been honored throughout her career:\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nVideos.\nVideos produced by Sonia Sarah Lipsyc director of Aleph CSUQ, and Abigail Hirsch  a Film Producer with Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso at Dorshei Emet Synagogue, Montreal,Canada: "}, "descending_order": ["570934", "25554733", "50585"], "permutation_1": ["570934", "25554733", "50585"], "permutation_2": ["50585", "25554733", "570934"], "permutation_3": ["570934", "25554733", "50585"]}
{"id": "3hop1__119402_102039_158266", "docs_added": {"4689264": "Australia\nCountry in Oceania\nAustralia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It has a total area of , making it the sixth-largest country in the world and the largest in Oceania. Australia is the world's flattest and driest inhabited continent. It is a megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates including deserts in the interior and tropical rainforests along the coast.\nThe ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south-east Asia 50,000 to 65,000 years ago, during the last glacial period. By the time of British settlement, Aboriginal Australians spoke 250 distinct languages and had one of the oldest living cultures in the world. Australia's written history commenced with Dutch exploration of most of the coastline in the 17th century. British colonisation began in 1788 with the establishment of the penal colony of New South Wales. By the mid-19th century, most of the continent had been explored by European settlers and five additional self-governing British colonies were established, each gaining responsible government by 1890. The colonies federated in 1901, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. This continued a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom, highlighted by the \"Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942\", and culminating in the Australia Acts of 1986.\nAustralia is a federal parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy comprising six states and ten territories. Its population of almost million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard. Canberra is the nation's capital, while its most populous cities are Sydney and Melbourne, both with a population of more than 5 million. Australia's culture is diverse, and the country has one of the highest foreign-born populations in the world. It has a highly developed economy and one of the highest per capita incomes globally. Its abundant natural resources and well-developed international trade relations are crucial to the country's economy. It ranks highly for quality of life, health, education, economic freedom, civil liberties and political rights.\nAustralia is a middle power, and has the world's thirteenth-highest military expenditure. It is a member of international groups including the United Nations; the G20; the OECD; the World Trade Organization; Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation; the Pacific Islands Forum; the Pacific Community; the Commonwealth of Nations; and the defence and security organisations ANZUS, AUKUS, and the Five Eyes. It is also a major non-NATO ally of the United States.\nEtymology.\nThe name \"Australia\" (pronounced in Australian English) is derived from the Latin ('unknown southern land'), a name used for a hypothetical continent in the Southern Hemisphere since ancient times. Several 16th-century cartographers used the word \"Australia\" on maps, but not to identify modern Australia.\nWhen the Dutch began visiting and mapping Australia in the 17th century, they called the continent \"New Holland\". The name \"Australia\" was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders, who circumnavigated the continent in 1803. However, when his account of his voyage was published in 1814, the name \"Terra Australis\" was used.\nNew South Wales Governor Lachlan Macquarie officially recommended the name \"Australia\" to replace \"New Holland\" in December 1817. The British Admiralty adopted the name in 1824, and the British Parliament used it in legislation in 1828. The United Kingdom Hydrographic Office used the new name in \"The Australia Directory\" of 1830. The name \"Commonwealth of Australia\" for the new federation of the six former colonies was formalised in the \"Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900\" (UK).\nColloquial names for Australia include \"Oz\", \"Straya\" and \"Down Under\".\nHistory.\nIndigenous prehistory.\nIndigenous Australians comprise two broad groups:\nHuman habitation of the Australian continent is estimated to have begun 50,000 to 65,000 years ago, with the migration of people by land bridges and short sea crossings from what is now Southeast Asia. It is uncertain how many waves of immigration may have contributed to these ancestors of modern Aboriginal Australians. The Madjedbebe rock shelter in Arnhem Land is possibly the oldest site showing the presence of humans in Australia. The oldest human remains found are the Lake Mungo remains, which have been dated to around 42,000 years ago.\nAboriginal Australian culture is one of the oldest continuous cultures on Earth. At the time of first European contact, Aboriginal Australians belonged to wide range of societies, with diverse economies spread across at least 250 different language groups. Estimates of the Aboriginal population before British settlement range from 300,000 to 3 million. Aboriginal Australians cultures were (and remain) deeply connected with the land and the environment, with stories of The Dreaming maintained through oral tradition, songs, dance and paintings. Certain groups engaged in fire-stick farming, fish farming, and built semi-permanent shelters. These practices have variously been characterised as \"hunter-gatherer\", \"agricultural\", \"natural cultivation\" and \"intensification\".\nTorres Strait Islander people first settled their islands at least 2,500 years ago. Culturally and linguistically distinct from mainland Aboriginal peoples, they were seafarers and obtained their livelihood from seasonal horticulture and the resources of their reefs and seas. Agriculture also developed on some islands and villages appeared by the 1300s. By the mid-18th century in northern Australia, contact, trade and cross-cultural engagement had been established between local Aboriginal groups and Makassan trepangers, visiting from present-day Indonesia.\nEuropean exploration and colonisation.\nThe Dutch East India Company ship, \"Duyfken\", captained by Willem Janszoon, made the first documented European landing in Australia in 1606. Later that year, Lu\u00eds Vaz de Torres sailed to the north of Australia through Torres Strait, along New Guinea's southern coast. Abel Tasman's voyage of 1642 was the first known European expedition to reach Van Diemen's Land. On his second voyage of 1644, he mapped the north coast of Australia south of New Guinea. Following Tasman's voyages, the Dutch were able to make almost complete maps of Australia's northern and western coasts and much of its southern and south-eastern Tasmanian coasts. They named the continent New Holland\".\"\nIn 1770, Captain James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named \"New South Wales\" and claimed for Great Britain. in 1786, the British government announced its intention to establish a penal colony in New South Wales. On 26 January 1788, the First Fleet commanded by Captain Arthur Phillip, arrived at Sydney Cove, Port Jackson. A camp was established and the Union Flag raised. The date later became Australia's national day.\nMost early settlers were convicts, transported for petty crimes and assigned as labourers or servants to \"free settlers\" (willing immigrants). Once emancipated, convicts tended to integrate into colonial society. Aboriginal resistance, convict rebellions and bushranging were sometimes suppressed under martial law. The 1808 Rum Rebellion, carried out by officers of the New South Wales Corp, led to a temporary military junta. During the next two decades, social and economic reforms, together with the establishment of a Legislative Council and Supreme Court, saw the penal colony transition to a civil society.\nThe indigenous population declined for 150 years following European settlement, mainly due to infectious disease. British colonial authorities did not sign any treaties with Aboriginal groups. As settlement expanded, tens of thousands of Indigenous people and thousands of settlers were killed in frontier conflicts, which many historians argue included acts of genocide by settlers. Settlers dispossessed surviving Indigenous peoples of most of their land.\nColonial expansion.\nIn 1803, a settlement was established in Van Diemen's Land (present-day Tasmania), and in 1813, Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and William Wentworth crossed the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, opening the interior to European settlement. The British claim was extended to the whole Australian continent in 1827 when Major Edmund Lockyer established a settlement on King George Sound (modern-day Albany). The Swan River Colony (present-day Perth) was established in 1829, evolving into the largest Australian colony by area, Western Australia. Separate colonies were carved from New South Wales: Tasmania in 1825, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, and Queensland in 1859. South Australia and Victoria were founded as free colonies\u2014they never accepted transported convicts. Growing opposition to the convict system culminated in its abolition in the eastern colonies by the 1850s. Initially a free colony, Western Australia accepted convicts from 1850 to 1868.\nThe six colonies individually gained responsible government between 1855 and 1890, managing most of their own affairs while remaining part of the British Empire. The Colonial Office in London retained control of some matters, notably foreign affairs. The colonial parliaments progressively extended voting rights to adult men from 1856, with women's suffrage on equal terms following between the 1890s and 1900s. Some colonies introduced racial restrictions on voting from 1885.\nIn the mid-19th century, explorers such as Burke and Wills charted Australia's interior. A series of gold rushes beginning in the early 1850s led to an influx of new migrants from China, North America and continental Europe, as well as outbreaks of bushranging and civil unrest; the latter peaked in 1854 when Ballarat miners launched the Eureka Rebellion against gold licence fees. The 1860s saw the rise of blackbirding, where South Sea Islanders were coerced or abducted into indentured labour, mainly by Queensland colonists.\nFrom 1886, Australian colonial governments began removing many Aboriginal children from their families and communities, justified on the grounds of child protection and forced assimilation policies. The Second Boer War (1899\u20131902) marked the largest overseas deployment of Australia's colonial forces.\nFederation to the World Wars.\nOn 1 January 1901, federation of the colonies was achieved after a decade of planning, constitutional conventions and referendums, resulting in the establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia as a nation under the new Australian Constitution.\nFrom 1901, Australia was a self-governing dominion within the British Empire. It was one of the founding members of the League of Nations in 1920, and the United Nations in 1945. The \"Statute of Westminster 1931\" ended the ability of the UK to legislate for Australia at the federal level without Australia's consent. Australia adopted it in 1942, but it was backdated to 1939 to confirm the validity of legislation passed during World War II.\nThe Australian Capital Territory was formed in 1911 as the location for the future federal capital of Canberra. While it was being constructed, Melbourne served as the temporary capital from 1901 to 1927. The Northern Territory was transferred from the control of South Australia to the Commonwealth in 1911. Australia took over the administration of the Territory of Papua (which had previously been a British colony) in 1905 and of the Territory of New Guinea (formerly German New Guinea) in 1920. The two were unified as the Territory of Papua and New Guinea in 1949 and gained independence from Australia in 1975.\nIn 1914, Australia joined the Allies in the First World War, and took part in the fighting on several fronts. Of the 324,000 men who served overseas, about 60,000 were killed and another 152,000 were wounded. Many Australians regard the defeat of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) at Gallipoli in 1915 as the \"baptism of fire\" that forged the new nation's identity. The beginning of the campaign is commemorated annually on Anzac Day, a date which rivals Australia Day as the nation's most important.\nFrom 1939 to 1945, Australia joined the Allies in fighting the Second World War. Australia's armed forces fought in the Pacific, European and Mediterranean and Middle East theatres. The shock of Britain's defeat in Singapore in 1942, followed soon after by the bombing of Darwin and other Japanese attacks on Australian soil, led to a widespread belief in Australia that a Japanese invasion was imminent, and a shift from the United Kingdom to the United States as Australia's principal ally and security partner. Since 1951, Australia has been allied with the United States under the ANZUS treaty.\nPost-war and contemporary eras.\nIn the three decades following World War II, Australia experienced significant increases in living standards, leisure time and suburban development. Governments encouraged a large wave of immigration from across Europe and called these migrants \"New Australians\". High immigration was justified to Australians using the slogan \"populate or perish,\" and from the 1960s the white Australia policy was gradually relaxed.\nA member of the Western Bloc during the Cold War, Australia participated in the Korean War and the Malayan Emergency during the 1950s and the Vietnam War from 1962 to 1973. Tensions over communist influence in society led to unsuccessful attempts by the Menzies Government to ban the Communist Party of Australia, and a bitter split in the Labor Party in 1955.\nAs a result of a 1967 referendum, the federal government gained the power to legislate with regard to Aboriginal Australians, and Aboriginal Australians were fully included in the census. Pre-colonial land interests (referred to as native title in Australia) was recognised in law for the first time when the High Court of Australia held in \"Mabo v Queensland (No 2)\" that Australia was neither \"terra nullius\" ('land belonging to no one') or \"desert and uncultivated land\" at the time of European settlement.\nFollowing the abolition of the last vestiges of the White Australia policy in 1973, Australia's demography and culture transformed as a result of a large and ongoing wave of non-European immigration, mostly from Asia. The late 20th century also saw an increasing focus on foreign policy ties with other Asia\u2013Pacific nations. The Australia Acts of 1986 severed the remaining constitutional ties between Australia and the United Kingdom while maintaining the monarch in her independent capacity as Queen of Australia. In a 1999 constitutional referendum, 55% of voters rejected abolishing the monarchy and becoming a republic.\nFollowing the September 11 attacks on the United States, Australia joined the United States in fighting the Afghanistan War from 2001 to 2021 and the Iraq War from 2003 to 2009. The nation's trade relations also became increasingly oriented towards East Asia in the 21st century, with China becoming the nation's largest trading partner by a large margin.\nIn response to the COVID-19 pandemic, from March 2020 lockdowns and other restrictions on public gatherings and movement across the national and state borders were implemented by the Federal, state and territory governments. Following the rollout of vaccines in 2021, these restrictions were gradually eased. In October 2023, Australia declared that COVID-19 was no longer a communicable disease incident of national significance.\nGeography.\nGeneral characteristics.\nAustralia consists of the mainland Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, numerous smaller offshore islands, and the remote offshore territories of Ashmore and Cartier Islands, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Coral Sea Islands, Heard and McDonald Islands, and Norfolk Island. Australia also claims about 42% of Antarctica as the Australian Antarctic Territory, but this claim is only recognised by four other countries.\nMainland Australia lies between latitudes 9\u00b0 and 44\u00b0 south, and longitudes 112\u00b0 and 154\u00b0 east. Surrounded by the Indian and Pacific oceans, Australia is separated from Asia by the Arafura and Timor seas, with the Coral Sea lying off the Queensland coast, and the Tasman Sea lying between Australia and New Zealand. The Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef, lies a short distance off the north-east coast and extends for more than .\nThe mainland is the world's smallest continent and the country is the sixth-largest by total area. Australia is sometimes considered the world's largest island and is often dubbed the \"island continent\". It has of coastline (excluding all offshore islands), and claims an exclusive economic zone of . This exclusive economic zone does not include the Australian Antarctic Territory.\nMost of Australia is arid or semi-arid. In 2021 Australia had 10% of the global permanent meadows and pastureland. Forest cover is around 17% of Australia's land area. The Australian mainland is relatively flat, with an average height of compared with for all continents. The Great Dividing Range runs along most of eastern Australia, dividing the central lowlands from the eastern highlands. At , Mount Kosciuszko is the highest mountain on the mainland. Taller are Mawson Peak, at , on Heard Island, and, in the Australian Antarctic Territory, Mount McClintock and Mount Menzies, at and respectively.The Murray-Darling is the major river system, draining most of inland New South Wales and Southern Queensland towards Lake Alexandrina and the sea in South Australia. There are also smaller coastal river systems, inland drainage systems such as the Lake Eyre system, and salt lake systems in central and western Australia. Australia's rivers have the lowest discharge into the sea of any continent. The mainland's flat, arid profile also makes its rivers slow-moving, resulting in a build up of salt on the land. Salinisation adversely affects Australia's soil which is, on average, poor in nutrients compared with world standards.\nAustralia's population is concentrated on the coastal fringes. About 95% of the population lives within 100\u00a0km of the coast; the world average is 39%. Australia's population density is 3.5 inhabitants per square kilometre, which is one of the lowest in the world. However, there is a large concentration of the population in cities along the temperate south-eastern coastline, and population density exceeds 38 inhabitants per square kilometre in central Melbourne.\nGeology.\nFormerly part of the Rodinia and Gondwana supercontinents, Australia completely separated from Antarctica about 35 million years ago and continued drifting northwards. When the last glacial period ended, rising sea levels separated the Australian mainland from New Guinea about 8,000 years ago and from Tasmania about 6,000 years ago.\nAustralia lies well within the Australian tectonic plate. The mainland is relatively stable geologically, with no major mountain building, active volcanoes or tectonic faults. However, the Australian plate is moving north-northeast at a rate of about 6 to 7\u00a0cm a year and is currently in collision with the Eurasian plate and Pacific plate. The resulting intratectonic stresses lead to relatively high seismic activity for a geologically stable landmass. There were 18 earthquakes with a moment magnitude of greater than 6 between 1901 and 2017. The Newcastle earthquake of 1989 was Australia's deadliest, killing 13 people. There were active volcanoes on the eastern mainland as recently as 4,600 years ago, and this is reflected in Aboriginal place names and creation stories. Currently volcanism occurs in the remote Heard Island and McDonald Islands.\nThe Australian continental crust was created in three cycles from the oldest Archaean cratons in the west to the younger orogenic formations in the east (built about 541 million to 252 million years ago). The oldest Australian surface rocks date to the Archaean period. Some in Western Australia are older than 3.7 billion years and others in South Australia are over 3.1 billion years old. The oldest zircon crystals on Earth, dating back 4.4 billion years, have been found in Western Australia. However, about 80 per cent of Australia is covered by sedimentary rocks and regolith that are less than 250 million years old.\nClimate.\nThe Australian climate ranges from wet tropical in the northeast and northwest to arid in the centre. The coastal south is temperate and humid with winter freezing and snow in the southeastern highlands and Tasmania. The climate is influenced by Australia's position in the \"horse latitudes\" which tends to bring arid conditions. Overall, the Australian mainland is the driest inhabited continent, with an average annual rainfall of . About 70% of the country is arid or semi-arid, and about 18% is desert.\nThe climate is also influenced by various systems such as the El Ni\u00f1o\u2013Southern Oscillation, the Indian Ocean Dipole and the Southern Annular Mode. Australia has unusual variability in rainfall within years and between years, leading to frequent droughts and flooding. Cyclones and rain depressions are common in tropical Australia. The summer monsoon brings significant rainfall to northern Australia and low pressure cells bring winter rainfall in the south. The hottest regions are in the northwest of the country and the coolest in the southeast. Bushfire conditions are common in southern Australia.\nClimate change from increased greenhouse gas emissions has led to a 1.5\u00a0\u00b0C rise in Australian temperatures since 1910 and an increase in extreme heat and heavy rainfall events. There has been a reduction in rainfall from April to October in southern Australia since 1970 and a longer bushfire season since the 1950s. Rainfall has increased in northern Australia since the 1970s. The number of tropical cyclones have fallen since 1982 and alpine snow has decreased since the late 1950s. Sea levels are rising around Australia and the surrounding oceans are becoming more acidic.\nBiodiversity.\nAustralia is one of 17 megadiverse countries. Because of its long geographic isolation, much of Australia's biota is unique. About 94% of its amphibians, 93% of its reptiles and flowering plants, 69% of its mammals and 46% of its birds are endemic. Australia has a wide range of ecosystems of which 89 regions and 419 subregions are recognised in the Australian bioregion framework.\nIn January 2025 there were 168,386 named species on the Australian National Species List. However, it is estimated that 70% of Australian species have not been discovered and classified and that there may be 600,000 Australian native species. In general, knowledge of vertebrates and flowering plants is better than for invertebrates and fungi. It is estimated that less that 10% of Australia\u2019s fungi and insects have been named.\nAbout 10% of the world\u2019s known plant species are found in Australia. Many of these have adapted to the arid climate, variable rainfall and nutrient-poor soil. Deserts and xeric shrubland cover about 70% of the mainland. Acacia, banksia and eucalypts have spread over much of Australia. Many plants have hard and long-living leaves, and are rich in carbon, poor in nutrients, and well adapted to bushfires.\nAbout two-thirds of the world's 330 species of marsupials are native to Australia. Australian placental mammals (overwhelmingly bats, rats and mice) also make up almost 47% of the world\u2019s land mammal species. Australia has about 10% of the world\u2019s known reptile species. There are also about 320,500 invertebrate species, of which insects are the largest class, accounting for more than 75% of all animal species. Australia has over 15,000 known species of fungi although it is possible that tens of thousands more exist.\nAustralia's wildlife show many adaptations to their environments. As the leaves of most plants are poor in nutrients, Australia has a high proportion of birds, insects and marsupials, such as the honey possum, that feed on nectar and pollen. The koala is an exception, specialising in feeding on eucalyptus leaves. Nutritionally poor flora and variable rainfall also favour animals with lower energy requirements, including snakes, lizards, and hopping marsupials such as the kangaroo and wallaby. There is, however, evidence of convergent evolution of Australia's marsupials and the placental mammals of other continents living in similar environments. For example, the extinct thylacine (Tasmanian tiger) had similarities with the placental wolf, marsupial moles with the golden moles of Africa, and hopping mice with the hopping rodents of other arid regions.\nThere were major extinctions of Australia's vertebrates, including its megafauna, around 46 thousand years ago, and there is an ongoing scientific debate over the role of human activity and climate change in these extinctions. The contraction of the range of the Tasmanian tiger and Tasmanian devil to that island around 4,000 to 5,000 years ago is also consistent with changes on the mainland including an increasing human population, the introduction of the dingo, and the greater use of fire and new stone tool technologies.\nOver the past two centuries, Australia has lost more mammal species than any other continent. Overall, 100 Australian species are listed as extinct or extinct in the wild. In June 2021, over 1,000 animal and plant species were listed by Australian governments as endangered or critically endangered. The major threats to endangered species are landscape change, ecosystem disruption, introduced species such as the feral cat and red fox, and climate change.\nThe federal \"Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999\" is the legal framework for the protection of threatened species. The National Reserve System is Australia's network of protected areas. As at 30 June 2022, it covered over 22% of Australia's land mass. \"Australia\u2019s Strategy for Nature 2024\u20132030\" is the national biodiversity plan that aims to reverse biodiversity loss in Australia by 2030 and meet the county's obligations under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity and other international agreements.\nGovernment and politics.\nAustralia is a constitutional monarchy, a parliamentary democracy and a federation. The country has maintained its mostly unchanged constitution alongside a stable liberal democratic political system since Federation in 1901. It is one of the world's oldest federations, in which power is divided between the federal and state governments. The Australian system of government combines elements derived from the political systems of the United Kingdom (a fused executive, constitutional monarchy and strong party discipline) and the United States (federalism, a written constitution and strong bicameralism with a Senate in which states have equal representation), resulting in a distinct hybrid.\nFederal government power is partially separated between three groups:\nCharles III reigns as King of Australia and is represented in Australia by the governor-general at the federal level and by the governors at the state level, who by of the Constitution and convention act on the advice of their ministers. Thus, in practice the governor-general acts as a legal figurehead for the actions of the prime minister and the Cabinet. The governor-general may in some situations exercise reserve powers: powers exercisable in the absence or contrary to ministerial advice. When these powers may be exercised is governed by convention and their precise scope is unclear. The most notable exercise of these powers was the dismissal of the Whitlam government in the constitutional crisis of 1975.\nIn the Senate (the upper house), there are 76 senators: twelve each from the states and two each from the mainland territories (the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory). The House of Representatives (the lower house) has 151 members elected from single-member electoral divisions, commonly known as \"electorates\" or \"seats\", allocated to states on the basis of population, with each of the current states guaranteed a minimum of five seats. The lower house has a maximum term of three years, but this is not fixed and governments usually dissolve the house early for an election at some point in the 6 months before the maximum. Elections for both chambers are generally held simultaneously with senators having overlapping six-year terms except for those from the territories, whose terms are not fixed but are tied to the electoral cycle for the lower house. Thus only 40 of the 76 places in the Senate are put to each election unless the cycle is interrupted by a double dissolution.\nAustralia's electoral system uses preferential voting for the House of Representatives and all state and territory lower house elections (with the exception of Tasmania and the ACT which use the Hare-Clark system). The Senate and most state upper houses use the proportional system which combines preferential voting with proportional representation for each state. Voting and enrolment is compulsory for all enrolled citizens 18 years and older in every jurisdiction. The party with majority support in the House of Representatives forms the government and its leader becomes Prime Minister. In cases where no party has majority support, the governor-general has the constitutional power to appoint the prime minister and, if necessary, dismiss one that has lost the confidence of Parliament. Due to the relatively unique position of Australia operating as a Westminster parliamentary democracy with a powerful and elected upper house, the system has sometimes been referred to as having a \"Washminster mutation\", or as a semi-parliamentary system.\nThere are two major political groups that usually form government federally: the Australian Labor Party and the Coalition, which is a formal grouping of the Liberal Party and its minor partner, the National Party. At the state level of government, the relationship between the Nationals and the Liberal Party differs, with the parties merged in Queensland and the Northern Territory (federal parliamentarians sit in either the Liberal or National partyroom however); in coalition in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia; and in competition with the Liberals in South Australia and Tasmania. Within Australian political culture, the Coalition is considered centre-right and the Labor Party is considered centre-left. Independent members and several minor parties have achieved representation in Australian parliaments, mostly in upper houses. The Australian Greens are the third largest party by both vote and membership and the fourth largest by parliamentary representation. The most recent federal election was held on 21 May 2022 and resulted in the Australian Labor Party, led by Anthony Albanese, being elected to government.\nStates and territories.\nAustralia has six states\u2014New South Wales (NSW), Victoria (Vic), Queensland (Qld), Western Australia (WA), South Australia (SA) and Tasmania (Tas)\u2014and two mainland self-governing territories\u2014the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and the Northern Territory (NT).\nThe states have the general power to make laws except in the few areas where the constitution grants the Commonwealth (the federal level of government) exclusive powers. The Commonwealth can only make laws on topics listed in the constitution but its laws prevail over those of the states to the extent of any inconsistency. Since Federation, the Commonwealth's power relative to the states has significantly increased due to the increasingly wide interpretation given to listed Commonwealth powers\u00a0\u2013 and because of the states' heavy financial reliance on Commonwealth grants.\nEach state and major mainland territory has its own parliament\u2014unicameral in the Northern Territory, the ACT and Queensland, and bicameral in the other states. The lower houses are known as the Legislative Assembly (the House of Assembly in South Australia and Tasmania); the upper houses are known as the Legislative Council. The head of the government in each state is the premier and in each territory the chief minister. The King is represented in each state by a governor. At the Commonwealth level, the King's representative is the governor-general.\nThe Commonwealth government directly administers the internal Jervis Bay Territory and the external territories: the Ashmore and Cartier Islands, the Coral Sea Islands, the Heard Island and McDonald Islands, the Indian Ocean territories (Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands), Norfolk Island, and the Australian Antarctic Territory. The remote Macquarie Island and Lord Howe Island are part of Tasmania and New South Wales respectively.\nForeign relations.\nAustralia is a middle power, whose foreign relations has three core bi-partisan pillars: commitment to the US alliance, engagement with the Indo-Pacific and support for international institutions, rules and co-operation. Through the ANZUS pact and its status as a major non-NATO ally, Australia maintains a close relationship with the US, which encompasses strong defence, security and trade ties. In the Indo-Pacific, the country seeks to increase its trade ties through the open flow of trade and capital, while managing the rise of Chinese power by supporting the existing rules based order. Regionally, the country is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Pacific Community, the ASEAN+6 mechanism and the East Asia Summit. Internationally, the country is a member of the United Nations (of which it was a founding member), the Commonwealth of Nations, the OECD and the G20. This reflects the country's generally strong commitment to multilateralism.\nAustralia is a member of several defence, intelligence and security groupings including the Five Eyes intelligence alliance with the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand; the ANZUS alliance with the United States and New Zealand; the AUKUS security treaty with the United States and United Kingdom; the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with the United States, India and Japan; the Five Power Defence Arrangements with New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Malaysia and Singapore; and the Reciprocal Access defence and security agreement with Japan.\nAustralia has pursued the cause of international trade liberalisation. It led the formation of the Cairns Group and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, and is a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Beginning in the 2000s, Australia entered into the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership multilateral free trade agreements as well as bilateral free trade agreements with the United States, China, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, with the most recent deal signed in 2023 with the UK.\nAustralia maintains a deeply integrated relationship with neighbouring New Zealand, with free mobility of citizens between the two countries under the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement and free trade under the Closer Economic Relations agreement. The most favourably viewed countries by the Australian people in 2021 include New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States and South Korea. It also maintains an international aid program under which some 75 countries receive assistance. Australia ranked fourth in the Center for Global Development's 2021 Commitment to Development Index.\nThe power over foreign policy is highly concentrated in the prime minister and the national security committee, with major decision such as joining the 2003 invasion of Iraq made with without prior Cabinet approval. Similarly, the Parliament does not play a formal role in foreign policy and the power to declare war lies solely with the executive government. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade supports the executive in its policy decisions.\nMilitary.\nThe two main institutions involved in the management of Australia's armed forces are the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and the Department of Defence, together known as \"Defence\". The Australian Defence Force is the military wing, headed by the chief of the defence force, and contains three branches: the Royal Australian Navy, the Australian Army and the Royal Australian Air Force. In 2021, it had 84,865 currently serving personnel (including 60,286 regulars and 24,581 reservists). The Department of Defence is the civilian wing and is headed by the secretary of defence. These two leaders collective manage Defence as a diarchy, with shared and joint responsibilities. The titular role of commander-in-chief is held by the governor-general; however, actual command is vested in the chief of the Defence Force. The executive branch of the Commonwealth government has overall control of the military through the minister of defence, who is subject to the decisions of Cabinet and its National Security Committee. Major Australian intelligence agencies include the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (foreign intelligence), the Australian Signals Directorate (signals intelligence) and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (domestic security).\nIn 2022, defence spending was 1.9% of GDP, representing the world's 13th-largest defence budget. In 2024, the ADF had active operations in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific (including security and aid provisions); was contributing to UN forces in relation to South Sudan, Syria\u2013Israel peacekeeping, and North Korea; and domestically was assisting in preventing asylum-seekers from entering the country and assisting in natural disaster relief.\nHuman rights.\nAustralia has generally strong protections for civil and political rights, and the country has signed up to a wide range of international rights treaties. Important documents protecting human rights include the Constitution, the \"Racial Discrimination Act 1975\", the \"Sex Discrimination Act 1984\", the \"Disability Discrimination Act 1992\", and the \"Age Discrimination Act 2004\". Same-sex marriage has been legal in the nation since 2017. Unlike other comparable Western democracies, Australia does not have a single federal charter of rights in the Constitution or under legislation; however, the ACT, Victoria, and Queensland have state-based ones.\nInternational organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have expressed concerns in areas including asylum-seeker policy, Indigenous deaths in custody, the lack of entrenched rights protection, and laws restricting protesting.\nEconomy.\nAustralia's high-income mixed-market economy is rich in natural resources. It is the world's fourteenth-largest by nominal terms, and the 18th-largest by PPP. As of 2021[ [update]], Australia has the second-highest amount of wealth per adult, after Luxembourg, and the thirteenth-highest financial assets per capita. Australia has a labour force of some 13.5 million, with an unemployment rate of 3.5% as of June 2022. According to the Australian Council of Social Service, the poverty rate of Australia exceeds 13.6% of the population, encompassing 3.2\u00a0million. It also estimated that there were 774,000 (17.7%) children under the age of 15 living in relative poverty. The Australian dollar is the national currency, which is also used by three island states in the Pacific: Kiribati, Nauru, and Tuvalu.\nAustralian government debt, about $963 billion in June 2022, exceeds 45.1% of the country's total GDP, and is the world's eighth-highest. Australia had the second-highest level of household debt in the world in 2020, after Switzerland. Its house prices are among the highest in the world, especially in the large urban areas. The large service sector accounts for about 71.2% of total GDP, followed by the industrial sector (25.3%), while its agriculture sector makes up 3.6% of total GDP. Australia is the world's 21st-largest exporter and 24th-largest importer. China is Australia's largest trading partner, accounting for roughly 40% of the country's exports and 17.6% of its imports. Other major export markets include Japan, the United States, and South Korea.\nAustralia has high levels of competitiveness and economic freedom, and was ranked tenth in the Human Development Index in 2022. As of 2022[ [update]], it is ranked twelfth in the Index of Economic Freedom and nineteenth in the Global Competitiveness Report. It attracted 9.5\u00a0million international tourists in 2019, and was ranked thirteenth among the countries of Asia-Pacific in 2019 for inbound tourism. The 2021 \"Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report\" ranked Australia seventh-highest in the world out of 117 countries. Its international tourism receipts in 2019 amounted to $45.7 billion.\nEnergy.\nIn 2021\u201322, Australia's generation of electricity was sourced from black coal (37.2%), brown coal (12%), natural gas (18.8%), hydro (6.5%), wind (11.1%), solar (13.3%), bio-energy (1.2%) and others (1.7%). Total consumption of energy in this period was sourced from coal (28.4%), oil (37.3%), gas (27.4%) and renewables (7%). From 2012 to 2022, the energy sourced from renewables has increased 5.7%, while energy sourced from coal has decreased 2.6%. The use of gas also increased by 1.5% and the use of oil stayed relatively stable with a reduction of only 0.2%.\nIn 2020, Australia produced 27.7% of its electricity from renewable sources, exceeding the target set by the Commonwealth government in 2009 of 20% renewable energy by 2020. A new target of 82% per cent renewable energy by 2030 was set in 2022 and a target for net zero emissions by 2050 was set in 2021.\nScience and technology.\nIn 2019, Australia spent $35.6 billion on research and development, allocating about 1.79% of GDP. A 2022 study by Accenture for the Tech Council shows that the Australian tech sector combined contributes $167 billion a year to the economy and employs 861,000 people. In addition, recent startup ecosystems in Sydney and Melbourne are valued at $34 billion combined. Australia ranked 23rd in the Global Innovation Index 2024.\nWith only 0.3% of the world's population, Australia contributed 4.1% of the world's published research in 2020, making it one of the top 10 research contributors in the world. CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, contributes 10% of all research in the country, while the rest is carried out by universities. Its most notable contributions include the invention of atomic absorption spectroscopy, the essential components of Wi-Fi technology, and the development of the first commercially successful polymer banknote. As of 2024[ [update]], 13 Australian scientists have been awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, chemistry or medicine, and two have been awarded the Fields Medal.\nAustralia is a key player in supporting space exploration. Facilities such as the Square Kilometre Array and Australia Telescope Compact Array radio telescopes, telescopes such as the Siding Spring Observatory, and ground stations such as the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex are of great assistance in deep space exploration missions, primarily by NASA.\nDemographics.\nAustralia has a population density of 3.4 persons per square kilometre of total land area, which makes it one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. The population is heavily concentrated on the east coast, and in particular in the south-eastern region between South East Queensland to the north-east and Adelaide to the south-west.\nAustralia is also highly urbanised, with 67% of the population living in the Greater Capital City Statistical Areas (metropolitan areas of the state and mainland territorial capital cities) in 2018. Metropolitan areas with more than one million inhabitants are Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide.\nIn common with many other developed countries, Australia is experiencing a demographic shift towards an older population, with more retirees and fewer people of working age. In 2021, the average age of the population was 39 years.\nCities.\nAustralia has five cities (including their suburbs) that have populations larger than one million people. The majority of Australia's population lives near coastlines.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nAncestry and immigration.\nBetween 1788 and the Second World War, the vast majority of settlers and immigrants came from the British Isles (principally England, Ireland and Scotland), although there was significant immigration from China and Germany during the 19th century. Following Federation in 1901, the white Australia policy was strengthened, restricting further migration from these areas. However, this policy was relaxed following WW2, and in the decades following, Australia received a large wave of immigration from across Europe, with many more immigrants arriving from Southern and Eastern Europe than in previous decades. All overt racial discrimination ended in 1973, with multiculturalism becoming official policy. Subsequently, there has been a large and continuing wave of immigration from across the world, with Asia being the largest source of immigrants in the 21st century.\nToday, Australia has the world's eighth-largest immigrant population, with immigrants accounting for 30% of the population, the highest proportion among major Western nations. In 2022\u201323, 212,789 permanent migrants were admitted to Australia, with a net migration population gain of 518,000 people inclusive of non-permanent residents. Most entered on skilled visas, however the immigration program also offers visas for family members and refugees.\nThe Australian Bureau of Statistics asks each Australian resident to nominate up to two ancestries each census and the responses are classified into broad ancestry groups. At the 2021 census, the most commonly nominated ancestry groups as a proportion of the total population were: 57.2% European (including 46% North-West European and 11.2% Southern and Eastern European), 33.8% Oceanian, 17.4% Asian (including 6.5% Southern and Central Asian, 6.4% North-East Asian, and 4.5% South-East Asian), 3.2% North African and Middle Eastern, 1.4% Peoples of the Americas, and 1.3% Sub-Saharan African. At the 2021 census, the most commonly nominated individual ancestries as a proportion of the total population were: \nAt the 2021 census, 3.8% of the Australian population identified as being Indigenous\u2014Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders.\nLanguage.\nAlthough English is not the official language of Australia in law, it is the \"de facto\" official and national language. Australian English is a major variety of the language with a distinctive accent and lexicon, and differs slightly from other varieties of English in grammar and spelling. General Australian serves as the standard dialect. The Australian sign language known as Auslan was used at home by 16,242 people at the time of the 2021 census.\nAt the 2021 census, English was the only language spoken in the home for 72% of the population. The next most common languages spoken at home were Mandarin (2.7%), Arabic (1.4%), Vietnamese (1.3%), Cantonese (1.2%) and Punjabi (0.9%).\nMore than 250 Australian Aboriginal languages are thought to have existed at the time of first European contact. The National Indigenous Languages Survey (NILS) for 2018\u201319 found that more than 120 Indigenous language varieties were in use or being revived, although 70 of those in use were endangered. The 2021 census found that 167 Indigenous languages were spoken at home by 76,978 Indigenous Australians \u2014 Yumplatok (Torres Strait Creole), Djambarrpuyngu (a Yol\u014bu language) and Pitjantjatjara (a Western Desert language) were among the most widely spoken. NILS and the Australian Bureau of Statistics use different classifications for Indigenous Australian languages.\nReligion.\nAustralia has no state religion; section 116 of the Australian Constitution prohibits federal legislation\nthat would establish any religion, impose any religious observance, or prohibit the free exercise of any religion. However, the states still retain the power to pass religiously discriminatory laws.\nAt the 2021 census, 38.9% of the population identified as having no religion, up from 15.5% in 2001. The largest religion is Christianity (43.9% of the population). The largest Christian denominations are the Roman Catholic Church (20% of the population) and the Anglican Church of Australia (9.8%). Non-British immigration since the Second World War has led to the growth of non-Christian religions, the largest of which are Islam (3.2%), Hinduism (2.7%), Buddhism (2.4%), Sikhism (0.8%), and Judaism (0.4%).\nIn 2021, just under 8,000 people declared an affiliation with traditional Aboriginal religions. In Australian Aboriginal mythology and the animist framework developed in Aboriginal Australia, the Dreaming is a sacred era in which ancestral totemic spirit beings formed The Creation. The Dreaming established the laws and structures of society and the ceremonies performed to ensure continuity of life and land.\nHealth.\nAustralia's life expectancy of 83 years (81 years for males and 85 years for females) is the fifth-highest in the world. It has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world, while cigarette smoking is the largest preventable cause of death and disease, responsible for 7.8% of the total mortality and disease. Ranked second in preventable causes is hypertension at 7.6%, with obesity third at 7.5%. Australia ranked 35th in the world in 2012 for its proportion of obese women and near the top of developed nations for its proportion of obese adults; 63% of its adult population is either overweight or obese.\nAustralia spent around 9.91% of its total GDP to health care in 2021. It introduced a national insurance scheme in 1975. Following a period in which access to the scheme was restricted, the scheme became universal once more in 1981 under the name of Medicare. The program is nominally funded by an income tax surcharge known as the Medicare levy, currently at 2%. The states manage hospitals and attached outpatient services, while the Commonwealth funds the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (subsidising the costs of medicines) and general practice.\nEducation.\nSchool attendance, or registration for home schooling, is compulsory throughout Australia. Education is primarily the responsibility of the individual states and territories; however, the Commonwealth has significant influence through funding agreements. Since 2014, a national curriculum developed by the Commonwealth has been implemented by the states and territories. Attendance rules vary between states, but in general children are required to attend school from the age of about 5 until about 16. In some states (Western Australia, Northern Territory and New South Wales), children aged 16\u201317 are required to either attend school or participate in vocational training, such as an apprenticeship. According to the 2022 PISA evaluations, Australian 15-year-olds ranked ninth in the OECD for reading and science and tenth for maths. However, less than 60% of Australian students achieved the National Proficiency Standard \u2013 51% in maths, 58% in science and 57% in reading.\nAustralia has an adult literacy rate that was estimated to be 99% in 2003. However, a 2011\u20132012 report for the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that 44% of the population does not have high literary and numeracy competence levels, interpreted by others as suggesting that they do not have the \"skills needed for everyday life\".\nAustralia has 37 government-funded universities and three private universities, as well as a number of other specialist institutions that provide approved courses at the higher education level. The OECD places Australia among the most expensive nations to attend university. There is a state-based system of vocational training, known as TAFE, and many trades conduct apprenticeships for training new tradespeople. About 58% of Australians aged from 25 to 64 have vocational or tertiary qualifications and the tertiary graduation rate of 49% is the highest among OECD countries. 30.9% of Australia's population has attained a higher education qualification, which is among the highest percentages in the world.\nAustralia has the highest ratio of international students per head of population in the world by a large margin, with 812,000 international students enrolled in the nation's universities and vocational institutions in 2019. Accordingly, in 2019, international students represented on average 26.7% of the student bodies of Australian universities. International education therefore represents one of the country's largest exports and has a pronounced influence on the country's demographics, with a significant proportion of international students remaining in Australia after graduation on various skill and employment visas. Education is Australia's third-largest export, after iron ore and coal, and contributed more than $28 billion to the economy in the 2016\u201317 financial year.\nCulture.\nContemporary Australian culture is diverse and reflects the country's Indigenous traditions, Anglo-Celtic heritage, and post-1945 history of multicultural immigration. The culture of the United States has also been influential. The evolution of Australian culture since British colonisation has given rise to distinctive cultural traits.\nMany Australians identify egalitarianism, mateship, irreverence and a lack of formality as part of their national identity. These find expression in Australian slang, as well as Australian humour, which is often characterised as dry, irreverent and ironic. New citizens and visa holders are required to commit to \"Australian values\", which are identified by the Department of Home Affairs as including: a respect for the freedom of the individual; recognition of the rule of law; opposition to racial, gender and religious discrimination; and an understanding of the \"fair go\", which is said to encompass the equality of opportunity for all and compassion for those in need. What these values mean, and whether or not Australians uphold them, has been debated since before Federation.\nArts.\nAustralia has more than 100,000 Aboriginal rock art sites, and traditional designs, patterns and stories infuse contemporary Indigenous Australian art, \"the last great art movement of the 20th century\" according to critic Robert Hughes; its exponents include Emily Kame Kngwarreye. Early colonial artists showed a fascination with the unfamiliar land. The impressionistic works of Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts and other members of the 19th-century Heidelberg School\u2014the first \"distinctively Australian\" movement in Western art\u2014gave expression to nationalist sentiments in the lead-up to Federation. While the school remained influential into the 1900s, modernists such as Margaret Preston and Clarice Beckett, and, later, Sidney Nolan, explored new artistic trends. The landscape remained central to the work of Aboriginal watercolourist Albert Namatjira, as well as Fred Williams, Brett Whiteley and other post-war artists whose works, eclectic in style yet uniquely Australian, moved between the figurative and the abstract.\nAustralian literature grew slowly in the decades following European settlement though Indigenous oral traditions, many of which have since been recorded in writing, are much older. In the 19th century, Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson captured the experience of the bush using a distinctive Australian vocabulary. Their works are still popular; Paterson's bush poem \"Waltzing Matilda\" (1895) is regarded as Australia's unofficial national anthem. Miles Franklin is the namesake of Australia's most prestigious literary prize, awarded annually to the best novel about Australian life. Its first recipient, Patrick White, went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973. Australian Booker Prize winners include Peter Carey, Thomas Keneally and Richard Flanagan. Australian public intellectuals have also written seminal works in their respective fields, including feminist Germaine Greer and philosopher Peter Singer.\nIn the performing arts, Aboriginal peoples have traditions of religious and secular song, dance and rhythmic music often performed in corroborees. At the beginning of the 20th century, Nellie Melba was one of the world's leading opera singers, and later popular music acts such as the Bee Gees, AC/DC, INXS and Kylie Minogue achieved international recognition. Many of Australia's performing arts companies receive funding through the Australian government's Australia Council. There is a symphony orchestra in each state, and a national opera company, Opera Australia, well known for its famous soprano Joan Sutherland. Ballet and dance are represented by The Australian Ballet and various state companies. Each state has a publicly funded theatre company.\nMedia.\n\"The Story of the Kelly Gang\" (1906), the world's first feature-length narrative film, spurred a boom in Australian cinema during the silent film era. After World War I, Hollywood monopolised the industry, and by the 1960s Australian film production had effectively ceased. With the benefit of government support, the Australian New Wave of the 1970s brought provocative and successful films, many exploring themes of national identity, such as \"Picnic at Hanging Rock\", \"Wake in Fright\" and \"Gallipoli\", while \"Crocodile Dundee\" and the Ozploitation movement's \"Mad Max\" series became international blockbusters. In a film market flooded with foreign content, Australian films delivered a 7.7% share of the local box office in 2015. The AACTAs are Australia's premier film and television awards, and notable Academy Award winners from Australia include Geoffrey Rush, Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett and Heath Ledger.\nAustralia has two public broadcasters (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the multicultural Special Broadcasting Service), three commercial television networks, several pay-TV services, and numerous public, non-profit television and radio stations. Each major city has at least one daily newspaper, and there are two national daily newspapers, \"The Australian\" and \"The Australian Financial Review\". In 2024, Reporters Without Borders placed Australia 39th on a list of 180 countries ranked by press freedom, behind New Zealand (19th) and the United Kingdom (23rd), but ahead of the United States (55th). This relatively low ranking is primarily because of the limited diversity of commercial media ownership in Australia; most print media are under the control of News Corp Australia (59%) and Nine Entertainment (23%).\nCuisine.\nMost Indigenous Australian groups subsisted on a diet of native fauna and flora, otherwise called bush tucker. It has increased in popularity among non-Indigenous Australians since the 1970s, with examples such as lemon myrtle, the macadamia nut and kangaroo meat now widely available.\nThe first colonists introduced British and Irish cuisine to the continent. This influence is seen in dishes such as fish and chips, and in the Australian meat pie, which is related to the British steak pie. Also during the colonial period, Chinese migrants paved the way for a distinctive Australian Chinese cuisine.\nPost-war migrants transformed Australian cuisine, bringing with them their culinary traditions and contributing to new fusion dishes. Italians introduced espresso coffee and, along with Greeks, helped develop Australia's caf\u00e9 culture, of which the flat white and avocado toast are now considered Australian staples. Pavlovas, lamingtons, Vegemite and Anzac biscuits are also often called iconic Australian foods.\nAustralia is a leading exporter and consumer of wine. Australian wine is produced mainly in the southern, cooler parts of the country. The nation also ranks highly in beer consumption, with each state and territory hosting numerous breweries.\nSport and recreation.\nThe most popular sports in Australia by adult participation are: swimming, athletics, cycling, soccer, golf, tennis, basketball, surfing, netball and cricket.\nAustralia is one of five nations to have participated in every Summer Olympics of the modern era, and has hosted the Games twice: 1956 in Melbourne and 2000 in Sydney. It is also set to host the 2032 Games in Brisbane. Australia has also participated in every Commonwealth Games, hosting the event in 1938, 1962, 1982, 2006 and 2018.\nThe Australian national cricket team competed against England in the first Test match (1877) and the first One Day International (1971), and against New Zealand in the first Twenty20 International (2004), winning all three games. It has also won the men's Cricket World Cup a record six times.\nAustralia has professional leagues for four football codes, whose relative popularity is divided geographically. Originating in Melbourne in the 1850s, Australian rules football attracts the most television viewers in all states except New South Wales and Queensland, where rugby league holds sway, followed by rugby union. Soccer, while ranked fourth in television viewers and resources, has the highest overall participation rates.\nThe surf lifesaving movement originated in Australia in the early 20th century, following the relaxation of laws prohibiting daylight bathing on Australian beaches. The volunteer lifesaver is one of the country's icons.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nGovernment\nTravel", "43825857": "C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy)\nNon-periodic comet\nC/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) is a non-periodic comet discovered on 17 August 2014 by Terry Lovejoy using a Schmidt\u2013Cassegrain telescope. It was discovered as a 15th-magnitude object in the southern constellation of Puppis. It is the fifth comet discovered by Terry Lovejoy.\nHistory.\nBy December 2014, the comet had brightened to roughly magnitude 7.4, making it a small telescope and binoculars target. By mid-December, the comet was visible to the naked eye for experienced observers with dark skies and keen eyesight. On 28\u201329 December 2014, the comet passed 1/3\u00b0 from globular cluster Messier 79. In January 2015, it brightened to roughly magnitude 4, and became one of the brightest comets located high in a dark sky since comet C/1995 O1 (Hale\u2013Bopp) in 1997. On 7 January 2015, the comet passed from Earth. It crossed the celestial equator on 9 January 2015, becoming better seen from the Northern Hemisphere. The comet came to perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) on 30 January 2015, at a distance of from the Sun. At perihelion, its water production rate exceeded 20 metric tons per second.\nC/2014 Q2 originated from the Oort cloud, but is not a dynamically new comet. Before entering the planetary region (epoch 1950), C/2014 Q2 had an orbital period of about 11,000 years, with an aphelion about from the Sun. After leaving the planetary region (epoch 2050), it will have an orbital period of about 8,000 years, with aphelion of about 800 AU.\nThe comet was observed to release 21 different organic molecules in gas, including ethanol and glycolaldehyde, a simple sugar. The presence of organic molecules suggests that they are preserved materials synthesized in the outskirts of the solar nebula or at earlier stages of the Solar System formation. Its blue-green glow is the result of organic molecules (mostly Diatomic carbon) and water released by the comet fluorescing under the intense UV and optical light of the Sun as it passes through space.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "10811164": "Terry Lovejoy\nAustralian information technologist (born 1966)\n \nTerry Lovejoy (born 20 November 1966) is an information technologist from Thornlands, Queensland, Australia, most widely known as an amateur astronomer. He has discovered six comets, including C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy), the first Kreutz Sungrazing comet discovered by ground-based observation in over 40 years. He is also known for popularizing procedures for modifying consumer-grade digital cameras so that they can be used for digital camera astrophotography.\nAstrophotography.\nLovejoy is known among amateur astronomers for identifying modifications to digital cameras needed for astrophotography. Such cameras come configured with built-in filters that cut off infrared light. They also cut off some of the red light that many deep space objects emit. After he published procedures to modify those filters, many amateur astronomers were able to improve their deep space photography.\nGordon J. Garradd named 61342 Lovejoy in honor of Lovejoy after discovering it on 3 August 2000.\nOn 15 March 2007, Lovejoy used a standard camera to discover the comet C/2007 E2 (Lovejoy). Two months later, he discovered another comet, designated C/2007 K5 (Lovejoy) using the modified camera.\nOn 27 November 2011, with his discovery of C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy), he became the first astronomer in over 40 years to discover a Kreutz Sungrazing comet from a ground-based observation. The discovery was made using a Celestron Schmidt\u2013Cassegrain telescope working at f/2.1 with a QHY9 CCD camera.\nOn 7 September 2013, Lovejoy discovered comet C/2013 R1 (Lovejoy) which became visible to the naked eye in November 2013.\nOn 17 August 2014, Lovejoy discovered comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) in the constellation Puppis.\nHis most recent discovery, C/2017 E4 (Lovejoy), was confirmed on 13 March 2017.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["43825857", "10811164", "4689264"], "permutation_1": ["4689264", "43825857", "10811164"], "permutation_2": ["4689264", "10811164", "43825857"], "permutation_3": ["4689264", "43825857", "10811164"]}
{"id": "3hop1__397785_35178_826724", "docs_added": {"43077563": "Meydan Mosque, Kashan\nMosque in Kashan, Iran\nThe Meydan Mosque () is a historical mosque in Kashan, Iran. It is located in the southern side of the \"Sang-e Ghadimi square\" and beside the Bazaar of Kashan. It is one of the oldest structures in Kashan. The primary structure belonged possibly to the seljuq era, but it was destroyed by the Mongols during their invasions. Later it was rebuilt and repaired by \"Khaje Emad ed-Din\". A quotation for this matter is an inscription in the old mihrab, in which it is mentioned that it is built in 623 Hijri (1226 AD) by \"Hassan ebn-e Arabschah\" in Kashan. The mihrab was in its original place until the last century, but it is kept now in the Museum of Islamic art in Berlin.\nJane Dieulafoy describes the mihrab as follows:\n\"\"Meydan mosque is a spacious structure with an appropriate architectural technique, but its distinctive characteristic in comparison with other similar structures is its exquisite mihrab, which is covered with splendid tiles with metal reflections. With respect to their high-quality these tiles are like the famous tiles of Imamzadeh Yahya in Varamin.\"\"\n\"Abd ol-Ghaffar Najm od-Dole\" predicted well in 1882 the future of the mihrab as follows:\n\"\"The embossed tiles, which I saw in the mihrab of Meydan mosque, were very interesting and spectacular. Westerners will buy them at least 2000 Tomans and will take the poor tiles away, if they can get a chance.\"\"\nThe mosque had in its past glorious times high iwans, a splendid inner dome space, large yard, Shabestan and Howz hall, but despite many repairs most parts of the mosque have been destroyed. The mosque had a special social and political importance, which can be realized from many orders written above its portal. These orders date back to the 15th century in the Kara Koyunlu era until the 19th century in the Qajar era. These orders include guidelines, regulations and commands about the buying and selling of goods and food stuffs with approved prices of that time and about the prohibition of gamble and acts against the sharia.\nThe portal of the mosque stands out because of its pure Iranian architectural techniques.\nThe former stone minaret was destroyed in 1778 in the late Safavid era by an earthquake.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "35413648": "Khosrowabad, Tehran\nCity in Tehran province, Iran\nKhosrowabad () is a city in, and the capital of, Jajrud District of Pardis County, Tehran province, Iran. It also serves as the administrative center for Jajrud Rural District.\nDemographics.\nPopulation.\nAt the time of the 2006 National Census, Khosrowabad's population was 1,180 in 386 households, when it was a village in Siyahrud Rural District of the Central District of Tehran County. The following census in 2011 counted 799 people in 250 households. The 2016 census measured the population of the village as 1,083 people in 340 households, by which time most of the rural district had been separated from the county in the establishment of Pardis County. Khosrowabad was transferred to Jajrud Rural District created in the new Jajrud District. It was the most populous village in its rural district.\nAfter the census, Khosrowabad was elevated to the status of a city.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "14653": "Iran\nCountry in West Asia\nIran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Turkey to the northwest and Iraq to the west, Azerbaijan, Armenia, the Caspian Sea, and Turkmenistan to the north, Afghanistan to the east, Pakistan to the southeast, the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south. With a multi-ethnic population of nearly 86 million in an area of , Iran ranks 17th globally in both geographic size and population. It is the sixth-largest country entirely in Asia and one of the world's most mountainous countries. Officially an Islamic republic, Iran is divided into five regions with 31 provinces. Tehran is the nation's capital, largest city and financial centre.\nA cradle of civilisation, Iran has been inhabited since the Lower Palaeolithic. The large part of Iran was first unified as a political entity by the Medes under Cyaxares in the seventh century BC, and reached its territorial height in the sixth century BC, when Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Empire, one of the largest in ancient history. Alexander the Great conquered the empire in the fourth century BC. An Iranian rebellion established the Parthian Empire in the third century BC and liberated the country, which was succeeded by the Sasanian Empire in the third century AD. Ancient Iran saw some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, religion and central government. The Sasanian era is considered a golden age in the history of Iranian civilisation. Muslims conquered the region in the seventh century AD, leading to Iran's Islamisation. The literature, philosophy, mathematics, medicine, astronomy and art which had blossomed during the Sasanian era were renewed during the Islamic Golden Age and Persian Renaissance, when a series of Iranian Muslim dynasties ended Arab rule, revived the Persian language and ruled the country until the Seljuk and Mongol conquests of the 11th to 14th centuries.\nIn the 16th century, the native Safavid dynasty re-established a unified Iranian state with Twelver Shi'ism as the official religion. During the Afsharid Empire in the 18th century, Iran was a leading world power, but this was no longer the case after the Qajars took power in the 1790s. The early 20th century saw the Persian Constitutional Revolution and the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty by Reza Shah the Great, who ousted the last Qajar shah in 1925. Attempts by Mohammad Mosaddegh to nationalise the oil industry led to an Anglo-American coup in 1953. After the Iranian Revolution, the monarchy was overthrown in 1979 and the Islamic Republic of Iran was established by Ruhollah Khomeini, who became the country's first Supreme Leader. In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, sparking the eight-year-long Iran\u2013Iraq War, which ended in stalemate.\nIran is officially governed as a unitary Islamic republic with a presidential system, with ultimate authority vested in a Supreme Leader. The government is authoritarian and has attracted widespread criticism for its significant violations of human rights and civil liberties. Iran is a major regional power, due to its large reserves of fossil fuels, including the world's second largest natural gas supply, third largest proven oil reserves, its geopolitically significant location, military capabilities, cultural hegemony, regional influence, and role as the world's focal point of Shia Islam. The Iranian economy is the world's 23rd-largest by PPP. Iran is a founding member of the United Nations, OIC, OPEC, and ECO as well as a current member of the NAM, SCO, and BRICS. Iran is home to 28 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the 10th highest in the world, and ranks 5th in Intangible Cultural Heritage, or human treasures.\nEtymology.\nThe term \"Iran\" 'the land of the Aryans' derives from Middle Persian , first attested in a 3rd-century inscription at Naqsh-e Rostam, with the accompanying Parthian inscription using , in reference to the Iranians. and are oblique plural forms of gentilic nouns \"\u0113r-\" (Middle Persian) and \"ary-\" (Parthian), deriving from Proto-Iranian language \"*arya-\" (meaning 'Aryan', i.e. of the Iranians), recognised as a derivative of Proto-Indo-European language \"*ar-yo-\", meaning 'one who assembles (skilfully)'. According to Iranian mythology, the name comes from Iraj, a legendary king.\nIran was referred to as \"Persia\" by the West, due to Greek historians who referred to all of Iran as , meaning 'the land of the Persians'. \"Persia\" is the Fars province in southwest Iran, the 4th largest province, also known as \"P\u00e2rs\". The Persian \"F\u00e2rs\" (\u0641\u0627\u0631\u0633), derived from the earlier form \"P\u00e2rs\" (\u067e\u0627\u0631\u0633), which is in turn derived from \"P\u00e2rs\u00e2\" (Old Persian: \ud800\udfb1\ud800\udfa0\ud800\udfbc\ud800\udfbf). Due to Fars' historical importance, \"Persia\" originated from this territory through Greek in around 550 BC, and Westerners referred to the entire country as \"Persia\", until 1935, when Reza Shah requested the international community to use its native and original name, \"Iran\"; Iranians called their nation \"Iran\" since at least 1000 BC. Today, both \"Iran\" and \"Persia\" are used culturally, while \"Iran\" remains mandatory in official use.\nThe Persian pronunciation of \"Iran\" is . Commonwealth English pronunciations of \"Iran\" are listed in the \"Oxford English Dictionary\" as and , while American English dictionaries provide pronunciations which map to , or . The \"Cambridge Dictionary\" lists as the British pronunciation and as the American pronunciation. Voice of America's pronunciation guide provides .\nHistory.\nIran is home to one of the world's oldest continuous major civilisations, with historical and urban settlements dating back to 4000 BC. The western part of the Iranian plateau participated in the traditional ancient Near East with Elam (3200\u2013539 BC), and later with other peoples such as the Kassites, Mannaeans, and Gutians. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel called the Persians the \"first Historical People\". The Iranian Empire began in the Iron Age with the rise of the Medes, who unified Iran as a nation and empire in 625 BC. The Achaemenid Empire (550\u2013330 BC), founded by Cyrus the Great, was the largest empire the world had seen, spanning from the Balkans to North Africa and Central Asia. They were succeeded by the Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian Empires, who governed Iran for almost 1,000 years, making Iran a leading power once again. Persia's arch-rival during this time was the Roman Empire and its successor, the Byzantine Empire.\nIran endured invasions by the Macedonians, Arabs, Turks, and Mongols. Despite these invasions, Iran continually reasserted its national identity and developed as a distinct political and cultural entity. The Muslim conquest of Persia (632\u2013654) ended the Sasanian Empire and marked a turning point in Iranian history, leading to the Islamisation of Iran from the eighth to tenth centuries and the decline of Zoroastrianism. However, the achievements of prior Persian civilisations were absorbed into the new Islamic polity. Iran suffered invasions by nomadic tribes during the Late Middle Ages and early modern period, negatively impacting the region. Iran was reunified as an independent state in 1501 by the Safavid dynasty, which established Shia Islam as the empire's official religion, marking another turning point in the history of Islam. Iran functioned again as a leading world power, especially in rivalry with the Ottoman Empire. In the 19th century, Iran lost significant territories in the Caucasus to the Russian Empire following the Russo-Persian Wars.\nIran remained a monarchy until the 1979 Iranian Revolution, when it officially became an Islamic republic on 1 April 1979. Since then, Iran has experienced significant political, social, and economic changes. The establishment of the \"Islamic Republic of Iran\" led to the restructuring of its political system, with Ayatollah Khomeini as the Supreme Leader. Iran's foreign relations have been shaped by the Iran\u2013Iraq War (1980\u20131988), ongoing tensions with the United States, and its nuclear programme, which has been a point of contention in international diplomacy.\nSince the 1990s.\nIn 1989, Akbar Rafsanjani concentrated on a pro-business policy of rebuilding the economy without breaking with the ideology of the revolution. He supported a free market domestically, favouring privatisation of state industries and a moderate position internationally. In 1997, Rafsanjani was succeeded by moderate reformist Mohammad Khatami, whose government advocated freedom of expression, constructive diplomatic relations with Asia and the European Union, and an economic policy that supported a free market and foreign investment.\nThe 2005 presidential election brought conservative populist and nationalist candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power. He was known for his hardline views, nuclearisation, and hostility towards Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UK, the US and other states. He was the first president to be summoned by the parliament to answer questions regarding his presidency. In 2013, centrist and reformist Hassan Rouhani was elected president. In domestic policy, he encouraged personal freedom, free access to information, and improved women's rights. He improved Iran's diplomatic relations through exchanging conciliatory letters. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was reached in Vienna in 2015, between Iran, the P5+1 (UN Security Council + Germany) and the EU. The negotiations centred around ending the economic sanctions in exchange for Iran's restriction in producing enriched uranium. In 2018, however, the US under Trump Administration withdrew from the deal and new sanctions were imposed. This nulled the economic provisions, left the agreement in jeopardy, and brought Iran to nuclear threshold status. In 2020, IRGC general, Qasem Soleimani, the 2nd-most powerful person in Iran, was assassinated by the US, heightening tensions between them. Iran retaliated against US airbases in Iraq, the largest ballistic missile attack ever on Americans; 110 sustained brain injuries.\nHardliner Ebrahim Raisi ran for president again in 2021, succeeding Hassan Rouhani. During Raisi's term, Iran intensified uranium enrichment, hindered international inspections, joined SCO and BRICS, supported Russia in its invasion of Ukraine and restored diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia. In April 2024, Israel's airstrike on an Iranian consulate, killed an IRGC commander. Iran retaliated with UAVs, cruise and ballistic missiles; 9 hit Israel. Western and Jordanian military helped Israel down some Iranian drones. It was the largest drone strike in history, biggest missile attack in Iranian history, its first ever direct attack on Israel and the first time since 1991, Israel was directly attacked by a state force. This occurred during heightened tensions amid the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. In May 2024, President Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash, and Iran held a presidential election in June, when reformist and former Minister of Health, Masoud Pezeshkian, was elected to office. On 1 October 2024, Iran launched about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for assassinations of Ismail Haniyeh, Hassan Nasrallah and Abbas Nilforoushan. On 27 October, Israel responded to that attack by strikes on a missile defence system in the Iranian region of Isfahan.\nGeography.\nIran has an area of . It is the sixth-largest country entirely in Asia and the second-largest in West Asia. It lies between latitudes 24\u00b0 and 40\u00b0 N, and longitudes 44\u00b0 and 64\u00b0 E. It is bordered to the northwest by Armenia (), the Azeri exclave of Nakhchivan (), and the Republic of Azerbaijan (); to the north by the Caspian Sea; to the northeast by Turkmenistan (); to the east by Afghanistan () and Pakistan (); to the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman; and to the west by Iraq () and Turkey ().\nIran is in a seismically active area. On average, an earthquake of magnitude seven on the Richter scale occurs once every ten years. Most earthquakes are shallow-focus and can be very devastating, such as the 2003 Bam earthquake.\nIran consists of the Iranian Plateau. It is one of the world's most mountainous countries; its landscape is dominated by rugged mountain ranges that separate basins or plateaus. The populous west part is the most mountainous, with ranges such as the Caucasus, Zagros, and Alborz, the last containing Mount Damavand, Iran's highest point, at , which is the highest volcano in Asia. Iran's mountains have impacted its politics and economics for centuries.\nThe north part is covered by the lush lowland Caspian Hyrcanian forests, near the southern shores of the Caspian Sea. The east part consists mostly of desert basins, such as the Kavir Desert, which is the country's largest desert, and the Lut Desert, as well as salt lakes. The Lut Desert is the hottest recorded spot on the Earth's surface, with 70.7\u00a0\u00b0C recorded in 2005. The only large plains are found along the coast of the Caspian and at the north end of the Persian Gulf, where the country borders the mouth of the Arvand river. Smaller, discontinuous plains are found along the remaining coast of the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman.\nIslands.\nIranian islands are mainly located in the Persian Gulf. Iran has 102 islands in Urmia Lake, 427 in Aras River, several in Anzali Lagoon, Ashurade Island in the Caspian Sea, Sheytan Island in the Oman Sea and other inland islands. Iran has an uninhabited island at the far end of the Gulf of Oman, near Pakistan. A few islands can be visited by tourists. Most are owned by the military or used for wildlife protection, and entry is prohibited or requires a permit.\nIran took control of Bumusa, and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs in 1971, in the Strait of Hormuz between the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. Despite the islands being small and having little natural resources or population, they are highly valuable for their strategic location. Although the United Arab Emirates claims sovereignty, it has consistently been met with a strong response from Iran, based on their historical and cultural background. Iran has full control over the islands.\nKish island, as a free trade zone, is touted as a consumer's paradise, with malls, shopping centres, tourist attractions, and luxury hotels. Qeshm is the largest island in Iran, and a UNESCO Global Geopark since 2016. Its salt cave, Namakdan, is the largest in the world, and one of the world's longest caves.\nClimate.\nIran's climate is diverse, ranging from arid and semi-arid, to subtropical along the Caspian coast and northern forests. On the north edge of the country, temperatures rarely fall below freezing and the area remains humid. Summer temperatures rarely exceed . Annual precipitation is in the east part of the plain and more than in the west part. The UN Resident Coordinator for Iran, has said that \"Water scarcity poses the most severe human security challenge in Iran today\".\nTo the west, settlements in the Zagros basin experience lower temperatures, severe winters with freezing average daily temperatures and heavy snowfall. The east and central basins are arid, with less than of rain and have occasional deserts. Average summer temperatures rarely exceed . The southern coastal plains of the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman have mild winters, and very humid and hot summers. The annual precipitation ranges from .\nBiodiversity.\nMore than one-tenth of the country is forested. About 120 million hectares of forests and fields are government-owned for national exploitation. Iran's forests can be divided into five vegetation regions: Hyrcanian region which forms the green belt of the north side of the country; the Turan region, which are mainly scattered in the centre of Iran; Zagros region, which mainly contains oak forests in the west; the Persian Gulf region, which is scattered in the southern coastal belt; the Arasbarani region, which contains rare and unique species. More than 8,200 plant species are grown. The land covered by natural flora is four times that of Europe's. There are over 200 protected areas to preserve biodiversity and wildlife, with over 30 being national parks.\nIran's living fauna includes 34 bat species, Indian grey mongoose, small Indian mongoose, golden jackal, Indian wolf, foxes, striped hyena, leopard, Eurasian lynx, brown bear and Asian black bear. Ungulate species include wild boar, urial, Armenian mouflon, red deer, and goitered gazelle. One of the most famous animals is the critically endangered Asiatic cheetah, which survives only in Iran. Iran lost all its Asiatic lions and the extinct Caspian tigers by the early 20th century. Domestic ungulates are represented by sheep, goat, cattle, horse, water buffalo, donkey and camel. Bird species like pheasant, partridge, stork, eagles and falcons are native.\nGovernment and politics.\nSupreme Leader.\nThe Supreme Leader, \"Rahbar\", Leader of the Revolution or Supreme Leadership Authority, is the head of state and responsible for supervision of policy. The president has limited power compared to the Rahbar. Key ministers are selected with the Rahbar's agreement and they have the ultimate say on foreign policy. The Rahbar is directly involved in ministerial appointments for Defence, Intelligence and Foreign Affairs, as well as other top ministries after submission of candidates from the president.\nRegional policy is directly controlled by the Rahbar, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' task limited to protocol and ceremonial occasions. Ambassadors to Arab countries, for example, are chosen by the Quds Force, which directly reports to the Rahbar. The Rahbar can order laws to be amended. Setad was estimated at $95\u00a0billion in 2013 by Reuters, accounts of which are secret even to the parliament.\nThe Rahbar is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, controls military intelligence and security operations, and has sole power to declare war or peace. The heads of the judiciary, state radio and television networks, commanders of the police and military, and the members of the Guardian Council are all appointed by the Rahbar.\nThe Assembly of Experts is responsible for electing the Rahbar, and has the power to dismiss him on the basis of qualifications and popular esteem. To date, the Assembly of Experts has not challenged any of the Rahbar's decisions nor attempted to dismiss him. The previous head of the judicial system, Sadeq Larijani, appointed by the Rahbar, said that it is illegal for the Assembly of Experts to supervise the Rahbar. Many believe the Assembly of Experts has become a ceremonial body without any real power. In February 2025,\u00a0 the New York Times reported that according to Karim Sadjadpour, an expert on Iran at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, there exist in the Islamic Republic of Iran two parallel regimes. One which is ruled by the military and intelligence forces, who report to the Rahbar, and \"who oversee the nuclear programme and regional proxies and are tasked with repression, hostage taking and assassinations\u201d. The other ruled by diplomats and politicians \"who are authorized to speak to Western media and officials\" and have minimal knowledge of Iran's nuclear programme.\nThe political system is based on the country's constitution. Iran ranked 154th in the 2022 \"The Economist Democracy Index\". Juan Jos\u00e9 Linz wrote in 2000 that \"the Iranian regime combines the ideological bent of totalitarianism with the limited pluralism of authoritarianism\".\nPresident.\nThe President is head of government and the second highest-ranking authority, after the Supreme Leader. The President is elected by universal suffrage for 4 years. Before elections, nominees to become a presidential candidate must be approved by the Guardian Council. The Council's members are chosen by the Leader, with the Leader having the power to dismiss the president. The President can only be re-elected for one term. The president is the deputy commander-in-chief of the Army, the head of Supreme National Security Council, and has the power to declare a state of emergency after passage by the parliament.\nThe President is responsible for the implementation of the constitution, and for the exercise of executive powers in implementing the decrees and general policies as outlined by the Rahbar, except for matters directly related to the Rahbar, who has the final say. The President functions as the executive of affairs such as signing treaties and other international agreements, and administering national planning, budget, and state employment affairs, all as approved by the Rahbar.\nThe President appoints ministers, subject to the approval of the Parliament, and the Rahbar, who can dismiss or reinstate any minister. The President supervises the Council of Ministers, coordinates government decisions, and selects government policies to be placed before the legislature. Eight Vice Presidents serve under the President, as well as a cabinet of 22 ministers, all appointed by the president.\nGuardian Council.\nPresidential and parliamentary candidates must be approved by the 12-member Guardian Council (all members of which are appointed by the Leader) or the Leader, before running to ensure their allegiance. The Leader rarely does the vetting, but has the power to do so, in which case additional approval of the Guardian Council is not needed. The Leader can revert the decisions of the Guardian Council.\nThe constitution gives the council three mandates: veto power over legislation passed by the parliament, supervision of elections and approving or disqualifying candidates seeking to run in local, parliamentary, presidential, or Assembly of Experts elections. The council can nullify a law based on two accounts: being against Sharia (Islamic law), or being against the constitution.\nSupreme National Security Council.\nThe Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) is at the top of the foreign policy decisions process. The council was formed during the 1989 Iranian constitutional referendum for the protection and support of national interests, the revolution, territorial integrity and national sovereignty. It is mandated by Article 176 of the Constitution to be presided over by the President.\nThe Leader selects the secretary of the Supreme Council, and the decisions of the council are effective after the confirmation by the Leader. The SNSC formulates nuclear policy, and would become effective if they are confirmed by the Leader.\nLegislature.\nThe legislature, known as the Islamic Consultative Assembly (ICA), Iranian Parliament or \"Majles\", is a unicameral body comprising 290 members elected for four-years. It drafts legislation, ratifies international treaties, and approves the national budget. All parliamentary candidates and legislation from the assembly must be approved by the Guardian Council. The Guardian Council can and has dismissed elected members of the parliament. The parliament has no legal status without the Guardian Council, and the Council holds absolute veto power over legislation.\nThe Expediency Discernment Council has the authority to mediate disputes between Parliament and the Guardian Council, and serves as an advisory body to the Supreme Leader, making it one of the most powerful governing bodies in Iran.\nThe Parliament has 207 constituencies, including the 5 reserved seats for religious minorities. The remaining 202 are territorial, each covering one or more of Iran's counties.\nLaw.\nIran uses the Sharia law as its legal system, with elements of Civil law. The Supreme Leader appoints the head of the Supreme Court and chief public prosecutor. There are several types of courts, including public courts that deal with civil and criminal cases, and revolutionary courts which deal with certain offences, such as crimes against national security. The decisions of the revolutionary courts are final and cannot be appealed.\nThe Chief Justice is the head of the judicial system and responsible for its administration and supervision. He is the highest judge of the Supreme Court of Iran. The Chief Justice nominates candidates to serve as minister of justice, and the President selects one. The Chief Justice can serve for two five-year terms.\nThe Special Clerical Court handles crimes allegedly committed by clerics, although it has taken on cases involving laypeople. The Special Clerical Court functions independently of the regular judicial framework and is accountable only to the Rahbar. The Court's rulings are final and cannot be appealed. The Assembly of Experts, which meets for one week annually, comprises 86 \"virtuous and learned\" clerics elected by adult suffrage for 8-year terms.\nAdministrative divisions.\nIran is subdivided into thirty-one provinces ( \"ost\u00e2n\"), each governed from a local centre, usually the largest local city, which is called the capital (Persian: , \"markaz\") of that province. The provincial authority is headed by a governor-general ( \"ost\u00e2nd\u00e2r\"), who is appointed by the Minister of the Interior subject to approval of the cabinet.\nForeign relations.\nIran maintains diplomatic relations with 165 countries, but not the United States and Israel\u2014a state which Iran derecognised in 1979.\nIran has an adversarial relationship with Saudi Arabia due to different political ideologies. Iran and Turkey have been involved in modern proxy conflicts such as in Syria, Libya, and the South Caucasus. However, they have shared common interests, such as the issue of Kurdish separatism and the Qatar diplomatic crisis. Iran has a close and strong relationship with Tajikistan. Iran has deep economic relations and alliance with Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, with Syria often described as Iran's \"closest ally\".\nRussia is a key trading partner, especially in regard to its excess oil reserves. Both share a close economic and military alliance, and are subject to heavy sanctions by Western nations. Iran is the only country in Western Asia that has been invited to join the CSTO, the Russia-based international treaty organisation that parallels NATO.\nRelations between Iran and China are strong economically; they have developed a friendly, economic and strategic relationship. In 2021, Iran and China signed a 25-year cooperation agreement that will strengthen the relations between the two countries and would include \"political, strategic and economic\" components. Iran-China relations dates back to at least 200 BC and possibly earlier. Iran is one of the few countries in the world that has a good relationship with both North and South Korea.\nIn December 2024, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, a close ally of Iran, was a severe setback for the political influence of Iran in the region.\nIran is a member of dozens of international organisations, including the G-15, G-24, G-77, IAEA, IBRD, IDA, NAM, IDB, IFC, ILO, IMF, IMO, Interpol, OIC, OPEC, WHO, and the UN, and currently has observer status at the WTO.\nMilitary.\nThe military is organised under a unified structure, the Islamic Republic of Iran Armed Forces, comprising the Islamic Republic of Iran Army, which includes the Ground Forces, Air Defence Force, Air Force, and Navy; the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which consists of the Ground Forces, Aerospace Force, Navy, Quds Force, and Basij; and the Law Enforcement Command (Faraja), which serves an analogous function to a gendarme. While the IRIAF protects the country's sovereignty in a traditional capacity, the IRGC is mandated to ensure the integrity of the Republic, against foreign interference, coups, and internal riots. Since 1925, it is mandatory for all male citizen aged 18 to serve around 14 months in the IRIAF or IRGC.\nIran has over 610,000 active troops and around 350,000 reservists, totalling over 1 million military personnel, one of the world's highest percentage of citizens with military training. The Basij\",\" a paramilitary volunteer militia within the IRGC, has over 20 million members, 600,000 available for immediate call-up, 300,000 reservists, and a million that could be mobilised when necessary. Faraja, the Iranian uniformed police force, has over 260,000 active personnel. Most statistical organisations do not include the Basij and Faraja in their ratings report.\nExcluding the Basij and Faraja, Iran has been identified as a major military power, owing it to the size and capabilities of its armed forces. It possesses the world's 14th strongest military. It ranks 13th globally in terms of overall military strength, 7th in the number of active military personnel, and 9th in the size of both its ground force and armoured force. Iran's armed forces are the largest in West Asia and comprise the greatest Army Aviation fleet in the Middle East. Iran is among the top 15 countries in terms of military budget. In 2021, its military spending increased for the first time in four years, to $24.6 billion, 2.3% of the national GDP. Funding for the IRGC accounted for 34% of Iran's total military spending in 2021.\nSince the Revolution, to overcome foreign embargoes, Iran has developed a domestic military industry capable of producing indigenous tanks, armoured personnel carriers, missiles, submarines, missile destroyer, radar systems, helicopters, naval vessels, and fighter planes. Official announcements have highlighted the development of advanced weaponry, particularly in rocketry. Consequently, Iran has the largest and most diverse ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East and is only the 5th country in the world with hypersonic missile technology. It is the world's 6th missile power. Iran designs and produces a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and is considered a global leader and superpower in drone warfare and technology. It is one of the world's five countries with cyberwarfare capabilities and is identified as \"one of the most active players in the international cyber arena\". Iran is an key exporter of arms since 2000s.\nFollowing Russia's purchase of Iranian drones during the invasion of Ukraine, in November 2023, the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) finalized arrangements to acquire Russian Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets, Mil Mi-28 attack helicopters, air defence and missile systems. The Iranian Navy has had joint exercises with Russia and China.\nNuclear programme.\nIran's nuclear programme dates back to the 1950s. Iran revived it after the Revolution, and its extensive nuclear fuel cycle, including enrichment capabilities, became the subject of intense international negotiations and sanctions. Many countries have expressed concern Iran could divert civilian nuclear technology into a weapons programme. In 2015, Iran and the P5+1 agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan on Action (JCPOA), aiming to end economic sanctions in exchange for restriction in producing enriched uranium.\nIn 2018, however, the US withdrew from the deal under the Trump administration, and reimposed sanctions. This was met with resistance by Iran and other members of the P5+1. A year later, Iran began decreasing its compliance. By 2020, Iran announced it would no longer observe any limit set by the agreement. Progress since then has brought Iran to the nuclear threshold status. As of November 2023[ [update]], Iran had uranium enriched to up to 60% fissile content, close to weapon grade. Some analysts already regard Iran as a de facto nuclear power.\nRegional influence.\nIran's significant influence and foothold, sometimes characterised as the \"Dawn of A New Persian Empire.\" Some analysts associate the Iranian influence to the nation's proud national legacy, empire and history.\nSince the Revolution, Iran has grown its influence across and beyond the region. It has built military forces with a wide network of state and none-state actors, starting with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 1982. The IRGC has been key to Iranian influence, through its Quds Force. The instability in Lebanon (from the 1980s), Iraq (from 2003) and Yemen (from 2014) has allowed Iran to build strong alliances and footholds beyond its borders. Iran has a prominent influence in the social services, education, economy and politics of Lebanon, and Lebanon provides Iran access to the Mediterranean Sea. Hezbollah's strategic successes against Israel, such as its symbolic victory during the 2006 Israel\u2013Hezbollah War, elevated Iran's influence in the Levant and strengthened its appeal across the Muslim World.\nSince the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the arrival of ISIS in the mid-2010s, Iran has financed and trained militia groups in Iraq. Since the Iran-Iraq war in 1980s and the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iran has shaped Iraq's politics. Following Iraq's struggle against ISIS in 2014, companies linked to the IRGC such as Khatam al-Anbiya, started to build roads, power plants, hotels and businesses in Iraq, creating an economic corridor worth around $9 billion before COVID-19. This is expected to grow to $20 billion.\nDuring Yemen's civil war, Iran provided military support to the Houthis, a Zaydi Shiite movement fighting Yemen's Sunni government since 2004. They gained significant power in recent years. Iran has considerable influence in Afghanistan and Pakistan through militant groups such as Liwa Fatemiyoun and Liwa Zainebiyoun.\nIn Syria, Iran has supported President Bashar al-Assad; the two countries are long-standing allies. Iran has provided significant military and economic support to Assad's government, so has a considerable foothold in Syria. Iran has long supported the anti-Israel fronts in North Africa in countries like Algeria and Tunisia, embracing Hamas in part to help undermine the popularity of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Iran's support of Hamas emerged more clearly in later years. According to US intelligence, Iran does not have full control over these state and non-state groups.\nHuman rights and censorship.\nThe Iranian government has been denounced by various international organisations and governments for violating human rights. The government has frequently persecuted and arrested critics of the government. Iranian law does not recognise sexual orientations. Sexual activity between members of the same sex is illegal and is punishable by death. Capital punishment is a legal punishment, and according to the BBC, Iran \"carries out more executions than any other country, except China\". UN Special Rapporteur Javaid Rehman has reported discrimination against several ethnic minorities in Iran. A group of UN experts in 2022 urged Iran to stop \"systematic persecution\" of religious minorities, adding that members of the Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith were arrested, barred from universities, or had their homes demolished.\nCensorship in Iran is ranked among the most extreme worldwide. Iran has strict internet censorship, with the government persistently blocking social media and other sites. Since January 2021, Iranian authorities have blocked a list of social media platforms; Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Telegram, Twitter and YouTube.\nThe 2006 election results were widely disputed, resulting in protests. The 2017\u201318 Iranian protests swept across the country in response to the economic and political situation. It was formally confirmed that thousands of protesters were arrested. The 2019\u201320 Iranian protests started on 15 November in Ahvaz, and spread across the country after the government announced increases in fuel prices of up to 300%. A week-long total Internet shutdown marked one of the most severe Internet blackouts in any country, and the bloodiest governmental crackdown of the protestors. Tens of thousands were arrested and hundreds were killed within a few days according to multiple international observers, including Amnesty International.\nUkraine International Airlines Flight 752, was a scheduled international civilian passenger flight from Tehran to Kyiv, operated by Ukraine International Airlines. On 8 January 2020, the Boeing 737\u2013800 flying the route was shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) shortly after takeoff, killing all 176 occupants on board and leading to protests. An international investigation led to the government admitting to the shootdown, calling it a \"human error\". Another Protests against the government began on 16 September 2022 after a woman named Mahsa Amini died in police custody following her arrest by the Guidance Patrol, known commonly as the \"morality police\".\nEconomy.\nAs of 2024[ [update]], Iran has the world's 19th largest economy (by PPP). It is a mixture of central planning, state ownership of oil and other large enterprises, village agriculture, and small-scale private trading and service ventures. Services contribute the largest percentage of GDP, followed by industry (mining and manufacturing) and agriculture. The economy is characterised by its hydrocarbon sector, in addition to manufacturing and financial services. With 10% of the world's oil reserves and 15% of gas reserves, Iran is an energy superpower. Over 40 industries are directly involved in the Tehran Stock Exchange.\nTehran is the economic powerhouse of Iran. About 30% of Iran's public-sector workforce and 45% of its large industrial firms are located there, and half those firms' employees work for government. The Central Bank of Iran is responsible for developing and maintaining the currency: the Iranian rial. The government does not recognise trade unions other than the Islamic labour councils, which are subject to the approval of employers and the security services. Unemployment was 9% in 2022.\nBudget deficits have been a chronic problem, mostly due to large state subsidies, that include foodstuffs and especially petrol, totalling $100\u00a0billion in 2022 for energy alone. In 2010, the economic reform plan was to cut subsidies gradually and replace them with targeted social assistance. The objective is to move towards free market prices and increase productivity and social justice. The administration continues reform, and indicates it will diversify the oil-reliant economy. Iran has developed a biotechnology, nanotechnology, and pharmaceutical industry. The government is privatising industries.\nIran has leading manufacturing industries in automobile manufacture, transportation, construction materials, home appliances, food and agricultural goods, armaments, pharmaceuticals, information technology, and petrochemicals in the Middle East. Iran is among the world's top five producers of apricots, cherries, cucumbers and gherkins, dates, figs, pistachios, quinces, walnuts, Kiwifruit and watermelons. International sanctions against Iran have damaged the economy. Iran is one of three countries that have not ratified the Paris Agreement to limit climate change, although academics say it would be good for the country.\nIran suffers from high inflation and especially surging food prices. A major contributing factor is the involvement of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the economy, particularly in the agriculture and food sectors but also due to significant spending on the Axis of Resistance which increase the public deficit. \nTourism.\nTourism had been rapidly growing before the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching nearly 9 million foreign visitors in 2019, the world's third fastest-growing tourism destination. In 2022 it expanded its share to 5% of the economy. Iran's tourism experienced a growth of 43% in 2023, attracting 6 million foreign tourists. The government ended visa requirements for 60 countries in 2023.\n98% of visits are for leisure, while 2% are for business, indicating the country's appeal as a tourist destination. Alongside the capital, the most popular tourist destinations are Isfahan, Shiraz and Mashhad. Iran is emerging as a preferred destination for medical tourism. Travellers from other West Asian countries grew 31% in the first seven months of 2023, surpassing Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Domestic tourism is one of the world's largests; Iranian tourists spent $33bn in 2021. Iran projects investment of $32 billion in the tourism sector by 2026.\nAgriculture and fishery.\nRoughly one-third of Iran's total surface area is suited for farmland. Only 12% of the total land area is under cultivation, but less than one-third of the cultivated area is irrigated; the rest is devoted to dryland farming. Some 92% of agricultural products depend on water. The western and northwestern portions of the country have the most fertile soils. Iran's food security index stands at around 96 percent. 3% of the total land area is used for grazing and fodder production. Most of the grazing is done on mostly semi-dry rangeland in mountain areas and on areas surrounding the large deserts of Central Iran. Progressive government efforts and incentives during the 1990s, improved agricultural productivity, helping Iran toward its goal of reestablishing national self-sufficiency in food production.\nAccess to the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and many river basins provides Iran the potential to develop excellent fisheries. The government assumed control of commercial fishing in 1952. Expansion of the fishery infrastructure enabled the country to harvest an estimated 700,000 tons of fish annually from the southern waters. Since the Revolution, increased attention has been focused on producing fish from inland waters. Between 1976 and 2004, the combined take from inland waters by the state and private sectors increased from 1,100 tons to 110,175 tons. Iran is the world's largest producer and exporter of caviar, exporting more than 300 tonnes annually.\nIndustry and services.\nIran is globally ranked 16th in car manufacturing, ahead of the UK, Italy, and Russia. It has outputted 1.188 million cars in 2023, a 12% growth compared to the previous years. Iran has exported various cars to countries such as Venezuela, Russia and Belarus. From 2008 to 2009, Iran leaped to 28th place from 69th in annual industrial production growth rate. Iranian contractors have been awarded several foreign tender contracts in different fields of construction of dams, bridges, roads, buildings, railroads, power generation, and gas, oil and petrochemical industries. As of 2011, some 66 Iranian industrial companies are carrying out projects in 27 countries. Iran exported over $20 billion worth of technical and engineering services over 2001\u20132011. The availability of local raw materials, rich mineral reserves, experienced manpower have all played crucial role in winning the bids.\n45% of large industrial firms are located in Tehran, and almost half of their workers work for government. The Iranian retail industry is largely in the hands of cooperatives, many of them government-sponsored, and of independent retailers in the bazaars. The bulk of food sales occur at street markets, where the Chief Statistics Bureau sets the prices. Iran's main exports are to Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Syria, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Canada, Venezuela, Japan, South Korea and Turkey. Iran's automotive industry is the second most active industry of the country, after its oil and gas industry. Iran Khodro is the largest car manufacturer in the Middle East, and ITMCO is the biggest tractor manufacturer. Iran is the 12th largest automaker in the world. Construction is one of the most important sectors in Iran accounting for 20\u201350% of the total private investment.\nIran is one of the most important mineral producers in the world, ranked among 15 major mineral-rich countries. Iran has become self-sufficient in designing, building and operating dams and power plants. Iran is one of the six countries in the world that manufacture gas- and steam-powered turbines.\nTransport.\nIn 2011 Iran had of roads, of which 73% were paved. In 2008 there were nearly 100 passenger cars for every 1,000 inhabitants.\nTehran Metro is the largest in the Middle East, it carries more than 3 million passengers daily and in 2018, 820 million trips. Trains operate on of track. The country's major port of entry is Bandar Abbas on the Strait of Hormuz. Imported goods are distributed through the country by trucks and freight trains. The Tehran\u2013Bandar Abbas railroad connects Bandar-Abbas to the railroad system of Central Asia, via Tehran and Mashhad. Other major ports include Bandar e-Anzali and Bandar e-Torkeman on the Caspian Sea and Khorramshahr and Bandar-e Emam Khomeyni on the Persian Gulf.\nDozens of cities have airports that serve passenger and cargo planes. Iran Air, the national airline, operates domestic and international flights. All large cities have mass transit systems using buses, and private companies provide bus services between cities. Over a million people work in transport, accounting for 9% of GDP.\nEnergy.\nIran is an energy superpower and petroleum plays a key part. As of 2023[ [update]], Iran produced 4% of the world's crude oil ( per day), which generates US$36bn of export revenue and is the main source of foreign currency. Oil and gas reserves are estimated at 1.2 trn barrels; Iran holds 10% of world oil reserves and 15% for gas. It ranks 3rd in oil reserves and is OPEC's 2nd largest exporter. It has the 2nd largest gas reserves, and 3rd largest natural gas production. In 2019, Iran discovered a southern oil field of 50 bn barrels and in April 2024, the NIOC discovered 10 giant shale oil deposits, totalling 2.6 bn barrels. Iran plans to invest $500 billion in oil by 2025.\nIran manufactures 60\u201370% of its industrial equipment domestically, including turbines, pumps, catalysts, refineries, oil tankers, drilling rigs, offshore platforms, towers, pipes, and exploration instruments. The addition of new hydroelectric stations and streamlining of conventional coal and oil-fired stations increased installed capacity to 33 GW; about 75% was based on natural gas, 18% on oil, and 7% on hydroelectric power. In 2004, Iran opened its first wind-powered and geothermal plants, and the first solar thermal plant began in 2009. Iran is the world's third country to develop GTL technology.\nDemographic trends and intensified industrialisation have caused electric power demand to grow by 8% per year. The government's goal of 53 GW of installed capacity by 2010 is to be reached by bringing on line new gas-fired plants, and adding hydropower and nuclear generation capacity. Iran's first nuclear power plant went online in 2011.\nDespite being an energy superpower as of 2024-2025 Iran suffers from an energy crisis, manifested by many power outages.\nScience and technology.\nIran has made considerable advances in science and technology, despite international sanctions. In the biomedical sciences, Iran's Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics has a UNESCO chair in biology. In 2006, Iranian scientists successfully cloned a sheep at the Royan Research Centre in Tehran. Stem cell research is among the top 10 in the world. Iran ranks 15th in the world in nanotechnologies. Iranian scientists outside Iran have made major scientific contributions. In 1960, Ali Javan co-invented the first gas laser, and fuzzy set theory was introduced by Lotfi A. Zadeh.\nCardiologist Tofy Mussivand invented and developed the first artificial cardiac pump, the precursor of the artificial heart. Furthering research in diabetes, the HbA1c was discovered by Samuel Rahbar. Many papers in string theory are published in Iran. In 2014, Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani became the first woman, and Iranian, to receive the Fields Medal, the highest prize in mathematics.\nIran increased its publication output nearly tenfold from 1996 through 2004, and ranked first in output growth rate, followed by China. According to a study by SCImago in 2012, Iran would rank fourth in research output by 2018, if the trend persisted. The Iranian humanoid robot Sorena 2, which was designed by engineers at the University of Tehran, was unveiled in 2010. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has placed the name of Surena among the five most prominent robots, after analysing its performance. \nAccording to a 2019 study by Isabel Campos-Varela et al., Iran recorded the highest proportion of retracted publications globally, with 15.52 retractions per 10,000 publications. Media reports from 2023 indicate that Iran continues to rank among the countries with the highest retraction rates. Common types of misconduct include fraudulent peer review processes, plagiarism, and data fabrication. Data from the Retraction Watch Leaderboard further highlights that two of the 32 individuals with the highest number of retracted articles worldwide are based in Iran.\nIran was ranked 64th in the Global Innovation Index in 2024.\nIranian Space Agency.\nThe Iranian Space Agency (ISA) was established in 2004. Iran became an orbital-launch-capable nation in 2009, and is a founding member of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Iran placed its domestically built satellite Omid into orbit on the 30th anniversary of the Revolution, in 2009, through its first expendable launch vehicle Safir. It became the 9th country capable of both producing a satellite and sending it into space from a domestically made launcher. Simorgh's launch in 2016, is the successor of Safir.\nIn January 2024, Iran launched the Soraya satellite into its highest orbit yet (750\u00a0km), a new space launch milestone for the country. It was launched by Qaem 100 rocket. Iran also successfully launched 3 indigenous satellites, The Mahda, Kayan and Hatef, into orbit using the Simorgh carrier rocket. It was the first time in country's history that it simultaneously sent three satellites into space. The three satellites are designed for testing advanced satellite subsystems, space-based positioning technology, and narrowband communication.\nIn February 2024, Iran launched its domestically developed imaging satellite, Pars 1, from Russia into orbit. This was the second time since August 2022, when Russia launched another Iranian remote-sensing, Khayyam satellite, into orbit from Kazakhstan, reflecting deep scientific cooperation between the countries.\nTelecommunication.\nIran's telecommunications industry is almost entirely state-owned, dominated by the Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI). As of 2020, 70 million Iranians use high-speed mobile internet. Iran is among the first five countries which have had a growth rate of over 20 percent and the highest level of development in telecommunication. Iran has been awarded the UNESCO special certificate for providing telecommunication services to rural areas.\nGlobally, Iran ranks 75th in mobile internet speed and 153rd in fixed internet speed.\nDemographics.\nIran's population grew rapidly from about 19\u00a0million in 1956 to about 85 million by February 2023. However, Iran's fertility rate has dropped dramatically, from 6.5 children born per woman to about 1.7 two decades later, leading to a population growth rate of about 1.39% as of 2018. Due to its young population, studies project that the growth will continue to slow until it stabilises at around 105\u00a0million by 2050.\nIran hosts one of the largest refugee populations, with almost one million, mostly from Afghanistan and Iraq. According to the Iranian Constitution, the government is required to provide every citizen with access to social security, covering retirement, unemployment, old age, disability, accidents, calamities, health and medical treatment and care services. This is covered by tax revenues and income derived from public contributions.\nThe country has one of the highest urban growth rates in the world. From 1950 to 2002, the urban proportion of the population increased from 27% to 60%. Iran's population is concentrated in its western half, especially in the north, north-west and west.\nTehran, with a population of around 9.4\u00a0million, is Iran's capital and largest city. The country's second most populous city, Mashhad, has a population of around 3.4\u00a0million, and is capital of the province of Razavi Khorasan. Isfahan has a population of around 2.2\u00a0million and is Iran's third most populous city. It is the capital of Isfahan province and was also the third capital of the Safavid Empire.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nEthnic groups.\nEthnic group composition remains a point of debate, mainly regarding the largest and second largest ethnic groups, the Persians and Azerbaijanis, due to the lack of Iranian state censuses based on ethnicity. The World Factbook has estimated that around 79% of the population of Iran is a diverse Indo-European ethno-linguistic group, with Persians (including Mazenderanis and Gilaks) constituting 61% of the population, Kurds 10%, Lurs 6%, and Balochs 2%. Peoples of other ethnolinguistic groups make up the remaining 21%, with Azerbaijanis constituting 16%, Arabs 2%, Turkmens and other Turkic tribes 2%, and others (such as Armenians, Talysh, Georgians, Circassians, Assyrians) 1%.\nThe Library of Congress issued slightly different estimates: 65% Persians (including Mazenderanis, Gilaks, and the Talysh), 16% Azerbaijanis, 7% Kurds, 6% Lurs, 2% Baloch, 1% Turkic tribal groups (including Qashqai and Turkmens), and non-Iranian, non-Turkic groups (including Armenians, Georgians, Assyrians, Circassians, and Arabs) less than 3%.\nEthnic based discrimination is prevalent in Iran. Minorities in Iran have been disproportionately affected by the ongoing crackdown aimed at repressing the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' movement, according to the UN Fact-Finding Mission.\nLanguages.\nMost of the population speaks Persian, the country's official and national language. Others include speakers of other Iranian languages, within the greater Indo-European family, and languages belonging to other ethnicities. The Gilaki and Mazenderani languages are widely spoken in Gilan and Mazenderan, northern Iran. The Talysh language is spoken in parts of Gilan. Varieties of Kurdish are concentrated in the province of Kurdistan and nearby areas. In Khuzestan, several dialects of Persian are spoken. South Iran also houses the Luri and Lari languages.\nAzerbaijani, the most-spoken minority language in the country, and other Turkic languages and dialects are found in various regions, especially Azerbaijan. Notable minority languages include Armenian, Georgian, Neo-Aramaic, and Arabic. Khuzi Arabic is spoken by the Arabs in Khuzestan, and the wider group of Iranian Arabs. Circassian was also once widely spoken by the large Circassian minority, but, due to assimilation, no sizable number of Circassians speak the language anymore.\nPercentages of spoken language continue to be a point of debate, most notably regarding the largest and second largest ethnicities in Iran, the Persians and Azerbaijanis. Percentages given by the CIA's World Factbook include 53% Persian, 16% Azerbaijani, 10% Kurdish, 7% Mazenderani and Gilaki, 7% Luri, 2% Turkmen, 2% Balochi, 2% Arabic, and 2% the remainder Armenian, Georgian, Neo-Aramaic, and Circassian.\nReligion.\nTwelver Shia Islam is the state religion, to which 90\u201395% of Iranians adhere; about 5\u201310% are in the Sunni and Sufi branches of Islam. 96% of Iranians believe in Islam, but 14% identify as not religious.\nThere is a large population of adherents to Yarsanism, a Kurdish indigenous religion, estimated to be over half a million to one million followers. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is not officially recognised and has been subject to official persecution. Since the Revolution, the persecution of Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds has increased. Irreligion is not recognised by the government.\nChristianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and the Sunni branch of Islam are officially recognised by the government and have reserved seats in the Parliament. Iran is home to the largest Jewish community in the Muslim World and the Middle East, outside of Israel. Around 250,000 to 370,000 Christians reside in Iran, and Christianity is the country's largest recognised minority religion, most are of Armenian background, as well as a sizable minority of Assyrians. The Iranian government has supported the rebuilding and renovation of Armenian churches, and has supported the Armenian Monastic Ensembles of Iran. In 2019, the government registered the Vank Cathedral, in Isfahan, as a World Heritage Site. Currently three Armenian churches in Iran have been included in the World Heritage List.\nEducation.\nEducation is highly centralised. K\u201312 is supervised by the Ministry of Education, and higher education is supervised by the Ministry of Science and Technology. Literacy among people aged 15 and older was 86% as of 2016[ [update]], with men (90%) significantly more educated than women (81%). Government expenditure on education is around 4% of GDP.\nThe requirement to enter into higher education is to have a high school diploma and pass the Iranian University Entrance Exam. Many students do a one\u2013two-year course of pre-university. Iran's higher education is sanctioned by different levels of diplomas, including an associate degree in two years, a bachelor's degree in four years, and a master's degree in two years, after which another exam allows the candidate to pursue a doctoral programme.\nHealth.\nHealthcare is provided by the public-governmental system, the private sector, and NGOs.\nIran is the only country in the world with a legal organ trade. Iran has been able to extend public health preventive services through the establishment of an extensive Primary Health Care Network. As a result, child and maternal mortality rates have fallen significantly, and life expectancy at birth has risen. Iran's medical knowledge rank is 17th globally, and 1st in the Middle East and North Africa. In terms of medical science production index, Iran ranks 16th in the world. Iran is fast emerging as a preferred destination for medical tourism.\nThe country faces the common problem of other young demographic nations in the region, which is keeping pace with growth of an already huge demand for various public services. An anticipated increase in the population growth rate will increase the need for public health infrastructures and services. About 90% of Iranians have health insurance.\nCulture.\nArt.\nIran has one of the richest art heritages in history and been strong in many media including architecture, painting, literature, music, metalworking, stonemasonry, weaving, calligraphy and sculpture. At different times, influences from neighbouring civilisations have been important, and latterly Persian art gave and received major influences as part of the wider styles of Islamic art.\nFrom the Achaemenid Empire of 550\u2013330 BC, the courts of successive dynasties led the style of Persian art, and court-sponsored art left many of the most impressive pieces that remain. The Islamic style of dense decoration, geometrically laid out, developed in Iran into an elegant and harmonious style, combining motifs derived from plants with Chinese motifs such as the cloud-band, and often animals represented at a smaller scale. During the Safavid Empire in the 16th century, this style was used across a variety of media, and diffused from the court artists of the king, most being painters.\nBy the time of the Sasanians, Iranian art had a renaissance. During the Middle Ages, Sasanian art played a prominent role in the formation of European and Asian mediaeval art.\nThe Safavid era is known as the Golden Age of Iranian art. Safavid art exerted noticeable influences upon the Ottomans, the Mughals, and the Deccans, and was influential through its fashion and garden architecture on 11th\u201317th-century Europe.\nIran's contemporary art traces its origins to Kamal-ol-molk, a prominent realist painter at the court of the Qajar Empire who affected the norms of painting and adopted a naturalistic style that would compete with photographic works. A new Iranian school of fine art was established by him in 1928, and was followed by the so-called \"coffeehouse\" style of painting. Iran's avant-garde modernists emerged by the arrival of new western influences during World War II. The contemporary art scene originates in the late 1940s, and Tehran's first modern art gallery, Apadana, was opened in 1949 by Mahmud Javadipur, Hosein Kazemi, and Hushang Ajudani. The new movements received official encouragement by the 1950s, which led to the emergence of artists such as Marcos Grigorian.\nArchitecture.\nThe history of architecture in Iran dates back to at least 5,000 BC, with characteristic examples distributed over an area from what is now Turkey and Iraq to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and from the Caucasus to Zanzibar. The Iranians made early use of mathematics, geometry and astronomy in their architecture, yielding a tradition with structural and aesthetic variety. The guiding motif is its cosmic symbolism.\nWithout sudden innovations, and despite the trauma of invasions and cultural shocks, it developed a recognizable style distinct from other regions of the Muslim world. Its virtues are \"a marked feeling for form and scale; structural inventiveness, especially in vault and dome construction; a genius for decoration with a freedom and success not rivalled in any other architecture\". In addition to historic gates, palaces, and mosques, the rapid growth of cities such as Tehran has brought a wave of construction. Iran ranks 7th among UNESCO's list of countries with the most archaeological ruins and attractions from antiquity.\nWorld Heritage Sites.\nIran's rich culture and history is reflected by its 27 World Heritage Sites, ranking 1st in the Middle East, and 10th in the world. These include Persepolis, Naghsh-e Jahan Square, Chogha Zanbil, Pasargadae, Golestan Palace, Arg-e Bam, Behistun Inscription, Shahr-e Sukhteh, Susa, Takht-e Soleyman, Hyrcanian forests, the city of Yazd and more. Iran has 24 Intangible Cultural Heritage, or Human treasures, which ranks 5th worldwide.\nWeaving.\nIran's carpet-weaving has its origins in the Bronze Age and is one of the most distinguished manifestations of Iranian art. Carpet weaving is an essential part of Persian culture and Iranian art. Persian rugs and carpets were woven in parallel by nomadic tribes in village and town workshops, and by royal court manufactories. As such, they represent simultaneous lines of tradition, and reflect the history of Iran, Persian culture, and its various peoples. Although the term \"Persian carpet\" most often refers to pile-woven textiles, flat-woven carpets and rugs like Kilim, Soumak, and embroidered tissues like Suzani are part of the manifold tradition of Persian carpet weaving.\nIran produces three-quarters of the world's handmade carpets, and has 30% of export markets. In 2010, the \"traditional skills of carpet weaving\" in Fars Province and Kashan were inscribed to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List. Within the Oriental rugs produced by the countries of the \"rug belt\", the Persian carpet stands out by the variety and elaborateness of its manifold designs.\nCarpets woven in towns and regional centres like Tabriz, Kerman, Ravar, Neyshabour, Mashhad, Kashan, Isfahan, Nain and Qom are characterized by their specific weaving techniques and use of high-quality materials, colours and patterns. Hand-woven Persian rugs and carpets have been regarded as objects of high artistic value and prestige, since they were mentioned by ancient Greek writers.\nLiterature.\nIran's oldest literary tradition is that of Avestan, the Old Iranian sacred language of the Avesta, which consists of the legendary and religious texts of Zoroastrianism and the ancient Iranian religion. The Persian language was used and developed through Persianate societies in Asia Minor, Central Asia, and South Asia, leaving extensive influences on Ottoman and Mughal literatures, among others. Iran has several famous mediaeval poets, notably Mawlana, Ferdowsi, Hafez, Sa'adi, Omar Khayyam, and Nezami Ganjavi.\nDescribed as one of the great literatures of humanity, including Goethe's assessment of it as one of the four main bodies of world literature, Persian literature has its roots in surviving works of Middle Persian and Old Persian, the latter of which dates back as far as 522\u00a0BCE, the date of the earliest surviving Achaemenid inscription, the Behistun Inscription. The bulk of surviving Persian literature, however, comes from the times following the Muslim conquest in c. 650\u00a0CE. After the Abbasids came to power (750 CE), the Iranians became the scribes and bureaucrats of the Islamic Caliphate and, increasingly, also its writers and poets. The New Persian language literature arose and flourished in Khorasan and Transoxiana because of political reasons, early Iranian dynasties of post-Islamic Iran such as the Tahirids and Samanids being based in Khorasan.\nPhilosophy.\nIranian philosophy can be traced back as far as Old Iranian philosophical traditions and thoughts which originated in ancient Indo-Iranian roots and were influenced by Zarathustra's teachings. Throughout Iranian history and due to remarkable political and social changes such as the Arab and Mongol invasions, a wide spectrum of schools of thoughts showed a variety of views on philosophical questions, extending from Old Iranian and mainly Zoroastrianism-related traditions, to schools appearing in the late pre-Islamic era such as Manicheism and Mazdakism as well as post-Islamic schools.\nThe Cyrus Cylinder is seen as a reflection of the questions and thoughts expressed by Zoroaster and developed in Zoroastrian schools of the Achaemenid era. Post-Islam Iranian philosophy is characterised by different interactions with the Old Iranian philosophy, the Greek philosophy and with the development of Islamic philosophy. The Illumination School and the Transcendent Philosophy are regarded as two of the main philosophical traditions of that era in Iran. Contemporary Iranian philosophy has been limited in its scope by intellectual repression.\nMythology and folklore.\nIranian mythology consists of ancient Iranian folklore and stories of extraordinary beings reflecting on good and evil (Ahura Mazda and Ahriman), actions of the gods, and the exploits of heroes and creatures. The tenth-century Persian poet, Ferdowsi, is the author of the national epic known as the \"Shahnameh\" (\"Book of Kings\"), which is for the most part based on \"Xwad\u0101yn\u0101mag\", a Middle Persian compilation of the history of Iranian kings and heroes, as well as the stories and characters of the Zoroastrian tradition, from the texts of the Avesta, the Denkard, the Vendidad and the Bundahishn. Modern scholars study the myths to shed light on the religious and political institutions of not only Iran but of the Greater Iran, which includes regions of West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, and Transcaucasia where the culture of Iran has had significant influence.\nStorytelling has a significant presence in Iranian folklore and culture. In classical Iran, minstrels performed for their audiences at royal courts and in public theatres. A minstrel was referred to by the Parthians as g\u014ds\u0101n, and by the Sasanians as huniy\u0101gar. Since the Safavid Empire, storytellers and poetry readers appeared at coffeehouses. After the Iranian Revolution, it took until 1985 to found the MCHTH (Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts), a now heavily centralised organisation, supervising all kinds of cultural activities. It held the first scientific meeting on anthropology and folklore in 1990.\nMuseums.\nThe National Museum of Iran in Tehran is the country's most important cultural institution. As the first and biggest museum in Iran, the institution includes the Museum of Ancient Iran and the Museum of the Islamic Era. The National Museum is the world's most important museum in terms of preservation, display and research of archaeological collections of Iran, and ranks as one of the few most prestigious museums globally in terms of volume, diversity and quality of its monuments.\nThere are many other popular museums across the country such as the Golestan Palace (World Heritage Site), The Treasury of National Jewels, Reza Abbasi Museum, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Sa'dabad Complex, The Carpet Museum, Abgineh Museum, Pars Museum, Azerbaijan Museum, Hegmataneh Museum, Susa Museum and more. Around 25 million people visited the museums in 2019.\nMusic and dance.\nIran is the apparent birthplace of the earliest complex instruments, dating to the third millennium\u00a0BC. The use of angular harps have been documented at Madaktu and Kul-e Farah, with the largest collection of Elamite instruments documented at Kul-e Farah. Xenophon's \"Cyropaedia\" mentions singing women at the court of the Achaemenid Empire. Under the Parthian Empire, the \"g\u014ds\u0101n\" (Parthian for 'minstrel') had a prominent role.\nThe history of Sasanian music is better documented than earlier periods and is especially more evident in Avestan texts. By the time of Khosrow II, the Sasanian royal court hosted prominent musicians, namely Azad, Bamshad, Barbad, Nagisa, Ramtin, and Sarkash. Iranian traditional musical instruments include string instruments such as chang (harp), qanun, santur, rud (oud, barbat), tar, dotar, setar, tanbur, and kamanche, wind instruments such as sorna (zurna, karna) and ney, and percussion instruments such as tompak, kus, daf (dayere), and naqare.\nIran's first symphony orchestra, the Tehran Symphony Orchestra, was founded in 1933. By the late 1940s, Ruhollah Khaleqi founded the country's first national music society and established the School of National Music in 1949. Iranian pop music has its origins in the Qajar era. It was significantly developed since the 1950s, using indigenous instruments and forms accompanied by electric guitar and other imported characteristics. Iranian rock emerged in the 1960s and hip hop in the 2000s.\nIran has known dance in the forms of music, play, drama or religious rituals since at least the 6th millennium BC. Artifacts with pictures of dancers were found in archaeological prehistoric sites. Genres of dance vary depending on the area, culture, and language of the local people, and can range from sophisticated reconstructions of refined court dances to energetic folk dances. Each group, region, and historical epoch has specific dance styles associated with it. The earliest researched dance from historic Iran is a dance worshipping Mithra. Ancient Persian dance was significantly researched by Greek historian Herodotus. Iran was occupied by foreign powers, causing a slow disappearance of heritage dance traditions.\nThe Qajar period had an important influence on Persian dance. In this period, a style of dance began to be called \"classical Persian dance\". Dancers performed artistic dances in court for entertainment purposes such as coronations, marriage celebrations, and Norouz celebrations. In the 20th century, the music came to be orchestrated and dance movement and costuming gained a modernistic orientation to the West.\nFashion and clothing.\nThe exact date of the emergence of weaving in Iran is not yet known, but it is likely to coincide with the emergence of civilisation. Ferdowsi and many historians have considered Keyumars to be first to use animals' skin and hair as clothing, while others propose Hushang. Ferdowsi considers Tahmuras to be a kind of textile initiator in Iran. The clothing of ancient Iran took an advanced form, and the fabric and colour of clothing became very important. Depending on the social status, eminence, climate of the region and the season, Persian clothing during the Achaemenian period took various forms. This clothing, in addition to being functional, had an aesthetic role.\nCinema, animation and theatre.\nA third-millennium BC earthen goblet discovered at the Burnt City in southeast Iran depicts what could be the world's oldest example of animation. The earliest attested Iranian examples of visual representations, however, are traced back to the bas-reliefs of Persepolis, the ritual centre of the Achaemenid Empire.\nThe first Iranian filmmaker was probably Mirza Ebrahim (Akkas Bashi), the court photographer of Mozaffar-ed-Din of the Qajar Empire. Mirza Ebrahim obtained a camera and filmed the Qajar ruler's visit to Europe. In 1904, Mirza Ebrahim (Sahhaf Bashi) opened the first public cinema in Tehran. The first Iranian feature film, \"Abi and Rabi\", was a silent comedy directed by Ovanes Ohanian in 1930. The first sound one, \"Lor Girl\", was produced by Ardeshir Irani and Abd-ol-Hosein Sepanta in 1932. Iran's animation industry began by the 1950s and was followed by the establishment of the influential Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults in 1965.\nWith the screening of the films \"Qeysar\" and \"The Cow\", directed by Masoud Kimiai and Dariush Mehrjui respectively in 1969, alternative films set out to establish their status in the film industry and Bahram Beyzai's \"Downpour\" and Nasser Taghvai's \"Tranquility in the Presence of Others\" followed. Attempts to organise a film festival, which had begun in 1954 within the Golrizan Festival, resulted in the festival of Sepas in 1969. It also resulted in the formation of Tehran's World Film Festival in 1973.\nFollowing the Cultural Revolution, a new age emerged in Iranian cinema, starting with \"Long Live!\" by Khosrow Sinai and followed by other directors, such as Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi. Kiarostami, an acclaimed director, planted Iran firmly on the map of world cinema when he won the for \"Taste of Cherry\" in 1997. The presence of Iranian films in prestigious international festivals, such as Cannes, Venice and Berlin, attracted attention to Iranian films. In 2006, 6 films represented Iranian cinema at Berlin; critics considered this a remarkable event in Iranian cinema. Asghar Farhadi, an Iranian director, has received a Golden Globe Award and two Academy Awards, representing Iran for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012 and 2017, with \"A Separation\" and \"The Salesman\". In 2020, Ashkan Rahgozar's \"The Last Fiction\" became the first representative of Iranian animated cinema in the competition section, in Best Animated Feature and Best Picture categories at the Academy Awards.\nThe oldest Iranian initiation of theatre can be traced to ancient epic ceremonial theatres such as \"Sug-e Si\u0101vu\u0691\" (\"mourning of Si\u0101va\u0691\"), as well as dances and theatre narrations of Iranian mythological tales reported by Herodotus and Xenophon. Iran's traditional theatrical genres include Baqq\u0101l-b\u0101zi (\"grocer play\", a form of slapstick comedy), Ruhowzi (or \"Taxt-howzi\", comedy performed over a courtyard pool covered with boards), Si\u0101h-b\u0101zi (the central comedian appears in blackface), S\u0101ye-b\u0101zi (shadow play), Xeyme-\u0691ab-b\u0101zi (marionette), and Arusak-b\u0101zi (puppetry), and Ta'zie (religious tragedy plays).\nThe Roudaki Hall is home to the Tehran Symphony Orchestra, the Tehran Opera Orchestra, and the Iranian National Ballet Company, and was officially renamed \"Vahdat Hall\" after the Revolution.\nMedia.\nIran's largest media corporation is the state-owned IRIB. The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance is responsible for the cultural policy, including activities regarding communications and information.\nMost of the newspapers published in Iran are in Persian, the country's official and national language. The country's most widely circulated periodicals are based in Tehran, among which are \"Etemad\", \"Ettela'at\", \"Kayhan\", \"Hamshahri\", \"Resalat\", and \"Shargh\". \"Tehran Times\", \"Iran Daily\", and \"Financial Tribune\" are among the famous English-language newspapers based in Iran.\nIran ranks 17th among countries by number of Internet users. Google Search is Iran's most widely used search engine and Instagram is the most popular online social networking service. Direct access to many worldwide mainstream websites has been blocked in Iran, including Facebook, which has been blocked since 2009. About 90% of Iran's e-commerce takes place on the Iranian online store Digikala, which has around 750,000 visitors per day and is the most visited online store in the Middle East.\nCuisine.\nIranian main dishes include varieties of kebab, pilaf, stew (khoresh), soup and \u0101sh, and omelette. Lunch and dinner meals are commonly accompanied by side dishes such as plain yogurt or mast-o-khiar, sabzi, salad Shirazi, and torshi, and might follow dishes such as borani, Mirza Qasemi, or kashk e bademjan. In Iranian culture, tea is widely consumed. Iran is the world's seventh major tea producer. One of Iran's most popular desserts is the falude. There is also the popular saffron ice cream, known as \"Bastani Sonnati\" (\"traditional ice cream\"), which is sometimes accompanied with carrot juice. Iran is also famous for its caviar.\nTypical Iranian main dishes are combinations of rice with meat, vegetables and nuts. Herbs are frequently used, along with fruits such as plums, pomegranates, quince, prunes, apricots and raisins. Characteristic Iranian spices and flavourings such as saffron, cardamom, and dried lime and other sources of sour flavoring, cinnamon, turmeric and parsley are mixed and used in various dishes.\nSports.\nIran is the most likely birthplace of polo, locally known as Chogan, with its earliest records attributed to the ancient Medes. Freestyle wrestling is traditionally considered the national sport, and Iran's wrestlers have been world champions many times. Iran's traditional wrestling, called \"ko\u0691ti e pahlev\u0101ni\" (\"heroic wrestling\"), is registered on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Iran's National Olympic Committee was founded in 1947. Wrestlers and weightlifters have achieved the country's highest records at the Olympics. In 1974, Iran became the first country in West Asia to host the Asian Games.\nAs a mountainous country, Iran is a venue for skiing, snowboarding, hiking, rock climbing, and mountain climbing. It is home to ski resorts, the most famous being Tochal, Dizin, and Shemshak. Dizin is the largest, and authorised by FIS to administer international competitions.\nFootball is the most popular sport, with the men's national team having won the Asian Cup three times. The men's team ranks 2nd in Asia and 20th in the FIFA World Rankings as of April 2024[ [update]]. The Azadi Stadium in Tehran is the largest association football stadium in West Asia and on a list of top-20 stadiums in the world. Volleyball is the second most popular sport. Having won the 2011 and 2013 Asian Men's Volleyball Championships, the men's national team is the 2nd strongest in Asia, and 15th in the FIVB World Rankings as of January\u00a02024[ [update]]. Basketball is also popular, with the men's national team having won three Asian Championships since 2007.\nObservances.\nIran's official New Year begins with Nowruz, an ancient Iranian tradition celebrated annually on the vernal equinox and described as the \"Persian New Year\". It was registered on the UNESCO's list of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2009. On the eve of the last Wednesday of the preceding year, as a prelude to Nowruz, the ancient festival of \u0628\u0101r\u0691anbe Suri celebrates \u0100tar (\"fire\") by performing rituals such as jumping over bonfires and lighting fireworks.\nYald\u0101, another ancient tradition, commemorates the ancient goddess Mithra and marks the longest night of the year on the eve of the winter solstice (usually on 20 or 21 December), during which families gather to recite poetry and eat fruits. In some regions of Mazanderan and Markazi, there is a midsummer festival, Tirg\u0101n, which is observed on Tir 13 (2 or 3July) as a celebration of water.\nIslamic annual events such as Ramez\u0101n, Eid e Fetr, and Ruz e \u0100\u0691ur\u0101 are marked by the country's population, Christian traditions such as Noel, elle ye Ruze, and Eid e P\u0101k are observed by the Christian communities, Jewish traditions such as Hanuk\u0101 and Eid e Fatir (Pesah) are observed by the Jewish communities, and Zoroastrian traditions such as Sade and Mehrg\u0101n are observed by the Zoroastrians.\nPublic holidays.\nWith 26, Iran has one of the world's highest number of public holidays. It ranks 1st in the world with the most paid leave days: 52. Iran's official calendar is the Solar Hejri calendar, beginning at the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. Each of the 12 months of the Solar Hejri calendar correspond with a zodiac sign, and the length of each year is solar. Alternatively, the Lunar Hejri calendar is used to indicate Islamic events, and the Gregorian calendar marks international events.\nLegal public holidays based on the Iranian solar calendar include the cultural celebrations of Nowruz (Farvardin 1\u20134; 21\u201324 March) and Sizdebedar (Farvardin 13; 2April), and the political events of Islamic Republic Day (Farvardin 12; 1April), the death of Ruhollah Khomeini (Khordad 14; 4June), the Khordad 15 event (Khordad 15; 5June), the anniversary of the Iranian Revolution (Bahman 22; 10 February), and Oil Nationalisation Day (Esfand 29; 19 March).\nLunar Islamic public holidays include Tasua (Muharram 9), Ashura (Muharram 10), Arba'een (Safar 20), Muhammad's death (Safar 28), the death of Ali al-Ridha (Safar 29 or 30), the birthday of Muhammad (Rabi-al-Awwal 17), the death of Fatimah (Jumada-al-Thani 3), the birthday of Ali (Rajab 13), Muhammad's first revelation (Rajab 27), the birthday of Muhammad al-Mahdi (Sha'ban 15), the death of Ali (Ramadan 21), Eid al-Fitr (Shawwal 1\u20132), the death of Ja'far al-Sadiq (Shawwal 25), Eid al-Qurban (Zulhijja 10), and Eid al-Qadir (Zulhijja 18).\nExplanatory notes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nFootnotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n<templatestyles src=\"Plain navboxes/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["35413648", "43077563", "14653"], "permutation_1": ["14653", "43077563", "35413648"], "permutation_2": ["14653", "43077563", "35413648"], "permutation_3": ["14653", "43077563", "35413648"]}
{"id": "3hop2__30796_234987_24137", "docs_added": {"5122699": "John Kerry\nAmerican politician and diplomat (born 1943)\nJohn Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician, and diplomat who served as the 68th United States secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 in the administration of Barack Obama. A member of the Forbes family and of the Democratic Party, he previously represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1985 to 2013 and later served as the first U.S. special presidential envoy for climate from 2021 to 2024. Kerry was the Democratic nominee for president of the United States in the 2004 election, narrowly losing to then-incumbent president George W. Bush.\nKerry grew up in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. In 1966, after graduating from Yale University, he enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve, ultimately attaining the rank of lieutenant. During the Vietnam War, Kerry served a brief tour in South Vietnam. While commanding a Swift boat, he sustained three wounds in combat with the Viet Cong, for which he earned three Purple Heart medals. Kerry was also awarded the Silver Star Medal and the Bronze Star Medal for conduct in separate military engagements. After completing his active military service, Kerry returned to the United States and became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. He gained national recognition as an anti-war activist, serving as a spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization. Kerry testified in the Fulbright Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where he described the United States government's policy in Vietnam as the cause of war crimes.\nIn 1972, Kerry entered electoral politics as a Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives in Massachusetts's 5th congressional district, losing to Republican Paul W. Cronin in the general election. He subsequently worked as a radio talk show host and as the executive director of an advocacy organization while attending law school. After a period in private legal practice, he was elected the 66th lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1982. In 1984, Kerry was elected to the United States Senate. In 2004, Kerry won the Democratic presidential nomination alongside Senator John Edwards. He lost the Electoral College and the popular vote by slim margins, winning 251 electors to Bush's 286 and 48.3% of the popular vote to Bush's 50.7%.\nIn January 2013, Kerry was nominated by President Obama to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and was subsequently confirmed by his Senate colleagues. He was U.S. secretary of state throughout the second term of the Obama administration from 2013 to 2017. During his tenure, he initiated the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks and negotiated agreements restricting the nuclear program of Iran, including the 2013 Joint Plan of Action and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In 2015, Kerry signed the Paris Agreement on climate change on behalf of the United States.\nIn January 2021, Kerry returned to government, becoming the first person to hold the position of U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, under President Joe Biden. On March 6, Kerry left this position to work on Biden's 2024 presidential campaign. Kerry was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Biden in May 2024.\nEarly life and education (1943\u20131966).\nJohn Forbes Kerry was born on December 11, 1943, at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado. He is the second of four children born to Richard John Kerry, a U.S. diplomat and lawyer, and Rosemary Forbes, a nurse and social activist. His father was raised Catholic (John's paternal grandparents were Austro-Hungarian Jewish immigrants who converted to Catholicism) and his mother was Episcopalian. He was raised with an elder sister Margaret, a younger sister Diana, and a younger brother Cameron. The children were raised in their father's Catholic faith, and John served as an altar boy.\nKerry was originally considered a military brat, until his father was discharged from the Army Air Corps in 1944. Kerry lived in Groton, Massachusetts his first year and Millis, Massachusetts afterwards before moving to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. at age seven, when his father took a position in the Department of the Navy's Office of General Counsel and soon became a diplomat in the State Department's Bureau of United Nations Affairs.\nAs members of the Forbes and Dudley\u2013Winthrop families, his maternal extended family enjoyed great wealth. Kerry's parents themselves were considered upper-middle class. They turned to his wealthy great-aunt, Clara Winthrop, who paid for his attendance at elite boarding schools, such as Institut Montana Zugerberg, in Zug, Switzerland. Through his maternal ancestry, Kerry also descends from Rev. James McGregor who was among the first 500 Scots-Irish immigrants to Boston Harbor in the 18th century.\nAt the age of ten, Kerry's father took a position as the U.S. Attorney for Berlin. When Kerry was twelve, he crossed into the Soviet Occupation Zone to visit Hitler's bunker and ride through the Brandenburg Gate. \nIn 1957, his father was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway, and Kerry was sent back to the United States to attend boarding school. He first attended the Fessenden School in Newton, Massachusetts, and later St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, where he learned skills in public speaking and began developing an interest in politics. Kerry founded the John Winant Society at St. Paul's to debate the issues of the day; the Society still exists there. In 1960, while at St. Paul's, he played bass in a minor rock band called The Electras with six of his classmates. The band had about five hundred copies of one album printed in 1961, which they sold some of at dances at the school; it was made available on streaming platforms many years later.\nIn 1962, Kerry attended Yale University, majoring in political science and residing in Jonathan Edwards College. By that year, his parents returned to Groton. While at Yale, Kerry briefly dated Janet Auchincloss, the younger half-sister of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Through Auchincloss, Kerry was invited to a day of sailing with then-President John F. Kennedy and his family.\nKerry played on the varsity Yale Bulldogs men's soccer team, earning his only letter in his senior year. He also played freshman and junior varsity hockey and, in his senior year, junior varsity lacrosse. In addition, he was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity and took flying lessons.\nIn his sophomore year, Kerry became the chairman of the Liberal Party of the Yale Political Union, and a year later he served as president of the union. Amongst his influential teachers in this period was Professor H. Bradford Westerfield, who was himself a former president of the Political Union. His involvement with the Political Union gave him an opportunity to be involved with important issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and the New Frontier program. He also became a member of Skull and Bones Society, and traveled to Switzerland through AIESEC Yale.\nUnder the guidance of the speaking coach and history professor Rollin G. Osterweis, Kerry won many debates against other college students from across the nation. In March 1965, as the Vietnam War escalated, he won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that was critical of U.S. foreign policy. In the speech he said, \"It is the spectre of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism and thus, it is self-defeating.\"\nKerry graduated from Yale with a bachelor of arts degree in 1966. Overall, he had below-average grades, graduating with a cumulative average of 76 over his four years. His freshman-year average was a 71, but he improved to an 81 average for his senior year. He never received an \"A\" during his time at Yale; his highest grade was an 89.\nMilitary service (1966\u20131970).\nDuty on USS \"Gridley\".\nOn February 18, 1966, Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserve. He began his active duty military service on August 19, 1966. After completing 16 weeks of Officer Candidate School at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island, Kerry received his officer's commission on December 16, 1966. During the 2004 election, Kerry posted his military records at his website, and permitted reporters to inspect his medical records. In 2005, Kerry released his military and medical records to the representatives of three news organizations, but has not authorized full public access to those records.\nDuring his tour on the guided missile frigate , Kerry requested duty in South Vietnam, listing as his first preference a position as the commander of a Fast Patrol Craft (PCF), also known as a \"Swift boat\". These boats have aluminum hulls and have little or no armor, but are heavily armed and rely on speed. \"I didn't really want to get involved in the war,\" Kerry said in a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. \"When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing.\" However, his second choice of billet was on a river patrol boat, or \"PBR\", which at the time was serving a more dangerous duty on the rivers of Vietnam.\nMilitary honors.\nDuring the night of December 2 and early morning of December 3, 1968, Kerry was in charge of a small boat operating near a peninsula north of Cam Ranh Bay together with a Swift boat (PCF-60). According to Kerry and the two crewmen who accompanied him that night, Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis, they surprised a group of Vietnamese men unloading sampans at a river crossing, who began running and failed to obey an order to stop. As the men fled, Kerry and his crew opened fire on the sampans and destroyed them, then rapidly left. During this encounter, Kerry received a shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow. It was for this injury that Kerry received his first Purple Heart Medal.\nKerry received his second Purple Heart for a wound received in action on the B\u1ed3 \u0110\u1ec1 River on February 20, 1969. The plan had been for the Swift boats to be accompanied by support helicopters. On the way up the Bo De, however, the helicopters were attacked. As the Swift boats reached the C\u1eeda L\u1edbn River, Kerry's boat was hit by a B-40 rocket (rocket propelled grenade round), and a piece of shrapnel hit Kerry's left leg, wounding him. Thereafter, enemy fire ceased and his boat reached the Gulf of Thailand safely. Kerry continues to have shrapnel embedded in his left thigh because the doctors that first treated him decided to remove the damaged tissue and close the wound with sutures rather than make a wide opening to remove the shrapnel. Although wounded like several others earlier that day, Kerry did not lose any time off from duty.\nSilver Star.\nEight days later, on February 28, 1969, came the events for which Kerry was awarded his Silver Star Medal. On this occasion, Kerry was in tactical command of his Swift boat and two other Swift boats during a combat operation. Their mission on the Duong Keo River included bringing an underwater demolition team and dozens of South Vietnamese Marines to destroy enemy sampans, structures and bunkers as described in the story \"The Death Of PCF 43\". Running into heavy small arms fire from the river banks, Kerry \"directed the units to turn to the beach and charge the Viet Cong positions\" and he \"expertly directed\" his boat's fire causing the enemy to flee while at the same time coordinating the insertion of the ninety South Vietnamese troops (according to the original medal citation signed by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt). Moving a short distance upstream, Kerry's boat was the target of a B-40 rocket round; Kerry charged the enemy positions and as his boat hove to and beached, a Viet Cong (\"VC\") insurgent armed with a rocket launcher emerged from a spider hole and ran. While the boat's gunner opened fire, wounding the VC in the leg, and while the other boats approached and offered cover fire, Kerry jumped from the boat to pursue the VC insurgent, subsequently killing him and capturing his loaded rocket launcher.\nKerry's commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander George Elliott, stated to Douglas Brinkley in 2003 that he did not know whether to court-martial Kerry for beaching the boat without orders or give him a medal for saving the crew. Elliott recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, and Zumwalt flew into An Thoi to personally award medals to Kerry and the rest of the sailors involved in the mission. The Navy's account of Kerry's actions is presented in the original signed by Zumwalt. The engagement was documented in an after-action report, a press release written on March 1, 1969, and a historical summary dated March 17, 1969.\nBronze Star.\nOn March 13, 1969, on the B\u00e1i H\u00e1p River, Kerry was in charge of one of five Swift boats that were returning to their base after performing an Operation Sealords mission to transport South Vietnamese troops from the garrison at C\u00e1i N\u01b0\u1edbc and MIKE Force advisors for a raid on a Vietcong camp located on the Rach Dong Cung canal. Earlier in the day, Kerry received a slight shrapnel wound in the buttocks from blowing up a rice bunker. Debarking some but not all of the passengers at a small village, the boats approached a fishing weir; one group of boats went around to the left of the weir, hugging the shore, and a group with Kerry's PCF-94 boat went around to the right, along the shoreline. A mine was detonated directly beneath the lead boat, PCF-3, as it crossed the weir to the left, lifting PCF-3 \"about 2\u20133 ft out of water\".\nJames Rassmann, a Green Beret advisor who was aboard Kerry's PCF-94, was knocked overboard when, according to witnesses and the documentation of the event, a mine or rocket exploded close to the boat. According to the documentation for the event, Kerry's arm was injured when he was thrown against a bulkhead during the explosion. PCF 94 returned to the scene and Kerry rescued Rassmann who was receiving sniper fire from the water. Kerry received the Bronze Star Medal with Combat \"V\" for \"heroic achievement\", for his actions during this incident; he also received his third Purple Heart.\nReturn from Vietnam.\nAfter Kerry's third qualifying wound, he was entitled per Navy regulations to reassignment away from combat duties. Kerry's preferred choice for reassignment was as a military aide in Boston, New York City or Washington, D.C. On April 11, 1969, he reported to the Brooklyn-based Atlantic Military Sea Transportation Service, where he would remain on active duty for the following year as a personal aide to an officer, Rear Admiral Walter Schlech. On January 1, 1970, Kerry was temporarily promoted to full lieutenant. Kerry had agreed to an extension of his active duty obligation from December 1969 to August 1970 in order to perform Swift Boat duty. John Kerry was on active duty in the United States Navy from August 1966 until January 1970. He continued to serve in the Naval Reserve until February 1978.\n\"Swiftboating\" controversy.\nWith the continuing controversy that had surrounded the military service of George W. Bush since the 2000 presidential election (when he was accused of having used his father's political influence to gain entrance to the Texas Air National Guard, thereby protecting himself from conscription into the United States Army, and possible service in the Vietnam War), John Kerry's contrasting status as a decorated Vietnam War veteran posed a problem for Bush's re-election campaign, which Republicans sought to counter by calling Kerry's war record into question. As the presidential campaign of 2004 developed, approximately 250 members of a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT, later renamed Swift Vets and POWs for Truth) opposed Kerry's campaign. The group held press conferences, ran ads and endorsed a book questioning Kerry's service record and his military awards. The group included several members of Kerry's unit, such as Larry Thurlow, who commanded a swift boat alongside of Kerry's, and Stephen Gardner, who served on Kerry's boat. The campaign inspired the widely used political pejorative '\"swiftboating,\" to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. Most of Kerry's former crewmates have stated that SBVT's allegations are false.\nAnti-war activism (1970\u20131971).\nAfter returning to the United States, Kerry moved to Waltham, Massachusetts and joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Then numbering about 20,000, VVAW was considered by some (including the administration of President Richard Nixon) to be an effective, if controversial, component of the antiwar movement. Kerry participated in the \"Winter Soldier Investigation\" conducted by VVAW of U.S. atrocities in Vietnam, and he appears in a film by that name that documents the investigation. According to Nixon Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, \"I didn't approve of what he did, but I understood the protesters quite well\", and he declined two requests from the Navy to court martial Reserve Lieutenant Kerry over his antiwar activity.\nOn April 22, 1971, Kerry appeared before a U.S. Senate committee hearing on proposals relating to ending the war. The day after this testimony, Kerry participated in a demonstration with thousands of other veterans in which he and other Vietnam War veterans threw their medals and service ribbons over a fence erected at the front steps of the United States Capitol building to dramatize their opposition to the war. Jack Smith, a Marine, read a statement explaining why the veterans were returning their military awards to the government. For more than two hours, almost 1,000 angry veterans tossed their medals, ribbons, hats, jackets, and military papers over the fence. Each veteran gave his or her name, hometown, branch of service and a statement. Kerry threw some of his own decorations and awards as well as some given to him by other veterans to throw. As Kerry threw his decorations over the fence, his statement was: \"I'm not doing this for any violent reasons, but for peace and justice, and to try and make this country wake up once and for all.\"\nKerry was arrested on May 30, 1971, during a VVAW march to honor American POWs held captive by North Vietnam. The march was planned as a multi-day event from Concord to Boston, and while in Lexington, participants tried to camp on the village green. At 2:30a.m., local and state police arrested 441 demonstrators, including Kerry, for trespassing. All were given the Miranda Warning and were hauled away on school buses to spend the night at the Lexington Public Works Garage. Kerry and the other protesters later paid a $5 fine, and were released. The mass arrests caused a community backlash and ended up giving positive coverage to the VVAW.\nEarly political career (1972\u20131985).\n1972 congressional election.\nIn 1970, Kerry had considered running for Congress in the Democratic primary against hawkish Democrat Philip J. Philbin of Massachusetts's 3rd congressional district, but deferred in favor of Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest and anti-war activist, who went on to defeat Philbin. In February 1972, Kerry's wife bought a house in Worcester, with Kerry intending to run against the 4th district's aging thirteen-term incumbent Democrat, Harold Donohue. The couple never moved in. After Republican Congressman F. Bradford Morse of the neighboring 5th district announced his retirement and then resignation to become Under-Secretary-General for Political and General Assembly Affairs at the United Nations, the couple instead rented an apartment in Lowell, so that Kerry could run to succeed him.\nIncluding Kerry, the Democratic primary race had 10 candidates, including attorney Paul J. Sheehy, State Representative Anthony R. DiFruscia, John J. Desmond and Robert B. Kennedy. Kerry ran a \"very expensive, sophisticated campaign\", financed by out-of-state backers and supported by many young volunteers. DiFruscia's campaign headquarters shared the same building as Kerry's. On the eve of the September 19 primary, police found Kerry's younger brother Cameron and campaign field director Thomas J. Vallely, breaking into where the building's telephone lines were located. They were arrested and charged with \"breaking and entering with the intent to commit grand larceny\", but the charges were dropped a year later. DiFruscia alleged that the two were trying to disrupt his get-out-the vote efforts. Vallely and Cameron Kerry maintained that they were only checking their own telephone lines because they had received an anonymous call warning that the Kerry lines would be cut.\nDespite the arrests, Kerry won the primary with 20,771 votes (27.56%). Sheehy came second with 15,641 votes (20.75%), followed by DiFruscia with 12,222 votes (16.22%), Desmond with 10,213 votes (13.55%) and Kennedy with 5,632 votes (7.47%). The remaining 10,891 votes were split amongst the other five candidates, with 1970 nominee Richard Williams coming last with just 1,706 votes (2.26%).\nIn the general election, Kerry was initially favored to defeat the Republican candidate, former State Representative Paul W. Cronin, and conservative Democrat Roger P. Durkin, who ran as an Independent. A week after the primary, one poll put Kerry 26-points ahead of Cronin. His campaign called for a national health insurance system, discounted prescription drugs for the unemployed, a jobs program to clean up the Merrimack River and rent controls in Lowell and Lawrence. A major obstacle, however, was the district's leading newspaper, the conservative \"The Sun\". The paper editorialized against him. It also ran critical news stories about his out-of-state contributions and his \"carpetbagging\", because he had only moved into the district in April. Subsequently, released \"Watergate\" Oval Office tape recordings of the Nixon White House showed that defeating Kerry's candidacy had attracted the personal attention of President Nixon. Kerry himself asserts that Nixon sent operatives to Lowell to help derail his campaign.\nThe race was the most expensive for Congress in the country that year and four days before the general election, Durkin withdrew and endorsed Cronin, hoping to see Kerry defeated. The week before, a poll had put Kerry 10 points ahead of Cronin, with Durkin at 13%. In the final days of the campaign, Kerry sensed that it was \"slipping away\" and Cronin emerged victorious by 110,970 votes (53.45%) to Kerry's 92,847 (44.72%). After his defeat, Kerry lamented in a letter to supporters that \"for two solid weeks, [\"The Sun\"] called me un-American, New Left antiwar agitator, unpatriotic, and labeled me every other 'un-' and 'anti-' that they could find. It's hard to believe that one newspaper could be so powerful, but they were.\" He later felt that his failure to respond directly to \"The Sun\"'s attacks cost him the race.\nLaw career.\nAfter Kerry's 1972 defeat, he and his wife bought a house in the Belvidere section of Lowell, Massachusetts, entering a decade which his brother Cameron later called \"the years in exile\". He spent some time working as a fundraiser for the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE), an international humanitarian organization. In September 1973, he entered Boston College Law School. While studying, Kerry worked as a talk radio host on WBZ and, in July 1974, was named executive director of Mass Action, a Massachusetts advocacy association.\nKerry received his juris doctor (J.D.) from Boston College in 1976. While in law school he had been a student prosecutor in the office of the District Attorney of Middlesex County, John J. Droney. After passing the bar exam and being admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1976, he went to work in that office as a full-time prosecutor and moved to Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.\nIn January 1977, Droney promoted him to First Assistant District Attorney, essentially making Kerry his campaign and media surrogate because Droney was afflicted with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease). As First Assistant, Kerry tried cases, which included winning convictions in a high-profile rape case and a murder. He also played a role in administering the office, including initiating the creation of special white-collar and organized crime units, creating programs to address the problems of rape and other crime victims and witnesses, and managing trial calendars to reflect case priorities. In 1978, Kerry launched a criminal investigation against Senator Edward Brooke, regarding \"misstatements\" in his first divorce trial. The inquiry ended with no charges being brought after investigators and prosecutors determined that Brooke's misstatements were pertinent to the case, but were not material enough to have affected the outcome.\nDroney's health was poor and Kerry had decided to run for his position in the 1978 election should Droney drop out. However, Droney was re-elected and his health improved; he went on to re-assume many of the duties that he had delegated to Kerry. Kerry thus decided to leave, departing in 1979 with assistant DA Roanne Sragow to set up their own law firm. Kerry also worked as a commentator for WCVB-TV and co-founded a bakery, Kilvert & Forbes Ltd., with businessman and former Kennedy aide K. Dun Gifford.\nLieutenant Governor of Massachusetts.\nIn the 1982 Massachusetts gubernatorial election, Lieutenant Governor Thomas P. O'Neill III declined to seek a third term, instead deciding to run for governor of Massachusetts. Kerry declared his candidacy, entering the primary election alongside Massachusetts Secretary of Environmental Affairs Evelyn Murphy, State Senator Samuel Rotondi, State Representative Lou Nickinello, and Lois Pines.\nKerry won the nomination with 325,890 votes (29%) to Murphy's 286,378 (25.48%), Rotondi's 228,086 (20.29%), Nickinello's 150,829 (13.42%) and Pines' 132,734 (11.81%). In the concurrent gubernatorial primary, former Governor Michael Dukakis defeated O'Neill and incumbent Governor Edward J. King. The Dukakis and Kerry ticket defeated the Republican ticket of John W. Sears and Leon Lombardi in the general election by 1,219,109 votes (61.92%) to 749,679 (38.08%).\nAs Lieutenant Governor, Kerry led meetings of the Massachusetts Governor's Council. Dukakis also delegated other tasks to Kerry, including serving as the state's liaison to the Federal government of the United States. He was also active on environmental issues, including combating acid rain.\n1984 U.S. Senate election.\nThe junior U.S. senator from Massachusetts, Paul Tsongas, announced in 1984 that he would be stepping down for health reasons. Kerry ran, and as in his 1982 race for Lieutenant Governor, he did not receive the endorsement of the party regulars at the state Democratic convention. Congressman James Shannon, a favorite of House Speaker Tip O'Neill, was the early favorite to win the nomination, and he \"won broad establishment support and led in early polling\". Again as in 1982, however, Kerry prevailed in a close primary.\nIn his general election campaign, Kerry promised to mix liberalism with tight budget controls. He defeated Republican Ray Shamie despite a nationwide landslide for the re-election of Republican President Ronald Reagan, for whom Massachusetts voted by a narrow margin. In his victory speech, Kerry asserted that his win meant that the people of Massachusetts \"emphatically reject the politics of selfishness and the notion that women must be treated as second-class citizens\".\nTsongas resigned on January 2, 1985, one day before the end of his term. Dukakis appointed Kerry to fill the vacancy, giving him seniority over other new senators who were sworn in on January 3, the scheduled start of their new terms.\nU.S. Senate (1985\u20132013).\nIran\u2013Contra hearings.\nOn April 18, 1985, a few months after taking his Senate seat, Kerry and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa traveled to Nicaragua and met the country's president, Daniel Ortega. Although Ortega had won internationally certified elections, the trip was criticized because Ortega and his leftist Sandinista government had strong ties to Cuba and the USSR and were accused of human rights abuses. The Sandinista government was opposed by the right-wing CIA-backed rebels known as the Contras. While in Nicaragua, Kerry and Harkin talked to people on both sides of the conflict. Through the senators, Ortega offered a cease-fire agreement in exchange for the U.S. dropping support of the Contras. The offer was denounced by the Reagan administration as a \"propaganda initiative\" designed to influence a House vote on a $14million Contra aid package, but Kerry said \"I am willing... to take the risk in the effort to put to test the good faith of the Sandinistas.\" The House voted down the Contra aid, but Ortega flew to Moscow to accept a $200million loan the next day, which in part prompted the House to pass a larger $27million aid package six weeks later.\nMeanwhile, Kerry's staff began their own investigations and, on October 14, issued a report that exposed illegal activities on the part of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who had set up a private network involving the National Security Council and the CIA to deliver military equipment to right-wing Nicaraguan rebels (Contras). In effect, North and certain members of the President's administration were accused by Kerry's report of illegally funding and supplying armed militants without the authorization of Congress. Kerry's staff investigation, based on a year-long inquiry and interviews with fifty unnamed sources, is said to raise \"serious questions about whether the United States has abided by the law in its handling of the contras over the past three years\".\nThe Kerry Committee report found that \"the Contra drug links included... payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies.\" The U.S. State Department paid over $806,000 to known drug traffickers to carry humanitarian assistance to the Contras. Kerry's findings provoked little reaction in the media and official Washington.\nThe Kerry report was a precursor to the Iran\u2013Contra affair. On May 4, 1989, North was convicted of charges relating to the Iran/Contra controversy, including three felonies. On September 16, 1991, however, North's convictions were overturned on appeal.\nGeorge H. W. Bush administration.\nOn November 15, 1988, at a businessmen's breakfast in East Lynn, Massachusetts, Kerry made a joke about then-President-elect George H. W. Bush and his running mate, saying \"if Bush is shot, the Secret Service has orders to shoot Dan Quayle.\" He apologized the following day.\nDuring their investigation of General Manuel Noriega, the \"de facto\" ruler of Panama, Kerry's staff found reason to believe that the Pakistan-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) had facilitated Noriega's drug trafficking and money laundering. This led to a separate inquiry into BCCI, and as a result, banking regulators shut down BCCI in 1991. In December 1992, Kerry and Senator Hank Brown, a Republican from Colorado, released \"The BCCI Affair\", a report on the BCCI scandal. The report showed that the bank was crooked and was working with terrorists, including Abu Nidal. It blasted the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, the Customs Service, the Federal Reserve Bank, as well as influential lobbyists and the CIA.\nKerry was criticized by some Democrats for having pursued his own party members, including former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, although Republicans said he should have pressed against some Democrats even harder. The BCCI scandal was later turned over to the Manhattan District Attorney's office.\nPrecursors to presidential bid.\nIn 1996, Kerry faced a difficult re-election fight against Governor William Weld, a popular Republican incumbent who had been re-elected in 1994 with 71% of the vote. The race was covered nationwide as one of the most closely watched Senate races that year. Kerry and Weld held several debates and negotiated a campaign spending cap of $6.9million at Kerry's Beacon Hill townhouse. Both candidates spent more than the cap, with each camp accusing the other of being first to break the agreement. During the campaign, Kerry spoke briefly at the 1996 Democratic National Convention. Kerry won re-election with 52 percent to Weld's 45 percent.\nIn the 2000 presidential election, Kerry found himself close to being chosen as the vice presidential running mate.\nA release from the presidential campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Al Gore listed Kerry on the short list to be selected as the vice-presidential nominee, along with North Carolina Senator John Edwards, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt, New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. Gore ultimately chose Lieberman.\n\"You get stuck in Iraq\" controversy.\nOn October 30, 2006, Kerry was a headline speaker at a campaign rally being held for Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. Speaking to an audience composed mainly of college students, Kerry said, \"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.\"\nThe day after he made the remark, leaders from both sides of the political spectrum criticized Kerry's remarks, which he said were a botched joke. Republicans including President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain and then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, said that Kerry's comments were insulting to American military forces fighting in Iraq. Democratic Representative Harold Ford Jr. called on Kerry to apologize.\nKerry initially stated: \"I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy\". Kerry also responded to criticism from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.\nKerry said that he had intended the remark as a jab at President Bush, and described the remarks as a \"botched joke\", having inadvertently left out the key word \"us\" (which would have been, \"If you don't, you get \"us\" stuck in Iraq\"), as well as leaving the phrase \"just ask President Bush\" off of the end of the sentence. In Kerry's prepared remarks, which he released during the ensuing media frenzy, the corresponding line was \"...you end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush\". He also said that from the context of the speech which, prior to the \"stuck in Iraq\" line, made several specific references to Bush and elements of his biography, that Kerry was referring to President Bush and not American troops in general.\nAfter two days of media coverage, citing a desire not to be a diversion, Kerry apologized to those who took offense at what he called the misinterpretation of his comment.\nAfghanistan and Pakistan.\nA \"Washington Post\" report in May 2011 stated that Kerry \"has emerged in the past few years as an important envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan during times of crisis\", as he undertook another trip to the two countries. The killing of Osama bin Laden \"has generated perhaps the most important crossroads yet\", the report continued, as the senator spoke at a press conference and prepared to fly from Kabul to Pakistan. Among matters discussed during the May visit to Pakistan, under the general rubric of \"recalibrating\" the bilateral relationship, Kerry sought and retrieved from the Pakistanis the tail-section of the U.S. helicopter which had had to be abandoned at Abbottabad during the bin Laden strike. In 2013, Kerry met with Pakistan's army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to discuss the peace process with the Taliban in Afghanistan.\nVoting record.\nOverall.\nMost analyses place Kerry's voting record on the left within the Senate Democratic caucus. During the 2004 presidential election he was portrayed as a staunch liberal by conservative groups and the Bush campaign, who often noted that in 2003 Kerry was rated the top Senate liberal by \"National Journal\". However, that rating was based only upon voting on legislation within that past year. In fact, in terms of career voting records, the \"National Journal\" found that Kerry is the 11th most liberal member of the Senate. Most analyses find that Kerry is at least slightly more liberal than the typical Democratic Senator. Kerry has stated that he opposes privatizing Social Security, supports abortion rights for adult women and minors, supports same-sex marriage, opposes capital punishment except for terrorists, supports most gun control laws, and is generally a supporter of trade agreements. In some of these, as in the case of abortion, Kerry distinguishes his personal views as in line with his Catholic faith, but believes that separation of church and state demands that he not legislate his religious beliefs upon those who do not share those beliefs. Kerry supported the North American Free Trade Agreement and Most Favored Nation status for China, but opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement.\nIn July 1997, Kerry joined his Senate colleagues in voting against ratification of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming without greenhouse gas emissions limits on nations deemed developing, including India and China. Since then, Kerry has attacked President Bush, charging him with opposition to international efforts to combat global warming.\nOn October 1, 2008, Kerry voted for Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, also known as the TARP bailout.\nIraq.\nIn the lead up to the Iraq War, Kerry said on October 9, 2002; \"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.\" Bush relied on that resolution in ordering the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Kerry also gave a January 23, 2003, speech to Georgetown University saying \"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator; leading an oppressive regime he presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.\" Kerry did, however, warn that the administration should exhaust its diplomatic avenues before launching war: \"Mr. President, do not rush to war, take the time to build the coalition, because it's not winning the war that's hard, it's winning the peace that's hard.\"\nAfter the invasion of Iraq, when no weapons of mass destruction were found, Kerry strongly criticized Bush, contending that he had misled the country: \"When the President of the United States looks at you and tells you something, there should be some trust.\"\nLibya.\nIn 2011, Kerry supported American military action in Libya.\nLeadership.\nKerry chaired the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs from 1991 to 1993. The committee's report, which Kerry endorsed, stated there was \"no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia\". In 1994 the Senate passed a resolution, sponsored by Kerry and fellow Vietnam veteran John McCain, that called for an end to the existing trade embargo against Vietnam; it was intended to pave the way for normalization. In 1995, President Bill Clinton normalized diplomatic relations with the country of Vietnam.\nKerry was the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 1987 to 1989. He was reelected to the Senate in 1990, 1996 (after winning re-election against the then-Governor of Massachusetts Republican William Weld), 2002, and 2008. In January 2009, Kerry replaced Joe Biden as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.\nAs a role model for campus leaders across the nation and strong advocate for global development, Kerry was honored by the Millennium Campus Network (MCN) as a Global Generation Award winner in 2011.\nCommittee assignments.\nDuring his tenure, Kerry served on four Senate committees and nine subcommittees:\nSeniority.\nFrom the beginning of the 113th United States Congress until his resignation, Kerry ranked as the 7th most senior U.S. Senator. Due to the longevity of Ted Kennedy's service, Kerry was the most senior \"junior Senator\" in the 111th United States Congress. On Tuesday, August 25, 2009, Kerry became the senior senator from Massachusetts following Ted Kennedy's death.\nSponsorship of legislation.\nAreas of concern in the bills Kerry introduced into the Senate included small business concerns, education, terrorism, veterans' and POW/MIA issues, and marine resource protection. A full list of Kerry's sponsored legislation was available on his Senate web site.\nDuring his Senate career, Kerry was primary sponsor of the following bills (excluding resolutions and amendments sponsored). This table does not count bills which Kerry co-sponsored.\nA chronological list of various bills and resolutions sponsored by Kerry follows.\n2004 presidential campaign.\nIn the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries, John Kerry defeated several Democratic rivals, including Sen. John Edwards (D-North Carolina), former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and retired Army General Wesley Clark. His victory in the Iowa caucuses is widely believed to be the tipping point where Kerry revived his sagging campaign in New Hampshire and the February 3, 2004, primary states like Arizona, South Carolina and New Mexico. Kerry then went on to win landslide victories in Nevada and Wisconsin. Kerry thus won the Democratic nomination to run for President of the United States against incumbent George W. Bush. On July 6, 2004, he announced his selection of John Edwards as his running mate. Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who was Kerry's 2004 campaign adviser, wrote an article in \"Time\" magazine claiming that after the election, Kerry had said that he wished he had never picked Edwards, and that the two have since stopped speaking to each other. In a subsequent appearance on ABC's \"This Week\", Kerry refused to respond to Shrum's allegation, calling it a \"ridiculous waste of time\".\nDuring his bid to be elected president in 2004, Kerry frequently criticized President George W. Bush for starting the Iraq War. While Kerry had initially voted in support of authorizing President Bush to use force in dealing with Saddam Hussein, he voted against an $87billion supplemental appropriations bill to pay for the subsequent war. His statement on March 16, 2004, \"I actually did vote for the $87billion before I voted against it\", helped the Bush campaign to paint him as a flip-flopper and has been cited as contributing to Kerry's defeat.\nOn November 3, 2004, Kerry conceded the race. Kerry won 59.03 million votes, or 48.3 percent of the popular vote; Bush won 62.04 million votes, or 50.7 percent of the popular vote. Kerry carried states with a total of 252 electoral votes. One Kerry elector voted for Kerry's running mate, Edwards, so in the final tally Kerry had 251 electoral votes to Bush's 286. He was the first Democrat since Michael Dukakis in 1988 to lose the popular vote in a presidential election, and until Kamala Harris's loss in 2024, he was the most recent Democrat to do so.\nSubsequent presidential-election activities.\nImmediately after the 2004 election, some Democrats mentioned Kerry as a possible contender for the 2008 Democratic nomination. His brother had said such a campaign was \"conceivable\", and Kerry himself reportedly said at a farewell party for his 2004 campaign staff, \"There's always another four years\".\nKerry established a separate political action committee, Keeping America's Promise, which declared as its mandate \"A Democratic Congress will restore accountability to Washington and help change a disastrous course in Iraq\", and raised money and channeled contributions to Democratic candidates in state and federal races. Through Keeping America's Promise in 2005, Kerry raised over $5.5million for other Democrats up and down the ballot. Through his campaign account and his political action committee, the Kerry campaign operation generated more than $10million for various party committees and 179 candidates for the U.S. House, Senate, state and local offices in 42 states focusing on the midterm elections during the 2006 election cycle. \"Cumulatively, John Kerry has done as much if not more than any other individual senator\", Hassan Nemazee, the national finance chairman of the DSCC said.\nOn January 10, 2008, Kerry endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama for president. He was mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate for Senator Obama, although fellow Senator Joe Biden was eventually chosen. After Biden's acceptance of the vice presidential nomination, speculation arose that John Kerry would be a candidate for Secretary of State in the Obama administration. However, Senator Hillary Clinton was offered the position.\nDuring the 2012 Obama reelection campaign, Kerry participated in one-on-one debate prep with the president, impersonating the Republican candidate Mitt Romney.\nSecretary of State (2013\u20132017).\nNomination and confirmation.\nOn December 15, 2012, several news outlets reported that President Barack Obama would nominate Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, after Susan Rice, widely seen as Obama's preferred choice, withdrew her name from consideration citing a politicized confirmation process following criticism of her response to the 2012 Benghazi attack. On December 21, Obama proposed the nomination, which received positive commentary. His confirmation hearing took place on January 24, 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the same panel where he first testified in 1971. The committee unanimously voted to approve him on January 29, 2013, and the same day the full Senate confirmed him on a vote of 94\u20133. In a letter to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Kerry announced his resignation from the Senate effective February 1.\nTenure.\nKerry was sworn in as Secretary of State on February 1, 2013.\nWhile serving as the Secretary of State, Kerry spoke in the French language on several occasions in his official capacity.\nAfter six months of rigorous diplomacy within the Middle East, Kerry was able to have Israeli and Palestinian negotiators agree to start the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks. Senior U.S. officials stated the two sides were able to meet on July 30, 2013, at the State Department without American mediators following a dinner the previous evening hosted by Kerry.\nOn September 27, 2013, he met with the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the P5+1 and Iran summit, which eventually led to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. It was the highest-level direct contact between the United States and Iran in the last six years, and made him the first U.S. Secretary of State to have met with his Iranian counterpart since 1979 Iranian Revolution.\nIn the State Department, Kerry quickly earned a reputation \"for being aloof, keeping to himself, and not bothering to read staff memos\". Career State Department officials complained that power became too centralized under Kerry's leadership, which slowed department operations when Kerry was on frequent overseas trips. Others in State described Kerry as having \"a kind of diplomatic attention deficit disorder\" as he shifted from topic to topic instead of focusing on long-term strategy. When asked whether he was traveling too much, he responded, \"Hell no. I'm not slowing down.\" Despite Kerry's early achievements, morale at State was lower than under Hillary Clinton, according to department employees. However, after Kerry's first six months in the State Department, a Gallup poll found he had high approval ratings among Americans as Secretary of State. After a year, another poll showed Kerry's favorability continued to rise. Less than two years into Kerry's term, the Foreign Policy Magazine's 2014 Ivory Tower survey of international relations scholars asked, \"Who was the most effective U.S. Secretary of State in the past 50 years?\"; John Kerry and Lawrence Eagleburger tied for 11th place out of the 15 confirmed Secretaries of State in that period.\nIn January 2014, having met with Vatican Secretary of State Archbishop Pietro Parolin, Kerry said: \"We touched on just about every major issue that we are both working on, that are issues of concern to all of us. First of all, we talked at great length about Syria, and I was particularly appreciative for the Archbishop's raising this issue, and equally grateful for the Holy Father's comments\u00a0\u2013 the Pope's comments yesterday regarding his support for the GenevaII process. We welcome that support. It is very important to have broad support, and I know that the Pope is particularly concerned about the massive numbers of displaced human beings and the violence that has taken over 130,000 lives.\"\nKerry expressed support for Israel's right to defend itself during the 2014 Israel\u2013Gaza conflict.\nKerry said the United States supported the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen because Saudi Arabia, an ally, was threatened \"very directly\" by the takeover of neighboring Yemen by the Houthis, but noted that the United States would not reflexively support Saudi Arabia's proxy wars against Iran.\nOn December 28, 2016, soon after United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 passed 14\u20130 with the U.S. abstaining, Kerry joined the rest of the U.N. Security Council in strongly criticizing Israel's settlement policies in a speech. His speech and criticisms met negative reactions from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while UK Prime Minister Theresa May distanced the UK from Kerry's strongly worded speech in what appeared to be an attempt to build bridges with the incoming Trump administration. Kerry's speech received positive reactions from Arab nations, but some criticized his remarks as too little, too late from the outgoing administration.\nSyria.\nFollowing the August 21, 2013, chemical weapons attack on the Ghouta suburbs of Damascus attributed to Syrian government forces, Kerry became a leading advocate for the use of military force against the Syrian government for what he called \"a despot's brutal and flagrant use of chemical weapons\".\nOn September 9, in response to a reporter's question about whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could avert a military strike, Kerry said \"He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that. But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done, obviously.\" This unscripted remark initiated a process that would lead to Syria agreeing to relinquish and destroy its chemical weapons arsenal, as Russia treated Kerry's statement as a serious proposal. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia would work \"immediately\" to convince Syria relinquish and destroy its large chemical weapons arsenal. Syria quickly welcomed this proposal and on September 14, the UN formally accepted Syria's application to join the convention banning chemical weapons, and separately, the U.S. and Russia agreed on a plan to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons by the middle of 2014, leading Kerry to declare on July 20, 2014: \"we struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out\". On September 28, the UN Security Council passed a resolution ordering the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons and condemning the August 21 Ghouta attack.\nLatin America.\nIn a speech before the Organization of American States in November 2013, Kerry remarked that the era of the Monroe Doctrine was over. He went on to explain, \"The relationship that we seek and that we have worked hard to foster is not about a United States declaration about how and when it will intervene in the affairs of other American states. It's about all of our countries viewing one another as equals, sharing responsibilities, cooperating on security issues, and adhering not to doctrine, but to the decisions that we make as partners to advance the values and the interests that we share.\"\nEnvironmentalism.\nIn April 2016, he signed the Paris Climate Accords at the United Nations in New York.\nOn November 11, 2016, Kerry became the first Secretary of State and highest-ranking U.S. official to date to visit Antarctica. Kerry spent two days on the continent meeting with researchers and staying overnight at McMurdo Station.\nIn 1994, Kerry led opposition to continued funding for the Integral Fast Reactor, which resulted in the end of funding for the project. However, in light of increasing concerns regarding climate change, in 2017 Kerry reversed his position on nuclear power, saying \"Given this challenge we face today, and given the progress of fourth generation nuclear: go for it. No other alternative, zero emissions.\"\nGlobal Connect initiative.\nIn September 2015, the U.S. Department of State unveiled a new initiative called \"Global Connect\" which sought to provide internet access to more than 1.5 billion people around the world within five years. In 2016, in partnership with OPIC, Kerry announced an investment of $171million to enable \"a low-cost and rapidly scalable wireless broadband network in India\". OPIC's financing is aimed at helping its Indian Partner, Tikona Digital Networks, to provide Internet through wireless technology.\nOut of government (2017\u20132021).\nKerry retired from his diplomatic work following the end of the Obama administration on January 20, 2017. He did not attend Donald Trump's inauguration on that day, and the following day took part in the 2017 Women's March in Washington, D.C.\nKerry has taken a strong stand against Trump policies and joined in filing a brief arguing against Trump's executive order banning entry of persons from seven Muslim countries. In November 2018, in a \"Guardian Live\" conversation with Andrew Rawnsley, sponsored by \"The Guardian\" at London's Central Hall, Kerry discussed several issues which have developed further since his tenure as Secretary of State, including migration into Europe and climate change.\nOn December 5, 2019, Kerry endorsed Joe Biden's bid for the Democratic nomination for president, saying \"He'll be ready on day one to put back together the country and the world that Donald Trump has broken apart\" and asserting that \"Joe will defeat Donald Trump next November. He's the candidate with the wisdom and standing to fix what Trump has broken, to restore our place in the world, and improve the lives of working people here at home.\"\nFollowing retirement from government service, Kerry signed an agreement with Simon & Schuster for publishing his planned memoirs, dealing with his life and career in government. In September 2018, he published \"Every Day Is Extra\".\nLeaked audiotape.\nOn April 25, 2021, \"The New York Times\" published content from a leaked audiotape of a three-hour taped conversation between economist Saeed Leylaz and Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. The taped conversation was connected to an oral history project, known as \"In the Islamic Republic the military field rules\", which documents the work of Iran's current administration. The tape was obtained by the London-based news channel Iran International.\nIn the tape, which the \"Times\" referred to as \"extraordinary\", Zarif reveals that then-Secretary of State Kerry told him that Israel attacked Iranian assets in Syria, \"at least 200 times\". Although the tape has not been verified, the spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry did not deny its validity.\nNineteen Republican senators signed a letter asking President Biden to investigate Zarif's claim. On April 27, 2021, Republicans called on Kerry to resign from the Biden administration's National Security Council. In a tweet, Kerry denied Zarif's account, writing, \"I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false. This never happened \u2014 either when I was Secretary of State or since.\"\nSpecial Presidential Envoy for Climate (2021\u20132024).\nOn November 23, 2020, President-elect Joe Biden's transition team announced that Kerry would be taking a full-time position in the administration, serving as a special envoy for climate; in this role he will be a principal on the National Security Council. Kerry assumed office on January 20, 2021, following Biden's inauguration.\nClimate cooperation with China.\nIn July 2023, John Kerry visited China for advance climate cooperation. The main achievement of the visit was some progress in the fields of: \"methane reduction commitments; reducing China's reliance on coal; China's objections to trade restrictions on solar panel and battery components; and climate finance.\" This was obtained despite many currently existing obstacles to cooperation. The visit was made in the middle of the 2023 Asia heat wave that set a new record of in Sanbu, Xinjiang, China, which Kerry mentioned in particular.\nClimate cooperation with India.\nAt the end of July 2023, John Kerry visited India. Among others he declared, the US will be committed to the target of delivering 100 billion dollars for climate action to low income countries and no future US president can retreat from climate commitment. He criticized Donald Trump for leaving the Paris agreement before.\nClimate cooperation with countries in the Middle East.\nIn June 2023, Kerry made visits to Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. In Israel, he emphasized the need for climate legislation to reach climate targets and reached an agreement about the renewal of \"Memorandum of understanding between Israel and the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Israel is one of the few developed countries which have still not approved a climate law and lags behind other OECD countries in climate action. Israeli environmental protection minister Idit Silman said that Israel intended to go to COP28 \"with an ambitious and applicable climate law and put the State of Israel on the same level as the developed countries of the OECD.\"\nDeparture.\nOn January 13, 2024, at least three sources close to Kerry revealed that he would step down as U.S. climate envoy by the upcoming spring. He told the \"Financial Times\" he planned to stay active in the climate finance space. He officially resigned from his position on March 6, 2024.\nPersonal and family life.\nAncestry.\nKerry's paternal ancestors came from the Fr\u00e4nkel family, which owned a textile factory in Neustadt, Upper Silesia (now Prudnik, Poland), founded by Samuel Fr\u00e4nkel. The Fr\u00e4nkels originated from Hotzenplotz, Austria (now Osoblaha, Czech Republic) and Z\u00fclz, Prussia (now Bia\u0142a Prudnicka, Poland). Kerry's paternal great-grandmother, Mathilda Fr\u00e4nkel, was born in Oberglogau (now G\u0142og\u00f3wek, near Prudnik) and married Benedikt Kohn from Bennisch (now Horn\u00ed Bene\u0161ov). His grandparents, shoe businessman Frederick A. \"Fred\" Kerry and musician Ida L\u00f6we, immigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the U.S. Fred, his wife, and his brother converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1901, and changed their names from Kohn to Kerry. Ida was of remote ancestry of Rabbi Sinai Loew of Worms, brother of Judah Loew ben Bezalel. Fred and Ida Kerry emigrated to the United States in 1905, living at first in Chicago and eventually moving to Brookline, Massachusetts, by 1915. According to \"The New York Times\", \"[the] brother and sister of John Kerry's paternal grandmother, Otto and Jenni Lowe, died in concentration camps\". Kerry's Jewish ancestry was publicly revealed during his 2004 presidential campaign; he has stated that he was unaware of it until a reporter informed him of it in 2003.\nKerry's maternal ancestors were of Scottish and English descent, and his maternal grandparents were James Grant Forbes II of the Forbes family and Margaret Tyndal Winthrop of the Dudley\u2013Winthrop family. Margaret's paternal grandfather Robert Charles Winthrop served as the 22nd Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Robert's father was Governor Thomas Lindall Winthrop. Thomas' father John Still Winthrop was a great-great-grandson of Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop and great-grandson of Governor Thomas Dudley. Through his mother, Kerry is a first cousin once removed of French politician Brice Lalonde.\nMarriages and children.\nKerry was married to Julia Thorne in 1970, and they had two daughters together: documentary filmmaker Alexandra Kerry (born September 5, 1973) and physician Vanessa Kerry (born December 31, 1976).\nAlexandra was born days before Kerry began law school. In 1982, Julia asked Kerry for a separation while she was suffering from severe depression. They were divorced on July 25, 1988, and the marriage was formally annulled in 1997. \"After 14 years as a political wife, I associated politics only with anger, fear and loneliness\", she wrote in \"A Change of Heart\", her book about depression. Thorne later married Richard Charlesworth, an architect, and moved to Bozeman, Montana, where she became active in local environmental groups such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Thorne supported Kerry's 2004 presidential run. She died of cancer on April 27, 2006.\nKerry and his second wife\u2014Portuguese-born businesswoman and philanthropist Teresa Heinz, the widow of Kerry's late Pennsylvania Republican Senate colleague John Heinz\u2014were introduced to each other by Heinz at an Earth Day rally in 1990. Early the following year, Senator Heinz was killed in a plane crash near Lower Merion. Teresa has three sons from her marriage to Heinz, Henry John IV, Andr\u00e9, and Christopher. Heinz and Kerry were married on May 26, 1995, in Nantucket, Massachusetts.\nNet worth.\nThe \"Forbes 400\" survey estimated in 2004 that Teresa Heinz Kerry had a net worth of $750million. However, estimates have frequently varied, ranging from around $165million to as high as $3.2billion, according to a study in the \"Los Angeles Times\". Regardless of which figure is correct, Kerry was the wealthiest U.S. Senator while serving in the Senate. Independent of Heinz, Kerry is wealthy in his own right, and is the beneficiary of at least four trusts inherited from Forbes family relatives, including his mother, Rosemary Forbes Kerry, who died in 2002. \"Forbes\" magazine (named for the Forbes family of publishers, unrelated to Kerry) estimated that if elected, and if Heinz family assets were included, Kerry would have been the third-richest U.S. president in history, when adjusted for inflation. This assessment was based on Heinz's and Kerry's combined assets, but the couple signed a prenuptial agreement that keeps their assets separate. Kerry's financial disclosure form for 2011 put his personal assets in the range of $230,000,000 to $320,000,000, including the assets of his spouse and any dependent children. This included slightly more than $3,000,000 worth of H. J. Heinz Company assets, which increased in value by over $600,000 in 2013 when Berkshire Hathaway announced their intention to purchase the company.\nIn April 2017, Kerry purchased an 18-acre property on the northwest corner of Martha's Vineyard overlooking Vineyard Sound in the town of Chilmark, Massachusetts. The property is located in Seven Gates Farm and according to property records, cost $11.75million for the seven bedroom home.\nReligious beliefs.\nKerry is a Roman Catholic, and is said to have carried a religious rosary, a prayer book, and a St. Christopher medal (the patron saint of travelers) when he campaigned. Discussing his faith, Kerry said: \"I thought of being a priest. I was very religious while at school in Switzerland. I was an altar boy and prayed all the time. I was very centered around the Mass and the church.\" He also said that the Letters of Paul (Apostle Paul) moved him the most, stating that they taught him to \"not feel sorry for myself\".\nKerry told \"Christianity Today\" in October 2004:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I'm a Catholic and I practice, but at the same time I have an open-mindedness to many other expressions of spirituality that come through different religions... I've spent some time reading and thinking about religion and trying to study it, and I've arrived at not so much a sense of the differences, but a sense of the similarities in so many ways.\nHe said that he believed that the Torah, the Quran, and the Bible all share a fundamental story which connects with readers.\nHealth.\nIn 2003, Kerry was diagnosed with and successfully treated for prostate cancer. On May 31, 2015, Kerry broke his right leg in a biking accident in Scionzier, France, and was flown to Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital for recovery. MGH Hip and Knee Replacement Orthopaedic Surgeon Dr. Dennis Burke, who had met Kerry in France and had accompanied him in the plane from France to Boston, set Kerry's right leg on Tuesday, June 2, in a four-hour operation.\nAthletics and sailing.\nIn addition to the sports he played at Yale, Kerry is described by \"Sports Illustrated\", among others, as an \"avid cyclist\", primarily riding on a road bike. Prior to his presidential bid, Kerry had participated in several long-distance rides. During his many campaigns, he was reported to have visited bicycle stores in both his home state and elsewhere. His staff requested recumbent stationary bikes for his hotel rooms. He has also been a snowboarder, windsurfer, and sailor.\nThe \"Boston Herald\" reported on July 23, 2010, that Kerry commissioned construction on a new $7million yacht (a Friendship 75) in New Zealand and moored it in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where the Friendship yacht company is based. The article claimed this allowed him to avoid paying Massachusetts taxes on the property including approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $500. On July 27, Kerry stated he would voluntarily pay $500,000 in Massachusetts taxes on his yacht.\nHonors.\nJohn Kerry was awarded:\nHonorary degrees.\nJohn Kerry has received several honorary degrees in recognition of his service to the United States, These include:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "3975969": "Timothy Pitkin\nAmerican lawyer, politician and historian (1766-1847)\nTimothy Pitkin (January 21, 1766 in Farmington, Connecticut \u2013 December 18, 1847 in New Haven, Connecticut) was an American lawyer, politician, and historian.\nHe graduated from Yale in 1785, taught in the academy at Plainfield, Connecticut, for a year, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1788. He served in the State Legislature of Connecticut in 1790, 1792, and 1794\u20111805, serving as Clerk of the House 1800\u20111802 and as Speaker 1803\u20111805. He was elected as a Federalist to the United States Congress in the Ninth Congress to fill in part the vacancies caused by the resignations of Calvin Goddard and Roger Griswold; and was re-elected to the Tenth and to the five succeeding Congresses, thus serving from September 16, 1805, to March 3, 1819.\nPitkin was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1815.\nHe was not a candidate for renomination to the federal Congress in 1818, but was a delegate to the convention which framed the new state constitution in that year. Resuming his private law practice, he also returned to serve as a member of the Connecticut state House of Representatives from 1819 to\u00a01830. His writing on and gathering of statistical materials are the accomplishments which accord him a special place in the history of the United States. Written with great care, \"A Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States of America\" (1816) and \"Political and Civil History of the United States from 1763 to the Close of Washington's Administration\" (2 volumes, 1828) are valuable reference works for students of American history. He is buried in New Haven, in Grove Street Cemetery.\nHe was the maternal uncle of Roger Sherman Baldwin's wife Emily Pitkin Perkins.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n\"It also incorporates text from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, also in the public domain.", "53825": "New Haven, Connecticut\nNew Haven is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is the third largest city in Connecticut after Bridgeport and Stamford, the largest city in the South Central Connecticut Planning Region, and the principal municipality of Greater New Haven, which had a total population of 864,835 in 2020.\nNew Haven was one of the first planned cities in the U.S. A year after its founding by English Puritans in 1638, eight streets were laid out in a four-by-four grid, creating the \"Nine Square Plan\". The central common block is the New Haven Green, a square at the center of Downtown New Haven. The Green is now a National Historic Landmark, and the \"Nine Square Plan\" is recognized by the American Planning Association as a National Planning Landmark.\nNew Haven is the home of Yale University, New Haven's biggest taxpayer and employer, and an integral part of the city's economy. Health care, professional and financial services and retail trade also contribute to the city's economic activity.\nThe city served as co-capital of Connecticut from 1701 until 1873, when sole governance was transferred to the more centrally located city of Hartford. New Haven has since billed itself as the \"Cultural Capital of Connecticut\" for its supply of established theaters, museums, and music venues. New Haven had the first public tree planting program in the U.S., producing a canopy of mature trees (including some large elms) that gave the city the nickname \"The Elm City\".\nHistory.\nPre-colonial foundation as an independent colony.\nBefore Europeans arrived, the New Haven area was the home of the Quinnipiac tribe of Native Americans, who lived in villages around the harbor and sustained an economy of local fisheries and the farming of maize. The area was briefly visited by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block in 1614. Dutch traders set up a small trading system of beaver pelts with the local inhabitants, but trade was sporadic and the Dutch did not settle permanently in the area.\nIn 1637, a small party of Puritans did a reconnaissance of the New Haven harbor area and wintered over. In April 1638, the main party of five hundred Puritans, who had left the Massachusetts Bay Colony under the leadership of Reverend John Davenport and London merchant Theophilus Eaton, sailed into the harbor. It was their hope to set up a theological community with the government more closely linked to the church than that in Massachusetts, and to exploit the area's potential as a port. The Quinnipiacs, who were under attack by neighboring Pequots, sold their land to the settlers in return for a pledge of protection.\nBy 1640, \"Quinnipiac's\" theocratic government and nine-square grid plan were in place, and the town was renamed New Haven, with 'haven' meaning harbor or port. However, the area to the north remained Quinnipiac until 1678, when it was renamed Hamden. The settlement became the headquarters of the New Haven Colony, distinct from the Connecticut Colony previously established to the north centering on Hartford. Reflecting its theocratic roots, the New Haven Colony forbade the establishment of other churches, whereas the Connecticut Colony permitted them.\nEconomic disaster struck New Haven in 1646, when the town sent its first fully loaded ship of local goods (the \"Great Shippe\") back to England. It never reached its destination, and its disappearance hindered New Haven's development as compared to the rising trade powers of Boston and New Amsterdam (modern day New York City).\nIn 1660, Colony founder John Davenport's wishes were fulfilled, and Hopkins School was founded in New Haven with money from the estate of Edward Hopkins.\nIn 1661, the Regicides who had signed the death warrant of Charles I of England were pursued by Charles II. Two of them, Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe, fled to New Haven for refuge. Davenport arranged for them to hide in the West Rock hills northwest of the town. A third judge, John Dixwell, later joined the others. None of the three were ever returned to England for trial; Dixwell died of old age in New Haven, the others likewise elsewhere in New England.\nAs part of the Connecticut Colony.\nIn 1664, New Haven became part of the Connecticut Colony when the two colonies were merged under political pressure from England. Seeking to establish a new theocracy elsewhere, some members of the New Haven Colony went on to establish Newark, New Jersey.\nNew Haven was made co-capital of Connecticut in 1701, a status it retained until 1873.\nIn 1716, the Collegiate School relocated from Old Saybrook to New Haven, establishing it as a center of learning. In 1718, in response to a large donation from East India Company merchant Elihu Yale, former Governor of Madras, the Collegiate School was renamed Yale College.\nFor over a century, New Haven citizens had fought in the colonial militia alongside regular British forces, including the French and Indian War. As the American Revolution approached, General David Wooster and other influential residents hoped that the conflict with the British parliament could be resolved short of rebellion. On April 23, 1775, Captain Benedict Arnold commanded the Second Company, Governor's Foot Guard, of New Haven to break into the powder house to arm themselves for a three-day march to Cambridge, Massachusetts, an event still celebrated in New Haven as Powder House Day. Other New Haven militia members were on hand to escort George Washington from his overnight stay in New Haven on his way to Cambridge. Contemporary reports, from both sides, remark on the New Haven volunteers' professional military bearing, including uniforms.\nOn July 5, 1779, 2,600 loyalists and British regulars under General William Tryon, governor of New York, landed in New Haven Harbor and raided the town of 3,500. A militia of Yale students had been preparing for battle, and former Yale president and Yale Divinity School professor Naphtali Daggett rode out to confront the Redcoats. Yale president Ezra Stiles recounted in his diary that while he moved furniture in anticipation of battle, he still couldn't quite believe the revolution had begun. New Haven was not torched as the invaders did with Danbury in 1777, or Fairfield and Norwalk a week after the New Haven raid, preserving many of the town's colonial features.\nPost-colonial period and industrialization.\nNew Haven was incorporated as a city in 1784, and Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Constitution and author of the \"Connecticut Compromise\", became the new city's first mayor.\nThe city struck fortune in the late 18th century with the inventions and industrial activity of Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate who remained in New Haven to develop the cotton gin and establish a gun-manufacturing factory in the northern part of the city near the Hamden town line. That area is still known as Whitneyville, and the main road through both towns is known as Whitney Avenue. The factory is now the Eli Whitney Museum, which has a particular emphasis on activities for children and exhibits pertaining to the A. C. Gilbert Company. His factory, along with that of Simeon North, and the lively clock-making and brass hardware sectors, contributed to making early Connecticut a powerful manufacturing economy; so many arms manufacturers sprang up that the state became known as \"The Arsenal of America\". It was in Whitney's gun-manufacturing plant that Samuel Colt invented the automatic revolver in 1836. Many other talented machinists and firearms designers would go on to found successful firearms manufacturing companies in New Haven, including Oliver Winchester and O.F. Mossberg & Sons.\nThe Farmington Canal, created in the early 19th century, was a short-lived transporter of goods into the interior regions of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and ran from New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts.\nNew Haven was to be the site of the first college for African Americans in the United States, but the plan was obstructed by efforts led by Yale Law School founder and former New Haven Mayor David Daggett, who went on to serve as a U.S. Senator and judge on Connecticut's highest court. Daggett denigrated African Americans, denied they were citizens, and presided over the trial of a woman persecuted for trying to admit an African American girl to her boarding school and, having that effort blocked, running a boarding school for African American girls.\nNew Haven was home to one of the important early events in the burgeoning anti-slavery movement when, in 1839, the trial of mutineering Mende tribesmen being transported as slaves on the Spanish slaveship \"Amistad\" was held in New Haven's United States District Court. There is a statue of Joseph Cinqu\u00e9, the informal leader of the slaves, beside City Hall. See \"Museums\" below for more information. Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech on slavery in New Haven in 1860, shortly before he secured the Republican nomination for President.\nThe American Civil War boosted the local economy with wartime purchases of industrial goods, including that of the New Haven Arms Company, which would later become the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. (Winchester would continue to produce arms in New Haven until 2006, and many of the buildings that were a part of the Winchester plant are now a part of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company Historic District). After the war, population grew and doubled by the start of the 20th century, most notably due to the influx of immigrants from southern Europe, particularly Italy. Today, roughly half the populations of East Haven, West Haven, and North Haven are Italian-American. Jewish immigration to New Haven has left an enduring mark on the city. Westville was the center of Jewish life in New Haven, though today many have fanned out to suburban communities such as Woodbridge and Cheshire. Lowell House, the city's first settlement, opened in 1900.\nPost-industrial era and urban redevelopment.\nNew Haven's expansion continued during the two World Wars, with most new inhabitants being African Americans from the American South, and Puerto Ricans. The city reached its peak population after World War II. The area of New Haven is only , encouraging further development of new housing after 1950 in adjacent, suburban towns. Moreover, as in other U.S. cities in the 1950s, New Haven began to suffer white flight of middle-class workers. One author suggested that aggressive redlining and rezoning made it difficult for residents to obtain financing for older, deteriorating urban housing stock, thereby condemning such structures to deterioration.\nIn 1954, then-mayor Richard C. Lee began some of the earliest major urban renewal projects in the United States. Certain sections of downtown New Haven were redeveloped to include museums, new office towers, a hotel, and large shopping complexes. Other parts of the city, particularly the Wooster Square and Fair Haven neighborhoods were affected by the construction of Interstate 95 along the Long Wharf section, Interstate 91, and the Oak Street Connector. The Oak Street Connector (Route 34), running between Interstate 95, downtown, and The Hill neighborhood, was originally intended as a highway to the city's western suburbs but was only completed as a highway to the downtown area, with the area to the west becoming a boulevard (See \"Redevelopment\" below).\nIn 1970, a series of criminal prosecutions against various members of the Black Panther Party took place in New Haven, inciting mass protests on the New Haven Green involving twelve thousand demonstrators and many well-known New Left political activists. (See \"Political Culture\" below for more information). From the 1960s through the early 1990s, some areas of New Haven continued to decline both economically and in terms of population despite attempts to resurrect certain neighborhoods through renewal projects. In conjunction with its declining population, New Haven experienced a steep rise in its crime rate.\nSince approximately 2000, many parts of downtown New Haven have been revitalized with new restaurants, nightlife, and small retail stores. In particular, the area surrounding the New Haven Green has experienced an influx of apartments and condominiums. In addition, two new supermarkets opened to serve downtown's growing residential population: a Stop & Shop opened just west of downtown, while Elm City Market, located one block from the Green, opened in 2011. The recent turnaround of downtown New Haven has received positive press from various periodicals.\nMajor projects include the current construction of a new campus for Gateway Community College downtown, and also a 32-story, 500-unit apartment/retail building called 360 State Street. The 360 State Street project is now occupied and is the largest residential building in Connecticut. A new boathouse and dock is planned for New Haven Harbor, and the linear park Farmington Canal Trail is set to extend into downtown New Haven within the coming year. Additionally, foundation and ramp work to widen I-95 to create a new harbor crossing for New Haven, with an extradosed bridge to replace the 1950s-era Q Bridge, has begun. The city still hopes to redevelop the site of the New Haven Coliseum, which was demolished in 2007.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 18 white firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no black firefighters scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. In the subsequent \"Ricci v. DeStefano\" decision the court found 5\u20134 that New Haven's decision to ignore the test results violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a result, a district court subsequently ordered the city to promote 14 of the white firefighters.\nIn 2010 and 2011, state and federal funds were awarded to Connecticut (and Massachusetts) to construct the Hartford Line, with a southern terminus at New Haven's Union Station and a northern terminus at Springfield's Union Station. According to the White House, \"This corridor [currently] has one train per day connecting communities in Connecticut and Massachusetts to the Northeast Corridor and Vermont. The vision for this corridor is to restore the alignment to its original route via the Knowledge Corridor in western Massachusetts, improving trip time and increasing the population base that can be served.\" Set for construction in 2013, the \"Knowledge Corridor high speed intercity passenger rail\" project will cost approximately $1\u00a0billion, and the ultimate northern terminus for the project is reported to be Montreal in Canada. Train speeds between will reportedly exceed and increase both cities' rail traffic exponentially.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 6.67%, is water.\nNew Haven's best-known geographic features are its large, shallow harbor, and two reddish basalt trap rock ridges which rise to the northeast and northwest of the city core. These trap rocks are known respectively as East Rock and West Rock, and both serve as extensive parks. West Rock has been tunneled through to make way for the east\u2013west passage of the Wilbur Cross Parkway (the only highway tunnel through a natural obstacle in Connecticut), and once served as the hideout of the \"Regicides\" (see: Regicides Trail). Most New Haveners refer to these men as \"The Three Judges\". East Rock features the prominent Soldiers and Sailors war monument on its peak as well as the \"Great/Giant Steps\" which run up the rock's cliffside.\nThe city is drained by three rivers; the West, Mill, and Quinnipiac, named in order from west to east. The West River discharges into West Haven Harbor, while the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers discharge into New Haven Harbor. Both harbors are embayments of Long Island Sound. In addition, several smaller streams flow through the city's neighborhoods, including Wintergreen Brook, the Beaver Ponds Outlet, Wilmot Brook, Belden Brook, and Prospect Creek. Not all of these small streams have continuous flow year-round.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen classification, New Haven experiences a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\"), bordering a hot-summer humid continental climate (\"Dfa\"). The city has hot, humid summers and cool to cold winters. From May to late September, the weather is typically hot and humid, with average temperatures exceeding on 70 days per year. In summer, the Bermuda High creates as southern flow of warm and humid air, with frequent (but brief) thundershowers. October to early December is normally mild to cool late in the season, while early spring (April) can be cool to warm. Winters are more variable, with cool to cold temperatures, mixed with warmer spells, with both rain and snow fall.\nWhile the weather patterns that affect New Haven result from a primarily offshore direction, thus reducing the marine influence of Long Island Sound, the location on Long Island Sound often influences the weather along the coastline compared to inland. During summer heat waves, temperatures may reach or higher on occasion with heat-index values of over . Tropical cyclones have struck New Haven in the past, including 1938 Hurricane (Long Island Express), Hurricane Carol in 1954, Hurricane Gloria in 1985. The hardiness zone is 7a.\nStreetscape.\nNew Haven has a long tradition of urban planning and a purposeful design for the city's layout. The city could be argued to have some of the first preconceived layouts in the country. Upon founding, New Haven was laid out in a grid plan of nine square blocks; the central square was left open, in the tradition of many New England towns, as the city green (a commons area). The city also instituted the first public tree planting program in America. As in other cities, many of the elms that gave New Haven the nickname \"Elm City\" perished in the mid-20th century due to Dutch elm disease, although many have since been replanted. The New Haven Green is currently home to three separate historic churches which speak to the original theocratic nature of the city. The Green remains the social center of the city today. It was named a National Historic Landmark in 1970.\nDowntown New Haven, occupied by nearly 7,000 residents, has a more residential character than most downtowns. The downtown area provides about half of the city's jobs and half of its tax base and in recent years has become filled with dozens of new upscale restaurants, in addition to shops and thousands of apartments and condominium units which subsequently help overall growth of the city.\nNeighborhoods.\nThe city has many distinct neighborhoods. In addition to Downtown, centered on the central business district and the Green, are the following neighborhoods: the west central neighborhoods of Dixwell and Dwight; the southern neighborhoods of The Hill, historic water-front City Point (or Oyster Point), and the harborside district of Long Wharf; the western neighborhoods of Beaver Hills, Edgewood, West River, Westville, Amity, and West Rock-Westhills; East Rock, Cedar Hill, Prospect Hill, and Newhallville in the northern side of town; the east central neighborhoods of Mill River and Wooster Square, an Italian-American neighborhood; Fair Haven, an immigrant community located between the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers; Quinnipiac Meadows and Fair Haven Heights across the Quinnipiac River; and facing the eastern side of the harbor, The Annex and East Shore (or Morris Cove).\nDemographics.\nCensus data.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nThe U.S. Census Bureau reports a 2010 population of 129,779, with 47,094 households and 25,854 families within the city of New Haven. The population density was . There were 52,941 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 42.6% White, 35.4% African American, 0.5% Native American, 4.6% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 12.9% from other races, and 3.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 27.4% of the population. Non-Hispanic Whites were 31.8% of the population in 2010, down from 69.6% in 1970. The city's Latino population is growing rapidly. Previous influxes among ethnic groups have been African-Americans in the postwar era, and Irish, Italian and (to a lesser degree) Slavic peoples in the prewar period.\nAs of the 2010 census, of the 47,094 households, 29.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 27.5% include married couples living together, 22.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 36.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.5% had someone living alone who was 65\u00a0years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40 and the average family size 3.19.\nThe ages of New Haven's residents were 25.4% under the age of 18, 16.4% from 18 to 24, 31.2% from 25 to 44, 16.7% from 45 to 64, and 10.2% who were 65\u00a0years of age or older. The median age was 29\u00a0years, which was significantly lower than the national average. There were 91.8 males per 100 females. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.6 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $29,604, and the median income for a family was $35,950. Median income for males was $33,605, compared with $28,424 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,393. About 20.5% of families and 24.4% of the population were living below the poverty line, including 32.2% of those under age 18 and 17.9% of those age 65 or over.\nOther data.\nIt is estimated that 14% of New Haven residents are pedestrian commuters, ranking it number four by highest percentage in the United States. This is primarily due to New Haven's small area and the presence of Yale University.\nNew Haven is noted for having the highest percentage of Italian American residents of any US city, and is noted for its local style of pizza.\nA study of the demographics of the New Haven metro area, based on age, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity, found that they were the closest of any American city to the national average.\nEconomy.\nNew Haven's economy originally was based in manufacturing, but the postwar period brought rapid industrial decline; the entire Northeast was affected, and medium-sized cities with large working-class populations, like New Haven, were hit particularly hard. Simultaneously, the growth and expansion of Yale University further affected the economic shift. Today, over half (56%) of the city's economy is now made up of services, in particular education and health care; Yale is the city's largest employer, followed by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital. Other large employers include Southern Connecticut State University, Assa Abloy lock manufacturing, the Knights of Columbus headquarters, Higher One, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Covidien and United Illuminating. Clothing stores Gant and Ann Taylor were founded in the city.\nIn 2017, New Haven was ranked by a Verizon study as one of the top 10 cities in America for launching tech startups, and top two in New England.\nIndustry sectors: Agriculture (.6%), Construction and Mining (4.9%), Manufacturing (2.9%), Transportation and Utilities (2.9%), Trade (21.7%), Finance and Real Estate (7.1%), Services (55.9%), Government (4.0%)\nHeadquarters.\nThe Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization and a Fortune 1000 company, is headquartered in New Haven. Amphenol, based in Greater New Haven (Wallingford), is a Fortune 100 company. Eight Courant 100 companies are based in Greater New Haven, with four headquartered in New Haven proper. New Haven-based companies traded on stock exchanges include NewAlliance Bank, the second largest bank in Connecticut and fourth-largest in New England (NYSE: NAL), Higher One Holdings (NYSE: ONE), a financial services firm, United Illuminating, the electricity distributor for southern Connecticut (NYSE: UIL), and Transpro Inc. (AMEX: TPR). The American division of Assa Abloy (one of the world's leading manufacturers of locks) is located in the city. The Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET) began operations in the city as the District Telephone Company of New Haven in 1878; the company remains headquartered in New Haven as a subsidiary of Frontier Communications and provides telephone service for all but two municipalities in Connecticut. SeeClickFix was founded and has been headquartered in the city since 2007. Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company (a candy-making division of the Hershey Company) was formerly located in the city. Achillion Pharmaceuticals and Alexion Pharmaceuticals were also formerly headquartered in New Haven.\nLaw and government.\nPolitical structure.\nNew Haven is governed via the mayor-council system. Connecticut municipalities (like those of neighboring states Massachusetts and Rhode Island) provide nearly all local services (such as fire and rescue, education, snow removal, etc.), as county government has been abolished since 1960.\nNew Haven County merely refers to a grouping of towns and a judicial district, not a governmental entity. New Haven is a member of the South Central Connecticut Regional Council of Governments (SCRCOG), a regional agency created to facilitate coordination between area municipal governments and state and federal agencies, in the absence of county government.\nJustin Elicker is the mayor of New Haven. He was sworn in as the 51st mayor of New Haven on January 1, 2020.\nThe city council, called the Board of Alders, consists of thirty members, each elected from single-member wards. Each of the 30 wards consists of slightly over 4,300 residents; redistricting takes place every ten years.\nThe city is overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2017, of the town's 83,694 voters, 66% were registered as Democrats (\u22124% since 2015), 4% were registered as Republicans (+1%), and 29% were unaffiliated (+3). The board of alders is dominated by Democrats; a Republican has not served as a New Haven alder since 2011.\nNew Haven is served by the New Haven Police Department, which had 443 sworn officers in 2011. The city is also served by the New Haven Fire Department.\nNew Haven lies within Connecticut's 3rd congressional district and has been represented by Rosa DeLauro since 1991. Martin Looney and Gary Holder-Winfield represent New Haven in the Connecticut State Senate, and the city lies within six districts (numbers 92 through 97) of the Connecticut House of Representatives.\nThe Greater New Haven area is served by the New Haven Judicial District Court and the New Haven Superior Court, both headquartered at the New Haven County Courthouse. The federal District Court for the District of Connecticut has a New Haven facility, the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse.\nPolitical history.\nNew Haven is the birthplace of former president George W. Bush, who was born when his father, former president George H. W. Bush, was living in New Haven while a student at Yale. In addition to being the site of the college educations of both Presidents Bush, as Yale students, New Haven was also the temporary home of former presidents William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, and Bill Clinton, as well as Secretary of State John Kerry. President Clinton met his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while the two were students at Yale Law School. Former vice presidents John C. Calhoun and Dick Cheney also studied in New Haven (although the latter did not graduate from Yale). Before the 2008 election, the last time there was not a person with ties to New Haven and Yale on either major party's ticket was 1968. James Hillhouse, a New Haven native, served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate in 1801.\nNew Haven voters overwhelmingly supported Al Gore in the 2000 election, Yale graduate John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. In the 2008 election, New Haven County was third among all Connecticut counties in campaign contributions, after Fairfield and Hartford counties. (Connecticut, in turn, was ranked 14th among all states in total campaign contributions.)\nNew Haven was the subject of \" Who Governs? Democracy and Power in An American City\", a very influential book in political science by preeminent Yale professor Robert A. Dahl, which includes an extensive history of the city and thorough description of its politics in the 1950s. New Haven's theocratic history is also mentioned several times by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic volume on 19th-century American political life, \"Democracy in America\". New Haven was the residence of conservative thinker William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1951, when he wrote his influential \"God and Man at Yale\". William Lee Miller's \"The Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society\" (1966) similarly explores the relationship between local politics in New Haven and national political movements, focusing on Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and urban renewal.\nGeorge Williamson Crawford, a Yale Law School graduate, served as the city's first black corporation counsel from 1954 to 1962, under Mayor Richard C. Lee.\nIn 1970, the New Haven Black Panther trials took place, the largest and longest trials in Connecticut history. Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale and ten other party members were tried for murdering an alleged informant. Beginning on May Day, the city became a center of protest for 12,000 Panther supporters, college students, and New Left activists (including Jean Genet, Benjamin Spock, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and John Froines), who amassed on the New Haven Green, across the street from where the trials were being held. Violent confrontations between the demonstrators and the New Haven Police occurred, and several bombs were set off in the area by radicals. The event became a rallying point for the New Left and critics of the Nixon Administration.\nDuring the summer of 2007, New Haven was the center of protests by anti-immigration groups who opposed the city's program of offering municipal ID cards, known as the Elm City Resident Card, to illegal immigrants. In 2008, the country of Ecuador opened a consulate in New Haven to serve the large Ecuadorean immigrant population in the area. It is the first foreign mission to open in New Haven since Italy opened a consulate (now closed) in the city in 1910.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 20 white and Hispanic firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no blacks scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. On June 29, 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the firefighters, agreeing that they were improperly denied promotion because of their race. The case, \"Ricci v. DeStefano\", became highly publicized and brought national attention to New Haven politics due to the involvement of then-Supreme Court nominee (and Yale Law School graduate) Sonia Sotomayor in a lower court decision.\nGarry Trudeau, creator of the political \"Doonesbury\" comic strip, attended Yale University. There he met fellow student and later Green Party candidate for Congress Charles Pillsbury, a long-time New Haven resident for whom Trudeau's comic strip is named. During his college years, Pillsbury was known by the nickname \"The Doones\". A theory of international law, which argues for a sociological normative approach in regards to jurisprudence, is named the New Haven Approach, after the city. Connecticut US senator Richard Blumenthal is a Yale graduate, as is former Connecticut US Senator Joe Lieberman who also was a New Haven resident for many years, before moving back to his hometown of Stamford.\nCrime.\nCrime increased in the 1990s, with New Haven having one of the ten highest violent crime rates per capita in the United States. In the late 1990s New Haven's crime began to stabilize. The city, adopting a policy of community policing, saw crime rates drop during the 2000s.\nViolent crime levels vary dramatically among New Haven's neighborhoods, with some areas having crime rates in line with the state of Connecticut average, and others having extremely high rates of crime. A 2011 New Haven Health Department report identifies these issues in greater detail.\nIn 2010, New Haven ranked as the 18th most dangerous city in the United States (albeit below the safety benchmark of 200.00 for the second consecutive year). However, according to a completely different analysis conducted by the \"24/7 Wall Street Blog\", in 2011 New Haven had risen to become the fourth most dangerous city in the United States, and was widely cited in the press as such.\nHowever, an analysis by the Regional Data Cooperative for Greater New Haven, Inc., has shown that due to issues of comparative denominators and other factors, such municipality-based rankings can be considered inaccurate. For example, two cities of identical population can cover widely differing land areas, making such analyses irrelevant. The research organization called for comparisons based on neighborhoods, blocks, or standard methodologies (similar to those used by Brookings, DiversityData, and other established institutions), not based on municipalities.\nEducation.\nColleges and universities.\nNew Haven is a notable center for higher education. Yale University, at the heart of downtown, is one of the city's best known features and its largest employer. New Haven is also home to Southern Connecticut State University, part of the Connecticut State University System, and Albertus Magnus College, a private institution. Gateway Community College has a campus in downtown New Haven, formerly located in the Long Wharf district; Gateway consolidated into one campus downtown into a new state-of-the-art campus (on the site of the old Macy's building) and was open for the Fall 2012 semester.\nThere are several institutions immediately outside of New Haven, as well. Quinnipiac University and the Paier College of Art are located just to the north, in the town of Hamden. The University of New Haven is located not in New Haven but in neighboring West Haven.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nNew Haven Public Schools is the school district serving the city. Wilbur Cross High School and Hillhouse High School are New Haven's two largest public secondary schools.\nHopkins School, a private school, was founded in 1660 and is the fifth-oldest educational institution in the United States. New Haven is home to a number of other private schools as well as public magnet schools, including Metropolitan Business Academy, High School in the Community, Hill Regional Career High School, Co-op High School, New Haven Academy, Edgewood Magnet School, ACES Educational Center for the Arts, the Foote School and the Sound School, all of which draw students from New Haven and suburban towns. New Haven is also home to two Achievement First charter schools, Amistad Academy and Elm City College Prep, and to Common Ground, an environmental charter school.\nThe city is renowned for its progressive school lunch programs, and participation in statewide bussing efforts toward increased diversity in schools.\nCulture.\nCuisine.\nLivability.com named New Haven as the Best Foodie City in the country in 2014. There are dozens of Zagat-rated restaurants in New Haven, the most in Connecticut and the third most in New England (after Boston and Cambridge). More than 120 restaurants are located within two blocks of the New Haven Green. The city is home to an eclectic mix of ethnic restaurants and small markets specializing in various foreign foods. Represented cuisines include Malaysian, Ethiopian, Spanish, Belgian, French, Greek, Latin American, Mexican, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Cuban, Peruvian, Syrian/Lebanese, and Turkish.\nNew Haven's greatest culinary claim to fame may be its pizza, which has been claimed to be among the best in the country, or even in the world. New Haven-style pizza, called \"apizza\", made its debut at the iconic Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana (known as Pepe's) in 1925. Apizza is baked in coal- or wood-fired brick ovens, and is notable for its thin crust. Apizza may be red (with a tomato-based sauce) or white (with a sauce of garlic and olive oil), and pies ordered \"plain\" are made without the otherwise customary mozzarella (originally smoked mozzarella, known as \"scamorza\" in Italian). A white clam pie is a well-known specialty of the restaurants on Wooster Street in the Little Italy section of New Haven, including Pepe's and Sally's Apizza (which opened in 1938). Modern Apizza on State Street, which opened in 1934, is also well-known.\nA second New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Louis' Lunch, which is located in a small brick building on Crown Street and has been serving fast food since 1895. Though fiercely debated, the restaurant's founder Louis Lassen is credited by the Library of Congress with inventing the hamburger and steak sandwich. Louis' Lunch broils hamburgers, steak sandwiches and hot dogs vertically in original antique 1898 cast iron stoves using gridirons, patented by local resident Luigi Pieragostini in 1939, that hold the meat in place while it cooks.\nA third New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Miya's, the first sustainable sushi restaurant in the world. Miya's, founded by Chef Yoshiko Lai in 1982, featured the first sustainable seafood-based sushi menu, the first plant-based sushi menu, and the first invasive species menu in the world. Second generation Miya's chef, Bun Lai, is the 2016 White House Champions of Change for Sustainable Seafood and a James Beard Foundation Award nominee. Chef Bun Lai is credited as the first chef in the world for implementing a sustainability paradigm to the cuisine of sushi.\nDuring weekday lunchtime, over 150 lunch carts and food trucks cater to diners around the city. The carts and food trucks cluster at four main points: on Long Wharf Drive, along the city's shoreline with quick access off Interstate 95, by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital in the center of the Hospital Green (Cedar and York streets), by Yale's Trumbull College (Elm and York streets), and on the intersection of Prospect and Sachem streets by the Yale School of Management.\nPopular farmers' markets, managed by the local non-profit CitySeed, set up shop weekly in several neighborhoods, including Westville/Edgewood Park, Fair Haven, Upper State Street, Wooster Square, and Downtown/New Haven Green.\nA large grocery store, the Elm City Market, opened on 360 State Street in New Haven in early fall 2011 and served local produce and groceries to the community. Originally, the market was a member-owned co-op, but debt defaults in August 2014 forced a sale of the business. It is now an employee-owned business; the co-op's previous owners received no equity in the new business.\nIn the past several years, two separate Downtown food tour companies have started offering popular restaurant tours on weekends.\nTaste of New Haven Tours offers several different weekly restaurant/bar tours and a popular pizza, bike, and pints tour. Culinary Walking Tours offers monthly restaurant tours and sponsors an annual Elm City Iron Chef competition.\nTheatre and film.\nThe city hosts numerous theatres and production houses, including the Yale Repertory Theatre, the Long Wharf Theatre, and the Shubert Theatre. There is also theatre activity from the Yale School of Drama, which works through the Yale University Theatre and the student-run Yale Cabaret. Southern Connecticut State University hosts the Lyman Center for the Performing Arts. The shuttered Palace Theatre (opposite the Shubert Theatre) was renovated and reopened as the College Street Music Hall in May 2015. Smaller theatres include the Little Theater on Lincoln Street. Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School also has a theatre on College Street. The theatre is used for student productions, and is the home to weekly services to a local non-denominational church, the City Church New Haven.\nThe Shubert Theatre once premiered many major theatrical productions before their Broadway debuts. Productions that premiered at the Shubert include \"Oklahoma!\" (which was also written in New Haven), \"Carousel\", \"South Pacific\", \"My Fair Lady\", \"The King and I\", and \"The Sound of Music\", and the Tennessee Williams play \"A Streetcar Named Desire\".\nBow Tie Cinemas owns and operates the Criterion Cinemas, the first new movie theater to open in New Haven in over 30 years and the first luxury movie complex in the city's history. The Criterion has seven screens and opened in November 2004, showing a mix of upscale first run commercial and independent film.\nMuseums.\nNew Haven has a variety of museums, many of them associated with Yale. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library features an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible. There is also the Connecticut Children's Museum; the Knights of Columbus museum near that organization's world headquarters; the Peabody Museum of Natural History; the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments; the Eli Whitney Museum (across the town line in Hamden, Connecticut, on Whitney Avenue); the Yale Center for British Art, which houses the largest collection of British art outside the U.K., and the Yale University Art Gallery, the western hemisphere's oldest college art museum. New Haven is also home to the New Haven Museum and Historical Society on Whitney Avenue, which has a library of many primary source treasures dating from Colonial times to the present.\nArtspace on Orange Street is one of several contemporary art galleries around the city, showcasing the work of local, national, and international artists. Others include City Gallery and A. Leaf Gallery in the downtown area. Westville galleries include Kehler Liddell, Jennifer Jane Gallery, and The Hungry Eye. The Erector Square complex in the Fair Haven neighborhood houses, the Parachute Factory gallery along with numerous artist studios, and the complex serves as an active destination during City-Wide Open Studios held yearly in October.\nNew Haven is the home port of a life-size replica of the historical \"Freedom Schooner Amistad\", which is open for tours at Long Wharf pier at certain times during the summer. Also at Long Wharf pier is the \"Quinnipiack\" schooner, offering sailing cruises of the harbor area throughout the summer. The \"Quinnipiack\" also functions as a floating classroom for hundreds of local students.\nMusic.\nThe New Haven Green is the site of many free music concerts, especially during the summer months. These have included the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the July Free Concerts on the Green, and the New Haven Jazz Festival in August. The Jazz Festival, which began in 1982, is one of the longest-running free outdoor festivals in the U.S., until it was canceled for 2007. Headliners such as Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles and Celia Cruz have historically drawn 30,000 to 50,000 fans, filling up the New Haven Green to capacity. The New Haven Jazz Festival was revived in 2008 and has been sponsored since by Jazz Haven.\nNew Haven is home to the concert venue Toad's Place, and a new venue, College Street Music Hall. The city has retained an alternative art and music underground that has helped to influence post-punk era music movements such as indie, college rock and underground hip-hop.\nThe Yale School of Music contributes to the city's music scene by offering hundreds of free concerts throughout the year at venues in and around the Yale campus. Large performances are held in the 2,700-seat Woolsey Hall auditorium, which contains the world's largest symphonic organs, while chamber music and recitals are performed in Sprague Hall.\nHardcore band Hatebreed are from Wallingford, but got their start in New Haven under the name Jasta 14. The band Miracle Legion formed in New Haven in 1983. Folk musicians from New Haven include Loren Mazzacane Connors and Kath Bloom.\nThe Hillhouse Opera Company is a U.S. non-profit opera company based in New Haven that performs in the New Haven area. Founded in 2008 by Victoria Leigh Gardner, Nicole Rodriguez and Jim Coatsworth Hillhouse Opera Company has performed operas as well as opera scenes programs, master classes and concert series. In 2011, the Company professionally staged the works created through the Riverview Opera Project. The Riverview Opera Project created workshops for children and adolescents at Riverview Hospital, Connecticut's only state-funded psychiatric hospital for youth, and helped them to successfully create, produce, and perform four original operas.\nFestivals.\nIn addition to the Jazz Festival (described above), New Haven serves as the home city of the annual International Festival of Arts and Ideas. New Haven's Saint Patrick's Day parade, which began in 1842, is New England's oldest and draws the largest crowds of any one-day spectator event in Connecticut. The St. Andrew the Apostle Italian Festival has taken place in the historic Wooster Square neighborhood every year since 1900. Other parishes in the city celebrate the Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua and a carnival in honor of St. Bernadette Soubirous. New Haven celebrates Powder House Day every April on the New Haven Green to commemorate the city's entrance into the Revolutionary War. The annual Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival commemorates the 1973 planting of 72 Yoshino Japanese cherry blossom trees by the New Haven Historic Commission in collaboration with the New Haven Parks Department and residents of the neighborhood. The Festival now draws well over 5,000 visitors. The Film Fest New Haven has been held annually since 1995.\nNightlife.\nIn the past decade downtown has seen an influx of new restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Large crowds are drawn to the Crown Street area downtown on weekends where many of the restaurants and bars are located. Crown Street between State and High Streets has dozens of establishments, as do nearby Temple and College Streets. Away from downtown, Upper State Street has a number of restaurants and bars popular with local residents and weekend visitors.\nNewspapers and media.\nNew Haven is served by the daily \"New Haven Register\", the weekly \"alternative\" \"New Haven Advocate\" (which is run by Tribune, the corporation owning the \"Hartford Courant\"), the online daily \"New Haven Independent\", and the monthly \"Grand News Community Newspaper.\" Downtown New Haven is covered by an in-depth civic news forum, Design New Haven. The \"Register\" also backs \"PLAY\" magazine, a weekly entertainment publication. The city is also served by several student-run papers, including the \"Yale Daily News\", the weekly \"Yale Herald\" and a humor tabloid, \"Rumpus Magazine\".\nWTNH Channel 8, the ABC affiliate for Connecticut, WCTX Channel 59, the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the state, Connecticut Public Television station WEDY channel 65, a PBS affiliate, and WTXX Channel 34, the IntrigueTV affiliate, broadcast from New Haven. All New York City news and sports team stations broadcast to New Haven County.\nSports and athletics.\nNew Haven has a history of professional sports franchises dating back to the 19th century and has been the home to professional baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer teams\u2014including the New York Giants of the National Football League from 1973 to 1974, who played at the Yale Bowl. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, New Haven consistently had minor league hockey and baseball teams, which played at the New Haven Arena (built in 1926, demolished in 1972), New Haven Coliseum (1972\u20132002), and Yale Field (1928\u2013present).\nWhen John DeStefano, Jr., became mayor of New Haven in 1995, he outlined a plan to transform the city into a major cultural and arts center in the Northeast, which involved investments in programs and projects other than sports franchises. As nearby Bridgeport built new sports facilities, the brutalist New Haven Coliseum rapidly deteriorated. Believing the upkeep on the venue to be a drain of tax dollars, the DeStefano administration closed the Coliseum in 2002; it was demolished in 2007. New Haven's last professional sports team, the New Haven County Cutters, left in 2009. The DeStefano administration did, however, see the construction of the New Haven Athletic Center in 1998, a indoor athletic facility with a seating capacity of over 3,000. The NHAC, built adjacent to Hillhouse High School, is used for New Haven public schools athletics, as well as large-scale area and state sporting events; it is the largest high school indoor sports complex in the state.\nNew Haven was the host of the 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games; then-President Bill Clinton spoke at the opening ceremonies. The city is home to the Pilot Pen International tennis event, which takes place every August at the Connecticut Tennis Center, one of the largest tennis venues in the world. New Haven biannually hosts \"The Game\" between Yale and Harvard, the country's second-oldest college football rivalry. Numerous road races take place in New Haven, including the USATF 20K Championship during the New Haven Road Race.\nGreater New Haven is home to a number of college sports teams. The Yale Bulldogs play Division I college sports, as do the Quinnipiac Bobcats in neighboring Hamden. Division II athletics are played by Southern Connecticut State University and the University of New Haven (actually located in neighboring West Haven), while Albertus Magnus College athletes perform at the Division III level.\nNew Haven is home to many New York Yankees, New York Mets, & Boston Red Sox fans due to the proximity of New York City & Boston.\nWalter Camp, deemed the \"father of American football\", was a New Havener.\nThe New Haven Warriors rugby league team play in the AMNRL. They have a large number of Pacific Islanders playing for them. Their field is located at the West Haven High School's Ken Strong Stadium. They won the 2008 AMNRL Grand Final.\nStructures.\nArchitecture.\nNew Haven has many architectural landmarks dating from every important time period and architectural style in American history. The city has been home to a number of architects and architectural firms that have left their mark on the city including Ithiel Town and Henry Austin in the 19th century and Cesar Pelli, Warren Platner, Kevin Roche, Herbert Newman and Barry Svigals in the 20th. The Yale School of Architecture has fostered this important component of the city's economy. Cass Gilbert, of the Beaux-Arts school, designed New Haven's Union Station and the New Haven Free Public Library and was also commissioned for a City Beautiful plan in 1919. Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, Alexander Jackson Davis, Philip C. Johnson, Gordon Bunshaft, Louis Kahn, James Gamble Rogers, Frank Gehry, Charles Willard Moore, Stefan Behnisch, James Polshek, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen and Robert Venturi all have designed buildings in New Haven. Yale's 1950s-era Ingalls Rink, designed by Eero Saarinen, was included on the \"America's Favorite Architecture\" list created in 2007.\nSeveral residential homes in New Haven were designed by Alice Washburn, a noted female architect whose Colonial Revival style set a standard for homes in the region.\nMany of the city's neighborhoods are well-preserved as walkable \"museums\" of 19th- and 20th-century American architecture, particularly by the New Haven Green, Hillhouse Avenue and other residential sections close to Downtown New Haven. Overall, a large proportion of the city's land area is National (NRHP) historic districts. One of the best sources on local architecture is \"New Haven: Architecture and Urban Design\", by Elizabeth Mills Brown.\nThe five tallest buildings in New Haven are:\nHistoric points of interest.\nMany historical sites exist throughout the city, including 59 properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Of these, nine are among the 60 U.S. National Historic Landmarks in Connecticut. The New Haven Green, one of the National Historic Landmarks, was formed in 1638, and is home to three 19th-century churches. Below the First Church of Christ in New Haven (referred to as the Center Church on the Green) lies a 17th-century crypt, which is open to visitors. Some of the more famous burials include the first wife of Benedict Arnold and the aunt and grandmother of President Rutherford B. Hayes; Hayes visited the crypt while President in 1880. The Old Campus of Yale University is located next to the Green, and includes Connecticut Hall, Yale's oldest building and a National Historic Landmark. The Hillhouse Avenue area, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a part of Yale's campus, has been called a walkable museum, due to its 19th-century mansions and street scape; Charles Dickens is said to have called Hillhouse Avenue \"the most beautiful street in America\" when visiting the city in 1868.\nIn 1660, Edward Whalley (a cousin and friend of Oliver Cromwell) and William Goffe, two English Civil War generals who signed the death warrant of King Charles I, hid in a rock formation in New Haven after having fled England upon the restoration of Charles II to the English throne. They were later joined by a third regicide, John Dixwell. The rock formation, which is now a part of West Rock Park, is known as Judges' Cave, and the path leading to the cave is called the Regicides Trail.\nAfter the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, the Connecticut colonial government ordered the construction of Black Rock Fort (to be built on top of an older 17th-century fort) to protect the port of New Haven. In 1779, during the Battle of New Haven, British soldiers captured Black Rock Fort and burned the barracks to the ground. The fort was reconstructed in 1807 by the federal government (on orders from the Thomas Jefferson administration), and rechristened Fort Nathan Hale, after the Revolutionary War hero who had lived in New Haven. The cannons of Fort Nathan Hale were successful in defying British war ships during the War of 1812. In 1863, during the Civil War, a second Fort Hale was built next to the original, complete with bomb-resistant bunkers and a moat, to defend the city should a Southern raid against New Haven be launched. The United States Congress deeded the site to the state in 1921, and all three versions of the fort have been restored. The site is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and receives thousands of visitors each year.\nGrove Street Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark which lies adjacent to Yale's campus, contains the graves of Roger Sherman, Eli Whitney, Noah Webster, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Charles Goodyear and Walter Camp, among other notable burials. The cemetery is noted for its Egyptian Revival gateway, and is the oldest planned burial ground in the United States. The Union League Club of New Haven building, located on Chapel Street, is notable for not only being a historic Beaux-Arts building, but also is built on the site where Roger Sherman's home once stood; George Washington is known to have stayed at the Sherman residence while President in 1789 (one of three times Washington visited New Haven throughout his lifetime).\nTwo sites pay homage to the time President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft lived in the city, as both a student and later Professor at Yale: a plaque on Prospect Street marks the site where Taft's home formerly stood, and downtown's Taft Apartment Building (formerly the Taft Hotel) bears the name of the former president who resided in the building for eight years before becoming Chief Justice of the United States.\nLighthouse Point Park, a public beach run by the city, was a popular tourist destination during the Roaring Twenties, attracting luminaries of the period such as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. The park remains popular among New Haveners, and is home to the Five Mile Point Lighthouse, constructed in 1847, and the Lighthouse Point Carousel, constructed in 1916. Five Mile Point Light was decommissioned in 1877 following the construction of Southwest Ledge Light at the entrance of the harbor, which remains in service to this day. Both of the lighthouses and the carousel are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nOther historic sites in the city include the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, which stands at the summit of East Rock, the Marsh Botanical Garden, Wooster Square, Dwight Street, Louis' Lunch, and the Farmington Canal, all of which date back to the 19th century. Other historic parks besides the Green include Edgerton Park, Edgewood Park, and East Rock Park, each of which is included on the National Register of Historic Places.\nTransportation.\nRail.\nNew Haven has two railroad stations, connected to New York City and points along the Northeast Corridor by commuter rail, regional rail and inter-city rail. Service is provided by:\nThe city's main railroad station is the historic Beaux-Arts Union Station, which serves Metro-North, Hartford Line, and Shore Line East commuter trains. Approximately 175 trains serve Union Station on weekdays. Union Station is also served by four Amtrak lines: the \"Northeast Regional\" and the high-speed \"Acela Express\" provide service to New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston, and rank as the first and second busiest routes in the country; the New Haven\u2013Springfield Line provides service to Hartford and Springfield, Massachusetts; and the \"Vermonter\" provides service to both Washington, D.C., and Vermont, from the Canada\u2013US border.\nAn additional station, State Street Station, was opened in 2002, providing passengers easier access to downtown New Haven. State Street Station is currently serviced by Shore Line East and Hartford Line trains, plus some peak-hour Metro-North trips.\nBus.\nThe New Haven Division of Connecticut Transit (CT Transit), the state's bus system, is the second largest division in the state with 24 routes. All routes originate from the New Haven Green, making it the central transfer hub of the city. Service is provided to 19 different municipalities throughout Greater New Haven. Bus routes were formerly identified by letters, but as of October 8, 2017, all service was renamed using 200-series numbers, in accordance with a renumbering of CTtransit's statewide services.\nCT Transit's Union Station Shuttle provides free service from Union Station to the New Haven Green and several New Haven parking garages. Peter Pan and Greyhound bus lines have scheduled stops at Union Station, and connections downtown can be made via the Union Station Shuttle. A private company operates the New Haven/Hartford Express which provides commuter bus service to Hartford. The Yale University Shuttle provides free transportation around New Haven for Yale students, faculty, and staff.\nThe New Haven Division buses follow routes that had originally been covered by trolley service. Horse-drawn streetcars began operating in New Haven in the 1860s, and by the mid-1890s all the lines had become electric. In the 1920s and 1930s, some of the trolley lines began to be replaced by bus lines, with the last trolley route converted to bus in 1948. The City of New Haven is in the very early stages of considering the restoration of streetcar (light-rail) service, which has been absent since the postwar period.\nBicycle.\nBikeshare.\nOn February 21, 2018, New Haven officially launched its Bike New Haven bikeshare program. based on dockless technology powered by Noa Technologies At time of launch, the program features 10 docking stations and 100 bikes, spread throughout the urban core; there are plans to reach 30 bike stations and 300 bikes by the end of April 2018. The launch of the New Haven bikeshare program coincided with the launch of Yale University's own bikeshare program, which uses the same technology powered by Noa.\nBike lanes.\nIn 2004, the first bike lane in the city was added to Orange Street, connecting East Rock Park and the East Rock neighborhood to downtown. Since then, bike lanes have also been added to sections of Howard Ave, Elm St, Dixwell Avenue, Water Street, Clinton Avenue and State Street. The city has created recommended bike routes for getting around New Haven, including use of the Canal Trail and the Orange Street lane. As of the end of 2012, bicycle lanes have also been added in both directions on Dixwell Avenue along most of the street from downtown to the Hamden town line, as well as along Howard Avenue from Yale New Haven Hospital to City Point.\nThe city has plans to create two additional bike lanes connecting Union Station with downtown, and the Westville neighborhood with downtown. The city has added dozens of covered bike parking spots at Union Station, in order to facilitate more bike commuting to the station.\nFarmington Canal Greenway.\nThe Farmington Canal Trail is a rail trail that will eventually run continuously from downtown New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts. The scenic trail follows the path of the historic New Haven and Northampton Company and the Farmington Canal. Currently, there is a continuous stretch of the trail from downtown, through Hamden and into Cheshire, making bicycle commuting between New Haven and those suburbs possible. The trail is part of the East Coast Greenway, a proposed bike path that would link every major city on the East Coast from Florida to Maine.\nRoads.\nNew Haven lies at the intersection of Interstate 95 on the coast\u2014which provides access southwards and/or westwards to the western coast of Connecticut and to New York City, and eastwards to the eastern Connecticut shoreline, Rhode Island, and eastern Massachusetts\u2014and Interstate 91, which leads northward to the interior of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont and the Canada\u2013US border. I-95 is notorious for traffic jams increasing with proximity to New York City; on the east side of New Haven it passes over the Quinnipiac River via the Pearl Harbor Memorial, or \"Q Bridge\", which often presents a major bottleneck to traffic. I-91, however, is relatively less congested, except at the intersection with I-95 during peak travel times.\nThe Oak Street Connector (Connecticut Route 34) intersects I-91 at exit 1, just south of the I-95/I-91 interchange, and runs northwest for a few blocks as an expressway spur into downtown before emptying onto surface roads. The Wilbur Cross Parkway (Connecticut Route 15) runs parallel to I-95 west of New Haven, turning northwards as it nears the city and then running northwards parallel to I-91 through the outer rim of New Haven and Hamden, offering an alternative to the I-95/I-91 journey (restricted to non-commercial vehicles). Route 15 in New Haven is the site of the only highway tunnel in the state (officially designated as Heroes Tunnel), running through West Rock, home to West Rock Park and the Three Judges Cave.\nThe city also has several major surface arteries. U.S. Route 1 (Columbus Avenue, Union Avenue, Water Street, Forbes Avenue) runs in an east\u2013west direction south of downtown serving Union Station and leading out of the city to Milford, West Haven, East Haven and Branford. The main road from downtown heading northwest is Whalley Avenue (partly signed as Route 10 and Route 63) leading to Westville and Woodbridge. Heading north towards Hamden, there are two major thoroughfares, Dixwell Avenue and Whitney Avenue. To the northeast are Middletown Avenue (Route 17), which leads to the Montowese section of North Haven, and Foxon Boulevard (Route 80), which leads to the Foxon section of East Haven and to the town of North Branford. To the west is Route 34, which leads to the city of Derby. Other major intracity arteries are Ella Grasso Boulevard (Route 10) west of downtown, and College Street, Temple Street, Church Street, Elm Street, and Grove Street in the downtown area.\nTraffic safety is a major concern for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists in New Haven. In addition to many traffic-related fatalities in the city each year, since 2005, over a dozen Yale students, staff and faculty have been killed or injured in traffic collisions on or near the campus.\nAirport.\nTweed New Haven Airport is located within the city limits east of the business district, straddling the border with neighboring East Haven. Service to approximately 25 cities is provided by Avelo Airlines, which established its first East Coast base at the airport in 2021. Breeze Airways plans to begin operations at Tweed in December 2024, and will provide service to 10 destinations. The airport is currently planning a runway lengthening and new terminal on the East Haven side of the airport.\nBus service between Downtown New Haven and Tweed is available via the CT Transit New Haven Division.\nSeaport.\nNew Haven Harbor is home to the Port of New Haven, a deep-water seaport with three berths capable of hosting vessels and barges as well as the facilities required to handle break bulk cargo. The port has the capacity to load 200 trucks a day from the ground or via loading docks. Providence and Worcester Railroad provides freight rail transportation to the port, with the railroad operating a switch engine for yard movements, a private siding for loading and unloading, and trackage over the Tomlinson Lift Bridge toward the Northeast Corridor. Approximately of inside storage and of outside storage are available at the site. Five shore cranes with a 250-ton capacity and 26 forklifts, each with a 26-ton capacity, are also available.\nOn June 17, 2013, the city commissioned the \"Nathan Hale\", a port security vessel capable of serving search and rescue, firefighting, and constabulary roles.\nInfrastructure.\nHospitals and medicine.\nThe New Haven area supports several medical facilities that are considered some of the best hospitals in the country. There are two major medical centers downtown: Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital has four pavilions, including the Yale \u2013 New Haven Children's Hospital and the Smilow Cancer Hospital; the Hospital of Saint Raphael is several blocks north, and touts its excellent cardiac emergency care program. Smaller downtown health facilities are the Temple Medical Center located downtown on Temple Street, Connecticut Mental Health Center/ across Park Street from Y-NHH, and the Hill Health Center, which serves the working-class Hill neighborhood. A large Veterans Affairs hospital is located in neighboring West Haven. To the west in Milford is Milford Hospital, and to the north in Meriden is the MidState Medical Center.\nIn recent years, Yale and the City of New Haven have been working to build a medical and biotechnology research hub in the city and Greater New Haven region. The city, state and Yale together run Science Park, a large site three blocks northwest of Yale's Science Hill campus. This multi-block site, approximately bordered by Mansfield Street, Division Street, and Shelton Avenue, is the former home of Winchester's and Olin Corporation's 45 large-scale factory buildings. Currently, sections of the site are large-scale parking lots or abandoned structures, but there is also a large remodeled and functioning area of buildings (leased primarily by a private developer) with numerous Yale employees, financial service and biotech companies.\nA second biotechnology district is being planned for the median strip on Frontage Road, on land cleared for the never-built Route 34 extension. As of late 2009, a Pfizer drug-testing clinic, a medical laboratory building serving Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital, and a mixed-use structure containing parking, housing and office space, have been constructed on this corridor. A former SNET telephone building at 300 George Street is being converted into lab space, and has been quite successful so far in attracting biotechnology and medical firms.\nPower supply facilities.\nElectricity for New Haven is generated by a 448\u00a0MW oil and gas-fired generating station located on the shore at New Haven Harbor. PPL Corporation operates a 220\u00a0MW peaking natural gas turbine plant in nearby Wallingford.\nNear New Haven there is the static inverter plant of the HVDC Cross Sound Cable.\nThere are three PureCell Model 400 fuel cells placed in the city of New Haven\u2014one at the New Haven Public Schools and newly constructed Roberto Clemente School, one at the mixed-use 360 State Street building, and one at City Hall. According to Giovanni Zinn of the city's Office of Sustainability, each fuel cell may save the city up to $1 million in energy costs over a decade. The fuel cells were provided by ClearEdge Power, formerly UTC Power. Additional fuel cells are located at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and at the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority (GNHWPCA). Ikea's New Haven facility also utilizes a 250\u00a0kW fuel cell and 940.8\u00a0kW solar array.\nNew Haven recently installed solar panels at 11 city schools with a combined power generation capacity of 1.8 MW. Owned and maintained by Greenskies, the panels allow New Haven to purchase electricity at a discounted rate through a power-purchasing agreement. The panels bring New Haven's solar capacity to 2.8 MW and will help New Haven meet its commitment to powering 100% of its municipal operations through clean energy, which it made in Summer 2017 and reaffirmed in the 2018 New Haven Climate and Sustainability Framework.\nIn popular culture.\nSeveral movies have been filmed in New Haven since 2000, including \"Mona Lisa Smile\" (2003), with Julia Roberts, \"The Life Before Her Eyes\" (2007), with Uma Thurman, and \"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull\" (2008) directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett and Shia LaBeouf. The filming of \"Crystal Skull\" involved an extensive chase sequence through the streets of New Haven. Several downtown streets were closed to traffic and received a \"makeover\" to look like streets of 1957, when the film is set. 500 locals were cast as extras for the film. In \"Everybody's Fine\" (2009), Robert De Niro has a close encounter in what is supposed to be the Denver train station; the scene was filmed in New Haven's Union Station.\n New Haven is mentioned in the song Peace Frog by the Doors, referencing a 1967 incident where vocalist Jim Morrison was arrested for \"attempting to incite a riot\" in the middle of a concert at the New Haven Arena.\nSister cities.\nNew Haven's sister cities are:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSome of these were selected because of historical connection\u2014Freetown because of the \"Amistad\" trial. Others, such as Amalfi and Afula, reflect ethnic groups in New Haven.\nIn 1990, the United Nations named New Haven a \"Peace Messenger City\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["3975969", "5122699", "53825"], "permutation_1": ["3975969", "5122699", "53825"], "permutation_2": ["5122699", "3975969", "53825"], "permutation_3": ["5122699", "53825", "3975969"]}
{"id": "3hop1__159612_22372_8184", "docs_added": {"49749": "Bern\nFederal city of Switzerland\nBern (), or Berne (), is the \"de facto\" capital of Switzerland, referred to as the \"federal city\". With a population of about 146,000 (as of 2024[ [update]]), Bern is the fifth-most populous city in Switzerland, behind Z\u00fcrich, Geneva, Basel and Lausanne. The Bern agglomeration, which includes 36 municipalities, had a population of 406,900 in 2014. The metropolitan area had a population of 660,000 in 2000.\nBern is also the capital of the canton of Bern, the second-most populous of Switzerland's cantons. The official language is German, but the main spoken language is the local variant of the Alemannic Swiss German dialect, Bernese German. In 1983, the historic old town (in ) in the centre of Bern became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is notably surrounded by the Aare, a major river of the Swiss Plateau.\nAlthough fortified settlements were established since antiquity, the medieval city proper was founded by the Z\u00e4hringer ruling family, probably in 1191 by Berthold V, Duke of Z\u00e4hringen. Bern was made a free imperial city in 1218 and, in 1353, it joined the Swiss Confederacy, becoming one of its eight early cantons. Since then, Bern became a large city-state and a prominent actor of Swiss history by pursuing a policy of sovereign territorial expansion. Since the 15th century, the city was progressively rebuilt and acquired its current characteristics. Bern was made the Federal City in 1848. From about 5,000 inhabitants in the 15th century, the city passed the 100,000 mark in the 1920s.\nEtymology.\nThe etymology of the name \"Bern\" is uncertain. According to the local legend, based on folk etymology, Berthold V, Duke of Z\u00e4hringen, the founder of the city of Bern, vowed to name the city after the first animal he met on the hunt, and this turned out to be a bear. It has long been considered likely that the city was named after the Italian city of Verona, which at the time was known as \"Bern\" in Middle High German. The city was sometimes referred to as \"Bern im \u00dcechtland\" to distinguish it from Verona. As a result of the finding of the Bern zinc tablet in the 1980s, it is now more common to assume that the city was named after a pre-existing toponym of Celtic origin, possibly \"*berna\" \"cleft\". The bear was the heraldic animal of the seal and coat of arms of Bern from at least the 1220s. The earliest reference to the keeping of live bears in the \"B\u00e4rengraben\" dates to the 1440s.\nHistory.\nEarly history.\nNo archaeological evidence that indicates a settlement on the site of today's city centre prior to the 12th century has been found so far. In antiquity, a Celtic \"oppidum\" stood on the \"Engehalbinsel\" (peninsula) north of Bern, fortified since the second century BC (late La T\u00e8ne period), thought to be one of the 12 \"oppida\" of the Helvetii mentioned by Caesar. During the Roman era, a Gallo-Roman \"vicus\" was on the same site. The Bern zinc tablet has the name \"Brenodor\" (\"dwelling of Breno\"). In the Early Middle Ages, a settlement in B\u00fcmpliz, now a city district of Bern, was some from the medieval city.\nThe medieval city is a foundation of the Z\u00e4hringer ruling family, which rose to power in Upper Burgundy in the 12th century. According to 14th-century historiography (\"Cronica de Berno\", 1309), Bern was founded in 1191 by Berthold V, Duke of Z\u00e4hringen.\nIn 1218, after Berthold died without an heir, Bern was made a free imperial city by the \"Goldene Handfeste\" of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II.\nOld Swiss Confederacy.\nIn 1353, Bern joined the Swiss Confederacy, becoming the eighth canton of the formative period of 1353 to 1481.\nBern invaded and conquered Aargau in 1415 and Vaud in 1536, as well as other smaller territories, thereby becoming the largest city-state north of the Alps. By the 18th century, it comprised most of what is today the canton of Bern and the canton of Vaud.\nThe city grew out towards the west of the boundaries of the peninsula formed by the river Aare. The \"Zytglogge\" tower marked the western boundary of the city from 1191 until 1256, when the \"K\u00e4figturm\" took over this role until 1345. It was succeeded by the \"Christoffelturm\" (formerly located closer to the site of the modern-day railway station) until 1622. During the Thirty Years' War, two new fortifications \u2013 the so-called big and small \"Schanze\" (entrenchments) \u2013 were built to protect the whole area of the peninsula.\nAfter a major blaze in 1405, the city's original wooden buildings were gradually replaced by half-timbered houses, and subsequently the sandstone buildings which came to be characteristic for the Old Town. Despite waves of pestilence that hit Europe in the 14th century, the city continued to grow, mainly due to immigration from the surrounding countryside.\nDuring the 18th century, the city of Bern was at one point the largest shareholder in the South Sea Company, a British joint-stock company which was involved in the Atlantic slave trade. From 1689 to 3 March 1798 in the town was printed, in French, the biweekly newspaper \"Gazette de Berne\", which reflected the opinions of Bern, usually hostile to the politics of Pre-revolutionary France.\nModern history.\nBern was occupied by French troops in 1798 during the French Revolutionary Wars, when it was stripped of parts of its territories. It regained control of the Bernese Oberland in 1802, and following the Congress of Vienna of 1814, it newly acquired the Bernese Jura. At this time, it once again became the largest canton of the Confederacy as it stood during the Restoration and until the secession of the canton of Jura in 1979.\nOn 28 November 1848, during the revolutions that year, a majority of the new Swiss Federal Assembly deputies chose Bern as the Federal City (seat of the government) of the newly created Swiss federal state, ahead of Z\u00fcrich and Lucerne. Bern was chosen as not to concentrate all the power in the economic powerhouse of Z\u00fcrich, while Catholic and conservative Lucerne had been part of the Sonderbund during the war a year before. In addition, Bern had a more central location and was supported by the French-speaking cantons due to proximity to them. However, the constitution doesn't define Bern as official capital of Switzerland, but as the seat of government.\nA number of congresses of the socialist First and Second Internationals were held in Bern, particularly during World War I when Switzerland was neutral; see Bern International.\nThe city's population rose from about 5,000 in the 15th century to about 12,000 by 1800 and to above 60,000 by 1900, passing the 100,000 mark during the 1920s. Population peaked during the 1960s at 165,000 and has since decreased slightly, to below 130,000 by 2000. As of September 2017, the resident population stood at 142,349, of which 100,000 were Swiss citizens and 42,349 (31%) resident foreigners. A further estimated 350,000 people live in the immediate urban agglomeration.\nGeography and climate.\nTopography.\nBern lies on the Swiss plateau in the canton of Bern, slightly west of the centre of Switzerland and north of the Bernese Alps. The countryside around Bern was formed by glaciers during the most recent ice age. The two mountains closest to Bern are Gurten with a height of and Bantiger with a height of . The site of the old observatory in Bern is the point of origin of the CH1903 coordinate system at .\nThe city was originally built on a hilly peninsula surrounded by the river Aare, but outgrew natural boundaries by the 19th century. A number of bridges have been built to allow the city to expand beyond the Aare.\nBern is built on very uneven ground. An elevation difference of up to 60 metres exists between the inner city districts on the Aare (Matte, Marzili) and the higher ones (Kirchenfeld, L\u00e4nggasse).\nBern has an area, as of 2013[ [update]], of . Of this area, or 18.2% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 33.3% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 46.0% is settled (buildings or roads), or 2.1% is either rivers or lakes, and or 0.3% is unproductive land.\nOf the developed area of Bern, 3.1% consists of industrial buildings, 22.3% housing and other buildings, and 12.9% is devoted to transport infrastructure. Power and water infrastructure, as well as other special developed areas, made up 1.2% of the city, while another 6.5% consists of parks, green belts, and sports fields.\nOf Bern's total land area, 32.8% is heavily forested. Of the agricultural land, 13.3% is used for growing crops and 4.4% is designated to be used as pasture. Local rivers and streams provide all the water in the municipality.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen Climate Classification, Bern has an oceanic climate (\"Cfb\") closely bordering on a humid continental climate (\"Dfb\").\nThe closest weather station near Bern is located in the municipality of Zollikofen, about north of the city centre. The warmest month for Bern is July, with a daily mean temperature of , and a daily maximum temperature of . The highest temperature recorded at Bern / Zollikofen is , recorded in August 2003. On average, a temperature of or above is recorded 40.7 days per year, and 6 days per year with a temperature of or above at Zollikofen, and the warmest day reaches an average of .\nThere are 103.7 days of air frost, and 22.3 ice days per year at Bern (Zollikofen) for the period of 1981\u20132010, as well as 14.1 days of snowfall, 36.7 days of snow cover per year and the average amount of snow measured per year is . On average, January is the coldest month, with a daily mean temperature of , and a daily minimum temperature of . The lowest temperature ever recorded at Bern (Zollikofen) was , recorded in February 1929, and typically the coldest temperature of the year reaches an average of for the period of 1981\u20132010.\nPolitics.\nSubdivisions.\nThe municipality is administratively subdivided into six districts (\"Stadtteile\"), each of which consists of several quarters (\"Quartiere\").\nGovernment.\nThe Municipal Council (de: Gemeinderat, fr: conseil municipal) constitutes the executive government of the City of Bern and operates as a collegiate authority. It is composed of five councillors (, ), each presiding over a directorate (de: \"Direktion\", fr: \"direction\") comprising several departments and bureaus. The president of the executive department acts as mayor (de: \"Stadtpr\u00e4sident/-pr\u00e4sidentin\", fr: \"Le Maire\"). In the mandate period (\"Legislatur\") 2025\u20132028, the Municipal Council is presided by \"Stadtpr\u00e4sidentin\" Marieke Kruit. Departmental tasks, coordination measures and implementation of laws decreed by the City Council are carried by the Municipal Council. The regular election of the Municipal Council by any inhabitant valid to vote is held every four years. Any resident of Bern allowed to vote can be elected as a member of the Municipal Council. Contrary to most other municipalities, the executive government in Bern is selected by means of a system of Proporz. The mayor is elected as such as well by public election while the heads of the other directorates are assigned by the collegiate. The executive body holds its meetings in the Erlacherhof, built by architect Albrecht St\u00fcrler after 1747.\nAs of 2025[ [update]], Bern's Municipal Council is made up of two representatives of the SP (Social Democratic Party), and one each of GFL (\"Gr\u00fcne Freie Liste\" a.k.a. Green Free List), GB (Green Alliance of Bern) and GLP (Green Liberal Party), giving the left parties a very strong majority of four out of five seats. The last regular election was held on 24 November 2024.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nDr. Claudia Mannhart is City Chronicler (\"Stadtschreiberin\"). She was elected by the Municipal Council in 2021.\nParliament.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nThe City Council (de: Stadtrat, fr: Conseil de ville) holds legislative power. It is made up of 80 members, with elections held every four years. The City Council decrees regulations and by-laws that are executed by the Municipal Council and the administration. The delegates are selected by means of a system of proportional representation.\nThe sessions of the City Council are public. Unlike members of the Municipal Council, members of the City Council are not politicians by profession, and they are paid a fee based on their attendance. Any resident of Bern allowed to vote can be elected as a member of the City Council. The parliament holds its meetings in the \"Stadthaus\" (Town Hall).\nThe last regular election of the City Council was held on 29 November 2020 for the mandate period (, ) from 2021 to 2024. The City Council consist of 23 (-1) members of the Social Democratic Party (SP/PS) including two seats by the junior party \"JUSO\", 11 (+3) Green Liberal Party (glp/pvl) including two member of its junior party \"jglp\", 10 (+1) Green Alliance of Bern (GB), 8 (-1) The Liberals (FDP/PLR) including one seat by its junior partner \"JF / DL\", 7 (-2) Swiss People's Party (SVP/UDC), 7 (-1) \"Gr\u00fcne Freie Liste (GFL)\" (Green Free List), 3 (+1) \"Junge Alternative (JA!)\" (or Young Alternatives), 3 (+1) Alternative Linke Bern (AL), 2 (-1) Conservative Democratic Party (BDP/PBD), 2 (-) Christian Democratic People's Party (CVP/PDC), 2 (-) Evangelical People's Party (EVP/PEV), 1 (-) Swiss Party of Labour (PdA), and 1 \"Gr\u00fcne alternative Partei (GaP)\" (or Green alternative Party).\nNational elections.\nNational Council.\nIn the 2019 federal election for the Swiss National Council the most popular party was the PS which received 28.7% (-5.6) of the vote. The next five most popular parties were the Green Party (25.2%, +7.9), the pvl (13.5%, +4.1), the UDC (9.5%, -2.9), PLR (4.2%, -2.8), and the BDP/PBD (7.0%). In the federal election a total of 49,030 votes were cast, and the voter turnout was 56%.\nIn the 2015 federal election for the Swiss National Council the most popular party was the PS which received 34.3% of the vote. The next five most popular parties were the Green Party (17.4%), the UDC (12.4%), and the FDP/PLR (9.9%), glp/pvl (9.4%), and the BDP/PBD (7.0%). In the federal election, a total of 48,556 voters were cast, and the voter turnout was 56.0%.\nInternational relations.\nTwin and sister cities.\nThe Municipal Council of the city of Bern decided against having twinned cities except for a temporary (during the UEFA Euro 2008) cooperation with the Austrian city Salzburg.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>Bern has a population (as of December 2020[ [update]]) of . About 34% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the 10 years between 2000 and 2010, the population changed at a rate of 0.6%. Migration accounted for 1.3%, while births and deaths accounted for \u22122.1%.\nMost of the population (as of 2000[ [update]]) speaks German (104,465 or 81.2%) as their first language, Italian is the second most common (5,062 or 3.9%) and French is the third (4,671 or 3.6%). There are 171 people who speak Romansh.\nAs of 2008[ [update]], the population was 47.5% male and 52.5% female. The population was made up of 44,032 Swiss men (35.4% of the population) and 15,092 (12.1%) non-Swiss men. There were 51,531 Swiss women (41.4%) and 13,726 (11.0%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality, 39,008 or about 30.3% were born in Bern and lived there in 2000. There were 27,573 or 21.4% who were born in the same canton, while 25,818 or 20.1% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 27,812 or 21.6% were born outside of Switzerland.\nAs of 2000[ [update]], children and teenagers (0\u201319 years old) make up 15.1% of the population, while adults (20\u201364 years old) make up 65% and seniors (over 64 years old) make up 19.9%.\nAs of 2000[ [update]], there were 59,948 people who were single and never married in the municipality. There were 49,873 married individuals, 9,345 widows or widowers and 9,468 individuals who are divorced.\nAs of 2000[ [update]], there were 67,115 private households in the municipality, and an average of 1.8 persons per household. There were 34,981 households that consist of only one person and 1,592 households with five or more people. In 2000[ [update]], a total of 65,538 apartments (90.6% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 5,352 apartments (7.4%) were seasonally occupied and 1,444 apartments (2.0%) were empty. As of 2009[ [update]], the construction rate of new housing units was 1.2 new units per 1000 residents.\nAs of 2003[ [update]] the average price to rent an average apartment in Bern was 1108.92 Swiss francs (CHF) per month (US$890, \u00a3500, \u20ac710 approx. exchange rate from 2003). The average rate for a one-room apartment was 619.82 CHF (US$500, \u00a3280, \u20ac400), a two-room apartment was about 879.36 CHF (US$700, \u00a3400, \u20ac560), a three-room apartment was about 1040.54 CHF (US$830, \u00a3470, \u20ac670) and a six or more room apartment cost an average of 2094.80 CHF (US$1680, \u00a3940, \u20ac1340). The average apartment price in Bern was 99.4% of the national average of 1116 CHF. The vacancy rate for the municipality, in 2010[ [update]], was 0.45%.\nHistoric population.\nThe historical population is given in the following chart:\nReligion.\nFrom the 2000 census[ [update]], 60,455 or 47.0% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church, while 31,510 or 24.5% were members of the Catholic Church. Of the rest of the population, there were 1,874 members of an Orthodox church (or about 1.46% of the population), there were 229 persons (or about 0.18% of the population) who belonged to the Christ Catholic Church, and there were 5,531 persons (or about 4.30% of the population) who belonged to another Christian religion. There were 324 persons (or about 0.25% of the population) who were Jewish, and 4,907 (or about 3.81% of the population) who were Muslim. There were 629 persons who were Buddhist, 1,430 persons who were Hindu and 177 persons who belonged to another religion. 16,363 (or about 12.72% of the population) belonged to no religion, are agnostic or atheist, and 7,855 persons (or about 6.11% of the population) did not answer the question. On 14 December 2014 the Haus der Religionen was inaugurated.\nMain sights.\nThe structure of Bern's city centre is largely medieval and has been recognised by UNESCO as a Cultural World Heritage Site. Perhaps its most famous sight is the \"Zytglogge\" (Bernese German for \"Time Bell\"), an elaborate medieval clock tower with moving puppets. It also has an impressive 15th century Gothic cathedral, the \"M\u00fcnster\", and a 15th-century town hall. Thanks to of arcades, the old town boasts one of the longest covered shopping promenades in Europe.\nSince the 16th century, the city has had a bear pit, the \"B\u00e4rengraben\", at the far end of the Nydeggbr\u00fccke to house its heraldic animals. The four bears are now kept in an open-air enclosure nearby, and two other young bears, a present by the Russian president, are kept in D\u00e4hlh\u00f6lzli zoo.\nThe Federal Palace (Bundeshaus), built from 1857 to 1902, which houses the national parliament, government and part of the federal administration, can also be visited.\nAlbert Einstein lived in a flat at the Kramgasse 49, the site of the Einsteinhaus, from 1903 to 1905, the year in which the \"Annus Mirabilis\" papers were published.\nThe Rose Garden (\"Rosengarten\"), from which a scenic panoramic view of the medieval town centre can be enjoyed, is a well-kept Rosarium on a hill, converted into a park from a former cemetery in 1913.\nThere are eleven Renaissance allegorical statues on public fountains in the Old Town. Nearly all the 16th-century fountains, except the Z\u00e4hringer fountain, which was created by Hans Hiltbrand, are the work of the Fribourg master Hans Gieng. One of the more interesting fountains is the Kindlifresserbrunnen (Bernese German: \"Child Eater Fountain\"), which is claimed to represent a Jew, the Greek god Chronos, or a Fastnacht figure meant to frighten disobedient children.\nBern's most recent sight is the set of fountains in front of the Federal Palace. It was inaugurated on 1 August 2004.\nThe Universal Postal Union is situated in Bern.\nHeritage sites of national significance.\nBern is home to 114 Swiss heritage sites of national significance.\nIt includes the entire Old Town, which is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and many sites within and around it. Some of the most notable in the Old Town include the Cathedral which was started in 1421 and is the tallest cathedral in Switzerland, the Zytglogge and K\u00e4figturm towers, which mark two successive expansions of the Old Town, and the Holy Ghost Church, which is one of the largest Swiss Reformed churches in Switzerland. Within the Old Town, there are eleven 16th-century fountains, most attributed to Hans Gieng, that are on the list.\nOutside the Old Town the heritage sites include the B\u00e4rengraben, the Gewerbeschule Bern (1937), the Eidgen\u00f6ssisches Archiv f\u00fcr Denkmalpflege, the Kirchenfeld mansion district (after 1881), the Thunplatzbrunnen, the Federal Mint building, the Federal Archives, the Swiss National Library, the Historical Museum (1894), Alpine Museum, Museum of Communication and Natural History Museum.\nCulture.\nCinemas.\nBern has several dozen cinemas. As is customary in German Switzerland, films are generally in German. Some films in select cinemas are shown in their original language with German and French subtitles.\nMusic events.\nThe \"Musikpreis des Kantons Bern\" is an annual musical event where \"Outstanding musicians which styles shape the Bern music scene\" are honored.\nSports.\nBern was the site of the 1954 FIFA World Cup Final, in which West Germany upset the Hungarian Golden Team 3\u20132. The football team BSC Young Boys is based in Bern at the Stadion Wankdorf, which also was one of the venues for the 2008 UEFA European Championship, in which it hosted three matches.\nFC Breitenrain Bern, founded in 1994, also play in Bern.\nSC Bern is the major ice hockey team of Bern which plays in the PostFinance Arena. They compete in the National League (NL), the highest league in Switzerland. The team has ranked highest in attendance for a European hockey team for more than a decade. PostFinance Arena was the main host of the 2009 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship, including the opening game and the final of the tournament.\nPostFinance Arena was also the host of the 2011 European Figure Skate Championships.\nBern Cardinals is the baseball and softball team of Bern, which plays at the Allmend.\nBern Grizzlies is the American football club in Bern (since 1985) and plays in the top level Nationalliga A (American football) at Athletics Arena Wankdorf. The Grizzlies have been Swiss Bowl champion six times.\nBern was a candidate to host the 2010 Winter Olympics, but withdrew its bid in September 2002 after a referendum was passed that showed that the bid was not supported by locals. Those games were eventually awarded to Vancouver, British Columbia.\nRC Bern is the local rugby club (since 1972) and plays at the Allmend. The ladies team was founded in 1995.\nThe locality of Bremgartenwald was home to the Bremgarten Circuit, the Grand Prix motor racing course that at one time hosted the Swiss Grand Prix.\nBern Bears is an NGO Basketball Club since 2010 in city of Bern.\nThe Swiss Grand Prix was held on the Circuit Bremgarten street track from 1950 to 1954, with MotoGP also running their Swiss motorcycle Grand Prix from 1949 to 1954. The circuit eventually fell into disrepair after Switzerland banned motorsports after the 1955 Le Mans Disaster, but they made an amendment in 2015 to host electric racing, which is how the Swiss ePrix happened in 2019.\nEconomy.\nAs of \u00a02010[ [update]], Bern had an unemployment rate of 3.3%. As of 2008[ [update]], there were 259 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 59 businesses involved in this sector. 16,413 people were employed in the secondary sector and there were 950 businesses in this sector. 135,973 people were employed in the tertiary sector, with 7,654 businesses in this sector.\nIn 2008[ [update]] the total number of full-time equivalent jobs was 125,037. The number of jobs in the primary sector was 203, of which 184 were in agriculture and 19 were in forestry or lumber production. The number of jobs in the secondary sector was 15,476 of which 7,650 or (49.4%) were in manufacturing, 51 or (0.3%) were in mining and 6,389 (41.3%) were in construction. The number of jobs in the tertiary sector was 109,358. In the tertiary sector; 11,396 or 10.4% were in wholesale or retail sales or the repair of motor vehicles, 10,293 or 9.4% were in the movement and storage of goods, 5,090 or 4.7% were in a hotel or restaurant, 7,302 or 6.7% were in the information industry, 8,437 or 7.7% were the insurance or financial industry, 10,660 or 9.7% were technical professionals or scientists, 5,338 or 4.9% were in education and 17,903 or 16.4% were in health care.\nIn 2000[ [update]], there were 94,367 workers who commuted into the municipality and 16,424 workers who commuted away. The municipality is a net importer of workers, with about 5.7 workers entering the municipality for every one leaving. Of the working population, 50.6% used public transport to get to work, and 20.6% used a private car.\nEducation.\nThe University of Bern, whose buildings are mainly located in the \"L\u00e4nggasse\" quarter, is located in Bern, as well as the University of Applied Sciences (\"Fachhochschule\") and several vocations schools.\nIn Bern, about 50,418 or (39.2%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 24,311 or (18.9%) have completed additional higher education (either university or a \"Fachhochschule\"). Of the 24,311 who completed tertiary schooling, 51.6% were Swiss men, 33.0% were Swiss women, 8.9% were non-Swiss men and 6.5% were non-Swiss women.\nThe canton of Bern school system provides one year of non-obligatory kindergarten, followed by six years of primary school. This is followed by three years of obligatory lower secondary school where the pupils are separated according to ability and aptitude. Following the lower secondary pupils may attend additional schooling or they may enter an apprenticeship.\nDuring the 2009\u201310 school year, there were a total of 10,979 pupils attending classes in Bern. There were 89 kindergarten classes with a total of 1,641 pupils in the municipality. Of the kindergarten pupils, 32.4% were permanent or temporary residents of Switzerland (not citizens) and 40.2% have a different mother language than the classroom language. The municipality had 266 primary classes and 5,040 pupils. Of the primary pupils, 30.1% were permanent or temporary residents of Switzerland (not citizens) and 35.7% have a different mother language than the classroom language. During the same year, there were 151 lower secondary classes with a total of 2,581 pupils. There were 28.7% who were permanent or temporary residents of Switzerland (not citizens) and 32.7% have a different mother language than the classroom language.\nNotable schools in Bern include Gymnasium Neufeld.\nBern is home to 8 libraries. These libraries include; the Schweiz. Nationalbibliothek/ Biblioth\u00e8que nationale suisse, the \"Universit\u00e4tsbibliothek Bern\", the \"Kornhausbibliotheken Bern\", the \"BFH Wirtschaft und Verwaltung Bern\", the \"BFH Gesundheit\", the \"BFH Soziale Arbeit\", the \"Hochschule der K\u00fcnste Bern, Gestaltung und Kunst\" and the \"Hochschule der K\u00fcnste Bern, Musikbibliothek\". There was a combined total (as of 2008[ [update]]) of 10,308,336 books or other media in the libraries, and in the same year a total of 2,627,973 items were loaned out.\nAs of 2000[ [update]], there were 9,045 pupils in Bern who came from another municipality, while 1,185 residents attended schools outside the municipality.\nTransport.\nPublic transport.\nBern is served by a dense network of trains, trams, trolleybuses, and conventional motorbuses. The Bern S-Bahn is Switzerland's second busiest.\nBern is the centre of the Libero tariff network, which covers the cantons of Bern and Solothurn and includes the towns of Biel/Bienne, Solothurn, and Thun. The network allows easy and coordinated travel on all modes of public transport, such as trains, PostAuto buses, trams, buses (trolleybuses and motorbuses) and others, regardless of transport operator. Fares are based on the number of zones in a journey. The central part of Bern, (excluding \"B\u00fcmpliz\", \"Betlehem\", \"Bottigen\", \"Br\u00fcnnen\", and \"Riedbach\" in the west of the municipality), is part of the fare zone \"100\".\nThe city is well served by railways, with the extensive S-Bahn network and many regional and international connections. Bern's central railway station (\"Bahnhof Bern\") is Switzerland's second busiest station (164,800 passengers per weekday in 2022), and is the main transport hub in the region.\nA funicular railway called the Marzilibahn leads from the \"Marzili\" district to the Federal Palace. With a length of , it is the second shortest public railway in Europe after the Zagreb funicular.\nRoad traffic.\nSeveral Aare bridges connect the old parts of the city with the newer districts outside of the peninsula.\nBern is well connected to other cities by several motorways (A1, A12, A6).\nAirport.\nBern Airport (colloquially called \"Bern-Belp\" or \"Belpmoos\") located outside the city near the town of Belp, as of March 2021 mostly serves general aviation and charter flights. Zurich Airport, Geneva Airport and EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg serve as gateways for air traffic, all reachable in less than two hours by train or car from Bern.\nBicycle transport.\nThe city has made efforts to make Bern the \"bicycle capital\" of Switzerland through the creation of better infrastructure, such as dedicated cycle paths. PubliBike operates a bike-sharing system.\nNotes and references.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "26748": "Switzerland\nCountry in Central Europe\nSwitzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is geographically divided among the Swiss Plateau, the Alps and the Jura; the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory, whereas most of the country's nearly 9 million people are concentrated on the plateau, which hosts its largest cities and economic centres, including Zurich, Geneva, and Lausanne. \nSwitzerland is a federal republic composed of 26 cantons, with federal authorities based in Bern. It has four main linguistic and cultural regions: German, French, Italian and Romansh. Although most Swiss are German-speaking, national identity is fairly cohesive, being rooted in a common historical background, shared values such as federalism and direct democracy, and Alpine symbolism. Swiss identity transcends language, ethnicity, and religion, leading to Switzerland being described as a (\"nation of volition\") rather than a nation state.\nSwitzerland originates from the Old Swiss Confederacy established in the Late Middle Ages as a defensive and commercial alliance; the Federal Charter of 1291 is considered the country's founding document. The confederation steadily expanded and consolidated despite external threats and internal political and religious strife. Swiss independence from the Holy Roman Empire was formally recognised in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The confederation was among the first and few republics of the early modern period, and the only one besides San Marino to survive the Napoleonic Wars. \nSwitzerland remained a network of self-governing states until 1798, when revolutionary France invaded and imposed the centralist Helvetic Republic. Napoleon abolished the republic in 1803 and reinstated a confederation. Following the Napoleonic Wars, Switzerland restored its pre-revolutionary system, but by 1830 faced growing division and conflict between liberal and conservative movements; this culminated in a new constitution in 1848 that established the current federal system and enshrined principles such as individual rights, separation of powers, and parliamentary bicameralism. \nSwitzerland has maintained a policy of armed neutrality since the 16th century and has not fought an international war since 1815. It joined the United Nations only in 2002 but pursues an active foreign policy that includes frequent involvement in peace building and global governance. Switzerland is the birthplace of the Red Cross and hosts the headquarters or offices of most major international institutions, including the WTO, the WHO, the ILO, FIFA, the WEF, and the UN. It is a founding member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) but not part of the European Union (EU), the European Economic Area, or the eurozone; however, it participates in the European single market and the Schengen Area. \nSwitzerland is among the world's most developed countries, with the highest nominal wealth per adult and the eighth-highest gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. It performs highly on several international metrics, including economic competitiveness, democratic governance, and press freedom. Zurich, Geneva and Basel rank among the highest in quality of life, albeit with some of the highest costs of living. Switzerland holds an international reputation for its established banking sector and for its specialized industries in watchmaking and chocolate production.\nEtymology.\nThe English name \"Switzerland\" is a portmanteau of \"Switzer\", an obsolete term for a Swiss person which was in use during the 16th to 19th centuries, and \"land\". The English adjective \"Swiss\" is a loanword from French ', also in use since the 16th century. The name \"Switzer\" is from the Alemannic ', in origin an inhabitant of \"Schwyz\" and its associated territory, one of the cantons which formed the nucleus of the Old Swiss Confederacy. The Swiss began to adopt the name for themselves after the Swabian War of 1499, used alongside the term for \"Confederates\", (literally: \"comrades by oath\"), used since the 14th century. The data code for Switzerland, CH, is derived from Latin (\"Helvetic Confederation\").\nThe toponym \"Schwyz\" itself was first attested in 972, as Old High German ', perhaps related to ' 'to burn' (cf. Old Norse 'to singe, burn'), referring to the area of forest that was burned and cleared to build. The name was extended to the area dominated by the canton, and after the Swabian War of 1499 gradually came to be used for the entire Confederation. The Swiss German name of the country, ', is homophonous to that of the canton and the settlement, but distinguished by the use of the definite article (' for the Confederation, but simply \"\" for the canton and the town). The long [i\u02d0] of Swiss German is historically and still often today spelled \u27e8y\u27e9 rather than \u27e8ii\u27e9, preserving the original identity of the two names even in writing.\nThe Latin name was neologised and introduced gradually after the formation of the federal state in 1848, harking back to the Napoleonic Helvetic Republic. It appeared on coins from 1879, inscribed on the Federal Palace in 1902 and after 1948 used in the official seal (e.g., the ISO banking code \"CHF\" for the Swiss franc, the Swiss postage stamps ('HELVETIA') and the country top-level domain \".ch\", are both taken from the state's Latin name). is derived from the \"Helvetii\", a Gaulish tribe living on the Swiss Plateau before the Roman era.\n\"Helvetia\" appeared as a national personification of the Swiss confederacy in the 17th century in a 1672 play by Johann Caspar Weissenbach.\nHistory.\nThe state of Switzerland took its present form with the adoption of the Swiss Federal Constitution in 1848. Switzerland's precursors established a defensive alliance in 1291, forming a loose confederation that persisted for centuries.\nBeginnings.\nThe oldest traces of hominid existence in Switzerland date to about 150,000 years ago. The oldest known farming settlements in Switzerland, which were found at G\u00e4chlingen, date to around 5300 BC.\nThe earliest known tribes formed the Hallstatt and La T\u00e8ne cultures, named after the archaeological site of La T\u00e8ne on the north side of Lake Neuch\u00e2tel. La T\u00e8ne culture developed and flourished during the late Iron Age from around 450 BC, possibly influenced by Greek and Etruscan civilisations. One of the most prominent La T\u00e8ne tribes were the Helvetii, who primarily occupied the Swiss Plateau, alongside the Rhaetians in the eastern regions. Facing pressures from Germanic tribes, in 58 BC, the Helvetii, influenced by Orgetorix, a wealthy aristocrat, decided to abandon the Swiss Plateau for better opportunities in western Gallia. After Orgetorix's mysterious death, the tribe continued their migration but was decisively defeated by Julius Caesar's armies at the Battle of Bibracte, in present-day eastern France. Following their defeat, the Helvetii were forced by Caesar to return to their original lands, where they were subjected to stringent restrictions on their autonomy and movements. In 15 BC, Tiberius (later the second Roman emperor) and his brother Drusus conquered the Alps, integrating them into the Roman Empire. The area occupied by the Helvetii first became part of Rome's Gallia Belgica province and then of its Germania Superior province. The eastern portion of modern Switzerland was integrated into the Roman province of Raetia. Sometime around the start of the Common Era, the Romans maintained a large camp called Vindonissa, now a ruin at the confluence of the Aare and Reuss rivers, near the town of Windisch.\nThe first and second century AD was an age of prosperity on the Swiss Plateau. Towns such as Aventicum, Iulia Equestris and Augusta Raurica reached a remarkable size, while hundreds of agricultural estates (Villae rusticae) were established in the countryside.\nAround 260 AD, the fall of the Agri Decumates territory north of the Rhine transformed today's Switzerland into a frontier land of the Empire. Repeated raids by the Alamanni tribes provoked the ruin of the Roman towns and economy, forcing the population to shelter near Roman fortresses, like the Castrum Rauracense near Augusta Raurica. The Empire built another line of defence at the north border (the so-called Donau-Iller-Rhine-Limes). At the end of the fourth century, the increased Germanic pressure forced the Romans to abandon the linear defence concept. The Swiss Plateau was finally open to Germanic tribes.\nIn the Early Middle Ages, from the end of the fourth century, the western extent of modern-day Switzerland was part of the territory of the Kings of the Burgundians, who introduced the French language to the area. The Alemanni settled the Swiss Plateau in the fifth century and the valleys of the Alps in the eighth century, forming Alemannia. Modern-day Switzerland was then divided between the kingdoms of Alemannia and Burgundy. The entire region became part of the expanding Frankish Empire in the sixth century, following Clovis I's victory over the Alemanni at Tolbiac in 504 AD, and later Frankish domination of the Burgundians.\nThroughout the rest of the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries, Swiss regions continued under Frankish hegemony (Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties) but after its extension under Charlemagne, the Frankish Empire was divided by the Treaty of Verdun in 843. The territories of present-day Switzerland became divided into Middle Francia and East Francia until they were reunified under the Holy Roman Empire around 1000\u00a0AD.\nIn the 10th century, as the rule of the Carolingians waned, Magyars destroyed Basel in 917 and St. Gallen in 926. In response, Henry the Fowler, the then ruler of East Francia, decreed the fortification of key settlements to defend against these invasions. Large villages and towns, including strategic locations like Zurich and St.Gallen, were fortified. This initiative led to the development of what were essentially early urban strongholds and city governments in Eastern Switzerland.\nBy 1200, the Swiss Plateau comprised the dominions of the houses of Savoy, Z\u00e4hringer, Habsburg, and Kyburg. Some regions (Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, later known as ) were accorded the Imperial immediacy to grant the empire direct control over the mountain passes. With the extinction of its male line in 1263, the Kyburg dynasty fell in AD 1264. The Habsburgs under King Rudolph I (Holy Roman Emperor in 1273) laid claim to the Kyburg lands and annexed them, extending their territory to the eastern Swiss Plateau.\nOld Swiss Confederacy.\nThe Old Swiss Confederacy was an alliance among the valley communities of the central Alps. The Confederacy was governed by nobles and patricians of various cantons who facilitated management of common interests and ensured peace on mountain trade routes. The Federal Charter of 1291 is considered the confederacy's founding document, even though similar alliances likely existed decades earlier. The document was agreed among the rural communes of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden.\nBy 1353, the three original cantons had joined with the cantons of Glarus and Zug and the Lucerne, Zurich and Bern city-states to form the \"Old Confederacy\" of eight states that obtained through the end of the 15th century. The expansion led to increased power and wealth for the confederation. By 1460, the confederates controlled most of the territory south and west of the Rhine to the Alps and the Jura mountains, and the University of Basel was founded (with a faculty of medicine) establishing a tradition of chemical and medical research. This increased after victories against the Habsburgs (Battle of Sempach, Battle of N\u00e4fels), over Charles the Bold of Burgundy during the 1470s, and the success of the Swiss mercenaries. The Swiss victory in the Swabian War against the Swabian League of Emperor Maximilian I in 1499 amounted to \"de facto\" independence within the Holy Roman Empire. In 1501, Basel and Schaffhausen joined the Old Swiss Confederacy.\nThe Confederacy acquired a reputation of invincibility during these earlier wars, but expansion of the confederation suffered a setback in 1515 with the Swiss defeat in the Battle of Marignano. This ended the so-called \"heroic\" epoch of Swiss history. The success of Zwingli's Reformation in some cantons led to inter-cantonal religious conflicts in 1529 and 1531 (Wars of Kappel). It was not until more than one hundred years after these internal wars that, in 1648, under the Peace of Westphalia, European countries recognised Switzerland's independence from the Holy Roman Empire and its neutrality.\nDuring the Early Modern period of Swiss history, the growing authoritarianism of the patriciate families combined with a financial crisis in the wake of the Thirty Years' War led to the Swiss peasant war of 1653. In the background to this struggle, the conflict between Catholic and Protestant cantons persisted, erupting in further violence at the First War of Villmergen, in 1656, and the Toggenburg War (or Second War of Villmergen), in 1712.\nNapoleonic era.\nIn 1798, the revolutionary French government invaded Switzerland and imposed a new unified constitution. This centralised the government of the country, effectively abolishing the cantons: moreover, M\u00fclhausen left Switzerland and the Valtellina valley became part of the Cisalpine Republic. The new regime, known as the Helvetic Republic, was highly unpopular. An invading foreign army had imposed and destroyed centuries of tradition, making Switzerland nothing more than a French satellite state. The fierce French suppression of the Nidwalden Revolt in September 1798 was an example of the oppressive presence of the French Army and the local population's resistance to the occupation.\nWhen war broke out between France and its rivals, Russian and Austrian forces invaded Switzerland. The Swiss refused to fight alongside the French in the name of the Helvetic Republic. In 1803 Napoleon organised a meeting of the leading Swiss politicians from both sides in Paris. The Act of Mediation was the result, which largely restored Swiss autonomy and introduced a Confederation of 19 cantons. Henceforth, much of Swiss politics would concern balancing the cantons' tradition of self-rule with the need for a central government.\nIn 1815, the Congress of Vienna fully re-established Swiss independence, and the European powers recognised permanent Swiss neutrality. Swiss troops served foreign governments until 1860 when they fought in the siege of Gaeta. The treaty allowed Switzerland to increase its territory, with the admission of the cantons of Valais, Neuch\u00e2tel and Geneva. Switzerland's borders saw only minor adjustments thereafter.\nFederal state.\nThe restoration of power to the patriciate was only temporary. After a period of unrest with repeated violent clashes, such as the Z\u00fcriputsch of 1839, civil war (the \"Sonderbundskrieg\") broke out in 1847 when some Catholic cantons tried to set up a separate alliance (the \"Sonderbund\"). The war lasted less than a month, causing fewer than 100 casualties, most of which were through friendly fire. The Sonderbundskrieg had a significant impact on the psychology and society of Switzerland.\nThe war convinced most Swiss of the need for unity and strength. Swiss from all strata of society, whether Catholic or Protestant, from the liberal or conservative current, realised that the cantons would profit more from merging their economic and religious interests.\nThus, while the rest of Europe saw revolutionary uprisings, the Swiss drew up a constitution that provided for a federal layout, much of it inspired by the American example. This constitution provided central authority while leaving the cantons the right to self-government on local issues. Giving credit to those who favoured the power of the cantons (the Sonderbund Kantone), the national assembly was divided between an upper house (the Council of States, two representatives per canton) and a lower house (the National Council, with representatives elected from across the country). Referendums were made mandatory for any amendments. This new constitution ended the legal power of nobility in Switzerland.\nA single system of weights and measures was introduced, and in 1850 the Swiss franc became the Swiss single currency, complemented by the WIR franc in 1934. Article 11 of the constitution forbade sending troops to serve abroad, marking the end of foreign service. It came with the expectation of serving the Holy See, and the Swiss were still obliged to serve Francis II of the Two Sicilies with Swiss Guards present at the siege of Gaeta in 1860.\nAn important clause of the constitution was that it could be entirely rewritten, if necessary, thus enabling it to evolve as a whole rather than being modified one amendment at a time.\nThis need soon proved itself when the rise in population and the Industrial Revolution that followed led to calls to modify the constitution accordingly. The population rejected an early draft in 1872, but modifications led to its acceptance in 1874. It introduced the facultative referendum for laws at the federal level. It also established federal responsibility for defence, trade, and legal matters.\nIn 1891, the constitution was revised with uncommonly strong elements of direct democracy, which remain unique today.\nModern history.\nSwitzerland was not invaded during either of the world wars. During World War I, Switzerland was home to the revolutionary and founder of the Soviet Union Vladimir Illych Ulyanov (Vladimir Lenin) who remained there until 1917. Swiss neutrality was seriously questioned by the short-lived Grimm\u2013Hoffmann affair in 1917. In 1920, Switzerland joined the League of Nations, which was based in Geneva, after it was exempted from military requirements.\nDuring World War II, detailed invasion plans were drawn up by the Germans, but Switzerland was never attacked. Switzerland was able to remain independent through a combination of military deterrence, concessions to Germany, and good fortune, as larger events during the war intervened. General Henri Guisan, appointed the commander-in-chief for the duration of the war ordered a general mobilisation of the armed forces. The Swiss military strategy changed from static defence at the borders to organised long-term attrition and withdrawal to strong, well-stockpiled positions high in the Alps, known as the Reduit. Switzerland was an important base for espionage by both sides and often mediated communications between the Axis and Allied powers.\nSwitzerland's trade was blockaded by both the Allies and the Axis. Economic cooperation and extension of credit to Nazi Germany varied according to the perceived likelihood of invasion and the availability of other trading partners. Concessions reached a peak after a crucial rail link through Vichy France was severed in 1942, leaving Switzerland (together with Liechtenstein) entirely isolated from the wider world by Axis-controlled territory. Over the course of the war, Switzerland interned over 300,000 refugees aided by the International Red Cross, based in Geneva. Strict immigration and asylum policies and the financial relationships with Nazi Germany raised controversy, only at the end of the 20th century.\nDuring the war, the Swiss Air Force engaged aircraft of both sides, shooting down 11 intruding Luftwaffe planes in May and June 1940, then forcing down other intruders after a change of policy following threats from Germany. Over 100 Allied bombers and their crews were interned. Between 1940 and 1945, Switzerland was bombed by the Allies, causing fatalities and property damage. Among the cities and towns bombed were Basel, Brusio, Chiasso, Cornol, Geneva, Koblenz, Niederweningen, Rafz, Renens, Samedan, Schaffhausen, Stein am Rhein, T\u00e4gerwilen, Thayngen, Vals, and Zurich. Allied forces maintained that the bombings, which violated the 96th Article of War, resulted from navigation errors, equipment failure, weather conditions, and pilot errors. The Swiss expressed fear and concern that the bombings were intended to put pressure on Switzerland to end economic cooperation and neutrality with Nazi Germany. Court-martial proceedings took place in England. The US paid SFR 62M for reparations.\nSwitzerland's attitude towards refugees was complicated and controversial; over the course of the war, it admitted as many as 300,000 refugees while refusing tens of thousands more, including Jews persecuted by the Nazis.\nAfter the war, the Swiss government exported credits through the charitable fund known as the and donated to the Marshall Plan to help Europe's recovery, efforts that ultimately benefited the Swiss economy.\nDuring the Cold War, Swiss authorities considered the construction of a Swiss nuclear bomb. Leading nuclear physicists at the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich such as Paul Scherrer made this a realistic possibility. In 1988, the Paul Scherrer Institute was founded in his name to explore the therapeutic uses of neutron scattering technologies. Financial problems with the defence budget and ethical considerations prevented the substantial funds from being allocated, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 was seen as a valid alternative. Plans for building nuclear weapons were dropped by 1988. Switzerland joined the Council of Europe in 1963.\nSwitzerland was the last Western republic (the Principality of Liechtenstein followed in 1984) to grant women the right to vote. Some Swiss cantons approved this in 1959, while at the federal level, it was achieved in 1971 and, after resistance, in the last canton Appenzell Innerrhoden (one of only two remaining \"Landsgemeinde\", along with Glarus) in 1990. After obtaining suffrage at the federal level, women quickly rose in political significance. The first woman on the seven-member Federal Council executive was Elisabeth Kopp, who served from 1984 to 1989, and the first female president was Ruth Dreifuss in 1999.\nIn 1979 areas from the canton of Bern attained independence from the Bernese, forming the new canton of Jura. On 18 April 1999, the Swiss population and the cantons voted in favour of a completely revised federal constitution.\nIn 2002 Switzerland became a full member of the United Nations, leaving Vatican City as the last widely recognised state without full UN membership. Switzerland is a founding member of the EFTA but not the European Economic Area (EEA). An application for membership in the European Union was sent in May 1992, but did not advance since rejecting the EEA in December 1992 when Switzerland conducted a referendum on the EEA. Several referendums on the EU issue ensued; due to opposition from the citizens, the membership application was withdrawn. Nonetheless, Swiss law is gradually changing to conform with that of the EU, and the government signed bilateral agreements with the European Union. Switzerland, together with Liechtenstein, has been surrounded by the EU since Austria's entry in 1995. On 5 June 2005, Swiss voters agreed by a 55% majority to join the Schengen treaty, a result that EU commentators regarded as a sign of support. In September 2020, a referendum calling for a vote to end the pact that allowed a free movement of people from the European Union was introduced by the Swiss People's Party (SVP). However, voters rejected the attempt to retake control of immigration, defeating the motion by a roughly 63%\u201337% margin.\nOn 9 February 2014, 50.3% of Swiss voters approved a ballot initiative launched by the Swiss People's Party (SVP/UDC) to restrict immigration. This initiative was mostly backed by rural (57.6% approval) and suburban groups (51.2% approval), and isolated towns (51.3% approval) as well as by a strong majority (69.2% approval) in Ticino, while metropolitan centres (58.5% rejection) and the French-speaking part (58.5% rejection) rejected it. In December 2016, a political compromise with the EU was attained that eliminated quotas on EU citizens, but still allowed favourable treatment of Swiss-based job applicants. On 27 September 2020, 62% of Swiss voters rejected the anti-free movement referendum by SVP.\nGeography.\nExtending across the north and south side of the Alps in west-central Europe, Switzerland encompasses diverse landscapes and climates across its .\nSwitzerland lies between latitudes 45\u00b0 and 48\u00b0 N, and longitudes 5\u00b0 and 11\u00b0 E. It contains three basic topographical areas: the Swiss Alps to the south, the Swiss Plateau or Central Plateau, and the Jura mountains on the west. The Alps are a mountain range running across the central and south of the country, constituting about 60% of the country's area. The majority of the population live on the Swiss Plateau. The Swiss Alps host many glaciers, covering . From these originate the headwaters of several major rivers, such as the Rhine, Inn, Ticino and Rh\u00f4ne, which flow in the four cardinal directions, spreading across Europe. The hydrographic network includes several of the largest bodies of fresh water in Central and Western Europe, among which are Lake Geneva (Lac L\u00e9man in French), Lake Constance (Bodensee in German) and Lake Maggiore. Switzerland has more than 1500 lakes and contains 6% of Europe's freshwater stock. Lakes and glaciers cover about 6% of the national territory. Lake Geneva is the largest lake and is shared with France. The Rh\u00f4ne is both the main source and outflow of Lake Geneva. Lake Constance is the second largest and, like Lake Geneva, an intermediate step by the Rhine at the border with Austria and Germany. While the Rh\u00f4ne flows into the Mediterranean Sea at the French Camargue region and the Rhine flows into the North Sea at Rotterdam, about apart, both springs are only about apart in the Swiss Alps. 90% of Switzerland's 65,000-kilometre-long network of rivers and streams have been straightened, dammed, canalized or channeled underground, in an effort to prevent natural disasters such as flooding, landslides, and avalanches. 80% of all Swiss drinking water comes from groundwater sources.\nForty-eight mountains are or higher in height. At , Monte Rosa is the highest, although the Matterhorn () is the best known. Both are located within the Pennine Alps in the canton of Valais, on the border with Italy. The section of the Bernese Alps above the deep glacial Lauterbrunnen valley, containing 72 waterfalls, is well known for the Jungfrau () Eiger and M\u00f6nch peaks, and its many picturesque valleys. In the southeast the long Engadin Valley, encompassing St. Moritz, is also well known; the highest peak in the neighbouring Bernina Alps is Piz Bernina ().\nThe Swiss Plateau has greater open and hilly landscapes, partly forested, partly open pastures, usually with grazing herds or vegetable and fruit fields, but it is still hilly. Large lakes and the biggest Swiss cities are found there.\nSwitzerland contains two small enclaves: B\u00fcsingen belongs to Germany, while Campione d'Italia belongs to Italy. Switzerland has no exclaves.\nClimate.\nThe Swiss climate is generally temperate, but can vary greatly across localities, from glacial conditions on the mountaintops to the near-Mediterranean climate at Switzerland's southern tip. Some valley areas in the southern part of Switzerland offer cold-hardy palm trees. Summers tend to be warm and humid at times with periodic rainfall, ideal for pastures/grazing. The less humid winters in the mountains may see weeks-long intervals of stable conditions. At the same time, the lower lands tend to suffer from inversion during such periods, hiding the sun.\nA weather phenomenon known as the f\u00f6hn (with an identical effect to the chinook wind) can occur any time and is characterised by an unexpectedly warm wind, bringing low relative humidity air to the north of the Alps during rainfall periods on the south-facing slopes. This works both ways across the alps but is more efficient if blowing from the south due to the steeper step for oncoming wind. Valleys running south to north trigger the best effect. The driest conditions persist in all inner alpine valleys that receive less rain because arriving clouds lose a lot of their moisture content while crossing the mountains before reaching these areas. Large alpine areas such as Graub\u00fcnden remain drier than pre-alpine areas, and as in the main valley of the Valais, wine grapes are grown there.\nThe wettest conditions persist in the high Alps and in the Ticino canton, which has much sun yet heavy bursts of rain from time to time. Precipitation tends to be spread moderately throughout the year, with a peak in summer. Autumn is the driest season, winter receives less precipitation than summer, yet the weather patterns in Switzerland are not in a stable climate system. They can vary from year to year with no strict and predictable periods.\nEnvironment.\nSwitzerland contains two terrestrial ecoregions: Western European broadleaf forests and Alps conifer and mixed forests.\nSwitzerland's many small valleys separated by high mountains often host unique ecologies. The mountainous regions themselves offer a rich range of plants not found at other altitudes. The climatic, geological and topographical conditions of the alpine region make for a fragile ecosystem that is particularly sensitive to climate change. According to the 2014 Environmental Performance Index, Switzerland ranks first among 132 nations in safeguarding the environment, due to its high scores on environmental public health, its heavy reliance on renewable sources of energy (hydropower and geothermal energy), and its level of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2020 it was ranked third out of 180 countries. The country pledged to cut GHG emissions by 50% by 2030 compared to the level of 1990 and plans to reach zero emissions by 2050.\nHowever, access to biocapacity in Switzerland is far lower than the world average. In 2016, Switzerland had 1.0 hectares of biocapacity per person within its territory, 40 per cent less than world average of 1.6. In contrast, in 2016, Swiss consumption required 4.6 hectares of biocapacity \u2013 their ecological footprint, 4.6 times as much as Swiss territory can support. The remainder comes from other countries and the shared resources (such as the atmosphere impacted by greenhouse gas emissions). Switzerland had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 3.53/10, ranking it 150th globally out of 172 countries.\nSwitzerland ranked 9th in the Environmental Performance Index for 2024. It scored well in parameters including air pollution, sanitation and drinking water, waste management, and climate change mitigation.\nUrbanisation.\nAbout 85% of the population live in urban areas. Switzerland went from a largely rural country to an urban one from 1930 to 2000. After 1935 urban development claimed as much of the Swiss landscape as it did during the prior 2,000 years. Urban sprawl affects the plateau, the Jura and the Alpine foothills, raising concerns about land use. During the 21st century, population growth in urban areas is higher than in the countryside.\nSwitzerland has a dense network of complementary large, medium and small towns. The plateau is densely populated with about 400 people per km2 and the landscape shows uninterrupted signs of human presence. The weight of the largest metropolitan areas \u2013 Zurich, Geneva\u2013Lausanne, Basel and Bern \u2013 tend to increase. The importance of these urban areas is greater than their population suggests. These urban centers are recognised for their high quality of life.\nThe average population density in 2019 was . In the largest canton by area, Graub\u00fcnden, lying entirely in the Alps, population density falls to . In the canton of Zurich, with its large urban capital, the density is .\nGovernment and politics.\nThe Federal Constitution adopted in 1848 is the legal foundation of Switzerland's federal state. It is regularly modified by referendum and has been completely revised twice, in 1874 and 1999. The constitution outlines rights of individuals and citizen participation in public affairs, divides the powers between the confederation and the cantons and defines federal jurisdiction and authority. Three main bodies govern on the federal level: the Federal Assembly (legislative), the Federal Council (executive) and the federal courts (judicial).\nFederal Assembly.\nThe Federal Assembly is the parliament of Switzerland. It consists of two houses: The Council of States has 46 members, two from each canton and one from each half-canton. The National Council has 200 members, apportioned to reflect the population of each canton, and elected by proportional representation within each canton. Members of both houses serve for four years and work part-time (\"Milizsystem\"). When both houses are in joint session, they are known collectively as the Federal Assembly. Through optional referendums, citizens may challenge any law passed by parliament.\nFederal Council.\nThe Federal Council is the Swiss executive. It leads the federal administration and serves as a collective head of state. It is a collegial body of seven members, elected to four-year terms by the Federal Assembly, which oversees the council. Each member leads a department of the federal government. Each year, one member of the Council is elected President of the Confederation by the Assembly, with the presidency traditionally rotating between members. The President chairs and represents the government, but has no additional powers and remains the head of their department.\nThe government has been a coalition of the four major political parties since 1959, each party having a number of seats that roughly reflects its share of the electorate and representation in the federal parliament. This distribution is called the \"magic formula\". Since 2003, the seven seats in the Federal Council have been distributed as follows:\nSupreme Court.\nThe function of the Federal Supreme Court is to hear appeals against rulings of cantonal or federal courts. The judges are elected by the Federal Assembly for six-year terms.\nDirect democracy.\nDirect democracy and federalism are hallmarks of the Swiss political system defined in the Swiss constitution. The Swiss people are subject to three legal jurisdictions: the municipal, cantonal and federal levels. At the federal level, popular rights include the right to submit a federal initiative and a referendum, both of which may overturn parliamentary decisions.\nThere are three types of federal referendum in Switzerland: \nThe Federal Council and the Federal Assembly can supplement a popular initiative with a counterproposal. Voters must then indicate their preference if both proposals are accepted. \nCantons.\nThe Swiss Confederation consists of 26 cantons. The cantons are federated states, with permanent constitutional status and a high degree of independence relative to the subnational divisions of most countries. Under the Federal Constitution, all 26 cantons are equal in status, except that six (referred to often as the half-cantons) are represented by one councillor instead of two in the Council of States and have only half a cantonal vote with respect to the required cantonal majority in referendums on constitutional amendments. Each canton has its own constitution and its own parliament, government, police and courts. However, considerable differences define the individual cantons, particularly in terms of population and geographical area. Their populations vary between 16,003 (Appenzell Innerrhoden) and 1,487,969 (Zurich), and their area between (Basel-Stadt) and (Grisons).\nMunicipalities.\nAs of 2018 the cantons comprised 2,222 municipalities.\nFederal City.\nUntil 1848, the loosely coupled Confederation did not have a central political organisation. Issues thought to affect the whole Confederation were the subject of periodic meetings in various locations.\nIn 1848, the federal constitution provided that details concerning federal institutions, such as their locations, should be addressed by the Federal Assembly (BV 1848 Art. 108). Thus on 28 November 1848, the Federal Assembly voted in the majority to locate the seat of government in Bern and, as a prototypical federal compromise, to assign other federal institutions, such as the Federal Polytechnical School (1854, the later ETH) to Zurich, and other institutions to Lucerne, such as the later SUVA (1912) and the Federal Insurance Court (1917). Other federal institutions were subsequently attributed to Lausanne (Federal Supreme Court in 1872, and EPFL in 1969), Bellinzona (Federal Criminal Court, 2004), and St. Gallen (Federal Administrative Court and Federal Patent Court, 2012).\nThe 1999 Constitution does not mention a Federal City and the Federal Council has yet to address the matter. Thus no city in Switzerland has the \"official\" status either of capital or of Federal City. Nevertheless, Bern is commonly referred to as \"Federal City\" (, , ).\nForeign relations and international institutions.\nTraditionally, Switzerland avoids alliances that might entail military, political, or direct economic action and has been neutral since the end of its expansion in 1515. Its policy of neutrality was internationally recognised at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Swiss neutrality has been questioned at times. In 2002 Switzerland became a full member of the United Nations. It was the first state to join it by referendum. Switzerland maintains diplomatic relations with almost all countries and historically has served as an intermediary between other states. Switzerland is not a member of the European Union; the Swiss people have consistently rejected membership since the early 1990s. However, Switzerland does participate in the Schengen Area.\nMany international institutions have headquarters in Switzerland, in part because of its policy of neutrality. Geneva is the birthplace of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the Geneva Conventions and, since 2006, hosts the United Nations Human Rights Council. Even though Switzerland is one of the most recent countries to join the United Nations, the Palace of Nations in Geneva is the second biggest centre for the United Nations after the headquarters in New York. Switzerland was a founding member and hosted the League of Nations.\nApart from the United Nations headquarters, the Swiss Confederation is host to many UN agencies, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and about 200 other international organisations, including the World Trade Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization. The annual meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos bring together business and political leaders from Switzerland and foreign countries to discuss important issues. The headquarters of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) moved to Basel in 1930.\nMany sports federations and organisations are located in the country, including the International Handball Federation in Basel, the International Basketball Federation in Geneva, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) in Nyon, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) and the International Ice Hockey Federation both in Zurich, the International Cycling Union in Aigle, and the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne.\nSwitzerland became a member of the United Nations Security Council for the 2023\u20132024 period. According to the 2024 Global Peace Index, Switzerland is the 6th most peaceful country in the world.\nSwitzerland and the European Union.\nAlthough not a member, Switzerland maintains relationships with the EU and European countries through bilateral agreements. The Swiss have brought their economic practices largely into conformity with those of the EU, in an effort to compete internationally. EU membership faces considerable negative popular sentiment. It is opposed by the conservative SVP party, the largest party in the National Council, and not advocated by several other political parties. The membership application was formally withdrawn in 2016. The western French-speaking areas and the urban regions of the rest of the country tend to be more pro-EU, but do not form a significant share of the population.\nAn Integration Office operates under the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Economic Affairs. Seven bilateral agreements liberalised trade ties, taking effect in 2001. This first series of bilateral agreements included the free movement of persons. A second series of agreements covering nine areas was signed in 2004, including the Schengen Treaty and the Dublin Convention.\nIn 2006, a referendum approved 1 billion francs of supportive investment in Southern and Central European countries in support of positive ties to the EU as a whole. A further referendum will be needed to approve 300 million francs to support Romania and Bulgaria and their recent admission.\nThe Swiss have faced EU and international pressure to reduce banking secrecy and raise tax rates to parity with the EU. Preparatory discussions involved four areas: the electricity market, participation in project Galileo, cooperating with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and certificates of origin for food products.\nSwitzerland is a member of the Schengen passport-free zone. Land border checkpoints monitor goods movements, but not people.\nMilitary.\nThe Swiss Armed Forces, including the Land Forces and the Air Force, are composed mostly of conscripts, male citizens aged from 20 to 34 (in exceptional cases up to 50) years. Being a landlocked country, Switzerland has no navy; however, on lakes bordering neighbouring countries, armed boats patrol. Swiss citizens are prohibited from serving in foreign armies, except for the Swiss Guards of the Vatican, or if they are dual citizens of a foreign country and reside there.\nThe Swiss militia system stipulates that soldiers keep their army-issued equipment, including fully automatic personal weapons, at home. Women can serve voluntarily. Men usually receive military conscription orders for training at the age of 18. About two-thirds of young Swiss are found suitable for service; for the others, various forms of alternative service are available. Annually, approximately 20,000 persons are trained in recruit centres for 18 to 21 weeks. The reform \"Army XXI\" was adopted by popular vote in 2003, replacing \"Army 95\", reducing the rolls from 400,000 to about 200,000. Of those, 120,000 are active in periodic Army training, and 80,000 are non-training reserves.\nThe newest reform of the military, (WEA; English: Further development of the Army), started in 2018 and was expected to reduce the number of army personnel to 100,000 by the end of 2022.\nOverall, three general mobilisations have been declared to ensure the integrity and neutrality of Switzerland. The first mobilisation was held in response to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870\u201371; while the second was in response to the First World War outbreak in August 1914; the third mobilisation took place in September 1939 in response to the German attack on Poland.\nBecause of its neutrality policy, the Swiss army does not take part in armed conflicts in other countries but joins some peacekeeping missions. Since 2000 the armed force department has maintained the Onyx intelligence gathering system to monitor satellite communications.\nGun politics in Switzerland are unique in Europe in that 2\u20133.5\u00a0million guns are in the hands of civilians, giving the nation an estimate of 28\u201341 guns per 100 people. As per the Small Arms Survey, only 324,484 guns are owned by the military. Only 143,372 are in the hands of soldiers. However, ammunition is no longer issued.\nEconomy and labour law.\nSwitzerland has a stable, prosperous and high-tech economy. It is the world's wealthiest country per capita in multiple rankings. The country ranks as one of the least corrupt countries in the world, while its banking sector is rated as \"one of the most corrupt in the world\". It has the world's twentieth largest economy by nominal GDP and the thirty-eighth largest by purchasing power parity. As of 2021, it is the thirteenth largest exporter, and the fifth largest per capita. Zurich and Geneva are regarded as global cities, ranked as Alpha and Beta respectively. Basel is the capital of Switzerland's pharmaceutical industry, hosting Novartis, Roche, and many other players. It is one of the world's most important centres for the life sciences industry.\nSwitzerland had the second-highest global rating in the Index of Economic Freedom 2023, while also providing significant public services. On a per capita basis, nominal GDP is higher than those of the larger Western and Central European economies and Japan, while adjusted for purchasing power, Switzerland ranked 11th in 2017, fifth in 2018, and ninth in 2020.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nThe 2016 World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report ranked Switzerland's economy as the world's most competitive; as of 2019, it ranks fifth globally. The European Union labeled it Europe's most innovative country. Switzerland has been ranked the most innovative country in the Global Innovation Index in 2024, as it had done in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019. It ranked 20th of 189 countries in the Ease of Doing Business Index. Switzerland's slow growth in the 1990s and the early 2000s increased support for economic reforms and harmonisation with the European Union. In 2020, IMD placed Switzerland first in attracting skilled workers.\nFor much of the 20th century, Switzerland was the wealthiest country in Europe by a considerable margin (per capita GDP). Switzerland has one of the world's largest account balances as a percentage of GDP. In 2018, the canton of Basel-City had the highest GDP per capita, ahead of Zug and Geneva. According to Credit Suisse, only about 37% of residents own their own homes, one of the lowest rates of home ownership in Europe. Housing and food price levels were 171% and 145% of the EU-25 index in 2007, compared to 113% and 104% in Germany.\nSwitzerland is home to several large multinational corporations. The largest by revenue are Glencore, Gunvor, Nestl\u00e9, Mediterranean Shipping Company, Novartis, Hoffmann-La Roche, ABB, Mercuria Energy Group and Adecco. Also, notable are UBS, Zurich Insurance, Richemont, Credit Suisse, Barry Callebaut, Swiss Re, Rolex, Tetra Pak, Swatch Group and Swiss International Air Lines.\nSwitzerland's most important economic sector is manufacturing. Manufactured products include specialty chemicals, health and pharmaceutical goods, scientific and precision measuring instruments and musical instruments. The largest exported goods are chemicals (34% of exported goods), machines/electronics (20.9%), and precision instruments/watches (16.9%). The service sector \u2013 especially banking and insurance, commodities trading, tourism, and international organisations \u2013 is another important industry for Switzerland. Exported services amount to a third of exports.\nAgricultural protectionism\u2014a rare exception to Switzerland's free trade policies\u2014contributes to high food prices. Product market liberalisation is lagging behind many EU countries according to the OECD. Apart from agriculture, economic and trade barriers between the European Union and Switzerland are minimal, and Switzerland has free trade agreements with many countries. Switzerland is a member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).\nSwitzerland is considered as the \"land of Cooperatives\" with the ten largest cooperative companies accounting for more than 11% of GDP in 2018. They include Migros and Coop, the two largest retail companies in Switzerland.\nTaxation and government spending.\nSwitzerland is a tax haven. The private sector economy dominates. It features low tax rates; tax revenue to GDP ratio is one of the smallest of developed countries. The Swiss Federal budget reached 62.8 billion Swiss francs in 2010, 11.35% of GDP; however, canton and municipality budgets are not counted as part of the federal budget. Total government spending is closer to 33.8% of GDP. The main sources of income for the federal government are the value-added tax (33% of tax revenue) and the direct federal tax (29%). The main areas of expenditure are in social welfare and finance/taxes. The expenditures of the Swiss Confederation have been growing from 7% of GDP in 1960 to 9.7% in 1990 and 10.7% in 2010. While the social welfare and finance sectors and tax grew from 35% in 1990 to 48.2% in 2010, a significant reduction of expenditures has been occurring in agriculture and national defence; from 26.5% to 12.4% (estimation for the year 2015).\nLabour force.\nSlightly more than 5 million people work in Switzerland; about 25% of employees belonged to a trade union in 2004. Switzerland has a more flexible labor market than neighbouring countries and the unemployment rate is consistently low. The unemployment rate increased from 1.7% in June 2000 to 4.4% in December 2009. It then decreased to 3.2% in 2014 and held steady for several years, before further dropping to 2.5% in 2018 and 2.3% in 2019; in 2023 it had reached a 20-year low of 2%. Population growth (from net immigration) reached 0.52% of population in 2004, increased in the following years before falling to 0.54% again in 2017. The foreign citizen population was 28.9% in 2015, about the same as in Australia.\nIn 2016, the median monthly gross income in Switzerland was 6,502 francs per month (equivalent to US$6,597 per month). After rent, taxes and pension contributions, plus spending on goods and services, the average household has about 15% of its gross income left for savings. Though 61% of the population made less than the mean income, income inequality is relatively low with a Gini coefficient of 29.7, placing Switzerland among the top 20 countries. In 2015, the richest 1% owned 35% of the wealth. Wealth inequality increased through 2019.\nAbout 8.2% of the population live below the national poverty line, defined in Switzerland as earning less than CHF3,990 per month for a household of two adults and two children, and a further 15% are at risk of poverty. Single-parent families, those with no post-compulsory education and those out of work are among the most likely to live below the poverty line. Although work is considered a way out of poverty, some 4.3% are considered working poor. One in ten jobs in Switzerland is considered low-paid; roughly 12% of Swiss workers hold such jobs, many of them women and foreigners.\nEducation and science.\nEducation in Switzerland is diverse, because the constitution of Switzerland delegates the operation for the school system to the cantons. Public and private schools are available, including many private international schools.\nPrimary education.\nThe minimum age for primary school is about six years, but most cantons provide a free \"children's school\" starting at age four or five. Primary school continues until grade four, five or six, depending on the school. Traditionally, the first foreign language in school was one of the other Swiss languages, although in 2000, English was elevated in a few cantons. At the end of primary school or at the beginning of secondary school, pupils are assigned according to their capacities into one of several sections (often three). The fastest learners are taught advanced classes to prepare for further studies and the matura, while other students receive an education adapted to their needs.\nTertiary education.\nSwitzerland hosts 12 universities, ten of which are maintained at cantonal level and usually offer non-technical subjects. It ranked 87th on the 2019 Academic Ranking of World Universities. The largest is the University of Zurich with nearly 25,000 students. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) and the University of Zurich are listed 20th and 54th respectively, on the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities.\nThe federal government sponsors two institutes: the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) in Zurich, founded in 1855 and the (EPFL) in Lausanne, founded in 1969, formerly associated with the University of Lausanne.\nEight of the world's ten best hotel schools are located in Switzerland. In addition, various universities of applied sciences are available. In business and management studies, the University of St. Gallen, (HSG) is ranked 329th in the world according to QS World University Rankings and the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), was ranked first in open programmes worldwide\".\" Switzerland has the second highest rate (almost 18% in 2003) of foreign students in tertiary education, after Australia (slightly over 18%).\nThe Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, located in Geneva, is continental Europe's oldest graduate school of international and development studies. It is widely held to be one of its most prestigious.\nScience.\nSwitzerland is among the countries with the highest number of Nobel laureates, both in total and per capita; of the 28 Swiss nationals who have won the Nobel Prize, 23 were recognised in the sciences. Among the most famous is Albert Einstein, who became a Swiss citizen in 1901 and developed his theory of special relativity in Bern. Among the Nobel laureates born or nautralised in Switzerland are Vladimir Prelog, Heinrich Rohrer, Richard Ernst, Edmond Fischer, Rolf Zinkernagel, Kurt W\u00fcthrich and Jacques Dubochet. Over 100 laureates across all fields have a relationship to Switzerland. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded nine times to organisations headquartered in Switzerland.\nGeneva and the nearby French department of Ain co-host the world's largest laboratory, CERN, dedicated to particle physics research. Another important research centre is the Paul Scherrer Institute, which conducts multi-disciplinary research in the natural and engineering sciences. \nNotable Swiss inventions include lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), diazepam (Valium), Velcro, and the scanning tunnelling microscope (which earned inventors Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics. Auguste Piccard became the first person to enter the Stratosphere with his pressurised hydrogen ballon, while his son Jacques Piccard became one of the first people to explore the deepest known part of the world's ocean (along with American Don Walsh).\nThe Swiss Space Office has been involved in various space technologies and programmes. It was one of the 10 founders of the European Space Agency in 1975 and is the seventh largest contributor to the ESA budget. In the private sector, several companies participate in the space industry, such as Oerlikon Space and Maxon Motors.\nEnergy.\nElectricity generated in Switzerland is 56% from hydroelectricity and 39% from nuclear power, producing negligible CO2. On 18 May 2003, two anti-nuclear referendums were defeated: \"Moratorium Plus\", aimed at forbidding the building of new nuclear power plants (41.6% supported), and Electricity Without Nuclear (33.7% supported) after a moratorium expired in 2000. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, in 2011 the government announced plans to end the use of nuclear energy in the following 20 to 30 years. In November 2016, Swiss voters rejected a Green Party referendum to accelerate the phaseout of nuclear power (45.8% supported). The Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) is responsible for energy supply and energy use within the Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC). The agency supports the 2000-watt society initiative to cut the nation's energy use by more than half by 2050.\nTransport.\nThe densest rail network in Europe spans and carried 614 million passengers in 2023. In 2015, each Swiss resident travelled on average by rail, more than any other European country. Virtually 100% of the network is electrified. 60% of the network is operated by the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB\u00a0CFF\u00a0FFS). Besides the second largest standard gauge railway company, BLS AG, two railways companies operate on narrow gauge networks: the Rhaetian Railway (RhB) in Graub\u00fcnden, which includes some World Heritage lines, and the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn (MGB), which co-operates with RhB the Glacier Express between Zermatt and St. Moritz/Davos. Switzerland operates the world's longest and deepest railway tunnel and the first flat, low-level route through the Alps, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the largest part of the New Railway Link through the Alps (NRLA) project.\nSwitzerland has a publicly managed, toll-free road network financed by highway permits as well as vehicle and petrol taxes. The Swiss autobahn/autoroute system requires the annual purchase of a vignette (toll sticker)\u2014for 40 Swiss francs\u2014to use its roadways, including passenger cars and trucks. The Swiss autobahn/autoroute network stretches for and has one of the highest motorway densities in the world.\nZurich Airport is Switzerland's largest international flight gateway; it handled 22.8\u00a0million passengers in 2012. The other international airports are Geneva Airport (13.9\u00a0million passengers in 2012), EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg (located in France), Bern Airport, Lugano Airport, St. Gallen-Altenrhein Airport and Sion Airport. Swiss International Air Lines is the flag carrier. Its main hub is Zurich, but it is legally domiciled in Basel.\nEnvironment.\nSwitzerland has one of the best environmental records among developed nations. It is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol. With Mexico and South Korea, it forms the Environmental Integrity Group (EIG).\nThe country is active in recycling and anti-littering programs and is one of the world's top recyclers, recovering 66% to 96% of recyclable materials, varying across the country. The 2014 Global Green Economy Index placed Switzerland among the top 10 green economies.\nSwitzerland has an economic system for garbage disposal, which is based mostly on recycling and energy-producing incinerators. As in other European countries, the illegal disposal of garbage is heavily fined. In almost all Swiss municipalities, mandatory stickers or dedicated garbage bags allow the identification of disposable garbage.\nDemographics.\nIn common with other developed countries, the Swiss population increased rapidly during the industrial era, quadrupling between 1800 and 1990, and it has continued to grow.\nThe population is about 9 million (2023 est.). Population growth is projected to continue to 2035, due mostly to immigration. Like most of Europe, Switzerland faces an ageing population, with a fertility rate close to replacement level. Switzerland has one of the world's oldest populations, with an average age of 44.5 years.\nAccording to the World Factbook, ethnic groups in Switzerland are as follows: Swiss 69.2%, German 4.2%, Italian 3.2%, Portuguese 2.5%, French 2.1%, Kosovan 1.1%, Turkish 1%, other 16.7% (2020 est). The Council of Europe figures suggest a population of around 30,000 Romani people in the country.\nImmigration.\nIn 2023, resident foreigners made up 26.3% of Switzerland's population. Most of these (83%) were from European countries. Italy provided the largest single group of foreigners, providing 14.7% of total foreign population, followed closely by Germany (14.0%), Portugal (11.7%), France (6.6%), Kosovo (5.1%), Spain (3.9%), Turkey (3.1%), North Macedonia (3.1%), Serbia (2.8%), Austria (2.0%), United Kingdom (1.9%), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1.3%) and Croatia (1.3%). Immigrants from Sri Lanka (1.3%), most of them former Tamil refugees, were the largest group of Asian origin (7.9%).\n2021 figures show that 39.5% (compared to 34.7% in 2012) of the permanent resident population aged 15 or over (around 2.89\u00a0million), had an immigrant background. 38% of the population with an immigrant background (1.1\u00a0million) held Swiss citizenship.\nIn the 2000s, domestic and international institutions expressed concern about what was perceived as an increase in xenophobia. In reply to one critical report, the Federal Council noted that \"racism unfortunately is present in Switzerland\", but stated that the high proportion of foreign citizens in the country, as well as the generally successful integration of foreigners, underlined Switzerland's openness. A follow-up study conducted in 2018 reported that 59% considered racism a serious problem in Switzerland. The proportion of the population that claimed to have been targeted by racial discrimination increased from 10% in 2014 to almost 17% in 2018, according to the Federal Statistical Office.\nLargest cities.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nLanguages.\nSwitzerland has four national languages: mainly German (spoken natively by 62.8% of the population in 2016); French (22.9%) spoken natively in the west; and Italian (8.2%) spoken natively in the south. The fourth national language, Romansh (0.5%), is a Romance language spoken locally in the southeastern trilingual canton of Grisons, and is designated by Article 4 of the Federal Constitution as a national language along with German, French, and Italian. In Article 70 it is mentioned as an official language if the authorities communicate with persons who speak Romansh. However, federal laws and other official acts do not need to be decreed in Romansh.\nIn 2016, the languages most spoken at home among permanent residents aged 15 and older were Swiss German (59.4%), French (23.5%), Standard German (10.6%), and Italian (8.5%). Other languages spoken at home included English (5.0%), Portuguese (3.8%), Albanian (3.0%), Spanish (2.6%) and Serbian and Croatian (2.5%). 6.9% reported speaking another language at home. In 2014 almost two-thirds (64.4%) of the permanent resident population indicated speaking more than one language regularly.\nThe federal government is obliged to communicate in the official languages, and in the federal parliament simultaneous translation is provided from and into German, French and Italian.\nAside from the official forms of their respective languages, the four linguistic regions of Switzerland also have local dialectal forms. The role played by dialects in each linguistic region varies dramatically: in German-speaking regions, Swiss German dialects have become more prevalent since the second half of the 20th century, especially in the media, and are used as an everyday language for many, while the Swiss variety of Standard German is almost always used instead of dialect for written communication (cf. diglossic usage of a language). Conversely, in the French-speaking regions, local Franco-Proven\u00e7al dialects have almost disappeared (only 6.3% of the population of Valais, 3.9% of Fribourg, and 3.1% of Jura still spoke dialects at the end of the 20th century), while in the Italian-speaking regions, the use of Lombard dialects is mostly limited to family settings and casual conversation.\nThe principal official languages have terms not used outside of Switzerland, known as Helvetisms. German Helvetisms are, roughly speaking, a large group of words typical of Swiss Standard German that do not appear in Standard German, nor in other German dialects. These include terms from Switzerland's surrounding language cultures (German \"Billett\" from French), from similar terms in another language (Italian \"azione\" used not only as \"act\" but also as \"discount\" from German \"Aktion\"). Swiss French, while generally close to the French of France, also contains some Helvetisms. The most frequent characteristics of Helvetisms are in vocabulary, phrases, and pronunciation, although certain Helvetisms denote themselves as special in syntax and orthography. Duden, the comprehensive German dictionary, contains about 3000 Helvetisms. Current French dictionaries, such as the Petit Larousse, include several hundred Helvetisms; notably, Swiss French uses different terms than that of France for the numbers 70 (\"septante\") and 90 (\"nonante\") and often 80 (\"huitante\") as well.\nLearning one of the other national languages is compulsory for all Swiss pupils, hence many Swiss are supposed to be at least bilingual, especially those belonging to linguistic minority groups. Because the largest part of Switzerland is German-speaking, many French, Italian, and Romansh speakers migrating to the rest of Switzerland and the children of those non-German-speaking Swiss born within the rest of Switzerland speak German. While learning one of the other national languages at school is important, most Swiss learn English to communicate with Swiss speakers of other languages, as it is perceived as a neutral means of communication. English often functions as the de facto lingua franca.\nHealth.\nSwiss residents are required to buy health insurance from private insurance companies, which in turn are required to accept every applicant. While the cost of the system is among the highest, its health outcomes compare well with other European countries; patients have been reported as in general, highly satisfied with it. In 2012, life expectancy at birth was 80.4 years for men and 84.7 years for women \u2013 the world's highest. However, spending on health at 11.4% of GDP (2010) is on par with Germany and France (11.6%) and other European countries, but notably less than the US (17.6%). From 1990, costs steadily increased.\nIt is estimated that one out of six Swiss persons suffers from mental illness.\nAccording to a survey conducted by Addiction Switzerland, fourteen per cent of men and 6.5% of women between 20 and 24 reported consuming cannabis in the past 30 days in 2020, and 4 Swiss cities were listed among the top 10 European cities for cocaine use as measured in wastewater, down from 5 in 2018.\nCulture.\nSwiss culture is characterised by diversity, which is reflected in diverse traditional customs. A region may be in some ways culturally connected to the neighbouring country that shares its language, all rooted in western European culture. The linguistically isolated Romansh culture in Graub\u00fcnden in eastern Switzerland constitutes an exception. It survives only in the upper valleys of the Rhine and the Inn and strives to maintain its rare linguistic tradition.\nSwitzerland is home to notable contributors to literature, art, architecture, music and sciences. In addition, the country attracted creatives during times of unrest or war. Some 1000 museums are found in the country.\nAmong the most important cultural performances held annually are the Pal\u00e9o Festival, Lucerne Festival, the Montreux Jazz Festival, the Locarno International Film Festival and Art Basel.\nAlpine symbolism played an essential role in shaping Swiss history and the Swiss national identity. Many alpine areas and ski resorts attract visitors for winter sports as well as hiking and mountain biking in summer. The quieter seasons are spring and autumn. A traditional pastoral culture predominates in many areas, and small farms are omnipresent in rural areas. Folk art is nurtured in organisations across the country. Switzerland most directly in appears in music, dance, poetry, wood carving, and embroidery. The alphorn, a trumpet-like musical instrument made of wood has joined yodeling and the accordion as epitomes of traditional Swiss music.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nChristianity is the predominant religion according to national surveys of Swiss Federal Statistical Office (about 67% of resident population in 2016\u20132018 and 75% of Swiss citizens), divided between the Catholic Church (35.8% of the population), the Swiss Reformed Church (23.8%), further Protestant churches (2.2%), Eastern Orthodoxy (2.5%), and other Christian denominations (2.2%).\nSwitzerland has no official state religion, though most of the cantons (except Geneva and Neuch\u00e2tel) recognise official churches, either the Catholic Church or the Swiss Reformed Church. These churches, and in some cantons the Old Catholic Church and Jewish congregations, are financed by official taxation of members. In 2020, the Roman Catholic Church had 3,048,475 registered and church tax paying members (corresponding to 35.2% of the total population), while the Swiss Reformed Church had 2,015,816 members (23.3% of the total population).\n26.3% of Swiss permanent residents are not affiliated with a religious community.\nAs of 2020, according to a national survey conducted by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, Christian minority communities included Neo-Pietism (0.5%), Pentecostalism (0.4%, mostly incorporated in the Schweizer Pfingstmission), Apostolic communities (0.3%), other Protestant denominations (1.1%, including Methodism), the Old Catholic Church (0.1%), other Christian denominations (0.3%). Non-Christian religions are Islam (5.3%), Hinduism (0.6%), Buddhism (0.5%), Judaism (0.25%) and others (0.4%).\nHistorically, the country was about evenly balanced between Catholic and Protestant, in a complex patchwork. During the Reformation Switzerland became home to many reformers. Geneva converted to Protestantism in 1536, just before John Calvin arrived. In 1541, he founded the \"Republic of Geneva\" on his own ideals. It became known internationally as the \"Protestant Rome\" and housed such reformers as Theodore Beza, William Farel or Pierre Viret. Zurich became another reform stronghold around the same time, with Huldrych Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger taking the lead. Anabaptists Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel also operated there. They were later joined by the fleeing Peter Martyr Vermigli and Hans Denck. Other centres included Basel (Andreas Karlstadt and Johannes Oecolampadius), Bern (Berchtold Haller and Niklaus Manuel), and St. Gallen (Joachim Vadian). One canton, Appenzell, was officially divided into Catholic and Protestant sections in 1597. The larger cities and their cantons (Bern, Geneva, Lausanne, Zurich and Basel) used to be predominantly Protestant. Central Switzerland, the Valais, the Ticino, Appenzell Innerrhodes, the Jura, and Fribourg are traditionally Catholic.\nThe Swiss Constitution of 1848, under the recent impression of the clashes of Catholic vs Protestant cantons that culminated in the Sonderbundskrieg, consciously defines a consociational state, allowing the peaceful co-existence of Catholics and Protestants. A 1980 initiative calling for the complete separation of church and state was rejected by 78.9% of the voters. Some traditionally Protestant cantons and cities nowadays have a slight Catholic majority, because since about 1970 a steadily growing minority were not affiliated with any religious body (21.4% in Switzerland, 2012) especially in traditionally Protestant regions, such as Basel-City (42%), canton of Neuch\u00e2tel (38%), canton of Geneva (35%), canton of Vaud (26%), or Zurich city (city: >25%; canton: 23%).\nLiterature.\nThe earliest forms of literature were in German, reflecting the language's early predominance. In the 18th century, French became fashionable in Bern and elsewhere, while the influence of the French-speaking allies and subject lands increased.\nAmong the classic authors of Swiss literature are Jeremias Gotthelf (1797\u20131854) and Gottfried Keller (1819\u20131890); later writers are Max Frisch (1911\u20131991) and Friedrich D\u00fcrrenmatt (1921\u20131990), whose (\"\") was released as a Hollywood film in 2001, starring Jack Nicholson.\nFamous French-speaking writers were Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712\u20131778) and Germaine de Sta\u00ebl (1766\u20131817). More recent authors include Charles Ferdinand Ramuz (1878\u20131947), whose novels describe the lives of peasants and mountain dwellers, set in a harsh environment, and Blaise Cendrars (born Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Sauser, 1887\u20131961). Italian and Romansh-speaking authors also contributed to the Swiss literary landscape, generally in proportion to their number.\nProbably the most famous Swiss literary creation, \"Heidi\", the story of an orphan girl who lives with her grandfather in the Alps, is one of the most popular children's books and has come to be a symbol of Switzerland. Her creator, Johanna Spyri (1827\u20131901), wrote a number of books on similar themes.\nMedia.\nFreedom of the press and the right to free expression is guaranteed in the constitution. The Swiss News Agency (SNA) broadcasts information in three of the four national languages\u2014on politics, economics, society and culture. The SNA supplies almost all Swiss media and foreign media with its reporting.\nIn Switzerland, the most influential newspapers include the German-language and \"Neue Z\u00fcrcher Zeitung\", as well as the French-language \"Le Temps\". Additionally, almost every city has at least one local newspaper published in the predominant local language.\nThe government exerts greater control over broadcast media than print media, especially due to financing and licensing. The Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, whose name was recently changed to SRG SSR, is charged with the production and distribution of radio and television content. SRG SSR studios are distributed across the various language regions. Radio content is produced in six central and four regional studios while video media are produced in Geneva, Zurich, Basel, and Lugano. An extensive cable network allows most Swiss to access content from neighbouring countries.\nSports.\nSkiing, snowboarding and mountaineering are among the most popular sports, reflecting the nature of the country Winter sports are practised by natives and visitors. The bobsleigh was invented in St. Moritz. The first world ski championships were held in M\u00fcrren (1931) and St. Moritz (1934). The latter town hosted the second Winter Olympic Games in 1928 and the fifth edition in 1948. Among its most successful skiers and world champions are Pirmin Zurbriggen and Didier Cuche.\nThe most prominently watched sports in Switzerland are football and ice hockey.\nThe headquarters of the international football's and ice hockey's governing bodies, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) and International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) are located in Zurich. Many other headquarters of international sports federations are located in Switzerland. For example, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), IOC's Olympic Museum and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) are located in Lausanne.\nSwitzerland hosted the 1954 FIFA World Cup and was the joint host, with Austria, of the UEFA Euro 2008 tournament. The Swiss Super League is the nation's professional football club league. Europe's highest football pitch, at above sea level, is located in Switzerland, the \"Ottmar Hitzfeld Stadium\".\nMany Swiss follow ice hockey and support one of the 12 teams of the National League, which is the most attended league in Europe. In 2009, Switzerland hosted the IIHF World Championship for the tenth time. It also became World Vice-Champion in 2013 and 2018. Its numerous lakes make Switzerland an attractive sailing destination. The largest, Lake Geneva, is the home of the sailing team Alinghi which was the first European team to win the America's Cup in 2003 and which successfully defended the title in 2007.\nSwiss tennis player Roger Federer is widely regarded as among the sport's greatest players. He won 20 Grand Slam tournaments overall including a record 8 Wimbledon titles. He won six ATP Finals. He was ranked no. 1 in the ATP rankings for a record 237 consecutive weeks. He ended 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009 ranked no. 1. Fellow Swiss players Martina Hingis and Stan Wawrinka also won multiple Grand Slam titles. Switzerland won the Davis Cup title in 2014.\nMotorsport racecourses and events were banned in Switzerland following the 1955 Le Mans disaster with exceptions for events such as hillclimbing. The country continued to produce successful racing drivers such as Clay Regazzoni, S\u00e9bastien Buemi, Jo Siffert, Dominique Aegerter, successful World Touring Car Championship driver Alain Menu, 2014 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Marcel F\u00e4ssler and 2015 24 Hours N\u00fcrburgring winner Nico M\u00fcller. Switzerland also won the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport in 2007\u201308 with driver Neel Jani. Swiss motorcycle racer Thomas L\u00fcthi won the 2005 MotoGP World Championship in the 125cc category. In June 2007 the Swiss National Council, one house of the Federal Assembly of Switzerland, voted to overturn the ban, however the other house, the Swiss Council of States rejected the change and the ban remains in place.\nTraditional sports include Swiss wrestling or , a tradition from the rural central cantons and considered the national sport by some. Hornussen is another indigenous Swiss sport, which is like a cross between baseball and golf. is the Swiss variant of stone put, a competition in throwing a heavy stone. Practised only among the alpine population since prehistoric times, it is recorded to have taken place in Basel in the 13th century. It is central to the Unspunnenfest, first held in 1805, with its symbol the 83.5 stone named .\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine is multifaceted. While dishes such as fondue, raclette or r\u00f6sti are omnipresent, each region developed its gastronomy according to the varieties of climate and language, for example, , engl.: sliced meat Zurich style. Traditional Swiss cuisine uses ingredients similar to those in other European countries, as well as unique dairy products and cheeses such as Gruy\u00e8re or Emmental, produced in the valleys of Gruy\u00e8res and Emmental. The number of fine-dining establishments is high, particularly in western Switzerland.\nChocolate has been made in Switzerland since the 18th century. Its reputation grew at the end of the 19th century with the invention of modern techniques such as conching and tempering, which enabled higher quality. Another breakthrough was the invention of solid milk chocolate in 1875 by Daniel Peter. The Swiss are the world's largest chocolate consumers.\nThe most popular alcoholic drink is wine. Switzerland is notable for its variety of grape varieties, reflecting the large variations in terroirs. Swiss wine is produced mainly in Valais, Vaud (Lavaux), Geneva and Ticino, with a small majority of white wines. Vineyards have been cultivated in Switzerland since the Roman era, even though traces of a more ancient origin can be found. The most widespread varieties are the Chasselas (called Fendant in Valais) and Pinot Noir. Merlot is the main variety produced in Ticino.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "17926": "League of Nations\n20th-century international organisation, predecessor to the United Nations\nThe League of Nations (LN or LoN; , SdN) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. The main organisation ceased operations on 18 April 1946 when many of its components were relocated into the new United Nations (UN) which was created in the aftermath of the Second World War. As the template for modern global governance, the League profoundly shaped the modern world.\nThe League's primary goals were stated in its eponymous Covenant. They included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration. Its other concerns included labour conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, human and drug trafficking, the arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in Europe. The Covenant of the League of Nations was signed on 28 June 1919 as Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, and it became effective with the rest of the Treaty on 10 January 1920. Australia was granted the right to participate as an autonomous member nation, marking the start of Australian independence on the global stage. The first meeting of the Council of the League took place on 16 January 1920, and the first meeting of the Assembly of the League took place on 15 November 1920. In 1919, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role as the leading architect of the League.\nThe diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift from the preceding hundred years. The League lacked its own armed force and depended on the victorious Allied Powers of World War I (Britain, France, Italy and Japan were the initial permanent members of the Council) to enforce its resolutions, keep to its economic sanctions, or provide an army when needed. The Great Powers were often reluctant to do so. Sanctions could hurt League members, so they were reluctant to comply with them. During the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, when the League accused Italian soldiers of targeting International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement medical tents, Benito Mussolini responded that \"the League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out.\"\nAt its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935, it had 58 members. After some notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930s. Its credibility was weakened because the United States never joined. Japan and Germany left in 1933, Italy left in 1937, and Spain left in 1939. The Soviet Union only joined in 1934 and was expelled in 1939 after invading Finland. Furthermore, the League demonstrated an irresolute approach to sanction enforcement for fear it might only spark further conflict, further decreasing its credibility. One example of this hesitancy was the Abyssinia Crisis, in which Italy's sanctions were only limited from the outset (coal and oil were not restricted), and later altogether abandoned despite Italy being declared the aggressors in the conflict. The onset of the Second World War in 1939 showed that the League had failed its primary purpose: to prevent another world war. It was largely inactive until its abolition. The League lasted for 26 years; the United Nations effectively replaced it in 1945, inheriting several agencies and organisations founded by the League, with the League itself formally dissolving the following year.\nCurrent scholarly consensus views that, even though the League failed to achieve its main goal of world peace, it did manage to build new roads towards expanding the rule of law across the globe; strengthened the concept of collective security, gave a voice to smaller nations; fostered economic stabilisation and financial stability, especially in Central Europe in the 1920s; helped to raise awareness of problems such as epidemics, slavery, child labour, colonial tyranny, refugee crises and general working conditions through its numerous commissions and committees; and paved the way for new forms of statehood, as the mandate system put the colonial powers under international observation. Professor David Kennedy portrays the League as a unique moment when international affairs were \"institutionalised\", as opposed to the pre\u2013First World War methods of law and politics.\nOrigins.\nBackground.\nThe concept of a peaceful community of nations had been proposed as early as 1795, when Immanuel Kant's \"\" outlined the idea of a league of nations to control conflict and promote peace between states. Kant argued for the establishment of a peaceful world community, not in a sense of a global government, but in the hope that each state would declare itself a free state that respects its citizens and welcomes foreign visitors as fellow rational beings, thus promoting peaceful society worldwide. International co-operation to promote collective security originated in the Concert of Europe that developed after the Napoleonic Wars in the 19th century in an attempt to maintain the \"status quo\" between European states and so avoid war.\nBy 1910, international law developed, with the first Geneva Conventions establishing laws dealing with humanitarian relief during wartime, and the international Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 governing rules of war and the peaceful settlement of international disputes. Theodore Roosevelt at the acceptance for his Nobel Prize in 1910, said: \"it would be a masterstroke if those great powers honestly bent on peace would form a League of Peace.\"\nOne small forerunner of the League of Nations, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), was formed by the peace activists William Randal Cremer and Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Passy in 1889 (and still exists as an international body focused on the world's various elected legislative bodies). The IPU was founded with an international scope, with a third of the members of parliaments (in the 24 countries that had parliaments) serving as members of the IPU by 1914. Its foundational aims were to encourage governments to solve international disputes by peaceful means. Annual conferences were established to help governments refine the process of international arbitration. Its structure was designed as a council headed by a president, which would later be reflected in the structure of the League.\nPlans and proposals.\nAt the start of the First World War, the first schemes for an international organisation to prevent future wars began to gain considerable public support, particularly in Great Britain and the United States. Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, a British political scientist, coined the term \"League of Nations\" in 1914 and drafted a scheme for its organisation. Together with Lord Bryce, he played a leading role in the founding of the group of internationalist pacifists known as the Bryce Group, later the League of Nations Union. The group became steadily more influential among the public and as a pressure group within the then-governing Liberal Party. In Dickinson's 1915 pamphlet \"After the War\" he wrote of his \"League of Peace\" as being essentially an organisation for arbitration and conciliation. He felt that the secret diplomacy of the early twentieth century had brought about war, and thus, could write that, \"the impossibility of war, I believe, would be increased in proportion as the issues of foreign policy should be known to and controlled by public opinion.\" The 'Proposals' of the Bryce Group were circulated widely, both in England and the US, where they had a profound influence on the nascent international movement.\nIn January 1915, a peace conference directed by Jane Addams was held in the neutral United States. The delegates adopted a platform calling for creation of international bodies with administrative and legislative powers to develop a \"permanent league of neutral nations\" to work for peace and disarmament. Within months, a call was made for an international women's conference to be held in The Hague. Coordinated by Mia Boissevain, Aletta Jacobs and Rosa Manus, the congress, which opened on 28 April 1915 was attended by 1,136 participants from neutral nations, and resulted in the establishment of an organisation which would become the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). At the close of the conference, two delegations of women were dispatched to meet European heads of state over the next several months. They secured agreement from reluctant foreign ministers, who overall felt that such a body would be ineffective, but agreed to participate in or not impede creation of a neutral mediating body, if other nations agreed and if President Woodrow Wilson would initiate a body. In the midst of the War, Wilson refused.\nIn 1915, a body similar to the Bryce Group was set up in the United States, led by former president William Howard Taft. It was called the League to Enforce Peace. It advocated the use of arbitration in conflict resolution and the imposition of sanctions on aggressive countries. None of these early organisations envisioned a continuously functioning body; with the exception of the Fabian Society in England, they maintained a legalistic approach that would limit the international body to a court of justice. The Fabians were the first to argue for a \"council\" of states, necessarily the Great Powers, who would adjudicate world affairs, and for the creation of a permanent secretariat to enhance international co-operation across a range of activities.\nIn the course of the diplomatic efforts surrounding World War I, both sides had to clarify their long-term war aims. By 1916 in Britain, fighting on the side of the Allies, and in the neutral United States, long-range thinkers had begun to design a unified international organisation to prevent future wars. Historian Peter Yearwood argues that when the new coalition government of David Lloyd George took power in December 1916, there was widespread discussion among intellectuals and diplomats of the desirability of establishing such an organisation. When Lloyd George was challenged by Wilson to state his position with an eye on the postwar situation, he endorsed such an organisation. Wilson himself included in his Fourteen Points in January 1918 a \"league of nations to ensure peace and justice.\" British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, argued that, as a condition of durable peace, \"behind international law, and behind all treaty arrangements for preventing or limiting hostilities, some form of international sanction should be devised which would give pause to the hardiest aggressor.\"\nThe war had had a profound impact, affecting the social, political and economic systems of Europe and inflicting psychological and physical damage. Several empires collapsed: first the Russian Empire in February 1917, followed by the German Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empire. Anti-war sentiment rose across the world; the First World War was described as \"the war to end all wars\", and its possible causes were vigorously investigated. The causes identified included arms races, alliances, militaristic nationalism, secret diplomacy, and the freedom of sovereign states to enter into war for their own benefit. One proposed remedy was the creation of an international organisation whose aim was to prevent future war through disarmament, open diplomacy, international co-operation, restrictions on the right to wage war, and penalties that made war unattractive.\nIn London Balfour commissioned the first official report into the matter in early 1918, under the initiative of Lord Robert Cecil. The British committee was finally appointed in February 1918. It was led by Walter Phillimore (and became known as the Phillimore Committee), but also included Eyre Crowe, William Tyrrell, and Cecil Hurst. The recommendations of the so-called Phillimore Commission included the establishment of a \"Conference of Allied States\" that would arbitrate disputes and impose sanctions on offending states. The proposals were approved by the British government, and much of the commission's results were later incorporated into the Covenant of the League of Nations.\nThe French authorities also drafted a much more far-reaching proposal in June 1918; they advocated annual meetings of a council to settle all disputes, as well as an \"international army\" to enforce its decisions.\nAmerican President Woodrow Wilson instructed Edward M. House to draft a US plan which reflected Wilson's own idealistic views (first articulated in the Fourteen Points of January 1918), as well as the work of the Phillimore Commission. The outcome of House's work and Wilson's own first draft proposed the termination of \"unethical\" state behaviour, including forms of espionage and dishonesty. Methods of compulsion against recalcitrant states would include severe measures, such as \"blockading and closing the frontiers of that power to commerce or intercourse with any part of the world and to use any force that may be necessary...\"\nThe two principal drafters and architects of the covenant of the League of Nations were the British politician Lord Robert Cecil and the South African statesman Jan Smuts. Smuts's proposals included the creation of a council of the great powers as permanent members and a non-permanent selection of the minor states. He also proposed the creation of a mandate system for captured colonies of the Central Powers during the war. Cecil focused on the administrative side and proposed annual council meetings and quadrennial meetings for the Assembly of all members. He also argued for a large and permanent secretariat to carry out the League's administrative duties.\nAccording to historian Patricia Clavin, Cecil and the British continued their leadership of the development of a rules-based global order into the 1920s and 1930s, with a primary focus on the League of Nations. The British goal was to systematise and normalise the economic and social relations between states, markets, and civil society. They gave priority to business and banking issues, but also considered the needs of ordinary women, children and the family as well. They moved beyond high-level intellectual discussions, and set up local organisations to support the League. The British were particularly active in setting up junior branches for secondary students.\nThe League of Nations was relatively more universal and inclusive in its membership and structure than previous international organisations, but the organisation enshrined racial hierarchy by curtailing the right to self-determination and prevented decolonisation.\nEstablishment.\nAt the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Wilson, Cecil and Smuts all put forward their draft proposals. After lengthy negotiations between the delegates, the Hurst\u2013Miller draft was finally produced as a basis for the Covenant. After more negotiation and compromise, the delegates finally approved of the proposal to create the League of Nations (, ) on 25 January 1919. The final Covenant of the League of Nations was drafted by a special commission, and the League was established by Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919.\nFrench women's rights advocates invited international feminists to participate in a parallel conference to the Paris Conference in hopes that they could gain permission to participate in the official conference. The Inter-Allied Women's Conference asked to be allowed to submit suggestions to the peace negotiations and commissions and were granted the right to sit on commissions dealing specifically with women and children. Though they asked for enfranchisement and full legal protection under the law equal with men, those rights were ignored. Women won the right to serve in all capacities, including as staff or delegates in the League of Nations organisation. They also won a declaration that member nations should prevent trafficking of women and children and should equally support humane conditions for children, women and men labourers. At the Z\u00fcrich Peace Conference held between 17 and 19 May 1919, the women of the WILPF condemned the terms of the Treaty of Versailles for both its punitive measures, as well as its failure to provide for condemnation of violence and exclusion of women from civil and political participation. Upon reading the Rules of Procedure for the League of Nations, Catherine Marshall, a British suffragist, discovered that the guidelines were completely undemocratic and they were modified based on her suggestion.\nThe League would be made up of a Assembly (representing all member states), a Council (with membership limited to major powers), and a permanent Secretariat. Member states were expected to \"respect and preserve as against external aggression\" the territorial integrity of other members and to disarm \"to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.\" All states were required to submit complaints for arbitration or judicial inquiry before going to war. The Council would create a Permanent Court of International Justice to make judgements on the disputes.\nDespite Wilson's efforts to establish and promote the League, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1919, the United States never joined. Senate Republicans led by Henry Cabot Lodge wanted a League with the reservation that only Congress could take the U.S. into war. Lodge gained a majority of Senators and Wilson refused to allow a compromise. The Senate voted on the ratification on 19 March 1920, and the 49\u201335 vote fell short of the needed 2/3 majority.\nThe League held its first council meeting in Paris on 16 January 1920, six days after the Versailles Treaty and the Covenant of the League of Nations came into force. On 1 November 1920, the headquarters of the League was moved from London to Geneva, where the first General Assembly was held on 15 November 1920. Geneva made sense as an ideal city for the League, since Switzerland had been a neutral country for centuries and was already the headquarters for the International Red Cross. Its strong democracy and location in central Europe made it a good choice for the nations of the world. Support for Geneva as the selection came from Swiss Federal Councillor Gustave Ador and economist William Rappard. The Palais Wilson on Geneva's western lakeshore, named after Woodrow Wilson, was the League's first permanent home.\nMission.\nThe covenant had ambiguities, as Carole Fink points out. There was not a good fit between Wilson's \"revolutionary conception of the League as a solid replacement for a corrupt alliance system, a guardian of international order, and protector of small states,\" versus Lloyd George's desire for a \"cheap, self-enforcing, peace, such as had been maintained by the old and more fluid Concert of Europe.\"\nFurthermore, the League, according to Carole Fink, was, \"deliberately excluded from such great-power prerogatives as freedom of the seas and naval disarmament, the Monroe Doctrine and the internal affairs of the French and British empires, and inter-Allied debts and German reparations, not to mention the Allied intervention and the settlement of borders with Soviet Russia.\"\nAlthough the United States never joined, unofficial observers became more and more involved, especially in the 1930s. American philanthropies became heavily involved, especially the Rockefeller Foundation. It made major grants designed to build up the technical expertise of the League staff. Ludovic Tourn\u00e8s argues that by the 1930s the foundations had changed the League from a \"Parliament of Nations\" to a modern think tank that used specialised expertise to provide an in-depth impartial analysis of international issues.\nLanguages and symbols.\nThe official languages of the League of Nations were French and English.\nDuring the 1939 New York World's Fair, a semi-official flag and emblem for the League of Nations emerged: two five-pointed stars within a blue pentagon. They symbolised the Earth's five continents and \"five races\". A bow at the top displayed the English name (\"League of Nations\"), while another at the bottom showed the French (\"Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 des Nations\").\nMembership.\nThe League consisted of 42 founding members in November 1920. Six other states joined in its founding year (by December 1920), and seven more joined by September 1924, bringing the League's size to 55. Costa Rica withdrew in December 1924, making it the member to have most quickly withdrawn, and Brazil became the first founding member to withdraw in June 1926. Germany (under the Weimar Republic) was admitted to the League of Nations through a resolution passed on 8 September 1926. The League's size remained at 54 for the next five years.\nThrough the first half of the 1930s, six more states joined, including Iraq in 1932 (newly independent from a League of Nations mandate) and the Soviet Union on 18 September 1934, but the Empire of Japan and Germany (under Hitler) withdrew in 1933. This marked the League's largest extent at 58 member states.\nIn December 1920, Argentina quit (being absent from all sessions and votes) without formally withdrawing, on rejection of an Argentine resolution that all sovereign states would be admitted to the League. It resumed its participation in September 1933.\nThe League's membership declined through the second half of the 1930s as it weakened. Between 1935 and the start of World War II in Europe in September 1939, only Egypt joined (becoming the last state to join), 11 members left, and 3 members ceased to exist or fell under military occupation (Ethiopia, Austria, and Czechoslovakia). The Soviet Union was expelled on 14 December 1939 for invading Finland, as one of the last acts of the League before it ceased functioning.\nOrganization.\n \nPermanent organs.\nThe main constitutional organs of the League were the Assembly, the council, and the Permanent Secretariat. It also had two essential wings: the Permanent Court of International Justice and the International Labour Organization. In addition, there were several auxiliary agencies and bodies. Each organ's budget was allocated by the Assembly (the League was supported financially by its member states).\nThe relations between the assembly and the council and the competencies of each were for the most part not explicitly defined. Each body could deal with any matter within the sphere of competence of the league or affecting peace in the world. Particular questions or tasks might be referred to either.\nUnanimity was required for the decisions of both the assembly and the council, except in matters of procedure and some other specific cases such as the admission of new members. This requirement was a reflection of the league's belief in the sovereignty of its component nations; the league sought a solution by consent, not by dictation. In case of a dispute, the consent of the parties to the dispute was not required for unanimity.\nThe Permanent Secretariat, established at the seat of the League at Geneva, comprised a body of experts in various spheres under the direction of the general secretary. Its principal sections were Political, Financial and Economics, Transit, Minorities and Administration (administering the Saar and Danzig), Mandates, Disarmament, Health, Social (Opium and Traffic in Women and Children), Intellectual Cooperation and International Bureaux, Legal, and Information. The staff of the Secretariat was responsible for preparing the agenda for the Council and the Assembly and publishing reports of the meetings and other routine matters, effectively acting as the League's civil service. In 1931 the staff numbered 707.\nThe Assembly consisted of representatives of all members of the League, with each state allowed up to three representatives and one vote. It met in Geneva and, after its initial sessions in 1920, it convened once a year in September. The special functions of the Assembly included the admission of new members, the periodical election of non-permanent members to the council, the election with the Council of the judges of the Permanent Court, and control of the budget. In practice, the Assembly was the general directing force of League activities.\nThe Council acted as a type of executive body directing the Assembly's business. It began with four permanent members \u2013 Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan \u2013 and four non-permanent members that were elected by the Assembly for a three-year term. The first non-permanent members were Belgium, Brazil, Greece, and Spain.\nThe composition of the Council was changed several times. The number of non-permanent members was first increased to six on 22 September 1922 and to nine on 8 September 1926. Werner Dankwort of Germany pushed for his country to join the League; joining in 1926, Germany became the fifth permanent member of the Council. Later, after Germany and Japan both left the League, the number of non-permanent seats was increased from nine to eleven, and the Soviet Union was made a permanent member giving the council a total of fifteen members. The Council met, on average, five times a year and in extraordinary sessions when required. In total, 107 sessions were held between 1920 and 1939.\nOther bodies.\nThe League oversaw the Permanent Court of International Justice and several other agencies and commissions created to deal with pressing international problems. These included the Disarmament Commission, the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Mandates Commission, the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation (precursor to UNESCO), the Permanent Central Opium Board, the Commission for Refugees, the Slavery Commission, and the Economic and Financial Organization. Three of these institutions were transferred to the United Nations after the Second World War: the International Labour Organization, the Permanent Court of International Justice (as the International Court of Justice), and the Health Organisation (restructured as the World Health Organization).\nThe Permanent Court of International Justice was provided for by the Covenant, but not established by it. The Council and the Assembly established its constitution. Its judges were elected by the Council and the Assembly, and its budget was provided by the latter. The Court was to hear and decide any international dispute which the parties concerned submitted to it. It might also give an advisory opinion on any dispute or question referred to it by the council or the Assembly. The Court was open to all the nations of the world under certain broad conditions.\nThe International Labour Organization was created in 1919 on the basis of Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles. The ILO, although having the same members as the League and being subject to the budget control of the Assembly, was an autonomous organisation with its own Governing Body, its own General Conference and its own Secretariat. Its constitution differed from that of the League: representation had been accorded not only to governments but also to representatives of employers' and workers' organisations. Albert Thomas was its first director.\nThe ILO successfully restricted the addition of lead to paint, and convinced several countries to adopt an eight-hour work day and forty-eight-hour working week. It also campaigned to end child labour, increase the rights of women in the workplace, and make shipowners liable for accidents involving seamen. After the demise of the League, the ILO became an agency of the United Nations in 1946.\nThe League's Health Organisation had three bodies: the Health Bureau, containing permanent officials of the League; the General Advisory Council or Conference, an executive section consisting of medical experts; and the Health Committee. In practice, the Paris-based Office international d'hygi\u00e8ne publique (OIHP) founded in 1907 after the International Sanitary Conferences, was discharging most of the practical health-related questions, and its relations with the League's Health Committee were often conflictual. The Health Committee's purpose was to conduct inquiries, oversee the operation of the League's health work, and prepare work to be presented to the council. This body focused on ending leprosy, malaria, and yellow fever, the latter two by starting an international campaign to exterminate mosquitoes. The Health Organisation also worked successfully with the government of the Soviet Union to prevent typhus epidemics, including organising a large education campaign.\nLinked with health, but also commercial concerns, was the topic of narcotics control. Introduced by the second International Opium Convention, the Permanent Central Opium Board had to supervise the statistical reports on trade in opium, morphine, cocaine and heroin. The board also established a system of import certificates and export authorisations for the legal international trade in narcotics.\nThe League of Nations had devoted serious attention to the question of international intellectual cooperation since its creation. The First Assembly in December 1920 recommended that the Council take action aiming at the international organisation of intellectual work, which it did by adopting a report presented by the Fifth Committee of the Second Assembly and inviting a committee on intellectual co-operation to meet in Geneva in August 1922. The French philosopher Henri Bergson became the first chairman of the committee. The work of the committee included: an inquiry into the conditions of intellectual life, assistance to countries where intellectual life was endangered, creation of national committees for intellectual cooperation, cooperation with international intellectual organisations, protection of intellectual property, inter-university co-operation, co-ordination of bibliographical work and international interchange of publications, and international co-operation in archaeological research.\nThe Slavery Commission sought to eradicate slavery and slave trading across the world, and fought forced prostitution. Its main success was through pressing the governments who administered mandated countries to end slavery in those countries. The League secured a commitment from Ethiopia to end slavery as a condition of membership in 1923, and worked with Liberia to abolish forced labour and intertribal slavery. The United Kingdom had not supported Ethiopian membership of the League on the grounds that \"Ethiopia had not reached a state of civilisation and internal security sufficient to warrant her admission.\"\nThe League also succeeded in reducing the death rate of workers constructing the Tanganyika railway from 55 to 4 per cent. Records were kept to control slavery, prostitution, and the trafficking of women and children. Partly as a result of pressure brought by the League of Nations, Afghanistan abolished slavery in 1923, Iraq in 1924, Nepal in 1926, Transjordan and Persia in 1929, Bahrain in 1937, and Ethiopia in 1942.\nLed by Fridtjof Nansen, the Commission for Refugees was established on 27 June 1921 to look after the interests of refugees, including overseeing their repatriation and, when necessary, resettlement. At the end of the First World War, there were two to three million ex-prisoners of war from various nations dispersed throughout Russia; within two years of the commission's foundation, it had helped 425,000 of them return home. It established camps in Turkey in 1922 to aid the country with an ongoing refugee crisis, helping to prevent the spread of cholera, smallpox and dysentery as well as feeding the refugees in the camps. It also established the Nansen passport as a means of identification for stateless people.\nThe Committee for the Study of the Legal Status of Women sought to inquire into the status of women all over the world. It was formed in 1937, and later became part of the United Nations as the Commission on the Status of Women.\nThe Covenant of the League said little about economics. Nonetheless, in 1920 the Council of the League called for a financial conference. The First Assembly at Geneva provided for the appointment of an Economic and Financial Advisory Committee to provide information to the conference. In 1923, a permanent Economic and Financial Organisation came into being. The existing bilateral treaty regime was integrated into the League where the most-favoured-nation norm was codified and the League took on responsibilities related to international oversight and standardisation.\nMandates.\nAt the end of the First World War, the Allied Powers were confronted with the question of the disposal of the former German colonies in Africa and the Pacific, and the several Arabic-speaking provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Many British and French leaders wanted to annex colonies of the defeated Central Powers, but U.S. President Woodrow Wilson strongly insisted that instead of annexation, these territories should be assisted under League of Nations supervision in achieving self-governance and eventual independence depending on the inhabitants' choices.\nThe Paris Peace Conference compromised with Wilson by adopting the principle that these territories should be administered by different governments on behalf of the League \u2013 a system of national responsibility subject to international supervision. This plan, defined as the mandate system, was adopted by the \"Council of Ten\" (the heads of government and foreign ministers of the main Allied Powers: Britain, France, the United States, Italy, and Japan) on 30 January 1919 and transmitted to the League of Nations.\nLeague of Nations mandates were established under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. The Permanent Mandates Commission supervised League of Nations mandates, and also organised plebiscites in disputed territories so that residents could decide which country they would join. There were three mandate classifications: A, B and C.\nThe A mandates (applied to parts of the old Ottoman Empire) were \"certain communities\" that had <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Article 22\nThe B mandates were applied to the former German colonies that the League took responsibility for after the First World War. These were described as \"peoples\" that the League said were <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Article 22\nSouth West Africa and certain South Pacific Islands were administered by League members under C mandates. These were classified as \"territories\" <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Article 22\nMandatory powers.\nThe territories were governed by mandatory powers, such as the United Kingdom in the case of the Mandate of Palestine, and the Union of South Africa in the case of South-West Africa, until the territories were deemed capable of self-government. Fourteen mandate territories were divided up among seven mandatory powers: the United Kingdom, the Union of South Africa, France, Belgium, New Zealand, Australia and Japan. With the exception of the Kingdom of Iraq, which joined the League on 3 October 1932, most of these territories did not begin to gain their independence until after the Second World War, in a process that did not end until 1990. Following the demise of the League, most of the remaining mandates became United Nations Trust Territories.\nIn addition to the mandates, the League itself governed the Territory of the Saar Basin for 15 years, before it was returned to Germany following a plebiscite, and the Free City of Danzig (now Gda\u0144sk, Poland) from 15 November 1920 to 1 September 1939.\nResolving territorial disputes.\nThe aftermath of the First World War left many issues to be settled, including the exact position of national boundaries and which country particular regions would join. Most of these questions were handled by the victorious Allied Powers in bodies such as the Allied Supreme Council. The Allied Powers tended to refer only particularly difficult matters to the League. This meant that, during the early interwar period, the League played little part in resolving the turmoil resulting from the war. The questions the League considered in its early years included those designated by the Paris Peace treaties.\nAs the League developed, its role expanded, and by the middle of the 1920s it had become the centre of international activity. This change can be seen in the relationship between the League and non-members. The United States and the Soviet Union, for example, increasingly worked with the League. During the second half of the 1920s, France, Britain and Germany were all using the League of Nations as the focus of their diplomatic activity, and each of their foreign secretaries attended League meetings at Geneva during this period. They also used the League's machinery to try to improve relations and settle their differences.\n\u00c5land Islands.\n\u00c5land is a collection of around 6,500 islands in the Baltic Sea, midway between Sweden and Finland. The islands are almost exclusively Swedish-speaking, but in 1809, the \u00c5land Islands, along with Finland, were taken by Imperial Russia. In December 1917, during the turmoil of the Russian October Revolution, Finland declared its independence, but most of the \u00c5landers wished to rejoin Sweden. The Finnish government considered the islands to be a part of their new nation, as the Russians had included \u00c5land in the Grand Duchy of Finland, formed in 1809. By 1920, the dispute had escalated to the point that there was danger of war. The British government referred the problem to the League of Nations Council, but Finland would not let the League intervene, as they considered it an internal matter. The League created a small panel to decide if it should investigate the matter and, with an affirmative response, a neutral commission was created. In June 1921, the League announced its decision: the islands were to remain a part of Finland, but with guaranteed protection of the islanders, including demilitarisation. With Sweden's reluctant agreement, this became the first European international agreement concluded directly through the League.\nUpper Silesia.\nThe Allied powers referred the problem of Upper Silesia to the League after they had been unable to resolve the territorial dispute between Poland and Germany. In 1919 Poland voiced a claim to Upper Silesia, which had been part of Prussia. The Treaty of Versailles had recommended a plebiscite in Upper Silesia to determine whether the territory should become part of Germany or Poland. Complaints about the attitude of the German authorities led to rioting and eventually to the first two Silesian Uprisings (1919 and 1920). A plebiscite took place on 20 March 1921, with 59.6 per cent (around 500,000) of the votes cast in favour of joining Germany, but Poland claimed the conditions surrounding it had been unfair. This result led to the Third Silesian Uprising in 1921.\nOn 12 August 1921, the League was asked to settle the matter; the Council created a commission with representatives from Belgium, Brazil, China and Spain to study the situation. The committee recommended that Upper Silesia be divided between Poland and Germany according to the preferences shown in the plebiscite and that the two sides should decide the details of the interaction between the two areas \u2013 for example, whether goods should pass freely over the border due to the economic and industrial interdependence of the two areas. In November 1921, a conference was held in Geneva to negotiate a convention between Germany and Poland. A final settlement was reached, after five meetings, in which most of the area was given to Germany, but with the Polish section containing the majority of the region's mineral resources and much of its industry. When this agreement became public in May 1922, bitter resentment was expressed in Germany, but the treaty was still ratified by both countries. The settlement produced peace in the area until the beginning of the Second World War.\nAlbania.\nThe frontiers of the Principality of Albania had not been set during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, as they were left for the League to decide. They had not yet been determined by September 1921, creating an unstable situation. Greek troops conducted military operations in the south of Albania. Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslav) forces became engaged, after clashes with Albanian tribesmen, in the northern part of the country. The League sent a commission of representatives from various powers to the region. In November 1921, the League decided that the frontiers of Albania should be the same as they had been in 1913, with three minor changes that favoured Yugoslavia. Yugoslav forces withdrew a few weeks later, albeit under protest.\nThe borders of Albania again became the cause of international conflict when Italian General Enrico Tellini and four of his assistants were ambushed and killed on 27 August 1923 while marking out the newly decided border between Greece and Albania. Italian leader Benito Mussolini was incensed and demanded that a commission investigate the incident within five days. Whatever the results of the investigation, Mussolini insisted that the Greek government pay Italy Lire\u00a050 million in reparations. The Greeks said they would not pay unless it was proved that the crime was committed by Greeks.\nMussolini sent a warship to shell the Greek island of Corfu, and Italian forces occupied the island on 31 August 1923. This contravened the League of Nations Covenant, so Greece appealed to the League to deal with the situation. The Allied Powers agreed (at Mussolini's insistence) that the Conference of Ambassadors should be responsible for resolving the dispute because it was the conference that had appointed General Tellini. The League of Nations Council examined the dispute, but then passed on their findings to the Conference of Ambassadors to make the final decision. The conference accepted most of the League's recommendations, forcing Greece to pay fifty million lire to Italy, even though those who committed the crime were never discovered. Italian forces then withdrew from Corfu.\nMemel.\nThe port city of Memel (now Klaip\u0117da) and the surrounding area, with a predominantly German population, was under provisional Entente control according to Article 99 of the Treaty of Versailles. The French and Polish governments favoured turning Memel into an international city, while Lithuania wanted to annex the area. By 1923, the fate of the area had still not been decided, prompting Lithuanian forces to invade in January 1923 and seize the port. After the Allied Powers failed to reach an agreement with Lithuania, they referred the matter to the League of Nations. In December 1923, the League of Nations Council appointed a Commission of Inquiry. The commission chose to cede Memel to Lithuania and give the area autonomous rights. The Klaip\u0117da Convention was approved by the Council on 14 March 1924, and then by the Allied Powers and Lithuania. In 1939 Germany retook the region following the rise of the Nazis and an ultimatum to Lithuania, demanding the return of the region under threat of war. The League of Nations failed to prevent the secession of the Memel region to Germany.\nHatay.\nWith League oversight, the Sanjak of Alexandretta in the French Mandate of Syria was given autonomy in 1937. Renamed Hatay, its parliament declared independence as the Republic of Hatay in September 1938, after elections the previous month. It was annexed by Turkey with French consent in mid-1939.\nMosul.\nThe League resolved a dispute between the Kingdom of Iraq and the Republic of Turkey over control of the former Ottoman province of Mosul in 1926. According to the British, who had been awarded a League of Nations mandate over Iraq in 1920 and therefore represented Iraq in its foreign affairs, Mosul belonged to Iraq; on the other hand, the new Turkish republic claimed the province as part of its historic heartland. A League of Nations Commission of Inquiry, with Belgian, Hungarian and Swedish members, was sent to the region in 1924; it found that the people of Mosul did not want to be part of either Turkey or Iraq, but if they had to choose, they would pick Iraq. In 1925, the commission recommended that the region stay part of Iraq, under the condition that the British hold the mandate over Iraq for another 25 years, to ensure the autonomous rights of the Kurdish population. The League Council adopted the recommendation and decided on 16 December 1925 to award Mosul to Iraq. Although Turkey had accepted League of Nations arbitration in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), it rejected the decision, questioning the Council's authority. The matter was referred to the Permanent Court of International Justice, which ruled that, when the Council made a unanimous decision, it must be accepted. Nonetheless, Britain, Iraq and Turkey ratified a separate treaty on 5 June 1926 that mostly followed the decision of the Council and also assigned Mosul to Iraq. It was agreed that Iraq could still apply for League membership within 25 years and that the mandate would end upon its admission.\nVilnius.\nAfter the First World War, Poland and Lithuania both regained their independence but soon became immersed in territorial disputes. During the Polish\u2013Soviet War, Lithuania signed the Moscow Peace Treaty with the Soviet Russia that laid out Lithuania's frontiers. This agreement gave Lithuanians control of the city of Vilnius (, ), the old Lithuanian capital, but a city with a majority Polish population. This heightened tension between Lithuania and Poland and led to fears that they would resume the Polish\u2013Lithuanian War, and on 7 October 1920, the League negotiated the Suwa\u0142ki Agreement establishing a cease-fire and a demarcation line between the two nations. On 9 October 1920, General Lucjan \u017beligowski, commanding a Polish military force in contravention of the Suwa\u0142ki Agreement, took the city and established the Republic of Central Lithuania.\nAfter a request for assistance from Lithuania, the League of Nations Council called for Poland's withdrawal from the area. The Polish government indicated they would comply, but instead reinforced the city with more Polish troops. This prompted the League to decide that the future of Vilnius should be determined by its residents in a plebiscite and that the Polish forces should withdraw and be replaced by an international force organised by the League. The plan was met with resistance in Poland, Lithuania, and the Soviet Russia, which opposed any international force in Lithuania. In March 1921, the League abandoned plans for the plebiscite. After unsuccessful proposals by Paul Hymans to create a federation between Poland and Lithuania, which was intended as a reincarnation of the former Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth which the two nations had shared before losing their independence, Vilnius and the surrounding area was formally annexed by Poland in March 1922. After Lithuania took over the Klaip\u0117da Region, the Allied Conference set the frontier between Lithuania and Poland, leaving Vilnius within Poland, on 14 March 1923. Lithuanian authorities refused to accept the decision, and officially remained in a state of war with Poland until 1927. It was not until the 1938 Polish ultimatum that Lithuania restored diplomatic relations with Poland and thus \"de facto\" accepted the borders.\nColombia and Peru.\nThere were several border conflicts between Colombia and Peru in the early part of the 20th century, and in 1922, their governments signed the Salom\u00f3n-Lozano Treaty in an attempt to resolve them. As part of this treaty, the border town of Leticia and its surrounding area was ceded from Peru to Colombia, giving Colombia access to the Amazon River. On 1 September 1932, business leaders from Peruvian rubber and sugar industries who had lost land, as a result, organised an armed takeover of Leticia. At first, the Peruvian government did not recognise the military takeover, but President of Peru Luis S\u00e1nchez Cerro decided to resist a Colombian re-occupation. The Peruvian Army occupied Leticia, leading to an armed conflict between the two nations. After months of diplomatic negotiations, the governments accepted mediation by the League of Nations, and their representatives presented their cases before the Council. A provisional peace agreement, signed by both parties in May 1933, provided for the League to assume control of the disputed territory while bilateral negotiations proceeded. In May 1934, a final peace agreement was signed, resulting in the return of Leticia to Colombia, a formal apology from Peru for the 1932 invasion, demilitarisation of the area around Leticia, free navigation on the Amazon and Putumayo Rivers, and a pledge of non-aggression.\nSaar.\nSaar was a province formed from parts of Prussia and the Rhenish Palatinate and placed under League control by the Treaty of Versailles. A plebiscite was to be held after fifteen years of League rule to determine whether the province should belong to Germany or France. When the referendum was held in 1935, 90.3 per cent of voters supported becoming part of Germany, which was quickly approved by the League of Nations Council.\nOther conflicts.\nIn addition to territorial disputes, the League also tried to intervene in other conflicts between and within nations. Among its successes were its fight against the international trade in opium and sexual slavery, and its work to alleviate the plight of refugees, particularly in Turkey in the period up to 1926. One of its innovations in this latter area was the 1922 introduction of the Nansen passport, which was the first internationally recognised identity card for stateless refugees.\nGreece and Bulgaria.\nAfter an incident involving sentries on the Greek-Bulgarian border in October 1925, fighting began between the two countries. Three days after the initial incident, Greek troops invaded Bulgaria. The Bulgarian government ordered its troops to make only token resistance, and evacuated between ten thousand and fifteen thousand people from the border region, trusting the League to settle the dispute. The League condemned the Greek invasion, and called for both Greek withdrawal and compensation to Bulgaria.\nLiberia.\nFollowing accusations of forced labour on the large American-owned Firestone rubber plantation and American accusations of slave trading, the Liberian government asked the League to launch an investigation. The resulting commission was jointly appointed by the League, the United States, and Liberia. In 1930, a League report confirmed the presence of slavery and forced labour. The report implicated many government officials in the selling of contract labour and recommended that they be replaced by Europeans or Americans, which generated anger within Liberia and led to the resignation of President Charles D. B. King and his vice-president. The Liberian government outlawed forced labour and slavery and asked for American help in social reforms.\nMukden Incident.\nThe Mukden Incident, also known as the \"Manchurian Incident\", was a decisive setback that weakened the League because its major members refused to tackle Japanese aggression. Japan itself withdrew.\nUnder the agreed terms of the Twenty-One Demands with China, the Japanese government had the right to station its troops in the area around the South Manchurian Railway, a major trade route between China and Korea (then a Japanese colony), in the Chinese region of Manchuria. In September 1931, a section of the railway was lightly damaged by the Japanese Kwantung Army as a pretext for an invasion of Manchuria. The Japanese army claimed that Chinese soldiers had sabotaged the railway and in apparent retaliation (acting contrary to orders from Tokyo) occupied all of Manchuria. They renamed the area Manchukuo, and on 9 March 1932 set up a puppet government, with Puyi, the final emperor of China, as its nominal head of state.\nThe League of Nations sent observers. The Lytton Report appeared a year later (October 1932). It refused to recognise Manchukuo and demanded Manchuria be returned to China. The report passed 42\u20131 in the Assembly in 1933 (only Japan voting against), but instead of removing its troops from China, Japan withdrew from the League. In the end, as British historian Charles Mowat argued, collective security was dead:\nThe League and the ideas of collective security and the rule of law were defeated; partly because of indifference and of sympathy with the aggressor, but partly because the League powers were unprepared, preoccupied with other matters, and too slow to perceive the scale of Japanese ambitions.\nChaco War.\nThe League failed to prevent the 1932 war between Bolivia and Paraguay over the arid Gran Chaco region. Although the region was sparsely populated, it contained the Paraguay River, which would have given either landlocked country access to the Atlantic Ocean, and there was also speculation, later proved incorrect, that the Chaco would be a rich source of petroleum. Border skirmishes throughout the late 1920s culminated in an all-out war in 1932 when the Bolivian army attacked the Paraguayans at Fort Carlos Antonio L\u00f3pez at Lake Pitiantuta. The war was a disaster for both sides, causing 57,000 casualties for Bolivia, whose population was around three million, and 36,000 dead for Paraguay, whose population was approximately one million. It also brought both countries to the brink of economic disaster. By the time a ceasefire was negotiated on 12 June 1935, Paraguay had seized control of most of the region, as was later recognised by the 1938 truce.\nInitially, both sides refused to allow the League to conduct an inquiry until November 1933, over a year after the start of the war. As a result, the League did not formally invoke Article 16 to apply sanctions. The Pan-American Conference offered to mediate and the League deferred to the conference, but the warring sides ignored the conference. Eventually (without going through Article 16), an arms embargo was enacted by several members of the League (plus non-League members the United States and Brazil), but several neighbouring states ignored the embargo rendering it ineffective. In November 1934, the League demanded that both sides withdraw and undergo arbitration. Bolivia accepted, but Paraguay by then had taken control of all of the disputed area. Paraguay rejected arbitration and quit the League.\nItalian invasion of Abyssinia.\nIn October 1935, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini sent 400,000 troops to invade Abyssinia (Ethiopia). Marshal Pietro Badoglio led the campaign from November 1935, ordering bombing, the use of chemical weapons such as mustard gas, and the poisoning of water supplies, against targets which included undefended villages and medical facilities. The modern Italian Army defeated the poorly armed Abyssinians and captured Addis Ababa in May 1936, forcing Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie to flee to exile in England.\nThe League of Nations condemned Italy's aggression and imposed economic sanctions in November 1935, but the sanctions were largely ineffective since they did not ban the sale of oil or close the Suez Canal (controlled by Britain). As Stanley Baldwin, the British Prime Minister, later observed, this was ultimately because no one had the military forces on hand to withstand an Italian attack. In October 1935, the US president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, invoked the recently passed Neutrality Acts and placed an embargo on arms and munitions to both sides, but extended a further \"moral embargo\" to the belligerent Italians, including other trade items. On 5 October and later on 29 February 1936, the United States endeavoured, with limited success, to limit its exports of oil and other materials to normal peacetime levels. The League sanctions were lifted on 4 July 1936, but by that point, Italy had already gained control of the urban areas of Abyssinia.\nThe Hoare\u2013Laval Pact of December 1935 was an attempt by the British Foreign Secretary Samuel Hoare and the French Prime Minister Pierre Laval to end the conflict in Abyssinia by proposing to partition the country into an Italian sector and an Abyssinian sector. Mussolini was prepared to agree to the pact, but news of the deal leaked out. Both the British and French public vehemently protested against it, describing it as a sell-out of Abyssinia. Hoare and Laval were forced to resign, and the British and French governments dissociated themselves from the two men. In June 1936, although there was no precedent for a head of state addressing the Assembly of the League of Nations in person, Haile Selassie spoke to the Assembly, appealing for its help in protecting his country.\nThe Abyssinian crisis showed how the League could be influenced by the self-interest of its members; one of the reasons why the sanctions were not very harsh was that both Britain and France feared the prospect of driving Mussolini and Adolf Hitler into an alliance.\nSpanish Civil War.\nOn 17 July 1936, the Spanish Army launched a coup d'\u00e9tat, leading to a prolonged armed conflict between Spanish Republicans (the elected leftist national government) and the Nationalists (conservative, anti-communist rebels who included most officers of the Spanish Army). Julio \u00c1lvarez del Vayo, the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, appealed to the League in September 1936 for arms to defend Spain's territorial integrity and political independence. The League members would not intervene in the Spanish Civil War nor prevent foreign intervention in the conflict. Adolf Hitler and Mussolini aided General Francisco Franco's Nationalists, while the Soviet Union helped the Spanish Republic. In February 1937, the League did ban foreign volunteers, but this was in practice a symbolic move. The result was a Nationalist victory in 1939 and confirmation to all observers that the League was ineffective in dealing with a major issue.\nSecond Sino-Japanese War.\nFollowing a long record of instigating localised conflicts throughout the 1930s, Japan began a full-scale invasion of China on 7 July 1937. On 12 September, the Chinese representative, Wellington Koo, appealed to the League for international intervention. Western countries were sympathetic to the Chinese in their struggle, particularly in their stubborn defence of Shanghai, a city with a substantial number of foreigners. The League was unable to provide any practical measures; on 4 October, it turned the case over to the Nine Power Treaty Conference.\nSoviet invasion of Finland.\nThe Nazi-Soviet Pact of 23 August 1939 contained secret protocols outlining spheres of interest. Finland and the Baltic states, as well as eastern Poland, fell into the Soviet sphere. After invading Poland on 17 September 1939, on 30 November the Soviets invaded Finland. Then \"the League of Nations for the first time expelled a member who had violated the Covenant.\" The League action of 14 December 1939, stung, because the Soviet Union became \"the only League member ever to suffer such an indignity\".\nFailure of disarmament.\nArticle 8 of the Covenant gave the League the task of reducing \"armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the enforcement by common action of international obligations\". Haakon Ikonomou argues that the Disarmament Section was a major failure. It was distrusted by the great powers, and given little autonomy by the Secretariat. Its mediocre staffers generated information that was unreliable and caused unrealistic expectations in the general public.\nSuccesses.\nThe League scored some successes, including the 1925 Conference for the Supervision of the International Trade in Arms and Ammunition and in Implements of War. It started to collect international arms data. Most important was the passage in 1925 of the Geneva protocol banning poison gas in war. It reflected strong worldwide public opinion, although the United States did not ratify it until 1975.\nFailures.\nThe League had numerous failures and shortfalls. In 1921, it set up the Temporary Mixed Commission on Armaments to explore possibilities for disarmament. It was made up not of government representatives but of famous individuals. They rarely agreed. Proposals ranged from abolishing chemical warfare and strategic bombing to the limitation of more conventional weapons, such as tanks.\n1923 Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance.\nThe 1923 Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance was an unsuccessful proposal made by the League of Nations to address the issue of disarmament and security in Europe after World War I. It was rejected by the British government in 1924 and was never adopted. The Draft Treaty was an early attempt by the League to create a system of collective security and disarmament, leading the League to pursue alternative approaches that also ultimately failed to gain traction.\nGeneva Protocol of 1924.\nA draft treaty was assembled in 1923 that made aggressive war illegal and bound the member states to defend victims of aggression by force. Since the onus of responsibility would, in practice, be on the great powers of the League, it was vetoed by Great Britain, who feared that this pledge would strain its own commitment to police its British Empire.\nThe \"Geneva Protocol for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes\" was a proposal by British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and his French counterpart \u00c9douard Herriot. It set up compulsory arbitration of disputes and created a method to determine the aggressor in international conflicts. All legal disputes between nations would be submitted to the World Court. It called for a disarmament conference in 1925. Any government that refused to comply in a dispute would be named an aggressor. Any victim of aggression was to receive immediate assistance from League members.\nBritish Conservatives condemned the proposal for fear that it would lead to conflict with the United States, which also opposed the proposal. The British Dominions strongly opposed it. The Conservatives came to power in Britain and in March 1925 the proposal was shelved and never reintroduced.\nWorld Disarmament Conference.\nThe Allied powers were also under obligation by the Treaty of Versailles to attempt to disarm, and the armament restrictions imposed on the defeated countries had been described as the first step toward worldwide disarmament. The League Covenant assigned the League the task of creating a disarmament plan for each state, but the Council devolved this responsibility to a special commission set up in 1926 to prepare for the 1932\u20131934 World Disarmament Conference. Members of the League held different views towards the issue. The French were reluctant to reduce their armaments without a guarantee of military help if they were attacked; Poland and Czechoslovakia felt vulnerable to attack from the west and wanted the League's response to aggression against its members to be strengthened before they disarmed. Without this guarantee, they would not reduce armaments because they felt the risk of attack from Germany was too great. Fear of attack increased as Germany regained its strength after the First World War, especially after Adolf Hitler gained power and became German Chancellor in 1933. In particular, Germany's attempts to overturn the Treaty of Versailles and the reconstruction of the German military made France increasingly unwilling to disarm.\nThe World Disarmament Conference was convened by the League of Nations in Geneva in 1932, with representatives from 60 states. It was a failure. A one-year moratorium on the expansion of armaments, later extended by a few months, was proposed at the start of the conference. The Disarmament Commission obtained initial agreement from France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Britain to limit the size of their navies but no final agreement was reached. Ultimately, the Commission failed to halt the military build-up by Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan during the 1930s.\nHelpless during buildup to World War II.\nThe League was mostly silent in the face of major events leading to the Second World War, such as Hitler's remilitarisation of the Rhineland, occupation of the Sudetenland and \"Anschluss\" of Austria, which had been forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In fact, League members themselves re-armed. In 1933, Japan simply withdrew from the League rather than submit to its judgement, as did Germany the same year (using the failure of the World Disarmament Conference to agree to arms parity between France and Germany as a pretext), Italy in 1937, and Spain in 1939. The final significant act of the League was to expel the Soviet Union in December 1939 after it invaded Finland.\nEconomic policies.\nInternational taxation.\nThe intellectual foundation of the modern international taxation regime was set with a 1923 report prepared by prominent political economists and tax law experts for the League of Nations. The report formulated \"general principles\" to avoid the adverse effects of double taxation and encourage free trade, international capital flows, and economic growth. For example, the report tried to set guidelines for resolving who would be allowed to tax a resident or citizen of one state when that individual earned income in another state. Prior to the publication of the report, these kinds of questions were primarily decided through unilateral state decisions or bilateral tax treaties.\nGeneral weaknesses.\nThe onset of the Second World War demonstrated that the League had failed in its primary purpose, the prevention of another world war. There were a variety of reasons for this failure, many connected to general weaknesses within the organisation. Additionally, the power of the League was limited by the United States' refusal to join.\nOrigins and structure.\nThe origins of the League as an organisation created by the Allied powers as part of the peace settlement to end the First World War led to it being viewed as a \"League of Victors\". The League's neutrality tended to manifest itself as indecision. It required a unanimous vote of nine, later fifteen, Council members to enact a resolution; hence, conclusive and effective action was difficult, if not impossible. It was also slow in coming to its decisions, as certain ones required the unanimous consent of the entire Assembly. This problem mainly stemmed from the fact that the primary members of the League of Nations were not willing to accept the possibility of their fate being decided by other countries and (by enforcing unanimous voting) had effectively given themselves veto power.\nGlobal representation.\nRepresentation at the League was often a problem. Though it was intended to encompass all nations, many never joined, or their period of membership was short. The most conspicuous absentee was the United States. President Woodrow Wilson had been a driving force behind the League's formation and strongly influenced the form it took, but the US Senate voted not to join on 19 November 1919. Ruth Henig has suggested that, had the United States become a member, it would have also provided support to France and Britain, possibly making France feel more secure, and so encouraging France and Britain to co-operate more fully regarding Germany, thus making the rise to power of the Nazi Party less likely. Conversely, Henig acknowledges that if the US had been a member, its reluctance to engage in war with European states or to enact economic sanctions might have hampered the ability of the League to deal with international incidents. The structure of the US federal government might also have made its membership problematic, as its representatives at the League would only be able to answer on behalf of the executive branch, certain League decisions such as to go to war, would always require prior approval of the legislative branch regardless of the outcome of any floor vote even.\nIn January 1920, when the League was born, Germany was not permitted to join because it was seen as having been the aggressor in the First World War. Soviet Russia was also initially excluded because Communist regimes were not welcomed and membership would have been initially dubious due to the ongoing Russian Civil War in which both sides claimed to be the legitimate government of the country. The League was further weakened when major powers left in the 1930s. Japan began as a permanent member of the Council since the country was an Allied Power in the First World War but withdrew in 1933 after the League voiced opposition to its occupation of Manchuria. Italy also began as a permanent member of the council. However the League staunchly opposed Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1934. When the war ended in an Italian conquest, the League refused to recognise Italian sovereignty over Ethiopia, prompting the Italian-Fascist government to withdraw from the organisation altogether in 1937. Though neutral during World War I, Spain (then still a kingdom) also began as a permanent member of the council, but withdrew in 1939 after the Spanish Civil War ended in a victory for the Nationalists. Though world opinion was much more divided over the Spanish Civil War than the conflicts involving Japan and Italy, the general perception leaned in favour of the Republican cause. The League had accepted Germany, also as a permanent member of the council, in 1926, deeming it to have become a \"peace-loving country\" under the Weimar Republic. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Adolf Hitler withdrew Germany almost immediately.\nCollective security.\nAnother important weakness grew from the contradiction between the idea of collective security that formed the basis of the League and international relations between individual states. The League's collective security system required nations to act, if necessary, against states they considered friendly, and in a way that might endanger their national interests, to support states for which they had no normal affinity. This weakness was exposed during the Abyssinia Crisis, when Britain and France had to balance maintaining the security they had attempted to create for themselves in Europe \"to defend against the enemies of internal order\", in which Italy's support played a pivotal role, with their obligations to Abyssinia as a member of the League.\nOn 23 June 1936, in the wake of the collapse of League efforts to restrain Italy's war against Abyssinia, the British Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, told the House of Commons that collective security had <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nUltimately, Britain and France both abandoned the concept of collective security in favour of appeasement in the face of growing German militarism under Hitler.\nIn this context, the League of Nations was also the institution where the first international debate on terrorism took place following the 1934 assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in Marseille, France. This debate established precedents regarding global surveillance (in the form of routine international sharing of surveillance data), the punishment of terrorists as an international (rather than national) matter, and the right of a nation to conduct military attacks within another nation as a response to international terrorism. Many of these concepts are detectable in the discourse of terrorism among states after 9/11.\nAmerican diplomatic historian Samuel Flagg Bemis originally supported the League, but after two decades changed his mind:\nThe League of Nations has been a disappointing failure... It has been a failure, not because the United States did not join it; but because the great powers have been unwilling to apply sanctions except where it suited their individual national interests to do so, and because Democracy, on which the original concepts of the League rested for support, has collapsed over half the world.\nPacifism, disarmament and radio.\nThe League of Nations lacked an armed force of its own and depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, which they were very unwilling to do. Its two most important members, Britain and France, were reluctant to use sanctions and even more reluctant to resort to military action on behalf of the League. Immediately after the First World War, pacifism became a strong force among both the people and governments of the two countries. The British Conservatives were especially tepid to the League and preferred, when in government, to negotiate treaties without the involvement of that organisation. Moreover, the League's advocacy of disarmament for Britain, France, and its other members, while at the same time advocating collective security, meant that the League was depriving itself of the only forceful means by which it could uphold its authority.\nDavid Goodman argues that the 1936 League of Nations Convention on the Use of Broadcasting in the Cause of Peace tried to create the standards for a liberal international public sphere. The Convention encouraged friendly radio broadcasts to other nations. It called for League prohibitions on international broadcasts containing hostile speech and false claims. It tried to draw the line between liberal and illiberal policies in communications, and emphasised the dangers of nationalist chauvinism. With Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia active on the radio, its liberal goals were ignored, while liberals warned that the code represented restraints on free speech.\nDemise and legacy.\nAs the situation in Europe escalated into war, the Assembly transferred enough power to the Secretary General on 30 September 1938 and 14 December 1939 to allow the League to continue to exist legally and carry on reduced operations. The headquarters of the League, the Palace of Nations, remained unoccupied for nearly six years until the Second World War ended.\nAt the 1943 Tehran Conference, the Allied powers agreed to create a new body to replace the League: the United Nations. Many League bodies, such as the International Labour Organization, continued to function and eventually became affiliated with the UN. The designers of the structures of the United Nations intended to make it more effective than the League.\nThe final session of the League of Nations concluded on 18 April 1946 in Geneva. Delegates from 34 nations attended the assembly. This session concerned itself with liquidating the League: it transferred assets worth approximately $22,000,000 (U.S.) in 1946 (including the Palace of Nations and the League's archives) to the UN, returned reserve funds to the nations that had supplied them, and settled the debts of the League. Robert Cecil, addressing the final session, said:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Let us boldly state that aggression wherever it occurs and however it may be defended, is an international crime, that it is the duty of every peace-loving state to resent it and employ whatever force is necessary to crush it, that the machinery of the Charter, no less than the machinery of the Covenant, is sufficient for this purpose if properly used, and that every well-disposed citizen of every state should be ready to undergo any sacrifice in order to maintain peace ... I venture to impress upon my hearers that the great work of peace is resting not only on the narrow interests of our own nations, but even more on those great principles of right and wrong which nations, like individuals, depend.\nThe League is dead. Long live the United Nations.\nThe Assembly passed a resolution that \"With effect from the day following the close of the present session of the Assembly [i.e., April 19], the League of Nations shall cease to exist except for the sole purpose of the liquidation of its affairs as provided in the present resolution.\" A Board of Liquidation consisting of nine persons from different countries spent the next 15 months overseeing the transfer of the League's assets and functions to the United Nations or specialised bodies, finally dissolving itself on 31 July 1947. The archive of the League of Nations was transferred to the United Nations Office at Geneva and is now an entry in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.\nIn the Assembly's last session in 1946, Philip Noel-Baker (representing the United Kingdom) remarked that failure to act as soon as a great power had invaded another state had ultimately doomed the League: \"We know the World War began in Manchuria 15 years ago...Manchuria, Abyssinia, Munich have killed another great illusion, the belief that appeasement, seeking the national interest at the expense of others, individual action, secret bargains, could bring us peace.\"\nIn the past few decades, by research using the League Archives at Geneva, historians have reviewed the legacy of the League of Nations as the United Nations has faced similar troubles to those of the interwar period. Current consensus views that, even though the League failed to achieve its ultimate goal of world peace, it did manage to build new roads towards expanding the rule of law across the globe; strengthened the concept of collective security, giving a voice to smaller nations; helped to raise awareness to problems like epidemics, slavery, child labour, colonial tyranny, refugee crises and general working conditions through its numerous commissions and committees; and paved the way for new forms of statehood, as the mandate system put the colonial powers under international observation. Erez Manela situated the League as a catalyst for transforming the postwar global order into one critical of the arrangements of empire. Alternatively, Laura Robson & Joe Maiolo posit the argument that the Mandate System under the League was a re-vitalised form of imperialism that placed former colonies under the ownership of greater powers.\nProfessor David Kennedy portrays the League as a unique moment when international affairs were \"institutionalised\", as opposed to the pre\u2013First World War methods of law and politics.\nThe principal Allies in the Second World War (the UK, the USSR, France, the U.S., and the Republic of China) became permanent members of the United Nations Security Council in 1946; in 1971, the People's Republic of China replaced the Republic of China (then only in control of Taiwan) as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and in 1991 the Russian Federation assumed the seat of the dissolved USSR. Decisions of the Security Council are binding on all members of the UN, and unanimous decisions are not required, unlike in the League Council. Only the five permanent members of the Security Council can wield a veto to protect their vital interests.\nLeague of Nations archives.\nThe League of Nations archives is a collection of the League's records and documents. It consists of approximately 15 million pages of content dating from the inception of the League of Nations in 1919 extending through its dissolution in 1946. It is located at the United Nations Office at Geneva. In 2017, the UN Library & Archives Geneva launched the Total Digital Access to the League of Nations Archives Project (LONTAD), with the intention of preserving, digitising, and providing online access to the League of Nations archives. It was completed in 2022.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nGeneral and cited references.\nSurveys.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nLeague topics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nRelated topics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistoriography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["17926", "26748", "49749"], "permutation_1": ["26748", "17926", "49749"], "permutation_2": ["26748", "17926", "49749"], "permutation_3": ["49749", "17926", "26748"]}
{"id": "3hop1__346812_15840_36014", "docs_added": {"2296072": "Drac's Night Out\nDrac's Night Out is an unreleased video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The game was developed by Mark Lesser and Rex Bradford of Microsmiths, and featured a prominent Reebok Pump shoe sponsorship.\nSummary.\nIn the game, the player controls Count Dracula who, while wearing Reebok Pumps, has to first work his way down his castle while avoiding the hostile villagers. This could be accomplished by hypnotizing the villagers with his vampiric gaze, or by pulling a lever to spring one of many Rube Goldberg-esque hidden traps. Once villagers are subdued, Dracula can then suck their blood and briefly turn into a bat to navigate through the tower. Scattered throughout these towers are also Reebok Pump power-ups. Once activated, Dracula is given a temporary speed-boost, as well as the ability to jump over villagers and holes.\nWhen Dracula escapes the castle, he is given a large open town to explore and search for his bride, Mina. This will require hints such as finding maps and compasses from villagers. Patrolling the streets are hostile mobs and non-hostile villagers. After sucking enough blood, Dracula temporarily transforms into an invulnerable wolf to cover distance more quickly. Dracula is also given the ability to suck the blood of sleeping villagers that will transform into Vampiresses and lead Dracula nearer to Mina's location. Some villagers drop items like keys and flowers, used to open gates and homes. Dracula can also travel through secret underground shortcuts. Once the player discovers the building housing Mina, a congratulatory picture of the pair walking together appears and leads to the next 'round'.\nDevelopment.\nAccording to Mark Lesser, the Reebok Pumps sponsorship was added late in development at the request of Parker Brothers. Although completed, the game was never officially released. However, a prototype has since been discovered and its ROM data released to the internet.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "28314": "Super Nintendo Entertainment System\nHome video game console\nThe Super Nintendo Entertainment System, commonly shortened to Super Nintendo, Super NES or SNES, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in Europe and Oceania and 1993 in South America. In Japan, it is called the In South Korea, it is called the Super Comboy and was distributed by Hyundai Electronics. The system was released in Brazil on August 30, 1993, by Playtronic. In Russia and CIS, the system was distributed by Steepler from 1994 until 1996. Although each version is essentially the same, several forms of regional lockout prevent cartridges for one version from being used in other versions.\nThe Super NES is Nintendo's second programmable home console, following the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The console introduced advanced graphics and sound capabilities compared with other systems at the time, like the Sega Genesis. It was designed to accommodate the ongoing development of a variety of enhancement chips integrated into game cartridges to be more competitive into the next generation.\nThe Super NES received largely positive reviews and was a global success, becoming the best-selling console of the 16-bit era after launching relatively late and facing intense competition from Sega's Genesis console in North America and Europe. Overlapping the NES's 61.9\u00a0million unit sales, the Super NES remained popular well into the 32-bit era, with 49.1\u00a0million units sold worldwide by the time it was discontinued in 2003. It continues to be popular among collectors and retro gamers, with new homebrew games and Nintendo's emulated rereleases, such as on the Virtual Console, the Super NES Classic Edition, Nintendo Switch Online; as well as several non-console emulators which operate on a desktop computer or mobile device, such as Snes9x.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nTo compete with the popular Family Computer in Japan, NEC Home Electronics launched the PC Engine in 1987, and Sega followed suit with the Mega Drive in 1988. The two platforms were later launched in North America in 1989 as the TurboGrafx-16 and the Sega Genesis respectively. Both systems were built on 16-bit architectures and offered improved graphics and sound over the 8-bit NES. It took several years for Sega's system to become successful. Bill Mensch, the co-creator of the 8-bit MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor and founder of the Western Design Center (WDC), gave Ricoh the exclusive right to supply 8-bit and 16-bit WDC microprocessors for the new system. Meanwhile, Sony engineer Ken Kutaragi reached an agreement with Nintendo to design the console's sound chip without notifying his supervisors, who were enraged when they discovered the project; though Kutaragi was nearly fired, then-CEO Norio Ohga intervened in support of the project and gave him permission to complete it.\nOn September 9, 1987, then-Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi revealed the development of the Super Famicom in the newspaper \"Kyoto Shimbun\". On August 30, 1988, in an interview with \"TOUCH Magazine\", Yamauchi announced the development of \"Super Mario Bros. 4\", \"Dragon Quest V\", three original games, and he projected sales of 3 million units of the upcoming console. \"Famicom Hissyoubon\" magazine speculated that Yamauchi's early announcement was probably made to forestall Christmas shopping for the PC Engine, and relayed Enix's clarification that it was waiting on sales figures to select either PC Engine or Super Famicom for its next \"Dragon Quest\" game. The magazine and Enix both expressed a strong interest in networking as a standard platform feature. The console was demonstrated to the Japanese press on November 21, 1988, and again on July 28, 1989.\nLaunch.\nDesigned by Masayuki Uemura, the designer of the original Famicom, the Super Famicom was released in Japan on Wednesday, November 21, 1990, for \u00a5. It was an instant success. Nintendo's initial shipment of 300,000 units sold out within hours, and the resulting social disturbance led the Japanese government to ask video game manufacturers to schedule future console releases on weekends. This gained the attention of the yakuza criminal organizations, so the devices were shipped at night to avoid robbery.\nWith the Super Famicom quickly outselling its rivals, Nintendo reasserted itself as the leader of the Japanese console market. Nintendo's success was partially due to the retention of most of its key third-party developers, including Capcom, Konami, Tecmo, Square, Koei, and Enix.\nNintendo released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, a redesigned version of the Super Famicom, in North America for US$. It began shipping in limited quantities on August 23, 1991, with an official nationwide release date of September 9, 1991. The Super NES was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland in April 1992 for \u00a3.\nMost of the PAL region versions of the console use the Japanese Super Famicom design, except for labeling and the length of the joypad leads. The Playtronic Super NES in Brazil, although PAL-M, uses the North American design. Both the NES and Super NES were released in Brazil in 1993 by Playtronic, a joint venture between the toy company Estrela and consumer electronics company Gradiente.\nThe Super NES and Super Famicom launched with few games, but these games were well received. In Japan, only two games were initially available: \"Super Mario World\" and \"F-Zero\". \"Bombuzal\" was released during the launch week. In North America, \"Super Mario World\" was launched as a bundle with the console; other launch games include \"F-Zero\", \"Pilotwings\" (both of which demonstrate the console's Mode 7 pseudo-3D rendering), \"SimCity\", and \"Gradius III\".\nConsole wars.\nThe rivalry between Nintendo and Sega was described as one of the most notable console wars in video game history, in which Sega positioned the Genesis as the \"cool\" console, with games aimed at older audiences, and aggressive advertisements that occasionally attacked the competition. Nintendo scored an early public-relations advantage by securing the first console conversion of Capcom's arcade hit \"Street Fighter II\" for Super NES, which took more than a year to make the transition to the Genesis. Though the Genesis had a two-year lead to launch time, a much larger library of games, and a lower price point, it only represented an estimated 60% of the American 16-bit console market in June 1992, and neither console could maintain a definitive lead for several years. \"Donkey Kong Country\" is said to have helped establish the Super NES's market prominence in the latter years of the 16-bit generation, and for a time, maintain against the PlayStation and Saturn. According to Nintendo, the company had sold more than 20\u00a0million Super NES units in the U.S. According to a 2014 Wedbush Securities report based on NPD sales data, the Super NES outsold the Genesis in the U.S. market by 1.5 million units.\nChanges in policy.\nDuring the NES era, Nintendo maintained exclusive control over games released for the system \u2013 the company had to approve every game, each third-party developer could only release up to five games per year (but some third parties got around this by using different names, such as Konami's \"Ultra Games\" brand), those games could not be released on another console within two years, and Nintendo was the exclusive manufacturer and supplier of NES cartridges. Competition from Sega's console brought an end to this practice; in 1991, Acclaim Entertainment began releasing games for both platforms, with most of Nintendo's other licensees following suit over the next several years; Capcom (which licensed some games to Sega instead of producing them directly) and Square were the most notable holdouts.\nNintendo continued to carefully review submitted games, scoring them on a 40-point scale and allocating marketing resources accordingly. Each region performed separate evaluations. Nintendo of America also maintained a policy that, among other things, limited the amount of violence in the games on its systems. The surprise arcade hit \"Mortal Kombat\" (1992), a gory fighting game with huge splashes of blood and graphically violent fatality moves, was heavily censored by Nintendo. Because the Genesis version allowed for an uncensored version via cheat code, it outsold the censored Super NES version by a ratio of nearly three to one.\nU.S. Senators Herb Kohl and Joe Lieberman convened a Congressional hearing on December 9, 1993, to investigate the marketing of violent video games to children. Though Nintendo took the high ground with moderate success, the hearings led to the creation of the Interactive Digital Software Association and the Entertainment Software Rating Board and the inclusion of ratings on all video games. With these ratings in place, Nintendo decided its censorship policies were no longer needed.\n32-bit era and beyond.\nWhile other companies were moving on to 32-bit systems, Rare and Nintendo proved that the Super NES was still a strong contender in the market. In November 1994, Rare released \"Donkey Kong Country\", a platform game featuring 3D models and textures pre-rendered on Silicon Graphics workstations. With its detailed graphics, fluid animation, and high-quality music, \"Donkey Kong Country\" rivals the aesthetic quality of games that were being released on newer 32-bit CD-based consoles. In the last 45 days of 1994, 6.1\u00a0million copies were sold, making it the fastest-selling video game in history to that date. This game conveyed that early 32-bit systems had little to offer over the Super NES, and proved the market for the more advanced consoles of the near future. According to TRSTS reports, two of the top five bestselling games in the U.S. for December 1996 are Super NES games.\nIn October 1997, Nintendo released a redesigned model of the Super NES (the SNS-101 model referred to as \"New-Style Super NES\") in North America for US$, with some units including the pack-in game \"\". Like the earlier New-Style NES (model NES-101), this is slimmer and lighter than its predecessor, but it lacks S-Video and RGB output, and it is among the last major Super NES-related releases in the region. A similarly redesigned Super Famicom Jr. was released in Japan at around the same time. The redesign stayed out of Europe.\nNintendo ceased production of the Super NES in North America in 1999, about two years after releasing \"Kirby's Dream Land 3\" (its final second-party game in the US) on November 27, 1997, and one year after releasing \"Frogger\" (its final third-party game in the US) in 1998. In Japan, Nintendo continued production of both the Family Computer and the Super Famicom until September 25, 2003, and new games were produced until the year 2000, ending with the release of \"Metal Slader Glory Director's Cut\" on November 29, 2000.\nMany popular Super NES games were ported to the Game Boy Advance, which has similar video capabilities. In 2005, Nintendo announced that Super NES games would be made available for download via the Wii's Virtual Console service. On October 31, 2007, Nintendo Co., Ltd. announced that it would no longer repair Family Computer or Super Famicom systems due to an increasing shortage of the necessary parts. On March 3, 2016, Nintendo Co., Ltd. announced that it would bring Super NES games to the New Nintendo 3DS and New Nintendo 3DS XL (and later the New Nintendo 2DS XL) via its eShop download service. At the Nintendo Direct event on September 4, 2019, Nintendo announced that it would be bringing select Super NES games to the Nintendo Switch Online platform.\nHardware.\nTechnical specifications.\nThe 16-bit design of the Super NES incorporates graphics and sound co-processors that perform tiling and simulated 3D effects, a palette of 32,768 colors, and 8-channel ADPCM audio. These base platform features, plus the ability to dramatically extend them all through substantial chip upgrades inside of each cartridge, represent a leap over the 8-bit NES generation and some significant advantages over 16-bit competitors such as the Genesis.\nCPU and RAM.\nThe CPU is a Ricoh 5A22, a derivative of the 16-bit WDC 65C816 microprocessor. In NTSC regions, its nominal clock speed is 3.58 MHz will slow to either 2.68\u00a0MHz or 1.79\u00a0MHz when accessing some slower peripherals.\nThis CPU has an 8-bit data bus and two address buses. The 24-bit \"Bus\u00a0A\" is designated for general accesses, and the 8-bit \"Bus\u00a0B\" can access support chip registers such as the video and audio co-processors.\nThe WDC 65C816 supports an 8-channel DMA unit, an 8-bit parallel I/O port a controller port interface circuits allowing serial and parallel access to controller data, a 16-bit multiplication and division unit, and circuitry for generating non-maskable interrupts on V-blank and IRQ interrupts on calculated screen positions.\nEarly revisions of the 5A22 used in SHVC boards are prone to spontaneous failure which can produce a variety of symptoms including graphics glitches in Mode 7, a black screen on power-on, or improperly reading the controllers. The first revision 5A22 has a fatal bug in the DMA controller that can crash games; this was corrected in subsequent revisions.\nThe console contains 128KB of general-purpose \"work\" RAM, which is separate from the 64KB dedicated to the video subsystem and the 64KB dedicated to the audio subsystem.\nVideo.\nThe Picture Processing Unit (PPU) consists of two closely tied IC packages. It contains 64KB of SRAM for video data, 544 bytes of object attribute memory (OAM) for sprite data, and 256\u00a0\u00d7\u00a015 bits of color generator RAM (CGRAM) for palette data. This CGRAM provisions up to 256 colors, chosen from the 15-bit RGB color space, from a palette of 32,768 colors. The PPU is clocked by the same signal as the CPU and generates a pixel every two or four cycles.\nAudio.\nThe S-SMP audio subsystem consisted of a 16-bit digital signal processor (DSP) to sequence the mix samples, an 8-bit SPC700 CPU to drive the DSP and 64KB of dedicated PSRAM. It was designed by Ken Kutaragi and produced by Sony and is completely independent from the rest of the system. It is clocked at a nominal 24.576\u00a0MHz in both NTSC and PAL systems. It is capable of stereo sound, composed from eight voices generated using 16-bit audio samples compressed using BRR and capable of applying effects such as echo. On early revisions of the motherboard the S-SMP audio system was spread across four chips: the DSP, the CPU, and two RAM modules. On later revisions, the sound hardware consolidated to a single chip, the S-APU.\nRegional lockout.\nNintendo employed several types of regional lockout, including both physical and hardware incompatibilities.\nPhysically, the cartridges are shaped differently for different regions. North American cartridges have a rectangular bottom with inset grooves matching protruding tabs in the console, and other regions' cartridges are narrower with a smooth curve on the front and no grooves. The physical incompatibility can be overcome with the use of various adapters, or through modification of the console.\nInternally, a regional lockout chip (CIC) within the console and in each cartridge prevents the PAL region games from being played on Japanese or North American consoles and vice versa. The Japanese and North American machines have the same region chip. This can be overcome through the use of adapters, typically by inserting the imported cartridge in one slot and a cartridge with the correct region chip in a second slot. Alternatively, disconnecting one pin of the console's lockout chip will prevent it from locking the console; hardware in later games can detect this situation, so it became common to install a switch to reconnect the lockout chip as needed.\nPAL consoles face another incompatibility when playing out-of-region cartridges: the NTSC video standard specifies video at 60\u00a0Hz but PAL operates at 50\u00a0Hz, resulting in an approximately 16.7% slower framerate. PAL's higher resolution results in letterboxing of the output image. Some commercial PAL region releases exhibit this same problem and, therefore, can be played in NTSC systems without issue, but other games will face a 20% speedup if played in an NTSC console. To mostly correct this issue, a switch can be added to place the Super NES PPU into a 60\u00a0Hz mode supported by most newer PAL televisions. Later games will detect this setting and refuse to run, requiring the switch to be thrown only after the check completes.\nCasing.\nAll models of the Super NES control deck are predominantly gray, of slightly different shades. The original North American version, designed by Nintendo of America industrial designer Lance Barr (who previously redesigned the Famicom to become the NES), has a boxy design with purple sliding switches and a dark gray eject lever. The loading bay surface is curved, both to invite interaction and to prevent food or drinks from being placed on the console and spilling as with the flat-surfaced NES. The Japanese and European versions are more rounded, with darker gray accents and buttons.\nAll versions incorporate a top-loading slot for game cartridges, although the shape of the slot differs between regions to match the different shapes of the cartridges. The MULTI OUT connector (later used on the Nintendo 64 and GameCube) can output composite video, S-Video and RGB signals, as well as RF with an external RF modulator. Original versions additionally include a 28-pin expansion port under a small cover on the bottom of the unit and a standard RF output with channel selection switch on the back; the redesigned models output composite video only, requiring an external modulator for RF.\nThe Nintendo Super System (NSS) is an arcade system for retail preview of 11 particular Super NES games in the United States, similar to the PlayChoice-10 for NES games. It consists of slightly modified Super NES hardware with a menu interface and 25-inch monitor, that allows gameplay for a certain amount of time depending on game credits. Manufacturing of this model was discontinued in 1992.\nRedesigned model.\nA cost-reduced version of the console, referred to as the New-Style Super NES (model SNS-101) in North America and as the in Japan, was released late in the platform's lifespan; designed by Barr, it incorporates design elements from both the original North American and Japanese/European console models but in a smaller form factor. Unlike the original console models, the redesigned model is virtually identical across both regions save for the color palette (the North American model receiving purple buttons and the Japanese model receiving grey buttons). The redesign did not receive a release in Europe.\nExternally, the power and reset buttons were moved to the left-hand side of the console while the cartridge eject button and power LED indicator were omitted. Internally, the redesigned model consolidates the console's hardware into a system-on-chip (SoC) design. The redesigned console lacks the bottom expansion slot, rendering it incompatible with the Japan-exclusive Satellaview add-on.\nFor AV output, the redesigned console features the same multi-out port used on the original models. Unlike the latter models, the former's AV port only supports composite video output natively as support for RGB video and S-Video was disabled internally; however, they can be restored via a \"relatively simple\" modification. The internal RF modulator was also removed, requiring an external one for such output if needed. Due to the SoC design, it is highly sought after by Super NES/Famicom enthusiasts since its RGB video quality (if restored) is improved over earlier internal revisions of the console.\nThe redesigned console first released in October 1997 in North America, where it originally retailed for US$99.95 in a bundle with \"\";\nit was subsequently released in Japan on March 27, 1998, where it retailed for \u00a57,800. Nintendo marketed it as an entry-level gamer's system for consumers who were apprehensive about the higher price of newer systems such as the Nintendo 64. Nintendo also introduced a slightly altered controller for it, with the console's logo replaced by an embossed Nintendo logo.\nYellowing.\nThe ABS plastic used in the casing of some older Super NES and Super Famicom consoles is particularly susceptible to oxidation with exposure to air. This, along with the particularly light color of the original plastic, causes affected consoles to quickly become yellow; if the sections of the casing came from different batches of plastic, a \"two-tone\" effect results. This issue may be reversed with a method called Retrobrighting, where a mixture of chemicals is applied to the case and exposed to UV light.\nGame cartridge.\nSuper NES games are distributed on ROM cartridges, officially referred to as Game Pak in most Western regions, and as in Japan and parts of Latin America. Though the Super NES can address 128\u00a0Mbit, only 117.75\u00a0Mbit are actually available for cartridge use. A fairly normal mapping could easily address up to 95\u00a0Mbit of ROM data (48\u00a0Mbit at FastROM speed) with 8\u00a0Mbit of battery-backed RAM. Most available memory access controllers only support mappings of up to 32\u00a0Mbit. The largest games released (\"Tales of Phantasia\" and \"Star Ocean\") contain 48\u00a0Mbit of ROM data, and the smallest games contain only 2\u00a0Mbit.\nCartridges may also contain battery-backed SRAM to save the game state, extra working RAM, custom coprocessors, or any other hardware that will not exceed the maximum current rating of the console.\nGames.\n1757 Super NES games were officially released: 717 in North America (plus 4 championship cartridges), 521 in Europe, 1,448 in Japan, 231 on Satellaview, and 13 on Sufami Turbo. Many Super NES games have been called some of the greatest video games of all time, such as \"Super Mario World\" (1990), \"\" (1991), \"Final Fantasy VI\" (1994), \"Donkey Kong Country\" (1994), \"EarthBound\" (1994), \"Super Metroid\" (1994), \"Chrono Trigger\" (1995) and \"Yoshi's Island\" (1995). Many Super NES games have been rereleased several times, including on the Virtual Console, Super NES Classic Edition, and the classic games service on Nintendo Switch Online. All Game Boy games are playable with the Super Game Boy add-on.\nPeripherals.\nThe Super NES controller design expands on that of the NES, with A, B, X, and Y face buttons in a diamond arrangement, and two shoulder buttons. Lance Barr created its ergonomic design, and he later adapted it in 1993 for the NES-039 \"dogbone\" controller. The Japanese and PAL region versions incorporated the four colors of the face buttons into the system's logo. The North American version's buttons were colored to match the redesigned console; the X and Y buttons are lavender with concave faces, and the A and B buttons are purple with convex faces. Several later controller designs have elements from the Super NES controller, including the PlayStation, Dreamcast, Xbox, and Wii Classic Controller. This face button layout is on future Nintendo systems since the Nintendo DS.\nSeveral peripherals add to the functionality of the Super NES. Some are required by certain games, such as the Super Scope light gun, and the Super NES Mouse for a point and click interface. Various third-parties, under license from Nintendo, released multitap adapters connecting up to five controllers into a single console, starting with the Super Multitap by Hudson Soft in conjunction with the \"Super Bomberman\" series. Specialized third-party controllers, such as the AsciiPad and Super Advantage (the successor to the NES Advantage) by Asciiware, and the Capcom Fighter Power Stick, an arcade-like joystick controller by Capcom designed specifically for \"Street Fighter II\". Unusual controllers include the BatterUP baseball bat, the Life Fitness Entertainment System (an exercise bike controller with built-in monitoring software), the TeeV Golf golf club, and the Justifier (a revolver-shaped light gun made by Konami for \"Lethal Enforcers\").\nThough Nintendo never released an adapter for playing NES games on the Super NES, the Super Game Boy adapter cartridge allows games designed for Nintendo's portable Game Boy system to be played on the Super NES. The Super Game Boy touts several feature enhancements over the Game Boy, including palette substitution, custom screen borders, and access to the Super NES console's features by specially enhanced Game Boy games. Japan also saw the release of the Super Game Boy 2, which adds a communication port to enable a second Game Boy to connect for multiplayer games.\nLike the NES before it, the Super NES has unlicensed third-party peripherals, including a new version of the Game Genie cheat cartridge designed for use with Super NES games.\nSoon after the release of the Super NES, companies began marketing backup devices such as the Super Wildcard, Super Pro Fighter Q, and Game Doctor. These devices create a backup of a cartridge, and can be used to play illicit ROM images or to copy games, violating copyright laws in many jurisdictions.\nThe Japan-only Satellaview is a satellite modem attached to the Super Famicom's expansion port and connected to the St.GIGA satellite radio station from April 23, 1995, to June 30, 2000. Satellaview subscribers could download gaming news and specially designed games, which were frequently either remakes of or sequels to older Famicom games, and released in installments. In the United States, the relatively short-lived XBAND allowed users to connect to a network via a dial-up modem to compete against other players around the country.\nNintendo attempted partnerships with Sony and then Philips, to develop CD-ROM-based peripheral prototypes for the console to compete with the TurboGrafx-CD and Sega CD. Sony produced the PlayStation (a brand name the company would use for their later independently produced console), a Super NES console with a built-in CD-ROM drive that never made it past the prototype phase. The Philips project was canceled without a prototype but Philips retained the contractual right to develop games based on Nintendo franchises, which it published for its CD-i multimedia console.\nEnhancement chips.\nAs part of the overall plan for the Super NES, rather than include an expensive CPU that would still become obsolete in a few years, the hardware designers made it easy to interface special coprocessor chips to the console, just like the MMC chips used for most NES games. This is most often characterized by 16 additional pins on the cartridge card edge.\nThe Super FX is a RISC CPU designed to perform functions that the main CPU can not feasibly do. The chip is primarily used to create 3D game worlds made with polygons, texture mapping and light source shading. The chip can also be used to enhance 2D games.\nThe Nintendo fixed-point digital signal processor (DSP) chip allowed fast vector-based calculations, bitmap conversions, both 2D and 3D coordinate transformations, and other functions. Four revisions of the chip exist, each physically identical but with different microcode. The DSP-1 version, including the later 1A and 1B bug fix revisions, is used most often; the DSP-2, DSP-3, and DSP-4 are used in only one game each.\nSimilar to the 5A22 CPU in the console, the SA-1 chip contains a 65C816 processor core clocked at 10.7\u00a0MHz, a memory mapper, DMA, decompression and bitplane conversion circuitry, several programmable timers, and CIC region lockout functionality.\nIn Japan, games could be downloaded cheaper than standard cartridges, from Nintendo Power kiosks onto special cartridges containing flash memory and a MegaChips MX15001TFC chip. The chip manages communication with the kiosks to download ROM images and has an initial menu to select a game. Some were published both in cartridge and download form, and others were download only. The service closed on February 8, 2007.\nMany cartridges contain other enhancement chips, most of which were created for use by a single company in a few games.\nReception and legacy.\nApproximately 49.1\u00a0million Super NES consoles were sold worldwide, with 23.35\u00a0million of those units sold in the Americas and 17.17\u00a0million in Japan. Although it could not quite repeat the success of the NES, which sold 61.91\u00a0million units worldwide, the Super NES was the best-selling console of its era.\nIn a 1997 year-end review, a team of five \"Electronic Gaming Monthly\" editors gave the Super NES scores of 5.5, 8.0, 7.0, 7.0, and 8.0. Though they criticized how few new games were coming out for the system and how dated its graphics were compared to current generation consoles, they regarded its selection of must-have games to be still unsurpassed. Additionally noting that used Super NES games were readily available in bargain bins, most of them still recommended buying a Super NES. In 2007, \"GameTrailers\" named the Super NES as the second-best console of all time (only behind the PlayStation 2) in their list of top ten consoles that \"left their mark on the history of gaming\", citing its graphics, sound, and library of top-quality games. In 2015, they also named it the best Nintendo console of all time, saying, \"The list of games we love from this console completely annihilates any other roster from the Big N.\" Technology columnist Don Reisinger proclaimed \"The SNES is the greatest console of all time\" in January 2008, citing the quality of the games and the console's dramatic improvement over its predecessor; fellow technology columnist Will Greenwald replied with a more nuanced view, giving the Super NES top marks with his heart, the NES with his head, and the PlayStation (for its controller) with his hands. GamingExcellence also gave the Super NES first place in 2008, declaring it \"simply the most timeless system ever created\" with many games that stand the test of time and citing its innovation in controller design, graphics capabilities, and game storytelling. At the same time, GameDaily rated it fifth of the ten greatest consoles for its graphics, audio, controllers, and games. In 2009, \"IGN\" named the Super NES the fourth-best video game console, complimenting its audio and number of AAA games.\nEmulation.\nSNES emulation began with VSMC in 1994, and Super Pasofami became the first working emulator in 1996. During that time, two competing emulation projects, Snes96 and Snes97, merged to form Snes9x. In 1997, ZSNES development began. In 2004, Bsnes development began with the goal of preservation through maximal accuracy and compatibility, and was later renamed to Higan.\nNintendo of America maintained its stance against the distribution of SNES ROM image files and the use of emulators, as it had with the NES before, saying they represent copyright infringement. Emulation proponents assert that the discontinued hardware production constitutes abandonware status, the owners' right to make a personal backup, space shifting for private use, the development of homebrew games, the frailty of ROM cartridges and consoles, and the lack of certain foreign imports. Nintendo designed a hobbyist development system for the SNES, but never released it.\nUnofficial SNES emulation is available on virtually all platforms, including Android, iOS, game consoles, and PDAs. Individual games have been bundled with official dedicated emulators on some GameCube discs, and Nintendo's Virtual Console service for the Wii introduced diverse and officially licensed SNES emulation.\nThe Super NES Classic Edition was released in September 2017 following the NES Classic Edition. This emulation-based mini-console, which is physically modeled after the North American and European versions of the SNES, is bundled with two SNES-style controllers and 21 games, including the unreleased \"Star Fox 2\".\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18944028": "Nintendo Entertainment System\nHome video game console\nThe Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on July 15, 1983, as the It was released in US test markets as the redesigned NES in October 1985, and fully launched in the US the following year. The NES was distributed in Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia throughout the 1980s under various names. As a third-generation console, it mainly competed with Sega's Master System.\nThe NES was designed by Masayuki Uemura. Nintendo's president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, called for a simple, cheap console that could run arcade games on cartridges. The controller design was reused from Nintendo's portable Game & Watch hardware. The western model was redesigned to resemble a video cassette recorder. Nintendo released add-ons such as the NES Zapper light gun for several shooting games, and R.O.B, a toy robot accessory.\nThe NES is regarded as one of the most influential consoles. It helped revitalise the American gaming industry following the video game crash of 1983, and pioneered a now-standard business model of licensing third-party developers to produce and distribute games. The NES features several influential games, including \"Super Mario Bros.\" (1985), \"The Legend of Zelda\" (1986), \"Metroid\" (1986) and \"Mega Man\" (1987), which became major franchises.\nThe NES dominated Japanese and North American markets, but initially underperformed in Europe, where it faced strong competition from the Sega Master System and microcomputers. With 61.91\u00a0million units sold, it is one of the best-selling consoles. It was succeeded in 1990 by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.\nHistory.\nBackground.\nThe video game industry experienced rapid growth and popularity from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, marked by the golden age of arcade games and the second generation of consoles. Games like \"Space Invaders\" (1978) became a phenomenon across arcades worldwide, while home consoles such as the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision gained footholds in the American market. Many companies emerged to capitalise on the growing industry, including the playing card manufacturer Nintendo.\nHiroshi Yamauchi, who had been Nintendo's president since 1949, realised that breakthroughs in the electronics industry meant that entertainment products could be produced at lower prices. Companies such as Atari and Magnavox were already selling gaming devices for use with television sets, to moderate success. Yamauchi negotiated a licence with Magnavox to sell its game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. Since Nintendo's operation was not yet sophisticated enough to design its own hardware, Yamauchi forged an alliance with Mitsubishi Electric and hired several Sharp Electronics employees to assist in developing the Color TV-Game 6 in Japan. This was followed by a more successful sequel, the Color TV-Game 15, and the handheld Game & Watch series. The successes of these machines gave Yamauchi the confidence to expand Nintendo's influence in the fledgling video game industry.\nIn 1978, Yamauchi split Nintendo into separate research and development divisions. He appointed Masayuki Uemura as head of Nintendo Research & Development 2, a division that focused solely on hardware. Yamauchi, through extensive discussions with Uemura and other engineers, recognised the potential of the developing console beyond gaming. He envisioned a home-computer system disguised as a toy, which could significantly expand Nintendo's reach if it became popular with children. This popularity would drive demand for games, with Nintendo as the sole provider. Indeed, by 1980 several systems had already been released in Japan by both American and Japanese companies. Yamauchi tasked Uemura with developing a system that would be superior to its competitors and difficult to replicate for at least a year. Uemura's main challenge was economic rather than technological; Yamauchi wanted the system to be affordable enough for widespread household adoption, aiming for a price of \u00a59,800 (less than $75) compared to existing machines priced at \u00a530,000 to \u00a550,000 ($200 to $350). The new system had to outperform other systems, both Japanese and American, while being significantly more affordable.\nInception.\nAs development progressed on the new video game system, engineers sought Yamauchi's guidance on its features. They questioned whether to include a disk drive, keyboard, data port, as well as the potential for a modem, expanded memory, and other computer-like capabilities. Yamauchi ultimately instructed Uemura to prioritise simplicity and affordability, omitting these peripherals entirely. Game cartridges, which Uemura saw as \"less intimidating\" to consumers, were chosen as the format. The team designed the system with 2,000 bytes of random-access memory (RAM), significantly more than Atari's 256 bytes. Larger cartridges also allowed for far more complex games, with thirty-two times the code capacity of Atari cartridges.\nThe console's hardware was largely based on arcade video games, particularly the hardware for Namco's \"Galaxian\" (1979) and Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\", with the goal of matching their powerful sprite and scrolling capabilities in a home system. A test model was constructed in October 1982 to verify the functionality of the hardware, and work began on programming tools. Because 65xx CPUs had not been manufactured or sold in Japan by that time, no cross-development software was available and it had to be developed from scratch. Early Famicom games were written on a NEC PC-8001 computer. LEDs on a grid were used with a digitizer to design graphics as no such software design tools existed at that time.\nThe codename for the project was \"GameCom\", but Masayuki Uemura's wife proposed the name \"Famicom\", arguing that \"In Japan, 'pasokon' is used to mean a personal computer, but it is neither a home nor personal computer. Perhaps we could say it is a family computer.\" Meanwhile, Hiroshi Yamauchi decided that the console should use a red and white theme after seeing a billboard for DX Antenna (a Japanese antenna manufacturer) which used those colors.\nDevelopment.\nThe Famicom was influenced by the ColecoVision, Coleco's competition against the Atari 2600 in the United States; the ColecoVision's top-seller was a port of Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\". The project's chief manager Takao Sawano brought a ColecoVision home to his family, impressed by its smooth graphics, which contrasts with the flicker and slowdown commonly seen on Atari 2600 games. Uemura said the ColecoVision set the bar for the Famicom. They wanted to surpass it and match the more powerful \"Donkey Kong\" arcade hardware; they took a \"Donkey Kong\" arcade cabinet to chip manufacturer Ricoh for analysis, which led to Ricoh producing the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) chip for the NES.\nOriginal plans called for the Famicom's cartridges to be the size of a cassette tape, but ultimately they ended up being twice as big. Careful design attention was paid to the cartridge connectors because loose and faulty connections often plagued arcade machines. As it necessitated 60 connection lines for the memory and expansion, Nintendo decided to produce its own connectors.\nThe controllers are hard-wired to the console with no connectors for cost reasons. The controller designs were reused from the Game & Watch machines, although the Famicom design team originally wanted to use arcade-style joysticks, even dismantling some from American game consoles to see how they worked. There were concerns regarding the durability of the joystick design and that children might step on joysticks on the floor. Katsuya Nakawaka attached a Game & Watch D-pad to the Famicom prototype and found that it was easy to use and caused no discomfort. Ultimately though, they installed a 15-pin expansion port on the front of the console so that an optional arcade-style joystick could be used.\nGunpei Yokoi suggested an eject lever, which was not necessary, but he believed that children could be entertained by pressing it. Uemura adopted his idea. Uemura added a microphone to the second controller with the idea that it could be used to make players\u2019 voices sound through the TV speaker.\nJapanese release.\nThe console was released on July 15, 1983, as the for \u00a5 () with three ports of Nintendo's successful arcade games \"Donkey Kong\", \"Donkey Kong Jr.\", and \"Popeye\". The Famicom was slow to gather success; a bad chip set caused the early revisions to crash. Following a product recall and a reissue with a new motherboard, the Famicom's popularity soared, becoming the bestselling game console in Japan by the end of 1984 in what came to be called the \"Famicom Boom\".\nNintendo launched the system with only first-party games, but after being approached by Namco and Hudson Soft in 1984, agreed to produce third-party games for a 30% fee for console licensing and production costs. This rate continued in the industry for consoles and digital storefront into the 21st century.\nNorth American release.\nNintendo targeted the North American market, entering distribution negotiations with Atari, Inc. to release a redesigned Famicom with Atari's name as the Nintendo Advanced Video Gaming System. The deal was set to be finalized and signed at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in June 1983. However, Atari discovered at that show that its competitor Coleco was illegally demonstrating its Coleco Adam computer with Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\" game. This violation of Atari's exclusive license with Nintendo to publish the game for its own computer systems delayed the implementation of Nintendo's game console marketing contract with Atari. Atari's CEO Ray Kassar was fired the next month, so the deal went nowhere, and Nintendo decided to market its system on its own.\nSubsequent plans for the Nintendo Advanced Video System likewise never materialized. It was privately demonstrated as a repackaged Famicom console featuring a keyboard, cassette data recorder, wireless joystick controller, and a special BASIC cartridge. By the beginning of 1985, more than 2.5\u00a0million Famicom units had been sold in Japan, and Nintendo soon announced plans to release it in North America as the Advanced Video Entertainment System (AVS) that year. The American video game press was skeptical that the console could have any success in the region, as the industry was still recovering from the video game crash of 1983. The March 1985 issue of \"Electronic Games\" magazine stated that \"the videogame market in America has virtually disappeared\" and that \"this could be a miscalculation on Nintendo's part\".\nThe Famicom hardware first made its North American debut in the arcades, in the form of the Nintendo VS. System in 1984. The system's success in arcades paved the way for the official release of the NES console. With US retailers refusing to stock game consoles, Yamauchi realized there was still a market for video games in the arcades, so he introduced the Famicom to North America through the arcade industry. The VS. System became a major success in North American arcades, becoming the highest-grossing arcade machine of 1985 in the United States. By the time the NES launched, nearly 100,000 VS. Systems had been sold to American arcades. The success of the VS. System gave Nintendo the confidence to release the Famicom in North America as a video game console, for which there was growing interest due to Nintendo's positive reputation in the arcades. It also gave Nintendo the opportunity to test new games as VS. Paks in the arcades, to determine which games to release for the NES launch.\nAt the 1985 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of the Famicom: a stripped-down and cost-reduced redesign of the Advanced Video System (AVS), having abandoned the home computer approach. Nintendo purposefully designed the system to avoid resembling a video game console and avoided terms associated with game consoles. Marketing manager Gail Tilden chose the term \"Game Pak\" for cartridges, \"Control Deck\" for the console, and \"Entertainment System\" for the whole platform. Renamed the \"Nintendo Entertainment System\" (\"NES\"), the new and cost-reduced version lacked most of the upscale features added in the AVS but retained many of its audiophile-inspired design elements, such as the grey colour scheme and boxy form factor. Disappointed with the cosmetically raw prototype part they received from Japan, which they nicknamed \"the lunchbox\", Nintendo of America designers Lance Barr and Don James added the two-tone gray, the black stripe, and the red lettering. To obscure the video game connotation, the NES replaced the top-loading cartridge slot of the Famicom and AVS with a front-loading chamber for software cartridges that kept the inserted cartridge out of view, reminiscent of a video cassette recorder. The Famicom's pair of hard-wired controllers and the AVS's wireless controllers were replaced with two custom 7-pin sockets for detachable wired controllers.\nAt June 1985's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of its Famicom, with a new case redesigned by Lance Barr and featuring a \"zero insertion force\" cartridge slot. The change from a top-loader in the Famicom to a front-loader was to make the new console more like a video cassette recorder, which had grown in popularity by 1985, and differentiate the unit from past video game consoles. Additionally, Uemura explained that Nintendo developers had feared that the console's electronics might face electrostatic hazards in dry American states such as Arizona and Texas, and a front-loading design would be safer if children handled the console carelessly.\nThis was deployed as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Nintendo seeded these first systems to limited American test markets starting in New York City on October 18, 1985, and followed up in Los Angeles in February 1986; the American nationwide release came on September 27, 1986. Nintendo released 17 launch games: \"10-Yard Fight\", \"Baseball\", \"Clu Clu Land\", \"Duck Hunt\", \"Excitebike\", \"Golf\", \"Gyromite\", \"Hogan's Alley\", \"Ice Climber\", \"Kung Fu\", \"Pinball\", \"Soccer\", \"Stack-Up\", \"Super Mario Bros.\", \"Tennis\", \"Wild Gunman\", and \"Wrecking Crew\". Nintendo contracted Worlds of Wonder to distribute the console physically. WoW salesman Jim Whims distinctly recalled delivering an ultimatum: \"if you want to sell Teddy Ruxpin and you want to sell Lazer Tag, you're gonna sell Nintendo as well. And if you feel that strongly about it, then you ought to just resign the line now.\" This marketing tactic led to the NES' financial success in North America in its first year; Nintendo of America would later terminate the contract and hired the company's sales staff (whom Atari offered them in 1983), while taking on physical distribution of the console itself.\nThe system's launch represented not only a new product, but also a reframing of the severely damaged home video game market in North America. The 1983 video game crash had occurred in large part due to a lack of consumer and retailer confidence in video games, which had been partially due to confusion and misrepresentation in video game marketing. Prior to the NES, the packaging of many video games presented bombastic artwork which did not represent a game's actual graphics. Furthermore, a single game such as \"Pac-Man\" appeared across consoles with substantial variations in graphics, sound, and general quality. In contrast, Nintendo's marketing strategy aimed to regain consumer and retailer confidence by delivering a singular platform whose graphics could be represented truthfully and whose qualities were clearly defined.\nTo differentiate Nintendo's new home platform from the perception of a troubled and shallow video game market still reeling from the 1983 crash, the company freshened its product nomenclature and established a strict product approval and licensing policy. The overall platform is referred to as \"Entertainment System\" instead of a \"video game system\", is centered upon a machine called a \"Control Deck\" instead of a \"console\", and features software cartridges called \"Game Paks\" instead of \"video games\". This allowed Nintendo to gain more traction in selling the system in toy stores. To deter production of games which had not been licensed by Nintendo, and to prevent copying, the 10NES lockout chip system acts as a lock-and-key coupling of each Game Pak and Control Deck. The packaging of the launch lineup of NES games bear pictures of close representations of actual onscreen graphics. To reduce consumer confusion, symbols on the games' packaging clearly indicate the genre of the game. A seal of quality is on all licensed game and accessory packaging. The initial seal states, \"This seal is your assurance that Nintendo has approved and guaranteed the quality of this product\". This text was later changed to \"Official Nintendo Seal of Quality\".\nUnlike with the Famicom, Nintendo of America marketed the console primarily to children, instituting a strict policy of censoring profanity, sexual, religious, or political content. The most famous example is Lucasfilm Games's attempts to port the comedy-horror game \"Maniac Mansion\" to the NES, which Nintendo insisted be considerably watered down.\nThe optional Robotic Operating Buddy, or R.O.B., was part of a marketing plan to portray the NES's technology as being novel and sophisticated when compared to previous game consoles, and to portray its position as being within reach of the better established toy market. Though at first, the American public exhibited limited excitement for the console itself, peripherals such as the light gun and R.O.B. attracted extensive attention.\nOther markets.\nIn Europe and Oceania, the NES was released in two separate marketing regions. The first consisted of mainland Europe (excluding Italy) where distribution was handled by several different companies, with Nintendo responsible for manufacturing. The NES saw an early launch in Europe in 1986 although most of the European countries received the console in 1987. The release in Scandinavia was on September 1, 1986, where it was released by Bergsala. In the Netherlands, it was released in the last quarter of 1987 and was distributed by Bandai BV. In France, it was released in October 1987, and in Spain most likely in 1988 through distributor Spaco. Also in 1987, Mattel handled distribution for the second region, consisting of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Australia and New Zealand. In other European countries, distribution was taken over by smaller companies like Bienengr\u00e4ber in Germany, ASD in France, Concentra in Portugal, Itochu in Greece and Cyprus, Stadlbauer in Austria, Switzerland and the former Eastern Bloc. In Poland, the NES had its release on October 6, 1994 along with the SNES and the Game Boy. In November 1994, Nintendo signed an agreement with Steepler to permit the continued sale of the Dendy, an unauthorized hardware clone of the Famicom, in Russia in exchange for also distributing the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo anticipated the NES would have a 25 per cent share in these countries, and saw particular potential in the United Kingdom. It sold modestly in Europe, however.\nIn Brazil, the console was released late in 1993 by Playtronic, even after the SNES. But the Brazilian market had been dominated by unlicensed NES clones \u2013 both locally made, and smuggled from Taiwan. One of the most successful local clones was the Phantom System, manufactured by Gradiente, which licensed Nintendo products in the country for the following decade. The sales of officially licensed products were low, due to the cloning, the quite late official launch, and the high prices of Nintendo's licensed products.\nOutside of Japan, regions in greater Asia received an \"Asian version\" of the front-loader NES though imported Famicom systems were prevalent. Due to import restrictions, NES consoles in India and South Korea were rebranded and distributed by local licensees. The Indian version is called the \"Samurai Electronic TV Game System\" and the Korean version is called the \"Hyundai Comboy\". The console sold very poorly in India due to affordability and a lack of consumer awareness.\nBundles and redesigns.\nFor its complete North American release, the Nintendo Entertainment System was progressively released over the ensuing years in several different bundles, beginning with the Deluxe Set, the Basic Set, the Action Set, and the Power Set. The Deluxe Set was launched in the 1985 test markets, retailing at US$, including R.O.B., a light gun called the NES Zapper, two controllers, and the two Game Paks \"Gyromite\" and \"Duck Hunt\". The Control Deck bundle was first released in 1987 at $ with no game, and $ bundled with the \"Super Mario Bros.\" cartridge. The Action Set, released April 14, 1988, for $, has the Control Deck, two controllers, an NES Zapper, and a dual Game Pak containing both \"Super Mario Bros.\" and \"Duck Hunt\".\nThe Power Set of 1989 includes the console, two game controllers, an NES Zapper, a Power Pad, and a triple Game Pak containing \"Super Mario Bros\", \"Duck Hunt\", and \"World Class Track Meet\". In 1990, a Sports Set bundle was released, including the console, an NES Satellite infrared wireless multitap adapter, four game controllers, and a dual Game Pak containing \"Super Spike V'Ball\" and \"Nintendo World Cup\". Two more bundle packages were later released with the original model NES console. In 1992, the Challenge Set was released for $ with the console, two controllers, and a \"Super Mario Bros. 3\" Game Pak. The Basic Set retailed at US$; it included only the console and two controllers, and no pack-in game. Instead, it contained a book called the \"Official Nintendo Player's Guide\", which contained detailed information for every NES game made up to that point.\nFinally, the console was redesigned for the Australian, North American, and Japanese markets, including the New-Style NES, or NES-101, and one redesigned \"dogbone\" game controller. In Australia, this console revision was released with a cartridge compiling \"Super Mario Bros\", \"Tetris\", and \"Nintendo World Cup\". Released in October 1993 in North America and 1994 in Australia, this final bundle retailed for $ and A$ (A$ with the pack-in game) respectively, and was discontinued with the NES in 1995.\nDiscontinuation.\nOn August 14, 1995, Nintendo discontinued the Nintendo Entertainment System in both North America and Europe. In North America, replacements for the original front-loading NES were available for $ in exchange for a broken system until at least December 1996, under Nintendo's Power Swap program. The Game Boy and Super NES were covered for $ and $ respectively.\nOn May 30, 2003, Nintendo announced the discontinuation of the Famicom in September alongside the Super Famicom and the disk rewriting services for the Famicom Disk System. The last Famicom, serial number HN11033309, was manufactured on September 25; it was kept by Nintendo and subsequently loaned to the organizers of Level X, a video game exhibition held from December 4, 2003, to February 8, 2004, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, for a Famicom retrospective in commemoration of the console's 20th anniversary. Nintendo offered repair service for the Famicom in Japan until 2007, when it was discontinued due to a shortage of available parts.\nHardware.\nConfigurations.\nAlthough all versions of the Famicom and NES include essentially similar hardware, they vary in physical characteristics. The original Famicom's design is predominantly white plastic, with dark red trim; it featured a top-loading cartridge slot, grooves on both sides of the deck in which the hardwired game controllers could be placed when not in use, and a 15-pin expansion port located on the unit's front panel for accessories. In contrast, the design of the original NES features a more subdued gray, black, and red color scheme; it includes a front-loading cartridge slot covered by a small, hinged door that can be opened to insert or remove a cartridge and closed at other times, and an expansion port on the bottom of the unit. Compared to the Famicom, the NES includes the 10NES lockout chip and incorporates a matching chip validation check in its cartridge connector.\nIn late 1993, Nintendo introduced a redesigned version of the Famicom and NES (officially named the New Famicom in Japan and the New-Style NES in the US) to complement the Super Famicom and SNES, to prolong interest in the console, and to reduce costs. The redesigned NES features a top-loading cartridge slot and omits the 10NES lockout chip to avoid reliability issues with the original console; the redesign also omits AV output. Conversely, the redesigned Famicom features such output and introduces detachable game controllers, though the microphone functionality is omitted as a result. The redesigned Famicom and NES models are cosmetically similar aside from the presence of a cartridge \"bump\" on the NES model, which the Famicom model lacks to accommodate its shorter cartridges and the RAM Adapter for the Famicom Disk System.\nSharp Corporation produced three licensed variants of the Famicom in Japan, all of which prominently display the shortened moniker rather than the official name, Family Computer. One variant was a television set with an integrated Famicom; originally released in 1983 as the My Computer TV in and models, it was later released in the United States in 1989 as a 19-inch model named the Video Game Television. Another variant is the Twin Famicom console released in 1986 to combine a Famicom with a Famicom Disk System. Sharp then produced the Famicom Titler in 1989. Intended for video capture and production, it features internal RGB video generation and video output via S-Video, plus inputs for adding subtitles and voice-overs.\nHardware clones.\nA thriving market of unlicensed NES hardware clones emerged during the climax of the console's popularity. Initially, such clones were popular in markets with weak copyright law and where Nintendo issue it's systems after famiclones become well known across specific region, making legal products hard to market or create brand awareness. In particular, the Dendy (), an unlicensed hardware clone produced in Taiwan and sold in the former Soviet Union by Steepler, emerged as the most popular video game console of its time in that setting and it enjoyed a degree of fame roughly equivalent to that experienced by the NES/Famicom in North America and Japan, eventually selling 6 million units. Poland had a similar story with Pegasus distributed by Bobmark International which sold more than 1 million units. In China, a place where many of these clones were manufactured, the media reported 30 million units sold until late 1995. A range of Famicom clones was marketed in Latin America during the late 1980s and 1990s with the name Family Game, resembling the original hardware design. Thailand got Family FR brand famiclones, Brazil a superior to the original Phantom System, the Micro Genius (Simplified Chinese: \u5c0f\u5929\u624d) was marketed in Southeast Asia as an alternative to the Famicom; Ending-Man Terminator enjoyed popularity in European Eastern Bloc, parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America. It happened that these clones reached countries with very good copyright law and high awareness of the Nintendo brand such as Power Player Super Joy III in US.\nThe unlicensed clone market has flourished following Nintendo's discontinuation of the NES. Some of the more exotic of these resulting systems surpass the functionality of the original hardware, such as a portable system with a color LCD (PocketFami). Others have been produced for certain specialized markets, such as a rather primitive personal computer with a keyboard and basic word processing software. These unauthorized clones have been helped by the invention of the so-called NES-on-a-chip.\nAs was the case with unlicensed games, Nintendo has typically gone to the courts to prohibit the manufacture and sale of unlicensed cloned hardware. Many of the clone vendors have included built-in copies of licensed Nintendo software, which constitutes copyright infringement in most countries.\nDesign flaws.\nNintendo's design styling for US release was made deliberately different from that of other game consoles. Nintendo wanted to distinguish its product from those of competitors and to avoid the generally poor reputation that game consoles had acquired following the video game crash of 1983. One result of this philosophy is to disguise the cartridge slot design as a front-loading zero-insertion force (ZIF) cartridge socket, designed to resemble the front-loading mechanism of a VCR. The socket works well when both the connector and the cartridges are clean and the pins on the connector are new. However, the socket is not truly zero-insertion force. When a user inserts the cartridge into the NES, the force of pressing the cartridge into place bends the contact pins slightly and presses the cartridge's ROM board back into the cartridge. Frequent insertion and removal of cartridges wears out the pins, and the ZIF design proved more prone to interference by dirt and dust than an industry-standard card edge connector.\nThe design problems were exacerbated by Nintendo's choice of materials. The console slot nickel connector springs wear due to design and the game cartridge's brass plated nickel connectors are also prone to tarnishing and oxidation. Nintendo sought to fix these problems by redesigning the next generation Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) as a top loader similar to the Famicom. Many players try to alleviate issues in the game caused by this corrosion by blowing into the cartridges, then reinserting them, which actually speeds up the tarnishing due to moisture. One way to slow down the tarnishing process and extend the life of the cartridges is to use isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs.\nUsers have attempted to solve these problems by blowing air onto the cartridge connectors, inserting the cartridge just far enough to get the ZIF to lower, licking the edge connector, slapping the side of the system after inserting a cartridge, shifting the cartridge from side to side after insertion, pushing the ZIF up and down repeatedly, holding the ZIF down lower than it should have been, and cleaning the connectors with alcohol. Many frequently used methods to fix this problem actually risk damaging gaming cartridges or the system. In 1989, Nintendo released an official NES Cleaning Kit to help users clean malfunctioning cartridges and consoles.\nIn response to these hardware flaws, \"Nintendo Authorized Repair Centers\" sprang up across the U.S. According to Nintendo, the authorization program was designed to ensure that the machines were properly repaired. Nintendo would ship the necessary replacement parts only to shops that had enrolled in the authorization program.\nWith the release of the top-loading NES-101 (New-Style NES) in 1993 toward the end of the NES's lifespan, Nintendo resolved the problems by switching to a standard card edge connector and eliminating the lockout chip. All of the Famicom systems use standard card edge connectors, as do Nintendo's two subsequent game consoles, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Nintendo 64.\nLockout.\nThe Famicom as released in Japan contains no lockout hardware, which led to unlicensed cartridges (both legitimate and bootleg) becoming extremely common throughout Japan and East Asia. Nintendo tried to promote its \"Seal of Quality\" in these regions to identify licensed games to combat bootlegs, but bootleg Famicom games continued to be produced even after Nintendo moved production onto the Super Famicom, effectively extending the lifetime of the Famicom.\nThe original NES released for Western countries in 1985 contains the 10NES lockout chip, which prevents it from running cartridges unapproved by Nintendo. The inclusion of the 10NES was a direct influence from the 1983 video game crash in North America, partially caused by a market flooded with uncontrolled publishing of games of poor quality for the home consoles. Nintendo did not want to see that happen with the NES and used the lockout chip to restrict games to only those they licensed and approved for the system. This means of protection worked in combination with the Nintendo \"Seal of Quality\", which a developer had to acquire before they would be able to have access to the required 10NES information prior to publication of their game.\nInitially, the 10NES chip proved a significant barrier to unlicensed developers seeking to develop and sell games for the console. However, hobbyists in later years discovered that disassembling the NES and cutting the fourth pin of the lockout chip would change the chip's mode of operation from \"lock\" to \"key\", removing all effects and greatly improving the console's ability to play legal games, bootlegs, and converted imports.\nOriginal NES consoles sold in different regions have different lockout chips, thereby enforcing regional lockout (regardless of TV signal compatibility). Such regions include North America; most of continental Europe (PAL-B); Asia; and the British Isles, Italy, and Australasia (PAL-A).\nProblems with the 10NES lockout chip frequently result in one of the console's most common issues: the blinking red power light, in which the system appears to turn itself on and off repeatedly because the 10NES would reset the console once per second. The lockout chip required constant communication with the chip in the game to work. Dirty, aging, and bent connectors often disrupt the communication, resulting in the blink effect. In other cases, the console turns on but only displays a solid white, gray, or green screen.\nTechnical specifications.\nThe console's main central processing unit (CPU) was produced by Ricoh, which manufactured different versions between NTSC and PAL regions; NTSC consoles have a 2A03 clocked at 1.79\u00a0MHzTooltip megahertz, and PAL consoles have a 2A07 clocked at 1.66\u00a0MHz. Both CPUs are unlicensed variants of the MOS Technology 6502, an 8-bit microprocessor prevalent in contemporary home computers and consoles; Nintendo ostensibly disabled the 6502's binary-coded decimal mode on them to avoid patent infringement against or licensing fees towards MOS Technology, which was owned by then-rival Commodore International. The CPU has access to 2\u00a0KBTooltip kilobyte of onboard work RAMTooltip random-access memory.\nThe console's graphics are handled by a Ricoh 2C02, a processor known as the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) that is clocked at 5.37\u00a0MHz. A derivative of the Texas Instruments TMS9918\u2014a video display controller used in the ColecoVision\u2014the PPU features 2\u00a0KB of video RAM, 256\u00a0bytes of on-die \"object attribute memory\" (OAM) to store sprite display information on up to 64 sprites, and 28\u00a0bytes of RAM to store information on the YIQ-based color palette; the console can display up to 25 colors simultaneously out of 54 usable colors.\nThe console's standard display resolution is 256 \u00d7 240 pixels, though video output options vary between models. The original Famicom features only radio frequency (RF) modulator output, and the NES additionally supports composite video via RCA connectors. The redesigned Famicom omits the RF modulator entirely, only outputting composite video via a proprietary \"multi-out\" connector first introduced on the Super Famicom/SNES; conversely, the redesigned NES features RF modulator output only, though a version of the model including the \"multi-out\" connector was produced in rare quantities.\nThe console produces sound via an audio processing unit (APU) integrated into the processor. It supports a total of five sound channels: two pulse wave channels, one triangle wave channel, one white noise channel, and one DPCMTooltip differential pulse-code modulation channel for sample playback. Audio playback speed is dependent on the CPU clock rate, which is set by a crystal oscillator.\nAccessories.\nControllers.\nThe game controller for both the NES and the Famicom has an oblong brick-like design with a simple four button layout: two round buttons labeled \"A\" and \"B\", a \"START\" button, and a \"SELECT\" button. Additionally, the controllers use the cross-shaped D-pad, designed by Nintendo employee Gunpei Yokoi for Nintendo Game & Watch systems, to replace the bulkier joysticks on controllers of earlier gaming consoles.\nThe original model Famicom features two game controllers, both of which are hardwired to the back of the console. The second controller lacks the START and SELECT button, featuring a small microphone instead; however, few games use this feature. The earliest produced Famicom units have square A and B buttons; issues with them getting stuck when pressed down led Nintendo to change their shape to a circular design in subsequent units following the console's recall.\nInstead of the Famicom's hardwired controllers, the NES has two proprietary seven-pin ports on the front of the console to support detachable controllers and third-party peripherals. The controllers bundled with the NES are identical and include the START and SELECT buttons, lacking the microphone on the original Famicom's second controller. The cables for NES controllers are also generally three times longer than their Famicom counterparts.\nSeveral special controllers are intended for use with specific games, though are not commonly used. Such peripherals include the NES Zapper (a light gun), R.O.B. (a toy robot), and the Power Pad (a dance pad). The original Famicom has a deepened DA-15 expansion port on the front of the unit to accommodate them.\nTwo official advanced controllers were produced for the NES: the NES Advantage, an arcade controller produced by Asciiware and licensed by Nintendo of America; and the NES Max, a controller with grip handles and a \"cycloid\" sliding-disc D-pad in place of the traditional one. Both controllers have a \"Turbo\" feature, which simulates multiple rapid button presses, for the A and B buttons; the NES Max has manually pressed Turbo buttons, and the NES Advantage offers toggle buttons for Turbo functionality along with knobs that adjust the firing rate of each button. The latter also includes a \"Slow\" button that rapidly pauses games, though this function is not intended for games that invoke a pause menu or screen.\nThe standard game controller was redesigned upon the introduction of the redesigned console. Though the original button layout was retained, the shape of the redesigned controller\u2014nicknamed the \"dog bone\" controller\u2014resembles that of the Super Famicom and SNES. It retained NES-style detachable controller ports.\nThe original NES controller has become one of the most recognizable symbols of the console. Nintendo has mimicked the look of the controller in several other products, from promotional merchandise to limited edition versions of the Game Boy Advance.\nJapanese accessories.\nFew of the numerous peripheral devices and software packages for the Famicom were released outside Japan.\nThe Famicom 3D System, an active shutter 3D headset peripheral released in 1987, enabled the ability to play stereoscopic video games. It was a commercial failure and never released outside Japan; users described the headset as bulky and uncomfortable. Seven games are compatible with the glasses, with three of them developed by Square; two titles received worldwide releases as \"Rad Racer\" and \"The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner\".\n\"Family BASIC\" is an implementation of BASIC for the Famicom, packaged with a keyboard. Similar in concept to the Atari 2600 \"BASIC\" cartridge, it allows the user to write programs, especially games, which can be saved on an included cassette recorder. Nintendo of America rejected releasing \"Famicom BASIC\" in the US in favor of its primary marketing demographic of children.\nThe Famicom Modem connected a Famicom to a now defunct proprietary network in Japan which provided content such as financial services. A dial-up modem was never released for the NES after a partnership with Fidelity Investments.\nFamicom Disk System.\nBy 1986, the cost and size limitations of ROM chips used in the Famicom's ROM cartridges were apparent, with no new advancements present to address them. With this in mind, Nintendo looked at the personal computer (PC) market, where the floppy disk was gaining wide adoption as a computer data storage medium. Partnering with Mitsumi to develop a floppy disk add-on for the Famicom based on the latter's Quick Disk format, Nintendo officially released it as the Family Computer Disk System in Japan on February 21, 1986, at a retail price of \u00a515,000.\nThe advantages of the format (called \"Disk Card\") were apparent on launch. It has more than triple the data storage capacity of the then-largest cartridge (used for \"Super Mario Bros.\") and introduced game save capability and lower production costs compared to cartridges, which resulted in lower retail prices for consumers. The add-on also has a new wavetable synthesis sound channel and more data storage for the Famicom's audio sample channel. Taking advantage of the disk's re-writability, Nintendo set up Disk Writer interactive kiosks at retail stores throughout Japan; at each kiosk, consumers could buy new games to rewrite onto their old disks or onto new disks. Disk Fax kiosks allowed players to submit their high scores on special blue disks for contests and rankings, predating the online leaderboard by several years.\nAlthough Nintendo committed to exclusively releasing games on the Disk System after its release, numerous external issues plagued its long-term viability. Just four months after launch, Capcom released a Famicom port of \"Makaimura\" (known as \"Ghosts 'n Goblins\" in the U.S.) on a cartridge with more data storage capacity than what was possible on Disk Cards, nullifying one of the Disk System's major advantages by using discrete logic chips to perform bank switching. Nintendo also demanded half of the copyright ownership for each game it selected for release on the Disk System, resulting in developers electing to remain on cartridge instead as the latter gained functionality previously considered unique to the former. Developers disliked the lower profit margin of the Disk Writer kiosks, and retailers complained of their use of valuable space as demand for the format waned.\nUsage of a floppy disk-based medium brought about further complications; Disk Cards were more fragile than cartridges and were prone to data corruption from magnetic exposure. Their unreliability was exacerbated by their lack of a shutter, which Nintendo substituted with a wax sleeve and clear keep case to reduce costs; blue disks and later Disk Cards included shutters. The rubber belt-based disk drives were also unreliable, with cryptic error codes complicating troubleshooting; even when fully functional, players accustomed to cartridges were annoyed with the introduction of loading times and disk flipping. Furthermore, the rewritable nature of the format resulted in rampant software piracy, with Nintendo's attempts at anti-piracy measures quickly defeated.\nThough selling close to two million units for all of 1986, Nintendo only managed to increase the total to 4.4\u00a0million units by 1990, falling well short of internal projections. By then, the Disk System was rendered obsolete due to advancements in ROM cartridge production: memory mapping chips for expanded data storage capacity, battery-backed SRAMTooltip static random-access memory for game saving, and declining overall production costs. Nintendo alluded to a Western release for the Disk System, going so far as to successfully file a U.S. patent for it and having the Famicom's cartridge pins used by its RAM Adapter for enhanced audio rerouted to the NES's little-used bottom expansion port. However, such a release never materialized due to its reception in Japan. Most of its games were re-released with workarounds on cartridge for both the Famicom and NES, without the enhanced audio. Although the last game for the Disk System was released in December 1992, Nintendo continued repair and rewrite services for it until September 2003.\nNES Test Station.\nThe NES Test Station diagnostics machine was introduced in 1988. It is an NES-based unit designed for testing NES hardware, components, and games. It was only provided for use in World of Nintendo boutiques as part of the Nintendo World Class Service program. Visitors were to bring items to test with the station, and could be assisted by a store technician or employee.\nThe NES Test Station's front has a Game Pak slot and connectors for testing various components (AC adapter, RF switch, Audio/Video cable, NES Control Deck, accessories and games), with a centrally-located selector knob to choose which component to test. The unit itself weighs approximately 11.7 pounds without a TV. It connects to a television via a combined A/V and RF Switch cable. By actuating the green button, a user can toggle between an A/V Cable or RF Switch connection. The television it is connected to (typically 11\" to 14\") is meant to be placed atop it.\nIn 1991, Nintendo provided an add-on called the \"Super NES Counter Tester\" that tests Super NES components and games. The Super NES Counter Tester is a standard Control Deck on a metal fixture with the connection from the back of the unit re-routed to the front. These connections may be made directly to the test station or to the TV, depending on what is to be tested.\nGames.\nGame Pak.\nThe NES uses a 72-pin design, as compared with 60 pins on the Famicom. To reduce costs and inventory, some early games released in North America are simply Famicom cartridges attached to an adapter to fit inside the NES hardware. Early NES cartridges are held together with five small slotted screws. Games released after 1987 were redesigned slightly to incorporate two plastic clips molded into the plastic itself, removing the need for the top two screws.\nThe back of the cartridge bears a label with handling instructions. Production and software revision codes were imprinted as stamps on the back label to correspond with the software version and producer. All licensed NTSC and PAL cartridges are a standard shade of gray plastic, with the exception of \"The Legend of Zelda\" and ', which were manufactured in gold-plastic carts. Unlicensed carts were produced in black, robin egg blue, and gold, and are all slightly different shapes than standard NES cartridges. Nintendo also produced yellow-plastic carts for internal use at Nintendo Service Centers, although these \"test carts\" were never made available for purchase. All licensed US cartridges were made by Nintendo, Konami, and Acclaim. For promotion of ', Capcom sent 150 limited-edition gold NES cartridges with the original game, featuring the \"Remastered\" art as the sticker, to different gaming news agencies. The instruction label on the back includes the opening lyric from the show's theme song, \"Life is like a hurricane\".\nFamicom cartridges are shaped slightly differently. Unlike NES games, official Famicom cartridges were produced in many colors of plastic. Adapters, similar in design to the popular accessory Game Genie, are available that allow Famicom games to be played on an NES. In Japan, several companies manufactured the cartridges for the Famicom. This allowed these companies to develop customized chips designed for specific purposes, such as superior sound and graphics.\nThird-party licensing.\nNintendo's near monopoly on the home video game market left it with a dominant influence over the industry. Unlike Atari, which never actively pursued third-party developers (and even went to court in an attempt to force Activision to cease production of Atari 2600 games), Nintendo had anticipated and encouraged the involvement of third-party software developers, though strictly on Nintendo's terms. Some of the Nintendo platform-control measures were adopted in a less stringent way by later console manufacturers such as Sega, Sony, and Microsoft.\nTo this end, a 10NES authentication chip is in every console and in every licensed cartridge. If the console's chip can not detect a counterpart chip inside the cartridge, the game does not load. Nintendo portrayed these measures as intended to protect the public against poor-quality games, and placed a golden seal of approval on all licensed games released for the system.\nNintendo found success with Japanese arcade manufacturers such as Konami, Capcom, Taito, and Namco, which signed on as third-party developers. However, they found resistance with US game developers including Atari Games, Activision, Electronic Arts, and Epyx refusing Nintendo's one-sided terms. Acclaim Entertainment, a fledgling game publisher founded by former Activision employees, was the first major third-party licensee in the United States to sign on with Nintendo in late 1987. Atari Games (through Tengen) and Activision signed on soon after.\nNintendo was not as restrictive as Sega, which did not permit third-party publishing until Mediagenic in late summer 1988. Nintendo's intention was to reserve a large part of NES game revenue for itself. Nintendo required that it be the sole manufacturer of all cartridges, and that the publisher had to pay in full before the cartridges for that game be produced. Cartridges could not be returned to Nintendo, so publishers assumed all the risk. As a result, some publishers lost more money due to distress sales of remaining inventory at the end of the NES era than they ever earned in profits from sales of the games. Because Nintendo controlled the production of all cartridges, it was able to enforce strict rules on its third-party developers, who were required to sign a contract that would obligate them to develop exclusively for the system, order at least 10,000 cartridges, and only make five games per year. The global 1988 shortage of DRAM and ROM chips reportedly caused Nintendo to only permit an average of 25% of publishers' requests for cartridges, with some receiving much higher amounts and others almost none. GameSpy noted that Nintendo's \"iron-clad terms\" made the company many enemies during the 1980s. Some developers tried to circumvent the five game limit by creating additional company brands like Konami's Ultra Games label; others tried circumventing the 10NES chip.\nNintendo was accused of antitrust violations because of the strict licensing requirements. The United States Department of Justice and several states began probing Nintendo's business practices, leading to the involvement of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC conducted an extensive investigation which included interviewing hundreds of retailers. During the FTC probe, Nintendo changed the terms of its publisher licensing agreements to eliminate the two-year rule and other restrictive terms. Nintendo and the FTC settled the case in April 1991, with Nintendo required to send vouchers giving a $5 discount off to a new game, to every person that had purchased an NES game between June 1988 and December 1990. GameSpy remarked that Nintendo's punishment was particularly weak given the case's findings, although it has been speculated that the FTC did not want to damage the video game industry in the United States.\nWith the NES near the end of its life, many third-party publishers such as Electronic Arts supported upstart competing consoles with less strict licensing terms such as the Sega Genesis and then the PlayStation, which eroded and then took over Nintendo's dominance in the home console market, respectively. Consoles from Nintendo's rivals in the post-SNES era had always enjoyed much stronger third-party support than Nintendo, which relied more heavily on first-party games.\nUnlicensed games.\nCompanies that refused to pay the licensing fee or were rejected by Nintendo found ways to circumvent the console's authentication system. Most of these companies created circuits that use a voltage spike to temporarily disable the 10NES chip. A few unlicensed games released in Europe and Australia are in the form of a dongle to connect to a licensed game, to use the licensed game's 10NES chip for authentication. To combat unlicensed games, Nintendo of America threatened retailers who sold them with losing their supply of licensed games, and multiple revisions were made to the NES PCBs to prevent unlicensed games from working.\nAtari Games took a different approach with its line of NES products, Tengen. The company attempted to reverse engineer the lockout chip to develop its own \"Rabbit\" chip. Tengen also obtained a description of the lockout chip from the United States Patent and Trademark Office by falsely claiming that it was required to defend against present infringement claims. Nintendo successfully sued Tengen for copyright infringement. Tengen's antitrust claims against Nintendo were never decided.\nColor Dreams made Christian video games under the subsidiary name Wisdom Tree. Historian Steven Kent wrote, \"Wisdom Tree presented Nintendo with a prickly situation. The general public did not seem to pay close attention to the court battle with Atari Games, and industry analysts were impressed with Nintendo's legal acumen; but going after a tiny company that published innocuous religious games was another story.\"\nGame rentals.\nAs the Nintendo Entertainment System grew in popularity and entered millions of American homes, some small video rental shops began buying their own copies of NES games, and renting them out to customers for around the same price as a video cassette rental for a few days. Nintendo received no profit from the practice beyond the initial cost of their game, and unlike movie rentals, a newly released game could hit store shelves and be available for rent on the same day. Nintendo took steps to stop game rentals, but did not take any formal legal action until Blockbuster Video began to make game rentals a large-scale service. Nintendo claimed that allowing customers to rent games would significantly hurt sales and drive up the cost of games. Nintendo lost the lawsuit, but did win on a claim of copyright infringement. Blockbuster was banned from including photocopies of original, copyrighted instruction booklets with its rented games. In compliance with the ruling, Blockbuster produced original short instructions\u2014usually in the form of a small booklet, card, or label stuck on the back of the rental box\u2014that explained the game's basic premise and controls. Video rental shops continued the practice of renting video games.\nReception.\nBy 1988, industry observers stated that the NES's popularity had grown so quickly that the market for Nintendo cartridges was larger than that for all home computer software. \"Compute!\" reported in 1989 that Nintendo had sold seven million NES systems in 1988 alone, almost as many as the number of Commodore 64s sold in its first five years. \"Computer game makers [are] scared stiff\", the magazine said, stating that Nintendo's popularity caused most competitors to have poor sales during the previous Christmas and resulted in serious financial problems for some.\nIn June 1989, Nintendo of America's vice president of marketing Peter Main, said that the Famicom was present in 37% of Japan's households. By 1990, 30% of American households owned the NES, compared to 23% for all personal computers. By 1990, the NES had outsold all previously released consoles worldwide. The slogan for this brand was \"It can't be beaten\". The Nintendo Entertainment System was not available in the Soviet Union.\nIn the early 1990s, gamers predicted that competition from technologically superior systems such as the 16-bit Sega Genesis would mean the immediate end of the NES's dominance. Instead, during the first year of Nintendo's successor console the Super Famicom (named Super Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan), the Famicom remained the second highest-selling video game console in Japan, outselling the newer and more powerful NEC PC Engine and Sega Mega Drive by a wide margin. The console remained popular in Japan and North America until late 1993, when the demand for new NES software abruptly plummeted. The final licensed Famicom game released in Japan is \"Takahashi Meijin no B\u014dken Jima IV (Adventure Island IV)\", in North America is \"Wario's Woods\", and in Europe is \"The Lion King\" in 1995. In the wake of ever decreasing sales and the lack of new games, Nintendo of America officially discontinued the NES by 1995. Nintendo produced new Famicom units in Japan until September 25, 2003, and continued to repair Famicom consoles until October 31, 2007, attributing the discontinuation of support to insufficient supplies of parts.\nThe NES was initially not as successful in Europe during the late 1980s, when it was outsold by the Master System in the United Kingdom. By 1990, the Master System was the highest-selling console in Europe, though the NES was beginning to have a fast-growing user base in the United Kingdom. During the early 1990s, NES sales caught up with and narrowly overtook the Master System overall in Western Europe, though the Master System maintained its lead in several markets such as the United Kingdom, Belgium and Spain.\nLegacy.\nThe NES was released two years after the video game crash of 1983, when many retailers and adult consumers regarded electronic games as a passing fad, so many believed at first that the NES would soon fade. Before the NES and Famicom, Nintendo was known as a moderately successful Japanese toy and playing card manufacturer, but the consoles' popularity helped the company grow into an internationally recognized name almost synonymous with video games as Atari had been, and set the stage for Japanese dominance of the video game industry. With the NES, Nintendo also changed the relationship between console manufacturers and third-party software developers by restricting developers from publishing and distributing software without licensed approval. This led to higher-quality games, which helped change the attitude of a public that had grown weary from poorly produced games for earlier systems.\nThe NES hardware design is also very influential. Nintendo chose the name \"Nintendo Entertainment System\" for the US market and redesigned the system so it would not give the appearance of a child's toy. The front-loading cartridge input allowed it to be used more easily in a TV stand with other entertainment devices, such as a videocassette recorder.\nThe system's hardware limitations led to design principles that still influence the development of modern video games. Many prominent game franchises originated on the NES, including Nintendo's own \"Super Mario Bros.\",| \"The Legend of Zelda\" and \"Metroid\", Capcom's \"Mega Man\" franchise, Konami's \"Castlevania\" franchise, Square's \"Final Fantasy\",| and Enix's \"Dragon Quest\"| franchises.\nNES imagery, especially its controller, has become a popular motif for a variety of products, including Nintendo's Game Boy Advance.\nAt the Tokyo Game Show in 2023, the \"Famicom\" was bestowed \"The Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Award\" in honour of the console's influence and laying down the foundations for the games industry.\nThe NES library includes some influential games. \"Super Mario Bros.\" is the forerunner of side-scrolling games, while \"The Legend of Zelda\" had mostly influenced action-adventure games and helped popularizing the save data in video games. Other two influential games are \"Metroid\" and \"Castlevania II\", which had established the metroidvania genre.\nIn 2011, \"IGN\" named the NES the greatest video game console of all time.\nEmulation.\nThe NES can be emulated on many other systems. The first emulator was the Japanese-only Pasofami. It was soon followed by iNES, which is available in English and is cross-platform, in 1996. It was described as being the first NES emulation software that could be used by a non-expert. The first version of NESticle, an unofficial MS-DOS-based emulator, was released on April 3, 1997. Nintendo offers licensed emulation of some NES games via its Virtual Console service for the Wii, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U, and via its Nintendo Switch Online service.\nRe-release.\nOn July 14, 2016, Nintendo announced the November 2016 launch of a miniature replica of the NES, named the Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition in the United States and Nintendo Classic Mini: Nintendo Entertainment System in Europe and Australia. The emulation-based console includes 30 permanently bundled games from the vintage NES library, including the \"Super Mario Bros.\" series and \"The Legend of Zelda\" series. The system has HDMI display output and a new replica controller, which can also connect to the Wii Remote for use with Virtual Console games. It was discontinued in North America on April 13, 2017, and worldwide on April 15, 2017. However, Nintendo announced in September 2017 that the NES Classic Mini would return to production on June 29, 2018, only to be discontinued again permanently by December of that year.\nNotes.\nTransliterations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["2296072", "18944028", "28314"], "permutation_1": ["28314", "2296072", "18944028"], "permutation_2": ["28314", "18944028", "2296072"], "permutation_3": ["28314", "2296072", "18944028"]}
{"id": "3hop1__625370_367503_126099", "docs_added": {"20896854": "Belyayev circle\nSociety of Russian musicians\nThe Belyayev circle () was a society of Russian musicians who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia between 1885 and 1908, and whose members included Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Glazunov, Vladimir Stasov, Anatoly Lyadov, Alexander Ossovsky, Witold Maliszewski, Nikolai Tcherepnin, Nikolay Sokolov, Alexander Winkler among others. The circle was named after Mitrofan Belyayev, a timber merchant and amateur musician who became a music philanthropist and publisher after hearing the music of the teenage Glazunov.\nThe Belyayev circle believed in a national style of classical music, based on the achievements of the composer group The Five which preceded it. One important difference between composers in the Belyayev circle and their counterparts in the Five was an acceptance in the necessity of Western-styled academic training; this was an attitude passed down by Rimsky-Korsakov, who taught many of the composers in the circle at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. While these composers were more open to Western compositional practices and influences, especially through the music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, they closely followed many of the compositional practices of the Five to the point of mannerism, especially in their depiction of folkloric subject matter.\nThe Belyayev circle came to dominate musical life in St. Petersburg. Composers who desired patronage, publication or public performance of their works through Belyayev were compelled to write in a musical style accepted by Glazunov, Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov. There was also peer pressure to compose in this style, as well as a distrust of composers who did not do so. Several composers who believed in the philosophy of the Belyayev circle became professors and heads of music conservatories in Russia, which extended the influence of the group past the physical confines of St. Petersburg and timewise well into the 20th century.\nBelyayev.\nBelyayev was one of a growing number of Russian nouveau-riche industrialists who became patrons of the arts in mid- to late-19th century Russia; their number included Nadezhda von Meck, railway magnate Savva Mamontov and textile manufacturer Pavel Tretyakov. While Nadezhda von Meck insisted on anonymity in her patronage in the tradition of \"noblesse oblige\", Belyayev, Mamontov and Tretyakov \"wanted to contribute conspicuously to public life\". Because of their cultural and political orientation, they were more likely than the aristocracy to support native talent, and were more inclined to support nationalist artists over cosmopolitan ones. This was not due to any social or political agenda implicit in the art, but due to the Russianness of the art itself. This included the music of the composers Belyayev chose to support.\nAn amateur viola player and chamber music enthusiast, Belyayev hosted \"quartet Fridays\" at his home in St. Petersburg. A frequent visitor to these gatherings was Rimsky-Korsakov. Belyayev became a music patron after he had heard the First Symphony by the sixteen-year-old Glazunov, who had been discovered by Balakirev and tutored by Rimsky-Korsakov in musical composition, counterpoint and orchestration. Not only did Glazunov become a fixture of the \"quartet Fridays\", but Belyayev also published Glazunov's work and took him on a tour of Western Europe. This tour included a visit to Weimar, Germany to present the young composer to famed Hungarian composer and pianist Franz Liszt.\nSoon Belyayev became interested in other Russian composers. In 1884 he set up an annual Glinka prize, named after pioneer Russian composer Mikhail Glinka (1804\u20131857). In 1885 he founded his own music publishing firm, based in Leipzig, Germany, through which he published works by Glazunov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Lyadov and Borodin at his own expense. By publishing in Leipzig, Belyayev could offer the double benefit of higher quality music printing than was available in Russia at the time, plus the protection of international copyright which Russia did not offer. At Rimsky-Korsakov's suggestion, Belyayev also founded his own concert series, the Russian Symphony Concerts, open exclusively to Russian composers. Among the works written especially for this series were the three by Rimsky-Korsakov by which he is currently best known in the West\u2014\"Scheherazade\", the \"Russian Easter Festival Overture\" and \"Capriccio espagnol\". To select which composers to assist with money, publication or performances from the many who now appealed for help, Belyayev set up an advisory council made up of Glazunov, Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov. They would look through the compositions and appeals submitted and suggest which composers were deserving of patronage and public attention.\nInfluence.\nThe musical scene in St. Petersburg came to be dominated by the Belyayev circle since Rimsky-Korsakov had taught many of its members at the Conservatory there. Since Glazunov, Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov acted in an advisory capacity to the Belyayev enterprises, and thus became channels of Belyayev's largesse, composers who wished to be part of this circle and who desired Belyayev's patronage had to write in a musical style approved by these three men. Because of this stricture, Rimsky-Korsakov's style became the preferred academic style\u2014one that young composers had to follow if they hoped to have any sort of career. In this sense, the Belyayev circle acted as a compositional guild. The better pupils from the St. Petersburg Conservatory received initiation by their invitation to the \"quartet Fridays\", and admission to the circle \"guaranteed well remunerated publication by Edition Belieff, Leipzig, and performance in the Russian Symphony Concert programs\". Thus, the Belyayev circle \"set up an establishment that governed all aspects of musical creation, education and performance\".\nPhilosophy.\nThe Belyayev circle ran counter in its philosophy to the artistic movement and magazine \"Mir iskusstva\" (, \"World of Art\"). \"Mir iskusstva\" \"identified with the artistic values of the [Russian] aristocracy\" in its cosmopolitanism and belief of a universal culture. The composers of the Belyayev circle, like the Five before it, believed in a national, realist form of Russian classical music that should stand apart in its style and characteristics from Western European classical music. In this sense, the Belyayev composers shared similar goals with the Abramtsevo Colony and Russian Revival in the sphere of fine arts. Another way \"Mir iskusstva\" disagreed with the Belyayev circle was that they believed the composers under Belyayev were practicing art for art's sake, much like a social program. This practice ran counter to their belief in focusing on \"art as the spiritual expression of the individual's creative genius\", as they felt Alexander Pushkin had done in his poetry and Tchaikovsky in his music. Alfred Nurok commented in an 1899 review in \"Mir iskusstva\":\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Mr. Belyayev's Maecenas activities bear a very special imprint. His undeniably lavish patronage of Russian music of the newest variety does not, unfortunately, so much facilitate the development of the talents of gifted but as yet unrecognized composers, as it encourages young people who have successfully completed their conservatory course to cultivate productivity come what may, touching little upon the question of their creative abilities. Mr. Belyayev encourages industry above all, and under his aegis musical composition has assumed the character of a workers' collective (\"artel\"), or even a crafts industry.\nMusicologist Richard Taruskin wrote, \"Within the Belyayev circle a safe conformism became increasingly the rule\". Concert programs needed to be filled with new Russian works, and new works had to be published to offer to the music public. It was therefore necessary \"to dip rather deep into the pool of available Conservatory trained talent\", and the circle became known for the number of less-than-first-rate talents harbored within it. Critic and composer C\u00e9sar Cui, who had been part of the Five along with Rimsky-Korsakov, derisively called these younger composers \"clones\". Though there was some snobbism involved in criticism of the Belyayev circle, there was also enough truth in the issue of conformism to cause the circle some embarrassment.\nA contributing factor to this conformism was the gradual academization of composers in the nationalist circle, fueled by Rimsky-Korsakov's efforts in this regard with his students. An increasing number of these students joined the Belyayev circle; the result was \"the emergence of production-line 'Russian style' pieces, polished and correct, but lacking originality\".\nComparison to the Five.\nThe composers who formed the Belyayev circle were nationalistic in their outlook, as were The Five before them. Like the Five, they believed in a uniquely Russian style of classical music that utilized folk music and exotic melodic, harmonic and rhythmic elements, as exemplified by the music of Balakirev, Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov. Unlike the Five, these composers also believed in the necessity of an academic, Western-based background in composition. The necessity of Western compositional techniques was something that Rimsky-Korsakov had instilled in many of them in his years at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Compared to the \"revolutionary\" composers in Balakirev's circle, Rimsky-Korsakov found those in the Belyayev circle to be \"progressive ... attaching as it did great importance to technical perfection, but ... also broke new paths, though more securely, even if less speedily...\"\nGlazunov's attitude toward outside influences was typical of the Belyayev circle. He studied Tchaikovsky's works and \"found much that was new ... that was instructive for us as young musicians. It struck me that Tchaikovsky, who was above all a lyrical and melodic composer, had introduced operatic elements into his symphonies. I admired the thematic material of his works less than the inspired unfolding of his thoughts, his temperament and the constructural perfection.\" Rimsky-Korsakov noted \"a tendency toward eclecticism\" among the composers in the Belyayev circle, as well as a \"predilection ... for Italian-French music of the time of wig and farthingale [that is, the eighteenth century], music introduced by Tchaikovsky in his \"Queen of Spades\" and \"Iolanthe\"\".\nNevertheless, while the Belyayev circle was more tolerant of outside influence to a certain degree than their predecessors under Balakirev, they still followed the compositional practices of the Five closely. Maes writes, \"The harmonies of Mussorgsky's coronation scene in \"Boris\", the octatonicism of \"Mlada\" and \"Sadko\", Balakirev's folk-song stylizations, Rimsky-Korsakov's colorful harmonization\u2014all these served as a store of recipes for writing Russian national music. In the portrayal of the national character ... these techniques prevailed over the subjects portrayed\".\nFolklorism, orientalism, \"fantastic\" style.\nUnlike their predecessors in the Five, composers in the Belyayev circle did not concern themselves greatly with folklorism\u2014the invention or adaptation of folklore to newly written stories or songs, or to folklore that is reworked and modified for modern tastes. They also did not travel to other parts of Russia to actively search for folk songs, as Balakirev had done. When the Belyayev composers produced folkloric works, \"they simply imitated Balakirev's or Rimsky-Korsakov's styles\".\nOne of the Belyayev composers, Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, continued the Five's work in musical orientalism\u2014the use of exotic melodic, harmonic and rhythmic elements to depict the middle- and far-eastern parts of the Russian Empire. He wrote three operas set in an oriental background and composed in Balakirev's style\u2014\"Ruth\", \"Azra\" and \"Izmena\". The story for the last of these operas \"deals with the struggle between Christians and Muslims during the sixteenth-century occupation of Georgia by the Persians\". Ippolotov-Ivanov is best known in the West for his two sets of \"Caucasian Sketches\" \"an orientalist orchestral work modeled on Balakirev and Borodin\".\nLyadov wrote in a \"fantastic\" vein akin to Rimsky-Korsakov's, especially in his tone poems based on Russian fairy tales, \"Baba Yaga\", \"Kikimora\" and \"The Enchanted Lake\". This style of musical writing was based on extensive use of the whole tone scale and the octatonic scale to depict supernatural or magical characters and events, hence the term \"fantastic\". Though he would break from the Belyayev aesthetic in subsequent works, Igor Stravinsky wrote his ballet \"The Firebird\" in a similar musical style.\nIntolerance of non-compliant composers.\nDespite Rimsky-Korsakov's denial of bias among composers of the Belyayev circle, musicologist Solomon Volkov mentions that they and the Five shared a mutual suspicion of compositions that did not follow its canon. This proved especially true of the First Symphony of Sergei Rachmaninoff, a Moscow composer and protege of Tchaikovsky. Rimsky-Korsakov, whose own musical preferences in his later years were not overly progressive, may have sounded an advance warning on hearing the symphony in rehearsal when he told Rachmaninoff, \"Forgive me, but I do not find this music at all agreeable\". By the reports of many present, the rehearsal that Rimsky-Korsakov had heard, conducted by Glazunov, was both a disaster as a performance and a horrific travesty of the score. The premiere, held in St. Petersburg on March 28, 1897, went no better. Cui wrote in his review of the work, among other things, \"If there were a conservatory in Hell, and if one of its talented students were to compose a programme symphony based on the story of the Ten Plagues of Egypt, and if he were to compose a symphony like Mr. Rachmaninoff's, then he would have fulfilled his task brilliantly and would delight the inhabitants of Hell\". The symphony was not performed again in Rachmaninoff's lifetime, and while Rachmaninoff did not destroy or disavow the score, he suffered a psychological collapse that led to a three-year creative hiatus.\nModernism.\nMaes writes that the composers who formed the Belyayev circle have often been described as \"important links to, and pathbreakers for\" modernist Russian composers such as Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev. This, he asserts, is actually a false assumption which suggests that modernism was the result of a gradual process. The truth, Maes suggests, was that modernist music in Russia was a much more radical break from the Belyayev circle than many have claimed. Rimsky-Korsakov's extensive use of the octatonic scale and other harmonic experiments \"was a gold mine for those bent on a modernist revolution,\" Maes writes. \"However, the renewing force had still to be liberated from the cliches and routines into which the Belyayev aesthetic had been pressed\".\nLegacy.\nBias toward the musical aesthetics practiced by the Belyayev circle would continue at the St. Petersburg Conservatory after Rimsky-Korsakov's retirement in 1906, with his son-in-law Maximilian Steinberg in charge of composition classes at the Conservatory through the 1920s. Dmitri Shostakovich would complain about Steinberg's musical conservatism, typified by such phrases as \"the inviolable foundations of the \"kuchka\"\" and the \"sacred traditions of Nikolai Andreyevich [Rimsky-Korsakov]\". Nor was this traditionalism limited to St. Petersburg. Well into the Soviet era, many other music conservatories remained run by traditionalists such as Ippolitov-Ivanov in Moscow and Reinhold Gli\u00e8re in Kiev. Because of these individuals, Maes writes, \"the conservatories retained a direct link with the Belyayev aesthetic\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18427784": "Symphony No. 1 (Glazunov)\nAlexander Glazunov wrote his Symphony No. 1 in E major, Op. 5, in 1881, when he was 16 years old. It was premiered the following year in St. Petersburg. It is known as his Slavonian Symphony.\nStructure.\nThe symphony is written in four movements:\nThe symphony bears a strong stylistic semblance to works by Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, and especially Borodin. It was also influenced by Schumann's \"Rhenish\" Symphony, a work which was highly regarded in the Balakirev circle.\nOverview.\nWhile the symphony itself was a resounding success, the audience was even more astonished to see a teenage boy come to the stage to take his bows in his school uniform. This was not the first time Alexander Glazunov had astounded people. He displayed his musical talent early, was discovered by Mily Balakirev (former leader of The Mighty Handful) and further encouraged by his teacher Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who gave him a thorough grounding in counterpoint, form, harmony and orchestration between 1879 and 1881, during which Rimsky-Korsakov wrote in his memoirs that it seemed Glazunov did not progress so much from day to day as from hour to hour. After two years, as Glazunov remembered, Rimsky-Korsakov told his pupil \"that henceforth he regarded it as unnecessary to instruct me systematically, in return for payment, as I had already more or less become a mature musician.\"\nStill, some remained skeptical, but not for long. When composer Sergei Taneyev told his friend Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky about the premiere of the First Symphony, Tchaikovsky wrote Balakirev:\nGlazunov interests me greatly. Is there any chance that this young man could send me the symphony so that I might take a look at it? I should also like to know whether he completed it, either conceptually or practically, with your or Rimsky-Korsakov's help.\nBalakirev replied:\nYou ask about Glazunov. He is a very talented young man who studied for a year under Rimsky-Korsakov. When he composed his symphony, he did not need any help.\"\nSome months later, Tchaikovsky wrote that he had purchased and studied the score of Glazunov's First String Quartet, concluding that \"Glazunov's talent is undeniable.\"\nTruth be told, Glazunov did have a little help from Balakirev, but on just one point. The composer wrote in his memoirs, \"I composed and orchestrated the slow movement of the \"First Symphony\" in the summer of 1881. In addition I played that passage to Balakirev, who approved of it in general but advised me to add something after the presentation of the two themes, before the repetition of the beginning. From the rhythmic figure that appears in the bars that I added, I created the contrapuntal accompaniment to the first theme, which lent the work a degree of rhythmic vitality. That autumn, the score of the symphony was ready.\"\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "25391": "Russia\nCountry spanning Europe and Asia\nRussia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the largest country in the world, and extends across eleven time zones; sharing land borders with fourteen countries. Russia is the most populous country in Europe and the ninth-most populous country in the world. It is a highly urbanised country, with sixteen of its urban areas having more than 1\u00a0million inhabitants. Moscow, the most populous metropolitan area in Europe, is the capital and largest city of Russia, while Saint Petersburg is its second-largest city and cultural centre.\nHuman settlement on the territory of modern Russia dates back to the Lower Paleolithic. The East Slavs emerged as a recognised group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries CE. The first East Slavic state, Kievan Rus', arose in the 9th century, and in 988, it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire. Kievan Rus' ultimately disintegrated; the Grand Duchy of Moscow led the unification of Russian lands, leading to the proclamation of the Tsardom of Russia in 1547. By the early 18th century, Russia had vastly expanded through conquest, annexation, and the efforts of Russian explorers, developing into the Russian Empire, which remains the third-largest empire in history. However, with the Russian Revolution in 1917, Russia's monarchic rule was abolished and eventually replaced by the Russian SFSR\u2014the world's first constitutionally socialist state. Following the Russian Civil War, the Russian SFSR established the Soviet Union with three other Soviet republics, within which it was the largest and principal constituent. The Soviet Union underwent rapid industrialisation in the 1930s, amidst the deaths of millions under Joseph Stalin's rule, and later played a decisive role for the Allies in World War II by leading large-scale efforts on the Eastern Front. With the onset of the Cold War, it competed with the United States for ideological dominance and international influence. The Soviet era of the 20th century saw some of the most significant Russian technological achievements, including the first human-made satellite and the first human expedition into outer space.\nIn 1991, the Russian SFSR emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as the Russian Federation. A new constitution was adopted, which established a federal semi-presidential system. Since the turn of the century, Russia's political system has been dominated by Vladimir Putin, under whom the country has experienced democratic backsliding and become an authoritarian dictatorship. Russia has been militarily involved in a number of conflicts in former Soviet states and other countries, including its war with Georgia in 2008 and its war with Ukraine since 2014. The latter has involved the internationally unrecognised annexations of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea in 2014 and four other regions in 2022, during an ongoing invasion.\nRussia is generally considered a great power and is a regional power, possessing the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons and having the third-highest military expenditure in the world. It has a high-income economy, which is the eleventh-largest in the world by nominal GDP and fourth-largest by PPP, relying on its vast mineral and energy resources; which rank as the second-largest in the world for oil and natural gas production. However, Russia ranks very low in international measurements of democracy, human rights and freedom of the press, and also has high levels of perceived corruption. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council; a member state of the G20, SCO, BRICS, APEC, OSCE, and WTO; and the leading member state of post-Soviet organisations such as CIS, CSTO, and EAEU. Russia is home to 32 UNESCO World Heritage Sites.\nEtymology.\nAccording to the \"Oxford English Dictionary\", the English name \"Russia\" first appeared in the 14th century, borrowed from , used in the 11th century and frequently in 12th-century British sources, in turn derived from and the suffix .\nThere are several words in Russian which translate to \"Russians\" in English. The noun and adjective refers to ethnic Russians. The adjective denotes Russian citizens regardless of ethnicity. The same applies to the more recently coined noun , in the sense of citizen of the Russian state.\nThe oldest endonyms used were \"Rus'\" () and the \"Russian land\" (). According to the \"Primary Chronicle\", the word \"Rus'\" is derived from the Rus' people, who were a Swedish tribe, and from where the three original members of the Rurikid dynasty came from. The Finnish word for Swedes, , has the same origin. In modern historiography, the early medieval East Slavic state is usually referred to as \"Kievan Rus'\", named after its capital city. Another Medieval Latin name for \"Rus'\" was \"Ruthenia\".\nIn Russian, the current name of the country, (), comes from the Byzantine Greek name (). The name () was first attested in 1387. The name appeared in Russian sources in the 15th century and began to replace the vernacular \"Rus'\" during the rise of Moscow as the centre of a unified Russian state. However, until the end of the 17th century, the country was more often referred to by its inhabitants as \"Rus'\", the \"Russian land\" (), or the \"Muscovite state\" (), among other variations.\nIn 1721, Peter the Great proclaimed the Russian Empire (). The name \"Rossiya\" was used as the common designation for the multinational Russian Empire and then for the modern Russian state. \"Rossiya\" is distinguished from the ethnonym \"russkiy\", as it refers to a supranational identity, including ethnic Russians. After the Russian Revolution and the proclamation of the Russian SFSR in 1918, the \"Russian\" in the title of the state was \"Rossiyskaya\", rather than \"Russkaya\", as the former denoted a multinational state, while the latter had ethnic dimensions. In modern Russian, the name \"Rus'\" is still used in poetry or prose to refer to either the older Russia or an imagined essence of Russia.\nHistory.\nEarly history.\nThe first human settlement on Russia dates back to the Oldowan period in the early Lower Paleolithic. About 2 million years ago, representatives of \"Homo erectus\" migrated to the Taman Peninsula in southern Russia. Flint tools, some 1.5 million years old, have been discovered in the North Caucasus. Radiocarbon dated specimens from Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains estimate the oldest Denisovan specimen lived 195\u2013122,700 years ago. Fossils of \"Denny\", an archaic human hybrid that was half Neanderthal and half Denisovan, and lived some 90,000 years ago, was also found within the latter cave. Russia was home to some of the last surviving Neanderthals, from about 45,000 years ago, found in Mezmaiskaya cave.\nThe first trace of an early modern human in Russia dates back to 45,000 years, in Western Siberia. The discovery of high concentration cultural remains of anatomically modern humans, from at least 40,000 years ago, was found at Kostyonki\u2013Borshchyovo, and at Sungir, dating back to 34,600 years ago\u2014both in western Russia. Humans reached Arctic Russia at least 40,000 years ago, in Mamontovaya Kurya. Ancient North Eurasian populations from Siberia genetically similar to Mal'ta\u2013Buret' culture and Afontova Gora were an important genetic contributor to Ancient Native Americans and Eastern Hunter-Gatherers.\nThe Kurgan hypothesis places the Volga-Dnieper region of southern Russia and Ukraine as the urheimat of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. Early Indo-European migrations from the Pontic\u2013Caspian steppe of Ukraine and Russia spread Yamnaya ancestry and Indo-European languages across large parts of Eurasia. Nomadic pastoralism developed in the Pontic\u2013Caspian steppe beginning in the Chalcolithic. Remnants of these steppe civilisations were discovered in places such as Ipatovo, Sintashta, Arkaim, and Pazyryk, which bear the earliest known traces of horses in warfare. The genetic makeup of speakers of the Uralic language family in northern Europe was shaped by migration from Siberia that began at least 3,500 years ago.\nIn the 3rd to 4th centuries CE, the Gothic kingdom of Oium existed in southern Russia, which was later overrun by Huns. Between the 3rd and 6th centuries CE, the Bosporan Kingdom, which was a Hellenistic polity that succeeded the Greek colonies, was also overwhelmed by nomadic invasions led by warlike tribes such as the Huns and Eurasian Avars. The Khazars, who were of Turkic origin, ruled the steppes between the Caucasus in the south, to the east past the Volga river basin, and west as far as Kyiv on the Dnieper river until the 10th century. After them came the Pechenegs who created a large confederacy, which was subsequently taken over by the Cumans and the Kipchaks.\nThe ancestors of Russians are among the Slavic tribes that separated from the Proto-Indo-Europeans, who appeared in the northeastern part of Europe c.\u20091500\u202fyears ago. The East Slavs gradually settled western Russia (approximately between modern Moscow and Saint-Petersburg) in two waves: one moving from Kiev towards present-day Suzdal and Murom and another from Polotsk towards Novgorod and Rostov. Prior to Slavic migration, that territory was populated by Finno-Ugrian peoples. From the 7th century onwards, the incoming East Slavs slowly assimilated the native Finno-Ugrians.\nKievan Rus'.\nThe establishment of the first East Slavic states in the 9th century coincided with the arrival of Varangians, the Vikings who ventured along the waterways extending from the eastern Baltic to the Black and Caspian Seas. According to the \"Primary Chronicle\", a Varangian from the Rus' people, named Rurik, was elected ruler of Novgorod in 862. In 882, his successor Oleg ventured south and conquered Kiev, which had been previously paying tribute to the Khazars. Rurik's son Igor and Igor's son Sviatoslav subsequently subdued all local East Slavic tribes to Kievan rule, destroyed the Khazar Khaganate, and launched several military expeditions to Bulgaria, Byzantium and Persia.\nIn the 10th to 11th centuries, Kievan Rus' became one of the largest and most prosperous states in Europe. The reigns of Vladimir the Great (980\u20131015) and his son Yaroslav the Wise (1019\u20131054) constitute the Golden Age of Kiev, which saw the acceptance of Orthodox Christianity from Byzantium, and the creation of the first East Slavic written legal code, the \"Russkaya Pravda\". The age of feudalism and decentralisation had come, marked by constant in-fighting between members of the Rurik dynasty that ruled Kievan Rus' collectively. Kiev's dominance waned, to the benefit of Vladimir-Suzdal in the north-east, the Novgorod Republic in the north, and Galicia-Volhynia in the south-west. By the 12th century, Kiev lost its pre-eminence and Kievan Rus' had fragmented into different principalities. Prince Andrey Bogolyubsky sacked Kiev in 1169 and made Vladimir his base, leading to political power being shifted to the north-east.\nLed by Prince Alexander Nevsky, Novgorodians repelled the invading Swedes in the Battle of the Neva in 1240, as well as the Germanic crusaders in the Battle on the Ice in 1242.\nKievan Rus' finally fell to the Mongol invasion of 1237\u20131240, which resulted in the sacking of Kiev and other cities, as well as the death of a major part of the population. The invaders, later known as Tatars, formed the state of the Golden Horde, which ruled over Russia for the next two centuries. Only the Novgorod Republic escaped foreign occupation after it agreed to pay tribute to the Mongols. Galicia-Volhynia would later be absorbed by Lithuania and Poland, while the Novgorod Republic continued to prosper in the north. In the northeast, the Byzantine-Slavic traditions of Kievan Rus' were adapted to form the Russian autocratic state.\nGrand Principality of Moscow.\nThe destruction of Kievan Rus' saw the eventual rise of the Grand Principality of Moscow, initially a part of Vladimir-Suzdal. While still under the domain of the Mongol-Tatars and with their connivance, Moscow began to assert its influence in the region in the early 14th century, gradually becoming the leading force in the \"gathering of the Russian lands\". When the seat of the Metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church moved to Moscow in 1325, its influence increased. Moscow's last rival, the Novgorod Republic, prospered as the chief fur trade centre and the easternmost port of the Hanseatic League.\nLed by Prince Dmitry Donskoy of Moscow, the united army of Russian principalities inflicted a milestone defeat on the Mongol-Tatars in the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380. Moscow gradually absorbed its parent duchy and surrounding principalities, including formerly strong rivals such as Tver and Novgorod.\nIvan\u00a0III (\"the Great\") threw off the control of the Golden Horde and consolidated the whole of northern Rus' under Moscow's dominion, and was the first Russian ruler to take the title \"Grand Prince of all Rus'\". After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Moscow claimed succession to the legacy of the Eastern Roman Empire. Ivan\u00a0III married Sophia Palaiologina, the niece of the last Byzantine emperor Constantine\u00a0XI, and made the Byzantine double-headed eagle his own, and eventually Russia's, coat-of-arms. Vasili III united all of Russia by annexing the last few independent Russian states in the early 16th century.\nTsardom of Russia.\nIn development of the Third Rome ideas, the grand prince Ivan\u00a0IV (\"the Terrible\") was officially crowned the first \"tsar\" of Russia in 1547. The tsar promulgated a new code of laws (Sudebnik of 1550), established the first Russian feudal representative body (the Zemsky Sobor), revamped the military, curbed the influence of the clergy, and reorganised local government. During his long reign, Ivan nearly doubled the already large Russian territory by annexing the three Tatar khanates: Kazan and Astrakhan along the Volga, and the Khanate of Sibir in southwestern Siberia. Ultimately, by the end of the 16th century, Russia expanded east of the Ural Mountains. However, the Tsardom was weakened by the long and unsuccessful Livonian War against the coalition of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (later the united Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth), the Kingdom of Sweden, and Denmark\u2013Norway for access to the Baltic coast and sea trade. In 1572, an invading army of Crimean Tatars were thoroughly defeated in the crucial Battle of Molodi.\nThe death of Ivan's sons marked the end of the ancient Rurik dynasty in 1598, and in combination with the disastrous famine of 1601\u20131603, led to a civil war, the rule of pretenders, and foreign intervention during the Time of Troubles in the early 17th century. The Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth, taking advantage, occupied parts of Russia, extending into the capital Moscow. In 1612, the Poles were forced to retreat by the Russian volunteer corps, led by merchant Kuzma Minin and prince Dmitry Pozharsky. The Romanov dynasty acceded to the throne in 1613 by the decision of the Zemsky Sobor, and the country started its gradual recovery from the crisis.\nRussia continued its territorial growth through the 17th century, which was the age of the Cossacks. In 1654, the Ukrainian leader, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, offered to place Ukraine under the protection of the Russian tsar, Alexis; whose acceptance of this offer led to another Russo-Polish War. Ultimately, Ukraine was split along the Dnieper, leaving the eastern part, (Left-bank Ukraine and Kiev) under Russian rule. In the east, the rapid Russian exploration and colonisation of vast Siberia continued, hunting for valuable furs and ivory. Russian explorers pushed eastward primarily along the Siberian River Routes, and by the mid-17th century, there were Russian settlements in eastern Siberia, on the Chukchi Peninsula, along the Amur River, and on the coast of the Pacific Ocean. In 1648, Semyon Dezhnyov became the first European to navigate through the Bering Strait.\nImperial Russia.\nUnder Peter the Great, Russia was proclaimed an empire in 1721, and established itself as one of the European great powers. Ruling from 1682 to 1725, Peter defeated Sweden in the Great Northern War (1700\u20131721), securing Russia's access to the sea and sea trade. In 1703, on the Baltic Sea, Peter founded Saint Petersburg as Russia's new capital. Throughout his rule, sweeping reforms were made, which brought significant Western European cultural influences to Russia. He was succeeded by Catherine I (1725\u20131727), followed by Peter II (1727\u20131730), and Anna. The reign of Peter\u00a0I's daughter Elizabeth in 1741\u20131762 saw Russia's participation in the Seven Years' War (1756\u20131763). During the conflict, Russian troops overran East Prussia, reaching Berlin. However, upon Elizabeth's death, all these conquests were returned to the Kingdom of Prussia by pro-Prussian Peter\u00a0III of Russia.\nCatherine\u00a0II (\"the Great\"), who ruled in 1762\u20131796, presided over the Russian Age of Enlightenment. She extended Russian political control over the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth and annexed most of its territories into Russia, making it the most populous country in Europe. In the south, after the successful Russo-Turkish Wars against the Ottoman Empire, Catherine advanced Russia's boundary to the Black Sea, by dissolving the Crimean Khanate, and annexing Crimea. As a result of victories over Qajar Iran through the Russo-Persian Wars, by the first half of the 19th century, Russia also conquered the Caucasus. Catherine's successor, her son Paul, was unstable and focused predominantly on domestic issues. Following his short reign, Catherine's strategy was continued with Alexander\u00a0I's (1801\u20131825) wresting of Finland from the weakened Sweden in 1809, and of Bessarabia from the Ottomans in 1812. In North America, the Russians became the first Europeans to reach and colonise Alaska. In 1803\u20131806, the first Russian circumnavigation was made. In 1820, a Russian expedition discovered the continent of Antarctica.\nGreat power and development of society, sciences, and arts.\nDuring the Napoleonic Wars, Russia joined alliances with various European powers, and fought against France. The French invasion of Russia at the height of Napoleon's power in 1812 reached Moscow, but eventually failed as the obstinate resistance in combination with the bitterly cold Russian winter led to a disastrous defeat of invaders, in which the pan-European Grande Arm\u00e9e faced utter destruction. Led by Mikhail Kutuzov and Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly, the Imperial Russian Army ousted Napoleon and drove throughout Europe in the War of the Sixth Coalition, ultimately entering Paris. Alexander I controlled Russia's delegation at the Congress of Vienna, which defined the map of post-Napoleonic Europe.\nThe officers who pursued Napoleon into Western Europe brought ideas of liberalism back to Russia, and attempted to curtail the tsar's powers during the abortive Decembrist revolt of 1825. At the end of the conservative reign of Nicholas I (1825\u20131855), a zenith period of Russia's power and influence in Europe, was disrupted by defeat in the Crimean War.\nGreat liberal reforms and capitalism.\nNicholas's successor Alexander\u00a0II (1855\u20131881) enacted significant changes throughout the country, including the emancipation reform of 1861. These reforms spurred industrialisation, and modernised the Imperial Russian Army, which liberated much of the Balkans from Ottoman rule in the aftermath of the 1877\u20131878 Russo-Turkish War. During most of the 19th and early 20th century, Russia and Britain colluded over Afghanistan and its neighbouring territories in Central and South Asia; the rivalry between the two major European empires came to be known as the Great Game.\nThe late 19th century saw the rise of various socialist movements in Russia. Alexander\u00a0II was assassinated in 1881 by revolutionary terrorists. The reign of his son Alexander\u00a0III (1881\u20131894) was less liberal but more peaceful.\nConstitutional monarchy and World War.\nUnder last Russian emperor, Nicholas\u00a0II (1894\u20131917), the Revolution of 1905 was triggered by the humiliating failure of the Russo-Japanese War. The uprising was put down, but the government was forced to concede major reforms (Russian Constitution of 1906), including granting freedoms of speech and assembly, the legalisation of political parties, and the creation of an elected legislative body, the State Duma.\nRevolution and civil war.\nIn 1914, Russia entered World War\u00a0I in response to Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on Russia's ally Serbia, and fought across multiple fronts while isolated from its Triple Entente allies. In 1916, the Brusilov Offensive of the Imperial Russian Army almost completely destroyed the Austro-Hungarian Army. However, the already-existing public distrust of the regime was deepened by the rising costs of war, high casualties, and rumors of corruption and treason. All this formed the climate for the Russian Revolution of 1917, carried out in two major acts. In early 1917, Nicholas II was forced to abdicate; he and his family were imprisoned and later executed during the Russian Civil War. The monarchy was replaced by a shaky coalition of political parties that declared itself the Provisional Government, and proclaimed the Russian Republic. On 19 January [O.S. 6 January], 1918, the Russian Constituent Assembly declared Russia a democratic federal republic (thus ratifying the Provisional Government's decision). The next day the Constituent Assembly was dissolved by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.\nAn alternative socialist establishment co-existed, the Petrograd Soviet, wielding power through the democratically elected councils of workers and peasants, called \"soviets\". The rule of the new authorities only aggravated the crisis in the country instead of resolving it, and eventually, the October Revolution, led by Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Provisional Government and gave full governing power to the soviets, leading to the creation of the world's first socialist state. The Russian Civil War broke out between the anti-communist White movement and the Bolsheviks with its Red Army. In the aftermath of signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that concluded hostilities with the Central Powers of World War\u00a0I; Bolshevist Russia surrendered most of its western territories, which hosted 34% of its population, 54% of its industries, 32% of its agricultural land, and roughly 90% of its coal mines.\nThe Allied powers launched an unsuccessful military intervention in support of anti-communist forces. In the meantime, both the Bolsheviks and White movement carried out campaigns of deportations and executions against each other, known respectively as the Red Terror and White Terror. By the end of the violent civil war, Russia's economy and infrastructure were heavily damaged, and as many as 10 million perished during the war, mostly civilians. Millions became White \u00e9migr\u00e9s, and the Russian famine of 1921\u20131922 claimed up to five\u00a0million victims.\nSoviet Union.\nCommand economy and Soviet society.\nOn 30 December 1922, Lenin and his aides formed the Soviet Union, by joining the Russian SFSR into a single state with the Byelorussian, Transcaucasian, and Ukrainian republics. Eventually internal border changes and annexations during World War II created a union of 15 republics; the largest in size and population being the Russian SFSR, which dominated the union politically, culturally, and economically.\nFollowing Lenin's death in 1924, a troika was designated to take charge. Eventually Joseph Stalin, the General Secretary of the Communist Party, managed to suppress all opposition factions and consolidate power in his hands to become the country's dictator by the 1930s. Leon Trotsky, the main proponent of world revolution, was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929, and Stalin's idea of Socialism in One Country became the official line. The continued internal struggle in the Bolshevik party culminated in the Great Purge.\nStalinism and modernisation.\nUnder Stalin's leadership, the government launched a command economy, industrialisation of the largely rural country, and collectivisation of its agriculture. During this period of rapid economic and social change, millions of people were sent to penal labour camps, including many political convicts for their suspected or real opposition to Stalin's rule; and millions were deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union. The transitional disorganisation of the country's agriculture, combined with the harsh state policies and a drought, led to the Soviet famine of 1932\u20131933; which killed 5.7 to 8.7 million, 3.3 million of them in the Russian SFSR. The Soviet Union, ultimately, made the costly transformation from a largely agrarian economy to a major industrial powerhouse within a short span of time.\nWorld War II and United Nations.\nThe Soviet Union entered World War II on 17 September 1939 with its invasion of Poland, in accordance with a secret protocol within the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union later invaded Finland, and occupied and annexed the Baltic states, as well as parts of Romania. On 22 June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, opening the Eastern Front, the largest theater of World War\u00a0II.\nEventually, some 5 million Red Army troops were captured by the Nazis; the latter deliberately starved to death or otherwise killed 3.3\u00a0million Soviet POWs, and a vast number of civilians, as the \"Hunger Plan\" sought to fulfil Generalplan Ost. Although the Wehrmacht had considerable early success, their attack was halted in the Battle of Moscow. Subsequently, the Germans were dealt major defeats first at the Battle of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942\u20131943, and then in the Battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943. Another German failure was the Siege of Leningrad, in which the city was fully blockaded on land between 1941 and 1944 by German and Finnish forces, and suffered starvation and more than a million deaths, but never surrendered. Soviet forces steamrolled through Eastern and Central Europe in 1944\u20131945 and captured Berlin in May 1945. In August 1945, the Red Army invaded Manchuria and ousted the Japanese from Northeast Asia, contributing to the Allied victory over Japan.\nThe 1941\u20131945 period of World War\u00a0II is known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War. The Soviet Union, along with the United States, the United Kingdom and China were considered the Big Four of Allied powers in World War II, and later became the Four Policemen, which was the foundation of the United Nations Security Council. During the war, Soviet civilian and military death were about 26\u201327 million, accounting for about half of all World War\u00a0II casualties. The Soviet economy and infrastructure suffered massive devastation, which caused the Soviet famine of 1946\u20131947. However, at the expense of a large sacrifice, the Soviet Union emerged as a global superpower.\nSuperpower and Cold War.\nAfter World War II, according to the Potsdam Conference, the Red Army occupied parts of Eastern and Central Europe, including East Germany and the eastern regions of Austria. Dependent communist governments were installed in the Eastern Bloc satellite states. After becoming the world's second nuclear power, the Soviet Union established the Warsaw Pact alliance, and entered into a struggle for global dominance, known as the Cold War, with the rivalling United States and NATO.\nKhrushchev Thaw reforms and economic development.\nAfter Stalin's death in 1953 and a short period of collective rule, the new leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin and launched the policy of de-Stalinization, releasing many political prisoners from the Gulag labour camps. The general easement of repressive policies became known later as the Khrushchev Thaw. At the same time, Cold War tensions reached its peak when the two rivals clashed over the deployment of the United States Jupiter missiles in Turkey and Soviet missiles in Cuba.\nIn 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world's first artificial satellite, \"Sputnik\u00a01\", thus starting the Space Age. Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth, aboard the \"Vostok\u00a01\" crewed spacecraft on 12 April 1961.\nPeriod of developed socialism or Era of Stagnation.\nFollowing the ousting of Khrushchev in 1964, another period of collective rule ensued, until Leonid Brezhnev became the leader. The era of the 1970s and the early 1980s was later designated as the Era of Stagnation. The 1965 Kosygin reform aimed for partial decentralisation of the Soviet economy. In 1979, after a communist-led revolution in Afghanistan, Soviet forces invaded the country, ultimately starting the Soviet\u2013Afghan War. In May 1988, the Soviets started to withdraw from Afghanistan, due to international opposition, persistent anti-Soviet guerrilla warfare, and a lack of support by Soviet citizens.\nPerestroika, democratisation and Russian sovereignty.\nFrom 1985 onwards, the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who sought to enact liberal reforms in the Soviet system, introduced the policies of \"glasnost\" (openness) and \"perestroika\" (restructuring) in an attempt to end the period of economic stagnation and to democratise the government. This, however, led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements across the country. Prior to 1991, the Soviet economy was the world's second-largest, but during its final years, it went into a crisis.\nBy 1991, economic and political turmoil began to boil over as the Baltic states chose to secede from the Soviet Union. On 17 March, a referendum was held, in which the vast majority of participating citizens voted in favour of changing the Soviet Union into a renewed federation. In June 1991, Boris Yeltsin became the first directly elected President in Russian history when he was elected President of the Russian SFSR. In August 1991, a coup d'\u00e9tat attempt by members of Gorbachev's government, directed against Gorbachev and aimed at preserving the Soviet Union, instead led to the end of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. On 25 December 1991, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, along with contemporary Russia, fourteen other post-Soviet states emerged.\nIndependent Russian Federation.\nTransition to a market economy and political crises.\nThe economic and political collapse of the Soviet Union led Russia into a deep and prolonged depression. During and after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, wide-ranging reforms including privatisation and market and trade liberalisation were undertaken, including radical changes along the lines of \"shock therapy\". The privatisation largely shifted control of enterprises from state agencies to individuals with inside connections in the government, which led to the rise of Russian oligarchs. Many of the newly rich moved billions in cash and assets outside of the country in an enormous capital flight. The depression of the economy led to the collapse of social services\u2014the birth rate plummeted while the death rate skyrocketed, and millions plunged into poverty; while extreme corruption, as well as criminal gangs and organised crime rose significantly.\nIn late 1993, tensions between Yeltsin and the Russian parliament culminated in a constitutional crisis which ended violently through military force. During the crisis, Yeltsin was backed by Western governments, and over 100 people were killed.\nModern liberal constitution, international cooperation and economic stabilisation.\nIn December, a referendum was held and approved, which introduced a new constitution, giving the president enormous powers. The 1990s were plagued by armed conflicts in the North Caucasus, both local ethnic skirmishes and separatist Islamist insurrections. From the time Chechen separatists declared independence in the early 1990s, an intermittent guerrilla war was fought between the rebel groups and Russian forces. Terrorist attacks against civilians were carried out by Chechen separatists, claiming the lives of thousands of Russian civilians.\nAfter the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia assumed responsibility for settling the latter's external debts. In 1992, most consumer price controls were eliminated, causing extreme inflation and significantly devaluing the rouble. High budget deficits coupled with increasing capital flight and inability to pay back debts, caused the 1998 Russian financial crisis, which resulted in a further GDP decline.\nMovement towards a modernised economy, political centralisation and democratic backsliding.\nOn 31 December 1999, President Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned, handing the post to the recently appointed prime minister and his chosen successor, Vladimir Putin. Putin then won the 2000 presidential election, and defeated the Chechen insurgency in the Second Chechen War.\nPutin won a second presidential term in 2004. High oil prices and a rise in foreign investment saw the Russian economy and living standards improve significantly. Putin's rule increased stability, while transforming Russia into an authoritarian state. In 2008, Putin took the post of prime minister, while Dmitry Medvedev was elected President for one term, to hold onto power despite legal term limits; this period has been described as a \"tandemocracy\".\nFollowing a diplomatic crisis with neighbouring Georgia, the Russo-Georgian War took place during 1\u201312 August 2008, resulting in Russia recognising two separatist states in the territories that it occupies in Georgia. It was the first European war of the 21st century. The 2008 constitutional amendments saw the terms of the president extend to six years and the lower house (State Duma) to five years. Putin then went on to win the 2012 presidential election, which fueled the \"Snow Revolution\" protests.\nInvasion of Ukraine.\nIn early 2014, following a pro-Western revolution in neighbouring Ukraine, Russia annexed Crimea after a disputed referendum on the status of Crimea was staged under Russian occupation. The annexation generated an insurgency in the Donbas region of Ukraine, supported by Russian military intervention as part of an undeclared war against Ukraine. Russian mercenaries and military forces, with the support of local separatist militias, waged a war in eastern Ukraine against the new Ukrainian government after the Russian government fostered anti-government and pro-Russian protests in the region, although most residents had opposed secession from Ukraine. Amidst nationwide protests against corruption, Putin was re-elected for his second consecutive term in the 2018 presidential election.\nIn a major escalation of the conflict, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. The invasion marked the largest conventional war in Europe since World War\u00a0II, and was met with international condemnation, as well as expanded sanctions against Russia.\nAs a result, Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe in March, and was suspended from the United Nations Human Rights Council in April. In September, following successful Ukrainian counteroffensives, Putin announced a \"partial mobilisation\", Russia's first mobilisation since Operation Barbarossa. In the end of September, Putin proclaimed the annexation of four partially-occupied Ukrainian regions, the largest annexation in Europe since World War\u00a0II. Putin and Russian-installed leaders signed treaties of accession, internationally unrecognised and widely denounced as illegal. As a result of the invasion, hundreds of thousands of people are estimated to have been killed or injured, while Russia has been accused of numerous war crimes. The war in Ukraine has further exacerbated Russia's demographic crisis.\nIn June 2023, the Wagner Group, a private military contractor fighting for Russia in Ukraine, declared an open rebellion against the Russian Ministry of Defence, capturing Rostov-on-Don, before beginning a march on Moscow. However, after negotiations between Wagner and the Belarusian government, the rebellion was called off. The leader of the rebellion, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was later killed in a plane crash. Putin won his third consecutive term in the 2024 presidential election, by winning 88% of the vote, the highest percentage in a presidential election in post-Soviet Russia.\nGeography.\nRussia's vast landmass stretches over the easternmost part of Europe and the northernmost part of Asia. It spans the northernmost edge of Eurasia and has the world's fourth-longest coastline, of over . Russia lies between latitudes 41\u00b0 and 82\u00b0 N, and longitudes 19\u00b0 E and 169\u00b0 W, extending some east to west, and north to south. Russia, by landmass, is larger than three continents, and has the same surface area as Pluto.\nRussia has nine major mountain ranges, and they are found along the southernmost regions, which share a significant portion of the Caucasus Mountains (containing Mount Elbrus, which at is the highest peak in Russia and Europe); the Altai and Sayan Mountains in Siberia; and in the East Siberian Mountains and the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East (containing Klyuchevskaya Sopka, which at is the highest active volcano in Eurasia). The Ural Mountains, running north to south through the country's west, are rich in mineral resources, and form the traditional boundary between Europe and Asia. The lowest point in Russia and Europe, is situated at the head of the Caspian Sea, where the Caspian Depression reaches some below sea level.\nRussia, as one of the world's only three countries bordering three oceans, has links with a great number of seas. Its major islands and archipelagos include Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land, Severnaya Zemlya, the New Siberian Islands, Wrangel Island, the Kuril Islands (four of which are disputed with Japan), and Sakhalin. The Diomede Islands, administered by Russia and the United States, are just apart; and Kunashir Island of the Kuril Islands is merely from Hokkaido, Japan.\nRussia, home of over 100,000 rivers, has one of the world's largest surface water resources, with its lakes containing approximately one-quarter of the world's liquid fresh water. Lake Baikal, the largest and most prominent among Russia's fresh water bodies, is the world's deepest, purest, oldest and most capacious fresh water lake, containing over one-fifth of the world's fresh surface water. Ladoga and Onega in northwestern Russia are two of the largest lakes in Europe. Russia is second only to Brazil by total renewable water resources. The Volga in western Russia, widely regarded as Russia's national river, is the longest river in Europe; and forms the Volga Delta, the largest river delta in the continent. The Siberian rivers of Ob, Yenisey, Lena, and Amur are among the world's longest rivers.\nClimate.\nThe size of Russia and the remoteness of many of its areas from the sea result in the dominance of the humid continental climate throughout most of the country, except for the tundra and the extreme southwest. Mountain ranges in the south and east obstruct the flow of warm air masses from the Indian and Pacific oceans, while the European Plain spanning its west and north opens it to influence from the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. Most of northwest Russia and Siberia have a subarctic climate, with extremely severe winters in the inner regions of northeast Siberia (mostly Sakha, where the Northern Pole of Cold is located with the record low temperature of ), and more moderate winters elsewhere. Russia's vast coastline along the Arctic Ocean and the Russian Arctic islands have a polar climate.\nThe coastal part of Krasnodar Krai on the Black Sea, most notably Sochi, and some coastal and interior strips of the North Caucasus possess a humid subtropical climate with mild and wet winters. In many regions of East Siberia and the Russian Far East, winter is dry compared to summer; while other parts of the country experience more even precipitation across seasons. Winter precipitation in most parts of the country usually falls as snow. The westernmost parts of Kaliningrad Oblast and some parts in the south of Krasnodar Krai and the North Caucasus have an oceanic climate. The region along the Lower Volga and Caspian Sea coast, as well as some southernmost slivers of Siberia, possess a semi-arid climate.\nThroughout much of the territory, there are only two distinct seasons, winter and summer; as spring and autumn are usually brief. The coldest month is January (February on the coastline); the warmest is usually July. Great ranges of temperature are typical. In winter, temperatures get colder both from south to north and from west to east. Summers can be quite hot, even in Siberia. Climate change in Russia is causing more frequent wildfires, and thawing the country's large expanse of permafrost.\nBiodiversity.\nRussia, owing to its gigantic size, has diverse ecosystems, including polar deserts, tundra, forest tundra, taiga, mixed and broadleaf forest, forest steppe, steppe, semi-desert, and subtropics. About half of Russia's territory is forested, and it has the world's largest area of forest, which sequester some of the world's highest amounts of carbon dioxide.\nRussian biodiversity includes 12,500 species of vascular plants, 2,200 species of bryophytes, about 3,000 species of lichens, 7,000\u20139,000 species of algae, and 20,000\u201325,000 species of fungi. Russian fauna is composed of 320 species of mammals, over 732 species of birds, 75 species of reptiles, about 30 species of amphibians, 343 species of freshwater fish (high endemism), approximately 1,500 species of saltwater fishes, 9 species of cyclostomata, and approximately 100\u2013150,000 invertebrates (high endemism). Approximately 1,100 rare and endangered plant and animal species are included in the Russian Red Data Book.\nRussia's entirely natural ecosystems are conserved in nearly 15,000 specially protected natural territories of various statuses, occupying more than 10% of the country's total area. They include 45 biosphere reserves, 64 national parks, and 101 nature reserves. Although in decline, the country still has many ecosystems which are still considered intact forest; mainly in the northern taiga areas, and the subarctic tundra of Siberia. Russia had a Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 9.02 in 2019, ranking 10th out of 172 countries; and the first ranked major nation globally.\nGovernment and politics.\nRussia, by constitution, is a symmetric federal republic with a semi-presidential system, wherein the president is the head of state, and the prime minister is the head of government. It is structured as a multi-party representative democracy, with the federal government composed of three branches:\nThe president is elected by popular vote for a six-year term and may be elected no more than twice. Ministries of the government are composed of the premier and his deputies, ministers, and selected other individuals; all are appointed by the president on the recommendation of the prime minister (whereas the appointment of the latter requires the consent of the State Duma). United Russia is the dominant political party in Russia, and has been described as \"big tent\" and the \"party of power\". \nPost-Soviet Russia was a flawed democracy during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin.223 However, following the presidencies of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, it has experienced significant democratic backsliding.223 The political system evolved from electoral authoritarianism into a consolidated authoritarian regime.323 Some political scientists have characterized Putin as the head of a dictatorship, or a personalist regime. Putin's second tenure as president has led to further autocratization,512 which has been the most significant since the rule of Stalin, with some authors suggesting a regeneration of totalitarian elements. Putin's ruling policies are generally referred to as Putinism.\nPolitical divisions.\nRussia, by constitution, is a symmetric (with the possibility of an asymmetric configuration) federation. Unlike the Soviet asymmetric model of the RSFSR, where only republics were \"subjects of the federation\", the current constitution raised the status of other regions to the level of republics and made all regions equal with the title \"subject of the federation\". The regions of Russia have reserved areas of competence, but regions do not have sovereignty, do not have the status of a sovereign state, do not have the right to indicate any sovereignty in their constitutions and do not have the right to secede from the country. The laws of the regions cannot contradict federal laws.\nThe federal subjects have equal representation\u2014two delegates each\u2014in the Federation Council, the upper house of the Federal Assembly. They do, however, differ in the degree of autonomy they enjoy. The federal districts of Russia were established by Putin in 2000 to facilitate central government control of the federal subjects. Originally seven, currently there are eight federal districts, each headed by an envoy appointed by the president.\nForeign relations.\nRussia has the world's sixth-largest diplomatic network as of 2024[ [update]]. It maintains diplomatic relations with 187 United Nations member states, two partially-recognised states, and two United Nations observer states; along with 143 embassies. Russia is one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. It is generally described as a great power, though it has been questioned whether it can retain this status. Russia is also a former superpower as the leading constituent of the former Soviet Union. It is a member of the G20, the OSCE, and the APEC\u2014and the leading member of organisations such as the CIS, the EAEU, the CSTO, the SCO, and BRICS. Russia was also a member of the G8 (now the G7) and part of the Council of Europe before its expulsion from the two groups in 2014 and 2022, respectively.\nRussia maintains close relations with neighbouring Belarus, which is a part of the Union State, a supranational confederation of the two states. Serbia has been a historically close ally of Russia, as both countries share a strong mutual cultural, ethnic, and religious affinity. From the 21st century, relations between Russia and China have significantly strengthened bilaterally and economically; due to shared political interests. India is the largest customer of Russian military equipment, and the two countries share a strong strategic and diplomatic relationship since the Soviet era. Russia wields great political influence across the geopolitically important South Caucasus and Central Asia; and the two regions have been described as Russia's \"backyard\". \nRussia shares a complex strategic, energy, and defence relationship with Turkey. It maintains cordial relations with Iran, as it is a strategic and economic ally. Russia has also significantly developed its relations with North Korea following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with increased defence co-operation. At the same time, its relations with neighbouring Ukraine and the Western world\u2014specifically the United States and the collective countries of the European Union and NATO\u2014have collapsed.\nIn the 21st century, Russia has pursued an aggressive foreign policy aimed at securing regional dominance in Europe and increasing its international influence, as well as increasing domestic support for the government. It has initiated military interventions in the post-Soviet states of Georgia and Ukraine, as well as in Syria during its prolonged civil war in a bid to increase its influence in the Middle East. Russia has also increasingly pushed to expand its influence across the Arctic, the Asia\u2013Pacific, Africa and Latin America. Two-thirds of the world's population, specifically the developing countries of the Global South, are either neutral or leaning towards Russia politically. Russia has also continued using subversive tactics to increase perceptions of its geopolitical power in its rival countries; including cyberwarfare, disinformation campaigns, sabotage attacks, assassination attempts, airspace violations, electoral interferences and nuclear saber-rattling.\nMilitary.\nThe Russian Armed Forces are divided into the Ground Forces, the Navy, and the Aerospace Forces\u2014and there are also two independent arms of service: the Strategic Missile Troops and the Airborne Troops. As of 2025[ [update]], the military have 1.1 million active-duty personnel, which is the world's fifth-largest, and about 1.5 million reserve personnel. It is mandatory for all male citizens aged 18\u201327 to be drafted for a year of service in the Armed Forces.\nRussia is among the five recognised nuclear-weapons states, with the world's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons; over half of the world's nuclear weapons are owned by Russia. Russia possesses the second-largest fleet of ballistic missile submarines, and is one of the only three countries operating strategic bombers. As of 2023[ [update]], Russia maintains the world's third-highest military expenditure, spending $109 billion, corresponding to about 5.9% of its GDP. It is also the third-largest arms exporter, and has a large and indigenous defence industry, which produces the majority of its military equipment.\nHuman rights.\nViolations of human rights in Russia have been increasingly reported by leading democracy and human rights groups. In particular, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say that Russia is not democratic and allows few political rights and civil liberties to its citizens.\nSince 2004, Freedom House has ranked Russia as \"not free\" in its \"Freedom in the World\" survey. Since 2011, the Economist Intelligence Unit has ranked Russia as an \"authoritarian regime\" in its Democracy Index, ranking it 150th out of 167 countries in 2024. In regards to media freedom, Russia was ranked 162nd out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders' Press Freedom Index for 2024. The Russian government has been widely criticised by political dissidents and human rights activists for unfair elections, crackdowns on opposition political parties and protests, persecution of non-governmental organisations and enforced suppression and killings of independent journalists, and censorship of mass media and internet.\nMuslims, especially Salafis, have faced persecution in Russia. To quash the insurgency in the North Caucasus, Russian authorities have been accused of indiscriminate killings, arrests, forced disappearances, and torture of civilians. In Dagestan, some Salafis along with facing government harassment based on their appearance, have had their homes blown up in counterinsurgency operations. Chechens and Ingush in Russian prisons reportedly take more abuse than other ethnic groups. During the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia has set up filtration camps where many Ukrainians are subjected to abuses and forcibly sent to Russia; the camps have been compared to those used in the Chechen Wars. Political repression also increased following the start of the invasion, with laws adopted that establish punishments for \"discrediting\" the armed forces.\nRussia has introduced several restrictions on LGBT rights, including a 2020 ban on same-sex marriage and the designation of LGBT+ organisations such as the Russian LGBT Network as \"foreign agents\".\nCorruption.\nRussia's political system has been variously described as a kleptocracy, an oligarchy, and a plutocracy. It was the lowest rated European country in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for 2024, ranking 154th out of 180 countries. Russia has a long history of corruption, which is seen as a significant problem. It affects various sectors, including the economy, business, public administration, law enforcement, healthcare, education, and the military.\nLaw and crime.\nThe primary and fundamental statement of laws in Russia is the Constitution of the Russian Federation. Statutes, like the Russian Civil Code and the Russian Criminal Code, are the predominant legal sources of Russian law.\nRussia has the world's second-largest illegal arms trade market, after the United States, is ranked first in Europe and 32nd globally in the Global Organized Crime Index, and is among the countries with the highest number of people in prison.\nEconomy.\nRussia has a high-income, industrialized, mixed market-oriented economy following a turbulent transition from the Soviet planned model during the 1990s. It has the eleventh-largest economy by nominal GDP and the fourth-largest economy by GDP (PPP). As of 2023[ [update]], the service sector accounts for roughly 57% of total GDP, followed by the industrial sector (30%), while the agricultural sector is the smallest, at 3% of total GDP. Russia's foreign exchange reserves are the fourth-largest in the world. It has a labour force of about 73 million, which is the eighth-largest in the world.\nRussia's human development is ranked as \"very high\" in the annual Human Development Index. Roughly 70% of Russia's total GDP is driven by domestic consumption, and the country has the world's twelfth-largest consumer market. Its social security system comprised roughly 16% of the total GDP in 2015. Russia has the fifth-highest number of billionaires in the world. However, its income inequality remains comparatively high among developed countries, caused by the variance of natural resources among its federal subjects, leading to regional economic disparities. High levels of corruption, a shrinking labor force, and an aging and declining population also remain major barriers to future economic growth.\nFollowing the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the country has faced extensive sanctions and other negative financial actions from the Western world and its allies which have the aim of isolating the Russian economy from the Western financial system. However, Russia has completed its transition into a war economy, and has shown resilience to such measures broadly, maintaining economic stability and growth\u2014driven primarily by high military expenditure, rising household consumption and wages, low unemployment, and increased government spending. Yet, inflation has remained comparatively high, with experts predicting the sanctions will have a long-term negative effect on the Russian economy.\nTransport and energy.\nRailway transport in Russia is mostly controlled by the state-run Russian Railways. The total length of common-used railway tracks is the world's third-longest, exceeding . As of 2019[ [update]], Russia has the world's fifth-largest road network, with over 1.5 million\u00a0km of roads, although its road density is among the world's lowest, in part to its vast land area. Russia's inland waterways are the longest in the world, totaling . Russia has over 900 airports, ranking seventh in the world, of which the busiest is Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow. Its largest port is the Port of Novorossiysk in Krasnodar Krai along the Black Sea. \nRussia has one of the world's largest amounts of energy resources throughout its vast landmass, particularly natural gas and oil, which play a crucial role in its energy self-sufficiency and exports. It has been widely described as an energy superpower. Russia has the world's largest proven gas reserves, the second-largest coal reserves, the eighth-largest proven oil reserves, and the largest oil shale reserves in Europe. As of 2023[ [update]], it is also the second-largest producer and the third-largest exporter of natural gas; as well as the second-largest producer and exporter of crude oil. Russia's large oil and gas sector accounted for 30% of its federal budget revenues in 2024, down from 50% in the mid-2010s, suggesting economic diversification.\nRussia is the world's third-largest electricity producer as of 2023[ [update]]. Fossil fuels account for over 64% of energy production and 87% of energy consumption. Natural gas is by far the largest source of energy, comprising over half of the energy production and 42% of electricity consumption. Russia was the first country to develop civilian nuclear power, building the world's first nuclear power plant in 1954, and remains a pioneer in nuclear energy technology and is considered a world leader in fast neutron reactors. Russia is the world's fourth-largest nuclear energy producer, which accounts for roughly one-fourth of energy generation (18%). Russian energy policy aims to expand the role of nuclear energy and develop new reactor technology. Russia is the sole country that builds and operates nuclear-powered icebreakers, which ease navigation along the Northern Sea Route, and aid in utilizing its Arctic policy in its continental shelf.\nRussia joined the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2015, and ratified the agreement in 2019. Its greenhouse gas emissions are the fourth-largest in the world as of 2023[ [update]]. Coal accounts for over 16% of energy generation. Russia is the fifth-largest hydroelectric producer as of 2022, with hydroelectric power contributing almost a fifth to the total energy generation (17%). The use and development of other renewable energy resources remain negligible, as Russia is among the few countries without strong governmental or public support for expanding these energy resources.\nAgriculture and fishery.\nAgriculture, forestry and fishing contributes about 3.3% of the country's total GDP as of 2023[ [update]]. It has the world's fourth-largest cultivated area, at . However, due to the harshness of its environment, only about 13.1% of its land is agricultural, with an additional 7.4% being arable. The country's agricultural land is considered part of the \"breadbasket\" of Europe. More than one-third of the sown area is devoted to fodder crops, and the remaining farmland is used industrial crops, vegetables, and fruits. The main product of Russian farming has always been grain, which occupies well over half the cropland. Russia is the world's largest exporter of wheat, the largest producer of barley and buckwheat, among the largest exporters of maize and sunflower oil, and the leading producer of fertiliser.\nVarious analysts of climate change adaptation foresee large opportunities for Russian agriculture during the rest of the 21st century as arability increases in Siberia, which would lead to both internal and external migration to the region. Owing to its large coastline along three oceans and twelve marginal seas, Russia maintains the world's sixth-largest fishing industry; capturing nearly 5 million tons of fish in 2018. It is home to the world's finest caviar, the beluga; and produces about one-third of all canned fish, and some one-fourth of the world's total fresh and frozen fish.\nScience and technology.\nRussia spent about 1% of its GDP on research and development in 2019, with the world's tenth-highest budget. It also ranked tenth worldwide in the number of scientific publications in 2020, with roughly 1.3 million papers. Since 1904, Nobel Prize were awarded to 26 Soviets and Russians in physics, chemistry, medicine, economy, literature and peace. Russia ranked 60th in the Global Innovation Index in 2024, down from 45th in 2021.\nSince the times of Nikolay Lobachevsky, who pioneered the non-Euclidean geometry, and Pafnuty Chebyshev, a prominent tutor; Russian mathematicians became among the world's most influential. Dmitry Mendeleev invented the Periodic table, the main framework of modern chemistry. Nine Soviet and Russian mathematicians have been awarded with the Fields Medal. Grigori Perelman was offered the first ever Clay Millennium Prize Problems Award for his final proof of the Poincar\u00e9 conjecture in 2002, as well as the Fields Medal in 2006.\nAlexander Popov was among the inventors of radio, while Nikolai Basov and Alexander Prokhorov were co-inventors of laser and maser. Oleg Losev made crucial contributions in the field of semiconductor junctions, and discovered light-emitting diodes. Vladimir Vernadsky is considered one of the founders of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and radiogeology. \u00c9lie Metchnikoff is known for his groundbreaking research in immunology. Ivan Pavlov is known chiefly for his work in classical conditioning. Lev Landau made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics.\nNikolai Vavilov was best known for having identified the centres of origin of cultivated plants. Trofim Lysenko was known mainly for Lysenkoism. Many famous Russian scientists and inventors were \u00e9migr\u00e9s. Igor Sikorsky was an aviation pioneer. Vladimir Zworykin was the inventor of the iconoscope and kinescope television systems. Theodosius Dobzhansky was the central figure in the field of evolutionary biology for his work in shaping the modern synthesis. George Gamow was one of the foremost advocates of the Big Bang theory.\nSpace exploration.\nRoscosmos is Russia's national space agency. The country's achievements in the field of space technology and space exploration can be traced back to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the father of theoretical astronautics, whose works had inspired leading Soviet rocket engineers, such as Sergey Korolyov, Valentin Glushko, and many others who contributed to the success of the Soviet space programme in the early stages of the Space Race and beyond.\nIn 1957, the first Earth-orbiting artificial satellite, \"Sputnik\u00a01\", was launched. In 1961, the first human trip into space was successfully made by Yuri Gagarin. Many other Soviet and Russian space exploration records ensued. In 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first and youngest woman in space, having flown a solo mission on Vostok 6. In 1965, Alexei Leonov became the first human to conduct a spacewalk, exiting the space capsule during Voskhod 2.\nIn 1957, Laika, a Soviet space dog, became the first animal to orbit the Earth, aboard Sputnik 2. In 1966, Luna\u00a09 became the first spacecraft to achieve a survivable landing on a celestial body, the Moon. In 1968, Zond 5 brought the first Earthlings (two tortoises and other life forms) to circumnavigate the Moon. In 1970, Venera\u00a07 became the first spacecraft to land on another planet, Venus. In 1971, Mars\u00a03 became the first spacecraft to land on Mars. During the same period, \"Lunokhod 1\" became the first space exploration rover, while \"Salyut\u00a01\" became the world's first space station.\nRussia had 181 active satellites in space in May 2023, the third-highest in the world. Between the final flight of the Space Shuttle programme in 2011 and the 2020 SpaceX's first crewed mission, Soyuz rockets were the only launch vehicles capable of transporting astronauts to the ISS. Luna\u00a025 launched in August 2023, was the first of the Luna-Glob Moon exploration programme.\nTourism.\nAccording to the World Tourism Organisation, Russia was the sixteenth-most visited country in the world, and the tenth-most visited country in Europe, in 2018, with over 24.6 million visits. According to Federal Agency for Tourism, the number of inbound trips of foreign citizens to Russia amounted to 24.4 million in 2019. Russia's international tourism receipts in 2018 totaled $11.6 billion. In 2019, travel and tourism accounted for about 4.8% of country's total GDP. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, tourism declined precipitously in 2020, to just over 6.3 million foreign visitors.\nMajor tourist routes in Russia include a journey around the Golden Ring of Russia, a theme route of ancient Russian cities; cruises on large rivers such as the Volga; hikes on mountain ranges such as the Caucasus Mountains, and journeys on the famous Trans-Siberian Railway. Russia's most visited and popular landmarks include Red Square, the Peterhof Palace, the Kazan Kremlin, the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius and Lake Baikal.\nMoscow, the nation's cosmopolitan capital and historic core, is a bustling modern megacity; it retains classical and Soviet-era architecture while boasting high art, world class ballet, and modern skyscrapers. Saint Petersburg, the imperial capital, is famous for its classical architecture, cathedrals, museums and theatres, white nights, crisscrossing rivers and numerous canals. Russia is famed worldwide for its rich museums, such as the State Russian, the State Hermitage, and the Tretyakov Gallery; and for theatres such as the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky. The Moscow Kremlin and the Saint Basil's Cathedral are among the cultural landmarks of Russia.\nDemographics.\nRussia had a population of 146 million in 2025 (143.6 million excluding Crimea and Sevastopol), down from 147.2 million in the 2021 census. It is the most populous country in Europe and ninth-most populous country in the world. With a population density of , Russia is one of the world's most sparsely populated countries, with the vast majority of its people concentrated within its western part. The country is highly urbanised, with two-thirds of the population living in urban areas. As of 2024[ [update]], the total fertility rate across Russia is estimated to be 1.41 children born per woman, which is below the replacement rate of 2.1 and among the lowest in the world. Subsequently, it has one of the oldest populations in the world, with a median age of 41.9 years.\nRussia's population peaked at over 148 million in 1993, having subsequently declined due to its death rate exceeding its birth rate, which some analysts have called a demographic crisis. In 2009, it recorded annual population growth for the first time in fifteen years, and subsequently experienced annual population growth due to declining death rates, increased birth rates, and increased immigration. However, these population gains have been reversed since 2020, as excessive deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the largest peacetime decline in its history. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the demographic crisis has deepened, owing to high military fatalities and renewed emigration. Recent studies have shown that between 15-45% of Russian emigrants have returned to Russia, though these numbers are not conclusive.\nRussia is a multinational state with many subnational entities associated with different minorities. There are over 193 ethnic groups nationwide. In the 2010 census, roughly 81% of the population were ethnic Russians, and the remaining 19% of the population were ethnic minorities; while over four-fifths of Russia's population was of European descent\u2014of whom the vast majority were Slavs, with a substantial minority of Finno-Ugric and Germanic peoples. Russia has the third-largest immigrant population in the world, with over 12 million immigrants residing in the country as of 2019[ [update]]. The vast majority of the Immigrants hail from post-Soviet states, with about half of them being from Ukraine and Kazakhstan as of 2020[ [update]].\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nLanguage.\nRussian is the official and the predominantly spoken language in Russia. It is the most spoken native language in Europe, the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, as well as the world's most widely spoken Slavic language. Russian is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station, as well as one of the six official languages of the United Nations.\nRussia is a multilingual nation; approximately 100\u2013150 minority languages are spoken across the country. According to the Russian Census of 2010, 137.5\u00a0million across the country spoke Russian, 4.3\u00a0million spoke Tatar, and 1.1\u00a0million spoke Ukrainian. The constitution gives the country's individual republics the right to establish their own state languages in addition to Russian, as well as guarantee its citizens the right to preserve their native language and to create conditions for its study and development. However, various experts have claimed Russia's linguistic diversity is rapidly declining due to many languages becoming endangered.\nReligion.\nRussia is constitutionally a secular state that officially enshrines freedom of religion. The largest religion is Eastern Orthodox Christianity, chiefly represented by the Russian Orthodox Church, which is legally recognised for its \"special role\" in the country's \"history and the formation and development of its spirituality and culture.\" Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism are recognised by Russian law as the \"traditional\" religions of the country constituting its \"historical heritage\".\nIslam is the second-largest religion in Russia and is traditional among the majority of peoples in the North Caucasus and some Turkic peoples in the Volga-Ural region. Large populations of Buddhists are found in Kalmykia, Buryatia, Zabaykalsky Krai, and they are the vast majority of the population in Tuva. A negligible population practices other religions\u2014such as Rodnovery (Slavic Neopaganism), Assianism (Scythian Neopaganism), other ethnic Paganisms, and inter-Pagan movements such as Ringing Cedars' Anastasianism, various movements of Hinduism, Siberian shamanism and Tengrism, various Neo-Theosophical movements such as Roerichism\u2014among other faiths. Some religious minorities have faced oppression and some have been banned in the country; notably, in 2017 the Jehovah's Witnesses were outlawed in Russia, facing persecution ever since, after having been declared an \"extremist\" and \"nontraditional\" faith.\nIn 2012, the research organisation Sreda, in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice, published the Arena Atlas, an adjunct to the 2010 census, enumerating in detail the religious populations and nationalities of Russia, based on a large-sample country-wide survey. The results showed that 47.3% of Russians declared themselves Christians\u2014including 41% Russian Orthodox, 1.5% simply Orthodox or members of non-Russian Orthodox churches, 4.1% unaffiliated Christians, and less than 1% Old Believers, Catholics or Protestants\u201425% were believers without affiliation to any specific religion, 13% were atheists, 6.5% were Muslims, 1.2% were followers of \"traditional religions honouring gods and ancestors\" (Rodnovery, other Paganisms, Siberian shamanism and Tengrism), 0.5% were Buddhists, 0.1% were religious Jews and 0.1% were Hindus. \nIn 2024, the (FOM) found that 61.8% of Russians identify as Orthodox Christians, 2.6% as other Christians, 9.5% as Muslims, 21.2% as not religious, 1.4% follow other religions and 3.5% are unsure about their belief. According to the survey, Orthodoxy is more widespread among women, people aged 60 and older, and people living in the Central and Southern Federal Districts, while Islam is the dominant religion in the North Caucasian Federal District.\nEducation.\nRussia has an adult literacy rate of 100%, and has compulsory education for a duration of 11 years, exclusively for children aged 7 to 17\u201318. It grants free education to its citizens by constitution. The Ministry of Education of Russia is responsible for primary and secondary education, as well as vocational education; while the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia is responsible for science and higher education. Regional authorities regulate education within their jurisdictions within the prevailing framework of federal laws. Russia is among the world's most educated countries, and has the sixth-highest proportion of tertiary-level graduates in terms of percentage of population, at 62.1%. It spent roughly 4.7% of its GDP on education in 2018.\nRussia's pre-school education system is highly developed and optional, some four-fifths of children aged 3 to 6 attend day nurseries or kindergartens. Primary school is compulsory for eleven years, starting from age 6 to 7, and leads to a basic general education certificate. An additional two or three years of schooling are required for the secondary-level certificate, and some seven-eighths of Russians continue their education past this level.\nAdmission to an institute of higher education is selective and highly competitive: first-degree courses usually take five years. The oldest and largest universities in Russia are Moscow State University and Saint Petersburg State University. There are ten highly prestigious across the country. Russia was the world's fifth-leading destination for international students in 2019, hosting roughly 300 thousand.\nHealth.\nRussia, by constitution, guarantees free, universal health care for all Russian citizens, through a compulsory state health insurance programme. The Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation oversees the Russian public healthcare system, and the sector employs more than two million people. Federal regions also have their own departments of health that oversee local administration. A separate private health insurance plan is needed to access private healthcare in Russia.\nRussia spent 7.39% of its GDP on healthcare in 2021. Its healthcare expenditure is notably lower than other developed nations. Russia has one of the world's most female-biased sex ratios, with 0.859 males to every female, due to its high male mortality rate. As of 2022[ [update]], the overall life expectancy in Russia at birth is 73 years (68 years for males and 78 years for females), and it has a very low infant mortality rate (4 per 1,000 live births).\nThe principal cause of death in Russia are cardiovascular diseases. Obesity is a prevalent health issue in Russia; most adults are overweight or obese. However, Russia's historically high alcohol consumption rate is the biggest health issue in the country, as it remains one of the world's highest, despite a stark decrease in the last decade. Smoking is another health issue in the country. The country's high suicide rate, although on the decline, remains a significant social issue.\nCulture.\nRussian writers and philosophers have played an important role in the development of European literature and thought. The Russians have also greatly influenced classical music, ballet, sport, painting, and cinema. The nation has also made pioneering contributions to science and technology and space exploration.\nRussia is home to 32 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, 21 of which are cultural; while 31 more sites lie on the tentative list. The large global Russian diaspora has also played a major role in spreading Russian culture throughout the world. Russia's national symbol, the double-headed eagle, dates back to the Tsardom period, and is featured in its coat of arms and heraldry. The Russian Bear and Mother Russia are often used as national personifications of the country. Matryoshka dolls are considered a cultural icon of Russia.\nHolidays.\nRussia has eight\u2014public, patriotic, and religious\u2014official holidays. The year starts with New Year's Day on 1 January, soon followed by Russian Orthodox Christmas on 7 January; the two are the country's most popular holidays. Defender of the Fatherland Day, dedicated to men, is celebrated on 23 February. International Women's Day on 8 March, gained momentum in Russia during the Soviet era. The annual celebration of women has become so popular, especially among Russian men, that the flower vendors of Moscow often see profits \"fiften times\" more compared to other holidays. Spring and Labour Day, originally a Soviet era holiday dedicated to workers, is celebrated on 1 May.\nVictory Day, which honours Soviet victory over Nazi Germany and the End of World War II in Europe, is celebrated on 9 May as an annual large parade in Moscow's Red Square; and marks the famous Immortal Regiment civil event. Other patriotic holidays include Russia Day on 12 June, celebrated to commemorate Russia's declaration of sovereignty from the collapsing Soviet Union; and Unity Day on 4 November, commemorating the 1612 uprising which marked the end of the Polish occupation of Moscow.\nThere are many popular non-public holidays. Old New Year is celebrated on 14 January. Maslenitsa is an ancient and popular East Slavic folk holiday. Cosmonautics Day on 12 April, in tribute to the first human trip into space. Two major Christian holidays are Easter and Trinity Sunday.\nArt and architecture.\nEarly Russian painting is represented in icons and vibrant frescos. In the early 15th century, the master icon painter Andrei Rublev created some of Russia's most treasured religious art. The Russian Academy of Arts, which was established in 1757, to train Russian artists, brought Western techniques of secular painting to Russia. In the 18th century, academicians Ivan Argunov, Dmitry Levitzky, Vladimir Borovikovsky became influential. The early 19th century saw many prominent paintings by Karl Briullov and Alexander Ivanov, both of whom were known for Romantic historical canvases. Ivan Aivazovsky, another Romantic painter, is considered one of the greatest masters of marine art.\nIn the 1860s, a group of critical realists (Peredvizhniki), led by Ivan Kramskoy, Ilya Repin and Vasiliy Perov broke with the academy, and portrayed the many-sided aspects of social life in paintings. The turn of the 20th century saw the rise of symbolism; represented by Mikhail Vrubel and Nicholas Roerich. The Russian avant-garde flourished from approximately 1890 to 1930; and globally influential artists from this era were El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, Natalia Goncharova, Wassily Kandinsky, and Marc Chagall.\nThe history of Russian architecture begins with early woodcraft buildings of ancient Slavs, and the church architecture of Kievan Rus'. Following the Christianization of Kievan Rus', for several centuries it was influenced predominantly by Byzantine architecture. Aristotle Fioravanti and other Italian architects brought Renaissance trends into Russia. The 16th century saw the development of the unique tent-like churches; and the onion dome design, which is a distinctive feature of Russian architecture. In the 17th century, the \"fiery style\" of ornamentation flourished in Moscow and Yaroslavl, gradually paving the way for the Naryshkin baroque of the 1680s.\nAfter the reforms of Peter the Great, Russia's architecture became influenced by Western European styles. The 18th-century taste for Rococo architecture led to the works of Bartolomeo Rastrelli and his followers. The most influential Russian architects of the eighteenth century; Vasily Bazhenov, Matvey Kazakov, and Ivan Starov, created lasting monuments in Moscow and Saint Petersburg and established a base for the more Russian forms that followed. During the reign of Catherine the Great, Saint Petersburg was transformed into an outdoor museum of Neoclassical architecture. Under Alexander I, Empire style became the \"de facto\" architectural style. The second half of the 19th century was dominated by the Neo-Byzantine and Russian Revival style. In the early 20th century, Russian neoclassical revival became a trend. Prevalent styles of the late 20th century were Art Nouveau, Constructivism, and Socialist Classicism.\nMusic.\nUntil the 18th century, music in Russia consisted mainly of church music and folk songs and dances. In the 19th century, it was defined by the tension between classical composer Mikhail Glinka along with other members of The Mighty Handful, who were later succeeded by the Belyayev circle, and the Russian Musical Society led by composers Anton and Nikolay Rubinstein. The later tradition of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era, was continued into the 20th century by Sergei Rachmaninoff. World-renowned composers of the 20th century include Alexander Scriabin, Alexander Glazunov, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich, and later Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina, Georgy Sviridov, and Alfred Schnittke.\nDuring the Soviet era, popular music also produced a number of renowned figures, such as the two balladeers\u2014Vladimir Vysotsky and Bulat Okudzhava, and performers such as Alla Pugacheva. Jazz, even with sanctions from Soviet authorities, flourished and evolved into one of the country's most popular musical forms. By the 1980s, rock music became popular across Russia, and produced bands such as Aria, Aquarium, DDT, and Kino; the latter's leader Viktor Tsoi, was in particular, a gigantic figure. Pop music has continued to flourish in Russia since the 1960s, with globally famous acts such as t.A.T.u.\nLiterature and philosophy.\nRussian literature is among the world's most influential and developed. It can be traced to the Middle Ages, when epics and chronicles in Old East Slavic were composed. By the Age of Enlightenment, literature had grown in importance, with works from Mikhail Lomonosov, Denis Fonvizin, Gavrila Derzhavin, and Nikolay Karamzin. From the early 1830s, during the Golden Age of Russian Poetry, literature underwent an astounding golden age in poetry, prose and drama. Romanticism permitted a flowering of poetic talent: Vasily Zhukovsky and later his prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Alexander Pushkin came to the fore. Following Pushkin's footsteps, a new generation of poets were born, including Mikhail Lermontov, Nikolay Nekrasov, Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, Fyodor Tyutchev and Afanasy Fet.\nThe first great Russian novelist was Nikolai Gogol. Then came Ivan Turgenev, who mastered both short stories and novels. Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy soon became internationally renowned. Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote prose satire, while Nikolai Leskov is best remembered for his shorter fiction. In the second half of the century Anton Chekhov excelled in short stories and became a leading dramatist. Other important 19th-century developments included the fabulist Ivan Krylov, non-fiction writers such as the critic Vissarion Belinsky, and playwrights such as Aleksandr Griboyedov and Aleksandr Ostrovsky. The beginning of the 20th century ranks as the Silver Age of Russian Poetry. This era had poets such as Alexander Blok, Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, and Konstantin Balmont. It also produced some first-rate novelists and short-story writers, such as Aleksandr Kuprin, Nobel Prize winner Ivan Bunin, Leonid Andreyev, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Andrei Bely.\nAfter the Russian Revolution of 1917, Russian literature split into Soviet and white \u00e9migr\u00e9 parts. In the 1930s, Socialist realism became the predominant trend in Russia. Its leading figure was Maxim Gorky, who laid the foundations of this style. Mikhail Bulgakov was one of the leading writers of the Soviet era. Nikolay Ostrovsky's novel How the Steel Was Tempered has been among the most successful works of Russian literature. Influential \u00e9migr\u00e9 writers include Vladimir Nabokov, and Isaac Asimov; who was considered one of the \"Big Three\" science fiction writers. Some writers dared to oppose Soviet ideology, such as Nobel Prize-winning novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who wrote about life in the Gulag camps.\nRussian philosophy has been greatly influential. Alexander Herzen is known as one of the fathers of agrarian populism. Mikhail Bakunin is referred to as the father of anarchism. Peter Kropotkin was the most important theorist of anarcho-communism. Mikhail Bakhtin's writings have significantly inspired scholars. Helena Blavatsky gained international following as the leading theoretician of Theosophy, and co-founded the Theosophical Society. Vladimir Lenin, a major revolutionary, developed a variant of communism known as Leninism. Leon Trotsky, on the other hand, founded Trotskyism. Alexander Zinoviev was a prominent philosopher in the second half of the 20th century. Aleksandr Dugin, known for his fascist views, has been regarded as the \"guru of geopolitics\".\nCuisine.\nRussian cuisine has been formed by climate, cultural and religious traditions, and the vast geography of the nation; and it shares similarities with the cuisines of its neighbouring countries. Crops of rye, wheat, barley, and millet provide the ingredients for various breads, pancakes and cereals, as well as for many drinks. Bread, of many varieties, is very popular across Russia. Flavourful soups and stews include shchi, borsch, ukha, solyanka, and okroshka. Smetana (a heavy sour cream) and mayonnaise are often added to soups and salads. Pirozhki, blini, and syrniki are native types of pancakes. Beef Stroganoff, Chicken Kiev, pelmeni, and shashlyk are popular meat dishes. Other meat dishes include stuffed cabbage rolls (golubtsy) usually filled with meat. Salads include Olivier salad, vinegret, and dressed herring.\nRussia's national non-alcoholic drink is kvass, and the national alcoholic drink is vodka; its production in Russia (and elsewhere) dates back to the 14th century. The country has the world's highest vodka consumption, while beer is the most popular alcoholic beverage. Wine has become increasingly popular in Russia in the 21st century. Tea has been popular in Russia for centuries.\nMass media and cinema.\nThere are 400 news agencies in Russia, among which the largest internationally operating are TASS, RIA Novosti, Sputnik, and Interfax. Television is the most popular medium in Russia. Among the 3,000 licensed radio stations nationwide, notable ones include Radio Rossii, Vesti FM, Echo of Moscow, Radio Mayak, and Russkoye Radio. Of the 16,000 registered newspapers, , Komsomolskaya Pravda, , Izvestia, and Moskovskij Komsomolets are popular. State-run Channel One and Russia-1 are the leading news channels, while RT is the flagship of Russia's international media operations. Russia has the largest video gaming market in Europe, with over 65 million players nationwide.\nRussian and later Soviet cinema was a hotbed of invention, resulting in world-renowned films such as \"The Battleship Potemkin\", which was named the greatest film of all time at the Brussels World's Fair in 1958. Soviet-era filmmakers, most notably Sergei Eisenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky, would go on to become among of the world's most innovative and influential directors. Eisenstein was a student of Lev Kuleshov, who developed the groundbreaking Soviet montage theory of film editing at the world's first film school, the All-Union Institute of Cinematography. Dziga Vertov's \"Kino-Eye\" theory had a large effect on the development of documentary filmmaking and cinema realism. Many Soviet socialist realism films were artistically successful, including \"Chapaev\", \"The Cranes Are Flying\", and \"Ballad of a Soldier\".\nThe 1960s and 1970s saw a greater variety of artistic styles in Soviet cinema. The comedies of Eldar Ryazanov and Leonid Gaidai of that time were immensely popular, with many of the catchphrases still in use today. In 1961\u201368 Sergey Bondarchuk directed an Oscar-winning film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's epic \"War and Peace\", which was the most expensive film made in the Soviet Union. In 1969, Vladimir Motyl's \"White Sun of the Desert\" was released, a very popular film in a genre of ostern; the film is traditionally watched by cosmonauts before any trip into space. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Russian cinema industry suffered large losses\u2014however, since the late 2000s, it has seen growth once again, and continues to expand.\nSports.\nFootball is the most popular sport in Russia. The Soviet Union national football team became the first European champions by winning Euro 1960, and reached the finals of Euro 1988. Russian clubs CSKA Moscow and Zenit Saint Petersburg won the UEFA Cup in 2005 and 2008. The Russian national football team reached the semi-finals of Euro 2008. Russia was the host nation for the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup, and the 2018 FIFA World Cup. However, Russian teams are currently suspended from FIFA and UEFA competitions.\nIce hockey is very popular in Russia, and the Soviet national ice hockey team dominated the sport internationally throughout its existence. Bandy is Russia's national sport, and it has historically been the highest-achieving country in the sport. The Russian national basketball team won the EuroBasket 2007, and the Russian basketball club PBC CSKA Moscow is among the most successful European basketball teams. The annual Formula One Russian Grand Prix was held at the Sochi Autodrom in the Sochi Olympic Park, until its termination following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.\nHistorically, Russian athletes have been one of the most successful contenders in the Olympic Games. Russia is the leading nation in rhythmic gymnastics; and Russian synchronised swimming is considered to be the world's best. Figure skating is another popular sport in Russia, especially pair skating and ice dancing. Russia has produced numerous prominent tennis players. Chess is also a widely popular pastime in the nation, with many of the world's top chess players being Russian for decades. The 1980 Summer Olympic Games were held in Moscow, and the 2014 Winter Olympics and the 2014 Winter Paralympics were hosted in Sochi. However, Russia has also had 43 Olympic medals stripped from its athletes due to doping violations, which is the most of any country, and nearly a third of the global total.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nGovernment\nGeneral information\nOther"}, "descending_order": ["18427784", "20896854", "25391"], "permutation_1": ["25391", "18427784", "20896854"], "permutation_2": ["20896854", "18427784", "25391"], "permutation_3": ["20896854", "18427784", "25391"]}
{"id": "3hop1__450185_102686_126099", "docs_added": {"3037199": "Kseniya Boguslavskaya\nRussian painter\nKseniya (or Ksenia or Xenia) Boguslavskaya (also Xana Puni; , born 5 February\u00a0[O.S. 24 January]\u00a01892 in Odessa, died 3. Mai 1972 in Herblay-sur-Seine) was a Russian avant-garde artist (Futurist, Suprematist), illustrator and scenic designer. She was the wife of the painter Ivan Puni, whom he supported very much.\nBiography.\nXana was born in Odessa as Xenia Bogoslovskaya.\nHer father Leonid Ivanovich Bogoslovsky (01.01.1854 \u2014 22.07.1902) was Lieutenant colonel of the Russian Army and served in 1898-1902 in Guangdong, China, where he died of dysentery. Her mother, Vera Fedorovna Bogoslovskaya (born Alabugina, daughter of lieutenant; 26.04.1858 - 16.08.1921), who followed him, went after her husband's death with Xana and her elder brother to Saint Petersburg and lived from the military pension. Xana studied in 1903-1908 at the Therese von Oldenburg Female School. For the drawing lessons she took hours at the Imperial Academy of Arts. With Ivan Puni, her future partner, she got acquainted in 1908. In \n1909-1910 she participated in some political activities. Fearing persecution, she married a certain Kolosov and left Russia with him, first to Galicia (Lviv, Carpathians), then to Vienna and from there to Naples. In Naples she entered the Academy of Fine Arts. In Naples she met Ivan Puni and moved to him to Paris (March 1912). Soon Ivan left for Russia, and Xana attended Parisian public schools (l'Acad\u00e9mie russe and Acad\u00e9mie de la Grande Chaumi\u00e8re) until May 1913. Then she returned to Saint Petersburg under the surname Boguslavskaya.\nIn St.-Petersburg she joined Puni (they married officially only in February 1920) and their flat became for 6 months a meeting point for the Russian Futurists. Velimir Khlebnikov was deeply impressed by herself and her stories from Galicia.\nXana supported Ivan in all his activities, e. g. preparation of the collection \"Roaring Parnassus\" (1913), organization of exhibitions \"Tramway V\" (March 1915) und \"0,10\" (December 1915) and the decoration of Petrograd for the revolutionary holydays (May und November 1918). In 1919 they went (January\u2013April) to Witebsk in order to teach at the Art School founded by Marc Chagall.\nBerlin Period.\nIn 1920 (February) she and Puni escaped from the Soviet Union across the ice of the Gulf of Finland. They lived in Berlin from 1920 to 1923, she worked as a scene designer for the Russian-German cabaret called \"Der Blaue Vogel\" and for the \"Russian Romantic Theatre\". In Berlin, they established ties with the \"International Futurists\", including poet and K\u0101rlis Z\u0101le.\nParis Period.\nAt the end of 1923 they moved to Paris. Boguslavskaya again took care of the finances as a costume designer and fabric designer until Puni gradually achieved fame as a painter. She was also active as art dealer, but above all she was committed to Puni's work. After his death (December 28, 1956), she organized around 20 retrospective exhibitions of Puni and prepared material for his catalog of works, which was published in 1972 (1st volume) and 1992 (2nd volume). In 1959/1960 and in 1966 she donated a total of 62 works by Puni (paintings and graphic works) to the French state.\nXenia Boguslavskaya died on May 3, 1972 in Herblay-sur-Seine near Paris.\nPersonal web seite of Xenia Boguslavskaya und Ivan Puni.\nIVAN PUNI, research project\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3033429": "Ivan Puni\nRussian artist\nIvan Albertovich Puni (; also known as Jean Pougny; 3 April\u00a0[O.S. 22 March]\u00a01890 \u2013 28 December 1956) was a Russian avant-garde (Suprematist, Cubo-Futurist) and French artist, who intensively changed his style until it went into lyric Primitivism in the direction of Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard.\nBiography.\nEarly life.\nIvan Puni was born in Kuokkala (then Grand Duchy of Finland in the Russian Empire, now Repino, a part of St. Petersburg in Russia). It was long believed that Ivan Puni was born in 1892 or 1894 until his birth certificate was found in 2019 in a St. Petersburg archive, showing his birth date as 22 March 1890 (old style). \nHe was the grandson of an eminent Italian composer of ballet music, Cesare Pugni. His father, a cellist, proposed him a military career, but Ivan instead decided to become a painter.\nCareer.\nPuni continued his formal training in Paris in 1910\u201311 at the Acad\u00e9mie Julien and other schools, where he painted in a derivative \"fauviste\" style. Upon his return to Russia in 1912, he married fellow artist Xenia Boguslavskaya, and met, and exhibited with, members of the St Petersburg avant-garde, including Kazimir Malevich and Vladimir Tatlin. He made a second trip to Paris in 1914, returning to St. Petersburg with the outbreak of WWI. At this point, he began painting in a Cubist style reminiscent of Juan Gris. In 1915, Puni organized the exhibitions \"Tramway V\" and \"0.10,\" both held in St Petersburg, in which Malevich, Tatlin, Aleksandra Ekster, Liubov Popova, Ivan Kliun, Olga Rozanova, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Boguslavskaya and others participated, and to which Puni contributed constructions, readymades, and paintings. In 1915-1916 Puni, together with other Suprematist artists, worked at Verbovka Village Folk Centre. In 1919, he taught at the Vitebsk Art School under Marc Chagall.\nYears of exile.\nPuni and his wife, Xenia Boguslavskaya, emigrated from Russia in 1920 (end of January), first to Finland, then to Berlin, where his solo exhibition was held at the Galerie der Sturm (February 1920). While in Berlin, Puni also designed costumes and sets for theatrical productions, and published a theoretical book \"Modern Painting\".\nPuni and Boguslavskaya relocated to Paris in 1923, where he carried on with development of his style, which experienced several metamorphoses until it stabilized at approximately 1943 to a variant of Post-Impressionism or lyric Primitivism in the direction of Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard. In France he became \"Jean Pougny\" and in 1947 obtained French citizenship. He died in Paris in 1956.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "25391": "Russia\nCountry spanning Europe and Asia\nRussia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the largest country in the world, and extends across eleven time zones; sharing land borders with fourteen countries. Russia is the most populous country in Europe and the ninth-most populous country in the world. It is a highly urbanised country, with sixteen of its urban areas having more than 1\u00a0million inhabitants. Moscow, the most populous metropolitan area in Europe, is the capital and largest city of Russia, while Saint Petersburg is its second-largest city and cultural centre.\nHuman settlement on the territory of modern Russia dates back to the Lower Paleolithic. The East Slavs emerged as a recognised group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries CE. The first East Slavic state, Kievan Rus', arose in the 9th century, and in 988, it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire. Kievan Rus' ultimately disintegrated; the Grand Duchy of Moscow led the unification of Russian lands, leading to the proclamation of the Tsardom of Russia in 1547. By the early 18th century, Russia had vastly expanded through conquest, annexation, and the efforts of Russian explorers, developing into the Russian Empire, which remains the third-largest empire in history. However, with the Russian Revolution in 1917, Russia's monarchic rule was abolished and eventually replaced by the Russian SFSR\u2014the world's first constitutionally socialist state. Following the Russian Civil War, the Russian SFSR established the Soviet Union with three other Soviet republics, within which it was the largest and principal constituent. The Soviet Union underwent rapid industrialisation in the 1930s, amidst the deaths of millions under Joseph Stalin's rule, and later played a decisive role for the Allies in World War II by leading large-scale efforts on the Eastern Front. With the onset of the Cold War, it competed with the United States for ideological dominance and international influence. The Soviet era of the 20th century saw some of the most significant Russian technological achievements, including the first human-made satellite and the first human expedition into outer space.\nIn 1991, the Russian SFSR emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as the Russian Federation. A new constitution was adopted, which established a federal semi-presidential system. Since the turn of the century, Russia's political system has been dominated by Vladimir Putin, under whom the country has experienced democratic backsliding and become an authoritarian dictatorship. Russia has been militarily involved in a number of conflicts in former Soviet states and other countries, including its war with Georgia in 2008 and its war with Ukraine since 2014. The latter has involved the internationally unrecognised annexations of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea in 2014 and four other regions in 2022, during an ongoing invasion.\nRussia is generally considered a great power and is a regional power, possessing the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons and having the third-highest military expenditure in the world. It has a high-income economy, which is the eleventh-largest in the world by nominal GDP and fourth-largest by PPP, relying on its vast mineral and energy resources; which rank as the second-largest in the world for oil and natural gas production. However, Russia ranks very low in international measurements of democracy, human rights and freedom of the press, and also has high levels of perceived corruption. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council; a member state of the G20, SCO, BRICS, APEC, OSCE, and WTO; and the leading member state of post-Soviet organisations such as CIS, CSTO, and EAEU. Russia is home to 32 UNESCO World Heritage Sites.\nEtymology.\nAccording to the \"Oxford English Dictionary\", the English name \"Russia\" first appeared in the 14th century, borrowed from , used in the 11th century and frequently in 12th-century British sources, in turn derived from and the suffix .\nThere are several words in Russian which translate to \"Russians\" in English. The noun and adjective refers to ethnic Russians. The adjective denotes Russian citizens regardless of ethnicity. The same applies to the more recently coined noun , in the sense of citizen of the Russian state.\nThe oldest endonyms used were \"Rus'\" () and the \"Russian land\" (). According to the \"Primary Chronicle\", the word \"Rus'\" is derived from the Rus' people, who were a Swedish tribe, and from where the three original members of the Rurikid dynasty came from. The Finnish word for Swedes, , has the same origin. In modern historiography, the early medieval East Slavic state is usually referred to as \"Kievan Rus'\", named after its capital city. Another Medieval Latin name for \"Rus'\" was \"Ruthenia\".\nIn Russian, the current name of the country, (), comes from the Byzantine Greek name (). The name () was first attested in 1387. The name appeared in Russian sources in the 15th century and began to replace the vernacular \"Rus'\" during the rise of Moscow as the centre of a unified Russian state. However, until the end of the 17th century, the country was more often referred to by its inhabitants as \"Rus'\", the \"Russian land\" (), or the \"Muscovite state\" (), among other variations.\nIn 1721, Peter the Great proclaimed the Russian Empire (). The name \"Rossiya\" was used as the common designation for the multinational Russian Empire and then for the modern Russian state. \"Rossiya\" is distinguished from the ethnonym \"russkiy\", as it refers to a supranational identity, including ethnic Russians. After the Russian Revolution and the proclamation of the Russian SFSR in 1918, the \"Russian\" in the title of the state was \"Rossiyskaya\", rather than \"Russkaya\", as the former denoted a multinational state, while the latter had ethnic dimensions. In modern Russian, the name \"Rus'\" is still used in poetry or prose to refer to either the older Russia or an imagined essence of Russia.\nHistory.\nEarly history.\nThe first human settlement on Russia dates back to the Oldowan period in the early Lower Paleolithic. About 2 million years ago, representatives of \"Homo erectus\" migrated to the Taman Peninsula in southern Russia. Flint tools, some 1.5 million years old, have been discovered in the North Caucasus. Radiocarbon dated specimens from Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains estimate the oldest Denisovan specimen lived 195\u2013122,700 years ago. Fossils of \"Denny\", an archaic human hybrid that was half Neanderthal and half Denisovan, and lived some 90,000 years ago, was also found within the latter cave. Russia was home to some of the last surviving Neanderthals, from about 45,000 years ago, found in Mezmaiskaya cave.\nThe first trace of an early modern human in Russia dates back to 45,000 years, in Western Siberia. The discovery of high concentration cultural remains of anatomically modern humans, from at least 40,000 years ago, was found at Kostyonki\u2013Borshchyovo, and at Sungir, dating back to 34,600 years ago\u2014both in western Russia. Humans reached Arctic Russia at least 40,000 years ago, in Mamontovaya Kurya. Ancient North Eurasian populations from Siberia genetically similar to Mal'ta\u2013Buret' culture and Afontova Gora were an important genetic contributor to Ancient Native Americans and Eastern Hunter-Gatherers.\nThe Kurgan hypothesis places the Volga-Dnieper region of southern Russia and Ukraine as the urheimat of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. Early Indo-European migrations from the Pontic\u2013Caspian steppe of Ukraine and Russia spread Yamnaya ancestry and Indo-European languages across large parts of Eurasia. Nomadic pastoralism developed in the Pontic\u2013Caspian steppe beginning in the Chalcolithic. Remnants of these steppe civilisations were discovered in places such as Ipatovo, Sintashta, Arkaim, and Pazyryk, which bear the earliest known traces of horses in warfare. The genetic makeup of speakers of the Uralic language family in northern Europe was shaped by migration from Siberia that began at least 3,500 years ago.\nIn the 3rd to 4th centuries CE, the Gothic kingdom of Oium existed in southern Russia, which was later overrun by Huns. Between the 3rd and 6th centuries CE, the Bosporan Kingdom, which was a Hellenistic polity that succeeded the Greek colonies, was also overwhelmed by nomadic invasions led by warlike tribes such as the Huns and Eurasian Avars. The Khazars, who were of Turkic origin, ruled the steppes between the Caucasus in the south, to the east past the Volga river basin, and west as far as Kyiv on the Dnieper river until the 10th century. After them came the Pechenegs who created a large confederacy, which was subsequently taken over by the Cumans and the Kipchaks.\nThe ancestors of Russians are among the Slavic tribes that separated from the Proto-Indo-Europeans, who appeared in the northeastern part of Europe c.\u20091500\u202fyears ago. The East Slavs gradually settled western Russia (approximately between modern Moscow and Saint-Petersburg) in two waves: one moving from Kiev towards present-day Suzdal and Murom and another from Polotsk towards Novgorod and Rostov. Prior to Slavic migration, that territory was populated by Finno-Ugrian peoples. From the 7th century onwards, the incoming East Slavs slowly assimilated the native Finno-Ugrians.\nKievan Rus'.\nThe establishment of the first East Slavic states in the 9th century coincided with the arrival of Varangians, the Vikings who ventured along the waterways extending from the eastern Baltic to the Black and Caspian Seas. According to the \"Primary Chronicle\", a Varangian from the Rus' people, named Rurik, was elected ruler of Novgorod in 862. In 882, his successor Oleg ventured south and conquered Kiev, which had been previously paying tribute to the Khazars. Rurik's son Igor and Igor's son Sviatoslav subsequently subdued all local East Slavic tribes to Kievan rule, destroyed the Khazar Khaganate, and launched several military expeditions to Bulgaria, Byzantium and Persia.\nIn the 10th to 11th centuries, Kievan Rus' became one of the largest and most prosperous states in Europe. The reigns of Vladimir the Great (980\u20131015) and his son Yaroslav the Wise (1019\u20131054) constitute the Golden Age of Kiev, which saw the acceptance of Orthodox Christianity from Byzantium, and the creation of the first East Slavic written legal code, the \"Russkaya Pravda\". The age of feudalism and decentralisation had come, marked by constant in-fighting between members of the Rurik dynasty that ruled Kievan Rus' collectively. Kiev's dominance waned, to the benefit of Vladimir-Suzdal in the north-east, the Novgorod Republic in the north, and Galicia-Volhynia in the south-west. By the 12th century, Kiev lost its pre-eminence and Kievan Rus' had fragmented into different principalities. Prince Andrey Bogolyubsky sacked Kiev in 1169 and made Vladimir his base, leading to political power being shifted to the north-east.\nLed by Prince Alexander Nevsky, Novgorodians repelled the invading Swedes in the Battle of the Neva in 1240, as well as the Germanic crusaders in the Battle on the Ice in 1242.\nKievan Rus' finally fell to the Mongol invasion of 1237\u20131240, which resulted in the sacking of Kiev and other cities, as well as the death of a major part of the population. The invaders, later known as Tatars, formed the state of the Golden Horde, which ruled over Russia for the next two centuries. Only the Novgorod Republic escaped foreign occupation after it agreed to pay tribute to the Mongols. Galicia-Volhynia would later be absorbed by Lithuania and Poland, while the Novgorod Republic continued to prosper in the north. In the northeast, the Byzantine-Slavic traditions of Kievan Rus' were adapted to form the Russian autocratic state.\nGrand Principality of Moscow.\nThe destruction of Kievan Rus' saw the eventual rise of the Grand Principality of Moscow, initially a part of Vladimir-Suzdal. While still under the domain of the Mongol-Tatars and with their connivance, Moscow began to assert its influence in the region in the early 14th century, gradually becoming the leading force in the \"gathering of the Russian lands\". When the seat of the Metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church moved to Moscow in 1325, its influence increased. Moscow's last rival, the Novgorod Republic, prospered as the chief fur trade centre and the easternmost port of the Hanseatic League.\nLed by Prince Dmitry Donskoy of Moscow, the united army of Russian principalities inflicted a milestone defeat on the Mongol-Tatars in the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380. Moscow gradually absorbed its parent duchy and surrounding principalities, including formerly strong rivals such as Tver and Novgorod.\nIvan\u00a0III (\"the Great\") threw off the control of the Golden Horde and consolidated the whole of northern Rus' under Moscow's dominion, and was the first Russian ruler to take the title \"Grand Prince of all Rus'\". After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Moscow claimed succession to the legacy of the Eastern Roman Empire. Ivan\u00a0III married Sophia Palaiologina, the niece of the last Byzantine emperor Constantine\u00a0XI, and made the Byzantine double-headed eagle his own, and eventually Russia's, coat-of-arms. Vasili III united all of Russia by annexing the last few independent Russian states in the early 16th century.\nTsardom of Russia.\nIn development of the Third Rome ideas, the grand prince Ivan\u00a0IV (\"the Terrible\") was officially crowned the first \"tsar\" of Russia in 1547. The tsar promulgated a new code of laws (Sudebnik of 1550), established the first Russian feudal representative body (the Zemsky Sobor), revamped the military, curbed the influence of the clergy, and reorganised local government. During his long reign, Ivan nearly doubled the already large Russian territory by annexing the three Tatar khanates: Kazan and Astrakhan along the Volga, and the Khanate of Sibir in southwestern Siberia. Ultimately, by the end of the 16th century, Russia expanded east of the Ural Mountains. However, the Tsardom was weakened by the long and unsuccessful Livonian War against the coalition of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (later the united Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth), the Kingdom of Sweden, and Denmark\u2013Norway for access to the Baltic coast and sea trade. In 1572, an invading army of Crimean Tatars were thoroughly defeated in the crucial Battle of Molodi.\nThe death of Ivan's sons marked the end of the ancient Rurik dynasty in 1598, and in combination with the disastrous famine of 1601\u20131603, led to a civil war, the rule of pretenders, and foreign intervention during the Time of Troubles in the early 17th century. The Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth, taking advantage, occupied parts of Russia, extending into the capital Moscow. In 1612, the Poles were forced to retreat by the Russian volunteer corps, led by merchant Kuzma Minin and prince Dmitry Pozharsky. The Romanov dynasty acceded to the throne in 1613 by the decision of the Zemsky Sobor, and the country started its gradual recovery from the crisis.\nRussia continued its territorial growth through the 17th century, which was the age of the Cossacks. In 1654, the Ukrainian leader, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, offered to place Ukraine under the protection of the Russian tsar, Alexis; whose acceptance of this offer led to another Russo-Polish War. Ultimately, Ukraine was split along the Dnieper, leaving the eastern part, (Left-bank Ukraine and Kiev) under Russian rule. In the east, the rapid Russian exploration and colonisation of vast Siberia continued, hunting for valuable furs and ivory. Russian explorers pushed eastward primarily along the Siberian River Routes, and by the mid-17th century, there were Russian settlements in eastern Siberia, on the Chukchi Peninsula, along the Amur River, and on the coast of the Pacific Ocean. In 1648, Semyon Dezhnyov became the first European to navigate through the Bering Strait.\nImperial Russia.\nUnder Peter the Great, Russia was proclaimed an empire in 1721, and established itself as one of the European great powers. Ruling from 1682 to 1725, Peter defeated Sweden in the Great Northern War (1700\u20131721), securing Russia's access to the sea and sea trade. In 1703, on the Baltic Sea, Peter founded Saint Petersburg as Russia's new capital. Throughout his rule, sweeping reforms were made, which brought significant Western European cultural influences to Russia. He was succeeded by Catherine I (1725\u20131727), followed by Peter II (1727\u20131730), and Anna. The reign of Peter\u00a0I's daughter Elizabeth in 1741\u20131762 saw Russia's participation in the Seven Years' War (1756\u20131763). During the conflict, Russian troops overran East Prussia, reaching Berlin. However, upon Elizabeth's death, all these conquests were returned to the Kingdom of Prussia by pro-Prussian Peter\u00a0III of Russia.\nCatherine\u00a0II (\"the Great\"), who ruled in 1762\u20131796, presided over the Russian Age of Enlightenment. She extended Russian political control over the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth and annexed most of its territories into Russia, making it the most populous country in Europe. In the south, after the successful Russo-Turkish Wars against the Ottoman Empire, Catherine advanced Russia's boundary to the Black Sea, by dissolving the Crimean Khanate, and annexing Crimea. As a result of victories over Qajar Iran through the Russo-Persian Wars, by the first half of the 19th century, Russia also conquered the Caucasus. Catherine's successor, her son Paul, was unstable and focused predominantly on domestic issues. Following his short reign, Catherine's strategy was continued with Alexander\u00a0I's (1801\u20131825) wresting of Finland from the weakened Sweden in 1809, and of Bessarabia from the Ottomans in 1812. In North America, the Russians became the first Europeans to reach and colonise Alaska. In 1803\u20131806, the first Russian circumnavigation was made. In 1820, a Russian expedition discovered the continent of Antarctica.\nGreat power and development of society, sciences, and arts.\nDuring the Napoleonic Wars, Russia joined alliances with various European powers, and fought against France. The French invasion of Russia at the height of Napoleon's power in 1812 reached Moscow, but eventually failed as the obstinate resistance in combination with the bitterly cold Russian winter led to a disastrous defeat of invaders, in which the pan-European Grande Arm\u00e9e faced utter destruction. Led by Mikhail Kutuzov and Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly, the Imperial Russian Army ousted Napoleon and drove throughout Europe in the War of the Sixth Coalition, ultimately entering Paris. Alexander I controlled Russia's delegation at the Congress of Vienna, which defined the map of post-Napoleonic Europe.\nThe officers who pursued Napoleon into Western Europe brought ideas of liberalism back to Russia, and attempted to curtail the tsar's powers during the abortive Decembrist revolt of 1825. At the end of the conservative reign of Nicholas I (1825\u20131855), a zenith period of Russia's power and influence in Europe, was disrupted by defeat in the Crimean War.\nGreat liberal reforms and capitalism.\nNicholas's successor Alexander\u00a0II (1855\u20131881) enacted significant changes throughout the country, including the emancipation reform of 1861. These reforms spurred industrialisation, and modernised the Imperial Russian Army, which liberated much of the Balkans from Ottoman rule in the aftermath of the 1877\u20131878 Russo-Turkish War. During most of the 19th and early 20th century, Russia and Britain colluded over Afghanistan and its neighbouring territories in Central and South Asia; the rivalry between the two major European empires came to be known as the Great Game.\nThe late 19th century saw the rise of various socialist movements in Russia. Alexander\u00a0II was assassinated in 1881 by revolutionary terrorists. The reign of his son Alexander\u00a0III (1881\u20131894) was less liberal but more peaceful.\nConstitutional monarchy and World War.\nUnder last Russian emperor, Nicholas\u00a0II (1894\u20131917), the Revolution of 1905 was triggered by the humiliating failure of the Russo-Japanese War. The uprising was put down, but the government was forced to concede major reforms (Russian Constitution of 1906), including granting freedoms of speech and assembly, the legalisation of political parties, and the creation of an elected legislative body, the State Duma.\nRevolution and civil war.\nIn 1914, Russia entered World War\u00a0I in response to Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on Russia's ally Serbia, and fought across multiple fronts while isolated from its Triple Entente allies. In 1916, the Brusilov Offensive of the Imperial Russian Army almost completely destroyed the Austro-Hungarian Army. However, the already-existing public distrust of the regime was deepened by the rising costs of war, high casualties, and rumors of corruption and treason. All this formed the climate for the Russian Revolution of 1917, carried out in two major acts. In early 1917, Nicholas II was forced to abdicate; he and his family were imprisoned and later executed during the Russian Civil War. The monarchy was replaced by a shaky coalition of political parties that declared itself the Provisional Government, and proclaimed the Russian Republic. On 19 January [O.S. 6 January], 1918, the Russian Constituent Assembly declared Russia a democratic federal republic (thus ratifying the Provisional Government's decision). The next day the Constituent Assembly was dissolved by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.\nAn alternative socialist establishment co-existed, the Petrograd Soviet, wielding power through the democratically elected councils of workers and peasants, called \"soviets\". The rule of the new authorities only aggravated the crisis in the country instead of resolving it, and eventually, the October Revolution, led by Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Provisional Government and gave full governing power to the soviets, leading to the creation of the world's first socialist state. The Russian Civil War broke out between the anti-communist White movement and the Bolsheviks with its Red Army. In the aftermath of signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that concluded hostilities with the Central Powers of World War\u00a0I; Bolshevist Russia surrendered most of its western territories, which hosted 34% of its population, 54% of its industries, 32% of its agricultural land, and roughly 90% of its coal mines.\nThe Allied powers launched an unsuccessful military intervention in support of anti-communist forces. In the meantime, both the Bolsheviks and White movement carried out campaigns of deportations and executions against each other, known respectively as the Red Terror and White Terror. By the end of the violent civil war, Russia's economy and infrastructure were heavily damaged, and as many as 10 million perished during the war, mostly civilians. Millions became White \u00e9migr\u00e9s, and the Russian famine of 1921\u20131922 claimed up to five\u00a0million victims.\nSoviet Union.\nCommand economy and Soviet society.\nOn 30 December 1922, Lenin and his aides formed the Soviet Union, by joining the Russian SFSR into a single state with the Byelorussian, Transcaucasian, and Ukrainian republics. Eventually internal border changes and annexations during World War II created a union of 15 republics; the largest in size and population being the Russian SFSR, which dominated the union politically, culturally, and economically.\nFollowing Lenin's death in 1924, a troika was designated to take charge. Eventually Joseph Stalin, the General Secretary of the Communist Party, managed to suppress all opposition factions and consolidate power in his hands to become the country's dictator by the 1930s. Leon Trotsky, the main proponent of world revolution, was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929, and Stalin's idea of Socialism in One Country became the official line. The continued internal struggle in the Bolshevik party culminated in the Great Purge.\nStalinism and modernisation.\nUnder Stalin's leadership, the government launched a command economy, industrialisation of the largely rural country, and collectivisation of its agriculture. During this period of rapid economic and social change, millions of people were sent to penal labour camps, including many political convicts for their suspected or real opposition to Stalin's rule; and millions were deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union. The transitional disorganisation of the country's agriculture, combined with the harsh state policies and a drought, led to the Soviet famine of 1932\u20131933; which killed 5.7 to 8.7 million, 3.3 million of them in the Russian SFSR. The Soviet Union, ultimately, made the costly transformation from a largely agrarian economy to a major industrial powerhouse within a short span of time.\nWorld War II and United Nations.\nThe Soviet Union entered World War II on 17 September 1939 with its invasion of Poland, in accordance with a secret protocol within the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union later invaded Finland, and occupied and annexed the Baltic states, as well as parts of Romania. On 22 June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, opening the Eastern Front, the largest theater of World War\u00a0II.\nEventually, some 5 million Red Army troops were captured by the Nazis; the latter deliberately starved to death or otherwise killed 3.3\u00a0million Soviet POWs, and a vast number of civilians, as the \"Hunger Plan\" sought to fulfil Generalplan Ost. Although the Wehrmacht had considerable early success, their attack was halted in the Battle of Moscow. Subsequently, the Germans were dealt major defeats first at the Battle of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942\u20131943, and then in the Battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943. Another German failure was the Siege of Leningrad, in which the city was fully blockaded on land between 1941 and 1944 by German and Finnish forces, and suffered starvation and more than a million deaths, but never surrendered. Soviet forces steamrolled through Eastern and Central Europe in 1944\u20131945 and captured Berlin in May 1945. In August 1945, the Red Army invaded Manchuria and ousted the Japanese from Northeast Asia, contributing to the Allied victory over Japan.\nThe 1941\u20131945 period of World War\u00a0II is known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War. The Soviet Union, along with the United States, the United Kingdom and China were considered the Big Four of Allied powers in World War II, and later became the Four Policemen, which was the foundation of the United Nations Security Council. During the war, Soviet civilian and military death were about 26\u201327 million, accounting for about half of all World War\u00a0II casualties. The Soviet economy and infrastructure suffered massive devastation, which caused the Soviet famine of 1946\u20131947. However, at the expense of a large sacrifice, the Soviet Union emerged as a global superpower.\nSuperpower and Cold War.\nAfter World War II, according to the Potsdam Conference, the Red Army occupied parts of Eastern and Central Europe, including East Germany and the eastern regions of Austria. Dependent communist governments were installed in the Eastern Bloc satellite states. After becoming the world's second nuclear power, the Soviet Union established the Warsaw Pact alliance, and entered into a struggle for global dominance, known as the Cold War, with the rivalling United States and NATO.\nKhrushchev Thaw reforms and economic development.\nAfter Stalin's death in 1953 and a short period of collective rule, the new leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin and launched the policy of de-Stalinization, releasing many political prisoners from the Gulag labour camps. The general easement of repressive policies became known later as the Khrushchev Thaw. At the same time, Cold War tensions reached its peak when the two rivals clashed over the deployment of the United States Jupiter missiles in Turkey and Soviet missiles in Cuba.\nIn 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world's first artificial satellite, \"Sputnik\u00a01\", thus starting the Space Age. Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth, aboard the \"Vostok\u00a01\" crewed spacecraft on 12 April 1961.\nPeriod of developed socialism or Era of Stagnation.\nFollowing the ousting of Khrushchev in 1964, another period of collective rule ensued, until Leonid Brezhnev became the leader. The era of the 1970s and the early 1980s was later designated as the Era of Stagnation. The 1965 Kosygin reform aimed for partial decentralisation of the Soviet economy. In 1979, after a communist-led revolution in Afghanistan, Soviet forces invaded the country, ultimately starting the Soviet\u2013Afghan War. In May 1988, the Soviets started to withdraw from Afghanistan, due to international opposition, persistent anti-Soviet guerrilla warfare, and a lack of support by Soviet citizens.\nPerestroika, democratisation and Russian sovereignty.\nFrom 1985 onwards, the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who sought to enact liberal reforms in the Soviet system, introduced the policies of \"glasnost\" (openness) and \"perestroika\" (restructuring) in an attempt to end the period of economic stagnation and to democratise the government. This, however, led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements across the country. Prior to 1991, the Soviet economy was the world's second-largest, but during its final years, it went into a crisis.\nBy 1991, economic and political turmoil began to boil over as the Baltic states chose to secede from the Soviet Union. On 17 March, a referendum was held, in which the vast majority of participating citizens voted in favour of changing the Soviet Union into a renewed federation. In June 1991, Boris Yeltsin became the first directly elected President in Russian history when he was elected President of the Russian SFSR. In August 1991, a coup d'\u00e9tat attempt by members of Gorbachev's government, directed against Gorbachev and aimed at preserving the Soviet Union, instead led to the end of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. On 25 December 1991, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, along with contemporary Russia, fourteen other post-Soviet states emerged.\nIndependent Russian Federation.\nTransition to a market economy and political crises.\nThe economic and political collapse of the Soviet Union led Russia into a deep and prolonged depression. During and after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, wide-ranging reforms including privatisation and market and trade liberalisation were undertaken, including radical changes along the lines of \"shock therapy\". The privatisation largely shifted control of enterprises from state agencies to individuals with inside connections in the government, which led to the rise of Russian oligarchs. Many of the newly rich moved billions in cash and assets outside of the country in an enormous capital flight. The depression of the economy led to the collapse of social services\u2014the birth rate plummeted while the death rate skyrocketed, and millions plunged into poverty; while extreme corruption, as well as criminal gangs and organised crime rose significantly.\nIn late 1993, tensions between Yeltsin and the Russian parliament culminated in a constitutional crisis which ended violently through military force. During the crisis, Yeltsin was backed by Western governments, and over 100 people were killed.\nModern liberal constitution, international cooperation and economic stabilisation.\nIn December, a referendum was held and approved, which introduced a new constitution, giving the president enormous powers. The 1990s were plagued by armed conflicts in the North Caucasus, both local ethnic skirmishes and separatist Islamist insurrections. From the time Chechen separatists declared independence in the early 1990s, an intermittent guerrilla war was fought between the rebel groups and Russian forces. Terrorist attacks against civilians were carried out by Chechen separatists, claiming the lives of thousands of Russian civilians.\nAfter the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia assumed responsibility for settling the latter's external debts. In 1992, most consumer price controls were eliminated, causing extreme inflation and significantly devaluing the rouble. High budget deficits coupled with increasing capital flight and inability to pay back debts, caused the 1998 Russian financial crisis, which resulted in a further GDP decline.\nMovement towards a modernised economy, political centralisation and democratic backsliding.\nOn 31 December 1999, President Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned, handing the post to the recently appointed prime minister and his chosen successor, Vladimir Putin. Putin then won the 2000 presidential election, and defeated the Chechen insurgency in the Second Chechen War.\nPutin won a second presidential term in 2004. High oil prices and a rise in foreign investment saw the Russian economy and living standards improve significantly. Putin's rule increased stability, while transforming Russia into an authoritarian state. In 2008, Putin took the post of prime minister, while Dmitry Medvedev was elected President for one term, to hold onto power despite legal term limits; this period has been described as a \"tandemocracy\".\nFollowing a diplomatic crisis with neighbouring Georgia, the Russo-Georgian War took place during 1\u201312 August 2008, resulting in Russia recognising two separatist states in the territories that it occupies in Georgia. It was the first European war of the 21st century. The 2008 constitutional amendments saw the terms of the president extend to six years and the lower house (State Duma) to five years. Putin then went on to win the 2012 presidential election, which fueled the \"Snow Revolution\" protests.\nInvasion of Ukraine.\nIn early 2014, following a pro-Western revolution in neighbouring Ukraine, Russia annexed Crimea after a disputed referendum on the status of Crimea was staged under Russian occupation. The annexation generated an insurgency in the Donbas region of Ukraine, supported by Russian military intervention as part of an undeclared war against Ukraine. Russian mercenaries and military forces, with the support of local separatist militias, waged a war in eastern Ukraine against the new Ukrainian government after the Russian government fostered anti-government and pro-Russian protests in the region, although most residents had opposed secession from Ukraine. Amidst nationwide protests against corruption, Putin was re-elected for his second consecutive term in the 2018 presidential election.\nIn a major escalation of the conflict, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. The invasion marked the largest conventional war in Europe since World War\u00a0II, and was met with international condemnation, as well as expanded sanctions against Russia.\nAs a result, Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe in March, and was suspended from the United Nations Human Rights Council in April. In September, following successful Ukrainian counteroffensives, Putin announced a \"partial mobilisation\", Russia's first mobilisation since Operation Barbarossa. In the end of September, Putin proclaimed the annexation of four partially-occupied Ukrainian regions, the largest annexation in Europe since World War\u00a0II. Putin and Russian-installed leaders signed treaties of accession, internationally unrecognised and widely denounced as illegal. As a result of the invasion, hundreds of thousands of people are estimated to have been killed or injured, while Russia has been accused of numerous war crimes. The war in Ukraine has further exacerbated Russia's demographic crisis.\nIn June 2023, the Wagner Group, a private military contractor fighting for Russia in Ukraine, declared an open rebellion against the Russian Ministry of Defence, capturing Rostov-on-Don, before beginning a march on Moscow. However, after negotiations between Wagner and the Belarusian government, the rebellion was called off. The leader of the rebellion, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was later killed in a plane crash. Putin won his third consecutive term in the 2024 presidential election, by winning 88% of the vote, the highest percentage in a presidential election in post-Soviet Russia.\nGeography.\nRussia's vast landmass stretches over the easternmost part of Europe and the northernmost part of Asia. It spans the northernmost edge of Eurasia and has the world's fourth-longest coastline, of over . Russia lies between latitudes 41\u00b0 and 82\u00b0 N, and longitudes 19\u00b0 E and 169\u00b0 W, extending some east to west, and north to south. Russia, by landmass, is larger than three continents, and has the same surface area as Pluto.\nRussia has nine major mountain ranges, and they are found along the southernmost regions, which share a significant portion of the Caucasus Mountains (containing Mount Elbrus, which at is the highest peak in Russia and Europe); the Altai and Sayan Mountains in Siberia; and in the East Siberian Mountains and the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East (containing Klyuchevskaya Sopka, which at is the highest active volcano in Eurasia). The Ural Mountains, running north to south through the country's west, are rich in mineral resources, and form the traditional boundary between Europe and Asia. The lowest point in Russia and Europe, is situated at the head of the Caspian Sea, where the Caspian Depression reaches some below sea level.\nRussia, as one of the world's only three countries bordering three oceans, has links with a great number of seas. Its major islands and archipelagos include Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land, Severnaya Zemlya, the New Siberian Islands, Wrangel Island, the Kuril Islands (four of which are disputed with Japan), and Sakhalin. The Diomede Islands, administered by Russia and the United States, are just apart; and Kunashir Island of the Kuril Islands is merely from Hokkaido, Japan.\nRussia, home of over 100,000 rivers, has one of the world's largest surface water resources, with its lakes containing approximately one-quarter of the world's liquid fresh water. Lake Baikal, the largest and most prominent among Russia's fresh water bodies, is the world's deepest, purest, oldest and most capacious fresh water lake, containing over one-fifth of the world's fresh surface water. Ladoga and Onega in northwestern Russia are two of the largest lakes in Europe. Russia is second only to Brazil by total renewable water resources. The Volga in western Russia, widely regarded as Russia's national river, is the longest river in Europe; and forms the Volga Delta, the largest river delta in the continent. The Siberian rivers of Ob, Yenisey, Lena, and Amur are among the world's longest rivers.\nClimate.\nThe size of Russia and the remoteness of many of its areas from the sea result in the dominance of the humid continental climate throughout most of the country, except for the tundra and the extreme southwest. Mountain ranges in the south and east obstruct the flow of warm air masses from the Indian and Pacific oceans, while the European Plain spanning its west and north opens it to influence from the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. Most of northwest Russia and Siberia have a subarctic climate, with extremely severe winters in the inner regions of northeast Siberia (mostly Sakha, where the Northern Pole of Cold is located with the record low temperature of ), and more moderate winters elsewhere. Russia's vast coastline along the Arctic Ocean and the Russian Arctic islands have a polar climate.\nThe coastal part of Krasnodar Krai on the Black Sea, most notably Sochi, and some coastal and interior strips of the North Caucasus possess a humid subtropical climate with mild and wet winters. In many regions of East Siberia and the Russian Far East, winter is dry compared to summer; while other parts of the country experience more even precipitation across seasons. Winter precipitation in most parts of the country usually falls as snow. The westernmost parts of Kaliningrad Oblast and some parts in the south of Krasnodar Krai and the North Caucasus have an oceanic climate. The region along the Lower Volga and Caspian Sea coast, as well as some southernmost slivers of Siberia, possess a semi-arid climate.\nThroughout much of the territory, there are only two distinct seasons, winter and summer; as spring and autumn are usually brief. The coldest month is January (February on the coastline); the warmest is usually July. Great ranges of temperature are typical. In winter, temperatures get colder both from south to north and from west to east. Summers can be quite hot, even in Siberia. Climate change in Russia is causing more frequent wildfires, and thawing the country's large expanse of permafrost.\nBiodiversity.\nRussia, owing to its gigantic size, has diverse ecosystems, including polar deserts, tundra, forest tundra, taiga, mixed and broadleaf forest, forest steppe, steppe, semi-desert, and subtropics. About half of Russia's territory is forested, and it has the world's largest area of forest, which sequester some of the world's highest amounts of carbon dioxide.\nRussian biodiversity includes 12,500 species of vascular plants, 2,200 species of bryophytes, about 3,000 species of lichens, 7,000\u20139,000 species of algae, and 20,000\u201325,000 species of fungi. Russian fauna is composed of 320 species of mammals, over 732 species of birds, 75 species of reptiles, about 30 species of amphibians, 343 species of freshwater fish (high endemism), approximately 1,500 species of saltwater fishes, 9 species of cyclostomata, and approximately 100\u2013150,000 invertebrates (high endemism). Approximately 1,100 rare and endangered plant and animal species are included in the Russian Red Data Book.\nRussia's entirely natural ecosystems are conserved in nearly 15,000 specially protected natural territories of various statuses, occupying more than 10% of the country's total area. They include 45 biosphere reserves, 64 national parks, and 101 nature reserves. Although in decline, the country still has many ecosystems which are still considered intact forest; mainly in the northern taiga areas, and the subarctic tundra of Siberia. Russia had a Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 9.02 in 2019, ranking 10th out of 172 countries; and the first ranked major nation globally.\nGovernment and politics.\nRussia, by constitution, is a symmetric federal republic with a semi-presidential system, wherein the president is the head of state, and the prime minister is the head of government. It is structured as a multi-party representative democracy, with the federal government composed of three branches:\nThe president is elected by popular vote for a six-year term and may be elected no more than twice. Ministries of the government are composed of the premier and his deputies, ministers, and selected other individuals; all are appointed by the president on the recommendation of the prime minister (whereas the appointment of the latter requires the consent of the State Duma). United Russia is the dominant political party in Russia, and has been described as \"big tent\" and the \"party of power\". \nPost-Soviet Russia was a flawed democracy during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin.223 However, following the presidencies of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, it has experienced significant democratic backsliding.223 The political system evolved from electoral authoritarianism into a consolidated authoritarian regime.323 Some political scientists have characterized Putin as the head of a dictatorship, or a personalist regime. Putin's second tenure as president has led to further autocratization,512 which has been the most significant since the rule of Stalin, with some authors suggesting a regeneration of totalitarian elements. Putin's ruling policies are generally referred to as Putinism.\nPolitical divisions.\nRussia, by constitution, is a symmetric (with the possibility of an asymmetric configuration) federation. Unlike the Soviet asymmetric model of the RSFSR, where only republics were \"subjects of the federation\", the current constitution raised the status of other regions to the level of republics and made all regions equal with the title \"subject of the federation\". The regions of Russia have reserved areas of competence, but regions do not have sovereignty, do not have the status of a sovereign state, do not have the right to indicate any sovereignty in their constitutions and do not have the right to secede from the country. The laws of the regions cannot contradict federal laws.\nThe federal subjects have equal representation\u2014two delegates each\u2014in the Federation Council, the upper house of the Federal Assembly. They do, however, differ in the degree of autonomy they enjoy. The federal districts of Russia were established by Putin in 2000 to facilitate central government control of the federal subjects. Originally seven, currently there are eight federal districts, each headed by an envoy appointed by the president.\nForeign relations.\nRussia has the world's sixth-largest diplomatic network as of 2024[ [update]]. It maintains diplomatic relations with 187 United Nations member states, two partially-recognised states, and two United Nations observer states; along with 143 embassies. Russia is one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. It is generally described as a great power, though it has been questioned whether it can retain this status. Russia is also a former superpower as the leading constituent of the former Soviet Union. It is a member of the G20, the OSCE, and the APEC\u2014and the leading member of organisations such as the CIS, the EAEU, the CSTO, the SCO, and BRICS. Russia was also a member of the G8 (now the G7) and part of the Council of Europe before its expulsion from the two groups in 2014 and 2022, respectively.\nRussia maintains close relations with neighbouring Belarus, which is a part of the Union State, a supranational confederation of the two states. Serbia has been a historically close ally of Russia, as both countries share a strong mutual cultural, ethnic, and religious affinity. From the 21st century, relations between Russia and China have significantly strengthened bilaterally and economically; due to shared political interests. India is the largest customer of Russian military equipment, and the two countries share a strong strategic and diplomatic relationship since the Soviet era. Russia wields great political influence across the geopolitically important South Caucasus and Central Asia; and the two regions have been described as Russia's \"backyard\". \nRussia shares a complex strategic, energy, and defence relationship with Turkey. It maintains cordial relations with Iran, as it is a strategic and economic ally. Russia has also significantly developed its relations with North Korea following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with increased defence co-operation. At the same time, its relations with neighbouring Ukraine and the Western world\u2014specifically the United States and the collective countries of the European Union and NATO\u2014have collapsed.\nIn the 21st century, Russia has pursued an aggressive foreign policy aimed at securing regional dominance in Europe and increasing its international influence, as well as increasing domestic support for the government. It has initiated military interventions in the post-Soviet states of Georgia and Ukraine, as well as in Syria during its prolonged civil war in a bid to increase its influence in the Middle East. Russia has also increasingly pushed to expand its influence across the Arctic, the Asia\u2013Pacific, Africa and Latin America. Two-thirds of the world's population, specifically the developing countries of the Global South, are either neutral or leaning towards Russia politically. Russia has also continued using subversive tactics to increase perceptions of its geopolitical power in its rival countries; including cyberwarfare, disinformation campaigns, sabotage attacks, assassination attempts, airspace violations, electoral interferences and nuclear saber-rattling.\nMilitary.\nThe Russian Armed Forces are divided into the Ground Forces, the Navy, and the Aerospace Forces\u2014and there are also two independent arms of service: the Strategic Missile Troops and the Airborne Troops. As of 2025[ [update]], the military have 1.1 million active-duty personnel, which is the world's fifth-largest, and about 1.5 million reserve personnel. It is mandatory for all male citizens aged 18\u201327 to be drafted for a year of service in the Armed Forces.\nRussia is among the five recognised nuclear-weapons states, with the world's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons; over half of the world's nuclear weapons are owned by Russia. Russia possesses the second-largest fleet of ballistic missile submarines, and is one of the only three countries operating strategic bombers. As of 2023[ [update]], Russia maintains the world's third-highest military expenditure, spending $109 billion, corresponding to about 5.9% of its GDP. It is also the third-largest arms exporter, and has a large and indigenous defence industry, which produces the majority of its military equipment.\nHuman rights.\nViolations of human rights in Russia have been increasingly reported by leading democracy and human rights groups. In particular, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say that Russia is not democratic and allows few political rights and civil liberties to its citizens.\nSince 2004, Freedom House has ranked Russia as \"not free\" in its \"Freedom in the World\" survey. Since 2011, the Economist Intelligence Unit has ranked Russia as an \"authoritarian regime\" in its Democracy Index, ranking it 150th out of 167 countries in 2024. In regards to media freedom, Russia was ranked 162nd out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders' Press Freedom Index for 2024. The Russian government has been widely criticised by political dissidents and human rights activists for unfair elections, crackdowns on opposition political parties and protests, persecution of non-governmental organisations and enforced suppression and killings of independent journalists, and censorship of mass media and internet.\nMuslims, especially Salafis, have faced persecution in Russia. To quash the insurgency in the North Caucasus, Russian authorities have been accused of indiscriminate killings, arrests, forced disappearances, and torture of civilians. In Dagestan, some Salafis along with facing government harassment based on their appearance, have had their homes blown up in counterinsurgency operations. Chechens and Ingush in Russian prisons reportedly take more abuse than other ethnic groups. During the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia has set up filtration camps where many Ukrainians are subjected to abuses and forcibly sent to Russia; the camps have been compared to those used in the Chechen Wars. Political repression also increased following the start of the invasion, with laws adopted that establish punishments for \"discrediting\" the armed forces.\nRussia has introduced several restrictions on LGBT rights, including a 2020 ban on same-sex marriage and the designation of LGBT+ organisations such as the Russian LGBT Network as \"foreign agents\".\nCorruption.\nRussia's political system has been variously described as a kleptocracy, an oligarchy, and a plutocracy. It was the lowest rated European country in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for 2024, ranking 154th out of 180 countries. Russia has a long history of corruption, which is seen as a significant problem. It affects various sectors, including the economy, business, public administration, law enforcement, healthcare, education, and the military.\nLaw and crime.\nThe primary and fundamental statement of laws in Russia is the Constitution of the Russian Federation. Statutes, like the Russian Civil Code and the Russian Criminal Code, are the predominant legal sources of Russian law.\nRussia has the world's second-largest illegal arms trade market, after the United States, is ranked first in Europe and 32nd globally in the Global Organized Crime Index, and is among the countries with the highest number of people in prison.\nEconomy.\nRussia has a high-income, industrialized, mixed market-oriented economy following a turbulent transition from the Soviet planned model during the 1990s. It has the eleventh-largest economy by nominal GDP and the fourth-largest economy by GDP (PPP). As of 2023[ [update]], the service sector accounts for roughly 57% of total GDP, followed by the industrial sector (30%), while the agricultural sector is the smallest, at 3% of total GDP. Russia's foreign exchange reserves are the fourth-largest in the world. It has a labour force of about 73 million, which is the eighth-largest in the world.\nRussia's human development is ranked as \"very high\" in the annual Human Development Index. Roughly 70% of Russia's total GDP is driven by domestic consumption, and the country has the world's twelfth-largest consumer market. Its social security system comprised roughly 16% of the total GDP in 2015. Russia has the fifth-highest number of billionaires in the world. However, its income inequality remains comparatively high among developed countries, caused by the variance of natural resources among its federal subjects, leading to regional economic disparities. High levels of corruption, a shrinking labor force, and an aging and declining population also remain major barriers to future economic growth.\nFollowing the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the country has faced extensive sanctions and other negative financial actions from the Western world and its allies which have the aim of isolating the Russian economy from the Western financial system. However, Russia has completed its transition into a war economy, and has shown resilience to such measures broadly, maintaining economic stability and growth\u2014driven primarily by high military expenditure, rising household consumption and wages, low unemployment, and increased government spending. Yet, inflation has remained comparatively high, with experts predicting the sanctions will have a long-term negative effect on the Russian economy.\nTransport and energy.\nRailway transport in Russia is mostly controlled by the state-run Russian Railways. The total length of common-used railway tracks is the world's third-longest, exceeding . As of 2019[ [update]], Russia has the world's fifth-largest road network, with over 1.5 million\u00a0km of roads, although its road density is among the world's lowest, in part to its vast land area. Russia's inland waterways are the longest in the world, totaling . Russia has over 900 airports, ranking seventh in the world, of which the busiest is Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow. Its largest port is the Port of Novorossiysk in Krasnodar Krai along the Black Sea. \nRussia has one of the world's largest amounts of energy resources throughout its vast landmass, particularly natural gas and oil, which play a crucial role in its energy self-sufficiency and exports. It has been widely described as an energy superpower. Russia has the world's largest proven gas reserves, the second-largest coal reserves, the eighth-largest proven oil reserves, and the largest oil shale reserves in Europe. As of 2023[ [update]], it is also the second-largest producer and the third-largest exporter of natural gas; as well as the second-largest producer and exporter of crude oil. Russia's large oil and gas sector accounted for 30% of its federal budget revenues in 2024, down from 50% in the mid-2010s, suggesting economic diversification.\nRussia is the world's third-largest electricity producer as of 2023[ [update]]. Fossil fuels account for over 64% of energy production and 87% of energy consumption. Natural gas is by far the largest source of energy, comprising over half of the energy production and 42% of electricity consumption. Russia was the first country to develop civilian nuclear power, building the world's first nuclear power plant in 1954, and remains a pioneer in nuclear energy technology and is considered a world leader in fast neutron reactors. Russia is the world's fourth-largest nuclear energy producer, which accounts for roughly one-fourth of energy generation (18%). Russian energy policy aims to expand the role of nuclear energy and develop new reactor technology. Russia is the sole country that builds and operates nuclear-powered icebreakers, which ease navigation along the Northern Sea Route, and aid in utilizing its Arctic policy in its continental shelf.\nRussia joined the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2015, and ratified the agreement in 2019. Its greenhouse gas emissions are the fourth-largest in the world as of 2023[ [update]]. Coal accounts for over 16% of energy generation. Russia is the fifth-largest hydroelectric producer as of 2022, with hydroelectric power contributing almost a fifth to the total energy generation (17%). The use and development of other renewable energy resources remain negligible, as Russia is among the few countries without strong governmental or public support for expanding these energy resources.\nAgriculture and fishery.\nAgriculture, forestry and fishing contributes about 3.3% of the country's total GDP as of 2023[ [update]]. It has the world's fourth-largest cultivated area, at . However, due to the harshness of its environment, only about 13.1% of its land is agricultural, with an additional 7.4% being arable. The country's agricultural land is considered part of the \"breadbasket\" of Europe. More than one-third of the sown area is devoted to fodder crops, and the remaining farmland is used industrial crops, vegetables, and fruits. The main product of Russian farming has always been grain, which occupies well over half the cropland. Russia is the world's largest exporter of wheat, the largest producer of barley and buckwheat, among the largest exporters of maize and sunflower oil, and the leading producer of fertiliser.\nVarious analysts of climate change adaptation foresee large opportunities for Russian agriculture during the rest of the 21st century as arability increases in Siberia, which would lead to both internal and external migration to the region. Owing to its large coastline along three oceans and twelve marginal seas, Russia maintains the world's sixth-largest fishing industry; capturing nearly 5 million tons of fish in 2018. It is home to the world's finest caviar, the beluga; and produces about one-third of all canned fish, and some one-fourth of the world's total fresh and frozen fish.\nScience and technology.\nRussia spent about 1% of its GDP on research and development in 2019, with the world's tenth-highest budget. It also ranked tenth worldwide in the number of scientific publications in 2020, with roughly 1.3 million papers. Since 1904, Nobel Prize were awarded to 26 Soviets and Russians in physics, chemistry, medicine, economy, literature and peace. Russia ranked 60th in the Global Innovation Index in 2024, down from 45th in 2021.\nSince the times of Nikolay Lobachevsky, who pioneered the non-Euclidean geometry, and Pafnuty Chebyshev, a prominent tutor; Russian mathematicians became among the world's most influential. Dmitry Mendeleev invented the Periodic table, the main framework of modern chemistry. Nine Soviet and Russian mathematicians have been awarded with the Fields Medal. Grigori Perelman was offered the first ever Clay Millennium Prize Problems Award for his final proof of the Poincar\u00e9 conjecture in 2002, as well as the Fields Medal in 2006.\nAlexander Popov was among the inventors of radio, while Nikolai Basov and Alexander Prokhorov were co-inventors of laser and maser. Oleg Losev made crucial contributions in the field of semiconductor junctions, and discovered light-emitting diodes. Vladimir Vernadsky is considered one of the founders of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and radiogeology. \u00c9lie Metchnikoff is known for his groundbreaking research in immunology. Ivan Pavlov is known chiefly for his work in classical conditioning. Lev Landau made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics.\nNikolai Vavilov was best known for having identified the centres of origin of cultivated plants. Trofim Lysenko was known mainly for Lysenkoism. Many famous Russian scientists and inventors were \u00e9migr\u00e9s. Igor Sikorsky was an aviation pioneer. Vladimir Zworykin was the inventor of the iconoscope and kinescope television systems. Theodosius Dobzhansky was the central figure in the field of evolutionary biology for his work in shaping the modern synthesis. George Gamow was one of the foremost advocates of the Big Bang theory.\nSpace exploration.\nRoscosmos is Russia's national space agency. The country's achievements in the field of space technology and space exploration can be traced back to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the father of theoretical astronautics, whose works had inspired leading Soviet rocket engineers, such as Sergey Korolyov, Valentin Glushko, and many others who contributed to the success of the Soviet space programme in the early stages of the Space Race and beyond.\nIn 1957, the first Earth-orbiting artificial satellite, \"Sputnik\u00a01\", was launched. In 1961, the first human trip into space was successfully made by Yuri Gagarin. Many other Soviet and Russian space exploration records ensued. In 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first and youngest woman in space, having flown a solo mission on Vostok 6. In 1965, Alexei Leonov became the first human to conduct a spacewalk, exiting the space capsule during Voskhod 2.\nIn 1957, Laika, a Soviet space dog, became the first animal to orbit the Earth, aboard Sputnik 2. In 1966, Luna\u00a09 became the first spacecraft to achieve a survivable landing on a celestial body, the Moon. In 1968, Zond 5 brought the first Earthlings (two tortoises and other life forms) to circumnavigate the Moon. In 1970, Venera\u00a07 became the first spacecraft to land on another planet, Venus. In 1971, Mars\u00a03 became the first spacecraft to land on Mars. During the same period, \"Lunokhod 1\" became the first space exploration rover, while \"Salyut\u00a01\" became the world's first space station.\nRussia had 181 active satellites in space in May 2023, the third-highest in the world. Between the final flight of the Space Shuttle programme in 2011 and the 2020 SpaceX's first crewed mission, Soyuz rockets were the only launch vehicles capable of transporting astronauts to the ISS. Luna\u00a025 launched in August 2023, was the first of the Luna-Glob Moon exploration programme.\nTourism.\nAccording to the World Tourism Organisation, Russia was the sixteenth-most visited country in the world, and the tenth-most visited country in Europe, in 2018, with over 24.6 million visits. According to Federal Agency for Tourism, the number of inbound trips of foreign citizens to Russia amounted to 24.4 million in 2019. Russia's international tourism receipts in 2018 totaled $11.6 billion. In 2019, travel and tourism accounted for about 4.8% of country's total GDP. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, tourism declined precipitously in 2020, to just over 6.3 million foreign visitors.\nMajor tourist routes in Russia include a journey around the Golden Ring of Russia, a theme route of ancient Russian cities; cruises on large rivers such as the Volga; hikes on mountain ranges such as the Caucasus Mountains, and journeys on the famous Trans-Siberian Railway. Russia's most visited and popular landmarks include Red Square, the Peterhof Palace, the Kazan Kremlin, the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius and Lake Baikal.\nMoscow, the nation's cosmopolitan capital and historic core, is a bustling modern megacity; it retains classical and Soviet-era architecture while boasting high art, world class ballet, and modern skyscrapers. Saint Petersburg, the imperial capital, is famous for its classical architecture, cathedrals, museums and theatres, white nights, crisscrossing rivers and numerous canals. Russia is famed worldwide for its rich museums, such as the State Russian, the State Hermitage, and the Tretyakov Gallery; and for theatres such as the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky. The Moscow Kremlin and the Saint Basil's Cathedral are among the cultural landmarks of Russia.\nDemographics.\nRussia had a population of 146 million in 2025 (143.6 million excluding Crimea and Sevastopol), down from 147.2 million in the 2021 census. It is the most populous country in Europe and ninth-most populous country in the world. With a population density of , Russia is one of the world's most sparsely populated countries, with the vast majority of its people concentrated within its western part. The country is highly urbanised, with two-thirds of the population living in urban areas. As of 2024[ [update]], the total fertility rate across Russia is estimated to be 1.41 children born per woman, which is below the replacement rate of 2.1 and among the lowest in the world. Subsequently, it has one of the oldest populations in the world, with a median age of 41.9 years.\nRussia's population peaked at over 148 million in 1993, having subsequently declined due to its death rate exceeding its birth rate, which some analysts have called a demographic crisis. In 2009, it recorded annual population growth for the first time in fifteen years, and subsequently experienced annual population growth due to declining death rates, increased birth rates, and increased immigration. However, these population gains have been reversed since 2020, as excessive deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the largest peacetime decline in its history. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the demographic crisis has deepened, owing to high military fatalities and renewed emigration. Recent studies have shown that between 15-45% of Russian emigrants have returned to Russia, though these numbers are not conclusive.\nRussia is a multinational state with many subnational entities associated with different minorities. There are over 193 ethnic groups nationwide. In the 2010 census, roughly 81% of the population were ethnic Russians, and the remaining 19% of the population were ethnic minorities; while over four-fifths of Russia's population was of European descent\u2014of whom the vast majority were Slavs, with a substantial minority of Finno-Ugric and Germanic peoples. Russia has the third-largest immigrant population in the world, with over 12 million immigrants residing in the country as of 2019[ [update]]. The vast majority of the Immigrants hail from post-Soviet states, with about half of them being from Ukraine and Kazakhstan as of 2020[ [update]].\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nLanguage.\nRussian is the official and the predominantly spoken language in Russia. It is the most spoken native language in Europe, the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, as well as the world's most widely spoken Slavic language. Russian is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station, as well as one of the six official languages of the United Nations.\nRussia is a multilingual nation; approximately 100\u2013150 minority languages are spoken across the country. According to the Russian Census of 2010, 137.5\u00a0million across the country spoke Russian, 4.3\u00a0million spoke Tatar, and 1.1\u00a0million spoke Ukrainian. The constitution gives the country's individual republics the right to establish their own state languages in addition to Russian, as well as guarantee its citizens the right to preserve their native language and to create conditions for its study and development. However, various experts have claimed Russia's linguistic diversity is rapidly declining due to many languages becoming endangered.\nReligion.\nRussia is constitutionally a secular state that officially enshrines freedom of religion. The largest religion is Eastern Orthodox Christianity, chiefly represented by the Russian Orthodox Church, which is legally recognised for its \"special role\" in the country's \"history and the formation and development of its spirituality and culture.\" Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism are recognised by Russian law as the \"traditional\" religions of the country constituting its \"historical heritage\".\nIslam is the second-largest religion in Russia and is traditional among the majority of peoples in the North Caucasus and some Turkic peoples in the Volga-Ural region. Large populations of Buddhists are found in Kalmykia, Buryatia, Zabaykalsky Krai, and they are the vast majority of the population in Tuva. A negligible population practices other religions\u2014such as Rodnovery (Slavic Neopaganism), Assianism (Scythian Neopaganism), other ethnic Paganisms, and inter-Pagan movements such as Ringing Cedars' Anastasianism, various movements of Hinduism, Siberian shamanism and Tengrism, various Neo-Theosophical movements such as Roerichism\u2014among other faiths. Some religious minorities have faced oppression and some have been banned in the country; notably, in 2017 the Jehovah's Witnesses were outlawed in Russia, facing persecution ever since, after having been declared an \"extremist\" and \"nontraditional\" faith.\nIn 2012, the research organisation Sreda, in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice, published the Arena Atlas, an adjunct to the 2010 census, enumerating in detail the religious populations and nationalities of Russia, based on a large-sample country-wide survey. The results showed that 47.3% of Russians declared themselves Christians\u2014including 41% Russian Orthodox, 1.5% simply Orthodox or members of non-Russian Orthodox churches, 4.1% unaffiliated Christians, and less than 1% Old Believers, Catholics or Protestants\u201425% were believers without affiliation to any specific religion, 13% were atheists, 6.5% were Muslims, 1.2% were followers of \"traditional religions honouring gods and ancestors\" (Rodnovery, other Paganisms, Siberian shamanism and Tengrism), 0.5% were Buddhists, 0.1% were religious Jews and 0.1% were Hindus. \nIn 2024, the (FOM) found that 61.8% of Russians identify as Orthodox Christians, 2.6% as other Christians, 9.5% as Muslims, 21.2% as not religious, 1.4% follow other religions and 3.5% are unsure about their belief. According to the survey, Orthodoxy is more widespread among women, people aged 60 and older, and people living in the Central and Southern Federal Districts, while Islam is the dominant religion in the North Caucasian Federal District.\nEducation.\nRussia has an adult literacy rate of 100%, and has compulsory education for a duration of 11 years, exclusively for children aged 7 to 17\u201318. It grants free education to its citizens by constitution. The Ministry of Education of Russia is responsible for primary and secondary education, as well as vocational education; while the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia is responsible for science and higher education. Regional authorities regulate education within their jurisdictions within the prevailing framework of federal laws. Russia is among the world's most educated countries, and has the sixth-highest proportion of tertiary-level graduates in terms of percentage of population, at 62.1%. It spent roughly 4.7% of its GDP on education in 2018.\nRussia's pre-school education system is highly developed and optional, some four-fifths of children aged 3 to 6 attend day nurseries or kindergartens. Primary school is compulsory for eleven years, starting from age 6 to 7, and leads to a basic general education certificate. An additional two or three years of schooling are required for the secondary-level certificate, and some seven-eighths of Russians continue their education past this level.\nAdmission to an institute of higher education is selective and highly competitive: first-degree courses usually take five years. The oldest and largest universities in Russia are Moscow State University and Saint Petersburg State University. There are ten highly prestigious across the country. Russia was the world's fifth-leading destination for international students in 2019, hosting roughly 300 thousand.\nHealth.\nRussia, by constitution, guarantees free, universal health care for all Russian citizens, through a compulsory state health insurance programme. The Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation oversees the Russian public healthcare system, and the sector employs more than two million people. Federal regions also have their own departments of health that oversee local administration. A separate private health insurance plan is needed to access private healthcare in Russia.\nRussia spent 7.39% of its GDP on healthcare in 2021. Its healthcare expenditure is notably lower than other developed nations. Russia has one of the world's most female-biased sex ratios, with 0.859 males to every female, due to its high male mortality rate. As of 2022[ [update]], the overall life expectancy in Russia at birth is 73 years (68 years for males and 78 years for females), and it has a very low infant mortality rate (4 per 1,000 live births).\nThe principal cause of death in Russia are cardiovascular diseases. Obesity is a prevalent health issue in Russia; most adults are overweight or obese. However, Russia's historically high alcohol consumption rate is the biggest health issue in the country, as it remains one of the world's highest, despite a stark decrease in the last decade. Smoking is another health issue in the country. The country's high suicide rate, although on the decline, remains a significant social issue.\nCulture.\nRussian writers and philosophers have played an important role in the development of European literature and thought. The Russians have also greatly influenced classical music, ballet, sport, painting, and cinema. The nation has also made pioneering contributions to science and technology and space exploration.\nRussia is home to 32 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, 21 of which are cultural; while 31 more sites lie on the tentative list. The large global Russian diaspora has also played a major role in spreading Russian culture throughout the world. Russia's national symbol, the double-headed eagle, dates back to the Tsardom period, and is featured in its coat of arms and heraldry. The Russian Bear and Mother Russia are often used as national personifications of the country. Matryoshka dolls are considered a cultural icon of Russia.\nHolidays.\nRussia has eight\u2014public, patriotic, and religious\u2014official holidays. The year starts with New Year's Day on 1 January, soon followed by Russian Orthodox Christmas on 7 January; the two are the country's most popular holidays. Defender of the Fatherland Day, dedicated to men, is celebrated on 23 February. International Women's Day on 8 March, gained momentum in Russia during the Soviet era. The annual celebration of women has become so popular, especially among Russian men, that the flower vendors of Moscow often see profits \"fiften times\" more compared to other holidays. Spring and Labour Day, originally a Soviet era holiday dedicated to workers, is celebrated on 1 May.\nVictory Day, which honours Soviet victory over Nazi Germany and the End of World War II in Europe, is celebrated on 9 May as an annual large parade in Moscow's Red Square; and marks the famous Immortal Regiment civil event. Other patriotic holidays include Russia Day on 12 June, celebrated to commemorate Russia's declaration of sovereignty from the collapsing Soviet Union; and Unity Day on 4 November, commemorating the 1612 uprising which marked the end of the Polish occupation of Moscow.\nThere are many popular non-public holidays. Old New Year is celebrated on 14 January. Maslenitsa is an ancient and popular East Slavic folk holiday. Cosmonautics Day on 12 April, in tribute to the first human trip into space. Two major Christian holidays are Easter and Trinity Sunday.\nArt and architecture.\nEarly Russian painting is represented in icons and vibrant frescos. In the early 15th century, the master icon painter Andrei Rublev created some of Russia's most treasured religious art. The Russian Academy of Arts, which was established in 1757, to train Russian artists, brought Western techniques of secular painting to Russia. In the 18th century, academicians Ivan Argunov, Dmitry Levitzky, Vladimir Borovikovsky became influential. The early 19th century saw many prominent paintings by Karl Briullov and Alexander Ivanov, both of whom were known for Romantic historical canvases. Ivan Aivazovsky, another Romantic painter, is considered one of the greatest masters of marine art.\nIn the 1860s, a group of critical realists (Peredvizhniki), led by Ivan Kramskoy, Ilya Repin and Vasiliy Perov broke with the academy, and portrayed the many-sided aspects of social life in paintings. The turn of the 20th century saw the rise of symbolism; represented by Mikhail Vrubel and Nicholas Roerich. The Russian avant-garde flourished from approximately 1890 to 1930; and globally influential artists from this era were El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, Natalia Goncharova, Wassily Kandinsky, and Marc Chagall.\nThe history of Russian architecture begins with early woodcraft buildings of ancient Slavs, and the church architecture of Kievan Rus'. Following the Christianization of Kievan Rus', for several centuries it was influenced predominantly by Byzantine architecture. Aristotle Fioravanti and other Italian architects brought Renaissance trends into Russia. The 16th century saw the development of the unique tent-like churches; and the onion dome design, which is a distinctive feature of Russian architecture. In the 17th century, the \"fiery style\" of ornamentation flourished in Moscow and Yaroslavl, gradually paving the way for the Naryshkin baroque of the 1680s.\nAfter the reforms of Peter the Great, Russia's architecture became influenced by Western European styles. The 18th-century taste for Rococo architecture led to the works of Bartolomeo Rastrelli and his followers. The most influential Russian architects of the eighteenth century; Vasily Bazhenov, Matvey Kazakov, and Ivan Starov, created lasting monuments in Moscow and Saint Petersburg and established a base for the more Russian forms that followed. During the reign of Catherine the Great, Saint Petersburg was transformed into an outdoor museum of Neoclassical architecture. Under Alexander I, Empire style became the \"de facto\" architectural style. The second half of the 19th century was dominated by the Neo-Byzantine and Russian Revival style. In the early 20th century, Russian neoclassical revival became a trend. Prevalent styles of the late 20th century were Art Nouveau, Constructivism, and Socialist Classicism.\nMusic.\nUntil the 18th century, music in Russia consisted mainly of church music and folk songs and dances. In the 19th century, it was defined by the tension between classical composer Mikhail Glinka along with other members of The Mighty Handful, who were later succeeded by the Belyayev circle, and the Russian Musical Society led by composers Anton and Nikolay Rubinstein. The later tradition of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era, was continued into the 20th century by Sergei Rachmaninoff. World-renowned composers of the 20th century include Alexander Scriabin, Alexander Glazunov, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich, and later Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina, Georgy Sviridov, and Alfred Schnittke.\nDuring the Soviet era, popular music also produced a number of renowned figures, such as the two balladeers\u2014Vladimir Vysotsky and Bulat Okudzhava, and performers such as Alla Pugacheva. Jazz, even with sanctions from Soviet authorities, flourished and evolved into one of the country's most popular musical forms. By the 1980s, rock music became popular across Russia, and produced bands such as Aria, Aquarium, DDT, and Kino; the latter's leader Viktor Tsoi, was in particular, a gigantic figure. Pop music has continued to flourish in Russia since the 1960s, with globally famous acts such as t.A.T.u.\nLiterature and philosophy.\nRussian literature is among the world's most influential and developed. It can be traced to the Middle Ages, when epics and chronicles in Old East Slavic were composed. By the Age of Enlightenment, literature had grown in importance, with works from Mikhail Lomonosov, Denis Fonvizin, Gavrila Derzhavin, and Nikolay Karamzin. From the early 1830s, during the Golden Age of Russian Poetry, literature underwent an astounding golden age in poetry, prose and drama. Romanticism permitted a flowering of poetic talent: Vasily Zhukovsky and later his prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Alexander Pushkin came to the fore. Following Pushkin's footsteps, a new generation of poets were born, including Mikhail Lermontov, Nikolay Nekrasov, Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, Fyodor Tyutchev and Afanasy Fet.\nThe first great Russian novelist was Nikolai Gogol. Then came Ivan Turgenev, who mastered both short stories and novels. Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy soon became internationally renowned. Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote prose satire, while Nikolai Leskov is best remembered for his shorter fiction. In the second half of the century Anton Chekhov excelled in short stories and became a leading dramatist. Other important 19th-century developments included the fabulist Ivan Krylov, non-fiction writers such as the critic Vissarion Belinsky, and playwrights such as Aleksandr Griboyedov and Aleksandr Ostrovsky. The beginning of the 20th century ranks as the Silver Age of Russian Poetry. This era had poets such as Alexander Blok, Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, and Konstantin Balmont. It also produced some first-rate novelists and short-story writers, such as Aleksandr Kuprin, Nobel Prize winner Ivan Bunin, Leonid Andreyev, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Andrei Bely.\nAfter the Russian Revolution of 1917, Russian literature split into Soviet and white \u00e9migr\u00e9 parts. In the 1930s, Socialist realism became the predominant trend in Russia. Its leading figure was Maxim Gorky, who laid the foundations of this style. Mikhail Bulgakov was one of the leading writers of the Soviet era. Nikolay Ostrovsky's novel How the Steel Was Tempered has been among the most successful works of Russian literature. Influential \u00e9migr\u00e9 writers include Vladimir Nabokov, and Isaac Asimov; who was considered one of the \"Big Three\" science fiction writers. Some writers dared to oppose Soviet ideology, such as Nobel Prize-winning novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who wrote about life in the Gulag camps.\nRussian philosophy has been greatly influential. Alexander Herzen is known as one of the fathers of agrarian populism. Mikhail Bakunin is referred to as the father of anarchism. Peter Kropotkin was the most important theorist of anarcho-communism. Mikhail Bakhtin's writings have significantly inspired scholars. Helena Blavatsky gained international following as the leading theoretician of Theosophy, and co-founded the Theosophical Society. Vladimir Lenin, a major revolutionary, developed a variant of communism known as Leninism. Leon Trotsky, on the other hand, founded Trotskyism. Alexander Zinoviev was a prominent philosopher in the second half of the 20th century. Aleksandr Dugin, known for his fascist views, has been regarded as the \"guru of geopolitics\".\nCuisine.\nRussian cuisine has been formed by climate, cultural and religious traditions, and the vast geography of the nation; and it shares similarities with the cuisines of its neighbouring countries. Crops of rye, wheat, barley, and millet provide the ingredients for various breads, pancakes and cereals, as well as for many drinks. Bread, of many varieties, is very popular across Russia. Flavourful soups and stews include shchi, borsch, ukha, solyanka, and okroshka. Smetana (a heavy sour cream) and mayonnaise are often added to soups and salads. Pirozhki, blini, and syrniki are native types of pancakes. Beef Stroganoff, Chicken Kiev, pelmeni, and shashlyk are popular meat dishes. Other meat dishes include stuffed cabbage rolls (golubtsy) usually filled with meat. Salads include Olivier salad, vinegret, and dressed herring.\nRussia's national non-alcoholic drink is kvass, and the national alcoholic drink is vodka; its production in Russia (and elsewhere) dates back to the 14th century. The country has the world's highest vodka consumption, while beer is the most popular alcoholic beverage. Wine has become increasingly popular in Russia in the 21st century. Tea has been popular in Russia for centuries.\nMass media and cinema.\nThere are 400 news agencies in Russia, among which the largest internationally operating are TASS, RIA Novosti, Sputnik, and Interfax. Television is the most popular medium in Russia. Among the 3,000 licensed radio stations nationwide, notable ones include Radio Rossii, Vesti FM, Echo of Moscow, Radio Mayak, and Russkoye Radio. Of the 16,000 registered newspapers, , Komsomolskaya Pravda, , Izvestia, and Moskovskij Komsomolets are popular. State-run Channel One and Russia-1 are the leading news channels, while RT is the flagship of Russia's international media operations. Russia has the largest video gaming market in Europe, with over 65 million players nationwide.\nRussian and later Soviet cinema was a hotbed of invention, resulting in world-renowned films such as \"The Battleship Potemkin\", which was named the greatest film of all time at the Brussels World's Fair in 1958. Soviet-era filmmakers, most notably Sergei Eisenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky, would go on to become among of the world's most innovative and influential directors. Eisenstein was a student of Lev Kuleshov, who developed the groundbreaking Soviet montage theory of film editing at the world's first film school, the All-Union Institute of Cinematography. Dziga Vertov's \"Kino-Eye\" theory had a large effect on the development of documentary filmmaking and cinema realism. Many Soviet socialist realism films were artistically successful, including \"Chapaev\", \"The Cranes Are Flying\", and \"Ballad of a Soldier\".\nThe 1960s and 1970s saw a greater variety of artistic styles in Soviet cinema. The comedies of Eldar Ryazanov and Leonid Gaidai of that time were immensely popular, with many of the catchphrases still in use today. In 1961\u201368 Sergey Bondarchuk directed an Oscar-winning film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's epic \"War and Peace\", which was the most expensive film made in the Soviet Union. In 1969, Vladimir Motyl's \"White Sun of the Desert\" was released, a very popular film in a genre of ostern; the film is traditionally watched by cosmonauts before any trip into space. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Russian cinema industry suffered large losses\u2014however, since the late 2000s, it has seen growth once again, and continues to expand.\nSports.\nFootball is the most popular sport in Russia. The Soviet Union national football team became the first European champions by winning Euro 1960, and reached the finals of Euro 1988. Russian clubs CSKA Moscow and Zenit Saint Petersburg won the UEFA Cup in 2005 and 2008. The Russian national football team reached the semi-finals of Euro 2008. Russia was the host nation for the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup, and the 2018 FIFA World Cup. However, Russian teams are currently suspended from FIFA and UEFA competitions.\nIce hockey is very popular in Russia, and the Soviet national ice hockey team dominated the sport internationally throughout its existence. Bandy is Russia's national sport, and it has historically been the highest-achieving country in the sport. The Russian national basketball team won the EuroBasket 2007, and the Russian basketball club PBC CSKA Moscow is among the most successful European basketball teams. The annual Formula One Russian Grand Prix was held at the Sochi Autodrom in the Sochi Olympic Park, until its termination following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.\nHistorically, Russian athletes have been one of the most successful contenders in the Olympic Games. Russia is the leading nation in rhythmic gymnastics; and Russian synchronised swimming is considered to be the world's best. Figure skating is another popular sport in Russia, especially pair skating and ice dancing. Russia has produced numerous prominent tennis players. Chess is also a widely popular pastime in the nation, with many of the world's top chess players being Russian for decades. The 1980 Summer Olympic Games were held in Moscow, and the 2014 Winter Olympics and the 2014 Winter Paralympics were hosted in Sochi. However, Russia has also had 43 Olympic medals stripped from its athletes due to doping violations, which is the most of any country, and nearly a third of the global total.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nGovernment\nGeneral information\nOther"}, "descending_order": ["3037199", "3033429", "25391"], "permutation_1": ["3037199", "25391", "3033429"], "permutation_2": ["3033429", "3037199", "25391"], "permutation_3": ["3033429", "25391", "3037199"]}
{"id": "3hop1__437119_23998_21435", "docs_added": {"53825": "New Haven, Connecticut\nNew Haven is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is the third largest city in Connecticut after Bridgeport and Stamford, the largest city in the South Central Connecticut Planning Region, and the principal municipality of Greater New Haven, which had a total population of 864,835 in 2020.\nNew Haven was one of the first planned cities in the U.S. A year after its founding by English Puritans in 1638, eight streets were laid out in a four-by-four grid, creating the \"Nine Square Plan\". The central common block is the New Haven Green, a square at the center of Downtown New Haven. The Green is now a National Historic Landmark, and the \"Nine Square Plan\" is recognized by the American Planning Association as a National Planning Landmark.\nNew Haven is the home of Yale University, New Haven's biggest taxpayer and employer, and an integral part of the city's economy. Health care, professional and financial services and retail trade also contribute to the city's economic activity.\nThe city served as co-capital of Connecticut from 1701 until 1873, when sole governance was transferred to the more centrally located city of Hartford. New Haven has since billed itself as the \"Cultural Capital of Connecticut\" for its supply of established theaters, museums, and music venues. New Haven had the first public tree planting program in the U.S., producing a canopy of mature trees (including some large elms) that gave the city the nickname \"The Elm City\".\nHistory.\nPre-colonial foundation as an independent colony.\nBefore Europeans arrived, the New Haven area was the home of the Quinnipiac tribe of Native Americans, who lived in villages around the harbor and sustained an economy of local fisheries and the farming of maize. The area was briefly visited by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block in 1614. Dutch traders set up a small trading system of beaver pelts with the local inhabitants, but trade was sporadic and the Dutch did not settle permanently in the area.\nIn 1637, a small party of Puritans did a reconnaissance of the New Haven harbor area and wintered over. In April 1638, the main party of five hundred Puritans, who had left the Massachusetts Bay Colony under the leadership of Reverend John Davenport and London merchant Theophilus Eaton, sailed into the harbor. It was their hope to set up a theological community with the government more closely linked to the church than that in Massachusetts, and to exploit the area's potential as a port. The Quinnipiacs, who were under attack by neighboring Pequots, sold their land to the settlers in return for a pledge of protection.\nBy 1640, \"Quinnipiac's\" theocratic government and nine-square grid plan were in place, and the town was renamed New Haven, with 'haven' meaning harbor or port. However, the area to the north remained Quinnipiac until 1678, when it was renamed Hamden. The settlement became the headquarters of the New Haven Colony, distinct from the Connecticut Colony previously established to the north centering on Hartford. Reflecting its theocratic roots, the New Haven Colony forbade the establishment of other churches, whereas the Connecticut Colony permitted them.\nEconomic disaster struck New Haven in 1646, when the town sent its first fully loaded ship of local goods (the \"Great Shippe\") back to England. It never reached its destination, and its disappearance hindered New Haven's development as compared to the rising trade powers of Boston and New Amsterdam (modern day New York City).\nIn 1660, Colony founder John Davenport's wishes were fulfilled, and Hopkins School was founded in New Haven with money from the estate of Edward Hopkins.\nIn 1661, the Regicides who had signed the death warrant of Charles I of England were pursued by Charles II. Two of them, Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe, fled to New Haven for refuge. Davenport arranged for them to hide in the West Rock hills northwest of the town. A third judge, John Dixwell, later joined the others. None of the three were ever returned to England for trial; Dixwell died of old age in New Haven, the others likewise elsewhere in New England.\nAs part of the Connecticut Colony.\nIn 1664, New Haven became part of the Connecticut Colony when the two colonies were merged under political pressure from England. Seeking to establish a new theocracy elsewhere, some members of the New Haven Colony went on to establish Newark, New Jersey.\nNew Haven was made co-capital of Connecticut in 1701, a status it retained until 1873.\nIn 1716, the Collegiate School relocated from Old Saybrook to New Haven, establishing it as a center of learning. In 1718, in response to a large donation from East India Company merchant Elihu Yale, former Governor of Madras, the Collegiate School was renamed Yale College.\nFor over a century, New Haven citizens had fought in the colonial militia alongside regular British forces, including the French and Indian War. As the American Revolution approached, General David Wooster and other influential residents hoped that the conflict with the British parliament could be resolved short of rebellion. On April 23, 1775, Captain Benedict Arnold commanded the Second Company, Governor's Foot Guard, of New Haven to break into the powder house to arm themselves for a three-day march to Cambridge, Massachusetts, an event still celebrated in New Haven as Powder House Day. Other New Haven militia members were on hand to escort George Washington from his overnight stay in New Haven on his way to Cambridge. Contemporary reports, from both sides, remark on the New Haven volunteers' professional military bearing, including uniforms.\nOn July 5, 1779, 2,600 loyalists and British regulars under General William Tryon, governor of New York, landed in New Haven Harbor and raided the town of 3,500. A militia of Yale students had been preparing for battle, and former Yale president and Yale Divinity School professor Naphtali Daggett rode out to confront the Redcoats. Yale president Ezra Stiles recounted in his diary that while he moved furniture in anticipation of battle, he still couldn't quite believe the revolution had begun. New Haven was not torched as the invaders did with Danbury in 1777, or Fairfield and Norwalk a week after the New Haven raid, preserving many of the town's colonial features.\nPost-colonial period and industrialization.\nNew Haven was incorporated as a city in 1784, and Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Constitution and author of the \"Connecticut Compromise\", became the new city's first mayor.\nThe city struck fortune in the late 18th century with the inventions and industrial activity of Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate who remained in New Haven to develop the cotton gin and establish a gun-manufacturing factory in the northern part of the city near the Hamden town line. That area is still known as Whitneyville, and the main road through both towns is known as Whitney Avenue. The factory is now the Eli Whitney Museum, which has a particular emphasis on activities for children and exhibits pertaining to the A. C. Gilbert Company. His factory, along with that of Simeon North, and the lively clock-making and brass hardware sectors, contributed to making early Connecticut a powerful manufacturing economy; so many arms manufacturers sprang up that the state became known as \"The Arsenal of America\". It was in Whitney's gun-manufacturing plant that Samuel Colt invented the automatic revolver in 1836. Many other talented machinists and firearms designers would go on to found successful firearms manufacturing companies in New Haven, including Oliver Winchester and O.F. Mossberg & Sons.\nThe Farmington Canal, created in the early 19th century, was a short-lived transporter of goods into the interior regions of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and ran from New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts.\nNew Haven was to be the site of the first college for African Americans in the United States, but the plan was obstructed by efforts led by Yale Law School founder and former New Haven Mayor David Daggett, who went on to serve as a U.S. Senator and judge on Connecticut's highest court. Daggett denigrated African Americans, denied they were citizens, and presided over the trial of a woman persecuted for trying to admit an African American girl to her boarding school and, having that effort blocked, running a boarding school for African American girls.\nNew Haven was home to one of the important early events in the burgeoning anti-slavery movement when, in 1839, the trial of mutineering Mende tribesmen being transported as slaves on the Spanish slaveship \"Amistad\" was held in New Haven's United States District Court. There is a statue of Joseph Cinqu\u00e9, the informal leader of the slaves, beside City Hall. See \"Museums\" below for more information. Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech on slavery in New Haven in 1860, shortly before he secured the Republican nomination for President.\nThe American Civil War boosted the local economy with wartime purchases of industrial goods, including that of the New Haven Arms Company, which would later become the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. (Winchester would continue to produce arms in New Haven until 2006, and many of the buildings that were a part of the Winchester plant are now a part of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company Historic District). After the war, population grew and doubled by the start of the 20th century, most notably due to the influx of immigrants from southern Europe, particularly Italy. Today, roughly half the populations of East Haven, West Haven, and North Haven are Italian-American. Jewish immigration to New Haven has left an enduring mark on the city. Westville was the center of Jewish life in New Haven, though today many have fanned out to suburban communities such as Woodbridge and Cheshire. Lowell House, the city's first settlement, opened in 1900.\nPost-industrial era and urban redevelopment.\nNew Haven's expansion continued during the two World Wars, with most new inhabitants being African Americans from the American South, and Puerto Ricans. The city reached its peak population after World War II. The area of New Haven is only , encouraging further development of new housing after 1950 in adjacent, suburban towns. Moreover, as in other U.S. cities in the 1950s, New Haven began to suffer white flight of middle-class workers. One author suggested that aggressive redlining and rezoning made it difficult for residents to obtain financing for older, deteriorating urban housing stock, thereby condemning such structures to deterioration.\nIn 1954, then-mayor Richard C. Lee began some of the earliest major urban renewal projects in the United States. Certain sections of downtown New Haven were redeveloped to include museums, new office towers, a hotel, and large shopping complexes. Other parts of the city, particularly the Wooster Square and Fair Haven neighborhoods were affected by the construction of Interstate 95 along the Long Wharf section, Interstate 91, and the Oak Street Connector. The Oak Street Connector (Route 34), running between Interstate 95, downtown, and The Hill neighborhood, was originally intended as a highway to the city's western suburbs but was only completed as a highway to the downtown area, with the area to the west becoming a boulevard (See \"Redevelopment\" below).\nIn 1970, a series of criminal prosecutions against various members of the Black Panther Party took place in New Haven, inciting mass protests on the New Haven Green involving twelve thousand demonstrators and many well-known New Left political activists. (See \"Political Culture\" below for more information). From the 1960s through the early 1990s, some areas of New Haven continued to decline both economically and in terms of population despite attempts to resurrect certain neighborhoods through renewal projects. In conjunction with its declining population, New Haven experienced a steep rise in its crime rate.\nSince approximately 2000, many parts of downtown New Haven have been revitalized with new restaurants, nightlife, and small retail stores. In particular, the area surrounding the New Haven Green has experienced an influx of apartments and condominiums. In addition, two new supermarkets opened to serve downtown's growing residential population: a Stop & Shop opened just west of downtown, while Elm City Market, located one block from the Green, opened in 2011. The recent turnaround of downtown New Haven has received positive press from various periodicals.\nMajor projects include the current construction of a new campus for Gateway Community College downtown, and also a 32-story, 500-unit apartment/retail building called 360 State Street. The 360 State Street project is now occupied and is the largest residential building in Connecticut. A new boathouse and dock is planned for New Haven Harbor, and the linear park Farmington Canal Trail is set to extend into downtown New Haven within the coming year. Additionally, foundation and ramp work to widen I-95 to create a new harbor crossing for New Haven, with an extradosed bridge to replace the 1950s-era Q Bridge, has begun. The city still hopes to redevelop the site of the New Haven Coliseum, which was demolished in 2007.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 18 white firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no black firefighters scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. In the subsequent \"Ricci v. DeStefano\" decision the court found 5\u20134 that New Haven's decision to ignore the test results violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a result, a district court subsequently ordered the city to promote 14 of the white firefighters.\nIn 2010 and 2011, state and federal funds were awarded to Connecticut (and Massachusetts) to construct the Hartford Line, with a southern terminus at New Haven's Union Station and a northern terminus at Springfield's Union Station. According to the White House, \"This corridor [currently] has one train per day connecting communities in Connecticut and Massachusetts to the Northeast Corridor and Vermont. The vision for this corridor is to restore the alignment to its original route via the Knowledge Corridor in western Massachusetts, improving trip time and increasing the population base that can be served.\" Set for construction in 2013, the \"Knowledge Corridor high speed intercity passenger rail\" project will cost approximately $1\u00a0billion, and the ultimate northern terminus for the project is reported to be Montreal in Canada. Train speeds between will reportedly exceed and increase both cities' rail traffic exponentially.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 6.67%, is water.\nNew Haven's best-known geographic features are its large, shallow harbor, and two reddish basalt trap rock ridges which rise to the northeast and northwest of the city core. These trap rocks are known respectively as East Rock and West Rock, and both serve as extensive parks. West Rock has been tunneled through to make way for the east\u2013west passage of the Wilbur Cross Parkway (the only highway tunnel through a natural obstacle in Connecticut), and once served as the hideout of the \"Regicides\" (see: Regicides Trail). Most New Haveners refer to these men as \"The Three Judges\". East Rock features the prominent Soldiers and Sailors war monument on its peak as well as the \"Great/Giant Steps\" which run up the rock's cliffside.\nThe city is drained by three rivers; the West, Mill, and Quinnipiac, named in order from west to east. The West River discharges into West Haven Harbor, while the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers discharge into New Haven Harbor. Both harbors are embayments of Long Island Sound. In addition, several smaller streams flow through the city's neighborhoods, including Wintergreen Brook, the Beaver Ponds Outlet, Wilmot Brook, Belden Brook, and Prospect Creek. Not all of these small streams have continuous flow year-round.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen classification, New Haven experiences a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\"), bordering a hot-summer humid continental climate (\"Dfa\"). The city has hot, humid summers and cool to cold winters. From May to late September, the weather is typically hot and humid, with average temperatures exceeding on 70 days per year. In summer, the Bermuda High creates as southern flow of warm and humid air, with frequent (but brief) thundershowers. October to early December is normally mild to cool late in the season, while early spring (April) can be cool to warm. Winters are more variable, with cool to cold temperatures, mixed with warmer spells, with both rain and snow fall.\nWhile the weather patterns that affect New Haven result from a primarily offshore direction, thus reducing the marine influence of Long Island Sound, the location on Long Island Sound often influences the weather along the coastline compared to inland. During summer heat waves, temperatures may reach or higher on occasion with heat-index values of over . Tropical cyclones have struck New Haven in the past, including 1938 Hurricane (Long Island Express), Hurricane Carol in 1954, Hurricane Gloria in 1985. The hardiness zone is 7a.\nStreetscape.\nNew Haven has a long tradition of urban planning and a purposeful design for the city's layout. The city could be argued to have some of the first preconceived layouts in the country. Upon founding, New Haven was laid out in a grid plan of nine square blocks; the central square was left open, in the tradition of many New England towns, as the city green (a commons area). The city also instituted the first public tree planting program in America. As in other cities, many of the elms that gave New Haven the nickname \"Elm City\" perished in the mid-20th century due to Dutch elm disease, although many have since been replanted. The New Haven Green is currently home to three separate historic churches which speak to the original theocratic nature of the city. The Green remains the social center of the city today. It was named a National Historic Landmark in 1970.\nDowntown New Haven, occupied by nearly 7,000 residents, has a more residential character than most downtowns. The downtown area provides about half of the city's jobs and half of its tax base and in recent years has become filled with dozens of new upscale restaurants, in addition to shops and thousands of apartments and condominium units which subsequently help overall growth of the city.\nNeighborhoods.\nThe city has many distinct neighborhoods. In addition to Downtown, centered on the central business district and the Green, are the following neighborhoods: the west central neighborhoods of Dixwell and Dwight; the southern neighborhoods of The Hill, historic water-front City Point (or Oyster Point), and the harborside district of Long Wharf; the western neighborhoods of Beaver Hills, Edgewood, West River, Westville, Amity, and West Rock-Westhills; East Rock, Cedar Hill, Prospect Hill, and Newhallville in the northern side of town; the east central neighborhoods of Mill River and Wooster Square, an Italian-American neighborhood; Fair Haven, an immigrant community located between the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers; Quinnipiac Meadows and Fair Haven Heights across the Quinnipiac River; and facing the eastern side of the harbor, The Annex and East Shore (or Morris Cove).\nDemographics.\nCensus data.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nThe U.S. Census Bureau reports a 2010 population of 129,779, with 47,094 households and 25,854 families within the city of New Haven. The population density was . There were 52,941 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 42.6% White, 35.4% African American, 0.5% Native American, 4.6% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 12.9% from other races, and 3.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 27.4% of the population. Non-Hispanic Whites were 31.8% of the population in 2010, down from 69.6% in 1970. The city's Latino population is growing rapidly. Previous influxes among ethnic groups have been African-Americans in the postwar era, and Irish, Italian and (to a lesser degree) Slavic peoples in the prewar period.\nAs of the 2010 census, of the 47,094 households, 29.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 27.5% include married couples living together, 22.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 36.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.5% had someone living alone who was 65\u00a0years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40 and the average family size 3.19.\nThe ages of New Haven's residents were 25.4% under the age of 18, 16.4% from 18 to 24, 31.2% from 25 to 44, 16.7% from 45 to 64, and 10.2% who were 65\u00a0years of age or older. The median age was 29\u00a0years, which was significantly lower than the national average. There were 91.8 males per 100 females. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.6 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $29,604, and the median income for a family was $35,950. Median income for males was $33,605, compared with $28,424 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,393. About 20.5% of families and 24.4% of the population were living below the poverty line, including 32.2% of those under age 18 and 17.9% of those age 65 or over.\nOther data.\nIt is estimated that 14% of New Haven residents are pedestrian commuters, ranking it number four by highest percentage in the United States. This is primarily due to New Haven's small area and the presence of Yale University.\nNew Haven is noted for having the highest percentage of Italian American residents of any US city, and is noted for its local style of pizza.\nA study of the demographics of the New Haven metro area, based on age, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity, found that they were the closest of any American city to the national average.\nEconomy.\nNew Haven's economy originally was based in manufacturing, but the postwar period brought rapid industrial decline; the entire Northeast was affected, and medium-sized cities with large working-class populations, like New Haven, were hit particularly hard. Simultaneously, the growth and expansion of Yale University further affected the economic shift. Today, over half (56%) of the city's economy is now made up of services, in particular education and health care; Yale is the city's largest employer, followed by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital. Other large employers include Southern Connecticut State University, Assa Abloy lock manufacturing, the Knights of Columbus headquarters, Higher One, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Covidien and United Illuminating. Clothing stores Gant and Ann Taylor were founded in the city.\nIn 2017, New Haven was ranked by a Verizon study as one of the top 10 cities in America for launching tech startups, and top two in New England.\nIndustry sectors: Agriculture (.6%), Construction and Mining (4.9%), Manufacturing (2.9%), Transportation and Utilities (2.9%), Trade (21.7%), Finance and Real Estate (7.1%), Services (55.9%), Government (4.0%)\nHeadquarters.\nThe Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization and a Fortune 1000 company, is headquartered in New Haven. Amphenol, based in Greater New Haven (Wallingford), is a Fortune 100 company. Eight Courant 100 companies are based in Greater New Haven, with four headquartered in New Haven proper. New Haven-based companies traded on stock exchanges include NewAlliance Bank, the second largest bank in Connecticut and fourth-largest in New England (NYSE: NAL), Higher One Holdings (NYSE: ONE), a financial services firm, United Illuminating, the electricity distributor for southern Connecticut (NYSE: UIL), and Transpro Inc. (AMEX: TPR). The American division of Assa Abloy (one of the world's leading manufacturers of locks) is located in the city. The Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET) began operations in the city as the District Telephone Company of New Haven in 1878; the company remains headquartered in New Haven as a subsidiary of Frontier Communications and provides telephone service for all but two municipalities in Connecticut. SeeClickFix was founded and has been headquartered in the city since 2007. Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company (a candy-making division of the Hershey Company) was formerly located in the city. Achillion Pharmaceuticals and Alexion Pharmaceuticals were also formerly headquartered in New Haven.\nLaw and government.\nPolitical structure.\nNew Haven is governed via the mayor-council system. Connecticut municipalities (like those of neighboring states Massachusetts and Rhode Island) provide nearly all local services (such as fire and rescue, education, snow removal, etc.), as county government has been abolished since 1960.\nNew Haven County merely refers to a grouping of towns and a judicial district, not a governmental entity. New Haven is a member of the South Central Connecticut Regional Council of Governments (SCRCOG), a regional agency created to facilitate coordination between area municipal governments and state and federal agencies, in the absence of county government.\nJustin Elicker is the mayor of New Haven. He was sworn in as the 51st mayor of New Haven on January 1, 2020.\nThe city council, called the Board of Alders, consists of thirty members, each elected from single-member wards. Each of the 30 wards consists of slightly over 4,300 residents; redistricting takes place every ten years.\nThe city is overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2017, of the town's 83,694 voters, 66% were registered as Democrats (\u22124% since 2015), 4% were registered as Republicans (+1%), and 29% were unaffiliated (+3). The board of alders is dominated by Democrats; a Republican has not served as a New Haven alder since 2011.\nNew Haven is served by the New Haven Police Department, which had 443 sworn officers in 2011. The city is also served by the New Haven Fire Department.\nNew Haven lies within Connecticut's 3rd congressional district and has been represented by Rosa DeLauro since 1991. Martin Looney and Gary Holder-Winfield represent New Haven in the Connecticut State Senate, and the city lies within six districts (numbers 92 through 97) of the Connecticut House of Representatives.\nThe Greater New Haven area is served by the New Haven Judicial District Court and the New Haven Superior Court, both headquartered at the New Haven County Courthouse. The federal District Court for the District of Connecticut has a New Haven facility, the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse.\nPolitical history.\nNew Haven is the birthplace of former president George W. Bush, who was born when his father, former president George H. W. Bush, was living in New Haven while a student at Yale. In addition to being the site of the college educations of both Presidents Bush, as Yale students, New Haven was also the temporary home of former presidents William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, and Bill Clinton, as well as Secretary of State John Kerry. President Clinton met his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while the two were students at Yale Law School. Former vice presidents John C. Calhoun and Dick Cheney also studied in New Haven (although the latter did not graduate from Yale). Before the 2008 election, the last time there was not a person with ties to New Haven and Yale on either major party's ticket was 1968. James Hillhouse, a New Haven native, served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate in 1801.\nNew Haven voters overwhelmingly supported Al Gore in the 2000 election, Yale graduate John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. In the 2008 election, New Haven County was third among all Connecticut counties in campaign contributions, after Fairfield and Hartford counties. (Connecticut, in turn, was ranked 14th among all states in total campaign contributions.)\nNew Haven was the subject of \" Who Governs? Democracy and Power in An American City\", a very influential book in political science by preeminent Yale professor Robert A. Dahl, which includes an extensive history of the city and thorough description of its politics in the 1950s. New Haven's theocratic history is also mentioned several times by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic volume on 19th-century American political life, \"Democracy in America\". New Haven was the residence of conservative thinker William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1951, when he wrote his influential \"God and Man at Yale\". William Lee Miller's \"The Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society\" (1966) similarly explores the relationship between local politics in New Haven and national political movements, focusing on Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and urban renewal.\nGeorge Williamson Crawford, a Yale Law School graduate, served as the city's first black corporation counsel from 1954 to 1962, under Mayor Richard C. Lee.\nIn 1970, the New Haven Black Panther trials took place, the largest and longest trials in Connecticut history. Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale and ten other party members were tried for murdering an alleged informant. Beginning on May Day, the city became a center of protest for 12,000 Panther supporters, college students, and New Left activists (including Jean Genet, Benjamin Spock, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and John Froines), who amassed on the New Haven Green, across the street from where the trials were being held. Violent confrontations between the demonstrators and the New Haven Police occurred, and several bombs were set off in the area by radicals. The event became a rallying point for the New Left and critics of the Nixon Administration.\nDuring the summer of 2007, New Haven was the center of protests by anti-immigration groups who opposed the city's program of offering municipal ID cards, known as the Elm City Resident Card, to illegal immigrants. In 2008, the country of Ecuador opened a consulate in New Haven to serve the large Ecuadorean immigrant population in the area. It is the first foreign mission to open in New Haven since Italy opened a consulate (now closed) in the city in 1910.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 20 white and Hispanic firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no blacks scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. On June 29, 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the firefighters, agreeing that they were improperly denied promotion because of their race. The case, \"Ricci v. DeStefano\", became highly publicized and brought national attention to New Haven politics due to the involvement of then-Supreme Court nominee (and Yale Law School graduate) Sonia Sotomayor in a lower court decision.\nGarry Trudeau, creator of the political \"Doonesbury\" comic strip, attended Yale University. There he met fellow student and later Green Party candidate for Congress Charles Pillsbury, a long-time New Haven resident for whom Trudeau's comic strip is named. During his college years, Pillsbury was known by the nickname \"The Doones\". A theory of international law, which argues for a sociological normative approach in regards to jurisprudence, is named the New Haven Approach, after the city. Connecticut US senator Richard Blumenthal is a Yale graduate, as is former Connecticut US Senator Joe Lieberman who also was a New Haven resident for many years, before moving back to his hometown of Stamford.\nCrime.\nCrime increased in the 1990s, with New Haven having one of the ten highest violent crime rates per capita in the United States. In the late 1990s New Haven's crime began to stabilize. The city, adopting a policy of community policing, saw crime rates drop during the 2000s.\nViolent crime levels vary dramatically among New Haven's neighborhoods, with some areas having crime rates in line with the state of Connecticut average, and others having extremely high rates of crime. A 2011 New Haven Health Department report identifies these issues in greater detail.\nIn 2010, New Haven ranked as the 18th most dangerous city in the United States (albeit below the safety benchmark of 200.00 for the second consecutive year). However, according to a completely different analysis conducted by the \"24/7 Wall Street Blog\", in 2011 New Haven had risen to become the fourth most dangerous city in the United States, and was widely cited in the press as such.\nHowever, an analysis by the Regional Data Cooperative for Greater New Haven, Inc., has shown that due to issues of comparative denominators and other factors, such municipality-based rankings can be considered inaccurate. For example, two cities of identical population can cover widely differing land areas, making such analyses irrelevant. The research organization called for comparisons based on neighborhoods, blocks, or standard methodologies (similar to those used by Brookings, DiversityData, and other established institutions), not based on municipalities.\nEducation.\nColleges and universities.\nNew Haven is a notable center for higher education. Yale University, at the heart of downtown, is one of the city's best known features and its largest employer. New Haven is also home to Southern Connecticut State University, part of the Connecticut State University System, and Albertus Magnus College, a private institution. Gateway Community College has a campus in downtown New Haven, formerly located in the Long Wharf district; Gateway consolidated into one campus downtown into a new state-of-the-art campus (on the site of the old Macy's building) and was open for the Fall 2012 semester.\nThere are several institutions immediately outside of New Haven, as well. Quinnipiac University and the Paier College of Art are located just to the north, in the town of Hamden. The University of New Haven is located not in New Haven but in neighboring West Haven.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nNew Haven Public Schools is the school district serving the city. Wilbur Cross High School and Hillhouse High School are New Haven's two largest public secondary schools.\nHopkins School, a private school, was founded in 1660 and is the fifth-oldest educational institution in the United States. New Haven is home to a number of other private schools as well as public magnet schools, including Metropolitan Business Academy, High School in the Community, Hill Regional Career High School, Co-op High School, New Haven Academy, Edgewood Magnet School, ACES Educational Center for the Arts, the Foote School and the Sound School, all of which draw students from New Haven and suburban towns. New Haven is also home to two Achievement First charter schools, Amistad Academy and Elm City College Prep, and to Common Ground, an environmental charter school.\nThe city is renowned for its progressive school lunch programs, and participation in statewide bussing efforts toward increased diversity in schools.\nCulture.\nCuisine.\nLivability.com named New Haven as the Best Foodie City in the country in 2014. There are dozens of Zagat-rated restaurants in New Haven, the most in Connecticut and the third most in New England (after Boston and Cambridge). More than 120 restaurants are located within two blocks of the New Haven Green. The city is home to an eclectic mix of ethnic restaurants and small markets specializing in various foreign foods. Represented cuisines include Malaysian, Ethiopian, Spanish, Belgian, French, Greek, Latin American, Mexican, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Cuban, Peruvian, Syrian/Lebanese, and Turkish.\nNew Haven's greatest culinary claim to fame may be its pizza, which has been claimed to be among the best in the country, or even in the world. New Haven-style pizza, called \"apizza\", made its debut at the iconic Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana (known as Pepe's) in 1925. Apizza is baked in coal- or wood-fired brick ovens, and is notable for its thin crust. Apizza may be red (with a tomato-based sauce) or white (with a sauce of garlic and olive oil), and pies ordered \"plain\" are made without the otherwise customary mozzarella (originally smoked mozzarella, known as \"scamorza\" in Italian). A white clam pie is a well-known specialty of the restaurants on Wooster Street in the Little Italy section of New Haven, including Pepe's and Sally's Apizza (which opened in 1938). Modern Apizza on State Street, which opened in 1934, is also well-known.\nA second New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Louis' Lunch, which is located in a small brick building on Crown Street and has been serving fast food since 1895. Though fiercely debated, the restaurant's founder Louis Lassen is credited by the Library of Congress with inventing the hamburger and steak sandwich. Louis' Lunch broils hamburgers, steak sandwiches and hot dogs vertically in original antique 1898 cast iron stoves using gridirons, patented by local resident Luigi Pieragostini in 1939, that hold the meat in place while it cooks.\nA third New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Miya's, the first sustainable sushi restaurant in the world. Miya's, founded by Chef Yoshiko Lai in 1982, featured the first sustainable seafood-based sushi menu, the first plant-based sushi menu, and the first invasive species menu in the world. Second generation Miya's chef, Bun Lai, is the 2016 White House Champions of Change for Sustainable Seafood and a James Beard Foundation Award nominee. Chef Bun Lai is credited as the first chef in the world for implementing a sustainability paradigm to the cuisine of sushi.\nDuring weekday lunchtime, over 150 lunch carts and food trucks cater to diners around the city. The carts and food trucks cluster at four main points: on Long Wharf Drive, along the city's shoreline with quick access off Interstate 95, by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital in the center of the Hospital Green (Cedar and York streets), by Yale's Trumbull College (Elm and York streets), and on the intersection of Prospect and Sachem streets by the Yale School of Management.\nPopular farmers' markets, managed by the local non-profit CitySeed, set up shop weekly in several neighborhoods, including Westville/Edgewood Park, Fair Haven, Upper State Street, Wooster Square, and Downtown/New Haven Green.\nA large grocery store, the Elm City Market, opened on 360 State Street in New Haven in early fall 2011 and served local produce and groceries to the community. Originally, the market was a member-owned co-op, but debt defaults in August 2014 forced a sale of the business. It is now an employee-owned business; the co-op's previous owners received no equity in the new business.\nIn the past several years, two separate Downtown food tour companies have started offering popular restaurant tours on weekends.\nTaste of New Haven Tours offers several different weekly restaurant/bar tours and a popular pizza, bike, and pints tour. Culinary Walking Tours offers monthly restaurant tours and sponsors an annual Elm City Iron Chef competition.\nTheatre and film.\nThe city hosts numerous theatres and production houses, including the Yale Repertory Theatre, the Long Wharf Theatre, and the Shubert Theatre. There is also theatre activity from the Yale School of Drama, which works through the Yale University Theatre and the student-run Yale Cabaret. Southern Connecticut State University hosts the Lyman Center for the Performing Arts. The shuttered Palace Theatre (opposite the Shubert Theatre) was renovated and reopened as the College Street Music Hall in May 2015. Smaller theatres include the Little Theater on Lincoln Street. Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School also has a theatre on College Street. The theatre is used for student productions, and is the home to weekly services to a local non-denominational church, the City Church New Haven.\nThe Shubert Theatre once premiered many major theatrical productions before their Broadway debuts. Productions that premiered at the Shubert include \"Oklahoma!\" (which was also written in New Haven), \"Carousel\", \"South Pacific\", \"My Fair Lady\", \"The King and I\", and \"The Sound of Music\", and the Tennessee Williams play \"A Streetcar Named Desire\".\nBow Tie Cinemas owns and operates the Criterion Cinemas, the first new movie theater to open in New Haven in over 30 years and the first luxury movie complex in the city's history. The Criterion has seven screens and opened in November 2004, showing a mix of upscale first run commercial and independent film.\nMuseums.\nNew Haven has a variety of museums, many of them associated with Yale. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library features an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible. There is also the Connecticut Children's Museum; the Knights of Columbus museum near that organization's world headquarters; the Peabody Museum of Natural History; the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments; the Eli Whitney Museum (across the town line in Hamden, Connecticut, on Whitney Avenue); the Yale Center for British Art, which houses the largest collection of British art outside the U.K., and the Yale University Art Gallery, the western hemisphere's oldest college art museum. New Haven is also home to the New Haven Museum and Historical Society on Whitney Avenue, which has a library of many primary source treasures dating from Colonial times to the present.\nArtspace on Orange Street is one of several contemporary art galleries around the city, showcasing the work of local, national, and international artists. Others include City Gallery and A. Leaf Gallery in the downtown area. Westville galleries include Kehler Liddell, Jennifer Jane Gallery, and The Hungry Eye. The Erector Square complex in the Fair Haven neighborhood houses, the Parachute Factory gallery along with numerous artist studios, and the complex serves as an active destination during City-Wide Open Studios held yearly in October.\nNew Haven is the home port of a life-size replica of the historical \"Freedom Schooner Amistad\", which is open for tours at Long Wharf pier at certain times during the summer. Also at Long Wharf pier is the \"Quinnipiack\" schooner, offering sailing cruises of the harbor area throughout the summer. The \"Quinnipiack\" also functions as a floating classroom for hundreds of local students.\nMusic.\nThe New Haven Green is the site of many free music concerts, especially during the summer months. These have included the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the July Free Concerts on the Green, and the New Haven Jazz Festival in August. The Jazz Festival, which began in 1982, is one of the longest-running free outdoor festivals in the U.S., until it was canceled for 2007. Headliners such as Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles and Celia Cruz have historically drawn 30,000 to 50,000 fans, filling up the New Haven Green to capacity. The New Haven Jazz Festival was revived in 2008 and has been sponsored since by Jazz Haven.\nNew Haven is home to the concert venue Toad's Place, and a new venue, College Street Music Hall. The city has retained an alternative art and music underground that has helped to influence post-punk era music movements such as indie, college rock and underground hip-hop.\nThe Yale School of Music contributes to the city's music scene by offering hundreds of free concerts throughout the year at venues in and around the Yale campus. Large performances are held in the 2,700-seat Woolsey Hall auditorium, which contains the world's largest symphonic organs, while chamber music and recitals are performed in Sprague Hall.\nHardcore band Hatebreed are from Wallingford, but got their start in New Haven under the name Jasta 14. The band Miracle Legion formed in New Haven in 1983. Folk musicians from New Haven include Loren Mazzacane Connors and Kath Bloom.\nThe Hillhouse Opera Company is a U.S. non-profit opera company based in New Haven that performs in the New Haven area. Founded in 2008 by Victoria Leigh Gardner, Nicole Rodriguez and Jim Coatsworth Hillhouse Opera Company has performed operas as well as opera scenes programs, master classes and concert series. In 2011, the Company professionally staged the works created through the Riverview Opera Project. The Riverview Opera Project created workshops for children and adolescents at Riverview Hospital, Connecticut's only state-funded psychiatric hospital for youth, and helped them to successfully create, produce, and perform four original operas.\nFestivals.\nIn addition to the Jazz Festival (described above), New Haven serves as the home city of the annual International Festival of Arts and Ideas. New Haven's Saint Patrick's Day parade, which began in 1842, is New England's oldest and draws the largest crowds of any one-day spectator event in Connecticut. The St. Andrew the Apostle Italian Festival has taken place in the historic Wooster Square neighborhood every year since 1900. Other parishes in the city celebrate the Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua and a carnival in honor of St. Bernadette Soubirous. New Haven celebrates Powder House Day every April on the New Haven Green to commemorate the city's entrance into the Revolutionary War. The annual Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival commemorates the 1973 planting of 72 Yoshino Japanese cherry blossom trees by the New Haven Historic Commission in collaboration with the New Haven Parks Department and residents of the neighborhood. The Festival now draws well over 5,000 visitors. The Film Fest New Haven has been held annually since 1995.\nNightlife.\nIn the past decade downtown has seen an influx of new restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Large crowds are drawn to the Crown Street area downtown on weekends where many of the restaurants and bars are located. Crown Street between State and High Streets has dozens of establishments, as do nearby Temple and College Streets. Away from downtown, Upper State Street has a number of restaurants and bars popular with local residents and weekend visitors.\nNewspapers and media.\nNew Haven is served by the daily \"New Haven Register\", the weekly \"alternative\" \"New Haven Advocate\" (which is run by Tribune, the corporation owning the \"Hartford Courant\"), the online daily \"New Haven Independent\", and the monthly \"Grand News Community Newspaper.\" Downtown New Haven is covered by an in-depth civic news forum, Design New Haven. The \"Register\" also backs \"PLAY\" magazine, a weekly entertainment publication. The city is also served by several student-run papers, including the \"Yale Daily News\", the weekly \"Yale Herald\" and a humor tabloid, \"Rumpus Magazine\".\nWTNH Channel 8, the ABC affiliate for Connecticut, WCTX Channel 59, the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the state, Connecticut Public Television station WEDY channel 65, a PBS affiliate, and WTXX Channel 34, the IntrigueTV affiliate, broadcast from New Haven. All New York City news and sports team stations broadcast to New Haven County.\nSports and athletics.\nNew Haven has a history of professional sports franchises dating back to the 19th century and has been the home to professional baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer teams\u2014including the New York Giants of the National Football League from 1973 to 1974, who played at the Yale Bowl. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, New Haven consistently had minor league hockey and baseball teams, which played at the New Haven Arena (built in 1926, demolished in 1972), New Haven Coliseum (1972\u20132002), and Yale Field (1928\u2013present).\nWhen John DeStefano, Jr., became mayor of New Haven in 1995, he outlined a plan to transform the city into a major cultural and arts center in the Northeast, which involved investments in programs and projects other than sports franchises. As nearby Bridgeport built new sports facilities, the brutalist New Haven Coliseum rapidly deteriorated. Believing the upkeep on the venue to be a drain of tax dollars, the DeStefano administration closed the Coliseum in 2002; it was demolished in 2007. New Haven's last professional sports team, the New Haven County Cutters, left in 2009. The DeStefano administration did, however, see the construction of the New Haven Athletic Center in 1998, a indoor athletic facility with a seating capacity of over 3,000. The NHAC, built adjacent to Hillhouse High School, is used for New Haven public schools athletics, as well as large-scale area and state sporting events; it is the largest high school indoor sports complex in the state.\nNew Haven was the host of the 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games; then-President Bill Clinton spoke at the opening ceremonies. The city is home to the Pilot Pen International tennis event, which takes place every August at the Connecticut Tennis Center, one of the largest tennis venues in the world. New Haven biannually hosts \"The Game\" between Yale and Harvard, the country's second-oldest college football rivalry. Numerous road races take place in New Haven, including the USATF 20K Championship during the New Haven Road Race.\nGreater New Haven is home to a number of college sports teams. The Yale Bulldogs play Division I college sports, as do the Quinnipiac Bobcats in neighboring Hamden. Division II athletics are played by Southern Connecticut State University and the University of New Haven (actually located in neighboring West Haven), while Albertus Magnus College athletes perform at the Division III level.\nNew Haven is home to many New York Yankees, New York Mets, & Boston Red Sox fans due to the proximity of New York City & Boston.\nWalter Camp, deemed the \"father of American football\", was a New Havener.\nThe New Haven Warriors rugby league team play in the AMNRL. They have a large number of Pacific Islanders playing for them. Their field is located at the West Haven High School's Ken Strong Stadium. They won the 2008 AMNRL Grand Final.\nStructures.\nArchitecture.\nNew Haven has many architectural landmarks dating from every important time period and architectural style in American history. The city has been home to a number of architects and architectural firms that have left their mark on the city including Ithiel Town and Henry Austin in the 19th century and Cesar Pelli, Warren Platner, Kevin Roche, Herbert Newman and Barry Svigals in the 20th. The Yale School of Architecture has fostered this important component of the city's economy. Cass Gilbert, of the Beaux-Arts school, designed New Haven's Union Station and the New Haven Free Public Library and was also commissioned for a City Beautiful plan in 1919. Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, Alexander Jackson Davis, Philip C. Johnson, Gordon Bunshaft, Louis Kahn, James Gamble Rogers, Frank Gehry, Charles Willard Moore, Stefan Behnisch, James Polshek, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen and Robert Venturi all have designed buildings in New Haven. Yale's 1950s-era Ingalls Rink, designed by Eero Saarinen, was included on the \"America's Favorite Architecture\" list created in 2007.\nSeveral residential homes in New Haven were designed by Alice Washburn, a noted female architect whose Colonial Revival style set a standard for homes in the region.\nMany of the city's neighborhoods are well-preserved as walkable \"museums\" of 19th- and 20th-century American architecture, particularly by the New Haven Green, Hillhouse Avenue and other residential sections close to Downtown New Haven. Overall, a large proportion of the city's land area is National (NRHP) historic districts. One of the best sources on local architecture is \"New Haven: Architecture and Urban Design\", by Elizabeth Mills Brown.\nThe five tallest buildings in New Haven are:\nHistoric points of interest.\nMany historical sites exist throughout the city, including 59 properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Of these, nine are among the 60 U.S. National Historic Landmarks in Connecticut. The New Haven Green, one of the National Historic Landmarks, was formed in 1638, and is home to three 19th-century churches. Below the First Church of Christ in New Haven (referred to as the Center Church on the Green) lies a 17th-century crypt, which is open to visitors. Some of the more famous burials include the first wife of Benedict Arnold and the aunt and grandmother of President Rutherford B. Hayes; Hayes visited the crypt while President in 1880. The Old Campus of Yale University is located next to the Green, and includes Connecticut Hall, Yale's oldest building and a National Historic Landmark. The Hillhouse Avenue area, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a part of Yale's campus, has been called a walkable museum, due to its 19th-century mansions and street scape; Charles Dickens is said to have called Hillhouse Avenue \"the most beautiful street in America\" when visiting the city in 1868.\nIn 1660, Edward Whalley (a cousin and friend of Oliver Cromwell) and William Goffe, two English Civil War generals who signed the death warrant of King Charles I, hid in a rock formation in New Haven after having fled England upon the restoration of Charles II to the English throne. They were later joined by a third regicide, John Dixwell. The rock formation, which is now a part of West Rock Park, is known as Judges' Cave, and the path leading to the cave is called the Regicides Trail.\nAfter the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, the Connecticut colonial government ordered the construction of Black Rock Fort (to be built on top of an older 17th-century fort) to protect the port of New Haven. In 1779, during the Battle of New Haven, British soldiers captured Black Rock Fort and burned the barracks to the ground. The fort was reconstructed in 1807 by the federal government (on orders from the Thomas Jefferson administration), and rechristened Fort Nathan Hale, after the Revolutionary War hero who had lived in New Haven. The cannons of Fort Nathan Hale were successful in defying British war ships during the War of 1812. In 1863, during the Civil War, a second Fort Hale was built next to the original, complete with bomb-resistant bunkers and a moat, to defend the city should a Southern raid against New Haven be launched. The United States Congress deeded the site to the state in 1921, and all three versions of the fort have been restored. The site is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and receives thousands of visitors each year.\nGrove Street Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark which lies adjacent to Yale's campus, contains the graves of Roger Sherman, Eli Whitney, Noah Webster, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Charles Goodyear and Walter Camp, among other notable burials. The cemetery is noted for its Egyptian Revival gateway, and is the oldest planned burial ground in the United States. The Union League Club of New Haven building, located on Chapel Street, is notable for not only being a historic Beaux-Arts building, but also is built on the site where Roger Sherman's home once stood; George Washington is known to have stayed at the Sherman residence while President in 1789 (one of three times Washington visited New Haven throughout his lifetime).\nTwo sites pay homage to the time President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft lived in the city, as both a student and later Professor at Yale: a plaque on Prospect Street marks the site where Taft's home formerly stood, and downtown's Taft Apartment Building (formerly the Taft Hotel) bears the name of the former president who resided in the building for eight years before becoming Chief Justice of the United States.\nLighthouse Point Park, a public beach run by the city, was a popular tourist destination during the Roaring Twenties, attracting luminaries of the period such as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. The park remains popular among New Haveners, and is home to the Five Mile Point Lighthouse, constructed in 1847, and the Lighthouse Point Carousel, constructed in 1916. Five Mile Point Light was decommissioned in 1877 following the construction of Southwest Ledge Light at the entrance of the harbor, which remains in service to this day. Both of the lighthouses and the carousel are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nOther historic sites in the city include the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, which stands at the summit of East Rock, the Marsh Botanical Garden, Wooster Square, Dwight Street, Louis' Lunch, and the Farmington Canal, all of which date back to the 19th century. Other historic parks besides the Green include Edgerton Park, Edgewood Park, and East Rock Park, each of which is included on the National Register of Historic Places.\nTransportation.\nRail.\nNew Haven has two railroad stations, connected to New York City and points along the Northeast Corridor by commuter rail, regional rail and inter-city rail. Service is provided by:\nThe city's main railroad station is the historic Beaux-Arts Union Station, which serves Metro-North, Hartford Line, and Shore Line East commuter trains. Approximately 175 trains serve Union Station on weekdays. Union Station is also served by four Amtrak lines: the \"Northeast Regional\" and the high-speed \"Acela Express\" provide service to New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston, and rank as the first and second busiest routes in the country; the New Haven\u2013Springfield Line provides service to Hartford and Springfield, Massachusetts; and the \"Vermonter\" provides service to both Washington, D.C., and Vermont, from the Canada\u2013US border.\nAn additional station, State Street Station, was opened in 2002, providing passengers easier access to downtown New Haven. State Street Station is currently serviced by Shore Line East and Hartford Line trains, plus some peak-hour Metro-North trips.\nBus.\nThe New Haven Division of Connecticut Transit (CT Transit), the state's bus system, is the second largest division in the state with 24 routes. All routes originate from the New Haven Green, making it the central transfer hub of the city. Service is provided to 19 different municipalities throughout Greater New Haven. Bus routes were formerly identified by letters, but as of October 8, 2017, all service was renamed using 200-series numbers, in accordance with a renumbering of CTtransit's statewide services.\nCT Transit's Union Station Shuttle provides free service from Union Station to the New Haven Green and several New Haven parking garages. Peter Pan and Greyhound bus lines have scheduled stops at Union Station, and connections downtown can be made via the Union Station Shuttle. A private company operates the New Haven/Hartford Express which provides commuter bus service to Hartford. The Yale University Shuttle provides free transportation around New Haven for Yale students, faculty, and staff.\nThe New Haven Division buses follow routes that had originally been covered by trolley service. Horse-drawn streetcars began operating in New Haven in the 1860s, and by the mid-1890s all the lines had become electric. In the 1920s and 1930s, some of the trolley lines began to be replaced by bus lines, with the last trolley route converted to bus in 1948. The City of New Haven is in the very early stages of considering the restoration of streetcar (light-rail) service, which has been absent since the postwar period.\nBicycle.\nBikeshare.\nOn February 21, 2018, New Haven officially launched its Bike New Haven bikeshare program. based on dockless technology powered by Noa Technologies At time of launch, the program features 10 docking stations and 100 bikes, spread throughout the urban core; there are plans to reach 30 bike stations and 300 bikes by the end of April 2018. The launch of the New Haven bikeshare program coincided with the launch of Yale University's own bikeshare program, which uses the same technology powered by Noa.\nBike lanes.\nIn 2004, the first bike lane in the city was added to Orange Street, connecting East Rock Park and the East Rock neighborhood to downtown. Since then, bike lanes have also been added to sections of Howard Ave, Elm St, Dixwell Avenue, Water Street, Clinton Avenue and State Street. The city has created recommended bike routes for getting around New Haven, including use of the Canal Trail and the Orange Street lane. As of the end of 2012, bicycle lanes have also been added in both directions on Dixwell Avenue along most of the street from downtown to the Hamden town line, as well as along Howard Avenue from Yale New Haven Hospital to City Point.\nThe city has plans to create two additional bike lanes connecting Union Station with downtown, and the Westville neighborhood with downtown. The city has added dozens of covered bike parking spots at Union Station, in order to facilitate more bike commuting to the station.\nFarmington Canal Greenway.\nThe Farmington Canal Trail is a rail trail that will eventually run continuously from downtown New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts. The scenic trail follows the path of the historic New Haven and Northampton Company and the Farmington Canal. Currently, there is a continuous stretch of the trail from downtown, through Hamden and into Cheshire, making bicycle commuting between New Haven and those suburbs possible. The trail is part of the East Coast Greenway, a proposed bike path that would link every major city on the East Coast from Florida to Maine.\nRoads.\nNew Haven lies at the intersection of Interstate 95 on the coast\u2014which provides access southwards and/or westwards to the western coast of Connecticut and to New York City, and eastwards to the eastern Connecticut shoreline, Rhode Island, and eastern Massachusetts\u2014and Interstate 91, which leads northward to the interior of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont and the Canada\u2013US border. I-95 is notorious for traffic jams increasing with proximity to New York City; on the east side of New Haven it passes over the Quinnipiac River via the Pearl Harbor Memorial, or \"Q Bridge\", which often presents a major bottleneck to traffic. I-91, however, is relatively less congested, except at the intersection with I-95 during peak travel times.\nThe Oak Street Connector (Connecticut Route 34) intersects I-91 at exit 1, just south of the I-95/I-91 interchange, and runs northwest for a few blocks as an expressway spur into downtown before emptying onto surface roads. The Wilbur Cross Parkway (Connecticut Route 15) runs parallel to I-95 west of New Haven, turning northwards as it nears the city and then running northwards parallel to I-91 through the outer rim of New Haven and Hamden, offering an alternative to the I-95/I-91 journey (restricted to non-commercial vehicles). Route 15 in New Haven is the site of the only highway tunnel in the state (officially designated as Heroes Tunnel), running through West Rock, home to West Rock Park and the Three Judges Cave.\nThe city also has several major surface arteries. U.S. Route 1 (Columbus Avenue, Union Avenue, Water Street, Forbes Avenue) runs in an east\u2013west direction south of downtown serving Union Station and leading out of the city to Milford, West Haven, East Haven and Branford. The main road from downtown heading northwest is Whalley Avenue (partly signed as Route 10 and Route 63) leading to Westville and Woodbridge. Heading north towards Hamden, there are two major thoroughfares, Dixwell Avenue and Whitney Avenue. To the northeast are Middletown Avenue (Route 17), which leads to the Montowese section of North Haven, and Foxon Boulevard (Route 80), which leads to the Foxon section of East Haven and to the town of North Branford. To the west is Route 34, which leads to the city of Derby. Other major intracity arteries are Ella Grasso Boulevard (Route 10) west of downtown, and College Street, Temple Street, Church Street, Elm Street, and Grove Street in the downtown area.\nTraffic safety is a major concern for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists in New Haven. In addition to many traffic-related fatalities in the city each year, since 2005, over a dozen Yale students, staff and faculty have been killed or injured in traffic collisions on or near the campus.\nAirport.\nTweed New Haven Airport is located within the city limits east of the business district, straddling the border with neighboring East Haven. Service to approximately 25 cities is provided by Avelo Airlines, which established its first East Coast base at the airport in 2021. Breeze Airways plans to begin operations at Tweed in December 2024, and will provide service to 10 destinations. The airport is currently planning a runway lengthening and new terminal on the East Haven side of the airport.\nBus service between Downtown New Haven and Tweed is available via the CT Transit New Haven Division.\nSeaport.\nNew Haven Harbor is home to the Port of New Haven, a deep-water seaport with three berths capable of hosting vessels and barges as well as the facilities required to handle break bulk cargo. The port has the capacity to load 200 trucks a day from the ground or via loading docks. Providence and Worcester Railroad provides freight rail transportation to the port, with the railroad operating a switch engine for yard movements, a private siding for loading and unloading, and trackage over the Tomlinson Lift Bridge toward the Northeast Corridor. Approximately of inside storage and of outside storage are available at the site. Five shore cranes with a 250-ton capacity and 26 forklifts, each with a 26-ton capacity, are also available.\nOn June 17, 2013, the city commissioned the \"Nathan Hale\", a port security vessel capable of serving search and rescue, firefighting, and constabulary roles.\nInfrastructure.\nHospitals and medicine.\nThe New Haven area supports several medical facilities that are considered some of the best hospitals in the country. There are two major medical centers downtown: Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital has four pavilions, including the Yale \u2013 New Haven Children's Hospital and the Smilow Cancer Hospital; the Hospital of Saint Raphael is several blocks north, and touts its excellent cardiac emergency care program. Smaller downtown health facilities are the Temple Medical Center located downtown on Temple Street, Connecticut Mental Health Center/ across Park Street from Y-NHH, and the Hill Health Center, which serves the working-class Hill neighborhood. A large Veterans Affairs hospital is located in neighboring West Haven. To the west in Milford is Milford Hospital, and to the north in Meriden is the MidState Medical Center.\nIn recent years, Yale and the City of New Haven have been working to build a medical and biotechnology research hub in the city and Greater New Haven region. The city, state and Yale together run Science Park, a large site three blocks northwest of Yale's Science Hill campus. This multi-block site, approximately bordered by Mansfield Street, Division Street, and Shelton Avenue, is the former home of Winchester's and Olin Corporation's 45 large-scale factory buildings. Currently, sections of the site are large-scale parking lots or abandoned structures, but there is also a large remodeled and functioning area of buildings (leased primarily by a private developer) with numerous Yale employees, financial service and biotech companies.\nA second biotechnology district is being planned for the median strip on Frontage Road, on land cleared for the never-built Route 34 extension. As of late 2009, a Pfizer drug-testing clinic, a medical laboratory building serving Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital, and a mixed-use structure containing parking, housing and office space, have been constructed on this corridor. A former SNET telephone building at 300 George Street is being converted into lab space, and has been quite successful so far in attracting biotechnology and medical firms.\nPower supply facilities.\nElectricity for New Haven is generated by a 448\u00a0MW oil and gas-fired generating station located on the shore at New Haven Harbor. PPL Corporation operates a 220\u00a0MW peaking natural gas turbine plant in nearby Wallingford.\nNear New Haven there is the static inverter plant of the HVDC Cross Sound Cable.\nThere are three PureCell Model 400 fuel cells placed in the city of New Haven\u2014one at the New Haven Public Schools and newly constructed Roberto Clemente School, one at the mixed-use 360 State Street building, and one at City Hall. According to Giovanni Zinn of the city's Office of Sustainability, each fuel cell may save the city up to $1 million in energy costs over a decade. The fuel cells were provided by ClearEdge Power, formerly UTC Power. Additional fuel cells are located at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and at the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority (GNHWPCA). Ikea's New Haven facility also utilizes a 250\u00a0kW fuel cell and 940.8\u00a0kW solar array.\nNew Haven recently installed solar panels at 11 city schools with a combined power generation capacity of 1.8 MW. Owned and maintained by Greenskies, the panels allow New Haven to purchase electricity at a discounted rate through a power-purchasing agreement. The panels bring New Haven's solar capacity to 2.8 MW and will help New Haven meet its commitment to powering 100% of its municipal operations through clean energy, which it made in Summer 2017 and reaffirmed in the 2018 New Haven Climate and Sustainability Framework.\nIn popular culture.\nSeveral movies have been filmed in New Haven since 2000, including \"Mona Lisa Smile\" (2003), with Julia Roberts, \"The Life Before Her Eyes\" (2007), with Uma Thurman, and \"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull\" (2008) directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett and Shia LaBeouf. The filming of \"Crystal Skull\" involved an extensive chase sequence through the streets of New Haven. Several downtown streets were closed to traffic and received a \"makeover\" to look like streets of 1957, when the film is set. 500 locals were cast as extras for the film. In \"Everybody's Fine\" (2009), Robert De Niro has a close encounter in what is supposed to be the Denver train station; the scene was filmed in New Haven's Union Station.\n New Haven is mentioned in the song Peace Frog by the Doors, referencing a 1967 incident where vocalist Jim Morrison was arrested for \"attempting to incite a riot\" in the middle of a concert at the New Haven Arena.\nSister cities.\nNew Haven's sister cities are:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSome of these were selected because of historical connection\u2014Freetown because of the \"Amistad\" trial. Others, such as Amalfi and Afula, reflect ethnic groups in New Haven.\nIn 1990, the United Nations named New Haven a \"Peace Messenger City\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "7234091": "Sonny Berman\nAmerican jazz trumpeter\nSaul \"Sonny\" Berman (April 21, 1925 \u2013 January 16, 1947) was an American jazz trumpeter.\nBerman was born in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. He began touring at age sixteen and performed with Louis Prima, Harry James and Benny Goodman, but is best known for his later work with Woody Herman. Berman was distinguished by his passionate and innovative soloing, and his versatility of tone\u2014ranging from bold and emotional to sweetly muted. He was also known for his sense of humor, which often made its way into a playfulness and joyfulness found in his solo work.\nSonny Berman died at the age of 21 in New York City of heart failure, caused by a heroin overdose.\nDiscography.\nWith Georgie Auld\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "34273": "Yale University\nPrivate university in New Haven, Connecticut, US\n \nYale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution.\nYale was established as the Collegiate School in 1701 by Congregationalist clergy of the Connecticut Colony. Originally restricted to instructing ministers in theology and sacred languages, the school's curriculum expanded, incorporating humanities and sciences by the time of the American Revolution. In the 19th century, the college expanded into graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first PhD in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887. Yale's faculty and student populations grew rapidly after 1890 due to the expansion of the physical campus and its scientific research programs.\nYale is organized into fifteen constituent schools, including the original undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and Yale Law School. While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each school's faculty oversees its curriculum and degree programs. In addition to a central campus in downtown New Haven, the university owns athletic facilities in western New Haven, a campus in West Haven, and forests and nature preserves throughout New England. As of 2023[ [update]], the university's endowment was valued at $, the third largest of any educational institution. The Yale University Library, serving all constituent schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States. Student athletes compete in intercollegiate sports as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I Ivy League conference.\nAs of \u00a02024[ [update]], 68 Nobel laureates, 5 Fields medalists, 4 Abel Prize laureates, and 3 Turing Award winners have been affiliated with Yale University. In addition, Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including 5 U.S. presidents, 10 Founding Fathers, 19 U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 31 living billionaires, 54 college founders and presidents, many heads of state, cabinet members and governors. Hundreds of members of Congress and many U.S. diplomats, 96 MacArthur Fellows, 263 Rhodes Scholars, 123 Marshall Scholars, 81 Gates Cambridge Scholars, 102 Guggenheim Fellows and 9 Mitchell Scholars have been affiliated with the university. Yale's current faculty include 67 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 55 members of the National Academy of Medicine, 8 members of the National Academy of Engineering, and 193 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.\nHistory.\nEarly history of Yale College.\nOrigins.\nYale traces its beginnings to \"An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School\", a would-be charter passed in New Haven by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut on October 9, 1701. The Act was an effort to create an institution to train ministers and lay leadership. Soon after, a group of ten Congregational ministers, Samuel Andrew, Thomas Buckingham, Israel Chauncy, Samuel Mather (nephew of Increase Mather), Rev. James Noyes II (son of James Noyes), James Pierpont, Abraham Pierson, Noadiah Russell, Joseph Webb, and Timothy Woodbridge, all Harvard alumni, met in the study of Reverend Samuel Russell, in Branford, to donate books to form the school's library. The group, led by James Pierpont, is now known as \"The Founders\".\nKnown from its origin as the \"Collegiate School\", the institution opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson, who is considered Yale's first president. Pierson lived in Killingworth. The school moved to Saybrook in 1703, when the first treasurer of Yale, Nathaniel Lynde, donated land and a building. In 1716, it moved to New Haven.\nMeanwhile, there was a rift forming at Harvard between its sixth president, Increase Mather, and the rest of the Harvard clergy, whom Mather viewed as increasingly liberal, ecclesiastically lax, and overly broad in Church polity. The feud caused the Mathers to champion the Collegiate School in the hope it would maintain the Puritan religious orthodoxy in a way Harvard had not. Rev. Jason Haven, minister at the First Church and Parish in Dedham, Massachusetts, had been considered for the presidency on account of his orthodox theology and \"Neatness dignity and purity of Style [which] surpass those of all that have been mentioned\", but was passed over due to his \"very Valetudinary and infirm State of Health\".\nNaming and development.\nIn 1718, at the behest of either Rector Samuel Andrew or the colony's Governor Gurdon Saltonstall, Cotton Mather contacted the Boston-born businessman Elihu Yale to ask for money to construct a new building for the college. Through the persuasion of Jeremiah Dummer, Yale, who had made a fortune in Madras while working for the East India Company as the first president of Fort St. George, donated nine bales of goods, which were sold for more than \u00a3560, a substantial sum of money. Cotton Mather suggested the school change its name to \"Yale College\". The name Yale is the Anglicized spelling of the Welsh name I\u00e2l, which had been used for the family estate at Plas yn I\u00e2l, near Llandegla, Wales.\nMeanwhile, a Harvard graduate working in England convinced 180 prominent intellectuals to donate books to Yale. The 1714 shipment of 500 books represented the best of modern English literature, science, philosophy and theology. It had a profound effect on intellectuals at Yale. Undergraduate Jonathan Edwards discovered John Locke's works and developed his \"new divinity\". In 1722 the rector and six friends, who had a study group to discuss the new ideas, announced they had given up Calvinism, become Arminians, and joined the Church of England. They were ordained in England and returned to the colonies as missionaries for the Anglican faith. Thomas Clapp became president in 1745, and while he attempted to return the college to Calvinist orthodoxy, did not close the library. Other students found Deist books in the library.\nCurriculum.\nYale College undergraduates follow a liberal arts curriculum with departmental majors and is organized into a social system of residential colleges.\nYale was swept up by the great intellectual movements of the period\u2014the Great Awakening and Enlightenment\u2014due to the religious and scientific interests of presidents Thomas Clap and Ezra Stiles. They were instrumental in developing the scientific curriculum while dealing with wars, student tumults, graffiti, \"irrelevance\" of curricula, desperate need for endowment and disagreements with the Connecticut legislature.\nSerious American students of theology and divinity, particularly in New England, regarded Hebrew as a classical language, along with Greek and Latin, and essential for study of the Old Testament in the original. Reverend Stiles, president from 1778 to 1795, brought with him his interest in Hebrew as a vehicle for studying ancient Biblical texts in their original language, requiring all freshmen to study Hebrew (in contrast to Harvard, where only upperclassmen were required to study it) and is responsible for the Hebrew phrase \u05d0\u05d5\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u05d5\u05ea\u05de\u05d9\u05dd (Urim and Thummim) on the Yale seal. A 1746 graduate of Yale, Stiles came to the college with experience in education, having played an integral role in founding Brown University. Stiles' greatest challenge occurred in 1779 when British forces occupied New Haven and threatened to raze the college. However, Yale graduate Edmund Fanning, secretary to the British general in command of the occupation, intervened and the college was saved. In 1803, Fanning was granted an honorary degree LL.D..\nStudents.\nAs the only college in Connecticut from 1701 to 1823, Yale educated the sons of the elite. Punishable offenses included cardplaying, tavern-going, destruction of college property, and acts of disobedience. Harvard was distinctive for the stability and maturity of its tutor corps, while Yale had youth and zeal.\nThe emphasis on classics gave rise to private student societies, open only by invitation, which arose as forums for discussions of scholarship, literature and politics. The first were debating societies: Crotonia in 1738, Linonia in 1753 and Brothers in Unity in 1768. Linonia and Brothers in Unity continue to exist; commemorations to them can be found with names given to campus structures, like Brothers in Unity Courtyard in Branford College.\n19th century.\nThe Yale Report of 1828 was a dogmatic defense of the Latin and Greek curriculum against critics who wanted more courses in modern languages, math and science. Unlike higher education in Europe, there was no national curriculum for U.S. colleges and universities. In the competition for students and financial support, college leaders strove to keep current with demands for innovation. At the same time, they realized a significant portion of students and prospective students demanded a classical background. The report meant the classics would not be abandoned. During this period, institutions experimented with changes in the curriculum, often resulting in a dual-track curriculum. In the decentralized environment of U.S. higher education, balancing change with tradition was a common challenge. A group of professors at Yale and New Haven Congregationalist ministers articulated a conservative response to the changes brought by Victorian culture. They concentrated on developing a person possessed of religious values strong enough to sufficiently resist temptations from within, yet flexible enough to adjust to the 'isms' (professionalism, materialism, individualism, and consumerism) tempting them from without. William Graham Sumner, professor from 1872 to 1909, taught in the emerging disciplines of economics and sociology to overflowing classrooms. Sumner bested President Noah Porter, who disliked the social sciences and wanted Yale to lock into its traditions of classical education. Porter objected to Sumner's use of a textbook by Herbert Spencer that espoused agnostic materialism because it might harm students.\nUntil 1887, the legal name of the university was \"The President and Fellows of Yale College, in New Haven\". In 1887, under an act passed by the Connecticut General Assembly, Yale was renamed \"Yale University\".\nSports and debate.\nThe Revolutionary War soldier Nathan Hale (Yale 1773) was the archetype of the Yale ideal in the early 19th\u00a0century: a manly yet aristocratic scholar, well-versed in knowledge and sports, and a patriot who \"regretted\" that he \"had but one life to lose\" for his country. Western painter Frederic Remington (Yale 1900) was an artist whose heroes gloried in the combat and tests of strength in the Wild West. The fictional, turn-of-the-20th-century Yale man Frank Merriwell embodied this same heroic ideal without racial prejudice, and his fictional successor Dink Stover in the novel \"Stover at Yale\" (1912) questioned the business mentality that had become prevalent at the school. Increasingly students turned to athletic stars as their heroes, especially since winning the big game became the goal of the student body, the alumni, and the team itself.\nAlong with Harvard and Princeton, Yale students rejected British concepts about 'amateurism' and constructed athletic programs that were uniquely American. The Harvard\u2013Yale football rivalry began in 1875. Between 1892, when Harvard and Yale met in one of the first intercollegiate debates, and in 1909 (year of the first Triangular Debate of Harvard/Yale/Princeton) the rhetoric, symbolism, and metaphors used in athletics were used to frame these debates. Debates were covered on front pages of college newspapers and emphasized in yearbooks, and team members received the equivalent of athletic letters for their jackets. There were rallies to send off teams to matches, but they never attained the broad appeal athletics enjoyed. One reason may be that debates do not have a clear winner, because scoring is subjective. With late 19th-century concerns about the impact of modern life on the body, athletics offered hope that neither the individual nor society was coming apart.\nIn 1909\u201310, football faced a crisis resulting from the failure of the reforms of 1905\u201306, which sought to solve the problem of serious injuries. There was a mood of alarm and mistrust, and, while the crisis was developing, the presidents of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton developed a project to reform the sport and forestall possible radical changes forced by government. Presidents Arthur Hadley of Yale, A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard, and Woodrow Wilson of Princeton worked to develop moderate reforms to reduce injuries. Their attempts, however, were reduced by rebellion against the rules committee and formation of the Intercollegiate Athletic Association. While the big three had attempted to operate independently of the majority, the changes pushed did reduce injuries.\nExpansion.\nStarting with the addition of the Yale School of Medicine in 1810, the college expanded gradually, establishing the Yale Divinity School in 1822, Yale Law School in 1822, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1847, the now-defunct Sheffield Scientific School in 1847, and the Yale School of Fine Arts in 1869. In 1887, under the presidency of Timothy Dwight V, Yale College was renamed to Yale University, and the former name was applied only to the undergraduate college. The university would continue to expand into the 20th and 21st centuries, adding the Yale School of Music in 1894, the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies in 1900, the Yale School of Public Health in 1915, the Yale School of Architecture in 1916, the Yale School of Nursing 1923, the Yale School of Drama in 1955, the Yale School of Management in 1976, and the Jackson School of Global Affairs in 2022. The Sheffield Scientific School would also reorganize its relationship with the university to teach only undergraduate courses.\nExpansion caused controversy about Yale's new roles. Noah Porter, a moral philosopher, was president from 1871 to 1886. During an age of expansion in higher education, Porter resisted the rise of the new research university, claiming an eager embrace of its ideals would corrupt undergraduate education. Historian George Levesque argues Porter was not a simple-minded reactionary, uncritically committed to tradition, but a principled and selective conservative. Levesque says he did not endorse everything old or reject everything new; rather, he sought to apply long-established ethical and pedagogical principles to a changing culture. Levesque concludes, noting he may have misunderstood some of the challenges, but he correctly anticipated the enduring tensions that have accompanied the emergence of the modern university.\n20th century.\nMedicine.\nMilton Winternitz led the Yale School of Medicine as its dean from 1920 to 1935. Dedicated to the new scientific medicine established in Germany, he was equally fervent about \"social medicine\" and the study of humans in their environment. He established the \"Yale System\" of teaching, with few lectures and fewer exams, and strengthened the full-time faculty system; he created the graduate-level Yale School of Nursing and the psychiatry department and built new buildings. Progress toward his plans for an Institute of Human Relations, envisioned as a refuge where social scientists would collaborate with biological scientists in a holistic study of humankind, lasted only a few years before resentful antisemitic colleagues drove him to resign.\nFaculty.\nBefore World War II, most elite university faculties counted among their numbers few, if any, Jews, blacks, women, or other minorities; Yale was no exception. By 1980, this condition had been altered dramatically, as numerous members of those groups held faculty positions. Almost all members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences\u2014and some members of other faculties\u2014teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually.\nWomen.\nIn 1793, Lucinda Foote passed the entrance exams for Yale College, but was rejected by the president on the basis of her gender. Women studied at Yale from 1892, in graduate-level programs at the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The first seven women to earn PhDs received their degrees in 1894: Elizabeth Deering Hanscom, Cornelia H. B. Rogers, Sara Bulkley Rogers, Margaretta Palmer, Mary Augusta Scott, Laura Johnson Wylie, and Charlotte Fitch Roberts. There is a portrait of them in Sterling Memorial Library, painted by Brenda Zlamany.\nIn 1966, Yale began discussions with its sister school Vassar College about merging to foster coeducation at the undergraduate level. Vassar, then all-female and part of the Seven Sisters\u2014elite higher education schools that served as sister institutions to the Ivy League when nearly all Ivy League institutions still only admitted men\u2014tentatively accepted, but then declined the invitation. Both schools introduced coeducation independently in 1969. Amy Solomon was the first woman to register as a Yale undergraduate; she was the first woman at Yale to join an undergraduate society, St. Anthony Hall. The undergraduate class of 1973 was the first to have women starting from freshman year; all undergraduate women were housed in Vanderbilt Hall.\nA decade into co-education, student assault and harassment by faculty became the impetus for the trailblazing lawsuit \"Alexander v. Yale\". In the 1970s, a group of students and a faculty member sued Yale for its failure to curtail sexual harassment, especially by male faculty. The case was partly built from a 1977 report authored by plaintiff Ann Olivarius, \"A report to the Yale Corporation from the Yale Undergraduate Women's Caucus\". This case was the first to use Title IX to argue and establish that sexual harassment of female students can be considered illegal sex discrimination. The plaintiffs were Olivarius, Ronni Alexander, Margery Reifler, Pamela Price, and Lisa E. Stone. They were joined by Yale classics professor John \"Jack\" J. Winkler. The lawsuit, brought partly by Catharine MacKinnon, alleged rape, fondling, and offers of higher grades for sex by faculty, including Keith Brion, professor of flute and director of bands, political science professor Raymond Duvall, English professor Michael Cooke, and coach of the field hockey team, Richard Kentwell. While unsuccessful in the courts, the legal reasoning changed the landscape of sex discrimination law and resulted in the establishment of Yale's Grievance Board and Women's Center. In 2011 a Title IX complaint was filed against Yale by students and graduates, including editors of Yale's feminist magazine \"Broad Recognition\", alleging the university had a hostile sexual climate. In response, the university formed a Title IX steering committee to address complaints of sexual misconduct. Afterwards, universities and colleges throughout the U.S. also established sexual harassment grievance procedures.\nClass.\nYale instituted policies in the early 20th century designed to maintain the proportion of white Protestants from notable families in the student body (see \"numerus clausus\") and eliminated such preferences, beginning with the class of 1970.\n21st century.\nIn 2006, Yale and Peking University (PKU) established a Joint Undergraduate Program in Beijing, an exchange program allowing Yale students to spend a semester living and studying with PKU honor students. In July 2012, the Yale University-PKU Program ended due to weak participation.\nIn 2007 outgoing Yale President Rick Levin characterized Yale's institutional priorities: \"First, among the nation's finest research universities, Yale is distinctively committed to excellence in undergraduate education. Second, in our graduate and professional schools, as well as in Yale College, we are committed to the education of leaders.\"\nIn 2009, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair picked Yale as one location\u2014the others being Britain's Durham University and Universiti Teknologi Mara\u2014for the Tony Blair Faith Foundation's United States Faith and Globalization Initiative. As of 2009, former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo is the director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and teaches an undergraduate seminar, \"Debating Globalization\". As of 2009, former presidential candidate and DNC chair Howard Dean teaches a residential college seminar, \"Understanding Politics and Politicians\". Also in 2009, an alliance was formed among Yale, University College London, and both schools' affiliated hospital complexes to conduct research focused on the direct improvement of patient care\u2014a field known as translational medicine. President Richard Levin noted that Yale has hundreds of other partnerships across the world, but \"no existing collaboration matches the scale of the new partnership with UCL\". In August 2013, a new partnership with the National University of Singapore led to the opening of Yale-NUS College in Singapore, a joint effort to create a new liberal arts college in Asia featuring a curriculum including Western and Asian traditions.\nIn 2017, having been suggested for decades, Yale University renamed Calhoun College, named for slave owner, anti-abolitionist, and white supremacist Vice President John C. Calhoun. It is now Hopper College, after Grace Hopper.\nIn 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd protests, the #CancelYale tag was used on social media to demand that Elihu Yale's name be removed from Yale University. Much of the support originated from right-wing pundits such as Mike Cernovich and Ann Coulter, who intended to satirize what they perceived as the excesses of cancel culture. Yale spent most of his professional career in the employ of the East India Company (EIC), serving as the governor of the Presidency of Fort St. George in modern-day Chennai. The EIC, including Yale himself, was involved in the Indian Ocean slave trade, though the extent of Yale's involvement in slavery remains debated.\nHis singularly large donation led critics to argue Yale University relied on money derived from slavery for its first scholarships and endowments.\nIn 2020, the U.S. Justice Department sued Yale for alleged discrimination against Asian and white candidates, through affirmative action admission policies. In 2021, under the new Biden administration, the Justice Department withdrew the lawsuit. The group, Students for Fair Admissions, later won a similar lawsuit against Harvard.\nIn April 2024, Yale students joined other campuses across the United States in protests against the Gaza war. The student protestors demanded that Yale University divest from military weapons companies with ties to Israel's war on Gaza. Over 50 people were arrested at protests in and around Beinecke Plaza, and protests continued during the summer and in the new academic year starting September 2024. Undergraduate students \"overwhelmingly\" voted in a December referendum to call for divestment. \nAlumni in politics.\nThe \"Boston Globe\" wrote in 2002 that \"if there's one school that can lay claim to educating the nation's top national leaders over the past three decades, it's Yale\". Yale alumni were represented on the Democratic or Republican ticket in every U.S. presidential election between 1972 and 2004. Yale-educated presidents since the end of the Vietnam War include Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, and major-party nominees include Hillary Clinton (2016), John Kerry (2004), Joseph Lieberman (vice president, 2000), and Sargent Shriver (vice president, 1972). Other alumni who have made serious bids for the presidency include Amy Klobuchar (2020), Tom Steyer (2020), Ben Carson (2016), Howard Dean (2004), Gary Hart (1984 and 1988), Paul Tsongas (1992), Pat Robertson (1988) and Jerry Brown (1976, 1980, 1992).\nSeveral explanations have been offered for Yale's representation since the end of the Vietnam War. Sources note the spirit of campus activism that has existed at Yale since the 1960s, and the intellectual influence of Reverend William Sloane Coffin on future candidates. Yale President Levin attributes the run to Yale's focus on creating \"a laboratory for future leaders\", an institutional priority that began during the tenure of Yale Presidents Alfred Whitney Griswold and Kingman Brewster. Richard H. Brodhead, former dean of Yale College and now president of Duke University, stated: \"We do give very significant attention to orientation to the community in our admissions, and there is a very strong tradition of volunteerism at Yale\". Yale historian Gaddis Smith notes \"an ethos of organized activity\" at Yale during the 20th century that led Kerry to lead the Yale Political Union's Liberal Party, George Pataki the Conservative Party, and Lieberman to manage the \"Yale Daily News\". Camille Paglia points to a history of networking and elitism: \"It has to do with a web of friendships and affiliations built up in school\". CNN suggests that George W. Bush benefited from preferential admissions policies for the \"son and grandson of alumni\", and for a \"member of a politically influential family\". Elisabeth Bumiller and James Fallows credit the culture of community that exists between students, faculty, and administration, which downplays self-interest and reinforces commitment to others.\nDuring the 1988 presidential election, George H. W. Bush (Yale '48) derided Michael Dukakis for having \"foreign-policy views born in Harvard Yard's boutique\". When challenged on the distinction between Dukakis's Harvard connection and his Yale background, he said that, unlike Harvard, Yale's reputation was \"so diffuse, there isn't a symbol, I don't think, in the Yale situation, any symbolism in it\" and said Yale did not share Harvard's reputation for \"liberalism and elitism\". In 2004 Howard Dean stated, \"In some ways, I consider myself separate from the other three (Yale) candidates of 2004. Yale changed so much between the class of '68 and the class of '71. My class was the first class to have women in it; it was the first class to have a significant effort to recruit African Americans. It was an extraordinary time, and in that span of time is the change of an entire generation\".\nAdministration and organization.\nLeadership.\nThe President and Fellows of Yale College, also known as the Yale Corporation, or board of trustees, is the governing body of the university and consists of thirteen standing committees with separate responsibilities outlined in the by-laws. The corporation has 19 members: three \"ex officio\" members, ten successor trustees, and six elected alumni fellows. The university has three major academic components: Yale College (the undergraduate program), the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the twelve professional schools.\nYale's former president Richard C. Levin was, at the time, one of the highest paid university presidents in the United States with a 2008 salary of $. Yale's succeeding president Peter Salovey ranks 40th with a 2020 salary of $.\nThe Yale Provost's Office and similar executive positions have launched several women into prominent university executive positions. In 1977, Provost Hanna Holborn Gray was appointed interim president of Yale and later went on to become president of the University of Chicago, being the first woman to hold either position at each respective school. In 1994, Provost Judith Rodin became the first permanent female president of an Ivy League institution at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2002, Provost Alison Richard became the vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge. In 2003, the dean of the Divinity School, Rebecca Chopp, was appointed president of Colgate University and later went on to serve as the president of Swarthmore College in 2009, and then the first female chancellor of the University of Denver in 2014. In 2004, Provost Dr. Susan Hockfield became the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2004, Dean of the Nursing school, Catherine Gilliss, was appointed the dean of Duke University's School of Nursing and vice chancellor for nursing affairs. In 2007, Deputy Provost H. Kim Bottomly was named president of Wellesley College.\nSimilar examples for men who have served in Yale leadership positions can also be found. In 2004, Dean of Yale College Richard H. Brodhead was appointed as the president of Duke University. In 2008, Provost Andrew Hamilton was confirmed to be the vice chancellor of the University of Oxford.\nStaff and labor unions.\nYale University staff are represented by several different unions. Clerical and technical workers are represented by Local 34, and service and maintenance workers are represented by Local 35, both of the same union affiliate UNITE HERE. Unlike similar institutions, Yale has consistently refused to recognize its graduate student union, Local 33 (another affiliate of UNITE HERE), citing claims that the union's elections were undemocratic and how graduate students are not employees; the move to not recognize the union has been criticized by the American Federation of Teachers. In addition, officers of the Yale University Police Department are represented by the Yale Police Benevolent Association, which affiliated in 2005 with the Connecticut Organization for Public Safety Employees. Yale security officers joined the International Union of Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America in late 2010, even though the Yale administration contested the election. In October 2014, after deliberation, Yale security decided to form a new union, the Yale University Security Officers Association, which has since represented the campus security officers.\nYale has a history of difficult and prolonged labor negotiations, often culminating in strikes. There have been at least eight strikes since 1968, and \"The New York Times\" wrote that Yale has a reputation as having the worst record of labor tension of any university in the U.S. Moreover, Yale has been accused by the AFL\u2013CIO of failing to treat workers with respect, as well as not renewing contracts with professors over involvement in campus labor issues. Yale has responded to strikes with claims over mediocre union participation and the benefits of their contracts.\nCampus.\nYale's central campus in downtown New Haven covers and comprises its main, historic campus and a medical campus adjacent to the Yale\u2013New Haven Hospital. In western New Haven, the university holds of athletic facilities, including the Yale Golf Course. In 2008, Yale purchased the 17-building, former Bayer HealthCare complex in West Haven, Connecticut, the buildings of which are now used as laboratory and research space. Yale also owns seven forests in Connecticut, Vermont, and New Hampshire\u2014the largest of which is the Yale-Myers Forest in Connecticut's Quiet Corner\u2014and nature preserves including Horse Island.\nYale is noted for its largely Collegiate Gothic campus as well as several iconic modern buildings commonly discussed in architectural history survey courses: Louis Kahn's Yale Art Gallery and Center for British Art, Eero Saarinen's Ingalls Rink and Ezra Stiles and Morse Colleges, and Paul Rudolph's Art & Architecture Building. Yale also owns and has restored many noteworthy 19th-century mansions along Hillhouse Avenue, which was considered the most beautiful street in America by Charles Dickens when he visited the United States in the 1840s. In 2011, \"Travel + Leisure\" listed the Yale campus as one of the most beautiful in the United States.\nMany of Yale's buildings were constructed in the Collegiate Gothic architecture style from 1917 to 1931, financed largely by Edward S. Harkness, including the Yale Drama School. Stone sculpture built into the walls of the buildings portray contemporary college personalities, such as a writer, an athlete, a tea-drinking socialite, and a student who has fallen asleep while reading. Similarly, the decorative friezes on the buildings depict contemporary scenes, like a policemen chasing a robber and arresting a prostitute (on the wall of the Law School), or a student relaxing with a mug of beer and a cigarette. The architect, James Gamble Rogers, faux-aged these buildings by splashing the walls with acid, deliberately breaking their leaded glass windows and repairing them in the style of the Middle Ages, and creating niches for decorative statuary but leaving them empty to simulate loss or theft over the ages. In fact, the buildings merely simulate Middle Ages architecture, for though they appear to be constructed of solid stone blocks in the authentic manner, most actually have steel framing as was commonly used in 1930. One exception is Harkness Tower, tall, which was originally a free-standing stone structure. It was reinforced in 1964 to allow the installation of the Yale Memorial Carillon.\nOther examples of the Gothic style are on the Old Campus by architects like Henry Austin, Charles C. Haight and Russell Sturgis. Several are associated with members of the Vanderbilt family, including Vanderbilt Hall, Phelps Hall, St. Anthony Hall (a commission for member Frederick William Vanderbilt), the Mason, Sloane and Osborn laboratories, dormitories for the Sheffield Scientific School (the engineering and sciences school at Yale until 1956) and elements of Silliman College, the largest residential college.\nThe oldest building on campus, Connecticut Hall (built in 1750), is in the Georgian style. Georgian-style buildings erected from 1929 to 1933 include Timothy Dwight College, Pierson College, and Davenport College, except the latter's east, York Street fa\u00e7ade, which was constructed in the Gothic style to coordinate with adjacent structures.\nThe Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, is one of the largest buildings in the world reserved exclusively for the preservation of rare books and manuscripts. The library includes a six-story above-ground tower of book stacks, filled with 180,000 volumes, that is surrounded by large translucent Vermont marble panels and a steel and granite truss. The panels act as windows and subdue direct sunlight while also diffusing the light in warm hues throughout the interior. Near the library is a sunken courtyard with sculptures by Isamu Noguchi that are said to represent time (the pyramid), the sun (the circle), and chance (the cube). The library is located near the center of the university in Hewitt Quadrangle, which is now more commonly referred to as \"Beinecke Plaza\".\nAlumnus Eero Saarinen, Finnish-American architect of such notable structures as the Gateway Arch in St.\u00a0Louis, Washington Dulles International Airport main terminal, Bell Labs Holmdel Complex and the CBS Building in Manhattan, designed Ingalls Rink, dedicated in 1959, as well as the residential colleges Ezra Stiles and Morse. These latter were modeled after the medieval Italian hill town of San Gimignano\u2014a prototype chosen for the town's pedestrian-friendly milieu and fortress-like stone towers. These tower forms at Yale act in counterpoint to the college's many Gothic spires and Georgian cupolas.\nThe athletic field complex is partially in New Haven, and partially in West Haven.\nNotable nonresidential campus buildings.\nNotable nonresidential campus buildings and landmarks include Battell Chapel, Beinecke Rare Book Library, Harkness Tower, Humanities Quadrangle, Ingalls Rink, Kline Biology Tower, Osborne Memorial Laboratories, Payne Whitney Gymnasium, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Sterling Hall of Medicine, Sterling Law Buildings, Sterling Memorial Library, Woolsey Hall, Yale Center for British Art, Yale University Art Gallery, Yale Art & Architecture Building, and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London.\nYale's secret society buildings (some of which are called \"tombs\") were built to be private yet unmistakable. A diversity of architectural styles is represented: Berzelius, Donn Barber in an austere cube with classical detailing (erected in 1908 or 1910); Book and Snake, Louis R. Metcalfe in a Greek Ionic style (erected in 1901); Elihu, architect unknown but built in a Colonial style (constructed on an early 17th-century foundation although the building is from the 18th century); Mace and Chain, in a late colonial, early Victorian style (built in 1823). (Interior moulding is said to have belonged to Benedict Arnold); Manuscript Society, King-lui Wu with Dan Kiley responsible for landscaping and Josef Albers for the brickwork intaglio mural. Building constructed in a mid-century modern style; Scroll and Key, Richard Morris Hunt in a Moorish- or Islamic-inspired Beaux-Arts style (erected 1869\u201370); Skull and Bones, possibly Alexander Jackson Davis or Henry Austin in an Egypto-Doric style utilizing Brownstone (in 1856 the first wing was completed, in 1903 the second wing, 1911 the Neo-Gothic towers in rear garden were completed); St. Elmo, (former tomb) Kenneth M. Murchison, 1912, designs inspired by Elizabethan manor. Current location, brick colonial; and Wolf's Head, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, erected 1923\u20131924, Collegiate Gothic.\nSustainability.\nYale's Office of Sustainability develops and implements sustainability practices at Yale. Yale is committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 10% below 1990 levels by 2020. As part of this commitment, the university allocates renewable energy credits to offset some of the energy used by residential colleges. Eleven campus buildings are candidates for LEED design and certification. Yale Sustainable Food Project initiated the introduction of local, organic vegetables, fruits, and beef to all residential college dining halls. Yale was listed as a Campus Sustainability Leader on the Sustainable Endowments Institute's College Sustainability Report Card 2008, and received a \"B+\" grade overall. Yale is a member of the Ivy Plus Sustainability Consortium, through which it has committed to best-practice sharing and the ongoing exchange of campus sustainability solutions along with other member institutions.\nRelationship with New Haven.\nYale is the largest taxpayer and employer in the City of New Haven, and has often buoyed the city's economy and communities. Yale, however, has consistently opposed paying a tax on its academic property. Yale's Art Galleries, along with many other university resources, are free and openly accessible. Yale also funds the New Haven Promise program, paying full tuition for eligible students from New Haven public schools.\nTown\u2013gown relations.\nYale has a complicated relationship with its home city; for example, thousands of students volunteer every year in myriad community organizations, but city officials, who decry Yale's exemption from local property taxes, have long pressed the university to do more to help. Under President Levin, Yale has financially supported many of New Haven's efforts to reinvigorate the city. Evidence suggests that the town and gown relationships are mutually beneficial. Still, the economic power of the university increased dramatically with its financial success amid a decline in the local economy.\nCampus safety.\nSeveral campus safety strategies have been pioneered at Yale. The first campus police force was founded at Yale in 1894, when the university contracted city police officers to exclusively cover the campus. Later hired by the university, the officers were originally brought in to quell unrest between students and city residents and curb destructive student behavior. In addition to the Yale Police Department, a variety of safety services are available including blue phones, a safety escort, and 24-hour shuttle service.\nIn the 1970s and 1980s, poverty and violent crime rose in New Haven, dampening Yale's student and faculty recruiting efforts. Between 1990 and 2006, New Haven's crime rate fell by half, helped by a community policing strategy by the New Haven Police and Yale's campus became the safest among peer schools.\nIn 2004, the national non-profit watchdog group Security on Campus filed a complaint with the U.S.\u00a0Department of Education, accusing Yale of under-reporting rape and sexual assaults.\nIn April 2021, Yale announced that it will require students to receive a COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of being on campus during the fall 2021 term.\nAcademics.\nAdmissions.\nUndergraduate admission to Yale College is considered \"most selective\" by \"U.S. News\". In 2022, Yale accepted 2,234 students to the Class of 2026 out of 50,015 applicants, for an acceptance rate of 4.46%. 98% of students graduate within six years.\nThrough its program of need-based financial aid, Yale commits to meet the full demonstrated financial need of all applicants, and the university is need-blind for both domestic and international applicants. Most financial aid is in the form of grants and scholarships that do not need to be paid back to the university, and the average need-based aid grant for the Class of 2017 was $. 15% of Yale College students are expected to have no parental contribution, and about 50% receive some form of financial aid. About 16% of the Class of 2013 had some form of student loan debt at graduation, with an average debt of $ among borrowers. For 2019, Yale ranked second in enrollment of recipients of the National Merit $2,500 Scholarship (140 scholars).\nHalf of all Yale undergraduates are women, more than 39% are ethnic minority U.S. citizens (19% are underrepresented minorities), and 10.5% are international students. 55% attended public schools and 45% attended private, religious, or international schools, and 97% of students were in the top 10% of their high school class. Every year, Yale College also admits a small group of non-traditional students through the Eli Whitney Students Program.\nCollections.\nYale University Library, which holds over 15\u00a0million volumes, is the second-largest university collection in the United States. The main library, Sterling Memorial Library, contains about 4\u00a0million volumes, and other holdings are dispersed at subject and location libraries.\nRare books are found in several Yale collections. The Beinecke Rare Book Library has a large collection of rare books and manuscripts. The Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library includes important historical medical texts, including an impressive collection of rare books, as well as historical medical instruments. The Lewis Walpole Library contains the largest collection of 18th\u2011century British literary works. The Elizabethan Club, technically a private organization, makes its Elizabethan folios and first editions available to qualified researchers through Yale.\nYale's museum collections are also of international stature. The Yale University Art Gallery, the country's first university-affiliated art museum, contains more than 200,000 works, including Old Masters and important collections of modern art, in the Swartwout and Kahn buildings. The latter, Louis Kahn's first large-scale American work (1953), was renovated and reopened in December 2006. The Yale Center for British Art, the largest collection of British art outside of the UK, grew from a gift of Paul Mellon and is housed in another Kahn-designed building.\nThe Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven is used by school children and contains research collections in anthropology, archaeology, and the natural environment.\nThe Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments, affiliated with the Yale School of Music, is perhaps the least-known of Yale's collections because its hours of opening are restricted.\nThe museums once housed the artifacts brought to the United States from Peru by Yale history professor Hiram Bingham in his Yale-financed expedition to Machu Picchu in 1912\u2014when the removal of such artifacts was legal. The artifacts were restored to Peru in 2012.\nRankings.\nThe \"U.S. News & World Report\" ranked Yale third among U.S. national universities for 2016, as it had for each of the previous sixteen years. Yale University is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education.\nInternationally, Yale was ranked 11th in the 2016 Academic Ranking of World Universities, tenth in the 2016\u201317 Nature Index for quality of scientific research output, and tenth in the 2016 CWUR World University Rankings. The university was also ranked sixth in the 2016 Times Higher Education (THE) Global University Employability Rankings and eighth in the Academic World Reputation Rankings. In 2019, it ranked 27th among the universities around the world by \"SCImago Institutions Rankings\".\nFaculty, research, and intellectual traditions.\nYale is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU) and is classified among \"R1: Doctoral Universities\u2014Very high research activity\". The National Science Foundation ranked Yale 15th among American universities for research and development expenditures in 2021 with $.\nYale's current faculty include 67 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 55 members of the National Academy of Medicine, 8 members of the National Academy of Engineering, and 187 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The college is, after normalization for institution size, the tenth-largest baccalaureate source of doctoral degree recipients in the United States, and the largest such source within the Ivy League. It also is a top 10 (ranked seventh) baccalaureate source (after normalization for the number of graduates) of some of the most notable scientists (Nobel, Fields, Turing prizes, or membership in National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, or National Academy of Medicine).\nYale's English and Comparative Literature departments were part of the New Criticism movement. Of the New Critics, Robert Penn Warren, W.K. Wimsatt, and Cleanth Brooks were all Yale faculty. Later, the Yale Comparative literature department became a center of American deconstruction. Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, taught at the department of comparative literature from the late 1970s to mid-1980s. Several other Yale faculty members were also associated with deconstruction, forming the so-called \"Yale School\". These included Paul de Man who taught in the Departments of Comparative Literature and French, J.\u00a0Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartman (both taught in the Departments of English and Comparative Literature), and Harold Bloom (English), whose theoretical position was always somewhat specific, and who ultimately took a very different path from the rest of this group. Yale's history department has also originated important intellectual trends. Historians C.\u00a0Vann Woodward and David Brion Davis are credited with beginning in the 1960s and 1970s an important stream of southern historians; likewise, David Montgomery, a labor historian, advised many of the current generation of labor historians in the country. Yale's Music School and department fostered the growth of Music Theory in the latter half of the 20th\u00a0century. The \"Journal of Music Theory\" was founded there in 1957; Allen Forte and David Lewin were influential teachers and scholars.\nSince the late 1960s, Yale produces social sciences and policy research through its Yale Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS).\nIn addition to eminent faculty members, Yale research relies heavily on the presence of roughly 1200 Postdocs from various national and international origin working in the multiple laboratories in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and professional schools of the university. The university progressively recognized this working force with the recent creation of the Office for Postdoctoral Affairs and the Yale Postdoctoral Association.\nCampus life.\nYale is a research university, with the majority of its students in the graduate and professional schools. Undergraduates, or Yale College students, come from a variety of ethnic, national, socioeconomic, and personal backgrounds. Of the 2010\u20132011 freshman class, 10% are non\u2011U.S. citizens, while 54% went to public high schools. The median family income of Yale students is $, with 57% of students coming from the top 10% highest-earning families and 16% from the bottom 60%.\nResidential colleges.\nYale's residential college system was established in 1933 by Edward S. Harkness, who admired the social intimacy of Oxford and Cambridge and donated significant funds to found similar colleges at Yale and Harvard. Though Yale's colleges resemble their English precursors organizationally and architecturally, they are dependent entities of Yale College and have limited autonomy. The colleges are led by a head and an academic dean, who reside in the college, and university faculty and affiliates constitute each college's fellowship. Colleges offer their own seminars, social events, and speaking engagements known as \"Master's Teas\", but do not contain programs of study or academic departments. All other undergraduate courses are taught by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and are open to members of any college.\nAll undergraduates are members of a college, to which they are assigned before their freshman year, and 85 percent live in the college quadrangle or a college-affiliated dormitory. While the majority of upperclassman live in the colleges, most on-campus freshmen live on the Old Campus, the university's oldest precinct.\nWhile Harkness' original colleges were Georgian Revival or Collegiate Gothic in style, two colleges constructed in the 1960s, Morse and Ezra Stiles Colleges, have modernist designs. All twelve college quadrangles are organized around a courtyard, and each has a dining hall, courtyard, library, common room, and a range of student facilities. The twelve colleges are named for important alumni or significant places in university history. In 2017, the university opened two new colleges near Science Hill.\nCalhoun College.\nSince the 1960s, John C. Calhoun's white supremacist beliefs and pro-slavery leadership had prompted calls to rename the college or remove its tributes to Calhoun. The racially motivated church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, led to renewed calls in the summer of 2015 for Calhoun College, one of 12 residential colleges at the time, to be renamed. In July 2015 students signed a petition calling for the name change. They argued in the petition that\u2014while Calhoun was respected in the 19th century as an \"extraordinary American statesman\"\u2014he was \"one of the most prolific defenders of slavery and white supremacy\" in the history of the United States. In August 2015, Yale President Peter Salovey addressed the Freshman Class of 2019 in which he responded to the racial tensions but explained why the college would not be renamed. He described Calhoun as \"a notable political theorist, a vice president to two different U.S. presidents, a secretary of war and of state, and a congressman and senator representing South Carolina\". He acknowledged that Calhoun also \"believed that the highest forms of civilization depend on involuntary servitude. Not only that, but he also believed that the races he thought to be inferior, black people in particular, ought to be subjected to it for the sake of their own best interests.\" Student activism about this issue increased in the fall of 2015, and included further protests sparked by controversy surrounding an administrator's comments on the potential positive and negative implications of students who wear Halloween costumes that are culturally sensitive. Campus-wide discussions expanded to include critical discussion of the experiences of women of color on campus, and the realities of racism in undergraduate life. The protests were sensationalized by the media and led to the labelling of some students as being members of Generation Snowflake.\nIn April 2016, Salovey announced that \"despite decades of vigorous alumni and student protests\", Calhoun's name will remain on the Yale residential college explaining that it is preferable for Yale students to live in Calhoun's \"shadow\" so they will be \"better prepared to rise to the challenges of the present and the future\". He claimed that if they removed Calhoun's name, it would \"obscure\" his \"legacy of slavery rather than addressing it\". \"Yale is part of that history\" and \"We cannot erase American history, but we can confront it, teach it and learn from it.\" One change that will be issued is the title of \"master\" for faculty members who serve as residential college leaders will be renamed to \"head of college\" due to its connotation of slavery.\nDespite this apparently conclusive reasoning, Salovey announced that Calhoun College would be renamed for groundbreaking computer scientist Grace Hopper in February 2017. This renaming decision received a range of responses from Yale students and alumni. In his 2019 book \"Assault on American Excellence\", former Dean of Yale Law School Anthony T. Kronman criticized the title and name changes and the lack of support from Salovey for the Christakises, who were targeted by the student activists. Other members of the university community disagreed with Kronman's positions.\nStudent organizations.\nIn 2024, Yale had 526 registered undergraduate student organizations, plus hundreds of others for graduate students.\nThe university hosts a variety of student journals, magazines, and newspapers. The \"Yale Literary Magazine\", founded in February 1836, is the oldest student literary magazine in the United States. Established in 1872, \"The Yale Record\" is the world's oldest college humor magazine. Newspapers include the \"Yale Daily News\", which was first published in 1878, and the weekly \"Yale Herald\", which was first published in 1986. The \"Yale Journal of Medicine & Law\" is a biannual magazine that explores the intersection of law and medicine.\nDwight Hall, an independent, non-profit community service organization, oversees more than 2,000 Yale undergraduates working on more than 70 community service initiatives in New Haven. The Yale College Council runs several agencies that oversee campus wide activities and student services. The Yale Dramatic Association and Bulldog Productions cater to the theater and film communities, respectively. In addition, the Yale Drama Coalition serves to coordinate between and provide resources for the various Sudler Fund sponsored theater productions which run each weekend. WYBC Yale Radio is the campus's radio station, owned and operated by students. While students used to broadcast on AM and FM frequencies, they now have an Internet-only stream.\nThe Yale College Council (YCC) serves as the campus's undergraduate student government. All registered student organizations are regulated and funded by a subsidiary organization of the YCC, known as the Undergraduate Organizations Funding Committee (UOFC). The Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS) serves as Yale's graduate and professional student government.\nThe Yale Political Union (YPU) is a debate society founded in 1934 to host student discussions on a wide variety of topics. It is advised by alumni political leaders such as John Kerry and George Pataki.\nThe Yale International Relations Association (YIRA) functions as the umbrella organization for the university's top-ranked Model UN team. YIRA also has a Europe-based offshoot, Yale Model Government Europe, other Model UN conferences such as YMUN, YMUN Korea, YMUN Taiwan and Yale Model African Union (YMAU), the Yale Review of International Studies (YRIS), and educational programs such as the Yale International Relations Leadership Institute and Hemispheres.\nThe campus includes several fraternities and sororities. The campus features at least 18 a\u00a0cappella groups, the most famous of which is The Whiffenpoofs, which from its founding in 1909 until 2018 was made up solely of senior men.\nThe Elizabethan Club, a social club, has a membership of undergraduates, graduates, faculty and staff with literary or artistic interests. Membership is by invitation. Members and their guests may enter the \"Lizzie's\" premises for conversation and tea. The club owns first editions of a Shakespeare Folio, several Shakespeare Quartos, and a first edition of Milton's \"Paradise Lost\", among other important literary texts.\nSecret societies.\nYale's secret societies include Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key, Wolf's Head, Book and Snake, Elihu, Berzelius, St.\u00a0Elmo, Manuscript, Brothers in Unity, Linonia, St. Anthony Hall, Shabtai, Myth and Sword, Daughters of Sovereign Government (DSG), Mace and Chain, ISO, Spade and Grave, and Sage and Chalice, among others. The two oldest existing honor societies are the Aurelian (1910) and the Torch Honor Society (1916).\nThese are akin to Harvard finals clubs, Princeton eating clubs, and senior societies at University of Pennsylvania.\nTraditions.\nYale seniors at graduation smash clay pipes underfoot to symbolize passage from their \"bright college years\", though in recent history the pipes have been replaced with \"bubble pipes\". (\"Bright College Years\", the university's alma mater, was penned in 1881 by Henry Durand, Class of 1881, to the tune of \"Die Wacht am Rhein\".) Yale's student tour guides tell visitors that students consider it good luck to rub the toe of the statue of Theodore Dwight Woolsey on Old Campus; however, actual students rarely do so. In the second half of the 20th century Bladderball, a campus-wide game played with a large inflatable ball, became a popular tradition but was banned by administration due to safety concerns. In spite of administration opposition, students revived the game in 2009, 2011, and 2014.\nAthletics.\nYale supports 35 varsity athletic teams that compete in the Ivy League Conference, the Eastern College Athletic Conference, and the New England Intercollegiate Sailing Association. Yale athletic teams compete intercollegiately at the NCAA Division\u00a0I level. Like other members of the Ivy League, Yale does not offer athletic scholarships.\nYale has numerous athletic facilities, including the Yale Bowl (the nation's first natural \"bowl\" stadium, and prototype for such stadiums as the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the Rose Bowl), located at The Walter Camp Field athletic complex, and the Payne Whitney Gymnasium, the second-largest indoor athletic complex in the world.\nIn 1970, the NCAA banned Yale from participating in all NCAA sports for two years, in reaction to Yale\u2014against the wishes of the NCAA\u2014playing its Jewish center Jack Langer in college games after Langer had played for Team United States at the 1969 Maccabiah Games in Israel with the approval of Yale President Kingman Brewster. The decision impacted 300 Yale students, every Yale student on its sports teams, over the next two years.\nIn 2016, the men's basketball team won the Ivy League Championship title for the first time in 54 years, earning a spot in the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. In the first round of the tournament, the Bulldogs beat the Baylor Bears 79\u201375 in the school's first-ever tournament win.\nIn May 2018, the men's lacrosse team defeated the Duke Blue Devils to claim their first-ever NCAA Division I Men's Lacrosse Championship, and were the first Ivy League school to win the title since the Princeton Tigers in 2001.\nYale crew is the oldest collegiate athletic team in America, and won Olympic Games Gold Medal for men's eights in 1924 and 1956. The Yale Corinthian Yacht Club, founded in 1881, is the oldest collegiate sailing club in the world. October 21, 2000, marked the dedication of Yale's fourth new boathouse in 157\u00a0years of collegiate rowing. The Gilder Boathouse is named to honor former Olympic rower Virginia Gilder\u00a0'79 and her father Richard Gilder\u00a0'54, who gave $ towards the $ project. Yale also maintains the Gales Ferry site where the heavyweight men's team trains for the Yale-Harvard Boat Race.\nIn 1896, Yale and Johns Hopkins played the first known ice hockey game in the United States. Since 2006, the school's ice hockey clubs have played a commemorative game.\nYale students claim to have invented Frisbee, by tossing empty Frisbie Pie Company tins.\nYale athletics are supported by the Yale Precision Marching Band. \"Precision\" is used here ironically; the band is a scatter-style band that runs wildly between formations rather than actually marching. The band attends every home football game and many away, as well as most hockey and basketball games throughout the winter.\nYale intramural sports are also a significant aspect of student life. Students compete for their respective residential colleges, fostering a friendly rivalry. The year is divided into fall, winter, and spring seasons, each of which includes about 10 different sports. About half the sports are coeducational. At the end of the year, the residential college with the most points (not all sports count equally) wins the Tyng Cup.\nSong.\nNotable among the songs commonly played and sung at events such as commencement, convocation, alumni gatherings, and athletic games is the alma mater, \"Bright College Years\". Despite its popularity, \"Boola Boola\" is not the official fight song, albeit being the origin of the university's unofficial motto. The official Yale fight song, \"Bulldog\" was written by Cole Porter during his undergraduate days and is sung after touchdowns during a football game. Additionally, two other songs, \"Down the Field\" by C.W. O'Conner, and \"Bingo Eli Yale\", also by Cole Porter, are still sung at football games. According to \"College Fight Songs: An Annotated Anthology\" published in 1998, \"Down the Field\" ranks as the fourth-greatest fight song of all time.\nMascot.\nThe school mascot is \"Handsome Dan\", the Yale bulldog, and the Yale fight song contains the refrain, \"Bulldog, bulldog, bow wow wow\". The school color, since 1894, is Yale Blue. Yale's Handsome Dan is believed to be the first college mascot in America, having been established in 1889.\nMental health.\nYale has faced significant criticism for its handling of student mental health on campus. Suicidal and depressed students say that Yale forced them to medically withdraw rather than provide them with academic accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and in 2018 the Ruderman Family Foundation ranked Yale as having the worst mental health policies in the Ivy League.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nDear Yale, I loved being here. I only wish I could've had some time. I needed time to work things out and to wait for new medication to kick in, but I couldn't do it in school, and I couldn't bear the thought of having to leave for a full year, or of leaving and never being readmitted. Love, Luchang.\nLuchang Wang, posted on Facebook in 2015 shortly before her death\nStudents at Yale say that the university's policies force them to hide their depression and avoid seeking help, for fear of being forced to leave. One prominent case was the suicide of Luchang Wang in 2015, who died by suicide after making a Facebook post saying that she needed time to deal with her mental health issues, but could not deal with being forced to medically withdraw for an entire year with an uncertain chance of being readmitted. Wang had previously withdrawn from school due to mental health issues, and was afraid of being forced to withdraw again, as a second readmission attempt would be considerably more difficult for her. A friend of Wang said that she routinely lied to her university therapist to avoid being kicked out, and another student said that many at Yale lie to their counselors as \"there's no clear standard established that says exactly what students will get involuntarily hospitalized or withdrawn for\". In response, the university convened a commission to evaluate their readmission policies after a mental health withdrawal, renaming the process to \"reinstatement\" as well as eliminating the $ reapplication fee.\nFor students that do seek help, waitlists for therapy can be months long, with individual counselling sessions only 30 minutes in length. In 2022, after a Washington Post article about their medical withdrawal policies, the school increased the number of mental health clinicians on campus from 51 to 60 as well as promised further changes. In 2023, after a lawsuit was filed against the school for what the plaintiffs described as discrimination, the university changed the name of a \"medical withdrawal\" to a \"medical leave of absence\" saying that the \"leave of absence\" terminology would allow students to remain on Yale's insurance while away from the school. The new policy also allowed for students on a leave of absence to participate in extracurricular clubs and visit campus, something a student on medical withdrawal was banned from doing. A representative of Yale also said that the criticism of their policies \"misrepresents our efforts and unwavering commitment to supporting our students, whose well-being and success are our primary focus\" and that \"the mental health of our students is a very, very high priority\".\nAfter the death of undergraduate student Rachael Shaw Rosenbaum by suicide, an organization called Elis for Rachael was formed, advocating for mental health-related reforms. The group has sued Yale, demanding changes.\nNotable people.\nBenefactors.\nYale has had many financial supporters, but some stand out by the magnitude or timeliness of their contributions. Among those who have made large donations commemorated at the university are: Elihu Yale, Jeremiah Dummer, the Vanderbilt family, the Harkness family (Edward, Anna, and William), the Beinecke family (Edwin, Frederick, and Walter), John William Sterling, Payne Whitney, Joseph Earl Sheffield, Paul Mellon, Charles B.\u00a0G. Murphy, Joseph Tsai, William K. Lanman, and Stephen Schwarzman. The Yale Class of 1954, led by Richard Gilder, donated $ in commemoration of their 50th\u00a0reunion. Charles B. Johnson, a 1954 graduate of Yale College, pledged a $ gift in 2013 to support the construction of two new residential colleges. The colleges have been named respectively in honor of Pauli Murray and Benjamin Franklin. A $ contribution by Stephen Adams enabled the Yale School of Music to become tuition-free and the Adams Center for Musical Arts to be built, while a $ contribution by David Geffen enabled the Yale School of Drama (renamed the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale) to become tuition-free as well.\nNotable alumni.\nYale has produced many distinguished alumni in various fields, in both the public and private sectors. According to 2020 data, around 71% of undergraduates join the workforce, while 17% attend graduate or professional schools. Yale graduates have been recipients of 263 Rhodes Scholarships, 123 Marshall Scholarships, 67 Truman Scholarships, 21 Churchill Scholarships, and 9 Mitchell Scholarships. The university is the 2nd largest producer of Fulbright Scholars, with 1,244 in its history and 89 MacArthur Fellows. The U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs ranked Yale fifth among research institutions producing the most 2020\u20132021 Fulbright Scholars. 31 living billionaires are alumni.\nOne of the most popular undergraduate majors is political science, with many going on to serve in government and politics. Former presidents who attended for undergrad include William Howard Taft, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush while former presidents Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton attended Yale Law School. Vice president JD Vance graduated from Yale Law School. Former vice president and influential antebellum era politician John C. Calhoun also graduated from Yale. Former world leaders include Italian prime minister Mario Monti, Turkish prime minister Tansu \u00c7iller, South Korean prime minister Lee Hong-koo, Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, German president Karl Carstens, Philippine president Jos\u00e9 Paciano Laurel, Latvian president Valdis Zatlers, Taiwanese premier Jiang Yi-huah, and Malawian president Peter Mutharika, among others. Prominent royals who graduated are Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, and Olympia Bonaparte, Princess Napol\u00e9on.\nAlumni have had considerable presence in U.S. government in all three branches. On the U.S. Supreme Court, 19 justices have been alumni, including current Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh. Alumni have been U.S. Senators, including current senators Michael Bennet, Richard Blumenthal, Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown, Chris Coons, Amy Klobuchar, Sheldon Whitehouse. Current and former cabinet members include Secretaries of State John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Cyrus Vance, and Dean Acheson; U.S. Secretaries of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, Robert Rubin, Nicholas F. Brady, Steven Mnuchin, and Janet Yellen; U.S. Attorneys General Nicholas Katzenbach, Edwin Meese, John Ashcroft, and Edward H. Levi; and many others. Peace Corps founder and American diplomat Sargent Shriver and public official and urban planner Robert Moses are Yale alumni.\nYale has produced numerous award-winning authors and influential writers, like Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Sinclair Lewis and Pulitzer Prize winners Stephen Vincent Ben\u00e9t, Thornton Wilder, Doug Wright, and David McCullough. Academy Award winning actors, actresses, and directors include Jodie Foster, Paul Newman, Meryl Streep, Elia Kazan, George Roy Hill, Lupita Nyong'o, Oliver Stone, and Frances McDormand. Alumni from Yale have also made notable contributions to both music and the arts. Leading American composer from the 20th century Charles Ives, Broadway composer Cole Porter, Grammy award winner David Lang, multi-Tony Award winner Composer and Musicologist Maury Yeston, and award-winning jazz pianist and composer Vijay Iyer all hail from Yale. Hugo Boss Prize winner Matthew Barney, famed American sculptor Richard Serra, President Barack Obama presidential portrait painter Kehinde Wiley, MacArthur Fellows and contemporary artists Tschabalala Self, Titus Kaphar, Richard Whitten, and Sarah Sze, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Garry Trudeau, and National Medal of Arts photorealist painter Chuck Close all graduated from Yale. Additional alumni include architect and Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Maya Lin, Pritzker Prize winner Norman Foster, and Gateway Arch designer Eero Saarinen. Journalists and pundits include Dick Cavett, Chris Cuomo, Anderson Cooper, William F. Buckley Jr., Blake Hounshell, and Fareed Zakaria.\nIn business, Yale has had numerous alumni and former students go on to become founders of influential business, like William Boeing (Boeing, United Airlines), Briton Hadden and Henry Luce (\"Time Magazine\"), Stephen A. Schwarzman (Blackstone Group), Frederick W. Smith (FedEx), Juan Trippe (Pan Am), Harold Stanley (Morgan Stanley), Bing Gordon (Electronic Arts), and Ben Silbermann (Pinterest). Other business people from Yale include former chairman and CEO of Sears Holdings Edward Lampert, former Time Warner president Jeffrey Bewkes, former PepsiCo chairperson and CEO Indra Nooyi, sports agent Donald Dell, and investor/philanthropist Sir John Templeton,\nAlumni distinguished in academia include literary critic and historian Henry Louis Gates, economists Irving Fischer, Mahbub ul Haq, and Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman; Nobel Prize in Physics laureates Ernest Lawrence and Murray Gell-Mann; Fields Medalist John G. Thompson; Human Genome Project leader and National Institutes of Health director Francis S. Collins; brain surgery pioneer Harvey Cushing; pioneering computer scientist Grace Hopper; influential mathematician and chemist Josiah Willard Gibbs; National Women's Hall of Fame inductee and biochemist Florence B. Seibert; Turing Award recipient Ron Rivest; inventors Samuel F.B. Morse and Eli Whitney; Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate John B. Goodenough; lexicographer Noah Webster; and theologians Jonathan Edwards and Reinhold Niebuhr.\nIn the sporting arena, alumni include baseball players Ron Darling and Craig Breslow who in the major leagues played with fellow Yale alum Ryan Lavarnway and baseball executives Theo Epstein and George Weiss; football players Calvin Hill, Gary Fenick, Amos Alonzo Stagg, and \"the Father of American Football\" Walter Camp; ice hockey players Chris Higgins and Olympian Helen Resor; Olympic figure skating champions Sarah Hughes and Nathan Chen; nine-time U.S. Squash men's champion Julian Illingworth; Olympic swimmer Don Schollander; Olympic rowers Josh West and Rusty Wailes; Olympic sailor Stuart McNay; Olympic runner Frank Shorter; and others.\nIn fiction and popular culture.\nYale University is a cultural referent as an institution that produces some of the most elite members of society and its grounds, alumni, and students have been prominently portrayed in fiction and U.S. popular culture. For example, Owen Johnson's novel \"Stover at Yale\" follows the college career of Dink Stover, and Frank Merriwell, the model for all later juvenile sports fiction, plays football, baseball, crew, and track at Yale while solving mysteries and righting wrongs. Yale University also is mentioned in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel \"The Great Gatsby\". The narrator, Nick Carraway, wrote a series of editorials for the \"Yale News\", and Tom Buchanan was \"one of the most powerful ends that ever played football\" for Yale.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["7234091", "34273", "53825"], "permutation_1": ["53825", "34273", "7234091"], "permutation_2": ["34273", "53825", "7234091"], "permutation_3": ["7234091", "34273", "53825"]}
{"id": "3hop1__395606_355553_476740", "docs_added": {"41770159": "Angels of the Apocalypse\nAngels of the Apocalypse is the second full-length album by Timo Tolkki's Finnish metal opera project Avalon, released on May 16, 2014 in Europe and four days later in North America.\nIt is the second part of the trilogy created by Tolkki, written as a prequel to the previous album \"The Land of New Hope\".\nAs with the previous effort, several heavy metal singers were invited to play the characters of the story of the album, with female vocalist Elize Ryd of Amaranthe reprising her role and Floor Jansen (Nightwish, ReVamp) playing the main character. The rest of the cast includes Fabio Lione (Rhapsody of Fire, Angra), David DeFeis (Virgin Steele), Simone Simons (Epica), Caterina Nix (solo Chilean singer who is having her debut album produced by Timo Tolkki) and Zachary Stevens (ex-Savatage, Circle II Circle).\nBackground and recording.\nThe album started to be composed in August 2013 in Greece, to where Timo travelled to seek inspiration.\nIn October 2013, Timo Tolkki launched a news website for the project in which he announced the album, which was provisionally titled \"Avalon II\". Tolkki also announced he would be working with former Stratovarius bandmates Tuomo Lassila (drums) and Antti Ikonen (keyboards).\nIn late January, Tolkki revealed the name of the album and the remaining singers. Timo also announced that there will be a contest for guitar and keyboard players, with the winners getting a chance to perform a solo with him in one of the songs.\nOnce again, the artwork was created by French artist Stanis W. Decker.\nTimo stated he created some songs with a specific singer in mind. The title-track will clock around 10:00. He also described the music of the album as \"darker and heavier\" than its predecessor, which was necessary due to the \"Apocalyptic scenes described in the lyrics\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "29407439": "The Black Light Bacchanalia\nThe Black Light Bacchanalia is the twelfth album by New York power metal group Virgin Steele. It was released via SPV/Steamhammer on October 22, 2010 in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, on October 25, 2010 in the rest of Europe, and on November 9, 2010 in the U.S.\nThe album is issued in CD format, limited edition digipak (with a bonus CD) and 3,000 copies worldwide boxset (with triple LP vinyl with a book, CD and extensive packaging).\nWith a duration of over 11 minutes, \"To Crown Them with Halos (Parts 1 & 2)\" was the longest track Virgin Steele had ever recorded until it was surpassed by the 13-minute \"The Ritual of Descent\" from their 2023 album \"The Passion of Dionysus\".\nTrack listing.\nAll music and lyrics by David DeFeis\nReception.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />It is a long album...close to 80 minutes. The album (to be really brief) concerns the reversal of all things. Once conquered by invading cultures, older Pagan deities become the demons from the new religion. The Black Light Bacchanalia is a reversal of the sacred sexual customs, and the final desecration of the 'Goddess Principle,' switching from matrilineal descent to patrilineal descent, with the rise of the idea of the Mountain-Fire God...And it also has to do with ancient fears such as the fear of the sun not rising...Lyrically it is a kind of continuation of the story I told on the last album...Musically it is quite something else...\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "19360420": "David DeFeis\nAmerican heavy metal singer\nDavid DeFeis (born January 4, 1961) is an American singer, songwriter and producer. He is the main composer, leader and sole constant member of the heavy metal band Virgin Steele.\nBiography.\nDeFeis comes from a theatrical family: his father is a Shakespearian actor who runs the theatre company \"The Arena Players Theatre\" while his sister Doreen is a gifted opera singer who performs all over Europe.\nA big fan of European classical music, at 9\u201310 years old he was introduced to rock music by hearing the band Stalk, with his brother Damon (on organ and piano) and his sister Danae (on vocals), playing in the basement beneath his room. Damon DeFeis was later in the band Creation with future Kiss drummer Eric Carr, and died in the Gulliver's nightclub fire in 1974. \nHe began piano lessons at the age of eight. By age eleven, he began his career with Long Island's local heavy metal band Phoenix.\nAt 16 years old, he met for the first time his future partner Edward Pursino when DeFeis's band at the time, Mountain Ash, was auditioning for a gig at the high school dance. Mountain Ash was mainly a Black Sabbath cover band and, after the performance of the song \"War Pigs\", Pursino came over and introduced himself to DeFeis.\nAt the beginning of the 1980s, together with Jack Starr and Joey Ayvazian, he started the first line-up of the band Virgin Steele. They debuted in 1982 with the song \"Children of the Storm\" included in the compilation \"U.S. Metal Vol. II\". \nIn 1985, the guitarist Edward Pursino replaced Starr. Among the years, in their longtime relationship in Virgin Steele, DeFeis and Pursino released a lot of heavy metal classics such as the albums: \"Noble Savage\", \"Invictus\", \"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part I\", \"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part II\".\nDeFeis collects swords: his collection includes more than 20 items. In studio, sometimes he uses his swords to create particular effects for the Virgin Steele songs, and during the concerts he usually burns a sword on stage.\nVoice and musical style.\nDeFeis is a classically trained pianist, with a bachelor's degree in composition from S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook. As vocalist, he is self-taught, possessing around four octaves and a four notes: E2-B6. He said he was very much influenced by guitar players like Jimmy Page, Brian May and Eddie Van Halen, because he wanted to do with his voice what they did with their guitars. He is also influenced by rock singers like Freddie Mercury, Robert Plant, David Coverdale, Ronnie James Dio and Ian Gillan.\nThe major part of the lyrics DeFeis writes are mythological, dealing with subjects from especially Greek, Sumerian and Christian mythology. All of them are based on real life in some form or another.\nMetal opera and theatre.\nBetween the end of the 1990s and the 2000s (decade), he wrote music for actors based on the Oresteia and the Greek myths related by Aeschylus. According with German artists Walter Weyers and Martina Krawulsky, with the name \"Klytaimnestra\": \"The House of Atreus\" Metal Opera (musically available on the Virgin Steele's albums \"The House of Atreus Act I\", \"The House of Atreus Act II\") was performed on stage in Germany theaters by Landestheater Production.\nThe premiere of \"Klytaimnestra\" in Memmingen, June 5, 1999, has been the first ever regular musical theatre show based on heavy metal concepts.\nAfter \"Klytaimnestra\" success, David DeFeis & Landestheater Production extracted a second metal opera musical, named \"The Rebels\", from the previous Virgin Steele's albums of the Marriage of Heaven and Hell trilogy (\"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part I\", \"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Part II\", \"Invictus\").\nIn 2003, the same team released a third Metal Opera, named \"Lilith\", based on the material of album \"Visions of Eden\". \"Visions of Eden\" was later on published in CD in 2006.\nProducer.\nDeFeis owns his personal recording studio called: \"The Hammer of Zeus\" (sometimes also called \"The Wrecking Ball Of Thor\").\nVirgin Steele's albums are produced by DeFeis.\nHe also produced albums released by other artists such as: \"Out of the Darkness\" and \"No Turning Back\" by Jack Starr, \"Nightmare Theatre\" by Exorcist, \"Stay Ugly\" by Piledriver, \"The Sign of the Jackal\" by Damien Thorn, \"Sin Will Find You Out\" by Original Sin.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "58229": "Bacchanalia\nRoman cults of the wine god and seer Bacchus\nThe Bacchanalia were unofficial, privately funded popular Roman festivals of Bacchus, based on various ecstatic elements of the Greek Dionysia. They were almost certainly associated with Rome's native cult of Liber, and probably arrived in Rome itself around 200 BC. Like all mystery religions of the ancient world, very little is known of their rites. They seem to have been popular and well-organised throughout the central and southern Italian peninsula.\nLivy, writing some 200 years after the event, offers a scandalized and extremely colourful account of the Bacchanalia, with frenzied rites, sexually violent initiations of both sexes, all ages and all social classes; he represents the cult as a murderous instrument of conspiracy against the state. Livy claims that seven thousand cult leaders and followers were arrested, and that most were executed. Livy believed the Bacchanalia scandal to be one of several indications of Rome's inexorable moral decay. Modern scholars take a skeptical approach to Livy's allegations.\nThe cult was not banned. Senatorial legislation to reform the Bacchanalia in 186 BC attempted to control their size, organisation, and priesthoods, under threat of the death penalty. This may have been motivated less by the kind of lurid and dramatic rumours that Livy describes than by the Senate's determination to assert its civil, moral and religious authority over Rome and its allies, after the prolonged social, political and military crisis of the Second Punic War (218\u2013201 BC). The reformed Bacchanalia rites may have been merged with the Liberalia festival. Bacchus, Liber and Dionysus became virtually interchangeable from the late Republican era (133 BC and onward), and their mystery cults persisted well into the Principate of the Roman Imperial era.\nBackground and development.\nThe Bacchanalia were Roman festivals of Bacchus, the Greco-Roman god of wine, freedom, intoxication and ecstasy. They were based on the Greek Dionysia and the Dionysian Mysteries, and probably arrived in Rome c. 200 BC via the Greek colonies in southern Italy, and from Etruria, Rome's northern neighbour. Tenney Frank suggests that some form of Dionysian worship may have been introduced to Rome by captives from the formerly Greek city of Tarentum in southern Italy, captured from the Carthaginians in 209 BC. Like all mystery cults, the Bacchanalia were held in strict privacy, and initiates were bound to secrecy; what little is known of the cult and its rites derives from Greek and Roman literature, plays, statuary and paintings. One of the earliest sources is Greek playwright Euripides's \"The Bacchae\", which won the Athenian Dionysia competition in 405 BC. The Bacchanalia may have had mystery elements and public elements; religious dramas which were performed in public, and private rites performed by acolytes and priests of the deity.\nLivy, the principal Roman literary source on the early Bacchanalia, names Paculla Annia, a Campanian priestess of Bacchus, as the founder of a private, unofficial Bacchanalia cult in Rome, based at the grove of Stimula, where the western slope of the Aventine Hill descends to the Tiber. The Aventine was an ethnically mixed district, strongly identified with Rome's plebeian class and the ingress of new and foreign cults. The wine and fertility god Liber Pater (\"The Free Father\"), divine patron of plebeian rights, freedoms and augury, had a long-established official cult in the nearby temple he shared with Ceres and Libera. Most Roman sources describe him as Rome's equivalent to Dionysus and Bacchus, both of whom were sometimes titled \"Eleutherios\" (liberator).\nBacchanalia scandal.\nLivy claims the earliest version of the Bacchanalia was open to women only, and held on three days of the year, in daylight; while in nearby Etruria, north of Rome, a \"Greek of humble origin, versed in sacrifices and soothsaying\" had established a nocturnal version, added wine and feasting to the mix, and thus acquired an enthusiastic following of women and men. The nocturnal version of the Bacchanalia involved wine-drinking to excess drunkenness and the free mingling of the sexes and classes; the rites also involved loud music.\nAccording to Livy's account, Publius Aebutius of the gens Aebutia was warned against the cult and its excesses by a courtesan, Hispala Faecenia. The Senate appointed Spurius Postumius Albinus and Quintus Marcius Philippus to investigate the cult. The inquiry claimed that under the cover of religion, priests and acolytes broke civil, moral and religious laws with impunity; weak-minded individuals could be persuaded to commit ritual or political murders undetected, at the behest of those who secretly controlled the cult, right in the heart of Rome. Livy claims that the cult held particular appeal to those of uneducated and fickle mind (\"levitas animi\"), such as the young, plebeians, women and \"men most like women\", and that most of the city's population was involved, even some members of Rome's highest class.\nReform.\nThe Legislation of 186 survives in the form of an inscription. Known as the \"Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus\", it brought the Bacchanalia under control of the Senate, and thus of the Roman pontifices. The existing cult chapters and colleges were dismantled. Congregations of mixed gender were permitted, but were limited to no more than two men and three women, and any Bacchanalia gathering must seek prior permission from the Senate. Men were forbidden Bacchus's priesthood.\nDespite their official suppression, illicit Bacchanals persisted covertly for many years, particularly in Southern Italy, their likely place of origin. The reformed, officially approved Bacchic cults would have borne little resemblance to the earlier crowded, ecstatic and uninhibited Bacchanalia. Similar attrition may have been imposed on Liber's cults; his perceived or actual association with the Bacchanalia may be the reason that his Liberalia \"ludi\" of 17 March were temporarily moved to Ceres' Cerealia of 12\u201319 April. They were restored when the ferocity of reaction eased, but in approved, much modified form.\nInterpretations.\nLivy's account of the Bacchanalia has been described as \"tendentious to say the least\". As a political and social conservative, he had a deep mistrust of mystery religions, and probably understood any form of Bacchanalia as a sign of Roman degeneracy. Though most of his \"dramatis personae\" are known historical figures, their speeches are implausibly circumstantial, and his characters, tropes and plot developments draw more from Roman satyr plays than from the Bacchanalia themselves. Paculla Annia is unlikely to have introduced all the changes he attributes to her.\nFor Livy, the cult's greatest offences arose from indiscriminate mixing of freeborn Romans of both sexes and all ages at night, a time when passions are easily aroused, especially given wine and unrestricted opportunity. Women at these gatherings, he says, outnumbered men; and his account has the consul Postumius stress the overwhelmingly female nature and organization of the cult. Yet the \"Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus\" itself allows women to outnumber men, by three to two, at any permitted gathering; and it expressly forbids Bacchic priesthoods to men. Livy's own narrative names all but one of the offending cult leaders as male, which seems to eliminate any perceived \"conspiracy of women\". Gender seems to have motivated the Senate's response no more than any other cause.\nLivy's consistent negative description of the cult's Greek origins and low moral character\u2014not even Bacchus is exempt from this judgment\u2014may have sought to justify its suppression as a sudden \"infiltration of too many Greek elements into Roman worship\". The cult had, however, been active in Rome for many years before its supposedly abrupt discovery, and Bacchic and Dionysiac cults had been part of life in Roman and allied, Greek-speaking Italy for many decades. Greek cults and Greek influences had been part of Rome's religious life since the 5th century BC, and Rome's acquisition of foreign cults\u2014Greek or otherwise\u2014through the alliance, treaty, capture or conquest was a cornerstone of its foreign policy, and an essential feature of its eventual hegemony. While the pace of such introductions had gathered rapidly during the 3rd century, contemporary evidence of the Bacchanalia reform betrays no anti-Greek or anti-foreign policy or sentiment.\nGruen interprets the \"Senatus consultum\" as a piece of \"Realpolitik\", a display of the Roman senate's authority to its Italian allies after the Second Punic War, and a reminder to any Roman politician, populist and would-be generalissimo that the Senate's collective authority trumped all personal ambition. Nevertheless, the extent and ferocity of the official response to the Bacchanalia was probably unprecedented, and betrays some form of moral panic on the part of Roman authorities; Burkert finds \"nothing comparable in religious history before the persecutions of Christians\".\nModern usage.\nIn modern usage, \"bacchanalia\" can mean any uninhibited or drunken revelry. The bacchanal in art describes any small group of revelers, often including satyrs and perhaps Bacchus or Silenus, usually in a landscape setting. The subject was popular from the Renaissance onwards, and usually included a large degree of nudity among the figures.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "636475": "African Hebrew Israelites in Israel\nAfrican-American claimants of Israelite descent\nThe African Hebrew Israelites in Israel comprise a new religious movement that is now mainly based in Dimona. Officially self-identifying as the African Hebrew Israelite Nation of Jerusalem, they originate from African American Ben Carter who later Renamed Himself to Ben Ammi Ben-Israel who immigrated to the State of Israel in the late 1960s (Around 1966). The community claims Israelite descent in line with the philosophy of the Black Hebrew Israelites, who believe that Black people in the United States are descended from the Twelve Tribes of Israel and thus rightfully belong to the Land of Israel. As of 2012[ [update]], their total population stood at about 5,000 people.\nBelieving that they were Jews by blood (i.e., through the Hebrews or Israelites), the community first settled in Liberia, where they were not welcomed by the Liberian government. Later moving to Israel, they were recognized as non-Jews by the Israeli government and by Israeli religious authorities. A number of the African Hebrew Israelites were illegal immigrants in Israel and were thus deported, prompting allegations from the community that the Israeli government's conduct against them was racist. Since 2004, however, some African Hebrew Israelites have been granted permanent residency and have enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces.\nMany of the community's beliefs were developed on the basis of revelations experienced by African-American steel worker Ben Carter, who claimed that the angel Gabriel had called on him to return his people\u2014the \"true\" Children of Israel\u2014to what is often referred to as the Holy Land in the Abrahamic religions. Born a Baptist Christian, Carter later changed his name to Ben Ammi Ben-Israel () and began rallying other African Americans to his cause. He rejected Judaism and Christianity, but asserted that the Jewish Bible was still divine and claimed that Abraham and Moses were Black people, while also perceiving Jesus as one of many messiahs. Some of Carter's statements and the community's beliefs have led to accusations of antisemitism against them: he alleged that there was an international Jewish conspiracy through which the Israeli government maintained control over the Holy Land. Claiming that Black people were the \"true inheritors of Israel\" suffering under \"Euro-gentile dominion\" in the United States, Carter stated that Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs in the Holy Land had a false tradition of being descended from Isaac and Ishmael, respectively, and were instead descended from European Crusaders.\nOrigins.\nThe group was founded in Chicago by former steel worker Ben Carter (1939\u20132014, also known as Ben Ammi Ben-Israel). In his early twenties Carter was given the name Ben Ammi by Rabbi Reuben of the Chicago Congregation of Ethiopian Hebrews (Not Beta Israel). Ben Ammi was working in an airline factory when he first discovered the Black Hebrew movement and its philosophy. According to Ben Ammi, in 1966, at the age of 27, he had a vision in which the Archangel Gabriel called him to take his people, African Americans, back to the Holy Land of Israel.\nAmmi and his followers draw on a long tradition in black American culture which is based on the belief that black Americans are the descendants of the Ancient Israelites (Ammi cites Charles Harrison Mason of Mississippi, William Saunders Crowdy of Virginia, Bishop William Boome of Tennessee, Charles Price Jones of Mississippi, and Elder Saint Samuel of Tennessee as early exponents of black descent from the Israelites).\nThey are also influenced by the teachings of the Jamaican proponent of Black nationalism, Marcus Garvey (1887\u20131940), and the black civil rights milieu in 1960s America, including figures such as the Black Panthers and Malcolm X. From these figures and their teachings, they have incorporated elements of black separatism as well as the doctrine which advocates the repatriation of the African Diaspora to its ancestral lands in a \"return to Africa\", of which they consider Israel to be a part. To them, Israel is located in Northeast Africa instead of West Asia.\nThe inspiration to move to Israel was born from several components. One component was the hardship which black community members faced within America as well as within American culture, especially in Chicago in the 1960s, at the height of the Civil rights movement. Another component was the community's willingness to form a confident and positive African identity, as opposed to the damaging identity which the group felt it carried in America. The last component was this spout of religious and spiritual connection to a long-standing culture, an ancient history and a Promised Land. An additional factor may have been the expectation of a coming apocalyptic war in which America would be destroyed.\nSettlement in Liberia (1967\u20131969).\nBen Ammi and 350 of his followers first settled in Liberia in 1967. There, they built a community which adhered to the \"laws of righteousness\". Prince Rakhamim, who was a community leader at that time, described what living in Liberia did for the community:\nWe chose to stay there about two and a half years in order to get rid of the foolishness of America before making way to the land of Israel. To make a person born again. To die from the hell we came out of, to get rid of it\u2014to learn to get rid of the hate... to get rid of our bitterness... Liberia was always conceived as the place where we would learn to be righteous. Those of us who wanted to do right shedded off the hate and came home to Israel.\nStatus in Israel.\nIt is unclear whether Israel was always the end-goal for the community, or whether Ben Ammi received another vision in 1969, when the community was in Liberia, telling him to take the community to its real promised land: Israel. The African Hebrew Israelite community believes that this ambiguity does not lessen its desire to establish a home in Israel. The group aimed to immigrate to Israel under the Israeli Law of Return, which states that all Jews who emigrate to Israel will be granted citizenship. However, in order to qualify for citizenship under the Law of Return, a person must be born a Jew, or he or she must be the child or grandchild of a Jew, or he or she must have converted to Judaism, and he or she must not be an active member of another religion.\nBecause Ben Ammi and his followers did not meet this requirement, they did not qualify for Israeli citizenship. This deterrent did not stop them from moving to Israel. In 1969, the group began to move to Israel by using temporary visas. Most Black Hebrews entered Israel on tourist visas and they overstayed their visas by living in Israel as illegal immigrants.\nInitially, the African Hebrew Israelites asserted that they were the only rightful heirs of the Land of Israel. They refused to convert to Judaism and they also asserted that most Israeli Jews were not the descendants of the ancient Israelites. By the late 1980s, the group tempered their beliefs. They came to see Israel as a nation of many cultures, races, and religions.\nMembers of the group continued to arrive and settle in the desert town of Dimona. For two decades, their population continued to grow through natural increase and illegal immigration. Throughout the 1970s, tensions between the group and the government grew as the group faced low employment, inadequate housing, and attempted deportations, while the government considered its members illegal aliens. Ben Ammi accused the government of practicing racism and he also accused it of occupying the holy land, he did this by claiming that \"The greatest conspiracy ever conceived in the minds of men was the creation of a National Homeland for Jewish People.\"\nIn 1973, the International League for the Rights of Man rejected the group's claims, stating that the group made no attempt to comply with the citizenship laws of Israel. In 1981, a six-person Black Americans to Support Israel Committee delegation assessed all aspects of the treatment of the community and concluded that racism was not the cause of its problems. Although the delegation's leader Bayard Rustin called Ben Ammi \"a dictator\" without \"the same moral standards as democratic leaders\", the other members of the delegation disassociated themselves from Rustin's accusation.\nThey are generally not considered Jews in Israel. The Israeli government especially in the past refused to grant the group citizenship, while occasionally pursuing deportation.\nIn May 1990, the group was granted tourist status and visas that permitted its members to work. In 1992, the Congressional Black Caucus of the United States Congress intervened, leading to the signing of an agreement which stated that the Black Hebrews would be granted temporary residency status if they did not receive new members. At the end of 2003, the group was granted permanent residency status by the Israeli Interior Ministry. It is believed that in 2009, Elyakim Ben-Israel became the first Black Hebrew to receive Israeli citizenship without converting to Judaism or marrying an Israeli. The Israeli government said that more Black Hebrews may be granted citizenship.\nIn 2004, Uriyahu Butler became the first member of the community to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces. The IDF agreed to accommodate some of the group's religious requirements, especially its dietary requirements.\nToday, young men and to a lesser degree young women from the African Hebrew community of Jerusalem serve in the IDF, and they have entered international sporting events and academic competitions under the Israeli flag, as well as having represented Israel twice in the Eurovision song contest.\nWay of life.\nThe group maintains a vegan diet, citing Genesis 1:29, \"And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.\" They appear to have become vegan in the early 1970s, although some members were vegetarian prior. While they value non-violence, the primary motive for their veganism appears to be health-based: mirroring a Rabbinic tradition, they argue that meat-eating is linked to humanity's fallen state, and must be overcome to attain righteousness. They practice abstinence from alcohol, other than the naturally fermented wine which they make themselves, as well as abstinence from both illegal and pharmaceutical drugs, so as to stay within the \"cycles of life\".\nThe group grows much of its own food and its members are authorized to be organic growers by the Israel Bio-Organic Agricultural Association.\nMembers wear only clothing made from natural fibers, which are sewn by members of the community, and all must bear blue thread and fringes as mandated in the Bible (Deut.22:11-12, Num.15:37\u201340). Men wear a form of kippah (head-covering) and beards.\nThe group practices \"polygyny\", meaning that a man can marry several wives (up to six). Within the community this is termed \"Divine Marriage\", being based on Biblical examples such as King David. Polygyny is not required, constituting approximately 37% of marriages in 1992.\nBeliefs.\nThe group believes that the ancient Israelites are the ancestors of black Americans. It objects to the use of the term 'Jew' based on its belief that black Americans are descended from all 12 tribes, not just the Tribe of Judah. Even though they reject the religious forms of both Judaism and Christianity, the Black Hebrews maintain the belief in the divine inspiration of the Tanakh, and they also value the New Testament as a record of the words of Yeshuah, one man in an ongoing line of 'messiahs' who were sent by God to keep the people of Israel in the ways of righteousness.\nThe core of the group's lifestyle is the Tanakh. Ben Ammi claims that \"the Law and the Prophets...are the light; they are the essence of what is required to set man on the path and show him the way back to his Maker.\" However, the group rejects the traditions of Rabbinic Judaism, including the Talmud, based on its belief that they are inauthentic as opposed to the Hebrew religion.\nBen Ammi claims that black Africans are the victims of \"a cruel plot to control us, an international religious plot that came about as a result of Blacks disobeying the law and commandments of God.\" The enslavement of black Africans is seen as punishment for straying from the righteous path and he cites an \"oral tradition that our people were cursed by God for violating His laws, statutes and commandments.\" He links this oral tradition to Deuteronomy 28:68, which speaks of a second captivity in a second Egypt which the Israelites would be carried to in ships. The \"Euro-gentile\" establishment hatched \"a deliberate scheme to conceal the truth that ancient Hebrews were Black\" and it also \"perpetuated the white Jesus deception\".\nIn an attempt to overcome the history of slavery in the United States, Ammi argues that it is essential to \"reexamine and redefine all things...we must question every facet of existence under Euro-gentile dominion.\" The ability to name and classify the word and social concept which Ammi calls \"The Power to Define\", which is in the wrong hands, is \"one of the greatest weapons that can be used to control men and nations,\" is the key to salvation from past oppression. Thus, Ammi claims that true freedom can never be found within a society that is intrinsically corrupt but can only be attained by establishing a new society based solely on the laws of God: \"No government, no party or system can bring salvation unto the Children of God...Their salvation is only of God.\"\nBased on the Hebrew word \"eved\" (\u05e2\u05d1\u05d3, meaning 'slave' or 'servant'), Ammi has argued that the distinction between work and worship is false \u2013 in fact, the activity we pursue with our lives is both our work and our worship. Therefore, \"every job that does not enhance God as creator is the worship of the devil. There is no neutral position.\"\nHowever, Ammi's concern is not solely for his own people but for the whole of humanity \u2013 the role of the Black Hebrew Israelite community is to serve as \"a light unto the gentiles\": \"Black Americans...were initially chosen by God to guide the world out of its state of ignorance.\" Recently the group has also begun to claim that Hebrew status is not solely from genealogy, but can be conferred by spiritual behaviour.\nAmmi does not believe in the existence of an afterlife; he prefers to focus on life on earth: \"Heaven is the reality of the righteous as they live, not a place for spirits after death.\"\nAs well as claiming that Jews are not the descendants of the ancient Israelites, they also claim that the members of the Palestinian Arab population are not the descendants of Ishmael: \"Our studies and experience have shown that the present-day inhabitants of this region are not the original people of the land. The majority of those today defined by modern historians as Arabs, are veritably the descendents of European Crusaders.\"\nThe group believes that the value system of a society is seen through its culture. According to one source, it is therefore \"important that our clothing, music, food and language reflect the glory and the higher standards of Yah (God).\"\nAccusations of antisemitism.\nOn several occasions, Ben Ammi and the Black Hebrew community have been accused of anti-semitism. As well as denying the Israelite heritage of world Jewry and its claim to the land of Israel, the stalemate which existed between the Black Hebrew community and Israel in the late 1970s led to heightened tensions and according to \"The Jerusalem Post\", \"Ben Ammi mounted a worldwide public relations offensive against the government that dripped with anti-semitism. Community newspapers compared the Israelis to Nazis and they also included images of money-grubbing Jews and other stereotypical images\". However, relations improved during the 1990s as the Black Hebrew community distanced itself from the ineffective extremist stance which it had taken up in earlier years. Since then, the group has become a valuable part of both the Dimona community and the wider Israeli society and it has also pursued integration in ways such as volunteering to serve in the IDF.\nIn 2011, the Georgia General Assembly passed a resolution which \"recognize(s) the Hebrew Israelite Community for its service to the nation of Israel and commends their 40 years of history.\" Citing the fact that the Dimona-based community is \"one of the largest urban kibbutzim in Israel\" and \"has attracted visitors from around the world because of its healthy lifestyle and organic agriculture,\" the Assembly concluded and declared that \"the culture and tradition of the Hebrew Israelite Community is a rich one, and the Community's numerous contributions are worthy of recognition.\"\nIn response to concerns about anti-Jewish prejudice and stereotyping that arose during its formative years in Israel, community leader Prince Immanuel Ben Yehuda simply states that they have \"grown up.\" \"As you look back over 30 years you realize that this has grown from the ground up. We've been here 30 years, that means we've grown up together... Our children have gone to schools (and) played in games together so there is another kind of relationship that has grown up.\"\nIn August 2008, the Village of Peace received a visit from Israel's president, Shimon Peres, who told the Hebrew Israelites \"Your community is beloved in Israel...You give the country happiness and song and hope for a better world\"\nAnd in March, 2012, during the community's annual \"New World Passover\" celebration in honor of their historic \"exodus\" from America in 1967, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed appreciation for \"the cooperative society that is working towards the inclusion of the Hebrew Israelite community in Israeli society at large,\" and he also declared that their experience in the land is \"an integral part of the Israeli experience.\"\nThe Black Hebrews still express concerns as to the direction in which Israel is heading. During an interview with \"Haaretz\", a popular Israeli newspaper, Ben Ammi stated that \"We must understand that peace will never come, and true freedom will never come, by way of politicians... There's a major difference between the peace that was promised by the Creator and the peace that is being sought after by politicians.\" \"We do give advice to politicians; because these individuals who are seen as leaders, if they would hear a message based upon truth, then it would influence that which they say they seek after \u2013 and that is peace. But without truth, and without spirituality, there can never be any genuine peace achieved in those lands.\"\nInstitutions.\nThe AHIJ\u2019s institutions include:\nThe School of the Prophets, a higher education academy, incorporating an international branch, The Institute of Regenerative"}, "descending_order": ["29407439", "58229", "636475", "41770159", "19360420"], "permutation_1": ["636475", "29407439", "19360420", "58229", "41770159"], "permutation_2": ["636475", "58229", "19360420", "41770159", "29407439"], "permutation_3": ["29407439", "636475", "41770159", "19360420", "58229"]}
{"id": "3hop1__20961_87850_93848", "docs_added": {"40509": "1824 United States presidential election\nPresidential elections were held in the United States from October 26 to December 2, 1824. Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and William Crawford were the primary contenders for the presidency. The result of the election was inconclusive, as no candidate won a majority of the electoral vote. In the election for vice president, John C. Calhoun was elected with a comfortable majority of the vote. Because none of the candidates for president garnered an electoral vote majority, the U.S. House of Representatives, under the provisions of the Twelfth Amendment, held a contingent election. On February 9, 1825, the House voted (with each state delegation casting one vote) to elect John Quincy Adams as president, ultimately giving the election to him.\nThe Democratic-Republican Party had won six consecutive presidential elections and by 1824 was the only national political party. However, as the election approached, the presence of multiple viable candidates resulted in there being multiple nominations by the contending factions, signaling the splintering of the party and an end to the Era of Good Feelings, as well as the First Party System.\nAdams won New England, Jackson and Adams split the mid-Atlantic states, Jackson and Clay split the Western states, and Jackson and Crawford split the Southern states. Jackson finished with a plurality of the popular vote (there was no popular vote in six states including New York, the most populous state), and also of the electoral vote (due to the Three-fifths Compromise), while the other three candidates each finished with a significant share of the votes. Clay, who had finished fourth, was eliminated. Adams was the first son of a former president to become president.\nThis is one of two presidential elections (along with the 1800 election) that have been decided in the House. It is also one of five elections in which the winner did not achieve at least a plurality of the national popular vote and the only election in which the candidate who received the most electoral votes from the Electoral College did not win the election. It is also, to date, the election with the lowest popular vote percentage for an elected president (32.7%).\nBackground.\nThe Era of Good Feelings, associated with the administration of President James Monroe, was a time of reduced emphasis on political party identity. With the Federalists discredited, Democratic-Republicans adopted some key Federalist economic programs and institutions. The economic nationalism of the Era of Good Feelings that would authorize the Tariff of 1816 and incorporate the Second Bank of the United States portended abandonment of the Jeffersonian political formula for strict construction of the Constitution, limited central government, and primacy of Southern slaveholding interests.\nAn unintended consequence of wide single-party identification was reduced party discipline. Rather than political harmony, factions arose within the party. Monroe attempted to improve discipline by appointing leading statesmen to his Cabinet, including Secretary of State John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, Secretary of the Treasury William H. Crawford of Georgia, and Secretary of War John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. General Andrew Jackson of Tennessee led high-profile military missions. Only House Speaker Henry Clay of Kentucky held political power independent of Monroe. He refused to join the cabinet and remained critical of the administration.\nTwo key events, the Panic of 1819 and the Missouri crisis of 1820, influenced and reshaped politics. The economic downturn broadly harmed workers, the sectional disputes over slavery expansion raised tensions, and both events plus other factors drove demand for increased democratic control. Social disaffection would help motivate revival of rivalrous political parties in the near future, though these had not yet formed by the time of the 1824 election.\nNominations.\nCandidates who withdrew before election.\nThe previous competition between the Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party collapsed after the War of 1812 due to the disintegration of the Federalists' popular appeal. President James Monroe of the Democratic-Republicans was able to run effectively unopposed in the 1820 election. Like previous presidents who had been elected to two terms, Monroe declined to seek re-nomination for a third term. The presidential nomination was thus left wide open within the Democratic-Republican Party, the only remaining major national political entity.\nDuring the first year of Monroe's second term, it was said that 17 names had been mentioned as possible candidates, although formal nominations did not occur until late December. Among these possible candidates, William H. Crawford was seen as the most formidable, with many observers anticipating that John Quincy Adams would be his primary rival, and Henry Clay regarded as a likely outside contender. Crawford, a native of the Georgia frontier, was physically imposing and a powerful political figure. He was the first president pro tem of the Senate to be elected continuingly and had nearly beaten Monroe for the party nomination in 1816. As Secretary of the Treasury, he had helped to reorganized the nation's finances after the War of 1812 and establish the Second Bank of the United States. As such, he came to be seen as the treasury candidate.\nCrawford cultivated a strong base of support for the nomination, especially among influential political figures who could manage the congressional caucus and had, in the words of William Lowndes, his own \"Organized Party\" (the Old Republicans). Opponents accused him of consolidating power through the Tenure of Office Act of 1820, which required financial officeholders to be reappointed every four years. In creating a web of support among self-interested agents, Crawford became a man suspected of deliberately contriving his own election, something feared by all others. Despite these accusations, his supporters believed that he was not the conniving, maneuvering self-seeker his rivals branded him to be. It is impossible to know for certain, however, as little of his personal correspondence survives.\nCalhoun and Lowndes.\nThe first people to be publicly nominated as candidates were Calhoun and Lowndes. Calhoun had been clashing with Crawford since the spring of 1820, when the latter began a retrenchment campaign in response to the Panic of 1819. Calhoun and his partisans viewed the effort as designed to emasculate the Department of War and discredit its secretary, especially as Congress failed to pass similar proposed reductions in the civil list.\nCalhoun, up until this point a staunch nationalist, shared many policy positions with Adams. Though claiming to prefer Adams, he feared that Adams could not defeat Crawford in the Southern and Middle states. Therefore, it fell upon him to challenge the assumption that Crawford was the favorite of the Southeast, hopefully defeating Crawford and his radicals. Overestimating his popularity, Calhoun believed that he could build a solid core of support by appealing to the economic interests of the two most powerful states, New York and Pennsylvania, and by consolidating his home base in the Southeast. In particular, he focused on Pennsylvania, where he made relations with the Family Party\u2014a group of young Republican politicians in Philadelphia, led by George M. Dallas and Samuel D. Ingham, who opposed the state's Republican leaders that favored Crawford. In December, he was apparently nominated by the faction, and later that month, a group of congressmen, mainly from Pennsylvania, called on him in Washington and formally invited him to become a candidate, which he accepted after \"some hesitation.\"\nBefore the nomination, he had informed Lowndes of his intention to run for president early in his stay at Calhoun's residence in Washington, which began in December 1821. Lowndes, while having spoken positively of the other men, assured Calhoun he preferred his election. However, during Lowndes' journey to Washington, and without his knowledge, lowcountry moderates in the South Carolina legislature made an unprecedented move by attempting to nominate Lowndes. This effort was led by James Hamilton Jr., the Charleston delegation, and others from the tidewater parishes and Middle District counties east of the Broad River. They called a caucus of the legislature, which met in the hall of representatives on December 18, with about 2/3 of both houses in attendance. Opposition to the motion consisted primarily of upcountry partisans of Calhoun who, caught off guard, argued for delay, declaring the proposal premature and condemning the very idea that a single small state should attempt to name a president for the whole nation. While recognizing Calhoun's credentials, Lowndes' supporters argued that he was a more nationally prominent figure who would be more acceptable to citizens across the country. The motion to recommend Lowndes for president narrowly passed, 58 to 54, embarrassing Calhoun's campaign.\nThe two men agreed not to alter their plans. Calhoun would enter the race as planned, while Lowndes would neither decline the nomination nor encourage an active campaign on his behalf, but follow the course dictated by his health. As this would most likely result in a voyage abroad, effectively removing Lowndes from further consideration, the difficulty presented by his nomination would be resolved, and supporters could transfer their backing to Calhoun. Despite this, his supporters remained insistent on his candidacy and encouraged him to stay. Lowndes died on October 27, 1822, en route to a recuperative visit to England. The next month the legislature transferred their nomination to Calhoun. Later, in February 1824, Dallas gave his support to Jackson's presidential campaign, with Calhoun as his running mate.\nClinton, King, Thompson, and Tompkins.\nWhile Republicans in Northern states wished to support a man of their own, many were reluctant to rally behind Adams. By early 1823, critics among his supporters complained that Adams was \"too fastidious and reserved,\" failing to engage in the political collaboration expected of a leader. They argued that presidents were no longer chosen purely on merit but rather through the influence of politicians and newspapers. His perceived \"indifference\" simply served to \"chill and depress the kind feeling and fair exertions of his friends.\"\nRather than endure such a leader, many potential supporters began searching for an alternative Northern candidate, though this effort ultimately proved fruitless. Rufus King was too old and also unwilling. Vice President Daniel D. Tompkins had long-since been dismissed as a viable successor to Monroe due to a combination of health problems and a financial dispute with the federal government, and he formally ruled himself out of making a presidential run at the start of 1824. Secretary of the navy Smith Thompson, believing his New York ties might make him a viable option, delayed accepting a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court for eight months before being persuaded that he stood no chance of the presidency. Clinton, while having been supported by a small minority for president in 1820, suffered from the memory of his past involvements with Federalists, and in 1822 had become too electorally weak to compete, let alone win New York presidentially against the state's political machine.\nLegislature nominations.\nThe \"Niles' Weekly Register\", reporting on Washington politics in its January 26, 1822, issue, reported the names of Calhoun, Thompson, Clinton, Lowndes, Tompkins, Adams, Clay, and Crawford as being put forth as candidates. The newspaper also reported that \"one or two others are casually spoken of\" but did not identify them. Lowndes' nomination had sparked intense speculation in Washington during the first week of the new year, concerned with the ramifications of the way Lowndes had been nominated. In a letter to his wife, Lowndes stated, \"The House is in terrible confusion. I thought when I came here that the question was in fact confined to two persons Mr Crawford and Mr Adams. Now we have all the Secretaries and at least two who are not secretaries named...\"\nThat year, Kentucky and Missouri legislature caucuses nominated Clay, and Tennessee nominated Jackson. In January 1823, a meeting of Ohio legislators approved resolutions naming Clay. In early 1823, the legislatures of Massachusetts and Maine stated a preference for Adams but did not make a formal nomination, as they wished to ensure party unity nationwide. In January 1824, a caucus in the Mississippi legislature divided evenly between supporting Adams and Jackson. In Rhode Island, the \"State Junta\" initially committed itself in early 1824 to supporting the caucus candidate but soon realized they could not sway public opinion against Adams. Consequently, they refrained from pressing for Crawford out of fear of jeopardizing their state ticket. In early 1824, the Connecticut legislature nominated Adams. In March 1824, a state party convention at Harrisburg nominated Jackson. In June 1824, the New Hampshire legislature nominated Adams.\nThe legislatures of Maine, New York, Virginia, and Georgia were in favor of the Congressional nominating caucus.\nCongressional nominating caucus.\nWhile not always popular, in past elections the party had relied on a congressional caucus, sometimes referred to as the \"King Caucus,\" to nominate their presidential candidates, a process that had consistently succeeded in identifying the party favorite. Now, however, there was no certainty that the caucus would work again. Proponents, many of whom supported William H. Crawford, argued that it was essential for maintaining the stability of the republic and ensuring party unity on the presidential question. Opponents, including some of Crawford's own supporters, criticized the process as limiting the people's choice and effectively predetermining the outcome of the popular election.\nThe strongest opposition came from Jacksonians. They viewed it as emblematic of the insider manipulation they sought to dismantle. On the other hand, New England Republicans, drawn to traditional party practices, had no such objection, and about 20 were believed to be willing to support Crawford if they could not have Adams, until Adams declared he would not accept a nomination for any office from a congressional caucus. In most delegations there were one or two representatives who, if left to themselves, were willing to attend the caucus. Crawford hoped to secure more than the 65 ballots that Monroe had obtained in 1816.\nIn early February 1824, a majority of congressmen signed a public statement that they would not attend a nominating caucus. They believed that by refusing to attend instead of killing it, the caucus system would collapse on its own. On February 14, the caucus nominated Crawford for president and Albert Gallatin for vice president, but only 66 of the 240 Democratic-Republican members of Congress attended the caucus, which was viewed as a meeting of a special interest that wanted to pass itself off as representative of the whole Democratic-Republican Party. Gallatin had not sought the vice presidential nomination and soon withdrew at Crawford's request. Gallatin was also dissatisfied with repeated attacks on his credibility made by the other candidates. He was replaced by North Carolina senator Nathaniel Macon.\nAdams sought to have Jackson be his vice-presidential running mate and Louisa Adams hosted a ball in honor of the Battle of New Orleans' ninth anniversary. He had supported Jackson during his invasion of Florida while Clay and Crawford opposed him, causing Jackson to oppose them. Clay supporters in the Tennessee legislature nominated Jackson for president in 1822, as an attempt to weaken Crawford in the state.\nMartin Van Buren and his political machine supported Crawford in New York. During the selection of New York's electors Van Buren was able to deny Clay enough support to prevent him from being eligible for the contingent election.\nGeneral election.\nCandidates.\nAll four candidates were nominated by at least one state legislature. Andrew Jackson was recruited to run for the office of the president by the state legislature of Tennessee. Jackson did not seek the task of running for president. Instead, he wished to retire to his estate on the outskirts of Nashville, called the Hermitage.\nCampaign.\nCandidates drew voter support by different states and sections. Adams dominated the popular vote in New England and won some support elsewhere, Clay dominated his home state of Kentucky and won pluralities in two neighboring states, and Crawford won the Virginia vote overwhelmingly and polled well in North Carolina. Jackson had geographically the broadest support, though there were heavy vote concentrations in his home state of Tennessee and in Pennsylvania and populous areas where even he ran poorly.\nPolicy played a reduced role in the election, though positions on tariffs and internal improvements did create significant disagreements. Both Adams and Jackson supporters backed Secretary of War John C. Calhoun of South Carolina for vice president. He easily secured the majority of electoral votes for that office. In reality, Calhoun was vehemently opposed to nearly all of Adams's policies, but he did nothing to dissuade Adams supporters from voting for him for vice president, partly because he was even more vehemently opposed to the prospect of a Clay presidency, and partly because he had a long-standing personal enmity with Crawford.\nThe campaigning for presidential election of 1824 took many forms. Contrafacta, or well known songs and tunes whose lyrics have been altered, were used to promote political agendas and presidential candidates. Below can be found a sound clip featuring \"Hunters of Kentucky\", a tune written by Samuel Woodsworth in 1815 under the title \"The Unfortunate Miss Bailey\". Contrafacta such as this one, which promoted Andrew Jackson as a national hero, have been a long-standing tradition in presidential elections. Another form of campaigning during this election was through newsprint. Political cartoons and partisan writings were best circulated among the voting public through newspapers. Presidential candidate John C. Calhoun was one of the candidates most directly involved through his participation in the publishing of the newspaper \"The Patriot\" as a member of the editorial staff. This was a sure way to promote his own political agendas and campaign. In contrast, most candidates involved in early 19th century elections did not run their own political campaigns. Instead it was left to volunteer citizens and partisans to speak on their behalf.\nResults.\nThe 1824 presidential election marked the final collapse of the Republican-Federalist political framework. The electoral map confirmed the candidates' sectional support, with Adams winning in New England, Jackson having wide voter appeal, Clay attracting votes from the West, and Crawford attracting votes from the eastern South. Jackson earned only a plurality of electoral votes. Thus, the presidential election was decided by the House of Representatives, which elected John Quincy Adams on the first ballot. John C. Calhoun, supported by Adams and Jackson, easily won the vice presidency, not requiring a contingent election in the Senate.\nJackson's electoral college plurality was the result of the Three-fifths Compromise. The electoral college results would have been 83 for Adams and 77 for Jackson without the inflated electoral count of slaveholding states. Crawford likewise benefited in this regard, as all but eight of his electoral votes were from slave states, while Clay's electoral votes were split relatively evenly (20 from the free states of New York and Ohio, 17 from the slave states of Kentucky and Missouri); without the Three-fifths Compromise, Crawford would have finished last in the electoral college, and Clay would have entered the contingent election at his expense.\nResults by state.\nElections in this period were vastly different from modern-day presidential elections. The actual presidential candidates were rarely mentioned on tickets and voters were voting for particular electors who were pledged to a particular candidate. There was sometimes confusion as to who a particular elector was actually pledged to. Results are reported as the highest result for an elector for any given candidate. For example, if three Jackson electors received 100, 50, and 25 votes, Jackson would be recorded as having 100 votes. Confusion surrounding the way results are reported may lead to discrepancies between the sum of all state results and national results.\nVice presidential electoral vote breakdown by ticket.\nClose states.\nStates where the margin of victory was under 1%:\nStates where the margin of victory was under 5%:\nStates where the margin of victory was under 10%:\n1825 contingent election.\nAs no presidential candidate had won an absolute electoral vote majority, the responsibility for electing a new president devolved upon the U.S. House of Representatives, which held a contingent election on February 9, 1825. As prescribed by the Twelfth Amendment, the House was limited to choosing from among the three candidates who received the most electoral votes: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and William Crawford; Henry Clay, who had finished fourth, was eliminated. Each state delegation, voting \"en bloc\", had a single vote. There were 24 states at the time, thus an absolute majority of 13 votes was required for victory.\nClay detested Jackson and had said of him, \"I cannot believe that killing 2,500 Englishmen at New Orleans qualifies for the various, difficult, and complicated duties of the Chief Magistracy.\" Moreover, Clay's American System was closer to Adams's position on tariffs and internal improvements than Jackson's. Even if Clay had wished to align with Crawford over Jackson, which was highly unlikely in any event since Clay's policy differences with Crawford were even deeper, especially on matters of the tariff, Crawford had been in poor health, and no path to victory was evident.\nDaniel Pope Cook, Illinois' sole representative, was anti-slavery and gave his support to Adams. James Buchanan attempted to make a compromise with Clay in which Jackson would make him Secretary of State in exchange for his support. Clay instead gave his support to Adams and was able to have the Kentucky, Missouri, and Ohio delegations support him. Illinois, Louisiana, and Maryland, which Jackson won during the election, had their delegations support Adams.\nVan Buren attempted to have New York's delegation be divided between Adams and Crawford in order to increase its power and make a deal with one of them. However, Stephen Van Rensselaer, a Federalist allied with Van Buren, voted for Adams. Van Buren stated that Van Rensselaer found a ballot for Adams on the floor while Van Rensselaer, in his letter to Governor DeWitt Clinton, stated that he voted for Adams as he was bound to win and that he wanted to shorten \"the long agony\". Van Buren supported Jackson during the 1828 election and aided in Calhoun's selection as vice president.\nIgnoring the nonbinding directive of the Kentucky legislature that its House delegation choose Jackson, the delegation voted 8\u20134 for Adams instead. Thus, Adams was elected president on the first ballot, with 13 states, followed by Jackson with seven, and Crawford with four.\nAftermath.\nAdams' victory shocked Jackson, who, as the winner of a plurality of both the popular and electoral votes, expected the House to choose him. Not long before the contingent House election, an anonymous statement appeared in a Philadelphia paper, called the \"Columbian Observer\". The statement, said to be from a member of Congress, essentially accused Clay of selling Adams his support for the office of Secretary of State. No formal investigation was conducted, so the matter was neither confirmed nor denied. When Clay was indeed offered the position after Adams was victorious, he opted to accept and continue to support the administration he voted for, knowing that declining the position would not have helped to dispel the rumors brought against him. Jackson referred to Clay as the \"Judas of the West\".\nBy appointing Clay his Secretary of State, President Adams essentially declared him heir to the presidency, as Adams and his three predecessors had all served as Secretary of State. Jackson and his followers accused Adams and Clay of striking a \"corrupt bargain\", and the Jacksonians would campaign on this claim for the next four years, ultimately helping Jackson defeat Adams in 1828. Ironically, Adams offered Jackson a position in his Cabinet as Secretary of War, which Jackson declined to accept.\nAdams' supporters controlled the U.S. House of Representatives after the 1824\u201325 elections and obtained the speakership for John W. Taylor. Adams' relationship with Calhoun deteriorated, with Calhoun opposing Clay's appointment as Secretary of State due to his own presidential ambitions. In June 1826, Calhoun gave his support to Jackson for the 1828 election.\nElectoral College selection.\n! Method of choosing electors\n! State(s)\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "27552742": "Law of the United States\n \nThe law of the United States comprises many levels of codified and uncodified forms of law, of which the supreme law is the nation's Constitution, which prescribes the foundation of the federal government of the United States, as well as various civil liberties. The Constitution sets out the boundaries of federal law, which consists of Acts of Congress, treaties ratified by the Senate, regulations promulgated by the executive branch, and case law originating from the federal judiciary. The United States Code is the official compilation and codification of general and permanent federal statutory law.\nThe Constitution provides that it, as well as federal laws and treaties that are made pursuant to it, preempt conflicting state and territorial laws in the 50 U.S. states and in the territories. However, the scope of federal preemption is limited because the scope of federal power is not universal. In the dual sovereign system of American federalism (actually tripartite because of the presence of Indian reservations), states are the plenary sovereigns, each with their own constitution, while the federal sovereign possesses only the limited supreme authority enumerated in the Constitution. Indeed, states may grant their citizens broader rights than the federal Constitution as long as they do not infringe on any federal constitutional rights. Thus U.S. law (especially the actual \"living law\" of contract, tort, property, probate, criminal and family law, experienced by citizens on a day-to-day basis) consists primarily of state law, which, while sometimes harmonized, can and does vary greatly from one state to the next. Even in areas governed by federal law, state law is often supplemented, rather than preempted.\nAt both the federal and state levels, with the exception of the legal system of Louisiana, the law of the United States is largely derived from the common law system of English law, which was in force in British America at the time of the American Revolutionary War. However, American law has diverged greatly from its English ancestor both in terms of substance and procedure and has incorporated a number of civil law innovations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nGeneral overview.\nSources of law.\nIn the United States, the law is derived from five sources: constitutional law, statutory law, treaties, administrative regulations, and the common law (which includes case law).\nConstitutionality.\nIf Congress enacts a statute that conflicts with the Constitution, state or federal courts may rule that law to be unconstitutional and declare it invalid.\nNotably, a statute does not automatically disappear merely because it has been found unconstitutional; it may, however, be deleted by a subsequent statute. Many federal and state statutes have remained on the books for decades after they were ruled to be unconstitutional. However, under the principle of \"stare decisis\", a lower court that enforces a statute of a kind previously declared unconstitutional will risk reversal by the Supreme Court. Conversely, any court that refuses to enforce a statute previously held by higher courts to be constitutional will risk reversal by the Supreme Court.\nAmerican common law.\nThe United States and most Commonwealth countries are heirs to the common law legal tradition of English law. Certain practices traditionally allowed under English common law were expressly outlawed by the Constitution, such as bills of attainder and general search warrants.\nAs common law courts, U.S. courts have inherited the principle of \"stare decisis\". American judges, like common law judges elsewhere, not only apply the law, they also make the law, to the extent that their decisions in the cases before them become precedent for decisions in future cases.\nThe actual substance of English law was formally \"received\" into the United States in several ways. First, all U.S. states except Louisiana have enacted \"reception statutes\" which generally state that the common law of England (particularly judge-made law) is the law of the state to the extent that it is not repugnant to domestic law or indigenous conditions. Some reception statutes impose a specific cutoff date for reception, such as the date of a colony's founding, while others are deliberately vague. Thus, contemporary U.S. courts often cite pre-Revolution cases when discussing the evolution of an ancient judge-made common law principle into its modern form, such as the heightened duty of care traditionally imposed upon common carriers.\nSecond, a small number of important British statutes in effect at the time of the Revolution have been independently reenacted by U.S. states. Two examples are the Statute of Frauds (still widely known in the U.S. by that name) and the Statute of 13 Elizabeth (the ancestor of the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act). Such English statutes are still regularly cited in contemporary American cases interpreting their modern American descendants.\nDespite the presence of reception statutes, much of \"contemporary\" American common law has diverged significantly from English common law. Although the courts of the various Commonwealth nations are often influenced by each other's rulings, American courts rarely follow post-Revolution precedents from England or the British Commonwealth.\nEarly on, American courts, even after the Revolution, often did cite contemporary English cases, because appellate decisions from many American courts were not regularly reported until the mid-19th century. Lawyers and judges used English legal materials to fill the gap. Citations to English decisions gradually disappeared during the 19th century as American courts developed their own principles to resolve the legal problems of the American people. The number of published volumes of American reports soared from eighteen in 1810 to over 8,000 by 1910. By 1879 one of the delegates to the California constitutional convention was already complaining: \"Now, when we require them to state the reasons for a decision, we do not mean they shall write a hundred pages of detail. We [do] not mean that they shall include the small cases, and impose on the country all this fine judicial literature, for the Lord knows we have got enough of that already.\"\nToday, in the words of Stanford law professor Lawrence M. Friedman: \"American cases rarely cite foreign materials. Courts occasionally cite a British classic or two, a famous old case, or a nod to Blackstone; but current British law almost never gets any mention.\" Foreign law has never been cited as binding precedent, but as a reflection of the shared values of Anglo-American civilization or even Western civilization in general.\nLevels of law.\nFederal law.\nFederal law originates with the Constitution, which gives Congress the power to enact statutes for certain limited purposes like regulating interstate commerce. The United States Code is the official compilation and codification of the general and permanent federal statutes. Many statutes give executive branch agencies the power to create regulations, which are published in the Federal Register and codified into the Code of Federal Regulations. From 1984 to 2024, regulations generally also carried the force of law under the \"Chevron\" doctrine, but are now subject only to a lesser form of judicial deference known as \"Skidmore\" deference. Many lawsuits turn on the meaning of a federal statute or regulation, and judicial interpretations of such meaning carry legal force under the principle of \"stare decisis\".\nDuring the 18th and 19th centuries, federal law traditionally focused on areas where there was an express grant of power to the federal government in the federal Constitution, like the military, money, foreign relations (especially international treaties), tariffs, intellectual property (specifically patents and copyrights), and mail. Since the start of the 20th century, broad interpretations of the Commerce and Spending Clauses of the Constitution have enabled federal law to expand into areas like aviation, telecommunications, railroads, pharmaceuticals, antitrust, and trademarks. In some areas, like aviation and railroads, the federal government has developed a comprehensive scheme that preempts virtually all state law, while in others, like family law, a relatively small number of federal statutes (generally covering interstate and international situations) interacts with a much larger body of state law. In areas like antitrust, trademark, and employment law, there are powerful laws at both the federal and state levels that coexist with each other. In a handful of areas like insurance, Congress has enacted laws expressly refusing to regulate them as long as the states have laws regulating them (see, e.g., the McCarran\u2013Ferguson Act).\nStatutes.\nAfter the president signs a bill into law (or Congress enacts it over the president's veto), it is delivered to the Office of the Federal Register (OFR) of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) where it is assigned a law number, and prepared for publication as a slip law. Public laws, but not private laws, are also given legal statutory citation by the OFR. At the end of each session of Congress, the slip laws are compiled into bound volumes called the United States Statutes at Large, and they are known as session laws. The Statutes at Large present a chronological arrangement of the laws in the exact order that they have been enacted.\nPublic laws are incorporated into the United States Code, which is a codification of all general and permanent laws of the United States. The main edition is published every six years by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the House of Representatives, and cumulative supplements are published annually. The U.S. Code is arranged by subject matter, and it shows the present status of laws (with amendments already incorporated in the text) that have been amended on one or more occasions.\nRegulations.\nCongress often enacts statutes that grant broad rulemaking authority to federal agencies. Often, Congress is simply too gridlocked to draft detailed statutes that explain how the agency should react to every possible situation, or Congress believes the agency's technical specialists are best equipped to deal with particular fact situations as they arise. Therefore, federal agencies are authorized to promulgate regulations. Under the principle of \"Chevron\" deference, regulations normally carry the force of law as long as they are based on a reasonable interpretation of the relevant statutes.\nRegulations are adopted pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Regulations are first proposed and published in the Federal Register (FR or Fed. Reg.) and subject to a public comment period. Eventually, after a period for public comment and revisions based on comments received, a final version is published in the Federal Register. The regulations are codified and incorporated into the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) which is published once a year on a rolling schedule.\nBesides regulations formally promulgated under the APA, federal agencies also frequently promulgate an enormous amount of forms, manuals, policy statements, letters, and rulings. These documents may be considered by a court as persuasive authority as to how a particular statute or regulation may be interpreted (known as \"Skidmore\" deference), but are not entitled to \"Chevron\" deference.\nCommon law, case law, and precedent.\nUnlike the situation with the states, there is no plenary reception statute at the federal level that continued the common law and thereby granted federal courts the power to formulate legal precedent like their English predecessors. Federal courts are solely creatures of the federal Constitution and the federal Judiciary Acts. However, it is universally accepted that the Founding Fathers of the United States, by vesting \"judicial power\" into the Supreme Court and the inferior federal courts in Article Three of the United States Constitution, thereby vested in them the implied judicial power of common law courts to formulate persuasive precedent; this power was widely accepted, understood, and recognized by the Founding Fathers at the time the Constitution was ratified. Several legal scholars have argued that the federal judicial power to decide \"cases or controversies\" necessarily includes the power to decide the precedential effect of those cases and controversies.\nThe difficult question is whether federal judicial power extends to formulating binding precedent through strict adherence to the rule of \"stare decisis\". This is where the act of deciding a case becomes a limited form of lawmaking in itself, in that an appellate court's rulings will thereby bind itself and lower courts in future cases (and therefore also implicitly binds all persons within the court's jurisdiction). Prior to a major change to federal court rules in 2007, about one-fifth of federal appellate cases were published and thereby became binding precedents, while the rest were unpublished and bound only the parties to each case.\nAs federal judge Alex Kozinski has pointed out, binding precedent as we know it today simply did not exist at the time the Constitution was framed. Judicial decisions were not consistently, accurately, and faithfully reported on both sides of the Atlantic (reporters often simply rewrote or failed to publish decisions which they disliked), and the United Kingdom lacked a coherent court hierarchy prior to the end of the 19th century. Furthermore, English judges in the eighteenth century subscribed to now-obsolete natural law theories of law, by which law was believed to have an existence independent of what individual judges said. Judges saw themselves as merely declaring the law which had always theoretically existed, and not as making the law. Therefore, a judge could reject another judge's opinion as simply an incorrect statement of the law, in the way that scientists regularly reject each other's conclusions as incorrect statements of the laws of science.\nIn turn, according to Kozinski's analysis, the contemporary rule of binding precedent became possible in the U.S. in the nineteenth century only after the creation of a clear court hierarchy (under the Judiciary Acts), and the beginning of regular \"verbatim\" publication of U.S. appellate decisions by West Publishing. The rule gradually developed, case-by-case, as an extension of the judiciary's public policy of effective judicial administration (that is, in order to efficiently exercise the judicial power). The rule of binding precedent is generally justified today as a matter of public policy, first, as a matter of fundamental fairness, and second, because in the absence of case law, it would be completely unworkable for every minor issue in every legal case to be briefed, argued, and decided from first principles (such as relevant statutes, constitutional provisions, and underlying public policies), which in turn would create hopeless inefficiency, instability, and unpredictability, and thereby undermine the rule of law. The contemporary form of the rule is descended from Justice Louis Brandeis's \"landmark dissent in 1932's \"Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co\".\", which \"catalogued the Court's actual overruling practices in such a powerful manner that his attendant stare decisis analysis immediately assumed canonical authority.\" \nHere is a typical exposition of how public policy supports the rule of binding precedent in a 2008 majority opinion signed by Justice Breyer:\nJustice Brandeis once observed that \"in most matters it is more important that the applicable rule of law be settled than that it be settled right.\" \"Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co.\" [...] To overturn a decision settling one such matter simply because we might believe that decision is no longer \"right\" would inevitably reflect a willingness to reconsider others. And that willingness could itself threaten to substitute disruption, confusion, and uncertainty for necessary legal stability. We have not found here any factors that might overcome these considerations.\nIt is now sometimes possible, over time, for a line of precedents to drift from the express language of any underlying statutory or constitutional texts until the courts' decisions establish doctrines that were not considered by the texts' drafters. This trend has been strongly evident in federal substantive due process and Commerce Clause decisions. Originalists and political conservatives, such as Associate Justice Antonin Scalia have criticized this trend as anti-democratic.\nUnder the doctrine of \"Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins\" (1938), there is \"no general federal common law\". Although federal courts can create federal common law in the form of case law, such law must be linked one way or another to the interpretation of a particular federal constitutional provision, statute, or regulation (which was either enacted as part of the Constitution or pursuant to constitutional authority). Federal courts lack the plenary power possessed by state courts to simply make up law, which the latter are able to do in the absence of constitutional or statutory provisions replacing the common law. Only in a few narrow limited areas, like maritime law, has the Constitution expressly authorized the continuation of English common law at the federal level (meaning that in those areas federal courts can continue to make law as they see fit, subject to the limitations of \"stare decisis\").\nThe other major implication of the \"Erie\" doctrine is that federal courts cannot dictate the content of state law when there is no federal issue (and thus no federal supremacy issue) in a case. When hearing claims under state law pursuant to diversity jurisdiction, federal trial courts \"must\" apply the statutory and decisional law of the state in which they sit, as if they were a court of that state, even if they believe that the relevant state law is irrational or just bad public policy. \nUnder \"Erie\", such federal deference to state law applies only in one direction: state courts are not bound by federal interpretations of state law. Similarly, state courts are also not bound by most federal interpretations of federal law. In the vast majority of state courts, interpretations of federal law from federal courts of appeals and district courts can be cited as persuasive authority, but state courts are not bound by those interpretations. The U.S. Supreme Court has never squarely addressed the issue, but has signaled in dicta that it sides with this rule. Therefore, in those states, there is only one federal court that binds all state courts as to the interpretation of federal law and the federal Constitution: the U.S. Supreme Court itself.\nState and territory law.\nThe fifty American states are separate sovereigns, with their own state constitutions, state governments, and state courts. All states have a legislative branch which enacts state statutes, an executive branch that promulgates state regulations pursuant to statutory authorization, and a judicial branch that applies, interprets, and occasionally overturns both state statutes and regulations, as well as local ordinances. They retain plenary power to make laws covering anything not preempted by the federal Constitution, federal statutes, or international treaties ratified by the federal Senate. Normally, state supreme courts are the final interpreters of state constitutions and state law, unless their interpretation itself presents a federal issue, in which case a decision may be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by way of a petition for writ of certiorari. State laws have dramatically diverged in the centuries since independence, to the extent that the United States cannot be regarded as one legal system as to the majority of types of law traditionally under state control, but must be regarded as 50 \"separate\" systems of tort law, family law, property law, contract law, criminal law, and so on.\nMost cases are litigated in state courts and involve claims and defenses under state laws. In a 2018 report, the National Center for State Courts' Court Statistics Project found that state trial courts received 83.8\u00a0million newly filed cases in 2018, which consisted of 44.4\u00a0million traffic cases, 17.0\u00a0million criminal cases, 16.4\u00a0million civil cases, 4.7\u00a0million domestic relations cases, and 1.2\u00a0million juvenile cases. In 2018, state appellate courts received 234,000 new cases. By way of comparison, all federal district courts in 2016 together received only about 274,552 new civil cases, 79,787 new criminal cases, and 833,515 bankruptcy cases, while federal appellate courts received 53,649 new cases.\nTerritorial legal systems.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nLocal law.\nStates have delegated lawmaking powers to thousands of agencies, townships, counties, cities, and special districts. And all the state constitutions, statutes and regulations (as well as all the ordinances and regulations promulgated by local entities) are subject to judicial interpretation like their federal counterparts.\nIt is common for residents of major U.S. metropolitan areas to live under six or more layers of special districts as well as a town or city, and a county or township (in addition to the federal and state governments). Thus, at any given time, the average American citizen is subject to the rules and regulations of several dozen different agencies at the federal, state, and local levels, depending upon one's current location and behavior.\nLegal subjects.\nAmerican lawyers draw a fundamental distinction between procedural law (which controls the procedure by which legal rights and duties are vindicated) and substantive law (the actual substance of law, which is usually expressed in the form of various legal rights and duties). (The remainder of this article requires the reader to be already familiar with the contents of the separate article on state law.) \nCriminal law and procedure.\nCriminal law involves the prosecution by the state of wrongful acts which are considered to be so serious that they are a breach of the sovereign's peace (and cannot be deterred or remedied by mere lawsuits between private parties). Generally, crimes can result in incarceration, but torts (see below) cannot. The majority of the crimes committed in the United States are prosecuted and punished at the state level. Federal criminal law focuses on areas specifically relevant to the federal government like evading payment of federal income tax, mail theft, or physical attacks on federal officials, as well as interstate crimes like drug trafficking and wire fraud.\nAll states have somewhat similar laws in regard to \"higher crimes\" (or felonies), such as murder and rape, although penalties for these crimes may vary from state to state. Capital punishment is permitted in some states but not others. Three strikes laws in certain states impose harsh penalties on repeat offenders.\nSome states distinguish between two levels: felonies and misdemeanors (minor crimes). Generally, most felony convictions result in lengthy prison sentences as well as subsequent probation, large fines, and orders to pay restitution directly to victims; while misdemeanors may lead to a year or less in jail and a substantial fine. To simplify the prosecution of traffic violations and other relatively minor crimes, some states have added a third level, infractions. These may result in fines and sometimes the loss of one's driver's license, but no jail time.\nOn average, only three percent of criminal cases are resolved by jury trial; 97 percent are terminated either by plea bargaining or dismissal of the charges.\nFor public welfare offenses where the state is punishing merely risky (as opposed to injurious) behavior, there is significant diversity across the various states. For example, punishments for drunk driving varied greatly prior to 1990. State laws dealing with drug crimes still vary widely, with some states treating possession of small amounts of drugs as a misdemeanor offense or as a medical issue and others categorizing the same offense as a serious felony.\nThe law of criminal procedure in the United States consists of a massive overlay of federal constitutional case law interwoven with the federal and state statutes that actually provide the foundation for the creation and operation of law enforcement agencies and prison systems as well as the proceedings in criminal trials. Due to the perennial inability of legislatures in the U.S. to enact statutes that would actually force law enforcement officers to respect the constitutional rights of criminal suspects and convicts, the federal judiciary gradually developed the exclusionary rule as a method to enforce such rights. In turn, the exclusionary rule spawned a family of judge-made remedies for the abuse of law enforcement powers, of which the most famous is the Miranda warning. The writ of \"habeas corpus\" is often used by suspects and convicts to challenge their detention, while the Third Enforcement Act and \"Bivens\" actions are used by suspects to recover tort damages for police brutality.\nCivil procedure.\nThe law of civil procedure governs process in all judicial proceedings involving lawsuits between private parties. Traditional common law pleading was replaced by code pleading in 27 states after New York enacted the Field Code in 1850 and code pleading in turn was subsequently replaced again in most states by modern notice pleading during the 20th century. The old English division between common law and equity courts was abolished in the federal courts by the adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 1938; it has also been independently abolished by legislative acts in nearly all states. The Delaware Court of Chancery is the most prominent of the small number of remaining equity courts.\nThirty-five states have adopted rules of civil procedure modeled after the FRCP (including rule numbers). However, in doing so, they had to make some modifications to account for the fact that state courts have broad general jurisdiction while federal courts have relatively limited jurisdiction.\nNew York, Illinois, and California are the most significant states that have not adopted the FRCP. Furthermore, all three states continue to maintain most of their civil procedure laws in the form of codified statutes enacted by the state legislature, as opposed to court rules promulgated by the state supreme court, on the ground that the latter are undemocratic. But certain key portions of their civil procedure laws have been modified by their legislatures to bring them closer to federal civil procedure.\nGenerally, American civil procedure has several notable features, including extensive pretrial discovery, heavy reliance on live testimony obtained at deposition or elicited in front of a jury, and aggressive pretrial \"law and motion\" practice designed to result in a pretrial disposition (that is, summary judgment) or a settlement. U.S. courts pioneered the concept of the opt-out class action, by which the burden falls on class members to notify the court that they do not wish to be bound by the judgment, as opposed to opt-in class actions, where class members must join into the class. Another unique feature is the so-called American Rule under which parties generally bear their own attorneys' fees (as opposed to the English Rule of \"loser pays\"), though American legislators and courts have carved out numerous exceptions.\nContract law.\nContract law covers obligations established by agreement (express or implied) between private parties. Generally, contract law in transactions involving the sale of goods has become highly standardized nationwide as a result of the widespread adoption of the Uniform Commercial Code. However, there is still significant diversity in the interpretation of other kinds of contracts, depending upon the extent to which a given state has codified its common law of contracts or adopted portions of the Restatement (Second) of Contracts.\nParties are permitted to agree to arbitrate disputes arising from their contracts. Under the Federal Arbitration Act (which has been interpreted to cover \"all\" contracts arising under federal or state law), arbitration clauses are generally enforceable unless the party resisting arbitration can show unconscionability or fraud or something else which undermines the entire contract.\nTort law.\nTort law generally covers any civil action between private parties arising from wrongful acts that amount to a breach of general obligations imposed by law and not by contract. This broad family of civil wrongs involves interference \"with person, property, reputation, or commercial or social advantage.\"\nTort law covers the entire imaginable spectrum of wrongs that humans can inflict upon each other, and it partially overlaps with wrongs also punishable by criminal law. It is primarily a matter of state law and is usually developed through case law from state appellate courts; it is rarely a matter of federal law, although some federal statutes, such as the Volunteer Protection Act and the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, limit the liability of people who commit torts under state law. State tort-related statutes focus on discrete issues such as authorizing wrongful death claims (which did not exist at common law). Although the American Law Institute has attempted to standardize tort law through the development of several versions of the Restatement of Torts, many states have chosen to adopt only certain sections of the Restatements and to reject others. Thus, because of its immense size and diversity, American tort law cannot be easily summarized.\nFor example, a few jurisdictions allow actions for negligent infliction of emotional distress even in the absence of physical injury to the plaintiff, but most do not. For any particular tort, states differ on the causes of action, types and scope of remedies, statutes of limitations, and the amount of specificity with which one must plead the cause. With practically any aspect of tort law, there is a \"majority rule\" adhered to by most states, and one or more \"minority rules.\"\nNotably, the most broadly influential innovation of 20th-century American tort law was the rule of strict liability for defective products, which originated with judicial glosses on the law of warranty. In 1963, Roger J. Traynor of the Supreme Court of California threw away legal fictions based on warranties and imposed strict liability for defective products as a matter of public policy in the landmark case of \"Greenman v. Yuba Power Products\". The American Law Institute subsequently adopted a slightly different version of the \"Greenman\" rule in Section 402A of the \"Restatement (Second) of Torts\", which was published in 1964 and was very influential throughout the United States. Outside the U.S., the rule was adopted by the European Economic Community in the Product Liability Directive of July 1985, by Australia in July 1992, and by Japan in June 1994.\nBy the 1990s, the avalanche of American cases resulting from \"Greenman\" and Section 402A had become so complicated that another restatement was needed, which occurred with the 1997 publication of the \"Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability\".\nProperty law.\nHistorically, American property law has been heavily influenced by English land law, and is therefore concerned with real property first and personal property second. It is also primarily a matter of state law, and the level of interstate diversity in the law of property is much more substantial than in contract and tort. Efforts by both the American Law Institute and the Uniform Law Commission to reduce such interstate diversity were spectacular failures. \nThe majority of states use a title recording system (coupled with privately provided title insurance) to manage title to real property, although title registration (\"Torrens\" title) is also allowed in a small minority of states. Title to personal property is usually not registered, with the notable exceptions of motor vehicles (through a state department of motor vehicles or equivalent), bicycles (in certain cities and counties), and some types of firearms (in certain states).\nFamily law.\nIn the United States, family law governs relationships between adults, and relationships between parents and their children. As a discrete area of law worthy of its own specialists and law professors, American family law is relatively young in comparison to European family law; it did not take flight until the no-fault divorce revolution of the 1960s. Before the 1950s, widespread religious, legal, and social prohibitions against divorce in the United States meant that divorces were rare, were often seen as fact-driven matters (meaning that they were perceived as turning on each case's facts and not broadly generalizable legal principles), and rarely went up on appeal. The rise of no-fault divorce caused divorce litigation to shift away from the question of who was at fault for the collapse of the marital relationship and to focus instead on issues such as division of property, spousal support, and child support. \nFamily cases are traditionally a matter of state law and are virtually always heard only in state courts. Certain kinds of contract, tort, and property civil actions involving state law issues can be heard in federal courts under diversity jurisdiction, but federal courts decline to hear family cases under the \"domestic relations exception\" to diversity jurisdiction. \nAlthough family cases are heard in state courts, there has been a trend towards federalization of certain specific issues in family law. State courts and the lawyers who practice before them must be aware of federal income tax and bankruptcy implications of a divorce judgment, federal constitutional rights to abortion and paternity, and federal statutes governing interstate child custody disputes and interstate child support enforcement.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "19468510": "United States House of Representatives\nLower house of the US Congress\nThe United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Article One of the U.S. Constitution to pass or defeat federal legislation, known as bills. Those that are also passed by the Senate are sent to the president for signature or veto. The House's exclusive powers include initiating all revenue bills, impeaching federal officers, and electing the president if no candidate receives a majority of votes in the Electoral College.\nMembers of the House serve a fixed term of two years, with each seat up for election before the start of the next Congress. Special elections also occur when a seat is vacated early enough. The House's composition was established by Article One of the United States Constitution. The House is composed of representatives who, pursuant to the Uniform Congressional District Act, sit in single member congressional districts allocated to each state on the basis of population as measured by the United States census, with each district having at least a single representative, provided that that state is entitled to them. Since its inception in 1789, all representatives have been directly elected. Although suffrage was initially limited, it gradually widened, particularly after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment and the civil rights movement. \nSince 1913, the number of voting representatives has been at 435 pursuant to the Apportionment Act of 1911. The Reapportionment Act of 1929 capped the size of the House at 435. However, the number was temporarily increased from 1959 until 1963 to 437 following the admissions of Alaska and Hawaii to the Union.\nIn addition, five non-voting delegates represent the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories of Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. A non-voting resident commissioner, serving a four-year term, represents the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. As of the 2020 census, the largest delegation was California, with 52 representatives. Six states have only one representative apiece: Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming.\nThe House meets in the south wing of the United States Capitol. The rules of the House generally address a two-party system, with a majority party in government, and a minority party in opposition. The presiding officer is the speaker of the House, who is elected by the members thereof. Other floor leaders are chosen by the Democratic Caucus or the Republican Conference, depending on whichever party has the most voting members.\nHistory.\n18th century.\nUnder the Articles of Confederation, the Congress of the Confederation was a unicameral body with equal representation for each state, which meant that any state could veto most actions. \nAfter eight years of a more limited confederal government under the Articles, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and other Founding Fathers initiated the Constitutional Convention, which convened in Philadelphia from May 25 to September 17, 1787, and received the Confederation Congress's sanction to \"amend the Articles of Confederation\". All states except Rhode Island agreed to send delegates.\nCongress's structure was a contentious issue among the founders during the convention. Edmund Randolph's Virginia Plan called for bicameral legislature with proportional representation in the House and equal state representation in the Senate.\nThe House is commonly referred to as the lower house and the Senate the upper house, although the United States Constitution does not use that terminology. Both houses' approval is necessary for the passage of legislation. The Virginia Plan drew the support of delegates from several large states, including Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and called for representation based on population. The smaller states, however, favored the New Jersey Plan, which called for a unicameral Congress with equal representation for the states.\nThe Convention ultimately reached the Connecticut Compromise or Great Compromise, under which the House of Representatives would provide representation proportional to each state's population, and the Senate would provide equal representation amongst the states. In 1788, the Constitution was ratified, and it was implemented on March 4, 1789. \nLess than a month later, on April 1, 1789, the U.S. House convened for the first time in New York City, which was then the nation's capital. In 1790, the capital was moved back to Philadelphia, and the House met there from 1790 until 1800 when construction of the new national capitol in Washington, D.C. was completed.\n19th century.\nDuring the first half of the 19th century, the House was frequently in conflict with the U.S. Senate over regionally divisive issues, including slavery. The North was much more populous than the South, and therefore dominated the House of Representatives. However, the North held no such advantage in the Senate, where the equal representation of states prevailed.\nRegional conflict was most pronounced over the issue of slavery. One example of a provision repeatedly supported by the House but blocked by the Senate was the Wilmot Proviso, which sought to ban slavery in the land gained during the Mexican\u2013American War. Conflict over slavery and other issues persisted until the Civil War (1861\u20131865), which began soon after several southern states attempted to secede from the Union. The Civil War culminated in the South's defeat and in the abolition of slavery. Since all southern senators except Andrew Johnson resigned their seats at the beginning of the war, the Senate did not hold the balance of power between North and South during the war.\nDuring the Reconstruction that followed, the Republican Party held large majorities, which many Americans associated with the Union's victory in the Civil War and the ending of slavery. The Reconstruction period ended in about 1877; the ensuing era, known as the Gilded Age, was marked by sharp political divisions in the electorate. The Democratic Party and Republican Party each held majorities in the House at various times.\nThe late 19th and early 20th centuries also saw a dramatic increase in the power of the speaker of the House. The rise of the speaker's influence began in the 1890s, during the tenure of Republican Thomas Brackett Reed. \"Czar Reed\", as he was nicknamed, attempted to put into effect his view that \"The best system is to have one party govern and the other party watch.\" The leadership structure of the House also developed during approximately the same period, with the positions of majority leader and minority leader being created in 1899. While the minority leader was the head of the minority party, the majority leader remained subordinate to the speaker.\n20th century.\nThe speakership reached its zenith during the term of Republican Joseph Gurney Cannon, from 1903 to 1911. The speaker's powers included chairmanship of the influential Rules Committee and the ability to appoint members of other House committees. However, these powers were curtailed in the \"Revolution of 1910\" because of the efforts of Democrats and dissatisfied Republicans who opposed Cannon's heavy-handed tactics.\nThe Democratic Party dominated the House of Representatives during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration between 1933 and 1945, often winning over two-thirds of the seats. Both Democrats and Republicans were in power at various times during the next decade. The Democratic Party maintained control of the House from 1955 until 1995. In the mid-1970s, members passed major reforms that strengthened the power of subscommittees at the expense of committee chairs and allowed party leaders to nominate committee chairs. These actions were taken to undermine the seniority system, and to reduce the ability of a small number of senior members to obstruct legislation they did not favor. There was also a shift from the 1990s to greater control of the legislative program by the majority party; the power of party leaders (especially the speaker) grew considerably. \nAccording to historian Julian E. Zelizer, the majority Democrats minimized the number of staff positions available to the minority Republicans, kept them out of decision-making, and gerrymandered their home districts. Republican Newt Gingrich argued American democracy was being ruined by the Democrats' tactics and that the GOP had to destroy the system before it could be saved. Cooperation in governance, says Zelizer, would have to be put aside until they deposed Speaker Wright and regained power. Gingrich brought an ethics complaint which led to Wright's resignation in 1989. Gingrich gained support from the media and good government forces in his crusade to persuade Americans that the system was, in Gingrich's words, \"morally, intellectually and spiritually corrupt\". Gingrich followed Wright's successor, Democrat Tom Foley, as speaker after the Republican Revolution of 1994 gave his party control of the House.\nGingrich attempted to pass a major legislative program, the Contract with America and made major reforms of the House, notably reducing the tenure of committee chairs to three two-year terms. Many elements of the Contract did not pass Congress, were vetoed by President Bill Clinton, or were substantially altered in negotiations with Clinton. After Republicans held control in the 1996 election, however, Clinton and the Gingrich-led House agreed on the first balanced federal budget in decades, along with a substantial tax cut.\n21st century.\nRepublicans held on to the House until 2006, when the Democrats won control and Nancy Pelosi was subsequently elected by the House as the first female speaker. \nRepublicans retook the House in 2010 elections with the largest shift of political power between the parties since the 1938 elections. Republicans held the House until Democrats retook it in the 2018 elections, which became the largest shift of power to the Democrats since the 1970s. In the 2022 elections, Republicans took back control of the House, winning a slim majority.\nIn November 2024, House speaker Mike Johnson announced that the House would have women-only spaces following the election of Sarah McBride\nMembership, qualifications, and apportionment.\nApportionments.\nUnder Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, seats in the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states by population, as determined by the census conducted every ten years. Each state is entitled to at least one representative, however small its population.\nThe only constitutional rule relating to the size of the House states: \"The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative.\" Congress regularly increased the size of the House to account for population growth until it fixed the number of voting House members at 435 in 1911. In 1959, upon the admission of Alaska and Hawaii, the number was temporarily increased to 437 (seating one representative from each of those states without changing existing apportionment), and returned to 435 four years later, after the reapportionment consequent to the 1960 census.\nThe Constitution does not provide for the representation of the District of Columbia or of territories. The District of Columbia and the territories of Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are each represented by one non-voting delegate. Puerto Rico elects a resident commissioner, but other than having a four-year term, the resident commissioner's role is identical to the delegates from the other territories. The five delegates and resident commissioner may participate in debates; before 2011, they were also allowed to vote in committees and the Committee of the Whole when their votes would not be decisive.\nRedistricting.\nStates entitled to more than one representative are divided into single-member districts. This has been a federal statutory requirement since 1967 pursuant to the act titled An Act For the relief of Doctor Ricardo Vallejo Samala and to provide for congressional redistricting. Before that law, general ticket representation was used by some states.\nStates typically redraw district boundaries after each census, though they may do so at other times, such as the 2003 Texas redistricting. Each state determines its own district boundaries, either through legislation or through non-partisan panels. Malapportionment is unconstitutional and districts must be approximately equal in population (see \"Wesberry v. Sanders\"). Additionally, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits redistricting plans that are intended to, or have the effect of, discriminating against racial or language minority voters. Aside from malapportionment and discrimination against racial or language minorities, federal courts have allowed state legislatures to engage in gerrymandering to benefit political parties or incumbents. In a 1984 case, \"Davis v. Bandemer\", the Supreme Court held that gerrymandered districts could be struck down based on the Equal Protection Clause, but the Court did not articulate a standard for when districts are impermissibly gerrymandered. However, the Court overruled Davis in 2004 in \"Vieth v. Jubelirer\", and Court precedent holds gerrymandering to be a political question. According to calculations made by Burt Neuborne using criteria set forth by the American Political Science Association, only about 40 seats, less than 10% of the House membership, are chosen through a genuinely contested electoral process, given partisan gerrymandering.\nQualifications.\nArticle I, Section 2 of the Constitution sets three qualifications for representatives. Each representative must: (1) be at least twenty-five (25) years old; (2) have been a citizen of the United States for the past seven years; and (3) be (at the time of the election) an inhabitant of the state they represent. Members are not required to live in the districts they represent, but they traditionally do. The age and citizenship qualifications for representatives are less than those for senators. The constitutional requirements of Article I, Section 2 for election to Congress are the maximum requirements that can be imposed on a candidate. Therefore, Article I, Section 5, which permits each House to be the judge of the qualifications of its own members does not permit either House to establish additional qualifications. Likewise, a state could not establish additional qualifications. William C. C. Claiborne served in the House below the minimum age of 25.\nDisqualification: under the Fourteenth Amendment, a federal or state officer who takes the requisite oath to support the Constitution, but later engages in rebellion or aids the enemies of the United States, is disqualified from becoming a representative. This post\u2013Civil War provision was intended to prevent those who sided with the Confederacy from serving. However, disqualified individuals may serve if they gain the consent of two-thirds of both houses of Congress.\nElections.\nElections for representatives are held in every even-numbered year, on Election Day the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Pursuant to the Uniform Congressional District Act, representatives must be elected from single-member districts. After a census is taken (in a year ending in 0), the year ending in 2 is the first year in which elections for U.S. House districts are based on that census (with the Congress based on those districts starting its term on the following January 3). As there is no legislation at the federal level mandating one particular system for elections to the House, systems are set at the state level. As of 2022, first-past-the-post or plurality voting is used in 46 states, electing 412 representatives, ranked-choice or instant-runoff voting in two states (Alaska and Maine), electing 3 representatives, and two-round system in two states (Georgia and Louisiana), electing 20 representatives. Elected representatives serve a two-year term, with no term limit.\nIn most states, major party candidates for each district are nominated in partisan primary elections, typically held in spring to late summer. In some states, the Republican and Democratic parties choose their candidates for each district in their political conventions in spring or early summer, which often use unanimous voice votes to reflect either confidence in the incumbent or the result of bargaining in earlier private discussions. Exceptions can result in so-called floor fights\u2014convention votes by delegates, with outcomes that can be hard to predict. Especially if a convention is closely divided, a losing candidate may contend further by meeting the conditions for a primary election. The courts generally do not consider ballot access rules for independent and third party candidates to be additional qualifications for holding office and no federal statutes regulate ballot access. As a result, the process to gain ballot access varies greatly from state to state, and in the case of a third party in the United States may be affected by results of previous years' elections.\nIn 1967, Congress passed the Uniform Congressional District Act, which requires all representatives to be elected from single-member-districts. Following the \"Wesberry v. Sanders\" decision, Congress was motivated by fears that courts would impose at-large plurality districts on states that did not redistrict to comply with the new mandates for districts roughly equal in population, and Congress also sought to prevent attempts by southern states to use such voting systems to dilute the vote of racial minorities. Several states have used multi-member districts in the past, although only two states (Hawaii and New Mexico) used multi-member districts in 1967. Louisiana is unique in that it holds an all-party primary election on the general Election Day with a subsequent runoff election between the top two finishers (regardless of party) if no candidate received a majority in the primary. The states of Washington and California use a similar (though not identical) system to that used by Louisiana.\nSeats vacated during a term are filled through special elections, unless the vacancy occurs closer to the next general election date than a pre-established deadline. The term of a member chosen in a special election usually begins the next day, or as soon as the results are certified.\nNon-voting delegates.\nHistorically, many territories have sent non-voting delegates to the House. While their role has fluctuated over the years, today they have many of the same privileges as voting members, have a voice in committees, and can introduce bills on the floor, but cannot vote on the ultimate passage of bills. Presently, the District of Columbia and the five inhabited U.S. territories each elect a delegate. A seventh delegate, representing the Cherokee Nation, has been formally proposed but has not yet been seated. An eighth delegate, representing the Choctaw Nation is guaranteed by treaty but has not yet been proposed. Additionally, some territories may choose to also elect shadow representatives, though these are not official members of the House and are separate individuals from their official delegates.\nTerms.\nRepresentatives and delegates serve for two-year terms, while a resident commissioner (a kind of delegate) serves for four years. A term starts on January 3 following the election in November. The U.S. Constitution requires that vacancies in the House be filled with a special election. The term of the replacement member expires on the date that the original member's would have expired.\nThe Constitution permits the House to expel a member with a two-thirds vote. In the history of the United States, only six members have been expelled from the House; in 1861, three were removed for supporting the Confederate states' secession: Democrats John Bullock Clark of Missouri, John William Reid of Missouri, and Henry Cornelius Burnett of Kentucky. Democrat Michael Myers of Pennsylvania was expelled after his criminal conviction for accepting bribes in 1980, Democrat James Traficant of Ohio was expelled in 2002 following his conviction for corruption, and Republican George Santos was expelled in 2023 after he was implicated in fraud by both a federal indictment and a House Ethics Committee investigation.\nThe House also has the power to formally censure or reprimand its members; censure or reprimand of a member requires only a simple majority, and does not remove that member from office.\nComparison to the Senate.\nAs a check on the regional, popular, and rapidly changing politics of the House, the Senate has several distinct powers. For example, the \"advice and consent\" powers (such as the power to approve treaties and confirm members of the Cabinet) are a sole Senate privilege. The House, however, has the exclusive power to initiate bills for raising revenue, to impeach officials, and to choose the president if a presidential candidate fails to get a majority of the Electoral College votes. Both House and Senate confirmation is now required to fill a vacancy if the vice presidency is vacant, according to the provisions of the Twenty-fifth Amendment. The Senate and House are further differentiated by term lengths and the number of districts represented: the Senate has longer terms of six years, fewer members (currently one hundred, two for each state), and (in all but seven delegations) larger constituencies per member.\nSalary and benefits.\nSalaries.\nSince December 2014, the annual salary of each representative is $174,000, the same as it is for each member of the Senate. The speaker of the House and the majority and minority leaders earn more: $223,500 for the speaker and $193,400 for their party leaders (the same as Senate leaders). A cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) increase takes effect annually unless Congress votes not to accept it. Congress sets members' salaries; however, the Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits a change in salary (but not COLA) from taking effect until after the next election of the whole House. Representatives are eligible for retirement benefits after serving for five years. Outside pay is limited to 15% of congressional pay, and certain types of income involving a fiduciary responsibility or personal endorsement are prohibited. Salaries are not for life, only during active term.\nTitles.\nRepresentatives use the prefix \"The Honorable\" before their names. A member of the House is referred to as a \"representative\", \"congressman\", or \"congresswoman\".\nRepresentatives are usually identified in the media and other sources by party and state, and sometimes by congressional district, or a major city or community within their district. For example, Democratic representative Nancy Pelosi, who represents California's 11th congressional district within San Francisco, may be identified as \"D\u2013California\", \"D\u2013California\u201311\" or \"D\u2013San Francisco\".\n\"Member of congress\" is occasionally abbreviated as either \"MOC\" or \"MC\" (similar to MP). However, the abbreviation \"Rep.\" for Representative is more common, as it avoids confusion as to whether they are a member of the House or the Senate.\nPension.\nAll members of Congress are automatically enrolled in the Federal Employees Retirement System, a pension system also used for federal civil servants, except the formula for calculating Congress members' pension results in a 70% higher pension than other federal employees based on the first 20 years of service. They become eligible to receive benefits after five years of service (two and one-half terms in the House). The FERS is composed of three elements:\nMembers of Congress may retire with full benefits at age 62 after five years of service, at age 50 after 20 years of service, and at any age after 25 years of service. With an average age of 58, the US House of Representatives is older than comparable chambers in Russia and the other G7 nations.\nTax deductions.\nMembers of Congress are permitted to deduct up to $3,000 of living expenses per year incurred while living away from their district or home state.\nHealth benefits.\nBefore 2014, members of Congress and their staff had access to essentially the same health benefits as federal civil servants; they could voluntarily enroll in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), an employer-sponsored health insurance program, and were eligible to participate in other programs, such as the Federal Flexible Spending Account Program (FSAFEDS).\nHowever, Section 1312(d)(3)(D) of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) provided that the only health plans that the federal government can make available to members of Congress and certain congressional staff are those created under the ACA or offered through a health care exchange. The Office of Personnel Management promulgated a final rule to comply with Section 1312(d)(3)(D). Under the rule, effective January 1, 2014, members and designated staff are no longer able to purchase FEHBP plans as active employees. However, if members enroll in a health plan offered through a Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) exchange, they remain eligible for an employer contribution toward coverage, and members and designated staff eligible for retirement may enroll in a FEHBP plan upon retirement.\nThe ACA and the final rule do not affect members' or staffers' eligibility for Medicare benefits. The ACA and the final rule also do not affect members' and staffers' eligibility for other health benefits related to federal employment, so members and staff are eligible to participate in FSAFEDS (which has three options within the program), the Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program, and the Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program.\nThe Office of the Attending Physician at the U.S. Capitol provides members with health care for an annual fee. The attending physician provides routine exams, consultations, and certain diagnostics, and may write prescriptions (although the office does not dispense them). The office does not provide vision or dental care.\nMembers (but not their dependents, and not former members) may also receive medical and emergency dental care at military treatment facilities. There is no charge for outpatient care if it is provided in the National Capital Region, but members are billed at full reimbursement rates (set by the Department of Defense) for inpatient care. (Outside the National Capital Region, charges are at full reimbursement rates for both inpatient and outpatient care).\nPersonnel, mail and office expenses.\nHouse members are eligible for a Member's Representational Allowance (MRA) to support them in their official and representational duties to their district. The MRA is calculated based on three components: one for personnel, one for official office expenses and one for official or franked mail. The personnel allowance is the same for all members; the office and mail allowances vary based on the members' district's distance from Washington, D.C., the cost of office space in the member's district, and the number of non-business addresses in their district. These three components are used to calculate a single MRA that can fund any expense\u2014even though each component is calculated individually, the franking allowance can be used to pay for personnel expenses if the member so chooses. In 2011 this allowance averaged $1.4\u00a0million per member, and ranged from $1.35 to $1.67\u00a0million.\nThe Personnel allowance was $944,671 per member in 2010. Each member may employ no more than 18 permanent employees. Members' employees' salary is capped at $168,411 as of 2009.\nTravel allowance.\nBefore being sworn into office, each member-elect and one staffer can be paid for one round trip between their home in their congressional district and Washington, D.C., for organization caucuses. Members are allowed \"a sum for travel based on the following formula: 64 times the rate per mile ... multiplied by the mileage between Washington, DC, and the furthest point in a Member's district, plus 10%.\" As of January 2012[ [update]] the rate ranges from based on distance ranges between D.C. and the member's district.\nOfficers.\nMember officials.\nThe party with a majority of seats in the House is known as the majority party. The next-largest party is the minority party. The speaker, committee chairs, and some other officials are generally from the majority party; they have counterparts (for instance, the \"ranking members\" of committees) in the minority party.\nThe Constitution provides that the House may choose its own speaker. Although not explicitly required by the Constitution, every speaker has been a member of the House. The Constitution does not specify the duties and powers of the speaker, which are instead regulated by the rules and customs of the House. Speakers have a role both as a leader of the House and the leader of their party (which need not be the majority party; theoretically, a member of the minority party could be elected as speaker with the support of a fraction of members of the majority party). Under the Presidential Succession Act (1947), the speaker is second in the line of presidential succession after the vice president.\nThe speaker is the presiding officer of the House but does not preside over every debate. Instead, they delegate the responsibility of presiding to other members in most cases. The presiding officer sits in a chair in the front of the House chamber. The powers of the presiding officer are extensive; one important power is that of controlling the order in which members of the House speak. No member may make a speech or a motion unless they have first been recognized by the presiding officer. Moreover, the presiding officer may rule on a \"point of order\" (a member's objection that a rule has been breached); the decision is subject to appeal to the whole House.\nSpeakers serve as chairs of their party's steering committee, which is responsible for assigning party members to other House committees. The speaker chooses the chairs of standing committees, appoints most of the members of the Rules Committee, appoints all members of conference committees, and determines which committees consider bills.\nEach party elects a floor leader, who is known as the majority leader or minority leader. The minority leader heads their party in the House, and the majority leader is their party's second-highest-ranking official, behind the speaker. Party leaders decide what legislation members of their party should either support or oppose.\nEach party also elects a Whip, who works to ensure that the party's members vote as the party leadership desires. The majority whip in the House of Representatives is Tom Emmer, who is a member of the Republican Party. The minority whip is Katherine Clark, who is a member of the Democratic Party. The whip is supported by chief deputy whips\nAfter the whips, the next ranking official in the House party's leadership is the party conference chair (styled as the Republican conference chair and Democratic caucus chair).\nAfter the conference chair, there are differences between each party's subsequent leadership ranks. After the Democratic caucus chair is the campaign committee chair (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee), then the co-chairs of the Steering Committee. For the Republicans it is the chair of the House Republican Policy Committee, followed by the campaign committee chairman (styled as the National Republican Congressional Committee).\nThe chairs of House committees, particularly influential standing committees such as Appropriations, Ways and Means, and Rules, are powerful but not officially part of the House leadership hierarchy. Until the post of majority leader was created, the chair of Ways and Means was the \"de facto\" majority leader.\nLeadership and partisanship.\nWhen the presidency and Senate are controlled by a different party from the one controlling the House, the speaker can become the \"de facto\" \"leader of the opposition\". Some notable examples include Tip O'Neill in the 1980s, Newt Gingrich in the 1990s, John Boehner in the early 2010s, and Nancy Pelosi in the late 2000s and again in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Since the speaker is a partisan officer with substantial power to control the business of the House, the position is often used for partisan advantage.\nIn the instance when the presidency and both Houses of Congress are controlled by one party, the speaker normally takes a low profile and defers to the president. For that situation the House minority leader can play the role of a \"de facto\" \"leader of the opposition\", often more so than the Senate minority leader, due to the more partisan nature of the House and the greater role of leadership.\nNon-member officials.\nThe House is also served by several officials who are not members. The House's chief such officer is the clerk, who maintains public records, prepares documents, and oversees junior officials, including pages until the discontinuation of House pages in 2011. The clerk also presides over the House at the beginning of each new Congress pending the election of a speaker. Another officer is the chief administrative officer, responsible for the day-to-day administrative support to the House of Representatives. This includes everything from payroll to foodservice.\nThe position of chief administrative officer (CAO) was created by the 104th Congress following the 1994 mid-term elections, replacing the positions of doorkeeper and director of non-legislative and financial services (created by the previous congress to administer the non-partisan functions of the House). The CAO also assumed some of the responsibilities of the House Information Services, which previously had been controlled directly by the Committee on House Administration, then headed by Representative Charlie Rose of North Carolina, along with the House \"Folding Room\".\nThe chaplain leads the House in prayer at the opening of the day. The sergeant at arms is the House's chief law enforcement officer and maintains order and security on House premises. Finally, routine police work is handled by the United States Capitol Police, which is supervised by the Capitol Police Board, a body to which the sergeant at arms belongs, and chairs in even-numbered years.\nProcedure.\nDaily procedures.\nLike the Senate, the House of Representatives meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. At one end of the chamber of the House is a rostrum from which the speaker, Speaker pro tempore, or (when in Committee of the Whole House) the chair presides. The lower tiers of the rostrum are used by clerks and other officials. A table in front of the rostrum is used by the official reporters. Members' seats are arranged in the chamber in a semicircular pattern facing the rostrum and are divided by a wide central aisle. By tradition, Democrats sit on the left of the center aisle, while Republicans sit on the right, facing the presiding officer's chair. Sittings are normally held on weekdays; meetings on Saturdays and Sundays are rare. Sittings of the House are generally open to the public; visitors must obtain a House Gallery pass from a congressional office. Sittings are broadcast live on television and have been streamed live on C-SPAN since March 19, 1979, and on \"HouseLive\", the official streaming service operated by the Clerk, since the early 2010s.\nThe procedure of the House depends not only on the rules, but also on a variety of customs, precedents, and traditions. In many cases, the House waives some of its stricter rules (including time limits on debates) by unanimous consent. A member may block a unanimous consent agreement, but objections are rare. The presiding officer, the speaker of the House enforces the rules of the House, and may warn members who deviate from them. The speaker uses a gavel to maintain order. Legislation to be considered by the House is placed in a box called the hopper.\nIn one of its first resolutions, the U.S. House of Representatives established the Office of the Sergeant at Arms. In an American tradition adopted from English custom in 1789 by the first speaker of the House, Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania, the Mace of the United States House of Representatives is used to open all sessions of the House. It is also used during the inaugural ceremonies for all presidents of the United States. For daily sessions of the House, the sergeant at arms carries the mace ahead of the speaker in procession to the rostrum. It is placed on a green marble pedestal to the speaker's right. When the House is in committee, the mace is moved to a pedestal next to the desk of the Sergeant at Arms.\nThe Constitution provides that a majority of the House constitutes a quorum to do business. Under the rules and customs of the House, a quorum is always assumed present unless a quorum call explicitly demonstrates otherwise. House rules prevent a member from making a point of order that a quorum is not present unless a question is being voted on. The presiding officer does not accept a point of order of no quorum during general debate, or when a question is not before the House.\nDuring debates, a member may speak only if called upon by the presiding officer. The presiding officer decides which members to recognize, and can therefore control the course of debate. All speeches must be addressed to the presiding officer, using the words \"Mr. Speaker\" or \"Madam Speaker\". Only the presiding officer may be directly addressed in speeches; other members must be referred to in the third person. In most cases, members do not refer to each other only by name, but also by state, using forms such as \"the gentleman from Virginia\", \"the distinguished gentlewoman from California\", or \"my distinguished friend from Alabama\".\nThere are 448 permanent seats on the House Floor and four tables, two on each side. These tables are occupied by members of the committee that have brought a bill to the floor for consideration and by the party leadership. Members address the House from microphones at any table or \"the well\", the area immediately in front of the rostrum.\nPassage of legislation.\nUnder the U.S. Constitution, the House of Representatives determines the rules according to which it passes legislation. Any of the rules can be changed with each new Congress, but in practice each new session amends a standing set of rules built up over the history of the body in an early resolution published for public inspection. Before legislation reaches the floor of the House, the Rules Committee normally passes a rule to govern debate on that measure (which then must be passed by the full House before it becomes effective). For instance, the committee determines if amendments to the bill are permitted. An \"open rule\" permits all germane amendments, but a \"closed rule\" restricts or even prohibits amendment. Debate on a bill is generally restricted to one hour, equally divided between the majority and minority parties. Each side is led during the debate by a \"floor manager\", who allocates debate time to members who wish to speak. On contentious matters, many members may wish to speak; thus, a member may receive as little as one minute, or even thirty seconds, to make their point.\nWhen debate concludes, the motion is put to a vote. In many cases, the House votes by voice vote; the presiding officer puts the question, and members respond either \"yea!\" or \"aye!\" (in favor of the motion) or \"nay!\" or \"no!\" (against the motion). The presiding officer then announces the result of the voice vote. A member may, however, challenge the presiding officer's assessment and \"request the yeas and nays\" or \"request a recorded vote\". The request may be granted only if it is seconded by one-fifth of the members present. Traditionally, however, members of Congress second requests for recorded votes as a matter of courtesy. Some votes are always recorded, such as those on the annual budget.\nA recorded vote may be taken in one of three different ways. One is electronically. Members use a personal identification card to record their votes at 46 voting stations in the chamber. Votes are usually held in this way. A second mode of recorded vote is by teller. Members hand in colored cards to indicate their votes: green for \"yea\", red for \"nay\", and orange for \"present\" (i.e., to abstain). Teller votes are normally held only when electronic voting breaks down. Finally, the House may conduct a roll call vote. The Clerk reads the list of members of the House, each of whom announces their vote when their name is called. This procedure is only used rarely (and usually for ceremonial occasions, such as for the election of a speaker) because of the time consumed by calling over four hundred names.\nVoting traditionally lasts for, at most, fifteen minutes, but it may be extended if the leadership needs to \"whip\" more members into alignment. The 2003 vote on the prescription drug benefit was open for three hours, from 3:00 to 6:00\u00a0a.m., to receive four additional votes, three of which were necessary to pass the legislation. The 2005 vote on the Central American Free Trade Agreement was open for one hour, from 11:00\u00a0p.m. to midnight. An October 2005 vote on facilitating refinery construction was kept open for forty minutes.\nPresiding officers may vote like other members. They may not, however, vote twice in the event of a tie; rather, a tie vote defeats the motion.\nCommittees and caucuses.\nThe House uses committees and their subcommittees for a variety of purposes, including the review of bills and the oversight of the executive branch. The appointment of committee members is formally made by the whole House, but the choice of members is actually made by the political parties. Generally, each party honors the preferences of individual members, giving priority on the basis of seniority. Historically, membership on committees has been in rough proportion to the party's strength in the House, with two exceptions: on the Rules Committee, the majority party fills nine of the thirteen seats; and on the Ethics Committee, each party has an equal number of seats. However, when party control in the House is closely divided, extra seats on committees are sometimes allocated to the majority party. In the 109th Congress, for example, the Republicans controlled about 53% of the House, but had 54% of the Appropriations Committee members, 55% of the members on the Energy and Commerce Committee, and 58% of the members on the Judiciary Committee.\nThe largest committee of the House is the Committee of the Whole, which, as its name suggests, consists of all members of the House. The Committee meets in the House chamber; it may consider and amend bills, but may not grant them final passage. Generally, the debate procedures of the Committee of the Whole are more flexible than those of the House itself. One advantage of the Committee of the Whole is its ability to include otherwise non-voting members of Congress.\nMost committee work is performed by twenty standing committees, each of which has jurisdiction over a specific set of issues, such as Agriculture or Foreign Affairs. Each standing committee considers, amends, and reports bills that fall under its jurisdiction. Committees have extensive powers with regard to bills; they may block legislation from reaching the floor of the House. Standing committees also oversee the departments and agencies of the executive branch. In discharging their duties, standing committees have the power to hold hearings and to subpoena witnesses and evidence.\nThe House also has one permanent committee that is not a standing committee, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and occasionally may establish temporary or advisory committees, such as the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. This latter committee, created in the 110th Congress and reauthorized for the 111th, has no jurisdiction over legislation and must be chartered anew at the start of every Congress. The House also appoints members to serve on joint committees, which include members of the Senate and House. Some joint committees oversee independent government bodies; for instance, the Joint Committee on the Library oversees the Library of Congress. Other joint committees serve to make advisory reports; for example, there exists a Joint Committee on Taxation. Bills and nominees are not referred to joint committees. Hence, the power of joint committees is considerably lower than those of standing committees.\nEach House committee and subcommittee is led by a chairman (always a member of the majority party). From 1910 to the 1970s, committee chairs were powerful. Woodrow Wilson in his classic study, suggested:Power is nowhere concentrated; it is rather deliberately and of set policy scattered amongst many small chiefs. It is divided up, as it were, into forty-seven seigniories, in each of which a Standing Committee is the court-baron and its chairman lord-proprietor. These petty barons, some of them not a little powerful, but none of them within the reach of the full powers of rule, may at will exercise almost despotic sway within their own shires, and may sometimes threaten to convulse even the realm itself.\nFrom 1910 to 1975 committee and subcommittee chairmanship was determined purely by seniority; members of Congress sometimes had to wait 30 years to get one, but their chairship was independent of party leadership. The rules were changed in 1975 to permit party caucuses to elect chairs, shifting power upward to the party leaders. In 1995, Republicans under Newt Gingrich set a limit of three two-year terms for committee chairs. The chairman's powers are extensive; he controls the committee/subcommittee agenda, and may prevent the committee from dealing with a bill. The senior member of the minority party is known as the Ranking Member. In some committees like Appropriations, partisan disputes are few.\nLegislative functions.\nMost bills may be introduced in either House of Congress. However, the Constitution states, \"All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.\" Because of the Origination Clause, the Senate cannot initiate bills imposing taxes. This provision barring the Senate from introducing revenue bills is based on the practice of the British Parliament, in which only the House of Commons may originate such measures. Furthermore, congressional tradition holds that the House of Representatives originates appropriation bills.\nAlthough it cannot originate revenue bills, the Senate retains the power to amend or reject them. Woodrow Wilson wrote the following about appropriations bills:\n[T]he constitutional prerogative of the House has been held to apply to all the general appropriations bills, and the Senate's right to amend these has been allowed the widest possible scope. The upper house may add to them what it pleases; may go altogether outside of their original provisions and tack to them entirely new features of legislation, altering not only the amounts but even the objects of expenditure, and making out of the materials sent them by the popular chamber measures of an almost totally new character.\nThe approval of the Senate and the House of Representatives is required for a bill to become law. Both Houses must pass the same version of the bill; if there are differences, they may be resolved by a conference committee, which includes members of both bodies. For the stages through which bills pass in the Senate, see Act of Congress.\nThe president may veto a bill passed by the House and Senate. If they do, the bill does not become law unless each House, by a two-thirds vote, votes to override the veto.\nChecks and balances.\nThe Constitution provides that the Senate's \"advice and consent\" is necessary for the president to make appointments and to ratify treaties. Thus, with its potential to frustrate presidential appointments, the Senate is more powerful than the House.\nThe Constitution empowers the House of Representatives to impeach federal officials for \"Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors\" and empowers the Senate to try such impeachments. The House may approve \"articles of impeachment\" by a simple majority vote; however, a two-thirds vote is required for conviction in the Senate. A convicted official is automatically removed from office and may be disqualified from holding future office under the United States. No further punishment is permitted during the impeachment proceedings; however, the party may face criminal penalties in a normal court of law.\nIn U.S. history, the House of Representatives has impeached seventeen officials, seven who were convicted. Another, Richard Nixon, resigned after the House Judiciary Committee passed articles of impeachment but before a formal impeachment vote by the full House. Only three U.S. presidents have ever been impeached: Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump in 2019 and in 2021. The trials of Johnson, Clinton, and Trump all ended in acquittal; in Johnson's case, the Senate fell one vote short of the two-thirds majority required for conviction.\nUnder the Twelfth Amendment, the House has the power to elect the president if no presidential candidate receives a majority of votes in the Electoral College. The Twelfth Amendment requires the House to choose from the three candidates with the highest numbers of electoral votes. The Constitution provides that \"the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote\". It is rare for no presidential candidate to receive a majority of electoral votes. In U.S. history, the House has only had to choose a president twice. In the 1800 election, which was held before adoption of the Twelfth Amendment, it elected Thomas Jefferson over Aaron Burr. In the 1824 election, it elected John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson and William H. Crawford. If no vice presidential candidate receives a majority of the electoral votes, the Senate elects the vice president from the two candidates with the highest numbers of electoral votes.\nLatest election results and party standings.\nAs of \u00a01, 2025[ [update]]\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources and further reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nSurveys.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["19468510", "40509", "27552742"], "permutation_1": ["27552742", "19468510", "40509"], "permutation_2": ["40509", "27552742", "19468510"], "permutation_3": ["40509", "19468510", "27552742"]}
{"id": "3hop1__701129_146907_1698", "docs_added": {"645042": "New York City\nMost populous city in the United States\nNew York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive with a respective county. The city is the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the United States by both population and urban area. New York is a global center of finance and commerce, culture, technology, entertainment and media, academics and scientific output, the arts and fashion, and, as home to the headquarters of the United Nations, international diplomacy.\nWith an estimated population in 2024 of 8,478,072 distributed over , the city is the most densely populated major city in the United States. New York City has more than double the population of Los Angeles, the nation's second-most populous city. With more than 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York City is one of the world's most populous megacities. The city and its metropolitan area are the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York City, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. In 2021, the city was home to nearly 3.1 million residents born outside the United States, the largest foreign-born population of any city in the world.\nNew York City traces its origins to Fort Amsterdam and a trading post founded on Manhattan Island by Dutch colonists around 1624. The settlement was named New Amsterdam in 1626 and was chartered as a city in 1653. The city came under English control in 1664 and was temporarily renamed New York after King Charles II granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York, before being permanently renamed New York in November 1674. Following independence from Great Britain, the city was the national capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. The modern city was formed by the 1898 consolidation of its five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island.\nAnchored by Wall Street in the Financial District, Manhattan, New York City has been called both the world's premier financial and fintech center and the most economically powerful city in the world. As of 2022[ [update]], the New York metropolitan area is the largest metropolitan economy in the world, with a gross metropolitan product of over US$2.16\u00a0trillion. The New York metropolitan area's economy is larger than all but nine countries in the world. Despite having a 24/7 rapid transit system, New York also leads the world in urban automobile traffic congestion. The city is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by market capitalization of their listed companies: the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. New York City is an established safe haven for global investors. As of 2023[ [update]], New York City is the most expensive city in the world for expatriates and has by a wide margin the highest residential rents of any city in the nation; and Fifth Avenue is the most expensive shopping street in the world. New York City is home by a significant margin to the highest number of billionaires, individuals of ultra-high net worth (greater than US$30 million), and millionaires of any city in the world.\nEtymology.\nIn 1664, New York was named in honor of the Duke of York (later King James\u00a0II of England). James's elder brother, King Charles\u00a0II, appointed him proprietor of the former territory of New Netherland, including the city of New Amsterdam, when the Kingdom of England seized it from Dutch control.\nHistory.\nEarly history.\nIn the pre-Columbian era, the area of present-day New York City was inhabited by Algonquians, including the Lenape. Their homeland, known as Lenapehoking, included the present-day areas of Staten Island, Manhattan, the Bronx, the western portion of Long Island (including Brooklyn and Queens), and the Lower Hudson Valley.\nThe first documented visit into New York Harbor by a European was in 1524 by explorer Giovanni da\u00a0Verrazzano. He claimed the area for France and named it \"Nouvelle Angoul\u00eame\" (New Angoul\u00eame). A Spanish expedition, led by the Portuguese captain Est\u00eav\u00e3o Gomes sailing for Emperor Charles\u00a0V, arrived in New York Harbor in January 1525 and charted the mouth of the Hudson River, which he named ('Saint Anthony's River').\nIn 1609, the English explorer Henry Hudson rediscovered New York Harbor while searching for the Northwest Passage to the Orient for the Dutch East India Company. He sailed up what the Dutch called North River (now the Hudson River), named first by Hudson as the \"Mauritius\" after Maurice, Prince of Orange.\nHudson claimed the region for the Dutch East India Company. In 1614, the area between Cape Cod and Delaware Bay was claimed by the Netherlands and called ('New Netherland'). The first non\u2013Native American inhabitant of what became New York City was Juan Rodriguez, a merchant from Santo Domingo who arrived in Manhattan during the winter of 1613\u201314, trapping for pelts and trading with the local population as a representative of the Dutch.\nDutch rule.\nA permanent European presence near New York Harbor was established in 1624, making New York the 12th-oldest continuously occupied European-established settlement in the continental United States, with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625, construction was started on a citadel and Fort Amsterdam, later called \"Nieuw Amsterdam\" (New Amsterdam), on present-day Manhattan Island.\nThe colony of New Amsterdam extended from the southern tip of Manhattan to modern-day Wall Street, where a wooden stockade was built in 1653 to protect against Native American and English raids. In 1626, the Dutch colonial Director-General Peter Minuit, as charged by the Dutch West India Company, purchased the island of Manhattan from the \"Canarsie\", a small Lenape band, for \"the value of 60 guilders\" (about $900 in 2018). A frequently told but disproved legend claims that Manhattan was purchased for $24 worth of glass beads.\nFollowing the purchase, New Amsterdam grew slowly. To attract settlers, the Dutch instituted the patroon system in 1628, whereby wealthy Dutchmen (\"patroons\", or patrons) who brought 50 colonists to New Netherland would be awarded land, local political autonomy, and rights to participate in the lucrative fur trade. This program had little success.\nSince 1621, the Dutch West India Company had operated as a monopoly in New Netherland, on authority granted by the Dutch States General. In 1639\u20131640, in an effort to bolster economic growth, the Dutch West India Company relinquished its monopoly over the fur trade, leading to growth in the production and trade of food, timber, tobacco, and slaves (particularly with the Dutch West Indies).\nIn 1647, Peter Stuyvesant began his tenure as the last Director-General of New Netherland. During his tenure, the population of New Netherland grew from 2,000 to 8,000. Stuyvesant has been credited with improving law and order; however, he earned a reputation as a despotic leader. He instituted regulations on liquor sales, attempted to assert control over the Dutch Reformed Church, and blocked other religious groups from establishing houses of worship.\nEnglish rule.\nIn 1664, unable to summon any significant resistance, Stuyvesant surrendered New Amsterdam to English troops, led by Colonel Richard Nicolls, without bloodshed. The terms of the surrender permitted Dutch residents to remain in the colony and allowed for religious freedom.\nIn 1667, during negotiations leading to the Treaty of Breda after the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the victorious Dutch decided to keep the nascent plantation colony of what is now Suriname, which they had gained from the English, and in return the English kept New Amsterdam. The settlement was promptly renamed \"New York\" after the Duke of York (the future King James II and VII). The duke gave part of the colony to proprietors George Carteret and John Berkeley.\nOn August 24, 1673, during the Third Anglo-Dutch War, Anthony Colve of the Dutch navy seized New York at the behest of Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest and rechristened it \"New Orange\" after William\u00a0III, the Prince of Orange. The Dutch soon returned the island to England under the Treaty of Westminster of November 1674.\nSeveral intertribal wars among the Native Americans and epidemics brought on by contact with the Europeans caused sizeable population losses for the Lenape between 1660 and 1670. By 1700, the Lenape population had diminished to 200. New York experienced several yellow fever epidemics in the 18th century, losing ten percent of its population in 1702 alone.\nIn the early 18th century, New York grew in importance as a trading port while as a part of the colony of New York. It became a center of slavery, with 42% of households enslaving Africans by 1730. Most were domestic slaves; others were hired out as labor. Slavery became integrally tied to New York's economy through the labor of slaves throughout the port, and the banking and shipping industries trading with the American South. During construction in Foley Square in the 1990s, the African Burying Ground was discovered; the cemetery included 10,000 to 20,000 graves of colonial-era Africans, some enslaved and some free.\nThe 1735 trial and acquittal in Manhattan of John Peter Zenger, who had been accused of seditious libel after criticizing colonial governor William Cosby, helped to establish freedom of the press in North America. In 1754, Columbia University was founded.\nAmerican Revolution.\nThe Stamp Act Congress met in New York in October 1765, as the Sons of Liberty organization emerged in the city and skirmished over the next ten years with British troops stationed there. The Battle of Long Island, the largest battle of the American Revolutionary War, was fought in August 1776 within modern-day Brooklyn. A British rout of the Continental Army at the Battle of Fort Washington in November 1776 eliminated the last American stronghold in Manhattan, causing George Washington and his forces to retreat across the Hudson River to New Jersey, pursued by British forces.\nAfter the battle, in which the Americans were defeated, the British made the city their military and political base of operations in North America. The city was a haven for Loyalist refugees and escaped slaves who joined the British lines for freedom promised by the Crown, with as many as 10,000 escaped slaves crowded into the city during the British occupation, the largest such community on the continent. When the British forces evacuated New York at the close of the war in 1783, they transported thousands of freedmen for resettlement in Nova Scotia, England, and the Caribbean.\nThe attempt at a peaceful solution to the war took place at the Conference House on Staten Island between American delegates, including Benjamin Franklin, and British general Lord Howe on September 11, 1776. Shortly after the British occupation began, the Great Fire of New York destroyed nearly 500 buildings, about a quarter of the structures in the city, including Trinity Church.\nPost-revolutionary period and early 19th century.\nIn January 1785, the assembly of the Congress of the Confederation made New York City the national capital. New York was the last capital of the United States under the Articles of Confederation and the first under the Constitution. As the capital, New York City hosted the inauguration of the first President, George Washington, and the first Congress, at Federal Hall on Wall Street. Congress drafted the Bill of Rights there. The Supreme Court held its first organizational sessions in New York in 1790.\nIn 1790, for the first time, New York City surpassed Philadelphia as the nation's largest city. At the end of 1790, the national capital was moved to Philadelphia, where it remained while the new capital in Washington, D.C. was being constructed.\nDuring the 19th century, New York City's population grew from 60,000 to 3.43\u00a0million. Under New York State's gradual emancipation act of 1799, children of slave mothers were to be eventually liberated but to be held in indentured servitude until their mid-to-late twenties. Together with slaves freed by their masters after the Revolutionary War and escaped slaves, a significant free-Black population gradually developed in Manhattan. The New York Manumission Society worked for abolition and established the African Free School to educate Black children. It was not until 1827 that slavery was completely abolished in the state. Free Blacks struggled with discrimination and interracial abolitionist activism continued. New York City's population jumped from 123,706 in 1820 (10,886 of whom were Black and of which 518 were enslaved) to 312,710 by 1840 (16,358 of whom were Black).\nAlso in the 19th century, the city was transformed by both commercial and residential development relating to its status as a national and international trading center, as well as by European immigration, respectively. The city adopted the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, which expanded the city street grid to encompass almost all of Manhattan. The 1825 completion of the Erie Canal through central New York connected the Atlantic port to the agricultural markets and commodities of the North American interior via the Hudson River and the Great Lakes. Local politics became dominated by Tammany Hall, a political machine supported by Irish and German immigrants. In 1831, New York University was founded.\nSeveral prominent American literary figures lived in New York during the 1830s and 1840s, including William Cullen Bryant, Washington Irving, Herman Melville, Rufus Wilmot Griswold, John Keese, Nathaniel Parker Willis, and Edgar Allan Poe. Members of the business elite lobbied for the establishment of Central Park, which in 1857 became the first landscaped park in an American city.\nThe Great Irish Famine brought a large influx of Irish immigrants, of whom more than 200,000 were living in New York by 1860, representing over a quarter of the city's population. Extensive immigration from the German provinces meant that Germans comprised another 25% of New York's population by 1860.\nAmerican Civil War.\nDemocratic Party candidates were consistently elected to local office, increasing the city's ties to the South and its dominant party. In 1861, Mayor Fernando Wood called on the aldermen to declare independence from Albany and the United States after the South seceded, but his proposal was not acted on. Anger at new military conscription laws during the American Civil War (1861\u20131865), which spared wealthier men who could afford to hire a substitute, led to the Draft Riots of 1863, whose most visible participants were ethnic Irish working class.\nThe draft riots deteriorated into attacks on New York's elite, followed by attacks on Black New Yorkers after fierce competition for a decade between Irish immigrants and Black people for work. Rioters burned the Colored Orphan Asylum to the ground. At least 120 people were killed. Eleven Black men were lynched over five days, and the riots forced hundreds of Blacks to flee. The Black population in Manhattan fell below 10,000 by 1865. The White working class had established dominance. It was one of the worst incidents of civil unrest in American history.\nLate 19th and early 20th century.\nIn 1886, the Statue of Liberty, a gift from France, was dedicated in New York Harbor. The statue welcomed 14 million immigrants as they arrived via Ellis Island by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is a symbol of the United States and American ideals of liberty and peace.\nIn 1898, the City of New York was formed with the consolidation of Brooklyn (until then a separate city), the County of New York (which then included parts of the Bronx), the County of Richmond, and the western portion of the County of Queens. The opening of the New York City Subway in 1904, first built as separate private systems, helped bind the new city together. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the city became a world center for industry, commerce, and communication.\nIn 1904, the steamship \"General Slocum\" caught fire in the East River, killing 1,021 people. In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the city's worst industrial disaster, killed 146 garment workers and spurred the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and major improvements in factory safety standards.\nNew York's non-White population was 36,620 in 1890. New York City was a prime destination in the early 20th century for Blacks during the Great Migration from the American South, and by 1916, New York City had the largest urban African diaspora in North America. The Harlem Renaissance of literary and cultural life flourished during the era of Prohibition. The larger economic boom generated construction of skyscrapers competing in height.\nNew York City became the most populous urbanized area in the world in the early 1920s, overtaking London. The metropolitan area surpassed 10\u00a0million in the early 1930s, becoming the first megacity. The Great Depression saw the election of reformer Fiorello La Guardia as mayor and the fall of Tammany Hall after eighty years of political dominance.\nReturning World War II veterans created a post-war economic boom and the development of large housing tracts in eastern Queens and Nassau County, with Wall Street leading America's place as the world's dominant economic power. The United Nations headquarters was completed in 1952, solidifying New York's global geopolitical influence, and the rise of abstract expressionism in the city precipitated New York's displacement of Paris as the center of the art world.\nLate 20th and early 21st centuries.\nIn 1969, the Stonewall riots were a series of violent protests by members of the gay community against a police raid that took place in the early morning of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. They are widely considered to be the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights. Wayne R. Dynes, author of the \"Encyclopedia of Homosexuality\", wrote that drag queens were the only \"transgender folks around\" during the Stonewall riots. The transgender community in New York City played a significant role in fighting for LGBT equality.\nIn the 1970s, job losses due to industrial restructuring caused New York City to suffer from economic problems and rising crime rates. Growing fiscal deficits in 1975 led the city to appeal to the federal government for financial aid; President Gerald Ford gave a speech denying the request, which was paraphrased on the front page of the \"New York Daily News\" as \"FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD\". The Municipal Assistance Corporation was formed and granted oversight authority over the city's finances. While a resurgence in the financial industry greatly improved the city's economic health in the 1980s, New York's crime rate continued to increase through that decade and into the beginning of the 1990s.\nNew York City's population exceeded 8 million for the first time in the 2000 census; further records were set in the 2010 and 2020 censuses. Important new economic sectors, such as Silicon Alley, emerged.\nThe year 2000 was celebrated with fanfare in Times Square. New York City suffered the bulk of the economic damage and largest loss of human life in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks. Two of the four hijacked airliners were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, resulting in the collapse of both buildings and the deaths of 2,753 people, including 343 first responders from the New York City Fire Department and 71 law enforcement officers.\nThe area was rebuilt with a new World Trade Center, the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, and other new buildings and infrastructure, including the World Trade Center Transportation Hub, the city's third-largest hub. The new One World Trade Center is the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere and the world's seventh-tallest building by pinnacle height, with its spire reaching a symbolic , a reference to the year of American independence.\nThe Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan began on September 17, 2011, receiving global attention and popularizing the Occupy movement against social and economic inequality worldwide.\nNew York City was heavily impacted by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, including flooding that led to the days-long shutdown of the subway system, and flooding of all East River subway tunnels and of all road tunnels entering Manhattan except the Lincoln Tunnel. The New York Stock Exchange closed for two days due to weather for the first time since the Great Blizzard of 1888. At least 43 people died in New York City as a result of Sandy, and the economic losses in New York City were estimated to be roughly $19 billion. The disaster spawned long-term efforts towards infrastructural projects to counter climate change and rising seas, with $15\u00a0billion in federal funding received through 2022 towards those resiliency efforts.\nIn March 2020, the first case of COVID-19 in the city was confirmed. With its population density and extensive exposure to global travelers, the city rapidly replaced Wuhan, China as the global epicenter of the pandemic during the early phase, straining the city's healthcare infrastructure. Through March 2023, New York City recorded more than 80,000 deaths from COVID-19-related complications.\nGeography.\nNew York City lies in the northeastern United States, in southeastern New York State, approximately halfway between Washington, D.C. and Boston. Its location at the mouth of the Hudson River, which feeds into a naturally sheltered harbor and then into the Atlantic Ocean, has helped the city become a significant trading port. Most of the city is built on the three islands of Long Island, Manhattan, and Staten Island.\nDuring the Wisconsin glaciation, 75,000 to 11,000 years ago, the New York City area was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet. The erosive forward movement of the ice (and its subsequent retreat) contributed to the separation of what is now Long Island and Staten Island. That action left bedrock at a relatively shallow depth, providing a solid foundation for most of Manhattan's skyscrapers.\nThe Hudson River flows through the Hudson Valley into New York Bay. Between New York City and Troy, New York, the river is an estuary. The Hudson River separates the city from New Jersey. The East River\u2014a tidal strait\u2014flows from Long Island Sound and separates the Bronx and Manhattan from Long Island. The Harlem River, another tidal strait between the East and Hudson rivers, separates most of Manhattan from the Bronx. The Bronx River, which flows through the Bronx and Westchester County, is the only entirely freshwater river in the city.\nThe city's land has been altered substantially by human intervention, with considerable land reclamation along the waterfronts since Dutch colonial times; reclamation is most prominent in Lower Manhattan, with developments such as Battery Park City in the 1970s and 1980s. Some of the natural relief in topography has been evened out, especially in Manhattan.\nThe city's total area is . of the city is land and of it is water. The highest point in the city is Todt Hill on Staten Island, which, at above sea level, is the highest point on the eastern seaboard south of Maine. The summit of the ridge is mostly covered in woodlands as part of the Staten Island Greenbelt.\nBoroughs.\nNew York City is sometimes referred to collectively as the \"Five Boroughs\". Each borough is coextensive with a respective county of New York State, making New York City one of the U.S. municipalities in multiple counties.\nManhattan (New York County) is the geographically smallest and most densely populated borough. It is home to Central Park and most of the city's skyscrapers, and is sometimes locally known as \"The City\". Manhattan's population density of in 2022 makes it the highest of any county in the United States and higher than the density of any individual American city. Manhattan is the cultural, administrative, and financial center of New York City and contains the headquarters of many major multinational corporations, the United Nations headquarters, Wall Street, and a number of important universities. The borough is often described as the financial and cultural center of the world.\nBrooklyn (Kings County), on the western tip of Long Island, is the city's most populous borough. Brooklyn is known for its cultural, social, and ethnic diversity, an independent art scene, distinct neighborhoods, and a distinctive architectural heritage. Downtown Brooklyn is the largest central core neighborhood in the Outer Boroughs. The borough has a long beachfront shoreline including Coney Island, established in the 1870s as one of the earliest amusement grounds in the United States Marine Park and Prospect Park are the two largest parks in Brooklyn. Since 2010, Brooklyn has evolved into a thriving hub of entrepreneurship and high technology startup firms, and of postmodern art and design. Brooklyn is also home to Fort Hamilton, the U.S. military's only active duty installation within New York City, aside from Coast Guard operations. The facility was established in 1825 on the site of a battery used during the American Revolution, and it is one of America's longest-serving military forts.\nQueens (Queens County), on Long Island north and east of Brooklyn, is geographically the largest borough, the most ethnically diverse county in the United States, and the most ethnically diverse urban area in the world. Queens is the site of the Citi Field, home of the New York Mets, and hosts the annual US Open tennis tournament at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows\u2013Corona Park, with plans to build Etihad Park, a soccer-specific stadium for New York City FC. Additionally, two of the three busiest airports serving the New York metropolitan area, John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport, are in Queens.\nThe Bronx (Bronx County) is both New York City's northernmost borough and the only one that is mostly on the U.S. mainland. It is the location of Yankee Stadium, the baseball park of the New York Yankees, and home to the largest cooperatively-owned housing complex in the United States, Co-op City. It is home to the Bronx Zoo, the world's largest metropolitan zoo, which spans and houses more than 6,000 animals. The Bronx is the birthplace of hip hop music and its associated culture. Pelham Bay Park is the largest park in New York City, at .\nStaten Island (Richmond County) is the most suburban in character of the five boroughs. It is connected to Brooklyn by the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, and to Manhattan by way of the free Staten Island Ferry. In central Staten Island, the Staten Island Greenbelt spans approximately , including of walking trails and one of the last undisturbed forests in the city. Designated in 1984 to protect the island's natural lands, the Greenbelt comprises seven city parks.\nClimate.\nUnder the K\u00f6ppen climate classification, New York City has a humid subtropical climate (Cfa), and is the northernmost major city on the North American continent with this categorization. The suburbs to the immediate north and west are in the transitional zone between humid subtropical and humid continental climates (Dfa). The city receives an average of of precipitation annually, which is relatively evenly spread throughout the year. New York averages over 2,500 hours of sunshine annually.\nWinters are chilly and damp, and prevailing wind patterns that blow sea breezes offshore temper the moderating effects of the Atlantic Ocean; yet the Atlantic and the partial shielding from colder air by the Appalachian Mountains keep the city warmer in the winter than inland North American cities at similar or lesser latitudes. The daily mean temperature in January, the area's coldest month, is . Temperatures usually drop to several times per winter, yet can also reach for several days even in the coldest winter month. Spring and autumn are unpredictable and can range from cool to warm, although they are usually mild with low humidity. Summers are typically hot and humid, with a daily mean temperature of in July.\nNighttime temperatures are degrees higher for the average city resident due to the urban heat island effect, caused by paved streets and tall buildings. Daytime temperatures exceed on average of 17 days each summer and in some years exceed , although this is a rare occurrence, last noted on July 18, 2012. Similarly, readings of are extremely rare, last occurring on February 14, 2016. Extreme temperatures have ranged from , recorded on July 9, 1936, down to on February 9, 1934; the coldest recorded wind chill was on the same day as the all-time record low. Average winter snowfall between 1991 and 2020 was ; this varies considerably between years. The record cold daily maximum was on December 30, 1917, while, conversely, the record warm daily minimum was , on July 2, 1903. The average water temperature of the nearby Atlantic Ocean ranges from in February to in August.\nHurricanes and tropical storms are rare in the New York area. Hurricane Sandy brought a destructive storm surge to New York City on the evening of October 29, 2012, flooding numerous streets, tunnels, and subway lines in Lower Manhattan and other areas of the city and cutting off electricity in many parts of the city and its suburbs. The storm and its profound impacts have prompted the discussion of constructing seawalls and other coastal barriers around the shorelines of the city and the metropolitan area to minimize the risk of destructive consequences from another such event in the future.\nParks.\nThe city of New York has a complex park system, with various lands operated by the National Park Service, the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. In its 2023 ParkScore ranking, the Trust for Public Land reported that the park system in New York City was the tenth-best park system among the most populous U.S. cities, citing the city's park acreage, investment in parks and that 99% of residents are within of a park.\nGateway National Recreation Area contains over , most of it in New York City. In Brooklyn and Queens, the park contains over of salt marsh, wetlands, islands, and water, including most of Jamaica Bay and the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. Also in Queens, the park includes a significant portion of the western Rockaway Peninsula, most notably Jacob Riis Park and Fort Tilden. In Staten Island, it includes Fort Wadsworth, with historic pre-Civil War era Battery Weed and Fort Tompkins, and Great Kills Park.\nThe Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island Immigration Museum are managed by the National Park Service and are in both New York and New Jersey. They are joined in the harbor by Governors Island National Monument. Historic sites under federal management on Manhattan Island include Stonewall National Monument; Castle Clinton National Monument; Federal Hall National Memorial; Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site; General Grant National Memorial (Grant's Tomb); African Burial Ground National Monument; and Hamilton Grange National Memorial. Hundreds of properties are listed on the National Register of Historic Places or as a National Historic Landmark.\nThere are seven state parks within the confines of New York City. They include: the Clay Pit Ponds State Park Preserve, a natural area that includes extensive riding trails; the Riverbank State Park, a facility; and the Marsha\u00a0P. Johnson State Park, a state park in Brooklyn and Manhattan that borders the East River renamed in honor of Marsha P. Johnson.\nNew York City has over of municipal parkland and of public beaches. The largest municipal park in the city is Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx, with , and the most visited urban park is the Central Park, and one of the most filmed and visited locations in the world, with 42\u00a0million visitors in 2023.\nEnvironment.\nEnvironmental issues in New York City are affected by the city's size, density, abundant public transportation infrastructure, and its location at the mouth of the Hudson River. For example, it is one of the country's biggest sources of pollution and has the lowest per-capita greenhouse gas emissions rate and electricity usage. Governors Island is planned to host a US$1billion research and education center to make New York City the global leader in addressing the climate crisis.\nAs an oceanic port city, New York City is vulnerable to long-term manifestations of global warming like sea level rise exacerbated by land subsidence. Climate change has spawned the development of a significant climate resiliency and environmental sustainability economy in the city. New York City has focused on reducing its environmental impact and carbon footprint. Mass transit use is the highest in the country.\nNew York's high rate of public transit use, more than 610,000 daily cycling trips as of 2022[ [update]], and many pedestrian commuters make it the most energy-efficient major city in the United States. Walk and bicycle modes of travel account for 21% of all modes for trips in the city; nationally, the rate for metro regions is about 8%. In both 2011 and 2015, Walk Score named New York City the most walkable large city in the United States, and in 2018, \"Stacker\" ranked New York the most walkable American city. Citibank sponsored public bicycles for the city's bike-share project, which became known as Citi Bike, in 2013. New York City's numerical \"in-season cycling indicator\" of bicycling in the city had hit an all-time high of 437 when measured in 2014.\nThe New York City drinking water supply is extracted from the protected Catskill Mountains watershed. As a result of the watershed's integrity and undisturbed natural water filtration system, New York is one of only four major cities in the United States the majority of whose drinking water is pure enough not to require water treatment. The city's municipal water system is the nation's largest, moving more than of water daily from a watershed covering \nAccording to the 2016 World Health Organization Global Urban Ambient Air Pollution Database, the annual average concentration in New York City's air of particulate matter measuring 2.5micrometers or less (PM2.5) was 7.0micrograms per cubic meter, or 3.0micrograms within the recommended limit of the WHO Air Quality Guidelines for the annual mean PM2.5. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, in partnership with Queens College, conducts the New York Community Air Survey to measure pollutants at about 150 locations.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nNew York City is the most populous city in the United States, with 8,804,190 residents as of the 2020 census, its highest decennial count ever, incorporating more immigration into the city than outmigration since the 2010 census. More than twice as many people live in New York City as in Los Angeles, the second-most populous American city. The city's population in 2020 was 35.9% White, 22.7% Black, 14.6% Asian, 10.5% Mixed, 0.7% Native American and 0.1% Pacific Islander; 28.4% identified themselves as Hispanic or Latino.\nBetween 2010 and 2020, New York City gained 629,000 residents, more than the total gains over the same decade of the next four largest American cities (Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix) combined. The city's population density of makes it the densest of any American municipality with a population above 100,000. Manhattan's population density is , the highest of any county in the United States.\nBased on data from the 2020 census, New York City comprises about 43.6% of the state's population of 20,202,320, and about 39% of the population of the New York metropolitan area. The majority of New York City residents in 2020 (5,141,539 or 58.4%) were living in Brooklyn or Queens, the two boroughs on Long Island. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, and the New York City metropolitan statistical area has the largest foreign-born population of any metropolitan region in the world. The New York region continues to be by far the leading metropolitan gateway for legal immigrants admitted into the United States, substantially exceeding the combined totals of Los Angeles and Miami. Nearly seven times as many young professionals applied for jobs in New York City in 2023 as compared to 2019, making New York the most popular destination for recent college graduates.\nEthnicity and nationality.\nAccording to 2022 estimates from the American Community Survey, the largest self-reported ancestries in New York City were Dominican (8.7%), Chinese (7.5%), Puerto Rican (6.9%), Italian (5.5%), Mexican (4.4%), Irish (4.4%), Asian Indian (3.1%), German (2.9%), Jamaican (2.4%), Ecuadorian (2.3%), English (2.1%), Polish (1.9%), Russian (1.7%), Arab (1.4%), Haitian (1.4%), Guyanese (1.3%), Filipino (1.1%), and Korean (1.1%).\nBased on American Community Survey data from 2018 to 2022, approximately 36.3% of the city's population is foreign born (compared to 13.7% nationwide), and 40% of all children are born to mothers who are immigrants. Throughout its history, New York has been a major port of entry for immigrants. No single country or region of origin dominates. Queens has the largest Asian American and Andean populations in the United States, and is also the most ethnically and linguistically diverse urban area in the world.\nThe metropolitan area has the largest Asian Indian population in the Western Hemisphere; the largest Russian American, Italian American, and African American populations; the largest Dominican American, Puerto Rican American, and South American and second-largest overall Hispanic population in the United States, numbering over 5\u00a0million. Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Guyana, Peru, and Brazil, are the top source countries from South America for immigrants to the New York City region; the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, and Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean; Nigeria, Egypt, Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, and South Africa from Africa; and El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala in Central America.\nNew York contains the highest total Asian population of any U.S. city proper. Asian Americans in New York City, according to the 2010 census, number more than 1.2 million, greater than the combined totals of San Francisco and Los Angeles. New York has the largest Chinese population of any city outside Asia, Manhattan's Chinatown is the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, and Queens is home to the largest Tibetan population outside Asia. Arab Americans number over 160,000 in New York City, with the highest concentration in Brooklyn. New York City has the highest Palestinian population in the United States. Central Asians, primarily Uzbek Americans, are a rapidly growing segment of the city's non-Hispanic White population. The metropolitan area is home to 20% of the nation's Indian Americans and at least twenty Little India enclaves, and 15% of all Korean Americans and four Koreatowns.\nNew York City has the largest European and non-Hispanic white population of any American city, numbering 2.7\u00a0million in 2012. The European diaspora residing in the city is very diverse and many European ethnic groups have formed enclaves. With 960,000 Jewish inhabitants as of 2023, New York City is home to the highest Jewish population of any city in the world, and its metropolitan area concentrated over 2 million Jews as of 2021, the second largest Jewish population worldwide after the Tel Aviv metropolitan area in Israel. In the borough of Brooklyn, an estimated one in four residents was Jewish as of 2018.\nSexual orientation and gender identity.\nNew York City has been described as the gay capital of the world and the central node of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) sociopolitical ecosystem, and is home to one of the world's largest LGBT populations and the most prominent. The New York metropolitan area is home to about 570,000 self-identifying gay and bisexual people, the largest in the country. Same-sex sexual activity between consenting adults has been legal in New York since 1980's \"New York v. Onofre\" case, which invalidated the state's sodomy law. Same-sex marriage in New York was legalized on June 24, 2011, and were authorized to take place on July 23, 2011.\nThe annual NYC Pride March proceeds southward down Fifth Avenue and ends at Greenwich Village in Lower Manhattan; the parade is the largest pride parade in the world, attracting tens of thousands of participants and millions of sidewalk spectators each June. The annual Queens Pride Parade is held in Jackson Heights and is accompanied by the ensuing \"Multicultural Parade\".\nStonewall 50 \u2013 WorldPride NYC 2019 was the largest international Pride celebration in history, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, with 150,000 participants and five million spectators attending in Manhattan alone. New York City is home to the largest transgender population in the world, estimated at more than 50,000 in 2018, concentrated in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens; however, until the June 1969 Stonewall riots, this community had felt marginalized and neglected by the gay community. Brooklyn Liberation March, the largest transgender-rights demonstration in LGBT history, took place on June 14, 2020, stretching from Grand Army Plaza to Fort Greene, Brooklyn, focused on supporting Black transgender lives, drawing an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 participants.\nReligion.\nChristianity is the largest religion (59% adherent) in New York City, which is home to the highest number of churches of any city in the world. Catholicism is the largest Christian denomination (33%), followed by Protestantism (23%), and other Christian denominations (3%). The Latin Catholic population is primarily served by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and Diocese of Brooklyn, while Eastern Catholics are divided into numerous jurisdictions throughout the city. Evangelical Protestantism is the largest branch of Protestantism in the city (9%), followed by Mainline Protestantism (8%), while the converse is usually true for other cities and metropolitan areas.\nWith 960,000 Jewish inhabitants as of 2023, Judaism is the second-largest religion practiced in New York City. Nearly half of the city's Jews live in Brooklyn. \nIslam ranks as the third-largest religion in New York City, following Christianity and Judaism, with estimates ranging between 600,000 and 1,000,000 observers of Islam, including 10% of the city's public school children. 22.3% of American Muslims live in New York City, with 1.5 million Muslims in the greater New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan Muslim population in the Western Hemisphere\u2014and the most ethnically diverse Muslim population of any city in the world. Powers Street Mosque in Brooklyn is one of the oldest continuously operating mosques in the United States, and represents the first Islamic organization in both the city and the state.\nFollowing these three largest religious groups in New York City are Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, and others. As of 2023, 24% of Greater New Yorkers identified with no organized religious affiliation, and 4% were self-identified atheists.\nEconomy.\nNew York City is a global hub of business and commerce, sometimes called the \"Capital of the World\". Greater New York is the world's largest metropolitan economy, with a gross metropolitan product estimated at US$2.16 trillion in 2022. New York is a center for worldwide banking and finance, health care, and life sciences, medical technology and research, retailing, world trade, transportation, tourism, real estate, new media, traditional media, advertising, legal services, accountancy, insurance, and the arts in the United States; while Silicon Alley, metonymous for New York's high technology sphere, continues to expand. The Port of New York and New Jersey is a major economic engine, benefitting post-Panamax from the expansion of the Panama Canal.\nMany Fortune 500 corporations are headquartered in New York City, as are a large number of multinational corporations. New York City has been ranked first among cities across the globe in attracting capital, business, and tourists. New York City's role as the top global center for the advertising industry is metonymously reflected as \"Madison Avenue\". The city's fashion industry provides approximately 180,000 employees with $11\u00a0billion in annual wages.\nSignificant other economic sectors include universities and non-profit institutions. Manufacturing declined over the 20th century but still accounts for significant employment. The city's apparel and garment industry, historically centered on the Garment District in Manhattan, peaked in 1950, when more than 323,000 workers were employed in the industry in New York. In 2015, fewer than 23,000 New York City residents were employed in the industry, although revival efforts were underway, and the American fashion industry continues to be metonymized as \"Seventh Avenue\". In 2017, the city had 205,592 employer firms, of which 22.0% were owned by women, 31.3% were minority-owned and 2.7% were owned by veterans.\nIn 2022, the gross domestic product of New York City was US$1.053 trillion, of which $781 billion (74%) was produced by Manhattan. Like other large cities, New York City has a degree of income disparity, as indicated by its Gini coefficient of 0.55 as of 2022. In November 2023, the city had total employment of over 4.75\u00a0million of which more than a quarter were in education and health services. Manhattan, which accounted for more than half of the city's jobs, had an average weekly wage of $2,590 in the second quarter of 2023, ranking fourth-highest among the nation's 360 largest counties. New York City is one of the relatively few American cities levying an income tax (about 3%) on its residents; despite this tax levy, New York City in 2024 was home by a significant margin to the highest number of billionaires of any city in the world, with a total of 110.\nWall Street.\nNew York City's most important economic sector lies in its role as a comprehensive financial center, metonymously known as \"Wall Street\". Lower Manhattan is home to the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq, representing the world's largest and second largest stock exchanges, respectively, when measured both by overall average daily trading volume and by total market capitalization of their listed companies in 2013. In fiscal year 2013\u201314, Wall Street's securities industry generated 19% of New York State's tax revenue.\nNew York City remains the largest global center for trading in public equity and debt capital markets. New York also leads in hedge fund management; private equity; and the monetary volume of mergers and acquisitions. Several investment banks and investment managers headquartered in Manhattan are important participants in other global financial centers. New York is the principal commercial banking center of the United States.\nManhattan contained over 500\u00a0million square feet (46.5\u00a0million m2) of office space in 2018, making New York City the largest office market in the world, while Midtown Manhattan, with 400\u00a0million square feet (37.2\u00a0million m2) in 2018, is the largest central business district in the world.\nTech and biotech.\nNew York is a top-tier global technology hub. Silicon Alley, once a metonym for the sphere encompassing the metropolitan region's high technology industries, is no longer a relevant moniker as the city's tech environment has expanded dramatically both in location and in scope since at least 2003, when tech business appeared in more places in Manhattan and in other boroughs, and not much silicon was involved. New York City's current tech sphere encompasses the array of applications involving universal applications of artificial intelligence (AI), broadband internet, new media, financial technology (\"fintech\") and cryptocurrency, biotechnology, game design, and other fields within information technology that are supported by its entrepreneurship ecosystem and venture capital investments. Technology-driven startup companies and entrepreneurial employment are growing in New York City and the region. The technology sector has been claiming a greater share of New York City's economy since 2010. , founded in 2016, is a non-profit organization which represents New York City's technology industry with government, civic institutions, in business, and in the media, and whose primary goals are to further augment New York's substantial tech talent base and to advocate for policies that will nurture tech companies to grow in the city.\nNew York City's AI sector raised US$483.6 million in venture capital investment in 2022. In 2023, New York unveiled the first comprehensive initiative to create both a framework of rules and a chatbot to regulate the use of AI within the sphere of city government.\nThe biotechnology sector is growing in New York City, based on the city's strength in academic scientific research and public and commercial financial support. On December 19, 2011, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced his choice of Cornell University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology to build a $2\u00a0billion graduate school of applied sciences called Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island with the goal of transforming New York City into the world's premier technology capital.\nReal estate.\nNew York City real estate is a safe haven for global investors. The total value of all New York City property was assessed at US$1.479\u00a0trillion for the 2017 fiscal year, an increase of 6.1% from the previous year. Of the total market value, single family homes accounted for $765\u00a0billion (51.7%); condominiums, co-ops, and apartment buildings totaled $351\u00a0billion (23.7%); and commercial properties were valued at $317\u00a0billion (21.4%). Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan commands the highest retail rents in the world, at in 2023.\nNew York City has one of the highest costs of living in the world, which is exacerbated by the city's housing shortage. In 2023, one-bedroom apartments in Manhattan rented at a median monthly price of US$4,443. The median house price city-wide is over $1 million as of 2023. With 33,000 units available in 2023 among the city's 2.3 million rentable apartments, the vacancy rate was 1.4%, the lowest level since 1968 and a rate that is indicative of a shortage of available units, especially among those with rents below a monthly rental of $1,650, where less than 1% of units were available. Perennially high demand has pushed median monthly one-bedroom apartment rents in New York City to over US$4,000 and two-bedroom rents to over $5,000, the highest in the United States by a significant margin.\nTourism.\nTourism is a vital industry for New York City, and New York City Tourism + Conventions represents the city's official bureau of tourism. New York has witnessed a growing combined volume of international and domestic tourists, with as many as 66.6\u00a0million visitors to the city per year, including as many as 13.5\u00a0million international visitors, with the highest numbers from the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, and China. Multiple sources have called New York the most photographed city in the world. \"I Love New York\" (stylized I \u2764 NY) is both a logo and a song that are the basis of an advertising campaign and have been used since 1977 to promote tourism in New York City, and later to promote New York State as well. The trademarked logo is owned by New York State Empire State Development.\nMany districts and monuments in New York City are major landmarks, including three of the world's ten-most-visited tourist attractions in 2023. A record 66.6\u00a0million tourists visited New York City in 2019, bringing in $47.4\u00a0billion in tourism revenue. Visitor numbers dropped by two-thirds in 2020 during the pandemic, rebounding to 63.3\u00a0million in 2023. Major landmarks in New York City include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, and Central Park. Times Square is the brightly illuminated hub of the Broadway Theater District, and a major center of the world's entertainment industry, attracting 50\u00a0million visitors annually to one of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections. According to The Broadway League, shows on Broadway sold approximately US$1.54\u00a0billion worth of tickets in both the 2022\u20132023 and the 2023\u20132024 seasons. Both seasons featured theater attendance of approximately 12.3 million each.\nMedia and entertainment.\nNew York City has been described as the entertainment and digital media capital of the world. It is a center for the advertising, music, newspaper, digital media, and publishing industries and is the largest media market in North America. Many of the world's largest media conglomerates are based in the city, including Warner Bros. Discovery, the Thomson Reuters Corporation, the Associated Press, Bloomberg L.P., the News Corp, The New York Times Company, NBCUniversal, the Hearst Corporation, AOL, Fox Corporation, and Paramount Global. Seven of the world's top eight global advertising agency networks have their headquarters in New York.\nMore than 200 newspapers and 350 consumer magazines have an office in the city, and the publishing industry employs about 11,500 people, with an economic impact of $9.2\u00a0billion. The two national daily newspapers with the largest daily circulations in the United States are published in New York: \"The Wall Street Journal\" and \"The New York Times\" broadsheets. With 132 awards through 2022, \"The Times\" has won the most Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and is considered the U.S. media's newspaper of record. Tabloid newspapers in the city include the \"New York Daily News\", which was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson, and the \"New York Post\", founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton.\nAs of 2019[ [update]], New York City was the second-largest center for filmmaking and television production in the United States, producing about 200 feature films annually. The industry employed more than 100,000 people in 2019, generating $12.2\u00a0billion in wages and a total economic impact of $64.1\u00a0billion. By volume, New York is the world leader in independent film production\u2014one-third of all American independent films are produced there.\nNew York is a major center for non-commercial educational media. NYC Media is the official public radio, television, and online media network and broadcasting service of New York City, and has produced several original Emmy Award-winning shows covering music and culture in city neighborhoods and city government. The oldest public-access television channel in the United States is the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, founded in 1971. WNET is the city's major public television station and produces a third of national Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) television programming. WNYC, a public radio station owned by the city until 1997, has the largest public radio audience in the United States.\nCulture.\nNew York City is frequently the setting for novels, movies, and television programs and has been described as the cultural capital of the world.\nThe city is the birthplace of many cultural movements, including the Harlem Renaissance in literature and visual art; abstract expressionism (known as the New York School) in painting; and hip-hop, punk, hardcore, salsa, freestyle, Tin Pan Alley, certain forms of jazz, and (along with Philadelphia) disco in music. New York City has been considered the dance capital of the world.\nOne of the most common traits attributed to New York City is its fast pace, which spawned the term \"New York minute\". New York City's residents are prominently known for their resilience historically, and more recently related to their management of the impacts of the September 11 terrorist attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic. New York was voted the world's most resilient city in 2021 and 2022, per \"Time Out\"'s global poll of urban residents.\nTheater.\nThe central hub of the American theater scene is Manhattan, with its divisions of Broadway, off-Broadway, and off-off-Broadway. Many movie and television stars have gotten their big break working in New York productions.\nBroadway theatre is one of the premier forms of English-language theatre in the world, named after Broadway, the major thoroughfare that crosses Times Square, sometimes referred to as \"The Great White Way\".\nForty-one venues mostly in Midtown Manhattan's Theatre District, each with at least 500 seats, are classified as Broadway theatres. The 2018\u201319 Broadway theatre season set records with total attendance of 14.8\u00a0million and gross revenue of $1.83\u00a0billion Recovering from closures forced by the COVID-19 pandemic, 2022\u201323 revenues rebounded to $1.58\u00a0billion with total attendance of 12.3\u00a0million. The Tony Awards recognizes excellence in live Broadway theatre and are presented at an annual ceremony in Manhattan.\nAccent and dialect.\nThe New York area is home to a distinctive regional accent and speech pattern called the New York dialect, alternatively known as \"Brooklynese\" or \"New Yorkese\". It has been considered one of the most recognizable accents within American English. The traditional New York area speech pattern is known for its rapid delivery, and its accent is characterized as non-rhotic so that the sound does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant, therefore the pronunciation of the city name as \"New Yawk\". The classic version of the New York City dialect is centered on middle- and working-class New Yorkers. The influx of non-European immigrants in recent decades has led to changes in this distinctive dialect, and the traditional form of this speech pattern is no longer as prevalent.\nArchitecture.\nNew York has architecturally noteworthy buildings in a wide range of styles and from distinct time periods, from the Dutch Colonial Pieter Claesen Wyckoff House in Brooklyn, the oldest section of which dates to 1656, to the modern One World Trade Center, the skyscraper at Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan and the most expensive office tower in the world by construction cost.\nManhattan's skyline, with its many skyscrapers, has been recognized as an iconic symbol of the city, and the city has been home to several of the tallest buildings in the world. As of 2019[ [update]], New York City had 6,455 high-rise buildings, the third most in the world after Hong Kong and Seoul.\nThe character of New York's large residential districts is often defined by the elegant brownstone rowhouses and townhouses and shabby tenements that were built during a period of rapid expansion from 1870 to 1930. Stone and brick became the city's building materials of choice after the construction of wood-frame houses was limited in the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1835.\nIn contrast, New York City also has neighborhoods that are less densely populated and feature free-standing dwellings. In neighborhoods such as Riverdale (in the Bronx), Ditmas Park (in Brooklyn), and Douglaston (in Queens), large single-family homes are common in various architectural styles such as Tudor Revival and Victorian.\nArts.\nLincoln Center for the Performing Arts, anchoring Lincoln Square on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is home to numerous influential arts organizations, including the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, New York Philharmonic, and New York City Ballet, as well as the Vivian Beaumont Theater, the Juilliard School, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and Alice Tully Hall. The Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute is in Union Square, and Tisch School of the Arts is based at New York University, while Central Park SummerStage presents free concerts in Central Park.\nNew York City has more than 2,000 arts and cultural organizations and more than 500 art galleries. The city government funds the arts with a larger annual budget than the National Endowment for the Arts. The city is also home to hundreds of cultural institutions and historic sites. Museum Mile is the name for a section of Fifth Avenue running from 82nd to 105th streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, in the upper portion of Carnegie Hill.\nNine museums occupy this section of Fifth Avenue, making it one of the densest displays of high culture in the world. Its art museums include the Guggenheim, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Neue Galerie New York, and The Africa Center. In addition to other programming, the museums collaborate for the annual Museum Mile Festival, held each year in June, to promote the museums and increase visitation. Many of the world's most lucrative art auctions are held in New York City.\nThe Metropolitan Museum of Art is the largest art museum in the Americas. In 2022, it welcomed 3.2\u00a0million visitors, ranking it the third-most visited museum in the country, and eighth-most visited art museum in the world. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works across 17 curatorial departments, and includes works of art from classical antiquity and ancient Egypt; paintings and sculptures from nearly all the European masters; and an extensive collection of American and modern art. The Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, and Islamic art.\nCuisine.\nNew York City's food culture includes an array of international cuisines influenced by the city's long immigrant history. Central and Eastern European immigrants, especially Jewish immigrants from those regions, brought New York-style bagels, cheesecake, hot dogs, knishes, and delicatessens (delis) to the city. Italian immigrants brought New York-style pizza and Italian cuisine into the city, while Jewish immigrants and Irish immigrants brought pastrami and corned beef, respectively. Chinese and other Asian restaurants, sandwich joints, trattorias, diners, and coffeehouses are ubiquitous throughout the city. Some 4,000 mobile food vendors licensed by the city, many immigrant-owned, have made Middle Eastern foods such as falafel and kebabs examples of modern New York street food. The city is home to \"nearly one thousand of the finest and most diverse haute cuisine restaurants in the world\", according to Michelin. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene assigns letter grades to the city's restaurants based on inspection results. As of 2019, there were 27,043 restaurants in the city, up from 24,865 in 2017. The Queens Night Market in Flushing Meadows\u2013Corona Park attracts more than ten thousand people nightly to sample food from more than 85 countries.\nFashion.\nNew York City is a global fashion capital, and the fashion industry employs 4.6% of the city's private workforce. New York Fashion Week (NYFW) is a high-profile semiannual event featuring models displaying the latest wardrobes created by fashion designers worldwide in advance of these fashions proceeding to the marketplace.\nNYFW sets the tone for the global fashion industry. New York's fashion district encompasses roughly 30 city blocks in Midtown Manhattan, clustered around a stretch of Seventh Avenue nicknamed \"Fashion Avenue\". New York's fashion calendar also includes Couture Fashion Week to showcase haute couture styles. The Met Gala is often described as \"Fashion's biggest night\".\nParades.\nNew York City is well known for its street parades, the majority in Manhattan. The primary orientation of the annual street parades is typically from north to south, marching along major avenues. The annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is the world's largest parade, beginning alongside Central Park and proceeding southward to the flagship Macy's Herald Square store; the parade is viewed on telecasts worldwide and draws millions of spectators in person. Other notable parades including the annual New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade in March, the NYC LGBT Pride March in June, the LGBT-inspired Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in October, and numerous parades commemorating the independence days of many nations. Ticker-tape parades celebrating championships won by sports teams as well as other accomplishments march northward along the Canyon of Heroes on Broadway from Bowling Green to City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan.\nSports.\nNew York City is home to the headquarters of the National Football League, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, and Major League Soccer.\nNew York City hosted the 1984 Summer Paralympics and the 1998 Goodwill Games. New York City's bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics was one of five finalists, but lost out to London.\nThe city has played host to more than 40 major professional teams in the five sports and their respective competing leagues. Four of the ten most expensive stadiums ever built worldwide (MetLife Stadium, the new Yankee Stadium, Madison Square Garden, and Citi Field) are in the New York metropolitan area.\nThe city is represented in the National Football League by the New York Giants and the New York Jets, although both teams play their home games at MetLife Stadium in nearby East Rutherford, New Jersey, which hosted Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014.\nThe city's two Major League Baseball teams are the New York Mets, who play at 41,800-seat Citi Field in Queens and the New York Yankees, who play at 47,400-seat Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. The two rivals compete in four games of interleague play every regular season, called the Subway Series. The Yankees have won an MLB-record 27 championships, while the Mets have won the World Series twice. The city was once home to the Brooklyn Dodgers (now the Los Angeles Dodgers), who won the World Series once, and the New York Giants (now the San Francisco Giants), who won the World Series five times. Both teams moved to California in 1958. There is one Minor League Baseball team in the city, the Mets-affiliated Brooklyn Cyclones, and the city gained a club in the independent Atlantic League when the Staten Island FerryHawks began play in 2022.\nThe city's National Basketball Association teams are the New York Knicks, who play at Madison Square Garden, and the Brooklyn Nets, who play at the Barclays Center. The New York Liberty is the city's Women's National Basketball Association team. The first national college-level basketball championship, the National Invitation Tournament, was held in New York in 1938 and remains in the city.\nThe metropolitan area is home to three National Hockey League teams. The New York Rangers, one of the league's Original Six, play at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. The New York Islanders, traditionally representing Long Island, play in UBS Arena in Elmont, New York, but played in Brooklyn's Barclays Center from 2015 to 2020. The New Jersey Devils play at Prudential Center in nearby Newark, New Jersey.\nNew York City is represented by New York City FC of Major League Soccer, who play their home games at Yankee Stadium and the New York Red Bulls, who play their home games at Sports Illustrated Stadium in nearby Harrison, New Jersey. NJ/NY Gotham FC in the National Women's Soccer League plays their home games in Sports Illustrated Stadium. Brooklyn FC is a professional soccer club based in that borough, fielding a women's team in the first-division USL Super League starting in 2024 and a men's team in the second-division USL Championship in 2025. New York was a host city for the 1994 FIFA World Cup, with matches being played at Giants Stadium in neighboring East Rutherford, New Jersey. New York City will be one of eleven host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, with the final set to be played at MetLife Stadium.\nThe annual US Open is one of four Grand Slam tennis tournaments and is held at the National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows\u2013Corona Park. The New York City Marathon, which courses through all five boroughs, is the world's largest running marathon, with 51,402 finishers in 2023, who came from all 50 states and 148 nations. The Millrose Games is an annual track and field meet held at the Fort Washington Avenue Armory, whose featured event is the Wanamaker Mile. Boxing is a prominent part of the city's sporting scene, with events like the New York Golden Gloves held at Madison Square Garden each year.\nHuman resources.\nEducation.\nNew York City has the largest educational system of any city. The city's educational infrastructure spans primary education, secondary education, higher education, and research. The New York City Public Schools system, managed by the New York City Department of Education, is the largest public school system in the United States, serving about 1.1\u00a0million students in approximately 1,800 separate primary and secondary schools, including charter schools, as of 2017\u20132018. There are approximately 900 additional privately run secular and religious schools.\nThe New York Public Library (NYPL) has the largest collection of any public library system in the United States. Queens is served by the Queens Borough Public Library (QPL), the nation's second-largest public library system, while the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) serves Brooklyn.\nMore than a million students, the highest number of any city in the United States, are enrolled in New York City's more than 120 higher education institutions, with more than half a million in the City University of New York (CUNY) system alone as of 2020[ [update]]. According to Academic Ranking of World Universities, New York City has, on average, the best higher education institutions of any global city.\nThe public CUNY system comprises 25 institutions across all five boroughs. The public State University of New York (SUNY) system's campuses in New York City include SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY Maritime College, and SUNY College of Optometry. New York City is home to such notable private universities as Barnard College, Columbia University, Cooper Union, Fordham University, New York University, New York Institute of Technology, Rockefeller University, Mercy University, Cornell Tech and Yeshiva University; several of these are ranked among the top universities in the world, while some of the world's most prestigious institutions like Princeton University and Yale University remain in the New York metropolitan area.\nMuch of the scientific research in the city is done in medicine and the life sciences. In 2019, the New York metropolitan area ranked first by share of published articles in life sciences. New York City has the most postgraduate life sciences degrees awarded annually in the United States, and in 2012, 43,523 licensed physicians were practicing in New York City. There are 127 Nobel laureates with roots in local institutions as of 2004[ [update]].\nHealth.\nNew York City is a center for healthcare and medical training, with employment of over 750,000 in the city's health care sector. Private hospitals in New York City include the Hospital for Special Surgery, Lenox Hill Hospital, Long Island Jewish Medical Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Mount Sinai Hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, and NYU Langone Health. Medical schools include SUNY Downstate College of Medicine in Brooklyn, Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, and CUNY School of Medicine, Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, Weill Cornell Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and New York University School of Medicine in Manhattan.\nNYC Health + Hospitals (HHC) is a public-benefit corporation established in 1969 which operates the city's public hospitals and a network of outpatient clinics. As of 2021[ [update]], HHC is the largest American municipal healthcare system with $10.9 billion in annual revenues. HHC serves 1.4\u00a0million patients, including more than 475,000 uninsured city residents. HHC operates eleven acute-care hospitals, four skilled nursing facilities, six diagnostic and treatment centers, and more than 70 community-based primary care sites, serving primarily the city's poor and working-class residents. HHC's MetroPlus Health Plan is one of New York City's largest providers of government-sponsored health insurance, enrolling 670,000 city residents as of June 2022.\nHHC's facilities annually provides service to millions of New Yorkers, interpreted in more than 190 languages. The best-known hospital in the HHC system is Bellevue Hospital, the oldest public hospital in the United States, established in 1736. Bellevue is the designated hospital for treatment of the president and other world leaders should they require care while in New York City.\nThe city banned smoking in most parts of restaurants in 1995 and prohibited smoking in bars, restaurants and places of public employment in 2003. Pharmacies are banned from selling smoked and vaped products in New York State.\nNew York City enforces a right-to-shelter law guaranteeing shelter to anyone who needs it, regardless of their immigration, socioeconomic, or housing status, which entails providing adequate shelter and food. As a result, while New York has the highest total homeless population of American cities, only 5% were unsheltered by the city, representing a significantly lower percentage of outdoor homelessness than in other cities. As of 2023, there were 92,824 homeless people sleeping nightly in the shelter system.\nPublic safety.\nThe New York Police Department (NYPD) is the largest police force in the United States, with more than 36,000 sworn officers. Members of the NYPD are frequently referred to by politicians, the media, and their own police cars by the nickname, \"New York's Finest\".\nThe city saw a spike in crime in the 1970s through 1990s. Crime overall has trended downward in New York City since the 1990s; violent crime decreased more than 75% from 1993 to 2005, and continued decreasing during periods when the nation as a whole saw increases. The NYPD's stop-and-frisk program was declared unconstitutional in 2013 as a \"policy of indirect racial profiling\" of Black and Mixed residents, although claims of disparate impact continued in subsequent years. The stop-and-frisk program had been widely credited as being behind the decline in crime, though rates continued dropping in the years after the program ended.\nThe city set a record high of 2,245 murders in 1990 and hit a near-70-year record low of 289 in 2018. The number of murders and the rate of 3.3 per 100,000 residents in 2017 was the lowest since 1951. New York City recorded 386 murders in 2023, a decline of 12% from the previous year. New York City had one of the lowest homicide rates among the ten largest U.S. cities at 5.5 per 100,000 residents in 2021.\nNew York City has stricter gun laws than most other cities in the United States\u2014a license to own any firearm is required, and the NY SAFE Act of 2013 banned assault weapons. New York State had the fifth-lowest gun death rate of the states in 2020.\nOrganized crime has long been associated with New York City, beginning with the Forty Thieves and the Roach Guards in the Five Points neighborhood in the 1820s, followed by the Tongs in the same neighborhood, which ultimately evolved into Chinatown, Manhattan. The 20th century saw a rise in the Mafia, dominated by the Five Families, as well as in gangs, including the Black Spades. The Mafia and gang presence has declined in the city in the 21st century.\nThe Fire Department of New York (FDNY) provides fire protection, technical rescue, primary response to biological, chemical, and radioactive hazards, and emergency medical services. FDNY faces multifaceted firefighting challenges in many ways unique to New York. In addition to responding to building types that range from wood-frame single family homes to high-rise structures, the FDNY responds to fires that occur in the New York City Subway. Secluded bridges and tunnels, as well as large parks and wooded areas that can give rise to brush fires, also present challenges. The FDNY is headquartered at 9 MetroTech Center in Downtown Brooklyn, and the FDNY Fire Academy is on Randalls Island.\nTransportation.\nRapid transit.\nMass transit in New York City, most of which runs 24 hours a day, accounts for one in every three users of mass transit in the country, and two-thirds of the nation's rail riders live in the New York City metropolitan area.\nBuses.\nNew York City's public bus fleet runs 24/7 and is the largest in North America. The New York City bus system serves the most passengers of any city in the nation: In 2022, MTA New York City Transit's buses served 483.5 million trips, while MTA Regional Bus Operations handled 100.3 million trips.\nThe Port Authority Bus Terminal is the city's main intercity bus terminal and the world's busiest bus station, serving 250,000 passengers on 7,000 buses each workday in a building opened in 1950 that was designed to accommodate 60,000 daily passengers. A 2021 plan announced by the Port Authority would spend $10 billion to expand capacity and modernize the facility. In 2024, the Port Authority announced plans for a new terminal that would feature a glass atrium at a new main entrance on 41st Street.\nRail.\nThe New York City Subway system is the largest rapid transit system in the world when measured by stations in operation, with 472, and by length of routes. Nearly all of New York's subway system is open 24 hours a day, in contrast to the overnight shutdown common to most subway systems. The New York City Subway is the busiest metropolitan rail transit system in the Western Hemisphere, with 1.70\u00a0billion passenger rides in 2019.\nPublic transport is widely used in New York City. 54.6% of New Yorkers commuted to work in 2005 using mass transit. This is in contrast to the rest of the country, where 91% of commuters travel in automobiles to their workplace. According to the New York City Comptroller, workers in the New York City area spend an average of 6hours and 18 minutes getting to work each week, the longest commute time in the nation among large cities. New York is the only American city in which a majority (52%) of households do not have a car; only 22% of Manhattanites own a car. Due to their high usage of mass transit, New Yorkers spend less of their household income on transportation than the national average, saving $19\u00a0billion annually on transportation compared to other urban Americans.\nNew York City's commuter rail network is the largest in North America. The rail network, connecting New York City to its suburbs, consists of the Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad, and New Jersey Transit. The combined systems converge at Grand Central Terminal and New York Penn Station and contain more than 250 stations and 20 rail lines. The elevated AirTrain JFK in Queens connects JFK International Airport to the New York City Subway and the Long Island Rail Road. For inter-city rail, New York City is served by Amtrak, whose busiest station by a significant margin is Penn Station on the West Side of Manhattan, from which Amtrak provides connections to Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. along the Northeast Corridor, and long-distance train service to other North American cities.\nThe Staten Island Railway rapid transit system solely serves Staten Island, operating 24 hours a day, with access to Manhattan from the St. George Terminal via the Staten Island Ferry. The PATH train links Midtown and Lower Manhattan with Hoboken Terminal and Newark Penn Station in New Jersey, and then those stations with the World Trade Center Oculus across the Hudson River. Like the New York City Subway, the PATH operates 24 hours a day, meaning three of the five American rapid transit systems which operate on 24-hour schedules are wholly or partly in New York. Grand Central Terminal is the world's largest train station by number of rail platforms and acres occupied.\nMultibillion-dollar heavy rail transit projects under construction in New York City include the Second Avenue Subway.\nAir.\nNew York's airspace is the busiest in the United States and one of the world's busiest air corridors. The three busiest airports in the New York metropolitan area are John F. Kennedy International Airport (with 55.3\u00a0million passengers), Newark Liberty International Airport (43.6\u00a0million) and LaGuardia Airport (29.0\u00a0million); 127.9\u00a0million travelers used these three airports in 2022. JFK and Newark Liberty were the busiest and fourth-busiest U.S. gateways for international air passengers, respectively, in 2023. As of 2011[ [update]], JFK was the busiest airport for international passengers in North America.\nDescribed in 2014 by then-Vice President Joe Biden as the kind of airport travelers would see in \"some third world country\", LaGuardia Airport has undergone an $8\u00a0billion project with federal and state support that has replaced its aging facilities with modern terminals and roadways. Plans have advanced to expand passenger volume at a fourth airport, Stewart International Airport, near Newburgh, New York, by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Other commercial airports in or serving the New York metropolitan area include Long Island MacArthur Airport, Trenton\u2013Mercer Airport and Westchester County Airport. The primary general aviation airport serving the area is Teterboro Airport.\nFerries, taxis and trams.\nThe Staten Island Ferry is the world's busiest ferry, carrying more than 23\u00a0million passengers from July 2015 through June 2016 on a route between Staten Island and Lower Manhattan and running 24/7. Other ferry systems shuttle commuters between Manhattan and other locales within the city and the metropolitan area. NYC Ferry, a NYCEDC initiative with routes planned to travel to all five boroughs, was launched in 2017.\nIdentified by their color and taxi medallion, the city's 13,587 yellow taxicabs are the only vehicles allowed to pick up riders making street hails throughout the city. Apple green-colored boro taxis can pick up street hails in Upper Manhattan and the four outer boroughs. Long dominated by yellow taxis, high-volume for-hire vehicles from Uber and Lyft have provided the most trips in the city since December 2016, when the for-hire vehicles and cabs each had about 10.5\u00a0million trips. By October 2023, the 78,000 vehicles-for-hire combined for 20.3\u00a0million trips, while 3.5\u00a0million trips were in yellow taxis.\nThe Roosevelt Island Tramway, an aerial tramway that began operation in 1976, transports 2\u00a0million passengers per year the between Roosevelt Island and 59th Street and Second Avenue on Manhattan Island.\nCycling network.\nNew York City has mixed cycling conditions which include urban density, relatively flat terrain, congested roadways with stop-and-go traffic, and many pedestrians. The city's large cycling population includes utility cyclists, such as delivery and messenger services; recreational cycling clubs; and an increasing number of commuters. Cycling is increasingly popular in New York City; in 2022 there were approximately 61,200 people who commuted daily using a bicycle and 610,000 daily bike trips, both nearly doubling over the previous decade. As of 2022[ [update]], New York City had of bike lanes, including of segregated or \"protected\" bike lanes citywide.\nStreets and highways.\nStreets are also a defining feature of the city. New York has been found to lead the world in urban automobile traffic congestion. The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 greatly influenced its physical development. New York City has an extensive web of freeways and parkways, which link the city's boroughs to each other and to North Jersey, Westchester County, Long Island, and southwestern Connecticut through bridges and tunnels. Because these highways serve millions of outer borough and suburban residents who commute into Manhattan, it is common for motorists to be stranded for hours in dense traffic congestion that is a daily occurrence, particularly during rush hour. Congestion pricing in New York City was activated in January 2025, applying to most motor vehicular traffic using the area of Manhattan south of 60th Street, in an effort to encourage commuters to use rapid transit instead.\nUnlike the rest of the country, New York State prohibits turns on red lights in cities with a population greater than one million, to reduce collisions and increase pedestrian safety. In New York City, therefore, all turns on red lights are illegal unless a sign permitting such maneuvers is present.\nBridges and tunnels.\nThe boroughs of Manhattan and Staten Island are located on islands with the same names, while Queens and Brooklyn are at the west end of the larger Long Island, and the Bronx is on New York State's mainland. Manhattan Island is linked to the outer boroughs and to New Jersey by an extensive network of bridges and tunnels. The 14-lane George Washington Bridge, connecting Manhattan to New Jersey across the Hudson River, is the world's busiest motor vehicle bridge. The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, spanning the Narrows between Brooklyn and Staten Island, is the longest suspension bridge in the Americas and one of the world's longest. The Brooklyn Bridge, with its stone neo-Gothic suspension towers, is an icon of the city; opened in 1883, it was the first steel-wire suspension bridge and was the longest suspension bridge in the world until 1903. The Queensboro Bridge \"was the longest cantilever span in North America\" from 1909 to 1917. The Manhattan Bridge, opened in 1909, \"is considered to be the forerunner of modern suspension bridges\", and its design \"served as the model for the major long-span suspension bridges\" of the early 20th century. The Throgs Neck Bridge and Whitestone Bridge connect Queens and the Bronx, while the Triborough Bridge connects Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx.\nThe Lincoln Tunnel, which carries 120,000 vehicles a day under the Hudson River between New Jersey and Midtown Manhattan, is the busiest vehicular tunnel in the world. The tunnel was built instead of a bridge to allow unfettered passage of large passenger and cargo ships that sailed through New York Harbor and up the Hudson River to Manhattan's piers. The Holland Tunnel, connecting Lower Manhattan to Jersey City, New Jersey, was the first mechanically ventilated vehicular tunnel when it opened in 1927. The Queens\u2013Midtown Tunnel, built to relieve congestion on the bridges connecting Manhattan with Queens and Brooklyn, was the largest non-federal project in its time when it was completed in 1940. The Brooklyn\u2013Battery Tunnel (officially the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel) is the longest continuous underwater vehicular tunnel in North America and runs underneath Battery Park, connecting the Financial District, Manhattan, to Red Hook, Brooklyn.\nGovernment and politics.\nGovernment.\nNew York City is a metropolitan municipality with a strong mayor\u2013council form of government. The city government is responsible for public education, correctional institutions, public safety, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply, and welfare services.\nThe City Council is a unicameral body of 51 council members whose districts are defined by geographic population boundaries. Each term for the mayor and council members lasts four years and has a two consecutive-term limit, (reset after a four-year break). The \"New York City Administrative Code\", the \"New York City Rules\", and \"The City Record\" are the code of local laws, compilation of regulations, and official journal, respectively.\nEach borough is coextensive with a judicial district of the state Unified Court System, of which the Criminal Court and the Civil Court are the local courts, while the New York Supreme Court conducts major trials and appeals. Manhattan hosts the First Department of the Supreme Court, Appellate Division, while Brooklyn hosts the Second Department. There are several extrajudicial administrative courts, which are executive agencies and not part of the state Unified Court System.\nNew York City is divided between, and is host to the main branches of, two different U.S. district courts: the District Court for the Southern District of New York, whose main courthouse is on Foley Square in Manhattan and whose jurisdiction includes Manhattan and the Bronx; and the District Court for the Eastern District of New York, whose main courthouse is in Brooklyn and whose jurisdiction includes Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and U.S. Court of International Trade are also based on Foley Square.\nPolitics.\nThe city's mayor is Eric Adams, a Democrat who was elected in 2021. The Democratic Party holds the majority of public offices. As of November 2023, 67% of active registered voters in the city are Democrats and 10.2% are Republicans. New York City has not been carried by a Republican presidential candidate since 1924, and no Republican candidate for statewide office has won all five boroughs since the city was incorporated in 1898. In redistricting following the 2020 census, 14 of New York's 26 congressional districts include portions of New York City.\nNew York City is a significant source of political fundraising. The city has a strong imbalance of payments with the national and state governments. It receives 83 cents in services for every $1 it sends to the federal government in taxes (or annually sends $11.4\u00a0billion more than it receives back). City residents and businesses also sent an additional $4.1\u00a0billion in the 2009\u20132010 fiscal year to the state than the city received in return.\nInternational relations.\nIn 2006, the sister city program was restructured as \"New York City Global Partners\". New York's \"historic sister cities\" are denoted below by the year they joined New York City's partnership network.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "7258879": "With the Mounted Police\nWith the Mounted Police is a 1912 American silent short romantic thriller film written by Lloyd Lonergan. The films stars William Garwood as a Mounted Police Officer and Mignon Anderson his sweetheart.", "7267650": "Lloyd Lonergan\nAmerican screenwriter\nLloyd Lonergan (March 3, 1870, Chicago, Illinois - April 6, 1937, New York City) was one of the most prolific scenario and screenwriters in American silent film.\nA brother-in-law of Edwin Thanhouser he worked for the Thanhouser Company based in New Rochelle, New York, writing screenplays for over 100 films.\nHis career was at its peak in the earlier short film era particularly in 1912 when Lonergan wrote the scripts for an astonishing 50 films. His sister Elizabeth Lonergan and brother Philip Lonergan were also a notable screenwriters, and his mother Ellen Mahoney Lonergan was a newspaper society editor.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["7258879", "645042", "7267650"], "permutation_1": ["7258879", "7267650", "645042"], "permutation_2": ["7267650", "7258879", "645042"], "permutation_3": ["7258879", "7267650", "645042"]}
{"id": "3hop1__159612_22372_45098", "docs_added": {"17926": "League of Nations\n20th-century international organisation, predecessor to the United Nations\nThe League of Nations (LN or LoN; , SdN) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. The main organisation ceased operations on 18 April 1946 when many of its components were relocated into the new United Nations (UN) which was created in the aftermath of the Second World War. As the template for modern global governance, the League profoundly shaped the modern world.\nThe League's primary goals were stated in its eponymous Covenant. They included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration. Its other concerns included labour conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, human and drug trafficking, the arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in Europe. The Covenant of the League of Nations was signed on 28 June 1919 as Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, and it became effective with the rest of the Treaty on 10 January 1920. Australia was granted the right to participate as an autonomous member nation, marking the start of Australian independence on the global stage. The first meeting of the Council of the League took place on 16 January 1920, and the first meeting of the Assembly of the League took place on 15 November 1920. In 1919, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role as the leading architect of the League.\nThe diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift from the preceding hundred years. The League lacked its own armed force and depended on the victorious Allied Powers of World War I (Britain, France, Italy and Japan were the initial permanent members of the Council) to enforce its resolutions, keep to its economic sanctions, or provide an army when needed. The Great Powers were often reluctant to do so. Sanctions could hurt League members, so they were reluctant to comply with them. During the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, when the League accused Italian soldiers of targeting International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement medical tents, Benito Mussolini responded that \"the League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out.\"\nAt its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935, it had 58 members. After some notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930s. Its credibility was weakened because the United States never joined. Japan and Germany left in 1933, Italy left in 1937, and Spain left in 1939. The Soviet Union only joined in 1934 and was expelled in 1939 after invading Finland. Furthermore, the League demonstrated an irresolute approach to sanction enforcement for fear it might only spark further conflict, further decreasing its credibility. One example of this hesitancy was the Abyssinia Crisis, in which Italy's sanctions were only limited from the outset (coal and oil were not restricted), and later altogether abandoned despite Italy being declared the aggressors in the conflict. The onset of the Second World War in 1939 showed that the League had failed its primary purpose: to prevent another world war. It was largely inactive until its abolition. The League lasted for 26 years; the United Nations effectively replaced it in 1945, inheriting several agencies and organisations founded by the League, with the League itself formally dissolving the following year.\nCurrent scholarly consensus views that, even though the League failed to achieve its main goal of world peace, it did manage to build new roads towards expanding the rule of law across the globe; strengthened the concept of collective security, gave a voice to smaller nations; fostered economic stabilisation and financial stability, especially in Central Europe in the 1920s; helped to raise awareness of problems such as epidemics, slavery, child labour, colonial tyranny, refugee crises and general working conditions through its numerous commissions and committees; and paved the way for new forms of statehood, as the mandate system put the colonial powers under international observation. Professor David Kennedy portrays the League as a unique moment when international affairs were \"institutionalised\", as opposed to the pre\u2013First World War methods of law and politics.\nOrigins.\nBackground.\nThe concept of a peaceful community of nations had been proposed as early as 1795, when Immanuel Kant's \"\" outlined the idea of a league of nations to control conflict and promote peace between states. Kant argued for the establishment of a peaceful world community, not in a sense of a global government, but in the hope that each state would declare itself a free state that respects its citizens and welcomes foreign visitors as fellow rational beings, thus promoting peaceful society worldwide. International co-operation to promote collective security originated in the Concert of Europe that developed after the Napoleonic Wars in the 19th century in an attempt to maintain the \"status quo\" between European states and so avoid war.\nBy 1910, international law developed, with the first Geneva Conventions establishing laws dealing with humanitarian relief during wartime, and the international Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 governing rules of war and the peaceful settlement of international disputes. Theodore Roosevelt at the acceptance for his Nobel Prize in 1910, said: \"it would be a masterstroke if those great powers honestly bent on peace would form a League of Peace.\"\nOne small forerunner of the League of Nations, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), was formed by the peace activists William Randal Cremer and Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Passy in 1889 (and still exists as an international body focused on the world's various elected legislative bodies). The IPU was founded with an international scope, with a third of the members of parliaments (in the 24 countries that had parliaments) serving as members of the IPU by 1914. Its foundational aims were to encourage governments to solve international disputes by peaceful means. Annual conferences were established to help governments refine the process of international arbitration. Its structure was designed as a council headed by a president, which would later be reflected in the structure of the League.\nPlans and proposals.\nAt the start of the First World War, the first schemes for an international organisation to prevent future wars began to gain considerable public support, particularly in Great Britain and the United States. Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, a British political scientist, coined the term \"League of Nations\" in 1914 and drafted a scheme for its organisation. Together with Lord Bryce, he played a leading role in the founding of the group of internationalist pacifists known as the Bryce Group, later the League of Nations Union. The group became steadily more influential among the public and as a pressure group within the then-governing Liberal Party. In Dickinson's 1915 pamphlet \"After the War\" he wrote of his \"League of Peace\" as being essentially an organisation for arbitration and conciliation. He felt that the secret diplomacy of the early twentieth century had brought about war, and thus, could write that, \"the impossibility of war, I believe, would be increased in proportion as the issues of foreign policy should be known to and controlled by public opinion.\" The 'Proposals' of the Bryce Group were circulated widely, both in England and the US, where they had a profound influence on the nascent international movement.\nIn January 1915, a peace conference directed by Jane Addams was held in the neutral United States. The delegates adopted a platform calling for creation of international bodies with administrative and legislative powers to develop a \"permanent league of neutral nations\" to work for peace and disarmament. Within months, a call was made for an international women's conference to be held in The Hague. Coordinated by Mia Boissevain, Aletta Jacobs and Rosa Manus, the congress, which opened on 28 April 1915 was attended by 1,136 participants from neutral nations, and resulted in the establishment of an organisation which would become the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). At the close of the conference, two delegations of women were dispatched to meet European heads of state over the next several months. They secured agreement from reluctant foreign ministers, who overall felt that such a body would be ineffective, but agreed to participate in or not impede creation of a neutral mediating body, if other nations agreed and if President Woodrow Wilson would initiate a body. In the midst of the War, Wilson refused.\nIn 1915, a body similar to the Bryce Group was set up in the United States, led by former president William Howard Taft. It was called the League to Enforce Peace. It advocated the use of arbitration in conflict resolution and the imposition of sanctions on aggressive countries. None of these early organisations envisioned a continuously functioning body; with the exception of the Fabian Society in England, they maintained a legalistic approach that would limit the international body to a court of justice. The Fabians were the first to argue for a \"council\" of states, necessarily the Great Powers, who would adjudicate world affairs, and for the creation of a permanent secretariat to enhance international co-operation across a range of activities.\nIn the course of the diplomatic efforts surrounding World War I, both sides had to clarify their long-term war aims. By 1916 in Britain, fighting on the side of the Allies, and in the neutral United States, long-range thinkers had begun to design a unified international organisation to prevent future wars. Historian Peter Yearwood argues that when the new coalition government of David Lloyd George took power in December 1916, there was widespread discussion among intellectuals and diplomats of the desirability of establishing such an organisation. When Lloyd George was challenged by Wilson to state his position with an eye on the postwar situation, he endorsed such an organisation. Wilson himself included in his Fourteen Points in January 1918 a \"league of nations to ensure peace and justice.\" British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, argued that, as a condition of durable peace, \"behind international law, and behind all treaty arrangements for preventing or limiting hostilities, some form of international sanction should be devised which would give pause to the hardiest aggressor.\"\nThe war had had a profound impact, affecting the social, political and economic systems of Europe and inflicting psychological and physical damage. Several empires collapsed: first the Russian Empire in February 1917, followed by the German Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empire. Anti-war sentiment rose across the world; the First World War was described as \"the war to end all wars\", and its possible causes were vigorously investigated. The causes identified included arms races, alliances, militaristic nationalism, secret diplomacy, and the freedom of sovereign states to enter into war for their own benefit. One proposed remedy was the creation of an international organisation whose aim was to prevent future war through disarmament, open diplomacy, international co-operation, restrictions on the right to wage war, and penalties that made war unattractive.\nIn London Balfour commissioned the first official report into the matter in early 1918, under the initiative of Lord Robert Cecil. The British committee was finally appointed in February 1918. It was led by Walter Phillimore (and became known as the Phillimore Committee), but also included Eyre Crowe, William Tyrrell, and Cecil Hurst. The recommendations of the so-called Phillimore Commission included the establishment of a \"Conference of Allied States\" that would arbitrate disputes and impose sanctions on offending states. The proposals were approved by the British government, and much of the commission's results were later incorporated into the Covenant of the League of Nations.\nThe French authorities also drafted a much more far-reaching proposal in June 1918; they advocated annual meetings of a council to settle all disputes, as well as an \"international army\" to enforce its decisions.\nAmerican President Woodrow Wilson instructed Edward M. House to draft a US plan which reflected Wilson's own idealistic views (first articulated in the Fourteen Points of January 1918), as well as the work of the Phillimore Commission. The outcome of House's work and Wilson's own first draft proposed the termination of \"unethical\" state behaviour, including forms of espionage and dishonesty. Methods of compulsion against recalcitrant states would include severe measures, such as \"blockading and closing the frontiers of that power to commerce or intercourse with any part of the world and to use any force that may be necessary...\"\nThe two principal drafters and architects of the covenant of the League of Nations were the British politician Lord Robert Cecil and the South African statesman Jan Smuts. Smuts's proposals included the creation of a council of the great powers as permanent members and a non-permanent selection of the minor states. He also proposed the creation of a mandate system for captured colonies of the Central Powers during the war. Cecil focused on the administrative side and proposed annual council meetings and quadrennial meetings for the Assembly of all members. He also argued for a large and permanent secretariat to carry out the League's administrative duties.\nAccording to historian Patricia Clavin, Cecil and the British continued their leadership of the development of a rules-based global order into the 1920s and 1930s, with a primary focus on the League of Nations. The British goal was to systematise and normalise the economic and social relations between states, markets, and civil society. They gave priority to business and banking issues, but also considered the needs of ordinary women, children and the family as well. They moved beyond high-level intellectual discussions, and set up local organisations to support the League. The British were particularly active in setting up junior branches for secondary students.\nThe League of Nations was relatively more universal and inclusive in its membership and structure than previous international organisations, but the organisation enshrined racial hierarchy by curtailing the right to self-determination and prevented decolonisation.\nEstablishment.\nAt the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Wilson, Cecil and Smuts all put forward their draft proposals. After lengthy negotiations between the delegates, the Hurst\u2013Miller draft was finally produced as a basis for the Covenant. After more negotiation and compromise, the delegates finally approved of the proposal to create the League of Nations (, ) on 25 January 1919. The final Covenant of the League of Nations was drafted by a special commission, and the League was established by Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919.\nFrench women's rights advocates invited international feminists to participate in a parallel conference to the Paris Conference in hopes that they could gain permission to participate in the official conference. The Inter-Allied Women's Conference asked to be allowed to submit suggestions to the peace negotiations and commissions and were granted the right to sit on commissions dealing specifically with women and children. Though they asked for enfranchisement and full legal protection under the law equal with men, those rights were ignored. Women won the right to serve in all capacities, including as staff or delegates in the League of Nations organisation. They also won a declaration that member nations should prevent trafficking of women and children and should equally support humane conditions for children, women and men labourers. At the Z\u00fcrich Peace Conference held between 17 and 19 May 1919, the women of the WILPF condemned the terms of the Treaty of Versailles for both its punitive measures, as well as its failure to provide for condemnation of violence and exclusion of women from civil and political participation. Upon reading the Rules of Procedure for the League of Nations, Catherine Marshall, a British suffragist, discovered that the guidelines were completely undemocratic and they were modified based on her suggestion.\nThe League would be made up of a Assembly (representing all member states), a Council (with membership limited to major powers), and a permanent Secretariat. Member states were expected to \"respect and preserve as against external aggression\" the territorial integrity of other members and to disarm \"to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.\" All states were required to submit complaints for arbitration or judicial inquiry before going to war. The Council would create a Permanent Court of International Justice to make judgements on the disputes.\nDespite Wilson's efforts to establish and promote the League, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1919, the United States never joined. Senate Republicans led by Henry Cabot Lodge wanted a League with the reservation that only Congress could take the U.S. into war. Lodge gained a majority of Senators and Wilson refused to allow a compromise. The Senate voted on the ratification on 19 March 1920, and the 49\u201335 vote fell short of the needed 2/3 majority.\nThe League held its first council meeting in Paris on 16 January 1920, six days after the Versailles Treaty and the Covenant of the League of Nations came into force. On 1 November 1920, the headquarters of the League was moved from London to Geneva, where the first General Assembly was held on 15 November 1920. Geneva made sense as an ideal city for the League, since Switzerland had been a neutral country for centuries and was already the headquarters for the International Red Cross. Its strong democracy and location in central Europe made it a good choice for the nations of the world. Support for Geneva as the selection came from Swiss Federal Councillor Gustave Ador and economist William Rappard. The Palais Wilson on Geneva's western lakeshore, named after Woodrow Wilson, was the League's first permanent home.\nMission.\nThe covenant had ambiguities, as Carole Fink points out. There was not a good fit between Wilson's \"revolutionary conception of the League as a solid replacement for a corrupt alliance system, a guardian of international order, and protector of small states,\" versus Lloyd George's desire for a \"cheap, self-enforcing, peace, such as had been maintained by the old and more fluid Concert of Europe.\"\nFurthermore, the League, according to Carole Fink, was, \"deliberately excluded from such great-power prerogatives as freedom of the seas and naval disarmament, the Monroe Doctrine and the internal affairs of the French and British empires, and inter-Allied debts and German reparations, not to mention the Allied intervention and the settlement of borders with Soviet Russia.\"\nAlthough the United States never joined, unofficial observers became more and more involved, especially in the 1930s. American philanthropies became heavily involved, especially the Rockefeller Foundation. It made major grants designed to build up the technical expertise of the League staff. Ludovic Tourn\u00e8s argues that by the 1930s the foundations had changed the League from a \"Parliament of Nations\" to a modern think tank that used specialised expertise to provide an in-depth impartial analysis of international issues.\nLanguages and symbols.\nThe official languages of the League of Nations were French and English.\nDuring the 1939 New York World's Fair, a semi-official flag and emblem for the League of Nations emerged: two five-pointed stars within a blue pentagon. They symbolised the Earth's five continents and \"five races\". A bow at the top displayed the English name (\"League of Nations\"), while another at the bottom showed the French (\"Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 des Nations\").\nMembership.\nThe League consisted of 42 founding members in November 1920. Six other states joined in its founding year (by December 1920), and seven more joined by September 1924, bringing the League's size to 55. Costa Rica withdrew in December 1924, making it the member to have most quickly withdrawn, and Brazil became the first founding member to withdraw in June 1926. Germany (under the Weimar Republic) was admitted to the League of Nations through a resolution passed on 8 September 1926. The League's size remained at 54 for the next five years.\nThrough the first half of the 1930s, six more states joined, including Iraq in 1932 (newly independent from a League of Nations mandate) and the Soviet Union on 18 September 1934, but the Empire of Japan and Germany (under Hitler) withdrew in 1933. This marked the League's largest extent at 58 member states.\nIn December 1920, Argentina quit (being absent from all sessions and votes) without formally withdrawing, on rejection of an Argentine resolution that all sovereign states would be admitted to the League. It resumed its participation in September 1933.\nThe League's membership declined through the second half of the 1930s as it weakened. Between 1935 and the start of World War II in Europe in September 1939, only Egypt joined (becoming the last state to join), 11 members left, and 3 members ceased to exist or fell under military occupation (Ethiopia, Austria, and Czechoslovakia). The Soviet Union was expelled on 14 December 1939 for invading Finland, as one of the last acts of the League before it ceased functioning.\nOrganization.\n \nPermanent organs.\nThe main constitutional organs of the League were the Assembly, the council, and the Permanent Secretariat. It also had two essential wings: the Permanent Court of International Justice and the International Labour Organization. In addition, there were several auxiliary agencies and bodies. Each organ's budget was allocated by the Assembly (the League was supported financially by its member states).\nThe relations between the assembly and the council and the competencies of each were for the most part not explicitly defined. Each body could deal with any matter within the sphere of competence of the league or affecting peace in the world. Particular questions or tasks might be referred to either.\nUnanimity was required for the decisions of both the assembly and the council, except in matters of procedure and some other specific cases such as the admission of new members. This requirement was a reflection of the league's belief in the sovereignty of its component nations; the league sought a solution by consent, not by dictation. In case of a dispute, the consent of the parties to the dispute was not required for unanimity.\nThe Permanent Secretariat, established at the seat of the League at Geneva, comprised a body of experts in various spheres under the direction of the general secretary. Its principal sections were Political, Financial and Economics, Transit, Minorities and Administration (administering the Saar and Danzig), Mandates, Disarmament, Health, Social (Opium and Traffic in Women and Children), Intellectual Cooperation and International Bureaux, Legal, and Information. The staff of the Secretariat was responsible for preparing the agenda for the Council and the Assembly and publishing reports of the meetings and other routine matters, effectively acting as the League's civil service. In 1931 the staff numbered 707.\nThe Assembly consisted of representatives of all members of the League, with each state allowed up to three representatives and one vote. It met in Geneva and, after its initial sessions in 1920, it convened once a year in September. The special functions of the Assembly included the admission of new members, the periodical election of non-permanent members to the council, the election with the Council of the judges of the Permanent Court, and control of the budget. In practice, the Assembly was the general directing force of League activities.\nThe Council acted as a type of executive body directing the Assembly's business. It began with four permanent members \u2013 Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan \u2013 and four non-permanent members that were elected by the Assembly for a three-year term. The first non-permanent members were Belgium, Brazil, Greece, and Spain.\nThe composition of the Council was changed several times. The number of non-permanent members was first increased to six on 22 September 1922 and to nine on 8 September 1926. Werner Dankwort of Germany pushed for his country to join the League; joining in 1926, Germany became the fifth permanent member of the Council. Later, after Germany and Japan both left the League, the number of non-permanent seats was increased from nine to eleven, and the Soviet Union was made a permanent member giving the council a total of fifteen members. The Council met, on average, five times a year and in extraordinary sessions when required. In total, 107 sessions were held between 1920 and 1939.\nOther bodies.\nThe League oversaw the Permanent Court of International Justice and several other agencies and commissions created to deal with pressing international problems. These included the Disarmament Commission, the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Mandates Commission, the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation (precursor to UNESCO), the Permanent Central Opium Board, the Commission for Refugees, the Slavery Commission, and the Economic and Financial Organization. Three of these institutions were transferred to the United Nations after the Second World War: the International Labour Organization, the Permanent Court of International Justice (as the International Court of Justice), and the Health Organisation (restructured as the World Health Organization).\nThe Permanent Court of International Justice was provided for by the Covenant, but not established by it. The Council and the Assembly established its constitution. Its judges were elected by the Council and the Assembly, and its budget was provided by the latter. The Court was to hear and decide any international dispute which the parties concerned submitted to it. It might also give an advisory opinion on any dispute or question referred to it by the council or the Assembly. The Court was open to all the nations of the world under certain broad conditions.\nThe International Labour Organization was created in 1919 on the basis of Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles. The ILO, although having the same members as the League and being subject to the budget control of the Assembly, was an autonomous organisation with its own Governing Body, its own General Conference and its own Secretariat. Its constitution differed from that of the League: representation had been accorded not only to governments but also to representatives of employers' and workers' organisations. Albert Thomas was its first director.\nThe ILO successfully restricted the addition of lead to paint, and convinced several countries to adopt an eight-hour work day and forty-eight-hour working week. It also campaigned to end child labour, increase the rights of women in the workplace, and make shipowners liable for accidents involving seamen. After the demise of the League, the ILO became an agency of the United Nations in 1946.\nThe League's Health Organisation had three bodies: the Health Bureau, containing permanent officials of the League; the General Advisory Council or Conference, an executive section consisting of medical experts; and the Health Committee. In practice, the Paris-based Office international d'hygi\u00e8ne publique (OIHP) founded in 1907 after the International Sanitary Conferences, was discharging most of the practical health-related questions, and its relations with the League's Health Committee were often conflictual. The Health Committee's purpose was to conduct inquiries, oversee the operation of the League's health work, and prepare work to be presented to the council. This body focused on ending leprosy, malaria, and yellow fever, the latter two by starting an international campaign to exterminate mosquitoes. The Health Organisation also worked successfully with the government of the Soviet Union to prevent typhus epidemics, including organising a large education campaign.\nLinked with health, but also commercial concerns, was the topic of narcotics control. Introduced by the second International Opium Convention, the Permanent Central Opium Board had to supervise the statistical reports on trade in opium, morphine, cocaine and heroin. The board also established a system of import certificates and export authorisations for the legal international trade in narcotics.\nThe League of Nations had devoted serious attention to the question of international intellectual cooperation since its creation. The First Assembly in December 1920 recommended that the Council take action aiming at the international organisation of intellectual work, which it did by adopting a report presented by the Fifth Committee of the Second Assembly and inviting a committee on intellectual co-operation to meet in Geneva in August 1922. The French philosopher Henri Bergson became the first chairman of the committee. The work of the committee included: an inquiry into the conditions of intellectual life, assistance to countries where intellectual life was endangered, creation of national committees for intellectual cooperation, cooperation with international intellectual organisations, protection of intellectual property, inter-university co-operation, co-ordination of bibliographical work and international interchange of publications, and international co-operation in archaeological research.\nThe Slavery Commission sought to eradicate slavery and slave trading across the world, and fought forced prostitution. Its main success was through pressing the governments who administered mandated countries to end slavery in those countries. The League secured a commitment from Ethiopia to end slavery as a condition of membership in 1923, and worked with Liberia to abolish forced labour and intertribal slavery. The United Kingdom had not supported Ethiopian membership of the League on the grounds that \"Ethiopia had not reached a state of civilisation and internal security sufficient to warrant her admission.\"\nThe League also succeeded in reducing the death rate of workers constructing the Tanganyika railway from 55 to 4 per cent. Records were kept to control slavery, prostitution, and the trafficking of women and children. Partly as a result of pressure brought by the League of Nations, Afghanistan abolished slavery in 1923, Iraq in 1924, Nepal in 1926, Transjordan and Persia in 1929, Bahrain in 1937, and Ethiopia in 1942.\nLed by Fridtjof Nansen, the Commission for Refugees was established on 27 June 1921 to look after the interests of refugees, including overseeing their repatriation and, when necessary, resettlement. At the end of the First World War, there were two to three million ex-prisoners of war from various nations dispersed throughout Russia; within two years of the commission's foundation, it had helped 425,000 of them return home. It established camps in Turkey in 1922 to aid the country with an ongoing refugee crisis, helping to prevent the spread of cholera, smallpox and dysentery as well as feeding the refugees in the camps. It also established the Nansen passport as a means of identification for stateless people.\nThe Committee for the Study of the Legal Status of Women sought to inquire into the status of women all over the world. It was formed in 1937, and later became part of the United Nations as the Commission on the Status of Women.\nThe Covenant of the League said little about economics. Nonetheless, in 1920 the Council of the League called for a financial conference. The First Assembly at Geneva provided for the appointment of an Economic and Financial Advisory Committee to provide information to the conference. In 1923, a permanent Economic and Financial Organisation came into being. The existing bilateral treaty regime was integrated into the League where the most-favoured-nation norm was codified and the League took on responsibilities related to international oversight and standardisation.\nMandates.\nAt the end of the First World War, the Allied Powers were confronted with the question of the disposal of the former German colonies in Africa and the Pacific, and the several Arabic-speaking provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Many British and French leaders wanted to annex colonies of the defeated Central Powers, but U.S. President Woodrow Wilson strongly insisted that instead of annexation, these territories should be assisted under League of Nations supervision in achieving self-governance and eventual independence depending on the inhabitants' choices.\nThe Paris Peace Conference compromised with Wilson by adopting the principle that these territories should be administered by different governments on behalf of the League \u2013 a system of national responsibility subject to international supervision. This plan, defined as the mandate system, was adopted by the \"Council of Ten\" (the heads of government and foreign ministers of the main Allied Powers: Britain, France, the United States, Italy, and Japan) on 30 January 1919 and transmitted to the League of Nations.\nLeague of Nations mandates were established under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. The Permanent Mandates Commission supervised League of Nations mandates, and also organised plebiscites in disputed territories so that residents could decide which country they would join. There were three mandate classifications: A, B and C.\nThe A mandates (applied to parts of the old Ottoman Empire) were \"certain communities\" that had <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Article 22\nThe B mandates were applied to the former German colonies that the League took responsibility for after the First World War. These were described as \"peoples\" that the League said were <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Article 22\nSouth West Africa and certain South Pacific Islands were administered by League members under C mandates. These were classified as \"territories\" <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Article 22\nMandatory powers.\nThe territories were governed by mandatory powers, such as the United Kingdom in the case of the Mandate of Palestine, and the Union of South Africa in the case of South-West Africa, until the territories were deemed capable of self-government. Fourteen mandate territories were divided up among seven mandatory powers: the United Kingdom, the Union of South Africa, France, Belgium, New Zealand, Australia and Japan. With the exception of the Kingdom of Iraq, which joined the League on 3 October 1932, most of these territories did not begin to gain their independence until after the Second World War, in a process that did not end until 1990. Following the demise of the League, most of the remaining mandates became United Nations Trust Territories.\nIn addition to the mandates, the League itself governed the Territory of the Saar Basin for 15 years, before it was returned to Germany following a plebiscite, and the Free City of Danzig (now Gda\u0144sk, Poland) from 15 November 1920 to 1 September 1939.\nResolving territorial disputes.\nThe aftermath of the First World War left many issues to be settled, including the exact position of national boundaries and which country particular regions would join. Most of these questions were handled by the victorious Allied Powers in bodies such as the Allied Supreme Council. The Allied Powers tended to refer only particularly difficult matters to the League. This meant that, during the early interwar period, the League played little part in resolving the turmoil resulting from the war. The questions the League considered in its early years included those designated by the Paris Peace treaties.\nAs the League developed, its role expanded, and by the middle of the 1920s it had become the centre of international activity. This change can be seen in the relationship between the League and non-members. The United States and the Soviet Union, for example, increasingly worked with the League. During the second half of the 1920s, France, Britain and Germany were all using the League of Nations as the focus of their diplomatic activity, and each of their foreign secretaries attended League meetings at Geneva during this period. They also used the League's machinery to try to improve relations and settle their differences.\n\u00c5land Islands.\n\u00c5land is a collection of around 6,500 islands in the Baltic Sea, midway between Sweden and Finland. The islands are almost exclusively Swedish-speaking, but in 1809, the \u00c5land Islands, along with Finland, were taken by Imperial Russia. In December 1917, during the turmoil of the Russian October Revolution, Finland declared its independence, but most of the \u00c5landers wished to rejoin Sweden. The Finnish government considered the islands to be a part of their new nation, as the Russians had included \u00c5land in the Grand Duchy of Finland, formed in 1809. By 1920, the dispute had escalated to the point that there was danger of war. The British government referred the problem to the League of Nations Council, but Finland would not let the League intervene, as they considered it an internal matter. The League created a small panel to decide if it should investigate the matter and, with an affirmative response, a neutral commission was created. In June 1921, the League announced its decision: the islands were to remain a part of Finland, but with guaranteed protection of the islanders, including demilitarisation. With Sweden's reluctant agreement, this became the first European international agreement concluded directly through the League.\nUpper Silesia.\nThe Allied powers referred the problem of Upper Silesia to the League after they had been unable to resolve the territorial dispute between Poland and Germany. In 1919 Poland voiced a claim to Upper Silesia, which had been part of Prussia. The Treaty of Versailles had recommended a plebiscite in Upper Silesia to determine whether the territory should become part of Germany or Poland. Complaints about the attitude of the German authorities led to rioting and eventually to the first two Silesian Uprisings (1919 and 1920). A plebiscite took place on 20 March 1921, with 59.6 per cent (around 500,000) of the votes cast in favour of joining Germany, but Poland claimed the conditions surrounding it had been unfair. This result led to the Third Silesian Uprising in 1921.\nOn 12 August 1921, the League was asked to settle the matter; the Council created a commission with representatives from Belgium, Brazil, China and Spain to study the situation. The committee recommended that Upper Silesia be divided between Poland and Germany according to the preferences shown in the plebiscite and that the two sides should decide the details of the interaction between the two areas \u2013 for example, whether goods should pass freely over the border due to the economic and industrial interdependence of the two areas. In November 1921, a conference was held in Geneva to negotiate a convention between Germany and Poland. A final settlement was reached, after five meetings, in which most of the area was given to Germany, but with the Polish section containing the majority of the region's mineral resources and much of its industry. When this agreement became public in May 1922, bitter resentment was expressed in Germany, but the treaty was still ratified by both countries. The settlement produced peace in the area until the beginning of the Second World War.\nAlbania.\nThe frontiers of the Principality of Albania had not been set during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, as they were left for the League to decide. They had not yet been determined by September 1921, creating an unstable situation. Greek troops conducted military operations in the south of Albania. Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslav) forces became engaged, after clashes with Albanian tribesmen, in the northern part of the country. The League sent a commission of representatives from various powers to the region. In November 1921, the League decided that the frontiers of Albania should be the same as they had been in 1913, with three minor changes that favoured Yugoslavia. Yugoslav forces withdrew a few weeks later, albeit under protest.\nThe borders of Albania again became the cause of international conflict when Italian General Enrico Tellini and four of his assistants were ambushed and killed on 27 August 1923 while marking out the newly decided border between Greece and Albania. Italian leader Benito Mussolini was incensed and demanded that a commission investigate the incident within five days. Whatever the results of the investigation, Mussolini insisted that the Greek government pay Italy Lire\u00a050 million in reparations. The Greeks said they would not pay unless it was proved that the crime was committed by Greeks.\nMussolini sent a warship to shell the Greek island of Corfu, and Italian forces occupied the island on 31 August 1923. This contravened the League of Nations Covenant, so Greece appealed to the League to deal with the situation. The Allied Powers agreed (at Mussolini's insistence) that the Conference of Ambassadors should be responsible for resolving the dispute because it was the conference that had appointed General Tellini. The League of Nations Council examined the dispute, but then passed on their findings to the Conference of Ambassadors to make the final decision. The conference accepted most of the League's recommendations, forcing Greece to pay fifty million lire to Italy, even though those who committed the crime were never discovered. Italian forces then withdrew from Corfu.\nMemel.\nThe port city of Memel (now Klaip\u0117da) and the surrounding area, with a predominantly German population, was under provisional Entente control according to Article 99 of the Treaty of Versailles. The French and Polish governments favoured turning Memel into an international city, while Lithuania wanted to annex the area. By 1923, the fate of the area had still not been decided, prompting Lithuanian forces to invade in January 1923 and seize the port. After the Allied Powers failed to reach an agreement with Lithuania, they referred the matter to the League of Nations. In December 1923, the League of Nations Council appointed a Commission of Inquiry. The commission chose to cede Memel to Lithuania and give the area autonomous rights. The Klaip\u0117da Convention was approved by the Council on 14 March 1924, and then by the Allied Powers and Lithuania. In 1939 Germany retook the region following the rise of the Nazis and an ultimatum to Lithuania, demanding the return of the region under threat of war. The League of Nations failed to prevent the secession of the Memel region to Germany.\nHatay.\nWith League oversight, the Sanjak of Alexandretta in the French Mandate of Syria was given autonomy in 1937. Renamed Hatay, its parliament declared independence as the Republic of Hatay in September 1938, after elections the previous month. It was annexed by Turkey with French consent in mid-1939.\nMosul.\nThe League resolved a dispute between the Kingdom of Iraq and the Republic of Turkey over control of the former Ottoman province of Mosul in 1926. According to the British, who had been awarded a League of Nations mandate over Iraq in 1920 and therefore represented Iraq in its foreign affairs, Mosul belonged to Iraq; on the other hand, the new Turkish republic claimed the province as part of its historic heartland. A League of Nations Commission of Inquiry, with Belgian, Hungarian and Swedish members, was sent to the region in 1924; it found that the people of Mosul did not want to be part of either Turkey or Iraq, but if they had to choose, they would pick Iraq. In 1925, the commission recommended that the region stay part of Iraq, under the condition that the British hold the mandate over Iraq for another 25 years, to ensure the autonomous rights of the Kurdish population. The League Council adopted the recommendation and decided on 16 December 1925 to award Mosul to Iraq. Although Turkey had accepted League of Nations arbitration in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), it rejected the decision, questioning the Council's authority. The matter was referred to the Permanent Court of International Justice, which ruled that, when the Council made a unanimous decision, it must be accepted. Nonetheless, Britain, Iraq and Turkey ratified a separate treaty on 5 June 1926 that mostly followed the decision of the Council and also assigned Mosul to Iraq. It was agreed that Iraq could still apply for League membership within 25 years and that the mandate would end upon its admission.\nVilnius.\nAfter the First World War, Poland and Lithuania both regained their independence but soon became immersed in territorial disputes. During the Polish\u2013Soviet War, Lithuania signed the Moscow Peace Treaty with the Soviet Russia that laid out Lithuania's frontiers. This agreement gave Lithuanians control of the city of Vilnius (, ), the old Lithuanian capital, but a city with a majority Polish population. This heightened tension between Lithuania and Poland and led to fears that they would resume the Polish\u2013Lithuanian War, and on 7 October 1920, the League negotiated the Suwa\u0142ki Agreement establishing a cease-fire and a demarcation line between the two nations. On 9 October 1920, General Lucjan \u017beligowski, commanding a Polish military force in contravention of the Suwa\u0142ki Agreement, took the city and established the Republic of Central Lithuania.\nAfter a request for assistance from Lithuania, the League of Nations Council called for Poland's withdrawal from the area. The Polish government indicated they would comply, but instead reinforced the city with more Polish troops. This prompted the League to decide that the future of Vilnius should be determined by its residents in a plebiscite and that the Polish forces should withdraw and be replaced by an international force organised by the League. The plan was met with resistance in Poland, Lithuania, and the Soviet Russia, which opposed any international force in Lithuania. In March 1921, the League abandoned plans for the plebiscite. After unsuccessful proposals by Paul Hymans to create a federation between Poland and Lithuania, which was intended as a reincarnation of the former Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth which the two nations had shared before losing their independence, Vilnius and the surrounding area was formally annexed by Poland in March 1922. After Lithuania took over the Klaip\u0117da Region, the Allied Conference set the frontier between Lithuania and Poland, leaving Vilnius within Poland, on 14 March 1923. Lithuanian authorities refused to accept the decision, and officially remained in a state of war with Poland until 1927. It was not until the 1938 Polish ultimatum that Lithuania restored diplomatic relations with Poland and thus \"de facto\" accepted the borders.\nColombia and Peru.\nThere were several border conflicts between Colombia and Peru in the early part of the 20th century, and in 1922, their governments signed the Salom\u00f3n-Lozano Treaty in an attempt to resolve them. As part of this treaty, the border town of Leticia and its surrounding area was ceded from Peru to Colombia, giving Colombia access to the Amazon River. On 1 September 1932, business leaders from Peruvian rubber and sugar industries who had lost land, as a result, organised an armed takeover of Leticia. At first, the Peruvian government did not recognise the military takeover, but President of Peru Luis S\u00e1nchez Cerro decided to resist a Colombian re-occupation. The Peruvian Army occupied Leticia, leading to an armed conflict between the two nations. After months of diplomatic negotiations, the governments accepted mediation by the League of Nations, and their representatives presented their cases before the Council. A provisional peace agreement, signed by both parties in May 1933, provided for the League to assume control of the disputed territory while bilateral negotiations proceeded. In May 1934, a final peace agreement was signed, resulting in the return of Leticia to Colombia, a formal apology from Peru for the 1932 invasion, demilitarisation of the area around Leticia, free navigation on the Amazon and Putumayo Rivers, and a pledge of non-aggression.\nSaar.\nSaar was a province formed from parts of Prussia and the Rhenish Palatinate and placed under League control by the Treaty of Versailles. A plebiscite was to be held after fifteen years of League rule to determine whether the province should belong to Germany or France. When the referendum was held in 1935, 90.3 per cent of voters supported becoming part of Germany, which was quickly approved by the League of Nations Council.\nOther conflicts.\nIn addition to territorial disputes, the League also tried to intervene in other conflicts between and within nations. Among its successes were its fight against the international trade in opium and sexual slavery, and its work to alleviate the plight of refugees, particularly in Turkey in the period up to 1926. One of its innovations in this latter area was the 1922 introduction of the Nansen passport, which was the first internationally recognised identity card for stateless refugees.\nGreece and Bulgaria.\nAfter an incident involving sentries on the Greek-Bulgarian border in October 1925, fighting began between the two countries. Three days after the initial incident, Greek troops invaded Bulgaria. The Bulgarian government ordered its troops to make only token resistance, and evacuated between ten thousand and fifteen thousand people from the border region, trusting the League to settle the dispute. The League condemned the Greek invasion, and called for both Greek withdrawal and compensation to Bulgaria.\nLiberia.\nFollowing accusations of forced labour on the large American-owned Firestone rubber plantation and American accusations of slave trading, the Liberian government asked the League to launch an investigation. The resulting commission was jointly appointed by the League, the United States, and Liberia. In 1930, a League report confirmed the presence of slavery and forced labour. The report implicated many government officials in the selling of contract labour and recommended that they be replaced by Europeans or Americans, which generated anger within Liberia and led to the resignation of President Charles D. B. King and his vice-president. The Liberian government outlawed forced labour and slavery and asked for American help in social reforms.\nMukden Incident.\nThe Mukden Incident, also known as the \"Manchurian Incident\", was a decisive setback that weakened the League because its major members refused to tackle Japanese aggression. Japan itself withdrew.\nUnder the agreed terms of the Twenty-One Demands with China, the Japanese government had the right to station its troops in the area around the South Manchurian Railway, a major trade route between China and Korea (then a Japanese colony), in the Chinese region of Manchuria. In September 1931, a section of the railway was lightly damaged by the Japanese Kwantung Army as a pretext for an invasion of Manchuria. The Japanese army claimed that Chinese soldiers had sabotaged the railway and in apparent retaliation (acting contrary to orders from Tokyo) occupied all of Manchuria. They renamed the area Manchukuo, and on 9 March 1932 set up a puppet government, with Puyi, the final emperor of China, as its nominal head of state.\nThe League of Nations sent observers. The Lytton Report appeared a year later (October 1932). It refused to recognise Manchukuo and demanded Manchuria be returned to China. The report passed 42\u20131 in the Assembly in 1933 (only Japan voting against), but instead of removing its troops from China, Japan withdrew from the League. In the end, as British historian Charles Mowat argued, collective security was dead:\nThe League and the ideas of collective security and the rule of law were defeated; partly because of indifference and of sympathy with the aggressor, but partly because the League powers were unprepared, preoccupied with other matters, and too slow to perceive the scale of Japanese ambitions.\nChaco War.\nThe League failed to prevent the 1932 war between Bolivia and Paraguay over the arid Gran Chaco region. Although the region was sparsely populated, it contained the Paraguay River, which would have given either landlocked country access to the Atlantic Ocean, and there was also speculation, later proved incorrect, that the Chaco would be a rich source of petroleum. Border skirmishes throughout the late 1920s culminated in an all-out war in 1932 when the Bolivian army attacked the Paraguayans at Fort Carlos Antonio L\u00f3pez at Lake Pitiantuta. The war was a disaster for both sides, causing 57,000 casualties for Bolivia, whose population was around three million, and 36,000 dead for Paraguay, whose population was approximately one million. It also brought both countries to the brink of economic disaster. By the time a ceasefire was negotiated on 12 June 1935, Paraguay had seized control of most of the region, as was later recognised by the 1938 truce.\nInitially, both sides refused to allow the League to conduct an inquiry until November 1933, over a year after the start of the war. As a result, the League did not formally invoke Article 16 to apply sanctions. The Pan-American Conference offered to mediate and the League deferred to the conference, but the warring sides ignored the conference. Eventually (without going through Article 16), an arms embargo was enacted by several members of the League (plus non-League members the United States and Brazil), but several neighbouring states ignored the embargo rendering it ineffective. In November 1934, the League demanded that both sides withdraw and undergo arbitration. Bolivia accepted, but Paraguay by then had taken control of all of the disputed area. Paraguay rejected arbitration and quit the League.\nItalian invasion of Abyssinia.\nIn October 1935, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini sent 400,000 troops to invade Abyssinia (Ethiopia). Marshal Pietro Badoglio led the campaign from November 1935, ordering bombing, the use of chemical weapons such as mustard gas, and the poisoning of water supplies, against targets which included undefended villages and medical facilities. The modern Italian Army defeated the poorly armed Abyssinians and captured Addis Ababa in May 1936, forcing Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie to flee to exile in England.\nThe League of Nations condemned Italy's aggression and imposed economic sanctions in November 1935, but the sanctions were largely ineffective since they did not ban the sale of oil or close the Suez Canal (controlled by Britain). As Stanley Baldwin, the British Prime Minister, later observed, this was ultimately because no one had the military forces on hand to withstand an Italian attack. In October 1935, the US president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, invoked the recently passed Neutrality Acts and placed an embargo on arms and munitions to both sides, but extended a further \"moral embargo\" to the belligerent Italians, including other trade items. On 5 October and later on 29 February 1936, the United States endeavoured, with limited success, to limit its exports of oil and other materials to normal peacetime levels. The League sanctions were lifted on 4 July 1936, but by that point, Italy had already gained control of the urban areas of Abyssinia.\nThe Hoare\u2013Laval Pact of December 1935 was an attempt by the British Foreign Secretary Samuel Hoare and the French Prime Minister Pierre Laval to end the conflict in Abyssinia by proposing to partition the country into an Italian sector and an Abyssinian sector. Mussolini was prepared to agree to the pact, but news of the deal leaked out. Both the British and French public vehemently protested against it, describing it as a sell-out of Abyssinia. Hoare and Laval were forced to resign, and the British and French governments dissociated themselves from the two men. In June 1936, although there was no precedent for a head of state addressing the Assembly of the League of Nations in person, Haile Selassie spoke to the Assembly, appealing for its help in protecting his country.\nThe Abyssinian crisis showed how the League could be influenced by the self-interest of its members; one of the reasons why the sanctions were not very harsh was that both Britain and France feared the prospect of driving Mussolini and Adolf Hitler into an alliance.\nSpanish Civil War.\nOn 17 July 1936, the Spanish Army launched a coup d'\u00e9tat, leading to a prolonged armed conflict between Spanish Republicans (the elected leftist national government) and the Nationalists (conservative, anti-communist rebels who included most officers of the Spanish Army). Julio \u00c1lvarez del Vayo, the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, appealed to the League in September 1936 for arms to defend Spain's territorial integrity and political independence. The League members would not intervene in the Spanish Civil War nor prevent foreign intervention in the conflict. Adolf Hitler and Mussolini aided General Francisco Franco's Nationalists, while the Soviet Union helped the Spanish Republic. In February 1937, the League did ban foreign volunteers, but this was in practice a symbolic move. The result was a Nationalist victory in 1939 and confirmation to all observers that the League was ineffective in dealing with a major issue.\nSecond Sino-Japanese War.\nFollowing a long record of instigating localised conflicts throughout the 1930s, Japan began a full-scale invasion of China on 7 July 1937. On 12 September, the Chinese representative, Wellington Koo, appealed to the League for international intervention. Western countries were sympathetic to the Chinese in their struggle, particularly in their stubborn defence of Shanghai, a city with a substantial number of foreigners. The League was unable to provide any practical measures; on 4 October, it turned the case over to the Nine Power Treaty Conference.\nSoviet invasion of Finland.\nThe Nazi-Soviet Pact of 23 August 1939 contained secret protocols outlining spheres of interest. Finland and the Baltic states, as well as eastern Poland, fell into the Soviet sphere. After invading Poland on 17 September 1939, on 30 November the Soviets invaded Finland. Then \"the League of Nations for the first time expelled a member who had violated the Covenant.\" The League action of 14 December 1939, stung, because the Soviet Union became \"the only League member ever to suffer such an indignity\".\nFailure of disarmament.\nArticle 8 of the Covenant gave the League the task of reducing \"armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the enforcement by common action of international obligations\". Haakon Ikonomou argues that the Disarmament Section was a major failure. It was distrusted by the great powers, and given little autonomy by the Secretariat. Its mediocre staffers generated information that was unreliable and caused unrealistic expectations in the general public.\nSuccesses.\nThe League scored some successes, including the 1925 Conference for the Supervision of the International Trade in Arms and Ammunition and in Implements of War. It started to collect international arms data. Most important was the passage in 1925 of the Geneva protocol banning poison gas in war. It reflected strong worldwide public opinion, although the United States did not ratify it until 1975.\nFailures.\nThe League had numerous failures and shortfalls. In 1921, it set up the Temporary Mixed Commission on Armaments to explore possibilities for disarmament. It was made up not of government representatives but of famous individuals. They rarely agreed. Proposals ranged from abolishing chemical warfare and strategic bombing to the limitation of more conventional weapons, such as tanks.\n1923 Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance.\nThe 1923 Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance was an unsuccessful proposal made by the League of Nations to address the issue of disarmament and security in Europe after World War I. It was rejected by the British government in 1924 and was never adopted. The Draft Treaty was an early attempt by the League to create a system of collective security and disarmament, leading the League to pursue alternative approaches that also ultimately failed to gain traction.\nGeneva Protocol of 1924.\nA draft treaty was assembled in 1923 that made aggressive war illegal and bound the member states to defend victims of aggression by force. Since the onus of responsibility would, in practice, be on the great powers of the League, it was vetoed by Great Britain, who feared that this pledge would strain its own commitment to police its British Empire.\nThe \"Geneva Protocol for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes\" was a proposal by British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and his French counterpart \u00c9douard Herriot. It set up compulsory arbitration of disputes and created a method to determine the aggressor in international conflicts. All legal disputes between nations would be submitted to the World Court. It called for a disarmament conference in 1925. Any government that refused to comply in a dispute would be named an aggressor. Any victim of aggression was to receive immediate assistance from League members.\nBritish Conservatives condemned the proposal for fear that it would lead to conflict with the United States, which also opposed the proposal. The British Dominions strongly opposed it. The Conservatives came to power in Britain and in March 1925 the proposal was shelved and never reintroduced.\nWorld Disarmament Conference.\nThe Allied powers were also under obligation by the Treaty of Versailles to attempt to disarm, and the armament restrictions imposed on the defeated countries had been described as the first step toward worldwide disarmament. The League Covenant assigned the League the task of creating a disarmament plan for each state, but the Council devolved this responsibility to a special commission set up in 1926 to prepare for the 1932\u20131934 World Disarmament Conference. Members of the League held different views towards the issue. The French were reluctant to reduce their armaments without a guarantee of military help if they were attacked; Poland and Czechoslovakia felt vulnerable to attack from the west and wanted the League's response to aggression against its members to be strengthened before they disarmed. Without this guarantee, they would not reduce armaments because they felt the risk of attack from Germany was too great. Fear of attack increased as Germany regained its strength after the First World War, especially after Adolf Hitler gained power and became German Chancellor in 1933. In particular, Germany's attempts to overturn the Treaty of Versailles and the reconstruction of the German military made France increasingly unwilling to disarm.\nThe World Disarmament Conference was convened by the League of Nations in Geneva in 1932, with representatives from 60 states. It was a failure. A one-year moratorium on the expansion of armaments, later extended by a few months, was proposed at the start of the conference. The Disarmament Commission obtained initial agreement from France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Britain to limit the size of their navies but no final agreement was reached. Ultimately, the Commission failed to halt the military build-up by Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan during the 1930s.\nHelpless during buildup to World War II.\nThe League was mostly silent in the face of major events leading to the Second World War, such as Hitler's remilitarisation of the Rhineland, occupation of the Sudetenland and \"Anschluss\" of Austria, which had been forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In fact, League members themselves re-armed. In 1933, Japan simply withdrew from the League rather than submit to its judgement, as did Germany the same year (using the failure of the World Disarmament Conference to agree to arms parity between France and Germany as a pretext), Italy in 1937, and Spain in 1939. The final significant act of the League was to expel the Soviet Union in December 1939 after it invaded Finland.\nEconomic policies.\nInternational taxation.\nThe intellectual foundation of the modern international taxation regime was set with a 1923 report prepared by prominent political economists and tax law experts for the League of Nations. The report formulated \"general principles\" to avoid the adverse effects of double taxation and encourage free trade, international capital flows, and economic growth. For example, the report tried to set guidelines for resolving who would be allowed to tax a resident or citizen of one state when that individual earned income in another state. Prior to the publication of the report, these kinds of questions were primarily decided through unilateral state decisions or bilateral tax treaties.\nGeneral weaknesses.\nThe onset of the Second World War demonstrated that the League had failed in its primary purpose, the prevention of another world war. There were a variety of reasons for this failure, many connected to general weaknesses within the organisation. Additionally, the power of the League was limited by the United States' refusal to join.\nOrigins and structure.\nThe origins of the League as an organisation created by the Allied powers as part of the peace settlement to end the First World War led to it being viewed as a \"League of Victors\". The League's neutrality tended to manifest itself as indecision. It required a unanimous vote of nine, later fifteen, Council members to enact a resolution; hence, conclusive and effective action was difficult, if not impossible. It was also slow in coming to its decisions, as certain ones required the unanimous consent of the entire Assembly. This problem mainly stemmed from the fact that the primary members of the League of Nations were not willing to accept the possibility of their fate being decided by other countries and (by enforcing unanimous voting) had effectively given themselves veto power.\nGlobal representation.\nRepresentation at the League was often a problem. Though it was intended to encompass all nations, many never joined, or their period of membership was short. The most conspicuous absentee was the United States. President Woodrow Wilson had been a driving force behind the League's formation and strongly influenced the form it took, but the US Senate voted not to join on 19 November 1919. Ruth Henig has suggested that, had the United States become a member, it would have also provided support to France and Britain, possibly making France feel more secure, and so encouraging France and Britain to co-operate more fully regarding Germany, thus making the rise to power of the Nazi Party less likely. Conversely, Henig acknowledges that if the US had been a member, its reluctance to engage in war with European states or to enact economic sanctions might have hampered the ability of the League to deal with international incidents. The structure of the US federal government might also have made its membership problematic, as its representatives at the League would only be able to answer on behalf of the executive branch, certain League decisions such as to go to war, would always require prior approval of the legislative branch regardless of the outcome of any floor vote even.\nIn January 1920, when the League was born, Germany was not permitted to join because it was seen as having been the aggressor in the First World War. Soviet Russia was also initially excluded because Communist regimes were not welcomed and membership would have been initially dubious due to the ongoing Russian Civil War in which both sides claimed to be the legitimate government of the country. The League was further weakened when major powers left in the 1930s. Japan began as a permanent member of the Council since the country was an Allied Power in the First World War but withdrew in 1933 after the League voiced opposition to its occupation of Manchuria. Italy also began as a permanent member of the council. However the League staunchly opposed Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1934. When the war ended in an Italian conquest, the League refused to recognise Italian sovereignty over Ethiopia, prompting the Italian-Fascist government to withdraw from the organisation altogether in 1937. Though neutral during World War I, Spain (then still a kingdom) also began as a permanent member of the council, but withdrew in 1939 after the Spanish Civil War ended in a victory for the Nationalists. Though world opinion was much more divided over the Spanish Civil War than the conflicts involving Japan and Italy, the general perception leaned in favour of the Republican cause. The League had accepted Germany, also as a permanent member of the council, in 1926, deeming it to have become a \"peace-loving country\" under the Weimar Republic. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Adolf Hitler withdrew Germany almost immediately.\nCollective security.\nAnother important weakness grew from the contradiction between the idea of collective security that formed the basis of the League and international relations between individual states. The League's collective security system required nations to act, if necessary, against states they considered friendly, and in a way that might endanger their national interests, to support states for which they had no normal affinity. This weakness was exposed during the Abyssinia Crisis, when Britain and France had to balance maintaining the security they had attempted to create for themselves in Europe \"to defend against the enemies of internal order\", in which Italy's support played a pivotal role, with their obligations to Abyssinia as a member of the League.\nOn 23 June 1936, in the wake of the collapse of League efforts to restrain Italy's war against Abyssinia, the British Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, told the House of Commons that collective security had <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nUltimately, Britain and France both abandoned the concept of collective security in favour of appeasement in the face of growing German militarism under Hitler.\nIn this context, the League of Nations was also the institution where the first international debate on terrorism took place following the 1934 assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in Marseille, France. This debate established precedents regarding global surveillance (in the form of routine international sharing of surveillance data), the punishment of terrorists as an international (rather than national) matter, and the right of a nation to conduct military attacks within another nation as a response to international terrorism. Many of these concepts are detectable in the discourse of terrorism among states after 9/11.\nAmerican diplomatic historian Samuel Flagg Bemis originally supported the League, but after two decades changed his mind:\nThe League of Nations has been a disappointing failure... It has been a failure, not because the United States did not join it; but because the great powers have been unwilling to apply sanctions except where it suited their individual national interests to do so, and because Democracy, on which the original concepts of the League rested for support, has collapsed over half the world.\nPacifism, disarmament and radio.\nThe League of Nations lacked an armed force of its own and depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, which they were very unwilling to do. Its two most important members, Britain and France, were reluctant to use sanctions and even more reluctant to resort to military action on behalf of the League. Immediately after the First World War, pacifism became a strong force among both the people and governments of the two countries. The British Conservatives were especially tepid to the League and preferred, when in government, to negotiate treaties without the involvement of that organisation. Moreover, the League's advocacy of disarmament for Britain, France, and its other members, while at the same time advocating collective security, meant that the League was depriving itself of the only forceful means by which it could uphold its authority.\nDavid Goodman argues that the 1936 League of Nations Convention on the Use of Broadcasting in the Cause of Peace tried to create the standards for a liberal international public sphere. The Convention encouraged friendly radio broadcasts to other nations. It called for League prohibitions on international broadcasts containing hostile speech and false claims. It tried to draw the line between liberal and illiberal policies in communications, and emphasised the dangers of nationalist chauvinism. With Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia active on the radio, its liberal goals were ignored, while liberals warned that the code represented restraints on free speech.\nDemise and legacy.\nAs the situation in Europe escalated into war, the Assembly transferred enough power to the Secretary General on 30 September 1938 and 14 December 1939 to allow the League to continue to exist legally and carry on reduced operations. The headquarters of the League, the Palace of Nations, remained unoccupied for nearly six years until the Second World War ended.\nAt the 1943 Tehran Conference, the Allied powers agreed to create a new body to replace the League: the United Nations. Many League bodies, such as the International Labour Organization, continued to function and eventually became affiliated with the UN. The designers of the structures of the United Nations intended to make it more effective than the League.\nThe final session of the League of Nations concluded on 18 April 1946 in Geneva. Delegates from 34 nations attended the assembly. This session concerned itself with liquidating the League: it transferred assets worth approximately $22,000,000 (U.S.) in 1946 (including the Palace of Nations and the League's archives) to the UN, returned reserve funds to the nations that had supplied them, and settled the debts of the League. Robert Cecil, addressing the final session, said:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Let us boldly state that aggression wherever it occurs and however it may be defended, is an international crime, that it is the duty of every peace-loving state to resent it and employ whatever force is necessary to crush it, that the machinery of the Charter, no less than the machinery of the Covenant, is sufficient for this purpose if properly used, and that every well-disposed citizen of every state should be ready to undergo any sacrifice in order to maintain peace ... I venture to impress upon my hearers that the great work of peace is resting not only on the narrow interests of our own nations, but even more on those great principles of right and wrong which nations, like individuals, depend.\nThe League is dead. Long live the United Nations.\nThe Assembly passed a resolution that \"With effect from the day following the close of the present session of the Assembly [i.e., April 19], the League of Nations shall cease to exist except for the sole purpose of the liquidation of its affairs as provided in the present resolution.\" A Board of Liquidation consisting of nine persons from different countries spent the next 15 months overseeing the transfer of the League's assets and functions to the United Nations or specialised bodies, finally dissolving itself on 31 July 1947. The archive of the League of Nations was transferred to the United Nations Office at Geneva and is now an entry in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.\nIn the Assembly's last session in 1946, Philip Noel-Baker (representing the United Kingdom) remarked that failure to act as soon as a great power had invaded another state had ultimately doomed the League: \"We know the World War began in Manchuria 15 years ago...Manchuria, Abyssinia, Munich have killed another great illusion, the belief that appeasement, seeking the national interest at the expense of others, individual action, secret bargains, could bring us peace.\"\nIn the past few decades, by research using the League Archives at Geneva, historians have reviewed the legacy of the League of Nations as the United Nations has faced similar troubles to those of the interwar period. Current consensus views that, even though the League failed to achieve its ultimate goal of world peace, it did manage to build new roads towards expanding the rule of law across the globe; strengthened the concept of collective security, giving a voice to smaller nations; helped to raise awareness to problems like epidemics, slavery, child labour, colonial tyranny, refugee crises and general working conditions through its numerous commissions and committees; and paved the way for new forms of statehood, as the mandate system put the colonial powers under international observation. Erez Manela situated the League as a catalyst for transforming the postwar global order into one critical of the arrangements of empire. Alternatively, Laura Robson & Joe Maiolo posit the argument that the Mandate System under the League was a re-vitalised form of imperialism that placed former colonies under the ownership of greater powers.\nProfessor David Kennedy portrays the League as a unique moment when international affairs were \"institutionalised\", as opposed to the pre\u2013First World War methods of law and politics.\nThe principal Allies in the Second World War (the UK, the USSR, France, the U.S., and the Republic of China) became permanent members of the United Nations Security Council in 1946; in 1971, the People's Republic of China replaced the Republic of China (then only in control of Taiwan) as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and in 1991 the Russian Federation assumed the seat of the dissolved USSR. Decisions of the Security Council are binding on all members of the UN, and unanimous decisions are not required, unlike in the League Council. Only the five permanent members of the Security Council can wield a veto to protect their vital interests.\nLeague of Nations archives.\nThe League of Nations archives is a collection of the League's records and documents. It consists of approximately 15 million pages of content dating from the inception of the League of Nations in 1919 extending through its dissolution in 1946. It is located at the United Nations Office at Geneva. In 2017, the UN Library & Archives Geneva launched the Total Digital Access to the League of Nations Archives Project (LONTAD), with the intention of preserving, digitising, and providing online access to the League of Nations archives. It was completed in 2022.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nGeneral and cited references.\nSurveys.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nLeague topics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nRelated topics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistoriography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "32156702": "Women's suffrage in Switzerland\n \nWomen in Switzerland gained the right to vote in federal elections after a referendum in February 1971. The first federal vote in which women were able to participate was the 31 October 1971 election of the Federal Assembly. However it was not until a 1990 decision by the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland that women gained full voting rights in the final Swiss canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden.\nAn earlier referendum on women's suffrage was held on 1 February 1959 and was rejected by the majority (67%) of Switzerland's men. Despite this, in some French-speaking cantons women obtained the right to vote in cantonal referendums. The first Swiss woman to hold political office, Trudy Sp\u00e4th-Schweizer, was elected to the municipal government of Riehen in 1958.\nSwiss political system and universal suffrage.\nThe principal reason for the delay of the Swiss relative to the other European countries was the importance of direct democracy in the political system. The introduction of federal and cantonal universal suffrage necessitated the vote of the majority of the electors, men in this case, for a referendum. Moreover, a new federal constitutional reform likewise had to be approved by the majority of the cantons. Another reason was the tight connection, since the constitution of 1848, between the right to vote and military service in the Swiss Army, which was compulsory for men.\nDirect democracy also allowed the introduction of woman suffrage via the initiative. Many cantons had initiatives for the right to vote prior to 1971. For example, the canton of Basel-Stadt had referendums on women's suffrage in 1920, 1927, and 1946.\nRepresentation of women in political institutions.\nFederal Assembly.\nThe number of women in the houses of the Federal Assembly of Switzerland increased. In Swiss National Council it went from 10 in 1971 to 50 in 2003, and from 1 to 11 in the 46-member Swiss Council of States. As of 2015[ [update]] there were 64 women out of 200 members (32%) in the National Council and 7 out of 46 (15.2%) in the Council of States.\nLise Girardin (member of FDP.The Liberals) served as the first female Councillor of States from 1971 to 1975, and was also the first mayor of a Swiss city, namely Geneva in 1968.\nFederal Council.\nThe first female member of the seven-member Swiss Federal Council, Elisabeth Kopp, served from 1984 to 1989.\nRuth Dreifuss, the second female member, served from 1993 to 1999, and was the first female President of the Swiss Confederation for the year 1999.\nTwo women, Micheline Calmy-Rey and Ruth Metzler-Arnold, served on the Swiss Federal Council from 1999 to 2003; when Ruth Metzler-Arnold failed to be re-elected in 2003, the number fell back to one. With the election of Doris Leuthard in 2006, there were again two, and, after January 2008, three with the arrival of Eveline Widmer Schlumpf. Micheline Calmy-Rey was elected President of the Swiss Confederation for 2007 and 2011.\nOn 22 September 2010, the Federal Council changed to a female majority for two years with the addition of Simonetta Sommaruga. Doris Leuthard was elected President for the years 2010 and 2017, and Eveline Widmer Schlumpf for the year 2012, Simonetta Sommaruga for the year 2015. The female representation dropped back to three in 2012, and further down to two women in 2016.\nSince 2019 there are three female members of the Federal Council: Simonetta Sommaruga (elected in 2010), Viola Amherd (since 2019) and Karin Keller-Sutter (since 2019).\nCantonal level.\nAs of 2018[ [update]], 37 women serve on cantonal executives (24% of a total of 154); 722 serve as representatives in cantonal parliaments (27.7% of 2609).\nMunicipal level.\nAs of 2017[ [update]], 277 women serve in town executives (26% of 789); 1,598 serve as representatives in town parliaments (31.3% of 3,508).\nLise Girardin was in 1968 the first female mayor of a Swiss city, Geneva, and also served as the first female Councillor of States (1971\u20131975).\nCorine Mauch (member of the Social Democratic Party) presides the largest Swiss city Z\u00fcrich as its mayor since 2009. As of 2018[ [update]] she has been re-elected in first round as \"Stadtpr\u00e4sidentin\" for another 4 years. She is openly gay and lives in a relationship.\nChronology.\nConstitution of 1848.\nThe constitution of 1848, the origin of modern Switzerland, proclaims the equality in the eyes of the law of all human beings (in German, \"Menschen\") but does not explicitly include women in that equality. However, the laws that followed that constitution rigidly placed women in a situation of legal inferiority.\nDebate over women's rights: 1860\u20131887.\nFrom 1860 to 1874, the first feminist movements were organized and, contemporaneously, the first constitutional revision of 1874; the political rights of women became the object of numerous discussions. In 1886, a first petition from a group of eminent women led by Marie Goegg-Pouchoulin was presented to the Federal Assembly. The attention attracted by this initiative opened the way for the first article about the claims of women in a large daily, \"Ketzerische Neujahrsgedanken einer Frau\" (Heretical New Years' Thoughts of a Woman), by Meta von Salis published in 1887 by the \"Z\u00fcrcher Post\". In the same year, Emilie Kempin-Spyri demanded before the federal court the right to become a lawyer. Her request was refused.\nWomen's rights organizations: 1893\u20131898.\nIn 1893, Frauenkomitee Bern was founded in Bern, and women in Zurich founded the Union fuer Frauenbestrebungen (Union for Women's Endeavors), which focused on women's rights. In 1894, von Salis organized meetings in the principal cities of Switzerland on the theme of the right to vote for women. Her conferences had little success and she often had to confront numerous demonstrations of hostility. Two years later, in 1896, the first congress of Swiss women was held in Geneva. Numerous male speakers called for an alliance between men and women, and, at the same time, for moderation in the demands. The importance that these demands acquired in the public debate led to the creation of the first parliamentary commission for the \"woman question.\"\nAdvances and resistance: 1900\u20131959.\nAround the turn of the 20th century, women organized in the entire country, and formed various women's organizations, for, as well as against, women's suffrage. The two most important were the Confederation of Swiss Women's Associations (Bund Schweizerischer Frauenvereine (BSF), since 1899 known as alliance F), under the leadership of Helene von M\u00fclinen, and the Swiss Alliance for Women's Suffrage (Schweizerischer Verband f\u00fcr Frauenstimmrecht (SVF)), which was founded in 1909.\nDuring the First World War, the movement came to a halt, as more critical problems came to the forefront. Among others, the women's alliances carried out the collective welfare work during the war, since Switzerland at this time still had no social insurance.\nIn the 1918 Swiss general strike, women's suffrage was the second of nine demands. In December, the first two advances for women's suffrage at the federal level were made by the National Councillors Herman Greulich (SP) and Emil G\u00f6ttisheim (FDP). In two motions, the Federal Council was called upon to \"introduce a report and motion regarding the constitutional granting of the same voting rights and eligibility for election to female Swiss citizens as to male Swiss citizens\".\nHalf a year later, in June 1919, 158 women's associations prepared a petition to grant more importance to the two motions. As a result, the motions of Greulich and G\u00f6ttisheim were accepted by the National Council and taken over by the Federal Council for completion. However, the responsible Federal Councillor, Heinrich H\u00e4berlin (FDP), postponed the action, due to \"urgent problems.\" Fifteen years later, in 1934, H\u00e4berlin handed over the unfinished business to his successor with the instruction, \"The material for women's suffrage lies in the middle drawer to the right of your desk.\"\nIn 1923, a group of women from Bern prepared a constitutional complaint. They wanted to exercise their voting rights in community, cantonal, and federal matters; however, they were rejected by the federal court by reference to customary law (Gewohnheitsrecht).\nFive years later, Leonard Jenni applied to the Federal Council with a petition demonstrating that the concept of \"Stimmb\u00fcrger\" (elector) in the German language included both sexes. The petition was rejected on the following grounds:\n\"When one now asserts that the concept is also supposed to include Swiss women, then one oversteps the boundaries of the allowable interpretation and thereby commits an act that contradicts the sense of the constitution...\"\nIn the summer of the same year, the Swiss Exhibition for Women's Work (Schweizerische Ausstellung f\u00fcr Frauenarbeit (SAFFA)) took place. A memorable vehicle accompanied the procession; a snail named \"women's suffrage.\" The organizers were strongly criticized for the snail and some critics saw this entirely as a sign of the political immaturity of the women.\nIn 1929, the SVF launched a new petition for women's suffrage and this time achieved a record number of signatures that even exceeded the required number of signatures for a popular initiative: 170,397 signatures of women and 78,840 signatures of men. The Catholic Women's League (Katholische Frauenbund) distanced itself explicitly from the demands of the other women's associations. Other oppositional organizations reacted as well and, in 1931, the Swiss League Against Political Women's Suffrage (Schweizer Liga gegen das politische Frauenstimmrecht) brought a petition to the Federal Council titled \"Position Against the Politicization of Swiss Women.\" On many occasions, the women and men of the League, among them Emma Rufer, wrote to the Federal Council and the parliament and implored them to abandon the project.\nDuring the 1930s and early 1940s, the effort for women's suffrage was once again overshadowed by international events such as the economic crisis and the Second World War. Women were called upon many times during these years to \"protect democracy\", to which the women's alliances advocating voting rights responded that in order to do that they needed to have democratic rights at their disposal.\nNear the end of the Second World War, the question arose again; in particular, middle-class women, in a counter-move to their entry in the military Women's Support Service (Frauenhilfsdienst), demanded that they be granted their democratic rights. In 1944, National Councillor Emil Oprecht requested in a postulate the introduction of women's suffrage, because important women's political issues were close to the political agenda of the day: old age and survivors' insurance, motherhood insurance, and family protection. The postulate was supported by the BSF with a petition of 6 February 1945 in the name of 38 women's alliances. The Swiss Women's Association for the Public Good (Schweizerische Gemeinn\u00fctzige Frauenverein) did not express an opinion on the question; however, the Catholic Women's League (Katholische Frauenbund) departed from the conservative line of the Catholic church and gave its members a free voice. In 1945, the Swiss Action Committee for Women's Suffrage (Schweizerische Aktionskomitee f\u00fcr Frauenstimmrecht) was established as an opinion-forming instrument.\nIn 1948, celebrations of the one hundred-year existence of the federal constitution were carried out, and \"Switzerland, a people of brothers\", celebrated. The women's associations rephrased the motto as \"a people of brothers without sisters\", and symbolically presented the Federal Council a map of Europe with a black blot in the middle. At this time, all European countries, with the exception of Switzerland, Portugal and Liechtenstein, had established women's suffrage. Like the SAFFA snail previously, this symbolic map was interpreted by critics as a sign of the political immaturity of the women.\nIn 1950, the Federal Council put a report before the Federal Assembly about the procedure for coming to an agreement for the establishment of women's voting rights. In 1951, the Swiss Women's Circle Against Women's Voting Rights (Schweizerische Frauenkreis gegen das Frauenstimmrecht), under the leadership of Dora Wipf, wrote a letter to the Federal Council that said: \"[...]We do not believe that our country requires politicized women[...]\"\nA year later, in 1952, Antoinette Quinche, president of the Swiss Women's Circle for Women's Voting Rights, and 1414 other disputants from her community, demanded to be entered into the voters' register. With the argument that the cantonal constitution at that time did not explicitly exclude women's voting rights, they went with their demand before the Federal Court. Again as in 1923, they were rejected by reference to customary law.\nIn 1957 a plebiscite was held, by which the civil defense service (Zivilschutzdienst) became mandatory for all Swiss women. During the plebiscite, a scandal took place. Encouraged by the community council, the women of the Unterb\u00e4ch community of the canton Valais (Wallis) voted. The community council explained that according to the terms of the constitution, the community is legally authorized to set up the voting register.\nCommunity president and chief councillor Paul Zenh\u00e4usern and the Valais (Wallis) National Councillor Peter von Roten were the initiators of the women's vote. 33 of the 84 potentially eligible Unterb\u00e4ch women took part; Katharina Zenh\u00e4usern, wife of the community president of Unterb\u00e4ch, was the first Swiss woman who placed a ballot in a Swiss ballot box. The women's votes, that were collected in a separate ballot box (the men's votes thus remained valid) had to be annulled, because the women's participation at that time still had no legal basis. Nevertheless, these first national women's votes wrote Swiss history, because they gave an important push for the later official establishment of women's suffrage. Thus Unterb\u00e4ch was the first community in Switzerland to establish the communal voting and election rights for women \u2013 in spite of the ban by the Valais (Wallis) executive council.\nAfter the canton of Basel-City empowered the three city communities to establish women's suffrage in 1957, the community of Riehen was the first in Switzerland to introduce women's suffrage on 26 June 1958. In the same year, Gertrud Sp\u00e4th-Schweizer was in the city council and therefore became the first Swiss woman elected to a governing body.\nIn 1958, the Federal parliament voted for the first time for a referendum on the establishment of women's suffrage for national issues; the proposal was accepted in the National Council with 96 to 43 votes, and in the Council of States with 25 to 12 votes.\nOn 1 February 1959, the first people's vote on national women's suffrage decisively failed with a voter participation of 67 percent in the people's vote (33% to 66%) and cantonal vote (3 to 16 plus 6 half cantons). Protest actions and women's strikes followed in all of Switzerland. Only in the cantons of Vaud, Neuch\u00e2tel, and canton of Geneva did a majority speak for women's suffrage.\nThe proponents, however, were able to record their first success at the cantonal level. On 1 February 1959, the canton of Vaud accepted women's suffrage. The cantons of Neuch\u00e2tel (27 September 1959) and Geneva (6 March 1960) followed, as well as the German-speaking cantons of Basel-City (26 June 1966), and canton of Basel-Country (23 June 1968). Likewise, before the establishment of a national women's suffrage, the cantons of Ticino (19 October 1969), Valais (Wallis) (12 April 1970), and Z\u00fcrich (15 November 1970) gave voting and election rights to women at the cantonal level.\nExtension to the cantonal level: 1960\u20131990.\nIn the end of 1970, 9 out of 25 cantons had introduced women's suffrage at the cantonal level. From 1970 to 1990, this right was extended to other cantons. In a judgment of 27 November 1990 in the case of \"Theresa Rohner et consorts contre Appenzell Rhodes-Int\u00e9rieures\" (ATF 116 Ia 359), the Swiss federal court declared unconstitutional the exclusive male suffrage as had been practiced in the half canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden. The principle of equality between men and women as was guaranteed by the federal constitution ordered, in effect, an interpretation of the Appenzell constitution such that women's suffrage should be equally possible. The voters of the canton had stood against women's suffrage in 1959 by 2,050 votes to 105.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "26748": "Switzerland\nCountry in Central Europe\nSwitzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is geographically divided among the Swiss Plateau, the Alps and the Jura; the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory, whereas most of the country's nearly 9 million people are concentrated on the plateau, which hosts its largest cities and economic centres, including Zurich, Geneva, and Lausanne. \nSwitzerland is a federal republic composed of 26 cantons, with federal authorities based in Bern. It has four main linguistic and cultural regions: German, French, Italian and Romansh. Although most Swiss are German-speaking, national identity is fairly cohesive, being rooted in a common historical background, shared values such as federalism and direct democracy, and Alpine symbolism. Swiss identity transcends language, ethnicity, and religion, leading to Switzerland being described as a (\"nation of volition\") rather than a nation state.\nSwitzerland originates from the Old Swiss Confederacy established in the Late Middle Ages as a defensive and commercial alliance; the Federal Charter of 1291 is considered the country's founding document. The confederation steadily expanded and consolidated despite external threats and internal political and religious strife. Swiss independence from the Holy Roman Empire was formally recognised in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The confederation was among the first and few republics of the early modern period, and the only one besides San Marino to survive the Napoleonic Wars. \nSwitzerland remained a network of self-governing states until 1798, when revolutionary France invaded and imposed the centralist Helvetic Republic. Napoleon abolished the republic in 1803 and reinstated a confederation. Following the Napoleonic Wars, Switzerland restored its pre-revolutionary system, but by 1830 faced growing division and conflict between liberal and conservative movements; this culminated in a new constitution in 1848 that established the current federal system and enshrined principles such as individual rights, separation of powers, and parliamentary bicameralism. \nSwitzerland has maintained a policy of armed neutrality since the 16th century and has not fought an international war since 1815. It joined the United Nations only in 2002 but pursues an active foreign policy that includes frequent involvement in peace building and global governance. Switzerland is the birthplace of the Red Cross and hosts the headquarters or offices of most major international institutions, including the WTO, the WHO, the ILO, FIFA, the WEF, and the UN. It is a founding member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) but not part of the European Union (EU), the European Economic Area, or the eurozone; however, it participates in the European single market and the Schengen Area. \nSwitzerland is among the world's most developed countries, with the highest nominal wealth per adult and the eighth-highest gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. It performs highly on several international metrics, including economic competitiveness, democratic governance, and press freedom. Zurich, Geneva and Basel rank among the highest in quality of life, albeit with some of the highest costs of living. Switzerland holds an international reputation for its established banking sector and for its specialized industries in watchmaking and chocolate production.\nEtymology.\nThe English name \"Switzerland\" is a portmanteau of \"Switzer\", an obsolete term for a Swiss person which was in use during the 16th to 19th centuries, and \"land\". The English adjective \"Swiss\" is a loanword from French ', also in use since the 16th century. The name \"Switzer\" is from the Alemannic ', in origin an inhabitant of \"Schwyz\" and its associated territory, one of the cantons which formed the nucleus of the Old Swiss Confederacy. The Swiss began to adopt the name for themselves after the Swabian War of 1499, used alongside the term for \"Confederates\", (literally: \"comrades by oath\"), used since the 14th century. The data code for Switzerland, CH, is derived from Latin (\"Helvetic Confederation\").\nThe toponym \"Schwyz\" itself was first attested in 972, as Old High German ', perhaps related to ' 'to burn' (cf. Old Norse 'to singe, burn'), referring to the area of forest that was burned and cleared to build. The name was extended to the area dominated by the canton, and after the Swabian War of 1499 gradually came to be used for the entire Confederation. The Swiss German name of the country, ', is homophonous to that of the canton and the settlement, but distinguished by the use of the definite article (' for the Confederation, but simply \"\" for the canton and the town). The long [i\u02d0] of Swiss German is historically and still often today spelled \u27e8y\u27e9 rather than \u27e8ii\u27e9, preserving the original identity of the two names even in writing.\nThe Latin name was neologised and introduced gradually after the formation of the federal state in 1848, harking back to the Napoleonic Helvetic Republic. It appeared on coins from 1879, inscribed on the Federal Palace in 1902 and after 1948 used in the official seal (e.g., the ISO banking code \"CHF\" for the Swiss franc, the Swiss postage stamps ('HELVETIA') and the country top-level domain \".ch\", are both taken from the state's Latin name). is derived from the \"Helvetii\", a Gaulish tribe living on the Swiss Plateau before the Roman era.\n\"Helvetia\" appeared as a national personification of the Swiss confederacy in the 17th century in a 1672 play by Johann Caspar Weissenbach.\nHistory.\nThe state of Switzerland took its present form with the adoption of the Swiss Federal Constitution in 1848. Switzerland's precursors established a defensive alliance in 1291, forming a loose confederation that persisted for centuries.\nBeginnings.\nThe oldest traces of hominid existence in Switzerland date to about 150,000 years ago. The oldest known farming settlements in Switzerland, which were found at G\u00e4chlingen, date to around 5300 BC.\nThe earliest known tribes formed the Hallstatt and La T\u00e8ne cultures, named after the archaeological site of La T\u00e8ne on the north side of Lake Neuch\u00e2tel. La T\u00e8ne culture developed and flourished during the late Iron Age from around 450 BC, possibly influenced by Greek and Etruscan civilisations. One of the most prominent La T\u00e8ne tribes were the Helvetii, who primarily occupied the Swiss Plateau, alongside the Rhaetians in the eastern regions. Facing pressures from Germanic tribes, in 58 BC, the Helvetii, influenced by Orgetorix, a wealthy aristocrat, decided to abandon the Swiss Plateau for better opportunities in western Gallia. After Orgetorix's mysterious death, the tribe continued their migration but was decisively defeated by Julius Caesar's armies at the Battle of Bibracte, in present-day eastern France. Following their defeat, the Helvetii were forced by Caesar to return to their original lands, where they were subjected to stringent restrictions on their autonomy and movements. In 15 BC, Tiberius (later the second Roman emperor) and his brother Drusus conquered the Alps, integrating them into the Roman Empire. The area occupied by the Helvetii first became part of Rome's Gallia Belgica province and then of its Germania Superior province. The eastern portion of modern Switzerland was integrated into the Roman province of Raetia. Sometime around the start of the Common Era, the Romans maintained a large camp called Vindonissa, now a ruin at the confluence of the Aare and Reuss rivers, near the town of Windisch.\nThe first and second century AD was an age of prosperity on the Swiss Plateau. Towns such as Aventicum, Iulia Equestris and Augusta Raurica reached a remarkable size, while hundreds of agricultural estates (Villae rusticae) were established in the countryside.\nAround 260 AD, the fall of the Agri Decumates territory north of the Rhine transformed today's Switzerland into a frontier land of the Empire. Repeated raids by the Alamanni tribes provoked the ruin of the Roman towns and economy, forcing the population to shelter near Roman fortresses, like the Castrum Rauracense near Augusta Raurica. The Empire built another line of defence at the north border (the so-called Donau-Iller-Rhine-Limes). At the end of the fourth century, the increased Germanic pressure forced the Romans to abandon the linear defence concept. The Swiss Plateau was finally open to Germanic tribes.\nIn the Early Middle Ages, from the end of the fourth century, the western extent of modern-day Switzerland was part of the territory of the Kings of the Burgundians, who introduced the French language to the area. The Alemanni settled the Swiss Plateau in the fifth century and the valleys of the Alps in the eighth century, forming Alemannia. Modern-day Switzerland was then divided between the kingdoms of Alemannia and Burgundy. The entire region became part of the expanding Frankish Empire in the sixth century, following Clovis I's victory over the Alemanni at Tolbiac in 504 AD, and later Frankish domination of the Burgundians.\nThroughout the rest of the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries, Swiss regions continued under Frankish hegemony (Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties) but after its extension under Charlemagne, the Frankish Empire was divided by the Treaty of Verdun in 843. The territories of present-day Switzerland became divided into Middle Francia and East Francia until they were reunified under the Holy Roman Empire around 1000\u00a0AD.\nIn the 10th century, as the rule of the Carolingians waned, Magyars destroyed Basel in 917 and St. Gallen in 926. In response, Henry the Fowler, the then ruler of East Francia, decreed the fortification of key settlements to defend against these invasions. Large villages and towns, including strategic locations like Zurich and St.Gallen, were fortified. This initiative led to the development of what were essentially early urban strongholds and city governments in Eastern Switzerland.\nBy 1200, the Swiss Plateau comprised the dominions of the houses of Savoy, Z\u00e4hringer, Habsburg, and Kyburg. Some regions (Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, later known as ) were accorded the Imperial immediacy to grant the empire direct control over the mountain passes. With the extinction of its male line in 1263, the Kyburg dynasty fell in AD 1264. The Habsburgs under King Rudolph I (Holy Roman Emperor in 1273) laid claim to the Kyburg lands and annexed them, extending their territory to the eastern Swiss Plateau.\nOld Swiss Confederacy.\nThe Old Swiss Confederacy was an alliance among the valley communities of the central Alps. The Confederacy was governed by nobles and patricians of various cantons who facilitated management of common interests and ensured peace on mountain trade routes. The Federal Charter of 1291 is considered the confederacy's founding document, even though similar alliances likely existed decades earlier. The document was agreed among the rural communes of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden.\nBy 1353, the three original cantons had joined with the cantons of Glarus and Zug and the Lucerne, Zurich and Bern city-states to form the \"Old Confederacy\" of eight states that obtained through the end of the 15th century. The expansion led to increased power and wealth for the confederation. By 1460, the confederates controlled most of the territory south and west of the Rhine to the Alps and the Jura mountains, and the University of Basel was founded (with a faculty of medicine) establishing a tradition of chemical and medical research. This increased after victories against the Habsburgs (Battle of Sempach, Battle of N\u00e4fels), over Charles the Bold of Burgundy during the 1470s, and the success of the Swiss mercenaries. The Swiss victory in the Swabian War against the Swabian League of Emperor Maximilian I in 1499 amounted to \"de facto\" independence within the Holy Roman Empire. In 1501, Basel and Schaffhausen joined the Old Swiss Confederacy.\nThe Confederacy acquired a reputation of invincibility during these earlier wars, but expansion of the confederation suffered a setback in 1515 with the Swiss defeat in the Battle of Marignano. This ended the so-called \"heroic\" epoch of Swiss history. The success of Zwingli's Reformation in some cantons led to inter-cantonal religious conflicts in 1529 and 1531 (Wars of Kappel). It was not until more than one hundred years after these internal wars that, in 1648, under the Peace of Westphalia, European countries recognised Switzerland's independence from the Holy Roman Empire and its neutrality.\nDuring the Early Modern period of Swiss history, the growing authoritarianism of the patriciate families combined with a financial crisis in the wake of the Thirty Years' War led to the Swiss peasant war of 1653. In the background to this struggle, the conflict between Catholic and Protestant cantons persisted, erupting in further violence at the First War of Villmergen, in 1656, and the Toggenburg War (or Second War of Villmergen), in 1712.\nNapoleonic era.\nIn 1798, the revolutionary French government invaded Switzerland and imposed a new unified constitution. This centralised the government of the country, effectively abolishing the cantons: moreover, M\u00fclhausen left Switzerland and the Valtellina valley became part of the Cisalpine Republic. The new regime, known as the Helvetic Republic, was highly unpopular. An invading foreign army had imposed and destroyed centuries of tradition, making Switzerland nothing more than a French satellite state. The fierce French suppression of the Nidwalden Revolt in September 1798 was an example of the oppressive presence of the French Army and the local population's resistance to the occupation.\nWhen war broke out between France and its rivals, Russian and Austrian forces invaded Switzerland. The Swiss refused to fight alongside the French in the name of the Helvetic Republic. In 1803 Napoleon organised a meeting of the leading Swiss politicians from both sides in Paris. The Act of Mediation was the result, which largely restored Swiss autonomy and introduced a Confederation of 19 cantons. Henceforth, much of Swiss politics would concern balancing the cantons' tradition of self-rule with the need for a central government.\nIn 1815, the Congress of Vienna fully re-established Swiss independence, and the European powers recognised permanent Swiss neutrality. Swiss troops served foreign governments until 1860 when they fought in the siege of Gaeta. The treaty allowed Switzerland to increase its territory, with the admission of the cantons of Valais, Neuch\u00e2tel and Geneva. Switzerland's borders saw only minor adjustments thereafter.\nFederal state.\nThe restoration of power to the patriciate was only temporary. After a period of unrest with repeated violent clashes, such as the Z\u00fcriputsch of 1839, civil war (the \"Sonderbundskrieg\") broke out in 1847 when some Catholic cantons tried to set up a separate alliance (the \"Sonderbund\"). The war lasted less than a month, causing fewer than 100 casualties, most of which were through friendly fire. The Sonderbundskrieg had a significant impact on the psychology and society of Switzerland.\nThe war convinced most Swiss of the need for unity and strength. Swiss from all strata of society, whether Catholic or Protestant, from the liberal or conservative current, realised that the cantons would profit more from merging their economic and religious interests.\nThus, while the rest of Europe saw revolutionary uprisings, the Swiss drew up a constitution that provided for a federal layout, much of it inspired by the American example. This constitution provided central authority while leaving the cantons the right to self-government on local issues. Giving credit to those who favoured the power of the cantons (the Sonderbund Kantone), the national assembly was divided between an upper house (the Council of States, two representatives per canton) and a lower house (the National Council, with representatives elected from across the country). Referendums were made mandatory for any amendments. This new constitution ended the legal power of nobility in Switzerland.\nA single system of weights and measures was introduced, and in 1850 the Swiss franc became the Swiss single currency, complemented by the WIR franc in 1934. Article 11 of the constitution forbade sending troops to serve abroad, marking the end of foreign service. It came with the expectation of serving the Holy See, and the Swiss were still obliged to serve Francis II of the Two Sicilies with Swiss Guards present at the siege of Gaeta in 1860.\nAn important clause of the constitution was that it could be entirely rewritten, if necessary, thus enabling it to evolve as a whole rather than being modified one amendment at a time.\nThis need soon proved itself when the rise in population and the Industrial Revolution that followed led to calls to modify the constitution accordingly. The population rejected an early draft in 1872, but modifications led to its acceptance in 1874. It introduced the facultative referendum for laws at the federal level. It also established federal responsibility for defence, trade, and legal matters.\nIn 1891, the constitution was revised with uncommonly strong elements of direct democracy, which remain unique today.\nModern history.\nSwitzerland was not invaded during either of the world wars. During World War I, Switzerland was home to the revolutionary and founder of the Soviet Union Vladimir Illych Ulyanov (Vladimir Lenin) who remained there until 1917. Swiss neutrality was seriously questioned by the short-lived Grimm\u2013Hoffmann affair in 1917. In 1920, Switzerland joined the League of Nations, which was based in Geneva, after it was exempted from military requirements.\nDuring World War II, detailed invasion plans were drawn up by the Germans, but Switzerland was never attacked. Switzerland was able to remain independent through a combination of military deterrence, concessions to Germany, and good fortune, as larger events during the war intervened. General Henri Guisan, appointed the commander-in-chief for the duration of the war ordered a general mobilisation of the armed forces. The Swiss military strategy changed from static defence at the borders to organised long-term attrition and withdrawal to strong, well-stockpiled positions high in the Alps, known as the Reduit. Switzerland was an important base for espionage by both sides and often mediated communications between the Axis and Allied powers.\nSwitzerland's trade was blockaded by both the Allies and the Axis. Economic cooperation and extension of credit to Nazi Germany varied according to the perceived likelihood of invasion and the availability of other trading partners. Concessions reached a peak after a crucial rail link through Vichy France was severed in 1942, leaving Switzerland (together with Liechtenstein) entirely isolated from the wider world by Axis-controlled territory. Over the course of the war, Switzerland interned over 300,000 refugees aided by the International Red Cross, based in Geneva. Strict immigration and asylum policies and the financial relationships with Nazi Germany raised controversy, only at the end of the 20th century.\nDuring the war, the Swiss Air Force engaged aircraft of both sides, shooting down 11 intruding Luftwaffe planes in May and June 1940, then forcing down other intruders after a change of policy following threats from Germany. Over 100 Allied bombers and their crews were interned. Between 1940 and 1945, Switzerland was bombed by the Allies, causing fatalities and property damage. Among the cities and towns bombed were Basel, Brusio, Chiasso, Cornol, Geneva, Koblenz, Niederweningen, Rafz, Renens, Samedan, Schaffhausen, Stein am Rhein, T\u00e4gerwilen, Thayngen, Vals, and Zurich. Allied forces maintained that the bombings, which violated the 96th Article of War, resulted from navigation errors, equipment failure, weather conditions, and pilot errors. The Swiss expressed fear and concern that the bombings were intended to put pressure on Switzerland to end economic cooperation and neutrality with Nazi Germany. Court-martial proceedings took place in England. The US paid SFR 62M for reparations.\nSwitzerland's attitude towards refugees was complicated and controversial; over the course of the war, it admitted as many as 300,000 refugees while refusing tens of thousands more, including Jews persecuted by the Nazis.\nAfter the war, the Swiss government exported credits through the charitable fund known as the and donated to the Marshall Plan to help Europe's recovery, efforts that ultimately benefited the Swiss economy.\nDuring the Cold War, Swiss authorities considered the construction of a Swiss nuclear bomb. Leading nuclear physicists at the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich such as Paul Scherrer made this a realistic possibility. In 1988, the Paul Scherrer Institute was founded in his name to explore the therapeutic uses of neutron scattering technologies. Financial problems with the defence budget and ethical considerations prevented the substantial funds from being allocated, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 was seen as a valid alternative. Plans for building nuclear weapons were dropped by 1988. Switzerland joined the Council of Europe in 1963.\nSwitzerland was the last Western republic (the Principality of Liechtenstein followed in 1984) to grant women the right to vote. Some Swiss cantons approved this in 1959, while at the federal level, it was achieved in 1971 and, after resistance, in the last canton Appenzell Innerrhoden (one of only two remaining \"Landsgemeinde\", along with Glarus) in 1990. After obtaining suffrage at the federal level, women quickly rose in political significance. The first woman on the seven-member Federal Council executive was Elisabeth Kopp, who served from 1984 to 1989, and the first female president was Ruth Dreifuss in 1999.\nIn 1979 areas from the canton of Bern attained independence from the Bernese, forming the new canton of Jura. On 18 April 1999, the Swiss population and the cantons voted in favour of a completely revised federal constitution.\nIn 2002 Switzerland became a full member of the United Nations, leaving Vatican City as the last widely recognised state without full UN membership. Switzerland is a founding member of the EFTA but not the European Economic Area (EEA). An application for membership in the European Union was sent in May 1992, but did not advance since rejecting the EEA in December 1992 when Switzerland conducted a referendum on the EEA. Several referendums on the EU issue ensued; due to opposition from the citizens, the membership application was withdrawn. Nonetheless, Swiss law is gradually changing to conform with that of the EU, and the government signed bilateral agreements with the European Union. Switzerland, together with Liechtenstein, has been surrounded by the EU since Austria's entry in 1995. On 5 June 2005, Swiss voters agreed by a 55% majority to join the Schengen treaty, a result that EU commentators regarded as a sign of support. In September 2020, a referendum calling for a vote to end the pact that allowed a free movement of people from the European Union was introduced by the Swiss People's Party (SVP). However, voters rejected the attempt to retake control of immigration, defeating the motion by a roughly 63%\u201337% margin.\nOn 9 February 2014, 50.3% of Swiss voters approved a ballot initiative launched by the Swiss People's Party (SVP/UDC) to restrict immigration. This initiative was mostly backed by rural (57.6% approval) and suburban groups (51.2% approval), and isolated towns (51.3% approval) as well as by a strong majority (69.2% approval) in Ticino, while metropolitan centres (58.5% rejection) and the French-speaking part (58.5% rejection) rejected it. In December 2016, a political compromise with the EU was attained that eliminated quotas on EU citizens, but still allowed favourable treatment of Swiss-based job applicants. On 27 September 2020, 62% of Swiss voters rejected the anti-free movement referendum by SVP.\nGeography.\nExtending across the north and south side of the Alps in west-central Europe, Switzerland encompasses diverse landscapes and climates across its .\nSwitzerland lies between latitudes 45\u00b0 and 48\u00b0 N, and longitudes 5\u00b0 and 11\u00b0 E. It contains three basic topographical areas: the Swiss Alps to the south, the Swiss Plateau or Central Plateau, and the Jura mountains on the west. The Alps are a mountain range running across the central and south of the country, constituting about 60% of the country's area. The majority of the population live on the Swiss Plateau. The Swiss Alps host many glaciers, covering . From these originate the headwaters of several major rivers, such as the Rhine, Inn, Ticino and Rh\u00f4ne, which flow in the four cardinal directions, spreading across Europe. The hydrographic network includes several of the largest bodies of fresh water in Central and Western Europe, among which are Lake Geneva (Lac L\u00e9man in French), Lake Constance (Bodensee in German) and Lake Maggiore. Switzerland has more than 1500 lakes and contains 6% of Europe's freshwater stock. Lakes and glaciers cover about 6% of the national territory. Lake Geneva is the largest lake and is shared with France. The Rh\u00f4ne is both the main source and outflow of Lake Geneva. Lake Constance is the second largest and, like Lake Geneva, an intermediate step by the Rhine at the border with Austria and Germany. While the Rh\u00f4ne flows into the Mediterranean Sea at the French Camargue region and the Rhine flows into the North Sea at Rotterdam, about apart, both springs are only about apart in the Swiss Alps. 90% of Switzerland's 65,000-kilometre-long network of rivers and streams have been straightened, dammed, canalized or channeled underground, in an effort to prevent natural disasters such as flooding, landslides, and avalanches. 80% of all Swiss drinking water comes from groundwater sources.\nForty-eight mountains are or higher in height. At , Monte Rosa is the highest, although the Matterhorn () is the best known. Both are located within the Pennine Alps in the canton of Valais, on the border with Italy. The section of the Bernese Alps above the deep glacial Lauterbrunnen valley, containing 72 waterfalls, is well known for the Jungfrau () Eiger and M\u00f6nch peaks, and its many picturesque valleys. In the southeast the long Engadin Valley, encompassing St. Moritz, is also well known; the highest peak in the neighbouring Bernina Alps is Piz Bernina ().\nThe Swiss Plateau has greater open and hilly landscapes, partly forested, partly open pastures, usually with grazing herds or vegetable and fruit fields, but it is still hilly. Large lakes and the biggest Swiss cities are found there.\nSwitzerland contains two small enclaves: B\u00fcsingen belongs to Germany, while Campione d'Italia belongs to Italy. Switzerland has no exclaves.\nClimate.\nThe Swiss climate is generally temperate, but can vary greatly across localities, from glacial conditions on the mountaintops to the near-Mediterranean climate at Switzerland's southern tip. Some valley areas in the southern part of Switzerland offer cold-hardy palm trees. Summers tend to be warm and humid at times with periodic rainfall, ideal for pastures/grazing. The less humid winters in the mountains may see weeks-long intervals of stable conditions. At the same time, the lower lands tend to suffer from inversion during such periods, hiding the sun.\nA weather phenomenon known as the f\u00f6hn (with an identical effect to the chinook wind) can occur any time and is characterised by an unexpectedly warm wind, bringing low relative humidity air to the north of the Alps during rainfall periods on the south-facing slopes. This works both ways across the alps but is more efficient if blowing from the south due to the steeper step for oncoming wind. Valleys running south to north trigger the best effect. The driest conditions persist in all inner alpine valleys that receive less rain because arriving clouds lose a lot of their moisture content while crossing the mountains before reaching these areas. Large alpine areas such as Graub\u00fcnden remain drier than pre-alpine areas, and as in the main valley of the Valais, wine grapes are grown there.\nThe wettest conditions persist in the high Alps and in the Ticino canton, which has much sun yet heavy bursts of rain from time to time. Precipitation tends to be spread moderately throughout the year, with a peak in summer. Autumn is the driest season, winter receives less precipitation than summer, yet the weather patterns in Switzerland are not in a stable climate system. They can vary from year to year with no strict and predictable periods.\nEnvironment.\nSwitzerland contains two terrestrial ecoregions: Western European broadleaf forests and Alps conifer and mixed forests.\nSwitzerland's many small valleys separated by high mountains often host unique ecologies. The mountainous regions themselves offer a rich range of plants not found at other altitudes. The climatic, geological and topographical conditions of the alpine region make for a fragile ecosystem that is particularly sensitive to climate change. According to the 2014 Environmental Performance Index, Switzerland ranks first among 132 nations in safeguarding the environment, due to its high scores on environmental public health, its heavy reliance on renewable sources of energy (hydropower and geothermal energy), and its level of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2020 it was ranked third out of 180 countries. The country pledged to cut GHG emissions by 50% by 2030 compared to the level of 1990 and plans to reach zero emissions by 2050.\nHowever, access to biocapacity in Switzerland is far lower than the world average. In 2016, Switzerland had 1.0 hectares of biocapacity per person within its territory, 40 per cent less than world average of 1.6. In contrast, in 2016, Swiss consumption required 4.6 hectares of biocapacity \u2013 their ecological footprint, 4.6 times as much as Swiss territory can support. The remainder comes from other countries and the shared resources (such as the atmosphere impacted by greenhouse gas emissions). Switzerland had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 3.53/10, ranking it 150th globally out of 172 countries.\nSwitzerland ranked 9th in the Environmental Performance Index for 2024. It scored well in parameters including air pollution, sanitation and drinking water, waste management, and climate change mitigation.\nUrbanisation.\nAbout 85% of the population live in urban areas. Switzerland went from a largely rural country to an urban one from 1930 to 2000. After 1935 urban development claimed as much of the Swiss landscape as it did during the prior 2,000 years. Urban sprawl affects the plateau, the Jura and the Alpine foothills, raising concerns about land use. During the 21st century, population growth in urban areas is higher than in the countryside.\nSwitzerland has a dense network of complementary large, medium and small towns. The plateau is densely populated with about 400 people per km2 and the landscape shows uninterrupted signs of human presence. The weight of the largest metropolitan areas \u2013 Zurich, Geneva\u2013Lausanne, Basel and Bern \u2013 tend to increase. The importance of these urban areas is greater than their population suggests. These urban centers are recognised for their high quality of life.\nThe average population density in 2019 was . In the largest canton by area, Graub\u00fcnden, lying entirely in the Alps, population density falls to . In the canton of Zurich, with its large urban capital, the density is .\nGovernment and politics.\nThe Federal Constitution adopted in 1848 is the legal foundation of Switzerland's federal state. It is regularly modified by referendum and has been completely revised twice, in 1874 and 1999. The constitution outlines rights of individuals and citizen participation in public affairs, divides the powers between the confederation and the cantons and defines federal jurisdiction and authority. Three main bodies govern on the federal level: the Federal Assembly (legislative), the Federal Council (executive) and the federal courts (judicial).\nFederal Assembly.\nThe Federal Assembly is the parliament of Switzerland. It consists of two houses: The Council of States has 46 members, two from each canton and one from each half-canton. The National Council has 200 members, apportioned to reflect the population of each canton, and elected by proportional representation within each canton. Members of both houses serve for four years and work part-time (\"Milizsystem\"). When both houses are in joint session, they are known collectively as the Federal Assembly. Through optional referendums, citizens may challenge any law passed by parliament.\nFederal Council.\nThe Federal Council is the Swiss executive. It leads the federal administration and serves as a collective head of state. It is a collegial body of seven members, elected to four-year terms by the Federal Assembly, which oversees the council. Each member leads a department of the federal government. Each year, one member of the Council is elected President of the Confederation by the Assembly, with the presidency traditionally rotating between members. The President chairs and represents the government, but has no additional powers and remains the head of their department.\nThe government has been a coalition of the four major political parties since 1959, each party having a number of seats that roughly reflects its share of the electorate and representation in the federal parliament. This distribution is called the \"magic formula\". Since 2003, the seven seats in the Federal Council have been distributed as follows:\nSupreme Court.\nThe function of the Federal Supreme Court is to hear appeals against rulings of cantonal or federal courts. The judges are elected by the Federal Assembly for six-year terms.\nDirect democracy.\nDirect democracy and federalism are hallmarks of the Swiss political system defined in the Swiss constitution. The Swiss people are subject to three legal jurisdictions: the municipal, cantonal and federal levels. At the federal level, popular rights include the right to submit a federal initiative and a referendum, both of which may overturn parliamentary decisions.\nThere are three types of federal referendum in Switzerland: \nThe Federal Council and the Federal Assembly can supplement a popular initiative with a counterproposal. Voters must then indicate their preference if both proposals are accepted. \nCantons.\nThe Swiss Confederation consists of 26 cantons. The cantons are federated states, with permanent constitutional status and a high degree of independence relative to the subnational divisions of most countries. Under the Federal Constitution, all 26 cantons are equal in status, except that six (referred to often as the half-cantons) are represented by one councillor instead of two in the Council of States and have only half a cantonal vote with respect to the required cantonal majority in referendums on constitutional amendments. Each canton has its own constitution and its own parliament, government, police and courts. However, considerable differences define the individual cantons, particularly in terms of population and geographical area. Their populations vary between 16,003 (Appenzell Innerrhoden) and 1,487,969 (Zurich), and their area between (Basel-Stadt) and (Grisons).\nMunicipalities.\nAs of 2018 the cantons comprised 2,222 municipalities.\nFederal City.\nUntil 1848, the loosely coupled Confederation did not have a central political organisation. Issues thought to affect the whole Confederation were the subject of periodic meetings in various locations.\nIn 1848, the federal constitution provided that details concerning federal institutions, such as their locations, should be addressed by the Federal Assembly (BV 1848 Art. 108). Thus on 28 November 1848, the Federal Assembly voted in the majority to locate the seat of government in Bern and, as a prototypical federal compromise, to assign other federal institutions, such as the Federal Polytechnical School (1854, the later ETH) to Zurich, and other institutions to Lucerne, such as the later SUVA (1912) and the Federal Insurance Court (1917). Other federal institutions were subsequently attributed to Lausanne (Federal Supreme Court in 1872, and EPFL in 1969), Bellinzona (Federal Criminal Court, 2004), and St. Gallen (Federal Administrative Court and Federal Patent Court, 2012).\nThe 1999 Constitution does not mention a Federal City and the Federal Council has yet to address the matter. Thus no city in Switzerland has the \"official\" status either of capital or of Federal City. Nevertheless, Bern is commonly referred to as \"Federal City\" (, , ).\nForeign relations and international institutions.\nTraditionally, Switzerland avoids alliances that might entail military, political, or direct economic action and has been neutral since the end of its expansion in 1515. Its policy of neutrality was internationally recognised at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Swiss neutrality has been questioned at times. In 2002 Switzerland became a full member of the United Nations. It was the first state to join it by referendum. Switzerland maintains diplomatic relations with almost all countries and historically has served as an intermediary between other states. Switzerland is not a member of the European Union; the Swiss people have consistently rejected membership since the early 1990s. However, Switzerland does participate in the Schengen Area.\nMany international institutions have headquarters in Switzerland, in part because of its policy of neutrality. Geneva is the birthplace of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the Geneva Conventions and, since 2006, hosts the United Nations Human Rights Council. Even though Switzerland is one of the most recent countries to join the United Nations, the Palace of Nations in Geneva is the second biggest centre for the United Nations after the headquarters in New York. Switzerland was a founding member and hosted the League of Nations.\nApart from the United Nations headquarters, the Swiss Confederation is host to many UN agencies, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and about 200 other international organisations, including the World Trade Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization. The annual meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos bring together business and political leaders from Switzerland and foreign countries to discuss important issues. The headquarters of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) moved to Basel in 1930.\nMany sports federations and organisations are located in the country, including the International Handball Federation in Basel, the International Basketball Federation in Geneva, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) in Nyon, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) and the International Ice Hockey Federation both in Zurich, the International Cycling Union in Aigle, and the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne.\nSwitzerland became a member of the United Nations Security Council for the 2023\u20132024 period. According to the 2024 Global Peace Index, Switzerland is the 6th most peaceful country in the world.\nSwitzerland and the European Union.\nAlthough not a member, Switzerland maintains relationships with the EU and European countries through bilateral agreements. The Swiss have brought their economic practices largely into conformity with those of the EU, in an effort to compete internationally. EU membership faces considerable negative popular sentiment. It is opposed by the conservative SVP party, the largest party in the National Council, and not advocated by several other political parties. The membership application was formally withdrawn in 2016. The western French-speaking areas and the urban regions of the rest of the country tend to be more pro-EU, but do not form a significant share of the population.\nAn Integration Office operates under the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Economic Affairs. Seven bilateral agreements liberalised trade ties, taking effect in 2001. This first series of bilateral agreements included the free movement of persons. A second series of agreements covering nine areas was signed in 2004, including the Schengen Treaty and the Dublin Convention.\nIn 2006, a referendum approved 1 billion francs of supportive investment in Southern and Central European countries in support of positive ties to the EU as a whole. A further referendum will be needed to approve 300 million francs to support Romania and Bulgaria and their recent admission.\nThe Swiss have faced EU and international pressure to reduce banking secrecy and raise tax rates to parity with the EU. Preparatory discussions involved four areas: the electricity market, participation in project Galileo, cooperating with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and certificates of origin for food products.\nSwitzerland is a member of the Schengen passport-free zone. Land border checkpoints monitor goods movements, but not people.\nMilitary.\nThe Swiss Armed Forces, including the Land Forces and the Air Force, are composed mostly of conscripts, male citizens aged from 20 to 34 (in exceptional cases up to 50) years. Being a landlocked country, Switzerland has no navy; however, on lakes bordering neighbouring countries, armed boats patrol. Swiss citizens are prohibited from serving in foreign armies, except for the Swiss Guards of the Vatican, or if they are dual citizens of a foreign country and reside there.\nThe Swiss militia system stipulates that soldiers keep their army-issued equipment, including fully automatic personal weapons, at home. Women can serve voluntarily. Men usually receive military conscription orders for training at the age of 18. About two-thirds of young Swiss are found suitable for service; for the others, various forms of alternative service are available. Annually, approximately 20,000 persons are trained in recruit centres for 18 to 21 weeks. The reform \"Army XXI\" was adopted by popular vote in 2003, replacing \"Army 95\", reducing the rolls from 400,000 to about 200,000. Of those, 120,000 are active in periodic Army training, and 80,000 are non-training reserves.\nThe newest reform of the military, (WEA; English: Further development of the Army), started in 2018 and was expected to reduce the number of army personnel to 100,000 by the end of 2022.\nOverall, three general mobilisations have been declared to ensure the integrity and neutrality of Switzerland. The first mobilisation was held in response to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870\u201371; while the second was in response to the First World War outbreak in August 1914; the third mobilisation took place in September 1939 in response to the German attack on Poland.\nBecause of its neutrality policy, the Swiss army does not take part in armed conflicts in other countries but joins some peacekeeping missions. Since 2000 the armed force department has maintained the Onyx intelligence gathering system to monitor satellite communications.\nGun politics in Switzerland are unique in Europe in that 2\u20133.5\u00a0million guns are in the hands of civilians, giving the nation an estimate of 28\u201341 guns per 100 people. As per the Small Arms Survey, only 324,484 guns are owned by the military. Only 143,372 are in the hands of soldiers. However, ammunition is no longer issued.\nEconomy and labour law.\nSwitzerland has a stable, prosperous and high-tech economy. It is the world's wealthiest country per capita in multiple rankings. The country ranks as one of the least corrupt countries in the world, while its banking sector is rated as \"one of the most corrupt in the world\". It has the world's twentieth largest economy by nominal GDP and the thirty-eighth largest by purchasing power parity. As of 2021, it is the thirteenth largest exporter, and the fifth largest per capita. Zurich and Geneva are regarded as global cities, ranked as Alpha and Beta respectively. Basel is the capital of Switzerland's pharmaceutical industry, hosting Novartis, Roche, and many other players. It is one of the world's most important centres for the life sciences industry.\nSwitzerland had the second-highest global rating in the Index of Economic Freedom 2023, while also providing significant public services. On a per capita basis, nominal GDP is higher than those of the larger Western and Central European economies and Japan, while adjusted for purchasing power, Switzerland ranked 11th in 2017, fifth in 2018, and ninth in 2020.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nThe 2016 World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report ranked Switzerland's economy as the world's most competitive; as of 2019, it ranks fifth globally. The European Union labeled it Europe's most innovative country. Switzerland has been ranked the most innovative country in the Global Innovation Index in 2024, as it had done in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019. It ranked 20th of 189 countries in the Ease of Doing Business Index. Switzerland's slow growth in the 1990s and the early 2000s increased support for economic reforms and harmonisation with the European Union. In 2020, IMD placed Switzerland first in attracting skilled workers.\nFor much of the 20th century, Switzerland was the wealthiest country in Europe by a considerable margin (per capita GDP). Switzerland has one of the world's largest account balances as a percentage of GDP. In 2018, the canton of Basel-City had the highest GDP per capita, ahead of Zug and Geneva. According to Credit Suisse, only about 37% of residents own their own homes, one of the lowest rates of home ownership in Europe. Housing and food price levels were 171% and 145% of the EU-25 index in 2007, compared to 113% and 104% in Germany.\nSwitzerland is home to several large multinational corporations. The largest by revenue are Glencore, Gunvor, Nestl\u00e9, Mediterranean Shipping Company, Novartis, Hoffmann-La Roche, ABB, Mercuria Energy Group and Adecco. Also, notable are UBS, Zurich Insurance, Richemont, Credit Suisse, Barry Callebaut, Swiss Re, Rolex, Tetra Pak, Swatch Group and Swiss International Air Lines.\nSwitzerland's most important economic sector is manufacturing. Manufactured products include specialty chemicals, health and pharmaceutical goods, scientific and precision measuring instruments and musical instruments. The largest exported goods are chemicals (34% of exported goods), machines/electronics (20.9%), and precision instruments/watches (16.9%). The service sector \u2013 especially banking and insurance, commodities trading, tourism, and international organisations \u2013 is another important industry for Switzerland. Exported services amount to a third of exports.\nAgricultural protectionism\u2014a rare exception to Switzerland's free trade policies\u2014contributes to high food prices. Product market liberalisation is lagging behind many EU countries according to the OECD. Apart from agriculture, economic and trade barriers between the European Union and Switzerland are minimal, and Switzerland has free trade agreements with many countries. Switzerland is a member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).\nSwitzerland is considered as the \"land of Cooperatives\" with the ten largest cooperative companies accounting for more than 11% of GDP in 2018. They include Migros and Coop, the two largest retail companies in Switzerland.\nTaxation and government spending.\nSwitzerland is a tax haven. The private sector economy dominates. It features low tax rates; tax revenue to GDP ratio is one of the smallest of developed countries. The Swiss Federal budget reached 62.8 billion Swiss francs in 2010, 11.35% of GDP; however, canton and municipality budgets are not counted as part of the federal budget. Total government spending is closer to 33.8% of GDP. The main sources of income for the federal government are the value-added tax (33% of tax revenue) and the direct federal tax (29%). The main areas of expenditure are in social welfare and finance/taxes. The expenditures of the Swiss Confederation have been growing from 7% of GDP in 1960 to 9.7% in 1990 and 10.7% in 2010. While the social welfare and finance sectors and tax grew from 35% in 1990 to 48.2% in 2010, a significant reduction of expenditures has been occurring in agriculture and national defence; from 26.5% to 12.4% (estimation for the year 2015).\nLabour force.\nSlightly more than 5 million people work in Switzerland; about 25% of employees belonged to a trade union in 2004. Switzerland has a more flexible labor market than neighbouring countries and the unemployment rate is consistently low. The unemployment rate increased from 1.7% in June 2000 to 4.4% in December 2009. It then decreased to 3.2% in 2014 and held steady for several years, before further dropping to 2.5% in 2018 and 2.3% in 2019; in 2023 it had reached a 20-year low of 2%. Population growth (from net immigration) reached 0.52% of population in 2004, increased in the following years before falling to 0.54% again in 2017. The foreign citizen population was 28.9% in 2015, about the same as in Australia.\nIn 2016, the median monthly gross income in Switzerland was 6,502 francs per month (equivalent to US$6,597 per month). After rent, taxes and pension contributions, plus spending on goods and services, the average household has about 15% of its gross income left for savings. Though 61% of the population made less than the mean income, income inequality is relatively low with a Gini coefficient of 29.7, placing Switzerland among the top 20 countries. In 2015, the richest 1% owned 35% of the wealth. Wealth inequality increased through 2019.\nAbout 8.2% of the population live below the national poverty line, defined in Switzerland as earning less than CHF3,990 per month for a household of two adults and two children, and a further 15% are at risk of poverty. Single-parent families, those with no post-compulsory education and those out of work are among the most likely to live below the poverty line. Although work is considered a way out of poverty, some 4.3% are considered working poor. One in ten jobs in Switzerland is considered low-paid; roughly 12% of Swiss workers hold such jobs, many of them women and foreigners.\nEducation and science.\nEducation in Switzerland is diverse, because the constitution of Switzerland delegates the operation for the school system to the cantons. Public and private schools are available, including many private international schools.\nPrimary education.\nThe minimum age for primary school is about six years, but most cantons provide a free \"children's school\" starting at age four or five. Primary school continues until grade four, five or six, depending on the school. Traditionally, the first foreign language in school was one of the other Swiss languages, although in 2000, English was elevated in a few cantons. At the end of primary school or at the beginning of secondary school, pupils are assigned according to their capacities into one of several sections (often three). The fastest learners are taught advanced classes to prepare for further studies and the matura, while other students receive an education adapted to their needs.\nTertiary education.\nSwitzerland hosts 12 universities, ten of which are maintained at cantonal level and usually offer non-technical subjects. It ranked 87th on the 2019 Academic Ranking of World Universities. The largest is the University of Zurich with nearly 25,000 students. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) and the University of Zurich are listed 20th and 54th respectively, on the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities.\nThe federal government sponsors two institutes: the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) in Zurich, founded in 1855 and the (EPFL) in Lausanne, founded in 1969, formerly associated with the University of Lausanne.\nEight of the world's ten best hotel schools are located in Switzerland. In addition, various universities of applied sciences are available. In business and management studies, the University of St. Gallen, (HSG) is ranked 329th in the world according to QS World University Rankings and the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), was ranked first in open programmes worldwide\".\" Switzerland has the second highest rate (almost 18% in 2003) of foreign students in tertiary education, after Australia (slightly over 18%).\nThe Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, located in Geneva, is continental Europe's oldest graduate school of international and development studies. It is widely held to be one of its most prestigious.\nScience.\nSwitzerland is among the countries with the highest number of Nobel laureates, both in total and per capita; of the 28 Swiss nationals who have won the Nobel Prize, 23 were recognised in the sciences. Among the most famous is Albert Einstein, who became a Swiss citizen in 1901 and developed his theory of special relativity in Bern. Among the Nobel laureates born or nautralised in Switzerland are Vladimir Prelog, Heinrich Rohrer, Richard Ernst, Edmond Fischer, Rolf Zinkernagel, Kurt W\u00fcthrich and Jacques Dubochet. Over 100 laureates across all fields have a relationship to Switzerland. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded nine times to organisations headquartered in Switzerland.\nGeneva and the nearby French department of Ain co-host the world's largest laboratory, CERN, dedicated to particle physics research. Another important research centre is the Paul Scherrer Institute, which conducts multi-disciplinary research in the natural and engineering sciences. \nNotable Swiss inventions include lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), diazepam (Valium), Velcro, and the scanning tunnelling microscope (which earned inventors Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics. Auguste Piccard became the first person to enter the Stratosphere with his pressurised hydrogen ballon, while his son Jacques Piccard became one of the first people to explore the deepest known part of the world's ocean (along with American Don Walsh).\nThe Swiss Space Office has been involved in various space technologies and programmes. It was one of the 10 founders of the European Space Agency in 1975 and is the seventh largest contributor to the ESA budget. In the private sector, several companies participate in the space industry, such as Oerlikon Space and Maxon Motors.\nEnergy.\nElectricity generated in Switzerland is 56% from hydroelectricity and 39% from nuclear power, producing negligible CO2. On 18 May 2003, two anti-nuclear referendums were defeated: \"Moratorium Plus\", aimed at forbidding the building of new nuclear power plants (41.6% supported), and Electricity Without Nuclear (33.7% supported) after a moratorium expired in 2000. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, in 2011 the government announced plans to end the use of nuclear energy in the following 20 to 30 years. In November 2016, Swiss voters rejected a Green Party referendum to accelerate the phaseout of nuclear power (45.8% supported). The Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) is responsible for energy supply and energy use within the Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC). The agency supports the 2000-watt society initiative to cut the nation's energy use by more than half by 2050.\nTransport.\nThe densest rail network in Europe spans and carried 614 million passengers in 2023. In 2015, each Swiss resident travelled on average by rail, more than any other European country. Virtually 100% of the network is electrified. 60% of the network is operated by the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB\u00a0CFF\u00a0FFS). Besides the second largest standard gauge railway company, BLS AG, two railways companies operate on narrow gauge networks: the Rhaetian Railway (RhB) in Graub\u00fcnden, which includes some World Heritage lines, and the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn (MGB), which co-operates with RhB the Glacier Express between Zermatt and St. Moritz/Davos. Switzerland operates the world's longest and deepest railway tunnel and the first flat, low-level route through the Alps, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the largest part of the New Railway Link through the Alps (NRLA) project.\nSwitzerland has a publicly managed, toll-free road network financed by highway permits as well as vehicle and petrol taxes. The Swiss autobahn/autoroute system requires the annual purchase of a vignette (toll sticker)\u2014for 40 Swiss francs\u2014to use its roadways, including passenger cars and trucks. The Swiss autobahn/autoroute network stretches for and has one of the highest motorway densities in the world.\nZurich Airport is Switzerland's largest international flight gateway; it handled 22.8\u00a0million passengers in 2012. The other international airports are Geneva Airport (13.9\u00a0million passengers in 2012), EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg (located in France), Bern Airport, Lugano Airport, St. Gallen-Altenrhein Airport and Sion Airport. Swiss International Air Lines is the flag carrier. Its main hub is Zurich, but it is legally domiciled in Basel.\nEnvironment.\nSwitzerland has one of the best environmental records among developed nations. It is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol. With Mexico and South Korea, it forms the Environmental Integrity Group (EIG).\nThe country is active in recycling and anti-littering programs and is one of the world's top recyclers, recovering 66% to 96% of recyclable materials, varying across the country. The 2014 Global Green Economy Index placed Switzerland among the top 10 green economies.\nSwitzerland has an economic system for garbage disposal, which is based mostly on recycling and energy-producing incinerators. As in other European countries, the illegal disposal of garbage is heavily fined. In almost all Swiss municipalities, mandatory stickers or dedicated garbage bags allow the identification of disposable garbage.\nDemographics.\nIn common with other developed countries, the Swiss population increased rapidly during the industrial era, quadrupling between 1800 and 1990, and it has continued to grow.\nThe population is about 9 million (2023 est.). Population growth is projected to continue to 2035, due mostly to immigration. Like most of Europe, Switzerland faces an ageing population, with a fertility rate close to replacement level. Switzerland has one of the world's oldest populations, with an average age of 44.5 years.\nAccording to the World Factbook, ethnic groups in Switzerland are as follows: Swiss 69.2%, German 4.2%, Italian 3.2%, Portuguese 2.5%, French 2.1%, Kosovan 1.1%, Turkish 1%, other 16.7% (2020 est). The Council of Europe figures suggest a population of around 30,000 Romani people in the country.\nImmigration.\nIn 2023, resident foreigners made up 26.3% of Switzerland's population. Most of these (83%) were from European countries. Italy provided the largest single group of foreigners, providing 14.7% of total foreign population, followed closely by Germany (14.0%), Portugal (11.7%), France (6.6%), Kosovo (5.1%), Spain (3.9%), Turkey (3.1%), North Macedonia (3.1%), Serbia (2.8%), Austria (2.0%), United Kingdom (1.9%), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1.3%) and Croatia (1.3%). Immigrants from Sri Lanka (1.3%), most of them former Tamil refugees, were the largest group of Asian origin (7.9%).\n2021 figures show that 39.5% (compared to 34.7% in 2012) of the permanent resident population aged 15 or over (around 2.89\u00a0million), had an immigrant background. 38% of the population with an immigrant background (1.1\u00a0million) held Swiss citizenship.\nIn the 2000s, domestic and international institutions expressed concern about what was perceived as an increase in xenophobia. In reply to one critical report, the Federal Council noted that \"racism unfortunately is present in Switzerland\", but stated that the high proportion of foreign citizens in the country, as well as the generally successful integration of foreigners, underlined Switzerland's openness. A follow-up study conducted in 2018 reported that 59% considered racism a serious problem in Switzerland. The proportion of the population that claimed to have been targeted by racial discrimination increased from 10% in 2014 to almost 17% in 2018, according to the Federal Statistical Office.\nLargest cities.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nLanguages.\nSwitzerland has four national languages: mainly German (spoken natively by 62.8% of the population in 2016); French (22.9%) spoken natively in the west; and Italian (8.2%) spoken natively in the south. The fourth national language, Romansh (0.5%), is a Romance language spoken locally in the southeastern trilingual canton of Grisons, and is designated by Article 4 of the Federal Constitution as a national language along with German, French, and Italian. In Article 70 it is mentioned as an official language if the authorities communicate with persons who speak Romansh. However, federal laws and other official acts do not need to be decreed in Romansh.\nIn 2016, the languages most spoken at home among permanent residents aged 15 and older were Swiss German (59.4%), French (23.5%), Standard German (10.6%), and Italian (8.5%). Other languages spoken at home included English (5.0%), Portuguese (3.8%), Albanian (3.0%), Spanish (2.6%) and Serbian and Croatian (2.5%). 6.9% reported speaking another language at home. In 2014 almost two-thirds (64.4%) of the permanent resident population indicated speaking more than one language regularly.\nThe federal government is obliged to communicate in the official languages, and in the federal parliament simultaneous translation is provided from and into German, French and Italian.\nAside from the official forms of their respective languages, the four linguistic regions of Switzerland also have local dialectal forms. The role played by dialects in each linguistic region varies dramatically: in German-speaking regions, Swiss German dialects have become more prevalent since the second half of the 20th century, especially in the media, and are used as an everyday language for many, while the Swiss variety of Standard German is almost always used instead of dialect for written communication (cf. diglossic usage of a language). Conversely, in the French-speaking regions, local Franco-Proven\u00e7al dialects have almost disappeared (only 6.3% of the population of Valais, 3.9% of Fribourg, and 3.1% of Jura still spoke dialects at the end of the 20th century), while in the Italian-speaking regions, the use of Lombard dialects is mostly limited to family settings and casual conversation.\nThe principal official languages have terms not used outside of Switzerland, known as Helvetisms. German Helvetisms are, roughly speaking, a large group of words typical of Swiss Standard German that do not appear in Standard German, nor in other German dialects. These include terms from Switzerland's surrounding language cultures (German \"Billett\" from French), from similar terms in another language (Italian \"azione\" used not only as \"act\" but also as \"discount\" from German \"Aktion\"). Swiss French, while generally close to the French of France, also contains some Helvetisms. The most frequent characteristics of Helvetisms are in vocabulary, phrases, and pronunciation, although certain Helvetisms denote themselves as special in syntax and orthography. Duden, the comprehensive German dictionary, contains about 3000 Helvetisms. Current French dictionaries, such as the Petit Larousse, include several hundred Helvetisms; notably, Swiss French uses different terms than that of France for the numbers 70 (\"septante\") and 90 (\"nonante\") and often 80 (\"huitante\") as well.\nLearning one of the other national languages is compulsory for all Swiss pupils, hence many Swiss are supposed to be at least bilingual, especially those belonging to linguistic minority groups. Because the largest part of Switzerland is German-speaking, many French, Italian, and Romansh speakers migrating to the rest of Switzerland and the children of those non-German-speaking Swiss born within the rest of Switzerland speak German. While learning one of the other national languages at school is important, most Swiss learn English to communicate with Swiss speakers of other languages, as it is perceived as a neutral means of communication. English often functions as the de facto lingua franca.\nHealth.\nSwiss residents are required to buy health insurance from private insurance companies, which in turn are required to accept every applicant. While the cost of the system is among the highest, its health outcomes compare well with other European countries; patients have been reported as in general, highly satisfied with it. In 2012, life expectancy at birth was 80.4 years for men and 84.7 years for women \u2013 the world's highest. However, spending on health at 11.4% of GDP (2010) is on par with Germany and France (11.6%) and other European countries, but notably less than the US (17.6%). From 1990, costs steadily increased.\nIt is estimated that one out of six Swiss persons suffers from mental illness.\nAccording to a survey conducted by Addiction Switzerland, fourteen per cent of men and 6.5% of women between 20 and 24 reported consuming cannabis in the past 30 days in 2020, and 4 Swiss cities were listed among the top 10 European cities for cocaine use as measured in wastewater, down from 5 in 2018.\nCulture.\nSwiss culture is characterised by diversity, which is reflected in diverse traditional customs. A region may be in some ways culturally connected to the neighbouring country that shares its language, all rooted in western European culture. The linguistically isolated Romansh culture in Graub\u00fcnden in eastern Switzerland constitutes an exception. It survives only in the upper valleys of the Rhine and the Inn and strives to maintain its rare linguistic tradition.\nSwitzerland is home to notable contributors to literature, art, architecture, music and sciences. In addition, the country attracted creatives during times of unrest or war. Some 1000 museums are found in the country.\nAmong the most important cultural performances held annually are the Pal\u00e9o Festival, Lucerne Festival, the Montreux Jazz Festival, the Locarno International Film Festival and Art Basel.\nAlpine symbolism played an essential role in shaping Swiss history and the Swiss national identity. Many alpine areas and ski resorts attract visitors for winter sports as well as hiking and mountain biking in summer. The quieter seasons are spring and autumn. A traditional pastoral culture predominates in many areas, and small farms are omnipresent in rural areas. Folk art is nurtured in organisations across the country. Switzerland most directly in appears in music, dance, poetry, wood carving, and embroidery. The alphorn, a trumpet-like musical instrument made of wood has joined yodeling and the accordion as epitomes of traditional Swiss music.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nChristianity is the predominant religion according to national surveys of Swiss Federal Statistical Office (about 67% of resident population in 2016\u20132018 and 75% of Swiss citizens), divided between the Catholic Church (35.8% of the population), the Swiss Reformed Church (23.8%), further Protestant churches (2.2%), Eastern Orthodoxy (2.5%), and other Christian denominations (2.2%).\nSwitzerland has no official state religion, though most of the cantons (except Geneva and Neuch\u00e2tel) recognise official churches, either the Catholic Church or the Swiss Reformed Church. These churches, and in some cantons the Old Catholic Church and Jewish congregations, are financed by official taxation of members. In 2020, the Roman Catholic Church had 3,048,475 registered and church tax paying members (corresponding to 35.2% of the total population), while the Swiss Reformed Church had 2,015,816 members (23.3% of the total population).\n26.3% of Swiss permanent residents are not affiliated with a religious community.\nAs of 2020, according to a national survey conducted by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, Christian minority communities included Neo-Pietism (0.5%), Pentecostalism (0.4%, mostly incorporated in the Schweizer Pfingstmission), Apostolic communities (0.3%), other Protestant denominations (1.1%, including Methodism), the Old Catholic Church (0.1%), other Christian denominations (0.3%). Non-Christian religions are Islam (5.3%), Hinduism (0.6%), Buddhism (0.5%), Judaism (0.25%) and others (0.4%).\nHistorically, the country was about evenly balanced between Catholic and Protestant, in a complex patchwork. During the Reformation Switzerland became home to many reformers. Geneva converted to Protestantism in 1536, just before John Calvin arrived. In 1541, he founded the \"Republic of Geneva\" on his own ideals. It became known internationally as the \"Protestant Rome\" and housed such reformers as Theodore Beza, William Farel or Pierre Viret. Zurich became another reform stronghold around the same time, with Huldrych Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger taking the lead. Anabaptists Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel also operated there. They were later joined by the fleeing Peter Martyr Vermigli and Hans Denck. Other centres included Basel (Andreas Karlstadt and Johannes Oecolampadius), Bern (Berchtold Haller and Niklaus Manuel), and St. Gallen (Joachim Vadian). One canton, Appenzell, was officially divided into Catholic and Protestant sections in 1597. The larger cities and their cantons (Bern, Geneva, Lausanne, Zurich and Basel) used to be predominantly Protestant. Central Switzerland, the Valais, the Ticino, Appenzell Innerrhodes, the Jura, and Fribourg are traditionally Catholic.\nThe Swiss Constitution of 1848, under the recent impression of the clashes of Catholic vs Protestant cantons that culminated in the Sonderbundskrieg, consciously defines a consociational state, allowing the peaceful co-existence of Catholics and Protestants. A 1980 initiative calling for the complete separation of church and state was rejected by 78.9% of the voters. Some traditionally Protestant cantons and cities nowadays have a slight Catholic majority, because since about 1970 a steadily growing minority were not affiliated with any religious body (21.4% in Switzerland, 2012) especially in traditionally Protestant regions, such as Basel-City (42%), canton of Neuch\u00e2tel (38%), canton of Geneva (35%), canton of Vaud (26%), or Zurich city (city: >25%; canton: 23%).\nLiterature.\nThe earliest forms of literature were in German, reflecting the language's early predominance. In the 18th century, French became fashionable in Bern and elsewhere, while the influence of the French-speaking allies and subject lands increased.\nAmong the classic authors of Swiss literature are Jeremias Gotthelf (1797\u20131854) and Gottfried Keller (1819\u20131890); later writers are Max Frisch (1911\u20131991) and Friedrich D\u00fcrrenmatt (1921\u20131990), whose (\"\") was released as a Hollywood film in 2001, starring Jack Nicholson.\nFamous French-speaking writers were Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712\u20131778) and Germaine de Sta\u00ebl (1766\u20131817). More recent authors include Charles Ferdinand Ramuz (1878\u20131947), whose novels describe the lives of peasants and mountain dwellers, set in a harsh environment, and Blaise Cendrars (born Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Sauser, 1887\u20131961). Italian and Romansh-speaking authors also contributed to the Swiss literary landscape, generally in proportion to their number.\nProbably the most famous Swiss literary creation, \"Heidi\", the story of an orphan girl who lives with her grandfather in the Alps, is one of the most popular children's books and has come to be a symbol of Switzerland. Her creator, Johanna Spyri (1827\u20131901), wrote a number of books on similar themes.\nMedia.\nFreedom of the press and the right to free expression is guaranteed in the constitution. The Swiss News Agency (SNA) broadcasts information in three of the four national languages\u2014on politics, economics, society and culture. The SNA supplies almost all Swiss media and foreign media with its reporting.\nIn Switzerland, the most influential newspapers include the German-language and \"Neue Z\u00fcrcher Zeitung\", as well as the French-language \"Le Temps\". Additionally, almost every city has at least one local newspaper published in the predominant local language.\nThe government exerts greater control over broadcast media than print media, especially due to financing and licensing. The Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, whose name was recently changed to SRG SSR, is charged with the production and distribution of radio and television content. SRG SSR studios are distributed across the various language regions. Radio content is produced in six central and four regional studios while video media are produced in Geneva, Zurich, Basel, and Lugano. An extensive cable network allows most Swiss to access content from neighbouring countries.\nSports.\nSkiing, snowboarding and mountaineering are among the most popular sports, reflecting the nature of the country Winter sports are practised by natives and visitors. The bobsleigh was invented in St. Moritz. The first world ski championships were held in M\u00fcrren (1931) and St. Moritz (1934). The latter town hosted the second Winter Olympic Games in 1928 and the fifth edition in 1948. Among its most successful skiers and world champions are Pirmin Zurbriggen and Didier Cuche.\nThe most prominently watched sports in Switzerland are football and ice hockey.\nThe headquarters of the international football's and ice hockey's governing bodies, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) and International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) are located in Zurich. Many other headquarters of international sports federations are located in Switzerland. For example, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), IOC's Olympic Museum and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) are located in Lausanne.\nSwitzerland hosted the 1954 FIFA World Cup and was the joint host, with Austria, of the UEFA Euro 2008 tournament. The Swiss Super League is the nation's professional football club league. Europe's highest football pitch, at above sea level, is located in Switzerland, the \"Ottmar Hitzfeld Stadium\".\nMany Swiss follow ice hockey and support one of the 12 teams of the National League, which is the most attended league in Europe. In 2009, Switzerland hosted the IIHF World Championship for the tenth time. It also became World Vice-Champion in 2013 and 2018. Its numerous lakes make Switzerland an attractive sailing destination. The largest, Lake Geneva, is the home of the sailing team Alinghi which was the first European team to win the America's Cup in 2003 and which successfully defended the title in 2007.\nSwiss tennis player Roger Federer is widely regarded as among the sport's greatest players. He won 20 Grand Slam tournaments overall including a record 8 Wimbledon titles. He won six ATP Finals. He was ranked no. 1 in the ATP rankings for a record 237 consecutive weeks. He ended 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009 ranked no. 1. Fellow Swiss players Martina Hingis and Stan Wawrinka also won multiple Grand Slam titles. Switzerland won the Davis Cup title in 2014.\nMotorsport racecourses and events were banned in Switzerland following the 1955 Le Mans disaster with exceptions for events such as hillclimbing. The country continued to produce successful racing drivers such as Clay Regazzoni, S\u00e9bastien Buemi, Jo Siffert, Dominique Aegerter, successful World Touring Car Championship driver Alain Menu, 2014 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Marcel F\u00e4ssler and 2015 24 Hours N\u00fcrburgring winner Nico M\u00fcller. Switzerland also won the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport in 2007\u201308 with driver Neel Jani. Swiss motorcycle racer Thomas L\u00fcthi won the 2005 MotoGP World Championship in the 125cc category. In June 2007 the Swiss National Council, one house of the Federal Assembly of Switzerland, voted to overturn the ban, however the other house, the Swiss Council of States rejected the change and the ban remains in place.\nTraditional sports include Swiss wrestling or , a tradition from the rural central cantons and considered the national sport by some. Hornussen is another indigenous Swiss sport, which is like a cross between baseball and golf. is the Swiss variant of stone put, a competition in throwing a heavy stone. Practised only among the alpine population since prehistoric times, it is recorded to have taken place in Basel in the 13th century. It is central to the Unspunnenfest, first held in 1805, with its symbol the 83.5 stone named .\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine is multifaceted. While dishes such as fondue, raclette or r\u00f6sti are omnipresent, each region developed its gastronomy according to the varieties of climate and language, for example, , engl.: sliced meat Zurich style. Traditional Swiss cuisine uses ingredients similar to those in other European countries, as well as unique dairy products and cheeses such as Gruy\u00e8re or Emmental, produced in the valleys of Gruy\u00e8res and Emmental. The number of fine-dining establishments is high, particularly in western Switzerland.\nChocolate has been made in Switzerland since the 18th century. Its reputation grew at the end of the 19th century with the invention of modern techniques such as conching and tempering, which enabled higher quality. Another breakthrough was the invention of solid milk chocolate in 1875 by Daniel Peter. The Swiss are the world's largest chocolate consumers.\nThe most popular alcoholic drink is wine. Switzerland is notable for its variety of grape varieties, reflecting the large variations in terroirs. Swiss wine is produced mainly in Valais, Vaud (Lavaux), Geneva and Ticino, with a small majority of white wines. Vineyards have been cultivated in Switzerland since the Roman era, even though traces of a more ancient origin can be found. The most widespread varieties are the Chasselas (called Fendant in Valais) and Pinot Noir. Merlot is the main variety produced in Ticino.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["17926", "32156702", "26748"], "permutation_1": ["17926", "32156702", "26748"], "permutation_2": ["17926", "32156702", "26748"], "permutation_3": ["32156702", "26748", "17926"]}
{"id": "3hop1__565867_104020_22438", "docs_added": {"3184267": "Patrick Juvet\nSwiss singer-songwriter (1950\u20132021)\nPatrick Juvet (21 August 1950 \u2013 c. 1 April 2021) was a Swiss model and singer-songwriter, who had a string of hit records in Europe. While his early career was focused on making pop records, he found international success as a disco music performer in the latter half of the 1970s. His biggest hit, \"I Love America\", made the top twenty in France, Sweden and the UK, and the top ten in the US disco chart.\nBiography.\nBorn in Montreux, Switzerland, Juvet grew up in nearby La Tour-de-Peilz, with his parents, Robert and Janine, his brother Daniel, and his sister Nancy. Juvet's father sold radios and televisions, which sparked an early interest in music for the young Juvet. Juvet began studying piano at age 7; later he developed an interest in the music of The Beatles.\nJuvet moved to Paris in 1968 at the age of 18 with little money. A friend encouraged him to become a model in Germany, and Juvet pursued this career in D\u00fcsseldorf, Germany, for two years. He returned to Paris in 1970.\nIn Saint-Tropez he met French music producer Eddie Barclay, who allowed him to record a first single in 1971. He wrote \"Le Lundi au soleil\", sung by Claude Fran\u00e7ois. Later, Juvet began collaborating with French composer and musician Jean-Michel Jarre with this new material featured on Juvet's album, \"Love\", which was released in 1973. Juvet represented Switzerland at the Eurovision Song Contest 1973 with \"Je vais me marier, Marie,\" placing at no. 12 in the competition.\nIn 1977, Juvet collaborated again with Jarre on the French-language album, \"Paris by Night,\" which featured the hit song, \"O\u00f9 sont les femmes?\" In 1978, he worked with noted disco producers Jacques Morali and Henri Belolo, who also produced Village People and The Ritchie Family, among other acts. As a result, Juvet soon experienced international success with the disco tracks, \"Got a Feeling\" and \"I Love America\".\nIn 1978, the aforementioned \"O\u00f9 sont les femmes?\" was re-recorded in English under the title, \"Where Is My Woman?\", and was featured on Juvet's English-language debut on Casablanca Records in the U.S. Victor Willis, original lead singer of Village People, was the lyricist for the project.\nHis soundtrack score to David Hamilton's art house film \"Laura\" featured disco musicians Marc Chantereau and Slim Pezin of Voyage and Space session bassist Jannick Top. Although the music from \"Laura\" was never released on compact disc and was never released in the United States, it nonetheless sold 650,000 copies. Parts of the music were written and produced by the New Zealander Brian Southcombe (now deceased) who was once married to Charlotte Rampling. Southcombe, David Hamilton and another New Zealander (Hamilton's business manager) were at one time actively trying to set up a sequel movie to \"Laura\" and are said to have approached Juvet for more music.\nWith the decline of disco in the early 1980s, Juvet returned to the French music scene in 1982 with the album, \"R\u00eaves immoraux\". While selling respectably, the album failed to match Juvet's earlier commercial success. A time of financial and personal decline followed, with Juvet suffering periods of depression and alcoholism and relocating from mainland Europe to London, then to Los Angeles and finally, in the latter half of the 1980s, back to Switzerland.\nJuvet returned to Paris in 1991 and to his roots as a singer-songwriter with the album, \"Solitudes\". The disc featured more personal, emotional songs with Juvet being accompanied by French-language performers, Fran\u00e7oise Hardy, Luc Plamondon, and Marc Lavoine.\nIn 2005, Juvet released his autobiography \"Les bleus au c\u0153ur: Souvenirs\" (\"Bruises on My Heart: Memories\"), in which he talks about his career and his bisexuality.\nOn 1 April 2021, it was announced that Juvet was found dead at his apartment in Barcelona, aged 70. An autopsy\u00a0report that was released on 8 April,\u00a0concluded that Juvet\u00a0died\u00a0of cardiac arrest.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "26748": "Switzerland\nCountry in Central Europe\nSwitzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is geographically divided among the Swiss Plateau, the Alps and the Jura; the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory, whereas most of the country's nearly 9 million people are concentrated on the plateau, which hosts its largest cities and economic centres, including Zurich, Geneva, and Lausanne. \nSwitzerland is a federal republic composed of 26 cantons, with federal authorities based in Bern. It has four main linguistic and cultural regions: German, French, Italian and Romansh. Although most Swiss are German-speaking, national identity is fairly cohesive, being rooted in a common historical background, shared values such as federalism and direct democracy, and Alpine symbolism. Swiss identity transcends language, ethnicity, and religion, leading to Switzerland being described as a (\"nation of volition\") rather than a nation state.\nSwitzerland originates from the Old Swiss Confederacy established in the Late Middle Ages as a defensive and commercial alliance; the Federal Charter of 1291 is considered the country's founding document. The confederation steadily expanded and consolidated despite external threats and internal political and religious strife. Swiss independence from the Holy Roman Empire was formally recognised in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The confederation was among the first and few republics of the early modern period, and the only one besides San Marino to survive the Napoleonic Wars. \nSwitzerland remained a network of self-governing states until 1798, when revolutionary France invaded and imposed the centralist Helvetic Republic. Napoleon abolished the republic in 1803 and reinstated a confederation. Following the Napoleonic Wars, Switzerland restored its pre-revolutionary system, but by 1830 faced growing division and conflict between liberal and conservative movements; this culminated in a new constitution in 1848 that established the current federal system and enshrined principles such as individual rights, separation of powers, and parliamentary bicameralism. \nSwitzerland has maintained a policy of armed neutrality since the 16th century and has not fought an international war since 1815. It joined the United Nations only in 2002 but pursues an active foreign policy that includes frequent involvement in peace building and global governance. Switzerland is the birthplace of the Red Cross and hosts the headquarters or offices of most major international institutions, including the WTO, the WHO, the ILO, FIFA, the WEF, and the UN. It is a founding member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) but not part of the European Union (EU), the European Economic Area, or the eurozone; however, it participates in the European single market and the Schengen Area. \nSwitzerland is among the world's most developed countries, with the highest nominal wealth per adult and the eighth-highest gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. It performs highly on several international metrics, including economic competitiveness, democratic governance, and press freedom. Zurich, Geneva and Basel rank among the highest in quality of life, albeit with some of the highest costs of living. Switzerland holds an international reputation for its established banking sector and for its specialized industries in watchmaking and chocolate production.\nEtymology.\nThe English name \"Switzerland\" is a portmanteau of \"Switzer\", an obsolete term for a Swiss person which was in use during the 16th to 19th centuries, and \"land\". The English adjective \"Swiss\" is a loanword from French ', also in use since the 16th century. The name \"Switzer\" is from the Alemannic ', in origin an inhabitant of \"Schwyz\" and its associated territory, one of the cantons which formed the nucleus of the Old Swiss Confederacy. The Swiss began to adopt the name for themselves after the Swabian War of 1499, used alongside the term for \"Confederates\", (literally: \"comrades by oath\"), used since the 14th century. The data code for Switzerland, CH, is derived from Latin (\"Helvetic Confederation\").\nThe toponym \"Schwyz\" itself was first attested in 972, as Old High German ', perhaps related to ' 'to burn' (cf. Old Norse 'to singe, burn'), referring to the area of forest that was burned and cleared to build. The name was extended to the area dominated by the canton, and after the Swabian War of 1499 gradually came to be used for the entire Confederation. The Swiss German name of the country, ', is homophonous to that of the canton and the settlement, but distinguished by the use of the definite article (' for the Confederation, but simply \"\" for the canton and the town). The long [i\u02d0] of Swiss German is historically and still often today spelled \u27e8y\u27e9 rather than \u27e8ii\u27e9, preserving the original identity of the two names even in writing.\nThe Latin name was neologised and introduced gradually after the formation of the federal state in 1848, harking back to the Napoleonic Helvetic Republic. It appeared on coins from 1879, inscribed on the Federal Palace in 1902 and after 1948 used in the official seal (e.g., the ISO banking code \"CHF\" for the Swiss franc, the Swiss postage stamps ('HELVETIA') and the country top-level domain \".ch\", are both taken from the state's Latin name). is derived from the \"Helvetii\", a Gaulish tribe living on the Swiss Plateau before the Roman era.\n\"Helvetia\" appeared as a national personification of the Swiss confederacy in the 17th century in a 1672 play by Johann Caspar Weissenbach.\nHistory.\nThe state of Switzerland took its present form with the adoption of the Swiss Federal Constitution in 1848. Switzerland's precursors established a defensive alliance in 1291, forming a loose confederation that persisted for centuries.\nBeginnings.\nThe oldest traces of hominid existence in Switzerland date to about 150,000 years ago. The oldest known farming settlements in Switzerland, which were found at G\u00e4chlingen, date to around 5300 BC.\nThe earliest known tribes formed the Hallstatt and La T\u00e8ne cultures, named after the archaeological site of La T\u00e8ne on the north side of Lake Neuch\u00e2tel. La T\u00e8ne culture developed and flourished during the late Iron Age from around 450 BC, possibly influenced by Greek and Etruscan civilisations. One of the most prominent La T\u00e8ne tribes were the Helvetii, who primarily occupied the Swiss Plateau, alongside the Rhaetians in the eastern regions. Facing pressures from Germanic tribes, in 58 BC, the Helvetii, influenced by Orgetorix, a wealthy aristocrat, decided to abandon the Swiss Plateau for better opportunities in western Gallia. After Orgetorix's mysterious death, the tribe continued their migration but was decisively defeated by Julius Caesar's armies at the Battle of Bibracte, in present-day eastern France. Following their defeat, the Helvetii were forced by Caesar to return to their original lands, where they were subjected to stringent restrictions on their autonomy and movements. In 15 BC, Tiberius (later the second Roman emperor) and his brother Drusus conquered the Alps, integrating them into the Roman Empire. The area occupied by the Helvetii first became part of Rome's Gallia Belgica province and then of its Germania Superior province. The eastern portion of modern Switzerland was integrated into the Roman province of Raetia. Sometime around the start of the Common Era, the Romans maintained a large camp called Vindonissa, now a ruin at the confluence of the Aare and Reuss rivers, near the town of Windisch.\nThe first and second century AD was an age of prosperity on the Swiss Plateau. Towns such as Aventicum, Iulia Equestris and Augusta Raurica reached a remarkable size, while hundreds of agricultural estates (Villae rusticae) were established in the countryside.\nAround 260 AD, the fall of the Agri Decumates territory north of the Rhine transformed today's Switzerland into a frontier land of the Empire. Repeated raids by the Alamanni tribes provoked the ruin of the Roman towns and economy, forcing the population to shelter near Roman fortresses, like the Castrum Rauracense near Augusta Raurica. The Empire built another line of defence at the north border (the so-called Donau-Iller-Rhine-Limes). At the end of the fourth century, the increased Germanic pressure forced the Romans to abandon the linear defence concept. The Swiss Plateau was finally open to Germanic tribes.\nIn the Early Middle Ages, from the end of the fourth century, the western extent of modern-day Switzerland was part of the territory of the Kings of the Burgundians, who introduced the French language to the area. The Alemanni settled the Swiss Plateau in the fifth century and the valleys of the Alps in the eighth century, forming Alemannia. Modern-day Switzerland was then divided between the kingdoms of Alemannia and Burgundy. The entire region became part of the expanding Frankish Empire in the sixth century, following Clovis I's victory over the Alemanni at Tolbiac in 504 AD, and later Frankish domination of the Burgundians.\nThroughout the rest of the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries, Swiss regions continued under Frankish hegemony (Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties) but after its extension under Charlemagne, the Frankish Empire was divided by the Treaty of Verdun in 843. The territories of present-day Switzerland became divided into Middle Francia and East Francia until they were reunified under the Holy Roman Empire around 1000\u00a0AD.\nIn the 10th century, as the rule of the Carolingians waned, Magyars destroyed Basel in 917 and St. Gallen in 926. In response, Henry the Fowler, the then ruler of East Francia, decreed the fortification of key settlements to defend against these invasions. Large villages and towns, including strategic locations like Zurich and St.Gallen, were fortified. This initiative led to the development of what were essentially early urban strongholds and city governments in Eastern Switzerland.\nBy 1200, the Swiss Plateau comprised the dominions of the houses of Savoy, Z\u00e4hringer, Habsburg, and Kyburg. Some regions (Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, later known as ) were accorded the Imperial immediacy to grant the empire direct control over the mountain passes. With the extinction of its male line in 1263, the Kyburg dynasty fell in AD 1264. The Habsburgs under King Rudolph I (Holy Roman Emperor in 1273) laid claim to the Kyburg lands and annexed them, extending their territory to the eastern Swiss Plateau.\nOld Swiss Confederacy.\nThe Old Swiss Confederacy was an alliance among the valley communities of the central Alps. The Confederacy was governed by nobles and patricians of various cantons who facilitated management of common interests and ensured peace on mountain trade routes. The Federal Charter of 1291 is considered the confederacy's founding document, even though similar alliances likely existed decades earlier. The document was agreed among the rural communes of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden.\nBy 1353, the three original cantons had joined with the cantons of Glarus and Zug and the Lucerne, Zurich and Bern city-states to form the \"Old Confederacy\" of eight states that obtained through the end of the 15th century. The expansion led to increased power and wealth for the confederation. By 1460, the confederates controlled most of the territory south and west of the Rhine to the Alps and the Jura mountains, and the University of Basel was founded (with a faculty of medicine) establishing a tradition of chemical and medical research. This increased after victories against the Habsburgs (Battle of Sempach, Battle of N\u00e4fels), over Charles the Bold of Burgundy during the 1470s, and the success of the Swiss mercenaries. The Swiss victory in the Swabian War against the Swabian League of Emperor Maximilian I in 1499 amounted to \"de facto\" independence within the Holy Roman Empire. In 1501, Basel and Schaffhausen joined the Old Swiss Confederacy.\nThe Confederacy acquired a reputation of invincibility during these earlier wars, but expansion of the confederation suffered a setback in 1515 with the Swiss defeat in the Battle of Marignano. This ended the so-called \"heroic\" epoch of Swiss history. The success of Zwingli's Reformation in some cantons led to inter-cantonal religious conflicts in 1529 and 1531 (Wars of Kappel). It was not until more than one hundred years after these internal wars that, in 1648, under the Peace of Westphalia, European countries recognised Switzerland's independence from the Holy Roman Empire and its neutrality.\nDuring the Early Modern period of Swiss history, the growing authoritarianism of the patriciate families combined with a financial crisis in the wake of the Thirty Years' War led to the Swiss peasant war of 1653. In the background to this struggle, the conflict between Catholic and Protestant cantons persisted, erupting in further violence at the First War of Villmergen, in 1656, and the Toggenburg War (or Second War of Villmergen), in 1712.\nNapoleonic era.\nIn 1798, the revolutionary French government invaded Switzerland and imposed a new unified constitution. This centralised the government of the country, effectively abolishing the cantons: moreover, M\u00fclhausen left Switzerland and the Valtellina valley became part of the Cisalpine Republic. The new regime, known as the Helvetic Republic, was highly unpopular. An invading foreign army had imposed and destroyed centuries of tradition, making Switzerland nothing more than a French satellite state. The fierce French suppression of the Nidwalden Revolt in September 1798 was an example of the oppressive presence of the French Army and the local population's resistance to the occupation.\nWhen war broke out between France and its rivals, Russian and Austrian forces invaded Switzerland. The Swiss refused to fight alongside the French in the name of the Helvetic Republic. In 1803 Napoleon organised a meeting of the leading Swiss politicians from both sides in Paris. The Act of Mediation was the result, which largely restored Swiss autonomy and introduced a Confederation of 19 cantons. Henceforth, much of Swiss politics would concern balancing the cantons' tradition of self-rule with the need for a central government.\nIn 1815, the Congress of Vienna fully re-established Swiss independence, and the European powers recognised permanent Swiss neutrality. Swiss troops served foreign governments until 1860 when they fought in the siege of Gaeta. The treaty allowed Switzerland to increase its territory, with the admission of the cantons of Valais, Neuch\u00e2tel and Geneva. Switzerland's borders saw only minor adjustments thereafter.\nFederal state.\nThe restoration of power to the patriciate was only temporary. After a period of unrest with repeated violent clashes, such as the Z\u00fcriputsch of 1839, civil war (the \"Sonderbundskrieg\") broke out in 1847 when some Catholic cantons tried to set up a separate alliance (the \"Sonderbund\"). The war lasted less than a month, causing fewer than 100 casualties, most of which were through friendly fire. The Sonderbundskrieg had a significant impact on the psychology and society of Switzerland.\nThe war convinced most Swiss of the need for unity and strength. Swiss from all strata of society, whether Catholic or Protestant, from the liberal or conservative current, realised that the cantons would profit more from merging their economic and religious interests.\nThus, while the rest of Europe saw revolutionary uprisings, the Swiss drew up a constitution that provided for a federal layout, much of it inspired by the American example. This constitution provided central authority while leaving the cantons the right to self-government on local issues. Giving credit to those who favoured the power of the cantons (the Sonderbund Kantone), the national assembly was divided between an upper house (the Council of States, two representatives per canton) and a lower house (the National Council, with representatives elected from across the country). Referendums were made mandatory for any amendments. This new constitution ended the legal power of nobility in Switzerland.\nA single system of weights and measures was introduced, and in 1850 the Swiss franc became the Swiss single currency, complemented by the WIR franc in 1934. Article 11 of the constitution forbade sending troops to serve abroad, marking the end of foreign service. It came with the expectation of serving the Holy See, and the Swiss were still obliged to serve Francis II of the Two Sicilies with Swiss Guards present at the siege of Gaeta in 1860.\nAn important clause of the constitution was that it could be entirely rewritten, if necessary, thus enabling it to evolve as a whole rather than being modified one amendment at a time.\nThis need soon proved itself when the rise in population and the Industrial Revolution that followed led to calls to modify the constitution accordingly. The population rejected an early draft in 1872, but modifications led to its acceptance in 1874. It introduced the facultative referendum for laws at the federal level. It also established federal responsibility for defence, trade, and legal matters.\nIn 1891, the constitution was revised with uncommonly strong elements of direct democracy, which remain unique today.\nModern history.\nSwitzerland was not invaded during either of the world wars. During World War I, Switzerland was home to the revolutionary and founder of the Soviet Union Vladimir Illych Ulyanov (Vladimir Lenin) who remained there until 1917. Swiss neutrality was seriously questioned by the short-lived Grimm\u2013Hoffmann affair in 1917. In 1920, Switzerland joined the League of Nations, which was based in Geneva, after it was exempted from military requirements.\nDuring World War II, detailed invasion plans were drawn up by the Germans, but Switzerland was never attacked. Switzerland was able to remain independent through a combination of military deterrence, concessions to Germany, and good fortune, as larger events during the war intervened. General Henri Guisan, appointed the commander-in-chief for the duration of the war ordered a general mobilisation of the armed forces. The Swiss military strategy changed from static defence at the borders to organised long-term attrition and withdrawal to strong, well-stockpiled positions high in the Alps, known as the Reduit. Switzerland was an important base for espionage by both sides and often mediated communications between the Axis and Allied powers.\nSwitzerland's trade was blockaded by both the Allies and the Axis. Economic cooperation and extension of credit to Nazi Germany varied according to the perceived likelihood of invasion and the availability of other trading partners. Concessions reached a peak after a crucial rail link through Vichy France was severed in 1942, leaving Switzerland (together with Liechtenstein) entirely isolated from the wider world by Axis-controlled territory. Over the course of the war, Switzerland interned over 300,000 refugees aided by the International Red Cross, based in Geneva. Strict immigration and asylum policies and the financial relationships with Nazi Germany raised controversy, only at the end of the 20th century.\nDuring the war, the Swiss Air Force engaged aircraft of both sides, shooting down 11 intruding Luftwaffe planes in May and June 1940, then forcing down other intruders after a change of policy following threats from Germany. Over 100 Allied bombers and their crews were interned. Between 1940 and 1945, Switzerland was bombed by the Allies, causing fatalities and property damage. Among the cities and towns bombed were Basel, Brusio, Chiasso, Cornol, Geneva, Koblenz, Niederweningen, Rafz, Renens, Samedan, Schaffhausen, Stein am Rhein, T\u00e4gerwilen, Thayngen, Vals, and Zurich. Allied forces maintained that the bombings, which violated the 96th Article of War, resulted from navigation errors, equipment failure, weather conditions, and pilot errors. The Swiss expressed fear and concern that the bombings were intended to put pressure on Switzerland to end economic cooperation and neutrality with Nazi Germany. Court-martial proceedings took place in England. The US paid SFR 62M for reparations.\nSwitzerland's attitude towards refugees was complicated and controversial; over the course of the war, it admitted as many as 300,000 refugees while refusing tens of thousands more, including Jews persecuted by the Nazis.\nAfter the war, the Swiss government exported credits through the charitable fund known as the and donated to the Marshall Plan to help Europe's recovery, efforts that ultimately benefited the Swiss economy.\nDuring the Cold War, Swiss authorities considered the construction of a Swiss nuclear bomb. Leading nuclear physicists at the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich such as Paul Scherrer made this a realistic possibility. In 1988, the Paul Scherrer Institute was founded in his name to explore the therapeutic uses of neutron scattering technologies. Financial problems with the defence budget and ethical considerations prevented the substantial funds from being allocated, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 was seen as a valid alternative. Plans for building nuclear weapons were dropped by 1988. Switzerland joined the Council of Europe in 1963.\nSwitzerland was the last Western republic (the Principality of Liechtenstein followed in 1984) to grant women the right to vote. Some Swiss cantons approved this in 1959, while at the federal level, it was achieved in 1971 and, after resistance, in the last canton Appenzell Innerrhoden (one of only two remaining \"Landsgemeinde\", along with Glarus) in 1990. After obtaining suffrage at the federal level, women quickly rose in political significance. The first woman on the seven-member Federal Council executive was Elisabeth Kopp, who served from 1984 to 1989, and the first female president was Ruth Dreifuss in 1999.\nIn 1979 areas from the canton of Bern attained independence from the Bernese, forming the new canton of Jura. On 18 April 1999, the Swiss population and the cantons voted in favour of a completely revised federal constitution.\nIn 2002 Switzerland became a full member of the United Nations, leaving Vatican City as the last widely recognised state without full UN membership. Switzerland is a founding member of the EFTA but not the European Economic Area (EEA). An application for membership in the European Union was sent in May 1992, but did not advance since rejecting the EEA in December 1992 when Switzerland conducted a referendum on the EEA. Several referendums on the EU issue ensued; due to opposition from the citizens, the membership application was withdrawn. Nonetheless, Swiss law is gradually changing to conform with that of the EU, and the government signed bilateral agreements with the European Union. Switzerland, together with Liechtenstein, has been surrounded by the EU since Austria's entry in 1995. On 5 June 2005, Swiss voters agreed by a 55% majority to join the Schengen treaty, a result that EU commentators regarded as a sign of support. In September 2020, a referendum calling for a vote to end the pact that allowed a free movement of people from the European Union was introduced by the Swiss People's Party (SVP). However, voters rejected the attempt to retake control of immigration, defeating the motion by a roughly 63%\u201337% margin.\nOn 9 February 2014, 50.3% of Swiss voters approved a ballot initiative launched by the Swiss People's Party (SVP/UDC) to restrict immigration. This initiative was mostly backed by rural (57.6% approval) and suburban groups (51.2% approval), and isolated towns (51.3% approval) as well as by a strong majority (69.2% approval) in Ticino, while metropolitan centres (58.5% rejection) and the French-speaking part (58.5% rejection) rejected it. In December 2016, a political compromise with the EU was attained that eliminated quotas on EU citizens, but still allowed favourable treatment of Swiss-based job applicants. On 27 September 2020, 62% of Swiss voters rejected the anti-free movement referendum by SVP.\nGeography.\nExtending across the north and south side of the Alps in west-central Europe, Switzerland encompasses diverse landscapes and climates across its .\nSwitzerland lies between latitudes 45\u00b0 and 48\u00b0 N, and longitudes 5\u00b0 and 11\u00b0 E. It contains three basic topographical areas: the Swiss Alps to the south, the Swiss Plateau or Central Plateau, and the Jura mountains on the west. The Alps are a mountain range running across the central and south of the country, constituting about 60% of the country's area. The majority of the population live on the Swiss Plateau. The Swiss Alps host many glaciers, covering . From these originate the headwaters of several major rivers, such as the Rhine, Inn, Ticino and Rh\u00f4ne, which flow in the four cardinal directions, spreading across Europe. The hydrographic network includes several of the largest bodies of fresh water in Central and Western Europe, among which are Lake Geneva (Lac L\u00e9man in French), Lake Constance (Bodensee in German) and Lake Maggiore. Switzerland has more than 1500 lakes and contains 6% of Europe's freshwater stock. Lakes and glaciers cover about 6% of the national territory. Lake Geneva is the largest lake and is shared with France. The Rh\u00f4ne is both the main source and outflow of Lake Geneva. Lake Constance is the second largest and, like Lake Geneva, an intermediate step by the Rhine at the border with Austria and Germany. While the Rh\u00f4ne flows into the Mediterranean Sea at the French Camargue region and the Rhine flows into the North Sea at Rotterdam, about apart, both springs are only about apart in the Swiss Alps. 90% of Switzerland's 65,000-kilometre-long network of rivers and streams have been straightened, dammed, canalized or channeled underground, in an effort to prevent natural disasters such as flooding, landslides, and avalanches. 80% of all Swiss drinking water comes from groundwater sources.\nForty-eight mountains are or higher in height. At , Monte Rosa is the highest, although the Matterhorn () is the best known. Both are located within the Pennine Alps in the canton of Valais, on the border with Italy. The section of the Bernese Alps above the deep glacial Lauterbrunnen valley, containing 72 waterfalls, is well known for the Jungfrau () Eiger and M\u00f6nch peaks, and its many picturesque valleys. In the southeast the long Engadin Valley, encompassing St. Moritz, is also well known; the highest peak in the neighbouring Bernina Alps is Piz Bernina ().\nThe Swiss Plateau has greater open and hilly landscapes, partly forested, partly open pastures, usually with grazing herds or vegetable and fruit fields, but it is still hilly. Large lakes and the biggest Swiss cities are found there.\nSwitzerland contains two small enclaves: B\u00fcsingen belongs to Germany, while Campione d'Italia belongs to Italy. Switzerland has no exclaves.\nClimate.\nThe Swiss climate is generally temperate, but can vary greatly across localities, from glacial conditions on the mountaintops to the near-Mediterranean climate at Switzerland's southern tip. Some valley areas in the southern part of Switzerland offer cold-hardy palm trees. Summers tend to be warm and humid at times with periodic rainfall, ideal for pastures/grazing. The less humid winters in the mountains may see weeks-long intervals of stable conditions. At the same time, the lower lands tend to suffer from inversion during such periods, hiding the sun.\nA weather phenomenon known as the f\u00f6hn (with an identical effect to the chinook wind) can occur any time and is characterised by an unexpectedly warm wind, bringing low relative humidity air to the north of the Alps during rainfall periods on the south-facing slopes. This works both ways across the alps but is more efficient if blowing from the south due to the steeper step for oncoming wind. Valleys running south to north trigger the best effect. The driest conditions persist in all inner alpine valleys that receive less rain because arriving clouds lose a lot of their moisture content while crossing the mountains before reaching these areas. Large alpine areas such as Graub\u00fcnden remain drier than pre-alpine areas, and as in the main valley of the Valais, wine grapes are grown there.\nThe wettest conditions persist in the high Alps and in the Ticino canton, which has much sun yet heavy bursts of rain from time to time. Precipitation tends to be spread moderately throughout the year, with a peak in summer. Autumn is the driest season, winter receives less precipitation than summer, yet the weather patterns in Switzerland are not in a stable climate system. They can vary from year to year with no strict and predictable periods.\nEnvironment.\nSwitzerland contains two terrestrial ecoregions: Western European broadleaf forests and Alps conifer and mixed forests.\nSwitzerland's many small valleys separated by high mountains often host unique ecologies. The mountainous regions themselves offer a rich range of plants not found at other altitudes. The climatic, geological and topographical conditions of the alpine region make for a fragile ecosystem that is particularly sensitive to climate change. According to the 2014 Environmental Performance Index, Switzerland ranks first among 132 nations in safeguarding the environment, due to its high scores on environmental public health, its heavy reliance on renewable sources of energy (hydropower and geothermal energy), and its level of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2020 it was ranked third out of 180 countries. The country pledged to cut GHG emissions by 50% by 2030 compared to the level of 1990 and plans to reach zero emissions by 2050.\nHowever, access to biocapacity in Switzerland is far lower than the world average. In 2016, Switzerland had 1.0 hectares of biocapacity per person within its territory, 40 per cent less than world average of 1.6. In contrast, in 2016, Swiss consumption required 4.6 hectares of biocapacity \u2013 their ecological footprint, 4.6 times as much as Swiss territory can support. The remainder comes from other countries and the shared resources (such as the atmosphere impacted by greenhouse gas emissions). Switzerland had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 3.53/10, ranking it 150th globally out of 172 countries.\nSwitzerland ranked 9th in the Environmental Performance Index for 2024. It scored well in parameters including air pollution, sanitation and drinking water, waste management, and climate change mitigation.\nUrbanisation.\nAbout 85% of the population live in urban areas. Switzerland went from a largely rural country to an urban one from 1930 to 2000. After 1935 urban development claimed as much of the Swiss landscape as it did during the prior 2,000 years. Urban sprawl affects the plateau, the Jura and the Alpine foothills, raising concerns about land use. During the 21st century, population growth in urban areas is higher than in the countryside.\nSwitzerland has a dense network of complementary large, medium and small towns. The plateau is densely populated with about 400 people per km2 and the landscape shows uninterrupted signs of human presence. The weight of the largest metropolitan areas \u2013 Zurich, Geneva\u2013Lausanne, Basel and Bern \u2013 tend to increase. The importance of these urban areas is greater than their population suggests. These urban centers are recognised for their high quality of life.\nThe average population density in 2019 was . In the largest canton by area, Graub\u00fcnden, lying entirely in the Alps, population density falls to . In the canton of Zurich, with its large urban capital, the density is .\nGovernment and politics.\nThe Federal Constitution adopted in 1848 is the legal foundation of Switzerland's federal state. It is regularly modified by referendum and has been completely revised twice, in 1874 and 1999. The constitution outlines rights of individuals and citizen participation in public affairs, divides the powers between the confederation and the cantons and defines federal jurisdiction and authority. Three main bodies govern on the federal level: the Federal Assembly (legislative), the Federal Council (executive) and the federal courts (judicial).\nFederal Assembly.\nThe Federal Assembly is the parliament of Switzerland. It consists of two houses: The Council of States has 46 members, two from each canton and one from each half-canton. The National Council has 200 members, apportioned to reflect the population of each canton, and elected by proportional representation within each canton. Members of both houses serve for four years and work part-time (\"Milizsystem\"). When both houses are in joint session, they are known collectively as the Federal Assembly. Through optional referendums, citizens may challenge any law passed by parliament.\nFederal Council.\nThe Federal Council is the Swiss executive. It leads the federal administration and serves as a collective head of state. It is a collegial body of seven members, elected to four-year terms by the Federal Assembly, which oversees the council. Each member leads a department of the federal government. Each year, one member of the Council is elected President of the Confederation by the Assembly, with the presidency traditionally rotating between members. The President chairs and represents the government, but has no additional powers and remains the head of their department.\nThe government has been a coalition of the four major political parties since 1959, each party having a number of seats that roughly reflects its share of the electorate and representation in the federal parliament. This distribution is called the \"magic formula\". Since 2003, the seven seats in the Federal Council have been distributed as follows:\nSupreme Court.\nThe function of the Federal Supreme Court is to hear appeals against rulings of cantonal or federal courts. The judges are elected by the Federal Assembly for six-year terms.\nDirect democracy.\nDirect democracy and federalism are hallmarks of the Swiss political system defined in the Swiss constitution. The Swiss people are subject to three legal jurisdictions: the municipal, cantonal and federal levels. At the federal level, popular rights include the right to submit a federal initiative and a referendum, both of which may overturn parliamentary decisions.\nThere are three types of federal referendum in Switzerland: \nThe Federal Council and the Federal Assembly can supplement a popular initiative with a counterproposal. Voters must then indicate their preference if both proposals are accepted. \nCantons.\nThe Swiss Confederation consists of 26 cantons. The cantons are federated states, with permanent constitutional status and a high degree of independence relative to the subnational divisions of most countries. Under the Federal Constitution, all 26 cantons are equal in status, except that six (referred to often as the half-cantons) are represented by one councillor instead of two in the Council of States and have only half a cantonal vote with respect to the required cantonal majority in referendums on constitutional amendments. Each canton has its own constitution and its own parliament, government, police and courts. However, considerable differences define the individual cantons, particularly in terms of population and geographical area. Their populations vary between 16,003 (Appenzell Innerrhoden) and 1,487,969 (Zurich), and their area between (Basel-Stadt) and (Grisons).\nMunicipalities.\nAs of 2018 the cantons comprised 2,222 municipalities.\nFederal City.\nUntil 1848, the loosely coupled Confederation did not have a central political organisation. Issues thought to affect the whole Confederation were the subject of periodic meetings in various locations.\nIn 1848, the federal constitution provided that details concerning federal institutions, such as their locations, should be addressed by the Federal Assembly (BV 1848 Art. 108). Thus on 28 November 1848, the Federal Assembly voted in the majority to locate the seat of government in Bern and, as a prototypical federal compromise, to assign other federal institutions, such as the Federal Polytechnical School (1854, the later ETH) to Zurich, and other institutions to Lucerne, such as the later SUVA (1912) and the Federal Insurance Court (1917). Other federal institutions were subsequently attributed to Lausanne (Federal Supreme Court in 1872, and EPFL in 1969), Bellinzona (Federal Criminal Court, 2004), and St. Gallen (Federal Administrative Court and Federal Patent Court, 2012).\nThe 1999 Constitution does not mention a Federal City and the Federal Council has yet to address the matter. Thus no city in Switzerland has the \"official\" status either of capital or of Federal City. Nevertheless, Bern is commonly referred to as \"Federal City\" (, , ).\nForeign relations and international institutions.\nTraditionally, Switzerland avoids alliances that might entail military, political, or direct economic action and has been neutral since the end of its expansion in 1515. Its policy of neutrality was internationally recognised at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Swiss neutrality has been questioned at times. In 2002 Switzerland became a full member of the United Nations. It was the first state to join it by referendum. Switzerland maintains diplomatic relations with almost all countries and historically has served as an intermediary between other states. Switzerland is not a member of the European Union; the Swiss people have consistently rejected membership since the early 1990s. However, Switzerland does participate in the Schengen Area.\nMany international institutions have headquarters in Switzerland, in part because of its policy of neutrality. Geneva is the birthplace of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the Geneva Conventions and, since 2006, hosts the United Nations Human Rights Council. Even though Switzerland is one of the most recent countries to join the United Nations, the Palace of Nations in Geneva is the second biggest centre for the United Nations after the headquarters in New York. Switzerland was a founding member and hosted the League of Nations.\nApart from the United Nations headquarters, the Swiss Confederation is host to many UN agencies, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and about 200 other international organisations, including the World Trade Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization. The annual meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos bring together business and political leaders from Switzerland and foreign countries to discuss important issues. The headquarters of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) moved to Basel in 1930.\nMany sports federations and organisations are located in the country, including the International Handball Federation in Basel, the International Basketball Federation in Geneva, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) in Nyon, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) and the International Ice Hockey Federation both in Zurich, the International Cycling Union in Aigle, and the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne.\nSwitzerland became a member of the United Nations Security Council for the 2023\u20132024 period. According to the 2024 Global Peace Index, Switzerland is the 6th most peaceful country in the world.\nSwitzerland and the European Union.\nAlthough not a member, Switzerland maintains relationships with the EU and European countries through bilateral agreements. The Swiss have brought their economic practices largely into conformity with those of the EU, in an effort to compete internationally. EU membership faces considerable negative popular sentiment. It is opposed by the conservative SVP party, the largest party in the National Council, and not advocated by several other political parties. The membership application was formally withdrawn in 2016. The western French-speaking areas and the urban regions of the rest of the country tend to be more pro-EU, but do not form a significant share of the population.\nAn Integration Office operates under the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Economic Affairs. Seven bilateral agreements liberalised trade ties, taking effect in 2001. This first series of bilateral agreements included the free movement of persons. A second series of agreements covering nine areas was signed in 2004, including the Schengen Treaty and the Dublin Convention.\nIn 2006, a referendum approved 1 billion francs of supportive investment in Southern and Central European countries in support of positive ties to the EU as a whole. A further referendum will be needed to approve 300 million francs to support Romania and Bulgaria and their recent admission.\nThe Swiss have faced EU and international pressure to reduce banking secrecy and raise tax rates to parity with the EU. Preparatory discussions involved four areas: the electricity market, participation in project Galileo, cooperating with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and certificates of origin for food products.\nSwitzerland is a member of the Schengen passport-free zone. Land border checkpoints monitor goods movements, but not people.\nMilitary.\nThe Swiss Armed Forces, including the Land Forces and the Air Force, are composed mostly of conscripts, male citizens aged from 20 to 34 (in exceptional cases up to 50) years. Being a landlocked country, Switzerland has no navy; however, on lakes bordering neighbouring countries, armed boats patrol. Swiss citizens are prohibited from serving in foreign armies, except for the Swiss Guards of the Vatican, or if they are dual citizens of a foreign country and reside there.\nThe Swiss militia system stipulates that soldiers keep their army-issued equipment, including fully automatic personal weapons, at home. Women can serve voluntarily. Men usually receive military conscription orders for training at the age of 18. About two-thirds of young Swiss are found suitable for service; for the others, various forms of alternative service are available. Annually, approximately 20,000 persons are trained in recruit centres for 18 to 21 weeks. The reform \"Army XXI\" was adopted by popular vote in 2003, replacing \"Army 95\", reducing the rolls from 400,000 to about 200,000. Of those, 120,000 are active in periodic Army training, and 80,000 are non-training reserves.\nThe newest reform of the military, (WEA; English: Further development of the Army), started in 2018 and was expected to reduce the number of army personnel to 100,000 by the end of 2022.\nOverall, three general mobilisations have been declared to ensure the integrity and neutrality of Switzerland. The first mobilisation was held in response to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870\u201371; while the second was in response to the First World War outbreak in August 1914; the third mobilisation took place in September 1939 in response to the German attack on Poland.\nBecause of its neutrality policy, the Swiss army does not take part in armed conflicts in other countries but joins some peacekeeping missions. Since 2000 the armed force department has maintained the Onyx intelligence gathering system to monitor satellite communications.\nGun politics in Switzerland are unique in Europe in that 2\u20133.5\u00a0million guns are in the hands of civilians, giving the nation an estimate of 28\u201341 guns per 100 people. As per the Small Arms Survey, only 324,484 guns are owned by the military. Only 143,372 are in the hands of soldiers. However, ammunition is no longer issued.\nEconomy and labour law.\nSwitzerland has a stable, prosperous and high-tech economy. It is the world's wealthiest country per capita in multiple rankings. The country ranks as one of the least corrupt countries in the world, while its banking sector is rated as \"one of the most corrupt in the world\". It has the world's twentieth largest economy by nominal GDP and the thirty-eighth largest by purchasing power parity. As of 2021, it is the thirteenth largest exporter, and the fifth largest per capita. Zurich and Geneva are regarded as global cities, ranked as Alpha and Beta respectively. Basel is the capital of Switzerland's pharmaceutical industry, hosting Novartis, Roche, and many other players. It is one of the world's most important centres for the life sciences industry.\nSwitzerland had the second-highest global rating in the Index of Economic Freedom 2023, while also providing significant public services. On a per capita basis, nominal GDP is higher than those of the larger Western and Central European economies and Japan, while adjusted for purchasing power, Switzerland ranked 11th in 2017, fifth in 2018, and ninth in 2020.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nThe 2016 World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report ranked Switzerland's economy as the world's most competitive; as of 2019, it ranks fifth globally. The European Union labeled it Europe's most innovative country. Switzerland has been ranked the most innovative country in the Global Innovation Index in 2024, as it had done in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019. It ranked 20th of 189 countries in the Ease of Doing Business Index. Switzerland's slow growth in the 1990s and the early 2000s increased support for economic reforms and harmonisation with the European Union. In 2020, IMD placed Switzerland first in attracting skilled workers.\nFor much of the 20th century, Switzerland was the wealthiest country in Europe by a considerable margin (per capita GDP). Switzerland has one of the world's largest account balances as a percentage of GDP. In 2018, the canton of Basel-City had the highest GDP per capita, ahead of Zug and Geneva. According to Credit Suisse, only about 37% of residents own their own homes, one of the lowest rates of home ownership in Europe. Housing and food price levels were 171% and 145% of the EU-25 index in 2007, compared to 113% and 104% in Germany.\nSwitzerland is home to several large multinational corporations. The largest by revenue are Glencore, Gunvor, Nestl\u00e9, Mediterranean Shipping Company, Novartis, Hoffmann-La Roche, ABB, Mercuria Energy Group and Adecco. Also, notable are UBS, Zurich Insurance, Richemont, Credit Suisse, Barry Callebaut, Swiss Re, Rolex, Tetra Pak, Swatch Group and Swiss International Air Lines.\nSwitzerland's most important economic sector is manufacturing. Manufactured products include specialty chemicals, health and pharmaceutical goods, scientific and precision measuring instruments and musical instruments. The largest exported goods are chemicals (34% of exported goods), machines/electronics (20.9%), and precision instruments/watches (16.9%). The service sector \u2013 especially banking and insurance, commodities trading, tourism, and international organisations \u2013 is another important industry for Switzerland. Exported services amount to a third of exports.\nAgricultural protectionism\u2014a rare exception to Switzerland's free trade policies\u2014contributes to high food prices. Product market liberalisation is lagging behind many EU countries according to the OECD. Apart from agriculture, economic and trade barriers between the European Union and Switzerland are minimal, and Switzerland has free trade agreements with many countries. Switzerland is a member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).\nSwitzerland is considered as the \"land of Cooperatives\" with the ten largest cooperative companies accounting for more than 11% of GDP in 2018. They include Migros and Coop, the two largest retail companies in Switzerland.\nTaxation and government spending.\nSwitzerland is a tax haven. The private sector economy dominates. It features low tax rates; tax revenue to GDP ratio is one of the smallest of developed countries. The Swiss Federal budget reached 62.8 billion Swiss francs in 2010, 11.35% of GDP; however, canton and municipality budgets are not counted as part of the federal budget. Total government spending is closer to 33.8% of GDP. The main sources of income for the federal government are the value-added tax (33% of tax revenue) and the direct federal tax (29%). The main areas of expenditure are in social welfare and finance/taxes. The expenditures of the Swiss Confederation have been growing from 7% of GDP in 1960 to 9.7% in 1990 and 10.7% in 2010. While the social welfare and finance sectors and tax grew from 35% in 1990 to 48.2% in 2010, a significant reduction of expenditures has been occurring in agriculture and national defence; from 26.5% to 12.4% (estimation for the year 2015).\nLabour force.\nSlightly more than 5 million people work in Switzerland; about 25% of employees belonged to a trade union in 2004. Switzerland has a more flexible labor market than neighbouring countries and the unemployment rate is consistently low. The unemployment rate increased from 1.7% in June 2000 to 4.4% in December 2009. It then decreased to 3.2% in 2014 and held steady for several years, before further dropping to 2.5% in 2018 and 2.3% in 2019; in 2023 it had reached a 20-year low of 2%. Population growth (from net immigration) reached 0.52% of population in 2004, increased in the following years before falling to 0.54% again in 2017. The foreign citizen population was 28.9% in 2015, about the same as in Australia.\nIn 2016, the median monthly gross income in Switzerland was 6,502 francs per month (equivalent to US$6,597 per month). After rent, taxes and pension contributions, plus spending on goods and services, the average household has about 15% of its gross income left for savings. Though 61% of the population made less than the mean income, income inequality is relatively low with a Gini coefficient of 29.7, placing Switzerland among the top 20 countries. In 2015, the richest 1% owned 35% of the wealth. Wealth inequality increased through 2019.\nAbout 8.2% of the population live below the national poverty line, defined in Switzerland as earning less than CHF3,990 per month for a household of two adults and two children, and a further 15% are at risk of poverty. Single-parent families, those with no post-compulsory education and those out of work are among the most likely to live below the poverty line. Although work is considered a way out of poverty, some 4.3% are considered working poor. One in ten jobs in Switzerland is considered low-paid; roughly 12% of Swiss workers hold such jobs, many of them women and foreigners.\nEducation and science.\nEducation in Switzerland is diverse, because the constitution of Switzerland delegates the operation for the school system to the cantons. Public and private schools are available, including many private international schools.\nPrimary education.\nThe minimum age for primary school is about six years, but most cantons provide a free \"children's school\" starting at age four or five. Primary school continues until grade four, five or six, depending on the school. Traditionally, the first foreign language in school was one of the other Swiss languages, although in 2000, English was elevated in a few cantons. At the end of primary school or at the beginning of secondary school, pupils are assigned according to their capacities into one of several sections (often three). The fastest learners are taught advanced classes to prepare for further studies and the matura, while other students receive an education adapted to their needs.\nTertiary education.\nSwitzerland hosts 12 universities, ten of which are maintained at cantonal level and usually offer non-technical subjects. It ranked 87th on the 2019 Academic Ranking of World Universities. The largest is the University of Zurich with nearly 25,000 students. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) and the University of Zurich are listed 20th and 54th respectively, on the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities.\nThe federal government sponsors two institutes: the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) in Zurich, founded in 1855 and the (EPFL) in Lausanne, founded in 1969, formerly associated with the University of Lausanne.\nEight of the world's ten best hotel schools are located in Switzerland. In addition, various universities of applied sciences are available. In business and management studies, the University of St. Gallen, (HSG) is ranked 329th in the world according to QS World University Rankings and the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), was ranked first in open programmes worldwide\".\" Switzerland has the second highest rate (almost 18% in 2003) of foreign students in tertiary education, after Australia (slightly over 18%).\nThe Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, located in Geneva, is continental Europe's oldest graduate school of international and development studies. It is widely held to be one of its most prestigious.\nScience.\nSwitzerland is among the countries with the highest number of Nobel laureates, both in total and per capita; of the 28 Swiss nationals who have won the Nobel Prize, 23 were recognised in the sciences. Among the most famous is Albert Einstein, who became a Swiss citizen in 1901 and developed his theory of special relativity in Bern. Among the Nobel laureates born or nautralised in Switzerland are Vladimir Prelog, Heinrich Rohrer, Richard Ernst, Edmond Fischer, Rolf Zinkernagel, Kurt W\u00fcthrich and Jacques Dubochet. Over 100 laureates across all fields have a relationship to Switzerland. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded nine times to organisations headquartered in Switzerland.\nGeneva and the nearby French department of Ain co-host the world's largest laboratory, CERN, dedicated to particle physics research. Another important research centre is the Paul Scherrer Institute, which conducts multi-disciplinary research in the natural and engineering sciences. \nNotable Swiss inventions include lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), diazepam (Valium), Velcro, and the scanning tunnelling microscope (which earned inventors Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics. Auguste Piccard became the first person to enter the Stratosphere with his pressurised hydrogen ballon, while his son Jacques Piccard became one of the first people to explore the deepest known part of the world's ocean (along with American Don Walsh).\nThe Swiss Space Office has been involved in various space technologies and programmes. It was one of the 10 founders of the European Space Agency in 1975 and is the seventh largest contributor to the ESA budget. In the private sector, several companies participate in the space industry, such as Oerlikon Space and Maxon Motors.\nEnergy.\nElectricity generated in Switzerland is 56% from hydroelectricity and 39% from nuclear power, producing negligible CO2. On 18 May 2003, two anti-nuclear referendums were defeated: \"Moratorium Plus\", aimed at forbidding the building of new nuclear power plants (41.6% supported), and Electricity Without Nuclear (33.7% supported) after a moratorium expired in 2000. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, in 2011 the government announced plans to end the use of nuclear energy in the following 20 to 30 years. In November 2016, Swiss voters rejected a Green Party referendum to accelerate the phaseout of nuclear power (45.8% supported). The Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) is responsible for energy supply and energy use within the Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC). The agency supports the 2000-watt society initiative to cut the nation's energy use by more than half by 2050.\nTransport.\nThe densest rail network in Europe spans and carried 614 million passengers in 2023. In 2015, each Swiss resident travelled on average by rail, more than any other European country. Virtually 100% of the network is electrified. 60% of the network is operated by the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB\u00a0CFF\u00a0FFS). Besides the second largest standard gauge railway company, BLS AG, two railways companies operate on narrow gauge networks: the Rhaetian Railway (RhB) in Graub\u00fcnden, which includes some World Heritage lines, and the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn (MGB), which co-operates with RhB the Glacier Express between Zermatt and St. Moritz/Davos. Switzerland operates the world's longest and deepest railway tunnel and the first flat, low-level route through the Alps, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the largest part of the New Railway Link through the Alps (NRLA) project.\nSwitzerland has a publicly managed, toll-free road network financed by highway permits as well as vehicle and petrol taxes. The Swiss autobahn/autoroute system requires the annual purchase of a vignette (toll sticker)\u2014for 40 Swiss francs\u2014to use its roadways, including passenger cars and trucks. The Swiss autobahn/autoroute network stretches for and has one of the highest motorway densities in the world.\nZurich Airport is Switzerland's largest international flight gateway; it handled 22.8\u00a0million passengers in 2012. The other international airports are Geneva Airport (13.9\u00a0million passengers in 2012), EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg (located in France), Bern Airport, Lugano Airport, St. Gallen-Altenrhein Airport and Sion Airport. Swiss International Air Lines is the flag carrier. Its main hub is Zurich, but it is legally domiciled in Basel.\nEnvironment.\nSwitzerland has one of the best environmental records among developed nations. It is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol. With Mexico and South Korea, it forms the Environmental Integrity Group (EIG).\nThe country is active in recycling and anti-littering programs and is one of the world's top recyclers, recovering 66% to 96% of recyclable materials, varying across the country. The 2014 Global Green Economy Index placed Switzerland among the top 10 green economies.\nSwitzerland has an economic system for garbage disposal, which is based mostly on recycling and energy-producing incinerators. As in other European countries, the illegal disposal of garbage is heavily fined. In almost all Swiss municipalities, mandatory stickers or dedicated garbage bags allow the identification of disposable garbage.\nDemographics.\nIn common with other developed countries, the Swiss population increased rapidly during the industrial era, quadrupling between 1800 and 1990, and it has continued to grow.\nThe population is about 9 million (2023 est.). Population growth is projected to continue to 2035, due mostly to immigration. Like most of Europe, Switzerland faces an ageing population, with a fertility rate close to replacement level. Switzerland has one of the world's oldest populations, with an average age of 44.5 years.\nAccording to the World Factbook, ethnic groups in Switzerland are as follows: Swiss 69.2%, German 4.2%, Italian 3.2%, Portuguese 2.5%, French 2.1%, Kosovan 1.1%, Turkish 1%, other 16.7% (2020 est). The Council of Europe figures suggest a population of around 30,000 Romani people in the country.\nImmigration.\nIn 2023, resident foreigners made up 26.3% of Switzerland's population. Most of these (83%) were from European countries. Italy provided the largest single group of foreigners, providing 14.7% of total foreign population, followed closely by Germany (14.0%), Portugal (11.7%), France (6.6%), Kosovo (5.1%), Spain (3.9%), Turkey (3.1%), North Macedonia (3.1%), Serbia (2.8%), Austria (2.0%), United Kingdom (1.9%), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1.3%) and Croatia (1.3%). Immigrants from Sri Lanka (1.3%), most of them former Tamil refugees, were the largest group of Asian origin (7.9%).\n2021 figures show that 39.5% (compared to 34.7% in 2012) of the permanent resident population aged 15 or over (around 2.89\u00a0million), had an immigrant background. 38% of the population with an immigrant background (1.1\u00a0million) held Swiss citizenship.\nIn the 2000s, domestic and international institutions expressed concern about what was perceived as an increase in xenophobia. In reply to one critical report, the Federal Council noted that \"racism unfortunately is present in Switzerland\", but stated that the high proportion of foreign citizens in the country, as well as the generally successful integration of foreigners, underlined Switzerland's openness. A follow-up study conducted in 2018 reported that 59% considered racism a serious problem in Switzerland. The proportion of the population that claimed to have been targeted by racial discrimination increased from 10% in 2014 to almost 17% in 2018, according to the Federal Statistical Office.\nLargest cities.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nLanguages.\nSwitzerland has four national languages: mainly German (spoken natively by 62.8% of the population in 2016); French (22.9%) spoken natively in the west; and Italian (8.2%) spoken natively in the south. The fourth national language, Romansh (0.5%), is a Romance language spoken locally in the southeastern trilingual canton of Grisons, and is designated by Article 4 of the Federal Constitution as a national language along with German, French, and Italian. In Article 70 it is mentioned as an official language if the authorities communicate with persons who speak Romansh. However, federal laws and other official acts do not need to be decreed in Romansh.\nIn 2016, the languages most spoken at home among permanent residents aged 15 and older were Swiss German (59.4%), French (23.5%), Standard German (10.6%), and Italian (8.5%). Other languages spoken at home included English (5.0%), Portuguese (3.8%), Albanian (3.0%), Spanish (2.6%) and Serbian and Croatian (2.5%). 6.9% reported speaking another language at home. In 2014 almost two-thirds (64.4%) of the permanent resident population indicated speaking more than one language regularly.\nThe federal government is obliged to communicate in the official languages, and in the federal parliament simultaneous translation is provided from and into German, French and Italian.\nAside from the official forms of their respective languages, the four linguistic regions of Switzerland also have local dialectal forms. The role played by dialects in each linguistic region varies dramatically: in German-speaking regions, Swiss German dialects have become more prevalent since the second half of the 20th century, especially in the media, and are used as an everyday language for many, while the Swiss variety of Standard German is almost always used instead of dialect for written communication (cf. diglossic usage of a language). Conversely, in the French-speaking regions, local Franco-Proven\u00e7al dialects have almost disappeared (only 6.3% of the population of Valais, 3.9% of Fribourg, and 3.1% of Jura still spoke dialects at the end of the 20th century), while in the Italian-speaking regions, the use of Lombard dialects is mostly limited to family settings and casual conversation.\nThe principal official languages have terms not used outside of Switzerland, known as Helvetisms. German Helvetisms are, roughly speaking, a large group of words typical of Swiss Standard German that do not appear in Standard German, nor in other German dialects. These include terms from Switzerland's surrounding language cultures (German \"Billett\" from French), from similar terms in another language (Italian \"azione\" used not only as \"act\" but also as \"discount\" from German \"Aktion\"). Swiss French, while generally close to the French of France, also contains some Helvetisms. The most frequent characteristics of Helvetisms are in vocabulary, phrases, and pronunciation, although certain Helvetisms denote themselves as special in syntax and orthography. Duden, the comprehensive German dictionary, contains about 3000 Helvetisms. Current French dictionaries, such as the Petit Larousse, include several hundred Helvetisms; notably, Swiss French uses different terms than that of France for the numbers 70 (\"septante\") and 90 (\"nonante\") and often 80 (\"huitante\") as well.\nLearning one of the other national languages is compulsory for all Swiss pupils, hence many Swiss are supposed to be at least bilingual, especially those belonging to linguistic minority groups. Because the largest part of Switzerland is German-speaking, many French, Italian, and Romansh speakers migrating to the rest of Switzerland and the children of those non-German-speaking Swiss born within the rest of Switzerland speak German. While learning one of the other national languages at school is important, most Swiss learn English to communicate with Swiss speakers of other languages, as it is perceived as a neutral means of communication. English often functions as the de facto lingua franca.\nHealth.\nSwiss residents are required to buy health insurance from private insurance companies, which in turn are required to accept every applicant. While the cost of the system is among the highest, its health outcomes compare well with other European countries; patients have been reported as in general, highly satisfied with it. In 2012, life expectancy at birth was 80.4 years for men and 84.7 years for women \u2013 the world's highest. However, spending on health at 11.4% of GDP (2010) is on par with Germany and France (11.6%) and other European countries, but notably less than the US (17.6%). From 1990, costs steadily increased.\nIt is estimated that one out of six Swiss persons suffers from mental illness.\nAccording to a survey conducted by Addiction Switzerland, fourteen per cent of men and 6.5% of women between 20 and 24 reported consuming cannabis in the past 30 days in 2020, and 4 Swiss cities were listed among the top 10 European cities for cocaine use as measured in wastewater, down from 5 in 2018.\nCulture.\nSwiss culture is characterised by diversity, which is reflected in diverse traditional customs. A region may be in some ways culturally connected to the neighbouring country that shares its language, all rooted in western European culture. The linguistically isolated Romansh culture in Graub\u00fcnden in eastern Switzerland constitutes an exception. It survives only in the upper valleys of the Rhine and the Inn and strives to maintain its rare linguistic tradition.\nSwitzerland is home to notable contributors to literature, art, architecture, music and sciences. In addition, the country attracted creatives during times of unrest or war. Some 1000 museums are found in the country.\nAmong the most important cultural performances held annually are the Pal\u00e9o Festival, Lucerne Festival, the Montreux Jazz Festival, the Locarno International Film Festival and Art Basel.\nAlpine symbolism played an essential role in shaping Swiss history and the Swiss national identity. Many alpine areas and ski resorts attract visitors for winter sports as well as hiking and mountain biking in summer. The quieter seasons are spring and autumn. A traditional pastoral culture predominates in many areas, and small farms are omnipresent in rural areas. Folk art is nurtured in organisations across the country. Switzerland most directly in appears in music, dance, poetry, wood carving, and embroidery. The alphorn, a trumpet-like musical instrument made of wood has joined yodeling and the accordion as epitomes of traditional Swiss music.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nChristianity is the predominant religion according to national surveys of Swiss Federal Statistical Office (about 67% of resident population in 2016\u20132018 and 75% of Swiss citizens), divided between the Catholic Church (35.8% of the population), the Swiss Reformed Church (23.8%), further Protestant churches (2.2%), Eastern Orthodoxy (2.5%), and other Christian denominations (2.2%).\nSwitzerland has no official state religion, though most of the cantons (except Geneva and Neuch\u00e2tel) recognise official churches, either the Catholic Church or the Swiss Reformed Church. These churches, and in some cantons the Old Catholic Church and Jewish congregations, are financed by official taxation of members. In 2020, the Roman Catholic Church had 3,048,475 registered and church tax paying members (corresponding to 35.2% of the total population), while the Swiss Reformed Church had 2,015,816 members (23.3% of the total population).\n26.3% of Swiss permanent residents are not affiliated with a religious community.\nAs of 2020, according to a national survey conducted by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, Christian minority communities included Neo-Pietism (0.5%), Pentecostalism (0.4%, mostly incorporated in the Schweizer Pfingstmission), Apostolic communities (0.3%), other Protestant denominations (1.1%, including Methodism), the Old Catholic Church (0.1%), other Christian denominations (0.3%). Non-Christian religions are Islam (5.3%), Hinduism (0.6%), Buddhism (0.5%), Judaism (0.25%) and others (0.4%).\nHistorically, the country was about evenly balanced between Catholic and Protestant, in a complex patchwork. During the Reformation Switzerland became home to many reformers. Geneva converted to Protestantism in 1536, just before John Calvin arrived. In 1541, he founded the \"Republic of Geneva\" on his own ideals. It became known internationally as the \"Protestant Rome\" and housed such reformers as Theodore Beza, William Farel or Pierre Viret. Zurich became another reform stronghold around the same time, with Huldrych Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger taking the lead. Anabaptists Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel also operated there. They were later joined by the fleeing Peter Martyr Vermigli and Hans Denck. Other centres included Basel (Andreas Karlstadt and Johannes Oecolampadius), Bern (Berchtold Haller and Niklaus Manuel), and St. Gallen (Joachim Vadian). One canton, Appenzell, was officially divided into Catholic and Protestant sections in 1597. The larger cities and their cantons (Bern, Geneva, Lausanne, Zurich and Basel) used to be predominantly Protestant. Central Switzerland, the Valais, the Ticino, Appenzell Innerrhodes, the Jura, and Fribourg are traditionally Catholic.\nThe Swiss Constitution of 1848, under the recent impression of the clashes of Catholic vs Protestant cantons that culminated in the Sonderbundskrieg, consciously defines a consociational state, allowing the peaceful co-existence of Catholics and Protestants. A 1980 initiative calling for the complete separation of church and state was rejected by 78.9% of the voters. Some traditionally Protestant cantons and cities nowadays have a slight Catholic majority, because since about 1970 a steadily growing minority were not affiliated with any religious body (21.4% in Switzerland, 2012) especially in traditionally Protestant regions, such as Basel-City (42%), canton of Neuch\u00e2tel (38%), canton of Geneva (35%), canton of Vaud (26%), or Zurich city (city: >25%; canton: 23%).\nLiterature.\nThe earliest forms of literature were in German, reflecting the language's early predominance. In the 18th century, French became fashionable in Bern and elsewhere, while the influence of the French-speaking allies and subject lands increased.\nAmong the classic authors of Swiss literature are Jeremias Gotthelf (1797\u20131854) and Gottfried Keller (1819\u20131890); later writers are Max Frisch (1911\u20131991) and Friedrich D\u00fcrrenmatt (1921\u20131990), whose (\"\") was released as a Hollywood film in 2001, starring Jack Nicholson.\nFamous French-speaking writers were Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712\u20131778) and Germaine de Sta\u00ebl (1766\u20131817). More recent authors include Charles Ferdinand Ramuz (1878\u20131947), whose novels describe the lives of peasants and mountain dwellers, set in a harsh environment, and Blaise Cendrars (born Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Sauser, 1887\u20131961). Italian and Romansh-speaking authors also contributed to the Swiss literary landscape, generally in proportion to their number.\nProbably the most famous Swiss literary creation, \"Heidi\", the story of an orphan girl who lives with her grandfather in the Alps, is one of the most popular children's books and has come to be a symbol of Switzerland. Her creator, Johanna Spyri (1827\u20131901), wrote a number of books on similar themes.\nMedia.\nFreedom of the press and the right to free expression is guaranteed in the constitution. The Swiss News Agency (SNA) broadcasts information in three of the four national languages\u2014on politics, economics, society and culture. The SNA supplies almost all Swiss media and foreign media with its reporting.\nIn Switzerland, the most influential newspapers include the German-language and \"Neue Z\u00fcrcher Zeitung\", as well as the French-language \"Le Temps\". Additionally, almost every city has at least one local newspaper published in the predominant local language.\nThe government exerts greater control over broadcast media than print media, especially due to financing and licensing. The Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, whose name was recently changed to SRG SSR, is charged with the production and distribution of radio and television content. SRG SSR studios are distributed across the various language regions. Radio content is produced in six central and four regional studios while video media are produced in Geneva, Zurich, Basel, and Lugano. An extensive cable network allows most Swiss to access content from neighbouring countries.\nSports.\nSkiing, snowboarding and mountaineering are among the most popular sports, reflecting the nature of the country Winter sports are practised by natives and visitors. The bobsleigh was invented in St. Moritz. The first world ski championships were held in M\u00fcrren (1931) and St. Moritz (1934). The latter town hosted the second Winter Olympic Games in 1928 and the fifth edition in 1948. Among its most successful skiers and world champions are Pirmin Zurbriggen and Didier Cuche.\nThe most prominently watched sports in Switzerland are football and ice hockey.\nThe headquarters of the international football's and ice hockey's governing bodies, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) and International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) are located in Zurich. Many other headquarters of international sports federations are located in Switzerland. For example, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), IOC's Olympic Museum and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) are located in Lausanne.\nSwitzerland hosted the 1954 FIFA World Cup and was the joint host, with Austria, of the UEFA Euro 2008 tournament. The Swiss Super League is the nation's professional football club league. Europe's highest football pitch, at above sea level, is located in Switzerland, the \"Ottmar Hitzfeld Stadium\".\nMany Swiss follow ice hockey and support one of the 12 teams of the National League, which is the most attended league in Europe. In 2009, Switzerland hosted the IIHF World Championship for the tenth time. It also became World Vice-Champion in 2013 and 2018. Its numerous lakes make Switzerland an attractive sailing destination. The largest, Lake Geneva, is the home of the sailing team Alinghi which was the first European team to win the America's Cup in 2003 and which successfully defended the title in 2007.\nSwiss tennis player Roger Federer is widely regarded as among the sport's greatest players. He won 20 Grand Slam tournaments overall including a record 8 Wimbledon titles. He won six ATP Finals. He was ranked no. 1 in the ATP rankings for a record 237 consecutive weeks. He ended 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009 ranked no. 1. Fellow Swiss players Martina Hingis and Stan Wawrinka also won multiple Grand Slam titles. Switzerland won the Davis Cup title in 2014.\nMotorsport racecourses and events were banned in Switzerland following the 1955 Le Mans disaster with exceptions for events such as hillclimbing. The country continued to produce successful racing drivers such as Clay Regazzoni, S\u00e9bastien Buemi, Jo Siffert, Dominique Aegerter, successful World Touring Car Championship driver Alain Menu, 2014 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Marcel F\u00e4ssler and 2015 24 Hours N\u00fcrburgring winner Nico M\u00fcller. Switzerland also won the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport in 2007\u201308 with driver Neel Jani. Swiss motorcycle racer Thomas L\u00fcthi won the 2005 MotoGP World Championship in the 125cc category. In June 2007 the Swiss National Council, one house of the Federal Assembly of Switzerland, voted to overturn the ban, however the other house, the Swiss Council of States rejected the change and the ban remains in place.\nTraditional sports include Swiss wrestling or , a tradition from the rural central cantons and considered the national sport by some. Hornussen is another indigenous Swiss sport, which is like a cross between baseball and golf. is the Swiss variant of stone put, a competition in throwing a heavy stone. Practised only among the alpine population since prehistoric times, it is recorded to have taken place in Basel in the 13th century. It is central to the Unspunnenfest, first held in 1805, with its symbol the 83.5 stone named .\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine is multifaceted. While dishes such as fondue, raclette or r\u00f6sti are omnipresent, each region developed its gastronomy according to the varieties of climate and language, for example, , engl.: sliced meat Zurich style. Traditional Swiss cuisine uses ingredients similar to those in other European countries, as well as unique dairy products and cheeses such as Gruy\u00e8re or Emmental, produced in the valleys of Gruy\u00e8res and Emmental. The number of fine-dining establishments is high, particularly in western Switzerland.\nChocolate has been made in Switzerland since the 18th century. Its reputation grew at the end of the 19th century with the invention of modern techniques such as conching and tempering, which enabled higher quality. Another breakthrough was the invention of solid milk chocolate in 1875 by Daniel Peter. The Swiss are the world's largest chocolate consumers.\nThe most popular alcoholic drink is wine. Switzerland is notable for its variety of grape varieties, reflecting the large variations in terroirs. Swiss wine is produced mainly in Valais, Vaud (Lavaux), Geneva and Ticino, with a small majority of white wines. Vineyards have been cultivated in Switzerland since the Roman era, even though traces of a more ancient origin can be found. The most widespread varieties are the Chasselas (called Fendant in Valais) and Pinot Noir. Merlot is the main variety produced in Ticino.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "34260322": "I Love America (Patrick Juvet song)\n\"I Love America\" is a 1978 disco hit by Swiss singer Patrick Juvet. Along with the tracks, \"Where Is My Woman\" and \"Got A Feeling\", it peaked at number five on the disco chart in the United States. It was included in the compilation album, \"A Night at Studio 54\", in 1979.\nIn 1996, \"I Love America\" was sampled for Full Intention's dance hit \"America (I Love America)\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["34260322", "3184267", "26748"], "permutation_1": ["26748", "34260322", "3184267"], "permutation_2": ["34260322", "3184267", "26748"], "permutation_3": ["3184267", "26748", "34260322"]}
{"id": "3hop1__850160_15840_36014", "docs_added": {"4662915": "Pictionary (video game)\n1990 video game\nPictionary, taglined The Game of Video Quick Draw, is a video board game developed by Software Creations and published by LJN for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It is based on the board game of the same name. Players may play in up to four teams of unlimited players.\nThe game is notorious for its uncharacteristically enthusiastic soundtrack, and has received a lot of retrospective accolades for how intricately and professionally done the game's six songs are. \nModes of play.\nThere are two modes of play: \"Regular Game\" and \"Alternative Game\".\nRegular game mode.\nIn \"Regular Game\" mode, you can either play in teams, or against the CPU. If you play against the CPU, or if you play with only two people, then the game is played by completing a series of minigames, every point scored revealing a part of a picture, and after the minigame is over, you must guess what the picture is, based on the amount you've been able to reveal.\nIf you're successful in guessing what the picture is, then you can \"roll\" a virtual die, to decide how many spaces you may move along the \"board\". The first person to reach the end of the board wins the game.\nIf you play in teams of two or more, then a \"designated drawer\" is chosen, and instead of the computer drawing a picture, you yourself draw a picture of something the computer has pre-decided upon (for example, 'snowmobile') using the controller, and if it is correctly guessed, the user must use the honor system to tell the game whether or not the answer was guessed correctly.\nIf your team guesses correctly, you may roll the virtual die, and proceed that number of spaces down the board. Whoever reaches the finish space first wins the game.\nAlternative game mode.\nAlternative Game Mode is played much the same way as \"Regular Game Mode\", except instead of the Computer supplying an answer, the designated drawer does so himself, and both teams may guess instead of just the drawer's team. At the end of a round, the game asks which team was successful in guessing, and you may choose \"Nobody did\", Team 1, Team 2, Team 3, or Team 4. If no one wins, then play moves on to the other team's designated drawer, and a new round begins. If a team guesses correctly, they may roll the virtual die, and proceed down the board. The first team to reach the end of the board is declared the winner.\nReception.\n\"Nintendo Power\" gave \"Pictionary\" a score of 3.5/5 for graphics and sound, 2.7/5 for play control, 3.1/5 for challenge, and 3/5 for theme and fun.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "28314": "Super Nintendo Entertainment System\nHome video game console\nThe Super Nintendo Entertainment System, commonly shortened to Super Nintendo, Super NES or SNES, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in Europe and Oceania and 1993 in South America. In Japan, it is called the In South Korea, it is called the Super Comboy and was distributed by Hyundai Electronics. The system was released in Brazil on August 30, 1993, by Playtronic. In Russia and CIS, the system was distributed by Steepler from 1994 until 1996. Although each version is essentially the same, several forms of regional lockout prevent cartridges for one version from being used in other versions.\nThe Super NES is Nintendo's second programmable home console, following the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The console introduced advanced graphics and sound capabilities compared with other systems at the time, like the Sega Genesis. It was designed to accommodate the ongoing development of a variety of enhancement chips integrated into game cartridges to be more competitive into the next generation.\nThe Super NES received largely positive reviews and was a global success, becoming the best-selling console of the 16-bit era after launching relatively late and facing intense competition from Sega's Genesis console in North America and Europe. Overlapping the NES's 61.9\u00a0million unit sales, the Super NES remained popular well into the 32-bit era, with 49.1\u00a0million units sold worldwide by the time it was discontinued in 2003. It continues to be popular among collectors and retro gamers, with new homebrew games and Nintendo's emulated rereleases, such as on the Virtual Console, the Super NES Classic Edition, Nintendo Switch Online; as well as several non-console emulators which operate on a desktop computer or mobile device, such as Snes9x.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nTo compete with the popular Family Computer in Japan, NEC Home Electronics launched the PC Engine in 1987, and Sega followed suit with the Mega Drive in 1988. The two platforms were later launched in North America in 1989 as the TurboGrafx-16 and the Sega Genesis respectively. Both systems were built on 16-bit architectures and offered improved graphics and sound over the 8-bit NES. It took several years for Sega's system to become successful. Bill Mensch, the co-creator of the 8-bit MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor and founder of the Western Design Center (WDC), gave Ricoh the exclusive right to supply 8-bit and 16-bit WDC microprocessors for the new system. Meanwhile, Sony engineer Ken Kutaragi reached an agreement with Nintendo to design the console's sound chip without notifying his supervisors, who were enraged when they discovered the project; though Kutaragi was nearly fired, then-CEO Norio Ohga intervened in support of the project and gave him permission to complete it.\nOn September 9, 1987, then-Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi revealed the development of the Super Famicom in the newspaper \"Kyoto Shimbun\". On August 30, 1988, in an interview with \"TOUCH Magazine\", Yamauchi announced the development of \"Super Mario Bros. 4\", \"Dragon Quest V\", three original games, and he projected sales of 3 million units of the upcoming console. \"Famicom Hissyoubon\" magazine speculated that Yamauchi's early announcement was probably made to forestall Christmas shopping for the PC Engine, and relayed Enix's clarification that it was waiting on sales figures to select either PC Engine or Super Famicom for its next \"Dragon Quest\" game. The magazine and Enix both expressed a strong interest in networking as a standard platform feature. The console was demonstrated to the Japanese press on November 21, 1988, and again on July 28, 1989.\nLaunch.\nDesigned by Masayuki Uemura, the designer of the original Famicom, the Super Famicom was released in Japan on Wednesday, November 21, 1990, for \u00a5. It was an instant success. Nintendo's initial shipment of 300,000 units sold out within hours, and the resulting social disturbance led the Japanese government to ask video game manufacturers to schedule future console releases on weekends. This gained the attention of the yakuza criminal organizations, so the devices were shipped at night to avoid robbery.\nWith the Super Famicom quickly outselling its rivals, Nintendo reasserted itself as the leader of the Japanese console market. Nintendo's success was partially due to the retention of most of its key third-party developers, including Capcom, Konami, Tecmo, Square, Koei, and Enix.\nNintendo released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, a redesigned version of the Super Famicom, in North America for US$. It began shipping in limited quantities on August 23, 1991, with an official nationwide release date of September 9, 1991. The Super NES was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland in April 1992 for \u00a3.\nMost of the PAL region versions of the console use the Japanese Super Famicom design, except for labeling and the length of the joypad leads. The Playtronic Super NES in Brazil, although PAL-M, uses the North American design. Both the NES and Super NES were released in Brazil in 1993 by Playtronic, a joint venture between the toy company Estrela and consumer electronics company Gradiente.\nThe Super NES and Super Famicom launched with few games, but these games were well received. In Japan, only two games were initially available: \"Super Mario World\" and \"F-Zero\". \"Bombuzal\" was released during the launch week. In North America, \"Super Mario World\" was launched as a bundle with the console; other launch games include \"F-Zero\", \"Pilotwings\" (both of which demonstrate the console's Mode 7 pseudo-3D rendering), \"SimCity\", and \"Gradius III\".\nConsole wars.\nThe rivalry between Nintendo and Sega was described as one of the most notable console wars in video game history, in which Sega positioned the Genesis as the \"cool\" console, with games aimed at older audiences, and aggressive advertisements that occasionally attacked the competition. Nintendo scored an early public-relations advantage by securing the first console conversion of Capcom's arcade hit \"Street Fighter II\" for Super NES, which took more than a year to make the transition to the Genesis. Though the Genesis had a two-year lead to launch time, a much larger library of games, and a lower price point, it only represented an estimated 60% of the American 16-bit console market in June 1992, and neither console could maintain a definitive lead for several years. \"Donkey Kong Country\" is said to have helped establish the Super NES's market prominence in the latter years of the 16-bit generation, and for a time, maintain against the PlayStation and Saturn. According to Nintendo, the company had sold more than 20\u00a0million Super NES units in the U.S. According to a 2014 Wedbush Securities report based on NPD sales data, the Super NES outsold the Genesis in the U.S. market by 1.5 million units.\nChanges in policy.\nDuring the NES era, Nintendo maintained exclusive control over games released for the system \u2013 the company had to approve every game, each third-party developer could only release up to five games per year (but some third parties got around this by using different names, such as Konami's \"Ultra Games\" brand), those games could not be released on another console within two years, and Nintendo was the exclusive manufacturer and supplier of NES cartridges. Competition from Sega's console brought an end to this practice; in 1991, Acclaim Entertainment began releasing games for both platforms, with most of Nintendo's other licensees following suit over the next several years; Capcom (which licensed some games to Sega instead of producing them directly) and Square were the most notable holdouts.\nNintendo continued to carefully review submitted games, scoring them on a 40-point scale and allocating marketing resources accordingly. Each region performed separate evaluations. Nintendo of America also maintained a policy that, among other things, limited the amount of violence in the games on its systems. The surprise arcade hit \"Mortal Kombat\" (1992), a gory fighting game with huge splashes of blood and graphically violent fatality moves, was heavily censored by Nintendo. Because the Genesis version allowed for an uncensored version via cheat code, it outsold the censored Super NES version by a ratio of nearly three to one.\nU.S. Senators Herb Kohl and Joe Lieberman convened a Congressional hearing on December 9, 1993, to investigate the marketing of violent video games to children. Though Nintendo took the high ground with moderate success, the hearings led to the creation of the Interactive Digital Software Association and the Entertainment Software Rating Board and the inclusion of ratings on all video games. With these ratings in place, Nintendo decided its censorship policies were no longer needed.\n32-bit era and beyond.\nWhile other companies were moving on to 32-bit systems, Rare and Nintendo proved that the Super NES was still a strong contender in the market. In November 1994, Rare released \"Donkey Kong Country\", a platform game featuring 3D models and textures pre-rendered on Silicon Graphics workstations. With its detailed graphics, fluid animation, and high-quality music, \"Donkey Kong Country\" rivals the aesthetic quality of games that were being released on newer 32-bit CD-based consoles. In the last 45 days of 1994, 6.1\u00a0million copies were sold, making it the fastest-selling video game in history to that date. This game conveyed that early 32-bit systems had little to offer over the Super NES, and proved the market for the more advanced consoles of the near future. According to TRSTS reports, two of the top five bestselling games in the U.S. for December 1996 are Super NES games.\nIn October 1997, Nintendo released a redesigned model of the Super NES (the SNS-101 model referred to as \"New-Style Super NES\") in North America for US$, with some units including the pack-in game \"\". Like the earlier New-Style NES (model NES-101), this is slimmer and lighter than its predecessor, but it lacks S-Video and RGB output, and it is among the last major Super NES-related releases in the region. A similarly redesigned Super Famicom Jr. was released in Japan at around the same time. The redesign stayed out of Europe.\nNintendo ceased production of the Super NES in North America in 1999, about two years after releasing \"Kirby's Dream Land 3\" (its final second-party game in the US) on November 27, 1997, and one year after releasing \"Frogger\" (its final third-party game in the US) in 1998. In Japan, Nintendo continued production of both the Family Computer and the Super Famicom until September 25, 2003, and new games were produced until the year 2000, ending with the release of \"Metal Slader Glory Director's Cut\" on November 29, 2000.\nMany popular Super NES games were ported to the Game Boy Advance, which has similar video capabilities. In 2005, Nintendo announced that Super NES games would be made available for download via the Wii's Virtual Console service. On October 31, 2007, Nintendo Co., Ltd. announced that it would no longer repair Family Computer or Super Famicom systems due to an increasing shortage of the necessary parts. On March 3, 2016, Nintendo Co., Ltd. announced that it would bring Super NES games to the New Nintendo 3DS and New Nintendo 3DS XL (and later the New Nintendo 2DS XL) via its eShop download service. At the Nintendo Direct event on September 4, 2019, Nintendo announced that it would be bringing select Super NES games to the Nintendo Switch Online platform.\nHardware.\nTechnical specifications.\nThe 16-bit design of the Super NES incorporates graphics and sound co-processors that perform tiling and simulated 3D effects, a palette of 32,768 colors, and 8-channel ADPCM audio. These base platform features, plus the ability to dramatically extend them all through substantial chip upgrades inside of each cartridge, represent a leap over the 8-bit NES generation and some significant advantages over 16-bit competitors such as the Genesis.\nCPU and RAM.\nThe CPU is a Ricoh 5A22, a derivative of the 16-bit WDC 65C816 microprocessor. In NTSC regions, its nominal clock speed is 3.58 MHz will slow to either 2.68\u00a0MHz or 1.79\u00a0MHz when accessing some slower peripherals.\nThis CPU has an 8-bit data bus and two address buses. The 24-bit \"Bus\u00a0A\" is designated for general accesses, and the 8-bit \"Bus\u00a0B\" can access support chip registers such as the video and audio co-processors.\nThe WDC 65C816 supports an 8-channel DMA unit, an 8-bit parallel I/O port a controller port interface circuits allowing serial and parallel access to controller data, a 16-bit multiplication and division unit, and circuitry for generating non-maskable interrupts on V-blank and IRQ interrupts on calculated screen positions.\nEarly revisions of the 5A22 used in SHVC boards are prone to spontaneous failure which can produce a variety of symptoms including graphics glitches in Mode 7, a black screen on power-on, or improperly reading the controllers. The first revision 5A22 has a fatal bug in the DMA controller that can crash games; this was corrected in subsequent revisions.\nThe console contains 128KB of general-purpose \"work\" RAM, which is separate from the 64KB dedicated to the video subsystem and the 64KB dedicated to the audio subsystem.\nVideo.\nThe Picture Processing Unit (PPU) consists of two closely tied IC packages. It contains 64KB of SRAM for video data, 544 bytes of object attribute memory (OAM) for sprite data, and 256\u00a0\u00d7\u00a015 bits of color generator RAM (CGRAM) for palette data. This CGRAM provisions up to 256 colors, chosen from the 15-bit RGB color space, from a palette of 32,768 colors. The PPU is clocked by the same signal as the CPU and generates a pixel every two or four cycles.\nAudio.\nThe S-SMP audio subsystem consisted of a 16-bit digital signal processor (DSP) to sequence the mix samples, an 8-bit SPC700 CPU to drive the DSP and 64KB of dedicated PSRAM. It was designed by Ken Kutaragi and produced by Sony and is completely independent from the rest of the system. It is clocked at a nominal 24.576\u00a0MHz in both NTSC and PAL systems. It is capable of stereo sound, composed from eight voices generated using 16-bit audio samples compressed using BRR and capable of applying effects such as echo. On early revisions of the motherboard the S-SMP audio system was spread across four chips: the DSP, the CPU, and two RAM modules. On later revisions, the sound hardware consolidated to a single chip, the S-APU.\nRegional lockout.\nNintendo employed several types of regional lockout, including both physical and hardware incompatibilities.\nPhysically, the cartridges are shaped differently for different regions. North American cartridges have a rectangular bottom with inset grooves matching protruding tabs in the console, and other regions' cartridges are narrower with a smooth curve on the front and no grooves. The physical incompatibility can be overcome with the use of various adapters, or through modification of the console.\nInternally, a regional lockout chip (CIC) within the console and in each cartridge prevents the PAL region games from being played on Japanese or North American consoles and vice versa. The Japanese and North American machines have the same region chip. This can be overcome through the use of adapters, typically by inserting the imported cartridge in one slot and a cartridge with the correct region chip in a second slot. Alternatively, disconnecting one pin of the console's lockout chip will prevent it from locking the console; hardware in later games can detect this situation, so it became common to install a switch to reconnect the lockout chip as needed.\nPAL consoles face another incompatibility when playing out-of-region cartridges: the NTSC video standard specifies video at 60\u00a0Hz but PAL operates at 50\u00a0Hz, resulting in an approximately 16.7% slower framerate. PAL's higher resolution results in letterboxing of the output image. Some commercial PAL region releases exhibit this same problem and, therefore, can be played in NTSC systems without issue, but other games will face a 20% speedup if played in an NTSC console. To mostly correct this issue, a switch can be added to place the Super NES PPU into a 60\u00a0Hz mode supported by most newer PAL televisions. Later games will detect this setting and refuse to run, requiring the switch to be thrown only after the check completes.\nCasing.\nAll models of the Super NES control deck are predominantly gray, of slightly different shades. The original North American version, designed by Nintendo of America industrial designer Lance Barr (who previously redesigned the Famicom to become the NES), has a boxy design with purple sliding switches and a dark gray eject lever. The loading bay surface is curved, both to invite interaction and to prevent food or drinks from being placed on the console and spilling as with the flat-surfaced NES. The Japanese and European versions are more rounded, with darker gray accents and buttons.\nAll versions incorporate a top-loading slot for game cartridges, although the shape of the slot differs between regions to match the different shapes of the cartridges. The MULTI OUT connector (later used on the Nintendo 64 and GameCube) can output composite video, S-Video and RGB signals, as well as RF with an external RF modulator. Original versions additionally include a 28-pin expansion port under a small cover on the bottom of the unit and a standard RF output with channel selection switch on the back; the redesigned models output composite video only, requiring an external modulator for RF.\nThe Nintendo Super System (NSS) is an arcade system for retail preview of 11 particular Super NES games in the United States, similar to the PlayChoice-10 for NES games. It consists of slightly modified Super NES hardware with a menu interface and 25-inch monitor, that allows gameplay for a certain amount of time depending on game credits. Manufacturing of this model was discontinued in 1992.\nRedesigned model.\nA cost-reduced version of the console, referred to as the New-Style Super NES (model SNS-101) in North America and as the in Japan, was released late in the platform's lifespan; designed by Barr, it incorporates design elements from both the original North American and Japanese/European console models but in a smaller form factor. Unlike the original console models, the redesigned model is virtually identical across both regions save for the color palette (the North American model receiving purple buttons and the Japanese model receiving grey buttons). The redesign did not receive a release in Europe.\nExternally, the power and reset buttons were moved to the left-hand side of the console while the cartridge eject button and power LED indicator were omitted. Internally, the redesigned model consolidates the console's hardware into a system-on-chip (SoC) design. The redesigned console lacks the bottom expansion slot, rendering it incompatible with the Japan-exclusive Satellaview add-on.\nFor AV output, the redesigned console features the same multi-out port used on the original models. Unlike the latter models, the former's AV port only supports composite video output natively as support for RGB video and S-Video was disabled internally; however, they can be restored via a \"relatively simple\" modification. The internal RF modulator was also removed, requiring an external one for such output if needed. Due to the SoC design, it is highly sought after by Super NES/Famicom enthusiasts since its RGB video quality (if restored) is improved over earlier internal revisions of the console.\nThe redesigned console first released in October 1997 in North America, where it originally retailed for US$99.95 in a bundle with \"\";\nit was subsequently released in Japan on March 27, 1998, where it retailed for \u00a57,800. Nintendo marketed it as an entry-level gamer's system for consumers who were apprehensive about the higher price of newer systems such as the Nintendo 64. Nintendo also introduced a slightly altered controller for it, with the console's logo replaced by an embossed Nintendo logo.\nYellowing.\nThe ABS plastic used in the casing of some older Super NES and Super Famicom consoles is particularly susceptible to oxidation with exposure to air. This, along with the particularly light color of the original plastic, causes affected consoles to quickly become yellow; if the sections of the casing came from different batches of plastic, a \"two-tone\" effect results. This issue may be reversed with a method called Retrobrighting, where a mixture of chemicals is applied to the case and exposed to UV light.\nGame cartridge.\nSuper NES games are distributed on ROM cartridges, officially referred to as Game Pak in most Western regions, and as in Japan and parts of Latin America. Though the Super NES can address 128\u00a0Mbit, only 117.75\u00a0Mbit are actually available for cartridge use. A fairly normal mapping could easily address up to 95\u00a0Mbit of ROM data (48\u00a0Mbit at FastROM speed) with 8\u00a0Mbit of battery-backed RAM. Most available memory access controllers only support mappings of up to 32\u00a0Mbit. The largest games released (\"Tales of Phantasia\" and \"Star Ocean\") contain 48\u00a0Mbit of ROM data, and the smallest games contain only 2\u00a0Mbit.\nCartridges may also contain battery-backed SRAM to save the game state, extra working RAM, custom coprocessors, or any other hardware that will not exceed the maximum current rating of the console.\nGames.\n1757 Super NES games were officially released: 717 in North America (plus 4 championship cartridges), 521 in Europe, 1,448 in Japan, 231 on Satellaview, and 13 on Sufami Turbo. Many Super NES games have been called some of the greatest video games of all time, such as \"Super Mario World\" (1990), \"\" (1991), \"Final Fantasy VI\" (1994), \"Donkey Kong Country\" (1994), \"EarthBound\" (1994), \"Super Metroid\" (1994), \"Chrono Trigger\" (1995) and \"Yoshi's Island\" (1995). Many Super NES games have been rereleased several times, including on the Virtual Console, Super NES Classic Edition, and the classic games service on Nintendo Switch Online. All Game Boy games are playable with the Super Game Boy add-on.\nPeripherals.\nThe Super NES controller design expands on that of the NES, with A, B, X, and Y face buttons in a diamond arrangement, and two shoulder buttons. Lance Barr created its ergonomic design, and he later adapted it in 1993 for the NES-039 \"dogbone\" controller. The Japanese and PAL region versions incorporated the four colors of the face buttons into the system's logo. The North American version's buttons were colored to match the redesigned console; the X and Y buttons are lavender with concave faces, and the A and B buttons are purple with convex faces. Several later controller designs have elements from the Super NES controller, including the PlayStation, Dreamcast, Xbox, and Wii Classic Controller. This face button layout is on future Nintendo systems since the Nintendo DS.\nSeveral peripherals add to the functionality of the Super NES. Some are required by certain games, such as the Super Scope light gun, and the Super NES Mouse for a point and click interface. Various third-parties, under license from Nintendo, released multitap adapters connecting up to five controllers into a single console, starting with the Super Multitap by Hudson Soft in conjunction with the \"Super Bomberman\" series. Specialized third-party controllers, such as the AsciiPad and Super Advantage (the successor to the NES Advantage) by Asciiware, and the Capcom Fighter Power Stick, an arcade-like joystick controller by Capcom designed specifically for \"Street Fighter II\". Unusual controllers include the BatterUP baseball bat, the Life Fitness Entertainment System (an exercise bike controller with built-in monitoring software), the TeeV Golf golf club, and the Justifier (a revolver-shaped light gun made by Konami for \"Lethal Enforcers\").\nThough Nintendo never released an adapter for playing NES games on the Super NES, the Super Game Boy adapter cartridge allows games designed for Nintendo's portable Game Boy system to be played on the Super NES. The Super Game Boy touts several feature enhancements over the Game Boy, including palette substitution, custom screen borders, and access to the Super NES console's features by specially enhanced Game Boy games. Japan also saw the release of the Super Game Boy 2, which adds a communication port to enable a second Game Boy to connect for multiplayer games.\nLike the NES before it, the Super NES has unlicensed third-party peripherals, including a new version of the Game Genie cheat cartridge designed for use with Super NES games.\nSoon after the release of the Super NES, companies began marketing backup devices such as the Super Wildcard, Super Pro Fighter Q, and Game Doctor. These devices create a backup of a cartridge, and can be used to play illicit ROM images or to copy games, violating copyright laws in many jurisdictions.\nThe Japan-only Satellaview is a satellite modem attached to the Super Famicom's expansion port and connected to the St.GIGA satellite radio station from April 23, 1995, to June 30, 2000. Satellaview subscribers could download gaming news and specially designed games, which were frequently either remakes of or sequels to older Famicom games, and released in installments. In the United States, the relatively short-lived XBAND allowed users to connect to a network via a dial-up modem to compete against other players around the country.\nNintendo attempted partnerships with Sony and then Philips, to develop CD-ROM-based peripheral prototypes for the console to compete with the TurboGrafx-CD and Sega CD. Sony produced the PlayStation (a brand name the company would use for their later independently produced console), a Super NES console with a built-in CD-ROM drive that never made it past the prototype phase. The Philips project was canceled without a prototype but Philips retained the contractual right to develop games based on Nintendo franchises, which it published for its CD-i multimedia console.\nEnhancement chips.\nAs part of the overall plan for the Super NES, rather than include an expensive CPU that would still become obsolete in a few years, the hardware designers made it easy to interface special coprocessor chips to the console, just like the MMC chips used for most NES games. This is most often characterized by 16 additional pins on the cartridge card edge.\nThe Super FX is a RISC CPU designed to perform functions that the main CPU can not feasibly do. The chip is primarily used to create 3D game worlds made with polygons, texture mapping and light source shading. The chip can also be used to enhance 2D games.\nThe Nintendo fixed-point digital signal processor (DSP) chip allowed fast vector-based calculations, bitmap conversions, both 2D and 3D coordinate transformations, and other functions. Four revisions of the chip exist, each physically identical but with different microcode. The DSP-1 version, including the later 1A and 1B bug fix revisions, is used most often; the DSP-2, DSP-3, and DSP-4 are used in only one game each.\nSimilar to the 5A22 CPU in the console, the SA-1 chip contains a 65C816 processor core clocked at 10.7\u00a0MHz, a memory mapper, DMA, decompression and bitplane conversion circuitry, several programmable timers, and CIC region lockout functionality.\nIn Japan, games could be downloaded cheaper than standard cartridges, from Nintendo Power kiosks onto special cartridges containing flash memory and a MegaChips MX15001TFC chip. The chip manages communication with the kiosks to download ROM images and has an initial menu to select a game. Some were published both in cartridge and download form, and others were download only. The service closed on February 8, 2007.\nMany cartridges contain other enhancement chips, most of which were created for use by a single company in a few games.\nReception and legacy.\nApproximately 49.1\u00a0million Super NES consoles were sold worldwide, with 23.35\u00a0million of those units sold in the Americas and 17.17\u00a0million in Japan. Although it could not quite repeat the success of the NES, which sold 61.91\u00a0million units worldwide, the Super NES was the best-selling console of its era.\nIn a 1997 year-end review, a team of five \"Electronic Gaming Monthly\" editors gave the Super NES scores of 5.5, 8.0, 7.0, 7.0, and 8.0. Though they criticized how few new games were coming out for the system and how dated its graphics were compared to current generation consoles, they regarded its selection of must-have games to be still unsurpassed. Additionally noting that used Super NES games were readily available in bargain bins, most of them still recommended buying a Super NES. In 2007, \"GameTrailers\" named the Super NES as the second-best console of all time (only behind the PlayStation 2) in their list of top ten consoles that \"left their mark on the history of gaming\", citing its graphics, sound, and library of top-quality games. In 2015, they also named it the best Nintendo console of all time, saying, \"The list of games we love from this console completely annihilates any other roster from the Big N.\" Technology columnist Don Reisinger proclaimed \"The SNES is the greatest console of all time\" in January 2008, citing the quality of the games and the console's dramatic improvement over its predecessor; fellow technology columnist Will Greenwald replied with a more nuanced view, giving the Super NES top marks with his heart, the NES with his head, and the PlayStation (for its controller) with his hands. GamingExcellence also gave the Super NES first place in 2008, declaring it \"simply the most timeless system ever created\" with many games that stand the test of time and citing its innovation in controller design, graphics capabilities, and game storytelling. At the same time, GameDaily rated it fifth of the ten greatest consoles for its graphics, audio, controllers, and games. In 2009, \"IGN\" named the Super NES the fourth-best video game console, complimenting its audio and number of AAA games.\nEmulation.\nSNES emulation began with VSMC in 1994, and Super Pasofami became the first working emulator in 1996. During that time, two competing emulation projects, Snes96 and Snes97, merged to form Snes9x. In 1997, ZSNES development began. In 2004, Bsnes development began with the goal of preservation through maximal accuracy and compatibility, and was later renamed to Higan.\nNintendo of America maintained its stance against the distribution of SNES ROM image files and the use of emulators, as it had with the NES before, saying they represent copyright infringement. Emulation proponents assert that the discontinued hardware production constitutes abandonware status, the owners' right to make a personal backup, space shifting for private use, the development of homebrew games, the frailty of ROM cartridges and consoles, and the lack of certain foreign imports. Nintendo designed a hobbyist development system for the SNES, but never released it.\nUnofficial SNES emulation is available on virtually all platforms, including Android, iOS, game consoles, and PDAs. Individual games have been bundled with official dedicated emulators on some GameCube discs, and Nintendo's Virtual Console service for the Wii introduced diverse and officially licensed SNES emulation.\nThe Super NES Classic Edition was released in September 2017 following the NES Classic Edition. This emulation-based mini-console, which is physically modeled after the North American and European versions of the SNES, is bundled with two SNES-style controllers and 21 games, including the unreleased \"Star Fox 2\".\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18944028": "Nintendo Entertainment System\nHome video game console\nThe Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on July 15, 1983, as the It was released in US test markets as the redesigned NES in October 1985, and fully launched in the US the following year. The NES was distributed in Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia throughout the 1980s under various names. As a third-generation console, it mainly competed with Sega's Master System.\nThe NES was designed by Masayuki Uemura. Nintendo's president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, called for a simple, cheap console that could run arcade games on cartridges. The controller design was reused from Nintendo's portable Game & Watch hardware. The western model was redesigned to resemble a video cassette recorder. Nintendo released add-ons such as the NES Zapper light gun for several shooting games, and R.O.B, a toy robot accessory.\nThe NES is regarded as one of the most influential consoles. It helped revitalise the American gaming industry following the video game crash of 1983, and pioneered a now-standard business model of licensing third-party developers to produce and distribute games. The NES features several influential games, including \"Super Mario Bros.\" (1985), \"The Legend of Zelda\" (1986), \"Metroid\" (1986) and \"Mega Man\" (1987), which became major franchises.\nThe NES dominated Japanese and North American markets, but initially underperformed in Europe, where it faced strong competition from the Sega Master System and microcomputers. With 61.91\u00a0million units sold, it is one of the best-selling consoles. It was succeeded in 1990 by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.\nHistory.\nBackground.\nThe video game industry experienced rapid growth and popularity from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, marked by the golden age of arcade games and the second generation of consoles. Games like \"Space Invaders\" (1978) became a phenomenon across arcades worldwide, while home consoles such as the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision gained footholds in the American market. Many companies emerged to capitalise on the growing industry, including the playing card manufacturer Nintendo.\nHiroshi Yamauchi, who had been Nintendo's president since 1949, realised that breakthroughs in the electronics industry meant that entertainment products could be produced at lower prices. Companies such as Atari and Magnavox were already selling gaming devices for use with television sets, to moderate success. Yamauchi negotiated a licence with Magnavox to sell its game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. Since Nintendo's operation was not yet sophisticated enough to design its own hardware, Yamauchi forged an alliance with Mitsubishi Electric and hired several Sharp Electronics employees to assist in developing the Color TV-Game 6 in Japan. This was followed by a more successful sequel, the Color TV-Game 15, and the handheld Game & Watch series. The successes of these machines gave Yamauchi the confidence to expand Nintendo's influence in the fledgling video game industry.\nIn 1978, Yamauchi split Nintendo into separate research and development divisions. He appointed Masayuki Uemura as head of Nintendo Research & Development 2, a division that focused solely on hardware. Yamauchi, through extensive discussions with Uemura and other engineers, recognised the potential of the developing console beyond gaming. He envisioned a home-computer system disguised as a toy, which could significantly expand Nintendo's reach if it became popular with children. This popularity would drive demand for games, with Nintendo as the sole provider. Indeed, by 1980 several systems had already been released in Japan by both American and Japanese companies. Yamauchi tasked Uemura with developing a system that would be superior to its competitors and difficult to replicate for at least a year. Uemura's main challenge was economic rather than technological; Yamauchi wanted the system to be affordable enough for widespread household adoption, aiming for a price of \u00a59,800 (less than $75) compared to existing machines priced at \u00a530,000 to \u00a550,000 ($200 to $350). The new system had to outperform other systems, both Japanese and American, while being significantly more affordable.\nInception.\nAs development progressed on the new video game system, engineers sought Yamauchi's guidance on its features. They questioned whether to include a disk drive, keyboard, data port, as well as the potential for a modem, expanded memory, and other computer-like capabilities. Yamauchi ultimately instructed Uemura to prioritise simplicity and affordability, omitting these peripherals entirely. Game cartridges, which Uemura saw as \"less intimidating\" to consumers, were chosen as the format. The team designed the system with 2,000 bytes of random-access memory (RAM), significantly more than Atari's 256 bytes. Larger cartridges also allowed for far more complex games, with thirty-two times the code capacity of Atari cartridges.\nThe console's hardware was largely based on arcade video games, particularly the hardware for Namco's \"Galaxian\" (1979) and Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\", with the goal of matching their powerful sprite and scrolling capabilities in a home system. A test model was constructed in October 1982 to verify the functionality of the hardware, and work began on programming tools. Because 65xx CPUs had not been manufactured or sold in Japan by that time, no cross-development software was available and it had to be developed from scratch. Early Famicom games were written on a NEC PC-8001 computer. LEDs on a grid were used with a digitizer to design graphics as no such software design tools existed at that time.\nThe codename for the project was \"GameCom\", but Masayuki Uemura's wife proposed the name \"Famicom\", arguing that \"In Japan, 'pasokon' is used to mean a personal computer, but it is neither a home nor personal computer. Perhaps we could say it is a family computer.\" Meanwhile, Hiroshi Yamauchi decided that the console should use a red and white theme after seeing a billboard for DX Antenna (a Japanese antenna manufacturer) which used those colors.\nDevelopment.\nThe Famicom was influenced by the ColecoVision, Coleco's competition against the Atari 2600 in the United States; the ColecoVision's top-seller was a port of Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\". The project's chief manager Takao Sawano brought a ColecoVision home to his family, impressed by its smooth graphics, which contrasts with the flicker and slowdown commonly seen on Atari 2600 games. Uemura said the ColecoVision set the bar for the Famicom. They wanted to surpass it and match the more powerful \"Donkey Kong\" arcade hardware; they took a \"Donkey Kong\" arcade cabinet to chip manufacturer Ricoh for analysis, which led to Ricoh producing the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) chip for the NES.\nOriginal plans called for the Famicom's cartridges to be the size of a cassette tape, but ultimately they ended up being twice as big. Careful design attention was paid to the cartridge connectors because loose and faulty connections often plagued arcade machines. As it necessitated 60 connection lines for the memory and expansion, Nintendo decided to produce its own connectors.\nThe controllers are hard-wired to the console with no connectors for cost reasons. The controller designs were reused from the Game & Watch machines, although the Famicom design team originally wanted to use arcade-style joysticks, even dismantling some from American game consoles to see how they worked. There were concerns regarding the durability of the joystick design and that children might step on joysticks on the floor. Katsuya Nakawaka attached a Game & Watch D-pad to the Famicom prototype and found that it was easy to use and caused no discomfort. Ultimately though, they installed a 15-pin expansion port on the front of the console so that an optional arcade-style joystick could be used.\nGunpei Yokoi suggested an eject lever, which was not necessary, but he believed that children could be entertained by pressing it. Uemura adopted his idea. Uemura added a microphone to the second controller with the idea that it could be used to make players\u2019 voices sound through the TV speaker.\nJapanese release.\nThe console was released on July 15, 1983, as the for \u00a5 () with three ports of Nintendo's successful arcade games \"Donkey Kong\", \"Donkey Kong Jr.\", and \"Popeye\". The Famicom was slow to gather success; a bad chip set caused the early revisions to crash. Following a product recall and a reissue with a new motherboard, the Famicom's popularity soared, becoming the bestselling game console in Japan by the end of 1984 in what came to be called the \"Famicom Boom\".\nNintendo launched the system with only first-party games, but after being approached by Namco and Hudson Soft in 1984, agreed to produce third-party games for a 30% fee for console licensing and production costs. This rate continued in the industry for consoles and digital storefront into the 21st century.\nNorth American release.\nNintendo targeted the North American market, entering distribution negotiations with Atari, Inc. to release a redesigned Famicom with Atari's name as the Nintendo Advanced Video Gaming System. The deal was set to be finalized and signed at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in June 1983. However, Atari discovered at that show that its competitor Coleco was illegally demonstrating its Coleco Adam computer with Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\" game. This violation of Atari's exclusive license with Nintendo to publish the game for its own computer systems delayed the implementation of Nintendo's game console marketing contract with Atari. Atari's CEO Ray Kassar was fired the next month, so the deal went nowhere, and Nintendo decided to market its system on its own.\nSubsequent plans for the Nintendo Advanced Video System likewise never materialized. It was privately demonstrated as a repackaged Famicom console featuring a keyboard, cassette data recorder, wireless joystick controller, and a special BASIC cartridge. By the beginning of 1985, more than 2.5\u00a0million Famicom units had been sold in Japan, and Nintendo soon announced plans to release it in North America as the Advanced Video Entertainment System (AVS) that year. The American video game press was skeptical that the console could have any success in the region, as the industry was still recovering from the video game crash of 1983. The March 1985 issue of \"Electronic Games\" magazine stated that \"the videogame market in America has virtually disappeared\" and that \"this could be a miscalculation on Nintendo's part\".\nThe Famicom hardware first made its North American debut in the arcades, in the form of the Nintendo VS. System in 1984. The system's success in arcades paved the way for the official release of the NES console. With US retailers refusing to stock game consoles, Yamauchi realized there was still a market for video games in the arcades, so he introduced the Famicom to North America through the arcade industry. The VS. System became a major success in North American arcades, becoming the highest-grossing arcade machine of 1985 in the United States. By the time the NES launched, nearly 100,000 VS. Systems had been sold to American arcades. The success of the VS. System gave Nintendo the confidence to release the Famicom in North America as a video game console, for which there was growing interest due to Nintendo's positive reputation in the arcades. It also gave Nintendo the opportunity to test new games as VS. Paks in the arcades, to determine which games to release for the NES launch.\nAt the 1985 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of the Famicom: a stripped-down and cost-reduced redesign of the Advanced Video System (AVS), having abandoned the home computer approach. Nintendo purposefully designed the system to avoid resembling a video game console and avoided terms associated with game consoles. Marketing manager Gail Tilden chose the term \"Game Pak\" for cartridges, \"Control Deck\" for the console, and \"Entertainment System\" for the whole platform. Renamed the \"Nintendo Entertainment System\" (\"NES\"), the new and cost-reduced version lacked most of the upscale features added in the AVS but retained many of its audiophile-inspired design elements, such as the grey colour scheme and boxy form factor. Disappointed with the cosmetically raw prototype part they received from Japan, which they nicknamed \"the lunchbox\", Nintendo of America designers Lance Barr and Don James added the two-tone gray, the black stripe, and the red lettering. To obscure the video game connotation, the NES replaced the top-loading cartridge slot of the Famicom and AVS with a front-loading chamber for software cartridges that kept the inserted cartridge out of view, reminiscent of a video cassette recorder. The Famicom's pair of hard-wired controllers and the AVS's wireless controllers were replaced with two custom 7-pin sockets for detachable wired controllers.\nAt June 1985's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of its Famicom, with a new case redesigned by Lance Barr and featuring a \"zero insertion force\" cartridge slot. The change from a top-loader in the Famicom to a front-loader was to make the new console more like a video cassette recorder, which had grown in popularity by 1985, and differentiate the unit from past video game consoles. Additionally, Uemura explained that Nintendo developers had feared that the console's electronics might face electrostatic hazards in dry American states such as Arizona and Texas, and a front-loading design would be safer if children handled the console carelessly.\nThis was deployed as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Nintendo seeded these first systems to limited American test markets starting in New York City on October 18, 1985, and followed up in Los Angeles in February 1986; the American nationwide release came on September 27, 1986. Nintendo released 17 launch games: \"10-Yard Fight\", \"Baseball\", \"Clu Clu Land\", \"Duck Hunt\", \"Excitebike\", \"Golf\", \"Gyromite\", \"Hogan's Alley\", \"Ice Climber\", \"Kung Fu\", \"Pinball\", \"Soccer\", \"Stack-Up\", \"Super Mario Bros.\", \"Tennis\", \"Wild Gunman\", and \"Wrecking Crew\". Nintendo contracted Worlds of Wonder to distribute the console physically. WoW salesman Jim Whims distinctly recalled delivering an ultimatum: \"if you want to sell Teddy Ruxpin and you want to sell Lazer Tag, you're gonna sell Nintendo as well. And if you feel that strongly about it, then you ought to just resign the line now.\" This marketing tactic led to the NES' financial success in North America in its first year; Nintendo of America would later terminate the contract and hired the company's sales staff (whom Atari offered them in 1983), while taking on physical distribution of the console itself.\nThe system's launch represented not only a new product, but also a reframing of the severely damaged home video game market in North America. The 1983 video game crash had occurred in large part due to a lack of consumer and retailer confidence in video games, which had been partially due to confusion and misrepresentation in video game marketing. Prior to the NES, the packaging of many video games presented bombastic artwork which did not represent a game's actual graphics. Furthermore, a single game such as \"Pac-Man\" appeared across consoles with substantial variations in graphics, sound, and general quality. In contrast, Nintendo's marketing strategy aimed to regain consumer and retailer confidence by delivering a singular platform whose graphics could be represented truthfully and whose qualities were clearly defined.\nTo differentiate Nintendo's new home platform from the perception of a troubled and shallow video game market still reeling from the 1983 crash, the company freshened its product nomenclature and established a strict product approval and licensing policy. The overall platform is referred to as \"Entertainment System\" instead of a \"video game system\", is centered upon a machine called a \"Control Deck\" instead of a \"console\", and features software cartridges called \"Game Paks\" instead of \"video games\". This allowed Nintendo to gain more traction in selling the system in toy stores. To deter production of games which had not been licensed by Nintendo, and to prevent copying, the 10NES lockout chip system acts as a lock-and-key coupling of each Game Pak and Control Deck. The packaging of the launch lineup of NES games bear pictures of close representations of actual onscreen graphics. To reduce consumer confusion, symbols on the games' packaging clearly indicate the genre of the game. A seal of quality is on all licensed game and accessory packaging. The initial seal states, \"This seal is your assurance that Nintendo has approved and guaranteed the quality of this product\". This text was later changed to \"Official Nintendo Seal of Quality\".\nUnlike with the Famicom, Nintendo of America marketed the console primarily to children, instituting a strict policy of censoring profanity, sexual, religious, or political content. The most famous example is Lucasfilm Games's attempts to port the comedy-horror game \"Maniac Mansion\" to the NES, which Nintendo insisted be considerably watered down.\nThe optional Robotic Operating Buddy, or R.O.B., was part of a marketing plan to portray the NES's technology as being novel and sophisticated when compared to previous game consoles, and to portray its position as being within reach of the better established toy market. Though at first, the American public exhibited limited excitement for the console itself, peripherals such as the light gun and R.O.B. attracted extensive attention.\nOther markets.\nIn Europe and Oceania, the NES was released in two separate marketing regions. The first consisted of mainland Europe (excluding Italy) where distribution was handled by several different companies, with Nintendo responsible for manufacturing. The NES saw an early launch in Europe in 1986 although most of the European countries received the console in 1987. The release in Scandinavia was on September 1, 1986, where it was released by Bergsala. In the Netherlands, it was released in the last quarter of 1987 and was distributed by Bandai BV. In France, it was released in October 1987, and in Spain most likely in 1988 through distributor Spaco. Also in 1987, Mattel handled distribution for the second region, consisting of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Australia and New Zealand. In other European countries, distribution was taken over by smaller companies like Bienengr\u00e4ber in Germany, ASD in France, Concentra in Portugal, Itochu in Greece and Cyprus, Stadlbauer in Austria, Switzerland and the former Eastern Bloc. In Poland, the NES had its release on October 6, 1994 along with the SNES and the Game Boy. In November 1994, Nintendo signed an agreement with Steepler to permit the continued sale of the Dendy, an unauthorized hardware clone of the Famicom, in Russia in exchange for also distributing the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo anticipated the NES would have a 25 per cent share in these countries, and saw particular potential in the United Kingdom. It sold modestly in Europe, however.\nIn Brazil, the console was released late in 1993 by Playtronic, even after the SNES. But the Brazilian market had been dominated by unlicensed NES clones \u2013 both locally made, and smuggled from Taiwan. One of the most successful local clones was the Phantom System, manufactured by Gradiente, which licensed Nintendo products in the country for the following decade. The sales of officially licensed products were low, due to the cloning, the quite late official launch, and the high prices of Nintendo's licensed products.\nOutside of Japan, regions in greater Asia received an \"Asian version\" of the front-loader NES though imported Famicom systems were prevalent. Due to import restrictions, NES consoles in India and South Korea were rebranded and distributed by local licensees. The Indian version is called the \"Samurai Electronic TV Game System\" and the Korean version is called the \"Hyundai Comboy\". The console sold very poorly in India due to affordability and a lack of consumer awareness.\nBundles and redesigns.\nFor its complete North American release, the Nintendo Entertainment System was progressively released over the ensuing years in several different bundles, beginning with the Deluxe Set, the Basic Set, the Action Set, and the Power Set. The Deluxe Set was launched in the 1985 test markets, retailing at US$, including R.O.B., a light gun called the NES Zapper, two controllers, and the two Game Paks \"Gyromite\" and \"Duck Hunt\". The Control Deck bundle was first released in 1987 at $ with no game, and $ bundled with the \"Super Mario Bros.\" cartridge. The Action Set, released April 14, 1988, for $, has the Control Deck, two controllers, an NES Zapper, and a dual Game Pak containing both \"Super Mario Bros.\" and \"Duck Hunt\".\nThe Power Set of 1989 includes the console, two game controllers, an NES Zapper, a Power Pad, and a triple Game Pak containing \"Super Mario Bros\", \"Duck Hunt\", and \"World Class Track Meet\". In 1990, a Sports Set bundle was released, including the console, an NES Satellite infrared wireless multitap adapter, four game controllers, and a dual Game Pak containing \"Super Spike V'Ball\" and \"Nintendo World Cup\". Two more bundle packages were later released with the original model NES console. In 1992, the Challenge Set was released for $ with the console, two controllers, and a \"Super Mario Bros. 3\" Game Pak. The Basic Set retailed at US$; it included only the console and two controllers, and no pack-in game. Instead, it contained a book called the \"Official Nintendo Player's Guide\", which contained detailed information for every NES game made up to that point.\nFinally, the console was redesigned for the Australian, North American, and Japanese markets, including the New-Style NES, or NES-101, and one redesigned \"dogbone\" game controller. In Australia, this console revision was released with a cartridge compiling \"Super Mario Bros\", \"Tetris\", and \"Nintendo World Cup\". Released in October 1993 in North America and 1994 in Australia, this final bundle retailed for $ and A$ (A$ with the pack-in game) respectively, and was discontinued with the NES in 1995.\nDiscontinuation.\nOn August 14, 1995, Nintendo discontinued the Nintendo Entertainment System in both North America and Europe. In North America, replacements for the original front-loading NES were available for $ in exchange for a broken system until at least December 1996, under Nintendo's Power Swap program. The Game Boy and Super NES were covered for $ and $ respectively.\nOn May 30, 2003, Nintendo announced the discontinuation of the Famicom in September alongside the Super Famicom and the disk rewriting services for the Famicom Disk System. The last Famicom, serial number HN11033309, was manufactured on September 25; it was kept by Nintendo and subsequently loaned to the organizers of Level X, a video game exhibition held from December 4, 2003, to February 8, 2004, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, for a Famicom retrospective in commemoration of the console's 20th anniversary. Nintendo offered repair service for the Famicom in Japan until 2007, when it was discontinued due to a shortage of available parts.\nHardware.\nConfigurations.\nAlthough all versions of the Famicom and NES include essentially similar hardware, they vary in physical characteristics. The original Famicom's design is predominantly white plastic, with dark red trim; it featured a top-loading cartridge slot, grooves on both sides of the deck in which the hardwired game controllers could be placed when not in use, and a 15-pin expansion port located on the unit's front panel for accessories. In contrast, the design of the original NES features a more subdued gray, black, and red color scheme; it includes a front-loading cartridge slot covered by a small, hinged door that can be opened to insert or remove a cartridge and closed at other times, and an expansion port on the bottom of the unit. Compared to the Famicom, the NES includes the 10NES lockout chip and incorporates a matching chip validation check in its cartridge connector.\nIn late 1993, Nintendo introduced a redesigned version of the Famicom and NES (officially named the New Famicom in Japan and the New-Style NES in the US) to complement the Super Famicom and SNES, to prolong interest in the console, and to reduce costs. The redesigned NES features a top-loading cartridge slot and omits the 10NES lockout chip to avoid reliability issues with the original console; the redesign also omits AV output. Conversely, the redesigned Famicom features such output and introduces detachable game controllers, though the microphone functionality is omitted as a result. The redesigned Famicom and NES models are cosmetically similar aside from the presence of a cartridge \"bump\" on the NES model, which the Famicom model lacks to accommodate its shorter cartridges and the RAM Adapter for the Famicom Disk System.\nSharp Corporation produced three licensed variants of the Famicom in Japan, all of which prominently display the shortened moniker rather than the official name, Family Computer. One variant was a television set with an integrated Famicom; originally released in 1983 as the My Computer TV in and models, it was later released in the United States in 1989 as a 19-inch model named the Video Game Television. Another variant is the Twin Famicom console released in 1986 to combine a Famicom with a Famicom Disk System. Sharp then produced the Famicom Titler in 1989. Intended for video capture and production, it features internal RGB video generation and video output via S-Video, plus inputs for adding subtitles and voice-overs.\nHardware clones.\nA thriving market of unlicensed NES hardware clones emerged during the climax of the console's popularity. Initially, such clones were popular in markets with weak copyright law and where Nintendo issue it's systems after famiclones become well known across specific region, making legal products hard to market or create brand awareness. In particular, the Dendy (), an unlicensed hardware clone produced in Taiwan and sold in the former Soviet Union by Steepler, emerged as the most popular video game console of its time in that setting and it enjoyed a degree of fame roughly equivalent to that experienced by the NES/Famicom in North America and Japan, eventually selling 6 million units. Poland had a similar story with Pegasus distributed by Bobmark International which sold more than 1 million units. In China, a place where many of these clones were manufactured, the media reported 30 million units sold until late 1995. A range of Famicom clones was marketed in Latin America during the late 1980s and 1990s with the name Family Game, resembling the original hardware design. Thailand got Family FR brand famiclones, Brazil a superior to the original Phantom System, the Micro Genius (Simplified Chinese: \u5c0f\u5929\u624d) was marketed in Southeast Asia as an alternative to the Famicom; Ending-Man Terminator enjoyed popularity in European Eastern Bloc, parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America. It happened that these clones reached countries with very good copyright law and high awareness of the Nintendo brand such as Power Player Super Joy III in US.\nThe unlicensed clone market has flourished following Nintendo's discontinuation of the NES. Some of the more exotic of these resulting systems surpass the functionality of the original hardware, such as a portable system with a color LCD (PocketFami). Others have been produced for certain specialized markets, such as a rather primitive personal computer with a keyboard and basic word processing software. These unauthorized clones have been helped by the invention of the so-called NES-on-a-chip.\nAs was the case with unlicensed games, Nintendo has typically gone to the courts to prohibit the manufacture and sale of unlicensed cloned hardware. Many of the clone vendors have included built-in copies of licensed Nintendo software, which constitutes copyright infringement in most countries.\nDesign flaws.\nNintendo's design styling for US release was made deliberately different from that of other game consoles. Nintendo wanted to distinguish its product from those of competitors and to avoid the generally poor reputation that game consoles had acquired following the video game crash of 1983. One result of this philosophy is to disguise the cartridge slot design as a front-loading zero-insertion force (ZIF) cartridge socket, designed to resemble the front-loading mechanism of a VCR. The socket works well when both the connector and the cartridges are clean and the pins on the connector are new. However, the socket is not truly zero-insertion force. When a user inserts the cartridge into the NES, the force of pressing the cartridge into place bends the contact pins slightly and presses the cartridge's ROM board back into the cartridge. Frequent insertion and removal of cartridges wears out the pins, and the ZIF design proved more prone to interference by dirt and dust than an industry-standard card edge connector.\nThe design problems were exacerbated by Nintendo's choice of materials. The console slot nickel connector springs wear due to design and the game cartridge's brass plated nickel connectors are also prone to tarnishing and oxidation. Nintendo sought to fix these problems by redesigning the next generation Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) as a top loader similar to the Famicom. Many players try to alleviate issues in the game caused by this corrosion by blowing into the cartridges, then reinserting them, which actually speeds up the tarnishing due to moisture. One way to slow down the tarnishing process and extend the life of the cartridges is to use isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs.\nUsers have attempted to solve these problems by blowing air onto the cartridge connectors, inserting the cartridge just far enough to get the ZIF to lower, licking the edge connector, slapping the side of the system after inserting a cartridge, shifting the cartridge from side to side after insertion, pushing the ZIF up and down repeatedly, holding the ZIF down lower than it should have been, and cleaning the connectors with alcohol. Many frequently used methods to fix this problem actually risk damaging gaming cartridges or the system. In 1989, Nintendo released an official NES Cleaning Kit to help users clean malfunctioning cartridges and consoles.\nIn response to these hardware flaws, \"Nintendo Authorized Repair Centers\" sprang up across the U.S. According to Nintendo, the authorization program was designed to ensure that the machines were properly repaired. Nintendo would ship the necessary replacement parts only to shops that had enrolled in the authorization program.\nWith the release of the top-loading NES-101 (New-Style NES) in 1993 toward the end of the NES's lifespan, Nintendo resolved the problems by switching to a standard card edge connector and eliminating the lockout chip. All of the Famicom systems use standard card edge connectors, as do Nintendo's two subsequent game consoles, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Nintendo 64.\nLockout.\nThe Famicom as released in Japan contains no lockout hardware, which led to unlicensed cartridges (both legitimate and bootleg) becoming extremely common throughout Japan and East Asia. Nintendo tried to promote its \"Seal of Quality\" in these regions to identify licensed games to combat bootlegs, but bootleg Famicom games continued to be produced even after Nintendo moved production onto the Super Famicom, effectively extending the lifetime of the Famicom.\nThe original NES released for Western countries in 1985 contains the 10NES lockout chip, which prevents it from running cartridges unapproved by Nintendo. The inclusion of the 10NES was a direct influence from the 1983 video game crash in North America, partially caused by a market flooded with uncontrolled publishing of games of poor quality for the home consoles. Nintendo did not want to see that happen with the NES and used the lockout chip to restrict games to only those they licensed and approved for the system. This means of protection worked in combination with the Nintendo \"Seal of Quality\", which a developer had to acquire before they would be able to have access to the required 10NES information prior to publication of their game.\nInitially, the 10NES chip proved a significant barrier to unlicensed developers seeking to develop and sell games for the console. However, hobbyists in later years discovered that disassembling the NES and cutting the fourth pin of the lockout chip would change the chip's mode of operation from \"lock\" to \"key\", removing all effects and greatly improving the console's ability to play legal games, bootlegs, and converted imports.\nOriginal NES consoles sold in different regions have different lockout chips, thereby enforcing regional lockout (regardless of TV signal compatibility). Such regions include North America; most of continental Europe (PAL-B); Asia; and the British Isles, Italy, and Australasia (PAL-A).\nProblems with the 10NES lockout chip frequently result in one of the console's most common issues: the blinking red power light, in which the system appears to turn itself on and off repeatedly because the 10NES would reset the console once per second. The lockout chip required constant communication with the chip in the game to work. Dirty, aging, and bent connectors often disrupt the communication, resulting in the blink effect. In other cases, the console turns on but only displays a solid white, gray, or green screen.\nTechnical specifications.\nThe console's main central processing unit (CPU) was produced by Ricoh, which manufactured different versions between NTSC and PAL regions; NTSC consoles have a 2A03 clocked at 1.79\u00a0MHzTooltip megahertz, and PAL consoles have a 2A07 clocked at 1.66\u00a0MHz. Both CPUs are unlicensed variants of the MOS Technology 6502, an 8-bit microprocessor prevalent in contemporary home computers and consoles; Nintendo ostensibly disabled the 6502's binary-coded decimal mode on them to avoid patent infringement against or licensing fees towards MOS Technology, which was owned by then-rival Commodore International. The CPU has access to 2\u00a0KBTooltip kilobyte of onboard work RAMTooltip random-access memory.\nThe console's graphics are handled by a Ricoh 2C02, a processor known as the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) that is clocked at 5.37\u00a0MHz. A derivative of the Texas Instruments TMS9918\u2014a video display controller used in the ColecoVision\u2014the PPU features 2\u00a0KB of video RAM, 256\u00a0bytes of on-die \"object attribute memory\" (OAM) to store sprite display information on up to 64 sprites, and 28\u00a0bytes of RAM to store information on the YIQ-based color palette; the console can display up to 25 colors simultaneously out of 54 usable colors.\nThe console's standard display resolution is 256 \u00d7 240 pixels, though video output options vary between models. The original Famicom features only radio frequency (RF) modulator output, and the NES additionally supports composite video via RCA connectors. The redesigned Famicom omits the RF modulator entirely, only outputting composite video via a proprietary \"multi-out\" connector first introduced on the Super Famicom/SNES; conversely, the redesigned NES features RF modulator output only, though a version of the model including the \"multi-out\" connector was produced in rare quantities.\nThe console produces sound via an audio processing unit (APU) integrated into the processor. It supports a total of five sound channels: two pulse wave channels, one triangle wave channel, one white noise channel, and one DPCMTooltip differential pulse-code modulation channel for sample playback. Audio playback speed is dependent on the CPU clock rate, which is set by a crystal oscillator.\nAccessories.\nControllers.\nThe game controller for both the NES and the Famicom has an oblong brick-like design with a simple four button layout: two round buttons labeled \"A\" and \"B\", a \"START\" button, and a \"SELECT\" button. Additionally, the controllers use the cross-shaped D-pad, designed by Nintendo employee Gunpei Yokoi for Nintendo Game & Watch systems, to replace the bulkier joysticks on controllers of earlier gaming consoles.\nThe original model Famicom features two game controllers, both of which are hardwired to the back of the console. The second controller lacks the START and SELECT button, featuring a small microphone instead; however, few games use this feature. The earliest produced Famicom units have square A and B buttons; issues with them getting stuck when pressed down led Nintendo to change their shape to a circular design in subsequent units following the console's recall.\nInstead of the Famicom's hardwired controllers, the NES has two proprietary seven-pin ports on the front of the console to support detachable controllers and third-party peripherals. The controllers bundled with the NES are identical and include the START and SELECT buttons, lacking the microphone on the original Famicom's second controller. The cables for NES controllers are also generally three times longer than their Famicom counterparts.\nSeveral special controllers are intended for use with specific games, though are not commonly used. Such peripherals include the NES Zapper (a light gun), R.O.B. (a toy robot), and the Power Pad (a dance pad). The original Famicom has a deepened DA-15 expansion port on the front of the unit to accommodate them.\nTwo official advanced controllers were produced for the NES: the NES Advantage, an arcade controller produced by Asciiware and licensed by Nintendo of America; and the NES Max, a controller with grip handles and a \"cycloid\" sliding-disc D-pad in place of the traditional one. Both controllers have a \"Turbo\" feature, which simulates multiple rapid button presses, for the A and B buttons; the NES Max has manually pressed Turbo buttons, and the NES Advantage offers toggle buttons for Turbo functionality along with knobs that adjust the firing rate of each button. The latter also includes a \"Slow\" button that rapidly pauses games, though this function is not intended for games that invoke a pause menu or screen.\nThe standard game controller was redesigned upon the introduction of the redesigned console. Though the original button layout was retained, the shape of the redesigned controller\u2014nicknamed the \"dog bone\" controller\u2014resembles that of the Super Famicom and SNES. It retained NES-style detachable controller ports.\nThe original NES controller has become one of the most recognizable symbols of the console. Nintendo has mimicked the look of the controller in several other products, from promotional merchandise to limited edition versions of the Game Boy Advance.\nJapanese accessories.\nFew of the numerous peripheral devices and software packages for the Famicom were released outside Japan.\nThe Famicom 3D System, an active shutter 3D headset peripheral released in 1987, enabled the ability to play stereoscopic video games. It was a commercial failure and never released outside Japan; users described the headset as bulky and uncomfortable. Seven games are compatible with the glasses, with three of them developed by Square; two titles received worldwide releases as \"Rad Racer\" and \"The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner\".\n\"Family BASIC\" is an implementation of BASIC for the Famicom, packaged with a keyboard. Similar in concept to the Atari 2600 \"BASIC\" cartridge, it allows the user to write programs, especially games, which can be saved on an included cassette recorder. Nintendo of America rejected releasing \"Famicom BASIC\" in the US in favor of its primary marketing demographic of children.\nThe Famicom Modem connected a Famicom to a now defunct proprietary network in Japan which provided content such as financial services. A dial-up modem was never released for the NES after a partnership with Fidelity Investments.\nFamicom Disk System.\nBy 1986, the cost and size limitations of ROM chips used in the Famicom's ROM cartridges were apparent, with no new advancements present to address them. With this in mind, Nintendo looked at the personal computer (PC) market, where the floppy disk was gaining wide adoption as a computer data storage medium. Partnering with Mitsumi to develop a floppy disk add-on for the Famicom based on the latter's Quick Disk format, Nintendo officially released it as the Family Computer Disk System in Japan on February 21, 1986, at a retail price of \u00a515,000.\nThe advantages of the format (called \"Disk Card\") were apparent on launch. It has more than triple the data storage capacity of the then-largest cartridge (used for \"Super Mario Bros.\") and introduced game save capability and lower production costs compared to cartridges, which resulted in lower retail prices for consumers. The add-on also has a new wavetable synthesis sound channel and more data storage for the Famicom's audio sample channel. Taking advantage of the disk's re-writability, Nintendo set up Disk Writer interactive kiosks at retail stores throughout Japan; at each kiosk, consumers could buy new games to rewrite onto their old disks or onto new disks. Disk Fax kiosks allowed players to submit their high scores on special blue disks for contests and rankings, predating the online leaderboard by several years.\nAlthough Nintendo committed to exclusively releasing games on the Disk System after its release, numerous external issues plagued its long-term viability. Just four months after launch, Capcom released a Famicom port of \"Makaimura\" (known as \"Ghosts 'n Goblins\" in the U.S.) on a cartridge with more data storage capacity than what was possible on Disk Cards, nullifying one of the Disk System's major advantages by using discrete logic chips to perform bank switching. Nintendo also demanded half of the copyright ownership for each game it selected for release on the Disk System, resulting in developers electing to remain on cartridge instead as the latter gained functionality previously considered unique to the former. Developers disliked the lower profit margin of the Disk Writer kiosks, and retailers complained of their use of valuable space as demand for the format waned.\nUsage of a floppy disk-based medium brought about further complications; Disk Cards were more fragile than cartridges and were prone to data corruption from magnetic exposure. Their unreliability was exacerbated by their lack of a shutter, which Nintendo substituted with a wax sleeve and clear keep case to reduce costs; blue disks and later Disk Cards included shutters. The rubber belt-based disk drives were also unreliable, with cryptic error codes complicating troubleshooting; even when fully functional, players accustomed to cartridges were annoyed with the introduction of loading times and disk flipping. Furthermore, the rewritable nature of the format resulted in rampant software piracy, with Nintendo's attempts at anti-piracy measures quickly defeated.\nThough selling close to two million units for all of 1986, Nintendo only managed to increase the total to 4.4\u00a0million units by 1990, falling well short of internal projections. By then, the Disk System was rendered obsolete due to advancements in ROM cartridge production: memory mapping chips for expanded data storage capacity, battery-backed SRAMTooltip static random-access memory for game saving, and declining overall production costs. Nintendo alluded to a Western release for the Disk System, going so far as to successfully file a U.S. patent for it and having the Famicom's cartridge pins used by its RAM Adapter for enhanced audio rerouted to the NES's little-used bottom expansion port. However, such a release never materialized due to its reception in Japan. Most of its games were re-released with workarounds on cartridge for both the Famicom and NES, without the enhanced audio. Although the last game for the Disk System was released in December 1992, Nintendo continued repair and rewrite services for it until September 2003.\nNES Test Station.\nThe NES Test Station diagnostics machine was introduced in 1988. It is an NES-based unit designed for testing NES hardware, components, and games. It was only provided for use in World of Nintendo boutiques as part of the Nintendo World Class Service program. Visitors were to bring items to test with the station, and could be assisted by a store technician or employee.\nThe NES Test Station's front has a Game Pak slot and connectors for testing various components (AC adapter, RF switch, Audio/Video cable, NES Control Deck, accessories and games), with a centrally-located selector knob to choose which component to test. The unit itself weighs approximately 11.7 pounds without a TV. It connects to a television via a combined A/V and RF Switch cable. By actuating the green button, a user can toggle between an A/V Cable or RF Switch connection. The television it is connected to (typically 11\" to 14\") is meant to be placed atop it.\nIn 1991, Nintendo provided an add-on called the \"Super NES Counter Tester\" that tests Super NES components and games. The Super NES Counter Tester is a standard Control Deck on a metal fixture with the connection from the back of the unit re-routed to the front. These connections may be made directly to the test station or to the TV, depending on what is to be tested.\nGames.\nGame Pak.\nThe NES uses a 72-pin design, as compared with 60 pins on the Famicom. To reduce costs and inventory, some early games released in North America are simply Famicom cartridges attached to an adapter to fit inside the NES hardware. Early NES cartridges are held together with five small slotted screws. Games released after 1987 were redesigned slightly to incorporate two plastic clips molded into the plastic itself, removing the need for the top two screws.\nThe back of the cartridge bears a label with handling instructions. Production and software revision codes were imprinted as stamps on the back label to correspond with the software version and producer. All licensed NTSC and PAL cartridges are a standard shade of gray plastic, with the exception of \"The Legend of Zelda\" and ', which were manufactured in gold-plastic carts. Unlicensed carts were produced in black, robin egg blue, and gold, and are all slightly different shapes than standard NES cartridges. Nintendo also produced yellow-plastic carts for internal use at Nintendo Service Centers, although these \"test carts\" were never made available for purchase. All licensed US cartridges were made by Nintendo, Konami, and Acclaim. For promotion of ', Capcom sent 150 limited-edition gold NES cartridges with the original game, featuring the \"Remastered\" art as the sticker, to different gaming news agencies. The instruction label on the back includes the opening lyric from the show's theme song, \"Life is like a hurricane\".\nFamicom cartridges are shaped slightly differently. Unlike NES games, official Famicom cartridges were produced in many colors of plastic. Adapters, similar in design to the popular accessory Game Genie, are available that allow Famicom games to be played on an NES. In Japan, several companies manufactured the cartridges for the Famicom. This allowed these companies to develop customized chips designed for specific purposes, such as superior sound and graphics.\nThird-party licensing.\nNintendo's near monopoly on the home video game market left it with a dominant influence over the industry. Unlike Atari, which never actively pursued third-party developers (and even went to court in an attempt to force Activision to cease production of Atari 2600 games), Nintendo had anticipated and encouraged the involvement of third-party software developers, though strictly on Nintendo's terms. Some of the Nintendo platform-control measures were adopted in a less stringent way by later console manufacturers such as Sega, Sony, and Microsoft.\nTo this end, a 10NES authentication chip is in every console and in every licensed cartridge. If the console's chip can not detect a counterpart chip inside the cartridge, the game does not load. Nintendo portrayed these measures as intended to protect the public against poor-quality games, and placed a golden seal of approval on all licensed games released for the system.\nNintendo found success with Japanese arcade manufacturers such as Konami, Capcom, Taito, and Namco, which signed on as third-party developers. However, they found resistance with US game developers including Atari Games, Activision, Electronic Arts, and Epyx refusing Nintendo's one-sided terms. Acclaim Entertainment, a fledgling game publisher founded by former Activision employees, was the first major third-party licensee in the United States to sign on with Nintendo in late 1987. Atari Games (through Tengen) and Activision signed on soon after.\nNintendo was not as restrictive as Sega, which did not permit third-party publishing until Mediagenic in late summer 1988. Nintendo's intention was to reserve a large part of NES game revenue for itself. Nintendo required that it be the sole manufacturer of all cartridges, and that the publisher had to pay in full before the cartridges for that game be produced. Cartridges could not be returned to Nintendo, so publishers assumed all the risk. As a result, some publishers lost more money due to distress sales of remaining inventory at the end of the NES era than they ever earned in profits from sales of the games. Because Nintendo controlled the production of all cartridges, it was able to enforce strict rules on its third-party developers, who were required to sign a contract that would obligate them to develop exclusively for the system, order at least 10,000 cartridges, and only make five games per year. The global 1988 shortage of DRAM and ROM chips reportedly caused Nintendo to only permit an average of 25% of publishers' requests for cartridges, with some receiving much higher amounts and others almost none. GameSpy noted that Nintendo's \"iron-clad terms\" made the company many enemies during the 1980s. Some developers tried to circumvent the five game limit by creating additional company brands like Konami's Ultra Games label; others tried circumventing the 10NES chip.\nNintendo was accused of antitrust violations because of the strict licensing requirements. The United States Department of Justice and several states began probing Nintendo's business practices, leading to the involvement of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC conducted an extensive investigation which included interviewing hundreds of retailers. During the FTC probe, Nintendo changed the terms of its publisher licensing agreements to eliminate the two-year rule and other restrictive terms. Nintendo and the FTC settled the case in April 1991, with Nintendo required to send vouchers giving a $5 discount off to a new game, to every person that had purchased an NES game between June 1988 and December 1990. GameSpy remarked that Nintendo's punishment was particularly weak given the case's findings, although it has been speculated that the FTC did not want to damage the video game industry in the United States.\nWith the NES near the end of its life, many third-party publishers such as Electronic Arts supported upstart competing consoles with less strict licensing terms such as the Sega Genesis and then the PlayStation, which eroded and then took over Nintendo's dominance in the home console market, respectively. Consoles from Nintendo's rivals in the post-SNES era had always enjoyed much stronger third-party support than Nintendo, which relied more heavily on first-party games.\nUnlicensed games.\nCompanies that refused to pay the licensing fee or were rejected by Nintendo found ways to circumvent the console's authentication system. Most of these companies created circuits that use a voltage spike to temporarily disable the 10NES chip. A few unlicensed games released in Europe and Australia are in the form of a dongle to connect to a licensed game, to use the licensed game's 10NES chip for authentication. To combat unlicensed games, Nintendo of America threatened retailers who sold them with losing their supply of licensed games, and multiple revisions were made to the NES PCBs to prevent unlicensed games from working.\nAtari Games took a different approach with its line of NES products, Tengen. The company attempted to reverse engineer the lockout chip to develop its own \"Rabbit\" chip. Tengen also obtained a description of the lockout chip from the United States Patent and Trademark Office by falsely claiming that it was required to defend against present infringement claims. Nintendo successfully sued Tengen for copyright infringement. Tengen's antitrust claims against Nintendo were never decided.\nColor Dreams made Christian video games under the subsidiary name Wisdom Tree. Historian Steven Kent wrote, \"Wisdom Tree presented Nintendo with a prickly situation. The general public did not seem to pay close attention to the court battle with Atari Games, and industry analysts were impressed with Nintendo's legal acumen; but going after a tiny company that published innocuous religious games was another story.\"\nGame rentals.\nAs the Nintendo Entertainment System grew in popularity and entered millions of American homes, some small video rental shops began buying their own copies of NES games, and renting them out to customers for around the same price as a video cassette rental for a few days. Nintendo received no profit from the practice beyond the initial cost of their game, and unlike movie rentals, a newly released game could hit store shelves and be available for rent on the same day. Nintendo took steps to stop game rentals, but did not take any formal legal action until Blockbuster Video began to make game rentals a large-scale service. Nintendo claimed that allowing customers to rent games would significantly hurt sales and drive up the cost of games. Nintendo lost the lawsuit, but did win on a claim of copyright infringement. Blockbuster was banned from including photocopies of original, copyrighted instruction booklets with its rented games. In compliance with the ruling, Blockbuster produced original short instructions\u2014usually in the form of a small booklet, card, or label stuck on the back of the rental box\u2014that explained the game's basic premise and controls. Video rental shops continued the practice of renting video games.\nReception.\nBy 1988, industry observers stated that the NES's popularity had grown so quickly that the market for Nintendo cartridges was larger than that for all home computer software. \"Compute!\" reported in 1989 that Nintendo had sold seven million NES systems in 1988 alone, almost as many as the number of Commodore 64s sold in its first five years. \"Computer game makers [are] scared stiff\", the magazine said, stating that Nintendo's popularity caused most competitors to have poor sales during the previous Christmas and resulted in serious financial problems for some.\nIn June 1989, Nintendo of America's vice president of marketing Peter Main, said that the Famicom was present in 37% of Japan's households. By 1990, 30% of American households owned the NES, compared to 23% for all personal computers. By 1990, the NES had outsold all previously released consoles worldwide. The slogan for this brand was \"It can't be beaten\". The Nintendo Entertainment System was not available in the Soviet Union.\nIn the early 1990s, gamers predicted that competition from technologically superior systems such as the 16-bit Sega Genesis would mean the immediate end of the NES's dominance. Instead, during the first year of Nintendo's successor console the Super Famicom (named Super Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan), the Famicom remained the second highest-selling video game console in Japan, outselling the newer and more powerful NEC PC Engine and Sega Mega Drive by a wide margin. The console remained popular in Japan and North America until late 1993, when the demand for new NES software abruptly plummeted. The final licensed Famicom game released in Japan is \"Takahashi Meijin no B\u014dken Jima IV (Adventure Island IV)\", in North America is \"Wario's Woods\", and in Europe is \"The Lion King\" in 1995. In the wake of ever decreasing sales and the lack of new games, Nintendo of America officially discontinued the NES by 1995. Nintendo produced new Famicom units in Japan until September 25, 2003, and continued to repair Famicom consoles until October 31, 2007, attributing the discontinuation of support to insufficient supplies of parts.\nThe NES was initially not as successful in Europe during the late 1980s, when it was outsold by the Master System in the United Kingdom. By 1990, the Master System was the highest-selling console in Europe, though the NES was beginning to have a fast-growing user base in the United Kingdom. During the early 1990s, NES sales caught up with and narrowly overtook the Master System overall in Western Europe, though the Master System maintained its lead in several markets such as the United Kingdom, Belgium and Spain.\nLegacy.\nThe NES was released two years after the video game crash of 1983, when many retailers and adult consumers regarded electronic games as a passing fad, so many believed at first that the NES would soon fade. Before the NES and Famicom, Nintendo was known as a moderately successful Japanese toy and playing card manufacturer, but the consoles' popularity helped the company grow into an internationally recognized name almost synonymous with video games as Atari had been, and set the stage for Japanese dominance of the video game industry. With the NES, Nintendo also changed the relationship between console manufacturers and third-party software developers by restricting developers from publishing and distributing software without licensed approval. This led to higher-quality games, which helped change the attitude of a public that had grown weary from poorly produced games for earlier systems.\nThe NES hardware design is also very influential. Nintendo chose the name \"Nintendo Entertainment System\" for the US market and redesigned the system so it would not give the appearance of a child's toy. The front-loading cartridge input allowed it to be used more easily in a TV stand with other entertainment devices, such as a videocassette recorder.\nThe system's hardware limitations led to design principles that still influence the development of modern video games. Many prominent game franchises originated on the NES, including Nintendo's own \"Super Mario Bros.\",| \"The Legend of Zelda\" and \"Metroid\", Capcom's \"Mega Man\" franchise, Konami's \"Castlevania\" franchise, Square's \"Final Fantasy\",| and Enix's \"Dragon Quest\"| franchises.\nNES imagery, especially its controller, has become a popular motif for a variety of products, including Nintendo's Game Boy Advance.\nAt the Tokyo Game Show in 2023, the \"Famicom\" was bestowed \"The Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Award\" in honour of the console's influence and laying down the foundations for the games industry.\nThe NES library includes some influential games. \"Super Mario Bros.\" is the forerunner of side-scrolling games, while \"The Legend of Zelda\" had mostly influenced action-adventure games and helped popularizing the save data in video games. Other two influential games are \"Metroid\" and \"Castlevania II\", which had established the metroidvania genre.\nIn 2011, \"IGN\" named the NES the greatest video game console of all time.\nEmulation.\nThe NES can be emulated on many other systems. The first emulator was the Japanese-only Pasofami. It was soon followed by iNES, which is available in English and is cross-platform, in 1996. It was described as being the first NES emulation software that could be used by a non-expert. The first version of NESticle, an unofficial MS-DOS-based emulator, was released on April 3, 1997. Nintendo offers licensed emulation of some NES games via its Virtual Console service for the Wii, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U, and via its Nintendo Switch Online service.\nRe-release.\nOn July 14, 2016, Nintendo announced the November 2016 launch of a miniature replica of the NES, named the Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition in the United States and Nintendo Classic Mini: Nintendo Entertainment System in Europe and Australia. The emulation-based console includes 30 permanently bundled games from the vintage NES library, including the \"Super Mario Bros.\" series and \"The Legend of Zelda\" series. The system has HDMI display output and a new replica controller, which can also connect to the Wii Remote for use with Virtual Console games. It was discontinued in North America on April 13, 2017, and worldwide on April 15, 2017. However, Nintendo announced in September 2017 that the NES Classic Mini would return to production on June 29, 2018, only to be discontinued again permanently by December of that year.\nNotes.\nTransliterations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["18944028", "4662915", "28314"], "permutation_1": ["18944028", "4662915", "28314"], "permutation_2": ["18944028", "28314", "4662915"], "permutation_3": ["28314", "18944028", "4662915"]}
{"id": "3hop2__6989_37759_74563", "docs_added": {"24437894": "Boston\nCapital of Massachusetts, United States\nBoston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and financial center of New England, a region of the Northeastern United States. It has an area of and a population of 675,647 as of the 2020 census, making it the third-largest city in the Northeastern United States after New York City and Philadelphia. The larger Greater Boston metropolitan statistical area has a population of 4.9 million as of 2023, making it the largest metropolitan area in New England and the eleventh-largest in the country.\nBoston was founded on Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by English Puritan settlers, who named the city after the market town of Boston, Lincolnshire in England. During the American Revolution and Revolutionary War, Boston was home to several seminal events, including the Boston Massacre (1770), the Boston Tea Party (1773), Paul Revere's midnight ride (1775), the Battle of Bunker Hill (1775), and the Siege of Boston (1775\u20131776). \nFollowing American independence from Great Britain, the city played an important national role as a port, manufacturing hub, and education and culture center, and the city expanded significantly beyond the original peninsula by filling in land and annexing neighboring towns. Boston's many firsts include the nation's first public park (Boston Common, 1634), the first public school (Boston Latin School, 1635), and the first subway system (Tremont Street subway, 1897).\nBoston later emerged as a global leader in higher education and research and is the largest biotechnology hub in the world as of 2023. The city is a national leader in scientific research, law, medicine, engineering, and business. With nearly 5,000 startup companies, the city is considered a global pioneer in innovation, entrepreneurship, and artificial intelligence. Boston's economy is led by finance, professional and business services, information technology, and government. Boston households provide the highest average rate of philanthropy in the nation as of 2013, and the city's businesses and institutions rank among the top in the nation for environmental sustainability and new investment.\nEtymology.\nIsaac Johnson, in one of his last official acts as leader of the Charlestown community before his death on September 30, 1630, named the new settlement across the river \"Boston\" after Johnson's hometown of Boston, Lincolnshire, where he, his wife (namesake of the \"Arbella\"), and John Cotton (grandfather of Cotton Mather) emigrated to New England. The name of the English town derives from its patron saint, St. Botolph, in whose church Cotton served as the rector until he and Johnson emigrated to area. In early sources, Lincolnshire's Boston was known as \"St. Botolph's town\", which was later abbreviated as \"Boston\". Before this renaming, the settlement on the peninsula was known as \"Shawmut\" by William Blaxton and \"Tremontaine\" by the Puritan settlers he invited.\nHistory.\nIndigenous era.\nPrior to European colonization, the region surrounding present-day Boston was inhabited by the Massachusett people who established small, seasonal communities in present-day Boston. In 1630, settlers led by John Winthrop arrived, and found Shawmut Peninsula nearly empty of Native people, since most had died of European diseases brought by earlier settlers and traders. Archaeological excavations have unearthed one of the oldest fishweirs in New England, located on Boylston Street, which Native people constructed as early as 7,000 years before European arrival in the Western Hemisphere.\nEuropean settlement.\nThe first European to live in what would become Boston was a University of Cambridge-educated Anglican cleric named William Blaxton, who was most directly responsible for the foundation of Boston by Puritan colonists in 1630 after Blaxton invited one of their leaders, Isaac Johnson, to cross Back Bay from the failing colony of Charlestown and share the peninsula. In September 1630, Puritans made the crossing to present-day Boston.\nPuritan influence on Boston began even before the settlement was founded with the 1629 Cambridge Agreement, which was created the Massachusetts Bay Colony and was signed by the colony's first governor, John Winthrop. Puritan ethics and their focus on education also influenced the city's early history. In 1635, America's first public school, Boston Latin School, was founded in Boston.\nBoston was the largest town in the Thirteen Colonies until Philadelphia outgrew it in the mid-18th century. Boston's oceanfront location made it a lively port, and the town engaged in shipping and fishing during the colonial era. Boston was a primary stop on the Caribbean trade route and imported large amounts of molasses, which led to the creation of Boston baked beans.\nBoston's economy stagnated in the decades prior to the American Revolution. By the mid-18th century, and New York City and Philadelphia both surpassed Boston in wealth. During this period, Boston encountered financial difficulties even as other New England cities were growing rapidly.\nRevolution and the siege of Boston.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nThe weather continuing boisterous the next day and night, giving the enemy time to improve their works, to bring up their cannon, and to put themselves in such a state of defence, that I could promise myself little success in attacking them under all the disadvantages I had to encounter.\nWilliam Howe, 5th Viscount Howe\n, in a letter to William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth, about the British army's decision to leave Boston, dated March 21, 1776.\nBoston played a central role in the American Revolution. Many crucial events of the American Revolution and subsequent American Revolutionary War occurred in or near Boston, where the city's revolutionary spirit against Britain's colonial governance was demonstrable and ultimately inspiring to the rest of the Thirteen Colonies. When the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765, the homes of Andrew Oliver, the official tasked with enforcing the Act, and Thomas Hutchinson, then lieutenant governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, were raved by Boston mobs. The British responded by sending two regiments to Boston in 1768 in an attempt to quell the revolt, but the increased British military presence in Boston only ended up further inflaming the Boston colonists. In 1770, in the Boston Massacre, British troops shot into a Boston crowd that was violently harassing the, forcing the British to withdraw their troops and helping fuel revolutionary sentiment in the colonies.\nIn May 1773, Parliament passed the Tea Act, which many colonists saw as a British attempt to compel them to accept taxes established by the Townshend Acts. This led to the Boston Tea Party, a defining event of the American Revolution in which angered Bostonians threw an entire shipment of tea sent from the East India Company into Boston Harbor, escalating the American Revolution. The British monarchy responded furiously, implementing the Intolerable Acts and demanding compensation for the tea destroyed during the Boston Tea Party. This response, in turn, angered the colonists further, leading to the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, the first battles of the American Revolutionary War, which were fought around Boston in Massachusetts Bay Colony.\nDuring the siege of Boston from April 19, 1775 to March 17, 1776, New England-based Patriot militia impeded movement by the British Army. Sir William Howe, then commander-in-chief of British forces in North America, led the British army in the siege. On June 17, the British captured Charlestown in present-day Boston during the Battle of Bunker Hill during which the British Army outnumbered Patriot militia. But the British sustained irreplaceable casualties, turning the Battle of Bunker Hill into a pyrrhic victory for the British. The Battle of Bunker Hill also demonstrated the skill and training of the Patriot militia, whose stubborn defense made it difficult for the British to capture Charlestown without suffering even further casualties.\nOn June 14, 1775, in an effort to unify the Revolutionary War effort, the Second Continental Congress, convening in the colonial-era capital of Philadelphia, founded the Continental Army and unanimously appointed George Washington as its commander-in-chief. Washington then immediately departed Philadelphia for Boston, where he arrived on July 2, 1775, and led the newly-formed Continental Army in the siege. Fighting was limited to small-scale raids and skirmishes, and the Continental Army faced challenges with a deficiency of munitions and supplies. Boston Neck, then narrow and only approximately 100 feet wide, impeded Washington's ability to invade Boston, which led to a prolonged stalemate between the Continental Army and British forces. A young officer, Rufus Putnam, came up with a plan to make portable fortifications out of wood, which were erected on the frozen ground under cover of darkness. Putnam supervised the effort, which successfully installed the fortifications and dozens of cannons on Dorchester Heights that Henry Knox laboriously brought through the snow from Fort Ticonderoga. The following morning, the astonished British Army awoke to see a large array of cannons bearing down on them. General Howe is believed to have said that the Americans had done more in one night than his British Army could have done in six months. The British Army responded by attempting to launch a cannon barrage for two hours, but their shots could not reach the Continental Army's cannons at such a height. The British then gave up, boarded their ships, and sailed away from Boston in what has come to be known as \"Evacuation Day\", which is now celebrated in Boston annually on March 17. After the British retreat, Washington was so impressed with the effort of Rufus Putnam that he appointed him as his chief engineer.\nPost-revolution and the War of 1812.\nAfter the Revolution, Boston's long seafaring tradition helped make it one of the nation's busiest ports for both domestic and international trade. Boston's harbor activity was significantly curtailed by the Embargo Act of 1807, which was adopted during the Napoleonic Wars, and the War of 1812. Foreign trade returned after these hostilities, but Boston's merchants had found alternatives for their capital investments in the meantime. Manufacturing became an important component of the city's economy, and the city's industrial manufacturing overtook international trade in economic importance by the mid-19th century. The small rivers bordering the city and connecting it to the surrounding region facilitated shipment of goods and led to a proliferation of mills and factories. Later, a dense network of railroads furthered the region's industry and commerce.\nDuring this period, Boston also flourished culturally. It was admired for its rarefied literary life and generous artistic patronage. Members of old Boston families, later dubbed \"Boston Brahmins\", came to be regarded as the nation's social and cultural elites. They are often associated with the American upper class, Harvard University, and the Episcopal Church.\nBoston was a prominent port of the Atlantic slave trade in the New England Colonies, but was soon overtaken by Salem, Massachusetts, and Newport, Rhode Island. Boston eventually became a center of the American abolitionist movement. The city reacted largely negatively to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, contributing to President Franklin Pierce's attempt to make an example of Boston after Anthony Burns's attempt to escape to freedom.\nIn 1822, the citizens of Boston voted to change the official name from the \"Town of Boston\" to the \"City of Boston\", and on March 19, 1822, the people of Boston accepted the charter incorporating the city. At the time Boston was chartered as a city, the population was about 46,226, while the area of the city was only .\n19th century.\nIn the 1820s, Boston's population grew rapidly, and the city's ethnic composition changed dramatically with the first wave of European immigrants. Irish immigrants dominated the first wave of newcomers during this period, especially following the Great Famine; by 1850, about 35,000 Irish lived in Boston. In the latter half of the 19th century, the city saw increasing numbers of Irish, Germans, Lebanese, Syrians, French Canadians, and Russian and Polish Jews settling there. By the end of the 19th century, Boston's core neighborhoods had become enclaves of ethnically distinct immigrants with their residence yielding lasting cultural change. Italians became the largest inhabitants of the North End, Irish dominated South Boston and Charlestown, and Russian Jews lived in the West End. Irish and Italian immigrants brought with them Roman Catholicism. Currently, Catholics make up Boston's largest religious community, and the Irish have played a major role in Boston politics since the early 20th century; prominent figures include the Kennedys, Tip O'Neill, and John F. Fitzgerald.\nBetween 1631 and 1890, the city tripled its area through land reclamation by filling in marshes, mud flats, and gaps between wharves along the waterfront. Reclamation projects in the middle of the century created significant parts of the South End, the West End, the Financial District, and Chinatown.\nAfter the Great Boston fire of 1872, workers used building rubble as landfill along the downtown waterfront. During the mid-to-late 19th century, workers filled almost of brackish Charles River marshlands west of Boston Common with gravel brought by rail from the hills of Needham Heights. The city annexed the adjacent towns of South Boston (1804), East Boston (1836), Roxbury (1868), Dorchester (including present-day Mattapan and a portion of South Boston) (1870), Brighton (including present-day Allston) (1874), West Roxbury (including present-day Jamaica Plain and Roslindale) (1874), Charlestown (1874), and Hyde Park (1912). Other proposals were unsuccessful for the annexation of Brookline, Cambridge, and Chelsea.\n20th century.\nMany architecturally significant buildings were built during the early years of the 20th century: Horticultural Hall, the Tennis and Racquet Club, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Fenway Studios, Jordan Hall, and the Boston Opera House.\u00a0 The Longfellow Bridge, built in 1906, was mentioned by Robert McCloskey in \"Make Way for Ducklings\", describing its \"salt and pepper shakers\" feature. Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox, opened in 1912, with the Boston Garden opening in 1928. Logan International Airport opened on September 8, 1923.\nIn the wake of the Great Depression, it became clear that more robust securities laws were needed, and Boston figured prominently. Governor of Massachusetts Frank G. Allen appointed John C. Hull\u00a0 the first Securities Director of Massachusetts in January 1930.On May 4, 1932, Hull introduced a bill to the committee on Banks and Banking in the Massachusetts House of Representatives for revision and simplification of the law relative to the sale of securities (Chapter 110A).\nThe act was approved June 6. 1932.Three Harvard professors, Felix Frankfurter, Benjamin V. Cohen and James M. Landis drafted both Securities Act of 1933 and\u00a0Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The\u00a01st Chair of the\u00a0U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission,\u00a0Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. was from Boston.\u00a0 \u00a0Kennedy Sr. had this to say before the Boston Chamber of Commerce on November 15, 1934: \u201cThe rogues who seek to live by deception-let me again repeat, the act is like all legal rules, subject to the limitations of effective legal action. Unfortunately, scoundrels will capitalize the registration requirements and may seek to sell you a security on the theory that mere filing indicates approval by the Commission. Beware of any such argument. Our short experience as to this legislation prompts me to sound a note of warning, particularly to you, my friends of the radio audience. Each and everyone of you is a prospective or actual member of a \"sucker\" list, and when the stranger calls you on the phone to interest you in the purchase of securities, beware.\u201d\nBy the early- to mid-20th century, Boston declined economically as factories became old and obsolete and businesses moved out of the region for cheaper labor elsewhere. Boston responded by initiating various urban renewal projects, under the direction of the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) established in 1957. In 1958, BRA initiated a project to improve the historic West End neighborhood. Extensive demolition was met with strong public opposition, and thousands of families were displaced.\nThe BRA continued implementing eminent domain projects, including the clearance of the vibrant Scollay Square area for construction of the modernist style Government Center. In 1965, the Columbia Point Health Center opened in the Dorchester neighborhood, the first Community Health Center in the United States. It mostly served the massive Columbia Point public housing complex adjoining it, which was built in 1953. The health center is still in operation and was rededicated in 1990 as the Geiger-Gibson Community Health Center. The Columbia Point complex itself was redeveloped and revitalized from 1984 to 1990 into a mixed-income residential development called Harbor Point Apartments.\nBy the 1970s, the city's economy had begun to recover after 30 years of economic downturn. A large number of high-rises were constructed in the Financial District and in Boston's Back Bay during this period. This boom continued into the mid-1980s and resumed after a few pauses. Hospitals such as Massachusetts General Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Brigham and Women's Hospital lead the nation in medical innovation and patient care. Schools such as the Boston Architectural College, Boston College, Boston University, Harvard Medical School, Tufts University School of Medicine, Northeastern University, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Wentworth Institute of Technology, Berklee College of Music, Boston Conservatory, and others attract students to the area. Nevertheless, the city experienced conflict starting in 1974 over desegregation busing, which resulted in unrest and violence around public schools throughout the mid-1970s. Boston has also experienced gentrification in the latter half of the 20th century, with housing prices increasing sharply since the 1990s when the city's rent control regime was struck down by statewide ballot proposition.\n21st century.\nBoston is an intellectual, technological, and political center. However, it has lost some important regional institutions, including the loss to mergers and acquisitions of local financial institutions such as FleetBoston Financial, which was acquired by Charlotte-based Bank of America in 2004. Boston-based department stores Jordan Marsh and Filene's have both merged into the New York City\u2013based Macy's.\nThe 1993 acquisition of \"The Boston Globe\" by \"The New York Times\" was reversed in 2013 when it was resold to Boston businessman John W. Henry. In 2016, it was announced General Electric would be moving its corporate headquarters from Connecticut to the Seaport District in Boston, joining many other companies in this rapidly developing neighborhood. The city also saw the completion of the Central Artery/Tunnel Project, known as the Big Dig, in 2007 after many delays and cost overruns.\nOn April 15, 2013, two Chechen Islamist brothers detonated a pair of bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring roughly 264. The subsequent search for the bombers led to a lock-down of Boston and surrounding municipalities. The region showed solidarity during this time as symbolized by the slogan \"Boston Strong\".\nIn 2016, Boston briefly shouldered a bid as the U.S. applicant for the 2024 Summer Olympics. The bid was supported by the mayor and a coalition of business leaders and local philanthropists, but was eventually dropped due to public opposition. The USOC then selected Los Angeles to be the American candidate with Los Angeles ultimately securing the right to host the 2028 Summer Olympics. Nevertheless, Boston is one of eleven U.S. cities which will host matches during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, with games taking place at Gillette Stadium.\nGeography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nThe geographical center of Boston is in Roxbury. Due north of the center we find the South End. This is not to be confused with South Boston which lies directly east from the South End. North of South Boston is East Boston and southwest of East Boston is the North End\nUnknown, A local colloquialism\nBoston has an area of . Of this area, , or 54%, of it is land and , or 46%, of it is water. The city's elevation, as measured at Logan International Airport, is above sea level. The highest point in Boston is Bellevue Hill at above sea level, and the lowest point is at sea level. The city is adjacent to Boston Harbor, an arm of Massachusetts Bay, and by extension, the Atlantic Ocean.\nBoston is surrounded by the Greater Boston metropolitan region. It is bordered to the east by the town of Winthrop and the Boston Harbor Islands, to the northeast by the cities of Revere, Chelsea and Everett, to the north by the cities of Somerville and Cambridge, to the northwest by Watertown, to the west by the city of Newton and town of Brookline, to the southwest by the town of Dedham and small portions of Needham and Canton, and to the southeast by the town of Milton, and the city of Quincy.\nThe Charles River separates Boston's Allston-Brighton, Fenway-Kenmore and Back Bay neighborhoods from Watertown and Cambridge, and most of Boston from its own Charlestown neighborhood. The Neponset River forms the boundary between Boston's southern neighborhoods and Quincy and Milton. The Mystic River separates Charlestown from Chelsea and Everett, and Chelsea Creek and Boston Harbor separate East Boston from Downtown, the North End, and the Seaport.\nNeighborhoods.\nBoston is sometimes called a \"city of neighborhoods\" because of the profusion of diverse subsections. The city government's Office of Neighborhood Services has officially designated 23 neighborhoods:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nMore than two-thirds of inner Boston's modern land area did not exist when the city was founded. Instead, it was created via the gradual filling in of the surrounding tidal areas over the centuries. This was accomplished using earth from the leveling or lowering of Boston's three original hills (the \"Trimountain\", after which Tremont Street is named), as well as with gravel brought by train from Needham to fill the Back Bay.\nChristian Science Center, Copley Square, Newbury Street, and New England's two tallest buildings: the John Hancock Tower and the Prudential Center. Near the John Hancock Tower is the old John Hancock Building with its prominent illuminated beacon, the color of which forecasts the weather.\nDowntown and its immediate surroundings (including the Financial District, Government Center, and South Boston) consist largely of low-rise masonry buildings \u2013 often federal style and Greek revival \u2013 interspersed with modern high-rises. Back Bay includes many prominent landmarks, such as the Boston Public Library, Trinity Church, single-family homes and wooden/brick multi-family row houses. The South End Historic District is the largest surviving contiguous Victorian-era neighborhood in the US.\nThe geography of downtown and South Boston was particularly affected by the Central Artery/Tunnel Project (which ran from 1991 to 2007, and was known unofficially as the \"Big Dig\"). That project removed the elevated Central Artery and incorporated new green spaces and open areas.\nEnvironment.\nBoston is located within the Boston Basin ecoregion, which is characterized by low and rolling hills with a number of ponds, lakes, and reservoirs. Forests are mainly transition hardwoods such as oak-hickory mixed with white pine. As a coastal city built largely on fill, sea-level rise is of major concern to the city government. A climate action plan from 2019 anticipates to more than of sea-level rise in Boston by the end of the 21st century. Many older buildings in certain areas of Boston are supported by wooden piles driven into the area's fill; these piles remain sound if submerged in water, but are subject to dry rot if exposed to air for long periods. Groundwater levels have been dropping in many areas of the city, due in part to an increase in the amount of rainwater discharged directly into sewers rather than absorbed by the ground. The Boston Groundwater Trust coordinates monitoring groundwater levels throughout the city via a network of public and private monitoring wells.\nThe city developed a climate action plan covering carbon reduction in buildings, transportation, and energy use. The first such plan was commissioned in 2007, with updates released in 2011, 2014, and 2019. This plan includes the Building Energy Reporting and Disclosure Ordinance, which requires the city's larger buildings to disclose their yearly energy and water use statistics and to partake in an energy assessment every five years. A separate initiative, Resilient Boston Harbor, lays out neighborhood-specific recommendations for coastal resilience. In 2013, Mayor Thomas Menino introduced the Renew Boston Whole Building Incentive which reduces the cost of living in buildings that are deemed energy efficient.\nClimate.\nUnder the K\u00f6ppen climate classification, Boston has either a hot-summer humid continental climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Dfa\") under the isotherm or a humid subtropical climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Cfa\") under the isotherm. Summers are warm to hot and humid, while winters are cold and stormy, with occasional periods of heavy snow. Spring and fall are usually cool and mild, with varying conditions dependent on wind direction and the position of the jet stream. Prevailing wind patterns that blow offshore minimize the influence of the Atlantic Ocean. However, in winter, areas near the immediate coast often see more rain than snow, as warm air is sometimes drawn off the Atlantic. The city lies at the border between USDA plant hardiness zones 6b (away from the coastline) and 7a (close to the coastline).\nThe hottest month is July, with a mean temperature of . The coldest month is January, with a mean temperature of . Periods exceeding in summer and below freezing in winter are not uncommon but tend to be fairly short, with about 13 and 25\u00a0days per year seeing each, respectively.\nSub- readings usually occur every 3 to 5 years. The most recent sub- reading occurred on February 4, 2023, when the temperature dipped down to ; this was the lowest temperature reading in the city since 1957. In addition, several decades may pass between readings; the last such reading occurred on July 24, 2022. The city's average window for freezing temperatures is November 9 through April 5. Official temperature records have ranged from on February 9, 1934, up to on July 4, 1911. The record cold daily maximum is on December 30, 1917, while the record warm daily minimum is on both August 2, 1975 and July 21, 2019.\nBoston averages of precipitation a year, with of snowfall per season. Most snowfall occurs from mid-November through early April, and snow is rare in May and October. There is also high year-to-year variability in snowfall; for instance, the winter of 2011\u201312 saw only of accumulating snow, but the previous winter, the corresponding figure was . The city's coastal location on the North Atlantic makes the city very prone to nor'easters, which can produce large amounts of snow and rain.\nFog is fairly common, particularly in spring and early summer. Due to its coastal location, the city often receives sea breezes, especially in the late spring, when water temperatures are still quite cold and temperatures at the coast can be more than colder than a few miles inland, sometimes dropping by that amount near midday. Thunderstorms typically occur from May to September; occasionally, they can become severe, with large hail, damaging winds, and heavy downpours. Although downtown Boston has never been struck by a violent tornado, the city itself has experienced many tornado warnings. Damaging storms are more common to areas north, west, and northwest of the city.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nIn the 2020 census, Boston was estimated to have 691,531 residents living in 266,724 households\u2014a 12% population increase over 2010. The city is the third-most densely populated large U.S. city of over half a million residents, and the most densely populated state capital. Some 1.2\u00a0million persons may be within Boston's boundaries during work hours, and as many as 2\u00a0million during special events. This fluctuation of people is caused by hundreds of thousands of suburban residents who travel to the city for work, education, health care, and special events.\nIn the city, 21.9% of the population was aged 19 and under, 14.3% was from 20 to 24, 33.2% from 25 to 44, 20.4% from 45 to 64, and 10.1% was 65 years of age or older. The median age was 30.8\u00a0years. For every 100 females, there were 92.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 89.9 males. There were 252,699 households, of which 20.4% had children under the age of 18 living in them, 25.5% were married couples living together, 16.3% had a female householder with no husband present, and 54.0% were non-families. 37.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 9.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.26 and the average family size was 3.08.\nThe median household income in Boston was $51,739, while the median income for a family was $61,035. Full-time year-round male workers had a median income of $52,544 versus $46,540 for full-time year-round female workers. The per capita income for the city was $33,158. 21.4% of the population and 16.0% of families were below the poverty line. Of the total population, 28.8% of those under the age of 18 and 20.4% of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line. Boston has a significant racial wealth gap with White Bostonians having a median net worth of $247,500 compared to an $8 median net worth for non-immigrant Black residents and $0 for Dominican immigrant residents.\nFrom the 1950s through the end of the 20th century, the proportion of non-Hispanic Whites in the city declined. In 2000, non-Hispanic Whites made up 49.5% of the city's population, making the city majority minority for the first time. However, in the 21st century, the city has experienced significant gentrification, during which affluent Whites have moved into formerly non-White areas. In 2006, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated non-Hispanic Whites again formed a slight majority but as of 2010[ [update]], in part due to the housing crash, as well as increased efforts to make more affordable housing more available, the non-White population has rebounded. This may also have to do with increased Latin American and Asian populations and more clarity surrounding U.S. Census statistics, which indicate a non-Hispanic White population of 47% (some reports give slightly lower figures).\nEthnicity.\nAfrican-Americans comprise 22% of the city's population. People of Irish descent form the second-largest single ethnic group in the city, making up 15.8% of the population, followed by Italians, accounting for 8.3% of the population. People of West Indian and Caribbean ancestry are another sizable group, collectively at over 15%.\nIn Greater Boston, these numbers grew significantly, with 150,000 Dominicans according to 2018 estimates, 134,000 Puerto Ricans, 57,500 Salvadorans, 39,000 Guatemalans, 36,000 Mexicans, and over 35,000 Colombians. East Boston has a diverse Hispanic/Latino population of Salvadorans, Colombians, Guatemalans, Mexicans, Dominicans and Puerto Ricans. Hispanic populations in southwest Boston neighborhoods are mainly made up of Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, usually sharing neighborhoods in this section with African Americans and Blacks with origins from the Caribbean and Africa especially Cape Verdeans and Haitians. Neighborhoods such as Jamaica Plain and Roslindale have experienced a growing number of Dominican Americans.\nThere is a large and historical Armenian community in Boston, and the city is home to the Armenian Heritage Park. Additionally, over 27,000 Chinese Americans made their home in Boston city proper in 2013. Overall, according to the 2012\u20132016 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, the largest ancestry groups in Boston are:\nIncome.\nData is from the American Community Survey's five-year estimates (2008\u20132012).\nReligion.\nAccording to a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, 57% of the population of the city identified themselves as Christians, with 25% attending a variety of Protestant churches and 29% professing Roman Catholic beliefs; 33% claim no religious affiliation, while the remaining 10% are composed of adherents of Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and other faiths.\nAs of 2010[ [update]], the Catholic Church had the highest number of adherents as a single denomination in the Greater Boston area, with more than two million members and 339 churches, followed by the Episcopal Church with 58,000 adherents in 160 churches. The United Church of Christ had 55,000 members and 213 churches.\nThe Boston metro area contained a Jewish population of approximately 248,000 as of 2015. More than half the Jewish households in the Greater Boston area reside in the city itself, Brookline, Newton, Cambridge, Somerville, or adjacent towns. A small minority practices Confucianism, and some practice Boston Confucianism, an American evolution of Confucianism adapted for Boston intellectuals.\nEconomy.\nA global city, Boston is ranked among the top 30 most economically powerful cities in the world. Encompassing $610\u00a0billion, the Greater Boston metropolitan area has the eighth-largest economy in the country and 16th-largest in the world.\nBoston's colleges and universities exert a significant impact on the regional economy. Boston attracts more than 350,000 college students from around the world, who contribute more than US$4.8\u00a0billion annually to the city's economy. The area's schools are major employers and attract industries to the city and surrounding region. The city is home to a number of technology companies and is a hub for biotechnology, with the Milken Institute rating Boston as the top life sciences cluster in the country. Boston receives the highest absolute amount of annual funding from the National Institutes of Health of all cities in the United States.\nThe city is considered highly innovative for a variety of reasons, including the presence of academia, access to venture capital, and the presence of many high-tech companies. The Route 128 corridor and Greater Boston continue to be a major center for venture capital investment, and high technology remains an important sector.\nTourism also composes a large part of Boston's economy, with 21.2\u00a0million domestic and international visitors spending $8.3\u00a0billion in 2011. Excluding visitors from Canada and Mexico, over 1.4\u00a0million international tourists visited Boston in 2014, with those from China and the United Kingdom leading the list. Boston's status as a state capital as well as the regional home of federal agencies has rendered law and government to be another major component of the city's economy. The city is a major seaport along the East Coast of the United States and the oldest continuously operated industrial and fishing port in the Western Hemisphere.\nIn the 2018 Global Financial Centres Index, Boston was ranked as having the 13th-most competitive financial services center in the world and the second-most competitive in the United States. Boston-based Fidelity Investments helped popularize the mutual fund in the 1980s and has made Boston one of the top financial centers in the United States and a center for venture capital firms. The city is home to the headquarters of Santander Bank and State Street Corporation, the latter specializing in asset management and custody services. Boston is a printing and publishing center\u2014Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is headquartered within the city, along with Bedford-St. Martin's Press and Beacon Press. Pearson PLC publishing units also employ several hundred people in Boston. The city is home to two convention centers\u2014the Hynes Convention Center in the Back Bay and the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center on the South Boston waterfront. Boston is home to the headquarters of several major athletic and footwear companies including Converse, New Balance, and Reebok. Rockport, Puma and Wolverine World Wide, Inc. headquarters or regional offices are just outside the city.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary.\nBoston Public Schools enroll 57,000 students attending 145 schools, including Boston Latin Academy, John D. O'Bryant School of Math & Science, and the Boston Latin School. The Boston Latin School was established in 1635 and is the oldest public high school in the US. Boston also operates the United States' second-oldest public high school and its oldest public elementary school. The system's students are 40% Hispanic or Latino, 35% Black or African American, 13% White, and 9% Asian. There are private, parochial, and charter schools as well, and approximately 3,300 minority students attend participating suburban schools through the Metropolitan Educational Opportunity Council. In September 2019, the city formally inaugurated Boston Saves, a program that provides every child enrolled in the city's kindergarten system a savings account containing $50 to be used toward college or career training.\nColleges and universities.\nSeveral of the highest-ranked universities in the world are near Boston. Three universities with a major presence in the city, Harvard, MIT, and Tufts, are just outside of Boston in the cities of Cambridge and Somerville, known as the \"Brainpower Triangle\". Harvard is the nation's oldest institute of higher education and is centered across the Charles River in Cambridge, though the majority of its land holdings and a substantial amount of its educational activities are in Boston. Its business school and athletics facilities are in Boston's Allston neighborhood, and its medical, dental, and public health schools are located in the Longwood area. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) originated in Boston and was long known as \"Boston Tech\"; it moved across the river to Cambridge in 1916. Tufts University's main campus is north of the city in Somerville and Medford, though its medical and dental schools are located in Boston's Chinatown at Tufts Medical Center.\nGreater Boston has more than 50 colleges and universities, with 250,000 students enrolled in Boston and Cambridge alone. The city's largest private universities include Boston University (also the city's fourth-largest employer), with its main campus along Commonwealth Avenue and a medical campus in the South End, Northeastern University in the Fenway area, Suffolk University near Beacon Hill, which includes law school and business school, and Boston College, which straddles the Boston (Brighton)\u2013Newton border. Boston's only public university is the University of Massachusetts Boston on Columbia Point in Dorchester. Roxbury Community College and Bunker Hill Community College are the city's two public community colleges. Altogether, Boston's colleges and universities employ more than 42,600 people, accounting for nearly seven percent of the city's workforce.\nFive members of the Association of American Universities are in Greater Boston (more than any other metropolitan area): Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University, Boston University, and Brandeis University. Furthermore, Greater Boston contains seven as per the Carnegie Classification. This includes, in addition to the aforementioned five, Boston College, and Northeastern University. This is, by a large margin, the highest concentration of such institutions in a single metropolitan area. Hospitals, universities, and research institutions in Greater Boston received more than $1.77\u00a0billion in National Institutes of Health grants in 2013, more money than any other American metropolitan area. This high density of research institutes also contributes to Boston's high density of early career researchers, which, due to high housing costs in the region, have been shown to face housing stress.\nSmaller private colleges include Babson College, Bentley University, Boston Architectural College, Emmanuel College, Fisher College, MGH Institute of Health Professions, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, Simmons University, Wellesley College, Wentworth Institute of Technology, New England School of Law (originally established as America's first all female law school), and Emerson College. The region is also home to several conservatories and art schools, including the New England Conservatory (the oldest independent conservatory in the United States), the Boston Conservatory, and Berklee College of Music, which has made Boston an important city for jazz music. Many trade schools also exist in the city such as the Boston Career Institute, the North Bennet Street School, and Greater Boston Joint Apprentice Training Center.\nGovernment.\nBoston has a strong mayor\u2013council government system in which the mayor (elected every fourth year) has extensive executive power. Michelle Wu became mayor in November 2021, succeeding Kim Janey who became the Acting Mayor in March 2021 following Marty Walsh's confirmation to the position of Secretary of Labor in the Biden/Harris Administration. Walsh's predecessor Thomas Menino's twenty-year tenure was the longest in the city's history. The Boston City Council is elected every two years; there are nine district seats, and four citywide \"at-large\" seats. The School Committee, which oversees the Boston Public Schools, is appointed by the mayor. The city uses an algorithm called CityScore to measure the effectiveness of various city services. This score is available on a public online dashboard and allows city managers in police, fire, schools, emergency management services, and 3-1-1 to take action and make adjustments in areas of concern.\nIn addition to city government, numerous commissions and state authorities, including the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, the Boston Public Health Commission, the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA), and the Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport), play a role in the life of Bostonians. As the capital of Massachusetts, Boston plays a major role in state politics.\nThe city has several federal facilities, including the John F. Kennedy Federal Office Building, the Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. Federal Building, the John W. McCormack Post Office and Courthouse, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts are housed in The John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse.\nFederally, Boston is split between two congressional districts. Three-fourths of the city is in the 7th district and is represented by Ayanna Pressley while the remaining southern fourth is in the 8th district and is represented by Stephen Lynch, both of whom are Democrats; a Republican has not represented a significant portion of Boston in over a century. The state's senior member of the United States Senate is Democrat Elizabeth Warren, first elected in 2012. The state's junior member of the United States Senate is Democrat Ed Markey, who was elected in 2013 to succeed John Kerry after Kerry's appointment and confirmation as the United States Secretary of State.\nPublic safety.\nBoston included $414\u00a0million in spending on the Boston Police Department in the fiscal 2021 budget. This is the second largest allocation of funding by the city after the allocation to Boston Public Schools.\nLike many major American cities, Boston has experienced a great reduction in violent crime since the early 1990s. Boston's low crime rate since the 1990s has been credited to the Boston Police Department's collaboration with neighborhood groups and church parishes to prevent youths from joining gangs, as well as involvement from the United States Attorney and District Attorney's offices. This helped lead in part to what has been touted as the \"Boston Miracle\". Murders in the city dropped from 152 in 1990 (for a murder rate of 26.5 per 100,000 people) to just 31\u2014not one of them a juvenile\u2014in 1999 (for a murder rate of 5.26 per 100,000).\nAccording to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program in 2022, Boston had 3,955 reported violent crimes (which include homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) and 11,514 reported property crimes (which include arson, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft). With a violent crime rate of 608.7 per 100,000 people, the city's violent crime rate is higher than Massachusetts' rate of 322 per 100,000 people and the national rate of 380.7 per 100,000 people. While Boston's property crime rate, at 1772.0 per 100,000 people, is higher than Massachusetts' property crime rate of 1070.1 per 100,000 people, it is lower than the national property crime rate of 1954.4 per 100,000 people.\nArts and culture.\nBoston shares many cultural roots with greater New England, including a dialect of the non-rhotic Eastern New England accent known as the Boston accent and a regional cuisine with a large emphasis on seafood, salt, and dairy products. Boston also has its own collection of neologisms known as \"Boston slang\" and sardonic humor.\nIn the early 1800s, William Tudor wrote that Boston was \"'perhaps the most perfect and certainly the best-regulated democracy that ever existed. There is something so impossible in the immortal fame of Athens, that the very name makes everything modern shrink from comparison; but since the days of that glorious city I know of none that has approached so near in some points, distant as it may still be from that illustrious model.' From this, Boston has been called the \"Athens of America\" (also a nickname of Philadelphia) for its literary culture, earning a reputation as \"the intellectual capital of the United States\".\nIn the 19th century, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, James Russell Lowell, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote in Boston. Some consider the Old Corner Bookstore to be the \"cradle of American literature\", the place where these writers met and where \"The Atlantic Monthly\" was first published. In 1852, the Boston Public Library was founded as the first free library in the United States. Boston's literary culture continues today thanks to the city's many universities and the Boston Book Festival.\nMusic is afforded a high degree of civic support in Boston. The Boston Symphony Orchestra is one of the \"Big Five\", a group of the greatest American orchestras, and the classical music magazine \"Gramophone\" called it one of the \"world's best\" orchestras. Symphony Hall (west of Back Bay) is home to the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the related Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, which is the largest youth orchestra in the nation, and to the Boston Pops Orchestra. Other concerts are held at the New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall. The Boston Ballet performs at the Boston Opera House. Other performing-arts organizations in the city include the Boston Lyric Opera Company, Opera Boston, Boston Baroque (the first permanent Baroque orchestra in the US), and the Handel and Haydn Society (one of the oldest choral companies in the United States). The city is a center for contemporary classical music with a number of performing groups, several of which are associated with the city's conservatories and universities. These include the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Boston Musica Viva. Several theaters are in or near the Theater District south of Boston Common, including the Cutler Majestic Theatre, Citi Performing Arts Center, the Colonial Theater, and the Orpheum Theatre.\nThere are several major annual events, such as First Night which occurs on New Year's Eve, the Boston Early Music Festival, the annual Boston Arts Festival at Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park, the annual Boston gay pride parade and festival held in June, and Italian summer feasts in the North End honoring Catholic saints. The city is the site of several events during the Fourth of July period. They include the week-long Harborfest festivities and a Boston Pops concert accompanied by fireworks on the banks of the Charles River.\nSeveral historic sites relating to the American Revolution period are preserved as part of the Boston National Historical Park because of the city's prominent role. Many are found along the Freedom Trail, which is marked by a red line of bricks embedded in the ground.\nThe city is home to several art museums and galleries, including the Museum of Fine Arts and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The Institute of Contemporary Art is housed in a contemporary building designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in the Seaport District. Boston's South End Art and Design District (SoWa) and Newbury St. are both art gallery destinations. Columbia Point is the location of the University of Massachusetts Boston, the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, and the Massachusetts Archives and Commonwealth Museum. The Boston Athen\u00e6um (one of the oldest independent libraries in the United States), Boston Children's Museum, Bull & Finch Pub (whose building is known from the television show \"Cheers\"), Museum of Science, and the New England Aquarium are within the city.\nBoston has been a noted religious center from its earliest days. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston serves nearly 300 parishes and is based in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross (1875) in the South End, while the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts serves just under 200 congregations, with the Cathedral Church of St. Paul (1819) as its episcopal seat. Unitarian Universalism has its headquarters in the Fort Point neighborhood. The Christian Scientists are headquartered in Back Bay at the Mother Church (1894). The oldest church in Boston is First Church in Boston, founded in 1630. King's Chapel was the city's first Anglican church, founded in 1686 and converted to Unitarianism in 1785. Other churches include Old South Church (1669), Christ Church (better known as Old North Church, 1723), the oldest church building in the city, Trinity Church (1733), Park Street Church (1809), and Basilica and Shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Help on Mission Hill (1878).\nSports.\nBoston has teams in the four major North American men's professional sports leagues plus Major League Soccer. As of 2024, the city has won 40 championships in these leagues. During a 23-year stretch from 2001 to 2024, the city's professional sports teams have won thirteen championships: Patriots (2001, 2003, 2004, 2014, 2016 and 2018), Red Sox (2004, 2007, 2013, and 2018), Celtics (2008, 2024), and Bruins (2011).\nThe Boston Red Sox, a founding member of the American League of Major League Baseball in 1901, play their home games at Fenway Park, near Kenmore Square, in the city's Fenway section. Built in 1912, it is the oldest sports arena or stadium in active use in the United States among the four major professional American sports leagues, Major League Baseball, the National Football League, National Basketball Association, and the National Hockey League. Boston was the site of the first game of the first modern World Series, in 1903. The series was played between the AL Champion Boston Americans and the NL champion Pittsburgh Pirates. Persistent reports that the team was known in 1903 as the \"Boston Pilgrims\" appear to be unfounded. Boston's first professional baseball team was the Red Stockings, one of the charter members of the National Association in 1871, and of the National League in 1876. The team played under that name until 1883, under the name Beaneaters until 1911, and under the name Braves from 1912 until they moved to Milwaukee after the 1952 season. Since 1966 they have played in Atlanta as the Atlanta Braves.\nTD Garden, formerly called the FleetCenter and built to replace the since-demolished Boston Garden, is above North Station and is the home of two major league teams: the Boston Bruins of the National Hockey League and the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association. The Bruins were the first American member of the National Hockey League and an Original Six franchise. The Boston Celtics were founding members of the Basketball Association of America, one of the two leagues that merged to form the NBA. The Celtics have won eighteen championships, the most of any NBA team.\nWhile they have played in suburban Foxborough since 1971, the New England Patriots of the National Football League were founded in 1960 as the Boston Patriots, changing their name after relocating. The team won the Super Bowl after the 2001, 2003, 2004, 2014, 2016 and 2018 seasons. They share Gillette Stadium with the New England Revolution of Major League Soccer. Another team associated with Boston who plays outside the city is the Boston Fleet of the PWHL, which plays at the Tsongas Center in nearby Lowell. During the inaugural 2024 PWHL playoffs, the Fleet (then simply known as PWHL Boston) made it to the Walter Cup finals, where they lost to the Minnesota Frost (PWHL Minnesota at the time).\nThe area's many colleges and universities are active in college athletics. Four NCAA Division I members play in the area\u2014Boston College, Boston University, Harvard University, and Northeastern University. Of the four, only Boston College participates in college football at the highest level, the Football Bowl Subdivision. Harvard participates in the second-highest level, the Football Championship Subdivision. These four universities participate in the Beanpot, an annual men's and women's ice hockey tournament. The men's Beanpot is hosted at the TD Garden, while the women's Beanpot is held at each member school's home arena on a rotating basis.\nBoston has Esports teams as well, such as the Overwatch League (OWL)'s Boston Uprising. Established in 2017, they were the first team to complete a perfect stage with 0 losses. The Boston Breach is another esports team in the Call of Duty League (CDL).\nOne of the best-known sporting events in the city is the Boston Marathon, the race which is the world's oldest annual marathon, run on Patriots' Day in April. The Red Sox traditionally play a home game starting around 11 a.m. on the same day, with the early start time allowing fans to watch runners finish the race nearby after the conclusion of the ballgame. Another major annual event is the Head of the Charles Regatta, held in October.\nParks and recreation.\nBoston Common, near the Financial District and Beacon Hill, is the oldest public park in the United States. Along with the adjacent Boston Public Garden, it is part of the Emerald Necklace, a string of parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted to run through the city. The Emerald Necklace includes the Back Bay Fens, Arnold Arboretum, Jamaica Pond, Boston's largest body of freshwater, and Franklin Park, the city's largest park and home of the Franklin Park Zoo. Another major park is the Esplanade, along the banks of the Charles River. The Hatch Shell, an outdoor concert venue, is adjacent to the Charles River Esplanade. Other parks are scattered throughout the city, with major parks and beaches near Castle Island and the south end, in Charlestown and along the Dorchester, South Boston, and East Boston shorelines.\nMedia.\nNewspapers.\n\"The Boston Globe\" is the oldest and largest daily newspaper in the city and is generally acknowledged as its paper of record. The city is also served by other publications such as the \"Boston Herald\", \"Boston magazine\", \"DigBoston\", and the Boston edition of \"Metro\". \"The Christian Science Monitor\", headquartered in Boston, was formerly a worldwide daily newspaper but ended publication of daily print editions in 2009, switching to continuous online and weekly magazine format publications. \"The Boston Globe\" also releases a teen publication to the city's public high schools, called \"Teens in Print\" or \"T.i.P.\", which is written by the city's teens and delivered quarterly within the school year. \"The Improper Bostonian\", a glossy lifestyle magazine, was published from 1991 through April 2019.\nThe city's growing Latino population has given rise to a number of local and regional Spanish-language newspapers. These include \"El Planeta\" (owned by the former publisher of the \"Boston Phoenix\"), \"El Mundo\", and \"La Semana\". \"Siglo21\", with its main offices in nearby Lawrence, is also widely distributed.\nVarious LGBT publications serve the city's large LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) population such as \"The Rainbow Times\", the only minority and lesbian-owned LGBT news magazine. Founded in 2006, \"The Rainbow Times\" is now based out of Boston, but serves all of New England.\nRadio and television.\nBoston is the largest broadcasting market in New England, with the radio market being the ninth largest in the United States. Several major AM stations include talk radio WRKO, sports/talk station WEEI, and news radio WBZ (AM). WBZ is a 50,000 watt \"clear channel\" station whose nighttime broadcasts are heard hundreds of miles from Boston. A variety of commercial FM radio formats serve the area, as do NPR stations WBUR and WGBH. College and university radio stations include WERS (Emerson), WHRB (Harvard), WUMB (UMass Boston), WMBR (MIT), WZBC (Boston College), WMFO (Tufts University), WBRS (Brandeis University), WRBB (Northeastern University) and WMLN-FM (Curry College).\nThe Boston television DMA, which also includes Manchester, New Hampshire, is the eighth largest in the United States. The city is served by stations representing every major American network, including WBZ-TV 4 and its sister station WSBK-TV 38 (the former a CBS O&O, the latter an independent station), WCVB-TV 5 and its sister station WMUR-TV 9 (both ABC), WHDH 7 and its sister station WLVI 56 (the former an independent station, the latter a CW affiliate), WBTS-CD 15 (an NBC O&O), and WFXT 25 (Fox). The city is also home to PBS member station WGBH-TV 2, a major producer of PBS programs, which also operates WGBX 44. Spanish-language television networks, including UniM\u00e1s (WUTF-TV 27), Telemundo (WNEU 60, a sister station to WBTS-CD), and Univisi\u00f3n (WUNI 66), have a presence in the region, with WNEU and WUNI serving as network owned-and-operated stations. Most of the area's television stations have their transmitters in nearby Needham and Newton along the Route 128 corridor. Seven Boston television stations are carried by satellite television and cable television providers in Canada.\nInfrastructure.\nHealthcare.\nMany of Boston's medical facilities are associated with universities. The Longwood Medical and Academic Area, adjacent to the Fenway, district, is home to a large number of medical and research facilities, including Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, Dana\u2013Farber Cancer Institute, and Joslin Diabetes Center. Prominent medical facilities, including Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital are in the Beacon Hill area. Many of the facilities in Longwood and near Massachusetts General Hospital are affiliated with Harvard Medical School.\nTufts Medical Center (formerly Tufts-New England Medical Center), in the southern portion of the Chinatown neighborhood, is affiliated with Tufts University School of Medicine. Boston Medical Center, in the South End neighborhood, is the region's largest safety-net hospital and trauma center. Formed by the merger of Boston City Hospital, the first municipal hospital in the United States, and Boston University Hospital, Boston Medical Center now serves as the primary teaching facility for the Boston University School of Medicine. St. Elizabeth's Medical Center is in Brighton Center of the city's Brighton neighborhood. New England Baptist Hospital is in Mission Hill. The city has Veterans Affairs medical centers in the Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury neighborhoods.\nTransportation.\nLogan International Airport, in East Boston and operated by the Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport), is Boston's principal airport. Nearby general aviation airports are Beverly Regional Airport and Lawrence Municipal Airport to the north, Hanscom Field to the west, and Norwood Memorial Airport to the south. Massport also operates several major facilities within the Port of Boston, including a cruise ship terminal and facilities to handle bulk and container cargo in South Boston, and other facilities in Charlestown and East Boston.\nDowntown Boston's streets grew organically, so they do not form a planned grid, unlike those in later-developed Back Bay, East Boston, the South End, and South Boston. Boston is the eastern terminus of I-90, which in Massachusetts runs along the Massachusetts Turnpike. The Central Artery follows I-93 as the primary north\u2013south artery that carries most of the through traffic in downtown Boston. Other major highways include US 1, which carries traffic to the North Shore and areas south of Boston, US 3, which connects to the northwestern suburbs, Massachusetts Route 3, which connects to the South Shore and Cape Cod, and Massachusetts Route 2 which connects to the western suburbs. Surrounding the city is Massachusetts Route 128, a partial beltway which has been largely subsumed by other routes (mostly I-95 and I-93).\nWith nearly a third of Bostonians using public transit for their commute to work, Boston has the fourth-highest rate of public transit usage in the country. The city of Boston has a higher than average percentage of households without a car. In 2016, 33.8 percent of Boston households lacked a car, compared with the national average of 8.7 percent. The city averaged 0.94 cars per household in 2016, compared to a national average of 1.8. Boston's public transportation agency, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), operates the oldest underground rapid transit system in the Americas and is the fourth-busiest rapid transit system in the country, with of track on four lines. The MBTA also operates busy bus and commuter rail networks as well as water shuttles.\nAmtrak intercity rail to Boston is provided through four stations: South Station, North Station, Back Bay, and Route 128. South Station is a major intermodal transportation hub and is the terminus of Amtrak's \"Northeast Regional\", \"Acela Express\", and \"Lake Shore Limited\" routes, in addition to multiple MBTA services. Back Bay is also served by MBTA and those three Amtrak routes, while Route 128, in the southwestern suburbs of Boston, is only served by the \"Acela Express\" and \"Northeast Regional\". Meanwhile, Amtrak's \"Downeaster\" to Brunswick, Maine terminates in North Station, and is the only Amtrak route to do so.\nNicknamed \"The Walking City\", Boston hosts more pedestrian commuters than do other comparably populated cities. Owing to factors such as necessity, the compactness of the city and large student population, 13 percent of the population commutes by foot, making it the highest percentage of pedestrian commuters in the country out of the major American cities. As of 2024[ [update]], Walk Score ranks Boston as the third most walkable U.S. city, with a Walk Score of 83, a Transit Score of 72, and a Bike Score of 69.\nBoston has one of the highest rates of bicycle commuting. The bikeshare program Bluebikes, originally called Hubway, launched in late July 2011. The system has 480 stations with a total of 4,500 bikes. PBSC Urban Solutions provides bicycles and technology for this bike-sharing system.\nInternational relations.\nThe City of Boston has eleven official sister cities:\nBoston has formal partnership relationships through a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) with five additional cities or regions:\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nWorks cited.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "25814008": "Protestantism\nMajor branch of Christianity\nProtestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes justification of sinners through faith alone, the teaching that salvation comes by unmerited divine grace, the priesthood of all believers, and the Bible as the sole infallible source of authority for Christian faith and practice. The five \"solae\" summarize the basic theological beliefs of mainstream Protestantism.\nProtestants follow the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began in the 16th century with the goal of reforming the Catholic Church from perceived errors, abuses, and discrepancies. The Reformation began in the Holy Roman Empire in 1517, when Martin Luther published his \"Ninety-five Theses\" as a reaction against abuses in the sale of indulgences by the Catholic Church, which purported to offer the remission of the temporal punishment of sins to their purchasers. The term, however, derives from the letter of protestation from German Lutheran princes in 1529 against an edict of the Diet of Speyer condemning the teachings of Martin Luther as heretical. In the 16th century, Lutheranism spread from Germany into Denmark\u2013Norway, Sweden, Finland, Livonia, and Iceland. Calvinist churches spread in Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Scotland, Switzerland, France, Poland and Lithuania, led by Protestant Reformers such as John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli and John Knox. The political separation of the Church of England from the Catholic Church under King Henry VIII began Anglicanism, bringing England and Wales into this broad Reformation movement, under the leadership of reformer Thomas Cranmer, whose work forged Anglican doctrine and identity.\nProtestantism is diverse, being divided into various denominations on the basis of theology and ecclesiology, not forming a single structure as with the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy or Oriental Orthodoxy. Protestants adhere to the concept of an invisible church, in contrast to the Catholic, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, the Assyrian Church of the East, and the Ancient Church of the East, which all understand themselves as the one and only original church\u2014the \"one true church\"\u2014founded by Jesus Christ (though certain Protestant denominations, including historic Lutheranism, hold to this position). Some denominations do have a worldwide scope and distribution of church membership, while others are confined to a single country. A majority of Protestants are members of a handful of Protestant denominational families; Adventists, Anabaptists, Anglicans/Episcopalians, Baptists, Calvinist/Reformed, Lutherans, Methodists, Moravians, Pentecostals, Plymouth Brethren, Presbyterians, and Quakers. Nondenominational, charismatic and independent churches are also on the rise, having recently expanded rapidly throughout much of the world, and constitute a significant part of Protestantism. These various movements, collectively labeled \"popular Protestantism\" by scholars such as Peter L. Berger, have been called one of the contemporary world's most dynamic religious movements. There are currently more than 1.18 billion Protestants worldwide.<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nTerminology.\nProtestant.\nSix princes of the Holy Roman Empire and rulers of fourteen Imperial Free Cities, who issued a protest (or dissent) against the edict of the Diet of Speyer (1529), were the first individuals to be called Protestants. The edict reversed concessions made to the Lutherans with the approval of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V three years earlier. The term \"protestant\", though initially purely political in nature, later acquired a broader sense, referring to a member of any Western church which subscribed to the main Protestant principles. A Protestant is an adherent of any of those Christian bodies that separated from the Church of Rome during the Reformation, or of any group descended from them.\nDuring the Reformation, the term \"protestant\" was hardly used outside of German politics. People who were involved in the religious movement used the word \"evangelical\" (). For further details, see the section below. Gradually, \"protestant\" became a general term, meaning any adherent of the Reformation in the German-speaking area. It was ultimately somewhat taken up by Lutherans, even though Martin Luther himself insisted on \"Christian\" or \"evangelical\" as the only acceptable names for individuals who professed faith in Christ. French and Swiss Protestants instead preferred the word \"reformed\" (), which became a popular, neutral, and alternative name for Calvinists.\nEvangelical.\nThe word \"evangelical\" (), which refers to the gospel, was widely used for those involved in the religious movement in the German-speaking area beginning in 1517. \"Evangelical\" is still preferred among some of the historical Protestant denominations in the Lutheran, Calvinist, and United (Lutheran and Reformed) Protestant traditions in Europe, and those with strong ties to them. Above all the term is used by Protestant bodies in the German-speaking area, such as the Protestant Church in Germany. Thus, the German word ' means Protestant, while the German ', refers to churches shaped by Evangelicalism. The English word \"evangelical\" usually refers to evangelical Protestant churches, and therefore to a certain part of Protestantism rather than to Protestantism as a whole. The English word traces its roots back to the Puritans in England, where Evangelicalism originated, and then was brought to the United States.\nMartin Luther always disliked the term \"Lutheran\", preferring the term \"evangelical\", which was derived from \"euangelion\", a Greek word meaning \"good news\", i.e. \"gospel\". The followers of John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, and other theologians linked to the Reformed tradition also began to use that term. To distinguish the two evangelical groups, others began to refer to the two groups as \"Evangelical Lutheran\" and \"Evangelical Reformed\". The word also pertains in the same way to some other mainline groups, for example \"Evangelical Methodist\". As time passed by, the word \"evangelical\" was dropped. Lutherans themselves began to use the term \"Lutheran\" in the middle of the 16th century, in order to distinguish themselves from other groups such as the Philippists and Calvinists.\nReformational.\nThe German word ', which roughly translates to English as \"reformational\" or \"reforming\", is used as an alternative for ' in German, and is different from English \"reformed\" (), which refers to churches shaped by ideas of John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, and other Reformed theologians. Derived from the word \"Reformation\", the term emerged around the same time as \"Evangelical\" (1517) and \"Protestant\" (1529).\nTheology.\nMain principles.\nMany experts have proposed criteria to determine whether a Christian denomination should be considered part of Protestantism. A common consensus approved by most of them is that if a Christian denomination is to be considered Protestant, it must acknowledge the following three fundamental principles of Protestantism.\nScripture alone.\nThe belief, emphasized by Luther, in the Bible as the highest source of authority for the church. The early churches of the Reformation believed in a critical, yet serious, reading of scripture and holding the Bible as a source of authority higher than that of church tradition. The many abuses that had occurred in the Western Church before the Protestant Reformation led the Reformers to reject much of its tradition. In the early 20th century, a less critical reading of the Bible developed in the United States\u2014leading to a \"fundamentalist\" reading of Scripture. Christian fundamentalists read the Bible as the \"inerrant, infallible\" Word of God, as do the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran churches, but interpret it in a literalist fashion without using the historical-critical method. Methodists and Anglicans differ from Lutherans and the Reformed on this doctrine as they teach \"prima scriptura\", which holds that Scripture is the primary source for Christian doctrine, but that \"tradition, experience, and reason\" can nurture the Christian religion as long as they are in harmony with the Bible (Protestant canon).\n\"Biblical Christianity\" focused on a deep study of the Bible is characteristic of most Protestants as opposed to \"Church Christianity\", focused on performing rituals and good works, represented by Catholic and Orthodox traditions. However, Quakers, Pentecostalists and Spiritual Christians emphasize the Holy Spirit and personal closeness to God.\nJustification by faith alone.\nThe belief that believers are justified, or pardoned for sin, solely on condition of faith in Christ rather than a combination of faith and good works. For Protestants, good works are a necessary consequence rather than cause of justification. However, while justification is by faith alone, there is the position that faith is not \"nuda fides\". John Calvin explained that \"it is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone: just as it is the heat alone of the sun which warms the earth, and yet in the sun it is not alone.\" Lutheran and Reformed Christians differ from Methodists in their understanding of this doctrine.\nUniversal priesthood of believers.\nThe universal priesthood of believers implies the right and duty of the Christian laity not only to read the Bible in the vernacular, but also to take part in the government and all the public affairs of the Church. It is opposed to the hierarchical system which puts the essence and authority of the Church in an exclusive priesthood, and which makes ordained priests the necessary mediators between God and the people. It is distinguished from the concept of the priesthood of all believers, which did not grant individuals the right to interpret the Bible apart from the Christian community at large because universal priesthood opened the door to such a possibility. There are scholars who cite that this doctrine tends to subsume all distinctions in the church under a single spiritual entity. Calvin referred to the universal priesthood as an expression of the relation between the believer and his God, including the freedom of a Christian to come to God through Christ without human mediation. He also maintained that this principle recognizes Christ as prophet, priest, and king and that his priesthood is shared with his people.\nTrinity.\nProtestants who adhere to the Nicene Creed believe in three persons (God the Father, God the Son, and the God the Holy Spirit) as one God.\nMovements that emerged around the time of the Protestant Reformation, but are not a part of Protestantism (e.g. Unitarianism), reject the Trinity. This often serves as a reason for exclusion of the Unitarian Universalism, Oneness Pentecostalism, and other movements from Protestantism by various observers. Unitarianism continues to have a presence mainly in Transylvania, England, and the United States.\nFive solae.\nThe Five ' are five Latin phrases (or slogans) that emerged during the Protestant Reformation and summarize the reformers' basic differences in theological beliefs in opposition to the teaching of the Catholic Church of the day. The Latin word ' means \"alone\", \"only\", or \"single\".\nThe use of the phrases as summaries of teaching emerged over time during the Reformation, based on the overarching Lutheran and Reformed principle of \"\" (by scripture alone). This idea contains the four main doctrines on the Bible: that its teaching is needed for salvation (necessity); that all the doctrine necessary for salvation comes from the Bible alone (sufficiency); that everything taught in the Bible is correct (inerrancy); and that, by the Holy Spirit overcoming sin, believers may read and understand truth from the Bible itself, though understanding is difficult, so the means used to guide individual believers to the true teaching is often mutual discussion within the church (clarity).\nThe necessity and inerrancy were well-established ideas, garnering little criticism, though they later came under debate from outside during the Enlightenment. The most contentious idea at the time though was the notion that anyone could simply pick up the Bible and learn enough to gain salvation. Though the reformers were concerned with ecclesiology (the doctrine of how the church as a body works), they had a different understanding of the process in which truths in scripture were applied to life of believers, compared to the Catholics' idea that certain people within the church, or ideas that were old enough, had a special status in giving understanding of the text.\nThe second main principle, ' (by faith alone), states that faith in Christ is sufficient alone for eternal salvation and justification. Though argued from scripture, and hence logically consequent to ', this is the guiding principle of the work of Luther and the later reformers. Because ' placed the Bible as the only source of teaching, ' epitomizes the main thrust of the teaching the reformers wanted to get back to, namely the direct, close, personal connection between Christ and the believer, hence the reformers' contention that their work was Christocentric.\nThe other solas, as statements, emerged later, but the thinking they represent was also part of the early Reformation.\n The Protestants characterize the dogma concerning the Pope as Christ's representative head of the Church on earth, the concept of works made meritorious by Christ, and the Catholic idea of a treasury of the merits of Christ and his saints, as a denial that Christ is the \"only\" mediator between God and man. Catholics, on the other hand, maintained the traditional understanding of Judaism on these questions, and appealed to the universal consensus of Christian tradition.\n Protestants perceived Catholic salvation to be dependent upon the grace of God and the merits of one's own works. The reformers posited that salvation is a gift of God (i.e., God's act of free grace), dispensed by the Holy Spirit owing to the redemptive work of Jesus Christ alone. Consequently, they argued that a sinner is not accepted by God on account of the change wrought in the believer by God's grace, and that the believer is accepted without regard for the merit of his works, for no one \"deserves\" salvation.\n All glory is due to God alone since salvation is accomplished solely through his will and action\u2014not only the gift of the all-sufficient atonement of Jesus on the cross but also the gift of faith in that atonement, created in the heart of the believer by the Holy Spirit. The reformers believed that human beings\u2014even saints canonized by the Catholic Church, the popes, and the ecclesiastical hierarchy\u2014are not worthy of the glory.\nChrist's presence in the Eucharist.\nThe Protestant movement began to diverge into several distinct branches in the mid-to-late 16th century. One of the central points of divergence was controversy over the Eucharist. Early Protestants rejected the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation, which teaches that the bread and wine used in the sacrificial rite of the Mass lose their natural substance by being transformed into the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. They disagreed with one another concerning the presence of Christ and his body and blood in Holy Communion.\nOther beliefs.\nProtestants reject the Catholic doctrine of papal supremacy, and have variant views on the number of sacraments, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and matters of ecclesiastical polity and apostolic succession.\nHistory.\nPre-Reformation.\nMany of the individual ideas that were taken up by various reformers had historical pre-cursors; however, calling them \"proto-reformers\" is controversial, as often their theology also had components that are not associated with later Protestants, or that were asserted by some Protestants but denied by others, or that were only superficially similar.\nOne of the earliest persons to be praised as a Protestant forerunner is Jovinian, who lived in the fourth century AD. He attacked monasticism, ascetism and believed that a saved believer can never be overcome by Satan.\nIn the 9th century, the theologian Gottschalk of Orbais was condemned for heresy by the Catholic Church. Gottschalk believed that the salvation of Jesus was limited and that his redemption was only for the elect. The theology of Gottschalk anticipated the Protestant reformation. Ratramnus also defended the theology of Gottschalk and denied the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist; his writings also influenced the later Protestant reformation. Claudius of Turin in the 9th century also held Protestant ideas, such as faith alone and rejection of the supremacy of Peter.\nIn the late 1130s, Arnold of Brescia, an Italian canon regular became one of the first theologians to attempt to reform the Catholic Church. After his death, his teachings on apostolic poverty gained currency among Arnoldists, and later more widely among Waldensians and the Spiritual Franciscans, though no written word of his has survived the official condemnation. In the early 1170s, Peter Waldo founded the Waldensians. He advocated an interpretation of the Gospel that led to conflicts with the Catholic Church. By 1215, the Waldensians were declared heretical and subject to persecution. Despite that, the movement continues to exist to this day in Italy, as a part of the wider Reformed tradition.\nIn the 1370s, Oxford theologian and priest John Wycliffe\u2014later dubbed the \"Morning Star of Reformation\"\u2014started his activity as an English reformer. He rejected papal authority over secular power (in that any person in mortal sin lost their authority and should be resisted: a priest with possessions, such as a pope, was in such grave sin), may have translated the Bible into vernacular English, and preached anticlerical and biblically centred reforms. His rejection of a real divine presence in the elements of the Eucharist foreshadowed Huldrych Zwingli's similar ideas in the 16th century. Wycliffe's admirers came to be known as \"Lollards\".\nBeginning in the first decade of the 15th century, Jan Hus\u2014a Catholic priest, Czech reformist and professor\u2014influenced by John Wycliffe's writings, founded the Hussite movement. He strongly advocated his reformist Bohemian religious denomination. He was excommunicated and burned at the stake in Constance, Bishopric of Constance, in 1415 by secular authorities for unrepentant and persistent heresy. After his execution, a revolt erupted. Hussites defeated five continuous crusades proclaimed against them by the Pope.\nLater theological disputes caused a split within the Hussite movement. Utraquists maintained that both the bread and the wine should be administered to the people during the Eucharist. Another major faction were the Taborites, who opposed the Utraquists in the Battle of Lipany during the Hussite Wars. There were two separate parties among the Hussites: moderate and radical movements. Other smaller regional Hussite branches in Bohemia included Adamites, Orebites, Orphans, and Praguers.\nThe Hussite Wars concluded with the victory of Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, his Catholic allies and moderate Hussites and the defeat of the radical Hussites. Tensions arose as the Thirty Years' War reached Bohemia in 1620. Both moderate and radical Hussitism was increasingly persecuted by Catholics and Holy Roman Emperor's armies.\nIn the 14th century, a German mysticist group called the Gottesfreunde criticized the Catholic church and its corruption. Many of their leaders were executed for attacking the Catholic church and they believed that God's judgement would soon come upon the church. The Gottesfreunde were a democratic lay movement and forerunner of the Reformation and put heavy stress of holiness and piety,\nStarting in 1475, an Italian Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola was calling for a Christian renewal. Later on, Martin Luther himself read some of the friar's writings and praised him as a martyr and forerunner whose ideas on faith and grace anticipated Luther's own doctrine of justification by faith alone.\nSome of Hus' followers founded the Unitas Fratrum\u2014\"Unity of the Brethren\"\u2014which was renewed under the leadership of Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf in Herrnhut, Saxony, in 1722 after its almost total destruction in the Thirty Years' War and the Counterreformation (\"Catholic Reformation\"). Today, it is usually referred to in English as the Moravian Church and in German as the Herrnhuter Br\u00fcdergemeine.\nIn the 15th century, three German theologians anticipated the reformation: Wessel Gansfort, Johann Ruchat von Wesel, and Johannes von Goch. They held ideas such as predestination, sola scriptura, and the church invisible, and denied the Catholic view on justification and the authority of the Pope, also questioning monasticism.\nWessel Gansfort also denied transubstantiation and anticipated the Lutheran view of justification by faith alone.\nReformation proper.\nThe Protestant Reformation began as an attempt to reform the Catholic Church.\nOn 31 October 1517, known as All Hallows' Eve, Martin Luther allegedly nailed his Ninety-five Theses, also known as the Disputation on the Power of Indulgences, on the door of the All Saints' Church in Wittenberg, Germany, detailing doctrinal and practical abuses of the Catholic Church, especially the selling of indulgences. The theses debated and criticized many aspects of the Church and the papacy, including the practice of purgatory, particular judgment, and the authority of the pope. Luther would later write works against the Catholic devotion to Virgin Mary, the intercession of and devotion to the saints, mandatory clerical celibacy, monasticism, the authority of the pope, the ecclesiastical law, censure and excommunication, the role of secular rulers in religious matters, the relationship between Christianity and the law, good works, and the sacraments.\nThe Reformation was a triumph of literacy and the new printing press invented by Johannes Gutenberg. Luther's translation of the Bible into German was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy, and stimulated as well the printing and distribution of religious books and pamphlets. From 1517 onward, religious pamphlets flooded much of Europe.\nFollowing the excommunication of Luther and condemnation of the Reformation by the Pope, the work and writings of John Calvin were influential in establishing a loose consensus among various groups in Switzerland, Scotland, Hungary, Germany and elsewhere. After the expulsion of its Bishop in 1526, and the unsuccessful attempts of the Bern reformer William Farel, Calvin was asked to use the organizational skill he had gathered as a student of law to discipline the city of Geneva. His \"Ordinances of 1541\" involved a collaboration of Church affairs with the city council and consistory to bring morality to all areas of life. After the establishment of the Geneva academy in 1559, Geneva became the unofficial capital of the Protestant movement, providing refuge for Protestant exiles from all over Europe and educating them as Calvinist missionaries. The faith continued to spread after Calvin's death in 1563.\nProtestantism also spread from the German lands into France, where the Protestants were nicknamed Huguenots (a term of somewhat inexplicable origin). Calvin continued to take an interest in the French religious affairs from his base in Geneva. He regularly trained pastors to lead congregations there. Despite heavy persecution, the Reformed tradition made steady progress across large sections of the nation, appealing to people alienated by the obduracy and the complacency of the Catholic establishment. French Protestantism came to acquire a distinctly political character, made all the more obvious by the conversions of nobles during the 1550s. This established the preconditions for a series of conflicts, known as the French Wars of Religion. The civil wars gained impetus with the sudden death of Henry II of France in 1559. Atrocity and outrage became the defining characteristics of the time, illustrated at their most intense in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of August 1572, when the Catholic party annihilated between 30,000 and 100,000 Huguenots across France. The wars only concluded when Henry IV of France issued the Edict of Nantes, promising official toleration of the Protestant minority, but under highly restricted conditions. Catholicism remained the official state religion, and the fortunes of French Protestants gradually declined over the next century, culminating in Louis XIV's Edict of Fontainebleau which revoked the Edict of Nantes and made Catholicism the sole legal religion once again. In response to the Edict of Fontainebleau, Frederick William I, Elector of Brandenburg declared the Edict of Potsdam, giving free passage to Huguenot refugees. In the late 17th century, many Huguenots fled to England, the Netherlands, Prussia, Switzerland, and the English and Dutch overseas colonies. A significant community in France remained in the C\u00e9vennes region.\nParallel to events in Germany, a movement began in Switzerland under the leadership of Huldrych Zwingli. Zwingli was a scholar and preacher, who in 1518 moved to Zurich. Although the two movements agreed on many issues of theology, some unresolved differences kept them separate. A long-standing resentment between the German states and the Swiss Confederation led to heated debate over how much Zwingli owed his ideas to Lutheranism. The German Prince Philip of Hesse saw potential in creating an alliance between Zwingli and Luther. A meeting was held in his castle in 1529, now known as the Colloquy of Marburg, which has become infamous for its failure. The two men could not come to any agreement due to their disputation over one key doctrine.\nIn 1534, King Henry VIII put an end to all papal jurisdiction in England, after the Pope failed to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (due to political considerations involving the Holy Roman Emperor); this opened the door to reformational ideas. Reformers in the Church of England alternated between sympathies for ancient Catholic tradition and more Reformed principles, gradually developing into a tradition considered a middle way (\"\") between the Catholic and Protestant traditions. The English Reformation followed a particular course. The different character of the English Reformation came primarily from the fact that it was driven initially by the political necessities of Henry VIII. King Henry decided to remove the Church of England from the authority of Rome. In 1534, the Act of Supremacy recognized Henry as \"the only Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England\". Between 1535 and 1540, under Thomas Cromwell, the policy known as the Dissolution of the Monasteries was put into effect. Following a brief Catholic restoration during the reign of Mary I, a loose consensus developed during the reign of Elizabeth I. The Elizabethan Religious Settlement largely formed Anglicanism into a distinctive church tradition. The compromise was uneasy and was capable of veering between extreme Calvinism on the one hand and Catholicism on the other. It was relatively successful until the Puritan Revolution or English Civil War in the 17th century.\nThe success of the Counterreformation (\"Catholic Reformation\") on the Continent and the growth of a Puritan party dedicated to further Protestant reform polarized the Elizabethan Age. The early Puritan movement was a movement for reform in the Church of England whose proponents desired for the Church of England to resemble more closely the Protestant churches of Europe, especially that of Geneva. The later Puritan movement, often referred to as dissenters and nonconformists, eventually led to the formation of various Reformed denominations.\nThe Scottish Reformation of 1560 decisively shaped the Church of Scotland. The Reformation in Scotland culminated ecclesiastically in the establishment of a church along Reformed lines, and politically in the triumph of English influence over that of France. John Knox is regarded as the leader of the Scottish Reformation. The Scottish Reformation Parliament of 1560 repudiated the pope's authority by the Papal Jurisdiction Act 1560, forbade the celebration of the Mass and approved a Protestant Confession of Faith. It was made possible by a revolution against French hegemony under the regime of the regent Mary of Guise, who had governed Scotland in the name of her absent daughter.\nSome of the most important activists of the Protestant Reformation included Jacobus Arminius, Theodore Beza, Martin Bucer, Andreas von Carlstadt, Heinrich Bullinger, Balthasar Hubmaier, Thomas Cranmer, William Farel, Thomas M\u00fcntzer, Laurentius Petri, Olaus Petri, Philipp Melanchthon, Menno Simons, Louis de Berquin, Primo\u017e Trubar and John Smyth.\nIn the course of this religious upheaval, the German Peasants' War of 1524\u201325 swept through the Bavarian, Thuringian and Swabian principalities. After the Eighty Years' War in the Low Countries and the French Wars of Religion, the confessional division of the states of the Holy Roman Empire eventually erupted in the Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648. It devastated much of Germany, killing between 25% and 40% of its population. The main tenets of the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War, were:\nPost-Reformation.\nThe Great Awakenings were periods of rapid and dramatic religious revival in Anglo-American religious history.\nThe First Great Awakening was an evangelical and revitalization movement that swept through Protestant Europe and British America, especially the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American Protestantism. It resulted from powerful preaching that gave listeners a sense of deep personal revelation of their need of salvation by Jesus Christ. Pulling away from ritual, ceremony, sacramentalism and hierarchy, it made Christianity intensely personal to the average person by fostering a deep sense of spiritual conviction and redemption, and by encouraging introspection and a commitment to a new standard of personal morality.\nThe Second Great Awakening began around 1790. It gained momentum by 1800. After 1820, membership rose rapidly among Baptist and Methodist congregations, whose preachers led the movement. It was past its peak by the late 1840s. It has been described as a reaction against skepticism, deism, and rationalism, although why those forces became pressing enough at the time to spark revivals is not fully understood. It enrolled millions of new members in existing evangelical denominations and led to the formation of new denominations.\nThe Third Great Awakening refers to a hypothetical historical period that was marked by religious activism in American history and spans the late 1850s to the early 20th century. It affected pietistic Protestant denominations and had a strong element of social activism. It gathered strength from the postmillennial belief that the Second Coming of Christ would occur after mankind had reformed the entire earth. It was affiliated with the Social Gospel Movement, which applied Christianity to social issues and gained its force from the Awakening, as did the worldwide missionary movement. New groupings emerged, such as the Holiness, Nazarene, and Christian Science movements.\nThe Fourth Great Awakening was a Christian religious awakening that some scholars\u2014most notably, Robert Fogel\u2014say took place in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, while others look at the era following World War II. The terminology is controversial. Thus, the idea of a Fourth Great Awakening itself has not been generally accepted.\nIn 1814, Le R\u00e9veil swept through Calvinist regions in Switzerland and France.\nIn 1904, a Protestant revival in Wales had a tremendous impact on the local population. A part of British modernization, it drew many people to churches, especially Methodist and Baptist ones.\nA noteworthy development in 20th-century Protestant Christianity was the rise of the modern Pentecostal movement. Sprung from Methodist and Wesleyan roots, it arose out of meetings at an urban mission on Azusa Street in Los Angeles. From there it spread around the world, carried by those who experienced what they believed to be miraculous moves of God there. These Pentecost-like manifestations have steadily been in evidence throughout history, such as seen in the two Great Awakenings. Pentecostalism, which in turn birthed the Charismatic movement within already established denominations, continues to be an important force in Western Christianity.\nIn the United States and elsewhere in the world, there has been a marked rise in the evangelical wing of Protestant denominations, especially those that are more exclusively evangelical, and a corresponding decline in the mainstream liberal churches. In the post\u2013World War I era, Liberal Christianity was on the rise, and a considerable number of seminaries held and taught from a liberal perspective as well. In the post\u2013World War II era, the trend began to swing back towards the conservative camp in America's seminaries and church structures.\nIn Europe, there has been a general move away from religious observance and belief in Christian teachings and a move towards secularism. The Enlightenment is largely responsible for the spread of secularism. Some scholars debate the link between Protestantism and the rise of secularism, and take as argument the wide-ranging freedom in Protestant-majority countries. However, the sole example of France demonstrates that even in Catholic-majority countries, the overwhelming impact of the Enlightenment has brought even stronger secularism and freedom of thought five centuries later. It is more reliable to consider that the Reformation influenced the critical thinkers of the subsequent centuries, providing intellectual, religious, and philosophical ground on which future philosophers could extend their criticism of the church, of its theological, philosophical, social assumptions of the time. One should be reminded though that initial philosophers of the Enlightenment were defending a Christian conception of the world, but it was developed together with a fierce and decisive criticism of the Church, its politics, its ethics, its worldview, its scientific and cultural assumptions, leading to the devaluation of all forms of institutionalized Christianity, which extended over the centuries.\nRadical Reformation.\nUnlike mainstream Lutheran, Calvinist and Zwinglian movements, the Radical Reformation, which had no state sponsorship, generally abandoned the idea of the \"Church visible\" as distinct from the \"Church invisible\". It was a rational extension of the state-approved Protestant dissent, which took the value of independence from constituted authority a step further, arguing the same for the civic realm. The Radical Reformation was non-mainstream, though in parts of Germany, Switzerland and Austria, a majority would sympathize with the Radical Reformation despite the intense persecution it faced from both Catholics and Magisterial Protestants.\nThe early Anabaptists believed that their reformation must purify not only theology but also the actual lives of Christians, especially their political and social relationships. Therefore, the church should not be supported by the state, neither by tithes and taxes, nor by the use of the sword; Christianity was a matter of individual conviction, which could not be forced on anyone, but rather required a personal decision for it. Protestant ecclesial leaders such as Hubmaier and Hofmann preached the invalidity of infant baptism, advocating baptism as following conversion (\"believer's baptism\") instead. This was not a doctrine new to the reformers, but was taught by earlier groups, such as the Albigenses in 1147. Though most of the Radical Reformers were Anabaptist, some did not identify themselves with the mainstream Anabaptist tradition. Thomas M\u00fcntzer was involved in the German Peasants' War. Andreas Karlstadt disagreed theologically with Huldrych Zwingli and Martin Luther, teaching nonviolence and refusing to baptize infants while not rebaptizing adult believers. Kaspar Schwenkfeld and Sebastian Franck were influenced by German mysticism and spiritualism.\nIn the view of many associated with the Radical Reformation, the Magisterial Reformation had not gone far enough. Radical Reformer, Andreas von Bodenstein Karlstadt, for example, referred to the Lutheran theologians at Wittenberg as the \"new papists\". Since the term \"magister\" also means \"teacher\", the Magisterial Reformation is also characterized by an emphasis on the authority of a teacher. This is made evident in the prominence of Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli as leaders of the reform movements in their respective areas of ministry. Because of their authority, they were often criticized by Radical Reformers as being too much like the Roman Popes. A more political side of the Radical Reformation can be seen in the thought and practice of Hans Hut, although typically Anabaptism has been associated with pacifism.\nAnabaptism in shape of its various diversification such as the Amish, Mennonites and Hutterites came out of the Radical Reformation. Later in history, Schwarzenau Brethren, and the Apostolic Christian Church would emerge in Anabaptist circles.\nDenominations.\nProtestants refer to specific groupings of congregations or churches that share in common foundational doctrines and the name of their groups as denominations. The term denomination (national body) is to be distinguished from branch (denominational family; tradition), communion (international body) and congregation (church). An example (this is no universal way to classify Protestant churches, as these may sometimes vary broadly in their structures) to show the difference:\nBranch/denominational family/tradition: Methodism\nCommunion/international body: World Methodist Council\nDenomination/national body: United Methodist Church\nCongregation/church: First United Methodist Church (Paintsville, Kentucky)\nProtestants reject the Catholic Church's doctrine that it is the one true church, with some teaching belief in the \"invisible church\", which consists of all who profess faith in Jesus Christ. The Lutheran Church traditionally sees itself as the \"main trunk of the historical Christian Tree\" founded by Christ and the Apostles, holding that during the Reformation, the Church of Rome fell away. Individual denominations also have formed over very subtle theological differences. Other denominations are simply regional or ethnic expressions of the same beliefs. Because the five solas are the main tenets of the Protestant faith, non-denominational groups and organizations are also considered Protestant.\nVarious ecumenical movements have attempted cooperation or reorganization of the various divided Protestant denominations, according to various models of union, but divisions continue to outpace unions, as there is no overarching authority to which any of the churches owe allegiance, which can authoritatively define the faith. Most denominations share common beliefs in the major aspects of the Christian faith while differing in many secondary doctrines, although what is major and what is secondary is a matter of idiosyncratic belief.\nSeveral countries have established their national churches, linking the ecclesiastical structure with the state. Jurisdictions where a Protestant denomination has been established as a state religion include several Nordic countries; Denmark (including Greenland), the Faroe Islands (its church being independent since 2007), Iceland and Norway have established Evangelical Lutheran churches. Tuvalu has the only established church in Reformed tradition in the world, while Tonga\u2014in the Methodist tradition.\nThe Church of England is the officially established religious institution in England, and also the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion.\nIn 1869, Finland was the first Nordic country to disestablish its Evangelical Lutheran church by introducing the Church Act. Although the church still maintains a special relationship with the state, it is not described as a state religion in the Finnish Constitution or other laws passed by the Finnish Parliament. In 2000, Sweden was the second Nordic country to do so.\nUnited and uniting churches.\nUnited and uniting churches are churches formed from the merger or other form of union of two or more different Protestant denominations.\nHistorically, unions of Protestant churches were enforced by the state, usually in order to have a stricter control over the religious sphere of its people, but also for other organizational reasons. As modern Christian ecumenism progresses, unions between various Protestant traditions are becoming more and more common, resulting in a growing number of united and uniting churches. Some of the recent major examples are the Church of North India (1970), United Protestant Church of France (2013), and the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (2004). As mainline Protestantism shrinks in Europe and North America due to the rise of secularism or in areas where Christianity is a minority religion as with the Indian subcontinent, Reformed, Anglican, and Lutheran denominations merge, often creating large nationwide denominations. The phenomenon is much less common among evangelical, nondenominational and charismatic churches as new ones arise and plenty of them remain independent of each other.\nWhat is perhaps the oldest official united church is found in Germany, where the Protestant Church in Germany is a federation of Lutheran, United (Prussian Union), and Reformed churches, a union dating back to 1817. The first of the series of unions was at a synod in Idstein to form the Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau in August 1817, commemorated in naming the church of Idstein Unionskirche one hundred years later.\nAround the world, each united or uniting church comprises a different mix of predecessor Protestant denominations. Trends are visible, however, as most united and uniting churches have one or more predecessors with heritage in the Reformed tradition and many are members of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.\nMajor branches.\nProtestants can be differentiated according to how they have been influenced by important movements since the Reformation, today regarded as branches. Some of these movements have a common lineage, sometimes directly spawning individual denominations. Due to the earlier stated multitude of denominations, this section discusses only the largest denominational families, or branches, widely considered to be a part of Protestantism. These are, in alphabetical order: Adventist, Anglican, Baptist, Calvinist (Reformed), Hussite, Lutheran, Methodist, Pentecostal, Plymouth Brethren and Quaker. A small but historically significant Anabaptist branch is also discussed.\nThe chart below shows the mutual relations and historical origins of the main Protestant denominational families, or their parts. Due to factors such as Counterreformation (\"Catholic Reformation\") and the legal principle of \"Cuius regio, eius religio\", many people lived as Nicodemites, where their professed religious affiliations were more or less at odds with the movement they sympathized with. As a result, the boundaries between the denominations do not separate as cleanly as this chart indicates. When a population was suppressed or persecuted into feigning an adherence to the dominant faith, over the generations they continued to influence the church they outwardly adhered to.\nBecause Calvinism was not specifically recognized in the Holy Roman Empire until the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, many Calvinists lived as Crypto-Calvinists. Due to Counterreformation (\"Catholic Reformation\") related suppressions in Catholic lands during the 16th through 19th centuries, many Protestants lived as Crypto-Protestants. Meanwhile, in Protestant areas, Catholics sometimes lived as crypto-papists, although in continental Europe emigration was more feasible so this was less common.\nAdventism.\nAdventism began in the 19th century in the context of the Second Great Awakening revival in the United States. The name refers to belief in the imminent Second Coming (or \"Second Advent\") of Jesus Christ. William Miller started the Adventist movement in the 1830s. His followers became known as Millerites.\nAlthough the Adventist churches hold much in common, their theologies differ on whether the intermediate state is unconscious sleep or consciousness, whether the ultimate punishment of the wicked is annihilation or eternal torment, the nature of immortality, whether or not the wicked are resurrected after the millennium, and whether the sanctuary of Daniel 8 refers to the one in heaven or one on earth. The movement has encouraged the examination of the whole Bible, leading Seventh-day Adventists and some smaller Adventist groups to observe the Sabbath. The General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists has compiled that church's core beliefs in the 28 Fundamental Beliefs (1980 and 2005), which use Biblical references as justification.\nIn 2010, Adventism claimed some 22\u00a0million believers scattered in various independent churches. The largest church within the movement\u2014the Seventh-day Adventist Church\u2014has more than 18\u00a0million members.\nAnabaptism.\nAnabaptism traces its origins to the Radical Reformation. Anabaptists believe in delaying baptism until the candidate confesses his or her faith. Although some consider this movement to be an offshoot of Protestantism, others see it as a distinct one. The Amish, Hutterites, and Mennonites are direct descendants of the movement. Schwarzenau Brethren, Bruderhof, and the Apostolic Christian Church are considered later developments among the Anabaptists.\nThe name \"Anabaptist\", meaning \"one who baptizes again\", was given to them by their persecutors in reference to the practice of re-baptizing converts who already had been baptized as infants. Anabaptists required that baptismal candidates be able to make their own confessions of faith and so rejected baptism of infants. The early members of this movement did not accept the name \"Anabaptist\", claiming that since infant baptism was unscriptural and null and void, the baptizing of believers was not a re-baptism but in fact their first real baptism. As a result of their views on the nature of baptism and other issues, Anabaptists were heavily persecuted during the 16th century and into the 17th by both Magisterial Protestants and Catholics. While most Anabaptists adhered to a literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount, which precluded taking oaths, participating in military actions, and participating in civil government, some who practiced re-baptism felt otherwise. They were thus technically Anabaptists, even though conservative Amish, Mennonites, and Hutterites and some historians tend to consider them as outside of true Anabaptism. Anabaptist reformers of the Radical Reformation are divided into Radical and the so-called Second Front. Some important Radical Reformation theologians were John of Leiden, Thomas M\u00fcntzer, Kaspar Schwenkfeld, Sebastian Franck, Menno Simons. Second Front Reformers included Hans Denck, Conrad Grebel, Balthasar Hubmaier and Felix Manz. Many Anabaptists today still use the \"Ausbund\", which is the oldest hymnal still in continuous use.\nAnglicanism.\nAnglicanism consists of the Church of England and churches which are historically tied to it or hold similar beliefs, worship practices and church structures. The word \"Anglican\" originates in \"\", a medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246 that means the \"English Church\". There is no single \"Anglican Church\" with universal juridical authority, since each national or regional church has full autonomy. As the name suggests, the communion is an association of churches in full communion with the archbishop of Canterbury. The great majority of Anglicans are members of churches which are part of the international Anglican Communion, which has 85\u00a0million adherents.\nThe Church of England declared its independence from the Catholic Church at the time of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement. Many of the new Anglican formularies of the mid-16th century corresponded closely to those of contemporary Reformed tradition. These reforms were understood by one of those most responsible for them, the then archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, as navigating a middle way between two of the emerging Protestant traditions, namely Lutheranism and Calvinism. By the end of the century, the retention in Anglicanism of many traditional liturgical forms and of the episcopate was already seen as unacceptable by those promoting the most developed Protestant principles.\nUnique to Anglicanism is the \"Book of Common Prayer\", the collection of services that worshippers in most Anglican churches used for centuries. While it has since undergone many revisions and Anglican churches in different countries have developed other service books, the Book of Common Prayer is still acknowledged as one of the ties that bind the Anglican Communion together.\nBaptists.\nBaptists subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers (believer's baptism, as opposed to infant baptism), and that it must be done by complete immersion (as opposed to affusion or sprinkling). Other tenets of Baptist churches include soul competency (liberty), salvation through faith alone, Scripture alone as the rule of faith and practice, and the autonomy of the local congregation. Baptists recognize two ministerial offices, pastors and deacons. Baptist churches are widely considered to be Protestant churches, though some Baptists disavow this identity.\nDiverse from their beginning, those identifying as Baptists today differ widely from one another in what they believe, how they worship, their attitudes toward other Christians, and their understanding of what is important in Christian discipleship.\nHistorians trace the earliest church labeled \"Baptist\" back to 1609 in Amsterdam, with English Separatist John Smyth as its pastor. In accordance with his reading of the New Testament, he rejected baptism of infants and instituted baptism only of believing adults. Baptist practice spread to England, where the General Baptists considered Christ's atonement to extend to all people, while the Particular Baptists believed that it extended only to the elect. In 1638, Roger Williams established the first Baptist congregation in the North American colonies. In the mid-18th century, the First Great Awakening increased Baptist growth in both New England and the South. The Second Great Awakening in the South in the early 19th century increased church membership, as did the preachers' lessening of support for abolition and manumission of slavery, which had been part of the 18th-century teachings. Baptist missionaries have spread their church to every continent.\nThe Baptist World Alliance reports more than 41\u00a0million members in more than 150,000 congregations. In 2002, there were over 100\u00a0million Baptists and Baptistic group members worldwide and over 33\u00a0million in North America. The largest Baptist association is the Southern Baptist Convention, with the membership of associated churches totaling more than 14\u00a0million.\nCalvinism.\nCalvinism, also called the Reformed tradition, was advanced by several theologians such as Martin Bucer, Heinrich Bullinger, Peter Martyr Vermigli, and Huldrych Zwingli, but this branch of Christianity bears the name of the French reformer John Calvin because of his prominent influence on it and because of his role in the confessional and ecclesiastical debates throughout the 16th century.\nThis term also currently refers to the doctrines and practices of the Reformed churches of which Calvin was an early leader. Less commonly, it can refer to the individual teaching of Calvin himself. The particulars of Calvinist theology may be stated in a number of ways. Perhaps the best known summary is contained in the five points of Calvinism, though these points identify the Calvinist view on soteriology rather than summarizing the system as a whole. Broadly speaking, Calvinism stresses the sovereignty or rule of God in all things\u2014in salvation but also in all of life. This concept is seen clearly in the doctrines of predestination and total depravity.\nThe biggest Reformed association is the World Communion of Reformed Churches with more than 80\u00a0million members in 211 member denominations around the world. There are more conservative Reformed federations like the World Reformed Fellowship and the International Conference of Reformed Churches, as well as independent churches.\nHussites.\nHussitism follows the teachings of Czech reformer Jan Hus, who became the best-known representative of the Bohemian Reformation and one of the forerunners of the Protestant Reformation. An early hymnal was the hand-written \"Jistebnice hymn book\". This predominantly religious movement was propelled by social issues and strengthened Czech national awareness. Among present-day Christians, Hussite traditions are represented in the Moravian Church, Unity of the Brethren and the Czechoslovak Hussite Church.\nLutheranism.\nLutheranism identifies with the theology of Martin Luther, a German monk and priest, ecclesiastical reformer, and theologian.\nLutheranism advocates a doctrine of justification \"by grace alone through faith alone on the basis of Scripture alone\", the doctrine that scripture is the final authority on all matters of faith, rejecting the assertion made by Catholic leaders at the Council of Trent that authority comes from both Scriptures and Tradition. In addition, Lutherans accept the teachings of the first four ecumenical councils of the undivided Christian Church.\nUnlike the Reformed tradition, Lutherans retain many of the liturgical practices and sacramental teachings of the pre-Reformation Church with an emphasis on the Eucharist, or Lord's Supper. Lutheran theology differs from Reformed theology in Christology, the purpose of God's Law, divine grace, the concept of perseverance of the saints, and predestination.\nToday, Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism. With approximately 80\u00a0million adherents, it constitutes the third most common Protestant confession after historically Pentecostal denominations and Anglicanism. The Lutheran World Federation, the largest global communion of Lutheran churches represents over 72\u00a0million people. Both of these figures miscount Lutherans worldwide as many members of more generically Protestant LWF member church bodies do not self-identify as Lutheran or attend congregations that self-identify as Lutheran. Additionally, there are other international organizations such as the Global Confessional and Missional Lutheran Forum, International Lutheran Council and the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference, as well as Lutheran denominations that are not necessarily a member of an international organization.\nMethodism.\nMethodism identifies principally with the theology of John Wesley\u2014an Anglican priest and evangelist. This evangelical movement originated as a revival within the 18th-century Church of England and became a separate Church following Wesley's death. Because of vigorous missionary activity, the movement spread throughout the British Empire, the United States, and beyond, today claiming approximately 80\u00a0million adherents worldwide. Originally it appealed especially to laborers and slaves.\nSoteriologically, most Methodists are Arminian, emphasizing that Christ accomplished salvation for every human being, and that humans must exercise an act of the will to receive it (as opposed to the traditional Calvinist doctrine of monergism). Methodism is traditionally low church in liturgy, although this varies greatly between individual congregations; the Wesleys themselves greatly valued the Anglican liturgy and tradition. Methodism is known for its rich musical tradition; John Wesley's brother, Charles, was instrumental in writing much of the hymnody of the Methodist Church, and many other eminent hymn writers come from the Methodist tradition.\nThe Holiness movement refers to a set of practices surrounding the doctrine of Christian perfection that emerged within 19th-century Methodism, along with a number of evangelical denominations and parachurch organizations (such as camp meetings). There are an estimated 12\u00a0million adherents in denominations aligned with the Wesleyan-holiness movement. The Free Methodist Church, the Salvation Army and the Wesleyan Methodist Church are notable examples, while other adherents of the Holiness Movement remained within mainline Methodism, e.g. the United Methodist Church.\nPentecostalism.\nPentecostalism is a movement that places special emphasis on a direct personal experience of God through the baptism with the Holy Spirit. The term \"Pentecostal\" is derived from Pentecost, the Greek name for the Jewish Feast of Weeks. For Christians, this event commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the followers of Jesus Christ, as described in the second chapter of the Book of Acts.\nThis branch of Protestantism is distinguished by belief in the baptism with the Holy Spirit as an experience separate from conversion that enables a Christian to live a life empowered by and filled with the Holy Spirit. This empowerment includes the use of spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues and divine healing\u2014two other defining characteristics of Pentecostalism. Because of their commitment to biblical authority, spiritual gifts, and the miraculous, Pentecostals tend to see their movement as reflecting the same kind of spiritual power and teachings that were found in the Apostolic Age of the early church. For this reason, some Pentecostals also use the term \"Apostolic\" or \"Full Gospel\" to describe their movement.\nPentecostalism eventually spawned hundreds of new denominations, including large groups such as the Assemblies of God and the Church of God in Christ, both in the United States and elsewhere. There are over 279\u00a0million Pentecostals worldwide, and the movement is growing in many parts of the world, especially the global South. Since the 1960s, Pentecostalism has increasingly gained acceptance from other Christian traditions, and Pentecostal beliefs concerning Spirit baptism and spiritual gifts have been embraced by non-Pentecostal Christians in Protestant and Catholic churches through the Charismatic Movement. Together, Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity numbers over 500\u00a0million adherents.\nPlymouth Brethren.\nThe Plymouth Brethren are a conservative, low church, evangelical denomination, whose history can be traced to Dublin, Ireland, in the late 1820s, originating from Anglicanism. Among other beliefs, the group emphasizes \"\". Brethren generally see themselves not as a denomination, but as a network, or even as a collection of overlapping networks, of like-minded independent churches. Although the group refused for many years to take any denominational name to itself\u2014a stance that some of them still maintain\u2014the title \"The Brethren\", is one that many of their number are comfortable with in that the Bible designates all believers as \"brethren\".\nQuakerism.\nQuakers, or Friends, are members of a family of religious movements collectively known as the Religious Society of Friends. The central unifying doctrine of these movements is the priesthood of all believers. Many Friends view themselves as members of a Christian denomination. They include those with evangelical, holiness, liberal, and traditional conservative Quaker understandings of Christianity. Unlike many other groups that emerged within Christianity, the Religious Society of Friends has actively tried to avoid creeds and hierarchical structures.\nOther Protestants.\nThere are many other Protestant denominations that do not fit neatly into the mentioned branches, and are far smaller in membership. Some groups of individuals who hold basic Protestant tenets identify themselves simply as \"Christians\" or \"born-again Christians\". They typically distance themselves from the confessionalism or creedalism of other Christian communities by calling themselves \"non-denominational\" or \"evangelical\". Often founded by individual pastors, they have little affiliation with historic denominations.<ref name=\"Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life / U.S. Religious Landscape Survey\"></ref>\nAlthough Unitarianism developed from the Protestant Reformation, it is excluded from Protestantism due to its Nontrinitarian theological nature. Unitarianism has been popular in the region of Transylvania within today's Romania, England, and the United States. It originated almost simultaneously in Transylvania and the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth.\nSpiritual Christianity is the group of Russian movements (Doukhobors and others), so-called folk Protestants. Their origins are varied: some were influenced by western Protestants, others from disgust of the behavior of official Orthodox priests.\nMessianic Judaism is a movement of the Jews and non-Jews, which arose in the 1960s within Evangelical Protestantism and absorbed elements of the messianic traditions in Judaism.\nInterdenominational movements.\nThere are also Christian movements which cross denominational lines and even branches, and cannot be classified on the same level previously mentioned forms. Evangelicalism is a prominent example. Some of those movements are active exclusively within Protestantism, some are Christian-wide. Transdenominational movements are sometimes capable of affecting parts of the Catholic Church, such as does it the Charismatic Movement, which aims to incorporate beliefs and practices similar to Pentecostals into the various branches of Christianity. Neo-charismatic churches are sometimes regarded as a subgroup of the Charismatic Movement. Both are put under a common label of Charismatic Christianity (so-called \"Renewalists\"), along with Pentecostals. Nondenominational churches and various house churches often adopt, or are akin to one of these movements.\nMegachurches are usually influenced by interdenominational movements. Globally, these large congregations are a significant development in Protestant Christianity. In the United States, the phenomenon has more than quadrupled in the past two decades. It has since spread worldwide.\nThe chart below shows the mutual relations and historical origins of the main interdenominational movements and other developments within Protestantism.\nEvangelicalism.\nEvangelicalism, or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide, transdenominational movement which maintains that the essence of the gospel consists in the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ's atonement.\nEvangelicals are Christians who believe in the centrality of the conversion or \"born again\" experience in receiving salvation, believe in the authority of the Bible as God's revelation to humanity and have a strong commitment to evangelism or sharing the Christian message.\nIt gained great momentum in the 18th and 19th centuries with the emergence of Methodism and the Great Awakenings in Britain and North America. The origins of Evangelicalism are usually traced back to the English Methodist movement, Nicolaus Zinzendorf, the Moravian Church, Lutheran pietism, Presbyterianism and Puritanism. Among leaders and major figures of the Evangelical Protestant movement were John Wesley, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Billy Graham, Harold John Ockenga, John Stott and Martyn Lloyd-Jones.\nThere are an estimated 285,480,000 Evangelicals, corresponding to 13% of the Christian population and 4% of the total world population. The Americas, Africa and Asia are home to the majority of Evangelicals. The United States has the largest concentration of Evangelicals. Evangelicalism is gaining popularity both in and outside the English-speaking world, especially in Latin America and the developing world.\nCharismatic movement.\nThe Charismatic movement is the international trend of historically mainstream congregations adopting beliefs and practices similar to Pentecostals. Fundamental to the movement is the use of spiritual gifts. Among Protestants, the movement began around 1960.\nIn the United States, Episcopalian Dennis Bennett is sometimes cited as one of the charismatic movement's seminal influence. In the United Kingdom, Colin Urquhart, Michael Harper, David Watson and others were in the vanguard of similar developments. The Massey conference in New Zealand, 1964 was attended by several Anglicans, including the Rev. Ray Muller, who went on to invite Bennett to New Zealand in 1966, and played a leading role in developing and promoting the \"Life in the Spirit\" seminars. Other Charismatic movement leaders in New Zealand include Bill Subritzky.\nLarry Christenson, a Lutheran theologian based in San Pedro, California, did much in the 1960s and 1970s to interpret the charismatic movement for Lutherans. A very large annual conference regarding that matter was held in Minneapolis. Charismatic Lutheran congregations in Minnesota became especially large and influential; especially \"Hosanna!\" in Lakeville, and North Heights in St. Paul. The next generation of Lutheran charismatics cluster around the Alliance of Renewal Churches. There is considerable charismatic activity among young Lutheran leaders in California centered around an annual gathering at Robinwood Church in Huntington Beach. Richard A. Jensen's \"Touched by the Spirit\" published in 1974, played a major role of the Lutheran understanding to the charismatic movement.\nIn Congregational and Presbyterian churches which profess a traditionally Calvinist or Reformed theology there are differing views regarding present-day continuation or cessation of the gifts (\"\") of the Spirit. Generally, however, Reformed charismatics distance themselves from renewal movements with tendencies which could be perceived as overemotional, such as Word of Faith, Toronto Blessing, Brownsville Revival and Lakeland Revival. Prominent Reformed charismatic denominations are the Sovereign Grace Churches and the Every Nation Churches in the US, in Great Britain there is the Newfrontiers churches and movement, which leading figure is Terry Virgo.\nA minority of Seventh-day Adventists today are charismatic. They are strongly associated with those holding more \"progressive\" Adventist beliefs. In the early decades of the church charismatic or ecstatic phenomena were commonplace.\nNeo-charismatic churches.\nNeo-charismatic churches are a category of churches in the Christian Renewal movement. Neo-charismatics include the Third Wave, but are broader. Now more numerous than Pentecostals (first wave) and charismatics (second wave) combined, owing to the remarkable growth of postdenominational and independent charismatic groups.\nNeo-charismatics believe in and stress the post-Biblical availability of gifts of the Holy Spirit, including glossolalia, healing, and prophecy. They practice laying on of hands and seek the \"infilling\" of the Holy Spirit. However, a specific experience of baptism with the Holy Spirit may not be requisite for experiencing such gifts. No single form, governmental structure, or style of church service characterizes all neo-charismatic services and churches.\nSome nineteen thousand denominations, with approximately 295\u00a0million individual adherents, are identified as neo-charismatic.\nProtestant offshoots.\nArminianism.\nArminianism is based on theological ideas of the Dutch Reformed theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560\u20131609) and his historic supporters known as Remonstrants. His teachings held to the five solae of the Reformation, but they were distinct from particular teachings of Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin, and other Protestant Reformers. Jacobus Arminius was a student of Theodore Beza at the Theological University of Geneva. Arminianism is known to some as a soteriological diversification of Calvinism. However, to others, Arminianism is a reclamation of early Church theological consensus. Dutch Arminianism was originally articulated in the Remonstrance (1610), a theological statement signed by 45 ministers and submitted to the States General of the Netherlands. Many Christian denominations have been influenced by Arminian views on the will of man being freed by grace prior to regeneration, notably the Baptists in the 16th century, the Methodists in the 18th century and the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the 19th century.\nThe original beliefs of Jacobus Arminius himself are commonly defined as Arminianism, but more broadly, the term may embrace the teachings of Hugo Grotius, John Wesley, and others as well. Classical Arminianism and Wesleyan Arminianism are the two main schools of thought. Wesleyan Arminianism is often identical with Methodism. The two systems of Calvinism and Arminianism share both history and many doctrines, and the history of Christian theology. However, because of their differences over the doctrines of divine predestination and election, many people view these schools of thought as opposed to each other. In short, the difference can be seen ultimately by whether God allows His desire to save all to be resisted by an individual's will (in the Arminian doctrine) or if God's grace is irresistible and limited to only some (in Calvinism). Some Calvinists assert that the Arminian perspective presents a synergistic system of Salvation and therefore is not only by grace, while Arminians firmly reject this conclusion. Many consider the theological differences to be crucial differences in doctrine, while others find them to be relatively minor.\nPietism.\nPietism was an influential movement within Lutheranism that combined the 17th-century Lutheran principles with the Reformed emphasis on individual piety and living a vigorous Christian life.\nIt began in the late 17th century, reached its zenith in the mid-18th century, and declined through the 19th century, and had almost vanished in America by the end of the 20th century. While declining as an identifiable Lutheran group, some of its theological tenets influenced Protestantism generally, inspiring the Anglican priest John Wesley to begin the Methodist movement and Alexander Mack to begin the Brethren movement under an influence of Anabaptists.\nThough Pietism shares an emphasis on personal behavior with the Puritan movement, and the two are often confused, there are important differences, particularly in the concept of the role of religion in government.\nPuritanism, English dissenters and nonconformists.\nThe Puritans were a group of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries, which sought to purify the Church of England of what they considered to be Catholic practices, maintaining that the church was only partially reformed. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some of the returning clergy exiled under Mary I shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England.\nPuritans were blocked from changing the established church from within, and were severely restricted in England by laws controlling the practice of religion. Their beliefs, however, were transported by the emigration of congregations to the Netherlands (and later to New England), and by evangelical clergy to Ireland (and later into Wales), and were spread into lay society and parts of the educational system, particularly certain colleges of the University of Cambridge. The first Protestant sermon delivered in England was in Cambridge, with the pulpit that this sermon was delivered from surviving to today. They took on distinctive beliefs about clerical dress and in opposition to the episcopal system, particularly after the 1619 conclusions of the Synod of Dort they were resisted by the English bishops. They largely adopted Sabbatarianism in the 17th century, and were influenced by millennialism.\nThey formed, and identified with various religious groups advocating greater purity of worship and doctrine, as well as personal and group piety. Puritans adopted a Reformed theology, but they also took note of radical criticisms of Zwingli in Zurich and Calvin in Geneva. In church polity, some advocated for separation from all other Christians, in favor of autonomous gathered churches. These separatist and independent strands of Puritanism became prominent in the 1640s. Although the English Civil War (which expanded into the Wars of the Three Kingdoms) began over a contest for political power between the King of England and the House of Commons, it divided the country along religious lines as episcopalians within the Church of England sided with the Crown and Presbyterians and Independents supported \"Parliament\" (after the defeat of the Royalists, the House of Lords as well as the Monarch were removed from the political structure of the state to create the Commonwealth). The supporters of a Presbyterian polity in the Westminster Assembly were unable to forge a new English national church, and the Parliamentary New Model Army, which was made up primarily of Independents, under Oliver Cromwell first purged Parliament, then abolished it and established The Protectorate.\nEngland's trans-Atlantic colonies in the war followed varying paths depending on their internal demographics. In the older colonies, which included Virginia (1607) and its offshoot Bermuda (1612), as well as Barbados and Antigua in the West Indies (collectively the targets in 1650 of An Act for prohibiting Trade with the Barbadoes, Virginia, Bermuda and Antego), Episcopalians remained the dominant church faction and the colonies remained Royalist 'til conquered or compelled to accept the new political order. In Bermuda, with control of the local government and the \"army\" (nine infantry companies of Militia plus coastal artillery), the Royalists forced Parliament-backing religious Independents into exile to settle the Bahamas as the Eleutheran Adventurers.\nEpiscopalian was re-established following the Restoration. A century later, non-conforming Protestants, along with the Protestant refugees from continental Europe, were to be among the primary instigators of the war of secession that led to the founding of the United States of America.\nNeo-orthodoxy and paleo-orthodoxy.\nA non-fundamentalist rejection of liberal Christianity along the lines of the Christian existentialism of S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard, who attacked the Hegelian state churches of his day for \"dead orthodoxy\", neo-orthodoxy is associated primarily with Karl Barth, J\u00fcrgen Moltmann, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Neo-orthodoxy sought to counter-act the tendency of liberal theology to make theological accommodations to modern scientific perspectives. Sometimes called \"crisis theology\", in the existentialist sense of the word crisis, also sometimes called \"neo-evangelicalism\", which uses the sense of \"evangelical\" pertaining to continental European Protestants rather than American evangelicalism. \"Evangelical\" was the originally preferred label used by Lutherans and Calvinists, but it was replaced by the names some Catholics used to label a heresy with the name of its founder.\nPaleo-orthodoxy is a movement similar in some respects to neo-evangelicalism but emphasizing the ancient Christian consensus of the undivided church of the first millennium AD, including in particular the early creeds and church councils as a means of properly understanding the scriptures. This movement is cross-denominational. A prominent theologian in this group is Thomas Oden, a Methodist.\nChristian fundamentalism.\nIn reaction to liberal Bible critique, fundamentalism arose in the 20th century, primarily in the United States, among those denominations most affected by Evangelicalism. Fundamentalist theology tends to stress Biblical inerrancy and Biblical literalism.\nToward the end of the 20th century, some have tended to confuse evangelicalism and fundamentalism; however, the labels represent very distinct differences of approach that both groups are diligent to maintain, although because of fundamentalism's dramatically smaller size it often gets classified simply as an ultra-conservative branch of evangelicalism.\nModernism and liberalism.\nModernism and liberalism do not constitute rigorous and well-defined schools of theology, but are rather an inclination by some writers and teachers to integrate Christian thought into the spirit of the Age of Enlightenment. New understandings of history and the natural sciences of the day led directly to new approaches to theology. Its opposition to the fundamentalist teaching resulted in religious debates, such as the Fundamentalist\u2013Modernist Controversy within the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America in the 1920s.\nProtestant culture.\nAlthough the Reformation was a religious movement, it also had a strong impact on all other aspects of life, including marriage and family, education, the humanities and sciences, the political and social order, the economy, and the arts. Protestant churches reject the idea of a celibate priesthood and thus allow their clergy to marry. Many of their families contributed to the development of intellectual elites in their countries. Since about 1950, women have entered the ministry in most Protestant churches, and some have assumed leading positions (e.g. bishops).\nProtestantism has promoted economic growth and entrepreneurship, especially in the period after the Scientific and the Industrial Revolution. Scholars have identified a positive correlation between the rise of Protestantism and human capital formation, work ethic, economic development, the rise of early experimental science, and the development of the state system.\nAs the Reformers wanted all members of the church to be able to read the Bible, education on all levels was strongly encouraged. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the literacy rate in England was about 60 percent, in Scotland 65 percent, and in Sweden 80 percent. Colleges and universities were founded. For example, the Puritans who established Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1628 founded Harvard College only eight years later. About a dozen other colleges followed in the 18th century, including Yale (1701). Pennsylvania also became a center of learning.\nMembers of mainline Protestant denominations have played leadership roles in many aspects of American life, including politics, business, science, the arts, and education. They founded most of the country's leading institutes of higher education.\nThought and work ethic.\nThe Protestant concept of God and man allows believers to use all their God-given faculties, including the power of reason. That means that they are allowed to explore God's creation and, according to Genesis 2:15, make use of it in a responsible and sustainable way. Thus a cultural climate was created that greatly enhanced the development of the humanities and the sciences. Another consequence of the Protestant understanding of man is that the believers, in gratitude for their election and redemption in Christ, are to follow God's commandments. Industry, frugality, calling, discipline, and a strong sense of responsibility are at the heart of their moral code. In particular, Calvin rejected luxury. Therefore, craftsmen, industrialists, and other businessmen were able to reinvest the greater part of their profits in the most efficient machinery and the most modern production methods that were based on progress in the sciences and technology. As a result, productivity grew, which led to increased profits and enabled employers to pay higher wages. In this way, the economy, the sciences, and technology reinforced each other. The chance to participate in the economic success of technological inventions was a strong incentive to both inventors and investors. The Protestant work ethic was an important force behind the unplanned and uncoordinated mass action that influenced the development of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. This idea is also known as the \"Protestant ethic thesis\".\nHowever, eminent historian Fernand Braudel (d. 1985), a leader of the important Annales School wrote, \"all historians have opposed this tenuous theory [the Protestant Ethic], although they have not managed to be rid of it once and for all. Yet it is clearly false. The northern countries took over the place that earlier had been so long and brilliantly been occupied by the old capitalist centers of the Mediterranean. They invented nothing, either in technology or business management.\" Social scientist Rodney Stark moreover comments that \"during their critical period of economic development, these northern centers of capitalism were Catholic, not Protestant\u2014the Reformation still lay well into the future\", while British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper (d. 2003) said, \"The idea that large-scale industrial capitalism was ideologically impossible before the Reformation is exploded by the simple fact that it existed.\"\nIn a factor analysis of the latest wave of World Values Survey data, Arno Tausch (Corvinus University of Budapest) found that Protestantism emerges to be very close to combining religion and the traditions of liberalism. The Global Value Development Index, calculated by Tausch, relies on the World Values Survey dimensions such as trust in the state of law, no support for shadow economy, postmaterial activism, support for democracy, a non-acceptance of violence, xenophobia and racism, trust in transnational capital and Universities, confidence in the market economy, supporting gender justice, and engaging in environmental activism, etc.\nEpiscopalians and Presbyterians, as well as other WASPs, tend to be considerably wealthier and better educated (having graduate and post-graduate degrees per capita) than most other religious groups in United States, and are disproportionately represented in the upper reaches of American business, law and politics, especially the Republican Party. Numbers of the most wealthy and affluent American families as the Vanderbilts, the Astors, Rockefellers, Du Ponts, Roosevelts, Forbes, Fords, Whitneys, Mellons, the Morgans and Harrimans are Mainline Protestant families.\nScience.\nProtestantism has had an important influence on science. According to the Merton Thesis, there was a positive correlation between the rise of English Puritanism and German Pietism on the one hand and early experimental science on the other. The Merton Thesis has two separate parts: Firstly, it presents a theory that science changes due to an accumulation of observations and improvement in experimental technique and methodology; secondly, it puts forward the argument that the popularity of science in 17th-century England and the religious demography of the Royal Society (English scientists of that time were predominantly Puritans or other Protestants) can be explained by a correlation between Protestantism and the scientific values. Merton focused on English Puritanism and German Pietism as having been responsible for the development of the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries. He explained that the connection between religious affiliation and interest in science was the result of a significant synergy between the ascetic Protestant values and those of modern science. Protestant values encouraged scientific research by allowing science to identify God's influence on the world\u2014his creation\u2014and thus providing a religious justification for scientific research.\nAccording to \"Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States\" by Harriet Zuckerman, a review of American Nobel Prizes awarded between 1901 and 1972, 72% of American Nobel Prize laureates identified a Protestant background. Overall, 84% of all the Nobel Prizes awarded to Americans in Chemistry, 60% in Medicine, and 59% in Physics between 1901 and 1972 were won by Protestants.\nAccording to \"100 Years of Nobel Prize (2005)\", a review of Nobel Prizes awarded between 1901 and 2000, 65% of Nobel Prize Laureates, have identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference (423 prizes). While 32% have identified with Protestantism in its various forms (208 prizes), although Protestants are 12% to 13% of the world's population.\nGovernment.\nDuring the Middle Ages, the Church and the worldly authorities were closely related. Martin Luther separated the religious and the worldly realms in principle (doctrine of the two kingdoms). The believers were obliged to use reason to govern the worldly sphere in an orderly and peaceful way. Luther's doctrine of the priesthood of all believers upgraded the role of laymen in the church considerably. The members of a congregation had the right to elect a minister and, if necessary, to vote for his dismissal (Treatise \"On the right and authority of a Christian assembly or congregation to judge all doctrines and to call, install and dismiss teachers, as testified in Scripture\"; 1523). Calvin strengthened this basically democratic approach by including elected laymen (church elders, presbyters) in his representative church government. The Huguenots added regional synods and a national synod, whose members were elected by the congregations, to Calvin's system of church self-government. This system was taken over by the other reformed churches and was adopted by some Lutherans beginning with those in J\u00fclich-Cleves-Berg during the 17th century.\nPolitically, Calvin favored a mixture of aristocracy and democracy. He appreciated the advantages of democracy: \"It is an invaluable gift, if God allows a people to freely elect its own authorities and overlords.\" Calvin also thought that earthly rulers lose their divine right and must be put down when they rise up against God. To further protect the rights of ordinary people, Calvin suggested separating political powers in a system of checks and balances (separation of powers). Thus he and his followers resisted political absolutism and paved the way for the rise of modern democracy. Besides England, the Netherlands were, under Calvinist leadership, the freest country in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It granted asylum to philosophers like Baruch Spinoza and Pierre Bayle. Hugo Grotius was able to teach his natural-law theory and a relatively liberal interpretation of the Bible.\nConsistent with Calvin's political ideas, Protestants created both the English and the American democracies. In seventeenth-century England, the most important persons and events in this process were the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell, John Milton, John Locke, the Glorious Revolution, the English Bill of Rights, and the Act of Settlement. Later, the British took their democratic ideals to their colonies, e.g. Australia, New Zealand, and India. In North America, Plymouth Colony (Pilgrim Fathers; 1620) and Massachusetts Bay Colony (1628) practised democratic self-rule and separation of powers. These Congregationalists were convinced that the democratic form of government was the will of God. The Mayflower Compact was a social contract.\nRights and liberty.\nProtestants also took the initiative in advocating for religious freedom. Freedom of conscience had a high priority on the theological, philosophical, and political agendas since Luther refused to recant his beliefs before the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire at Worms (1521). In his view, faith was a free work of the Holy Spirit and could, therefore, not be forced on a person. The persecuted Anabaptists and Huguenots demanded freedom of conscience, and they practiced separation of church and state. In the early seventeenth century, Baptists like John Smyth and Thomas Helwys published tracts in defense of religious freedom. Their thinking influenced John Milton and John Locke's stance on tolerance. Under the leadership of Baptist Roger Williams, Congregationalist Thomas Hooker, and Quaker William Penn, respectively, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania combined democratic constitutions with freedom of religion. These colonies became safe havens for persecuted religious minorities, including Jews.\nThe United States Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, and the American Bill of Rights with its fundamental human rights made this tradition permanent by giving it a legal and political framework. The great majority of American Protestants, both clergy and laity, strongly supported the independence movement. All major Protestant churches were represented in the First and Second Continental Congresses. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the American democracy became a model for numerous other countries and regions throughout the world (e.g., Latin America, Japan, and Germany). The strongest link between the American and French Revolutions was Marquis de Lafayette, an ardent supporter of the American constitutional principles. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was mainly based on Lafayette's draft of this document. The Declaration by United Nations and Universal Declaration of Human Rights also echo the American constitutional tradition.\nDemocracy, social-contract theory, separation of powers, religious freedom, separation of church and state\u2014these achievements of the Reformation and early Protestantism were elaborated on and popularized by Age of Enlightenment thinkers. Some of the philosophers of the English, Scottish, German, and Swiss Enlightenment\u2014Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, John Toland, David Hume, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Christian Wolff, Immanuel Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau\u2014had Protestant backgrounds. For example, John Locke, whose political thought was based on \"a set of Protestant Christian assumptions\", derived the equality of all humans, including the equality of the genders (\"Adam and Eve\"), from Genesis 1, 26\u201328. As all persons were created equally free, all governments needed \"the consent of the governed\".\nAlso, other human rights were advocated for by some Protestants. For example, torture was abolished in Prussia in 1740, slavery in Britain in 1834 and in the United States in 1865 (William Wilberforce, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham Lincoln\u2014against Southern Protestants). Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf were among the first thinkers who made significant contributions to international law. The Geneva Convention, an important part of humanitarian international law, was largely the work of Henry Dunant, a reformed pietist. He also founded the Red Cross.\nSocial teaching.\nProtestants have founded hospitals, homes for disabled or elderly people, educational institutions, organizations that give aid to developing countries, and other social welfare agencies. In the nineteenth century, throughout the Anglo-American world, numerous dedicated members of all Protestant denominations were active in social reform movements such as the abolition of slavery, prison reforms, and woman suffrage. As an answer to the \"social question\" of the nineteenth century, Germany under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck introduced insurance programs that led the way to the welfare state (health insurance, accident insurance, disability insurance, old-age pensions). To Bismarck this was \"practical Christianity\". These programs, too, were copied by many other nations, particularly in the Western world.\nThe Young Men's Christian Association was founded by Congregationalist George Williams, aimed at empowering young people.\nArts.\nThe arts have been strongly inspired by Protestant beliefs.\nMartin Luther, Paul Gerhardt, George Wither, Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, William Cowper, and other authors and composers created well-known church hymns.\nMusicians like Heinrich Sch\u00fctz, Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Henry Purcell, Johannes Brahms, Philipp Nicolai and Felix Mendelssohn composed great works of music.\nProminent painters with Protestant background were, for example, Albrecht D\u00fcrer, Hans Holbein the Younger, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger, Rembrandt, and Vincent van Gogh.\nWorld literature was enriched by the works of Edmund Spenser, John Milton, John Bunyan, John Donne, John Dryden, Daniel Defoe, William Wordsworth, Jonathan Swift, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edgar Allan Poe, Matthew Arnold, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Theodor Fontane, Washington Irving, Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, Emily Bront\u00eb, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thomas Stearns Eliot, John Galsworthy, Thomas Mann, William Faulkner, John Updike, and many others.\nCatholic responses.\nThe view of the Catholic Church is that Protestant denominations cannot be considered churches but rather that they are \"ecclesial communities\" or \"specific faith-believing communities\" because their ordinances and doctrines are not historically the same as the Catholic sacraments and dogmas, and the Protestant communities have no sacramental ministerial priesthood and therefore lack true apostolic succession. According to Bishop Hilarion (Alfeyev) the Eastern Orthodox Church shares the same view on the subject.\nContrary to how the Protestant Reformers were often characterized, the concept of a \"catholic\" or universal Church was not brushed aside during the Protestant Reformation. On the contrary, the visible unity of the \"catholic\" or \"universal church\" was seen by the Protestant reformers as an important and essential doctrine of the Reformation. The Magisterial reformers, such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Huldrych Zwingli, believed that they were reforming the Catholic Church, which they viewed as having become corrupted. Each of them took very seriously the charges of schism and innovation, denying these charges and maintaining that it was the Catholic Church that had left them. The Protestant Reformers formed a new and radically different theological opinion on ecclesiology, that the visible Church is \"catholic\" (lower-case \"c\") rather than \"Catholic\" (upper-case \"C\"). Accordingly, there is not an indefinite number of parochial, congregational or national churches, constituting, as it were, so many ecclesiastical individualities, but one great spiritual republic of which these various organizations form a part, although they each have very different opinions. This was markedly far-removed from the traditional and historic Catholic understanding that the Catholic Church was the one true Church of Christ.\nYet, in the Protestant understanding, the \"visible church\" is not a genus, so to speak, with so many species under it. In order to justify their departure from the Catholic Church, Protestants often posited a new argument, saying that there was no real visible Church with divine authority, only a \"spiritual, invisible, and hidden church\"\u2014this notion began in the early days of the Protestant Reformation.\nWherever the Magisterial Reformation, which received support from the ruling authorities, took place, the result was a reformed national Protestant church envisioned to be a part of the whole \"invisible church\", but disagreeing, in certain important points of doctrine and doctrine-linked practice, with what had until then been considered the normative reference point on such matters, namely the Papacy and central authority of the Catholic Church. The Reformed churches thus believed in some form of Catholicity, founded on their doctrines of the five solas and a visible ecclesiastical organization based on the 14th- and 15th-century Conciliar movement, rejecting the papacy and papal infallibility in favor of ecumenical councils, but rejecting the latest ecumenical council, the Council of Trent. Religious unity therefore became not one of doctrine and identity but one of invisible character, wherein the unity was one of faith in Jesus Christ, not common identity, doctrine, belief, and collaborative action.\nThere are Protestants, especially of the Reformed tradition, that either reject or downplay the designation \"Protestant\" because of the negative idea that the word invokes in addition to its primary meaning, preferring the designation \"Reformed\", \"Evangelical\" or even \"Reformed Catholic\" expressive of what they call a \"Reformed Catholicity\" and defending their arguments from the traditional Protestant confessions.\nEcumenism.\nThe ecumenical movement has had an influence on mainline churches, beginning at least in 1910 with the Edinburgh Missionary Conference. Its origins lay in the recognition of the need for cooperation on the mission field in Africa, Asia and Oceania. Since 1948, the World Council of Churches has been influential, but ineffective in creating a united church. There are also ecumenical bodies at regional, national and local levels across the globe; but schisms still far outnumber unifications. One, but not the only expression of the ecumenical movement, has been the move to form united churches, such as the Church of South India, the Church of North India, the US-based United Church of Christ, the United Church of Canada, the Uniting Church in Australia and the United Church of Christ in the Philippines which have rapidly declining memberships. There has been a strong engagement of Orthodox churches in the ecumenical movement, though the reaction of individual Orthodox theologians has ranged from tentative approval of the aim of Christian unity to outright condemnation of the perceived effect of watering down Orthodox doctrine.\nA Protestant baptism is held to be valid by the Catholic Church if given with the trinitarian formula and with the intent to baptize. However, as the ordination of Protestant ministers is not recognized due to the lack of apostolic succession and the disunity from Catholic Church, all other sacraments (except marriage) performed by Protestant denominations and ministers are not recognized as valid. Therefore, Protestants desiring full communion with the Catholic Church are not re-baptized (although they are confirmed) and Protestant ministers who become Catholics may be ordained to the priesthood after a period of study.\nIn 1999, the representatives of Lutheran World Federation and Catholic Church signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, apparently resolving the conflict over the nature of justification which was at the root of the Protestant Reformation, although Confessional Lutherans reject this statement. This is understandable, since there is no compelling authority within them. On 18 July 2006, delegates to the World Methodist Conference voted unanimously to adopt the Joint Declaration.\nSpread and demographics.\n \nThere are more than 1.18 billion Protestants worldwide, among approximately 2.6\u00a0billion Christians. In 2010, a total of more than 800\u00a0million included 300\u00a0million in Sub-Saharan Africa, 260\u00a0million in the Americas, 140\u00a0million in the Asia-Pacific region, 100\u00a0million in Europe and 2\u00a0million in Middle East-North Africa. Protestants account for nearly forty percent of Christians worldwide, and are more than one tenth of the total human population. Various estimates put the percentage of Protestants in relation to the total number of world's Christians at 33%, 36%, 36.7%, and 40%, while in relation to the world's population at 11.6% and 13%.\nIn European countries which were most profoundly influenced by the Reformation, Protestantism still remains the most practiced religion. These include the Nordic countries and the United Kingdom. In other historical Protestant strongholds such as Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Latvia, and Estonia, it remains one of the most popular religions. Although what is now the Czech Republic was the site of one of the most significant pre-reformation movements, there is only a small Protestant population today; mainly due to historical reasons like persecution of Protestants by the Catholic Habsburgs, restrictions during the Communist rule, and also the ongoing secularization. Over the last several decades, religious practice has been declining as secularization has increased. According to a 2019 study about Religiosity in the European Union in 2019 by Eurobarometer, Protestants made up 9% of the EU population. According to Pew Research Center, Protestants constituted nearly one fifth (or 18%) of the continent's Christian population in 2010. Clarke and Beyer estimate that Protestants constituted 15% of all Europeans in 2009, while Noll claims that fewer than 12% of them lived in Europe in 2010.\nChanges in worldwide Protestantism over the last century have been significant. Since 1900, Protestantism has spread rapidly in Africa, Asia, Oceania and Latin America. That caused Protestantism to be called a primarily non-Western religion. Much of the growth has occurred after World War II, when decolonization of Africa and abolition of various restrictions against Protestants in Latin American countries occurred. According to one source, Protestants constituted respectively 2.5%, 2%, 0.5% of Latin Americans, Africans and Asians. In 2000, percentage of Protestants on mentioned continents was 17%, more than 27% and 6%, respectively. According to Mark A. Noll, 79% of Anglicans lived in the United Kingdom in 1910, while most of the remainder was found in the United States and across the British Commonwealth. By 2010, 59% of Anglicans were found in Africa. In 2010, more Protestants lived in India than in the UK or Germany, while Protestants in Brazil were as numerous as those in the UK and Germany combined. Almost as many lived in each of Nigeria and China as in all of Europe. China is home to world's largest Protestant minority.\nProtestantism is growing in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania, while declining in Anglo America and Europe, with some exceptions such as France, where it was driven underground from the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes until shortly before the French Revolution, but its adherents are now claimed to be stable in number or even growing slightly. According to some, Russia is another country to see a Protestant revival.\nIn 2010, the largest Protestant denominational families were historically Pentecostal denominations (11%), Anglican (11%), Lutheran (10%), Baptist (9%), United and uniting churches (unions of different denominations) (7%), Presbyterian or Reformed (7%), Methodist (3%), Adventist (3%), Congregationalist (1%), Brethren (1%), The Salvation Army (<1%) and Moravian (<1%). Other denominations accounted for 38% of Protestants.\nThe United States is home to approximately 20% of the world's Protestants. According to a 2012 study, the Protestant share of U.S. population was 48%, marking the first time in which it was not the religion of the majority of the country. The decline is attributed mainly to the dropping membership of the Mainline Protestant churches, while Evangelical Protestant and Black churches are stable or continue to grow.\nBy 2050, Protestants are projected to form to slightly more than half of the world's total Christian population. According to other experts such as Hans J. Hillerbrand, Protestants will be as numerous as Catholics.\nAccording to Peter L. Berger, popular Protestantism is the most dynamic religious movement in the contemporary world, alongside resurgent Islam.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\nGeneral\nSpecial", "27705397": "History of the Puritans in North America\nBeginnings of Puritanism in Colonial America\nIn the early 17th century, thousands of English Puritans settled in North America, almost all in New England. Puritans were intensely devout members of the Church of England who believed that the Church of England was insufficiently reformed, retaining too much of its Roman Catholic doctrinal roots, and who therefore opposed royal ecclesiastical policy. Most Puritans were \"non-separating Puritans\" who believed there should be an established church and did not advocate setting up separate congregations distinct from the Church of England; these were later called Nonconformists. A small minority of Puritans were \"separating Puritans\" who advocated for local, doctrinally similar, church congregations but no state established church. The Pilgrims, unlike most of New England's puritans, were a Separatist group, and they established the Plymouth Colony in 1620. Puritans went chiefly to New England, but small numbers went to other English colonies up and down the Atlantic. \nPuritans played the leading roles in establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629, the Saybrook Colony in 1635, the Connecticut Colony in 1636, and the New Haven Colony in 1638. The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was established by settlers expelled from Massachusetts because of their unorthodox religious opinions. Puritans were also active in New Hampshire before it became a crown colony in 1691. Puritanism as a powerful force weakened early in the 18th century and before 1740 was replaced by the much milder Congregational church.\nBackground (1533\u20131630).\nPuritanism was a Protestant movement that emerged in 16th-century England with the goal of transforming it into a godly society by reforming or purifying the Church of England of all remaining Roman Catholic teachings and practices. During the reign of Elizabeth I, Puritans were for the most part tolerated within the established church. Like Puritans, most English Protestants at the time were Calvinist in their theology, and many bishops and Privy Council members were sympathetic to Puritan objectives. The major point of controversy between Puritans and church authorities was over liturgical ceremonies Puritans thought too Catholic, such as wearing clerical vestments, kneeling to receive Holy Communion, and making the sign of the cross during baptism.\nDuring the reign of James I, most Puritans were no longer willing to wait for further church reforms and separated from the Church of England. Since the law required everyone to attend parish services, these Separatists were vulnerable to criminal prosecution, and some such as Henry Barrowe and John Greenwood were executed. To escape persecution and worship freely, some Separatists migrated to the Netherlands. Nevertheless, most Puritans remained within the Church of England.\nUnder Charles I, Calvinist teachings were undermined, and bishops became less tolerant of Puritan views and more willing to enforce the use of controversial ceremonies. Controls were placed on Puritan preaching, and some ministers were suspended or removed from their livings. Increasingly, many Puritans concluded that they had no choice but to emigrate.\nMigration to America (1620\u20131640).\nIn 1620, a group of Separatists known as the Pilgrims settled in New England and established the Plymouth Colony. The Pilgrims originated as a dissenting congregation in Scrooby led by Richard Clyfton, John Robinson and William Brewster. This congregation was subject to persecution with members being imprisoned or having property seized. Fearing greater persecution, the group left England and settled in the Dutch city of Leiden. In 1620, after receiving a patent from the London Company, the Pilgrims left for New England on board the \"Mayflower\", landing at Plymouth Rock. The Pilgrims are remembered for creating the Mayflower Compact, a social contract based on Puritan political theory and in imitation of the church covenant they had made at the church in Scrooby.\nTwo of the Pilgrim settlers in Plymouth Colony\u2014Robert Cushman and Edward Winslow\u2014believed that Cape Ann would be a profitable location for a settlement. They therefore organized a company named the Dorchester Company and in 1622 sailed to England seeking a patent from the London Company giving them permission to settle there. They were successful and were granted the Sheffield Patent (named after Edmund, Lord Sheffield, the member of the Plymouth Company who granted the patent). On the basis of this patent, Roger Conant led a group of fishermen from the area later called Gloucester to found Salem in 1626, being replaced as governor by John Endecott in 1628 or 1629.\nOther Puritans were convinced that New England could provide a religious refuge, and the enterprise was reorganized as the Massachusetts Bay Company. In March 1629, it succeeded in obtaining from King Charles a royal charter for the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1630, the first ships of the Great Puritan Migration sailed to the New World, led by John Winthrop.\nDuring the crossing, Winthrop preached a sermon entitled \"A Model of Christian Charity\", in which he told his followers that they had entered a covenant with God according to which he would cause them to prosper if they maintained their commitment to God. In doing so, their new colony would become a \"City upon a Hill\", meaning that they would be a model to all the nations of Europe as to what a properly reformed Christian commonwealth should look like.\nMost of the Puritans who emigrated settled in the New England area. However, the Great Migration of Puritans was relatively short-lived and very large. It began in earnest in 1629 with the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and ended in 1642 with the start of the English Civil War when King Charles I effectively shut off immigration to the colonies. Emigration was officially restricted to conforming churchmen in December 1634 by his Privy Council. From 1629 through 1643, approximately 21,000 Puritans immigrated to New England.\nThe immigration was primarily an exodus of families. Between 1630 and 1640, over 13,000 men, women, and children sailed to Massachusetts. The religious and political factors behind the Great Migration influenced the demographics of the emigrants. Groups of young men seeking economic success predominated the Virginia colonies, whereas Puritan ships were laden with \"ordinary\" people, old and young, families as well as individuals. Just a quarter of the emigrants were in their twenties when they boarded ships in the 1630s, making young adults a minority in New England settlements. The New World Puritan population was more of a cross-section in the age of the English population than those of other colonies. This meant that the Massachusetts Bay Colony retained a relatively normal population composition. In the colony of Virginia, the ratio of colonist men to women was 4:1 in the early decades and at least 2:1 in later decades, and only limited intermarriage took place with Native women. By contrast, nearly half of the Puritan immigrants to the New World were women, and there was very little intermarriage with Native Americans. The majority of families who traveled to Massachusetts Bay were families in progress, with parents who were not yet through with their reproductive years and whose continued fertility made New England's population growth possible. The women who emigrated were critical agents in the success of the establishment and maintenance of the Puritan colonies in North America. Success in the early colonial economy depended largely on labor, which was conducted by members of Puritan families.\nOther destinations.\nThe struggle between the assertive Church of England and various Presbyterian and Puritan groups extended throughout the English realm in the 17th century, prompting not only the emigration of British Presbyterians from Ireland to North America (the \"Scotch-Irish\"), but prompting emigration from Bermuda, England's second-oldest overseas territory. Roughly 10,000 Bermudians emigrated before 1775. Most of these went to the American colonies, founding or contributing to settlements throughout the South, especially. Many went to the Bahamas, where Bermudian Independent Puritan families, under the leadership of William Sayle, had established the colony of Eleuthera in 1648.\nEmigration resumed under the rule of Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s but not in large numbers as there was no longer any need to escape persecution in England. Some Puritans returned to England during the English Civil War. They were on the winning side and remained under Cromwell's Puritanical rule.\nLife in the New World.\nPuritan dominance in the New World lasted until the early 18th century. That era can be broken down into three parts: the generation of John Cotton and Richard Mather (1630\u201362) from the founding to the Restoration, years of virtual independence and nearly autonomous development; the generation of Increase Mather (1662\u201389) from the Restoration and the Halfway Covenant to the Glorious Revolution, years of struggle with the British crown; and the generation of Cotton Mather (1689\u20131728) from the overthrow of Edmund Andros (in which Cotton Mather played a part) and the new charter, mediated by Increase Mather, to the death of Cotton Mather.\nReligion.\nOnce in New England, the Puritans established Congregational churches that subscribed to Reformed theology. The Savoy Declaration, a modification of the Westminster Confession of Faith, was adopted as a confessional statement by the churches in Massachusetts in 1680 and the churches of Connecticut in 1708.\nThe Cambridge Platform describes Congregationalist polity as practiced by Puritans in the 17th century. Every congregation was founded upon a church covenant, a written agreement signed by all members in which they agreed to uphold congregational principles, to be guided by \"sola scriptura\" in their decision making, and to submit to church discipline. The right of each congregation to elect its own officers and manage its own affairs was upheld.\nFor church offices, Puritans imitated the model developed in Calvinist Geneva. There were two major offices: elder (or presbyter) and deacon. Initially, there were two types of elders. Ministers, whose responsibilities included preaching and administering the sacraments, were referred to as teaching elders. Large churches would have two ministers, one to serve as pastor and the other to serve as teacher. Prominent laymen would be elected for life as ruling elders and could preach.\nThe essential Puritan belief was that people are saved by grace alone and not by any merit from doing good works. At the same time, Puritans also believed that men and women \"could labor to make themselves \"appropriate\" vessels of saving grace\" [emphasis in original]. They could accomplish this through Bible reading, prayer, and doing good works. This doctrine was called preparationism, and nearly all Puritans were preparationists to some extent. The process of conversion was described in different ways, but most ministers agreed that there were three essential stages. The first stage was humiliation or sorrow for having sinned against God. The second stage was justification or adoption characterized by a sense of having been forgiven and accepted by God through Christ's mercy. The third stage was sanctification, the ability to live a holy life out of gladness toward God.\nPuritans believed churches should be composed of \"visible saints\" or the elect. To ensure that only regenerated persons were admitted as full members, New England churches required prospective members to provide a conversion narrative describing their personal conversion experience. All settlers were required to attend church services and were subject to church discipline. The Lord's Supper, however, was reserved to full members only. Puritans practiced infant baptism, but only church members in full communion could present their children for baptism. Members' children were considered part of the church and covenant by birth and were entitled to baptism. Nevertheless, these children would not enjoy the full privileges of church membership until they provided a public account of conversion.\nChurch services were held in the morning and afternoon on Sunday, and there was usually a mid-week service. The ruling elders and deacons sat facing the congregation on a raised seat. Men and women sat on opposite sides of the meeting house, and children sat in their own section under the oversight of a tithingman, who corrected unruly children (or sleeping adults) with a long staff. The pastor opened the service with prayer for about 15 minutes, the teacher then read and explained the selected Bible passage, and a ruling elder then led in singing a Psalm, usually from the \"Bay Psalm Book\". The pastor then preached for an hour or more, and the teacher ended the service with prayer and benediction. In churches with only one minister, the morning sermon was devoted to the argument (interpreting the biblical text and justifying that interpretation) and the afternoon sermon to its application (the lessons that could be drawn from the text for the individual or for the collective community).\nChurch and state.\nFor Puritans, the people of society were bound together by a social covenant (such as Plymouth's Mayflower Compact, Connecticut's Fundamental Orders, New Haven's Fundamental Agreement, and Massachusetts' colonial charter). Having entered into such a covenant, eligible voters were responsible for choosing qualified men to govern and to obey such rulers, who ultimately received their authority from God and were responsible for using it to promote the common good. If the ruler was evil, however, the people were justified in opposing and rebelling against him. Such notions helped New Englanders justify their support for the Parliamentary cause in the English Civil War of the 1640s, and later the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the American Revolution of 1775.\nThe Puritans also believed they were in a national covenant with God. They believed they were chosen by God to help redeem the world by their total obedience to his will. If they were true to the covenant, they would be blessed; if not, they would fail. Within this worldview, it was the government's responsibility to enforce moral standards and ensure true religious worship was established and maintained. In the Puritan colonies, the Congregational church functioned as a state religion. In Massachusetts, no new church could be established without the permission of the colony's existing Congregational churches and the government. Likewise, Connecticut allowed only one church per town or parish, which had to be Congregational.\nAll residents in Massachusetts and Connecticut were required to pay taxes for the support of the Congregational churches, even if they were religious dissenters. The franchise was limited to Congregational church members in Massachusetts and New Haven, but voting rights were more extensive in Connecticut and Plymouth. In Connecticut, church attendance on Sundays was mandatory (for both church members and non-members), and those who failed to attend were fined.\nThere was a greater separation of church and state in the Puritan commonwealths than existed anywhere in Europe at the time. In England, the king was head of both church and state, bishops sat in Parliament and the Privy Council, and church officials exercised many secular functions. In New England, secular matters were handled only by civil authorities, and those who held offices in the church were barred from holding positions in the civil government. When dealing with unorthodox persons, Puritans believed that the church, as a spiritual organization, was limited to \"attempting to persuade the individual of his error, to warn him of the dangers he faced if he publicly persisted in it, and\u2014as a last resort\u2014to expel him from the spiritual society by ex-communication.\" Citizens who lost church membership by excommunication retained the right to vote in civil affairs.\nReligious intoleration.\nThe Puritans did not come to America to establish a theocracy, but neither did they institute religious freedom. Puritans believed that the state was obligated to protect society from heresy, and it was empowered to use corporal punishment, banishment, and execution. New England magistrates did not investigate private views, but they did take action against public dissent from the religious establishment. \nPuritan sentiments were expressed by Nathaniel Ward in \"The Simple Cobbler of Agawam\": \"all Familists, Antinomians, Anabaptists, and other Enthusiasts shall have free Liberty to keep away from us, and such as will come [shall have liberty] to be gone as fast as they can, the sooner the better.\"\nQuakers.\nThe period 1658\u20131692 saw the execution of Quakers and the imprisonment of Baptists. Quakers were initially banished by colonial courts, but they often returned in defiance of authorities. Historian Daniel Boorstin stated, \"the Puritans had not sought out the Quakers in order to punish them; the Quakers had come in quest of punishment.\"\nCivil and religious restrictions were most strictly applied by the Puritans of Massachusetts which saw various banishments applied to dissenters to enforce conformity, including the branding iron, the whipping post, the bilboes and the hangman's noose. Notable individuals persecuted by the Puritans include Anne Hutchinson who was banished to Rhode Island during the Antinomian Controversy and Quaker Mary Dyer who was hanged in Boston for repeatedly defying a Puritan law banning Quakers from the colony. Dyer was one of the four executed Quakers known as the Boston martyrs. Executions ceased in 1661 when King Charles II explicitly forbade Massachusetts from executing anyone for professing Quakerism. \nJesuits.\nIn 1647, Massachusetts passed a law prohibiting any Jesuit Catholic priests from entering territory under Puritan jurisdiction. Any suspected person who could not clear himself was to be banished from the colony; a second offence carried a death penalty.\nFamily life.\nFor Puritans, the family was the \"locus of spiritual and civic development and protection\", and marriage was the foundation of the family and, therefore, society. Unlike in England, where people were married by ministers in the church according to the \"Book of Common Prayer\", Puritans saw no biblical justification for church weddings or the exchange of wedding rings. While marriage held great religious significance for Puritans\u2014they saw it as a covenant relationship freely entered into by both man and wife\u2014the wedding was viewed as a private, contractual event officiated by a civil magistrate either in the home of the magistrate or a member of the bridal party. Massachusetts ministers were not legally permitted to solemnize marriages until 1686 after the colony had been placed under royal control, but by 1726 it had become the accepted tradition.\nAccording to scholars Gerald Moran and Maris Vinovskis, some historians argue that Puritan child-rearing was repressive. Central to this argument is the views of John Robinson, the Pilgrims' first pastor, who wrote in a 1625 treatise \"Of Children and Their Education\", \"And surely there is in all children, though not alike, a stubbornness, and stoutness of mind arising from natural pride, which must, in the first place, be broken and beaten down.\" Moran and Vinovskis, however, argue that Robinson's views were not representative of 17th-century Puritans. They write that Puritan parents \"exercised an authoritative, not an authoritarian, mode of child-rearing\" that aimed to cultivate godly affections and reason, with corporal punishment used as a last resort.\nEducation.\nAccording to historian Bruce C. Daniels, the Puritans were \"[o]ne of the most literate groups in the early modern world\", with about 60 percent of New England able to read. At a time when the literacy rate in England was less than 30 percent, the Puritan leaders of colonial New England believed children should be educated for both religious and civil reasons, and they worked to achieve universal literacy. In 1642, Massachusetts required heads of households to teach their wives, children, and servants basic reading and writing so that they could read the Bible and understand colonial laws. In 1647, the government required all towns with 50 or more households to hire a teacher and towns of 100 or more households to hire a grammar school instructor to prepare promising boys for college. Boys interested in the ministry were often sent to colleges such as Harvard (founded in 1636) or Yale (founded in 1707).\nThe Puritans anticipated the educational theories of John Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers. Like Locke's blank slate, Puritans believed that a child's mind was \"an empty receptacle, one that had to be infused with the knowledge gained from careful instruction and education.\" The Puritans in the United States were great believers in education. They wanted their children to be able to read the Bible themselves, and interpret it themselves, rather than have to have a clergyman tell them what it says and means. This then leads to thinking for themselves, which is the basis of democracy.\nThe Puritans, almost immediately after arriving in America in 1630, set up schools for their sons. They also set up what were called dame schools for their daughters and in other cases taught their daughters at home how to read. As a result, Americans were the most literate people in the world. By the time of the American Revolution, there were 40 newspapers in the United States (at a time when there were only two cities\u2014New York and Philadelphia\u2014with as many as 20,000 people in them).\nThe Puritans set up a college (Harvard University) only six years after arriving in the United States. By the time of the Revolution, the United States had 10 colleges (while England had only two).\nRecreation and leisure.\nPuritans did not celebrate traditional holidays such as Christmas, Easter, or May Day. They also did not observe personal annual holidays, such as birthdays or anniversaries. They did, however, celebrate special occasions such as military victories, harvests, ordinations, weddings, and births. These celebrations consisted of food and conversation. Beyond special occasions, the tavern was an important place for people to gather for fellowship on a regular basis.\nIncrease Mather wrote that dancing was \"a natural expression of joy; so that there is no more sin in it than in laughter.\" Puritans generally discouraged mixed or \"promiscuous\" dancing between men and women, which according to Mather would lead to \"unchaste touches and gesticulations. .. [that] have a palpable tendency to that which is evil.\" Some ministers, including John Cotton, thought that mixed dancing was appropriate under special circumstances, but all agreed it was a practice not to be encouraged. Dancing was also discouraged at weddings or on holidays (especially dancing around a maypole) and was illegal in taverns.\nPuritans had no theological objections to sports and games as long as they did not involve gambling (which eliminated activities such as billiards, shuffleboard, horse racing, bowling, and cards). They also opposed blood sports, such as cockfighting, cudgel-fighting, and bear-baiting. Team sports, such as football, were problematic because \"they encouraged idleness, produced injuries, and created bitter rivalries.\" Hunting and fishing were approved because they were productive. Other sports were encouraged for promoting civic virtue, such as competitions of marksmanship, running, and wrestling held within militia companies.\nOnly a few activities were completely condemned by Puritans. They were most opposed to the theater. According to historian Bruce Daniels, plays were seen as \"false recreations because they exhausted rather than relaxed the audience and actors\" and also \"wasted labor, led to wantonness and homosexuality, and invariably were represented by Puritans as a foreign\u2014particularly French or Italian\u2014disease of a similar enervating nature as syphilis.\" All forms of gambling were illegal. Not only were card-playing, dice throwing and other forms of gambling seen as contrary to the values of \"family, work, and honesty\", they were religiously offensive because gamblers implicitly asked God to intervene in trivial matters, violating the Third Commandment against taking the Lord's name in vain.\nSlavery.\nSlavery was legal in colonial New England; however, the slave population was less than three percent of the labor force. Most Puritan clergy accepted the existence of slavery since it was a practice recognized in the Bible. They also acknowledged that all people\u2014whether white, black or Native American\u2014were persons with souls who might receive saving grace. For this reason, slaves and free black people were eligible for full church membership, though meetinghouses and burial grounds were racially segregated. The Puritan influence over society meant that slaves were treated better in New England than in the Southern Colonies. In Massachusetts, the law gave slaves \"all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God established in Israel doth morally require\". As a result, slaves received the same protections against mistreatment as white servants. Slave marriages were legally recognized, and slaves were entitled to a trial by jury, even if accused of a crime by their master.\nThe first voices advocating the abolition of slavery were Puritans. For example, in 1700, Massachusetts judge and Puritan Samuel Sewall published \"The Selling of Joseph,\" the first antislavery tract written in America. In it, Sewall condemns slavery and the slave trade and refutes many of the era's typical justifications for slavery.\nThe Puritan influence on slavery was still strong at the time of the American Revolution and beyond. In the decades leading up to the American Civil War, abolitionists such as Theodore Parker, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Frederick Douglass repeatedly used the Puritan heritage of the country to bolster their cause. The most radical anti-slavery newspaper, \"The Liberator\", invoked the Puritans and Puritan values over a thousand times. Parker, in urging New England Congressmen to support the abolition of slavery, writes \"The son of the Puritan ... is sent to Congress to stand up for Truth and Right ...\"\nControversies.\nRoger Williams.\nRoger Williams, a Separating Puritan minister, arrived in Boston in 1631. He was immediately invited to become the teacher at the Boston church, but he refused the invitation on the grounds that the congregation had not separated from the Church of England. He then was invited to become the teacher of the church at Salem but was blocked by Boston political leaders, who objected to his separatism. He thus spent two years with his fellow Separatists in the Plymouth Colony but ultimately came into conflict with them and returned to Salem, where he became the unofficial assistant pastor to Samuel Skelton.\nWilliams held many controversial views that irritated the colony's political and religious leaders. He criticized the Puritan clergy's practice of meeting regularly for consultation, seeing in this a drift toward Presbyterianism. Williams' concern for the purity of the church led him to oppose the mixing of the elect and the unregenerate for worship and prayer, even when the unregenerate were family members of the elect. He also believed that Massachusetts rightfully belonged to the Native Americans and that the king had no authority to give it to the Puritans. Because he feared that government interference in religion would corrupt the church, Williams rejected the government's authority to punish violations of the first four Ten Commandments and believed that magistrates should not tender oaths to unconverted persons, which would have effectively abolished civil oaths.\nIn 1634 Skelton died, and the Salem congregation called Williams to be its pastor. In July 1635, however, he was brought before the General Court to answer for his views on oaths. Williams refused to back down, and the General Court warned Salem not to install him in any official position. In response, Williams decided that he could not maintain communion with the other churches in the colony nor with the Salem church unless they joined him in severing ties with the other churches. Caught between Williams and the General Court, the Salem congregation rejected Williams' extreme views.\nIn October, Williams was once again called before the General Court and refused to change his opinions. Williams was ordered to leave the colony and given until spring to do so, provided he ceased spreading his views. Unwilling to do so, the government issued orders for his immediate return to England in January 1636, but John Winthrop warned Williams, allowing him to escape. In 1636, the exiled Williams founded the colony of Providence Plantation. He was one of the first Puritans to advocate separation of church and state, and Providence Plantation was one of the first places in the Christian world to recognize freedom of religion.\nAntinomian Controversy.\nAnne Hutchinson and her family moved from Boston, Lincolnshire, to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634, following their Puritan minister John Cotton. Cotton became the teacher of the Boston church, working alongside its pastor John Wilson, and Hutchinson joined the congregation. In 1635, Hutchinson began holding meetings in her home to summarize the previous week's sermons for women who had been absent. Such gatherings were not unusual.\nIn October 1635, Wilson returned from a trip to England, and his preaching began to concern Hutchinson. Like most of the clergy in Massachusetts, Wilson taught preparationism, the belief that human actions were \"a means of preparation for God's grant of saving grace and\u00a0... evidence of sanctification.\" Cotton's preaching, however, emphasized the inevitability of God's will rather than human preparatory action. These two positions were a matter of emphases, as neither Cotton nor Wilson believed that good works could save a person. For Hutchinson, however, the difference was significant, and she began to criticize Wilson in her private meetings.\nIn the summer of 1636, Hutchinson's meetings were attracting powerful men such as William Aspinwall, William Coddington, John Coggeshall, and the colony's governor, Henry Vane. The group's credibility was increased by the perceived support of Cotton and the definite support of Hutchinson's brother-in-law, the minister John Wheelwright. By this time, Hutchinson was criticizing all the ministers in the colony, with the exception of Cotton and Wheelwright, for teaching legalism and preaching a \"covenant of works\" rather than a \"covenant of grace\". While denouncing the Puritan clergy as Arminians, Hutchinson maintained \"that assurance of salvation was conveyed not by action but by an essentially mystical experience of grace\u2014an inward conviction of the coming of the Spirit to the individual that bore no relationship to moral conduct.\" By rejecting adherence to the moral law, Hutchinson was teaching antinomianism, according to her clerical opponents.\nTensions continued to increase in the Boston church between Wilson and Hutchinson's followers, who formed a majority of the members. In January 1637, they were nearly successful in censuring him, and in the months that followed they left the meeting house whenever Wilson began to preach. The General Court ordered a day of fasting and prayer to help calm tensions, but Wheelwright preached a sermon on that day that further inflamed tensions, for which he was found guilty of sedition. Because Governor Vane was one of Hutchinson's followers, the general election of 1637 became a battlefront in the controversy, and Winthrop was elected to replace Vane.\nA synod of New England clergy was held in August 1637. The ministers defined 82 errors attributed to Hutchinson and her followers. It also discouraged private religious meetings and criticizing the clergy. In November, Wheelwright was banished from the colony. Hutchinson was called before the General Court where she ably defended herself. Nevertheless, she was ultimately convicted and sentenced to banishment from the colony for her claims of receiving direct personal revelations from God. Other supporters were disenfranchised or forbidden from bearing arms unless they admitted their errors. Hutchinson received a church trial in March 1638 in which the Boston congregation switched sides and unanimously voted for Hutchinson's excommunication. This effectively ended the controversy.\nWhile often described as a struggle for religious liberty, historian Francis Bremer states that this is a misunderstanding. Bremer writes, \"Anne Hutchinson was every bit as intolerant as her enemies. The struggle was over which of two competing views would be crowned and enforced as New England orthodoxy. As a consequence of the crisis she precipitated, the range of views that were tolerated in the Bay actually narrowed.\"\nIn the aftermath of the crisis, ministers realized the need for greater communication between churches and the standardization of preaching. As a consequence, nonbinding ministerial conferences to discuss theological questions and address conflicts became more frequent in the following years. A more substantial innovation was the implementation of the \"third way of communion\", a method of isolating a dissident or heretical church from neighboring churches. Members of an offending church would be unable to worship or receive the Lord's Supper in other churches.\nWitchcraft in Colonial America.\nPuritan fears, beliefs, and institutions fueled the witch craze in towns such as Salem from an interdisciplinary and anthropological approach. From a gendered approach, offered by Carol Karlsen and Elizabeth Reis, the question of why witches were primarily women did not fully surface until after the second wave of feminism in the 1980s. Some believe that women who were gaining economic or social power, specifically in the form of land inheritance, were at a higher risk of being tried as witches. Others maintain that females were more susceptible to being witches as the Puritans believed that the weak body was a pathway to the soul which both God and the Devil fought for. Because Puritans believed that female bodies \"lacked the strength and vitality\" compared to male bodies, females were more susceptible to make a choice to enter a covenant with Satan as their fragile bodies could not protect their souls.\nFrom a racial perspective, Puritans believed that African Americans and Native Americans living within the colonies were viewed as \"true witches\" from an anthropological sense as Blacks were considered \"inherently evil creatures, unable to control their connection to Satanic wickedness.\" Another contribution made to scholarship includes the religious perspective that historians attempt to understand its effect on the witch trials. J.P. Demos, a major scholar in the field of Puritan witchcraft studies, maintains that the intense and oppressive nature of Puritan religion can be viewed as the main culprit in the Colonial witch trials.\nDecline of power and influence.\nThe decline of the Puritans and the Congregational churches was brought about first through practices such as the Half-Way Covenant and second through the rise of dissenting Baptists, Quakers, Anglicans and Presbyterians in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. There is no consensus on when the Puritan era ended, though it is agreed that it was over by 1740. By this time, the Puritan tradition was splintering into different strands of pietists, rationalists, and conservatives. Historian Thomas S. Kidd argues that after 1689 and the success of the Glorious Revolution, \"[New Englanders'] religious and political agenda had so fundamentally changed that it doesn't make sense to call them Puritans any longer.\"\nDenominations that are directly descended from the Puritan churches of New England include the Congregationalist Churches, a branch of the wider Reformed tradition: the United Church of Christ, the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches, and the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference. Next in size and historical importance is the United Church of Christ, which is the historic continuation of the Congregational churches founded under the influence of New England Puritanism. The United Church of Christ also subsumed the third major Reformed group, the German Reformed, which (then known as the Evangelical and Reformed Church) merged with the Congregationalists in 1957.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["24437894", "27705397", "25814008"], "permutation_1": ["25814008", "24437894", "27705397"], "permutation_2": ["25814008", "24437894", "27705397"], "permutation_3": ["24437894", "27705397", "25814008"]}
{"id": "3hop2__30796_773286_24137", "docs_added": {"5122699": "John Kerry\nAmerican politician and diplomat (born 1943)\nJohn Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician, and diplomat who served as the 68th United States secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 in the administration of Barack Obama. A member of the Forbes family and of the Democratic Party, he previously represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1985 to 2013 and later served as the first U.S. special presidential envoy for climate from 2021 to 2024. Kerry was the Democratic nominee for president of the United States in the 2004 election, narrowly losing to then-incumbent president George W. Bush.\nKerry grew up in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. In 1966, after graduating from Yale University, he enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve, ultimately attaining the rank of lieutenant. During the Vietnam War, Kerry served a brief tour in South Vietnam. While commanding a Swift boat, he sustained three wounds in combat with the Viet Cong, for which he earned three Purple Heart medals. Kerry was also awarded the Silver Star Medal and the Bronze Star Medal for conduct in separate military engagements. After completing his active military service, Kerry returned to the United States and became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. He gained national recognition as an anti-war activist, serving as a spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization. Kerry testified in the Fulbright Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where he described the United States government's policy in Vietnam as the cause of war crimes.\nIn 1972, Kerry entered electoral politics as a Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives in Massachusetts's 5th congressional district, losing to Republican Paul W. Cronin in the general election. He subsequently worked as a radio talk show host and as the executive director of an advocacy organization while attending law school. After a period in private legal practice, he was elected the 66th lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1982. In 1984, Kerry was elected to the United States Senate. In 2004, Kerry won the Democratic presidential nomination alongside Senator John Edwards. He lost the Electoral College and the popular vote by slim margins, winning 251 electors to Bush's 286 and 48.3% of the popular vote to Bush's 50.7%.\nIn January 2013, Kerry was nominated by President Obama to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and was subsequently confirmed by his Senate colleagues. He was U.S. secretary of state throughout the second term of the Obama administration from 2013 to 2017. During his tenure, he initiated the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks and negotiated agreements restricting the nuclear program of Iran, including the 2013 Joint Plan of Action and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In 2015, Kerry signed the Paris Agreement on climate change on behalf of the United States.\nIn January 2021, Kerry returned to government, becoming the first person to hold the position of U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, under President Joe Biden. On March 6, Kerry left this position to work on Biden's 2024 presidential campaign. Kerry was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Biden in May 2024.\nEarly life and education (1943\u20131966).\nJohn Forbes Kerry was born on December 11, 1943, at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado. He is the second of four children born to Richard John Kerry, a U.S. diplomat and lawyer, and Rosemary Forbes, a nurse and social activist. His father was raised Catholic (John's paternal grandparents were Austro-Hungarian Jewish immigrants who converted to Catholicism) and his mother was Episcopalian. He was raised with an elder sister Margaret, a younger sister Diana, and a younger brother Cameron. The children were raised in their father's Catholic faith, and John served as an altar boy.\nKerry was originally considered a military brat, until his father was discharged from the Army Air Corps in 1944. Kerry lived in Groton, Massachusetts his first year and Millis, Massachusetts afterwards before moving to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. at age seven, when his father took a position in the Department of the Navy's Office of General Counsel and soon became a diplomat in the State Department's Bureau of United Nations Affairs.\nAs members of the Forbes and Dudley\u2013Winthrop families, his maternal extended family enjoyed great wealth. Kerry's parents themselves were considered upper-middle class. They turned to his wealthy great-aunt, Clara Winthrop, who paid for his attendance at elite boarding schools, such as Institut Montana Zugerberg, in Zug, Switzerland. Through his maternal ancestry, Kerry also descends from Rev. James McGregor who was among the first 500 Scots-Irish immigrants to Boston Harbor in the 18th century.\nAt the age of ten, Kerry's father took a position as the U.S. Attorney for Berlin. When Kerry was twelve, he crossed into the Soviet Occupation Zone to visit Hitler's bunker and ride through the Brandenburg Gate. \nIn 1957, his father was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway, and Kerry was sent back to the United States to attend boarding school. He first attended the Fessenden School in Newton, Massachusetts, and later St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, where he learned skills in public speaking and began developing an interest in politics. Kerry founded the John Winant Society at St. Paul's to debate the issues of the day; the Society still exists there. In 1960, while at St. Paul's, he played bass in a minor rock band called The Electras with six of his classmates. The band had about five hundred copies of one album printed in 1961, which they sold some of at dances at the school; it was made available on streaming platforms many years later.\nIn 1962, Kerry attended Yale University, majoring in political science and residing in Jonathan Edwards College. By that year, his parents returned to Groton. While at Yale, Kerry briefly dated Janet Auchincloss, the younger half-sister of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Through Auchincloss, Kerry was invited to a day of sailing with then-President John F. Kennedy and his family.\nKerry played on the varsity Yale Bulldogs men's soccer team, earning his only letter in his senior year. He also played freshman and junior varsity hockey and, in his senior year, junior varsity lacrosse. In addition, he was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity and took flying lessons.\nIn his sophomore year, Kerry became the chairman of the Liberal Party of the Yale Political Union, and a year later he served as president of the union. Amongst his influential teachers in this period was Professor H. Bradford Westerfield, who was himself a former president of the Political Union. His involvement with the Political Union gave him an opportunity to be involved with important issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and the New Frontier program. He also became a member of Skull and Bones Society, and traveled to Switzerland through AIESEC Yale.\nUnder the guidance of the speaking coach and history professor Rollin G. Osterweis, Kerry won many debates against other college students from across the nation. In March 1965, as the Vietnam War escalated, he won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that was critical of U.S. foreign policy. In the speech he said, \"It is the spectre of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism and thus, it is self-defeating.\"\nKerry graduated from Yale with a bachelor of arts degree in 1966. Overall, he had below-average grades, graduating with a cumulative average of 76 over his four years. His freshman-year average was a 71, but he improved to an 81 average for his senior year. He never received an \"A\" during his time at Yale; his highest grade was an 89.\nMilitary service (1966\u20131970).\nDuty on USS \"Gridley\".\nOn February 18, 1966, Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserve. He began his active duty military service on August 19, 1966. After completing 16 weeks of Officer Candidate School at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island, Kerry received his officer's commission on December 16, 1966. During the 2004 election, Kerry posted his military records at his website, and permitted reporters to inspect his medical records. In 2005, Kerry released his military and medical records to the representatives of three news organizations, but has not authorized full public access to those records.\nDuring his tour on the guided missile frigate , Kerry requested duty in South Vietnam, listing as his first preference a position as the commander of a Fast Patrol Craft (PCF), also known as a \"Swift boat\". These boats have aluminum hulls and have little or no armor, but are heavily armed and rely on speed. \"I didn't really want to get involved in the war,\" Kerry said in a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. \"When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing.\" However, his second choice of billet was on a river patrol boat, or \"PBR\", which at the time was serving a more dangerous duty on the rivers of Vietnam.\nMilitary honors.\nDuring the night of December 2 and early morning of December 3, 1968, Kerry was in charge of a small boat operating near a peninsula north of Cam Ranh Bay together with a Swift boat (PCF-60). According to Kerry and the two crewmen who accompanied him that night, Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis, they surprised a group of Vietnamese men unloading sampans at a river crossing, who began running and failed to obey an order to stop. As the men fled, Kerry and his crew opened fire on the sampans and destroyed them, then rapidly left. During this encounter, Kerry received a shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow. It was for this injury that Kerry received his first Purple Heart Medal.\nKerry received his second Purple Heart for a wound received in action on the B\u1ed3 \u0110\u1ec1 River on February 20, 1969. The plan had been for the Swift boats to be accompanied by support helicopters. On the way up the Bo De, however, the helicopters were attacked. As the Swift boats reached the C\u1eeda L\u1edbn River, Kerry's boat was hit by a B-40 rocket (rocket propelled grenade round), and a piece of shrapnel hit Kerry's left leg, wounding him. Thereafter, enemy fire ceased and his boat reached the Gulf of Thailand safely. Kerry continues to have shrapnel embedded in his left thigh because the doctors that first treated him decided to remove the damaged tissue and close the wound with sutures rather than make a wide opening to remove the shrapnel. Although wounded like several others earlier that day, Kerry did not lose any time off from duty.\nSilver Star.\nEight days later, on February 28, 1969, came the events for which Kerry was awarded his Silver Star Medal. On this occasion, Kerry was in tactical command of his Swift boat and two other Swift boats during a combat operation. Their mission on the Duong Keo River included bringing an underwater demolition team and dozens of South Vietnamese Marines to destroy enemy sampans, structures and bunkers as described in the story \"The Death Of PCF 43\". Running into heavy small arms fire from the river banks, Kerry \"directed the units to turn to the beach and charge the Viet Cong positions\" and he \"expertly directed\" his boat's fire causing the enemy to flee while at the same time coordinating the insertion of the ninety South Vietnamese troops (according to the original medal citation signed by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt). Moving a short distance upstream, Kerry's boat was the target of a B-40 rocket round; Kerry charged the enemy positions and as his boat hove to and beached, a Viet Cong (\"VC\") insurgent armed with a rocket launcher emerged from a spider hole and ran. While the boat's gunner opened fire, wounding the VC in the leg, and while the other boats approached and offered cover fire, Kerry jumped from the boat to pursue the VC insurgent, subsequently killing him and capturing his loaded rocket launcher.\nKerry's commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander George Elliott, stated to Douglas Brinkley in 2003 that he did not know whether to court-martial Kerry for beaching the boat without orders or give him a medal for saving the crew. Elliott recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, and Zumwalt flew into An Thoi to personally award medals to Kerry and the rest of the sailors involved in the mission. The Navy's account of Kerry's actions is presented in the original signed by Zumwalt. The engagement was documented in an after-action report, a press release written on March 1, 1969, and a historical summary dated March 17, 1969.\nBronze Star.\nOn March 13, 1969, on the B\u00e1i H\u00e1p River, Kerry was in charge of one of five Swift boats that were returning to their base after performing an Operation Sealords mission to transport South Vietnamese troops from the garrison at C\u00e1i N\u01b0\u1edbc and MIKE Force advisors for a raid on a Vietcong camp located on the Rach Dong Cung canal. Earlier in the day, Kerry received a slight shrapnel wound in the buttocks from blowing up a rice bunker. Debarking some but not all of the passengers at a small village, the boats approached a fishing weir; one group of boats went around to the left of the weir, hugging the shore, and a group with Kerry's PCF-94 boat went around to the right, along the shoreline. A mine was detonated directly beneath the lead boat, PCF-3, as it crossed the weir to the left, lifting PCF-3 \"about 2\u20133 ft out of water\".\nJames Rassmann, a Green Beret advisor who was aboard Kerry's PCF-94, was knocked overboard when, according to witnesses and the documentation of the event, a mine or rocket exploded close to the boat. According to the documentation for the event, Kerry's arm was injured when he was thrown against a bulkhead during the explosion. PCF 94 returned to the scene and Kerry rescued Rassmann who was receiving sniper fire from the water. Kerry received the Bronze Star Medal with Combat \"V\" for \"heroic achievement\", for his actions during this incident; he also received his third Purple Heart.\nReturn from Vietnam.\nAfter Kerry's third qualifying wound, he was entitled per Navy regulations to reassignment away from combat duties. Kerry's preferred choice for reassignment was as a military aide in Boston, New York City or Washington, D.C. On April 11, 1969, he reported to the Brooklyn-based Atlantic Military Sea Transportation Service, where he would remain on active duty for the following year as a personal aide to an officer, Rear Admiral Walter Schlech. On January 1, 1970, Kerry was temporarily promoted to full lieutenant. Kerry had agreed to an extension of his active duty obligation from December 1969 to August 1970 in order to perform Swift Boat duty. John Kerry was on active duty in the United States Navy from August 1966 until January 1970. He continued to serve in the Naval Reserve until February 1978.\n\"Swiftboating\" controversy.\nWith the continuing controversy that had surrounded the military service of George W. Bush since the 2000 presidential election (when he was accused of having used his father's political influence to gain entrance to the Texas Air National Guard, thereby protecting himself from conscription into the United States Army, and possible service in the Vietnam War), John Kerry's contrasting status as a decorated Vietnam War veteran posed a problem for Bush's re-election campaign, which Republicans sought to counter by calling Kerry's war record into question. As the presidential campaign of 2004 developed, approximately 250 members of a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT, later renamed Swift Vets and POWs for Truth) opposed Kerry's campaign. The group held press conferences, ran ads and endorsed a book questioning Kerry's service record and his military awards. The group included several members of Kerry's unit, such as Larry Thurlow, who commanded a swift boat alongside of Kerry's, and Stephen Gardner, who served on Kerry's boat. The campaign inspired the widely used political pejorative '\"swiftboating,\" to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. Most of Kerry's former crewmates have stated that SBVT's allegations are false.\nAnti-war activism (1970\u20131971).\nAfter returning to the United States, Kerry moved to Waltham, Massachusetts and joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Then numbering about 20,000, VVAW was considered by some (including the administration of President Richard Nixon) to be an effective, if controversial, component of the antiwar movement. Kerry participated in the \"Winter Soldier Investigation\" conducted by VVAW of U.S. atrocities in Vietnam, and he appears in a film by that name that documents the investigation. According to Nixon Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, \"I didn't approve of what he did, but I understood the protesters quite well\", and he declined two requests from the Navy to court martial Reserve Lieutenant Kerry over his antiwar activity.\nOn April 22, 1971, Kerry appeared before a U.S. Senate committee hearing on proposals relating to ending the war. The day after this testimony, Kerry participated in a demonstration with thousands of other veterans in which he and other Vietnam War veterans threw their medals and service ribbons over a fence erected at the front steps of the United States Capitol building to dramatize their opposition to the war. Jack Smith, a Marine, read a statement explaining why the veterans were returning their military awards to the government. For more than two hours, almost 1,000 angry veterans tossed their medals, ribbons, hats, jackets, and military papers over the fence. Each veteran gave his or her name, hometown, branch of service and a statement. Kerry threw some of his own decorations and awards as well as some given to him by other veterans to throw. As Kerry threw his decorations over the fence, his statement was: \"I'm not doing this for any violent reasons, but for peace and justice, and to try and make this country wake up once and for all.\"\nKerry was arrested on May 30, 1971, during a VVAW march to honor American POWs held captive by North Vietnam. The march was planned as a multi-day event from Concord to Boston, and while in Lexington, participants tried to camp on the village green. At 2:30a.m., local and state police arrested 441 demonstrators, including Kerry, for trespassing. All were given the Miranda Warning and were hauled away on school buses to spend the night at the Lexington Public Works Garage. Kerry and the other protesters later paid a $5 fine, and were released. The mass arrests caused a community backlash and ended up giving positive coverage to the VVAW.\nEarly political career (1972\u20131985).\n1972 congressional election.\nIn 1970, Kerry had considered running for Congress in the Democratic primary against hawkish Democrat Philip J. Philbin of Massachusetts's 3rd congressional district, but deferred in favor of Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest and anti-war activist, who went on to defeat Philbin. In February 1972, Kerry's wife bought a house in Worcester, with Kerry intending to run against the 4th district's aging thirteen-term incumbent Democrat, Harold Donohue. The couple never moved in. After Republican Congressman F. Bradford Morse of the neighboring 5th district announced his retirement and then resignation to become Under-Secretary-General for Political and General Assembly Affairs at the United Nations, the couple instead rented an apartment in Lowell, so that Kerry could run to succeed him.\nIncluding Kerry, the Democratic primary race had 10 candidates, including attorney Paul J. Sheehy, State Representative Anthony R. DiFruscia, John J. Desmond and Robert B. Kennedy. Kerry ran a \"very expensive, sophisticated campaign\", financed by out-of-state backers and supported by many young volunteers. DiFruscia's campaign headquarters shared the same building as Kerry's. On the eve of the September 19 primary, police found Kerry's younger brother Cameron and campaign field director Thomas J. Vallely, breaking into where the building's telephone lines were located. They were arrested and charged with \"breaking and entering with the intent to commit grand larceny\", but the charges were dropped a year later. DiFruscia alleged that the two were trying to disrupt his get-out-the vote efforts. Vallely and Cameron Kerry maintained that they were only checking their own telephone lines because they had received an anonymous call warning that the Kerry lines would be cut.\nDespite the arrests, Kerry won the primary with 20,771 votes (27.56%). Sheehy came second with 15,641 votes (20.75%), followed by DiFruscia with 12,222 votes (16.22%), Desmond with 10,213 votes (13.55%) and Kennedy with 5,632 votes (7.47%). The remaining 10,891 votes were split amongst the other five candidates, with 1970 nominee Richard Williams coming last with just 1,706 votes (2.26%).\nIn the general election, Kerry was initially favored to defeat the Republican candidate, former State Representative Paul W. Cronin, and conservative Democrat Roger P. Durkin, who ran as an Independent. A week after the primary, one poll put Kerry 26-points ahead of Cronin. His campaign called for a national health insurance system, discounted prescription drugs for the unemployed, a jobs program to clean up the Merrimack River and rent controls in Lowell and Lawrence. A major obstacle, however, was the district's leading newspaper, the conservative \"The Sun\". The paper editorialized against him. It also ran critical news stories about his out-of-state contributions and his \"carpetbagging\", because he had only moved into the district in April. Subsequently, released \"Watergate\" Oval Office tape recordings of the Nixon White House showed that defeating Kerry's candidacy had attracted the personal attention of President Nixon. Kerry himself asserts that Nixon sent operatives to Lowell to help derail his campaign.\nThe race was the most expensive for Congress in the country that year and four days before the general election, Durkin withdrew and endorsed Cronin, hoping to see Kerry defeated. The week before, a poll had put Kerry 10 points ahead of Cronin, with Durkin at 13%. In the final days of the campaign, Kerry sensed that it was \"slipping away\" and Cronin emerged victorious by 110,970 votes (53.45%) to Kerry's 92,847 (44.72%). After his defeat, Kerry lamented in a letter to supporters that \"for two solid weeks, [\"The Sun\"] called me un-American, New Left antiwar agitator, unpatriotic, and labeled me every other 'un-' and 'anti-' that they could find. It's hard to believe that one newspaper could be so powerful, but they were.\" He later felt that his failure to respond directly to \"The Sun\"'s attacks cost him the race.\nLaw career.\nAfter Kerry's 1972 defeat, he and his wife bought a house in the Belvidere section of Lowell, Massachusetts, entering a decade which his brother Cameron later called \"the years in exile\". He spent some time working as a fundraiser for the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE), an international humanitarian organization. In September 1973, he entered Boston College Law School. While studying, Kerry worked as a talk radio host on WBZ and, in July 1974, was named executive director of Mass Action, a Massachusetts advocacy association.\nKerry received his juris doctor (J.D.) from Boston College in 1976. While in law school he had been a student prosecutor in the office of the District Attorney of Middlesex County, John J. Droney. After passing the bar exam and being admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1976, he went to work in that office as a full-time prosecutor and moved to Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.\nIn January 1977, Droney promoted him to First Assistant District Attorney, essentially making Kerry his campaign and media surrogate because Droney was afflicted with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease). As First Assistant, Kerry tried cases, which included winning convictions in a high-profile rape case and a murder. He also played a role in administering the office, including initiating the creation of special white-collar and organized crime units, creating programs to address the problems of rape and other crime victims and witnesses, and managing trial calendars to reflect case priorities. In 1978, Kerry launched a criminal investigation against Senator Edward Brooke, regarding \"misstatements\" in his first divorce trial. The inquiry ended with no charges being brought after investigators and prosecutors determined that Brooke's misstatements were pertinent to the case, but were not material enough to have affected the outcome.\nDroney's health was poor and Kerry had decided to run for his position in the 1978 election should Droney drop out. However, Droney was re-elected and his health improved; he went on to re-assume many of the duties that he had delegated to Kerry. Kerry thus decided to leave, departing in 1979 with assistant DA Roanne Sragow to set up their own law firm. Kerry also worked as a commentator for WCVB-TV and co-founded a bakery, Kilvert & Forbes Ltd., with businessman and former Kennedy aide K. Dun Gifford.\nLieutenant Governor of Massachusetts.\nIn the 1982 Massachusetts gubernatorial election, Lieutenant Governor Thomas P. O'Neill III declined to seek a third term, instead deciding to run for governor of Massachusetts. Kerry declared his candidacy, entering the primary election alongside Massachusetts Secretary of Environmental Affairs Evelyn Murphy, State Senator Samuel Rotondi, State Representative Lou Nickinello, and Lois Pines.\nKerry won the nomination with 325,890 votes (29%) to Murphy's 286,378 (25.48%), Rotondi's 228,086 (20.29%), Nickinello's 150,829 (13.42%) and Pines' 132,734 (11.81%). In the concurrent gubernatorial primary, former Governor Michael Dukakis defeated O'Neill and incumbent Governor Edward J. King. The Dukakis and Kerry ticket defeated the Republican ticket of John W. Sears and Leon Lombardi in the general election by 1,219,109 votes (61.92%) to 749,679 (38.08%).\nAs Lieutenant Governor, Kerry led meetings of the Massachusetts Governor's Council. Dukakis also delegated other tasks to Kerry, including serving as the state's liaison to the Federal government of the United States. He was also active on environmental issues, including combating acid rain.\n1984 U.S. Senate election.\nThe junior U.S. senator from Massachusetts, Paul Tsongas, announced in 1984 that he would be stepping down for health reasons. Kerry ran, and as in his 1982 race for Lieutenant Governor, he did not receive the endorsement of the party regulars at the state Democratic convention. Congressman James Shannon, a favorite of House Speaker Tip O'Neill, was the early favorite to win the nomination, and he \"won broad establishment support and led in early polling\". Again as in 1982, however, Kerry prevailed in a close primary.\nIn his general election campaign, Kerry promised to mix liberalism with tight budget controls. He defeated Republican Ray Shamie despite a nationwide landslide for the re-election of Republican President Ronald Reagan, for whom Massachusetts voted by a narrow margin. In his victory speech, Kerry asserted that his win meant that the people of Massachusetts \"emphatically reject the politics of selfishness and the notion that women must be treated as second-class citizens\".\nTsongas resigned on January 2, 1985, one day before the end of his term. Dukakis appointed Kerry to fill the vacancy, giving him seniority over other new senators who were sworn in on January 3, the scheduled start of their new terms.\nU.S. Senate (1985\u20132013).\nIran\u2013Contra hearings.\nOn April 18, 1985, a few months after taking his Senate seat, Kerry and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa traveled to Nicaragua and met the country's president, Daniel Ortega. Although Ortega had won internationally certified elections, the trip was criticized because Ortega and his leftist Sandinista government had strong ties to Cuba and the USSR and were accused of human rights abuses. The Sandinista government was opposed by the right-wing CIA-backed rebels known as the Contras. While in Nicaragua, Kerry and Harkin talked to people on both sides of the conflict. Through the senators, Ortega offered a cease-fire agreement in exchange for the U.S. dropping support of the Contras. The offer was denounced by the Reagan administration as a \"propaganda initiative\" designed to influence a House vote on a $14million Contra aid package, but Kerry said \"I am willing... to take the risk in the effort to put to test the good faith of the Sandinistas.\" The House voted down the Contra aid, but Ortega flew to Moscow to accept a $200million loan the next day, which in part prompted the House to pass a larger $27million aid package six weeks later.\nMeanwhile, Kerry's staff began their own investigations and, on October 14, issued a report that exposed illegal activities on the part of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who had set up a private network involving the National Security Council and the CIA to deliver military equipment to right-wing Nicaraguan rebels (Contras). In effect, North and certain members of the President's administration were accused by Kerry's report of illegally funding and supplying armed militants without the authorization of Congress. Kerry's staff investigation, based on a year-long inquiry and interviews with fifty unnamed sources, is said to raise \"serious questions about whether the United States has abided by the law in its handling of the contras over the past three years\".\nThe Kerry Committee report found that \"the Contra drug links included... payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies.\" The U.S. State Department paid over $806,000 to known drug traffickers to carry humanitarian assistance to the Contras. Kerry's findings provoked little reaction in the media and official Washington.\nThe Kerry report was a precursor to the Iran\u2013Contra affair. On May 4, 1989, North was convicted of charges relating to the Iran/Contra controversy, including three felonies. On September 16, 1991, however, North's convictions were overturned on appeal.\nGeorge H. W. Bush administration.\nOn November 15, 1988, at a businessmen's breakfast in East Lynn, Massachusetts, Kerry made a joke about then-President-elect George H. W. Bush and his running mate, saying \"if Bush is shot, the Secret Service has orders to shoot Dan Quayle.\" He apologized the following day.\nDuring their investigation of General Manuel Noriega, the \"de facto\" ruler of Panama, Kerry's staff found reason to believe that the Pakistan-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) had facilitated Noriega's drug trafficking and money laundering. This led to a separate inquiry into BCCI, and as a result, banking regulators shut down BCCI in 1991. In December 1992, Kerry and Senator Hank Brown, a Republican from Colorado, released \"The BCCI Affair\", a report on the BCCI scandal. The report showed that the bank was crooked and was working with terrorists, including Abu Nidal. It blasted the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, the Customs Service, the Federal Reserve Bank, as well as influential lobbyists and the CIA.\nKerry was criticized by some Democrats for having pursued his own party members, including former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, although Republicans said he should have pressed against some Democrats even harder. The BCCI scandal was later turned over to the Manhattan District Attorney's office.\nPrecursors to presidential bid.\nIn 1996, Kerry faced a difficult re-election fight against Governor William Weld, a popular Republican incumbent who had been re-elected in 1994 with 71% of the vote. The race was covered nationwide as one of the most closely watched Senate races that year. Kerry and Weld held several debates and negotiated a campaign spending cap of $6.9million at Kerry's Beacon Hill townhouse. Both candidates spent more than the cap, with each camp accusing the other of being first to break the agreement. During the campaign, Kerry spoke briefly at the 1996 Democratic National Convention. Kerry won re-election with 52 percent to Weld's 45 percent.\nIn the 2000 presidential election, Kerry found himself close to being chosen as the vice presidential running mate.\nA release from the presidential campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Al Gore listed Kerry on the short list to be selected as the vice-presidential nominee, along with North Carolina Senator John Edwards, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt, New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. Gore ultimately chose Lieberman.\n\"You get stuck in Iraq\" controversy.\nOn October 30, 2006, Kerry was a headline speaker at a campaign rally being held for Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. Speaking to an audience composed mainly of college students, Kerry said, \"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.\"\nThe day after he made the remark, leaders from both sides of the political spectrum criticized Kerry's remarks, which he said were a botched joke. Republicans including President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain and then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, said that Kerry's comments were insulting to American military forces fighting in Iraq. Democratic Representative Harold Ford Jr. called on Kerry to apologize.\nKerry initially stated: \"I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy\". Kerry also responded to criticism from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.\nKerry said that he had intended the remark as a jab at President Bush, and described the remarks as a \"botched joke\", having inadvertently left out the key word \"us\" (which would have been, \"If you don't, you get \"us\" stuck in Iraq\"), as well as leaving the phrase \"just ask President Bush\" off of the end of the sentence. In Kerry's prepared remarks, which he released during the ensuing media frenzy, the corresponding line was \"...you end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush\". He also said that from the context of the speech which, prior to the \"stuck in Iraq\" line, made several specific references to Bush and elements of his biography, that Kerry was referring to President Bush and not American troops in general.\nAfter two days of media coverage, citing a desire not to be a diversion, Kerry apologized to those who took offense at what he called the misinterpretation of his comment.\nAfghanistan and Pakistan.\nA \"Washington Post\" report in May 2011 stated that Kerry \"has emerged in the past few years as an important envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan during times of crisis\", as he undertook another trip to the two countries. The killing of Osama bin Laden \"has generated perhaps the most important crossroads yet\", the report continued, as the senator spoke at a press conference and prepared to fly from Kabul to Pakistan. Among matters discussed during the May visit to Pakistan, under the general rubric of \"recalibrating\" the bilateral relationship, Kerry sought and retrieved from the Pakistanis the tail-section of the U.S. helicopter which had had to be abandoned at Abbottabad during the bin Laden strike. In 2013, Kerry met with Pakistan's army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to discuss the peace process with the Taliban in Afghanistan.\nVoting record.\nOverall.\nMost analyses place Kerry's voting record on the left within the Senate Democratic caucus. During the 2004 presidential election he was portrayed as a staunch liberal by conservative groups and the Bush campaign, who often noted that in 2003 Kerry was rated the top Senate liberal by \"National Journal\". However, that rating was based only upon voting on legislation within that past year. In fact, in terms of career voting records, the \"National Journal\" found that Kerry is the 11th most liberal member of the Senate. Most analyses find that Kerry is at least slightly more liberal than the typical Democratic Senator. Kerry has stated that he opposes privatizing Social Security, supports abortion rights for adult women and minors, supports same-sex marriage, opposes capital punishment except for terrorists, supports most gun control laws, and is generally a supporter of trade agreements. In some of these, as in the case of abortion, Kerry distinguishes his personal views as in line with his Catholic faith, but believes that separation of church and state demands that he not legislate his religious beliefs upon those who do not share those beliefs. Kerry supported the North American Free Trade Agreement and Most Favored Nation status for China, but opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement.\nIn July 1997, Kerry joined his Senate colleagues in voting against ratification of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming without greenhouse gas emissions limits on nations deemed developing, including India and China. Since then, Kerry has attacked President Bush, charging him with opposition to international efforts to combat global warming.\nOn October 1, 2008, Kerry voted for Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, also known as the TARP bailout.\nIraq.\nIn the lead up to the Iraq War, Kerry said on October 9, 2002; \"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.\" Bush relied on that resolution in ordering the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Kerry also gave a January 23, 2003, speech to Georgetown University saying \"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator; leading an oppressive regime he presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.\" Kerry did, however, warn that the administration should exhaust its diplomatic avenues before launching war: \"Mr. President, do not rush to war, take the time to build the coalition, because it's not winning the war that's hard, it's winning the peace that's hard.\"\nAfter the invasion of Iraq, when no weapons of mass destruction were found, Kerry strongly criticized Bush, contending that he had misled the country: \"When the President of the United States looks at you and tells you something, there should be some trust.\"\nLibya.\nIn 2011, Kerry supported American military action in Libya.\nLeadership.\nKerry chaired the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs from 1991 to 1993. The committee's report, which Kerry endorsed, stated there was \"no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia\". In 1994 the Senate passed a resolution, sponsored by Kerry and fellow Vietnam veteran John McCain, that called for an end to the existing trade embargo against Vietnam; it was intended to pave the way for normalization. In 1995, President Bill Clinton normalized diplomatic relations with the country of Vietnam.\nKerry was the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 1987 to 1989. He was reelected to the Senate in 1990, 1996 (after winning re-election against the then-Governor of Massachusetts Republican William Weld), 2002, and 2008. In January 2009, Kerry replaced Joe Biden as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.\nAs a role model for campus leaders across the nation and strong advocate for global development, Kerry was honored by the Millennium Campus Network (MCN) as a Global Generation Award winner in 2011.\nCommittee assignments.\nDuring his tenure, Kerry served on four Senate committees and nine subcommittees:\nSeniority.\nFrom the beginning of the 113th United States Congress until his resignation, Kerry ranked as the 7th most senior U.S. Senator. Due to the longevity of Ted Kennedy's service, Kerry was the most senior \"junior Senator\" in the 111th United States Congress. On Tuesday, August 25, 2009, Kerry became the senior senator from Massachusetts following Ted Kennedy's death.\nSponsorship of legislation.\nAreas of concern in the bills Kerry introduced into the Senate included small business concerns, education, terrorism, veterans' and POW/MIA issues, and marine resource protection. A full list of Kerry's sponsored legislation was available on his Senate web site.\nDuring his Senate career, Kerry was primary sponsor of the following bills (excluding resolutions and amendments sponsored). This table does not count bills which Kerry co-sponsored.\nA chronological list of various bills and resolutions sponsored by Kerry follows.\n2004 presidential campaign.\nIn the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries, John Kerry defeated several Democratic rivals, including Sen. John Edwards (D-North Carolina), former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and retired Army General Wesley Clark. His victory in the Iowa caucuses is widely believed to be the tipping point where Kerry revived his sagging campaign in New Hampshire and the February 3, 2004, primary states like Arizona, South Carolina and New Mexico. Kerry then went on to win landslide victories in Nevada and Wisconsin. Kerry thus won the Democratic nomination to run for President of the United States against incumbent George W. Bush. On July 6, 2004, he announced his selection of John Edwards as his running mate. Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who was Kerry's 2004 campaign adviser, wrote an article in \"Time\" magazine claiming that after the election, Kerry had said that he wished he had never picked Edwards, and that the two have since stopped speaking to each other. In a subsequent appearance on ABC's \"This Week\", Kerry refused to respond to Shrum's allegation, calling it a \"ridiculous waste of time\".\nDuring his bid to be elected president in 2004, Kerry frequently criticized President George W. Bush for starting the Iraq War. While Kerry had initially voted in support of authorizing President Bush to use force in dealing with Saddam Hussein, he voted against an $87billion supplemental appropriations bill to pay for the subsequent war. His statement on March 16, 2004, \"I actually did vote for the $87billion before I voted against it\", helped the Bush campaign to paint him as a flip-flopper and has been cited as contributing to Kerry's defeat.\nOn November 3, 2004, Kerry conceded the race. Kerry won 59.03 million votes, or 48.3 percent of the popular vote; Bush won 62.04 million votes, or 50.7 percent of the popular vote. Kerry carried states with a total of 252 electoral votes. One Kerry elector voted for Kerry's running mate, Edwards, so in the final tally Kerry had 251 electoral votes to Bush's 286. He was the first Democrat since Michael Dukakis in 1988 to lose the popular vote in a presidential election, and until Kamala Harris's loss in 2024, he was the most recent Democrat to do so.\nSubsequent presidential-election activities.\nImmediately after the 2004 election, some Democrats mentioned Kerry as a possible contender for the 2008 Democratic nomination. His brother had said such a campaign was \"conceivable\", and Kerry himself reportedly said at a farewell party for his 2004 campaign staff, \"There's always another four years\".\nKerry established a separate political action committee, Keeping America's Promise, which declared as its mandate \"A Democratic Congress will restore accountability to Washington and help change a disastrous course in Iraq\", and raised money and channeled contributions to Democratic candidates in state and federal races. Through Keeping America's Promise in 2005, Kerry raised over $5.5million for other Democrats up and down the ballot. Through his campaign account and his political action committee, the Kerry campaign operation generated more than $10million for various party committees and 179 candidates for the U.S. House, Senate, state and local offices in 42 states focusing on the midterm elections during the 2006 election cycle. \"Cumulatively, John Kerry has done as much if not more than any other individual senator\", Hassan Nemazee, the national finance chairman of the DSCC said.\nOn January 10, 2008, Kerry endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama for president. He was mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate for Senator Obama, although fellow Senator Joe Biden was eventually chosen. After Biden's acceptance of the vice presidential nomination, speculation arose that John Kerry would be a candidate for Secretary of State in the Obama administration. However, Senator Hillary Clinton was offered the position.\nDuring the 2012 Obama reelection campaign, Kerry participated in one-on-one debate prep with the president, impersonating the Republican candidate Mitt Romney.\nSecretary of State (2013\u20132017).\nNomination and confirmation.\nOn December 15, 2012, several news outlets reported that President Barack Obama would nominate Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, after Susan Rice, widely seen as Obama's preferred choice, withdrew her name from consideration citing a politicized confirmation process following criticism of her response to the 2012 Benghazi attack. On December 21, Obama proposed the nomination, which received positive commentary. His confirmation hearing took place on January 24, 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the same panel where he first testified in 1971. The committee unanimously voted to approve him on January 29, 2013, and the same day the full Senate confirmed him on a vote of 94\u20133. In a letter to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Kerry announced his resignation from the Senate effective February 1.\nTenure.\nKerry was sworn in as Secretary of State on February 1, 2013.\nWhile serving as the Secretary of State, Kerry spoke in the French language on several occasions in his official capacity.\nAfter six months of rigorous diplomacy within the Middle East, Kerry was able to have Israeli and Palestinian negotiators agree to start the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks. Senior U.S. officials stated the two sides were able to meet on July 30, 2013, at the State Department without American mediators following a dinner the previous evening hosted by Kerry.\nOn September 27, 2013, he met with the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the P5+1 and Iran summit, which eventually led to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. It was the highest-level direct contact between the United States and Iran in the last six years, and made him the first U.S. Secretary of State to have met with his Iranian counterpart since 1979 Iranian Revolution.\nIn the State Department, Kerry quickly earned a reputation \"for being aloof, keeping to himself, and not bothering to read staff memos\". Career State Department officials complained that power became too centralized under Kerry's leadership, which slowed department operations when Kerry was on frequent overseas trips. Others in State described Kerry as having \"a kind of diplomatic attention deficit disorder\" as he shifted from topic to topic instead of focusing on long-term strategy. When asked whether he was traveling too much, he responded, \"Hell no. I'm not slowing down.\" Despite Kerry's early achievements, morale at State was lower than under Hillary Clinton, according to department employees. However, after Kerry's first six months in the State Department, a Gallup poll found he had high approval ratings among Americans as Secretary of State. After a year, another poll showed Kerry's favorability continued to rise. Less than two years into Kerry's term, the Foreign Policy Magazine's 2014 Ivory Tower survey of international relations scholars asked, \"Who was the most effective U.S. Secretary of State in the past 50 years?\"; John Kerry and Lawrence Eagleburger tied for 11th place out of the 15 confirmed Secretaries of State in that period.\nIn January 2014, having met with Vatican Secretary of State Archbishop Pietro Parolin, Kerry said: \"We touched on just about every major issue that we are both working on, that are issues of concern to all of us. First of all, we talked at great length about Syria, and I was particularly appreciative for the Archbishop's raising this issue, and equally grateful for the Holy Father's comments\u00a0\u2013 the Pope's comments yesterday regarding his support for the GenevaII process. We welcome that support. It is very important to have broad support, and I know that the Pope is particularly concerned about the massive numbers of displaced human beings and the violence that has taken over 130,000 lives.\"\nKerry expressed support for Israel's right to defend itself during the 2014 Israel\u2013Gaza conflict.\nKerry said the United States supported the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen because Saudi Arabia, an ally, was threatened \"very directly\" by the takeover of neighboring Yemen by the Houthis, but noted that the United States would not reflexively support Saudi Arabia's proxy wars against Iran.\nOn December 28, 2016, soon after United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 passed 14\u20130 with the U.S. abstaining, Kerry joined the rest of the U.N. Security Council in strongly criticizing Israel's settlement policies in a speech. His speech and criticisms met negative reactions from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while UK Prime Minister Theresa May distanced the UK from Kerry's strongly worded speech in what appeared to be an attempt to build bridges with the incoming Trump administration. Kerry's speech received positive reactions from Arab nations, but some criticized his remarks as too little, too late from the outgoing administration.\nSyria.\nFollowing the August 21, 2013, chemical weapons attack on the Ghouta suburbs of Damascus attributed to Syrian government forces, Kerry became a leading advocate for the use of military force against the Syrian government for what he called \"a despot's brutal and flagrant use of chemical weapons\".\nOn September 9, in response to a reporter's question about whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could avert a military strike, Kerry said \"He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that. But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done, obviously.\" This unscripted remark initiated a process that would lead to Syria agreeing to relinquish and destroy its chemical weapons arsenal, as Russia treated Kerry's statement as a serious proposal. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia would work \"immediately\" to convince Syria relinquish and destroy its large chemical weapons arsenal. Syria quickly welcomed this proposal and on September 14, the UN formally accepted Syria's application to join the convention banning chemical weapons, and separately, the U.S. and Russia agreed on a plan to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons by the middle of 2014, leading Kerry to declare on July 20, 2014: \"we struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out\". On September 28, the UN Security Council passed a resolution ordering the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons and condemning the August 21 Ghouta attack.\nLatin America.\nIn a speech before the Organization of American States in November 2013, Kerry remarked that the era of the Monroe Doctrine was over. He went on to explain, \"The relationship that we seek and that we have worked hard to foster is not about a United States declaration about how and when it will intervene in the affairs of other American states. It's about all of our countries viewing one another as equals, sharing responsibilities, cooperating on security issues, and adhering not to doctrine, but to the decisions that we make as partners to advance the values and the interests that we share.\"\nEnvironmentalism.\nIn April 2016, he signed the Paris Climate Accords at the United Nations in New York.\nOn November 11, 2016, Kerry became the first Secretary of State and highest-ranking U.S. official to date to visit Antarctica. Kerry spent two days on the continent meeting with researchers and staying overnight at McMurdo Station.\nIn 1994, Kerry led opposition to continued funding for the Integral Fast Reactor, which resulted in the end of funding for the project. However, in light of increasing concerns regarding climate change, in 2017 Kerry reversed his position on nuclear power, saying \"Given this challenge we face today, and given the progress of fourth generation nuclear: go for it. No other alternative, zero emissions.\"\nGlobal Connect initiative.\nIn September 2015, the U.S. Department of State unveiled a new initiative called \"Global Connect\" which sought to provide internet access to more than 1.5 billion people around the world within five years. In 2016, in partnership with OPIC, Kerry announced an investment of $171million to enable \"a low-cost and rapidly scalable wireless broadband network in India\". OPIC's financing is aimed at helping its Indian Partner, Tikona Digital Networks, to provide Internet through wireless technology.\nOut of government (2017\u20132021).\nKerry retired from his diplomatic work following the end of the Obama administration on January 20, 2017. He did not attend Donald Trump's inauguration on that day, and the following day took part in the 2017 Women's March in Washington, D.C.\nKerry has taken a strong stand against Trump policies and joined in filing a brief arguing against Trump's executive order banning entry of persons from seven Muslim countries. In November 2018, in a \"Guardian Live\" conversation with Andrew Rawnsley, sponsored by \"The Guardian\" at London's Central Hall, Kerry discussed several issues which have developed further since his tenure as Secretary of State, including migration into Europe and climate change.\nOn December 5, 2019, Kerry endorsed Joe Biden's bid for the Democratic nomination for president, saying \"He'll be ready on day one to put back together the country and the world that Donald Trump has broken apart\" and asserting that \"Joe will defeat Donald Trump next November. He's the candidate with the wisdom and standing to fix what Trump has broken, to restore our place in the world, and improve the lives of working people here at home.\"\nFollowing retirement from government service, Kerry signed an agreement with Simon & Schuster for publishing his planned memoirs, dealing with his life and career in government. In September 2018, he published \"Every Day Is Extra\".\nLeaked audiotape.\nOn April 25, 2021, \"The New York Times\" published content from a leaked audiotape of a three-hour taped conversation between economist Saeed Leylaz and Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. The taped conversation was connected to an oral history project, known as \"In the Islamic Republic the military field rules\", which documents the work of Iran's current administration. The tape was obtained by the London-based news channel Iran International.\nIn the tape, which the \"Times\" referred to as \"extraordinary\", Zarif reveals that then-Secretary of State Kerry told him that Israel attacked Iranian assets in Syria, \"at least 200 times\". Although the tape has not been verified, the spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry did not deny its validity.\nNineteen Republican senators signed a letter asking President Biden to investigate Zarif's claim. On April 27, 2021, Republicans called on Kerry to resign from the Biden administration's National Security Council. In a tweet, Kerry denied Zarif's account, writing, \"I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false. This never happened \u2014 either when I was Secretary of State or since.\"\nSpecial Presidential Envoy for Climate (2021\u20132024).\nOn November 23, 2020, President-elect Joe Biden's transition team announced that Kerry would be taking a full-time position in the administration, serving as a special envoy for climate; in this role he will be a principal on the National Security Council. Kerry assumed office on January 20, 2021, following Biden's inauguration.\nClimate cooperation with China.\nIn July 2023, John Kerry visited China for advance climate cooperation. The main achievement of the visit was some progress in the fields of: \"methane reduction commitments; reducing China's reliance on coal; China's objections to trade restrictions on solar panel and battery components; and climate finance.\" This was obtained despite many currently existing obstacles to cooperation. The visit was made in the middle of the 2023 Asia heat wave that set a new record of in Sanbu, Xinjiang, China, which Kerry mentioned in particular.\nClimate cooperation with India.\nAt the end of July 2023, John Kerry visited India. Among others he declared, the US will be committed to the target of delivering 100 billion dollars for climate action to low income countries and no future US president can retreat from climate commitment. He criticized Donald Trump for leaving the Paris agreement before.\nClimate cooperation with countries in the Middle East.\nIn June 2023, Kerry made visits to Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. In Israel, he emphasized the need for climate legislation to reach climate targets and reached an agreement about the renewal of \"Memorandum of understanding between Israel and the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Israel is one of the few developed countries which have still not approved a climate law and lags behind other OECD countries in climate action. Israeli environmental protection minister Idit Silman said that Israel intended to go to COP28 \"with an ambitious and applicable climate law and put the State of Israel on the same level as the developed countries of the OECD.\"\nDeparture.\nOn January 13, 2024, at least three sources close to Kerry revealed that he would step down as U.S. climate envoy by the upcoming spring. He told the \"Financial Times\" he planned to stay active in the climate finance space. He officially resigned from his position on March 6, 2024.\nPersonal and family life.\nAncestry.\nKerry's paternal ancestors came from the Fr\u00e4nkel family, which owned a textile factory in Neustadt, Upper Silesia (now Prudnik, Poland), founded by Samuel Fr\u00e4nkel. The Fr\u00e4nkels originated from Hotzenplotz, Austria (now Osoblaha, Czech Republic) and Z\u00fclz, Prussia (now Bia\u0142a Prudnicka, Poland). Kerry's paternal great-grandmother, Mathilda Fr\u00e4nkel, was born in Oberglogau (now G\u0142og\u00f3wek, near Prudnik) and married Benedikt Kohn from Bennisch (now Horn\u00ed Bene\u0161ov). His grandparents, shoe businessman Frederick A. \"Fred\" Kerry and musician Ida L\u00f6we, immigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the U.S. Fred, his wife, and his brother converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1901, and changed their names from Kohn to Kerry. Ida was of remote ancestry of Rabbi Sinai Loew of Worms, brother of Judah Loew ben Bezalel. Fred and Ida Kerry emigrated to the United States in 1905, living at first in Chicago and eventually moving to Brookline, Massachusetts, by 1915. According to \"The New York Times\", \"[the] brother and sister of John Kerry's paternal grandmother, Otto and Jenni Lowe, died in concentration camps\". Kerry's Jewish ancestry was publicly revealed during his 2004 presidential campaign; he has stated that he was unaware of it until a reporter informed him of it in 2003.\nKerry's maternal ancestors were of Scottish and English descent, and his maternal grandparents were James Grant Forbes II of the Forbes family and Margaret Tyndal Winthrop of the Dudley\u2013Winthrop family. Margaret's paternal grandfather Robert Charles Winthrop served as the 22nd Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Robert's father was Governor Thomas Lindall Winthrop. Thomas' father John Still Winthrop was a great-great-grandson of Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop and great-grandson of Governor Thomas Dudley. Through his mother, Kerry is a first cousin once removed of French politician Brice Lalonde.\nMarriages and children.\nKerry was married to Julia Thorne in 1970, and they had two daughters together: documentary filmmaker Alexandra Kerry (born September 5, 1973) and physician Vanessa Kerry (born December 31, 1976).\nAlexandra was born days before Kerry began law school. In 1982, Julia asked Kerry for a separation while she was suffering from severe depression. They were divorced on July 25, 1988, and the marriage was formally annulled in 1997. \"After 14 years as a political wife, I associated politics only with anger, fear and loneliness\", she wrote in \"A Change of Heart\", her book about depression. Thorne later married Richard Charlesworth, an architect, and moved to Bozeman, Montana, where she became active in local environmental groups such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Thorne supported Kerry's 2004 presidential run. She died of cancer on April 27, 2006.\nKerry and his second wife\u2014Portuguese-born businesswoman and philanthropist Teresa Heinz, the widow of Kerry's late Pennsylvania Republican Senate colleague John Heinz\u2014were introduced to each other by Heinz at an Earth Day rally in 1990. Early the following year, Senator Heinz was killed in a plane crash near Lower Merion. Teresa has three sons from her marriage to Heinz, Henry John IV, Andr\u00e9, and Christopher. Heinz and Kerry were married on May 26, 1995, in Nantucket, Massachusetts.\nNet worth.\nThe \"Forbes 400\" survey estimated in 2004 that Teresa Heinz Kerry had a net worth of $750million. However, estimates have frequently varied, ranging from around $165million to as high as $3.2billion, according to a study in the \"Los Angeles Times\". Regardless of which figure is correct, Kerry was the wealthiest U.S. Senator while serving in the Senate. Independent of Heinz, Kerry is wealthy in his own right, and is the beneficiary of at least four trusts inherited from Forbes family relatives, including his mother, Rosemary Forbes Kerry, who died in 2002. \"Forbes\" magazine (named for the Forbes family of publishers, unrelated to Kerry) estimated that if elected, and if Heinz family assets were included, Kerry would have been the third-richest U.S. president in history, when adjusted for inflation. This assessment was based on Heinz's and Kerry's combined assets, but the couple signed a prenuptial agreement that keeps their assets separate. Kerry's financial disclosure form for 2011 put his personal assets in the range of $230,000,000 to $320,000,000, including the assets of his spouse and any dependent children. This included slightly more than $3,000,000 worth of H. J. Heinz Company assets, which increased in value by over $600,000 in 2013 when Berkshire Hathaway announced their intention to purchase the company.\nIn April 2017, Kerry purchased an 18-acre property on the northwest corner of Martha's Vineyard overlooking Vineyard Sound in the town of Chilmark, Massachusetts. The property is located in Seven Gates Farm and according to property records, cost $11.75million for the seven bedroom home.\nReligious beliefs.\nKerry is a Roman Catholic, and is said to have carried a religious rosary, a prayer book, and a St. Christopher medal (the patron saint of travelers) when he campaigned. Discussing his faith, Kerry said: \"I thought of being a priest. I was very religious while at school in Switzerland. I was an altar boy and prayed all the time. I was very centered around the Mass and the church.\" He also said that the Letters of Paul (Apostle Paul) moved him the most, stating that they taught him to \"not feel sorry for myself\".\nKerry told \"Christianity Today\" in October 2004:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I'm a Catholic and I practice, but at the same time I have an open-mindedness to many other expressions of spirituality that come through different religions... I've spent some time reading and thinking about religion and trying to study it, and I've arrived at not so much a sense of the differences, but a sense of the similarities in so many ways.\nHe said that he believed that the Torah, the Quran, and the Bible all share a fundamental story which connects with readers.\nHealth.\nIn 2003, Kerry was diagnosed with and successfully treated for prostate cancer. On May 31, 2015, Kerry broke his right leg in a biking accident in Scionzier, France, and was flown to Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital for recovery. MGH Hip and Knee Replacement Orthopaedic Surgeon Dr. Dennis Burke, who had met Kerry in France and had accompanied him in the plane from France to Boston, set Kerry's right leg on Tuesday, June 2, in a four-hour operation.\nAthletics and sailing.\nIn addition to the sports he played at Yale, Kerry is described by \"Sports Illustrated\", among others, as an \"avid cyclist\", primarily riding on a road bike. Prior to his presidential bid, Kerry had participated in several long-distance rides. During his many campaigns, he was reported to have visited bicycle stores in both his home state and elsewhere. His staff requested recumbent stationary bikes for his hotel rooms. He has also been a snowboarder, windsurfer, and sailor.\nThe \"Boston Herald\" reported on July 23, 2010, that Kerry commissioned construction on a new $7million yacht (a Friendship 75) in New Zealand and moored it in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where the Friendship yacht company is based. The article claimed this allowed him to avoid paying Massachusetts taxes on the property including approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $500. On July 27, Kerry stated he would voluntarily pay $500,000 in Massachusetts taxes on his yacht.\nHonors.\nJohn Kerry was awarded:\nHonorary degrees.\nJohn Kerry has received several honorary degrees in recognition of his service to the United States, These include:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "5449220": "WPLR\nMainstream rock radio station in New Haven, Connecticut\nWPLR (99.1 MHz, also known as \"99.1 PLR\" or Connecticut's No. 1 Rock Station). licensed to New Haven, Connecticut, is a mainstream rock station owned by Connoisseur Media as of May 10, 2013. The station's playlist includes rock music from the 1970s to the early 2000s.\nThe station, which first went on the air in 1948 as WNHC-FM, has a history as a pioneer in the AOR format, with which it has closely identified since its inception in the early 1970s.\nThe physical location of the station has also changed as the studios are now co-located with other Connoisseur radio stations on Wheelers Farms Road in Milford. Previously, the studios were located on Dixwell Avenue in Hamden and prior to that the offices and studios were located on Chapel Street in New Haven. The station's transmitter is on Madmare Mountain in Hamden near the WTNH transmitter site.\nWPLR-HD2.\nOn September 18, 2017, at 10:23\u00a0am. WPLR launched an alternative rock format on its HD2 subchannel, branded as \"Mod 102.3\" (simulcast on translator W272DO 102.3 FM New Haven). The first song on Mod was \"First\" by Cold War Kids.\nW272DO was sold to Red Wolf Broadcasting in January 2018. On January 15, it immediately ceased simulcasting \"Mod\" and began carrying Spanish CHR \"Bomba\" from WMRQ-HD2.\nAs of November 24, 2019, WPLR-HD2 is no longer broadcasting the \"Mod\" format and is now simulcasting WICC 600 AM Bridgeport.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "53825": "New Haven, Connecticut\nNew Haven is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is the third largest city in Connecticut after Bridgeport and Stamford, the largest city in the South Central Connecticut Planning Region, and the principal municipality of Greater New Haven, which had a total population of 864,835 in 2020.\nNew Haven was one of the first planned cities in the U.S. A year after its founding by English Puritans in 1638, eight streets were laid out in a four-by-four grid, creating the \"Nine Square Plan\". The central common block is the New Haven Green, a square at the center of Downtown New Haven. The Green is now a National Historic Landmark, and the \"Nine Square Plan\" is recognized by the American Planning Association as a National Planning Landmark.\nNew Haven is the home of Yale University, New Haven's biggest taxpayer and employer, and an integral part of the city's economy. Health care, professional and financial services and retail trade also contribute to the city's economic activity.\nThe city served as co-capital of Connecticut from 1701 until 1873, when sole governance was transferred to the more centrally located city of Hartford. New Haven has since billed itself as the \"Cultural Capital of Connecticut\" for its supply of established theaters, museums, and music venues. New Haven had the first public tree planting program in the U.S., producing a canopy of mature trees (including some large elms) that gave the city the nickname \"The Elm City\".\nHistory.\nPre-colonial foundation as an independent colony.\nBefore Europeans arrived, the New Haven area was the home of the Quinnipiac tribe of Native Americans, who lived in villages around the harbor and sustained an economy of local fisheries and the farming of maize. The area was briefly visited by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block in 1614. Dutch traders set up a small trading system of beaver pelts with the local inhabitants, but trade was sporadic and the Dutch did not settle permanently in the area.\nIn 1637, a small party of Puritans did a reconnaissance of the New Haven harbor area and wintered over. In April 1638, the main party of five hundred Puritans, who had left the Massachusetts Bay Colony under the leadership of Reverend John Davenport and London merchant Theophilus Eaton, sailed into the harbor. It was their hope to set up a theological community with the government more closely linked to the church than that in Massachusetts, and to exploit the area's potential as a port. The Quinnipiacs, who were under attack by neighboring Pequots, sold their land to the settlers in return for a pledge of protection.\nBy 1640, \"Quinnipiac's\" theocratic government and nine-square grid plan were in place, and the town was renamed New Haven, with 'haven' meaning harbor or port. However, the area to the north remained Quinnipiac until 1678, when it was renamed Hamden. The settlement became the headquarters of the New Haven Colony, distinct from the Connecticut Colony previously established to the north centering on Hartford. Reflecting its theocratic roots, the New Haven Colony forbade the establishment of other churches, whereas the Connecticut Colony permitted them.\nEconomic disaster struck New Haven in 1646, when the town sent its first fully loaded ship of local goods (the \"Great Shippe\") back to England. It never reached its destination, and its disappearance hindered New Haven's development as compared to the rising trade powers of Boston and New Amsterdam (modern day New York City).\nIn 1660, Colony founder John Davenport's wishes were fulfilled, and Hopkins School was founded in New Haven with money from the estate of Edward Hopkins.\nIn 1661, the Regicides who had signed the death warrant of Charles I of England were pursued by Charles II. Two of them, Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe, fled to New Haven for refuge. Davenport arranged for them to hide in the West Rock hills northwest of the town. A third judge, John Dixwell, later joined the others. None of the three were ever returned to England for trial; Dixwell died of old age in New Haven, the others likewise elsewhere in New England.\nAs part of the Connecticut Colony.\nIn 1664, New Haven became part of the Connecticut Colony when the two colonies were merged under political pressure from England. Seeking to establish a new theocracy elsewhere, some members of the New Haven Colony went on to establish Newark, New Jersey.\nNew Haven was made co-capital of Connecticut in 1701, a status it retained until 1873.\nIn 1716, the Collegiate School relocated from Old Saybrook to New Haven, establishing it as a center of learning. In 1718, in response to a large donation from East India Company merchant Elihu Yale, former Governor of Madras, the Collegiate School was renamed Yale College.\nFor over a century, New Haven citizens had fought in the colonial militia alongside regular British forces, including the French and Indian War. As the American Revolution approached, General David Wooster and other influential residents hoped that the conflict with the British parliament could be resolved short of rebellion. On April 23, 1775, Captain Benedict Arnold commanded the Second Company, Governor's Foot Guard, of New Haven to break into the powder house to arm themselves for a three-day march to Cambridge, Massachusetts, an event still celebrated in New Haven as Powder House Day. Other New Haven militia members were on hand to escort George Washington from his overnight stay in New Haven on his way to Cambridge. Contemporary reports, from both sides, remark on the New Haven volunteers' professional military bearing, including uniforms.\nOn July 5, 1779, 2,600 loyalists and British regulars under General William Tryon, governor of New York, landed in New Haven Harbor and raided the town of 3,500. A militia of Yale students had been preparing for battle, and former Yale president and Yale Divinity School professor Naphtali Daggett rode out to confront the Redcoats. Yale president Ezra Stiles recounted in his diary that while he moved furniture in anticipation of battle, he still couldn't quite believe the revolution had begun. New Haven was not torched as the invaders did with Danbury in 1777, or Fairfield and Norwalk a week after the New Haven raid, preserving many of the town's colonial features.\nPost-colonial period and industrialization.\nNew Haven was incorporated as a city in 1784, and Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Constitution and author of the \"Connecticut Compromise\", became the new city's first mayor.\nThe city struck fortune in the late 18th century with the inventions and industrial activity of Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate who remained in New Haven to develop the cotton gin and establish a gun-manufacturing factory in the northern part of the city near the Hamden town line. That area is still known as Whitneyville, and the main road through both towns is known as Whitney Avenue. The factory is now the Eli Whitney Museum, which has a particular emphasis on activities for children and exhibits pertaining to the A. C. Gilbert Company. His factory, along with that of Simeon North, and the lively clock-making and brass hardware sectors, contributed to making early Connecticut a powerful manufacturing economy; so many arms manufacturers sprang up that the state became known as \"The Arsenal of America\". It was in Whitney's gun-manufacturing plant that Samuel Colt invented the automatic revolver in 1836. Many other talented machinists and firearms designers would go on to found successful firearms manufacturing companies in New Haven, including Oliver Winchester and O.F. Mossberg & Sons.\nThe Farmington Canal, created in the early 19th century, was a short-lived transporter of goods into the interior regions of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and ran from New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts.\nNew Haven was to be the site of the first college for African Americans in the United States, but the plan was obstructed by efforts led by Yale Law School founder and former New Haven Mayor David Daggett, who went on to serve as a U.S. Senator and judge on Connecticut's highest court. Daggett denigrated African Americans, denied they were citizens, and presided over the trial of a woman persecuted for trying to admit an African American girl to her boarding school and, having that effort blocked, running a boarding school for African American girls.\nNew Haven was home to one of the important early events in the burgeoning anti-slavery movement when, in 1839, the trial of mutineering Mende tribesmen being transported as slaves on the Spanish slaveship \"Amistad\" was held in New Haven's United States District Court. There is a statue of Joseph Cinqu\u00e9, the informal leader of the slaves, beside City Hall. See \"Museums\" below for more information. Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech on slavery in New Haven in 1860, shortly before he secured the Republican nomination for President.\nThe American Civil War boosted the local economy with wartime purchases of industrial goods, including that of the New Haven Arms Company, which would later become the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. (Winchester would continue to produce arms in New Haven until 2006, and many of the buildings that were a part of the Winchester plant are now a part of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company Historic District). After the war, population grew and doubled by the start of the 20th century, most notably due to the influx of immigrants from southern Europe, particularly Italy. Today, roughly half the populations of East Haven, West Haven, and North Haven are Italian-American. Jewish immigration to New Haven has left an enduring mark on the city. Westville was the center of Jewish life in New Haven, though today many have fanned out to suburban communities such as Woodbridge and Cheshire. Lowell House, the city's first settlement, opened in 1900.\nPost-industrial era and urban redevelopment.\nNew Haven's expansion continued during the two World Wars, with most new inhabitants being African Americans from the American South, and Puerto Ricans. The city reached its peak population after World War II. The area of New Haven is only , encouraging further development of new housing after 1950 in adjacent, suburban towns. Moreover, as in other U.S. cities in the 1950s, New Haven began to suffer white flight of middle-class workers. One author suggested that aggressive redlining and rezoning made it difficult for residents to obtain financing for older, deteriorating urban housing stock, thereby condemning such structures to deterioration.\nIn 1954, then-mayor Richard C. Lee began some of the earliest major urban renewal projects in the United States. Certain sections of downtown New Haven were redeveloped to include museums, new office towers, a hotel, and large shopping complexes. Other parts of the city, particularly the Wooster Square and Fair Haven neighborhoods were affected by the construction of Interstate 95 along the Long Wharf section, Interstate 91, and the Oak Street Connector. The Oak Street Connector (Route 34), running between Interstate 95, downtown, and The Hill neighborhood, was originally intended as a highway to the city's western suburbs but was only completed as a highway to the downtown area, with the area to the west becoming a boulevard (See \"Redevelopment\" below).\nIn 1970, a series of criminal prosecutions against various members of the Black Panther Party took place in New Haven, inciting mass protests on the New Haven Green involving twelve thousand demonstrators and many well-known New Left political activists. (See \"Political Culture\" below for more information). From the 1960s through the early 1990s, some areas of New Haven continued to decline both economically and in terms of population despite attempts to resurrect certain neighborhoods through renewal projects. In conjunction with its declining population, New Haven experienced a steep rise in its crime rate.\nSince approximately 2000, many parts of downtown New Haven have been revitalized with new restaurants, nightlife, and small retail stores. In particular, the area surrounding the New Haven Green has experienced an influx of apartments and condominiums. In addition, two new supermarkets opened to serve downtown's growing residential population: a Stop & Shop opened just west of downtown, while Elm City Market, located one block from the Green, opened in 2011. The recent turnaround of downtown New Haven has received positive press from various periodicals.\nMajor projects include the current construction of a new campus for Gateway Community College downtown, and also a 32-story, 500-unit apartment/retail building called 360 State Street. The 360 State Street project is now occupied and is the largest residential building in Connecticut. A new boathouse and dock is planned for New Haven Harbor, and the linear park Farmington Canal Trail is set to extend into downtown New Haven within the coming year. Additionally, foundation and ramp work to widen I-95 to create a new harbor crossing for New Haven, with an extradosed bridge to replace the 1950s-era Q Bridge, has begun. The city still hopes to redevelop the site of the New Haven Coliseum, which was demolished in 2007.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 18 white firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no black firefighters scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. In the subsequent \"Ricci v. DeStefano\" decision the court found 5\u20134 that New Haven's decision to ignore the test results violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a result, a district court subsequently ordered the city to promote 14 of the white firefighters.\nIn 2010 and 2011, state and federal funds were awarded to Connecticut (and Massachusetts) to construct the Hartford Line, with a southern terminus at New Haven's Union Station and a northern terminus at Springfield's Union Station. According to the White House, \"This corridor [currently] has one train per day connecting communities in Connecticut and Massachusetts to the Northeast Corridor and Vermont. The vision for this corridor is to restore the alignment to its original route via the Knowledge Corridor in western Massachusetts, improving trip time and increasing the population base that can be served.\" Set for construction in 2013, the \"Knowledge Corridor high speed intercity passenger rail\" project will cost approximately $1\u00a0billion, and the ultimate northern terminus for the project is reported to be Montreal in Canada. Train speeds between will reportedly exceed and increase both cities' rail traffic exponentially.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 6.67%, is water.\nNew Haven's best-known geographic features are its large, shallow harbor, and two reddish basalt trap rock ridges which rise to the northeast and northwest of the city core. These trap rocks are known respectively as East Rock and West Rock, and both serve as extensive parks. West Rock has been tunneled through to make way for the east\u2013west passage of the Wilbur Cross Parkway (the only highway tunnel through a natural obstacle in Connecticut), and once served as the hideout of the \"Regicides\" (see: Regicides Trail). Most New Haveners refer to these men as \"The Three Judges\". East Rock features the prominent Soldiers and Sailors war monument on its peak as well as the \"Great/Giant Steps\" which run up the rock's cliffside.\nThe city is drained by three rivers; the West, Mill, and Quinnipiac, named in order from west to east. The West River discharges into West Haven Harbor, while the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers discharge into New Haven Harbor. Both harbors are embayments of Long Island Sound. In addition, several smaller streams flow through the city's neighborhoods, including Wintergreen Brook, the Beaver Ponds Outlet, Wilmot Brook, Belden Brook, and Prospect Creek. Not all of these small streams have continuous flow year-round.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen classification, New Haven experiences a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\"), bordering a hot-summer humid continental climate (\"Dfa\"). The city has hot, humid summers and cool to cold winters. From May to late September, the weather is typically hot and humid, with average temperatures exceeding on 70 days per year. In summer, the Bermuda High creates as southern flow of warm and humid air, with frequent (but brief) thundershowers. October to early December is normally mild to cool late in the season, while early spring (April) can be cool to warm. Winters are more variable, with cool to cold temperatures, mixed with warmer spells, with both rain and snow fall.\nWhile the weather patterns that affect New Haven result from a primarily offshore direction, thus reducing the marine influence of Long Island Sound, the location on Long Island Sound often influences the weather along the coastline compared to inland. During summer heat waves, temperatures may reach or higher on occasion with heat-index values of over . Tropical cyclones have struck New Haven in the past, including 1938 Hurricane (Long Island Express), Hurricane Carol in 1954, Hurricane Gloria in 1985. The hardiness zone is 7a.\nStreetscape.\nNew Haven has a long tradition of urban planning and a purposeful design for the city's layout. The city could be argued to have some of the first preconceived layouts in the country. Upon founding, New Haven was laid out in a grid plan of nine square blocks; the central square was left open, in the tradition of many New England towns, as the city green (a commons area). The city also instituted the first public tree planting program in America. As in other cities, many of the elms that gave New Haven the nickname \"Elm City\" perished in the mid-20th century due to Dutch elm disease, although many have since been replanted. The New Haven Green is currently home to three separate historic churches which speak to the original theocratic nature of the city. The Green remains the social center of the city today. It was named a National Historic Landmark in 1970.\nDowntown New Haven, occupied by nearly 7,000 residents, has a more residential character than most downtowns. The downtown area provides about half of the city's jobs and half of its tax base and in recent years has become filled with dozens of new upscale restaurants, in addition to shops and thousands of apartments and condominium units which subsequently help overall growth of the city.\nNeighborhoods.\nThe city has many distinct neighborhoods. In addition to Downtown, centered on the central business district and the Green, are the following neighborhoods: the west central neighborhoods of Dixwell and Dwight; the southern neighborhoods of The Hill, historic water-front City Point (or Oyster Point), and the harborside district of Long Wharf; the western neighborhoods of Beaver Hills, Edgewood, West River, Westville, Amity, and West Rock-Westhills; East Rock, Cedar Hill, Prospect Hill, and Newhallville in the northern side of town; the east central neighborhoods of Mill River and Wooster Square, an Italian-American neighborhood; Fair Haven, an immigrant community located between the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers; Quinnipiac Meadows and Fair Haven Heights across the Quinnipiac River; and facing the eastern side of the harbor, The Annex and East Shore (or Morris Cove).\nDemographics.\nCensus data.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nThe U.S. Census Bureau reports a 2010 population of 129,779, with 47,094 households and 25,854 families within the city of New Haven. The population density was . There were 52,941 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 42.6% White, 35.4% African American, 0.5% Native American, 4.6% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 12.9% from other races, and 3.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 27.4% of the population. Non-Hispanic Whites were 31.8% of the population in 2010, down from 69.6% in 1970. The city's Latino population is growing rapidly. Previous influxes among ethnic groups have been African-Americans in the postwar era, and Irish, Italian and (to a lesser degree) Slavic peoples in the prewar period.\nAs of the 2010 census, of the 47,094 households, 29.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 27.5% include married couples living together, 22.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 36.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.5% had someone living alone who was 65\u00a0years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40 and the average family size 3.19.\nThe ages of New Haven's residents were 25.4% under the age of 18, 16.4% from 18 to 24, 31.2% from 25 to 44, 16.7% from 45 to 64, and 10.2% who were 65\u00a0years of age or older. The median age was 29\u00a0years, which was significantly lower than the national average. There were 91.8 males per 100 females. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.6 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $29,604, and the median income for a family was $35,950. Median income for males was $33,605, compared with $28,424 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,393. About 20.5% of families and 24.4% of the population were living below the poverty line, including 32.2% of those under age 18 and 17.9% of those age 65 or over.\nOther data.\nIt is estimated that 14% of New Haven residents are pedestrian commuters, ranking it number four by highest percentage in the United States. This is primarily due to New Haven's small area and the presence of Yale University.\nNew Haven is noted for having the highest percentage of Italian American residents of any US city, and is noted for its local style of pizza.\nA study of the demographics of the New Haven metro area, based on age, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity, found that they were the closest of any American city to the national average.\nEconomy.\nNew Haven's economy originally was based in manufacturing, but the postwar period brought rapid industrial decline; the entire Northeast was affected, and medium-sized cities with large working-class populations, like New Haven, were hit particularly hard. Simultaneously, the growth and expansion of Yale University further affected the economic shift. Today, over half (56%) of the city's economy is now made up of services, in particular education and health care; Yale is the city's largest employer, followed by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital. Other large employers include Southern Connecticut State University, Assa Abloy lock manufacturing, the Knights of Columbus headquarters, Higher One, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Covidien and United Illuminating. Clothing stores Gant and Ann Taylor were founded in the city.\nIn 2017, New Haven was ranked by a Verizon study as one of the top 10 cities in America for launching tech startups, and top two in New England.\nIndustry sectors: Agriculture (.6%), Construction and Mining (4.9%), Manufacturing (2.9%), Transportation and Utilities (2.9%), Trade (21.7%), Finance and Real Estate (7.1%), Services (55.9%), Government (4.0%)\nHeadquarters.\nThe Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization and a Fortune 1000 company, is headquartered in New Haven. Amphenol, based in Greater New Haven (Wallingford), is a Fortune 100 company. Eight Courant 100 companies are based in Greater New Haven, with four headquartered in New Haven proper. New Haven-based companies traded on stock exchanges include NewAlliance Bank, the second largest bank in Connecticut and fourth-largest in New England (NYSE: NAL), Higher One Holdings (NYSE: ONE), a financial services firm, United Illuminating, the electricity distributor for southern Connecticut (NYSE: UIL), and Transpro Inc. (AMEX: TPR). The American division of Assa Abloy (one of the world's leading manufacturers of locks) is located in the city. The Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET) began operations in the city as the District Telephone Company of New Haven in 1878; the company remains headquartered in New Haven as a subsidiary of Frontier Communications and provides telephone service for all but two municipalities in Connecticut. SeeClickFix was founded and has been headquartered in the city since 2007. Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company (a candy-making division of the Hershey Company) was formerly located in the city. Achillion Pharmaceuticals and Alexion Pharmaceuticals were also formerly headquartered in New Haven.\nLaw and government.\nPolitical structure.\nNew Haven is governed via the mayor-council system. Connecticut municipalities (like those of neighboring states Massachusetts and Rhode Island) provide nearly all local services (such as fire and rescue, education, snow removal, etc.), as county government has been abolished since 1960.\nNew Haven County merely refers to a grouping of towns and a judicial district, not a governmental entity. New Haven is a member of the South Central Connecticut Regional Council of Governments (SCRCOG), a regional agency created to facilitate coordination between area municipal governments and state and federal agencies, in the absence of county government.\nJustin Elicker is the mayor of New Haven. He was sworn in as the 51st mayor of New Haven on January 1, 2020.\nThe city council, called the Board of Alders, consists of thirty members, each elected from single-member wards. Each of the 30 wards consists of slightly over 4,300 residents; redistricting takes place every ten years.\nThe city is overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2017, of the town's 83,694 voters, 66% were registered as Democrats (\u22124% since 2015), 4% were registered as Republicans (+1%), and 29% were unaffiliated (+3). The board of alders is dominated by Democrats; a Republican has not served as a New Haven alder since 2011.\nNew Haven is served by the New Haven Police Department, which had 443 sworn officers in 2011. The city is also served by the New Haven Fire Department.\nNew Haven lies within Connecticut's 3rd congressional district and has been represented by Rosa DeLauro since 1991. Martin Looney and Gary Holder-Winfield represent New Haven in the Connecticut State Senate, and the city lies within six districts (numbers 92 through 97) of the Connecticut House of Representatives.\nThe Greater New Haven area is served by the New Haven Judicial District Court and the New Haven Superior Court, both headquartered at the New Haven County Courthouse. The federal District Court for the District of Connecticut has a New Haven facility, the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse.\nPolitical history.\nNew Haven is the birthplace of former president George W. Bush, who was born when his father, former president George H. W. Bush, was living in New Haven while a student at Yale. In addition to being the site of the college educations of both Presidents Bush, as Yale students, New Haven was also the temporary home of former presidents William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, and Bill Clinton, as well as Secretary of State John Kerry. President Clinton met his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while the two were students at Yale Law School. Former vice presidents John C. Calhoun and Dick Cheney also studied in New Haven (although the latter did not graduate from Yale). Before the 2008 election, the last time there was not a person with ties to New Haven and Yale on either major party's ticket was 1968. James Hillhouse, a New Haven native, served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate in 1801.\nNew Haven voters overwhelmingly supported Al Gore in the 2000 election, Yale graduate John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. In the 2008 election, New Haven County was third among all Connecticut counties in campaign contributions, after Fairfield and Hartford counties. (Connecticut, in turn, was ranked 14th among all states in total campaign contributions.)\nNew Haven was the subject of \" Who Governs? Democracy and Power in An American City\", a very influential book in political science by preeminent Yale professor Robert A. Dahl, which includes an extensive history of the city and thorough description of its politics in the 1950s. New Haven's theocratic history is also mentioned several times by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic volume on 19th-century American political life, \"Democracy in America\". New Haven was the residence of conservative thinker William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1951, when he wrote his influential \"God and Man at Yale\". William Lee Miller's \"The Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society\" (1966) similarly explores the relationship between local politics in New Haven and national political movements, focusing on Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and urban renewal.\nGeorge Williamson Crawford, a Yale Law School graduate, served as the city's first black corporation counsel from 1954 to 1962, under Mayor Richard C. Lee.\nIn 1970, the New Haven Black Panther trials took place, the largest and longest trials in Connecticut history. Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale and ten other party members were tried for murdering an alleged informant. Beginning on May Day, the city became a center of protest for 12,000 Panther supporters, college students, and New Left activists (including Jean Genet, Benjamin Spock, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and John Froines), who amassed on the New Haven Green, across the street from where the trials were being held. Violent confrontations between the demonstrators and the New Haven Police occurred, and several bombs were set off in the area by radicals. The event became a rallying point for the New Left and critics of the Nixon Administration.\nDuring the summer of 2007, New Haven was the center of protests by anti-immigration groups who opposed the city's program of offering municipal ID cards, known as the Elm City Resident Card, to illegal immigrants. In 2008, the country of Ecuador opened a consulate in New Haven to serve the large Ecuadorean immigrant population in the area. It is the first foreign mission to open in New Haven since Italy opened a consulate (now closed) in the city in 1910.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 20 white and Hispanic firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no blacks scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. On June 29, 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the firefighters, agreeing that they were improperly denied promotion because of their race. The case, \"Ricci v. DeStefano\", became highly publicized and brought national attention to New Haven politics due to the involvement of then-Supreme Court nominee (and Yale Law School graduate) Sonia Sotomayor in a lower court decision.\nGarry Trudeau, creator of the political \"Doonesbury\" comic strip, attended Yale University. There he met fellow student and later Green Party candidate for Congress Charles Pillsbury, a long-time New Haven resident for whom Trudeau's comic strip is named. During his college years, Pillsbury was known by the nickname \"The Doones\". A theory of international law, which argues for a sociological normative approach in regards to jurisprudence, is named the New Haven Approach, after the city. Connecticut US senator Richard Blumenthal is a Yale graduate, as is former Connecticut US Senator Joe Lieberman who also was a New Haven resident for many years, before moving back to his hometown of Stamford.\nCrime.\nCrime increased in the 1990s, with New Haven having one of the ten highest violent crime rates per capita in the United States. In the late 1990s New Haven's crime began to stabilize. The city, adopting a policy of community policing, saw crime rates drop during the 2000s.\nViolent crime levels vary dramatically among New Haven's neighborhoods, with some areas having crime rates in line with the state of Connecticut average, and others having extremely high rates of crime. A 2011 New Haven Health Department report identifies these issues in greater detail.\nIn 2010, New Haven ranked as the 18th most dangerous city in the United States (albeit below the safety benchmark of 200.00 for the second consecutive year). However, according to a completely different analysis conducted by the \"24/7 Wall Street Blog\", in 2011 New Haven had risen to become the fourth most dangerous city in the United States, and was widely cited in the press as such.\nHowever, an analysis by the Regional Data Cooperative for Greater New Haven, Inc., has shown that due to issues of comparative denominators and other factors, such municipality-based rankings can be considered inaccurate. For example, two cities of identical population can cover widely differing land areas, making such analyses irrelevant. The research organization called for comparisons based on neighborhoods, blocks, or standard methodologies (similar to those used by Brookings, DiversityData, and other established institutions), not based on municipalities.\nEducation.\nColleges and universities.\nNew Haven is a notable center for higher education. Yale University, at the heart of downtown, is one of the city's best known features and its largest employer. New Haven is also home to Southern Connecticut State University, part of the Connecticut State University System, and Albertus Magnus College, a private institution. Gateway Community College has a campus in downtown New Haven, formerly located in the Long Wharf district; Gateway consolidated into one campus downtown into a new state-of-the-art campus (on the site of the old Macy's building) and was open for the Fall 2012 semester.\nThere are several institutions immediately outside of New Haven, as well. Quinnipiac University and the Paier College of Art are located just to the north, in the town of Hamden. The University of New Haven is located not in New Haven but in neighboring West Haven.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nNew Haven Public Schools is the school district serving the city. Wilbur Cross High School and Hillhouse High School are New Haven's two largest public secondary schools.\nHopkins School, a private school, was founded in 1660 and is the fifth-oldest educational institution in the United States. New Haven is home to a number of other private schools as well as public magnet schools, including Metropolitan Business Academy, High School in the Community, Hill Regional Career High School, Co-op High School, New Haven Academy, Edgewood Magnet School, ACES Educational Center for the Arts, the Foote School and the Sound School, all of which draw students from New Haven and suburban towns. New Haven is also home to two Achievement First charter schools, Amistad Academy and Elm City College Prep, and to Common Ground, an environmental charter school.\nThe city is renowned for its progressive school lunch programs, and participation in statewide bussing efforts toward increased diversity in schools.\nCulture.\nCuisine.\nLivability.com named New Haven as the Best Foodie City in the country in 2014. There are dozens of Zagat-rated restaurants in New Haven, the most in Connecticut and the third most in New England (after Boston and Cambridge). More than 120 restaurants are located within two blocks of the New Haven Green. The city is home to an eclectic mix of ethnic restaurants and small markets specializing in various foreign foods. Represented cuisines include Malaysian, Ethiopian, Spanish, Belgian, French, Greek, Latin American, Mexican, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Cuban, Peruvian, Syrian/Lebanese, and Turkish.\nNew Haven's greatest culinary claim to fame may be its pizza, which has been claimed to be among the best in the country, or even in the world. New Haven-style pizza, called \"apizza\", made its debut at the iconic Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana (known as Pepe's) in 1925. Apizza is baked in coal- or wood-fired brick ovens, and is notable for its thin crust. Apizza may be red (with a tomato-based sauce) or white (with a sauce of garlic and olive oil), and pies ordered \"plain\" are made without the otherwise customary mozzarella (originally smoked mozzarella, known as \"scamorza\" in Italian). A white clam pie is a well-known specialty of the restaurants on Wooster Street in the Little Italy section of New Haven, including Pepe's and Sally's Apizza (which opened in 1938). Modern Apizza on State Street, which opened in 1934, is also well-known.\nA second New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Louis' Lunch, which is located in a small brick building on Crown Street and has been serving fast food since 1895. Though fiercely debated, the restaurant's founder Louis Lassen is credited by the Library of Congress with inventing the hamburger and steak sandwich. Louis' Lunch broils hamburgers, steak sandwiches and hot dogs vertically in original antique 1898 cast iron stoves using gridirons, patented by local resident Luigi Pieragostini in 1939, that hold the meat in place while it cooks.\nA third New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Miya's, the first sustainable sushi restaurant in the world. Miya's, founded by Chef Yoshiko Lai in 1982, featured the first sustainable seafood-based sushi menu, the first plant-based sushi menu, and the first invasive species menu in the world. Second generation Miya's chef, Bun Lai, is the 2016 White House Champions of Change for Sustainable Seafood and a James Beard Foundation Award nominee. Chef Bun Lai is credited as the first chef in the world for implementing a sustainability paradigm to the cuisine of sushi.\nDuring weekday lunchtime, over 150 lunch carts and food trucks cater to diners around the city. The carts and food trucks cluster at four main points: on Long Wharf Drive, along the city's shoreline with quick access off Interstate 95, by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital in the center of the Hospital Green (Cedar and York streets), by Yale's Trumbull College (Elm and York streets), and on the intersection of Prospect and Sachem streets by the Yale School of Management.\nPopular farmers' markets, managed by the local non-profit CitySeed, set up shop weekly in several neighborhoods, including Westville/Edgewood Park, Fair Haven, Upper State Street, Wooster Square, and Downtown/New Haven Green.\nA large grocery store, the Elm City Market, opened on 360 State Street in New Haven in early fall 2011 and served local produce and groceries to the community. Originally, the market was a member-owned co-op, but debt defaults in August 2014 forced a sale of the business. It is now an employee-owned business; the co-op's previous owners received no equity in the new business.\nIn the past several years, two separate Downtown food tour companies have started offering popular restaurant tours on weekends.\nTaste of New Haven Tours offers several different weekly restaurant/bar tours and a popular pizza, bike, and pints tour. Culinary Walking Tours offers monthly restaurant tours and sponsors an annual Elm City Iron Chef competition.\nTheatre and film.\nThe city hosts numerous theatres and production houses, including the Yale Repertory Theatre, the Long Wharf Theatre, and the Shubert Theatre. There is also theatre activity from the Yale School of Drama, which works through the Yale University Theatre and the student-run Yale Cabaret. Southern Connecticut State University hosts the Lyman Center for the Performing Arts. The shuttered Palace Theatre (opposite the Shubert Theatre) was renovated and reopened as the College Street Music Hall in May 2015. Smaller theatres include the Little Theater on Lincoln Street. Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School also has a theatre on College Street. The theatre is used for student productions, and is the home to weekly services to a local non-denominational church, the City Church New Haven.\nThe Shubert Theatre once premiered many major theatrical productions before their Broadway debuts. Productions that premiered at the Shubert include \"Oklahoma!\" (which was also written in New Haven), \"Carousel\", \"South Pacific\", \"My Fair Lady\", \"The King and I\", and \"The Sound of Music\", and the Tennessee Williams play \"A Streetcar Named Desire\".\nBow Tie Cinemas owns and operates the Criterion Cinemas, the first new movie theater to open in New Haven in over 30 years and the first luxury movie complex in the city's history. The Criterion has seven screens and opened in November 2004, showing a mix of upscale first run commercial and independent film.\nMuseums.\nNew Haven has a variety of museums, many of them associated with Yale. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library features an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible. There is also the Connecticut Children's Museum; the Knights of Columbus museum near that organization's world headquarters; the Peabody Museum of Natural History; the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments; the Eli Whitney Museum (across the town line in Hamden, Connecticut, on Whitney Avenue); the Yale Center for British Art, which houses the largest collection of British art outside the U.K., and the Yale University Art Gallery, the western hemisphere's oldest college art museum. New Haven is also home to the New Haven Museum and Historical Society on Whitney Avenue, which has a library of many primary source treasures dating from Colonial times to the present.\nArtspace on Orange Street is one of several contemporary art galleries around the city, showcasing the work of local, national, and international artists. Others include City Gallery and A. Leaf Gallery in the downtown area. Westville galleries include Kehler Liddell, Jennifer Jane Gallery, and The Hungry Eye. The Erector Square complex in the Fair Haven neighborhood houses, the Parachute Factory gallery along with numerous artist studios, and the complex serves as an active destination during City-Wide Open Studios held yearly in October.\nNew Haven is the home port of a life-size replica of the historical \"Freedom Schooner Amistad\", which is open for tours at Long Wharf pier at certain times during the summer. Also at Long Wharf pier is the \"Quinnipiack\" schooner, offering sailing cruises of the harbor area throughout the summer. The \"Quinnipiack\" also functions as a floating classroom for hundreds of local students.\nMusic.\nThe New Haven Green is the site of many free music concerts, especially during the summer months. These have included the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the July Free Concerts on the Green, and the New Haven Jazz Festival in August. The Jazz Festival, which began in 1982, is one of the longest-running free outdoor festivals in the U.S., until it was canceled for 2007. Headliners such as Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles and Celia Cruz have historically drawn 30,000 to 50,000 fans, filling up the New Haven Green to capacity. The New Haven Jazz Festival was revived in 2008 and has been sponsored since by Jazz Haven.\nNew Haven is home to the concert venue Toad's Place, and a new venue, College Street Music Hall. The city has retained an alternative art and music underground that has helped to influence post-punk era music movements such as indie, college rock and underground hip-hop.\nThe Yale School of Music contributes to the city's music scene by offering hundreds of free concerts throughout the year at venues in and around the Yale campus. Large performances are held in the 2,700-seat Woolsey Hall auditorium, which contains the world's largest symphonic organs, while chamber music and recitals are performed in Sprague Hall.\nHardcore band Hatebreed are from Wallingford, but got their start in New Haven under the name Jasta 14. The band Miracle Legion formed in New Haven in 1983. Folk musicians from New Haven include Loren Mazzacane Connors and Kath Bloom.\nThe Hillhouse Opera Company is a U.S. non-profit opera company based in New Haven that performs in the New Haven area. Founded in 2008 by Victoria Leigh Gardner, Nicole Rodriguez and Jim Coatsworth Hillhouse Opera Company has performed operas as well as opera scenes programs, master classes and concert series. In 2011, the Company professionally staged the works created through the Riverview Opera Project. The Riverview Opera Project created workshops for children and adolescents at Riverview Hospital, Connecticut's only state-funded psychiatric hospital for youth, and helped them to successfully create, produce, and perform four original operas.\nFestivals.\nIn addition to the Jazz Festival (described above), New Haven serves as the home city of the annual International Festival of Arts and Ideas. New Haven's Saint Patrick's Day parade, which began in 1842, is New England's oldest and draws the largest crowds of any one-day spectator event in Connecticut. The St. Andrew the Apostle Italian Festival has taken place in the historic Wooster Square neighborhood every year since 1900. Other parishes in the city celebrate the Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua and a carnival in honor of St. Bernadette Soubirous. New Haven celebrates Powder House Day every April on the New Haven Green to commemorate the city's entrance into the Revolutionary War. The annual Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival commemorates the 1973 planting of 72 Yoshino Japanese cherry blossom trees by the New Haven Historic Commission in collaboration with the New Haven Parks Department and residents of the neighborhood. The Festival now draws well over 5,000 visitors. The Film Fest New Haven has been held annually since 1995.\nNightlife.\nIn the past decade downtown has seen an influx of new restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Large crowds are drawn to the Crown Street area downtown on weekends where many of the restaurants and bars are located. Crown Street between State and High Streets has dozens of establishments, as do nearby Temple and College Streets. Away from downtown, Upper State Street has a number of restaurants and bars popular with local residents and weekend visitors.\nNewspapers and media.\nNew Haven is served by the daily \"New Haven Register\", the weekly \"alternative\" \"New Haven Advocate\" (which is run by Tribune, the corporation owning the \"Hartford Courant\"), the online daily \"New Haven Independent\", and the monthly \"Grand News Community Newspaper.\" Downtown New Haven is covered by an in-depth civic news forum, Design New Haven. The \"Register\" also backs \"PLAY\" magazine, a weekly entertainment publication. The city is also served by several student-run papers, including the \"Yale Daily News\", the weekly \"Yale Herald\" and a humor tabloid, \"Rumpus Magazine\".\nWTNH Channel 8, the ABC affiliate for Connecticut, WCTX Channel 59, the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the state, Connecticut Public Television station WEDY channel 65, a PBS affiliate, and WTXX Channel 34, the IntrigueTV affiliate, broadcast from New Haven. All New York City news and sports team stations broadcast to New Haven County.\nSports and athletics.\nNew Haven has a history of professional sports franchises dating back to the 19th century and has been the home to professional baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer teams\u2014including the New York Giants of the National Football League from 1973 to 1974, who played at the Yale Bowl. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, New Haven consistently had minor league hockey and baseball teams, which played at the New Haven Arena (built in 1926, demolished in 1972), New Haven Coliseum (1972\u20132002), and Yale Field (1928\u2013present).\nWhen John DeStefano, Jr., became mayor of New Haven in 1995, he outlined a plan to transform the city into a major cultural and arts center in the Northeast, which involved investments in programs and projects other than sports franchises. As nearby Bridgeport built new sports facilities, the brutalist New Haven Coliseum rapidly deteriorated. Believing the upkeep on the venue to be a drain of tax dollars, the DeStefano administration closed the Coliseum in 2002; it was demolished in 2007. New Haven's last professional sports team, the New Haven County Cutters, left in 2009. The DeStefano administration did, however, see the construction of the New Haven Athletic Center in 1998, a indoor athletic facility with a seating capacity of over 3,000. The NHAC, built adjacent to Hillhouse High School, is used for New Haven public schools athletics, as well as large-scale area and state sporting events; it is the largest high school indoor sports complex in the state.\nNew Haven was the host of the 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games; then-President Bill Clinton spoke at the opening ceremonies. The city is home to the Pilot Pen International tennis event, which takes place every August at the Connecticut Tennis Center, one of the largest tennis venues in the world. New Haven biannually hosts \"The Game\" between Yale and Harvard, the country's second-oldest college football rivalry. Numerous road races take place in New Haven, including the USATF 20K Championship during the New Haven Road Race.\nGreater New Haven is home to a number of college sports teams. The Yale Bulldogs play Division I college sports, as do the Quinnipiac Bobcats in neighboring Hamden. Division II athletics are played by Southern Connecticut State University and the University of New Haven (actually located in neighboring West Haven), while Albertus Magnus College athletes perform at the Division III level.\nNew Haven is home to many New York Yankees, New York Mets, & Boston Red Sox fans due to the proximity of New York City & Boston.\nWalter Camp, deemed the \"father of American football\", was a New Havener.\nThe New Haven Warriors rugby league team play in the AMNRL. They have a large number of Pacific Islanders playing for them. Their field is located at the West Haven High School's Ken Strong Stadium. They won the 2008 AMNRL Grand Final.\nStructures.\nArchitecture.\nNew Haven has many architectural landmarks dating from every important time period and architectural style in American history. The city has been home to a number of architects and architectural firms that have left their mark on the city including Ithiel Town and Henry Austin in the 19th century and Cesar Pelli, Warren Platner, Kevin Roche, Herbert Newman and Barry Svigals in the 20th. The Yale School of Architecture has fostered this important component of the city's economy. Cass Gilbert, of the Beaux-Arts school, designed New Haven's Union Station and the New Haven Free Public Library and was also commissioned for a City Beautiful plan in 1919. Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, Alexander Jackson Davis, Philip C. Johnson, Gordon Bunshaft, Louis Kahn, James Gamble Rogers, Frank Gehry, Charles Willard Moore, Stefan Behnisch, James Polshek, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen and Robert Venturi all have designed buildings in New Haven. Yale's 1950s-era Ingalls Rink, designed by Eero Saarinen, was included on the \"America's Favorite Architecture\" list created in 2007.\nSeveral residential homes in New Haven were designed by Alice Washburn, a noted female architect whose Colonial Revival style set a standard for homes in the region.\nMany of the city's neighborhoods are well-preserved as walkable \"museums\" of 19th- and 20th-century American architecture, particularly by the New Haven Green, Hillhouse Avenue and other residential sections close to Downtown New Haven. Overall, a large proportion of the city's land area is National (NRHP) historic districts. One of the best sources on local architecture is \"New Haven: Architecture and Urban Design\", by Elizabeth Mills Brown.\nThe five tallest buildings in New Haven are:\nHistoric points of interest.\nMany historical sites exist throughout the city, including 59 properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Of these, nine are among the 60 U.S. National Historic Landmarks in Connecticut. The New Haven Green, one of the National Historic Landmarks, was formed in 1638, and is home to three 19th-century churches. Below the First Church of Christ in New Haven (referred to as the Center Church on the Green) lies a 17th-century crypt, which is open to visitors. Some of the more famous burials include the first wife of Benedict Arnold and the aunt and grandmother of President Rutherford B. Hayes; Hayes visited the crypt while President in 1880. The Old Campus of Yale University is located next to the Green, and includes Connecticut Hall, Yale's oldest building and a National Historic Landmark. The Hillhouse Avenue area, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a part of Yale's campus, has been called a walkable museum, due to its 19th-century mansions and street scape; Charles Dickens is said to have called Hillhouse Avenue \"the most beautiful street in America\" when visiting the city in 1868.\nIn 1660, Edward Whalley (a cousin and friend of Oliver Cromwell) and William Goffe, two English Civil War generals who signed the death warrant of King Charles I, hid in a rock formation in New Haven after having fled England upon the restoration of Charles II to the English throne. They were later joined by a third regicide, John Dixwell. The rock formation, which is now a part of West Rock Park, is known as Judges' Cave, and the path leading to the cave is called the Regicides Trail.\nAfter the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, the Connecticut colonial government ordered the construction of Black Rock Fort (to be built on top of an older 17th-century fort) to protect the port of New Haven. In 1779, during the Battle of New Haven, British soldiers captured Black Rock Fort and burned the barracks to the ground. The fort was reconstructed in 1807 by the federal government (on orders from the Thomas Jefferson administration), and rechristened Fort Nathan Hale, after the Revolutionary War hero who had lived in New Haven. The cannons of Fort Nathan Hale were successful in defying British war ships during the War of 1812. In 1863, during the Civil War, a second Fort Hale was built next to the original, complete with bomb-resistant bunkers and a moat, to defend the city should a Southern raid against New Haven be launched. The United States Congress deeded the site to the state in 1921, and all three versions of the fort have been restored. The site is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and receives thousands of visitors each year.\nGrove Street Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark which lies adjacent to Yale's campus, contains the graves of Roger Sherman, Eli Whitney, Noah Webster, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Charles Goodyear and Walter Camp, among other notable burials. The cemetery is noted for its Egyptian Revival gateway, and is the oldest planned burial ground in the United States. The Union League Club of New Haven building, located on Chapel Street, is notable for not only being a historic Beaux-Arts building, but also is built on the site where Roger Sherman's home once stood; George Washington is known to have stayed at the Sherman residence while President in 1789 (one of three times Washington visited New Haven throughout his lifetime).\nTwo sites pay homage to the time President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft lived in the city, as both a student and later Professor at Yale: a plaque on Prospect Street marks the site where Taft's home formerly stood, and downtown's Taft Apartment Building (formerly the Taft Hotel) bears the name of the former president who resided in the building for eight years before becoming Chief Justice of the United States.\nLighthouse Point Park, a public beach run by the city, was a popular tourist destination during the Roaring Twenties, attracting luminaries of the period such as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. The park remains popular among New Haveners, and is home to the Five Mile Point Lighthouse, constructed in 1847, and the Lighthouse Point Carousel, constructed in 1916. Five Mile Point Light was decommissioned in 1877 following the construction of Southwest Ledge Light at the entrance of the harbor, which remains in service to this day. Both of the lighthouses and the carousel are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nOther historic sites in the city include the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, which stands at the summit of East Rock, the Marsh Botanical Garden, Wooster Square, Dwight Street, Louis' Lunch, and the Farmington Canal, all of which date back to the 19th century. Other historic parks besides the Green include Edgerton Park, Edgewood Park, and East Rock Park, each of which is included on the National Register of Historic Places.\nTransportation.\nRail.\nNew Haven has two railroad stations, connected to New York City and points along the Northeast Corridor by commuter rail, regional rail and inter-city rail. Service is provided by:\nThe city's main railroad station is the historic Beaux-Arts Union Station, which serves Metro-North, Hartford Line, and Shore Line East commuter trains. Approximately 175 trains serve Union Station on weekdays. Union Station is also served by four Amtrak lines: the \"Northeast Regional\" and the high-speed \"Acela Express\" provide service to New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston, and rank as the first and second busiest routes in the country; the New Haven\u2013Springfield Line provides service to Hartford and Springfield, Massachusetts; and the \"Vermonter\" provides service to both Washington, D.C., and Vermont, from the Canada\u2013US border.\nAn additional station, State Street Station, was opened in 2002, providing passengers easier access to downtown New Haven. State Street Station is currently serviced by Shore Line East and Hartford Line trains, plus some peak-hour Metro-North trips.\nBus.\nThe New Haven Division of Connecticut Transit (CT Transit), the state's bus system, is the second largest division in the state with 24 routes. All routes originate from the New Haven Green, making it the central transfer hub of the city. Service is provided to 19 different municipalities throughout Greater New Haven. Bus routes were formerly identified by letters, but as of October 8, 2017, all service was renamed using 200-series numbers, in accordance with a renumbering of CTtransit's statewide services.\nCT Transit's Union Station Shuttle provides free service from Union Station to the New Haven Green and several New Haven parking garages. Peter Pan and Greyhound bus lines have scheduled stops at Union Station, and connections downtown can be made via the Union Station Shuttle. A private company operates the New Haven/Hartford Express which provides commuter bus service to Hartford. The Yale University Shuttle provides free transportation around New Haven for Yale students, faculty, and staff.\nThe New Haven Division buses follow routes that had originally been covered by trolley service. Horse-drawn streetcars began operating in New Haven in the 1860s, and by the mid-1890s all the lines had become electric. In the 1920s and 1930s, some of the trolley lines began to be replaced by bus lines, with the last trolley route converted to bus in 1948. The City of New Haven is in the very early stages of considering the restoration of streetcar (light-rail) service, which has been absent since the postwar period.\nBicycle.\nBikeshare.\nOn February 21, 2018, New Haven officially launched its Bike New Haven bikeshare program. based on dockless technology powered by Noa Technologies At time of launch, the program features 10 docking stations and 100 bikes, spread throughout the urban core; there are plans to reach 30 bike stations and 300 bikes by the end of April 2018. The launch of the New Haven bikeshare program coincided with the launch of Yale University's own bikeshare program, which uses the same technology powered by Noa.\nBike lanes.\nIn 2004, the first bike lane in the city was added to Orange Street, connecting East Rock Park and the East Rock neighborhood to downtown. Since then, bike lanes have also been added to sections of Howard Ave, Elm St, Dixwell Avenue, Water Street, Clinton Avenue and State Street. The city has created recommended bike routes for getting around New Haven, including use of the Canal Trail and the Orange Street lane. As of the end of 2012, bicycle lanes have also been added in both directions on Dixwell Avenue along most of the street from downtown to the Hamden town line, as well as along Howard Avenue from Yale New Haven Hospital to City Point.\nThe city has plans to create two additional bike lanes connecting Union Station with downtown, and the Westville neighborhood with downtown. The city has added dozens of covered bike parking spots at Union Station, in order to facilitate more bike commuting to the station.\nFarmington Canal Greenway.\nThe Farmington Canal Trail is a rail trail that will eventually run continuously from downtown New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts. The scenic trail follows the path of the historic New Haven and Northampton Company and the Farmington Canal. Currently, there is a continuous stretch of the trail from downtown, through Hamden and into Cheshire, making bicycle commuting between New Haven and those suburbs possible. The trail is part of the East Coast Greenway, a proposed bike path that would link every major city on the East Coast from Florida to Maine.\nRoads.\nNew Haven lies at the intersection of Interstate 95 on the coast\u2014which provides access southwards and/or westwards to the western coast of Connecticut and to New York City, and eastwards to the eastern Connecticut shoreline, Rhode Island, and eastern Massachusetts\u2014and Interstate 91, which leads northward to the interior of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont and the Canada\u2013US border. I-95 is notorious for traffic jams increasing with proximity to New York City; on the east side of New Haven it passes over the Quinnipiac River via the Pearl Harbor Memorial, or \"Q Bridge\", which often presents a major bottleneck to traffic. I-91, however, is relatively less congested, except at the intersection with I-95 during peak travel times.\nThe Oak Street Connector (Connecticut Route 34) intersects I-91 at exit 1, just south of the I-95/I-91 interchange, and runs northwest for a few blocks as an expressway spur into downtown before emptying onto surface roads. The Wilbur Cross Parkway (Connecticut Route 15) runs parallel to I-95 west of New Haven, turning northwards as it nears the city and then running northwards parallel to I-91 through the outer rim of New Haven and Hamden, offering an alternative to the I-95/I-91 journey (restricted to non-commercial vehicles). Route 15 in New Haven is the site of the only highway tunnel in the state (officially designated as Heroes Tunnel), running through West Rock, home to West Rock Park and the Three Judges Cave.\nThe city also has several major surface arteries. U.S. Route 1 (Columbus Avenue, Union Avenue, Water Street, Forbes Avenue) runs in an east\u2013west direction south of downtown serving Union Station and leading out of the city to Milford, West Haven, East Haven and Branford. The main road from downtown heading northwest is Whalley Avenue (partly signed as Route 10 and Route 63) leading to Westville and Woodbridge. Heading north towards Hamden, there are two major thoroughfares, Dixwell Avenue and Whitney Avenue. To the northeast are Middletown Avenue (Route 17), which leads to the Montowese section of North Haven, and Foxon Boulevard (Route 80), which leads to the Foxon section of East Haven and to the town of North Branford. To the west is Route 34, which leads to the city of Derby. Other major intracity arteries are Ella Grasso Boulevard (Route 10) west of downtown, and College Street, Temple Street, Church Street, Elm Street, and Grove Street in the downtown area.\nTraffic safety is a major concern for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists in New Haven. In addition to many traffic-related fatalities in the city each year, since 2005, over a dozen Yale students, staff and faculty have been killed or injured in traffic collisions on or near the campus.\nAirport.\nTweed New Haven Airport is located within the city limits east of the business district, straddling the border with neighboring East Haven. Service to approximately 25 cities is provided by Avelo Airlines, which established its first East Coast base at the airport in 2021. Breeze Airways plans to begin operations at Tweed in December 2024, and will provide service to 10 destinations. The airport is currently planning a runway lengthening and new terminal on the East Haven side of the airport.\nBus service between Downtown New Haven and Tweed is available via the CT Transit New Haven Division.\nSeaport.\nNew Haven Harbor is home to the Port of New Haven, a deep-water seaport with three berths capable of hosting vessels and barges as well as the facilities required to handle break bulk cargo. The port has the capacity to load 200 trucks a day from the ground or via loading docks. Providence and Worcester Railroad provides freight rail transportation to the port, with the railroad operating a switch engine for yard movements, a private siding for loading and unloading, and trackage over the Tomlinson Lift Bridge toward the Northeast Corridor. Approximately of inside storage and of outside storage are available at the site. Five shore cranes with a 250-ton capacity and 26 forklifts, each with a 26-ton capacity, are also available.\nOn June 17, 2013, the city commissioned the \"Nathan Hale\", a port security vessel capable of serving search and rescue, firefighting, and constabulary roles.\nInfrastructure.\nHospitals and medicine.\nThe New Haven area supports several medical facilities that are considered some of the best hospitals in the country. There are two major medical centers downtown: Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital has four pavilions, including the Yale \u2013 New Haven Children's Hospital and the Smilow Cancer Hospital; the Hospital of Saint Raphael is several blocks north, and touts its excellent cardiac emergency care program. Smaller downtown health facilities are the Temple Medical Center located downtown on Temple Street, Connecticut Mental Health Center/ across Park Street from Y-NHH, and the Hill Health Center, which serves the working-class Hill neighborhood. A large Veterans Affairs hospital is located in neighboring West Haven. To the west in Milford is Milford Hospital, and to the north in Meriden is the MidState Medical Center.\nIn recent years, Yale and the City of New Haven have been working to build a medical and biotechnology research hub in the city and Greater New Haven region. The city, state and Yale together run Science Park, a large site three blocks northwest of Yale's Science Hill campus. This multi-block site, approximately bordered by Mansfield Street, Division Street, and Shelton Avenue, is the former home of Winchester's and Olin Corporation's 45 large-scale factory buildings. Currently, sections of the site are large-scale parking lots or abandoned structures, but there is also a large remodeled and functioning area of buildings (leased primarily by a private developer) with numerous Yale employees, financial service and biotech companies.\nA second biotechnology district is being planned for the median strip on Frontage Road, on land cleared for the never-built Route 34 extension. As of late 2009, a Pfizer drug-testing clinic, a medical laboratory building serving Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital, and a mixed-use structure containing parking, housing and office space, have been constructed on this corridor. A former SNET telephone building at 300 George Street is being converted into lab space, and has been quite successful so far in attracting biotechnology and medical firms.\nPower supply facilities.\nElectricity for New Haven is generated by a 448\u00a0MW oil and gas-fired generating station located on the shore at New Haven Harbor. PPL Corporation operates a 220\u00a0MW peaking natural gas turbine plant in nearby Wallingford.\nNear New Haven there is the static inverter plant of the HVDC Cross Sound Cable.\nThere are three PureCell Model 400 fuel cells placed in the city of New Haven\u2014one at the New Haven Public Schools and newly constructed Roberto Clemente School, one at the mixed-use 360 State Street building, and one at City Hall. According to Giovanni Zinn of the city's Office of Sustainability, each fuel cell may save the city up to $1 million in energy costs over a decade. The fuel cells were provided by ClearEdge Power, formerly UTC Power. Additional fuel cells are located at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and at the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority (GNHWPCA). Ikea's New Haven facility also utilizes a 250\u00a0kW fuel cell and 940.8\u00a0kW solar array.\nNew Haven recently installed solar panels at 11 city schools with a combined power generation capacity of 1.8 MW. Owned and maintained by Greenskies, the panels allow New Haven to purchase electricity at a discounted rate through a power-purchasing agreement. The panels bring New Haven's solar capacity to 2.8 MW and will help New Haven meet its commitment to powering 100% of its municipal operations through clean energy, which it made in Summer 2017 and reaffirmed in the 2018 New Haven Climate and Sustainability Framework.\nIn popular culture.\nSeveral movies have been filmed in New Haven since 2000, including \"Mona Lisa Smile\" (2003), with Julia Roberts, \"The Life Before Her Eyes\" (2007), with Uma Thurman, and \"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull\" (2008) directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett and Shia LaBeouf. The filming of \"Crystal Skull\" involved an extensive chase sequence through the streets of New Haven. Several downtown streets were closed to traffic and received a \"makeover\" to look like streets of 1957, when the film is set. 500 locals were cast as extras for the film. In \"Everybody's Fine\" (2009), Robert De Niro has a close encounter in what is supposed to be the Denver train station; the scene was filmed in New Haven's Union Station.\n New Haven is mentioned in the song Peace Frog by the Doors, referencing a 1967 incident where vocalist Jim Morrison was arrested for \"attempting to incite a riot\" in the middle of a concert at the New Haven Arena.\nSister cities.\nNew Haven's sister cities are:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSome of these were selected because of historical connection\u2014Freetown because of the \"Amistad\" trial. Others, such as Amalfi and Afula, reflect ethnic groups in New Haven.\nIn 1990, the United Nations named New Haven a \"Peace Messenger City\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["5449220", "5122699", "53825"], "permutation_1": ["5122699", "53825", "5449220"], "permutation_2": ["5449220", "53825", "5122699"], "permutation_3": ["53825", "5122699", "5449220"]}
{"id": "3hop1__848113_15840_36014", "docs_added": {"28314": "Super Nintendo Entertainment System\nHome video game console\nThe Super Nintendo Entertainment System, commonly shortened to Super Nintendo, Super NES or SNES, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in Europe and Oceania and 1993 in South America. In Japan, it is called the In South Korea, it is called the Super Comboy and was distributed by Hyundai Electronics. The system was released in Brazil on August 30, 1993, by Playtronic. In Russia and CIS, the system was distributed by Steepler from 1994 until 1996. Although each version is essentially the same, several forms of regional lockout prevent cartridges for one version from being used in other versions.\nThe Super NES is Nintendo's second programmable home console, following the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The console introduced advanced graphics and sound capabilities compared with other systems at the time, like the Sega Genesis. It was designed to accommodate the ongoing development of a variety of enhancement chips integrated into game cartridges to be more competitive into the next generation.\nThe Super NES received largely positive reviews and was a global success, becoming the best-selling console of the 16-bit era after launching relatively late and facing intense competition from Sega's Genesis console in North America and Europe. Overlapping the NES's 61.9\u00a0million unit sales, the Super NES remained popular well into the 32-bit era, with 49.1\u00a0million units sold worldwide by the time it was discontinued in 2003. It continues to be popular among collectors and retro gamers, with new homebrew games and Nintendo's emulated rereleases, such as on the Virtual Console, the Super NES Classic Edition, Nintendo Switch Online; as well as several non-console emulators which operate on a desktop computer or mobile device, such as Snes9x.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nTo compete with the popular Family Computer in Japan, NEC Home Electronics launched the PC Engine in 1987, and Sega followed suit with the Mega Drive in 1988. The two platforms were later launched in North America in 1989 as the TurboGrafx-16 and the Sega Genesis respectively. Both systems were built on 16-bit architectures and offered improved graphics and sound over the 8-bit NES. It took several years for Sega's system to become successful. Bill Mensch, the co-creator of the 8-bit MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor and founder of the Western Design Center (WDC), gave Ricoh the exclusive right to supply 8-bit and 16-bit WDC microprocessors for the new system. Meanwhile, Sony engineer Ken Kutaragi reached an agreement with Nintendo to design the console's sound chip without notifying his supervisors, who were enraged when they discovered the project; though Kutaragi was nearly fired, then-CEO Norio Ohga intervened in support of the project and gave him permission to complete it.\nOn September 9, 1987, then-Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi revealed the development of the Super Famicom in the newspaper \"Kyoto Shimbun\". On August 30, 1988, in an interview with \"TOUCH Magazine\", Yamauchi announced the development of \"Super Mario Bros. 4\", \"Dragon Quest V\", three original games, and he projected sales of 3 million units of the upcoming console. \"Famicom Hissyoubon\" magazine speculated that Yamauchi's early announcement was probably made to forestall Christmas shopping for the PC Engine, and relayed Enix's clarification that it was waiting on sales figures to select either PC Engine or Super Famicom for its next \"Dragon Quest\" game. The magazine and Enix both expressed a strong interest in networking as a standard platform feature. The console was demonstrated to the Japanese press on November 21, 1988, and again on July 28, 1989.\nLaunch.\nDesigned by Masayuki Uemura, the designer of the original Famicom, the Super Famicom was released in Japan on Wednesday, November 21, 1990, for \u00a5. It was an instant success. Nintendo's initial shipment of 300,000 units sold out within hours, and the resulting social disturbance led the Japanese government to ask video game manufacturers to schedule future console releases on weekends. This gained the attention of the yakuza criminal organizations, so the devices were shipped at night to avoid robbery.\nWith the Super Famicom quickly outselling its rivals, Nintendo reasserted itself as the leader of the Japanese console market. Nintendo's success was partially due to the retention of most of its key third-party developers, including Capcom, Konami, Tecmo, Square, Koei, and Enix.\nNintendo released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, a redesigned version of the Super Famicom, in North America for US$. It began shipping in limited quantities on August 23, 1991, with an official nationwide release date of September 9, 1991. The Super NES was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland in April 1992 for \u00a3.\nMost of the PAL region versions of the console use the Japanese Super Famicom design, except for labeling and the length of the joypad leads. The Playtronic Super NES in Brazil, although PAL-M, uses the North American design. Both the NES and Super NES were released in Brazil in 1993 by Playtronic, a joint venture between the toy company Estrela and consumer electronics company Gradiente.\nThe Super NES and Super Famicom launched with few games, but these games were well received. In Japan, only two games were initially available: \"Super Mario World\" and \"F-Zero\". \"Bombuzal\" was released during the launch week. In North America, \"Super Mario World\" was launched as a bundle with the console; other launch games include \"F-Zero\", \"Pilotwings\" (both of which demonstrate the console's Mode 7 pseudo-3D rendering), \"SimCity\", and \"Gradius III\".\nConsole wars.\nThe rivalry between Nintendo and Sega was described as one of the most notable console wars in video game history, in which Sega positioned the Genesis as the \"cool\" console, with games aimed at older audiences, and aggressive advertisements that occasionally attacked the competition. Nintendo scored an early public-relations advantage by securing the first console conversion of Capcom's arcade hit \"Street Fighter II\" for Super NES, which took more than a year to make the transition to the Genesis. Though the Genesis had a two-year lead to launch time, a much larger library of games, and a lower price point, it only represented an estimated 60% of the American 16-bit console market in June 1992, and neither console could maintain a definitive lead for several years. \"Donkey Kong Country\" is said to have helped establish the Super NES's market prominence in the latter years of the 16-bit generation, and for a time, maintain against the PlayStation and Saturn. According to Nintendo, the company had sold more than 20\u00a0million Super NES units in the U.S. According to a 2014 Wedbush Securities report based on NPD sales data, the Super NES outsold the Genesis in the U.S. market by 1.5 million units.\nChanges in policy.\nDuring the NES era, Nintendo maintained exclusive control over games released for the system \u2013 the company had to approve every game, each third-party developer could only release up to five games per year (but some third parties got around this by using different names, such as Konami's \"Ultra Games\" brand), those games could not be released on another console within two years, and Nintendo was the exclusive manufacturer and supplier of NES cartridges. Competition from Sega's console brought an end to this practice; in 1991, Acclaim Entertainment began releasing games for both platforms, with most of Nintendo's other licensees following suit over the next several years; Capcom (which licensed some games to Sega instead of producing them directly) and Square were the most notable holdouts.\nNintendo continued to carefully review submitted games, scoring them on a 40-point scale and allocating marketing resources accordingly. Each region performed separate evaluations. Nintendo of America also maintained a policy that, among other things, limited the amount of violence in the games on its systems. The surprise arcade hit \"Mortal Kombat\" (1992), a gory fighting game with huge splashes of blood and graphically violent fatality moves, was heavily censored by Nintendo. Because the Genesis version allowed for an uncensored version via cheat code, it outsold the censored Super NES version by a ratio of nearly three to one.\nU.S. Senators Herb Kohl and Joe Lieberman convened a Congressional hearing on December 9, 1993, to investigate the marketing of violent video games to children. Though Nintendo took the high ground with moderate success, the hearings led to the creation of the Interactive Digital Software Association and the Entertainment Software Rating Board and the inclusion of ratings on all video games. With these ratings in place, Nintendo decided its censorship policies were no longer needed.\n32-bit era and beyond.\nWhile other companies were moving on to 32-bit systems, Rare and Nintendo proved that the Super NES was still a strong contender in the market. In November 1994, Rare released \"Donkey Kong Country\", a platform game featuring 3D models and textures pre-rendered on Silicon Graphics workstations. With its detailed graphics, fluid animation, and high-quality music, \"Donkey Kong Country\" rivals the aesthetic quality of games that were being released on newer 32-bit CD-based consoles. In the last 45 days of 1994, 6.1\u00a0million copies were sold, making it the fastest-selling video game in history to that date. This game conveyed that early 32-bit systems had little to offer over the Super NES, and proved the market for the more advanced consoles of the near future. According to TRSTS reports, two of the top five bestselling games in the U.S. for December 1996 are Super NES games.\nIn October 1997, Nintendo released a redesigned model of the Super NES (the SNS-101 model referred to as \"New-Style Super NES\") in North America for US$, with some units including the pack-in game \"\". Like the earlier New-Style NES (model NES-101), this is slimmer and lighter than its predecessor, but it lacks S-Video and RGB output, and it is among the last major Super NES-related releases in the region. A similarly redesigned Super Famicom Jr. was released in Japan at around the same time. The redesign stayed out of Europe.\nNintendo ceased production of the Super NES in North America in 1999, about two years after releasing \"Kirby's Dream Land 3\" (its final second-party game in the US) on November 27, 1997, and one year after releasing \"Frogger\" (its final third-party game in the US) in 1998. In Japan, Nintendo continued production of both the Family Computer and the Super Famicom until September 25, 2003, and new games were produced until the year 2000, ending with the release of \"Metal Slader Glory Director's Cut\" on November 29, 2000.\nMany popular Super NES games were ported to the Game Boy Advance, which has similar video capabilities. In 2005, Nintendo announced that Super NES games would be made available for download via the Wii's Virtual Console service. On October 31, 2007, Nintendo Co., Ltd. announced that it would no longer repair Family Computer or Super Famicom systems due to an increasing shortage of the necessary parts. On March 3, 2016, Nintendo Co., Ltd. announced that it would bring Super NES games to the New Nintendo 3DS and New Nintendo 3DS XL (and later the New Nintendo 2DS XL) via its eShop download service. At the Nintendo Direct event on September 4, 2019, Nintendo announced that it would be bringing select Super NES games to the Nintendo Switch Online platform.\nHardware.\nTechnical specifications.\nThe 16-bit design of the Super NES incorporates graphics and sound co-processors that perform tiling and simulated 3D effects, a palette of 32,768 colors, and 8-channel ADPCM audio. These base platform features, plus the ability to dramatically extend them all through substantial chip upgrades inside of each cartridge, represent a leap over the 8-bit NES generation and some significant advantages over 16-bit competitors such as the Genesis.\nCPU and RAM.\nThe CPU is a Ricoh 5A22, a derivative of the 16-bit WDC 65C816 microprocessor. In NTSC regions, its nominal clock speed is 3.58 MHz will slow to either 2.68\u00a0MHz or 1.79\u00a0MHz when accessing some slower peripherals.\nThis CPU has an 8-bit data bus and two address buses. The 24-bit \"Bus\u00a0A\" is designated for general accesses, and the 8-bit \"Bus\u00a0B\" can access support chip registers such as the video and audio co-processors.\nThe WDC 65C816 supports an 8-channel DMA unit, an 8-bit parallel I/O port a controller port interface circuits allowing serial and parallel access to controller data, a 16-bit multiplication and division unit, and circuitry for generating non-maskable interrupts on V-blank and IRQ interrupts on calculated screen positions.\nEarly revisions of the 5A22 used in SHVC boards are prone to spontaneous failure which can produce a variety of symptoms including graphics glitches in Mode 7, a black screen on power-on, or improperly reading the controllers. The first revision 5A22 has a fatal bug in the DMA controller that can crash games; this was corrected in subsequent revisions.\nThe console contains 128KB of general-purpose \"work\" RAM, which is separate from the 64KB dedicated to the video subsystem and the 64KB dedicated to the audio subsystem.\nVideo.\nThe Picture Processing Unit (PPU) consists of two closely tied IC packages. It contains 64KB of SRAM for video data, 544 bytes of object attribute memory (OAM) for sprite data, and 256\u00a0\u00d7\u00a015 bits of color generator RAM (CGRAM) for palette data. This CGRAM provisions up to 256 colors, chosen from the 15-bit RGB color space, from a palette of 32,768 colors. The PPU is clocked by the same signal as the CPU and generates a pixel every two or four cycles.\nAudio.\nThe S-SMP audio subsystem consisted of a 16-bit digital signal processor (DSP) to sequence the mix samples, an 8-bit SPC700 CPU to drive the DSP and 64KB of dedicated PSRAM. It was designed by Ken Kutaragi and produced by Sony and is completely independent from the rest of the system. It is clocked at a nominal 24.576\u00a0MHz in both NTSC and PAL systems. It is capable of stereo sound, composed from eight voices generated using 16-bit audio samples compressed using BRR and capable of applying effects such as echo. On early revisions of the motherboard the S-SMP audio system was spread across four chips: the DSP, the CPU, and two RAM modules. On later revisions, the sound hardware consolidated to a single chip, the S-APU.\nRegional lockout.\nNintendo employed several types of regional lockout, including both physical and hardware incompatibilities.\nPhysically, the cartridges are shaped differently for different regions. North American cartridges have a rectangular bottom with inset grooves matching protruding tabs in the console, and other regions' cartridges are narrower with a smooth curve on the front and no grooves. The physical incompatibility can be overcome with the use of various adapters, or through modification of the console.\nInternally, a regional lockout chip (CIC) within the console and in each cartridge prevents the PAL region games from being played on Japanese or North American consoles and vice versa. The Japanese and North American machines have the same region chip. This can be overcome through the use of adapters, typically by inserting the imported cartridge in one slot and a cartridge with the correct region chip in a second slot. Alternatively, disconnecting one pin of the console's lockout chip will prevent it from locking the console; hardware in later games can detect this situation, so it became common to install a switch to reconnect the lockout chip as needed.\nPAL consoles face another incompatibility when playing out-of-region cartridges: the NTSC video standard specifies video at 60\u00a0Hz but PAL operates at 50\u00a0Hz, resulting in an approximately 16.7% slower framerate. PAL's higher resolution results in letterboxing of the output image. Some commercial PAL region releases exhibit this same problem and, therefore, can be played in NTSC systems without issue, but other games will face a 20% speedup if played in an NTSC console. To mostly correct this issue, a switch can be added to place the Super NES PPU into a 60\u00a0Hz mode supported by most newer PAL televisions. Later games will detect this setting and refuse to run, requiring the switch to be thrown only after the check completes.\nCasing.\nAll models of the Super NES control deck are predominantly gray, of slightly different shades. The original North American version, designed by Nintendo of America industrial designer Lance Barr (who previously redesigned the Famicom to become the NES), has a boxy design with purple sliding switches and a dark gray eject lever. The loading bay surface is curved, both to invite interaction and to prevent food or drinks from being placed on the console and spilling as with the flat-surfaced NES. The Japanese and European versions are more rounded, with darker gray accents and buttons.\nAll versions incorporate a top-loading slot for game cartridges, although the shape of the slot differs between regions to match the different shapes of the cartridges. The MULTI OUT connector (later used on the Nintendo 64 and GameCube) can output composite video, S-Video and RGB signals, as well as RF with an external RF modulator. Original versions additionally include a 28-pin expansion port under a small cover on the bottom of the unit and a standard RF output with channel selection switch on the back; the redesigned models output composite video only, requiring an external modulator for RF.\nThe Nintendo Super System (NSS) is an arcade system for retail preview of 11 particular Super NES games in the United States, similar to the PlayChoice-10 for NES games. It consists of slightly modified Super NES hardware with a menu interface and 25-inch monitor, that allows gameplay for a certain amount of time depending on game credits. Manufacturing of this model was discontinued in 1992.\nRedesigned model.\nA cost-reduced version of the console, referred to as the New-Style Super NES (model SNS-101) in North America and as the in Japan, was released late in the platform's lifespan; designed by Barr, it incorporates design elements from both the original North American and Japanese/European console models but in a smaller form factor. Unlike the original console models, the redesigned model is virtually identical across both regions save for the color palette (the North American model receiving purple buttons and the Japanese model receiving grey buttons). The redesign did not receive a release in Europe.\nExternally, the power and reset buttons were moved to the left-hand side of the console while the cartridge eject button and power LED indicator were omitted. Internally, the redesigned model consolidates the console's hardware into a system-on-chip (SoC) design. The redesigned console lacks the bottom expansion slot, rendering it incompatible with the Japan-exclusive Satellaview add-on.\nFor AV output, the redesigned console features the same multi-out port used on the original models. Unlike the latter models, the former's AV port only supports composite video output natively as support for RGB video and S-Video was disabled internally; however, they can be restored via a \"relatively simple\" modification. The internal RF modulator was also removed, requiring an external one for such output if needed. Due to the SoC design, it is highly sought after by Super NES/Famicom enthusiasts since its RGB video quality (if restored) is improved over earlier internal revisions of the console.\nThe redesigned console first released in October 1997 in North America, where it originally retailed for US$99.95 in a bundle with \"\";\nit was subsequently released in Japan on March 27, 1998, where it retailed for \u00a57,800. Nintendo marketed it as an entry-level gamer's system for consumers who were apprehensive about the higher price of newer systems such as the Nintendo 64. Nintendo also introduced a slightly altered controller for it, with the console's logo replaced by an embossed Nintendo logo.\nYellowing.\nThe ABS plastic used in the casing of some older Super NES and Super Famicom consoles is particularly susceptible to oxidation with exposure to air. This, along with the particularly light color of the original plastic, causes affected consoles to quickly become yellow; if the sections of the casing came from different batches of plastic, a \"two-tone\" effect results. This issue may be reversed with a method called Retrobrighting, where a mixture of chemicals is applied to the case and exposed to UV light.\nGame cartridge.\nSuper NES games are distributed on ROM cartridges, officially referred to as Game Pak in most Western regions, and as in Japan and parts of Latin America. Though the Super NES can address 128\u00a0Mbit, only 117.75\u00a0Mbit are actually available for cartridge use. A fairly normal mapping could easily address up to 95\u00a0Mbit of ROM data (48\u00a0Mbit at FastROM speed) with 8\u00a0Mbit of battery-backed RAM. Most available memory access controllers only support mappings of up to 32\u00a0Mbit. The largest games released (\"Tales of Phantasia\" and \"Star Ocean\") contain 48\u00a0Mbit of ROM data, and the smallest games contain only 2\u00a0Mbit.\nCartridges may also contain battery-backed SRAM to save the game state, extra working RAM, custom coprocessors, or any other hardware that will not exceed the maximum current rating of the console.\nGames.\n1757 Super NES games were officially released: 717 in North America (plus 4 championship cartridges), 521 in Europe, 1,448 in Japan, 231 on Satellaview, and 13 on Sufami Turbo. Many Super NES games have been called some of the greatest video games of all time, such as \"Super Mario World\" (1990), \"\" (1991), \"Final Fantasy VI\" (1994), \"Donkey Kong Country\" (1994), \"EarthBound\" (1994), \"Super Metroid\" (1994), \"Chrono Trigger\" (1995) and \"Yoshi's Island\" (1995). Many Super NES games have been rereleased several times, including on the Virtual Console, Super NES Classic Edition, and the classic games service on Nintendo Switch Online. All Game Boy games are playable with the Super Game Boy add-on.\nPeripherals.\nThe Super NES controller design expands on that of the NES, with A, B, X, and Y face buttons in a diamond arrangement, and two shoulder buttons. Lance Barr created its ergonomic design, and he later adapted it in 1993 for the NES-039 \"dogbone\" controller. The Japanese and PAL region versions incorporated the four colors of the face buttons into the system's logo. The North American version's buttons were colored to match the redesigned console; the X and Y buttons are lavender with concave faces, and the A and B buttons are purple with convex faces. Several later controller designs have elements from the Super NES controller, including the PlayStation, Dreamcast, Xbox, and Wii Classic Controller. This face button layout is on future Nintendo systems since the Nintendo DS.\nSeveral peripherals add to the functionality of the Super NES. Some are required by certain games, such as the Super Scope light gun, and the Super NES Mouse for a point and click interface. Various third-parties, under license from Nintendo, released multitap adapters connecting up to five controllers into a single console, starting with the Super Multitap by Hudson Soft in conjunction with the \"Super Bomberman\" series. Specialized third-party controllers, such as the AsciiPad and Super Advantage (the successor to the NES Advantage) by Asciiware, and the Capcom Fighter Power Stick, an arcade-like joystick controller by Capcom designed specifically for \"Street Fighter II\". Unusual controllers include the BatterUP baseball bat, the Life Fitness Entertainment System (an exercise bike controller with built-in monitoring software), the TeeV Golf golf club, and the Justifier (a revolver-shaped light gun made by Konami for \"Lethal Enforcers\").\nThough Nintendo never released an adapter for playing NES games on the Super NES, the Super Game Boy adapter cartridge allows games designed for Nintendo's portable Game Boy system to be played on the Super NES. The Super Game Boy touts several feature enhancements over the Game Boy, including palette substitution, custom screen borders, and access to the Super NES console's features by specially enhanced Game Boy games. Japan also saw the release of the Super Game Boy 2, which adds a communication port to enable a second Game Boy to connect for multiplayer games.\nLike the NES before it, the Super NES has unlicensed third-party peripherals, including a new version of the Game Genie cheat cartridge designed for use with Super NES games.\nSoon after the release of the Super NES, companies began marketing backup devices such as the Super Wildcard, Super Pro Fighter Q, and Game Doctor. These devices create a backup of a cartridge, and can be used to play illicit ROM images or to copy games, violating copyright laws in many jurisdictions.\nThe Japan-only Satellaview is a satellite modem attached to the Super Famicom's expansion port and connected to the St.GIGA satellite radio station from April 23, 1995, to June 30, 2000. Satellaview subscribers could download gaming news and specially designed games, which were frequently either remakes of or sequels to older Famicom games, and released in installments. In the United States, the relatively short-lived XBAND allowed users to connect to a network via a dial-up modem to compete against other players around the country.\nNintendo attempted partnerships with Sony and then Philips, to develop CD-ROM-based peripheral prototypes for the console to compete with the TurboGrafx-CD and Sega CD. Sony produced the PlayStation (a brand name the company would use for their later independently produced console), a Super NES console with a built-in CD-ROM drive that never made it past the prototype phase. The Philips project was canceled without a prototype but Philips retained the contractual right to develop games based on Nintendo franchises, which it published for its CD-i multimedia console.\nEnhancement chips.\nAs part of the overall plan for the Super NES, rather than include an expensive CPU that would still become obsolete in a few years, the hardware designers made it easy to interface special coprocessor chips to the console, just like the MMC chips used for most NES games. This is most often characterized by 16 additional pins on the cartridge card edge.\nThe Super FX is a RISC CPU designed to perform functions that the main CPU can not feasibly do. The chip is primarily used to create 3D game worlds made with polygons, texture mapping and light source shading. The chip can also be used to enhance 2D games.\nThe Nintendo fixed-point digital signal processor (DSP) chip allowed fast vector-based calculations, bitmap conversions, both 2D and 3D coordinate transformations, and other functions. Four revisions of the chip exist, each physically identical but with different microcode. The DSP-1 version, including the later 1A and 1B bug fix revisions, is used most often; the DSP-2, DSP-3, and DSP-4 are used in only one game each.\nSimilar to the 5A22 CPU in the console, the SA-1 chip contains a 65C816 processor core clocked at 10.7\u00a0MHz, a memory mapper, DMA, decompression and bitplane conversion circuitry, several programmable timers, and CIC region lockout functionality.\nIn Japan, games could be downloaded cheaper than standard cartridges, from Nintendo Power kiosks onto special cartridges containing flash memory and a MegaChips MX15001TFC chip. The chip manages communication with the kiosks to download ROM images and has an initial menu to select a game. Some were published both in cartridge and download form, and others were download only. The service closed on February 8, 2007.\nMany cartridges contain other enhancement chips, most of which were created for use by a single company in a few games.\nReception and legacy.\nApproximately 49.1\u00a0million Super NES consoles were sold worldwide, with 23.35\u00a0million of those units sold in the Americas and 17.17\u00a0million in Japan. Although it could not quite repeat the success of the NES, which sold 61.91\u00a0million units worldwide, the Super NES was the best-selling console of its era.\nIn a 1997 year-end review, a team of five \"Electronic Gaming Monthly\" editors gave the Super NES scores of 5.5, 8.0, 7.0, 7.0, and 8.0. Though they criticized how few new games were coming out for the system and how dated its graphics were compared to current generation consoles, they regarded its selection of must-have games to be still unsurpassed. Additionally noting that used Super NES games were readily available in bargain bins, most of them still recommended buying a Super NES. In 2007, \"GameTrailers\" named the Super NES as the second-best console of all time (only behind the PlayStation 2) in their list of top ten consoles that \"left their mark on the history of gaming\", citing its graphics, sound, and library of top-quality games. In 2015, they also named it the best Nintendo console of all time, saying, \"The list of games we love from this console completely annihilates any other roster from the Big N.\" Technology columnist Don Reisinger proclaimed \"The SNES is the greatest console of all time\" in January 2008, citing the quality of the games and the console's dramatic improvement over its predecessor; fellow technology columnist Will Greenwald replied with a more nuanced view, giving the Super NES top marks with his heart, the NES with his head, and the PlayStation (for its controller) with his hands. GamingExcellence also gave the Super NES first place in 2008, declaring it \"simply the most timeless system ever created\" with many games that stand the test of time and citing its innovation in controller design, graphics capabilities, and game storytelling. At the same time, GameDaily rated it fifth of the ten greatest consoles for its graphics, audio, controllers, and games. In 2009, \"IGN\" named the Super NES the fourth-best video game console, complimenting its audio and number of AAA games.\nEmulation.\nSNES emulation began with VSMC in 1994, and Super Pasofami became the first working emulator in 1996. During that time, two competing emulation projects, Snes96 and Snes97, merged to form Snes9x. In 1997, ZSNES development began. In 2004, Bsnes development began with the goal of preservation through maximal accuracy and compatibility, and was later renamed to Higan.\nNintendo of America maintained its stance against the distribution of SNES ROM image files and the use of emulators, as it had with the NES before, saying they represent copyright infringement. Emulation proponents assert that the discontinued hardware production constitutes abandonware status, the owners' right to make a personal backup, space shifting for private use, the development of homebrew games, the frailty of ROM cartridges and consoles, and the lack of certain foreign imports. Nintendo designed a hobbyist development system for the SNES, but never released it.\nUnofficial SNES emulation is available on virtually all platforms, including Android, iOS, game consoles, and PDAs. Individual games have been bundled with official dedicated emulators on some GameCube discs, and Nintendo's Virtual Console service for the Wii introduced diverse and officially licensed SNES emulation.\nThe Super NES Classic Edition was released in September 2017 following the NES Classic Edition. This emulation-based mini-console, which is physically modeled after the North American and European versions of the SNES, is bundled with two SNES-style controllers and 21 games, including the unreleased \"Star Fox 2\".\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "5677000": "Star Voyager\n1986 video game\nStar Voyager is an outer space shooter for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The gameplay is a first-person shooter from inside the cockpit of a spaceship. The player navigates \"sub spaces\" of a larger \"world map.\" Gameplay takes place between different subspaces.\nThis game was released in Japan as .\nGameplay.\nThe plot centers around a lone pilot in a spacecraft attempting to protect a transport ship, the \"CosmoStation Noah\", full of planetary refugees from a fleet of intergalactic terrorists known as the \"Molok Wardrivers\". The player's primary goal is to eliminate all enemy fleets before they can surround the stationary Cosmostation Noah. The player may also visit up to eight different planets in search of engine and weapon upgrades for their ship, may seek repairs at up to five space stations in addition to CosmoStation Noah, and may also visit an asteroid field, and a black hole from which escape is difficult but not impossible. The game is won if the player defeats the enemy armada and safely returns to base. However, the game is lost if the enemy fleet reaches the CosmoStation Noah, the player enters the black hole, the player's ship runs out of fuel crystals, or if life support fails.\nGameplay occurs on a 10x10 grid that is randomized at the start of each game with the exceptions of the player and CosmoStation Noah which will always begin in the top left, and the five initial Molok Wardriver fleets will begin in the bottom right. To progress through the grid, the player must select their destination coordinates either through the HUD or the select menu grid, and hold down the B button to charge enough power to travel to as many sectors as required to reach their destination, as identified by the number on the bottom-center of the HUD. The number of leaps charged is indicated by icons in the upper-left gauge.\nAs gameplay progresses, additional fleets may join the Molok Wardriver armada. Any space stations they encounter during their trek to the CosmoStation Noah will be destroyed, limiting the resources the player will have to mount an attack. In order to destroy the enemy fleets, the player must warp to their coordinates and destroy the fleet's spacecraft and mothership, which will endlessly deploy enemy spacecraft as long as it remains operational. The player must raise their shields in the select menu in order to minimize damage taken to the ship.\nThe player's fuel crystals will deplete normally over time, and faster during warping or sustaining damage. Therefore, it is necessary to visit space stations to refuel to prolong gameplay. They can also repair damaged systems which include radar, engines, and weapons, but a malfunctioning life support system can be repaired \"only\" at the CosmoStation Noah. Depending on the amount of damage taken, the engines may become inoperable, one or both laser cannons can malfunction, and radar can become difficult to use.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18944028": "Nintendo Entertainment System\nHome video game console\nThe Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on July 15, 1983, as the It was released in US test markets as the redesigned NES in October 1985, and fully launched in the US the following year. The NES was distributed in Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia throughout the 1980s under various names. As a third-generation console, it mainly competed with Sega's Master System.\nThe NES was designed by Masayuki Uemura. Nintendo's president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, called for a simple, cheap console that could run arcade games on cartridges. The controller design was reused from Nintendo's portable Game & Watch hardware. The western model was redesigned to resemble a video cassette recorder. Nintendo released add-ons such as the NES Zapper light gun for several shooting games, and R.O.B, a toy robot accessory.\nThe NES is regarded as one of the most influential consoles. It helped revitalise the American gaming industry following the video game crash of 1983, and pioneered a now-standard business model of licensing third-party developers to produce and distribute games. The NES features several influential games, including \"Super Mario Bros.\" (1985), \"The Legend of Zelda\" (1986), \"Metroid\" (1986) and \"Mega Man\" (1987), which became major franchises.\nThe NES dominated Japanese and North American markets, but initially underperformed in Europe, where it faced strong competition from the Sega Master System and microcomputers. With 61.91\u00a0million units sold, it is one of the best-selling consoles. It was succeeded in 1990 by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.\nHistory.\nBackground.\nThe video game industry experienced rapid growth and popularity from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, marked by the golden age of arcade games and the second generation of consoles. Games like \"Space Invaders\" (1978) became a phenomenon across arcades worldwide, while home consoles such as the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision gained footholds in the American market. Many companies emerged to capitalise on the growing industry, including the playing card manufacturer Nintendo.\nHiroshi Yamauchi, who had been Nintendo's president since 1949, realised that breakthroughs in the electronics industry meant that entertainment products could be produced at lower prices. Companies such as Atari and Magnavox were already selling gaming devices for use with television sets, to moderate success. Yamauchi negotiated a licence with Magnavox to sell its game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. Since Nintendo's operation was not yet sophisticated enough to design its own hardware, Yamauchi forged an alliance with Mitsubishi Electric and hired several Sharp Electronics employees to assist in developing the Color TV-Game 6 in Japan. This was followed by a more successful sequel, the Color TV-Game 15, and the handheld Game & Watch series. The successes of these machines gave Yamauchi the confidence to expand Nintendo's influence in the fledgling video game industry.\nIn 1978, Yamauchi split Nintendo into separate research and development divisions. He appointed Masayuki Uemura as head of Nintendo Research & Development 2, a division that focused solely on hardware. Yamauchi, through extensive discussions with Uemura and other engineers, recognised the potential of the developing console beyond gaming. He envisioned a home-computer system disguised as a toy, which could significantly expand Nintendo's reach if it became popular with children. This popularity would drive demand for games, with Nintendo as the sole provider. Indeed, by 1980 several systems had already been released in Japan by both American and Japanese companies. Yamauchi tasked Uemura with developing a system that would be superior to its competitors and difficult to replicate for at least a year. Uemura's main challenge was economic rather than technological; Yamauchi wanted the system to be affordable enough for widespread household adoption, aiming for a price of \u00a59,800 (less than $75) compared to existing machines priced at \u00a530,000 to \u00a550,000 ($200 to $350). The new system had to outperform other systems, both Japanese and American, while being significantly more affordable.\nInception.\nAs development progressed on the new video game system, engineers sought Yamauchi's guidance on its features. They questioned whether to include a disk drive, keyboard, data port, as well as the potential for a modem, expanded memory, and other computer-like capabilities. Yamauchi ultimately instructed Uemura to prioritise simplicity and affordability, omitting these peripherals entirely. Game cartridges, which Uemura saw as \"less intimidating\" to consumers, were chosen as the format. The team designed the system with 2,000 bytes of random-access memory (RAM), significantly more than Atari's 256 bytes. Larger cartridges also allowed for far more complex games, with thirty-two times the code capacity of Atari cartridges.\nThe console's hardware was largely based on arcade video games, particularly the hardware for Namco's \"Galaxian\" (1979) and Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\", with the goal of matching their powerful sprite and scrolling capabilities in a home system. A test model was constructed in October 1982 to verify the functionality of the hardware, and work began on programming tools. Because 65xx CPUs had not been manufactured or sold in Japan by that time, no cross-development software was available and it had to be developed from scratch. Early Famicom games were written on a NEC PC-8001 computer. LEDs on a grid were used with a digitizer to design graphics as no such software design tools existed at that time.\nThe codename for the project was \"GameCom\", but Masayuki Uemura's wife proposed the name \"Famicom\", arguing that \"In Japan, 'pasokon' is used to mean a personal computer, but it is neither a home nor personal computer. Perhaps we could say it is a family computer.\" Meanwhile, Hiroshi Yamauchi decided that the console should use a red and white theme after seeing a billboard for DX Antenna (a Japanese antenna manufacturer) which used those colors.\nDevelopment.\nThe Famicom was influenced by the ColecoVision, Coleco's competition against the Atari 2600 in the United States; the ColecoVision's top-seller was a port of Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\". The project's chief manager Takao Sawano brought a ColecoVision home to his family, impressed by its smooth graphics, which contrasts with the flicker and slowdown commonly seen on Atari 2600 games. Uemura said the ColecoVision set the bar for the Famicom. They wanted to surpass it and match the more powerful \"Donkey Kong\" arcade hardware; they took a \"Donkey Kong\" arcade cabinet to chip manufacturer Ricoh for analysis, which led to Ricoh producing the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) chip for the NES.\nOriginal plans called for the Famicom's cartridges to be the size of a cassette tape, but ultimately they ended up being twice as big. Careful design attention was paid to the cartridge connectors because loose and faulty connections often plagued arcade machines. As it necessitated 60 connection lines for the memory and expansion, Nintendo decided to produce its own connectors.\nThe controllers are hard-wired to the console with no connectors for cost reasons. The controller designs were reused from the Game & Watch machines, although the Famicom design team originally wanted to use arcade-style joysticks, even dismantling some from American game consoles to see how they worked. There were concerns regarding the durability of the joystick design and that children might step on joysticks on the floor. Katsuya Nakawaka attached a Game & Watch D-pad to the Famicom prototype and found that it was easy to use and caused no discomfort. Ultimately though, they installed a 15-pin expansion port on the front of the console so that an optional arcade-style joystick could be used.\nGunpei Yokoi suggested an eject lever, which was not necessary, but he believed that children could be entertained by pressing it. Uemura adopted his idea. Uemura added a microphone to the second controller with the idea that it could be used to make players\u2019 voices sound through the TV speaker.\nJapanese release.\nThe console was released on July 15, 1983, as the for \u00a5 () with three ports of Nintendo's successful arcade games \"Donkey Kong\", \"Donkey Kong Jr.\", and \"Popeye\". The Famicom was slow to gather success; a bad chip set caused the early revisions to crash. Following a product recall and a reissue with a new motherboard, the Famicom's popularity soared, becoming the bestselling game console in Japan by the end of 1984 in what came to be called the \"Famicom Boom\".\nNintendo launched the system with only first-party games, but after being approached by Namco and Hudson Soft in 1984, agreed to produce third-party games for a 30% fee for console licensing and production costs. This rate continued in the industry for consoles and digital storefront into the 21st century.\nNorth American release.\nNintendo targeted the North American market, entering distribution negotiations with Atari, Inc. to release a redesigned Famicom with Atari's name as the Nintendo Advanced Video Gaming System. The deal was set to be finalized and signed at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in June 1983. However, Atari discovered at that show that its competitor Coleco was illegally demonstrating its Coleco Adam computer with Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\" game. This violation of Atari's exclusive license with Nintendo to publish the game for its own computer systems delayed the implementation of Nintendo's game console marketing contract with Atari. Atari's CEO Ray Kassar was fired the next month, so the deal went nowhere, and Nintendo decided to market its system on its own.\nSubsequent plans for the Nintendo Advanced Video System likewise never materialized. It was privately demonstrated as a repackaged Famicom console featuring a keyboard, cassette data recorder, wireless joystick controller, and a special BASIC cartridge. By the beginning of 1985, more than 2.5\u00a0million Famicom units had been sold in Japan, and Nintendo soon announced plans to release it in North America as the Advanced Video Entertainment System (AVS) that year. The American video game press was skeptical that the console could have any success in the region, as the industry was still recovering from the video game crash of 1983. The March 1985 issue of \"Electronic Games\" magazine stated that \"the videogame market in America has virtually disappeared\" and that \"this could be a miscalculation on Nintendo's part\".\nThe Famicom hardware first made its North American debut in the arcades, in the form of the Nintendo VS. System in 1984. The system's success in arcades paved the way for the official release of the NES console. With US retailers refusing to stock game consoles, Yamauchi realized there was still a market for video games in the arcades, so he introduced the Famicom to North America through the arcade industry. The VS. System became a major success in North American arcades, becoming the highest-grossing arcade machine of 1985 in the United States. By the time the NES launched, nearly 100,000 VS. Systems had been sold to American arcades. The success of the VS. System gave Nintendo the confidence to release the Famicom in North America as a video game console, for which there was growing interest due to Nintendo's positive reputation in the arcades. It also gave Nintendo the opportunity to test new games as VS. Paks in the arcades, to determine which games to release for the NES launch.\nAt the 1985 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of the Famicom: a stripped-down and cost-reduced redesign of the Advanced Video System (AVS), having abandoned the home computer approach. Nintendo purposefully designed the system to avoid resembling a video game console and avoided terms associated with game consoles. Marketing manager Gail Tilden chose the term \"Game Pak\" for cartridges, \"Control Deck\" for the console, and \"Entertainment System\" for the whole platform. Renamed the \"Nintendo Entertainment System\" (\"NES\"), the new and cost-reduced version lacked most of the upscale features added in the AVS but retained many of its audiophile-inspired design elements, such as the grey colour scheme and boxy form factor. Disappointed with the cosmetically raw prototype part they received from Japan, which they nicknamed \"the lunchbox\", Nintendo of America designers Lance Barr and Don James added the two-tone gray, the black stripe, and the red lettering. To obscure the video game connotation, the NES replaced the top-loading cartridge slot of the Famicom and AVS with a front-loading chamber for software cartridges that kept the inserted cartridge out of view, reminiscent of a video cassette recorder. The Famicom's pair of hard-wired controllers and the AVS's wireless controllers were replaced with two custom 7-pin sockets for detachable wired controllers.\nAt June 1985's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of its Famicom, with a new case redesigned by Lance Barr and featuring a \"zero insertion force\" cartridge slot. The change from a top-loader in the Famicom to a front-loader was to make the new console more like a video cassette recorder, which had grown in popularity by 1985, and differentiate the unit from past video game consoles. Additionally, Uemura explained that Nintendo developers had feared that the console's electronics might face electrostatic hazards in dry American states such as Arizona and Texas, and a front-loading design would be safer if children handled the console carelessly.\nThis was deployed as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Nintendo seeded these first systems to limited American test markets starting in New York City on October 18, 1985, and followed up in Los Angeles in February 1986; the American nationwide release came on September 27, 1986. Nintendo released 17 launch games: \"10-Yard Fight\", \"Baseball\", \"Clu Clu Land\", \"Duck Hunt\", \"Excitebike\", \"Golf\", \"Gyromite\", \"Hogan's Alley\", \"Ice Climber\", \"Kung Fu\", \"Pinball\", \"Soccer\", \"Stack-Up\", \"Super Mario Bros.\", \"Tennis\", \"Wild Gunman\", and \"Wrecking Crew\". Nintendo contracted Worlds of Wonder to distribute the console physically. WoW salesman Jim Whims distinctly recalled delivering an ultimatum: \"if you want to sell Teddy Ruxpin and you want to sell Lazer Tag, you're gonna sell Nintendo as well. And if you feel that strongly about it, then you ought to just resign the line now.\" This marketing tactic led to the NES' financial success in North America in its first year; Nintendo of America would later terminate the contract and hired the company's sales staff (whom Atari offered them in 1983), while taking on physical distribution of the console itself.\nThe system's launch represented not only a new product, but also a reframing of the severely damaged home video game market in North America. The 1983 video game crash had occurred in large part due to a lack of consumer and retailer confidence in video games, which had been partially due to confusion and misrepresentation in video game marketing. Prior to the NES, the packaging of many video games presented bombastic artwork which did not represent a game's actual graphics. Furthermore, a single game such as \"Pac-Man\" appeared across consoles with substantial variations in graphics, sound, and general quality. In contrast, Nintendo's marketing strategy aimed to regain consumer and retailer confidence by delivering a singular platform whose graphics could be represented truthfully and whose qualities were clearly defined.\nTo differentiate Nintendo's new home platform from the perception of a troubled and shallow video game market still reeling from the 1983 crash, the company freshened its product nomenclature and established a strict product approval and licensing policy. The overall platform is referred to as \"Entertainment System\" instead of a \"video game system\", is centered upon a machine called a \"Control Deck\" instead of a \"console\", and features software cartridges called \"Game Paks\" instead of \"video games\". This allowed Nintendo to gain more traction in selling the system in toy stores. To deter production of games which had not been licensed by Nintendo, and to prevent copying, the 10NES lockout chip system acts as a lock-and-key coupling of each Game Pak and Control Deck. The packaging of the launch lineup of NES games bear pictures of close representations of actual onscreen graphics. To reduce consumer confusion, symbols on the games' packaging clearly indicate the genre of the game. A seal of quality is on all licensed game and accessory packaging. The initial seal states, \"This seal is your assurance that Nintendo has approved and guaranteed the quality of this product\". This text was later changed to \"Official Nintendo Seal of Quality\".\nUnlike with the Famicom, Nintendo of America marketed the console primarily to children, instituting a strict policy of censoring profanity, sexual, religious, or political content. The most famous example is Lucasfilm Games's attempts to port the comedy-horror game \"Maniac Mansion\" to the NES, which Nintendo insisted be considerably watered down.\nThe optional Robotic Operating Buddy, or R.O.B., was part of a marketing plan to portray the NES's technology as being novel and sophisticated when compared to previous game consoles, and to portray its position as being within reach of the better established toy market. Though at first, the American public exhibited limited excitement for the console itself, peripherals such as the light gun and R.O.B. attracted extensive attention.\nOther markets.\nIn Europe and Oceania, the NES was released in two separate marketing regions. The first consisted of mainland Europe (excluding Italy) where distribution was handled by several different companies, with Nintendo responsible for manufacturing. The NES saw an early launch in Europe in 1986 although most of the European countries received the console in 1987. The release in Scandinavia was on September 1, 1986, where it was released by Bergsala. In the Netherlands, it was released in the last quarter of 1987 and was distributed by Bandai BV. In France, it was released in October 1987, and in Spain most likely in 1988 through distributor Spaco. Also in 1987, Mattel handled distribution for the second region, consisting of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Australia and New Zealand. In other European countries, distribution was taken over by smaller companies like Bienengr\u00e4ber in Germany, ASD in France, Concentra in Portugal, Itochu in Greece and Cyprus, Stadlbauer in Austria, Switzerland and the former Eastern Bloc. In Poland, the NES had its release on October 6, 1994 along with the SNES and the Game Boy. In November 1994, Nintendo signed an agreement with Steepler to permit the continued sale of the Dendy, an unauthorized hardware clone of the Famicom, in Russia in exchange for also distributing the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo anticipated the NES would have a 25 per cent share in these countries, and saw particular potential in the United Kingdom. It sold modestly in Europe, however.\nIn Brazil, the console was released late in 1993 by Playtronic, even after the SNES. But the Brazilian market had been dominated by unlicensed NES clones \u2013 both locally made, and smuggled from Taiwan. One of the most successful local clones was the Phantom System, manufactured by Gradiente, which licensed Nintendo products in the country for the following decade. The sales of officially licensed products were low, due to the cloning, the quite late official launch, and the high prices of Nintendo's licensed products.\nOutside of Japan, regions in greater Asia received an \"Asian version\" of the front-loader NES though imported Famicom systems were prevalent. Due to import restrictions, NES consoles in India and South Korea were rebranded and distributed by local licensees. The Indian version is called the \"Samurai Electronic TV Game System\" and the Korean version is called the \"Hyundai Comboy\". The console sold very poorly in India due to affordability and a lack of consumer awareness.\nBundles and redesigns.\nFor its complete North American release, the Nintendo Entertainment System was progressively released over the ensuing years in several different bundles, beginning with the Deluxe Set, the Basic Set, the Action Set, and the Power Set. The Deluxe Set was launched in the 1985 test markets, retailing at US$, including R.O.B., a light gun called the NES Zapper, two controllers, and the two Game Paks \"Gyromite\" and \"Duck Hunt\". The Control Deck bundle was first released in 1987 at $ with no game, and $ bundled with the \"Super Mario Bros.\" cartridge. The Action Set, released April 14, 1988, for $, has the Control Deck, two controllers, an NES Zapper, and a dual Game Pak containing both \"Super Mario Bros.\" and \"Duck Hunt\".\nThe Power Set of 1989 includes the console, two game controllers, an NES Zapper, a Power Pad, and a triple Game Pak containing \"Super Mario Bros\", \"Duck Hunt\", and \"World Class Track Meet\". In 1990, a Sports Set bundle was released, including the console, an NES Satellite infrared wireless multitap adapter, four game controllers, and a dual Game Pak containing \"Super Spike V'Ball\" and \"Nintendo World Cup\". Two more bundle packages were later released with the original model NES console. In 1992, the Challenge Set was released for $ with the console, two controllers, and a \"Super Mario Bros. 3\" Game Pak. The Basic Set retailed at US$; it included only the console and two controllers, and no pack-in game. Instead, it contained a book called the \"Official Nintendo Player's Guide\", which contained detailed information for every NES game made up to that point.\nFinally, the console was redesigned for the Australian, North American, and Japanese markets, including the New-Style NES, or NES-101, and one redesigned \"dogbone\" game controller. In Australia, this console revision was released with a cartridge compiling \"Super Mario Bros\", \"Tetris\", and \"Nintendo World Cup\". Released in October 1993 in North America and 1994 in Australia, this final bundle retailed for $ and A$ (A$ with the pack-in game) respectively, and was discontinued with the NES in 1995.\nDiscontinuation.\nOn August 14, 1995, Nintendo discontinued the Nintendo Entertainment System in both North America and Europe. In North America, replacements for the original front-loading NES were available for $ in exchange for a broken system until at least December 1996, under Nintendo's Power Swap program. The Game Boy and Super NES were covered for $ and $ respectively.\nOn May 30, 2003, Nintendo announced the discontinuation of the Famicom in September alongside the Super Famicom and the disk rewriting services for the Famicom Disk System. The last Famicom, serial number HN11033309, was manufactured on September 25; it was kept by Nintendo and subsequently loaned to the organizers of Level X, a video game exhibition held from December 4, 2003, to February 8, 2004, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, for a Famicom retrospective in commemoration of the console's 20th anniversary. Nintendo offered repair service for the Famicom in Japan until 2007, when it was discontinued due to a shortage of available parts.\nHardware.\nConfigurations.\nAlthough all versions of the Famicom and NES include essentially similar hardware, they vary in physical characteristics. The original Famicom's design is predominantly white plastic, with dark red trim; it featured a top-loading cartridge slot, grooves on both sides of the deck in which the hardwired game controllers could be placed when not in use, and a 15-pin expansion port located on the unit's front panel for accessories. In contrast, the design of the original NES features a more subdued gray, black, and red color scheme; it includes a front-loading cartridge slot covered by a small, hinged door that can be opened to insert or remove a cartridge and closed at other times, and an expansion port on the bottom of the unit. Compared to the Famicom, the NES includes the 10NES lockout chip and incorporates a matching chip validation check in its cartridge connector.\nIn late 1993, Nintendo introduced a redesigned version of the Famicom and NES (officially named the New Famicom in Japan and the New-Style NES in the US) to complement the Super Famicom and SNES, to prolong interest in the console, and to reduce costs. The redesigned NES features a top-loading cartridge slot and omits the 10NES lockout chip to avoid reliability issues with the original console; the redesign also omits AV output. Conversely, the redesigned Famicom features such output and introduces detachable game controllers, though the microphone functionality is omitted as a result. The redesigned Famicom and NES models are cosmetically similar aside from the presence of a cartridge \"bump\" on the NES model, which the Famicom model lacks to accommodate its shorter cartridges and the RAM Adapter for the Famicom Disk System.\nSharp Corporation produced three licensed variants of the Famicom in Japan, all of which prominently display the shortened moniker rather than the official name, Family Computer. One variant was a television set with an integrated Famicom; originally released in 1983 as the My Computer TV in and models, it was later released in the United States in 1989 as a 19-inch model named the Video Game Television. Another variant is the Twin Famicom console released in 1986 to combine a Famicom with a Famicom Disk System. Sharp then produced the Famicom Titler in 1989. Intended for video capture and production, it features internal RGB video generation and video output via S-Video, plus inputs for adding subtitles and voice-overs.\nHardware clones.\nA thriving market of unlicensed NES hardware clones emerged during the climax of the console's popularity. Initially, such clones were popular in markets with weak copyright law and where Nintendo issue it's systems after famiclones become well known across specific region, making legal products hard to market or create brand awareness. In particular, the Dendy (), an unlicensed hardware clone produced in Taiwan and sold in the former Soviet Union by Steepler, emerged as the most popular video game console of its time in that setting and it enjoyed a degree of fame roughly equivalent to that experienced by the NES/Famicom in North America and Japan, eventually selling 6 million units. Poland had a similar story with Pegasus distributed by Bobmark International which sold more than 1 million units. In China, a place where many of these clones were manufactured, the media reported 30 million units sold until late 1995. A range of Famicom clones was marketed in Latin America during the late 1980s and 1990s with the name Family Game, resembling the original hardware design. Thailand got Family FR brand famiclones, Brazil a superior to the original Phantom System, the Micro Genius (Simplified Chinese: \u5c0f\u5929\u624d) was marketed in Southeast Asia as an alternative to the Famicom; Ending-Man Terminator enjoyed popularity in European Eastern Bloc, parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America. It happened that these clones reached countries with very good copyright law and high awareness of the Nintendo brand such as Power Player Super Joy III in US.\nThe unlicensed clone market has flourished following Nintendo's discontinuation of the NES. Some of the more exotic of these resulting systems surpass the functionality of the original hardware, such as a portable system with a color LCD (PocketFami). Others have been produced for certain specialized markets, such as a rather primitive personal computer with a keyboard and basic word processing software. These unauthorized clones have been helped by the invention of the so-called NES-on-a-chip.\nAs was the case with unlicensed games, Nintendo has typically gone to the courts to prohibit the manufacture and sale of unlicensed cloned hardware. Many of the clone vendors have included built-in copies of licensed Nintendo software, which constitutes copyright infringement in most countries.\nDesign flaws.\nNintendo's design styling for US release was made deliberately different from that of other game consoles. Nintendo wanted to distinguish its product from those of competitors and to avoid the generally poor reputation that game consoles had acquired following the video game crash of 1983. One result of this philosophy is to disguise the cartridge slot design as a front-loading zero-insertion force (ZIF) cartridge socket, designed to resemble the front-loading mechanism of a VCR. The socket works well when both the connector and the cartridges are clean and the pins on the connector are new. However, the socket is not truly zero-insertion force. When a user inserts the cartridge into the NES, the force of pressing the cartridge into place bends the contact pins slightly and presses the cartridge's ROM board back into the cartridge. Frequent insertion and removal of cartridges wears out the pins, and the ZIF design proved more prone to interference by dirt and dust than an industry-standard card edge connector.\nThe design problems were exacerbated by Nintendo's choice of materials. The console slot nickel connector springs wear due to design and the game cartridge's brass plated nickel connectors are also prone to tarnishing and oxidation. Nintendo sought to fix these problems by redesigning the next generation Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) as a top loader similar to the Famicom. Many players try to alleviate issues in the game caused by this corrosion by blowing into the cartridges, then reinserting them, which actually speeds up the tarnishing due to moisture. One way to slow down the tarnishing process and extend the life of the cartridges is to use isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs.\nUsers have attempted to solve these problems by blowing air onto the cartridge connectors, inserting the cartridge just far enough to get the ZIF to lower, licking the edge connector, slapping the side of the system after inserting a cartridge, shifting the cartridge from side to side after insertion, pushing the ZIF up and down repeatedly, holding the ZIF down lower than it should have been, and cleaning the connectors with alcohol. Many frequently used methods to fix this problem actually risk damaging gaming cartridges or the system. In 1989, Nintendo released an official NES Cleaning Kit to help users clean malfunctioning cartridges and consoles.\nIn response to these hardware flaws, \"Nintendo Authorized Repair Centers\" sprang up across the U.S. According to Nintendo, the authorization program was designed to ensure that the machines were properly repaired. Nintendo would ship the necessary replacement parts only to shops that had enrolled in the authorization program.\nWith the release of the top-loading NES-101 (New-Style NES) in 1993 toward the end of the NES's lifespan, Nintendo resolved the problems by switching to a standard card edge connector and eliminating the lockout chip. All of the Famicom systems use standard card edge connectors, as do Nintendo's two subsequent game consoles, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Nintendo 64.\nLockout.\nThe Famicom as released in Japan contains no lockout hardware, which led to unlicensed cartridges (both legitimate and bootleg) becoming extremely common throughout Japan and East Asia. Nintendo tried to promote its \"Seal of Quality\" in these regions to identify licensed games to combat bootlegs, but bootleg Famicom games continued to be produced even after Nintendo moved production onto the Super Famicom, effectively extending the lifetime of the Famicom.\nThe original NES released for Western countries in 1985 contains the 10NES lockout chip, which prevents it from running cartridges unapproved by Nintendo. The inclusion of the 10NES was a direct influence from the 1983 video game crash in North America, partially caused by a market flooded with uncontrolled publishing of games of poor quality for the home consoles. Nintendo did not want to see that happen with the NES and used the lockout chip to restrict games to only those they licensed and approved for the system. This means of protection worked in combination with the Nintendo \"Seal of Quality\", which a developer had to acquire before they would be able to have access to the required 10NES information prior to publication of their game.\nInitially, the 10NES chip proved a significant barrier to unlicensed developers seeking to develop and sell games for the console. However, hobbyists in later years discovered that disassembling the NES and cutting the fourth pin of the lockout chip would change the chip's mode of operation from \"lock\" to \"key\", removing all effects and greatly improving the console's ability to play legal games, bootlegs, and converted imports.\nOriginal NES consoles sold in different regions have different lockout chips, thereby enforcing regional lockout (regardless of TV signal compatibility). Such regions include North America; most of continental Europe (PAL-B); Asia; and the British Isles, Italy, and Australasia (PAL-A).\nProblems with the 10NES lockout chip frequently result in one of the console's most common issues: the blinking red power light, in which the system appears to turn itself on and off repeatedly because the 10NES would reset the console once per second. The lockout chip required constant communication with the chip in the game to work. Dirty, aging, and bent connectors often disrupt the communication, resulting in the blink effect. In other cases, the console turns on but only displays a solid white, gray, or green screen.\nTechnical specifications.\nThe console's main central processing unit (CPU) was produced by Ricoh, which manufactured different versions between NTSC and PAL regions; NTSC consoles have a 2A03 clocked at 1.79\u00a0MHzTooltip megahertz, and PAL consoles have a 2A07 clocked at 1.66\u00a0MHz. Both CPUs are unlicensed variants of the MOS Technology 6502, an 8-bit microprocessor prevalent in contemporary home computers and consoles; Nintendo ostensibly disabled the 6502's binary-coded decimal mode on them to avoid patent infringement against or licensing fees towards MOS Technology, which was owned by then-rival Commodore International. The CPU has access to 2\u00a0KBTooltip kilobyte of onboard work RAMTooltip random-access memory.\nThe console's graphics are handled by a Ricoh 2C02, a processor known as the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) that is clocked at 5.37\u00a0MHz. A derivative of the Texas Instruments TMS9918\u2014a video display controller used in the ColecoVision\u2014the PPU features 2\u00a0KB of video RAM, 256\u00a0bytes of on-die \"object attribute memory\" (OAM) to store sprite display information on up to 64 sprites, and 28\u00a0bytes of RAM to store information on the YIQ-based color palette; the console can display up to 25 colors simultaneously out of 54 usable colors.\nThe console's standard display resolution is 256 \u00d7 240 pixels, though video output options vary between models. The original Famicom features only radio frequency (RF) modulator output, and the NES additionally supports composite video via RCA connectors. The redesigned Famicom omits the RF modulator entirely, only outputting composite video via a proprietary \"multi-out\" connector first introduced on the Super Famicom/SNES; conversely, the redesigned NES features RF modulator output only, though a version of the model including the \"multi-out\" connector was produced in rare quantities.\nThe console produces sound via an audio processing unit (APU) integrated into the processor. It supports a total of five sound channels: two pulse wave channels, one triangle wave channel, one white noise channel, and one DPCMTooltip differential pulse-code modulation channel for sample playback. Audio playback speed is dependent on the CPU clock rate, which is set by a crystal oscillator.\nAccessories.\nControllers.\nThe game controller for both the NES and the Famicom has an oblong brick-like design with a simple four button layout: two round buttons labeled \"A\" and \"B\", a \"START\" button, and a \"SELECT\" button. Additionally, the controllers use the cross-shaped D-pad, designed by Nintendo employee Gunpei Yokoi for Nintendo Game & Watch systems, to replace the bulkier joysticks on controllers of earlier gaming consoles.\nThe original model Famicom features two game controllers, both of which are hardwired to the back of the console. The second controller lacks the START and SELECT button, featuring a small microphone instead; however, few games use this feature. The earliest produced Famicom units have square A and B buttons; issues with them getting stuck when pressed down led Nintendo to change their shape to a circular design in subsequent units following the console's recall.\nInstead of the Famicom's hardwired controllers, the NES has two proprietary seven-pin ports on the front of the console to support detachable controllers and third-party peripherals. The controllers bundled with the NES are identical and include the START and SELECT buttons, lacking the microphone on the original Famicom's second controller. The cables for NES controllers are also generally three times longer than their Famicom counterparts.\nSeveral special controllers are intended for use with specific games, though are not commonly used. Such peripherals include the NES Zapper (a light gun), R.O.B. (a toy robot), and the Power Pad (a dance pad). The original Famicom has a deepened DA-15 expansion port on the front of the unit to accommodate them.\nTwo official advanced controllers were produced for the NES: the NES Advantage, an arcade controller produced by Asciiware and licensed by Nintendo of America; and the NES Max, a controller with grip handles and a \"cycloid\" sliding-disc D-pad in place of the traditional one. Both controllers have a \"Turbo\" feature, which simulates multiple rapid button presses, for the A and B buttons; the NES Max has manually pressed Turbo buttons, and the NES Advantage offers toggle buttons for Turbo functionality along with knobs that adjust the firing rate of each button. The latter also includes a \"Slow\" button that rapidly pauses games, though this function is not intended for games that invoke a pause menu or screen.\nThe standard game controller was redesigned upon the introduction of the redesigned console. Though the original button layout was retained, the shape of the redesigned controller\u2014nicknamed the \"dog bone\" controller\u2014resembles that of the Super Famicom and SNES. It retained NES-style detachable controller ports.\nThe original NES controller has become one of the most recognizable symbols of the console. Nintendo has mimicked the look of the controller in several other products, from promotional merchandise to limited edition versions of the Game Boy Advance.\nJapanese accessories.\nFew of the numerous peripheral devices and software packages for the Famicom were released outside Japan.\nThe Famicom 3D System, an active shutter 3D headset peripheral released in 1987, enabled the ability to play stereoscopic video games. It was a commercial failure and never released outside Japan; users described the headset as bulky and uncomfortable. Seven games are compatible with the glasses, with three of them developed by Square; two titles received worldwide releases as \"Rad Racer\" and \"The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner\".\n\"Family BASIC\" is an implementation of BASIC for the Famicom, packaged with a keyboard. Similar in concept to the Atari 2600 \"BASIC\" cartridge, it allows the user to write programs, especially games, which can be saved on an included cassette recorder. Nintendo of America rejected releasing \"Famicom BASIC\" in the US in favor of its primary marketing demographic of children.\nThe Famicom Modem connected a Famicom to a now defunct proprietary network in Japan which provided content such as financial services. A dial-up modem was never released for the NES after a partnership with Fidelity Investments.\nFamicom Disk System.\nBy 1986, the cost and size limitations of ROM chips used in the Famicom's ROM cartridges were apparent, with no new advancements present to address them. With this in mind, Nintendo looked at the personal computer (PC) market, where the floppy disk was gaining wide adoption as a computer data storage medium. Partnering with Mitsumi to develop a floppy disk add-on for the Famicom based on the latter's Quick Disk format, Nintendo officially released it as the Family Computer Disk System in Japan on February 21, 1986, at a retail price of \u00a515,000.\nThe advantages of the format (called \"Disk Card\") were apparent on launch. It has more than triple the data storage capacity of the then-largest cartridge (used for \"Super Mario Bros.\") and introduced game save capability and lower production costs compared to cartridges, which resulted in lower retail prices for consumers. The add-on also has a new wavetable synthesis sound channel and more data storage for the Famicom's audio sample channel. Taking advantage of the disk's re-writability, Nintendo set up Disk Writer interactive kiosks at retail stores throughout Japan; at each kiosk, consumers could buy new games to rewrite onto their old disks or onto new disks. Disk Fax kiosks allowed players to submit their high scores on special blue disks for contests and rankings, predating the online leaderboard by several years.\nAlthough Nintendo committed to exclusively releasing games on the Disk System after its release, numerous external issues plagued its long-term viability. Just four months after launch, Capcom released a Famicom port of \"Makaimura\" (known as \"Ghosts 'n Goblins\" in the U.S.) on a cartridge with more data storage capacity than what was possible on Disk Cards, nullifying one of the Disk System's major advantages by using discrete logic chips to perform bank switching. Nintendo also demanded half of the copyright ownership for each game it selected for release on the Disk System, resulting in developers electing to remain on cartridge instead as the latter gained functionality previously considered unique to the former. Developers disliked the lower profit margin of the Disk Writer kiosks, and retailers complained of their use of valuable space as demand for the format waned.\nUsage of a floppy disk-based medium brought about further complications; Disk Cards were more fragile than cartridges and were prone to data corruption from magnetic exposure. Their unreliability was exacerbated by their lack of a shutter, which Nintendo substituted with a wax sleeve and clear keep case to reduce costs; blue disks and later Disk Cards included shutters. The rubber belt-based disk drives were also unreliable, with cryptic error codes complicating troubleshooting; even when fully functional, players accustomed to cartridges were annoyed with the introduction of loading times and disk flipping. Furthermore, the rewritable nature of the format resulted in rampant software piracy, with Nintendo's attempts at anti-piracy measures quickly defeated.\nThough selling close to two million units for all of 1986, Nintendo only managed to increase the total to 4.4\u00a0million units by 1990, falling well short of internal projections. By then, the Disk System was rendered obsolete due to advancements in ROM cartridge production: memory mapping chips for expanded data storage capacity, battery-backed SRAMTooltip static random-access memory for game saving, and declining overall production costs. Nintendo alluded to a Western release for the Disk System, going so far as to successfully file a U.S. patent for it and having the Famicom's cartridge pins used by its RAM Adapter for enhanced audio rerouted to the NES's little-used bottom expansion port. However, such a release never materialized due to its reception in Japan. Most of its games were re-released with workarounds on cartridge for both the Famicom and NES, without the enhanced audio. Although the last game for the Disk System was released in December 1992, Nintendo continued repair and rewrite services for it until September 2003.\nNES Test Station.\nThe NES Test Station diagnostics machine was introduced in 1988. It is an NES-based unit designed for testing NES hardware, components, and games. It was only provided for use in World of Nintendo boutiques as part of the Nintendo World Class Service program. Visitors were to bring items to test with the station, and could be assisted by a store technician or employee.\nThe NES Test Station's front has a Game Pak slot and connectors for testing various components (AC adapter, RF switch, Audio/Video cable, NES Control Deck, accessories and games), with a centrally-located selector knob to choose which component to test. The unit itself weighs approximately 11.7 pounds without a TV. It connects to a television via a combined A/V and RF Switch cable. By actuating the green button, a user can toggle between an A/V Cable or RF Switch connection. The television it is connected to (typically 11\" to 14\") is meant to be placed atop it.\nIn 1991, Nintendo provided an add-on called the \"Super NES Counter Tester\" that tests Super NES components and games. The Super NES Counter Tester is a standard Control Deck on a metal fixture with the connection from the back of the unit re-routed to the front. These connections may be made directly to the test station or to the TV, depending on what is to be tested.\nGames.\nGame Pak.\nThe NES uses a 72-pin design, as compared with 60 pins on the Famicom. To reduce costs and inventory, some early games released in North America are simply Famicom cartridges attached to an adapter to fit inside the NES hardware. Early NES cartridges are held together with five small slotted screws. Games released after 1987 were redesigned slightly to incorporate two plastic clips molded into the plastic itself, removing the need for the top two screws.\nThe back of the cartridge bears a label with handling instructions. Production and software revision codes were imprinted as stamps on the back label to correspond with the software version and producer. All licensed NTSC and PAL cartridges are a standard shade of gray plastic, with the exception of \"The Legend of Zelda\" and ', which were manufactured in gold-plastic carts. Unlicensed carts were produced in black, robin egg blue, and gold, and are all slightly different shapes than standard NES cartridges. Nintendo also produced yellow-plastic carts for internal use at Nintendo Service Centers, although these \"test carts\" were never made available for purchase. All licensed US cartridges were made by Nintendo, Konami, and Acclaim. For promotion of ', Capcom sent 150 limited-edition gold NES cartridges with the original game, featuring the \"Remastered\" art as the sticker, to different gaming news agencies. The instruction label on the back includes the opening lyric from the show's theme song, \"Life is like a hurricane\".\nFamicom cartridges are shaped slightly differently. Unlike NES games, official Famicom cartridges were produced in many colors of plastic. Adapters, similar in design to the popular accessory Game Genie, are available that allow Famicom games to be played on an NES. In Japan, several companies manufactured the cartridges for the Famicom. This allowed these companies to develop customized chips designed for specific purposes, such as superior sound and graphics.\nThird-party licensing.\nNintendo's near monopoly on the home video game market left it with a dominant influence over the industry. Unlike Atari, which never actively pursued third-party developers (and even went to court in an attempt to force Activision to cease production of Atari 2600 games), Nintendo had anticipated and encouraged the involvement of third-party software developers, though strictly on Nintendo's terms. Some of the Nintendo platform-control measures were adopted in a less stringent way by later console manufacturers such as Sega, Sony, and Microsoft.\nTo this end, a 10NES authentication chip is in every console and in every licensed cartridge. If the console's chip can not detect a counterpart chip inside the cartridge, the game does not load. Nintendo portrayed these measures as intended to protect the public against poor-quality games, and placed a golden seal of approval on all licensed games released for the system.\nNintendo found success with Japanese arcade manufacturers such as Konami, Capcom, Taito, and Namco, which signed on as third-party developers. However, they found resistance with US game developers including Atari Games, Activision, Electronic Arts, and Epyx refusing Nintendo's one-sided terms. Acclaim Entertainment, a fledgling game publisher founded by former Activision employees, was the first major third-party licensee in the United States to sign on with Nintendo in late 1987. Atari Games (through Tengen) and Activision signed on soon after.\nNintendo was not as restrictive as Sega, which did not permit third-party publishing until Mediagenic in late summer 1988. Nintendo's intention was to reserve a large part of NES game revenue for itself. Nintendo required that it be the sole manufacturer of all cartridges, and that the publisher had to pay in full before the cartridges for that game be produced. Cartridges could not be returned to Nintendo, so publishers assumed all the risk. As a result, some publishers lost more money due to distress sales of remaining inventory at the end of the NES era than they ever earned in profits from sales of the games. Because Nintendo controlled the production of all cartridges, it was able to enforce strict rules on its third-party developers, who were required to sign a contract that would obligate them to develop exclusively for the system, order at least 10,000 cartridges, and only make five games per year. The global 1988 shortage of DRAM and ROM chips reportedly caused Nintendo to only permit an average of 25% of publishers' requests for cartridges, with some receiving much higher amounts and others almost none. GameSpy noted that Nintendo's \"iron-clad terms\" made the company many enemies during the 1980s. Some developers tried to circumvent the five game limit by creating additional company brands like Konami's Ultra Games label; others tried circumventing the 10NES chip.\nNintendo was accused of antitrust violations because of the strict licensing requirements. The United States Department of Justice and several states began probing Nintendo's business practices, leading to the involvement of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC conducted an extensive investigation which included interviewing hundreds of retailers. During the FTC probe, Nintendo changed the terms of its publisher licensing agreements to eliminate the two-year rule and other restrictive terms. Nintendo and the FTC settled the case in April 1991, with Nintendo required to send vouchers giving a $5 discount off to a new game, to every person that had purchased an NES game between June 1988 and December 1990. GameSpy remarked that Nintendo's punishment was particularly weak given the case's findings, although it has been speculated that the FTC did not want to damage the video game industry in the United States.\nWith the NES near the end of its life, many third-party publishers such as Electronic Arts supported upstart competing consoles with less strict licensing terms such as the Sega Genesis and then the PlayStation, which eroded and then took over Nintendo's dominance in the home console market, respectively. Consoles from Nintendo's rivals in the post-SNES era had always enjoyed much stronger third-party support than Nintendo, which relied more heavily on first-party games.\nUnlicensed games.\nCompanies that refused to pay the licensing fee or were rejected by Nintendo found ways to circumvent the console's authentication system. Most of these companies created circuits that use a voltage spike to temporarily disable the 10NES chip. A few unlicensed games released in Europe and Australia are in the form of a dongle to connect to a licensed game, to use the licensed game's 10NES chip for authentication. To combat unlicensed games, Nintendo of America threatened retailers who sold them with losing their supply of licensed games, and multiple revisions were made to the NES PCBs to prevent unlicensed games from working.\nAtari Games took a different approach with its line of NES products, Tengen. The company attempted to reverse engineer the lockout chip to develop its own \"Rabbit\" chip. Tengen also obtained a description of the lockout chip from the United States Patent and Trademark Office by falsely claiming that it was required to defend against present infringement claims. Nintendo successfully sued Tengen for copyright infringement. Tengen's antitrust claims against Nintendo were never decided.\nColor Dreams made Christian video games under the subsidiary name Wisdom Tree. Historian Steven Kent wrote, \"Wisdom Tree presented Nintendo with a prickly situation. The general public did not seem to pay close attention to the court battle with Atari Games, and industry analysts were impressed with Nintendo's legal acumen; but going after a tiny company that published innocuous religious games was another story.\"\nGame rentals.\nAs the Nintendo Entertainment System grew in popularity and entered millions of American homes, some small video rental shops began buying their own copies of NES games, and renting them out to customers for around the same price as a video cassette rental for a few days. Nintendo received no profit from the practice beyond the initial cost of their game, and unlike movie rentals, a newly released game could hit store shelves and be available for rent on the same day. Nintendo took steps to stop game rentals, but did not take any formal legal action until Blockbuster Video began to make game rentals a large-scale service. Nintendo claimed that allowing customers to rent games would significantly hurt sales and drive up the cost of games. Nintendo lost the lawsuit, but did win on a claim of copyright infringement. Blockbuster was banned from including photocopies of original, copyrighted instruction booklets with its rented games. In compliance with the ruling, Blockbuster produced original short instructions\u2014usually in the form of a small booklet, card, or label stuck on the back of the rental box\u2014that explained the game's basic premise and controls. Video rental shops continued the practice of renting video games.\nReception.\nBy 1988, industry observers stated that the NES's popularity had grown so quickly that the market for Nintendo cartridges was larger than that for all home computer software. \"Compute!\" reported in 1989 that Nintendo had sold seven million NES systems in 1988 alone, almost as many as the number of Commodore 64s sold in its first five years. \"Computer game makers [are] scared stiff\", the magazine said, stating that Nintendo's popularity caused most competitors to have poor sales during the previous Christmas and resulted in serious financial problems for some.\nIn June 1989, Nintendo of America's vice president of marketing Peter Main, said that the Famicom was present in 37% of Japan's households. By 1990, 30% of American households owned the NES, compared to 23% for all personal computers. By 1990, the NES had outsold all previously released consoles worldwide. The slogan for this brand was \"It can't be beaten\". The Nintendo Entertainment System was not available in the Soviet Union.\nIn the early 1990s, gamers predicted that competition from technologically superior systems such as the 16-bit Sega Genesis would mean the immediate end of the NES's dominance. Instead, during the first year of Nintendo's successor console the Super Famicom (named Super Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan), the Famicom remained the second highest-selling video game console in Japan, outselling the newer and more powerful NEC PC Engine and Sega Mega Drive by a wide margin. The console remained popular in Japan and North America until late 1993, when the demand for new NES software abruptly plummeted. The final licensed Famicom game released in Japan is \"Takahashi Meijin no B\u014dken Jima IV (Adventure Island IV)\", in North America is \"Wario's Woods\", and in Europe is \"The Lion King\" in 1995. In the wake of ever decreasing sales and the lack of new games, Nintendo of America officially discontinued the NES by 1995. Nintendo produced new Famicom units in Japan until September 25, 2003, and continued to repair Famicom consoles until October 31, 2007, attributing the discontinuation of support to insufficient supplies of parts.\nThe NES was initially not as successful in Europe during the late 1980s, when it was outsold by the Master System in the United Kingdom. By 1990, the Master System was the highest-selling console in Europe, though the NES was beginning to have a fast-growing user base in the United Kingdom. During the early 1990s, NES sales caught up with and narrowly overtook the Master System overall in Western Europe, though the Master System maintained its lead in several markets such as the United Kingdom, Belgium and Spain.\nLegacy.\nThe NES was released two years after the video game crash of 1983, when many retailers and adult consumers regarded electronic games as a passing fad, so many believed at first that the NES would soon fade. Before the NES and Famicom, Nintendo was known as a moderately successful Japanese toy and playing card manufacturer, but the consoles' popularity helped the company grow into an internationally recognized name almost synonymous with video games as Atari had been, and set the stage for Japanese dominance of the video game industry. With the NES, Nintendo also changed the relationship between console manufacturers and third-party software developers by restricting developers from publishing and distributing software without licensed approval. This led to higher-quality games, which helped change the attitude of a public that had grown weary from poorly produced games for earlier systems.\nThe NES hardware design is also very influential. Nintendo chose the name \"Nintendo Entertainment System\" for the US market and redesigned the system so it would not give the appearance of a child's toy. The front-loading cartridge input allowed it to be used more easily in a TV stand with other entertainment devices, such as a videocassette recorder.\nThe system's hardware limitations led to design principles that still influence the development of modern video games. Many prominent game franchises originated on the NES, including Nintendo's own \"Super Mario Bros.\",| \"The Legend of Zelda\" and \"Metroid\", Capcom's \"Mega Man\" franchise, Konami's \"Castlevania\" franchise, Square's \"Final Fantasy\",| and Enix's \"Dragon Quest\"| franchises.\nNES imagery, especially its controller, has become a popular motif for a variety of products, including Nintendo's Game Boy Advance.\nAt the Tokyo Game Show in 2023, the \"Famicom\" was bestowed \"The Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Award\" in honour of the console's influence and laying down the foundations for the games industry.\nThe NES library includes some influential games. \"Super Mario Bros.\" is the forerunner of side-scrolling games, while \"The Legend of Zelda\" had mostly influenced action-adventure games and helped popularizing the save data in video games. Other two influential games are \"Metroid\" and \"Castlevania II\", which had established the metroidvania genre.\nIn 2011, \"IGN\" named the NES the greatest video game console of all time.\nEmulation.\nThe NES can be emulated on many other systems. The first emulator was the Japanese-only Pasofami. It was soon followed by iNES, which is available in English and is cross-platform, in 1996. It was described as being the first NES emulation software that could be used by a non-expert. The first version of NESticle, an unofficial MS-DOS-based emulator, was released on April 3, 1997. Nintendo offers licensed emulation of some NES games via its Virtual Console service for the Wii, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U, and via its Nintendo Switch Online service.\nRe-release.\nOn July 14, 2016, Nintendo announced the November 2016 launch of a miniature replica of the NES, named the Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition in the United States and Nintendo Classic Mini: Nintendo Entertainment System in Europe and Australia. The emulation-based console includes 30 permanently bundled games from the vintage NES library, including the \"Super Mario Bros.\" series and \"The Legend of Zelda\" series. The system has HDMI display output and a new replica controller, which can also connect to the Wii Remote for use with Virtual Console games. It was discontinued in North America on April 13, 2017, and worldwide on April 15, 2017. However, Nintendo announced in September 2017 that the NES Classic Mini would return to production on June 29, 2018, only to be discontinued again permanently by December of that year.\nNotes.\nTransliterations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["18944028", "28314", "5677000"], "permutation_1": ["18944028", "28314", "5677000"], "permutation_2": ["28314", "18944028", "5677000"], "permutation_3": ["18944028", "28314", "5677000"]}
{"id": "3hop1__159612_22372_8111", "docs_added": {"17926": "League of Nations\n20th-century international organisation, predecessor to the United Nations\nThe League of Nations (LN or LoN; , SdN) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. The main organisation ceased operations on 18 April 1946 when many of its components were relocated into the new United Nations (UN) which was created in the aftermath of the Second World War. As the template for modern global governance, the League profoundly shaped the modern world.\nThe League's primary goals were stated in its eponymous Covenant. They included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration. Its other concerns included labour conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, human and drug trafficking, the arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in Europe. The Covenant of the League of Nations was signed on 28 June 1919 as Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, and it became effective with the rest of the Treaty on 10 January 1920. Australia was granted the right to participate as an autonomous member nation, marking the start of Australian independence on the global stage. The first meeting of the Council of the League took place on 16 January 1920, and the first meeting of the Assembly of the League took place on 15 November 1920. In 1919, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role as the leading architect of the League.\nThe diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift from the preceding hundred years. The League lacked its own armed force and depended on the victorious Allied Powers of World War I (Britain, France, Italy and Japan were the initial permanent members of the Council) to enforce its resolutions, keep to its economic sanctions, or provide an army when needed. The Great Powers were often reluctant to do so. Sanctions could hurt League members, so they were reluctant to comply with them. During the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, when the League accused Italian soldiers of targeting International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement medical tents, Benito Mussolini responded that \"the League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out.\"\nAt its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935, it had 58 members. After some notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930s. Its credibility was weakened because the United States never joined. Japan and Germany left in 1933, Italy left in 1937, and Spain left in 1939. The Soviet Union only joined in 1934 and was expelled in 1939 after invading Finland. Furthermore, the League demonstrated an irresolute approach to sanction enforcement for fear it might only spark further conflict, further decreasing its credibility. One example of this hesitancy was the Abyssinia Crisis, in which Italy's sanctions were only limited from the outset (coal and oil were not restricted), and later altogether abandoned despite Italy being declared the aggressors in the conflict. The onset of the Second World War in 1939 showed that the League had failed its primary purpose: to prevent another world war. It was largely inactive until its abolition. The League lasted for 26 years; the United Nations effectively replaced it in 1945, inheriting several agencies and organisations founded by the League, with the League itself formally dissolving the following year.\nCurrent scholarly consensus views that, even though the League failed to achieve its main goal of world peace, it did manage to build new roads towards expanding the rule of law across the globe; strengthened the concept of collective security, gave a voice to smaller nations; fostered economic stabilisation and financial stability, especially in Central Europe in the 1920s; helped to raise awareness of problems such as epidemics, slavery, child labour, colonial tyranny, refugee crises and general working conditions through its numerous commissions and committees; and paved the way for new forms of statehood, as the mandate system put the colonial powers under international observation. Professor David Kennedy portrays the League as a unique moment when international affairs were \"institutionalised\", as opposed to the pre\u2013First World War methods of law and politics.\nOrigins.\nBackground.\nThe concept of a peaceful community of nations had been proposed as early as 1795, when Immanuel Kant's \"\" outlined the idea of a league of nations to control conflict and promote peace between states. Kant argued for the establishment of a peaceful world community, not in a sense of a global government, but in the hope that each state would declare itself a free state that respects its citizens and welcomes foreign visitors as fellow rational beings, thus promoting peaceful society worldwide. International co-operation to promote collective security originated in the Concert of Europe that developed after the Napoleonic Wars in the 19th century in an attempt to maintain the \"status quo\" between European states and so avoid war.\nBy 1910, international law developed, with the first Geneva Conventions establishing laws dealing with humanitarian relief during wartime, and the international Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 governing rules of war and the peaceful settlement of international disputes. Theodore Roosevelt at the acceptance for his Nobel Prize in 1910, said: \"it would be a masterstroke if those great powers honestly bent on peace would form a League of Peace.\"\nOne small forerunner of the League of Nations, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), was formed by the peace activists William Randal Cremer and Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Passy in 1889 (and still exists as an international body focused on the world's various elected legislative bodies). The IPU was founded with an international scope, with a third of the members of parliaments (in the 24 countries that had parliaments) serving as members of the IPU by 1914. Its foundational aims were to encourage governments to solve international disputes by peaceful means. Annual conferences were established to help governments refine the process of international arbitration. Its structure was designed as a council headed by a president, which would later be reflected in the structure of the League.\nPlans and proposals.\nAt the start of the First World War, the first schemes for an international organisation to prevent future wars began to gain considerable public support, particularly in Great Britain and the United States. Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, a British political scientist, coined the term \"League of Nations\" in 1914 and drafted a scheme for its organisation. Together with Lord Bryce, he played a leading role in the founding of the group of internationalist pacifists known as the Bryce Group, later the League of Nations Union. The group became steadily more influential among the public and as a pressure group within the then-governing Liberal Party. In Dickinson's 1915 pamphlet \"After the War\" he wrote of his \"League of Peace\" as being essentially an organisation for arbitration and conciliation. He felt that the secret diplomacy of the early twentieth century had brought about war, and thus, could write that, \"the impossibility of war, I believe, would be increased in proportion as the issues of foreign policy should be known to and controlled by public opinion.\" The 'Proposals' of the Bryce Group were circulated widely, both in England and the US, where they had a profound influence on the nascent international movement.\nIn January 1915, a peace conference directed by Jane Addams was held in the neutral United States. The delegates adopted a platform calling for creation of international bodies with administrative and legislative powers to develop a \"permanent league of neutral nations\" to work for peace and disarmament. Within months, a call was made for an international women's conference to be held in The Hague. Coordinated by Mia Boissevain, Aletta Jacobs and Rosa Manus, the congress, which opened on 28 April 1915 was attended by 1,136 participants from neutral nations, and resulted in the establishment of an organisation which would become the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). At the close of the conference, two delegations of women were dispatched to meet European heads of state over the next several months. They secured agreement from reluctant foreign ministers, who overall felt that such a body would be ineffective, but agreed to participate in or not impede creation of a neutral mediating body, if other nations agreed and if President Woodrow Wilson would initiate a body. In the midst of the War, Wilson refused.\nIn 1915, a body similar to the Bryce Group was set up in the United States, led by former president William Howard Taft. It was called the League to Enforce Peace. It advocated the use of arbitration in conflict resolution and the imposition of sanctions on aggressive countries. None of these early organisations envisioned a continuously functioning body; with the exception of the Fabian Society in England, they maintained a legalistic approach that would limit the international body to a court of justice. The Fabians were the first to argue for a \"council\" of states, necessarily the Great Powers, who would adjudicate world affairs, and for the creation of a permanent secretariat to enhance international co-operation across a range of activities.\nIn the course of the diplomatic efforts surrounding World War I, both sides had to clarify their long-term war aims. By 1916 in Britain, fighting on the side of the Allies, and in the neutral United States, long-range thinkers had begun to design a unified international organisation to prevent future wars. Historian Peter Yearwood argues that when the new coalition government of David Lloyd George took power in December 1916, there was widespread discussion among intellectuals and diplomats of the desirability of establishing such an organisation. When Lloyd George was challenged by Wilson to state his position with an eye on the postwar situation, he endorsed such an organisation. Wilson himself included in his Fourteen Points in January 1918 a \"league of nations to ensure peace and justice.\" British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, argued that, as a condition of durable peace, \"behind international law, and behind all treaty arrangements for preventing or limiting hostilities, some form of international sanction should be devised which would give pause to the hardiest aggressor.\"\nThe war had had a profound impact, affecting the social, political and economic systems of Europe and inflicting psychological and physical damage. Several empires collapsed: first the Russian Empire in February 1917, followed by the German Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empire. Anti-war sentiment rose across the world; the First World War was described as \"the war to end all wars\", and its possible causes were vigorously investigated. The causes identified included arms races, alliances, militaristic nationalism, secret diplomacy, and the freedom of sovereign states to enter into war for their own benefit. One proposed remedy was the creation of an international organisation whose aim was to prevent future war through disarmament, open diplomacy, international co-operation, restrictions on the right to wage war, and penalties that made war unattractive.\nIn London Balfour commissioned the first official report into the matter in early 1918, under the initiative of Lord Robert Cecil. The British committee was finally appointed in February 1918. It was led by Walter Phillimore (and became known as the Phillimore Committee), but also included Eyre Crowe, William Tyrrell, and Cecil Hurst. The recommendations of the so-called Phillimore Commission included the establishment of a \"Conference of Allied States\" that would arbitrate disputes and impose sanctions on offending states. The proposals were approved by the British government, and much of the commission's results were later incorporated into the Covenant of the League of Nations.\nThe French authorities also drafted a much more far-reaching proposal in June 1918; they advocated annual meetings of a council to settle all disputes, as well as an \"international army\" to enforce its decisions.\nAmerican President Woodrow Wilson instructed Edward M. House to draft a US plan which reflected Wilson's own idealistic views (first articulated in the Fourteen Points of January 1918), as well as the work of the Phillimore Commission. The outcome of House's work and Wilson's own first draft proposed the termination of \"unethical\" state behaviour, including forms of espionage and dishonesty. Methods of compulsion against recalcitrant states would include severe measures, such as \"blockading and closing the frontiers of that power to commerce or intercourse with any part of the world and to use any force that may be necessary...\"\nThe two principal drafters and architects of the covenant of the League of Nations were the British politician Lord Robert Cecil and the South African statesman Jan Smuts. Smuts's proposals included the creation of a council of the great powers as permanent members and a non-permanent selection of the minor states. He also proposed the creation of a mandate system for captured colonies of the Central Powers during the war. Cecil focused on the administrative side and proposed annual council meetings and quadrennial meetings for the Assembly of all members. He also argued for a large and permanent secretariat to carry out the League's administrative duties.\nAccording to historian Patricia Clavin, Cecil and the British continued their leadership of the development of a rules-based global order into the 1920s and 1930s, with a primary focus on the League of Nations. The British goal was to systematise and normalise the economic and social relations between states, markets, and civil society. They gave priority to business and banking issues, but also considered the needs of ordinary women, children and the family as well. They moved beyond high-level intellectual discussions, and set up local organisations to support the League. The British were particularly active in setting up junior branches for secondary students.\nThe League of Nations was relatively more universal and inclusive in its membership and structure than previous international organisations, but the organisation enshrined racial hierarchy by curtailing the right to self-determination and prevented decolonisation.\nEstablishment.\nAt the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Wilson, Cecil and Smuts all put forward their draft proposals. After lengthy negotiations between the delegates, the Hurst\u2013Miller draft was finally produced as a basis for the Covenant. After more negotiation and compromise, the delegates finally approved of the proposal to create the League of Nations (, ) on 25 January 1919. The final Covenant of the League of Nations was drafted by a special commission, and the League was established by Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919.\nFrench women's rights advocates invited international feminists to participate in a parallel conference to the Paris Conference in hopes that they could gain permission to participate in the official conference. The Inter-Allied Women's Conference asked to be allowed to submit suggestions to the peace negotiations and commissions and were granted the right to sit on commissions dealing specifically with women and children. Though they asked for enfranchisement and full legal protection under the law equal with men, those rights were ignored. Women won the right to serve in all capacities, including as staff or delegates in the League of Nations organisation. They also won a declaration that member nations should prevent trafficking of women and children and should equally support humane conditions for children, women and men labourers. At the Z\u00fcrich Peace Conference held between 17 and 19 May 1919, the women of the WILPF condemned the terms of the Treaty of Versailles for both its punitive measures, as well as its failure to provide for condemnation of violence and exclusion of women from civil and political participation. Upon reading the Rules of Procedure for the League of Nations, Catherine Marshall, a British suffragist, discovered that the guidelines were completely undemocratic and they were modified based on her suggestion.\nThe League would be made up of a Assembly (representing all member states), a Council (with membership limited to major powers), and a permanent Secretariat. Member states were expected to \"respect and preserve as against external aggression\" the territorial integrity of other members and to disarm \"to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.\" All states were required to submit complaints for arbitration or judicial inquiry before going to war. The Council would create a Permanent Court of International Justice to make judgements on the disputes.\nDespite Wilson's efforts to establish and promote the League, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1919, the United States never joined. Senate Republicans led by Henry Cabot Lodge wanted a League with the reservation that only Congress could take the U.S. into war. Lodge gained a majority of Senators and Wilson refused to allow a compromise. The Senate voted on the ratification on 19 March 1920, and the 49\u201335 vote fell short of the needed 2/3 majority.\nThe League held its first council meeting in Paris on 16 January 1920, six days after the Versailles Treaty and the Covenant of the League of Nations came into force. On 1 November 1920, the headquarters of the League was moved from London to Geneva, where the first General Assembly was held on 15 November 1920. Geneva made sense as an ideal city for the League, since Switzerland had been a neutral country for centuries and was already the headquarters for the International Red Cross. Its strong democracy and location in central Europe made it a good choice for the nations of the world. Support for Geneva as the selection came from Swiss Federal Councillor Gustave Ador and economist William Rappard. The Palais Wilson on Geneva's western lakeshore, named after Woodrow Wilson, was the League's first permanent home.\nMission.\nThe covenant had ambiguities, as Carole Fink points out. There was not a good fit between Wilson's \"revolutionary conception of the League as a solid replacement for a corrupt alliance system, a guardian of international order, and protector of small states,\" versus Lloyd George's desire for a \"cheap, self-enforcing, peace, such as had been maintained by the old and more fluid Concert of Europe.\"\nFurthermore, the League, according to Carole Fink, was, \"deliberately excluded from such great-power prerogatives as freedom of the seas and naval disarmament, the Monroe Doctrine and the internal affairs of the French and British empires, and inter-Allied debts and German reparations, not to mention the Allied intervention and the settlement of borders with Soviet Russia.\"\nAlthough the United States never joined, unofficial observers became more and more involved, especially in the 1930s. American philanthropies became heavily involved, especially the Rockefeller Foundation. It made major grants designed to build up the technical expertise of the League staff. Ludovic Tourn\u00e8s argues that by the 1930s the foundations had changed the League from a \"Parliament of Nations\" to a modern think tank that used specialised expertise to provide an in-depth impartial analysis of international issues.\nLanguages and symbols.\nThe official languages of the League of Nations were French and English.\nDuring the 1939 New York World's Fair, a semi-official flag and emblem for the League of Nations emerged: two five-pointed stars within a blue pentagon. They symbolised the Earth's five continents and \"five races\". A bow at the top displayed the English name (\"League of Nations\"), while another at the bottom showed the French (\"Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 des Nations\").\nMembership.\nThe League consisted of 42 founding members in November 1920. Six other states joined in its founding year (by December 1920), and seven more joined by September 1924, bringing the League's size to 55. Costa Rica withdrew in December 1924, making it the member to have most quickly withdrawn, and Brazil became the first founding member to withdraw in June 1926. Germany (under the Weimar Republic) was admitted to the League of Nations through a resolution passed on 8 September 1926. The League's size remained at 54 for the next five years.\nThrough the first half of the 1930s, six more states joined, including Iraq in 1932 (newly independent from a League of Nations mandate) and the Soviet Union on 18 September 1934, but the Empire of Japan and Germany (under Hitler) withdrew in 1933. This marked the League's largest extent at 58 member states.\nIn December 1920, Argentina quit (being absent from all sessions and votes) without formally withdrawing, on rejection of an Argentine resolution that all sovereign states would be admitted to the League. It resumed its participation in September 1933.\nThe League's membership declined through the second half of the 1930s as it weakened. Between 1935 and the start of World War II in Europe in September 1939, only Egypt joined (becoming the last state to join), 11 members left, and 3 members ceased to exist or fell under military occupation (Ethiopia, Austria, and Czechoslovakia). The Soviet Union was expelled on 14 December 1939 for invading Finland, as one of the last acts of the League before it ceased functioning.\nOrganization.\n \nPermanent organs.\nThe main constitutional organs of the League were the Assembly, the council, and the Permanent Secretariat. It also had two essential wings: the Permanent Court of International Justice and the International Labour Organization. In addition, there were several auxiliary agencies and bodies. Each organ's budget was allocated by the Assembly (the League was supported financially by its member states).\nThe relations between the assembly and the council and the competencies of each were for the most part not explicitly defined. Each body could deal with any matter within the sphere of competence of the league or affecting peace in the world. Particular questions or tasks might be referred to either.\nUnanimity was required for the decisions of both the assembly and the council, except in matters of procedure and some other specific cases such as the admission of new members. This requirement was a reflection of the league's belief in the sovereignty of its component nations; the league sought a solution by consent, not by dictation. In case of a dispute, the consent of the parties to the dispute was not required for unanimity.\nThe Permanent Secretariat, established at the seat of the League at Geneva, comprised a body of experts in various spheres under the direction of the general secretary. Its principal sections were Political, Financial and Economics, Transit, Minorities and Administration (administering the Saar and Danzig), Mandates, Disarmament, Health, Social (Opium and Traffic in Women and Children), Intellectual Cooperation and International Bureaux, Legal, and Information. The staff of the Secretariat was responsible for preparing the agenda for the Council and the Assembly and publishing reports of the meetings and other routine matters, effectively acting as the League's civil service. In 1931 the staff numbered 707.\nThe Assembly consisted of representatives of all members of the League, with each state allowed up to three representatives and one vote. It met in Geneva and, after its initial sessions in 1920, it convened once a year in September. The special functions of the Assembly included the admission of new members, the periodical election of non-permanent members to the council, the election with the Council of the judges of the Permanent Court, and control of the budget. In practice, the Assembly was the general directing force of League activities.\nThe Council acted as a type of executive body directing the Assembly's business. It began with four permanent members \u2013 Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan \u2013 and four non-permanent members that were elected by the Assembly for a three-year term. The first non-permanent members were Belgium, Brazil, Greece, and Spain.\nThe composition of the Council was changed several times. The number of non-permanent members was first increased to six on 22 September 1922 and to nine on 8 September 1926. Werner Dankwort of Germany pushed for his country to join the League; joining in 1926, Germany became the fifth permanent member of the Council. Later, after Germany and Japan both left the League, the number of non-permanent seats was increased from nine to eleven, and the Soviet Union was made a permanent member giving the council a total of fifteen members. The Council met, on average, five times a year and in extraordinary sessions when required. In total, 107 sessions were held between 1920 and 1939.\nOther bodies.\nThe League oversaw the Permanent Court of International Justice and several other agencies and commissions created to deal with pressing international problems. These included the Disarmament Commission, the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Mandates Commission, the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation (precursor to UNESCO), the Permanent Central Opium Board, the Commission for Refugees, the Slavery Commission, and the Economic and Financial Organization. Three of these institutions were transferred to the United Nations after the Second World War: the International Labour Organization, the Permanent Court of International Justice (as the International Court of Justice), and the Health Organisation (restructured as the World Health Organization).\nThe Permanent Court of International Justice was provided for by the Covenant, but not established by it. The Council and the Assembly established its constitution. Its judges were elected by the Council and the Assembly, and its budget was provided by the latter. The Court was to hear and decide any international dispute which the parties concerned submitted to it. It might also give an advisory opinion on any dispute or question referred to it by the council or the Assembly. The Court was open to all the nations of the world under certain broad conditions.\nThe International Labour Organization was created in 1919 on the basis of Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles. The ILO, although having the same members as the League and being subject to the budget control of the Assembly, was an autonomous organisation with its own Governing Body, its own General Conference and its own Secretariat. Its constitution differed from that of the League: representation had been accorded not only to governments but also to representatives of employers' and workers' organisations. Albert Thomas was its first director.\nThe ILO successfully restricted the addition of lead to paint, and convinced several countries to adopt an eight-hour work day and forty-eight-hour working week. It also campaigned to end child labour, increase the rights of women in the workplace, and make shipowners liable for accidents involving seamen. After the demise of the League, the ILO became an agency of the United Nations in 1946.\nThe League's Health Organisation had three bodies: the Health Bureau, containing permanent officials of the League; the General Advisory Council or Conference, an executive section consisting of medical experts; and the Health Committee. In practice, the Paris-based Office international d'hygi\u00e8ne publique (OIHP) founded in 1907 after the International Sanitary Conferences, was discharging most of the practical health-related questions, and its relations with the League's Health Committee were often conflictual. The Health Committee's purpose was to conduct inquiries, oversee the operation of the League's health work, and prepare work to be presented to the council. This body focused on ending leprosy, malaria, and yellow fever, the latter two by starting an international campaign to exterminate mosquitoes. The Health Organisation also worked successfully with the government of the Soviet Union to prevent typhus epidemics, including organising a large education campaign.\nLinked with health, but also commercial concerns, was the topic of narcotics control. Introduced by the second International Opium Convention, the Permanent Central Opium Board had to supervise the statistical reports on trade in opium, morphine, cocaine and heroin. The board also established a system of import certificates and export authorisations for the legal international trade in narcotics.\nThe League of Nations had devoted serious attention to the question of international intellectual cooperation since its creation. The First Assembly in December 1920 recommended that the Council take action aiming at the international organisation of intellectual work, which it did by adopting a report presented by the Fifth Committee of the Second Assembly and inviting a committee on intellectual co-operation to meet in Geneva in August 1922. The French philosopher Henri Bergson became the first chairman of the committee. The work of the committee included: an inquiry into the conditions of intellectual life, assistance to countries where intellectual life was endangered, creation of national committees for intellectual cooperation, cooperation with international intellectual organisations, protection of intellectual property, inter-university co-operation, co-ordination of bibliographical work and international interchange of publications, and international co-operation in archaeological research.\nThe Slavery Commission sought to eradicate slavery and slave trading across the world, and fought forced prostitution. Its main success was through pressing the governments who administered mandated countries to end slavery in those countries. The League secured a commitment from Ethiopia to end slavery as a condition of membership in 1923, and worked with Liberia to abolish forced labour and intertribal slavery. The United Kingdom had not supported Ethiopian membership of the League on the grounds that \"Ethiopia had not reached a state of civilisation and internal security sufficient to warrant her admission.\"\nThe League also succeeded in reducing the death rate of workers constructing the Tanganyika railway from 55 to 4 per cent. Records were kept to control slavery, prostitution, and the trafficking of women and children. Partly as a result of pressure brought by the League of Nations, Afghanistan abolished slavery in 1923, Iraq in 1924, Nepal in 1926, Transjordan and Persia in 1929, Bahrain in 1937, and Ethiopia in 1942.\nLed by Fridtjof Nansen, the Commission for Refugees was established on 27 June 1921 to look after the interests of refugees, including overseeing their repatriation and, when necessary, resettlement. At the end of the First World War, there were two to three million ex-prisoners of war from various nations dispersed throughout Russia; within two years of the commission's foundation, it had helped 425,000 of them return home. It established camps in Turkey in 1922 to aid the country with an ongoing refugee crisis, helping to prevent the spread of cholera, smallpox and dysentery as well as feeding the refugees in the camps. It also established the Nansen passport as a means of identification for stateless people.\nThe Committee for the Study of the Legal Status of Women sought to inquire into the status of women all over the world. It was formed in 1937, and later became part of the United Nations as the Commission on the Status of Women.\nThe Covenant of the League said little about economics. Nonetheless, in 1920 the Council of the League called for a financial conference. The First Assembly at Geneva provided for the appointment of an Economic and Financial Advisory Committee to provide information to the conference. In 1923, a permanent Economic and Financial Organisation came into being. The existing bilateral treaty regime was integrated into the League where the most-favoured-nation norm was codified and the League took on responsibilities related to international oversight and standardisation.\nMandates.\nAt the end of the First World War, the Allied Powers were confronted with the question of the disposal of the former German colonies in Africa and the Pacific, and the several Arabic-speaking provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Many British and French leaders wanted to annex colonies of the defeated Central Powers, but U.S. President Woodrow Wilson strongly insisted that instead of annexation, these territories should be assisted under League of Nations supervision in achieving self-governance and eventual independence depending on the inhabitants' choices.\nThe Paris Peace Conference compromised with Wilson by adopting the principle that these territories should be administered by different governments on behalf of the League \u2013 a system of national responsibility subject to international supervision. This plan, defined as the mandate system, was adopted by the \"Council of Ten\" (the heads of government and foreign ministers of the main Allied Powers: Britain, France, the United States, Italy, and Japan) on 30 January 1919 and transmitted to the League of Nations.\nLeague of Nations mandates were established under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. The Permanent Mandates Commission supervised League of Nations mandates, and also organised plebiscites in disputed territories so that residents could decide which country they would join. There were three mandate classifications: A, B and C.\nThe A mandates (applied to parts of the old Ottoman Empire) were \"certain communities\" that had <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Article 22\nThe B mandates were applied to the former German colonies that the League took responsibility for after the First World War. These were described as \"peoples\" that the League said were <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Article 22\nSouth West Africa and certain South Pacific Islands were administered by League members under C mandates. These were classified as \"territories\" <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Article 22\nMandatory powers.\nThe territories were governed by mandatory powers, such as the United Kingdom in the case of the Mandate of Palestine, and the Union of South Africa in the case of South-West Africa, until the territories were deemed capable of self-government. Fourteen mandate territories were divided up among seven mandatory powers: the United Kingdom, the Union of South Africa, France, Belgium, New Zealand, Australia and Japan. With the exception of the Kingdom of Iraq, which joined the League on 3 October 1932, most of these territories did not begin to gain their independence until after the Second World War, in a process that did not end until 1990. Following the demise of the League, most of the remaining mandates became United Nations Trust Territories.\nIn addition to the mandates, the League itself governed the Territory of the Saar Basin for 15 years, before it was returned to Germany following a plebiscite, and the Free City of Danzig (now Gda\u0144sk, Poland) from 15 November 1920 to 1 September 1939.\nResolving territorial disputes.\nThe aftermath of the First World War left many issues to be settled, including the exact position of national boundaries and which country particular regions would join. Most of these questions were handled by the victorious Allied Powers in bodies such as the Allied Supreme Council. The Allied Powers tended to refer only particularly difficult matters to the League. This meant that, during the early interwar period, the League played little part in resolving the turmoil resulting from the war. The questions the League considered in its early years included those designated by the Paris Peace treaties.\nAs the League developed, its role expanded, and by the middle of the 1920s it had become the centre of international activity. This change can be seen in the relationship between the League and non-members. The United States and the Soviet Union, for example, increasingly worked with the League. During the second half of the 1920s, France, Britain and Germany were all using the League of Nations as the focus of their diplomatic activity, and each of their foreign secretaries attended League meetings at Geneva during this period. They also used the League's machinery to try to improve relations and settle their differences.\n\u00c5land Islands.\n\u00c5land is a collection of around 6,500 islands in the Baltic Sea, midway between Sweden and Finland. The islands are almost exclusively Swedish-speaking, but in 1809, the \u00c5land Islands, along with Finland, were taken by Imperial Russia. In December 1917, during the turmoil of the Russian October Revolution, Finland declared its independence, but most of the \u00c5landers wished to rejoin Sweden. The Finnish government considered the islands to be a part of their new nation, as the Russians had included \u00c5land in the Grand Duchy of Finland, formed in 1809. By 1920, the dispute had escalated to the point that there was danger of war. The British government referred the problem to the League of Nations Council, but Finland would not let the League intervene, as they considered it an internal matter. The League created a small panel to decide if it should investigate the matter and, with an affirmative response, a neutral commission was created. In June 1921, the League announced its decision: the islands were to remain a part of Finland, but with guaranteed protection of the islanders, including demilitarisation. With Sweden's reluctant agreement, this became the first European international agreement concluded directly through the League.\nUpper Silesia.\nThe Allied powers referred the problem of Upper Silesia to the League after they had been unable to resolve the territorial dispute between Poland and Germany. In 1919 Poland voiced a claim to Upper Silesia, which had been part of Prussia. The Treaty of Versailles had recommended a plebiscite in Upper Silesia to determine whether the territory should become part of Germany or Poland. Complaints about the attitude of the German authorities led to rioting and eventually to the first two Silesian Uprisings (1919 and 1920). A plebiscite took place on 20 March 1921, with 59.6 per cent (around 500,000) of the votes cast in favour of joining Germany, but Poland claimed the conditions surrounding it had been unfair. This result led to the Third Silesian Uprising in 1921.\nOn 12 August 1921, the League was asked to settle the matter; the Council created a commission with representatives from Belgium, Brazil, China and Spain to study the situation. The committee recommended that Upper Silesia be divided between Poland and Germany according to the preferences shown in the plebiscite and that the two sides should decide the details of the interaction between the two areas \u2013 for example, whether goods should pass freely over the border due to the economic and industrial interdependence of the two areas. In November 1921, a conference was held in Geneva to negotiate a convention between Germany and Poland. A final settlement was reached, after five meetings, in which most of the area was given to Germany, but with the Polish section containing the majority of the region's mineral resources and much of its industry. When this agreement became public in May 1922, bitter resentment was expressed in Germany, but the treaty was still ratified by both countries. The settlement produced peace in the area until the beginning of the Second World War.\nAlbania.\nThe frontiers of the Principality of Albania had not been set during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, as they were left for the League to decide. They had not yet been determined by September 1921, creating an unstable situation. Greek troops conducted military operations in the south of Albania. Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslav) forces became engaged, after clashes with Albanian tribesmen, in the northern part of the country. The League sent a commission of representatives from various powers to the region. In November 1921, the League decided that the frontiers of Albania should be the same as they had been in 1913, with three minor changes that favoured Yugoslavia. Yugoslav forces withdrew a few weeks later, albeit under protest.\nThe borders of Albania again became the cause of international conflict when Italian General Enrico Tellini and four of his assistants were ambushed and killed on 27 August 1923 while marking out the newly decided border between Greece and Albania. Italian leader Benito Mussolini was incensed and demanded that a commission investigate the incident within five days. Whatever the results of the investigation, Mussolini insisted that the Greek government pay Italy Lire\u00a050 million in reparations. The Greeks said they would not pay unless it was proved that the crime was committed by Greeks.\nMussolini sent a warship to shell the Greek island of Corfu, and Italian forces occupied the island on 31 August 1923. This contravened the League of Nations Covenant, so Greece appealed to the League to deal with the situation. The Allied Powers agreed (at Mussolini's insistence) that the Conference of Ambassadors should be responsible for resolving the dispute because it was the conference that had appointed General Tellini. The League of Nations Council examined the dispute, but then passed on their findings to the Conference of Ambassadors to make the final decision. The conference accepted most of the League's recommendations, forcing Greece to pay fifty million lire to Italy, even though those who committed the crime were never discovered. Italian forces then withdrew from Corfu.\nMemel.\nThe port city of Memel (now Klaip\u0117da) and the surrounding area, with a predominantly German population, was under provisional Entente control according to Article 99 of the Treaty of Versailles. The French and Polish governments favoured turning Memel into an international city, while Lithuania wanted to annex the area. By 1923, the fate of the area had still not been decided, prompting Lithuanian forces to invade in January 1923 and seize the port. After the Allied Powers failed to reach an agreement with Lithuania, they referred the matter to the League of Nations. In December 1923, the League of Nations Council appointed a Commission of Inquiry. The commission chose to cede Memel to Lithuania and give the area autonomous rights. The Klaip\u0117da Convention was approved by the Council on 14 March 1924, and then by the Allied Powers and Lithuania. In 1939 Germany retook the region following the rise of the Nazis and an ultimatum to Lithuania, demanding the return of the region under threat of war. The League of Nations failed to prevent the secession of the Memel region to Germany.\nHatay.\nWith League oversight, the Sanjak of Alexandretta in the French Mandate of Syria was given autonomy in 1937. Renamed Hatay, its parliament declared independence as the Republic of Hatay in September 1938, after elections the previous month. It was annexed by Turkey with French consent in mid-1939.\nMosul.\nThe League resolved a dispute between the Kingdom of Iraq and the Republic of Turkey over control of the former Ottoman province of Mosul in 1926. According to the British, who had been awarded a League of Nations mandate over Iraq in 1920 and therefore represented Iraq in its foreign affairs, Mosul belonged to Iraq; on the other hand, the new Turkish republic claimed the province as part of its historic heartland. A League of Nations Commission of Inquiry, with Belgian, Hungarian and Swedish members, was sent to the region in 1924; it found that the people of Mosul did not want to be part of either Turkey or Iraq, but if they had to choose, they would pick Iraq. In 1925, the commission recommended that the region stay part of Iraq, under the condition that the British hold the mandate over Iraq for another 25 years, to ensure the autonomous rights of the Kurdish population. The League Council adopted the recommendation and decided on 16 December 1925 to award Mosul to Iraq. Although Turkey had accepted League of Nations arbitration in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), it rejected the decision, questioning the Council's authority. The matter was referred to the Permanent Court of International Justice, which ruled that, when the Council made a unanimous decision, it must be accepted. Nonetheless, Britain, Iraq and Turkey ratified a separate treaty on 5 June 1926 that mostly followed the decision of the Council and also assigned Mosul to Iraq. It was agreed that Iraq could still apply for League membership within 25 years and that the mandate would end upon its admission.\nVilnius.\nAfter the First World War, Poland and Lithuania both regained their independence but soon became immersed in territorial disputes. During the Polish\u2013Soviet War, Lithuania signed the Moscow Peace Treaty with the Soviet Russia that laid out Lithuania's frontiers. This agreement gave Lithuanians control of the city of Vilnius (, ), the old Lithuanian capital, but a city with a majority Polish population. This heightened tension between Lithuania and Poland and led to fears that they would resume the Polish\u2013Lithuanian War, and on 7 October 1920, the League negotiated the Suwa\u0142ki Agreement establishing a cease-fire and a demarcation line between the two nations. On 9 October 1920, General Lucjan \u017beligowski, commanding a Polish military force in contravention of the Suwa\u0142ki Agreement, took the city and established the Republic of Central Lithuania.\nAfter a request for assistance from Lithuania, the League of Nations Council called for Poland's withdrawal from the area. The Polish government indicated they would comply, but instead reinforced the city with more Polish troops. This prompted the League to decide that the future of Vilnius should be determined by its residents in a plebiscite and that the Polish forces should withdraw and be replaced by an international force organised by the League. The plan was met with resistance in Poland, Lithuania, and the Soviet Russia, which opposed any international force in Lithuania. In March 1921, the League abandoned plans for the plebiscite. After unsuccessful proposals by Paul Hymans to create a federation between Poland and Lithuania, which was intended as a reincarnation of the former Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth which the two nations had shared before losing their independence, Vilnius and the surrounding area was formally annexed by Poland in March 1922. After Lithuania took over the Klaip\u0117da Region, the Allied Conference set the frontier between Lithuania and Poland, leaving Vilnius within Poland, on 14 March 1923. Lithuanian authorities refused to accept the decision, and officially remained in a state of war with Poland until 1927. It was not until the 1938 Polish ultimatum that Lithuania restored diplomatic relations with Poland and thus \"de facto\" accepted the borders.\nColombia and Peru.\nThere were several border conflicts between Colombia and Peru in the early part of the 20th century, and in 1922, their governments signed the Salom\u00f3n-Lozano Treaty in an attempt to resolve them. As part of this treaty, the border town of Leticia and its surrounding area was ceded from Peru to Colombia, giving Colombia access to the Amazon River. On 1 September 1932, business leaders from Peruvian rubber and sugar industries who had lost land, as a result, organised an armed takeover of Leticia. At first, the Peruvian government did not recognise the military takeover, but President of Peru Luis S\u00e1nchez Cerro decided to resist a Colombian re-occupation. The Peruvian Army occupied Leticia, leading to an armed conflict between the two nations. After months of diplomatic negotiations, the governments accepted mediation by the League of Nations, and their representatives presented their cases before the Council. A provisional peace agreement, signed by both parties in May 1933, provided for the League to assume control of the disputed territory while bilateral negotiations proceeded. In May 1934, a final peace agreement was signed, resulting in the return of Leticia to Colombia, a formal apology from Peru for the 1932 invasion, demilitarisation of the area around Leticia, free navigation on the Amazon and Putumayo Rivers, and a pledge of non-aggression.\nSaar.\nSaar was a province formed from parts of Prussia and the Rhenish Palatinate and placed under League control by the Treaty of Versailles. A plebiscite was to be held after fifteen years of League rule to determine whether the province should belong to Germany or France. When the referendum was held in 1935, 90.3 per cent of voters supported becoming part of Germany, which was quickly approved by the League of Nations Council.\nOther conflicts.\nIn addition to territorial disputes, the League also tried to intervene in other conflicts between and within nations. Among its successes were its fight against the international trade in opium and sexual slavery, and its work to alleviate the plight of refugees, particularly in Turkey in the period up to 1926. One of its innovations in this latter area was the 1922 introduction of the Nansen passport, which was the first internationally recognised identity card for stateless refugees.\nGreece and Bulgaria.\nAfter an incident involving sentries on the Greek-Bulgarian border in October 1925, fighting began between the two countries. Three days after the initial incident, Greek troops invaded Bulgaria. The Bulgarian government ordered its troops to make only token resistance, and evacuated between ten thousand and fifteen thousand people from the border region, trusting the League to settle the dispute. The League condemned the Greek invasion, and called for both Greek withdrawal and compensation to Bulgaria.\nLiberia.\nFollowing accusations of forced labour on the large American-owned Firestone rubber plantation and American accusations of slave trading, the Liberian government asked the League to launch an investigation. The resulting commission was jointly appointed by the League, the United States, and Liberia. In 1930, a League report confirmed the presence of slavery and forced labour. The report implicated many government officials in the selling of contract labour and recommended that they be replaced by Europeans or Americans, which generated anger within Liberia and led to the resignation of President Charles D. B. King and his vice-president. The Liberian government outlawed forced labour and slavery and asked for American help in social reforms.\nMukden Incident.\nThe Mukden Incident, also known as the \"Manchurian Incident\", was a decisive setback that weakened the League because its major members refused to tackle Japanese aggression. Japan itself withdrew.\nUnder the agreed terms of the Twenty-One Demands with China, the Japanese government had the right to station its troops in the area around the South Manchurian Railway, a major trade route between China and Korea (then a Japanese colony), in the Chinese region of Manchuria. In September 1931, a section of the railway was lightly damaged by the Japanese Kwantung Army as a pretext for an invasion of Manchuria. The Japanese army claimed that Chinese soldiers had sabotaged the railway and in apparent retaliation (acting contrary to orders from Tokyo) occupied all of Manchuria. They renamed the area Manchukuo, and on 9 March 1932 set up a puppet government, with Puyi, the final emperor of China, as its nominal head of state.\nThe League of Nations sent observers. The Lytton Report appeared a year later (October 1932). It refused to recognise Manchukuo and demanded Manchuria be returned to China. The report passed 42\u20131 in the Assembly in 1933 (only Japan voting against), but instead of removing its troops from China, Japan withdrew from the League. In the end, as British historian Charles Mowat argued, collective security was dead:\nThe League and the ideas of collective security and the rule of law were defeated; partly because of indifference and of sympathy with the aggressor, but partly because the League powers were unprepared, preoccupied with other matters, and too slow to perceive the scale of Japanese ambitions.\nChaco War.\nThe League failed to prevent the 1932 war between Bolivia and Paraguay over the arid Gran Chaco region. Although the region was sparsely populated, it contained the Paraguay River, which would have given either landlocked country access to the Atlantic Ocean, and there was also speculation, later proved incorrect, that the Chaco would be a rich source of petroleum. Border skirmishes throughout the late 1920s culminated in an all-out war in 1932 when the Bolivian army attacked the Paraguayans at Fort Carlos Antonio L\u00f3pez at Lake Pitiantuta. The war was a disaster for both sides, causing 57,000 casualties for Bolivia, whose population was around three million, and 36,000 dead for Paraguay, whose population was approximately one million. It also brought both countries to the brink of economic disaster. By the time a ceasefire was negotiated on 12 June 1935, Paraguay had seized control of most of the region, as was later recognised by the 1938 truce.\nInitially, both sides refused to allow the League to conduct an inquiry until November 1933, over a year after the start of the war. As a result, the League did not formally invoke Article 16 to apply sanctions. The Pan-American Conference offered to mediate and the League deferred to the conference, but the warring sides ignored the conference. Eventually (without going through Article 16), an arms embargo was enacted by several members of the League (plus non-League members the United States and Brazil), but several neighbouring states ignored the embargo rendering it ineffective. In November 1934, the League demanded that both sides withdraw and undergo arbitration. Bolivia accepted, but Paraguay by then had taken control of all of the disputed area. Paraguay rejected arbitration and quit the League.\nItalian invasion of Abyssinia.\nIn October 1935, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini sent 400,000 troops to invade Abyssinia (Ethiopia). Marshal Pietro Badoglio led the campaign from November 1935, ordering bombing, the use of chemical weapons such as mustard gas, and the poisoning of water supplies, against targets which included undefended villages and medical facilities. The modern Italian Army defeated the poorly armed Abyssinians and captured Addis Ababa in May 1936, forcing Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie to flee to exile in England.\nThe League of Nations condemned Italy's aggression and imposed economic sanctions in November 1935, but the sanctions were largely ineffective since they did not ban the sale of oil or close the Suez Canal (controlled by Britain). As Stanley Baldwin, the British Prime Minister, later observed, this was ultimately because no one had the military forces on hand to withstand an Italian attack. In October 1935, the US president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, invoked the recently passed Neutrality Acts and placed an embargo on arms and munitions to both sides, but extended a further \"moral embargo\" to the belligerent Italians, including other trade items. On 5 October and later on 29 February 1936, the United States endeavoured, with limited success, to limit its exports of oil and other materials to normal peacetime levels. The League sanctions were lifted on 4 July 1936, but by that point, Italy had already gained control of the urban areas of Abyssinia.\nThe Hoare\u2013Laval Pact of December 1935 was an attempt by the British Foreign Secretary Samuel Hoare and the French Prime Minister Pierre Laval to end the conflict in Abyssinia by proposing to partition the country into an Italian sector and an Abyssinian sector. Mussolini was prepared to agree to the pact, but news of the deal leaked out. Both the British and French public vehemently protested against it, describing it as a sell-out of Abyssinia. Hoare and Laval were forced to resign, and the British and French governments dissociated themselves from the two men. In June 1936, although there was no precedent for a head of state addressing the Assembly of the League of Nations in person, Haile Selassie spoke to the Assembly, appealing for its help in protecting his country.\nThe Abyssinian crisis showed how the League could be influenced by the self-interest of its members; one of the reasons why the sanctions were not very harsh was that both Britain and France feared the prospect of driving Mussolini and Adolf Hitler into an alliance.\nSpanish Civil War.\nOn 17 July 1936, the Spanish Army launched a coup d'\u00e9tat, leading to a prolonged armed conflict between Spanish Republicans (the elected leftist national government) and the Nationalists (conservative, anti-communist rebels who included most officers of the Spanish Army). Julio \u00c1lvarez del Vayo, the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, appealed to the League in September 1936 for arms to defend Spain's territorial integrity and political independence. The League members would not intervene in the Spanish Civil War nor prevent foreign intervention in the conflict. Adolf Hitler and Mussolini aided General Francisco Franco's Nationalists, while the Soviet Union helped the Spanish Republic. In February 1937, the League did ban foreign volunteers, but this was in practice a symbolic move. The result was a Nationalist victory in 1939 and confirmation to all observers that the League was ineffective in dealing with a major issue.\nSecond Sino-Japanese War.\nFollowing a long record of instigating localised conflicts throughout the 1930s, Japan began a full-scale invasion of China on 7 July 1937. On 12 September, the Chinese representative, Wellington Koo, appealed to the League for international intervention. Western countries were sympathetic to the Chinese in their struggle, particularly in their stubborn defence of Shanghai, a city with a substantial number of foreigners. The League was unable to provide any practical measures; on 4 October, it turned the case over to the Nine Power Treaty Conference.\nSoviet invasion of Finland.\nThe Nazi-Soviet Pact of 23 August 1939 contained secret protocols outlining spheres of interest. Finland and the Baltic states, as well as eastern Poland, fell into the Soviet sphere. After invading Poland on 17 September 1939, on 30 November the Soviets invaded Finland. Then \"the League of Nations for the first time expelled a member who had violated the Covenant.\" The League action of 14 December 1939, stung, because the Soviet Union became \"the only League member ever to suffer such an indignity\".\nFailure of disarmament.\nArticle 8 of the Covenant gave the League the task of reducing \"armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the enforcement by common action of international obligations\". Haakon Ikonomou argues that the Disarmament Section was a major failure. It was distrusted by the great powers, and given little autonomy by the Secretariat. Its mediocre staffers generated information that was unreliable and caused unrealistic expectations in the general public.\nSuccesses.\nThe League scored some successes, including the 1925 Conference for the Supervision of the International Trade in Arms and Ammunition and in Implements of War. It started to collect international arms data. Most important was the passage in 1925 of the Geneva protocol banning poison gas in war. It reflected strong worldwide public opinion, although the United States did not ratify it until 1975.\nFailures.\nThe League had numerous failures and shortfalls. In 1921, it set up the Temporary Mixed Commission on Armaments to explore possibilities for disarmament. It was made up not of government representatives but of famous individuals. They rarely agreed. Proposals ranged from abolishing chemical warfare and strategic bombing to the limitation of more conventional weapons, such as tanks.\n1923 Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance.\nThe 1923 Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance was an unsuccessful proposal made by the League of Nations to address the issue of disarmament and security in Europe after World War I. It was rejected by the British government in 1924 and was never adopted. The Draft Treaty was an early attempt by the League to create a system of collective security and disarmament, leading the League to pursue alternative approaches that also ultimately failed to gain traction.\nGeneva Protocol of 1924.\nA draft treaty was assembled in 1923 that made aggressive war illegal and bound the member states to defend victims of aggression by force. Since the onus of responsibility would, in practice, be on the great powers of the League, it was vetoed by Great Britain, who feared that this pledge would strain its own commitment to police its British Empire.\nThe \"Geneva Protocol for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes\" was a proposal by British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and his French counterpart \u00c9douard Herriot. It set up compulsory arbitration of disputes and created a method to determine the aggressor in international conflicts. All legal disputes between nations would be submitted to the World Court. It called for a disarmament conference in 1925. Any government that refused to comply in a dispute would be named an aggressor. Any victim of aggression was to receive immediate assistance from League members.\nBritish Conservatives condemned the proposal for fear that it would lead to conflict with the United States, which also opposed the proposal. The British Dominions strongly opposed it. The Conservatives came to power in Britain and in March 1925 the proposal was shelved and never reintroduced.\nWorld Disarmament Conference.\nThe Allied powers were also under obligation by the Treaty of Versailles to attempt to disarm, and the armament restrictions imposed on the defeated countries had been described as the first step toward worldwide disarmament. The League Covenant assigned the League the task of creating a disarmament plan for each state, but the Council devolved this responsibility to a special commission set up in 1926 to prepare for the 1932\u20131934 World Disarmament Conference. Members of the League held different views towards the issue. The French were reluctant to reduce their armaments without a guarantee of military help if they were attacked; Poland and Czechoslovakia felt vulnerable to attack from the west and wanted the League's response to aggression against its members to be strengthened before they disarmed. Without this guarantee, they would not reduce armaments because they felt the risk of attack from Germany was too great. Fear of attack increased as Germany regained its strength after the First World War, especially after Adolf Hitler gained power and became German Chancellor in 1933. In particular, Germany's attempts to overturn the Treaty of Versailles and the reconstruction of the German military made France increasingly unwilling to disarm.\nThe World Disarmament Conference was convened by the League of Nations in Geneva in 1932, with representatives from 60 states. It was a failure. A one-year moratorium on the expansion of armaments, later extended by a few months, was proposed at the start of the conference. The Disarmament Commission obtained initial agreement from France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Britain to limit the size of their navies but no final agreement was reached. Ultimately, the Commission failed to halt the military build-up by Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan during the 1930s.\nHelpless during buildup to World War II.\nThe League was mostly silent in the face of major events leading to the Second World War, such as Hitler's remilitarisation of the Rhineland, occupation of the Sudetenland and \"Anschluss\" of Austria, which had been forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In fact, League members themselves re-armed. In 1933, Japan simply withdrew from the League rather than submit to its judgement, as did Germany the same year (using the failure of the World Disarmament Conference to agree to arms parity between France and Germany as a pretext), Italy in 1937, and Spain in 1939. The final significant act of the League was to expel the Soviet Union in December 1939 after it invaded Finland.\nEconomic policies.\nInternational taxation.\nThe intellectual foundation of the modern international taxation regime was set with a 1923 report prepared by prominent political economists and tax law experts for the League of Nations. The report formulated \"general principles\" to avoid the adverse effects of double taxation and encourage free trade, international capital flows, and economic growth. For example, the report tried to set guidelines for resolving who would be allowed to tax a resident or citizen of one state when that individual earned income in another state. Prior to the publication of the report, these kinds of questions were primarily decided through unilateral state decisions or bilateral tax treaties.\nGeneral weaknesses.\nThe onset of the Second World War demonstrated that the League had failed in its primary purpose, the prevention of another world war. There were a variety of reasons for this failure, many connected to general weaknesses within the organisation. Additionally, the power of the League was limited by the United States' refusal to join.\nOrigins and structure.\nThe origins of the League as an organisation created by the Allied powers as part of the peace settlement to end the First World War led to it being viewed as a \"League of Victors\". The League's neutrality tended to manifest itself as indecision. It required a unanimous vote of nine, later fifteen, Council members to enact a resolution; hence, conclusive and effective action was difficult, if not impossible. It was also slow in coming to its decisions, as certain ones required the unanimous consent of the entire Assembly. This problem mainly stemmed from the fact that the primary members of the League of Nations were not willing to accept the possibility of their fate being decided by other countries and (by enforcing unanimous voting) had effectively given themselves veto power.\nGlobal representation.\nRepresentation at the League was often a problem. Though it was intended to encompass all nations, many never joined, or their period of membership was short. The most conspicuous absentee was the United States. President Woodrow Wilson had been a driving force behind the League's formation and strongly influenced the form it took, but the US Senate voted not to join on 19 November 1919. Ruth Henig has suggested that, had the United States become a member, it would have also provided support to France and Britain, possibly making France feel more secure, and so encouraging France and Britain to co-operate more fully regarding Germany, thus making the rise to power of the Nazi Party less likely. Conversely, Henig acknowledges that if the US had been a member, its reluctance to engage in war with European states or to enact economic sanctions might have hampered the ability of the League to deal with international incidents. The structure of the US federal government might also have made its membership problematic, as its representatives at the League would only be able to answer on behalf of the executive branch, certain League decisions such as to go to war, would always require prior approval of the legislative branch regardless of the outcome of any floor vote even.\nIn January 1920, when the League was born, Germany was not permitted to join because it was seen as having been the aggressor in the First World War. Soviet Russia was also initially excluded because Communist regimes were not welcomed and membership would have been initially dubious due to the ongoing Russian Civil War in which both sides claimed to be the legitimate government of the country. The League was further weakened when major powers left in the 1930s. Japan began as a permanent member of the Council since the country was an Allied Power in the First World War but withdrew in 1933 after the League voiced opposition to its occupation of Manchuria. Italy also began as a permanent member of the council. However the League staunchly opposed Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1934. When the war ended in an Italian conquest, the League refused to recognise Italian sovereignty over Ethiopia, prompting the Italian-Fascist government to withdraw from the organisation altogether in 1937. Though neutral during World War I, Spain (then still a kingdom) also began as a permanent member of the council, but withdrew in 1939 after the Spanish Civil War ended in a victory for the Nationalists. Though world opinion was much more divided over the Spanish Civil War than the conflicts involving Japan and Italy, the general perception leaned in favour of the Republican cause. The League had accepted Germany, also as a permanent member of the council, in 1926, deeming it to have become a \"peace-loving country\" under the Weimar Republic. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Adolf Hitler withdrew Germany almost immediately.\nCollective security.\nAnother important weakness grew from the contradiction between the idea of collective security that formed the basis of the League and international relations between individual states. The League's collective security system required nations to act, if necessary, against states they considered friendly, and in a way that might endanger their national interests, to support states for which they had no normal affinity. This weakness was exposed during the Abyssinia Crisis, when Britain and France had to balance maintaining the security they had attempted to create for themselves in Europe \"to defend against the enemies of internal order\", in which Italy's support played a pivotal role, with their obligations to Abyssinia as a member of the League.\nOn 23 June 1936, in the wake of the collapse of League efforts to restrain Italy's war against Abyssinia, the British Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, told the House of Commons that collective security had <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nUltimately, Britain and France both abandoned the concept of collective security in favour of appeasement in the face of growing German militarism under Hitler.\nIn this context, the League of Nations was also the institution where the first international debate on terrorism took place following the 1934 assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in Marseille, France. This debate established precedents regarding global surveillance (in the form of routine international sharing of surveillance data), the punishment of terrorists as an international (rather than national) matter, and the right of a nation to conduct military attacks within another nation as a response to international terrorism. Many of these concepts are detectable in the discourse of terrorism among states after 9/11.\nAmerican diplomatic historian Samuel Flagg Bemis originally supported the League, but after two decades changed his mind:\nThe League of Nations has been a disappointing failure... It has been a failure, not because the United States did not join it; but because the great powers have been unwilling to apply sanctions except where it suited their individual national interests to do so, and because Democracy, on which the original concepts of the League rested for support, has collapsed over half the world.\nPacifism, disarmament and radio.\nThe League of Nations lacked an armed force of its own and depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, which they were very unwilling to do. Its two most important members, Britain and France, were reluctant to use sanctions and even more reluctant to resort to military action on behalf of the League. Immediately after the First World War, pacifism became a strong force among both the people and governments of the two countries. The British Conservatives were especially tepid to the League and preferred, when in government, to negotiate treaties without the involvement of that organisation. Moreover, the League's advocacy of disarmament for Britain, France, and its other members, while at the same time advocating collective security, meant that the League was depriving itself of the only forceful means by which it could uphold its authority.\nDavid Goodman argues that the 1936 League of Nations Convention on the Use of Broadcasting in the Cause of Peace tried to create the standards for a liberal international public sphere. The Convention encouraged friendly radio broadcasts to other nations. It called for League prohibitions on international broadcasts containing hostile speech and false claims. It tried to draw the line between liberal and illiberal policies in communications, and emphasised the dangers of nationalist chauvinism. With Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia active on the radio, its liberal goals were ignored, while liberals warned that the code represented restraints on free speech.\nDemise and legacy.\nAs the situation in Europe escalated into war, the Assembly transferred enough power to the Secretary General on 30 September 1938 and 14 December 1939 to allow the League to continue to exist legally and carry on reduced operations. The headquarters of the League, the Palace of Nations, remained unoccupied for nearly six years until the Second World War ended.\nAt the 1943 Tehran Conference, the Allied powers agreed to create a new body to replace the League: the United Nations. Many League bodies, such as the International Labour Organization, continued to function and eventually became affiliated with the UN. The designers of the structures of the United Nations intended to make it more effective than the League.\nThe final session of the League of Nations concluded on 18 April 1946 in Geneva. Delegates from 34 nations attended the assembly. This session concerned itself with liquidating the League: it transferred assets worth approximately $22,000,000 (U.S.) in 1946 (including the Palace of Nations and the League's archives) to the UN, returned reserve funds to the nations that had supplied them, and settled the debts of the League. Robert Cecil, addressing the final session, said:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Let us boldly state that aggression wherever it occurs and however it may be defended, is an international crime, that it is the duty of every peace-loving state to resent it and employ whatever force is necessary to crush it, that the machinery of the Charter, no less than the machinery of the Covenant, is sufficient for this purpose if properly used, and that every well-disposed citizen of every state should be ready to undergo any sacrifice in order to maintain peace ... I venture to impress upon my hearers that the great work of peace is resting not only on the narrow interests of our own nations, but even more on those great principles of right and wrong which nations, like individuals, depend.\nThe League is dead. Long live the United Nations.\nThe Assembly passed a resolution that \"With effect from the day following the close of the present session of the Assembly [i.e., April 19], the League of Nations shall cease to exist except for the sole purpose of the liquidation of its affairs as provided in the present resolution.\" A Board of Liquidation consisting of nine persons from different countries spent the next 15 months overseeing the transfer of the League's assets and functions to the United Nations or specialised bodies, finally dissolving itself on 31 July 1947. The archive of the League of Nations was transferred to the United Nations Office at Geneva and is now an entry in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.\nIn the Assembly's last session in 1946, Philip Noel-Baker (representing the United Kingdom) remarked that failure to act as soon as a great power had invaded another state had ultimately doomed the League: \"We know the World War began in Manchuria 15 years ago...Manchuria, Abyssinia, Munich have killed another great illusion, the belief that appeasement, seeking the national interest at the expense of others, individual action, secret bargains, could bring us peace.\"\nIn the past few decades, by research using the League Archives at Geneva, historians have reviewed the legacy of the League of Nations as the United Nations has faced similar troubles to those of the interwar period. Current consensus views that, even though the League failed to achieve its ultimate goal of world peace, it did manage to build new roads towards expanding the rule of law across the globe; strengthened the concept of collective security, giving a voice to smaller nations; helped to raise awareness to problems like epidemics, slavery, child labour, colonial tyranny, refugee crises and general working conditions through its numerous commissions and committees; and paved the way for new forms of statehood, as the mandate system put the colonial powers under international observation. Erez Manela situated the League as a catalyst for transforming the postwar global order into one critical of the arrangements of empire. Alternatively, Laura Robson & Joe Maiolo posit the argument that the Mandate System under the League was a re-vitalised form of imperialism that placed former colonies under the ownership of greater powers.\nProfessor David Kennedy portrays the League as a unique moment when international affairs were \"institutionalised\", as opposed to the pre\u2013First World War methods of law and politics.\nThe principal Allies in the Second World War (the UK, the USSR, France, the U.S., and the Republic of China) became permanent members of the United Nations Security Council in 1946; in 1971, the People's Republic of China replaced the Republic of China (then only in control of Taiwan) as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and in 1991 the Russian Federation assumed the seat of the dissolved USSR. Decisions of the Security Council are binding on all members of the UN, and unanimous decisions are not required, unlike in the League Council. Only the five permanent members of the Security Council can wield a veto to protect their vital interests.\nLeague of Nations archives.\nThe League of Nations archives is a collection of the League's records and documents. It consists of approximately 15 million pages of content dating from the inception of the League of Nations in 1919 extending through its dissolution in 1946. It is located at the United Nations Office at Geneva. In 2017, the UN Library & Archives Geneva launched the Total Digital Access to the League of Nations Archives Project (LONTAD), with the intention of preserving, digitising, and providing online access to the League of Nations archives. It was completed in 2022.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nGeneral and cited references.\nSurveys.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nLeague topics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nRelated topics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistoriography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "26748": "Switzerland\nCountry in Central Europe\nSwitzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is geographically divided among the Swiss Plateau, the Alps and the Jura; the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory, whereas most of the country's nearly 9 million people are concentrated on the plateau, which hosts its largest cities and economic centres, including Zurich, Geneva, and Lausanne. \nSwitzerland is a federal republic composed of 26 cantons, with federal authorities based in Bern. It has four main linguistic and cultural regions: German, French, Italian and Romansh. Although most Swiss are German-speaking, national identity is fairly cohesive, being rooted in a common historical background, shared values such as federalism and direct democracy, and Alpine symbolism. Swiss identity transcends language, ethnicity, and religion, leading to Switzerland being described as a (\"nation of volition\") rather than a nation state.\nSwitzerland originates from the Old Swiss Confederacy established in the Late Middle Ages as a defensive and commercial alliance; the Federal Charter of 1291 is considered the country's founding document. The confederation steadily expanded and consolidated despite external threats and internal political and religious strife. Swiss independence from the Holy Roman Empire was formally recognised in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The confederation was among the first and few republics of the early modern period, and the only one besides San Marino to survive the Napoleonic Wars. \nSwitzerland remained a network of self-governing states until 1798, when revolutionary France invaded and imposed the centralist Helvetic Republic. Napoleon abolished the republic in 1803 and reinstated a confederation. Following the Napoleonic Wars, Switzerland restored its pre-revolutionary system, but by 1830 faced growing division and conflict between liberal and conservative movements; this culminated in a new constitution in 1848 that established the current federal system and enshrined principles such as individual rights, separation of powers, and parliamentary bicameralism. \nSwitzerland has maintained a policy of armed neutrality since the 16th century and has not fought an international war since 1815. It joined the United Nations only in 2002 but pursues an active foreign policy that includes frequent involvement in peace building and global governance. Switzerland is the birthplace of the Red Cross and hosts the headquarters or offices of most major international institutions, including the WTO, the WHO, the ILO, FIFA, the WEF, and the UN. It is a founding member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) but not part of the European Union (EU), the European Economic Area, or the eurozone; however, it participates in the European single market and the Schengen Area. \nSwitzerland is among the world's most developed countries, with the highest nominal wealth per adult and the eighth-highest gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. It performs highly on several international metrics, including economic competitiveness, democratic governance, and press freedom. Zurich, Geneva and Basel rank among the highest in quality of life, albeit with some of the highest costs of living. Switzerland holds an international reputation for its established banking sector and for its specialized industries in watchmaking and chocolate production.\nEtymology.\nThe English name \"Switzerland\" is a portmanteau of \"Switzer\", an obsolete term for a Swiss person which was in use during the 16th to 19th centuries, and \"land\". The English adjective \"Swiss\" is a loanword from French ', also in use since the 16th century. The name \"Switzer\" is from the Alemannic ', in origin an inhabitant of \"Schwyz\" and its associated territory, one of the cantons which formed the nucleus of the Old Swiss Confederacy. The Swiss began to adopt the name for themselves after the Swabian War of 1499, used alongside the term for \"Confederates\", (literally: \"comrades by oath\"), used since the 14th century. The data code for Switzerland, CH, is derived from Latin (\"Helvetic Confederation\").\nThe toponym \"Schwyz\" itself was first attested in 972, as Old High German ', perhaps related to ' 'to burn' (cf. Old Norse 'to singe, burn'), referring to the area of forest that was burned and cleared to build. The name was extended to the area dominated by the canton, and after the Swabian War of 1499 gradually came to be used for the entire Confederation. The Swiss German name of the country, ', is homophonous to that of the canton and the settlement, but distinguished by the use of the definite article (' for the Confederation, but simply \"\" for the canton and the town). The long [i\u02d0] of Swiss German is historically and still often today spelled \u27e8y\u27e9 rather than \u27e8ii\u27e9, preserving the original identity of the two names even in writing.\nThe Latin name was neologised and introduced gradually after the formation of the federal state in 1848, harking back to the Napoleonic Helvetic Republic. It appeared on coins from 1879, inscribed on the Federal Palace in 1902 and after 1948 used in the official seal (e.g., the ISO banking code \"CHF\" for the Swiss franc, the Swiss postage stamps ('HELVETIA') and the country top-level domain \".ch\", are both taken from the state's Latin name). is derived from the \"Helvetii\", a Gaulish tribe living on the Swiss Plateau before the Roman era.\n\"Helvetia\" appeared as a national personification of the Swiss confederacy in the 17th century in a 1672 play by Johann Caspar Weissenbach.\nHistory.\nThe state of Switzerland took its present form with the adoption of the Swiss Federal Constitution in 1848. Switzerland's precursors established a defensive alliance in 1291, forming a loose confederation that persisted for centuries.\nBeginnings.\nThe oldest traces of hominid existence in Switzerland date to about 150,000 years ago. The oldest known farming settlements in Switzerland, which were found at G\u00e4chlingen, date to around 5300 BC.\nThe earliest known tribes formed the Hallstatt and La T\u00e8ne cultures, named after the archaeological site of La T\u00e8ne on the north side of Lake Neuch\u00e2tel. La T\u00e8ne culture developed and flourished during the late Iron Age from around 450 BC, possibly influenced by Greek and Etruscan civilisations. One of the most prominent La T\u00e8ne tribes were the Helvetii, who primarily occupied the Swiss Plateau, alongside the Rhaetians in the eastern regions. Facing pressures from Germanic tribes, in 58 BC, the Helvetii, influenced by Orgetorix, a wealthy aristocrat, decided to abandon the Swiss Plateau for better opportunities in western Gallia. After Orgetorix's mysterious death, the tribe continued their migration but was decisively defeated by Julius Caesar's armies at the Battle of Bibracte, in present-day eastern France. Following their defeat, the Helvetii were forced by Caesar to return to their original lands, where they were subjected to stringent restrictions on their autonomy and movements. In 15 BC, Tiberius (later the second Roman emperor) and his brother Drusus conquered the Alps, integrating them into the Roman Empire. The area occupied by the Helvetii first became part of Rome's Gallia Belgica province and then of its Germania Superior province. The eastern portion of modern Switzerland was integrated into the Roman province of Raetia. Sometime around the start of the Common Era, the Romans maintained a large camp called Vindonissa, now a ruin at the confluence of the Aare and Reuss rivers, near the town of Windisch.\nThe first and second century AD was an age of prosperity on the Swiss Plateau. Towns such as Aventicum, Iulia Equestris and Augusta Raurica reached a remarkable size, while hundreds of agricultural estates (Villae rusticae) were established in the countryside.\nAround 260 AD, the fall of the Agri Decumates territory north of the Rhine transformed today's Switzerland into a frontier land of the Empire. Repeated raids by the Alamanni tribes provoked the ruin of the Roman towns and economy, forcing the population to shelter near Roman fortresses, like the Castrum Rauracense near Augusta Raurica. The Empire built another line of defence at the north border (the so-called Donau-Iller-Rhine-Limes). At the end of the fourth century, the increased Germanic pressure forced the Romans to abandon the linear defence concept. The Swiss Plateau was finally open to Germanic tribes.\nIn the Early Middle Ages, from the end of the fourth century, the western extent of modern-day Switzerland was part of the territory of the Kings of the Burgundians, who introduced the French language to the area. The Alemanni settled the Swiss Plateau in the fifth century and the valleys of the Alps in the eighth century, forming Alemannia. Modern-day Switzerland was then divided between the kingdoms of Alemannia and Burgundy. The entire region became part of the expanding Frankish Empire in the sixth century, following Clovis I's victory over the Alemanni at Tolbiac in 504 AD, and later Frankish domination of the Burgundians.\nThroughout the rest of the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries, Swiss regions continued under Frankish hegemony (Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties) but after its extension under Charlemagne, the Frankish Empire was divided by the Treaty of Verdun in 843. The territories of present-day Switzerland became divided into Middle Francia and East Francia until they were reunified under the Holy Roman Empire around 1000\u00a0AD.\nIn the 10th century, as the rule of the Carolingians waned, Magyars destroyed Basel in 917 and St. Gallen in 926. In response, Henry the Fowler, the then ruler of East Francia, decreed the fortification of key settlements to defend against these invasions. Large villages and towns, including strategic locations like Zurich and St.Gallen, were fortified. This initiative led to the development of what were essentially early urban strongholds and city governments in Eastern Switzerland.\nBy 1200, the Swiss Plateau comprised the dominions of the houses of Savoy, Z\u00e4hringer, Habsburg, and Kyburg. Some regions (Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, later known as ) were accorded the Imperial immediacy to grant the empire direct control over the mountain passes. With the extinction of its male line in 1263, the Kyburg dynasty fell in AD 1264. The Habsburgs under King Rudolph I (Holy Roman Emperor in 1273) laid claim to the Kyburg lands and annexed them, extending their territory to the eastern Swiss Plateau.\nOld Swiss Confederacy.\nThe Old Swiss Confederacy was an alliance among the valley communities of the central Alps. The Confederacy was governed by nobles and patricians of various cantons who facilitated management of common interests and ensured peace on mountain trade routes. The Federal Charter of 1291 is considered the confederacy's founding document, even though similar alliances likely existed decades earlier. The document was agreed among the rural communes of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden.\nBy 1353, the three original cantons had joined with the cantons of Glarus and Zug and the Lucerne, Zurich and Bern city-states to form the \"Old Confederacy\" of eight states that obtained through the end of the 15th century. The expansion led to increased power and wealth for the confederation. By 1460, the confederates controlled most of the territory south and west of the Rhine to the Alps and the Jura mountains, and the University of Basel was founded (with a faculty of medicine) establishing a tradition of chemical and medical research. This increased after victories against the Habsburgs (Battle of Sempach, Battle of N\u00e4fels), over Charles the Bold of Burgundy during the 1470s, and the success of the Swiss mercenaries. The Swiss victory in the Swabian War against the Swabian League of Emperor Maximilian I in 1499 amounted to \"de facto\" independence within the Holy Roman Empire. In 1501, Basel and Schaffhausen joined the Old Swiss Confederacy.\nThe Confederacy acquired a reputation of invincibility during these earlier wars, but expansion of the confederation suffered a setback in 1515 with the Swiss defeat in the Battle of Marignano. This ended the so-called \"heroic\" epoch of Swiss history. The success of Zwingli's Reformation in some cantons led to inter-cantonal religious conflicts in 1529 and 1531 (Wars of Kappel). It was not until more than one hundred years after these internal wars that, in 1648, under the Peace of Westphalia, European countries recognised Switzerland's independence from the Holy Roman Empire and its neutrality.\nDuring the Early Modern period of Swiss history, the growing authoritarianism of the patriciate families combined with a financial crisis in the wake of the Thirty Years' War led to the Swiss peasant war of 1653. In the background to this struggle, the conflict between Catholic and Protestant cantons persisted, erupting in further violence at the First War of Villmergen, in 1656, and the Toggenburg War (or Second War of Villmergen), in 1712.\nNapoleonic era.\nIn 1798, the revolutionary French government invaded Switzerland and imposed a new unified constitution. This centralised the government of the country, effectively abolishing the cantons: moreover, M\u00fclhausen left Switzerland and the Valtellina valley became part of the Cisalpine Republic. The new regime, known as the Helvetic Republic, was highly unpopular. An invading foreign army had imposed and destroyed centuries of tradition, making Switzerland nothing more than a French satellite state. The fierce French suppression of the Nidwalden Revolt in September 1798 was an example of the oppressive presence of the French Army and the local population's resistance to the occupation.\nWhen war broke out between France and its rivals, Russian and Austrian forces invaded Switzerland. The Swiss refused to fight alongside the French in the name of the Helvetic Republic. In 1803 Napoleon organised a meeting of the leading Swiss politicians from both sides in Paris. The Act of Mediation was the result, which largely restored Swiss autonomy and introduced a Confederation of 19 cantons. Henceforth, much of Swiss politics would concern balancing the cantons' tradition of self-rule with the need for a central government.\nIn 1815, the Congress of Vienna fully re-established Swiss independence, and the European powers recognised permanent Swiss neutrality. Swiss troops served foreign governments until 1860 when they fought in the siege of Gaeta. The treaty allowed Switzerland to increase its territory, with the admission of the cantons of Valais, Neuch\u00e2tel and Geneva. Switzerland's borders saw only minor adjustments thereafter.\nFederal state.\nThe restoration of power to the patriciate was only temporary. After a period of unrest with repeated violent clashes, such as the Z\u00fcriputsch of 1839, civil war (the \"Sonderbundskrieg\") broke out in 1847 when some Catholic cantons tried to set up a separate alliance (the \"Sonderbund\"). The war lasted less than a month, causing fewer than 100 casualties, most of which were through friendly fire. The Sonderbundskrieg had a significant impact on the psychology and society of Switzerland.\nThe war convinced most Swiss of the need for unity and strength. Swiss from all strata of society, whether Catholic or Protestant, from the liberal or conservative current, realised that the cantons would profit more from merging their economic and religious interests.\nThus, while the rest of Europe saw revolutionary uprisings, the Swiss drew up a constitution that provided for a federal layout, much of it inspired by the American example. This constitution provided central authority while leaving the cantons the right to self-government on local issues. Giving credit to those who favoured the power of the cantons (the Sonderbund Kantone), the national assembly was divided between an upper house (the Council of States, two representatives per canton) and a lower house (the National Council, with representatives elected from across the country). Referendums were made mandatory for any amendments. This new constitution ended the legal power of nobility in Switzerland.\nA single system of weights and measures was introduced, and in 1850 the Swiss franc became the Swiss single currency, complemented by the WIR franc in 1934. Article 11 of the constitution forbade sending troops to serve abroad, marking the end of foreign service. It came with the expectation of serving the Holy See, and the Swiss were still obliged to serve Francis II of the Two Sicilies with Swiss Guards present at the siege of Gaeta in 1860.\nAn important clause of the constitution was that it could be entirely rewritten, if necessary, thus enabling it to evolve as a whole rather than being modified one amendment at a time.\nThis need soon proved itself when the rise in population and the Industrial Revolution that followed led to calls to modify the constitution accordingly. The population rejected an early draft in 1872, but modifications led to its acceptance in 1874. It introduced the facultative referendum for laws at the federal level. It also established federal responsibility for defence, trade, and legal matters.\nIn 1891, the constitution was revised with uncommonly strong elements of direct democracy, which remain unique today.\nModern history.\nSwitzerland was not invaded during either of the world wars. During World War I, Switzerland was home to the revolutionary and founder of the Soviet Union Vladimir Illych Ulyanov (Vladimir Lenin) who remained there until 1917. Swiss neutrality was seriously questioned by the short-lived Grimm\u2013Hoffmann affair in 1917. In 1920, Switzerland joined the League of Nations, which was based in Geneva, after it was exempted from military requirements.\nDuring World War II, detailed invasion plans were drawn up by the Germans, but Switzerland was never attacked. Switzerland was able to remain independent through a combination of military deterrence, concessions to Germany, and good fortune, as larger events during the war intervened. General Henri Guisan, appointed the commander-in-chief for the duration of the war ordered a general mobilisation of the armed forces. The Swiss military strategy changed from static defence at the borders to organised long-term attrition and withdrawal to strong, well-stockpiled positions high in the Alps, known as the Reduit. Switzerland was an important base for espionage by both sides and often mediated communications between the Axis and Allied powers.\nSwitzerland's trade was blockaded by both the Allies and the Axis. Economic cooperation and extension of credit to Nazi Germany varied according to the perceived likelihood of invasion and the availability of other trading partners. Concessions reached a peak after a crucial rail link through Vichy France was severed in 1942, leaving Switzerland (together with Liechtenstein) entirely isolated from the wider world by Axis-controlled territory. Over the course of the war, Switzerland interned over 300,000 refugees aided by the International Red Cross, based in Geneva. Strict immigration and asylum policies and the financial relationships with Nazi Germany raised controversy, only at the end of the 20th century.\nDuring the war, the Swiss Air Force engaged aircraft of both sides, shooting down 11 intruding Luftwaffe planes in May and June 1940, then forcing down other intruders after a change of policy following threats from Germany. Over 100 Allied bombers and their crews were interned. Between 1940 and 1945, Switzerland was bombed by the Allies, causing fatalities and property damage. Among the cities and towns bombed were Basel, Brusio, Chiasso, Cornol, Geneva, Koblenz, Niederweningen, Rafz, Renens, Samedan, Schaffhausen, Stein am Rhein, T\u00e4gerwilen, Thayngen, Vals, and Zurich. Allied forces maintained that the bombings, which violated the 96th Article of War, resulted from navigation errors, equipment failure, weather conditions, and pilot errors. The Swiss expressed fear and concern that the bombings were intended to put pressure on Switzerland to end economic cooperation and neutrality with Nazi Germany. Court-martial proceedings took place in England. The US paid SFR 62M for reparations.\nSwitzerland's attitude towards refugees was complicated and controversial; over the course of the war, it admitted as many as 300,000 refugees while refusing tens of thousands more, including Jews persecuted by the Nazis.\nAfter the war, the Swiss government exported credits through the charitable fund known as the and donated to the Marshall Plan to help Europe's recovery, efforts that ultimately benefited the Swiss economy.\nDuring the Cold War, Swiss authorities considered the construction of a Swiss nuclear bomb. Leading nuclear physicists at the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich such as Paul Scherrer made this a realistic possibility. In 1988, the Paul Scherrer Institute was founded in his name to explore the therapeutic uses of neutron scattering technologies. Financial problems with the defence budget and ethical considerations prevented the substantial funds from being allocated, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 was seen as a valid alternative. Plans for building nuclear weapons were dropped by 1988. Switzerland joined the Council of Europe in 1963.\nSwitzerland was the last Western republic (the Principality of Liechtenstein followed in 1984) to grant women the right to vote. Some Swiss cantons approved this in 1959, while at the federal level, it was achieved in 1971 and, after resistance, in the last canton Appenzell Innerrhoden (one of only two remaining \"Landsgemeinde\", along with Glarus) in 1990. After obtaining suffrage at the federal level, women quickly rose in political significance. The first woman on the seven-member Federal Council executive was Elisabeth Kopp, who served from 1984 to 1989, and the first female president was Ruth Dreifuss in 1999.\nIn 1979 areas from the canton of Bern attained independence from the Bernese, forming the new canton of Jura. On 18 April 1999, the Swiss population and the cantons voted in favour of a completely revised federal constitution.\nIn 2002 Switzerland became a full member of the United Nations, leaving Vatican City as the last widely recognised state without full UN membership. Switzerland is a founding member of the EFTA but not the European Economic Area (EEA). An application for membership in the European Union was sent in May 1992, but did not advance since rejecting the EEA in December 1992 when Switzerland conducted a referendum on the EEA. Several referendums on the EU issue ensued; due to opposition from the citizens, the membership application was withdrawn. Nonetheless, Swiss law is gradually changing to conform with that of the EU, and the government signed bilateral agreements with the European Union. Switzerland, together with Liechtenstein, has been surrounded by the EU since Austria's entry in 1995. On 5 June 2005, Swiss voters agreed by a 55% majority to join the Schengen treaty, a result that EU commentators regarded as a sign of support. In September 2020, a referendum calling for a vote to end the pact that allowed a free movement of people from the European Union was introduced by the Swiss People's Party (SVP). However, voters rejected the attempt to retake control of immigration, defeating the motion by a roughly 63%\u201337% margin.\nOn 9 February 2014, 50.3% of Swiss voters approved a ballot initiative launched by the Swiss People's Party (SVP/UDC) to restrict immigration. This initiative was mostly backed by rural (57.6% approval) and suburban groups (51.2% approval), and isolated towns (51.3% approval) as well as by a strong majority (69.2% approval) in Ticino, while metropolitan centres (58.5% rejection) and the French-speaking part (58.5% rejection) rejected it. In December 2016, a political compromise with the EU was attained that eliminated quotas on EU citizens, but still allowed favourable treatment of Swiss-based job applicants. On 27 September 2020, 62% of Swiss voters rejected the anti-free movement referendum by SVP.\nGeography.\nExtending across the north and south side of the Alps in west-central Europe, Switzerland encompasses diverse landscapes and climates across its .\nSwitzerland lies between latitudes 45\u00b0 and 48\u00b0 N, and longitudes 5\u00b0 and 11\u00b0 E. It contains three basic topographical areas: the Swiss Alps to the south, the Swiss Plateau or Central Plateau, and the Jura mountains on the west. The Alps are a mountain range running across the central and south of the country, constituting about 60% of the country's area. The majority of the population live on the Swiss Plateau. The Swiss Alps host many glaciers, covering . From these originate the headwaters of several major rivers, such as the Rhine, Inn, Ticino and Rh\u00f4ne, which flow in the four cardinal directions, spreading across Europe. The hydrographic network includes several of the largest bodies of fresh water in Central and Western Europe, among which are Lake Geneva (Lac L\u00e9man in French), Lake Constance (Bodensee in German) and Lake Maggiore. Switzerland has more than 1500 lakes and contains 6% of Europe's freshwater stock. Lakes and glaciers cover about 6% of the national territory. Lake Geneva is the largest lake and is shared with France. The Rh\u00f4ne is both the main source and outflow of Lake Geneva. Lake Constance is the second largest and, like Lake Geneva, an intermediate step by the Rhine at the border with Austria and Germany. While the Rh\u00f4ne flows into the Mediterranean Sea at the French Camargue region and the Rhine flows into the North Sea at Rotterdam, about apart, both springs are only about apart in the Swiss Alps. 90% of Switzerland's 65,000-kilometre-long network of rivers and streams have been straightened, dammed, canalized or channeled underground, in an effort to prevent natural disasters such as flooding, landslides, and avalanches. 80% of all Swiss drinking water comes from groundwater sources.\nForty-eight mountains are or higher in height. At , Monte Rosa is the highest, although the Matterhorn () is the best known. Both are located within the Pennine Alps in the canton of Valais, on the border with Italy. The section of the Bernese Alps above the deep glacial Lauterbrunnen valley, containing 72 waterfalls, is well known for the Jungfrau () Eiger and M\u00f6nch peaks, and its many picturesque valleys. In the southeast the long Engadin Valley, encompassing St. Moritz, is also well known; the highest peak in the neighbouring Bernina Alps is Piz Bernina ().\nThe Swiss Plateau has greater open and hilly landscapes, partly forested, partly open pastures, usually with grazing herds or vegetable and fruit fields, but it is still hilly. Large lakes and the biggest Swiss cities are found there.\nSwitzerland contains two small enclaves: B\u00fcsingen belongs to Germany, while Campione d'Italia belongs to Italy. Switzerland has no exclaves.\nClimate.\nThe Swiss climate is generally temperate, but can vary greatly across localities, from glacial conditions on the mountaintops to the near-Mediterranean climate at Switzerland's southern tip. Some valley areas in the southern part of Switzerland offer cold-hardy palm trees. Summers tend to be warm and humid at times with periodic rainfall, ideal for pastures/grazing. The less humid winters in the mountains may see weeks-long intervals of stable conditions. At the same time, the lower lands tend to suffer from inversion during such periods, hiding the sun.\nA weather phenomenon known as the f\u00f6hn (with an identical effect to the chinook wind) can occur any time and is characterised by an unexpectedly warm wind, bringing low relative humidity air to the north of the Alps during rainfall periods on the south-facing slopes. This works both ways across the alps but is more efficient if blowing from the south due to the steeper step for oncoming wind. Valleys running south to north trigger the best effect. The driest conditions persist in all inner alpine valleys that receive less rain because arriving clouds lose a lot of their moisture content while crossing the mountains before reaching these areas. Large alpine areas such as Graub\u00fcnden remain drier than pre-alpine areas, and as in the main valley of the Valais, wine grapes are grown there.\nThe wettest conditions persist in the high Alps and in the Ticino canton, which has much sun yet heavy bursts of rain from time to time. Precipitation tends to be spread moderately throughout the year, with a peak in summer. Autumn is the driest season, winter receives less precipitation than summer, yet the weather patterns in Switzerland are not in a stable climate system. They can vary from year to year with no strict and predictable periods.\nEnvironment.\nSwitzerland contains two terrestrial ecoregions: Western European broadleaf forests and Alps conifer and mixed forests.\nSwitzerland's many small valleys separated by high mountains often host unique ecologies. The mountainous regions themselves offer a rich range of plants not found at other altitudes. The climatic, geological and topographical conditions of the alpine region make for a fragile ecosystem that is particularly sensitive to climate change. According to the 2014 Environmental Performance Index, Switzerland ranks first among 132 nations in safeguarding the environment, due to its high scores on environmental public health, its heavy reliance on renewable sources of energy (hydropower and geothermal energy), and its level of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2020 it was ranked third out of 180 countries. The country pledged to cut GHG emissions by 50% by 2030 compared to the level of 1990 and plans to reach zero emissions by 2050.\nHowever, access to biocapacity in Switzerland is far lower than the world average. In 2016, Switzerland had 1.0 hectares of biocapacity per person within its territory, 40 per cent less than world average of 1.6. In contrast, in 2016, Swiss consumption required 4.6 hectares of biocapacity \u2013 their ecological footprint, 4.6 times as much as Swiss territory can support. The remainder comes from other countries and the shared resources (such as the atmosphere impacted by greenhouse gas emissions). Switzerland had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 3.53/10, ranking it 150th globally out of 172 countries.\nSwitzerland ranked 9th in the Environmental Performance Index for 2024. It scored well in parameters including air pollution, sanitation and drinking water, waste management, and climate change mitigation.\nUrbanisation.\nAbout 85% of the population live in urban areas. Switzerland went from a largely rural country to an urban one from 1930 to 2000. After 1935 urban development claimed as much of the Swiss landscape as it did during the prior 2,000 years. Urban sprawl affects the plateau, the Jura and the Alpine foothills, raising concerns about land use. During the 21st century, population growth in urban areas is higher than in the countryside.\nSwitzerland has a dense network of complementary large, medium and small towns. The plateau is densely populated with about 400 people per km2 and the landscape shows uninterrupted signs of human presence. The weight of the largest metropolitan areas \u2013 Zurich, Geneva\u2013Lausanne, Basel and Bern \u2013 tend to increase. The importance of these urban areas is greater than their population suggests. These urban centers are recognised for their high quality of life.\nThe average population density in 2019 was . In the largest canton by area, Graub\u00fcnden, lying entirely in the Alps, population density falls to . In the canton of Zurich, with its large urban capital, the density is .\nGovernment and politics.\nThe Federal Constitution adopted in 1848 is the legal foundation of Switzerland's federal state. It is regularly modified by referendum and has been completely revised twice, in 1874 and 1999. The constitution outlines rights of individuals and citizen participation in public affairs, divides the powers between the confederation and the cantons and defines federal jurisdiction and authority. Three main bodies govern on the federal level: the Federal Assembly (legislative), the Federal Council (executive) and the federal courts (judicial).\nFederal Assembly.\nThe Federal Assembly is the parliament of Switzerland. It consists of two houses: The Council of States has 46 members, two from each canton and one from each half-canton. The National Council has 200 members, apportioned to reflect the population of each canton, and elected by proportional representation within each canton. Members of both houses serve for four years and work part-time (\"Milizsystem\"). When both houses are in joint session, they are known collectively as the Federal Assembly. Through optional referendums, citizens may challenge any law passed by parliament.\nFederal Council.\nThe Federal Council is the Swiss executive. It leads the federal administration and serves as a collective head of state. It is a collegial body of seven members, elected to four-year terms by the Federal Assembly, which oversees the council. Each member leads a department of the federal government. Each year, one member of the Council is elected President of the Confederation by the Assembly, with the presidency traditionally rotating between members. The President chairs and represents the government, but has no additional powers and remains the head of their department.\nThe government has been a coalition of the four major political parties since 1959, each party having a number of seats that roughly reflects its share of the electorate and representation in the federal parliament. This distribution is called the \"magic formula\". Since 2003, the seven seats in the Federal Council have been distributed as follows:\nSupreme Court.\nThe function of the Federal Supreme Court is to hear appeals against rulings of cantonal or federal courts. The judges are elected by the Federal Assembly for six-year terms.\nDirect democracy.\nDirect democracy and federalism are hallmarks of the Swiss political system defined in the Swiss constitution. The Swiss people are subject to three legal jurisdictions: the municipal, cantonal and federal levels. At the federal level, popular rights include the right to submit a federal initiative and a referendum, both of which may overturn parliamentary decisions.\nThere are three types of federal referendum in Switzerland: \nThe Federal Council and the Federal Assembly can supplement a popular initiative with a counterproposal. Voters must then indicate their preference if both proposals are accepted. \nCantons.\nThe Swiss Confederation consists of 26 cantons. The cantons are federated states, with permanent constitutional status and a high degree of independence relative to the subnational divisions of most countries. Under the Federal Constitution, all 26 cantons are equal in status, except that six (referred to often as the half-cantons) are represented by one councillor instead of two in the Council of States and have only half a cantonal vote with respect to the required cantonal majority in referendums on constitutional amendments. Each canton has its own constitution and its own parliament, government, police and courts. However, considerable differences define the individual cantons, particularly in terms of population and geographical area. Their populations vary between 16,003 (Appenzell Innerrhoden) and 1,487,969 (Zurich), and their area between (Basel-Stadt) and (Grisons).\nMunicipalities.\nAs of 2018 the cantons comprised 2,222 municipalities.\nFederal City.\nUntil 1848, the loosely coupled Confederation did not have a central political organisation. Issues thought to affect the whole Confederation were the subject of periodic meetings in various locations.\nIn 1848, the federal constitution provided that details concerning federal institutions, such as their locations, should be addressed by the Federal Assembly (BV 1848 Art. 108). Thus on 28 November 1848, the Federal Assembly voted in the majority to locate the seat of government in Bern and, as a prototypical federal compromise, to assign other federal institutions, such as the Federal Polytechnical School (1854, the later ETH) to Zurich, and other institutions to Lucerne, such as the later SUVA (1912) and the Federal Insurance Court (1917). Other federal institutions were subsequently attributed to Lausanne (Federal Supreme Court in 1872, and EPFL in 1969), Bellinzona (Federal Criminal Court, 2004), and St. Gallen (Federal Administrative Court and Federal Patent Court, 2012).\nThe 1999 Constitution does not mention a Federal City and the Federal Council has yet to address the matter. Thus no city in Switzerland has the \"official\" status either of capital or of Federal City. Nevertheless, Bern is commonly referred to as \"Federal City\" (, , ).\nForeign relations and international institutions.\nTraditionally, Switzerland avoids alliances that might entail military, political, or direct economic action and has been neutral since the end of its expansion in 1515. Its policy of neutrality was internationally recognised at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Swiss neutrality has been questioned at times. In 2002 Switzerland became a full member of the United Nations. It was the first state to join it by referendum. Switzerland maintains diplomatic relations with almost all countries and historically has served as an intermediary between other states. Switzerland is not a member of the European Union; the Swiss people have consistently rejected membership since the early 1990s. However, Switzerland does participate in the Schengen Area.\nMany international institutions have headquarters in Switzerland, in part because of its policy of neutrality. Geneva is the birthplace of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the Geneva Conventions and, since 2006, hosts the United Nations Human Rights Council. Even though Switzerland is one of the most recent countries to join the United Nations, the Palace of Nations in Geneva is the second biggest centre for the United Nations after the headquarters in New York. Switzerland was a founding member and hosted the League of Nations.\nApart from the United Nations headquarters, the Swiss Confederation is host to many UN agencies, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and about 200 other international organisations, including the World Trade Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization. The annual meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos bring together business and political leaders from Switzerland and foreign countries to discuss important issues. The headquarters of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) moved to Basel in 1930.\nMany sports federations and organisations are located in the country, including the International Handball Federation in Basel, the International Basketball Federation in Geneva, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) in Nyon, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) and the International Ice Hockey Federation both in Zurich, the International Cycling Union in Aigle, and the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne.\nSwitzerland became a member of the United Nations Security Council for the 2023\u20132024 period. According to the 2024 Global Peace Index, Switzerland is the 6th most peaceful country in the world.\nSwitzerland and the European Union.\nAlthough not a member, Switzerland maintains relationships with the EU and European countries through bilateral agreements. The Swiss have brought their economic practices largely into conformity with those of the EU, in an effort to compete internationally. EU membership faces considerable negative popular sentiment. It is opposed by the conservative SVP party, the largest party in the National Council, and not advocated by several other political parties. The membership application was formally withdrawn in 2016. The western French-speaking areas and the urban regions of the rest of the country tend to be more pro-EU, but do not form a significant share of the population.\nAn Integration Office operates under the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Economic Affairs. Seven bilateral agreements liberalised trade ties, taking effect in 2001. This first series of bilateral agreements included the free movement of persons. A second series of agreements covering nine areas was signed in 2004, including the Schengen Treaty and the Dublin Convention.\nIn 2006, a referendum approved 1 billion francs of supportive investment in Southern and Central European countries in support of positive ties to the EU as a whole. A further referendum will be needed to approve 300 million francs to support Romania and Bulgaria and their recent admission.\nThe Swiss have faced EU and international pressure to reduce banking secrecy and raise tax rates to parity with the EU. Preparatory discussions involved four areas: the electricity market, participation in project Galileo, cooperating with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and certificates of origin for food products.\nSwitzerland is a member of the Schengen passport-free zone. Land border checkpoints monitor goods movements, but not people.\nMilitary.\nThe Swiss Armed Forces, including the Land Forces and the Air Force, are composed mostly of conscripts, male citizens aged from 20 to 34 (in exceptional cases up to 50) years. Being a landlocked country, Switzerland has no navy; however, on lakes bordering neighbouring countries, armed boats patrol. Swiss citizens are prohibited from serving in foreign armies, except for the Swiss Guards of the Vatican, or if they are dual citizens of a foreign country and reside there.\nThe Swiss militia system stipulates that soldiers keep their army-issued equipment, including fully automatic personal weapons, at home. Women can serve voluntarily. Men usually receive military conscription orders for training at the age of 18. About two-thirds of young Swiss are found suitable for service; for the others, various forms of alternative service are available. Annually, approximately 20,000 persons are trained in recruit centres for 18 to 21 weeks. The reform \"Army XXI\" was adopted by popular vote in 2003, replacing \"Army 95\", reducing the rolls from 400,000 to about 200,000. Of those, 120,000 are active in periodic Army training, and 80,000 are non-training reserves.\nThe newest reform of the military, (WEA; English: Further development of the Army), started in 2018 and was expected to reduce the number of army personnel to 100,000 by the end of 2022.\nOverall, three general mobilisations have been declared to ensure the integrity and neutrality of Switzerland. The first mobilisation was held in response to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870\u201371; while the second was in response to the First World War outbreak in August 1914; the third mobilisation took place in September 1939 in response to the German attack on Poland.\nBecause of its neutrality policy, the Swiss army does not take part in armed conflicts in other countries but joins some peacekeeping missions. Since 2000 the armed force department has maintained the Onyx intelligence gathering system to monitor satellite communications.\nGun politics in Switzerland are unique in Europe in that 2\u20133.5\u00a0million guns are in the hands of civilians, giving the nation an estimate of 28\u201341 guns per 100 people. As per the Small Arms Survey, only 324,484 guns are owned by the military. Only 143,372 are in the hands of soldiers. However, ammunition is no longer issued.\nEconomy and labour law.\nSwitzerland has a stable, prosperous and high-tech economy. It is the world's wealthiest country per capita in multiple rankings. The country ranks as one of the least corrupt countries in the world, while its banking sector is rated as \"one of the most corrupt in the world\". It has the world's twentieth largest economy by nominal GDP and the thirty-eighth largest by purchasing power parity. As of 2021, it is the thirteenth largest exporter, and the fifth largest per capita. Zurich and Geneva are regarded as global cities, ranked as Alpha and Beta respectively. Basel is the capital of Switzerland's pharmaceutical industry, hosting Novartis, Roche, and many other players. It is one of the world's most important centres for the life sciences industry.\nSwitzerland had the second-highest global rating in the Index of Economic Freedom 2023, while also providing significant public services. On a per capita basis, nominal GDP is higher than those of the larger Western and Central European economies and Japan, while adjusted for purchasing power, Switzerland ranked 11th in 2017, fifth in 2018, and ninth in 2020.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nThe 2016 World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report ranked Switzerland's economy as the world's most competitive; as of 2019, it ranks fifth globally. The European Union labeled it Europe's most innovative country. Switzerland has been ranked the most innovative country in the Global Innovation Index in 2024, as it had done in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019. It ranked 20th of 189 countries in the Ease of Doing Business Index. Switzerland's slow growth in the 1990s and the early 2000s increased support for economic reforms and harmonisation with the European Union. In 2020, IMD placed Switzerland first in attracting skilled workers.\nFor much of the 20th century, Switzerland was the wealthiest country in Europe by a considerable margin (per capita GDP). Switzerland has one of the world's largest account balances as a percentage of GDP. In 2018, the canton of Basel-City had the highest GDP per capita, ahead of Zug and Geneva. According to Credit Suisse, only about 37% of residents own their own homes, one of the lowest rates of home ownership in Europe. Housing and food price levels were 171% and 145% of the EU-25 index in 2007, compared to 113% and 104% in Germany.\nSwitzerland is home to several large multinational corporations. The largest by revenue are Glencore, Gunvor, Nestl\u00e9, Mediterranean Shipping Company, Novartis, Hoffmann-La Roche, ABB, Mercuria Energy Group and Adecco. Also, notable are UBS, Zurich Insurance, Richemont, Credit Suisse, Barry Callebaut, Swiss Re, Rolex, Tetra Pak, Swatch Group and Swiss International Air Lines.\nSwitzerland's most important economic sector is manufacturing. Manufactured products include specialty chemicals, health and pharmaceutical goods, scientific and precision measuring instruments and musical instruments. The largest exported goods are chemicals (34% of exported goods), machines/electronics (20.9%), and precision instruments/watches (16.9%). The service sector \u2013 especially banking and insurance, commodities trading, tourism, and international organisations \u2013 is another important industry for Switzerland. Exported services amount to a third of exports.\nAgricultural protectionism\u2014a rare exception to Switzerland's free trade policies\u2014contributes to high food prices. Product market liberalisation is lagging behind many EU countries according to the OECD. Apart from agriculture, economic and trade barriers between the European Union and Switzerland are minimal, and Switzerland has free trade agreements with many countries. Switzerland is a member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).\nSwitzerland is considered as the \"land of Cooperatives\" with the ten largest cooperative companies accounting for more than 11% of GDP in 2018. They include Migros and Coop, the two largest retail companies in Switzerland.\nTaxation and government spending.\nSwitzerland is a tax haven. The private sector economy dominates. It features low tax rates; tax revenue to GDP ratio is one of the smallest of developed countries. The Swiss Federal budget reached 62.8 billion Swiss francs in 2010, 11.35% of GDP; however, canton and municipality budgets are not counted as part of the federal budget. Total government spending is closer to 33.8% of GDP. The main sources of income for the federal government are the value-added tax (33% of tax revenue) and the direct federal tax (29%). The main areas of expenditure are in social welfare and finance/taxes. The expenditures of the Swiss Confederation have been growing from 7% of GDP in 1960 to 9.7% in 1990 and 10.7% in 2010. While the social welfare and finance sectors and tax grew from 35% in 1990 to 48.2% in 2010, a significant reduction of expenditures has been occurring in agriculture and national defence; from 26.5% to 12.4% (estimation for the year 2015).\nLabour force.\nSlightly more than 5 million people work in Switzerland; about 25% of employees belonged to a trade union in 2004. Switzerland has a more flexible labor market than neighbouring countries and the unemployment rate is consistently low. The unemployment rate increased from 1.7% in June 2000 to 4.4% in December 2009. It then decreased to 3.2% in 2014 and held steady for several years, before further dropping to 2.5% in 2018 and 2.3% in 2019; in 2023 it had reached a 20-year low of 2%. Population growth (from net immigration) reached 0.52% of population in 2004, increased in the following years before falling to 0.54% again in 2017. The foreign citizen population was 28.9% in 2015, about the same as in Australia.\nIn 2016, the median monthly gross income in Switzerland was 6,502 francs per month (equivalent to US$6,597 per month). After rent, taxes and pension contributions, plus spending on goods and services, the average household has about 15% of its gross income left for savings. Though 61% of the population made less than the mean income, income inequality is relatively low with a Gini coefficient of 29.7, placing Switzerland among the top 20 countries. In 2015, the richest 1% owned 35% of the wealth. Wealth inequality increased through 2019.\nAbout 8.2% of the population live below the national poverty line, defined in Switzerland as earning less than CHF3,990 per month for a household of two adults and two children, and a further 15% are at risk of poverty. Single-parent families, those with no post-compulsory education and those out of work are among the most likely to live below the poverty line. Although work is considered a way out of poverty, some 4.3% are considered working poor. One in ten jobs in Switzerland is considered low-paid; roughly 12% of Swiss workers hold such jobs, many of them women and foreigners.\nEducation and science.\nEducation in Switzerland is diverse, because the constitution of Switzerland delegates the operation for the school system to the cantons. Public and private schools are available, including many private international schools.\nPrimary education.\nThe minimum age for primary school is about six years, but most cantons provide a free \"children's school\" starting at age four or five. Primary school continues until grade four, five or six, depending on the school. Traditionally, the first foreign language in school was one of the other Swiss languages, although in 2000, English was elevated in a few cantons. At the end of primary school or at the beginning of secondary school, pupils are assigned according to their capacities into one of several sections (often three). The fastest learners are taught advanced classes to prepare for further studies and the matura, while other students receive an education adapted to their needs.\nTertiary education.\nSwitzerland hosts 12 universities, ten of which are maintained at cantonal level and usually offer non-technical subjects. It ranked 87th on the 2019 Academic Ranking of World Universities. The largest is the University of Zurich with nearly 25,000 students. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) and the University of Zurich are listed 20th and 54th respectively, on the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities.\nThe federal government sponsors two institutes: the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) in Zurich, founded in 1855 and the (EPFL) in Lausanne, founded in 1969, formerly associated with the University of Lausanne.\nEight of the world's ten best hotel schools are located in Switzerland. In addition, various universities of applied sciences are available. In business and management studies, the University of St. Gallen, (HSG) is ranked 329th in the world according to QS World University Rankings and the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), was ranked first in open programmes worldwide\".\" Switzerland has the second highest rate (almost 18% in 2003) of foreign students in tertiary education, after Australia (slightly over 18%).\nThe Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, located in Geneva, is continental Europe's oldest graduate school of international and development studies. It is widely held to be one of its most prestigious.\nScience.\nSwitzerland is among the countries with the highest number of Nobel laureates, both in total and per capita; of the 28 Swiss nationals who have won the Nobel Prize, 23 were recognised in the sciences. Among the most famous is Albert Einstein, who became a Swiss citizen in 1901 and developed his theory of special relativity in Bern. Among the Nobel laureates born or nautralised in Switzerland are Vladimir Prelog, Heinrich Rohrer, Richard Ernst, Edmond Fischer, Rolf Zinkernagel, Kurt W\u00fcthrich and Jacques Dubochet. Over 100 laureates across all fields have a relationship to Switzerland. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded nine times to organisations headquartered in Switzerland.\nGeneva and the nearby French department of Ain co-host the world's largest laboratory, CERN, dedicated to particle physics research. Another important research centre is the Paul Scherrer Institute, which conducts multi-disciplinary research in the natural and engineering sciences. \nNotable Swiss inventions include lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), diazepam (Valium), Velcro, and the scanning tunnelling microscope (which earned inventors Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics. Auguste Piccard became the first person to enter the Stratosphere with his pressurised hydrogen ballon, while his son Jacques Piccard became one of the first people to explore the deepest known part of the world's ocean (along with American Don Walsh).\nThe Swiss Space Office has been involved in various space technologies and programmes. It was one of the 10 founders of the European Space Agency in 1975 and is the seventh largest contributor to the ESA budget. In the private sector, several companies participate in the space industry, such as Oerlikon Space and Maxon Motors.\nEnergy.\nElectricity generated in Switzerland is 56% from hydroelectricity and 39% from nuclear power, producing negligible CO2. On 18 May 2003, two anti-nuclear referendums were defeated: \"Moratorium Plus\", aimed at forbidding the building of new nuclear power plants (41.6% supported), and Electricity Without Nuclear (33.7% supported) after a moratorium expired in 2000. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, in 2011 the government announced plans to end the use of nuclear energy in the following 20 to 30 years. In November 2016, Swiss voters rejected a Green Party referendum to accelerate the phaseout of nuclear power (45.8% supported). The Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) is responsible for energy supply and energy use within the Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC). The agency supports the 2000-watt society initiative to cut the nation's energy use by more than half by 2050.\nTransport.\nThe densest rail network in Europe spans and carried 614 million passengers in 2023. In 2015, each Swiss resident travelled on average by rail, more than any other European country. Virtually 100% of the network is electrified. 60% of the network is operated by the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB\u00a0CFF\u00a0FFS). Besides the second largest standard gauge railway company, BLS AG, two railways companies operate on narrow gauge networks: the Rhaetian Railway (RhB) in Graub\u00fcnden, which includes some World Heritage lines, and the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn (MGB), which co-operates with RhB the Glacier Express between Zermatt and St. Moritz/Davos. Switzerland operates the world's longest and deepest railway tunnel and the first flat, low-level route through the Alps, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the largest part of the New Railway Link through the Alps (NRLA) project.\nSwitzerland has a publicly managed, toll-free road network financed by highway permits as well as vehicle and petrol taxes. The Swiss autobahn/autoroute system requires the annual purchase of a vignette (toll sticker)\u2014for 40 Swiss francs\u2014to use its roadways, including passenger cars and trucks. The Swiss autobahn/autoroute network stretches for and has one of the highest motorway densities in the world.\nZurich Airport is Switzerland's largest international flight gateway; it handled 22.8\u00a0million passengers in 2012. The other international airports are Geneva Airport (13.9\u00a0million passengers in 2012), EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg (located in France), Bern Airport, Lugano Airport, St. Gallen-Altenrhein Airport and Sion Airport. Swiss International Air Lines is the flag carrier. Its main hub is Zurich, but it is legally domiciled in Basel.\nEnvironment.\nSwitzerland has one of the best environmental records among developed nations. It is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol. With Mexico and South Korea, it forms the Environmental Integrity Group (EIG).\nThe country is active in recycling and anti-littering programs and is one of the world's top recyclers, recovering 66% to 96% of recyclable materials, varying across the country. The 2014 Global Green Economy Index placed Switzerland among the top 10 green economies.\nSwitzerland has an economic system for garbage disposal, which is based mostly on recycling and energy-producing incinerators. As in other European countries, the illegal disposal of garbage is heavily fined. In almost all Swiss municipalities, mandatory stickers or dedicated garbage bags allow the identification of disposable garbage.\nDemographics.\nIn common with other developed countries, the Swiss population increased rapidly during the industrial era, quadrupling between 1800 and 1990, and it has continued to grow.\nThe population is about 9 million (2023 est.). Population growth is projected to continue to 2035, due mostly to immigration. Like most of Europe, Switzerland faces an ageing population, with a fertility rate close to replacement level. Switzerland has one of the world's oldest populations, with an average age of 44.5 years.\nAccording to the World Factbook, ethnic groups in Switzerland are as follows: Swiss 69.2%, German 4.2%, Italian 3.2%, Portuguese 2.5%, French 2.1%, Kosovan 1.1%, Turkish 1%, other 16.7% (2020 est). The Council of Europe figures suggest a population of around 30,000 Romani people in the country.\nImmigration.\nIn 2023, resident foreigners made up 26.3% of Switzerland's population. Most of these (83%) were from European countries. Italy provided the largest single group of foreigners, providing 14.7% of total foreign population, followed closely by Germany (14.0%), Portugal (11.7%), France (6.6%), Kosovo (5.1%), Spain (3.9%), Turkey (3.1%), North Macedonia (3.1%), Serbia (2.8%), Austria (2.0%), United Kingdom (1.9%), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1.3%) and Croatia (1.3%). Immigrants from Sri Lanka (1.3%), most of them former Tamil refugees, were the largest group of Asian origin (7.9%).\n2021 figures show that 39.5% (compared to 34.7% in 2012) of the permanent resident population aged 15 or over (around 2.89\u00a0million), had an immigrant background. 38% of the population with an immigrant background (1.1\u00a0million) held Swiss citizenship.\nIn the 2000s, domestic and international institutions expressed concern about what was perceived as an increase in xenophobia. In reply to one critical report, the Federal Council noted that \"racism unfortunately is present in Switzerland\", but stated that the high proportion of foreign citizens in the country, as well as the generally successful integration of foreigners, underlined Switzerland's openness. A follow-up study conducted in 2018 reported that 59% considered racism a serious problem in Switzerland. The proportion of the population that claimed to have been targeted by racial discrimination increased from 10% in 2014 to almost 17% in 2018, according to the Federal Statistical Office.\nLargest cities.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nLanguages.\nSwitzerland has four national languages: mainly German (spoken natively by 62.8% of the population in 2016); French (22.9%) spoken natively in the west; and Italian (8.2%) spoken natively in the south. The fourth national language, Romansh (0.5%), is a Romance language spoken locally in the southeastern trilingual canton of Grisons, and is designated by Article 4 of the Federal Constitution as a national language along with German, French, and Italian. In Article 70 it is mentioned as an official language if the authorities communicate with persons who speak Romansh. However, federal laws and other official acts do not need to be decreed in Romansh.\nIn 2016, the languages most spoken at home among permanent residents aged 15 and older were Swiss German (59.4%), French (23.5%), Standard German (10.6%), and Italian (8.5%). Other languages spoken at home included English (5.0%), Portuguese (3.8%), Albanian (3.0%), Spanish (2.6%) and Serbian and Croatian (2.5%). 6.9% reported speaking another language at home. In 2014 almost two-thirds (64.4%) of the permanent resident population indicated speaking more than one language regularly.\nThe federal government is obliged to communicate in the official languages, and in the federal parliament simultaneous translation is provided from and into German, French and Italian.\nAside from the official forms of their respective languages, the four linguistic regions of Switzerland also have local dialectal forms. The role played by dialects in each linguistic region varies dramatically: in German-speaking regions, Swiss German dialects have become more prevalent since the second half of the 20th century, especially in the media, and are used as an everyday language for many, while the Swiss variety of Standard German is almost always used instead of dialect for written communication (cf. diglossic usage of a language). Conversely, in the French-speaking regions, local Franco-Proven\u00e7al dialects have almost disappeared (only 6.3% of the population of Valais, 3.9% of Fribourg, and 3.1% of Jura still spoke dialects at the end of the 20th century), while in the Italian-speaking regions, the use of Lombard dialects is mostly limited to family settings and casual conversation.\nThe principal official languages have terms not used outside of Switzerland, known as Helvetisms. German Helvetisms are, roughly speaking, a large group of words typical of Swiss Standard German that do not appear in Standard German, nor in other German dialects. These include terms from Switzerland's surrounding language cultures (German \"Billett\" from French), from similar terms in another language (Italian \"azione\" used not only as \"act\" but also as \"discount\" from German \"Aktion\"). Swiss French, while generally close to the French of France, also contains some Helvetisms. The most frequent characteristics of Helvetisms are in vocabulary, phrases, and pronunciation, although certain Helvetisms denote themselves as special in syntax and orthography. Duden, the comprehensive German dictionary, contains about 3000 Helvetisms. Current French dictionaries, such as the Petit Larousse, include several hundred Helvetisms; notably, Swiss French uses different terms than that of France for the numbers 70 (\"septante\") and 90 (\"nonante\") and often 80 (\"huitante\") as well.\nLearning one of the other national languages is compulsory for all Swiss pupils, hence many Swiss are supposed to be at least bilingual, especially those belonging to linguistic minority groups. Because the largest part of Switzerland is German-speaking, many French, Italian, and Romansh speakers migrating to the rest of Switzerland and the children of those non-German-speaking Swiss born within the rest of Switzerland speak German. While learning one of the other national languages at school is important, most Swiss learn English to communicate with Swiss speakers of other languages, as it is perceived as a neutral means of communication. English often functions as the de facto lingua franca.\nHealth.\nSwiss residents are required to buy health insurance from private insurance companies, which in turn are required to accept every applicant. While the cost of the system is among the highest, its health outcomes compare well with other European countries; patients have been reported as in general, highly satisfied with it. In 2012, life expectancy at birth was 80.4 years for men and 84.7 years for women \u2013 the world's highest. However, spending on health at 11.4% of GDP (2010) is on par with Germany and France (11.6%) and other European countries, but notably less than the US (17.6%). From 1990, costs steadily increased.\nIt is estimated that one out of six Swiss persons suffers from mental illness.\nAccording to a survey conducted by Addiction Switzerland, fourteen per cent of men and 6.5% of women between 20 and 24 reported consuming cannabis in the past 30 days in 2020, and 4 Swiss cities were listed among the top 10 European cities for cocaine use as measured in wastewater, down from 5 in 2018.\nCulture.\nSwiss culture is characterised by diversity, which is reflected in diverse traditional customs. A region may be in some ways culturally connected to the neighbouring country that shares its language, all rooted in western European culture. The linguistically isolated Romansh culture in Graub\u00fcnden in eastern Switzerland constitutes an exception. It survives only in the upper valleys of the Rhine and the Inn and strives to maintain its rare linguistic tradition.\nSwitzerland is home to notable contributors to literature, art, architecture, music and sciences. In addition, the country attracted creatives during times of unrest or war. Some 1000 museums are found in the country.\nAmong the most important cultural performances held annually are the Pal\u00e9o Festival, Lucerne Festival, the Montreux Jazz Festival, the Locarno International Film Festival and Art Basel.\nAlpine symbolism played an essential role in shaping Swiss history and the Swiss national identity. Many alpine areas and ski resorts attract visitors for winter sports as well as hiking and mountain biking in summer. The quieter seasons are spring and autumn. A traditional pastoral culture predominates in many areas, and small farms are omnipresent in rural areas. Folk art is nurtured in organisations across the country. Switzerland most directly in appears in music, dance, poetry, wood carving, and embroidery. The alphorn, a trumpet-like musical instrument made of wood has joined yodeling and the accordion as epitomes of traditional Swiss music.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nChristianity is the predominant religion according to national surveys of Swiss Federal Statistical Office (about 67% of resident population in 2016\u20132018 and 75% of Swiss citizens), divided between the Catholic Church (35.8% of the population), the Swiss Reformed Church (23.8%), further Protestant churches (2.2%), Eastern Orthodoxy (2.5%), and other Christian denominations (2.2%).\nSwitzerland has no official state religion, though most of the cantons (except Geneva and Neuch\u00e2tel) recognise official churches, either the Catholic Church or the Swiss Reformed Church. These churches, and in some cantons the Old Catholic Church and Jewish congregations, are financed by official taxation of members. In 2020, the Roman Catholic Church had 3,048,475 registered and church tax paying members (corresponding to 35.2% of the total population), while the Swiss Reformed Church had 2,015,816 members (23.3% of the total population).\n26.3% of Swiss permanent residents are not affiliated with a religious community.\nAs of 2020, according to a national survey conducted by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, Christian minority communities included Neo-Pietism (0.5%), Pentecostalism (0.4%, mostly incorporated in the Schweizer Pfingstmission), Apostolic communities (0.3%), other Protestant denominations (1.1%, including Methodism), the Old Catholic Church (0.1%), other Christian denominations (0.3%). Non-Christian religions are Islam (5.3%), Hinduism (0.6%), Buddhism (0.5%), Judaism (0.25%) and others (0.4%).\nHistorically, the country was about evenly balanced between Catholic and Protestant, in a complex patchwork. During the Reformation Switzerland became home to many reformers. Geneva converted to Protestantism in 1536, just before John Calvin arrived. In 1541, he founded the \"Republic of Geneva\" on his own ideals. It became known internationally as the \"Protestant Rome\" and housed such reformers as Theodore Beza, William Farel or Pierre Viret. Zurich became another reform stronghold around the same time, with Huldrych Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger taking the lead. Anabaptists Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel also operated there. They were later joined by the fleeing Peter Martyr Vermigli and Hans Denck. Other centres included Basel (Andreas Karlstadt and Johannes Oecolampadius), Bern (Berchtold Haller and Niklaus Manuel), and St. Gallen (Joachim Vadian). One canton, Appenzell, was officially divided into Catholic and Protestant sections in 1597. The larger cities and their cantons (Bern, Geneva, Lausanne, Zurich and Basel) used to be predominantly Protestant. Central Switzerland, the Valais, the Ticino, Appenzell Innerrhodes, the Jura, and Fribourg are traditionally Catholic.\nThe Swiss Constitution of 1848, under the recent impression of the clashes of Catholic vs Protestant cantons that culminated in the Sonderbundskrieg, consciously defines a consociational state, allowing the peaceful co-existence of Catholics and Protestants. A 1980 initiative calling for the complete separation of church and state was rejected by 78.9% of the voters. Some traditionally Protestant cantons and cities nowadays have a slight Catholic majority, because since about 1970 a steadily growing minority were not affiliated with any religious body (21.4% in Switzerland, 2012) especially in traditionally Protestant regions, such as Basel-City (42%), canton of Neuch\u00e2tel (38%), canton of Geneva (35%), canton of Vaud (26%), or Zurich city (city: >25%; canton: 23%).\nLiterature.\nThe earliest forms of literature were in German, reflecting the language's early predominance. In the 18th century, French became fashionable in Bern and elsewhere, while the influence of the French-speaking allies and subject lands increased.\nAmong the classic authors of Swiss literature are Jeremias Gotthelf (1797\u20131854) and Gottfried Keller (1819\u20131890); later writers are Max Frisch (1911\u20131991) and Friedrich D\u00fcrrenmatt (1921\u20131990), whose (\"\") was released as a Hollywood film in 2001, starring Jack Nicholson.\nFamous French-speaking writers were Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712\u20131778) and Germaine de Sta\u00ebl (1766\u20131817). More recent authors include Charles Ferdinand Ramuz (1878\u20131947), whose novels describe the lives of peasants and mountain dwellers, set in a harsh environment, and Blaise Cendrars (born Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Sauser, 1887\u20131961). Italian and Romansh-speaking authors also contributed to the Swiss literary landscape, generally in proportion to their number.\nProbably the most famous Swiss literary creation, \"Heidi\", the story of an orphan girl who lives with her grandfather in the Alps, is one of the most popular children's books and has come to be a symbol of Switzerland. Her creator, Johanna Spyri (1827\u20131901), wrote a number of books on similar themes.\nMedia.\nFreedom of the press and the right to free expression is guaranteed in the constitution. The Swiss News Agency (SNA) broadcasts information in three of the four national languages\u2014on politics, economics, society and culture. The SNA supplies almost all Swiss media and foreign media with its reporting.\nIn Switzerland, the most influential newspapers include the German-language and \"Neue Z\u00fcrcher Zeitung\", as well as the French-language \"Le Temps\". Additionally, almost every city has at least one local newspaper published in the predominant local language.\nThe government exerts greater control over broadcast media than print media, especially due to financing and licensing. The Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, whose name was recently changed to SRG SSR, is charged with the production and distribution of radio and television content. SRG SSR studios are distributed across the various language regions. Radio content is produced in six central and four regional studios while video media are produced in Geneva, Zurich, Basel, and Lugano. An extensive cable network allows most Swiss to access content from neighbouring countries.\nSports.\nSkiing, snowboarding and mountaineering are among the most popular sports, reflecting the nature of the country Winter sports are practised by natives and visitors. The bobsleigh was invented in St. Moritz. The first world ski championships were held in M\u00fcrren (1931) and St. Moritz (1934). The latter town hosted the second Winter Olympic Games in 1928 and the fifth edition in 1948. Among its most successful skiers and world champions are Pirmin Zurbriggen and Didier Cuche.\nThe most prominently watched sports in Switzerland are football and ice hockey.\nThe headquarters of the international football's and ice hockey's governing bodies, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) and International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) are located in Zurich. Many other headquarters of international sports federations are located in Switzerland. For example, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), IOC's Olympic Museum and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) are located in Lausanne.\nSwitzerland hosted the 1954 FIFA World Cup and was the joint host, with Austria, of the UEFA Euro 2008 tournament. The Swiss Super League is the nation's professional football club league. Europe's highest football pitch, at above sea level, is located in Switzerland, the \"Ottmar Hitzfeld Stadium\".\nMany Swiss follow ice hockey and support one of the 12 teams of the National League, which is the most attended league in Europe. In 2009, Switzerland hosted the IIHF World Championship for the tenth time. It also became World Vice-Champion in 2013 and 2018. Its numerous lakes make Switzerland an attractive sailing destination. The largest, Lake Geneva, is the home of the sailing team Alinghi which was the first European team to win the America's Cup in 2003 and which successfully defended the title in 2007.\nSwiss tennis player Roger Federer is widely regarded as among the sport's greatest players. He won 20 Grand Slam tournaments overall including a record 8 Wimbledon titles. He won six ATP Finals. He was ranked no. 1 in the ATP rankings for a record 237 consecutive weeks. He ended 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009 ranked no. 1. Fellow Swiss players Martina Hingis and Stan Wawrinka also won multiple Grand Slam titles. Switzerland won the Davis Cup title in 2014.\nMotorsport racecourses and events were banned in Switzerland following the 1955 Le Mans disaster with exceptions for events such as hillclimbing. The country continued to produce successful racing drivers such as Clay Regazzoni, S\u00e9bastien Buemi, Jo Siffert, Dominique Aegerter, successful World Touring Car Championship driver Alain Menu, 2014 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Marcel F\u00e4ssler and 2015 24 Hours N\u00fcrburgring winner Nico M\u00fcller. Switzerland also won the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport in 2007\u201308 with driver Neel Jani. Swiss motorcycle racer Thomas L\u00fcthi won the 2005 MotoGP World Championship in the 125cc category. In June 2007 the Swiss National Council, one house of the Federal Assembly of Switzerland, voted to overturn the ban, however the other house, the Swiss Council of States rejected the change and the ban remains in place.\nTraditional sports include Swiss wrestling or , a tradition from the rural central cantons and considered the national sport by some. Hornussen is another indigenous Swiss sport, which is like a cross between baseball and golf. is the Swiss variant of stone put, a competition in throwing a heavy stone. Practised only among the alpine population since prehistoric times, it is recorded to have taken place in Basel in the 13th century. It is central to the Unspunnenfest, first held in 1805, with its symbol the 83.5 stone named .\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine is multifaceted. While dishes such as fondue, raclette or r\u00f6sti are omnipresent, each region developed its gastronomy according to the varieties of climate and language, for example, , engl.: sliced meat Zurich style. Traditional Swiss cuisine uses ingredients similar to those in other European countries, as well as unique dairy products and cheeses such as Gruy\u00e8re or Emmental, produced in the valleys of Gruy\u00e8res and Emmental. The number of fine-dining establishments is high, particularly in western Switzerland.\nChocolate has been made in Switzerland since the 18th century. Its reputation grew at the end of the 19th century with the invention of modern techniques such as conching and tempering, which enabled higher quality. Another breakthrough was the invention of solid milk chocolate in 1875 by Daniel Peter. The Swiss are the world's largest chocolate consumers.\nThe most popular alcoholic drink is wine. Switzerland is notable for its variety of grape varieties, reflecting the large variations in terroirs. Swiss wine is produced mainly in Valais, Vaud (Lavaux), Geneva and Ticino, with a small majority of white wines. Vineyards have been cultivated in Switzerland since the Roman era, even though traces of a more ancient origin can be found. The most widespread varieties are the Chasselas (called Fendant in Valais) and Pinot Noir. Merlot is the main variety produced in Ticino.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "8128": "Dialect\nVariant of a language\nA dialect is a variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. It can also refer to a language subordinate in status to a dominant language, and is sometimes used to mean a vernacular language.\nThe more common usage of the term in English refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The dialects or varieties of a particular language are closely related and, despite their differences, are most often largely mutually intelligible, especially if geographically close to one another in a dialect continuum. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class or ethnicity. A dialect associated with a particular social class is called a sociolect; one associated with a particular ethnic group is an ethnolect; and a geographical or regional dialect is a regiolect (alternative terms include 'regionalect', 'geolect', and 'topolect'). Any variety of a given language can be classified as a \"dialect\", including standardized ones.\nA second usage, which refers to colloquial settings, typically diglossic, exists in a few countries like Italy, such as ', ' in France, much of East Central Europe, and the Philippines, and may carry a pejorative undertone and underlines the politically and socially subordinated status of an autochthonous non-national language to the country's official language(s). Dialects in this sense do not derive from a dominant language and are therefore not one of its varieties, though they may have evolved in a separate and parallel way. While they may be historically cognate with and share genetic roots in the same subfamily as the dominant national language and may, to a varying degree, share some mutual intelligibility with the latter, \"dialects\" under this second definition are separate languages from the standard or national language. Under this definition, the standard or national language would not itself be considered a dialect, as it is the dominant language in terms of linguistic prestige, social or political (e.g. official) status, predominance or prevalence, or all of the above. \"Dialect\" used this way implies a political connotation, often being used to refer to non-standardized \"low-prestige\" languages (regardless of their actual degree of distance from the national language) of limited geographic distribution, languages lacking institutional support, or even those considered to be \"unsuitable for writing\".\nOccasionally, in a third usage, \"dialect\" refers to the unwritten or non-codified languages of developing countries or isolated areas, where the term \"vernacular language\" would be preferred by linguists.\nFeatures that distinguish dialects from each other can be found in lexicon (vocabulary) and grammar (morphology, syntax) as well as in pronunciation (phonology, including prosody). In instances where the salient distinctions are only or mostly to be observed in pronunciation, the more specific term \"accent\" may be used instead of \"dialect\". Differences that are largely concentrated in lexicon may be classified as creoles. When lexical differences are mostly concentrated in the specialized vocabulary of a profession or other organization, they are jargons. Differences in vocabulary that are deliberately cultivated to exclude outsiders or to serve as shibboleths are known as cryptolects or cant, and include slangs and argots. The particular speech patterns used by an individual are referred to as that person's idiolect.\nLanguages are classified as dialects based on linguistic distance. The dialects of a language with a writing system will operate at different degrees of distance from the standardized written form. Some dialects of a language are not mutually intelligible in spoken form, leading to debate as to whether they are regiolects or separate languages.\nStandard and nonstandard dialects.\nA \"standard dialect\", also known as a \"standardized language\", is supported by institutions. Such institutional support may include any or all of the following: government recognition or designation; formal presentation in schooling as the \"correct\" form of a language; informal monitoring of everyday usage; published grammars, dictionaries, and textbooks that set forth a normative spoken and written form; and an extensive formal literature (be it prose, poetry, non-fiction, etc.) that uses it. An example of a standardized language is the French language which is supported by the institution. A nonstandard dialect also has a complete grammar and vocabulary, but is usually not the beneficiary of institutional support.\nThe distinction between the \"standard\" dialect and the \"nonstandard\" (vernacular) dialects of the same language is often arbitrary and based on social, political, cultural, or historical considerations or prevalence and prominence. In a similar way, the definitions of the terms \"language\" and \"dialect\" may overlap and are often subject to debate, with the differentiation between the two classifications often grounded in arbitrary or sociopolitical motives, and the term \"dialect\" is sometimes restricted to mean \"non-standard variety\", particularly in non-specialist settings and non-English linguistic traditions.\nDialect as linguistic variety of a language.\nThe term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class or ethnicity. A dialect that is associated with a particular social class can be termed a sociolect. A dialect that is associated with a particular ethnic group can be termed an ethnolect.\nA geographical/regional dialect may be termed a regiolect (alternative terms include 'regionalect', 'geolect', and 'topolect'). According to this definition, any variety of a given language can be classified as \"a dialect\", including any standardized varieties. In this case, the distinction between the \"standard language\" (i.e. the \"standard\" dialect of a particular language) and the \"nonstandard\" (vernacular) dialects of the same language is often arbitrary and based on social, political, cultural, or historical considerations or prevalence and prominence. In a similar way, the definitions of the terms \"language\" and \"dialect\" may overlap and are often subject to debate, with the differentiation between the two classifications often grounded in arbitrary or sociopolitical motives. The term \"dialect\" is however sometimes restricted to mean \"non-standard variety\", particularly in non-specialist settings and non-English linguistic traditions. Conversely, some dialectologists have reserved the term \"dialect\" for forms that they believed (sometimes wrongly) to be purer forms of the older languages, as in how early dialectologists of English did not consider the Brummie of Birmingham or the Scouse of Liverpool to be real dialects, as they had arisen fairly recently in time and partly as a result of influences from Irish migrants.\nDifference between dialects and languages.\nThere is no universally accepted criterion for distinguishing two different languages from two dialects (i.e. varieties) of the same language. A number of rough measures exist, sometimes leading to contradictory results. The distinction between dialect and language is therefore subjective and depends upon the user's preferred frame of reference. For example, there has been discussion about whether or not the Lim\u00f3n Creole English should be considered \"a kind\" of English or a different language. This creole is spoken in the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica (Central America) by descendants of Jamaican people. The position that Costa Rican linguists support depends upon which university they represent. Another example is Scanian, which even, for a time, had its own ISO code.\nLinguistic distance.\nAn important criterion for categorizing varieties of language is linguistic distance. For a variety to be considered a dialect, the linguistic distance between the two varieties must be low. Linguistic distance between spoken or written forms of language increases as the differences between the forms are characterized. For example, two languages with completely different syntactical structures would have a high linguistic distance, while a language with very few differences from another may be considered a dialect or a sibling of that language. Linguistic distance may be used to determine language families and language siblings. For example, languages with little linguistic distance, like Dutch and German, are considered siblings. Dutch and German are siblings in the West-Germanic language group. Some language siblings are closer to each other in terms of linguistic distance than to other linguistic siblings. French and Spanish, siblings in the Romance Branch of the Indo-European group, are closer to each other than they are to any of the languages of the West-Germanic group. When languages are close in terms of linguistic distance, they resemble one another, hence why dialects are not considered linguistically distant to their parent language.\nMutual intelligibility.\nOne criterion, which is often considered to be purely linguistic, is that of mutual intelligibility: two varieties are said to be dialects of the same language if being a speaker of one variety has sufficient knowledge to understand and be understood by a speaker of the other dialect; otherwise, they are said to be different languages. However, this definition has often been criticized, especially in the case of a dialect continuum (or dialect chain), which contains a sequence of varieties, where each mutually intelligible with the next, but may not be mutually intelligible with distant varieties.\nOthers have argued that mutual intelligibility occurs in varying degrees, and the potential difficulty in distinguishing between intelligibility and prior familiarity with the other variety. However, recent research suggests that there is some empirical evidence in favor of using some form of the intelligibility criterion to distinguish between languages and dialects, though mutuality may not be as relevant as initially thought. The requirement for mutuality is abandoned by the \"Language Survey Reference Guide\" of SIL International, publishers of the \"Ethnologue\" and the registration authority for the ISO 639-3 standard for language codes. They define a \"dialect cluster\" as a central variety together with all those varieties whose speakers understand the central variety at a specified threshold level or higher. If the threshold level is high, usually between 70% and 85%, the cluster is designated as a \"language\".\nSociolinguistic definitions.\nAnother occasionally used criterion for discriminating dialects from languages is the sociolinguistic notion of linguistic authority. According to this definition, two varieties are considered dialects of the same language if (under at least some circumstances) they would defer to the same authority regarding some questions about their language. For instance, to learn the name of a new invention, or an obscure foreign species of plant, speakers of Westphalian and East Franconian German might each consult a German dictionary or ask a German-speaking expert in the subject. Thus these varieties are said to be dependent on, or heteronomous with respect to, Standard German, which is said to be autonomous.\nIn contrast, speakers in the Netherlands of Low Saxon varieties similar to Westphalian would instead consult a dictionary of Standard Dutch, and hence is categorized as a dialect of Dutch instead. Similarly, although Yiddish is classified by linguists as a language in the High German group of languages and has some degree of mutual intelligibility with German, a Yiddish speaker would consult a Yiddish dictionary rather than a German dictionary in such a case, and is classified as its own language.\nWithin this framework, W. A. Stewart defined a \"language\" as an autonomous variety in addition to all the varieties that are heteronomous with respect to it, noting that an essentially equivalent definition had been stated by Charles A. Ferguson and John J. Gumperz in 1960. A heteronomous variety may be considered a \"dialect\" of a language defined in this way. In these terms, Danish and Norwegian, though mutually intelligible to a large degree, are considered separate languages. In the framework of Heinz Kloss, these are described as languages by \"ausbau\" (development) rather than by \"abstand\" (separation).\nDialect and language clusters.\nIn other situations, a closely related group of varieties possess considerable (though incomplete) mutual intelligibility, but none dominates the others. To describe this situation, the editors of the \"Handbook of African Languages\" introduced the term dialect cluster as a classificatory unit at the same level as a language. A similar situation, but with a greater degree of mutual unintelligibility, has been termed a language cluster.\nIn the \"Language Survey Reference Guide\" issued by SIL International, who produce \"Ethnologue\", a \"dialect cluster\" is defined as a central variety together with a collection of varieties whose speakers can understand the central variety at a specified threshold level (usually between 70% and 85%) or higher. It is not required that peripheral varieties be understood by speakers of the central variety or of other peripheral varieties. A minimal set of central varieties providing coverage of a dialect continuum may be selected algorithmically from intelligibility data.\nPolitical factors.\nIn many societies, however, a particular dialect, often the sociolect of the elite class, comes to be identified as the \"standard\" or \"proper\" version of a language by those seeking to make a social distinction and is contrasted with other varieties. As a result of this, in some contexts, the term \"dialect\" refers specifically to varieties with low social status. In this secondary sense of \"dialect\", language varieties are often called \"dialects\" rather than \"languages\":\nThe status of \"language\" is not solely determined by linguistic criteria, but it is also the result of a historical and political development. Romansh came to be a written language, and therefore it is recognized as a language, even though it is very close to the Lombardic alpine dialects and classical Latin. An opposite example is Chinese, whose variations such as Mandarin and Cantonese are often called dialects and not languages in China, despite their mutual unintelligibility.\nNational boundaries sometimes make the distinction between \"language\" and \"dialect\" an issue of political importance. A group speaking a separate \"language\" may be seen as having a greater claim to being a separate \"people\", and thus to be more deserving of its own independent state, while a group speaking a \"dialect\" may be seen as a sub-group, part of a bigger people, which must content itself with regional autonomy.\nThe Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich published the expression, \"A shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot\" (: \"A language is a dialect with an army and navy\") in \"YIVO Bleter\" 25.1, 1945, p.\u00a013. The significance of the political factors in any attempt at answering the question \"what is a language?\" is great enough to cast doubt on whether any strictly linguistic definition, without a socio-cultural approach, is possible. This is illustrated by the frequency with which the army-navy aphorism is cited.\nTerminology.\nBy the definition most commonly used by linguists, any linguistic variety can be considered a \"dialect\" of \"some\" language\u2014\"everybody speaks a dialect\". According to that interpretation, the criteria above merely serve to distinguish whether two varieties are dialects of the \"same\" language or dialects of \"different\" languages.\nThe terms \"language\" and \"dialect\" are not necessarily mutually exclusive, although they are often perceived to be. Thus there is nothing contradictory in the statement \"the \"language\" of the Pennsylvania Dutch is a dialect of German\".\nThere are various terms that linguists may use to avoid taking a position on whether the speech of a community is an independent language in its own right or a dialect of another language. Perhaps the most common is \"variety\"; \"lect\" is another. A more general term is \"languoid\", which does not distinguish between dialects, languages, and groups of languages, whether genealogically related or not.\nColloquial meaning of dialect.\nThe colloquial meaning of dialect can be understood by example, e.g. in Italy (see '), France (see ') and the Philippines, carries a pejorative undertone and underlines the politically and socially subordinated status of a non-national language to the country's single official language. In other words, these \"dialects\" are not actual dialects in the same sense as in the first usage, as they do not derive from the politically dominant language and are therefore not one of its varieties, but instead they evolved in a separate and parallel way and may thus better fit various parties' criteria for a separate language.\nDespite this, these \"dialects\" may often be historically cognate and share genetic roots in the same subfamily as the dominant national language and may even, to a varying degree, share some mutual intelligibility with the latter. In this sense, unlike in the first usage, the national language would not itself be considered a \"dialect\", as it is the dominant language in a particular state, be it in terms of linguistic prestige, social or political (e.g. official) status, predominance or prevalence, or all of the above. The term \"dialect\" used this way implies a political connotation, being mostly used to refer to low-prestige languages (regardless of their actual degree of distance from the national language), languages lacking institutional support, or those perceived as \"unsuitable for writing\". The designation \"dialect\" is also used popularly to refer to the unwritten or non-codified languages of developing countries or isolated areas, where the term \"vernacular language\" would be preferred by linguists.\nDialect and accent.\nJohn Lyons writes that \"Many linguists [...] subsume differences of accent under differences of dialect.\" In general, \"accent\" refers to variations in pronunciation, while \"dialect\" also encompasses specific variations in grammar and vocabulary.\nExamples.\nArabic.\nThere are three geographical zones in which Arabic is spoken (Jastrow 2002). Zone I is categorized as the area in which Arabic was spoken before the rise of Islam. It is the Arabian Peninsula, excluding the areas where southern Arabian was spoken. Zone II is categorized as the areas to which Arabic speaking peoples moved as a result of the conquests of Islam. Included in Zone II are the Levant, Egypt, North Africa, Iraq, and some parts of Iran. The Egyptian, Sudanese, and Levantine dialects (including the Syrian dialect) are well documented, and widely spoken and studied. Zone III comprises the areas in which Arabic is spoken outside of the continuous Arabic Language area.\nSpoken dialects of the Arabic language share the same writing system and share Modern Standard Arabic as their common prestige dialect used in writing.\nGerman.\nWhen talking about the German language, the term German dialects is only used for the traditional regional varieties. That allows them to be distinguished from the regional varieties of modern standard German. The German dialects show a wide spectrum of variation. Some of them are not mutually intelligible. German dialectology traditionally names the major dialect groups after Germanic tribes from which they were assumed to have descended.\nThe extent to which the dialects are spoken varies according to a number of factors: In Northern Germany, dialects are less common than in the South. In cities, dialects are less common than in the countryside. In a public environment, dialects are less common than in a familiar environment.\nThe situation in Switzerland and Liechtenstein is different from the rest of the German-speaking countries. The Swiss German dialects are the default everyday language in virtually every situation, whereas standard German is only spoken in education, partially in media, and with foreigners not possessing knowledge of Swiss German. Most Swiss German speakers perceive standard German to be a foreign language.\nThe Low German and Low Franconian varieties spoken in Germany are often counted among the German dialects. This reflects the modern situation where they are roofed by standard German. This is different from the situation in the Middle Ages when Low German had strong tendencies towards an ausbau language.\nThe Frisian languages spoken in Germany and the Netherlands are excluded from the German dialects.\nItaly.\nItaly is an often quoted example of a country where the second definition of the word \"dialect\" (\"dialetto\") is most prevalent. Italy is in fact home to a vast array of separate languages, most of which lack mutual intelligibility with one another and have their own local varieties; twelve of them (Albanian, Catalan, German, Greek, Slovene, Croatian, French, Franco-Proven\u00e7al, Friulian, Ladin, Occitan and Sardinian) underwent Italianization to a varying degree (ranging from the currently endangered state displayed by Sardinian and southern Italian Greek to the vigorous promotion of Germanic Tyrolean), but have been officially recognized as minority languages (\"minoranze linguistiche storiche\"), in light of their distinctive historical development. Yet, most of the regional languages spoken across the peninsula are often colloquially referred to in non-linguistic circles as Italian \"dialetti\", since most of them, including the prestigious Neapolitan, Sicilian and Venetian, have adopted vulgar Tuscan as their reference language since the Middle Ages. However, all these languages evolved from Vulgar Latin in parallel with Italian, long prior to the popular diffusion of the latter throughout what is now Italy.\nDuring the \"Risorgimento\", Italian still existed mainly as a literary language, and only 2.5% of Italy's population could speak Italian. Proponents of Italian nationalism, like the Lombard Alessandro Manzoni, stressed the importance of establishing a uniform national language in order to better create an Italian national identity. With the unification of Italy in the 1860s, Italian became the official national language of the new Italian state, while the other ones came to be institutionally regarded as \"dialects\" subordinate to Italian, and negatively associated with a lack of education.\nIn the early 20th century, the conscription of Italian men from all throughout Italy during World War I is credited with having facilitated the diffusion of Italian among the less educated conscripted soldiers, as these men, who had been speaking various regional languages up until then, found themselves forced to communicate with each other in a common tongue while serving in the Italian military. With the popular spread of Italian out of the intellectual circles, because of the mass-media and the establishment of public education, Italians from all regions were increasingly exposed to Italian. While dialect levelling has increased the number of Italian speakers and decreased the number of speakers of other languages native to Italy, Italians in different regions have developed variations of standard Italian specific to their region. These variations of standard Italian, known as \"regional Italian\", would thus more appropriately be called dialects in accordance with the first linguistic definition of the term, as they are in fact derived from Italian, with some degree of influence from the local or regional native languages and accents.\nThe most widely spoken languages of Italy, which are not to be confused with regional Italian, fall within a family of which even Italian is part, the Italo-Dalmatian group. This wide category includes:\nModern Italian is heavily based on the Florentine dialect of Tuscan. The Tuscan-based language that would eventually become modern Italian had been used in poetry and literature since at least the 12th century, and it first spread outside the Tuscan linguistic borders through the works of the so-called \"tre corone\" (\"three crowns\"): Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, and Giovanni Boccaccio. Florentine thus gradually rose to prominence as the \"volgare\" of the literate and upper class in Italy, and it spread throughout the peninsula and Sicily as the \"lingua franca\" among the Italian educated class as well as Italian travelling merchants. The economic prowess and cultural and artistic importance of Tuscany in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance further encouraged the diffusion of the Florentine-Tuscan Italian throughout Italy and among the educated and powerful, though local and regional languages remained the main languages of the common people.\nAside from the Italo-Dalmatian languages, the second most widespread family in Italy is the Gallo-Italic group, spanning throughout much of Northern Italy's languages and dialects (such as Piedmontese, Emilian-Romagnol, Ligurian, Lombard, Venetian, Sicily's and Basilicata's Gallo-Italic in southern Italy, etc.).\nFinally, other languages from a number of different families follow the last two major groups: the Gallo-Romance languages (French, Occitan and its Vivaro-Alpine dialect, Franco-Proven\u00e7al); the Rhaeto-Romance languages (Friulian and Ladin); the Ibero-Romance languages (Sardinia's Algherese); the Germanic Cimbrian, Southern Bavarian, Walser German and the M\u00f2cheno language; the Albanian Arb\u00ebresh language; the Hellenic Griko language and Calabrian Greek; the Serbo-Croatian Slavomolisano dialect; and the various Slovene languages, including the Gail Valley dialect and Istrian dialect. The language indigenous to Sardinia, while being Romance in nature, is considered to be a specific linguistic family of its own, separate from the other Neo-Latin groups; it is often subdivided into the Centro-Southern and Centro-Northern dialects.\nThough mostly mutually unintelligible, the exact degree to which all the Italian languages are mutually unintelligible varies, often correlating with geographical distance or geographical barriers between the languages; some regional Italian languages that are closer in geographical proximity to each other or closer to each other on the dialect continuum are more or less mutually intelligible. For instance, a speaker of purely Eastern Lombard, a language in Northern Italy's Lombardy region that includes the Bergamasque dialect, would have severely limited mutual intelligibility with a purely Italian speaker and would be nearly completely unintelligible to a Sicilian-speaking individual. Due to Eastern Lombard's status as a Gallo-Italic language, an Eastern Lombard speaker may, in fact, have more mutual intelligibility with an Occitan, Catalan, or French speaker than with an Italian or Sicilian speaker. Meanwhile, a Sicilian-speaking person would have a greater degree of mutual intelligibility with a speaker of the more closely related Neapolitan language, but far less mutual intelligibility with a person speaking Sicilian Gallo-Italic, a language that developed in isolated Lombard emigrant communities on the same island as the Sicilian language.\nToday, the majority of Italian nationals are able to speak Italian, though many Italians still speak their regional language regularly or as their primary day-to-day language, especially at home with family or when communicating with Italians from the same town or region.\nThe Balkans.\nThe classification of speech varieties as dialects or languages and their relationship to other varieties of speech can be controversial and the verdicts inconsistent. Serbo-Croatian illustrates this point. Serbo-Croatian has two major formal variants (Serbian and Croatian). Both are based on the \"Shtokavian\" dialect and therefore mutually intelligible with differences found mostly in their respective local vocabularies and minor grammatical differences. Certain dialects of Serbia (\"Torlakian\") and Croatia (\"Kajkavian\" and \"Chakavian\"), however, are not mutually intelligible even though they are usually subsumed under Serbo-Croatian. How these dialects should be classified in relation to Shtokavian remains a matter of dispute.\nMacedonian, which is largely mutually intelligible with Bulgarian and certain dialects of Serbo-Croatian (Torlakian), is considered by Bulgarian linguists to be a Bulgarian dialect, while in North Macedonia, it is regarded as a language in its own right. Before the establishment of a literary standard of Macedonian in 1944, in most sources in and out of Bulgaria before the Second World War, the South Slavic dialect continuum covering the area of today's North Macedonia were referred to as Bulgarian dialects. Sociolinguists agree that the question of whether Macedonian is a dialect of Bulgarian or a language is a political one and cannot be resolved on a purely linguistic basis.\nLebanon.\nIn Lebanon, a part of the Christian population considers \"Lebanese\" to be in some sense a distinct language from Arabic and not merely a dialect thereof. During the civil war, Christians often used Lebanese Arabic officially, and sporadically used the Latin script to write Lebanese, thus further distinguishing it from Arabic. All Lebanese laws are written in the standard literary form of Arabic, though parliamentary debate may be conducted in Lebanese Arabic.\nMalay.\nMalay has a long history as a lingua franca (Indonesian and Malay: \"basantara\") in the Malay Archipelago which currently includes Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, Singapore, East Timor, and the southern part of Thailand. This geographical variation, which then spread widely even to South Africa, finally led to the formation of a Malay language cluster which spread and had differences due to geographical conditions.\nThe Malay language is pluricentric and a macrolanguage, i.e., several varieties of it are standardized as the national language ( or ) of several nation states with various official names: in Malaysia, it is designated as either (\"Malaysian\") or also (\"Malay language\"); in Singapore and Brunei, it is called (\"Malay language\"); in Indonesia, an autonomous normative variety called (\"Indonesian language\") is designated the (\"unifying language\" or lingua franca) whereas the term \"Malay\" () is domestically restricted to vernacular varieties of Malay indigenous to areas of Central to Southern Sumatra and West Kalimantan.\nNorth Africa.\nIn Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, the Darijas translated as literally meaning Dialect in Arabic (spoken North African languages) are sometimes considered more different from other Arabic dialects. Officially, North African countries prefer to give preference to the Literary Arabic and conduct much of their political and religious life in it (adherence to Islam), and refrain from declaring each country's specific variety to be a separate language, because Literary Arabic is the liturgical language of Islam and the language of the Islamic sacred book, the Qur'an. Although, especially since the 1960s, the Darijas are occupying an increasing use and influence in the cultural life of these countries. Examples of cultural elements where Darijas' use became dominant include: theatre, film, music, television, advertisement, social media, folk-tale books and companies' names.\nUkraine.\nThe Modern Ukrainian language has been in common use since the late 17th century, associated with the establishment of the Cossack Hetmanate. In the 19th century, the Tsarist Government of the Russian Empire claimed that Ukrainian (or Little Russian, per official name) was merely a dialect of Russian (or Polonized dialect) and not a language on its own (same concept as for Belarusian language). That concepted was enrooted soon after the partitions of Poland. According to these claims, the differences were few and caused by the conquest of western Ukraine by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. However, in reality the dialects in Ukraine were developing independently from the dialects in the modern Russia for several centuries, and as a result they differed substantially.\nFollowing the Spring of Nations in Europe and efforts of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, across the so-called \"Southwestern Krai\" of Russian Empire started to spread cultural societies of Hromada and their Sunday schools. Themselves \"hromadas\" acted in same manner as Orthodox fraternities of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth back in 15th century. Around that time in Ukraine becoming popular political movements Narodnichestvo (Narodniks) and Khlopomanstvo.\nMoldova.\nThere have been cases of a variety of speech being deliberately reclassified to serve political purposes. One example is Moldovan. In 1996, the Moldovan Parliament, citing fears of \"Romanian expansionism\", rejected a proposal from President Mircea Snegur to change the name of the language to Romanian, and in 2003 a Moldovan\u2013Romanian dictionary was published, purporting to show that the two countries speak different languages. Linguists of the Romanian Academy reacted by declaring that all the Moldovan words were also Romanian words; while in Moldova, the head of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova, Ion B\u0103rbu\u0163\u0103, described the dictionary as a politically motivated \"absurdity\". On 22 March 2023, the president of Moldova, Maia Sandu, promulgated a law passed by Parliament that named the national language as \"Romanian\" in all legislative texts and the constitution.\nGreater China.\nUnlike languages that use alphabets to indicate their pronunciation, Chinese characters have developed from logograms that do not always give hints to their pronunciation. Although the written characters have remained relatively consistent for the last two thousand years, the pronunciation and grammar in different regions have developed to an extent that the varieties of the spoken language are often mutually unintelligible. As a series of migration to the south throughout the history, the regional languages of the south, including Gan, Xiang, Wu, Min, Yue and Hakka often show traces of Old Chinese or Middle Chinese.\nFrom the Ming dynasty onward, Beijing has been the capital of China and the dialect spoken in Beijing has had the most prestige among other varieties. With the founding of the Republic of China, Standard Mandarin was designated as the official language, based on the spoken language of Beijing. Since then, other spoken varieties are regarded as \"fangyan\" (regional speech). Cantonese is still the most commonly-used language in Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau and among some overseas Chinese communities, whereas Hokkien has been accepted in Taiwan as an important local language alongside Mandarin. Then starting in the 1950s, the written language also diverged when the People's Republic of China introduced simplified characters, which are now used throughout the country. Traditional characters are still the norm in Taiwan and some other overseas communities.\nHindi and Urdu.\nHindi is one of the official languages of India, alongside English, and an official language in nine states (including Gujarat, where Gujarati is the most spoken language). Urdu is the national and official language of Pakistan, as well as being an additional official language in 5 states of India (3 of the 8 Hindi speaking states plus Andhra Pradesh and Telangana). While it is the second language for most Pakistanis (outside of muhajirs who immigrated during partition and their descendants) in favor of languages like Punjabi and Sindhi, it is the first language of most Indian Muslims in North India and the Deccan Plateau.\nThe two languages in their colloquially spoken form are mutually intelligible, but in written form, Hindi uses the Devanagari script while Urdu uses the Perso-Arabic script. For formal vocabulary, the two languages diverge, with Hindi drawing more from Sanskrit and Urdu more from Persian or Arabic. \nIn addition, several other dialects or languages are classified under Hindi that did not descend from it. Standard Hindi and Urdu are based on Khari Boli, the dialect spoken around Delhi. Other dialects with high mutual intelligibility spoken in surrounding areas include Haryanvi and languages from Western Uttar Pradesh, like Braj Bhasha. But many languages less similar to Standard Hindi do not have official status under the 8th Schedule to the Constitution of India and are instead classified as dialects of Hindi. This includes Bhojpuri, spoken in Eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which does not have official status in either state or in the 8th Schedule, despite being spoken by over 50 million people. But over time, more languages have been recognized as distinct from Hindi. Maithili was made a scheduled language of India in 2003, and Chhattisgarhi was made official in Chhattisgarh.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSelected list of articles on dialects.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["8128", "26748", "17926"], "permutation_1": ["8128", "26748", "17926"], "permutation_2": ["8128", "26748", "17926"], "permutation_3": ["8128", "17926", "26748"]}
{"id": "3hop2__30654_144622_89329", "docs_added": {"38480751": "Lawrence Zazzo\nAmerican countertenor (born 1970)\nLawrence Zazzo (born December 15, 1970) is an American countertenor who has performed at major opera houses in Europe and the US. His repertoire includes Baroque opera and oratorios as well as works of the 20th century.\nEducation and background.\nBorn in Philadelphia, Zazzo took part in school drama productions and choirs, including the Philadelphia Boys Choir & Chorale, and also performed as the magician \"The Great Zazzini\" for smaller children in the neighbourhood. After his voice had broken, he noticed that he had kept his alto voice in the falsetto register and began to develop it. He sang in numerous barbershop ensembles, high school madrigal and a cappella choirs. This led to his decision to study English and Music at Yale University (1989\u201393) and at King's College, Cambridge, England, (1993\u201395).\nZazzo envisaged a career as a conductor, a concert singer or as an academic (and in fact, Zazzo completed a PhD in Musicology at Queen's University (2015) on Handel's oratorios, which he researched for six years in between singing engagements). While he was completing his vocal studies at the Royal College of Music in London (1995\u201397), he made his debut as Oberon in Britten's \"A Midsummer Night's Dream\". The same year he sang the title role in Handel's \"Arminio\" at the London Handel Festival.\nIn 2017, Zazzo joined Newcastle University as Head of Performance and Lecturer in Music.\nPerformance.\nZazzo has worked with numerous conductors including Ren\u00e9 Jacobs, William Christie, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Ivor Bolton, Christopher Hogwood, Trevor Pinnock, Christophe Rousset, Harry Bicket, Emmanuelle Ha\u00efm, Harry Christophers, Paul Goodwin, P\u00e9ter E\u00f6tv\u00f6s, Rinaldo Alessandrini, Herv\u00e9 Niquet, Jean-Claude Malgoire, Jordi Savall, James Conlon and others for many opera houses and concert halls.\nHis major operatic roles include Giulio Cesare in Handel's \"Giulio Cesare\" (Metropolitan Opera New York, La Monnaie Brussels, Netherlands Opera Amsterdam, Paris National Opera, English National Opera London, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Semperoper Dresden, Boston, Oper Frankfurt), Orfeo in Gluck's \"Orfeo ed Euridice\" (Oslo Opera House, Canadian Opera Company Toronto, Reisopera Netherlands, New National Theatre Tokyo), Radamisto in Handel's \"Radamisto\" (English National Opera London), and Gualtiero in Scarlatti's \"Griselda\" (Berlin State Opera). He performed the title roles in \"Sosarme\" (Teatro Nacional de S\u00e3o Carlos), in \"Alessandro\" (Karlsruhe), in \"Orlando\" (Cardiff, Bristol, London) and in \"Solomon\" (Royal Opera House London).\nHe also appeared as Ottone in Handel's \"Agrippina\" (La Monnaie Brussels, Th\u00e9\u00e2tre des Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es Paris, Oper Frankfurt), as Ottone in Monteverdi's \"L'incoronazione di Poppea\" (Bavarian and Berlin State Opera, Theater an der Wien and La Monnaie), as Goffredo in Handel's \"Rinaldo\" (Berlin State Opera, Op\u00e9ra National de Montpellier, Z\u00fcrich Opera House), as Farnace in Mozart's \"Mitridate, re di Ponto\" (Bavarian State Opera Munich), and as Ruggerio in Vivaldi's \"Orlando furioso\" (Oper Frankfurt). He was Cardenio in Francesco Bartolomeo Conti's \"Don Chisciotte in Sierra Morena\" (Theater an der Wien). He sang the alto part in Purcell's semi-opera \"The Fairy-Queen\" (Berliner Philharmonie) and the role of Arsace in \"Partenope\" (Th\u00e9\u00e2tre des Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es Paris, Ferrol, Amsterdam, Pamplona, Essen and Madrid). In the German premiere of Francesco Cavalli's \"Veremonda\", he appeared as Delio (Schlosstheater Schwetzingen, Staatstheater Mainz). He performed the role of Arsamene in Handel's \"Serse\" (Oper Frankfurt) Unulfo in Handel's \"Rodelinda\" (Teatro Real Madrid) and Bertarido in \"Rodelinda\" Op\u00e9ra National de Lyon. He sang the title role in \"Giustino\" (Stadthalle Osterode) and \"Tamerlano\" (Oper Frankfurt at the Bockenheimer Depot, Deutsches Theater G\u00f6ttingen).\nHis repertoire includes numerous oratorios by Georg Friedrich H\u00e4ndel, for example \"Messiah\" (Shanghai Opera, Notre Dame Cathedral, Konzerthaus, Vienna, Winchester Cathedral, Munich Residenz, Jones Hall), \"Semele\" (K\u00f6lner Philharmonie, Concertgebouw, Concertzaal Gent), \"Theodora\" (Chan Centre for the Performing Arts Vancouver, Th\u00e9\u00e2tre des Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es, Theater an der Wien), \"Jephtha\" (Stefaniensaal Graz), \"Acis and Galatea\" (Th\u00e9\u00e2tre des Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es, Theater an der Wien), Samson (Beaune, Namur), Saul (Beaune, Namur) \u2013 He performed the alto parts in Bach's \"St Matthew Passion\" (Harris Theater (Chicago), Ambronay, De Doelen Rotterdam) and \"St John Passion\" (Chicago, K\u00f6lner Philharmonie, Leeds). Further the role \"Disinganno\" in Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival.\nHe has also appeared in several roles in contemporary works, among others as Oberon in Britten's \"A Midsummer Night's Dream\" (Op\u00e9ra National de Lyon, Canadian Opera Company Toronto, Teatro all 'Opera di Roma, Aix-en-Provence Festival, Poly Theater Beijing, Hamburg State Opera, Scottish Opera), as Trinculo in \"The Tempest\" (Royal Opera House Covent Garden), as the Refugee in \"Flight\" (Glyndebourne Festival) and as Masha in \"Tri sestry\" (\"Three Sisters\") (Op\u00e9ra National de Lyon, La Monnaie, Theater an der Wien). He sang the role of Odysseus in the world premiere of Rolf Riehm's \"Sirenen\" (Oper Frankfurt). Furthermore he sang in the world premiere performance of Riehm's \"The Deaths of Orpheus\" and of Geoff Page's monodrama \"Paradise Lost\" based on John Milton's \"Paradise Lost\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "50585": "Philadelphia\nLargest city in Pennsylvania, United States\nPhiladelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the sixth-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 1,603,797 in the 2020 census. The city is the urban core of the larger Delaware Valley, also known as the Philadelphia metropolitan area, the nation's eighth-largest metropolitan area and seventh-largest combined statistical area with 6.245 million residents and 7.366 million residents, respectively.\nPhiladelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn, an English Quaker and advocate of religious freedom, and served as the capital of the colonial era Province of Pennsylvania. It then played a historic and vital role during the American Revolution and Revolutionary War. It served as the central meeting place for the nation's Founding Fathers, hosted the First Continental Congress (1774) and the Second Continental Congress, during which the Founders formed the Continental Army, elected George Washington as its commander, and adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. During the Revolutionary War's Philadelphia campaign, the city briefly fell to the British Army, which occupied Philadelphia for nine months from September 1777 to June 1778. \nIn 1787, following the end of the Revolutionary War and establishment of independence, the U.S. Constitution was ratified in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Convention. Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until 1790, and it served as the nation's first capital from May 10, 1775, until December 12, 1776, and on four subsequent occasions until 1800, when construction of the new national capital in Washington, D.C. was completed.\nPhiladelphia maintains extensive contemporary influence in business and industry, culture, sports, and music. With 17 four-year universities and colleges in the city, Philadelphia is one of the nation's leading centers for higher education and academic research. The city is a national cultural center, hosting more outdoor sculptures and murals than any other city in the nation. Fairmount Park, when combined with adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park in the same watershed, is , representing one of the nation's largest and the world's 55th-largest urban park. Philadelphia is known for its arts, culture, cuisine, and colonial and Revolutionary-era history; in 2016, it attracted 42\u00a0million domestic tourists who spent $6.8\u00a0billion, representing $11\u00a0billion in economic impact to the city and its surrounding Pennsylvania counties. With five professional sports teams and one of the nation's most loyal and passionate fan bases, Philadelphia is often ranked as the nation's best city for professional sports fans. The city has a culturally and philanthropically active LGBTQ+ community. Philadelphia also has played an immensely influential historic and ongoing role in the development and evolution of American music, especially R&B, soul, and rock.\nAs of 2023[ [update]], the Philadelphia metropolitan area had a gross metropolitan product of US$557.6 billion and is home to 13 \"Fortune\" 500 corporate headquarters. Metropolitan Philadelphia ranks as one of the nation's Big Five venture capital hubs, facilitated by its geographic proximity to both the entrepreneurial and financial ecosystems of New York City and the federal regulatory environment of Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Philadelphia is also a biotechnology hub. The Philadelphia Stock Exchange, owned by Nasdaq since 2008, is the nation's oldest stock exchange and a global leader in options trading. 30th Street Station, the city's primary rail station, is the third-busiest Amtrak hub in the nation with over 4.1 million passengers in 2023. The city's multimodal transportation and logistics infrastructure includes Philadelphia International Airport, a major transatlantic gateway and transcontinental hub; the rapidly-growing PhilaPort seaport; and Interstate 95, the spine of the north\u2013south highway system along the U.S. East Coast.\nPhiladelphia is a city of many firsts, including the nation's first library (1731), hospital (1751), medical school (1765), national capital (1774), university (by some accounts) (1779), central bank (1781), stock exchange (1790), zoo (1874), and business school (1881). Philadelphia contains 67 National Historic Landmarks, including Independence Hall. From the city's 17th century founding through the present, Philadelphia has been the birthplace or home to an extensive number of prominent and influential Americans.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nNative peoples.\nPrior to the arrival of Europeans in the early 17th century, the Lenape, an Indian tribe also known as the Delaware Indians, lived in the village of Shackamaxon in present-day Philadelphia and the surrounding area. The Lenape historically lived along the Delaware River watershed, western Long Island, and the Lower Hudson Valley. Most Lenape were pushed out of the region during the 18th century as the original Thirteen colonies expanded, which was further exacerbated by losses from intertribal conflicts. Lenape communities were also weakened by newly introduced diseases, mainly smallpox, and conflicts with Europeans. The Iroquois occasionally fought the Lenape. Surviving Lenape moved west into the upper Ohio River basin. Following the American Revolutionary War and the subsequent establishment of the United States, the Lenape began moving further west. In the 1860s, the U.S. federal government sent most remaining Lenape in the eastern United States to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma and surrounding territories as part of the Indian removal policy.\nColonial era.\nEuropeans first entered Philadelphia and the surrounding Delaware Valley in the early 17th century. The first settlements were founded by Dutch colonists, who built Fort Nassau on the Delaware River in 1623 in what is now Brooklawn, New Jersey. The Dutch considered the entire Delaware River valley to be part of their New Netherland colony. In 1638, Swedish settlers led by renegade Dutch established the colony of New Sweden at Fort Christina, located in present-day Wilmington, Delaware, and quickly spread out in the valley. In 1644, New Sweden supported the Susquehannocks in their war against Maryland colonists. In 1648, the Dutch built Fort Beversreede on the west bank of the Delaware, south of the Schuylkill River near the present-day Eastwick section of Philadelphia, to reassert their dominion over the area. The Swedes responded by building Fort Nya Korsholm, or New Korsholm, named after a town in Finland with a Swedish majority.\nIn 1655, a Dutch military campaign led by New Netherland Director-General Peter Stuyvesant took control of the Swedish colony, ending its claim to independence. The Swedish and Finnish settlers continued to have their own militia, religion, and court, and to enjoy substantial autonomy under the Dutch. An English fleet captured the New Netherland colony in 1664, though the situation did not change substantially until 1682, when the area was included in William Penn's charter for Pennsylvania.\nIn 1681, in partial repayment of a debt, Charles II of England granted Penn a charter for what would become the Pennsylvania colony. Despite the royal charter, Penn bought the land from the local Lenape in an effort to establish good terms with the Native Americans and ensure peace for the colony. Penn made a treaty of friendship with Lenape chief Tammany under an elm tree at Shackamaxon, in what is now the city's Fishtown neighborhood. Penn named the city Philadelphia, which is Greek for \"brotherly love\", derived from the Ancient Greek terms \u03c6\u03af\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2 \"ph\u00edlos\" (beloved, dear) and \u1f00\u03b4\u03b5\u03bb\u03c6\u03cc\u03c2 \"adelph\u00f3s\" (brother, brotherly). There were a number of cities named \"Philadelphia\" in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Greek and Roman periods, including modern Ala\u015fehir, mentioned as the site of an early Christian congregation in the Book of Revelation. As a Quaker, Penn had experienced religious persecution and wanted his colony to be a place where anyone could worship freely. This tolerance, which exceeded that of other colonies, led to better relations with the local native tribes and fostered Philadelphia's rapid growth into America's most important city.\nPenn planned a city on the Delaware River to serve as a port and place for government. Hoping that Philadelphia would become more like an English rural town instead of a city, Penn laid out roads on a grid plan to keep houses and businesses spread far apart with areas for gardens and orchards.\nThe city's inhabitants did not follow Penn's plans, however, and instead crowded the present-day Port of Philadelphia on the Delaware River and subdivided and resold their lots. Before Penn left Philadelphia for the final time, he issued the Charter of 1701 establishing it as a city. Though poor at first, Philadelphia became an important trading center with tolerable living conditions by the 1750s. Benjamin Franklin, a leading citizen, helped improve city services and founded new ones that were among the first in the nation, including a fire company, library, and hospital.\nA number of philosophical societies were formed, which were centers of the city's intellectual life, including the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture (1785), the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts (1787), the Academy of Natural Sciences (1812), and the Franklin Institute (1824). These societies developed and financed new industries that attracted skilled and knowledgeable immigrants from Europe.\nAmerican Revolution.\nPhiladelphia's importance and central location in the colonies made it a natural center for America's revolutionaries. By the 1750s, Philadelphia surpassed Boston as the largest city and busiest port in British America, and the second-largest city in the entire British Empire after London. In 1774, as resentment of the British government's policies towards the colonies and support for independence began burgeoning in the colonies, Philadelphia hosted the First Continental Congress at Carpenters' Hall, and 12 of the original 13 colonies sent delegates to the Congress.\nFrom 1775 to 1781, Philadelphia hosted the Second Continental Congress, whose 56 delegated unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence inside what was then called Pennsylvania State House and was later renamed Independence Hall. Written predominantly by Thomas Jefferson from his second-floor apartment on Market Street within walking distance of Independence Hall, the Declaration has been described by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis as \"the most potent and consequential words in American history,\" and its adoption represented a declaration of war against Great Britain. Since the Declaration's July 4, 1776, adoption, its signing has been cited globally and repeatedly by various peoples of the world seeking independence and liberty. It also has been, since its adoption, the basis for annual celebration by Americans; in 1938, this celebration of the Declaration was formalized as Independence Day, one of only eleven designated U.S. federal holidays.\nAfter George Washington's defeat at the Battle of Brandywine in Chadds Ford Township, on September 11, 1777, during the Philadelphia campaign, the revolutionary capital of Philadelphia was defenseless, and the city prepared for what was perceived to be an inevitable British attack. Because bells could easily be recast into munitions, the Liberty Bell, then known as the Pennsylvania State Bell, and bells from two Philadelphia churches, Christ Church and St. Peter's Church, were hastily taken down and transported by heavily guarded wagon train out of the city. The Liberty Bell was taken to Zion German Reformed Church in Northampton Town, which is present-day Allentown, where it was hidden under the church's floor boards for nine months from September 1777 until departure of British forces from Philadelphia in June 1778. Two Revolutionary War battles, the Siege of Fort Mifflin, fought between September 26 and November 16, 1777, and the Battle of Germantown, fought on October 4, 1777, took place within Philadelphia's city limits.\nIn Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation on November 15, 1777. Independence Hall in Philadelphia was the meeting place for the Constitutional Convention, which ratified the Constitution on September 17, 1787, which is now the longest-standing codified national constitution.\nPhiladelphia served as capital of the United States for most of the colonial and early post-colonial period. including for a decade, from 1790 to 1800, while Washington, D.C., was being constructed and prepared to serve as the new national capital, and on five prior occasions between 1776 and 1790. In 1793, the largest yellow fever epidemic in U.S. history killed approximately 4,000 to 5,000 people in Philadelphia, or about ten percent of the city's population at the time. The capital of the United States was moved to Washington, D.C. in 1800 upon completion of the White House and U.S. Capitol buildings.\nThe state capital was moved from Philadelphia to Lancaster in 1799, then ultimately to Harrisburg in 1812. Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until the late 18th century. It also was the nation's financial and cultural center until ultimately being eclipsed in total population by New York City in 1790. In 1816, the city's free Black community founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent Black denomination in the country, and the first Black Episcopal Church. The free Black community also established many schools for its children with the help of Quakers. Large-scale construction projects for new roads, canals, and railroads made Philadelphia the first major industrial city in the United States.\n19th century.\nThroughout the 19th century, Philadelphia hosted a variety of industries and businesses; the largest was the textile industry. Major corporations in the 19th and early 20th centuries included the Baldwin Locomotive Works, William Cramp & Sons Shipbuilding Company, and the Pennsylvania Railroad. Established in 1870, the Philadelphia Conveyancers' Association was chartered by the state in 1871. Along with the U.S. Centennial in 1876, the city's industry was celebrated in the Centennial Exposition, the first official World's fair in the U.S.\nImmigrants, mostly from Ireland and Germany, settled in Philadelphia and the surrounding districts. These immigrants were largely responsible for the first general strike in North America in 1835, in which workers in the city won the ten-hour workday. The city was a destination for thousands of Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine in the 1840s; housing for them was developed south of South Street and later occupied by succeeding immigrants. They established a network of Catholic churches and schools and dominated the Catholic clergy for decades. Anti-Irish, anti-Catholic nativist riots erupted in Philadelphia in 1844. The rise in population of the surrounding districts helped lead to the Act of Consolidation of 1854, which extended the city limits from the of Center City to the roughly of Philadelphia County.\nIn the latter half of the 19th century and leading into the 20th century, immigrants from Russia, Eastern Europe, and Italy, and African Americans from the southern U.S. settled in the city.\nPhiladelphia was represented by the Washington Grays in the American Civil War. The African-American population of Philadelphia increased from 31,699 to 219,559 between 1880 and 1930, largely stemming from the Great Migration from the South.\n20th century.\nBy the 20th century, Philadelphia had an entrenched Republican political machine and a complacent population. In 1910, a general strike shut down the entire city.\nIn 1917, following outrage over the election-year murder of a Philadelphia police officer, the City Council shrank from two houses to just one. In July 1919, Philadelphia was one of more than 36 industrial cities nationally to suffer a race riot during Red Summer in post-World War I unrest as recent immigrants competed with Blacks for jobs. In the 1920s, the public flouting of Prohibition laws, organized crime, mob violence, and corrupt police involvement in illegal activities led to the appointment of Brig. Gen. Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marine Corps as the city's director of public safety, but political pressure still prevented long-term success in fighting crime and corruption.\nIn 1940, non-Hispanic whites constituted 86.8% of the city's population. In 1950, the population peaked at more than two million residents, then began to decline with the restructuring of industry that led to the loss of many middle-class union jobs. In addition, suburbanization enticed many affluent residents to depart the city for its outlying railroad commuting towns and newer housing. The resulting reduction in Philadelphia's tax base and the resources of local government caused the city to struggle through a long period of adjustment, and it approached bankruptcy by the late 1980s.\nIn 1985, the MOVE Bombing of the Cobbs Creek neighborhood by city helicopters occurred, killing 11 and destroying 61 homes.\nRevitalization and gentrification of neighborhoods began in the late 1970s and continues into the 21st century with much of the development occurring in the Center City and University City neighborhoods. But this expanded a shortage of affordable housing in the city. After many manufacturers and businesses left Philadelphia or shut down, the city started attracting service businesses and began to market itself more aggressively as a tourist destination. Contemporary glass-and-granite skyscrapers were built in Center City beginning in the 1980s. Historic areas such as Old City and Society Hill were renovated during the reformist mayoral era of the 1950s through the 1980s, making both areas among the most desirable Center City neighborhoods. Immigrants from around the world began to enter the U.S. through Philadelphia as their gateway, leading to a reversal of the city's population decline between 1950 and 2000, during which it lost about 25 percent of its residents.\n21st century.\nPhiladelphia eventually began experiencing a growth in its population in 2007, which continued with incremental annual increases through the present. A migration pattern has been established from New York City to Philadelphia by residents opting for a large city with relative proximity and a lower cost of living.\nGeography.\nTopography.\nPhiladelphia's geographic center is about 40\u00b0 0\u2032 34\u2033 north latitude and 75\u00b0 8\u2032 0\u2033 west longitude. The 40th parallel north passes through neighborhoods in Northeast Philadelphia, North Philadelphia, and West Philadelphia including Fairmount Park. The city encompasses , of which is land and , or 6%, is water. Natural bodies of water include the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, lakes in Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park, and Cobbs, Wissahickon, and Pennypack creeks. The largest artificial body of water is East Park Reservoir in Fairmount Park.\nThe lowest point is sea level and the highest point is in Chestnut Hill, about above sea level on Summit Street near the intersection of Germantown Avenue and Bethlehem Pike at: 40.07815 N, 75.20747 W. Philadelphia is located on the Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line that separates the Atlantic Plain from the Piedmont. The Schuylkill River's rapids at East Falls were inundated by completion of the dam at Fairmount Water Works.\nThe city is the seat of its own county. The city is bordered by six adjacent counties: Montgomery to the northwest; Bucks to the north and northeast; Burlington County, New Jersey to the east; Camden County, New Jersey to the southeast; Gloucester County, New Jersey to the south; and Delaware County to the southwest.\nCityscape.\nCity planning.\nPhiladelphia was created in the 17th century, following the plan by William Penn's surveyor Thomas Holme. Center City is structured with long, straight streets running nearly due east\u2013west and north\u2013south, forming a grid pattern between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers that is aligned with their courses. The original city plan was designed to allow for easy travel and to keep residences separated by open space that would help prevent the spread of fire. In keeping with the idea of a \"Greene Countrie Towne\", and inspired by the many types of trees that grew in the region, Penn named many of the east\u2013west streets for local trees. Penn planned the creation of five public parks in the city which were renamed in 1824. Centre Square was renamed Penn Square; Northeast Square was renamed Franklin Square; Southeast Square was renamed Washington Square; Southwest Square was renamed Rittenhouse Square; and Northwest Square was renamed Logan Circle/Square. Center City had an estimated 183,240 residents as of 2015[ [update]], making it the second-most populated downtown area in the United States after Midtown Manhattan in New York City.\nPhiladelphia's neighborhoods are divided into six large sections that surround Center City: North Philadelphia, Northeast Philadelphia, South Philadelphia, Southwest Philadelphia, West Philadelphia, and Northwest Philadelphia. The city's geographic boundaries have been largely unchanged since these neighborhoods were consolidated in 1854. However, each of these large areas contains numerous neighborhoods, some of whose boundaries derive from the boroughs, townships, and other communities that constituted Pennsylvania County before their inclusion within the city.\nThe City Planning Commission, tasked with guiding growth and development of the city, has divided the city into 18 planning districts as part of the Philadelphia2035 physical development plan. Much of the city's 1980 zoning code was overhauled from 2007 to 2012 as part of a joint effort between former mayors John F. Street and Michael Nutter. The zoning changes were intended to rectify incorrect zoning maps to facilitate future community development, as the city forecasts an additional 100,000 residents and 40,000 jobs will be added by 2035.\nThe Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) is the largest landlord in Pennsylvania. Established in 1937, the PHA is the nation's fourth-largest housing authority, serving about 81,000 people with affordable housing, while employing 1,400 on a budget of $371\u00a0million. The Philadelphia Parking Authority is responsible for ensuring adequate parking for city residents, businesses, and visitors.\nArchitecture.\nPhiladelphia's architectural history dates back to colonial times and includes a wide range of styles. The earliest structures were constructed with logs, but brick structures were common by 1700. During the 18th century, the cityscape was dominated by Georgian architecture, including Independence Hall and Christ Church.\nIn the first decades of the 19th century, Federal and Greek Revival architecture were the dominant styles produced by Philadelphia architects such as Benjamin Latrobe, William Strickland, John Haviland, John Notman, Thomas Walter, and Samuel Sloan. Frank Furness is considered Philadelphia's greatest architect of the second half of the 19th century. His contemporaries included John McArthur Jr., Addison Hutton, Wilson Eyre, the Wilson Brothers, and Horace Trumbauer. In 1871, construction began on the Second Empire-style Philadelphia City Hall. The Philadelphia Historical Commission was created in 1955 to preserve the cultural and architectural history of the city. The commission maintains the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, adding historic buildings, structures, sites, objects and districts as it sees fit.\nIn 1932, Philadelphia became home to the first modern International Style skyscraper in the United States, the PSFS Building, designed by George Howe and William Lescaze. The City Hall remained the tallest building in the city until 1987 when One Liberty Place was completed. Numerous glass and granite skyscrapers were built in Center City beginning in the late 1980s. In 2007, the Comcast Center surpassed One Liberty Place to become the city's tallest building. The Comcast Technology Center was completed in 2018, reaching a height of , as the tallest building in the United States outside of Manhattan and Chicago.\nFor much of Philadelphia's history, the typical home has been the row house. The row house was introduced to the United States via Philadelphia in the early 19th century and, for a time, row houses built elsewhere in the United States were known as \"Philadelphia rows\". A variety of row houses are found throughout the city, from Federal-style continuous blocks in Old City and Society Hill to Victorian-style homes in North Philadelphia to twin row houses in West Philadelphia. While newer homes have been built recently, much of the housing dates to the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, which has created problems such as urban decay and vacant lots. Some neighborhoods, including Northern Liberties and Society Hill, have been rehabilitated through gentrification.\nParks.\nAs of 2014[ [update]], the city's total park space, including municipal, state, and federal parks in the city, amounts to . Philadelphia's largest park is Fairmount Park, which includes the Philadelphia Zoo and encompasses of the total parkland. Fairmount Park's adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park contains . Fairmount Park, when combined with Wissahickon Valley Park, is one of the largest contiguous urban park areas in the U.S. The two parks, along with the Colonial Revival, Georgian and Federal-style mansions in them, have been listed as one entity on the National Register of Historic Places since 1972.\nClimate.\nWithin the K\u00f6ppen climate classification, Philadelphia falls under the northern periphery of the humid subtropical climate zone (K\u00f6ppen \"Cfa\"). Within the Trewartha climate classification, Philadelphia has a temperate maritime climate (\"Do\") limited to the north by the continental climate (\"Dc\"). Summers are typically hot and muggy. Fall and spring are generally mild, and winter is moderately cold. The plant life hardiness zones are 7a and 7b, reflecting an average annual extreme minimum temperature between .\nSnowfall is highly variable. Some winters have only light snow while others include major snowstorms. The normal seasonal snowfall averages , with rare snowfalls in November or April, and rarely any sustained snow cover. Seasonal snowfall accumulation has ranged from trace amounts in 1972\u201373, to in the winter of 2009\u201310. The city's heaviest single-storm snowfall was , which occurred in January 1996.\nPrecipitation is generally spread throughout the year, with eight to eleven wet days per month, at an average annual rate of , but historically ranging from in 1922 to in 2011. The most rain recorded in one day occurred on July 28, 2013, when fell at Philadelphia International Airport. Philadelphia has a moderately sunny climate with an average of 2,498 hours of sunshine annually. The percentage of sunshine ranges from 47% in December to 61% in June, July, and August.\nThe January daily average temperature is . The temperature frequently rises to during thaws. July averages . Heat waves accompanied by high humidity and heat indices are frequent, with highs reaching or exceeding on 30 days of the year. The average window for freezing temperatures is November 6 to April 2, allowing a growing season of 217 days. Early fall and late winter are generally dry, with February having the lowest average precipitation at . The dewpoint in the summer averages between .\nThe highest recorded temperature was on August 7, 1918. Temperatures at or above are not common, with the last occurrence of such a temperature being July 21, 2019. The lowest officially recorded temperature was on February 9, 1934. Temperatures at or below are rare, with the last such occurrence being January 19, 1994. The record low maximum is on February 10, 1899, and December 30, 1880. The record high minimum is on July 23, 2011, and July 24, 2010.\nTime Series.\nAir quality.\nPhiladelphia County received an ozone grade of F and a 24-hour particle pollution rating of D in the American Lung Association's 2017 State of the Air report, which analyzed data from 2013 to 2015. The city was ranked 22nd for ozone, 20th for short-term particle pollution, and 11th for year-round particle pollution. According to the same report, the city experienced a significant reduction in high ozone days since 2001\u2014from nearly 50 days per year to fewer than 10\u2014along with fewer days of high particle pollution since 2000\u2014from about 19 days per year to about 3\u2014and an approximate 30% reduction in annual levels of particle pollution since 2000.\nFive of the ten largest combined statistical areas (CSAs) were ranked higher for ozone: Los Angeles (1st), New York City (9th), Houston (12th), Dallas (13th), and San Jose, California (18th). Many smaller CSAs were also ranked higher for ozone, including Sacramento (8th), Las Vegas (10th), Denver (11th), El Paso (16th), and Salt Lake City (20th). Only two of those same ten CSAs, San Jose and Los Angeles, were ranked higher than Philadelphia for both year-round and short-term particle pollution.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nAs of the 2020 U.S. Census, there were 1,603,797 people residing in Philadelphia, representing a 1.2% increase from the 2019 census estimate. The racial composition of the city was 39.3% Black alone (42.0% Black alone or in combination), 36.3% White alone (41.9% White alone or in combination), 8.7% Asian alone, 0.4% American Indian and Alaska Native alone, 8.7% some other race, and 6.9% multiracial. 14.9% of residents were Hispanic or Latino.\n34.8% had a bachelor's degree or higher. 23.9% spoke a language other than English at home, the most common of which was Spanish (10.8%). 15.0% of the populations foreign born, roughly half of whom are naturalized U.S. citizens. 3.7% of the population are veterans. The median household income was $52,889 and 22.8% of the population lived in poverty. 49.5% of the population drove alone to work, while 23.2% used public transit, 8.2% carpooled, 7.9% walked, and 7.0% worked from home. The average commute is 31 minutes.\nAfter the 1950 census, when a record high of 2,071,605 was recorded, the city's population began a long decline. The population dropped to a low of 1,488,710 residents in 2006 before beginning to rise again. Between 2006 and 2017, Philadelphia added 92,153 residents. In 2017, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that the racial composition of the city was 41.3% Black (non-Hispanic), 34.9% White (non-Hispanic), 14.1% Hispanic or Latino, 7.1% Asian, 0.4% Native American, 0.05% Pacific Islander, and 2.8% multiracial.\nImmigration and cultural diversity.\nIn addition to the city's economic growth, the city's population has been fueled by foreign immigration. According to The Pew Charitable Trusts, the city's foreign-born population increased by 69% between 2000 and 2016 to constitute nearly 20% of Philadelphia's workforce, and it doubled between 1990 and 2017 to constitute 13.8% of the city's total population, with the top five countries of origin being China by a significant margin followed by the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, India, and Vietnam.\nIrish, Italian, German, Polish, English, Russian, Ukrainian, and French ancestries constitute the largest European ethnic groups in the city. Philadelphia has the second-largest Irish and Italian populations in the United States after New York City. South Philadelphia remains one of the largest Italian neighborhoods in the country and is home to the Italian Market.\nThe Pennsport neighborhood and Gray's Ferry section of South Philadelphia, home to many Mummer clubs, are well known as Irish neighborhoods. The Kensington, Port Richmond, and Fishtown neighborhoods have historically been heavily Irish and Polish. Port Richmond is a center for the Polish-American community in Philadelphia, and it remains a common destination for Polish immigrants. Northeast Philadelphia, although known for its Irish and Irish-American population, is home to a Jewish and Russian population. Mount Airy in Northwest Philadelphia also contains a Jewish community. Nearby Chestnut Hill is historically known as an Anglo-Saxon Protestant community.\nPhiladelphia's Black American population is the fourth-largest in the country after New York City, Chicago, and Houston. West Philadelphia and North Philadelphia are largely African-American neighborhoods, but many are leaving those areas in favor of the Northeast and Southwest sections of Philadelphia. A higher proportion of African-American Muslims reside in Philadelphia than most other major U.S. cities. West Philadelphia and Southwest Philadelphia are home to various Afro-Caribbean and African immigrant communities.\nThe Puerto Rican population in Philadelphia is the second-largest on the U.S. mainland after New York City, and the second-fastest growing after Orlando. Eastern North Philadelphia, particularly Fairhill and surrounding areas to the north and east, has one of the highest concentrations of Puerto Ricans outside Puerto Rico, with many large swaths of blocks being close to 100% Puerto Rican. Puerto Rican and Dominican populations reside in North Philadelphia and the Northeast, and Mexican and Central American populations exist in South Philadelphia. South American migrants were being transported by bus from Texas to Philadelphia beginning in 2022.\nPhiladelphia's Asian American population includes those of Chinese, Indians, Vietnamese, South Koreans, Filipinos, Cambodians, and Indonesians. Over 35,000 Chinese Americans lived in the city in 2015, including a Fuzhounese population. Center City hosts a Chinatown that is served by Chinatown bus lines with service to/from Chinatown, Manhattan. Indians make up the second-largest Asian group in the city of Philadelphia, while making up the largest foreign-born population in the Delaware Valley. A Korean community initially settled in the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Olney; however, the primary Koreatown has subsequently shifted further north, straddling the city's border with adjacent Cheltenham in Montgomery County and Cherry Hill in South Jersey. South Philadelphia is home to Vietnamese-Americans in Little Saigon and Cambodian-Americans in Cambodia Town, as well as Thai-American, Indonesian-American, and Chinese-American communities.\nPhiladelphia's Gay village near Washington Square is home to a concentration of gay and lesbian-friendly businesses, restaurants, and bars.\nReligion.\nIn a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, 68% of the population of the city identified themselves as Christian. Approximately 41% of Christians in the city and area professed attendance at a variety of churches that could be considered Protestant, while 26% professed Catholic beliefs.\nThe Protestant Christian community in Philadelphia is dominated by mainline Protestant denominations including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church in the United States, Presbyterian Church (USA) and American Baptist Churches USA. One of the most prominent mainline Protestant jurisdictions is the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. The African Methodist Episcopal Church was established in Philadelphia. Historically, the city has strong connections to the Quakers, Unitarian Universalism, and the Ethical Culture movement, all of which continue to be represented in the city. The Quaker Friends General Conference is based in Philadelphia. Evangelical Protestants making up less than 15% of the population were also prevalent.\nEvangelical Protestant bodies included the Anglican Church in North America, Lutheran Church\u2014Missouri Synod, Presbyterian Church in America, and National Baptist Convention of America. The Catholic community is primarily served by the Latin Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Eparchy of the United States of America and Canada, though some independent Catholic churches exist throughout Philadelphia and its suburbs. The Latin Church-based jurisdiction is headquartered in the city, and its see is the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. The Ukrainian Catholic jurisdiction is headquartered in Philadelphia, and is seated at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.\nLess than 1% of Philadelphia's Christians were Mormons. The remainder of the Christian demographic is spread among smaller Protestant denominations and the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox among others. The Diocese of Eastern Pennsylvania (Orthodox Church in America) and Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (Ecumenical Patriarchate) divide the Eastern Orthodox in Philadelphia. The Russian Orthodox St. Andrew's Cathedral is in the city.\nThe same study says that other religions collectively compose about 8% of the population, including Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Sikhism. Philadelphia has the fifth-largest Muslim population among U.S. cities. The remaining 24% claimed no religious affiliation.\nThe Philadelphia metropolitan area's Jewish population was estimated at 206,000 in 2001, which was the sixth-largest in the U.S. at that time. Jewish traders were operating in southeastern Pennsylvania long before William Penn. Jews in Philadelphia took a prominent part in the War of Independence. Although the majority of the early Jewish residents were of Portuguese or Spanish descent, some among them had emigrated from Germany and Poland. About the beginning of the 19th century, a number of Jews from the latter countries, finding the services of the Congregation Mickv\u00e9 Israel unfamiliar to them, resolved to form a new congregation which would use the ritual to which they had been accustomed.\nAfrican diasporic religions are practiced in some Latino and Hispanic and Caribbean communities in North and West Philadelphia.\nLanguages.\nAs of 2010[ [update]], 79.12% (1,112,441) of Philadelphia residents age 5 and older spoke English at home as a primary language, while 9.72% (136,688) spoke Spanish, 1.64% (23,075) Chinese, 0.89% (12,499) Vietnamese, 0.77% (10,885) Russian, 0.66% (9,240) French, 0.61% (8,639) other Asian languages, 0.58% (8,217) African languages, 0.56% (7,933) Cambodian (Mon-Khmer), and Italian was spoken as a main language by 0.55% (7,773) of the population over the age of five. In total, 20.88% (293,544) of Philadelphia's population age 5 and older spoke a mother language other than English.\nPoverty.\nPhiladelphia is home to many food poverty programs, of which two of the largest are Philabundance which claims to feed 90000 people per week. and Share Food Program which claims to feed 1 million people per month.\nEconomy.\nPhiladelphia's close geographical and transportation connections to other large metropolitan economies along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States have been cited as offering a significant competitive advantage for business creation and entrepreneurship. The city is the center of economic activity in both Pennsylvania and the four-state Delaware Valley metropolitan region. Five Fortune 500 companies are based in the city. As of 2021[ [update]], the Philadelphia metropolitan area is estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of US$479\u00a0billion, an increase from the $445\u00a0billion calculated by the Bureau of Economic Analysis for 2017, representing the ninth-largest U.S. metropolitan economy.\nPhiladelphia's economic sectors include financial services, health care, biotechnology, information technology, trade and transportation, manufacturing, oil refining, food processing, and tourism. Metropolitan Philadelphia is one of the top five American venture capital hubs, credited to its proximity to New York City's financial and tech and biotechnology ecosystems. Financial activities account for the largest economic sector of the metropolitan area, which is one of the largest health education and research centers in the United States. The city's two largest employers are the federal and city governments. Philadelphia's largest private employer is the University of Pennsylvania followed by Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.\nFinance and corporations.\nThe Philadelphia Stock Exchange, acquired by Nasdaq in 2007, is a global leader in options trading. The city is home to the headquarters of Comcast, the nation's largest multinational telecommunications corporation; insurance conglomerates Cigna, Colonial Penn, and Independence Blue Cross; as well as food services company Aramark, chemical makers FMC Corporation and Rohm and Haas, pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline, Amicus Therapeutics, Spark Therapeutics, apparel retailers Five Below and Urban Outfitters and its subsidiary Anthropologie, automotive parts retailer Pep Boys, and stainless steel producer Carpenter Technology Corporation.\nOther corporation headquarters in the city include RiteAid, Crown Holdings, and Brandywine Realty Trust. The headquarters of Boeing Rotorcraft Systems and its main rotorcraft factory are in the Philadelphia suburb of Ridley Park; The Vanguard Group, and the U.S. headquarters of Siemens Healthineers are headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb. Healthcare conglomerate AmerisourceBergen is located in suburban Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Across the Delaware River in adjacent Camden County, New Jersey, Campbell Soup Company and Subaru USA are both headquartered in Camden, New Jersey, and TD Bank (USA) is headquartered in nearby suburban Cherry Hill, New Jersey.\nTech and biotech.\nPhiladelphia is a hub for information technology and biotechnology. Philadelphia and Pennsylvania are attracting new life sciences ventures. As of 2024, the Delaware Valley ranks as one of the Big Five U.S. venture capital hubs, enabled by its proximity to both the entrepreneurial and financial ecosystems of New York City and to the federal regulatory environment of Washington, D.C.\nTourism.\nPhiladelphia's history attracts many tourists, with the Independence National Historical Park, which includes the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and other historic sites, received over 5\u00a0million visitors in 2016. The city welcomed 42\u00a0million domestic tourists in 2016 who spent $6.8\u00a0billion, generating an estimated $11\u00a0billion in total economic impact in the city and surrounding four counties of Pennsylvania. The annual Naked Bike Ride attracts participants from around the United States and internationally to Philadelphia.\nTrade and transportation.\nPhiladelphia International Airport, a major Transatlantic gateway and transcontinental hub, has undergone a $900\u00a0million infrastructural expansion to increase passenger capacity and augment passenger experience, and the airport continues an ongoing capital expenditure program to upgrade facilities and add further amenities. The Port of Philadelphia, having experienced the highest percentage growth by tonnage loaded in 2017 among major U.S. seaports, has doubled its shipping capacity to accommodate super-sized post-Panamax shipping vessels since 2018. Philadelphia's 30th Street Station is the third-busiest Amtrak rail hub, following Penn Station in Manhattan and Union Station in Washington, D.C., transporting over 4\u00a0million inter-city rail passengers annually.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nEducation in Philadelphia is provided by many private and public institutions. The School District of Philadelphia is the local school district, operating public schools, in all of the city. The Philadelphia School District is the eighth-largest school district in the nation with 142,266 students in 218 traditional public schools and 86 charter schools as of 2014[ [update]].\nThe city's K-12 enrollment in district\u2013run schools dropped from 156,211 students in 2010 to 130,104 students in 2015. During the same time period, the enrollment in charter schools increased from 33,995 students in 2010 to 62,358 students in 2015. This consistent drop in enrollment led the city to close 24 of its public schools in 2013. During the 2014 school year, the city spent an average of $12,570 per pupil, below the average among comparable urban school districts.\nGraduation rates among district-run schools, meanwhile, steadily increased in the ten years from 2005. In 2005, Philadelphia had a district graduation rate of 52%. This number increased to 65% in 2014, still below the national and state averages. Scores on the state's standardized test, the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) trended upward from 2005 to 2011 but subsequently decreased. In 2005, the district-run schools scored an average of 37.4% on math and 35.5% on reading. The city's schools reached their peak scores in 2011 with 59.0% on math and 52.3% on reading. In 2014, the scores dropped significantly to 45.2% on math and 42.0% on reading.\nOf the city's public high schools, including charter schools, only four performed above the national average on the SAT (1497 out of 2400) in 2014: Masterman, Central, Girard Academic Music Program, and MaST Community Charter School. All other district-run schools were below average.\nHigher education.\nMedical and research facilities of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Philadelphia has the third-largest student concentration on the East Coast, with more than 120,000 college and university students enrolled within the city and nearly 300,000 in the metropolitan area. More than 80 colleges, universities, trade, and specialty schools are in the Philadelphia region. One of the founding members of the Association of American Universities is in the city, the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution with claims to be the First university in the United States.\nThe city's largest university by student enrollment is Temple University, followed by Drexel University. The city's nationally ranked research universities comprise the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, Drexel University, and Thomas Jefferson University. Philadelphia is also home to five schools of medicine: Drexel University College of Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Temple University School of Medicine, and Thomas Jefferson University's Sidney Kimmel Medical College. Hospitals, universities, and higher education research institutions in Philadelphia's four congressional districts received more than $252\u00a0million in National Institutes of Health grants in 2015.\nOther institutions of higher learning within the city's borders include:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCulture.\nPhiladelphia is home to many national historical sites that relate to the founding of the United States. Independence National Historical Park is the center of these historical landmarks and one of the country's 22 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, and the Liberty Bell is housed, are among the city's most popular attractions. Other national historic sites include the homes of Edgar Allan Poe and Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and early government buildings, including the First and the Second Bank of the United States, Fort Mifflin, and the Gloria Dei (Old Swedes') Church. Philadelphia alone has 67 National Historic Landmarks, the third most of any city in the country.\nPhiladelphia's major science museums include the Franklin Institute, which contains the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the M\u00fctter Museum, and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. History museums include the National Constitution Center, the Museum of the American Revolution, the Philadelphia History Museum, the National Museum of American Jewish History, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Masonic Library and Museum of Pennsylvania in the Masonic Temple, and the Eastern State Penitentiary. Philadelphia is home to the United States's first zoo and hospital, as well as Fairmount Park, one of America's oldest and largest urban parks, founded in 1855.\nThe city is home to important archival repositories, including the Library Company of Philadelphia, established in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin at 1314 Locust Street, and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, founded in 1814. The Presbyterian Historical Society is the country's oldest denominational historical society, organized in 1852.\nArts.\nThe city is home to multiple art museums, including the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Rodin Museum, which holds the largest collection of work by Auguste Rodin outside France. The city's largest art museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is one of the largest art museums in the world. The long flight of steps to the Art Museum's main entrance became famous after the film \"Rocky\" (1976).\nAnnual events include the Philadelphia Film Festival, held annually each October, the 6abc Dunkin' Donuts Thanksgiving Day Parade, the nation's longest-running continuously held Thanksgiving Day parade, and the Mummers Parade, the nation's longest continuously held folk parade, which is held every New Year's Day predominantly on Broad Street.\nAreas such as South Street and the Old City section of the city have a vibrant night life. The Avenue of the Arts in Center City contains many restaurants and theaters, such as the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, home of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Academy of Music, home of Opera Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Ballet. The Wilma Theatre and the Philadelphia Theatre Company at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre produce a variety of new plays. Several blocks to the east are the Lantern Theater Company at St. Stephens Episcopal Church; and the Walnut Street Theatre, a National Historic Landmark stated to be the oldest and most subscribed-to theatre in the English-speaking world, founded in 1809. In May 2019, the Walnut Street Theatre announced a major expansion to begin in 2020. New Freedom Theatre, Pennsylvania's oldest African-American theatre, is located on North Broad Street.\nPhiladelphia has more public art than any other American city. In 1872, the Association for Public Art, formerly the Fairmount Park Art Association, was created as the first private association in the United States dedicated to integrating public art and urban planning. In 1959, lobbying by the Artists Equity Association helped create the Percent for Art ordinance, the first for a U.S. city. The program, which has funded more than 200 pieces of public art, is administered by the Philadelphia Office of Arts and Culture, the city's art agency. The city has more murals than any other American city, due to the 1984 creation of the Department of Recreation's Mural Arts Program, which seeks to beautify neighborhoods and provide an outlet for graffiti artists. The program has funded more than 2,800 murals by professional, staff and volunteer artists and educated more than 20,000 youth in underserved neighborhoods throughout Philadelphia.\nThe city is home to a number of art organizations, including the regional art advocacy nonprofit Philadelphia Tri-State Artists Equity, the Philadelphia Sketch Club, one of the country's oldest artists' clubs, and The Plastic Club, started by women excluded from the Sketch Club. Many Old City art galleries stay open late on the First Friday event of each month.\nCuisine.\nThe city is known for its hoagies, stromboli, roast pork sandwich, scrapple, soft pretzels, water ice, Irish potato candy, tastykakes, and the cheesesteak sandwich which was developed by Italian immigrants. The Philadelphia area has many establishments that serve cheesesteaks, including restaurants, taverns, delicatessens and pizza parlors. The originator of the thinly-sliced steak sandwich in the 1930s, initially without cheese, is Pat's King of Steaks, which faces its rival Geno's Steaks, founded in 1966, across the intersection of 9th Street and Passyunk Avenue in the Italian Market of South Philadelphia.\nMcGillin's Olde Ale House, opened in 1860 on Drury Street in Center City, is the oldest continuously operated tavern in the city. The City Tavern is a replica of a historic 18th-century building first opened in 1773, demolished in 1854 after a fire, and rebuilt in 1975 on the same site as part of Independence National Historical Park. The tavern offers authentic 18th-century recipes, served in seven period dining rooms, three wine cellar rooms and an outdoor garden.\nThe Reading Terminal Market is a historic food market founded in 1893 in the Reading Terminal building, a designated National Historic Landmark. The enclosed market is one of the oldest and largest markets in the country, hosting over a hundred merchants offering Pennsylvania Dutch specialties, artisan cheese and meat, locally grown groceries, and specialty and ethnic foods.\nDialect.\nThe traditional Philadelphia accent is considered by some linguists to be the most distinctive accent in North America. The Philadelphia dialect, which is spread throughout the Delaware Valley and South Jersey, is part of a larger Mid-Atlantic American English family, a designation that also includes the Baltimore accent. Additionally, it shares many similarities with the New York accent. Owing to over a century of linguistic data collected by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania under sociolinguist William Labov, the Philadelphia dialect has been one of the best-studied forms of American English. The accent is especially found within the Irish American and Italian American working-class neighborhoods. Philadelphia also has its own unique collection of neologisms and slang terms.\nMusic.\nThe Philadelphia Orchestra is generally considered one of the top five orchestras in the United States. The orchestra performs at the Kimmel Center and has a summer concert series at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts. Opera Philadelphia performs at the nation's oldest continually operating opera house\u2014the Academy of Music. The Philadelphia Boys Choir & Chorale has performed its music all over the world. The Philly Pops plays orchestral versions of popular jazz, swing, Broadway, and blues songs at the Kimmel Center and other venues within the mid-Atlantic region. The Curtis Institute of Music is one of the world's premier conservatories and among the most selective institutes of higher education in the nation.\nPhiladelphia has played a prominent role in the music of the United States. The culture of American popular music has been influenced by significant contributions of Philadelphia area musicians and producers, in both the recording and broadcasting industries. In 1952, the teen dance party program called \"Bandstand\" premiered on local television, hosted by Bob Horn. The show was renamed \"American Bandstand\" in 1957, when it began national syndication on ABC, hosted by Dick Clark and produced in Philadelphia until 1964 when it moved to Los Angeles. Promoters marketed youthful musical artists known as teen idols to appeal to the young audience. Philadelphia-born singers, including Frankie Avalon, James Darren, Eddie Fisher, Fabian Forte, Bobby Rydell, and South Philly-raised Chubby Checker, topped the music charts, establishing a clean-cut rock and roll image.\nPhilly soul music of the late 1960s\u20131970s is a highly produced version of soul music which led to later forms of popular music such as disco and urban contemporary rhythm and blues. On July 13, 1985, John F. Kennedy Stadium was the American venue for the Live Aid concert. The city also hosted the Live 8 concert, which attracted about 700,000 people to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on July 2, 2005.\nNotable rock and pop musicians from Philadelphia and its suburbs include Bill Haley & His Comets, Nazz, Todd Rundgren, Hall & Oates, the Hooters, Cinderella, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Ween, Schoolly D, Pink, the Roots, Beanie Sigel, State Property, Lisa \"Left Eye\" Lopes, Meek Mill, Lil Uzi Vert, and others.\nSports.\nPhiladelphia has one of the nation's richest histories in professional sports, dating back to the mid-19th century. Its first professional sports team, the Philadelphia Athletics, a professional baseball team, was founded in 1860. The Athletics were initially an amateur league team that turned professional in 1871. In 1876, the Athletics joined with seven other teams in founding the National League, now the longest continuously operating league in world sports. \nPhiladelphia is one of 12 U.S. cities to have teams in all four major league sports: the Philadelphia Phillies of Major League Baseball (MLB), the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League (NFL), the Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League (NHL), and the Philadelphia 76ers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Phillies, formed in 1883 as the Quakers and renamed in 1884, are the oldest team continuously playing under the same name in the same city in the history of American professional sports.\nThe Philadelphia metro area is also home to the Philadelphia Union of Major League Soccer (MLS), plays their home games at Subaru Park, a soccer-specific stadium in Chester, Pennsylvania.\nPhiladelphia was the second of eight U.S. cities to win titles in all four major leagues, the MLB, NFL, NHL, and NBA. It won a title in soccer in the now-defunct North American Soccer League in 1973. Following the 76ers' victory over the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1983 NBA Finals, however, the city's professional teams and their fans endured 25 years without a championship in any professional sport until the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, defeating the Tampa Bay Rays. This quarter century without a championship for any Philadelphia sports team is sometimes described as the Curse of Billy Penn, a reference to a 1987 decision that permitted One Liberty Place to become the first building in city history to surpass the height of \"William Penn\", a statue installed in 1894 atop City Hall. In 2004, during the city's championship drought, ESPN placed Philadelphia second on its list of \"The Fifteen Most Tortured Sports Cities\". The city's sports fans are often both praised and sometimes derided. In 2011, for instance, \"GQ\" magazine named Eagles and Phillies fans the nation's worst professional sports fans, describing them as the \"Meanest Fans in America\" in summarizing repeated incidents of their drunken behavior and long history of booing.\nAfter the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, nine years passed without a championship until the Eagles won their first Super Bowl following the 2017 season, defeating the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII. Seven seasons later, following the 2024 season, the Eagles won their second Super Bowl, defeating the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX. \nMajor professional sports teams that originated in Philadelphia, which later moved to other cities, include the Golden State Warriors basketball team, which played in Philadelphia from 1946 to 1962 and the Oakland Athletics baseball team, which was originally the Philadelphia Athletics and played in Philadelphia from 1901 to 1954.\nPhiladelphia is home to professional, semi-professional, and elite amateur teams in multiple other sports, including cricket, rugby league, and rugby union. Major running events in the city include the Penn Relays, the Philadelphia Marathon, and the Broad Street Run. The Collegiate Rugby Championship is played annually each June at Talen Energy Stadium in Chester.\nThe city also has a rich history in rowing, which has been popular in Philadelphia since the 18th century. On Boathouse Row, a symbol of Philadelphia's rich rowing history, each Big Five member has its own boathouse. Philadelphia hosts numerous local and collegiate rowing clubs and competitions, including the annual Dad Vail Regatta, the largest intercollegiate rowing event in North America with more than 100 participating U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities; the annual Stotesbury Cup Regatta, which is billed as the world's oldest and largest rowing event for high school students; and the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta. The regattas are held on the Schuylkill River and organized by Schuylkill Navy, an association of area rowing clubs that has produced numerous Olympic rowers.\nThe Philadelphia Spinners were a professional ultimate team in Major League Ultimate (MLU) until 2016. The Spinners were one of the original eight teams of the American Ultimate Disc League (AUDL), which was founded in 2012. They played at Franklin Field and won the inaugural AUDL championship and the final MLU championship in 2016. The MLU was suspended indefinitely by its investors in December 2016. As of 2018[ [update]], the Philadelphia Phoenix continue to play in the AUDL.\nPhiladelphia is home to the Philadelphia Big 5, a group of five NCAA Division I college basketball programs, including La Salle, Penn, Saint Joseph's, Temple, and Villanova universities. The sixth NCAA Division I school in Philadelphia is Drexel University. La Salle won the 1954 championship of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. Villanova won the 1985, 2016, and 2018 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournaments. Philadelphia will be one of the eleven US host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.\nLaw and government.\nPhiladelphia County is a legal nullity. All county functions were assumed by the city in 1952. The city has been coterminous with the county since 1854.\nPhiladelphia's 1952 Home Rule Charter was written by the City Charter Commission, which was created by the Pennsylvania General Assembly in an act of April 1949, and a city ordinance of June 1949. The existing city council received a proposed draft in February 1951, and the electors approved it in an election held in April 1951. The first elections under the new Home Rule Charter were held in November 1951, and the newly elected officials took office in January 1952.\nThe city uses the strong-mayor version of the mayor\u2013council form of government, which is led by one mayor in whom executive authority is vested. The mayor has the authority to appoint and dismiss members of all boards and commissions without the approval of the city council. Elected at-large, the mayor is limited to two consecutive four-year terms, but can run for the position again after an intervening term.\nCourts.\nPhiladelphia County is coterminous with the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas is the trial court of general jurisdiction for the city, hearing felony-level criminal cases and civil suits above the minimum jurisdictional limit of $10,000. The court has appellate jurisdiction over rulings from the Municipal and Traffic Courts, and some administrative agencies and boards. The trial division has 70 commissioned judges elected by the voters, along with about one thousand other employees. The court has a family division with 25 judges and an orphans' court with three judges.\nAs of 2018[ [update]], the city's District Attorney is Larry Krasner, a Democrat. The last Republican to hold the office is Ronald D. Castille, who left in 1991 and later served as the Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court from 2008 to 2014.\nThe Philadelphia Municipal Court handles traffic cases, misdemeanor and felony criminal cases with maximum incarceration of five years, and civil cases involving $12,000 or less ($15,000 in real estate and school tax cases), and all landlord-tenant disputes. The municipal court has 27 judges elected by the voters.\nPennsylvania's three appellate courts also have sittings in Philadelphia. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the court of last resort in the state, regularly hears arguments in Philadelphia City Hall. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania and the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania also sit in Philadelphia several times a year. Judges for these courts are elected at large. The state Supreme Court and Superior Court have deputy prothonotary offices in Philadelphia.\nPhiladelphia is home to the federal United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, both of which are housed in the James A. Byrne United States Courthouse.\nPolitics.\nThe current mayor is Cherelle Parker who won the election in November 2023. Parker's predecessor, Jim Kenney, served two terms from 2016 to January 2024. Parker is a member of the Democratic Party. For over seven decades, since 1952, every Philadelphia mayor has been a Democrat.\nPhiladelphia City Council is the legislative branch which consists of ten council members representing individual districts and seven members elected at-large, all of whom are elected to four-year terms. Democrats are currently the majority and hold 14 seats including nine of the ten districts and five at-large seats. Republicans hold one seat: the Northeast-based Tenth District. The Working Families Party holds two at-large seats making them the council's minority party. The current council president is Kenyatta Johnson.\nPhiladelphia's political structure consists of a system of wards and divisions. There are 66 wards with 11 to 51 divisions each for a total of 1703 divisions. Each division elects two committee people who are supposed to live within the division boundaries, and committee people select a leader for their ward. Democrats and Republicans elect their own committee people every four years. The committee person's role is to serve as a point of contact between voters and party officials and help get out the vote. Most wards are closed which means the ward leader makes sole endorsement decisions; open wards allow committee people to weigh in on these decisions. There are groups such as Open Wards Philadelphia and individuals who are working to elect ward leaders who promote an open ward system.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nPhiladelphia had historically been a bastion of the Republican Party from the American Civil War until the mid-1930s. In 1856, the first Republican National Convention was held at Musical Fund Hall at 808 Locust Street in Philadelphia.\nDemocratic registrations increased after the Great Depression; however, the city was not carried by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt in his landslide victory of 1932, as Pennsylvania was one of only six states won by Republican Herbert Hoover. Voter turnout surged from 600,000 in 1932 to nearly 900,000 in 1936 and Roosevelt carried Philadelphia with over 60% of the vote. Philadelphia has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1936. In 2008, Democrat Barack Obama drew 83% of the city's vote. Obama's win was even larger in 2012, capturing 85% of the vote. In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton won 82% of the vote.\nAs a result of the previously declining population in the city and state, Philadelphia has only three congressional districts of the 18 districts in Pennsylvania, based on the 2010 census apportionment: the 2nd district, represented by Brendan Boyle; the 3rd, represented by Dwight Evans; and the 5th, represented by Mary Gay Scanlon. All three representatives are Democrats, though Republicans still have some support in the city, primarily in the Northeast. Sam Katz ran competitive mayoral races as the Republican nominee in 1999 and 2003, losing to Democrat John Street both times.\nPennsylvania's longest-serving Senator, Arlen Specter, was an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania who opened his first law practice in Philadelphia. Specter served as a Republican from 1981 and as a Democrat from 2009, losing that party's primary in 2010 and leaving office in January 2011. He was assistant counsel on the Warren Commission in 1964 and the city's district attorney from 1966 to 1974.\nPhiladelphia has hosted various national conventions, including in 1848 (Whig), 1856 (Republican), 1872 (Republican), 1900 (Republican), 1936 (Democratic), 1940 (Republican), 1948 (Republican), 1948 (Progressive), 2000 (Republican), and 2016 (Democratic). Philadelphia has been home to one vice president, George M. Dallas, and one general of the American Civil War, George B. McClellan, who won his party's nomination for president but lost in the general election to Abraham Lincoln in 1864. In May 2019, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden chose Philadelphia to be his 2020 U.S. presidential campaign headquarters.\nEnvironmental policy.\n\"Green Cities, Clean Water\" is an environmental policy initiative based in Philadelphia that has shown promising results in mitigating the effects of climate change. The researchers on the policy have stated that despite such promising plans of green infrastructure building, \"the city is forecasted to grow warmer, wetter, and more urbanized over the century, runoff and local temperatures will increase on average throughout the city\". Even though landcover predictive models on the effects of the policy initiative have indicated that green infrastructure could be useful at decreasing the amount of runoff in the city over time, the city government would have to expand its current plans and \"consider the cobenefit of climate change adaptation when planning new projects\" in limiting the scope of city-wide temperature increase.\nPublic safety.\nPolice and law enforcement.\nIn a 2015 report by Pew Charitable Trusts, the police districts with the highest rates of violent crime were Frankford (15th district) and Kensington (24th district) in the Near Northeast, and districts to the North (22nd, 25th, and 35th districts), West (19th district) and Southwest (12th district) of Center City. Each of those seven districts recorded more than a thousand violent crimes in 2014. The lowest rates of violent crime occurred in Center City, South Philadelphia, the Far Northeast, and Roxborough districts, the latter of which includes Manayunk.\nPhiladelphia had 500, 503 according to some sources, murders in 1990, a rate of 31.5 per 100,000. An average of about 400 murders occurred each year for most of the 1990s. The murder count dropped in 2002 to 288, then rose to 406 by 2006, before dropping slightly to 392 in 2007. A few years later, Philadelphia began to see a rapid decline in homicides and violent crime. In 2013, the city had 246 murders, which is a decrease of nearly 40% since 2006.\nIn 2014, 248 homicides were committed. The homicide rate rose to 280 in 2015, then fell slightly to 277 in 2016, before rising again to 317 in 2017. Homicides increased dramatically in the late 2010s/early 2020s, reaching 499 homicides in 2020 and surpassing the 1990 \"record\" in 2021, with 501st murder on November 27 and 510 by the end of the month. Phillie ended the year with 562 murders, an all-time record. It dropped in 2022 to 514, and significantly further again in 2023, to 410.\nIn 2006, Philadelphia's homicide rate of 27.7 per 100,000 people was the highest of the country's 10 most populous cities. In 2012, Philadelphia had the fourth-highest homicide rate among the country's most populous cities. The rate dropped to 16 homicides per 100,000 residents by 2014 placing Philadelphia as the sixth-highest city in the country.\nThe number of shootings in the city has declined significantly since the early years of the 21st century. Shooting incidents peaked at 1,857 in 2006 before declining nearly 44 percent to 1,047 shootings in 2014. Major crimes have decreased gradually since a peak in 2006 when 85,498 major crimes were reported. The number of reported major crimes fell 11 percent in three years to 68,815 occurrences in 2014. Violent crimes, which include homicide, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery, decreased 14 percent in three years to 15,771 occurrences in 2014.\nIn 2014, Philadelphia enacted an ordinance decriminalizing the possession of less than 30 grams of marijuana or eight grams of hashish; the ordinance gave police officers the discretion to treat possession of these amounts as a civil infraction punishable by a $25 ticket, rather than a crime. At the time, Philadelphia was at the largest city in the nation to decriminalize the possession of marijuana. From 2013 to 2018, marijuana arrests in the city dropped by more than 85%. The purchase or sale of marijuana remains a criminal offense in Philadelphia.\nFirefighting.\nThe Philadelphia Fire Department provides fire protection and emergency medical services (EMS). The department's official mission is to protect public safety by quick and professional response to emergencies and the promotion of sound emergency prevention measures. This mandate encompasses all traditional firefighting functions, including fire suppression, with 60 engine companies and 30 ladder companies as well as specialty and support units deployed throughout the city; specialized firefighting units for Philadelphia International Airport and the Port of Philadelphia; investigations conducted by the fire marshal's office to determine the origins of fires and develop preventive strategies; prevention programs to educate the public; and support services including research and planning, management of the fire communications center within the city's 911 system, and operation of the Philadelphia Fire Academy.\nMedia.\nNewspapers.\nPhiladelphia's two major daily newspapers are \"The Philadelphia Inquirer\", first published in 1829\u2014the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the country\u2014and the \"Philadelphia Daily News\", first published in 1925. The \"Daily News\" has been published as an edition of the \"Inquirer\" since 2009. Recent owners of the \"Inquirer\" and \"Daily News\" have included Knight Ridder, The McClatchy Company, and Philadelphia Media Holdings, with the latter organization declaring bankruptcy in 2010. After two years of financial struggle, the newspapers were sold to Interstate General Media in 2012. The two newspapers had a combined daily circulation of 306,831 and a Sunday circulation of 477,313 in 2013[ [update]], the 18th-largest circulation in the country, and their collective website, Philly.com, was ranked 13th in popularity among online U.S. newspapers by Alexa Internet the same year.\nSmaller publications include the \"Philadelphia Tribune\" published five days each week for the African-American community; \"Philadelphia\" magazine, a monthly regional magazine; \"Philadelphia Weekly\", a weekly alternative newspaper; \"Philadelphia Gay News\", a weekly newspaper for the LGBT community; \"The Jewish Exponent\", a weekly newspaper for the Jewish community; \"Al D\u00eda\", a weekly newspaper for the Latino community; and \"Philadelphia Metro\", a free daily newspaper.\nStudent-run newspapers include the University of Pennsylvania's \"The Daily Pennsylvanian\", Temple University's \"The Temple News\", and Drexel University's \"The Triangle\".\nRadio.\nThe first experimental radio license was issued in Philadelphia in August 1912 to St. Joseph's College. The first commercial AM radio stations began broadcasting in 1922: first WIP, then owned by Gimbels department store, followed by WFIL, then owned by Strawbridge & Clothier department store, and WOO, a defunct station owned by Wanamaker's department store, as well as WCAU and WDAS.\nAs of 2018[ [update]], the FCC lists 28 FM and 11 AM stations for Philadelphia. As of December 2017, the ten highest-rated stations in Philadelphia were adult contemporary WBEB-FM (101.1), sports talk WIP-FM (94.1), classic rock WMGK-FM (102.9), urban adult contemporary WDAS-FM (105.3), classic hits WOGL-FM (98.1), album-oriented rock WMMR-FM (93.3), country music WXTU-FM (92.5), all-news KYW-AM (1060), talk radio WHYY-FM (90.9), and urban adult contemporary WRNB-FM (100.3). Philadelphia is served by three non-commercial public radio stations: WHYY-FM (NPR), WRTI-FM (classical and jazz), and WXPN-FM (adult alternative music).\nTelevision.\nIn the 1930s, W3XE, an experimental station owned by Philco, launched as Philadelphia's first television station. In 1939, the station became the nation's first NBC's first affiliate, and later became KYW-TV, the Philadelphia television market's CBS affiliate. In 1952, WFIL, later renamed WPVI, premiered the television show \"Bandstand\", which later became the nationally broadcast \"American Bandstand\" hosted by Dick Clark. In the 1960s, WCAU-TV, WFIL-TV, and WHYY-TV were founded.\nEach of the nation's commercial networks has an affiliate in Philadelphia: KYW-TV 3 (CBS), WPVI-TV 6 (ABC), WCAU 10 (NBC), WPHL-TV 17 (The CW with MyNetworkTV on DT2), WFPA-CD 28 (UniM\u00e1s), WTXF-TV 29 (Fox), WPSG 57 (Independent), WWSI 62 (Telemundo), and WUVP-DT 65 (Univision). The region is served also by public broadcasting stations WPPT-TV in Philadelphia, WHYY-TV in Wilmington, Delaware and Philadelphia, WLVT-TV in the Lehigh Valley, and NJTV in New Jersey.\nSince September 2024, Philadelphia is the nation's largest television market where at least one of the six English networks are shown at a station not owned by a particular network's associated parent company. The major Spanish language networks are Univision (WUVP-DT), UniM\u00e1s (WFPA-CD), and Telemundo (WWSI-TV).\nAs of 2023, the Philadelphia media market is the fifth-largest in North America with over 7.8 million viewers\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nPhiladelphia is served by SEPTA, which operates buses, trains, rapid transit (as both subways and elevated trains), trolleys, and trackless trolleys (electric buses) throughout Philadelphia, the four Pennsylvania suburban counties of Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery, in addition to service to Mercer County, New Jersey (Trenton) and New Castle County, Delaware (Wilmington and Newark, Delaware). The city's subway system consists of two routes: the subway section of the Market\u2013Frankford Line running east\u2013west under Market Street which opened in 1905 to the west and 1908 to the east of City Hall, and the Broad Street Line running north\u2013south beneath Broad Street which opened in stages from 1928 to 1938.\nBeginning in the 1980s, large sections of the SEPTA Regional Rail service to the far suburbs of Philadelphia were discontinued due to a lack of funding for equipment and infrastructure maintenance.\nPhiladelphia's 30th Street Station is a major railroad station on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor with 4.4\u00a0million passengers in 2017 making it the third-busiest station in the country after New York City's Pennsylvania Station and Washington's Union Station. 30th Street Station offers access to Amtrak, SEPTA, and NJ Transit lines. Over 12\u00a0million SEPTA and NJ Transit rail commuters use the station each year, and more than 100,000 people on an average weekday.\nThe PATCO Speedline provides rapid transit service to Camden, Collingswood, Westmont, Haddonfield, Woodcrest (Cherry Hill), Ashland (Voorhees), and Lindenwold, New Jersey, from stations on Locust Street between 16th and 15th, 13th and 12th, and 10th and 9th streets, and on Market Street at 8th Street.\nAirports.\nPhiladelphia is served by two airports. Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), the larger of the two, is south-southwest of Center City on the boundary with Delaware County, and provides scheduled domestic and international air service. As of 2023, Philadelphia International Airport is the 21st-busiest airport in the nation with over 13.6 million passengers. It is also among the world's busiest airports measured by traffic movements, including takeoffs and landings. Over 30\u00a0million passengers pass through the airport annually on 25 airlines, including all major domestic carriers. The airport has nearly 500 daily departures to over 120 destinations worldwide. SEPTA's Airport Line provides direct service between Center City railroad stations and Philadelphia International Airport.\nPhiladelphia's second major airport, Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE), is a general aviation relief airport in Northeast Philadelphia, which provides general and corporate aviation.\nRoads.\nWilliam Penn planned Philadelphia with numbered streets traversing north and south, and streets named for trees, including Chestnut, Walnut, and Mulberry (since renamed Arch Streets, traversing east and west. The two main streets were named Broad Street, the north\u2013south artery, later designated Pennsylvania Route 611, and High Street, the east\u2013west artery, which was later renamed Market Street, converging at Centre Square which later became the site of City Hall.\nInterstate 95, also known as the Delaware Expressway, traverses the southern and eastern edges of the city along the Delaware River as the main north\u2013south controlled-access highway, and connects Philadelphia with Newark, New Jersey and New York City to the north and Baltimore and Washington, D.C. to the south. The city is served by Interstate 76, also known as the Schuylkill Expressway, which runs along the Schuylkill River, intersecting the Pennsylvania Turnpike at King of Prussia and providing access to Harrisburg and points west. Interstate 676, also known as Vine Street Expressway, links I-95 and I-76 through Center City, running below street level between the eastbound and westbound lanes of Vine Street. Entrance and exit ramps for the Benjamin Franklin Bridge are near the eastern end of the expressway just west of the I-95 interchange.\nRoosevelt Boulevard and Expressway, also known as U.S. 1, connects Northeast Philadelphia with Center City via I-76 through Fairmount Park. Woodhaven Road, also known as Route 63, and Cottman Avenue, also known as Route 73, serve the neighborhoods of Northeast Philadelphia, running between I-95 and the Roosevelt Boulevard. Fort Washington Expressway, also known as Route 309, extends north from the city's northern border, serving Montgomery and Bucks Counties. U.S. Route 30, also known as Lancaster Avenue, extends west from West Philadelphia to Lancaster.\nInterstate 476, locally called the Blue Route, traverses Delaware County, bypassing the city to the west and serving the city's western suburbs, providing a direct route to Allentown, the Poconos, and points north. Interstate 276, the Pennsylvania Turnpike's Delaware River extension, is a bypass and commuter route north of the city, which links to the New Jersey Turnpike and New York City.\nDelaware River Port Authority operates four bridges in the Philadelphia area, each of which cross the Delaware River to South Jersey: Walt Whitman Bridge (I-76), the Benjamin Franklin Bridge (I-676 and U.S. 30), Betsy Ross Bridge (New Jersey Route 90), and Commodore Barry Bridge (U.S. 322 in Delaware County, south of the city. The Burlington County Bridge Commission maintains two additional bridges that cross the Delaware River. Tacony\u2013Palmyra Bridge connects PA Route 73 in the Tacony section of Northeast Philadelphia with New Jersey Route 73 in Palmyra in Burlington County. Burlington\u2013Bristol Bridge connects NJ Route 413/U.S. Route 130 in Burlington, New Jersey with PA Route 413/U.S. 13 in Bristol Township, north of Philadelphia.\nBus service.\nThe Greyhound terminal is at 1001 Filbert Street (at 10th Street) in Center City, southeast of the Pennsylvania Convention Center and south of Chinatown. Several other bus operators provide service at the Greyhound terminal including Fullington Trailways, Martz Trailways, Peter Pan Bus Lines, and NJ Transit buses.\nOther intercity bus services include Megabus with stops at 30th Street Station and the visitor center for Independence Hall, BoltBus (operated by Greyhound) at 30th Street Station, OurBus at various stops in the city.\nRail.\nSince the early days of rail transportation in the United States, Philadelphia has served as a hub for several major rail companies, particularly the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Railroad. The Pennsylvania Railroad first operated Broad Street Station, then 30th Street Station and Suburban Station, and the Reading Railroad operated Reading Terminal, now part of the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The two companies also operated competing commuter rail systems in the area. The two systems now operate as a single system under the control of SEPTA, the regional transit authority. Additionally, the PATCO Speedline subway system and NJ Transit's Atlantic City Line operate successor services to South Jersey.\nIn 1911, Philadelphia had nearly 4,000 electric trolleys running on 86 lines. In 2005, SEPTA reintroduced trolley service to the Girard Avenue Line, Route 15. SEPTA operates six subway-surface trolleys that run on street-level tracks in West Philadelphia and subway tunnels in Center City, along with two surface trolleys in adjacent suburbs.\nPhiladelphia is a regional hub of the federally-owned Amtrak system, with 30th Street Station being a primary stop on the Washington-Boston Northeast Corridor and the Keystone Corridor to Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. 30th Street also serves as a major station for services via the Pennsylvania Railroad's former Pennsylvania Main Line to Chicago. As of 2018[ [update]], 30th Street is Amtrak's third-busiest station in the country, after New York City and Washington.\nUtilities.\nWater purity and availability.\nIn 1815, Philadelphia began sourcing its water via the Fairmount Water Works on the Schuylkill River, the nation's first major urban water supply system. In 1909, the Water Works was decommissioned as the city transitioned to modern sand filtration methods. Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) provides drinking water, wastewater collection, and stormwater services for Philadelphia, as well as surrounding counties. PWD draws about 57 percent of its drinking water from the Delaware River and the balance from the Schuylkill River. The city has two filtration plants on the Schuylkill River and one on the Delaware River. The three plants can treat up to 546\u00a0million gallons of water per day, while the total storage capacity of the combined plant and distribution system exceeds one billion gallons. The wastewater system consists of three water pollution control plants, 21 pumping stations, and about of sewers.\nElectricity.\nExelon subsidiary PECO Energy Company, founded as the Brush Electric Light Company of Philadelphia in 1881 and renamed Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) in 1902, provides electricity to about 1.6\u00a0million customers and more than 500,000 natural gas customers in the southeastern Pennsylvania area including the city of Philadelphia and most of its suburbs. PECO is the largest electric and natural gas utility in the state with 472 power substations and nearly of electric transmission and distribution lines and of natural gas transmission, distribution, and service lines.\nNatural gas.\nPhiladelphia Gas Works (PGW), overseen by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, is the nation's largest municipally-owned natural gas utility. PGW serves over 500,000 homes and businesses in the Philadelphia area. Founded in 1836, the company came under city ownership in 1987 and has been providing the majority of gas distributed within city limits. In 2014, the City Council refused to conduct hearings on a $1.86\u00a0billion sale of PGW, part of a two-year effort that was proposed by the mayor. The refusal led to the prospective buyer terminating its offer.\nTelecommunications.\nSoutheastern Pennsylvania was assigned the 215 area code in 1947 when the North American Numbering Plan of the Bell System went into effect. The geographic area covered by the code was split nearly in half in 1994 when area code 610 was created, with the city and its northern suburbs retaining 215. Overlay area code 267 was added to the 215 service area in 1997, and 484 was added to the 610 area in 1999. A plan in 2001 to introduce a third overlay code to both service areas, area code 445 to 215 and area code 835 to 610, was delayed and later rescinded. Area code 445 was implemented as an overlay for area codes 215 and 267 starting on February 3, 2018.\nSister cities.\nPhiladelphia also has three partnership cities or regions:\nPhiladelphia has eight official sister cities as designated by the Citizen Diplomacy International (CDI) of Philadelphia: Philadelphia has dedicated landmarks to its sister cities. The Sister Cities Park, a site of at 18th and Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Logan Square, was dedicated in June 1976. The park was built to commemorate Philadelphia's first two sister city relationships, with Tel Aviv and Florence. Toru\u0144 Triangle, honoring the sister city relationship with Toru\u0144, Poland, was constructed in 1976, west of the United Way building at 18th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Sister Cities Park was redesigned and reopened in 2012, featuring an interactive fountain honoring Philadelphia's sister and partnership cities, a caf\u00e9 and visitor center, children's play area, outdoor garden, boat pond, and a pavilion built to environmentally friendly standards.\nThe Chinatown Gate, erected in 1984 and crafted by artisans from Tianjin, stands astride 10th Street, on the north side of its intersection with Arch Street, as a symbol of the sister city relationship. The CDI of Philadelphia has participated in the U.S. Department of State's \"Partners for Peace\" project with Mosul, Iraq, and in accepting visiting delegations from dozens of other countries.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nclass=\"wikitable succession-box noprint\" style=\"margin:0.5em auto; font-size:small;clear:both;\"", "570934": "Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church\nHistoric church in Pennsylvania, United States\nThe Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is a historic church and congregation which is located at 419 South 6th Street in Center City Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The congregation, founded in 1794, is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal congregation in the nation.\nIts present church, completed in 1890, is the oldest church property in the United States to be continuously owned by African Americans. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972.\nHistory of the congregation.\nThe church was proposed in 1791 by members of the Free African Society of Philadelphia, including Absalom Jones, out of a desire to create a space for autonomous African-American worship and community in the city. The desire to create the church was strengthened in 1792, after African-American members of St. George's Methodist Church walked out due to racial segregation in the worship services. Leading roles in the founding were played by Richard Allen, who arranged the purchase of the church's site and its construction, and Absalom Jones, who raised funds among both black and white Philadelphia residents (including then-President George Washington). Mother Bethel was one of the first African-American churches in the United States, dedicated July 29, 1794, by Bishop Francis Asbury.\nOn October 12, 1794, Reverend Robert Blackwell announced that the congregation was received in full fellowship in the Methodist Episcopal Church.\nIn 1816, Rev. Richard Allen brought together other black Methodist congregations from the region to organize the new African Methodist Episcopal Church denomination. He was elected bishop of this denomination. After the American Civil War, its missionaries went to the South to help freedmen and planted many new churches in the region.\nIn 1838, the building was damaged during the riots that followed the destruction of Pennsylvania Hall.\nAllen and his wife, Sarah Allen are both buried in the present church's crypt. The current church building was constructed in 1888\u20131890, and it has been designated a National Historic Landmark.\nOn October 25, 2009, \"The Great Gathering\" took place at St. George's Church in which the community of Mother Bethel AME and St. George's congregations gathered for Sunday worship at St. George's for the first time since the historic walkout. The Rev. Dr. Mark Kelly Tyler preached for this service.\nBuilding history.\nThe property was acquired for the new congregation in 1794. Its first building was a frame structure originally used as a blacksmith's shop, which was hauled to the site.\nThis building was later replaced by frame structures in 1805 and 1841. The 1841 church was reported to have a tunnel connecting it with a nearby Quaker meetinghouse to facilitate the movements of fugitive slaves.\nThe present building, which was completed in 1890, is a three-story masonry structure with Romanesque styling. Its large round-arch windows are adorned with stained glass from Germany.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["570934", "38480751", "50585"], "permutation_1": ["570934", "38480751", "50585"], "permutation_2": ["38480751", "570934", "50585"], "permutation_3": ["50585", "38480751", "570934"]}
{"id": "3hop1__32903_103178_91941", "docs_added": {"43460": "Han dynasty\nImperial dynasty in China (202 BC \u2013 220 AD)\nThe Han dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China (202\u00a0BC\u00a0\u2013 9\u00a0AD, 25\u2013220\u00a0AD) established by Liu Bang and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221\u2013206\u00a0BC) and a warring interregnum known as the Chu\u2013Han Contention (206\u2013202\u00a0BC), and it was succeeded by the Three Kingdoms period (220\u2013280\u00a0AD). The dynasty was briefly interrupted by the Xin dynasty (9\u201323\u00a0AD) established by the usurping regent Wang Mang, and is thus separated into two periods\u2014the Western Han (202\u00a0BC\u00a0\u2013 9\u00a0AD) and the Eastern Han (25\u2013220\u00a0AD). Spanning over four centuries, the Han dynasty is considered a golden age in Chinese history, and had a permanent impact on Chinese identity in later periods. The majority ethnic group of modern China refer to themselves as the \"Han people\" or \"Han Chinese\". The spoken Chinese and written Chinese are referred to respectively as the \"Han language\" and \"Han characters\".\nThe Han emperor was at the pinnacle of Han society and culture. He presided over the Han government but shared power with both the nobility and the appointed ministers who came largely from the scholarly gentry class. The Han Empire was divided into areas directly controlled by the central government called commanderies, as well as a number of semi-autonomous kingdoms. These kingdoms gradually lost all vestiges of their independence, particularly following the Rebellion of the Seven States. From the reign of Emperor Wu (r.\u2009141\u00a0\u2013\u00a087\u00a0BC) onward, the Chinese court officially sponsored Confucianism in education and court politics, synthesized with the cosmology of later scholars such as Dong Zhongshu.\nThe Han dynasty oversaw periods of economic prosperity as well as significant growth in the money economy that had first been established during the Zhou dynasty (c.\u20091050\u00a0\u2013 256\u00a0BC). The coinage minted by the central government in 119\u00a0BC remained the standard in China until the Tang dynasty (618\u2013907\u00a0AD). The period saw a number of limited institutional innovations. To finance its military campaigns and the settlement of newly conquered frontier territories, the Han government nationalised private salt and iron industries in 117\u00a0BC, creating government monopolies that were later repealed during the Eastern period. There were significant advances in science and technology during the Han period, including the emergence of papermaking, rudders for steering ships, negative numbers in mathematics, raised-relief maps, hydraulic-powered armillary spheres for astronomy, and seismometers that discerned the cardinal direction of distant earthquakes by use of inverted pendulums.\nThe Han dynasty had many conflicts with the Xiongnu, a nomadic confederation centred in the eastern Eurasian steppe. The Xiongnu defeated the Han in 200\u00a0BC, prompting the Han to appease the Xiongnu with a policy of marriage alliance and payments of tribute, though the Xiongnu continued to raid the Han's northern borders. Han policy changed in 133\u00a0BC, under Emperor Wu, when Han forces began a series of military campaigns to quell the Xiongnu. The Xiongnu were eventually defeated and forced to accept a status as Han vassals, and the Xiongnu confederation fragmented. The Han conquered the Hexi Corridor and Inner Asian territory of the Tarim Basin from the Xiongnu, helping to establish the Silk Road. The lands north of the Han's borders were later overrun by the nomadic Xianbei confederation. Emperor Wu also launched successful conquests in the south, annexing Nanyue in 111\u00a0BC and Dian in 109\u00a0BC. He further expanded Han territory into the northern Korean Peninsula, where Han forces conquered Gojoseon and established the Xuantu and Lelang commanderies in 108\u00a0BC. \nAfter 92\u00a0AD, palace eunuchs increasingly involved themselves in the dynasty's court politics, engaging in violent power struggles between various consort clans of the empresses and empresses dowager. Imperial authority was also seriously challenged by large Taoist religious societies which instigated the Yellow Turban Rebellion and the Five Pecks of Rice Rebellion. Following the death of Emperor Ling (r.\u2009168\u00a0\u2013\u00a0189\u00a0AD), the palace eunuchs were massacred by military officers, allowing members of the aristocracy and military governors to become warlords and divide the empire. The Han dynasty came to an end in 220\u00a0AD when Cao Pi, king of Wei, usurped the throne from Emperor Xian.\nEtymology.\nAccording to the \"Records of the Grand Historian\", after the collapse of the Qin dynasty the hegemon Xiang Yu appointed Liu Bang as prince of the small fief of Hanzhong, named after its location on the Han River (in modern southwest Shaanxi). Following Liu Bang's victory in the Chu\u2013Han Contention, the resulting Han dynasty was named after the Hanzhong fief.\nHistory.\nWestern Han (202 BC \u2013 9 AD).\nChina's first imperial dynasty was the Qin dynasty (221\u2013206\u00a0BC). The Qin united the Chinese Warring States by conquest, but their regime became unstable after the death of the first emperor Qin Shi Huang. Within four years, the dynasty's authority had collapsed in a rebellion. Two former rebel leaders, Xiang Yu (d.\u2009202\u00a0BC) of Chu and Liu Bang (d.\u2009195\u00a0BC) of Han, engaged in a war to determine who would have hegemony over China, which had fissured into Eighteen Kingdoms, each claiming allegiance to either Xiang Yu or Liu Bang. Although Xiang Yu proved to be an effective commander, Liu Bang defeated him at the Battle of Gaixia (202\u00a0BC) in modern-day Anhui. Liu Bang assumed the title of Emperor at the urging of his followers and is known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu (r.\u2009202\u00a0\u2013\u00a0195\u00a0BC). Chang'an (modern Xi'an) was chosen as the new capital of the reunified empire under Han.\nAt the beginning of the Western Han (), also known as the Former Han (), thirteen centrally-controlled commanderies\u2014including the capital region\u2014existed in the western third of the empire, while the eastern two-thirds were divided into ten semi-autonomous kingdoms. To placate his prominent commanders from the war with Chu, Emperor Gaozu enfeoffed some of them as kings.\nBy 196, the Han court had replaced all of these kings with royal Liu family members, with the lone exception of Changsha. The loyalty of non-relatives to the emperor was questioned, and after several insurrections by Han kings\u2014with the largest being the Rebellion of the Seven States in 154\u2014the imperial court began enacting a series of reforms that limited the power of these kingdoms in 145, dividing their former territories into new commanderies under central control. Kings were no longer able to appoint their own staff; this duty was assumed by the imperial court. Kings became nominal heads of their fiefs and collected a portion of tax revenues as their personal incomes. The kingdoms were never entirely abolished and existed throughout the remainder of Western and Eastern Han.\nTo the north of China proper, the nomadic Xiongnu chieftain Modu Chanyu (r.\u2009209\u00a0\u2013\u00a0174\u00a0BC) conquered various tribes inhabiting the eastern portion of the Eurasian Steppe. By the end of his reign, he controlled the Inner Asian regions of Manchuria, Mongolia, and the Tarim Basin, subjugating over twenty states east of Samarkand. Emperor Gaozu was troubled about the abundant Han-manufactured iron weapons traded to the Xiongnu along the northern borders, and he established a trade embargo against the group.\nIn retaliation, the Xiongnu invaded what is now Shanxi, where they defeated the Han forces at Baideng in 200\u00a0BC. After negotiations, the \"heqin\" agreement in 198\u00a0BC nominally held the leaders of the Xiongnu and the Han as equal partners in a royal marriage alliance, but the Han were forced to send large amounts of tribute items such as silk clothes, food, and wine to the Xiongnu.\nDespite the tribute and negotiation between Laoshang Chanyu (r.\u2009174\u00a0\u2013\u00a0160\u00a0BC) and Emperor Wen (r.\u2009180\u00a0\u2013\u00a0157\u00a0BC) to reopen border markets, many of the Chanyu's subordinates chose not to obey the treaty and periodically raided Han territories south of the Great Wall for additional goods. In a court conference assembled by Emperor Wu (r.\u2009141\u00a0\u2013\u00a087\u00a0BC) in 135\u00a0BC, the majority consensus of the ministers was to retain the \"heqin\" agreement. Emperor Wu accepted this, despite continuing Xiongnu raids.\nHowever, a court conference the following year convinced the majority that a limited engagement at Mayi involving the assassination of the Chanyu would throw the Xiongnu realm into chaos and benefit the Han. When this plot failed in 133\u00a0BC, Emperor Wu launched a series of massive military invasions into Xiongnu territory. The assault culminated in 119\u00a0BC at the Battle of Mobei, when Han commanders Huo Qubing (d.\u2009117\u00a0BC) and Wei Qing (d.\u2009106\u00a0BC) forced the Xiongnu court to flee north of the Gobi Desert, and Han forces reached as far north as Lake Baikal.\nAfter Wu's reign, Han forces continued to fight the Xiongnu. The Xiongnu leader Huhanye (r.\u200958\u00a0\u2013\u00a031\u00a0BC) finally submitted to the Han as a tributary vassal in 51\u00a0BC. Huhanye's rival claimant to the throne, Zhizhi Chanyu (r.\u200956\u00a0\u2013\u00a036\u00a0BC), was killed by Han forces under Chen Tang and Gan Yanshou () at the Battle of Zhizhi, in modern Taraz, Kazakhstan.\nIn 121\u00a0BC, Han forces expelled the Xiongnu from a vast territory spanning the Hexi Corridor to Lop Nur. They repelled a joint Xiongnu-Qiang invasion of this northwestern territory in 111\u00a0BC. In that same year, the Han court established four new frontier commanderies in this region to consolidate their control: Jiuquan, Zhangyi, Dunhuang, and Wuwei. The majority of people on the frontier were soldiers. On occasion, the court forcibly moved peasant farmers to new frontier settlements, along with government-owned slaves and convicts who performed hard labour. The court also encouraged commoners, such as farmers, merchants, landowners, and hired labourers, to voluntarily migrate to the frontier.\nEven before the Han's expansion into Central Asia, diplomat Zhang Qian's travels from 139 to 125\u00a0BC had established Chinese contacts with many surrounding civilizations. Zhang encountered Dayuan (Fergana), Kangju (Sogdiana), and Daxia (Bactria, formerly the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom); he also gathered information on Shendu (the Indus River valley) and Anxi (the Parthian Empire). All of these countries eventually received Han embassies. These connections marked the beginning of the Silk Road trade network that extended to the Roman Empire, bringing goods like Chinese silk and Roman glasswares between the two.\nFrom c.\u2009115 BC until c.\u200960 BC, Han forces fought the Xiongnu over control of the oasis city-states in the Tarim Basin. The Han was eventually victorious and established the Protectorate of the Western Regions in 60\u00a0BC, which dealt with the region's defence and foreign affairs. The Han also expanded southward. The naval conquest of Nanyue in 111\u00a0BC expanded the Han realm into what are now modern Guangdong, Guangxi, and northern Vietnam. Yunnan was brought into the Han realm with the conquest of the Dian Kingdom in 109\u00a0BC, followed by parts of the Korean Peninsula with the Han conquest of Gojoseon and establishment of the Xuantu and Lelang commanderies in 108\u00a0BC. The first nationwide census in Chinese history was taken in 2\u00a0AD; the Han's total population was registered as comprising 57,671,400 individuals across 12,366,470 households.\nTo pay for his military campaigns and colonial expansion, Emperor Wu nationalised several private industries. He created central government monopolies administered largely by former merchants. These monopolies included salt, iron, and liquor production, as well as bronze coinage. The liquor monopoly lasted only from 98 to 81\u00a0BC, and the salt and iron monopolies were eventually abolished in the early Eastern Han. The issuing of coinage remained a central government monopoly throughout the rest of the Han dynasty.\nThe government monopolies were eventually repealed when a political faction known as the Reformists gained greater influence in the court. The Reformists opposed the Modernist faction that had dominated court politics in Emperor Wu's reign and during the subsequent regency of Huo Guang (d.\u200968\u00a0BC). The Modernists argued for an aggressive and expansionary foreign policy supported by revenues from heavy government intervention in the private economy. The Reformists, however, overturned these policies, favouring a cautious, non-expansionary approach to foreign policy, frugal budget reform, and lower tax-rates imposed on private entrepreneurs.\nWang Mang's reign and civil war.\nWang Zhengjun (71\u00a0BC\u00a0\u2013 13\u00a0AD) was first empress, then empress dowager, and finally grand empress dowager during the reigns of the Emperors Yuan (r.\u200949\u00a0\u2013\u00a033\u00a0BC), Cheng (r.\u200933\u00a0\u2013\u00a07\u00a0BC), and Ai (r.\u20097\u00a0\u2013\u00a01\u00a0BC), respectively. During this time, a succession of her male relatives held the title of regent. Following the death of Ai, Wang Zhengjun's nephew Wang Mang (45\u00a0BC\u00a0\u2013 23\u00a0AD) was appointed regent as Marshall of State on 16 August under Emperor Ping (r.1\u00a0BC\u00a0\u2013 6\u00a0AD).\nWhen Ping died on 3 February 6\u00a0AD, Ruzi Ying (d.\u200925\u00a0AD) was chosen as the heir and Wang Mang was appointed to serve as acting emperor for the child. Wang promised to relinquish his control to Liu Ying once he came of age. Despite this promise, and against protest and revolts from the nobility, Wang Mang claimed on 10 January that the divine Mandate of Heaven called for the end of the Han dynasty and the beginning of his own: the Xin dynasty (9\u201323\u00a0AD).\nWang Mang initiated a series of major reforms that were ultimately unsuccessful. These reforms included outlawing slavery, nationalizing and equally distributing land between households, and introducing new currencies, a change which debased the value of coinage. Although these reforms provoked considerable opposition, Wang's regime met its ultimate downfall with the massive floods of c.\u20093\u00a0AD and 11\u00a0AD. Gradual silt build-up in the Yellow River had raised its water level and overwhelmed the flood control works. The Yellow River split into two new branches: one emptying to the north and the other to the south of the Shandong Peninsula, though Han engineers managed to dam the southern branch by 70\u00a0AD.\nThe flood dislodged thousands of peasant farmers, many of whom joined roving bandit and rebel groups such as the Red Eyebrows to survive. Wang Mang's armies were incapable of quelling these enlarged rebel groups. Eventually, an insurgent mob forced their way into the Weiyang Palace and killed Wang Mang.\nThe Gengshi Emperor (r.\u200923\u00a0\u2013\u00a025\u00a0AD), a descendant of Emperor Jing (r.\u2009157\u00a0\u2013\u00a0141\u00a0BC), attempted to restore the Han dynasty and occupied Chang'an as his capital. However, he was overwhelmed by the Red Eyebrow rebels who deposed, assassinated, and replaced him with the puppet monarch Liu Penzi. Gengshi's distant cousin Liu Xiu, known posthumously as Emperor Guangwu (r.\u200925\u00a0\u2013\u00a057\u00a0AD), after distinguishing himself at the Battle of Kunyang in 23\u00a0AD, was urged to succeed Gengshi as emperor.\nUnder Guangwu's rule, the Han Empire was restored. Guangwu made Luoyang his capital in 25\u00a0AD, and by 27 his officers Deng Yu and Feng Yi had forced the Red Eyebrows to surrender and executed their leaders for treason. From 26 until 36\u00a0AD, Emperor Guangwu had to wage war against other regional warlords who claimed the title of emperor; when these warlords were defeated, China reunified under the Han.\nThe period between the foundation of the Han dynasty and Wang Mang's reign is known as the Western Han () or Former Han () (206\u00a0BC\u00a0\u2013 9\u00a0AD). During this period the capital was at Chang'an (modern Xi'an). From the reign of Guangwu the capital was moved eastward to Luoyang. The era from his reign until the fall of Han is known as the Eastern Han or Later Han (25\u2013220\u00a0AD).\nEastern Han (25\u2013220 AD).\nThe Eastern Han (), also known as the Later Han (), formally began on 5 August AD\u00a025, when Liu Xiu became Emperor Guangwu of Han. During the widespread rebellion against Wang Mang, the state of Goguryeo was free to raid Han's Korean commanderies; Han did not reaffirm its control over the region until AD\u00a030.\nThe Tr\u01b0ng Sisters of Vietnam rebelled against Han in AD\u00a040. Their rebellion was crushed by Han general Ma Yuan (d.\u2009AD\u00a049) in a campaign from AD\u00a042 to 43. Wang Mang renewed hostilities against the Xiongnu, who were estranged from Han until their leader Bi (), a rival claimant to the throne against his cousin Punu (), submitted to Han as a tributary vassal in AD\u00a050. This created two rival Xiongnu states: the Southern Xiongnu led by Bi, an ally of Han, and the Northern Xiongnu led by Punu, an enemy of Han.\nDuring the turbulent reign of Wang Mang, China lost control over the Tarim Basin, which was conquered by the Northern Xiongnu in AD\u00a063 and used as a base to invade the Hexi Corridor in Gansu. Dou Gu (d.\u200988\u00a0AD) defeated the Northern Xiongnu at the Battle of Yiwulu in AD\u00a073, evicting them from Turpan and chasing them as far as Lake Barkol before establishing a garrison at Hami. After the new Protector General of the Western Regions Chen Mu (d.\u2009AD\u00a075) was killed by allies of the Xiongnu in Karasahr and Kucha, the garrison at Hami was withdrawn.\nAt the Battle of Ikh Bayan in AD\u00a089, Dou Xian (d.\u2009AD\u00a092) defeated the Northern Xiongnu \"chanyu\" who then retreated into the Altai Mountains. After the Northern Xiongnu fled into the Ili River valley in AD\u00a091, the nomadic Xianbei occupied the area from the borders of the Buyeo Kingdom in Manchuria to the Ili River of the Wusun people. The Xianbei reached their apogee under Tanshihuai (d.\u2009AD\u00a0181), who consistently defeated Chinese armies. However, Tanshihuai's confederation disintegrated after his death.\nBan Chao (d.\u2009AD\u00a0102) enlisted the aid of the Kushan Empire, which controlled territory across South and Central Asia, to subdue Kashgar and its ally Sogdiana. When a request by Kushan ruler Vima Kadphises (r.) for a marriage alliance with the Han was rejected in AD\u00a090, he sent his forces to Wakhan (modern-day Afghanistan) to attack Ban Chao. The conflict ended with the Kushans withdrawing because of lack of supplies. In AD\u00a091, the office of Protector General of the Western Regions was reinstated when it was bestowed on Ban Chao.\nForeign travellers to the Eastern Han empire included Buddhist monks who translated works into Chinese, such as An Shigao from Parthia, and Lokaksema from Kushan-era Gandhara. In addition to tributary relations with the Kushans, the Han empire received gifts from sovereigns in the Parthian Empire, as well as from kings in modern Burma and Japan. He also initiated an unsuccessful mission to Rome in AD\u00a097 with Gan Ying as emissary.\nA Roman embassy of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (r.\u2009161\u00a0\u2013\u00a0180\u00a0AD) is recorded in the \"Weil\u00fce\" and \"Book of Later Han\" to have reached the court of Emperor Huan of Han (r.\u2009146\u00a0\u2013\u00a0168\u00a0AD) in AD\u00a0166, yet Rafe de Crespigny asserts that this was most likely a group of Roman merchants. In addition to Roman glasswares and coins found in China, Roman medallions from the reign of Antoninus Pius and his adopted son Marcus Aurelius have been found at \u00d3c Eo in Vietnam. This was near the commandery of Rinan where Chinese sources claim the Romans first landed, as well as embassies from Tianzhu in northern India in 159 and 161. \u00d3c Eo is also thought to be the port city \"Cattigara\" described by Ptolemy in his \"Geography\" (c.\u2009150\u00a0AD) as lying east of the Golden Chersonese (Malay Peninsula) along the \"Magnus Sinus\" (i.e. the Gulf of Thailand and South China Sea), where a Greek sailor had visited.\nEmperor Zhang's (r.\u200975\u00a0\u2013\u00a088\u00a0AD) reign came to be viewed by later Eastern Han scholars as the high point of the dynastic house. Subsequent reigns were increasingly marked by eunuch intervention in court politics and their involvement in the violent power struggles of the imperial consort clans. In 92\u00a0AD, with the aid of the eunuch Zheng Zhong (d.\u2009107\u00a0AD), Emperor He (r.\u200988\u00a0\u2013\u00a0105\u00a0AD) had Empress Dowager Dou (d.\u200997\u00a0AD) put under house arrest and her clan stripped of power. This was in revenge for Dou's purging of the clan of his natural mother\u2014Consort Liang\u2014and then concealing her identity from him. After Emperor He's death, his wife Empress Deng Sui (d.\u2009121\u00a0AD) managed state affairs as the regent empress dowager during a turbulent financial crisis and widespread Qiang rebellion that lasted from 107 to 118\u00a0AD.\nWhen Empress Dowager Deng died, Emperor An (r.\u2009106\u00a0\u2013\u00a0125\u00a0AD) was convinced by the accusations of the eunuchs Li Run () and Jiang Jing () that Deng and her family had planned to depose him. An dismissed Deng's clan members from office, exiled them, and forced many to commit suicide. After An's death, his wife, Empress Dowager Yan (d.\u2009126\u00a0AD) placed the child Marquess of Beixiang on the throne in an attempt to retain power within her family. However, palace eunuch Sun Cheng (d.\u2009132\u00a0AD) masterminded a successful overthrow of her regime to enthrone Emperor Shun of Han (r.\u2009125\u00a0\u2013\u00a0144\u00a0AD). Yan was placed under house arrest, her relatives were either killed or exiled, and her eunuch allies were slaughtered. The regent Liang Ji (d.\u2009159\u00a0AD), brother of Empress Liang Na (d.\u2009150\u00a0AD), had the brother-in-law of Consort Deng Mengn\u00fc (d.\u2009165\u00a0AD) killed after Deng Mengn\u00fc resisted Liang Ji's attempts to control her. Afterward, Emperor Huan employed eunuchs to depose Liang Ji, who was then forced to commit suicide.\nStudents from the imperial university organized a widespread student protest against the eunuchs of Emperor Huan's court. Huan further alienated the bureaucracy when he initiated grandiose construction projects and hosted thousands of concubines in his harem at a time of economic crisis. Palace eunuchs imprisoned the official Li Ying () and his associates from the Imperial University on a dubious charge of treason. In 167\u00a0AD, the Grand Commandant Dou Wu (d.\u2009168\u00a0AD) convinced his son-in-law, Emperor Huan, to release them. However, the emperor permanently barred Li Ying and his associates from serving in office, marking the beginning of the Partisan Prohibitions.\nFollowing Huan's death, Dou Wu and the Grand Tutor Chen Fan (d.\u2009168\u00a0AD) attempted a coup against the eunuchs Hou Lan (d.\u2009172\u00a0AD), Cao Jie (d.\u2009181\u00a0AD), and Wang Fu (). When the plot was uncovered, the eunuchs arrested Empress Dowager Dou (d.\u2009172\u00a0AD) and Chen Fan. General Zhang Huan () favoured the eunuchs. He and his troops confronted Dou Wu and his retainers at the palace gate where each side shouted accusations of treason against the other. When the retainers gradually deserted Dou Wu, he was forced to commit suicide.\nUnder Emperor Ling (r.\u2009168\u00a0\u2013\u00a0189\u00a0AD) the eunuchs had the partisan prohibitions renewed and expanded, while also auctioning off top government offices. Many affairs of state were entrusted to the eunuchs Zhao Zhong (d.\u2009189\u00a0AD) and Zhang Rang (d.\u2009189\u00a0AD) while Emperor Ling spent much of his time roleplaying with concubines and participating in military parades.\nEnd of the Han dynasty.\nThe Partisan Prohibitions were repealed during the Yellow Turban Rebellion and Five Pecks of Rice Rebellion in 184\u00a0AD, largely because the court did not want to continue to alienate a significant portion of the gentry class who might otherwise join the rebellions. The Yellow Turbans and Five-Pecks-of-Rice adherents belonged to two different hierarchical Taoist religious societies led by faith healers Zhang Jue (d.\u2009184\u00a0AD) and Zhang Lu (d.\u2009216\u00a0AD), respectively.\nZhang Lu's rebellion, in what is now northern Sichuan and southern Shaanxi, was not quelled until 215\u00a0AD. Zhang Jue's massive rebellion across eight provinces was annihilated by Han forces within a year; however, the following decades saw much smaller recurrent uprisings. Although the Yellow Turbans were defeated, many generals appointed during the crisis never disbanded their assembled militias and used these troops to amass power outside of the collapsing imperial authority.\nGeneral-in-chief He Jin (d.\u2009189\u00a0AD), half-brother to Empress He (d.\u2009189\u00a0AD), plotted with Yuan Shao (d.\u2009202\u00a0AD) to overthrow the eunuchs by having several generals march to the outskirts of the capital. There, in a written petition to Empress He, they demanded the eunuchs' execution. After a period of hesitation, Empress He consented. When the eunuchs discovered this, however, they had her brother He Miao () rescind the order. The eunuchs assassinated He Jin on 22 September 189.\nYuan Shao then besieged Luoyang's Northern Palace while his brother Yuan Shu (d.\u2009199\u00a0AD) besieged the Southern Palace. On September 25 both palaces were breached and approximately two thousand eunuchs were killed. Zhang Rang had previously fled with Emperor Shao (r.189\u00a0AD) and his brother Liu Xie\u2014the future Emperor Xian of Han (r.\u2009189\u00a0\u2013\u00a0220\u00a0AD). While being pursued by the Yuan brothers, Zhang committed suicide by jumping into the Yellow River.\nGeneral Dong Zhuo (d.\u2009192\u00a0AD) found the young emperor and his brother wandering in the countryside. He escorted them safely back to the capital and was made Minister of Works, taking control of Luoyang and forcing Yuan Shao to flee. After Dong Zhuo demoted Emperor Shao and promoted his brother Liu Xie as Emperor Xian, Yuan Shao led a coalition of former officials and officers against Dong, who burned Luoyang to the ground and resettled the court at Chang'an in May 191\u00a0AD. Dong Zhuo later poisoned Emperor Shao.\nDong was killed by his adopted son L\u00fc Bu (d.\u2009198\u00a0AD) in a plot hatched by Wang Yun (d.\u2009192\u00a0AD). Emperor Xian fled from Chang'an in 195\u00a0AD to the ruins of Luoyang. Xian was persuaded by Cao Cao (155\u2013220\u00a0AD), then Governor of Yan Province in modern western Shandong and eastern Henan, to move the capital to Xuchang in 196\u00a0AD.\nYuan Shao challenged Cao Cao for control over the emperor. Yuan's power was greatly diminished after Cao defeated him at the Battle of Guandu in 200\u00a0AD. After Yuan died, Cao killed Yuan Shao's son Yuan Tan (173\u2013205\u00a0AD), who had fought with his brothers over the family inheritance. His brothers Yuan Shang and Yuan Xi were killed in 207\u00a0AD by Gongsun Kang (d.\u2009221\u00a0AD), who sent their heads to Cao Cao.\nAfter Cao's defeat at the naval Battle of Red Cliffs in 208\u00a0AD, China was divided into three spheres of influence, with Cao Cao dominating the north, Sun Quan (182\u2013252\u00a0AD) dominating the south, and Liu Bei (161\u2013223\u00a0AD) dominating the west. Cao Cao died in March 220\u00a0AD. By December his son Cao Pi (187\u2013226\u00a0AD) had Emperor Xian relinquish the throne to him and is known posthumously as Emperor Wen of Wei. This formally ended the Han dynasty and initiated an age of conflict between the Three Kingdoms: Cao Wei, Eastern Wu, and Shu Han.\nCulture and society.\nSocial class.\nIn the hierarchical social order, the emperor was at the apex of Han society and government. However, the emperor was often a minor, ruled over by a regent such as the empress dowager or one of her male relatives. Ranked immediately below the emperor were the kings who were of the same Liu family clan. The rest of society, including nobles lower than kings and all commoners excluding slaves, belonged to one of twenty ranks (\"ershi gongcheng\" ).\nEach successive rank gave its holder greater pensions and legal privileges. The highest rank, of full marquess, came with a state pension and a territorial fiefdom. Holders of the rank immediately below, that of ordinary marquess, received a pension, but had no territorial rule. Scholar-bureaucrats who served in government belonged to the wider commoner social class and were ranked just below nobles in social prestige. The highest government officials could be enfeoffed as marquesses.\nBy the Eastern Han, local elites of unattached scholars, teachers, students, and government officials began to identify themselves as members of a nationwide gentry class with shared values and a commitment to mainstream scholarship. When the government became noticeably corrupt in mid-to-late Eastern Han, many gentry even considered the cultivation of morally-grounded personal relationships more important than serving in public office.\nFarmers, namely small landowner\u2013cultivators, were ranked just below scholars and officials in the social hierarchy. Other agricultural cultivators were of a lower status, such as tenants, wage labourers, and slaves. The Han dynasty made adjustments to slavery in China and saw an increase in agricultural slaves. Artisans, technicians, tradespeople, and craftsmen had a legal and socioeconomic status between that of owner-cultivator farmers and common merchants.\nState-registered merchants, who were forced by law to wear white-coloured clothes and pay high commercial taxes, were considered by the gentry as social parasites with a contemptible status. These were often petty shopkeepers of urban marketplaces; merchants such as industrialists and itinerant traders working between a network of cities could avoid registering as merchants and were often wealthier and more powerful than the vast majority of government officials.\nWealthy landowners, such as nobles and officials, often provided lodging for retainers who provided valuable work or duties, sometimes including fighting bandits or riding into battle. Unlike slaves, retainers could come and go from their master's home as they pleased. Physicians, pig breeders, and butchers had fairly high social status, while occultist diviners, runners, and messengers had low status.\nMarriage, gender, and kinship.\nThe Han-era family was patrilineal and typically had four to five nuclear family members living in one household. Multiple generations of extended family members did not occupy the same house, unlike families of later dynasties. According to Confucian family norms, various family members were treated with different levels of respect and intimacy. For example, there were different accepted time frames for mourning the death of a father versus a paternal uncle.\nMarriages were highly ritualized, particularly for the wealthy, and included many important steps. The giving of betrothal gifts, known as bride price and dowry, were especially important. A lack of either was considered dishonourable and the woman would have been seen not as a wife, but as a concubine. Arranged marriages were typical, with the father's input on his offspring's spouse being considered more important than the mother's.\nMonogamous marriages were also normal, although nobles and high officials were wealthy enough to afford and support concubines as additional lovers. Under certain conditions dictated by custom, not law, both men and women were able to divorce their spouses and remarry. However, a woman who had been widowed continued to belong to her husband's family after his death. In order to remarry, the widow would have to be returned to her family in exchange for a ransom fee. Her children would not be allowed to go with her.\nApart from the passing of noble titles or ranks, inheritance practices did not involve primogeniture; each son received an equal share of the family property. Unlike the practice in later dynasties, the father usually sent his adult married sons away with their portions of the family fortune. Daughters received a portion of the family fortune through their dowries, though this was usually much less than the shares of sons. A different distribution of the remainder could be specified in a will, but it is unclear how common this was.\nWomen were expected to obey the will of their father, then their husband, and then their adult son in old age. However, it is known from contemporary sources that there were many deviations to this rule, especially in regard to mothers over their sons, and empresses who ordered around and openly humiliated their fathers and brothers. Women were exempt from the annual corv\u00e9e labour duties, but often engaged in a range of income-earning occupations aside from their domestic chores of cooking and cleaning.\nThe most common occupation for women was weaving clothes for the family, for sale at market, or for large textile enterprises that employed hundreds of women. Other women helped on their brothers' farms or became singers, dancers, sorceresses, respected medical physicians, and successful merchants who could afford their own silk clothes. Some women formed spinning collectives, aggregating the resources of several different families.\nEducation, literature, and philosophy.\nThe early Western Han court simultaneously accepted the philosophical teachings of Legalism, Huang-Lao Taoism, and Confucianism in making state decisions and shaping government policy. However, the Han court under Emperor Wu gave Confucianism exclusive patronage. In 136\u00a0BC, he abolished all academic chairs not concerned with the Five Classics, and in 124 BC he established the Imperial University, at which he encouraged nominees for office to receive a Confucian education.\nUnlike the original ideology espoused by Confucius (551\u2013479\u00a0BC), Han Confucianism in Emperor Wu's reign was the creation of Dong Zhongshu (179\u2013104\u00a0BC). Dong was a scholar and minor official who aggregated the ethical Confucian ideas of ritual, filial piety, and harmonious relationships with five phases and yin-yang cosmologies. Dong's synthesis justified the imperial system of government within the natural order of the universe.\nThe Imperial University grew in importance as the student body grew to over 30,000 by the 2nd century\u00a0AD. A Confucian-based education was also made available at commandery-level schools and private schools opened in small towns, where teachers earned respectable incomes from tuition payments. Schools were established in far southern regions where standard Chinese texts were used to assimilate the local populace.\nSome important texts were created and studied by scholars. Philosophy written by Yang Xiong (53\u00a0BC\u00a0\u2013 18\u00a0AD), Huan Tan (43\u00a0BC\u00a0\u2013 28\u00a0AD), Wang Chong (27\u2013100\u00a0AD), and Wang Fu (78\u2013163\u00a0AD) questioned whether human nature was innately good or evil and posed challenges to Dong's universal order. The \"Records of the Grand Historian\" started by Sima Tan (d.\u2009110\u00a0BC) and finished by his son Sima Qian (145\u201386\u00a0BC) established the standard model for imperial China's tradition of official histories, being emulated initially by the \"Book of Han\" authored by Ban Biao (3\u201354\u00a0AD) with his son Ban Gu (32\u201392\u00a0AD), and his daughter Ban Zhao (45\u2013116\u00a0AD). Biographies on important figures were written by members of the gentry. There were also dictionaries published during the Han period such as the \"Shuowen Jiezi\" by Xu Shen (c.\u200958\u00a0\u2013 c.\u2009147\u00a0AD) and the \"Fangyan\" by Yang Xiong. Han dynasty poetry was dominated by the \"fu\" genre, which achieved its greatest prominence during the reign of Emperor Wu.\nLaw and order.\nHan scholars such as Jia Yi (201\u2013169\u00a0BC) portrayed the Qin as a brutal regime. However, archaeological evidence from Zhangjiashan and Shuihudi reveal that many of the statutes in the Han law code compiled by Chancellor Xiao He (d.\u2009193\u00a0BC) were derived from Qin law.\nVarious cases for rape, physical abuse, and murder were prosecuted in court. Women, although usually having fewer rights by custom, were allowed to level civil and criminal charges against men. While suspects were jailed, convicted criminals were never imprisoned. Instead, punishments were commonly monetary fines, periods of forced hard labour for convicts, and the penalty of death by beheading. Early Han punishments of torturous mutilation were borrowed from Qin law. A series of reforms abolished mutilation punishments with progressively less-severe beatings by the bastinado.\nActing as a judge in lawsuits was one of the many duties of the county magistrate and Administrators of commanderies. Complex, high-profile, or unresolved cases were often deferred to the Minister of Justice in the capital or even the emperor. In each Han county was several districts, each overseen by a chief of police. Order in the cities was maintained by government officers in the marketplaces and constables in the neighbourhoods.\nFood.\nThe most common staple crops consumed during Han were wheat, barley, foxtail millet, proso millet, rice, and beans. Commonly eaten fruits and vegetables included chestnuts, pears, plums, peaches, melons, apricots, strawberries, red bayberries, jujubes, calabash, bamboo shoots, mustard plant, and taro. Domesticated animals that were also eaten included chickens, Mandarin ducks, geese, cows, sheep, pigs, camels, and dogs (various types were bred specifically for food, while most were used as pets). Turtles and fish were taken from streams and lakes. Commonly hunted game, such as owl, pheasant, magpie, sika deer, and Chinese bamboo partridge were consumed. Seasoning included sugar, honey, salt, and soy sauce. Beer and wine were regularly consumed.\nClothing.\nThe types of clothing worn and the materials used during the Han period depended upon social class. Wealthy folk could afford silk robes, skirts, socks, and mittens, coats made of badger or fox fur, duck plumes, and slippers with inlaid leather, pearls, and silk lining. Peasants commonly wore clothes made of hemp, wool, and ferret skins.\nReligion, cosmology, and metaphysics.\nFamilies throughout Han China made ritual sacrifices of animals and food to deities, spirits, and ancestors at temples and shrines. They believed that these items could be used by those in the spiritual realm. It was thought that each person had a two-part soul: the spirit-soul which journeyed to the afterlife paradise of immortals (\"xian\"), and the body-soul which remained in its grave or tomb on earth and was only reunited with the spirit-soul through a ritual ceremony.\nIn addition to his many other roles, the emperor acted as the highest priest in the land who made sacrifices to Heaven, the main deities known as the Five Powers, and spirits of mountains and rivers known as \"shen\". It was believed that the three realms of Heaven, Earth, and Mankind were linked by natural cycles of yin and yang and the five phases. If the emperor did not behave according to proper ritual, ethics, and morals, he could disrupt the fine balance of these cosmological cycles and cause calamities such as earthquakes, floods, droughts, epidemics, and swarms of locusts.\nIt was believed that immortality could be achieved if one reached the lands of the Queen Mother of the West or Mount Penglai. Han-era Taoists assembled into small groups of hermits who attempted to achieve immortality through breathing exercises, sexual techniques, and the use of medical elixirs.\nBy the 2nd century\u00a0AD, Taoists formed large hierarchical religious societies such as the Way of the Five Pecks of Rice. Its followers believed that the sage-philosopher Laozi (fl.\u20096th century\u00a0BC) was a holy prophet who would offer salvation and good health if his devout followers would confess their sins, ban the worship of unclean gods who accepted meat sacrifices, and chant sections of the \"Tao Te Ching\".\nBuddhism first entered Imperial China through the Silk Road during the Eastern Han, and was first mentioned in 65\u00a0AD. Liu Ying (d.\u200971\u00a0AD), a half-brother to Emperor Ming of Han (r.\u200957\u00a0\u2013\u00a075\u00a0AD), was one of its earliest Chinese adherents, although Chinese Buddhism at this point was heavily associated with Huang\u2013Lao Taoism. China's first known Buddhist temple, the White Horse Temple, was constructed outside the wall of Luoyang during Emperor Ming's reign. Important Buddhist canons were translated into Chinese during the 2nd century\u00a0AD, including the \"Sutra of Forty-two Chapters\", \"Perfection of Wisdom\", \"Shurangama Sutra\", and \"Pratyutpanna Sutra\".\nGovernment and politics.\nCentral government.\nIn Han government, the emperor was the supreme judge and lawgiver, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and sole designator of official nominees appointed to the top posts in central and local administrations; those who earned a 600-bushel salary-rank or higher. Theoretically, there were no limits to his power.\nHowever, state organs with competing interests and institutions such as the court conference (\"tingyi\" )\u2014where ministers were convened to reach a majority consensus on an issue\u2014pressured the emperor to accept the advice of his ministers on policy decisions. If the emperor rejected a court conference decision, he risked alienating his high ministers. Nevertheless, emperors sometimes did reject the majority opinion reached at court conferences.\nBelow the emperor were his cabinet members known as the Three Councillors of State. These were the Chancellor or Minister over the Masses, the Imperial Counsellor or Excellency of Works (\"Yushi dafu\" or \"Da sikong\" ), and Grand Commandant or Grand Marshal (\"Taiwei\" or \"Da sima\" ).\nThe Chancellor, whose title had changed in 8\u00a0BC to Minister over the Masses, was chiefly responsible for drafting the government budget. The Chancellor's other duties included managing provincial registers for land and population, leading court conferences, acting as judge in lawsuits, and recommending nominees for high office. He could appoint officials below the salary-rank of 600 bushels.\nThe Imperial Counsellor's chief duty was to conduct disciplinary procedures for officials. He shared similar duties with the Chancellor, such as receiving annual provincial reports. However, when his title was changed to Minister of Works in 8\u00a0BC, his chief duty became the oversight of public works projects.\nThe Grand Commandant, whose title was changed to Grand Marshal in 119\u00a0BC before reverting to Grand Commandant in 51\u00a0AD, was the irregularly posted commander of the military and then regent during the Western Han period. In the Eastern Han era he was chiefly a civil official who shared many of the same censorial powers as the other two Councillors of State.\nRanked below the Three Councillors of State were the Nine Ministers, who each headed a specialized ministry. The Minister of Ceremonies (\"Taichang\" ) was the chief official in charge of religious rites, rituals, prayers, and the maintenance of ancestral temples and altars. The Minister of the Household (\"Guang lu xun\" ) was in charge of the emperor's security within the palace grounds, external imperial parks, and wherever the emperor made an outing by chariot.\nThe Minister of the Guards (\"Weiwei\" ) was responsible for securing and patrolling the walls, towers, and gates of the imperial palaces. The Minister Coachman (\"Taipu\" ) was responsible for the maintenance of imperial stables, horses, carriages, and coach-houses for the emperor and his palace attendants, as well as the supply of horses for the armed forces. The Minister of Justice (\"Tingwei\" ) was the chief official in charge of upholding, administering, and interpreting the law. The Minister Herald (\"Da honglu\" ) was the chief official in charge of receiving honoured guests like nobles and foreign ambassadors at court.\nThe Minister of the Imperial Clan (\"Zongzheng\" ) oversaw the imperial court's interactions with the empire's nobility and extended imperial family, such as granting fiefs and titles. The Minister of Finance (\"da s\u00ecnong\" ) was the treasurer for the official bureaucracy and the armed forces who handled tax revenues and set standards for units of measurement. The Minister Steward (\"Shaofu\" ) served the emperor exclusively, providing him with entertainment and amusements, proper food and clothing, medicine and physical care, valuables and equipment.\nLocal government.\nThe Han empire, excluding kingdoms and marquessates, was divided, in descending order of size, into political units of provinces, commanderies, and counties. A county was divided into several districts (\"xiang\" ), the latter composed of a group of hamlets (\"li\" ), each containing about a hundred families.\nThe heads of provinces, whose official title was changed from Inspector to Governor and vice versa several times during Han, were responsible for inspecting several commandery-level and kingdom-level administrations. On the basis of their reports, the officials in these local administrations would be promoted, demoted, dismissed, or prosecuted by the imperial court.\nA governor could take various actions without permission from the imperial court. The lower-ranked inspector had executive powers only during times of crisis, such as raising militias across the commanderies under his jurisdiction to suppress a rebellion.\nA commandery consisted of a group of counties, and was headed by an administrator. He was the top civil and military leader of the commandery and handled defence, lawsuits, seasonal instructions to farmers, and recommendations of nominees for office sent annually to the capital in a quota system first established by Emperor Wu. The head of a large county of about 10,000 households was called a Prefect, while the heads of smaller counties were called chiefs, and both could be referred to as magistrates. A Magistrate maintained law and order in his county, registered the populace for taxation, mobilized commoners for annual corv\u00e9e duties, repaired schools, and supervised public works.\nKingdoms and marquessates.\nKingdoms\u2014roughly the size of commanderies\u2014were ruled exclusively by the emperor's male relatives as semi-autonomous fiefdoms. Before 157\u00a0BC, some kingdoms were ruled by non-relatives, granted to them in return for their services to Emperor Gaozu. The administration of each kingdom was very similar to that of the central government. Although the emperor appointed the Chancellor of each kingdom, kings appointed all the remaining civil officials in their fiefs.\nHowever, in 145\u00a0BC, after several insurrections by the kings, Emperor Jing removed the kings' rights to appoint officials whose salaries were higher than 400 bushels. The Imperial Counsellors and Nine Ministers (excluding the Minister Coachman) of every kingdom were abolished, although the Chancellor was still appointed by the central government.\nWith these reforms, kings were reduced to being nominal heads of their fiefs, gaining a personal income from only a portion of the taxes collected in their kingdom. Similarly, the officials in the administrative staff of a full marquess's fief were appointed by the central government. A marquess's chancellor was ranked as the equivalent of a county prefect. Like a king, the marquess collected a portion of the tax revenues in his fief as personal income.\nUntil the reign of Emperor Jing of Han, the Han emperors had great difficulties controlling their vassal kings, who often switched allegiances to the Xiongnu whenever they felt threatened by imperial centralization of power. The seven years of Gaozu's reign featured defections by three vassal kings and one marquess, who then aligned themselves with the Xiongnu. Even imperial princes controlling fiefdoms would sometimes invite a Xiongnu invasion in response to the Emperor's threats. The Han moved to secure a treaty with the Xiongnu, aiming to clearly divide authority between them. The Han and Xiongnu now held one another out as the \"two masters\" with sole dominion over their respective peoples; they cemented this agreement with a marriage alliance (\"heqin\"), before eliminating the rebellious vassal kings in 154\u00a0BC. This prompted some of the Xiongnu vassals to swap allegiances to the Han, starting in 147. Han court officials were initially hostile to the idea of disrupting the status quo by expanding into Xiongnu territory in the steppe. The surrendered Xiongnu were integrated into a parallel military and political structures loyal to the Han emperor, a step toward a potential Han challenge to the superiority of Xiongnu cavalry in steppe warfare. This also brought the Han into contact with the interstate trade networks through the Tarim Basin in the far northwest, allowing for the Han's expansion from a regional state to a universalist, cosmopolitan empire achieved in part through further marriage alliances with the Wusun, another steppe power.\nMilitary.\nAt the beginning of the Han, every male commoner aged twenty-three was liable for conscription into the military. The minimum age was reduced to twenty following the reign of Emperor Zhao (r.\u200987\u00a0\u2013\u00a074). Conscripted soldiers underwent one year of training and one year of service as non-professional soldiers. The year of training was spent in one of three branches of the armed forces: infantry, cavalry, or navy. Prior to the abolition of much of the conscription system after 30\u00a0AD, soldiers could be called up for future service following the completion of their terms. They had to continue training regularly to maintain their skills, and were subject to annual inspections of their military readiness. The year of active service was served either on the frontier, in a king's court, or in the capital under the Minister of the Guards. A small professional army was stationed near the capital.\nDuring the Eastern Han, conscription could be avoided if one paid a commutable tax. The Eastern Han court favoured the recruitment of a volunteer army. The volunteer army comprised the Southern Army (\"Nanjun\" ), while the standing army stationed in and near the capital was the Northern Army (\"Beijun\" ). Led by Colonels (\"Xiaowei\" ), the Northern Army consisted of five regiments, each composed of several thousand soldiers. When central authority collapsed after 189\u00a0AD, wealthy landowners, members of the aristocracy/nobility, and regional military-governors relied upon their retainers to act as their own personal troops.\nDuring times of war, the volunteer army was increased, and a much larger militia was raised across the country to supplement the Northern Army. In these circumstances, a general (\"jiangjun\" ) led a division, which was divided into regiments led by a colonel or major (\"sima\" ). Regiments were divided into companies and led by captains. Platoons were the smallest units.\nEconomy.\nCurrency.\nThe Han dynasty inherited the \"ban liang\" coin type from the Qin. In the beginning of the Han, Emperor Gaozu closed the government mint in favour of private minting of coins. This decision was reversed in 186\u00a0BC by his widow Grand Empress Dowager L\u00fc Zhi (d.\u2009180\u00a0BC), who abolished private minting. In 182\u00a0BC, L\u00fc Zhi issued a bronze coin that was much lighter in weight than previous coins. This caused widespread inflation that was not reduced until 175\u00a0BC, when Emperor Wen allowed private minters to manufacture coins that were precisely in weight.\nIn 144\u00a0BC, Emperor Jing abolished private minting in favour of central-government and commandery-level minting; he also introduced a new coin. Emperor Wu introduced another in 120\u00a0BC, but a year later he abandoned the \"ban liangs\" entirely in favour of the \"wuzhu\" coin, weighing . The \"wuzhu\" became China's standard coin until the Tang dynasty (618\u2013907). Its use was interrupted briefly by several new currencies introduced during Wang Mang's regime until it was reinstated in 40\u00a0AD by Emperor Guangwu.\nSince commandery-issued coins were often of inferior quality and lighter weight, the central government closed commandery mints and monopolized the issue of coinage in 113\u00a0BC. This central government issuance of coinage was overseen by the Superintendent of Waterways and Parks, this duty being transferred to the Minister of Finance during the Eastern Han.\nTaxation and property.\nAside from the landowner's land tax paid in a portion of their crop yield, the poll tax and property taxes were paid in coin cash. The annual poll tax rate for adult men and women was 120 coins and 20 coins for minors. Merchants were required to pay a higher rate of 240 coins. The poll tax stimulated a money economy that necessitated the minting of over 28,000,000,000 coins from 118\u00a0BC to 5\u00a0AD, an average of 220,000,000 coins a year.\nThe widespread circulation of coin cash allowed successful merchants to invest money in land, empowering the very social class the government attempted to suppress through heavy commercial and property taxes. Emperor Wu even enacted laws which banned registered merchants from owning land, yet powerful merchants were able to avoid registration and own large tracts of land.\nThe small landowner-cultivators formed the majority of the Han tax base; this revenue was threatened during the latter half of Eastern Han when many peasants fell into debt and were forced to work as farming tenants for wealthy landlords. The Han government enacted reforms in order to keep small landowner-cultivators out of debt and on their own farms. These reforms included reducing taxes, temporary remissions of taxes, granting loans, and providing landless peasants temporary lodging and work in agricultural colonies until they could recover from their debts.\nIn 168\u00a0BC, the land tax rate was reduced from one-fifteenth of a farming household's crop yield to one-thirtieth, and later to one-hundredth of a crop yield for the last decades of the dynasty. The consequent loss of government revenue was compensated for by increasing property taxes.\nThe labour tax took the form of conscripted labour for one month per year, which was imposed upon male commoners aged fifteen to fifty-six. This could be avoided in Eastern Han with a commutable tax, since hired labour became more popular.\nPrivate manufacture and government monopolies.\nIn the early Western Han, a wealthy salt or iron industrialist, whether a semi-autonomous king or wealthy merchant, could boast funds that rivalled the imperial treasury and amass a peasant workforce numbering in the thousands. This kept many peasants away from their farms and denied the government a significant portion of its land tax revenue. To eliminate the influence of such private entrepreneurs, Emperor Wu nationalized the salt and iron industries in 117\u00a0BC and allowed many of the former industrialists to become officials administering the state monopolies. By the Eastern Han, the central government monopolies were repealed in favour of production by commandery and county administrations, as well as private businessmen.\nLiquor was another profitable private industry nationalized by the central government in 98\u00a0BC. However, this was repealed in 81\u00a0BC and a property tax rate of two coins for every was levied for those who traded it privately. By 110\u00a0BC, Emperor Wu also interfered with the profitable trade in grain when he eliminated speculation by selling government stores of grain at a lower price than that demanded by merchants. Apart from Emperor Ming's creation of a short-lived Office for Price Adjustment and Stabilization, which was abolished in 68\u00a0AD, central-government price control regulations were largely absent during the Eastern Han.\nScience and technology.\nThe Han dynasty was a unique period in the development of premodern Chinese science and technology, comparable to the level of scientific and technological growth during the Song dynasty (960\u20131279).\nWriting materials.\nIn the 1st millennium\u00a0BC, typical ancient Chinese writing materials were bronzeware, oracle bones, and bamboo slips or wooden boards. By the beginning of the Han, the chief writing materials were clay tablets, silk cloth, hemp paper, and rolled scrolls made from bamboo strips sewn together with hempen string; these were passed through drilled holes and secured with clay stamps.\nThe oldest known Chinese piece of hempen paper dates to the 2nd century\u00a0BC. The standard papermaking process was invented by Cai Lun (AD\u00a050\u2013121) in 105. The oldest known surviving piece of paper with writing on it was found in the ruins of a Han watchtower that had been abandoned in AD\u00a0110, in Inner Mongolia.\nMetallurgy and agriculture.\nEvidence suggests that blast furnaces, that convert raw iron ore into pig iron, which can be remelted in a cupola furnace to produce cast iron by means of a cold blast and hot blast, were operational in China by the late Spring and Autumn period (c.\u2009770\u00a0\u2013 c.\u2009481\u00a0BC). The bloomery was non-existent in ancient China; however, the Han-era Chinese produced wrought iron by injecting excess oxygen into a furnace and causing decarburisation. Cast iron and pig iron could be converted into wrought iron and steel using a fining process.\nThe Han dynasty Chinese used bronze and iron to make a range of weapons, culinary tools, carpenters' tools, and domestic wares. A significant product of these improved iron-smelting techniques was the manufacture of new agricultural tools. The three-legged iron seed drill, invented by the 2nd century\u00a0BC, enabled farmers to carefully plant crops in rows instead of sowing seeds by hand. The heavy mouldboard iron plough, also invented during the Han, required only one man to control it with two oxen to pull it. It had three ploughshares, a seed box for the drills, a tool which turned down the soil and could sow roughly of land in a single day.\nTo protect crops from wind and drought, the grain intendant Zhao Guo () created the alternating fields system (\"daitianfa\" ) during Emperor Wu's reign. This system switched the positions of furrows and ridges between growing seasons. Once experiments with this system yielded successful results, the government officially sponsored it and encouraged peasants to use it. Han farmers also used the pit field system ( ) for growing crops, which involved heavily fertilized pits that did not require ploughs or oxen and could be placed on sloping terrain. In the southern and small parts of central Han-era China, paddy fields were chiefly used to grow rice, while farmers along the Huai River used transplantation methods of rice production.\nStructural and geo-technical engineering.\nTimber was the chief building material during the Han; it was used to build palace halls, multi-story residential towers and halls, and single-story houses. Because wood decays rapidly, the only remaining evidence of Han wooden architecture is a collection of scattered ceramic roof tiles. The oldest surviving wooden halls in China date to the Tang dynasty. Architectural historian Robert L. Thorp points out the scarcity of Han-era archaeological remains, and claims that often unreliable Han-era literary and artistic sources are used by historians as clues concerning lost Han architecture.\nThough Han wooden structures decayed, some Han dynasty ruins made of brick, stone, and rammed earth remain intact. This includes stone pillar-gates, brick tomb chambers, rammed-earth city walls, rammed-earth and brick beacon towers, rammed-earth sections of the Great Wall, rammed-earth platforms where elevated halls once stood, and two rammed-earth castles in Gansu. The ruins of rammed-earth walls that once surrounded the capitals Chang'an and Luoyang still stand, along with their drainage systems of brick arches, ditches, and ceramic water pipes. Monumental stone pillar-gates called \"que\", of which 29 dated to the Han survive, formed entrances of walled enclosures at shrine and tomb sites. These pillars feature artistic imitations of wooden and ceramic building components such as roof tiles, eaves, and balustrades.\nThe courtyard house is the most common type of home portrayed in Han artwork. Ceramic architectural models of buildings, like houses and towers, were found in Han tombs, perhaps to provide lodging for the dead in the afterlife. These provide valuable clues about lost wooden architecture. The artistic designs found on ceramic roof tiles of tower models are in some cases exact matches to Han roof tiles found at archaeological sites.\nOver ten Han-era underground tombs have been found, many of them featuring archways, vaulted chambers, and domed roofs. Underground vaults and domes did not require buttress supports since they were held in place by earthen pits. The use of brick vaults and domes in aboveground Han structures is unknown.\nFrom Han literary sources, it is known that wooden-trestle beam bridges, arch bridges, simple suspension bridges, and floating pontoon bridges existed during the Han. However, there are only two known references to arch bridges in Han literature. There is only one Han-era relief sculpture, located in Sichuan, that depicts an arch bridge.\nUnderground mine shafts were dug to extract metal ores, with some reaching depths of more than . Borehole drilling and derricks were used to lift brine to iron pans where it was distilled into salt. The distillation furnaces were heated by natural gas funnelled to the surface through bamboo pipelines. It is possible that these boreholes reached a total depth of .\nMechanical and hydraulic engineering.\nHan-era mechanical engineering comes largely from the choice observational writings of sometimes-disinterested Confucian scholars who generally considered scientific and engineering endeavours to be far beneath them. Professional artisan-engineers (\"jiang\" ) did not leave behind detailed records of their work. Han scholars, who often had little or no expertise in mechanical engineering, sometimes provided insufficient information on the various technologies they described.\nNevertheless, some literary sources provide crucial information. For example, in 15\u00a0BC the philosopher and poet Yang Xiong described the invention of the belt drive for a quilling machine, which was of great importance to early textile manufacturing. The inventions of mechanical engineer and craftsman Ding Huan are mentioned in the \"Miscellaneous Notes on the Western Capital\". Around AD\u00a0180, Ding created a manually operated rotary fan used for air conditioning within palace buildings. Ding also used gimbals as pivotal supports for one of his incense burners and invented the world's first known zoetrope lamp.\nModern archaeology has led to the discovery of Han artwork portraying inventions which were otherwise absent in Han literary sources. As observed in Han miniature tomb models, but not in literary sources, the crank handle was used to operate the fans of winnowing machines that separated grain from chaff. The odometer cart, invented during the Han period, measured journey lengths, using mechanical figures banging drums and gongs to indicate each distance travelled. This invention is depicted in Han artwork by the 2nd century, yet detailed written descriptions were not offered until the 3rd century.\nModern archaeologists have also unearthed specimens of devices used during the Han dynasty, for example a pair of sliding metal calipers used by craftsmen for making minute measurements. These calipers contain inscriptions of the exact day and year they were manufactured. These tools are not mentioned in any Han literary sources.\nThe waterwheel appeared in Chinese records during the Han. As mentioned by Huan Tan c.\u200920\u00a0AD, they were used to turn gears that lifted iron trip hammers, and were used in pounding, threshing, and polishing grain. However, there is no sufficient evidence for the watermill in China until around the 5th century. The administrator, mechanical engineer, and metallurgist Du Shi (d.\u200938\u00a0AD) created a waterwheel-powered reciprocator that worked the bellows for the smelting of iron. Waterwheels were also used to power chain pumps that lifted water to raised irrigation ditches. The chain pump was first mentioned in China by the philosopher Wang Chong in his 1st-century \"Lunheng\".\nThe armillary sphere, a three-dimensional representation of the movements in the celestial sphere, was invented by the Han during the 1st century\u00a0BC. Using a water clock, waterwheel, and a series of gears, the Court Astronomer Zhang Heng (78\u2013139\u00a0AD) was able to mechanically rotate his metal-ringed armillary sphere. To address the problem of slowed timekeeping in the pressure head of the inflow water clock, Zhang was the first in China to install an additional tank between the reservoir and inflow vessel.\nZhang also invented a device he termed an \"earthquake weathervane\" ( ), which the British sinologist and historian Joseph Needham described as \"the ancestor of all seismographs\". This device was able to detect the exact cardinal or ordinal direction of earthquakes from hundreds of kilometres away. It employed an inverted pendulum that, when disturbed by ground tremors, would trigger a set of gears that dropped a metal ball from one of eight dragon mouths (representing all eight directions) into a metal toad's mouth. The account of this device in the \"Book of the Later Han\" describes how, on one occasion, one of the metal balls was triggered without any of the observers feeling a disturbance. Several days later, a messenger arrived bearing news that an earthquake had struck in Longxi Commandery (modern Gansu), the direction the device had indicated, which forced the officials at court to admit the efficacy of Zhang's device.\nMathematics.\nThree Han mathematical treatises still exist. These are the \"Book on Numbers and Computation\", the \"Zhoubi Suanjing,\" and the \"Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art\". Han mathematical achievements include solving problems with right triangles, square roots, cube roots, and matrix methods, finding more accurate approximations for pi, providing mathematical proof of the Pythagorean theorem, use of the decimal fraction, Gaussian elimination to solve linear equations, and continued fractions to find the roots of equations.\nOne of the Han's greatest mathematical advancements was the world's first use of negative numbers. Negative numbers first appeared in the \"Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art\" as black counting rods, where positive numbers were represented by red counting rods. Negative numbers were also used by the Greek mathematician Diophantus around AD\u00a0275, and in the 7th-century Bakhshali manuscript of Gandhara, South Asia, but were not widely accepted in Europe until the 16th century.\nThe Han applied mathematics to various diverse disciplines. In musical tuning, Jing Fang (78\u201337\u00a0BC) realized that 53 perfect fifths was approximate to 31 octaves. He also created a musical scale of 60 tones, calculating the difference at 177147\u2044176776 (the same value of 53 equal temperament discovered by the German mathematician Nicholas Mercator [1620\u20131687], i.e. 353/284).\nAstronomy.\nMathematics were essential in drafting the astronomical calendar, a lunisolar calendar that used the Sun and Moon as time-markers throughout the year. In the 5th century\u00a0BC, during the Spring and Autumn period, the Chinese established the Sifen calendar (), which measured the tropical year at 365.25 days. This was replaced in 104\u00a0BC with the Taichu calendar () that measured the tropical year at <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />365+385\u20441539 (~ 365.25016) days and the lunar month at <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />29+43\u204481 days. However, Emperor Zhang later reinstated the Sifen calendar.\nHan dynasty astronomers made star catalogues and detailed records of comets that appeared in the night sky, including recording the appearance of the comet now known as Halley's Comet in 12\u00a0BC. They adopted a geocentric model of the universe, theorizing that it was a sphere surrounding the Earth in the centre. They assumed that the Sun, Moon, and planets were spherical and not disc-shaped. They also thought that the illumination of the Moon and planets was caused by sunlight, that lunar eclipses occurred when the Earth obstructed sunlight falling onto the Moon, and that a solar eclipse occurred when the Moon obstructed sunlight from reaching the Earth. Although others disagreed with his model, Wang Chong accurately described the water cycle of the evaporation of water into clouds.\nCartography, ships, and vehicles.\nBoth literary and archaeological evidence has demonstrated that cartography in China predated the Han. Some of the oldest Han-era maps that have been discovered were written using ink on silk, and were found amongst the Mawangdui Silk Texts in a 2nd-century\u00a0BC tomb in Hunan. The general Ma Yuan created the world's first known raised-relief map from rice in the 1st century. This date could be revised if the tomb of Qin Shi Huang is excavated and the \"Shiji\"'s account of a model map of the empire is proven to be true.\nAlthough the use of graduated scales and grid references in maps was not thoroughly described prior to the work of Pei Xiu (AD\u00a0224\u2013271), there is evidence that their use was introduced in the early 2nd century by the cartographer Zhang Heng.\nThe Han sailed in various types of ships that differed from those used in previous eras, such as the tower ship. The \"junk\" design was developed and realized during the Han era. Junk ships featured a square-ended bow and stern, a flat-bottomed hull or carvel-shaped hull with no keel or sternpost, and solid transverse bulkheads in the place of [structural ribs found in Western vessels. Moreover, Han ships were the first in the world to be steered using a rudder at the stern, in contrast to the simpler steering oar used for riverine transport, allowing them to sail on the high seas.\nAlthough ox carts and chariots were previously used in China, the wheelbarrow was first used in Han China in the 1st century\u00a0BC. Han artwork of horse-drawn chariots shows that the Warring-States-Era heavy wooden yoke placed around a horse's chest was replaced by the softer \"breast strap\". Later, during the Northern Wei (386\u2013534), the fully developed horse collar was invented.\nMedicine.\nHan-era medical physicians believed that the human body was subject to the same forces of nature that governed the greater universe, namely the cosmological cycles of yin and yang and the five phases. Each organ of the body was associated with a particular phase. Illness was viewed as a sign that qi, or vital energy, channels leading to a certain organ had been disrupted. Thus, Han-era physicians prescribed medicine that was believed to counteract this imbalance.\nFor example, since the wood phase was believed to promote the fire phase, medicinal ingredients associated with the wood phase could be used to heal an organ associated with the fire phase. Besides dieting, Han physicians also prescribed moxibustion, acupuncture, and callisthenics as methods of maintaining one's health. When surgery was performed by the Chinese physician Hua Tuo (d.\u2009AD\u00a0208), he used anaesthesia to numb his patients' pain and prescribed a rubbing ointment that allegedly sped up the healing process for surgical wounds. The physician Zhang Zhongjing (c.\u2009150\u00a0\u2013 c.\u2009219\u00a0AD) is known to have written the \"Shanghan Lun\" (\"Dissertation on Typhoid Fever\"), and it is thought that he and Hua Tuo collaborated to compile the \"Shennong Bencaojing\" medical text.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources cited.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "1505285": "Wang Chong\n1st century Chinese meteorologist, astronomer, and philosopher\nWang Chong (; 27 \u2013 c. 97 AD), courtesy name Zhongren (\u4ef2\u4efb), was a Chinese astronomer, meteorologist, naturalist, philosopher, and writer active during the Eastern Han dynasty. He developed a rational, secular, naturalistic and mechanistic account of the world and of human beings and gave a materialistic explanation of the origin of the universe. His main work was the \"Lunheng\" (\u8ad6\u8861, \"Critical Essays\"). This book contained many theories involving early sciences of astronomy and meteorology, and Wang Chong was even the first in Chinese history to mention the use of the square-pallet chain pump, which became common in irrigation and public works in China thereafter. Wang also accurately described the process of the water cycle.\nUnlike most of the Chinese philosophers of his period, Wang spent much of his life in non-self-inflicted poverty. He was said to have studied by standing at bookstalls, and had a superb memory, which allowed him to become very well-versed in the Chinese classics. He eventually reached the rank of District Secretary, a post he soon lost as a result of his combative and anti-authoritarian nature.\nLife.\nWang was born into a poor family in modern Shangyu, Zhejiang. Born a son of Wang Song, he was admired in his local community for his filial piety and devotion to his father. With the urging of his parents, Wang travelled to the Eastern Han capital at Luoyang to study at the Imperial University. It was there that Wang became acquainted with the prestigious historian Ban Biao (3\u201354), the latter who initiated the \"Book of Han\". He also befriended Ban Gu (32\u201392), the son of Ban Biao who made further contributions to the \"Book of Han\". Since he was poor and lacked enough money to purchase proper texts of study, Wang had to resort to frequent visits to bookshops to acquire knowledge. Rafe de Crespigny writes that during his studies Wang was most likely influenced by contemporary Old Text realists such as Huan Tan (d. 28). Due to his humble origins, Wang became resentful of officials who were admired simply because of their wealth and power and not for any scholarly abilities.\nWang returned to his home commandery where he became a local teacher. He was elevated as an Officer of Merit, but due to his critical and quarrelsome nature he decided to resign from this position. Following this was a period of isolated retirement when Wang composed essays on philosophy, his \"Jisu\" (\"On Common Morality\"), \"Jeiyi\" (\"Censures\"), \"Zheng wu\" (\"On Government\"), and \"Yangxing shu\" (\"On Macrobiotics\"). About eighty of these essays were later compiled into his \"Lunheng\" (\"Discourses Weighed in the Balance\").\nDespite his self-imposed retirement, he eventually accepted an invitation of Inspector Dong Qin (fl. AD 80\u201390) of Yang province to work as a Headquarters Officer. However, Wang soon resigned from this post as well. Xie Yiwu, a friend of Wang Chong's and a long-standing inspector and official, made an official recommendation to the court requesting that Wang serve as a senior scholar under Emperor Zhang of Han (r. 75\u201388). Emperor Zhang accepted this and summoned Wang Chong to appear at his court, yet Wang claimed ill health and refused to travel. Wang later died at home around the year 100.\nAlthough Wang's rationalistic philosophy and criticism of so-called New Text Confucianism were largely ignored during his lifetime, the prominent official and later scholar Cai Yong (132\u2013192) wrote of his admiration for Wang's written works. The politician Wang Lang (d. 228) acquired a copy of Wang's \"Lunheng\" and brought it with him on his trip in 198 to the Han court established at Xuchang by the notable statesman Cao Cao (155\u2013220). As some of the questionable tenets of the philosophy of New Text Confucianism fell out of use and repute, Rafe de Crespigny states that the rationalist philosophy of Wang Chong became much more influential in Chinese thought.\nWork and philosophy.\nWang Chong reacted to the state that philosophy had reached in China. Daoism had long ago changed into a religious and magic way, and Confucianism had been the state religion for some 150 years. Confucius and Laozi were worshipped as gods, omens were seen everywhere, belief in ghosts was almost universal, and fengshui had begun to rule people's lives. Wang derided all this and made a vocation of giving a rational, naturalistic account of the world and the human place in it.\nAt the centre of his thought was the denial that Heaven has any purpose for us, whether benevolent or hostile. To say that Heaven provides us food and clothing is to say it acts as our farmer or tailor\u2014an obvious absurdity. Humans are insignificant specks in the universe and cannot hope to effect changes in it, and it is ludicrous arrogance to think that the universe would change itself for us.\nWang insisted that the words of previous sages should be treated critically, and that they were often contradictory or inconsistent. He criticized scholars of his time for not accepting this, as well as what he called the popular acceptance of written works. He believed that the truth could be discovered, and would become obvious, by making the words clear, and by clear commentary on the text.\nOne example of Wang's rationality is his argument that thunder must be caused by fire or heat, and is not a sign of the heavens being displeased. He argued that repeatable experience and experiment should be tried before adopting the belief that divine will was involved.\nHe was equally scathing about the popular belief in ghosts. Why should only human beings have ghosts, he asked, not other animals? We are all living creatures, animated by the same vital principle. Besides, so many people have died that their ghosts would vastly outnumber living people; the world would be swamped by them. He never, however, explicitly denies the existence of ghosts (\"gui\" \u9b3c) or spirits (\"shen\" \u795e), he simply separates them from the notion that they are the souls of the dead. He seems to believe that the phenomena exist, but whatever they may be, they have no relation to the deceased.\nPeople say that spirits are the souls of dead men. That being the case, spirits should always appear naked, for surely it is not contended that clothes have souls as well as men. (\"Lunheng\")\nWang was just as rational and uncompromising about knowledge. Beliefs require evidence, just as actions require results. Anyone can prattle nonsense, and they'll always be able to find people to believe it, especially if they can dress it up in superstitious flummery. Careful reasoning and experience of the world are needed.\nThe Swedish linguist and sinologist Bernhard Karlgren called his style straightforward and without literary pretensions; in general, modern Western writers have noted that Wang was one of the most original thinkers of his time, even iconoclastic in his opinions. They note that he gained popularity in the early 20th century because his ideas correspond to those that later evolved in Europe. His writing is praised for being clear and well ordered. But, because there was no functioning scientific method or larger scientific discourse in his time, his formulations can seem alien to the modern eye\u2014to some readers, even as peculiar as the superstitions that he was rejecting. But despite this barrier to his work, he gained some fame, though mostly after his death. He had an effect on what Karlgren called, the 'neo-Daoism'\u2014a reformed Daoist philosophy with a more rational, naturalistic metaphysics, without much of the superstition and mysticism into which Daoism had fallen.\nEarly scientific thought.\nMeteorology.\nWith his acute rationale and objective approach, Wang Chong wrote many things that would be praised by later modern sinologists and scientists alike as being modern-minded. For example, much like Greek polymath Aristotle's 4th century BC \"Meteorology\" portrayed the water cycle, Wang Chong wrote the following passage about clouds and rain:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Seeing the rain gather from above, people say that it comes from the heavens\u2014admittedly it comes from above the earth. How can we demonstrate that the rain originates in the earth and rises from the mountains? Gongyang Gao's [i.e. Gongyang Zhuan] commentary on the \"Spring and Autumn Annals\" says; \"It evaporates upwards through stones one or two inches thick, and gathers. In one day's time it can spread over the whole empire, but this is only so if it comes from Thai Shan.\" What he means is that from Mount Tai rain clouds can spread all over the empire, but from small mountains only over a single province\u2014the distance depends on the height. As to this coming of rain from the mountains, some hold that the clouds carry the rain with them, dispersing as it is precipitated (and they are right). Clouds and rain are really the same thing. Water evaporating upwards becomes clouds, which condense into rain, or still further into dew. When the garments (of those travelling on high mountain passes) are moistened, it is not the effect of the clouds and mists they pass through, but of the suspended rain water.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Some persons cite the \"Shujing,\" which says, \"When the moon follows the stars, there will be wind and rain,\" or the \"Shijing\", which says, \"The approach of the moon to Pi \"hsiu\" [the Hyades] will bring heavy rain showers.\" They believe that according to these two passages of the classics, heaven itself causes the rain. What are we to say to this?\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />When the rain comes from the mountains, the moon passes the (other) stars and approaches Pi \"hsiu\". When it approaches Pi \"hsiu\" there must be rain. As long as it does not rain, the moon has not approached, and the mountains have no clouds. Heaven and earth, above and below, act in mutual resonance. When the moon approaches above, the mountains steam below, and the embodied qi meet and unite. This is (part of the) spontaneous Tao of Nature. Clouds and fog show that rain is coming. In summer it turns to dew, in winter to frost. Warm, it is rain, cold, it is snow. Rain, dew, and frost, all proceed from the earth, and do not descend from the heavens.\nWang's reference to Gongyan Gao's (i.e. Gongyan Zhuan's) commentary perhaps demonstrates that Gongyan's work, compiled in the 2nd century BC, explored the topic of the hydrological cycle long before Wang wrote about the process. The British biochemist, historian, and sinologist Joseph Needham asserts that: \"As to the seasonal lunar and stellar connections, the thought of Wang Chong (about 83 AD) is that in some way or other the cyclical behavior of the qi on earth, where water is distilled into mountain clouds, is correlated with the behavior of the qi in the heavens, which brings the moon near to the Hyades at certain times.\" Thus, Wang Chong was uniting classical Chinese thought with radically modern ways of scientific thinking in his day.\nAstronomy.\nSimilar to Han dynasty polymath contemporary Zhang Heng (78\u2013139) and Chinese scholars before him, Wang discussed theories about the causation of eclipses, with solar eclipse and lunar eclipse. However, Wang Chong's theory went against the correct 'radiating influence' theory supported by Zhang Heng (that the light of the rounded Moon was simply a reflection of the light emanating from the rounded Sun). Writing little more than a century before Zhang Heng, the mathematician and music theorist Jing Fang (78\u201337 BC) wrote in the 1st century BC:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nZhang Heng wrote in his \"Ling Xian\" (Mystical Laws) of 120 AD:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The sun is like fire and the moon like water. The fire gives out light and the water reflects it. Thus the moon's brightness is produced from the radiance of the sun, and the moon's darkness is due to (the light of) the sun being obstructed. The side that faces the sun is fully lit, and the side that is away from it is dark. The planets (as well as the moon) have the nature of water and reflect light. The light pouring forth from the sun does not always reach the moon owing to the obstruction of the earth itself\u2014this is called 'anxu', a lunar eclipse. When (a similar effect) happens with a planet (we call it) an occultation (xingwei); when the moon passes across (the sun's path) then there is a solar eclipse (shi).\nGoing against the grain of the accepted theory, and thinking more along the lines of the 1st century BC Roman philosopher Lucretius, Wang Chong wrote:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />According to the scholars, solar eclipses are brought about by the moon. It has been observed that they occur at times of new moon (lit. on the last days and first days of months), when the moon is in conjunction with the sun, and therefore the moon can eclipse it. In the Spring and Autumn period there were many eclipses, and the \"Chun Qiu\" says that at such and such a month at new moon there was an eclipse of the sun, but these statements do not imply that the moon did it. Why should (the chroniclers) have made no mention of the moon if they knew that it was really responsible?\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Roughly speaking, every 41 or 42 months there is a solar eclipse, and every 180 days there is a lunar eclipse. The reason why the eclipses have definite times is not (as the scholars say) that there are (recurring) abnormal events due to the periods (of the moon's cycle), but because it is the nature of the qi (of the sun) to change (at those times). Why should it be said that the moon has anything to do with the times of (changing of) the sun('s qi) at the first and last days of the months? The sun should normally be full; if there is a shrinkage it is an abnormal event (and the scholars say that) there must be something consuming (the sun). But in such cases as landslides and earthquakes, what does the consuming then?\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />But that the moon covers the light of the sun in solar eclipses\u2014no, that is not true. How can this be verified? When the sun and the moon are in conjunction and the light of the former is 'covered' by the latter, the edges of the two must meet at the beginning, and when the light reappears they must have changed places. Suppose the sun is in the east and the moon is in the west. The moon falls back (lit. moves) quickly eastwards and meets the sun, 'covering' its edge. Soon the moon going on eastwards passes the sun. When the western edge (of the sun), which has been 'covered' first, shines again with its light, the eastern edge, which was not 'covered' before, should (now) be 'covered'. But in fact we see that during an eclipse of the sun the light of the western edge is extinguished, yet when (the light) comes back the western edge is bright (but the eastern edge is bright also). The moon goes on and covers the eastern (inner) part as well as the western (inner) part. This is called 'exact intrustion' and 'mutual covering and obscuring'. How can these facts be explained (by astronomers who believe that the moon covers the light of the sun in solar eclipse).\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nAlthough Wang Chong was certain of his ideas about eclipses (without the knowledge of how gravity forms naturally large spherical bodies in space), his ideas on this would not be later accepted in China. Although there were some figures like \"Liu Chi\", writing in his Lun Tian (Discourse on the Heavens) of 274 AD that supported Wang's theory by arguing the inferior Yin (Moon) could never obstruct the superior Yang (Sun), Liu was still outside of the mainstream accepted Confucian tradition. The Song dynasty (960\u20131279) polymathic scientist Shen Kuo (1031\u20131095) supported the old theory of a spherical Sun and Moon by using his own reasoning about eclipses, which he explained were due to the Moon and the Sun coming into obstruction of one another. The Song dynasty Chinese philosopher Zhu Xi (1130\u20131200) also supported this theory in his writing. Although Wang Chong was right about the water cycle and other aspects of early science, his stern opposition to mainstream Confucian thought at the time made him a skeptic of all their theories, including eclipses (the Confucian-accepted model being correct).\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "5094570": "Great Wall of China\nSeries of fortifications in northern China\nThe Great Wall of China (, literally \"ten thousand \"li\" long wall\") is a series of fortifications in China. They were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China as protection against various nomadic groups from the Eurasian Steppe. The first walls date to the 7th century BC; these were joined together in the Qin dynasty. Successive dynasties expanded the wall system; the best-known sections were built by the Ming dynasty (1368\u20131644).\nTo aid in defense, the Great Wall utilized watchtowers, troop barracks, garrison stations, signaling capabilities through the means of smoke or fire, and its status as a transportation corridor. Other purposes of the Great Wall have included border controls (allowing control of immigration and emigration, and the imposition of duties on goods transported along the Silk Road), and the regulation of trade. \nThe collective fortifications constituting the Great Wall stretch from Liaodong in the east to Lop Lake in the west, and from the present-day Sino\u2013Russian border in the north to Tao River in the south: an arc that roughly delineates the edge of the Mongolian steppe, spanning in total. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and was voted one of the New 7 Wonders of the World in 2007. Today, the defensive system of the Great Wall is recognized as one of the most impressive architectural feats in history.\nNames.\nThe collection of fortifications known as the Great Wall of China has historically had a number of different names in both Chinese and English.\nIn Chinese histories, the term \"Long Wall(s)\" ( \u9577\u57ce, \u957f\u57ce, \"Ch\u00e1ngch\u00e9ng\") appears in Sima Qian's \"Records of the Grand Historian\", where it referred both to the separate great walls built between and north of the Warring States and to the more unified construction of the First Emperor. The Chinese character , meaning city or fortress, is a phono-semantic compound of the \"earth\" radical and phonetic , whose Old Chinese pronunciation has been reconstructed as *\"de\u014b\". It originally referred to the rampart which surrounded traditional Chinese cities and was used by extension for these walls around their respective states; today, however, it is more commonly used to mean \"city\".\nThe longer Chinese name \"Ten-Thousand Mile Long Wall\" ( \u842c\u91cc\u9577\u57ce, \u4e07\u91cc\u957f\u57ce, \"W\u00e0nl\u01d0 Ch\u00e1ngch\u00e9ng\") came from Sima Qian's description of it in the \"Records\", though he did not name the walls themselves as such. The AD 493 \"Book of Song\" quotes the frontier general Tan Daoji referring to \"the long wall of 10,000 miles\", closer to the modern name, but the name rarely features in pre-modern times otherwise. The traditional Chinese mile (, \"l\u01d0\") was an often irregular distance that was intended to show the length of a standard village and varied with terrain but was usually standardized at distances around a third of an English mile (540 m). However, this use of \"ten-thousand\" (\"w\u00e0n\") is figurative in a similar manner to the Greek and English \"myriad\" and simply means \"innumerable\" or \"immeasurable\".\nBecause of the wall's association with the First Emperor's supposed tyranny, the Chinese dynasties after Qin usually avoided referring to their own additions to the wall by the name \"Long Wall\". Instead, various terms were used in medieval records, including \"frontier(s)\" (, \"S\u00e0i\"), \"rampart(s)\" (, \"Yu\u00e1n\"), \"barrier(s)\" (, \"Zh\u00e0ng\"), \"the outer fortresses\" (, \"W\u00e0ib\u01ceo\"), and \"the border wall(s)\" ( , , \"Bi\u0101nqi\u00e1ng\"). Poetic and informal names for the wall included \"the Purple Frontier\" (, \"Z\u01d0s\u00e0i\") and \"the Earth Dragon\" ( , , \"T\u01d4l\u00f3ng\"). Only during the Qing period did \"Long Wall\" become the catch-all term to refer to the many border walls regardless of their location or dynastic origin, equivalent to the English \"Great Wall\".\nSections of the wall in south Gobi Desert and Mongolian steppe are sometimes referred to as \"Wall of Genghis Khan\", even though Genghis Khan did not construct any walls or permanent defense lines himself.\nThe current English name evolved from accounts of \"the Chinese wall\" from early modern European travelers. By the nineteenth century, \"the Great Wall of China\" had become standard in English and French, although other European languages such as German continue to refer to it as \"the Chinese wall\".\nHistory.\nEarly walls.\nThe Chinese were already familiar with the techniques of wall-building by the time of the Spring and Autumn period between the 8th and 5th centuries BC. During this time and the subsequent Warring States period, the states of Qin, Wei, Zhao, Qi, Han, Yan, and Zhongshan all constructed extensive fortifications to defend their own borders. Built to withstand the attack of small arms such as swords and spears, these walls were made mostly of stone or by stamping earth and gravel between board frames.\nThe state of Qin emerged victorious in 221 BC; its ruler, now the First Emperor of a unified China, intended to centralize rule and prevent the resurgence of feudal lords; in doing so, he ordered the destruction of the sections of the walls that divided his empire among the former states. To position the empire against the Xiongnu people from the north, however, he ordered the building of new walls to connect the remaining fortifications along the northern frontier. \"Build and move on\" was a central guiding principle in constructing the wall, implying that the Chinese were not erecting a permanently fixed border. \nTransporting the large quantity of materials required for construction was difficult, so builders always tried to use local resources; stone was used in montane areas, while rammed earth was used while building in the plains. There are no surviving historical records indicating the exact length and course of the Qin walls; most of the ancient walls have eroded away over the centuries, and very few sections remain today. The human cost of the construction is unknown, but it has been estimated by some authors that hundreds of thousands of workers died building the Qin wall. Later, the Han, the Northern dynasties and the Sui all repaired, rebuilt, or expanded sections of the Great Wall at great cost to defend themselves against northern invaders. The Tang and Song dynasties did not undertake any significant effort in the region. Dynasties founded by non-Han ethnic groups also built border walls: the Xianbei-ruled Northern Wei, the Khitan-ruled Liao, Jurchen-led Jin and the Tangut-established Western Xia, who ruled vast territories over Northern China throughout centuries, all constructed defensive walls, albeit being further north\u2014reaching into the environs of present-day Mongolia\u2014than Han-built fortifications.\nMing and Qing eras.\nThe Ming dynasty made substantial contributions to the Great Wall, following their defeat to the Oirats in the Battle of Tumu. This defeat had come in the context of protracted conflict with Mongol tribes; a new strategy for defense was thus realized by constructing walls along the northern border of China. Acknowledging the Mongol control established in the Ordos Desert, the wall followed the desert's southern edge, instead of incorporating the bend of the Yellow River.\nUnlike the earlier fortifications, the Ming construction was stronger and more elaborate, due to the use of bricks and stone instead of rammed earth. Up to 25,000 watchtowers are estimated to have been constructed on the wall. As Mongol raids continued periodically over the years, the Ming devoted considerable resources to repair and reinforce the walls; sections near the Ming capital of Beijing were especially strong. Under general Qi Jiguang's supervision, 1,200 watchtowers from Shanhaiguan Pass to Changping were constructed between 1567 and 1570, and sections of the ram-earth wall were faced with bricks. \nDuring the mid\u201315th century, the Ming also built a so-called \"Liaodong Wall\". It enclosed the agricultural heartland of the Liaodong province, protecting it against potential incursions by Jurchen-Mongol Oriyanghan from the northwest and the Jianzhou Jurchens from the north. While stones and tiles were sometimes used here, it was otherwise simply an earth dike with moats on both sides.\nTowards the end of the Ming, the Great Wall helped defend the empire against the Manchu invasions that began around 1600. Even after the loss of all of Liaodong, the Ming army held the heavily fortified Shanhai Pass, preventing the Manchus from conquering the Chinese heartland. The Manchus were finally able to cross the Great Wall in 1644, after Beijing had already fallen to Li Zicheng's short-lived Shun dynasty. Before this time, the Manchus had crossed the Great Wall multiple times to raid, but this time it was for conquest. The gates at Shanhai Pass were opened on May 25 by the commanding Ming general, Wu Sangui, who formed an alliance with the Manchus, hoping to use the Manchus to expel the rebels from Beijing. The Manchus quickly seized Beijing instead, and eventually defeated both the Shun dynasty and the remaining Ming resistance, consolidating the rule of the Qing dynasty over all of China proper.\nUnder Qing rule and the annexation of Mongolia into the empire, China's borders extended beyond the Great Wall; work on it for the purpose of border defense was thus discontinued. Construction nevertheless persisted with projects like the Willow Palisade; following a line similar to that of the Liaodong Wall of the Ming, it was meant to prevent Han Chinese migration into Manchuria.\nForeign accounts.\nNone of the Europeans who visited China or Mongolia in the 13th and 14th centuries, such as Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, William of Rubruck, Marco Polo, Odoric of Pordenone and Giovanni de' Marignolli, mentioned the Great Wall.\nThe North African traveler Ibn Battuta, who also visited China during the Yuan dynasty c.\u20091346, had heard about China's Great Wall, possibly before he had arrived in China. He wrote that the wall is \"sixty days' travel\" from Zeitun (modern Quanzhou) in his travelogue \"Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling\". He associated it with the legend of the wall mentioned in the Qur'an, which Dhul-Qarnayn (commonly associated with Alexander the Great) was said to have erected to protect people near the land of the rising sun from the savages of Gog and Magog. However, Ibn Battuta could find no one who had either seen it or knew of anyone who had seen it, suggesting that although there were remnants of the wall at that time, they were not significant.\nSoon after Europeans reached Ming China by ship in the early 16th century, accounts of the Great Wall started to circulate in Europe, even though no European was to see it for another century. Possibly one of the earliest European descriptions of the wall and of its significance for the defense of the country against the \"Tartars\" (i.e. Mongols) may be the one contained in Jo\u00e3o de Barros's 1563 \"Asia\". Other early accounts in Western sources include those of Gaspar da Cruz, Bento de Goes, Matteo Ricci, and Bishop Juan Gonz\u00e1lez de Mendoza, the latter in 1585 describing it as a \"superbious and mightie work\" of architecture, though he had not seen it. In 1559, in his work \"A Treatise of China and the Adjoyning Regions\", Gaspar da Cruz offers an early discussion of the Great Wall. Perhaps the first recorded instance of a European actually entering China via the Great Wall came in 1605, when the Portuguese Jesuit brother Bento de G\u00f3is reached the northwestern Jiayu Pass from India. Early European accounts were mostly modest and empirical, closely mirroring contemporary Chinese understanding of the Wall, although later they slid into hyperbole, including the erroneous but ubiquitous claim that the Ming walls were the same ones that were built by the first emperor in the 3rd century BC.\nWhen China opened its borders to foreign merchants and visitors after its defeat in the First and Second Opium Wars, the Great Wall became a main attraction for tourists. The travelogues of the later 19th century further enhanced the reputation and the mythology of the Great Wall.\nCourse.\nA formal definition of what constitutes a \"Great Wall\" has not been agreed upon, making the full course of the Great Wall difficult to describe in its entirety. The defensive lines contain multiple stretches of ramparts, trenches and ditches, as well as individual fortresses.\nIn 2012, based on existing research and the results of a comprehensive mapping survey, the National Cultural Heritage Administration of China concluded that the remaining Great Wall associated sites include 10,051 wall sections, 1,764 ramparts or trenches, 29,510 individual buildings, and 2,211 fortifications or passes, with the walls and trenches spanning a total length of . It was further concluded that the Ming Great Wall measures . This consists of of wall sections, of trenches and of natural defensive barriers such as hills and rivers. In addition, Qin, Han and earlier Great Wall sites are long in total; Jin dynasty (1115\u20131234) border fortifications are in length; the remainder date back to Northern Wei, Northern Qi, Sui, Tang, the Five Dynasties, Song, Liao and Xixia. About half of the sites are located in Inner Mongolia and Hebei (31% and 19% respectively).\nHan Great Wall.\nHan fortifications start from Yumen Pass and Yang Pass, southwest of Dunhuang, in Gansu province. Ruins of the remotest Han border posts are found in Mamitu ( , , \"M\u01cem\u00edt\u00fa\", \"horses losing their way\") near Yumen Pass.\nMing Great Wall.\nThe Jiayu Pass, located in Gansu province, is the western terminus of the Ming Great Wall. From here, the wall travels discontinuously down the Hexi Corridor and into the deserts of Ningxia, where it enters the western edge of the Yellow River loop at Yinchuan. Here the first major walls erected during the Ming dynasty cut through the Ordos Desert to the eastern edge of the Yellow River loop. There, at Piantou Pass ( , , \"Pi\u0101nt\u00f3ugu\u0101n\") in Xinzhou, Shanxi, the Great Wall splits in two with the \"Outer Great Wall\" ( , , \"W\u00e0i Ch\u01cengch\u00e9ng\") extending along the Inner Mongolia border with Shanxi into Hebei province, and the \"Inner Great Wall\" ( , , \"N\u00e8i Ch\u01cengch\u00e9ng\") running southeast from Piantou Pass for some , passing through important passes like the Pingxing Pass and Yanmen Pass before joining the Outer Great Wall at Sihaiye (, \"S\u00ech\u01ceiy\u011b\"), in Beijing's Yanqing County.\nThe sections of the Great Wall around Beijing, were frequently renovated, and are regularly visited by tourists today. The Badaling Great Wall near Zhangjiakou is the most famous stretch of the wall, as it was the first section to be opened to the public in the People's Republic of China; foreign dignitaries would be shown this section on visits to the Great Wall. The Badaling Great Wall saw nearly 10 million visitors in 2018, and in 2019, a daily limit of 65,000 visitors was instated. South of Badaling is the Juyong Pass; when it was used by the Chinese to protect their land, this section of the wall had many guards to defend the capital Beijing. Made of stone and bricks from the hills, this portion of the Great Wall is high and wide.\nOne of the most striking sections of the Ming Great Wall is where it climbs extremely steep slopes in Jinshanling. There it runs long, ranges from in height, and across the bottom, narrowing up to across the top. Wangjing Lou ( , , \"W\u00e0ngj\u012bng L\u00f3u\") is one of Jinshanling's 67 watchtowers, above sea level. Southeast of Jinshanling is the Mutianyu Great Wall which winds along lofty, cragged mountains from the southeast to the northwest for . It is connected with Juyongguan Pass to the west and Gubeikou to the east. This section was one of the first to be renovated following the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution.\nAt the edge of the Bohai Gulf is Shanhai Pass, considered the traditional end of the Great Wall and the \"First Pass Under Heaven\". The part of the wall inside Shanhai Pass that meets the sea is named the \"Old Dragon Head\". north of Shanhai Pass is Jiaoshan Great Wall ( \u7126\u5c71\u9577\u57ce, \u7126\u5c71\u957f\u57ce, \"Ji\u0101osh\u0101n Ch\u00e1ngch\u00e9ng\"), the site of the first mountain of the Great Wall. northeast from Shanhaiguan is ( , , \"Ji\u01d4m\u00e9nk\u01d2u\"), which is the only portion of the wall that was built as a bridge.\nIn 2009, 180\u00a0km of previously unknown sections of the Ming wall concealed by hills, trenches and rivers were discovered with the help of infrared range finders and GPS devices. In March and April 2015, nine sections with a total length of more than , believed to be part of the Great Wall, were discovered along the border of Ningxia autonomous region and Gansu province.\nCharacteristics.\nBefore the use of bricks, the Great Wall was mainly built from rammed earth, stones, and wood. During the Ming, however, bricks were heavily used in many areas of the wall, as were materials such as tiles, lime, and stone. The size and weight of the bricks made them easier to work with than earth and stone, so construction quickened. Additionally, bricks could bear more weight and endure better than rammed earth. Stone can hold under its own weight better than brick, but is more difficult to use. Consequently, stones cut into rectangular shapes were used for the foundation, inner and outer brims, and gateways of the wall. Battlements line the uppermost portion of the vast majority of the wall, with defensive gaps a little over tall, and about wide. From the parapets, guards could survey the surrounding land. \nSticky rice mortar, consisting of sticky rice soup mixed with slaked lime, was extensively used to hold bricks together; no human bones or body parts were ever incorporated into the mortar or any part of the wall, contrary to urban legend. Communication between the army units along the length of the Great Wall, including the ability to call reinforcements and warn garrisons of enemy movements, was of high importance. Signal towers were built upon hill tops or other high points along the wall for their visibility. Wooden gates could be used as a trap against those going through. Barracks, stables, and armories were built near the wall's inner surface.\nCondition.\nWhile portions north of Beijing and near tourist centers have been preserved and even extensively renovated, in many other locations the wall is in disrepair. The wall sometimes provided a source of stones to build houses and roads. Sections of the wall are also prone to graffiti and vandalism, while inscribed bricks were pilfered and sold on the market for up to 50 renminbi. Parts have been destroyed to make way for construction or mining. \nA 2012 report by the National Cultural Heritage Administration states that 22% of the Ming Great Wall has disappeared, while of wall have vanished. In 2007 it was estimated that more than of the wall in Gansu province may disappear in the next 20 years, due to erosion from sandstorms. In some places, the height of the wall has been reduced from more than to less than . Various square lookout towers that characterize the most famous images of the wall have disappeared. Many western sections of the wall are constructed from mud, rather than brick and stone, and thus are more susceptible to erosion. In 2014 a portion of the wall near the border of Liaoning and Hebei province was repaired with concrete. The work has been much criticized.\nA section of the wall in Shanxi province was severely damaged in 2023 by construction workers, who widened an existing gap in the wall to make a shortcut for an excavator to pass through. Police described the act as causing \"irreversible damage to the integrity of the Ming Great Wall and to the safety of the cultural relics\".\nVisibility from space.\nVarious factoids in popular culture claim that the Great Wall can be seen (with the naked eye) from space, with questionable degrees of veracity.\nFrom the Moon.\nThe Great Wall of China cannot be seen by the naked human eye from the Moon. Even though the myth is thoroughly debunked, it is still ingrained in popular culture. The apparent width of the Great Wall as seen from the Moon would be the same as that of a human hair viewed from away.\nOne of the earliest known references to the myth of the Great Wall's visibility from the Moon appears in a letter written in 1754 by the English antiquary William Stukeley. Stukeley wrote that, \"This mighty wall [Hadrian's wall] of four score miles [130 km] in length is only exceeded by the Chinese Wall, which makes a considerable figure upon the terrestrial globe, and may be discerned at the Moon.\" The claim was also mentioned by Henry Norman in 1895, writing \"besides its age it enjoys the reputation of being the only work of human hands on the globe visible from the Moon.\" The myth also appears in the 1932 strip of \"Ripley's Believe It or Not!.\"\nFrom low Earth orbit.\nThe Great Wall has also been claimed to be visible from low Earth orbit (an altitude extending from ). NASA states that it is barely visible, and only under nearly perfect conditions; it is no more conspicuous than many other human-made objects.\nAstronauts testifying to its visibility from space include Gene Cernan and Ed Lu; Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut, meanwhile stated that he had not been able to see it. In response, the European Space Agency (ESA) issued a press release reporting of its visibility from an altitude of ; the image was actually of a river in Beijing.\nLeroy Chiao, a Chinese-American astronaut, took a photograph from the International Space Station that shows the wall. It was so indistinct that the photographer was not certain he had actually captured it. Based on the photograph, the \"China Daily\" later reported that the Great Wall can be seen from 'space' with the naked eye, under favorable viewing conditions, if one knows exactly where to look.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["5094570", "43460", "1505285"], "permutation_1": ["5094570", "43460", "1505285"], "permutation_2": ["43460", "5094570", "1505285"], "permutation_3": ["5094570", "43460", "1505285"]}
{"id": "3hop1__742464_15840_36014", "docs_added": {"1590808": "Robodemons\n1989 video game\nRobodemons is an action video game with shooting elements that was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System by Color Dreams on December 20, 1989. Like all Color Dreams games, Robodemons was not officially licensed by Nintendo.\nGameplay.\nAccording to the game's instruction manual, the player controls a boomerang-wielding hero whose mission is to destroy the robotic demon army of the evil king Kull. There are seven levels in Robodemons, which are titled the \"levels of\" Bone, Flesh, Fire, Condemned Souls, Demon's Quarters, Robodemon Factory and Kull's Palace.\nUnlike most Color Dreams games which featured heavy religious/Christian themes, Robodemons contains very Satanic and occult themes. It contains allusions/references to Limbo, Hell, Death, Hades and Satan. The level structure is similar to passages found in the \"Divine Comedy\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "28314": "Super Nintendo Entertainment System\nHome video game console\nThe Super Nintendo Entertainment System, commonly shortened to Super Nintendo, Super NES or SNES, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in Europe and Oceania and 1993 in South America. In Japan, it is called the In South Korea, it is called the Super Comboy and was distributed by Hyundai Electronics. The system was released in Brazil on August 30, 1993, by Playtronic. In Russia and CIS, the system was distributed by Steepler from 1994 until 1996. Although each version is essentially the same, several forms of regional lockout prevent cartridges for one version from being used in other versions.\nThe Super NES is Nintendo's second programmable home console, following the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The console introduced advanced graphics and sound capabilities compared with other systems at the time, like the Sega Genesis. It was designed to accommodate the ongoing development of a variety of enhancement chips integrated into game cartridges to be more competitive into the next generation.\nThe Super NES received largely positive reviews and was a global success, becoming the best-selling console of the 16-bit era after launching relatively late and facing intense competition from Sega's Genesis console in North America and Europe. Overlapping the NES's 61.9\u00a0million unit sales, the Super NES remained popular well into the 32-bit era, with 49.1\u00a0million units sold worldwide by the time it was discontinued in 2003. It continues to be popular among collectors and retro gamers, with new homebrew games and Nintendo's emulated rereleases, such as on the Virtual Console, the Super NES Classic Edition, Nintendo Switch Online; as well as several non-console emulators which operate on a desktop computer or mobile device, such as Snes9x.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nTo compete with the popular Family Computer in Japan, NEC Home Electronics launched the PC Engine in 1987, and Sega followed suit with the Mega Drive in 1988. The two platforms were later launched in North America in 1989 as the TurboGrafx-16 and the Sega Genesis respectively. Both systems were built on 16-bit architectures and offered improved graphics and sound over the 8-bit NES. It took several years for Sega's system to become successful. Bill Mensch, the co-creator of the 8-bit MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor and founder of the Western Design Center (WDC), gave Ricoh the exclusive right to supply 8-bit and 16-bit WDC microprocessors for the new system. Meanwhile, Sony engineer Ken Kutaragi reached an agreement with Nintendo to design the console's sound chip without notifying his supervisors, who were enraged when they discovered the project; though Kutaragi was nearly fired, then-CEO Norio Ohga intervened in support of the project and gave him permission to complete it.\nOn September 9, 1987, then-Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi revealed the development of the Super Famicom in the newspaper \"Kyoto Shimbun\". On August 30, 1988, in an interview with \"TOUCH Magazine\", Yamauchi announced the development of \"Super Mario Bros. 4\", \"Dragon Quest V\", three original games, and he projected sales of 3 million units of the upcoming console. \"Famicom Hissyoubon\" magazine speculated that Yamauchi's early announcement was probably made to forestall Christmas shopping for the PC Engine, and relayed Enix's clarification that it was waiting on sales figures to select either PC Engine or Super Famicom for its next \"Dragon Quest\" game. The magazine and Enix both expressed a strong interest in networking as a standard platform feature. The console was demonstrated to the Japanese press on November 21, 1988, and again on July 28, 1989.\nLaunch.\nDesigned by Masayuki Uemura, the designer of the original Famicom, the Super Famicom was released in Japan on Wednesday, November 21, 1990, for \u00a5. It was an instant success. Nintendo's initial shipment of 300,000 units sold out within hours, and the resulting social disturbance led the Japanese government to ask video game manufacturers to schedule future console releases on weekends. This gained the attention of the yakuza criminal organizations, so the devices were shipped at night to avoid robbery.\nWith the Super Famicom quickly outselling its rivals, Nintendo reasserted itself as the leader of the Japanese console market. Nintendo's success was partially due to the retention of most of its key third-party developers, including Capcom, Konami, Tecmo, Square, Koei, and Enix.\nNintendo released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, a redesigned version of the Super Famicom, in North America for US$. It began shipping in limited quantities on August 23, 1991, with an official nationwide release date of September 9, 1991. The Super NES was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland in April 1992 for \u00a3.\nMost of the PAL region versions of the console use the Japanese Super Famicom design, except for labeling and the length of the joypad leads. The Playtronic Super NES in Brazil, although PAL-M, uses the North American design. Both the NES and Super NES were released in Brazil in 1993 by Playtronic, a joint venture between the toy company Estrela and consumer electronics company Gradiente.\nThe Super NES and Super Famicom launched with few games, but these games were well received. In Japan, only two games were initially available: \"Super Mario World\" and \"F-Zero\". \"Bombuzal\" was released during the launch week. In North America, \"Super Mario World\" was launched as a bundle with the console; other launch games include \"F-Zero\", \"Pilotwings\" (both of which demonstrate the console's Mode 7 pseudo-3D rendering), \"SimCity\", and \"Gradius III\".\nConsole wars.\nThe rivalry between Nintendo and Sega was described as one of the most notable console wars in video game history, in which Sega positioned the Genesis as the \"cool\" console, with games aimed at older audiences, and aggressive advertisements that occasionally attacked the competition. Nintendo scored an early public-relations advantage by securing the first console conversion of Capcom's arcade hit \"Street Fighter II\" for Super NES, which took more than a year to make the transition to the Genesis. Though the Genesis had a two-year lead to launch time, a much larger library of games, and a lower price point, it only represented an estimated 60% of the American 16-bit console market in June 1992, and neither console could maintain a definitive lead for several years. \"Donkey Kong Country\" is said to have helped establish the Super NES's market prominence in the latter years of the 16-bit generation, and for a time, maintain against the PlayStation and Saturn. According to Nintendo, the company had sold more than 20\u00a0million Super NES units in the U.S. According to a 2014 Wedbush Securities report based on NPD sales data, the Super NES outsold the Genesis in the U.S. market by 1.5 million units.\nChanges in policy.\nDuring the NES era, Nintendo maintained exclusive control over games released for the system \u2013 the company had to approve every game, each third-party developer could only release up to five games per year (but some third parties got around this by using different names, such as Konami's \"Ultra Games\" brand), those games could not be released on another console within two years, and Nintendo was the exclusive manufacturer and supplier of NES cartridges. Competition from Sega's console brought an end to this practice; in 1991, Acclaim Entertainment began releasing games for both platforms, with most of Nintendo's other licensees following suit over the next several years; Capcom (which licensed some games to Sega instead of producing them directly) and Square were the most notable holdouts.\nNintendo continued to carefully review submitted games, scoring them on a 40-point scale and allocating marketing resources accordingly. Each region performed separate evaluations. Nintendo of America also maintained a policy that, among other things, limited the amount of violence in the games on its systems. The surprise arcade hit \"Mortal Kombat\" (1992), a gory fighting game with huge splashes of blood and graphically violent fatality moves, was heavily censored by Nintendo. Because the Genesis version allowed for an uncensored version via cheat code, it outsold the censored Super NES version by a ratio of nearly three to one.\nU.S. Senators Herb Kohl and Joe Lieberman convened a Congressional hearing on December 9, 1993, to investigate the marketing of violent video games to children. Though Nintendo took the high ground with moderate success, the hearings led to the creation of the Interactive Digital Software Association and the Entertainment Software Rating Board and the inclusion of ratings on all video games. With these ratings in place, Nintendo decided its censorship policies were no longer needed.\n32-bit era and beyond.\nWhile other companies were moving on to 32-bit systems, Rare and Nintendo proved that the Super NES was still a strong contender in the market. In November 1994, Rare released \"Donkey Kong Country\", a platform game featuring 3D models and textures pre-rendered on Silicon Graphics workstations. With its detailed graphics, fluid animation, and high-quality music, \"Donkey Kong Country\" rivals the aesthetic quality of games that were being released on newer 32-bit CD-based consoles. In the last 45 days of 1994, 6.1\u00a0million copies were sold, making it the fastest-selling video game in history to that date. This game conveyed that early 32-bit systems had little to offer over the Super NES, and proved the market for the more advanced consoles of the near future. According to TRSTS reports, two of the top five bestselling games in the U.S. for December 1996 are Super NES games.\nIn October 1997, Nintendo released a redesigned model of the Super NES (the SNS-101 model referred to as \"New-Style Super NES\") in North America for US$, with some units including the pack-in game \"\". Like the earlier New-Style NES (model NES-101), this is slimmer and lighter than its predecessor, but it lacks S-Video and RGB output, and it is among the last major Super NES-related releases in the region. A similarly redesigned Super Famicom Jr. was released in Japan at around the same time. The redesign stayed out of Europe.\nNintendo ceased production of the Super NES in North America in 1999, about two years after releasing \"Kirby's Dream Land 3\" (its final second-party game in the US) on November 27, 1997, and one year after releasing \"Frogger\" (its final third-party game in the US) in 1998. In Japan, Nintendo continued production of both the Family Computer and the Super Famicom until September 25, 2003, and new games were produced until the year 2000, ending with the release of \"Metal Slader Glory Director's Cut\" on November 29, 2000.\nMany popular Super NES games were ported to the Game Boy Advance, which has similar video capabilities. In 2005, Nintendo announced that Super NES games would be made available for download via the Wii's Virtual Console service. On October 31, 2007, Nintendo Co., Ltd. announced that it would no longer repair Family Computer or Super Famicom systems due to an increasing shortage of the necessary parts. On March 3, 2016, Nintendo Co., Ltd. announced that it would bring Super NES games to the New Nintendo 3DS and New Nintendo 3DS XL (and later the New Nintendo 2DS XL) via its eShop download service. At the Nintendo Direct event on September 4, 2019, Nintendo announced that it would be bringing select Super NES games to the Nintendo Switch Online platform.\nHardware.\nTechnical specifications.\nThe 16-bit design of the Super NES incorporates graphics and sound co-processors that perform tiling and simulated 3D effects, a palette of 32,768 colors, and 8-channel ADPCM audio. These base platform features, plus the ability to dramatically extend them all through substantial chip upgrades inside of each cartridge, represent a leap over the 8-bit NES generation and some significant advantages over 16-bit competitors such as the Genesis.\nCPU and RAM.\nThe CPU is a Ricoh 5A22, a derivative of the 16-bit WDC 65C816 microprocessor. In NTSC regions, its nominal clock speed is 3.58 MHz will slow to either 2.68\u00a0MHz or 1.79\u00a0MHz when accessing some slower peripherals.\nThis CPU has an 8-bit data bus and two address buses. The 24-bit \"Bus\u00a0A\" is designated for general accesses, and the 8-bit \"Bus\u00a0B\" can access support chip registers such as the video and audio co-processors.\nThe WDC 65C816 supports an 8-channel DMA unit, an 8-bit parallel I/O port a controller port interface circuits allowing serial and parallel access to controller data, a 16-bit multiplication and division unit, and circuitry for generating non-maskable interrupts on V-blank and IRQ interrupts on calculated screen positions.\nEarly revisions of the 5A22 used in SHVC boards are prone to spontaneous failure which can produce a variety of symptoms including graphics glitches in Mode 7, a black screen on power-on, or improperly reading the controllers. The first revision 5A22 has a fatal bug in the DMA controller that can crash games; this was corrected in subsequent revisions.\nThe console contains 128KB of general-purpose \"work\" RAM, which is separate from the 64KB dedicated to the video subsystem and the 64KB dedicated to the audio subsystem.\nVideo.\nThe Picture Processing Unit (PPU) consists of two closely tied IC packages. It contains 64KB of SRAM for video data, 544 bytes of object attribute memory (OAM) for sprite data, and 256\u00a0\u00d7\u00a015 bits of color generator RAM (CGRAM) for palette data. This CGRAM provisions up to 256 colors, chosen from the 15-bit RGB color space, from a palette of 32,768 colors. The PPU is clocked by the same signal as the CPU and generates a pixel every two or four cycles.\nAudio.\nThe S-SMP audio subsystem consisted of a 16-bit digital signal processor (DSP) to sequence the mix samples, an 8-bit SPC700 CPU to drive the DSP and 64KB of dedicated PSRAM. It was designed by Ken Kutaragi and produced by Sony and is completely independent from the rest of the system. It is clocked at a nominal 24.576\u00a0MHz in both NTSC and PAL systems. It is capable of stereo sound, composed from eight voices generated using 16-bit audio samples compressed using BRR and capable of applying effects such as echo. On early revisions of the motherboard the S-SMP audio system was spread across four chips: the DSP, the CPU, and two RAM modules. On later revisions, the sound hardware consolidated to a single chip, the S-APU.\nRegional lockout.\nNintendo employed several types of regional lockout, including both physical and hardware incompatibilities.\nPhysically, the cartridges are shaped differently for different regions. North American cartridges have a rectangular bottom with inset grooves matching protruding tabs in the console, and other regions' cartridges are narrower with a smooth curve on the front and no grooves. The physical incompatibility can be overcome with the use of various adapters, or through modification of the console.\nInternally, a regional lockout chip (CIC) within the console and in each cartridge prevents the PAL region games from being played on Japanese or North American consoles and vice versa. The Japanese and North American machines have the same region chip. This can be overcome through the use of adapters, typically by inserting the imported cartridge in one slot and a cartridge with the correct region chip in a second slot. Alternatively, disconnecting one pin of the console's lockout chip will prevent it from locking the console; hardware in later games can detect this situation, so it became common to install a switch to reconnect the lockout chip as needed.\nPAL consoles face another incompatibility when playing out-of-region cartridges: the NTSC video standard specifies video at 60\u00a0Hz but PAL operates at 50\u00a0Hz, resulting in an approximately 16.7% slower framerate. PAL's higher resolution results in letterboxing of the output image. Some commercial PAL region releases exhibit this same problem and, therefore, can be played in NTSC systems without issue, but other games will face a 20% speedup if played in an NTSC console. To mostly correct this issue, a switch can be added to place the Super NES PPU into a 60\u00a0Hz mode supported by most newer PAL televisions. Later games will detect this setting and refuse to run, requiring the switch to be thrown only after the check completes.\nCasing.\nAll models of the Super NES control deck are predominantly gray, of slightly different shades. The original North American version, designed by Nintendo of America industrial designer Lance Barr (who previously redesigned the Famicom to become the NES), has a boxy design with purple sliding switches and a dark gray eject lever. The loading bay surface is curved, both to invite interaction and to prevent food or drinks from being placed on the console and spilling as with the flat-surfaced NES. The Japanese and European versions are more rounded, with darker gray accents and buttons.\nAll versions incorporate a top-loading slot for game cartridges, although the shape of the slot differs between regions to match the different shapes of the cartridges. The MULTI OUT connector (later used on the Nintendo 64 and GameCube) can output composite video, S-Video and RGB signals, as well as RF with an external RF modulator. Original versions additionally include a 28-pin expansion port under a small cover on the bottom of the unit and a standard RF output with channel selection switch on the back; the redesigned models output composite video only, requiring an external modulator for RF.\nThe Nintendo Super System (NSS) is an arcade system for retail preview of 11 particular Super NES games in the United States, similar to the PlayChoice-10 for NES games. It consists of slightly modified Super NES hardware with a menu interface and 25-inch monitor, that allows gameplay for a certain amount of time depending on game credits. Manufacturing of this model was discontinued in 1992.\nRedesigned model.\nA cost-reduced version of the console, referred to as the New-Style Super NES (model SNS-101) in North America and as the in Japan, was released late in the platform's lifespan; designed by Barr, it incorporates design elements from both the original North American and Japanese/European console models but in a smaller form factor. Unlike the original console models, the redesigned model is virtually identical across both regions save for the color palette (the North American model receiving purple buttons and the Japanese model receiving grey buttons). The redesign did not receive a release in Europe.\nExternally, the power and reset buttons were moved to the left-hand side of the console while the cartridge eject button and power LED indicator were omitted. Internally, the redesigned model consolidates the console's hardware into a system-on-chip (SoC) design. The redesigned console lacks the bottom expansion slot, rendering it incompatible with the Japan-exclusive Satellaview add-on.\nFor AV output, the redesigned console features the same multi-out port used on the original models. Unlike the latter models, the former's AV port only supports composite video output natively as support for RGB video and S-Video was disabled internally; however, they can be restored via a \"relatively simple\" modification. The internal RF modulator was also removed, requiring an external one for such output if needed. Due to the SoC design, it is highly sought after by Super NES/Famicom enthusiasts since its RGB video quality (if restored) is improved over earlier internal revisions of the console.\nThe redesigned console first released in October 1997 in North America, where it originally retailed for US$99.95 in a bundle with \"\";\nit was subsequently released in Japan on March 27, 1998, where it retailed for \u00a57,800. Nintendo marketed it as an entry-level gamer's system for consumers who were apprehensive about the higher price of newer systems such as the Nintendo 64. Nintendo also introduced a slightly altered controller for it, with the console's logo replaced by an embossed Nintendo logo.\nYellowing.\nThe ABS plastic used in the casing of some older Super NES and Super Famicom consoles is particularly susceptible to oxidation with exposure to air. This, along with the particularly light color of the original plastic, causes affected consoles to quickly become yellow; if the sections of the casing came from different batches of plastic, a \"two-tone\" effect results. This issue may be reversed with a method called Retrobrighting, where a mixture of chemicals is applied to the case and exposed to UV light.\nGame cartridge.\nSuper NES games are distributed on ROM cartridges, officially referred to as Game Pak in most Western regions, and as in Japan and parts of Latin America. Though the Super NES can address 128\u00a0Mbit, only 117.75\u00a0Mbit are actually available for cartridge use. A fairly normal mapping could easily address up to 95\u00a0Mbit of ROM data (48\u00a0Mbit at FastROM speed) with 8\u00a0Mbit of battery-backed RAM. Most available memory access controllers only support mappings of up to 32\u00a0Mbit. The largest games released (\"Tales of Phantasia\" and \"Star Ocean\") contain 48\u00a0Mbit of ROM data, and the smallest games contain only 2\u00a0Mbit.\nCartridges may also contain battery-backed SRAM to save the game state, extra working RAM, custom coprocessors, or any other hardware that will not exceed the maximum current rating of the console.\nGames.\n1757 Super NES games were officially released: 717 in North America (plus 4 championship cartridges), 521 in Europe, 1,448 in Japan, 231 on Satellaview, and 13 on Sufami Turbo. Many Super NES games have been called some of the greatest video games of all time, such as \"Super Mario World\" (1990), \"\" (1991), \"Final Fantasy VI\" (1994), \"Donkey Kong Country\" (1994), \"EarthBound\" (1994), \"Super Metroid\" (1994), \"Chrono Trigger\" (1995) and \"Yoshi's Island\" (1995). Many Super NES games have been rereleased several times, including on the Virtual Console, Super NES Classic Edition, and the classic games service on Nintendo Switch Online. All Game Boy games are playable with the Super Game Boy add-on.\nPeripherals.\nThe Super NES controller design expands on that of the NES, with A, B, X, and Y face buttons in a diamond arrangement, and two shoulder buttons. Lance Barr created its ergonomic design, and he later adapted it in 1993 for the NES-039 \"dogbone\" controller. The Japanese and PAL region versions incorporated the four colors of the face buttons into the system's logo. The North American version's buttons were colored to match the redesigned console; the X and Y buttons are lavender with concave faces, and the A and B buttons are purple with convex faces. Several later controller designs have elements from the Super NES controller, including the PlayStation, Dreamcast, Xbox, and Wii Classic Controller. This face button layout is on future Nintendo systems since the Nintendo DS.\nSeveral peripherals add to the functionality of the Super NES. Some are required by certain games, such as the Super Scope light gun, and the Super NES Mouse for a point and click interface. Various third-parties, under license from Nintendo, released multitap adapters connecting up to five controllers into a single console, starting with the Super Multitap by Hudson Soft in conjunction with the \"Super Bomberman\" series. Specialized third-party controllers, such as the AsciiPad and Super Advantage (the successor to the NES Advantage) by Asciiware, and the Capcom Fighter Power Stick, an arcade-like joystick controller by Capcom designed specifically for \"Street Fighter II\". Unusual controllers include the BatterUP baseball bat, the Life Fitness Entertainment System (an exercise bike controller with built-in monitoring software), the TeeV Golf golf club, and the Justifier (a revolver-shaped light gun made by Konami for \"Lethal Enforcers\").\nThough Nintendo never released an adapter for playing NES games on the Super NES, the Super Game Boy adapter cartridge allows games designed for Nintendo's portable Game Boy system to be played on the Super NES. The Super Game Boy touts several feature enhancements over the Game Boy, including palette substitution, custom screen borders, and access to the Super NES console's features by specially enhanced Game Boy games. Japan also saw the release of the Super Game Boy 2, which adds a communication port to enable a second Game Boy to connect for multiplayer games.\nLike the NES before it, the Super NES has unlicensed third-party peripherals, including a new version of the Game Genie cheat cartridge designed for use with Super NES games.\nSoon after the release of the Super NES, companies began marketing backup devices such as the Super Wildcard, Super Pro Fighter Q, and Game Doctor. These devices create a backup of a cartridge, and can be used to play illicit ROM images or to copy games, violating copyright laws in many jurisdictions.\nThe Japan-only Satellaview is a satellite modem attached to the Super Famicom's expansion port and connected to the St.GIGA satellite radio station from April 23, 1995, to June 30, 2000. Satellaview subscribers could download gaming news and specially designed games, which were frequently either remakes of or sequels to older Famicom games, and released in installments. In the United States, the relatively short-lived XBAND allowed users to connect to a network via a dial-up modem to compete against other players around the country.\nNintendo attempted partnerships with Sony and then Philips, to develop CD-ROM-based peripheral prototypes for the console to compete with the TurboGrafx-CD and Sega CD. Sony produced the PlayStation (a brand name the company would use for their later independently produced console), a Super NES console with a built-in CD-ROM drive that never made it past the prototype phase. The Philips project was canceled without a prototype but Philips retained the contractual right to develop games based on Nintendo franchises, which it published for its CD-i multimedia console.\nEnhancement chips.\nAs part of the overall plan for the Super NES, rather than include an expensive CPU that would still become obsolete in a few years, the hardware designers made it easy to interface special coprocessor chips to the console, just like the MMC chips used for most NES games. This is most often characterized by 16 additional pins on the cartridge card edge.\nThe Super FX is a RISC CPU designed to perform functions that the main CPU can not feasibly do. The chip is primarily used to create 3D game worlds made with polygons, texture mapping and light source shading. The chip can also be used to enhance 2D games.\nThe Nintendo fixed-point digital signal processor (DSP) chip allowed fast vector-based calculations, bitmap conversions, both 2D and 3D coordinate transformations, and other functions. Four revisions of the chip exist, each physically identical but with different microcode. The DSP-1 version, including the later 1A and 1B bug fix revisions, is used most often; the DSP-2, DSP-3, and DSP-4 are used in only one game each.\nSimilar to the 5A22 CPU in the console, the SA-1 chip contains a 65C816 processor core clocked at 10.7\u00a0MHz, a memory mapper, DMA, decompression and bitplane conversion circuitry, several programmable timers, and CIC region lockout functionality.\nIn Japan, games could be downloaded cheaper than standard cartridges, from Nintendo Power kiosks onto special cartridges containing flash memory and a MegaChips MX15001TFC chip. The chip manages communication with the kiosks to download ROM images and has an initial menu to select a game. Some were published both in cartridge and download form, and others were download only. The service closed on February 8, 2007.\nMany cartridges contain other enhancement chips, most of which were created for use by a single company in a few games.\nReception and legacy.\nApproximately 49.1\u00a0million Super NES consoles were sold worldwide, with 23.35\u00a0million of those units sold in the Americas and 17.17\u00a0million in Japan. Although it could not quite repeat the success of the NES, which sold 61.91\u00a0million units worldwide, the Super NES was the best-selling console of its era.\nIn a 1997 year-end review, a team of five \"Electronic Gaming Monthly\" editors gave the Super NES scores of 5.5, 8.0, 7.0, 7.0, and 8.0. Though they criticized how few new games were coming out for the system and how dated its graphics were compared to current generation consoles, they regarded its selection of must-have games to be still unsurpassed. Additionally noting that used Super NES games were readily available in bargain bins, most of them still recommended buying a Super NES. In 2007, \"GameTrailers\" named the Super NES as the second-best console of all time (only behind the PlayStation 2) in their list of top ten consoles that \"left their mark on the history of gaming\", citing its graphics, sound, and library of top-quality games. In 2015, they also named it the best Nintendo console of all time, saying, \"The list of games we love from this console completely annihilates any other roster from the Big N.\" Technology columnist Don Reisinger proclaimed \"The SNES is the greatest console of all time\" in January 2008, citing the quality of the games and the console's dramatic improvement over its predecessor; fellow technology columnist Will Greenwald replied with a more nuanced view, giving the Super NES top marks with his heart, the NES with his head, and the PlayStation (for its controller) with his hands. GamingExcellence also gave the Super NES first place in 2008, declaring it \"simply the most timeless system ever created\" with many games that stand the test of time and citing its innovation in controller design, graphics capabilities, and game storytelling. At the same time, GameDaily rated it fifth of the ten greatest consoles for its graphics, audio, controllers, and games. In 2009, \"IGN\" named the Super NES the fourth-best video game console, complimenting its audio and number of AAA games.\nEmulation.\nSNES emulation began with VSMC in 1994, and Super Pasofami became the first working emulator in 1996. During that time, two competing emulation projects, Snes96 and Snes97, merged to form Snes9x. In 1997, ZSNES development began. In 2004, Bsnes development began with the goal of preservation through maximal accuracy and compatibility, and was later renamed to Higan.\nNintendo of America maintained its stance against the distribution of SNES ROM image files and the use of emulators, as it had with the NES before, saying they represent copyright infringement. Emulation proponents assert that the discontinued hardware production constitutes abandonware status, the owners' right to make a personal backup, space shifting for private use, the development of homebrew games, the frailty of ROM cartridges and consoles, and the lack of certain foreign imports. Nintendo designed a hobbyist development system for the SNES, but never released it.\nUnofficial SNES emulation is available on virtually all platforms, including Android, iOS, game consoles, and PDAs. Individual games have been bundled with official dedicated emulators on some GameCube discs, and Nintendo's Virtual Console service for the Wii introduced diverse and officially licensed SNES emulation.\nThe Super NES Classic Edition was released in September 2017 following the NES Classic Edition. This emulation-based mini-console, which is physically modeled after the North American and European versions of the SNES, is bundled with two SNES-style controllers and 21 games, including the unreleased \"Star Fox 2\".\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18944028": "Nintendo Entertainment System\nHome video game console\nThe Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on July 15, 1983, as the It was released in US test markets as the redesigned NES in October 1985, and fully launched in the US the following year. The NES was distributed in Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia throughout the 1980s under various names. As a third-generation console, it mainly competed with Sega's Master System.\nThe NES was designed by Masayuki Uemura. Nintendo's president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, called for a simple, cheap console that could run arcade games on cartridges. The controller design was reused from Nintendo's portable Game & Watch hardware. The western model was redesigned to resemble a video cassette recorder. Nintendo released add-ons such as the NES Zapper light gun for several shooting games, and R.O.B, a toy robot accessory.\nThe NES is regarded as one of the most influential consoles. It helped revitalise the American gaming industry following the video game crash of 1983, and pioneered a now-standard business model of licensing third-party developers to produce and distribute games. The NES features several influential games, including \"Super Mario Bros.\" (1985), \"The Legend of Zelda\" (1986), \"Metroid\" (1986) and \"Mega Man\" (1987), which became major franchises.\nThe NES dominated Japanese and North American markets, but initially underperformed in Europe, where it faced strong competition from the Sega Master System and microcomputers. With 61.91\u00a0million units sold, it is one of the best-selling consoles. It was succeeded in 1990 by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.\nHistory.\nBackground.\nThe video game industry experienced rapid growth and popularity from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, marked by the golden age of arcade games and the second generation of consoles. Games like \"Space Invaders\" (1978) became a phenomenon across arcades worldwide, while home consoles such as the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision gained footholds in the American market. Many companies emerged to capitalise on the growing industry, including the playing card manufacturer Nintendo.\nHiroshi Yamauchi, who had been Nintendo's president since 1949, realised that breakthroughs in the electronics industry meant that entertainment products could be produced at lower prices. Companies such as Atari and Magnavox were already selling gaming devices for use with television sets, to moderate success. Yamauchi negotiated a licence with Magnavox to sell its game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. Since Nintendo's operation was not yet sophisticated enough to design its own hardware, Yamauchi forged an alliance with Mitsubishi Electric and hired several Sharp Electronics employees to assist in developing the Color TV-Game 6 in Japan. This was followed by a more successful sequel, the Color TV-Game 15, and the handheld Game & Watch series. The successes of these machines gave Yamauchi the confidence to expand Nintendo's influence in the fledgling video game industry.\nIn 1978, Yamauchi split Nintendo into separate research and development divisions. He appointed Masayuki Uemura as head of Nintendo Research & Development 2, a division that focused solely on hardware. Yamauchi, through extensive discussions with Uemura and other engineers, recognised the potential of the developing console beyond gaming. He envisioned a home-computer system disguised as a toy, which could significantly expand Nintendo's reach if it became popular with children. This popularity would drive demand for games, with Nintendo as the sole provider. Indeed, by 1980 several systems had already been released in Japan by both American and Japanese companies. Yamauchi tasked Uemura with developing a system that would be superior to its competitors and difficult to replicate for at least a year. Uemura's main challenge was economic rather than technological; Yamauchi wanted the system to be affordable enough for widespread household adoption, aiming for a price of \u00a59,800 (less than $75) compared to existing machines priced at \u00a530,000 to \u00a550,000 ($200 to $350). The new system had to outperform other systems, both Japanese and American, while being significantly more affordable.\nInception.\nAs development progressed on the new video game system, engineers sought Yamauchi's guidance on its features. They questioned whether to include a disk drive, keyboard, data port, as well as the potential for a modem, expanded memory, and other computer-like capabilities. Yamauchi ultimately instructed Uemura to prioritise simplicity and affordability, omitting these peripherals entirely. Game cartridges, which Uemura saw as \"less intimidating\" to consumers, were chosen as the format. The team designed the system with 2,000 bytes of random-access memory (RAM), significantly more than Atari's 256 bytes. Larger cartridges also allowed for far more complex games, with thirty-two times the code capacity of Atari cartridges.\nThe console's hardware was largely based on arcade video games, particularly the hardware for Namco's \"Galaxian\" (1979) and Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\", with the goal of matching their powerful sprite and scrolling capabilities in a home system. A test model was constructed in October 1982 to verify the functionality of the hardware, and work began on programming tools. Because 65xx CPUs had not been manufactured or sold in Japan by that time, no cross-development software was available and it had to be developed from scratch. Early Famicom games were written on a NEC PC-8001 computer. LEDs on a grid were used with a digitizer to design graphics as no such software design tools existed at that time.\nThe codename for the project was \"GameCom\", but Masayuki Uemura's wife proposed the name \"Famicom\", arguing that \"In Japan, 'pasokon' is used to mean a personal computer, but it is neither a home nor personal computer. Perhaps we could say it is a family computer.\" Meanwhile, Hiroshi Yamauchi decided that the console should use a red and white theme after seeing a billboard for DX Antenna (a Japanese antenna manufacturer) which used those colors.\nDevelopment.\nThe Famicom was influenced by the ColecoVision, Coleco's competition against the Atari 2600 in the United States; the ColecoVision's top-seller was a port of Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\". The project's chief manager Takao Sawano brought a ColecoVision home to his family, impressed by its smooth graphics, which contrasts with the flicker and slowdown commonly seen on Atari 2600 games. Uemura said the ColecoVision set the bar for the Famicom. They wanted to surpass it and match the more powerful \"Donkey Kong\" arcade hardware; they took a \"Donkey Kong\" arcade cabinet to chip manufacturer Ricoh for analysis, which led to Ricoh producing the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) chip for the NES.\nOriginal plans called for the Famicom's cartridges to be the size of a cassette tape, but ultimately they ended up being twice as big. Careful design attention was paid to the cartridge connectors because loose and faulty connections often plagued arcade machines. As it necessitated 60 connection lines for the memory and expansion, Nintendo decided to produce its own connectors.\nThe controllers are hard-wired to the console with no connectors for cost reasons. The controller designs were reused from the Game & Watch machines, although the Famicom design team originally wanted to use arcade-style joysticks, even dismantling some from American game consoles to see how they worked. There were concerns regarding the durability of the joystick design and that children might step on joysticks on the floor. Katsuya Nakawaka attached a Game & Watch D-pad to the Famicom prototype and found that it was easy to use and caused no discomfort. Ultimately though, they installed a 15-pin expansion port on the front of the console so that an optional arcade-style joystick could be used.\nGunpei Yokoi suggested an eject lever, which was not necessary, but he believed that children could be entertained by pressing it. Uemura adopted his idea. Uemura added a microphone to the second controller with the idea that it could be used to make players\u2019 voices sound through the TV speaker.\nJapanese release.\nThe console was released on July 15, 1983, as the for \u00a5 () with three ports of Nintendo's successful arcade games \"Donkey Kong\", \"Donkey Kong Jr.\", and \"Popeye\". The Famicom was slow to gather success; a bad chip set caused the early revisions to crash. Following a product recall and a reissue with a new motherboard, the Famicom's popularity soared, becoming the bestselling game console in Japan by the end of 1984 in what came to be called the \"Famicom Boom\".\nNintendo launched the system with only first-party games, but after being approached by Namco and Hudson Soft in 1984, agreed to produce third-party games for a 30% fee for console licensing and production costs. This rate continued in the industry for consoles and digital storefront into the 21st century.\nNorth American release.\nNintendo targeted the North American market, entering distribution negotiations with Atari, Inc. to release a redesigned Famicom with Atari's name as the Nintendo Advanced Video Gaming System. The deal was set to be finalized and signed at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in June 1983. However, Atari discovered at that show that its competitor Coleco was illegally demonstrating its Coleco Adam computer with Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\" game. This violation of Atari's exclusive license with Nintendo to publish the game for its own computer systems delayed the implementation of Nintendo's game console marketing contract with Atari. Atari's CEO Ray Kassar was fired the next month, so the deal went nowhere, and Nintendo decided to market its system on its own.\nSubsequent plans for the Nintendo Advanced Video System likewise never materialized. It was privately demonstrated as a repackaged Famicom console featuring a keyboard, cassette data recorder, wireless joystick controller, and a special BASIC cartridge. By the beginning of 1985, more than 2.5\u00a0million Famicom units had been sold in Japan, and Nintendo soon announced plans to release it in North America as the Advanced Video Entertainment System (AVS) that year. The American video game press was skeptical that the console could have any success in the region, as the industry was still recovering from the video game crash of 1983. The March 1985 issue of \"Electronic Games\" magazine stated that \"the videogame market in America has virtually disappeared\" and that \"this could be a miscalculation on Nintendo's part\".\nThe Famicom hardware first made its North American debut in the arcades, in the form of the Nintendo VS. System in 1984. The system's success in arcades paved the way for the official release of the NES console. With US retailers refusing to stock game consoles, Yamauchi realized there was still a market for video games in the arcades, so he introduced the Famicom to North America through the arcade industry. The VS. System became a major success in North American arcades, becoming the highest-grossing arcade machine of 1985 in the United States. By the time the NES launched, nearly 100,000 VS. Systems had been sold to American arcades. The success of the VS. System gave Nintendo the confidence to release the Famicom in North America as a video game console, for which there was growing interest due to Nintendo's positive reputation in the arcades. It also gave Nintendo the opportunity to test new games as VS. Paks in the arcades, to determine which games to release for the NES launch.\nAt the 1985 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of the Famicom: a stripped-down and cost-reduced redesign of the Advanced Video System (AVS), having abandoned the home computer approach. Nintendo purposefully designed the system to avoid resembling a video game console and avoided terms associated with game consoles. Marketing manager Gail Tilden chose the term \"Game Pak\" for cartridges, \"Control Deck\" for the console, and \"Entertainment System\" for the whole platform. Renamed the \"Nintendo Entertainment System\" (\"NES\"), the new and cost-reduced version lacked most of the upscale features added in the AVS but retained many of its audiophile-inspired design elements, such as the grey colour scheme and boxy form factor. Disappointed with the cosmetically raw prototype part they received from Japan, which they nicknamed \"the lunchbox\", Nintendo of America designers Lance Barr and Don James added the two-tone gray, the black stripe, and the red lettering. To obscure the video game connotation, the NES replaced the top-loading cartridge slot of the Famicom and AVS with a front-loading chamber for software cartridges that kept the inserted cartridge out of view, reminiscent of a video cassette recorder. The Famicom's pair of hard-wired controllers and the AVS's wireless controllers were replaced with two custom 7-pin sockets for detachable wired controllers.\nAt June 1985's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of its Famicom, with a new case redesigned by Lance Barr and featuring a \"zero insertion force\" cartridge slot. The change from a top-loader in the Famicom to a front-loader was to make the new console more like a video cassette recorder, which had grown in popularity by 1985, and differentiate the unit from past video game consoles. Additionally, Uemura explained that Nintendo developers had feared that the console's electronics might face electrostatic hazards in dry American states such as Arizona and Texas, and a front-loading design would be safer if children handled the console carelessly.\nThis was deployed as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Nintendo seeded these first systems to limited American test markets starting in New York City on October 18, 1985, and followed up in Los Angeles in February 1986; the American nationwide release came on September 27, 1986. Nintendo released 17 launch games: \"10-Yard Fight\", \"Baseball\", \"Clu Clu Land\", \"Duck Hunt\", \"Excitebike\", \"Golf\", \"Gyromite\", \"Hogan's Alley\", \"Ice Climber\", \"Kung Fu\", \"Pinball\", \"Soccer\", \"Stack-Up\", \"Super Mario Bros.\", \"Tennis\", \"Wild Gunman\", and \"Wrecking Crew\". Nintendo contracted Worlds of Wonder to distribute the console physically. WoW salesman Jim Whims distinctly recalled delivering an ultimatum: \"if you want to sell Teddy Ruxpin and you want to sell Lazer Tag, you're gonna sell Nintendo as well. And if you feel that strongly about it, then you ought to just resign the line now.\" This marketing tactic led to the NES' financial success in North America in its first year; Nintendo of America would later terminate the contract and hired the company's sales staff (whom Atari offered them in 1983), while taking on physical distribution of the console itself.\nThe system's launch represented not only a new product, but also a reframing of the severely damaged home video game market in North America. The 1983 video game crash had occurred in large part due to a lack of consumer and retailer confidence in video games, which had been partially due to confusion and misrepresentation in video game marketing. Prior to the NES, the packaging of many video games presented bombastic artwork which did not represent a game's actual graphics. Furthermore, a single game such as \"Pac-Man\" appeared across consoles with substantial variations in graphics, sound, and general quality. In contrast, Nintendo's marketing strategy aimed to regain consumer and retailer confidence by delivering a singular platform whose graphics could be represented truthfully and whose qualities were clearly defined.\nTo differentiate Nintendo's new home platform from the perception of a troubled and shallow video game market still reeling from the 1983 crash, the company freshened its product nomenclature and established a strict product approval and licensing policy. The overall platform is referred to as \"Entertainment System\" instead of a \"video game system\", is centered upon a machine called a \"Control Deck\" instead of a \"console\", and features software cartridges called \"Game Paks\" instead of \"video games\". This allowed Nintendo to gain more traction in selling the system in toy stores. To deter production of games which had not been licensed by Nintendo, and to prevent copying, the 10NES lockout chip system acts as a lock-and-key coupling of each Game Pak and Control Deck. The packaging of the launch lineup of NES games bear pictures of close representations of actual onscreen graphics. To reduce consumer confusion, symbols on the games' packaging clearly indicate the genre of the game. A seal of quality is on all licensed game and accessory packaging. The initial seal states, \"This seal is your assurance that Nintendo has approved and guaranteed the quality of this product\". This text was later changed to \"Official Nintendo Seal of Quality\".\nUnlike with the Famicom, Nintendo of America marketed the console primarily to children, instituting a strict policy of censoring profanity, sexual, religious, or political content. The most famous example is Lucasfilm Games's attempts to port the comedy-horror game \"Maniac Mansion\" to the NES, which Nintendo insisted be considerably watered down.\nThe optional Robotic Operating Buddy, or R.O.B., was part of a marketing plan to portray the NES's technology as being novel and sophisticated when compared to previous game consoles, and to portray its position as being within reach of the better established toy market. Though at first, the American public exhibited limited excitement for the console itself, peripherals such as the light gun and R.O.B. attracted extensive attention.\nOther markets.\nIn Europe and Oceania, the NES was released in two separate marketing regions. The first consisted of mainland Europe (excluding Italy) where distribution was handled by several different companies, with Nintendo responsible for manufacturing. The NES saw an early launch in Europe in 1986 although most of the European countries received the console in 1987. The release in Scandinavia was on September 1, 1986, where it was released by Bergsala. In the Netherlands, it was released in the last quarter of 1987 and was distributed by Bandai BV. In France, it was released in October 1987, and in Spain most likely in 1988 through distributor Spaco. Also in 1987, Mattel handled distribution for the second region, consisting of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Australia and New Zealand. In other European countries, distribution was taken over by smaller companies like Bienengr\u00e4ber in Germany, ASD in France, Concentra in Portugal, Itochu in Greece and Cyprus, Stadlbauer in Austria, Switzerland and the former Eastern Bloc. In Poland, the NES had its release on October 6, 1994 along with the SNES and the Game Boy. In November 1994, Nintendo signed an agreement with Steepler to permit the continued sale of the Dendy, an unauthorized hardware clone of the Famicom, in Russia in exchange for also distributing the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo anticipated the NES would have a 25 per cent share in these countries, and saw particular potential in the United Kingdom. It sold modestly in Europe, however.\nIn Brazil, the console was released late in 1993 by Playtronic, even after the SNES. But the Brazilian market had been dominated by unlicensed NES clones \u2013 both locally made, and smuggled from Taiwan. One of the most successful local clones was the Phantom System, manufactured by Gradiente, which licensed Nintendo products in the country for the following decade. The sales of officially licensed products were low, due to the cloning, the quite late official launch, and the high prices of Nintendo's licensed products.\nOutside of Japan, regions in greater Asia received an \"Asian version\" of the front-loader NES though imported Famicom systems were prevalent. Due to import restrictions, NES consoles in India and South Korea were rebranded and distributed by local licensees. The Indian version is called the \"Samurai Electronic TV Game System\" and the Korean version is called the \"Hyundai Comboy\". The console sold very poorly in India due to affordability and a lack of consumer awareness.\nBundles and redesigns.\nFor its complete North American release, the Nintendo Entertainment System was progressively released over the ensuing years in several different bundles, beginning with the Deluxe Set, the Basic Set, the Action Set, and the Power Set. The Deluxe Set was launched in the 1985 test markets, retailing at US$, including R.O.B., a light gun called the NES Zapper, two controllers, and the two Game Paks \"Gyromite\" and \"Duck Hunt\". The Control Deck bundle was first released in 1987 at $ with no game, and $ bundled with the \"Super Mario Bros.\" cartridge. The Action Set, released April 14, 1988, for $, has the Control Deck, two controllers, an NES Zapper, and a dual Game Pak containing both \"Super Mario Bros.\" and \"Duck Hunt\".\nThe Power Set of 1989 includes the console, two game controllers, an NES Zapper, a Power Pad, and a triple Game Pak containing \"Super Mario Bros\", \"Duck Hunt\", and \"World Class Track Meet\". In 1990, a Sports Set bundle was released, including the console, an NES Satellite infrared wireless multitap adapter, four game controllers, and a dual Game Pak containing \"Super Spike V'Ball\" and \"Nintendo World Cup\". Two more bundle packages were later released with the original model NES console. In 1992, the Challenge Set was released for $ with the console, two controllers, and a \"Super Mario Bros. 3\" Game Pak. The Basic Set retailed at US$; it included only the console and two controllers, and no pack-in game. Instead, it contained a book called the \"Official Nintendo Player's Guide\", which contained detailed information for every NES game made up to that point.\nFinally, the console was redesigned for the Australian, North American, and Japanese markets, including the New-Style NES, or NES-101, and one redesigned \"dogbone\" game controller. In Australia, this console revision was released with a cartridge compiling \"Super Mario Bros\", \"Tetris\", and \"Nintendo World Cup\". Released in October 1993 in North America and 1994 in Australia, this final bundle retailed for $ and A$ (A$ with the pack-in game) respectively, and was discontinued with the NES in 1995.\nDiscontinuation.\nOn August 14, 1995, Nintendo discontinued the Nintendo Entertainment System in both North America and Europe. In North America, replacements for the original front-loading NES were available for $ in exchange for a broken system until at least December 1996, under Nintendo's Power Swap program. The Game Boy and Super NES were covered for $ and $ respectively.\nOn May 30, 2003, Nintendo announced the discontinuation of the Famicom in September alongside the Super Famicom and the disk rewriting services for the Famicom Disk System. The last Famicom, serial number HN11033309, was manufactured on September 25; it was kept by Nintendo and subsequently loaned to the organizers of Level X, a video game exhibition held from December 4, 2003, to February 8, 2004, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, for a Famicom retrospective in commemoration of the console's 20th anniversary. Nintendo offered repair service for the Famicom in Japan until 2007, when it was discontinued due to a shortage of available parts.\nHardware.\nConfigurations.\nAlthough all versions of the Famicom and NES include essentially similar hardware, they vary in physical characteristics. The original Famicom's design is predominantly white plastic, with dark red trim; it featured a top-loading cartridge slot, grooves on both sides of the deck in which the hardwired game controllers could be placed when not in use, and a 15-pin expansion port located on the unit's front panel for accessories. In contrast, the design of the original NES features a more subdued gray, black, and red color scheme; it includes a front-loading cartridge slot covered by a small, hinged door that can be opened to insert or remove a cartridge and closed at other times, and an expansion port on the bottom of the unit. Compared to the Famicom, the NES includes the 10NES lockout chip and incorporates a matching chip validation check in its cartridge connector.\nIn late 1993, Nintendo introduced a redesigned version of the Famicom and NES (officially named the New Famicom in Japan and the New-Style NES in the US) to complement the Super Famicom and SNES, to prolong interest in the console, and to reduce costs. The redesigned NES features a top-loading cartridge slot and omits the 10NES lockout chip to avoid reliability issues with the original console; the redesign also omits AV output. Conversely, the redesigned Famicom features such output and introduces detachable game controllers, though the microphone functionality is omitted as a result. The redesigned Famicom and NES models are cosmetically similar aside from the presence of a cartridge \"bump\" on the NES model, which the Famicom model lacks to accommodate its shorter cartridges and the RAM Adapter for the Famicom Disk System.\nSharp Corporation produced three licensed variants of the Famicom in Japan, all of which prominently display the shortened moniker rather than the official name, Family Computer. One variant was a television set with an integrated Famicom; originally released in 1983 as the My Computer TV in and models, it was later released in the United States in 1989 as a 19-inch model named the Video Game Television. Another variant is the Twin Famicom console released in 1986 to combine a Famicom with a Famicom Disk System. Sharp then produced the Famicom Titler in 1989. Intended for video capture and production, it features internal RGB video generation and video output via S-Video, plus inputs for adding subtitles and voice-overs.\nHardware clones.\nA thriving market of unlicensed NES hardware clones emerged during the climax of the console's popularity. Initially, such clones were popular in markets with weak copyright law and where Nintendo issue it's systems after famiclones become well known across specific region, making legal products hard to market or create brand awareness. In particular, the Dendy (), an unlicensed hardware clone produced in Taiwan and sold in the former Soviet Union by Steepler, emerged as the most popular video game console of its time in that setting and it enjoyed a degree of fame roughly equivalent to that experienced by the NES/Famicom in North America and Japan, eventually selling 6 million units. Poland had a similar story with Pegasus distributed by Bobmark International which sold more than 1 million units. In China, a place where many of these clones were manufactured, the media reported 30 million units sold until late 1995. A range of Famicom clones was marketed in Latin America during the late 1980s and 1990s with the name Family Game, resembling the original hardware design. Thailand got Family FR brand famiclones, Brazil a superior to the original Phantom System, the Micro Genius (Simplified Chinese: \u5c0f\u5929\u624d) was marketed in Southeast Asia as an alternative to the Famicom; Ending-Man Terminator enjoyed popularity in European Eastern Bloc, parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America. It happened that these clones reached countries with very good copyright law and high awareness of the Nintendo brand such as Power Player Super Joy III in US.\nThe unlicensed clone market has flourished following Nintendo's discontinuation of the NES. Some of the more exotic of these resulting systems surpass the functionality of the original hardware, such as a portable system with a color LCD (PocketFami). Others have been produced for certain specialized markets, such as a rather primitive personal computer with a keyboard and basic word processing software. These unauthorized clones have been helped by the invention of the so-called NES-on-a-chip.\nAs was the case with unlicensed games, Nintendo has typically gone to the courts to prohibit the manufacture and sale of unlicensed cloned hardware. Many of the clone vendors have included built-in copies of licensed Nintendo software, which constitutes copyright infringement in most countries.\nDesign flaws.\nNintendo's design styling for US release was made deliberately different from that of other game consoles. Nintendo wanted to distinguish its product from those of competitors and to avoid the generally poor reputation that game consoles had acquired following the video game crash of 1983. One result of this philosophy is to disguise the cartridge slot design as a front-loading zero-insertion force (ZIF) cartridge socket, designed to resemble the front-loading mechanism of a VCR. The socket works well when both the connector and the cartridges are clean and the pins on the connector are new. However, the socket is not truly zero-insertion force. When a user inserts the cartridge into the NES, the force of pressing the cartridge into place bends the contact pins slightly and presses the cartridge's ROM board back into the cartridge. Frequent insertion and removal of cartridges wears out the pins, and the ZIF design proved more prone to interference by dirt and dust than an industry-standard card edge connector.\nThe design problems were exacerbated by Nintendo's choice of materials. The console slot nickel connector springs wear due to design and the game cartridge's brass plated nickel connectors are also prone to tarnishing and oxidation. Nintendo sought to fix these problems by redesigning the next generation Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) as a top loader similar to the Famicom. Many players try to alleviate issues in the game caused by this corrosion by blowing into the cartridges, then reinserting them, which actually speeds up the tarnishing due to moisture. One way to slow down the tarnishing process and extend the life of the cartridges is to use isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs.\nUsers have attempted to solve these problems by blowing air onto the cartridge connectors, inserting the cartridge just far enough to get the ZIF to lower, licking the edge connector, slapping the side of the system after inserting a cartridge, shifting the cartridge from side to side after insertion, pushing the ZIF up and down repeatedly, holding the ZIF down lower than it should have been, and cleaning the connectors with alcohol. Many frequently used methods to fix this problem actually risk damaging gaming cartridges or the system. In 1989, Nintendo released an official NES Cleaning Kit to help users clean malfunctioning cartridges and consoles.\nIn response to these hardware flaws, \"Nintendo Authorized Repair Centers\" sprang up across the U.S. According to Nintendo, the authorization program was designed to ensure that the machines were properly repaired. Nintendo would ship the necessary replacement parts only to shops that had enrolled in the authorization program.\nWith the release of the top-loading NES-101 (New-Style NES) in 1993 toward the end of the NES's lifespan, Nintendo resolved the problems by switching to a standard card edge connector and eliminating the lockout chip. All of the Famicom systems use standard card edge connectors, as do Nintendo's two subsequent game consoles, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Nintendo 64.\nLockout.\nThe Famicom as released in Japan contains no lockout hardware, which led to unlicensed cartridges (both legitimate and bootleg) becoming extremely common throughout Japan and East Asia. Nintendo tried to promote its \"Seal of Quality\" in these regions to identify licensed games to combat bootlegs, but bootleg Famicom games continued to be produced even after Nintendo moved production onto the Super Famicom, effectively extending the lifetime of the Famicom.\nThe original NES released for Western countries in 1985 contains the 10NES lockout chip, which prevents it from running cartridges unapproved by Nintendo. The inclusion of the 10NES was a direct influence from the 1983 video game crash in North America, partially caused by a market flooded with uncontrolled publishing of games of poor quality for the home consoles. Nintendo did not want to see that happen with the NES and used the lockout chip to restrict games to only those they licensed and approved for the system. This means of protection worked in combination with the Nintendo \"Seal of Quality\", which a developer had to acquire before they would be able to have access to the required 10NES information prior to publication of their game.\nInitially, the 10NES chip proved a significant barrier to unlicensed developers seeking to develop and sell games for the console. However, hobbyists in later years discovered that disassembling the NES and cutting the fourth pin of the lockout chip would change the chip's mode of operation from \"lock\" to \"key\", removing all effects and greatly improving the console's ability to play legal games, bootlegs, and converted imports.\nOriginal NES consoles sold in different regions have different lockout chips, thereby enforcing regional lockout (regardless of TV signal compatibility). Such regions include North America; most of continental Europe (PAL-B); Asia; and the British Isles, Italy, and Australasia (PAL-A).\nProblems with the 10NES lockout chip frequently result in one of the console's most common issues: the blinking red power light, in which the system appears to turn itself on and off repeatedly because the 10NES would reset the console once per second. The lockout chip required constant communication with the chip in the game to work. Dirty, aging, and bent connectors often disrupt the communication, resulting in the blink effect. In other cases, the console turns on but only displays a solid white, gray, or green screen.\nTechnical specifications.\nThe console's main central processing unit (CPU) was produced by Ricoh, which manufactured different versions between NTSC and PAL regions; NTSC consoles have a 2A03 clocked at 1.79\u00a0MHzTooltip megahertz, and PAL consoles have a 2A07 clocked at 1.66\u00a0MHz. Both CPUs are unlicensed variants of the MOS Technology 6502, an 8-bit microprocessor prevalent in contemporary home computers and consoles; Nintendo ostensibly disabled the 6502's binary-coded decimal mode on them to avoid patent infringement against or licensing fees towards MOS Technology, which was owned by then-rival Commodore International. The CPU has access to 2\u00a0KBTooltip kilobyte of onboard work RAMTooltip random-access memory.\nThe console's graphics are handled by a Ricoh 2C02, a processor known as the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) that is clocked at 5.37\u00a0MHz. A derivative of the Texas Instruments TMS9918\u2014a video display controller used in the ColecoVision\u2014the PPU features 2\u00a0KB of video RAM, 256\u00a0bytes of on-die \"object attribute memory\" (OAM) to store sprite display information on up to 64 sprites, and 28\u00a0bytes of RAM to store information on the YIQ-based color palette; the console can display up to 25 colors simultaneously out of 54 usable colors.\nThe console's standard display resolution is 256 \u00d7 240 pixels, though video output options vary between models. The original Famicom features only radio frequency (RF) modulator output, and the NES additionally supports composite video via RCA connectors. The redesigned Famicom omits the RF modulator entirely, only outputting composite video via a proprietary \"multi-out\" connector first introduced on the Super Famicom/SNES; conversely, the redesigned NES features RF modulator output only, though a version of the model including the \"multi-out\" connector was produced in rare quantities.\nThe console produces sound via an audio processing unit (APU) integrated into the processor. It supports a total of five sound channels: two pulse wave channels, one triangle wave channel, one white noise channel, and one DPCMTooltip differential pulse-code modulation channel for sample playback. Audio playback speed is dependent on the CPU clock rate, which is set by a crystal oscillator.\nAccessories.\nControllers.\nThe game controller for both the NES and the Famicom has an oblong brick-like design with a simple four button layout: two round buttons labeled \"A\" and \"B\", a \"START\" button, and a \"SELECT\" button. Additionally, the controllers use the cross-shaped D-pad, designed by Nintendo employee Gunpei Yokoi for Nintendo Game & Watch systems, to replace the bulkier joysticks on controllers of earlier gaming consoles.\nThe original model Famicom features two game controllers, both of which are hardwired to the back of the console. The second controller lacks the START and SELECT button, featuring a small microphone instead; however, few games use this feature. The earliest produced Famicom units have square A and B buttons; issues with them getting stuck when pressed down led Nintendo to change their shape to a circular design in subsequent units following the console's recall.\nInstead of the Famicom's hardwired controllers, the NES has two proprietary seven-pin ports on the front of the console to support detachable controllers and third-party peripherals. The controllers bundled with the NES are identical and include the START and SELECT buttons, lacking the microphone on the original Famicom's second controller. The cables for NES controllers are also generally three times longer than their Famicom counterparts.\nSeveral special controllers are intended for use with specific games, though are not commonly used. Such peripherals include the NES Zapper (a light gun), R.O.B. (a toy robot), and the Power Pad (a dance pad). The original Famicom has a deepened DA-15 expansion port on the front of the unit to accommodate them.\nTwo official advanced controllers were produced for the NES: the NES Advantage, an arcade controller produced by Asciiware and licensed by Nintendo of America; and the NES Max, a controller with grip handles and a \"cycloid\" sliding-disc D-pad in place of the traditional one. Both controllers have a \"Turbo\" feature, which simulates multiple rapid button presses, for the A and B buttons; the NES Max has manually pressed Turbo buttons, and the NES Advantage offers toggle buttons for Turbo functionality along with knobs that adjust the firing rate of each button. The latter also includes a \"Slow\" button that rapidly pauses games, though this function is not intended for games that invoke a pause menu or screen.\nThe standard game controller was redesigned upon the introduction of the redesigned console. Though the original button layout was retained, the shape of the redesigned controller\u2014nicknamed the \"dog bone\" controller\u2014resembles that of the Super Famicom and SNES. It retained NES-style detachable controller ports.\nThe original NES controller has become one of the most recognizable symbols of the console. Nintendo has mimicked the look of the controller in several other products, from promotional merchandise to limited edition versions of the Game Boy Advance.\nJapanese accessories.\nFew of the numerous peripheral devices and software packages for the Famicom were released outside Japan.\nThe Famicom 3D System, an active shutter 3D headset peripheral released in 1987, enabled the ability to play stereoscopic video games. It was a commercial failure and never released outside Japan; users described the headset as bulky and uncomfortable. Seven games are compatible with the glasses, with three of them developed by Square; two titles received worldwide releases as \"Rad Racer\" and \"The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner\".\n\"Family BASIC\" is an implementation of BASIC for the Famicom, packaged with a keyboard. Similar in concept to the Atari 2600 \"BASIC\" cartridge, it allows the user to write programs, especially games, which can be saved on an included cassette recorder. Nintendo of America rejected releasing \"Famicom BASIC\" in the US in favor of its primary marketing demographic of children.\nThe Famicom Modem connected a Famicom to a now defunct proprietary network in Japan which provided content such as financial services. A dial-up modem was never released for the NES after a partnership with Fidelity Investments.\nFamicom Disk System.\nBy 1986, the cost and size limitations of ROM chips used in the Famicom's ROM cartridges were apparent, with no new advancements present to address them. With this in mind, Nintendo looked at the personal computer (PC) market, where the floppy disk was gaining wide adoption as a computer data storage medium. Partnering with Mitsumi to develop a floppy disk add-on for the Famicom based on the latter's Quick Disk format, Nintendo officially released it as the Family Computer Disk System in Japan on February 21, 1986, at a retail price of \u00a515,000.\nThe advantages of the format (called \"Disk Card\") were apparent on launch. It has more than triple the data storage capacity of the then-largest cartridge (used for \"Super Mario Bros.\") and introduced game save capability and lower production costs compared to cartridges, which resulted in lower retail prices for consumers. The add-on also has a new wavetable synthesis sound channel and more data storage for the Famicom's audio sample channel. Taking advantage of the disk's re-writability, Nintendo set up Disk Writer interactive kiosks at retail stores throughout Japan; at each kiosk, consumers could buy new games to rewrite onto their old disks or onto new disks. Disk Fax kiosks allowed players to submit their high scores on special blue disks for contests and rankings, predating the online leaderboard by several years.\nAlthough Nintendo committed to exclusively releasing games on the Disk System after its release, numerous external issues plagued its long-term viability. Just four months after launch, Capcom released a Famicom port of \"Makaimura\" (known as \"Ghosts 'n Goblins\" in the U.S.) on a cartridge with more data storage capacity than what was possible on Disk Cards, nullifying one of the Disk System's major advantages by using discrete logic chips to perform bank switching. Nintendo also demanded half of the copyright ownership for each game it selected for release on the Disk System, resulting in developers electing to remain on cartridge instead as the latter gained functionality previously considered unique to the former. Developers disliked the lower profit margin of the Disk Writer kiosks, and retailers complained of their use of valuable space as demand for the format waned.\nUsage of a floppy disk-based medium brought about further complications; Disk Cards were more fragile than cartridges and were prone to data corruption from magnetic exposure. Their unreliability was exacerbated by their lack of a shutter, which Nintendo substituted with a wax sleeve and clear keep case to reduce costs; blue disks and later Disk Cards included shutters. The rubber belt-based disk drives were also unreliable, with cryptic error codes complicating troubleshooting; even when fully functional, players accustomed to cartridges were annoyed with the introduction of loading times and disk flipping. Furthermore, the rewritable nature of the format resulted in rampant software piracy, with Nintendo's attempts at anti-piracy measures quickly defeated.\nThough selling close to two million units for all of 1986, Nintendo only managed to increase the total to 4.4\u00a0million units by 1990, falling well short of internal projections. By then, the Disk System was rendered obsolete due to advancements in ROM cartridge production: memory mapping chips for expanded data storage capacity, battery-backed SRAMTooltip static random-access memory for game saving, and declining overall production costs. Nintendo alluded to a Western release for the Disk System, going so far as to successfully file a U.S. patent for it and having the Famicom's cartridge pins used by its RAM Adapter for enhanced audio rerouted to the NES's little-used bottom expansion port. However, such a release never materialized due to its reception in Japan. Most of its games were re-released with workarounds on cartridge for both the Famicom and NES, without the enhanced audio. Although the last game for the Disk System was released in December 1992, Nintendo continued repair and rewrite services for it until September 2003.\nNES Test Station.\nThe NES Test Station diagnostics machine was introduced in 1988. It is an NES-based unit designed for testing NES hardware, components, and games. It was only provided for use in World of Nintendo boutiques as part of the Nintendo World Class Service program. Visitors were to bring items to test with the station, and could be assisted by a store technician or employee.\nThe NES Test Station's front has a Game Pak slot and connectors for testing various components (AC adapter, RF switch, Audio/Video cable, NES Control Deck, accessories and games), with a centrally-located selector knob to choose which component to test. The unit itself weighs approximately 11.7 pounds without a TV. It connects to a television via a combined A/V and RF Switch cable. By actuating the green button, a user can toggle between an A/V Cable or RF Switch connection. The television it is connected to (typically 11\" to 14\") is meant to be placed atop it.\nIn 1991, Nintendo provided an add-on called the \"Super NES Counter Tester\" that tests Super NES components and games. The Super NES Counter Tester is a standard Control Deck on a metal fixture with the connection from the back of the unit re-routed to the front. These connections may be made directly to the test station or to the TV, depending on what is to be tested.\nGames.\nGame Pak.\nThe NES uses a 72-pin design, as compared with 60 pins on the Famicom. To reduce costs and inventory, some early games released in North America are simply Famicom cartridges attached to an adapter to fit inside the NES hardware. Early NES cartridges are held together with five small slotted screws. Games released after 1987 were redesigned slightly to incorporate two plastic clips molded into the plastic itself, removing the need for the top two screws.\nThe back of the cartridge bears a label with handling instructions. Production and software revision codes were imprinted as stamps on the back label to correspond with the software version and producer. All licensed NTSC and PAL cartridges are a standard shade of gray plastic, with the exception of \"The Legend of Zelda\" and ', which were manufactured in gold-plastic carts. Unlicensed carts were produced in black, robin egg blue, and gold, and are all slightly different shapes than standard NES cartridges. Nintendo also produced yellow-plastic carts for internal use at Nintendo Service Centers, although these \"test carts\" were never made available for purchase. All licensed US cartridges were made by Nintendo, Konami, and Acclaim. For promotion of ', Capcom sent 150 limited-edition gold NES cartridges with the original game, featuring the \"Remastered\" art as the sticker, to different gaming news agencies. The instruction label on the back includes the opening lyric from the show's theme song, \"Life is like a hurricane\".\nFamicom cartridges are shaped slightly differently. Unlike NES games, official Famicom cartridges were produced in many colors of plastic. Adapters, similar in design to the popular accessory Game Genie, are available that allow Famicom games to be played on an NES. In Japan, several companies manufactured the cartridges for the Famicom. This allowed these companies to develop customized chips designed for specific purposes, such as superior sound and graphics.\nThird-party licensing.\nNintendo's near monopoly on the home video game market left it with a dominant influence over the industry. Unlike Atari, which never actively pursued third-party developers (and even went to court in an attempt to force Activision to cease production of Atari 2600 games), Nintendo had anticipated and encouraged the involvement of third-party software developers, though strictly on Nintendo's terms. Some of the Nintendo platform-control measures were adopted in a less stringent way by later console manufacturers such as Sega, Sony, and Microsoft.\nTo this end, a 10NES authentication chip is in every console and in every licensed cartridge. If the console's chip can not detect a counterpart chip inside the cartridge, the game does not load. Nintendo portrayed these measures as intended to protect the public against poor-quality games, and placed a golden seal of approval on all licensed games released for the system.\nNintendo found success with Japanese arcade manufacturers such as Konami, Capcom, Taito, and Namco, which signed on as third-party developers. However, they found resistance with US game developers including Atari Games, Activision, Electronic Arts, and Epyx refusing Nintendo's one-sided terms. Acclaim Entertainment, a fledgling game publisher founded by former Activision employees, was the first major third-party licensee in the United States to sign on with Nintendo in late 1987. Atari Games (through Tengen) and Activision signed on soon after.\nNintendo was not as restrictive as Sega, which did not permit third-party publishing until Mediagenic in late summer 1988. Nintendo's intention was to reserve a large part of NES game revenue for itself. Nintendo required that it be the sole manufacturer of all cartridges, and that the publisher had to pay in full before the cartridges for that game be produced. Cartridges could not be returned to Nintendo, so publishers assumed all the risk. As a result, some publishers lost more money due to distress sales of remaining inventory at the end of the NES era than they ever earned in profits from sales of the games. Because Nintendo controlled the production of all cartridges, it was able to enforce strict rules on its third-party developers, who were required to sign a contract that would obligate them to develop exclusively for the system, order at least 10,000 cartridges, and only make five games per year. The global 1988 shortage of DRAM and ROM chips reportedly caused Nintendo to only permit an average of 25% of publishers' requests for cartridges, with some receiving much higher amounts and others almost none. GameSpy noted that Nintendo's \"iron-clad terms\" made the company many enemies during the 1980s. Some developers tried to circumvent the five game limit by creating additional company brands like Konami's Ultra Games label; others tried circumventing the 10NES chip.\nNintendo was accused of antitrust violations because of the strict licensing requirements. The United States Department of Justice and several states began probing Nintendo's business practices, leading to the involvement of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC conducted an extensive investigation which included interviewing hundreds of retailers. During the FTC probe, Nintendo changed the terms of its publisher licensing agreements to eliminate the two-year rule and other restrictive terms. Nintendo and the FTC settled the case in April 1991, with Nintendo required to send vouchers giving a $5 discount off to a new game, to every person that had purchased an NES game between June 1988 and December 1990. GameSpy remarked that Nintendo's punishment was particularly weak given the case's findings, although it has been speculated that the FTC did not want to damage the video game industry in the United States.\nWith the NES near the end of its life, many third-party publishers such as Electronic Arts supported upstart competing consoles with less strict licensing terms such as the Sega Genesis and then the PlayStation, which eroded and then took over Nintendo's dominance in the home console market, respectively. Consoles from Nintendo's rivals in the post-SNES era had always enjoyed much stronger third-party support than Nintendo, which relied more heavily on first-party games.\nUnlicensed games.\nCompanies that refused to pay the licensing fee or were rejected by Nintendo found ways to circumvent the console's authentication system. Most of these companies created circuits that use a voltage spike to temporarily disable the 10NES chip. A few unlicensed games released in Europe and Australia are in the form of a dongle to connect to a licensed game, to use the licensed game's 10NES chip for authentication. To combat unlicensed games, Nintendo of America threatened retailers who sold them with losing their supply of licensed games, and multiple revisions were made to the NES PCBs to prevent unlicensed games from working.\nAtari Games took a different approach with its line of NES products, Tengen. The company attempted to reverse engineer the lockout chip to develop its own \"Rabbit\" chip. Tengen also obtained a description of the lockout chip from the United States Patent and Trademark Office by falsely claiming that it was required to defend against present infringement claims. Nintendo successfully sued Tengen for copyright infringement. Tengen's antitrust claims against Nintendo were never decided.\nColor Dreams made Christian video games under the subsidiary name Wisdom Tree. Historian Steven Kent wrote, \"Wisdom Tree presented Nintendo with a prickly situation. The general public did not seem to pay close attention to the court battle with Atari Games, and industry analysts were impressed with Nintendo's legal acumen; but going after a tiny company that published innocuous religious games was another story.\"\nGame rentals.\nAs the Nintendo Entertainment System grew in popularity and entered millions of American homes, some small video rental shops began buying their own copies of NES games, and renting them out to customers for around the same price as a video cassette rental for a few days. Nintendo received no profit from the practice beyond the initial cost of their game, and unlike movie rentals, a newly released game could hit store shelves and be available for rent on the same day. Nintendo took steps to stop game rentals, but did not take any formal legal action until Blockbuster Video began to make game rentals a large-scale service. Nintendo claimed that allowing customers to rent games would significantly hurt sales and drive up the cost of games. Nintendo lost the lawsuit, but did win on a claim of copyright infringement. Blockbuster was banned from including photocopies of original, copyrighted instruction booklets with its rented games. In compliance with the ruling, Blockbuster produced original short instructions\u2014usually in the form of a small booklet, card, or label stuck on the back of the rental box\u2014that explained the game's basic premise and controls. Video rental shops continued the practice of renting video games.\nReception.\nBy 1988, industry observers stated that the NES's popularity had grown so quickly that the market for Nintendo cartridges was larger than that for all home computer software. \"Compute!\" reported in 1989 that Nintendo had sold seven million NES systems in 1988 alone, almost as many as the number of Commodore 64s sold in its first five years. \"Computer game makers [are] scared stiff\", the magazine said, stating that Nintendo's popularity caused most competitors to have poor sales during the previous Christmas and resulted in serious financial problems for some.\nIn June 1989, Nintendo of America's vice president of marketing Peter Main, said that the Famicom was present in 37% of Japan's households. By 1990, 30% of American households owned the NES, compared to 23% for all personal computers. By 1990, the NES had outsold all previously released consoles worldwide. The slogan for this brand was \"It can't be beaten\". The Nintendo Entertainment System was not available in the Soviet Union.\nIn the early 1990s, gamers predicted that competition from technologically superior systems such as the 16-bit Sega Genesis would mean the immediate end of the NES's dominance. Instead, during the first year of Nintendo's successor console the Super Famicom (named Super Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan), the Famicom remained the second highest-selling video game console in Japan, outselling the newer and more powerful NEC PC Engine and Sega Mega Drive by a wide margin. The console remained popular in Japan and North America until late 1993, when the demand for new NES software abruptly plummeted. The final licensed Famicom game released in Japan is \"Takahashi Meijin no B\u014dken Jima IV (Adventure Island IV)\", in North America is \"Wario's Woods\", and in Europe is \"The Lion King\" in 1995. In the wake of ever decreasing sales and the lack of new games, Nintendo of America officially discontinued the NES by 1995. Nintendo produced new Famicom units in Japan until September 25, 2003, and continued to repair Famicom consoles until October 31, 2007, attributing the discontinuation of support to insufficient supplies of parts.\nThe NES was initially not as successful in Europe during the late 1980s, when it was outsold by the Master System in the United Kingdom. By 1990, the Master System was the highest-selling console in Europe, though the NES was beginning to have a fast-growing user base in the United Kingdom. During the early 1990s, NES sales caught up with and narrowly overtook the Master System overall in Western Europe, though the Master System maintained its lead in several markets such as the United Kingdom, Belgium and Spain.\nLegacy.\nThe NES was released two years after the video game crash of 1983, when many retailers and adult consumers regarded electronic games as a passing fad, so many believed at first that the NES would soon fade. Before the NES and Famicom, Nintendo was known as a moderately successful Japanese toy and playing card manufacturer, but the consoles' popularity helped the company grow into an internationally recognized name almost synonymous with video games as Atari had been, and set the stage for Japanese dominance of the video game industry. With the NES, Nintendo also changed the relationship between console manufacturers and third-party software developers by restricting developers from publishing and distributing software without licensed approval. This led to higher-quality games, which helped change the attitude of a public that had grown weary from poorly produced games for earlier systems.\nThe NES hardware design is also very influential. Nintendo chose the name \"Nintendo Entertainment System\" for the US market and redesigned the system so it would not give the appearance of a child's toy. The front-loading cartridge input allowed it to be used more easily in a TV stand with other entertainment devices, such as a videocassette recorder.\nThe system's hardware limitations led to design principles that still influence the development of modern video games. Many prominent game franchises originated on the NES, including Nintendo's own \"Super Mario Bros.\",| \"The Legend of Zelda\" and \"Metroid\", Capcom's \"Mega Man\" franchise, Konami's \"Castlevania\" franchise, Square's \"Final Fantasy\",| and Enix's \"Dragon Quest\"| franchises.\nNES imagery, especially its controller, has become a popular motif for a variety of products, including Nintendo's Game Boy Advance.\nAt the Tokyo Game Show in 2023, the \"Famicom\" was bestowed \"The Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Award\" in honour of the console's influence and laying down the foundations for the games industry.\nThe NES library includes some influential games. \"Super Mario Bros.\" is the forerunner of side-scrolling games, while \"The Legend of Zelda\" had mostly influenced action-adventure games and helped popularizing the save data in video games. Other two influential games are \"Metroid\" and \"Castlevania II\", which had established the metroidvania genre.\nIn 2011, \"IGN\" named the NES the greatest video game console of all time.\nEmulation.\nThe NES can be emulated on many other systems. The first emulator was the Japanese-only Pasofami. It was soon followed by iNES, which is available in English and is cross-platform, in 1996. It was described as being the first NES emulation software that could be used by a non-expert. The first version of NESticle, an unofficial MS-DOS-based emulator, was released on April 3, 1997. Nintendo offers licensed emulation of some NES games via its Virtual Console service for the Wii, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U, and via its Nintendo Switch Online service.\nRe-release.\nOn July 14, 2016, Nintendo announced the November 2016 launch of a miniature replica of the NES, named the Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition in the United States and Nintendo Classic Mini: Nintendo Entertainment System in Europe and Australia. The emulation-based console includes 30 permanently bundled games from the vintage NES library, including the \"Super Mario Bros.\" series and \"The Legend of Zelda\" series. The system has HDMI display output and a new replica controller, which can also connect to the Wii Remote for use with Virtual Console games. It was discontinued in North America on April 13, 2017, and worldwide on April 15, 2017. However, Nintendo announced in September 2017 that the NES Classic Mini would return to production on June 29, 2018, only to be discontinued again permanently by December of that year.\nNotes.\nTransliterations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["1590808", "18944028", "28314"], "permutation_1": ["28314", "1590808", "18944028"], "permutation_2": ["1590808", "28314", "18944028"], "permutation_3": ["28314", "18944028", "1590808"]}
{"id": "3hop2__75297_30654_89329", "docs_added": {"31979": "United States Capitol\nMeeting place of the United States Congress\nThe United States Capitol, often called the Capitol or the Capitol Building, is the seat of the United States Congress, the legislative branch of the federal government. It is located on Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Although no longer at the geographic center of the national capital, the U.S. Capitol forms the origin point for the street-numbering system of the district as well as its four quadrants. Like the principal buildings of the executive and judicial branches, the Capitol is built in a neoclassical style and has a white exterior.\nCentral sections of the present building were completed in 1800. These were partly destroyed in the 1814 Burning of Washington, then were fully restored within five years. The building was enlarged in the 1850s by extending the wings for the chambers for the bicameral legislature, the House of Representatives in the south wing and the Senate in the north wing. The massive dome was completed around 1866 just after the American Civil War. The east front portico was extended in 1958. The building's Visitors Center was opened in the early 21st century.\nBoth its east and west elevations are formally referred to as \"fronts\", although only the east front was intended for the reception of visitors and dignitaries, while the west front is now used for presidential inauguration ceremonies. The building and grounds are overseen by the architect of the Capitol, who also oversees the surrounding Capitol Complex.\nHistory.\n18th century.\nPrior to establishing the nation's capital in Washington, D.C., the United States Congress and its predecessors met at Independence Hall and Congress Hall in Philadelphia, Federal Hall in New York City, and five additional locations: York, Pennsylvania, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the Maryland State House in Annapolis, Maryland, and Nassau Hall in Princeton, New Jersey, and Trenton, New Jersey. In September 1774, the First Continental Congress brought together delegates from the colonies in Philadelphia, followed by the Second Continental Congress, which met from May 1775 to March 1781.\nAfter adopting the Articles of Confederation in York, Pennsylvania, the Congress of the Confederation was formed and convened in Philadelphia from March 1781 until June 1783, when a mob of angry soldiers converged upon Independence Hall, demanding payment for their service during the American Revolutionary War. Congress requested that John Dickinson, the Governor of Pennsylvania, call up the militia to defend Congress from attacks by the protesters. In what became known as the Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783, Dickinson sympathized with the protesters and refused to remove them from Philadelphia. As a result, Congress was forced to flee to Princeton, New Jersey, on June 21, 1783, and met in Annapolis, Maryland, and Trenton, New Jersey, before ending up in New York City.\nThe U.S. Congress was established upon ratification of the U.S. Constitution and formally began on March 4, 1789. New York City remained home to Congress until July 1790, when the Residence Act was passed to pave the way for a permanent capital. The decision of where to locate the capital was contentious, but Alexander Hamilton helped broker a compromise in which the federal government would take on war debt incurred during the American Revolutionary War, in exchange for support from northern states for locating the capital along the Potomac River. As part of the legislation, Philadelphia was chosen as a temporary capital for ten years (until December 1800), until the nation's capital in Washington, D.C., would be ready.\nPierre L'Enfant was charged with creating the city plan for the new capital city and the major public buildings. The Congress House would be built on Jenkins Hill, now known as Capitol Hill, which L'Enfant described as a \"pedestal awaiting a monument.\" L'Enfant connected Congress House with the President's House via Pennsylvania Avenue with a width set at 160 feet, identical to the narrowest points of the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es in Paris. Westwards was a 400-foot-wide (122 m) garden-lined \"grand avenue\" containing a public walk (later known as the National Mall) that would travel for about 1 mile (1.6\u00a0km) along the east\u2013west line.\nThe term \"Capitol\" (from Latin \"Capitolium\") originally denoted the Capitoline Hill in Rome and the Temple of Jupiter that stood on its summit. The Roman Capitol was sometimes misconceived of as a meeting place for senators, and this led the term to be applied to legislative buildings; the first such building was the Williamsburg Capitol in Virginia. Thomas Jefferson had sat here as a member of the House of Burgesses, and it was he who applied the name \"Capitol\" to what on L'Enfant's plan had been called the \"Congress House\". \"Capitol\" has since become a general term for government buildings, especially in the United States. It is often confused with \"capital\"; one, however, denotes a building or complex of buildings, while the other denotes a city.\nL'Enfant secured the lease of quarries at Wigginton Island and along Aquia Creek in Virginia for use in the foundations and outer walls of the Capitol in November 1791. Surveying was under way soon after the Jefferson conference plan for the Capitol was accepted. On September 18, 1793, President Washington, along with eight other Freemasons dressed in masonic regalia, laid the cornerstone, which was made by silversmith Caleb Bentley.\nIn early 1792, after Pierre L'Enfant was dismissed from the federal city project, Jefferson proposed a design competition to solicit designs for the Capitol and the \"President's House\", and set a four-month deadline. The prize for the competition was $500 and a lot in the Federal City. At least ten individuals submitted designs for the Capitol; however the drawings were regarded as crude and amateurish, reflecting the level of architectural skill present in the United States at the time. \nThe most promising of the submissions was by Stephen Hallet, a trained French architect who was a draftsman to Pierre L'Enfant on the city plan. However, Hallet's designs were overly fancy, with too much French influence, and were deemed too costly. \nHowever, the design did incorporate the concept for a \"great circular room and dome\" which had originated with L'Enfant. John Trumbull was given a tour of \"Jenkins Hill\" by L'Enfant himself and confirmed this in his autobiography years later.\nOn January 31, 1793, a late entry by amateur architect William Thornton was submitted, and was met with praise for its \"Grandeur, Simplicity, and Beauty\" by Washington, along with praise from Jefferson. Thornton was inspired by the east front of the Louvre, as well as the Paris Pantheon for the center portion of the design. Thornton's design was officially approved in a letter dated April 5, 1793, from Washington, and Thornton served as the first architect of the Capitol (and later first superintendent of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office). In an effort to console Hallet, the commissioners appointed him to review Thornton's plans, develop cost estimates, and serve as superintendent of construction. Hallet proceeded to pick apart and make drastic changes to Thornton's design, which he saw as costly to build and problematic. \nIn July 1793, Jefferson convened a five-member commission, bringing Hallet and Thornton together, along with James Hoban (winning architect of the \"President's Palace\") to address problems with and revise Thornton's plan. Hallet suggested changes to the floor plan, which could be fitted within the exterior design by Thornton. The revised plan was accepted, except that Secretary Jefferson and President Washington insisted on an open recess in the center of the East front, which was part of Thornton's original plan.\nThe original design by Thornton was later significantly altered by Benjamin Henry Latrobe, and later Charles Bulfinch. The current cast-iron dome and the House's new southern extension and Senate new northern wing were designed by Thomas Ustick Walter and August Schoenborn, a German immigrant, in the 1850s, and were completed under the supervision of Edward Clark.\nConstruction proceeded with Hallet working under supervision of James Hoban, who was also busy working on construction of the \"President's House\" (also later known as the \"Executive Mansion\"). Despite the wishes of Jefferson and the President, Hallet went ahead anyway and modified Thornton's design for the East Front and created a square central court that projected from the center, with flanking wings which would house the legislative bodies. Hallet was dismissed by Secretary Jefferson on November 15, 1794. George Hadfield was hired on October 15, 1795, as Superintendent of Construction, but resigned three years later in May 1798, because of his dissatisfaction with Thornton's plan and quality of work done thus far.\n19th century.\nThe Senate (north) wing was completed in 1800. The Senate and House shared quarters in the north wing until a temporary wooden pavilion was erected on the future site of the House wing which served for a few years for the Representatives to meet in, until the House of Representatives (south) wing was finally completed in 1811, with a covered wooden temporary walkway connecting the two wings with the Congressional chambers where the future center section with rotunda and dome would eventually be. However, the House of Representatives moved early into their House wing in 1807. Though the Senate wing building was incomplete, the Capitol held its first session of the U.S. Congress with both chambers in session on November 17, 1800. The National Legislature was moved to Washington prematurely, at the urging of President John Adams, in hopes of securing enough Southern votes in the Electoral College to be re-elected for a second term as president.\nIn March 1803, James Madison appointed Benjamin Henry Latrobe to the position of \"Surveyor of Public Buildings\", with the principal responsibility of completing construction of the Capitol's south and north wings. Work on the north wing began in November 1806. Although occupied for only six years, it had suffered from falling plaster, rotting floors and a leaking roof. Instead of repairing it, Latrobe demolished, redesigned and rebuilt the interiors within the existing brick and sandstone walls. Notably, Latrobe designed the Supreme Court and Senate chambers. The former was a particular architectural achievement; the size and structure of its vaulted, semi-circular ceiling was then unprecedented in the United States.\nFor several decades, beginning when the federal government moved to Washington in the fall of 1800, the Capitol building was used for Sunday religious services as well as for governmental functions. The first services were conducted in the \"hall\" of the House in the north wing of the building. In 1801 the House moved to temporary quarters in the south wing, called the \"Oven\", which it vacated in 1804, returning to the north wing for three years. Then, from 1807 to 1857, they were held in the then-House Chamber (now called Statuary Hall). When held in the House chamber, the Speaker's podium was used as the preacher's pulpit. According to the U.S. Library of Congress exhibit \"Religion and the Founding of the American Republic\":\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />It is no exaggeration to say that on Sundays in Washington during the administrations of Thomas Jefferson (1801\u20131809) and of James Madison (1809\u20131817) the state became the church. Within a year of his inauguration, Jefferson began attending church services in the chamber of the House of Representatives. Madison followed Jefferson's example, although unlike Jefferson, who rode on horseback to church in the Capitol, Madison came in a coach and four. Worship services in the House\u00a0\u2013 a practice that continued until after the Civil War\u00a0\u2013 were acceptable to Jefferson because they were nondiscriminatory and voluntary. Preachers of every Protestant denomination appeared. (Catholic priests began officiating in 1826.) As early as January 1806 a female evangelist, Dorothy Ripley, delivered a camp meeting-style exhortation in the House to Jefferson, Vice President Aaron Burr, and a \"crowded audience\".\nNot long after the completion of both wings, the Capitol was partially burned by the British on August 24, 1814, during the War of 1812. After the fires, Latrobe was rehired as Architect of the Capitol to oversee restoration works.\nGeorge Bomford and Joseph Gardner Swift, both military engineers, were called upon to help rebuild the Capitol. Reconstruction began in 1815 and included redesigned chambers for both Senate and House wings (now sides), which were completed by 1819. During the reconstruction, Congress met in the Old Brick Capitol, a temporary structure financed by local investors. Construction continued through to 1826, with the addition of the center section with front steps and columned portico and an interior Rotunda rising above the first low dome of the Capitol. Latrobe is principally connected with the original construction and many innovative interior features; his successor Bulfinch also played a major role, such as design of the first low dome covered in copper.\nBy 1850, it became clear that the Capitol could not accommodate the growing number of legislators arriving from newly admitted states. A new design competition was held, and President Millard Fillmore appointed Philadelphia architect Thomas U. Walter to carry out the expansion. Two new wings were added: a new chamber for the House of Representatives on the south side, and a new chamber for the Senate on the north.\nWhen the Capitol was expanded in the 1850s, some of the construction labor was carried out by slaves \"who cut the logs, laid the stones and baked the bricks\". The original plan was to use workers brought in from Europe. However, there was a poor response to recruitment efforts; African Americans, some free and some enslaved, along with Scottish stonemasons, comprised most of the workforce.\nCapitol dome.\nThe 1850 expansion more than doubled the length of the United States Capitol; it dwarfed the original, timber-framed, copper-sheeted, low dome of 1818, designed by Charles Bulfinch which was no longer in proportion with the increased size of the building. In 1855, the decision was made to tear it down and replace it with the \"wedding-cake style\" cast-iron dome that stands today. Also designed by Thomas U. Walter, the new dome would stand three times the height of the original dome and in diameter, yet had to be supported on the existing masonry piers.\nLike Mansart's dome at Les Invalides in Paris (which he had visited in 1838), Walter's dome is double, with a large oculus in the inner dome, through which is seen \"The Apotheosis of Washington\" painted on a shell suspended from the supporting ribs, which also support the visible exterior structure and the tholos that supports the \"Statue of Freedom\", a colossal statue that was raised to the top of the dome in 1863. The statue invokes the goddesses Minerva or Athena. The cast iron for the dome weighs . The dome's cast iron frame was supplied and constructed by the iron foundry Janes, Fowler, Kirtland & Co. The thirty-six Corinthian columns that surround the base of the dome were provided by the Baltimore ironworks of Poole & Hunt.\nWhen the Capitol's new dome was finally completed, its massive visual weight, in turn, overpowered the proportions of the columns of the East Portico, built in 1828.\n20th century.\nIn 1904, the East Front of the Capitol building was rebuilt, following a design of the architects Carr\u00e8re and Hastings, who designed the Russell Senate and Cannon House office buildings earlier that year.\nIn 1958, the next major expansion to the Capitol started, with a extension of the East Portico. In 1960, two years into the project, the dome underwent a restoration. A marble duplicate of the sandstone East Front was built from the old Front. In 1962, a connecting extension repurposed what had been an outside wall as an inside wall. In the process, the original sandstone Corinthian columns were removed and replaced with marble. It was not until 1984 that landscape designer Russell Page created a suitable setting for them in a large meadow at the U.S. National Arboretum in northeast Washington as the National Capitol Columns, where they were combined with a reflecting pool into an ensemble that reminds some visitors of the ruins of Persepolis, in Persia.\nBesides the columns, two hundred tons of the original stone were removed in several hundred blocks, which were first stored on site at the Capitol, and then stored in an unused yard at the Capitol Power Plant until 1975. The same year, the power plant was renovated and expanded in accordance with legislation passed in 1970, and the stones fell to the Commission on the Extension of the United States Capitol. As this body was long-defunct, responsibility for the material passed to the House and Senate office building commissions. These commissions then arranged for the National Park Service to store the debris at the back of a NPS maintenance yard in Rock Creek Park.\nWith the permission of the speaker of the House, the United States Capitol Historical Society has periodically mined the blocks for sandstone since 1975. The stone removed is used to make commemorative bookends, which are still sold to support the Capitol Historical Society. By 1982, more than $20,000 (nearly $60,000 adjusted) had been raised through such sales. Unpursued uses for the stones proposed by the Capitol Historical Society have included their sale as cornerstones in new housing developments.\nOn December 19, 1960, the Capitol was declared a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service. The building was ranked No. 6 in a 2007 survey conducted for the American Institute of Architects' \"America's Favorite Architecture\" list.\nThe Capitol draws heavily from other notable buildings, especially churches and landmarks in Europe, including the dome of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican and St. Paul's Cathedral in London. On the roofs of the Senate and House Chambers are flagpoles that fly the U.S. flag when either is in session. On September 18, 1993, to commemorate the Capitol's bicentennial, the Masonic ritual cornerstone laying with George Washington was reenacted. U.S. senator Strom Thurmond was one of the Freemason politicians who took part in the ceremony.\n21st century.\nOn June 20, 2000, ground was broken for the Capitol Visitor Center, which opened on December 2, 2008. From 2001 through 2008, the East Front of the Capitol (site of most presidential inaugurations until Ronald Reagan began a new tradition in 1981) was the site of construction for this massive underground complex, designed to facilitate a more orderly entrance for visitors to the Capitol. Prior to the center being built, visitors to the Capitol had to line up in the basement of the Cannon House Office Building or the Russell Senate Office Building. The new underground facility provides a grand entrance hall, a visitors theater, room for exhibits, and dining and restroom facilities, in addition to space for building necessities such as a service tunnel.\nA large-scale Capitol dome restoration project, the first extensive such work since 1959\u20131960, began in 2014, with completion scheduled before the 2017 presidential inauguration. As of 2012, $20\u00a0million in work around the skirt of the dome had been completed, but other deterioration, including at least 1,300 cracks in the brittle iron that have led to rusting and seepage inside, needed to be addressed. Before the August 2012 recess, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to spend $61\u00a0million to repair the exterior of the dome. The House wanted to spend less on government operations, but in late 2013, it was announced that renovations would take place over two years, starting in spring 2014.\nIn 2014, extensive scaffolding was erected, enclosing and obscuring the dome. All exterior scaffolding was removed by mid-September 2016.\nWith the increased use of technologies such as the Internet, a bid tendering process was approved in 2002 for a contract to install the multidirectional radio communication network for Wi-Fi and mobile-phone within the Capitol Building and annexes, followed by the new Capitol Visitor Center. The winning bidder was an Israeli company called Foxcom which has since changed its name and been acquired by Corning Incorporated.\nInterior.\nThe Capitol building is marked by its central dome above a rotunda in the central section of the structure (which also includes the older original smaller center flanked by the two original (designed 1793, occupied 1800) smaller two wings (inner north and inner south) containing the two original smaller meeting chambers for the Senate and the House of Representatives (between 1800 and late 1850s) and then flanked by two further extended (newer) wings, one also for each chamber of the larger, more populous Congress: the new north wing is the Senate chamber and the new south wing is the House of Representatives chamber. Above these newer chambers are galleries where visitors can watch the Senate and House of Representatives. It is an example of neoclassical architecture.\nTunnels and internal subways connect the Capitol building with the Congressional office buildings in the Capitol Complex. All rooms in the Capitol are designated as either S (for Senate) or H (for House), depending on whether they are in the Senate or House wing of the Capitol.\nArt.\nSince 1856, the Capitol has featured some the most prominent art in the United States, including Italian American artist Constantino Brumidi, whose murals are located in the hallways of the first floor of the Senate side of the Capitol. The murals, known as the Brumidi Corridors, reflect great moments and people in United States history. Among the original works are those depicting Benjamin Franklin, John Fitch, Robert Fulton, and events such as the Cession of Louisiana. Also decorating the walls are animals, insects and natural flora indigenous to the United States. Brumidi's design left many spaces open so future events in United States history could be added. Among those added are the \"Spirit of St. Louis\", the Moon landing, and the Space Shuttle \"Challenger\" crew.\nBrumidi also worked within the Rotunda. He painted \"The Apotheosis of Washington\" beneath the top of the dome, and also the \"Frieze of American History\". \"The Apotheosis of Washington\" was completed in 11 months and painted by Brumidi while suspended nearly in the air. It is said to be the first attempt by the United States to deify a founding father. Washington is depicted surrounded by 13 maidens in an inner ring with many Greek and Roman gods and goddesses below him in a second ring. The frieze is located around the inside of the base of the dome and is a chronological, pictorial history of the United States from the landing of Christopher Columbus to the Wright Brothers's flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The frieze was started in 1878 and was not completed until 1953. The frieze was therefore painted by four different artists: Brumidi, Filippo Costaggini, Charles Ayer Whipple, and Allyn Cox. The final scenes depicted in the fresco had not yet occurred when Brumidi began his \"Frieze of the United States History\".\nWithin the Rotunda there are eight large paintings about the development of the United States as a nation. On the east side are four paintings depicting major events in the discovery of America. On the west are four paintings depicting the founding of the United States. The east side paintings include \"The Baptism of Pocahontas\" by John Gadsby Chapman, \"The Embarkation of the Pilgrims\" by Robert Walter Weir, \"The Discovery of the Mississippi\" by William Henry Powell, and \"The Landing of Columbus\" by John Vanderlyn. The paintings on the west side are by John Trumbull: \"Declaration of Independence\", \"Surrender of General Burgoyne\", \"Surrender of Lord Cornwallis\", and \"General George Washington Resigning His Commission\". Trumbull was a contemporary of the United States' founding fathers and a participant in the American Revolutionary War; he painted a self-portrait into \"Surrender of Lord Cornwallis\".\n\"First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln\", an 1864 painting by Francis Bicknell Carpenter, hangs over the west staircase in the Senate wing.\nThe Capitol also houses the National Statuary Hall Collection, comprising two statues donated by each of the fifty states to honor persons notable in their histories. One of the most notable statues in the National Statuary Hall is a bronze statue of King Kamehameha donated by the state of Hawaii upon its accession to the union in 1959. The statue's extraordinary weight of raised concerns that it might come crashing through the floor, so it was moved to Emancipation Hall of the new Capitol Visitor Center. The 100th, and last statue for the collection, that of Po'pay from the state of New Mexico, was added on September 22, 2005. It was the first statue moved into the Emancipation Hall.\nCrypt.\nOn the ground floor is an area known as the Crypt. It was intended to be the burial place of George Washington, with a ringed balustrade at the center of the Rotunda above looking down to his tomb. However, under the stipulations of his last will, Washington was buried at Mount Vernon. The Crypt houses exhibits on the history of the Capitol. A compass star inlaid in the floor marks the point at which Washington, D.C. is divided into its four quadrants and is the basis for how addresses in Washington, D.C., are designated (NE, NW, SE, or SW).\nGutzon Borglum's massive \"Abraham Lincoln Bust\" is housed in the crypt. The sculptor had a fascination with large-scale art and themes of heroic nationalism, and carved the piece from a six-ton block of marble. Borglum carved the bust in 1908; it was donated to the Congress by Eugene Meyer Jr. and accepted by the Joint Committee on the Library the same year. The pedestal was specially designed by the sculptor and installed in 1911. The bust and pedestal were on display in the Rotunda until 1979 when, after a rearrangement of all the sculptures in the Rotunda, they were placed in the Crypt. Borglum was a patriot and believed the \"monuments we have built are not our own\"; he looked to create art that was \"American, drawn from American sources, memorializing American achievement\", according to a 1908 interview article. Borglum's depiction of Lincoln was so accurate that Robert Todd Lincoln, the president's son, praised the bust as \"the most extraordinarily good portrait of my father I have ever seen\". Supposedly, according to legend, the marble head remains unfinished (missing the left ear) to symbolize Lincoln's unfinished life.\nFeatures.\nA statue of John C. Calhoun is located at one end of the room near the Old Supreme Court Chamber. On the right leg of the statue, a mark from a bullet fired during the 1998 shooting incident is clearly visible. The bullet also left a mark on the cape, located on the back right side of the statue.\nThirteen presidents have lain in state in the Rotunda for public viewing, most recently Jimmy Carter. The tomb meant for Washington stored the catafalque which is used to support coffins lying in state or honor in the Capitol. The catafalque now on display in the Exhibition Hall of the Capitol Visitor Center was used for President Lincoln.\nThe Hall of Columns is located on the House side of the Capitol, home to twenty-eight fluted columns and statues from the National Statuary Hall Collection. In the basement of the Capitol building in a utility room are two marble bathtubs, which are all that remain of the once elaborate Senate baths. These baths were a spa-like facility designed for members of Congress and their guests before many buildings in the city had modern plumbing. The facilities included several bathtubs, a barbershop, and a massage parlor.\nA steep metal staircase, totaling 365 steps, leads from the basement to an outdoor walkway on top of the Capitol's dome. The number of steps represents each day of the year. Also in the basement, the weekly Jummah prayer is held on Fridays by Muslim staffers.\nHeight.\nContrary to a popular myth, building height laws have never referred to the height of the Capitol building, which rises to . Indeed, the Capitol is only the fourth-tallest structure in Washington.\nHouse Chamber.\nThe House of Representatives Chamber has 448 permanent seats. Unlike senators, representatives do not have assigned seats. The chamber is large enough to accommodate members of all three branches of the federal government and invited guests for joint sessions of Congress such as the State of the Union speech and other events.\nThe Chamber is adorned with relief portraits of famous lawmakers and lawgivers throughout Western and Near Eastern history. The United States national motto \"In God We Trust\" is written over the tribune below the clock and above the United States flag. Of the twenty-three relief portraits, only Moses is sculpted from a full front view and is located across from the dais where the Speaker of the House ceremonially sits.\nIn order, clockwise around the chamber:\nThere is a quote by statesman Daniel Webster etched in the marble of the chamber, as stated: \"Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered.\"\nSenate Chamber.\nThe current Senate Chamber opened in 1859 and is adorned with white marble busts of the former Presidents of the Senate (Vice presidents).\nOld Chambers.\nStatuary Hall.\nThe National Statuary Hall is a chamber in the United States Capitol devoted to sculptures of prominent Americans. The hall, also known as the Old Hall of the House, is a large, two-story, semicircular room with a second story gallery along the curved perimeter. It is located immediately south of the Rotunda. It was the meeting place of the U.S. House of Representatives for nearly 50 years (1807\u20131857). After a few years of disuse, in 1864, it was repurposed as a statuary hall.\nOld Senate and Supreme Court Chambers.\nThe Old Senate Chamber is a room in the United States Capitol that was the legislative chamber of the United States Senate from 1810 to 1859, and served as the Supreme Court chamber from 1860 until 1935.\nThis room was originally the lower half of the Old Senate Chamber from 1800 to 1806. After division of the chamber in two levels, this room was used from 1806 until 1860 as the Supreme Court Chamber. In 1860, the Supreme Court began using the newly vacated Old Senate Chamber. In 1935, the Supreme Court vacated the Capitol Building and began meeting in the newly constructed United States Supreme Court Building across the street.\nExterior.\nLandscaping.\nThe Capitol Grounds cover approximately 274 acres (1.11\u00a0km2), with the grounds proper consisting mostly of lawns, walkways, streets, drives, and planting areas. Several monumental sculptures used to be located on the east facade and lawn of the Capitol including \"The Rescue\" and \"George Washington\". The current grounds were designed by noted American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who planned the expansion and landscaping performed from 1874 to 1892. In 1875, as one of his first recommendations, Olmsted proposed the construction of the marble terraces on the north, west, and south sides of the building creating an enveloping base. This addressed issues with the placement of the original structure; it had been built too far westwards on the crest of the hill and gave the appearance as if the building might slide into the marshy terrain below. \nOlmsted also designed the Summerhouse, the open-air brick building that sits just north of the Capitol. Three arches open into the hexagonal structure, which encloses a fountain and twenty-two brick chairs. A fourth wall holds a small window which looks onto an artificial grotto. Built between 1879 and 1881, the Summerhouse was intended to answer complaints that visitors to the Capitol had no place to sit and no place to obtain water for their horses and themselves. Modern drinking fountains have since replaced Olmsted's fountain for the latter purpose. Olmsted intended to build a second, matching Summerhouse on the southern side of the Capitol, but congressional objections led to the project's cancellation.\nFlag.\nUp to four U.S. flags can be seen flying over the Capitol. Two flagpoles are located at the base of the dome on the East and West sides. These flagpoles have flown the flag day and night since World War I. The other two flagpoles are above the North (Senate) and South (House of Representatives) wings of the building, and fly only when the chamber below is in session. The flag above the House of Representatives is raised and lowered by House pages. The flag above the United States Senate is raised and lowered by Senate Doorkeepers. To raise the flag, Doorkeepers access the roof of the Capitol from the Senate Sergeant at Arms's office. Several auxiliary flagpoles, to the west of the dome and not visible from the ground, are used to meet congressional requests for flags flown over the Capitol. Constituents pay for U.S. flags flown over the Capitol to commemorate a variety of events such as the death of a veteran family member.\nMajor events.\nThe Capitol and the grounds of Capitol Hill have played host to major events, including presidential inaugurations, which are held every four years. During an inauguration, the front of the Capitol is outfitted with a platform and a grand staircase. Annual events at the Capitol include Independence Day celebrations, and the National Memorial Day Concert.\nThe general public has paid respect to a number of individuals lying in state at the Capitol, including numerous former presidents, senators, and other officials. Other Americans lying in honor include Officers Jacob Chestnut and John Gibson, the two officers killed in the 1998 shooting incident. Chestnut was the first African American ever to lie in honor in the Capitol. The public also paid respect to Rosa Parks, an icon of the civil rights movement, at the Capitol in 2005. She was the first woman and second African American to lie in honor in the Capitol. In February 2018, the evangelical Rev. Billy Graham became the fourth private citizen to lie in honor in the Rotunda.\nOn September 24, 2015, Pope Francis gave a joint address to Congress, the first Pope to do so.\nSecurity.\nThe U.S. Capitol is believed to have been the intended target of United Airlines Flight 93, one of the four planes that were hijacked in the September 11 attacks. The plane crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after passengers tried to regain control of the plane from the hijackers.\nSince the September 11 attacks, the roads and grounds around the Capitol have undergone dramatic changes. The United States Capitol Police have also installed checkpoints to inspect vehicles at specific locations around Capitol Hill, and have closed a section of one street indefinitely. The level of screening employed varies. On the main east\u2013west thoroughfares of Constitution and Independence Avenues, barricades are implanted in the roads that can be raised in the event of an emergency. Trucks larger than pickups are interdicted by the Capitol Police and are instructed to use other routes. On the checkpoints at the shorter cross streets, the barriers are typically kept in a permanent \"emergency\" position, and only vehicles with special permits are allowed to pass. All Capitol visitors are screened by a magnetometer, and all items that visitors may bring inside the building are screened by an x-ray device. In both chambers, gas masks are located underneath the chairs in each chamber for members to use in case of emergency. Structures ranging from scores of Jersey barriers to hundreds of ornamental bollards have been erected to obstruct the path of any vehicles that might stray from the designated roadways.\nAfter the January 6 United States Capitol attack, security increased again. Additional security fences were installed around the perimeter, and National Guard troops were deployed to bolster security.\nCapitol Visitor Center.\nThe United States Capitol Visitor Center (CVC), located below the East Front of the Capitol and its plaza, between the Capitol building and 1st Street East, opened on December 2, 2008. The CVC provides a single security checkpoint for all visitors, including those with disabilities, and an expansion space for the US Congress.\nThe complex contains of space below ground on three floors, and offers visitors a food court, restrooms, and educational exhibits, including an 11-foot scale model of the Capitol dome. It also features skylights affording views of the actual dome. Long in the planning stages, construction began in the fall of 2001, following the killing of two Capitol police officers in 1998. The estimated final cost of constructing the CVC was $621\u00a0million.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "50585": "Philadelphia\nLargest city in Pennsylvania, United States\nPhiladelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the sixth-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 1,603,797 in the 2020 census. The city is the urban core of the larger Delaware Valley, also known as the Philadelphia metropolitan area, the nation's eighth-largest metropolitan area and seventh-largest combined statistical area with 6.245 million residents and 7.366 million residents, respectively.\nPhiladelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn, an English Quaker and advocate of religious freedom, and served as the capital of the colonial era Province of Pennsylvania. It then played a historic and vital role during the American Revolution and Revolutionary War. It served as the central meeting place for the nation's Founding Fathers, hosted the First Continental Congress (1774) and the Second Continental Congress, during which the Founders formed the Continental Army, elected George Washington as its commander, and adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. During the Revolutionary War's Philadelphia campaign, the city briefly fell to the British Army, which occupied Philadelphia for nine months from September 1777 to June 1778. \nIn 1787, following the end of the Revolutionary War and establishment of independence, the U.S. Constitution was ratified in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Convention. Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until 1790, and it served as the nation's first capital from May 10, 1775, until December 12, 1776, and on four subsequent occasions until 1800, when construction of the new national capital in Washington, D.C. was completed.\nPhiladelphia maintains extensive contemporary influence in business and industry, culture, sports, and music. With 17 four-year universities and colleges in the city, Philadelphia is one of the nation's leading centers for higher education and academic research. The city is a national cultural center, hosting more outdoor sculptures and murals than any other city in the nation. Fairmount Park, when combined with adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park in the same watershed, is , representing one of the nation's largest and the world's 55th-largest urban park. Philadelphia is known for its arts, culture, cuisine, and colonial and Revolutionary-era history; in 2016, it attracted 42\u00a0million domestic tourists who spent $6.8\u00a0billion, representing $11\u00a0billion in economic impact to the city and its surrounding Pennsylvania counties. With five professional sports teams and one of the nation's most loyal and passionate fan bases, Philadelphia is often ranked as the nation's best city for professional sports fans. The city has a culturally and philanthropically active LGBTQ+ community. Philadelphia also has played an immensely influential historic and ongoing role in the development and evolution of American music, especially R&B, soul, and rock.\nAs of 2023[ [update]], the Philadelphia metropolitan area had a gross metropolitan product of US$557.6 billion and is home to 13 \"Fortune\" 500 corporate headquarters. Metropolitan Philadelphia ranks as one of the nation's Big Five venture capital hubs, facilitated by its geographic proximity to both the entrepreneurial and financial ecosystems of New York City and the federal regulatory environment of Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Philadelphia is also a biotechnology hub. The Philadelphia Stock Exchange, owned by Nasdaq since 2008, is the nation's oldest stock exchange and a global leader in options trading. 30th Street Station, the city's primary rail station, is the third-busiest Amtrak hub in the nation with over 4.1 million passengers in 2023. The city's multimodal transportation and logistics infrastructure includes Philadelphia International Airport, a major transatlantic gateway and transcontinental hub; the rapidly-growing PhilaPort seaport; and Interstate 95, the spine of the north\u2013south highway system along the U.S. East Coast.\nPhiladelphia is a city of many firsts, including the nation's first library (1731), hospital (1751), medical school (1765), national capital (1774), university (by some accounts) (1779), central bank (1781), stock exchange (1790), zoo (1874), and business school (1881). Philadelphia contains 67 National Historic Landmarks, including Independence Hall. From the city's 17th century founding through the present, Philadelphia has been the birthplace or home to an extensive number of prominent and influential Americans.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nNative peoples.\nPrior to the arrival of Europeans in the early 17th century, the Lenape, an Indian tribe also known as the Delaware Indians, lived in the village of Shackamaxon in present-day Philadelphia and the surrounding area. The Lenape historically lived along the Delaware River watershed, western Long Island, and the Lower Hudson Valley. Most Lenape were pushed out of the region during the 18th century as the original Thirteen colonies expanded, which was further exacerbated by losses from intertribal conflicts. Lenape communities were also weakened by newly introduced diseases, mainly smallpox, and conflicts with Europeans. The Iroquois occasionally fought the Lenape. Surviving Lenape moved west into the upper Ohio River basin. Following the American Revolutionary War and the subsequent establishment of the United States, the Lenape began moving further west. In the 1860s, the U.S. federal government sent most remaining Lenape in the eastern United States to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma and surrounding territories as part of the Indian removal policy.\nColonial era.\nEuropeans first entered Philadelphia and the surrounding Delaware Valley in the early 17th century. The first settlements were founded by Dutch colonists, who built Fort Nassau on the Delaware River in 1623 in what is now Brooklawn, New Jersey. The Dutch considered the entire Delaware River valley to be part of their New Netherland colony. In 1638, Swedish settlers led by renegade Dutch established the colony of New Sweden at Fort Christina, located in present-day Wilmington, Delaware, and quickly spread out in the valley. In 1644, New Sweden supported the Susquehannocks in their war against Maryland colonists. In 1648, the Dutch built Fort Beversreede on the west bank of the Delaware, south of the Schuylkill River near the present-day Eastwick section of Philadelphia, to reassert their dominion over the area. The Swedes responded by building Fort Nya Korsholm, or New Korsholm, named after a town in Finland with a Swedish majority.\nIn 1655, a Dutch military campaign led by New Netherland Director-General Peter Stuyvesant took control of the Swedish colony, ending its claim to independence. The Swedish and Finnish settlers continued to have their own militia, religion, and court, and to enjoy substantial autonomy under the Dutch. An English fleet captured the New Netherland colony in 1664, though the situation did not change substantially until 1682, when the area was included in William Penn's charter for Pennsylvania.\nIn 1681, in partial repayment of a debt, Charles II of England granted Penn a charter for what would become the Pennsylvania colony. Despite the royal charter, Penn bought the land from the local Lenape in an effort to establish good terms with the Native Americans and ensure peace for the colony. Penn made a treaty of friendship with Lenape chief Tammany under an elm tree at Shackamaxon, in what is now the city's Fishtown neighborhood. Penn named the city Philadelphia, which is Greek for \"brotherly love\", derived from the Ancient Greek terms \u03c6\u03af\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2 \"ph\u00edlos\" (beloved, dear) and \u1f00\u03b4\u03b5\u03bb\u03c6\u03cc\u03c2 \"adelph\u00f3s\" (brother, brotherly). There were a number of cities named \"Philadelphia\" in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Greek and Roman periods, including modern Ala\u015fehir, mentioned as the site of an early Christian congregation in the Book of Revelation. As a Quaker, Penn had experienced religious persecution and wanted his colony to be a place where anyone could worship freely. This tolerance, which exceeded that of other colonies, led to better relations with the local native tribes and fostered Philadelphia's rapid growth into America's most important city.\nPenn planned a city on the Delaware River to serve as a port and place for government. Hoping that Philadelphia would become more like an English rural town instead of a city, Penn laid out roads on a grid plan to keep houses and businesses spread far apart with areas for gardens and orchards.\nThe city's inhabitants did not follow Penn's plans, however, and instead crowded the present-day Port of Philadelphia on the Delaware River and subdivided and resold their lots. Before Penn left Philadelphia for the final time, he issued the Charter of 1701 establishing it as a city. Though poor at first, Philadelphia became an important trading center with tolerable living conditions by the 1750s. Benjamin Franklin, a leading citizen, helped improve city services and founded new ones that were among the first in the nation, including a fire company, library, and hospital.\nA number of philosophical societies were formed, which were centers of the city's intellectual life, including the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture (1785), the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts (1787), the Academy of Natural Sciences (1812), and the Franklin Institute (1824). These societies developed and financed new industries that attracted skilled and knowledgeable immigrants from Europe.\nAmerican Revolution.\nPhiladelphia's importance and central location in the colonies made it a natural center for America's revolutionaries. By the 1750s, Philadelphia surpassed Boston as the largest city and busiest port in British America, and the second-largest city in the entire British Empire after London. In 1774, as resentment of the British government's policies towards the colonies and support for independence began burgeoning in the colonies, Philadelphia hosted the First Continental Congress at Carpenters' Hall, and 12 of the original 13 colonies sent delegates to the Congress.\nFrom 1775 to 1781, Philadelphia hosted the Second Continental Congress, whose 56 delegated unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence inside what was then called Pennsylvania State House and was later renamed Independence Hall. Written predominantly by Thomas Jefferson from his second-floor apartment on Market Street within walking distance of Independence Hall, the Declaration has been described by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis as \"the most potent and consequential words in American history,\" and its adoption represented a declaration of war against Great Britain. Since the Declaration's July 4, 1776, adoption, its signing has been cited globally and repeatedly by various peoples of the world seeking independence and liberty. It also has been, since its adoption, the basis for annual celebration by Americans; in 1938, this celebration of the Declaration was formalized as Independence Day, one of only eleven designated U.S. federal holidays.\nAfter George Washington's defeat at the Battle of Brandywine in Chadds Ford Township, on September 11, 1777, during the Philadelphia campaign, the revolutionary capital of Philadelphia was defenseless, and the city prepared for what was perceived to be an inevitable British attack. Because bells could easily be recast into munitions, the Liberty Bell, then known as the Pennsylvania State Bell, and bells from two Philadelphia churches, Christ Church and St. Peter's Church, were hastily taken down and transported by heavily guarded wagon train out of the city. The Liberty Bell was taken to Zion German Reformed Church in Northampton Town, which is present-day Allentown, where it was hidden under the church's floor boards for nine months from September 1777 until departure of British forces from Philadelphia in June 1778. Two Revolutionary War battles, the Siege of Fort Mifflin, fought between September 26 and November 16, 1777, and the Battle of Germantown, fought on October 4, 1777, took place within Philadelphia's city limits.\nIn Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation on November 15, 1777. Independence Hall in Philadelphia was the meeting place for the Constitutional Convention, which ratified the Constitution on September 17, 1787, which is now the longest-standing codified national constitution.\nPhiladelphia served as capital of the United States for most of the colonial and early post-colonial period. including for a decade, from 1790 to 1800, while Washington, D.C., was being constructed and prepared to serve as the new national capital, and on five prior occasions between 1776 and 1790. In 1793, the largest yellow fever epidemic in U.S. history killed approximately 4,000 to 5,000 people in Philadelphia, or about ten percent of the city's population at the time. The capital of the United States was moved to Washington, D.C. in 1800 upon completion of the White House and U.S. Capitol buildings.\nThe state capital was moved from Philadelphia to Lancaster in 1799, then ultimately to Harrisburg in 1812. Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until the late 18th century. It also was the nation's financial and cultural center until ultimately being eclipsed in total population by New York City in 1790. In 1816, the city's free Black community founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent Black denomination in the country, and the first Black Episcopal Church. The free Black community also established many schools for its children with the help of Quakers. Large-scale construction projects for new roads, canals, and railroads made Philadelphia the first major industrial city in the United States.\n19th century.\nThroughout the 19th century, Philadelphia hosted a variety of industries and businesses; the largest was the textile industry. Major corporations in the 19th and early 20th centuries included the Baldwin Locomotive Works, William Cramp & Sons Shipbuilding Company, and the Pennsylvania Railroad. Established in 1870, the Philadelphia Conveyancers' Association was chartered by the state in 1871. Along with the U.S. Centennial in 1876, the city's industry was celebrated in the Centennial Exposition, the first official World's fair in the U.S.\nImmigrants, mostly from Ireland and Germany, settled in Philadelphia and the surrounding districts. These immigrants were largely responsible for the first general strike in North America in 1835, in which workers in the city won the ten-hour workday. The city was a destination for thousands of Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine in the 1840s; housing for them was developed south of South Street and later occupied by succeeding immigrants. They established a network of Catholic churches and schools and dominated the Catholic clergy for decades. Anti-Irish, anti-Catholic nativist riots erupted in Philadelphia in 1844. The rise in population of the surrounding districts helped lead to the Act of Consolidation of 1854, which extended the city limits from the of Center City to the roughly of Philadelphia County.\nIn the latter half of the 19th century and leading into the 20th century, immigrants from Russia, Eastern Europe, and Italy, and African Americans from the southern U.S. settled in the city.\nPhiladelphia was represented by the Washington Grays in the American Civil War. The African-American population of Philadelphia increased from 31,699 to 219,559 between 1880 and 1930, largely stemming from the Great Migration from the South.\n20th century.\nBy the 20th century, Philadelphia had an entrenched Republican political machine and a complacent population. In 1910, a general strike shut down the entire city.\nIn 1917, following outrage over the election-year murder of a Philadelphia police officer, the City Council shrank from two houses to just one. In July 1919, Philadelphia was one of more than 36 industrial cities nationally to suffer a race riot during Red Summer in post-World War I unrest as recent immigrants competed with Blacks for jobs. In the 1920s, the public flouting of Prohibition laws, organized crime, mob violence, and corrupt police involvement in illegal activities led to the appointment of Brig. Gen. Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marine Corps as the city's director of public safety, but political pressure still prevented long-term success in fighting crime and corruption.\nIn 1940, non-Hispanic whites constituted 86.8% of the city's population. In 1950, the population peaked at more than two million residents, then began to decline with the restructuring of industry that led to the loss of many middle-class union jobs. In addition, suburbanization enticed many affluent residents to depart the city for its outlying railroad commuting towns and newer housing. The resulting reduction in Philadelphia's tax base and the resources of local government caused the city to struggle through a long period of adjustment, and it approached bankruptcy by the late 1980s.\nIn 1985, the MOVE Bombing of the Cobbs Creek neighborhood by city helicopters occurred, killing 11 and destroying 61 homes.\nRevitalization and gentrification of neighborhoods began in the late 1970s and continues into the 21st century with much of the development occurring in the Center City and University City neighborhoods. But this expanded a shortage of affordable housing in the city. After many manufacturers and businesses left Philadelphia or shut down, the city started attracting service businesses and began to market itself more aggressively as a tourist destination. Contemporary glass-and-granite skyscrapers were built in Center City beginning in the 1980s. Historic areas such as Old City and Society Hill were renovated during the reformist mayoral era of the 1950s through the 1980s, making both areas among the most desirable Center City neighborhoods. Immigrants from around the world began to enter the U.S. through Philadelphia as their gateway, leading to a reversal of the city's population decline between 1950 and 2000, during which it lost about 25 percent of its residents.\n21st century.\nPhiladelphia eventually began experiencing a growth in its population in 2007, which continued with incremental annual increases through the present. A migration pattern has been established from New York City to Philadelphia by residents opting for a large city with relative proximity and a lower cost of living.\nGeography.\nTopography.\nPhiladelphia's geographic center is about 40\u00b0 0\u2032 34\u2033 north latitude and 75\u00b0 8\u2032 0\u2033 west longitude. The 40th parallel north passes through neighborhoods in Northeast Philadelphia, North Philadelphia, and West Philadelphia including Fairmount Park. The city encompasses , of which is land and , or 6%, is water. Natural bodies of water include the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, lakes in Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park, and Cobbs, Wissahickon, and Pennypack creeks. The largest artificial body of water is East Park Reservoir in Fairmount Park.\nThe lowest point is sea level and the highest point is in Chestnut Hill, about above sea level on Summit Street near the intersection of Germantown Avenue and Bethlehem Pike at: 40.07815 N, 75.20747 W. Philadelphia is located on the Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line that separates the Atlantic Plain from the Piedmont. The Schuylkill River's rapids at East Falls were inundated by completion of the dam at Fairmount Water Works.\nThe city is the seat of its own county. The city is bordered by six adjacent counties: Montgomery to the northwest; Bucks to the north and northeast; Burlington County, New Jersey to the east; Camden County, New Jersey to the southeast; Gloucester County, New Jersey to the south; and Delaware County to the southwest.\nCityscape.\nCity planning.\nPhiladelphia was created in the 17th century, following the plan by William Penn's surveyor Thomas Holme. Center City is structured with long, straight streets running nearly due east\u2013west and north\u2013south, forming a grid pattern between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers that is aligned with their courses. The original city plan was designed to allow for easy travel and to keep residences separated by open space that would help prevent the spread of fire. In keeping with the idea of a \"Greene Countrie Towne\", and inspired by the many types of trees that grew in the region, Penn named many of the east\u2013west streets for local trees. Penn planned the creation of five public parks in the city which were renamed in 1824. Centre Square was renamed Penn Square; Northeast Square was renamed Franklin Square; Southeast Square was renamed Washington Square; Southwest Square was renamed Rittenhouse Square; and Northwest Square was renamed Logan Circle/Square. Center City had an estimated 183,240 residents as of 2015[ [update]], making it the second-most populated downtown area in the United States after Midtown Manhattan in New York City.\nPhiladelphia's neighborhoods are divided into six large sections that surround Center City: North Philadelphia, Northeast Philadelphia, South Philadelphia, Southwest Philadelphia, West Philadelphia, and Northwest Philadelphia. The city's geographic boundaries have been largely unchanged since these neighborhoods were consolidated in 1854. However, each of these large areas contains numerous neighborhoods, some of whose boundaries derive from the boroughs, townships, and other communities that constituted Pennsylvania County before their inclusion within the city.\nThe City Planning Commission, tasked with guiding growth and development of the city, has divided the city into 18 planning districts as part of the Philadelphia2035 physical development plan. Much of the city's 1980 zoning code was overhauled from 2007 to 2012 as part of a joint effort between former mayors John F. Street and Michael Nutter. The zoning changes were intended to rectify incorrect zoning maps to facilitate future community development, as the city forecasts an additional 100,000 residents and 40,000 jobs will be added by 2035.\nThe Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) is the largest landlord in Pennsylvania. Established in 1937, the PHA is the nation's fourth-largest housing authority, serving about 81,000 people with affordable housing, while employing 1,400 on a budget of $371\u00a0million. The Philadelphia Parking Authority is responsible for ensuring adequate parking for city residents, businesses, and visitors.\nArchitecture.\nPhiladelphia's architectural history dates back to colonial times and includes a wide range of styles. The earliest structures were constructed with logs, but brick structures were common by 1700. During the 18th century, the cityscape was dominated by Georgian architecture, including Independence Hall and Christ Church.\nIn the first decades of the 19th century, Federal and Greek Revival architecture were the dominant styles produced by Philadelphia architects such as Benjamin Latrobe, William Strickland, John Haviland, John Notman, Thomas Walter, and Samuel Sloan. Frank Furness is considered Philadelphia's greatest architect of the second half of the 19th century. His contemporaries included John McArthur Jr., Addison Hutton, Wilson Eyre, the Wilson Brothers, and Horace Trumbauer. In 1871, construction began on the Second Empire-style Philadelphia City Hall. The Philadelphia Historical Commission was created in 1955 to preserve the cultural and architectural history of the city. The commission maintains the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, adding historic buildings, structures, sites, objects and districts as it sees fit.\nIn 1932, Philadelphia became home to the first modern International Style skyscraper in the United States, the PSFS Building, designed by George Howe and William Lescaze. The City Hall remained the tallest building in the city until 1987 when One Liberty Place was completed. Numerous glass and granite skyscrapers were built in Center City beginning in the late 1980s. In 2007, the Comcast Center surpassed One Liberty Place to become the city's tallest building. The Comcast Technology Center was completed in 2018, reaching a height of , as the tallest building in the United States outside of Manhattan and Chicago.\nFor much of Philadelphia's history, the typical home has been the row house. The row house was introduced to the United States via Philadelphia in the early 19th century and, for a time, row houses built elsewhere in the United States were known as \"Philadelphia rows\". A variety of row houses are found throughout the city, from Federal-style continuous blocks in Old City and Society Hill to Victorian-style homes in North Philadelphia to twin row houses in West Philadelphia. While newer homes have been built recently, much of the housing dates to the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, which has created problems such as urban decay and vacant lots. Some neighborhoods, including Northern Liberties and Society Hill, have been rehabilitated through gentrification.\nParks.\nAs of 2014[ [update]], the city's total park space, including municipal, state, and federal parks in the city, amounts to . Philadelphia's largest park is Fairmount Park, which includes the Philadelphia Zoo and encompasses of the total parkland. Fairmount Park's adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park contains . Fairmount Park, when combined with Wissahickon Valley Park, is one of the largest contiguous urban park areas in the U.S. The two parks, along with the Colonial Revival, Georgian and Federal-style mansions in them, have been listed as one entity on the National Register of Historic Places since 1972.\nClimate.\nWithin the K\u00f6ppen climate classification, Philadelphia falls under the northern periphery of the humid subtropical climate zone (K\u00f6ppen \"Cfa\"). Within the Trewartha climate classification, Philadelphia has a temperate maritime climate (\"Do\") limited to the north by the continental climate (\"Dc\"). Summers are typically hot and muggy. Fall and spring are generally mild, and winter is moderately cold. The plant life hardiness zones are 7a and 7b, reflecting an average annual extreme minimum temperature between .\nSnowfall is highly variable. Some winters have only light snow while others include major snowstorms. The normal seasonal snowfall averages , with rare snowfalls in November or April, and rarely any sustained snow cover. Seasonal snowfall accumulation has ranged from trace amounts in 1972\u201373, to in the winter of 2009\u201310. The city's heaviest single-storm snowfall was , which occurred in January 1996.\nPrecipitation is generally spread throughout the year, with eight to eleven wet days per month, at an average annual rate of , but historically ranging from in 1922 to in 2011. The most rain recorded in one day occurred on July 28, 2013, when fell at Philadelphia International Airport. Philadelphia has a moderately sunny climate with an average of 2,498 hours of sunshine annually. The percentage of sunshine ranges from 47% in December to 61% in June, July, and August.\nThe January daily average temperature is . The temperature frequently rises to during thaws. July averages . Heat waves accompanied by high humidity and heat indices are frequent, with highs reaching or exceeding on 30 days of the year. The average window for freezing temperatures is November 6 to April 2, allowing a growing season of 217 days. Early fall and late winter are generally dry, with February having the lowest average precipitation at . The dewpoint in the summer averages between .\nThe highest recorded temperature was on August 7, 1918. Temperatures at or above are not common, with the last occurrence of such a temperature being July 21, 2019. The lowest officially recorded temperature was on February 9, 1934. Temperatures at or below are rare, with the last such occurrence being January 19, 1994. The record low maximum is on February 10, 1899, and December 30, 1880. The record high minimum is on July 23, 2011, and July 24, 2010.\nTime Series.\nAir quality.\nPhiladelphia County received an ozone grade of F and a 24-hour particle pollution rating of D in the American Lung Association's 2017 State of the Air report, which analyzed data from 2013 to 2015. The city was ranked 22nd for ozone, 20th for short-term particle pollution, and 11th for year-round particle pollution. According to the same report, the city experienced a significant reduction in high ozone days since 2001\u2014from nearly 50 days per year to fewer than 10\u2014along with fewer days of high particle pollution since 2000\u2014from about 19 days per year to about 3\u2014and an approximate 30% reduction in annual levels of particle pollution since 2000.\nFive of the ten largest combined statistical areas (CSAs) were ranked higher for ozone: Los Angeles (1st), New York City (9th), Houston (12th), Dallas (13th), and San Jose, California (18th). Many smaller CSAs were also ranked higher for ozone, including Sacramento (8th), Las Vegas (10th), Denver (11th), El Paso (16th), and Salt Lake City (20th). Only two of those same ten CSAs, San Jose and Los Angeles, were ranked higher than Philadelphia for both year-round and short-term particle pollution.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nAs of the 2020 U.S. Census, there were 1,603,797 people residing in Philadelphia, representing a 1.2% increase from the 2019 census estimate. The racial composition of the city was 39.3% Black alone (42.0% Black alone or in combination), 36.3% White alone (41.9% White alone or in combination), 8.7% Asian alone, 0.4% American Indian and Alaska Native alone, 8.7% some other race, and 6.9% multiracial. 14.9% of residents were Hispanic or Latino.\n34.8% had a bachelor's degree or higher. 23.9% spoke a language other than English at home, the most common of which was Spanish (10.8%). 15.0% of the populations foreign born, roughly half of whom are naturalized U.S. citizens. 3.7% of the population are veterans. The median household income was $52,889 and 22.8% of the population lived in poverty. 49.5% of the population drove alone to work, while 23.2% used public transit, 8.2% carpooled, 7.9% walked, and 7.0% worked from home. The average commute is 31 minutes.\nAfter the 1950 census, when a record high of 2,071,605 was recorded, the city's population began a long decline. The population dropped to a low of 1,488,710 residents in 2006 before beginning to rise again. Between 2006 and 2017, Philadelphia added 92,153 residents. In 2017, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that the racial composition of the city was 41.3% Black (non-Hispanic), 34.9% White (non-Hispanic), 14.1% Hispanic or Latino, 7.1% Asian, 0.4% Native American, 0.05% Pacific Islander, and 2.8% multiracial.\nImmigration and cultural diversity.\nIn addition to the city's economic growth, the city's population has been fueled by foreign immigration. According to The Pew Charitable Trusts, the city's foreign-born population increased by 69% between 2000 and 2016 to constitute nearly 20% of Philadelphia's workforce, and it doubled between 1990 and 2017 to constitute 13.8% of the city's total population, with the top five countries of origin being China by a significant margin followed by the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, India, and Vietnam.\nIrish, Italian, German, Polish, English, Russian, Ukrainian, and French ancestries constitute the largest European ethnic groups in the city. Philadelphia has the second-largest Irish and Italian populations in the United States after New York City. South Philadelphia remains one of the largest Italian neighborhoods in the country and is home to the Italian Market.\nThe Pennsport neighborhood and Gray's Ferry section of South Philadelphia, home to many Mummer clubs, are well known as Irish neighborhoods. The Kensington, Port Richmond, and Fishtown neighborhoods have historically been heavily Irish and Polish. Port Richmond is a center for the Polish-American community in Philadelphia, and it remains a common destination for Polish immigrants. Northeast Philadelphia, although known for its Irish and Irish-American population, is home to a Jewish and Russian population. Mount Airy in Northwest Philadelphia also contains a Jewish community. Nearby Chestnut Hill is historically known as an Anglo-Saxon Protestant community.\nPhiladelphia's Black American population is the fourth-largest in the country after New York City, Chicago, and Houston. West Philadelphia and North Philadelphia are largely African-American neighborhoods, but many are leaving those areas in favor of the Northeast and Southwest sections of Philadelphia. A higher proportion of African-American Muslims reside in Philadelphia than most other major U.S. cities. West Philadelphia and Southwest Philadelphia are home to various Afro-Caribbean and African immigrant communities.\nThe Puerto Rican population in Philadelphia is the second-largest on the U.S. mainland after New York City, and the second-fastest growing after Orlando. Eastern North Philadelphia, particularly Fairhill and surrounding areas to the north and east, has one of the highest concentrations of Puerto Ricans outside Puerto Rico, with many large swaths of blocks being close to 100% Puerto Rican. Puerto Rican and Dominican populations reside in North Philadelphia and the Northeast, and Mexican and Central American populations exist in South Philadelphia. South American migrants were being transported by bus from Texas to Philadelphia beginning in 2022.\nPhiladelphia's Asian American population includes those of Chinese, Indians, Vietnamese, South Koreans, Filipinos, Cambodians, and Indonesians. Over 35,000 Chinese Americans lived in the city in 2015, including a Fuzhounese population. Center City hosts a Chinatown that is served by Chinatown bus lines with service to/from Chinatown, Manhattan. Indians make up the second-largest Asian group in the city of Philadelphia, while making up the largest foreign-born population in the Delaware Valley. A Korean community initially settled in the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Olney; however, the primary Koreatown has subsequently shifted further north, straddling the city's border with adjacent Cheltenham in Montgomery County and Cherry Hill in South Jersey. South Philadelphia is home to Vietnamese-Americans in Little Saigon and Cambodian-Americans in Cambodia Town, as well as Thai-American, Indonesian-American, and Chinese-American communities.\nPhiladelphia's Gay village near Washington Square is home to a concentration of gay and lesbian-friendly businesses, restaurants, and bars.\nReligion.\nIn a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, 68% of the population of the city identified themselves as Christian. Approximately 41% of Christians in the city and area professed attendance at a variety of churches that could be considered Protestant, while 26% professed Catholic beliefs.\nThe Protestant Christian community in Philadelphia is dominated by mainline Protestant denominations including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church in the United States, Presbyterian Church (USA) and American Baptist Churches USA. One of the most prominent mainline Protestant jurisdictions is the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. The African Methodist Episcopal Church was established in Philadelphia. Historically, the city has strong connections to the Quakers, Unitarian Universalism, and the Ethical Culture movement, all of which continue to be represented in the city. The Quaker Friends General Conference is based in Philadelphia. Evangelical Protestants making up less than 15% of the population were also prevalent.\nEvangelical Protestant bodies included the Anglican Church in North America, Lutheran Church\u2014Missouri Synod, Presbyterian Church in America, and National Baptist Convention of America. The Catholic community is primarily served by the Latin Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Eparchy of the United States of America and Canada, though some independent Catholic churches exist throughout Philadelphia and its suburbs. The Latin Church-based jurisdiction is headquartered in the city, and its see is the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. The Ukrainian Catholic jurisdiction is headquartered in Philadelphia, and is seated at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.\nLess than 1% of Philadelphia's Christians were Mormons. The remainder of the Christian demographic is spread among smaller Protestant denominations and the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox among others. The Diocese of Eastern Pennsylvania (Orthodox Church in America) and Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (Ecumenical Patriarchate) divide the Eastern Orthodox in Philadelphia. The Russian Orthodox St. Andrew's Cathedral is in the city.\nThe same study says that other religions collectively compose about 8% of the population, including Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Sikhism. Philadelphia has the fifth-largest Muslim population among U.S. cities. The remaining 24% claimed no religious affiliation.\nThe Philadelphia metropolitan area's Jewish population was estimated at 206,000 in 2001, which was the sixth-largest in the U.S. at that time. Jewish traders were operating in southeastern Pennsylvania long before William Penn. Jews in Philadelphia took a prominent part in the War of Independence. Although the majority of the early Jewish residents were of Portuguese or Spanish descent, some among them had emigrated from Germany and Poland. About the beginning of the 19th century, a number of Jews from the latter countries, finding the services of the Congregation Mickv\u00e9 Israel unfamiliar to them, resolved to form a new congregation which would use the ritual to which they had been accustomed.\nAfrican diasporic religions are practiced in some Latino and Hispanic and Caribbean communities in North and West Philadelphia.\nLanguages.\nAs of 2010[ [update]], 79.12% (1,112,441) of Philadelphia residents age 5 and older spoke English at home as a primary language, while 9.72% (136,688) spoke Spanish, 1.64% (23,075) Chinese, 0.89% (12,499) Vietnamese, 0.77% (10,885) Russian, 0.66% (9,240) French, 0.61% (8,639) other Asian languages, 0.58% (8,217) African languages, 0.56% (7,933) Cambodian (Mon-Khmer), and Italian was spoken as a main language by 0.55% (7,773) of the population over the age of five. In total, 20.88% (293,544) of Philadelphia's population age 5 and older spoke a mother language other than English.\nPoverty.\nPhiladelphia is home to many food poverty programs, of which two of the largest are Philabundance which claims to feed 90000 people per week. and Share Food Program which claims to feed 1 million people per month.\nEconomy.\nPhiladelphia's close geographical and transportation connections to other large metropolitan economies along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States have been cited as offering a significant competitive advantage for business creation and entrepreneurship. The city is the center of economic activity in both Pennsylvania and the four-state Delaware Valley metropolitan region. Five Fortune 500 companies are based in the city. As of 2021[ [update]], the Philadelphia metropolitan area is estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of US$479\u00a0billion, an increase from the $445\u00a0billion calculated by the Bureau of Economic Analysis for 2017, representing the ninth-largest U.S. metropolitan economy.\nPhiladelphia's economic sectors include financial services, health care, biotechnology, information technology, trade and transportation, manufacturing, oil refining, food processing, and tourism. Metropolitan Philadelphia is one of the top five American venture capital hubs, credited to its proximity to New York City's financial and tech and biotechnology ecosystems. Financial activities account for the largest economic sector of the metropolitan area, which is one of the largest health education and research centers in the United States. The city's two largest employers are the federal and city governments. Philadelphia's largest private employer is the University of Pennsylvania followed by Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.\nFinance and corporations.\nThe Philadelphia Stock Exchange, acquired by Nasdaq in 2007, is a global leader in options trading. The city is home to the headquarters of Comcast, the nation's largest multinational telecommunications corporation; insurance conglomerates Cigna, Colonial Penn, and Independence Blue Cross; as well as food services company Aramark, chemical makers FMC Corporation and Rohm and Haas, pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline, Amicus Therapeutics, Spark Therapeutics, apparel retailers Five Below and Urban Outfitters and its subsidiary Anthropologie, automotive parts retailer Pep Boys, and stainless steel producer Carpenter Technology Corporation.\nOther corporation headquarters in the city include RiteAid, Crown Holdings, and Brandywine Realty Trust. The headquarters of Boeing Rotorcraft Systems and its main rotorcraft factory are in the Philadelphia suburb of Ridley Park; The Vanguard Group, and the U.S. headquarters of Siemens Healthineers are headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb. Healthcare conglomerate AmerisourceBergen is located in suburban Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Across the Delaware River in adjacent Camden County, New Jersey, Campbell Soup Company and Subaru USA are both headquartered in Camden, New Jersey, and TD Bank (USA) is headquartered in nearby suburban Cherry Hill, New Jersey.\nTech and biotech.\nPhiladelphia is a hub for information technology and biotechnology. Philadelphia and Pennsylvania are attracting new life sciences ventures. As of 2024, the Delaware Valley ranks as one of the Big Five U.S. venture capital hubs, enabled by its proximity to both the entrepreneurial and financial ecosystems of New York City and to the federal regulatory environment of Washington, D.C.\nTourism.\nPhiladelphia's history attracts many tourists, with the Independence National Historical Park, which includes the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and other historic sites, received over 5\u00a0million visitors in 2016. The city welcomed 42\u00a0million domestic tourists in 2016 who spent $6.8\u00a0billion, generating an estimated $11\u00a0billion in total economic impact in the city and surrounding four counties of Pennsylvania. The annual Naked Bike Ride attracts participants from around the United States and internationally to Philadelphia.\nTrade and transportation.\nPhiladelphia International Airport, a major Transatlantic gateway and transcontinental hub, has undergone a $900\u00a0million infrastructural expansion to increase passenger capacity and augment passenger experience, and the airport continues an ongoing capital expenditure program to upgrade facilities and add further amenities. The Port of Philadelphia, having experienced the highest percentage growth by tonnage loaded in 2017 among major U.S. seaports, has doubled its shipping capacity to accommodate super-sized post-Panamax shipping vessels since 2018. Philadelphia's 30th Street Station is the third-busiest Amtrak rail hub, following Penn Station in Manhattan and Union Station in Washington, D.C., transporting over 4\u00a0million inter-city rail passengers annually.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nEducation in Philadelphia is provided by many private and public institutions. The School District of Philadelphia is the local school district, operating public schools, in all of the city. The Philadelphia School District is the eighth-largest school district in the nation with 142,266 students in 218 traditional public schools and 86 charter schools as of 2014[ [update]].\nThe city's K-12 enrollment in district\u2013run schools dropped from 156,211 students in 2010 to 130,104 students in 2015. During the same time period, the enrollment in charter schools increased from 33,995 students in 2010 to 62,358 students in 2015. This consistent drop in enrollment led the city to close 24 of its public schools in 2013. During the 2014 school year, the city spent an average of $12,570 per pupil, below the average among comparable urban school districts.\nGraduation rates among district-run schools, meanwhile, steadily increased in the ten years from 2005. In 2005, Philadelphia had a district graduation rate of 52%. This number increased to 65% in 2014, still below the national and state averages. Scores on the state's standardized test, the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) trended upward from 2005 to 2011 but subsequently decreased. In 2005, the district-run schools scored an average of 37.4% on math and 35.5% on reading. The city's schools reached their peak scores in 2011 with 59.0% on math and 52.3% on reading. In 2014, the scores dropped significantly to 45.2% on math and 42.0% on reading.\nOf the city's public high schools, including charter schools, only four performed above the national average on the SAT (1497 out of 2400) in 2014: Masterman, Central, Girard Academic Music Program, and MaST Community Charter School. All other district-run schools were below average.\nHigher education.\nMedical and research facilities of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Philadelphia has the third-largest student concentration on the East Coast, with more than 120,000 college and university students enrolled within the city and nearly 300,000 in the metropolitan area. More than 80 colleges, universities, trade, and specialty schools are in the Philadelphia region. One of the founding members of the Association of American Universities is in the city, the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution with claims to be the First university in the United States.\nThe city's largest university by student enrollment is Temple University, followed by Drexel University. The city's nationally ranked research universities comprise the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, Drexel University, and Thomas Jefferson University. Philadelphia is also home to five schools of medicine: Drexel University College of Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Temple University School of Medicine, and Thomas Jefferson University's Sidney Kimmel Medical College. Hospitals, universities, and higher education research institutions in Philadelphia's four congressional districts received more than $252\u00a0million in National Institutes of Health grants in 2015.\nOther institutions of higher learning within the city's borders include:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCulture.\nPhiladelphia is home to many national historical sites that relate to the founding of the United States. Independence National Historical Park is the center of these historical landmarks and one of the country's 22 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, and the Liberty Bell is housed, are among the city's most popular attractions. Other national historic sites include the homes of Edgar Allan Poe and Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and early government buildings, including the First and the Second Bank of the United States, Fort Mifflin, and the Gloria Dei (Old Swedes') Church. Philadelphia alone has 67 National Historic Landmarks, the third most of any city in the country.\nPhiladelphia's major science museums include the Franklin Institute, which contains the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the M\u00fctter Museum, and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. History museums include the National Constitution Center, the Museum of the American Revolution, the Philadelphia History Museum, the National Museum of American Jewish History, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Masonic Library and Museum of Pennsylvania in the Masonic Temple, and the Eastern State Penitentiary. Philadelphia is home to the United States's first zoo and hospital, as well as Fairmount Park, one of America's oldest and largest urban parks, founded in 1855.\nThe city is home to important archival repositories, including the Library Company of Philadelphia, established in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin at 1314 Locust Street, and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, founded in 1814. The Presbyterian Historical Society is the country's oldest denominational historical society, organized in 1852.\nArts.\nThe city is home to multiple art museums, including the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Rodin Museum, which holds the largest collection of work by Auguste Rodin outside France. The city's largest art museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is one of the largest art museums in the world. The long flight of steps to the Art Museum's main entrance became famous after the film \"Rocky\" (1976).\nAnnual events include the Philadelphia Film Festival, held annually each October, the 6abc Dunkin' Donuts Thanksgiving Day Parade, the nation's longest-running continuously held Thanksgiving Day parade, and the Mummers Parade, the nation's longest continuously held folk parade, which is held every New Year's Day predominantly on Broad Street.\nAreas such as South Street and the Old City section of the city have a vibrant night life. The Avenue of the Arts in Center City contains many restaurants and theaters, such as the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, home of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Academy of Music, home of Opera Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Ballet. The Wilma Theatre and the Philadelphia Theatre Company at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre produce a variety of new plays. Several blocks to the east are the Lantern Theater Company at St. Stephens Episcopal Church; and the Walnut Street Theatre, a National Historic Landmark stated to be the oldest and most subscribed-to theatre in the English-speaking world, founded in 1809. In May 2019, the Walnut Street Theatre announced a major expansion to begin in 2020. New Freedom Theatre, Pennsylvania's oldest African-American theatre, is located on North Broad Street.\nPhiladelphia has more public art than any other American city. In 1872, the Association for Public Art, formerly the Fairmount Park Art Association, was created as the first private association in the United States dedicated to integrating public art and urban planning. In 1959, lobbying by the Artists Equity Association helped create the Percent for Art ordinance, the first for a U.S. city. The program, which has funded more than 200 pieces of public art, is administered by the Philadelphia Office of Arts and Culture, the city's art agency. The city has more murals than any other American city, due to the 1984 creation of the Department of Recreation's Mural Arts Program, which seeks to beautify neighborhoods and provide an outlet for graffiti artists. The program has funded more than 2,800 murals by professional, staff and volunteer artists and educated more than 20,000 youth in underserved neighborhoods throughout Philadelphia.\nThe city is home to a number of art organizations, including the regional art advocacy nonprofit Philadelphia Tri-State Artists Equity, the Philadelphia Sketch Club, one of the country's oldest artists' clubs, and The Plastic Club, started by women excluded from the Sketch Club. Many Old City art galleries stay open late on the First Friday event of each month.\nCuisine.\nThe city is known for its hoagies, stromboli, roast pork sandwich, scrapple, soft pretzels, water ice, Irish potato candy, tastykakes, and the cheesesteak sandwich which was developed by Italian immigrants. The Philadelphia area has many establishments that serve cheesesteaks, including restaurants, taverns, delicatessens and pizza parlors. The originator of the thinly-sliced steak sandwich in the 1930s, initially without cheese, is Pat's King of Steaks, which faces its rival Geno's Steaks, founded in 1966, across the intersection of 9th Street and Passyunk Avenue in the Italian Market of South Philadelphia.\nMcGillin's Olde Ale House, opened in 1860 on Drury Street in Center City, is the oldest continuously operated tavern in the city. The City Tavern is a replica of a historic 18th-century building first opened in 1773, demolished in 1854 after a fire, and rebuilt in 1975 on the same site as part of Independence National Historical Park. The tavern offers authentic 18th-century recipes, served in seven period dining rooms, three wine cellar rooms and an outdoor garden.\nThe Reading Terminal Market is a historic food market founded in 1893 in the Reading Terminal building, a designated National Historic Landmark. The enclosed market is one of the oldest and largest markets in the country, hosting over a hundred merchants offering Pennsylvania Dutch specialties, artisan cheese and meat, locally grown groceries, and specialty and ethnic foods.\nDialect.\nThe traditional Philadelphia accent is considered by some linguists to be the most distinctive accent in North America. The Philadelphia dialect, which is spread throughout the Delaware Valley and South Jersey, is part of a larger Mid-Atlantic American English family, a designation that also includes the Baltimore accent. Additionally, it shares many similarities with the New York accent. Owing to over a century of linguistic data collected by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania under sociolinguist William Labov, the Philadelphia dialect has been one of the best-studied forms of American English. The accent is especially found within the Irish American and Italian American working-class neighborhoods. Philadelphia also has its own unique collection of neologisms and slang terms.\nMusic.\nThe Philadelphia Orchestra is generally considered one of the top five orchestras in the United States. The orchestra performs at the Kimmel Center and has a summer concert series at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts. Opera Philadelphia performs at the nation's oldest continually operating opera house\u2014the Academy of Music. The Philadelphia Boys Choir & Chorale has performed its music all over the world. The Philly Pops plays orchestral versions of popular jazz, swing, Broadway, and blues songs at the Kimmel Center and other venues within the mid-Atlantic region. The Curtis Institute of Music is one of the world's premier conservatories and among the most selective institutes of higher education in the nation.\nPhiladelphia has played a prominent role in the music of the United States. The culture of American popular music has been influenced by significant contributions of Philadelphia area musicians and producers, in both the recording and broadcasting industries. In 1952, the teen dance party program called \"Bandstand\" premiered on local television, hosted by Bob Horn. The show was renamed \"American Bandstand\" in 1957, when it began national syndication on ABC, hosted by Dick Clark and produced in Philadelphia until 1964 when it moved to Los Angeles. Promoters marketed youthful musical artists known as teen idols to appeal to the young audience. Philadelphia-born singers, including Frankie Avalon, James Darren, Eddie Fisher, Fabian Forte, Bobby Rydell, and South Philly-raised Chubby Checker, topped the music charts, establishing a clean-cut rock and roll image.\nPhilly soul music of the late 1960s\u20131970s is a highly produced version of soul music which led to later forms of popular music such as disco and urban contemporary rhythm and blues. On July 13, 1985, John F. Kennedy Stadium was the American venue for the Live Aid concert. The city also hosted the Live 8 concert, which attracted about 700,000 people to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on July 2, 2005.\nNotable rock and pop musicians from Philadelphia and its suburbs include Bill Haley & His Comets, Nazz, Todd Rundgren, Hall & Oates, the Hooters, Cinderella, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Ween, Schoolly D, Pink, the Roots, Beanie Sigel, State Property, Lisa \"Left Eye\" Lopes, Meek Mill, Lil Uzi Vert, and others.\nSports.\nPhiladelphia has one of the nation's richest histories in professional sports, dating back to the mid-19th century. Its first professional sports team, the Philadelphia Athletics, a professional baseball team, was founded in 1860. The Athletics were initially an amateur league team that turned professional in 1871. In 1876, the Athletics joined with seven other teams in founding the National League, now the longest continuously operating league in world sports. \nPhiladelphia is one of 12 U.S. cities to have teams in all four major league sports: the Philadelphia Phillies of Major League Baseball (MLB), the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League (NFL), the Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League (NHL), and the Philadelphia 76ers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Phillies, formed in 1883 as the Quakers and renamed in 1884, are the oldest team continuously playing under the same name in the same city in the history of American professional sports.\nThe Philadelphia metro area is also home to the Philadelphia Union of Major League Soccer (MLS), plays their home games at Subaru Park, a soccer-specific stadium in Chester, Pennsylvania.\nPhiladelphia was the second of eight U.S. cities to win titles in all four major leagues, the MLB, NFL, NHL, and NBA. It won a title in soccer in the now-defunct North American Soccer League in 1973. Following the 76ers' victory over the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1983 NBA Finals, however, the city's professional teams and their fans endured 25 years without a championship in any professional sport until the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, defeating the Tampa Bay Rays. This quarter century without a championship for any Philadelphia sports team is sometimes described as the Curse of Billy Penn, a reference to a 1987 decision that permitted One Liberty Place to become the first building in city history to surpass the height of \"William Penn\", a statue installed in 1894 atop City Hall. In 2004, during the city's championship drought, ESPN placed Philadelphia second on its list of \"The Fifteen Most Tortured Sports Cities\". The city's sports fans are often both praised and sometimes derided. In 2011, for instance, \"GQ\" magazine named Eagles and Phillies fans the nation's worst professional sports fans, describing them as the \"Meanest Fans in America\" in summarizing repeated incidents of their drunken behavior and long history of booing.\nAfter the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, nine years passed without a championship until the Eagles won their first Super Bowl following the 2017 season, defeating the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII. Seven seasons later, following the 2024 season, the Eagles won their second Super Bowl, defeating the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX. \nMajor professional sports teams that originated in Philadelphia, which later moved to other cities, include the Golden State Warriors basketball team, which played in Philadelphia from 1946 to 1962 and the Oakland Athletics baseball team, which was originally the Philadelphia Athletics and played in Philadelphia from 1901 to 1954.\nPhiladelphia is home to professional, semi-professional, and elite amateur teams in multiple other sports, including cricket, rugby league, and rugby union. Major running events in the city include the Penn Relays, the Philadelphia Marathon, and the Broad Street Run. The Collegiate Rugby Championship is played annually each June at Talen Energy Stadium in Chester.\nThe city also has a rich history in rowing, which has been popular in Philadelphia since the 18th century. On Boathouse Row, a symbol of Philadelphia's rich rowing history, each Big Five member has its own boathouse. Philadelphia hosts numerous local and collegiate rowing clubs and competitions, including the annual Dad Vail Regatta, the largest intercollegiate rowing event in North America with more than 100 participating U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities; the annual Stotesbury Cup Regatta, which is billed as the world's oldest and largest rowing event for high school students; and the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta. The regattas are held on the Schuylkill River and organized by Schuylkill Navy, an association of area rowing clubs that has produced numerous Olympic rowers.\nThe Philadelphia Spinners were a professional ultimate team in Major League Ultimate (MLU) until 2016. The Spinners were one of the original eight teams of the American Ultimate Disc League (AUDL), which was founded in 2012. They played at Franklin Field and won the inaugural AUDL championship and the final MLU championship in 2016. The MLU was suspended indefinitely by its investors in December 2016. As of 2018[ [update]], the Philadelphia Phoenix continue to play in the AUDL.\nPhiladelphia is home to the Philadelphia Big 5, a group of five NCAA Division I college basketball programs, including La Salle, Penn, Saint Joseph's, Temple, and Villanova universities. The sixth NCAA Division I school in Philadelphia is Drexel University. La Salle won the 1954 championship of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. Villanova won the 1985, 2016, and 2018 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournaments. Philadelphia will be one of the eleven US host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.\nLaw and government.\nPhiladelphia County is a legal nullity. All county functions were assumed by the city in 1952. The city has been coterminous with the county since 1854.\nPhiladelphia's 1952 Home Rule Charter was written by the City Charter Commission, which was created by the Pennsylvania General Assembly in an act of April 1949, and a city ordinance of June 1949. The existing city council received a proposed draft in February 1951, and the electors approved it in an election held in April 1951. The first elections under the new Home Rule Charter were held in November 1951, and the newly elected officials took office in January 1952.\nThe city uses the strong-mayor version of the mayor\u2013council form of government, which is led by one mayor in whom executive authority is vested. The mayor has the authority to appoint and dismiss members of all boards and commissions without the approval of the city council. Elected at-large, the mayor is limited to two consecutive four-year terms, but can run for the position again after an intervening term.\nCourts.\nPhiladelphia County is coterminous with the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas is the trial court of general jurisdiction for the city, hearing felony-level criminal cases and civil suits above the minimum jurisdictional limit of $10,000. The court has appellate jurisdiction over rulings from the Municipal and Traffic Courts, and some administrative agencies and boards. The trial division has 70 commissioned judges elected by the voters, along with about one thousand other employees. The court has a family division with 25 judges and an orphans' court with three judges.\nAs of 2018[ [update]], the city's District Attorney is Larry Krasner, a Democrat. The last Republican to hold the office is Ronald D. Castille, who left in 1991 and later served as the Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court from 2008 to 2014.\nThe Philadelphia Municipal Court handles traffic cases, misdemeanor and felony criminal cases with maximum incarceration of five years, and civil cases involving $12,000 or less ($15,000 in real estate and school tax cases), and all landlord-tenant disputes. The municipal court has 27 judges elected by the voters.\nPennsylvania's three appellate courts also have sittings in Philadelphia. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the court of last resort in the state, regularly hears arguments in Philadelphia City Hall. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania and the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania also sit in Philadelphia several times a year. Judges for these courts are elected at large. The state Supreme Court and Superior Court have deputy prothonotary offices in Philadelphia.\nPhiladelphia is home to the federal United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, both of which are housed in the James A. Byrne United States Courthouse.\nPolitics.\nThe current mayor is Cherelle Parker who won the election in November 2023. Parker's predecessor, Jim Kenney, served two terms from 2016 to January 2024. Parker is a member of the Democratic Party. For over seven decades, since 1952, every Philadelphia mayor has been a Democrat.\nPhiladelphia City Council is the legislative branch which consists of ten council members representing individual districts and seven members elected at-large, all of whom are elected to four-year terms. Democrats are currently the majority and hold 14 seats including nine of the ten districts and five at-large seats. Republicans hold one seat: the Northeast-based Tenth District. The Working Families Party holds two at-large seats making them the council's minority party. The current council president is Kenyatta Johnson.\nPhiladelphia's political structure consists of a system of wards and divisions. There are 66 wards with 11 to 51 divisions each for a total of 1703 divisions. Each division elects two committee people who are supposed to live within the division boundaries, and committee people select a leader for their ward. Democrats and Republicans elect their own committee people every four years. The committee person's role is to serve as a point of contact between voters and party officials and help get out the vote. Most wards are closed which means the ward leader makes sole endorsement decisions; open wards allow committee people to weigh in on these decisions. There are groups such as Open Wards Philadelphia and individuals who are working to elect ward leaders who promote an open ward system.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nPhiladelphia had historically been a bastion of the Republican Party from the American Civil War until the mid-1930s. In 1856, the first Republican National Convention was held at Musical Fund Hall at 808 Locust Street in Philadelphia.\nDemocratic registrations increased after the Great Depression; however, the city was not carried by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt in his landslide victory of 1932, as Pennsylvania was one of only six states won by Republican Herbert Hoover. Voter turnout surged from 600,000 in 1932 to nearly 900,000 in 1936 and Roosevelt carried Philadelphia with over 60% of the vote. Philadelphia has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1936. In 2008, Democrat Barack Obama drew 83% of the city's vote. Obama's win was even larger in 2012, capturing 85% of the vote. In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton won 82% of the vote.\nAs a result of the previously declining population in the city and state, Philadelphia has only three congressional districts of the 18 districts in Pennsylvania, based on the 2010 census apportionment: the 2nd district, represented by Brendan Boyle; the 3rd, represented by Dwight Evans; and the 5th, represented by Mary Gay Scanlon. All three representatives are Democrats, though Republicans still have some support in the city, primarily in the Northeast. Sam Katz ran competitive mayoral races as the Republican nominee in 1999 and 2003, losing to Democrat John Street both times.\nPennsylvania's longest-serving Senator, Arlen Specter, was an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania who opened his first law practice in Philadelphia. Specter served as a Republican from 1981 and as a Democrat from 2009, losing that party's primary in 2010 and leaving office in January 2011. He was assistant counsel on the Warren Commission in 1964 and the city's district attorney from 1966 to 1974.\nPhiladelphia has hosted various national conventions, including in 1848 (Whig), 1856 (Republican), 1872 (Republican), 1900 (Republican), 1936 (Democratic), 1940 (Republican), 1948 (Republican), 1948 (Progressive), 2000 (Republican), and 2016 (Democratic). Philadelphia has been home to one vice president, George M. Dallas, and one general of the American Civil War, George B. McClellan, who won his party's nomination for president but lost in the general election to Abraham Lincoln in 1864. In May 2019, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden chose Philadelphia to be his 2020 U.S. presidential campaign headquarters.\nEnvironmental policy.\n\"Green Cities, Clean Water\" is an environmental policy initiative based in Philadelphia that has shown promising results in mitigating the effects of climate change. The researchers on the policy have stated that despite such promising plans of green infrastructure building, \"the city is forecasted to grow warmer, wetter, and more urbanized over the century, runoff and local temperatures will increase on average throughout the city\". Even though landcover predictive models on the effects of the policy initiative have indicated that green infrastructure could be useful at decreasing the amount of runoff in the city over time, the city government would have to expand its current plans and \"consider the cobenefit of climate change adaptation when planning new projects\" in limiting the scope of city-wide temperature increase.\nPublic safety.\nPolice and law enforcement.\nIn a 2015 report by Pew Charitable Trusts, the police districts with the highest rates of violent crime were Frankford (15th district) and Kensington (24th district) in the Near Northeast, and districts to the North (22nd, 25th, and 35th districts), West (19th district) and Southwest (12th district) of Center City. Each of those seven districts recorded more than a thousand violent crimes in 2014. The lowest rates of violent crime occurred in Center City, South Philadelphia, the Far Northeast, and Roxborough districts, the latter of which includes Manayunk.\nPhiladelphia had 500, 503 according to some sources, murders in 1990, a rate of 31.5 per 100,000. An average of about 400 murders occurred each year for most of the 1990s. The murder count dropped in 2002 to 288, then rose to 406 by 2006, before dropping slightly to 392 in 2007. A few years later, Philadelphia began to see a rapid decline in homicides and violent crime. In 2013, the city had 246 murders, which is a decrease of nearly 40% since 2006.\nIn 2014, 248 homicides were committed. The homicide rate rose to 280 in 2015, then fell slightly to 277 in 2016, before rising again to 317 in 2017. Homicides increased dramatically in the late 2010s/early 2020s, reaching 499 homicides in 2020 and surpassing the 1990 \"record\" in 2021, with 501st murder on November 27 and 510 by the end of the month. Phillie ended the year with 562 murders, an all-time record. It dropped in 2022 to 514, and significantly further again in 2023, to 410.\nIn 2006, Philadelphia's homicide rate of 27.7 per 100,000 people was the highest of the country's 10 most populous cities. In 2012, Philadelphia had the fourth-highest homicide rate among the country's most populous cities. The rate dropped to 16 homicides per 100,000 residents by 2014 placing Philadelphia as the sixth-highest city in the country.\nThe number of shootings in the city has declined significantly since the early years of the 21st century. Shooting incidents peaked at 1,857 in 2006 before declining nearly 44 percent to 1,047 shootings in 2014. Major crimes have decreased gradually since a peak in 2006 when 85,498 major crimes were reported. The number of reported major crimes fell 11 percent in three years to 68,815 occurrences in 2014. Violent crimes, which include homicide, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery, decreased 14 percent in three years to 15,771 occurrences in 2014.\nIn 2014, Philadelphia enacted an ordinance decriminalizing the possession of less than 30 grams of marijuana or eight grams of hashish; the ordinance gave police officers the discretion to treat possession of these amounts as a civil infraction punishable by a $25 ticket, rather than a crime. At the time, Philadelphia was at the largest city in the nation to decriminalize the possession of marijuana. From 2013 to 2018, marijuana arrests in the city dropped by more than 85%. The purchase or sale of marijuana remains a criminal offense in Philadelphia.\nFirefighting.\nThe Philadelphia Fire Department provides fire protection and emergency medical services (EMS). The department's official mission is to protect public safety by quick and professional response to emergencies and the promotion of sound emergency prevention measures. This mandate encompasses all traditional firefighting functions, including fire suppression, with 60 engine companies and 30 ladder companies as well as specialty and support units deployed throughout the city; specialized firefighting units for Philadelphia International Airport and the Port of Philadelphia; investigations conducted by the fire marshal's office to determine the origins of fires and develop preventive strategies; prevention programs to educate the public; and support services including research and planning, management of the fire communications center within the city's 911 system, and operation of the Philadelphia Fire Academy.\nMedia.\nNewspapers.\nPhiladelphia's two major daily newspapers are \"The Philadelphia Inquirer\", first published in 1829\u2014the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the country\u2014and the \"Philadelphia Daily News\", first published in 1925. The \"Daily News\" has been published as an edition of the \"Inquirer\" since 2009. Recent owners of the \"Inquirer\" and \"Daily News\" have included Knight Ridder, The McClatchy Company, and Philadelphia Media Holdings, with the latter organization declaring bankruptcy in 2010. After two years of financial struggle, the newspapers were sold to Interstate General Media in 2012. The two newspapers had a combined daily circulation of 306,831 and a Sunday circulation of 477,313 in 2013[ [update]], the 18th-largest circulation in the country, and their collective website, Philly.com, was ranked 13th in popularity among online U.S. newspapers by Alexa Internet the same year.\nSmaller publications include the \"Philadelphia Tribune\" published five days each week for the African-American community; \"Philadelphia\" magazine, a monthly regional magazine; \"Philadelphia Weekly\", a weekly alternative newspaper; \"Philadelphia Gay News\", a weekly newspaper for the LGBT community; \"The Jewish Exponent\", a weekly newspaper for the Jewish community; \"Al D\u00eda\", a weekly newspaper for the Latino community; and \"Philadelphia Metro\", a free daily newspaper.\nStudent-run newspapers include the University of Pennsylvania's \"The Daily Pennsylvanian\", Temple University's \"The Temple News\", and Drexel University's \"The Triangle\".\nRadio.\nThe first experimental radio license was issued in Philadelphia in August 1912 to St. Joseph's College. The first commercial AM radio stations began broadcasting in 1922: first WIP, then owned by Gimbels department store, followed by WFIL, then owned by Strawbridge & Clothier department store, and WOO, a defunct station owned by Wanamaker's department store, as well as WCAU and WDAS.\nAs of 2018[ [update]], the FCC lists 28 FM and 11 AM stations for Philadelphia. As of December 2017, the ten highest-rated stations in Philadelphia were adult contemporary WBEB-FM (101.1), sports talk WIP-FM (94.1), classic rock WMGK-FM (102.9), urban adult contemporary WDAS-FM (105.3), classic hits WOGL-FM (98.1), album-oriented rock WMMR-FM (93.3), country music WXTU-FM (92.5), all-news KYW-AM (1060), talk radio WHYY-FM (90.9), and urban adult contemporary WRNB-FM (100.3). Philadelphia is served by three non-commercial public radio stations: WHYY-FM (NPR), WRTI-FM (classical and jazz), and WXPN-FM (adult alternative music).\nTelevision.\nIn the 1930s, W3XE, an experimental station owned by Philco, launched as Philadelphia's first television station. In 1939, the station became the nation's first NBC's first affiliate, and later became KYW-TV, the Philadelphia television market's CBS affiliate. In 1952, WFIL, later renamed WPVI, premiered the television show \"Bandstand\", which later became the nationally broadcast \"American Bandstand\" hosted by Dick Clark. In the 1960s, WCAU-TV, WFIL-TV, and WHYY-TV were founded.\nEach of the nation's commercial networks has an affiliate in Philadelphia: KYW-TV 3 (CBS), WPVI-TV 6 (ABC), WCAU 10 (NBC), WPHL-TV 17 (The CW with MyNetworkTV on DT2), WFPA-CD 28 (UniM\u00e1s), WTXF-TV 29 (Fox), WPSG 57 (Independent), WWSI 62 (Telemundo), and WUVP-DT 65 (Univision). The region is served also by public broadcasting stations WPPT-TV in Philadelphia, WHYY-TV in Wilmington, Delaware and Philadelphia, WLVT-TV in the Lehigh Valley, and NJTV in New Jersey.\nSince September 2024, Philadelphia is the nation's largest television market where at least one of the six English networks are shown at a station not owned by a particular network's associated parent company. The major Spanish language networks are Univision (WUVP-DT), UniM\u00e1s (WFPA-CD), and Telemundo (WWSI-TV).\nAs of 2023, the Philadelphia media market is the fifth-largest in North America with over 7.8 million viewers\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nPhiladelphia is served by SEPTA, which operates buses, trains, rapid transit (as both subways and elevated trains), trolleys, and trackless trolleys (electric buses) throughout Philadelphia, the four Pennsylvania suburban counties of Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery, in addition to service to Mercer County, New Jersey (Trenton) and New Castle County, Delaware (Wilmington and Newark, Delaware). The city's subway system consists of two routes: the subway section of the Market\u2013Frankford Line running east\u2013west under Market Street which opened in 1905 to the west and 1908 to the east of City Hall, and the Broad Street Line running north\u2013south beneath Broad Street which opened in stages from 1928 to 1938.\nBeginning in the 1980s, large sections of the SEPTA Regional Rail service to the far suburbs of Philadelphia were discontinued due to a lack of funding for equipment and infrastructure maintenance.\nPhiladelphia's 30th Street Station is a major railroad station on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor with 4.4\u00a0million passengers in 2017 making it the third-busiest station in the country after New York City's Pennsylvania Station and Washington's Union Station. 30th Street Station offers access to Amtrak, SEPTA, and NJ Transit lines. Over 12\u00a0million SEPTA and NJ Transit rail commuters use the station each year, and more than 100,000 people on an average weekday.\nThe PATCO Speedline provides rapid transit service to Camden, Collingswood, Westmont, Haddonfield, Woodcrest (Cherry Hill), Ashland (Voorhees), and Lindenwold, New Jersey, from stations on Locust Street between 16th and 15th, 13th and 12th, and 10th and 9th streets, and on Market Street at 8th Street.\nAirports.\nPhiladelphia is served by two airports. Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), the larger of the two, is south-southwest of Center City on the boundary with Delaware County, and provides scheduled domestic and international air service. As of 2023, Philadelphia International Airport is the 21st-busiest airport in the nation with over 13.6 million passengers. It is also among the world's busiest airports measured by traffic movements, including takeoffs and landings. Over 30\u00a0million passengers pass through the airport annually on 25 airlines, including all major domestic carriers. The airport has nearly 500 daily departures to over 120 destinations worldwide. SEPTA's Airport Line provides direct service between Center City railroad stations and Philadelphia International Airport.\nPhiladelphia's second major airport, Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE), is a general aviation relief airport in Northeast Philadelphia, which provides general and corporate aviation.\nRoads.\nWilliam Penn planned Philadelphia with numbered streets traversing north and south, and streets named for trees, including Chestnut, Walnut, and Mulberry (since renamed Arch Streets, traversing east and west. The two main streets were named Broad Street, the north\u2013south artery, later designated Pennsylvania Route 611, and High Street, the east\u2013west artery, which was later renamed Market Street, converging at Centre Square which later became the site of City Hall.\nInterstate 95, also known as the Delaware Expressway, traverses the southern and eastern edges of the city along the Delaware River as the main north\u2013south controlled-access highway, and connects Philadelphia with Newark, New Jersey and New York City to the north and Baltimore and Washington, D.C. to the south. The city is served by Interstate 76, also known as the Schuylkill Expressway, which runs along the Schuylkill River, intersecting the Pennsylvania Turnpike at King of Prussia and providing access to Harrisburg and points west. Interstate 676, also known as Vine Street Expressway, links I-95 and I-76 through Center City, running below street level between the eastbound and westbound lanes of Vine Street. Entrance and exit ramps for the Benjamin Franklin Bridge are near the eastern end of the expressway just west of the I-95 interchange.\nRoosevelt Boulevard and Expressway, also known as U.S. 1, connects Northeast Philadelphia with Center City via I-76 through Fairmount Park. Woodhaven Road, also known as Route 63, and Cottman Avenue, also known as Route 73, serve the neighborhoods of Northeast Philadelphia, running between I-95 and the Roosevelt Boulevard. Fort Washington Expressway, also known as Route 309, extends north from the city's northern border, serving Montgomery and Bucks Counties. U.S. Route 30, also known as Lancaster Avenue, extends west from West Philadelphia to Lancaster.\nInterstate 476, locally called the Blue Route, traverses Delaware County, bypassing the city to the west and serving the city's western suburbs, providing a direct route to Allentown, the Poconos, and points north. Interstate 276, the Pennsylvania Turnpike's Delaware River extension, is a bypass and commuter route north of the city, which links to the New Jersey Turnpike and New York City.\nDelaware River Port Authority operates four bridges in the Philadelphia area, each of which cross the Delaware River to South Jersey: Walt Whitman Bridge (I-76), the Benjamin Franklin Bridge (I-676 and U.S. 30), Betsy Ross Bridge (New Jersey Route 90), and Commodore Barry Bridge (U.S. 322 in Delaware County, south of the city. The Burlington County Bridge Commission maintains two additional bridges that cross the Delaware River. Tacony\u2013Palmyra Bridge connects PA Route 73 in the Tacony section of Northeast Philadelphia with New Jersey Route 73 in Palmyra in Burlington County. Burlington\u2013Bristol Bridge connects NJ Route 413/U.S. Route 130 in Burlington, New Jersey with PA Route 413/U.S. 13 in Bristol Township, north of Philadelphia.\nBus service.\nThe Greyhound terminal is at 1001 Filbert Street (at 10th Street) in Center City, southeast of the Pennsylvania Convention Center and south of Chinatown. Several other bus operators provide service at the Greyhound terminal including Fullington Trailways, Martz Trailways, Peter Pan Bus Lines, and NJ Transit buses.\nOther intercity bus services include Megabus with stops at 30th Street Station and the visitor center for Independence Hall, BoltBus (operated by Greyhound) at 30th Street Station, OurBus at various stops in the city.\nRail.\nSince the early days of rail transportation in the United States, Philadelphia has served as a hub for several major rail companies, particularly the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Railroad. The Pennsylvania Railroad first operated Broad Street Station, then 30th Street Station and Suburban Station, and the Reading Railroad operated Reading Terminal, now part of the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The two companies also operated competing commuter rail systems in the area. The two systems now operate as a single system under the control of SEPTA, the regional transit authority. Additionally, the PATCO Speedline subway system and NJ Transit's Atlantic City Line operate successor services to South Jersey.\nIn 1911, Philadelphia had nearly 4,000 electric trolleys running on 86 lines. In 2005, SEPTA reintroduced trolley service to the Girard Avenue Line, Route 15. SEPTA operates six subway-surface trolleys that run on street-level tracks in West Philadelphia and subway tunnels in Center City, along with two surface trolleys in adjacent suburbs.\nPhiladelphia is a regional hub of the federally-owned Amtrak system, with 30th Street Station being a primary stop on the Washington-Boston Northeast Corridor and the Keystone Corridor to Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. 30th Street also serves as a major station for services via the Pennsylvania Railroad's former Pennsylvania Main Line to Chicago. As of 2018[ [update]], 30th Street is Amtrak's third-busiest station in the country, after New York City and Washington.\nUtilities.\nWater purity and availability.\nIn 1815, Philadelphia began sourcing its water via the Fairmount Water Works on the Schuylkill River, the nation's first major urban water supply system. In 1909, the Water Works was decommissioned as the city transitioned to modern sand filtration methods. Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) provides drinking water, wastewater collection, and stormwater services for Philadelphia, as well as surrounding counties. PWD draws about 57 percent of its drinking water from the Delaware River and the balance from the Schuylkill River. The city has two filtration plants on the Schuylkill River and one on the Delaware River. The three plants can treat up to 546\u00a0million gallons of water per day, while the total storage capacity of the combined plant and distribution system exceeds one billion gallons. The wastewater system consists of three water pollution control plants, 21 pumping stations, and about of sewers.\nElectricity.\nExelon subsidiary PECO Energy Company, founded as the Brush Electric Light Company of Philadelphia in 1881 and renamed Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) in 1902, provides electricity to about 1.6\u00a0million customers and more than 500,000 natural gas customers in the southeastern Pennsylvania area including the city of Philadelphia and most of its suburbs. PECO is the largest electric and natural gas utility in the state with 472 power substations and nearly of electric transmission and distribution lines and of natural gas transmission, distribution, and service lines.\nNatural gas.\nPhiladelphia Gas Works (PGW), overseen by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, is the nation's largest municipally-owned natural gas utility. PGW serves over 500,000 homes and businesses in the Philadelphia area. Founded in 1836, the company came under city ownership in 1987 and has been providing the majority of gas distributed within city limits. In 2014, the City Council refused to conduct hearings on a $1.86\u00a0billion sale of PGW, part of a two-year effort that was proposed by the mayor. The refusal led to the prospective buyer terminating its offer.\nTelecommunications.\nSoutheastern Pennsylvania was assigned the 215 area code in 1947 when the North American Numbering Plan of the Bell System went into effect. The geographic area covered by the code was split nearly in half in 1994 when area code 610 was created, with the city and its northern suburbs retaining 215. Overlay area code 267 was added to the 215 service area in 1997, and 484 was added to the 610 area in 1999. A plan in 2001 to introduce a third overlay code to both service areas, area code 445 to 215 and area code 835 to 610, was delayed and later rescinded. Area code 445 was implemented as an overlay for area codes 215 and 267 starting on February 3, 2018.\nSister cities.\nPhiladelphia also has three partnership cities or regions:\nPhiladelphia has eight official sister cities as designated by the Citizen Diplomacy International (CDI) of Philadelphia: Philadelphia has dedicated landmarks to its sister cities. The Sister Cities Park, a site of at 18th and Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Logan Square, was dedicated in June 1976. The park was built to commemorate Philadelphia's first two sister city relationships, with Tel Aviv and Florence. Toru\u0144 Triangle, honoring the sister city relationship with Toru\u0144, Poland, was constructed in 1976, west of the United Way building at 18th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Sister Cities Park was redesigned and reopened in 2012, featuring an interactive fountain honoring Philadelphia's sister and partnership cities, a caf\u00e9 and visitor center, children's play area, outdoor garden, boat pond, and a pavilion built to environmentally friendly standards.\nThe Chinatown Gate, erected in 1984 and crafted by artisans from Tianjin, stands astride 10th Street, on the north side of its intersection with Arch Street, as a symbol of the sister city relationship. The CDI of Philadelphia has participated in the U.S. Department of State's \"Partners for Peace\" project with Mosul, Iraq, and in accepting visiting delegations from dozens of other countries.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nclass=\"wikitable succession-box noprint\" style=\"margin:0.5em auto; font-size:small;clear:both;\"", "570934": "Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church\nHistoric church in Pennsylvania, United States\nThe Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is a historic church and congregation which is located at 419 South 6th Street in Center City Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The congregation, founded in 1794, is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal congregation in the nation.\nIts present church, completed in 1890, is the oldest church property in the United States to be continuously owned by African Americans. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972.\nHistory of the congregation.\nThe church was proposed in 1791 by members of the Free African Society of Philadelphia, including Absalom Jones, out of a desire to create a space for autonomous African-American worship and community in the city. The desire to create the church was strengthened in 1792, after African-American members of St. George's Methodist Church walked out due to racial segregation in the worship services. Leading roles in the founding were played by Richard Allen, who arranged the purchase of the church's site and its construction, and Absalom Jones, who raised funds among both black and white Philadelphia residents (including then-President George Washington). Mother Bethel was one of the first African-American churches in the United States, dedicated July 29, 1794, by Bishop Francis Asbury.\nOn October 12, 1794, Reverend Robert Blackwell announced that the congregation was received in full fellowship in the Methodist Episcopal Church.\nIn 1816, Rev. Richard Allen brought together other black Methodist congregations from the region to organize the new African Methodist Episcopal Church denomination. He was elected bishop of this denomination. After the American Civil War, its missionaries went to the South to help freedmen and planted many new churches in the region.\nIn 1838, the building was damaged during the riots that followed the destruction of Pennsylvania Hall.\nAllen and his wife, Sarah Allen are both buried in the present church's crypt. The current church building was constructed in 1888\u20131890, and it has been designated a National Historic Landmark.\nOn October 25, 2009, \"The Great Gathering\" took place at St. George's Church in which the community of Mother Bethel AME and St. George's congregations gathered for Sunday worship at St. George's for the first time since the historic walkout. The Rev. Dr. Mark Kelly Tyler preached for this service.\nBuilding history.\nThe property was acquired for the new congregation in 1794. Its first building was a frame structure originally used as a blacksmith's shop, which was hauled to the site.\nThis building was later replaced by frame structures in 1805 and 1841. The 1841 church was reported to have a tunnel connecting it with a nearby Quaker meetinghouse to facilitate the movements of fugitive slaves.\nThe present building, which was completed in 1890, is a three-story masonry structure with Romanesque styling. Its large round-arch windows are adorned with stained glass from Germany.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["570934", "50585", "31979"], "permutation_1": ["570934", "50585", "31979"], "permutation_2": ["570934", "31979", "50585"], "permutation_3": ["31979", "570934", "50585"]}
{"id": "3hop1__38426_91850_685675", "docs_added": {"770949": "Jorge Posada\nPuerto Rican baseball player (born 1970)\nJorge Rafael Posada Villeta (born August 17, 1970) is a Puerto Rican former professional baseball catcher who played 17 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the New York Yankees. Posada recorded a .273 batting average, 275 home runs, and 1,065 runs batted in (RBIs) during his career. A switch hitter, Posada was a five-time All-Star, won five Silver Slugger Awards, and was on the roster for four World Series championship teams.\nDrafted by the Yankees in 1990, Posada was originally an infielder before moving to catcher during his minor league career. He debuted in the major leagues in 1995, but it was not until 1998 that he found regular playing time. A solid-hitting catcher, Posada established himself as a mainstay in the Yankees lineup and as one of the \"Core Four\" players who contributed to the Yankees' winning seasons. In 2003, he finished third in voting for the American League (AL) Most Valuable Player Award and became only the second Yankees catcher after Yogi Berra to hit 30 home runs in a season. Posada added one of his best seasons in 2007 at age 37 when he batted .338. Following a stint as designated hitter in 2011, he retired.\nPosada is only the fifth MLB catcher with at least 1,500 hits, 350 doubles, 275 home runs, and 1,000 RBIs in a career. From 2000 to 2011, he compiled more RBIs and home runs than any other catcher in baseball. He is the only MLB catcher to ever bat .330 or better with 40 doubles, 20 home runs, and 90 RBIs in a single season. Away from baseball, Posada is the founder of the Jorge Posada Foundation, which is involved with research for craniosynostosis, a birth defect that impacts his son.\nEarly life and education.\nJorge Posada was born on August 17, 1970, in the Santurce district of San Juan, Puerto Rico to a Cuban father and a Dominican mother. He attended Alejandrino High School in San Juan, where he participated in several sports, including baseball. He was named to the all-star team in 1988\u201389 as a shortstop. He also umpired for the girls' softball team.\nPosada's SAT scores were not high enough for him to enroll in a four-year college. Fred Frickie, the head coach of the college baseball team at Calhoun Community College in Decatur, Alabama, recruited Posada without scouting him in 1991. Posada accepted the scholarship at Calhoun without visiting the school. He made friends on the team quickly. Posada has also spoken about the racism he encountered from classmates at the school. He was voted best hitter (1990), co-captain (1991), and selected all-conference (1991). He was inducted in the Alabama Community College Athletic Hall of Fame in 2006 and Calhoun retired his number (#6).\nProfessional career.\nDraft and minor leagues (1990\u20131996).\nPosada was drafted by the Yankees in the 24th round of the 1990 Major League Baseball draft as an infielder. Yankees scout Leon Wurth followed Posada as he played for Calhoun, and rated his bat and attitude highly. Posada signed with the Yankees for a signing bonus close to $30,000. The team agreed to keep him in their system for three years. Posada played second base in his first season with the Oneonta Yankees in the Class A-Short Season New York\u2013Penn League, in which he had a .235 batting average and four home runs in 71 games played. As the Yankees felt that Posada lacked the speed to remain an infielder, they began to transition Posada into a catcher in 1992. Though Posada initially resisted the position change, as he didn't feel able to catch full-time, he agreed. That year, he played for the Greensboro Hornets of the Class A South Atlantic League. He finished the season with a .277 batting average, 38 extra-base hits, including 12 home runs and 58 runs batted in (RBIs). He caught Andy Pettitte for the first time while they were teammates at Greensboro.\nA full-time catcher in 1993, Posada started the season with the Prince William Cannons of the Class A-Advanced Carolina League. After he hit 17 home runs and recorded 61 RBIs in 118 games for the Cannons, he was promoted to the Albany-Colonie Yankees of the Class AA Eastern League. He earned Carolina League mid-season and post-season All-Star honors. Still working on his defense, Posada committed 38 passed balls in the 1993 season, the most in the Carolina League.\nThe Yankees promoted Posada to the Columbus Clippers of the Class AAA International League in 1994. He batted .240 with 11 home runs on the year. His left leg was broken and ankle was dislocated in a home plate collision, prematurely ending his season. After recovering from the injury, Posada played for the Clippers for the majority of the 1995 season, batting .255 with eight home runs and 51 RBIs. The Yankees included Posada in trade discussions with the Seattle Mariners in their attempts to acquire Tino Martinez. Three weeks later, the Yankees attempted to trade Posada and Mariano Rivera to the Cincinnati Reds for David Wells, but that trade was not accepted. Returning to Columbus in 1996, Posada batted .271. He appeared in the 1996 Triple-A All-Star Game.\nNew York Yankees (1995\u20132011).\n1995\u20131999.\nPosada made his MLB debut with the Yankees in 1995, replacing Jim Leyritz in the ninth inning of a game on September 4, 1995. Despite his appearing in only one game during the regular season, the Yankees included Posada on their postseason roster, and he appeared in Game 2 of the 1995 American League Division Series (ALDS) as a pinch runner, scoring a run. The Yankees lost the division series in five games to the Seattle Mariners.\nPosada began the 1996 season with Columbus, but was promoted to the Yankees late in the season. He appeared in eight games, making his first start on September 25, 1996. Posada appeared in eight games in 1996, recording one hit and one walk. Posada did not appear in the postseason but the Yankees still succeeded as they defeated the Atlanta Braves in the 1996 World Series. Despite not being on the 1996 World Series or any Postseason rosters for the Yankees, Posada still received a 1996 World Series Championship ring from the Yankees.\nPosada succeeded Leyritz in 1997 as the backup catcher to Joe Girardi, with Girardi serving as a mentor to Posada. Posada was expected to appear in approximately 40 games in 1997; he started in 52. Posada appeared in 60 games during the 1997 season and batted .250 with six home runs and 25 RBIs. The Yankees made the postseason again, but the team lost in the 1997 ALDS to the Cleveland Indians. After the 1997 season, the Yankees offered Posada and Mike Lowell to the Montreal Expos for Pedro Mart\u00ednez; the Expos traded Mart\u00ednez to the Boston Red Sox, instead.\nDuring the offseason, Posada hired a personal trainer and running coach, who helped improve his physical conditioning. Going into the 1998 season, Posada pushed the Yankees to increase his playing time. Posada caught David Wells' perfect game on May 17, 1998. Overall, Posada batted .268 with 17 home runs and 63 RBIs over 111 games in the 1998 season. The Yankees reached the postseason for the fourth consecutive year and the team won the 1998 World Series in four games against the San Diego Padres.\nThe Yankees renewed Posada's contract for $350,000 for the 1999 season, less than the $650,000 he requested. Posada struggled in April, batting .146 and striking out 15 times in 46 appearances. After batting .210 at the All-Star Break, he batted .285 for the remainder of the season, ending the year with a .245 batting average, 12 home runs, and 57 RBIs. He also committed 17 passed balls. Posada played in 112 games with 379 at-bats, while Girardi played in 65 games with 209 at-bats. While Girardi began the 1999 postseason as the regular catcher, Posada saw increased playing time. The Yankees entered the postseason once again and won the 1999 World Series against the Braves in only four games.\n2000\u20132006.\nGirardi left the Yankees as a free agent after the 1999 season, and the Yankees entrusted Posada with the everyday catching job. Yankees' manager Joe Torre selected Posada for his first All-Star Game appearance that season. During the 2000 season, Posada batted .287 with 28 homers, 86 RBIs, 107 walks, and 151 strikeouts. The Yankees reached the postseason once again, and they won the 2000 World Series against the New York Mets. Posada won the Silver Slugger Award for catcher in 2000.\nPosada appeared in the 2001 MLB All-Star Game. For the season, Posada batted .277 with 22 home runs and 95 RBIs, but led the league in passed balls and errors among catchers. The Yankees entered the postseason for another shot to win a championship, but lost to the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 2001 World Series in seven games. Posada won his second consecutive Silver Slugger Award in 2001. Posada started the 2002 MLB All-Star Game. He batted .268 with 20 home runs and 99 RBIs, and grounded into an AL-leading 23 double plays. He again led all catchers in errors. The Yankees entered the postseason again but lost in the 2002 ALDS to the Anaheim Angels. Posada won a Silver Slugger Award for a third consecutive season. Posada again started at catcher in the 2003 All-Star Game. For the season, he hit 30 home runs and drove in 101 runs, both career highs. He batted .281 and was also fifth in the league in OBP (.405), and sixth in the league in walks (93; walking 17.5% of the time, a career high). He tied Yogi Berra's record for most home runs by a Yankee catcher. The Yankees again reached the postseason but lost to the Florida Marlins in the 2003 World Series. After the season, Posada won his fourth consecutive Silver Slugger Award. He finished third in the MVP voting, behind Alex Rodriguez and Carlos Delgado.\nIn 2004, Posada grounded into 24 double plays, which tied for the most in the AL, but batted .272 with 21 home runs and 81 RBIs. After defeating the Minnesota Twins in the 2004 ALDS, the Yankees lost to the Boston Red Sox in the 2004 ALCS despite leading the series three games to none. In 2005, Posada batted .262 with 19 home runs and 71 RBIs. The Yankees reached the postseason again, but lost to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in the 2005 ALDS.\nIn 2006, Posada posted his highest batting average and home run total since 2003. He also led the major leagues with 20 pinch hits. In addition, work with new first base coach Tony Pe\u00f1a, a former catcher, helped him improve his percentage of runners thrown out stealing second almost 60 points above his career average. However, he again led the league in passed balls. He batted .277 and had 23 home runs with 93 RBIs. On May 16, Posada led the Yankees to a victory despite falling behind by nine runs, matching the largest deficit the Yankees overcame for a victory in franchise history. He registered a +0.93 win probability added in that game, the highest of his career.\n2007\u20132010.\nPosada batted .338, with 20 home runs, 90 RBIs, and career highs in hits (171) and doubles (42) during the 2007 season. He joined Iv\u00e1n Rodr\u00edguez as the only two catchers in MLB history to record at least 40 doubles in two separate seasons. He finished the season third in the AL in on-base percentage (.426), fourth in batting average, sixth in on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS) (.970), and eighth in doubles and slugging percentage (.543). He finished sixth in MVP voting for the season, and won his fifth Silver Slugger Award. Posada and Jason Kendall were the only catchers to catch at least 120 games per season from 2000 through 2007. Posada became a free agent after the 2007 season. He signed a four-year, $52\u00a0million contract to remain with the Yankees. Posada was represented in negotiations by Sam and Seth Levinson of ACES Inc.\nOn July 21, 2008, Posada was placed on the disabled list (DL), the first time he was placed on the DL in his career. Posada intended to recover from this injury in order to perform as designated hitter or first baseman. However, the team decided to acquire Xavier Nady in order to allow him enough time to operate. Posada underwent surgery to repair a glenoid labrum in his right shoulder and was placed on the DL for the remainder of the 2008 season. He batted .268 with three home runs and 22 RBIs in 51 games prior to the injury. During his absence, the Yankees finished with an 89\u201373 record, third place in AL East behind the wild-card winning Boston Red Sox. It was the first and only season the Yankees were eliminated from postseason contention during Posada's career.\nPosada hit the first regular-season home run in the new Yankee Stadium on April 16, 2009, against Cliff Lee of the Cleveland Indians. During a game against the Toronto Blue Jays on September 15, 2009, Posada took exception to a pitch that was thrown behind him by Jesse Carlson. Posada walked and later scored on an RBI single by Brett Gardner. After Posada crossed home plate, he bumped into Carlson and was then ejected after taunting Carlson. Posada then charged at Carlson, igniting a bench-clearing brawl. Posada and Carlson were each suspended for three games for their roles in the brawl. Posada finished the 2009 season with a .285 batting average, 22 home runs, and 81 RBIs. During the 2009 postseason, Posada had a .276 batting average and two home runs. The Yankees won the 2009 World Series against the Philadelphia Phillies.\nIn an interleague series against the Houston Astros in June 2010, Posada became the first Yankee since Bill Dickey in 1937 to hit a grand slam in back-to-back games. On July 23, 2010, Posada recorded his 1,000th career RBI against the Kansas City Royals. Posada finished the 2010 year batting .248 with 18 home runs and 57 RBIs. The Yankees went into the postseason again but lost to the Texas Rangers in the 2010 ALCS.\n2011.\nFollowing the 2010 season, Posada underwent arthroscopic surgery in his left knee to repair a torn meniscus. Posada was shifted to designated hitter for the 2011 season due to his declining defensive performance, while Russell Martin became the new everyday catcher. After starting the 2011 season in a slump, Posada was moved to ninth in the batting order for a May 14 game against the Boston Red Sox. Posada asked to be removed from the lineup. Posada told reporters that he needed time to \"clear [his] head\" and also mentioned some \"stiffness\" in his back as the reasons for his request.\nPosada hit .382 in June, but was removed from the everyday lineup in August due to his .230 season batting average. On August 13, 2011, his first start since being benched, in a game against the Tampa Bay Rays, Posada went 3-for-5 with a grand slam and six RBIs. His grand slam was the tenth of his career, moving him past Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle for sixth place on the Yankees' all-time list. On August 25, 2011, he played second base for the first time in his major league career during the ninth inning of the Yankees' 22\u20139 victory over the Oakland Athletics; Posada recorded the final out by fielding a grounder. On September 10, 2011, Posada played as a catcher for the first time of the season due to injuries of Russell Martin and Francisco Cervelli. Posada finished the regular season with a .235 batting average, 14 home runs, and 44 RBIs.\nIn the 2011 ALDS, Posada recorded six hits, including a triple, four runs, and four walks in 14 at-bats as the starting DH, for a .429 batting average and a .579 on-base percentage. The Yankees lost the series to the Detroit Tigers in five games.\nRetirement.\nWhen asked by reporters after the 2011 ALDS if he had considered that he might have played for the final time with the Yankees, Posada said, \"I don't want to look at it like that. We lost, and we'll see what happens in the off-season.\" As the interview session went on, he eventually became emotional and left the clubhouse area to compose himself. Girardi said, \"This guy, when you look at what he did in this series, he was awesome. He's had a tremendous career, and I'm sure he's going to continue to play, and I don't know what's going to happen.\" Girardi added, \"But you talk about being proud of players\u2014what he went through this year and what he gave us in the postseason, I don't think there's a prouder moment that I've had of Jorge.\"\nBy November 2011, Posada received interest from \"five or six teams\", but not the Yankees. He remained undecided on whether or not he wanted to keep playing. In January 2012, Posada decided to retire. The Yankees held a press conference officially announcing his retirement from baseball on January 24, 2012. He rejoined the Yankees as a guest instructor during spring training in 2013.\nThe Yankees retired Posada's jersey number 20 on August 22, 2015.\nPosada became eligible for the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2017, but he received only 3.8% of the vote and was dropped off the ballot.\nPersonal life.\nPosada's mother is Dominican and his father, Jorge Posada Sr., is Cuban, but fled to Puerto Rico to escape Fidel Castro's regime. Posada Sr. worked as a scout for the Colorado Rockies. \nMajor League pitcher Bruce Brubaker married Posada's mother's sister, Leda, making him Posada's uncle. Leo Posada, who played for the Kansas City Athletics in the early 1960s, is commonly believed to have been Jorge Posada's uncle. They did enjoy a close relationship and worked together on Jorge's game over the years. However, they were at most distant kin (Leo had just one sister; Jorge Sr. was not his brother).\nPosada met Laura (n\u00e9e Mendez) at a party in 1997, soon recognizing her as the pitcher of the softball team in games he umpired. They were married on January 21, 2000. Laura, a former model and actress, works as an attorney. They have two children, Jorge Luis and Paulina. Derek Jeter served as best man at the wedding.\nPosada's son, Jorge Luis, suffers from craniosynostosis, which he was diagnosed with 10 days after he was born. Posada established the Jorge Posada Foundation, which helps fund research and offers family support. Jorge released a charity wine in 2008 called Jorge Cabernet to raise funds for his foundation. In June 2011, his son underwent what Posada hoped would be the final surgery for the condition.\nPosada wrote a children's book entitled \"Play Ball!\" that was published in 2006. He and his wife co-wrote \"Fit Home Team\", a family health manual, and an autobiography titled \"The Beauty of Love: A Memoir of Miracles, Hope, and Healing\", which describes their personal ordeals and how they dealt with them after learning of their son's birth condition in 1999.\nAfter Hurricane Maria had devastated Puerto Rico in September 2017, Posada launched a relief fundraiser. St. Louis Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina and wife, Wanda, also started a GoFundMe campaign for victims of the hurricane on September 21, 2017. By December, the fund had raised over $500,000.\nPosada is a dedicated Catholic.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3338": "The Bronx\nBorough and county in New York, United States\nThe Bronx ( ) is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the U.S. state of New York. It shares a land border with Westchester County to its north; to its south and west, the New York City borough of Manhattan is across the Harlem River; and to its south and east is the borough of Queens, across the East River. The Bronx, the only New York City borough not primarily located on an island, has a land area of and a population of 1,472,654 at the 2020 census. It has the fourth-largest area, fourth-highest population, and third-highest population density of the boroughs.\nThe Bronx is divided by the Bronx River into a hillier section in the west, and a flatter eastern section. East and west street names are divided by Jerome Avenue. The West Bronx was annexed to New York City in 1874, and the areas east of the Bronx River in 1895. Bronx County was separated from New York County (modern-day Manhattan) in 1914. About a quarter of the Bronx's area is open space, including Woodlawn Cemetery, Van Cortlandt Park, Pelham Bay Park, the New York Botanical Garden, and the Bronx Zoo in the borough's north and center. The Thain Family Forest at the New York Botanical Garden is thousands of years old and is New York City's largest remaining tract of the original forest that once covered the city. These open spaces are primarily on land reserved in the late 19th century as urban development progressed north and east from Manhattan. The Bronx is also home to Yankee Stadium of Major League Baseball.\nThe word \"Bronx\" originated with Swedish-born (or Faroese-born) Jonas Bronck, who established the first European settlement in the area as part of the New Netherland colony in 1639. European settlers displaced the native Lenape after 1643. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Bronx received many immigrant and migrant groups as it was transformed into an urban community, first from European countries particularly Ireland, Germany, Italy, and Eastern Europe, and later from the Caribbean region (particularly Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Haiti, Guyana, Jamaica, Barbados, and the Dominican Republic), and immigrants from West Africa (particularly from Ghana and Nigeria), African American migrants from the Southern United States, Panamanians, Hondurans, and South Asians.\nThe Bronx contains the poorest congressional district in the United States, New York's 15th. The borough also features upper- and middle-income neighborhoods, such as Riverdale, Fieldston, Spuyten Duyvil, Schuylerville, Pelham Bay, Pelham Gardens, Morris Park, and Country Club. Parts of the Bronx saw a steep decline in population, livable housing, and quality of life starting from the mid-to-late 1960s, continuing throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, ultimately culminating in a wave of arson in the late 1970s, a period when hip hop music evolved. The South Bronx, in particular, experienced severe urban decay. The borough began experiencing new population growth starting in the late 1990s and continuing to the present day.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nEtymology and naming.\nEarly names.\nThe Bronx was called \"\" by the native Siwanoy band of Lenape (also known historically as \"the Delawares\"), while other Native Americans knew the Bronx as \"Keskeskeck\". It was divided by the Aquahung River (now known in English as the Bronx River).\nThe Bronx was named after Jonas Bronck (c.\u20091600\u20131643), a European settler whose precise origins are disputed. Documents indicate he was a Swedish-born immigrant from Komstad, Norra Ljunga parish in Sm\u00e5land, Sweden, who arrived in New Netherland during the spring of 1639. Bronck became the first recorded European settler in the present-day Bronx and built a farm named \"Emmaus\" close to what today is the corner of Willis Avenue and 132nd Street in Mott Haven. He leased land from the Dutch West India Company on the neck of the mainland immediately north of the Dutch settlement of New Haarlem (on Manhattan Island), and bought additional tracts from the local tribes. He eventually accumulated between the Harlem River and the Aquahung, which became known as \"Bronck's River\" or \"the Bronx [River]\". Dutch and English settlers referred to the area as \"Bronck's Land\". The American poet William Bronk was a descendant of Pieter Bronck, probably Jonas Bronck's nephew or cousin, as there was an age difference of 16 years. Much work on the Swedish claim has been undertaken by Brian G. Andersson, former Commissioner of New York City's Department of Records, who helped organize a 375th Anniversary celebration in Bronck's hometown in 2014.\nUse of definite article.\nThe Bronx is referred to with the definite article as \"the Bronx\" or \"The Bronx\", both legally and colloquially. The \"County of the Bronx\" also takes \"the\" immediately before \"Bronx\" in formal references, like the coextensive \"Borough of the Bronx\". The United States Postal Service uses \"Bronx, NY\" for mailing addresses. The region was apparently named after the Bronx River and first appeared in the \"Annexed District of The Bronx\", created in 1874 out of part of Westchester County. It was continued in the \"Borough of The Bronx\", created in 1898, which included a larger annexation from Westchester County in 1895. The use of the definite article is attributed to the style of referring to rivers. A time-worn story purportedly explaining the use of the definite article in the borough's name says it stems from the phrase \"visiting the Broncks\", referring to the settler's family.\nThe capitalization of the borough's name is sometimes disputed. Generally, the definite article is lowercase in place names (\"the Bronx\") except in some official references. The definite article is capitalized (\"The Bronx\") at the beginning of a sentence or in any other situation when a normally lowercase word would be capitalized. However, some people and groups refer to the borough with a capital letter at all times, such as Bronx Borough Historian Lloyd Ultan, The Bronx County Historical Society, and the Bronx-based organization Great and Glorious Grand Army of The Bronx, arguing the definite article is part of the proper name. In particular, the Great and Glorious Grand Army of The Bronx is leading efforts to make the city refer to the borough with an uppercase definite article in all uses, comparing the lowercase article in the Bronx's name to \"not capitalizing the 's' in 'Staten Island'\".\nHistory.\nEuropean colonization of the Bronx began in 1639. The Bronx was originally part of Westchester County, but it was ceded to New York County in two major parts (West Bronx, 1874 and East Bronx, 1895) before it became Bronx County. Originally, the area was part of the Lenape's Lenapehoking territory inhabited by Siwanoy of the Wappinger Confederacy. Over time, European colonists converted the borough into farmlands.\nBefore 1914.\nThe Bronx's development is directly connected to its strategic location between New England and New York (Manhattan). Control over the bridges across the Harlem River plagued the period of British colonial rule. The King's Bridge, built in 1693 where Broadway reached the Spuyten Duyvil Creek, was a possession of Frederick Philipse, lord of Philipse Manor. Local farmers on both sides of the creek resented the tolls, and in 1759, Jacobus Dyckman and Benjamin Palmer led them in building a free bridge across the Harlem River. After the American Revolutionary War, the King's Bridge toll was abolished.\nThe territory now contained within Bronx County was originally part of Westchester County, one of the 12 original counties of the English Province of New York. The present Bronx County was contained in the town of Westchester and parts of the towns in Yonkers, Eastchester, and Pelham. In 1846, a new town was created by division of Westchester, called West Farms. The town of Morrisania was created, in turn, from West Farms in 1855. In 1873, the town of Kingsbridge was established within the former borders of the town of Yonkers, roughly corresponding to the modern Bronx neighborhoods of Kingsbridge, Riverdale, and Woodlawn Heights, and included Woodlawn Cemetery.\nAmong the famous people who settled in the Bronx during the 19th and early 20th centuries were author Willa Cather, tobacco merchant Pierre Lorillard, and inventor Jordan L. Mott, who established Mott Haven to house the workers at his iron works.\nThe consolidation of the Bronx into New York City proceeded in two stages. In 1873, the state legislature annexed Kingsbridge, West Farms, and Morrisania to New York, effective in 1874; the three towns were soon abolished in the process.\nThe whole territory east of the Bronx River was annexed to the city in 1895, three years before New York's consolidation with Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. This included the Town of Westchester (which had voted against consolidation in 1894) and parts of Eastchester and Pelham. The maritime community of City Island voted to join the city in 1896.\nFollowing these two annexations, the Bronx's territory had moved from Westchester County into New York County, which already included Manhattan and the rest of pre-1874 New York City.\nOn January 1, 1898, the consolidated City of New York was born, including the Bronx as one of the five distinct boroughs. However, it remained part of New York County until Bronx County was created in 1914.\nOn April 19, 1912, those parts of New York County which had been annexed from Westchester County in previous decades were newly constituted as Bronx County, the 62nd and last county to be created by the state, effective in 1914. Bronx County's courts opened for business on January 2, 1914 (the same day that John P. Mitchel started work as Mayor of New York City). Marble Hill, Manhattan, was now connected to the Bronx by filling in the former waterway, but it is not part of the borough or county.\nAfter 1914.\nThe history of the Bronx during the 20th century may be divided into four periods: a boom period during 1900\u20131929, with a population growth by a factor of six from 200,000 in 1900 to 1.3\u00a0million in 1930. The Great Depression and post World War II years saw a slowing of growth leading into an eventual decline. The mid to late century were hard times, as the Bronx changed during 1950\u20131985 from a predominantly moderate-income to a predominantly lower-income area with high rates of violent crime and poverty in some areas. The Bronx has experienced an economic and developmental resurgence starting in the late 1980s that continues into today.\nNew York City expands.\nThe Bronx was a mostly rural area for many generations, with small farms supplying the city markets. In the late 19th century, however, it grew into a railroad suburb. Faster transportation enabled rapid population growth in the late 19th century, involving the move from horse-drawn street cars to elevated railways and the subway system, which linked to Manhattan in 1904.\nThe South Bronx was a manufacturing center for many years and was noted as a center of piano manufacturing in the early part of the 20th century. In 1919, the Bronx was the site of 63 piano factories employing more than 5,000 workers.\nAt the end of World War I, the Bronx hosted the rather small 1918 World's Fair at 177th Street and DeVoe Avenue.\nThe Bronx underwent rapid urban growth after World War I. Extensions of the New York City Subway contributed to the increase in population as thousands of immigrants came to the Bronx, resulting in a major boom in residential construction. Among these groups, many Irish Americans, Italian Americans, and especially Jewish Americans settled here. In addition, French, German, Polish, and other immigrants moved into the borough. As evidence of the change in population, by 1937, 592,185 Jews lived in the Bronx (43.9% of the borough's population), while only 54,000 Jews lived in the borough in 2011. Many synagogues still stand in the Bronx, but most have been converted to other uses.\nChange.\nBootleggers and gangs were active in the Bronx during Prohibition (1920\u20131933). Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Polish gangs smuggled in most of the illegal whiskey, and the oldest sections of the borough became poverty-stricken. Police Commissioner Richard Enright said that speakeasies provided a place for \"the vicious elements, bootleggers, gamblers and their friends in all walks of life\" to cooperate and to \"evade the law, escape punishment for their crimes, [and] to deter the police from doing their duty\".\nBetween 1930 and 1960, moderate and upper income Bronxites (predominantly non-Hispanic Whites) began to relocate from the borough's southwestern neighborhoods. This migration has left a mostly poor African American and Hispanic (largely Puerto Rican) population in the West Bronx. One significant factor that shifted the racial and economic demographics was the construction of Co-op City, built to house middle-class residents in family-sized apartments. The high-rise complex played a significant role in draining middle-class residents from older tenement buildings in the borough's southern and western fringes. Most predominantly non-Hispanic White communities today are in the eastern and northwestern sections of the borough.\nFrom the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, the quality of life changed for some Bronx residents. Historians and social scientists have suggested many factors, including the theory that Robert Moses' Cross Bronx Expressway destroyed existing residential neighborhoods and created instant slums, as put forward in Robert Caro's biography \"The Power Broker\". Another factor in the Bronx's decline may have been the development of high-rise housing projects, particularly in the South Bronx. Yet another factor may have been a reduction in the real estate listings and property-related financial services offered in some areas of the Bronx, such as mortgage loans or insurance policies\u2014a process known as redlining. Others have suggested a \"planned shrinkage\" of municipal services, such as fire-fighting. There was also much debate as to whether rent control laws had made it less profitable (or more costly) for landlords to maintain existing buildings with their existing tenants than to abandon or destroy those buildings.\nIn the 1970s, parts of the Bronx were plagued by a wave of arson. The burning of buildings was predominantly in the poorest communities, such as the South Bronx. One explanation of this event was that landlords decided to burn their low property-value buildings and take the insurance money, as it was easier for them to get insurance money than to try to refurbish a dilapidated building or sell a building in a severely distressed area. The Bronx became identified with a high rate of poverty and unemployment, which was mainly a persistent problem in the South Bronx. There were cases where tenants set fire to the building they lived in so they could qualify for emergency relocations by city social service agencies to better residences, sometimes being relocated to other parts of the city.\nOut of 289 census tracts in the Bronx borough, 7 tracts lost more than 97% of their buildings to arson and abandonment between 1970 and 1980; another 44 tracts had more than 50% of their buildings meet the same fate. By the early 1980s, the Bronx was considered the most blighted urban area in the country, particularly the South Bronx which experienced a loss of 60% of the population and 40% of housing units. However, starting in the 1990s, many of the burned-out and run-down tenements were replaced by new housing units.\nIn May 1984, New York Supreme Court justice Peter J. McQuillan ruled that Marble Hill, Manhattan, was simultaneously part of the Borough of Manhattan (not the Borough of the Bronx) and part of Bronx County (not New York County) and the matter was definitively settled later that year when the New York Legislature overwhelmingly passed legislation declaring the neighborhood part of both New York County and the Borough of Manhattan and made this clarification retroactive to 1938, as reflected on the official maps of the city.\nRevitalization.\nSince the late 1980s, significant development has occurred in the Bronx, first stimulated by the city's \"Ten-Year Housing Plan\" and community members working to rebuild the social, economic and environmental infrastructure by creating affordable housing. Groups affiliated with churches in the South Bronx erected the Nehemiah Homes with about 1,000 units. The grass roots organization Nos Quedamos' endeavor known as Melrose Commons began to rebuild areas in the South Bronx. The IRT White Plains Road Line ( 2 and \u200b 5 trains) began to show an increase in riders. Chains such as Marshalls, Staples, and Target opened stores in the Bronx. More bank branches opened in the Bronx as a whole (rising from 106 in 1997 to 149 in 2007), although not primarily in poor or minority neighborhoods, while the Bronx still has fewer branches per person than other boroughs.\nIn 1997, the Bronx was designated an \"All America City\" by the National Civic League, acknowledging its comeback from the decline of the mid-century. In 2006, \"The New York Times\" reported that \"construction cranes have become the borough's new visual metaphor, replacing the window decals of the 1980s in which pictures of potted plants and drawn curtains were placed in the windows of abandoned buildings.\" The borough has experienced substantial new building construction since 2002. Between 2002 and June 2007, 33,687 new units of housing were built or were under way and $4.8\u00a0billion has been invested in new housing. In the first six months of 2007 alone total investment in new residential development was $965\u00a0million and 5,187 residential units were scheduled to be completed. Much of the new development is springing up in formerly vacant lots across the South Bronx.\nIn addition there came a revitalization of the existing housing market in areas such as Hunts Point, the Lower Concourse, and the neighborhoods surrounding the Third Avenue Bridge as people buy apartments and renovate them. Several boutique and chain hotels opened in the 2010s in the South Bronx.\nNew developments are underway. The Bronx General Post Office on the corner of the Grand Concourse and East 149th Street is being converted into a market place, boutiques, restaurants and office space with a USPS concession. The Kingsbridge Armory, often cited as the largest armory in the world, is currently slated for redevelopment.\nUnder consideration for future development is the construction of a platform over the New York City Subway's Concourse Yard adjacent to Lehman College. The construction permitted approximately of development and cost US$.\nDespite significant investment compared to the post war period, many exacerbated social problems remain including high rates of violent crime, substance abuse, overcrowding, and substandard housing conditions. The Bronx has the highest rate of poverty in New York City, and the greater South Bronx is the poorest area.\nGeography.\nLocation and physical features.\nAccording to the U.S. Census Bureau, Bronx County has a total area of , of which is land and (27%) is water.\nThe Bronx is New York City's northernmost borough, New York State's southernmost mainland county and the only part of New York City that is almost entirely on the North American mainland, unlike the other four boroughs that are either islands or located on islands. The bedrock of the West Bronx is primarily \"Fordham gneiss\", a high-grade heavily banded metamorphic rock containing significant amounts of pink feldspar. Marble Hill \u2013 politically part of Manhattan but now physically attached to the Bronx \u2013 is so-called because of the formation of Inwood marble there as well as in Inwood, Manhattan, and parts of the Bronx and Westchester County.\nThe Hudson River separates the Bronx on the west from Alpine, Tenafly and Englewood Cliffs in Bergen County, New Jersey; the Harlem River separates it from the island of Manhattan to the southwest; the East River separates it from Queens to the southeast; and to the east, Long Island Sound separates it from Nassau County in western Long Island. Directly north of the Bronx are (from west to east) the adjoining Westchester County communities of Yonkers, Mount Vernon, Pelham Manor and New Rochelle. There is also a short southern land boundary with Marble Hill in the Borough of Manhattan, over the filled-in former course of the Spuyten Duyvil Creek; Marble Hill's postal ZIP code, telephonic area codes and fire service, however, are shared with the Bronx and not Manhattan.\nThe Bronx River flows south from Westchester County through the borough, emptying into the East River; it is the only entirely freshwater river in New York City. It separates the West Bronx from the schist of the East Bronx. A smaller river, the Hutchinson River (named after the religious leader Anne Hutchinson, killed along its banks in 1641), passes through the East Bronx and empties into Eastchester Bay.\nThe Bronx also includes several small islands in the East River and Long Island Sound, such as City Island and Hart Island. Rikers Island in the East River, home to the large jail complex for the entire city, is also part of the Bronx.\nThe Bronx's highest elevation at is in the northwest corner, west of Van Cortlandt Park and in the Chapel Farm area near the Riverdale Country School. The opposite (southeastern) side of the Bronx has four large low peninsulas or \"necks\" of low-lying land that jut into the waters of the East River and were once salt marsh: Hunt's Point, Clason's Point, Screvin's Neck and Throggs Neck. Further up the coastline, Rodman's Neck lies between Pelham Bay Park in the northeast and City Island. The Bronx's irregular shoreline extends for .\nParks and open space.\nAlthough Bronx County was the third most densely populated county in the United States in 2022 (after Manhattan and Brooklyn), of the Bronx\u2014about one fifth of the Bronx's area, and one quarter of its land area\u2014is given over to parkland. The vision of a system of major Bronx parks connected by park-like thoroughfares is usually attributed to John Mullaly.\nWoodlawn Cemetery, located on and one of the largest cemeteries in New York City, sits on the western bank of the Bronx River near Yonkers. It opened in 1863, in what was then the town of Yonkers, at the time a rural area. Since the first burial in 1865, more than 300,000 people have been interred there.\nThe borough's northern side includes the largest park in New York City\u2014Pelham Bay Park, which includes Orchard Beach\u2014and the third-largest, Van Cortlandt Park, which is west of Woodlawn Cemetery and borders Yonkers. Also in the northern Bronx, Wave Hill, the former estate of George W. Perkins\u2014known for a historic house, gardens, changing site-specific art installations and concerts\u2014overlooks the New Jersey Palisades from a promontory on the Hudson in Riverdale. Nearer the borough's center, and along the Bronx River, is Bronx Park; its northern end houses the New York Botanical Gardens, which preserve the last patch of the original hemlock forest that once covered the county, and its southern end the Bronx Zoo, the largest urban zoological gardens in the United States. In 1904 the Chestnut Blight pathogen (\"Cryphonectria parasitica\") was found for the first time outside of Asia, at the Bronx Zoo. Over the next 40 years it spread throughout eastern North America and killed back essentially every American Chestnut (\"Castanea dentata\"), causing ecological and economic devastation.\nJust south of Van Cortlandt Park is the Jerome Park Reservoir, surrounded by of stone walls and bordering several small parks in the Bedford Park neighborhood; the reservoir was built in the 1890s on the site of the former Jerome Park Racetrack. Further south is Crotona Park, home to a lake, 28 species of trees, and a large swimming pool. The land for these parks, and many others, was bought by New York City in 1888, while land was still open and inexpensive, in anticipation of future needs and future pressures for development.\nSome of the acquired land was set aside for the Grand Concourse and Pelham Parkway, the first of a series of boulevards and parkways (thoroughfares lined with trees, vegetation and greenery). Later projects included the Bronx River Parkway, which developed a road while restoring the riverbank and reducing pollution, Mosholu Parkway and the Henry Hudson Parkway.\nIn 2006, a five-year, $220-million program of capital improvements and natural restoration in 70 Bronx parks was begun (financed by water and sewer revenues) as part of an agreement that allowed a water filtration plant under Mosholu Golf Course in Van Cortlandt Park. One major focus is on opening more of the Bronx River's banks and restoring them to a natural state.\nAdjacent counties.\nThe Bronx adjoins:\nDivisions of the Bronx.\nRegional divisions.\nThere are two primary systems for dividing the Bronx into regions, which do not necessarily agree with one another. One system is based on the Bronx River, while the other strictly separates South Bronx from the rest of the borough.\nThe Bronx River divides the borough nearly in half, putting the earlier-settled, more urban, and hillier sections in the western lobe and the newer, more suburban coastal sections in the eastern lobe. It is an accurate reflection on the Bronx's history considering that the towns that existed in the area prior to annexation to the City of New York generally did not straddle the Bronx River. In addition, what is today the Bronx was annexed to New York City in two stages: areas west of the Bronx River were annexed in 1874 while areas to the east of the river were annexed in 1895.\nUnder this system, the Bronx can be further divided into the following regions:\nA second system divides the borough first and foremost into the following sections:\nNeighborhoods.\nThe number, locations, and boundaries of the Bronx's neighborhoods (many of them sitting on the sites of 19th-century villages) have become unclear with time and successive waves of newcomers. Even city officials do not necessarily agree. In a 2006 article for \"The New York Times\", Manny Fernandez described the disagreement:\nAccording to a Department of City Planning map of the city's neighborhoods, the Bronx has 49. The map publisher Hagstrom identifies 69. The borough president, Adolfo Carri\u00f3n Jr., says 61. The Mayor's Community Assistance Unit, in a listing of the borough's community boards, names 68.\nMajor neighborhoods of the Bronx include the following.\nEast Bronx.\nEast of the Bronx River, the borough is relatively flat and includes four large low peninsulas, or 'necks,' of low-lying land which jut into the waters of the East River and were once saltmarsh: Hunts Point, Clason's Point, Screvin's Neck (Castle Hill Point) and Throgs Neck. The East Bronx has older tenement buildings, low income public housing complexes, and multifamily homes, as well as single family homes. It includes New York City's largest park: Pelham Bay Park along the Westchester-Bronx border.\nNeighborhoods include: Clason's Point, Harding Park, Soundview, Castle Hill, Parkchester \"(Community District 9)\"; Throggs Neck, Country Club, City Island, Pelham Bay, Edgewater Park, Co-op City \"(Community District 10)\"; Westchester Square, Van Nest, Pelham Parkway, Morris Park \"(Community District 11)\"; Williamsbridge, Eastchester, Baychester, Edenwald and Wakefield \"(Community District 12)\".\nCity Island and Hart Island.\nCity Island is east of Pelham Bay Park in Long Island Sound and is known for its seafood restaurants and private waterfront homes. City Island's single shopping street, City Island Avenue, is reminiscent of a small New England town. It is connected to Rodman's Neck on the mainland by the City Island Bridge.\nEast of City Island is Hart Island, which is uninhabited and not open to the public. It once served as a prison and now houses New York City's potter's field for unclaimed bodies.\nWest Bronx.\nThe western parts of the Bronx are hillier and are dominated by a series of parallel ridges, running south to north. The West Bronx has older apartment buildings, low income public housing complexes, multifamily homes in its lower income areas as well as larger single family homes in more affluent areas such as Riverdale and Fieldston. It includes New York City's third-largest park: Van Cortlandt Park along the Westchester-Bronx border. The Grand Concourse, a wide boulevard, runs through it, north to south.\nNorthwestern Bronx.\nNeighborhoods include: Fordham-Bedford, Bedford Park, Norwood, Kingsbridge Heights \"(Community District 7)\", Kingsbridge, Riverdale \"(Community District 8)\", and Woodlawn Heights \"(Community District 12)\".\nSouth Bronx.\nLike other neighborhoods in New York City, the South Bronx has no official boundaries. The name has been used to represent poverty in the Bronx and is applied to progressively more northern places so that by the 2000s, Fordham Road was often used as a northern limit. The Bronx River more consistently forms an eastern boundary. The South Bronx has many high-density apartment buildings, low income public housing complexes, and multi-unit homes. The South Bronx is home to the Bronx County Courthouse, Borough Hall, and other government buildings, as well as Yankee Stadium. The Cross Bronx Expressway bisects it, east to west. The South Bronx has some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country, as well as very high crime areas.\nNeighborhoods include: The Hub (a retail district at Third Avenue and East 149th Street), Port Morris, Mott Haven \"(Community District 1)\", Melrose \"(Community District 1 & Community District 3)\", Morrisania, East Morrisania [also known as Crotona Park East] \"(Community District 3)\", Hunts Point, Longwood \"(Community District 2)\", Highbridge, Concourse \"(Community District 4)\", West Farms, Belmont, East Tremont \"(Community District 6)\", Tremont, Morris Heights \"(Community District 5)\", University Heights. \"(Community District 5 & Community District 7)\".\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nRace, ethnicity, language, and immigration.\n2018 estimates.\nThe borough's most populous racial group, White, declined from 99.3% in 1920 to 14.9% in 2018.\nThe Bronx has 532,487 housing units, with a median value of $371,800, and with an owner-occupancy rate of 19.7%, the lowest of the five boroughs. There are 495,356 households, with 2.85 persons per household. 59.3% of residents speak a language besides English at home, the highest rate of the five boroughs.\nIn the Bronx, the population is 7.2% under 5, 17.6% 6\u201318, 62.4% 19\u201364, and 12.8% over 65. 52.9% of the population is female. 35.3% of residents are foreign born.\nThe per capita income is $19,721, while the median household income is $36,593, both being the lowest of the five boroughs. 27.9% of residents live below the poverty line, the highest of the five boroughs.\n2010 census.\nAccording to the 2010 Census, 53.5% of Bronx's population was of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin (they may be of any race); 30.1% non-Hispanic Black or African American, 10.9% of the population was non-Hispanic White, 3.4% non-Hispanic Asian, 1.2% of two or more races (non-Hispanic), and 0.6% from some other race (non-Hispanic).\nAs of 2010, 46.29% (584,463) of Bronx residents aged five and older spoke Spanish at home, while 44.02% (555,767) spoke English, 2.48% (31,361) African languages, 0.91% (11,455) French, 0.90% (11,355) Italian, 0.87% (10,946) various Indic languages, 0.70% (8,836) other Indo-European languages, and Chinese was spoken at home by 0.50% (6,610) of the population over the age of five. In total, 55.98% (706,783) of the Bronx's population age five and older spoke a language at home other than English. A Garifuna-speaking community from Honduras and Guatemala also makes the Bronx its home.\n2009 community survey.\nThe Bronx is the only New York City borough with a Hispanic majority, many of whom are Puerto Ricans and Dominicans. According to the 2009 American Community Survey, Black Americans were the second largest racial/ethnic group in the Bronx. Black people of both Hispanic and non-Hispanic origin represented over one-third (35.4%) of the Bronx's population. Black people of non-Hispanic origin made up 30.8% of the population. Over 495,200 Black people resided in the borough, of whom 87% were non-Hispanic. Over 61,000 people identified themselves as Sub-Saharan African in the survey, making up 4.4% of the population.\nMultiracial Americans are also a sizable minority in the Bronx. People of multiracial heritage number over 41,800 individuals and represent 3.0% of the population. People of mixed African American and European American heritage number over 6,850 members and form 0.5% of the population. People of mixed Native American and European heritage number over 2,450 members and form 0.2% of the population. People of mixed Asian and European heritage number over 880 members and form 0.1% of the population. People of mixed African American and Native American heritage number over 1,220 members and form 0.1% of the population.\nOut of all five boroughs, the Bronx has the lowest number and proportion of white residents. As of 2009, White Americans of both Hispanic and non-Hispanic origin represented over one-fifth (22.9%) of the Bronx's population, or 320,640 people. Non-Hispanic White people accounted for one-eighth of the population (12.1%, or 168,570 12.1%). This is in contrast to a century ago, when almost all Bronx residents were white (99.3% in 1920). That share fell to about one-third by 1980 (34.4%). As of 2009, White Americans of both Hispanic and non-Hispanic origin represented one-fifth (22.9%) of the Bronx's population, but counting non-Hispanic White people the proportion was under one-eighth (12.1%). The majority of the non-Hispanic European American population is of Italian and Irish descent. People of Italian descent numbered over 55,000 individuals and made up 3.9% of the population. People of Irish descent numbered over 43,500 individuals and made up 3.1% of the population. German Americans and Polish Americans made up 1.4% and 0.8% of the population respectively. The Bronx has the largest Albanian community in the United States. As of 2018, non-Hispanic White people account for about one in seven residents (14.9% in 2018).\nOlder estimates.\nThe census of 1930 counted only 1.0% (12,930) of the Bronx's population as Negro (while making no distinct counts of Hispanic or Spanish-surname residents).\nPopulation and housing.\nAs of the 2010 census, there were 1,385,108 people living in the Bronx, a 3.9% increase since 2000.\nAs of the 2000 United States census, there were 1,332,650 people, 463,212 households, and 314,984 families residing in the borough. The population density was . There were 490,659 housing units at an average density of . Census estimates place total population of Bronx county at 1,392,002 as of 2012.\nThere were 463,212 households, out of which 38.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 31.4% were married couples living together, 30.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.0% were non-families. 27.4% of all households were made up of individuals, and 9.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.78 and the average family size was 3.37.\nThe age distribution of the population in the Bronx were as follows: 29.8% under the age of 18, 10.6% from 18 to 24, 30.7% from 25 to 44, 18.8% from 45 to 64, and 10.1% 65 years of age or older. The median age was 31 years. For every 100 females, there were 87.0 males.\nIndividual and household income.\nThe 1999 median income for a household in the borough was $27,611, and the median family income was $30,682. Men had a median income of $31,178 versus $29,429 for women. The per capita income for the borough was $13,959. About 28.0% of families and 30.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 41.5% of those under age 18 and 21.3% of those age 65 or over. More than half of the neighborhoods in the Bronx are high poverty or extreme poverty areas.\nFrom 2015 census data, the median income for a household was (in 2015 dollars) $34,299. Per capita income in past 12 months (in 2015 dollars): $18,456 with persons in poverty at 30.3%. Per the 2016 Census data, the median income for a household was $35,302. Per capita income was cited at $18,896.\nCulture and institutions.\nSports.\nThe Bronx is the home of the New York Yankees\u2014nicknamed \"the Bronx Bombers\"\u2014of Major League Baseball. The Yankees have won 27 World Series titles, more than any other team, and their roster has featured players like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle.\nWhen the team's original Yankee Stadium opened in 1923, it was the largest baseball park. The field also hosted college football games, and was the home of two National Football League teams, the New York Yankees (1926\u20131929) and the New York Giants (1956\u20131973). In 2008, the park was replaced with the current Yankee Stadium.\nThe Bronx additionally hosts the only Major League Soccer team in the five boroughs, the New York City FC, which also plays in Yankee Stadium. Part of the New York City Marathon travels through the Bronx, including the notoriously difficult Mile 20. From 1889 to 1904, the borough used to have a horse racing facility, the Morris Park Racecourse. In its later years, the course was used for motor racing: a new land speed record was reached on the track. College teams in the Bronx include the Fordham Rams and the Lehman Lightning.\nMusic.\nThe Bronx has had a long association with music. In the early 20th century, it was a center for the evolution of Latin jazz. The Bronx Opera was established in 1967.\nIn the 1970s, The Bronx was strongly associated with the development of hip hop music. One of the genre's pioneers, DJ Kool Herc, held parties in the community room of an apartment building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, where he experimented with turntablist techniques such as mixing and scratching of funk records, as well as rapping during extended instrumentals. Other significant Bronx DJs from this period include Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa. In addition, The Bronx was important for drill culture by raising rappers such as Kay Flock, Sha EK and many others.\nOff-Off-Broadway.\nThe Bronx is home to several Off-Off-Broadway theaters, many staging new works by immigrant playwrights from Latin America and Africa. The Pregones Theater, which produces Latin American work, opened a new 130-seat theater in 2005 on Walton Avenue in the South Bronx. Some artists from elsewhere in New York City have begun to converge on the area, and housing prices have nearly quadrupled in the area since 2002. However, rising prices directly correlate to a housing shortage across the city and the entire metro area.\nArts.\nThe Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, founded in 1998 by Arthur Aviles and Charles Rice-Gonzalez, provides dance, theatre and art workshops, festivals and performances focusing on contemporary and modern art in relation to race, gender and sexuality. It is home to the Arthur Aviles Typical Theatre, a contemporary dance company, and the Bronx Dance Coalition. The academy was formerly in the American Bank Note Company Building before relocating to a venue on the grounds of St. Peter's Episcopal Church.\nThe Bronx Museum of the Arts, founded in 1971, exhibits 20th century and contemporary art through its central museum space and of galleries. Many of its exhibitions are on themes of special interest to the Bronx. Its permanent collection features more than 800 works of art, primarily by artists from Africa, Asia and Latin America, including paintings, photographs, prints, drawings, and mixed media. The museum was temporarily closed in 2006 while it underwent an expansion designed by the architectural firm Arquitectonica that would double the museum's size to .\nThe Bronx has also become home to a peculiar poetic tribute in the form of the \"Heinrich Heine Memorial\", better known as the Lorelei Fountain. After Heine's German birthplace of D\u00fcsseldorf had rejected, allegedly for antisemitic motives, a centennial monument to the radical German-Jewish poet (1797\u20131856), his incensed German-American admirers, including Carl Schurz, started a movement to place one instead in Midtown Manhattan, at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street. However, this intention was thwarted by a combination of ethnic antagonism, aesthetic controversy and political struggles over the institutional control of public art. In 1899, the memorial by Ernst Gustav Herter was placed in Joyce Kilmer Park, near the Yankee Stadium. In 1999, it was moved to 161st Street and the Concourse.\nMaritime heritage.\nThe peninsular borough's maritime heritage is acknowledged in several ways. The City Island Historical Society and Nautical Museum occupies a former public school designed by the New York City school system's turn-of-the-last-century master architect C. B. J. Snyder. The state's Maritime College in Fort Schuyler (on the southeastern shore) houses the Maritime Industry Museum. In addition, the Harlem River is reemerging as \"Scullers' Row\" due in large part to the efforts of the Bronx River Restoration Project, a joint public-private endeavor of the city's parks department. Canoeing and kayaking on the borough's namesake river have been promoted by the Bronx River Alliance. The river is also straddled by the New York Botanical Gardens, its neighbor, the Bronx Zoo, and a little further south, on the west shore, Bronx River Art Center.\nCommunity celebrations.\n\"Bronx Week\", traditionally held in May, began as a one-day celebration. Begun by Bronx historian Lloyd Ultan and supported by then borough president Robert Abrams, the original one-day program was based on the \"Bronx Borough Day\" festival which took place in the 1920s. The following year, at the height of the decade's civil unrest, the festival was extended to a one-week event. In the 1980s the key event, the \"Bronx Ball\", was launched. The week includes the Bronx Week Parade as well as inductions into the \"Bronx Walk of Fame\".\nVarious Bronx neighborhoods conduct their own community celebrations. The Arthur Avenue \"Little Italy\" neighborhood conducts an annual Autumn Ferragosto Festival that celebrates Italian culture. Hunts Point hosts an annual \"Fish Parade and Summer Festival\" at the start of summer. Edgewater Park hosts an annual \"Ragamuffin\" children's walk in November. There are several events to honor the borough's veterans. Albanian Independence Day is also observed.\nThere are also parades to celebrate Dominican, Italian, and Irish heritage.\nPress and broadcasting.\nThe Bronx is home to several local newspapers and radio and television studios.\nNewspapers.\nThe Bronx has several local newspapers, including The Bronx Daily, \"The Bronx News\", \"Parkchester News\", \"City News\", \"The Norwood News\", \"The Riverdale Press\", \"Riverdale Review\", \"The Bronx Times Reporter\", and \"Co-op City Times\". Four non-profit news outlets, \"Norwood News\", \"Mount Hope Monitor\", \"Mott Haven Herald\" and \"The Hunts Point Express\" serve the borough's poorer communities. The editor and co-publisher of \"The Riverdale Press\", Bernard Stein, won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing for his editorials about Bronx and New York City issues in 1998. (Stein graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1959.)\nThe Bronx once had its own daily newspaper, \"The Bronx Home News\", which started publishing on January 20, 1907, and merged into the \"New York Post\" in 1948. It became a special section of the \"Post\", sold only in the Bronx, and eventually disappeared from view.\nRadio and television.\nOne of New York City's major non-commercial radio broadcasters is WFUV, a National Public Radio-affiliated 50,000-watt station broadcasting from Fordham University's Rose Hill campus in the Bronx. The radio station's antenna was relocated to the top of an apartment building owned by Montefiore Medical Center, which expanded the reach of the station's signal.\nThe City of New York has an official television station run by NYC Media and broadcasting from Bronx Community College, and Cablevision operates News 12 The Bronx, both of which feature programming based in the Bronx. Co-op City was the first area in the Bronx, and the first in New York beyond Manhattan, to have its own cable television provider. The local public-access television station BronxNet originates from Herbert H. Lehman College, the borough's only four year CUNY school, and provides government-access television (GATV) public affairs programming in addition to programming produced by Bronx residents.\nEconomy.\nShopping malls and markets in the Bronx include:\nShopping districts.\nProminent shopping areas in the Bronx include Fordham Road, Bay Plaza in Co-op City, The Hub, the Riverdale/Kingsbridge shopping center, and Bruckner Boulevard. Shops are also concentrated on streets aligned underneath elevated railroad lines, including Westchester Avenue, White Plains Road, Jerome Avenue, Southern Boulevard, and Broadway. The Bronx Terminal Market contains several big-box stores, which opened in 2009 south of Yankee Stadium.\nThe Bronx has three primary shopping centers: The Hub, Gateway Center and Southern Boulevard. The Hub\u2013Third Avenue Business Improvement District (B.I.D.), in The Hub, is the retail heart of the South Bronx, where four roads converge: East 149th Street, Willis, Melrose and Third Avenues. It is primarily inside the neighborhood of Melrose but also lines the northern border of Mott Haven. The Hub has been called \"the Broadway of the Bronx\", being likened to the real Broadway in Manhattan and the northwestern Bronx. It is the site of both maximum traffic and architectural density. In configuration, it resembles a miniature Times Square, a spatial \"bow-tie\" created by the geometry of the street. The Hub is part of Bronx Community Board 1.\nThe Bronx Terminal Market, in the West Bronx, formerly known as Gateway Center, is a shopping center that encompasses less than one million square feet of retail space, built on a site that formerly held a wholesale fruit and vegetable market also named Bronx Terminal Market as well as the former Bronx House of Detention, south of Yankee Stadium. The $500\u00a0million shopping center, which was completed in 2009, saw the construction of new buildings and two smaller buildings, one new and the other a renovation of an existing building that was part of the original market. The two main buildings are linked by a six-level garage for 2,600 cars. The center's design has earned it a LEED \"Silver\" designation.\nGovernment and politics.\nLocal government.\nSince New York City's consolidation in 1898, the New York City Charter that provides for a \"strong\" mayor\u2013council system has governed the Bronx. The centralized New York City government is responsible for public education, correctional institutions, libraries, public safety, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply, and welfare services in the Bronx.\nThe office of Borough President was created in the consolidation of 1898 to balance centralization with local authority. Each borough president had a powerful administrative role derived from having a vote on the New York City Board of Estimate, which was responsible for creating and approving the city's budget and proposals for land use. In 1989 the Supreme Court of the United States declared the Board of Estimate unconstitutional on the grounds that Brooklyn, the most populous borough, had no greater effective representation on the Board than Staten Island, the least populous borough, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause pursuant to the high court's 1964 \"one man, one vote\" decision.\nSince 1990 the Borough President has acted as an advocate for the borough at the mayoral agencies, the City Council, the New York state government, and corporations.\nUntil March 1, 2009, the Borough President of the Bronx was Adolfo Carri\u00f3n Jr., elected as a Democrat in 2001 and 2005 before retiring early to direct the White House Office of Urban Affairs Policy. His successor, Democratic New York State Assembly member Rub\u00e9n D\u00edaz, Jr. \u2014 after winning a special election on April 21, 2009, by a vote of 86.3% (29,420) on the \"Bronx Unity\" line to 13.3% (4,646) for the Republican district leader Anthony Ribustello on the \"People First\" line, \u2014 became Borough President on May 1, 2009. In 2021, Rub\u00e9n D\u00edaz's Democratic successor, Vanessa Gibson was elected (to begin serving in 2022) with 79.9% of the vote against 13.4% for Janell King (Republican) and 6.5% for Sammy Ravelo (Conservative).\nAll of the Bronx's currently elected public officials have first won the nomination of the Democratic Party (in addition to any other endorsements). Local party platforms center on affordable housing, education and economic development. Controversial political issues in the Bronx include environmental issues, the cost of housing, and annexation of parkland for new Yankee Stadium.\nSince its separation from New York County on January 1, 1914, the Bronx, has had, like each of the other 61 counties of New York State, its own criminal court system and District Attorney, the chief public prosecutor who is directly elected by popular vote. Darcel D. Clark has been the Bronx County District Attorney since 2016. Her predecessor was Robert T. Johnson, the District Attorney from 1989 to 2015. He was the first African-American District Attorney in New York State.\nThe Bronx also has twelve Community Boards, appointed bodies that advise on land use and municipal facilities and services for local residents, businesses and institutions.\nPolitics.\nAfter becoming a separate county in 1914, the Bronx has supported only two Republican presidential candidates. It voted heavily for the winning Republican Warren G. Harding in 1920, but much more narrowly on a split vote for his victorious Republican successor Calvin Coolidge in 1924 (Coolidge 79,562; John W. Davis, Dem., 72,834; Robert La Follette, 62,202 equally divided between the Progressive and Socialist lines).\nSince then, the Bronx has always supported the Democratic Party's nominee for president, starting with a vote of 2\u20131 for the unsuccessful Al Smith in 1928, followed by four 2\u20131 votes for the successful Franklin D. Roosevelt. (Both had been Governors of New York, but Republican former Gov. Thomas E. Dewey won only 28% of the Bronx's vote in 1948 against 55% for Pres. Harry Truman, the winning Democrat, and 17% for Henry A. Wallace of the Progressives. It was only 32 years earlier, by contrast, that another Republican former Governor who narrowly lost the Presidency, Charles Evans Hughes, had won 42.6% of the Bronx's 1916 vote against Democratic President Woodrow Wilson's 49.8% and Socialist candidate Allan Benson's 7.3%.) Donald Trump improved on the Republican Party's performance from a historic low of 8% in 2012 to 27% in 2024 over the course of his three runs for president, the highest for Republicans since 1984.\nFederal Representatives.\nAs of 2025, four Democrats represented the Bronx in the United States House of Representatives:\nElections for Mayor of New York.\nThe Bronx has often shown striking differences from other boroughs in elections for Mayor. The only Republican to carry the Bronx since 1914 was Fiorello La Guardia in 1933, 1937, and 1941 (and in the latter two elections, only because his 30% to 32% vote on the American Labor Party line was added to 22% to 23% as a Republican). The Bronx was thus the only borough not carried by the successful Republican re-election campaigns of Mayors Rudy Giuliani in 1997 and Michael Bloomberg in 2005. The anti-war Socialist campaign of Morris Hillquit in the 1917 mayoral election won over 31% of the Bronx's vote, putting him second and well ahead of the 20% won by the incumbent pro-war Fusion Mayor John Purroy Mitchel, who came in second (ahead of Hillquit) everywhere else and outpolled Hillquit citywide by 23.2% to 21.7%.\nEducation.\nEducation in the Bronx is provided by a large number of public and private institutions, many of which draw students who live beyond the Bronx. The New York City Department of Education manages the borough's public noncharter schools. In 2000, public schools enrolled nearly 280,000 of the Bronx's residents over three years old (out of 333,100 enrolled in all pre-college schools). There are also several public charter schools. Private schools range from elite independent schools to religiously affiliated schools run by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and Jewish organizations.\nA small portion of land between Pelham and Pelham Bay Park, with 35 houses, is a part of the Bronx, but is cut off from the rest of the borough due to the county boundaries; the New York City government pays for the residents' children to go to Pelham Union Free School District schools, including Pelham Memorial High School, since that is more cost effective than sending school buses to take the students to New York City schools. This arrangement has been in place since 1948.\nEducational attainment.\nIn 2000, according to the United States census, out of the nearly 800,000 people in the Bronx who were then at least 25 years old, 62.3% had graduated from high school and 14.6% held a bachelor's or higher college degree. These percentages were lower than those for New York's other boroughs, which ranged from 68.8% (Brooklyn) to 82.6% (Staten Island) for high school graduates over 24, and from 21.8% (Brooklyn) to 49.4% (Manhattan) for college graduates. (The respective state and national percentages were \"[NY]\" 79.1% & 27.4% and \"[US]\" 80.4% & 24.4%.)\nHigh schools.\nIn the 2000 Census, 79,240 of the nearly 95,000 Bronx residents enrolled in high school attended public schools.\nMany public high schools are in the borough including the elite Bronx High School of Science, Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music, DeWitt Clinton High School, High School for Violin and Dance, Bronx Leadership Academy 2, Bronx International High School, the School for Excellence, the Morris Academy for Collaborative Study, Wings Academy for young adults, The Bronx School for Law, Government and Justice, Validus Preparatory Academy, The Eagle Academy For Young Men, Bronx Expeditionary Learning High School, Bronx Academy of Letters, Herbert H. Lehman High School and High School of American Studies. The Bronx is also home to three of New York City's most prestigious private, secular schools: Fieldston, Horace Mann, and Riverdale Country School.\nHigh schools linked to the Catholic Church include: St. Raymond Academy for Girls, All Hallows High School, Fordham Preparatory School, Monsignor Scanlan High School, St. Raymond High School for Boys, Cardinal Hayes High School, Cardinal Spellman High School, The Academy of Mount Saint Ursula, Aquinas High School, Preston High School, St. Catharine Academy, Mount Saint Michael Academy, and St. Barnabas High School.\nThe SAR Academy and SAR High School are Modern Orthodox Jewish Yeshiva coeducational day schools in Riverdale, with roots in Manhattan's Lower East Side.\nIn the 1990s, New York City began closing the large, public high schools in the Bronx and replacing them with small high schools. Among the reasons cited for the changes were poor graduation rates and concerns about safety. Schools that have been closed or reduced in size include John F. Kennedy, James Monroe, Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson, Evander Childs, Christopher Columbus, Morris, Walton, and South Bronx High Schools.\nColleges and universities.\nIn 2000, 49,442 (57.5%) of the 86,014 Bronx residents seeking college, graduate or professional degrees attended public institutions.\nSeveral colleges and universities are in the Bronx.\nFordham University was founded as St. John's College in 1841 by the Diocese of New York as the first Catholic institution of higher education in the northeast. It is now officially an independent institution, but strongly embraces its Jesuit heritage. The Bronx campus, known as Rose Hill, is the main campus of the university, and is among the largest within the city (other Fordham campuses are in Manhattan and Westchester County).\nThree campuses of the City University of New York are in the Bronx: Hostos Community College, Bronx Community College (occupying the former University Heights Campus of New York University) and Herbert H. Lehman College (formerly the uptown campus of Hunter College), which offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees.\nThe College of Mount Saint Vincent is a Catholic liberal arts college in Riverdale under the direction of the Sisters of Charity of New York. Founded in 1847 as a school for girls, the academy became a degree-granting college in 1911 and began admitting men in 1974. The school serves 1,600 students. Its campus is also home to the Academy for Jewish Religion, a transdenominational rabbinical and cantorial school.\nManhattan University is a Catholic college in Riverdale which offers undergraduate programs in the arts, business, education, engineering, and science. It also offers graduate programs in education and engineering.\nAlbert Einstein College of Medicine, part of the Montefiore Medical Center, is in Morris Park.\nThe coeducational and non-sectarian Mercy University\u2014with its main campus in Dobbs Ferry\u2014has a Bronx campus near Westchester Square.\nThe State University of New York Maritime College in Fort Schuyler (Throggs Neck)\u2014at the far southeastern tip of the Bronx\u2014is the national leader in maritime education and houses the Maritime Industry Museum. (Directly across Long Island Sound is Kings Point, Long Island, home of the United States Merchant Marine Academy and the American Merchant Marine Museum.) As of 2017, graduates from the university earned an average annual salary of $144,000, the highest of any university graduates in the United States.\nIn addition, the private, proprietary Monroe College, focused on preparation for business and the professions, started in the Bronx in 1933 and now has a campus in New Rochelle (Westchester County) as well the Bronx's Fordham neighborhood.\nTransportation.\nRoads and streets.\nSurface streets.\nThe Bronx street grid is irregular. Like the northernmost part of upper Manhattan, the West Bronx's hilly terrain leaves a relatively free-style street grid. Much of the West Bronx's street numbering carries over from upper Manhattan, but does not match it exactly; East 132nd Street is the lowest numbered street in the Bronx. This dates from the mid-19th century when the southwestern area of Westchester County west of the Bronx River, was incorporated into New York City and known as the Northside.\nThe East Bronx is considerably flatter, and the street layout tends to be more regular. Only the Wakefield neighborhood picks up the street numbering, albeit at a misalignment due to Tremont Avenue's layout. At the same diagonal latitude, West 262nd Street in Riverdale matches East 237th Street in Wakefield.\nThree major north\u2013south thoroughfares run between Manhattan and the Bronx: Third Avenue, Park Avenue, and Broadway. Other major north\u2013south roads include the Grand Concourse, Jerome Avenue, Sedgwick Avenue, Webster Avenue, and White Plains Road. Major east-west thoroughfares include Mosholu Parkway, Gun Hill Road, Fordham Road, Pelham Parkway, and Tremont Avenue.\nMost east\u2013west streets are prefixed with either \"East\" or \"West\", to indicate on which side of Jerome Avenue they lie (continuing the similar system in Manhattan, which uses Fifth Avenue as the dividing line).\nThe historic Boston Post Road, part of the long pre-revolutionary road connecting Boston with other northeastern cities, runs east\u2013west in some places, and sometimes northeast\u2013southwest.\nMosholu and Pelham Parkways, with Bronx Park between them, Van Cortlandt Park to the west and Pelham Bay Park to the east, are also linked by bridle paths.\nAs of the 2000 Census, approximately 61.6% of all Bronx households do not have access to a car. Citywide, the percentage of autoless households is 55%.\nHighways.\nSeveral major limited access highways traverse the Bronx. These include:\nBridges and tunnels.\nThirteen bridges and three tunnels connect the Bronx to Manhattan, and three bridges connect the Bronx to Queens. These are, from west to east:\n\"To Manhattan:\" the Spuyten Duyvil Bridge, the Henry Hudson Bridge, the Broadway Bridge, the University Heights Bridge, the Washington Bridge, the Alexander Hamilton Bridge, the High Bridge, the Concourse Tunnel, the Macombs Dam Bridge, the 145th Street Bridge, the 149th Street Tunnel, the Madison Avenue Bridge, the Park Avenue Bridge, the Lexington Avenue Tunnel, the Third Avenue Bridge (southbound traffic only), and the Willis Avenue Bridge (northbound traffic only).\n\"To both Manhattan and Queens:\" the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, formerly known as the Triborough Bridge.\n\"To Queens:\" the Bronx\u2013Whitestone Bridge and the Throgs Neck Bridge.\nMass transit.\nThe Bronx is served by seven New York City Subway services along six physical lines, with 70 stations in the Bronx:\nThere are also many MTA Regional Bus Operations bus routes in the Bronx. This includes local and express routes as well as Bee-Line Bus System routes.\nTwo Metro-North Railroad commuter rail lines (the Harlem Line and the Hudson Line) serve 11 stations in the Bronx. (Marble Hill, between the Spuyten Duyvil and University Heights stations, is actually in the only part of Manhattan connected to the mainland.) In addition, some trains serving the New Haven Line stop at Fordham Plaza. As part of Penn Station Access, the 2018 MTA budget funded construction of four new stops along the New Haven Line to serve Hunts Point, Parkchester, Morris Park, and Co-op City.\nIn 2018, NYC Ferry's Soundview line opened, connecting the Soundview landing in Clason Point Park to three East River locations in Manhattan. On December 28, 2021; the Throgs Neck Ferry landing at Ferry Point Park in Throgs Neck was opened providing an additional stop on the Soundview line. The ferry is operated by Hornblower Cruises.\nIn popular culture.\nFilm and television.\nMid-20th century.\nMid-20th century movies set in the Bronx portrayed densely settled, working-class, urban culture. \"From This Day Forward\" (1946), set in Highbridge, occasionally delved into Bronx life. The most notable examinations of working class Bronx life were Paddy Chayefsky's Academy Award-winning \"Marty\" and his 1956 film \"The Catered Affair.\" Other films that portrayed life in the Bronx are: the 1993 Robert De Niro/Chazz Palminteri film, \"A Bronx Tale\", Spike Lee's 1999 movie \"Summer of Sam\", which focused on an Italian-American Bronx community in the 1970s, 1994's \"I Like It Like That\" which takes place in the predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood of the South Bronx, and \"Doughboys\", the story of two Italian-American brothers in danger of losing their bakery thanks to one brother's gambling debts.\nThe Bronx's gritty urban life had worked its way into the movies even earlier, with depictions of the \"Bronx cheer\", a loud flatulent-like sound of disapproval, allegedly first made by New York Yankees fans. The sound can be heard, for example, on the Spike Jones and His City Slickers recording of \"Der Fuehrer's Face\" (from the 1942 Disney animated film of the same name), repeatedly lambasting Adolf Hitler with: \"We'll Heil! (Bronx cheer) Heil! (Bronx cheer) Right in Der Fuehrer's Face!\"\nSymbolism.\nStarting in the 1970s, the Bronx often symbolized violence, decay, and urban ruin. The wave of arson in the South Bronx in the 1960s and 1970s inspired the observation that \"The Bronx is burning\": in 1974 it was the title of both an editorial in \"The New York Times\" and a BBC documentary film. The line entered the pop-consciousness with Game Two of the 1977 World Series, when a fire broke out near Yankee Stadium as the team was playing the Los Angeles Dodgers. As the fire was captured on live television, announcer Howard Cosell is wrongly remembered to have said something like, \"There it is, ladies and gentlemen: the Bronx is burning\". Historians of New York City often point to Cosell's remark as an acknowledgement of both the city and the borough's decline. A feature-length documentary film by Edwin Pag\u00e1n called \"Bronx Burning\" chronicled what led up to the many arson-for-insurance fraud fires of the 1970s in the borough.\nBronx gang life was depicted in the 1974 novel \"The Wanderers\" by Bronx native Richard Price and the 1979 movie of the same name. They are set in the heart of the Bronx, showing apartment life and the then-landmark Krums ice cream parlor. In the 1979 film \"The Warriors\", the eponymous gang go to a meeting in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, and have to fight their way out of the borough and get back to Coney Island in Brooklyn. \"A Bronx Tale\" (1993) depicts gang activities in the Belmont \"Little Italy\" section of the Bronx. The 2005 video game adaptation features levels called Pelham, Tremont, and \"Gunhill\" (a play off the name Gun Hill Road). This theme lends itself to the title of \"The Bronx Is Burning\", an eight-part ESPN TV mini-series (2007) about the New York Yankees' drive to winning baseball's 1977 World Series. The TV series emphasizes the team's boisterous nature, led by manager Billy Martin, catcher Thurman Munson and outfielder Reggie Jackson, as well as the malaise of the Bronx and New York City in general during that time, such as the blackout, the city's serious financial woes and near bankruptcy, the arson for insurance payments, and the election of Ed Koch as mayor.\nThe 1981 film \"Fort Apache, The Bronx\" is another film that used the Bronx's gritty image for its storyline. The movie's title is from the nickname for the 41st Police Precinct in the South Bronx which was nicknamed \"Fort Apache\". Also from 1981 is the horror film \"Wolfen\" making use of the rubble of the Bronx as a home for werewolf type creatures. \"Knights of the South Bronx\", a true story of a teacher who worked with disadvantaged children, is another film also set in the Bronx released in 2005. The Bronx was the setting for the 1983 film \"Fuga dal Bronx\", also known as \"Bronx Warriors 2\" and \"Escape 2000\", an Italian B-movie best known for its appearance on the television series \"Mystery Science Theater 3000\". The plot revolves around a sinister construction corporation's plans to depopulate, destroy and redevelop the Bronx, and a band of rebels who are out to expose the corporation's murderous ways and save their homes. The film is memorable for its almost incessant use of the phrase, \"Leave the Bronx!\" Many of the movie's scenes were filmed in Queens, substituting as the Bronx. \"Rumble in the Bronx\", filmed in Vancouver, was a 1995 Jackie Chan kung-fu film, another which popularized the Bronx to international audiences. \"Last Bronx\", a 1996 Sega game played on the bad reputation of the Bronx to lend its name to an alternate version of post-Japanese bubble Tokyo, where crime and gang warfare is rampant. The 2016 Netflix series \"The Get Down\" is based on the development of hip hop in 1977 in the South Bronx.\nLiterature.\nBooks.\nThe Bronx has been featured significantly in fiction literature. All of the characters in Herman Wouk's (1948) live in the Bronx, and about half of the action is set there. Kate Simon's \"Bronx Primitive: Portraits of a Childhood\" (1982) is directly autobiographical, a warm account of a Polish-Jewish girl in an immigrant family growing up before World War II, and living near Arthur Avenue and Tremont Avenue. In Jacob M. Appel's short story, \"The Grand Concourse\" (2007), a woman who grew up in the iconic Lewis Morris Building returns to the Morrisania neighborhood with her adult daughter. Similarly, in Avery Corman's book \"The Old Neighborhood\" (1980), an upper-middle class white protagonist returns to his birth neighborhood (Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse), and learns that even though the folks are poor, Hispanic and African-American, they are good people.\nBy contrast, Tom Wolfe's \"Bonfire of the Vanities\" (1987) portrays a wealthy, white protagonist, Sherman McCoy, getting lost off the Bruckner Expressway in the South Bronx and having an altercation with locals. A substantial piece of the last part of the book is set in the resulting riotous trial at the Bronx County Courthouse. However, times change, and in 2007, \"The New York Times\" reported that \"the Bronx neighborhoods near the site of Sherman's accident are now dotted with townhouses and apartments.\" In the same article, the Reverend Al Sharpton (whose fictional analogue in the novel is \"Reverend Bacon\") asserts that \"twenty years later, the cynicism of \"The Bonfire of the Vanities\" is as out of style as Tom Wolfe's wardrobe.\"\nDon DeLillo's \"Underworld\" (1997) is also set in the Bronx and offers a perspective on the area from the 1950s onward.\nPoetry.\nIn poetry, the Bronx has been immortalized by one of the world's shortest couplets:\n<poem style=\"margin-left: 2em;\">The Bronx?\nNo Thonx\n Ogden Nash, \"The New Yorker\", 1931</poem>\nNash repented 33 years after his calumny, penning the following poem to the dean of faculty at Bronx Community College in 1964:\n<poem style=\"margin-left: 2em;\">\nI wrote those lines, \"The Bronx? No thonx\";\nI shudder to confess them.\nNow I'm an older, wiser man\nI cry, \"The Bronx? God bless them!\"</poem>\nIn 2016, W. R. Rodriguez published \"Bronx Trilogy\"\u2014consisting of \"the shoe shine parlor poems et al.\", \"concrete pastures of the beautiful bronx\", and \"from the banks of brook avenue\". The trilogy celebrates Bronx people, places, and events. DeWitt Clinton High School, St. Mary's Park, and Brook Avenue are a few of the schools, parks, and streets Rodriguez uses as subjects for his poems.\nNash's couplet \"The Bronx? No Thonx\" and his subsequent blessing are mentioned in \"Bronx Accent: A Literary and Pictorial History of the Borough\", edited by Lloyd Ultan and Barbara Unger and published in 2000. The book, which includes the work of Yiddish poets, offers a selection from Allen Ginsberg's \"Kaddish\", as his Aunt Elanor and his mother, Naomi, lived near Woodlawn Cemetery. Also featured is Ruth Lisa Schecther's poem, \"Bronx\", which is described as a celebration of the borough's landmarks. There is a selection of works from poets such as Sandra Mar\u00eda Esteves, Milton Kessler, Joan Murray, W. R. Rodriguez, Myra Shapiro, Gayl Teller, and Terence Wynch.\n\"Bronx Migrations\" by Michelle M. Tokarczyk is a collection that spans five decades of Tokarczyk's life in the Bronx, from her exodus in 1962 to her return in search of her childhood tenement.\nBronx Memoir Project.\n\"\" is a published anthology by the Bronx Council on the Arts and brought forth through a series of workshops meant to empower Bronx residents and shed the stigma on the Bronx's burning past. The Bronx Memoir Project was created as an ongoing collaboration between the Bronx Council on the Arts and other cultural institutions, including the Bronx Documentary Center, the Bronx Library Center, the (Edgar Allan) Poe Park Visitor Center, Mindbuilders, and other institutions and funded through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The goal was to develop and refine memoir fragments written by people of all walks of life that share a common bond residing within the Bronx.\nTheater.\nClifford Odets's play \"Awake and Sing!\" is set in 1933 in the Bronx. The play, first produced at the Belasco Theater in 1935, concerns a poor family living in small quarters, the struggles of the controlling parents and the aspirations of their children.\nRen\u00e9 Marqu\u00e9s' \"The Oxcart\" (1959) concerns a rural Puerto Rican family who immigrate to the Bronx for a better life.\n\"A Bronx Tale\" is an autobiographical one-man show written and performed by Chazz Palminteri. It is a coming-of-age story set in the Bronx. It premiered in Los Angeles in the 1980s and then played on Off-Broadway. After a film version involving Palminteri and Robert De Niro, Palminteri performed his one-man show on Broadway and on tour in 2007.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "22146637": "Yankee Stadium\nBaseball stadium in the Bronx, New York City\nYankee Stadium is a baseball stadium located in the Bronx in New York City. It is the home field of Major League Baseball\u2019s New York Yankees and New York City FC of Major League Soccer.\nThe stadium opened in April 2009, replacing the original Yankee Stadium that operated from 1923 to 2008; it is situated on the former site of Macombs Dam Park, one block north of the original stadium's site. The new Yankee Stadium replicates design elements of the original Yankee Stadium, including its exterior and trademark frieze, while incorporating larger spaces and modern amenities. It has the sixth-largest seating capacity among the 30 stadiums of Major League Baseball.\nConstruction on the stadium began in August 2006, and the project spanned many years and faced many controversies, including the high public cost and the loss of public park land. The $2.3 billion stadium was built with $1.2 billion in public subsidies and is one of the most expensive stadiums ever built.\nYankee Stadium hosted the 2009 and 2024 World Series. Yankee Stadium became the home field of the MLS expansion club New York City FC in 2014, which is owned by City Football Group and the Yankees. It will be an interim venue for the club until Etihad Park is constructed in Willets Point and opens in 2027. It has also occasionally hosted college football games, including the annual Pinstripe Bowl, concerts, and other athletic and entertainment events.\nHistory.\nPlanning.\nNew York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner began campaigning for a new stadium in the early 1980s, just a few years after the remodeled Yankee Stadium opened. Steinbrenner at the time was reportedly considering a move to the Meadowlands Sports Complex in New Jersey. New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean in 1984 authorized the use of land for a new baseball stadium in the Meadowlands, but the state legislature did not provide financing for the stadium. In a statewide referendum in 1987, New Jersey taxpayers rejected $185 million in public financing for a baseball stadium for the Yankees. Despite the rejection from New Jersey, Steinbrenner frequently threatened to move as leverage in negotiations with New York City.\nIn 1988, Mayor Ed Koch agreed to have city taxpayers spend $90 million on a second renovation of Yankee Stadium that included luxury boxes and restaurants inside the stadium and parking garages and traffic improvements outside. Steinbrenner agreed in principle, but then backed out of the deal. In 1993, Mayor David Dinkins expanded on Koch's proposal by offering his Bronx Center vision for the neighborhood, including new housing, a new courthouse, and relocating the Police Academy nearby.\nIn 1993, New York Governor Mario Cuomo proposed using the West Side Yard, a rail yard along the West Side of Manhattan and owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, as the location for a new stadium for the Yankees. However, Cuomo lost his re-election bid a few months later. By 1995, Steinbrenner had rejected 13 proposals to keep the Yankees in the Bronx.\nIn 1998, Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer proposed spending $600 million in public money to add dozens of luxury boxes to the stadium, to improve highway and public transportation access, and to create a Yankee Village, with shops, restaurants, and a museum. Steinbrenner rejected this as well. That same year, Mayor Rudy Giuliani unveiled a plan to relocate the Yankees to the West Side Yard for a $1 billion stadium. However, with most of the funding coming from taxpayers, Giuliani tabled the proposal, fearing rejection in a citywide referendum. The West Side Stadium plan resurfaced in December 2001, and by January 2002, months after the September 11 attacks, Giuliani announced \"tentative agreements\" for both the New York Yankees and New York Mets to build new stadiums. He estimated that both stadiums would cost $2 billion, with city and state taxpayers contributing $1.2 billion.\nMichael Bloomberg, who succeeded Giuliani as mayor in 2002, called the former mayor's agreements \"corporate welfare\" and exercised the escape clause in the agreements to back out of both deals, saying that the city could not afford to build new stadiums for the Yankees and Mets. Bloomberg said that Giuliani had inserted a clause in this deal that loosened the teams' leases with the city and would allow the Yankees and Mets to leave the city on 60 days' notice to find a new home elsewhere if the city backed out of the agreement. At the time, Bloomberg said that publicly funded stadiums were a poor investment. Bloomberg's blueprint for the stadium was unveiled in 2004, at the same time as the plan for the Mets' new stadium, Citi Field. The final cost for the two stadiums was more than $3.1 billion; taxpayer subsidies accounted for $1.8 billion.\nConstruction.\nGroundbreaking ceremonies for the stadium took place on August 16, 2006, the 58th anniversary of Babe Ruth's death, with Steinbrenner, Bloomberg, and then-Governor of New York George Pataki among the notables donning Yankees hard hats and wielding ceremonial shovels to mark the occasion. The Yankees continued to play in the previous Yankee Stadium during the 2007 and 2008 seasons while their new home stadium was built across the street. The community was left without parkland for five years.\nDuring construction of the new stadium, a construction worker and avid Boston Red Sox fan buried a replica jersey of Red Sox player David Ortiz underneath the visitors' dugout with the objective of placing a \"hex\" on the Yankees, much like the \"Curse of the Bambino\" that had allegedly plagued the Red Sox long after trading Ruth to the Yankees. After the worker was exposed by co-workers, he was forced to help exhume the jersey. The Yankees organization then donated the retrieved jersey to the Jimmy Fund, a charity started in 1948 by the Red Sox' National League rivals, the Boston Braves, but long championed by the Red Sox and particularly associated with Ted Williams. The worker has since claimed to have buried a 2004 American League Championship Series program/scorecard, but has not said where he placed it. These attempts did not have much effect upon the home team, though: the Yankees went on to win the 2009 World Series at the end of their first MLB season in the new stadium.\nFeatures.\nThe new stadium is meant to evoke elements of the original Yankee Stadium, both in its original 1923 state and its post-renovation state in 1976. The exterior resembles the original look of the 1923 Yankee Stadium. The interior, a modern ballpark with greater space and increased amenities, features a playing field that closely mimics the 1988\u20132008 dimensions of the old stadium. The current stadium features 4,300 club seats and 68 luxury suites.\nDesign and layout.\nThe stadium was designed by the architectural firm Populous. The exterior was made from 11,000 pieces of Indiana limestone, along with granite and pre-cast concrete. The limestone is from the same quarry that produced the limestone for the Empire State Building. It features the building's name V-cut and gold-leaf lettered above each gate. The interior of the stadium is adorned with hundreds of photographs capturing the history of the Yankees. The \"New York Daily News\" newspaper partnered with the Yankees for the exhibition \"The Glory of the Yankees Photo Collection\", which was selected from the \"Daily News\"' collection of over 2,000 photographs. Sports & The Arts was hired by the Yankees to curate the nearly 1,300 photographs that adorn the building from sources including the \"Daily News\", Getty Images, the Baseball Hall of Fame and Major League Baseball.\nThe seats are laid out similar to the original Yankee Stadium's stands, with grandstand seating that stretches beyond the foul poles, as well as bleacher seats beyond the outfield fences. The Field Level and Main Level constitute the lower bowl, with suites on the H&R Block Level, and the Upper Level and Grandstand Level constituting the upper bowl. Approximately <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />2\u20443 of the stadium's seating is in the lower bowl, the inverse from the original Yankee Stadium. 50,287 fans can be seated, with a standing room capacity of 52,325. The new stadium's seating is spaced outward in a bowl, unlike the stacked-tiers design at the old stadium. This design places most fans farther back but lower to the field, by about an average of . Over 56 suites are located within the ballpark, triple the amount from the previous stadium. Seats are wide, up from the previous stadium's wide seats, while there is of leg room, up from of leg room in the previous stadium. Many lower-level seats are cushioned, while all seats are equipped with cupholders. To allow for the extra seating space, the stadium's capacity is reduced by more than 4,000 seats in comparison to the previous stadium.\nMany design elements of the ballpark's interior are inspired by the original Yankee Stadium. The roof of the new facility features a replica of the frieze that was a trademark of the previous ballpark. In the original Yankee Stadium, a copper frieze originally lined the roof of the upper deck stands, but it was torn down during the 1974\u201375 renovations and replicated atop the wall beyond the bleachers. The new stadium replicates the frieze in its original location along the upper deck stands. Made of steel coated with zinc for rust protection, it is part of the support system for the cantilevers holding up the top deck and the lighting on the roof. The wall beyond the bleacher seats is \"cut out\" to reveal the 4 subway trains as they pass by, like they were in the original facility. A manually operated auxiliary scoreboard was built into the left and right field fences, in the same locations it existed in the pre-renovation iteration of the original Yankee Stadium. They were removed in favor of digital advertising signage prior to the 2022 season.\nBetween the exterior perimeter wall and interior of the stadium is the \"Great Hall\", a large open air concourse that runs between Gates 4 and 6. With seven-story ceilings, the Great Hall is the largest open air public entry way at any sports venue in the world and features more than of retail space and is lined with 20 banners of past and present Yankees superstars. The Great Hall features a LED (light-emitting diode) ribbon display as well as a 25' by 36' LED video display above the entrance to the ballpark from Daktronics, a company in Brookings, South Dakota.\nMonument Park, which features the Yankees' retired numbers, as well as monuments and plaques dedicated to distinguished Yankees, has been moved from its location beyond the left field fences in the original Yankee Stadium to its new location beyond the center field fences at the new facility. Monument Park is now situated under the sports bar; black shades cover the monuments on the back wall during games to prevent interference with the vision of the batter. The new location of the monuments is meant to mirror their original placement in center field at the original pre-renovation Yankee Stadium, albeit when they were on the playing field. The transfer of Monument Park from the old stadium to the new stadium began on November 10, 2008. The first monuments were put in place on February 23, 2009. Yankees pitcher Mariano Rivera requested that the Yankees reposition the team's bullpen, as well as add a door to connect the Yankees' bullpen to Monument Park, in order to allow access to it by Yankee relievers. The organization complied with his request.\nField dimensions and playing surface.\nThe field dimensions for the large outfield fences have the same distance markers as the original facility prior to closing yet the dimensions are not identical. Due to the design of the right-field stands and the inclusion of an embedded manual scoreboard, the right-field wall is an average of closer to home plate. Overall, the fences measure to left field, to left-center field, to center field, to right-center field, and to right field. At the old Yankee Stadium, the right field wall curved from the right-field corner to straightaway center, while at the new ballpark the fence takes a sharp, almost entirely straight angle. This results in a difference at certain points between the right field markers of as much as . The dimensions in left field are substantially the same despite the presence of an embedded auxiliary scoreboard there as well. All these differences make the current Yankee Stadium more hitter-friendly to right field than the original one.\nThe outfield fences measure high from the left-field foul pole until the Yankees' bullpen, when the fences begin to gradually descend in height until the right field foul pole, where they are tall. This also marks a decrease from the previous Yankee Stadium, where the right field wall stood at a height of approximately . The distance from home plate to the backstop is , a reduction of from the previous facility. The field is made up of Kentucky bluegrass, the same surface as the previous stadium, which is grown on a farm in Bridgeton, New Jersey. The grass is equipped with a drainage system (featuring over of pipe) that makes the field playable an hour after taking of rain.\nComparison with the 1923 stadium.\n\"Source:\" New York Yankees\nAmenities and facilities.\nYankee Stadium features a wide array of amenities. It contains 63% more space, more in total, than the previous stadium, with wider concourses and open sight lines on concourses. Along with of wired Ethernet cable, the building has sufficient fiber-optic cable wiring that Cisco Vice President and Treasurer David Holland calls the building \"future proof\". Over 1,100 HD video monitors are placed within the stadium and approximately $10 million worth of baseball merchandise is housed within the ballpark.\nThe center field scoreboard, manufactured by Mitsubishi Diamond Vision, measures 59 x and offers of viewing area. It was the third-largest HD scoreboard in the world when it opened (behind the board at newly renovated Kauffman Stadium and the new board at the renovated Tokyo Racecourse). Since then, it has also been surpassed by what was the world's largest scoreboard at AT&T Stadium and the new scoreboard at the Philadelphia Phillies' Citizens Bank Park. Displaying of video, the scoreboard can display four 1080p HD images simultaneously.\nThe Yankees clubhouse features 30,000 square feet (2,880 m2) of space, over 2.5 times the space of the clubhouse from the previous facility. The dressing area alone features of space, with each locker equipped with a safety deposit box and touch-screen computer. The Yankees clubhouse features a weight room, training room, video room, and lounge area, while both teams' clubhouses have their own indoor batting cages. The Yankees' therapy room features a hydrotherapy pool with an underwater treadmill. The Yankees are believed to be the first team to chemically treat their uniforms, as well as the showering surfaces with an anti-bacterial agent that reduces the risk of infection.\nThe New York Yankees Museum, located on the lower level at Gate 6, displays a wide range of Yankees' memorabilia. A \"Ball Wall\" features hundreds of balls autographed by past and present Yankees, and there are plans to eventually add autographs for every living player who has played for the Yankees. The centerpiece of the museum is a tribute to Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series, with a commemorative home plate in the floor and statues of Larsen pitching to Yogi Berra. Along with a facsimile of a current locker from the Yankees' clubhouse, fans can view the locker of the late Thurman Munson, which sat unoccupied in the previous stadium's Yankee clubhouse in honor of Munson.\nFood At The Stadium.\nThe ballpark offers a wide choice of restaurants. There are 25 fixed concessions stands, along with 112 movable ones. A Hard Rock Cafe is located within the ballpark, but it is open to anyone at the 161st St. and River Ave. entrance year round. The Hard Rock Cafe at Yankee Stadium officially opened on March 30, 2009, and an opening ceremony took place on April 2, 2009. A steakhouse called NYY Steak is located beyond right field..Celebrity chefs will occasionally make appearances at the ballpark's restaurants and help prepare food for fans in premium seating over the course of the season. Above Monument Park is the Center Field Sports Bar, whose tinted black glass acts as the ballpark's batter's eye. The MasterCard Batters Eye Deck which is located above centerfield serves as a large space that can hold 250 guests. This location is the perfect spot for a variety of actives such as picnics, brunches, and autographing sessions while there is an amazing view of the stadium, \nPartners.\nYankee stadium has a variety of different returning partners who help to supply the fans with the best experience possible for food. These partners consist of; \nThere are new partners for the stadium such as; \nThe operations for food at the stadium are ran by Legends Hospitality, which is operated by the Executive Chef Robert Flowers who is currently in his second year running the stadium menu. At all of the restaurants or \"Main Plates\" you will be able to find a variety of traditional and signature dishes to the stadium. There are a lot of options for everybody at the stadium with some of the options being burgers and sandwiches, halal, BBQ, Italian food, deserts and more. The stadium also offers vegetarian options. Yankee stadium was ranked the 7th best ball park to eat at and overall 9/10 in comparison to the other stadiums in the MLB. Next is a list of some of the signature food items offered at yankee stadium and where to find them; \nPublic opinion.\nOpening and public perception.\nAlthough Yankee Stadium has been praised for its amenities, it also has been widely criticized for high ticket prices. Seats within the first eight rows in the lower bowl, called the \"Legends Suite\", are among the highest-priced tickets in professional sports. Tickets cost $510 on average; the most expensive tickets cost $2,600 each. Legends Suite Seats have been regularly empty, with many ticket holders in this section having given up their tickets, and others remaining unsold, despite most other seats in the ballpark selling out. This has created an embarrassing image on television of the seats behind home plate being almost completely vacant. Consequently, a surplus of tickets for Legends Seats have emerged in the secondary market, and with supply exceeding demand, resale prices have dropped. Empty seats in the Legends Suite could even be seen during the 2009 playoffs, including World Series games. Even though all playoff games were sellouts, Legends Suite ticket holders were in the lounges and the restaurant underneath instead of their seats. Overall, the average ticket price is $63, the highest in baseball.\nLegends Suite seats are also separate from the other lower bowl seating and are vigorously patrolled by stadium security, with the divider being described as a \"concrete moat.\" Fans who do not have tickets within this premium section in the front rows are not allowed in the section. This includes standing behind the dugouts during batting practice and to seek autographs. The least expensive seats, the bleachers, initially left many fans disappointed, as the indoor club seating area in center field obstructed the views from bleacher seats on both sides in sections 201 and 239. These severely obstructed sections would ultimately be removed during the 2016\u20132017 off-season in favor of outdoor bars and patio called Franks Red Hot Terrace in left center and Toyota Terrace in right center. These new areas are complete with standing terraces accessible to all ticket holders, in addition to replacing the seating on top of the center field club with standing terraces, drastically reducing the number of obstructed views from center field in the process.\nThe Yankee Stadium staff was also criticized for an incident during a May 4, 2009 game, which was interrupted by a rain delay. Fans were told by some staff members that the game was unlikely to resume and consequently, many fans exited the stadium, only for the game to eventually resume play. The fans that left the ballpark were not permitted to re-enter, per the stadium's re-entry policy, and many subsequently got into arguments with stadium personnel. In response to the backlash the Yankees received for the incident, the staff members were required to sign a gag order preventing them from speaking to media, but they did indicate that communication for rain delays would be improved.\nLate in the stadium's first season, cracks were seen on the concrete ramps of the Stadium. The Yankees are trying to determine whether there was something wrong with the concrete, or the ramps' installation or design. The company involved in inspecting the concrete was indicted on charges that its employees either faked or failed to perform some required tests and falsified the results of others.\nThe stadium has also been criticized for its lack of fan noise. During a \"Sunday Night Baseball\" telecast in 2012, commentator and former Red Sox manager Terry Francona spoke about the different atmospheres in the old and new stadiums saying that \"As a visiting team, especially for the Red Sox, by the time the (national) anthem was over, you couldn't wait to get back in the dugout. Now (there is) a little different (kind) of fan sitting around down there by the dugout.\" Games at the new stadium do not feature the same deafening crowd moments and often sound eerily silent. The lack of fan noise was noticeable in the 2012 playoffs as well, with thousands of unsold seats for Game 5 of the ALDS and Games 1 and 2 of the ALCS. \"This is a very easy place to play now,\" said Quintin Berry of the Detroit Tigers, the Yankees' ALCS opponents. \"Coming from Oakland, the fans there were so rowdy. It was easier to come here.\" In his autobiography \"The Closer\", the Yankees' longtime relief pitcher Mariano Rivera wrote about the new stadium's atmosphere: \"It doesn't hold noise, or home-team fervor, anywhere near the way the old place did. The old Stadium was our 10th man\u2014a loud and frenzied cauldron of pinstriped passion, with a lot of lifers in the stands. Maybe I'm wrong, but it's hard to see that the new place can ever quite duplicate that.\" Derek Jeter echoed this sentiment in a September 2014 article in \"New York\" magazine, in which he said he missed the original Yankee Stadium: \"It was a different feel. The new stadium, its second to none\u2014all the amenities. For the players, it really doesn't get any better. The old stadium, if you were at the stadium, in the stands, the only place you could see the game was in your seat. Now there's so many suites and places people can go. So a lot of times it looks like it's empty, but it's really not. The old stadium, it was more intimidating. The fans were right on top of you.\"\nStarting in 2017, the new stadium began to sound like the old stadium especially during the 2017 American League Championship Series against the Houston Astros. In Game 4 specifically, the stadium was raucous and loud where the Yankees rallied and won 6\u20134. The crowd noise and atmosphere may have even caused an Astros miscue in the eighth inning. After the game, several Yankees commented on the crowd noise and the atmosphere it created. In a \"New York Times\" article following the game, CC Sabathia said \"It felt like the old stadium tonight\" and \"This is as loud as I\u2019ve ever heard it\". Aaron Judge said \"Deafening, just deafening.\" He went on to say \"You try to talk to the person next to you, but you can\u2019t hear a thing. It was crazy.\" Todd Frazier said \"We still felt confident, and the crowd played a huge part in it.\" and Brett Gardner, a Yankee since 2008, said \"Tonight was about as loud as it gets.\"\nEarly propensity for home runs.\nIn its first season, Yankee Stadium quickly acquired a reputation as a \"bandbox\" and a \"launching pad\" because of the high number of home runs hit at the new ballpark. Through its first 23 games, 87 home runs were hit at the venue, easily besting Enron Field's (now called Daikin Park) previous record set in 2000. Early in the season, Yankee Stadium was on pace to break Coors Field's 1999 single-season record of 303 home runs allowed, and the hometown \"Daily News\" (using the back-page headline \"HOMERS ODYSSEY\") started publishing a daily graphic comparing each stadium's home run totals through a similar number of games.\nESPN commentator Peter Gammons denounced the new facility as \"one of the biggest jokes in baseball\" during an appearance on \"Mike and Mike in the Morning\", and concluded that \"[it] was not a very well-planned ballpark\". Likewise, Gammons' ESPN colleague Buster Olney described the stadium as \"a veritable wind tunnel\" and likened it to his childhood Wiffle-ball park. \"Newsday\" columnist Wallace Matthews joined in the criticism, labeling the stadium \"ridiculous\" and accused \"the franchise that took ownership of the home run\" of cheapening it. He suggested that Babe Ruth could have potentially hit 120 or more homers if he played in the new Stadium. For his column, Matthews interviewed former Yankee Reggie Jackson, who termed the park \"too small\" to contain current player Alex Rodriguez. Jackson estimated that the park might enable the third baseman to hit 75 home runs in a season.\nA variety of theories have been posited to account for the dramatic increase in home runs at the new Yankee Stadium over the original stadium, foremost among these the sharper angles of the outfield walls and the speculated presence of a wind tunnel. During construction of the new ballpark, engineers commissioned a wind study, the results of which indicated there would be no noticeable difference between the two stadiums. The franchise planned a second study, but Major League rules prohibit a team from making any changes to the playing field until the off-season.\nAn independent study by the weather service provider AccuWeather in June 2009 concluded that the shape and height of the right field wall, rather than the wind, is responsible for the proliferation of home runs at the stadium. AccuWeather's analysis found that roughly 20% of the home runs hit at the new ballpark would not have been home runs at the old ballpark due to the gentle curve of its right field corner, and its wall height. Nothing was observed in wind speeds and patterns that would account for the increase.\nThe number of home runs hit at the new stadium slowed significantly as the season progressed, but a new single-season record for most home runs hit at a Yankee home ballpark was nonetheless set in the Yankees' 73rd home game of 2009 when Vladimir Guerrero of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim hit the 216th home run of the season at the venue, surpassing the previous record of 215 set at the original Yankee Stadium in 2005. However, the Yankees offense, as in previous years, had employed many home run hitters in 2009. The Yankees hit 108 home runs while playing on the road, the second most in baseball behind the Philadelphia Phillies.\nIn 2010, the early rate of home runs were markedly less through May 15, 2010, with 35 home runs hit in 14 games for 2.5 per game (a projection of 205\u2014in 2009, the stadium finished at 2.93 per game for a total of 237). Even though the stadium's home run rate decreased slightly for the 2010 season to 2.73 per game, it was still the highest figure in the majors. However, the prolific home run rate of April and May 2009 that drew criticism has not sustained itself over any season thus far, and while through the first two months of the 2011 season the Yankees hit far more homers than any other team in the majors, Yankee Stadium was not the top home run park.\nStadium firsts.\nBefore the official Opening Day against the Cleveland Indians on April 16, 2009, the Yankees hosted a two-game exhibition series at the stadium in early April against the Chicago Cubs. The Yankees lost the stadium's first regular-season game to the Indians and 2008 Cy Young Award winner Cliff Lee by a score of 10\u20132. Before the Yankees went to bat for the first time, the bat that Babe Ruth used to hit his first home run at the old Yankee Stadium in 1923 was placed momentarily on home plate. In the bottom of the fifth inning of the same game, Jorge Posada hit the first Yankee home run in the new ballpark off of Lee, which also served as New York's first run at the new venue. Later in that game, Grady Sizemore of the Indians hit the first grand slam at the stadium, doing so off of Yankee relief pitcher D\u00e1maso Marte in the top of the seventh inning. On July 2, 2009, Russell Branyan of the Seattle Mariners became the first player to hit a home run off of the Mohegan Sun Restaurant in center field.\nLike its predecessor, the new Yankee Stadium hosted the World Series in its very first season. The first World Series game at the venue was a 6\u20131 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies on October 28, 2009; coincidentally, Phillies starter Cliff Lee, who won the first regular season game at the venue with the Indians prior to being traded to Philadelphia, was the winning pitcher in Game 1. The Yankees, however, rallied to win four of the next five, defeating the Phillies four games to two to win their 27th World Series championship. With the series-clinching 7\u20133 New York victory in Game 6 on November 4, 2009, Yankee Stadium also became the latest stadium to host a World Series-clinching victory by its home team in the venue's first season (after the St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series at Busch Stadium in 2006). The Yankees also became the only team to inaugurate two stadiums with World Series wins and also appeared in the 1976 World Series following the refurbishment of the original Yankee Stadium, losing to the Big Red Machine in a four-game sweep. On October 6, 2011, the Detroit Tigers defeated the Yankees 3\u20132 in Game 5 of the ALDS to become the first team to eliminate the Yankees at the new stadium in the postseason. On October 30, 2024, the Los Angeles Dodgers became the first visiting team to win a World Series at the venue when they erased a 5\u20130 deficit to defeat the Yankees 7\u20136 in Game 5 of the 2024 World Series.\nMany historic milestones and records have been achieved at Yankee Stadium. In 2009, Derek Jeter became the Yankees all-time hits leader with his 2,722nd hit, surpassing Lou Gehrig's 72-year record. The following season, Alex Rodriguez hit his 600th home run at the Stadium, becoming the youngest player to accomplish the feat. In 2011, three significant milestones were achieved at the stadium. In July, Jeter became the first Yankee to join the 3,000 hit club and collect all 3,000 hits with the franchise. The following month, the Yankees became the first team in history to hit three grand slams in a single game. As the regular season drew to a close, Mariano Rivera became the all-time leader in regular season saves, when he earned his 602nd save.\nOn April 20, 2016, the Oakland Athletics' Kendall Graveman became the first starting pitcher to bat at Yankee Stadium.\nDue to the lack of games scheduled for teams not in the own league, San Diego Padres in the NL West was the final team to visit the Yankee Stadium in its new configuration on May 27, 2019. Yankees amassed a record of 24\u20135 for homes games against every opposing teams' first games visiting the current Yankee Stadium.\nOn June 25, 2022, new Yankee Stadium witnessed its first no-hitter when three Houston Astros pitchers (Cristian Javier, H\u00e9ctor Neris, and Ryan Pressly) combine to no-hit the Yankees in a 3\u20130 win. The Astros were also the last team to no-hit the Yankees at the original Yankee Stadium in 2003.\nAccessibility and transportation.\nThe stadium is reachable via the 161st Street \u2013 Yankee Stadium station complex, the same that served the old Yankee Stadium, by the 4 \u200b, B , and \u200b D trains of the New York City Subway. It is also served by the Yankees \u2013 East 153rd Street station of the Metro-North Railroad, opened on May 23, 2009; this station routinely features Hudson Line train service, but on game days, Harlem Line and New Haven Line trains from upstate New York and Connecticut\u2014as well as shuttle trains from Grand Central Terminal--also stop there. The stadium is also served by the Bx1, Bx2, Bx6, Bx6 SBS, and Bx13 New York City Bus routes.\nYankee Stadium is accessible by car via the Major Deegan Expressway (I-87), with connections to the Cross Bronx Expressway (I-95), Bruckner Expressway (I-278), and other highways and roads. Aside from existing parking lots and garages serving the stadium, construction for additional parking garages is planned. The New York State Legislature agreed to $70 million in subsidies for a $320 million parking garage project. On October 9, 2007, the New York City Industrial Development Agency approved $225 million in tax-exempt bonds to finance construction of three new parking garages that will have 3,600 new parking spaces, and renovation of the existing 5,569 parking spaces nearby. Plans initially called for a fourth new garage, but this was eliminated before the final approval. The garages will be built (and renovated) by the Community Initiatives Development Corporation of Hudson, a nonprofit entity that will use the parking revenue to repay the bonds and pay a $3 million yearly land lease to the City of New York. Parking is expected to cost $25 per game. To enhance security and expedite entry, Yankee Stadium implemented a clear bag policy, allowing only transparent bags of specific dimensions for easier inspection and quicker access.\nNon-baseball uses.\nSoccer.\nAs part of the 2012 World Football Challenge, Chelsea played Paris Saint-Germain on July 22, 2012, in the first soccer match at Yankee Stadium, the match ended in a 1\u20131 tie, before a crowd of 38,202. The Stadium hosted another soccer match between A.C. Milan and Real Madrid on August 8, 2012. Real Madrid won 5\u20131, before a crowd of 49,474. Chelsea also played Manchester City there on May 25, 2013, which ended in a 5\u20133 win for City. On June 11, 2013, Spain defeated the Republic of Ireland 2\u20130 in a friendly match at the stadium.\nOn April 21, 2014, it was announced that New York City FC, a Major League Soccer expansion team owned jointly by the New York Yankees and Manchester City, would play in Yankee Stadium from 2015 until Etihad Park is completed in 2027. NYCFC played their first game at Yankee Stadium on March 15, 2015. Because of the unique dimensions of the Yankee Stadium field, the playing surface of the soccer pitch is 110 yards (100 m) long by 70 yards (64 m) wide\u2014the smallest field in all of Major League Soccer, and close to the smallest allowed by International Football Association Board guidelines.\nDespite having soccer matches played in Yankee Stadium, it is not approved for CONCACAF matches, most notability for the CONCACAF Champions League, meaning that any CONCACAF match that has New York City FC playing in it would be required to be played at another stadium.\nCollege football.\nThe Notre Dame Fighting Irish played a college football game at Yankee Stadium against The Army Black Knights on November 20, 2010, with the Irish defeating the Black Knights 27\u20133. This marked the two teams' first meeting in the Bronx since 1969. Army played Rutgers in 2011 (Rutgers defeated Army 27\u201312), and played against Connecticut in 2014. Also in 2014, Lehigh and Lafayette played the 150th edition of their college football rivalry game at Yankee Stadium on November 22, 2014. Both teams played to a sold out stadium; Lafayette winning, 27\u20137. On November 12, 2016, Fordham University beat Holy Cross 54\u201314 in the 53rd meeting of the Ram\u2013Crusader Cup.\nSince 2010, Yankee Stadium has hosted the Pinstripe Bowl, an annual college football bowl game. The inaugural bowl pitted Syracuse (3rd place Big East) against Kansas State (7th place Big 12) on December 30, 2010. Syracuse defeated Kansas State 36\u201334 in a shootout, before a crowd of 38,274.\nThe stadium was intended to host a game between Rutgers and Maryland on November 4, 2017. The game was moved back to Rutgers' home stadium due to potential conflicts with the Yankees' postseason.\nIce hockey.\nIn 2014, the National Hockey League (NHL) hosted two outdoor games at Yankee Stadium known as the NHL Stadium Series, with the New Jersey Devils hosting the New York Rangers on January 26, 2014, and the New York Islanders hosting the Rangers on January 29, 2014. The Devils and Islanders had never played an outdoor game before this series. The Rangers were the designated away team in both games to maintain the tax-exempt status of their home arena, Madison Square Garden; if either the Rangers or the New York Knicks \"cease playing\" home games at the Garden, the venue would lose its tax exemption and be subject to penalties.\nBoxing.\nThe promotional tour for the Manny Pacquiao\u2013Miguel Cotto fight began with an event at Yankee Stadium on September 10, 2009.\nOn June 5, 2010, Yuri Foreman fought Cotto in the first boxing match in The Bronx since 1976. The fight was referred to as the \"Stadium Slugfest\". Cotto defeated Foreman with a TKO in the ninth round. Cotto captured the WBA super welterweight title and his fourth world title, before a crowd of 20,272.\nOther events.\nThe first non-baseball event at the current version of Yankee Stadium took place on the evening of Saturday, April 25, 2009, when Senior Pastor Joel Osteen of Lakewood Church held what was dubbed as a \"Historic Night of Hope\" Christian prayer service.\nA New York University graduation ceremony took place on May 13, 2009, with the address being delivered by U.S. Secretary of State and former New York Senator Hillary Clinton. The 2010 NYU ceremony featured alumnus Alec Baldwin as a speaker. President Bill Clinton spoke at the 2011 ceremony. Taylor Swift received her honorary doctorate in fine arts at the 2022 ceremony.\nIn 2014, Yankee Stadium became the home of the Double A and Triple A New York City High School Public School Athletic League Championship. In 2011, it became home to the PSAL Football City Conference Championship.\nTicket policy.\nEffective 2016, printed electronic tickets cannot be used at New York Yankees and New York City FC matches at Yankee Stadium. Only traditional hard-stock tickets, and those issued via a mobile ticketing system, are accepted. The team justified the decision by stating that it was meant to combat fraud associated with printed digital tickets. However, it was also believed that the team was trying to specifically hinder the ticket resale service StubHub, which competed against an official resale service run by TicketMaster known as the Yankees Ticket Exchange. The YTE is subject to a price flooring policy, meaning that tickets may only be discounted up to a certain amount. Although StubHub was the official ticket resale partner of Major League Baseball at the time, the Yankees, as well as the Los Angeles Angels and Chicago Cubs, had opted out of this agreement.\nOwing to the Yankees' ownership of the team, New York City FC announced on March 11, 2016, that its matches would also be subject to this policy. At the team's March 13, 2016 home opener, although the team stated that they would be phasing in mobile ticketing by introducing additional verification steps for printed tickets before the policy takes full effect in April, reports indicated that the stadium was turning away fans with printed tickets, leading to long queue lines, as well as few attendees inside the stadium itself. In an interview with WFAN radio, Yankees COO Lonn Trost explained that the measures were to help combat ticket resale, arguing that the team did not want fans to purchase \"premium\" seats at bargain prices, because they would be filled by \"someone who has never sat in a premium location [before]\".\nOn April 3, 2016, an episode of the HBO news-comedy series \"Last Week Tonight\" aired, where host John Oliver responded to Trost's remarks, arguing that he was \"saying that rich people couldn't bear to sit next to people who aren't as rich.\" As a further satire of Trost's arguments against discounted resale, Oliver then announced a contest in which viewers were invited to send photos of themselves dressed as if they had \"never sat in a premium location before\", with winners offered the ability to purchase a pair of Legends Seats from one of the first three home games of the season for 25 cents. The stunt was successful, leading to the presence of several costumed attendees in Legends Seats during the opening games. Team president Randy Levine responded positively to the stunt, thanking Oliver for having bought tickets to begin with, and remarked that everyone was welcome at Yankee Stadium.\nOn June 27, 2016, the Yankees announced that it had reached a deal with StubHub for it to become its new official ticket resale partner beginning on July 7, 2016, and allow season ticket holders to sell electronic tickets, rather than mail physical tickets to the buyer. The service will still be subject to a price flooring policy, but the team stated that the new arrangement would provide a \"superior, more secure, [and] better experience\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nEvents and tenants\n 2009\u2013present \n 2010\u2013present \n 2015\u2013present "}, "descending_order": ["22146637", "3338", "770949"], "permutation_1": ["22146637", "3338", "770949"], "permutation_2": ["3338", "22146637", "770949"], "permutation_3": ["3338", "22146637", "770949"]}
{"id": "3hop1__660065_23998_21435", "docs_added": {"357108": "James Hillhouse\nAmerican lawyer, real estate developer and politician (1754-1832)\nJames Hillhouse (October 20, 1754 \u2013 December 29, 1832) was an American lawyer, real estate developer, and politician from New Haven, Connecticut. He represented the state in both chambers of the US Congress. From February to March 1801, Hillhouse briefly served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate.\nYouth and Family life.\nHillhouse was born in Montville in the Connecticut Colony, the son of William Hillhouse and Sarah (Griswold) Hillhouse. He had at least nine siblings, seven of which survived to adulthood. At the age of seven, he was adopted by his childless uncle and aunt, James Abraham and Mary Lucas Hillhouse. He attended the Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven, Connecticut, and graduated from Yale College in 1773. At Yale, he was a member of the Linonian Society. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1775, and practiced law in New Haven.\nFamily Life.\nHe married Sarah Lloyd in 1779 and that same year they had their one and only child together, Mary. However, Mary would pass away aged just three days, and Sarah would pass away three days after that. In 1782, he married Rebecca Woolsey. They had five children together: Sarah, Mary, James, Augustus, and Rebecca. All five would survive to adulthood. His wife, Rebecca Woolsey, would pass away in December, 1813 after 31 years of marriage.\nRevolutionary War.\nDuring the Revolutionary War, Hillhouse served as captain of the Second \nCompany of the Governor's Foot Guard. During the successful British invasion of New Haven on July 5, 1779, he commanded troops alongside Aaron Burr, with Yale student volunteers.\nCareer and Death.\nHillhouse was a member of the Connecticut House of Representatives from 1780 to 1785. He was a member of the Connecticut council of Assistants from 1789 to 1790 and was elected as a US representative from Connecticut at large for the Second, Third, and Fourth Congresses and served from March 4, 1791, to his resignation, in the fall of 1796. He also served as a judge of the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors from 1789 to 1793.\nElected as a US senator on May 12, 1796, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Oliver Ellsworth, Hillhouse was re-elected in 1797, 1803, and 1809, and he served from December 1796 to June 10, 1810, when he resigned. During the Sixth Congress he was President pro tempore of the Senate. During his time in this role, he administered the oath of office to Aaron Burr as Vice President, within the first inauguration of Thomas Jefferson on March 4, 1801.\nIn 1803, Hillhouse and several other New England politicians proposed secession of New England from the union because of the growing influence of Jeffersonian Democrats, especially after the Louisiana Purchase, which would further diminish Northern and Federalist influence.\nHillhouse was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1813.\nIn 1814, he was a Connecticut delegate to the Hartford Convention, and he was treasurer of Yale College from 1782 to 1832.\nHillhouse was a slaveholder.\nHillhouse passed away in New Haven on December 29th, 1832 at the age of 78. He was buried at Grove Street Cemetery located in the same city along with both his wives.\nLegacy.\nHillhouse made major contributions to the beautification of New Haven. He was active in the drive to plant the elm trees, which gave New Haven the nickname of \"Elm City.\" Hillhouse Avenue and James Hillhouse High School, in New Haven, are named after him.\nHe was a nephew of Matthew Griswold and an uncle of Thomas Hillhouse.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "53825": "New Haven, Connecticut\nNew Haven is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is the third largest city in Connecticut after Bridgeport and Stamford, the largest city in the South Central Connecticut Planning Region, and the principal municipality of Greater New Haven, which had a total population of 864,835 in 2020.\nNew Haven was one of the first planned cities in the U.S. A year after its founding by English Puritans in 1638, eight streets were laid out in a four-by-four grid, creating the \"Nine Square Plan\". The central common block is the New Haven Green, a square at the center of Downtown New Haven. The Green is now a National Historic Landmark, and the \"Nine Square Plan\" is recognized by the American Planning Association as a National Planning Landmark.\nNew Haven is the home of Yale University, New Haven's biggest taxpayer and employer, and an integral part of the city's economy. Health care, professional and financial services and retail trade also contribute to the city's economic activity.\nThe city served as co-capital of Connecticut from 1701 until 1873, when sole governance was transferred to the more centrally located city of Hartford. New Haven has since billed itself as the \"Cultural Capital of Connecticut\" for its supply of established theaters, museums, and music venues. New Haven had the first public tree planting program in the U.S., producing a canopy of mature trees (including some large elms) that gave the city the nickname \"The Elm City\".\nHistory.\nPre-colonial foundation as an independent colony.\nBefore Europeans arrived, the New Haven area was the home of the Quinnipiac tribe of Native Americans, who lived in villages around the harbor and sustained an economy of local fisheries and the farming of maize. The area was briefly visited by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block in 1614. Dutch traders set up a small trading system of beaver pelts with the local inhabitants, but trade was sporadic and the Dutch did not settle permanently in the area.\nIn 1637, a small party of Puritans did a reconnaissance of the New Haven harbor area and wintered over. In April 1638, the main party of five hundred Puritans, who had left the Massachusetts Bay Colony under the leadership of Reverend John Davenport and London merchant Theophilus Eaton, sailed into the harbor. It was their hope to set up a theological community with the government more closely linked to the church than that in Massachusetts, and to exploit the area's potential as a port. The Quinnipiacs, who were under attack by neighboring Pequots, sold their land to the settlers in return for a pledge of protection.\nBy 1640, \"Quinnipiac's\" theocratic government and nine-square grid plan were in place, and the town was renamed New Haven, with 'haven' meaning harbor or port. However, the area to the north remained Quinnipiac until 1678, when it was renamed Hamden. The settlement became the headquarters of the New Haven Colony, distinct from the Connecticut Colony previously established to the north centering on Hartford. Reflecting its theocratic roots, the New Haven Colony forbade the establishment of other churches, whereas the Connecticut Colony permitted them.\nEconomic disaster struck New Haven in 1646, when the town sent its first fully loaded ship of local goods (the \"Great Shippe\") back to England. It never reached its destination, and its disappearance hindered New Haven's development as compared to the rising trade powers of Boston and New Amsterdam (modern day New York City).\nIn 1660, Colony founder John Davenport's wishes were fulfilled, and Hopkins School was founded in New Haven with money from the estate of Edward Hopkins.\nIn 1661, the Regicides who had signed the death warrant of Charles I of England were pursued by Charles II. Two of them, Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe, fled to New Haven for refuge. Davenport arranged for them to hide in the West Rock hills northwest of the town. A third judge, John Dixwell, later joined the others. None of the three were ever returned to England for trial; Dixwell died of old age in New Haven, the others likewise elsewhere in New England.\nAs part of the Connecticut Colony.\nIn 1664, New Haven became part of the Connecticut Colony when the two colonies were merged under political pressure from England. Seeking to establish a new theocracy elsewhere, some members of the New Haven Colony went on to establish Newark, New Jersey.\nNew Haven was made co-capital of Connecticut in 1701, a status it retained until 1873.\nIn 1716, the Collegiate School relocated from Old Saybrook to New Haven, establishing it as a center of learning. In 1718, in response to a large donation from East India Company merchant Elihu Yale, former Governor of Madras, the Collegiate School was renamed Yale College.\nFor over a century, New Haven citizens had fought in the colonial militia alongside regular British forces, including the French and Indian War. As the American Revolution approached, General David Wooster and other influential residents hoped that the conflict with the British parliament could be resolved short of rebellion. On April 23, 1775, Captain Benedict Arnold commanded the Second Company, Governor's Foot Guard, of New Haven to break into the powder house to arm themselves for a three-day march to Cambridge, Massachusetts, an event still celebrated in New Haven as Powder House Day. Other New Haven militia members were on hand to escort George Washington from his overnight stay in New Haven on his way to Cambridge. Contemporary reports, from both sides, remark on the New Haven volunteers' professional military bearing, including uniforms.\nOn July 5, 1779, 2,600 loyalists and British regulars under General William Tryon, governor of New York, landed in New Haven Harbor and raided the town of 3,500. A militia of Yale students had been preparing for battle, and former Yale president and Yale Divinity School professor Naphtali Daggett rode out to confront the Redcoats. Yale president Ezra Stiles recounted in his diary that while he moved furniture in anticipation of battle, he still couldn't quite believe the revolution had begun. New Haven was not torched as the invaders did with Danbury in 1777, or Fairfield and Norwalk a week after the New Haven raid, preserving many of the town's colonial features.\nPost-colonial period and industrialization.\nNew Haven was incorporated as a city in 1784, and Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Constitution and author of the \"Connecticut Compromise\", became the new city's first mayor.\nThe city struck fortune in the late 18th century with the inventions and industrial activity of Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate who remained in New Haven to develop the cotton gin and establish a gun-manufacturing factory in the northern part of the city near the Hamden town line. That area is still known as Whitneyville, and the main road through both towns is known as Whitney Avenue. The factory is now the Eli Whitney Museum, which has a particular emphasis on activities for children and exhibits pertaining to the A. C. Gilbert Company. His factory, along with that of Simeon North, and the lively clock-making and brass hardware sectors, contributed to making early Connecticut a powerful manufacturing economy; so many arms manufacturers sprang up that the state became known as \"The Arsenal of America\". It was in Whitney's gun-manufacturing plant that Samuel Colt invented the automatic revolver in 1836. Many other talented machinists and firearms designers would go on to found successful firearms manufacturing companies in New Haven, including Oliver Winchester and O.F. Mossberg & Sons.\nThe Farmington Canal, created in the early 19th century, was a short-lived transporter of goods into the interior regions of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and ran from New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts.\nNew Haven was to be the site of the first college for African Americans in the United States, but the plan was obstructed by efforts led by Yale Law School founder and former New Haven Mayor David Daggett, who went on to serve as a U.S. Senator and judge on Connecticut's highest court. Daggett denigrated African Americans, denied they were citizens, and presided over the trial of a woman persecuted for trying to admit an African American girl to her boarding school and, having that effort blocked, running a boarding school for African American girls.\nNew Haven was home to one of the important early events in the burgeoning anti-slavery movement when, in 1839, the trial of mutineering Mende tribesmen being transported as slaves on the Spanish slaveship \"Amistad\" was held in New Haven's United States District Court. There is a statue of Joseph Cinqu\u00e9, the informal leader of the slaves, beside City Hall. See \"Museums\" below for more information. Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech on slavery in New Haven in 1860, shortly before he secured the Republican nomination for President.\nThe American Civil War boosted the local economy with wartime purchases of industrial goods, including that of the New Haven Arms Company, which would later become the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. (Winchester would continue to produce arms in New Haven until 2006, and many of the buildings that were a part of the Winchester plant are now a part of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company Historic District). After the war, population grew and doubled by the start of the 20th century, most notably due to the influx of immigrants from southern Europe, particularly Italy. Today, roughly half the populations of East Haven, West Haven, and North Haven are Italian-American. Jewish immigration to New Haven has left an enduring mark on the city. Westville was the center of Jewish life in New Haven, though today many have fanned out to suburban communities such as Woodbridge and Cheshire. Lowell House, the city's first settlement, opened in 1900.\nPost-industrial era and urban redevelopment.\nNew Haven's expansion continued during the two World Wars, with most new inhabitants being African Americans from the American South, and Puerto Ricans. The city reached its peak population after World War II. The area of New Haven is only , encouraging further development of new housing after 1950 in adjacent, suburban towns. Moreover, as in other U.S. cities in the 1950s, New Haven began to suffer white flight of middle-class workers. One author suggested that aggressive redlining and rezoning made it difficult for residents to obtain financing for older, deteriorating urban housing stock, thereby condemning such structures to deterioration.\nIn 1954, then-mayor Richard C. Lee began some of the earliest major urban renewal projects in the United States. Certain sections of downtown New Haven were redeveloped to include museums, new office towers, a hotel, and large shopping complexes. Other parts of the city, particularly the Wooster Square and Fair Haven neighborhoods were affected by the construction of Interstate 95 along the Long Wharf section, Interstate 91, and the Oak Street Connector. The Oak Street Connector (Route 34), running between Interstate 95, downtown, and The Hill neighborhood, was originally intended as a highway to the city's western suburbs but was only completed as a highway to the downtown area, with the area to the west becoming a boulevard (See \"Redevelopment\" below).\nIn 1970, a series of criminal prosecutions against various members of the Black Panther Party took place in New Haven, inciting mass protests on the New Haven Green involving twelve thousand demonstrators and many well-known New Left political activists. (See \"Political Culture\" below for more information). From the 1960s through the early 1990s, some areas of New Haven continued to decline both economically and in terms of population despite attempts to resurrect certain neighborhoods through renewal projects. In conjunction with its declining population, New Haven experienced a steep rise in its crime rate.\nSince approximately 2000, many parts of downtown New Haven have been revitalized with new restaurants, nightlife, and small retail stores. In particular, the area surrounding the New Haven Green has experienced an influx of apartments and condominiums. In addition, two new supermarkets opened to serve downtown's growing residential population: a Stop & Shop opened just west of downtown, while Elm City Market, located one block from the Green, opened in 2011. The recent turnaround of downtown New Haven has received positive press from various periodicals.\nMajor projects include the current construction of a new campus for Gateway Community College downtown, and also a 32-story, 500-unit apartment/retail building called 360 State Street. The 360 State Street project is now occupied and is the largest residential building in Connecticut. A new boathouse and dock is planned for New Haven Harbor, and the linear park Farmington Canal Trail is set to extend into downtown New Haven within the coming year. Additionally, foundation and ramp work to widen I-95 to create a new harbor crossing for New Haven, with an extradosed bridge to replace the 1950s-era Q Bridge, has begun. The city still hopes to redevelop the site of the New Haven Coliseum, which was demolished in 2007.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 18 white firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no black firefighters scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. In the subsequent \"Ricci v. DeStefano\" decision the court found 5\u20134 that New Haven's decision to ignore the test results violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a result, a district court subsequently ordered the city to promote 14 of the white firefighters.\nIn 2010 and 2011, state and federal funds were awarded to Connecticut (and Massachusetts) to construct the Hartford Line, with a southern terminus at New Haven's Union Station and a northern terminus at Springfield's Union Station. According to the White House, \"This corridor [currently] has one train per day connecting communities in Connecticut and Massachusetts to the Northeast Corridor and Vermont. The vision for this corridor is to restore the alignment to its original route via the Knowledge Corridor in western Massachusetts, improving trip time and increasing the population base that can be served.\" Set for construction in 2013, the \"Knowledge Corridor high speed intercity passenger rail\" project will cost approximately $1\u00a0billion, and the ultimate northern terminus for the project is reported to be Montreal in Canada. Train speeds between will reportedly exceed and increase both cities' rail traffic exponentially.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 6.67%, is water.\nNew Haven's best-known geographic features are its large, shallow harbor, and two reddish basalt trap rock ridges which rise to the northeast and northwest of the city core. These trap rocks are known respectively as East Rock and West Rock, and both serve as extensive parks. West Rock has been tunneled through to make way for the east\u2013west passage of the Wilbur Cross Parkway (the only highway tunnel through a natural obstacle in Connecticut), and once served as the hideout of the \"Regicides\" (see: Regicides Trail). Most New Haveners refer to these men as \"The Three Judges\". East Rock features the prominent Soldiers and Sailors war monument on its peak as well as the \"Great/Giant Steps\" which run up the rock's cliffside.\nThe city is drained by three rivers; the West, Mill, and Quinnipiac, named in order from west to east. The West River discharges into West Haven Harbor, while the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers discharge into New Haven Harbor. Both harbors are embayments of Long Island Sound. In addition, several smaller streams flow through the city's neighborhoods, including Wintergreen Brook, the Beaver Ponds Outlet, Wilmot Brook, Belden Brook, and Prospect Creek. Not all of these small streams have continuous flow year-round.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen classification, New Haven experiences a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\"), bordering a hot-summer humid continental climate (\"Dfa\"). The city has hot, humid summers and cool to cold winters. From May to late September, the weather is typically hot and humid, with average temperatures exceeding on 70 days per year. In summer, the Bermuda High creates as southern flow of warm and humid air, with frequent (but brief) thundershowers. October to early December is normally mild to cool late in the season, while early spring (April) can be cool to warm. Winters are more variable, with cool to cold temperatures, mixed with warmer spells, with both rain and snow fall.\nWhile the weather patterns that affect New Haven result from a primarily offshore direction, thus reducing the marine influence of Long Island Sound, the location on Long Island Sound often influences the weather along the coastline compared to inland. During summer heat waves, temperatures may reach or higher on occasion with heat-index values of over . Tropical cyclones have struck New Haven in the past, including 1938 Hurricane (Long Island Express), Hurricane Carol in 1954, Hurricane Gloria in 1985. The hardiness zone is 7a.\nStreetscape.\nNew Haven has a long tradition of urban planning and a purposeful design for the city's layout. The city could be argued to have some of the first preconceived layouts in the country. Upon founding, New Haven was laid out in a grid plan of nine square blocks; the central square was left open, in the tradition of many New England towns, as the city green (a commons area). The city also instituted the first public tree planting program in America. As in other cities, many of the elms that gave New Haven the nickname \"Elm City\" perished in the mid-20th century due to Dutch elm disease, although many have since been replanted. The New Haven Green is currently home to three separate historic churches which speak to the original theocratic nature of the city. The Green remains the social center of the city today. It was named a National Historic Landmark in 1970.\nDowntown New Haven, occupied by nearly 7,000 residents, has a more residential character than most downtowns. The downtown area provides about half of the city's jobs and half of its tax base and in recent years has become filled with dozens of new upscale restaurants, in addition to shops and thousands of apartments and condominium units which subsequently help overall growth of the city.\nNeighborhoods.\nThe city has many distinct neighborhoods. In addition to Downtown, centered on the central business district and the Green, are the following neighborhoods: the west central neighborhoods of Dixwell and Dwight; the southern neighborhoods of The Hill, historic water-front City Point (or Oyster Point), and the harborside district of Long Wharf; the western neighborhoods of Beaver Hills, Edgewood, West River, Westville, Amity, and West Rock-Westhills; East Rock, Cedar Hill, Prospect Hill, and Newhallville in the northern side of town; the east central neighborhoods of Mill River and Wooster Square, an Italian-American neighborhood; Fair Haven, an immigrant community located between the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers; Quinnipiac Meadows and Fair Haven Heights across the Quinnipiac River; and facing the eastern side of the harbor, The Annex and East Shore (or Morris Cove).\nDemographics.\nCensus data.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nThe U.S. Census Bureau reports a 2010 population of 129,779, with 47,094 households and 25,854 families within the city of New Haven. The population density was . There were 52,941 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 42.6% White, 35.4% African American, 0.5% Native American, 4.6% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 12.9% from other races, and 3.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 27.4% of the population. Non-Hispanic Whites were 31.8% of the population in 2010, down from 69.6% in 1970. The city's Latino population is growing rapidly. Previous influxes among ethnic groups have been African-Americans in the postwar era, and Irish, Italian and (to a lesser degree) Slavic peoples in the prewar period.\nAs of the 2010 census, of the 47,094 households, 29.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 27.5% include married couples living together, 22.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 36.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.5% had someone living alone who was 65\u00a0years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40 and the average family size 3.19.\nThe ages of New Haven's residents were 25.4% under the age of 18, 16.4% from 18 to 24, 31.2% from 25 to 44, 16.7% from 45 to 64, and 10.2% who were 65\u00a0years of age or older. The median age was 29\u00a0years, which was significantly lower than the national average. There were 91.8 males per 100 females. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.6 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $29,604, and the median income for a family was $35,950. Median income for males was $33,605, compared with $28,424 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,393. About 20.5% of families and 24.4% of the population were living below the poverty line, including 32.2% of those under age 18 and 17.9% of those age 65 or over.\nOther data.\nIt is estimated that 14% of New Haven residents are pedestrian commuters, ranking it number four by highest percentage in the United States. This is primarily due to New Haven's small area and the presence of Yale University.\nNew Haven is noted for having the highest percentage of Italian American residents of any US city, and is noted for its local style of pizza.\nA study of the demographics of the New Haven metro area, based on age, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity, found that they were the closest of any American city to the national average.\nEconomy.\nNew Haven's economy originally was based in manufacturing, but the postwar period brought rapid industrial decline; the entire Northeast was affected, and medium-sized cities with large working-class populations, like New Haven, were hit particularly hard. Simultaneously, the growth and expansion of Yale University further affected the economic shift. Today, over half (56%) of the city's economy is now made up of services, in particular education and health care; Yale is the city's largest employer, followed by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital. Other large employers include Southern Connecticut State University, Assa Abloy lock manufacturing, the Knights of Columbus headquarters, Higher One, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Covidien and United Illuminating. Clothing stores Gant and Ann Taylor were founded in the city.\nIn 2017, New Haven was ranked by a Verizon study as one of the top 10 cities in America for launching tech startups, and top two in New England.\nIndustry sectors: Agriculture (.6%), Construction and Mining (4.9%), Manufacturing (2.9%), Transportation and Utilities (2.9%), Trade (21.7%), Finance and Real Estate (7.1%), Services (55.9%), Government (4.0%)\nHeadquarters.\nThe Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization and a Fortune 1000 company, is headquartered in New Haven. Amphenol, based in Greater New Haven (Wallingford), is a Fortune 100 company. Eight Courant 100 companies are based in Greater New Haven, with four headquartered in New Haven proper. New Haven-based companies traded on stock exchanges include NewAlliance Bank, the second largest bank in Connecticut and fourth-largest in New England (NYSE: NAL), Higher One Holdings (NYSE: ONE), a financial services firm, United Illuminating, the electricity distributor for southern Connecticut (NYSE: UIL), and Transpro Inc. (AMEX: TPR). The American division of Assa Abloy (one of the world's leading manufacturers of locks) is located in the city. The Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET) began operations in the city as the District Telephone Company of New Haven in 1878; the company remains headquartered in New Haven as a subsidiary of Frontier Communications and provides telephone service for all but two municipalities in Connecticut. SeeClickFix was founded and has been headquartered in the city since 2007. Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company (a candy-making division of the Hershey Company) was formerly located in the city. Achillion Pharmaceuticals and Alexion Pharmaceuticals were also formerly headquartered in New Haven.\nLaw and government.\nPolitical structure.\nNew Haven is governed via the mayor-council system. Connecticut municipalities (like those of neighboring states Massachusetts and Rhode Island) provide nearly all local services (such as fire and rescue, education, snow removal, etc.), as county government has been abolished since 1960.\nNew Haven County merely refers to a grouping of towns and a judicial district, not a governmental entity. New Haven is a member of the South Central Connecticut Regional Council of Governments (SCRCOG), a regional agency created to facilitate coordination between area municipal governments and state and federal agencies, in the absence of county government.\nJustin Elicker is the mayor of New Haven. He was sworn in as the 51st mayor of New Haven on January 1, 2020.\nThe city council, called the Board of Alders, consists of thirty members, each elected from single-member wards. Each of the 30 wards consists of slightly over 4,300 residents; redistricting takes place every ten years.\nThe city is overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2017, of the town's 83,694 voters, 66% were registered as Democrats (\u22124% since 2015), 4% were registered as Republicans (+1%), and 29% were unaffiliated (+3). The board of alders is dominated by Democrats; a Republican has not served as a New Haven alder since 2011.\nNew Haven is served by the New Haven Police Department, which had 443 sworn officers in 2011. The city is also served by the New Haven Fire Department.\nNew Haven lies within Connecticut's 3rd congressional district and has been represented by Rosa DeLauro since 1991. Martin Looney and Gary Holder-Winfield represent New Haven in the Connecticut State Senate, and the city lies within six districts (numbers 92 through 97) of the Connecticut House of Representatives.\nThe Greater New Haven area is served by the New Haven Judicial District Court and the New Haven Superior Court, both headquartered at the New Haven County Courthouse. The federal District Court for the District of Connecticut has a New Haven facility, the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse.\nPolitical history.\nNew Haven is the birthplace of former president George W. Bush, who was born when his father, former president George H. W. Bush, was living in New Haven while a student at Yale. In addition to being the site of the college educations of both Presidents Bush, as Yale students, New Haven was also the temporary home of former presidents William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, and Bill Clinton, as well as Secretary of State John Kerry. President Clinton met his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while the two were students at Yale Law School. Former vice presidents John C. Calhoun and Dick Cheney also studied in New Haven (although the latter did not graduate from Yale). Before the 2008 election, the last time there was not a person with ties to New Haven and Yale on either major party's ticket was 1968. James Hillhouse, a New Haven native, served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate in 1801.\nNew Haven voters overwhelmingly supported Al Gore in the 2000 election, Yale graduate John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. In the 2008 election, New Haven County was third among all Connecticut counties in campaign contributions, after Fairfield and Hartford counties. (Connecticut, in turn, was ranked 14th among all states in total campaign contributions.)\nNew Haven was the subject of \" Who Governs? Democracy and Power in An American City\", a very influential book in political science by preeminent Yale professor Robert A. Dahl, which includes an extensive history of the city and thorough description of its politics in the 1950s. New Haven's theocratic history is also mentioned several times by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic volume on 19th-century American political life, \"Democracy in America\". New Haven was the residence of conservative thinker William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1951, when he wrote his influential \"God and Man at Yale\". William Lee Miller's \"The Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society\" (1966) similarly explores the relationship between local politics in New Haven and national political movements, focusing on Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and urban renewal.\nGeorge Williamson Crawford, a Yale Law School graduate, served as the city's first black corporation counsel from 1954 to 1962, under Mayor Richard C. Lee.\nIn 1970, the New Haven Black Panther trials took place, the largest and longest trials in Connecticut history. Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale and ten other party members were tried for murdering an alleged informant. Beginning on May Day, the city became a center of protest for 12,000 Panther supporters, college students, and New Left activists (including Jean Genet, Benjamin Spock, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and John Froines), who amassed on the New Haven Green, across the street from where the trials were being held. Violent confrontations between the demonstrators and the New Haven Police occurred, and several bombs were set off in the area by radicals. The event became a rallying point for the New Left and critics of the Nixon Administration.\nDuring the summer of 2007, New Haven was the center of protests by anti-immigration groups who opposed the city's program of offering municipal ID cards, known as the Elm City Resident Card, to illegal immigrants. In 2008, the country of Ecuador opened a consulate in New Haven to serve the large Ecuadorean immigrant population in the area. It is the first foreign mission to open in New Haven since Italy opened a consulate (now closed) in the city in 1910.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 20 white and Hispanic firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no blacks scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. On June 29, 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the firefighters, agreeing that they were improperly denied promotion because of their race. The case, \"Ricci v. DeStefano\", became highly publicized and brought national attention to New Haven politics due to the involvement of then-Supreme Court nominee (and Yale Law School graduate) Sonia Sotomayor in a lower court decision.\nGarry Trudeau, creator of the political \"Doonesbury\" comic strip, attended Yale University. There he met fellow student and later Green Party candidate for Congress Charles Pillsbury, a long-time New Haven resident for whom Trudeau's comic strip is named. During his college years, Pillsbury was known by the nickname \"The Doones\". A theory of international law, which argues for a sociological normative approach in regards to jurisprudence, is named the New Haven Approach, after the city. Connecticut US senator Richard Blumenthal is a Yale graduate, as is former Connecticut US Senator Joe Lieberman who also was a New Haven resident for many years, before moving back to his hometown of Stamford.\nCrime.\nCrime increased in the 1990s, with New Haven having one of the ten highest violent crime rates per capita in the United States. In the late 1990s New Haven's crime began to stabilize. The city, adopting a policy of community policing, saw crime rates drop during the 2000s.\nViolent crime levels vary dramatically among New Haven's neighborhoods, with some areas having crime rates in line with the state of Connecticut average, and others having extremely high rates of crime. A 2011 New Haven Health Department report identifies these issues in greater detail.\nIn 2010, New Haven ranked as the 18th most dangerous city in the United States (albeit below the safety benchmark of 200.00 for the second consecutive year). However, according to a completely different analysis conducted by the \"24/7 Wall Street Blog\", in 2011 New Haven had risen to become the fourth most dangerous city in the United States, and was widely cited in the press as such.\nHowever, an analysis by the Regional Data Cooperative for Greater New Haven, Inc., has shown that due to issues of comparative denominators and other factors, such municipality-based rankings can be considered inaccurate. For example, two cities of identical population can cover widely differing land areas, making such analyses irrelevant. The research organization called for comparisons based on neighborhoods, blocks, or standard methodologies (similar to those used by Brookings, DiversityData, and other established institutions), not based on municipalities.\nEducation.\nColleges and universities.\nNew Haven is a notable center for higher education. Yale University, at the heart of downtown, is one of the city's best known features and its largest employer. New Haven is also home to Southern Connecticut State University, part of the Connecticut State University System, and Albertus Magnus College, a private institution. Gateway Community College has a campus in downtown New Haven, formerly located in the Long Wharf district; Gateway consolidated into one campus downtown into a new state-of-the-art campus (on the site of the old Macy's building) and was open for the Fall 2012 semester.\nThere are several institutions immediately outside of New Haven, as well. Quinnipiac University and the Paier College of Art are located just to the north, in the town of Hamden. The University of New Haven is located not in New Haven but in neighboring West Haven.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nNew Haven Public Schools is the school district serving the city. Wilbur Cross High School and Hillhouse High School are New Haven's two largest public secondary schools.\nHopkins School, a private school, was founded in 1660 and is the fifth-oldest educational institution in the United States. New Haven is home to a number of other private schools as well as public magnet schools, including Metropolitan Business Academy, High School in the Community, Hill Regional Career High School, Co-op High School, New Haven Academy, Edgewood Magnet School, ACES Educational Center for the Arts, the Foote School and the Sound School, all of which draw students from New Haven and suburban towns. New Haven is also home to two Achievement First charter schools, Amistad Academy and Elm City College Prep, and to Common Ground, an environmental charter school.\nThe city is renowned for its progressive school lunch programs, and participation in statewide bussing efforts toward increased diversity in schools.\nCulture.\nCuisine.\nLivability.com named New Haven as the Best Foodie City in the country in 2014. There are dozens of Zagat-rated restaurants in New Haven, the most in Connecticut and the third most in New England (after Boston and Cambridge). More than 120 restaurants are located within two blocks of the New Haven Green. The city is home to an eclectic mix of ethnic restaurants and small markets specializing in various foreign foods. Represented cuisines include Malaysian, Ethiopian, Spanish, Belgian, French, Greek, Latin American, Mexican, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Cuban, Peruvian, Syrian/Lebanese, and Turkish.\nNew Haven's greatest culinary claim to fame may be its pizza, which has been claimed to be among the best in the country, or even in the world. New Haven-style pizza, called \"apizza\", made its debut at the iconic Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana (known as Pepe's) in 1925. Apizza is baked in coal- or wood-fired brick ovens, and is notable for its thin crust. Apizza may be red (with a tomato-based sauce) or white (with a sauce of garlic and olive oil), and pies ordered \"plain\" are made without the otherwise customary mozzarella (originally smoked mozzarella, known as \"scamorza\" in Italian). A white clam pie is a well-known specialty of the restaurants on Wooster Street in the Little Italy section of New Haven, including Pepe's and Sally's Apizza (which opened in 1938). Modern Apizza on State Street, which opened in 1934, is also well-known.\nA second New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Louis' Lunch, which is located in a small brick building on Crown Street and has been serving fast food since 1895. Though fiercely debated, the restaurant's founder Louis Lassen is credited by the Library of Congress with inventing the hamburger and steak sandwich. Louis' Lunch broils hamburgers, steak sandwiches and hot dogs vertically in original antique 1898 cast iron stoves using gridirons, patented by local resident Luigi Pieragostini in 1939, that hold the meat in place while it cooks.\nA third New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Miya's, the first sustainable sushi restaurant in the world. Miya's, founded by Chef Yoshiko Lai in 1982, featured the first sustainable seafood-based sushi menu, the first plant-based sushi menu, and the first invasive species menu in the world. Second generation Miya's chef, Bun Lai, is the 2016 White House Champions of Change for Sustainable Seafood and a James Beard Foundation Award nominee. Chef Bun Lai is credited as the first chef in the world for implementing a sustainability paradigm to the cuisine of sushi.\nDuring weekday lunchtime, over 150 lunch carts and food trucks cater to diners around the city. The carts and food trucks cluster at four main points: on Long Wharf Drive, along the city's shoreline with quick access off Interstate 95, by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital in the center of the Hospital Green (Cedar and York streets), by Yale's Trumbull College (Elm and York streets), and on the intersection of Prospect and Sachem streets by the Yale School of Management.\nPopular farmers' markets, managed by the local non-profit CitySeed, set up shop weekly in several neighborhoods, including Westville/Edgewood Park, Fair Haven, Upper State Street, Wooster Square, and Downtown/New Haven Green.\nA large grocery store, the Elm City Market, opened on 360 State Street in New Haven in early fall 2011 and served local produce and groceries to the community. Originally, the market was a member-owned co-op, but debt defaults in August 2014 forced a sale of the business. It is now an employee-owned business; the co-op's previous owners received no equity in the new business.\nIn the past several years, two separate Downtown food tour companies have started offering popular restaurant tours on weekends.\nTaste of New Haven Tours offers several different weekly restaurant/bar tours and a popular pizza, bike, and pints tour. Culinary Walking Tours offers monthly restaurant tours and sponsors an annual Elm City Iron Chef competition.\nTheatre and film.\nThe city hosts numerous theatres and production houses, including the Yale Repertory Theatre, the Long Wharf Theatre, and the Shubert Theatre. There is also theatre activity from the Yale School of Drama, which works through the Yale University Theatre and the student-run Yale Cabaret. Southern Connecticut State University hosts the Lyman Center for the Performing Arts. The shuttered Palace Theatre (opposite the Shubert Theatre) was renovated and reopened as the College Street Music Hall in May 2015. Smaller theatres include the Little Theater on Lincoln Street. Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School also has a theatre on College Street. The theatre is used for student productions, and is the home to weekly services to a local non-denominational church, the City Church New Haven.\nThe Shubert Theatre once premiered many major theatrical productions before their Broadway debuts. Productions that premiered at the Shubert include \"Oklahoma!\" (which was also written in New Haven), \"Carousel\", \"South Pacific\", \"My Fair Lady\", \"The King and I\", and \"The Sound of Music\", and the Tennessee Williams play \"A Streetcar Named Desire\".\nBow Tie Cinemas owns and operates the Criterion Cinemas, the first new movie theater to open in New Haven in over 30 years and the first luxury movie complex in the city's history. The Criterion has seven screens and opened in November 2004, showing a mix of upscale first run commercial and independent film.\nMuseums.\nNew Haven has a variety of museums, many of them associated with Yale. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library features an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible. There is also the Connecticut Children's Museum; the Knights of Columbus museum near that organization's world headquarters; the Peabody Museum of Natural History; the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments; the Eli Whitney Museum (across the town line in Hamden, Connecticut, on Whitney Avenue); the Yale Center for British Art, which houses the largest collection of British art outside the U.K., and the Yale University Art Gallery, the western hemisphere's oldest college art museum. New Haven is also home to the New Haven Museum and Historical Society on Whitney Avenue, which has a library of many primary source treasures dating from Colonial times to the present.\nArtspace on Orange Street is one of several contemporary art galleries around the city, showcasing the work of local, national, and international artists. Others include City Gallery and A. Leaf Gallery in the downtown area. Westville galleries include Kehler Liddell, Jennifer Jane Gallery, and The Hungry Eye. The Erector Square complex in the Fair Haven neighborhood houses, the Parachute Factory gallery along with numerous artist studios, and the complex serves as an active destination during City-Wide Open Studios held yearly in October.\nNew Haven is the home port of a life-size replica of the historical \"Freedom Schooner Amistad\", which is open for tours at Long Wharf pier at certain times during the summer. Also at Long Wharf pier is the \"Quinnipiack\" schooner, offering sailing cruises of the harbor area throughout the summer. The \"Quinnipiack\" also functions as a floating classroom for hundreds of local students.\nMusic.\nThe New Haven Green is the site of many free music concerts, especially during the summer months. These have included the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the July Free Concerts on the Green, and the New Haven Jazz Festival in August. The Jazz Festival, which began in 1982, is one of the longest-running free outdoor festivals in the U.S., until it was canceled for 2007. Headliners such as Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles and Celia Cruz have historically drawn 30,000 to 50,000 fans, filling up the New Haven Green to capacity. The New Haven Jazz Festival was revived in 2008 and has been sponsored since by Jazz Haven.\nNew Haven is home to the concert venue Toad's Place, and a new venue, College Street Music Hall. The city has retained an alternative art and music underground that has helped to influence post-punk era music movements such as indie, college rock and underground hip-hop.\nThe Yale School of Music contributes to the city's music scene by offering hundreds of free concerts throughout the year at venues in and around the Yale campus. Large performances are held in the 2,700-seat Woolsey Hall auditorium, which contains the world's largest symphonic organs, while chamber music and recitals are performed in Sprague Hall.\nHardcore band Hatebreed are from Wallingford, but got their start in New Haven under the name Jasta 14. The band Miracle Legion formed in New Haven in 1983. Folk musicians from New Haven include Loren Mazzacane Connors and Kath Bloom.\nThe Hillhouse Opera Company is a U.S. non-profit opera company based in New Haven that performs in the New Haven area. Founded in 2008 by Victoria Leigh Gardner, Nicole Rodriguez and Jim Coatsworth Hillhouse Opera Company has performed operas as well as opera scenes programs, master classes and concert series. In 2011, the Company professionally staged the works created through the Riverview Opera Project. The Riverview Opera Project created workshops for children and adolescents at Riverview Hospital, Connecticut's only state-funded psychiatric hospital for youth, and helped them to successfully create, produce, and perform four original operas.\nFestivals.\nIn addition to the Jazz Festival (described above), New Haven serves as the home city of the annual International Festival of Arts and Ideas. New Haven's Saint Patrick's Day parade, which began in 1842, is New England's oldest and draws the largest crowds of any one-day spectator event in Connecticut. The St. Andrew the Apostle Italian Festival has taken place in the historic Wooster Square neighborhood every year since 1900. Other parishes in the city celebrate the Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua and a carnival in honor of St. Bernadette Soubirous. New Haven celebrates Powder House Day every April on the New Haven Green to commemorate the city's entrance into the Revolutionary War. The annual Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival commemorates the 1973 planting of 72 Yoshino Japanese cherry blossom trees by the New Haven Historic Commission in collaboration with the New Haven Parks Department and residents of the neighborhood. The Festival now draws well over 5,000 visitors. The Film Fest New Haven has been held annually since 1995.\nNightlife.\nIn the past decade downtown has seen an influx of new restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Large crowds are drawn to the Crown Street area downtown on weekends where many of the restaurants and bars are located. Crown Street between State and High Streets has dozens of establishments, as do nearby Temple and College Streets. Away from downtown, Upper State Street has a number of restaurants and bars popular with local residents and weekend visitors.\nNewspapers and media.\nNew Haven is served by the daily \"New Haven Register\", the weekly \"alternative\" \"New Haven Advocate\" (which is run by Tribune, the corporation owning the \"Hartford Courant\"), the online daily \"New Haven Independent\", and the monthly \"Grand News Community Newspaper.\" Downtown New Haven is covered by an in-depth civic news forum, Design New Haven. The \"Register\" also backs \"PLAY\" magazine, a weekly entertainment publication. The city is also served by several student-run papers, including the \"Yale Daily News\", the weekly \"Yale Herald\" and a humor tabloid, \"Rumpus Magazine\".\nWTNH Channel 8, the ABC affiliate for Connecticut, WCTX Channel 59, the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the state, Connecticut Public Television station WEDY channel 65, a PBS affiliate, and WTXX Channel 34, the IntrigueTV affiliate, broadcast from New Haven. All New York City news and sports team stations broadcast to New Haven County.\nSports and athletics.\nNew Haven has a history of professional sports franchises dating back to the 19th century and has been the home to professional baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer teams\u2014including the New York Giants of the National Football League from 1973 to 1974, who played at the Yale Bowl. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, New Haven consistently had minor league hockey and baseball teams, which played at the New Haven Arena (built in 1926, demolished in 1972), New Haven Coliseum (1972\u20132002), and Yale Field (1928\u2013present).\nWhen John DeStefano, Jr., became mayor of New Haven in 1995, he outlined a plan to transform the city into a major cultural and arts center in the Northeast, which involved investments in programs and projects other than sports franchises. As nearby Bridgeport built new sports facilities, the brutalist New Haven Coliseum rapidly deteriorated. Believing the upkeep on the venue to be a drain of tax dollars, the DeStefano administration closed the Coliseum in 2002; it was demolished in 2007. New Haven's last professional sports team, the New Haven County Cutters, left in 2009. The DeStefano administration did, however, see the construction of the New Haven Athletic Center in 1998, a indoor athletic facility with a seating capacity of over 3,000. The NHAC, built adjacent to Hillhouse High School, is used for New Haven public schools athletics, as well as large-scale area and state sporting events; it is the largest high school indoor sports complex in the state.\nNew Haven was the host of the 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games; then-President Bill Clinton spoke at the opening ceremonies. The city is home to the Pilot Pen International tennis event, which takes place every August at the Connecticut Tennis Center, one of the largest tennis venues in the world. New Haven biannually hosts \"The Game\" between Yale and Harvard, the country's second-oldest college football rivalry. Numerous road races take place in New Haven, including the USATF 20K Championship during the New Haven Road Race.\nGreater New Haven is home to a number of college sports teams. The Yale Bulldogs play Division I college sports, as do the Quinnipiac Bobcats in neighboring Hamden. Division II athletics are played by Southern Connecticut State University and the University of New Haven (actually located in neighboring West Haven), while Albertus Magnus College athletes perform at the Division III level.\nNew Haven is home to many New York Yankees, New York Mets, & Boston Red Sox fans due to the proximity of New York City & Boston.\nWalter Camp, deemed the \"father of American football\", was a New Havener.\nThe New Haven Warriors rugby league team play in the AMNRL. They have a large number of Pacific Islanders playing for them. Their field is located at the West Haven High School's Ken Strong Stadium. They won the 2008 AMNRL Grand Final.\nStructures.\nArchitecture.\nNew Haven has many architectural landmarks dating from every important time period and architectural style in American history. The city has been home to a number of architects and architectural firms that have left their mark on the city including Ithiel Town and Henry Austin in the 19th century and Cesar Pelli, Warren Platner, Kevin Roche, Herbert Newman and Barry Svigals in the 20th. The Yale School of Architecture has fostered this important component of the city's economy. Cass Gilbert, of the Beaux-Arts school, designed New Haven's Union Station and the New Haven Free Public Library and was also commissioned for a City Beautiful plan in 1919. Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, Alexander Jackson Davis, Philip C. Johnson, Gordon Bunshaft, Louis Kahn, James Gamble Rogers, Frank Gehry, Charles Willard Moore, Stefan Behnisch, James Polshek, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen and Robert Venturi all have designed buildings in New Haven. Yale's 1950s-era Ingalls Rink, designed by Eero Saarinen, was included on the \"America's Favorite Architecture\" list created in 2007.\nSeveral residential homes in New Haven were designed by Alice Washburn, a noted female architect whose Colonial Revival style set a standard for homes in the region.\nMany of the city's neighborhoods are well-preserved as walkable \"museums\" of 19th- and 20th-century American architecture, particularly by the New Haven Green, Hillhouse Avenue and other residential sections close to Downtown New Haven. Overall, a large proportion of the city's land area is National (NRHP) historic districts. One of the best sources on local architecture is \"New Haven: Architecture and Urban Design\", by Elizabeth Mills Brown.\nThe five tallest buildings in New Haven are:\nHistoric points of interest.\nMany historical sites exist throughout the city, including 59 properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Of these, nine are among the 60 U.S. National Historic Landmarks in Connecticut. The New Haven Green, one of the National Historic Landmarks, was formed in 1638, and is home to three 19th-century churches. Below the First Church of Christ in New Haven (referred to as the Center Church on the Green) lies a 17th-century crypt, which is open to visitors. Some of the more famous burials include the first wife of Benedict Arnold and the aunt and grandmother of President Rutherford B. Hayes; Hayes visited the crypt while President in 1880. The Old Campus of Yale University is located next to the Green, and includes Connecticut Hall, Yale's oldest building and a National Historic Landmark. The Hillhouse Avenue area, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a part of Yale's campus, has been called a walkable museum, due to its 19th-century mansions and street scape; Charles Dickens is said to have called Hillhouse Avenue \"the most beautiful street in America\" when visiting the city in 1868.\nIn 1660, Edward Whalley (a cousin and friend of Oliver Cromwell) and William Goffe, two English Civil War generals who signed the death warrant of King Charles I, hid in a rock formation in New Haven after having fled England upon the restoration of Charles II to the English throne. They were later joined by a third regicide, John Dixwell. The rock formation, which is now a part of West Rock Park, is known as Judges' Cave, and the path leading to the cave is called the Regicides Trail.\nAfter the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, the Connecticut colonial government ordered the construction of Black Rock Fort (to be built on top of an older 17th-century fort) to protect the port of New Haven. In 1779, during the Battle of New Haven, British soldiers captured Black Rock Fort and burned the barracks to the ground. The fort was reconstructed in 1807 by the federal government (on orders from the Thomas Jefferson administration), and rechristened Fort Nathan Hale, after the Revolutionary War hero who had lived in New Haven. The cannons of Fort Nathan Hale were successful in defying British war ships during the War of 1812. In 1863, during the Civil War, a second Fort Hale was built next to the original, complete with bomb-resistant bunkers and a moat, to defend the city should a Southern raid against New Haven be launched. The United States Congress deeded the site to the state in 1921, and all three versions of the fort have been restored. The site is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and receives thousands of visitors each year.\nGrove Street Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark which lies adjacent to Yale's campus, contains the graves of Roger Sherman, Eli Whitney, Noah Webster, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Charles Goodyear and Walter Camp, among other notable burials. The cemetery is noted for its Egyptian Revival gateway, and is the oldest planned burial ground in the United States. The Union League Club of New Haven building, located on Chapel Street, is notable for not only being a historic Beaux-Arts building, but also is built on the site where Roger Sherman's home once stood; George Washington is known to have stayed at the Sherman residence while President in 1789 (one of three times Washington visited New Haven throughout his lifetime).\nTwo sites pay homage to the time President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft lived in the city, as both a student and later Professor at Yale: a plaque on Prospect Street marks the site where Taft's home formerly stood, and downtown's Taft Apartment Building (formerly the Taft Hotel) bears the name of the former president who resided in the building for eight years before becoming Chief Justice of the United States.\nLighthouse Point Park, a public beach run by the city, was a popular tourist destination during the Roaring Twenties, attracting luminaries of the period such as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. The park remains popular among New Haveners, and is home to the Five Mile Point Lighthouse, constructed in 1847, and the Lighthouse Point Carousel, constructed in 1916. Five Mile Point Light was decommissioned in 1877 following the construction of Southwest Ledge Light at the entrance of the harbor, which remains in service to this day. Both of the lighthouses and the carousel are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nOther historic sites in the city include the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, which stands at the summit of East Rock, the Marsh Botanical Garden, Wooster Square, Dwight Street, Louis' Lunch, and the Farmington Canal, all of which date back to the 19th century. Other historic parks besides the Green include Edgerton Park, Edgewood Park, and East Rock Park, each of which is included on the National Register of Historic Places.\nTransportation.\nRail.\nNew Haven has two railroad stations, connected to New York City and points along the Northeast Corridor by commuter rail, regional rail and inter-city rail. Service is provided by:\nThe city's main railroad station is the historic Beaux-Arts Union Station, which serves Metro-North, Hartford Line, and Shore Line East commuter trains. Approximately 175 trains serve Union Station on weekdays. Union Station is also served by four Amtrak lines: the \"Northeast Regional\" and the high-speed \"Acela Express\" provide service to New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston, and rank as the first and second busiest routes in the country; the New Haven\u2013Springfield Line provides service to Hartford and Springfield, Massachusetts; and the \"Vermonter\" provides service to both Washington, D.C., and Vermont, from the Canada\u2013US border.\nAn additional station, State Street Station, was opened in 2002, providing passengers easier access to downtown New Haven. State Street Station is currently serviced by Shore Line East and Hartford Line trains, plus some peak-hour Metro-North trips.\nBus.\nThe New Haven Division of Connecticut Transit (CT Transit), the state's bus system, is the second largest division in the state with 24 routes. All routes originate from the New Haven Green, making it the central transfer hub of the city. Service is provided to 19 different municipalities throughout Greater New Haven. Bus routes were formerly identified by letters, but as of October 8, 2017, all service was renamed using 200-series numbers, in accordance with a renumbering of CTtransit's statewide services.\nCT Transit's Union Station Shuttle provides free service from Union Station to the New Haven Green and several New Haven parking garages. Peter Pan and Greyhound bus lines have scheduled stops at Union Station, and connections downtown can be made via the Union Station Shuttle. A private company operates the New Haven/Hartford Express which provides commuter bus service to Hartford. The Yale University Shuttle provides free transportation around New Haven for Yale students, faculty, and staff.\nThe New Haven Division buses follow routes that had originally been covered by trolley service. Horse-drawn streetcars began operating in New Haven in the 1860s, and by the mid-1890s all the lines had become electric. In the 1920s and 1930s, some of the trolley lines began to be replaced by bus lines, with the last trolley route converted to bus in 1948. The City of New Haven is in the very early stages of considering the restoration of streetcar (light-rail) service, which has been absent since the postwar period.\nBicycle.\nBikeshare.\nOn February 21, 2018, New Haven officially launched its Bike New Haven bikeshare program. based on dockless technology powered by Noa Technologies At time of launch, the program features 10 docking stations and 100 bikes, spread throughout the urban core; there are plans to reach 30 bike stations and 300 bikes by the end of April 2018. The launch of the New Haven bikeshare program coincided with the launch of Yale University's own bikeshare program, which uses the same technology powered by Noa.\nBike lanes.\nIn 2004, the first bike lane in the city was added to Orange Street, connecting East Rock Park and the East Rock neighborhood to downtown. Since then, bike lanes have also been added to sections of Howard Ave, Elm St, Dixwell Avenue, Water Street, Clinton Avenue and State Street. The city has created recommended bike routes for getting around New Haven, including use of the Canal Trail and the Orange Street lane. As of the end of 2012, bicycle lanes have also been added in both directions on Dixwell Avenue along most of the street from downtown to the Hamden town line, as well as along Howard Avenue from Yale New Haven Hospital to City Point.\nThe city has plans to create two additional bike lanes connecting Union Station with downtown, and the Westville neighborhood with downtown. The city has added dozens of covered bike parking spots at Union Station, in order to facilitate more bike commuting to the station.\nFarmington Canal Greenway.\nThe Farmington Canal Trail is a rail trail that will eventually run continuously from downtown New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts. The scenic trail follows the path of the historic New Haven and Northampton Company and the Farmington Canal. Currently, there is a continuous stretch of the trail from downtown, through Hamden and into Cheshire, making bicycle commuting between New Haven and those suburbs possible. The trail is part of the East Coast Greenway, a proposed bike path that would link every major city on the East Coast from Florida to Maine.\nRoads.\nNew Haven lies at the intersection of Interstate 95 on the coast\u2014which provides access southwards and/or westwards to the western coast of Connecticut and to New York City, and eastwards to the eastern Connecticut shoreline, Rhode Island, and eastern Massachusetts\u2014and Interstate 91, which leads northward to the interior of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont and the Canada\u2013US border. I-95 is notorious for traffic jams increasing with proximity to New York City; on the east side of New Haven it passes over the Quinnipiac River via the Pearl Harbor Memorial, or \"Q Bridge\", which often presents a major bottleneck to traffic. I-91, however, is relatively less congested, except at the intersection with I-95 during peak travel times.\nThe Oak Street Connector (Connecticut Route 34) intersects I-91 at exit 1, just south of the I-95/I-91 interchange, and runs northwest for a few blocks as an expressway spur into downtown before emptying onto surface roads. The Wilbur Cross Parkway (Connecticut Route 15) runs parallel to I-95 west of New Haven, turning northwards as it nears the city and then running northwards parallel to I-91 through the outer rim of New Haven and Hamden, offering an alternative to the I-95/I-91 journey (restricted to non-commercial vehicles). Route 15 in New Haven is the site of the only highway tunnel in the state (officially designated as Heroes Tunnel), running through West Rock, home to West Rock Park and the Three Judges Cave.\nThe city also has several major surface arteries. U.S. Route 1 (Columbus Avenue, Union Avenue, Water Street, Forbes Avenue) runs in an east\u2013west direction south of downtown serving Union Station and leading out of the city to Milford, West Haven, East Haven and Branford. The main road from downtown heading northwest is Whalley Avenue (partly signed as Route 10 and Route 63) leading to Westville and Woodbridge. Heading north towards Hamden, there are two major thoroughfares, Dixwell Avenue and Whitney Avenue. To the northeast are Middletown Avenue (Route 17), which leads to the Montowese section of North Haven, and Foxon Boulevard (Route 80), which leads to the Foxon section of East Haven and to the town of North Branford. To the west is Route 34, which leads to the city of Derby. Other major intracity arteries are Ella Grasso Boulevard (Route 10) west of downtown, and College Street, Temple Street, Church Street, Elm Street, and Grove Street in the downtown area.\nTraffic safety is a major concern for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists in New Haven. In addition to many traffic-related fatalities in the city each year, since 2005, over a dozen Yale students, staff and faculty have been killed or injured in traffic collisions on or near the campus.\nAirport.\nTweed New Haven Airport is located within the city limits east of the business district, straddling the border with neighboring East Haven. Service to approximately 25 cities is provided by Avelo Airlines, which established its first East Coast base at the airport in 2021. Breeze Airways plans to begin operations at Tweed in December 2024, and will provide service to 10 destinations. The airport is currently planning a runway lengthening and new terminal on the East Haven side of the airport.\nBus service between Downtown New Haven and Tweed is available via the CT Transit New Haven Division.\nSeaport.\nNew Haven Harbor is home to the Port of New Haven, a deep-water seaport with three berths capable of hosting vessels and barges as well as the facilities required to handle break bulk cargo. The port has the capacity to load 200 trucks a day from the ground or via loading docks. Providence and Worcester Railroad provides freight rail transportation to the port, with the railroad operating a switch engine for yard movements, a private siding for loading and unloading, and trackage over the Tomlinson Lift Bridge toward the Northeast Corridor. Approximately of inside storage and of outside storage are available at the site. Five shore cranes with a 250-ton capacity and 26 forklifts, each with a 26-ton capacity, are also available.\nOn June 17, 2013, the city commissioned the \"Nathan Hale\", a port security vessel capable of serving search and rescue, firefighting, and constabulary roles.\nInfrastructure.\nHospitals and medicine.\nThe New Haven area supports several medical facilities that are considered some of the best hospitals in the country. There are two major medical centers downtown: Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital has four pavilions, including the Yale \u2013 New Haven Children's Hospital and the Smilow Cancer Hospital; the Hospital of Saint Raphael is several blocks north, and touts its excellent cardiac emergency care program. Smaller downtown health facilities are the Temple Medical Center located downtown on Temple Street, Connecticut Mental Health Center/ across Park Street from Y-NHH, and the Hill Health Center, which serves the working-class Hill neighborhood. A large Veterans Affairs hospital is located in neighboring West Haven. To the west in Milford is Milford Hospital, and to the north in Meriden is the MidState Medical Center.\nIn recent years, Yale and the City of New Haven have been working to build a medical and biotechnology research hub in the city and Greater New Haven region. The city, state and Yale together run Science Park, a large site three blocks northwest of Yale's Science Hill campus. This multi-block site, approximately bordered by Mansfield Street, Division Street, and Shelton Avenue, is the former home of Winchester's and Olin Corporation's 45 large-scale factory buildings. Currently, sections of the site are large-scale parking lots or abandoned structures, but there is also a large remodeled and functioning area of buildings (leased primarily by a private developer) with numerous Yale employees, financial service and biotech companies.\nA second biotechnology district is being planned for the median strip on Frontage Road, on land cleared for the never-built Route 34 extension. As of late 2009, a Pfizer drug-testing clinic, a medical laboratory building serving Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital, and a mixed-use structure containing parking, housing and office space, have been constructed on this corridor. A former SNET telephone building at 300 George Street is being converted into lab space, and has been quite successful so far in attracting biotechnology and medical firms.\nPower supply facilities.\nElectricity for New Haven is generated by a 448\u00a0MW oil and gas-fired generating station located on the shore at New Haven Harbor. PPL Corporation operates a 220\u00a0MW peaking natural gas turbine plant in nearby Wallingford.\nNear New Haven there is the static inverter plant of the HVDC Cross Sound Cable.\nThere are three PureCell Model 400 fuel cells placed in the city of New Haven\u2014one at the New Haven Public Schools and newly constructed Roberto Clemente School, one at the mixed-use 360 State Street building, and one at City Hall. According to Giovanni Zinn of the city's Office of Sustainability, each fuel cell may save the city up to $1 million in energy costs over a decade. The fuel cells were provided by ClearEdge Power, formerly UTC Power. Additional fuel cells are located at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and at the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority (GNHWPCA). Ikea's New Haven facility also utilizes a 250\u00a0kW fuel cell and 940.8\u00a0kW solar array.\nNew Haven recently installed solar panels at 11 city schools with a combined power generation capacity of 1.8 MW. Owned and maintained by Greenskies, the panels allow New Haven to purchase electricity at a discounted rate through a power-purchasing agreement. The panels bring New Haven's solar capacity to 2.8 MW and will help New Haven meet its commitment to powering 100% of its municipal operations through clean energy, which it made in Summer 2017 and reaffirmed in the 2018 New Haven Climate and Sustainability Framework.\nIn popular culture.\nSeveral movies have been filmed in New Haven since 2000, including \"Mona Lisa Smile\" (2003), with Julia Roberts, \"The Life Before Her Eyes\" (2007), with Uma Thurman, and \"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull\" (2008) directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett and Shia LaBeouf. The filming of \"Crystal Skull\" involved an extensive chase sequence through the streets of New Haven. Several downtown streets were closed to traffic and received a \"makeover\" to look like streets of 1957, when the film is set. 500 locals were cast as extras for the film. In \"Everybody's Fine\" (2009), Robert De Niro has a close encounter in what is supposed to be the Denver train station; the scene was filmed in New Haven's Union Station.\n New Haven is mentioned in the song Peace Frog by the Doors, referencing a 1967 incident where vocalist Jim Morrison was arrested for \"attempting to incite a riot\" in the middle of a concert at the New Haven Arena.\nSister cities.\nNew Haven's sister cities are:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSome of these were selected because of historical connection\u2014Freetown because of the \"Amistad\" trial. Others, such as Amalfi and Afula, reflect ethnic groups in New Haven.\nIn 1990, the United Nations named New Haven a \"Peace Messenger City\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "34273": "Yale University\nPrivate university in New Haven, Connecticut, US\n \nYale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution.\nYale was established as the Collegiate School in 1701 by Congregationalist clergy of the Connecticut Colony. Originally restricted to instructing ministers in theology and sacred languages, the school's curriculum expanded, incorporating humanities and sciences by the time of the American Revolution. In the 19th century, the college expanded into graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first PhD in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887. Yale's faculty and student populations grew rapidly after 1890 due to the expansion of the physical campus and its scientific research programs.\nYale is organized into fifteen constituent schools, including the original undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and Yale Law School. While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each school's faculty oversees its curriculum and degree programs. In addition to a central campus in downtown New Haven, the university owns athletic facilities in western New Haven, a campus in West Haven, and forests and nature preserves throughout New England. As of 2023[ [update]], the university's endowment was valued at $, the third largest of any educational institution. The Yale University Library, serving all constituent schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States. Student athletes compete in intercollegiate sports as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I Ivy League conference.\nAs of \u00a02024[ [update]], 68 Nobel laureates, 5 Fields medalists, 4 Abel Prize laureates, and 3 Turing Award winners have been affiliated with Yale University. In addition, Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including 5 U.S. presidents, 10 Founding Fathers, 19 U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 31 living billionaires, 54 college founders and presidents, many heads of state, cabinet members and governors. Hundreds of members of Congress and many U.S. diplomats, 96 MacArthur Fellows, 263 Rhodes Scholars, 123 Marshall Scholars, 81 Gates Cambridge Scholars, 102 Guggenheim Fellows and 9 Mitchell Scholars have been affiliated with the university. Yale's current faculty include 67 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 55 members of the National Academy of Medicine, 8 members of the National Academy of Engineering, and 193 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.\nHistory.\nEarly history of Yale College.\nOrigins.\nYale traces its beginnings to \"An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School\", a would-be charter passed in New Haven by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut on October 9, 1701. The Act was an effort to create an institution to train ministers and lay leadership. Soon after, a group of ten Congregational ministers, Samuel Andrew, Thomas Buckingham, Israel Chauncy, Samuel Mather (nephew of Increase Mather), Rev. James Noyes II (son of James Noyes), James Pierpont, Abraham Pierson, Noadiah Russell, Joseph Webb, and Timothy Woodbridge, all Harvard alumni, met in the study of Reverend Samuel Russell, in Branford, to donate books to form the school's library. The group, led by James Pierpont, is now known as \"The Founders\".\nKnown from its origin as the \"Collegiate School\", the institution opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson, who is considered Yale's first president. Pierson lived in Killingworth. The school moved to Saybrook in 1703, when the first treasurer of Yale, Nathaniel Lynde, donated land and a building. In 1716, it moved to New Haven.\nMeanwhile, there was a rift forming at Harvard between its sixth president, Increase Mather, and the rest of the Harvard clergy, whom Mather viewed as increasingly liberal, ecclesiastically lax, and overly broad in Church polity. The feud caused the Mathers to champion the Collegiate School in the hope it would maintain the Puritan religious orthodoxy in a way Harvard had not. Rev. Jason Haven, minister at the First Church and Parish in Dedham, Massachusetts, had been considered for the presidency on account of his orthodox theology and \"Neatness dignity and purity of Style [which] surpass those of all that have been mentioned\", but was passed over due to his \"very Valetudinary and infirm State of Health\".\nNaming and development.\nIn 1718, at the behest of either Rector Samuel Andrew or the colony's Governor Gurdon Saltonstall, Cotton Mather contacted the Boston-born businessman Elihu Yale to ask for money to construct a new building for the college. Through the persuasion of Jeremiah Dummer, Yale, who had made a fortune in Madras while working for the East India Company as the first president of Fort St. George, donated nine bales of goods, which were sold for more than \u00a3560, a substantial sum of money. Cotton Mather suggested the school change its name to \"Yale College\". The name Yale is the Anglicized spelling of the Welsh name I\u00e2l, which had been used for the family estate at Plas yn I\u00e2l, near Llandegla, Wales.\nMeanwhile, a Harvard graduate working in England convinced 180 prominent intellectuals to donate books to Yale. The 1714 shipment of 500 books represented the best of modern English literature, science, philosophy and theology. It had a profound effect on intellectuals at Yale. Undergraduate Jonathan Edwards discovered John Locke's works and developed his \"new divinity\". In 1722 the rector and six friends, who had a study group to discuss the new ideas, announced they had given up Calvinism, become Arminians, and joined the Church of England. They were ordained in England and returned to the colonies as missionaries for the Anglican faith. Thomas Clapp became president in 1745, and while he attempted to return the college to Calvinist orthodoxy, did not close the library. Other students found Deist books in the library.\nCurriculum.\nYale College undergraduates follow a liberal arts curriculum with departmental majors and is organized into a social system of residential colleges.\nYale was swept up by the great intellectual movements of the period\u2014the Great Awakening and Enlightenment\u2014due to the religious and scientific interests of presidents Thomas Clap and Ezra Stiles. They were instrumental in developing the scientific curriculum while dealing with wars, student tumults, graffiti, \"irrelevance\" of curricula, desperate need for endowment and disagreements with the Connecticut legislature.\nSerious American students of theology and divinity, particularly in New England, regarded Hebrew as a classical language, along with Greek and Latin, and essential for study of the Old Testament in the original. Reverend Stiles, president from 1778 to 1795, brought with him his interest in Hebrew as a vehicle for studying ancient Biblical texts in their original language, requiring all freshmen to study Hebrew (in contrast to Harvard, where only upperclassmen were required to study it) and is responsible for the Hebrew phrase \u05d0\u05d5\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u05d5\u05ea\u05de\u05d9\u05dd (Urim and Thummim) on the Yale seal. A 1746 graduate of Yale, Stiles came to the college with experience in education, having played an integral role in founding Brown University. Stiles' greatest challenge occurred in 1779 when British forces occupied New Haven and threatened to raze the college. However, Yale graduate Edmund Fanning, secretary to the British general in command of the occupation, intervened and the college was saved. In 1803, Fanning was granted an honorary degree LL.D..\nStudents.\nAs the only college in Connecticut from 1701 to 1823, Yale educated the sons of the elite. Punishable offenses included cardplaying, tavern-going, destruction of college property, and acts of disobedience. Harvard was distinctive for the stability and maturity of its tutor corps, while Yale had youth and zeal.\nThe emphasis on classics gave rise to private student societies, open only by invitation, which arose as forums for discussions of scholarship, literature and politics. The first were debating societies: Crotonia in 1738, Linonia in 1753 and Brothers in Unity in 1768. Linonia and Brothers in Unity continue to exist; commemorations to them can be found with names given to campus structures, like Brothers in Unity Courtyard in Branford College.\n19th century.\nThe Yale Report of 1828 was a dogmatic defense of the Latin and Greek curriculum against critics who wanted more courses in modern languages, math and science. Unlike higher education in Europe, there was no national curriculum for U.S. colleges and universities. In the competition for students and financial support, college leaders strove to keep current with demands for innovation. At the same time, they realized a significant portion of students and prospective students demanded a classical background. The report meant the classics would not be abandoned. During this period, institutions experimented with changes in the curriculum, often resulting in a dual-track curriculum. In the decentralized environment of U.S. higher education, balancing change with tradition was a common challenge. A group of professors at Yale and New Haven Congregationalist ministers articulated a conservative response to the changes brought by Victorian culture. They concentrated on developing a person possessed of religious values strong enough to sufficiently resist temptations from within, yet flexible enough to adjust to the 'isms' (professionalism, materialism, individualism, and consumerism) tempting them from without. William Graham Sumner, professor from 1872 to 1909, taught in the emerging disciplines of economics and sociology to overflowing classrooms. Sumner bested President Noah Porter, who disliked the social sciences and wanted Yale to lock into its traditions of classical education. Porter objected to Sumner's use of a textbook by Herbert Spencer that espoused agnostic materialism because it might harm students.\nUntil 1887, the legal name of the university was \"The President and Fellows of Yale College, in New Haven\". In 1887, under an act passed by the Connecticut General Assembly, Yale was renamed \"Yale University\".\nSports and debate.\nThe Revolutionary War soldier Nathan Hale (Yale 1773) was the archetype of the Yale ideal in the early 19th\u00a0century: a manly yet aristocratic scholar, well-versed in knowledge and sports, and a patriot who \"regretted\" that he \"had but one life to lose\" for his country. Western painter Frederic Remington (Yale 1900) was an artist whose heroes gloried in the combat and tests of strength in the Wild West. The fictional, turn-of-the-20th-century Yale man Frank Merriwell embodied this same heroic ideal without racial prejudice, and his fictional successor Dink Stover in the novel \"Stover at Yale\" (1912) questioned the business mentality that had become prevalent at the school. Increasingly students turned to athletic stars as their heroes, especially since winning the big game became the goal of the student body, the alumni, and the team itself.\nAlong with Harvard and Princeton, Yale students rejected British concepts about 'amateurism' and constructed athletic programs that were uniquely American. The Harvard\u2013Yale football rivalry began in 1875. Between 1892, when Harvard and Yale met in one of the first intercollegiate debates, and in 1909 (year of the first Triangular Debate of Harvard/Yale/Princeton) the rhetoric, symbolism, and metaphors used in athletics were used to frame these debates. Debates were covered on front pages of college newspapers and emphasized in yearbooks, and team members received the equivalent of athletic letters for their jackets. There were rallies to send off teams to matches, but they never attained the broad appeal athletics enjoyed. One reason may be that debates do not have a clear winner, because scoring is subjective. With late 19th-century concerns about the impact of modern life on the body, athletics offered hope that neither the individual nor society was coming apart.\nIn 1909\u201310, football faced a crisis resulting from the failure of the reforms of 1905\u201306, which sought to solve the problem of serious injuries. There was a mood of alarm and mistrust, and, while the crisis was developing, the presidents of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton developed a project to reform the sport and forestall possible radical changes forced by government. Presidents Arthur Hadley of Yale, A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard, and Woodrow Wilson of Princeton worked to develop moderate reforms to reduce injuries. Their attempts, however, were reduced by rebellion against the rules committee and formation of the Intercollegiate Athletic Association. While the big three had attempted to operate independently of the majority, the changes pushed did reduce injuries.\nExpansion.\nStarting with the addition of the Yale School of Medicine in 1810, the college expanded gradually, establishing the Yale Divinity School in 1822, Yale Law School in 1822, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1847, the now-defunct Sheffield Scientific School in 1847, and the Yale School of Fine Arts in 1869. In 1887, under the presidency of Timothy Dwight V, Yale College was renamed to Yale University, and the former name was applied only to the undergraduate college. The university would continue to expand into the 20th and 21st centuries, adding the Yale School of Music in 1894, the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies in 1900, the Yale School of Public Health in 1915, the Yale School of Architecture in 1916, the Yale School of Nursing 1923, the Yale School of Drama in 1955, the Yale School of Management in 1976, and the Jackson School of Global Affairs in 2022. The Sheffield Scientific School would also reorganize its relationship with the university to teach only undergraduate courses.\nExpansion caused controversy about Yale's new roles. Noah Porter, a moral philosopher, was president from 1871 to 1886. During an age of expansion in higher education, Porter resisted the rise of the new research university, claiming an eager embrace of its ideals would corrupt undergraduate education. Historian George Levesque argues Porter was not a simple-minded reactionary, uncritically committed to tradition, but a principled and selective conservative. Levesque says he did not endorse everything old or reject everything new; rather, he sought to apply long-established ethical and pedagogical principles to a changing culture. Levesque concludes, noting he may have misunderstood some of the challenges, but he correctly anticipated the enduring tensions that have accompanied the emergence of the modern university.\n20th century.\nMedicine.\nMilton Winternitz led the Yale School of Medicine as its dean from 1920 to 1935. Dedicated to the new scientific medicine established in Germany, he was equally fervent about \"social medicine\" and the study of humans in their environment. He established the \"Yale System\" of teaching, with few lectures and fewer exams, and strengthened the full-time faculty system; he created the graduate-level Yale School of Nursing and the psychiatry department and built new buildings. Progress toward his plans for an Institute of Human Relations, envisioned as a refuge where social scientists would collaborate with biological scientists in a holistic study of humankind, lasted only a few years before resentful antisemitic colleagues drove him to resign.\nFaculty.\nBefore World War II, most elite university faculties counted among their numbers few, if any, Jews, blacks, women, or other minorities; Yale was no exception. By 1980, this condition had been altered dramatically, as numerous members of those groups held faculty positions. Almost all members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences\u2014and some members of other faculties\u2014teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually.\nWomen.\nIn 1793, Lucinda Foote passed the entrance exams for Yale College, but was rejected by the president on the basis of her gender. Women studied at Yale from 1892, in graduate-level programs at the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The first seven women to earn PhDs received their degrees in 1894: Elizabeth Deering Hanscom, Cornelia H. B. Rogers, Sara Bulkley Rogers, Margaretta Palmer, Mary Augusta Scott, Laura Johnson Wylie, and Charlotte Fitch Roberts. There is a portrait of them in Sterling Memorial Library, painted by Brenda Zlamany.\nIn 1966, Yale began discussions with its sister school Vassar College about merging to foster coeducation at the undergraduate level. Vassar, then all-female and part of the Seven Sisters\u2014elite higher education schools that served as sister institutions to the Ivy League when nearly all Ivy League institutions still only admitted men\u2014tentatively accepted, but then declined the invitation. Both schools introduced coeducation independently in 1969. Amy Solomon was the first woman to register as a Yale undergraduate; she was the first woman at Yale to join an undergraduate society, St. Anthony Hall. The undergraduate class of 1973 was the first to have women starting from freshman year; all undergraduate women were housed in Vanderbilt Hall.\nA decade into co-education, student assault and harassment by faculty became the impetus for the trailblazing lawsuit \"Alexander v. Yale\". In the 1970s, a group of students and a faculty member sued Yale for its failure to curtail sexual harassment, especially by male faculty. The case was partly built from a 1977 report authored by plaintiff Ann Olivarius, \"A report to the Yale Corporation from the Yale Undergraduate Women's Caucus\". This case was the first to use Title IX to argue and establish that sexual harassment of female students can be considered illegal sex discrimination. The plaintiffs were Olivarius, Ronni Alexander, Margery Reifler, Pamela Price, and Lisa E. Stone. They were joined by Yale classics professor John \"Jack\" J. Winkler. The lawsuit, brought partly by Catharine MacKinnon, alleged rape, fondling, and offers of higher grades for sex by faculty, including Keith Brion, professor of flute and director of bands, political science professor Raymond Duvall, English professor Michael Cooke, and coach of the field hockey team, Richard Kentwell. While unsuccessful in the courts, the legal reasoning changed the landscape of sex discrimination law and resulted in the establishment of Yale's Grievance Board and Women's Center. In 2011 a Title IX complaint was filed against Yale by students and graduates, including editors of Yale's feminist magazine \"Broad Recognition\", alleging the university had a hostile sexual climate. In response, the university formed a Title IX steering committee to address complaints of sexual misconduct. Afterwards, universities and colleges throughout the U.S. also established sexual harassment grievance procedures.\nClass.\nYale instituted policies in the early 20th century designed to maintain the proportion of white Protestants from notable families in the student body (see \"numerus clausus\") and eliminated such preferences, beginning with the class of 1970.\n21st century.\nIn 2006, Yale and Peking University (PKU) established a Joint Undergraduate Program in Beijing, an exchange program allowing Yale students to spend a semester living and studying with PKU honor students. In July 2012, the Yale University-PKU Program ended due to weak participation.\nIn 2007 outgoing Yale President Rick Levin characterized Yale's institutional priorities: \"First, among the nation's finest research universities, Yale is distinctively committed to excellence in undergraduate education. Second, in our graduate and professional schools, as well as in Yale College, we are committed to the education of leaders.\"\nIn 2009, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair picked Yale as one location\u2014the others being Britain's Durham University and Universiti Teknologi Mara\u2014for the Tony Blair Faith Foundation's United States Faith and Globalization Initiative. As of 2009, former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo is the director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and teaches an undergraduate seminar, \"Debating Globalization\". As of 2009, former presidential candidate and DNC chair Howard Dean teaches a residential college seminar, \"Understanding Politics and Politicians\". Also in 2009, an alliance was formed among Yale, University College London, and both schools' affiliated hospital complexes to conduct research focused on the direct improvement of patient care\u2014a field known as translational medicine. President Richard Levin noted that Yale has hundreds of other partnerships across the world, but \"no existing collaboration matches the scale of the new partnership with UCL\". In August 2013, a new partnership with the National University of Singapore led to the opening of Yale-NUS College in Singapore, a joint effort to create a new liberal arts college in Asia featuring a curriculum including Western and Asian traditions.\nIn 2017, having been suggested for decades, Yale University renamed Calhoun College, named for slave owner, anti-abolitionist, and white supremacist Vice President John C. Calhoun. It is now Hopper College, after Grace Hopper.\nIn 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd protests, the #CancelYale tag was used on social media to demand that Elihu Yale's name be removed from Yale University. Much of the support originated from right-wing pundits such as Mike Cernovich and Ann Coulter, who intended to satirize what they perceived as the excesses of cancel culture. Yale spent most of his professional career in the employ of the East India Company (EIC), serving as the governor of the Presidency of Fort St. George in modern-day Chennai. The EIC, including Yale himself, was involved in the Indian Ocean slave trade, though the extent of Yale's involvement in slavery remains debated.\nHis singularly large donation led critics to argue Yale University relied on money derived from slavery for its first scholarships and endowments.\nIn 2020, the U.S. Justice Department sued Yale for alleged discrimination against Asian and white candidates, through affirmative action admission policies. In 2021, under the new Biden administration, the Justice Department withdrew the lawsuit. The group, Students for Fair Admissions, later won a similar lawsuit against Harvard.\nIn April 2024, Yale students joined other campuses across the United States in protests against the Gaza war. The student protestors demanded that Yale University divest from military weapons companies with ties to Israel's war on Gaza. Over 50 people were arrested at protests in and around Beinecke Plaza, and protests continued during the summer and in the new academic year starting September 2024. Undergraduate students \"overwhelmingly\" voted in a December referendum to call for divestment. \nAlumni in politics.\nThe \"Boston Globe\" wrote in 2002 that \"if there's one school that can lay claim to educating the nation's top national leaders over the past three decades, it's Yale\". Yale alumni were represented on the Democratic or Republican ticket in every U.S. presidential election between 1972 and 2004. Yale-educated presidents since the end of the Vietnam War include Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, and major-party nominees include Hillary Clinton (2016), John Kerry (2004), Joseph Lieberman (vice president, 2000), and Sargent Shriver (vice president, 1972). Other alumni who have made serious bids for the presidency include Amy Klobuchar (2020), Tom Steyer (2020), Ben Carson (2016), Howard Dean (2004), Gary Hart (1984 and 1988), Paul Tsongas (1992), Pat Robertson (1988) and Jerry Brown (1976, 1980, 1992).\nSeveral explanations have been offered for Yale's representation since the end of the Vietnam War. Sources note the spirit of campus activism that has existed at Yale since the 1960s, and the intellectual influence of Reverend William Sloane Coffin on future candidates. Yale President Levin attributes the run to Yale's focus on creating \"a laboratory for future leaders\", an institutional priority that began during the tenure of Yale Presidents Alfred Whitney Griswold and Kingman Brewster. Richard H. Brodhead, former dean of Yale College and now president of Duke University, stated: \"We do give very significant attention to orientation to the community in our admissions, and there is a very strong tradition of volunteerism at Yale\". Yale historian Gaddis Smith notes \"an ethos of organized activity\" at Yale during the 20th century that led Kerry to lead the Yale Political Union's Liberal Party, George Pataki the Conservative Party, and Lieberman to manage the \"Yale Daily News\". Camille Paglia points to a history of networking and elitism: \"It has to do with a web of friendships and affiliations built up in school\". CNN suggests that George W. Bush benefited from preferential admissions policies for the \"son and grandson of alumni\", and for a \"member of a politically influential family\". Elisabeth Bumiller and James Fallows credit the culture of community that exists between students, faculty, and administration, which downplays self-interest and reinforces commitment to others.\nDuring the 1988 presidential election, George H. W. Bush (Yale '48) derided Michael Dukakis for having \"foreign-policy views born in Harvard Yard's boutique\". When challenged on the distinction between Dukakis's Harvard connection and his Yale background, he said that, unlike Harvard, Yale's reputation was \"so diffuse, there isn't a symbol, I don't think, in the Yale situation, any symbolism in it\" and said Yale did not share Harvard's reputation for \"liberalism and elitism\". In 2004 Howard Dean stated, \"In some ways, I consider myself separate from the other three (Yale) candidates of 2004. Yale changed so much between the class of '68 and the class of '71. My class was the first class to have women in it; it was the first class to have a significant effort to recruit African Americans. It was an extraordinary time, and in that span of time is the change of an entire generation\".\nAdministration and organization.\nLeadership.\nThe President and Fellows of Yale College, also known as the Yale Corporation, or board of trustees, is the governing body of the university and consists of thirteen standing committees with separate responsibilities outlined in the by-laws. The corporation has 19 members: three \"ex officio\" members, ten successor trustees, and six elected alumni fellows. The university has three major academic components: Yale College (the undergraduate program), the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the twelve professional schools.\nYale's former president Richard C. Levin was, at the time, one of the highest paid university presidents in the United States with a 2008 salary of $. Yale's succeeding president Peter Salovey ranks 40th with a 2020 salary of $.\nThe Yale Provost's Office and similar executive positions have launched several women into prominent university executive positions. In 1977, Provost Hanna Holborn Gray was appointed interim president of Yale and later went on to become president of the University of Chicago, being the first woman to hold either position at each respective school. In 1994, Provost Judith Rodin became the first permanent female president of an Ivy League institution at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2002, Provost Alison Richard became the vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge. In 2003, the dean of the Divinity School, Rebecca Chopp, was appointed president of Colgate University and later went on to serve as the president of Swarthmore College in 2009, and then the first female chancellor of the University of Denver in 2014. In 2004, Provost Dr. Susan Hockfield became the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2004, Dean of the Nursing school, Catherine Gilliss, was appointed the dean of Duke University's School of Nursing and vice chancellor for nursing affairs. In 2007, Deputy Provost H. Kim Bottomly was named president of Wellesley College.\nSimilar examples for men who have served in Yale leadership positions can also be found. In 2004, Dean of Yale College Richard H. Brodhead was appointed as the president of Duke University. In 2008, Provost Andrew Hamilton was confirmed to be the vice chancellor of the University of Oxford.\nStaff and labor unions.\nYale University staff are represented by several different unions. Clerical and technical workers are represented by Local 34, and service and maintenance workers are represented by Local 35, both of the same union affiliate UNITE HERE. Unlike similar institutions, Yale has consistently refused to recognize its graduate student union, Local 33 (another affiliate of UNITE HERE), citing claims that the union's elections were undemocratic and how graduate students are not employees; the move to not recognize the union has been criticized by the American Federation of Teachers. In addition, officers of the Yale University Police Department are represented by the Yale Police Benevolent Association, which affiliated in 2005 with the Connecticut Organization for Public Safety Employees. Yale security officers joined the International Union of Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America in late 2010, even though the Yale administration contested the election. In October 2014, after deliberation, Yale security decided to form a new union, the Yale University Security Officers Association, which has since represented the campus security officers.\nYale has a history of difficult and prolonged labor negotiations, often culminating in strikes. There have been at least eight strikes since 1968, and \"The New York Times\" wrote that Yale has a reputation as having the worst record of labor tension of any university in the U.S. Moreover, Yale has been accused by the AFL\u2013CIO of failing to treat workers with respect, as well as not renewing contracts with professors over involvement in campus labor issues. Yale has responded to strikes with claims over mediocre union participation and the benefits of their contracts.\nCampus.\nYale's central campus in downtown New Haven covers and comprises its main, historic campus and a medical campus adjacent to the Yale\u2013New Haven Hospital. In western New Haven, the university holds of athletic facilities, including the Yale Golf Course. In 2008, Yale purchased the 17-building, former Bayer HealthCare complex in West Haven, Connecticut, the buildings of which are now used as laboratory and research space. Yale also owns seven forests in Connecticut, Vermont, and New Hampshire\u2014the largest of which is the Yale-Myers Forest in Connecticut's Quiet Corner\u2014and nature preserves including Horse Island.\nYale is noted for its largely Collegiate Gothic campus as well as several iconic modern buildings commonly discussed in architectural history survey courses: Louis Kahn's Yale Art Gallery and Center for British Art, Eero Saarinen's Ingalls Rink and Ezra Stiles and Morse Colleges, and Paul Rudolph's Art & Architecture Building. Yale also owns and has restored many noteworthy 19th-century mansions along Hillhouse Avenue, which was considered the most beautiful street in America by Charles Dickens when he visited the United States in the 1840s. In 2011, \"Travel + Leisure\" listed the Yale campus as one of the most beautiful in the United States.\nMany of Yale's buildings were constructed in the Collegiate Gothic architecture style from 1917 to 1931, financed largely by Edward S. Harkness, including the Yale Drama School. Stone sculpture built into the walls of the buildings portray contemporary college personalities, such as a writer, an athlete, a tea-drinking socialite, and a student who has fallen asleep while reading. Similarly, the decorative friezes on the buildings depict contemporary scenes, like a policemen chasing a robber and arresting a prostitute (on the wall of the Law School), or a student relaxing with a mug of beer and a cigarette. The architect, James Gamble Rogers, faux-aged these buildings by splashing the walls with acid, deliberately breaking their leaded glass windows and repairing them in the style of the Middle Ages, and creating niches for decorative statuary but leaving them empty to simulate loss or theft over the ages. In fact, the buildings merely simulate Middle Ages architecture, for though they appear to be constructed of solid stone blocks in the authentic manner, most actually have steel framing as was commonly used in 1930. One exception is Harkness Tower, tall, which was originally a free-standing stone structure. It was reinforced in 1964 to allow the installation of the Yale Memorial Carillon.\nOther examples of the Gothic style are on the Old Campus by architects like Henry Austin, Charles C. Haight and Russell Sturgis. Several are associated with members of the Vanderbilt family, including Vanderbilt Hall, Phelps Hall, St. Anthony Hall (a commission for member Frederick William Vanderbilt), the Mason, Sloane and Osborn laboratories, dormitories for the Sheffield Scientific School (the engineering and sciences school at Yale until 1956) and elements of Silliman College, the largest residential college.\nThe oldest building on campus, Connecticut Hall (built in 1750), is in the Georgian style. Georgian-style buildings erected from 1929 to 1933 include Timothy Dwight College, Pierson College, and Davenport College, except the latter's east, York Street fa\u00e7ade, which was constructed in the Gothic style to coordinate with adjacent structures.\nThe Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, is one of the largest buildings in the world reserved exclusively for the preservation of rare books and manuscripts. The library includes a six-story above-ground tower of book stacks, filled with 180,000 volumes, that is surrounded by large translucent Vermont marble panels and a steel and granite truss. The panels act as windows and subdue direct sunlight while also diffusing the light in warm hues throughout the interior. Near the library is a sunken courtyard with sculptures by Isamu Noguchi that are said to represent time (the pyramid), the sun (the circle), and chance (the cube). The library is located near the center of the university in Hewitt Quadrangle, which is now more commonly referred to as \"Beinecke Plaza\".\nAlumnus Eero Saarinen, Finnish-American architect of such notable structures as the Gateway Arch in St.\u00a0Louis, Washington Dulles International Airport main terminal, Bell Labs Holmdel Complex and the CBS Building in Manhattan, designed Ingalls Rink, dedicated in 1959, as well as the residential colleges Ezra Stiles and Morse. These latter were modeled after the medieval Italian hill town of San Gimignano\u2014a prototype chosen for the town's pedestrian-friendly milieu and fortress-like stone towers. These tower forms at Yale act in counterpoint to the college's many Gothic spires and Georgian cupolas.\nThe athletic field complex is partially in New Haven, and partially in West Haven.\nNotable nonresidential campus buildings.\nNotable nonresidential campus buildings and landmarks include Battell Chapel, Beinecke Rare Book Library, Harkness Tower, Humanities Quadrangle, Ingalls Rink, Kline Biology Tower, Osborne Memorial Laboratories, Payne Whitney Gymnasium, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Sterling Hall of Medicine, Sterling Law Buildings, Sterling Memorial Library, Woolsey Hall, Yale Center for British Art, Yale University Art Gallery, Yale Art & Architecture Building, and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London.\nYale's secret society buildings (some of which are called \"tombs\") were built to be private yet unmistakable. A diversity of architectural styles is represented: Berzelius, Donn Barber in an austere cube with classical detailing (erected in 1908 or 1910); Book and Snake, Louis R. Metcalfe in a Greek Ionic style (erected in 1901); Elihu, architect unknown but built in a Colonial style (constructed on an early 17th-century foundation although the building is from the 18th century); Mace and Chain, in a late colonial, early Victorian style (built in 1823). (Interior moulding is said to have belonged to Benedict Arnold); Manuscript Society, King-lui Wu with Dan Kiley responsible for landscaping and Josef Albers for the brickwork intaglio mural. Building constructed in a mid-century modern style; Scroll and Key, Richard Morris Hunt in a Moorish- or Islamic-inspired Beaux-Arts style (erected 1869\u201370); Skull and Bones, possibly Alexander Jackson Davis or Henry Austin in an Egypto-Doric style utilizing Brownstone (in 1856 the first wing was completed, in 1903 the second wing, 1911 the Neo-Gothic towers in rear garden were completed); St. Elmo, (former tomb) Kenneth M. Murchison, 1912, designs inspired by Elizabethan manor. Current location, brick colonial; and Wolf's Head, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, erected 1923\u20131924, Collegiate Gothic.\nSustainability.\nYale's Office of Sustainability develops and implements sustainability practices at Yale. Yale is committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 10% below 1990 levels by 2020. As part of this commitment, the university allocates renewable energy credits to offset some of the energy used by residential colleges. Eleven campus buildings are candidates for LEED design and certification. Yale Sustainable Food Project initiated the introduction of local, organic vegetables, fruits, and beef to all residential college dining halls. Yale was listed as a Campus Sustainability Leader on the Sustainable Endowments Institute's College Sustainability Report Card 2008, and received a \"B+\" grade overall. Yale is a member of the Ivy Plus Sustainability Consortium, through which it has committed to best-practice sharing and the ongoing exchange of campus sustainability solutions along with other member institutions.\nRelationship with New Haven.\nYale is the largest taxpayer and employer in the City of New Haven, and has often buoyed the city's economy and communities. Yale, however, has consistently opposed paying a tax on its academic property. Yale's Art Galleries, along with many other university resources, are free and openly accessible. Yale also funds the New Haven Promise program, paying full tuition for eligible students from New Haven public schools.\nTown\u2013gown relations.\nYale has a complicated relationship with its home city; for example, thousands of students volunteer every year in myriad community organizations, but city officials, who decry Yale's exemption from local property taxes, have long pressed the university to do more to help. Under President Levin, Yale has financially supported many of New Haven's efforts to reinvigorate the city. Evidence suggests that the town and gown relationships are mutually beneficial. Still, the economic power of the university increased dramatically with its financial success amid a decline in the local economy.\nCampus safety.\nSeveral campus safety strategies have been pioneered at Yale. The first campus police force was founded at Yale in 1894, when the university contracted city police officers to exclusively cover the campus. Later hired by the university, the officers were originally brought in to quell unrest between students and city residents and curb destructive student behavior. In addition to the Yale Police Department, a variety of safety services are available including blue phones, a safety escort, and 24-hour shuttle service.\nIn the 1970s and 1980s, poverty and violent crime rose in New Haven, dampening Yale's student and faculty recruiting efforts. Between 1990 and 2006, New Haven's crime rate fell by half, helped by a community policing strategy by the New Haven Police and Yale's campus became the safest among peer schools.\nIn 2004, the national non-profit watchdog group Security on Campus filed a complaint with the U.S.\u00a0Department of Education, accusing Yale of under-reporting rape and sexual assaults.\nIn April 2021, Yale announced that it will require students to receive a COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of being on campus during the fall 2021 term.\nAcademics.\nAdmissions.\nUndergraduate admission to Yale College is considered \"most selective\" by \"U.S. News\". In 2022, Yale accepted 2,234 students to the Class of 2026 out of 50,015 applicants, for an acceptance rate of 4.46%. 98% of students graduate within six years.\nThrough its program of need-based financial aid, Yale commits to meet the full demonstrated financial need of all applicants, and the university is need-blind for both domestic and international applicants. Most financial aid is in the form of grants and scholarships that do not need to be paid back to the university, and the average need-based aid grant for the Class of 2017 was $. 15% of Yale College students are expected to have no parental contribution, and about 50% receive some form of financial aid. About 16% of the Class of 2013 had some form of student loan debt at graduation, with an average debt of $ among borrowers. For 2019, Yale ranked second in enrollment of recipients of the National Merit $2,500 Scholarship (140 scholars).\nHalf of all Yale undergraduates are women, more than 39% are ethnic minority U.S. citizens (19% are underrepresented minorities), and 10.5% are international students. 55% attended public schools and 45% attended private, religious, or international schools, and 97% of students were in the top 10% of their high school class. Every year, Yale College also admits a small group of non-traditional students through the Eli Whitney Students Program.\nCollections.\nYale University Library, which holds over 15\u00a0million volumes, is the second-largest university collection in the United States. The main library, Sterling Memorial Library, contains about 4\u00a0million volumes, and other holdings are dispersed at subject and location libraries.\nRare books are found in several Yale collections. The Beinecke Rare Book Library has a large collection of rare books and manuscripts. The Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library includes important historical medical texts, including an impressive collection of rare books, as well as historical medical instruments. The Lewis Walpole Library contains the largest collection of 18th\u2011century British literary works. The Elizabethan Club, technically a private organization, makes its Elizabethan folios and first editions available to qualified researchers through Yale.\nYale's museum collections are also of international stature. The Yale University Art Gallery, the country's first university-affiliated art museum, contains more than 200,000 works, including Old Masters and important collections of modern art, in the Swartwout and Kahn buildings. The latter, Louis Kahn's first large-scale American work (1953), was renovated and reopened in December 2006. The Yale Center for British Art, the largest collection of British art outside of the UK, grew from a gift of Paul Mellon and is housed in another Kahn-designed building.\nThe Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven is used by school children and contains research collections in anthropology, archaeology, and the natural environment.\nThe Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments, affiliated with the Yale School of Music, is perhaps the least-known of Yale's collections because its hours of opening are restricted.\nThe museums once housed the artifacts brought to the United States from Peru by Yale history professor Hiram Bingham in his Yale-financed expedition to Machu Picchu in 1912\u2014when the removal of such artifacts was legal. The artifacts were restored to Peru in 2012.\nRankings.\nThe \"U.S. News & World Report\" ranked Yale third among U.S. national universities for 2016, as it had for each of the previous sixteen years. Yale University is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education.\nInternationally, Yale was ranked 11th in the 2016 Academic Ranking of World Universities, tenth in the 2016\u201317 Nature Index for quality of scientific research output, and tenth in the 2016 CWUR World University Rankings. The university was also ranked sixth in the 2016 Times Higher Education (THE) Global University Employability Rankings and eighth in the Academic World Reputation Rankings. In 2019, it ranked 27th among the universities around the world by \"SCImago Institutions Rankings\".\nFaculty, research, and intellectual traditions.\nYale is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU) and is classified among \"R1: Doctoral Universities\u2014Very high research activity\". The National Science Foundation ranked Yale 15th among American universities for research and development expenditures in 2021 with $.\nYale's current faculty include 67 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 55 members of the National Academy of Medicine, 8 members of the National Academy of Engineering, and 187 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The college is, after normalization for institution size, the tenth-largest baccalaureate source of doctoral degree recipients in the United States, and the largest such source within the Ivy League. It also is a top 10 (ranked seventh) baccalaureate source (after normalization for the number of graduates) of some of the most notable scientists (Nobel, Fields, Turing prizes, or membership in National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, or National Academy of Medicine).\nYale's English and Comparative Literature departments were part of the New Criticism movement. Of the New Critics, Robert Penn Warren, W.K. Wimsatt, and Cleanth Brooks were all Yale faculty. Later, the Yale Comparative literature department became a center of American deconstruction. Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, taught at the department of comparative literature from the late 1970s to mid-1980s. Several other Yale faculty members were also associated with deconstruction, forming the so-called \"Yale School\". These included Paul de Man who taught in the Departments of Comparative Literature and French, J.\u00a0Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartman (both taught in the Departments of English and Comparative Literature), and Harold Bloom (English), whose theoretical position was always somewhat specific, and who ultimately took a very different path from the rest of this group. Yale's history department has also originated important intellectual trends. Historians C.\u00a0Vann Woodward and David Brion Davis are credited with beginning in the 1960s and 1970s an important stream of southern historians; likewise, David Montgomery, a labor historian, advised many of the current generation of labor historians in the country. Yale's Music School and department fostered the growth of Music Theory in the latter half of the 20th\u00a0century. The \"Journal of Music Theory\" was founded there in 1957; Allen Forte and David Lewin were influential teachers and scholars.\nSince the late 1960s, Yale produces social sciences and policy research through its Yale Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS).\nIn addition to eminent faculty members, Yale research relies heavily on the presence of roughly 1200 Postdocs from various national and international origin working in the multiple laboratories in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and professional schools of the university. The university progressively recognized this working force with the recent creation of the Office for Postdoctoral Affairs and the Yale Postdoctoral Association.\nCampus life.\nYale is a research university, with the majority of its students in the graduate and professional schools. Undergraduates, or Yale College students, come from a variety of ethnic, national, socioeconomic, and personal backgrounds. Of the 2010\u20132011 freshman class, 10% are non\u2011U.S. citizens, while 54% went to public high schools. The median family income of Yale students is $, with 57% of students coming from the top 10% highest-earning families and 16% from the bottom 60%.\nResidential colleges.\nYale's residential college system was established in 1933 by Edward S. Harkness, who admired the social intimacy of Oxford and Cambridge and donated significant funds to found similar colleges at Yale and Harvard. Though Yale's colleges resemble their English precursors organizationally and architecturally, they are dependent entities of Yale College and have limited autonomy. The colleges are led by a head and an academic dean, who reside in the college, and university faculty and affiliates constitute each college's fellowship. Colleges offer their own seminars, social events, and speaking engagements known as \"Master's Teas\", but do not contain programs of study or academic departments. All other undergraduate courses are taught by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and are open to members of any college.\nAll undergraduates are members of a college, to which they are assigned before their freshman year, and 85 percent live in the college quadrangle or a college-affiliated dormitory. While the majority of upperclassman live in the colleges, most on-campus freshmen live on the Old Campus, the university's oldest precinct.\nWhile Harkness' original colleges were Georgian Revival or Collegiate Gothic in style, two colleges constructed in the 1960s, Morse and Ezra Stiles Colleges, have modernist designs. All twelve college quadrangles are organized around a courtyard, and each has a dining hall, courtyard, library, common room, and a range of student facilities. The twelve colleges are named for important alumni or significant places in university history. In 2017, the university opened two new colleges near Science Hill.\nCalhoun College.\nSince the 1960s, John C. Calhoun's white supremacist beliefs and pro-slavery leadership had prompted calls to rename the college or remove its tributes to Calhoun. The racially motivated church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, led to renewed calls in the summer of 2015 for Calhoun College, one of 12 residential colleges at the time, to be renamed. In July 2015 students signed a petition calling for the name change. They argued in the petition that\u2014while Calhoun was respected in the 19th century as an \"extraordinary American statesman\"\u2014he was \"one of the most prolific defenders of slavery and white supremacy\" in the history of the United States. In August 2015, Yale President Peter Salovey addressed the Freshman Class of 2019 in which he responded to the racial tensions but explained why the college would not be renamed. He described Calhoun as \"a notable political theorist, a vice president to two different U.S. presidents, a secretary of war and of state, and a congressman and senator representing South Carolina\". He acknowledged that Calhoun also \"believed that the highest forms of civilization depend on involuntary servitude. Not only that, but he also believed that the races he thought to be inferior, black people in particular, ought to be subjected to it for the sake of their own best interests.\" Student activism about this issue increased in the fall of 2015, and included further protests sparked by controversy surrounding an administrator's comments on the potential positive and negative implications of students who wear Halloween costumes that are culturally sensitive. Campus-wide discussions expanded to include critical discussion of the experiences of women of color on campus, and the realities of racism in undergraduate life. The protests were sensationalized by the media and led to the labelling of some students as being members of Generation Snowflake.\nIn April 2016, Salovey announced that \"despite decades of vigorous alumni and student protests\", Calhoun's name will remain on the Yale residential college explaining that it is preferable for Yale students to live in Calhoun's \"shadow\" so they will be \"better prepared to rise to the challenges of the present and the future\". He claimed that if they removed Calhoun's name, it would \"obscure\" his \"legacy of slavery rather than addressing it\". \"Yale is part of that history\" and \"We cannot erase American history, but we can confront it, teach it and learn from it.\" One change that will be issued is the title of \"master\" for faculty members who serve as residential college leaders will be renamed to \"head of college\" due to its connotation of slavery.\nDespite this apparently conclusive reasoning, Salovey announced that Calhoun College would be renamed for groundbreaking computer scientist Grace Hopper in February 2017. This renaming decision received a range of responses from Yale students and alumni. In his 2019 book \"Assault on American Excellence\", former Dean of Yale Law School Anthony T. Kronman criticized the title and name changes and the lack of support from Salovey for the Christakises, who were targeted by the student activists. Other members of the university community disagreed with Kronman's positions.\nStudent organizations.\nIn 2024, Yale had 526 registered undergraduate student organizations, plus hundreds of others for graduate students.\nThe university hosts a variety of student journals, magazines, and newspapers. The \"Yale Literary Magazine\", founded in February 1836, is the oldest student literary magazine in the United States. Established in 1872, \"The Yale Record\" is the world's oldest college humor magazine. Newspapers include the \"Yale Daily News\", which was first published in 1878, and the weekly \"Yale Herald\", which was first published in 1986. The \"Yale Journal of Medicine & Law\" is a biannual magazine that explores the intersection of law and medicine.\nDwight Hall, an independent, non-profit community service organization, oversees more than 2,000 Yale undergraduates working on more than 70 community service initiatives in New Haven. The Yale College Council runs several agencies that oversee campus wide activities and student services. The Yale Dramatic Association and Bulldog Productions cater to the theater and film communities, respectively. In addition, the Yale Drama Coalition serves to coordinate between and provide resources for the various Sudler Fund sponsored theater productions which run each weekend. WYBC Yale Radio is the campus's radio station, owned and operated by students. While students used to broadcast on AM and FM frequencies, they now have an Internet-only stream.\nThe Yale College Council (YCC) serves as the campus's undergraduate student government. All registered student organizations are regulated and funded by a subsidiary organization of the YCC, known as the Undergraduate Organizations Funding Committee (UOFC). The Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS) serves as Yale's graduate and professional student government.\nThe Yale Political Union (YPU) is a debate society founded in 1934 to host student discussions on a wide variety of topics. It is advised by alumni political leaders such as John Kerry and George Pataki.\nThe Yale International Relations Association (YIRA) functions as the umbrella organization for the university's top-ranked Model UN team. YIRA also has a Europe-based offshoot, Yale Model Government Europe, other Model UN conferences such as YMUN, YMUN Korea, YMUN Taiwan and Yale Model African Union (YMAU), the Yale Review of International Studies (YRIS), and educational programs such as the Yale International Relations Leadership Institute and Hemispheres.\nThe campus includes several fraternities and sororities. The campus features at least 18 a\u00a0cappella groups, the most famous of which is The Whiffenpoofs, which from its founding in 1909 until 2018 was made up solely of senior men.\nThe Elizabethan Club, a social club, has a membership of undergraduates, graduates, faculty and staff with literary or artistic interests. Membership is by invitation. Members and their guests may enter the \"Lizzie's\" premises for conversation and tea. The club owns first editions of a Shakespeare Folio, several Shakespeare Quartos, and a first edition of Milton's \"Paradise Lost\", among other important literary texts.\nSecret societies.\nYale's secret societies include Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key, Wolf's Head, Book and Snake, Elihu, Berzelius, St.\u00a0Elmo, Manuscript, Brothers in Unity, Linonia, St. Anthony Hall, Shabtai, Myth and Sword, Daughters of Sovereign Government (DSG), Mace and Chain, ISO, Spade and Grave, and Sage and Chalice, among others. The two oldest existing honor societies are the Aurelian (1910) and the Torch Honor Society (1916).\nThese are akin to Harvard finals clubs, Princeton eating clubs, and senior societies at University of Pennsylvania.\nTraditions.\nYale seniors at graduation smash clay pipes underfoot to symbolize passage from their \"bright college years\", though in recent history the pipes have been replaced with \"bubble pipes\". (\"Bright College Years\", the university's alma mater, was penned in 1881 by Henry Durand, Class of 1881, to the tune of \"Die Wacht am Rhein\".) Yale's student tour guides tell visitors that students consider it good luck to rub the toe of the statue of Theodore Dwight Woolsey on Old Campus; however, actual students rarely do so. In the second half of the 20th century Bladderball, a campus-wide game played with a large inflatable ball, became a popular tradition but was banned by administration due to safety concerns. In spite of administration opposition, students revived the game in 2009, 2011, and 2014.\nAthletics.\nYale supports 35 varsity athletic teams that compete in the Ivy League Conference, the Eastern College Athletic Conference, and the New England Intercollegiate Sailing Association. Yale athletic teams compete intercollegiately at the NCAA Division\u00a0I level. Like other members of the Ivy League, Yale does not offer athletic scholarships.\nYale has numerous athletic facilities, including the Yale Bowl (the nation's first natural \"bowl\" stadium, and prototype for such stadiums as the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the Rose Bowl), located at The Walter Camp Field athletic complex, and the Payne Whitney Gymnasium, the second-largest indoor athletic complex in the world.\nIn 1970, the NCAA banned Yale from participating in all NCAA sports for two years, in reaction to Yale\u2014against the wishes of the NCAA\u2014playing its Jewish center Jack Langer in college games after Langer had played for Team United States at the 1969 Maccabiah Games in Israel with the approval of Yale President Kingman Brewster. The decision impacted 300 Yale students, every Yale student on its sports teams, over the next two years.\nIn 2016, the men's basketball team won the Ivy League Championship title for the first time in 54 years, earning a spot in the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. In the first round of the tournament, the Bulldogs beat the Baylor Bears 79\u201375 in the school's first-ever tournament win.\nIn May 2018, the men's lacrosse team defeated the Duke Blue Devils to claim their first-ever NCAA Division I Men's Lacrosse Championship, and were the first Ivy League school to win the title since the Princeton Tigers in 2001.\nYale crew is the oldest collegiate athletic team in America, and won Olympic Games Gold Medal for men's eights in 1924 and 1956. The Yale Corinthian Yacht Club, founded in 1881, is the oldest collegiate sailing club in the world. October 21, 2000, marked the dedication of Yale's fourth new boathouse in 157\u00a0years of collegiate rowing. The Gilder Boathouse is named to honor former Olympic rower Virginia Gilder\u00a0'79 and her father Richard Gilder\u00a0'54, who gave $ towards the $ project. Yale also maintains the Gales Ferry site where the heavyweight men's team trains for the Yale-Harvard Boat Race.\nIn 1896, Yale and Johns Hopkins played the first known ice hockey game in the United States. Since 2006, the school's ice hockey clubs have played a commemorative game.\nYale students claim to have invented Frisbee, by tossing empty Frisbie Pie Company tins.\nYale athletics are supported by the Yale Precision Marching Band. \"Precision\" is used here ironically; the band is a scatter-style band that runs wildly between formations rather than actually marching. The band attends every home football game and many away, as well as most hockey and basketball games throughout the winter.\nYale intramural sports are also a significant aspect of student life. Students compete for their respective residential colleges, fostering a friendly rivalry. The year is divided into fall, winter, and spring seasons, each of which includes about 10 different sports. About half the sports are coeducational. At the end of the year, the residential college with the most points (not all sports count equally) wins the Tyng Cup.\nSong.\nNotable among the songs commonly played and sung at events such as commencement, convocation, alumni gatherings, and athletic games is the alma mater, \"Bright College Years\". Despite its popularity, \"Boola Boola\" is not the official fight song, albeit being the origin of the university's unofficial motto. The official Yale fight song, \"Bulldog\" was written by Cole Porter during his undergraduate days and is sung after touchdowns during a football game. Additionally, two other songs, \"Down the Field\" by C.W. O'Conner, and \"Bingo Eli Yale\", also by Cole Porter, are still sung at football games. According to \"College Fight Songs: An Annotated Anthology\" published in 1998, \"Down the Field\" ranks as the fourth-greatest fight song of all time.\nMascot.\nThe school mascot is \"Handsome Dan\", the Yale bulldog, and the Yale fight song contains the refrain, \"Bulldog, bulldog, bow wow wow\". The school color, since 1894, is Yale Blue. Yale's Handsome Dan is believed to be the first college mascot in America, having been established in 1889.\nMental health.\nYale has faced significant criticism for its handling of student mental health on campus. Suicidal and depressed students say that Yale forced them to medically withdraw rather than provide them with academic accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and in 2018 the Ruderman Family Foundation ranked Yale as having the worst mental health policies in the Ivy League.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nDear Yale, I loved being here. I only wish I could've had some time. I needed time to work things out and to wait for new medication to kick in, but I couldn't do it in school, and I couldn't bear the thought of having to leave for a full year, or of leaving and never being readmitted. Love, Luchang.\nLuchang Wang, posted on Facebook in 2015 shortly before her death\nStudents at Yale say that the university's policies force them to hide their depression and avoid seeking help, for fear of being forced to leave. One prominent case was the suicide of Luchang Wang in 2015, who died by suicide after making a Facebook post saying that she needed time to deal with her mental health issues, but could not deal with being forced to medically withdraw for an entire year with an uncertain chance of being readmitted. Wang had previously withdrawn from school due to mental health issues, and was afraid of being forced to withdraw again, as a second readmission attempt would be considerably more difficult for her. A friend of Wang said that she routinely lied to her university therapist to avoid being kicked out, and another student said that many at Yale lie to their counselors as \"there's no clear standard established that says exactly what students will get involuntarily hospitalized or withdrawn for\". In response, the university convened a commission to evaluate their readmission policies after a mental health withdrawal, renaming the process to \"reinstatement\" as well as eliminating the $ reapplication fee.\nFor students that do seek help, waitlists for therapy can be months long, with individual counselling sessions only 30 minutes in length. In 2022, after a Washington Post article about their medical withdrawal policies, the school increased the number of mental health clinicians on campus from 51 to 60 as well as promised further changes. In 2023, after a lawsuit was filed against the school for what the plaintiffs described as discrimination, the university changed the name of a \"medical withdrawal\" to a \"medical leave of absence\" saying that the \"leave of absence\" terminology would allow students to remain on Yale's insurance while away from the school. The new policy also allowed for students on a leave of absence to participate in extracurricular clubs and visit campus, something a student on medical withdrawal was banned from doing. A representative of Yale also said that the criticism of their policies \"misrepresents our efforts and unwavering commitment to supporting our students, whose well-being and success are our primary focus\" and that \"the mental health of our students is a very, very high priority\".\nAfter the death of undergraduate student Rachael Shaw Rosenbaum by suicide, an organization called Elis for Rachael was formed, advocating for mental health-related reforms. The group has sued Yale, demanding changes.\nNotable people.\nBenefactors.\nYale has had many financial supporters, but some stand out by the magnitude or timeliness of their contributions. Among those who have made large donations commemorated at the university are: Elihu Yale, Jeremiah Dummer, the Vanderbilt family, the Harkness family (Edward, Anna, and William), the Beinecke family (Edwin, Frederick, and Walter), John William Sterling, Payne Whitney, Joseph Earl Sheffield, Paul Mellon, Charles B.\u00a0G. Murphy, Joseph Tsai, William K. Lanman, and Stephen Schwarzman. The Yale Class of 1954, led by Richard Gilder, donated $ in commemoration of their 50th\u00a0reunion. Charles B. Johnson, a 1954 graduate of Yale College, pledged a $ gift in 2013 to support the construction of two new residential colleges. The colleges have been named respectively in honor of Pauli Murray and Benjamin Franklin. A $ contribution by Stephen Adams enabled the Yale School of Music to become tuition-free and the Adams Center for Musical Arts to be built, while a $ contribution by David Geffen enabled the Yale School of Drama (renamed the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale) to become tuition-free as well.\nNotable alumni.\nYale has produced many distinguished alumni in various fields, in both the public and private sectors. According to 2020 data, around 71% of undergraduates join the workforce, while 17% attend graduate or professional schools. Yale graduates have been recipients of 263 Rhodes Scholarships, 123 Marshall Scholarships, 67 Truman Scholarships, 21 Churchill Scholarships, and 9 Mitchell Scholarships. The university is the 2nd largest producer of Fulbright Scholars, with 1,244 in its history and 89 MacArthur Fellows. The U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs ranked Yale fifth among research institutions producing the most 2020\u20132021 Fulbright Scholars. 31 living billionaires are alumni.\nOne of the most popular undergraduate majors is political science, with many going on to serve in government and politics. Former presidents who attended for undergrad include William Howard Taft, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush while former presidents Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton attended Yale Law School. Vice president JD Vance graduated from Yale Law School. Former vice president and influential antebellum era politician John C. Calhoun also graduated from Yale. Former world leaders include Italian prime minister Mario Monti, Turkish prime minister Tansu \u00c7iller, South Korean prime minister Lee Hong-koo, Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, German president Karl Carstens, Philippine president Jos\u00e9 Paciano Laurel, Latvian president Valdis Zatlers, Taiwanese premier Jiang Yi-huah, and Malawian president Peter Mutharika, among others. Prominent royals who graduated are Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, and Olympia Bonaparte, Princess Napol\u00e9on.\nAlumni have had considerable presence in U.S. government in all three branches. On the U.S. Supreme Court, 19 justices have been alumni, including current Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh. Alumni have been U.S. Senators, including current senators Michael Bennet, Richard Blumenthal, Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown, Chris Coons, Amy Klobuchar, Sheldon Whitehouse. Current and former cabinet members include Secretaries of State John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Cyrus Vance, and Dean Acheson; U.S. Secretaries of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, Robert Rubin, Nicholas F. Brady, Steven Mnuchin, and Janet Yellen; U.S. Attorneys General Nicholas Katzenbach, Edwin Meese, John Ashcroft, and Edward H. Levi; and many others. Peace Corps founder and American diplomat Sargent Shriver and public official and urban planner Robert Moses are Yale alumni.\nYale has produced numerous award-winning authors and influential writers, like Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Sinclair Lewis and Pulitzer Prize winners Stephen Vincent Ben\u00e9t, Thornton Wilder, Doug Wright, and David McCullough. Academy Award winning actors, actresses, and directors include Jodie Foster, Paul Newman, Meryl Streep, Elia Kazan, George Roy Hill, Lupita Nyong'o, Oliver Stone, and Frances McDormand. Alumni from Yale have also made notable contributions to both music and the arts. Leading American composer from the 20th century Charles Ives, Broadway composer Cole Porter, Grammy award winner David Lang, multi-Tony Award winner Composer and Musicologist Maury Yeston, and award-winning jazz pianist and composer Vijay Iyer all hail from Yale. Hugo Boss Prize winner Matthew Barney, famed American sculptor Richard Serra, President Barack Obama presidential portrait painter Kehinde Wiley, MacArthur Fellows and contemporary artists Tschabalala Self, Titus Kaphar, Richard Whitten, and Sarah Sze, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Garry Trudeau, and National Medal of Arts photorealist painter Chuck Close all graduated from Yale. Additional alumni include architect and Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Maya Lin, Pritzker Prize winner Norman Foster, and Gateway Arch designer Eero Saarinen. Journalists and pundits include Dick Cavett, Chris Cuomo, Anderson Cooper, William F. Buckley Jr., Blake Hounshell, and Fareed Zakaria.\nIn business, Yale has had numerous alumni and former students go on to become founders of influential business, like William Boeing (Boeing, United Airlines), Briton Hadden and Henry Luce (\"Time Magazine\"), Stephen A. Schwarzman (Blackstone Group), Frederick W. Smith (FedEx), Juan Trippe (Pan Am), Harold Stanley (Morgan Stanley), Bing Gordon (Electronic Arts), and Ben Silbermann (Pinterest). Other business people from Yale include former chairman and CEO of Sears Holdings Edward Lampert, former Time Warner president Jeffrey Bewkes, former PepsiCo chairperson and CEO Indra Nooyi, sports agent Donald Dell, and investor/philanthropist Sir John Templeton,\nAlumni distinguished in academia include literary critic and historian Henry Louis Gates, economists Irving Fischer, Mahbub ul Haq, and Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman; Nobel Prize in Physics laureates Ernest Lawrence and Murray Gell-Mann; Fields Medalist John G. Thompson; Human Genome Project leader and National Institutes of Health director Francis S. Collins; brain surgery pioneer Harvey Cushing; pioneering computer scientist Grace Hopper; influential mathematician and chemist Josiah Willard Gibbs; National Women's Hall of Fame inductee and biochemist Florence B. Seibert; Turing Award recipient Ron Rivest; inventors Samuel F.B. Morse and Eli Whitney; Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate John B. Goodenough; lexicographer Noah Webster; and theologians Jonathan Edwards and Reinhold Niebuhr.\nIn the sporting arena, alumni include baseball players Ron Darling and Craig Breslow who in the major leagues played with fellow Yale alum Ryan Lavarnway and baseball executives Theo Epstein and George Weiss; football players Calvin Hill, Gary Fenick, Amos Alonzo Stagg, and \"the Father of American Football\" Walter Camp; ice hockey players Chris Higgins and Olympian Helen Resor; Olympic figure skating champions Sarah Hughes and Nathan Chen; nine-time U.S. Squash men's champion Julian Illingworth; Olympic swimmer Don Schollander; Olympic rowers Josh West and Rusty Wailes; Olympic sailor Stuart McNay; Olympic runner Frank Shorter; and others.\nIn fiction and popular culture.\nYale University is a cultural referent as an institution that produces some of the most elite members of society and its grounds, alumni, and students have been prominently portrayed in fiction and U.S. popular culture. For example, Owen Johnson's novel \"Stover at Yale\" follows the college career of Dink Stover, and Frank Merriwell, the model for all later juvenile sports fiction, plays football, baseball, crew, and track at Yale while solving mysteries and righting wrongs. Yale University also is mentioned in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel \"The Great Gatsby\". The narrator, Nick Carraway, wrote a series of editorials for the \"Yale News\", and Tom Buchanan was \"one of the most powerful ends that ever played football\" for Yale.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["357108", "53825", "34273"], "permutation_1": ["357108", "34273", "53825"], "permutation_2": ["53825", "34273", "357108"], "permutation_3": ["357108", "53825", "34273"]}
{"id": "3hop1__41221_71250_135051", "docs_added": {"37073": "Civil disobedience\nNonviolent disobedience of the law\nCivil disobedience is the active and professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders, or commands of a government (or any other authority). By some definitions, civil disobedience has to be nonviolent to be called \"civil\". Hence, civil disobedience is sometimes equated with peaceful protests or nonviolent resistance. Henry David Thoreau's essay \"Resistance to Civil Government\", first published in 1849 and then published posthumously in 1866 as \"Civil Disobedience\", popularized the term in the US, although the concept itself was practiced long before this work. \nVarious forms of civil disobedience have been used by prominent activists, such as American women's suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony in the late 19th century, Egyptian nationalist Saad Zaghloul during the 1910s, and Indian nationalist Mahatma Gandhi in 1920s British India as part of his leadership of the Indian independence movement. Martin Luther King Jr.'s and James Bevel's peaceful nonviolent protests during the civil rights movement in the 1960s United States sometimes contained important aspects of civil disobedience. Although civil disobedience is rarely justifiable in court, King regarded civil disobedience to be a display and practice of reverence for law: \"Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law.\"\nHistory.\nAn early depiction of civil disobedience is in Sophocles' play \"Antigone\", in which Antigone, one of the daughters of former King of Thebes, Oedipus, defies Creon, the current King of Thebes, who is trying to stop her from giving her brother Polynices a proper burial. She gives a stirring speech in which she tells him that she must obey her conscience rather than human law. She is not at all afraid of the death he threatens her with (and eventually carries out), but she is afraid of how her conscience will smite her if she does not do this.\nConrad Grebel and Anabaptists advocated civil disobedience to oppression. \u00c9tienne de La Bo\u00e9tie's thought developed in his work \"Discours de la servitude volontaire ou le Contr'un\" (1552) was also taken up by many movements of civil disobedience, which drew from the concept of rebellion to voluntary servitude the foundation of its instrument of struggle. \u00c9tienne de La Bo\u00e9tie was one of the first to theorize and propose the strategy of non-cooperation, and thus a form of nonviolent disobedience, as a really effective weapon.\nIn the lead-up to the Glorious Revolution in Britain\u2014when the 1689 Bill of Rights was documented, the last Catholic monarch was deposed, and male and female joint-co-monarchs elevated\u2014the English Midland Enlightenment developed a manner of voicing objection to a law viewed as illegitimate and then taking the consequences of the law. (For example, they might refuse to swear allegiance to the king, and, as a consequence, accept the prison sentence legally and normally meted out to people who refused to take this oath.) This was focused on the illegitimacy of laws claimed to be \"divine\" in origin, both the \"divine rights of kings\" and \"divine rights of man\", and the legitimacy of laws acknowledged to be made by human beings.\nFollowing the Peterloo massacre of 1819, the poet Percy Shelley wrote the political poem \"The Mask of Anarchy\" later that year, that begins with the images of what he thought to be the unjust forms of authority of his time\u2014and then imagines the stirrings of a new form of social action. According to Ashton Nichols, it is perhaps the first modern statement of the principle of nonviolent protest. A version was taken up by the author Henry David Thoreau in his essay \"Civil Disobedience\", and later by Gandhi in his doctrine of \"Satyagraha\". Gandhi's Satyagraha was partially influenced and inspired by Shelley's nonviolence in protest and political action. In particular, it is known that Gandhi often quoted Shelley's \"Mask of Anarchy\" to vast audiences during the campaign for a free India.\nThoreau's 1849 essay \"Civil Disobedience\", originally titled \"Resistance to Civil Government\", has had a wide influence on many later practitioners of civil disobedience. The driving idea behind the essay is that citizens are morally responsible for their support of aggressors, even when such support is required by law. In the essay, Thoreau explained his reasons for having refused to pay taxes as an act of protest against slavery and against the Mexican\u2013American War. He writes,\nIf I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. See what gross inconsistency is tolerated. I have heard some of my townsmen say, \"I should like to have them order me out to help put down an insurrection of the slaves, or to march to Mexico;\u2014see if I would go;\" and yet these very men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute.\nBy the 1850s, a range of minority groups in the United States: African Americans, Jews, Seventh Day Baptists, Catholics, anti-prohibitionists, racial egalitarians, and others\u2014employed civil disobedience to combat a range of legal measures and public practices that to them promoted ethnic, religious, and racial discrimination. Pro Public and typically peaceful resistance to political power remained an integral tactic in modern American minority rights politics.\nIn Ireland starting from 1879 the Irish \"Land War\" intensified when Irish nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell, in a speech in Ennis proposed that when dealing with tenants who take farms where another tenant was evicted, rather than resorting to violence, everyone in the locality should shun them. Following this Captain Charles Boycott, the land agent of an absentee landlord in County Mayo, Ireland, was subject to social ostracism organized by the Irish Land League in 1880. Boycott attempted to evict eleven tenants from his land. While Parnell's speech did not refer to land agents or landlords, the tactic was applied to Boycott when the alarm was raised about the evictions. Despite the short-term economic hardship to those undertaking this action, Boycott soon found himself isolated \u2013 his workers stopped work in the fields and stables, as well as in his house. Local businessmen stopped trading with him, and the local postman refused to deliver mail. The movement spread throughout Ireland and gave rise to the term to Boycott, and eventually led to legal reform and support for Irish independence.\nEgypt saw a massive implementation on a nation-wide movement starting 1914 and peaking in 1919 as the Egyptian Revolution of 1919. This was then adopted by other peoples who campaigned against European colonial rule from 1920 onwards. Zaghloul Pasha, considered the mastermind behind this massive civil disobedience, was a native middle-class, Azhar graduate, political activist, judge, parliamentary and ex-cabinet minister whose leadership brought Christian and Muslim communities together as well as women into the massive protests. Along with his companions of Wafd Party, who have achieved an independence of Egypt and a first constitution in 1923.\nCivil disobedience is one of the many ways people have revolted against what they deem to be unfair laws. It has been used in many nonviolent resistance movements in India (Mahatma Gandhi's campaigns for independence from the British Empire), in Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution, in early stages of the Bangladeshi independence movement against Pakistani colonialism and in East Germany to oust their Stalinist government. In South Africa during the leftist campaign against the far-right Apartheid regime, in the American civil rights movement against Jim Crow laws, in the Singing Revolution to bring independence to the Baltic countries from the Soviet Union, and more recently with the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia, the 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2013\u20132014 Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine, the 2016\u20132017 Candlelight Revolution in South Korea, and the 2020\u20132021 Belarusian protests, among many other various movements worldwide.\nEtymology.\nHenry David Thoreau's 1849 essay \"Resistance to Civil Government\" was eventually renamed \"Essay on Civil Disobedience\". After his landmark lectures were published in 1866, the term began to appear in numerous sermons and lectures relating to slavery and the war in Mexico. Thus, by the time Thoreau's lectures were first published under the title \"Civil Disobedience\", in 1866, four years after his death, the term had achieved fairly widespread usage.\nIt has been argued that the term \"civil disobedience\" has always suffered from ambiguity and in modern times, become utterly debased. Marshall Cohen notes, \"It has been used to describe everything from bringing a test-case in the federal courts to taking aim at a federal official. Indeed, for Vice President Spiro Agnew it has become a code-word describing the activities of muggers, arsonists, draft evaders, campaign hecklers, campus militants, anti-war demonstrators, juvenile delinquents and political assassins.\"\nLeGrande writes that\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />the formulation of a single all-encompassing definition of the term is extremely difficult, if not impossible. In reviewing the voluminous literature on the subject, the student of civil disobedience rapidly finds himself surrounded by a maze of semantical problems and grammatical niceties. Like Alice in Wonderland, he often finds that specific terminology has no more (or no less) meaning than the individual orator intends it to have.\nHe encourages a distinction between lawful protest demonstration, nonviolent civil disobedience, and violent civil disobedience.\nIn a letter to P.\u00a0K. Rao, dated 10 September 1935, Gandhi disputes that his idea of civil disobedience was derived from the writings of Thoreau:\nThe statement that I had derived my idea of Civil Disobedience from the writings of Thoreau is wrong. The resistance to authority in South Africa was well advanced before I got the essay\u00a0... When I saw the title of Thoreau's great essay, I began to use his phrase to explain our struggle to the English readers. But I found that even \"Civil Disobedience\" failed to convey the full meaning of the struggle. I therefore adopted the phrase \"Civil Resistance.\"\nTheories.\nIn seeking an active form of civil disobedience, one may choose to deliberately break certain laws, such as by forming a peaceful blockade or occupying a facility illegally, though sometimes violence has been known to occur. Often there is an expectation to be attacked or even beaten by the authorities. Protesters often undergo training in advance on how to react to arrest or to attack.\nCivil disobedience is usually defined as pertaining to a citizen's relation to the state and its laws, as distinguished from a constitutional impasse, in which two public agencies, especially two equally sovereign branches of government, conflict. For instance, if the head of government of a country were to refuse to enforce a decision of that country's highest court, it would not be civil disobedience, since the head of government would act in his or her capacity as public official rather than private citizen.\nThis definition is disputed by Thoreau's political philosophy on the conscience vs. the collective. The person is the final judge of right and wrong. More than this, since only people act, only a person can act unjustly. When the government knocks on the door, it is a person in the form of a postman or tax collector whose hand hits the wood. Before Thoreau's imprisonment, when a confused taxman had wondered aloud about how to handle his refusal to pay, Thoreau had advised, \"Resign\". If a man chose to be an agent of injustice, then Thoreau insisted on confronting him with the fact that he was making a choice. He admits that government may express the will of the majority but it may also express nothing more than the will of elite politicians. Even a good form of government is \"liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it\". If a government did express the voice of most people, this would not compel the obedience of those who disagree with what is said. The majority may be powerful but it is not necessarily right.\nIn his 1971 book, \"A Theory of Justice\", John Rawls described civil disobedience as \"a public, non-violent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law usually done with the aim of bringing about change in the law or policies of the government\".\nRonald Dworkin held that there are three types of civil disobedience:\nSome theories of civil disobedience hold that civil disobedience is only justified against governmental entities. Brownlee argues that disobedience in opposition to the decisions of non-governmental agencies such as trade unions, banks, and private universities can be justified if it reflects \"a larger challenge to the legal system that permits those decisions to be taken\". The same principle, she argues, applies to breaches of law in protest against international organizations and foreign governments.\nIt is usually recognized that lawbreaking, if it is not done publicly, at least must be publicly announced to constitute civil disobedience. But Stephen Eilmann argues that if it is necessary to disobey rules that conflict with morality, we might ask why disobedience should take the form of public civil disobedience rather than simply covert lawbreaking. If a lawyer wishes to help a client overcome legal obstacles to securing their natural rights, he might, for instance, find that assisting in fabricating evidence or committing perjury is more effective than open disobedience. This assumes that common morality does not have a prohibition on deceit in such situations. The Fully Informed Jury Association's publication \"A Primer for Prospective Jurors\" notes, \"Think of the dilemma faced by German citizens when Hitler's secret police demanded to know if they were hiding a Jew in their house.\" By this definition, civil disobedience could be traced back to the Book of Exodus, where Shiphrah and Puah refused a direct order of Pharaoh but misrepresented how they did it. (Exodus 1: 15\u201319)\nViolent vs. nonviolent.\nThere have been debates as to whether civil disobedience must necessarily be non-violent. \"Black's Law Dictionary\" includes nonviolence in its definition of civil disobedience. Christian Bay's encyclopedia article states that civil disobedience requires \"carefully chosen and legitimate means\", but holds that they do not have to be non-violent. It has been argued that, while both civil disobedience and civil rebellion are justified by appeal to constitutional defects, rebellion is much more destructive; therefore, the defects justifying rebellion must be much more serious than those justifying disobedience, and if one cannot justify civil rebellion, then one cannot justify a civil disobedient's use of force and violence and refusal to submit to arrest. Civil disobedients' refraining from violence is also said to help preserve society's tolerance of civil disobedience.\nThe philosopher H.\u00a0J. McCloskey argues that \"if violent, intimidatory, coercive disobedience is more effective, it is, other things being equal, more justified than less effective, nonviolent disobedience.\" In his best-selling \"Disobedience and Democracy: Nine Fallacies on Law and Order\", Howard Zinn takes a similar position; Zinn states that while the goals of civil disobedience are generally nonviolent,\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />in the inevitable tension accompanying the transition from a violent world to a non-violent one, the choice of means will almost never be pure, and will involve such complexities that the simple distinction between violence and non-violence does not suffice as a guide\u00a0... the very acts with which we seek to do good cannot escape the imperfections of the world we are trying to change.\nZinn rejects any \"easy and righteous dismissal of violence\", noting that Thoreau, the popularizer of the term civil disobedience, approved of the armed insurrection of John Brown. He also notes that some major civil disobedience campaigns which have been classified as non-violent, such as the Birmingham campaign, have actually included elements of violence.\nRevolutionary vs. non-revolutionary.\nNon-revolutionary civil disobedience is a simple disobedience of laws on the grounds that they are judged \"wrong\" by a person's conscience, or as part of an effort to render certain laws ineffective, to cause their repeal, or to exert pressure to get one's political wishes on some other issue. Revolutionary civil disobedience is more of an active attempt to overthrow a government (or to change cultural traditions, social customs or religious beliefs). Revolution does not have to be political, i.e. \"cultural revolution\", it simply implies sweeping and widespread change to a section of the social fabric. Gandhi's acts have been described as revolutionary civil disobedience. It has been claimed that the Hungarians under Ferenc De\u00e1k directed revolutionary civil disobedience against the Austrian government. Thoreau also wrote of civil disobedience accomplishing \"peaceable revolution\". Howard Zinn, Harvey Wheeler, and others have identified the right espoused in the US Declaration of Independence to \"alter or abolish\" an unjust government to be a principle of civil disobedience.\nCollective vs. solitary.\nThe earliest recorded incidents of collective civil disobedience took place during the Roman Empire. Unarmed Jews gathered in the streets to prevent the installation of pagan images in the Temple in Jerusalem. In modern times, some activists who commit civil disobedience as a group collectively refuse to sign bail until certain demands are met, such as favourable bail conditions, or the release of all the activists. This is a form of jail solidarity. There have also been many instances of solitary civil disobedience, such as that committed by Thoreau, but these sometimes go unnoticed. Thoreau, at the time of his arrest, was not yet a well-known author, and his arrest was not covered in any newspapers in the days, weeks and months after it happened. The tax collector who arrested him rose to higher political office, and Thoreau's essay was not published until after the end of the Mexican War.\nChoices.\nAction.\nCivil disobedients have chosen a variety of different illegal acts. Hugo A. Bedau writes,\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />There is a whole class of acts, undertaken in the name of civil disobedience, which, even if they were widely practiced, would in themselves constitute hardly more than a nuisance (e.g. trespassing at a nuclear-missile installation)\u00a0... Such acts are often just a harassment and, at least to the bystander, somewhat inane\u00a0... The remoteness of the connection between the disobedient act and the objectionable law lays such acts open to the charge of ineffectiveness and absurdity.\nBedau also notes, though, that the very harmlessness of such entirely symbolic illegal protests toward public policy goals may serve a propaganda purpose. Some civil disobedients, such as the proprietors of illegal medical cannabis dispensaries and Voice in the Wilderness, which brought medicine to Iraq without the permission of the US government, directly achieve a desired social goal (such as the provision of medication to the sick) while openly breaking the law. Julia Butterfly Hill lived in Luna, a -tall, 600-year-old California Redwood tree for 738 days, preventing its felling.\nIn cases where the criminalized behaviour is pure speech, civil disobedience can consist simply of engaging in the forbidden speech. An example is WBAI's broadcasting of the bit \"Filthy Words\" from a George Carlin comedy album, which eventually led to the 1978 Supreme Court case of \"FCC v. Pacifica Foundation\". Threatening government officials is a way to express defiance toward the government and unwillingness to stand for its policies. For example, a supporter of some tax deniers in New Hampshire, Edward and Elaine Brown, was arrested for allegedly telling the local city councillors to \"Wise up or die.\"\nMore generally, protesters of particular victimless crimes often see fit to openly commit that crime. Laws against public nudity, for instance, have been protested by going naked in public, and laws against cannabis consumption have been protested by openly possessing it and using it at cannabis rallies.\nSome forms of civil disobedience, such as illegal boycotts, refusals to pay taxes, draft dodging, distributed denial-of-service attacks, and sit-ins, make it more difficult for a system to function. In this way, they might be considered coercive; coercive disobedience has the effect of exposing the enforcement of laws and policies, and it has even operated as an aesthetic strategy in contemporary art practice. Brownlee notes that \"although civil disobedients are constrained in their use of coercion by their conscientious aim to engage in moral dialogue, nevertheless they may find it necessary to employ limited coercion to get their issue onto the table\". The Plowshares organization temporarily closed GCSB Waihopai by padlocking the gates and using sickles to deflate one of the large domes covering two satellite dishes.\nElectronic civil disobedience can include web site defacements, redirects, denial-of-service attacks, information theft and data leaks, illegal web site parodies, virtual sit-ins, and virtual sabotage. It is distinct from other kinds of hacktivism in that the perpetrator openly reveals his identity. Virtual actions rarely succeed in completely shutting down their targets, but they often generate media attention.\nDilemma actions are designed to create a \"response dilemma\" for public authorities \"by forcing them to either concede some public space to protesters or make themselves look absurd or heavy-handed by acting against the protest.\"\nResponse to punishment.\nAs civil disobedience is intentionally breaking the law, people engaging in civil disobedience can expect to be arrested, criminally charged, tried, and legally punished for breaking the law. Protestors have to make choices about how to respond to each of these results. \nAl Sharpton, a civil rights and social justice activist, says that civil disobedients \"must be prepared to say the cause is more important than my freedom\" and not incorrectly believe themselves to have legal immunity or feel a sense of entitlement to break laws without being subject to the ordinary legal punishments for breaking those laws. \nArrest strategies.\nSome disciplines of civil disobedience hold that the protester must submit to arrest and cooperate with the authorities. Others advocate falling limp or resisting arrest, especially when it will hinder the police from effectively responding to a mass protest.\nMany of the same decisions and principles that apply in other criminal investigations and arrests arise also in civil disobedience cases. For example, the suspect may need to decide whether to grant a consent search of his property and whether to talk to police officers. It is generally agreed within the legal community, and is often believed within the activist community, that a suspect's talking to criminal investigators can serve no useful purpose and may be harmful. Some civil disobedients are compelled to respond to investigators' questions, sometimes by a misunderstanding of the legal ramifications or a fear of seeming rude. Also, some civil disobedients seek to use the arrest as an opportunity to make an impression on the officers. Thoreau wrote,\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nTrial strategies.\nSome civil disobedients feel it is incumbent upon them to accept punishment because of their belief in the validity of the social contract, which is held to bind all to obey the laws that a government meeting certain standards of legitimacy has established, or else suffer the penalties set out in the law. Other civil disobedients who favour the existence of government still do not believe in the legitimacy of their particular government or do not believe in the legitimacy of a particular law it has enacted. Anarchistic civil disobedients do not believe in the legitimacy of any government, so see no need to accept punishment for a violation of criminal law.\nPleading guilty.\nAn important decision for civil disobedients is whether to plead guilty. There is much debate on this point, as some believe that it is a civil disobedient's duty to submit to the punishment prescribed by law, while others believe that defending oneself in court will increase the possibility of changing the unjust law. It has also been argued that either choice is compatible with the spirit of civil disobedience. ACT UP's Civil Disobedience Training handbook states that a civil disobedient who pleads guilty is essentially stating, \"Yes, I committed the act of which you accuse me. I don't deny it; in fact, I am proud of it. I feel I did the right thing by violating this particular law; I am guilty as charged\", but that pleading not guilty sends a message of, \"Guilt implies wrong-doing. I feel I have done no wrong. I may have violated some specific laws, but I am guilty of doing no wrong. I, therefore, plead not guilty.\" A plea of no contest is sometimes regarded as a compromise between the two. One defendant accused of illegally protesting nuclear power, when asked to enter his plea, stated, \"I plead for the beauty that surrounds us\"; this is known as a \"creative plea\", and will usually be interpreted as a plea of not guilty.\nWhen the Committee for Non-Violent Action sponsored a protest in August 1957, at the Camp Mercury nuclear test site near Las Vegas, Nevada, 13 of the protesters attempted to enter the test site knowing that they faced arrest. At an announced time, one by one they crossed a line and were immediately arrested. They were put on a bus and taken to the Nye County seat of Tonopah, Nevada, and arraigned for trial before the local Justice of the Peace, that afternoon. A civil rights attorney, Francis Heisler, had volunteered to defend the accused, advising them to plead \"nolo contendere\" rather than guilty or not guilty. They were found guilty and given suspended sentences, conditional on not reentering the test site.\nHoward Zinn writes,\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />There may be many times when protesters \"choose\" to go to jail, as a way of continuing their protest, as a way of reminding their countrymen of injustice. But that is different than the notion that they \"must\" go to jail as part of a rule connected with civil disobedience. The key point is that the spirit of protest should be maintained all the way, whether it is done by remaining in jail, or by evading it. To accept jail penitently as an accession to \"the rules\" is to switch suddenly to a spirit of subservience, to demean the seriousness of the protest\u00a0... In particular, the neo-conservative insistence on a guilty plea should be eliminated.\nSometimes the prosecution proposes a plea bargain to civil disobedients, as in the case of the Camden 28, in which the defendants were offered an opportunity to plead guilty to one misdemeanour count and receive no jail time. In some mass arrest situations, the activists decide to use solidarity tactics to secure the same plea bargain for everyone. \nBut some activists have opted to enter a blind plea, pleading guilty without any plea agreement in place. Mahatma Gandhi pleaded guilty and told the court, \"I am here to\u00a0... submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is a deliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen.\"\nAllocution.\nSome civil disobedience defendants choose to make a defiant speech, or a speech explaining their actions, in allocution. In \"U.S. v. Burgos-Andujar\", a defendant who was involved in a movement to stop military exercises by trespassing on US Navy property argued to the court in allocution that \"the ones who are violating the greater law are the members of the Navy\". As a result, the judge increased her sentence from 40 to 60 days. This action was upheld because, according to the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, her statement suggested a lack of remorse, an attempt to avoid responsibility for her actions, and even a likelihood of repeating her illegal actions. Some of the other allocution speeches given by the protesters complained about mistreatment from government officials.\nTim DeChristopher gave an allocution statement to the court describing the US as \"a place where the rule of law was created through acts of civil disobedience\" and arguing, \"Since those bedrock acts of civil disobedience by our founding fathers, the rule of law in this country has continued to grow closer to our shared higher moral code through the civil disobedience that drew attention to legalized injustice.\"\nTrial strategies.\nSteven Barkan writes that if defendants plead not guilty, \"they must decide whether their primary goal will be to win an acquittal and avoid imprisonment or a fine, or to use the proceedings as a forum to inform the jury and the public of the political circumstances surrounding the case and their reasons for breaking the law via civil disobedience.\" A technical defence may enhance the chances for acquittal but increase the possibility of additional proceedings and of reduced press coverage. During the Vietnam War era, the Chicago Eight used a political defence, but Benjamin Spock used a technical defence. In countries such as the United States, whose laws guarantee the right to a jury trial but do not excuse lawbreaking for political purposes, some civil disobedients seek jury nullification. Over the years, this has been made more difficult by court decisions such as \"Sparf v. United States\", which held that the judge need not inform jurors of their nullification prerogative, and \"United States v. Dougherty\", which held that the judge need not allow defendants to openly seek jury nullification.\nChoices made by the legal system.\nBritish judge Lord Hoffman writes that \"In deciding whether or not to impose punishment, the most important consideration would be whether it would do more harm than good. This means that the objector has no right not to be punished. It is a matter for the state (including the judges) to decide on utilitarian grounds whether to do so or not.\" Hoffman also asserted that while the \"rules of the game\" for civil disobedients were to remain non-violent while breaking the law, the authorities must recognize that demonstrators are acting out of their conscience in pursuit of democracy. \"When it comes to punishment, the court should take into account their personal convictions\", he said.\nChoices made by society.\nIn addition to legal action, civil disobedients may be affected socially. For example, student protesters may be suspended or expelled from school. Civil disobedients may be disowned by or become estranged from their families. Some employers may prefer to hire people who did not engage in civil disobedience or fire employees who do. \nLegal theory.\nGovernments have generally not recognized the legitimacy of civil disobedience or viewed political objectives as an excuse for breaking the law. Specifically, the law usually distinguishes between criminal motive and criminal intent; the offender's motives or purposes may be admirable and praiseworthy, but his intent may still be criminal. For example, a protester may be \"motivated by\" a desire to increase awareness about an injustice and \"intend\" to block traffic on a street, and it is the intention, rather than the motivation, that is criminally significant. Hence the saying that \"if there is any possible justification of civil disobedience, it must come from outside the legal system.\"\nOne theory is that, while disobedience may be helpful, any great amount of it undermines the law by encouraging general disobedience which is neither conscientious nor of social benefit. Therefore, conscientious lawbreakers must be punished. \nCourts have distinguished between two types of civil disobedience: \"Indirect civil disobedience involves violating a law which is not, itself, the object of protest, whereas direct civil disobedience involves protesting the existence of a particular law by breaking that law.\" \nDuring the Vietnam War, courts typically refused to excuse the perpetrators of illegal protests from punishment on the basis of their challenging the legality of the Vietnam War; the courts ruled it was a political question. The necessity defence has sometimes been used as a shadow defence by civil disobedients to deny guilt without denouncing their politically motivated acts, and to present their political beliefs in the courtroom. Court cases such as \"United States v. Schoon\" have greatly curtailed the availability of the political necessity defence. Likewise, when Carter Wentworth was charged for his role in the Clamshell Alliance's 1977 illegal occupation of the Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant, the judge instructed the jury to disregard his competing harms defence, and he was found guilty. Fully Informed Jury Association activists have sometimes handed out educational leaflets inside courthouses despite admonitions not to; according to the association, many of them have escaped prosecution because \"prosecutors have reasoned (correctly) that if they arrest fully informed jury leafleters, the leaflets will have to be given to the leafleter's own jury as evidence.\"\nAlong with giving the offender his just deserts, achieving crime control via incapacitation and deterrence is a major goal of criminal punishment. Brownlee says \"Bringing in deterrence at the level of justification detracts from the law's engagement in a moral dialogue with the offender as a rational person because it focuses attention on the threat of punishment and not the moral reasons to follow this law.\" \nActions that are outside of civil disobedience.\nMichael Bayles argues that if a person violates a law to create a test case as to the constitutionality of a law, and then wins his case, then that act did not constitute civil disobedience. \nBreaking the law for self-gratification, as in the case of a cannabis user who does not direct his act at securing the repeal of amendment of the law, is not civil disobedience. Likewise, a protester who attempts to escape punishment by committing the crime covertly and avoiding attribution, or by denying having committed the crime, or by fleeing the jurisdiction, is generally not called a civil disobedient.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "30570": "Trajan\nRoman emperor from AD 98 to 117\nTrajan ( ; born Marcus Ulpius Traianus, 18 September\u00a053\u00a0\u2013\u00a0c.\u20099 August\u00a0117) was a Roman emperor from AD\u00a098 to 117, remembered as the second of the Five Good Emperors of the Nerva\u2013Antonine dynasty. He was a philanthropic ruler and a successful soldier-emperor who presided over one of the greatest military expansions in Roman history, during which, by the time of his death, the Roman Empire reached its maximum territorial extent. He was given the title of ('the best') by the Roman Senate.\nTrajan was born in the of Italica in the present-day Andalusian province of Seville in southern Spain, an Italic settlement in Hispania Baetica; his came from the town of Tuder in the Umbria region of central Italy. His namesake father, Marcus Ulpius Traianus, was a general and distinguished senator. Trajan rose to prominence during the reign of Domitian; in AD 89, serving as a in , he supported the emperor against a revolt on the Rhine led by Antonius Saturninus. He then served as governor of Germania and Pannonia. In September 96, Domitian was succeeded by the elderly and childless Nerva, who proved to be unpopular with the army. After a revolt by members of the Praetorian Guard, Nerva decided to adopt as his heir and successor the more popular Trajan, who had distinguished himself in military campaigns against Germanic tribes.\nAs emperor of Rome, Trajan oversaw the construction of building projects such as the forum named after him, the introduction of social welfare policies such as the , and new military conquests. He annexed Nabataea and Dacia, and his war against the Parthian Empire ended with the incorporation of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria as Roman provinces. In August AD\u00a0117, while sailing back to Rome, Trajan fell ill and died of a stroke in the city of Selinus. He was deified by the senate and his successor Hadrian (Trajan's cousin). According to historical tradition, Trajan's ashes were entombed in a small room beneath Trajan's Column.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nSources.\nAn account of the Dacian Wars, the \"Commentarii de bellis Dacicis\", written by Trajan himself or a ghostwriter and modelled after Caesar's \"Commentarii de Bello Gallico\", is lost with the exception of one sentence. Only fragments remain of the \"Getica\", a book by Trajan's personal physician Titus Statilius Criton. The \"Parthica\", a 17-volume account of the Parthian Wars written by Arrian, has met a similar fate. Book68 in Greek author Cassius Dio's \"Roman History\", which survives mostly as Byzantine abridgements and epitomes, is the main source for the political history of Trajan's rule. Besides this, Pliny the Younger's \"Panegyricus\" and Dio Chrysostom's orations are the best surviving contemporary sources. Both are adulatory perorations, typical of the High Imperial period, that describe an idealized monarch and an equally idealized view of Trajan's rule, and concern themselves more with ideology than with fact.\nThe 10th volume of Pliny's letters contains his correspondence with Trajan, which deals with various aspects of imperial Roman government. It is generally agreed that Pliny, being part of the emperor's inner circle, provides a unique and valuable source of information through his letters with Trajan, the only surviving correspondence between a governor and his emperor. However, it has been argued that Pliny's correspondence with Trajan is neither intimate nor candid, but rather an exchange of official mail in which Pliny's stance borders on the servile. Some authors have even proposed that much of the text was written and/or edited by Trajan's Imperial secretary, his \"ab epistulis\". Given the scarcity of literary sources, discussion of Trajan and his rule in modern historiography cannot avoid speculation. Non-literary sources such as archaeology, epigraphy, and numismatics are also useful for reconstructing his reign.\nEarly life.\nMarcus Ulpius Traianus was born on 18 September AD53 in the Roman province of Hispania Baetica (in what is now Andalusia in modern Spain), in the \"municipium\" of Italica (now in the municipal area of Santiponce, in the outskirts of Seville), a Roman colony established in 206BC by Scipio Africanus. At the time of Trajan's birth it was a small town, without baths, theatre and amphitheatre, and with a very narrow territory under its direct administration. Trajan's year of birth is not reliably attested and may instead have been AD 56.\nThe epitome of Cassius Dio's Roman history describes Trajan as \"an Iberian and neither an Italian nor even an Italiote\", but this claim is contradicted by other ancient sources and rejected by modern scholars, who have reconstructed Trajan's Italic lineage. Appian states that Trajan's hometown of Italica was settled by and named after Italic veterans who fought in Spain under Scipio, and new settlers arrived there from Italy in the following centuries. Among the Italic settlers were the Ulpii and the Traii, who were either part of the original colonists or arrived as late as the end of the 1st century BC. Their original home, according to the description of Trajan as \"Ulpius Traianus ex urbe Tudertina\" in the Epitome de Caesaribus, was the town of Tuder (Todi) in the Umbria region of central Italy. This is confirmed by archeology, with epigraphic evidence placing both the Ulpii and the Traii in Umbria generally and Tuder specifically, and by linguistic studies of the family names \"Ulpius\" and \"Traius\" which show that both are of Osco-Umbrian origin. \nIt is unknown whether Trajan's ancestors were Roman citizens or not at their arrival in Spain. They would have certainly possessed Roman citizenship in case they arrived after the Social War (91\u201387 BC), when Tuder became a municipium of Roman citizens. In Spain they may well have intermarried with native Iberians, in which case they would have lost their citizenship. Had they lacked or lost the status of Roman citizens, they would have achieved it or recovered it when Italica became a municipium with Latin rights in the mid-1st century BC.\nTrajan's paternal grandfather Ulpius married a Traia. Their son, Trajan's namesake father Marcus Ulpius Traianus, was born at Italica during the reign of Tiberius and became a prominent senator and general, commanding the Legio X Fretensis under Vespasian in the First Jewish-Roman War. Trajan's mother was Marcia, a Roman noblewoman of the gens Marcia and a sister-in-law of the second Flavian Emperor Titus. Little is known of her. Her father is believed to be Quintus Marcius Barea Sura. Her mother was Antonia Furnilla, daughter of Aulus Antonius Rufus and Furnia. Trajan owned some lands called \"Figlinae Marcianae\" in Ameria, another Umbrian town, located near both Tuder and Reate (the home of the Flavian dynasty) and believed to be the home of Marcia's family.\nThe line of the Ulpii continued long after Trajan's death. His elder sister was Ulpia Marciana, and his niece was Salonia Matidia. Very little is known about Trajan's early formative years, but it is thought likely that he spent his first months or years in Italica before moving to Rome and then, perhaps at around eight or nine years of age, he almost certainly would have returned temporarily to Italica with his father during Trajanus's governorship of Baetica (ca. 64\u201365). The lack of a strong local power base, caused by the size of the town from which they came, made it necessary for the Ulpii (and for the Aelii, the other important senatorial family of Italica with whom they were allied) to weave local alliances, in the Baetica (with the Annii, the Ucubi and perhaps the Dasumii from Corduba), the Tarraconense and the Narbonense, here above all through Pompeia Plotina, Trajan's wife. Many of these alliances were made not in Spain, but in Rome. The family home in Rome, the Domus Traiana, was on the Aventine Hill; excavations under the Piazza del Tempio di Diana found remains thought to be of the family's large suburban villa, with evidence of highly decorated rooms.\nMilitary career.\nAs a young man Trajan rose through the ranks of the Roman army, serving in some of the most contested parts of the empire's frontier. In 76\u201377, his father was Governor of Syria (\"Legatus pro praetore Syriae\"), where Trajan himself remained as \"Tribunus legionis\". From there, after his father's replacement, he seems to have been transferred to an unspecified Rhine province, and Pliny implies that he engaged in active combat duty during both commissions.\nIn about 86, Trajan's cousin Aelius Afer died, leaving his young children Hadrian and Paulina orphans. Trajan and his colleague Publius Acilius Attianus became co-guardians of the two children. Trajan, in his late thirties, was created ordinary consul for the year 91. This early appointment may reflect the prominence of his father's career, as his father had been instrumental to the ascent of the ruling Flavian dynasty, held consular rank himself and had just been made a patrician. Around this time Trajan brought the architect and engineer Apollodorus of Damascus with him to Rome, and married Pompeia Plotina, a noblewoman from the Roman settlement at N\u00eemes; the marriage ultimately remained childless.\nThe historian Cassius Dio later noted that Trajan was a lover of young men, in contrast to the usual bisexual activity that was common among upper-class Roman men of the period. The emperor Julian also made a sardonic reference to his predecessor's sexual preference, stating that Zeus himself would have had to be on guard had his Ganymede come within Trajan's vicinity. This distaste reflected a change of mores that began with the Severan dynasty, Trajan's putative lovers included the future emperor, Hadrian, pages of the imperial household, the actor Pylades, a dancer called Apolaustus, Lucius Licinius Sura, and Trajan's predecessor Nerva. Cassius Dio also relates that Trajan made an ally out of Abgar VII on account of the latter's beautiful son, Arbandes, who would then dance for Trajan at a banquet.\nThe details of Trajan's early military career are obscure, save for the fact that in 89, as legate of Legio VII Gemina in Hispania Tarraconensis, he supported Domitian against an attempted coup by Lucius Antonius Saturninus, the governor of Germania Superior. Trajan probably remained in the region after the revolt was quashed, to engage with the Chatti who had sided with Saturninus, before returning the VII Gemina legion to Legio in Hispania Tarraconensis. In 91 he held a consulate with Acilius Glabrio, a rarity in that neither consul was a member of the ruling dynasty. He held an unspecified consular commission as governor of either Pannonia or Germania Superior, or possibly both. Pliny\u00a0\u2013\u00a0who seems to deliberately avoid offering details that would stress personal attachment between Trajan and the \"tyrant\" Domitian\u00a0\u2013\u00a0attributes to him, at the time, various (and unspecified) feats of arms.\nRise to power.\nDomitian's successor, Nerva, was unpopular with the army, and had been forced by his Praetorian Prefect Casperius Aelianus to execute Domitian's killers. Nerva needed the army's support to avoid being ousted. He accomplished this in the summer of 97 by naming Trajan as his adoptive son and successor, claiming that this was entirely due to Trajan's outstanding military merits. There are hints, however, in contemporary literary sources that Trajan's adoption was imposed on Nerva. Pliny implied as much when he wrote that, although an emperor could not be coerced into doing something, if this was the way in which Trajan was raised to power, then it was worth it. Alice K\u00f6nig argues that the notion of a natural continuity between Nerva's and Trajan's reigns was an \"ex post facto\" fiction developed by authors writing under Trajan, including Tacitus and Pliny.\nAccording to the \"Historia Augusta\", the future Emperor Hadrian brought word to Trajan of his adoption. Trajan retained Hadrian on the Rhine frontier as a military tribune, and Hadrian thus became privy to the circle of friends and relations with whom Trajan surrounded himself. Among them was Lucius Licinius Sura, a Roman senator born in Spain and the governor of Germania Inferior, who was Trajan's personal friend and became an official adviser of the Emperor. Sura was highly influential, and was appointed consul for a third term in 107. Some senators may have resented Sura's activities as a kingmaker and \u00e9minence grise, among them the historian Tacitus, who acknowledged Sura's military and oratorical talents, but compared his rapacity and devious ways to those of Vespasian's \u00e9minence grise Licinius Mucianus. Sura is said to have informed Hadrian in 108 that he had been chosen as Trajan's imperial heir.\nAs governor of Upper Germany (Germania Superior) during Nerva's reign, Trajan received the impressive title of \"Germanicus\" for his skilful management and rule of the volatile Imperial province. When Nerva died on 28 January 98, Trajan succeeded to the role of emperor without any outward adverse incident. The fact that he chose not to hasten towards Rome, but made a lengthy tour of inspection on the Rhine and Danube frontiers, may suggest that he was unsure of his position, both in Rome and with the armies at the front. Alternatively, Trajan's keen military mind understood the importance of strengthening the empire's frontiers. His vision for future conquests required the diligent improvement of surveillance networks, defences and transport along the Danube. Prior to his frontier tours, Trajan ordered his Prefect Aelianus to attend him in Germany, where he was apparently executed forthwith (\"put out of the way\"), and his now-vacant post taken by Attius Suburanus. Trajan's accession, therefore, could qualify more as a successful coup than an orderly succession.\nRoman emperor.\nOn his entry to Rome, Trajan granted the plebs a direct gift of money. The traditional donative to the troops, however, was reduced by half. There remained the issue of the strained relations between the emperor and the Senate, especially after the supposed bloodiness that had marked Domitian's reign and his dealings with the Curia. By feigning reluctance to hold power, Trajan was able to start building a consensus around him in the Senate. His belated ceremonial entry into Rome in 99 was notably understated, something on which Pliny the Younger elaborated. By not openly supporting Domitian's preference for equestrian officers, Trajan appeared to conform to the idea (developed by Pliny) that an emperor derived his legitimacy from his adherence to traditional hierarchies and senatorial morals. Therefore, he could point to the allegedly republican character of his rule.\nIn a speech at the inauguration of his third consulship, on 1January 100, Trajan exhorted the senate to share the care-taking of the empire with him\u00a0\u2013\u00a0an event later celebrated on a coin. In reality, Trajan did not share power in any meaningful way with the senate, something that Pliny admits candidly: \"[E]verything depends on the whims of a single man who, on behalf of the common welfare, has taken upon himself all functions and all tasks\". One of the most significant trends of his reign was his encroachment on the senate's sphere of authority, such as his decision to make the senatorial provinces of Achaea and Bithynia into imperial ones in order to deal with the inordinate spending on public works by local magnates and the general mismanagement of provincial affairs by various proconsuls appointed by the Senate.\n\"Optimus princeps\".\nIn the formula developed by Pliny, however, Trajan was a \"good\" emperor in that, by himself, he approved or blamed the same things that the Senate would have approved or blamed. If in reality Trajan was an autocrat, his deferential behavior towards his peers qualified him to be viewed as a virtuous monarch. The idea is that Trajan wielded autocratic power through \"moderatio\" instead of \"contumacia\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0moderation instead of insolence. In short, according to the ethics for autocracy developed by most political writers of the Imperial Roman Age, Trajan was a good ruler in that he ruled less by fear, and more by acting as a role model, for, according to Pliny, \"men learn better from examples\". Eventually, Trajan's popularity among his peers was such that the Roman Senate bestowed upon him the honorific of \"optimus\", meaning \"the best\", which appears on coins from 105 on. This title had mostly to do with Trajan's role as benefactor, such as in the case of his returning confiscated property. The epithet \"optimus princeps\" had already been used for the emperors since the late republic, but Trajan was the only one officially honoured by the title.\nPliny states that Trajan's ideal role was a conservative one, argued as well by the orations of Dio Chrysostom\u2014in particular his four \"Orations on Kingship\", composed early during Trajan's reign. Dio, as a Greek notable and intellectual with friends in high places, and possibly an official friend to the emperor (\"amicus caesaris\"), saw Trajan as a defender of the \"status quo\". In his third kingship oration, Dio describes an ideal king ruling by means of \"friendship\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0that is, through patronage and a network of local notables who act as mediators between the ruled and the ruler. Dio's notion of being \"friend\" to Trajan (or any other Roman emperor), however, was that of an \"informal\" arrangement, that involved no formal entry of such \"friends\" into the Roman administration. Trajan ingratiated himself with the Greek intellectual elite by recalling to Rome many (including Dio) who had been exiled by Domitian, and by returning (in a process begun by Nerva) a great deal of private property that Domitian had confiscated. He also had good dealings with Plutarch, who, as a notable of Delphi, seems to have been favoured by the decisions taken on behalf of his home-place by one of Trajan's legates, who had arbitrated a boundary dispute between Delphi and its neighbouring cities.\nHowever, it was clear to Trajan that Greek intellectuals and notables were to be regarded as tools for local administration, and not be allowed to fancy themselves in a privileged position. As Pliny said in one of his letters at the time, it was official policy that Greek civic elites be treated according to their status as notionally free but not put on an equal footing with their Roman rulers. When the city of Apamea complained of an audit of its accounts by Pliny, alleging its \"free\" status as a Roman colony, Trajan replied by writing that it was by his own wish that such inspections had been ordered. Concern about independent local political activity is seen in Trajan's decision to forbid Nicomedia from having a corps of firemen (\"If people assemble for a common purpose... they soon turn it into a political society\", Trajan wrote to Pliny) as well as in his and Pliny's fears about excessive civic generosities by local notables such as distribution of money or gifts.\nPliny's letters suggest that Trajan and his aides were as much bored as they were alarmed by the claims of Dio and other Greek notables to political influence based on what they saw as their \"special connection\" to their Roman overlords. Pliny tells of Dio of Prusa placing a statue of Trajan in a building complex where Dio's wife and son were buried \u2013 therefore incurring a charge of treason for placing the emperor's statue near a grave. Trajan, however, dropped the charge. Nevertheless, while the office of \"corrector\" was intended as a tool to curb any hint of independent political activity among local notables in the Greek cities, the \"correctores\" themselves were all men of the highest social standing entrusted with an exceptional commission. The post seems to have been conceived partly as a reward for senators who had chosen to make a career solely on the emperor's behalf. Therefore, in reality the post was conceived as a means for \"taming\" both Greek notables and Roman senators. It must be added that, although Trajan was wary of the civic oligarchies in the Greek cities, he also admitted into the senate a number of prominent Eastern notables already slated for promotion during Domitian's reign by reserving for them one of the twenty posts open each year for minor magistrates (the \"vigintiviri\"). Such must be the case of the Galatian notable and \"leading member of the Greek community\" (according to one inscription) Gaius Julius Severus, who was a descendant of several Hellenistic dynasts and client kings.\nSeverus was the grandfather of the prominent general Gaius Julius Quadratus Bassus, consul in 105. Other prominent Eastern senators included Gaius Julius Alexander Berenicianus, a descendant of Herod the Great, suffect consul in 116. Trajan created at least fourteen new senators from the Greek-speaking half of the empire, an unprecedented recruitment number that opens to question the issue of the \"traditionally Roman\" character of his reign, as well as the \"Hellenism\" of his successor Hadrian. But then Trajan's new Eastern senators were mostly very powerful and very wealthy men with more than local influence and much interconnected by marriage, so that many of them were not altogether \"new\" to the Senate. On the local level, among the lower section of the Eastern propertied, the alienation of most Greek notables and intellectuals towards Roman rule, and the fact that the Romans were seen by most such Greek notables as aliens, persisted well after Trajan's reign. One of Trajan's senatorial creations from the East, the Athenian Gaius Julius Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappos, a member of the Royal House of Commagene, left behind him a funeral monument on the Mouseion Hill that was later disparagingly described by Pausanias as \"a monument built to a Syrian man\".\nGreek-Roman relations.\nAs a senatorial Emperor, Trajan was inclined to choose his local base of political support from among the members of the ruling urban oligarchies. In the West, that meant local senatorial families like his own. In the East, that meant the families of Greek notables. The Greeks, though, had their own memories of independence\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and a commonly acknowledged sense of cultural superiority\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and, instead of seeing themselves as Roman, disdained Roman rule. What the Greek oligarchies wanted from Rome was, above all, to be left in peace, to be allowed to exert their right to self-government (i.e., to be excluded from the provincial government, as was Italy) and to concentrate on their local interests. This was something the Romans were not disposed to do as from their perspective the Greek notables were shunning their responsibilities in regard to the management of Imperial affairs\u00a0\u2013\u00a0primarily in failing to keep the common people under control, thus creating the need for the Roman governor to intervene. An excellent example of this Greek alienation was the personal role played by Dio of Prusa in his relationship with Trajan. Dio is described by Philostratus as Trajan's close friend, and Trajan as supposedly engaging publicly in conversations with Dio.\nNevertheless, as a Greek local magnate with a taste for costly building projects and pretensions of being an important political agent for Rome, Dio of Prusa was actually a target for one of Trajan's authoritarian innovations: the appointing of imperial \"correctores\" to audit the civic finances of the technically free Greek cities. The main goal was to curb the overenthusiastic spending on public works that served to channel ancient rivalries between neighbouring cities. As Pliny wrote to Trajan, this had as its most visible consequence a trail of unfinished or ill-kept public utilities. Competition among Greek cities and their ruling oligarchies was mainly for marks of pre-eminence, especially for titles bestowed by the Roman emperor. Such titles were ordered in a ranking system that determined how the cities were to be outwardly treated by Rome. The usual form that such rivalries took was that of grandiose building plans, giving the cities the opportunity to vie with each other over \"extravagant, needless... structures that would make a show\". A side effect of such extravagant spending was that junior and thus less wealthy members of the local oligarchies felt disinclined to present themselves to fill posts as local magistrates, positions that involved ever-increasing personal expense. Roman authorities liked to play the Greek cities against one another\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something of which Dio of Prusa was fully aware:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />[B]y their public acts [the Roman governors] have branded you as a pack of fools, yes, they treat you just like children, for we often offer children the most trivial things in place of things of greatest worth [...] In place of justice, in place of the freedom of the cities from spoliation or from the seizure of the private possessions of their inhabitants, in place of their refraining from insulting you [...] your governors hand you titles, and call you 'first' either by word of mouth or in writing; that done, they may thenceforth with impunity treat you as being the very last!\"These same Roman authorities had also an interest in assuring the cities' solvency and therefore ready collection of Imperial taxes. Last but not least, inordinate spending on civic buildings was not only a means to achieve local superiority, but also a means for the local Greek elites to maintain a separate cultural identity\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something expressed in the contemporary rise of the Second Sophistic; this \"cultural patriotism\" acted as a kind of substitute for the loss of political independence, and as such was shunned by Roman authorities. As Trajan himself wrote to Pliny: \"These poor Greeks all love a gymnasium... they will have to content with one that suits their real needs\". The first known \"corrector\" was charged with a commission \"to deal with the situation of the free cities\", as it was felt that the old method of \"ad hoc\" intervention by the Emperor and/or the proconsuls had not been enough to curb the pretensions of the Greek notables. It is noteworthy that an embassy from Dio's city of Prusa was not favourably received by Trajan, and that this had to do with Dio's chief objective, which was to elevate Prusa to the status of a free city, an \"independent\" city-state exempt from paying taxes to Rome. Eventually, Dio gained for Prusa the right to become the head of the assize-district, conventus (meaning that Prusans did not have to travel to be judged by the Roman governor), but \"eleutheria\" (freedom, in the sense of full political autonomy) was denied.\nEventually, it fell to Pliny, as imperial governor of Bithynia in AD110, to deal with the consequences of the financial mess wrought by Dio and his fellow civic officials. \"It's well established that [the cities' finances] are in a state of disorder\", Pliny once wrote to Trajan, plans for unnecessary works made in collusion with local contractors being identified as one of the main problems. One of the compensatory measures proposed by Pliny expressed a thoroughly Roman conservative position: as the cities' financial solvency depended on the councilmen's purses, it was necessary to have more councilmen on the local city councils. According to Pliny, the best way to achieve this was to lower the minimum age for holding a seat on the council, making it possible for more sons of the established oligarchical families to join and thus contribute to civic spending; this was seen as preferable to enrolling non-noble wealthy upstarts. Such an increase in the number of council members was granted to Dio's city of Prusa, to the dismay of existing councilmen who felt their status lowered. A similar situation existed in Claudiopolis, where a public bath was built with the proceeds from the entrance fees paid by \"supernumerary\" members of the council, enrolled with Trajan's permission. According to the Digest, Trajan decreed that when a city magistrate promised to achieve a particular public building, his heirs inherited responsibility for its completion.\nBuilding projects.\nTrajan was a prolific builder. Many of his buildings were designed and erected by the gifted architect Apollodorus of Damascus, including a massive bridge over the Danube, which the Roman army and its reinforcements could use regardless of weather; the Danube sometimes froze over in winter, but seldom enough to bear the passage of a party of soldiers. Trajan's works at the Iron Gates region of the Danube created or enlarged the boardwalk road cut into the cliff-face along the Iron Gate's gorge. A canal was built between the Danube's Kasajna tributary and Ducis Pratum, circumventing rapids and cataracts.\nTrajan's Forum Traiani was Rome's largest forum. It was built to commemorate his victories in Dacia, and was largely financed from that campaign's loot. To accommodate it, parts of the Capitoline and Quirinal Hills had to be removed, the latter enlarging a clear area first established by Domitian. Apollodorus of Damascus' \"magnificent\" design incorporated a Triumphal arch entrance, a forum space approximately 120 m long and 90m wide, surrounded by peristyles: a monumentally sized basilica: and later, Trajan's Column and libraries. It was started in AD 107, dedicated on 1 January 112, and remained in use for at least 500 years. It still drew admiration when Emperor Constantius II visited Rome in the fourth century. It accommodated Trajan's Market, and an adjacent brick market.\nTrajan was also a prolific builder of triumphal arches, many of which survive. He built roads, such as the Via Traiana, an extension of the Via Appia from Beneventum to Brundisium and the Via Traiana Nova, a mostly military road between Damascus and Aila, which Rome employed in its annexation of Nabataea and founding of Arabia Province.\nSome historians attribute the construction or reconstruction of Old Cairo's Roman fortress (also known as \"Babylon Fort\") to Trajan, and the building of a canal between the River Nile and the Red Sea. In Egypt, Trajan was \"quite active\" in constructing and embellishing buildings. He is portrayed, together with Domitian, on the propylon of the Temple of Hathor at Dendera. His cartouche also appears in the column shafts of the Temple of Khnum at Esna.\nHe built palatial villas outside Rome at Arcinazzo, at Centumcellae and at Talamone.\nHe also built a bath complex as well as the Aqua Traiana.\nGames.\nTrajan invested heavily in the provision of popular amusements. He carried out a \"massive reconstruction\" of the Circus Maximus, which was already the empire's biggest and best appointed circuit for the immensely popular sport of chariot racing. The Circus also hosted religious theatrical spectacles and games, and public processions on a grand scale. Trajan's reconstruction, completed by 103, was modestly described by Trajan himself as \"adequate\" for the Roman people. It replaced flammable wooden seating tiers with stone, and increased the Circus' already vast capacity by about 5,000 seats. Its lofty, elevated Imperial viewing box was rebuilt among the seating tiers, so that spectators could see their emperor sharing their enjoyment of the races, alongside his family and images of the gods,\nAt some time during 108 or 109, Trajan held 123 days of games to celebrate his Dacian victory. They involved \"fully 10,000\" gladiators and the slaughter of thousands, \"possibly tens of thousands,\" of animals, both wild and domestic. Trajan's careful management of public spectacles led the orator Fronto to congratulate him for paying equal attention to public entertainments and more serious issues, acknowledging that \"neglect of serious matters can cause greater damage, but neglect of amusements greater discontent\". State-funded public entertainments helped to maintain contentment among the populace; the more \"serious matter\" of the corn dole aimed to satisfy individuals.\nChristians.\nDuring the period of peace that followed the Dacian war, Trajan exchanged letters with Pliny the Younger on how best to deal with the Christians of Pontus. Trajan told Pliny to continue prosecutions of Christians if they merited that, but not to accept anonymous or malicious denunciations. He considered this to be in the interests of justice, and to reflect \"the spirit of the age\". Non-citizens who admitted to being Christians and refused to recant were to be executed \"for obstinacy\". Citizens were sent to Rome for trial.\nFurther tests faced by Christians in Pontus are alluded to in correspondence between Pliny the Younger, governor of the Roman province of Bithynia and Pontus, and Emperor Trajan. Writing from Pontus in about AD 112, Pliny reported that the \"contagion\" of Christianity threatened everyone, regardless of gender, age, or rank. Pliny gave those accused of being Christians opportunity to deny it, and those who would not, he executed. Any who cursed Christ or recited a prayer to the gods or to Trajan\u2019s statue were released. Pliny acknowledged that these were things that \"those who are really Christians cannot be made to do.\"\nCurrency and welfare.\nIn 107, Trajan devalued the Roman currency, decreasing the silver content of the denarius from 93.5% to 89.0%\u00a0\u2013\u00a0the actual silver weight dropping from 3.04grams to 2.88grams. This devaluation, along with the massive amounts of gold and silver acquired through his Dacian wars, allowed Trajan to mint many more denarii than his predecessors. He also withdrew from circulation silver denarii minted before Nero's devaluation. Trajan's devaluation may have had a political intent, enabling planned increases in civil and military spending. Trajan formalised the alimenta, a welfare program that helped orphans and poor children throughout Italy by providing cash, food and subsidized education. The program was supported out of Dacian War booty, estate taxes and philanthropy. The alimenta also relied indirectly on mortgages secured against Italian farms (\"fundi\"). Registered landowners received a lump sum from the imperial treasury, and in return were expected to repay an annual sum to support the alimentary fund.\nMilitary campaigns.\nConquest of Dacia.\nThe earliest of Trajan's conquests were Rome's two wars against Dacia, an area that had troubled Roman politics for over a decade in regard to the unstable peace negotiated by Domitian's ministers with the powerful Dacian king Decebalus. Dacia would be reduced by Trajan's Rome to a client kingdom in the first war (101\u2013102), followed by a second war that ended in actual incorporation into the Empire of the trans-Danube border group of Dacia. According to the provisions of Decebalus's earlier treaty with Rome, made in the time of Domitian, Decebalus was acknowledged as \"rex amicus\", that is, client king; in exchange for accepting client status, he received from Rome both a generous stipend and a steady supply of technical experts. The treaty seems to have allowed Roman troops the right of passage through the Dacian kingdom in order to attack the Marcomanni, Quadi and Sarmatians. However, senatorial opinion never forgave Domitian for paying what was seen as tribute to a barbarian king. Unlike the Germanic tribes, the Dacian kingdom was an organized state capable of developing alliances of its own, thus making it a strategic threat and giving Trajan a strong motive to attack it.\nIn May of 101, Trajan launched his first campaign into the Dacian kingdom, crossing to the northern bank of the Danube and defeating the Dacian army at Tapae (see Second Battle of Tapae), near the Iron Gates of Transylvania. It was not a decisive victory, however. Trajan's troops took heavy losses in the encounter, and he put off further campaigning for the year in order to regroup and reinforce his army. Nevertheless, the battle was considered a Roman victory and Trajan strived to ultimately consolidate his position, including other major engagements, as well as the capture of Decebalus' sister as depicted on Trajan's Column.\nThe following winter, Decebalus took the initiative by launching a counter-attack across the Danube further downstream, supported by Sarmatian cavalry, forcing Trajan to come to the aid of the troops in his rearguard. The Dacians and their allies were repulsed after two battles in Moesia, at Nicopolis ad Istrum and Adamclisi. Trajan's army then advanced further into Dacian territory, and, a year later, forced Decebalus to submit. He had to renounce claim to some regions of his kingdom, return runaways from Rome then under his protection (most of them technical experts), and surrender all his war machines. Trajan returned to Rome in triumph and was granted the title \"Dacicus\". The peace of 102 had returned Decebalus to the condition of more or less harmless client king; however, he soon began to rearm, to again harbour Roman runaways, and to pressure his Western neighbours, the Iazyges Sarmatians, into allying themselves with him. Through his efforts to develop an anti-Roman bloc, Decebalus prevented Trajan from treating Dacia as a protectorate instead of an outright conquest. In 104, Decebalus devised an attempt on Trajan's life by means of some Roman deserters, a plan that failed. Decebalus also took prisoner Trajan's legate Longinus, who eventually poisoned himself while in custody. Finally, in 105, Decebalus undertook an invasion of Roman-occupied territory north of the Danube.\nPrior to the campaign, Trajan had raised two entirely new legions: II Traiana\u00a0\u2013\u00a0which, however, may have been posted in the East, at the Syrian port of Laodicea\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and XXX Ulpia Victrix, which was posted to Brigetio, in Pannonia. By 105, the concentration of Roman troops assembled in the middle and lower Danube amounted to fourteen legions (up from nine in 101)\u00a0\u2013\u00a0about half of the entire Roman army. Even after the Dacian wars, the Danube frontier would permanently replace the Rhine as the main military axis of the Roman Empire. Including auxiliaries, the number of Roman troops engaged on both campaigns was between 150,000 and 175,000, while Decebalus could dispose of up to 200,000. Other estimates for the Roman forces involved in Trajan's second Dacian War cite around 86,000 for active campaigning with large reserves retained in the proximal provinces, and potentially much lower numbers around 50,000 for Decebalus' depleted forces and absent allies.\nIn a fierce campaign that seems to have consisted mostly of static warfare, the Dacians, devoid of manoeuvring room, kept to their network of fortresses, which the Romans sought systematically to storm (see also Second Dacian War). The Romans gradually tightened their grip around Decebalus' stronghold in Sarmizegetusa Regia, which they finally took and destroyed. A controversial scene on Trajan's column just before the fall of Sarmizegetusa Regia suggests that Decebalus may have offered poison to his remaining men as an alternative option to capture or death while trying to flee the besieged capital with him. Decebalus fled but, when later cornered by Roman cavalry, committed suicide. His severed head, brought to Trajan by the cavalryman Tiberius Claudius Maximus, was later exhibited in Rome on the steps leading up to the Capitol and thrown on the Gemonian stairs. The famous Dacian treasures were not found in the captured capital and their whereabouts were only revealed when a Dacian nobleman called Bikilis was captured. Decebalus\u2019 treasures had been buried under a temporarily diverted river and the captive workers executed to retain the secret. Staggering amounts of gold and silver were found and packed off to fill Rome's coffers.\nTrajan built a new city, Colonia Ulpia Traiana Augusta Dacica Sarmizegetusa, on another site (north of the hill citadel holding the previous Dacian capital), although bearing the same full name, Sarmizegetusa. This capital city was conceived as a purely civilian administrative centre and was provided the usual Romanized administrative apparatus (decurions, aediles, etc.). Urban life in Roman Dacia seems to have been restricted to Roman colonists, mostly military veterans; there is no extant evidence for the existence in the province of peregrine cities. Native Dacians continued to live in scattered rural settlements, according to their own ways. In another arrangement with no parallels in any other Roman province, the existing quasi-urban Dacian settlements disappeared after the Roman conquest.\nA number of unorganized urban settlements (\"vici\") developed around military encampments in Dacia proper \u2013 the most important being Apulum \u2013 but were only acknowledged as cities proper well after Trajan's reign. The main regional effort of urbanization was concentrated by Trajan at the rearguard, in Moesia, where he created the new cities of Nicopolis ad Istrum and Marcianopolis. A vicus was also created around the Tropaeum Traianum. The garrison city of Oescus received the status of Roman colony after its legionary garrison was redeployed. The fact that these former Danubian outposts had ceased to be frontier bases and were now in the deep rear acted as an inducement to their urbanization and development. Not all of Dacia was permanently occupied. After the post-Trajanic evacuation of lands across the lower Danube, land extending from the Danube to the inner arch of the Carpathian Mountains, including Transylvania, the Metaliferi Mountains and Oltenia was absorbed into the Roman province, which eventually took the form of an \"excrescence\" with ill-defined limits, stretching from the Danube northwards to the Carpathians. This may have been intended as a basis for further expansion within Eastern Europe, as the Romans believed the region to be much more geographically \"flattened\", and thus easier to traverse, than it actually was; they also underestimated the distance from those vaguely defined borders to the ocean.\nDefence of the province was entrusted to a single legion, the XIII Gemina, stationed at Apulum, which functioned as an advance guard that could, in case of need, strike either west or east at the Sarmatians living at the borders. Therefore, the indefensible character of the province did not appear to be a problem for Trajan, as the province was conceived more as a sally-base for further attacks. Even in the absence of further Roman expansion, the value of the province depended on Roman overall strength: while Rome was strong, the Dacian salient was an instrument of military and diplomatic control over the Danubian lands; when Rome was weak, as during the Crisis of the Third Century, the province became a liability and was eventually abandoned. Trajan resettled Dacia with Romans and annexed it as a province of the Roman Empire. Aside from their enormous booty (over half a million slaves, according to John Lydus), Trajan's Dacian campaigns benefited the Empire's finances through the acquisition of Dacia's gold mines, managed by an imperial procurator of equestrian rank (\"procurator aurariarum\"). On the other hand, commercial agricultural exploitation on the villa model, based on the centralized management of a huge landed estate by a single owner (\"fundus\") was poorly developed. Therefore, use of slave labor in the province itself seems to have been relatively undeveloped, and epigraphic evidence points to work in the gold mines being conducted by means of labor contracts (\"locatio conductio rei\") and seasonal wage-earning. The victory was commemorated by the construction both of the 102 cenotaph generally known as the Tropaeum Traiani in Moesia, as well of the much later (113) Trajan's Column in Rome, the latter depicting in stone carved bas-reliefs the Dacian Wars' most important moments.\nNabataean annexation.\nIn 106, Rabbel II Soter, one of Rome's client kings, died. This event might have prompted the annexation of the Nabataean Kingdom, but the manner and the formal reasons for the annexation are unclear. Some epigraphic evidence suggests a military operation, with forces from Syria and Egypt. What is known is that by 107, Roman legions were stationed in the area around Petra and Bosra, as is shown by a papyrus found in Egypt. The furthest south the Romans occupied (or, better, garrisoned, adopting a policy of having garrisons at key points in the desert) was Hegra, over south-west of Petra. The empire gained what became the province of Arabia Petraea (modern southern Jordan and northwest Saudi Arabia). At this time, a Roman road (\"Via Traiana Nova\") was built from Aila (now Aqaba) in Limes Arabicus to Bosrah. As Nabataea was the last client kingdom in Asia west of the Euphrates, the annexation meant that the entire Roman East had been provincialized, completing a trend towards direct rule that had begun under the Flavians.\nParthian campaign.\nIn 113, Trajan embarked on his last campaign, provoked by Parthia's decision to put an unacceptable king on the throne of Armenia, a kingdom over which the two great empires had shared hegemony since the time of Nero some fifty years earlier. Trajan, already in Syria early in 113, consistently refused to accept diplomatic approaches from the Parthians intended to settle the Armenian imbroglio peacefully. As the surviving literary accounts of Trajan's Parthian War are fragmentary and scattered, it is difficult to assign them a proper context, something that has led to a long-running controversy about its precise happenings and ultimate aims.\nCause of the war.\nModern historians advance the possibility that Trajan's decision to wage war against Parthia had economic motives: after Trajan's annexation of Arabia, he built a new road, Via Traiana Nova, that went from Bostra to Aila on the Red Sea. That meant that Charax on the Persian Gulf was the sole remaining western terminus of the Indian trade route outside direct Roman control, and such control was important in order to lower import prices and to limit the supposed drain of precious metals created by the deficit in Roman trade with the Far East. That Charax traded with the Roman Empire, there can be no doubt, as its actual connections with merchants from Palmyra during the period are well documented in a contemporary Palmyrene epigraph, which tells of various Palmyrene citizens honoured for holding office in Charax. Also, Charax's rulers' domains at the time possibly included the Bahrain islands, which offered the possibility of extending Roman hegemony into the Persian Gulf itself. (A Palmyrene citizen held office as satrap over the islands shortly after Trajan's death, though the appointment was made by a Parthian king of Charax.) The rationale behind Trajan's campaign, in this case, was one of breaking down a system of Far Eastern trade through small Semitic (\"Arab\") cities under Parthia's control and to put it under Roman control instead.\nIn his Dacian conquests, Trajan had already resorted to Syrian auxiliary units, whose veterans, along with Syrian traders, had an important role in the subsequent colonization of Dacia. He had recruited Palmyrene units into his army, including a camel unit, therefore apparently procuring Palmyrene support to his ultimate goal of annexing Charax. It has even been ventured that, when earlier in his campaign Trajan annexed Armenia, he was bound to annex the whole of Mesopotamia lest the Parthians interrupt the flux of trade from the Persian Gulf and/or foment trouble at the Roman frontier on the Danube. Other historians reject these motives, as the supposed Parthian \"control\" over the maritime Far Eastern trade route was, at best, conjectural and based on a selective reading of Chinese sources\u00a0\u2013\u00a0trade by land through Parthia seems to have been unhampered by Parthian authorities and left solely to the devices of private enterprise. Commercial activity in second century Mesopotamia seems to have been a general phenomenon, shared by many peoples within and without the Roman Empire, with no sign of a concerted Imperial policy towards it.\nAs in the case of the \"alimenta\", scholars like Moses Finley and Paul Veyne have considered the idea that a foreign trade policy underlay Trajan's war to be anachronistic; according to these scholars, the concern of Roman leaders with the trade in far eastern luxuries\u00a0\u2013\u00a0besides collecting toll taxes and customs\u00a0\u2013\u00a0was moral in nature, because contemporary Roman mores frowned upon the \"softness\" of luxuries. In the absence of conclusive evidence, trade between Rome and India might have been far more balanced, in terms of quantities of precious metals exchanged: one of our sources for the notion of the Roman gold drain\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Pliny's the Younger's uncle Pliny the Elder\u00a0\u2013\u00a0had earlier described the Gangetic Plains as one of the gold sources for the Roman Empire. Accordingly \u2013 in a controversial book on the Roman economy \u2013 Finley considers Trajan's \"badly miscalculated and expensive assault on Parthia\" to be an example of the many Roman \"commercial wars\" that had in common the fact of existing only in the books of modern historians.\nThe alternative view is to see the campaign as triggered by the lure of territorial annexation and prestige, the sole motive ascribed by Cassius Dio. As far as territorial conquest involved tax-collecting, especially of the 25% tax levied on all goods entering the Roman Empire, the \"tetarte\", one can say that Trajan's Parthian War had an \"economic\" motive. Also, there was the propaganda value of an Eastern conquest that would emulate, in Roman fashion, those of Alexander the Great. The fact that emissaries from the Kushan Empire might have attended to the commemorative ceremonies for the Dacian War may have kindled in some Greco-Roman intellectuals like Plutarch\u00a0\u2013\u00a0who wrote about only 70,000 Roman soldiers being necessary to a conquest of India \u00a0\u2013\u00a0as well as in Trajan's closer associates, speculative dreams about the booty to be obtained by reproducing Macedonian Eastern conquests. There could also be Trajan's idea to use an ambitious blueprint of conquests as a way to emphasize quasi-divine status, such as with his cultivated association, in coins and monuments, to Hercules.\nAlso, it is possible that the attachment of Trajan to an expansionist policy was supported by a powerful circle of conservative senators from Hispania committed to a policy of imperial expansion, first among them being the all-powerful Licinius Sura. Alternatively, one can explain the campaign by the fact that, for the Romans, their empire was in principle unlimited, and that Trajan only took advantage of an opportunity to make idea and reality coincide. Finally, there are other modern historians who think that Trajan's original aims were purely military and strategic: to assure a more defensible Eastern frontier for the Roman Empire, crossing Northern Mesopotamia along the course of the Khabur River in order to offer cover to a Roman Armenia. This interpretation is backed by the fact that all subsequent Roman wars against Parthia would aim at establishing a Roman presence deep into Parthia itself. It is possible that during the onset of Trajan's military experience, as a young tribune, he had witnessed engagement with the Parthians; so any strategic vision was grounded in a tactical awareness of what was needed to tackle Parthia.\nCourse of the war.\nThe campaign was carefully planned in advance: ten legions were concentrated in the Eastern theatre; since 111, the correspondence of Pliny the Younger witnesses to the fact that provincial authorities in Bithynia had to organize supplies for passing troops, and local city councils and their individual members had to shoulder part of the increased expenses by supplying troops themselves. The intended campaign, therefore, was immensely costly from its very beginning. Trajan marched first on Armenia, deposed the Parthian-appointed king, Parthamasiris (who was afterwards murdered while kept in the custody of Roman troops in an unclear incident, later described by Fronto as a breach of Roman good faith), and annexed it to the Roman Empire as a province, receiving in passing the acknowledgement of Roman hegemony by various tribes in the Caucasus and on the Eastern coast of the Black Sea\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a process that kept him busy until the end of 114. At the same time, a Roman column under the legate Lusius Quietus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0an outstanding cavalry general who had signalled himself during the Dacian Wars by commanding a unit from his native Mauretania\u00a0\u2013\u00a0crossed the Araxes river from Armenia into Media Atropatene and the land of the Mardians (present-day Ghilan). It is possible that Quietus' campaign had as its goal the extending of the newer, more defensible Roman border eastwards towards the Caspian Sea and northwards to the foothills of the Caucasus. This newer, more \"rational\" frontier, depended, however, on an increased, permanent Roman presence east of the Euphrates.\nThe chronology of subsequent events is uncertain, but it is generally believed that early in 115 Trajan launched a Mesopotamian campaign, marching down towards the Taurus mountains in order to consolidate territory between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. He placed permanent garrisons along the way to secure the territory. While Trajan moved from west to east, Lusius Quietus moved with his army from the Caspian Sea towards the west, both armies performing a successful pincer movement, whose apparent result was to establish a Roman presence into the Parthian Empire proper, with Trajan taking the northern Mesopotamian cities of Nisibis and Batnae and organizing a province of Mesopotamia, including the Kingdom of Osrhoene\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where King Abgar VII submitted to Trajan publicly\u00a0\u2013\u00a0as a Roman protectorate. This process seems to have been completed at the beginning of 116, when coins were issued announcing that Armenia and Mesopotamia had been put under the authority of the Roman people. The area between the Khabur River and the mountains around Singara seems to have been considered as the new frontier, and as such received a road surrounded by fortresses.\nAfter wintering in Antioch during 115/116 \u00a0\u2013\u00a0and, according to literary sources, barely escaping from a violent earthquake that claimed the life of one of the consuls, Marcus Pedo Virgilianus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Trajan again took to the field in 116, with a view to the conquest of the whole of Mesopotamia, an overambitious goal that eventually backfired on the results of his entire campaign. According to some modern historians, the aim of the campaign of 116 was to achieve a \"pre-emptive demonstration\" aiming not toward the conquest of Parthia, but for tighter Roman control over the Eastern trade route. However, the overall scarcity of manpower for the Roman military establishment meant that the campaign was doomed from the start. It is noteworthy that no new legions were raised by Trajan before the Parthian campaign, maybe because the sources of new citizen recruits were already over-exploited.\nAs far as the sources allow a description of this campaign, it seems that one Roman division crossed the Tigris into Adiabene, sweeping south and capturing Adenystrae; a second followed the river south, capturing Babylon; Trajan himself sailed down the Euphrates from Dura-Europos\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where a triumphal arch was erected in his honour\u00a0\u2013\u00a0through Ozogardana, where he erected a \"tribunal\" still to be seen at the time of Julian the Apostate's campaigns in the same area. Having come to the narrow strip of land between the Euphrates and the Tigris, he then dragged his fleet overland into the Tigris, capturing Seleucia and finally the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon. He continued southward to the Persian Gulf, when, after escaping with his fleet a tidal bore on the Tigris, he received the submission of Athambelus, the ruler of Charax. He declared Babylon a new province of the Empire and had his statue erected on the shore of the Persian Gulf, after which he sent the Senate a laurelled letter declaring the war to be at a close and bemoaning that he was too old to go on any further and repeat the conquests of Alexander the Great. Since Charax was a \"de facto\" independent kingdom whose connections to Palmyra were described above, Trajan's bid for the Persian Gulf may have coincided with Palmyrene interests in the region. Another hypothesis is that the rulers of Charax had expansionist designs on Parthian Babylon, giving them a rationale for alliance with Trajan. The Parthian city of Susa was apparently also occupied by the Romans.\nAccording to late literary sources (not backed by numismatic or inscriptional evidence) a province of Assyria was also proclaimed, apparently covering the territory of Adiabene. Some measures seem to have been considered regarding the fiscal administration of Indian trade\u00a0\u2013\u00a0or simply about the payment of customs (\"portoria\") on goods traded on the Euphrates and Tigris. It is possible that it was this \"streamlining\" of the administration of the newly conquered lands according to the standard pattern of Roman provincial administration in tax collecting, requisitions and the handling of local potentates' prerogatives, that triggered later resistance against Trajan. According to some modern historians, Trajan might have busied himself during his stay on the Persian Gulf with ordering raids on the Parthian coasts, as well as probing into extending Roman suzerainty over the mountaineer tribes holding the passes across the Zagros Mountains into the Iranian plateau eastward, as well as establishing some sort of direct contact between Rome and the Kushan Empire. No attempt was made to expand into the Iranian Plateau itself, where the Roman army, with its relative weakness in cavalry, would have been at a disadvantage.\nTrajan left the Persian Gulf for Babylon\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where he intended to offer sacrifice to Alexander in the house where he had died in 323BC\u00a0\u2013\u00a0 But a revolt led by Sanatruces, a nephew of the Parthian king Osroes I who had retained a cavalry force, possibly strengthened by the addition of Saka archers, imperilled Roman positions in Mesopotamia and Armenia. Trajan sought to deal with this by forsaking direct Roman rule in Parthia proper, at least partially. Trajan sent two armies towards Northern Mesopotamia: the first, under Lusius Quietus, recovered Nisibis and Edessa from the rebels, probably having King Abgarus deposed and killed in the process, with Quietus probably earning the right to receive the honors of a senator of praetorian rank (\"adlectus inter praetorios\"). The second army, however, under Appius Maximus Santra (probably a governor of Macedonia) was defeated and Santra killed.\nLater in 116, Trajan, with the assistance of Quietus and two other legates, Marcus Erucius Clarus and Tiberius Julius Alexander Julianus, defeated a Parthian army in a battle where Sanatruces was killed (possibly with the assistance of Osroes' son and Sanatruces' cousin, Parthamaspates, whom Trajan wooed successfully). After re-taking and burning Seleucia, Trajan then formally deposed Osroes, putting Parthamaspates on the throne as client ruler. This event was commemorated in a coin as the reduction of Parthia to client kingdom status: , \"a king is given to the Parthians\". That done, Trajan retreated north in order to retain what he could of the new provinces of Armenia\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where he had already accepted an armistice in exchange for surrendering part of the territory to Sanatruces' son Vologeses\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and Mesopotamia. It was at this point that Trajan's health started to fail him. The fortress city of Hatra, on the Tigris in his rear, continued to hold out against repeated Roman assaults. He was personally present at the siege, and it is possible that he suffered a heat stroke while in the blazing heat.\nDiaspora revolt.\nAbout this same time (AD 116\u2013117), Jews in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire\u2014Egypt, Cyprus, and Cyrene, which was likely the original trouble hotspot\u2014rebelled in what appears to have been an ethnic and religious uprising against the local populations, later known as the Diaspora Revolt. Additionally, Jewish communities in Northern Mesopotamia revolted, likely as part of a broader resistance against Roman occupation. Trajan had to withdraw his army to suppress these revolts, a move he considered a temporary setback. He never returned to command, delegating Eastern operations to Lusius Quietus, who was appointed governor of Judaea in early 117 and likely dealt with Jewish unrest there. Quietus discharged his commissions successfully, leading rabbinic sources to name the conflict in Judaea the \"Kitos War,\" with \"Kitus\" being a corruption of \"Quietus\". Whether or not the Diaspora revolt included Judea proper, or only the Jewish Eastern diaspora, remains doubtful in the absence of clear epigraphic and archaeological evidence. What is certain is that there was an increased Roman military presence in Judea at the time.\nQuietus was promised a consulate in the following year (118) for his victories, but he was killed before this could occur, during the bloody purge that opened Hadrian's reign, in which Quietus and three other former consuls were sentenced to death after being tried on a vague charge of conspiracy by the (secret) court of the Praetorian Prefect Attianus. It has been thought that Quietus and his colleagues were executed on Hadrian's direct orders, for fear of their popular standing with the army and their close connections to Trajan. In contrast, the next prominent Roman figure in charge of the repression of the Jewish revolt, the equestrian Quintus Marcius Turbo, who had dealt with the rebel leader from Cyrene, Loukuas, retained Hadrian's trust, eventually becoming his Praetorian Prefect. As all four consulars were senators of the highest standing and as such generally regarded as able to take imperial power (\"capaces imperii\"), Hadrian seems to have decided to forestall these prospective rivals.\nDeath and succession.\nEarly in 117, Trajan grew ill and set sail for Italy. His health declined throughout the spring and summer of 117, possibly acknowledged to the public by the display of a bronze portrait-bust at the public baths of Ancyra, showing an aged and emaciated man, though the identification with Trajan is disputed. He reached Selinus, where he suddenly died, shortly before 11 August. Trajan in person could have lawfully nominated Hadrian as his successor, but Dio claims that Trajan's wife, Pompeia Plotina, assured Hadrian's succession by keeping Trajan's death a secret, long enough for her to produce and sign a document attesting to Hadrian's adoption as son and successor. Dio, who tells this narrative, offers his father\u00a0\u2013\u00a0the governor of Cilicia Apronianus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0as a source, so his narrative may be based on contemporary rumour. It may also reflect male Roman displeasure that an empress\u00a0\u2013\u00a0let alone any woman\u00a0\u2013\u00a0 could presume to meddle in Rome's political affairs.\nHadrian held an ambiguous position during Trajan's reign. After commanding Legio I Minervia during the Dacian Wars, he had been relieved from front-line duties at the decisive stage of the Second Dacian War, being sent to govern the newly created province of Pannonia Inferior. He had pursued a senatorial career without particular distinction and had not been officially adopted by Trajan although he received from him decorations and other marks of distinction that made him hope for the succession. He received no post after his 108 consulate and no further honours other than being made Archon eponymos for Athens in 111/112. He probably did not take part in the Parthian War. Literary sources relate that Trajan had considered others, such as the jurist Lucius Neratius Priscus, as heir. Hadrian, who was eventually entrusted with the governorship of Syria at the time of Trajan's death, was Trajan's cousin and was married to Trajan's grandniece, which all made him as good as heir designate. Hadrian seems to have been well connected to the powerful and influential coterie of Spanish senators at Trajan's court, through his ties to Plotina and the Prefect Attianus. His refusal to sustain Trajan's senatorial and expansionist policy during his own reign may account for the \"crass hostility\" shown him by literary sources.\nHadrian's first major act as emperor was to abandon Mesopotamia as too costly and distant to defend, and to restore Armenia and Osrhoene to Parthian hegemony, under Rome's suzerainty. The Parthian campaign had been an enormous setback to Trajan's policy, proof that Rome had overstretched its capacity to sustain an ambitious program of conquest. According to the \"Historia Augusta\", Hadrian claimed to follow the precedent set by Cato the Elder towards the Macedonians, who \"were to be set free because they could not be protected\" \u2013 something Birley sees as an unconvincing precedent. Other territories conquered by Trajan were retained. According to a well-established historical tradition, Trajan's ashes were placed within the small cella that still survives at the base of Trajan's column. In some modern scholarship, his ashes were more likely interred near his column, in a mausoleum, temple or tomb built for his cult as a \"divus\" of the Roman state.\nLegacy.\nAncient sources on Trajan's personality and accomplishments are unanimously positive. Pliny the Younger, for example, celebrates Trajan in his panegyric as a wise and just emperor and a moral man. Cassius Dio added that he always remained dignified and fair. A third-century emperor, Decius, even received from the Senate the name Trajan as a decoration. In the Later Roman Empire, following the setbacks of the third century, Trajan, together with Augustus, became the paragon of the most positive traits of the Imperial order. Emperors in the 4th century were honoured by the Senate with the acclamation \"Felicior Augusto, Melior Traiano\" (\"May you be more fortunate than Augustus and better than Trajan\"). The fourth-century emperor Constantine I is credited with calling him a \"plant upon every wall\" for the many buildings bearing inscriptions with his name.\nIconography.\nAll Roman emperors until Trajan, except Nero who occasionally wore sideburns, were depicted clean-shaven, according to the fashion introduced among the Romans by Scipio Africanus (236\u00a0\u2013\u00a0183 BC). This Imperial fashion was changed by Trajan's successor Hadrian who made beards fashionable for emperors.\nAfter Rome.\nDuring the Middle Ages, some theologians such as Thomas Aquinas discussed Trajan as an example of a virtuous pagan. In the \"Divine Comedy\", Dante, following this legend, sees the spirit of Trajan in the Heaven of Jupiter with other historical and mythological persons noted for their justice. Also, a mural of Trajan stopping to provide justice for a poor widow is present in the first terrace of Purgatory as a lesson to those who are purged for being proud.\n<poem>\nI noticed that the inner bank of the curve...\nWas of white marble, and so decorated\nWith carvings that not only Polycletus\nBut nature herself would there be put to shame...\nThere was recorded the high glory\nOf that ruler of Rome whose worth\nMoved Gregory to his great victory;\nI mean by this the Emperor Trajan;\nAnd at his bridle a poor widow\nWhose attitude bespoke tears and grief...\nThe wretched woman, in the midst of all this,\nSeemed to be saying: 'Lord, avenge my son,\nWho is dead, so that my heart is broken..'\nSo he said: 'Now be comforted, for I must\nCarry out my duty before I go on:\nJustice requires it and pity holds me back.'\n\"Dante, The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio X, ll. 32 f. and 73 f.\"\n</poem>\nIn the Renaissance, Machiavelli, speaking on the advantages of adoptive succession over heredity, mentioned the five successive good emperors \"from Nerva to Marcus\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a trope out of which the 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon popularized the notion of the Five Good Emperors, of whom Trajan was the second.\nIn the 18th century, King Charles III of Spain commissioned Anton Raphael Mengs to paint \"The Triumph of Trajan\" on the ceiling of the banquet hall of the Royal Palace of Madrid\u00a0\u2013\u00a0considered among the best works of this artist.\nIt was only during the Enlightenment that this legacy began to be contested, when Edward Gibbon expressed doubts about the militarized character of Trajan's reign in contrast to the \"moderate\" practices of his immediate successors. Mommsen adopted a divided stance towards Trajan, at some point of his posthumously published lectures even speaking about his \"vainglory\" (\"Scheinglorie\"). Mommsen also speaks of Trajan's \"insatiable, unlimited lust for conquest\". Although Mommsen had no liking for Trajan's successor Hadrian\u00a0\u2013\u00a0\"a repellent manner, and a venomous, envious and malicious nature\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0he admitted that Hadrian, in renouncing Trajan's conquests, was \"doing what the situation clearly required\".\nIt was exactly this military character of Trajan's reign that attracted his early twentieth-century biographer, the Italian historian Roberto Paribeni, who in his 1927 two-volume biography \"Optimus Princeps\" described Trajan's reign as the acme of the Roman principate, which he saw as Italy's patrimony. Following in Paribeni's footsteps, the German historian Alfred Heuss saw in Trajan \"the accomplished human embodiment of the imperial title\" (\"die ideale Verk\u00f6rperung des humanen Kaiserbegriffs\"). Trajan's first English-language biography by Julian Bennett is also a positive one in that it assumes that Trajan was an active policy-maker concerned with the management of the empire as a whole\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something his reviewer Lendon considers an anachronistic outlook that sees in the Roman emperor a kind of modern administrator.\nDuring the 1980s, the Romanian historian Eugen Cizek took a more nuanced view as he described the changes in the \"personal\" ideology of Trajan's reign, stressing the fact that it became ever more autocratic and militarized, especially after 112 and towards the Parthian War (as \"only an universal monarch, a \"kosmocrator\", could dictate his law to the East\"). The biography by the German historian Karl Strobel stresses the continuity between Domitian's and Trajan's reigns, saying that Trajan's rule followed the same autocratic and sacred character as Domitian's, culminating in a failed Parthian adventure intended as the crown of his personal achievement. It is in modern French historiography that Trajan's reputation becomes most markedly deflated: Paul Petit writes about Trajan's portraits as a \"lowbrow boor with a taste for booze and boys\". For Paul Veyne, what is to be retained from Trajan's \"stylish\" qualities was that he was the last Roman emperor to think of the empire as a purely Italian and Rome-centred hegemony of conquest. In contrast, his successor Hadrian would stress the notion of the empire as ecumenical and of the emperor as universal benefactor and not \"kosmocrator\".\nIn Romanian culture.\nIn Romania, Trajan (Romanian: \"Traian\") is regarded as one of the founders of the Romanian nation and a historical figure of great importance to the Romanian people and culture. This is due to his orchestration of the Dacian Wars that led to the foundation of the Daco-Roman culture and the Latin-based Romanian language. The creation of Roman Dacia is therefore seen in the country as the ethnogenesis of the Romanian nation.\nIn Jewish legend.\nIn the Jewish homiletical works, such as \"Esther Rabbah\", Trajan is described with the epitaph \"may his bones be crushed\" (). The same epitaph is also used for Hadrian.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "25507": "Roman Empire\nTerritory ruled by Rome and period of Roman history\nThe Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Romans conquered most of this during the Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of effective sole rule in 27\u00a0BC. The western empire collapsed in 476\u00a0AD, but the eastern empire lasted until the fall of Constantinople in 1453.\nBy 100\u00a0BC, the city of Rome had expanded its rule from the Italian peninsula to most of the Mediterranean and beyond. However, it was severely destabilised by civil wars and political conflicts, which culminated in the victory of Octavian over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31\u00a0BC, and the subsequent conquest of the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt. In 27\u00a0BC, the Roman Senate granted Octavian overarching military power () and the new title of \"Augustus\", marking his accession as the first Roman emperor. The vast Roman territories were organized into senatorial provinces, governed by proconsuls who were appointed by lot annually, and imperial provinces, which belonged to the emperor but were governed by legates.\nThe first two centuries of the Empire saw a period of unprecedented stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana (lit.\u2009'Roman Peace'). Rome reached its greatest territorial extent under Trajan (r.\u200998\u00a0\u2013\u00a0117\u00a0AD), but a period of increasing trouble and decline began under Commodus (r.\u2009180\u00a0\u2013\u00a0192). In the 3rd century, the Empire underwent a 49-year crisis that threatened its existence due to civil war, plagues and barbarian invasions. The Gallic and Palmyrene empires broke away from the state and a series of short-lived emperors led the Empire, which was later reunified under Aurelian (r.\u2009270\u00a0\u2013\u00a0275). The civil wars ended with the victory of Diocletian (r.\u2009284\u00a0\u2013\u00a0305), who set up two different imperial courts in the Greek East and Latin West. Constantine the Great (r.\u2009306\u00a0\u2013\u00a0337), the first Christian emperor, moved the imperial seat from Rome to Byzantium in 330, and renamed it Constantinople. The Migration Period, involving large invasions by Germanic peoples and by the Huns of Attila, led to the decline of the Western Roman Empire. With the fall of Ravenna to the Germanic Herulians and the deposition of Romulus Augustus in 476 by Odoacer, the Western Empire finally collapsed. The Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire survived for another millennium with Constantinople as its sole capital, until the city's fall in 1453.\nDue to the Empire's extent and endurance, its institutions and culture had a lasting influence on the development of language, religion, art, architecture, literature, philosophy, law, and forms of government across its territories. Latin evolved into the Romance languages while Medieval Greek became the language of the East. The Empire's adoption of Christianity resulted in the formation of medieval Christendom. Roman and Greek art had a profound impact on the Italian Renaissance. Rome's architectural tradition served as the basis for Romanesque, Renaissance and Neoclassical architecture, influencing Islamic architecture. The rediscovery of classical science and technology (which formed the basis for Islamic science) in medieval Europe contributed to the Scientific Renaissance and Scientific Revolution. Many modern legal systems, such as the Napoleonic Code, descend from Roman law. Rome's republican institutions have influenced the Italian city-state republics of the medieval period, the early United States, and modern democratic republics.\nHistory.\nTransition from Republic to Empire.\nRome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the Roman Republic in the 6th century BC, though not outside the Italian Peninsula until the 3rd century BC. Thus, it was an \"empire\" (a great power) long before it had an emperor. The Republic was not a nation-state in the modern sense, but a network of self-ruled towns (with varying degrees of independence from the Senate) and provinces administered by military commanders. It was governed by annually elected magistrates (Roman consuls above all) in conjunction with the Senate. The 1st century BC was a time of political and military upheaval, which ultimately led to rule by emperors. The consuls' military power rested in the Roman legal concept of \"imperium\", meaning \"command\" (typically in a military sense). Occasionally, successful consuls or generals were given the honorary title \"imperator\" (commander); this is the origin of the word \"emperor\", since this title was always bestowed to the early emperors.\nRome suffered a long series of internal conflicts, conspiracies, and civil wars from the late second century BC (see Crisis of the Roman Republic) while greatly extending its power beyond Italy. In 44 BC Julius Caesar was briefly perpetual dictator before being assassinated by a faction that opposed his concentration of power. This faction was driven from Rome and defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC by Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son Octavian. Antony and Octavian divided the Roman world between them, but this did not last long. Octavian's forces defeated those of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. In 27 BC the Senate gave him the title \"Augustus\" (\"venerated\") and made him \"princeps\" (\"foremost\") with proconsular \"imperium\", thus beginning the Principate, the first epoch of Roman imperial history. Although the republic stood in name, Augustus had all meaningful authority. During his 40-year rule, a new constitutional order emerged so that, upon his death, Tiberius would succeed him as the new \"de facto\" monarch.\n\"Pax Romana\".\nThe 200 years that began with Augustus's rule is traditionally regarded as the \"Pax Romana\" (\"Roman Peace\"). The cohesion of the empire was furthered by a degree of social stability and economic prosperity that Rome had never before experienced. Uprisings in the provinces were infrequent and put down \"mercilessly and swiftly\". The success of Augustus in establishing principles of dynastic succession was limited by his outliving a number of talented potential heirs. The Julio-Claudian dynasty lasted for four more emperors\u2014Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero\u2014before it yielded in 69 AD to the strife-torn Year of the Four Emperors, from which Vespasian emerged as the victor. Vespasian became the founder of the brief Flavian dynasty, followed by the Nerva\u2013Antonine dynasty which produced the \"Five Good Emperors\": Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius.\nTransition from classical to late antiquity.\nIn the view of contemporary Greek historian Cassius Dio, the accession of Commodus in 180 marked the descent \"from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron\", a comment which has led some historians, notably Edward Gibbon, to take Commodus' reign as the beginning of the Empire's decline.\nIn 212, during the reign of Caracalla, Roman citizenship was granted to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. The Severan dynasty was tumultuous; an emperor's reign was ended routinely by his murder or execution and, following its collapse, the Empire was engulfed by the Crisis of the Third Century, a period of invasions, civil strife, economic disorder, and plague. In defining historical epochs, this crisis sometimes marks the transition from Classical to Late Antiquity. Aurelian (r.\u2009270\u00a0\u2013\u00a0275) stabilised the empire militarily and Diocletian reorganised and restored much of it in 285. Diocletian's reign brought the empire's most concerted effort against the perceived threat of Christianity, the \"Great Persecution\".\nDiocletian divided the empire into four regions, each ruled by a separate tetrarch. Confident that he fixed the disorder plaguing Rome, he abdicated along with his co-emperor, but the Tetrarchy collapsed shortly after. Order was eventually restored by Constantine the Great, who became the first emperor to convert to Christianity, and who established Constantinople as the new capital of the Eastern Empire. During the decades of the Constantinian and Valentinian dynasties, the empire was divided along an east\u2013west axis, with dual power centres in Constantinople and Rome. Julian, who under the influence of his adviser Mardonius attempted to restore Classical Roman and Hellenistic religion, only briefly interrupted the succession of Christian emperors. Theodosius I, the last emperor to rule over both East and West, died in 395 after making Christianity the state religion.\nFall in the West and survival in the East.\nThe Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate in the early 5th century. The Romans fought off all invaders, most famously Attila, but the empire had assimilated so many Germanic peoples of dubious loyalty to Rome that the empire started to dismember itself. Most chronologies place the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476, when Romulus Augustulus was forced to abdicate to the Germanic warlord Odoacer.\nOdoacer ended the Western Empire by declaring Zeno sole emperor and placing himself as Zeno's nominal subordinate. In reality, Italy was ruled by Odoacer alone. The Eastern Roman Empire, called the Byzantine Empire by later historians, continued until the reign of Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Roman emperor. He died in battle in 1453 against Mehmed II and his Ottoman forces during the siege of Constantinople. Mehmed II adopted the title of \"caesar\" in an attempt to claim a connection to the former Empire. His claim was soon recognized by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, but not by European monarchs.\nGeography and demography.\nThe Roman Empire was one of the largest in history, with contiguous territories throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The Latin phrase \"imperium sine fine\" (\"empire without end\") expressed the ideology that neither time nor space limited the Empire. In Virgil's \"Aeneid\", limitless empire is said to be granted to the Romans by Jupiter. This claim of universal dominion was renewed when the Empire came under Christian rule in the 4th century. In addition to annexing large regions, the Romans directly altered their geography, for example cutting down entire forests.\nRoman expansion was mostly accomplished under the Republic, though parts of northern Europe were conquered in the 1st century, when Roman control in Europe, Africa, and Asia was strengthened. Under Augustus, a \"global map of the known world\" was displayed for the first time in public at Rome, coinciding with the creation of the most comprehensive political geography that survives from antiquity, the \"Geography\" of Strabo. When Augustus died, the account of his achievements (\"Res Gestae\") prominently featured the geographical cataloguing of the Empire. Geography alongside meticulous written records were central concerns of Roman Imperial administration.\nThe Empire reached its largest expanse under Trajan (r.\u200998\u00a0\u2013\u00a0117), encompassing 5 million km2. The traditional population estimate of 55\u201360 million inhabitants accounted for between one-sixth and one-fourth of the world's total population and made it the most populous unified political entity in the West until the mid-19th century. Recent demographic studies have argued for a population peak from 70 million to more than 100 million. Each of the three largest cities in the Empire\u2014Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch\u2014was almost twice the size of any European city at the beginning of the 17th century.\nAs the historian Christopher Kelly described it:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Then the empire stretched from Hadrian's Wall in drizzle-soaked northern England to the sun-baked banks of the Euphrates in Syria; from the great Rhine\u2013Danube river system, which snaked across the fertile, flat lands of Europe from the Low Countries to the Black Sea, to the rich plains of the North African coast and the luxuriant gash of the Nile Valley in Egypt. The empire completely circled the Mediterranean\u00a0... referred to by its conquerors as \"mare nostrum\"\u2014'our sea'.\nTrajan's successor Hadrian adopted a policy of maintaining rather than expanding the empire. Borders (\"fines\") were marked, and the frontiers (\"limites\") patrolled. The most heavily fortified borders were the most unstable. Hadrian's Wall, which separated the Roman world from what was perceived as an ever-present barbarian threat, is the primary surviving monument of this effort.\nLanguages.\nLatin and Greek were the main languages of the Empire, but the Empire was deliberately multilingual. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill says \"The main desire of the Roman government was to make itself understood\". At the start of the Empire, knowledge of Greek was useful to pass as educated nobility and knowledge of Latin was useful for a career in the military, government, or law. Bilingual inscriptions indicate the everyday interpenetration of the two languages.\nLatin and Greek's mutual linguistic and cultural influence is a complex topic. Latin words incorporated into Greek were very common by the early imperial era, especially for military, administration, and trade and commerce matters. Greek grammar, literature, poetry and philosophy shaped Latin language and culture.\nThere was never a legal requirement for Latin in the Empire, but it represented a certain status. High standards of Latin, \"Latinitas\", started with the advent of Latin literature. Due to the flexible language policy of the Empire, a natural competition of language emerged that spurred \"Latinitas\", to defend Latin against the stronger cultural influence of Greek. Over time Latin usage was used to project power and a higher social class. Most of the emperors were bilingual but had a preference for Latin in the public sphere for political reasons, a \"rule\" that first started during the Punic Wars. Different emperors up until Justinian would attempt to require the use of Latin in various sections of the administration but there is no evidence that a linguistic imperialism existed during the early Empire.\nAfter all freeborn inhabitants were universally enfranchised in 212, many Roman citizens would have lacked a knowledge of Latin. The wide use of Koine Greek was what enabled the spread of Christianity and reflects its role as the lingua franca of the Mediterranean during the time of the Empire. Following Diocletian's reforms in the 3rd century CE, there was a decline in the knowledge of Greek in the west. Spoken Latin later fragmented into the incipient romance languages in the 7th century CE following the collapse of the Empire's west.\nThe dominance of Latin and Greek among the literate elite obscure the continuity of other spoken languages within the Empire. Latin, referred to in its spoken form as Vulgar Latin, gradually replaced Celtic and Italic languages. References to interpreters indicate the continuing use of local languages, particularly in Egypt with Coptic, and in military settings along the Rhine and Danube. Roman jurists also show a concern for local languages such as Punic, Gaulish, and Aramaic in assuring the correct understanding of laws and oaths. In Africa, Libyco-Berber and Punic were used in inscriptions into the 2nd century. In Syria, Palmyrene soldiers used their dialect of Aramaic for inscriptions, an exception to the rule that Latin was the language of the military. The last reference to Gaulish was between 560 and 575. The emergent Gallo-Romance languages would then be shaped by Gaulish. Proto-Basque or Aquitanian evolved with Latin loan words to modern Basque. The Thracian language, as were several now-extinct languages in Anatolia, are attested in Imperial-era inscriptions.\nSociety.\nThe Empire was remarkably multicultural, with \"astonishing cohesive capacity\" to create shared identity while encompassing diverse peoples. Public monuments and communal spaces open to all\u2014such as forums, amphitheatres, racetracks and baths\u2014helped foster a sense of \"Romanness\".\nRoman society had multiple, overlapping social hierarchies. The civil war preceding Augustus caused upheaval, but did not effect an immediate redistribution of wealth and social power. From the perspective of the lower classes, a peak was merely added to the social pyramid. Personal relationships\u2014patronage, friendship (\"amicitia\"), family, marriage\u2014continued to influence politics. By the time of Nero, however, it was not unusual to find a former slave who was richer than a freeborn citizen, or an equestrian who exercised greater power than a senator.\nThe blurring of the Republic's more rigid hierarchies led to increased social mobility, both upward and downward, to a greater extent than all other well-documented ancient societies. Women, freedmen, and slaves had opportunities to profit and exercise influence in ways previously less available to them. Social life, particularly for those whose personal resources were limited, was further fostered by a proliferation of voluntary associations and confraternities (\"collegia\" and \"sodalitates\"): professional and trade guilds, veterans' groups, religious sodalities, drinking and dining clubs, performing troupes, and burial societies.\nLegal status.\nAccording to the jurist Gaius, the essential distinction in the Roman \"law of persons\" was that all humans were either free (\"liberi\") or slaves (\"servi\"). The legal status of free persons was further defined by their citizenship. Most citizens held limited rights (such as the \"ius Latinum\", \"Latin right\"), but were entitled to legal protections and privileges not enjoyed by non-citizens. Free people not considered citizens, but living within the Roman world, were \"peregrini\", non-Romans. In 212, the \"Constitutio Antoniniana\" extended citizenship to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. This legal egalitarianism required a far-reaching revision of existing laws that distinguished between citizens and non-citizens.\nWomen in Roman law.\nFreeborn Roman women were considered citizens, but did not vote, hold political office, or serve in the military. A mother's citizen status determined that of her children, as indicated by the phrase \"ex duobus civibus Romanis natos\" (\"children born of two Roman citizens\"). A Roman woman kept her own family name (\"nomen\") for life. Children most often took the father's name, with some exceptions. Women could own property, enter contracts, and engage in business. Inscriptions throughout the Empire honour women as benefactors in funding public works, an indication they could hold considerable fortunes.\nThe archaic \"manus\" marriage in which the woman was subject to her husband's authority was largely abandoned by the Imperial era, and a married woman retained ownership of any property she brought into the marriage. Technically she remained under her father's legal authority, even though she moved into her husband's home, but when her father died she became legally emancipated. This arrangement was a factor in the degree of independence Roman women enjoyed compared to many other cultures up to the modern period: although she had to answer to her father in legal matters, she was free of his direct scrutiny in daily life, and her husband had no legal power over her. Although it was a point of pride to be a \"one-man woman\" (\"univira\") who had married only once, there was little stigma attached to divorce, nor to speedy remarriage after being widowed or divorced. Girls had equal inheritance rights with boys if their father died without leaving a will. A mother's right to own and dispose of property, including setting the terms of her will, gave her enormous influence over her sons into adulthood.\nAs part of the Augustan programme to restore traditional morality and social order, moral legislation attempted to regulate conduct as a means of promoting \"family values\". Adultery was criminalized, and defined broadly as an illicit sex act (\"stuprum\") between a male citizen and a married woman, or between a married woman and any man other than her husband. That is, a double standard was in place: a married woman could have sex only with her husband, but a married man did not commit adultery if he had sex with a prostitute or person of marginalized status. Childbearing was encouraged: a woman who had given birth to three children was granted symbolic honours and greater legal freedom (the \"ius trium liberorum\").\nSlaves and the law.\nAt the time of Augustus, as many as 35% of the people in Roman Italy were slaves, making Rome one of five historical \"slave societies\" in which slaves constituted at least a fifth of the population and played a major role in the economy. Slavery was a complex institution that supported traditional Roman social structures as well as contributing economic utility. In urban settings, slaves might be professionals such as teachers, physicians, chefs, and accountants; the majority of slaves provided trained or unskilled labour. Agriculture and industry, such as milling and mining, relied on the exploitation of slaves. Outside Italy, slaves were on average an estimated 10 to 20% of the population, sparse in Roman Egypt but more concentrated in some Greek areas. Expanding Roman ownership of arable land and industries affected preexisting practices of slavery in the provinces. Although slavery has often been regarded as waning in the 3rd and 4th centuries, it remained an integral part of Roman society until gradually ceasing in the 6th and 7th centuries with the disintegration of the complex Imperial economy.\nLaws pertaining to slavery were \"extremely intricate\". Slaves were considered property and had no legal personhood. They could be subjected to forms of corporal punishment not normally exercised on citizens, sexual exploitation, torture, and summary execution. A slave could not as a matter of law be raped; a slave's rapist had to be prosecuted by the owner for property damage under the Aquilian Law. Slaves had no right to the form of legal marriage called \"conubium\", but their unions were sometimes recognized. Technically, a slave could not own property, but a slave who conducted business might be given access to an individual fund (\"peculium\") that he could use, depending on the degree of trust and co-operation between owner and slave. Within a household or workplace, a hierarchy of slaves might exist, with one slave acting as the master of others. Talented slaves might accumulate a large enough \"peculium\" to justify their freedom, or be manumitted for services rendered. Manumission had become frequent enough that in 2 BC a law (\"Lex Fufia Caninia\") limited the number of slaves an owner was allowed to free in his will.\nFollowing the Servile Wars of the Republic, legislation under Augustus and his successors shows a driving concern for controlling the threat of rebellions through limiting the size of work groups, and for hunting down fugitive slaves. Over time slaves gained increased legal protection, including the right to file complaints against their masters. A bill of sale might contain a clause stipulating that the slave could not be employed for prostitution, as prostitutes in ancient Rome were often slaves. The burgeoning trade in eunuchs in the late 1st century prompted legislation that prohibited the castration of a slave against his will \"for lust or gain\".\nRoman slavery was not based on race. Generally, slaves in Italy were indigenous Italians, with a minority of foreigners (including both slaves and freedmen) estimated at 5% of the total in the capital at its peak, where their number was largest. Foreign slaves had higher mortality and lower birth rates than natives and were sometimes even subjected to mass expulsions. The average recorded age at death for the slaves of the city of Rome was seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females).\nDuring the period of republican expansionism when slavery had become pervasive, war captives were a main source of slaves. The range of ethnicities among slaves to some extent reflected that of the armies Rome defeated in war, and the conquest of Greece brought a number of highly skilled and educated slaves. Slaves were also traded in markets and sometimes sold by pirates. Infant abandonment and self-enslavement among the poor were other sources. \"Vernae\", by contrast, were \"homegrown\" slaves born to female slaves within the household, estate or farm. Although they had no special legal status, an owner who mistreated or failed to care for his \"vernae\" faced social disapproval, as they were considered part of the family household and in some cases might actually be the children of free males in the family.\nFreedmen.\nRome differed from Greek city-states in allowing freed slaves to become citizens; any future children of a freedman were born free, with full rights of citizenship. After manumission, a slave who had belonged to a Roman citizen enjoyed active political freedom (\"libertas\"), including the right to vote. His former master became his patron (\"patronus\"): the two continued to have customary and legal obligations to each other. A freedman was not entitled to hold public office or the highest state priesthoods, but could play a priestly role. He could not marry a woman from a senatorial family, nor achieve legitimate senatorial rank himself, but during the early Empire, freedmen held key positions in the government bureaucracy, so much so that Hadrian limited their participation by law. The rise of successful freedmen\u2014through political influence or wealth\u2014is a characteristic of early Imperial society. The prosperity of a high-achieving group of freedmen is attested by .\nCensus rank.\nThe Latin word \"ordo\" (plural \"ordines\") is translated variously and inexactly into English as \"class, order, rank\". One purpose of the Roman census was to determine the \"ordo\" to which an individual belonged. Two of the highest \"ordines\" in Rome were the senatorial and equestrian. Outside Rome, cities or colonies were led by decurions, also known as \"curiales.\"\n\"Senator\" was not itself an elected office in ancient Rome; an individual gained admission to the Senate after he had been elected to and served at least one term as an executive magistrate. A senator also had to meet a minimum property requirement of 1 million \"sestertii\". Not all men who qualified for the \"ordo senatorius\" chose to take a Senate seat, which required legal domicile at Rome. Emperors often filled vacancies in the 600-member body by appointment. A senator's son belonged to the \"ordo senatorius\", but he had to qualify on his own merits for admission to the Senate. A senator could be removed for violating moral standards.\nIn the time of Nero, senators were still primarily from Italy, with some from the Iberian peninsula and southern France; men from the Greek-speaking provinces of the East began to be added under Vespasian. The first senator from the easternmost province, Cappadocia, was admitted under Marcus Aurelius. By the Severan dynasty (193\u2013235), Italians made up less than half the Senate. During the 3rd century, domicile at Rome became impractical, and inscriptions attest to senators who were active in politics and munificence in their homeland (\"patria\").\nSenators were the traditional governing class who rose through the \"cursus honorum\", the political career track, but equestrians often possessed greater wealth and political power. Membership in the equestrian order was based on property; in Rome's early days, \"equites\" or knights had been distinguished by their ability to serve as mounted warriors, but cavalry service was a separate function in the Empire. A census valuation of 400,000 sesterces and three generations of free birth qualified a man as an equestrian. The census of 28 BC uncovered large numbers of men who qualified, and in 14 AD, a thousand equestrians were registered at C\u00e1diz and Padua alone. Equestrians rose through a military career track (\"tres militiae\") to become highly placed prefects and procurators within the Imperial administration.\nThe rise of provincial men to the senatorial and equestrian orders is an aspect of social mobility in the early Empire. Roman aristocracy was based on competition, and unlike later European nobility, a Roman family could not maintain its position merely through hereditary succession or having title to lands. Admission to the higher \"ordines\" brought distinction and privileges, but also responsibilities. In antiquity, a city depended on its leading citizens to fund public works, events, and services (\"munera\"). Maintaining one's rank required massive personal expenditures. Decurions were so vital for the functioning of cities that in the later Empire, as the ranks of the town councils became depleted, those who had risen to the Senate were encouraged to return to their hometowns, in an effort to sustain civic life.\nIn the later Empire, the \"dignitas\" (\"worth, esteem\") that attended on senatorial or equestrian rank was refined further with titles such as \"vir illustris\" (\"illustrious man\"). The appellation \"clarissimus\" (Greek \"lamprotatos\") was used to designate the \"dignitas\" of certain senators and their immediate family, including women. \"Grades\" of equestrian status proliferated.\nUnequal justice.\nAs the republican principle of citizens' equality under the law faded, the symbolic and social privileges of the upper classes led to an informal division of Roman society into those who had acquired greater honours (\"honestiores\") and humbler folk (\"humiliores\"). In general, \"honestiores\" were the members of the three higher \"orders\", along with certain military officers. The granting of universal citizenship in 212 seems to have increased the competitive urge among the upper classes to have their superiority affirmed, particularly within the justice system. Sentencing depended on the judgment of the presiding official as to the relative \"worth\" (\"dignitas\") of the defendant: an \"honestior\" could pay a fine for a crime for which an \"humilior\" might receive a scourging.\nExecution, which was an infrequent legal penalty for free men under the Republic, could be quick and relatively painless for \"honestiores\", while \"humiliores\" might suffer the kinds of torturous death previously reserved for slaves, such as crucifixion and condemnation to the beasts. In the early Empire, those who converted to Christianity could lose their standing as \"honestiores\", especially if they declined to fulfil religious responsibilities, and thus became subject to punishments that created the conditions of martyrdom.\nGovernment and military.\nThe three major elements of the Imperial state were the central government, the military, and the provincial government. The military established control of a territory through war, but after a city or people was brought under treaty, the mission turned to policing: protecting Roman citizens, agricultural fields, and religious sites. The Romans lacked sufficient manpower or resources to rule through force alone. Cooperation with local elites was necessary to maintain order, collect information, and extract revenue. The Romans often exploited internal political divisions.\nCommunities with demonstrated loyalty to Rome retained their own laws, could collect their own taxes locally, and in exceptional cases were exempt from Roman taxation. Legal privileges and relative independence incentivized compliance. Roman government was thus limited, but efficient in its use of available resources.\nCentral government.\nThe Imperial cult of ancient Rome identified emperors and some members of their families with divinely sanctioned authority (\"auctoritas\"). The rite of apotheosis (also called \"consecratio\") signified the deceased emperor's deification. The dominance of the emperor was based on the consolidation of powers from several republican offices. The emperor made himself the central religious authority as \"pontifex maximus\", and centralized the right to declare war, ratify treaties, and negotiate with foreign leaders. While these functions were clearly defined during the Principate, the emperor's powers over time became less constitutional and more monarchical, culminating in the Dominate.\nThe emperor was the ultimate authority in policy- and decision-making, but in the early Principate, he was expected to be accessible and deal personally with official business and petitions. A bureaucracy formed around him only gradually. The Julio-Claudian emperors relied on an informal body of advisors that included not only senators and equestrians, but trusted slaves and freedmen. After Nero, the influence of the latter was regarded with suspicion, and the emperor's council (\"consilium\") became subject to official appointment for greater transparency. Though the Senate took a lead in policy discussions until the end of the Antonine dynasty, equestrians played an increasingly important role in the \"consilium\". The women of the emperor's family often intervened directly in his decisions.\nAccess to the emperor might be gained at the daily reception (\"salutatio\"), a development of the traditional homage a client paid to his patron; public banquets hosted at the palace; and religious ceremonies. The common people who lacked this access could manifest their approval or displeasure as a group at games. By the 4th century, the Christian emperors became remote figureheads who issued general rulings, no longer responding to individual petitions. Although the Senate could do little short of assassination and open rebellion to contravene the will of the emperor, it retained its symbolic political centrality. The Senate legitimated the emperor's rule, and the emperor employed senators as legates (\"legati\"): generals, diplomats, and administrators.\nThe practical source of an emperor's power and authority was the military. The legionaries were paid by the Imperial treasury, and swore an annual oath of loyalty to the emperor. Most emperors chose a successor, usually a close family member or adopted heir. The new emperor had to seek a swift acknowledgement of his status and authority to stabilize the political landscape. No emperor could hope to survive without the allegiance of the Praetorian Guard and the legions. To secure their loyalty, several emperors paid the \"donativum\", a monetary reward. In theory, the Senate was entitled to choose the new emperor, but did so mindful of acclamation by the army or Praetorians.\nMilitary.\nAfter the Punic Wars, the Roman army comprised professional soldiers who volunteered for 20 years of active duty and five as reserves. The transition to a professional military began during the late Republic and was one of the many profound shifts away from republicanism, under which an army of conscript citizens defended the homeland against a specific threat. The Romans expanded their war machine by \"organizing the communities that they conquered in Italy into a system that generated huge reservoirs of manpower for their army\". By Imperial times, military service was a full-time career. The pervasiveness of military garrisons throughout the Empire was a major influence in the process of Romanization.\nThe primary mission of the military of the early empire was to preserve the Pax Romana. The three major divisions of the military were:\nThrough his military reforms, which included consolidating or disbanding units of questionable loyalty, Augustus regularized the legion. A legion was organized into ten cohorts, each of which comprised six centuries, with a century further made up of ten squads (\"contubernia\"); the exact size of the Imperial legion, which was likely determined by logistics, has been estimated to range from 4,800 to 5,280. After Germanic tribes wiped out three legions in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, the number of legions was increased from 25 to around 30. The army had about 300,000 soldiers in the 1st century, and under 400,000 in the 2nd, \"significantly smaller\" than the collective armed forces of the conquered territories. No more than 2% of adult males living in the Empire served in the Imperial army. Augustus also created the Praetorian Guard: nine cohorts, ostensibly to maintain the public peace, which were garrisoned in Italy. Better paid than the legionaries, the Praetorians served only sixteen years.\nThe \"auxilia\" were recruited from among the non-citizens. Organized in smaller units of roughly cohort strength, they were paid less than the legionaries, and after 25 years of service were rewarded with Roman citizenship, also extended to their sons. According to Tacitus there were roughly as many auxiliaries as there were legionaries\u2014thus, around 125,000 men, implying approximately 250 auxiliary regiments. The Roman cavalry of the earliest Empire were primarily from Celtic, Hispanic or Germanic areas. Several aspects of training and equipment derived from the Celts.\nThe Roman navy not only aided in the supply and transport of the legions but also in the protection of the frontiers along the rivers Rhine and Danube. Another duty was protecting maritime trade against pirates. It patrolled the Mediterranean, parts of the North Atlantic coasts, and the Black Sea. Nevertheless, the army was considered the senior and more prestigious branch.\nProvincial government.\nAn annexed territory became a Roman province in three steps: making a register of cities, taking a census, and surveying the land. Further government recordkeeping included births and deaths, real estate transactions, taxes, and juridical proceedings. In the 1st and 2nd centuries, the central government sent out around 160 officials annually to govern outside Italy. Among these officials were the Roman governors: magistrates elected at Rome who in the name of the Roman people governed senatorial provinces; or governors, usually of equestrian rank, who held their \"imperium\" on behalf of the emperor in imperial provinces, most notably Roman Egypt. A governor had to make himself accessible to the people he governed, but he could delegate various duties. His staff, however, was minimal: his official attendants (\"apparitores\"), including lictors, heralds, messengers, scribes, and bodyguards; legates, both civil and military, usually of equestrian rank; and friends who accompanied him unofficially.\nOther officials were appointed as supervisors of government finances. Separating fiscal responsibility from justice and administration was a reform of the Imperial era, to avoid provincial governors and tax farmers exploiting local populations for personal gain. Equestrian procurators, whose authority was originally \"extra-judicial and extra-constitutional\", managed both state-owned property and the personal property of the emperor (\"res privata\"). Because Roman government officials were few, a provincial who needed help with a legal dispute or criminal case might seek out any Roman perceived to have some official capacity.\nIn the High Empire, Italy was legally distinguished from the provinces, and along with some favored provincial communities, enjoyed immunity from the property tax and poll tax. However, under the Emperor Diocletian, Italy lost these privileges and was subdivided into provinces.\nLaw.\nRoman courts held original jurisdiction over cases involving Roman citizens throughout the empire, but there were too few judicial functionaries to impose Roman law uniformly in the provinces. Most parts of the Eastern Empire already had well-established law codes and juridical procedures. Generally, it was Roman policy to respect the \"mos regionis\" (\"regional tradition\" or \"law of the land\") and to regard local laws as a source of legal precedent and social stability. The compatibility of Roman and local law was thought to reflect an underlying \"ius gentium\", the \"law of nations\" or international law regarded as common and customary. If provincial law conflicted with Roman law or custom, Roman courts heard appeals, and the emperor held final decision-making authority.\nIn the West, law had been administered on a highly localized or tribal basis, and private property rights may have been a novelty of the Roman era, particularly among Celts. Roman law facilitated the acquisition of wealth by a pro-Roman elite. The extension of universal citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Empire in 212 required the uniform application of Roman law, replacing local law codes that had applied to non-citizens. Diocletian's efforts to stabilize the Empire after the Crisis of the Third Century included two major compilations of law in four years, the \"Codex Gregorianus\" and the \"Codex Hermogenianus\", to guide provincial administrators in setting consistent legal standards.\nThe pervasiveness of Roman law throughout Western Europe enormously influenced the Western legal tradition, reflected by continued use of Latin legal terminology in modern law.\nTaxation.\nTaxation under the Empire amounted to about 5% of its gross product. The typical tax rate for individuals ranged from 2 to 5%. The tax code was \"bewildering\" in its complicated system of direct and indirect taxes, some paid in cash and some in kind. Taxes might be specific to a province, or kinds of properties such as fisheries; they might be temporary. Tax collection was justified by the need to maintain the military, and taxpayers sometimes got a refund if the army captured a surplus of booty. In-kind taxes were accepted from less-monetized areas, particularly those who could supply grain or goods to army camps.\nThe primary source of direct tax revenue was individuals, who paid a poll tax and a tax on their land, construed as a tax on its produce or productive capacity. Tax obligations were determined by the census: each head of household provided a headcount of his household, as well as an accounting of his property. A major source of indirect-tax revenue was the \"portoria\", customs and tolls on trade, including among provinces. Towards the end of his reign, Augustus instituted a 4% tax on the sale of slaves, which Nero shifted from the purchaser to the dealers, who responded by raising their prices. An owner who manumitted a slave paid a \"freedom tax\", calculated at 5% of value. An inheritance tax of 5% was assessed when Roman citizens above a certain net worth left property to anyone outside their immediate family. Revenues from the estate tax and from an auction tax went towards the veterans' pension fund (\"aerarium militare\").\nLow taxes helped the Roman aristocracy increase their wealth, which equalled or exceeded the revenues of the central government. An emperor sometimes replenished his treasury by confiscating the estates of the \"super-rich\", but in the later period, the resistance of the wealthy to paying taxes was one of the factors contributing to the collapse of the Empire.\nEconomy.\nThe Empire is best thought of as a network of regional economies, based on a form of \"political capitalism\" in which the state regulated commerce to assure its own revenues. Economic growth, though not comparable to modern economies, was greater than that of most other societies prior to industrialization. Territorial conquests permitted a large-scale reorganization of land use that resulted in agricultural surplus and specialization, particularly in north Africa. Some cities were known for particular industries. The scale of urban building indicates a significant construction industry. Papyri preserve complex accounting methods that suggest elements of economic rationalism, and the Empire was highly monetized. Although the means of communication and transport were limited in antiquity, transportation in the 1st and 2nd centuries expanded greatly, and trade routes connected regional economies. The supply contracts for the army drew on local suppliers near the base (\"castrum\"), throughout the province, and across provincial borders.\nEconomic historians vary in their calculations of the gross domestic product during the Principate. In the sample years of 14, 100, and 150 AD, estimates of per capita GDP range from 166 to 380 \"HS\". The GDP per capita of Italy is estimated as 40 to 66% higher than in the rest of the Empire, due to tax transfers from the provinces and the concentration of elite income.\nEconomic dynamism resulted in social mobility. Although aristocratic values permeated traditional elite society, wealth requirements for rank indicate a strong tendency towards plutocracy. Prestige could be obtained through investing one's wealth in grand estates or townhouses, luxury items, public entertainments, funerary monuments, and religious dedications. Guilds (\"collegia\") and corporations (\"corpora\") provided support for individuals to succeed through networking. \"There can be little doubt that the lower classes of ... provincial towns of the Roman Empire enjoyed a high standard of living not equaled again in Western Europe until the 19th century\". Households in the top 1.5% of income distribution captured about 20% of income. The \"vast majority\" produced more than half of the total income, but lived near subsistence.\nCurrency and banking.\nThe early Empire was monetized to a near-universal extent, using money as a way to express prices and debts. The \"sestertius\" (English \"sesterces\", symbolized as \"HS\") was the basic unit of reckoning value into the 4th century, though the silver \"denarius\", worth four sesterces, was also used beginning in the Severan dynasty. The smallest coin commonly circulated was the bronze \"as\", one-tenth \"denarius\". Bullion and ingots seem not to have counted as \"pecunia\" (\"money\") and were used only on the frontiers. Romans in the first and second centuries counted coins, rather than weighing them\u2014an indication that the coin was valued on its face. This tendency towards fiat money led to the debasement of Roman coinage in the later Empire. The standardization of money throughout the Empire promoted trade and market integration. The high amount of metal coinage in circulation increased the money supply for trading or saving.\nRome had no central bank, and regulation of the banking system was minimal. Banks of classical antiquity typically kept less in reserves than the full total of customers' deposits. A typical bank had fairly limited capital, and often only one principal. Seneca assumes that anyone involved in Roman commerce needs access to credit. A professional deposit banker received and held deposits for a fixed or indefinite term, and lent money to third parties. The senatorial elite were involved heavily in private lending, both as creditors and borrowers. The holder of a debt could use it as a means of payment by transferring it to another party, without cash changing hands. Although it has sometimes been thought that ancient Rome lacked documentary transactions, the system of banks throughout the Empire permitted the exchange of large sums without physically transferring coins, in part because of the risks of moving large amounts of cash. Only one serious credit shortage is known to have occurred in the early Empire, in 33 AD; generally, available capital exceeded the amount needed by borrowers. The central government itself did not borrow money, and without public debt had to fund deficits from cash reserves.\nEmperors of the Antonine and Severan dynasties debased the currency, particularly the \"denarius\", under the pressures of meeting military payrolls. Sudden inflation under Commodus damaged the credit market. In the mid-200s, the supply of specie contracted sharply. Conditions during the Crisis of the Third Century\u2014such as reductions in long-distance trade, disruption of mining operations, and the physical transfer of gold coinage outside the empire by invading enemies\u2014greatly diminished the money supply and the banking sector. Although Roman coinage had long been fiat money or fiduciary currency, general economic anxieties came to a head under Aurelian, and bankers lost confidence in coins. Despite Diocletian's introduction of the gold \"solidus\" and monetary reforms, the credit market of the Empire never recovered its former robustness.\nMining and metallurgy.\nThe main mining regions of the Empire were the Iberian Peninsula (silver, copper, lead, iron and gold); Gaul (gold, silver, iron); Britain (mainly iron, lead, tin), the Danubian provinces (gold, iron); Macedonia and Thrace (gold, silver); and Asia Minor (gold, silver, iron, tin). Intensive large-scale mining\u2014of alluvial deposits, and by means of open-cast mining and underground mining\u2014took place from the reign of Augustus up to the early 3rd century, when the instability of the Empire disrupted production.\nHydraulic mining allowed base and precious metals to be extracted on a proto-industrial scale. The total annual iron output is estimated at 82,500\u00a0tonnes. Copper and lead production levels were unmatched until the Industrial Revolution. At its peak around the mid-2nd century, the Roman silver stock is estimated at 10,000\u00a0t, five to ten times larger than the combined silver mass of medieval Europe and the Caliphate around 800\u00a0AD. As an indication of the scale of Roman metal production, lead pollution in the Greenland ice sheet quadrupled over prehistoric levels during the Imperial era and dropped thereafter.\nTransportation and communication.\nThe Empire completely encircled the Mediterranean, which they called \"our sea\" (\"Mare Nostrum\"). Roman sailing vessels navigated the Mediterranean as well as major rivers. Transport by water was preferred where possible, as moving commodities by land was more difficult. Vehicles, wheels, and ships indicate the existence of a great number of skilled woodworkers.\nLand transport utilized the advanced system of Roman roads, called \"viae\". These roads were primarily built for military purposes, but also served commercial ends. The in-kind taxes paid by communities included the provision of personnel, animals, or vehicles for the \"cursus publicus\", the state mail and transport service established by Augustus. Relay stations were located along the roads every seven to twelve Roman miles, and tended to grow into villages or trading posts. A \"mansio\" (plural \"mansiones\") was a privately run service station franchised by the imperial bureaucracy for the \"cursus publicus\". The distance between \"mansiones\" was determined by how far a wagon could travel in a day. Carts were usually pulled by mules, travelling about 4\u00a0mph.\nTrade and commodities.\nRoman provinces traded among themselves, but trade extended outside the frontiers to regions as far away as China and India. Chinese trade was mostly conducted overland through middle men along the Silk Road; Indian trade also occurred by sea from Egyptian ports. The main commodity was grain. Also traded were olive oil, foodstuffs, \"garum\" (fish sauce), slaves, ore and manufactured metal objects, fibres and textiles, timber, pottery, glassware, marble, papyrus, spices and \"materia medica\", ivory, pearls, and gemstones. Though most provinces could produce wine, regional varietals were desirable and wine was a central trade good.\nLabour and occupations.\nInscriptions record 268 different occupations in Rome and 85 in Pompeii. Professional associations or trade guilds (\"collegia\") are attested for a wide range of occupations, some quite specialized.\nWork performed by slaves falls into five general categories: domestic, with epitaphs recording at least 55 different household jobs; imperial or public service; urban crafts and services; agriculture; and mining. Convicts provided much of the labour in the mines or quarries, where conditions were notoriously brutal. In practice, there was little division of labour between slave and free, and most workers were illiterate and without special skills. The greatest number of common labourers were employed in agriculture: in Italian industrial farming (\"latifundia\"), these may have been mostly slaves, but elsewhere slave farm labour was probably less important.\nTextile and clothing production was a major source of employment. Both textiles and finished garments were traded and products were often named for peoples or towns, like a fashion \"label\". Better ready-to-wear was exported by local businessmen (\"negotiatores\" or \"mercatores\"). Finished garments might be retailed by their sales agents, by \"vestiarii\" (clothing dealers), or peddled by itinerant merchants. The fullers (\"fullones\") and dye workers (\"coloratores\") had their own guilds. \"Centonarii\" were guild workers who specialized in textile production and the recycling of old clothes into pieced goods.\nArchitecture and engineering.\nThe chief Roman contributions to architecture were the arch, vault, and dome. Some Roman structures still stand today, due in part to sophisticated methods of making cements and concrete. Roman temples developed Etruscan and Greek forms, with some distinctive elements. Roman roads are considered the most advanced built until the early 19th century.\nRoman bridges were among the first large and lasting bridges, built from stone (and in most cases concrete) with the arch as the basic structure. The largest Roman bridge was Trajan's bridge over the lower Danube, constructed by Apollodorus of Damascus, which remained for over a millennium the longest bridge to have been built. The Romans built many dams and reservoirs for water collection, such as the Subiaco Dams, two of which fed the Anio Novus, one of the largest aqueducts of Rome.\nThe Romans constructed numerous aqueducts. \"De aquaeductu\", a treatise by Frontinus, who served as water commissioner, reflects the administrative importance placed on the water supply. Masonry channels carried water along a precise gradient, using gravity alone. It was then collected in tanks and fed through pipes to public fountains, baths, toilets, or industrial sites. The main aqueducts in Rome were the Aqua Claudia and the Aqua Marcia. The complex system built to supply Constantinople had its most distant supply drawn from over 120\u00a0km away along a route of more than 336\u00a0km. Roman aqueducts were built to remarkably fine tolerance, and to a technological standard not equalled until modern times. The Romans also used aqueducts in their extensive mining operations across the empire.\nInsulated glazing (or \"double glazing\") was used in the construction of public baths. Elite housing in cooler climates might have hypocausts, a form of central heating. The Romans were the first culture to assemble all essential components of the much later steam engine: the crank and connecting rod system, Hero's aeolipile (generating steam power), the cylinder and piston (in metal force pumps), non-return valves (in water pumps), and gearing (in water mills and clocks).\nDaily life.\nCity and country.\nThe city was viewed as fostering civilization by being \"properly designed, ordered, and adorned\". Augustus undertook a vast building programme in Rome, supported public displays of art that expressed imperial ideology, and reorganized the city into neighbourhoods \"(vici)\" administered at the local level with police and firefighting services. A focus of Augustan monumental architecture was the Campus Martius, an open area outside the city centre: the Altar of Augustan Peace () was located there, as was an obelisk imported from Egypt that formed the pointer (\"gnomon\") of a horologium. With its public gardens, the Campus was among the most attractive places in Rome to visit.\nCity planning and urban lifestyles was influenced by the Greeks early on, and in the Eastern Empire, Roman rule shaped the development of cities that already had a strong Hellenistic character. Cities such as Athens, Aphrodisias, Ephesus and Gerasa tailored city planning and architecture to imperial ideals, while expressing their individual identity and regional preeminence. In areas inhabited by Celtic-speaking peoples, Rome encouraged the development of urban centres with stone temples, forums, monumental fountains, and amphitheatres, often on or near the sites of preexisting walled settlements known as \"oppida\". Urbanization in Roman Africa expanded on Greek and Punic coastal cities.\nThe network of cities (, \"municipia\", \"civitates\" or in Greek terms \"poleis\") was a primary cohesive force during the Pax Romana. Romans of the 1st and 2nd centuries were encouraged to \"inculcate the habits of peacetime\". As the classicist Clifford Ando noted:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Most of the cultural appurtenances popularly associated with imperial culture\u2014public cult and its games and civic banquets, competitions for artists, speakers, and athletes, as well as the funding of the great majority of public buildings and public display of art\u2014were financed by private individuals, whose expenditures in this regard helped to justify their economic power and legal and provincial privileges.\nIn the city of Rome, most people lived in multistory apartment buildings (\"insulae\") that were often squalid firetraps. Public facilities\u2014such as baths (\"thermae\"), toilets with running water (\"latrinae\"), basins or elaborate fountains (\"nymphea\") delivering fresh water, and large-scale entertainments such as chariot races and gladiator combat\u2014were aimed primarily at the common people. \nThe public baths served hygienic, social and cultural functions. Bathing was the focus of daily socializing. Roman baths were distinguished by a series of rooms that offered communal bathing in three temperatures, with amenities that might include an exercise room, sauna, exfoliation spa, ball court, or outdoor swimming pool. Baths had hypocaust heating: the floors were suspended over hot-air channels. Public baths were part of urban culture throughout the provinces, but in the late 4th century, individual tubs began to replace communal bathing. Christians were advised to go to the baths only for hygiene.\nRich families from Rome usually had two or more houses: a townhouse (\"domus\") and at least one luxury home (\"villa\") outside the city. The \"domus\" was a privately owned single-family house, and might be furnished with a private bath (\"balneum\"), but it was not a place to retreat from public life. Although some neighbourhoods show a higher concentration of such houses, they were not segregated enclaves. The \"domus\" was meant to be visible and accessible. The atrium served as a reception hall in which the \"paterfamilias\" (head of household) met with clients every morning. It was a centre of family religious rites, containing a shrine and images of family ancestors. The houses were located on busy public roads, and ground-level spaces were often rented out as shops (\"tabernae\"). In addition to a kitchen garden\u2014windowboxes might substitute in the \"insulae\"\u2014townhouses typically enclosed a peristyle garden.\nThe villa by contrast was an escape from the city, and in literature represents a lifestyle that balances intellectual and artistic interests (\"otium\") with an appreciation of nature and agriculture. Ideally a villa commanded a view or vista, carefully framed by the architectural design. \nAugustus' programme of urban renewal, and the growth of Rome's population to as many as one million, was accompanied by nostalgia for rural life. Poetry idealized the lives of farmers and shepherds. Interior decorating often featured painted gardens, fountains, landscapes, vegetative ornament, and animals, rendered accurately enough to be identified by species. On a more practical level, the central government took an active interest in supporting agriculture. Producing food was the priority of land use. Larger farms (\"latifundia\") achieved an economy of scale that sustained urban life. Small farmers benefited from the development of local markets in towns and trade centres. Agricultural techniques such as crop rotation and selective breeding were disseminated throughout the Empire, and new crops were introduced from one province to another.\nMaintaining an affordable food supply to the city of Rome had become a major political issue in the late Republic, when the state began to provide a grain dole (Cura Annonae) to citizens who registered for it (about 200,000\u2013250,000 adult males in Rome). The dole cost at least 15% of state revenues, but improved living conditions among the lower classes, and subsidized the rich by allowing workers to spend more of their earnings on the wine and olive oil produced on estates. The grain dole also had symbolic value: it affirmed the emperor's position as universal benefactor, and the right of citizens to share in \"the fruits of conquest\". The \"annona\", public facilities, and spectacular entertainments mitigated the otherwise dreary living conditions of lower-class Romans, and kept social unrest in check. The satirist Juvenal, however, saw \"bread and circuses\" (\"panem et circenses\") as emblematic of the loss of republican political liberty:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The public has long since cast off its cares: the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things: bread and circuses.\nHealth and disease.\nEpidemics were common in the ancient world, and occasional pandemics in the Empire killed millions. The Roman population was unhealthy. About 20 percent\u2014a large percentage by ancient standards\u2014lived in cities, Rome being the largest. The cities were a \"demographic sink\": the death rate exceeded the birth rate and constant immigration was necessary to maintain the population. Average lifespan is estimated at the mid-twenties, and perhaps more than half of children died before reaching adulthood. Dense urban populations and poor sanitation contributed to disease. Land and sea connections facilitated and sped the transfer of infectious diseases across the empire's territories. The rich were not immune; only two of emperor Marcus Aurelius's fourteen children are known to have reached adulthood.\nThe importance of a good diet to health was recognized by medical writers such as Galen (2nd century). Views on nutrition were influenced by beliefs like humoral theory. A good indicator of nutrition and disease burden is average height: the average Roman was shorter in stature than the population of pre-Roman Italian societies and medieval Europe.\nFood and dining.\nMost apartments in Rome lacked kitchens, though a charcoal brazier could be used for rudimentary cookery. Prepared food was sold at pubs and bars, inns, and food stalls (\"tabernae\", \"cauponae\", \"popinae\", \"thermopolia\"). Carryout and restaurants were for the lower classes; fine dining appeared only at dinner parties in wealthy homes with a chef (\"archimagirus\") and kitchen staff, or banquets hosted by social clubs (\"collegia\").\nMost Romans consumed at least 70% of their daily calories in the form of cereals and legumes. \"Puls\" (pottage) was considered the food of the Romans, and could be elaborated to produce dishes similar to polenta or risotto. Urban populations and the military preferred bread. By the reign of Aurelian, the state had begun to distribute the \"annona\" as a daily ration of bread baked in state factories, and added olive oil, wine, and pork to the dole.\nRoman literature focuses on the dining habits of the upper classes, for whom the evening meal (\"cena\") had important social functions. Guests were entertained in a finely decorated dining room (\"triclinium\") furnished with couches. By the late Republic, women dined, reclined, and drank wine along with men. The poet Martial describes a dinner, beginning with the \"gustatio\" (\"tasting\" or \"appetizer\") salad. The main course was kid, beans, greens, a chicken, and leftover ham, followed by a dessert of fruit and wine. Roman \"foodies\" indulged in wild game, fowl such as peacock and flamingo, large fish (mullet was especially prized), and shellfish. Luxury ingredients were imported from the far reaches of empire. A book-length collection of Roman recipes is attributed to Apicius, a name for several figures in antiquity that became synonymous with \"gourmet\".\nRefined cuisine could be moralized as a sign of either civilized progress or decadent decline. Most often, because of the importance of landowning in Roman culture, produce\u2014cereals, legumes, vegetables, and fruit\u2014were considered more civilized foods than meat. The Mediterranean staples of bread, wine, and oil were sacralized by Roman Christianity, while Germanic meat consumption became a mark of paganism. Some philosophers and Christians resisted the demands of the body and the pleasures of food, and adopted fasting as an ideal. Food became simpler in general as urban life in the West diminished and trade routes were disrupted; the Church formally discouraged gluttony, and hunting and pastoralism were seen as simple and virtuous.\nSpectacles.\nWhen Juvenal complained that the Roman people had exchanged their political liberty for \"bread and circuses\", he was referring to the state-provided grain dole and the \"circenses\", events held in the entertainment venue called a \"circus\". The largest such venue in Rome was the Circus Maximus, the setting of horse races, chariot races, the equestrian Troy Game, staged beast hunts (\"venationes\"), athletic contests, gladiator combat, and historical re-enactments. From earliest times, several religious festivals had featured games (\"ludi\"), primarily horse and chariot races (\"ludi circenses\"). The races retained religious significance in connection with agriculture, initiation, and the cycle of birth and death.\nUnder Augustus, public entertainments were presented on 77 days of the year; by the reign of Marcus Aurelius, this had expanded to 135. Circus games were preceded by an elaborate parade (\"pompa circensis\") that ended at the venue. Competitive events were held also in smaller venues such as the amphitheatre, which became the characteristic Roman spectacle venue, and stadium. Greek-style athletics included footraces, boxing, wrestling, and the pancratium. Aquatic displays, such as the mock sea battle (\"naumachia\") and a form of \"water ballet\", were presented in engineered pools. State-supported theatrical events (\"ludi scaenici\") took place on temple steps or in grand stone theatres, or in the smaller enclosed theatre called an \"odeon\".\nCircuses were the largest structure regularly built in the Roman world. The Flavian Amphitheatre, better known as the Colosseum, became the regular arena for blood sports in Rome. Many Roman amphitheatres, circuses and theatres built in cities outside Italy are visible as ruins today. The local ruling elite were responsible for sponsoring spectacles and arena events, which both enhanced their status and drained their resources. The physical arrangement of the amphitheatre represented the order of Roman society: the emperor in his opulent box; senators and equestrians in reserved advantageous seats; women seated at a remove from the action; slaves given the worst places, and everybody else in-between. The crowd could call for an outcome by booing or cheering, but the emperor had the final say. Spectacles could quickly become sites of social and political protest, and emperors sometimes had to deploy force to put down crowd unrest, most notoriously at the Nika riots in 532.\nThe chariot teams were known by the colours they wore. Fan loyalty was fierce and at times erupted into sports riots. Racing was perilous, but charioteers were among the most celebrated and well-compensated athletes. Circuses were designed to ensure that no team had an unfair advantage and to minimize collisions (\"naufragia\"), which were nonetheless frequent and satisfying to the crowd. The races retained a magical aura through their early association with chthonic rituals: circus images were considered protective or lucky, curse tablets have been found buried at the site of racetracks, and charioteers were often suspected of sorcery. Chariot racing continued into the Byzantine period under imperial sponsorship, but the decline of cities in the 6th and 7th centuries led to its eventual demise.\nThe Romans thought gladiator contests had originated with funeral games and sacrifices. Some of the earliest styles of gladiator fighting had ethnic designations such as \"Thracian\" or \"Gallic\". The staged combats were considered , \"services, offerings, benefactions\", initially distinct from the festival games (\"ludi\"). To mark the opening of the Colosseum, Titus presented 100 days of arena events, with 3,000 gladiators competing on a single day. Roman fascination with gladiators is indicated by how widely they are depicted on mosaics, wall paintings, lamps, and in graffiti. Gladiators were trained combatants who might be slaves, convicts, or free volunteers. Death was not a necessary or even desirable outcome in matches between these highly skilled fighters, whose training was costly and time-consuming. By contrast, \"noxii\" were convicts sentenced to the arena with little or no training, often unarmed, and with no expectation of survival; physical suffering and humiliation were considered appropriate retributive justice. These executions were sometimes staged or ritualized as re-enactments of myths, and amphitheatres were equipped with elaborate stage machinery to create special effects.\nModern scholars have found the pleasure Romans took in the \"theatre of life and death\" difficult to understand. Pliny the Younger rationalized gladiator spectacles as good for the people, \"to inspire them to face honourable wounds and despise death, by exhibiting love of glory and desire for victory\". Some Romans such as Seneca were critical of the brutal spectacles, but found virtue in the courage and dignity of the defeated fighter\u2014an attitude that finds its fullest expression with the Christians martyred in the arena. Tertullian considered deaths in the arena to be nothing more than a dressed-up form of human sacrifice. Even martyr literature, however, offers \"detailed, indeed luxuriant, descriptions of bodily suffering\", and became a popular genre at times indistinguishable from fiction.\nRecreation.\nThe singular \"ludus\", \"play, game, sport, training\", had a wide range of meanings such as \"word play\", \"theatrical performance\", \"board game\", \"primary school\", and even \"gladiator training school\" (as in \"Ludus Magnus\"). Activities for children and young people in the Empire included hoop rolling and knucklebones (\"astragali\" or \"jacks\"). Girls had dolls made of wood, terracotta, and especially bone and ivory. Ball games include trigon and harpastum. People of all ages played board games, including \"latrunculi\" (\"Raiders\") and \"XII scripta\" (\"Twelve Marks\"). A game referred to as \"alea\" (dice) or \"tabula\" (the board) may have been similar to backgammon. Dicing as a form of gambling was disapproved of, but was a popular pastime during the festival of the Saturnalia.\nAfter adolescence, most physical training for males was of a military nature. The Campus Martius originally was an exercise field where young men learned horsemanship and warfare. Hunting was also considered an appropriate pastime. According to Plutarch, conservative Romans disapproved of Greek-style athletics that promoted a fine body for its own sake, and condemned Nero's efforts to encourage Greek-style athletic games. Some women trained as gymnasts and dancers, and a rare few as female gladiators. The \"Bikini Girls\" mosaic shows young women engaging in routines comparable to rhythmic gymnastics. Women were encouraged to maintain health through activities such as playing ball, swimming, walking, or reading aloud (as a breathing exercise).\nClothing.\nIn a status-conscious society like that of the Romans, clothing and personal adornment indicated the etiquette of interacting with the wearer. Wearing the correct clothing reflected a society in good order. There is little direct evidence of how Romans dressed in daily life, since portraiture may show the subject in clothing with symbolic value, and surviving textiles are rare.\nThe toga was the distinctive national garment of the male citizen, but it was heavy and impractical, worn mainly for conducting political or court business and religious rites. It was a \"vast expanse\" of semi-circular white wool that could not be put on and draped correctly without assistance. The drapery became more intricate and structured over time. The \"toga praetexta\", with a purple or purplish-red stripe representing inviolability, was worn by children who had not come of age, curule magistrates, and state priests. Only the emperor could wear an all-purple toga (\"toga picta\").\nOrdinary clothing was dark or colourful. The basic garment for all Romans, regardless of gender or wealth, was the simple sleeved tunic, with length differing by wearer. The tunics of poor people and labouring slaves were made from coarse wool in natural, dull shades; finer tunics were made of lightweight wool or linen. A man of the senatorial or equestrian order wore a tunic with two purple stripes (\"clavi\") woven vertically: the wider the stripe, the higher the wearer's status. Other garments could be layered over the tunic. Common male attire also included cloaks, and in some regions, trousers. In the 2nd century, emperors and elite men are often portrayed wearing the pallium, an originally Greek mantle; women are also portrayed in the pallium. Tertullian considered the pallium an appropriate garment both for Christians, in contrast to the toga, and for educated people.\nRoman clothing styles changed over time. In the Dominate, clothing worn by both soldiers and bureaucrats became highly decorated with geometrical patterns, stylized plant motifs, and in more elaborate examples, human or animal figures. Courtiers of the later Empire wore elaborate silk robes. The militarization of Roman society, and the waning of urban life, affected fashion: heavy military-style belts were worn by bureaucrats as well as soldiers, and the toga was abandoned, replaced by the pallium as a garment embodying social unity.\nArts.\nGreek art had a profound influence on Roman art. Public art\u2014including sculpture, monuments such as victory columns or triumphal arches, and the iconography on coins\u2014is often analysed for historical or ideological significance. In the private sphere, artistic objects were made for religious dedications, funerary commemoration, domestic use, and commerce. The wealthy advertised their appreciation of culture through artwork and decorative arts in their homes. Despite the value placed on art, even famous artists were of low social status, partly as they worked with their hands.\nPortraiture.\nPortraiture, which survives mainly in sculpture, was the most copious form of imperial art. Portraits during the Augustan period utilize classical proportions, evolving later into a mixture of realism and idealism. Republican portraits were characterized by verism, but as early as the 2nd century BC, Greek heroic nudity was adopted for conquering generals. Imperial portrait sculptures may model a mature head atop a youthful nude or semi-nude body with perfect musculature. Clothed in the toga or military regalia, the body communicates rank or role, not individual characteristics. \nPortraiture in painting is represented primarily by the Fayum mummy portraits, which evoke Egyptian and Roman traditions of commemorating the dead with realistic painting. Marble portrait sculpture were painted, but traces have rarely survived.\nSculpture and sarcophagi.\nExamples of Roman sculpture survive abundantly, though often in damaged or fragmentary condition, including freestanding statuary in marble, bronze and terracotta, and reliefs from public buildings and monuments. Niches in amphitheatres were originally filled with statues, as were formal gardens. Temples housed cult images of deities, often by famed sculptors.\nElaborately carved marble and limestone sarcophagi are characteristic of the 2nd to 4th centuries. Sarcophagus relief has been called the \"richest single source of Roman iconography\", depicting mythological scenes or Jewish/Christian imagery as well as the deceased's life.\nPainting.\nInitial Roman painting drew from Etruscan and Greek models and techniques. Examples of Roman paintings can be found in palaces, catacombs and villas. Much of what is known of Roman painting is from the interior decoration of private homes, particularly as preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius. In addition to decorative borders and panels with geometric or vegetative motifs, wall painting depicts scenes from mythology and theatre, landscapes and gardens, spectacles, everyday life, and erotic art.\nMosaic.\nMosaics are among the most enduring of Roman decorative arts, and are found on floors and other architectural features. The most common is the tessellated mosaic, formed from uniform pieces \"(tesserae)\" of materials such as stone and glass. \"Opus sectile\" is a related technique in which flat stone, usually coloured marble, is cut precisely into shapes from which geometric or figurative patterns are formed. This more difficult technique became especially popular for luxury surfaces in the 4th century (e.g. the Basilica of Junius Bassus).\nFigurative mosaics share many themes with painting, and in some cases use almost identical compositions. Geometric patterns and mythological scenes occur throughout the Empire. In North Africa, a particularly rich source of mosaics, homeowners often chose scenes of life on their estates, hunting, agriculture, and local wildlife. Plentiful and major examples of Roman mosaics come also from present-day Turkey (particularly the (Antioch mosaics), Italy, southern France, Spain, and Portugal.\nDecorative arts.\nDecorative arts for luxury consumers included fine pottery, silver and bronze vessels and implements, and glassware. Pottery manufacturing was economically important, as were the glass and metalworking industries. Imports stimulated new regional centres of production. Southern Gaul became a leading producer of the finer red-gloss pottery (\"terra sigillata\") that was a major trade good in 1st-century Europe. Glassblowing was regarded by the Romans as originating in Syria in the 1st century BC, and by the 3rd century, Egypt and the Rhineland had become noted for fine glass.\nPerforming arts.\nIn Roman tradition, borrowed from the Greeks, literary theatre was performed by all-male troupes that used face masks with exaggerated facial expressions to portray emotion. Female roles were played by men in drag (\"travesti\"). Roman literary theatre tradition is represented in Latin literature by the tragedies of Seneca, for example.\nMore popular than literary theatre was the genre-defying \"mimus\" theatre, which featured scripted scenarios with free improvisation, risqu\u00e9 language and sex scenes, action sequences, and political satire, along with dance, juggling, acrobatics, tightrope walking, striptease, and dancing bears. Unlike literary theatre, \"mimus\" was played without masks, and encouraged stylistic realism. Female roles were performed by women. \"Mimus\" was related to \"pantomimus\", an early form of story ballet that contained no spoken dialogue but rather a sung libretto, often mythological, either tragic or comic.\nAlthough sometimes regarded as foreign, music and dance existed in Rome from earliest times. Music was customary at funerals, and the \"tibia\", a woodwind instrument, was played at sacrifices. Song \"(carmen)\" was integral to almost every social occasion. Music was thought to reflect the orderliness of the cosmos. Various woodwinds and \"brass\" instruments were played, as were stringed instruments such as the \"cithara\", and percussion. The \"cornu\", a long tubular metal wind instrument, was used for military signals and on parade. These instruments spread throughout the provinces and are widely depicted in Roman art. The hydraulic pipe organ \"(hydraulis)\" was \"one of the most significant technical and musical achievements of antiquity\", and accompanied gladiator games and events in the amphitheatre. Although certain dances were seen at times as non-Roman or unmanly, dancing was embedded in religious rituals of archaic Rome. Ecstatic dancing was a feature of the mystery religions, particularly the cults of Cybele and Isis. In the secular realm, dancing girls from Syria and Cadiz were extremely popular.\nLike gladiators, entertainers were legally \"infames\", technically free but little better than slaves. \"Stars\", however, could enjoy considerable wealth and celebrity, and mingled socially and often sexually with the elite. Performers supported each other by forming guilds, and several memorials for theatre members survive. Theatre and dance were often condemned by Christian polemicists in the later Empire.\nLiteracy, books, and education.\nEstimates of the average literacy rate range from 5 to over 30%. The Roman obsession with documents and inscriptions indicates the value placed on the written word. Laws and edicts were posted as well as read out. Illiterate Roman subjects could have a government scribe (\"scriba\") read or write their official documents for them. The military produced extensive written records. The Babylonian Talmud declared \"if all seas were ink, all reeds were pen, all skies parchment, and all men scribes, they would be unable to set down the full scope of the Roman government's concerns\".\nNumeracy was necessary for commerce. Slaves were numerate and literate in significant numbers; some were highly educated. Graffiti and low-quality inscriptions with misspellings and solecisms indicate casual literacy among non-elites.\nThe Romans had an extensive priestly archive, and inscriptions appear throughout the Empire in connection with votives dedicated by ordinary people, as well as \"magic spells\" (e.g. the Greek Magical Papyri).\nBooks were expensive, since each copy had to be written out on a papyrus roll (\"volumen\") by scribes. The codex\u2014pages bound to a spine\u2014was still a novelty in the 1st century, but by the end of the 3rd century was replacing the \"volumen\". Commercial book production was established by the late Republic, and by the 1st century certain neighbourhoods of Rome and Western provincial cities were known for their bookshops. The quality of editing varied wildly, and plagiarism or forgery were common, since there was no copyright law.\nCollectors amassed personal libraries, and a fine library was part of the cultivated leisure (\"otium\") associated with the villa lifestyle. Significant collections might attract \"in-house\" scholars, and an individual benefactor might endow a community with a library (as Pliny the Younger did in Comum). Imperial libraries were open to users on a limited basis, and represented a literary canon. Books considered subversive might be publicly burned, and Domitian crucified copyists for reproducing works deemed treasonous.\nLiterary texts were often shared aloud at meals or with reading groups. Public readings (\"recitationes\") expanded from the 1st through the 3rd century, giving rise to \"consumer literature\" for entertainment. Illustrated books, including erotica, were popular, but are poorly represented by extant fragments.\nLiteracy began to decline during the Crisis of the Third Century. The emperor Julian banned Christians from teaching the classical curriculum, but the Church Fathers and other Christians adopted Latin and Greek literature, philosophy and science in biblical interpretation. As the Western Roman Empire declined, reading became rarer even for those within the Church hierarchy, although it continued in the Byzantine Empire.\nEducation.\nTraditional Roman education was moral and practical. Stories were meant to instil Roman values (\"mores maiorum\"). Parents were expected to act as role models, and working parents passed their skills to their children, who might also enter apprenticeships. Young children were attended by a pedagogue, usually a Greek slave or former slave, who kept the child safe, taught self-discipline and public behaviour, attended class and helped with tutoring.\nFormal education was available only to families who could pay for it; lack of state support contributed to low literacy. Primary education in reading, writing, and arithmetic might take place at home if parents hired or bought a teacher. Other children attended \"public\" schools organized by a schoolmaster (\"ludimagister\") paid by parents. \"Vernae\" (homeborn slave children) might share in-home or public schooling. Boys and girls received primary education generally from ages 7 to 12, but classes were not segregated by grade or age. Most schools employed corporal punishment. For the socially ambitious, education in Greek as well as Latin was necessary. Schools became more numerous during the Empire, increasing educational opportunities.\nAt the age of 14, upperclass males made their rite of passage into adulthood, and began to learn leadership roles through mentoring from a senior family member or family friend. Higher education was provided by \"grammatici\" or \"rhetores\". The \"grammaticus\" or \"grammarian\" taught mainly Greek and Latin literature, with history, geography, philosophy or mathematics treated as explications of the text. With the rise of Augustus, contemporary Latin authors such as Virgil and Livy also became part of the curriculum. The \"rhetor\" was a teacher of oratory or public speaking. The art of speaking (\"ars dicendi\") was highly prized, and \"eloquentia\" (\"speaking ability, eloquence\") was considered the \"glue\" of civilized society. Rhetoric was not so much a body of knowledge (though it required a command of the literary canon) as it was a mode of expression that distinguished those who held social power. The ancient model of rhetorical training\u2014\"restraint, coolness under pressure, modesty, and good humour\"\u2014endured into the 18th century as a Western educational ideal.\nIn Latin, \"illiteratus\" could mean both \"unable to read and write\" and \"lacking in cultural awareness or sophistication\". Higher education promoted career advancement. Urban elites throughout the Empire shared a literary culture imbued with Greek educational ideals (\"paideia\"). Hellenistic cities sponsored schools of higher learning to express cultural achievement. Young Roman men often went abroad to study rhetoric and philosophy, mostly to Athens. The curriculum in the East was more likely to include music and physical training. On the Hellenistic model, Vespasian endowed chairs of grammar, Latin and Greek rhetoric, and philosophy at Rome, and gave secondary teachers special exemptions from taxes and legal penalties. In the Eastern Empire, Berytus (present-day Beirut) was unusual in offering a Latin education, and became famous for its school of Roman law. The cultural movement known as the Second Sophistic (1st\u20133rd century AD) promoted the assimilation of Greek and Roman social, educational, and esthetic values.\nLiterate women ranged from cultured aristocrats to girls trained to be calligraphers and scribes. The ideal woman in Augustan love poetry was educated and well-versed in the arts. Education seems to have been standard for daughters of the senatorial and equestrian orders. An educated wife was an asset for the socially ambitious household.\nLiterature.\nLiterature under Augustus, along with that of the Republic, has been viewed as the \"Golden Age\" of Latin literature, embodying classical ideals. The three most influential Classical Latin poets\u2014Virgil, Horace, and Ovid\u2014belong to this period. Virgil's \"Aeneid\" was a national epic in the manner of the Homeric epics of Greece. Horace perfected the use of Greek lyric metres in Latin verse. Ovid's erotic poetry was enormously popular, but ran afoul of Augustan morality, contributing to his exile. Ovid's \"Metamorphoses\" wove together Greco-Roman mythology; his versions of Greek myths became a primary source of later classical mythology, and his work was hugely influential on medieval literature. The early Principate produced satirists such as Persius and Juvenal.\nThe mid-1st through mid-2nd century has conventionally been called the \"Silver Age\" of Latin literature. The three leading writers\u2014Seneca, Lucan, and Petronius\u2014committed suicide after incurring Nero's displeasure. Epigrammatist and social observer Martial and the epic poet Statius, whose poetry collection \"Silvae\" influenced Renaissance literature, wrote during the reign of Domitian. Other authors of the Silver Age included Pliny the Elder, author of the encyclopedic \"Natural History\"; his nephew, Pliny the Younger; and the historian Tacitus.\nThe principal Latin prose author of the Augustan age is the historian Livy, whose account of Rome's founding became the most familiar version in modern-era literature. \"The Twelve Caesars\" by Suetonius is a primary source for imperial biography. Among Imperial historians who wrote in Greek are Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Josephus, and Cassius Dio. Other major Greek authors of the Empire include the biographer Plutarch, the geographer Strabo, and the rhetorician and satirist Lucian.\nFrom the 2nd to the 4th centuries, Christian authors were in active dialogue with the classical tradition. Tertullian was one of the earliest prose authors with a distinctly Christian voice. After the conversion of Constantine, Latin literature is dominated by the Christian perspective. In the late 4th century, Jerome produced the Latin translation of the Bible that became authoritative as the Vulgate. Around that same time, Augustine wrote \"The City of God against the Pagans\", considered \"a masterpiece of Western culture\".\nIn contrast to the unity of Classical Latin, the literary esthetic of late antiquity has a tessellated quality. A continuing interest in the religious traditions of Rome prior to Christian dominion is found into the 5th century, with the \"Saturnalia\" of Macrobius and \"The Marriage of Philology and Mercury\" of Martianus Capella. Latin poets of late antiquity include Ausonius, Prudentius, Claudian, and Sidonius Apollinaris.\nReligion.\nThe Romans thought of themselves as highly religious, and attributed their success to their collective piety (\"pietas\") and good relations with the gods (\"pax deorum\"). The archaic religion believed to have come from the earliest kings of Rome was the foundation of the \"mos maiorum\", \"the way of the ancestors\", central to Roman identity.\nRoman religion was practical and contractual, based on the principle of \"do ut des\", \"I give that you might give\". Religion depended on knowledge and the correct practice of prayer, ritual, and sacrifice, not on faith or dogma, although Latin literature preserves learned speculation on the nature of the divine. For ordinary Romans, religion was a part of daily life. Each home had a household shrine to offer prayers and libations to the family's domestic deities. Neighbourhood shrines and sacred places such as springs and groves dotted the city. The Roman calendar was structured around religious observances; as many as 135 days were devoted to religious festivals and games (\"ludi\").\nIn the wake of the Republic's collapse, state religion adapted to support the new regime. Augustus justified one-man rule with a vast programme of religious revivalism and reform. Public vows now were directed at the wellbeing of the emperor. So-called \"emperor worship\" expanded on a grand scale the traditional veneration of the ancestral dead and of the \"Genius\", the divine tutelary of every individual. Upon death, an emperor could be made a state divinity (\"divus\") by vote of the Senate. The Roman imperial cult, influenced by Hellenistic ruler cult, became one of the major ways Rome advertised its presence in the provinces and cultivated shared cultural identity. Cultural precedent in the Eastern provinces facilitated a rapid dissemination of Imperial cult, extending as far as Najran, in present-day Saudi Arabia. Rejection of the state religion became tantamount to treason.\nThe Romans are known for the great number of deities they honoured. As the Romans extended their territories, their general policy was to promote stability among diverse peoples by absorbing local deities and cults rather than eradicating them, building temples that framed local theology within Roman religion. Inscriptions throughout the Empire record the side-by-side worship of local and Roman deities, including dedications made by Romans to local gods. By the height of the Empire, numerous syncretic or reinterpreted gods were cultivated, among them cults of Cybele, Isis, Epona, and of solar gods such as Mithras and Sol Invictus, found as far north as Roman Britain. Because Romans had never been obligated to cultivate one god or cult only, religious tolerance was not an issue.\nMystery religions, which offered initiates salvation in the afterlife, were a matter of personal choice, practiced in addition to one's family rites and public religion. The mysteries, however, involved exclusive oaths and secrecy, which conservative Romans viewed with suspicion as characteristic of \"magic\", conspiracy (\"coniuratio\"), and subversive activity. Thus, sporadic and sometimes brutal attempts were made to suppress religionists. In Gaul, the power of the druids was checked, first by forbidding Roman citizens to belong to the order, and then by banning druidism altogether. However, Celtic traditions were reinterpreted within the context of Imperial theology, and a new Gallo-Roman religion coalesced; its capital at the Sanctuary of the Three Gauls established precedent for Western cult as a form of Roman-provincial identity. The monotheistic rigour of Judaism posed difficulties for Roman policy that led at times to compromise and granting of special exemptions. Tertullian noted that Judaism, unlike Christianity, was considered a \"religio licita\", \"legitimate religion\". The Jewish\u2013Roman wars resulted from political as well as religious conflicts; the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD led to the sacking of the Second Temple and the dispersal of Jewish political power (see Jewish diaspora).\nChristianity emerged in Roman Judaea as a Jewish religious sect in the 1st century and gradually spread out of Jerusalem throughout the Empire and beyond. Imperially authorized persecutions were limited and sporadic, with martyrdoms occurring most often under the authority of local officials. Tacitus reports that after the Great Fire of Rome in AD\u00a064, the emperor attempted to deflect blame from himself onto the Christians. A major persecution occurred under the emperor Domitian and a persecution in 177 took place at Lugdunum, the Gallo-Roman religious capital. A letter from Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia, describes his persecution and executions of Christians. The Decian persecution of 246\u2013251 seriously threatened the Christian Church, but ultimately strengthened Christian defiance. Diocletian undertook the most severe persecution of Christians, from 303 to 311.\nFrom the 2nd century onward, the Church Fathers condemned the diverse religions practiced throughout the Empire as \"pagan\". In the early 4th century, Constantine I became the first emperor to convert to Christianity. He supported the Church financially and made laws that favored it, but the new religion was already successful, having moved from less than 50,000 to over a million adherents between 150 and 250. Constantine and his successors banned public sacrifice while tolerating other traditional practices. Constantine never engaged in a purge, there were no \"pagan martyrs\" during his reign, and people who had not converted to Christianity remained in important positions at court. Julian attempted to revive traditional public sacrifice and Hellenistic religion, but met Christian resistance and lack of popular support.\nChristians of the 4th century believed the conversion of Constantine showed that Christianity had triumphed over paganism (in Heaven) and little further action besides such rhetoric was necessary. Thus, their focus shifted towards heresy. According to Peter Brown, \"In most areas, polytheists were not molested, and apart from a few ugly incidents of local violence, Jewish communities also enjoyed a century of stable, even privileged, existence\". There were anti-pagan laws, but they were not generally enforced; through the 6th century, centers of paganism existed in Athens, Gaza, Alexandria, and elsewhere.\nAccording to recent Jewish scholarship, toleration of the Jews was maintained under Christian emperors. This did not extend to heretics: Theodosius I made multiple laws and acted against alternate forms of Christianity, and heretics were persecuted and killed by both the government and the church throughout Late Antiquity. Non-Christians were not persecuted until the 6th century. Rome's original religious hierarchy and ritual influenced Christian forms, and many pre-Christian practices survived in Christian festivals and local traditions.\nLegacy.\nSeveral states claimed to be the Roman Empire's successor. The Holy Roman Empire was established in 800 when Pope Leo\u00a0III crowned Charlemagne as Roman emperor. The Russian Tsardom, as inheritor of the Byzantine Empire's Orthodox Christian tradition, counted itself the Third Rome (Constantinople having been the second), in accordance with the concept of translatio imperii. The last Eastern Roman titular, Andreas Palaiologos, sold the title of Emperor of Constantinople to Charles VIII of France; upon Charles' death, Palaiologos reclaimed the title and on his death granted it to Ferdinand and Isabella and their successors, who never used it. When the Ottomans, who based their state on the Byzantine model, took Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed\u00a0II established his capital there and claimed to sit on the throne of the Roman Empire. He even launched an invasion of Otranto with the purpose of re-uniting the Empire, which was aborted by his death. In the medieval West, \"Roman\" came to mean the church and the Catholic Pope. The Greek form Romaioi remained attached to the Greek-speaking Christian population of the Byzantine Empire and is still used by Greeks.\nThe Roman Empire's control of the Italian Peninsula influenced Italian nationalism and the unification of Italy (\"Risorgimento\") in 1861. \nIn the United States, the founders were educated in the classical tradition, and used classical models for landmarks in Washington, D.C.. The founders saw Athenian democracy and Roman republicanism as models for the mixed constitution, but regarded the emperor as a figure of tyranny.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nstyle=\"width:100%\""}, "descending_order": ["37073", "30570", "25507"], "permutation_1": ["30570", "25507", "37073"], "permutation_2": ["30570", "25507", "37073"], "permutation_3": ["30570", "25507", "37073"]}
{"id": "3hop2__30654_144936_89329", "docs_added": {"2840775": "Michael Peskin\nAmerican theoretical physicist\nMichael Edward Peskin (born October 27, 1951, Philadelphia) is an American theoretical physicist. He is currently a professor in the theory group at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. \nPeskin has been recognized for his work in proposing and analyzing unifying models of elementary particles and forces in theoretical elementary particle physics, and proposing experimental methods for testing such models. Peskin was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000. He was appointed a co-editor of the journal \"Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science\" as of 2023.\nEducation.\nMichael Peskin is a fourth generation descendent of Jewish Lithuanian emigrants from the Pale of Settlement. Both of his parents became medical doctors. Peskin attended Lower Merion High School in the Philadelphia area and later New Trier West in the Chicago suburbs.\nPeskin was an undergraduate at Harvard University. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1978 at Cornell University studying under Kenneth Wilson. He was a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows from 1977\u20131980.\nCareer.\nAfter receiving his Ph.D. from Cornell University, Peskin served as a junior fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows from 1977 to 1980. He also held postdoctoral appointments at Saclay Nuclear Research Centre (1979\u20131980) and Cornell (1980\u20131982). In 1982, Peskin joined the faculty of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University.\nIn 2000, Peskin was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. \nHe was appointed a co-editor of the journal \"Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science\" as of 2023. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Annual Reviews.\nResearch.\nPeskin has worked on many aspects of quantum field theory and elementary particle physics, exploring and going beyond the Standard Model of particle physics to explore technicolor theories.\nPeskin and Schroeder's widely used textbook on quantum field theory, \"An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory\" (1995, 2018) is considered a classic in the field. More recently, he has written \"Concepts of Elementary Particle Physics\" (2019), a textbook on the Standard Model.\nIn 1990, Peskin and Tatsu Takeuchi proposed the parameterization of a set of three measurable quantities, called S, T, and U, that are used to describe and simplify precision\nelectroweak fits. These parameters are sensitive to new physics which contributes to oblique corrections. They are now called the Peskin\u2013Takeuchi parameters.\nPeskin uses high energy colliders to search for new physical interactions on the basis of high-precision observations and measurements of elementary particles, including the W and Z bosons, the top quark, and the Higgs boson. He is interested in modelling dark matter and is a noted advocate of building a future linear collider, a \u201cHiggs factory\u201d.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "50585": "Philadelphia\nLargest city in Pennsylvania, United States\nPhiladelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the sixth-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 1,603,797 in the 2020 census. The city is the urban core of the larger Delaware Valley, also known as the Philadelphia metropolitan area, the nation's eighth-largest metropolitan area and seventh-largest combined statistical area with 6.245 million residents and 7.366 million residents, respectively.\nPhiladelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn, an English Quaker and advocate of religious freedom, and served as the capital of the colonial era Province of Pennsylvania. It then played a historic and vital role during the American Revolution and Revolutionary War. It served as the central meeting place for the nation's Founding Fathers, hosted the First Continental Congress (1774) and the Second Continental Congress, during which the Founders formed the Continental Army, elected George Washington as its commander, and adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. During the Revolutionary War's Philadelphia campaign, the city briefly fell to the British Army, which occupied Philadelphia for nine months from September 1777 to June 1778. \nIn 1787, following the end of the Revolutionary War and establishment of independence, the U.S. Constitution was ratified in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Convention. Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until 1790, and it served as the nation's first capital from May 10, 1775, until December 12, 1776, and on four subsequent occasions until 1800, when construction of the new national capital in Washington, D.C. was completed.\nPhiladelphia maintains extensive contemporary influence in business and industry, culture, sports, and music. With 17 four-year universities and colleges in the city, Philadelphia is one of the nation's leading centers for higher education and academic research. The city is a national cultural center, hosting more outdoor sculptures and murals than any other city in the nation. Fairmount Park, when combined with adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park in the same watershed, is , representing one of the nation's largest and the world's 55th-largest urban park. Philadelphia is known for its arts, culture, cuisine, and colonial and Revolutionary-era history; in 2016, it attracted 42\u00a0million domestic tourists who spent $6.8\u00a0billion, representing $11\u00a0billion in economic impact to the city and its surrounding Pennsylvania counties. With five professional sports teams and one of the nation's most loyal and passionate fan bases, Philadelphia is often ranked as the nation's best city for professional sports fans. The city has a culturally and philanthropically active LGBTQ+ community. Philadelphia also has played an immensely influential historic and ongoing role in the development and evolution of American music, especially R&B, soul, and rock.\nAs of 2023[ [update]], the Philadelphia metropolitan area had a gross metropolitan product of US$557.6 billion and is home to 13 \"Fortune\" 500 corporate headquarters. Metropolitan Philadelphia ranks as one of the nation's Big Five venture capital hubs, facilitated by its geographic proximity to both the entrepreneurial and financial ecosystems of New York City and the federal regulatory environment of Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Philadelphia is also a biotechnology hub. The Philadelphia Stock Exchange, owned by Nasdaq since 2008, is the nation's oldest stock exchange and a global leader in options trading. 30th Street Station, the city's primary rail station, is the third-busiest Amtrak hub in the nation with over 4.1 million passengers in 2023. The city's multimodal transportation and logistics infrastructure includes Philadelphia International Airport, a major transatlantic gateway and transcontinental hub; the rapidly-growing PhilaPort seaport; and Interstate 95, the spine of the north\u2013south highway system along the U.S. East Coast.\nPhiladelphia is a city of many firsts, including the nation's first library (1731), hospital (1751), medical school (1765), national capital (1774), university (by some accounts) (1779), central bank (1781), stock exchange (1790), zoo (1874), and business school (1881). Philadelphia contains 67 National Historic Landmarks, including Independence Hall. From the city's 17th century founding through the present, Philadelphia has been the birthplace or home to an extensive number of prominent and influential Americans.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nNative peoples.\nPrior to the arrival of Europeans in the early 17th century, the Lenape, an Indian tribe also known as the Delaware Indians, lived in the village of Shackamaxon in present-day Philadelphia and the surrounding area. The Lenape historically lived along the Delaware River watershed, western Long Island, and the Lower Hudson Valley. Most Lenape were pushed out of the region during the 18th century as the original Thirteen colonies expanded, which was further exacerbated by losses from intertribal conflicts. Lenape communities were also weakened by newly introduced diseases, mainly smallpox, and conflicts with Europeans. The Iroquois occasionally fought the Lenape. Surviving Lenape moved west into the upper Ohio River basin. Following the American Revolutionary War and the subsequent establishment of the United States, the Lenape began moving further west. In the 1860s, the U.S. federal government sent most remaining Lenape in the eastern United States to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma and surrounding territories as part of the Indian removal policy.\nColonial era.\nEuropeans first entered Philadelphia and the surrounding Delaware Valley in the early 17th century. The first settlements were founded by Dutch colonists, who built Fort Nassau on the Delaware River in 1623 in what is now Brooklawn, New Jersey. The Dutch considered the entire Delaware River valley to be part of their New Netherland colony. In 1638, Swedish settlers led by renegade Dutch established the colony of New Sweden at Fort Christina, located in present-day Wilmington, Delaware, and quickly spread out in the valley. In 1644, New Sweden supported the Susquehannocks in their war against Maryland colonists. In 1648, the Dutch built Fort Beversreede on the west bank of the Delaware, south of the Schuylkill River near the present-day Eastwick section of Philadelphia, to reassert their dominion over the area. The Swedes responded by building Fort Nya Korsholm, or New Korsholm, named after a town in Finland with a Swedish majority.\nIn 1655, a Dutch military campaign led by New Netherland Director-General Peter Stuyvesant took control of the Swedish colony, ending its claim to independence. The Swedish and Finnish settlers continued to have their own militia, religion, and court, and to enjoy substantial autonomy under the Dutch. An English fleet captured the New Netherland colony in 1664, though the situation did not change substantially until 1682, when the area was included in William Penn's charter for Pennsylvania.\nIn 1681, in partial repayment of a debt, Charles II of England granted Penn a charter for what would become the Pennsylvania colony. Despite the royal charter, Penn bought the land from the local Lenape in an effort to establish good terms with the Native Americans and ensure peace for the colony. Penn made a treaty of friendship with Lenape chief Tammany under an elm tree at Shackamaxon, in what is now the city's Fishtown neighborhood. Penn named the city Philadelphia, which is Greek for \"brotherly love\", derived from the Ancient Greek terms \u03c6\u03af\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2 \"ph\u00edlos\" (beloved, dear) and \u1f00\u03b4\u03b5\u03bb\u03c6\u03cc\u03c2 \"adelph\u00f3s\" (brother, brotherly). There were a number of cities named \"Philadelphia\" in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Greek and Roman periods, including modern Ala\u015fehir, mentioned as the site of an early Christian congregation in the Book of Revelation. As a Quaker, Penn had experienced religious persecution and wanted his colony to be a place where anyone could worship freely. This tolerance, which exceeded that of other colonies, led to better relations with the local native tribes and fostered Philadelphia's rapid growth into America's most important city.\nPenn planned a city on the Delaware River to serve as a port and place for government. Hoping that Philadelphia would become more like an English rural town instead of a city, Penn laid out roads on a grid plan to keep houses and businesses spread far apart with areas for gardens and orchards.\nThe city's inhabitants did not follow Penn's plans, however, and instead crowded the present-day Port of Philadelphia on the Delaware River and subdivided and resold their lots. Before Penn left Philadelphia for the final time, he issued the Charter of 1701 establishing it as a city. Though poor at first, Philadelphia became an important trading center with tolerable living conditions by the 1750s. Benjamin Franklin, a leading citizen, helped improve city services and founded new ones that were among the first in the nation, including a fire company, library, and hospital.\nA number of philosophical societies were formed, which were centers of the city's intellectual life, including the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture (1785), the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts (1787), the Academy of Natural Sciences (1812), and the Franklin Institute (1824). These societies developed and financed new industries that attracted skilled and knowledgeable immigrants from Europe.\nAmerican Revolution.\nPhiladelphia's importance and central location in the colonies made it a natural center for America's revolutionaries. By the 1750s, Philadelphia surpassed Boston as the largest city and busiest port in British America, and the second-largest city in the entire British Empire after London. In 1774, as resentment of the British government's policies towards the colonies and support for independence began burgeoning in the colonies, Philadelphia hosted the First Continental Congress at Carpenters' Hall, and 12 of the original 13 colonies sent delegates to the Congress.\nFrom 1775 to 1781, Philadelphia hosted the Second Continental Congress, whose 56 delegated unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence inside what was then called Pennsylvania State House and was later renamed Independence Hall. Written predominantly by Thomas Jefferson from his second-floor apartment on Market Street within walking distance of Independence Hall, the Declaration has been described by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis as \"the most potent and consequential words in American history,\" and its adoption represented a declaration of war against Great Britain. Since the Declaration's July 4, 1776, adoption, its signing has been cited globally and repeatedly by various peoples of the world seeking independence and liberty. It also has been, since its adoption, the basis for annual celebration by Americans; in 1938, this celebration of the Declaration was formalized as Independence Day, one of only eleven designated U.S. federal holidays.\nAfter George Washington's defeat at the Battle of Brandywine in Chadds Ford Township, on September 11, 1777, during the Philadelphia campaign, the revolutionary capital of Philadelphia was defenseless, and the city prepared for what was perceived to be an inevitable British attack. Because bells could easily be recast into munitions, the Liberty Bell, then known as the Pennsylvania State Bell, and bells from two Philadelphia churches, Christ Church and St. Peter's Church, were hastily taken down and transported by heavily guarded wagon train out of the city. The Liberty Bell was taken to Zion German Reformed Church in Northampton Town, which is present-day Allentown, where it was hidden under the church's floor boards for nine months from September 1777 until departure of British forces from Philadelphia in June 1778. Two Revolutionary War battles, the Siege of Fort Mifflin, fought between September 26 and November 16, 1777, and the Battle of Germantown, fought on October 4, 1777, took place within Philadelphia's city limits.\nIn Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation on November 15, 1777. Independence Hall in Philadelphia was the meeting place for the Constitutional Convention, which ratified the Constitution on September 17, 1787, which is now the longest-standing codified national constitution.\nPhiladelphia served as capital of the United States for most of the colonial and early post-colonial period. including for a decade, from 1790 to 1800, while Washington, D.C., was being constructed and prepared to serve as the new national capital, and on five prior occasions between 1776 and 1790. In 1793, the largest yellow fever epidemic in U.S. history killed approximately 4,000 to 5,000 people in Philadelphia, or about ten percent of the city's population at the time. The capital of the United States was moved to Washington, D.C. in 1800 upon completion of the White House and U.S. Capitol buildings.\nThe state capital was moved from Philadelphia to Lancaster in 1799, then ultimately to Harrisburg in 1812. Philadelphia remained the nation's largest city until the late 18th century. It also was the nation's financial and cultural center until ultimately being eclipsed in total population by New York City in 1790. In 1816, the city's free Black community founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent Black denomination in the country, and the first Black Episcopal Church. The free Black community also established many schools for its children with the help of Quakers. Large-scale construction projects for new roads, canals, and railroads made Philadelphia the first major industrial city in the United States.\n19th century.\nThroughout the 19th century, Philadelphia hosted a variety of industries and businesses; the largest was the textile industry. Major corporations in the 19th and early 20th centuries included the Baldwin Locomotive Works, William Cramp & Sons Shipbuilding Company, and the Pennsylvania Railroad. Established in 1870, the Philadelphia Conveyancers' Association was chartered by the state in 1871. Along with the U.S. Centennial in 1876, the city's industry was celebrated in the Centennial Exposition, the first official World's fair in the U.S.\nImmigrants, mostly from Ireland and Germany, settled in Philadelphia and the surrounding districts. These immigrants were largely responsible for the first general strike in North America in 1835, in which workers in the city won the ten-hour workday. The city was a destination for thousands of Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine in the 1840s; housing for them was developed south of South Street and later occupied by succeeding immigrants. They established a network of Catholic churches and schools and dominated the Catholic clergy for decades. Anti-Irish, anti-Catholic nativist riots erupted in Philadelphia in 1844. The rise in population of the surrounding districts helped lead to the Act of Consolidation of 1854, which extended the city limits from the of Center City to the roughly of Philadelphia County.\nIn the latter half of the 19th century and leading into the 20th century, immigrants from Russia, Eastern Europe, and Italy, and African Americans from the southern U.S. settled in the city.\nPhiladelphia was represented by the Washington Grays in the American Civil War. The African-American population of Philadelphia increased from 31,699 to 219,559 between 1880 and 1930, largely stemming from the Great Migration from the South.\n20th century.\nBy the 20th century, Philadelphia had an entrenched Republican political machine and a complacent population. In 1910, a general strike shut down the entire city.\nIn 1917, following outrage over the election-year murder of a Philadelphia police officer, the City Council shrank from two houses to just one. In July 1919, Philadelphia was one of more than 36 industrial cities nationally to suffer a race riot during Red Summer in post-World War I unrest as recent immigrants competed with Blacks for jobs. In the 1920s, the public flouting of Prohibition laws, organized crime, mob violence, and corrupt police involvement in illegal activities led to the appointment of Brig. Gen. Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marine Corps as the city's director of public safety, but political pressure still prevented long-term success in fighting crime and corruption.\nIn 1940, non-Hispanic whites constituted 86.8% of the city's population. In 1950, the population peaked at more than two million residents, then began to decline with the restructuring of industry that led to the loss of many middle-class union jobs. In addition, suburbanization enticed many affluent residents to depart the city for its outlying railroad commuting towns and newer housing. The resulting reduction in Philadelphia's tax base and the resources of local government caused the city to struggle through a long period of adjustment, and it approached bankruptcy by the late 1980s.\nIn 1985, the MOVE Bombing of the Cobbs Creek neighborhood by city helicopters occurred, killing 11 and destroying 61 homes.\nRevitalization and gentrification of neighborhoods began in the late 1970s and continues into the 21st century with much of the development occurring in the Center City and University City neighborhoods. But this expanded a shortage of affordable housing in the city. After many manufacturers and businesses left Philadelphia or shut down, the city started attracting service businesses and began to market itself more aggressively as a tourist destination. Contemporary glass-and-granite skyscrapers were built in Center City beginning in the 1980s. Historic areas such as Old City and Society Hill were renovated during the reformist mayoral era of the 1950s through the 1980s, making both areas among the most desirable Center City neighborhoods. Immigrants from around the world began to enter the U.S. through Philadelphia as their gateway, leading to a reversal of the city's population decline between 1950 and 2000, during which it lost about 25 percent of its residents.\n21st century.\nPhiladelphia eventually began experiencing a growth in its population in 2007, which continued with incremental annual increases through the present. A migration pattern has been established from New York City to Philadelphia by residents opting for a large city with relative proximity and a lower cost of living.\nGeography.\nTopography.\nPhiladelphia's geographic center is about 40\u00b0 0\u2032 34\u2033 north latitude and 75\u00b0 8\u2032 0\u2033 west longitude. The 40th parallel north passes through neighborhoods in Northeast Philadelphia, North Philadelphia, and West Philadelphia including Fairmount Park. The city encompasses , of which is land and , or 6%, is water. Natural bodies of water include the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, lakes in Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park, and Cobbs, Wissahickon, and Pennypack creeks. The largest artificial body of water is East Park Reservoir in Fairmount Park.\nThe lowest point is sea level and the highest point is in Chestnut Hill, about above sea level on Summit Street near the intersection of Germantown Avenue and Bethlehem Pike at: 40.07815 N, 75.20747 W. Philadelphia is located on the Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line that separates the Atlantic Plain from the Piedmont. The Schuylkill River's rapids at East Falls were inundated by completion of the dam at Fairmount Water Works.\nThe city is the seat of its own county. The city is bordered by six adjacent counties: Montgomery to the northwest; Bucks to the north and northeast; Burlington County, New Jersey to the east; Camden County, New Jersey to the southeast; Gloucester County, New Jersey to the south; and Delaware County to the southwest.\nCityscape.\nCity planning.\nPhiladelphia was created in the 17th century, following the plan by William Penn's surveyor Thomas Holme. Center City is structured with long, straight streets running nearly due east\u2013west and north\u2013south, forming a grid pattern between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers that is aligned with their courses. The original city plan was designed to allow for easy travel and to keep residences separated by open space that would help prevent the spread of fire. In keeping with the idea of a \"Greene Countrie Towne\", and inspired by the many types of trees that grew in the region, Penn named many of the east\u2013west streets for local trees. Penn planned the creation of five public parks in the city which were renamed in 1824. Centre Square was renamed Penn Square; Northeast Square was renamed Franklin Square; Southeast Square was renamed Washington Square; Southwest Square was renamed Rittenhouse Square; and Northwest Square was renamed Logan Circle/Square. Center City had an estimated 183,240 residents as of 2015[ [update]], making it the second-most populated downtown area in the United States after Midtown Manhattan in New York City.\nPhiladelphia's neighborhoods are divided into six large sections that surround Center City: North Philadelphia, Northeast Philadelphia, South Philadelphia, Southwest Philadelphia, West Philadelphia, and Northwest Philadelphia. The city's geographic boundaries have been largely unchanged since these neighborhoods were consolidated in 1854. However, each of these large areas contains numerous neighborhoods, some of whose boundaries derive from the boroughs, townships, and other communities that constituted Pennsylvania County before their inclusion within the city.\nThe City Planning Commission, tasked with guiding growth and development of the city, has divided the city into 18 planning districts as part of the Philadelphia2035 physical development plan. Much of the city's 1980 zoning code was overhauled from 2007 to 2012 as part of a joint effort between former mayors John F. Street and Michael Nutter. The zoning changes were intended to rectify incorrect zoning maps to facilitate future community development, as the city forecasts an additional 100,000 residents and 40,000 jobs will be added by 2035.\nThe Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) is the largest landlord in Pennsylvania. Established in 1937, the PHA is the nation's fourth-largest housing authority, serving about 81,000 people with affordable housing, while employing 1,400 on a budget of $371\u00a0million. The Philadelphia Parking Authority is responsible for ensuring adequate parking for city residents, businesses, and visitors.\nArchitecture.\nPhiladelphia's architectural history dates back to colonial times and includes a wide range of styles. The earliest structures were constructed with logs, but brick structures were common by 1700. During the 18th century, the cityscape was dominated by Georgian architecture, including Independence Hall and Christ Church.\nIn the first decades of the 19th century, Federal and Greek Revival architecture were the dominant styles produced by Philadelphia architects such as Benjamin Latrobe, William Strickland, John Haviland, John Notman, Thomas Walter, and Samuel Sloan. Frank Furness is considered Philadelphia's greatest architect of the second half of the 19th century. His contemporaries included John McArthur Jr., Addison Hutton, Wilson Eyre, the Wilson Brothers, and Horace Trumbauer. In 1871, construction began on the Second Empire-style Philadelphia City Hall. The Philadelphia Historical Commission was created in 1955 to preserve the cultural and architectural history of the city. The commission maintains the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, adding historic buildings, structures, sites, objects and districts as it sees fit.\nIn 1932, Philadelphia became home to the first modern International Style skyscraper in the United States, the PSFS Building, designed by George Howe and William Lescaze. The City Hall remained the tallest building in the city until 1987 when One Liberty Place was completed. Numerous glass and granite skyscrapers were built in Center City beginning in the late 1980s. In 2007, the Comcast Center surpassed One Liberty Place to become the city's tallest building. The Comcast Technology Center was completed in 2018, reaching a height of , as the tallest building in the United States outside of Manhattan and Chicago.\nFor much of Philadelphia's history, the typical home has been the row house. The row house was introduced to the United States via Philadelphia in the early 19th century and, for a time, row houses built elsewhere in the United States were known as \"Philadelphia rows\". A variety of row houses are found throughout the city, from Federal-style continuous blocks in Old City and Society Hill to Victorian-style homes in North Philadelphia to twin row houses in West Philadelphia. While newer homes have been built recently, much of the housing dates to the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, which has created problems such as urban decay and vacant lots. Some neighborhoods, including Northern Liberties and Society Hill, have been rehabilitated through gentrification.\nParks.\nAs of 2014[ [update]], the city's total park space, including municipal, state, and federal parks in the city, amounts to . Philadelphia's largest park is Fairmount Park, which includes the Philadelphia Zoo and encompasses of the total parkland. Fairmount Park's adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park contains . Fairmount Park, when combined with Wissahickon Valley Park, is one of the largest contiguous urban park areas in the U.S. The two parks, along with the Colonial Revival, Georgian and Federal-style mansions in them, have been listed as one entity on the National Register of Historic Places since 1972.\nClimate.\nWithin the K\u00f6ppen climate classification, Philadelphia falls under the northern periphery of the humid subtropical climate zone (K\u00f6ppen \"Cfa\"). Within the Trewartha climate classification, Philadelphia has a temperate maritime climate (\"Do\") limited to the north by the continental climate (\"Dc\"). Summers are typically hot and muggy. Fall and spring are generally mild, and winter is moderately cold. The plant life hardiness zones are 7a and 7b, reflecting an average annual extreme minimum temperature between .\nSnowfall is highly variable. Some winters have only light snow while others include major snowstorms. The normal seasonal snowfall averages , with rare snowfalls in November or April, and rarely any sustained snow cover. Seasonal snowfall accumulation has ranged from trace amounts in 1972\u201373, to in the winter of 2009\u201310. The city's heaviest single-storm snowfall was , which occurred in January 1996.\nPrecipitation is generally spread throughout the year, with eight to eleven wet days per month, at an average annual rate of , but historically ranging from in 1922 to in 2011. The most rain recorded in one day occurred on July 28, 2013, when fell at Philadelphia International Airport. Philadelphia has a moderately sunny climate with an average of 2,498 hours of sunshine annually. The percentage of sunshine ranges from 47% in December to 61% in June, July, and August.\nThe January daily average temperature is . The temperature frequently rises to during thaws. July averages . Heat waves accompanied by high humidity and heat indices are frequent, with highs reaching or exceeding on 30 days of the year. The average window for freezing temperatures is November 6 to April 2, allowing a growing season of 217 days. Early fall and late winter are generally dry, with February having the lowest average precipitation at . The dewpoint in the summer averages between .\nThe highest recorded temperature was on August 7, 1918. Temperatures at or above are not common, with the last occurrence of such a temperature being July 21, 2019. The lowest officially recorded temperature was on February 9, 1934. Temperatures at or below are rare, with the last such occurrence being January 19, 1994. The record low maximum is on February 10, 1899, and December 30, 1880. The record high minimum is on July 23, 2011, and July 24, 2010.\nTime Series.\nAir quality.\nPhiladelphia County received an ozone grade of F and a 24-hour particle pollution rating of D in the American Lung Association's 2017 State of the Air report, which analyzed data from 2013 to 2015. The city was ranked 22nd for ozone, 20th for short-term particle pollution, and 11th for year-round particle pollution. According to the same report, the city experienced a significant reduction in high ozone days since 2001\u2014from nearly 50 days per year to fewer than 10\u2014along with fewer days of high particle pollution since 2000\u2014from about 19 days per year to about 3\u2014and an approximate 30% reduction in annual levels of particle pollution since 2000.\nFive of the ten largest combined statistical areas (CSAs) were ranked higher for ozone: Los Angeles (1st), New York City (9th), Houston (12th), Dallas (13th), and San Jose, California (18th). Many smaller CSAs were also ranked higher for ozone, including Sacramento (8th), Las Vegas (10th), Denver (11th), El Paso (16th), and Salt Lake City (20th). Only two of those same ten CSAs, San Jose and Los Angeles, were ranked higher than Philadelphia for both year-round and short-term particle pollution.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nAs of the 2020 U.S. Census, there were 1,603,797 people residing in Philadelphia, representing a 1.2% increase from the 2019 census estimate. The racial composition of the city was 39.3% Black alone (42.0% Black alone or in combination), 36.3% White alone (41.9% White alone or in combination), 8.7% Asian alone, 0.4% American Indian and Alaska Native alone, 8.7% some other race, and 6.9% multiracial. 14.9% of residents were Hispanic or Latino.\n34.8% had a bachelor's degree or higher. 23.9% spoke a language other than English at home, the most common of which was Spanish (10.8%). 15.0% of the populations foreign born, roughly half of whom are naturalized U.S. citizens. 3.7% of the population are veterans. The median household income was $52,889 and 22.8% of the population lived in poverty. 49.5% of the population drove alone to work, while 23.2% used public transit, 8.2% carpooled, 7.9% walked, and 7.0% worked from home. The average commute is 31 minutes.\nAfter the 1950 census, when a record high of 2,071,605 was recorded, the city's population began a long decline. The population dropped to a low of 1,488,710 residents in 2006 before beginning to rise again. Between 2006 and 2017, Philadelphia added 92,153 residents. In 2017, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that the racial composition of the city was 41.3% Black (non-Hispanic), 34.9% White (non-Hispanic), 14.1% Hispanic or Latino, 7.1% Asian, 0.4% Native American, 0.05% Pacific Islander, and 2.8% multiracial.\nImmigration and cultural diversity.\nIn addition to the city's economic growth, the city's population has been fueled by foreign immigration. According to The Pew Charitable Trusts, the city's foreign-born population increased by 69% between 2000 and 2016 to constitute nearly 20% of Philadelphia's workforce, and it doubled between 1990 and 2017 to constitute 13.8% of the city's total population, with the top five countries of origin being China by a significant margin followed by the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, India, and Vietnam.\nIrish, Italian, German, Polish, English, Russian, Ukrainian, and French ancestries constitute the largest European ethnic groups in the city. Philadelphia has the second-largest Irish and Italian populations in the United States after New York City. South Philadelphia remains one of the largest Italian neighborhoods in the country and is home to the Italian Market.\nThe Pennsport neighborhood and Gray's Ferry section of South Philadelphia, home to many Mummer clubs, are well known as Irish neighborhoods. The Kensington, Port Richmond, and Fishtown neighborhoods have historically been heavily Irish and Polish. Port Richmond is a center for the Polish-American community in Philadelphia, and it remains a common destination for Polish immigrants. Northeast Philadelphia, although known for its Irish and Irish-American population, is home to a Jewish and Russian population. Mount Airy in Northwest Philadelphia also contains a Jewish community. Nearby Chestnut Hill is historically known as an Anglo-Saxon Protestant community.\nPhiladelphia's Black American population is the fourth-largest in the country after New York City, Chicago, and Houston. West Philadelphia and North Philadelphia are largely African-American neighborhoods, but many are leaving those areas in favor of the Northeast and Southwest sections of Philadelphia. A higher proportion of African-American Muslims reside in Philadelphia than most other major U.S. cities. West Philadelphia and Southwest Philadelphia are home to various Afro-Caribbean and African immigrant communities.\nThe Puerto Rican population in Philadelphia is the second-largest on the U.S. mainland after New York City, and the second-fastest growing after Orlando. Eastern North Philadelphia, particularly Fairhill and surrounding areas to the north and east, has one of the highest concentrations of Puerto Ricans outside Puerto Rico, with many large swaths of blocks being close to 100% Puerto Rican. Puerto Rican and Dominican populations reside in North Philadelphia and the Northeast, and Mexican and Central American populations exist in South Philadelphia. South American migrants were being transported by bus from Texas to Philadelphia beginning in 2022.\nPhiladelphia's Asian American population includes those of Chinese, Indians, Vietnamese, South Koreans, Filipinos, Cambodians, and Indonesians. Over 35,000 Chinese Americans lived in the city in 2015, including a Fuzhounese population. Center City hosts a Chinatown that is served by Chinatown bus lines with service to/from Chinatown, Manhattan. Indians make up the second-largest Asian group in the city of Philadelphia, while making up the largest foreign-born population in the Delaware Valley. A Korean community initially settled in the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Olney; however, the primary Koreatown has subsequently shifted further north, straddling the city's border with adjacent Cheltenham in Montgomery County and Cherry Hill in South Jersey. South Philadelphia is home to Vietnamese-Americans in Little Saigon and Cambodian-Americans in Cambodia Town, as well as Thai-American, Indonesian-American, and Chinese-American communities.\nPhiladelphia's Gay village near Washington Square is home to a concentration of gay and lesbian-friendly businesses, restaurants, and bars.\nReligion.\nIn a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, 68% of the population of the city identified themselves as Christian. Approximately 41% of Christians in the city and area professed attendance at a variety of churches that could be considered Protestant, while 26% professed Catholic beliefs.\nThe Protestant Christian community in Philadelphia is dominated by mainline Protestant denominations including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church in the United States, Presbyterian Church (USA) and American Baptist Churches USA. One of the most prominent mainline Protestant jurisdictions is the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. The African Methodist Episcopal Church was established in Philadelphia. Historically, the city has strong connections to the Quakers, Unitarian Universalism, and the Ethical Culture movement, all of which continue to be represented in the city. The Quaker Friends General Conference is based in Philadelphia. Evangelical Protestants making up less than 15% of the population were also prevalent.\nEvangelical Protestant bodies included the Anglican Church in North America, Lutheran Church\u2014Missouri Synod, Presbyterian Church in America, and National Baptist Convention of America. The Catholic community is primarily served by the Latin Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Eparchy of the United States of America and Canada, though some independent Catholic churches exist throughout Philadelphia and its suburbs. The Latin Church-based jurisdiction is headquartered in the city, and its see is the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. The Ukrainian Catholic jurisdiction is headquartered in Philadelphia, and is seated at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.\nLess than 1% of Philadelphia's Christians were Mormons. The remainder of the Christian demographic is spread among smaller Protestant denominations and the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox among others. The Diocese of Eastern Pennsylvania (Orthodox Church in America) and Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (Ecumenical Patriarchate) divide the Eastern Orthodox in Philadelphia. The Russian Orthodox St. Andrew's Cathedral is in the city.\nThe same study says that other religions collectively compose about 8% of the population, including Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Sikhism. Philadelphia has the fifth-largest Muslim population among U.S. cities. The remaining 24% claimed no religious affiliation.\nThe Philadelphia metropolitan area's Jewish population was estimated at 206,000 in 2001, which was the sixth-largest in the U.S. at that time. Jewish traders were operating in southeastern Pennsylvania long before William Penn. Jews in Philadelphia took a prominent part in the War of Independence. Although the majority of the early Jewish residents were of Portuguese or Spanish descent, some among them had emigrated from Germany and Poland. About the beginning of the 19th century, a number of Jews from the latter countries, finding the services of the Congregation Mickv\u00e9 Israel unfamiliar to them, resolved to form a new congregation which would use the ritual to which they had been accustomed.\nAfrican diasporic religions are practiced in some Latino and Hispanic and Caribbean communities in North and West Philadelphia.\nLanguages.\nAs of 2010[ [update]], 79.12% (1,112,441) of Philadelphia residents age 5 and older spoke English at home as a primary language, while 9.72% (136,688) spoke Spanish, 1.64% (23,075) Chinese, 0.89% (12,499) Vietnamese, 0.77% (10,885) Russian, 0.66% (9,240) French, 0.61% (8,639) other Asian languages, 0.58% (8,217) African languages, 0.56% (7,933) Cambodian (Mon-Khmer), and Italian was spoken as a main language by 0.55% (7,773) of the population over the age of five. In total, 20.88% (293,544) of Philadelphia's population age 5 and older spoke a mother language other than English.\nPoverty.\nPhiladelphia is home to many food poverty programs, of which two of the largest are Philabundance which claims to feed 90000 people per week. and Share Food Program which claims to feed 1 million people per month.\nEconomy.\nPhiladelphia's close geographical and transportation connections to other large metropolitan economies along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States have been cited as offering a significant competitive advantage for business creation and entrepreneurship. The city is the center of economic activity in both Pennsylvania and the four-state Delaware Valley metropolitan region. Five Fortune 500 companies are based in the city. As of 2021[ [update]], the Philadelphia metropolitan area is estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of US$479\u00a0billion, an increase from the $445\u00a0billion calculated by the Bureau of Economic Analysis for 2017, representing the ninth-largest U.S. metropolitan economy.\nPhiladelphia's economic sectors include financial services, health care, biotechnology, information technology, trade and transportation, manufacturing, oil refining, food processing, and tourism. Metropolitan Philadelphia is one of the top five American venture capital hubs, credited to its proximity to New York City's financial and tech and biotechnology ecosystems. Financial activities account for the largest economic sector of the metropolitan area, which is one of the largest health education and research centers in the United States. The city's two largest employers are the federal and city governments. Philadelphia's largest private employer is the University of Pennsylvania followed by Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.\nFinance and corporations.\nThe Philadelphia Stock Exchange, acquired by Nasdaq in 2007, is a global leader in options trading. The city is home to the headquarters of Comcast, the nation's largest multinational telecommunications corporation; insurance conglomerates Cigna, Colonial Penn, and Independence Blue Cross; as well as food services company Aramark, chemical makers FMC Corporation and Rohm and Haas, pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline, Amicus Therapeutics, Spark Therapeutics, apparel retailers Five Below and Urban Outfitters and its subsidiary Anthropologie, automotive parts retailer Pep Boys, and stainless steel producer Carpenter Technology Corporation.\nOther corporation headquarters in the city include RiteAid, Crown Holdings, and Brandywine Realty Trust. The headquarters of Boeing Rotorcraft Systems and its main rotorcraft factory are in the Philadelphia suburb of Ridley Park; The Vanguard Group, and the U.S. headquarters of Siemens Healthineers are headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb. Healthcare conglomerate AmerisourceBergen is located in suburban Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Across the Delaware River in adjacent Camden County, New Jersey, Campbell Soup Company and Subaru USA are both headquartered in Camden, New Jersey, and TD Bank (USA) is headquartered in nearby suburban Cherry Hill, New Jersey.\nTech and biotech.\nPhiladelphia is a hub for information technology and biotechnology. Philadelphia and Pennsylvania are attracting new life sciences ventures. As of 2024, the Delaware Valley ranks as one of the Big Five U.S. venture capital hubs, enabled by its proximity to both the entrepreneurial and financial ecosystems of New York City and to the federal regulatory environment of Washington, D.C.\nTourism.\nPhiladelphia's history attracts many tourists, with the Independence National Historical Park, which includes the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and other historic sites, received over 5\u00a0million visitors in 2016. The city welcomed 42\u00a0million domestic tourists in 2016 who spent $6.8\u00a0billion, generating an estimated $11\u00a0billion in total economic impact in the city and surrounding four counties of Pennsylvania. The annual Naked Bike Ride attracts participants from around the United States and internationally to Philadelphia.\nTrade and transportation.\nPhiladelphia International Airport, a major Transatlantic gateway and transcontinental hub, has undergone a $900\u00a0million infrastructural expansion to increase passenger capacity and augment passenger experience, and the airport continues an ongoing capital expenditure program to upgrade facilities and add further amenities. The Port of Philadelphia, having experienced the highest percentage growth by tonnage loaded in 2017 among major U.S. seaports, has doubled its shipping capacity to accommodate super-sized post-Panamax shipping vessels since 2018. Philadelphia's 30th Street Station is the third-busiest Amtrak rail hub, following Penn Station in Manhattan and Union Station in Washington, D.C., transporting over 4\u00a0million inter-city rail passengers annually.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nEducation in Philadelphia is provided by many private and public institutions. The School District of Philadelphia is the local school district, operating public schools, in all of the city. The Philadelphia School District is the eighth-largest school district in the nation with 142,266 students in 218 traditional public schools and 86 charter schools as of 2014[ [update]].\nThe city's K-12 enrollment in district\u2013run schools dropped from 156,211 students in 2010 to 130,104 students in 2015. During the same time period, the enrollment in charter schools increased from 33,995 students in 2010 to 62,358 students in 2015. This consistent drop in enrollment led the city to close 24 of its public schools in 2013. During the 2014 school year, the city spent an average of $12,570 per pupil, below the average among comparable urban school districts.\nGraduation rates among district-run schools, meanwhile, steadily increased in the ten years from 2005. In 2005, Philadelphia had a district graduation rate of 52%. This number increased to 65% in 2014, still below the national and state averages. Scores on the state's standardized test, the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) trended upward from 2005 to 2011 but subsequently decreased. In 2005, the district-run schools scored an average of 37.4% on math and 35.5% on reading. The city's schools reached their peak scores in 2011 with 59.0% on math and 52.3% on reading. In 2014, the scores dropped significantly to 45.2% on math and 42.0% on reading.\nOf the city's public high schools, including charter schools, only four performed above the national average on the SAT (1497 out of 2400) in 2014: Masterman, Central, Girard Academic Music Program, and MaST Community Charter School. All other district-run schools were below average.\nHigher education.\nMedical and research facilities of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Philadelphia has the third-largest student concentration on the East Coast, with more than 120,000 college and university students enrolled within the city and nearly 300,000 in the metropolitan area. More than 80 colleges, universities, trade, and specialty schools are in the Philadelphia region. One of the founding members of the Association of American Universities is in the city, the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution with claims to be the First university in the United States.\nThe city's largest university by student enrollment is Temple University, followed by Drexel University. The city's nationally ranked research universities comprise the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, Drexel University, and Thomas Jefferson University. Philadelphia is also home to five schools of medicine: Drexel University College of Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Temple University School of Medicine, and Thomas Jefferson University's Sidney Kimmel Medical College. Hospitals, universities, and higher education research institutions in Philadelphia's four congressional districts received more than $252\u00a0million in National Institutes of Health grants in 2015.\nOther institutions of higher learning within the city's borders include:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCulture.\nPhiladelphia is home to many national historical sites that relate to the founding of the United States. Independence National Historical Park is the center of these historical landmarks and one of the country's 22 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, and the Liberty Bell is housed, are among the city's most popular attractions. Other national historic sites include the homes of Edgar Allan Poe and Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and early government buildings, including the First and the Second Bank of the United States, Fort Mifflin, and the Gloria Dei (Old Swedes') Church. Philadelphia alone has 67 National Historic Landmarks, the third most of any city in the country.\nPhiladelphia's major science museums include the Franklin Institute, which contains the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the M\u00fctter Museum, and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. History museums include the National Constitution Center, the Museum of the American Revolution, the Philadelphia History Museum, the National Museum of American Jewish History, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Masonic Library and Museum of Pennsylvania in the Masonic Temple, and the Eastern State Penitentiary. Philadelphia is home to the United States's first zoo and hospital, as well as Fairmount Park, one of America's oldest and largest urban parks, founded in 1855.\nThe city is home to important archival repositories, including the Library Company of Philadelphia, established in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin at 1314 Locust Street, and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, founded in 1814. The Presbyterian Historical Society is the country's oldest denominational historical society, organized in 1852.\nArts.\nThe city is home to multiple art museums, including the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Rodin Museum, which holds the largest collection of work by Auguste Rodin outside France. The city's largest art museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is one of the largest art museums in the world. The long flight of steps to the Art Museum's main entrance became famous after the film \"Rocky\" (1976).\nAnnual events include the Philadelphia Film Festival, held annually each October, the 6abc Dunkin' Donuts Thanksgiving Day Parade, the nation's longest-running continuously held Thanksgiving Day parade, and the Mummers Parade, the nation's longest continuously held folk parade, which is held every New Year's Day predominantly on Broad Street.\nAreas such as South Street and the Old City section of the city have a vibrant night life. The Avenue of the Arts in Center City contains many restaurants and theaters, such as the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, home of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Academy of Music, home of Opera Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Ballet. The Wilma Theatre and the Philadelphia Theatre Company at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre produce a variety of new plays. Several blocks to the east are the Lantern Theater Company at St. Stephens Episcopal Church; and the Walnut Street Theatre, a National Historic Landmark stated to be the oldest and most subscribed-to theatre in the English-speaking world, founded in 1809. In May 2019, the Walnut Street Theatre announced a major expansion to begin in 2020. New Freedom Theatre, Pennsylvania's oldest African-American theatre, is located on North Broad Street.\nPhiladelphia has more public art than any other American city. In 1872, the Association for Public Art, formerly the Fairmount Park Art Association, was created as the first private association in the United States dedicated to integrating public art and urban planning. In 1959, lobbying by the Artists Equity Association helped create the Percent for Art ordinance, the first for a U.S. city. The program, which has funded more than 200 pieces of public art, is administered by the Philadelphia Office of Arts and Culture, the city's art agency. The city has more murals than any other American city, due to the 1984 creation of the Department of Recreation's Mural Arts Program, which seeks to beautify neighborhoods and provide an outlet for graffiti artists. The program has funded more than 2,800 murals by professional, staff and volunteer artists and educated more than 20,000 youth in underserved neighborhoods throughout Philadelphia.\nThe city is home to a number of art organizations, including the regional art advocacy nonprofit Philadelphia Tri-State Artists Equity, the Philadelphia Sketch Club, one of the country's oldest artists' clubs, and The Plastic Club, started by women excluded from the Sketch Club. Many Old City art galleries stay open late on the First Friday event of each month.\nCuisine.\nThe city is known for its hoagies, stromboli, roast pork sandwich, scrapple, soft pretzels, water ice, Irish potato candy, tastykakes, and the cheesesteak sandwich which was developed by Italian immigrants. The Philadelphia area has many establishments that serve cheesesteaks, including restaurants, taverns, delicatessens and pizza parlors. The originator of the thinly-sliced steak sandwich in the 1930s, initially without cheese, is Pat's King of Steaks, which faces its rival Geno's Steaks, founded in 1966, across the intersection of 9th Street and Passyunk Avenue in the Italian Market of South Philadelphia.\nMcGillin's Olde Ale House, opened in 1860 on Drury Street in Center City, is the oldest continuously operated tavern in the city. The City Tavern is a replica of a historic 18th-century building first opened in 1773, demolished in 1854 after a fire, and rebuilt in 1975 on the same site as part of Independence National Historical Park. The tavern offers authentic 18th-century recipes, served in seven period dining rooms, three wine cellar rooms and an outdoor garden.\nThe Reading Terminal Market is a historic food market founded in 1893 in the Reading Terminal building, a designated National Historic Landmark. The enclosed market is one of the oldest and largest markets in the country, hosting over a hundred merchants offering Pennsylvania Dutch specialties, artisan cheese and meat, locally grown groceries, and specialty and ethnic foods.\nDialect.\nThe traditional Philadelphia accent is considered by some linguists to be the most distinctive accent in North America. The Philadelphia dialect, which is spread throughout the Delaware Valley and South Jersey, is part of a larger Mid-Atlantic American English family, a designation that also includes the Baltimore accent. Additionally, it shares many similarities with the New York accent. Owing to over a century of linguistic data collected by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania under sociolinguist William Labov, the Philadelphia dialect has been one of the best-studied forms of American English. The accent is especially found within the Irish American and Italian American working-class neighborhoods. Philadelphia also has its own unique collection of neologisms and slang terms.\nMusic.\nThe Philadelphia Orchestra is generally considered one of the top five orchestras in the United States. The orchestra performs at the Kimmel Center and has a summer concert series at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts. Opera Philadelphia performs at the nation's oldest continually operating opera house\u2014the Academy of Music. The Philadelphia Boys Choir & Chorale has performed its music all over the world. The Philly Pops plays orchestral versions of popular jazz, swing, Broadway, and blues songs at the Kimmel Center and other venues within the mid-Atlantic region. The Curtis Institute of Music is one of the world's premier conservatories and among the most selective institutes of higher education in the nation.\nPhiladelphia has played a prominent role in the music of the United States. The culture of American popular music has been influenced by significant contributions of Philadelphia area musicians and producers, in both the recording and broadcasting industries. In 1952, the teen dance party program called \"Bandstand\" premiered on local television, hosted by Bob Horn. The show was renamed \"American Bandstand\" in 1957, when it began national syndication on ABC, hosted by Dick Clark and produced in Philadelphia until 1964 when it moved to Los Angeles. Promoters marketed youthful musical artists known as teen idols to appeal to the young audience. Philadelphia-born singers, including Frankie Avalon, James Darren, Eddie Fisher, Fabian Forte, Bobby Rydell, and South Philly-raised Chubby Checker, topped the music charts, establishing a clean-cut rock and roll image.\nPhilly soul music of the late 1960s\u20131970s is a highly produced version of soul music which led to later forms of popular music such as disco and urban contemporary rhythm and blues. On July 13, 1985, John F. Kennedy Stadium was the American venue for the Live Aid concert. The city also hosted the Live 8 concert, which attracted about 700,000 people to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on July 2, 2005.\nNotable rock and pop musicians from Philadelphia and its suburbs include Bill Haley & His Comets, Nazz, Todd Rundgren, Hall & Oates, the Hooters, Cinderella, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Ween, Schoolly D, Pink, the Roots, Beanie Sigel, State Property, Lisa \"Left Eye\" Lopes, Meek Mill, Lil Uzi Vert, and others.\nSports.\nPhiladelphia has one of the nation's richest histories in professional sports, dating back to the mid-19th century. Its first professional sports team, the Philadelphia Athletics, a professional baseball team, was founded in 1860. The Athletics were initially an amateur league team that turned professional in 1871. In 1876, the Athletics joined with seven other teams in founding the National League, now the longest continuously operating league in world sports. \nPhiladelphia is one of 12 U.S. cities to have teams in all four major league sports: the Philadelphia Phillies of Major League Baseball (MLB), the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League (NFL), the Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League (NHL), and the Philadelphia 76ers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Phillies, formed in 1883 as the Quakers and renamed in 1884, are the oldest team continuously playing under the same name in the same city in the history of American professional sports.\nThe Philadelphia metro area is also home to the Philadelphia Union of Major League Soccer (MLS), plays their home games at Subaru Park, a soccer-specific stadium in Chester, Pennsylvania.\nPhiladelphia was the second of eight U.S. cities to win titles in all four major leagues, the MLB, NFL, NHL, and NBA. It won a title in soccer in the now-defunct North American Soccer League in 1973. Following the 76ers' victory over the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1983 NBA Finals, however, the city's professional teams and their fans endured 25 years without a championship in any professional sport until the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, defeating the Tampa Bay Rays. This quarter century without a championship for any Philadelphia sports team is sometimes described as the Curse of Billy Penn, a reference to a 1987 decision that permitted One Liberty Place to become the first building in city history to surpass the height of \"William Penn\", a statue installed in 1894 atop City Hall. In 2004, during the city's championship drought, ESPN placed Philadelphia second on its list of \"The Fifteen Most Tortured Sports Cities\". The city's sports fans are often both praised and sometimes derided. In 2011, for instance, \"GQ\" magazine named Eagles and Phillies fans the nation's worst professional sports fans, describing them as the \"Meanest Fans in America\" in summarizing repeated incidents of their drunken behavior and long history of booing.\nAfter the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, nine years passed without a championship until the Eagles won their first Super Bowl following the 2017 season, defeating the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII. Seven seasons later, following the 2024 season, the Eagles won their second Super Bowl, defeating the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX. \nMajor professional sports teams that originated in Philadelphia, which later moved to other cities, include the Golden State Warriors basketball team, which played in Philadelphia from 1946 to 1962 and the Oakland Athletics baseball team, which was originally the Philadelphia Athletics and played in Philadelphia from 1901 to 1954.\nPhiladelphia is home to professional, semi-professional, and elite amateur teams in multiple other sports, including cricket, rugby league, and rugby union. Major running events in the city include the Penn Relays, the Philadelphia Marathon, and the Broad Street Run. The Collegiate Rugby Championship is played annually each June at Talen Energy Stadium in Chester.\nThe city also has a rich history in rowing, which has been popular in Philadelphia since the 18th century. On Boathouse Row, a symbol of Philadelphia's rich rowing history, each Big Five member has its own boathouse. Philadelphia hosts numerous local and collegiate rowing clubs and competitions, including the annual Dad Vail Regatta, the largest intercollegiate rowing event in North America with more than 100 participating U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities; the annual Stotesbury Cup Regatta, which is billed as the world's oldest and largest rowing event for high school students; and the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta. The regattas are held on the Schuylkill River and organized by Schuylkill Navy, an association of area rowing clubs that has produced numerous Olympic rowers.\nThe Philadelphia Spinners were a professional ultimate team in Major League Ultimate (MLU) until 2016. The Spinners were one of the original eight teams of the American Ultimate Disc League (AUDL), which was founded in 2012. They played at Franklin Field and won the inaugural AUDL championship and the final MLU championship in 2016. The MLU was suspended indefinitely by its investors in December 2016. As of 2018[ [update]], the Philadelphia Phoenix continue to play in the AUDL.\nPhiladelphia is home to the Philadelphia Big 5, a group of five NCAA Division I college basketball programs, including La Salle, Penn, Saint Joseph's, Temple, and Villanova universities. The sixth NCAA Division I school in Philadelphia is Drexel University. La Salle won the 1954 championship of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. Villanova won the 1985, 2016, and 2018 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournaments. Philadelphia will be one of the eleven US host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.\nLaw and government.\nPhiladelphia County is a legal nullity. All county functions were assumed by the city in 1952. The city has been coterminous with the county since 1854.\nPhiladelphia's 1952 Home Rule Charter was written by the City Charter Commission, which was created by the Pennsylvania General Assembly in an act of April 1949, and a city ordinance of June 1949. The existing city council received a proposed draft in February 1951, and the electors approved it in an election held in April 1951. The first elections under the new Home Rule Charter were held in November 1951, and the newly elected officials took office in January 1952.\nThe city uses the strong-mayor version of the mayor\u2013council form of government, which is led by one mayor in whom executive authority is vested. The mayor has the authority to appoint and dismiss members of all boards and commissions without the approval of the city council. Elected at-large, the mayor is limited to two consecutive four-year terms, but can run for the position again after an intervening term.\nCourts.\nPhiladelphia County is coterminous with the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas is the trial court of general jurisdiction for the city, hearing felony-level criminal cases and civil suits above the minimum jurisdictional limit of $10,000. The court has appellate jurisdiction over rulings from the Municipal and Traffic Courts, and some administrative agencies and boards. The trial division has 70 commissioned judges elected by the voters, along with about one thousand other employees. The court has a family division with 25 judges and an orphans' court with three judges.\nAs of 2018[ [update]], the city's District Attorney is Larry Krasner, a Democrat. The last Republican to hold the office is Ronald D. Castille, who left in 1991 and later served as the Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court from 2008 to 2014.\nThe Philadelphia Municipal Court handles traffic cases, misdemeanor and felony criminal cases with maximum incarceration of five years, and civil cases involving $12,000 or less ($15,000 in real estate and school tax cases), and all landlord-tenant disputes. The municipal court has 27 judges elected by the voters.\nPennsylvania's three appellate courts also have sittings in Philadelphia. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the court of last resort in the state, regularly hears arguments in Philadelphia City Hall. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania and the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania also sit in Philadelphia several times a year. Judges for these courts are elected at large. The state Supreme Court and Superior Court have deputy prothonotary offices in Philadelphia.\nPhiladelphia is home to the federal United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, both of which are housed in the James A. Byrne United States Courthouse.\nPolitics.\nThe current mayor is Cherelle Parker who won the election in November 2023. Parker's predecessor, Jim Kenney, served two terms from 2016 to January 2024. Parker is a member of the Democratic Party. For over seven decades, since 1952, every Philadelphia mayor has been a Democrat.\nPhiladelphia City Council is the legislative branch which consists of ten council members representing individual districts and seven members elected at-large, all of whom are elected to four-year terms. Democrats are currently the majority and hold 14 seats including nine of the ten districts and five at-large seats. Republicans hold one seat: the Northeast-based Tenth District. The Working Families Party holds two at-large seats making them the council's minority party. The current council president is Kenyatta Johnson.\nPhiladelphia's political structure consists of a system of wards and divisions. There are 66 wards with 11 to 51 divisions each for a total of 1703 divisions. Each division elects two committee people who are supposed to live within the division boundaries, and committee people select a leader for their ward. Democrats and Republicans elect their own committee people every four years. The committee person's role is to serve as a point of contact between voters and party officials and help get out the vote. Most wards are closed which means the ward leader makes sole endorsement decisions; open wards allow committee people to weigh in on these decisions. There are groups such as Open Wards Philadelphia and individuals who are working to elect ward leaders who promote an open ward system.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nPhiladelphia had historically been a bastion of the Republican Party from the American Civil War until the mid-1930s. In 1856, the first Republican National Convention was held at Musical Fund Hall at 808 Locust Street in Philadelphia.\nDemocratic registrations increased after the Great Depression; however, the city was not carried by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt in his landslide victory of 1932, as Pennsylvania was one of only six states won by Republican Herbert Hoover. Voter turnout surged from 600,000 in 1932 to nearly 900,000 in 1936 and Roosevelt carried Philadelphia with over 60% of the vote. Philadelphia has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1936. In 2008, Democrat Barack Obama drew 83% of the city's vote. Obama's win was even larger in 2012, capturing 85% of the vote. In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton won 82% of the vote.\nAs a result of the previously declining population in the city and state, Philadelphia has only three congressional districts of the 18 districts in Pennsylvania, based on the 2010 census apportionment: the 2nd district, represented by Brendan Boyle; the 3rd, represented by Dwight Evans; and the 5th, represented by Mary Gay Scanlon. All three representatives are Democrats, though Republicans still have some support in the city, primarily in the Northeast. Sam Katz ran competitive mayoral races as the Republican nominee in 1999 and 2003, losing to Democrat John Street both times.\nPennsylvania's longest-serving Senator, Arlen Specter, was an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania who opened his first law practice in Philadelphia. Specter served as a Republican from 1981 and as a Democrat from 2009, losing that party's primary in 2010 and leaving office in January 2011. He was assistant counsel on the Warren Commission in 1964 and the city's district attorney from 1966 to 1974.\nPhiladelphia has hosted various national conventions, including in 1848 (Whig), 1856 (Republican), 1872 (Republican), 1900 (Republican), 1936 (Democratic), 1940 (Republican), 1948 (Republican), 1948 (Progressive), 2000 (Republican), and 2016 (Democratic). Philadelphia has been home to one vice president, George M. Dallas, and one general of the American Civil War, George B. McClellan, who won his party's nomination for president but lost in the general election to Abraham Lincoln in 1864. In May 2019, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden chose Philadelphia to be his 2020 U.S. presidential campaign headquarters.\nEnvironmental policy.\n\"Green Cities, Clean Water\" is an environmental policy initiative based in Philadelphia that has shown promising results in mitigating the effects of climate change. The researchers on the policy have stated that despite such promising plans of green infrastructure building, \"the city is forecasted to grow warmer, wetter, and more urbanized over the century, runoff and local temperatures will increase on average throughout the city\". Even though landcover predictive models on the effects of the policy initiative have indicated that green infrastructure could be useful at decreasing the amount of runoff in the city over time, the city government would have to expand its current plans and \"consider the cobenefit of climate change adaptation when planning new projects\" in limiting the scope of city-wide temperature increase.\nPublic safety.\nPolice and law enforcement.\nIn a 2015 report by Pew Charitable Trusts, the police districts with the highest rates of violent crime were Frankford (15th district) and Kensington (24th district) in the Near Northeast, and districts to the North (22nd, 25th, and 35th districts), West (19th district) and Southwest (12th district) of Center City. Each of those seven districts recorded more than a thousand violent crimes in 2014. The lowest rates of violent crime occurred in Center City, South Philadelphia, the Far Northeast, and Roxborough districts, the latter of which includes Manayunk.\nPhiladelphia had 500, 503 according to some sources, murders in 1990, a rate of 31.5 per 100,000. An average of about 400 murders occurred each year for most of the 1990s. The murder count dropped in 2002 to 288, then rose to 406 by 2006, before dropping slightly to 392 in 2007. A few years later, Philadelphia began to see a rapid decline in homicides and violent crime. In 2013, the city had 246 murders, which is a decrease of nearly 40% since 2006.\nIn 2014, 248 homicides were committed. The homicide rate rose to 280 in 2015, then fell slightly to 277 in 2016, before rising again to 317 in 2017. Homicides increased dramatically in the late 2010s/early 2020s, reaching 499 homicides in 2020 and surpassing the 1990 \"record\" in 2021, with 501st murder on November 27 and 510 by the end of the month. Phillie ended the year with 562 murders, an all-time record. It dropped in 2022 to 514, and significantly further again in 2023, to 410.\nIn 2006, Philadelphia's homicide rate of 27.7 per 100,000 people was the highest of the country's 10 most populous cities. In 2012, Philadelphia had the fourth-highest homicide rate among the country's most populous cities. The rate dropped to 16 homicides per 100,000 residents by 2014 placing Philadelphia as the sixth-highest city in the country.\nThe number of shootings in the city has declined significantly since the early years of the 21st century. Shooting incidents peaked at 1,857 in 2006 before declining nearly 44 percent to 1,047 shootings in 2014. Major crimes have decreased gradually since a peak in 2006 when 85,498 major crimes were reported. The number of reported major crimes fell 11 percent in three years to 68,815 occurrences in 2014. Violent crimes, which include homicide, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery, decreased 14 percent in three years to 15,771 occurrences in 2014.\nIn 2014, Philadelphia enacted an ordinance decriminalizing the possession of less than 30 grams of marijuana or eight grams of hashish; the ordinance gave police officers the discretion to treat possession of these amounts as a civil infraction punishable by a $25 ticket, rather than a crime. At the time, Philadelphia was at the largest city in the nation to decriminalize the possession of marijuana. From 2013 to 2018, marijuana arrests in the city dropped by more than 85%. The purchase or sale of marijuana remains a criminal offense in Philadelphia.\nFirefighting.\nThe Philadelphia Fire Department provides fire protection and emergency medical services (EMS). The department's official mission is to protect public safety by quick and professional response to emergencies and the promotion of sound emergency prevention measures. This mandate encompasses all traditional firefighting functions, including fire suppression, with 60 engine companies and 30 ladder companies as well as specialty and support units deployed throughout the city; specialized firefighting units for Philadelphia International Airport and the Port of Philadelphia; investigations conducted by the fire marshal's office to determine the origins of fires and develop preventive strategies; prevention programs to educate the public; and support services including research and planning, management of the fire communications center within the city's 911 system, and operation of the Philadelphia Fire Academy.\nMedia.\nNewspapers.\nPhiladelphia's two major daily newspapers are \"The Philadelphia Inquirer\", first published in 1829\u2014the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the country\u2014and the \"Philadelphia Daily News\", first published in 1925. The \"Daily News\" has been published as an edition of the \"Inquirer\" since 2009. Recent owners of the \"Inquirer\" and \"Daily News\" have included Knight Ridder, The McClatchy Company, and Philadelphia Media Holdings, with the latter organization declaring bankruptcy in 2010. After two years of financial struggle, the newspapers were sold to Interstate General Media in 2012. The two newspapers had a combined daily circulation of 306,831 and a Sunday circulation of 477,313 in 2013[ [update]], the 18th-largest circulation in the country, and their collective website, Philly.com, was ranked 13th in popularity among online U.S. newspapers by Alexa Internet the same year.\nSmaller publications include the \"Philadelphia Tribune\" published five days each week for the African-American community; \"Philadelphia\" magazine, a monthly regional magazine; \"Philadelphia Weekly\", a weekly alternative newspaper; \"Philadelphia Gay News\", a weekly newspaper for the LGBT community; \"The Jewish Exponent\", a weekly newspaper for the Jewish community; \"Al D\u00eda\", a weekly newspaper for the Latino community; and \"Philadelphia Metro\", a free daily newspaper.\nStudent-run newspapers include the University of Pennsylvania's \"The Daily Pennsylvanian\", Temple University's \"The Temple News\", and Drexel University's \"The Triangle\".\nRadio.\nThe first experimental radio license was issued in Philadelphia in August 1912 to St. Joseph's College. The first commercial AM radio stations began broadcasting in 1922: first WIP, then owned by Gimbels department store, followed by WFIL, then owned by Strawbridge & Clothier department store, and WOO, a defunct station owned by Wanamaker's department store, as well as WCAU and WDAS.\nAs of 2018[ [update]], the FCC lists 28 FM and 11 AM stations for Philadelphia. As of December 2017, the ten highest-rated stations in Philadelphia were adult contemporary WBEB-FM (101.1), sports talk WIP-FM (94.1), classic rock WMGK-FM (102.9), urban adult contemporary WDAS-FM (105.3), classic hits WOGL-FM (98.1), album-oriented rock WMMR-FM (93.3), country music WXTU-FM (92.5), all-news KYW-AM (1060), talk radio WHYY-FM (90.9), and urban adult contemporary WRNB-FM (100.3). Philadelphia is served by three non-commercial public radio stations: WHYY-FM (NPR), WRTI-FM (classical and jazz), and WXPN-FM (adult alternative music).\nTelevision.\nIn the 1930s, W3XE, an experimental station owned by Philco, launched as Philadelphia's first television station. In 1939, the station became the nation's first NBC's first affiliate, and later became KYW-TV, the Philadelphia television market's CBS affiliate. In 1952, WFIL, later renamed WPVI, premiered the television show \"Bandstand\", which later became the nationally broadcast \"American Bandstand\" hosted by Dick Clark. In the 1960s, WCAU-TV, WFIL-TV, and WHYY-TV were founded.\nEach of the nation's commercial networks has an affiliate in Philadelphia: KYW-TV 3 (CBS), WPVI-TV 6 (ABC), WCAU 10 (NBC), WPHL-TV 17 (The CW with MyNetworkTV on DT2), WFPA-CD 28 (UniM\u00e1s), WTXF-TV 29 (Fox), WPSG 57 (Independent), WWSI 62 (Telemundo), and WUVP-DT 65 (Univision). The region is served also by public broadcasting stations WPPT-TV in Philadelphia, WHYY-TV in Wilmington, Delaware and Philadelphia, WLVT-TV in the Lehigh Valley, and NJTV in New Jersey.\nSince September 2024, Philadelphia is the nation's largest television market where at least one of the six English networks are shown at a station not owned by a particular network's associated parent company. The major Spanish language networks are Univision (WUVP-DT), UniM\u00e1s (WFPA-CD), and Telemundo (WWSI-TV).\nAs of 2023, the Philadelphia media market is the fifth-largest in North America with over 7.8 million viewers\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nPhiladelphia is served by SEPTA, which operates buses, trains, rapid transit (as both subways and elevated trains), trolleys, and trackless trolleys (electric buses) throughout Philadelphia, the four Pennsylvania suburban counties of Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery, in addition to service to Mercer County, New Jersey (Trenton) and New Castle County, Delaware (Wilmington and Newark, Delaware). The city's subway system consists of two routes: the subway section of the Market\u2013Frankford Line running east\u2013west under Market Street which opened in 1905 to the west and 1908 to the east of City Hall, and the Broad Street Line running north\u2013south beneath Broad Street which opened in stages from 1928 to 1938.\nBeginning in the 1980s, large sections of the SEPTA Regional Rail service to the far suburbs of Philadelphia were discontinued due to a lack of funding for equipment and infrastructure maintenance.\nPhiladelphia's 30th Street Station is a major railroad station on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor with 4.4\u00a0million passengers in 2017 making it the third-busiest station in the country after New York City's Pennsylvania Station and Washington's Union Station. 30th Street Station offers access to Amtrak, SEPTA, and NJ Transit lines. Over 12\u00a0million SEPTA and NJ Transit rail commuters use the station each year, and more than 100,000 people on an average weekday.\nThe PATCO Speedline provides rapid transit service to Camden, Collingswood, Westmont, Haddonfield, Woodcrest (Cherry Hill), Ashland (Voorhees), and Lindenwold, New Jersey, from stations on Locust Street between 16th and 15th, 13th and 12th, and 10th and 9th streets, and on Market Street at 8th Street.\nAirports.\nPhiladelphia is served by two airports. Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), the larger of the two, is south-southwest of Center City on the boundary with Delaware County, and provides scheduled domestic and international air service. As of 2023, Philadelphia International Airport is the 21st-busiest airport in the nation with over 13.6 million passengers. It is also among the world's busiest airports measured by traffic movements, including takeoffs and landings. Over 30\u00a0million passengers pass through the airport annually on 25 airlines, including all major domestic carriers. The airport has nearly 500 daily departures to over 120 destinations worldwide. SEPTA's Airport Line provides direct service between Center City railroad stations and Philadelphia International Airport.\nPhiladelphia's second major airport, Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE), is a general aviation relief airport in Northeast Philadelphia, which provides general and corporate aviation.\nRoads.\nWilliam Penn planned Philadelphia with numbered streets traversing north and south, and streets named for trees, including Chestnut, Walnut, and Mulberry (since renamed Arch Streets, traversing east and west. The two main streets were named Broad Street, the north\u2013south artery, later designated Pennsylvania Route 611, and High Street, the east\u2013west artery, which was later renamed Market Street, converging at Centre Square which later became the site of City Hall.\nInterstate 95, also known as the Delaware Expressway, traverses the southern and eastern edges of the city along the Delaware River as the main north\u2013south controlled-access highway, and connects Philadelphia with Newark, New Jersey and New York City to the north and Baltimore and Washington, D.C. to the south. The city is served by Interstate 76, also known as the Schuylkill Expressway, which runs along the Schuylkill River, intersecting the Pennsylvania Turnpike at King of Prussia and providing access to Harrisburg and points west. Interstate 676, also known as Vine Street Expressway, links I-95 and I-76 through Center City, running below street level between the eastbound and westbound lanes of Vine Street. Entrance and exit ramps for the Benjamin Franklin Bridge are near the eastern end of the expressway just west of the I-95 interchange.\nRoosevelt Boulevard and Expressway, also known as U.S. 1, connects Northeast Philadelphia with Center City via I-76 through Fairmount Park. Woodhaven Road, also known as Route 63, and Cottman Avenue, also known as Route 73, serve the neighborhoods of Northeast Philadelphia, running between I-95 and the Roosevelt Boulevard. Fort Washington Expressway, also known as Route 309, extends north from the city's northern border, serving Montgomery and Bucks Counties. U.S. Route 30, also known as Lancaster Avenue, extends west from West Philadelphia to Lancaster.\nInterstate 476, locally called the Blue Route, traverses Delaware County, bypassing the city to the west and serving the city's western suburbs, providing a direct route to Allentown, the Poconos, and points north. Interstate 276, the Pennsylvania Turnpike's Delaware River extension, is a bypass and commuter route north of the city, which links to the New Jersey Turnpike and New York City.\nDelaware River Port Authority operates four bridges in the Philadelphia area, each of which cross the Delaware River to South Jersey: Walt Whitman Bridge (I-76), the Benjamin Franklin Bridge (I-676 and U.S. 30), Betsy Ross Bridge (New Jersey Route 90), and Commodore Barry Bridge (U.S. 322 in Delaware County, south of the city. The Burlington County Bridge Commission maintains two additional bridges that cross the Delaware River. Tacony\u2013Palmyra Bridge connects PA Route 73 in the Tacony section of Northeast Philadelphia with New Jersey Route 73 in Palmyra in Burlington County. Burlington\u2013Bristol Bridge connects NJ Route 413/U.S. Route 130 in Burlington, New Jersey with PA Route 413/U.S. 13 in Bristol Township, north of Philadelphia.\nBus service.\nThe Greyhound terminal is at 1001 Filbert Street (at 10th Street) in Center City, southeast of the Pennsylvania Convention Center and south of Chinatown. Several other bus operators provide service at the Greyhound terminal including Fullington Trailways, Martz Trailways, Peter Pan Bus Lines, and NJ Transit buses.\nOther intercity bus services include Megabus with stops at 30th Street Station and the visitor center for Independence Hall, BoltBus (operated by Greyhound) at 30th Street Station, OurBus at various stops in the city.\nRail.\nSince the early days of rail transportation in the United States, Philadelphia has served as a hub for several major rail companies, particularly the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Railroad. The Pennsylvania Railroad first operated Broad Street Station, then 30th Street Station and Suburban Station, and the Reading Railroad operated Reading Terminal, now part of the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The two companies also operated competing commuter rail systems in the area. The two systems now operate as a single system under the control of SEPTA, the regional transit authority. Additionally, the PATCO Speedline subway system and NJ Transit's Atlantic City Line operate successor services to South Jersey.\nIn 1911, Philadelphia had nearly 4,000 electric trolleys running on 86 lines. In 2005, SEPTA reintroduced trolley service to the Girard Avenue Line, Route 15. SEPTA operates six subway-surface trolleys that run on street-level tracks in West Philadelphia and subway tunnels in Center City, along with two surface trolleys in adjacent suburbs.\nPhiladelphia is a regional hub of the federally-owned Amtrak system, with 30th Street Station being a primary stop on the Washington-Boston Northeast Corridor and the Keystone Corridor to Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. 30th Street also serves as a major station for services via the Pennsylvania Railroad's former Pennsylvania Main Line to Chicago. As of 2018[ [update]], 30th Street is Amtrak's third-busiest station in the country, after New York City and Washington.\nUtilities.\nWater purity and availability.\nIn 1815, Philadelphia began sourcing its water via the Fairmount Water Works on the Schuylkill River, the nation's first major urban water supply system. In 1909, the Water Works was decommissioned as the city transitioned to modern sand filtration methods. Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) provides drinking water, wastewater collection, and stormwater services for Philadelphia, as well as surrounding counties. PWD draws about 57 percent of its drinking water from the Delaware River and the balance from the Schuylkill River. The city has two filtration plants on the Schuylkill River and one on the Delaware River. The three plants can treat up to 546\u00a0million gallons of water per day, while the total storage capacity of the combined plant and distribution system exceeds one billion gallons. The wastewater system consists of three water pollution control plants, 21 pumping stations, and about of sewers.\nElectricity.\nExelon subsidiary PECO Energy Company, founded as the Brush Electric Light Company of Philadelphia in 1881 and renamed Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) in 1902, provides electricity to about 1.6\u00a0million customers and more than 500,000 natural gas customers in the southeastern Pennsylvania area including the city of Philadelphia and most of its suburbs. PECO is the largest electric and natural gas utility in the state with 472 power substations and nearly of electric transmission and distribution lines and of natural gas transmission, distribution, and service lines.\nNatural gas.\nPhiladelphia Gas Works (PGW), overseen by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, is the nation's largest municipally-owned natural gas utility. PGW serves over 500,000 homes and businesses in the Philadelphia area. Founded in 1836, the company came under city ownership in 1987 and has been providing the majority of gas distributed within city limits. In 2014, the City Council refused to conduct hearings on a $1.86\u00a0billion sale of PGW, part of a two-year effort that was proposed by the mayor. The refusal led to the prospective buyer terminating its offer.\nTelecommunications.\nSoutheastern Pennsylvania was assigned the 215 area code in 1947 when the North American Numbering Plan of the Bell System went into effect. The geographic area covered by the code was split nearly in half in 1994 when area code 610 was created, with the city and its northern suburbs retaining 215. Overlay area code 267 was added to the 215 service area in 1997, and 484 was added to the 610 area in 1999. A plan in 2001 to introduce a third overlay code to both service areas, area code 445 to 215 and area code 835 to 610, was delayed and later rescinded. Area code 445 was implemented as an overlay for area codes 215 and 267 starting on February 3, 2018.\nSister cities.\nPhiladelphia also has three partnership cities or regions:\nPhiladelphia has eight official sister cities as designated by the Citizen Diplomacy International (CDI) of Philadelphia: Philadelphia has dedicated landmarks to its sister cities. The Sister Cities Park, a site of at 18th and Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Logan Square, was dedicated in June 1976. The park was built to commemorate Philadelphia's first two sister city relationships, with Tel Aviv and Florence. Toru\u0144 Triangle, honoring the sister city relationship with Toru\u0144, Poland, was constructed in 1976, west of the United Way building at 18th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Sister Cities Park was redesigned and reopened in 2012, featuring an interactive fountain honoring Philadelphia's sister and partnership cities, a caf\u00e9 and visitor center, children's play area, outdoor garden, boat pond, and a pavilion built to environmentally friendly standards.\nThe Chinatown Gate, erected in 1984 and crafted by artisans from Tianjin, stands astride 10th Street, on the north side of its intersection with Arch Street, as a symbol of the sister city relationship. The CDI of Philadelphia has participated in the U.S. Department of State's \"Partners for Peace\" project with Mosul, Iraq, and in accepting visiting delegations from dozens of other countries.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nclass=\"wikitable succession-box noprint\" style=\"margin:0.5em auto; font-size:small;clear:both;\"", "570934": "Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church\nHistoric church in Pennsylvania, United States\nThe Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is a historic church and congregation which is located at 419 South 6th Street in Center City Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The congregation, founded in 1794, is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal congregation in the nation.\nIts present church, completed in 1890, is the oldest church property in the United States to be continuously owned by African Americans. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972.\nHistory of the congregation.\nThe church was proposed in 1791 by members of the Free African Society of Philadelphia, including Absalom Jones, out of a desire to create a space for autonomous African-American worship and community in the city. The desire to create the church was strengthened in 1792, after African-American members of St. George's Methodist Church walked out due to racial segregation in the worship services. Leading roles in the founding were played by Richard Allen, who arranged the purchase of the church's site and its construction, and Absalom Jones, who raised funds among both black and white Philadelphia residents (including then-President George Washington). Mother Bethel was one of the first African-American churches in the United States, dedicated July 29, 1794, by Bishop Francis Asbury.\nOn October 12, 1794, Reverend Robert Blackwell announced that the congregation was received in full fellowship in the Methodist Episcopal Church.\nIn 1816, Rev. Richard Allen brought together other black Methodist congregations from the region to organize the new African Methodist Episcopal Church denomination. He was elected bishop of this denomination. After the American Civil War, its missionaries went to the South to help freedmen and planted many new churches in the region.\nIn 1838, the building was damaged during the riots that followed the destruction of Pennsylvania Hall.\nAllen and his wife, Sarah Allen are both buried in the present church's crypt. The current church building was constructed in 1888\u20131890, and it has been designated a National Historic Landmark.\nOn October 25, 2009, \"The Great Gathering\" took place at St. George's Church in which the community of Mother Bethel AME and St. George's congregations gathered for Sunday worship at St. George's for the first time since the historic walkout. The Rev. Dr. Mark Kelly Tyler preached for this service.\nBuilding history.\nThe property was acquired for the new congregation in 1794. Its first building was a frame structure originally used as a blacksmith's shop, which was hauled to the site.\nThis building was later replaced by frame structures in 1805 and 1841. The 1841 church was reported to have a tunnel connecting it with a nearby Quaker meetinghouse to facilitate the movements of fugitive slaves.\nThe present building, which was completed in 1890, is a three-story masonry structure with Romanesque styling. Its large round-arch windows are adorned with stained glass from Germany.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["570934", "2840775", "50585"], "permutation_1": ["50585", "570934", "2840775"], "permutation_2": ["570934", "50585", "2840775"], "permutation_3": ["2840775", "570934", "50585"]}
{"id": "2hop__297833_13701", "docs_added": {"8469462": "List of Bones episodes\n\"Bones\" is an American crime drama television series created by Hart Hanson that premiered on Fox on September 13, 2005.\nThe show is based on forensic anthropology and forensic archaeology, with each episode focusing on an FBI case concerning the mystery behind human remains brought by FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) to the forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance \"Bones\" Brennan (Emily Deschanel). The rest of the main cast includes Michaela Conlin as forensic artist Angela Montenegro, T. J. Thyne as entomologist Dr. Jack Hodgins, Eric Millegan as Dr. Zack Addy (seasons 1\u20133; guest, 4\u20135, 11\u201312), Jonathan Adams as Dr. Daniel Goodman (season 1), Tamara Taylor as pathologist Dr. Camille Saroyan (seasons 2\u201312), John Francis Daley as psychologist Dr. Lance Sweets (seasons 3\u201310), and John Boyd as FBI agent James Aubrey (seasons 10\u201312).\nSeries overview.\n<onlyinclude></onlyinclude>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> ", "11127": "Federal Bureau of Investigation\nU.S. federal law enforcement agency\nThe Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. An agency of the United States Department of Justice, the FBI is a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community and reports to both the attorney general and the director of national intelligence. A leading American counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and criminal investigative organization, the FBI has jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crimes.\nAlthough many of the FBI's functions are unique, its activities in support of national security are comparable to those of the British MI5 and NCA, the New Zealand GCSB and the Russian FSB. Unlike the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which has no law enforcement authority and is focused on intelligence collection abroad, the FBI is primarily a domestic agency, maintaining 56 field offices in major cities throughout the United States, and more than 400 resident agencies in smaller cities and areas across the nation. At an FBI field office, a senior-level FBI officer concurrently serves as the representative of the director of national intelligence.\nDespite its domestic focus, the FBI also maintains a significant international footprint, operating 60 Legal Attache (LEGAT) offices and 15 sub-offices in U.S. embassies and consulates across the globe. These foreign offices exist primarily for the purpose of coordination with foreign security services and do not usually conduct unilateral operations in the host countries. The FBI can and does at times carry out secret activities overseas, just as the CIA has a limited domestic function. These activities generally require coordination across government agencies.\nThe FBI was established in 1908 as the Bureau of Investigation, the BOI or BI for short. Its name was changed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1935. The FBI headquarters is the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C. The FBI has a list of the top 10 most wanted fugitives.\nMission, priorities and budget.\nMission.\nThe mission of the FBI is to \"protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States\".\nPriorities.\nCurrently, the FBI's top priorities are:\nBudget.\nIn the fiscal year 2019, the Bureau's total budget was approximately $9.6\u00a0billion.\nIn the Authorization and Budget Request to Congress for fiscal year 2021, the FBI asked for $9,800,724,000. Of that money, $9,748,829,000 would be used for Salaries and Expenses (S&E) and $51,895,000 for Construction. The S&E program saw an increase of $199,673,000.\nHistory.\nBackground.\nIn 1896, the National Bureau of Criminal Identification was founded, providing agencies across the country with information to identify known criminals. The 1901 assassination of President William McKinley created a perception that the United States was under threat from anarchists. The Departments of Justice and Labor had been keeping records on anarchists for years, but President Theodore Roosevelt wanted more power to monitor them.\nThe Justice Department had been tasked with the regulation of interstate commerce since 1887, though it lacked the staff to do so. It had made little effort to relieve its staff shortage until the Oregon land fraud scandal at the turn of the 20th century. President Roosevelt instructed Attorney General Charles Bonaparte to organize an autonomous investigative service that would report only to the Attorney General.\nBonaparte contacted other agencies, including the U.S. Secret Service, for personnel, investigators in particular. On May 27, 1908, Congress forbade this use of Treasury employees by the Justice Department, citing fears that the new agency would serve as a secret police department. Again at Roosevelt's urging, Bonaparte moved to organize a formal Bureau of Investigation, which would then have its own staff of special agents.\nCreation of BOI.\nThe Bureau of Investigation (BOI) was created on July 26, 1908. Attorney General Bonaparte, using Department of Justice expense funds, hired thirty-four people, including some veterans of the Secret Service, to work for a new investigative agency. Its first \"chief\" (the title is now \"director\") was Stanley Finch. Bonaparte notified the Congress of these actions in December 1908.\nThe bureau's first official task was visiting and making surveys of the houses of prostitution in preparation for enforcing the \"White Slave Traffic Act\" or Mann Act, passed on June 25, 1910. In 1932, the bureau was renamed the United States Bureau of Investigation.\nCreation of FBI.\nThe following year, 1933, the BOI was linked to the Bureau of Prohibition and rechristened the Division of Investigation (DOI); it became an independent service within the Department of Justice in 1935. In the same year, its name was officially changed from the Division of Investigation to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).\nJ. Edgar Hoover as FBI director.\nJ. Edgar Hoover served as FBI director from 1924 to 1972, a combined 48 years with the BOI, DOI, and FBI. He was chiefly responsible for creating the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory, or the FBI Laboratory, which officially opened in 1932, as part of his work to professionalize investigations by the government. Hoover was substantially involved in most major cases and projects that the FBI handled during his tenure. But as detailed below, his tenure as Bureau director proved to be highly controversial, especially in its later years. After Hoover's death, Congress passed legislation that limited the tenure of future FBI directors to ten years.\nEarly homicide investigations of the new agency included the Osage Indian murders. During the \"War on Crime\" of the 1930s, FBI agents apprehended or killed a number of notorious criminals who committed kidnappings, bank robberies, and murders throughout the nation, including John Dillinger, \"Baby Face\" Nelson, Kate \"Ma\" Barker, Alvin \"Creepy\" Karpis, and George \"Machine Gun\" Kelly.\nOther activities of its early decades focused on the scope and influence of the white supremacist group Ku Klux Klan, a group with which the FBI was evidenced to be working in the Viola Liuzzo lynching case. Earlier, through the work of Edwin Atherton, the BOI claimed to have successfully apprehended an entire army of Mexican neo-revolutionaries under the leadership of General Enrique Estrada in the mid-1920s, east of San Diego, California.\nHoover began using wiretapping in the 1920s during Prohibition to arrest bootleggers. In the 1927 case \"Olmstead v. United States\", in which a bootlegger was caught through telephone tapping, the United States Supreme Court ruled that FBI wiretaps did not violate the Fourth Amendment as unlawful search and seizure, as long as the FBI did not break into a person's home to complete the tapping. After Prohibition's repeal, Congress passed the Communications Act of 1934, which outlawed non-consensual phone tapping, but did allow bugging. In the 1939 case \"Nardone v. United States\", the court ruled that due to the 1934 law, evidence the FBI obtained by phone tapping was inadmissible in court. After \"Katz v. United States\" (1967) overturned \"Olmstead\", Congress passed the Omnibus Crime Control Act, allowing public authorities to tap telephones during investigations, as long as they obtained warrants beforehand.\nNational security.\nBeginning in the 1940s and continuing into the 1970s, the bureau investigated cases of espionage against the United States and its allies. Eight Nazi agents who had planned sabotage operations against American targets were arrested, and six were executed (\"Ex parte Quirin\") under their sentences. Also during this time, a joint US/UK code-breaking effort called \"The Venona Project\"\u2014with which the FBI was heavily involved\u2014broke Soviet diplomatic and intelligence communications codes, allowing the US and British governments to read Soviet communications. This effort confirmed the existence of Americans working in the United States for Soviet intelligence. Hoover was administering this project, but he failed to notify the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of it until 1952. Another notable case was the arrest of Soviet spy Rudolf Abel in 1957. The discovery of Soviet spies operating in the US motivated Hoover to pursue his longstanding concern with the threat he perceived from the American Left.\nJapanese American internment.\nIn 1939, the Bureau began compiling a custodial detention list with the names of those who would be taken into custody in the event of war with Axis nations. The majority of the names on the list belonged to Issei community leaders, as the FBI investigation built on an existing Naval Intelligence index that had focused on Japanese Americans in Hawaii and the West Coast, but many German and Italian nationals also found their way onto the FBI Index list. Robert Shivers, head of the Honolulu office, obtained permission from Hoover to start detaining those on the list on December 7, 1941, while bombs were still falling over Pearl Harbor. Mass arrests and searches of homes, in most cases conducted without warrants, began a few hours after the attack, and over the next several weeks more than 5,500 Issei men were taken into FBI custody. \nOn February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing the removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. FBI Director Hoover opposed the subsequent mass removal and confinement of Japanese Americans authorized under Executive Order 9066, but Roosevelt prevailed. The vast majority went along with the subsequent exclusion orders, but in a handful of cases where Japanese Americans refused to obey the new military regulations, FBI agents handled their arrests. The Bureau continued surveillance on Japanese Americans throughout the war, conducting background checks on applicants for resettlement outside camp, and entering the camps, usually without the permission of War Relocation Authority officials, and grooming informants to monitor dissidents and \"troublemakers\". After the war, the FBI was assigned to protect returning Japanese Americans from attacks by hostile white communities.\nSex deviates program.\nAccording to Douglas M. Charles, the FBI's \"sex deviates\" program began on April 10, 1950, when J. Edgar Hoover forwarded to the White House, to the U.S. Civil Service Commission, and to branches of the armed services a list of 393 alleged federal employees who had allegedly been arrested in Washington, D.C., since 1947, on charges of \"sexual irregularities\". On June 20, 1951, Hoover expanded the program by issuing a memo establishing a \"uniform policy for the handling of the increasing number of reports and allegations concerning present and past employees of the United States Government who assertedly [sic] are sex deviates\". The program was expanded to include non-government jobs. According to Athan Theoharis, \"In 1951 he [Hoover] had unilaterally instituted a Sex Deviates program to purge alleged homosexuals from any position in the federal government, from the lowliest clerk to the more powerful position of White house aide.\" On May 27, 1953, Executive Order 10450 went into effect. The program was expanded further by this executive order by making all federal employment of homosexuals illegal. On July 8, 1953, the FBI forwarded to the U.S. Civil Service Commission information from the sex deviates program. Between 1977 and 1978, 300,000 pages in the sex deviates program, collected between 1930 and the mid-1970s, were destroyed by FBI officials.\nCivil rights movement.\nDuring the 1950s and 1960s, FBI officials became increasingly concerned about the influence of civil rights leaders, whom they believed either had communist ties or were unduly influenced by communists or \"fellow travelers\". In 1956, for example, Hoover sent an open letter denouncing Dr. T. R. M. Howard, a civil rights leader, surgeon, and wealthy entrepreneur in Mississippi who had criticized FBI inaction in solving recent murders of George W. Lee, Emmett Till, and other blacks in the South. The FBI carried out controversial domestic surveillance in an operation it called the COINTELPRO, from \"COunter-INTELligence PROgram\". It was to investigate and disrupt the activities of dissident political organizations within the United States, including both militant and non-violent organizations. Among its targets was the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a leading civil rights organization whose clergy leadership included the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr..\nThe FBI frequently investigated King. In the mid-1960s, King began to criticize the Bureau for giving insufficient attention to the use of terrorism by white supremacists. Hoover responded by publicly calling King the most \"notorious liar\" in the United States. In his 1991 memoir, \"Washington Post\" journalist Carl Rowan asserted that the FBI had sent at least one anonymous letter to King encouraging him to commit suicide. Historian Taylor Branch documents an anonymous November 1964 \"suicide package\" sent by the Bureau that combined a letter to the civil rights leader telling him \"You are done. There is only one way out for you.\" with audio recordings of King's sexual indiscretions.\nIn March 1971, the residential office of an FBI agent in Media, Pennsylvania, was burgled by a group calling itself the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI. Numerous files were taken and distributed to a range of newspapers, including \"The Harvard Crimson\". The files detailed the FBI's extensive COINTELPRO program, which included investigations into lives of ordinary citizens\u2014including a black student group at a Pennsylvania military college and the daughter of Congressman Henry S. Reuss of Wisconsin. The country was \"jolted\" by the revelations, which included assassinations of political activists, and the actions were denounced by members of the Congress, including House Majority Leader Hale Boggs. The phones of some members of the Congress, including Boggs, had allegedly been tapped.\nKennedy's assassination.\nWhen President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed, the jurisdiction fell to the local police departments until President Lyndon B. Johnson directed the FBI to take over the investigation. To ensure clarity about the responsibility for investigation of homicides of federal officials, Congress passed a law in 1965 that included investigations of such deaths of federal officials, especially by homicide, within FBI jurisdiction.\nOrganized crime.\nIn response to organized crime, on August 25, 1953, the FBI created the Top Hoodlum Program. The national office directed field offices to gather information on mobsters in their territories and to report it regularly to Washington for a centralized collection of intelligence on racketeers. After the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, for RICO Act, took effect, the FBI began investigating the former Prohibition-organized groups, which had become fronts for crime in major cities and small towns. All the FBI work was done undercover and from within these organizations, using the provisions provided in the RICO Act. Gradually the agency dismantled many of the groups. Although Hoover initially denied the existence of a National Crime Syndicate in the United States, the Bureau later conducted operations against known organized crime syndicates and families, including those headed by Sam Giancana and John Gotti. The RICO Act is still used today for all organized crime and any individuals who may fall under the Act's provisions.\nIn 2003, a congressional committee called the FBI's organized crime informant program \"one of the greatest failures in the history of federal law enforcement\". The FBI allowed four innocent men to be convicted of the March 1965 gangland murder of Edward \"Teddy\" Deegan in order to protect Vincent Flemmi, an FBI informant. Three of the men were sentenced to death (which was later reduced to life in prison), and the fourth defendant was sentenced to life in prison. Two of the four men died in prison after serving almost 30 years, and two others were released after serving 32 and 36 years. In July 2007, U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner in Boston found that the Bureau had helped convict the four men using false witness accounts given by mobster Joseph Barboza. The U.S. Government was ordered to pay $100\u00a0million in damages to the four defendants.\nSpecial FBI teams.\nIn 1982, the FBI formed an elite unit to help with problems that might arise at the 1984 Summer Olympics to be held in Los Angeles, particularly terrorism and major-crime. This was a result of the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, when terrorists murdered the Israeli athletes. Named the Hostage Rescue Team, or HRT, it acts as a dedicated FBI SWAT team dealing primarily with counter-terrorism scenarios. Unlike the special agents serving on local FBI SWAT teams, HRT does not conduct investigations. Instead, HRT focuses solely on additional tactical proficiency and capabilities. Also formed in 1984 was the \"Computer Analysis and Response Team\", or CART.\nFrom the end of the 1980s to the early 1990s, the FBI reassigned more than 300 agents from foreign counter-intelligence duties to violent crime, and made violent crime the sixth national priority. With cuts to other well-established departments, and because terrorism was no longer considered a threat after the end of the Cold War, the FBI assisted local and state police forces in tracking fugitives who had crossed state lines, which is a federal offense. The FBI Laboratory helped develop DNA testing, continuing its pioneering role in identification that began with its fingerprinting system in 1924.\nNotable efforts in the 1990s.\nOn May 1, 1992, FBI SWAT and HRT personnel in Los Angeles County, California aided local officials in securing peace within the area during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. HRT operators, for instance, spent 10 days conducting vehicle-mounted patrols throughout Los Angeles, before returning to Virginia.\nBetween 1993 and 1996, the FBI increased its counter-terrorism role following the first 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York City, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and the arrest of the Unabomber in 1996. Technological innovation and the skills of FBI Laboratory analysts helped ensure that the three cases were successfully prosecuted. However, Justice Department investigations into the FBI's roles in the Ruby Ridge and Waco incidents were found to have been obstructed by agents within the Bureau. During the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, the FBI was criticized for its investigation of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. It has settled a dispute with Richard Jewell, who was a private security guard at the venue, along with some media organizations, in regard to the leaking of his name during the investigation; this had briefly led to his being wrongly suspected of the bombing.\nAfter Congress passed the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA, 1994), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA, 1996), and the Economic Espionage Act (EEA, 1996), the FBI followed suit and underwent a technological upgrade in 1998, just as it did with its CART team in 1991. Computer Investigations and Infrastructure Threat Assessment Center (CITAC) and the National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) were created to deal with the increase in Internet-related problems, such as computer viruses, worms, and other malicious programs that threatened U.S. operations. With these developments, the FBI increased its electronic surveillance in public safety and national security investigations, adapting to the telecommunications advancements that changed the nature of such problems.\nSeptember 11 attacks.\nDuring the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, FBI agent Leonard W. Hatton Jr. was killed during the rescue effort while helping the rescue personnel evacuate the occupants of the South Tower, and he stayed when it collapsed. Within months after the attacks, FBI Director Robert Mueller, who had been sworn in a week before the attacks, called for a re-engineering of FBI structure and operations. He made countering every federal crime a top priority, including the prevention of terrorism, countering foreign intelligence operations, addressing cybersecurity threats, other high-tech crimes, protecting civil rights, combating public corruption, organized crime, white-collar crime, and major acts of violent crime.\nIn February 2001, Robert Hanssen was caught selling information to the Russian government. It was later learned that Hanssen, who had reached a high position within the FBI, had been selling intelligence since as early as 1979. He pleaded guilty to espionage and received a life sentence in 2002, but the incident led many to question the security practices employed by the FBI. There was also a claim that Hanssen might have contributed information that led to the September 11, 2001, attacks.\nThe 9/11 Commission's final report on July 22, 2004, stated that the FBI and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were both partially to blame for not pursuing intelligence reports that could have prevented the September 11 attacks. In its most damning assessment, the report concluded that the country had \"not been well served\" by either agency and listed numerous recommendations for changes within the FBI. While the FBI did accede to most of the recommendations, including oversight by the new director of National Intelligence, some former members of the 9/11 Commission publicly criticized the FBI in October 2005, claiming it was resisting any meaningful changes.\nOn July 8, 2007, \"The Washington Post\" published excerpts from UCLA Professor Amy Zegart's book \"Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11\". The \"Post\" reported, from Zegart's book, that government documents showed that both the CIA and the FBI had missed 23 potential chances to disrupt the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The primary reasons for the failures included: agency cultures resistant to change and new ideas; inappropriate incentives for promotion; and a lack of cooperation between the FBI, CIA, and the rest of the United States Intelligence Community. The book blamed the FBI's decentralized structure, which prevented effective communication and cooperation among different FBI offices. The book suggested that the FBI had not evolved into an effective counter-terrorism or counter-intelligence agency, due in large part to deeply ingrained agency cultural resistance to change. For example, FBI personnel practices continued to treat all staff other than special agents as support staff, classifying intelligence analysts alongside the FBI's auto mechanics and janitors.\nFaulty bullet analysis.\nFor over 40 years, the FBI crime lab in Quantico had believed that lead alloys used in bullets had unique chemical signatures. It was analyzing the bullets with the goal of matching them chemically, not only to a single batch of ammunition coming out of a factory, but also to a single box of bullets. The National Academy of Sciences conducted an 18-month independent review of comparative bullet-lead analysis. In 2003, its National Research Council published a report whose conclusions called into question 30 years of FBI testimony. It found the analytic model used by the FBI for interpreting results was deeply flawed, and the conclusion, that bullet fragments could be matched to a box of ammunition, was so overstated that it was misleading under the rules of evidence. One year later, the FBI decided to stop conducting bullet lead analyses.\nAfter a \"60 Minutes\"/\"The Washington Post\" investigation in November 2007, two years later, the Bureau agreed to identify, review, and release all pertinent cases, and notify prosecutors about cases in which faulty testimony was given.\nTechnology.\nIn 2012, the FBI formed the National Domestic Communications Assistance Center to develop technology for assisting law enforcement with technical knowledge regarding communication services, technologies, and electronic surveillance.\nJanuary 6 United States Capitol attack.\nAn FBI informant who participated in the January 6 United States Capitol attack on democratic institutions in Washington D.C. later testified in support of the Proud boys, who were part of the plot. Revelations about the informant raised fresh questions about intelligence failures by the FBI before the riot. According to the Brennan Center, and Senate committees, the FBI's response to white supremacist violence was \"woefully inadequate\". The FBI has long been suspected to have turned a blind eye towards right-wing extremists while disseminating \"conspiracy theories\" on the origin of SARS-CoV-2.\nOrganization.\nOrganizational structure.\nThe FBI is organized into functional branches and the Office of the Director, which contains most administrative offices. An executive assistant director manages each branch. Each branch is then divided into offices and divisions, each headed by an assistant director. The various divisions are further divided into sub-branches, led by deputy assistant directors. Within these sub-branches, there are various sections headed by section chiefs. Section chiefs are ranked analogous to special agents in charge. Four of the branches report to the deputy director while two report to the associate director.\nThe main branches of the FBI are:\nEach branch focuses on different tasks, and some focus on more than one. Here are some of the tasks that different branches are in charge of:\nFBI Headquarters Washington D.C..\nNational Security Branch (NSB)\nIntelligence Branch (IB)\nFBI Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch (CCRSB)\nScience and Technology Branch (STB)\nOther Headquarter Offices.\nInformation and Technology Branch (ITB)\nHuman Resources Branch (HRB)\nAdministrative and financial management support\nOffice of the Director.\nThe Office of the Director serves as the central administrative organ of the FBI. The office provides staff support functions (such as finance and facilities management) to the five function branches and the various field divisions. The office is managed by the FBI associate director, who also oversees the operations of both the Information and Technology and Human Resources Branches.\nSenior staff\nOffice of the Director\nRank structure.\nThe following is a listing of the rank structure found within the FBI (in ascending order):\nLegal authority.\nThe FBI's mandate is established in Title 28 of the United States Code (U.S. Code), Section 533, which authorizes the Attorney General to \"appoint officials to detect and prosecute crimes against the United States\". Other federal statutes give the FBI the authority and responsibility to investigate specific crimes.\nThe FBI's chief tool against organized crime is the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. The FBI is also charged with the responsibility of enforcing compliance of the United States Civil Rights Act of 1964 and investigating violations of the act in addition to prosecuting such violations with the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). The FBI also shares concurrent jurisdiction with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in the enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970.\nThe USA PATRIOT Act increased the powers allotted to the FBI, especially in wiretapping and monitoring of Internet activity. One of the most controversial provisions of the act is the so-called \"sneak and peek\" provision, granting the FBI powers to search a house while the residents are away, and not requiring them to notify the residents for several weeks afterward. Under the PATRIOT Act's provisions, the FBI also resumed inquiring into the library records of those who are suspected of terrorism (something it had supposedly not done since the 1970s).\nIn the early 1980s, Senate hearings were held to examine FBI undercover operations in the wake of the Abscam controversy, which had allegations of entrapment of elected officials. As a result, in the following years a number of guidelines were issued to constrain FBI activities.\nInformation obtained through an FBI investigation is presented to the appropriate U.S. Attorney or Department of Justice official, who decides if prosecution or other action is warranted.\nThe FBI often works in conjunction with other federal agencies, including the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in seaport and airport security, and the National Transportation Safety Board in investigating airplane crashes and other critical incidents. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) has nearly the same amount of investigative manpower as the FBI and investigates the largest range of crimes. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, then\u2013Attorney General Ashcroft assigned the FBI as the designated lead organization in terrorism investigations after the creation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. HSI and the FBI are both integral members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force.\nIndian reservations.\nThe federal government has the primary responsibility for investigating and prosecuting serious crime on Indian reservations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" /><poem>There are 565 federally recognized American Indian Tribes in the United States, and the FBI has federal law enforcement responsibility on nearly 200 Indian reservations. This federal jurisdiction is shared concurrently with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Office of Justice Services (BIA-OJS).\nLocated within the FBI's Criminal Investigative Division, the Indian Country Crimes Unit (ICCU) is responsible for developing and implementing strategies, programs, and policies to address identified crime problems in Indian Country (IC) for which the FBI has responsibility.</poem>\nThe FBI does not specifically list crimes in Native American land as one of its priorities. Often serious crimes have been either poorly investigated or prosecution has been declined. Tribal courts can impose sentences of up to three years, under certain restrictions.\nInfrastructure.\nThe FBI is headquartered at the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C., with 56 field offices in major cities across the United States. The FBI also maintains over 400 resident agencies across the United States, as well as over 50 legal attach\u00e9s at United States embassies and consulates. Many specialized FBI functions are located at facilities in Quantico, Virginia, as well as a \"data campus\" in Clarksburg, West Virginia, where 96\u00a0million sets of fingerprints \"from across the United States are stored, along with others collected by American authorities from prisoners in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan\". The FBI is in process of moving its Records Management Division, which processes Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, to Winchester, Virginia.\nAccording to \"The Washington Post\", the FBI \"is building a vast repository controlled by people who work in a top-secret vault on the fourth floor of the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington. This one stores the profiles of tens of thousands of Americans and legal residents who are not accused of any crime. What they have done is appear to be acting suspiciously to a town sheriff, a traffic cop or even a neighbor.\"\nThe FBI Laboratory, established with the formation of the BOI, did not appear in the J. Edgar Hoover Building until its completion in 1974. The lab serves as the primary lab for most DNA, biological, and physical work. Public tours of FBI headquarters ran through the FBI laboratory workspace before the move to the J. Edgar Hoover Building. The services the lab conducts include \"Chemistry\", \"Combined DNA Index System\" (CODIS), \"Computer Analysis and Response\", \"DNA Analysis\", \"Evidence Response\", \"Explosives\", \"Firearms and Tool marks\", \"Forensic Audio\", \"Forensic Video\", \"Image Analysis\", \"Forensic Science Research\", \"Forensic Science Training\", \"Hazardous Materials Response\", \"Investigative and Prospective Graphics\", \"Latent Prints\", \"Materials Analysis\", \"Questioned Documents\", \"Racketeering Records\", \"Special Photographic Analysis\", \"Structural Design\", and \"Trace Evidence\". The services of the FBI Laboratory are used by many state, local, and international agencies free of charge. The lab also maintains a second lab at the FBI Academy.\nThe FBI Academy, located in Quantico, Virginia, is home to the communications and computer laboratory the FBI utilizes. It is also where new agents are sent for training to become FBI special agents. Going through the 21-week course is required for every special agent. First opened for use in 1972, the facility is located on of woodland. The Academy trains state and local law enforcement agencies, which are invited to the law enforcement training center. The FBI units that reside at Quantico are the \"Field and Police Training Unit\", \"Firearms Training Unit\", \"Forensic Science Research and Training Center\", \"Technology Services Unit\" (TSU), \"Investigative Training Unit\", \"Law Enforcement Communication Unit\", \"Leadership and Management Science Units\" (LSMU), \"Physical Training Unit\", \"New Agents' Training Unit\" (NATU), \"Practical Applications Unit\" (PAU), the \"Investigative Computer Training Unit\" and the \"College of Analytical Studies\".\nIn 2000, the FBI began the Trilogy project to upgrade its outdated information technology (IT) infrastructure. This project, originally scheduled to take three years and cost around $380\u00a0million, ended up over budget and behind schedule. Efforts to deploy modern computers and networking equipment were generally successful, but attempts to develop new investigation software, outsourced to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), were not. Virtual Case File, or VCF, as the software was known, was plagued by poorly defined goals, and repeated changes in management. \nIn January 2005, more than two years after the software was originally planned for completion, the FBI abandoned the project. At least $100\u00a0million, and much more by some estimates, was spent on the project, which never became operational. The FBI has been forced to continue using its decade-old Automated Case Support system, which IT experts consider woefully inadequate. In March 2005, the FBI announced it was beginning a new, more ambitious software project, code-named Sentinel, which they expected to complete by 2009.\nCarnivore was an electronic eavesdropping software system implemented by the FBI during the Clinton administration; it was designed to monitor email and electronic communications. After prolonged negative coverage in the press, the FBI changed the name of its system from \"Carnivore\" to \"DCS1000\". DCS is reported to stand for \"Digital Collection System\"; the system has the same functions as before. The Associated Press reported in mid-January 2005 that the FBI essentially abandoned the use of Carnivore in 2001, in favor of commercially available software, such as NarusInsight.\nThe Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division is located in Clarksburg, West Virginia. Organized beginning in 1991, the office opened in 1995 as the youngest agency division. The complex is the length of three football fields. It provides a main repository for information in various data systems. Under the roof of the CJIS are the programs for the \"National Crime Information Center\" (NCIC), \"Uniform Crime Reporting\" (UCR), \"Fingerprint Identification\", \"Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System\" (IAFIS), \"NCIC 2000\", and the \"National Incident-Based Reporting System\" (NIBRS). Many state and local agencies use these data systems as a source for their own investigations and contribute to the database using secure communications. FBI provides these tools of sophisticated identification and information services to local, state, federal, and international law enforcement agencies.\nThe FBI heads the National Virtual Translation Center, which provides \"timely and accurate translations of foreign intelligence for all elements of the Intelligence Community\".\nIn June 2021, the FBI held a groundbreaking for its planned FBI Innovation Center, set to be built in Huntsville, Alabama. The Innovation Center is to be part of a large, college-like campus costing a total of $1.3 billion in Redstone Arsenal and will act as a center for cyber threat intelligence, data analytics, and emerging threat training.\nPersonnel.\nAs of December\u00a031, 2009[ [update]], the FBI had a total of 33,852 employees. That includes 13,412 special agents and 20,420 support professionals, such as intelligence analysts, language specialists, scientists, information technology specialists, and other professionals.\nLine of Duty Deaths.\nAccording to the Officer Down Memorial Page 87 FBI agents and 2 K9s have died in the line of duty from 1925 to February 2021.\nHiring process.\nTo apply to become an FBI agent, one must be between the ages of 23 and 37, unless one is a preference-eligible veteran, in which case one may apply after age 37. The applicant must also hold U.S. citizenship, be of high moral character, have a clean record, and hold at least a four-year bachelor's degree. At least three years of professional work experience prior to application is also required. All FBI employees require a Top Secret (TS) security clearance, and in many instances, employees need a TS/SCI (Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information) clearance. \nTo obtain a security clearance, all potential FBI personnel must pass a series of Single Scope Background Investigations (SSBI), which are conducted by the Office of Personnel Management. Special agent candidates also have to pass a Physical Fitness Test (PFT), which includes a 300-meter run, one-minute sit-ups, maximum push-ups, and a run. Personnel must pass a polygraph test with questions including possible drug use. Applicants who fail polygraphs may not gain employment with the FBI. Up until 1975, the FBI had a minimum height requirement of .\nBOI and FBI directors.\nFBI directors are appointed (nominated) by the president of the United States and must be confirmed by the United States Senate to serve a term of office of ten years, subject to resignation or removal by the president at his/her discretion before their term ends. Additional terms are allowed following the same procedure.\nJ. Edgar Hoover, appointed by President Calvin Coolidge in 1924, was by far the longest-serving director, serving until his death in 1972. In 1968, Congress passed legislation, as part of the \"Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968\", requiring Senate confirmation of appointments of future directors. As the incumbent, this legislation did not apply to Hoover. The last FBI director was Andrew McCabe. The current FBI director is Kash Patel, appointed by President Donald Trump.\nThe FBI director is responsible for the day-to-day operations at the FBI. Along with the deputy director, the director makes sure cases and operations are handled correctly. The director also is in charge of making sure the leadership in the FBI field offices is staffed with qualified agents. Before the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act was passed in the wake of the September 11 attacks, the FBI director would directly brief the president of the United States on any issues that arise from within the FBI. Since then, the director now reports to the director of national intelligence (DNI), who in turn reports to the President.\nFirearms.\nUpon qualification, an FBI special agent is issued a full-size Glock 22 or compact Glock 23 semi-automatic pistol, both of which are chambered in the .40 S&W cartridge. In May 1997, the FBI officially adopted the Glock, in .40 S&W, for general agent use, and first issued it to New Agent Class 98-1 in October 1997. At present, the Glock 23 \"FG&R\" (finger groove and rail; either 3rd generation or \"Gen4\") is the issue sidearm. \nNew agents are issued firearms, on which they must qualify, on successful completion of their training at the FBI Academy. The Glock 26 (subcompact 9\u00a0mm Parabellum), Glock 23 and Glock 27 (.40 S&W compact and subcompact, respectively) are authorized as secondary weapons. Special agents are also authorized to purchase and qualify with the Glock 21 in .45 ACP.\nSpecial agents of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) and regional SWAT teams are issued the Springfield Armory Professional Model 1911 pistol in .45 ACP.\nIn June 2016, the FBI awarded Glock a contract for new handguns. Unlike the currently issued .40 S&W chambered Glock pistols, the new Glocks will be chambered for 9\u00a0mm Parabellum. The contract is for the full-size Glock 17M and the compact Glock 19M. The \"M\" means the Glocks have been modified to meet government standards specified by a 2015 government request for proposal.\nPublications.\nThe \"FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin\" is published monthly by the FBI Law Enforcement Communication Unit, with articles of interest to state and local law enforcement personnel. First published in 1932 as \"Fugitives Wanted by Police\", the \"FBI Law Bulletin\" covers topics including law enforcement technology and issues, such as crime mapping and use of force, as well as recent criminal justice research, and ViCAP alerts, on wanted suspects and key cases.\nThe FBI also publishes some reports for both law enforcement personnel as well as regular citizens covering topics including law enforcement, terrorism, cybercrime, white-collar crime, violent crime, and statistics. The vast majority of federal government publications covering these topics are published by the Office of Justice Programs agencies of the United States Department of Justice, and disseminated through the National Criminal Justice Reference Service.\nCrime statistics.\nDuring the 1920s the FBI began issuing crime reports by gathering numbers from local police departments. Due to limitations of this system that were discovered during the 1960s and 1970s\u2014victims often simply did not report crimes to the police in the first place\u2014the Department of Justice developed an alternative method of tallying crime, the victimization survey.\nUniform Crime Reports.\nThe Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) compile data from over 17,000 law enforcement agencies across the country. They provide detailed data regarding the volume of crimes to include arrest, clearance (or closing a case), and law enforcement officer information. The UCR focuses its data collection on violent crimes, hate crimes, and property crimes. Created in the 1920s, the UCR system has not proven to be as \"uniform\" as its name implies. The UCR data only reflect the most serious offense in the case of connected crimes and has a very restrictive definition of rape. Since about 93% of the data submitted to the FBI is in this format, the UCR stands out as the publication of choice as most states require law enforcement agencies to submit this data.\nPreliminary Annual \"Uniform Crime Report\" for 2006 was released on June 4, 2006. The report shows violent crime offenses rose 1.3%, but the number of property crime offenses decreased 2.9% compared to 2005.\nNational Incident-Based Reporting System.\nThe National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) crime statistics system aims to address limitations inherent in UCR data. The system is used by law enforcement agencies in the United States for collecting and reporting data on crimes. Local, state, and federal agencies generate NIBRS data from their records management systems. Data is collected on every incident and arrest in the Group A offense category. The Group A offenses are 46 specific crimes grouped in 22 offense categories. Specific facts about these offenses are gathered and reported in the NIBRS system. In addition to the Group A offenses, eleven Group B offenses are reported with only the arrest information. The NIBRS system is in greater detail than the summary-based UCR system. As of 2004[ [update]], 5,271 law enforcement agencies submitted NIBRS data. That amount represents 20% of the United States population and 16% of the crime statistics data collected by the FBI.\neGuardian.\neGuardian is the name of an FBI system, launched in January 2009, to share tips about possible terror threats with local police agencies. The program aims to get law enforcement at all levels sharing data quickly about suspicious activity and people.\neGuardian enables near real-time sharing and tracking of terror information and suspicious activities with local, state, tribal, and federal agencies. The eGuardian system is a spin-off of a similar but classified tool called Guardian that has been used inside the FBI, and shared with vetted partners since 2005.\nControversies.\nThroughout its history, the FBI has been the subject of many controversies, both at home and abroad.\nSpecific practices include:\nMedia portrayal.\nThe FBI has been frequently depicted in popular media since the 1930s. The bureau has participated to varying degrees, which has ranged from direct involvement in the creative process of film or TV series development, to providing consultation on operations and closed cases. A few of the notable portrayals of the FBI on television are the series \"The X-Files\", which started in 1993 and concluded its eleventh season in early 2018, and concerned investigations into paranormal phenomena by five fictional special agents, and the fictional Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) agency in the TV drama \"24\", which is patterned after the FBI Counterterrorism Division. \nThe 1991 movie \"Point Break\" depicts an undercover FBI agent who infiltrated a gang of bank robbers. The 1997 movie \"Donnie Brasco\" is based on the true story of undercover FBI agent Joseph D. Pistone infiltrating the Mafia. The 2005\u20132020 television series \"Criminal Minds\", that follows the team members of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) in the pursuit of serial killers. The 2017 TV series Riverdale where one of the main characters is an FBI agent. The 2015 TV series \"Quantico\", titled after the location of the Bureau's training facility, deals with probationary and special agents, not all of whom, within the show's format, may be fully reliable or even trustworthy. \nThe 2018 series \"FBI\", set in NYC that follows the personal and professional lives of the agents assigned to 26 Federal Plaza (NYC FBI field office). \"FBI\"'s first spin-off titled ' (2019), follows the FBI's Fugitive Task Force in chasing down the US's most wanted criminals, and the second spin-off, ' (2021), follows the FBI's International Fly Team that goes where ever they are needed in the world to protect the US's interests.\nNotable FBI personnel.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11127", "8469462"], "permutation_1": ["11127", "8469462"], "permutation_2": ["11127", "8469462"], "permutation_3": ["11127", "8469462"]}
{"id": "2hop__756738_11125", "docs_added": {"51585": "New Delhi\nCapital city of India\nNew Delhi (; , ) is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the Government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Sansad Bhavan, and the Supreme Court. New Delhi is a municipality within the NCT, administered by the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), which covers mostly Lutyens' Delhi and a few adjacent areas. The municipal area is part of a larger administrative district, the New Delhi district.\nAlthough colloquially \"Delhi\" and \"New Delhi\" are used interchangeably to refer to the National Capital Territory of Delhi, both are distinct entities, with the municipality and the New Delhi district forming a relatively small part within the megacity of Delhi. The National Capital Region is an even larger entity, comprising the entire NCT along with adjoining districts in the two neighbouring states forming a continuously built-up area with it, including Ghaziabad, Noida, Greater Noida, Meerut, YEIDA City, Gurgaon, and Faridabad.\nThe foundation stone of New Delhi, south of central Delhi, was laid by George V during the Delhi Durbar of 1911. It was designed by British architects Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker. The new capital was inaugurated on 13 February 1931, by Viceroy and Governor-General Irwin.\nHistory.\nEstablishment.\nUntil December 1911, Calcutta was the capital of India during the British Rule. However, it had become the centre of the nationalist movements since the late nineteenth century, which led to the Partition of Bengal by Viceroy Curzon. This created massive political and religious upsurge including political assassinations of British officials in Calcutta. The anti-colonial sentiments among the public led to a complete boycott of British goods, which forced the colonial government to reunite Bengal and immediately shift the capital to New Delhi.\nOld Delhi had served as the political and financial centre of several empires of medieval India and the Delhi Sultanate, most notably of the Mughal Empire from 1649 to 1857. During the early 1900s, a proposal was made to the British administration to shift the capital of the British Indian Empire, as India was officially named, from Calcutta on the east coast, to Delhi. The Government of British India felt that it would be logistically easier to administer India from Delhi, which is in the centre of northern India. The land for building the new city of Delhi was acquired under the Land Acquisition Act 1894.\nDuring the Delhi Durbar on 12 December 1911, George V while laying the foundation stone for the viceroy's residence in the Coronation Park, Kingsway Camp, declared that the capital of the Raj would be shifted from Calcutta to Delhi. Three days later, George V and his consort, Mary, laid the foundation stone of New Delhi at Kingsway Camp. Large parts of New Delhi were planned by Edwin Lutyens, who first visited Delhi in 1912, and Herbert Baker, both leading 20th-century British architects. The contract was given to Sobha Singh. The original plan called for its construction in Tughlaqabad, inside the Tughlaqabad Fort, but this was given up because of the Delhi-Calcutta trunk line that passed through the fort. Construction really began after World War I and was completed by 1931. The gardening and planning of plantations was led by A.E.P. Griessen, and later William Mustoe. The city that was later dubbed \"Lutyens' Delhi\" was inaugurated in ceremonies beginning on 10 February 1931 by Viceroy Irwin. Lutyens designed the central administrative area of the city as a testament to Britain's imperial aspirations.\nSoon Lutyens started considering other places. Indeed, the Delhi Town Planning Committee, set up to plan the new imperial capital, with George Swinton as chairman, and John A. Brodie and Lutyens as members, submitted reports for both north and south sites. However, it was rejected by the Viceroy when the cost of acquiring the necessary properties was found to be too high. The central axis of New Delhi, which today faces east at India Gate, was previously meant to be a north\u2013south axis linking the Viceroy's House at one end with Paharganj at the other. Eventually, owing to space constraints and the presence of a large number of heritage sites on the north side, the committee settled on the south site. A site atop the Raisina Hill, formerly Raisina Village, a Meo village, was chosen for the Rashtrapati Bhawan, then known as the Viceroy's House. The reason for this choice was that the hill lay directly opposite the Dinapanah citadel, which was also considered the site of Indraprastha, the ancient region of Delhi. Subsequently, the foundation stone was shifted from the site of Delhi Durbar of 1911\u20131912, where the Coronation Pillar stood, and embedded in the walls of the forecourt of the Secretariat. The Rajpath, also known as King's Way, stretched from the India Gate to the Rashtrapati Bhawan. The Secretariat building, the two blocks of which flank the Rashtrapati Bhawan and houses ministries of the government of India, and the Parliament House, both designed by Baker, are located at the Sansad Marg and run parallel to the Rajpath.\nIn the south, land up to Safdarjung's Tomb was acquired to create what is today known as Lutyens' Bungalow Zone. Before construction could begin on the rocky ridge of Raisina Hill, a circular railway line around the Council House (now Parliament House), called the \"Imperial Delhi Railway\", was built to transport construction material and workers for the next twenty years. The last stumbling block was the Agra-Delhi railway line that cut right through the site earmarked for the hexagonal All-India War Memorial (India Gate) and Kingsway (Rajpath), which was a problem because the Old Delhi Railway Station served the entire city at that time. The line was shifted to run along the Yamuna River, and it began operating in 1924. The New Delhi Railway Station opened in 1926, with a single platform at Ajmeri Gate near Paharganj, and was completed in time for the city's inauguration in 1931. As construction of the Viceroy's House (the present Rashtrapati Bhavan), Central Secretariat, Parliament House, and All-India War Memorial (India Gate) was winding down, the building of a shopping district and a new plaza, Connaught Place, began in 1929, and was completed by 1933. Named after Prince Arthur, 1st Duke of Connaught (1850\u20131942), it was designed by Robert Tor Russell, chief architect to the Public Works Department (PWD).\nAfter the capital of India moved to Delhi, a temporary secretariat building was constructed in a few months in 1912 in North Delhi. Most of the government offices of the new capital moved here from the 'Old secretariat' in Old Delhi (the building now houses the Delhi Legislative Assembly), a decade before the new capital was inaugurated in 1931. Many employees were brought into the new capital from distant parts of India, including the Bengal Presidency and Madras Presidency. Subsequently, housing for them has developed around Gole Market area in the 1920s. Built in the 1940s, to house government employees, with bungalows for senior officials in the nearby Lodi Estate area, Lodi Colony near historic Lodi Gardens, was the last residential areas built by the British Raj.\nPost-independence.\nAfter India gained independence in 1947, limited autonomy was conferred to New Delhi and was administered by a Chief Commissioner appointed by the Government of India. In 1966, Delhi was converted into a union territory and eventually the Chief Commissioner was replaced by a Lieutenant Governor. The Constitution (Sixty-ninth Amendment) Act, 1991 declared the Union Territory of Delhi to be formally known as the National Capital Territory of Delhi. A system was introduced under which the elected government was given wide powers, excluding law and order which remained with the Central Government. The actual enforcement of the legislation came in 1993.\nThe first major extension of New Delhi outside of Lutyens' Delhi came in the 1950s when the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) developed a large area of land southwest of Lutyens' Delhi to create the diplomatic enclave of Chanakyapuri, where land was allotted for embassies, chanceries, high commissions and residences of ambassadors, around a wide central vista, \"Shanti Path\".\nGeography.\nWith a total area of , the municipality of New Delhi forms a small part of the Delhi metropolitan area. Since the city is located on the Indo-Gangetic Plain, there is little difference in elevation across the city. New Delhi and surrounding areas were once a part of the Aravali Range; all that is left of those mountains is the Delhi Ridge, which is also called the Lungs of Delhi. While New Delhi lies on the floodplains of the Yamuna River, it is essentially a landlocked city. East of the river is the urban area of Shahdara.\nSeismology.\nNew Delhi falls under the seismic zone-IV, making it vulnerable to earthquakes. It lies on several fault lines and thus experiences frequent earthquakes, most of them of mild intensity. There was a spike in the number of earthquakes between 2011 and 2015, most notable being a 5.4 magnitude earthquake in 2015 with its epicentre in Nepal, a 4.7-magnitude earthquake on 25 November 2007, a 4.2-magnitude earthquake on 7 September 2011, a 5.2-magnitude earthquake on 5 March 2012, and a swarm of twelve earthquakes, including four of magnitudes 2.5, 2.8, 3.1, and 3.3, on 12 November 2013.\nClimate.\nThe climate of New Delhi is a dry-winter humid subtropical climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Cwa\") bordering on a hot semi-arid climate (K\u00f6ppen \"BSh\") with high variation between summer and winter in terms of both temperature and rainfall. The temperature varies from in summers to around in winters. The area's version of a humid subtropical climate is noticeably different from many other cities with this climate classification in that it features long and extremely hot summers with dust storms, relatively dry and mild winters with wildfire haze, and a monsoonal period. Summers are long, extending from early April to October, with the monsoon season occurring in the middle of the summer. Winter starts in November and peaks in January. Winters are very mild. The annual mean temperature is around ; monthly daily mean temperatures range from approximately . New Delhi's highest temperature ever recorded is on 28 May 2024 at Met Delhi Mungeshpur while the lowest temperature ever recorded is on 11 January 1967 at Indira Gandhi International Airport (formerly known as Palam Airport). The average annual rainfall is and monsoon rainfall from June to September is about , most of which is during the monsoons in July and August.\nAir quality.\nIn Mercer's 2015 annual quality-of-living survey, New Delhi ranks at number 154 out of 230 cities due to bad air quality and pollution. The World Health Organization ranked New Delhi as the world's worst polluted city in 2014 among about 1,600 cities the organisation tracked around the world. In 2016, United States Environmental Protection Agency listed New Delhi as the most polluted city on Earth and IQAir listed New Delhi as the world's most polluted capital city for the second straight year in year 2019.\nIn an attempt to lessen air pollution in New Delhi, which gets worse during the winter, a temporary alternate-day travel scheme for cars using the odd- and even-numbered licence plates system was announced by Delhi government in December 2015. In addition, trucks were to be allowed to enter India's capital only after 11\u00a0pm, two hours later than the existing restriction. The driving restriction scheme was planned to be implemented as a trial from 1 January 2016 for an initial period of 15 days. The restriction was in force between 8\u00a0am and 8\u00a0pm, and traffic was not restricted on Sundays. Public transportation service was increased during the restriction period.\nOn 16 December 2015, the Supreme Court of India mandated several restrictions on Delhi's transportation system to curb pollution. Among the measures, the court ordered to stop registrations of diesel cars and sport utility vehicles with an engine capacity of 2,000 cc and over until 31 March 2016. The court also ordered all taxis in the Delhi region to switch to compressed natural gas by 1 March 2016. Transportation vehicles that are more than 10 years old were banned from entering the capital.\nAnalysing real-time vehicle speed data from Uber Delhi revealed that during the odd-even program, average speeds went up by a statistically significant 5.4 per cent (2.8 standard deviations from normal). This means vehicles have less idling time in traffic and vehicle engines would run closer to minimum fuel consumption. In bordering areas, PM 2.5 levels were recorded more than 400 (ug/m3) while in inner areas in Delhi, they were recorded between 150 and 210 on an average. However, the sub-city of Dwarka, located in the southwest district, has a substantially low level of air pollution. At the NSIT University campus, located in sector 3 Dwarka, pollution levels were as low as 93 PPM.\nOn 7 November 2017, the Indian Medical Association declared a public health emergency due to high pollution levels. The highest being in the Punjabi Bagh district with an air quality index of 999 and in the RK Puram district with an index of 852. The lowest index recorded was in the Anand Vihar district with an index of 319. Levels of PM2.5 were recorded at 710\u00a0\u03bcg/m3, more than 11 times the World Health Organization's safe limit.\nIn a 2018 study, New Delhi was found to be the most polluted capital out of 61 capital cities around the world. In December 2019, IIT Bombay, in partnership with the McKelvey School of Engineering of Washington University in St. Louis, launched the Aerosol and Air Quality Research Facility to study air pollution in New Delhi, among other Indian cities. During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in India, the water quality of the Yamuna and Ganges river basins have improved as industries are closed due to the lockdown. The air quality has also significantly improved during the lockdown. On 5 November 2020, New Delhi recorded its most toxic day in a year, as the concentration of poisonous PM2.5 particles was recorded at 14 times the WHO's safe limit.\nDemographics.\nAs of 2011, the New Delhi Municipal Council area has a population of 249,998. Hindi is the most widely spoken language in New Delhi and the lingua franca of the city. English is primarily used as the formal language by business and government institutes. New Delhi has a literacy rate of 89.38% according to 2011 census, which is the highest in Delhi.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nReligion.\nAccording to 2011 census, Hinduism is the religion of 89.8% of New Delhi's population. There are also communities of Muslims (4.5%), Christians (2.9%), Sikhs (2.0%), Jains (0.4%). Other religious groups include Parsis, Buddhists, and Jews.\nGovernment.\nThe national capital of India, New Delhi is jointly administered by both the Central Government of India and the local Government of Delhi, it is also the capital of the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi.\nNew Delhi is administered through a municipal government, known as the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC). The other urban areas of the metropolis of Delhi are administered by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and Delhi Cantonment Board. As of 2015[ [update]], the government structure of the New Delhi Municipal Council includes a chairperson, three members of New Delhi's Legislative Assembly, two members nominated by the Chief Minister of the NCT of Delhi and five members nominated by the central government.\nThe districts of the NCT were redrawn in 2012 and include a district called New Delhi, albeit with different borders than the municipality. The New Delhi district includes not only the area of the municipality of the same name but also encompasses the Delhi Cantonment and parts of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi area.\nEconomy.\nNew Delhi is the largest commercial city in northern India. It has an estimated net State Domestic Product (FY 2010) of () in nominal terms and ~ () in PPP terms. As of 2013[ [update]], the per capita income of Delhi was Rs. 230000, second highest in India after Goa. GSDP in Delhi at the prices for 2012\u201313 is estimated at Rs 3.88\u00a0trillion (short scale) against Rs 3.11\u00a0trillion (short scale) in 2011\u201312.\nConnaught Place, one of North India's largest commercial and financial centres, is located in the northern part of New Delhi. Adjoining areas such as Barakhamba Road, ITO are also major commercial centres. The government and quasi-government sector was the primary employer in New Delhi. The city's service sector has expanded due in part to the large skilled English-speaking workforce that has attracted many multinational companies. Key service industries include information technology, telecommunications, hotels, banking, media, and tourism.\nThe 2011 World Wealth Report ranks economic activity in New Delhi at 39, but overall the capital is ranked at 37, above cities like Jakarta and Johannesburg. New Delhi, with Beijing, shares the top position as the most targeted emerging markets retail destination among Asia-Pacific markets.\nThe government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi does not release any economic figures specifically for New Delhi but publishes an official economic report on the whole of Delhi annually. According to the \"Economic Survey of Delhi\", the metropolis has a net State Domestic Product (SDP) of Rs. 830.85\u00a0billion (for the year 2004\u201305) and a per capita income of Rs. 53,976 ($1,200). In the year 2008\u201309 New Delhi had a per capita Income of Rs. ($2,595). It grew by 16.2% to reach Rs. ($3,018) in 2009\u201310 fiscal. New Delhi's per capita GDP (at PPP) was at $6,860 during 2009\u201310 fiscal, making it one of the richest cities in India. The tertiary sector contributes 78.4% of Delhi's gross SDP followed by secondary and primary sectors with 20.2% and 1.4% contribution respectively.\nThe gross state domestic product (GSDP) of Delhi at prices for the year 2011\u201312 has been estimated at Rs 3.13\u00a0trillion (short scale), which is an increase of 18.7 per cent over the previous fiscal.\nCulture.\nNew Delhi is a cosmopolitan city due to the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural presence of the vast Indian bureaucracy and political system. The city's capital status has amplified the importance of national events and holidays. National events such as Republic Day, Independence Day and \"Gandhi Jayanti\" (Gandhi's birthday) are celebrated with great enthusiasm in New Delhi and the rest of India. On India's Independence Day (15 August), the prime minister of India addresses the nation from the Red Fort. Most Delhiites celebrate the day by flying kites, which are considered a symbol of freedom. The Republic Day Parade is a large cultural and military parade showcasing India's cultural diversity and military might.\nReligious festivals include Diwali (the festival of light), Maha Shivaratri, Teej, Durga Puja, Chhath Puja, Mahavir Jayanti, Guru Nanak Jayanti, Holi, Lohri, Eid ul-Fitr, Eid ul-Adha, Easter, Raksha Bandhan, and Christmas. The Qutub Festival is a cultural event during which performances of musicians and dancers from all over India are showcased at night, with the Qutub Minar as the chosen backdrop of the event. Other events such as Kite Flying Festival, International Mango Festival and \"Vasant Panchami\" (the Spring Festival) are held every year in Delhi.\nIn 2007, the Japanese Buddhist organisation Nipponzan Myohoji decided to build a Peace Pagoda in the city containing Buddha relics. It was inaugurated by the Dalai Lama.\nHistoric sites, museums and gardens.\nNew Delhi is home to several historic sites and museums. The National Museum, which began with an exhibition of Indian art and artefacts at the Royal Academy in London in the winter of 1947\u201348, was later at the end was shown at the Rashtrapati Bhawan in 1949. Later it was to form a permanent National Museum. On 15 August 1949, the National Museum was formally inaugurated and has 200,000 works of art, both of Indian and foreign origin, covering over 5,000 years.\nThe India Gate, which was built in 1931, was inspired by the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. It is the national monument of India commemorating the 90,000 soldiers of the Indian Army who died while fighting for the British Raj in World War I and the Third Anglo-Afghan War. The monument is barricaded now with entry to the inside arch restricted.\nThe Rajpath, which was built similar to the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es in Paris, is the ceremonial boulevard for the Republic of India, located in New Delhi. The annual Republic Day parade takes place here on 26 January. The Beating retreat takes place here two days later.\nGandhi Smriti in New Delhi is the location where Mahatma Gandhi spent the last 144 days of his life and was assassinated on 30 January 1948. Rajghat is the place where Gandhi was cremated on 31 January 1948 after his assassination and his ashes were buried and make it a final resting place beside the sanctity of the Yamuna River. The Raj Ghat in the shape of the large square platform with black marble was designed by architect Vanu Bhuta.\nJantar Mantar located in Connaught Place was built by Maharaja Jai Singh II of Jaipur. It consists of 13 architectural astronomy instruments. The primary purpose of the observatory was to compile astronomical tables, and to predict the times and movements of the sun, moon and planets.\nNew Delhi is home to Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum, National Gallery of Modern Art, National Museum of Natural History, National Rail Museum, National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum, National Philatelic Museum, Nehru Planetarium, Shankar's International Dolls Museum. and Supreme Court of India Museum,\nIn the coming years, a new National War Memorial and Museum will be constructed in New Delhi for million ().\nNew Delhi is particularly renowned for its beautifully landscaped gardens that can look quite stunning in spring. The largest of these include Buddha Jayanti Park and the historic Lodi Gardens. In addition, there are the gardens in the Presidential Estate, the gardens along the Rajpath and India Gate, the gardens along Shanti Path, the Rose Garden, Nehru Park and the Railway Garden in Chanakya Puri. Also of note is the garden adjacent to the Jangpura Metro Station near the Defence Colony Flyover, as are the roundabout and neighbourhood gardens throughout the city.\nThe New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) area was declared the cleanest in North India, based on solid waste management, access to sanitation and other parameters of cleanliness, under the zone-wise Swachh Survekshan 2017.\nCityscape.\nMuch of New Delhi, planned by the leading 20th-century British architect Edwin Lutyens, was laid out to be the central administrative area of the city as a testament to Britain's imperial ambitions. New Delhi is structured around two central promenades called the Rajpath and the Janpath. The Rajpath, or King's Way, stretches from the Rashtrapati Bhavan to the India Gate. The Janpath (), formerly Queen's Way, begins at Connaught Circus and cuts the Rajpath at right angles. Nineteen foreign embassies are located on the nearby Shantipath (), making it the largest diplomatic enclave in India.\nAt the heart of the city is the magnificent Rashtrapati Bhavan (formerly known as Viceroy's House) which sits atop Raisina Hill. The Secretariat, which houses ministries of the government of India, flanks out of the Rashtrapati Bhavan. The Parliament House, designed by Herbert Baker, is located at the Sansad Marg, which runs parallel to the Rajpath. Connaught Place is a large, circular commercial area in New Delhi, modelled after the Royal Crescent in England. Twelve separate roads lead out of the outer ring of Connaught Place, one of them being the Janpath.\nArchitecture.\nThe New Delhi town plan, like its architecture, was chosen with one single chief consideration: to be a symbol of British power and supremacy. All other decisions were subordinate to this, and it was this framework that dictated the choice and application of symbology and influences from both Hindu and Islamic architecture.\nIt took about 20 years to build the city from 1911. Many elements of New Delhi architecture borrow from indigenous sources; however, they fit into a British Classical/Palladian tradition. The fact that there were any indigenous features in the design was due to the persistence and urging of both the Viceroy Hardinge and historians like E.B. Havell.\nIn the year 2019, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and Government of India introduced the Central Vista redevelopment project proposing the redevelopment of over , costing \u20b9 crore ().\nTransport.\nAir.\nIndira Gandhi International Airport, situated to the southwest of Delhi, is the main gateway for the city's domestic and international civilian air traffic. In 2012\u201313, the airport was used by more than 35\u00a0million passengers, making it one of the busiest airports in South Asia. Terminal 3, which cost () to construct between 2007 and 2010, handles an additional 37\u00a0million passengers annually.\nThe Delhi Flying Club, established in 1928 with two de Havilland Moth aircraft named \"Delhi\" and \"Roshanara\", was based at \"Safdarjung Airport\" which started operations in 1929, when it was the Delhi's only airport and the second in India. The airport functioned until 2001; however, in January 2002 the government closed the airport for flying activities because of security concerns following the New York attacks in September 2001. Since then, the club only carries out aircraft maintenance courses, and is used for helicopter rides to Indira Gandhi International Airport for VIP including the president and the prime minister.\nIn 2010, Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) was conferred the fourth best airport award in the world in the 15\u201325\u00a0million category, and \"Best Improved Airport\" in the Asia-Pacific Region by Airports Council International. The airport was rated as the \"Best airport in the world\" in the 25\u201340\u00a0million passengers category in 2015, by Airports Council International. Delhi Airport also bags two awards for \"The Best Airport in Central Asia/India\" and \"Best Airport Staff in Central Asia/India\" at the Skytrax World Airport Awards 2015.\nA second airport, Noida International Airport, is currently being built in Jewar.\nRoad.\nNew Delhi has one of India's largest bus transport systems. Buses are operated by the state-owned Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC), which owns the largest fleet of compressed natural gas (CNG)-fueled buses in the world and Delhi Transit. Personal vehicles especially cars also form a major chunk of vehicles plying on New Delhi roads. New Delhi has the highest number of registered cars compared to any other metropolitan city in India. Taxis and Auto Rickshaws also ply on New Delhi roads in large numbers. New Delhi has one of the highest road density in India and average vehicle speed is around in peak hours in the city.\nSome roads and expressways serve as important pillars of New Delhi's road infrastructure:\nNational Highways.\nNew Delhi is connected by road to the rest of India through National highways:\nRailway.\nNew Delhi is a major junction in the Indian railway network and is the headquarters of the Northern Railway. The five main railway stations are New Delhi railway station, Delhi Junction, Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station, Anand Vihar Terminal and Sarai Rohilla. The Delhi Ring Railway, a circular railway network in Delhi that runs parallel to the Ring Road, is a part of Delhi's suburban railway services.\nMetro.\nThe Delhi Metro is a rapid transit system serving Delhi, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon and Noida in the National Capital Region of India. Delhi Metro is the world's 12th largest metro system in terms of length. Delhi Metro was India's first modern public transportation system, which had revolutionised travel by providing a fast, reliable, safe, and comfortable means of transport. Presently, the network consists of 10 colour-coded lines serving 255 stations with a total length of . The network has now crossed the boundaries of Delhi to reach Ghaziabad and Noida in Uttar Pradesh, and Faridabad and Gurgaon in Haryana. All stations have escalators, elevators, and tactile tiles to guide the visually impaired from station entrances to trains. It has a combination of elevated, at-grade, and underground lines, and uses both broad gauge and standard gauge rolling stock. Four types of rolling stock are used: Mitsubishi-ROTEM Broad gauge, Bombardier MOVIA, Mitsubishi-ROTEM Standard gauge, and CAF Beasain Standard gauge. According to a study, Delhi Metro has helped in removing about 390,000 vehicles from the streets of Delhi.\nDelhi Metro is being built and operated by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Limited (DMRC), a state-owned company with equal equity participation from the Government of India and the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi. However, the organisation is under administrative control of the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India. Besides the construction and operation of the Delhi metro, DMRC is also involved in the planning and implementation of metro rail, monorail and high-speed rail projects in India and providing consultancy services to other metro projects in the country as well as abroad. The Delhi Metro project was spearheaded by E. Sreedharan, the managing director of DMRC and popularly known as the \"Metro Man\" of India. He famously resigned from DMRC, taking moral responsibility for a metro bridge collapse which took five lives. Sreedharan was awarded with the Legion of Honour by the French government for his contribution to Delhi Metro.\nSports.\nThe city hosted the 2010 Commonwealth Games and annually hosts Delhi Half Marathon foot-race. The city has previously hosted the 1951 Asian Games and the 1982 Asian Games. New Delhi was interested in bidding for the 2019 Asian Games but was turned down by the government on 2 August 2010 amid allegations of corruption in 2010 Commonwealth Games. The city also had a bid to host the 1992 Summer Olympics, but withdrew in March 1986, seven months before the host selection.\nMajor sporting venues in New Delhi include the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Ambedkar Stadium, Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium, Arun Jaitley Stadium, R.K. Khanna Tennis Complex, Dhyan Chand National Stadium and Siri Fort Sports Complex. \nInternational relations and organisations.\nThe city is home to numerous international organisations. The Asian and Pacific Centre for Transfer of Technology of the UNESCAP servicing the Asia-Pacific region is headquartered in New Delhi. New Delhi is home to most UN regional offices in India namely the UNDP, UNODC, UNESCO, UNICEF, WFP, UNV, UNCTAD, FAO, UNFPA, WHO, World Bank, ILO, IMF, UNIFEM, IFC and UNAIDS. UNHCR Representation in India is also located in the city.\nNew Delhi hosts 145 foreign embassies and high commissions.\nSummits, conferences and conventions.\nUnited Nations Conference on Trade and Development hosted its second meeting conference in the year 1968 at New Delhi.\nNew Delhi hosted the 7th NAM Summit in 1983, 4th BRICS Summit in 2012, IBSA Summit in 2015, and 5th Global Conference on CyberSpace in 2017. India has also host the G20 summit in 2023 in New Delhi.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4508360": "Centre for Science and Environment\nIndian not-for-profit organisation\nCentre for Science and Environment (CSE) is a not-for-profit public interest research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, India. Established in 1980, CSE works as a think tank on environment-development issues in India, poor planning, climate shifts devastating India's Sundarbans and advocates for policy changes and better implementation of the already existing policies.\nThe director of the centre is Sunita Narain. Under her leadership, the Centre for Science and Environment exposed the high level of pesticides present in American brands of soft drinks such as Coke and Pepsi.\nIn 2018 the CSE was awarded Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development.\nSome of its projects include investigating food adulteration and consumer product safety.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "31096097": "Monsoon of South Asia\nMonsoon in Indian subcontinent\nThe Monsoon of South Asia is among several geographically distributed global monsoons. It affects the Indian subcontinent, where it is one of the oldest and most anticipated weather phenomena and an economically important pattern every year from June through September, but it is only partly understood and notoriously difficult to predict. Several theories have been proposed to explain the origin, process, strength, variability, distribution, and general vagaries of the monsoon, but understanding and predictability are still evolving.\nThe unique geographical features of the Indian subcontinent, along with associated atmospheric, oceanic, and geographical factors, influence the behavior of the monsoon. Because of its effect on agriculture, on flora and fauna, and on the climates of nations such as Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka \u2013 among other economic, social, and environmental effects \u2013 the monsoon is one of the most anticipated, tracked, and studied weather phenomena in the region. It has a significant effect on the overall well-being of residents and has even been dubbed the \"real finance minister of India\".\nDefinition.\nThe word \"monsoon\", derived from the Arabic word \u0645\u0648\u0633\u0645 (\"mawsim\") meaning \"season\", colloquially refers to a season of greatly intensified precipitation that occurs in some coastal regions in the tropics and subtropics. Scientifically however, while generally defined as a system of winds characterized by a seasonal reversal of direction, there are several more detailed definitions used by various meteorological and climatological sources. Some examples:\nThus, similar seasonal precipitation patterns in other parts of the world are not always true monsoons.\nBackground.\nThe first people to observe the combined pattern of the monsoons' branches over different regions of South Asia were sailors in the Arabian Sea who traveled between Africa, India, and Southeast Asia.\nThe monsoon can be categorized into two \"branches\" based on their spread over the subcontinent:\nAlternatively, it can be categorized into two \"segments\" based on the direction of rain-bearing winds:\nBased on the time of year that these winds bring rain to India, the monsoon can also be categorized into two \"periods\":\nThe complexity of the monsoon of South Asia is not completely understood, making it difficult to accurately predict the quantity, timing, and geographic distribution of the accompanying precipitation. These are the most monitored components of the monsoon, and they determine the water availability in India for any given year.\nChanges of the Monsoon.\nMonsoons typically occur in tropical areas. One area that monsoons impact greatly is"}, "descending_order": ["31096097", "4508360", "51585"], "permutation_1": ["4508360", "51585", "31096097"], "permutation_2": ["4508360", "31096097", "51585"], "permutation_3": ["51585", "4508360", "31096097"]}
{"id": "2hop__249867_557232", "docs_added": {"106642": "Carefree, Arizona\nTown in Maricopa County, Arizona\nCarefree is a town in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. It is a town north of both Phoenix and Scottsdale, located in the far northeast area of the Phoenix Metropolitan Area. As of the 2020 United States census, the population of the town was 3,690.\nHistory.\nCharacterized as an upscale residential area, Carefree was conceived in the mid-1950s by business partners K.T. Palmer and Tom Darlington as a master-planned community. Land sales commenced in 1955 and homebuilding started in 1958. Carefree was incorporated in 1984 to avoid annexation by neighboring Scottsdale.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nAs of the census of 2000, there were 2,927 people, 1,389 households, and 995 families residing in the town. The population density was . There were 1,769 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the town was 98% White, <1% Black or African American, <1% Native American, <1% Asian, <1% from other races, and 1% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 3% of the population.\nThere were 1,389 households, out of which 14.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 66.5% were married couples, 3.2% had a single owner, and 28.3% were non-families. 23.3% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.11 and the average family size was 2.44.\nIn the town, the population was spread out, with 12.7% under the age of 18, 2.0% from 18 to 24, 15.4% from 25 to 44, 40.5% from 45 to 64, and 29.3% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 55 years. For every 100 females, there were 98.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 97.2 males.\nThe median income for a household in the town was $88,702, and the median income for a family was $105,699. Males had a median income of $61,050 versus $38,750 for females. The per capita income for the town was $62,433. About 2.0% of families and 3.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 1.2% of those under the age of 18 and 3.2% of those 65 and older.\nGeography and climate.\nCarefree is in northeastern Maricopa County, bordered by the city of Scottsdale to the south and east and by the town of Cave Creek to the west. Carefree and Cave Creek are sometimes thought of as a single community. The two towns share the local landmark Black Mountain, which rises more than above them, to an elevation of .\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of which , or 0.05%, are listed as water.\nCarefree has a hot semi-arid climate (K\u00f6ppen \"BSh\") with hot summers and mild winters, avoiding a designation of arid by being located closer to the rain-catching central mountains of Arizona, so that it receives about 70 percent (around ) more rainfall annually than does Phoenix. There are 141 afternoons annually with highs of at least , 63.4 afternoons of at least , and three afternoons that exceed . During the winter, 8.3 mornings will fall below freezing; the coldest temperature reported in Carefree is , which occurred on January 13, 1963, and January 7, 1971. Snowfall, although infrequent, can occur. The last measurable snow was February 22, 2019, accumulating 3\u20136\" depending upon the elevation.\nRainfall is sometimes heavy during winter fronts or monsoonal storms; the wettest month on record is January 1993 with , which helped produce a record \u201crain year\u201d total of between July 1992 and June 1993; in contrast between July 1962 and June 1963, only was recorded.\nSites of interest.\nThe Carefree sundial, designed by architect Joe Wong and solar engineer John I. Yellott, was erected in the Sundial Circle plaza in 1959 and claims to be the \"third largest sundial in the Western Hemisphere\". The sundial, which points to the North Star, is made from a steel frame and covered in anodized copper. It measures in diameter. The metal gnomon, the shadow-casting portion of the dial, stands above the plaza and extends .\nCarefree was the long-time home of Southwestern Studios, originally built in 1968 as Fred Graham Studios by actor, stunt man, and Arizona Film Commissioner Fred Graham. The sprawling desert property adjacent to North Scottsdale featured three state-of-the-art soundstages, edit bays, 35mm screening room, make-up, production facilities, western street and backlot. In the early 1970s, Stage 1 of the studio was used for \"The New Dick Van Dyke Show\" starring Dick Van Dyke, Hope Lange, Fannie Flagg, and Marty Brill. Stage 1 also was used for the filming of one of Orson Welles' last films, \"The Other Side of the Wind\", with John Huston, Oja Kodar, Susan Strasberg, Bob Random and Peter Bogdanovich.\nThe studio was used for the filming of Bob Hope's last feature film, \"Cancel My Reservation\", with Eva Marie Saint, Ralph Bellamy, and Forrest Tucker. Scenes were also shot in Carefree and at the studio for Michaelangelo Antonioni's \"Zabriskie Point\", on the back lot, where a mock-up of the Carefree mansion was built and then exploded. The studio was also used for Paul Newman's scenes in \"Pocket Money\", for Bill Cosby's feature debut, \"Man and Boy\", for which the western street was built, and for \"Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure\", again the western street. The short, silent feature \"Time River\" was shot on Stages 2 and 3 and extensively on the back lot and western street sets.\nSouthwestern Studios was also used in television productions. In 1973\u201374, local resident [[Hugh Downs]] produced and hosted two pilot episodes for a unique show, \"Foursome\", that was both a game show and talk show, where four celebrities came together to play various games and interact with each other. In one episode, actors [[Janet Leigh]] and [[Robert Culp]] and comedians [[Jo Anne Worley]] and [[Alan Sues]] played a game of tennis. In the other episode, shot on Stage 3, dancer-singer-actor [[Ann Miller]], Robert Culp, Jo Anne Worley, and Alan Sues played a popular board game. In 1974, Southwestern Studios was the location on Stage 2 and the back lot for the filming of the TV movie, \"McMasters of Sweetwater\", starring [[Jack Cassidy]] and Loretta Ball and directed by [[Robert Butler (director)|Robert Butler]].\nLater renamed Carefree Studios, the studio was razed in 1999. The studio, western street, and pristine desert back lot property was developed into retail space and [[residential development]].\n[[Gordon Lightfoot]] wrote and sang a song named \"[[Carefree Highway (song)|Carefree Highway]]\". He took the name from a section of [[Arizona State Route 74]] in north Phoenix, to explain his mood at that time. The highway runs from the foot of (North) Tom Darlington Drive at the South-West corner of Carefree about 30 miles westward to Lake Pleasant Parkway in Peoria, AZ.\nEducation.\nThe town is served by [[Cave Creek Unified School District]].\nTransportation.\n[[Arizona State Route 74]] runs along the south border of Carefree. [[Cave Creek Road]] runs along the east edge of Carefree, then curves and becomes an east-west road through Carefree. \nCave Creek is not a member of [[Valley Metro]] and does not have local bus service.\nSkyRanch is a private airport located in Carefree.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n[[Category:Towns in Maricopa County, Arizona]]\n[[Category:Populated places established in 1958]]\n[[Category:1958 establishments in Arizona]]\n[[Category:Phoenix metropolitan area]]", "37137075": "Desert Forest Golf Club\nGolf course and club in Carefree, Arizona\nDesert Forest Golf Club is a par-72 golf course and club located in Carefree, Arizona. The course is 7201 yards long and located underneath Black Mountain in the Sonoran Desert.\nHistory.\nDesert Forest Golf Club, Carefree, Arizona, was designed by Robert \"Red\" Lawrence in 1961 and established in 1962, becoming the first desert golf layout in the Southwestern United States and earning its designer the nickname of \"Desert Fox\". The course was created as a part of the development plans of club founders K.T. Palmer and Tom Darlington, who created the town of Carefree north of Scottsdale in the early 1950s. The course is located in the Sonoran Desert at an elevation of about 2400\u20133000 feet. Very little earth was moved in the creation of the course, resulting in narrow, rolling fairways that follow the natural terrain. It is considered to be the first course in the western deserts to incorporate the desert itself into the course design, instead of imposing eastern designs onto the desert landscape. According to Scott Gummer of \"Links Magazine\", \"Beyond the boundary markers [the designer] staked, nothing was to be touched. Everything was\u2014and remains today\u2014in play, from the saguaro, ocotillo, prickly pear and myriad other varieties of cactus to the javelinas, coyotes, roadrunners and rattlesnakes that call the desert home.\"\n\"Golfweek\" has consistently ranked Desert Forest among the 50 best golf courses in the United States. Then in 2009 \"Golf Magazine\" ranked Desert Forest as the 35th best in the world on its list of the \"50 Greatest Courses of the Last 50 Years\", making it the only course in the state of Arizona to make that list. Author Jeff Barr named Desert Forest's holes number 7, 13, and 16 as among the most important holes in golf in his book \"1001 Golf Holes You Must Play Before You Die\". Over time the course has also ranked among the best in the US according to \"Golf Digest Magazine\", which began keeping a list of \"America's 100 Greatest Golf Courses\" (first as \"America's 100 Most Testing Courses\") in 1969, a list on which Desert Forest has appeared for a total of 17 of the years since. This makes it one of the most consistently ranked golf courses by the magazine in America.\nIn 2013 Golf Course Architect David Zinkand was engaged to create a new Master Plan for the golf course, and to oversee subsequent construction. The golf course was rebuilt from tee to green, including state of the art infrastructure. Changes and enhancements were made to accommodate the modern game, while staying true to the original Red Lawrence routing and use of the desert. Zinkand has created a masterful update of this classic American golf course.\nNational Championship Tournaments.\nIn 1990 Desert Forest hosted the USGA Senior Amateur Championship, over the week of October 15 to October 20, 1990. The winner of the tournament was Jackie Cummings, who won a semi-final match against Rick Jones after eliminating the 1988 Senior Amateur Champion Clarence Moore in the quarter-finals. Cummings became the youngest winner in the history of the championship at that time, winning at age 55 by defeating fellow finalist Bobby Clark.\nOver the week of September 29 to October 4, 2007, Desert Forest hosted the U.S. Women's Mid-Amateur. The winner of the stroke-play event was Dawn Woodard, defeating runner-up Virginia Grimes by two strokes after shooting a 70 in the first round and a 74 in the second. The winner of the match-play event was Meghan Bolger, who defeated finalist Kerry Postillion (a Desert Forest member) 1-up in the championship round. The course has also hosted several other U.S. Mid-Amateur and U.S. Women's Mid-Amateur qualifiers previously. The course is also a previous host to other major tournaments including the Goldwater Cup on several occasions and the Phoenix Silver Pro AM in 1994.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "8748944": "Forest Oaks Country Club\nThe Forest Oaks Country Club is located in Greensboro, North Carolina. It is primarily known for its golf course with the PGA Tour event held there from 1977 through 2007: the Wyndham Championship, formerly the Greater Greensboro Chrysler Classic, and the Greater Greensboro Open (GGO). The club was established in 1962 and has recently converted to a semi-private facility.\nAmenities.\nThe golf course at Forest Oaks has five sets of tees making it accessible for golfers of varying skill levels. In addition, it has a six lane swimming pool, six lighted clay tennis courts , and six pickleball courts. It also offers the standard range of country club resources: meals and drinks at the clubhouse bar and restaurant, golf and tennis lessons, and the ability to host private events.\nGolf course.\nThe course at Forest Oaks was originally designed by Ellis Maples and opened in 1962. It underwent only minor alterations until 2002, when golfer Davis Love III was hired to redesign it. The fairways are grassed by Tift Sport Bermuda grass and the greens with a mix of A4 and A1 bentgrass. Par for the course is 72 and it has a slope rating of 135. Golf World Magazine gave the new course a 4.7 rating out of a possible 5.0.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "22872709": "Forest of Arden Hotel and Country Club\nHotel and country club complex in England\nThe Forest of Arden Hotel & Country Club is a hotel and country club complex in England. It is located to the east of Birmingham Airport in Warwickshire. In October 2023, it was acquired by Blackstone Inc. to be operated under their Warner Leisure Hotels brand. I was previously operated by Marriott Hotels & Resorts.\nThe Forest of Arden has two golf courses, the Arden and the Aylesford, both of which were designed by Donald Steel, and a golf academy. The Arden is the championship course, and has been the venue for many prestigious tournaments, including European Tour events, the British Masters on three occasions, and the English Open four times between 1993 and 1996.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "37591070": "Robert Lawrence (golf course architect)\nRobert \"Red\" Lawrence was an American golf course architect, largely producing courses in the US states of Arizona and New Mexico.\nLife and career.\nLawrence was born in White Plains, New York, in 1893. He began his career in 1919, as layout engineer of Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York, becoming part of what is known as the second generation of major American golf course designers. He is also known as a member of the \"Philadelphia School\" of golf course design, and was involved in the re-design of the original and premier example of this school the Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. In his early career, Lawrence was largely under the tutelage of William S. Flynn between 1921 and 1932, serving as the course architect's design assistant. He then became the manager of several important golf and country clubs, before becoming a full-time golf course architect. Lawrence was a founding member of the American Society of Golf Course Architects in 1946. By the age of 65 he moved from his residency in Boca Raton, Florida, to Arizona, where he became a prolific architect of western American golf courses.\nIn 1962 he earned the additional moniker \"Desert Fox\" for his design of the Desert Forest Golf Club, the world's first course built entirely in the desert. At Desert Forest, the Championship Golf Course at the University of New Mexico, and other courses, he is known for building a course using the natural terrain of the area and including the original aspects of the region in the design. In 1974 Lawrence designed an 18-hole addition to The Wigwam golf club, a course that was eventually named the \"Red\" course in honor of his long-term nickname. His golf courses at the Tubac Golf Resort & Spa were featured in the 1996 Kevin Costner film \"Tin Cup\". Lawrence died in Tucson on July 27, 1976, at the age of 83, and inducted into the Arizona Golf Hall of Fame posthumously in 2003.\nGolf courses.\nThe following are examples of golf courses designed by Lawrence (the list does not include every course he designed):\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "9174700": "Doha Golf Club\nThe Doha Golf Club in Doha, Qatar is an 18-hole, 7,374-yard, par 72 championship course that was designed by Peter Harradine. The Doha Golf Club is also one of the first grass golf course ever built in the Middle East. Open to nonmembers, it has a 2 808 yards long floodlit nine-hole academy course, and a clubhouse with three restaurants and a golf shop.\nThe club hosts the Qatar Masters golf tournament.\nGeography.\nThe Doha Golf Club is located in Al Egla, a northern district of Qatar's capital Doha which is just north of West Bay.\nFeatures.\nClubhouse.\nThe Doha Golf Club also has a clubhouse.\nCourses.\nThe Doha Golf Club was designed with eight strategically positioned lakes, 65 giant cacti which were imported from the deserts of Arizona, more than 10 000 green trees and shrubs, numerous limestone formations and an abundance of lush and lengthy fairways, which were all designed to present a startling contrast to the desert that surrounds this green golf club.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1513620": "Desert Inn\nHistoric casino hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada\nThe Desert Inn, also known as the D.I., was a hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada, which operated from April 24, 1950, to August 28, 2000. Designed by architect Hugh Taylor and interior design by Jac Lessman, it was the fifth resort to open on the Strip, the first four being El Rancho Vegas, The New Frontier, Flamingo, and the El Rancho (then known as the Thunderbird). It was situated between Desert Inn Road and Sands Avenue.\nThe Desert Inn opened with 300 rooms and the \"Sky Room\" restaurant, headed by a chef formerly of the Ritz Paris, which once had the highest vantage point on the Las Vegas Strip. The casino, at , was one of the largest in Nevada at the time. The nine-story St. Andrews Tower was completed during the first renovation in 1963, and the 14-story Augusta Tower became the Desert Inn's main tower when it was completed in 1978 along with the seven-story Wimbledon Tower. The Palms Tower was completed in 1997 with the second and final renovation. The Desert Inn was the first hotel in Las Vegas to feature a fountain at the entrance. In 1997, the Desert Inn underwent a $200 million renovation and expansion, but after it was purchased for $270 million by Steve Wynn in 2000, he decided to demolish it and build the Wynn Las Vegas resort and casino where the Desert Inn once stood, and later, Encore. The remaining towers of the Desert Inn were imploded in 2004.\nThe original performance venue at the Desert Inn was the Painted Desert Room, later the Crystal Room, which opened in 1950 with 450 seats. Frank Sinatra made his Las Vegas debut there on September 13, 1951, and became a regular performer. The property included an 18-hole golf course which hosted the PGA Tour Tournament of Champions from 1953 to 1966. The golf course remained in place and is now a part of the Wynn resort.\nHistory.\nThe hotel was situated at 3145 Las Vegas Boulevard South, between Desert Inn Road and Sands Avenue. The original name was \"Wilbur Clark's Desert Inn\". Wilbur Clark, described by Frank Sinatra biographer James Kaplan as a \"onetime San Diego bellhop and Reno craps dealer\", originally began building the resort with his brother in 1947 with $250,000, but ran out of money. Author Hal Rothman notes that \"for nearly two years the framed structure sat in the hot desert sun, looking more like an ancient relic than a nascent casino\". Clark approached the Reconstruction Finance Corporation for investment, but it was struggling financially. In 1949, he met with Moe Dalitz, the head of the notorious Cleveland Syndicate, which had ties to the Mayfield Road Mob, and Dalitz agreed to fund 75% of the project with $1.3 million, and construction resumed. Much of the financing came from the American National Insurance Company (ANICO), though Clark became the public frontman of the resort while Dalitz remained quietly in the background as the principal owner. The resort would eventually be renamed Desert Inn and was called the \"D.I.\" by Las Vegas locals and regular guests.\nThe Desert Inn opened formally on April 24, 1950, at a two-day gala which was heavily publicized nationally. Journalists from all of the major newspapers and magazines were invited, and the hotel paid $5,700 to cover air tickets. 150 invitations were sent out by Clark to VIPs with a credit limit of $10,000. About half the attendees at the opening were from California and Nevada. At the opening show in the Painted Desert Room were performers such as Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Vivian Blaine, Pat Patrick, The Donn Arden Dancers, Van Heflin, Abbott and Costello, and the Desert Inn Orchestra, led by Ray Noble. In attendance were a number of mafiosi, including Black Bill Tocco, Joe Massei, Sam Maceo, Peter Licavoli, and Frank Malone in a gala which Barbara Greenspun believed marked the beginning of heavy involvement of the mafia in the development of Las Vegas. Sidney Korshak was one of its early investors.\nThe Desert Inn became known for its \"opulence\" and top-notch service. The first manager of the Desert Inn had previously worked as the manager at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco. Lew and Edie Wasserman were frequent guests of the hotel. During the 1950s, the hotel often hosted the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Winston Churchill, Adlai Stevenson, Senator John F. Kennedy, and former President Harry S. Truman.\nIn the mid 1940s and early 1950s the city and its Chamber of Commerce worked to keep the Vegas nickname of the \"Atomic City\" going to attract tourists. After the Desert Inn opened, so called \"bomb parties\" famously took place in the hotel's panoramic Sky Room, where patrons could view the detonations from a relatively safe distance while drinking Atomic Cocktails.\nIn 1959, Lawrence Wien, owner of New York City's Plaza Hotel purchased the hotel, but signed a management deal for Clark to remain as manager. In the early 1960s, the mafia-financed casino hotels of the Las Vegas Strip and Nevada came under close scrutiny by the FBI, and they placed increased pressure on the Nevada Gaming Control Board to force the mobsters out of Las Vegas. After Sam Giancana was spotted on the premises of Frank Sinatra's Cal Neva Lodge & Casino at Lake Tahoe, his gambling license was removed by the Board and he was forced to sell up and forfeit his share in the Sands Hotel and Casino. The Desert Inn faced similar scrutiny by the FBI, attracting controversy at the same time for the involvement of Dalitz and his mobster associates, but simultaneously called for the prosecution of the FBI for illegal wiretapping. In 1964, Clark sold his remaining share in the hotel to Dalitz and business associates Morris Kleinman, Thomas McGinty and Sam Tucker. He died of a heart attack the following year. The bell captain of the Desert Inn, Jack Butler, remembered Clark: \"Wilbur was the greatest guy. Without him this town never would've got off the ground. Everyone came into the club just to see him and he was all over the postcards. He was the only boss who would agree to have his picture taken\".\nThe Desert Inn's most famous guest, businessman Howard Hughes, arrived on Thanksgiving Day 1966, renting the hotel's entire top two floors. After staying past his initial ten-day reservation, he was asked to leave in December so that the resort could accommodate the high rollers who were expected for New Year's Eve. Instead of leaving, Hughes started negotiations to buy the Desert Inn. On March 27, 1967, Hughes purchased the resort from Dalitz for $6.2 million in cash and $7 million in loans. This was the first of many Las Vegas resort purchases by Hughes, including the Sands Hotel and Casino ($14.6 million) and the Frontier Hotel and Casino ($23 million). However, Hughes refused to include the PGA Tour Tournament of Champions in the deal, so Dalitz moved the tournament to his Stardust Resort and Casino in 1967 and 1968.\nThe reclusive Hughes continued to live in his penthouse suite at the Desert Inn for four years, never leaving his bedroom. Usually unclothed, he spent his time \"negotiating purchases and business deals with the curtains drawn and windows and doors sealed shut with tape\", and did not allow anyone from the hotel staff to come in and clean his room. On the eve of Thanksgiving 1970, he was removed from his room on a stretcher and flown to the Bahamas. After Hughes's death in 1976, the hotel remained under the Summa Corporation, which completed the extensive renovation that he had ordered. Summa sold the hotel to Kirk Kerkorian and the Tracinda Corporation in 1986, and it became known as the MGM Desert Inn.\nIn 1992, Frank Sinatra celebrated his 77th birthday at the hotel in an event that generated much media attention. Dick Taylor, the CEO of public relations firm Rogers & Cowan recalled: \"We had the stars assemble in the casino's presidential suite and then took them in limos to the entrance of the hotel, where the press and hundreds of fans were gathered, like a Hollywood movie premiere. The stars were interviewed on the red carpet and in they went to the famed Crystal Room. It was a very big deal.\"\nModern history.\nKerkorian sold the resort to ITT Sheraton in 1993 for $160 million and it was renamed the Sheraton Desert Inn. In May 1994, ITT Sheraton announced plans to build the Sheraton Desert Kingdom, a $750 million, 3,500-room megaresort on the property, adjacent to the existing Sheraton Desert Inn. When ITT Sheraton bought Caesars World in December 1994, plans for the new resort were shelved. In 1997, ITT Sheraton undertook a $200 million renovation of the Augusta Tower and St. Andrews Tower and expansion, with the building and completion of the Palms Tower. The resort was returned to its historic name, The Desert Inn, dropping the Sheraton name, and was placed in the ITT Sheraton Luxury Collection division. ITT Sheraton itself was sold the following year to Starwood.\nDue to losing money, Starwood immediately put The Desert Inn up for sale, and contracted a sale to Sun International Hotels Ltd. on May 19, 1999, for $275 million. The sale to Sun International fell through the following March, however. Also in 1999, Sinatra's and the Rat Pack's estate managers, Sheffield Enterprises Inc., sued the Desert Inn, claiming an infringement of rights in their use of Sinatra's name and persona in its advertising and sales, including the words \"Frank\", \"Ol' Blue Eyes\", \"the chairman of the Board\" and \"The Rat Pack\". Sinatra's estate specifically objected to their use in \"billboard advertising, marquees, alcoholic beverages and wine menus, and on the front and back of tee-shirts and caps at its gift shop\" and alleged photographs of Sinatra and his signature on the walls behind the bar near the entrance to the Starlight Lounge of the Desert Inn.\nThe Desert Inn celebrated its 50th anniversary on April 24, 2000. Celebrations were held for a week and a celebrity golf tournament was held with the likes of Robert Loggia, Chris O'Donnell, Robert Urich, Susan Anton, Vincent Van Patten and Tony Curtis. As part of the festivities, a time capsule was buried in a granite burial chamber on April 25, to be reopened on April 25, 2050. Three days later, on April 27, Steve Wynn purchased the resort from Starwood for $270 million. Wynn closed the Desert Inn at 2:00\u00a0a.m. on August 28, 2000.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"Long time residents were stunned. They had endured the loss of the Dunes, the Sands, the Aladdin, the Landmark and the Hacienda but the loss of the Desert Inn seemed to hit many of them on more personal level. Perhaps it was that the Desert Inn had been the favored place for locals to go to for dancing and dining. Perhaps it was all the myth surrounding Wilbur Clark, Moe Dalitz and Howard Hughes. Or maybe it was that long time residents were beginning to realize that their town was forever changing and would never again be that small, wonderful Entertainment Capital of the World where you could see Sinatra and the Rat Pack or Elvis for dinner and drinks.\"\n\u2014Wilbur Clark's Desert Inn Hotel History\nOn October 23, 2001, the Augusta Tower, the Desert Inn's southernmost building, was imploded to make room for a mega-resort that Wynn planned to build. Coming a month after the September 11 attacks, the implosion was marked with less fanfare than previous Las Vegas demolition spectacles due to its similarity to the collapse of the Twin Towers. Originally intended to be named Le R\u00eave, the new project opened as Wynn Las Vegas. The remaining two towers, the St. Andrews Tower and Palms Tower were both temporarily used as the Wynn Gallery, spanning to display some of Wynn's art collection. The St. Andrews Tower and Palms Tower were finally imploded on November 16, 2004.\nArchitecture and features.\nThe initial hotel, a $6.5 million property set in 200 acres, was designed by Hugh Taylor who was hired after Wilbur Clark and Wayne McAllister could not agree on the design. Interiors were by noted New York architect Jac Lessman. The property conveyed the image of a \"southwestern spa\" that was \"half ranch house, half nightclub\". It was built of \"cinder blocks but trimmed with sandstone and finished throughout the inside with redwood\". The logo of the hotel was a Joshua tree cactus. The driveway into the hotel passed under an \"old-fashioned ranch sign\" bearing the name \"Wilbur Clark's Desert Inn\" in scripted letters. The Desert Inn was the first hotel in Las Vegas to feature a fountain at the entrance. A \"Dancing Waters\" show involved the fountain jets choreographed to music.\nThe interior of the hotel was finished in redwood with flagstone flooring. The public space included a registration area, a casino, two bars, a coffee shop, a restaurant, various commercial shops and services, and a broadcasting station for K-RAM radio. Guest rooms were located in wings situated behind the main building, surrounding the figure-eight swimming pool. The hotel originally had 300 rooms, each outfitted with air conditioning with individual thermostats.\nThe lounge was located in a three-story, glass-sided tower at the front of the hotel known as the \"Sky Room\", which was the largest structure on the Strip at the time of its construction and commanded views of the mountains and desert all around, as well as overlooked the \"Dancing Waters\" feature. The \"Sky Room\" restaurant was headed by a chef formerly of the Ritz Paris.\nThe original performance venue at the Desert Inn was the 450 seat Painted Desert Room, later the Crystal Room, which opened in 1950 with 450 seats. Charles Cobelle created the handpainted murals, and a \"band car\" was used to move the orchestra within the showroom. Next door was a restaurant, the Cactus Room. The Kachina Doll Ranch was a supervised play area for guests' children. The hotel had a ladies salon and health club from the outset. Another performance venue at the hotel was the Lady Luck Lounge.\nThe hotel had its first addition when in 1963 the St. Andrews Tower was built. The tower was designed by William B. Tabler. A near-identical tower by Tabler was built concurrently at the Stardust, which was under common ownership. In the 1970s, the hotel underwent a $54-million renovation under Howard Hughes, which resumed under the responsibility of the Summa Corporation after his death in 1976. The 14-story Augusta Tower became the Desert Inn's main tower when it was completed in 1978. The seven-story Wimbledon Tower contained duplex suites, and resembled a modern version of a Mayan pyramid. It overlooked the golf course and was built at the same time, bringing the total room count to 825. By 1978, most of the 1950s structures on the property had been replaced with modern buildings and the property was renamed the Desert Inn and Country Club. It featured full country club amenities open to guests of the hotel, including a club house, driving range, pro shop, restaurant and lounge at the golf club; 10 tournament-class outdoor tennis courts; and a spa. Three restaurants were added: the \"small, intimate\" Monte Carlo Room, the \"gourmet\" Portofino Room, and the Ho Wan Chinese restaurant. At the time of its sale to ITT-Sheraton in 1993, the Desert Inn had the largest frontage of any casino hotel on the Las Vegas Strip, measuring feet.\nIn 1997, the Desert Inn underwent a $200 million renovation and expansion by Steelman Partners, giving it a new Mediterranean-looking exterior with white stucco and red clay tile roofs. The room count was reduced to 715 to provide more luxurious accommodations. The nine-story Palm Tower was completed, the lagoon-style pool was added, and notable changes were made to the Grand Lobby Atrium, Starlight Lounge, Villas Del Lago, and new golf shop and country club. The seven-story lobby, fully built in marble, was also a major part of the renovation.\nCasino.\nAt its opening in 1950, the casino, at , was one of the largest in Nevada at the time. The windowless room included \"five crap tables, three roulette wheels, four black jack tables and 75 slot machines\", together with a sportsbook. Hundreds of coin-operated gambling machines \u2013 including slot machines, video poker, 21, and keno \u2013 were installed during the 1978 renovation. The casino acquired a reputation for attracting the high rollers. On January 27, 2000, the Megabucks jackpot record for Las Vegas was broken when $34"}, "descending_order": ["37137075", "8748944", "22872709", "37591070", "9174700", "1513620", "106642"], "permutation_1": ["1513620", "22872709", "37137075", "37591070", "9174700", "106642", "8748944"], "permutation_2": ["1513620", "22872709", "9174700", "8748944", "37591070", "37137075", "106642"], "permutation_3": ["37137075", "8748944", "22872709", "1513620", "9174700", "37591070", "106642"]}
{"id": "2hop__756738_11179", "docs_added": {"51585": "New Delhi\nCapital city of India\nNew Delhi (; , ) is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the Government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Sansad Bhavan, and the Supreme Court. New Delhi is a municipality within the NCT, administered by the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), which covers mostly Lutyens' Delhi and a few adjacent areas. The municipal area is part of a larger administrative district, the New Delhi district.\nAlthough colloquially \"Delhi\" and \"New Delhi\" are used interchangeably to refer to the National Capital Territory of Delhi, both are distinct entities, with the municipality and the New Delhi district forming a relatively small part within the megacity of Delhi. The National Capital Region is an even larger entity, comprising the entire NCT along with adjoining districts in the two neighbouring states forming a continuously built-up area with it, including Ghaziabad, Noida, Greater Noida, Meerut, YEIDA City, Gurgaon, and Faridabad.\nThe foundation stone of New Delhi, south of central Delhi, was laid by George V during the Delhi Durbar of 1911. It was designed by British architects Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker. The new capital was inaugurated on 13 February 1931, by Viceroy and Governor-General Irwin.\nHistory.\nEstablishment.\nUntil December 1911, Calcutta was the capital of India during the British Rule. However, it had become the centre of the nationalist movements since the late nineteenth century, which led to the Partition of Bengal by Viceroy Curzon. This created massive political and religious upsurge including political assassinations of British officials in Calcutta. The anti-colonial sentiments among the public led to a complete boycott of British goods, which forced the colonial government to reunite Bengal and immediately shift the capital to New Delhi.\nOld Delhi had served as the political and financial centre of several empires of medieval India and the Delhi Sultanate, most notably of the Mughal Empire from 1649 to 1857. During the early 1900s, a proposal was made to the British administration to shift the capital of the British Indian Empire, as India was officially named, from Calcutta on the east coast, to Delhi. The Government of British India felt that it would be logistically easier to administer India from Delhi, which is in the centre of northern India. The land for building the new city of Delhi was acquired under the Land Acquisition Act 1894.\nDuring the Delhi Durbar on 12 December 1911, George V while laying the foundation stone for the viceroy's residence in the Coronation Park, Kingsway Camp, declared that the capital of the Raj would be shifted from Calcutta to Delhi. Three days later, George V and his consort, Mary, laid the foundation stone of New Delhi at Kingsway Camp. Large parts of New Delhi were planned by Edwin Lutyens, who first visited Delhi in 1912, and Herbert Baker, both leading 20th-century British architects. The contract was given to Sobha Singh. The original plan called for its construction in Tughlaqabad, inside the Tughlaqabad Fort, but this was given up because of the Delhi-Calcutta trunk line that passed through the fort. Construction really began after World War I and was completed by 1931. The gardening and planning of plantations was led by A.E.P. Griessen, and later William Mustoe. The city that was later dubbed \"Lutyens' Delhi\" was inaugurated in ceremonies beginning on 10 February 1931 by Viceroy Irwin. Lutyens designed the central administrative area of the city as a testament to Britain's imperial aspirations.\nSoon Lutyens started considering other places. Indeed, the Delhi Town Planning Committee, set up to plan the new imperial capital, with George Swinton as chairman, and John A. Brodie and Lutyens as members, submitted reports for both north and south sites. However, it was rejected by the Viceroy when the cost of acquiring the necessary properties was found to be too high. The central axis of New Delhi, which today faces east at India Gate, was previously meant to be a north\u2013south axis linking the Viceroy's House at one end with Paharganj at the other. Eventually, owing to space constraints and the presence of a large number of heritage sites on the north side, the committee settled on the south site. A site atop the Raisina Hill, formerly Raisina Village, a Meo village, was chosen for the Rashtrapati Bhawan, then known as the Viceroy's House. The reason for this choice was that the hill lay directly opposite the Dinapanah citadel, which was also considered the site of Indraprastha, the ancient region of Delhi. Subsequently, the foundation stone was shifted from the site of Delhi Durbar of 1911\u20131912, where the Coronation Pillar stood, and embedded in the walls of the forecourt of the Secretariat. The Rajpath, also known as King's Way, stretched from the India Gate to the Rashtrapati Bhawan. The Secretariat building, the two blocks of which flank the Rashtrapati Bhawan and houses ministries of the government of India, and the Parliament House, both designed by Baker, are located at the Sansad Marg and run parallel to the Rajpath.\nIn the south, land up to Safdarjung's Tomb was acquired to create what is today known as Lutyens' Bungalow Zone. Before construction could begin on the rocky ridge of Raisina Hill, a circular railway line around the Council House (now Parliament House), called the \"Imperial Delhi Railway\", was built to transport construction material and workers for the next twenty years. The last stumbling block was the Agra-Delhi railway line that cut right through the site earmarked for the hexagonal All-India War Memorial (India Gate) and Kingsway (Rajpath), which was a problem because the Old Delhi Railway Station served the entire city at that time. The line was shifted to run along the Yamuna River, and it began operating in 1924. The New Delhi Railway Station opened in 1926, with a single platform at Ajmeri Gate near Paharganj, and was completed in time for the city's inauguration in 1931. As construction of the Viceroy's House (the present Rashtrapati Bhavan), Central Secretariat, Parliament House, and All-India War Memorial (India Gate) was winding down, the building of a shopping district and a new plaza, Connaught Place, began in 1929, and was completed by 1933. Named after Prince Arthur, 1st Duke of Connaught (1850\u20131942), it was designed by Robert Tor Russell, chief architect to the Public Works Department (PWD).\nAfter the capital of India moved to Delhi, a temporary secretariat building was constructed in a few months in 1912 in North Delhi. Most of the government offices of the new capital moved here from the 'Old secretariat' in Old Delhi (the building now houses the Delhi Legislative Assembly), a decade before the new capital was inaugurated in 1931. Many employees were brought into the new capital from distant parts of India, including the Bengal Presidency and Madras Presidency. Subsequently, housing for them has developed around Gole Market area in the 1920s. Built in the 1940s, to house government employees, with bungalows for senior officials in the nearby Lodi Estate area, Lodi Colony near historic Lodi Gardens, was the last residential areas built by the British Raj.\nPost-independence.\nAfter India gained independence in 1947, limited autonomy was conferred to New Delhi and was administered by a Chief Commissioner appointed by the Government of India. In 1966, Delhi was converted into a union territory and eventually the Chief Commissioner was replaced by a Lieutenant Governor. The Constitution (Sixty-ninth Amendment) Act, 1991 declared the Union Territory of Delhi to be formally known as the National Capital Territory of Delhi. A system was introduced under which the elected government was given wide powers, excluding law and order which remained with the Central Government. The actual enforcement of the legislation came in 1993.\nThe first major extension of New Delhi outside of Lutyens' Delhi came in the 1950s when the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) developed a large area of land southwest of Lutyens' Delhi to create the diplomatic enclave of Chanakyapuri, where land was allotted for embassies, chanceries, high commissions and residences of ambassadors, around a wide central vista, \"Shanti Path\".\nGeography.\nWith a total area of , the municipality of New Delhi forms a small part of the Delhi metropolitan area. Since the city is located on the Indo-Gangetic Plain, there is little difference in elevation across the city. New Delhi and surrounding areas were once a part of the Aravali Range; all that is left of those mountains is the Delhi Ridge, which is also called the Lungs of Delhi. While New Delhi lies on the floodplains of the Yamuna River, it is essentially a landlocked city. East of the river is the urban area of Shahdara.\nSeismology.\nNew Delhi falls under the seismic zone-IV, making it vulnerable to earthquakes. It lies on several fault lines and thus experiences frequent earthquakes, most of them of mild intensity. There was a spike in the number of earthquakes between 2011 and 2015, most notable being a 5.4 magnitude earthquake in 2015 with its epicentre in Nepal, a 4.7-magnitude earthquake on 25 November 2007, a 4.2-magnitude earthquake on 7 September 2011, a 5.2-magnitude earthquake on 5 March 2012, and a swarm of twelve earthquakes, including four of magnitudes 2.5, 2.8, 3.1, and 3.3, on 12 November 2013.\nClimate.\nThe climate of New Delhi is a dry-winter humid subtropical climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Cwa\") bordering on a hot semi-arid climate (K\u00f6ppen \"BSh\") with high variation between summer and winter in terms of both temperature and rainfall. The temperature varies from in summers to around in winters. The area's version of a humid subtropical climate is noticeably different from many other cities with this climate classification in that it features long and extremely hot summers with dust storms, relatively dry and mild winters with wildfire haze, and a monsoonal period. Summers are long, extending from early April to October, with the monsoon season occurring in the middle of the summer. Winter starts in November and peaks in January. Winters are very mild. The annual mean temperature is around ; monthly daily mean temperatures range from approximately . New Delhi's highest temperature ever recorded is on 28 May 2024 at Met Delhi Mungeshpur while the lowest temperature ever recorded is on 11 January 1967 at Indira Gandhi International Airport (formerly known as Palam Airport). The average annual rainfall is and monsoon rainfall from June to September is about , most of which is during the monsoons in July and August.\nAir quality.\nIn Mercer's 2015 annual quality-of-living survey, New Delhi ranks at number 154 out of 230 cities due to bad air quality and pollution. The World Health Organization ranked New Delhi as the world's worst polluted city in 2014 among about 1,600 cities the organisation tracked around the world. In 2016, United States Environmental Protection Agency listed New Delhi as the most polluted city on Earth and IQAir listed New Delhi as the world's most polluted capital city for the second straight year in year 2019.\nIn an attempt to lessen air pollution in New Delhi, which gets worse during the winter, a temporary alternate-day travel scheme for cars using the odd- and even-numbered licence plates system was announced by Delhi government in December 2015. In addition, trucks were to be allowed to enter India's capital only after 11\u00a0pm, two hours later than the existing restriction. The driving restriction scheme was planned to be implemented as a trial from 1 January 2016 for an initial period of 15 days. The restriction was in force between 8\u00a0am and 8\u00a0pm, and traffic was not restricted on Sundays. Public transportation service was increased during the restriction period.\nOn 16 December 2015, the Supreme Court of India mandated several restrictions on Delhi's transportation system to curb pollution. Among the measures, the court ordered to stop registrations of diesel cars and sport utility vehicles with an engine capacity of 2,000 cc and over until 31 March 2016. The court also ordered all taxis in the Delhi region to switch to compressed natural gas by 1 March 2016. Transportation vehicles that are more than 10 years old were banned from entering the capital.\nAnalysing real-time vehicle speed data from Uber Delhi revealed that during the odd-even program, average speeds went up by a statistically significant 5.4 per cent (2.8 standard deviations from normal). This means vehicles have less idling time in traffic and vehicle engines would run closer to minimum fuel consumption. In bordering areas, PM 2.5 levels were recorded more than 400 (ug/m3) while in inner areas in Delhi, they were recorded between 150 and 210 on an average. However, the sub-city of Dwarka, located in the southwest district, has a substantially low level of air pollution. At the NSIT University campus, located in sector 3 Dwarka, pollution levels were as low as 93 PPM.\nOn 7 November 2017, the Indian Medical Association declared a public health emergency due to high pollution levels. The highest being in the Punjabi Bagh district with an air quality index of 999 and in the RK Puram district with an index of 852. The lowest index recorded was in the Anand Vihar district with an index of 319. Levels of PM2.5 were recorded at 710\u00a0\u03bcg/m3, more than 11 times the World Health Organization's safe limit.\nIn a 2018 study, New Delhi was found to be the most polluted capital out of 61 capital cities around the world. In December 2019, IIT Bombay, in partnership with the McKelvey School of Engineering of Washington University in St. Louis, launched the Aerosol and Air Quality Research Facility to study air pollution in New Delhi, among other Indian cities. During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in India, the water quality of the Yamuna and Ganges river basins have improved as industries are closed due to the lockdown. The air quality has also significantly improved during the lockdown. On 5 November 2020, New Delhi recorded its most toxic day in a year, as the concentration of poisonous PM2.5 particles was recorded at 14 times the WHO's safe limit.\nDemographics.\nAs of 2011, the New Delhi Municipal Council area has a population of 249,998. Hindi is the most widely spoken language in New Delhi and the lingua franca of the city. English is primarily used as the formal language by business and government institutes. New Delhi has a literacy rate of 89.38% according to 2011 census, which is the highest in Delhi.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nReligion.\nAccording to 2011 census, Hinduism is the religion of 89.8% of New Delhi's population. There are also communities of Muslims (4.5%), Christians (2.9%), Sikhs (2.0%), Jains (0.4%). Other religious groups include Parsis, Buddhists, and Jews.\nGovernment.\nThe national capital of India, New Delhi is jointly administered by both the Central Government of India and the local Government of Delhi, it is also the capital of the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi.\nNew Delhi is administered through a municipal government, known as the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC). The other urban areas of the metropolis of Delhi are administered by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and Delhi Cantonment Board. As of 2015[ [update]], the government structure of the New Delhi Municipal Council includes a chairperson, three members of New Delhi's Legislative Assembly, two members nominated by the Chief Minister of the NCT of Delhi and five members nominated by the central government.\nThe districts of the NCT were redrawn in 2012 and include a district called New Delhi, albeit with different borders than the municipality. The New Delhi district includes not only the area of the municipality of the same name but also encompasses the Delhi Cantonment and parts of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi area.\nEconomy.\nNew Delhi is the largest commercial city in northern India. It has an estimated net State Domestic Product (FY 2010) of () in nominal terms and ~ () in PPP terms. As of 2013[ [update]], the per capita income of Delhi was Rs. 230000, second highest in India after Goa. GSDP in Delhi at the prices for 2012\u201313 is estimated at Rs 3.88\u00a0trillion (short scale) against Rs 3.11\u00a0trillion (short scale) in 2011\u201312.\nConnaught Place, one of North India's largest commercial and financial centres, is located in the northern part of New Delhi. Adjoining areas such as Barakhamba Road, ITO are also major commercial centres. The government and quasi-government sector was the primary employer in New Delhi. The city's service sector has expanded due in part to the large skilled English-speaking workforce that has attracted many multinational companies. Key service industries include information technology, telecommunications, hotels, banking, media, and tourism.\nThe 2011 World Wealth Report ranks economic activity in New Delhi at 39, but overall the capital is ranked at 37, above cities like Jakarta and Johannesburg. New Delhi, with Beijing, shares the top position as the most targeted emerging markets retail destination among Asia-Pacific markets.\nThe government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi does not release any economic figures specifically for New Delhi but publishes an official economic report on the whole of Delhi annually. According to the \"Economic Survey of Delhi\", the metropolis has a net State Domestic Product (SDP) of Rs. 830.85\u00a0billion (for the year 2004\u201305) and a per capita income of Rs. 53,976 ($1,200). In the year 2008\u201309 New Delhi had a per capita Income of Rs. ($2,595). It grew by 16.2% to reach Rs. ($3,018) in 2009\u201310 fiscal. New Delhi's per capita GDP (at PPP) was at $6,860 during 2009\u201310 fiscal, making it one of the richest cities in India. The tertiary sector contributes 78.4% of Delhi's gross SDP followed by secondary and primary sectors with 20.2% and 1.4% contribution respectively.\nThe gross state domestic product (GSDP) of Delhi at prices for the year 2011\u201312 has been estimated at Rs 3.13\u00a0trillion (short scale), which is an increase of 18.7 per cent over the previous fiscal.\nCulture.\nNew Delhi is a cosmopolitan city due to the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural presence of the vast Indian bureaucracy and political system. The city's capital status has amplified the importance of national events and holidays. National events such as Republic Day, Independence Day and \"Gandhi Jayanti\" (Gandhi's birthday) are celebrated with great enthusiasm in New Delhi and the rest of India. On India's Independence Day (15 August), the prime minister of India addresses the nation from the Red Fort. Most Delhiites celebrate the day by flying kites, which are considered a symbol of freedom. The Republic Day Parade is a large cultural and military parade showcasing India's cultural diversity and military might.\nReligious festivals include Diwali (the festival of light), Maha Shivaratri, Teej, Durga Puja, Chhath Puja, Mahavir Jayanti, Guru Nanak Jayanti, Holi, Lohri, Eid ul-Fitr, Eid ul-Adha, Easter, Raksha Bandhan, and Christmas. The Qutub Festival is a cultural event during which performances of musicians and dancers from all over India are showcased at night, with the Qutub Minar as the chosen backdrop of the event. Other events such as Kite Flying Festival, International Mango Festival and \"Vasant Panchami\" (the Spring Festival) are held every year in Delhi.\nIn 2007, the Japanese Buddhist organisation Nipponzan Myohoji decided to build a Peace Pagoda in the city containing Buddha relics. It was inaugurated by the Dalai Lama.\nHistoric sites, museums and gardens.\nNew Delhi is home to several historic sites and museums. The National Museum, which began with an exhibition of Indian art and artefacts at the Royal Academy in London in the winter of 1947\u201348, was later at the end was shown at the Rashtrapati Bhawan in 1949. Later it was to form a permanent National Museum. On 15 August 1949, the National Museum was formally inaugurated and has 200,000 works of art, both of Indian and foreign origin, covering over 5,000 years.\nThe India Gate, which was built in 1931, was inspired by the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. It is the national monument of India commemorating the 90,000 soldiers of the Indian Army who died while fighting for the British Raj in World War I and the Third Anglo-Afghan War. The monument is barricaded now with entry to the inside arch restricted.\nThe Rajpath, which was built similar to the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es in Paris, is the ceremonial boulevard for the Republic of India, located in New Delhi. The annual Republic Day parade takes place here on 26 January. The Beating retreat takes place here two days later.\nGandhi Smriti in New Delhi is the location where Mahatma Gandhi spent the last 144 days of his life and was assassinated on 30 January 1948. Rajghat is the place where Gandhi was cremated on 31 January 1948 after his assassination and his ashes were buried and make it a final resting place beside the sanctity of the Yamuna River. The Raj Ghat in the shape of the large square platform with black marble was designed by architect Vanu Bhuta.\nJantar Mantar located in Connaught Place was built by Maharaja Jai Singh II of Jaipur. It consists of 13 architectural astronomy instruments. The primary purpose of the observatory was to compile astronomical tables, and to predict the times and movements of the sun, moon and planets.\nNew Delhi is home to Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum, National Gallery of Modern Art, National Museum of Natural History, National Rail Museum, National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum, National Philatelic Museum, Nehru Planetarium, Shankar's International Dolls Museum. and Supreme Court of India Museum,\nIn the coming years, a new National War Memorial and Museum will be constructed in New Delhi for million ().\nNew Delhi is particularly renowned for its beautifully landscaped gardens that can look quite stunning in spring. The largest of these include Buddha Jayanti Park and the historic Lodi Gardens. In addition, there are the gardens in the Presidential Estate, the gardens along the Rajpath and India Gate, the gardens along Shanti Path, the Rose Garden, Nehru Park and the Railway Garden in Chanakya Puri. Also of note is the garden adjacent to the Jangpura Metro Station near the Defence Colony Flyover, as are the roundabout and neighbourhood gardens throughout the city.\nThe New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) area was declared the cleanest in North India, based on solid waste management, access to sanitation and other parameters of cleanliness, under the zone-wise Swachh Survekshan 2017.\nCityscape.\nMuch of New Delhi, planned by the leading 20th-century British architect Edwin Lutyens, was laid out to be the central administrative area of the city as a testament to Britain's imperial ambitions. New Delhi is structured around two central promenades called the Rajpath and the Janpath. The Rajpath, or King's Way, stretches from the Rashtrapati Bhavan to the India Gate. The Janpath (), formerly Queen's Way, begins at Connaught Circus and cuts the Rajpath at right angles. Nineteen foreign embassies are located on the nearby Shantipath (), making it the largest diplomatic enclave in India.\nAt the heart of the city is the magnificent Rashtrapati Bhavan (formerly known as Viceroy's House) which sits atop Raisina Hill. The Secretariat, which houses ministries of the government of India, flanks out of the Rashtrapati Bhavan. The Parliament House, designed by Herbert Baker, is located at the Sansad Marg, which runs parallel to the Rajpath. Connaught Place is a large, circular commercial area in New Delhi, modelled after the Royal Crescent in England. Twelve separate roads lead out of the outer ring of Connaught Place, one of them being the Janpath.\nArchitecture.\nThe New Delhi town plan, like its architecture, was chosen with one single chief consideration: to be a symbol of British power and supremacy. All other decisions were subordinate to this, and it was this framework that dictated the choice and application of symbology and influences from both Hindu and Islamic architecture.\nIt took about 20 years to build the city from 1911. Many elements of New Delhi architecture borrow from indigenous sources; however, they fit into a British Classical/Palladian tradition. The fact that there were any indigenous features in the design was due to the persistence and urging of both the Viceroy Hardinge and historians like E.B. Havell.\nIn the year 2019, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and Government of India introduced the Central Vista redevelopment project proposing the redevelopment of over , costing \u20b9 crore ().\nTransport.\nAir.\nIndira Gandhi International Airport, situated to the southwest of Delhi, is the main gateway for the city's domestic and international civilian air traffic. In 2012\u201313, the airport was used by more than 35\u00a0million passengers, making it one of the busiest airports in South Asia. Terminal 3, which cost () to construct between 2007 and 2010, handles an additional 37\u00a0million passengers annually.\nThe Delhi Flying Club, established in 1928 with two de Havilland Moth aircraft named \"Delhi\" and \"Roshanara\", was based at \"Safdarjung Airport\" which started operations in 1929, when it was the Delhi's only airport and the second in India. The airport functioned until 2001; however, in January 2002 the government closed the airport for flying activities because of security concerns following the New York attacks in September 2001. Since then, the club only carries out aircraft maintenance courses, and is used for helicopter rides to Indira Gandhi International Airport for VIP including the president and the prime minister.\nIn 2010, Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) was conferred the fourth best airport award in the world in the 15\u201325\u00a0million category, and \"Best Improved Airport\" in the Asia-Pacific Region by Airports Council International. The airport was rated as the \"Best airport in the world\" in the 25\u201340\u00a0million passengers category in 2015, by Airports Council International. Delhi Airport also bags two awards for \"The Best Airport in Central Asia/India\" and \"Best Airport Staff in Central Asia/India\" at the Skytrax World Airport Awards 2015.\nA second airport, Noida International Airport, is currently being built in Jewar.\nRoad.\nNew Delhi has one of India's largest bus transport systems. Buses are operated by the state-owned Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC), which owns the largest fleet of compressed natural gas (CNG)-fueled buses in the world and Delhi Transit. Personal vehicles especially cars also form a major chunk of vehicles plying on New Delhi roads. New Delhi has the highest number of registered cars compared to any other metropolitan city in India. Taxis and Auto Rickshaws also ply on New Delhi roads in large numbers. New Delhi has one of the highest road density in India and average vehicle speed is around in peak hours in the city.\nSome roads and expressways serve as important pillars of New Delhi's road infrastructure:\nNational Highways.\nNew Delhi is connected by road to the rest of India through National highways:\nRailway.\nNew Delhi is a major junction in the Indian railway network and is the headquarters of the Northern Railway. The five main railway stations are New Delhi railway station, Delhi Junction, Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station, Anand Vihar Terminal and Sarai Rohilla. The Delhi Ring Railway, a circular railway network in Delhi that runs parallel to the Ring Road, is a part of Delhi's suburban railway services.\nMetro.\nThe Delhi Metro is a rapid transit system serving Delhi, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon and Noida in the National Capital Region of India. Delhi Metro is the world's 12th largest metro system in terms of length. Delhi Metro was India's first modern public transportation system, which had revolutionised travel by providing a fast, reliable, safe, and comfortable means of transport. Presently, the network consists of 10 colour-coded lines serving 255 stations with a total length of . The network has now crossed the boundaries of Delhi to reach Ghaziabad and Noida in Uttar Pradesh, and Faridabad and Gurgaon in Haryana. All stations have escalators, elevators, and tactile tiles to guide the visually impaired from station entrances to trains. It has a combination of elevated, at-grade, and underground lines, and uses both broad gauge and standard gauge rolling stock. Four types of rolling stock are used: Mitsubishi-ROTEM Broad gauge, Bombardier MOVIA, Mitsubishi-ROTEM Standard gauge, and CAF Beasain Standard gauge. According to a study, Delhi Metro has helped in removing about 390,000 vehicles from the streets of Delhi.\nDelhi Metro is being built and operated by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Limited (DMRC), a state-owned company with equal equity participation from the Government of India and the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi. However, the organisation is under administrative control of the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India. Besides the construction and operation of the Delhi metro, DMRC is also involved in the planning and implementation of metro rail, monorail and high-speed rail projects in India and providing consultancy services to other metro projects in the country as well as abroad. The Delhi Metro project was spearheaded by E. Sreedharan, the managing director of DMRC and popularly known as the \"Metro Man\" of India. He famously resigned from DMRC, taking moral responsibility for a metro bridge collapse which took five lives. Sreedharan was awarded with the Legion of Honour by the French government for his contribution to Delhi Metro.\nSports.\nThe city hosted the 2010 Commonwealth Games and annually hosts Delhi Half Marathon foot-race. The city has previously hosted the 1951 Asian Games and the 1982 Asian Games. New Delhi was interested in bidding for the 2019 Asian Games but was turned down by the government on 2 August 2010 amid allegations of corruption in 2010 Commonwealth Games. The city also had a bid to host the 1992 Summer Olympics, but withdrew in March 1986, seven months before the host selection.\nMajor sporting venues in New Delhi include the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Ambedkar Stadium, Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium, Arun Jaitley Stadium, R.K. Khanna Tennis Complex, Dhyan Chand National Stadium and Siri Fort Sports Complex. \nInternational relations and organisations.\nThe city is home to numerous international organisations. The Asian and Pacific Centre for Transfer of Technology of the UNESCAP servicing the Asia-Pacific region is headquartered in New Delhi. New Delhi is home to most UN regional offices in India namely the UNDP, UNODC, UNESCO, UNICEF, WFP, UNV, UNCTAD, FAO, UNFPA, WHO, World Bank, ILO, IMF, UNIFEM, IFC and UNAIDS. UNHCR Representation in India is also located in the city.\nNew Delhi hosts 145 foreign embassies and high commissions.\nSummits, conferences and conventions.\nUnited Nations Conference on Trade and Development hosted its second meeting conference in the year 1968 at New Delhi.\nNew Delhi hosted the 7th NAM Summit in 1983, 4th BRICS Summit in 2012, IBSA Summit in 2015, and 5th Global Conference on CyberSpace in 2017. India has also host the G20 summit in 2023 in New Delhi.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4508360": "Centre for Science and Environment\nIndian not-for-profit organisation\nCentre for Science and Environment (CSE) is a not-for-profit public interest research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, India. Established in 1980, CSE works as a think tank on environment-development issues in India, poor planning, climate shifts devastating India's Sundarbans and advocates for policy changes and better implementation of the already existing policies.\nThe director of the centre is Sunita Narain. Under her leadership, the Centre for Science and Environment exposed the high level of pesticides present in American brands of soft drinks such as Coke and Pepsi.\nIn 2018 the CSE was awarded Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development.\nSome of its projects include investigating food adulteration and consumer product safety.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4159362": "UK Centre for Ecology &amp; Hydrology\nUK environmental science research organisation\nThe UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) is a centre for excellence in environmental science across water, land and air. \nThe organisation has a long history of investigating, monitoring and modelling environmental change. It operates from four sites in the UK and one in Ghana. Research topics include: air pollution, biodiversity, chemical risks in the environment, extreme weather events, droughts, floods, greenhouse gas emissions, soil health, sustainable agriculture, sustainable ecosystems, water quality, and water resources management.\nUKCEH coordinates a number of long-term environmental science monitoring sites and programmes, including the Predatory Bird Monitoring Scheme, the Isle of May Long-Term Study, the UK National River Flow Archive, the Plynlimon catchment study, lakes monitoring at Loch Leven and in the English Lake District, the UK Cosmic-ray soil moisture monitoring network (COSMOS-UK), the UK Upland Waters Monitoring Network, the Biological Records Centre, and the UKCEH Countryside Survey. The centre manages an urban atmospheric pollution observatory at the top of BT Tower in London. Its international work includes collaboration with the World Meteorological Organization on a global hydrological monitoring initiative and working with European partners to set up butterfly and wider pollinator monitoring schemes.\nUKCEH is a strategic delivery partner for the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).\nThe institute has four locations: Wallingford (its headquarters), Edinburgh, Lancaster and Bangor.\nUKCEH is a member of the Partnership for European Environmental Research (PEER).\nHistory.\nThe Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) was formally established in March 1994 by John Krebs, the then chief executive of NERC. It was formed by the drawing together of four research institutes: the Institute of Hydrology, the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, the Institute of Freshwater Ecology and the Institute of Virology and Environmental Microbiology (IVEM).\nIn 1994, Brian Wilkinson, a professor of civil engineering at Cranfield University, director of the Institute of Hydrology, was appointed as the first CEH director. In 1994 CEH had 15 laboratories and field stations across the UK. From 1996 onwards the number of sites was reduced and the centre now operates from 4 locations across the UK.\nIn the early years there was a need to integrate environmental science across the institutes: joint science programs were established together with an inter-disc"}, "descending_order": ["4159362", "4508360", "51585"], "permutation_1": ["51585", "4508360", "4159362"], "permutation_2": ["4159362", "51585", "4508360"], "permutation_3": ["51585", "4508360", "4159362"]}
{"id": "2hop__411091_625230", "docs_added": {"112305": "Greenfield, Indiana\nGreenfield is a city in and the county seat of Hancock County, Indiana, United States. It lies in Center Township and is part of the Indianapolis metropolitan area. The population was 23,488 at the 2020 census.\nGreenfield was a stop along the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad that connected Pittsburgh to Chicago and St. Louis.\nHistory.\nHancock County was created on March 1, 1828, and named for John Hancock, the first person to sign the Declaration of Independence. The town of Greenfield was chosen as the county seat on April 11, 1828. The Commissioners announced, \"The seat of Justice of Hancock County shall be known and designated by the name and title of Greenfield.\" The population of the county at that time was 400.\nEarly settlers built along the two creeks which flow south through Center Township, which includes Greenfield. The first businesses were small gristmills for grinding corn and wheat for settlers.\nU.S. Route 40, the National Road, was built through Hancock County around 1835. It was heavily traveled by wagon trains going west and livestock going to Cincinnati. In 1853, the first steam railroad was completed by the Indiana Central Railroad at the south edge of Greenfield. The railroad became part of the Pennsylvania Railroad system and later the Penn-Central. These tracks were removed in the 1980s.\nDuring this time, Greenfield's population continued to grow. Greenfield was incorporated as a city in 1876 with a population of 2,023. The greatest single period of growth began in 1887 when natural gas was discovered in the area. Greenfield was a boomtown for 20 years, with the founding of manufacturing plants and other industries.\nA statue of James Whitcomb Riley, which stands in front of the Hancock County Courthouse, was erected in 1918. It was purchased with money donated by school children from all over the United States. Each year, during the Riley Festival in October, the city's school children parade to the statue to place flowers around it.\nThe Charles Barr House, Greenfield Courthouse Square Historic District, Greenfield Residential Historic District, Lilly Biological Laboratories, Lincoln Park School, and James Whitcomb Riley House are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nGeography.\nGreenfield is located in central Hancock County. U.S. Route 40 passes through the center of the city as Main Street, and leads east to Knightstown and west to downtown Indianapolis. Interstate 70 parallels US-40, passing through the northern limits of Greenfield with access from Exit 104. I-70 leads east to Richmond near the Ohio border and west through Indianapolis to Terre Haute. Indiana State Road 9 (State Street) crosses US-40 in the center of Greenfield and leads north to Pendleton and south to Shelbyville.\nAccording to the 2010 census, Greenfield has a total area of , of which (or 99.12%) is land and (or 0.88%) is water.\nLocated on the east side of historic downtown lies Riley Park, in which flows the Brandywine Creek, a south-flowing tributary of the Big Blue River and part of the watershed of the East Fork White River.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nAs of the census of 2010, there were 20,602 people, 7,983 households, and 5,382 families living in the city. The population density was . There were 8,818 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 96.6% White, 0.6% African American, 0.3% Native American, 0.8% Asian, 0.4% from other races, and 1.3% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.8% of the population.\nThere were 7,983 households, of which 36.8% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 49.2% were married couples living together, 12.8% had a female householder with no husband present, 5.4% had a male householder with no wife present, and 32.6% were non-families. 26.8% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.51 and the average family size was 3.04.\nThe median age in the city was 35.6 years. 26.4% of residents were under the age of 18; 8% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 28.7% were from 25 to 44; 23% were from 45 to 64; and 14% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 48.1% male and 51.9% female.\n2000 census.\nAs of the census of 2000, there were 14,600 people, 5,917 households, and 4,017 families living in the city. The population density was . There were 6,449 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 98.23% White, 0.05% African American, 0.21% Native American, 0.53% Asian, 0.01% Pacific Islander, 0.33% from other races, and 0.64% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.27% of the population.\nThere were 5,917 households, out of which 32.8% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 53.4% were married couples living together, 10.7% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.1% were non-families. 27.4% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.41 and the average family size was 2.93.\nIn the city, the population was spread out, with 25.2% under the age of 18, 8.6% from 18 to 24, 30.9% from 25 to 44, 21.0% from 45 to 64, and 14.3% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females, there were 92.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.6 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $72,035, and the median income for a family was $82,408. Males had a median income of $66,188 versus $56,568 for females. The per capita income for the city was $52,509. About 3.0% of families and 4.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 4.7% of those under age 18 and 6.2% of those age 65 or over.\nGovernment.\nThe government consists of a mayor and a city council. The mayor is elected in citywide vote. The city council consists of seven members. Five are elected from individual districts. Two are elected at-large.\nEducation.\nGreenfield-Central Community School Corporation services the city of Greenfield and surrounding areas in central Hancock County. It consists of four elementary schools (Grades K - 3), two intermediate schools (Grades 4 - 6), one junior high school (Grades 7 - 8), and one high school (Grades 9 - 12). Greenfield Central Jr. High School was built in the late 2000s to accommodate Greenfield's rapidly growing population. Greenfield-Central High School also underwent renovation in 2011 and 2022.\nSt. Michael's School also serves Greenfield, offering Pre-kindergarten through Grade 8. It is a private Catholic School that won the Blue Ribbon Award and has a student-teacher ratio of 8:1.\nGreenfield has a public library, a branch of the Hancock County Public Library.\nIndustry and commerce.\nBusinesses with headquarters and/or significant operations in Greenfield include:\nSister and friendship cities.\nGreenfield is currently in a sister city relationship with Kakuda, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. Each year, a small group of high school students from Greenfield and Kakuda are chosen to travel to each sister city, respectively, and will stay with a host family for ten days, most expenses paid, thanks to local donations. The sister city program began in 1990 and continues today.\nEvents.\nEach year in October, the city of Greenfield hosts the Riley Festival, commonly known as \"Riley Days.\" The intersection of State Road 9 and US 40 is closed, and the downtown courthouse square is filled with vendors and exhibitors.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4723867": "Mark Dismore\nAmerican racing driver\nMark Dismore (born October 12, 1956 in Greenfield, Indiana) is a former driver in the Indy Racing League and the 1990 Toyota Pacific champion as well as the winner of the 1993 24 Hours of Daytona with Dan Gurney's All American Racers in a Toyota GTP car with co-drivers Rocky Moran and P. J. Jones. He made 3 CART starts in 1991 but was badly injured in a practice crash for the Indianapolis 500, when his car veered sharply towards the entrance of pit road at the exit of Turn 4 and back-ended the fence, only to careen across the pit lane and smash virtually head on at sizeable speed against the edge of pit wall; this second impact tore off the front of the car leaving Mark's legs exposed. Among the injuries he suffered, the most severe was a broken neck. He was largely out of open wheel racing until the 1996 Indy 500 where he drove for Team Menard though he did try to qualify in the 1992 Indianapolis 500 for Concept Motorsports in an outdated Lola/Buick. In 1997 he drove a second car at the Indy 500 for Kelley Racing and would become a full-time fixture there until the 2001 season. He returned to Menard for a partial season in 2002. Dismore has a single IRL win coming in the fall 1999 Texas Motor Speedway race and also finished a career-best third in points that season. Among his 62 career IRL starts he won four poles. He also represented the IRL in the International Race of Champions in 2000 and 2001.\nHe now owns and operates New Castle Motorsports Park, a Karting facility in New Castle, Indiana, he is also vice president of Comet Kart Sales in Greenfield, Indiana the business was founded by his father and has been in family ownership ever since. New Castle Motorsports Park is the home of the Dan Wheldon Memorial Pro-Am Karting Challenge. The Wheldon Memorial Pro-Am Karting Challenge is a tribute and fundraising event that is popular with racers, crews, sponsors and fans of IndyCar racing. The event returned in May 2019 after a nearly four year hiatus.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "420186": "Andrew Dismore\nBritish politician (born 1954)\nAndrew Hartley Dismore (born 2 September 1954) is a British Labour politician who was the Member of the London Assembly for Barnet and Camden from 2012 to 2021. He previously was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Hendon from 1997 until 2010.\nEarly life.\nDismore was born in Bridlington, East Riding of Yorkshire, the son of a hotelier. He was educated at Bridlington Grammar School before attending the University of Warwick, where he received a LLB in 1975, and the London School of Economics, where he was awarded his LLM in 1976. He graduated from The College of Law in 1978.\nProfessional life.\nDismore joined the Labour Party in 1974. After a brief time during his studies when he worked as an education officer with the General, Municipal, Boilermakers and Allied Trade Union, he began his professional career as a partner with Robin Thompson and Partners Solicitors in 1978. He became a partner in the firm Russell Jones & Walker Solicitors in 1995.\nHe was elected as a councillor for Westbourne on Westminster City Council in 1982, becoming the Labour group leader in 1990. During his time there, he led the criticism of Shirley Porter and the homes for votes scandal.\nMember of Parliament.\nHe was elected to the House of Commons at the 1997 general election for the new seat of Hendon, defeating John Gorst, the sitting Conservative MP for the former constituency of Hendon North, by 6,155 votes. He made his maiden speech on 6 June 1997, in which he criticised the government of John Major for closing the Edgware General Hospital A & E department. He became a member of the Social Security select committee in 1998, and after the 2001 general election its replacement, the Work and Pensions Select Committee, on which he remained until 2005. He was a member of the Standards and Privileges Select Committee from 2001 until 2010 and the Human Rights and Liaison committees from 2005 to 2010 (chairing the Joint Committee on Human Rights).\nDismore asked Tony Blair a parliamentary question about Holocaust memorial and education, and received a written answer on 10 June 1999. This led to the establishment of Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK. He set the 21st century record for a filibuster in the House of Commons by talking for 197 minutes during the debate of the Criminal Law (Amendment) (Protection of Property) Bill.\nIn the 2010 general election Dismore lost his seat by 106 (0.2%) votes to Conservative candidate and former Hendon ward councillor Matthew Offord. In his losing speech Dismore complained that Offord had used his record of expenses against him.\nHe was a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Tribal Peoples.\nIn 2015, Dismore stood once again as the Labour Party candidate for Hendon in the General Election but failed to regain his seat, instead losing by a bigger majority as the Conservatives improved their position overall.\nIn 2009, \"The Daily Telegraph\" reported that he had claimed expenses equivalent to 487 journeys between Parliament and his constituency home, although the Commons only sat for 145 days.\nIt was reported by the BBC in March 2010, that Dismore had annual trips to Cyprus, funded by the Cypriot Parliament. Dismore failed to declare this interest on a number of Parliamentary Questions and Early Day Motions, despite providing this information on the register of members\u2019 interests.\nLondon Assembly.\nFollowing his defeat as MP for Hendon, Andrew Dismore was selected as the Labour Party candidate for the Barnet and Camden constituency in the 2012 London Assembly election, defeating Conservative incumbent Brian Coleman. He was re-elected in 2016 with a reduced majority. Dismore served as Chair of the London Assembly's Fire, Resilience and Emergency Planning Committee. During his time on the Assembly, he has campaigned on issues including tube noise and the impact of Brexit on London. He stood down in 2021 and was succeeded by Anne Clarke.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "25659738": "2001 Casino Magic 500\nMotor car race\nThe 2001 Casino Magic 500 was the 5th round of the 2001 Indy Racing League season. It took place on June 9, 2001 at Texas Motor Speedway.\nQualifying.\nMark Dismore, for the 4th time in his Indy Racing League career, qualified on pole with a speed of 215.508\u00a0mph. His teammate Scott Sharp started alongside him on the first row.\nRace.\nLap 1 - Lap 78.\nAt the end of lap 1, Mark Dismore was the leader, Eddie Cheever Jr. was in second and Sam Hornish Jr. was in third. After 3 laps, Cheever Jr. took the lead from Dismore. The top 12 after 10 laps was the following: Eddie Cheever Jr., Sam Hornish Jr., Scott Sharp, Mark Dismore, Shigeaki Hattori, Robbie Buhl, Billy Boat, Donnie Beechler, Buddy Lazier, Airton Dar\u00e9, Greg Ray and Jeff Ward. Caution waved for the first time on lap 25, when debris landed on the back stretch. The leaders used this as an opportunity to pit, though some elected to stay out, which promoted Jaques Lazier to the lead. The restart came at lap 32. On lap 72, a major crash, involving Sarah Fisher, Davey Hamilton and Jeret Schroeder, occurred. Schroeder suffered an engine failure, which sent him into a spin and into the path of Hamilton. Hamilton made heavy contact with the wall and almost flipped in the incident. Fisher suffered suspension damage when a tire impacted her car as she drove by the scene of the incident. Hamilton suffered severe injuries to his feet and lower legs, which caused doctors to seriously consider amputation in order for his survival. While amputation was unnecessary, Hamilton would undergo 23 surgeries and spend a year in a wheelchair in the aftermath of the accident. It would be his last race until 2007. The incident brought out the race's second caution, which allowed for another opportunity for pitstops. After the stops, the top 10 after 78 laps was: Greg Ray, Eddie Cheever Jr., Felipe Giaffone, Scott Sharp, Sam Hornish Jr., Jeff Ward, Airton Dar\u00e9, Billy Boat, Didier Andre and Eliseo Salazar.\nLap 89 - Lap 116.\nThe restart came at lap 89. Some laps later, Airton Dar\u00e9 suffered an engine problem, bring out the race's third caution. Dar\u00e9 would spend considerable amount of time behind the wall, but would rejoin the race some 55 laps behind the leader. Racing resumed on lap 116.\nClosing Stages: Last 44 laps.\nWith 44 laps to go, caution once again came out for debris. The restart came with 40 laps to go, with Scott Sharp leading the field. With 27 laps to go, Eddie Cheever tried a three-wide pass with Greg Ray and Sharp, but ran out of room and was forced to back out, allowing Jeff Ward to take third. Bearing issues brought an end to Ward's run, though, and brought out another caution. The restart came with 12 laps to go with Scott Sharp still leading the field. With 11 laps to go, Cheever, Sharp and Ray battled for the lead, with Ray emerging the leader. However, with 5 laps to go, the leaders came up on Robby McGehee on the back stretch. Ray attempted to dive to the inside of McGehee to lap him, but made contact, causing both cars to spin and sending McGehee into the path of Cheever. All three cars retired and Sharp inherited the lead. With the track unable to be cleared for a green flag finish, Scott Sharp took victory under caution conditions.\nFinal results.\nNotes:\n1 Race finished under caution\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "47338053": "1998 Indy 200 at Walt Disney World\nMotor car race\nThe 1998 Indy 200 at Walt Disney World was the first round of the 1998 Indy Racing League season. The race was held on January 24, 1998 at the Walt Disney World Speedway in Bay Lake, Florida. As in 1997, rain hampered the event, this time forcing to cancel the qualifying session.\nReport.\nQualifying.\nFor the first time in IRL history, torrential rain forced the qualifying session to be cancelled. Thus, the grid was set by 1996-1997 entrant points. The remaining new entries were sorted by practice speeds. The grid was limited to 28 cars due to concerns about safety in the pit area.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nRace.\nTony Stewart outlasted all challengers to take his second IRL victory. Starting on the pole, he was quickly passed by Roberto Guerrero who pulled away until he got collected in an accident in turn 1. Stewart then led the rest of the first half of the race, which was marked by numerous incidents taking out contenders: Scott Sharp got tangled up with a slower car and had to pit for a new nose, Scott Goodyear slid into the wall in the midstretch and suffered suspension damage, Raul Boesel collided in the pit lane with Robbie Buhl and needed a radiator replaced, and defending champion Eddie Cheever dropped out with engine failure.\nUnexpected cold weather caused tire problems for the competitors; Robbie Groff wrecked at the start of the race when his rear tires broke loose under acceleration, and Billy Boat had a grinding crash on the inside wall of the front stretch when the same thing happened to him on a restart. On lap 132, Buddy Lazier took the lead and held it until he got bound up behind a slower car, spun, and hit the back stretch inside wall on lap 166. At that point, all five cars remaining in the lead lap (Stewart, Davey Hamilton, Jeff Ward, St\u00e9phan Gr\u00e9goire and Mark Dismore) were marginal on fuel mileage. Stewart, Hamilton, and Ward pitted for fuel, while Dismore and Gr\u00e9goire elected to gamble and assumed the top two places.\nAfter the restart, Dismore held off Stewart (who had moved back up to second) while Gr\u00e9goire, Hamilton, and Ward all dueled for third. The gamble didn't work for Dismore, and he finally had to pit for fuel on lap 197 after Stewart had passed him two laps earlier when the engine stumbled. On the final lap, Ward passed Hamilton, and then claimed second place as Gr\u00e9goire ran out of fuel and coasted across the line to a fourth-place finish.\nRace Statistics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "23391714": "1996 True Value 200\nMotor car race\nThe 1996 True Value 200 was the first round of the 1996\u20131997 Indy Racing League. The race was held on August 18, 1996, at the New Hampshire International Speedway in Loudon, New Hampshire. This race was dominated, but not won, by Tony Stewart, who passed Arie Luyendyk on lap 15 and led 165 laps until he suffered an engine computer failure, with 18 laps to go and a nearly three-lap lead. 1996 Indy Racing League co-champion Scott Sharp went on to win the race.\nReport.\nPre-Race.\nDue to the Indy Racing League's original wish to end every season at the Indianapolis 500, New Hampshire would host the 1996\u20131997 season opener on August 18, a race that had been counter-scheduled by CART at Road America, with the Texaco/Havoline 200 to be held on the same day. During the 11-week hiatus between seasons, some of the drivers in the series competed in CART Indy Car events. Eliseo Salazar took part in four races with Dick Simon Racing, teaming the week after Indy with Michel Jourdain Jr. at Milwaukee, and at Portland. Afterwards, Salazar raced in Michigan, where he finished 11th, and Mid-Ohio, while Jourdain did so at Detroit. On the other hand, Richie Hearn raced in Toronto, with Robbie Buhl taking part in the Indy Lights event, and Stan Wattles in his regular Atlantic Championship ride.\nTony Stewart also competed in four NASCAR events, scoring his first top-10 in his Truck Series debut at Indianapolis Raceway Park, and Scott Sharp grabbed another win in his second IMSA GT outing of the year at Sonoma Raceway, with John Paul Jr. in third place. Previously, Sharp was one of four IRL regular competitors who took part in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, along Michele Alboreto, Ferm\u00edn V\u00e9lez and Mark Dismore, whose car managed to finish the race. Indy 500 runner-up Davy Jones was one of the overall winners.\nPre-season testing started at the brand-new Las Vegas Motor Speedway, whose inaugural event in September would be headlined by the IRL. 20 drivers took part in a 3-day test on June 26\u201328, with 12 regular drivers being joined by Mark Dismore, who had driven with Team Menard at Indianapolis. Dismore had been signed on a permanent basis, replacing the late Scott Brayton. Richie Hearn set a first unofficial track record with a 222.359\u00a0mph lap, and nine drivers went over 210\u00a0mph. In that test, the Brickell Racing car prepared by PDM Racing continued its role as a 'mule' for USAC's drivers test.\nA short-lived run by Joe Gosek was followed by Andy Michner, who passed a refresher test, and by Dave Blaney, the reigning World of Outlaws sprint car champion at the time, who fell five laps short of passing his test after his engine blew. Doug Kalitta and Jack Hewitt were also scheduled to take part, although they never took a lap. New Zealand's Rob Wilson, who didn't qualify for the Indy 500, also passed a refresher test with Foyt. On the last day of testing, three Indy 500 entrants took some laps, with Brad Murphey driving for Hemelgarn Racing, Billy Roe with Team Blueprint Racing, and Randy Tolsma for McCormack Motorsports, a team that was embarking in an effort on its own after running the Zunne Group Racing operation in the Indy 500.\nAdditionally, Goodyear held private tests at New Hampshire on July 8\u201310, with A. J. Foyt Enterprises (Scott Sharp and Davey Hamilton), Pagan Racing (Roberto Guerrero), Della Penna Motorsports (Richie Hearn) and Team Scandia (Eliseo Salazar), on which Hearn suffered a hard crash during the first day, although he was uninjured. During that month, Jonathan Byrd's Racing announced the end of their partnership with Treadway Racing to become partners with Cunningham Racing. Mike Groff, who had driven for Foyt and Walker Racing during the year, was selected as their driver, replacing Johnny O'Connell, who would remain on New Hampshire's entry list before being 'scratched'. Also, McCormack Motorsports announced the signing of an injury-free Stan Wattles, on the sidelines since Leigh Miller Racing's assets were bought by Beck Motorsports in the spring.\nOn August 5, the entry list for New Hampshire was released, with the absence of Johnny Parsons in Blueprint's No. 16, as well as some driver changes. After being released by Team Menard, Eddie Cheever bought the car he had been using to form his own team, and St\u00e9phan Gr\u00e9goire left Hemelgarn Racing to drive in Team Scandia, subbing for Michel Jourdain Jr. in that race. Scandia also fielded a fourth car for Marco Greco, who had hired the services of the Arizona Motorsports rental crew headed by Jeff Sinden. McCormack Motorsports announced a second entry for Randy Tolsma that would be eventually scratched, Tempero\u2013Giuffre Racing entered sportscar gentleman Jon Field, and ABF Motorsports entered supermodified driver Mike Ordway. In the following days, PDM Racing entered Tyce Carlson in its second car, and it was confirmed that the Indy Racing League would be visiting Pikes Peak International Raceway, another new oval, with a date set for July 27, 1997.\nPractice and qualifying.\nAn IRL open test at NHIS planned for July 23\u201325 was cancelled after some NASCAR drivers complained that the track was breaking up in some spots during the Jiffy Lube 300 two weeks earlier. Therefore, IRL officials scheduled two days of testing on August 14\u201315, prior to the start of practice. The first day was reserved for USAC's driver tests. After Tyce Carlson passed a refresher test, his car was used by NASCAR Whelen Modified drivers Tim Connolly, who passed his test, and Ted Christopher, who run out of time in his attempt after completing three phases. Five other drivers (Divina Galica, Reggie Ruggiero, Ed Flemke Jr., Tom Cravenho and Tony Turco) were left waiting for their opportunity.\nTempero\u2013Giuffre assigned their second car to sportscar and occasional Indy Lights driver Juan Carlos Carbonell, who had been partnering Jon Field in selected IMSA rounds, but the team had to withdraw both of them, as Carbonell did not complete his test and Field crashed in Turn 1 before being approved. ABF Motorsports had switched Ordway for USAC Silver Crown talent Dave Steele, but he also crashed in Turn 4 before completing his test. During the second day, Hemelgarn Racing confirmed that Brad Murphey would be driving the No. 9 car previously used by St\u00e9phan Gr\u00e9goire, and Tempero\u2013Giuffre announced the return of David Kudrave, while Project Indy, initially absent in the first entry list, returned to competition with Johnny Unser, their regular driver. Unser and Kudrave were among a group of 10 entered drivers who had previous Indy car experience at New Hampshire, with Eliseo Salazar, Eddie Cheever, Marco Greco and Buddy Lazier having taken part in the 1995 race; Unser, Scott Sharp, Mike Groff and Arie Luyendyk had started the 1994 race, while Roberto Guerrero, with a 4th-place finish, and Kudrave had been part of the 1993 event.\nRichie Hearn dominated on Friday, leading a rain affected morning practice with a 175.335\u00a0mph lap, followed by Arie Luyendyk and Tony Stewart, and the afternoon practice at 172.297\u00a0mph, in front of Mark Dismore and Stewart. In that session, Johnny Unser lost control of his car, crashed in Turn 2 and travelled all the way down the back straight without steering until he crashed in Turn 3 again. The car was lost for the weekend, and Project Indy withdrew from the event. On Saturday morning, Michele Alboreto jumped to the front with a 173.364\u00a0mph lap, beating Stewart and Buddy Lazier. Also, ABF Motorsports returned to the track, with Joe Gosek at the wheel of the No. 96, and Brad Murphey crashed in Turn 2, leaving himself out of qualifying.\nAfter a few runs had been completed in qualifying, Buddy Lazier set the pace with a 172.664\u00a0mph lap. That mark was surpassed by Michele Alboreto, who registered a 175.125\u00a0mph. The Italian veteran was close to obtain the pole position after Tony Stewart, Mark Dismore and Arie Luyendyk fell short, but Richie Hearn got to set the two fastest laps of the day, securing his first Indy car pole position at 175.367\u00a0mph, two miles short of Andr\u00e9 Ribeiro's 177.436\u00a0mph track record, yet fast enough for a 4th place spot in the 1995 grid. Luyendyk and Lazier completed the second row, while Dismore qualified in a career-best fifth place, in front of Eliseo Salazar and Stewart. Further behind, John Paul Jr. soldiered his 1993 Lola to an 11th place, between IRL co-champions Buzz Calkins and Scott Sharp. His teammate Tyce Carlson, qualifying for his first Indy car race, only got to do a single lap after missing his qualifying turn, but it was good enough for 16th place, in front of favourites Davey Hamilton and Roberto Guerrero.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nRace.\nWith an estimated attendance of 24.000 espectators, Richie Hearn kept the lead when the green flag was waved, while Arie Luyendyk passed Michele Alboreto for second place. The first caution came out immediately, as Jim Guthrie lost control of his car accelerating off Turn 4 due to a leak, and Robbie Buhl had found the Turn 1 wall after being loose. The race was restarted on Lap 7, and Luyendyk took advantage to overtake Hearn in Turn 3, taking the lead. Having started in seventh place, Stewart had already made it past Eliseo Salazar and a slow starting Mark Dismore at the start, and passed Buddy Lazier during the restart, paving the way for his dominating performance. He soon caught up to the leading trio on Lap 11 and, helped by traffic, grabbed the lead on Lap 14. Amid concerns that high fuel consumption would subject Team Menard to an additional pit stop, Stewart rapidly started to pull away, being at least a full second faster than anyone else: by Lap 25, he had a 10-second lead, which was increased to 22 seconds by Lap 30.\nScott Sharp climbed into the top 10, and was running in eighth place, while Hearn faded to fifth place and Lazier overtook Alboreto on Lap 29 for third place. Both were by Stewart five laps later. Before the leader could catch Luyendyk, a second caution came out as Joe Gosek, running in 17th place, spun and crashed in Turn 4. Luyendyk, Lazier, Alboreto, Sharp, Davey Hamilton, Buzz Calkins and Mike Groff elected not to pit to regain their lap, although Hamilton and Calkins wouldn't be able to keep up in green flag conditions. Stewart came out of the pits in second place, behind Luyendyk, but 10 seconds away from Lazier. His teammate Mark Dismore, who pitted just behind Stewart, spun exiting his pit box and was left backwards, having to make a 180\u00ba burnout. In doing so, he damaged his clutch and ran over an air hose, then being assessed a Stop & Go penalty before retiring a few laps later. This resembled a similar half-spin by Eddie Cheever at the Indianapolis 500, also in front of Stewart's pit box when he was his teammate, although Stewart had already left before Dismore spun.\nDespite restarting with a 3-second gap on Lap 41, Luyendyk's lead lasted two further laps, as Stewart continued to obliterate the field. Sharp passed Alboreto for fourth place at the restart, and Buddy Lazier passed Luyendyk for second on Lap 64, but the Indy 500 winner had Stewart already in his mirrors three laps later, and was instructed to not let him pass. On Lap 68, Stewart dived into the inside of Lazier in Turn 3 and both drivers had a slight contact that sent Lazier into the wall. Lazier, who was still competing with partial back injuries suffered at Phoenix earlier in the year, did not suffer further back damage in this crash, but was very angry at Stewart's maneuver, being heard using profanities on ABC's broadcast, for which he later apologized. Despite"}, "descending_order": ["4723867", "420186", "25659738", "47338053", "23391714", "112305"], "permutation_1": ["4723867", "25659738", "112305", "420186", "47338053", "23391714"], "permutation_2": ["112305", "23391714", "47338053", "420186", "25659738", "4723867"], "permutation_3": ["420186", "112305", "47338053", "4723867", "23391714", "25659738"]}
{"id": "2hop__825300_36180", "docs_added": {"30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "11978512": "Luasamotu\nIslet in Vaitupu atoll, Tuvalu\nLuasamotu is an uninhabited islet of Vaitupu, Tuvalu. Luasamotu on the reef off the eastern part of Vaitupu known as Matangi.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11978512", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["30227", "11978512"], "permutation_2": ["11978512", "30227"], "permutation_3": ["30227", "11978512"]}
{"id": "2hop__109152_159045", "docs_added": {"3183878": "Risen Christ (Michelangelo, Santa Maria sopra Minerva)\nStatue by Michelangelo\nThe Risen Christ, \"Cristo della Minerva\" in Italian, also known as \"Christ the Redeemer\" or \"Christ Carrying the Cross\", is a marble sculpture by the Italy High Renaissance master Michelangelo, finished in 1521. It is in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome, to the left of the main altar.\nThe work was commissioned in June 1514, by the Roman patrician Metello Vari, who stipulated only that the nude standing figure would have the Cross in his arms, but left the composition entirely to Michelangelo. Michelangelo was working on a first version of this statue in his studio in Macello dei Corvi around 1515, but abandoned it in roughed-out condition when he discovered a black vein in the white marble, remarked upon by Vari in a letter, and later by Ulisse Aldrovandi. A new version was hurriedly substituted in 1519\u20131520 to fulfil the terms of the contract. Michelangelo worked on it in Florence, and the move to Rome and final touches were entrusted to an apprentice, Pietro Urbano; the latter, however, damaged the work and had to be quickly replaced by Federico Frizzi at the suggestion of Sebastiano del Piombo.\nThe first version, rough as it was, was asked for by Metello Vari, and given him in January 1522, for the little garden courtyard of his palazzetto near Santa Maria sopra Minerva, ' translated as \"As his greatest honor, as if it were of gold\", a mark of the esteem in which Michelangelo was held\". There it remained, described by Aldrovandi in 1556, and noted in some contemporary letters as apparently for sale in 1607, following which it was utterly lost to sight. In 2000 Irene Baldriga recognized the lost first version, finished in the early seventeenth century, in the sacristy of the church of San Vincenzo Martire, at Bassano Romano near Viterbo; the black vein is clearly distinguishable on Christ's left cheek. It is now often called the Giustiniani Christ. The parts finished later are the \"right hand, parts of the face and the back\".\nDespite all these problems, the second version impressed the contemporaries. Sebastiano del Piombo declared that the knees alone were worthy of more than the whole Rome, which William Wallace has called \"one of the most curious praises ever sung about a work of art\" Christ is shown by Michelangelo unclothed in a standing pose. Christ's sexual organs are exposed in order to show that his sexuality is uncorrupted by lust and completely controlled by his will, so that in his resurrected body he shows his triumph over both sin and death. A floating bronze loincloth was added in 1546 which shields the genitals from view.\nA leg is flexed and the head turned back, according to the principle of \"contrapposto\". Compared to the first version, the more active pose allows more varied impressions when the statue is seen from different angles, \"not only activating the space around him, but also suggesting an unfolding story\". The first version was exhibited in the National Gallery, London in 2017, in the same room as a cast of the second version, drawings for it, and letter relating to it.\nNotes and references.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "21019": "Michelangelo\nItalian artist and architect (1475\u20131564)\nMichelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6March 1475\u00a0\u2013 18February 1564), known mononymously as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspired by models from classical antiquity and had a lasting influence on Western art. Michelangelo's creative abilities and mastery in a range of artistic arenas define him as an archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci. Given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences, Michelangelo is one of the best-documented artists of the 16th century. He was lauded by contemporary biographers as the most accomplished artist of his era.\nMichelangelo achieved fame early. Two of his best-known works, the \"Piet\u00e0\" and \"David\", were sculpted before the age of 30. Although he did not consider himself a painter, Michelangelo created two of the most influential frescoes in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and \"The Last Judgment\" on its altar wall. His design of the Laurentian Library pioneered Mannerist architecture. At the age of 71, he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peter's Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan so that the Western end was finished to his design, as was the dome, with some modification, after his death.\nMichelangelo was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive. Three biographies were published during his lifetime. One of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that Michelangelo's work transcended that of any artist living or dead, and was \"supreme in not one art alone but in all three\".\nIn his lifetime, Michelangelo was often called (\"the divine one\"). His contemporaries admired his \"terribilit\u00e0\"\u2014his ability to instill a sense of awe in viewers of his art. Attempts by subsequent artists to imitate the expressive physicality of Michelangelo's style contributed to the rise of Mannerism, a short-lived movement in Western art between the High Renaissance and the Baroque.\nLife.\nEarly life, 1475\u20131488.\nMichelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was born on 6 March 1475 in Caprese, known today as Caprese Michelangelo, a small town situated in Valtiberina, near Arezzo, Tuscany. For several generations, his family had been small-scale bankers in Florence; but the bank failed, and his father Ludovico briefly took a government post in Caprese. At the time of Michelangelo's birth, his father was the town's judicial administrator and \"podest\u00e0\" (local administrator) of Chiusi della Verna. Michelangelo's mother was Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena. The Buonarrotis claimed to descend from the Countess Matilde di Canossa\u2014a claim that remains unproven, but which Michelangelo believed.\nSeveral months after Michelangelo's birth, the family returned to Florence, where he was raised. During his mother's later prolonged illness, and after her death in 1481 (when he was six years old), Michelangelo lived with a nanny and her husband, a stonecutter, in the town of Settignano, where his father owned a marble quarry and a small farm. There the young boy gained his love for marble. As his biographer Giorgio Vasari quotes him:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nApprenticeships, 1488\u20131492.\nAs a young boy, Michelangelo was sent to the city of Florence to study grammar under the Humanist Francesco da Urbino. Michelangelo showed no interest in his schooling, preferring to copy paintings from churches and seek the company of other painters. Florence was at that time Italy's greatest centre of the arts and learning. Art was sponsored by the (the town council), the merchant guilds, and wealthy patrons such as the Medici and their banking associates. The Renaissance, a renewal of Classical scholarship and the arts, had its first flowering in Florence. In the early 15th century, the architect Filippo Brunelleschi, having studied the remains of Classical buildings in Rome, had created two churches, San Lorenzo's and Santo Spirito, which embodied the Classical precepts. The sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti had laboured for 50 years to create the north and east bronze doors of the Baptistry, which Michelangelo was to describe as \"The Gates of Paradise\". The exterior niches of the Church of Orsanmichele contained a gallery of works by the most acclaimed sculptors of Florence: Donatello, Ghiberti, Andrea del Verrocchio, and Nanni di Banco. The interiors of the older churches were covered with frescos (mostly in Late Medieval, but also in the Early Renaissance style), begun by Giotto and continued by Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel, both of whose works Michelangelo studied and copied in drawings.\nDuring Michelangelo's childhood, a team of painters had been called from Florence to the Vatican to decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel. Among them was Domenico Ghirlandaio, a master in fresco painting, perspective, figure drawing and portraiture who had the largest workshop in Florence. In 1488, at the age of 13, Michelangelo was apprenticed to Ghirlandaio. The next year, his father persuaded Ghirlandaio to pay Michelangelo as an artist, which was rare for someone that young. When in 1489, Lorenzo de' Medici, \"de facto\" ruler of Florence, asked Ghirlandaio for his two best pupils, Ghirlandaio sent Michelangelo and Francesco Granacci.\nFrom 1490 to 1492, Michelangelo attended the Platonic Academy, a Humanist academy founded by the Medicis. There, his work and outlook were influenced by many of the most prominent philosophers and writers of the day, including Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Poliziano. At this time, Michelangelo sculpted the reliefs \"Madonna of the Stairs\" and \"Battle of the Centaurs\", the latter based on a theme suggested by Poliziano and commissioned by Lorenzo de' Medici. Michelangelo worked for a time with the sculptor Bertoldo di Giovanni. When he was 17, another pupil, Pietro Torrigiano, struck him on the nose, causing the disfigurement that is conspicuous in the portraits of Michelangelo.\nBologna, Florence, and Rome, 1492\u20131499.\nLorenzo de' Medici's death on 8 April 1492 changed Michelangelo's circumstances. He left the security of the Medici court and returned to his father's house. In the following months he carved a polychrome wooden \"Crucifix\" (1493), as a gift to the prior of the Florentine church of Santo Spirito, which had allowed him to do some anatomical studies of the corpses from the church's hospital. This was the first of several instances during his career that Michelangelo studied anatomy by dissecting cadavers.\nBetween 1493 and 1494, Michelangelo bought a block of marble, and carved a larger-than-life statue of Hercules. On 20 January 1494, after heavy snowfalls, Lorenzo's heir, Piero de Medici, commissioned a statue made of snow, and Michelangelo again entered the court of the Medici. In the same year, the Medici were expelled from Florence as the result of the rise of Savonarola. Michelangelo left the city before the end of the political upheaval, moving to Venice and then to Bologna. In Bologna, he was commissioned to carve several of the last small figures for the completion of the Shrine of St. Dominic, in the church dedicated to that saint. At this time Michelangelo studied the robust reliefs carved by Jacopo della Quercia around the main portal of the Basilica of St Petronius, including the panel of \"The Creation of Eve\", the composition of which was to reappear on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Towards the end of 1495, the political situation in Florence was calmer; the city, previously under threat from the French, was no longer in danger as Charles VIII had suffered defeats. Michelangelo returned to Florence but received no commissions from the new city government under Savonarola. He returned to the employment of the Medici. During the half-year he spent in Florence, he worked on two small statues, a child \"St. John the Baptist\" and a sleeping \"Cupid\". According to Condivi, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, for whom Michelangelo had sculpted \"St. John the Baptist\", asked that Michelangelo \"fix it so that it looked as if it had been buried\" so he could \"send it to Rome\u00a0... pass [it off as] an ancient work and\u00a0... sell it much better.\" Both Lorenzo and Michelangelo were unwittingly cheated out of the real value of the piece by a middleman. Cardinal Raffaele Riario, to whom Lorenzo had sold it, discovered that it was a fraud, but was so impressed by the quality of the sculpture that he invited the artist to Rome. This apparent success in selling his sculpture abroad as well as the conservative Florentine situation may have encouraged Michelangelo to accept the prelate's invitation.\nMichelangelo arrived in Rome on 25 June 1496 at the age of 21. On 4 July of the same year, he began work on a commission for Cardinal Riario, an over-life-size statue of the Roman wine god \"Bacchus\". Upon completion, the work was rejected by the cardinal, and subsequently entered the collection of the banker Jacopo Galli, for his garden. In November 1497, the French ambassador to the Holy See, Cardinal Jean de Bilh\u00e8res-Lagraulas, commissioned him to carve a \"Piet\u00e0\", a sculpture showing the Virgin Mary grieving over the body of Jesus. The subject, which is not part of the Biblical narrative of the Crucifixion, was common in religious sculpture of medieval northern Europe and would have been very familiar to the Cardinal. The contract was agreed upon in August of the following year. Michelangelo was 24 at the time of its completion. It was soon to be regarded as one of the world's great masterpieces of sculpture, \"a revelation of all the potentialities and force of the art of sculpture\". Contemporary opinion was summarised by Vasari: \"It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh.\" Michelangelo's only work known to have been signed, his name on Mary's sash, it is now located in St Peter's Basilica.\nFlorence, 1499\u20131505.\nMichelangelo returned to Florence in 1499. The Republic was changing after the fall of its leader, anti-Renaissance priest Girolamo Savonarola, who was executed in 1498, and the rise of the \"gonfaloniere\" Piero Soderini. Michelangelo was asked by the consuls of the Guild of Wool to complete an unfinished project begun 40 years earlier by Agostino di Duccio: a colossal statue of Carrara marble portraying David as a symbol of Florentine freedom to be placed on the gable of Florence Cathedral. Michelangelo responded by completing his most famous work, the statue of \"David\", in 1504. The masterwork definitively established his prominence as a sculptor of extraordinary technical skill and strength of symbolic imagination. A team of consultants, including Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Filippino Lippi, Pietro Perugino, Lorenzo di Credi, Antonio and Giuliano da Sangallo, Andrea della Robbia, Cosimo Rosselli, Davide Ghirlandaio, Piero di Cosimo, Andrea Sansovino and Michelangelo's dear friend Granacci, was called together to decide upon its placement, ultimately the Piazza della Signoria, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. It now stands in the Academia while a replica occupies its place in the square. In the same period of placing the \"David\", Michelangelo may have been involved in creating the sculptural profile on Palazzo Vecchio's fa\u00e7ade known as the Importuno di Michelangelo. The hypothesis of Michelangelo's possible involvement in the creation of the profile is based on the strong resemblance of the latter to a profile drawn by the artist, datable to the beginning of the 16th century, now preserved in the Louvre.\nWith the completion of the \"David\" came another commission. In early 1504 Leonardo da Vinci had been commissioned to paint \"The Battle of Anghiari\" in the council chamber of the Palazzo Vecchio, depicting the battle between Florence and Milan in 1440. Michelangelo was then commissioned to paint the \"Battle of Cascina\". The two paintings are very different: Leonardo depicts soldiers fighting on horseback, while Michelangelo has soldiers being ambushed as they bathe in the river. Neither work was completed and both were lost forever when the chamber was refurbished. Both works were much admired, and copies remain of them, Leonardo's work having been copied by Rubens and Michelangelo's by Bastiano da Sangallo.\nAlso during this period, Michelangelo was commissioned by Angelo Doni to paint a \"Holy Family\" as a present for his wife, Maddalena Strozzi. It is known as the \"Doni Tondo\" and hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in its original magnificent frame, which Michelangelo may have designed. He also may have painted the Madonna and Child with John the Baptist, known as the \"Manchester Madonna\" and now in the National Gallery, London.\nTomb of Julius II, 1505\u20131545.\nIn 1505 Michelangelo was invited back to Rome by the newly elected Pope Julius II and commissioned to build the Pope's tomb, which was to include forty statues and be finished in five years. Under the patronage of the pope, Michelangelo experienced constant interruptions to his work on the tomb in order to accomplish numerous other tasks.\nThe commission for the tomb forced the artist to leave Florence with his planned \"Battle of Cascina\" painting unfinished. By this time, Michelangelo was established as an artist; both he and Julius II had hot tempers and soon argued. On 17 April 1506, Michelangelo left Rome in secret for Florence, remaining there until the Florentine government pressed him to return to the pope.\nAlthough Michelangelo worked on the tomb for 40 years, it was never finished to his satisfaction. It is located in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome and is most famous for the central figure of Moses, completed in 1516. Of the other statues intended for the tomb, two, known as the \"Rebellious Slave\" and the \"Dying Slave\", are now in the Louvre.\nSistine Chapel ceiling, 1508 \u20131512.\nDuring the same period, Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which took approximately four years to complete (1508\u20131512). According to Condivi's account, Bramante, who was working on the building of St. Peter's Basilica, resented Michelangelo's commission for the pope's tomb and convinced the pope to commission him in a medium with which he was unfamiliar, in order that he might fail at the task. Michelangelo was originally commissioned to paint the Twelve Apostles on the triangular pendentives that supported the ceiling, and to cover the central part of the ceiling with ornament. Michelangelo persuaded Pope Julius II to give him a free hand and proposed a different and more complex scheme, representing the Creation, the Fall of Man, the Promise of Salvation through the prophets, and the genealogy of Christ. The work is part of a larger scheme of decoration within the chapel that represents much of the doctrine of the Catholic Church.\nThe composition stretches over 500 square metres of ceiling and contains over 300 figures. At its centre are nine episodes from the Book of Genesis, divided into three groups: God's creation of the earth; God's creation of humankind and their fall from God's grace; and lastly, the state of humanity as represented by Noah and his family. On the pendentives supporting the ceiling are painted twelve men and women who prophesied the coming of Jesus, seven prophets of Israel, and five Sibyls, prophetic women of the Classical world. Among the most famous paintings on the ceiling are The Creation of Adam, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the Deluge, the Prophet Jeremiah, and the Cumaean Sibyl.\nFlorence under Medici popes, 1513 \u2013 early 1534.\nIn 1513, Pope Julius II died and was succeeded by Pope Leo X, the second son of Lorenzo de' Medici. From 1513 to 1516, Pope Leo was on good terms with Pope Julius's surviving relatives, so encouraged Michelangelo to continue work on Julius's tomb, but the families became enemies again in 1516 when Pope Leo tried to seize the Duchy of Urbino from Julius's nephew Francesco Maria I della Rovere. Pope Leo then had Michelangelo stop working on the tomb, and commissioned him to reconstruct the fa\u00e7ade of the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence and to adorn it with sculptures. He spent three years creating drawings and models for the fa\u00e7ade, as well as attempting to open a new marble quarry at Pietrasanta specifically for the project. In 1520, the work was abruptly cancelled by his financially strapped patrons before any real progress had been made. The basilica lacks a fa\u00e7ade to this day.\nIn 1520, the Medici came back to Michelangelo with another grand proposal, this time for a family funerary chapel in the Basilica of San Lorenzo. For posterity, this project, occupying the artist for much of the 1520s and 1530s, was more fully realised. Michelangelo used his own discretion to create the composition of the Medici Chapel, which houses the large tombs of two of the younger members of the Medici family, Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, and Lorenzo, his nephew. It also serves to commemorate their more famous predecessors, Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano, who are buried nearby. The tombs display statues of the two Medici and allegorical figures representing \"Night\" and \"Day\", and \"Dusk\" and \"Dawn\". The chapel also contains Michelangelo's \"Medici Madonna\". In 1976, a concealed corridor was discovered with drawings on the walls that related to the chapel itself.\nPope Leo X died in 1521 and was succeeded briefly by the austere Adrian VI, and then by his cousin Giulio Medici as Pope Clement VII. In 1524, Michelangelo received an architectural commission from the Medici pope for the Laurentian Library at San Lorenzo's Church. He designed both the interior of the library itself and its vestibule, a building utilising architectural forms with such dynamic effect that it is seen as the forerunner of Baroque architecture. It was left to assistants to interpret his plans and carry out construction. The library was not opened until 1571, and the vestibule remained incomplete until 1904.\nIn 1527, Florentine citizens, encouraged by the sack of Rome, threw out the Medici and restored the republic. A siege of the city ensued, and Michelangelo went to the aid of his beloved Florence by working on the city's fortifications from 1528 to 1529. The city fell in 1530, and the Medici were restored to power, with the young Alessandro Medici as the first Duke of Florence. Pope Clement, a Medici, sentenced Michelangelo to death. It is thought that Michelangelo hid for two months in a small chamber under the Medici chapels in the Basilica of San Lorenzo with light from just a tiny window, making many charcoal and chalk drawings which remained hidden until the room was rediscovered in 1975, and opened to small numbers of visitors in 2023. Michelangelo was eventually pardoned by the Medicis and the death sentence lifted, so that he could complete work on the Sistine Chapel and the Medici family tomb. He left Florence for Rome in 1534. Despite Michelangelo's support of the republic and resistance to the Medici rule, Pope Clement reinstated an allowance that he had previously granted the artist and made a new contract with him over the tomb of Pope Julius.\nRome, 1534\u20131546.\nIn Rome, Michelangelo lived near the church of Santa Maria di Loreto. It was at this time that he met the poet Vittoria Colonna, marchioness of Pescara, who was to become one of his closest friends until her death in 1547.\nShortly before his death in 1534, Pope Clement VII commissioned Michelangelo to paint a fresco of \"The Last Judgment\" on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. His successor, Pope Paul III, was instrumental in seeing that Michelangelo began and completed the project, which he laboured on from 1534 to October 1541. The fresco depicts the Second Coming of Christ and his Judgement of the souls. Michelangelo ignored the usual artistic conventions in portraying Jesus, showing him as a massive, muscular figure, youthful, beardless and naked. He is surrounded by saints, among whom Saint Bartholomew holds a drooping flayed skin, bearing the likeness of Michelangelo. The dead rise from their graves, to be consigned either to Heaven or to Hell.\nOnce completed, the depiction of Christ and the Virgin Mary naked was considered sacrilegious, and Cardinal Carafa and Monsignor Sernini (Mantua's ambassador) campaigned to have the fresco removed or censored, but the Pope resisted. At the Council of Trent, shortly before Michelangelo's death in 1564, it was decided to obscure the genitals and Daniele da Volterra, an apprentice of Michelangelo, was commissioned to make the alterations. An uncensored copy of the original, by Marcello Venusti, is in the Capodimonte Museum of Naples.\nMichelangelo worked on a number of architectural projects at this time. They included a design for the Capitoline Hill with its trapezoid piazza displaying the ancient bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius. He designed the upper floor of the Palazzo Farnese and the interior of the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, in which he transformed the vaulted interior of an Ancient Roman bathhouse. Other architectural works include San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, the Sforza Chapel (Capella Sforza) in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore and the Porta Pia.\nSt Peter's Basilica, 1546\u20131564.\nWhile still working on the \"Last Judgment\", Michelangelo received yet another commission for the Vatican. This was for the painting of two large frescos in the Cappella Paolina depicting significant events in the lives of the two most important saints of Rome, the \"Conversion of Saint Paul\" and the \"Crucifixion of Saint Peter\". Like the \"Last Judgment\", these two works are complex compositions containing a great number of figures. They were completed in 1550. In the same year, Giorgio Vasari published his \"Vita\", including a biography of Michelangelo.\nIn 1546, Michelangelo was appointed architect of St. Peter's Basilica, Rome. The process of replacing the Constantinian basilica of the 4th century had been underway for fifty years and in 1506 foundations had been laid to the plans of Bramante. Successive architects had worked on it, but little progress had been made. Michelangelo was persuaded to take over the project. He returned to the concepts of Bramante, and developed his ideas for a centrally planned church, strengthening the structure both physically and visually. The dome, not completed until after his death, has been called by Banister Fletcher, \"the greatest creation of the Renaissance\".\nAs construction was progressing on St Peter's, there was concern that Michelangelo would die before the dome was finished. However, once building commenced on the lower part of the dome, the supporting ring, the completion of the design was inevitable.\nPersonal life.\nFaith.\nMichelangelo was a devout Catholic whose faith deepened at the end of his life. Along with Raphael, he was enrolled in the Secular Franciscan Order.\nHis poetry includes the following closing lines from what is known as poem 285 (written in 1554): \"Neither painting nor sculpture will be able any longer to calm my soul, now turned toward that divine love that opened his arms on the cross to take us in.\"\nPersonal habits.\nMichelangelo was moderate in his personal life, and once told his apprentice, Ascanio Condivi: \"However rich I may have been, I have always lived like a poor man.\" Michelangelo's bank accounts and numerous deeds of purchase show that his net worth was about 50,000 gold ducats, more than many princes and dukes of his time. Condivi said he was indifferent to food and drink, eating \"more out of necessity than of pleasure\" and that he \"often slept in his clothes and\u00a0... boots.\" His biographer Paolo Giovio says, \"His nature was so rough and uncouth that his domestic habits were incredibly squalid, and deprived posterity of any pupils who might have followed him.\" This, however, may not have affected him, as he was by nature a solitary and melancholy person, , a man who \"withdrew himself from the company of men.\"\nRelationships and poetry.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nIt is impossible to know whether Michelangelo had any physical relationships. Understanding about his sexuality is rooted in his art, especially his poetry. He wrote more than three hundred sonnets and madrigals. About sixty are addressed to men \u2013 \"the first significant modern corpus of love poetry from one man to another\".\nThe longest sequence, displaying deep loving feeling, was written to the young Roman patrician Tommaso dei Cavalieri (c.\u20091509\u20131587), who was 23 years old when Michelangelo first met him in 1532, at the age of 57. In his \"Lives of the Artists\", Vasari observed: \"But infinitely more than any of the others he loved M. Tommaso de' Cavalieri, a Roman gentleman, for whom, being a young man and much inclined to these arts, [Michelangelo] made, to the end that he might learn to draw, many most superb drawings of divinely beautiful heads, designed in black and red chalk; and then he drew for him a Ganymede rapt to Heaven by Jove's Eagle, a Tityus with the Vulture devouring his heart, the Chariot of the Sun falling with Pha\u00ebthon into the Po, and a Bacchanal of children, which are all in themselves most rare things, and drawings the like of which have never been seen.\" Some scholars downplay the relationship between Michelangelo and Cavalieri as one of platonic friendship. The poems to Cavalieri make up the first large sequence of poems in any modern tongue addressed by one man to another; they predate by 50 years Shakespeare's sonnets to the fair youth:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nCavalieri replied: \"I swear to return your love. Never have I loved a man more than I love you, never have I wished for a friendship more than I wish for yours.\" Cavalieri remained devoted to Michelangelo until his death.\nIn 1542, Michelangelo met Cecchino dei Bracci who died only a year later, inspiring Michelangelo to write 48 funeral epigrams. Some of the objects of Michelangelo's affections, and subjects of his poetry, took advantage of him: the model Febo di Poggio asked for money in response to a love-poem, and a second model, Gherardo Perini, shamelessly stole from him.\nThe nature of the poetry has been a source of discomfort to later generations. Michelangelo's grandnephew, Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger, published the poems in 1623 with the gender of pronouns changed; he also removed words or in other instances insisted that Michelangelo's poems be read allegorically and philosophically, a judgment some modern scholars still repeat today. It was not until John Addington Symonds translated the poems into English in 1893 that the original genders were restored. Since then it has become more accepted that his poems should be understood at face value, that is, as indicating his personal feelings and a preference by him for young men over women. The Elizabeth Jennings translation, \"The Sonnets of Michelangelo\", is considered the standard version. \nLate in life, Michelangelo nurtured a friendship with the poet and noble widow Vittoria Colonna, whom he met in Rome in 1536 or 1538 and who was in her late forties at the time. They wrote sonnets for each other and were in regular contact until she died. These sonnets mostly deal with the spiritual issues that occupied them. Condivi, who in his biography was preoccupied with downplaying Michelangelo's attraction to men, alleged Michelangelo said his sole regret in life was that he did not kiss the widow's face in the same manner that he had her hand.\nFeuds with other artists.\nIn a letter from late 1542, Michelangelo blamed the tensions between Julius\u00a0II and him on the envy of Bramante and Raphael, saying of the latter, \"all he had in art, he got from me\". According to Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Michelangelo and Raphael met once: the former was alone, while the latter was accompanied by several others. Michelangelo commented that he thought he had encountered the chief of police with such an assemblage, and Raphael replied that he thought he had met an executioner, as they are wont to walk alone.\nWorks.\nMadonna and Child.\nThe \"Madonna of the Stairs\" is Michelangelo's earliest known work in marble. It is carved in shallow relief, a technique often employed by the master-sculptor of the early 15th century, Donatello, and others such as Desiderio da Settignano. While the Madonna is in profile, the easiest aspect for a shallow relief, the child displays a twisting motion that was to become characteristic of Michelangelo's work. The \"Taddei Tondo\" of 1502 shows the Christ Child frightened by a Bullfinch, a symbol of the Crucifixion. The lively form of the child was later adapted by Raphael in the \"Bridgewater Madonna\". The \"Madonna of Bruges\" was, at the time of its creation, unlike other such statues depicting the Virgin proudly presenting her son. Here, the Christ Child, restrained by his mother's clasping hand, is about to step off into the world. The \"Doni Tondo\", depicting the Holy Family, has elements of all three previous works: the frieze of figures in the background has the appearance of a low-relief, while the circular shape and dynamic forms echo the Taddeo Tondo. The twisting motion present in the \"Madonna of Bruges\" is accentuated in the painting. The painting heralds the forms, movement and colour that Michelangelo was to employ on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.\nMale figure.\nThe kneeling \"Angel\" is an early work, one of several that Michelangelo created as part of a large decorative scheme for the Arca di San Domenico in the church dedicated to that saint in Bologna. Several other artists had worked on the scheme, beginning with Nicola Pisano in the 13th century. In the late 15th century, the project was managed by Niccol\u00f2 dell'Arca. An angel holding a candlestick, by Niccol\u00f2, was already in place. Although the two angels form a pair, there is a great contrast between the two works, the one depicting a delicate child with flowing hair clothed in Gothic robes with deep folds, and Michelangelo's depicting a robust and muscular youth with eagle's wings, clad in a garment of Classical style. Everything about Michelangelo's \"Angel\" is dynamic. Michelangelo's \"Bacchus\" was a commission with a specified subject, the youthful God of Wine. The sculpture has all the traditional attributes, a vine wreath, a cup of wine and a fawn, but Michelangelo ingested an air of reality into the subject, depicting him with bleary eyes, a swollen bladder and a stance that suggests he is unsteady on his feet. While the work is plainly inspired by Classical sculpture, it is innovative for its rotating movement and strongly three-dimensional quality, which encourages the viewer to look at it from every angle.\nIn the so-called \"Dying Slave\", Michelangelo again utilised the figure with marked contrapposto to suggest a particular human state, in this case waking from sleep. With the \"Rebellious Slave\", it is one of two such earlier figures for the Tomb of Pope Julius II, now in the Louvre, that the sculptor brought to an almost finished state. These two works were to have a profound influence on later sculpture, through Rodin who studied them at the Louvre. The \"Atlas Slave\" is one of the later figures for Pope Julius' tomb. The works, known collectively as \"The Captives\", each show the figure struggling to free itself, as if from the bonds of the rock in which it is lodged. The works give a unique insight into the sculptural methods that Michelangelo employed and his way of revealing what he perceived within the rock.\nSistine Chapel ceiling.\nThe Sistine Chapel ceiling was painted between 1508 and 1512. The ceiling is a flattened barrel vault supported on twelve triangular pendentives that rise from between the windows of the chapel. The commission, as envisaged by Julius II, was to adorn the pendentives with figures of the twelve apostles. Michelangelo, who was reluctant to take the job, persuaded the Pope to give him a free hand in the composition. The resultant scheme of decoration awed his contemporaries and has inspired other artists ever since. The scheme is of nine panels illustrating episodes from the Book of Genesis, set in an architectonic frame. On the pendentives, Michelangelo replaced the proposed Apostles with Prophets and Sibyls who heralded the coming of the Messiah.\nMichelangelo began painting with the later episodes in the narrative, the pictures including locational details and groups of figures, the \"Drunkenness of Noah\" being the first of this group. In the later compositions, painted after the initial scaffolding had been removed, Michelangelo made the figures larger. One of the central images, \"The Creation of Adam\" is one of the best known and most reproduced works in the history of art. The final panel, showing the \"Separation of Light from Darkness\" is the broadest in style and was painted in a single day. As the model for the Creator, Michelangelo has depicted himself in the action of painting the ceiling.\nAs supporters to the smaller scenes, Michelangelo painted twenty youths who have variously been interpreted as angels, as muses, or simply as decoration. Michelangelo referred to them as \"ignudi\". The figure reproduced may be seen in context in the above image of the \"Separation of Light from Darkness\".\nIn the process of painting the ceiling, Michelangelo made studies for different figures, of which some, such as that for \"The Libyan Sibyl\" have survived, demonstrating the care taken by Michelangelo in details such as the hands and feet. The prophet Jeremiah, contemplating the downfall of Jerusalem, is a self-portrait.\nFigure compositions.\nMichelangelo's relief of the \"Battle of the Centaurs\", created while he was still a youth associated with the Medici Academy, is an unusually complex relief in that it shows a great number of figures involved in a vigorous struggle. Such a complex disarray of figures was rare in Florentine art, where it would usually only be found in images showing either the Massacre of the Innocents or the Torments of Hell. The relief treatment, in which some of the figures are boldly projecting, may indicate Michelangelo's familiarity with Roman sarcophagus reliefs from the collection of Lorenzo Medici, and similar marble panels created by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, and with the figurative compositions on Ghiberti's Baptistry Doors.\nThe composition of the \"Battle of Cascina\" is known in its entirety only from copies, as the original cartoon, according to Vasari, was so admired that it deteriorated and was eventually in pieces. It reflects the earlier relief in the energy and diversity of the figures, with many different postures, and many being viewed from the back, as they turn towards the approaching enemy and prepare for battle.\nIn \"The Last Judgment\" it is said that Michelangelo drew inspiration from a fresco by Melozzo da Forl\u00ec in Rome's Santi Apostoli. Melozzo had depicted figures from different angles, as if they were floating in the Heaven and seen from below. Melozzo's majestic figure of Christ, with windblown cloak, demonstrates a degree of foreshortening of the figure that had also been employed by Andrea Mantegna, but was not usual in the frescos of Florentine painters. In \"The Last Judgment\" Michelangelo had the opportunity to depict, on an unprecedented scale, figures in the action of either rising heavenward or falling and being dragged down.\nIn the two frescos of the Pauline Chapel, \"The Crucifixion of St. Peter\" and \"The Conversion of Saul\", Michelangelo has used the various groups of figures to convey a complex narrative. In the \"Crucifixion of Peter\" soldiers busy themselves about their assigned duty of digging a post hole and raising the cross while various people look on and discuss the events. A group of horrified women cluster in the foreground, while another group of Christians is led by a tall man to witness the events. In the right foreground, Michelangelo walks out of the painting with an expression of disillusionment.\nArchitecture.\nMichelangelo's architectural commissions included a number that were not realised, notably the fa\u00e7ade for Brunelleschi's Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, for which Michelangelo had a wooden model constructed, but which remains to this day unfinished rough brick. At the same church, Giulio de' Medici (later Pope Clement VII) commissioned him to design the Medici Chapel and the tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo Medici. Pope Clement also commissioned the Laurentian Library, for which Michelangelo also designed the extraordinary vestibule with columns recessed into niches, and a staircase that appears to spill out of the library like a flow of lava, according to Nikolaus Pevsner, \"...\u00a0revealing Mannerism in its most sublime architectural form\".\nIn 1546 Michelangelo produced the highly complex ovoid design for the pavement of the Campidoglio and began designing an upper storey for the Farnese Palace. In 1547 he took on the job of completing St Peter's Basilica, begun to a design by Bramante, and with several intermediate designs by several architects. Michelangelo returned to Bramante's design, retaining the basic form and concepts by simplifying and strengthening the design to create a more dynamic and unified whole. Although the late 16th-century engraving depicts the dome as having a hemispherical profile, the dome of Michelangelo's model is somewhat ovoid and the final product, as completed by Giacomo della Porta, is more so.\nFinal years.\nIn his old age, Michelangelo created a number of \"Piet\u00e0s\" in which he apparently reflects upon mortality. They are heralded by the \"Victory\", perhaps created for the tomb of Pope Julius II but left unfinished. In this group, the youthful victor overcomes an older hooded figure, with the features of Michelangelo. The \"Piet\u00e0 of Vittoria Colonna\" is a chalk drawing of a type described as \"presentation drawings\", as they might be given as a gift by an artist, and were not necessarily studies towards a painted work. In this image, Mary's upraised arms and hands are indicative of her prophetic role. The frontal aspect is reminiscent of Masaccio's fresco of the Holy Trinity in the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, Florence. In the \"Florentine Piet\u00e0\", Michelangelo again depicts himself, this time as the aged Nicodemus lowering the body of Jesus from the cross into the arms of Mary his mother and Mary Magdalene. Michelangelo smashed the left arm and leg of the figure of Jesus. His pupil Tiberio Calcagni repaired the arm and drilled a hole in which to fix a replacement leg which was not subsequently attached. He also worked on the figure of Mary Magdalene.\nThe last sculpture that Michelangelo worked on (six days before his death), the \"Rondanini Piet\u00e0,\" could never be completed because Michelangelo carved it away until there was insufficient stone. The legs and a detached arm remain from a previous stage of the work. As it remains, the sculpture has an abstract quality, in keeping with 20th-century concepts of sculpture.\nMichelangelo died in Rome on 18 February 1564, at the age of 88. His body was taken from Rome for interment at the Basilica of Santa Croce, fulfilling the maestro's last request to be buried in his beloved Florence. His heir Lionardo Buonarroti commissioned Vasari to design and build the \"Tomb of Michelangelo\", a monumental project that cost 770 scudi, and took over 14 years to complete. Marble for the tomb was supplied by Cosimo I de' Medici, Duke of Tuscany, who had also organized a state funeral to honour Michelangelo in Florence.\nLegacy.\nMichelangelo, with Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, is one of the three giants of the Florentine High Renaissance. Although their names are often cited together, Michelangelo was younger than Leonardo by 23 years, and eight years older than Raphael. Because of his reclusive nature, he had little to do with either artist and outlived both of them by more than 40 years. Michelangelo took few sculpture students. He employed Granacci, who was his fellow pupil at the Medici Academy, and became one of several assistants on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Michelangelo appears to have used assistants mainly for the more manual tasks of preparing surfaces and grinding colours. Despite this, his works were to have a great influence on painters, sculptors and architects for many generations to come.\nWhile Michelangelo's \"David\" is the most famous male nude of all time, some of his other works have had perhaps even greater impact on the course of art. The twisting forms and tensions of the \"Victory\", the \"Bruges Madonna\" and the \"Medici Madonna\" make them the heralds of the Mannerist art. The unfinished giants for the tomb of Pope Julius II had profound effect on sculptors such as Rodin and Henry Moore.\nMichelangelo's vestibule of the Laurentian Library was one of the earliest buildings to use classical forms in a plastic and expressive manner. This dynamic quality was later to find its major expression in his centrally planned St. Peter's, with its giant order, its rippling cornice and its upward-launching pointed dome. The dome of St. Peter's was to influence the building of churches for many centuries, including Sant'Andrea della Valle in Rome and St Paul's Cathedral, London, as well as the civic domes of public buildings and state capitals across the United States.\nArtists who were directly influenced by Michelangelo include Raphael, whose monumental treatment of the figure in the \"School of Athens\" and \"The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple\" owes much to Michelangelo, and whose fresco of \"Isaiah\" in Sant'Agostino closely imitates the older master's prophets. Other artists, such as Pontormo, drew on the writhing forms of the \"Last Judgment\" and the frescoes of the Cappella Paolina.\nThe Sistine Chapel ceiling was a work of unprecedented grandeur, both for its architectonic forms, to be imitated by many Baroque ceiling painters, and also for the wealth of its inventiveness in the study of figures. Vasari wrote:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["3183878", "21019"], "permutation_1": ["21019", "3183878"], "permutation_2": ["21019", "3183878"], "permutation_3": ["3183878", "21019"]}
{"id": "2hop__258940_135844", "docs_added": {"528872": "Tolyatti\nTolyatti or Togliatti ( , ; , ), known before 1964 as Stavropol, is a city in Samara Oblast, Russia. It is the largest city in Russia which is neither the administrative center of a federal subject, nor the largest city of a subject. Population: \u2009(2021 Census); \u2009(2010 Census); \u2009(2002 Census); \u2009(1989 Soviet census)<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/> The city is best known as the home of Russia's largest car manufacturer AvtoVAZ (Lada). For this reason, Tolyatti is often dubbed \"Russia's motor city\" or \"Russia's Motown\" (in reference to Detroit in the United States\u2014the spiritual home of the American automotive industry). It was renamed after Italian communist politician Palmiro Togliatti in 1964.\nHistory.\nStavropol was founded as a fortress in 1737 by the Russian statesman Vasily Tatishchev. It was often informally referred to as Stavropol-on-Volga to distinguish it from Stavropol, a larger city in southwest Russia, although \"Stavropol-on-Volga\" was never its official name.\nThe construction of the Kuybyshev Dam and Hydroelectric Station on the Volga River in the 1950s created the Kuybyshev Reservoir, which flooded the existing location of the city, and it was completely rebuilt on a new site.\nIn 1964, the city was chosen as the location of the new VAZ automobile plant: a joint venture between Fiat and the Soviet government. It was then renamed Tolyatti after Palmiro Togliatti, the longest-serving secretary of the Italian Communist Party, who had been instrumental in setting up the venture with Fiat. Much of the modern city was constructed in the 1960s to house the workers of the factory, and today AvtoVAZ dominates the economy of the city.\nAdministrative and municipal status.\nWithin the framework of administrative divisions, Tolyatti serves as the administrative center of Stavropolsky District, even though it is not a part of it. As an administrative division, it is incorporated separately as the city of oblast significance of Tolyatti\u2014an administrative unit with the status equal to that of the districts. As a municipal division, the city of oblast significance of Tolyatti is incorporated as Tolyatti Urban Okrug.\nCity divisions.\nFor the administrative purposes, the city is divided into three districts:\nEconomy.\nThe city's main claim to fame has been automobiles Lada (Zhiguli) manufactured by AvtoVAZ car plant employing some 110,000 people: in cooperation with Italy's Fiat since 1970, with General Motors since 2001 and with the Renault-Nissan Alliance since 2012, and once again becoming an independent, state-owned enterprise in 2022.\nOther industries have moved into Tolyatti because it is close to abundant supplies of electricity and water. Petrochemicals are well represented in the city. Among the significant enterprises based there are \"TogliattiAzot\" (Russia's biggest ammonia manufacturer headed by Sergei Makhlai) and \"KuibyshevAzot\" (a nitrogen fertilizer manufacturer and Russia's biggest caprolactam and polyamide producer). Other industries include building materials production, ship repair and electrical equipment and electronics.\nIn 2011 the Tolyatti Special Economic Zone was launched in order to develop the region further and diversify the economy of the city. Several auto-component producers (German Mubea and Japanese Sanoh among them) have since been registered, as well as large industrial manufacturers (Praxair and Edscha). By November 2012 the value of project investment totalled 10 billion Rubles and around 3000 jobs were being created.\nTransportation.\nThe transport system is well developed in the city. Public transport includes municipal buses and trolley-buses, and so-called \"alternative\" (commercial) transport or marshrutkas.\nExternal transport routes are provided by two bus stations, two railway stations and a city harbour. Tolyatti has its airport as well, but it is used by personal aircraft only (the nearest international airport, Kurumoch, is located 40\u00a0km away, towards Samara). The city is linked to the federal road network by the M5 \"Ural\" highway.\nCulture, education, and sports.\nThe creation of the Kuybyshev Reservoir in the 1950s destroyed much of the city's history, so almost all the city's cultural points of interest date from the Soviet period, but the city administration has continued to build new monuments and cathedrals. A recent notable event was the 1998 opening of the large Tatishchev Monument near the Volga. The Transfiguration Cathedral was completed in 2002.\nEducation.\nEducation is represented by over one hundred public and ten private schools, as well as several higher education institutions. Most notable ones include:\nSports.\nIn the eyes of the Soviet leaders, Tolyatti was a perfect Soviet city (since most population migrated here during the construction of AvtoVAZ factories)\u00a0\u2013 many sports facilities appeared so that the \"perfect Soviet person\" could be healthy. The city has high-quality sports facilities: gymnasiums, swimming pools, ice arenas, association football and racing stadiums\u00a0\u2014 as a result, many athletes, including Olympic Champion Alexei Nemov, Stanley Cup winners Alexei Kovalev and Ilya Bryzgalov had moved to Tolyatti. Former Montreal Canadiens defenseman Alexei Emelin, and former Washington Capitals winger Viktor Kozlov and defenseman Alexei Tezikov were born there. Daria Kasatkina, a professional tennis player, was born there.\nTolyatti is represented in almost every kind of team sports. Tolyatti's Lada-sponsored Ice Hockey Club broke the Moscow teams' domination of the game. The Lada women's football team has won the Russian championship several times\u00a0\u2014 and the Lada women's handball team, who are the Russian and European Champions, is the core for Russian national women's handball. Men's football (FC Lada Togliatti), basketball and handball teams also take part in national championships. As for the traditional national sport of Russia, bandy, there is a team founded in 2013, TOAZ, which however only takes part in a recreational league.\nMega-Lada Togliatti who race at the Anatoly Stepanov Stadium are a record 17-times champions of Russia.\nParks and monuments.\nTolyatti has many parks, and many of these contain monuments of cultural, historical, and aesthetic interest. Examples include Victory Park with its Victory Monument and other monuments, Liberty Square with its Obelisk of Glory and other monuments, Central Park with its \"Mourning Angel\" (a memorial to victims of Soviet repression), large statue of Lenin, and other monuments, and other parks.\nAnd there are other monuments outside the parks. The City Duma has been energetic in creating or designating historical and cultural monuments, ranging from the colossal equestrian Tatishchev Monument to the tumbledown Repin House and a monument to a faithful dog, and many other types.\nMedia.\nThere are a number of local newspapers published in Tolyatti: \"Ploshchad Svobody\", \"Tolyattinskoye Obozreniye\" (\"Tolyatti Observer\"), business newspaper \"Monday\" (\"Ponedelnik\"), \"Volny Gorod\", \"Gorodskiye Vedomosti\", and a few others. In the end of the 1990s, \"Tolyattinskoye Obozreniye\" published a series of articles on a local crime group. The stories drew attention to the group's connections with the local police. Subsequently, Togliatti Review saw two of its editors (Valery Ivanov and Alexei Sidorov) killed in 2002\u20132003.\nThe only local-born FM-band radio station is Radio August at 70.64 and 102.3\u00a0MHz.\nReligion.\nTolyatti is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious city. Most religious people in the city are of the Orthodox Christian faith. Muslims are the second largest group of believers. Also in the city are organizations of almost all major religions: Old Believers, Catholics, Jews, Protestants, Buddhists and others.\nCrime.\nOctober 2007 bomb attack.\nDuring the morning rush hour of 31 October 2007, a bomb exploded on a passenger bus in the city, killing at least eight people and injuring about 50 in what Irina Doroshenko, a spokeswoman for the investigative wing of the local prosecutor's office, said could be a terrorist attack. At the beginning of the investigation, it was believed to be the work of terrorists from the North Caucasus. Early reports indicated possible involvement of Chechen terrorist Doku Umarov. However, the officials later named a 21-year-old Evgeny Vakhrushev, who also died in the blast, as the only person to be responsible for the tragedy.\nOrganized crime.\nThe city also has a reputation for gang violence.\nViolent crimes.\nThe city has witnessed a mafia killing spree: there have been 550 commissioned killings in Tolyatti over 1998\u20132004, five of those murdered were journalists.\nThree chief architects of Tolyatti were victims of violent crimes: Valery Lopatin was shot to death on July 7, 2004, Mikhail Syardin and Aleksander Kiryakov were also injured in violent attacks.\nA former city mayor (1994\u20132000), Sergey Zhilkin, was murdered on November 15, 2008.\nOn December 13, 2008, Anatoly Stepanov, a vice-speaker of Duma of Samara Oblast, a former head of administration of Tsentralny City District of Tolyatti in 1991-1997 and Tolyatti mayor candidate in 2004, was attacked on a street and left with serious head injuries. He died in hospital on February 24, 2009.\nCorruption.\nThe city's mayor in 2000\u20132007, Nikolay Utkin, was sentenced to seven years in prison on corruption charges.\nLocal government.\nMayor Antashev Sergey Alexandrovich was born on December 16, 1959, in the city of Saransk, Mordovia. In 1994 he moved to Tolyatti, was accepted to the post of director of the heating network enterprise of TEVIS. In 2000 he graduated from the International Market Institute with a degree in management. From 2000 to April 9, 2012 - Marketing Director - Energy Sales Director of TEVIS. Deputy of the Duma of the city district of Togliatti IV (from 2005 to 2009) and V (from 2008 to 2012) convocations. From April 2012 to February 2015, he served as deputy mayor of the city of Tolyatti on urban economy. On April 12, 2017, the Tolyatti City Council appointed Sergey Antashev as the mayor of the city.\nOn March 4, 2021, Igor Ladyka was appointed acting mayor of the Togliatti city district, in connection with the resignation of Sergei Antashev.\nOn April 30, 2021, Nikolai Rentz took office as head of the Togliatti city district. The inauguration ceremony was attended by the Governor of the Samara Region Dmitry Azarov.\nTwin towns \u2013 sister cities.\nTolyatti is twinned with:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotable people.\n \nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>", "31386864": "Lesnoye Sanatorium\nLesnoye Sanatorium () is the oldest medical institution in the city of Tolyatti, Russia. Its main focus is tuberculosis treatment.\nDespite being only from the center of what is now the large city of Tolyatti, the sanatorium is located in of forest (the Tolyatti Pine Forest) near the shores of the Volga, hence its name, which means \"Sanatorium in the Forest\".\nHistory.\nBefore 1917.\nLesnoye Sanatorium was founded in 1910 by the Stavropol-on-Volga merchant and entrepreneur V. N. Klimushin (Stavropol-on-Volga being the former name of Tolyatti). The original building was a two-story building of brick and timber, with stove heating. The newspapers announcing the opening of the health resort noted that medicinal kumis (fermented horse milk) was to be a feature of the therapeutic regime. Vladimir B. Zolotnitsky, a tuberculosis specialist and well-known public figure, was appointed chief physician and the first tuberculosis patients were admitted.\nThe sanatorium applied advanced (for the time) methods of treatment, including the Mantoux test and electrification. There were laboratories and a sunroom.\nOut on the steppe far from the Lesnoye Sanatorium was a farm where two hundred horses were kept to provide mare's milk. From this was made the sanatorium's therapeutic beverage \u2013 kumis. During the holiday season up to 45,000 bottles of kumis were produced, not only for use by the sanatorium but also for sale.\nPatients came from all over Russia \u2013 mostly the wealthy, as the fee for a season was 200 silver rubles. The health resort became famous, attracting aristocrats from Turkey and France. The health resort was well-appointed, with flower gardens, sculptures, fountains, and gazebos. There were electric lights and water from an artesian well. Horse-drawn carriages were available for hire.\nIn 1913, the sanatorium treated the French communist Inessa Armand. In 1967 a memorial plaque with her name was placed, lost when the building was renovated.\nDuring World War I, the Lesnoye Sanatorium was used as a rehabilitation hospital for wounded soldiers and officers.\nIn Soviet times.\nIn 1918, the sanatorium was nationalized and given over to the Stavropol-on-Volga district health department. In the 1920s and 1930s outbreaks of tuberculosis were common throughout Russia, and the sanatorium became the base from which the Moscow tuberculosis clinics were supervised, and was itself filled to capacity. Surgical methods of treatment and more effective use of kumis were developed here.\nDuring World War II the Military Institute of Foreign Languages moved to Stavropol-on-Volga, and a training center for military translators was established at the Lesnoye Sanatorium under the direction of Lieutenant General Nikolai Biasi. From 1941 to 1942 two thousand translators were trained. Among the cadets trained here were many who became well-known writers, artists and composers, including Vladimir Etush, Andrei Eshpai, S. Lvov, E. Rzhevskaya, and A. Troyanovsky.\nAfter the war, Lesnoye Sanatorium began accepting patients again, but only in the summer. In 1950 about 100 patients were admitted. Year-round operations resumed in 1960, and patients came for treatment from all over the USSR.\nIn 1980, a large (, not including pedestal and base) statue of Lenin which had been installed on the grounds was moved to Central Park to increase its public visibility.\nIn 1989 a modern seven-story building with 360 beds and kitchens, a dining room, a recreation center, a movie theater, and other services was commissioned.\nRecent history and current status.\nTuberculosis patients from all regions of Russia continue to be treated at Lesnoye Sanatorium, which is now owned and operated by the Russian federal government. The current capacity is 360 beds. The main methods of treatment are medication, diet, and kumis.\nToday, the kumis is made from cow's milk. It is slightly inferior in its medicinal properties to natural mare's kumis. In 1996, a private goat farm was established on the grounds of the sanatorium, to provide goat's milk for medicinal purposes to patients of the sanatorium and to children in the city.\nIn 1993, the facade and grounds of the Lesnoye Sanatorium were declared a monument of architecture and history of the Samara region, and they are included in the official register of monuments of Tolyatti. A picture of Lesnoye Sanatorium is on the labels of the local brandy \"Stavropol-on-Volga\".\nLesnoye Sanatorium celebrated its centennial in 2010. A forest fire, one of the many 2010 Russian wildfires of that hot dry summer, destroyed large swaths of the surrounding forest. The sanatorium was saved, but was closed from July 30, 2010 to December 10, 2010. Another huge forest fire broke out near the sanatorium in July 2021.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "46310162": "Tolyatti Pine Forest\nThe Tolyatti Pine Forest or Green Zone is a large forest in the middle of the Russian city of Tolyatti. It lies between and separates the three districts of the city (Auto Factory, Central, and Komsomol) from each other. It encompasses about one-quarter of the area of Tolyatti. A natural old-growth forest, it is a prime spot for city dwellers to escape the industrial confines of Tolyatti.\nThe forest is a protected monument of regional significance by declaration of the provincial government of Samara Oblast. Lesnoye Sanatorium, in the middle of the forest (thus its name, which means \"Sanatorium in the Forest\") is also a protected monument of regional importance. At the time the Sanatorium was established in 1910, it was on the outskirts of Stavropol-on-Volga; since the city was moved (and renamed), it is now near its center.\nThe forest includes cross-country skiing paths for winter recreation and tennis courts, miniature golf, and a swimming pool for summer.\nIn 2010 (a summer of record heat and widespread fires throughout Russia) the forest was subject to a catastrophic forest fire which devastated large areas of the forest. This was one of the many 2010 Russian wildfires. The Lesnoye Sanatorium was saved (although it had to be evacuated and was closed for more than four months), but crown fires and ground fires devastated large sections of the forest.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "61844029": "Lesnoye, Biysky District, Altai Krai\nLesnoye () is a rural locality (a selo) and the administrative center of Lesnoy Selsoviet, Biysky District, Altai Krai, Russia. The population was 2,008 as of 2013. There are 25 streets.\nGeography.\nLesnoye is located 10\u00a0km south of Biysk (the district's administrative centre) by road. Zarechny is the nearest rural locality.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "61429012": "Lesnoye, Republic of Bashkortostan\nLesnoye () is a rural locality (a village) in Skvorchikhinsky Selsoviet, Ishimbaysky District, Bashkortostan, Russia. The population was 11 as of 2010. There is 1 street.\nGeography.\nLesnoye is located 25 km southeast of Ishimbay (the district's administrative centre) by road. Torgaska is the nearest rural locality.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "61846528": "Lesnoye, Burlinsky District, Altai Krai\nLesnoye () is a rural locality (a selo) and the administrative center of Rozhkovsky Selsoviet, Burlinsky District, Altai Krai, Russia. The population was 594 as of 2013. It was founded in 1939. There are 6 streets.\nGeography.\nLesnoye is located 50 km northeast of Burla (the district's administrative centre) by road. Ustyanka is the nearest rural locality.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "60307227": "Lesnoye, Astrakhan Oblast\nLesnoye () is a rural locality (a selo) in Limansky District, Astrakhan Oblast, Russia. The population was 2,115 as of 2010. There are 12 streets.\nGeography.\nLesnoye is located 25 km east of Liman (the district's administrative centre) by road. Olya is the nearest rural locality.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "61810198": "Lesnoye, Bryansky District, Bryansk Oblast\nLesnoye () is a rural locality (a village) in Bryansky District, Bryansk Oblast, Russia. The population was 62 as of 2010. There is 1 street.\nGeography.\nLesnoye is located 64 km east of Glinishchevo (the district's administrative centre) by road. Kozyolkino is the nearest rural locality.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "32658508": "Lesnoy District\nLesnoy District () is an administrative and municipal district (raion), one of the thirty-six in Tver Oblast, Russia. It is located in the northeast of the oblast and borders with Pestovsky District of Novgorod Oblast in the north, Sandovsky District in the east, Maksatikhinsky District in the south, Udomelsky District in the southwest, and with Moshenskoy District of Novgorod Oblast in the northwest. The area of the district is . Its administrative center is the rural locality (a \"selo\") of Lesnoye. Population: 5,252 (2010 Census); \u2009(2002 Census); \u2009(1989 Soviet census) The population of Lesnoye accounts for 31.7% of the district's total population.\nGeography.\nThe whole area of the district belongs to the drainage basin of the Mologa River, a major tributary of the Rybinsk Reservoir. The Mologa crosses the eastern part of the district from south to north, and stretches of its course form the boundary between Lesnoy District and Maksatikhinsky and Sandovsky Districts. The principal tributaries of the Mologa within the district are the Keza and the Saragozha. 65% of the district area is covered by forests.\nHistory.\nThe area of the district was originally populated by the Finnic peoples, in the 11th century, Slavs started to arrive. In the 13th century, the town of Ilovl (Ilov) was located in the area, which belonged to the Novgorod Republic. The town was presumably destroyed by Mongols. In the 15th century, together with Novgorod, the area was annexed by the Grand Duchy of Moscow. It belonged to Bezhetsk Pyatina, one of the five pyatinas into which Novgorod lands were divided.\nIn the course of the administrative reform carried out in 1708 by Peter the Great, the area was included into Ingermanland Governorate (known since 1710 as Saint Petersburg Governorate), but in 1727 it was transferred to Moscow Governorate. In 1775, Tver Viceroyalty was formed from the lands which previously belonged to Moscow and Novgorod Governorates, and in 1776 Vesyegonsky Uyezd was established as a part of Tver Viceroyalty. In 1796, the viceroyalty was transformed into Tver Governorate, and Vesyegonsky Uyezd was abolished, the area was moved to Bezhetsky Uyezd. In 1803, the uyezd was re-established. The area was split between three volosts of Vesyegonsky Uyezd, Nikolskaya, Mikhaylovskaya, and Lopatinskaya Volosts. On April\u00a025, 1921, Vesyegonsky Uyezd was transferred to newly established Rybinsk Governorate. In 1922, part of the area was transferred to Vyshnevolotsky Uyezd of Tver Governorate. On February\u00a015, 1923, Rybinsk Governorate was abolished, and Vesyegonsky uyezd was transferred back to Tver Governorate.\nOn July\u00a012, 1929 the governorates and uyezds were abolished. Mikhaylovsky District, with the administrative center in the selo of Smerdyn, was established within Bezhetsk Okrug of Moscow Oblast. On July\u00a023, 1930, the okrugs were abolished, and the districts were directly subordinated to the oblast. On December\u00a025, 1930 Smerdyn was renamed Lesnoye, and Mikhaylovsky District was renamed Lesnoy District. On January\u00a029, 1935 Kalinin Oblast was established, and Lesnoy District was transferred to Kalinin Oblast. In February\u00a01963, during the abortive administrative reform by Nikita Khrushchev, Lesnoy District was merged into Maksatikhinsky District, but on December\u00a030, 1966 it was re-established. In 1990, Kalinin Oblast was renamed Tver Oblast.\nEconomy.\nIndustry.\nThere are enterprises of timber and food industries in the district.\nAgriculture.\nThe main agricultural specialization of the district is cattle breeding with meat and milk production.\nTransportation.\nLesnoye is connected by road with Maksatikha. There are some local roads, however, there are no roads which connect the district and Novgorod Oblast.\nNone of the rivers in the district are navigable.\nCulture and recreation.\nThe district contains seven cultural heritage monuments of federal significance and additionally twenty-four objects classified as cultural and historical heritage of local significance. The federal monuments include the complex of the Ascencion Church (1749) in the selo of Mikhaylovskoye, the tomb of Lieutenant Dmitry Ilyin, a participant of the Battle of Chesma, in the village of Zastizhye, as well as a number of archeological sites.\nReferences.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "63623934": "Lesnoye, Vologda Oblast\nLesnoye () is a rural locality (a settlement) in Yugskoye Rural Settlement, Cherepovetsky District, Vologda Oblast, Russia. The population was 78 as of 2002.\nGeography.\nLesnoye is located southwest of Cherepovets (the district's administrative centre) by road. Cherepovets is the nearest rural locality.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "40893187": "Lesnoye, Tver Oblast\nLesnoye () is a rural locality (a \"selo\") and the administrative center of Lesnoy District of Tver Oblast, Russia. Population: \u2009(2010 Census); \u2009(2002 Census); \u2009(1989 Soviet census)\nHistory.\nLesnoye is first mentioned as Smerdyn in a birch bark manuscript found in Veliky Novgorod. The manuscript dates from the end of the 14th century or the beginning of the 15th century and is believed to refer to the same Smerdyn which later became Lesnoye. At the time, it belonged to the Novgorod Republic. In the 15th century, together with Novgorod, the area was annexed by the Grand Duchy of Moscow. It belonged to Bezhetsk Pyatina, one of the five pyatinas into which Novgorod lands were divided.\nIn the course of the administrative reform carried out in 1708 by Peter the Great, Smerdyn was included into Ingermanland Governorate (known since 1710 as Saint Petersburg Governorate), but in 1727 it was transferred to Moscow Governorate. In 1775, Tver Viceroyalty was formed from the lands which previously belonged to Moscow and Novgorod Governorates, and in 1776 Vesyegonsky Uyezd was established as a part of Tver Viceroyalty. In 1796, the viceroyalty was transformed into Tver Governorate, and Vesyegonsky Uyezd was abolished, the area was moved to Bezhetsky Uyezd. In 1803, the uyezd was re-established. Smerdyn belonged to Mikhaylovskaya Volost of Vesyegonsky Uyezd. On April\u00a025, 1921, Vesyegonsky Uyezd was transferred to newly established Rybinsk Governorate. In 1922, Smerdyn was transferred to Vyshnevolotsky Uyezd of Tver Governorate.\nOn July\u00a012, 1929 the governorates and uyezds were abolished. Mikhaylovsky District, with the administrative center in Smerdyn, was established within Bezhetsk Okrug of Moscow Oblast. On July\u00a023, 1930, the okrugs were abolished, and the districts were directly subordinated to the oblast. On December\u00a025, 1930 Smerdyn was renamed Lesnoye, and Mikhaylovsky District was renamed Lesnoy District. On January\u00a029, 1935 Kalinin Oblast was established, and Lesnoy District was transferred to Kalinin Oblast. In February\u00a01963, during the abortive administrative reform by Nikita Khrushchev, Lesnoy District was merged into Maksatikhinsky District, but on December\u00a030, 1966 it was re-established. In 1990, Kalinin Oblast was renamed Tver Oblast.\nEconomy.\nIndustry.\nThere are enterprises of timber and food industries in Lesnoye.\nTransportation.\nLesnoye is connected by road with Maksatikha. There are some local roads, however, there are no roads which connect Lesnoye and Novgorod Oblast.\nReferences.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "61862885": "Lesnoye, Nemetsky natsionalny District, Altai Krai\nLesnoye () is a rural locality (a selo) in Nemetsky National District, Altai Krai, Russia. The population was 125 as of 2013.\nGeography.\nLesnoye is located 22 km northeast of Galbshtadt (the district's administrative centre) by road. Alexandrovka is the nearest rural locality.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "9949519": "Losheng Sanatorium\nLosheng Sanatorium () is a sanatorium for lepers in Xinzhuang District, New Taipei, Taiwan. \"Losheng\" means \"happy life\". The building was constructed in the 1930s during the Japanese colonial period.\nThere were heated debates and protests about plans to replace Losheng Sanatorium with a MRT (Mass Rapid Transport) depot.\nHistory.\nLosheng Sanatorium, originally named Rakusei Sanatorium for Lepers of Governor-General of Taiwan , was built in 1929 during the Japanese colonial period and served as an isolation hospital for leprosy patients. The Japanese government forced leprosy patients to live in this hospital. The first five buildings could house more than 100 patients.\nDuring the 1930s, Losheng Sanatorium was the first leprosy hospital and the only public sanatorium for leprosy patients in Taiwan. It was designed for quarantine and treatment of lepers. With a force of sanitary police and medical officers; investigation, quarantine, and imprisonment of lepers was conducted thoroughly from 1934 till the end of colonial governance of Japan. As a result, Losheng Sanatorium became the institution of compulsory quarantine as well as lifelong imprisonment for thousands of leprosy patients. The successive KMT regime inherited the policy in its early years.\nAfter the discovery of new leprosy treatment, patients were allowed to leave Losheng Sanatorium since 1954. However, many of them who had undergone chronic isolation and faced discrimination had little choice but to stay and had grown used to the settings.\nIn 1994, the Department of Taipei Rapid Transit System (DORTS) planned to build a depot in the site where Losheng Sanatorium is, for the Zhonghe\u2013Xinlu line. Although the government built a new hospital building nearby for settling the patients, the proposed demolition of the original compound brought a series of debates and, later, a preservation movement. According to a survey conducted in March 2006, there were 165 Losheng residents living in the new hospital building and 52 living in the old compound or other places.\nDebates and preservation movement.\nIn 1994, Taipei Rapid Transit System planned to build a depot on the site where the sanatorium is. Chen Ching-Chuan (\u9673\u4eac\u5ddd), the ex-director of Losheng, was opposed to this decision. He did three surveys among the patients to see what they thought and needed, shortly before he got demoted and reprimanded. Ever since, the patients have had no access to the MRT construction plans and its related discussions.\nFight for preservation.\nIn 2001, due to the construction of Xinzhuang Line, the government planned to transform Losheng to a community hospital, thus put an end to its dedicated hospitalization and care for leprosy patients. Many students, urban planners and NGOs tried to protect this sanatorium ever since.\nIn 2002, the new housing projects, Huei Long Hospital (\u8ff4\u9f8d\u91ab\u9662) was initiated, but instead of \u2018houses\u2019 which were earlier promised to the patients, the new director gave them two tall buildings with modern hospital facilities. It became clear that the new administration team intended to run a hospital business. The skyscraper-ish hospital buildings were designed mainly for housing short-term patients; therefore it has inadequate space for residents to move around freely. Moreover, the hospital management forbids patients from bringing with them personal belongings; from cooking; and from coming over to the front building. The policy is discriminative.\nLong before the depot construction was initiated, Loshen\u2019s ex-director and history professionals have demanded a large-scale inspection of Losheng\u2019s position as a historical site. The scholars appealed to the MRT Department that they should spare the Losheng Sanatorium, while they unanimously agreed the entire site should be preserved. However, the officials unilaterally terminated the process of inspection, and decided the sanatorium should be torn down entirely.\nIt was not until 2004, when Prof. John K.C. Liu (\u5289\u53ef\u5f37) came up with a symbiosis plan, and when the Council for Cultural Affairs has deemed the sanatorium a historical spot, that the MRT Department was pressured to rethink the possibilities of preservation.\nReasons for preservation.\nPeople who claimed that the Losheng Sanatorium should be preserved have raised the following issues:\nThe MRT depot was originally planned to be built Yingpan (\u71df\u76e4) near Fu Jen Catholic University (FJU, \u5929\u4e3b\u6559\u8f14\u4ec1\u5927\u5b78), and Fu Jen University Station should be the terminal station, which is why the number of that station is O1, meaning \"first station of Orange Line\".\nBut the plan was altered by local politicians. It has been asserted that this is wrong for the following reasons:\nIn 2009, the Losheng Sanatorium was named a potential World Heritage Site, \n\"because it has witnessed the development of politics, medicine, public health and human rights in Taiwan over several decades.\"\nDoubts for the 90% plan.\nIn the press release issued by the"}, "descending_order": ["31386864", "46310162", "61844029", "61429012", "61846528", "60307227", "61810198", "32658508", "63623934", "40893187", "61862885", "9949519", "528872"], "permutation_1": ["61846528", "61862885", "61844029", "40893187", "9949519", "61429012", "46310162", "31386864", "528872", "32658508", "63623934", "60307227", "61810198"], "permutation_2": ["61844029", "9949519", "61429012", "46310162", "528872", "61862885", "40893187", "63623934", "61810198", "61846528", "60307227", "31386864", "32658508"], "permutation_3": ["61844029", "40893187", "528872", "46310162", "61429012", "63623934", "61862885", "60307227", "9949519", "31386864", "32658508", "61810198", "61846528"]}
{"id": "2hop__650729_136211", "docs_added": {"27208": "Saint Lucia\nCountry in the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean Sea\nSaint Lucia is an island country of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean. Part of the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, it is located north/northeast of the island of Saint Vincent, northwest of Barbados and south of Martinique. It covers a land area of with an estimated population of over 180,000 people as of 2018. The nation's capital and largest city is Castries.\nThe first proven inhabitants of the island, the Arawaks, are believed to have been the first to settle on the island in 200\u2013400 AD. In 800 AD, the island was taken over by the Kalinago. The French were the first European colonists to settle on the island, and they signed a treaty with the native Caribs in 1660. The English took control of the island in 1663. In ensuing years, England and France fought 14 times for control of the island; consequently control over this immensely valuable geopolitical position changed frequently. Eventually, the British took complete control in 1814, shortly after the victory over French Emperor Napoleon I. Because the island switched so often between British and French control, Saint Lucia was also known as the \"Helen of the West\" after the Greek mythological character, Helen of Troy.\nRepresentative government was introduced in 1924 with universal suffrage being established in 1951. From 1958 to 1962, the island was a member of the West Indies Federation. On 22 February 1979, Saint Lucia became an independent state, while remaining as a Commonwealth realm.\nSaint Lucia is a member of the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the World Trade Organization, CARICOM and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). It is also a member of .\nEtymology.\nSaint Lucia is named after Saint Lucy of Syracuse (AD 283 \u2013 304). Saint Lucia is one of two sovereign states in the world named after a female and is the only one named after a woman (Ireland is named after a goddess). Legend states that French sailors were shipwrecked on the island on 13 December, the feast day of St. Lucy, and therefore named the island in her honour. \nA globe in the Vatican from 1520 shows the island as Sancta Lucia, indicating that the island was instead named by early Spanish explorers. Saint Lucia was first known as \"Louanalao\" by the Arawak Indians in 200 AD, meaning \"Island of the Iguanas,\" and then as \"Hewanorra\", in 800 AD, meaning \"there where iguanas are found,\" when the Carib Indians arrived and assimilated their culture into Saint Lucia.\nHistory.\nPre-Columbian.\nThe first proven inhabitants of Saint Lucia were the Arawaks, though there may have been other native peoples prior to them. The Arawaks are believed to have come from northern South America, sometime around AD 200\u2013400, as there are numerous archaeological sites on the island where specimens of their pottery have been found.\nThe Kalinago (Island Caribs) arrived around AD 800, and seized control from the Arawaks by killing their men and assimilating the women into their own society. \nEarly European exploration and colonization.\nIt is possible that Christopher Columbus may have sighted the island during his fourth voyage in 1502, but he does not mention the island in his log. Juan de la Cosa noted the island on his map of 1500, calling it \"El Falcon\", and another island to the south \"Las Agujas\". A Spanish c\u00e9dula from 1511 mentions the island within the Spanish domain, and a globe in the Vatican made in 1520, shows the island as Sancta Lucia.\nIn the late 1550s, the French pirate Fran\u00e7ois le Clerc (known as \"Jambe de Bois\", due to his wooden leg) set up a camp on Pigeon Island, from where he attacked passing Spanish ships. In 1605, an English vessel called the \"Oliphe Blossome\" was blown off-course on its way to Guyana, and the 67 colonists started a settlement on Saint Lucia, after initially being welcomed by the Carib chief Anthonie. By 26 September 1605, only 19 survived following continued attacks by the Carib chief Augraumart, so the settlers fled the island. The English tried to settle the island again in 1638, but the Caribs continued to be hostile. Eventually, the French successfully claimed the island in 1650 and they signed a treaty with the Caribs in 1660. In 1664, Thomas Warner (son of Sir Thomas Warner, the governor of St Kitts) claimed Saint Lucia for England but the English fled again in 1666, with the French gaining full control of the island after the signing of the Treaty of Breda. Saint Lucia was made an official French crown colony in 1674, as a dependency of Martinique.\n18th and 19th centuries.\nAfter the slave-based sugar industry developed, both the British and the French found the island attractive. During the 18th century, the island changed ownership, or was declared neutral territory, a dozen times, although the French settlements remained and the island was a de facto French colony well into the eighteenth century.\nIn 1722, George I of Great Britain granted both Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent to the 2nd Duke of Montagu. Montague appointed Nathaniel Uring, a merchant sea captain and adventurer, as deputy-governor. Uring went to the islands with a group of seven ships, and established settlement at Petit Carenage. Unable to get enough support from British warships, he and the new colonists were quickly run off by the French.\nDuring the Seven Years' War, Britain occupied Saint Lucia for a year, but handed the island back to the French in 1763, under the Treaty of Paris. Like the English and Dutch on other islands, in 1765, the French began to develop the land for the cultivation of sugar cane as a commodity crop on large plantations. The British occupied the island again in 1778.\nFrom 1782 to 1803, control of the island switched multiple times. In January 1791, during the French Revolution, the National Assembly sent four \"commissaires\" to St Lucia to spread the revolutionary philosophy. By August 1791, slaves began to abandon their estates and Governor Jean-Joseph Sourbader de Gimat fled. In December 1792, Lt. Jean-Baptiste Raymond de Lacrosse arrived with revolutionary pamphlets, and the impoverished whites and free people of colour began to arm themselves as \"patriots\". On 1 February 1793, France declared war on England and Holland, and General Nicolas Xavier de Ricard took over as Governor. The National Convention abolished enslavement on 4 February 1794. On 1 April 1794, St. Lucia was captured by a British expeditionary force led by Vice Admiral John Jervis. Morne Fortune was renamed \"Fort Charlotte\". Soon, a combined force of French Revolutionary Army soldiers and maroons, \"L'Armee Fran\u00e7aise dans les Bois\", began to fight back, starting the First Brigand War.\nA short time later, the British invaded the island as a part of the war with France that had recently broken out. On 21 February 1795, French forces under the nominal control of Victor Hugues, defeated a battalion of British troops at Vieux Fort and Rabot. In 1796, Castries was burned as part of the conflict. Leading the 27th (Inniskilling) Regiment, General John Moore retook Fort Charlotte in 1796, after two days of bitter fighting. As an honour, the Fusiliers' regimental colour was displayed on the flagstaff of the captured fortress at Morne Fortune for an hour before being replaced by the Union Jack. Upon the capture of the fort, Moore's superior, Ralph Abercromby, departed the island and placed Moore in charge of the British garrison. Moore remained at this post until falling ill with yellow fever, leading to his return to Britain before 1798.\nIn 1803, the British regained control of the island. Many members of the \"L'Armee Fran\u00e7aise dans les Bois\" escaped into the thick rainforest where they evaded capture and established maroon communities.\nSlavery on the island continued for a short time, but anti-slavery sentiment was rising in Britain. The British stopped the import of slaves by anyone, white or coloured, when they abolished the slave trade in 1807.\nFrance and Great Britain continued to contest Saint Lucia until the British secured it in 1814, as part of the Treaty of Paris, ending the Napoleonic Wars. Thereafter, Saint Lucia was considered one of the British Windward Islands colonies.\nThe institution of slavery was abolished on the island in 1834, as it was throughout the British Empire. After abolition, all former slaves had to serve a four-year \"apprenticeship\", to accustom them to the idea of freedom. During that period, they worked for their former masters for at least three-quarters of the work week. Full freedom was duly granted by the British in 1838. By that time, people of African ethnicity greatly outnumbered those of ethnic European background. People of Carib descent also comprised a minority on the island.\n20th century.\nSaint Lucia's first representative government was introduced in 1924, with the first election taking place in 1925. Many Saint Lucians served during the Second World War, and the conflict visited the island directly during the Battle of the Caribbean, when a German U-boat attacked and sank two British ships in Castries harbour on 9 March 1942. The United States used the island as a military hub during the war, including setting up a secondary naval base in Gros Islet and using what is now the island's international airport as an air force base.\nUniversal suffrage was introduced in 1951 and elections were held the same year. In 1958, Saint Lucia joined the West Indies Federation, although the federation was dissolved just a few years later in 1962. In 1967, Saint Lucia became one of the six members of the West Indies Associated States, with internal self-government. Independence was peacefully gained in 1979 under Sir John Compton of United Workers Party, with the island remaining within the British Commonwealth, keeping then-Queen Elizabeth II as Monarch, represented locally by a Governor-General.\nPost-independence era.\nDespite leading the country to independence, Compton's initial term as prime minister lasted only a few months, being defeated by the Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) under Allan Louisy in the 1979 Saint Lucian general election. In 1980, Hurricane Allen struck the island, destroying much of its infrastructure and reducing economic growth. Compton returned to power after the 1982 Saint Lucian general election after much instability during the labour government's term. During Compton's second term as the island's leader, banana exports significantly increased and became the nation's main source of revenue. There were improvements to infrastructure, and education was expanded to rural areas. Saint Lucia was key to the US invasion of Grenada. During the 1990s and 2000s, the nation's economy began shifting from agriculture to tourism under the leadership of Kenny Anthony. The 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001 killed two Saint Lucians, and caused an economic slowdown, although moderate growth continued until the Great Recession. The recession, as well as the landfall of Hurricane Tomas in 2010, led to slow economic growth during the early 2010s, although the economy picked up during the later part of the decade and avoided contraction until 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic caused major economic issues globally.\nIn June 2016, the United Workers Party (UWP), led by Allen Michael Chastanet, won 11 of the 17 seats in the general election, ousting the St Lucia Labour Party (SLP) of the incumbent Prime Minister Kenny Anthony. However, Saint Lucia Labour Party won the next election in July 2021, meaning its leader Philip J Pierre became the ninth Prime Minister of Saint Lucia since independence.\nGeography.\nSaint Lucia has a total area of 617 square kilometers (238 sq mi). As a volcanic island, Saint Lucia is very mountainous, with its highest point being Mount Gimie, at above sea level. The Pitons, two mountainous volcanic plugs, form the island's most famous landmark. Saint Lucia is also home to the world's only drive-in volcano, the Sulphur Springs. There are a number of small islands off the coast, the largest of which are the Maria Islands, located in the south-east of the island.\nSaint Lucia lies at latitude 14\u00b0 N and longitude 61\u00b0 W. The population tends to be concentrated around the coast, with the interior more sparsely populated, due to the presence of dense forests. \nFlora and fauna.\nMany species are endemic to the island, including \"Anolis luciae\", a species of lizard, and \"Boa orophias\", a species of boid snake.\nEcoregions.\nSaint Lucia has five terrestrial ecoregions: Windward Islands moist forests, Leeward Islands dry forests, Windward Islands dry forests, Windward Islands xeric scrub, and Lesser Antilles mangroves. The country had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 6.17/10, ranking it 84th globally out of 172 countries.\nClimate.\nSaint Lucia has a tropical climate, specifically a tropical rainforest climate (Af), moderated by northeast trade winds, with a dry season from 1 December to 31 May, and a wet/rainy season from 1 June to 30 November.\nAverage daytime and nighttime temperatures are around , and respectively. Being fairly close to the equator, the island's temperature does not fluctuate much between winter and summer.\nGeology.\nThe geology of St. Lucia can be described as composing three main areas. The oldest, 16\u201318 Ma, volcanic rocks are exposed from Castries northward and consist of eroded basalt and andesite centres. The middle, central highlands, portion of the island consists of dissected andesite centres, 10.4 to 1 Mya, while the lower southwest portion of the island contains recent activity from the Soufriere Volcanic Centre (SVC). This SVC, centred about the Qualibou depression, contains pyroclastic flow deposits, lava flows, domes, block and ash flow deposits, and explosion craters. This depression's perimeter includes the town of Soufriere, Mount Tabac, Mt. Gimie, Morne Bonin, and Gros Piton. At in diameter, though the western portion is open towards the Grenada basin, the depression formed as recently as 100 kya. The depression is noted for its geothermal activity, especially at Sulphur Springs and Soufri\u00e8re Estates, a phreatic eruption in 1776, and recent seismic activity (2000\u20132001).\nEroded andesitic stratovolcanoes to the north east of the depression include Mt. Gimie, Piton St Esprit, and Mt. Grand Magazin, all greater than 1 Ma in age. Andesitic and dacite pyroclastic flows from these volcanoes are found at Morne Tabac dome (532 ka), Morne Bonin dome (273 kya), and Bellevue (264 kya). Avalanche deposits from the formation of the Qualibou depression are found offshore, and in the massive blocks of Rabot, Pleisance, and Coubaril. The dacitic domes of Petit Piton (109 kya) and Gros Piton (71 kya) were then extruded onto the depression floor accompanied by the Anse John (104 kya) and La Pointe (59.8 kya) pyroclastic flows. Later, pyroclastic flows include pumice-rich Belfond and Anse Noir (20 kya). Finally, the dacitic domes of Terre Blanche (15.3 kya) and Belfond (13.6 kya) formed within the depression.\nGovernment.\nLike most Caribbean countries, Saint Lucia is a unitary state with a parliamentary system. It is a Commonwealth realm and a constitutional monarchy, with the current monarch being Charles III, who is represented on the island by a governor-general, currently Errol Charles. The prime minister (currently Philip J. Pierre) is the head of government, the head of the cabinet, and is normally the leader of the largest party in the House of Assembly. The house has 17 seats, with each member being elected via a plurality of votes in their constituency. The upper chamber of Parliament is the Senate which has 11 appointed members, the majority of which are appointed by the prime minister.\nAdministrative divisions.\nSaint Lucia is made up of 10 districts. The districts were created and named by French colonials, and the British chose to keep the names in an anglicised form. The largest district in both size and population is Castries, where the nation's capital of the same name is located. The following are the 10 districts placed in alphabetical order:\nLaw and crime.\nSaint Lucia is a mixed jurisdiction, meaning that it has a legal system based in part on both the civil law and English common law. The Civil Code of St. Lucia of 1867 was based on the Quebec Civil Code of 1866, as supplemented by English common law-style legislation. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was Saint Lucia's final court of appeal until 2023, when a constitutional amendment transferred this to the Caribbean Court of Justice.\nSaint Lucia's homicide rate has hit record highs in recent years. There were 75 homicides in 2021, a 34.5% increase compared with 55 homicides in 2020. 2021 saw the island record the most homicides in its history, and also its highest murder rate in its history, at 40 murders per 100,000 people.\nForeign relations.\nSaint Lucia is a member of the Caribbean Community, OECS, the Organization of American States and La Francophonie. As a Commonwealth Realm, Saint Lucia has relatively friendly relations with United Kingdom and Canada. France is also a major ally, in part due to Saint Lucia's border with Martinique. The United States is the island's largest trading partner, and Saint Lucia was key to the US invasion of Grenada in 1983, and voted against condemning the invasion. Saint Lucia became the 152nd member of the United Nations on 18 September 1979.\nSaint Lucia does not have a military although the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force has a Special Service Unit (SSU) and a Coast Guard. The island signed the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2018.\nEconomy.\nSaint Lucia is a Small Island Developing State, a designation similar to a developing country with a few substantial differences due to Saint Lucia's island nature. The service sector is the largest sector of the economy, accounting for 86.9% of GDP in 2020, followed by industrial and agricultural sectors at 10.9% and 2.2%, respectively.\nSaint Lucia has been able to attract foreign business and investment due to its educated workforce and improvements in roads, communications, water supply, sewerage, and port facilities. Like most small islands, Tourism and offshore banking are Saint Lucia's main sources of revenue. Agriculture, specifically the banana industry, was previously the largest sector of the economy, although its importance has declined significantly. The island's manufacturing sector has been called the most diverse in the Eastern Caribbean, with goods such as plastic being produced on a large scale.\nSaint Lucia's currency is the Eastern Caribbean Dollar (EC$), a regional currency shared among members of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECU). The country's main trade partners are the US, UK, EU and other CARICOM countries.\nTourism.\nTourism is the largest contributor to Saint Lucia's economy. Tourist numbers tend to be more substantial during the dry season (January to April), often referred to as the tourist season. Saint Lucia's tropical weather, scenery, beaches and resorts have made it a popular tourist destination, with 1.29\u00a0million visitors arriving in 2019.\nSome of Saint Lucia's tourist attractions include the Sulphur Springs, the Botanical Gardens, Pigeon Island and The Pitons.\nAgriculture.\nThe agricultural sector was once the main contributor to Saint Lucia's economy. This was especially thanks to the exporting of bananas. However, its importance to the economy has declined significantly, in part due to increased competition from South American countries in the banana industry. Nevertheless, agriculture is still an important part of the country's economy, providing 7.9% of jobs and contributing to 2.2% of the GDP in 2021.\nAbout 18% of land is used for agricultural practices. Bananas remain the main agricultural product grown in Saint Lucia, as well as coconuts, cocoa beans, mangoes, avocados, vegetables, citrus fruits, and root crops such as yams and sweet potatoes.\nSaint Lucia also has a small livestock sector, which is dominated by poultry. The island is self-sufficient in egg production and production of poultry and pork has increased in recent years. Fishing has also been of considerable importance to the nation's economy.\nInfrastructure.\nSaint Lucia has a wide-ranging public bus network which covers most of the island. Busses are owned by private individuals, whilst the government is responsible for setting up routes and hubs. The road network covers most of the island, although some rural areas still lack access to proper roads.\nThe island has two airports, including one International airport. Cruising and yachting are very important to the country's economy, with the main sea port being located in Castries, while the main marina is located in Rodney Bay which is also home to the St. Lucia Yacht Club. Meanwhile, the nation's main oil refinery is located in Bexon.\nThe main source of electricity in Saint Lucia is oil through its sole power station, the Cul De Sac Power Station, although solar energy is also a major source. There have also been attempts to introduce geothermal and wind energy to the island.\nDemographics.\nA census is normally held in Saint Lucia every 10 years. In the 2010 census, Saint Lucia reported a population of 165,595 in 58,920 households. This was a 5.1% increase from the 157,490 recorded at the previous census in 2001. Ages 0\u201314 made up 24.1% of the population whilst those 65 and over made up 8.6%. Nearly 40% of the island's population lived in the District of Castries, where the nation's capital of the same name is located.\nSaint Lucia had a fertility rate of 1.4 children per woman in 2021, the lowest in the Americas. This is much lower than in 1990, when the birth rate was 3.4 children per woman, and significantly lower than in 1959, when the birth rate peaked at 6.98 children per woman. Most emigration from Saint Lucia is primarily to Anglophone countries, with the United Kingdom having almost 10,000 Saint Lucian-born citizens, and over 30,000 of Saint Lucian heritage. The United States is home to many Saint Lucians, especially areas such as Miami and New York City. Canada is also home to many Saint Lucians, and especially in the French-speaking province of Quebec in the city of Montr\u00e9al. The median age of Saint Lucians was 33.1 years in 2021.\nEthnic groups.\nSaint Lucia was originally populated by Amerindian peoples. However, European colonisation led to a significant drop in the indigenous populations. Most residents of the island were white planters, but African slaves and indentured servants brought by the Europeans eventually came to outnumber them. Because of this, Saint Lucia's population is predominantly of African and mixed descent. As of 2010, 85.3% of the population are black and 10.9% are of multiracial descent. Other groups include Indo-Caribbean persons (2.2%), whites (0.6%), and Indigenous Persons (0.6%). A small number of Kalinago live in the Choiseul region and in other towns on the western coast. There is also a small population of Lebanese and Syrians.\nLanguages.\nThe official language of Saint Lucia is English, though Saint Lucian French Creole (Kw\u00e9y\u00f2l) is widely spoken. Referred to colloquially as \"Patois\" (\"Patwa\"), it is spoken by a majority of the population. It is a dialect of Antillean Creole and is also related to Haitian Creole, though it nonetheless has a number of distinctive features from the latter. The Creole language developed during the early period of French colonisation and is derived chiefly from French and West African languages. There have been some attempts to make the language official, but they have not yet been successful.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nIn the 2010 census, a majority of Saint Lucians identified as Christians. This can be traced back to the nation's colonization by French and British settlers. Due to heavy French influence, most Christians on the island are Catholics, with 62.5% of the island's residents identifying as such. 24.5% of the island's residents identify as Protestants. In addition, 1.9% of the population identified as members of the Rastafari movement and 1.4% of the population practice Hinduism. The number of residents claiming no religion stood at 5.9% in 2010.\nThere is no state religion in Saint Lucia. The nation's constitution guarantees freedom of religion and prohibits forcing persons to take oath to any religion in which they do not follow. Religious groups are also guaranteed the freedom to establish places of education.\nEducation.\nMost primary and secondary schools in Saint Lucia are operated by the government. Education is free and compulsory for children aged five to fifteen. This includes seven years of primary school and three to five years of secondary school. In the last two years of secondary school, students are allowed to choose the subjects that they would like to do, in preparation for regional CSEC examinations. In 2020, public spending on education was at 3.6%.\nTertiary educational facilities on the island are normally private institutions. These include Monroe College and International American University. However, there are still a few public institutions, including the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College and the University of the West Indies.\nHealthcare.\nHealth services in Saint Lucia are split between the government and private institutions. The island is served by 2 public hospitals and multiple health centers, although most dental and vision services are private. Public expenditure on healthcare stood at 2.1% in 2019.\nIn 2021, life expectancy was at 71.1 years (67.8 for men and 74.7 for women). This was compared to 73.4 years in 2019. The drop in life expectancy was largely attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nCulture.\nThe culture of Saint Lucia has been influenced by African, East Indian, French, and English heritage. The main secondary language of the island is Saint Lucian Creole (Kw\u00e9y\u00f2l), a French-based creole spoken by most of the population. The island boasts the highest ratio of Nobel laureates produced with respect to the total population of any sovereign country in the world. Two winners have come from Saint Lucia: Sir Arthur Lewis, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1979, and the poet Derek Walcott, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.\nSaint Lucia has two flower festivals, the La Rose festival, celebrated on 30 August, and the La Marguerite festival, celebrated on 17 October. Every summer, the island hosts a carnival as a way to present the country's culture and music. Annually, there are normally many festivals, most of them being music related.\nMusic.\nSaint Lucian music is heavily influenced by elements of African music, especially rhythmically. The most popular music genres in Saint Lucia are calypso, soca, dancehall, reggae, zouk, and folk music. Dennery Segment, a genre influenced by Angolan Kuduro, Saint Lucian Solo music and Dancehall was developed on the island. The internationally renowned Saint Lucia Jazz Festival is held annually, and the festival is a major source of revenue for the country's economy.\nFood.\nSaint Lucian cuisine is a mix of African, European, Indian and Caribbean dishes. Some common dishes include macaroni pie, stewed chicken, rice and peas, roti (Indian flatbreads) and soups packed full with fresh locally produced vegetables. All mainstream meat and poultry are eaten in St. Lucia; meat and seafood are normally stewed and browned to create a rich gravy sometimes served over \"ground provisions\" (vegetables) or rice. Johnny Cakes (known as bakes) are also common, and are served with different sides, such as saltfish. The national dish of Saint Lucia is green figs and saltfish.\nSports.\nAs with most Caribbean islands, cricket is the most popular sport in Saint Lucia. The Windward Islands cricket team includes players from Saint Lucia and plays in the West Indies regional tournament. Daren Sammy became the first Saint Lucian to represent the West Indies on his debut in 2007, and was made captain in 2010. The Saint Lucia Kings is a T20 franchise playing in the Caribbean Premier League based in this said island nation. Sailing is also a major sport in Saint Lucia, with the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) race beginning in the Canary Islands and ending on the island. Other sports that are popular on the island include football, basketball, tennis, golf and volleyball. Karate and boxing have also seen increased popularity in recent years. \nJulien Alfred won the nation's first-ever Olympic medal, when she won the women's 100 meters event in 10.72 seconds at the 2024 Summer Olympics held in Paris, France.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "28645538": "Philip Tisson\nSaint Lucian footballer\nIsidore Philip Tisson (12 September 1985 \u2013 30 August 2010) was an international footballer from Saint Lucia. Tisson played as a midfielder, and played club football for clubs throughout the Caribbean including Canaries, Anse La Raye Young Stars and Helenites.\nTisson was shot to death on 30 August 2010 in Brooklyn, New York City.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "51540769": "Philippe Tisson\nFrench swimmer\nPhilippe Tisson (8 March 1903 \u2013 2 January 1990) was a French freestyle swimmer. He competed in the men's 4 \u00d7 200 metre freestyle relay event at the 1928 Summer Olympics.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "78285839": "Philip Fitz Lewes\nLord Warden and Constable of Dover Castle\nPhilip Fitz Lewes, Philip Fitz-Lewes, or Philip Fitzlewes (c. 1430 \u2015 July 18, 1492) was a 15th-century English Nobelman who served as both the Warden of the Cinque Ports and Constable of Dover Castle from 1488 to 1492 under Henry VII.\nBiography.\nThe birthplace of Philip Fitz Lewes seems to have been lost to history but it is more than likely he was born in a major hub in the East of England due to his nobleman status, such as London or Colchester. His father John Fitz Lewis was said to have been a successful man living in London, another major hint of his birthplace. Philip is believed to have had eight siblings, four brothers and four sisters. He married a woman by the surname of Turney in 1483 in Essex of which they had one child, a daughter named Anne.\nMuch information on Philip's time in said positions can be found in Samuel Statham's \"The History of the Castle, Town, and Port of Dover\" from 1899 and the sources listed therein. It is thought that also around 1483 Philip became a deputy at Dover Castle by Richard III under William Fitzalan, whom he would later take his position in possibly late 1487 but confirmed by 1488. The exact date of Philip's death is unknown but it is known to have been after July 18, 1492 as he was ordered by Henry VII to provide fifty-seven ships from the Cinque Ports. It is generally believed that William Scott rose to the position of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports in August of that year. However, this has not been confirmed and his name does not appear in town records.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "62093": "Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh\nConsort of Queen Elizabeth II from 1952 to 2021\nPrince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, later Philip Mountbatten; 10\u00a0June 1921\u00a0\u2013 9\u00a0April 2021), was the husband of Queen Elizabeth\u00a0II. As such, he was the consort of the British monarch from his wife's accession on 6\u00a0February 1952 until his death in 2021, making him the longest-serving royal consort in history.\nPhilip was born in Greece into the Greek and Danish royal families; his family was exiled from the country when he was eighteen months old. After being educated in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, he joined the Royal Navy in 1939, when he was 18 years old. In July 1939, Philip began corresponding with the 13-year-old Princess Elizabeth, the elder daughter and heir presumptive of King George\u00a0VI. During the Second World War, he served with distinction in the British Mediterranean and Pacific fleets.\nIn the summer of 1946, the King granted Philip permission to marry Elizabeth, then aged 20. Before the official announcement of their engagement in July 1947, Philip stopped using his Greek and Danish royal titles and styles, became a naturalised British subject, and adopted his maternal grandparents' surname Mountbatten. In November 1947, he married Elizabeth, was granted the style \"His Royal Highness\" and was created Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth, and Baron Greenwich. Philip left active military service when Elizabeth ascended the throne in 1952, having reached the rank of commander. In 1957, he was created a British prince. Philip had four children with Elizabeth: Charles, Anne, Andrew, and Edward.\nA sports enthusiast, Philip helped develop the equestrian event of carriage driving. He was patron, president, or member of over 780 organisations, including the World Wide Fund for Nature, and served as chairman of The Duke of Edinburgh's Award, a youth awards programme for people aged 14 to 24. Philip is the longest-lived male member of the British royal family. He retired from royal duties in 2017, aged 96, having completed 22,219 solo engagements and 5,493 speeches since 1952, and died at the age of 99 at Windsor Castle.\nEarly life and education.\nFamily, infancy and exile from Greece.\nPrince Philip () of Greece and Denmark was born on 10\u00a0June 1921 on the dining room table in Mon Repos, a villa on the Greek island of Corfu. He was the only son and fifth and final child of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and his wife, Princess Alice of Battenberg. Philip's father was the fourth son of King George\u00a0I and Queen Olga of Greece, and his mother was the eldest child of Louis Mountbatten, 1st Marquess of Milford Haven, and Victoria Mountbatten, March"}, "descending_order": ["28645538", "51540769", "78285839", "62093", "27208"], "permutation_1": ["78285839", "62093", "51540769", "28645538", "27208"], "permutation_2": ["78285839", "51540769", "27208", "62093", "28645538"], "permutation_3": ["62093", "78285839", "27208", "28645538", "51540769"]}
{"id": "2hop__96955_155490", "docs_added": {"45515134": "Frank P. Brown Medal\nThe Frank P. Brown Medal was formerly awarded by the Franklin Institute for excellence in science, engineering, and structures. It was established by the 1938 will of Franklin Pierce Brown, a member of the Master Plumbers Association.\nThe designer of the medal was Walker Kirtland Hancock.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "226577": "Franklin Institute\nScience museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania\nThe Franklin Institute is a science museum and a center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named after the American scientist and statesman Benjamin Franklin. It houses the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial. Founded in 1824, the Franklin Institute is one of the oldest centers of science education and development in the United States. Its chief astronomer is Derrick Pitts.\nHistory.\n19th century.\nOn February 5, 1824, Samuel Vaughan Merrick and William H. Keating founded the Franklin Institute of the State of Pennsylvania for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts. The opening was chronicled by \"The Literary Chronicle for the Year 1824\":\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />With a view further to develop the resources of the union, increase the national independence, call forth the ingenuity and industry of the people, and thereby increase the comforts of the community at large.\nBegun in 1825, the institute was an important force in the professionalization of American science and technology through the nineteenth century, beginning with early investigations into steam engines and water power. In addition to conducting scientific inquiry, it fostered research and education by running schools, publishing the influential \"Journal of The Franklin Institute\", sponsoring exhibitions, and recognizing scientific advancement and invention with medals and awards.\n20th century.\nIn the late 20th century, the institute's research roles gave way to educating the general public through its museum. The Bartol Research Foundation of the Franklin Institute, founded in 1924 to conduct research in the physical sciences, now is part of the University of Delaware and named Bartol Research Institute. The Franklin Institute Laboratories for Research and Development operated from the Second World War into the 1980s.\nMany scientists have demonstrated groundbreaking new technology at the Franklin Institute. From September 2 to October 11, 1884, it hosted the International Electrical Exhibition of 1884, the first great electrical exposition in the United States. The world's first public demonstration of an all-electronic television system was later given by Philo Taylor Farnsworth on August 25, 1934.\nThe first female member, Elizabeth Skinner, was elected to membership in 1833. The Franklin Institute was integrated in 1870, when Philadelphia teacher and activist Octavius Catto was admitted as a member.\nThe institute's original building at 15 South 7th Street, later the home of the (now-defunct) Atwater Kent Museum, eventually proved too small for the institute's research, educational programs, and library. The Institute moved into its current home on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, near the intersection with 20th Street, in 1934. The new facility was intended from the start to educate visitors through hand-on interactions with exhibits: \"Visitors to this museum would be encouraged to touch, handle, and operate the exhibits in order to learn how things work.\" Funds to build the new Institute and Franklin Memorial came from the Poor Richard Club, the City Board of Trust, the Benjamin Franklin Memorial, Inc., and the Franklin Institute. John T. Windrim's original design was a completely square building surrounding the Benjamin Franklin Statue, which had yet to be built. Despite the effects of the Great Depression, the Benjamin Franklin Memorial, Inc. raised $5 million between December 1929 and June 1930. Only two of the four wings envisioned by Windrim were built; these face the Parkway and share design elements with other cultural and civic structures around Logan Circle.\nOn March 31, 1940, press agent William Castellini issued a press release stating that the world would end the next day. The story was picked up by KYW, which reported, \"Your worst fears that the world will end are confirmed by astronomers of Franklin Institute, Philadelphia. Scientists predict that the world will end at 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time tomorrow. This is no April Fool joke. Confirmation can be obtained from Wagner Schlesinger, director of the Fels Planetarium of this city.\" This caused a panic in the city which only subsided when the Franklin Institute assured people it had made no such prediction. Castellini was dismissed shortly thereafter.\n21st century.\nOn December 21, 2017, during a party hosted by the museum, a partygoer with his companions slipped into a closed-off exhibit of ten Terracotta Army warriors on loan from China. After his companions left, the partygoer broke off and stole a thumb from one of the warriors. Law enforcement agents later recovered the stolen thumb. The vandalized cavalryman is valued at US$4.5 million, and is considered a \"priceless part of China's cultural heritage\". The vandalism stoked outrage in Chinese media, such as Xinhua. The Franklin Institute blamed its external security contractor, and stated it had reviewed its security measures and procedures to prevent such situations from recurring. The defendant was charged both with theft, and with concealment of an item of cultural heritage.\nThe defense argued that the defendant was being \"overcharged\" under statutes applicable to professional art thieves. An April 2019 trial ended in a hung jury with seven of the 12 jurors in favor of acquittal. A February 2020 retrial was postponed due to travel restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nIn 2021, the institute housed the work of Dyymond Whipper-Young as she broke the Guinness world record for the \"world's largest drawing by an individual\".\nCapital campaign.\nIn 2006, the Franklin Institute began fundraising activities for the Inspire Science! capital campaign, a $64.7 million campaign intended to fund the construction of a building addition, new exhibits, and upgrades and renovations to the existing Institute building and exhibits.\nIn 2011, the Franklin Institute received a $10 million gift from Athena and Nicholas Karabots towards the Inspire Science! capital campaign. This gift is the largest gift in the institute's history, and put the Franklin Institute within $6 million of the $64.7 million capital campaign goal. The Nicholas and Athena Karabots Pavilion will house not only a $10 million multiroom exhibit on neuroscience, but also a conference center, classroom space, and additional room for traveling exhibitions.\nThe Science Center.\nThe most recognizable part of the Franklin Institute's Science Center is the Franklin Institute Science Museum. In the spirit of inquiry and discovery embodied by Benjamin Franklin, the mission of the Franklin Institute Science Museum serves to inspire an understanding of and passion for science and technology learning. Among other exhibits, the Science Museum holds the largest collection of artifacts from the Wright brothers' workshop.\nOther attractions.\nThe Science Center includes many pertinent attractions that are not museum exhibits. The Budd BB-1 \"Pioneer\" flying boat, in front of the museum, was the world's first stainless steel airplane, built by Philadelphia-based Edward F. Budd Manufacturing Corporation, and has been on display since 1935.\nA mock-up which would eventually become the Lunar Module in the Apollo space program, first shown on display in the 1966\u201367 World's Fair, held in the New York Hall of Science, is also located on the grounds. (See .)\nTheaters.\nIn 1933, Samuel Simeon Fels contributed funds to build The Fels Planetarium, only the second built in the United States after Chicago's Adler Planetarium. Fully reconstructed in 2002, the Planetarium's new design includes replacement of the original 40,000-pound stainless steel dome, originally built in 1933. The new premium dome is lighter and is in diameter. It is the first of its kind in the United States. The planetarium is also outfitted for visitors who are hearing impaired.\nThe Tuttleman IMAX Theater is an IMAX dome theater that is 180\u00b0 encompassing and tilted at 30 degrees. The seating places the audience up in the dome which is over across and 4.5 stories tall. In addition, the theater has 20,000 watts of amplifier power and over 50 speakers. The theater was closed in 2020 due to COVID-19, and did not reopen with the rest of the museum. In November 2023, the Franklin Institute confirmed that the theater would remain closed permanently, citing that it was financially unviable and had outdated equipment, and that the museum would be investing in other new exhibits instead.\nEarly in 2008, extensive renovation of the museum's auditorium was completed. Previously a lecture hall, the space was renamed Franklin Theater, and features 3-D and hi-def Blu-ray digital projection capabilities. The Franklin Theater shows educational films during daytime hours while also including mass release feature-length films.\nTraveling exhibits.\nIn the past, the Science Center has hosted many traveling exhibits including \"Storms\", \"Titanic\", \"Grossology\", \"Body Worlds\", \"Darwin\", and \"Robots\". In the summer of 2007, the Franklin Institute hosted \"Tutankhamun and The Golden Age of The Pharaohs,\" in the Mandell Center of the Franklin Institute Science Museum. The exhibit began its United States Tour in Los Angeles, and went to Fort Lauderdale, and Chicago, before coming to Philadelphia for its final American appearance. When the exhibit left Philadelphia on September 30, 2007, it traveled to London.\nThis exhibit was nearly twice the size of the original Tutankhamun exhibit of the 1970s, and contained 50 objects directly from Tut's tomb, as well as nearly 70 object from the tombs of his ancestors in The Valley of the Kings. The show also featured a CAT Scan that revealed what the Boy King may have looked like.\nThe Franklin Institute is a member of the Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC) and the American Alliance of Museums (AAM).\nThe Franklin Institute is also a member of the Science Museum Exhibit Collaborative with the Fort Worth Museum of Science & History; the Museum of Science, Boston; COSI Columbus, formerly known as the \"Center of Science and Industry\" in Columbus, Ohio; OMSI in Portland, Oregon; the Science Museum of Minnesota in Saint Paul, Minnesota; and the California Science Center, formerly the California Museum of Science & Industry, in Los Angeles.\nBenjamin Franklin National Memorial.\nThe Benjamin Franklin National Memorial features a high marble statue, sculpted by James Earle Fraser. Originally opened in 1938, the Memorial was designed by architect John T. Windrim and modeled after the Pantheon in Rome. The Hall is in length, width, and height. The domed ceiling is self-supporting and weighs 1600 tons. The floors, walls, columns, pilasters, and cornices are made of marbles imported from Portugal, Italy, and France.\nThe United States Congress designated the Hall and statue as the official Benjamin Franklin National Memorial on October 25, 1972 (Pub. L.\u00a0). The Memorial was dedicated by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller in 1976.\nOn December 30, 2005, Congress authorized the institute to receive up to $10 million in matching grants for the rehabilitation of the memorial and for the development of related exhibits.\nIn the fall of 2008, the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial was re-opened after a summer-long restoration that included multimedia enhancements. Philadelphia's most famous citizen is featured in \"Benjamin Franklin Forever\", an hourly 3.5-minute multimedia presentation utilizing the entire rotunda.\nAlso noteworthy is the Franklin Institute's Frankliniana Collection, some of which is on rotating display in the Pendulum Staircase. Highlights include Franklin's 1777 Nini Medallion, the scale model of the bust from the statue in the Memorial, the figurehead of Franklin's bust from the frigate , his ceremonial sword used in the court of King Louis XVI, and the odometer that Franklin used to measure the postal routes in Philadelphia. Additionally, the institute's \"Electricity\" exhibition highlights one of Franklin's lightning rods, his electricity tube, a Franklin Electrostatic Generator, the 1751 publication of Franklin's \"Experiments and Observations on Electricity\", and Thornton Oakley's two 1940 historical murals of Franklin and the \"Kite and Key\" experiment.\n\"The Journal of The Franklin Institute\".\nIn 1826, \"The Journal of The Franklin Institute\" was established to publish US Patent information and to document scientific and technological achievements throughout the nation. It is the second oldest continuously published scientific journal in the country, and is now primarily devoted to engineering and applied mathematics.\nAwards.\nSince 1824, the Franklin Institute has maintained the longest continuously awarded science and technology awards program in the United States, and one of the oldest in the world. The first issue of the \"Journal of The Franklin Institute\", dated January 1826, makes the first written reference to these awards. Before 1998 several medals were awarded by the Franklin Institute, such as (year indicates when the award was first presented): the Elliott Cresson Medal (1875), the Edward Longstreth Medal (1890), the Howard N. Potts Medal (1911), the Franklin Medal (1915), the George R. Henderson Medal (1924), the Louis E. Levy Medal (1924), the John Price Wetherill Medal (1926), The Frank P. Brown Medal (first awarded in 1941), Stuart Ballantine Medal (1947), and the Albert A. Michelson Medal (1968). Past winners include Henry Ford, Frank Lloyd Wright, Marie Curie, and Thomas Edison.\nIn 1998 all of the endowed medals were reorganized as the Benjamin Franklin Medals. Multiple medals are given every year, for different fields of science and engineering. The fields awarded today are \"Chemistry\", \"Computer and Cognitive Science\", \"Earth and Environmental Science\", \"Electrical Engineering\", \"Life Science\", \"Mechanical Engineering\" and \"Physics\". In the past also the fields \"Earth Science\", \"Engineering\" and \"Materials Science\" were rewarded.\nAdditionally since 1990, the Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science (Bower Science Award) and the Bower Award for Business Leadership have been awarded annually. They are funded by a $7.5 million bequest in 1988 from Henry Bower, a chemical manufacturer in Philadelphia. The Bower Science Award contains $250,000 of cash, one of the largest amounts for a science award in the US.\nThe institute's Committee on Science and the Arts determines the winners of these awards. Recipients and related information can be found in the laureates database.\nInformal science learning research.\nThe Franklin Institute also undertakes research in informal science education. Areas of special strength are educational technology, school partnerships, and youth leadership. In addition, the center has built a substantial portfolio of unique online resources of the history of science, including online exhibits on Ben Franklin and the Heart, as well as resources on the Wright Aeronautical Engineering Collection.\nThe Franklin Institute is a member of the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network (NISE Net).\nPrograms.\nScience Leadership Academy.\nOpening in September 2006, The \"Science Leadership Academy\" is a partnership between the Franklin Institute and the School District of Philadelphia.\nTeacher professional development.\nThe Franklin Institute offers summer institutes and school year mini-courses for K-8 teachers, in collaboration with the School District of Philadelphia and Curriculum & Instruction Office.\nPartnerships for Achieving Careers in Technology and Science.\n\"Partnerships for Achieving Careers in Technology and Science\", or PACTS, is a year-round program of science enrichment, career development, and leadership opportunities for diverse middle- and high-school students in the Philadelphia Region. PACTS students use hands-on science workshops, field based research, field trips, and laboratory experiments to learn how science affects their everyday lives.\nGirls at the Center.\n\"Girls at the Center\" is a partnership between the Franklin Institute and the Girl Scouts of the USA provided girls and their families a chance to learn about science together. Over 100 sites participated in the program, with over 70 of the sites still active today. Girls at the Center provided activities for the girls to do with their families at home, as well as projects to be completed on site, all culminating in a year-end party.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1427382": "John Y. Brown Jr.\nAmerican politician and businessman (1933\u20132022)\nJohn Young Brown Jr. (December 28, 1933 \u2013 November 22, 2022) was an American politician and entrepreneur from Kentucky. He served as the 55th governor of Kentucky from 1979 to 1983, and built Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) into a multimillion-dollar restaurant chain.\nThe son of United States Congressman John Y. Brown Sr., Brown's talent for business became evident in college, where he made a substantial amount of money selling \"Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica\" sets. After briefly practicing law with his father, he purchased Kentucky Fried Chicken from founder Harland Sanders in 1964. Brown turned the company into a worldwide success and sold his interest in the company for a huge profit in 1971. He then invested in several other restaurant ventures, but none matched the success of KFC. During the 1970s, he also owned, at various times, three professional basketball teams: the American Basketball Association's Kentucky Colonels, and the National Basketball Association's Boston Celtics and Buffalo Braves (currently the Los Angeles Clippers).\nDespite having previously shown little inclination toward politics, Brown surprised political observers by declaring his candidacy for governor in the 1979 election. With the state and nation facing difficult economic times, Brown promised to run the state government like a business. A strong media campaign funded by his personal fortune allowed him to win the Democratic primary and go on to defeat former Republican governor Louie B. Nunn in the general election. Because he owed few favors to established political leaders, he appointed many successful businesspeople to state posts instead of making political appointments. Following through on his campaign promise to make more diverse appointments, he named a woman and an African American to his cabinet. During his tenure, Brown exerted less influence over the legislature than previous governors and was frequently absent from the state, leaving Lieutenant Governor Martha Layne Collins as acting governor for more than one-quarter of his term. He briefly competed for the U.S. Senate after his gubernatorial term in the 1984 election but withdrew from the race after only six weeks, citing health issues. He continued to invest in business ventures, the most high profile of which was Kenny Rogers Roasters, a wood-roasted chicken restaurant he founded with country music star Kenny Rogers.\nBrown married three times, the second time to former Miss America Phyllis George. Among his children are news anchor Pamela Ashley Brown and former Secretary of State of Kentucky John Young Brown III.\nEarly life.\nBrown was born on December 28, 1933, in Lexington, Kentucky. He was the only son of five children born to John Y. and Dorothy Inman Brown. His father was a member of the United States House of Representatives from Kentucky and a member of the Kentucky General Assembly for nearly three decades, including a term as Speaker of the House. John Sr. was named for, but not related to, the nineteenth century governor of the same name. A 1979 \"People\" magazine article recounts that the elder Brown's nine unsuccessful political races \u2013 for either governor or the U.S. Senate \u2013 took a toll on his family and left his mother resentful of all the money spent on campaigns.\nBrown attended Lafayette High School in Lexington, where he was a seventeen-time letterman in various sports. During one summer, his father expressed disappointment that he had decided to spend the summer selling vacuum cleaners instead of working on a road construction crew with the rest of his football teammates. Motivated by his father's disapproval, Brown averaged $1,000 in monthly commissions from vacuum cleaner sales. After high school, Brown matriculated at the University of Kentucky, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1957 and a law degree in 1960. As an undergraduate, he was a member of the golf team and Phi Delta Theta fraternity. While in law school, he made as much as $25,000 a year selling Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica sets and employed a sales crew made up of classmates to increase his profits.\nBrown joined his father's law practice after earning his law degree. From 1959 to 1965, he also served in the United States Army Reserve. He served as legal counsel for Paul Hornung when Hornung was suspended for the 1963 National Football League season for gambling. After only a few years, Brown left his father's law firm and began a career in business.\nBusiness ventures.\nIn 1960, Brown married Eleanor Bennett Durall and had three children including John Young Brown III, Eleanor Faris, and Sandra Bennett. He got his wife involved in managing a barbecue restaurant; upon seeing its success, he became convinced of the financial potential of the fast food industry. During a 1963 political breakfast, Brown met Colonel Harland Sanders, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), and the two discussed selling Sanders' chicken in Brown's chain of barbecue restaurants. By 1964, Brown persuaded Jack C. Massey to purchase KFC from Sanders for $2 million (). The investment group changed the restaurant's format from the diner-style restaurant envisioned by Sanders to a fast-food take out model. Giving all their restaurants a distinct red-and-white striped color pattern, the group opened over 1,500 restaurants, including locations in all 50 U.S. states and several international locations. By 1967, KFC had become the nation's sixth-largest restaurant chain by volume and first offered its stock for public purchase in 1969.\nFor his work with KFC, Brown was named one of the Outstanding Young Men of America by the Junior Chamber of Commerce in 1966; the following year, the Chamber named him one of the Outstanding Civic Leaders of America. Eventually, he became a member of both the Kentucky and Louisville Chambers of Commerce. The Louisville Junior Chamber of Commerce honored him as Louisville's Outstanding Young Man in 1969, and he was inducted into the University of Kentucky Alumni Association Hall of Distinguished Alumni on November 6, 1970.\nIn 1971, Brown sold his interest in KFC to Heublein for $284\u00a0million (). Using some of the profits from the KFC sale, Brown and some associates bought the Miami-based Lum's chain of restaurants from its founders, Stuart and Clifford S. Perlman, for $4\u00a0million. Of the 340-outlet beer-and-hot-dog chain, Brown said, \"They did not have very good food. I figured that upgrading it would be my first task.\" Accordingly, he hired a group of young executives to find \"the perfect hamburger\". After a three-month courtship, he hired Ollie Gleichenhaus, owner of Ollie's Sandwich Shop, a small diner in Miami Beach, Florida, to train Lum's staff to prepare his \"Ollie Burger\" hamburgers. He later started a chain of take-out restaurants called Ollie's Trolley, named for Gleichenhaus. Initially successful, Brown said, \"That venture [Ollie's Trolley] collapsed\". Lions Clubs International in Tampa, Florida, honored Brown with its Service to America Award in 1974. Brown sold the Lum's chain for $9.5\u00a0million to Friedrich Jahn's Wienerwald holding group in 1978. A few years later, Brown launched John Y's Chicken, a venture which also subsequently failed. Kenny Rogers Roasters, another chain founded with country music superstar Kenny Rogers, proved more successful.\nBasketball ventures.\nConcurrent with his post-KFC business ventures, Brown purchased an ownership stake in several professional basketball teams. He owned three professional basketball teams, one of those being the Boston Celtics. In 1970, Wendell Cherry assembled a group that included Brown to buy the American Basketball Association's (ABA) Kentucky Colonels. Following the 1972\u201373 season, Cherry sold his interest in the Colonels to a group from Cincinnati; Brown immediately purchased Cherry's interest from the group, reportedly to keep the team from moving to Cincinnati. He put his wife and a 10-woman board of directors in charge of the team. Colonels general manager Mike Storen felt that this was a sign that Brown was going to run the team \"his way\" and left the team as a result; two months later, he accepted the job of ABA league commissioner. Head coach Joe Mullaney followed soon after, saying that Brown was going to be too meddlesome in personnel decisions. Babe McCarthy lasted only one season as Mullaney's replacement; in 1975, Brown hired Hubie Brown (no relation) as head coach. The team won the ABA championship the following year.\nAlthough he had been hailed as a hero, first for saving the Colonels from moving to Cincinnati and then for bringing a championship to Louisville, Brown came under intense public criticism following the Colonels' championship season for selling the rights to center Dan Issel to the Baltimore Claws in a cost-saving move. He frequently clashed with coach Hubie Brown during the 1975\u201376 season, and at the end of the year, he accepted $3\u00a0million to fold the team during the 1976 ABA\u2013NBA merger rather than paying $3\u00a0million for the team to join the National Basketball Association (NBA).\nAfter folding the Colonels, Brown stated that basketball was not the kind of business he wanted to be involved in. Despite this declaration, he purchased half-ownership in the NBA's Buffalo Braves later in 1976. The Braves had posted a dismal 30\u201352 record in the 1975\u201376 season, and Brown immediately set out to make moves that would improve the franchise's fortunes in the next season. He re-signed All Star guard Randy Smith, who had threatened to leave as a free agent, then traded the club's first-round draft pick to the Milwaukee Bucks for center Swen Nater. In a single day, he made two significant trades. In the first, he swapped reigning Rookie of the Year Adrian Dantley for the Indiana Pacers' Billy Knight, who was second in the league in scoring the previous season. Four hours later, he acquired Nate \"Tiny\" Archibald from the New York Nets for George Johnson and a first-round draft pick in 1979. In 1977, Brown purchased the remaining share of the team from the owner Paul Snyder.\nThe following year, Brown traded franchises with Boston Celtics owner Irv Levin. The move allowed Levin to move his franchise to his home state of California, while giving Brown ownership of one of the league's most storied franchises. Two weeks before the swap of franchises was made official, details of a six-player trade between the two were reported. Boston sent Freeman Williams, Kevin Kunnert, and Kermit Washington to the Braves for \"Tiny\" Archibald, Billy Knight, and Marvin Barnes. The move turned Boston fans against Brown, both because Kunnert and Washington were seen as key pieces of the team's future and because team president and legendary former coach Red Auerbach publicly stated that he was not consulted about the trade. The relationship between Brown and Auerbach worsened with Brown's decision to trade three first-round draft picks that Auerbach had planned to use to rebuild the franchise for Bob McAdoo. Again, Brown made the trade without consulting Auerbach. Auerbach almost left Boston to take a job with the New York Knicks as a result. Brown eventually sold his interest in the team to co-owner Harry Mangurian in 1979.\nBrown and his first wife divorced in 1977. On March 17, 1979, he married former Miss America and CBS sportscaster Phyllis George. The ceremony was performed by Norman Vincent Peale. Brown and George had two children, Lincoln Tyler George Brown and Pamela Ashley Brown. Pamela would later become a major journalist for CNN after joining the network in 2021.\nPolitical career.\nUnlike his father, Brown showed only a passing interest in politics prior to 1979. In the 1960 election, he was named vice-chairman of John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign in Kentucky. He was a member of the Young Leadership Council of the Democratic National Committee, and was named honorary chairman of the National Democratic Party in 1972. Later that year, he considered running for the U.S. Senate, but decided against it once former governor Louie Nunn entered the race. From 1972 to 1974, he hosted the Democratic National Telethon. He founded the Governor's Economic Development Commission of Kentucky and served as chair from 1975 to 1977.\nGubernatorial election of 1979.\nOn March 27, 1979, Brown interrupted his honeymoon with Phyllis George to announce his candidacy for governor of Kentucky. The announcement surprised most political observers because of his prior political apathy and because Brown had spent considerable time out of the state with his business ventures and lavish lifestyle. Funding his campaign with his own personal fortune, Brown launched a massive media campaign promoting his candidacy to help him overcome his late start in the race. He promised to run the state government like a business and to be a salesman for the state as governor.\nOther candidates in the Democratic field included sitting lieutenant governor Thelma Stovall, former state representative Terry McBrayer (the choice of sitting governor Julian Carroll), United States congressman Carroll Hubbard, state auditor George Adkins, and Louisville mayor Harvey I. Sloane. Initially the leading candidate, Stovall was hampered during the campaign by ill health. During the campaign, Brown was attacked by McBrayer for refusing to release his federal tax returns. McBrayer also claimed that Brown had not voted in a Democratic primary since 1975, a charge validated by public voting records. Nevertheless, Brown won the primary by a margin of 25,000 votes. The race was so close that Sloane, Brown's closest competitor, refused to concede for two days. Brown defeated former Republican governor Louie Nunn in the 1979 general election by a vote of 588,088 to 381,278.\nRenovation of Governor's Mansion.\nWithin a month of moving into the Governor's Mansion, Brown noticed significant deterioration in the wiring and ordered a full inspection. The Department of Buildings and Construction's preliminary report stated, \"If this was a privately operated structure, this office would have no alternative other than to give the operator 30 to 60 days to rewire the structure.\" The report went on to say that the mansion was a virtual firetrap. Upon receiving the report, Brown immediately moved his family out of the mansion and back to Cave Hill, his estate in Lexington. The Department of Buildings and Construction forbade use of the mansion for overnight purposes or group meetings until repairs could be made. Brown's Cave Hill estate was officially designated the temporary executive mansion, and the state agreed to furnish Brown's groceries, reimburse him for entertaining official guests, and pay for telephone calls made in his capacity as governor. He was also given a travel allowance.\nIn March 1980, the General Assembly created a committee to study whether it would be more feasible to construct a new governor's mansion or repair the old one. Ultimately, they decided to renovate the existing mansion, and Brown's wife Phyllis was given liberal input into the decision making. The state had expected to cover the cost of the repairs using federal revenue sharing funds, but President Jimmy Carter ordered a halt to the funds in May 1980. First lady Phyllis Brown organized a group called \"Save the Mansion\" to raise private funds to offset the repair costs. Independently wealthy, Governor Brown donated his first year's salary to the project. He waived his salary for the remainder of his term. The renovation and repairs were completed in March 1983, and the Brown family returned to the mansion in April.\nGovernorship.\nBecause Brown owed few favors to the state's established politicians, many of his top appointees were businesspeople. Keeping a campaign promise to appoint a woman and an African American to his cabinet, Brown named William E. McAnulty Jr., and Jacqueline Swigart to his cabinet. McAnulty resigned his post as secretary of the state's Justice Cabinet within one month, saying the position would keep him from spending enough time with his family. Brown re-appointed McAnulty to his former position as a judge with the Jefferson County District Court and replaced him with another African American, George W. Wilson. He also appointed Viola Davis Brown as Executive Director of the Office of Public Health Nursing in 1980. She was the first African American nurse to lead a state office of public health nursing in the United States. His most controversial appointment was Frank Metts, his secretary of transportation. Metts broke with political tradition in Kentucky, announcing that contracts would be awarded on the basis of competitive bids and performance rather than political patronage. Despite cutting personnel from the department, Metts doubled the miles of road that were resurfaced.\nDifficult economic times marked Brown's term in office. During his tenure, the state's unemployment rate climbed from 5.6 percent to 11.7 percent. Brown stuck to his campaign promise not to raise taxes. When state income fell short of expectations, he reduced the state budget by 22 percent and cut the number of state employees from 37,241 to 30,783, mostly through transfer and attrition. At the same time, his merit pay policies increased salaries for the remaining employees by an average of 34 percent. He cut the executive office staff from ninety-seven to thirty and sold seven of the state's eight government airplanes.\nBrown appointed a group of insurance experts to study the state's policies and put them out for bid, ultimately saving $2\u00a0million. He also required competitive bids from banks where state funds were deposited; the extra interest generated by this process generated an additional $50\u00a0million in revenue to the general fund. He opened communications and contacts with Japan, setting the stage for future economic relations between that country and Kentucky. Among his other accomplishments as governor were the implementation of competitive bidding for government contracts and passage of a weight-distance tax on trucks.\nBrown was less involved with the legislative process than previous governors. For example, he did not attempt to influence the choice of legislative leadership, while most previous governors had practically hand-selected the presiding officers in each house. During one of the two legislative sessions of his term, he went on vacation. Consequently, many of his legislative recommendations were not enacted. Among his failed proposals were a multi-county banking law, a flat rate income tax, professional negotiations for teachers, and a constitutional amendment to allow a governor to be elected to successive terms. In all, Brown was out of the state \u2013 leaving Lieutenant Governor Martha Layne Collins as acting governor \u2013 for more than five hundred days during his four-year term. As noted by Kentucky historian Lowell H. Harrison, Brown's hands-off approach allowed the legislature to gain power relative to the governor for the first time in Kentucky history, a trend which continued into the terms of his successors.\nDuring his term, Brown served as co-chairman of the Appalachian Regional Commission and chair of the Southern States' Energy Board. In May 1981, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Kentucky, and in May 1982, he was the recipient of the Father of the Year award. In September 1983, the national Democratic Party named him Democrat of the Year, and he was later made the party's lifetime Honorary Treasurer.\nIn 1982, Brown was briefly hospitalized for hypertension, and near the end of his term, he underwent quadruple bypass surgery. While recovering from the surgery, Brown suffered a rare pulmonary disease, keeping him hospitalized for weeks, during part of which time he was comatose. He had no pulse for a period of time, and one of his lungs partially collapsed. Brown's office tried to conceal the seriousness of his condition, drawing fire from the press. Following his recovery, he gave up smoking and took up jogging.\nIn \"Kentucky's Governors\", Brown biographer Mary K. Bonsteel Tachau said of his administration: \"There were no scandals. Neither he nor any of his people were accused of corruption.\" Scandal did touch Brown personally, however, as well as some of his close associates. In 1981, he was investigated for withdrawing $1.3\u00a0million in personal cash from the All American Bank of Miami. The bank failed to report the transaction to the Internal Revenue Service as required by law. When the Federal Bureau of Investigation probed the matter in 19"}, "descending_order": ["45515134", "1427382", "226577"], "permutation_1": ["226577", "45515134", "1427382"], "permutation_2": ["45515134", "226577", "1427382"], "permutation_3": ["45515134", "226577", "1427382"]}
{"id": "2hop__800133_46077", "docs_added": {"3335": "Baltic Sea\nSea in northern Europe\nThe Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North and Central European Plain regions.\nThe sea stretches from 53\u00b0N to 66\u00b0N latitude and from 10\u00b0E to 30\u00b0E longitude. It is a shelf sea and marginal sea of the Atlantic with limited water exchange between the two, making it an inland sea. The Baltic Sea drains through the Danish straits into the Kattegat by way of the \u00d8resund, Great Belt and Little Belt. It includes the Gulf of Bothnia (divided into the Bothnian Bay and the Bothnian Sea), the Gulf of Finland, the Gulf of Riga and the Bay of Gda\u0144sk.\nThe \"Baltic Proper\" is bordered on its northern edge, at latitude 60\u00b0N, by \u00c5land and the Gulf of Bothnia, on its northeastern edge by the Gulf of Finland, on its eastern edge by the Gulf of Riga, and in the west by the Swedish part of the southern Scandinavian Peninsula.\nThe Baltic Sea is connected by artificial waterways to the White Sea via the White Sea\u2013Baltic Canal and to the German Bight of the North Sea via the Kiel Canal.\nDefinitions.\nAdministration.\nThe Helsinki Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area includes the Baltic Sea and the Kattegat, without calling Kattegat a part of the Baltic Sea, \"For the purposes of this Convention the 'Baltic Sea Area' shall be the Baltic Sea and the Entrance to the Baltic Sea, bounded by the parallel of the Skaw in the Skagerrak at 57\u00b044.43'N.\"\nTraffic history.\nHistorically, the Kingdom of Denmark collected Sound Dues from ships at the border between the ocean and the land-locked Baltic Sea, in tandem: in the \u00d8resund at Kronborg castle near Helsing\u00f8r; in the Great Belt at Nyborg; and in the Little Belt at its narrowest part then Fredericia, after that stronghold was built. The narrowest part of Little Belt is the \"Middelfart Sund\" near Middelfart.\nOceanography.\nGeographers widely agree that the preferred physical border between the Baltic and North Seas is the Langelandsb\u00e6lt (the southern part of the Great Belt strait near Langeland) and the Drogden-Sill strait. The Drogden Sill is situated north of K\u00f8ge Bugt and connects Drag\u00f8r in the south of Copenhagen to Malm\u00f6; it is used by the \u00d8resund Bridge, including the \"Drogden Tunnel\". By this definition, the Danish straits is part of the entrance, but the Bay of Mecklenburg and the Bay of Kiel are parts of the Baltic Sea.\nAnother usual border is the line between Falsterbo, Sweden, and Stevns Klint, Denmark, as this is the southern border of \u00d8resund. It is also the border between the shallow southern \u00d8resund (with a typical depth of 5\u201310 meters only) and notably deeper water.\nHydrography and biology.\nDrogden Sill (depth of ) sets a limit to \u00d8resund and Darss Sill (depth of ), and a limit to the Belt Sea. The shallow sills are obstacles to the flow of heavy salt water from the Kattegat into the basins around Bornholm and Gotland.\nThe Kattegat and the southwestern Baltic Sea are well oxygenated and have a rich biology. The remainder of the Sea is brackish, poor in oxygen, and in species. Thus, statistically, the more of the entrance that is included in its definition, the healthier the Baltic appears; conversely, the more narrowly it is defined, the more endangered its biology appears.\nEtymology and nomenclature.\nTacitus called it the Suebic Sea, Latin: after the Germanic people of the Suebi, and Ptolemy \"Sarmatian Ocean\" after the Sarmatians, but the first to name it the \"Baltic Sea\" () was the eleventh-century German chronicler Adam of Bremen. The origin of the latter name is speculative and it was adopted into Slavic and Finnic languages spoken around the sea, very likely due to the role of Medieval Latin in cartography. It might be connected to the Germanic word \"belt\", a name used for two of the Danish straits, the Belts, while others claim it to be directly derived from the source of the Germanic word, Latin \"belt\". Adam of Bremen himself compared the sea with a belt, stating that it is so named because it stretches through the land as a belt (\"Balticus, eo quod in modum baltei longo tractu per Scithicas regiones tendatur usque in Greciam\").\nHe might also have been influenced by the name of a legendary island mentioned in the \"Natural History\" of Pliny the Elder. Pliny mentions an island named \"Baltia\" (or \"Balcia\") with reference to accounts of Pytheas and Xenophon. It is possible that Pliny refers to an island named Basilia (\"the royal\") in \"On the Ocean\" by Pytheas. \"Baltia\" also might be derived from \"belt\", and therein mean \"near belt of sea, strait\".\nOthers have suggested that the name of the island originates from the Proto-Indo-European root \"*b\u02b0el\" meaning \"white, fair\", which may echo the naming of seas after colours relating to the cardinal points (as per Black Sea and Red Sea). This '*b\u02b0el' root and basic meaning were retained in Lithuanian (as ), Latvian (as ) and Slavic (as ). On this basis, a related hypothesis holds that the name originated from this Indo-European root via a Baltic language such as Lithuanian. Another explanation is that, while derived from the aforementioned root, the name of the sea is related to names for various forms of water and related substances in several European languages, that might have been originally associated with colors found in swamps (compare Proto-Slavic \"*bolto\" \"swamp\"). Yet another explanation is that the name originally meant \"enclosed sea, bay\" as opposed to open sea.\nIn the Middle Ages the sea was known by a variety of names. The name Baltic Sea became dominant after 1600. Usage of \"Baltic\" and similar terms to denote the region east of the sea started only in the 19th century.\nName in other languages.\nThe Baltic Sea was known in ancient Latin language sources as or even . Older native names in languages that used to be spoken on the shores of the sea or near it usually indicate the geographical location of the sea (in Germanic languages), or its size in relation to smaller gulfs (in Old Latvian), or tribes associated with it (in Old Russian the sea was known as the Varanghian Sea). In modern languages, it is known by the equivalents of \"East Sea\", \"West Sea\", or \"Baltic Sea\" in different languages:\nHistory.\nClassical world.\nAt the time of the Roman Empire, the Baltic Sea was known as the or \"Mare Sarmaticum\". Tacitus in his AD\u00a098 \"Agricola\" and \"Germania\" described the Mare Suebicum, named for the Suebi tribe, during the spring months, as a brackish sea where the ice broke apart and chunks floated about. The Suebi eventually migrated southwest to temporarily reside in the Rhineland area of modern Germany, where their name survives in the historic region known as Swabia. Jordanes called it the \"Germanic Sea\" in his work, the \"Getica\".\nMiddle Ages.\nIn the early Middle Ages, Norse (Scandinavian) merchants built a trade empire all around the Baltic. Later, the Norse fought for control of the Baltic against Wendish tribes dwelling on the southern shore. The Norse also used the rivers of Russia for trade routes, finding their way eventually to the Black Sea and southern Russia. This Norse-dominated period is referred to as the Viking Age.\nSince the Viking Age, the Scandinavians have referred to the Baltic Sea as \"Austmarr\" (\"Eastern Sea\"). \"Eastern Sea\", appears in the \"Heimskringla\" and \"Eystra salt\" appears in \"S\u00f6rla \u00fe\u00e1ttr\". Saxo Grammaticus recorded in \"Gesta Danorum\" an older name, \"Gandvik\", \"-vik\" being Old Norse for \"bay\", which implies that the Vikings correctly regarded it as an inlet of the sea. Another form of the name, \"Grandvik\", attested in at least one English translation of \"Gesta Danorum\", is likely to be a misspelling.\nIn addition to fish the sea also provides amber, especially from its southern shores within today's borders of Poland, Russia and Lithuania. First mentions of amber deposits on the South Coast of the Baltic Sea date back to the 12th century. The bordering countries have also traditionally exported lumber, wood tar, flax, hemp and furs by ship across the Baltic. Sweden had from early medieval times exported iron and silver mined there, while Poland had and still has extensive salt mines. Thus, the Baltic Sea has long been crossed by much merchant shipping.\nThe lands on the Baltic's eastern shore were among the last in Europe to be converted to Christianity. This finally happened during the Northern Crusades: Finland in the twelfth century by Swedes, and what are now Estonia and Latvia in the early thirteenth century by Danes and Germans (Livonian Brothers of the Sword). The Teutonic Order gained control over parts of the southern and eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, where they set up their monastic state. Lithuania was the last European state to convert to Christianity.\nAn arena of conflict.\nIn the period between the 8th and 14th centuries, there was much piracy in the Baltic from the coasts of Pomerania and Prussia, and the Victual Brothers held Gotland.\nStarting in the 11th century, the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic were settled by migrants mainly from Germany, a movement called the \"Ostsiedlung\" (\"east settling\"). Other settlers were from the Netherlands, Denmark, and Scotland. The Polabian Slavs were gradually assimilated by the Germans. Denmark gradually gained control over most of the Baltic coast, until she lost much of her possessions after being defeated in the 1227 Battle of Bornh\u00f6ved.\nIn the 13th to 16th centuries, the strongest economic force in Northern Europe was the Hanseatic League, a federation of merchant cities around the Baltic Sea and the North Sea. In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Poland, Denmark, and Sweden fought wars for \"Dominium maris baltici\" (\"Lordship over the Baltic Sea\"). Eventually, it was Sweden that virtually encompassed the Baltic Sea. In Sweden, the sea was then referred to as \"Mare Nostrum Balticum\" (\"Our Baltic Sea\"). The goal of Swedish warfare during the 17th century was to make the Baltic Sea an all-Swedish sea (\"Ett Svenskt innanhav\"), something that was accomplished except the part between Riga in Latvia and Stettin in Pomerania. However, the Dutch dominated the Baltic trade in the seventeenth century.\nIn the eighteenth century, Russia and Prussia became the leading powers over the sea. Sweden's defeat in the Great Northern War brought Russia to the eastern coast. Russia became and remained a dominating power in the Baltic. Russia's Peter the Great saw the strategic importance of the Baltic and decided to found his new capital, Saint Petersburg, at the mouth of the Neva river at the east end of the Gulf of Finland. There was much trading not just within the Baltic region but also with the North Sea region, especially eastern England and the Netherlands: their fleets needed the Baltic timber, tar, flax, and hemp.\nDuring the Crimean War, a joint British and French fleet attacked the Russian fortresses in the Baltic; the case is also known as the \u00c5land War. They bombarded Sveaborg, which guards Helsinki; and Kronstadt, which guards Saint Petersburg; and they destroyed Bomarsund in \u00c5land. After the unification of Germany in 1871, the whole southern coast became German. World War I was partly fought in the Baltic Sea. After 1920 Poland was granted access to the Baltic Sea at the expense of Germany by the Polish Corridor and enlarged the port of Gdynia in rivalry with the port of the Free City of Danzig.\nAfter the Nazis' rise to power, Germany reclaimed the Memelland and after the outbreak of the Eastern Front (World War II) occupied the Baltic states. In 1945, the Baltic Sea became a mass grave for retreating soldiers and refugees on torpedoed troop transports. The sinking of the \"Wilhelm Gustloff\" remains the worst maritime disaster in history, killing (very roughly) 9,000 people. In 2005, a Russian group of scientists found over five thousand airplane wrecks, sunken warships, and other material, mainly from World War II, on the bottom of the sea.\nSince World War II.\nSince the end of World War II, various nations, including the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States have disposed of chemical weapons in the Baltic Sea, raising concerns of environmental contamination. Today, fishermen occasionally find some of these materials: the most recent available report from the Helsinki Commission notes that four small scale catches of chemical munitions representing approximately of material were reported in 2005. This is a reduction from the 25 incidents representing of material in 2003. Until now, the U.S. Government refuses to disclose the exact coordinates of the wreck sites. Deteriorating bottles leak mustard gas and other substances, thus slowly poisoning a substantial part of the Baltic Sea.\nAfter 1945, the German population was expelled from all areas east of the Oder-Neisse line, making room for new Polish and Russian settlement. Poland gained most of the southern shore. The Soviet Union gained another access to the Baltic with the Kaliningrad Oblast, that had been part of German-settled East Prussia. The Baltic states on the eastern shore were annexed by the Soviet Union. The Baltic then separated opposing military blocs: NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Neutral Sweden developed incident weapons to defend its territorial waters after the Swedish submarine incidents. This border status restricted trade and travel. It ended only after the collapse of the Communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s.\nFinland and Sweden joined NATO in 2023 and 2024, respectively, making the Baltic Sea almost entirely surrounded by the alliance's members, leading some commentators to label the sea a \u2033NATO lake\u2033. Such an arrangement has also existed for the European Union (EU) since May 2004 following the accession of the Baltic states and Poland. The remaining non-NATO and non-EU shore areas are Russian: the Saint Petersburg area and the Kaliningrad Oblast exclave.\nStorms and storm floods.\nWinter storms begin arriving in the region during October. These have caused numerous shipwrecks, and contributed to the extreme difficulties of rescuing passengers of the ferry MS \"Estonia\" en route from Tallinn, Estonia, to Stockholm, Sweden, in September 1994, which claimed the lives of 852 people. Older, wood-based shipwrecks such as the \"Vasa\" tend to remain well-preserved, as the Baltic's cold and brackish water does not suit the shipworm.\nStorm surge floods are generally taken to occur when the water level is more than one metre above normal. In Warnem\u00fcnde about 110 floods occurred from 1950 to 2000, an average of just over two per year.\nHistoric flood events were the All Saints' Flood of 1304 and other floods in the years 1320, 1449, 1625, 1694, 1784 and 1825. Little is known of their extent. From 1872, there exist regular and reliable records of water levels in the Baltic Sea. The highest was the flood of 1872 when the water was an average of above sea level at Warnem\u00fcnde and a maximum of above sea level in Warnem\u00fcnde. In the last very heavy floods the average water levels reached above sea level in 1904, in 1913, in January 1954, on 2\u20134 November 1995 and on 21 February 2002.\nGeography.\nGeophysical data.\nAn arm of the North Atlantic Ocean, the Baltic Sea is enclosed by Sweden and Denmark to the west, Finland to the northeast, and the Baltic countries to the southeast.\nIt is about long, an average of wide, and an average of deep. The maximum depth is which is on the Swedish side of the center. The surface area is about and the volume is about . The periphery amounts to about of coastline.\nThe Baltic Sea is one of the largest brackish inland seas by area, and occupies a basin (a \"Zungenbecken\") formed by glacial erosion during the last few ice ages.\nExtent.\nThe International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Baltic Sea as follows:\nBordered by the coasts of Germany, Denmark, Poland, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, it extends north-eastward of the following limits:\n*\"In the Little Belt.\" A line joining Falsh\u00f6ft () and Vejsn\u00e6s Nakke (\u00c6r\u00f8: ).\n*\"In the Great Belt.\" A line joining Gulstav (South extreme of Langeland Island) and Kappel Kirke () on Island of Lolland.\n*\"In the Guldborg Sound.\" A line joining Flinthorne-Rev and Skjelby ().\n*\"In the Sound.\" A line joining Stevns Lighthouse () and Falsterbo Point ().\nSubdivisions.\nThe northern part of the Baltic Sea is known as the Gulf of Bothnia, of which the northernmost part is the Bay of Bothnia or Bothnian Bay. The more rounded southern basin of the gulf is called Bothnian Sea and immediately to the south of it lies the Sea of \u00c5land. The Gulf of Finland connects the Baltic Sea with Saint Petersburg. The Gulf of Riga lies between the Latvian capital city of Riga and the Estonian island of Saaremaa.\nThe Northern Baltic Sea lies between the Stockholm area, southwestern Finland, and Estonia. The Western and Eastern Gotland basins form the major parts of the Central Baltic Sea or Baltic proper. The Bornholm Basin is the area east of Bornholm, and the shallower Arkona Basin extends from Bornholm to the Danish isles of Falster and Zealand.\nIn the south, the Bay of Gda\u0144sk lies east of the Hel Peninsula on the Polish coast and west of the Sambia Peninsula in Kaliningrad Oblast. The Bay of Pomerania lies north of the islands of Usedom/Uznam and Wolin, east of R\u00fcgen. Between Falster and the German coast lie the Bay of Mecklenburg and Bay of L\u00fcbeck. The westernmost part of the Baltic Sea is the Bay of Kiel. The three Danish straits, the Great Belt, the Little Belt and The Sound (\"\u00d6resund\"/\"\u00d8resund\"), connect the Baltic Sea with the Kattegat and Skagerrak strait in the North Sea.\nTemperature and ice.\nThe water temperature of the Baltic Sea varies significantly depending on exact location, season and depth. At the Bornholm Basin, which is located directly east of the island of the same name, the surface temperature typically falls to during the peak of the winter and rises to during the peak of the summer, with an annual average of around . A similar pattern can be seen in the Gotland Basin, which is located between the island of Gotland and Latvia. In the deep of these basins the temperature variations are smaller. At the bottom of the Bornholm Basin, deeper than , the temperature typically is , and at the bottom of the Gotland Basin, at depths greater than , the temperature typically is . Generally, offshore locations, lower latitudes and islands maintain maritime climates, but adjacent to the water continental climates are common, especially on the Gulf of Finland. In the northern tributaries the climates transition from moderate continental to subarctic on the northernmost coastlines.\nOn the long-term average, the Baltic Sea is ice-covered at the annual maximum for about 45% of its surface area. The ice-covered area during such a typical winter includes the Gulf of Bothnia, the Gulf of Finland, the Gulf of Riga, the archipelago west of Estonia, the Stockholm archipelago, and the Archipelago Sea southwest of Finland. The remainder of the Baltic does not freeze during a normal winter, except sheltered bays and shallow lagoons such as the Curonian Lagoon. The ice reaches its maximum extent in February or March; typical ice thickness in the northernmost areas in the Bothnian Bay, the northern basin of the Gulf of Bothnia, is about for landfast sea ice. The thickness decreases farther south.\nFreezing begins in the northern extremities of the Gulf of Bothnia typically in the middle of November, reaching the open waters of the Bothnian Bay in early January. The Bothnian Sea, the basin south of Kvarken, freezes on average in late February. The Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Riga freeze typically in late January. In 2011, the Gulf of Finland was completely frozen on 15 February.\nThe ice extent depends on whether the winter is mild, moderate, or severe. In severe winters ice can form around southern Sweden and even in the Danish straits. According to the 18th-century natural historian William Derham, during the severe winters of 1703 and 1708, the ice cover reached as far as the Danish straits. Frequently, parts of the Gulf of Bothnia and the Gulf of Finland are frozen, in addition to coastal fringes in more southerly locations such as the Gulf of Riga. This description meant that the whole of the Baltic Sea was covered with ice.\nSince 1720, the Baltic Sea has frozen over entirely 20 times, most recently in early 1987, which was the most severe winter in Scandinavia since 1720. The ice then covered . During the winter of 2010\u201311, which was quite severe compared to those of the last decades, the maximum ice cover was , which was reached on 25 February 2011. The ice then extended from the north down to the northern tip of Gotland, with small ice-free areas on either side, and the east coast of the Baltic Sea was covered by an ice sheet about wide all the way to Gda\u0144sk. This was brought about by a stagnant high-pressure area that lingered over central and northern Scandinavia from around 10 to 24 February. After this, strong southern winds pushed the ice further into the north, and much of the waters north of Gotland were again free of ice, which had then packed against the shores of southern Finland. The effects of the aforementioned high-pressure area did not reach the southern parts of the Baltic Sea, and thus the entire sea did not freeze over. However, floating ice was additionally observed near \u015awinouj\u015bcie harbor in January 2010.\nIn recent years before 2011, the Bothnian Bay and the Bothnian Sea were frozen with solid ice near the Baltic coast and dense floating ice far from it. In 2008, almost no ice formed except for a short period in March.\nDuring winter, fast ice, which is attached to the shoreline, develops first, rendering ports unusable without the services of icebreakers. Level ice, ice sludge, pancake ice, and rafter ice form in the more open regions. The gleaming expanse of ice is similar to the Arctic, with wind-driven pack ice and ridges up to . Offshore of the landfast ice, the ice remains very dynamic all year, and it is relatively easily moved around by winds and therefore forms pack ice, made up of large piles and ridges pushed against the landfast ice and shores.\nIn spring, the Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Bothnia normally thaw in late April, with some ice ridges persisting until May in the eastern extremities of the Gulf of Finland. In the northernmost reaches of the Bothnian Bay, ice usually stays until late May; by early June it is practically always gone. However, in the famine year of 1867 remnants of ice were observed as late as 17 July near Uddsk\u00e4r. Even as far south as \u00d8resund, remnants of ice have been observed in May on several occasions; near Taarbaek on 15 May 1942 and near Copenhagen on 11 May 1771. Drift ice was also observed on 11 May 1799.\nThe ice cover is the main habitat for two large mammals, the grey seal (\"Halichoerus grypus\") and the Baltic ringed seal (\"Pusa hispida botnica\"), both of which feed underneath the ice and breed on its surface. Of these two seals, only the Baltic ringed seal suffers when there is not adequate ice in the Baltic Sea, as it feeds its young only while on ice. The grey seal is adapted to reproducing also with no ice in the sea. The sea ice also harbors several species of algae that live in the bottom and inside unfrozen brine pockets in the ice.\nDue to the often fluctuating winter temperatures between above and below freezing, the saltwater ice of the Baltic Sea can be treacherous and hazardous to walk on, in particular in comparison to the more stable fresh water-ice sheets in the interior lakes.\nHydrography.\nThe Baltic Sea flows out through the Danish straits; however, the flow is complex. A surface layer of brackish water discharges per year into the North Sea. Due to the difference in salinity, by salinity permeation principle, a sub-surface layer of more saline water moving in the opposite direction brings in per year. It mixes very slowly with the upper waters, resulting in a salinity gradient from top to bottom, with most of the saltwater remaining below deep. The general circulation is anti-clockwise: northwards along its eastern boundary, and south along with the western one .\nThe difference between the outflow and the inflow comes entirely from fresh water. More than 250 streams drain a basin of about , contributing a volume of per year to the Baltic. They include the major rivers of north Europe, such as the Oder, the Vistula, the Neman, the Daugava and the Neva. Additional fresh water comes from the difference of precipitation less evaporation, which is positive.\nAn important source of salty water is infrequent inflows (also known as major Baltic inflows or MBIs) of North Sea water into the Baltic. Such inflows, important to the Baltic ecosystem because of the oxygen they transport into the Baltic deeps, happen on average once per year, but large pulses that can replace the anoxic deep water in the Gotland Deep occur about once in ten years. Previously, it was believed that the frequency of MBIs had declined since 1980, but recent studies have challenged this view and no longer display a clear change in the frequency or intensity of saline inflows. Instead, a decadal variability in the intensities of MBIs is observed with a main period of approximately 30 years.\nThe water level is generally far more dependent on the regional wind situation than on tidal effects. However, tidal currents occur in narrow passages in the western parts of the Baltic Sea. Tides can reach in the Gulf of Finland.\nThe significant wave height is generally much lower than that of the North Sea. Quite violent, sudden storms sweep the surface ten or more times a year, due to large transient temperature differences and a long reach of the wind. Seasonal winds also cause small changes in sea level, of the order of . According to the media, during a storm in January 2017, an extreme wave above has been measured and significant wave height of around has been measured by the FMI. A numerical study has shown the presence of events with significant wave heights. Those extreme waves events can play an important role in the coastal zone on erosion and sea dynamics.\nSalinity.\nThe Baltic Sea is the world's largest brackish sea. Only two other brackish waters are larger according to some measurements: The Black Sea is larger in both surface area and water volume, but most of it is located outside the continental shelf (only a small fraction is inland). The Caspian Sea is larger in water volume, but\u2014despite its name\u2014it is a lake rather than a sea.\nThe Baltic Sea's salinity is much lower than that of ocean water (which averages 3.5%), as a result of abundant freshwater runoff from the surrounding land (rivers, streams and alike), combined with the shallowness of the sea itself; runoff contributes roughly one-fortieth its total volume per year, as the volume of the basin is about and yearly runoff is about .\nThe open surface waters of the Baltic Sea \"proper\" generally have a salinity of 0.3 to 0.9%, which is border-line freshwater. The flow of freshwater into the sea from approximately two hundred rivers and the introduction of salt from the southwest builds up a gradient of salinity in the Baltic Sea. The highest surface salinities, generally 0.7\u20130.9%, are in the southwestern most part of the Baltic, in the Arkona and Bornholm basins (the former located roughly between southeast Zealand and Bornholm, and the latter directly east of Bornholm). It gradually falls further east and north, reaching the lowest in the Bothnian Bay at around 0.3%. Drinking the surface water of the Baltic as a means of survival would actually hydrate the body instead of dehydrating, as is the case with ocean water.\nAs saltwater is denser than freshwater, the bottom of the Baltic Sea is saltier than the surface. This creates a vertical stratification of the water column, a halocline, that represents a barrier to the exchange of oxygen and nutrients, and fosters completely separate maritime environments. The difference between the bottom and surface salinities varies depending on location. Overall it follows the same southwest to east and north pattern as the surface. At the bottom of the Arkona Basin (equaling depths greater than ) and Bornholm Basin (depths greater than ) it is typically 1.4\u20131.8%. Further east and north the salinity at the bottom is consistently lower, being the lowest in Bothnian Bay (depths greater than ) where it is slightly below 0.4%, or only marginally higher than the surface in the same region.\nIn contrast, the salinity of the Danish straits, which connect the Baltic Sea and Kattegat, tends to be significantly higher, but with major variations from year to year. For example, the surface and bottom salinity in the Great Belt is typically around 2.0% and 2.8% respectively, which is only somewhat below that of the Kattegat. The water surplus caused by the continuous inflow of rivers and streams to the Baltic Sea means that there generally is a flow of brackish water out through the Danish straits to the Kattegat (and eventually the Atlantic). Significant flows in the opposite direction, salt water from the Kattegat through the Danish straits to the Baltic Sea, are less regular and are known as major Baltic inflows (MBIs).\nMajor tributaries.\nThe rating of mean discharges differs from the ranking of hydrological lengths (from the most distant source to the sea) and the rating of the nominal lengths. G\u00f6ta \u00e4lv, a tributary of the Kattegat, is not listed, as due to the northward upper low-salinity-flow in the sea, its water hardly reaches the Baltic proper:\nCoastal countries.\nCountries that border the sea: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden.\nCountries lands in the outer drainage basin: Belarus, Czech Republic, Norway, Slovakia, Ukraine.\nThe Baltic Sea drainage basin is roughly four times the surface area of the sea itself. About 48% of the region is forested, with Sweden and Finland containing the majority of the forest, especially around the Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland.\nAbout 20% of the land is used for agriculture and pasture, mainly in Poland and around the edge of the Baltic Proper, in Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. About 17% of the basin is unused open land with another 8% of wetlands. Most of the latter are in the Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland.\nThe rest of the land is heavily populated. About 85\u00a0million people live in the Baltic drainage basin, 15\u00a0million within of the coast and 29\u00a0million within of the coast. Around 22\u00a0million live in population centers of over 250,000. 90% of these are concentrated in the band around the coast. Of the nations containing all or part of the basin, Poland includes 45% of the 85\u00a0million, Russia 12%, Sweden 10% and the others less than 6% each.\nCities.\nThe biggest coastal cities (by population):\nOther important ports:\nGeology.\nThe Baltic Sea somewhat resembles a riverbed, with two tributaries, the Gulf of Finland and Gulf of Bothnia. Geological surveys show that before the Pleistocene, instead of the Baltic Sea, there was a wide plain around a great river that paleontologists call the Eridanos. Several Pleistocene glacial episodes scooped out the river bed into the sea basin. By the time of the last, or Eemian Stage (MIS\u00a05e), the Eemian Sea was in place. Instead of a true sea, the Baltic can even today also be understood as the common estuary of all rivers flowing into it.\nFrom that time the waters underwent a geologic history summarized under the names listed below. Many of the stages are named after marine animals (e.g. the Littorina mollusk) that are clear markers of changing water temperatures and salinity.\nThe factors that determined the sea's characteristics were the submergence or emergence of the region due to the weight of ice and subsequent isostatic readjustment, and the connecting channels it found to the North Sea-Atlantic, either through the straits of Denmark or at what are now the large lakes of Sweden, and the White Sea-Arctic Sea. There are a number of named and dated stages in the evolution of the Baltic Sea: \nThe land is still emerging isostatically from its depressed state, which was caused by the weight of ice during the last glaciation. The phenomenon is known as post-glacial rebound. Consequently, the surface area and the depth of the sea are diminishing. The uplift is about eight millimeters per year on the Finnish coast of the northernmost Gulf of Bothnia. In the area, the former seabed is only gently sloping, leading to large areas of land being reclaimed in what are, geologically speaking, relatively short periods (decades and centuries).\nThe \"Baltic Sea anomaly\".\nThe \"Baltic Sea anomaly\" is a feature on an indistinct sonar image taken by Swedish salvage divers on the floor of the northern Baltic Sea in June 2011. The treasure hunters suggested the image showed an object with unusual features of seemingly extraordinary origin. Speculation published in tabloid newspapers claimed that the object was a sunken UFO. A consensus of experts and scientists say that the image most likely shows a natural geological formation.\nBiology.\nFauna and flora.\nThe fauna of the Baltic Sea is a mixture of marine and freshwater species. Among marine fishes are Atlantic cod, Atlantic herring, European hake, European plaice, European flounder, shorthorn sculpin and turbot, and examples of freshwater species include European perch, northern pike, whitefish and common roach. Freshwater species may occur at outflows of rivers or streams in all coastal sections of the Baltic Sea. Otherwise, marine species dominate in most sections of the Baltic, at least as far north as G\u00e4vle, where less than one-tenth are freshwater species. Further north the pattern is inverted. In the Bothnian Bay, roughly two-thirds of the species are freshwater. In the far north of this bay, saltwater species are almost entirely absent. For example, the common starfish and shore crab, two species that are very widespread along European coasts, are both unable to cope with the significantly lower salinity. Their range limit is west of Bornholm, meaning that they are absent from the vast majority of the Baltic Sea. Some marine species, like the Atlantic cod and European flounder, can survive at relatively low salinities but need higher salinities to breed, which therefore occurs in deeper parts of the Baltic Sea. The common blue mussel is the dominating animal species, and makes up more than 90% of the total animal biomass in the sea.\nThere is a decrease in species richness from the Danish belts to the Gulf of Bothnia. The decreasing salinity along this path causes restrictions in both physiology and habitats. At more than 600 species of invertebrates, fish, aquatic mammals, aquatic birds and macrophytes, the Arkona Basin (roughly between southeast Zealand and Bornholm) is far richer than other more eastern and northern basins in the Baltic Sea, which all have less than 400 species from these groups, with the exception of the Gulf of Finland with more than 750 species. However, even the most diverse sections of the Baltic Sea have far fewer species than the almost-full saltwater Kattegat, which is home to more than 1600 species from these groups. The lack of tides has affected the marine species as compared with the Atlantic.\nSince the Baltic Sea is so young there are only two or three known endemic species: the brown alga \"Fucus radicans\" and the flounder \"Platichthys solemdali\". Both appear to have evolved in the Baltic basin and were only recognized as species in 2005 and 2018 respectively, having formerly been confused with more widespread relatives. The tiny Copenhagen cockle (\"Parvicardium hauniense\"), a rare mussel, is sometimes considered endemic, but has now been recorded in the Mediterranean. However, some consider non-Baltic records to be misidentifications of juvenile lagoon cockles (\"Cerastoderma glaucum\"). Several widespread marine species have distinctive subpopulations in the Baltic Sea adapted to the low salinity, such as the Baltic Sea forms of the Atlantic herring and lumpsucker, which are smaller than the widespread forms in the North Atlantic.\nA peculiar feature of the fauna is that it contains a number of glacial relict species, isolated populations of arctic species which have remained in the Baltic Sea since the last glaciation, such as the large isopod \"Saduria entomon\", the Baltic subspecies of ringed seal, and the fourhorn sculpin. Some of these relicts are derived from glacial lakes, such as \"Monoporeia affinis\", which is a main element in the benthic fauna of the low-salinity Bothnian Bay.\nCetaceans in the Baltic Sea are monitored by the countries bordering the sea and data compiled by various intergovernmental bodies, such as ASCOBANS. A critically endangered population of harbor porpoise inhabit the Baltic proper, whereas the species is abundant in the outer Baltic (Western Baltic and Danish straits) and occasionally oceanic and out-of-range species such as minke whales, bottlenose dolphins, beluga whales, orcas, and beaked whales visit the waters. In recent years, very small, but with increasing rates, fin whales and humpback whales migrate into Baltic sea including mother and calf pair. Now extinct Atlantic grey whales (remains found from Gr\u00e4s\u00f6 along Bothnian Sea/southern Bothnian Gulf and Ystad) and eastern population of North Atlantic right whales that is facing functional extinction once migrated into Baltic Sea.\nOther notable megafauna include the basking sharks.\nEnvironmental status.\nSatellite images taken in July 2010 revealed a massive algal bloom covering in the Baltic Sea. The area of the bloom extended from Germany and Poland to Finland. Researchers of the phenomenon have indicated that algal blooms have occurred every summer for decades. Fertilizer runoff from surrounding agricultural land has exacerbated the problem and led to increased eutrophication.\nApproximately of the Baltic's seafloor (a quarter of its total area) is a variable dead zone. The more saline (and therefore denser) water remains on the bottom, isolating it from surface waters and the atmosphere. This leads to decreased oxygen concentrations within the zone. It is mainly bacteria that grow in it, digesting organic material and releasing hydrogen sulfide. Because of this large anaerobic zone, the seafloor ecology differs from that of the neighboring Atlantic.\nPlans to artificially oxygenate areas of the Baltic that have experienced eutrophication have been proposed by the University of Gothenburg and Inocean AB. The proposal intends to use wind-driven pumps to pump oxygen-rich surface water to a depth of around 130 m.\nAfter World War II, Germany had to be disarmed and large quantities of ammunition stockpiles were disposed directly into the Baltic Sea and the North Sea. Environmental experts and marine biologists warn that these ammunition dumps pose an environmental threat with potentially life-threatening consequences to the health and safety of humans on the coastlines of these seas.\nFuture change.\nClimate change, and pollution from agriculture and forestry, impose such strong effects on the ecosystems of the Baltic sea, that there is a concern the sea will turn from a carbon sink to a source of CO2 and methane. Modelling climate change and the impact of well characterised factors such as post-glacial rebound before the year 2050, is complicated by the unique properties of the Baltic Sea area compared to say the adjacent North Sea and controversy as to the relative contributions of socio-economic factors such as land use to any warming component.537 These include its current brackish water, the southern subbasin tendency to have a vertical stratification of the halocline, and the northern subbasin seasonal sea ice cover.458 High confidence future projections include: air temperature warming, more heavy precipitation episodes, less snow with less perifrost and glacial ice mass in northern catchment areas, more mild winters, raised mean water temperature with more marine heatwaves, intensified seasonal thermoclines without change in the thermohaline circulation, and sea level rise. There are many more projections but these have lower confidence.\nEconomy.\nConstruction of the Great Belt Bridge in Denmark (completed 1997) and the \u00d8resund Bridge-Tunnel (completed 1999), linking Denmark with Sweden, provided a highway and railroad connection between Sweden and the Danish mainland (the Jutland Peninsula, precisely the Zealand). The undersea tunnel of the \u00d8resund Bridge-Tunnel provides for navigation of large ships into and out of the Baltic Sea. The Baltic Sea is the main trade route for the export of Russian petroleum. Countries neighboring the Baltic Sea have expressed concerns about this since a major oil leak in a seagoing tanker would be especially disastrous for the Baltic given the slow exchange of water in the ecosystem. The tourism industry surrounding the Baltic Sea is naturally concerned about oil pollution.\nMuch shipbuilding is carried out in the shipyards around the Baltic Sea. The largest shipyards are at Gda\u0144sk, Gdynia, and Szczecin, Poland; Kiel, Germany; Karlskrona and Malm\u00f6, Sweden; Rauma, Turku, and Helsinki, Finland; Riga, Ventspils, and Liep\u0101ja, Latvia; Klaip\u0117da, Lithuania; and Saint Petersburg, Russia.\nThere are several cargo and passenger ferries that operate on the Baltic Sea, such as\nConstruction of the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link between Denmark and Germany is due to finish in 2029. It will be a three-bore tunnel carrying four motorway lanes and two rail tracks.\nThrough the development of offshore wind power the Baltic Sea is expected to become a major source of energy for countries in the region. According to the Marienborg Declaration, signed in 2022, all EU Baltic Sea states have announced their intentions to have 19.6 gigawatts of offshore wind in operation by 2030. \nTourism.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nThe Helsinki Convention.\n1974 Convention.\nFor the first time ever, all the sources of pollution around an entire sea were made subject to a single convention, signed in 1974 by the then seven Baltic coastal states. The 1974 Convention entered into force on 3 May 1980.\n1992 Convention.\nIn the light of political changes and developments in international environmental and maritime law, a new convention was signed in 1992 by all the states bordering on the Baltic Sea, and the European Community. After ratification, the Convention entered into force on 17 January 2000. The Convention covers the whole of the Baltic Sea area, including inland waters and the water of the sea itself, as well as the seabed. Measures are also taken in the whole catchment area of the Baltic Sea to reduce land-based pollution. The convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area, 1992, entered into force on 17 January 2000.\nThe governing body of the convention is the Helsinki Commission, also known as HELCOM, or Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission. The present contracting parties are Denmark, Estonia, the European Community, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Sweden.\nThe ratification instruments were deposited by the European Community, Germany, Latvia and Sweden in 1994, by Estonia and Finland in 1995, by Denmark in 1996, by Lithuania in 1997, and by Poland and Russia in November 1999.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "11438393": "Battle of Karuse\n1270 battle of the Livonian Crusade on the frozen Baltic Sea near Muhu Island\nThe Battle of Karuse or Battle on the Ice was fought on 16 February 1270 between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Livonian Order on the frozen Baltic Sea between the island of Muhu and the mainland. The Lithuanians achieved a decisive victory. The battle, named after the village of Karuse, was the fifth-largest defeat of the Livonian or Teutonic Orders in the 13th century. Almost all that is known about the battle comes from the \"Livonian Rhymed Chronicle\", which devoted 192 lines to the battle.\nBackground.\nThe Livonian Brothers of the Sword, a crusading military order established in 1202, set out to conquer and convert to Christianity indigenous peoples of present-day Latvia and Estonia. They subjugated the Semigallians by 1250. However, after the Livonian defeats in the 1259 Battle of Skuodas and the 1260 Battle of Durbe, the Semigallians rebelled. Traidenis, who became Grand Duke of Lithuania in 1269 or 1270, supported the rebellion.\nIn winter 1270, the Livonian Order invaded Semigalia. However, after learning that a large Lithuanian army had also invaded the region, Master Otto von Lutterberg decided to retreat to Riga. The Lithuanians marched north, reaching as far as the island of Saaremaa, which they were able to reach because the Baltic Sea was frozen. The Lithuanian army plundered the area, taking much war loot. It is unclear whether Semigallians joined the Lithuanians and participated in this campaign \u2013 contemporary sources do not mention them, but later sources such as \"J\u00fcngere Hochmeisterchronik\" and Dionysius Fabricius always mention their participation.\nMaster Lutterberg gathered a large army of Livonian knights, soldiers from the Bishopric of Dorpat, the Bishopric of \u00d6sel\u2013Wiek, Danish Estonia, as well as local tribes of Livs and Latgalians. The Order was well-prepared for the battle: for a year it had been recruiting soldiers for an expedition into Semigalia. The Livonian army marched north to meet the Lithuanians near Saaremaa Island. The armies met on the frozen Moon Sound (probably near Virtsu) on the feast day of Juliana of Nicomedia.\nBattle.\nThe Livonian army positioned for the battle: troops from Danish Estonia, commanded by the Danish king's viceroy Siverith, formed the right flank; Livonian knights, commanded by Master Luttenberg, formed the center; soldiers from the Bishoprics formed the left flank. The Lithuanians arranged their sleighs as a barricade. A vanguard unit likely covered construction of the improvised barricade so that the knights could not see it. When the knights attacked, Lithuanians retreated behind their sleighs and the Livonian cavalry ran into the barricade. As the horses got stuck between the sleighs, the horses and their riders were struck by Lithuanian spears. A small number of Livonian knights managed to break through the barricade and the left and right flanks joined the fighting, but that was not enough to overcome the strong Lithuanian formation. The Lithuanians achieved a decisive victory: 52 knights, including Master Lutterberg, and some 600 low-ranking soldiers were killed while bishop Hermann of \u00d6sel-Wiek was gravely injured and barely managed to escape. According to the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle, 1600 Lithuanians were killed, but that information is very doubtful and most likely inflated by pro-Livonian bias.\nAftermath.\nVice-Master Andreas von Westfalen, who acted as a Master before proper elections could be held, decided to restore the lost morale of the knights by winning a quick victory. In the middle of 1270 he learned of another Lithuanian raid into Livonia and hurried his soldiers to seek out the enemy. While the knights were resting, the Lithuanians attacked their camp and killed Andreas and twenty more knights. This is sometimes known as the Battle of P\u0101rdaugava near Riga, and was the tenth-largest defeat of the Teutonic Knights in its own right. Traidenis scored another victory in 1279 during the Battle of Aizkraukle.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11438393", "3335"], "permutation_1": ["11438393", "3335"], "permutation_2": ["11438393", "3335"], "permutation_3": ["11438393", "3335"]}
{"id": "2hop__46524_93263", "docs_added": {"6281193": "List of Real Madrid CF records and statistics\nReal Madrid Club de F\u00fatbol is a Spanish professional association football club based in Madrid. The club was formed in 1902 as \"Madrid Football Club\", and played its first competitive match on 13 May 1902, when it entered the semi-final of the Campeonato de Copa de S.M. Alfonso XIII. Real Madrid currently plays in the Spanish top-tier La Liga, having become one of the founding members of that league in 1929, and is one of three clubs, the others being Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao, to have never been relegated from the league. They have also been involved in European football ever since they became the first Spanish club to enter the European Cup in 1955, except for the 1977\u201378 and 1996\u201397 seasons.\nThis list encompasses the major honours won by Real Madrid and records set by the club, their managers and their players. The player records section includes details of the club's leading goalscorers and those who have made most appearances in first team competitions. It also records notable achievements by Real Madrid players on the international stage, and the highest transfer fees paid and received by the club.\nThe club currently holds the record for the most European Cup / UEFA Champions League triumphs, with 15, and the most La Liga titles, with 36. Additionally, Real has won the Copa del Rey 20 times, the Supercopa de Espa\u00f1a 13 times, the Copa de la Liga once, the Copa Eva Duarte once, the UEFA Cup twice, the European/UEFA Super Cup six times, the Intercontinental Cup three times, the FIFA Intercontinental Cup one time, the FIFA Club World Cup five times, the Latin Cup twice and Copa Iberoamericana once. Powered by its fifteen European Cups, Real Madrid have a distinction of being the most successful club in terms of international titles, having amassed 35 pieces of silverware, more than any other team in the world. On the domestic front, its 71 titles rank second to Barcelona. The club's record appearance maker is Ra\u00fal, who made 741 appearances from 1994 to 2010; the club's record goalscorer is Portuguese forward Cristiano Ronaldo, who scored 450 goals in 438 appearances through all competitions from 2009 to 2018.\nPlayers.\nAppearances.\nMost appearances.\n\"Competitive, professional matches only. Including substitutes. Players in italics are still active outside the club.\"\n\"As of 1 April 2025.\"\nGoalscorers.\nMost goals.\n\"Competitive, professional matches only. Total appearances are shown in parentheses. Players in italics are still active outside the club.\"\n\"As of 4 June 2023.\"\nIn a single season.\nThis table lists players who have scored more than 40 goals in a single season. Ordered by goals scored and by season.\nAssists.\nMost assists.\nNotes: The criteria for an assist to be awarded may vary according to the source, the following stats is based on the assists criteria according to Opta, where assists are not counted for balls that are deflected or rebounded off opposing players and have clearly affected the trajectory of the ball and its arrival to the recipient (the goal scorer). Assists are also not counted for penalty kicks, direct goals from corners or free kicks, or own goals. These statistics include assists in all official matches from 1902 to the present day. This information is gathered according to official sources, reports, and reliable records in club, association, and press archives. At least 100 assists.\nWins.\nMost matches wins.\n\"Competitive, professional matches only. Including substitutes. Players in italics are still active outside the club.\"\n\"As of 29 March 2025.\"\nTransfers.\nHighest transfer fees paid.\nReal Madrid's record signing is Jude Bellingham. Bellingham signed for the club from Borussia Dortmund for a total of \u00a388.5 million in June 2023, according to media reports.\nHighest transfer fees received.\nCristiano Ronaldo's transfer to Juventus in 2018 remains the club's record sale. Ronaldo was also their record transfer at the time of his move to Madrid in 2009.\nManagers.\nAppearances.\n\"Competitive, professional matches only. Bold indicates manager is still active at club level. As of 1 April 2025.\"\nMost wins.\n\"Competitive, professional matches only. Bold indicates manager is still active at club level. As of 29 March 2025.\"\nHonours.\nUnofficial.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nIn 2017, Real Madrid received the Nine Values Cup, an award of the international children's social programme Football for Friendship.\nAwards.\nPlayers Awards.\nBallon d'Or (1956\u2013).\nThe following players have won the Ballon d'Or while playing for Real Madrid:\nFIFA World Player of the Year (1991\u20132009).\nThe following players have won the FIFA World Player of the Year award while playing for Real Madrid:\nThe Best FIFA Men's Player (2016\u2013).\nThe following players have won The Best FIFA Men's Player while playing for Real Madrid:\nEuropean Golden Shoe.\nThe following players have won the European Golden Shoe while playing for Real Madrid:\nUEFA Club Footballer of the Year (1998\u20132010).\nThe following players have won the UEFA Club Footballer of the Year award while playing for Real Madrid:\nUEFA Best Player in Europe Award (2011\u2013).\nThe following players have won the UEFA Best Player in Europe Award while playing for Real Madrid:\nPichichi winners.\nThe following Real Madrid players have won the Pichichi Trophy:\nZamora winners.\nThe following Real Madrid players have won the Ricardo Zamora Trophy:\nManagers awards.\nFIFA World Coach of the Year / The Best FIFA Football Coach.\nThe following managers have won the FIFA World Coach of the Year / The Best FIFA Football Coach while managing Real Madrid:\nIFFHS World's Best Club Coach winners.\nThe following managers have won the IFFHS World's Best Club Coach while managing Real Madrid:\nJohan Cruyff Trophy (2024\u2013).\nThe following managers have won the Men's Johan Cruyff Trophy while managing Real Madrid:\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "623737": "Cristiano Ronaldo\nPortuguese footballer (born 1985)\nCristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro (; born 5 February 1985) is a Portuguese professional footballer who plays as a forward for and captains both Saudi Pro League club Al Nassr and the Portugal national team. Nicknamed CR7, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, and has won numerous individual accolades throughout his professional footballing career, including five Ballon d'Or awards, a record three UEFA Men's Player of the Year Awards, four European Golden Shoes, and was named five times the world's best player by FIFA. He has won 33 trophies in his career, including seven league titles, five UEFA Champions Leagues and the UEFA European Championship. Ronaldo holds the records for most goals (140) and assists (42) in the Champions League, goals (14) and assists (8) in the European Championship, and most international appearances (219) and international goals (136). He is one of the few players to have made over 1,200 professional career appearances, the most by an outfield player, and has scored over 900 official senior career goals for club and country, making him the top goalscorer of all time.\nRonaldo began his senior career with Sporting CP, before signing with Manchester United in 2003, winning the FA Cup in his first season. He went on to become a star player at United, as they won three consecutive Premier League titles, the Champions League and the FIFA Club World Cup; his 2007-08 season earned him his first Ballon d'Or, aged 23. Ronaldo was the subject of the then-most expensive association football transfer when he signed for Real Madrid in 2009 in a transfer worth \u20ac94\u00a0million (\u00a380\u00a0million). He was integral to Madrid becoming a dominant force again, as they won four Champions Leagues from 2014 to 2018, including \"La D\u00e9cima\". He won back-to-back Ballon d'Or awards in 2013 and 2014, and again in 2016 and 2017, and was runner-up three times behind Lionel Messi, his perceived career rival. He also became the club's all-time top goalscorer and finished as the Champions League's top scorer for six consecutive seasons between 2012 and 2018. With Madrid, Ronaldo's additional titles include two La Liga titles, including a record-breaking title win in 2011-12, and two Copas del Rey. In 2018, following issues with the Madrid hierarchy, Ronaldo made a surprise transfer to Juventus in a transfer worth an initial \u20ac100\u00a0million (\u00a388\u00a0million). He won several trophies in Italy, including two Serie A titles and a Coppa Italia, and broke several records for Juventus. He returned to United in 2021; despite a collectively disappointing season, Ronaldo's individual performances earned him being included in the PFA Team of the Year at 37 years old. His contract was terminated in 2022 due to a fall out with the newly appointed manager, and in 2023 he signed for Al Nassr, a move that has since been widely credited for revolutionising football in Saudi Arabia.\nRonaldo made his international debut for Portugal in 2003 at the age of 18 and has earned more than 200 caps, making him history's most-capped male player. Ronaldo has played in eleven major tournaments and scored in ten; he scored his first international goal at Euro 2004, where he helped Portugal reach the final and subsequently made the team of the tournament. In the 2006 FIFA World Cup, his first World Cup, he was a focal part to Portugal ultimately finishing in fourth place. He assumed captaincy of the national team in July 2008 ahead of Euro 2008; four years later, at Euro 2012, he was named to the team of the tournament. In 2015, Ronaldo was named the best Portuguese player of all time by the Portuguese Football Federation. The following year, he led Portugal to their first major tournament title at Euro 2016, being named in the team of the tournament for the third time and receiving the Silver Boot as the second-highest goalscorer of the tournament. This achievement saw him receive his fourth Ballon d'Or. In 2018, Ronaldo had his most prolific World Cup campaign and was voted in the Fan Dream Team. He led his country to victory in the inaugural UEFA Nations League in 2019, receiving the top scorer award in the finals, and also received the Golden Boot as top scorer of Euro 2020. In the 2022 World Cup, he became the first player to score at five World Cups.\nOne of the world's most marketable and famous athletes, Ronaldo was ranked the world's highest-paid athlete by \"Forbes\" in 2016, 2017, 2023, and 2024 and the world's most famous athlete by ESPN from 2016 to 2019. He is the first footballer and the third sportsman to earn US$1 billion in his career. \"Time\" included him on their list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2014. Ronaldo is the most popular sportsperson on social media: he counts over 1\u00a0billion total followers across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram, making him the first person to achieve that feat. Ronaldo was named in the UEFA Ultimate Team of the Year in 2015, the All-time UEFA Euro XI in 2016, and the Ballon d'Or Dream Team in 2020. In recognition of his record-breaking goalscoring success, he received special awards for Outstanding Career Achievement by FIFA in 2021 and Champions League All-Time Top Scorer by UEFA in 2024.<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nEarly life.\nCristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro was born on 5 February 1985 in the S\u00e3o Pedro parish of Funchal, the capital of the Portuguese island of Madeira, and grew up in the nearby parish of Santo Ant\u00f3nio. He is the fourth and youngest child of Maria Dolores dos Santos Viveiros Aveiro, who worked as a cook in the hospitality industry and a cleaning woman, and Jos\u00e9 Dinis Aveiro, a municipal gardener at the \"Junta de Freguesia\" of Santo Ant\u00f3nio and part-time kit man for football club Andorinha. His great-grandmother on his father's side, Isabel da Piedade, an African woman, was born in the island of S\u00e3o Vicente, in what was then Portuguese Cape Verde, and moved to Madeira Island at 16. He has one older brother, Hugo, and two older sisters, Elma and Liliana C\u00e1tia \"K\u00e1tia\". He was named after actor and U.S. President Ronald Reagan, whom his father was a fan of. His mother revealed that she wanted to abort him due to poverty, his father's alcoholism, and having too many children already, but her doctor refused to perform the procedure. Ronaldo grew up in an impoverished Catholic home, sharing a room with all his siblings.\nAs a child, Ronaldo played for Andorinha from 1992 to 1995, where his father was the kit man, and later spent two years with Nacional. In 1997, aged 12, he went on a three-day trial with Sporting CP, who signed him for a fee of \u00a31,500. He subsequently moved from Madeira to Lisbon to join Sporting CP's youth system. By age 14, while struggling with his school duties and responsibilities in Escola EB2 de Telheiras, his school in the Telheiras area of Lisbon, Ronaldo believed he had the ability to play semi-professionally and agreed with his mother and his tutor at Sporting CP, Leonel Pontes, to cease his education to focus entirely on football. With a troubled life as a student, and although living in Lisbon area away from his Madeiran family, he did not complete schooling beyond the 6th grade. While popular with other students at school, he had been expelled after throwing a chair at his teacher, who he said had \"disrespected\" him. One year later, he was diagnosed with tachycardia, a condition that could have forced him to give up playing football. Ronaldo underwent heart surgery where a laser was used to cauterise multiple cardiac pathways into one, altering his resting heart rate. He was discharged from the hospital hours after the procedure and resumed training a few days later. In 2021, Cristiano Ronaldo's mother, Dolores Aveiro, stated in an interview for Sporting CP's official television channel (Sporting TV) that her son would be a bricklayer if he had not become a professional football player.\nGrowing up, Ronaldo idolised the Brazilian footballers Ronaldinho and Ronaldo Naz\u00e1rio, and has described them as leaving \"a beautiful history in football\".\nClub career.\nSporting CP.\nAfter impressing in Sporting's youth teams, he was promoted to the main team by first-team manager L\u00e1szl\u00f3 B\u00f6l\u00f6ni. At age 17, on 14 August 2002, he played his first official match for the first team, in a UEFA Champions League qualifying round at Jos\u00e9 Alvalade Stadium against Inter Milan, and his Primeira Liga debut, took place a month later against Braga, and on 7 October, he scored two goals against Moreirense in their 3\u20130 win. Over the course of the 2002\u201303 season, his representatives suggested the player to Liverpool manager G\u00e9rard Houllier and Barcelona president Joan Laporta. Manager Ars\u00e8ne Wenger, who was interested in signing Ronaldo, met with him at Arsenal's stadium in November to discuss a possible transfer.\nManchester United manager Alex Ferguson was determined to acquire Ronaldo on a permanent move urgently, after Sporting defeated United 3\u20131 at the inauguration of the Est\u00e1dio Jos\u00e9 Alvalade on 6 August 2003. Initially, United had planned to sign Ronaldo and loan him back to Sporting for a year. Having been impressed by him, the United players urged Ferguson to sign him. After the game, Ferguson said Ronaldo was \"one of the most exciting young players\" he had ever seen.\nManchester United.\n2003\u20132007: Development and breakthrough.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"There have been a few players described as 'the new George Best' over the years, but this is the first time it's been a compliment to me.\"\n\u2014Former Manchester United player George Best hails the 18-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo in 2003.\nOn 12 August 2003, less than a week after the friendly that impressed Ferguson, Manchester United signed Ronaldo for \u00a312\u00a0million, an England record for a teenager. This also made him the first Portuguese player to sign for the club.\nAlthough he requested the number 28, his number at Sporting, he received the squad number 7 shirt, which had previously been worn by such United players as George Best, Eric Cantona and David Beckham. Wearing the number 7 became an extra source of motivation for Ronaldo. A key element in his development during his time in England proved to be Ferguson, of whom he later said: \"He's been my father in sport, one of the most important and influential factors in my career.\"\nRonaldo made his debut as a substitute in a 4\u20130 home win over Bolton Wanderers in the Premier League on 16 August 2003. His performance earned praise from Best, who hailed it as \"undoubtedly the most exciting debut\" he had ever seen. Ronaldo scored his first goal for Manchester United with a free-kick in a 3\u20130 win over Portsmouth on 1 November. On 15 May 2004, in a victory against Aston Villa, Ronaldo scored the opening goal and later received the first red card of his career. Ronaldo ended his first season in English football with a trophy, scoring the opening goal in United's 3\u20130 win over Millwall in the 2004 FA Cup Final. BBC pundit Alan Hansen described him as the star of the final. The British press had been critical of Ronaldo during the season for his \"elaborate\" step-overs in trying to beat opponents, but teammate Gary Neville said he was \"not a show pony, but the real thing\", and predicted he would become a world-class player.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"He has got the tricks and party pieces, we know that, but they're not much good unless there is something at the end of it all. We still have to remember, of course, that the lad is only 19 years of age. Considering that, you have to say he has got massive talent. His feet are mesmerising at times, and if he can couple that with some consistently good crossing, the future looks frightening.\"\n\u2014Former BBC pundit Alan Hansen commenting on Ronaldo after his first season.\nAt the start of 2005, Ronaldo played two of his best matches of the 2004\u201305 season, producing a goal and an assist against Aston Villa and scoring twice against rivals Arsenal. Ronaldo won his second trophy in English football, the Football League Cup, after scoring the third goal in United's 4\u20130 final win over Wigan Athletic.\nDuring his third season in England, Ronaldo was involved in several incidents. Ronaldo clashed with a teammate, striker Ruud van Nistelrooy, who took offence at the winger's showboating style of play. Following the 2006 FIFA World Cup, in which he was involved in an incident where club teammate Wayne Rooney was sent off, Ronaldo publicly asked for a transfer, lamenting the lack of support he felt he had received from the club over the incident. United denied the possibility of him leaving the club. Although his World Cup altercation with Rooney resulted in Ronaldo being booed throughout the 2006\u201307 season, it proved to be his break-out year, as he broke the 20-goal barrier for the first time and won his first Premier League title.\n2007\u20132009: Collective and individual success and Ballon d'Or.\nIn the 2006\u201307 season, he amassed a host of personal awards for the season, winning the Professional Footballers' Association's Player's Player, Fans' Player, Young Player of the Year awards, and the Football Writers' Association's Footballer of the Year award, becoming the first player to win all four main PFA and FWA honours. Ronaldo was named runner-up to Kak\u00e1 for the 2007 Ballon d'Or, and came third, behind Kak\u00e1 and Lionel Messi, in the running for the 2007 FIFA World Player of the Year award.\nRonaldo scored his first hat-trick for United in a 6\u20130 win against Newcastle United on 12 January 2008. His 31 league goals earned him the Premier League Golden Boot, as well as the European Golden Shoe, which made him the first winger to win the latter award. He additionally received the PFA Players' Player of the Year and FWA Footballer of the Year awards for the second consecutive season. United reached the final against Chelsea\nin Moscow on 21 May, where, despite his opening goal being negated by an equaliser and his penalty kick being saved in the shoot-out, United emerged victorious, winning 6\u20135 on penalties after a 1\u20131 draw at the end of 120 minutes. As the Champions League top scorer, Ronaldo was named the UEFA Club Footballer of the Year. With his 2008 Ballon d'Or and 2008 FIFA World Player of the Year, Ronaldo became United's first Ballon d'Or winner since Best in 1968, and the first Premier League player to be named the FIFA World Player of the Year.\nShortly after, Ronaldo was linked to a move to Real Madrid, United filed a tampering complaint with governing body FIFA over Madrid's alleged pursuit of their player, but they declined to take action. and he remained at United for another year. \nHis match-winning goal in the second leg against Porto, a 40-yard strike, earned him the inaugural FIFA Pusk\u00e1s Award, presented by FIFA in recognition of the best goal of the year; he later called it the best goal he had ever scored. United advanced to the final in Rome, where he made little impact in United's 2\u20130 defeat to Barcelona.\nReal Madrid.\n2009\u20132015: World record transfer and consecutive Ballon d'Or wins.\nIn 2009, Ronaldo transferred to Real Madrid for a then world record \u00a380\u00a0million. At least 80,000 fans attended his presentation at the Santiago Bernab\u00e9u, surpassing the 25-year record of 75,000 fans who had welcomed Diego Maradona at Napoli. Ronaldo said, \"This is the completion of my boyhood dream, to be a Real Madrid player.\"\nRonaldo made his La Liga debut against Deportivo La Coru\u00f1a on 29 August, scoring a penalty in a 3\u20132 home win. He scored in each of his first four league games, the first Madrid player to do so. His first Champions League goals for the club followed with two free kicks in the first group match against Z\u00fcrich. His strong start to the season was interrupted when he suffered an ankle injury in October while on international duty, which kept him sidelined for seven weeks. Despite scoring 33 goals in all competitions and contributing to Real Madrid's 96 points in La Liga, his first season with Madrid ended trophyless.\nFollowing Ra\u00fal's departure, Ronaldo was given No. 7 for the 2010\u201311 season and scored 53 goals, helping Madrid win the Copa del Rey, scoring the winning goal against rivals Barcelona in the \"El Cl\u00e1sico\", his first trophy with Madrid. He also became the first player in La Liga to score 40 goals. In addition to the Pichichi Trophy, Ronaldo won the European Golden Shoe for a second time, becoming the first player to win the award in different leagues.\nThe following season saw Ronaldo score 60 goals across all competitions, leading Madrid to their first league title in four years with a record 100 points and his runner-up finish to Lionel Messi in the 2011 FIFA Ballon d'Or. He scored his 100th league goal for Madrid in a 5\u20131 win over Real Sociedad on 24 March 2012, breaking the previous club record held by Ferenc Pusk\u00e1s. In the 2012\u201313 season, he scored his first hat-trick in the Champions League in a 4\u20131 win over Ajax. Four days later, he became the first player to score in six successive \"Cl\u00e1sicos\" when he hit a brace in a 2\u20132 draw at Camp Nou. His performances again saw Ronaldo voted second in the running for the 2012 FIFA Ballon d'Or, behind four-time winner Messi.\nFollowing the 2012\u201313 winter break, Ronaldo captained Madrid for the first time in an official match, scoring twice to lift 10-man Madrid to a 4\u20133 win over Sociedad on 6 January. He subsequently became the first non-Spanish player in 60 years to captain Madrid in \"El Clasico\" on 30 January, a match which also marked his 500th club appearance.\nIn 2013\u201314 season, Ronaldo was joined at the club by winger Gareth Bale and together with striker Karim Benzema, they formed an attacking trio popularly dubbed \"BBC\", an acronym of Bale, Benzema and Cristiano, and a play on the name of the British public service broadcaster, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). He continued prolific scoring, with 69 goals in 2013, winning the 2013 FIFA Ballon d'Or, and the FIFA World Player of the Year award, for the first time in his career.\nConcurrently with his individual achievements, Ronaldo enjoyed his greatest team success in Spain to date, as he helped Madrid win \"La D\u00e9cima\", their tenth European Cup, scoring a penalty in the 120th minute of the 4\u20131 final win over city rivals Atl\u00e9tico Madrid, becoming the first player to score in two European Cup finals for two different winning teams. As the competition's top goalscorer for the third time, with a record 17 goals, he was named the UEFA Best Player in Europe. Ronaldo scored 31 goals in 30 league games, which earned him the Pichichi and the European Golden Shoe, along with Liverpool's Luis Su\u00e1rez On 4 May, Ronaldo scored a back-heeled volley in the closing moments of the match against Valencia, voted goal of the season by the Liga Nacional de F\u00fatbol Profesional (LFP), giving him the Best Player in La Liga award.\nDuring the 2014\u201315 season, Ronaldo set a new personal best of 61 goals, and after winning the 2014 FIFA Club World Cup, Ronaldo received the 2014 Ballon d'Or, joining Johan Cruyff, Michel Platini and Marco van Basten as a three-time recipient. Madrid finished in second place in La Liga and exited at the semi-final stage in the Champions League. With 10 goals, he finished as top scorer for a third consecutive season, alongside Messi and Neymar. On 5 April, he scored five goals in a game for the first time in his career, including an eight-minute hat-trick, in a 9\u20131 rout of Granada. His 300th goal for his club followed three days later in a 2\u20130 win against Rayo Vallecano. He finished the season with 48 goals, winning a second consecutive Pichichi and the European Golden Shoe for a record fourth time.\n2015\u20132018: All-time Madrid top scorer and Fifth Ballon d'Or.\nCristiano Ronaldo became Real Madrid's all-time top scorer on 12 September 2015 against Espanyol, netting 230 goals in 203 matches, surpassing the previous record holder, Ra\u00fal. Ronaldo also became the all-time top scorer in the Champions League with a hat-trick in the first group match against Shakhtar Donetsk, having finished the previous season level with Messi on 77 goals. Two goals against Malm\u00f6 FF in a 2\u20130 away win on 30 September saw him reach the milestone of 500 career goals for club and country. He won the 2016 Ballon d'Or, his fourth, and the inaugural 2016 The Best FIFA Men's Player, a revival of the former FIFA World Player of the Year, largely owing to his success with Portugal in winning Euro 2016.\nIn the 2016\u201317 UEFA Champions League quarter-finals against Bayern in April, Ronaldo scored both goals in a 2\u20131 away win which saw him make history by becoming the first player to reach 100 goals in UEFA club competition. On 17 May, Ronaldo overtook Jimmy Greaves as the all-time top scorer in the top five European leagues, scoring twice against Celta de Vigo. He finished the season with 42 goals in all competitions as he helped Madrid to win their first La Liga title since 2012. In the Champions League Final, Ronaldo scored two goals in a 4\u20131 victory over Juventus to take him to 12 goals for the season, making him the competition's top goalscorer for the fifth straight season (sixth overall), as well as the first player to score in three finals in the Champions League era; the second goal was the 600th of his senior career. Madrid also became the first team to win back-to-back finals in the Champions League era.\nOn 23 October, his performances throughout 2017 saw him awarded The Best FIFA Men's Player award for the second consecutive year. A day later, Ronaldo won the 2017 Ballon d'Or, receiving his fifth-time award on the Eiffel Tower in Paris. On 3 April 2018, Ronaldo scored the first two goals in a 3\u20130 away win against Juventus in the quarter-finals of the 2017\u201318 UEFA Champions League, with his second goal being an acrobatic bicycle kick. Described as a \"PlayStation goal\" by Juventus defender Andrea Barzagli, with Ronaldo's foot approximately off the ground, it garnered him a standing ovation from the opposing fans in the stadium as well as a plethora of plaudits from peers, pundits and coaches. In the final on 26 May, Madrid defeated Liverpool 3\u20131, winning Ronaldo his fifth Champions League title, the first player to do so. He finished as the top scorer of the tournament for the sixth consecutive season with 15 goals. After the final, Ronaldo referred to his time with Madrid in the past tense, sparking speculation that he could leave the club.\nJuventus.\nRonaldo joined Juventus in 2018 for \u20ac100\u00a0million, the transfer was the highest ever for a player over 30 years old and the highest paid by an Italian club. Upon signing, Ronaldo cited his need for a new challenge as his rationale for departing Madrid, but later attributed the transfer to the lack of support he felt was shown by club president Florentino P\u00e9rez.\n2018\u20132020: Consecutive Serie A titles.\nOn 18 August, Ronaldo made his debut in a 3\u20132 away win against Chievo Verona. On 19 September, in his first Champions League match for Juve, he was sent off against Valencia, his first red card in 154 Champions League appearances. In the reverse (home) leg against Valencia, Cristiano won 100 Champions League matches, becoming the first ever player to do so.\nRonaldo won his first trophy with the club on 16 January 2019, the 2018 Supercoppa Italiana, after he scored the only goal from a header against AC Milan. On 10 February, Ronaldo scored in a 3\u20130 win over Sassuolo, the ninth consecutive away game in which he had scored in the league, equalling Giuseppe Signori's single season Serie A record of most consecutive away games with at least one goal. On 12 March, Ronaldo scored a hat-trick in a 3\u20130 home win against Atl\u00e9tico in the second leg of the Champions League round of 16, helping Juventus overcome a two-goal deficit to reach the quarter-finals. On 20 April, Ronaldo played in the \"scudetto\" clinching game against Fiorentina, as Juventus won their eighth successive title after a 2\u20131 home win, thereby becoming the first player to win league titles in England, Spain and Italy. With 21 goals and eight assists, Ronaldo won the league award for Most Valuable Player.\nOn 1 October, he reached several milestones in Juventus's 3\u20130 Champions League group stage win over Bayer Leverkusen including breaking Iker Casillas' record for most Champions League wins of all time. On 18 December, Ronaldo leapt to a height of , higher than the crossbar, to head the winning goal in a 2\u20131 away win against Sampdoria. He scored his first Serie A hat-trick on 6 January 2020, in a 4\u20130 home win against Cagliari and became only the second player to score hat-tricks in the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A. On 22 February, Ronaldo scored for a record-equalling 11th consecutive league game, alongside Gabriel Batistuta and Fabio Quagliarella, in what was his 1,000th senior professional game, a 2\u20131 away win against SPAL. On 22 June, he scored a penalty in a 2\u20130 away win over Bologna, overtaking Rui Costa to become the highest scoring Portuguese player in Serie A history. On 20 July, Ronaldo scored twice in a 2\u20131 home win over Lazio; his first goal was his 50th in Serie A. He became the first player in history to reach 50 goals in the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A, and becoming the second player after Edin D\u017eeko to score 50 goals in three of Europe's top five major leagues. Moreover, he became the oldest player, at the age of 35 years and 166 days, to score over 30 goals in one of the five top European leagues since Ronnie Rooke with Arsenal in 1948. On 26 July, Ronaldo scored the opening goal in a 2\u20130 home win over Sampdoria as Juventus were crowned Serie A champions for a ninth consecutive time. On 7 August, Ronaldo scored a brace in a 2\u20131 home win against Lyon in the second leg of the Champions League round of 16, which saw him finish the season with 37 goals in all competitions; the tally allowed him to break Borel's club record of 36 goals in a single season.\n2020\u20132021: 100 Juve goals, \"Capocannoniere\", and departure.\nRonaldo played his 100th match in all competitions for Juventus on 13 December, scoring two penalties in a 3\u20131 away win over Genoa in the league to bring his goal tally to 79. On 2 March 2021, he scored a goal in a 3\u20130 win over Spezia in his 600th league match, to become the first player to score at least 20 goals in 12 consecutive seasons in the top five leagues of Europe. On 12 May, Ronaldo scored a goal in a 3\u20131 away win over Sassuolo to reach his 100th goal for Juventus in all competitions on his 131st appearance, becoming the fastest Juventus player to achieve the feat. With Juventus's victory in the 2021 Coppa Italia Final on 19 May, Ronaldo became the first player in history to win every major domestic trophy in England, Spain and Italy. Ronaldo ended the season with 29 league goals, winning the \"Capocannoniere\" award for highest goalscorer and becoming the first footballer to finish as top scorer in the English, Spanish and Italian leagues.\nThe start of the following season came amid reports Ronaldo would depart the club before the closure of the transfer window, despite Ronaldo and his agent Jorge Mendes reaching a verbal agreement with Manchester City over personal terms, but the club pulled out of the deal, and later it was confirmed that City's rivals Manchester United, Ronaldo's former club, were in advanced talks to sign him, while former manager Alex Ferguson and several ex-teammates had been in contact to persuade him to re-sign for United.\nReturn to Manchester United.\nOn 27 August 2021, Manchester United announced they had reached an agreement with Juventus to re-sign Ronaldo, subject to agreement of personal terms, visa and medical. Ronaldo was given the number 7 shirt after Edinson Cavani agreed to switch to 21. The first 24 hours of Ronaldo's shirt sales was reported to have broken the all-time record following a transfer, overtaking Messi after his move to Paris Saint-Germain.\nOn 11 September, Ronaldo made his second debut at Old Trafford, scoring the opening two goals in a 4\u20131 league victory against Newcastle United. On 29 September, he scored a last-minute winner in United's 2\u20131 victory at home to Villarreal in the Champions League, and overtook Iker Casillas as the player with the most appearances in the competition. Ronaldo proved to be crucial in the next Champions League fixtures, scoring various last minute goals to help United qualify for the round of 16 as group winners. On 2 December, Ronaldo netted two goals in a 3\u20132 home league win against Arsenal, which saw him surpass 800 career goals. Struggles ensued, with a fractured relationship with his teammates and interim manager, continuing for two months, until he scored in United's 2\u20130 win at home versus Brighton & Hove Albion on 15 February 2022, his first in the new year. He finished the season with 24 goals in all competitions being named in the Premier League Team of the Year and the winner of United's Sir Matt Busby Player of the Year award, but United finished in a disappointing sixth place and qualified for the UEFA Europa League; as a result, Ronaldo went trophyless for the first time since 2010.\nAfter growing dissatisfaction with the direction of United on and off the field, Ronaldo desired to leave to join a club competing in the Champions League, but a move failed to materialise, with various European clubs refusing a transfer, due to his age, overall cost of a transfer and high wage demands. Shortly after, he fell out with manager Erik ten Hag who used him as a substitute, leading United to terminate his contract on 22 November, following an interview with Piers Morgan, where Ronaldo said that he felt \"betrayed\" by Ten Hag and criticised the management of the club.\nAl Nassr.\nOn 30 December 2022, Saudi club Al-Nassr reached an agreement for Ronaldo to join the club, signing a contract until 2025. Ronaldo received the highest football salary ever, at \u20ac200 million per year, including a guaranteed football salary of \u20ac90 million, with commercial and sponsorship deals bringing his total annual salary to \u20ac200 million.\nHe made his debut for Al Nassr on 22 January 2023, as club captain, playing the full 90 minutes of a 1\u20130 win over Al-Ettifaq, and scored his first goal in a 2\u20132 draw against Al-Fateh by converting a last-minute penalty. On 9 February, Ronaldo scored all four goals in a 4\u20130 win over Al Wehda, his first goal of the match being his 500th career league goal. According to the BBC, Ronaldo's transfer to Al-Nassr led a \"revolution\" in Asian football, with many players from other leagues, particularly those in Europe, transferring to Saudi Pro League clubs for the 2023\u201324 season.\nIn the final of the Arab Club Champions Cup on 12 August, Ronaldo scored both goals as they defeated rivals Al-Hilal 2\u20131 after extra time. Ronaldo scored six goals in the competition. At the close of the year, Ronaldo scored 54 goals in all competitions for Al-Nassr and Portugal, making him the outright top scorer in 2023, reaching the same goalscoring record as in 2016. On 27 May 2024, in Al Nassr's home fixture against Al-Ittihad, Ronaldo scored his 34th and 35th league goals of the campaign, surpassing Abderrazak Hamdallah's record for the most goals scored in a single Saudi Pro League season. He also became the first footballer to finish as top scorer in four different leagues, the English, Spanish, Italian and Saudi leagues. On 31 May, in a 5\u20134 penalty shoot-out defeat to Al-Hilal in the 2024 King Cup final following a 1\u20131 draw after extra-time (in which he scored his side's second spot kick), he equalled Rog\u00e9rio Ceni's record for most top-level matches by a male professional footballer (1,225).\nInternational career.\nAt the age of 18, Ronaldo made his debut for Portugal as a substitute against Kazakhstan on 20 August 2003. At UEFA Euro 2004, he scored his first international goal in a 2\u20131 group stage loss to Greece in his eighth international appearance. Despite Portugal losing to Greece again in the final, Ronaldo made the team of the tournament, with two assists and two goals. In the 2006 FIFA World Cup, at the age of 21 years and 132 days, Ronaldo became the youngest ever goalscorer for Portugal at a World Cup finals. Portugal reached the semi-finals, where Portugal lost to France, with Ronaldo being booed during their defeat, due to an incident that occurred in the quarter-finals against England. FIFA's Technical Study Group overlooked him for the tournament's Best Young Player award and handed it to Germany's Lukas Podolski, citing his behaviour as a factor in the decision.\nOn 6 February 2007, Cristiano captained Portugal for the first time in a friendly against Brazil. He wore the number 7 shirt ahead of UEFA Euro 2008. Despite scoring eight goals in qualifications, the second-highest tally, he scored just one goal in the finals, netting the second goal of Portugal's 3\u20131 win in the group stage game against the Czech Republic. Portugal were eliminated in the quarter-finals after a 3\u20132 loss to Germany.\nRonaldo failed to score in 2010 World Cup qualifying. He scored only one goal in the 2010 World Cup finals; despite this, he was named man of the match in all three group stage matches, against Ivory Coast, North Korea and Brazil. His only goal of the tournament came in their 7\u20130 demolishing of North Korea, which was his first international goal in 16 months. Two years later, in UEFA Euro 2012, Ronaldo was joint top scorer with three goals, enough for him to be included in the team of the tournament. During qualification for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, Ronaldo scored eight goals. Despite this, Portugal did not qualify directly; Ronaldo scored all four goals against Sweden in the play-off to qualify. At the tournament in Brazil, Ronaldo assisted a last-minute 2\u20132 equaliser against the United States, and scored an 80th-minute winner in a 2\u20131 win over Ghana.\nIn 2016, Ronaldo led Portugal to their first-ever trophy at the UEFA Euro 2016, although he was subbed off in the 25th minute in the final against hosts France. He received the Silver Boot as the second-highest goalscorer, which gave him his fourth Ballon d'Or later that year. With the win, Portugal qualified and made its only appearance in the FIFA Confederations Cup held in Russia, where they finished in third place, with Ronaldo being named man of the match in all three of Portugal's group stage matches.\nIn the 2018 World Cup, Ronaldo became the oldest player to score a hat-trick in a World Cup match, in a 3\u20133 draw against Spain. The following match, Ronaldo scored the only goal in a 1\u20130 win against Morocco, breaking Pusk\u00e1s' record as the highest European goalscorer of all time, with 85 international goals. For his performances in the tournament, Ronaldo was named in the World Cup Dream Team.\nRonaldo led Portugal to victory in the inaugural UEFA Nations League in 2019, receiving the top scorer award in the finals, and received the Golden Boot as top scorer of Euro 2020. Ronaldo also became the first player to score at five European Championships. On 23 June 2021, Ronaldo scored two goals in the Euro 2020 match against France, breaking the men's goalscoring record previously held by Ali Daei.\nOn 9 October, he scored the opening goal in a 3\u20130 friendly win over Qatar at the Est\u00e1dio Algarve; with his 181st international appearance, he also overtook Sergio Ramos's record for the most international caps received by a European player. In the following match against Luxembourg on 12 October, also played at the Est\u00e1dio Algarve, Ronaldo scored a hat-trick in a 5\u20130 win for Portugal, thus becoming the first player to score 10 hat-tricks in men's international football.\nIn the 2022 World Cup, on 24 November, Ronaldo became the first player to score at five World Cups, netting a penalty against Ghana. Following a dispute with manager Fernando Santos, after their last group game against South Korea, he was dropped from the starting line-up for Portugal's last 16 match, marking the first time since Euro 2008 that he had not started a game for Portugal in a major international tournament, and the first time Portugal had started a knockout game without Ronaldo in the starting line-up at an international tournament since Euro 2000.\nOn 23 March 2023, Ronaldo scored a brace against Liechtenstein as he earned his 197th overall cap to become the most capped male footballer of all time. On 20 June, Ronaldo made his 200th appearance for his national team, scoring the only goal of an away win over Iceland, in the Euro qualifiers, as he became the first player in the history of men's international football to make 200 appearances for his country. On 16 October, Portugal secured first place in their qualifying group, following a 5\u20130 away victory over Bosnia and Herzegovina, with Ronaldo scoring twice. The landmark goals saw him score in more than 100 goals in each of the last three decades (2000s, 2010s, 2020s).\nWith his start in Portugal's UEFA Euro 2024 opener against the Czech Republic, Ronaldo became the first player to feature in six European Championships, having previously been the first player to appear in five. Later that year, on 5 September, he scored his 900th career goal in a 2\u20131 victory over Croatia in the UEFA Nations League.\nPlayer profile.\nStyle of play.\nA versatile attacker, Ronaldo is capable of playing on either wing as well as through the centre of the pitch, and, while ostensibly right-footed, is very strong with both feet. Tactically, Ronaldo has undergone several evolutions throughout his career. While at Sporting and during his first season at Manchester United, he was typically deployed as a traditional winger on the right side of midfield, where he regularly looked to deliver crosses into the penalty area. In this position, he was able to use his pace and acceleration, agility and technical skills to take on opponents in one-on-one situations. Ronaldo became noted for his dribbling and flair, often displaying an array of tricks and feints, such as the step overs and so-called 'chops' that became his trademark; he has also been known to use the flip-flap.\nHis strength and jumping ability, combined with his elevation, heading accuracy and height of , give him an edge in winning aerial duels. These attributes allow him to function as a target-man and make him an aerial goal threat in the penalty area; consequently, many of his goals have been headers. Ronaldo holds the record for the highest recorded jump in football history, measuring , which he achieved during a match against Manchester United while playing for Real Madrid in the round of 16 of the UEFA Champions League in 2013. Allied with his increased stamina and work-rate, his goalscoring ability improved drastically on the left wing where he was given the positional freedom to move into the centre to finish attacks. He has also increasingly played a creative role for his team, often dropping deep to pick up the ball, participate in the build-up of plays and create chances for his teammates, courtesy of his vision and passing ability.\nIn his final seasons at United, Ronaldo played an even more attacking and central role, functioning both as a striker and as a supporting forward, or even as an attacking midfielder on occasion. He developed into a prolific goalscorer, capable of finishing well both inside the penalty area and from distance with an accurate and powerful shot, courtesy of his striking ability. An accurate penalty kick taker, he also became a set piece specialist, renowned for his powerful, bending free kicks. When taking free kicks, Ronaldo is known for using the \"knuckleball\" technique, which was developed by Juninho Pernambucano. He also adopts a trademark stance before striking the ball, which involves him standing with his legs far apart. Regarding Ronaldo's unique style of taking free kicks, former United assistant manager Mike Phelan commented: \"People used to put the ball down, walk away, run up and hit it. He brought in a more dynamic showmanship. He places the ball down, the concentration level is high, he takes his certain amount of steps back so that his standing foot is in the perfect place to hit the ball in the sweet spot. He is the ultimate showman. He has that slight arrogance. When he pulls those shorts up and shows his thighs, he is saying 'All eyes on me' and this is going in. He understands the marketing side of it. The way he struts up and places it; the world is watching him.\"\nAt Real Madrid, Ronaldo continued to play a more offensive role, while his creative and defensive duties became more limited, although not entirely diminished. Initially deployed as a centre forward by managers Manuel Pellegrini and Jos\u00e9 Mourinho, he was later moved back onto the left wing, though in a free tactical role; this position allowed him to drift into the centre at will to get onto the end of crosses and score, or draw out defenders with his movement off the ball and leave space for teammates to exploit. Madrid's counter-attacking style of play also allowed him to become a more efficient and consistent player, as evidenced by his record-breaking goalscoring feats. While he mainly drew praise in the media for his prolific goalscoring, Ronaldo also demonstrated his ability as an effective creator in this role. This unique role has been described by pundits as that of a \"false\", \"attacking\", or \"goalscoring winger\", as Ronaldo effectively almost functioned as a striker at times with his central runs into the penalty area, despite actually playing on the left flank. From 2013 onwards, under manager Carlo Ancelotti, he effectively adapted his style to the physical effects of ageing with increasingly reduced off-the-ball movement and general involvement, completing fewer dribbles and passes per game, and instead focusing on short-distance creating and goalscoring. Since 2017, Ronaldo adapted his style of play yet again to become more of a free-roaming centre forward under manager Zinedine Zidane, a role in which he continued to excel and maintain a prolific goalscoring record; in this position, he earned praise in the media for his intelligent movement both on and off the ball, positional sense, link-up play and finishing, as well as his ability to lose or anticipate his markers, find space in the box and score from few touches or opportunities.\nIn his first season at Juventus, Ronaldo continued to play in a variety of different attacking roles under manager Massimiliano Allegri, depending on whom he was partnered with. While he had occupied an increasingly offensive role in his final years at Real Madrid, at times he functioned in a free role at Juventus, either as a lone striker or in his trademark role on the left wing, in a 4\u20132\u20133\u20131 or 4\u20133\u20133 formation, in which he often switched positions with Mario Mand\u017euki\u0107. In this role, he was also given licence to drop deep or even out wide onto the right flank to receive the ball, and be more involved in the build-up of plays; as such, aside from scoring goals himself, he began to take on opponents and create chances for other players with greater frequency than he had in his final seasons with Real Madrid. Off the ball, he was also capable of creating space for teammates with his movement and attacking runs into the box, or finishing off chances with his head or feet by getting onto the end of his teammates' crosses. On occasion he also played in an attacking partnership alongside Mand\u017euki\u0107 in a 4\u20133\u20131\u20132, 4\u20134\u20132, or 3\u20135\u20132 formation. He continued to play a similar role in his second season with the club under manager Maurizio Sarri.\nReception and image.\nRonaldo is widely regarded as one of the two best players of his generation, alongside Argentina forward Lionel Messi. Winning his first Ballon d'Or in 2008 by a record-high vote count at age 23, over the next decade Ronaldo has often featured in debates concerning who is the greatest player in history. Acclaimed for his prolific and consistent goal-scoring, he is considered a decisive player who is also a game changer, especially in important and high-pressured situations. In a 2018 article for \"Bleacher Report\", former NBA star Steve Nash compared Ronaldo to Michael Jordan: \"On the pitch, [Ronaldo's] learned how to make his play\u2014less explosive in individual movements\u2014more successful for the team, and in that, I see the greatness of Jordan.\" In the same article, Ronaldo was ranked first in the ranking of the 50 most influential people in sports culture for 2018.<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"In the six years we had him, you just saw his game grow all the time, and he was a fantastic player. Now you see the complete player. His decision-making, his maturity, his experience, plus all the great skills he has got, they all make him the complete player.\"\n \u2014Former manager Alex Ferguson, January 2013\nRonaldo is noted for his work ethic, elite body conditioning and dedication to improvement on the training pitch, as well being regarded as a natural leader. On his longevity and \"extraordinary commitment to physical preparation\", Adam Bate of Sky Sports said: \"Dedication is a huge part of staying at the top and Ronaldo's focus is perhaps unparalleled within the game.\" While stating they were stylistically different players who shared an equal desire to score goals, former Brazil international Ronaldo praised Cristiano's approach to training, arguing that \"there are so few players who take care of their body like he does. I trained because I had to, he does it because he loves it.\" His drive and determination to succeed are fuelled by a desire to be talked about alongside other greats such as Pel\u00e9 and Diego Maradona once retiring. He is credited, along with his compatriot, coach Jos\u00e9 Mourinho, with inspiring changing fortunes of Portuguese football in and . At times, he has been criticised for simulating when tackled. He was also occasionally criticised early in his career by manager Alex Ferguson, teammates and the media for being a selfish or overly flamboyant player. Jonathan Wilson of \"The Guardian\" opined that Ronaldo had made Juventus, who he joined aged 33 in 2018, weaker, due to \"his relative immobility\" in his mid-30s, even if his personal goal-scoring output remained high.\nDuring his career, Ronaldo has also been described as having an \"arrogant image\" on the pitch, with Ronaldo stating that he had become a \"victim\" because of how he was portrayed in the media. He is often seen moaning, gesticulating and scowling while trying to inspire his team to victory, with Ronaldo insisting that his competitive nature should not be mistaken for arrogance. His managers, teammates and various journalists have said that this reputation has caused an unfair image of him.\nGoal celebrations.\nRonaldo has adopted several goal celebrations throughout his career, including one particular celebration which gained widespread coverage in the media, when he squatted and stared directly into a camera on the sidelines of the pitch with his hand on his chin. After scoring a goal, he usually celebrates with a \"storming jump\" and \"turn\", before \"landing in spread-eagled fashion\" into his \"signature power stance\", while usually simultaneously exclaiming \"S\u00ed\" (Spanish and Italian for \"yes\"). This trademark celebration has been dubbed the \"Siu\" or siuuu in the media. It has also been known as \"suiii\", \"siiuuu\", \"siii\" or \"Right Here Right Now\", formally the Cristiano Ronaldo celebration. Since Ronaldo first performed the gesture in 2013, it has been widely imitated by athletes and personalities both in and outside of football when celebrating scoring in respective sports or a significant achievement, and is widely regarded as the most iconic association football celebration of all time.\nThe gesture was first performed by Ronaldo on 7 August, during the 2013 International Champions Cup Final between Real Madrid and Chelsea. Ronaldo gave Madrid a 2\u20131 lead with a free kick when he headed in a cross from Isco, helping Madrid beat Chelsea 3\u20131 to claim the International Champions Cup and celebrating with his first \"Siuuu\". During an interview after the match against Chelsea when he first performed the gesture, Ronaldo explained he scored the goal and \"it just felt natural\" and \"didn't know where it came from\". He started doing it more often and when the supporters see it they are reminded of him.\nThe phrase \"siu\" is derived from Portuguese \"sim\", meaning \"yes\". This was confirmed by Ronaldo in an interview in 2023, almost a decade since he first performed it. Ronaldo explained that the phrase \"Siuuu\" simply means yes, but \"meaning it very strongly\".\nRivalry with Lionel Messi.\nBoth Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have scored in multiple UEFA Champions League finals, have regularly broken the 50-goal barrier in a single season, and are the two leading goal scorers in history. Sports journalists and pundits regularly weigh the individual merits of both players in an attempt to argue who they believe is the best player in modern football or in the history of the game. It has been compared to several sports rivalries, among them the Muhammad Ali\u2013Joe Frazier rivalry in boxing, the Borg\u2013McEnroe rivalry in tennis and the Senna\u2013Prost rivalry from Formula One motor racing. Some commentators choose to analyse the differing physiques and playing styles of the two. Part of the debate revolves around the contrasting personalities of the two players, as Ronaldo is sometimes depicted as an arrogant and theatrical showoff, while Messi is portrayed as a shy, humble character.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"It's part of my life now. People are bound to compare us. He tries to do his best for his club and for his national team, as I do, and there is a degree of rivalry with both of us trying to do the best for the teams we represent.\"\n\u2014Ronaldo commenting on his rivalry with Messi.\nIn a 2012 interview, Ronaldo commented on the rivalry, saying: \"I think we push each other sometimes in the competition, this is why the competition is so high.\" Alex Ferguson, Ronaldo's manager during his time at Manchester United, opined: \"I don't think the rivalry against each other bothers them. I think they have their own personal pride in terms of wanting to be the best.\" Messi himself denied any rivalry, saying that it was \"only the media, the press, who wants us to be at loggerheads but I've never fought with Cristiano.\" Responding to the claims that he and Messi do not get on well on a personal level, Ronaldo commented: \"We don't have a relationship outside the world of football, just as we don't with a lot of other players.\" Ronaldo added that in years to come he hopes they can laugh about it together, stating: \"We have to look on this rivalry with a positive spirit, because it's a good thing.\" Representing archrivals Barcelona and Real Madrid, the two players faced each other at least twice every season in the world's biggest club game, \"El Cl\u00e1sico\", which is among the world's most viewed annual sporting events.\nIn a debate at Oxford Union in October 2013, when asked whether FIFA president Sepp Blatter preferred Messi or Ronaldo, Blatter paid tribute to the work ethic of the Argentine before taking a swipe at Ronaldo, claiming \"one of them has more expenses for the hairdresser than the other.\" Real Madrid demanded and promptly received a full apology. In response to Blatter's \"commander\" on the pitch comment, Ronaldo issued his own riposte with a mock-salute celebration after scoring a penalty against Sevilla. In August 2019, Ronaldo and Messi were interviewed while sat next to each other prior to the announcement of the UEFA Men's Player of the Year, with Ronaldo stating: \"I pushed him and he pushed me as well. So it's good to be part of the history of football.\"\nAfter Messi led Argentina to victory in the 2022 FIFA World Cup, a number of football critics, commentators and players have opined that Messi settled the debate between the two players. In September 2023, Ronaldo declared that his rivalry with Messi was over and \"gone\", after 36 official fixtures and 15 years of \"sharing the stage\".\nIn popular culture.\nPopularity and online following.\nRonaldo was named in the 2014 Time 100, \"Time\"'s annual list of the most influential people in the world. ESPN named Ronaldo the world's most famous athlete in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. Demand for a replica Ronaldo shirt has been high throughout his career. In 2008, Ronaldo's number 7 Manchester United shirt was the best-selling Premier League sports product. In 2015, Ronaldo's number 7 Real Madrid shirt was the second best-selling worldwide, after Messi's number 10 Barcelona shirt. In 2018, within 24 hours of his number 7 Juventus shirt being released, over 520,000 had been sold, with $62.4\u00a0million generated in one day.\nRonaldo has established a strong online presence. The most popular sportsperson on social media, he counted over 500\u00a0million total followers across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram by February 2021, making him the first person to pass half a billion followers. The most-followed person on Facebook (171\u00a0million), most-followed on Instagram (650\u00a0million) and most-followed sportsperson on Twitter (115\u00a0million), his sponsors earned $936\u00a0million in media value across his accounts between June 2016 and June 2017. After announcing the creation of his YouTube channel, UR Cristiano on 21 August 2024, it became the fastest to reach the 1 million subscribers milestone, doing so in 90 minutes. The channel also became the fastest to reach 5, 10, 20, 30 and 50 million subscribers. It also became the most subscribed channel in Portugal, surpassing the Portuguese Nick Jr. Computer security company McAfee produced a 2012 report ranking footballers by the probability of an internet search for their name leading to an unsafe website, with Ronaldo's name first on the list.\nWealth and sponsorships.\nWith earnings of \u20ac720\u00a0million (\u00a3615\u00a0million) from 2010 to 2019, Ronaldo was ranked second in \"Forbes\" list of the decade's highest-paid athletes, behind boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. \"Forbes\" twice ranked Ronaldo first on its list of the world's highest-paid football players; his combined income from salaries, bonuses and endorsements was $73\u00a0million in 2013\u201314 and $79\u00a0million in 2014\u201315. The latter earnings saw him listed behind only Mayweather on the magazine's list of The World's Highest-Paid Athletes. In 2016, he became the first footballer to top the \"Forbes\" list of highest-earning athletes, with a total income of $88\u00a0million from his salary and endorsements in 2015\u201316. He topped the list for the second straight year with earnings of $93\u00a0million in 2016\u201317. He is the first footballer and only the third sportsman to earn $1 billion in their career.\nRonaldo is one of the world's most marketable sportsmen: \"SportsPro\" rated him the fifth most marketable athlete in 2012 and eighth most marketable athlete in 2013. Sports market research company Repucom named Ronaldo the most marketable and most recognised football player in the world in May 2014. Since his reputation grew at Manchester United, Ronaldo has signed many sponsorship deals for consumer products, including sportswear, football boots; since November 2012, Ronaldo has worn the Nike Mercurial Vapor personalised CR7 edition, soft drinks, clothing, automotive lubricants, financial services, electronics, and video games. Ronaldo featured as the cover star of \"FIFA\" video game \"FIFA 18\" and was heavily involved in the game's promotion. His \"Sii\" goal celebration features in the \"FIFA\" series, accompanied with his own voiceover. He was also the face of \"Pro Evolution Soccer\", appearing on the covers of the 2008, 2012 and 2013 editions of the game.\nPhilanthropy.\nRonaldo has made contributions to various charitable causes throughout his career. Television footage of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami showed an eight-year-old boy survivor named Martunis wearing a Portuguese football shirt who was stranded for 19 days after his family was killed. Following this, Ronaldo visited Aceh, Indonesia, to raise funds for rehabilitation and reconstruction. After accepting undisclosed damages from a libel case against \"The Sun\" newspaper in 2008, Ronaldo donated the damages to a charity in Madeira. In 2009, Ronaldo donated \u00a3100,000 to the hospital that saved his mother's life in Madeira following her battle with cancer, so that they could build a cancer centre on the island. In support of the victims of the 2010 Madeira flood, Ronaldo pledged to play in a charity match in Madeira between Primeira Liga club Porto and players from Madeiran-based clubs Mar\u00edtimo and Nacional.\nIn 2012, Ronaldo and his agent paid for specialist treatment for a nine-year-old Canarian boy with apparently terminal cancer. In December 2012, Ronaldo joined FIFA's \"11 for Health\" programme to raise awareness among kids of how to steer clear of conditions including drug addiction, HIV, malaria, and obesity. In January 2013, Ronaldo became Save the Children's new Global Artist Ambassador, in which he hopes to help fight child hunger and obesity. In March 2013, Ronaldo agreed to be the ambassador for The Mangrove Care Forum in Indonesia, an organisation aiming to raise awareness of mangrove conservation.\nRonaldo was named the world's most charitable sportsperson in 2015 after donating \u00a35\u00a0million to the relief effort after the earthquake in Nepal which killed over 8,000 people. In June 2016, Ronaldo donated the entirety of his \u20ac600,000 Champions League bonus after Real Madrid won the competition. In August of the same year, Ronaldo launched CR7Selfie, a selfie app for charity to help Save the Children that lets participants take a selfie with him in one of several different outfits and poses.\nEponyms and honours.\nIn 2007, C.D. Nacional renamed its youth campus Cristiano Ronaldo Campus Futebol (Cristiano Ronaldo Football Campus). In December 2013, Ronaldo opened a museum, Museu CR7, in his hometown of Funchal, Madeira, to house trophies and memorabilia; the museum is an official sponsor of the local football team Uni\u00e3o da Madeira. At a ceremony held at the Bel\u00e9m Palace in January 2014, President of Portugal An\u00edbal Cavaco Silva raised Ronaldo to the rank of Grand Officer of the Order of Prince Henry \"to distinguish an athlete of world renown who has been a symbol of Portugal globally, contributing to the international projection of the country and setting an example of tenacity for future generations.\" In June 2015, astronomers led by David Sobral from Lisbon and Leiden discovered a galaxy which they named Cosmos Redshift 7 (CR7) in tribute to Ronaldo.\nOn 23 July 2016, following Portugal's triumph at Euro 2016, Madeira Airport in Funchal was renamed as Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport. The name change was subject to much debate locally by some politicians and citizens, who even started a petition against the move, an action criticised by President of Madeira Miguel Albuquerque. On 21 September 2020, the Sporting CP's football academy in Alcochete, until then called \"Academia Sporting\", was renamed \"Academia Cristiano Ronaldo\". In 2023, the Lisbon City Council approved awarding him, at the proposal of its president, Carlos Moedas, the Medal of Honor of the City, because he is \"a great Lisboner, in the sense of the passion he has for the city\".\nPublic art.\nIn June 2010, during the build-up to the World Cup, Ronaldo became the fourth footballer (after Steven Gerrard, Pel\u00e9, and David Beckham) to be represented as a waxwork at Madame Tussauds London. Another waxwork of him was presented at the Madrid Wax Museum in December 2013. A bronze statue of Ronaldo, designed by artist Ricardo Madeira Veloso, was unveiled in Funchal on 21 December 2014.\nThe unveiling of the rebranded Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport took place on 29 March 2017, which included a bust of his head being presented. The bust and the name change were controversial, with the lack of the bust's likeness to Ronaldo being ridiculed by comedians, including \"Saturday Night Live\", A year later, sports website Bleacher Report commissioned sculptor Emanuel Santos to create another bust; however, this bust was never used and a new one was made by a Spanish sculptor, shown to the public on 15 June 2018.\nBusiness ventures.\nRonaldo opened a fashion boutique under the name \"CR7\" (his initials and shirt number) on the island of Madeira in 2006 and opened a second in Lisbon in 2008. In partnership with Scandinavian manufacturer JBS Textile Group and the New York fashion designer Richard Chai, Ronaldo co-designed a range of underwear and sock line, released in November 2013. He expanded his \"CR7\" fashion brand by launching a line of premium shirts and shoes in July 2014. In September 2015, Ronaldo released his own fragrance, \"Legacy\", in a partnership with Eden Parfums. Since 26 October 2023, the new owners of Medialivre (\"Correio da Manh\u00e3\", \"Record\" and \"Jornal de Neg\u00f3cios\" publisher) are a group of investors that include Cristiano Ronaldo through Portuguese company Express\u00e3o Livre. In December 2011, he launched an iPhone game called \"Heads Up with Cristiano\", created by developer RockLive, and in December 2013, he launched \"Viva Ronaldo\", a dedicated social networking website and app.\nMedia.\nRonaldo's autobiography, titled \"Moments\", was published in 2007. His sponsor Castrol produced the television film \"Ronaldo: Tested to the Limit\", in which he was physically and mentally tested in several areas; his physical performance was subject to scrutiny by world media upon the film's release in September 2011. ', a documentary narrated by actor Benedict Cumberbatch, was released via Vimeo in June 2014. A documentary film directed by Anthony Wonke about his life and career, titled \"Ronaldo\", was released on 9 November 2015. He appears as a playable character in the 2025 fighting game '.\nPersonal life.\nFamily, children, and relationships.\nRonaldo has five living children. He first became a father to a son, who was born on 17 June 2010 in the United States. He has full custody of the child and has not publicly revealed the identity of the mother per an agreement with her. In January 2015, Ronaldo's five-year relationship with Russian model Irina Shayk ended.\nRonaldo became a father to twins, born on 8 June 2017 in the United States via surrogacy. He is currently in a relationship with Argentine-born Spanish model Georgina Rodr\u00edguez, who gave birth to a daughter on 12 November 2017. The couple expected another set of twins in 2022. The male twin died during childbirth while the female twin survived.\nRonaldo's father, Jos\u00e9, died of an alcoholism-related liver condition at age 52 in September 2005 when Ronaldo was 20.\nIn January 2023, after Ronaldo moved to Saudi Arabia with his family having been signed by Saudi Pro League side Al Nassr, the rulers of the Kingdom made Ronaldo an exception to the rule that unmarried couples are not allowed to live together in Saudi Arabia. An unnamed Saudi lawyer told Spanish news agency EFE that \"the laws of the Kingdom still prohibit cohabitation without a marriage contract\", but Saudi authorities have begun to \"turn a blind eye and stop prosecuting anyone, even though these laws are applied when there is a problem or a crime\".\nRonaldo is of (one-eighth) Cape Verdean descent through his great-grandmother. He is a Catholic.\nAfter her son achieved legendary status in world football, Cristiano Ronaldo's mother, Dolores Aveiro, became a popular personality in Portugal to such an extent that advertising campaigns for well-known brands in the country, such as Maggi, MultiOpticas and Pingo Doce, have featured her in commercials.\nHealth.\nRonaldo has said that he does not drink alcohol, and he received libel damages over a \"Daily Mirror\" article that reported him drinking heavily in a nightclub while recovering from an injury in July 2008. He also does not have any tattoos as he regularly donates blood and bone marrow.\nLegal issues.\nIn July 2017, Ronaldo was charged with fraudulently evading almost \u20ac15\u00a0million in tax between 2011 and 2014, a claim he denied at the time. In June 2018, Ronaldo was given a two-year suspended jail sentence and fined \u20ac18.8\u00a0million, later reduced to \u20ac16.8\u00a0million after reaching a deal with Spanish authorities. The sentence can be served under probation, without any jail time, so long as he does not re-offend.\nRonaldo and another man were investigated by the British Crown Prosecution Service after a 2005 rape allegation was brought forward by two women. Within days, the two women withdrew their allegation and Scotland Yard later issued a statement declaring there was not enough evidence for a prosecution.\nIn April 2017, it was reported that Ronaldo was being investigated by the Las Vegas Police Department for an allegation by a woman that he had raped her in 2009. Documents, confirmed by Ronaldo's lawyers, state that Ronaldo paid a woman US$375,000 in a non-disclosure settlement. Ronaldo and his lawyers issued a lengthy statement denying all accusations, describing them as an \"intentional defamation campaign\" with parts significantly \"altered and/or completely fabricated\", a claim which \"Der Spiegel\" categorically denied. In July 2019, Las Vegas prosecutors said they would not charge Ronaldo over allegations of rape; the statement added: \"Based upon a review of information at this time, the allegations of sexual assault against Cristiano Ronaldo cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.\" The same woman, in September 2018, filed a civil lawsuit in Nevada accusing Ronaldo of rape. \"The Daily Mirror\", citing court documents, reported in 2021 that the woman sought \u00a356\u00a0million in damages from Ronaldo. In October 2021, federal magistrate judge Daniel Albregts recommended that the lawsuit be dismissed, citing that the woman's lawyer, Leslie Stovall, \"acted in bad faith by asking for, receiving, and using Football Leaks documents to prosecute\" the case, despite the documents containing \"privileged communications\" between Ronaldo and his lawyers. Additionally, Albregts stated that no evidence was found of Ronaldo's lawyers having \"intimidated [the woman] or impeded law enforcement\" during the 2010 settlement with her. In June 2022, the woman's rape lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice in the United States District Court for the District of Nevada, as district judge Jennifer A. Dorsey ruled that Stovall's repeated use of \"cyber-hacked attorney\u2013client privileged documents\" were actions representing \"abuses and flagrant circumvention of the proper litigation process\".\n \"As of match played 14 March 2025\"\nCareer statistics.\nClub.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\n \"As of match played 23 March 2025\"\nInternational.\nNotes\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nHonours.\nSporting CP\nManchester United\nReal Madrid\nJuventus\nAl Nassr\nPortugal\nIndividual\nOrders\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["6281193", "623737"], "permutation_1": ["623737", "6281193"], "permutation_2": ["6281193", "623737"], "permutation_3": ["623737", "6281193"]}
{"id": "2hop__537752_127008", "docs_added": {"7343862": "Nice (song)\n\"Nice\" is a song by the English pop rock band Duran Duran, released in 2005. It was the third single to be lifted from the group's eleventh studio album, \"Astronaut\" (2004).\nReception.\nDavid Medsker of \"PopMatters\" said \"if there is a single moment where things fall seamlessly into place on \"Astronaut\", it is 'Nice', a magnificent melding of Andy's power chords, Nick's wall of synths, and John's octave-jumping disco bass that recalls the best moments of \"Rio\" all rolled into one. It's not particularly complex, but neither was 'Hold Back the Rain', a fan favorite to this day. 'Nice' is simple in all the right ways and, like all good pop songs, it knows when to quit, with a cold ending at a mere three minutes and 27 seconds. The label is nuts if they don't release this as the second single.\"\nPersonnel.\nDuran Duran\nTechnical\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "148703": "Duran Duran\nEnglish pop rock band\nDuran Duran () are an English pop rock band formed in Birmingham in 1978 by singer Stephen Duffy, keyboardist Nick Rhodes and guitarist/bassist John Taylor. After several early changes, the band's line-up settled in May 1980 as Rhodes, Taylor, singer Simon Le Bon, guitarist Andy Taylor and drummer Roger Taylor. \nEmerging as members of the New Romantic scene, Duran Duran were innovators of the music video and a leading band in the MTV-driven Second British Invasion of the US in the 1980s. By 1984, the band had achieved levels of fame similar to Beatlemania. The band's first major hit was \"Girls on Film\" (1981), from their self-titled debut album, the popularity of which was enhanced by a controversial music video. The band's breakthrough second album was \"Rio\" (1982), a worldwide hit. The songs \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Rio\" featured cinematic music videos directed by Australian film maker Russell Mulcahy and became two of their biggest hits. Their third album, \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\", became their only UK number one album and featured the US and UK number one single \"The Reflex\". In 1985, the band topped the US charts with the single \"A View to a Kill\" from the soundtrack of the James Bond film of the same title.\nAndy Taylor and Roger Taylor both left the band before the recording of their fourth album, \"Notorious\" (1986), which yielded the top ten title track. Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor initially continued as a core trio, before adding drummer Sterling Campbell and former Frank Zappa and Missing Persons guitarist Warren Cuccurullo as full-time members in 1989, though Campbell departed in 1991. The band spent the late 1980s and early 1990s releasing albums and singles to only moderate success. Their comeback album, 1993's \"Duran Duran\" (commonly called \"The Wedding Album\"), featured two top ten worldwide hits \"Ordinary World\" and \"Come Undone\". John Taylor left the band in 1997, though four years later, in 2001, a full reunion of the classic 1980\u20131985 line-up of Le Bon, Rhodes and all three Taylors took place, which led to a number of highly successful concert tours and the 2004 album \"Astronaut\", which reached number three in the UK and top 40 in numerous other countries. The album's lead single \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\" was an international dance hit, and reached number five in the UK. Andy Taylor left again in 2006, and the band have released five additional albums, with the most recent being \"Danse Macabre\" in 2023.\nAccording to \"Billboard\", Duran Duran have sold over 100 million records. They achieved 30 top 40 singles in the UK Singles Chart (14 of them top 10) and 21 top 40 singles in the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100. The band have won numerous awards throughout their career: two Brit Awards including the 2004 award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, two Grammy Awards, an MTV Video Music Award for Lifetime Achievement and a Video Visionary Award from the MTV Europe Music Awards. They were also awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The band were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.\nHistory.\n1978\u20131980: Formation and early years.\nJohn Taylor and Nick Rhodes formed Duran Duran in 1978 in Birmingham, England, with Taylor's art school friend Stephen Duffy, naming their band after \"Dr. Durand Durand\", Milo O'Shea's character from the science fiction film \"Barbarella\" (1968), the day after the film was broadcast on BBC on 20 October 1978. The three of them (Taylor on guitar and vocals, Rhodes on synthesizer and tapes, Duffy on vocals and bass) played their first gig on 5 April 1979 at the Birmingham Polytechnic. Soon after, they were joined by Simon Colley on clarinet and bass. John (then going by his first name Nigel) was the guitarist at this point. After a few gigs, including a performance at Barbarella's in Birmingham opening for the band Fashion, Duffy and Colley left the band in June 1979.\nTaylor and Rhodes then recruited lead vocalist Andy Wickett (formerly frontman of \"TV Eye\") and decided that they needed a live drummer. They hired Roger Taylor, a former member of various local bands (most recently \"The Scent Organs\" who also played at Barbarella's), while John Taylor switched to bass guitar. In September 1979, this incarnation of the band recorded a four-track demo including an early version of \"Girls on Film\" co-written by Andy Wickett. Soon afterwards Alan Curtis was recruited as lead guitarist. After a few gigs with this line-up Wickett left the band in late 1979.\nWickett was replaced by Roger Taylor's friend and former singer of \"The Scent Organs\" Jeff Thomas. In early 1980, they became the resident band at the city's Rum Runner nightclub. They were doing jobs at the club and began rehearsing and regularly playing at the venue. Curtis was unhappy with the Rum Runner club scene and left the band to form Dif Juz with his brother. Thomas was fired shortly after following disagreements and repeated arguments. The three remaining members started to look for a new lead vocalist and guitarist. The owners of the club, brothers Paul and Michael Berrow, became the band's management, paying them to work as doormen, disc jockeys (DJs) and barmen when they were not rehearsing, and also formed the Tritec Music company.\nIn April 1980, guitarist Andy Taylor came from Newcastle upon Tyne to audition after responding to an advertisement in \"Melody Maker\". Andy already had a lot of experience from playing with cover bands for years and although he came from a totally different rock music background his versatile playing style was seen as a perfect complement to the band. In May 1980, London vocalist and drama student Simon Le Bon was recommended to the band by an ex-girlfriend who worked at the Rum Runner. The band were immediately impressed by Le Bon and soon completed their first composition with the new line-up, \"Sound of Thunder\", featuring lyrics by Le Bon. Duran Duran's first performance with the lineup of Le Bon, Rhodes and the three Taylors was on 16\u00a0July 1980 at the Rum Runner.\nDuran Duran spent the next months writing, developing and demoing their songs and performed in clubs around Birmingham and London. In September 1980 they had written all of what would become their debut album. Touring as an opening act for Hazel O'Connor, the band attracted critical attention, resulting in a bidding war between the record companies EMI and Phonogram. \"A certain patriotism\" toward the label of the Beatles led them to sign with EMI in December. A week later, the first article about Duran Duran in a national magazine appeared in \"Sounds\". The members of Duran Duran had noticed that Betty Page (pen name for Beverley Glick) was writing about a new movement called New Romantic that would fit the band perfectly and invited her to meet them at the Rum Runner.\nShortly after signing the recording contract with EMI, Duran Duran went to London to record their debut album with producer Colin Thurston, and initial plans for an independent release of the songs \"Planet Earth\" and \"Is There Anyone Out There?\" on the Tritec Music label were scrapped.\n1981\u20131982: Self-titled debut, \"Rio\" and Second British Invasion.\nThe band's debut album, \"Duran Duran\", was released on the EMI label in June 1981. The first single, \"Planet Earth\", had reached the United Kingdom's top 20 at number 12 in February. A follow-up, \"Careless Memories\", released in April, stalled at number 37. The third single, \"Girls on Film\", was released in July and went to number 5 in the UK. The video, featuring topless women mud wrestling, pillow fighting and stylised depictions of other sexual fetishes, was made with directing duo Godley & Creme in August. The video was filmed just two weeks after MTV was launched in the United States. The band expected the \"Girls on Film\" video to be played in the newer nightclubs that had video screens or on pay TV channels like the Playboy Channel. Kevin Godley explained the thinking behind it:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />We were very explicitly told by Duran Duran's management to make a very sensational and erotic piece that would be for clubs, where it would get shown uncensored just to make people take notice and talk about it.\nThe video was heavily edited for MTV. The album peaked in the UK top twenty at number three. Later in 1981 the band embarked on their first United States club tour followed by more dates in Germany and the UK. This second tour of Britain coincided with a wave of riots sparked by unemployment and racial tension, including those of Moss Side and Toxteth. The band played Birmingham the day after the Handsworth riots. The band also began writing and demoing songs for a new album. In November 1981, they released a new single, the disco-influenced \"My Own Way\", that reached number 14 in the UK, followed in early 1982 by the recording of their second album at AIR Studios in London.\nIn May 1982, Duran Duran released their second album, \"Rio\", which entered the UK Albums Chart at number four and peaked at number two the following week. The band scored three UK top 10 hits on the singles chart from the album with \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" at number five in June, \"Save a Prayer\" at number two in September and the title song \"Rio\" at number nine in December, while the earlier top 20 hit \"My Own Way\" was included in a re-recorded version on the album.\nWith the album Duran Duran also began to achieve worldwide recognition. A headlining tour of Australia, Japan and the US was followed by a stint supporting Blondie during that band's final American tour. Diana, Princess of Wales declared Duran Duran her favourite band, and the band were dubbed \"the Fab Five\" by the British press, comparing them to the Beatles whose nickname was the Fab Four.\nAt first, the \"Rio\" album did not do well in the United States. EMI in the UK had promoted Duran Duran as a New Romantic band, but the New Romantic movement was barely known in the US, and EMI's American subsidiary Capitol Records was at a loss about how to sell them. After \"Carnival\" (an EP of \"Rio\"'s dance remixes) became popular with DJs in the fall, the band arranged to have most of the album remixed by David Kershenbaum. In June 1982, Duran Duran appeared for the first time on American television, performing \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Rio\" on \"Dancin' on Air\", the forerunner to the national hit show \"Dance Party USA\".\nNow promoted as a dance album, \"Rio\" was re-released in the US in November and began to climb the American charts six months after its European success. MTV placed \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and several other Duran Duran videos into heavy rotation, pushing the single and album into the US top twenty in early 1983. The ballad \"Save a Prayer\" also did well. \"The band was a natural for music television,\" noted \"Rolling Stone\". \"They may be the first rock group to ride in on a video wave.\" The album ultimately peaked at number six in the US and remained on the charts there for 129 weeks. In 2003, \"Rio\" was listed at number 65 in the \"NME\"'s list of the 100 Greatest Albums of All Time.\nDuran Duran were among the earliest bands to work on their own remixes. Before the days of digital synthesizer and easy audio sampling, they created multi-layered arrangements of their singles, sometimes recording entirely different extended performances of the songs in the studio. These \"night versions\" were generally available only on vinyl as b-sides to 45 rpm singles or on 12-inch club singles until the release of the compilation \"\" in 1998.\n1983\u20131985: The \"Fab Five\", Side projects and Live Aid.\nThe band began 1983 at the Palladium in New York playing the MTV New Year's Eve Rock n' Roll Ball with \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" still climbing the charts in the US, and the American reissue of the \"Rio\" single to follow in March. To satisfy America's appetite for their music, the band re-released their eponymous first album in the US in the middle of the year with the addition of the new single \"Is There Something I Should Know?\". Upon its release, this song entered the chart at number one in the UK (a rarity then and their first chart-topper in their home country) and reached number five on the American charts. During the promotion of this album, Rhodes and Le Bon were MTV guest VJs for a show, during which artist and admirer Andy Warhol dropped by to greet them. \"Our first gigs in the United States were crazy and culty\", Rhodes said later, \"But when we came back after 'Hungry' was a hit, it was mayhem. It was Beatlemania. We were doing a signing of the 'Girls on Film' video at a store in Times Square. We couldn't get out of the store. The cops sealed off the streets.\" Also in 1983, Rhodes produced the UK number one and US number five hit \"Too Shy\" for English band Kajagoogoo and Andy Taylor became the first member of Duran Duran to get married.\nThe band spent the next year as tax exiles, writing songs at a ch\u00e2teau in France where \"The Tube\" with Jools Holland filmed a documentary with the band in May 1983 before they flew to Montserrat and then Sydney to record and mix their third album. During the summer, they returned to the UK to perform two concerts, the first on 20 July in front of the Prince and Princess of Wales at the Dominion Theatre, and the second, a charity concert at Aston Villa's home ground. The band were under pressure to follow up the success of \"Rio\", and the recording process took over six months as different band members went through bouts of perfectionism and insecurity. A newly decadent lifestyle and substance abuse issues for some members added complications. In the documentary film \"Extraordinary World\", filmed a decade later, Rhodes described the effect on their sound as \"barely controlled hysteria, scratching beneath the surface\".\nThe new album, \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" (1983), included the late 1983 hit \"Union of the Snake\" (with the soprano saxophone solo by Andy Hamilton). With \"Hungry Like the Wolf\", \"Rio\", \"Save a Prayer\" and \"Is There Something I Should Know?\", Duran Duran now had five US Top Twenty hits from three different albums in a single year. The band made music headlines by deciding to release the \"Union of the Snake\" video to MTV a full week before the single was released to radio. They followed up with \"New Moon on Monday\", which reached number nine in the UK. Their next single \"The Reflex\", taken from \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" and given a significant remix overhaul by Nile Rodgers of Chic fame, became their first number one hit in the United States. \"The Reflex\" was also their second and final UK number one and was successful in numerous other countries around the world.\nThe band embarked on a global tour that continued throughout the first four months of 1984 including their first major stadium dates in America. A film crew led by director Russell Mulcahy followed the band closely, leading to the documentary film \"Sing Blue Silver\" and the accompanying concert film \"Arena\". The live album \"Arena\" was also recorded during the tour and was released with the new single \"The Wild Boys\", which went to number two on both sides of the Atlantic. In February 1984, the band appeared on the cover of \"Rolling Stone\" magazine and won two Grammy Awards in the brand-new Long Form and Short Form music video categories. Meanwhile, \"Save a Prayer\" gained momentum in North America, and a special US remix of the song became a single in January 1985. It peaked at number 16 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 in March. A live version of the song was used for the single's B-side, taken from the concert video footage for \"Arena\" / \"As the Lights Go Down\".\nDuring this period, all of the band members became heartthrobs for many of their young teenage fans. After the tour, Roger Taylor was married in Naples, Italy, and Rhodes wed in London, wearing a pink velvet tuxedo and top hat. At the end of 1984, the group featured on the Band Aid benefit single \"Do They Know It's Christmas?\" along with other popular British and Irish musical acts. Le Bon sang fourth on the song, after Paul Young, Boy George and George Michael sing their lines.\nEven with Duran Duran on hold, band members were soon anxious to record new music, leading to a supposedly temporary split into two side projects. John Taylor and Andy Taylor wanted to break away from the Duran Duran sound and pursue hard rock material; they collaborated with lead vocalist Robert Palmer and Chic's drummer Tony Thompson to form the rock/funk supergroup the Power Station, releasing two top 10 singles. Le Bon and Rhodes wanted to further explore Duran Duran's atmospheric aspect and formed Arcadia, releasing one album (\"So Red the Rose\") and an accompanying single (\"Election Day\"). Contributors to that album included guitarist Masami Tsuchiya, bassist Mark Egan, percussionist David Van Tieghem, drummer Steve Jordan, Sting, Herbie Hancock and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. Roger Taylor was a drummer for Arcadia as well as contributing percussion to the Power Station album. According to Rhodes, the two side projects \"were commercial suicide... But we've always been good at that.\" The band regrouped to contribute \"A View to a Kill\" to the 1985 James Bond film of the same name. This single was the first Bond theme to go to number one on the US charts, and was at the time the joint highest-placed Bond theme on the UK chart where it reached number two. It was the last single the band recorded as the original five-piece for close to twenty years.\nAs a follow-up to the Christmas 1984 Band Aid single, Duran Duran performed in front of 90,000 people (and an estimated 1.5\u00a0billion TV viewers) at the Live Aid charity concert at John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 13 July 1985 while their Bond song held the top spot on the American charts. It was not intended to be a farewell performance\u2014the band planned only to take a break after four years of non-stop touring and public appearances\u2014but the original five did not play live together again until July 2003. During their Live Aid set, Le Bon inadvertently hit an off-key falsetto note in the chorus of \"A View to a Kill\", an error that was trumpeted by numerous media outlets as \"The Bum Note Heard Round the World\" (in contrast to Freddie Mercury's \"Note Heard Round the World\" at the Wembley Stadium Live Aid show). Le Bon later described the moment as the most embarrassing of his career.\n1986\u20131989: Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor trio.\nAfter releasing three studio albums and one live album in five years, each accompanied by heavy media promotion and lengthy concert tours, the band lost two of its core members to fatigue and tension in 1986. After Live Aid and Arcadia, Roger Taylor left the band and retired to the English countryside, suffering from exhaustion.\nAndy Taylor led the remaining members to believe he would return to work on a new Duran Duran album, even as he was signing a solo recording contract in Los Angeles with MCA Records, eventually releasing a solo album in 1986 called \"Thunder\". The band resorted to legal measures to get him into the studio but after numerous delays they let him go at last. He played on only a few songs on the next album, including \"A Matter of Feeling\", whilst the disagreements were being settled.\nWithout a guitarist or a drummer, Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor had producer (and former Chic guitarist) Nile Rodgers play a few tracks on guitar, and hired Steve Ferrone to play drums while they searched for replacements. In September 1986, Warren Cuccurullo (formerly of Missing Persons and Frank Zappa's band) was hired as a session guitarist. With Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor, he recorded the rest of the \"Notorious\" album, which was released in October 1986. The black-and-white documentary film \"Three to Get Ready\" chronicled the recording of the album, legal tensions, and preparations for the tour.\nAlthough the song \"Notorious\" was a US and UK top ten hit, the album was a relative failure globally, reaching number 16 in the UK and spending one week in the top 50 album chart. The band found they had lost much of the momentum and hysteria they had left behind in 1985. In the three years between the release of \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" and \"Notorious\", many of their teenage fans had grown up and the music was funkier, more mature, and less \"pop\", given the added experience of their work on Arcadia and Power Station and with other musicians. \"Skin Trade\" and \"Meet El Presidente\", the two subsequent singles, made the charts but fared poorly compared to the band's earlier successes. Finally in late 1987, Sterling Campbell was hired as a session drummer.\nSubsequently, Duran Duran struggled to escape the teen idol image and gain respect among critics with more complex music. The new serious image was not accepted at first and their popularity began to wane. \"Rolling Stone\" said, \"In their search for musical maturity, the surviving Durans have lost a good deal of their identity.\" In contrast the \"New York Times\" said, \"Duran Duran's newfound disillusionment may mark a step toward maturity...they managed to catch a trend on the upswing, perhaps \"Notorious\" suggests that for late 1980s grit and pessimism is coming into style.\" Another factor was the band's dismissal of early managers, the Berrow brothers. There was no announcement of the reasons for the decision, but disagreements over money, and the brothers' involvement in Le Bon's yachting adventures (they were co-owners of \"Drum\") were thought to have played a part. Whatever the reason, Duran Duran switched managers frequently and undertook periods of self-management in the later stages of their career. In addition, EMI fired its president and went through a major corporate restructuring that summer and seemed to have lost interest in promoting the band. According to Rhodes the band needed to break up in order to come back together stronger.\nThe next album \"Big Thing\" (1988) yielded the singles \"I Don't Want Your Love\" (number four in the US), and \"All She Wants Is\" (the last top ten hit in the UK until 1993). The record was experimental, mixing influences from house music and raves with Duran's atmospheric synth-pop and the creative guitar work of Cuccurullo (now a full band member), as well as more mature lyrics.\n1989\u20131991: Five again, \"Decade\" and \"Liberty\".\nBy the end of 1989 and at the start of the 1990s, the popularity of synth-pop was fading and losing fans to other momentum-gaining music genres at the time, such as hip hop, techno and alternative rock. After touring for the album finished, the band regained a five-man membership as Cuccurullo and Campbell were made full members of Duran Duran.\nThe compilation album \"Decade\" was released late in 1989, along with the megamix single \"Burning the Ground\", which consisted of woven snippets of the band's hits from the previous ten years, created and produced with John Jones, who began working with the band after the release of \"Big Thing\". The single came and went with little fanfare, but the album became another major seller for the band. The 1990 release \"Liberty\" (a retreat from the experimentation of \"Big Thing\") failed to capitalise on any regained momentum. The album entered the UK album chart in the top ten, but faded away quickly. The singles \"Violence of Summer (Love's Taking Over)\" and \"Serious\" were only mildly successful. For the first time, Duran Duran did not tour in support of an album, performing on only a handful of club dates and TV shows. Campbell left the band early in 1991, going on to work with Soul Asylum and David Bowie. The quartet of Le Bon, Rhodes, John Taylor and Cuccurullo would remain intact for six more years.\n1992\u20131996: Quartet line-up and a brief comeback.\nIn 1993, the band released a second self-titled album: this \"Duran Duran\" album is known as \"The Wedding Album\" (for Nick Egan's cover art featuring the wedding photos of the band members' parents) to distinguish it from the 1981 release, and was produced and recorded with John Jones. The release of this first \"comeback\" album was delayed, with then manager at Left Bank, Tommy Manzi, later telling HitQuarters that this was due to industry resistance to the revival of the band, who he said would rather focus on \"the next hip band\". Listener demand for leaked single \"Ordinary World\" forced it onto radio playlists months earlier than planned; it reached number three on the US chart and number six in the UK and won a prestigious Ivor Novello Award for song writing.\n\"Come Undone\", primarily written by Cuccurullo, with lyrics by Le Bon, made number seven in the US and number 13 in the UK. Both the band and the record label seemed to be caught by surprise by the album's critical and commercial success (number four in the UK, number seven in the US). John Taylor had been considering leaving the band but changed his mind. The band's largest tour ever, which included stops in the Middle East, the then recently de-embargoed South Africa, and South America, was halted after seven months when Le Bon suffered from strained vocal cords. After six weeks' recuperation, the band performed intermittently for another five months, including appearances in Israel, Thailand, and Indonesia.\nIn 1995, the band released the cover album \"Thank You\". Songs from \"Thank You\" included covers of Lou Reed's \"Perfect Day\" and Melle Mel's \"White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)\" (with backing vocals from the original artists). The album also marked the temporary return of former drummer Roger Taylor, who joined the band in studio to play drums on \"Watching the Detectives\" and \"Perfect Day\" (as well as a cover of \"Jeepster\" by T. Rex that did not appear on the album). In a video interview provided with the album's electronic press kit, Reed said he considered Duran Duran's version the best cover ever done of one of his songs, and they received praise from Robert Plant and Jimmy Page for their cover of Led Zeppelin's \"Thank You\".\n1997\u20132000: John Taylor's departure and second trio.\nAfter the promo tour for \"Thank You\" was completed, John Taylor co-founded the B5 Records label, recorded a solo album, founded and toured with the supergroup Neurotic Outsiders, and reunited the Power Station, though the project proceeded without him when he had to withdraw to deal with his divorce. Finally, after struggling for months to record the next album, \"Medazzaland\", in January 1997, John Taylor announced at the DuranCon fan convention that he was leaving the band \"for good\". His departure reduced the band to two long time members (Le Bon and Rhodes) and Cuccurullo, who decided to continue recording under the name Duran Duran.\nFreed from some internal writing conflicts, the band returned to the studio to rewrite and re-record many of the songs on \"Medazzaland\" (John Taylor's work remains on only four tracks). The album marked a return to the layered experimentation of \"Big Thing\", with intricate guitar textures and processed vocals. The track \"Out of My Mind\" was used as the theme song for the film \"The Saint\" (1997), but the only true single to be released in the United States was the quirky \"Electric Barbarella\", which is one of the first singles ever to be sold online. The music video for this single, featuring a sexy robot purchased and played with by band members, had to be censored before airing on MTV, but there was little of the controversy that had surrounded \"Girls on Film\". \"Electric Barbarella\" peaked at number 52 in the US in October 1997. Although \"Medazzaland\" was released in the US in October 1997, the album was never released in the UK. \"Electric Barbarella\" was later released in the UK as a single from the 1998 \"Greatest\" compilation album and peaked at number 23 on the UK chart in January 1999. The group played a set at the Princess Diana Tribute Concert on 27 June 1998 by special request of her family.\nDuran Duran parted ways with Capitol/EMI in 1999, although the label has since used Duran Duran's back catalogue to release several compilations of remixes and rare vinyl-only B-sides. The band then signed what was intended to be a three-album contract with Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records, but it lasted only through the poorly received 2000 album \"Pop Trash\". This slow-paced and heavy album seemed out-of-keeping with earlier band material. Rhodes' intricate production and Cuccurullo's songwriting and experimentation with guitar sounds and time signatures were not enough to hook the public, and the album did not perform well. The dreamy single \"Someone Else Not Me\" lasted barely two weeks on the radio, although its video was noted as the first to be produced entirely with Flash animation. While supporting \"Medazzaland\" and \"Pop Trash\", Duran Duran toured with bassist Wes Wehmiller and drummer Joe Travers.\n2001\u20132005: Reunion.\nIn 2000, Le Bon approached John Taylor with a proposal to reform Duran Duran's classic line-up. They agreed to part company with Cuccurullo after completing the \"Pop Trash\" tour. Cuccurullo then announced on his website that he was leaving Duran Duran to resume work with his 1980s band Missing Persons. This announcement was confirmed the next day by Duran Duran's website, followed a day later by the news that John, Roger and Andy had rejoined. To fulfill contractual obligations, Cuccurullo played three Duran Duran concerts in Japan in June 2001, ending his tenure in the band.\nThroughout 2001, 2002 and 2003, the band worked on writing new material, initially renting a house in Saint-Tropez where audio engineer Mark Tinley built a recording studio for their first serious writing session. They then returned to London to do some self-financed work with various producers (including old friend Nile Rodgers) and search for a new record deal. It proved difficult to find a record label willing to gamble on the band's comeback, so Duran Duran went on tour to prove the drawing power of the reunited band. The response of the fans and the media exceeded expectations. The band played a handful of 25th-anniversary dates across 2003, starting with two arena dates in Tokyo filled to capacity. Tickets sold out for each show within minutes, and celebrities turned out \"en masse\" for reunion dates. Amongst these were a number of shows at smaller venues that the band had played on both sides of the pond when they first got together in the early 1980s. In August, the band were booked as presenters at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, only to be surprised with a Lifetime Achievement Award. They also received a Lifetime Achievement award from \"Q\" magazine in October, and the equivalent Outstanding Contribution award at the BRIT Awards in February 2004.\nThe pace picked up with a sold-out tour of America, Australia and New Zealand. The band played a full concert at a private tailgate party at Super Bowl XXXVIII, their performance of \"The Wild Boys\" broadcast to millions during the pre-game show. A remix of the new track \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\" was released on many TV shows in February while magazines hailed (the modern \"Fab Five\") Duran Duran as one of the greatest bands of all time. Duran Duran then celebrated their homecoming to the UK with fourteen stadium dates in April 2004, including five sold-out nights at Wembley Arena. The British press, traditionally hostile to the band, accorded the shows some very warm reviews. Duran Duran brought along band Goldfrapp and the Scissor Sisters as alternating opening acts for this tour. The last two shows were filmed, resulting in the concert DVD \"Duran Duran: Live from London\" which was released in November.\nFinally, with more than thirty-five songs completed, the band signed a two-album contract with Epic Records in June, and completed the new album, now titled \"Astronaut\". The album was released in October 2004 and entered the UK charts at number three and the US charts at number 17. The first single was \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\", which reached number one on the \"Billboard\" US Dance chart in November and peaked at number five on the UK Singles Chart, Duran Duran's highest chart position since \"A View to a Kill\" in 1985. A second single, \"What Happens Tomorrow\", debuted at No.\u00a011 on the UK chart in February. A 5.1 mix of \"Astronaut\" was created by Jeremy Wheatley for the dual-disc release of \"Astronaut\". The CD side contains the album as-is and the DVD side contains the 5.1 mix of the album in DVD Audio format along with some DVD footage and videos.\nAfter a world tour in early 2005, Duran Duran were presented with the PRS Outstanding Contribution to British Music at the 2005 Ivor Novello Awards. Later that summer, the band headlined the massive Live 8 concert, Rome on 2 July 2005 in the Circus Maximus.\n2006\u20132008: \"Red Carpet Massacre\" and Andy Taylor's second departure.\nIn early 2006, Duran Duran covered John Lennon's song \"Instant Karma!\" for the \"Make Some Noise\" campaign sponsored by Amnesty International. Their version later appeared on \"\" as an iTunes exclusive bonus track. They also performed at two high-profile events\u00a0\u2013 the Nobel Prize Awards and the 2006 Winter Olympics. After a couple of weeks of songwriting in Northern California, the band began working with producer Michael Patterson in London, and continued intermittently for the next several months. At one point, they reported having had fifteen tracks nearly complete for an album tentatively titled \"Reportage\", but no further news emerged from the band for months afterward. In September, the band held meetings in New York City with Justin Timberlake and producer Timbaland with an eye to a potential collaboration and were soon reported to have completed three songs with the producer, including a song with Justin Timberlake.\nOn 25 October 2006, Duran Duran parted company with Andy Taylor once again. In an official announcement on their website, the band stated that an \"unworkable gulf\" had developed between them and Taylor and that \"we can no longer effectively function together\". It was noted by Andy Taylor in his book \"Wild Boy\" that tensions had arisen between the group's management and himself, and he was also diagnosed with clinical depression connected with the death of his father. Dom Brown, who had previously toured with the band, again took over guitar duties and has been performing with them since. After Taylor's departure, the band scrapped the \"Reportage\" album. They wrote and recorded a new album titled \"Red Carpet Massacre\" (2007), which included the Timbaland tracks. Dom Brown is the featured guitarist on the album.\nIn July 2007, the band performed twice at Wembley Stadium. Their first appearance at the stadium was the Concert for Diana which celebrated the life of Princess Diana almost 10 years after her death. The band performed \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\", \"The Wild Boys\" and \"Rio\". Their second appearance was at Live Earth concert, London. On 25 September, the Timberlake collaboration \"Falling Down\" was released as a download single on iTunes, and the band announced that they would play nine shows at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway to launch the \"Red Carpet Massacre\" album. The album launch was later extended to incorporate a show in London on 3 December 2007 and one in Dublin on 5 December 2007.\nIn May 2008, they toured the US leg of their 2008 world tour and were supported by the British band Your Vegas. In June 2008, they played the Louvre in Paris in a fundraising effort that contributed to the restoration of a Louis XV drawing room. Guests dined, privately viewed some of the museum's artworks, then attended a performance by the band in the I.M. Pei-designed Pyramid du Louvre. The group's performance marked a first for the 18th-century museum which had never before allowed a rock concert to occur anywhere within the grounds or buildings and another groundbreaker for Duran Duran.\nOn 2 July 2008, in Paris, Mark Ronson performed a unique live set with Duran Duran for an exclusive, invitation-only performance. Together, they showcased specially re-worked versions of some of Duran Duran's classic hits re-created by Ronson, along with tracks from \"Red Carpet Massacre\". Le Bon also performed songs from Ronson's latest album, \"Version\" (2007), as one of Ronson's featured guest vocalists. Unlike the band's previous album \"Astronaut\" (2004), \"Red Carpet Massacre\" sold poorly and received mixed responses from the music press. In 2008, \"Rio\" was included in the \"Classic Albums\" series.\n2009\u20132012: \"All You Need Is Now\".\nThe band departed from Epic Records in 2009, after releasing just two albums. In early 2010, it was revealed that the band would be contributing a cover of \"Boys Keep Swinging\" to a tribute/charity record for David Bowie called \"\" from which all profits go to War Child. Other contributing artists included Carla Bruni, Devendra Banhart, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, and Warpaint. The album was released on 14 September 2010 on Manimal Vinyl Records. A limited edition split 7-inch single with Duran Duran and Carla Bruni was also released on Manimal Vinyl in December 2010.\nOn 21 December 2010, Duran Duran's thirteenth album, titled \"All You Need Is Now\", produced by the Grammy Award-winning Mark Ronson and mixed by Spike Stent, was released exclusively on iTunes and hit the number one spot on download charts in 15 countries (including the UK). The first single from the record, title track \"All You Need Is Now\", was free to download worldwide on 8 December 2010 exclusively in iTunes. Guitarist and songwriter Dom Brown co-wrote all but two songs on the album.\nOn 25 February 2011, while in Milan, Duran Duran received a Style Icons of the 20th Century Award and a key to the city, presented by the city's mayor Letizia Moratti.\nIn March 2011 the band embarked on a world tour in support of the album. After a warm-up show in London, the tour officially began 16 March 2011 in Austin, Texas. On 23 March, the band performed live at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles as the start of the second season of \"\". The concert was directed by David Lynch and live-streamed on YouTube. The band was joined onstage by Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, Beth Ditto of Gossip, and Kelis. On 17 April 2011, Duran Duran performed at the Coachella Music Festival located at Empire Polo Grounds, in Indio, California. In May 2011, Le Bon contracted laryngitis leading to either cancellation or rescheduling of most of the European dates for the \"All You Need Is Now\" World Tour.\nOn 27 July 2012, Duran Duran headlined the London Summer Olympics 2012 Opening Ceremony celebration in Hyde Park. They represented England, along with Snow Patrol for Northern Ireland, Stereophonics for Wales, and Paolo Nutini for Scotland. At the end of August 2012, with one week left of their 18-month world tour, the band were forced to cancel the rest of the North American leg of the tour as Nick Rhodes had become ill with a viral infection.\n2013\u20132018: \"Paper Gods\".\nOn 4 March 2013, the band returned to the studio to work on their fourteenth album, and continued during the week beginning 23 September. They reconvened 13 to 18 December. On 31 December 2013, the band posted a mixtape curated by John Taylor as a New Year's \"thank you\" to their fans. On 10 February 2014, John Taylor and Roger Taylor worked with the Voce Chamber Choir and London Youth Chamber Choir on vocals for use on some Duran Duran tracks. Then former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante worked with the band on the new album.\nOn 11 September 2015, the album \"Paper Gods\" was released. The single \"Pressure Off\" was also released the same week, first via Microsoft's Xbox Music. The song subsequently appeared on Google Play Music. The album debuted at number 10 on the \"Billboard\" 200, the band's highest debut in 22 years. The album also reached number two in Italy, number four in the Netherlands, and number five in the UK. In 2016, the artist MNDR stood in for Rhodes during part of the third leg of the Paper Gods tour in the United States, while he returned to the UK in order to attend to an urgent family matter. Rhodes was quoted as saying, \"I will be back as soon as I can but know, in the meantime, that I am leaving both the band and fans in great hands, with the fabulous MNDR.\" Also, several remixes of their song \"Last Night in the City\" were released in digital form in that year.\nIn December 2016, the original five-piece lineup lost a case in the British High Court after they attempted to reclaim the U.S. copyright on their first three albums from Gloucester Place Music, part of EMI Music Publishing. Rhodes commented, \"We signed a publishing agreement as unsuspecting teenagers, over three decades ago, when just starting out and when we knew no better... if left untested, this judgment sets a very bad precedent for all songwriters of our era.\" In March 2020, Duran Duran signed with the Warner/Chappell Music publisher, covering their post-1986 catalogue. The band spent 2017 touring the American continent and playing a handful of festival dates in Europe and Asia.\n2019\u20132022: \"Future Past\" and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction.\nIn 2019, Duran Duran were working on a new album with Ronson, Erol Alkan and Giorgio Moroder handling production duties, and Graham Coxon and Lykke Li being confirmed as collaborators. Rhodes described the content and sound of a possible first single to be \"very different for us.\" Initially planned for release in 2020, the recording of the album was put on hold in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On 8 January 2021, a cover of \"Five Years\" by David Bowie was released for the fifth anniversary of his death. On 13 January 2021, \"Rolling Stone\" included the album at number 50 on their \"54 Most Anticipated Albums of 2021\" list. Le Bon said that the album is \"quite naked, raw. The grass is slightly sharp and twinkly rather than smooth,\" and is \"groovy (and) modern and very honest. The lyrics are quite something.\u201d On 18 May, the album title was announced as \"Future Past\".\nOn 19 May, the first single from the album \"Invisible\" was released along with a music video, and features Coxon as a guitarist and co-writer. On 9 July, the band premiered a second song from the album titled \"Give It All Up\" on NBC's \"Today\" show. On 5 August, Duran Duran released the album's second single \"More Joy!\", featuring further collaboration with Coxon, Erol Alkan and also Japanese rock band Chai. On 12 August, the band appeared on \"The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon\" performing \"Invisible\". On 31 August, Duran Duran released the album's third single \"Anniversary\", followed by the fourth single, \"Tonight United\", on 24 September. On 14 and 15 September, the band played two sold-out gigs at Birmingham's O2 Institute. That was the first time they played live since their last live gig in 2019. Along with their hit songs, they performed three tracks from \"Future Past\"\u2014\"Invisible\", \"Anniversary\" and \"Tonight United\". The band headlined the Isle of Wight festival on 19 September.\nOn 22 October 2021, \"Future Past\" was released. The album entered the UK Album Chart at number three, the band's highest peak since 2004's \"Astronaut\". This also earned the band the distinction of having UK Top 5 albums in each of the five decades they had been releasing music (1980s\u20132020s). On 22 January 2022, Duran Duran played on \"Austin City Limits\". In June 2022, Duran Duran performed at the Platinum Party at the Palace. In July 2022, the band returned to the city of their origin, Birmingham to headline the opening ceremony of Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games playing to a capacity Alexander Stadium.\nIn 2022, the band topped the fan vote (over 1 million preferences) for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the class of 2022, and in May of that year were announced as one of the seven inductees in the \"Performer\" category. \nOn 11 July 2022, Duran Duran headlined a concert in Hyde Park, London, to more than 80,000 adoring fans, as part of the 2022 BST concert series.\nThe ceremony at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was held on 5 November 2022, where Robert Downey Jr. inducted the band. John Taylor, Roger Taylor, Rhodes and Le Bon each attended the induction ceremony and performed \"Girls on Film\", \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Ordinary World\" along with longtime touring guitarist Dom Brown. During the acceptance speech, Simon Le Bon read from a letter written by Andy Taylor, who was absent from the ceremony, that revealed he has been privately fighting stage IV metastatic prostate cancer for the past four years and was \"massively disappointed\" he couldn't attend.\n2023\u2013present: \"Danse Macabre\".\nOn 20 March 2023, Duran Duran took to their Instagram to announce they are working on a new musical project, set for release in late 2023. The work will feature a collaboration with former band members Andy Taylor and Warren Cuccurullo. The project, \"Danse Macabre\", was released on 27 October. A Halloween-themed album, it features new songs, reworkings of older material and several covers.\nThe first single \u2013 the title track \"Danse Macabre\" \u2013 was released on 30 August 2023. The second single, \"Black Moonlight\", followed on 21 September.\nOn 13 September 2024, the band released a new reworking of their 1983 single \"New Moon on Monday\" titled \"New Moon (Dark Phase)\", ahead of a planned deluxe reissue of \"Danse Macabre\". The single features contributions from Andy Taylor.\nIn 2025, Carlo Conti announced that Duran Duran would be special guests of Sanremo Music Festival in the third night. They perform with Victoria De Angelis.\nInfluences.\nAlthough they began their career as \"a group of art school, experimental, post punk rockers,\" the band's quick rise to stardom, polished good looks and embrace of the teen press almost guaranteed disfavour from music critics. During the 1980s, Duran Duran were considered the quintessential manufactured, throw-away pop group. However, according to the \"Sunday Herald\", \"To describe them, as some have, as the first boy band, misrepresents their appeal. Their weapons were never just their looks, but self-penned songs.\" Moby said of the band in his blog in 2003: \"...\u00a0they were cursed by what we can call the 'Bee Gees' curse, which is: 'write amazing songs, sell tons of records, and consequently incur the wrath or disinterest of the rock obsessed critical establishment.'\"\nInfluences on Duran Duran included David Bowie, Roxy Music, the Beatles and the Doors; the electronic music of John Foxx's Ultravox, Kraftwerk, the Yellow Magic Orchestra and Giorgio Moroder; glam rock and American rock such as T. Rex, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and Sparks; British punk and post-punk bands such as the Clash, Sex Pistols and Siouxsie and the Banshees; and the disco/funk band Chic. Duran Duran were also influenced by contemporary synth-pop groups, with records by Japan, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and the Human League becoming fixtures in Rhodes's 1980 DJ sets at the Rum Runner club. Andy Taylor was a fan of the rock band AC/DC, \"...all these different influences were coming into the studio. Somehow, it had its own life. It became very unique in itself. It was influenced by a lot of different people\", Roger Taylor said in a 2012 interview.\nSeveral of the band's contemporaries including the Bangles, Elton John, Kylie Minogue, Paul Young and even the Monkees, have named themselves fans of the band's music. Le Bon described the group as \"the band to dance to when the bomb drops\". Successors like Barenaked Ladies, Beck, Jonathan Davis of Korn, the Bravery, Gwen Stefani and Pink have all cited Duran Duran as a key band in their formative years. Justin Timberlake is a fan of the band and presented them with the Outstanding Contribution award at the 2004 Brit Awards. The most recent crop of performers to name Duran Duran as an influence include Dido, Franz Ferdinand, Panic! at the Disco, Goldfrapp and Brandon Flowers of the Killers, who said, \"Nick Rhodes is an absolute hero of mine\u2014their records still sound fresh, which is no mean feat as far as synths are concerned.\"\nRhodes has directly lent his production techniques to Kajagoogoo's debut album \"White Feathers\" (1983) and its number one single \"Too Shy\", and to the Dandy Warhols' fourth album \"Welcome to the Monkey House\" (2003). The band's music has been used by several hip hop artists, most notably the Notorious B.I.G., who sampled Duran Duran's 1986 single \"Notorious\". Numerous bands have covered their music on record and in concert.\nVideos.\nThe MTV cable channel and the band were launched at about the same time, and each had a hand in propelling the other to greater heights. MTV needed showcase videos with charismatic performers. Les Garland, senior executive vice-president at MTV, said \"I remember our director of talent and artist relations came running in and said, \"You have got to see this video that's come in\". Duran Duran were getting zero radio airplay at the time, and MTV wanted to try to break new music. \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" was the greatest video I'd ever seen\". The band's video work was influential in several ways. First, Duran Duran filmed in exotic locales like Sri Lanka and Antigua, creating memorable images that were radically different from the then-common low budget \"band-playing-on-a-stage\" videos. Second, rather than simply playing their instruments, the band participated in mini-storylines (often taking inspiration from contemporary movies: \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" riffs on 1981's \"Raiders of the Lost Ark\", \"The Wild Boys\" on 1981's \"Mad Max 2\"), etc. While videos were already headed in this direction, Duran Duran led the trend with a style, featuring quick editing, arresting graphic design, and surreal-to-nonsensical image inserts, that drew attention from commentators and spawned a wealth of imitators.\nDuran Duran were among the first bands to have their videos shot with a professional movie camera on 35mm film, rather than on videotape, making them look superior to many of the quickly shot videos which had been MTV staples until then. MTV provided Duran Duran with access to American radio markets that were unfriendly to British music, new wave music, or \"anything with synthesisers\". Because MTV was not available everywhere in the United States at first, it was easy to see a pattern: where MTV went, listener demand for Duran Duran, Tears for Fears, Def Leppard and other European bands with interesting videos went through the roof. The band's sun-drenched videos for \"Rio\", \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Save a Prayer\", and the surreal \"Is There Something I Should Know?\" were filmed by future movie director Russell Mulcahy, who made eleven videos for the band. Duran Duran have always sought out innovative directors and techniques, even in their later years when MTV gave them little airplay. In addition to Mulcahy, they have had videos filmed by influential photographers Dean Chamberlain and Ellen von Unwerth, Chinese director Chen Kaige, documentary filmmaker Julien Temple, and the Polish Brothers, among others. According to Rhodes, \"Video is to us like stereo was to Pink Floyd.\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"The British won out here, hands down. Next to the prosaic, foursquare appearance of the American bands, such acts as Duran Duran seemed like caviar. MTV opened up a whole new world that could not be fully apprehended over the radio. The visual angle played to the arty conceits of Britain's young style barons, suggesting something more exotic than the viewer was likely to find in the old hometown. The big Duran Duran hits, \"Girls on Film\" and \"Hungry Like the Wolf\", were MTV favorites three months before radio began to pick up on them. And via MTV, Duran Duran and their like have engendered an outpouring of good old-fashioned hysteria among teenage girls.\"\nIn 1984, Duran Duran introduced video technology into their live stadium shows by being among the first acts to provide video screens above the stage. They have recorded concerts using IMAX and 360-degree panoramic \"immersive video\" cameras, with 10.2 channel audio. In 2000, they experimented with augmented reality technology, which allowed three-dimensional computer-generated images to appear on stage with the band. They appeared on several century-end video countdowns: The MTV \"100 Greatest Videos Ever Made\" featured \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" at No.\u00a011 and \"Girls on Film\" at No.\u00a068, and the \"VH1: 100 Greatest Videos\" listed \"Hungry\" at No.\u00a031 and \"Rio\" at No.\u00a060. MTV named \"Hungry\" the 15th of their most played videos of all time.\nThe band has released several video compilations, starting with the self-titled \"video album\" \"Duran Duran\" (1983), for which they won a Grammy Award, up to the 2004 two-disc DVD release \"Greatest\", which included alternative versions of several popular videos as Easter eggs. In addition to \"Greatest\", the documentary \"Sing Blue Silver\", and the concert film \"Arena\" (both from 1984) were released on DVD in 2004. \"Live from London\", a concert video from one of their sold-out 2004 reunion shows at Wembley Arena, was released in the fall of 2005.\nOther video collections, concert films, and documentaries remain available only on videotape, and Duran Duran have not yet released a collection which includes all their videos. The band has said that a huge amount of unreleased concert and documentary footage has been filmed over the years, which they hope can be edited and released in some form in the near future. The video for \"Falling Down\" was released in October 2007. The Nick Egan-directed video for the lead single and title track from \"All You Need Is Now\" was premiered via Yahoo Music on 20 December 2010. The second video from \"All You Need Is Now\", \"Girl Panic\", was released on 8 November 2011. It features some of the world's most famous supermodels, such as Yasmin Le Bon, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Eva Herzigov\u00e1 and Helena Christensen, playing the band. The video was directed by Jonas Akerlund, and during the filming, an editorial was made for \"Harper's Bazaar\" magazine.\nVisual style.\nFrom the beginning of their career, all the members had a keen sense of visual style. They worked with stylist Perry Haines and fashion designers such as Kahn & Bell and Antony Price to build a sharp and elegant image, soon outgrowing the ruffles and sashes of the pirate-flavoured early New Romantic look that had been popularised by Adam Ant during 1980\u201381. They have continued to present fashion as part of their package throughout their career. In the 1990s they worked with Vivienne Westwood and in the 2000s with Giorgio Armani. The band retained creative control of their visual presentation having worked closely with graphic designer Malcolm Garrett and many others over the years to create album covers, tour programs and other materials.\nTeen and music magazines in the UK latched onto their good looks quickly, and the USA soon followed. It was a rare month in the early 1980s when there was not at least one picture of the band members in teen magazines such as \"Smash Hits\" or \"Tiger Beat\". John Taylor once remarked that the band was \"like a box of Quality Street [chocolates]; everyone is someone's favourite\" Duran Duran later came to regret this early pin-up exposure, but at the time it helped attract national attention. In an interview with \"Rock Fever Superstars\" magazine in early 1988, John Taylor stated:\nWe used to be a very chi-chi name to drop in '79, but then the Fab Five hype started and something went wrong. Something went really wrong. That wasn't what I wanted. [...] Not that I didn't like being screamed at. At one point I really did\".\nDiscography.\nStudio albums\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nTours.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nExplanatory notes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["7343862", "148703"], "permutation_1": ["148703", "7343862"], "permutation_2": ["7343862", "148703"], "permutation_3": ["148703", "7343862"]}
{"id": "2hop__776939_774871", "docs_added": {"159172": "Iron Maiden\nEnglish heavy metal band\nIron Maiden are an English heavy metal band formed in Leyton, East London, in 1975 by bassist and primary songwriter Steve Harris. Although fluid in the early years of the band, the line-up for most of the band's history has consisted of Harris, lead vocalist Bruce Dickinson, drummer Nicko McBrain, and guitarists Dave Murray, Adrian Smith and Janick Gers. As pioneers of the new wave of British heavy metal movement, Iron Maiden released a series of UK and US Platinum and Gold albums, including 1980's debut album, 1981's \"Killers\", and 1982's \"The Number of the Beast\" \u2013 its first album with Dickinson, who in 1981 replaced Paul Di'Anno as lead singer. The addition of Dickinson was a turning point in their career, establishing them as one of heavy metal's most important bands. \"The Number of the Beast\" is among the most popular heavy metal albums of all time, having sold almost 20 million copies worldwide.\nAfter some turbulence in the 1990s, the return of lead vocalist Bruce Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith in 1999 saw the band undergo a resurgence in popularity, with a series of new albums and highly successful tours. Their three most recent albums \u2014 \"The Final Frontier\" (2010), \"The Book of Souls\" (2015), and \"Senjutsu\" (2021) \u2014 have all reached number\u00a01 in more than 25 countries. Iron Maiden have sold over 130\u00a0million copies of their albums worldwide and have obtained over\u00a0600 certifications. The band is considered to be one of the most influential and revered heavy metal bands of all time. They have received multiple industry awards, including the Grammy and Brit Awards.\nThe band have released 41 albums, including 17 studio albums, 13 live albums, four EPs and seven compilations. They have also released 47 singles and 20 video albums, and two video games. Iron Maiden's lyrics cover such topics as history, literature, war, mythology, dark fantasy, science fiction, society and religion. As of October\u00a02019[ [update]], the band have played 2,500 live shows. For over 40\u00a0years the band have featured their signature mascot, \"Eddie\", on the covers of almost all of their releases.\nHistory.\nEarly years (1975\u20131978).\nIron Maiden were formed on Christmas Day, 25 December 1975, by bassist Steve Harris shortly after he left his previous group, Smiler. Harris attributed the band's name to a film adaptation of \"The Man in the Iron Mask\" from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, as the title reminded him of the iron maiden torture device. They originally used the name Ash Mountain, but most of the band members preferred the name Iron Maiden. After months of rehearsal, Iron Maiden made their debut at St. Nicks Hall in Poplar on 1 May 1976, before taking up a semi-residency at the Cart and Horses Pub in Maryland, Stratford. The original line-up was short-lived, with vocalist Paul Mario Day being the first to go as, according to Harris, he lacked \"energy or charisma on stage\". He was replaced by Dennis Wilcock, a Kiss fan who used makeup and fake blood during live performances and had earlier played with Harris and Doug Sampson in the band Smiler. Wilcock's friend, guitarist Dave Murray, was invited to join, much to the dismay of the band's guitarists Dave Sullivan and Terry Rance. Their frustration led Harris to temporarily disband Iron Maiden in 1976, though the group reformed soon after with Murray as the sole guitarist. Harris and Murray remain the band's longest-serving members and have performed on all of their releases.\nIron Maiden recruited another guitarist in 1977, Bob Sawyer, who was sacked for embarrassing the band on stage by pretending to play guitar with his teeth. Tension ensued again, causing a rift between Murray and Wilcock, who convinced Harris to fire Murray, as well as original drummer Ron Matthews. A new line-up was put together, including future Cutting Crew member Tony Moore on keyboards, Terry Wapram on guitar and drummer Barry Purkis (better known today as Thunderstick). After a single gig with the band in January 1978, Moore was asked to leave as Harris decided keyboards did not suit the band's sound. Dave Murray rejoined in late March 1978, and when Terry Wapram disapproved he was sacked. A few weeks later, Dennis Wilcock decided to leave Iron Maiden to form his own band, V1, with Wapram, and drummer Barry Purkis also left. Former Smiler drummer Doug Sampson was at Dennis' and Thunderstick's last gig, and joined the band afterwards.\nHarris, Murray and Sampson spent the summer and autumn of 1978 rehearsing while they searched for a singer to complete the band's new line-up. A chance meeting at the Red Lion, a pub in Leytonstone, in November 1978 evolved into a successful audition for vocalist Paul Di'Anno. Steve Harris said, \"There's sort of a quality in Paul's voice, a raspiness in his voice, or whatever you want to call it, that just gave it this great edge\". At this time, Murray would typically act as their sole guitarist, with Harris commenting, \"Davey was so good he could do a lot of it on his own. The plan was always to get a second guitarist in, but finding one that could match Davey was really difficult\".\nRecord contract and early releases (1978\u20131981).\nOn New Year's Eve, 1978, Iron Maiden recorded a four-song demo at Spaceward Studios in Cambridge. Hoping the recording would help them secure more gigs, the band gave a copy to Neal Kay, who, at the time, was managing a heavy metal club called \"Bandwagon Heavy Metal Soundhouse\". After hearing the tape, Kay began playing the demo regularly at the Bandwagon, and one of the songs, \"Prowler\", eventually went to number\u00a01 in the Soundhouse charts, which were published weekly in \"Sounds\" magazine. A copy was also acquired by Rod Smallwood, who soon became the band's manager. As Iron Maiden's popularity increased, they released the demo on their own record label as \"The Soundhouse Tapes\", named after the club. Featuring only three tracks (one song, \"Strange World\", was excluded as the band were unsatisfied with its production), all 5,000 copies sold out within weeks.\nIn December 1979, the band secured a major record deal with EMI and asked Dave Murray's childhood friend, Adrian Smith of Urchin, to join the group as their second guitarist. Busy with his own band, Smith declined and Dennis Stratton was hired instead. Shortly after, Doug Sampson left due to health issues and was replaced by ex-Samson drummer Clive Burr at Stratton's suggestion on 26 December 1979. Iron Maiden's first appearance on an EMI album was on the \"Metal for Muthas\" compilation (released on 15 February 1980) with two early versions of \"Sanctuary\" and \"Wrathchild\". The release led to a tour including several other bands linked with the new wave of British heavy metal movement.\nIron Maiden released their self-titled album in 1980, which debuted at number\u00a04 in the UK Albums Chart. In addition to the title track, the album included other early favourites such as \"Running Free\", \"Transylvania\", \"Phantom of the Opera\" and \"Sanctuary\" \u2013 which was not on the original UK release, but appeared on the US version and subsequent remasters. The band embarked on a headline tour of the UK, before opening for Kiss on their 1980 Unmasked Tour's European leg as well as supporting Judas Priest on select dates. After the Kiss tour, Dennis Stratton was dismissed from the band as a result of creative and personal differences, and was replaced by Smith in October 1980. In December, the band played at the Rainbow Theatre in London, where their first live video was filmed. \"Live at the Rainbow\" was released in May 1981, and \"Iron Maiden\" and \"Wrathchild\" from this video received heavy rotation on MTV during its first hours on the air as the first metal videos ever.\nIn 1981, Iron Maiden released their second studio album, \"Killers\". Although many tracks were written prior to their debut release, it had two new songs: \"Prodigal Son\" and \"Murders in the Rue Morgue\" (the latter's title was taken from the short story by Edgar Allan Poe). Unsatisfied with the production on their debut album, the band hired veteran producer Martin Birch, who would continue to work with Iron Maiden until his retirement in 1992. The record was followed by the band's first world tour with their debut performance in the United States opening for Judas Priest at The Aladdin Casino in Las Vegas. \"Killers\" marked the band's USA album charts debut, reaching number\u00a078 on the \"Billboard\" 200, and they booked 132 shows to promote the album, including their first concert in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. During the summer, Iron Maiden played several festivals in Europe, including at the Golden Summernights 1981 festivals at Zeppelinfeld in Nuremberg in front of 100,000 people.\nSuccess (1981\u20131985).\nBy 1981, Paul Di'Anno was demonstrating increasingly erratic behaviour, particularly due to his drug usage, about which Di'Anno comments, \"It wasn't just that I was snorting a bit of coke, though; I was just going for it non-stop, 24 hours a day, every day\u00a0... the band had commitments piling up that went on for months, years, and I just couldn't see my way to the end of it. I knew I'd never last the whole tour. It was too much\". Di'Anno was dismissed following the Killer World Tour with the band already having selected his replacement. After a meeting with Rod Smallwood at the Reading Festival, Bruce Dickinson, formerly of Samson, auditioned for Iron Maiden in September 1981 and was immediately hired. The following month, Dickinson went out on the road with the band on a small headlining tour in Italy and a one-off show at the Rainbow Theatre in the UK. For the last show, and in anticipation of their forthcoming album, the band played \"Children of the Damned\" and \"22 Acacia Avenue\", introducing fans to their new material.\nIn 1982, Iron Maiden released their third studio album, \"The Number of the Beast\", which became the band's first number\u00a01 record on the UK Albums Chart, was a Top 10 hit in many other countries, and reached number\u00a033 on the \"Billboard\" 200. At the time, Dickinson was in the midst of legal difficulties with Samson's management and was not permitted to add his name to any of the songwriting credits, although he still made what he described as a \"moral contribution\" to \"Children of the Damned\", \"The Prisoner\", and \"Run to the Hills\". The band embarked on a world tour, dubbed The Beast on the Road, with shows in North America, Japan, Australia and Europe, including a headline appearance for 40,000 people at the Reading Festival. Iron Maiden played 188 shows in 10 months. The Beast on the Road's US leg proved controversial when an American conservative political lobbying group claimed Iron Maiden were Satanic because of the new album's title track and \"demonic\" cover art, and a group of Christian activists destroyed Iron Maiden records in protest. Dickinson later said the band treated this as \"silliness\" and the demonstrations in fact gave them \"loads of publicity\". \"The Number of the Beast\" sold 2.5 million copies in its first year, 14 million by 2010, and 20 million by 2022.\nIn December 1982, drummer Clive Burr was fired from the band and replaced by Nicko McBrain, who previously played for Trust. Although Harris said the dismissal took place because his live performances were affected by offstage activities, Burr later claimed he was unfairly ousted from the band. The band then recorded the first of three consecutive albums at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas. In 1983, they released their fourth studio album, \"Piece of Mind\", which reached the number\u00a03 spot in the UK and number\u00a014 on the \"Billboard\" 200. \"Piece of Mind\" features the singles \"The Trooper\" and \"Flight of Icarus\", the latter being one of the band's few songs to gain substantial airplay in the US. Iron Maiden played 147 concerts in Europe and North America as a part of the World Piece Tour. This was also their first major North American tour as headliners, selling out Madison Square Garden with a crowd of 20,000.\nAfter the success of \"Piece of Mind\" and its supporting tour, the band released their fifth studio album, \"Powerslave\", on 9 September 1984. The album features the singles \"2 Minutes to Midnight\" and \"Aces High\", the title track, and \"Rime of the Ancient Mariner\" (based on Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem \"Rime of the Ancient Mariner\"). \"Powerslave\" was another chart success, reaching number\u00a012 on the \"Billboard\" 200 and eventually number\u00a01 in the UK. The band's fifth studio album sold over 4 million copies in its first year after the premiere. The tour following the album, called World Slavery Tour, was the band's largest to date with 193 shows in 28 countries over 13 months, playing to an estimated 3,500,000 people. Many shows were played back to back in the same city, such as in Long Beach, California, where the band played four consecutive concerts at Long Beach Arena for a combined audience of 54,000 fans. Iron Maiden also made their debut appearance in South America, where they co-headlined the Rock in Rio festival with Queen for an audience estimated at 350,000\u2013500,000 people. The tour started in August 1984 with five shows in Poland. Iron Maiden were the first Western artists to bring full-scale production behind the Iron Curtain. The band's third official video, entitled \"Behind the Iron Curtain\", was released in October 1984. The World Slavery Tour documentary brought footage of the band touring Eastern Europe in 1984, performing shows in the countries visited, \"Behind the Iron Curtain\" was the first documentary ever published by a Western artist that showed them touring the countries of Eastern Bloc. The documentary movie was broadcast by MTV and local TV stations around the world.\nThe tour was physically gruelling for the band, who demanded six months off when it ended (although this was later reduced to four months). This was the first substantial touring break in the group's history, including the cancellation of a proposed supporting tour for the new live album, with Bruce Dickinson threatening to quit unless the tour ended. In October 1985, Iron Maiden released the double live album and home video, \"Live After Death\". A critical and commercial success, it peaked at number\u00a019 on the \"Billboard 200\" and number\u00a02 in the UK. The album was recorded at Long Beach Arena and also features additional tracks from four nights at London's Hammersmith Apollo. In November 1985, Iron Maiden were named the best rock and metal band in the world and awarded at Public Choice International.\nExperimentation (1986\u20131989).\nReturning from their time off, the band added different musical elements to their 1986 studio album, \"Somewhere in Time.\" These focused on synthesised bass and guitars to add textures and layers to the sound. The release performed well across the world, particularly the single \"Wasted Years\", but included no writing credits from Dickinson, whose material was rejected by the rest of the band. The album was the band's biggest American chart success to date, reaching number\u00a011 on the \"Billboard 200\" and number\u00a02 in the UK charts. The Somewhere on Tour was also a success. The band played 157 shows for over two and a half million fans, including eighty-one shows in North America. Once again, Iron Maiden visited Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia to play for tens of thousands of fans in each country. The experimentation evident on \"Somewhere in Time\" continued on their next album, \"Seventh Son of a Seventh Son\", which was released in 1988. A concept album recorded at Musicland Studios in Munich and based on the 1987 novel \"Seventh Son\" by Orson Scott Card, it was the band's first record to include keyboards, which were performed by Harris and Smith. Dickinson's enthusiasm was also renewed as his ideas were accepted for this album. Another popular release, it became Iron Maiden's third album to hit number\u00a01 in the UK charts and reached number\u00a012 on the \"Billboard 200.\"\nDuring the following tour, the band headlined the Monsters of Rock festival at Donington Park on 20 August 1988, playing to the largest crowd in the festival's history (107,000). The tour concluded with several headline shows in the UK in November and December 1988, with the concerts at the NEC Arena, Birmingham, recorded for a live video, entitled \"Maiden England\". The video debuted at top spots of worldwide music videos charts. In May, the group set out on a supporting tour, which saw them perform 103 shows to well over two million people worldwide over seven months. To recreate the album's keyboards onstage throughout the tour, the group recruited Michael Kenney, Steve Harris' bass technician; Kenney has served as the band's live keyboard player ever since, also performing on the band's four following albums.\nUpheaval (1989\u20131994).\nDuring a break in 1989, guitarist Adrian Smith released a solo album with his band ASAP, entitled \"Silver and Gold.\" Vocalist Bruce Dickinson also began work on a solo album with former Gillan guitarist Janick Gers, releasing \"Tattooed Millionaire\" in 1990, followed by a tour. At the same time, to mark the band's 10-year recording anniversary, Iron Maiden released a compilation collection, \"The First Ten Years\", a series of 10 CDs and double 12-inch singles. Between 24 February and 28 April 1990, the individual parts were released one by one, each containing two of Iron Maiden's singles, including the original B-sides.\nIron Maiden then began work on a new studio record. During the pre-production stages, Adrian Smith left the band due to differences with Steve Harris regarding the direction the band should be taking. Smith disagreed with the \"stripped down\" style they were leaning towards. Janick Gers, having worked on Dickinson's solo project, was chosen to replace Smith and became the band's first new member in seven years. The album \"No Prayer for the Dying\" was released in October 1990. It contained the hit singles \"Holy Smoke\" and \"Bring Your Daughter... to the Slaughter\", the band's first \u2013 and, to date, only \u2013 UK Singles Chart number\u00a01, originally recorded by Dickinson's solo project for the soundtrack of \"\". Iron Maiden's eighth studio album debuted at number\u00a02 on the UK albums chart and number\u00a017 on the \"Billboard 200\". \"No Prayer for the Dying\" was a return to their musical roots, especially in the simplicity of composition. The No Prayer on the Road tour was booked for 120 shows in Europe, North America, and Japan. Thirty-three shows in continental Europe were sold out with a reported 530,000 fans attending. In total, Iron Maiden played for some two million fans.\nAfter another break, the band recorded their next studio album, \"Fear of the Dark\", which was released in 1992. The title track became a regular part of the band's concert setlists. Achieving their fourth number\u00a01 on the UK albums chart and number\u00a012 on the \"Billboard 200\", the release also included the number\u00a02 single \"Be Quick or Be Dead\", the number\u00a021 single \"From Here to Eternity\", and the softer \"Wasting Love\". The album featured the first songwriting by Gers, and no collaboration between Harris and Dickinson on songs. The extensive worldwide tour that followed included their first-ever Latin American leg, although Christian organisations prevented Iron Maiden from performing in Chile and accused them of being \"emissaries of satanic propaganda\", and headlining the Monsters of Rock festivals in seven European countries. Iron Maiden's second performance at Donington Park, for a sold-out audience of 75,000, was filmed for the audio and video release \"Live at Donington\" and featured a guest appearance by Adrian Smith, who joined the band to perform \"Running Free\". The tour also saw conflicts between Bruce Dickinson and rest of the band.\nIn 1993, Dickinson left the band to pursue his solo career, but agreed to remain for a farewell tour and two live albums (later re-released in one package). The first, \"A Real Live One\", was released in March 1993 and featured songs from 1986 to 1992, and the second, \"A Real Dead One\", was released after Dickinson left the band and featured songs from 1980 to 1984. The tour did not go well, with Steve Harris claiming Dickinson would only perform properly for high-profile shows, and that at several concerts, he would only mumble into the microphone. Dickinson denied he was under-performing, saying it was impossible to \"make like Mr. Happy Face if the vibe wasn't right\", and that news of his exit from the band had prevented any chance of a good atmosphere during the tour. Dickinson played his farewell show with Iron Maiden on 28 August 1993. The show was filmed, broadcast by the BBC, MTV and released on video under the name \"Raising Hell\".\nDifficulties (1994\u20131999).\nIn 1994, the title track from the \"Fear of the Dark\" album received a Grammy Awards nomination for \"Best Metal Performance\", a first for Iron Maiden. The band listened to the thousands of tapes sent in by vocalists before convincing Blaze Bayley, formerly of the band Wolfsbane, who had supported Iron Maiden in 1990, to audition for them. Harris' preferred choice from the outset, Bayley had a different vocal style from his predecessor and ultimately received a mixed reception among fans.\nAfter a three-year hiatus \u2013 a record for the band at the time \u2013 Iron Maiden released their next studio album, \"The X Factor\". The band had their lowest chart position since 1981 for an album in the UK, debuting at number\u00a08; however, the album went on to win \"Album of the Year\" awards in France, Spain and Germany. The record included the 11-minute epic \"Sign of the Cross\", the band's longest song since \"Rime of the Ancient Mariner\", as well as the singles \"Man on the Edge\" (based on the film \"Falling Down\") and \"Lord of the Flies\", based on the novel \"Lord of the Flies\". The release is notable for its \"dark\" tone, inspired by Steve Harris' divorce. The band toured for the rest of 1995 and 1996, playing their first shows in Israel and South Africa as well as Malta, Bulgaria and Romania in Europe, before concluding in the Americas. The biggest show of the whole tour was a headline appearance for 60,000 people at the Monsters of Rock festival in S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil.\"The X Factor\" sold 1.3 million copies, the lowest sales result since 1981. After the tour, Iron Maiden released a compilation album, \"Best of the Beast\". The band's first compilation, it included a new single, \"Virus\", in which the lyrics attack critics who had recently written off the band.\nIn 1998, Iron Maiden released \"Virtual XI\", whose chart scores were the band's lowest to date. The album peaked at number\u00a016 in the UK, the band's lowest for a new studio record. At the same time, Steve Harris assisted in remastering the band's entire discography, up to and including \"Live at Donington\". Bayley's tenure in Iron Maiden ended in January 1999 when he was asked to leave during a band meeting. The dismissal took place due to issues Bayley had experienced with his voice during the Virtual XI World Tour, although Janick Gers said this was partly the band's fault for forcing him to perform songs pitched outside the natural range of his voice.\nReunion and renewed success (1999\u20132005).\nThe band entered into talks with Dickinson, who agreed to rejoin during a meeting in Brighton in January 1999, along with guitarist Adrian Smith, who was telephoned a few hours later. With Gers remaining, Iron Maiden now had a three-guitar line-up (nicknamed \"The Three Amigos\"), and embarked on a hugely successful reunion tour. Dubbed The Ed Hunter Tour, it tied in with the band's newly released greatest hits collection, \"Ed Hunter\", whose track listing was decided by a poll on the group's website, and also contained a computer game starring Eddie, the band's mascot.\nNot satisfied with the results from Harris' Barnyard Studios, located on his property in Essex, which had been used for the last four Iron Maiden studio albums, the band recorded the new release, \"Brave New World\", at Guillaume Tell Studios in Paris, France in November 1999 with producer Kevin Shirley. Iron Maiden continued to find inspiration in movies and books, as shown in songs like \"The Wicker Man\" \u2013 based on the 1973 British cult film \"The Wicker Man\" \u2013 and \"Brave New World\" \u2013 a title taken from the Aldous Huxley novel \"Brave New World\". The album revisited the more progressive and melodic sound featured in some earlier recordings, along with elaborate song structures and keyboard orchestration. The album was a commercial and artistic success.\nThe reunion world tour that followed had over 100\u00a0dates (including 31 shows of the 1999 tour), and culminated on 19 January 2001 in a show at the Rock in Rio festival in Brazil, where Iron Maiden played to an audience of over 250,000. While the performance was being produced for a CD and DVD release in March 2002, under the name \"Rock in Rio\", the band took a year off from touring, although they played three consecutive shows at Brixton Academy to raise funds for former drummer Clive Burr, who had recently announced that he had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The band performed two further concerts for Burr's MS Trust Fund charity in 2005, and 2007, before his death in 2013. During the 2000\u20132002 tour, Iron Maiden played 91 shows for over two million people in 33 countries. In addition to their touring success, the band was nominated twice for the annual Grammy Awards and received the International Achievement Award at the 2001 Ivor Novello Awards. In November 2001, a documentary movie about the making of \"The Number of the Beast\" album was produced by BBC as a part of the \"Classic Album series\".\nFollowing their summer 2003 Give Me Ed... 'Til I'm Dead Tour, with 57 shows in Europe and North America and headlining large festivals such as Roskilde, Heineken Jammin' Festival, Rock am Ring and Rock im Park (combined attendance of 130,000) and the first Download Festival held at Donington Park; a successor to Monsters of Rock, Iron Maiden released \"Dance of Death\", their thirteenth studio album. It met with worldwide critical and commercial success, reaching number\u00a02 on the UK Albums Chart and number\u00a018 on the \"Billboard 200\". Produced by Kevin Shirley, now the band's regular producer, many critics felt this release reached the standard of their earlier efforts. Historical and literary references were present, with \"Monts\u00e9gur\" focussing on the Cathar stronghold conquered in 1244, and \"Paschendale\" relating to the First World War battle.\nDuring the Dance of Death Tour 2003\u201304, which began in September 2003, Iron Maiden played 53 shows across Europe, North America, Latin America and Japan. The band's performance at Westfalenhalle, in Dortmund, Germany, was recorded and released in August 2005 as a live album and DVD entitled \"Death on the Road\". In 2005, the band announced the Eddie Rips Up the World Tour, which, tying in with their 2004 DVD entitled \"\", only featured material from their first four albums. As part of this celebration of their earlier years, \"The Number of the Beast\" single was re-released and went straight to number\u00a03 on the UK Chart. The tour featured many headlining stadium and festival dates, including a performance at Ullevi Stadium in Sweden to an audience of almost 60,000. This concert was also broadcast live on satellite television across Europe to approximately 60 million viewers. The band completed the tour by headlining the Reading and Leeds Festivals on 26\u201328 August, and the RDS Stadium in Ireland on 31 August.\nContinued success and expanded tours (2005\u20132014).\nAt the end of 2005, Iron Maiden began work on \"A Matter of Life and Death\", their fourteenth studio album, which was released in autumn 2006. War and religion are recurring themes in the lyrics and the cover artwork. The release was a critical and commercial success, marking the band's first top ten on the \"Billboard\" 200 and debuting at number one in the album charts of 13 countries. The supporting tour saw mixed critical reception, but included the band's first performance in Dubai at the Dubai Desert Rock Festival for 25,000 people, followed by a concert in Bangalore Palace Grounds, the first of any heavy metal band in India. The band then played a string of European dates, including an appearance at Download Festival, their fourth headline performance at Donington Park, to approximately 80,000 people.\nOn 5 September 2007, the band announced their Somewhere Back in Time World Tour, tying in with the DVD release of their \"Live After Death\" album. The setlist for the tour consisted of songs from the 1980s. They played their first concerts in Costa Rica and Colombia and their first shows in Australia and Puerto Rico since 1992. The tour led to the release of a new compilation album, entitled \"Somewhere Back in Time\", which included a selection of tracks from their 1980 eponymous debut to 1988's \"Seventh Son of a Seventh Son\", as well as several live versions from \"Live After Death\". In 2008\u201309 in Latin America the band played 27 concerts for about a million people in total, a record for a heavy rock performer. The tour continued with two legs in the US and Europe in the summer of 2008. The sole UK concert took place at Twickenham Stadium, marking the first time the band would headline a stadium in their own country. The 2008 tour was the second highest-grossing tour of the year for a British artist. The final leg included the band's first appearances in Peru and Ecuador, as well as their return to Venezuela and New Zealand after 17 years. The band also played another show in India at the Rock in India festival to a crowd of 20,000. At their concert in S\u00e3o Paulo on 15 March, Dickinson announced on stage that it was the largest non-festival show of their career, with an overall attendance of 100,000\u00a0people. The final leg ended in Florida on 2 April after which the band took a break. Overall, the tour reportedly had an attendance of over two and a half million people worldwide over both years. At the 2009 Brit Awards, Iron Maiden won the award for best British live act.\nOn 20 January 2009, the band announced they were planning to release a full-length documentary film in select cinemas on 21 April 2009. Entitled \"\", it documented the first part of the Somewhere Back in Time World Tour (between February and March 2008). \"Flight 666\" was co-produced by Banger Productions and was distributed in cinemas by Arts Alliance Media and EMI, with D&E Entertainment sub-distributing in the US. The film went on to have a Blu-ray, DVD, and CD release in May and June, topping the music DVD charts in 25 countries. In most of them the release went Gold, Platinum or Multi-Platinum.\nThe band had begun composing new material and booked studio time in early 2010 with Kevin Shirley producing, and \"The Final Frontier\" was announced on 4 March and featured three singles \"The Final Frontier\", \"El Dorado\" and \"Coming Home\", as well as epic, progressive opuses \"Isle of Avalon\", \"The Talisman\" and \"When The Wild Wind Blows\". The album, the band's fifteenth, was released on 16 August to critical acclaim. It was also the band's greatest commercial success to that point, reaching number\u00a01 in twenty-eight countries worldwide, including a debut at number\u00a04 on \"Billboard 200\".\nThe album's supporting tour saw the band perform 101 shows across the globe to an estimated audience of over two and a half million, including their first visits to Singapore, Indonesia, and South Korea. \"El Dorado\" won the Best Metal Performance award at the 2011 Grammy Awards, the band's first win after two previous nominations. On 15 March, a new compilation to accompany 2009's \"Somewhere Back in Time\" was announced. The double disc set covers the period 1990\u20132010 (the band's most recent eight studio albums). In 2012, the band announced a new live album and DVD release entitled \"En Vivo!\", based on footage from the Chile concert. The DVD topped the music video charts around the world. In addition to the concert footage, the video release includes an 88-minute tour documentary, entitled Behind The Beast, containing interviews with the band and their crew. In December 2012, one song from the release (\"Blood Brothers\") was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance at the 2013 Grammy Awards.\nOn 15 February, the band announced their third retrospective Maiden England World Tour 2012\u201314, which was based around the video \"Maiden England\". The tour commenced in North America in the summer of 2012 and was followed by further dates in 2013 and 2014, and included the band's fifth headline performance at Donington Park with 100,000 fans in attendance. Iron Maiden closed the tour in July 2014 at Sonisphere Festival, Knebworth, having undertaken 100 shows in 32 countries before an estimated audience of more than 2.7 million people.\nLatest albums and tours (2015\u2013present).\nThe band's 2015 album, \"The Book of Souls\", was released on 4 September. The band's first original studio album not to be issued by EMI outside North America, following Parlophone's acquisition by Warner Music Group in 2013, it was a critical and commercial success, becoming the band's fifth UK number\u00a01 album and hit number\u00a04 on \"Billboard 200\" in the US. The new release reached the number one position in the album charts of 43 countries. The new record was recorded at Guillaume Tell Studios in late summer 2014; its closing song, \"Empire of the Clouds\", penned by Dickinson, surpassed \"Rime of the Ancient Mariner\" (from 1984's \"Powerslave\") as Iron Maiden's longest song, at 18 minutes in length.\nIn February 2016, the band embarked on The Book of Souls World Tour, with shows in 35 countries across six continents, including their first performances in China, El Salvador, and Lithuania. It was the band's biggest album tour since 1996. In total, Iron Maiden played 117 shows on six continents for well over two and a half million people. The band then launched the Legacy of the Beast World Tour in Europe in 2018, with North and South American shows following in 2019. The tour was inspired by the band's new mobile game and comic series released in 2017, entitled \"Legacy of the Beast\". The tour was received very positively by fans and critics, spanning up to three years with 140 shows, performing to over 3.5 million fans.\nThe COVID-19 pandemic forced the rescheduling of nearly one million tickets from 2020, first to 2021, and then to 2022. In October 2020, the band announced they would release a live album from the Legacy of the Beast World Tour called \"Nights of the Dead, Legacy of the Beast: Live in Mexico City\". The double concert album was recorded during three sold-out concerts in Mexico City's Palacio de los Deportes for a combined audience of over 70,000 people.\nOn 15 July 2021, Iron Maiden released a video for their first song in six years, \"The Writing on the Wall\", which was directed by Nicos Livesey. Four days later, the band announced their seventeenth studio album, \"Senjutsu\", would be released on 3 September 2021. \"Senjutsu\" eventually reached the top of the best-seller lists in 27 countries, but it was the band's first album in fifteen years not to reach number one on the UK charts, although it did top the UK Rock & Metal Singles and Albums Charts. In total, \"Senjutsu\" reached the top three in 55 countries and the top five in 63 countries.\nOn 1 February 2023, the band received their second nomination for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The band started their 25th global tour, The Future Past World Tour, with a concert in Ljubljana in May 2023. On 6 October, the band performed at the Power Trip festival which drew nearly 100,000 people. Throughout the 2023\u201324 world tour, Iron Maiden performed 81 shows for almost two million fans. Following the conclusion of the tour in S\u00e3o Paulo in December 2024, McBrain retired from touring, but would still remain a member of Iron Maiden and be involved with various upcoming band-related projects in the studio. The following day, it was announced that British Lion drummer Simon Dawson would be his touring replacement for any further tours.\nOn 19 September 2024, the band announced their 26th global tour, Run For Your Lives World Tour, which is set to start in May 2025, to celebrate the band's 50th anniversary and is set to be focused on the band's first nine studio albums.\nImage and legacy.\nIron Maiden have received numerous nominations, honours and awards including Grammy Awards and equivalents awards in many countries, Brit Awards, Ivor Novello Awards, and Juno Awards. They have ranked highly in many polls of the greatest metal artists of all time. In 2012 \"The Number of the Beast\" was voted as Best British Album Ever by the British public as part of Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Iron Maiden have an exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Rock in Rio Wall of Fame.\nIron Maiden were inducted into Hollywood RockWalk, BPI Hall of Fame and Kerrang! Hall of Fame. Band's mascot Eddie the Head is a part of the British Music Experience permanent exhibition. In April 2021, the band's former members (Paul Di'Anno, Blaze Bayley, and illustrator Derek Riggs) were inducted into the Metal Hall of Fame. They have twice been nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In January 2023 Iron Maiden were honoured by Royal Mail UK with dedicated postal stamps and cards.\nIron Maiden have sold over 130\u00a0million copies of their albums worldwide, despite little radio or television support. According to many sources all audio-visual catalogue of the band have sold in over 200\u00a0million copies worldwide, including regular albums, singles, compilations, and videos. Their third studio album, \"The Number of the Beast,\" is among the most popular heavy metal albums of all time and the most commercially successful release of the band, having sold almost 20 million copies worldwide. As of 2022 their releases have been certified silver, gold and platinum around 600 times worldwide.\nIn 1979\u20131980, visual artist Derek Riggs created the macabre mascot named Eddie The Head. Since then, Eddie has been an integral part of the stage and media image of the group. Originally a papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 mask which would squirt fake blood during their live shows, the character featured on the band's debut album cover, also done by Derek Riggs. Eddie was painted exclusively by Riggs until 1992, at which point the band began using artwork from other artists, including Melvyn Grant.\nA large puppet version of Eddie has appeared many times during carnival celebrations in Rio de Janeiro and other South American cities. During the Cavalcade of Magi 2021 in the Spanish city of Cadiz, next to dolls representing characters known from the world of pop culture, there was a huge, inflatable mummy inspired by the image of the Iron Maiden mascot from 1985.\nIron Maiden's distinct logo has adorned all of the band's releases since their debut, 1979's \"The Soundhouse Tapes\" EP. The typeface originates with Vic Fair's poster design for the 1976 science fiction film, \"The Man Who Fell to Earth\", also used by Gordon Giltrap, although Steve Harris claims he designed it himself, using his training as an architectural draughtsman.\nInfluence on other artists and the genre.\nIron Maiden have influenced numerous artists and bands representing different genres of rock and metal music. Kiss co-founder Paul Stanley said Iron Maiden \"have helped spawn an entire genre of music\" and influenced literally thousands of other artists. According to \"Guitar World\", Iron Maiden's music has \"influenced generations of newer metal acts, from legends like Metallica to current stars like Avenged Sevenfold.\" Metallica members Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, and Jason Newsted have cited Iron Maiden as a major influence on their work. Other bands and artists directly influenced by Iron Maiden include Ghost, Avenged Sevenfold, In Flames, Anthrax, Exodus, and Alice in Chains.\nJournalist Geoff Barton says the band's music constituted an important passage between the classic heavy rock school during the 1960s and 1970s, based on rhythm and blues, and contemporary heavy metal, characterised by sub-genre diversification and stylistic eclecticism. Music journalist G\u00f6tz K\u00fchnemund said \"Iron Maiden were (and still are) the inspiration for all the heavy metal bands we know today because they're an intrinsically heavy metal group. They're equally important for those who play power metal, speed, thrash, death, black, nu metal, metal core and hard rock \u2013 almost every genre.\" The journalist stated the band introduced a DIY approach to all rock music. According to Rock 'n Roll Fantasy Camp the style and attitude of Iron Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain has inspired generations of heavy-metal drummers that followed. Music writer, heavy metal expert and radio broadcaster Scott Penfold stated band's \"influence on the genre is immeasurable, as they not only inspired subsequent generations of metal bands but also revolutionized live shows with their elaborate stage productions, further cementing their status as pioneers of heavy metal.\"\nMusic journalist and the writer Neil Daniels said Iron Maiden \"redefined the whole genre blending classic heavy rock influence with punky vibe, twin guitars attack and progressive approach which finally have created the new quality. [The] Band's influence on generations of rock and metal bands cannot be overstated. They elevated metal to an art form, proving that academic and musical inspirations can coexist.\" The band's profile by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame says \"in the 1980s, Iron Maiden released seven high-octane albums that cemented them as one of the greatest rock bands \u2013 creating a blueprint for how heavy metal bands should look, sound and tour.\" According to \"Metal Hammer\" Iron Maiden is the second band to Black Sabbath, which has had the most significant impact on metal and heavy rock music.\nAppearance in media.\nThe first heavy metal videos broadcast by MTV were the live versions of \"Iron Maiden\" and \"Wrathchild\" taken from the official VHS \"Live at the Rainbow (Iron Maiden)\". In 1989, Iron Maiden took part in the Rock Aid Armenia project (also known as Live Aid Armenia) - a humanitarian project by the British music industry. The project aimed to raise funds to help people affected by the earthquake in Armenia in 1988.\nThe number of releases in tribute to the British band can be estimated in the hundreds, with an extremely wide range of stylistic variants. In 2008, \"Kerrang!\" released \"\", an album composed of Iron Maiden cover songs performed by Metallica, Machine Head, Dream Theater, Trivium, Coheed and Cambria, Avenged Sevenfold, and other groups influenced by the band. In 2010, Maiden uniteD, an acoustic tribute band consisting of members of Ayreon, Threshold and Within Temptation, released \"Mind the Acoustic Pieces\", a re-interpretation of the entire \"Piece of Mind\" album. As of 2021 nearly 200 Iron Maiden cover audio-visual releases exist (each featuring various artists), including piano, electro, string quartet and hip-hop tributes.\nIn March 2025, Netflix will release \"Run to the Hills\", a documentary celebrating Iron Maiden's 50th anniversary. Directed by David Morgan, it will explore the band's rise from their early days in London to global heavy metal icons. The exact release date is yet to be confirmed.\nClaims of Satanic references.\nThe 1982 release of \"The Number of the Beast\" created some controversy for the band. The artwork and title track led to Christian groups in the United States branding the band as Satanists, encouraging people to destroy copies of the release. The band's manager, Rod Smallwood, later said the groups initially burnt the records, but later decided to destroy them with hammers due to fear of breathing in the melting vinyl's fumes. The protests were not restricted to the US, with Christian organisations preventing Iron Maiden from performing in Chile in 1992.\nThe band have always denied the notion they are Satanists, with lead vocalist, Bruce Dickinson, doing so on-stage in the \"Live After Death\" concert video. Steve Harris has since commented that, \"It was mad. They completely got the wrong end of the stick. They obviously hadn't read the lyrics. They just wanted to believe all that rubbish about us being Satanists.\" Harris has also said that \"The Number of the Beast\" song was inspired by a nightmare he had after watching \"\", and also influenced by Robert Burns' \"Tam o' Shanter\". The band's drummer, Nicko McBrain, has been a born-again Christian since 1999.\nEd Force One.\nFor their Somewhere Back in Time World Tour in 2008 and 2009, Iron Maiden commissioned an Astraeus Airlines Boeing 757 as transport. The aeroplane was converted into a combi configuration, which enabled it to carry the band, their crew and stage production, allowing the group to perform in countries which were previously deemed unreachable logistically. It was also repainted with a special Iron Maiden livery, which the airline decided to retain after receiving positive feedback from customers.\nThe aircraft, named \"Ed Force One\" after a competition on the band's website, was flown by Dickinson until 2022, as he was also a commercial airline pilot for Astraeus; the plane also appears in the documentary \"\". For The Book of Souls World Tour in 2016, the band upgraded to an ex-Air France Boeing 747-400 jumbo jet which allows for more space without the aircraft having to undergo a significant conversion to carry their equipment.\nIn 2025, the band announced that the 747-400 they used during 2016's The Book of Souls World Tour would be scrapped, and keychains constructed from the plane's parts could be collected by fans. \"She's been scrapped but bits of her will live on,\" Dickinson said. The keychains were sold for \u20ac66.66, which is a reference to the band's album The \"Number of the Beast\".\nMusical style and influences.\nSteve Harris, Iron Maiden's bassist and primary songwriter, has said his influences include Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes, Jethro Tull, Thin Lizzy, UFO, Queen, and Wishbone Ash. In 2010 Harris said, \"I think if anyone wants to understand Maiden's early thing, in particular the harmony guitars, all they have to do is listen to Wishbone Ash's \"Argus\" album. Thin Lizzy too, but not as much. And then we wanted to have a bit of a prog thing thrown in as well, because I was really into bands like Genesis and Jethro Tull. So you combine all that with the heavy riffs and the speed, and you've got it.\" In 2004, Harris explained the band's \"heaviness\" was inspired by \"Black Sabbath and Deep Purple with a bit of Zeppelin thrown in.\" Harris also developed his own playing style, which guitarist Janick Gers describes as \"more like a rhythm guitar.\" Harris's bass technique is responsible for the band's galloping style, heard in such songs as \"The Trooper\" and \"Run to the Hills\".\nThe band's guitarists, Dave Murray, Adrian Smith, and Janick Gers, each have their own individual influences and playing styles. Dave Murray is known for his legato technique which, he says, \"evolved naturally. I'd heard Jimi Hendrix using legato when I was growing up, and I liked that style of playing.\" Stating that he \"was inspired by blues rock rather than metal,\" Adrian Smith was influenced by Johnny Winter and Pat Travers, leading to him becoming a \"melodic player.\" Janick Gers prefers a more improvised style, largely inspired by Ritchie Blackmore, which he says is in contrast to Smith's \"rhythmic\" sound.\nSinger Bruce Dickinson, who typically works in collaboration with guitarist Adrian Smith, has an operatic vocal style, inspired by Arthur Brown, Peter Hammill, Ian Anderson and Ian Gillan, and is often considered to be one of the best heavy metal vocalists of all time. Although Nicko McBrain has only received one writing credit, on the \"Dance of Death\" album, Harris often relies on him while developing songs. Adrian Smith commented, \"Steve loves playing with him. [They] used to work for hours going over these bass and drum patterns.\"\nThroughout their career, the band's style has remained largely unchanged, although the addition of guitar synthesisers on 1986's \"Somewhere in Time\", keyboards on 1988's \"Seventh Son of a Seventh Son\", and an attempt to return to the \"stripped down\" production of their earlier material on 1990's \"No Prayer for the Dying\" marked some experimentation. In recent years, however, the band have begun using more progressive elements in their songs, which Steve Harris describes as not progressive \"in the modern sense, but like Dream Theater, more in a 70s way\". Greg Prato of Ultimate-Guitar wrote, \"By and large, Iron Maiden's long and lengthy career can be categorized into two separate eras: \"punk Maiden\" and \"prog Maiden\". According to Harris, \"Seventh Son of a Seventh Son\" was the band's first album which was \"more progressive\", and they would return to this style in 1995's \"The X Factor\", which he states is \"like an extension of \"Seventh Son\"..., in the sense of the progressive element to it\". The development contrasts with the band's raw-sounding earlier material, which AllMusic states was \"clearly drawing from elements of punk rock\", although Harris firmly denies this.\nBand members.\nCurrent lineup\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "3645732": "Sanctuary (Iron Maiden song)\n\"Sanctuary\" is the second single released by the English heavy metal band Iron Maiden. The single was released on 23 May 1980. Although originally issued as a non-album single, the song was added to the later US release of their debut studio record, \"Iron Maiden\" (1980). When the album was re-released in 1998, the song was added in all territories. In 1990, it was reissued on CD and 12\" vinyl in \"The First Ten Years\" box set, in which it was combined with their first single, \"Running Free\".\nHistory.\nThe original mix of the song was recorded in November 1979 and originally appeared on the 1980 \"Metal for Muthas\" compilation, featuring several other artists associated with the new wave of British heavy metal, which the band recorded as a four-piece with Doug Sampson on drums. Although the compilation was panned in \"Sounds\", Iron Maiden's songs were praised, with their contributions being described as \"raucous heavy metal/punk crossovers and tantalising tasters for their own forthcoming album.\"\nAlready a regular in the band's live set, the \"Sanctuary\" single was released on 7\" vinyl on 16 May during the UK leg of the Iron Maiden Tour. This version of the song was recorded during the \"Iron Maiden\" album sessions, and, according to guitarist Dave Murray, \"was ten times better than the original \"Metal for Muthas\" version.\" The b-side includes two live songs recorded at the Marquee Club in London on 3 April 1980\u00a0\u2013 \"Drifter\" (which would feature on the band's next album, \"Killers\") and a cover of Montrose's \"I've Got the Fire\". The live version of \"Drifter\" includes a crowd interaction part where the audience is invited to follow the lead singer as he chants \"Yo Yo Yo\", which parodies The Police's \"Walking on the Moon\". The single performed even better than their debut, \"Running Free\", entering the UK Singles Chart at No. 33 before peaking at No. 29 a week later.\nAlthough the song is credited to Iron Maiden, according to \"Metal Hammer\" contributor Dave Ling, the song was originally written by guitarist Rob Angelo, a member of the band in 1977 who was paid \u00a3300 for the song's rights. From 1998 onwards, the song was credited to Murray, bassist Steve Harris and singer Paul Di'Anno.\nArtwork and controversy.\nThe cover art caused controversy for the band as it depicted their mascot, Eddie, wielding a knife while crouching over the corpse of then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. The band's manager, Rod Smallwood, explained the artwork's concept: \"The artwork is very tongue in cheek, as usual. At that time, Maggie had visited the old USSR and, following her tough stance with them, had been christened the Iron Maiden. Eddie took offence to this, and even more so when she started taking our posters.\" It was Smallwood himself who suggested to EMI that the cover be released with Thatcher's face censored \"as this would give the tabloids an angle and draw attention to the single.\"\nThe attempt to gain coverage proved successful, with the \"Daily Mirror\" running a story about the single, as well as publishing the uncensored artwork, on 20 May under the headline: \"It's murder! Maggie gets rock mugging.\" The \"Daily Record\" also published an article which deemed the cover \"horrific,\" as well as included interviews with Young Scottish Conservatives who criticised the artwork for being \"in very bad taste.\"\nMargaret Thatcher also appeared in art for the band's next single, \"Women in Uniform,\" in which she is shown seeking revenge on Eddie with a machine gun.\nTrack listing.\n7\" UK single\n12\" Dutch Single\nPersonnel.\nProduction credits are adapted from the 7-inch vinyl cover.\nIron Maiden\nProduction\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["3645732", "159172"], "permutation_1": ["159172", "3645732"], "permutation_2": ["159172", "3645732"], "permutation_3": ["159172", "3645732"]}
{"id": "2hop__801831_46077", "docs_added": {"3335": "Baltic Sea\nSea in northern Europe\nThe Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North and Central European Plain regions.\nThe sea stretches from 53\u00b0N to 66\u00b0N latitude and from 10\u00b0E to 30\u00b0E longitude. It is a shelf sea and marginal sea of the Atlantic with limited water exchange between the two, making it an inland sea. The Baltic Sea drains through the Danish straits into the Kattegat by way of the \u00d8resund, Great Belt and Little Belt. It includes the Gulf of Bothnia (divided into the Bothnian Bay and the Bothnian Sea), the Gulf of Finland, the Gulf of Riga and the Bay of Gda\u0144sk.\nThe \"Baltic Proper\" is bordered on its northern edge, at latitude 60\u00b0N, by \u00c5land and the Gulf of Bothnia, on its northeastern edge by the Gulf of Finland, on its eastern edge by the Gulf of Riga, and in the west by the Swedish part of the southern Scandinavian Peninsula.\nThe Baltic Sea is connected by artificial waterways to the White Sea via the White Sea\u2013Baltic Canal and to the German Bight of the North Sea via the Kiel Canal.\nDefinitions.\nAdministration.\nThe Helsinki Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area includes the Baltic Sea and the Kattegat, without calling Kattegat a part of the Baltic Sea, \"For the purposes of this Convention the 'Baltic Sea Area' shall be the Baltic Sea and the Entrance to the Baltic Sea, bounded by the parallel of the Skaw in the Skagerrak at 57\u00b044.43'N.\"\nTraffic history.\nHistorically, the Kingdom of Denmark collected Sound Dues from ships at the border between the ocean and the land-locked Baltic Sea, in tandem: in the \u00d8resund at Kronborg castle near Helsing\u00f8r; in the Great Belt at Nyborg; and in the Little Belt at its narrowest part then Fredericia, after that stronghold was built. The narrowest part of Little Belt is the \"Middelfart Sund\" near Middelfart.\nOceanography.\nGeographers widely agree that the preferred physical border between the Baltic and North Seas is the Langelandsb\u00e6lt (the southern part of the Great Belt strait near Langeland) and the Drogden-Sill strait. The Drogden Sill is situated north of K\u00f8ge Bugt and connects Drag\u00f8r in the south of Copenhagen to Malm\u00f6; it is used by the \u00d8resund Bridge, including the \"Drogden Tunnel\". By this definition, the Danish straits is part of the entrance, but the Bay of Mecklenburg and the Bay of Kiel are parts of the Baltic Sea.\nAnother usual border is the line between Falsterbo, Sweden, and Stevns Klint, Denmark, as this is the southern border of \u00d8resund. It is also the border between the shallow southern \u00d8resund (with a typical depth of 5\u201310 meters only) and notably deeper water.\nHydrography and biology.\nDrogden Sill (depth of ) sets a limit to \u00d8resund and Darss Sill (depth of ), and a limit to the Belt Sea. The shallow sills are obstacles to the flow of heavy salt water from the Kattegat into the basins around Bornholm and Gotland.\nThe Kattegat and the southwestern Baltic Sea are well oxygenated and have a rich biology. The remainder of the Sea is brackish, poor in oxygen, and in species. Thus, statistically, the more of the entrance that is included in its definition, the healthier the Baltic appears; conversely, the more narrowly it is defined, the more endangered its biology appears.\nEtymology and nomenclature.\nTacitus called it the Suebic Sea, Latin: after the Germanic people of the Suebi, and Ptolemy \"Sarmatian Ocean\" after the Sarmatians, but the first to name it the \"Baltic Sea\" () was the eleventh-century German chronicler Adam of Bremen. The origin of the latter name is speculative and it was adopted into Slavic and Finnic languages spoken around the sea, very likely due to the role of Medieval Latin in cartography. It might be connected to the Germanic word \"belt\", a name used for two of the Danish straits, the Belts, while others claim it to be directly derived from the source of the Germanic word, Latin \"belt\". Adam of Bremen himself compared the sea with a belt, stating that it is so named because it stretches through the land as a belt (\"Balticus, eo quod in modum baltei longo tractu per Scithicas regiones tendatur usque in Greciam\").\nHe might also have been influenced by the name of a legendary island mentioned in the \"Natural History\" of Pliny the Elder. Pliny mentions an island named \"Baltia\" (or \"Balcia\") with reference to accounts of Pytheas and Xenophon. It is possible that Pliny refers to an island named Basilia (\"the royal\") in \"On the Ocean\" by Pytheas. \"Baltia\" also might be derived from \"belt\", and therein mean \"near belt of sea, strait\".\nOthers have suggested that the name of the island originates from the Proto-Indo-European root \"*b\u02b0el\" meaning \"white, fair\", which may echo the naming of seas after colours relating to the cardinal points (as per Black Sea and Red Sea). This '*b\u02b0el' root and basic meaning were retained in Lithuanian (as ), Latvian (as ) and Slavic (as ). On this basis, a related hypothesis holds that the name originated from this Indo-European root via a Baltic language such as Lithuanian. Another explanation is that, while derived from the aforementioned root, the name of the sea is related to names for various forms of water and related substances in several European languages, that might have been originally associated with colors found in swamps (compare Proto-Slavic \"*bolto\" \"swamp\"). Yet another explanation is that the name originally meant \"enclosed sea, bay\" as opposed to open sea.\nIn the Middle Ages the sea was known by a variety of names. The name Baltic Sea became dominant after 1600. Usage of \"Baltic\" and similar terms to denote the region east of the sea started only in the 19th century.\nName in other languages.\nThe Baltic Sea was known in ancient Latin language sources as or even . Older native names in languages that used to be spoken on the shores of the sea or near it usually indicate the geographical location of the sea (in Germanic languages), or its size in relation to smaller gulfs (in Old Latvian), or tribes associated with it (in Old Russian the sea was known as the Varanghian Sea). In modern languages, it is known by the equivalents of \"East Sea\", \"West Sea\", or \"Baltic Sea\" in different languages:\nHistory.\nClassical world.\nAt the time of the Roman Empire, the Baltic Sea was known as the or \"Mare Sarmaticum\". Tacitus in his AD\u00a098 \"Agricola\" and \"Germania\" described the Mare Suebicum, named for the Suebi tribe, during the spring months, as a brackish sea where the ice broke apart and chunks floated about. The Suebi eventually migrated southwest to temporarily reside in the Rhineland area of modern Germany, where their name survives in the historic region known as Swabia. Jordanes called it the \"Germanic Sea\" in his work, the \"Getica\".\nMiddle Ages.\nIn the early Middle Ages, Norse (Scandinavian) merchants built a trade empire all around the Baltic. Later, the Norse fought for control of the Baltic against Wendish tribes dwelling on the southern shore. The Norse also used the rivers of Russia for trade routes, finding their way eventually to the Black Sea and southern Russia. This Norse-dominated period is referred to as the Viking Age.\nSince the Viking Age, the Scandinavians have referred to the Baltic Sea as \"Austmarr\" (\"Eastern Sea\"). \"Eastern Sea\", appears in the \"Heimskringla\" and \"Eystra salt\" appears in \"S\u00f6rla \u00fe\u00e1ttr\". Saxo Grammaticus recorded in \"Gesta Danorum\" an older name, \"Gandvik\", \"-vik\" being Old Norse for \"bay\", which implies that the Vikings correctly regarded it as an inlet of the sea. Another form of the name, \"Grandvik\", attested in at least one English translation of \"Gesta Danorum\", is likely to be a misspelling.\nIn addition to fish the sea also provides amber, especially from its southern shores within today's borders of Poland, Russia and Lithuania. First mentions of amber deposits on the South Coast of the Baltic Sea date back to the 12th century. The bordering countries have also traditionally exported lumber, wood tar, flax, hemp and furs by ship across the Baltic. Sweden had from early medieval times exported iron and silver mined there, while Poland had and still has extensive salt mines. Thus, the Baltic Sea has long been crossed by much merchant shipping.\nThe lands on the Baltic's eastern shore were among the last in Europe to be converted to Christianity. This finally happened during the Northern Crusades: Finland in the twelfth century by Swedes, and what are now Estonia and Latvia in the early thirteenth century by Danes and Germans (Livonian Brothers of the Sword). The Teutonic Order gained control over parts of the southern and eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, where they set up their monastic state. Lithuania was the last European state to convert to Christianity.\nAn arena of conflict.\nIn the period between the 8th and 14th centuries, there was much piracy in the Baltic from the coasts of Pomerania and Prussia, and the Victual Brothers held Gotland.\nStarting in the 11th century, the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic were settled by migrants mainly from Germany, a movement called the \"Ostsiedlung\" (\"east settling\"). Other settlers were from the Netherlands, Denmark, and Scotland. The Polabian Slavs were gradually assimilated by the Germans. Denmark gradually gained control over most of the Baltic coast, until she lost much of her possessions after being defeated in the 1227 Battle of Bornh\u00f6ved.\nIn the 13th to 16th centuries, the strongest economic force in Northern Europe was the Hanseatic League, a federation of merchant cities around the Baltic Sea and the North Sea. In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Poland, Denmark, and Sweden fought wars for \"Dominium maris baltici\" (\"Lordship over the Baltic Sea\"). Eventually, it was Sweden that virtually encompassed the Baltic Sea. In Sweden, the sea was then referred to as \"Mare Nostrum Balticum\" (\"Our Baltic Sea\"). The goal of Swedish warfare during the 17th century was to make the Baltic Sea an all-Swedish sea (\"Ett Svenskt innanhav\"), something that was accomplished except the part between Riga in Latvia and Stettin in Pomerania. However, the Dutch dominated the Baltic trade in the seventeenth century.\nIn the eighteenth century, Russia and Prussia became the leading powers over the sea. Sweden's defeat in the Great Northern War brought Russia to the eastern coast. Russia became and remained a dominating power in the Baltic. Russia's Peter the Great saw the strategic importance of the Baltic and decided to found his new capital, Saint Petersburg, at the mouth of the Neva river at the east end of the Gulf of Finland. There was much trading not just within the Baltic region but also with the North Sea region, especially eastern England and the Netherlands: their fleets needed the Baltic timber, tar, flax, and hemp.\nDuring the Crimean War, a joint British and French fleet attacked the Russian fortresses in the Baltic; the case is also known as the \u00c5land War. They bombarded Sveaborg, which guards Helsinki; and Kronstadt, which guards Saint Petersburg; and they destroyed Bomarsund in \u00c5land. After the unification of Germany in 1871, the whole southern coast became German. World War I was partly fought in the Baltic Sea. After 1920 Poland was granted access to the Baltic Sea at the expense of Germany by the Polish Corridor and enlarged the port of Gdynia in rivalry with the port of the Free City of Danzig.\nAfter the Nazis' rise to power, Germany reclaimed the Memelland and after the outbreak of the Eastern Front (World War II) occupied the Baltic states. In 1945, the Baltic Sea became a mass grave for retreating soldiers and refugees on torpedoed troop transports. The sinking of the \"Wilhelm Gustloff\" remains the worst maritime disaster in history, killing (very roughly) 9,000 people. In 2005, a Russian group of scientists found over five thousand airplane wrecks, sunken warships, and other material, mainly from World War II, on the bottom of the sea.\nSince World War II.\nSince the end of World War II, various nations, including the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States have disposed of chemical weapons in the Baltic Sea, raising concerns of environmental contamination. Today, fishermen occasionally find some of these materials: the most recent available report from the Helsinki Commission notes that four small scale catches of chemical munitions representing approximately of material were reported in 2005. This is a reduction from the 25 incidents representing of material in 2003. Until now, the U.S. Government refuses to disclose the exact coordinates of the wreck sites. Deteriorating bottles leak mustard gas and other substances, thus slowly poisoning a substantial part of the Baltic Sea.\nAfter 1945, the German population was expelled from all areas east of the Oder-Neisse line, making room for new Polish and Russian settlement. Poland gained most of the southern shore. The Soviet Union gained another access to the Baltic with the Kaliningrad Oblast, that had been part of German-settled East Prussia. The Baltic states on the eastern shore were annexed by the Soviet Union. The Baltic then separated opposing military blocs: NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Neutral Sweden developed incident weapons to defend its territorial waters after the Swedish submarine incidents. This border status restricted trade and travel. It ended only after the collapse of the Communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s.\nFinland and Sweden joined NATO in 2023 and 2024, respectively, making the Baltic Sea almost entirely surrounded by the alliance's members, leading some commentators to label the sea a \u2033NATO lake\u2033. Such an arrangement has also existed for the European Union (EU) since May 2004 following the accession of the Baltic states and Poland. The remaining non-NATO and non-EU shore areas are Russian: the Saint Petersburg area and the Kaliningrad Oblast exclave.\nStorms and storm floods.\nWinter storms begin arriving in the region during October. These have caused numerous shipwrecks, and contributed to the extreme difficulties of rescuing passengers of the ferry MS \"Estonia\" en route from Tallinn, Estonia, to Stockholm, Sweden, in September 1994, which claimed the lives of 852 people. Older, wood-based shipwrecks such as the \"Vasa\" tend to remain well-preserved, as the Baltic's cold and brackish water does not suit the shipworm.\nStorm surge floods are generally taken to occur when the water level is more than one metre above normal. In Warnem\u00fcnde about 110 floods occurred from 1950 to 2000, an average of just over two per year.\nHistoric flood events were the All Saints' Flood of 1304 and other floods in the years 1320, 1449, 1625, 1694, 1784 and 1825. Little is known of their extent. From 1872, there exist regular and reliable records of water levels in the Baltic Sea. The highest was the flood of 1872 when the water was an average of above sea level at Warnem\u00fcnde and a maximum of above sea level in Warnem\u00fcnde. In the last very heavy floods the average water levels reached above sea level in 1904, in 1913, in January 1954, on 2\u20134 November 1995 and on 21 February 2002.\nGeography.\nGeophysical data.\nAn arm of the North Atlantic Ocean, the Baltic Sea is enclosed by Sweden and Denmark to the west, Finland to the northeast, and the Baltic countries to the southeast.\nIt is about long, an average of wide, and an average of deep. The maximum depth is which is on the Swedish side of the center. The surface area is about and the volume is about . The periphery amounts to about of coastline.\nThe Baltic Sea is one of the largest brackish inland seas by area, and occupies a basin (a \"Zungenbecken\") formed by glacial erosion during the last few ice ages.\nExtent.\nThe International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Baltic Sea as follows:\nBordered by the coasts of Germany, Denmark, Poland, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, it extends north-eastward of the following limits:\n*\"In the Little Belt.\" A line joining Falsh\u00f6ft () and Vejsn\u00e6s Nakke (\u00c6r\u00f8: ).\n*\"In the Great Belt.\" A line joining Gulstav (South extreme of Langeland Island) and Kappel Kirke () on Island of Lolland.\n*\"In the Guldborg Sound.\" A line joining Flinthorne-Rev and Skjelby ().\n*\"In the Sound.\" A line joining Stevns Lighthouse () and Falsterbo Point ().\nSubdivisions.\nThe northern part of the Baltic Sea is known as the Gulf of Bothnia, of which the northernmost part is the Bay of Bothnia or Bothnian Bay. The more rounded southern basin of the gulf is called Bothnian Sea and immediately to the south of it lies the Sea of \u00c5land. The Gulf of Finland connects the Baltic Sea with Saint Petersburg. The Gulf of Riga lies between the Latvian capital city of Riga and the Estonian island of Saaremaa.\nThe Northern Baltic Sea lies between the Stockholm area, southwestern Finland, and Estonia. The Western and Eastern Gotland basins form the major parts of the Central Baltic Sea or Baltic proper. The Bornholm Basin is the area east of Bornholm, and the shallower Arkona Basin extends from Bornholm to the Danish isles of Falster and Zealand.\nIn the south, the Bay of Gda\u0144sk lies east of the Hel Peninsula on the Polish coast and west of the Sambia Peninsula in Kaliningrad Oblast. The Bay of Pomerania lies north of the islands of Usedom/Uznam and Wolin, east of R\u00fcgen. Between Falster and the German coast lie the Bay of Mecklenburg and Bay of L\u00fcbeck. The westernmost part of the Baltic Sea is the Bay of Kiel. The three Danish straits, the Great Belt, the Little Belt and The Sound (\"\u00d6resund\"/\"\u00d8resund\"), connect the Baltic Sea with the Kattegat and Skagerrak strait in the North Sea.\nTemperature and ice.\nThe water temperature of the Baltic Sea varies significantly depending on exact location, season and depth. At the Bornholm Basin, which is located directly east of the island of the same name, the surface temperature typically falls to during the peak of the winter and rises to during the peak of the summer, with an annual average of around . A similar pattern can be seen in the Gotland Basin, which is located between the island of Gotland and Latvia. In the deep of these basins the temperature variations are smaller. At the bottom of the Bornholm Basin, deeper than , the temperature typically is , and at the bottom of the Gotland Basin, at depths greater than , the temperature typically is . Generally, offshore locations, lower latitudes and islands maintain maritime climates, but adjacent to the water continental climates are common, especially on the Gulf of Finland. In the northern tributaries the climates transition from moderate continental to subarctic on the northernmost coastlines.\nOn the long-term average, the Baltic Sea is ice-covered at the annual maximum for about 45% of its surface area. The ice-covered area during such a typical winter includes the Gulf of Bothnia, the Gulf of Finland, the Gulf of Riga, the archipelago west of Estonia, the Stockholm archipelago, and the Archipelago Sea southwest of Finland. The remainder of the Baltic does not freeze during a normal winter, except sheltered bays and shallow lagoons such as the Curonian Lagoon. The ice reaches its maximum extent in February or March; typical ice thickness in the northernmost areas in the Bothnian Bay, the northern basin of the Gulf of Bothnia, is about for landfast sea ice. The thickness decreases farther south.\nFreezing begins in the northern extremities of the Gulf of Bothnia typically in the middle of November, reaching the open waters of the Bothnian Bay in early January. The Bothnian Sea, the basin south of Kvarken, freezes on average in late February. The Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Riga freeze typically in late January. In 2011, the Gulf of Finland was completely frozen on 15 February.\nThe ice extent depends on whether the winter is mild, moderate, or severe. In severe winters ice can form around southern Sweden and even in the Danish straits. According to the 18th-century natural historian William Derham, during the severe winters of 1703 and 1708, the ice cover reached as far as the Danish straits. Frequently, parts of the Gulf of Bothnia and the Gulf of Finland are frozen, in addition to coastal fringes in more southerly locations such as the Gulf of Riga. This description meant that the whole of the Baltic Sea was covered with ice.\nSince 1720, the Baltic Sea has frozen over entirely 20 times, most recently in early 1987, which was the most severe winter in Scandinavia since 1720. The ice then covered . During the winter of 2010\u201311, which was quite severe compared to those of the last decades, the maximum ice cover was , which was reached on 25 February 2011. The ice then extended from the north down to the northern tip of Gotland, with small ice-free areas on either side, and the east coast of the Baltic Sea was covered by an ice sheet about wide all the way to Gda\u0144sk. This was brought about by a stagnant high-pressure area that lingered over central and northern Scandinavia from around 10 to 24 February. After this, strong southern winds pushed the ice further into the north, and much of the waters north of Gotland were again free of ice, which had then packed against the shores of southern Finland. The effects of the aforementioned high-pressure area did not reach the southern parts of the Baltic Sea, and thus the entire sea did not freeze over. However, floating ice was additionally observed near \u015awinouj\u015bcie harbor in January 2010.\nIn recent years before 2011, the Bothnian Bay and the Bothnian Sea were frozen with solid ice near the Baltic coast and dense floating ice far from it. In 2008, almost no ice formed except for a short period in March.\nDuring winter, fast ice, which is attached to the shoreline, develops first, rendering ports unusable without the services of icebreakers. Level ice, ice sludge, pancake ice, and rafter ice form in the more open regions. The gleaming expanse of ice is similar to the Arctic, with wind-driven pack ice and ridges up to . Offshore of the landfast ice, the ice remains very dynamic all year, and it is relatively easily moved around by winds and therefore forms pack ice, made up of large piles and ridges pushed against the landfast ice and shores.\nIn spring, the Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Bothnia normally thaw in late April, with some ice ridges persisting until May in the eastern extremities of the Gulf of Finland. In the northernmost reaches of the Bothnian Bay, ice usually stays until late May; by early June it is practically always gone. However, in the famine year of 1867 remnants of ice were observed as late as 17 July near Uddsk\u00e4r. Even as far south as \u00d8resund, remnants of ice have been observed in May on several occasions; near Taarbaek on 15 May 1942 and near Copenhagen on 11 May 1771. Drift ice was also observed on 11 May 1799.\nThe ice cover is the main habitat for two large mammals, the grey seal (\"Halichoerus grypus\") and the Baltic ringed seal (\"Pusa hispida botnica\"), both of which feed underneath the ice and breed on its surface. Of these two seals, only the Baltic ringed seal suffers when there is not adequate ice in the Baltic Sea, as it feeds its young only while on ice. The grey seal is adapted to reproducing also with no ice in the sea. The sea ice also harbors several species of algae that live in the bottom and inside unfrozen brine pockets in the ice.\nDue to the often fluctuating winter temperatures between above and below freezing, the saltwater ice of the Baltic Sea can be treacherous and hazardous to walk on, in particular in comparison to the more stable fresh water-ice sheets in the interior lakes.\nHydrography.\nThe Baltic Sea flows out through the Danish straits; however, the flow is complex. A surface layer of brackish water discharges per year into the North Sea. Due to the difference in salinity, by salinity permeation principle, a sub-surface layer of more saline water moving in the opposite direction brings in per year. It mixes very slowly with the upper waters, resulting in a salinity gradient from top to bottom, with most of the saltwater remaining below deep. The general circulation is anti-clockwise: northwards along its eastern boundary, and south along with the western one .\nThe difference between the outflow and the inflow comes entirely from fresh water. More than 250 streams drain a basin of about , contributing a volume of per year to the Baltic. They include the major rivers of north Europe, such as the Oder, the Vistula, the Neman, the Daugava and the Neva. Additional fresh water comes from the difference of precipitation less evaporation, which is positive.\nAn important source of salty water is infrequent inflows (also known as major Baltic inflows or MBIs) of North Sea water into the Baltic. Such inflows, important to the Baltic ecosystem because of the oxygen they transport into the Baltic deeps, happen on average once per year, but large pulses that can replace the anoxic deep water in the Gotland Deep occur about once in ten years. Previously, it was believed that the frequency of MBIs had declined since 1980, but recent studies have challenged this view and no longer display a clear change in the frequency or intensity of saline inflows. Instead, a decadal variability in the intensities of MBIs is observed with a main period of approximately 30 years.\nThe water level is generally far more dependent on the regional wind situation than on tidal effects. However, tidal currents occur in narrow passages in the western parts of the Baltic Sea. Tides can reach in the Gulf of Finland.\nThe significant wave height is generally much lower than that of the North Sea. Quite violent, sudden storms sweep the surface ten or more times a year, due to large transient temperature differences and a long reach of the wind. Seasonal winds also cause small changes in sea level, of the order of . According to the media, during a storm in January 2017, an extreme wave above has been measured and significant wave height of around has been measured by the FMI. A numerical study has shown the presence of events with significant wave heights. Those extreme waves events can play an important role in the coastal zone on erosion and sea dynamics.\nSalinity.\nThe Baltic Sea is the world's largest brackish sea. Only two other brackish waters are larger according to some measurements: The Black Sea is larger in both surface area and water volume, but most of it is located outside the continental shelf (only a small fraction is inland). The Caspian Sea is larger in water volume, but\u2014despite its name\u2014it is a lake rather than a sea.\nThe Baltic Sea's salinity is much lower than that of ocean water (which averages 3.5%), as a result of abundant freshwater runoff from the surrounding land (rivers, streams and alike), combined with the shallowness of the sea itself; runoff contributes roughly one-fortieth its total volume per year, as the volume of the basin is about and yearly runoff is about .\nThe open surface waters of the Baltic Sea \"proper\" generally have a salinity of 0.3 to 0.9%, which is border-line freshwater. The flow of freshwater into the sea from approximately two hundred rivers and the introduction of salt from the southwest builds up a gradient of salinity in the Baltic Sea. The highest surface salinities, generally 0.7\u20130.9%, are in the southwestern most part of the Baltic, in the Arkona and Bornholm basins (the former located roughly between southeast Zealand and Bornholm, and the latter directly east of Bornholm). It gradually falls further east and north, reaching the lowest in the Bothnian Bay at around 0.3%. Drinking the surface water of the Baltic as a means of survival would actually hydrate the body instead of dehydrating, as is the case with ocean water.\nAs saltwater is denser than freshwater, the bottom of the Baltic Sea is saltier than the surface. This creates a vertical stratification of the water column, a halocline, that represents a barrier to the exchange of oxygen and nutrients, and fosters completely separate maritime environments. The difference between the bottom and surface salinities varies depending on location. Overall it follows the same southwest to east and north pattern as the surface. At the bottom of the Arkona Basin (equaling depths greater than ) and Bornholm Basin (depths greater than ) it is typically 1.4\u20131.8%. Further east and north the salinity at the bottom is consistently lower, being the lowest in Bothnian Bay (depths greater than ) where it is slightly below 0.4%, or only marginally higher than the surface in the same region.\nIn contrast, the salinity of the Danish straits, which connect the Baltic Sea and Kattegat, tends to be significantly higher, but with major variations from year to year. For example, the surface and bottom salinity in the Great Belt is typically around 2.0% and 2.8% respectively, which is only somewhat below that of the Kattegat. The water surplus caused by the continuous inflow of rivers and streams to the Baltic Sea means that there generally is a flow of brackish water out through the Danish straits to the Kattegat (and eventually the Atlantic). Significant flows in the opposite direction, salt water from the Kattegat through the Danish straits to the Baltic Sea, are less regular and are known as major Baltic inflows (MBIs).\nMajor tributaries.\nThe rating of mean discharges differs from the ranking of hydrological lengths (from the most distant source to the sea) and the rating of the nominal lengths. G\u00f6ta \u00e4lv, a tributary of the Kattegat, is not listed, as due to the northward upper low-salinity-flow in the sea, its water hardly reaches the Baltic proper:\nCoastal countries.\nCountries that border the sea: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden.\nCountries lands in the outer drainage basin: Belarus, Czech Republic, Norway, Slovakia, Ukraine.\nThe Baltic Sea drainage basin is roughly four times the surface area of the sea itself. About 48% of the region is forested, with Sweden and Finland containing the majority of the forest, especially around the Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland.\nAbout 20% of the land is used for agriculture and pasture, mainly in Poland and around the edge of the Baltic Proper, in Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. About 17% of the basin is unused open land with another 8% of wetlands. Most of the latter are in the Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland.\nThe rest of the land is heavily populated. About 85\u00a0million people live in the Baltic drainage basin, 15\u00a0million within of the coast and 29\u00a0million within of the coast. Around 22\u00a0million live in population centers of over 250,000. 90% of these are concentrated in the band around the coast. Of the nations containing all or part of the basin, Poland includes 45% of the 85\u00a0million, Russia 12%, Sweden 10% and the others less than 6% each.\nCities.\nThe biggest coastal cities (by population):\nOther important ports:\nGeology.\nThe Baltic Sea somewhat resembles a riverbed, with two tributaries, the Gulf of Finland and Gulf of Bothnia. Geological surveys show that before the Pleistocene, instead of the Baltic Sea, there was a wide plain around a great river that paleontologists call the Eridanos. Several Pleistocene glacial episodes scooped out the river bed into the sea basin. By the time of the last, or Eemian Stage (MIS\u00a05e), the Eemian Sea was in place. Instead of a true sea, the Baltic can even today also be understood as the common estuary of all rivers flowing into it.\nFrom that time the waters underwent a geologic history summarized under the names listed below. Many of the stages are named after marine animals (e.g. the Littorina mollusk) that are clear markers of changing water temperatures and salinity.\nThe factors that determined the sea's characteristics were the submergence or emergence of the region due to the weight of ice and subsequent isostatic readjustment, and the connecting channels it found to the North Sea-Atlantic, either through the straits of Denmark or at what are now the large lakes of Sweden, and the White Sea-Arctic Sea. There are a number of named and dated stages in the evolution of the Baltic Sea: \nThe land is still emerging isostatically from its depressed state, which was caused by the weight of ice during the last glaciation. The phenomenon is known as post-glacial rebound. Consequently, the surface area and the depth of the sea are diminishing. The uplift is about eight millimeters per year on the Finnish coast of the northernmost Gulf of Bothnia. In the area, the former seabed is only gently sloping, leading to large areas of land being reclaimed in what are, geologically speaking, relatively short periods (decades and centuries).\nThe \"Baltic Sea anomaly\".\nThe \"Baltic Sea anomaly\" is a feature on an indistinct sonar image taken by Swedish salvage divers on the floor of the northern Baltic Sea in June 2011. The treasure hunters suggested the image showed an object with unusual features of seemingly extraordinary origin. Speculation published in tabloid newspapers claimed that the object was a sunken UFO. A consensus of experts and scientists say that the image most likely shows a natural geological formation.\nBiology.\nFauna and flora.\nThe fauna of the Baltic Sea is a mixture of marine and freshwater species. Among marine fishes are Atlantic cod, Atlantic herring, European hake, European plaice, European flounder, shorthorn sculpin and turbot, and examples of freshwater species include European perch, northern pike, whitefish and common roach. Freshwater species may occur at outflows of rivers or streams in all coastal sections of the Baltic Sea. Otherwise, marine species dominate in most sections of the Baltic, at least as far north as G\u00e4vle, where less than one-tenth are freshwater species. Further north the pattern is inverted. In the Bothnian Bay, roughly two-thirds of the species are freshwater. In the far north of this bay, saltwater species are almost entirely absent. For example, the common starfish and shore crab, two species that are very widespread along European coasts, are both unable to cope with the significantly lower salinity. Their range limit is west of Bornholm, meaning that they are absent from the vast majority of the Baltic Sea. Some marine species, like the Atlantic cod and European flounder, can survive at relatively low salinities but need higher salinities to breed, which therefore occurs in deeper parts of the Baltic Sea. The common blue mussel is the dominating animal species, and makes up more than 90% of the total animal biomass in the sea.\nThere is a decrease in species richness from the Danish belts to the Gulf of Bothnia. The decreasing salinity along this path causes restrictions in both physiology and habitats. At more than 600 species of invertebrates, fish, aquatic mammals, aquatic birds and macrophytes, the Arkona Basin (roughly between southeast Zealand and Bornholm) is far richer than other more eastern and northern basins in the Baltic Sea, which all have less than 400 species from these groups, with the exception of the Gulf of Finland with more than 750 species. However, even the most diverse sections of the Baltic Sea have far fewer species than the almost-full saltwater Kattegat, which is home to more than 1600 species from these groups. The lack of tides has affected the marine species as compared with the Atlantic.\nSince the Baltic Sea is so young there are only two or three known endemic species: the brown alga \"Fucus radicans\" and the flounder \"Platichthys solemdali\". Both appear to have evolved in the Baltic basin and were only recognized as species in 2005 and 2018 respectively, having formerly been confused with more widespread relatives. The tiny Copenhagen cockle (\"Parvicardium hauniense\"), a rare mussel, is sometimes considered endemic, but has now been recorded in the Mediterranean. However, some consider non-Baltic records to be misidentifications of juvenile lagoon cockles (\"Cerastoderma glaucum\"). Several widespread marine species have distinctive subpopulations in the Baltic Sea adapted to the low salinity, such as the Baltic Sea forms of the Atlantic herring and lumpsucker, which are smaller than the widespread forms in the North Atlantic.\nA peculiar feature of the fauna is that it contains a number of glacial relict species, isolated populations of arctic species which have remained in the Baltic Sea since the last glaciation, such as the large isopod \"Saduria entomon\", the Baltic subspecies of ringed seal, and the fourhorn sculpin. Some of these relicts are derived from glacial lakes, such as \"Monoporeia affinis\", which is a main element in the benthic fauna of the low-salinity Bothnian Bay.\nCetaceans in the Baltic Sea are monitored by the countries bordering the sea and data compiled by various intergovernmental bodies, such as ASCOBANS. A critically endangered population of harbor porpoise inhabit the Baltic proper, whereas the species is abundant in the outer Baltic (Western Baltic and Danish straits) and occasionally oceanic and out-of-range species such as minke whales, bottlenose dolphins, beluga whales, orcas, and beaked whales visit the waters. In recent years, very small, but with increasing rates, fin whales and humpback whales migrate into Baltic sea including mother and calf pair. Now extinct Atlantic grey whales (remains found from Gr\u00e4s\u00f6 along Bothnian Sea/southern Bothnian Gulf and Ystad) and eastern population of North Atlantic right whales that is facing functional extinction once migrated into Baltic Sea.\nOther notable megafauna include the basking sharks.\nEnvironmental status.\nSatellite images taken in July 2010 revealed a massive algal bloom covering in the Baltic Sea. The area of the bloom extended from Germany and Poland to Finland. Researchers of the phenomenon have indicated that algal blooms have occurred every summer for decades. Fertilizer runoff from surrounding agricultural land has exacerbated the problem and led to increased eutrophication.\nApproximately of the Baltic's seafloor (a quarter of its total area) is a variable dead zone. The more saline (and therefore denser) water remains on the bottom, isolating it from surface waters and the atmosphere. This leads to decreased oxygen concentrations within the zone. It is mainly bacteria that grow in it, digesting organic material and releasing hydrogen sulfide. Because of this large anaerobic zone, the seafloor ecology differs from that of the neighboring Atlantic.\nPlans to artificially oxygenate areas of the Baltic that have experienced eutrophication have been proposed by the University of Gothenburg and Inocean AB. The proposal intends to use wind-driven pumps to pump oxygen-rich surface water to a depth of around 130 m.\nAfter World War II, Germany had to be disarmed and large quantities of ammunition stockpiles were disposed directly into the Baltic Sea and the North Sea. Environmental experts and marine biologists warn that these ammunition dumps pose an environmental threat with potentially life-threatening consequences to the health and safety of humans on the coastlines of these seas.\nFuture change.\nClimate change, and pollution from agriculture and forestry, impose such strong effects on the ecosystems of the Baltic sea, that there is a concern the sea will turn from a carbon sink to a source of CO2 and methane. Modelling climate change and the impact of well characterised factors such as post-glacial rebound before the year 2050, is complicated by the unique properties of the Baltic Sea area compared to say the adjacent North Sea and controversy as to the relative contributions of socio-economic factors such as land use to any warming component.537 These include its current brackish water, the southern subbasin tendency to have a vertical stratification of the halocline, and the northern subbasin seasonal sea ice cover.458 High confidence future projections include: air temperature warming, more heavy precipitation episodes, less snow with less perifrost and glacial ice mass in northern catchment areas, more mild winters, raised mean water temperature with more marine heatwaves, intensified seasonal thermoclines without change in the thermohaline circulation, and sea level rise. There are many more projections but these have lower confidence.\nEconomy.\nConstruction of the Great Belt Bridge in Denmark (completed 1997) and the \u00d8resund Bridge-Tunnel (completed 1999), linking Denmark with Sweden, provided a highway and railroad connection between Sweden and the Danish mainland (the Jutland Peninsula, precisely the Zealand). The undersea tunnel of the \u00d8resund Bridge-Tunnel provides for navigation of large ships into and out of the Baltic Sea. The Baltic Sea is the main trade route for the export of Russian petroleum. Countries neighboring the Baltic Sea have expressed concerns about this since a major oil leak in a seagoing tanker would be especially disastrous for the Baltic given the slow exchange of water in the ecosystem. The tourism industry surrounding the Baltic Sea is naturally concerned about oil pollution.\nMuch shipbuilding is carried out in the shipyards around the Baltic Sea. The largest shipyards are at Gda\u0144sk, Gdynia, and Szczecin, Poland; Kiel, Germany; Karlskrona and Malm\u00f6, Sweden; Rauma, Turku, and Helsinki, Finland; Riga, Ventspils, and Liep\u0101ja, Latvia; Klaip\u0117da, Lithuania; and Saint Petersburg, Russia.\nThere are several cargo and passenger ferries that operate on the Baltic Sea, such as\nConstruction of the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link between Denmark and Germany is due to finish in 2029. It will be a three-bore tunnel carrying four motorway lanes and two rail tracks.\nThrough the development of offshore wind power the Baltic Sea is expected to become a major source of energy for countries in the region. According to the Marienborg Declaration, signed in 2022, all EU Baltic Sea states have announced their intentions to have 19.6 gigawatts of offshore wind in operation by 2030. \nTourism.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nThe Helsinki Convention.\n1974 Convention.\nFor the first time ever, all the sources of pollution around an entire sea were made subject to a single convention, signed in 1974 by the then seven Baltic coastal states. The 1974 Convention entered into force on 3 May 1980.\n1992 Convention.\nIn the light of political changes and developments in international environmental and maritime law, a new convention was signed in 1992 by all the states bordering on the Baltic Sea, and the European Community. After ratification, the Convention entered into force on 17 January 2000. The Convention covers the whole of the Baltic Sea area, including inland waters and the water of the sea itself, as well as the seabed. Measures are also taken in the whole catchment area of the Baltic Sea to reduce land-based pollution. The convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area, 1992, entered into force on 17 January 2000.\nThe governing body of the convention is the Helsinki Commission, also known as HELCOM, or Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission. The present contracting parties are Denmark, Estonia, the European Community, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Sweden.\nThe ratification instruments were deposited by the European Community, Germany, Latvia and Sweden in 1994, by Estonia and Finland in 1995, by Denmark in 1996, by Lithuania in 1997, and by Poland and Russia in November 1999.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "37709415": "Gedser Odde\nDenmark's southernmost point\nGedser Odde on the island of Falster in the Baltic Sea is Denmark's southernmost point. The terminal moraine from Idestrup through Skelby to Gedser is part of the maximum glaciation line across Falster, from Orehoved to Gedser. Fronted by low cliffs, the ridge, high, continues underwater a further south-east to Gedser Rev. Sydstenen (the south stone) marks the southernmost point.\nGeology.\nThe coastal cliff at Gedser Odder is almost always exposed. The strata deposited during the last ice age can be clearly seen, but lake sediments have also been exposed, from the lowering of the terrain. The sediments from the postglacial period contain fossils of freshwater snails and mussels, evidence of a freshwater episode in the Baltic. The ice age strata consist mostly of moraines of clay and boulders deposited by the melting glacier. Traces of pink in the moraines come from red sandstone plucked up in the Baltic Sea.\nBirds.\nGedser Odde is a good site for observing migratory birds, especially on windy days. Common eiders can be seen in large numbers around the point in the spring (from the end of March to the beginning of April) and autumn. It is not uncommon for as many as 40,000 per day to fly past. The common scoter is viewable throughout the year in flocks of as many as 3,000. In the autumn, migratory geese can be seen in their thousands. Other species crossing the area include the red-throated loon, pomarine skua, the long-tailed jaeger, and great skua. Gedser Odde is probably the area with the most little gulls in both the spring and the autumn with up to a thousand per day.\nAmong the birds of prey which frequent the area in fairly large numbers between the southernmost point and the Gedser Marina are the rough-legged buzzard, red kite (often flying low), the western marsh harrier and common buzzard. Smaller birds also occur, including the western yellow wagtail, meadow pipit, common chaffinch and brambling. Much less common species have on occasion also been observed in the area, such as little egret, black stork, Steller's eider, short-toed snake eagle, Blyth's reed warbler, great reed warbler, eastern olivaceous warbler, barred warbler, brown warbler and rock bunting.\nFeatures.\nGedser Fyr, a square, lighthouse, sits north-west of Gedser Odde point. The tower features a light and a racon, or radar transponder, and can be ascended. Extending for about north from Gedser Odde, Falster's east coast is protected by a dyke. Submarine cables extending north-east, south-east, and south-south-east lie off Gedser Odde.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["3335", "37709415"], "permutation_1": ["37709415", "3335"], "permutation_2": ["37709415", "3335"], "permutation_3": ["37709415", "3335"]}
{"id": "2hop__142865_127008", "docs_added": {"14054551": "6ix by 3hree\n6ix by 3hree (\"Six by Three\") is a video compilation by English rock band Duran Duran released in 1989 on VHS and LaserDisc. There is currently no commercial DVD release available but the whole compilation was included as an extra on the 2010 DD Fan Club DVD release of \"Three to Get Ready\". The six videos of the title are taken from the band's albums \"Notorious\" and \"Big Thing\".\nThe intent of this release was similar to the \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" video EP \"Dancing on the Valentine\", mopping up an album's worth (or two albums in this case) of videos and getting them to market. However, the release of \"Decade\" a year later meant that most of the videos on both of these compilations were readily available on one release.\n\"6ix by 3hree\" does include two videos not available on other compilations\u2014\"Meet El Presidente\" and \"Do You Believe in Shame?\"\u2014but they were included as extras on the CD/DVD special releases of \"Notorious\" and \"Big Thing\", respectively.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "148703": "Duran Duran\nEnglish pop rock band\nDuran Duran () are an English pop rock band formed in Birmingham in 1978 by singer Stephen Duffy, keyboardist Nick Rhodes and guitarist/bassist John Taylor. After several early changes, the band's line-up settled in May 1980 as Rhodes, Taylor, singer Simon Le Bon, guitarist Andy Taylor and drummer Roger Taylor. \nEmerging as members of the New Romantic scene, Duran Duran were innovators of the music video and a leading band in the MTV-driven Second British Invasion of the US in the 1980s. By 1984, the band had achieved levels of fame similar to Beatlemania. The band's first major hit was \"Girls on Film\" (1981), from their self-titled debut album, the popularity of which was enhanced by a controversial music video. The band's breakthrough second album was \"Rio\" (1982), a worldwide hit. The songs \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Rio\" featured cinematic music videos directed by Australian film maker Russell Mulcahy and became two of their biggest hits. Their third album, \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\", became their only UK number one album and featured the US and UK number one single \"The Reflex\". In 1985, the band topped the US charts with the single \"A View to a Kill\" from the soundtrack of the James Bond film of the same title.\nAndy Taylor and Roger Taylor both left the band before the recording of their fourth album, \"Notorious\" (1986), which yielded the top ten title track. Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor initially continued as a core trio, before adding drummer Sterling Campbell and former Frank Zappa and Missing Persons guitarist Warren Cuccurullo as full-time members in 1989, though Campbell departed in 1991. The band spent the late 1980s and early 1990s releasing albums and singles to only moderate success. Their comeback album, 1993's \"Duran Duran\" (commonly called \"The Wedding Album\"), featured two top ten worldwide hits \"Ordinary World\" and \"Come Undone\". John Taylor left the band in 1997, though four years later, in 2001, a full reunion of the classic 1980\u20131985 line-up of Le Bon, Rhodes and all three Taylors took place, which led to a number of highly successful concert tours and the 2004 album \"Astronaut\", which reached number three in the UK and top 40 in numerous other countries. The album's lead single \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\" was an international dance hit, and reached number five in the UK. Andy Taylor left again in 2006, and the band have released five additional albums, with the most recent being \"Danse Macabre\" in 2023.\nAccording to \"Billboard\", Duran Duran have sold over 100 million records. They achieved 30 top 40 singles in the UK Singles Chart (14 of them top 10) and 21 top 40 singles in the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100. The band have won numerous awards throughout their career: two Brit Awards including the 2004 award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, two Grammy Awards, an MTV Video Music Award for Lifetime Achievement and a Video Visionary Award from the MTV Europe Music Awards. They were also awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The band were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.\nHistory.\n1978\u20131980: Formation and early years.\nJohn Taylor and Nick Rhodes formed Duran Duran in 1978 in Birmingham, England, with Taylor's art school friend Stephen Duffy, naming their band after \"Dr. Durand Durand\", Milo O'Shea's character from the science fiction film \"Barbarella\" (1968), the day after the film was broadcast on BBC on 20 October 1978. The three of them (Taylor on guitar and vocals, Rhodes on synthesizer and tapes, Duffy on vocals and bass) played their first gig on 5 April 1979 at the Birmingham Polytechnic. Soon after, they were joined by Simon Colley on clarinet and bass. John (then going by his first name Nigel) was the guitarist at this point. After a few gigs, including a performance at Barbarella's in Birmingham opening for the band Fashion, Duffy and Colley left the band in June 1979.\nTaylor and Rhodes then recruited lead vocalist Andy Wickett (formerly frontman of \"TV Eye\") and decided that they needed a live drummer. They hired Roger Taylor, a former member of various local bands (most recently \"The Scent Organs\" who also played at Barbarella's), while John Taylor switched to bass guitar. In September 1979, this incarnation of the band recorded a four-track demo including an early version of \"Girls on Film\" co-written by Andy Wickett. Soon afterwards Alan Curtis was recruited as lead guitarist. After a few gigs with this line-up Wickett left the band in late 1979.\nWickett was replaced by Roger Taylor's friend and former singer of \"The Scent Organs\" Jeff Thomas. In early 1980, they became the resident band at the city's Rum Runner nightclub. They were doing jobs at the club and began rehearsing and regularly playing at the venue. Curtis was unhappy with the Rum Runner club scene and left the band to form Dif Juz with his brother. Thomas was fired shortly after following disagreements and repeated arguments. The three remaining members started to look for a new lead vocalist and guitarist. The owners of the club, brothers Paul and Michael Berrow, became the band's management, paying them to work as doormen, disc jockeys (DJs) and barmen when they were not rehearsing, and also formed the Tritec Music company.\nIn April 1980, guitarist Andy Taylor came from Newcastle upon Tyne to audition after responding to an advertisement in \"Melody Maker\". Andy already had a lot of experience from playing with cover bands for years and although he came from a totally different rock music background his versatile playing style was seen as a perfect complement to the band. In May 1980, London vocalist and drama student Simon Le Bon was recommended to the band by an ex-girlfriend who worked at the Rum Runner. The band were immediately impressed by Le Bon and soon completed their first composition with the new line-up, \"Sound of Thunder\", featuring lyrics by Le Bon. Duran Duran's first performance with the lineup of Le Bon, Rhodes and the three Taylors was on 16\u00a0July 1980 at the Rum Runner.\nDuran Duran spent the next months writing, developing and demoing their songs and performed in clubs around Birmingham and London. In September 1980 they had written all of what would become their debut album. Touring as an opening act for Hazel O'Connor, the band attracted critical attention, resulting in a bidding war between the record companies EMI and Phonogram. \"A certain patriotism\" toward the label of the Beatles led them to sign with EMI in December. A week later, the first article about Duran Duran in a national magazine appeared in \"Sounds\". The members of Duran Duran had noticed that Betty Page (pen name for Beverley Glick) was writing about a new movement called New Romantic that would fit the band perfectly and invited her to meet them at the Rum Runner.\nShortly after signing the recording contract with EMI, Duran Duran went to London to record their debut album with producer Colin Thurston, and initial plans for an independent release of the songs \"Planet Earth\" and \"Is There Anyone Out There?\" on the Tritec Music label were scrapped.\n1981\u20131982: Self-titled debut, \"Rio\" and Second British Invasion.\nThe band's debut album, \"Duran Duran\", was released on the EMI label in June 1981. The first single, \"Planet Earth\", had reached the United Kingdom's top 20 at number 12 in February. A follow-up, \"Careless Memories\", released in April, stalled at number 37. The third single, \"Girls on Film\", was released in July and went to number 5 in the UK. The video, featuring topless women mud wrestling, pillow fighting and stylised depictions of other sexual fetishes, was made with directing duo Godley & Creme in August. The video was filmed just two weeks after MTV was launched in the United States. The band expected the \"Girls on Film\" video to be played in the newer nightclubs that had video screens or on pay TV channels like the Playboy Channel. Kevin Godley explained the thinking behind it:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />We were very explicitly told by Duran Duran's management to make a very sensational and erotic piece that would be for clubs, where it would get shown uncensored just to make people take notice and talk about it.\nThe video was heavily edited for MTV. The album peaked in the UK top twenty at number three. Later in 1981 the band embarked on their first United States club tour followed by more dates in Germany and the UK. This second tour of Britain coincided with a wave of riots sparked by unemployment and racial tension, including those of Moss Side and Toxteth. The band played Birmingham the day after the Handsworth riots. The band also began writing and demoing songs for a new album. In November 1981, they released a new single, the disco-influenced \"My Own Way\", that reached number 14 in the UK, followed in early 1982 by the recording of their second album at AIR Studios in London.\nIn May 1982, Duran Duran released their second album, \"Rio\", which entered the UK Albums Chart at number four and peaked at number two the following week. The band scored three UK top 10 hits on the singles chart from the album with \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" at number five in June, \"Save a Prayer\" at number two in September and the title song \"Rio\" at number nine in December, while the earlier top 20 hit \"My Own Way\" was included in a re-recorded version on the album.\nWith the album Duran Duran also began to achieve worldwide recognition. A headlining tour of Australia, Japan and the US was followed by a stint supporting Blondie during that band's final American tour. Diana, Princess of Wales declared Duran Duran her favourite band, and the band were dubbed \"the Fab Five\" by the British press, comparing them to the Beatles whose nickname was the Fab Four.\nAt first, the \"Rio\" album did not do well in the United States. EMI in the UK had promoted Duran Duran as a New Romantic band, but the New Romantic movement was barely known in the US, and EMI's American subsidiary Capitol Records was at a loss about how to sell them. After \"Carnival\" (an EP of \"Rio\"'s dance remixes) became popular with DJs in the fall, the band arranged to have most of the album remixed by David Kershenbaum. In June 1982, Duran Duran appeared for the first time on American television, performing \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Rio\" on \"Dancin' on Air\", the forerunner to the national hit show \"Dance Party USA\".\nNow promoted as a dance album, \"Rio\" was re-released in the US in November and began to climb the American charts six months after its European success. MTV placed \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and several other Duran Duran videos into heavy rotation, pushing the single and album into the US top twenty in early 1983. The ballad \"Save a Prayer\" also did well. \"The band was a natural for music television,\" noted \"Rolling Stone\". \"They may be the first rock group to ride in on a video wave.\" The album ultimately peaked at number six in the US and remained on the charts there for 129 weeks. In 2003, \"Rio\" was listed at number 65 in the \"NME\"'s list of the 100 Greatest Albums of All Time.\nDuran Duran were among the earliest bands to work on their own remixes. Before the days of digital synthesizer and easy audio sampling, they created multi-layered arrangements of their singles, sometimes recording entirely different extended performances of the songs in the studio. These \"night versions\" were generally available only on vinyl as b-sides to 45 rpm singles or on 12-inch club singles until the release of the compilation \"\" in 1998.\n1983\u20131985: The \"Fab Five\", Side projects and Live Aid.\nThe band began 1983 at the Palladium in New York playing the MTV New Year's Eve Rock n' Roll Ball with \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" still climbing the charts in the US, and the American reissue of the \"Rio\" single to follow in March. To satisfy America's appetite for their music, the band re-released their eponymous first album in the US in the middle of the year with the addition of the new single \"Is There Something I Should Know?\". Upon its release, this song entered the chart at number one in the UK (a rarity then and their first chart-topper in their home country) and reached number five on the American charts. During the promotion of this album, Rhodes and Le Bon were MTV guest VJs for a show, during which artist and admirer Andy Warhol dropped by to greet them. \"Our first gigs in the United States were crazy and culty\", Rhodes said later, \"But when we came back after 'Hungry' was a hit, it was mayhem. It was Beatlemania. We were doing a signing of the 'Girls on Film' video at a store in Times Square. We couldn't get out of the store. The cops sealed off the streets.\" Also in 1983, Rhodes produced the UK number one and US number five hit \"Too Shy\" for English band Kajagoogoo and Andy Taylor became the first member of Duran Duran to get married.\nThe band spent the next year as tax exiles, writing songs at a ch\u00e2teau in France where \"The Tube\" with Jools Holland filmed a documentary with the band in May 1983 before they flew to Montserrat and then Sydney to record and mix their third album. During the summer, they returned to the UK to perform two concerts, the first on 20 July in front of the Prince and Princess of Wales at the Dominion Theatre, and the second, a charity concert at Aston Villa's home ground. The band were under pressure to follow up the success of \"Rio\", and the recording process took over six months as different band members went through bouts of perfectionism and insecurity. A newly decadent lifestyle and substance abuse issues for some members added complications. In the documentary film \"Extraordinary World\", filmed a decade later, Rhodes described the effect on their sound as \"barely controlled hysteria, scratching beneath the surface\".\nThe new album, \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" (1983), included the late 1983 hit \"Union of the Snake\" (with the soprano saxophone solo by Andy Hamilton). With \"Hungry Like the Wolf\", \"Rio\", \"Save a Prayer\" and \"Is There Something I Should Know?\", Duran Duran now had five US Top Twenty hits from three different albums in a single year. The band made music headlines by deciding to release the \"Union of the Snake\" video to MTV a full week before the single was released to radio. They followed up with \"New Moon on Monday\", which reached number nine in the UK. Their next single \"The Reflex\", taken from \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" and given a significant remix overhaul by Nile Rodgers of Chic fame, became their first number one hit in the United States. \"The Reflex\" was also their second and final UK number one and was successful in numerous other countries around the world.\nThe band embarked on a global tour that continued throughout the first four months of 1984 including their first major stadium dates in America. A film crew led by director Russell Mulcahy followed the band closely, leading to the documentary film \"Sing Blue Silver\" and the accompanying concert film \"Arena\". The live album \"Arena\" was also recorded during the tour and was released with the new single \"The Wild Boys\", which went to number two on both sides of the Atlantic. In February 1984, the band appeared on the cover of \"Rolling Stone\" magazine and won two Grammy Awards in the brand-new Long Form and Short Form music video categories. Meanwhile, \"Save a Prayer\" gained momentum in North America, and a special US remix of the song became a single in January 1985. It peaked at number 16 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 in March. A live version of the song was used for the single's B-side, taken from the concert video footage for \"Arena\" / \"As the Lights Go Down\".\nDuring this period, all of the band members became heartthrobs for many of their young teenage fans. After the tour, Roger Taylor was married in Naples, Italy, and Rhodes wed in London, wearing a pink velvet tuxedo and top hat. At the end of 1984, the group featured on the Band Aid benefit single \"Do They Know It's Christmas?\" along with other popular British and Irish musical acts. Le Bon sang fourth on the song, after Paul Young, Boy George and George Michael sing their lines.\nEven with Duran Duran on hold, band members were soon anxious to record new music, leading to a supposedly temporary split into two side projects. John Taylor and Andy Taylor wanted to break away from the Duran Duran sound and pursue hard rock material; they collaborated with lead vocalist Robert Palmer and Chic's drummer Tony Thompson to form the rock/funk supergroup the Power Station, releasing two top 10 singles. Le Bon and Rhodes wanted to further explore Duran Duran's atmospheric aspect and formed Arcadia, releasing one album (\"So Red the Rose\") and an accompanying single (\"Election Day\"). Contributors to that album included guitarist Masami Tsuchiya, bassist Mark Egan, percussionist David Van Tieghem, drummer Steve Jordan, Sting, Herbie Hancock and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. Roger Taylor was a drummer for Arcadia as well as contributing percussion to the Power Station album. According to Rhodes, the two side projects \"were commercial suicide... But we've always been good at that.\" The band regrouped to contribute \"A View to a Kill\" to the 1985 James Bond film of the same name. This single was the first Bond theme to go to number one on the US charts, and was at the time the joint highest-placed Bond theme on the UK chart where it reached number two. It was the last single the band recorded as the original five-piece for close to twenty years.\nAs a follow-up to the Christmas 1984 Band Aid single, Duran Duran performed in front of 90,000 people (and an estimated 1.5\u00a0billion TV viewers) at the Live Aid charity concert at John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 13 July 1985 while their Bond song held the top spot on the American charts. It was not intended to be a farewell performance\u2014the band planned only to take a break after four years of non-stop touring and public appearances\u2014but the original five did not play live together again until July 2003. During their Live Aid set, Le Bon inadvertently hit an off-key falsetto note in the chorus of \"A View to a Kill\", an error that was trumpeted by numerous media outlets as \"The Bum Note Heard Round the World\" (in contrast to Freddie Mercury's \"Note Heard Round the World\" at the Wembley Stadium Live Aid show). Le Bon later described the moment as the most embarrassing of his career.\n1986\u20131989: Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor trio.\nAfter releasing three studio albums and one live album in five years, each accompanied by heavy media promotion and lengthy concert tours, the band lost two of its core members to fatigue and tension in 1986. After Live Aid and Arcadia, Roger Taylor left the band and retired to the English countryside, suffering from exhaustion.\nAndy Taylor led the remaining members to believe he would return to work on a new Duran Duran album, even as he was signing a solo recording contract in Los Angeles with MCA Records, eventually releasing a solo album in 1986 called \"Thunder\". The band resorted to legal measures to get him into the studio but after numerous delays they let him go at last. He played on only a few songs on the next album, including \"A Matter of Feeling\", whilst the disagreements were being settled.\nWithout a guitarist or a drummer, Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor had producer (and former Chic guitarist) Nile Rodgers play a few tracks on guitar, and hired Steve Ferrone to play drums while they searched for replacements. In September 1986, Warren Cuccurullo (formerly of Missing Persons and Frank Zappa's band) was hired as a session guitarist. With Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor, he recorded the rest of the \"Notorious\" album, which was released in October 1986. The black-and-white documentary film \"Three to Get Ready\" chronicled the recording of the album, legal tensions, and preparations for the tour.\nAlthough the song \"Notorious\" was a US and UK top ten hit, the album was a relative failure globally, reaching number 16 in the UK and spending one week in the top 50 album chart. The band found they had lost much of the momentum and hysteria they had left behind in 1985. In the three years between the release of \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" and \"Notorious\", many of their teenage fans had grown up and the music was funkier, more mature, and less \"pop\", given the added experience of their work on Arcadia and Power Station and with other musicians. \"Skin Trade\" and \"Meet El Presidente\", the two subsequent singles, made the charts but fared poorly compared to the band's earlier successes. Finally in late 1987, Sterling Campbell was hired as a session drummer.\nSubsequently, Duran Duran struggled to escape the teen idol image and gain respect among critics with more complex music. The new serious image was not accepted at first and their popularity began to wane. \"Rolling Stone\" said, \"In their search for musical maturity, the surviving Durans have lost a good deal of their identity.\" In contrast the \"New York Times\" said, \"Duran Duran's newfound disillusionment may mark a step toward maturity...they managed to catch a trend on the upswing, perhaps \"Notorious\" suggests that for late 1980s grit and pessimism is coming into style.\" Another factor was the band's dismissal of early managers, the Berrow brothers. There was no announcement of the reasons for the decision, but disagreements over money, and the brothers' involvement in Le Bon's yachting adventures (they were co-owners of \"Drum\") were thought to have played a part. Whatever the reason, Duran Duran switched managers frequently and undertook periods of self-management in the later stages of their career. In addition, EMI fired its president and went through a major corporate restructuring that summer and seemed to have lost interest in promoting the band. According to Rhodes the band needed to break up in order to come back together stronger.\nThe next album \"Big Thing\" (1988) yielded the singles \"I Don't Want Your Love\" (number four in the US), and \"All She Wants Is\" (the last top ten hit in the UK until 1993). The record was experimental, mixing influences from house music and raves with Duran's atmospheric synth-pop and the creative guitar work of Cuccurullo (now a full band member), as well as more mature lyrics.\n1989\u20131991: Five again, \"Decade\" and \"Liberty\".\nBy the end of 1989 and at the start of the 1990s, the popularity of synth-pop was fading and losing fans to other momentum-gaining music genres at the time, such as hip hop, techno and alternative rock. After touring for the album finished, the band regained a five-man membership as Cuccurullo and Campbell were made full members of Duran Duran.\nThe compilation album \"Decade\" was released late in 1989, along with the megamix single \"Burning the Ground\", which consisted of woven snippets of the band's hits from the previous ten years, created and produced with John Jones, who began working with the band after the release of \"Big Thing\". The single came and went with little fanfare, but the album became another major seller for the band. The 1990 release \"Liberty\" (a retreat from the experimentation of \"Big Thing\") failed to capitalise on any regained momentum. The album entered the UK album chart in the top ten, but faded away quickly. The singles \"Violence of Summer (Love's Taking Over)\" and \"Serious\" were only mildly successful. For the first time, Duran Duran did not tour in support of an album, performing on only a handful of club dates and TV shows. Campbell left the band early in 1991, going on to work with Soul Asylum and David Bowie. The quartet of Le Bon, Rhodes, John Taylor and Cuccurullo would remain intact for six more years.\n1992\u20131996: Quartet line-up and a brief comeback.\nIn 1993, the band released a second self-titled album: this \"Duran Duran\" album is known as \"The Wedding Album\" (for Nick Egan's cover art featuring the wedding photos of the band members' parents) to distinguish it from the 1981 release, and was produced and recorded with John Jones. The release of this first \"comeback\" album was delayed, with then manager at Left Bank, Tommy Manzi, later telling HitQuarters that this was due to industry resistance to the revival of the band, who he said would rather focus on \"the next hip band\". Listener demand for leaked single \"Ordinary World\" forced it onto radio playlists months earlier than planned; it reached number three on the US chart and number six in the UK and won a prestigious Ivor Novello Award for song writing.\n\"Come Undone\", primarily written by Cuccurullo, with lyrics by Le Bon, made number seven in the US and number 13 in the UK. Both the band and the record label seemed to be caught by surprise by the album's critical and commercial success (number four in the UK, number seven in the US). John Taylor had been considering leaving the band but changed his mind. The band's largest tour ever, which included stops in the Middle East, the then recently de-embargoed South Africa, and South America, was halted after seven months when Le Bon suffered from strained vocal cords. After six weeks' recuperation, the band performed intermittently for another five months, including appearances in Israel, Thailand, and Indonesia.\nIn 1995, the band released the cover album \"Thank You\". Songs from \"Thank You\" included covers of Lou Reed's \"Perfect Day\" and Melle Mel's \"White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)\" (with backing vocals from the original artists). The album also marked the temporary return of former drummer Roger Taylor, who joined the band in studio to play drums on \"Watching the Detectives\" and \"Perfect Day\" (as well as a cover of \"Jeepster\" by T. Rex that did not appear on the album). In a video interview provided with the album's electronic press kit, Reed said he considered Duran Duran's version the best cover ever done of one of his songs, and they received praise from Robert Plant and Jimmy Page for their cover of Led Zeppelin's \"Thank You\".\n1997\u20132000: John Taylor's departure and second trio.\nAfter the promo tour for \"Thank You\" was completed, John Taylor co-founded the B5 Records label, recorded a solo album, founded and toured with the supergroup Neurotic Outsiders, and reunited the Power Station, though the project proceeded without him when he had to withdraw to deal with his divorce. Finally, after struggling for months to record the next album, \"Medazzaland\", in January 1997, John Taylor announced at the DuranCon fan convention that he was leaving the band \"for good\". His departure reduced the band to two long time members (Le Bon and Rhodes) and Cuccurullo, who decided to continue recording under the name Duran Duran.\nFreed from some internal writing conflicts, the band returned to the studio to rewrite and re-record many of the songs on \"Medazzaland\" (John Taylor's work remains on only four tracks). The album marked a return to the layered experimentation of \"Big Thing\", with intricate guitar textures and processed vocals. The track \"Out of My Mind\" was used as the theme song for the film \"The Saint\" (1997), but the only true single to be released in the United States was the quirky \"Electric Barbarella\", which is one of the first singles ever to be sold online. The music video for this single, featuring a sexy robot purchased and played with by band members, had to be censored before airing on MTV, but there was little of the controversy that had surrounded \"Girls on Film\". \"Electric Barbarella\" peaked at number 52 in the US in October 1997. Although \"Medazzaland\" was released in the US in October 1997, the album was never released in the UK. \"Electric Barbarella\" was later released in the UK as a single from the 1998 \"Greatest\" compilation album and peaked at number 23 on the UK chart in January 1999. The group played a set at the Princess Diana Tribute Concert on 27 June 1998 by special request of her family.\nDuran Duran parted ways with Capitol/EMI in 1999, although the label has since used Duran Duran's back catalogue to release several compilations of remixes and rare vinyl-only B-sides. The band then signed what was intended to be a three-album contract with Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records, but it lasted only through the poorly received 2000 album \"Pop Trash\". This slow-paced and heavy album seemed out-of-keeping with earlier band material. Rhodes' intricate production and Cuccurullo's songwriting and experimentation with guitar sounds and time signatures were not enough to hook the public, and the album did not perform well. The dreamy single \"Someone Else Not Me\" lasted barely two weeks on the radio, although its video was noted as the first to be produced entirely with Flash animation. While supporting \"Medazzaland\" and \"Pop Trash\", Duran Duran toured with bassist Wes Wehmiller and drummer Joe Travers.\n2001\u20132005: Reunion.\nIn 2000, Le Bon approached John Taylor with a proposal to reform Duran Duran's classic line-up. They agreed to part company with Cuccurullo after completing the \"Pop Trash\" tour. Cuccurullo then announced on his website that he was leaving Duran Duran to resume work with his 1980s band Missing Persons. This announcement was confirmed the next day by Duran Duran's website, followed a day later by the news that John, Roger and Andy had rejoined. To fulfill contractual obligations, Cuccurullo played three Duran Duran concerts in Japan in June 2001, ending his tenure in the band.\nThroughout 2001, 2002 and 2003, the band worked on writing new material, initially renting a house in Saint-Tropez where audio engineer Mark Tinley built a recording studio for their first serious writing session. They then returned to London to do some self-financed work with various producers (including old friend Nile Rodgers) and search for a new record deal. It proved difficult to find a record label willing to gamble on the band's comeback, so Duran Duran went on tour to prove the drawing power of the reunited band. The response of the fans and the media exceeded expectations. The band played a handful of 25th-anniversary dates across 2003, starting with two arena dates in Tokyo filled to capacity. Tickets sold out for each show within minutes, and celebrities turned out \"en masse\" for reunion dates. Amongst these were a number of shows at smaller venues that the band had played on both sides of the pond when they first got together in the early 1980s. In August, the band were booked as presenters at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, only to be surprised with a Lifetime Achievement Award. They also received a Lifetime Achievement award from \"Q\" magazine in October, and the equivalent Outstanding Contribution award at the BRIT Awards in February 2004.\nThe pace picked up with a sold-out tour of America, Australia and New Zealand. The band played a full concert at a private tailgate party at Super Bowl XXXVIII, their performance of \"The Wild Boys\" broadcast to millions during the pre-game show. A remix of the new track \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\" was released on many TV shows in February while magazines hailed (the modern \"Fab Five\") Duran Duran as one of the greatest bands of all time. Duran Duran then celebrated their homecoming to the UK with fourteen stadium dates in April 2004, including five sold-out nights at Wembley Arena. The British press, traditionally hostile to the band, accorded the shows some very warm reviews. Duran Duran brought along band Goldfrapp and the Scissor Sisters as alternating opening acts for this tour. The last two shows were filmed, resulting in the concert DVD \"Duran Duran: Live from London\" which was released in November.\nFinally, with more than thirty-five songs completed, the band signed a two-album contract with Epic Records in June, and completed the new album, now titled \"Astronaut\". The album was released in October 2004 and entered the UK charts at number three and the US charts at number 17. The first single was \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\", which reached number one on the \"Billboard\" US Dance chart in November and peaked at number five on the UK Singles Chart, Duran Duran's highest chart position since \"A View to a Kill\" in 1985. A second single, \"What Happens Tomorrow\", debuted at No.\u00a011 on the UK chart in February. A 5.1 mix of \"Astronaut\" was created by Jeremy Wheatley for the dual-disc release of \"Astronaut\". The CD side contains the album as-is and the DVD side contains the 5.1 mix of the album in DVD Audio format along with some DVD footage and videos.\nAfter a world tour in early 2005, Duran Duran were presented with the PRS Outstanding Contribution to British Music at the 2005 Ivor Novello Awards. Later that summer, the band headlined the massive Live 8 concert, Rome on 2 July 2005 in the Circus Maximus.\n2006\u20132008: \"Red Carpet Massacre\" and Andy Taylor's second departure.\nIn early 2006, Duran Duran covered John Lennon's song \"Instant Karma!\" for the \"Make Some Noise\" campaign sponsored by Amnesty International. Their version later appeared on \"\" as an iTunes exclusive bonus track. They also performed at two high-profile events\u00a0\u2013 the Nobel Prize Awards and the 2006 Winter Olympics. After a couple of weeks of songwriting in Northern California, the band began working with producer Michael Patterson in London, and continued intermittently for the next several months. At one point, they reported having had fifteen tracks nearly complete for an album tentatively titled \"Reportage\", but no further news emerged from the band for months afterward. In September, the band held meetings in New York City with Justin Timberlake and producer Timbaland with an eye to a potential collaboration and were soon reported to have completed three songs with the producer, including a song with Justin Timberlake.\nOn 25 October 2006, Duran Duran parted company with Andy Taylor once again. In an official announcement on their website, the band stated that an \"unworkable gulf\" had developed between them and Taylor and that \"we can no longer effectively function together\". It was noted by Andy Taylor in his book \"Wild Boy\" that tensions had arisen between the group's management and himself, and he was also diagnosed with clinical depression connected with the death of his father. Dom Brown, who had previously toured with the band, again took over guitar duties and has been performing with them since. After Taylor's departure, the band scrapped the \"Reportage\" album. They wrote and recorded a new album titled \"Red Carpet Massacre\" (2007), which included the Timbaland tracks. Dom Brown is the featured guitarist on the album.\nIn July 2007, the band performed twice at Wembley Stadium. Their first appearance at the stadium was the Concert for Diana which celebrated the life of Princess Diana almost 10 years after her death. The band performed \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\", \"The Wild Boys\" and \"Rio\". Their second appearance was at Live Earth concert, London. On 25 September, the Timberlake collaboration \"Falling Down\" was released as a download single on iTunes, and the band announced that they would play nine shows at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway to launch the \"Red Carpet Massacre\" album. The album launch was later extended to incorporate a show in London on 3 December 2007 and one in Dublin on 5 December 2007.\nIn May 2008, they toured the US leg of their 2008 world tour and were supported by the British band Your Vegas. In June 2008, they played the Louvre in Paris in a fundraising effort that contributed to the restoration of a Louis XV drawing room. Guests dined, privately viewed some of the museum's artworks, then attended a performance by the band in the I.M. Pei-designed Pyramid du Louvre. The group's performance marked a first for the 18th-century museum which had never before allowed a rock concert to occur anywhere within the grounds or buildings and another groundbreaker for Duran Duran.\nOn 2 July 2008, in Paris, Mark Ronson performed a unique live set with Duran Duran for an exclusive, invitation-only performance. Together, they showcased specially re-worked versions of some of Duran Duran's classic hits re-created by Ronson, along with tracks from \"Red Carpet Massacre\". Le Bon also performed songs from Ronson's latest album, \"Version\" (2007), as one of Ronson's featured guest vocalists. Unlike the band's previous album \"Astronaut\" (2004), \"Red Carpet Massacre\" sold poorly and received mixed responses from the music press. In 2008, \"Rio\" was included in the \"Classic Albums\" series.\n2009\u20132012: \"All You Need Is Now\".\nThe band departed from Epic Records in 2009, after releasing just two albums. In early 2010, it was revealed that the band would be contributing a cover of \"Boys Keep Swinging\" to a tribute/charity record for David Bowie called \"\" from which all profits go to War Child. Other contributing artists included Carla Bruni, Devendra Banhart, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, and Warpaint. The album was released on 14 September 2010 on Manimal Vinyl Records. A limited edition split 7-inch single with Duran Duran and Carla Bruni was also released on Manimal Vinyl in December 2010.\nOn 21 December 2010, Duran Duran's thirteenth album, titled \"All You Need Is Now\", produced by the Grammy Award-winning Mark Ronson and mixed by Spike Stent, was released exclusively on iTunes and hit the number one spot on download charts in 15 countries (including the UK). The first single from the record, title track \"All You Need Is Now\", was free to download worldwide on 8 December 2010 exclusively in iTunes. Guitarist and songwriter Dom Brown co-wrote all but two songs on the album.\nOn 25 February 2011, while in Milan, Duran Duran received a Style Icons of the 20th Century Award and a key to the city, presented by the city's mayor Letizia Moratti.\nIn March 2011 the band embarked on a world tour in support of the album. After a warm-up show in London, the tour officially began 16 March 2011 in Austin, Texas. On 23 March, the band performed live at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles as the start of the second season of \"\". The concert was directed by David Lynch and live-streamed on YouTube. The band was joined onstage by Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, Beth Ditto of Gossip, and Kelis. On 17 April 2011, Duran Duran performed at the Coachella Music Festival located at Empire Polo Grounds, in Indio, California. In May 2011, Le Bon contracted laryngitis leading to either cancellation or rescheduling of most of the European dates for the \"All You Need Is Now\" World Tour.\nOn 27 July 2012, Duran Duran headlined the London Summer Olympics 2012 Opening Ceremony celebration in Hyde Park. They represented England, along with Snow Patrol for Northern Ireland, Stereophonics for Wales, and Paolo Nutini for Scotland. At the end of August 2012, with one week left of their 18-month world tour, the band were forced to cancel the rest of the North American leg of the tour as Nick Rhodes had become ill with a viral infection.\n2013\u20132018: \"Paper Gods\".\nOn 4 March 2013, the band returned to the studio to work on their fourteenth album, and continued during the week beginning 23 September. They reconvened 13 to 18 December. On 31 December 2013, the band posted a mixtape curated by John Taylor as a New Year's \"thank you\" to their fans. On 10 February 2014, John Taylor and Roger Taylor worked with the Voce Chamber Choir and London Youth Chamber Choir on vocals for use on some Duran Duran tracks. Then former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante worked with the band on the new album.\nOn 11 September 2015, the album \"Paper Gods\" was released. The single \"Pressure Off\" was also released the same week, first via Microsoft's Xbox Music. The song subsequently appeared on Google Play Music. The album debuted at number 10 on the \"Billboard\" 200, the band's highest debut in 22 years. The album also reached number two in Italy, number four in the Netherlands, and number five in the UK. In 2016, the artist MNDR stood in for Rhodes during part of the third leg of the Paper Gods tour in the United States, while he returned to the UK in order to attend to an urgent family matter. Rhodes was quoted as saying, \"I will be back as soon as I can but know, in the meantime, that I am leaving both the band and fans in great hands, with the fabulous MNDR.\" Also, several remixes of their song \"Last Night in the City\" were released in digital form in that year.\nIn December 2016, the original five-piece lineup lost a case in the British High Court after they attempted to reclaim the U.S. copyright on their first three albums from Gloucester Place Music, part of EMI Music Publishing. Rhodes commented, \"We signed a publishing agreement as unsuspecting teenagers, over three decades ago, when just starting out and when we knew no better... if left untested, this judgment sets a very bad precedent for all songwriters of our era.\" In March 2020, Duran Duran signed with the Warner/Chappell Music publisher, covering their post-1986 catalogue. The band spent 2017 touring the American continent and playing a handful of festival dates in Europe and Asia.\n2019\u20132022: \"Future Past\" and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction.\nIn 2019, Duran Duran were working on a new album with Ronson, Erol Alkan and Giorgio Moroder handling production duties, and Graham Coxon and Lykke Li being confirmed as collaborators. Rhodes described the content and sound of a possible first single to be \"very different for us.\" Initially planned for release in 2020, the recording of the album was put on hold in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On 8 January 2021, a cover of \"Five Years\" by David Bowie was released for the fifth anniversary of his death. On 13 January 2021, \"Rolling Stone\" included the album at number 50 on their \"54 Most Anticipated Albums of 2021\" list. Le Bon said that the album is \"quite naked, raw. The grass is slightly sharp and twinkly rather than smooth,\" and is \"groovy (and) modern and very honest. The lyrics are quite something.\u201d On 18 May, the album title was announced as \"Future Past\".\nOn 19 May, the first single from the album \"Invisible\" was released along with a music video, and features Coxon as a guitarist and co-writer. On 9 July, the band premiered a second song from the album titled \"Give It All Up\" on NBC's \"Today\" show. On 5 August, Duran Duran released the album's second single \"More Joy!\", featuring further collaboration with Coxon, Erol Alkan and also Japanese rock band Chai. On 12 August, the band appeared on \"The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon\" performing \"Invisible\". On 31 August, Duran Duran released the album's third single \"Anniversary\", followed by the fourth single, \"Tonight United\", on 24 September. On 14 and 15 September, the band played two sold-out gigs at Birmingham's O2 Institute. That was the first time they played live since their last live gig in 2019. Along with their hit songs, they performed three tracks from \"Future Past\"\u2014\"Invisible\", \"Anniversary\" and \"Tonight United\". The band headlined the Isle of Wight festival on 19 September.\nOn 22 October 2021, \"Future Past\" was released. The album entered the UK Album Chart at number three, the band's highest peak since 2004's \"Astronaut\". This also earned the band the distinction of having UK Top 5 albums in each of the five decades they had been releasing music (1980s\u20132020s). On 22 January 2022, Duran Duran played on \"Austin City Limits\". In June 2022, Duran Duran performed at the Platinum Party at the Palace. In July 2022, the band returned to the city of their origin, Birmingham to headline the opening ceremony of Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games playing to a capacity Alexander Stadium.\nIn 2022, the band topped the fan vote (over 1 million preferences) for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the class of 2022, and in May of that year were announced as one of the seven inductees in the \"Performer\" category. \nOn 11 July 2022, Duran Duran headlined a concert in Hyde Park, London, to more than 80,000 adoring fans, as part of the 2022 BST concert series.\nThe ceremony at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was held on 5 November 2022, where Robert Downey Jr. inducted the band. John Taylor, Roger Taylor, Rhodes and Le Bon each attended the induction ceremony and performed \"Girls on Film\", \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Ordinary World\" along with longtime touring guitarist Dom Brown. During the acceptance speech, Simon Le Bon read from a letter written by Andy Taylor, who was absent from the ceremony, that revealed he has been privately fighting stage IV metastatic prostate cancer for the past four years and was \"massively disappointed\" he couldn't attend.\n2023\u2013present: \"Danse Macabre\".\nOn 20 March 2023, Duran Duran took to their Instagram to announce they are working on a new musical project, set for release in late 2023. The work will feature a collaboration with former band members Andy Taylor and Warren Cuccurullo. The project, \"Danse Macabre\", was released on 27 October. A Halloween-themed album, it features new songs, reworkings of older material and several covers.\nThe first single \u2013 the title track \"Danse Macabre\" \u2013 was released on 30 August 2023. The second single, \"Black Moonlight\", followed on 21 September.\nOn 13 September 2024, the band released a new reworking of their 1983 single \"New Moon on Monday\" titled \"New Moon (Dark Phase)\", ahead of a planned deluxe reissue of \"Danse Macabre\". The single features contributions from Andy Taylor.\nIn 2025, Carlo Conti announced that Duran Duran would be special guests of Sanremo Music Festival in the third night. They perform with Victoria De Angelis.\nInfluences.\nAlthough they began their career as \"a group of art school, experimental, post punk rockers,\" the band's quick rise to stardom, polished good looks and embrace of the teen press almost guaranteed disfavour from music critics. During the 1980s, Duran Duran were considered the quintessential manufactured, throw-away pop group. However, according to the \"Sunday Herald\", \"To describe them, as some have, as the first boy band, misrepresents their appeal. Their weapons were never just their looks, but self-penned songs.\" Moby said of the band in his blog in 2003: \"...\u00a0they were cursed by what we can call the 'Bee Gees' curse, which is: 'write amazing songs, sell tons of records, and consequently incur the wrath or disinterest of the rock obsessed critical establishment.'\"\nInfluences on Duran Duran included David Bowie, Roxy Music, the Beatles and the Doors; the electronic music of John Foxx's Ultravox, Kraftwerk, the Yellow Magic Orchestra and Giorgio Moroder; glam rock and American rock such as T. Rex, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and Sparks; British punk and post-punk bands such as the Clash, Sex Pistols and Siouxsie and the Banshees; and the disco/funk band Chic. Duran Duran were also influenced by contemporary synth-pop groups, with records by Japan, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and the Human League becoming fixtures in Rhodes's 1980 DJ sets at the Rum Runner club. Andy Taylor was a fan of the rock band AC/DC, \"...all these different influences were coming into the studio. Somehow, it had its own life. It became very unique in itself. It was influenced by a lot of different people\", Roger Taylor said in a 2012 interview.\nSeveral of the band's contemporaries including the Bangles, Elton John, Kylie Minogue, Paul Young and even the Monkees, have named themselves fans of the band's music. Le Bon described the group as \"the band to dance to when the bomb drops\". Successors like Barenaked Ladies, Beck, Jonathan Davis of Korn, the Bravery, Gwen Stefani and Pink have all cited Duran Duran as a key band in their formative years. Justin Timberlake is a fan of the band and presented them with the Outstanding Contribution award at the 2004 Brit Awards. The most recent crop of performers to name Duran Duran as an influence include Dido, Franz Ferdinand, Panic! at the Disco, Goldfrapp and Brandon Flowers of the Killers, who said, \"Nick Rhodes is an absolute hero of mine\u2014their records still sound fresh, which is no mean feat as far as synths are concerned.\"\nRhodes has directly lent his production techniques to Kajagoogoo's debut album \"White Feathers\" (1983) and its number one single \"Too Shy\", and to the Dandy Warhols' fourth album \"Welcome to the Monkey House\" (2003). The band's music has been used by several hip hop artists, most notably the Notorious B.I.G., who sampled Duran Duran's 1986 single \"Notorious\". Numerous bands have covered their music on record and in concert.\nVideos.\nThe MTV cable channel and the band were launched at about the same time, and each had a hand in propelling the other to greater heights. MTV needed showcase videos with charismatic performers. Les Garland, senior executive vice-president at MTV, said \"I remember our director of talent and artist relations came running in and said, \"You have got to see this video that's come in\". Duran Duran were getting zero radio airplay at the time, and MTV wanted to try to break new music. \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" was the greatest video I'd ever seen\". The band's video work was influential in several ways. First, Duran Duran filmed in exotic locales like Sri Lanka and Antigua, creating memorable images that were radically different from the then-common low budget \"band-playing-on-a-stage\" videos. Second, rather than simply playing their instruments, the band participated in mini-storylines (often taking inspiration from contemporary movies: \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" riffs on 1981's \"Raiders of the Lost Ark\", \"The Wild Boys\" on 1981's \"Mad Max 2\"), etc. While videos were already headed in this direction, Duran Duran led the trend with a style, featuring quick editing, arresting graphic design, and surreal-to-nonsensical image inserts, that drew attention from commentators and spawned a wealth of imitators.\nDuran Duran were among the first bands to have their videos shot with a professional movie camera on 35mm film, rather than on videotape, making them look superior to many of the quickly shot videos which had been MTV staples until then. MTV provided Duran Duran with access to American radio markets that were unfriendly to British music, new wave music, or \"anything with synthesisers\". Because MTV was not available everywhere in the United States at first, it was easy to see a pattern: where MTV went, listener demand for Duran Duran, Tears for Fears, Def Leppard and other European bands with interesting videos went through the roof. The band's sun-drenched videos for \"Rio\", \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Save a Prayer\", and the surreal \"Is There Something I Should Know?\" were filmed by future movie director Russell Mulcahy, who made eleven videos for the band. Duran Duran have always sought out innovative directors and techniques, even in their later years when MTV gave them little airplay. In addition to Mulcahy, they have had videos filmed by influential photographers Dean Chamberlain and Ellen von Unwerth, Chinese director Chen Kaige, documentary filmmaker Julien Temple, and the Polish Brothers, among others. According to Rhodes, \"Video is to us like stereo was to Pink Floyd.\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"The British won out here, hands down. Next to the prosaic, foursquare appearance of the American bands, such acts as Duran Duran seemed like caviar. MTV opened up a whole new world that could not be fully apprehended over the radio. The visual angle played to the arty conceits of Britain's young style barons, suggesting something more exotic than the viewer was likely to find in the old hometown. The big Duran Duran hits, \"Girls on Film\" and \"Hungry Like the Wolf\", were MTV favorites three months before radio began to pick up on them. And via MTV, Duran Duran and their like have engendered an outpouring of good old-fashioned hysteria among teenage girls.\"\nIn 1984, Duran Duran introduced video technology into their live stadium shows by being among the first acts to provide video screens above the stage. They have recorded concerts using IMAX and 360-degree panoramic \"immersive video\" cameras, with 10.2 channel audio. In 2000, they experimented with augmented reality technology, which allowed three-dimensional computer-generated images to appear on stage with the band. They appeared on several century-end video countdowns: The MTV \"100 Greatest Videos Ever Made\" featured \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" at No.\u00a011 and \"Girls on Film\" at No.\u00a068, and the \"VH1: 100 Greatest Videos\" listed \"Hungry\" at No.\u00a031 and \"Rio\" at No.\u00a060. MTV named \"Hungry\" the 15th of their most played videos of all time.\nThe band has released several video compilations, starting with the self-titled \"video album\" \"Duran Duran\" (1983), for which they won a Grammy Award, up to the 2004 two-disc DVD release \"Greatest\", which included alternative versions of several popular videos as Easter eggs. In addition to \"Greatest\", the documentary \"Sing Blue Silver\", and the concert film \"Arena\" (both from 1984) were released on DVD in 2004. \"Live from London\", a concert video from one of their sold-out 2004 reunion shows at Wembley Arena, was released in the fall of 2005.\nOther video collections, concert films, and documentaries remain available only on videotape, and Duran Duran have not yet released a collection which includes all their videos. The band has said that a huge amount of unreleased concert and documentary footage has been filmed over the years, which they hope can be edited and released in some form in the near future. The video for \"Falling Down\" was released in October 2007. The Nick Egan-directed video for the lead single and title track from \"All You Need Is Now\" was premiered via Yahoo Music on 20 December 2010. The second video from \"All You Need Is Now\", \"Girl Panic\", was released on 8 November 2011. It features some of the world's most famous supermodels, such as Yasmin Le Bon, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Eva Herzigov\u00e1 and Helena Christensen, playing the band. The video was directed by Jonas Akerlund, and during the filming, an editorial was made for \"Harper's Bazaar\" magazine.\nVisual style.\nFrom the beginning of their career, all the members had a keen sense of visual style. They worked with stylist Perry Haines and fashion designers such as Kahn & Bell and Antony Price to build a sharp and elegant image, soon outgrowing the ruffles and sashes of the pirate-flavoured early New Romantic look that had been popularised by Adam Ant during 1980\u201381. They have continued to present fashion as part of their package throughout their career. In the 1990s they worked with Vivienne Westwood and in the 2000s with Giorgio Armani. The band retained creative control of their visual presentation having worked closely with graphic designer Malcolm Garrett and many others over the years to create album covers, tour programs and other materials.\nTeen and music magazines in the UK latched onto their good looks quickly, and the USA soon followed. It was a rare month in the early 1980s when there was not at least one picture of the band members in teen magazines such as \"Smash Hits\" or \"Tiger Beat\". John Taylor once remarked that the band was \"like a box of Quality Street [chocolates]; everyone is someone's favourite\" Duran Duran later came to regret this early pin-up exposure, but at the time it helped attract national attention. In an interview with \"Rock Fever Superstars\" magazine in early 1988, John Taylor stated:\nWe used to be a very chi-chi name to drop in '79, but then the Fab Five hype started and something went wrong. Something went really wrong. That wasn't what I wanted. [...] Not that I didn't like being screamed at. At one point I really did\".\nDiscography.\nStudio albums\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nTours.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nExplanatory notes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["14054551", "148703"], "permutation_1": ["148703", "14054551"], "permutation_2": ["148703", "14054551"], "permutation_3": ["148703", "14054551"]}
{"id": "2hop__16844_20510", "docs_added": {"47923": "Queen Victoria\nQueen of the United Kingdom from 1837 to 1901\nVictoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 \u2013 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 216 days, which was longer than those of any of her predecessors, constituted the Victorian era. It was a period of industrial, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. In 1876, the British parliament voted to grant her the additional title of Empress of India.\nVictoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn (the fourth son of King George III), and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. After the deaths of her father and grandfather in 1820, she was raised under close supervision by her mother and her comptroller, John Conroy. She inherited the throne aged 18 after her father's three elder brothers died without surviving legitimate issue. Victoria, a constitutional monarch, attempted privately to influence government policy and ministerial appointments; publicly, she became a national icon who was identified with strict standards of personal morality.\nVictoria married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in 1840. Their nine children married into royal and noble families across the continent, earning Victoria the sobriquet \"grandmother of Europe\". After Albert's death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances. As a result of her seclusion, British republicanism temporarily gained strength, but in the latter half of her reign, her popularity recovered. Her Golden and Diamond jubilees were times of public celebration. Victoria died at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, at the age of 81. The last British monarch of the House of Hanover, she was succeeded by her son Edward VII of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.\nEarly life.\nBirth and ancestry.\nVictoria's father was Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of King George\u00a0III and Queen Charlotte. Until 1817, King George's only legitimate grandchild was Edward's niece Princess Charlotte of Wales, the daughter of George, Prince Regent (who would become George IV). Princess Charlotte's death in 1817 precipitated a succession crisis that brought pressure on Prince Edward and his unmarried brothers to marry and have children. In 1818, the Duke of Kent married Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, a widowed German princess with two children\u2014Carl (1804\u20131856) and Feodora (1807\u20131872)\u2014by her first marriage to Emich Carl, 2nd Prince of Leiningen. Her brother Leopold was Princess Charlotte's widower and later the first king of Belgium. The Duke and Duchess of Kent's only child, Victoria was born at 4:15\u00a0a.m. on Monday, 24 May 1819 at Kensington Palace in London.\nVictoria was christened privately by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Manners-Sutton, on 24 June 1819 in the Cupola Room at Kensington Palace. She was baptised \"Alexandrina\" after one of her godparents, Tsar Alexander I of Russia, and \"Victoria\", after her mother. Additional names proposed by her parents\u2014Georgina (or Georgiana), Charlotte, and Augusta\u2014were dropped on the instructions of the Prince Regent.\nAt birth, Victoria was fifth in the line of succession after the four eldest sons of George\u00a0III: George, Prince Regent (later George\u00a0IV); Frederick, Duke of York; William, Duke of Clarence (later William\u00a0IV); and Victoria's father, Edward, Duke of Kent. Prince George had no surviving children, and Prince Frederick had no children; further, both were estranged from their wives, who were both past child-bearing age, so the two eldest brothers were unlikely to have any further legitimate children. William married in 1818, in a joint ceremony with his brother Edward, but both of William's legitimate daughters died as infants. The first of these was Princess Charlotte, who was born and died on 27 March 1819, two months before Victoria was born. Victoria's father died in January 1820, when Victoria was less than a year old. A week later her grandfather died and was succeeded by his eldest son as George\u00a0IV. Victoria was then third in line to the throne after Frederick and William. She was fourth in line while William's second daughter, Princess Elizabeth, lived, from 10 December 1820 to 4\u00a0March 1821.\nHeir presumptive.\nPrince Frederick died in 1827, followed by George\u00a0IV in 1830; their next surviving brother succeeded to the throne as William\u00a0IV, and Victoria became heir presumptive. The Regency Act 1830 made special provision for Victoria's mother to act as regent in case William died while Victoria was still a minor. King William distrusted the Duchess's capacity to be regent, and in 1836 he declared in her presence that he wanted to live until Victoria's 18th birthday, so that a regency could be avoided.\nVictoria later described her childhood as \"rather melancholy\". Her mother was extremely protective, and Victoria was raised largely isolated from other children under the so-called \"Kensington System\", an elaborate set of rules and protocols devised by the Duchess and her ambitious and domineering comptroller, Sir John Conroy, who was rumoured to be the Duchess's lover. The system prevented the princess from meeting people whom her mother and Conroy deemed undesirable (including most of her father's family), and was designed to render her weak and dependent upon them. The Duchess avoided the court because she was scandalised by the presence of King William's illegitimate children. Victoria shared a bedroom with her mother every night, studied with private tutors to a regular timetable, and spent her play-hours with her dolls and her King Charles Spaniel, Dash. Her lessons included French, German, Italian, and Latin, but she spoke only English at home. At age ten, she wrote and illustrated a children's story, \"The Adventures of Alice Laselles\", which was eventually published in 2015.\nIn 1830, the Duchess and Conroy took Victoria across the centre of England to visit the Malvern Hills, stopping at towns and great country houses along the way. Similar journeys to other parts of England and Wales were taken in 1832, 1833, 1834 and 1835. To the King's annoyance, Victoria was enthusiastically welcomed in each of the stops. William compared the journeys to royal progresses and was concerned that they portrayed Victoria as his rival rather than his heir presumptive. Victoria disliked the trips; the constant round of public appearances made her tired and ill, and there was little time for her to rest. She objected on the grounds of the King's disapproval, but her mother dismissed his complaints as motivated by jealousy and forced Victoria to continue the tours. At Ramsgate in October 1835, Victoria contracted a severe fever, which Conroy initially dismissed as a childish pretence. While Victoria was ill, Conroy and the Duchess unsuccessfully badgered her to make Conroy her private secretary. As a teenager, Victoria resisted persistent attempts by her mother and Conroy to appoint him to her staff. Once queen, she banned him from her presence, but he remained in her mother's household.\nBy 1836, Victoria's maternal uncle Leopold, who had been King of the Belgians since 1831, hoped to marry her to Prince Albert, the son of his brother Ernest I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Leopold arranged for Victoria's mother to invite her Coburg relatives to visit her in May 1836, with the purpose of introducing Victoria to Albert. William IV, however, disapproved of any match with the Coburgs, and instead favoured the suit of Prince Alexander of the Netherlands, second son of the Prince of Orange. Victoria was aware of the various matrimonial plans and critically appraised a parade of eligible princes. According to her diary, she enjoyed Albert's company from the beginning. After the visit she wrote, \"[Albert] is extremely handsome; his hair is about the same colour as mine; his eyes are large and blue, and he has a beautiful nose and a very sweet mouth with fine teeth; but the charm of his countenance is his expression, which is most delightful.\" Alexander, on the other hand, she described as \"very plain\".\nVictoria wrote to King Leopold, whom she considered her \"best and kindest adviser\", to thank him \"for the prospect of \"great\" happiness you have contributed to give me, in the person of dear Albert\u00a0... He possesses every quality that could be desired to render me perfectly happy. He is so sensible, so kind, and so good, and so amiable too. He has besides the most pleasing and delightful exterior and appearance you can possibly see.\" However at 17, Victoria, though interested in Albert, was not yet ready to marry. The parties did not undertake a formal engagement, but assumed that the match would take place in due time.\nAccession and early reign.\nVictoria turned 18 on 24 May 1837, and a regency was avoided. Less than a month later, on 20 June 1837, William IV died at the age of 71, and Victoria became Queen of the United Kingdom. In her diary she wrote, \"I was awoke at 6\u00a0o'clock by Mamma, who told me the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conyngham were here and wished to see me. I got out of bed and went into my sitting-room (only in my dressing gown) and \"alone\", and saw them. Lord Conyngham then acquainted me that my poor Uncle, the King, was no more, and had expired at 12 minutes past 2\u00a0this morning, and consequently that \"I\" am \"Queen\".\" Official documents prepared on the first day of her reign described her as Alexandrina Victoria, but the first name was withdrawn at her own wish and not used again.\nSince 1714, Britain had shared a monarch with Hanover in Germany, but under Salic law, women were excluded from the Hanoverian succession. While Victoria inherited the British throne, her father's unpopular younger brother, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, became King of Hanover. He was Victoria's heir presumptive until she had a child.\nAt the time of Victoria's accession, the government was led by the Whig prime minister Lord Melbourne. He at once became a powerful influence on the politically inexperienced monarch, who relied on him for advice. Charles Greville supposed that the widowed and childless Melbourne was \"passionately fond of her as he might be of his daughter if he had one\", and Victoria probably saw him as a father figure. Her coronation took place on 28 June 1838 at Westminster Abbey. Over 400,000 visitors came to London for the celebrations. She became the first sovereign to take up residence at Buckingham Palace and inherited the revenues of the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall as well as being granted a civil list allowance of \u00a3385,000 per year. Financially prudent, she paid off her father's debts.\nAt the start of her reign Victoria was popular, but her reputation suffered in an 1839 court intrigue when one of her mother's ladies-in-waiting, Lady Flora Hastings, developed an abdominal growth that was widely rumoured to be an out-of-wedlock pregnancy by Sir John Conroy. Victoria believed the rumours. She hated Conroy, and despised \"that odious Lady Flora\", because she had conspired with Conroy and the Duchess in the Kensington System. At first, Lady Flora refused to submit to an intimate medical examination, until in mid-February she eventually acquiesced, and was found to be a virgin. Conroy, the Hastings family, and the opposition Tories organised a press campaign implicating the Queen in the spreading of false rumours about Lady Flora. When Lady Flora died in July, the post-mortem revealed a large tumour on her liver that had distended her abdomen. At public appearances, Victoria was hissed and jeered at as \"Mrs. Melbourne\".\nIn 1839, Melbourne resigned after Radicals and Tories (both of whom Victoria detested) voted against a bill to suspend the constitution of Jamaica. The bill removed political power from plantation owners who were resisting measures associated with the abolition of slavery. The Queen commissioned a Tory, Robert Peel, to form a new ministry. At the time, it was customary for the prime minister to appoint members of the Royal Household, who were usually his political allies and their spouses. Many of the Queen's ladies of the bedchamber were wives of Whigs, and Peel expected to replace them with wives of Tories. In what became known as the \"bedchamber crisis\", Victoria, advised by Melbourne, objected to their removal. Peel refused to govern under the restrictions imposed by the Queen, and consequently resigned his commission, allowing Melbourne to return to office.\nMarriage and public life.\nAlthough Victoria was now queen, as an unmarried young woman she was required by social convention to live with her mother, despite their differences over the Kensington System and her mother's continued reliance on Conroy. The duchess was consigned to a remote apartment in Buckingham Palace, and Victoria often refused to see her. When Victoria complained to Melbourne that her mother's proximity promised \"torment for many years\", Melbourne sympathised but said it could be avoided by marriage, which Victoria called a \"schocking [\"sic\"] alternative\". Victoria showed interest in Albert's education for the future role he would have to play as her husband, but she resisted attempts to rush her into wedlock.\nVictoria continued to praise Albert following his second visit in October 1839. They felt mutual affection and the queen proposed to him on 15 October 1839, just five days after he had arrived at Windsor. They were married on 10 February 1840, in the Chapel Royal of St James's Palace, London. Victoria was love-struck. She spent the evening after their wedding lying down with a headache, but wrote ecstatically in her diary:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I NEVER, NEVER spent such an evening!!! MY DEAREST DEAREST DEAR Albert\u00a0... his excessive love & affection gave me feelings of heavenly love & happiness I never could have \"hoped\" to have felt before! He clasped me in his arms, & we kissed each other again & again! His beauty, his sweetness & gentleness\u2014really how can I ever be thankful enough to have such a \"Husband\"!\u00a0... to be called by names of tenderness, I have never yet heard used to me before\u2014was bliss beyond belief! Oh! This was the happiest day of my life!\nAlbert became an important political adviser as well as the queen's companion, replacing Melbourne as the dominant influential figure in the first half of her life. Victoria's mother was evicted from the palace, to Ingestre House in Belgrave Square. After the death of Victoria's aunt Princess Augusta in 1840, the duchess was given both Clarence House and Frogmore House. Through Albert's mediation, relations between mother and daughter slowly improved.\nDuring Victoria's first pregnancy in 1840, in the first few months of the marriage, 18-year-old Edward Oxford attempted to assassinate her while she was riding in a carriage with Prince Albert on her way to visit her mother. Oxford fired twice, but either both bullets missed or, as he later claimed, the guns had no shot. He was tried for high treason, found not guilty by reason of insanity, committed to an insane asylum indefinitely, and later sent to live in Australia. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Victoria's popularity soared, mitigating residual discontent over the Hastings affair and the bedchamber crisis. Her daughter, also named Victoria, was born on 21 November 1840. The queen hated being pregnant, viewed breast-feeding with disgust, and thought newborn babies were ugly. Nevertheless, over the following seventeen years, she and Albert had a further eight children: Albert Edward, Alice, Alfred, Helena, Louise, Arthur, Leopold and Beatrice.\nThe household was largely run by Victoria's childhood governess, Baroness Louise Lehzen from Hanover. Lehzen had been a formative influence on Victoria and had supported her against the Kensington System. Albert, however, thought that Lehzen was incompetent and that her mismanagement threatened his daughter Victoria's health. After a furious row between Victoria and Albert over the issue, Lehzen was pensioned off in 1842, and Victoria's close relationship with her ended.\nOn 29 May 1842, Victoria was riding in a carriage along The Mall, London, when John Francis aimed a pistol at her, but the gun did not fire. The assailant escaped; the following day, Victoria drove the same route, though faster and with a greater escort, in a deliberate attempt to bait Francis into taking a second aim and catch him in the act. As expected, Francis shot at her, but he was seized by plainclothes policemen, and convicted of high treason. On 3 July, two days after Francis's death sentence was commuted to transportation for life, John William Bean also tried to fire a pistol at the queen, but it was loaded only with paper and tobacco and had too little charge. Edward Oxford felt that the attempts were encouraged by his acquittal in 1840. Bean was sentenced to 18 months in jail. In a similar attack in 1849, unemployed Irishman William Hamilton fired a powder-filled pistol at Victoria's carriage as it passed along Constitution Hill, London. In 1850, the queen did sustain injury when she was assaulted by a possibly insane ex-army officer, Robert Pate. As Victoria was riding in a carriage, Pate struck her with his cane, crushing her bonnet and bruising her forehead. Both Hamilton and Pate were sentenced to seven years' transportation.\nMelbourne's support in the House of Commons weakened through the early years of Victoria's reign, and in the 1841 general election the Whigs were defeated. Peel became prime minister, and the ladies of the bedchamber most associated with the Whigs were replaced.\nIn 1845, Ireland was hit by a potato blight. In the next four years, over a million Irish people died and another million emigrated in what became known as the Great Famine. In Ireland, Victoria was labelled \"The Famine Queen\". In January 1847 she personally donated \u00a32,000 (equivalent to between \u00a3230,000 and \u00a38.5million in 2022) to the British Relief Association, more than any other individual famine relief donor, and supported the Maynooth Grant to a Roman Catholic seminary in Ireland, despite Protestant opposition. The story that she donated only \u00a35 in aid to the Irish, and on the same day gave the same amount to Battersea Dogs Home, was a myth generated towards the end of the 19th century.\nBy 1846, Peel's ministry faced a crisis involving the repeal of the Corn Laws. Many Tories\u2014by then known also as Conservatives\u2014were opposed to the repeal, but Peel, some Tories (the free-trade oriented liberal conservative \"Peelites\"), most Whigs and Victoria supported it. Peel resigned in 1846, after the repeal narrowly passed, and was replaced by Lord John Russell.\nInternationally, Victoria took a keen interest in the improvement of relations between France and Britain. She made and hosted several visits between the British royal family and the House of Orleans, who were related by marriage through the Coburgs. In 1843 and 1845, she and Albert stayed with King Louis Philippe I at Ch\u00e2teau d'Eu in Normandy; she was the first British or English monarch to visit a French monarch since the meeting of Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France on the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. When Louis Philippe made a reciprocal trip in 1844, he became the first French king to visit a British sovereign. Louis Philippe was deposed in the revolutions of 1848, and fled to exile in England. At the height of a revolutionary scare in the United Kingdom in April 1848, Victoria and her family left London for the greater safety of Osborne House, a private estate on the Isle of Wight that they had purchased in 1845 and redeveloped. Demonstrations by Chartists and Irish nationalists failed to attract widespread support, and the scare died down without any major disturbances. Victoria's first visit to Ireland in 1849 was a public relations success, but it had no lasting impact or effect on the growth of Irish nationalism.\nRussell's ministry, though Whig, was not favoured by the queen. She found particularly offensive the Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, who often acted without consulting the cabinet, the prime minister, or the queen. Victoria complained to Russell that Palmerston sent official dispatches to foreign leaders without her knowledge, but Palmerston was retained in office and continued to act on his own initiative, despite her repeated remonstrances. It was only in 1851 that Palmerston was removed after he announced the British government's approval of President Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte's coup in France without consulting the prime minister. The following year, President Bonaparte was declared Emperor Napoleon\u00a0III, by which time Russell's administration had been replaced by a short-lived minority government led by Lord Derby.\nIn 1853, Victoria gave birth to her eighth child, Leopold, with the aid of the new anaesthetic, chloroform. She was so impressed by the relief it gave from the pain of childbirth that she used it again in 1857 at the birth of her ninth and final child, Beatrice, despite opposition from members of the clergy, who considered it against biblical teaching, and members of the medical profession, who thought it dangerous. Victoria may have had postnatal depression after many of her pregnancies. Letters from Albert to Victoria intermittently complain of her loss of self-control. For example, about a month after Leopold's birth Albert complained in a letter to Victoria about her \"continuance of hysterics\" over a \"miserable trifle\".\nIn early 1855, the government of Lord Aberdeen, who had replaced Derby, fell amidst recriminations over the poor management of British troops in the Crimean War. Victoria approached both Derby and Russell to form a ministry, but neither had sufficient support, and Victoria was forced to appoint Palmerston as prime minister.\nNapoleon III, Britain's closest ally as a result of the Crimean War, visited London in April 1855, and from 17 to 28 August the same year Victoria and Albert returned the visit. Napoleon\u00a0III met the couple at Boulogne and accompanied them to Paris. They visited the (a successor to Albert's 1851 brainchild the Great Exhibition) and Napoleon I's tomb at Les Invalides (to which his remains had only been returned in 1840), and were guests of honour at a 1,200-guest ball at the Palace of Versailles. This marked the first time that a reigning British monarch had been to Paris in over 400 years.\nOn 14 January 1858, an Italian refugee from Britain called Felice Orsini attempted to assassinate Napoleon\u00a0III with a bomb made in England. The ensuing diplomatic crisis destabilised the government, and Palmerston resigned. Derby was reinstated as prime minister. Victoria and Albert attended the opening of a new basin at the French military port of Cherbourg on 5\u00a0August 1858, in an attempt by Napoleon\u00a0III to reassure Britain that his military preparations were directed elsewhere. On her return Victoria wrote to Derby reprimanding him for the poor state of the Royal Navy in comparison to the French Navy. Derby's ministry did not last long, and in June 1859 Victoria recalled Palmerston to office.\nEleven days after Orsini's assassination attempt in France, Victoria's eldest daughter married Prince Frederick William of Prussia in London. They had been betrothed since September 1855, when Princess Victoria was 14 years old; the marriage was delayed by the queen and her husband Albert until the bride was 17. The queen and Albert hoped that their daughter and son-in-law would be a liberalising influence in the enlarging Prussian state. The queen felt \"sick at heart\" to see her daughter leave England for Germany; \"It really makes me shudder\", she wrote to Princess Victoria in one of her frequent letters, \"when I look round to all your sweet, happy, unconscious sisters, and think I must give them up too \u2013 one by one.\" Almost exactly a year later, the Princess gave birth to the queen's first grandchild, Wilhelm, who would become the last German emperor.\nWidowhood and isolation.\nIn March 1861, Victoria's mother died, with Victoria at her side. Through reading her mother's papers, Victoria discovered that her mother had loved her deeply; she was heart-broken, and blamed Conroy and Lehzen for \"wickedly\" estranging her from her mother. To relieve his wife during her intense and deep grief, Albert took on most of her duties, despite being ill himself with chronic stomach trouble. In August, Victoria and Albert visited their son, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, who was attending army manoeuvres near Dublin, and spent a few days holidaying in Killarney. In November, Albert was made aware of gossip that his son had slept with an actress in Ireland. Appalled, he travelled to Cambridge, where his son was studying, to confront him.\nBy the beginning of December, Albert was very unwell. He was diagnosed with typhoid fever by William Jenner, and died on 14 December 1861. Victoria was devastated. She blamed her husband's death on worry over the Prince of Wales's philandering. He had been \"killed by that dreadful business\", she said. She entered a state of mourning and wore black for the remainder of her life. She avoided public appearances and rarely set foot in London in the following years. Her seclusion earned her the nickname \"widow of Windsor\". Her weight increased through comfort eating, which reinforced her aversion to public appearances.\nVictoria's self-imposed isolation from the public diminished the popularity of the monarchy, and encouraged the growth of the republican movement. She did undertake her official government duties, yet chose to remain secluded in her royal residences\u2014Windsor Castle, Osborne House, and the private estate in Scotland that she and Albert had acquired in 1847, Balmoral Castle. In March 1864, a protester stuck a notice on the railings of Buckingham Palace that announced \"these commanding premises to be let or sold in consequence of the late occupant's declining business\". Her uncle Leopold wrote to her advising her to appear in public. She agreed to visit the gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society at Kensington and take a drive through London in an open carriage.\nThrough the 1860s, Victoria relied increasingly on a manservant from Scotland, John Brown. Rumours of a romantic connection and even a secret marriage appeared in print, and some referred to the Queen as \"Mrs. Brown\". The story of their relationship was the subject of the 1997 movie \"Mrs. Brown\". A painting by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer depicting the Queen with Brown was exhibited at the Royal Academy, and Victoria published a book, \"Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands\", which featured Brown prominently and in which the Queen praised him highly.\nPalmerston died in 1865, and after a brief ministry led by Russell, Derby returned to power. In 1866, Victoria attended the State Opening of Parliament for the first time since Albert's death. The following year she supported the passing of the Reform Act 1867 which doubled the electorate by extending the franchise to many urban working men, though she was not in favour of votes for women. Derby resigned in 1868, to be replaced by Benjamin Disraeli, who charmed Victoria. \"Everyone likes flattery,\" he said, \"and when you come to royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.\" With the phrase \"we authors, Ma'am\", he complimented her. Disraeli's ministry only lasted a matter of months, and at the end of the year his Liberal rival, William Ewart Gladstone, was appointed prime minister. Victoria found Gladstone's demeanour far less appealing; he spoke to her, she is thought to have complained, as though she were \"a public meeting rather than a woman\".\nIn 1870 republican sentiment in Britain, fed by the Queen's seclusion, was boosted after the establishment of the Third French Republic. A republican rally in Trafalgar Square demanded Victoria's removal, and Radical MPs spoke against her. In August and September 1871, she was seriously ill with an abscess in her arm, which Joseph Lister successfully lanced and treated with his new antiseptic carbolic acid spray. In late November 1871, at the height of the republican movement, the Prince of Wales contracted typhoid fever, the disease that was believed to have killed his father, and Victoria was fearful her son would die. As the tenth anniversary of her husband's death approached, her son's condition grew no better, and Victoria's distress continued. To general rejoicing, he recovered. Mother and son attended a public parade through London and a grand service of thanksgiving in St Paul's Cathedral on 27 February 1872, and republican feeling subsided.\nOn the last day of February 1872, two days after the thanksgiving service, 17-year-old Arthur O'Connor, a great-nephew of Irish MP Feargus O'Connor, waved an unloaded pistol at Victoria's open carriage just after she had arrived at Buckingham Palace. Brown, who was attending the Queen, grabbed him and O'Connor was later sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment, and a birching. As a result of the incident, Victoria's popularity recovered further.\nEmpress of India.\nAfter the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the British East India Company, which had ruled much of India, was dissolved, and Britain's possessions and protectorates on the Indian subcontinent were formally incorporated into the British Empire. The Queen had a relatively balanced view of the conflict, and condemned atrocities on both sides. She wrote of \"her feelings of horror and regret at the result of this bloody civil war\", and insisted, urged on by Albert, that an official proclamation announcing the transfer of power from the company to the state \"should breathe feelings of generosity, benevolence and religious toleration\". At her behest, a reference threatening the \"undermining of native religions and customs\" was replaced by a passage guaranteeing religious freedom.\nIn the 1874 general election, Disraeli was returned to power. He passed the Public Worship Regulation Act 1874, which removed Catholic rituals from the Anglican liturgy and which Victoria strongly supported. She preferred short, simple services, and personally considered herself more aligned with the presbyterian Church of Scotland than the episcopal Church of England. Disraeli also pushed the Royal Titles Act 1876 through Parliament, so that Victoria took the title \"Empress of India\" from 1\u00a0May 1876. The new title was proclaimed at the Delhi Durbar of 1\u00a0January 1877.\nOn 14 December 1878, the anniversary of Albert's death, Victoria's second daughter Alice, who had married Louis of Hesse, died of diphtheria in Darmstadt. Victoria noted the coincidence of the dates as \"almost incredible and most mysterious\". In May 1879, she became a great-grandmother (on the birth of Princess Feodora of Saxe-Meiningen) and passed her \"poor old 60th birthday\". She felt \"aged\" by \"the loss of my beloved child\".\nBetween April 1877 and February 1878, she threatened five times to abdicate while pressuring Disraeli to act against Russia during the Russo-Turkish War, but her threats had no impact on the events or their conclusion with the Congress of Berlin. Disraeli's expansionist foreign policy, which Victoria endorsed, led to conflicts such as the Anglo-Zulu War and the Second Anglo-Afghan War. \"If \"we\" are to \"maintain\" our position as a \"first-rate\" Power\", she wrote, \"we must\u00a0... be \"Prepared\" for \"attacks\" and \"wars\", \"somewhere\" or \"other\", CONTINUALLY.\" Victoria saw the expansion of the British Empire as civilising and benign, protecting native peoples from more aggressive powers or cruel rulers: \"It is not in our custom to annexe countries\", she said, \"unless we are obliged & forced to do so.\" To Victoria's dismay, Disraeli lost the 1880 general election, and Gladstone returned as prime minister. When Disraeli died the following year, she was blinded by \"fast falling tears\", and erected a memorial tablet \"placed by his grateful Sovereign and Friend, Victoria R.I.\"\nOn 2 March 1882, Roderick Maclean, a disgruntled poet apparently offended by Victoria's refusal to accept one of his poems, shot at the Queen as her carriage left Windsor railway station. Gordon Chesney Wilson and another schoolboy from Eton College struck him with their umbrellas, until he was hustled away by a policeman. Victoria was outraged when he was found not guilty by reason of insanity, but was so pleased by the many expressions of loyalty after the attack that she said it was \"worth being shot at\u2014to see how much one is loved\".\nOn 17 March 1883, Victoria fell down some stairs at Windsor, which left her lame until July; she never fully recovered and was plagued with rheumatism thereafter. John Brown died 10 days after her accident, and to the consternation of her private secretary, Sir Henry Ponsonby, Victoria began work on a eulogistic biography of Brown. Ponsonby and Randall Davidson, Dean of Windsor, who had both seen early drafts, advised Victoria against publication, on the grounds that it would stoke the rumours of a love affair. The manuscript was destroyed. In early 1884, Victoria did publish \"More Leaves from a Journal of a Life in the Highlands\", a sequel to her earlier book, which she dedicated to her \"devoted personal attendant and faithful friend John Brown\". On the day after the first anniversary of Brown's death, Victoria was informed by telegram that her youngest son, Leopold, had died in Cannes. He was \"the dearest of my dear sons\", she lamented. The following month, Victoria's youngest child, Beatrice, met and fell in love with Prince Henry of Battenberg at the wedding of Victoria's granddaughter Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine to Henry's brother Prince Louis of Battenberg. Beatrice and Henry planned to marry, but Victoria opposed the match at first, wishing to keep Beatrice at home to act as her companion. After a year, she was won around to the marriage by their promise to remain living with and attending her.\nVictoria was pleased when Gladstone resigned in 1885 after his budget was defeated. She thought his government was \"the worst I have ever had\", and blamed him for the death of General Gordon during the Siege of Khartoum. Gladstone was replaced by Lord Salisbury. Salisbury's government only lasted a few months, however, and Victoria was forced to recall Gladstone, whom she referred to as a \"half crazy & really in many ways ridiculous old man\". Gladstone attempted to pass a bill granting Ireland home rule, but to Victoria's glee it was defeated. In the ensuing election, Gladstone's party lost to Salisbury's and the government switched hands again.\nGolden and Diamond Jubilees.\nIn 1887, the British Empire celebrated Victoria's Golden Jubilee. She marked the fiftieth anniversary of her accession on 20 June with a banquet to which 50 kings and princes were invited. The following day, she participated in a procession and attended a thanksgiving service in Westminster Abbey. By this time, Victoria was once again extremely popular. Two days later on 23 June, she engaged two Indian Muslims as waiters, one of whom was Abdul Karim. He was soon promoted to \"Munshi\": teaching her Urdu and acting as a clerk. Her family and retainers were appalled, and accused Abdul Karim of spying for the Muslim Patriotic League, and biasing the Queen against the Hindus. Equerry Frederick Ponsonby (the son of Sir Henry) discovered that the Munshi had lied about his parentage, and reported to Lord Elgin, Viceroy of India, \"the Munshi occupies very much the same position as John Brown used to do.\" Victoria dismissed their complaints as racial prejudice. Abdul Karim remained in her service until he returned to India with a pension, on her death.\nVictoria's eldest daughter became empress consort of Germany in 1888, but she was widowed a little over three months later, and Victoria's eldest grandchild became German Emperor as Wilhelm\u00a0II. Victoria and Albert's hopes of a liberal Germany would go unfulfilled, as Wilhelm was a firm believer in autocracy. Victoria thought he had \"little heart or \"Zartgef\u00fchl\" [tact] \u2013 and\u00a0... his conscience & intelligence have been completely wharped [\"sic\"]\".\nGladstone returned to power after the 1892 general election; he was 82 years old. Victoria objected when Gladstone proposed appointing the Radical MP Henry Labouch\u00e8re to the Cabinet, so Gladstone agreed not to appoint him. In 1894, Gladstone retired and, without consulting the outgoing prime minister, Victoria appointed Lord Rosebery as prime minister. His government was weak, and the following year Lord Salisbury replaced him. Salisbury remained prime minister for the remainder of Victoria's reign.\nOn 23 September 1896, Victoria surpassed her grandfather George\u00a0III as the longest-reigning monarch in British history. The Queen requested that any special celebrations be delayed until 1897, to coincide with her Diamond Jubilee, which was made a festival of the British Empire at the suggestion of the Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain. The prime ministers of all the self-governing Dominions were invited to London for the festivities. One reason for including the prime ministers of the Dominions and excluding foreign heads of state was to avoid having to invite Victoria's grandson Wilhelm\u00a0II, who, it was feared, might cause trouble at the event.\nThe Queen's Diamond Jubilee procession on 22 June 1897 followed a route six miles long through London and included troops from all over the empire. The procession paused for an open-air service of thanksgiving held outside St Paul's Cathedral, throughout which Victoria sat in her open carriage, to avoid her having to climb the steps to enter the building. The celebration was marked by vast crowds of spectators and great outpourings of affection for the 78-year-old Queen.\nDeclining health and death.\nVictoria regularly holidayed in mainland Europe. In 1889, during a stay in Biarritz, she became the first reigning monarch from Britain to visit Spain by briefly crossing the border. By April 1900, the Boer War was so unpopular in mainland Europe that her annual trip to France seemed inadvisable. Instead, the Queen went to Ireland for the first time since 1861, in part to acknowledge the contribution of Irish regiments to the South African war.\nIn July 1900, Victoria's second son, Alfred (\"Affie\"), died. \"Oh, God! My poor darling Affie gone too\", she wrote in her journal. \"It is a horrible year, nothing but sadness & horrors of one kind & another.\"\nFollowing a custom she maintained throughout her widowhood, Victoria spent the Christmas of 1900 at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. Rheumatism in her legs had rendered her disabled, and her eyesight was clouded by cataracts. Through early January, she felt \"weak and unwell\", and by mid-January she was \"drowsy[...] dazed, [and] confused\". Her favourite pet Pomeranian, Turi, was laid on her bed as a last request. She died aged 81 on 22 January 1901, at half past six in the evening, in the presence of her eldest son, Albert Edward, and grandson Wilhelm II. Albert Edward immediately succeeded as Edward VII.\nIn 1897, Victoria had written instructions for her funeral, which was to be military as befitting a soldier's daughter and the head of the army, and white instead of black. On 25 January, Edward VII and Wilhelm II, together with Prince Arthur, helped lift her body into the coffin. She was dressed in a white dress and her wedding veil. An array of mementos commemorating her extended family, friends and servants were laid in the coffin with her, at her request, by her physician and dressers. One of Albert's dressing gowns was placed by her side, with a plaster cast of his hand, while a lock of John Brown's hair, along with a picture of him, was placed in her left hand concealed from the view of the family by a carefully positioned bunch of flowers. Items of jewellery placed on Victoria included the wedding ring of Brown's mother, which Brown gave Victoria in 1883. Her funeral was held on Saturday 2 February, in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, and after two days of lying-in-state, she was interred beside Prince Albert in the Royal Mausoleum, Frogmore, at Windsor Great Park.\nWith a reign of 63 years, seven months, and two days, Victoria was the longest-reigning British monarch and the longest-reigning queen regnant in world history, until her great-great-granddaughter Elizabeth II surpassed her on 9 September 2015. She was the last monarch of Britain from the House of Hanover; her son Edward VII belonged to her husband's House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.\nLegacy.\nReputation.\nAccording to one of her biographers, Giles St Aubyn, Victoria wrote an average of 2,500 words a day during her adult life. From July 1832 until just before her death, she kept a detailed journal, which eventually encompassed 122 volumes. After Victoria's death, her youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, was appointed her literary executor. Beatrice transcribed and edited the diaries covering Victoria's accession onwards, and burned the originals in the process. Despite this destruction, much of the diaries still exist. In addition to Beatrice's edited copy, Lord Esher transcribed the volumes from 1832 to 1861 before Beatrice destroyed them. Part of Victoria's extensive correspondence has been published in volumes edited by A. C. Benson, Hector Bolitho, George Earle Buckle, Lord Esher, Roger Fulford, and Richard Hough among others.\nIn her later years, Victoria was stout, dowdy, and about tall, but she projected a grand image. She was unpopular during the first years of her widowhood, but was well liked during the 1880s and 1890s, when she embodied the empire as a benevolent matriarchal figure. Only after the release of her diary and letters did the extent of her political influence become known to the wider public. Biographies of Victoria written before much of the primary material became available, such as Lytton Strachey's \"Queen Victoria\" of 1921, are now considered out of date. The biographies written by Elizabeth Longford and Cecil Woodham-Smith, in 1964 and 1972 respectively, are still widely admired. They, and others, conclude that as a person Victoria was emotional, obstinate, honest, and straight-talking.\nThrough Victoria's reign, the gradual establishment of a modern constitutional monarchy in Britain continued. Reforms of the voting system increased the power of the House of Commons at the expense of the House of Lords and the monarch. In 1867, Walter Bagehot wrote that the monarch only retained \"the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, and the right to warn\". As Victoria's monarchy became more symbolic than political, it placed a strong emphasis on morality and family values, in contrast to the sexual, financial and personal scandals that had been associated with previous members of the House of Hanover and which had discredited the monarchy. The concept of the \"family monarchy\", with which the burgeoning middle classes could identify, was solidified.\nDescendants and haemophilia.\nVictoria's links with Europe's royal families earned her the nickname \"the grandmother of Europe\". Of the grandchildren of Victoria and Albert, 34 survived to adulthood.\nVictoria's youngest son, Leopold, was affected by the blood-clotting disease haemophilia B and at least two of her five daughters, Alice and Beatrice, were carriers. Royal haemophiliacs descended from Victoria included her great-grandsons, Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia; Alfonso, Prince of Asturias; and Infante Gonzalo of Spain. The presence of the disease in Victoria's descendants, but not in her ancestors, led to modern speculation that her true father was not the Duke of Kent, but a haemophiliac. There is no documentary evidence of a haemophiliac in connection with Victoria's mother, and as male carriers always had the disease, even if such a man had existed he would have been seriously ill. It is more likely that the mutation arose spontaneously because Victoria's father was over 50 at the time of her conception and haemophilia arises more frequently in the children of older fathers. Spontaneous mutations account for about a third of cases.\nTitles, styles, honours, and arms.\nTitles and styles.\nAt the end of her reign, the Queen's full style was: \"Her Majesty Victoria, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Queen, Defender of the Faith, Empress of India\".\nArms.\nAs Sovereign, Victoria used the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom. As she could not succeed to the throne of Hanover, her arms did not carry the Hanoverian symbols that were used by her immediate predecessors. Her arms have been borne by all of her successors on the throne.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nPrimary sources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "4721": "British Empire\nTerritory ruled by the United Kingdom\nThe British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and colonisation attempts by Scotland during the 17th century. At its height in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it became the largest empire in history and, for a century, was the foremost global power. By 1913, the British Empire held sway over 412\u00a0million people, of the world population at the time, and by 1920, it covered , of the Earth's total land area. As a result, its constitutional, legal, linguistic, and cultural legacy is widespread. At the peak of its power, it was described as \"the empire on which the sun never sets\", as the sun was always shining on at least one of its territories.\nDuring the Age of Discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal and Spain pioneered European exploration of the globe, and in the process established large overseas empires. Envious of the great wealth these empires generated, England, France, and the Netherlands began to establish colonies and trade networks of their own in the Americas and Asia. A series of wars in the 17th and 18th centuries with the Netherlands and France left Britain the dominant colonial power in North America. Britain became a major power in the Indian subcontinent after the East India Company's conquest of Mughal Bengal at the Battle of Plassey in 1757.\nThe American War of Independence resulted in Britain losing some of its oldest and most populous colonies in North America by 1783. While retaining control of British North America (now Canada) and territories in and near the Caribbean in the British West Indies, British colonial expansion turned towards Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. After the defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars (1803\u20131815), Britain emerged as the principal naval and imperial power of the 19th century and expanded its imperial holdings. It pursued trade concessions in China and Japan, and territory in Southeast Asia. The Great Game and Scramble for Africa also ensued. The period of relative peace (1815\u20131914) during which the British Empire became the global hegemon was later described as (Latin for \"British Peace\"). Alongside the formal control that Britain exerted over its colonies, its dominance of much of world trade, and of its oceans, meant that it effectively controlled the economies of, and readily enforced its interests in, many regions, such as Asia and Latin America. It also came to dominate the Middle East. Increasing degrees of autonomy were granted to its white settler colonies, some of which were formally reclassified as Dominions by the 1920s. By the start of the 20th century, Germany and the United States had begun to challenge Britain's economic lead. Military, economic and colonial tensions between Britain and Germany were major causes of the First World War, during which Britain relied heavily on its empire. The conflict placed enormous strain on its military, financial, and manpower resources. Although the empire achieved its largest territorial extent immediately after the First World War, Britain was no longer the world's preeminent industrial or military power.\nIn the Second World War, Britain's colonies in East Asia and Southeast Asia were occupied by the Empire of Japan. Despite the final victory of Britain and its allies, the damage to British prestige and the British economy helped accelerate the decline of the empire. India, Britain's most valuable and populous possession, achieved independence in 1947 as part of a larger decolonisation movement, in which Britain granted independence to most territories of the empire. The Suez Crisis of 1956 confirmed Britain's decline as a global power, and the handover of Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997 symbolised for many the end of the British Empire, though fourteen overseas territories that are remnants of the empire remain under British sovereignty. After independence, many former British colonies, along with most of the dominions, joined the Commonwealth of Nations, a free association of independent states. Fifteen of these, including the United Kingdom, retain the same person as monarch, currently King Charles III.\nOrigins (1497\u20131583).\nThe foundations of the British Empire were laid when England and Scotland were separate kingdoms. In 1496, King Henry VII of England, following the successes of Spain and Portugal in overseas exploration, commissioned John Cabot to lead an expedition to discover a northwest passage to Asia via the North Atlantic. Cabot sailed in 1497, five years after the first voyage of Christopher Columbus, and made landfall on the coast of Newfoundland. He believed he had reached Asia, and there was no attempt to found a colony. Cabot led another voyage to the Americas the following year but did not return; it is unknown what happened to his ships.\nNo further attempts to establish English colonies in the Americas were made until well into the reign of Queen Elizabeth\u00a0I, during the last decades of the 16th century. In the meantime, Henry VIII's 1533 Statute in Restraint of Appeals had declared \"that this realm of England is an Empire\". The Protestant Reformation turned England and Catholic Spain into implacable enemies. In 1562, Elizabeth\u00a0I encouraged the privateers John Hawkins and Francis Drake to engage in slave-raiding attacks against Spanish and Portuguese ships off the coast of West Africa with the aim of establishing an Atlantic slave trade. This effort was rebuffed and later, as the Anglo-Spanish Wars intensified, Elizabeth\u00a0I gave her blessing to further privateering raids against Spanish ports in the Americas and shipping that was returning across the Atlantic, laden with treasure from the New World. At the same time, influential writers such as Richard Hakluyt and John Dee (who was the first to use the term \"British Empire\") were beginning to press for the establishment of England's own empire. By this time, Spain had become the dominant power in the Americas and was exploring the Pacific Ocean, Portugal had established trading posts and forts from the coasts of Africa and Brazil to China, and France had begun to settle the Saint Lawrence River area, later to become New France.\nAlthough England tended to trail behind Portugal, Spain, and France in establishing overseas colonies, it carried out its first modern colonisation, referred to as the Munster Plantations, in 16th century Ireland by settling it with English and Welsh Protestant settlers. England had already colonised part of the country following the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169. Several people who helped establish the Munster plantations later played a part in the early colonisation of North America, particularly a group known as the West Country Men.\nEnglish overseas possessions (1583\u20131707).\nIn 1578, Elizabeth I granted a patent to Humphrey Gilbert for discovery and overseas exploration. That year, Gilbert sailed for the Caribbean with the intention of engaging in piracy and establishing a colony in North America, but the expedition was aborted before it had crossed the Atlantic. In 1583, he embarked on a second attempt. On this occasion, he formally claimed the harbour of the island of Newfoundland, although no settlers were left behind. Gilbert did not survive the return journey to England and was succeeded by his half-brother, Walter Raleigh, who was granted his own patent by Elizabeth in 1584. Later that year, Raleigh founded the Roanoke Colony on the coast of present-day North Carolina, but lack of supplies caused the colony to fail.\nIn 1603, James VI of Scotland ascended (as James I) to the English throne and in 1604 negotiated the Treaty of London, ending hostilities with Spain. Now at peace with its main rival, English attention shifted from preying on other nations' colonial infrastructures to the business of establishing its own overseas colonies. The British Empire began to take shape during the early 17th century, with the English settlement of North America and the smaller islands of the Caribbean, and the establishment of joint-stock companies, most notably the East India Company, to administer colonies and overseas trade. This period, until the loss of the Thirteen Colonies after the American War of Independence towards the end of the 18th century, has been referred to by some historians as the \"First British Empire\".\nAmericas, Africa and the slave trade.\nEngland's early efforts at colonisation in the Americas met with mixed success. An attempt to establish a colony in Guiana in 1604 lasted only two years and failed in its main objective to find gold deposits. Colonies on the Caribbean islands of St Lucia\u00a0(1605) and Grenada\u00a0(1609) rapidly folded. The first permanent English settlement in the Americas was founded in 1607 in Jamestown by Captain John Smith, and managed by the Virginia Company; the Crown took direct control of the venture in 1624, thereby founding the Colony of Virginia. Bermuda was settled and claimed by England as a result of the 1609 shipwreck of the Virginia Company's flagship, while attempts to settle Newfoundland were largely unsuccessful. In 1620, Plymouth was founded as a haven by Puritan religious separatists, later known as the Pilgrims. Fleeing from religious persecution would become the motive for many English would-be colonists to risk the arduous trans-Atlantic voyage: Maryland was established by English Roman Catholics\u00a0(1634), Rhode Island\u00a0(1636) as a colony tolerant of all religions and Connecticut\u00a0(1639) for Congregationalists. England's North American holdings were further expanded by the annexation of the Dutch colony of New Netherland in 1664, following the capture of New Amsterdam, which was renamed New York. Although less financially successful than colonies in the Caribbean, these territories had large areas of good agricultural land and attracted far greater numbers of English emigrants, who preferred their temperate climates.\nThe British West Indies initially provided England's most important and lucrative colonies. Settlements were successfully established in St. Kitts\u00a0(1624), Barbados\u00a0(1627) and Nevis\u00a0(1628), but struggled until the \"Sugar Revolution\" transformed the Caribbean economy in the mid-17th century. Large sugarcane plantations were first established in the 1640s on Barbados, with assistance from Dutch merchants and Sephardic Jews fleeing Portuguese Brazil. At first, sugar was grown primarily using white indentured labour, but rising costs soon led English traders to embrace the use of imported African slaves. The enormous wealth generated by slave-produced sugar made Barbados the most successful colony in the Americas, and one of the most densely populated places in the world. This boom led to the spread of sugar cultivation across the Caribbean, financed the development of non-plantation colonies in North America, and accelerated the growth of the Atlantic slave trade, particularly the triangular trade of slaves, sugar and provisions between Africa, the West Indies and Europe.\nTo ensure that the increasingly healthy profits of colonial trade remained in English hands, Parliament decreed in 1651 that only English ships would be able to ply their trade in English colonies. This led to hostilities with the United Dutch Provinces\u2014a series of Anglo-Dutch Wars\u2014which would eventually strengthen England's position in the Americas at the expense of the Dutch. In 1655, England annexed the island of Jamaica from the Spanish, and in 1666 succeeded in colonising the Bahamas.\nIn 1670, Charles II incorporated by royal charter the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), granting it a monopoly on the fur trade in the area known as Rupert's Land, which would later form a large proportion of the Dominion of Canada. Forts and trading posts established by the HBC were frequently the subject of attacks by the French, who had established their own fur trading colony in adjacent New France.\nTwo years later, the Royal African Company was granted a monopoly on the supply of slaves to the British colonies in the Caribbean. The company would transport more slaves across the Atlantic than any other, and significantly grew England's share of the trade, from 33 per cent in 1673 to 74 per cent in 1683. The removal of this monopoly between 1688 and 1712 allowed independent British slave traders to thrive, leading to a rapid escalation in the number of slaves transported. British ships carried a third of all slaves shipped across the Atlantic\u2014approximately 3.5\u00a0million Africans\u2014until the abolition of the trade by Parliament in 1807 (see ). To facilitate the shipment of slaves, forts were established on the coast of West Africa, such as James Island, Accra and Bunce Island. In the British Caribbean, the percentage of the population of African descent rose from 25 per cent in 1650 to around 80 per cent in 1780, and in the Thirteen Colonies from 10 per cent to 40 per cent over the same period (the majority in the southern colonies). The transatlantic slave trade played a pervasive role in British economic life, and became a major economic mainstay for western port cities. Ships registered in Bristol, Liverpool and London were responsible for the bulk of British slave trading. For the transported, harsh and unhygienic conditions on the slaving ships and poor diets meant that the average mortality rate during the Middle Passage was one in seven.\nRivalry with other European empires.\nAt the end of the 16th century, England and the Dutch Empire began to challenge the Portuguese Empire's monopoly of trade with Asia, forming private joint-stock companies to finance the voyages\u2014the English, later British, East India Company and the Dutch East India Company, chartered in 1600 and 1602 respectively. The primary aim of these companies was to tap into the lucrative spice trade, an effort focused mainly on two regions: the East Indies archipelago, and an important hub in the trade network, India. There, they competed for trade supremacy with Portugal and with each other. Although England eclipsed the Netherlands as a colonial power, in the short term the Netherlands' more advanced financial system and the three Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th century left it with a stronger position in Asia. Hostilities ceased after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when the Dutch William of Orange ascended the English throne, bringing peace between the Dutch Republic and England. A deal between the two nations left the spice trade of the East Indies archipelago to the Netherlands and the textiles industry of India to England, but textiles soon overtook spices in terms of profitability.\nPeace between England and the Netherlands in 1688 meant the two countries entered the Nine Years' War as allies, but the conflict\u2014waged in Europe and overseas between France, Spain and the Anglo-Dutch alliance\u2014left the English a stronger colonial power than the Dutch, who were forced to devote a larger proportion of their military budget to the costly land war in Europe. The death of Charles II of Spain in 1700 and his bequeathal of Spain and its colonial empire to Philip V of Spain, a grandson of the King of France, raised the prospect of the unification of France, Spain and their respective colonies, an unacceptable state of affairs for England and the other powers of Europe. In 1701, England, Portugal and the Netherlands sided with the Holy Roman Empire against Spain and France in the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted for thirteen years.\nColonies and territories of Scotland (1629\u20131707).\nColonisation attempts by the Kingdom of Scotland predates the establishment of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and the British Empire. During the 17th century, the Kingdom of Scotland made attempts to establish trading schemes in Ireland and Canada. Nova Scotia, today a province of Canada, was a short lived scheme in the Mi'kmaq people territory. Additionally, there was a high number of Scots in Ireland, particularly in the region of Ulster, who settled there as planters.\nNorth America.\nThe first documented Scottish settlement in the Americas was of Nova Scotia in 1629. On 29 September 1621, the charter for the foundation of a colony was granted by James VI of Scotland to Sir William Alexander. Between 1622 and 1628, Sir William launched four attempts to send colonists to Nova Scotia; all failed for various reasons. A successful settlement of Nova Scotia was finally achieved in 1629. The colony's charter, in law, made Nova Scotia (defined as all land between Newfoundland and New England; i.e., The Maritimes) a part of mainland Scotland; this was later used to get around the English navigation acts.\nAs a country, Scotland engaged in two ventures in an attempt to establish colonies within English colonies during the 1680s in Carolina and East New Jersey. The attempt to establish themselves in Carolina was largely in part due to Scottish Presbyterians fleeing from the threat of religious persecution in Scotland, and were assisted in their efforts by Scottish merchants who were aiming to develop transatlantic trade which was not subjected to the English Navigation Acts. The Act restricted Scottish trade with English colonies. Scottish settlement attempts in Carolina began in 1682, and was eventually defeated by the dissolution of the Scottish settlement of Stewartstoun, which was established in 1684, by the Spanish in 1686.\nSouth America.\nIn 1695, the Parliament of Scotland granted a charter to the Company of Scotland, which established a settlement in 1698 on the Isthmus of Panama. Besieged by neighbouring Spanish colonists of New Granada, and affected by malaria, the colony was abandoned two years later. The Darien scheme was a financial disaster for Scotland: a quarter of Scottish capital was lost in the enterprise. The episode had major political consequences, helping to persuade the government of the Kingdom of Scotland of the merits of turning the personal union with England into a political and economic one under the Kingdom of Great Britain established by the Acts of Union 1707.\nBritish Empire (1707\u20131783).\nThe 18th century saw the newly united Great Britain rise to be the world's dominant colonial power, with France becoming its main rival on the imperial stage. Great Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and the Holy Roman Empire continued the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted until 1714 and was concluded by the Treaty of Utrecht. Philip V of Spain renounced his and his descendants' claim to the French throne, and Spain lost its empire in Europe. The British Empire was territorially enlarged: from France, Britain gained Newfoundland and Acadia, and from Spain, Gibraltar and Menorca. Gibraltar became a critical naval base and allowed Britain to control the Atlantic entry and exit point to the Mediterranean. Spain ceded the rights to the lucrative \"asiento\" (permission to sell African slaves in Spanish America) to Britain. With the outbreak of the Anglo-Spanish War of Jenkins' Ear in 1739, Spanish privateers attacked British merchant shipping along the Triangle Trade routes. In 1746, the Spanish and British began peace talks, with the King of Spain agreeing to stop all attacks on British shipping; however, in the 1750 Treaty of Madrid Britain lost its slave-trading rights in Latin America.\nIn the East Indies, British and Dutch merchants continued to compete in spices and textiles. With textiles becoming the larger trade, by 1720, in terms of sales, the British company had overtaken the Dutch. During the middle decades of the 18th century, there were several outbreaks of military conflict on the Indian subcontinent, as the English East India Company and its French counterpart, struggled alongside local rulers to fill the vacuum that had been left by the decline of the Mughal Empire. The Battle of Plassey in 1757, in which the British defeated the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies, left the British East India Company in control of Bengal and as a major military and political power in India. France was left control of its enclaves but with military restrictions and an obligation to support British client states, ending French hopes of controlling India. In the following decades the British East India Company gradually increased the size of the territories under its control, either ruling directly or via local rulers under the threat of force from the Presidency Armies, the vast majority of which was composed of Indian sepoys, led by British officers. The British and French struggles in India became but one theatre of the global Seven Years' War (1756\u20131763) involving France, Britain, and the other major European powers.\nThe signing of the Treaty of Paris of 1763 had important consequences for the future of the British Empire. In North America, France's future as a colonial power effectively ended with the recognition of British claims to Rupert's Land, and the ceding of New France to Britain (leaving a sizeable French-speaking population under British control) and Louisiana to Spain. Spain ceded Florida to Britain. Along with its victory over France in India, the Seven Years' War therefore left Britain as the world's most powerful maritime power.\nLoss of the Thirteen American Colonies.\nDuring the 1760s and early 1770s, relations between the Thirteen Colonies and Britain became increasingly strained, primarily because of resentment of the British Parliament's attempts to govern and tax American colonists without their consent. This was summarised at the time by the colonists' slogan \"No taxation without representation\", a perceived violation of the guaranteed Rights of Englishmen. The American Revolution began with a rejection of Parliamentary authority and moves towards self-government. In response, Britain sent troops to reimpose direct rule, leading to the outbreak of war in 1775. The following year, in 1776, the Second Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence proclaiming the colonies' sovereignty from the British Empire as the new United States of America. The entry of French and Spanish forces into the war tipped the military balance in the Americans' favour and after a decisive defeat at Yorktown in 1781, Britain began negotiating peace terms. American independence was acknowledged at the Peace of Paris in 1783.\nThe loss of such a large portion of British America, at the time Britain's most populous overseas possession, is seen by some historians as the event defining the transition between the first and second empires, in which Britain shifted its attention away from the Americas to Asia, the Pacific and later Africa. Adam Smith's \"Wealth of Nations\", published in 1776, had argued that colonies were redundant, and that free trade should replace the old mercantilist policies that had characterised the first period of colonial expansion, dating back to the protectionism of Spain and Portugal. The growth of trade between the newly independent United States and Britain after 1783 seemed to confirm Smith's view that political control was not necessary for economic success.\nThe war to the south influenced British policy in Canada, where between 40,000 and 100,000 defeated Loyalists had migrated from the new United States following independence. The 14,000 Loyalists who went to the Saint John and Saint Croix river valleys, then part of Nova Scotia, felt too far removed from the provincial government in Halifax, so London split off New Brunswick as a separate colony in 1784. The Constitutional Act 1791 created the provinces of Upper Canada (mainly English speaking) and Lower Canada (mainly French-speaking) to defuse tensions between the French and British communities, and implemented governmental systems similar to those employed in Britain, with the intention of asserting imperial authority and not allowing the sort of popular control of government that was perceived to have led to the American Revolution.\nTensions between Britain and the United States escalated again during the Napoleonic Wars, as Britain tried to cut off American trade with France and boarded American ships to impress men into the Royal Navy. The United States Congress declared war, the War of 1812, and invaded Canadian territory. In response, Britain invaded the US, but the pre-war boundaries were reaffirmed by the 1814 Treaty of Ghent, ensuring Canada's future would be separate from that of the United States.\nBritish Empire (1783\u20131815).\nExploration of the Pacific.\nSince 1718, transportation to the American colonies had been a penalty for various offences in Britain, with approximately one thousand convicts transported per year. Forced to find an alternative location after the loss of the Thirteen Colonies in 1783, the British government looked for an alternative, eventually turning to Australia. On his first of three voyages commissioned by the government, James Cook reached New Zealand in October 1769. He was the first European to circumnavigate and map the country. From the late 18th century, the country was regularly visited by explorers and other sailors, missionaries, traders and adventurers but no attempt was made to settle the country or establish possession. The coast of Australia had been discovered for Europeans by the Dutch in 1606, but there was no attempt to colonise it. In 1770, after leaving New Zealand, James Cook charted the eastern coast, claimed the continent for Britain, and named it New South Wales. In 1778, Joseph Banks, Cook's botanist on the voyage, presented evidence to the government on the suitability of Botany Bay for the establishment of a penal settlement, and in 1787 the first shipment of convicts set sail, arriving in 1788. Unusually, Australia was claimed through proclamation. Indigenous Australians were considered too uncivilised to require treaties, and colonisation brought disease and violence that together with the deliberate dispossession of land and culture were devastating to these peoples. Britain continued to transport convicts to New South Wales until 1840, to Tasmania until 1853 and to Western Australia until 1868. The Australian colonies became profitable exporters of wool and gold, mainly because of the Victorian gold rush, making its capital Melbourne for a time the richest city in the world.\nThe British also expanded their mercantile interests in the North Pacific. Spain and Britain had become rivals in the area, culminating in the Nootka Crisis in 1789. Both sides mobilised for war, but when France refused to support Spain it was forced to back down, leading to the Nootka Convention. The outcome was a humiliation for Spain, which practically renounced all sovereignty on the North Pacific coast. This opened the way to British expansion in the area, and a number of expeditions took place; firstly a naval expedition led by George Vancouver which explored the inlets around the Pacific North West, particularly around Vancouver Island. On land, expeditions sought to discover a river route to the Pacific for the extension of the North American fur trade. Alexander Mackenzie of the North West Company led the first, starting out in 1792, and a year later he became the first European to reach the Pacific overland north of the Rio Grande, reaching the ocean near present-day Bella Coola. This preceded the Lewis and Clark Expedition by twelve years. Shortly thereafter, Mackenzie's companion, John Finlay, founded the first permanent European settlement in British Columbia, Fort St. John. The North West Company sought further exploration and backed expeditions by David Thompson, starting in 1797, and later by Simon Fraser. These pushed into the wilderness territories of the Rocky Mountains and Interior Plateau to the Strait of Georgia on the Pacific Coast, expanding British North America westward.\nContinued conquest in India.\nThe East India Company fought a series of Anglo-Mysore wars in Southern India with the Sultanate of Mysore under Hyder Ali and then Tipu Sultan. Defeats in the First Anglo-Mysore war and stalemate in the Second were followed by victories in the Third and the Fourth. Following Tipu Sultan's death in the fourth war in the Siege of Seringapatam (1799), the kingdom became a protectorate of the company.\nThe East India Company fought three Anglo-Maratha Wars with the Maratha Confederacy. The First Anglo-Maratha War ended in 1782 with a restoration of the pre-war \"status quo\". The Second and Third Anglo-Maratha wars resulted in British victories. After the surrender of Peshwa Bajirao II on 1818, the East India Company acquired control of a large majority of the Indian subcontinent.\nWars with France.\nBritain was challenged again by France under Napoleon, in a struggle that, unlike previous wars, represented a contest of ideologies between the two nations. It was not only Britain's position on the world stage that was at risk: Napoleon threatened to invade Britain itself, just as his armies had overrun many countries of continental Europe.\nThe Napoleonic Wars were therefore ones in which Britain invested large amounts of capital and resources to win. French ports were blockaded by the Royal Navy, which won a decisive victory over a French Imperial Navy-Spanish Navy fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Overseas colonies were attacked and occupied, including those of the Netherlands, which was annexed by Napoleon in 1810. France was finally defeated by a coalition of European armies in 1815. Britain was again the beneficiary of peace treaties: France ceded the Ionian Islands, Malta (which it had occupied in 1798), Mauritius, St Lucia, the Seychelles, and Tobago; Spain ceded Trinidad; the Netherlands ceded Guiana, Ceylon and the Cape Colony, while the Danish ceded Heligoland. Britain returned Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, and R\u00e9union to France; Menorca to Spain; Danish West Indies to Denmark and Java and Suriname to the Netherlands.\nAbolition of slavery.\nWith the advent of the Industrial Revolution, goods produced by slavery became less important to the British economy. Added to this was the cost of suppressing regular slave rebellions. With support from the British abolitionist movement, Parliament enacted the Slave Trade Act in 1807, which abolished the slave trade in the empire. In 1808, Sierra Leone Colony was designated an official British colony for freed slaves. Parliamentary reform in 1832 saw the influence of the West India Committee decline. The Slavery Abolition Act, passed the following year, abolished slavery in the British Empire on 1 August 1834, finally bringing the empire into line with the law in the UK (with the exception of the territories administered by the East India Company and Ceylon, where slavery was ended in 1844). Under the Act, slaves were granted full emancipation after a period of four to six years of \"apprenticeship\". Facing further opposition from abolitionists, the apprenticeship system was abolished in 1838. The British government compensated slave-owners.\nBritain's imperial century (1815\u20131914).\nBetween 1815 and 1914, a period referred to as Britain's \"imperial century\" by some historians, around of territory and roughly 400\u00a0million people were added to the British Empire. Victory over Napoleon left Britain without any serious international rival, other than Russia in Central Asia. Unchallenged at sea, Britain adopted the role of global policeman, a state of affairs later known as the \"Pax Britannica\", and a foreign policy of \"splendid isolation\". Alongside the formal control it exerted over its own colonies, Britain's dominant position in world trade meant that it effectively controlled the economies of many countries, such as China, Argentina and Siam, which has been described by some historians as an \"Informal Empire\".\nBritish imperial strength was underpinned by the steamship and the telegraph, new technologies invented in the second half of the 19th century, allowing it to control and defend the empire. By 1902, the British Empire was linked together by a network of telegraph cables, called the All Red Line.\nEast India Company rule and the British Raj in India.\nThe East India Company drove the expansion of the British Empire in Asia. The company's army had first joined forces with the Royal Navy during the Seven Years' War, and the two continued to co-operate in arenas outside India: the eviction of the French from Egypt (1799), the capture of Java from the Netherlands (1811), the acquisition of Penang Island (1786), Singapore (1819) and Malacca (1824), and the defeat of Burma (1826).\nFrom its base in India, the company had been engaged in an increasingly profitable opium export trade to Qing China since the 1730s. This trade, illegal since it was outlawed by China in 1729, helped reverse the trade imbalances resulting from the British imports of tea, which saw large outflows of silver from Britain to China. In 1839, the confiscation by the Chinese authorities at Canton of 20,000 chests of opium led Britain to attack China in the First Opium War, and resulted in the seizure by Britain of Hong Kong Island, at that time a minor settlement, and other treaty ports including Shanghai.\nDuring the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the British Crown began to assume an increasingly large role in the affairs of the company. A series of acts of Parliament were passed, including the Regulating Act 1773, East India Company Act 1784 and the Charter Act 1813 which regulated the company's affairs and established the sovereignty of the Crown over the territories that it had acquired. The company's eventual end was precipitated by the Indian Rebellion in 1857, a conflict that had begun with the mutiny of sepoys, Indian troops under British officers and discipline. The rebellion took six months to suppress, with heavy loss of life on both sides. The following year the British government dissolved the company and assumed direct control over India through the Government of India Act 1858, establishing the British Raj, where an appointed governor-general administered India and Queen Victoria was crowned the Empress of India. India became the empire's most valuable possession, \"the Jewel in the Crown\", and was the most important source of Britain's strength.\nA series of serious crop failures in the late 19th century led to widespread famines on the subcontinent in which it is estimated that over 15\u00a0million people died. The East India Company had failed to implement any coordinated policy to deal with the famines during its period of rule. Later, under direct British rule, commissions were set up after each famine to investigate the causes and implement new policies, which took until the early 1900s to have an effect.\nNew Zealand.\nOn each of his three voyages to the Pacific between 1769 and 1777, James Cook visited New Zealand. He was followed by an assortment of Europeans and Americans which including whalers, sealers, escaped convicts from New South Wales, missionaries and adventurers. Initially, contact with the indigenous M\u0101ori people was limited to the trading of goods, although interaction increased during the early decades of the 19th century with many trading and missionary stations being set up, especially in the north. The first of several Church of England missionaries arrived in 1814 and as well as their missionary role, they soon become the only form of European authority in a land that was not subject to British jurisdiction: the closest authority being the New South Wales governor in Sydney. The sale of weapons to M\u0101ori resulted from 1818 on in the intertribal warfare of the Musket Wars, with devastating consequences for the M\u0101ori population.\nThe UK government finally decided to act, dispatching Captain William Hobson with instructions to take formal possession after obtaining native consent. There was no central M\u0101ori authority able to represent all New Zealand so, on 6 February 1840, Hobson and many M\u0101ori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi in the Bay of Islands; most other chiefs signing in stages over the following months. William Hobson declared British sovereignty over all New Zealand on 21 May 1840, over the North Island by cession and over the South Island by discovery (the island was sparsely populated and deemed terra nullius). Hobson became Lieutenant-Governor, subject to Governor Sir George Gipps in Sydney, with British possession of New Zealand initially administered from Australia as a dependency of the New South Wales colony. From 16 June 1840 New South Wales laws applied in New Zealand. This transitional arrangement ended with the Charter for Erecting the Colony of New Zealand on 16 November 1840. The Charter stated that New Zealand would be established as a separate Crown colony on 3 May 1841 with Hobson as its governor.\nRivalry with Russia.\nDuring the 19th century, Britain and the Russian Empire vied to fill the power vacuums that had been left by the declining Ottoman Empire, Qajar dynasty and Qing dynasty. This rivalry in Central Asia came to be known as the \"Great Game\". As far as Britain was concerned, defeats inflicted by Russia on Persia and Turkey demonstrated its imperial ambitions and capabilities and stoked fears in Britain of an overland invasion of India. In 1839, Britain moved to pre-empt this by invading Afghanistan, but the First Anglo-Afghan War was a disaster for Britain.\nWhen Russia invaded the Ottoman Balkans in 1853, fears of Russian dominance in the Mediterranean and the Middle East led Britain and France to enter the war in support of the Ottoman Empire and invade the Crimean Peninsula to destroy Russian naval capabilities. The ensuing Crimean War (1854\u20131856), which involved new techniques of modern warfare, was the only global war fought between Britain and another imperial power during the \"Pax Britannica\" and was a resounding defeat for Russia. The situation remained unresolved in Central Asia for two more decades, with Britain annexing Baluchistan in 1876 and Russia annexing Kirghizia, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. For a while, it appeared that another war would be inevitable, but the two countries reached an agreement on their respective spheres of influence in the region in 1878 and on all outstanding matters in 1907 with the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente. The destruction of the Imperial Russian Navy by the Imperial Japanese Navy at the Battle of Tsushima during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904\u20131905 limited its threat to the British.\nCape to Cairo.\nThe Dutch East India Company had founded the Dutch Cape Colony on the southern tip of Africa in 1652 as a way station for its ships travelling to and from its colonies in the East Indies. Britain formally acquired the colony, and its large Afrikaner (or Boer) population in 1806, having occupied it in 1795 to prevent its falling into French hands during the Flanders Campaign. British immigration to the Cape Colony began to rise after 1820, and pushed thousands of Boers, resentful of British rule, northwards to found their own\u2014mostly short-lived\u2014independent republics, during the Great Trek of the late 1830s and early 1840s. In the process the Voortrekkers clashed repeatedly with the British, who had their own agenda with regard to colonial expansion in South Africa and to the various native African polities, including those of the Sotho people and the Zulu Kingdom. Eventually, the Boers established two republics that had a longer lifespan: the South African Republic or Transvaal Republic (1852\u20131877; 1881\u20131902) and the Orange Free State (1854\u20131902). In 1902 Britain occupied both republics, concluding a treaty with the two Boer Republics following the Second Boer War (1899\u20131902).\nIn 1869 the Suez Canal opened under Napoleon III, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Indian Ocean. Initially the Canal was opposed by the British; but once opened, its strategic value was quickly recognised and became the \"jugular vein of the Empire\". In 1875, the Conservative government of Benjamin Disraeli bought the indebted Egyptian ruler Isma'il Pasha's 44 per cent shareholding in the Suez Canal for \u00a34\u00a0million (equivalent to \u00a3 in 2023). Although this did not grant outright control of the strategic waterway, it did give Britain leverage. Joint Anglo-French financial control over Egypt ended in outright British occupation in 1882. Although Britain controlled the Khedivate of Egypt into the 20th century, it was officially a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire and not part of the British Empire. The French were still majority shareholders and attempted to weaken the British position, but a compromise was reached with the 1888 Convention of Constantinople, which made the Canal officially neutral territory.\nWith competitive French, Belgian and Portuguese activity in the lower Congo River region undermining orderly colonisation of tropical Africa, the Berlin Conference of 1884\u201385 was held to regulate the competition between the European powers in what was called the \"Scramble for Africa\" by defining \"effective occupation\" as the criterion for international recognition of territorial claims. The scramble continued into the 1890s, and caused Britain to reconsider its decision in 1885 to withdraw from Sudan. A joint force of British and Egyptian troops defeated the Mahdist Army in 1896 and rebuffed an attempted French invasion at Fashoda in 1898. Sudan was nominally made an Anglo-Egyptian condominium, but a British colony in reality.\nBritish gains in Southern and East Africa prompted Cecil Rhodes, pioneer of British expansion in Southern Africa, to urge a \"Cape to Cairo\" railway linking the strategically important Suez Canal to the mineral-rich south of the continent. During the 1880s and 1890s, Rhodes, with his privately owned British South Africa Company, occupied and annexed territories named after him, Rhodesia.\nChanging status of the white colonies.\nThe path to independence for the white colonies of the British Empire began with the 1839 Durham Report, which proposed unification and self-government for Upper and Lower Canada, as a solution to political unrest which had erupted in armed rebellions in 1837. This began with the passing of the Act of Union in 1840, which created the Province of Canada. Responsible government was first granted to Nova Scotia in 1848, and was soon extended to the other British North American colonies. With the passage of the British North America Act, 1867 by the British Parliament, the Province of Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were formed into Canada, a confederation enjoying full self-government with the exception of international relations. Australia and New Zealand achieved similar levels of self-government after 1900, with the Australian colonies federating in 1901. The term \"dominion status\" was officially introduced at the 1907 Imperial Conference. As the dominions gained greater autonomy, they would come to be recognized as distinct realms of the empire with unique customs and symbols of their own. Imperial identity, through imagery such as patriotic artworks and banners, began developing into a form that attempted to be more inclusive by showcasing the empire as a family of newly birthed nations with common roots.\nThe last decades of the 19th century saw concerted political campaigns for Irish home rule. Ireland had been united with Britain into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland with the Act of Union 1800 after the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and had suffered a severe famine between 1845 and 1852. Home rule was supported by the British prime minister, William Gladstone, who hoped that Ireland might follow in Canada's footsteps as a Dominion within the empire, but his 1886 Home Rule bill was defeated in Parliament. Although the bill, if passed, would have granted Ireland less autonomy within the UK than the Canadian provinces had within their own federation, many MPs feared that a partially independent Ireland might pose a security threat to Great Britain or mark the beginning of the break-up of the empire. A second Home Rule bill was defeated for similar reasons. A third bill was passed by Parliament in 1914, but not implemented because of the outbreak of the First World War leading to the 1916 Easter Rising.\nWorld wars (1914\u20131945).\nBy the turn of the 20th century, fears had begun to grow in Britain that it would no longer be able to defend the metropole and the entirety of the empire while at the same time maintaining the policy of \"splendid isolation\". Germany was rapidly rising as a military and industrial power and was now seen as the most likely opponent in any future war. Recognising that it was overstretched in the Pacific and threatened at home by the Imperial German Navy, Britain formed an alliance with Japan in 1902 and with its old enemies France and Russia in 1904 and 1907, respectively.\nFirst World War.\nBritain's fears of war with Germany were realised in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War. Britain quickly invaded and occupied most of Germany's overseas colonies in Africa. In the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand occupied German New Guinea and German Samoa respectively. Plans for a post-war division of the Ottoman Empire, which had joined the war on Germany's side, were secretly drawn up by Britain and France under the 1916 Sykes\u2013Picot Agreement. This agreement was not divulged to the Sharif of Mecca, who the British had been encouraging to launch an Arab revolt against their Ottoman rulers, giving the impression that Britain was supporting the creation of an independent Arab state.\nThe British declaration of war on Germany and its allies committed the colonies and Dominions, which provided invaluable military, financial and material support. Over 2.5\u00a0million men served in the armies of the Dominions, as well as many thousands of volunteers from the Crown colonies. The contributions of Australian and New Zealand troops during the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign against the Ottoman Empire had a great impact on the national consciousness at home and marked a watershed in the transition of Australia and New Zealand from colonies to nations in their own right. The countries continue to commemorate this occasion on Anzac Day. Canadians viewed the Battle of Vimy Ridge in a similar light. The important contribution of the Dominions to the war effort was recognised in 1917 by British prime minister David Lloyd George when he invited each of the Dominion prime ministers to join an Imperial War Cabinet to co-ordinate imperial policy.\nUnder the terms of the concluding Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919, the empire reached its greatest extent with the addition of and 13\u00a0million new subjects. The colonies of Germany and the Ottoman Empire were distributed to the Allied powers as League of Nations mandates. Britain gained control of Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, parts of Cameroon and Togoland, and Tanganyika. The Dominions themselves acquired mandates of their own: the Union of South Africa gained South West Africa (modern-day Namibia), Australia gained New Guinea, and New Zealand Western Samoa. Nauru was made a combined mandate of Britain and the two Pacific Dominions.\nInter-war period.\nThe changing world order that the war had brought about, in particular the growth of the United States and Japan as naval powers, and the rise of independence movements in India and Ireland, caused a major reassessment of British imperial policy. Forced to choose between alignment with the United States or Japan, Britain opted not to renew its Anglo-Japanese Alliance and instead signed the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, where Britain accepted naval parity with the United States. This decision was the source of much debate in Britain during the 1930s as militaristic governments took hold in Germany and Japan helped in part by the Great Depression, for it was feared that the empire could not survive a simultaneous attack by both nations. The issue of the empire's security was a serious concern in Britain, as it was vital to the British economy.\nIn 1919, the frustrations caused by delays to Irish home rule led the MPs of Sinn F\u00e9in, a pro-independence party that had won a majority of the Irish seats in the 1918 British general election, to establish an independent parliament in Dublin, at which Irish independence was declared. The Irish Republican Army simultaneously began a guerrilla war against the British administration. The Irish War of Independence ended in 1921 with a stalemate and the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, creating the Irish Free State, a Dominion within the British Empire, with effective internal independence but still constitutionally linked with the British Crown. Northern Ireland, consisting of six of the 32 Irish counties which had been established as a devolved region under the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, immediately exercised its option under the treaty to retain its existing status within the United Kingdom.\nA similar struggle began in India when the Government of India Act 1919 failed to satisfy the demand for independence. Concerns over communist and foreign plots following the Ghadar conspiracy ensured that war-time strictures were renewed by the Rowlatt Acts. This led to tension, particularly in the Punjab region, where repressive measures culminated in the Amritsar Massacre. In Britain, public opinion was divided over the morality of the massacre, between those who saw it as having saved India from anarchy, and those who viewed it with revulsion. The non-cooperation movement was called off in March 1922 following the Chauri Chaura incident, and discontent continued to simmer for the next 25 years.\nIn 1922, Egypt, which had been declared a British protectorate at the outbreak of the First World War, was granted formal independence, though it continued to be a British client state until 1954. British troops remained stationed in Egypt until the signing of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty in 1936, under which it was agreed that the troops would withdraw but continue to occupy and defend the Suez Canal zone. In return, Egypt was assisted in joining the League of Nations. Iraq, a British mandate since 1920, gained membership of the League in its own right after achieving independence from Britain in 1932. In Palestine, Britain was presented with the problem of mediating between the Arabs and increasing numbers of Jews. The Balfour Declaration, which had been incorporated into the terms of the mandate, stated that a national home for the Jewish people would be established in Palestine, and Jewish immigration allowed up to a limit that would be determined by the mandatory power. This led to increasing conflict with the Arab population, who openly revolted in 1936. As the threat of war with Germany increased during the 1930s, Britain judged the support of Arabs as more important than the establishment of a Jewish homeland, and shifted to a pro-Arab stance, limiting Jewish immigration and in turn triggering a Jewish insurgency.\nThe right of the Dominions to set their own foreign policy, independent of Britain, was recognised at the 1923 Imperial Conference. Britain's request for military assistance from the Dominions at the outbreak of the Chanak Crisis the previous year had been turned down by Canada and South Africa, and Canada had refused to be bound by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. After pressure from the Irish Free State and South Africa, the 1926 Imperial Conference issued the Balfour Declaration of 1926, declaring Britain and the Dominions to be \"autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another\" within a \"British Commonwealth of Nations\". This declaration was given legal substance under the 1931 Statute of Westminster. The parliaments of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland were now independent of British legislative control, they could nullify British laws and Britain could no longer pass laws for them without their consent. Newfoundland reverted to colonial status in 1933, suffering from financial difficulties during the Great Depression. In 1937 the Irish Free State introduced a republican constitution renaming itself \"Ireland\".\nSecond World War.\nBritain's declaration of war against Nazi Germany in September 1939 included the Crown colonies and India but did not automatically commit the Dominions of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Newfoundland and South Africa. All soon declared war on Germany. While Britain continued to regard Ireland as still within the British Commonwealth, Ireland chose to remain legally neutral throughout the war.\nAfter the Fall of France in June 1940, Britain and the empire stood alone against Germany, until the German invasion of Greece on 7 April 1941. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill successfully lobbied President Franklin D. Roosevelt for military aid from the United States, but Roosevelt was not yet ready to ask Congress to commit the country to war. In August 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt met and signed the Atlantic Charter, which included the statement that \"the rights of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they live\" should be respected. This wording was ambiguous as to whether it referred to European countries invaded by Germany and Italy, or the peoples colonised by European nations, and would later be interpreted differently by the British, Americans, and nationalist movements. Nevertheless, Churchill rejected its universal applicability when it came to the self-determination of subject nations including the British Indian Empire. Churchill further added that he did not become Prime Minister to oversee the liquidation of the empire.\nFor Churchill, the entry of the United States into the war was the \"greatest joy\". He felt that Britain was now assured of victory, but failed to recognise that the \"many disasters, immeasurable costs and tribulations [which he knew] lay ahead\" in December 1941 would have permanent consequences for the future of the empire. The manner in which British forces were rapidly defeated in the Far East irreversibly harmed Britain's standing and prestige as an imperial power, including, particularly, the Fall of Singapore, which had previously been hailed as an impregnable fortress and the eastern equivalent of Gibraltar. The realisation that Britain could not defend its entire empire pushed Australia and New Zealand, which now appeared threatened by Japanese forces, into closer ties with the United States and, ultimately, the 1951 ANZUS Pact. The war weakened the empire in other ways: undermining Britain's control of politics in India, inflicting long-term economic damage, and irrevocably changing geopolitics by pushing the Soviet Union and the United States to the centre of the global stage.\nDecolonisation and decline (1945\u20131997).\nThough Britain and the empire emerged victorious from the Second World War, the effects of the conflict were profound, both at home and abroad. Much of Europe, a continent that had dominated the world for several centuries, was in ruins, and host to the armies of the United States and the Soviet Union, who now held the balance of global power. Britain was left essentially bankrupt, with insolvency only averted in 1946 after the negotiation of a US$3.75\u00a0billion loan from the United States, the last instalment of which was repaid in 2006. At the same time, anti-colonial movements were on the rise in the colonies of European nations. The situation was complicated further by the increasing Cold War rivalry of the United States and the Soviet Union. In principle, both nations were opposed to European colonialism. In practice, American anti-communism prevailed over anti-imperialism, and therefore the United States supported the continued existence of the British Empire to keep Communist expansion in check. At first, British politicians believed it would be possible to maintain Britain's role as a world power at the head of a re-imagined Commonwealth, but by 1960 they were forced to recognise that there was an irresistible \"wind of change\" blowing. Their priorities changed to maintaining an extensive zone of British influence and ensuring that stable, non-Communist governments were established in former colonies. In this context, while other European powers such as France and Portugal waged costly and unsuccessful wars to keep their empires intact, Britain generally adopted a policy of peaceful disengagement from its colonies, although violence occurred in Malaya, Kenya and Palestine. Between 1945 and 1965, the number of people under British rule outside the UK itself fell from 700 million to 5 million, 3 million of whom were in Hong Kong.\nInitial disengagement.\nThe pro-decolonisation Labour government, elected at the 1945 general election and led by Clement Attlee, moved quickly to tackle the most pressing issue facing the empire: Indian independence. India's major political party\u2014the Indian National Congress (led by Mahatma Gandhi) \u2014 had been campaigning for independence for decades, but disagreed with Muslim League (led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah) as to how it should be implemented. Congress favoured a unified secular Indian state, whereas the League, fearing domination by the Hindu majority, desired a separate Islamic state for Muslim-majority regions. Increasing civil unrest led Attlee to promise independence no later than 30 June 1948. When the urgency of the situation and risk of civil war became apparent, the newly appointed (and last) Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, hastily brought forward the date to 15 August 1947. The borders drawn by the British to broadly partition India into Hindu and Muslim areas left tens of millions as minorities in the newly independent states of India and Pakistan. The princely states were provided with a choice to either remain independent or join India or Pakistan. Millions of Muslims crossed from India to Pakistan and Hindus vice versa, and violence between the two communities cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Burma, which had been administered as part of British India until 1937 gained independence the following year in 1948 along with Sri Lanka (formerly known as British Ceylon). India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka became members of the Commonwealth, while Burma chose not to join. That same year, the British Nationality Act was enacted, in hopes of strengthening and unifying the Commonwealth: it provided British citizenship and right of entry to all those living within its jurisdiction.\nThe British Mandate in Palestine, where an Arab majority lived alongside a Jewish minority, presented the British with a similar problem to that of India. The matter was complicated by large numbers of Jewish refugees seeking to be admitted to Palestine following the Holocaust, while Arabs were opposed to the creation of a Jewish state. Frustrated by the intractability of the problem, attacks by Jewish paramilitary organisations and the increasing cost of maintaining its military presence, Britain announced in 1947 that it would withdraw in 1948 and leave the matter to the United Nations to solve. The UN General Assembly subsequently voted for a plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. It was immediately followed by the outbreak of a civil war between the Arabs and Jews of Palestine, and British forces withdrew amid the fighting. The British Mandate for Palestine officially terminated at midnight on 15 May 1948 as the State of Israel declared independence and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War broke out, during which the territory of the former Mandate was partitioned between Israel and the surrounding Arab states. Amid the fighting, British forces continued to withdraw from Israel, with the last British troops departing from Haifa on 30 June 1948.\nFollowing the surrender of Japan in the Second World War, anti-Japanese resistance movements in Malaya turned their attention towards the British, who had moved to quickly retake control of the colony, valuing it as a source of rubber and tin. The fact that the guerrillas were primarily Malaysian Chinese Communists meant that the British attempt to quell the uprising was supported by the Muslim Malay majority, on the understanding that once the insurgency had been quelled, independence would be granted. The Malayan Emergency, as it was called, began in 1948 and lasted until 1960, but by 1957, Britain felt confident enough to grant independence to the Federation of Malaya within the Commonwealth. In 1963, the 11 states of the federation together with Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo joined to form Malaysia, but in 1965 Chinese-majority Singapore was expelled from the union following tensions between the Malay and Chinese populations and became an independent city-state. Brunei, which had been a British protectorate since 1888, declined to join the union.\nSuez and its aftermath.\nIn the 1951 general election, the Conservative Party returned to power in Britain under the leadership of Winston Churchill. Churchill and the Conservatives believed that Britain's position as a world power relied on the continued existence of the empire, with the base at the Suez Canal allowing Britain to maintain its pre-eminent position in the Middle East in spite of the loss of India. Churchill could not ignore Gamal Abdul Nasser's new revolutionary government of Egypt that had taken power in 1952, and the following year it was agreed that British troops would withdraw from the Suez Canal zone and that Sudan would be granted self-determination by 1955, with independence to follow Sudan was granted independence on 1 January 1956.\nIn July 1956, Nasser unilaterally nationalised the Suez Canal. The response of Anthony Eden, who had succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister, was to collude with France to engineer an Israeli attack on Egypt that would give Britain and France an excuse to intervene militarily and retake the canal. Eden infuriated US President Dwight D. Eisenhower by his lack of consultation, and Eisenhower refused to back the invasion. Another of Eisenhower's concerns was the possibility of a wider war with the Soviet Union after it threatened to intervene on the Egyptian side. Eisenhower applied financial leverage by threatening to sell US reserves of the British pound and thereby precipitate a collapse of the British currency. Though the invasion force was militarily successful in its objectives, UN intervention and US pressure forced Britain into a humiliating withdrawal of its forces, and Eden resigned.\nThe Suez Crisis very publicly exposed Britain's limitations to the world and confirmed Britain's decline on the world stage and its end as a first-rate power, demonstrating that henceforth it could no longer act without at least the acquiescence, if not the full support, of the United States. The events at Suez wounded British national pride, leading one Member of Parliament (MP) to describe it as \"Britain's Waterloo\" and another to suggest that the country had become an \"American satellite\". Margaret Thatcher later described the mindset she believed had befallen Britain's political leaders after Suez where they \"went from believing that Britain could do anything to an almost neurotic belief that Britain could do nothing\", from which Britain did not recover until the successful recapture of the Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982.\nWhile the Suez Crisis caused British power in the Middle East to weaken, it did not collapse. Britain again deployed its armed forces to the region, intervening in Oman (1957), Jordan (1958) and Kuwait (1961), though on these occasions with American approval, as the new Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's foreign policy was to remain firmly aligned with the United States. Although Britain granted Kuwait independence in 1961, it continued to maintain a military presence in the Middle East for another decade. On 16 January 1968, a few weeks after the devaluation of the pound, Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his Defence Secretary Denis Healey announced that British Armed Forces troops would be withdrawn from major military bases East of Suez, which included the ones in the Middle East, and primarily from Malaysia and Singapore by the end of 1971, instead of 1975 as earlier planned. By that time over 50,000 British military personnel were still stationed in the Far East, including 30,000 in Singapore. The British granted independence to the Maldives in 1965 but continued to station a garrison there until 1976, withdrew from Aden in 1967, and granted independence to Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates in 1971.\nWind of change.\nMacmillan gave a speech in Cape Town, South Africa in February 1960 where he spoke of \"the wind of change blowing through this continent\". Macmillan wished to avoid the same kind of colonial war that France was fighting in Algeria, and under his premiership decolonisation proceeded rapidly. To the three colonies that had been granted independence in the 1950s\u2014Sudan, the Gold Coast and Malaya\u2014were added nearly ten times that number during the 1960s. Owing to the rapid pace of decolonisation during this period, the cabinet post of Secretary of State for the Colonies was abolished in 1966, along with the Colonial Office, which merged with the Commonwealth Relations Office to form the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) in October 1968.\nBritain's remaining colonies in Africa, except for self-governing Southern Rhodesia, were all granted independence by 1968. British withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of Africa was not a peaceful process. From 1952 the Kenya Colony saw the eight-year long Mau Mau rebellion, in which tens of thousands of suspected rebels were interned by the colonial government in detention camps to suppress the rebellion and over 1000 convicts executed, with records systematically destroyed. Throughout the 1960s, the British government took a \"No independence until majority rule\" policy towards decolonising the empire, leading the white minority government of Southern Rhodesia to enact the 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain, resulting in a civil war that lasted until the British-mediated Lancaster House Agreement of 1979. The agreement saw the British Empire temporarily re-establish the Colony of Southern Rhodesia from 1979 to 1980 as a transitionary government to a majority rule Republic of Zimbabwe. This was the last British possession in Africa.\nIn Cyprus, a guerrilla war waged by the Greek Cypriot organisation EOKA against British rule, was ended in 1959 by the London and Z\u00fcrich Agreements, which resulted in Cyprus being granted independence in 1960. The UK retained the military bases of Akrotiri and Dhekelia as sovereign base areas. The Mediterranean colony of Malta was amicably granted independence from the UK in 1964 and became the country of Malta, though the idea had been raised in 1955 of integration with Britain.\nMost of the UK's Caribbean territories achieved independence after the departure in 1961 and 1962 of Jamaica and Trinidad from the West Indies Federation, established in 1958 in an attempt to unite the British Caribbean colonies under one government, but which collapsed following the loss of its two largest members. Jamaica attained independence in 1962, as did Trinidad and Tobago. Barbados achieved independence in 1966 and the remainder of the eastern Caribbean islands, including the Bahamas, in the 1970s and 1980s, but Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands opted to revert to British rule after they had already started on the path to independence. The British Virgin Islands, The Cayman Islands and Montserrat opted to retain ties with Britain, while Guyana achieved independence in 1966. Britain's last colony on the American mainland, British Honduras, became a self-governing colony in 1964 and was renamed Belize in 1973, achieving full independence in 1981. A dispute with Guatemala over claims to Belize was left unresolved.\nBritish Overseas Territories in the Pacific acquired independence in the 1970s beginning with Fiji in 1970 and ending with Vanuatu in 1980. Vanuatu's independence was delayed because of political conflict between English and French-speaking communities, as the islands had been jointly administered as a condominium with France. Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu became Commonwealth realms.\nEnd of empire.\nBy 1981, aside from a scattering of islands and outposts, the process of decolonisation that had begun after the Second World War was largely complete. In 1982, Britain's resolve in defending its remaining overseas territories was tested when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, acting on a long-standing claim that dated back to the Spanish Empire. Britain's successful military response to retake the Falkland Islands during the ensuing Falklands War contributed to reversing the downward trend in Britain's status as a world power.\nThe 1980s saw Canada, Australia, and New Zealand sever their final constitutional links with Britain. Although granted legislative independence by the Statute of Westminster 1931, vestigial constitutional links had remained in place. The British Parliament retained the power to amend key Canadian constitutional statutes, meaning that an act of the British Parliament was required to make certain changes to the Canadian Constitution. The British Parliament had the power to pass laws extending to Canada at Canadian request. Although no longer able to pass any laws that would apply to Australian Commonwealth law, the British Parliament retained the power to legislate for the individual Australian states. With regard to New Zealand, the British Parliament retained the power to pass legislation applying to New Zealand with the New Zealand Parliament's consent. In 1982, the last legal link between Canada and Britain was severed by the Canada Act 1982, which was passed by the British parliament, formally patriating the Canadian Constitution. The act ended the need for British involvement in changes to the Canadian constitution. Similarly, the Australia Act 1986 (effective 3 March 1986) severed the constitutional link between Britain and the Australian states, while New Zealand's Constitution Act 1986 (effective 1 January 1987) reformed the constitution of New Zealand to sever its constitutional link with Britain.\nOn 1 January 1984, Brunei, Britain's last remaining Asian protectorate, was granted full independence. Independence had been delayed due to the opposition of the Sultan, who had preferred British protection.\nIn September 1982 the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, travelled to Beijing to negotiate with the Chinese Communist government, on the future of Britain's last major and most populous overseas territory, Hong Kong. Under the terms of the 1842 Treaty of Nanking and 1860 Convention of Peking, Hong Kong Island and Kowloon Peninsula had been respectively ceded to Britain \"in perpetuity\", but the majority of the colony consisted of the New Territories, which had been acquired under a 99-year lease in 1898, due to expire in 1997. Thatcher, seeing parallels with the Falkland Islands, initially wished to hold Hong Kong and proposed British administration with Chinese sovereignty, though this was rejected by China. A deal was reached in 1984\u2014under the terms of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, Hong Kong would become a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China. The handover ceremony in 1997 marked for many, including King Charles III, then Prince of Wales, who was in attendance, \"the end of Empire\", though many British territories that are remnants of the empire still remain.\nLegacy.\nBritain retains sovereignty over 14 territories outside the British Isles. In 1983, the British Nationality Act 1981 renamed the existing Crown Colonies as \"British Dependent Territories\", and in 2002 they were renamed the British Overseas Territories. Most former British colonies and protectorates are members of the Commonwealth of Nations, a voluntary association of equal members, comprising a population of around 2.2\u00a0billion people. The United Kingdom and 14 other countries, all collectively known as the Commonwealth realms, voluntarily continue to share the same person\u2014 King Charles III\u2014as their respective head of state. These 15 nations are distinct and equal legal entities: the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.\nDuring the colonial era, emphasis was given to study of the classical Greco-Roman heritage and their experience with empire, aiming to parse how that heritage could be applied to improve the future of the colonies. American hegemony, which throughout its early rise had challenged British claims of being the \"New Rome\", became the successor to British dominance in the mid-20th century; the two countries' historical ties and wartime collaboration supported a peaceful handoff of power after World War II. As for the United Kingdom itself, British views of the former Empire are more positive than is the case with other post-imperial nations; discourse around the former Empire has continued to impact the nation's present-day understanding of itself, as seen in the debate leading up to its decision to leave the European Union in 2016.\nDecades, and in some cases centuries, of British rule and emigration have left their mark on the independent nations that rose from the British Empire. The empire established the use of the English language in regions around the world. Today it is the primary language of up to 460\u00a0million people and is spoken by about 1.5 billion as a first, second or foreign language. It has also significantly influenced other languages. Individual and team sports developed in Britain, particularly football, cricket, lawn tennis, and golf were exported. Some sports were also invented or standardised in the former colonies, such as badminton, polo, and snooker in India. British missionaries who travelled around the globe often in advance of soldiers and civil servants spread Protestantism (including Anglicanism) to all continents. The British Empire provided refuge for religiously persecuted continental Europeans for hundreds of years. British educational institutions also remain popular in the present day, in part due to the importance of the English language and similarity of British curriculums to those in the former colonies.\nPolitical boundaries drawn by the British did not always reflect homogeneous ethnicities or religions, contributing to conflicts in formerly colonised areas. The British Empire was responsible for large migrations of peoples (see also: Commonwealth diaspora). Millions left the British Isles, with the founding settler colonist populations of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand coming mainly from Britain and Ireland. Millions of people moved between British colonies, with large numbers of South Asian people emigrating to other parts of the empire, such as Malaysia and Fiji, and Overseas Chinese people to Malaysia, Singapore and the Caribbean; about half of all modern immigration to the Commonwealth nations continues to occur between them. The demographics of the United Kingdom changed after the Second World War owing to immigration to Britain from its former colonies.\nIn the 19th century, innovation in Britain led to revolutionary changes in manufacturing, the development of factory systems, and the growth of transportation by railway and steamship. Debate has also occurred as to what extent the Industrial Revolution, originating from the United Kingdom, was facilitated by or dependent on imperialism. British colonial architecture, such as in churches, railway stations and government buildings, can be seen in many cities that were once part of the British Empire; Western technologies and architecture had been globalised in part due to the Empire's military and administrative requirements. Integration of former colonies into the global economy was also a major legacy. The British choice of system of measurement, the imperial system, continues to be used in some countries in various ways. The convention of driving on the left-hand side of the road has been retained in much of the former empire.\nThe Westminster system of parliamentary democracy has served as the template for the governments of many former colonies, and English common law for legal systems. It has been observed that almost every former colony that emerged as an independent democratic state is a former British colony, though this correlation greatly declines in strength after 30 years of an ex-colony's independence. International commercial contracts are often based on English common law. The British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council still serves as the highest court of appeal for twelve former colonies.\nInterpretations of Empire.\nHistorians' approaches to understanding the British Empire are diverse and evolving. Two key sites of debate over recent decades have been the impact of post-colonial studies, which seek to critically re-evaluate the history of imperialism, and the continued relevance of historians Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, whose work greatly influenced imperial historiography during the 1950s and 1960s. In addition, differing assessments of the empire's legacy remain relevant to debates over recent history and politics, such as the Anglo-American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Britain's role and identity in the contemporary world.\nHistorians such as Caroline Elkins have argued against perceptions of the British Empire as a primarily liberalising and modernising enterprise, criticising its widespread use of violence and emergency laws to maintain power. Common criticisms of the empire include the use of detention camps in its colonies, massacres of indigenous peoples, and famine-response policies. Some scholars, including Amartya Sen, assert that British policies worsened the famines in India that killed millions during British rule. Conversely, historians such as Niall Ferguson say that the economic and institutional development the British Empire brought resulted in a net benefit to its colonies. Other historians treat its legacy as varied and ambiguous. Public attitudes towards the empire within 21st-century Britain have been broadly positive although sentiment towards the Commonwealth has been one of apathy and decline.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["4721", "47923"], "permutation_1": ["4721", "47923"], "permutation_2": ["47923", "4721"], "permutation_3": ["47923", "4721"]}
{"id": "2hop__133051_120035", "docs_added": {"4469024": "Hudson Commodore\nThe Hudson Commodore is an automobile that was produced by the Hudson Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan between 1941 and 1952. During its time in production, the Commodore was the largest and most luxurious Hudson model.\nFirst generation.\n1941.\nThe Commodore Series 12 and Series 14 were the junior models to the Commodore Custom Series 15 and Series 17. The junior models debuted in Hudson's 1941 model line. Commodore Series 12 featured a I6 engine and the Series 14 models came with a I8, with all built on a wheelbase, while Commodore Customs utilized on the wheelbase for Series 15 coupes and a version for Series 17 sedans. \nThe Commodore was powered by Hudson's I6 producing , or by Hudson's I8 that produced . Prices listed for the Series 12 coupe started at US$1,028 ($ in 2024 dollars ) to the top level Custom Series 17 Sedan at US$1,537 ($ in 2024 dollars ).\nThe Commodore series was Hudson's largest model range in its debut year, consisting of sedans, coupes, and convertibles. Hudson used a forward hinged hood that opened from the rear by the windshield with the front end of the hood sliding downward over the grille. Elements of the interior and exterior were styled by Betty Thatcher, \"the first woman designer to be employed by a car manufacturer\".\n1942.\nFor the 1942 model year, the cars received a facelift. This included concealed running boards, modestly enlarged front grilles, and external trim arrangements. Hudson offered an optional \"Drive-Master\" vacuum-assisted clutch with a servo-operated transmission with three modes: \"automatic\" shifting and clutching, automated clutching only, or fully manual.\nThe firm promoted its economy over luxury during the shortened model year that ended in January 1942, as U.S. war production accelerated.\nSecond generation.\n1946.\nHudson began postwar automobile production on August 30, 1945. Body styles were trimmed to Sedan, Club Coupe, and Convertible. The designs were based on the 1942 models. There were minor cosmetic changes from the pre-war versions with one exception, the car's grille now had a concave center section.\nHudson automobiles were more fully equipped than competitive makes, and all Hudson models received door armrests, twin air-horns, ashtrays, windshield wipers, stop lights, locking glove box, sealed beam headlights, and deep pile carpeting. Commodore and Commodore Customs added foam rubber seat cushions (Hudson was the first automaker to introduce foam seat cushions), door-step courtesy lights, rear center armrest (sedans), and gold etched lettering on the dashboard panel.\n1947.\nThe priority was building cars following the war rather than introducing annual design changes for 1947 since Hudson was in the process of developing a completely new model. Production of the 1947 Hudson Commodore Eight increased to 12,593 from the previous year's 8,193.\nThird generation.\n1948.\nHudson developed a new and radical car design. Production of the 1948 Hudsons began on 12 October 1947. Introduced on 7 December 1947, the Hudson Commodore was one of the first new-design postwar cars made. The 1948 model year inaugurated Hudson's trademarked \"Monobuilt\" construction or \"step-down\" automobile. The new cars were designed by Frank Spring and in part by Betty Thatcher, the first female designer to be employed by a car manufacturer. The marketing tagline for the innovative Hudsons was \"Now You're Face to Face with Tomorrow.\"\nThe cars had a light and strong semi-unit body with a perimeter frame. Because of the encircling frame, passengers stepped down into the vehicles. Hudson's step-down design made the body lower than contemporary cars. It offered passengers the protection of being surrounded by the car's chassis with a lower center of gravity. In addition to the safety of being surrounded by the car's chassis, the step-down also allowed Hudson to achieve weight savings through the unibody construction, making for a well-performing automobile. The \"monobuilt\" or \"step-down design also required less steel for its production.\nThe cars featured slab-sided bodies with fully integrated fenders. The Brougham and sedans were of a fastback design, while convertibles and coupes were notchbacks. A character line ran from the front to back further lowering the car even more visually, so \"the new Hudson looked like a dream car straight from the auto show.\"\nIn 1948, Commodores came in one series and were available in either I6 or optional I8 engines. Interiors were upholstered in broadcloth on sedans, and leather on convertibles. Again, Hudson continued to provide numerous standard features that other manufacturers classified as upcharge options. Not only were the 1948 models \"truly significant new designs of the early postwar years. The \u201cStep-Down\u201d Hudson was low and sleek, which many consumers really enjoyed.\" Total Commodore production was 62,474 of which 35,315 were I8 units.\nSir Vival.\nIn response to the increasing number of deaths on highways in the United States after World War II, an innovative concept car was designed and built for safety rather than for style or speed. Using two 1948 Hudsons, Walter Jerome, built a hinged two-section car to minimize impact of collisions. Among its many features are a centrally-positioned, raised turret-shaped driver compartment providing panoramic visibility, as well as safety equipment that would later become standard on production vehicles such as rubber bumpers, seat belts, and side marker lights. Jerome had purchased the two donor Hudsons from Bellingham Motors, a Hudson dealership in Massachusetts, and was planning to build up to a dozen Sir Vivals per year, but only the prototype was completed and in early-1970s, it went back to Bellingham Motors for storage.\nWith the closing of Bellingham Motors, in 2022 it was sold to Lane Motor Museum which plans to restore it.\n1949.\nFor the 1949 model year, the Commodore line was enlarged to include more luxurious Custom models. As a marketing promotion, Hudson had plastic specialists use scaled-down blueprints to develop transparent models of the Commodore Eight sedan to demonstrate and promote the design and construction of the cars.\n1950.\nThe most noticeable change to the 1950 model year was the restyled grille featuring a design that superimposed Hudson's signature triangle logo on four horizontal bars. This would become the \"Hudson look.\" The 1950 models included a new split back window and redesigned interiors. A new Custom Commodore convertible model debuted in mid-April 1950. \n1951.\nIn 1951, Hudson introduced a new I6 engine and offered General Motors' Hydra-Matic as an optional transmission. The grille was redesigned from a rather rectangular shape to an oval shape, a design that would carry through to 1953. The grille would be redesigned again in 1954, the last year for the famous aerodynamic Hudson body style which was used from 1948 until 1954.\n1952.\nIn its final year in 1952, the Commodore was split into the Six Series and Eight Series. The exterior received another trim change, but by the end of 1953, the Step-Down styling was beginning to look outdated. Hudson lacked the resources to keep adding new and exciting changes to keep up with the competition from the other automakers, whose annual redesigns added tailfins and more chrome trim that consumers wanted. Instead of redesigning the aging \"set-down\" models, company President A. E. Barit pushed ahead with the firm's plan for the Jet compact.\nDiscontinuation.\nBeginning in 1953, Hudson would field only the Hudson Hornet and Hudson Wasp line, as well as introduce the entirely new Hudson Jet compact car line.\nFollowing Hudson's merger with Nash to form American Motors Corporation (AMC) in 1954, Hudson's automobile production was switched to AMC's facility in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Following slow sales of the 1955 model year, AMC turned Hudson styling to Richard Arbib, who created a unique look for the Hudson line based on what he termed \"V-Line\" styling. The new design did not attract customers to Hudson, and production fell even further.\n1957 show car.\nIn its final year, the Hudson brand was pared down to a single model, the Hudson Hornet, available in two trim levels, the top-level Custom and the Super. However, during the show car season, AMC prepared a one-off 1957 Hudson Commodore show car identical to the production Hornet, featuring gold exterior trim and unique upholstery.\nStation wagon.\nIn 1946, Hudson hired an experienced Army illustrator for instruction manuals and training materials. Don Butler assisted with the final design drawings for the upcoming 1948 Hudsons. However, he also sketched unofficial proposals for Hudson that included a station wagon, a pickup, and a town car. Butler's illustrations were an inspiration to build a Commodore station wagon. A 1948 Hudson Commodore Eight four-door sedan served a donor with another car's roof added for the station wagon's rear section. The woodie was hand-made of ash framing with mahogany veneer panels. The car is a modern realization of an unbuilt postwar design.\nNotable owner.\nActor Steve McQueen owned four Hudsons that he drove around Los Angeles. His 1950 Hudson Commodore Six Brougham was the only convertible. McQueen upgraded the standard I6 with a Twin-H version from a Hudson Hornet.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "364596": "Hudson Motor Car Company\nAmerican auto company\nThe Hudson Motor Car Company made Hudson and other branded automobiles in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., from 1909 until 1954. In 1954, Hudson merged with Nash-Kelvinator to form American Motors Corporation (AMC). The Hudson name was continued through the 1957 model year, after which it was discontinued.\nCompany strategy.\nThe name \"Hudson\" came from Joseph L. Hudson, a Detroit department store entrepreneur and founder of Hudson's department store, who provided the necessary capital and gave permission for the company to be named after him. A total of eight Detroit businessmen formed the company on February 20, 1909, to produce an automobile which would sell for less than US$1,000 (equivalent to approximately $ in 2024 funds).\nOne of the lead \"car men\" and an organizer of the company was Roy D. Chapin Sr., a young executive who had worked with Ransom E. Olds. (Chapin's son, Roy Jr., would later be president of Hudson-Nash descendant American Motors Corporation in the 1960s). The company quickly started production, with the first car driven out of a small factory in Detroit on July 3, 1909, at Mack Avenue and Beaufait Street on the East Side of Detroit, occupying the old Aerocar factory.\nThe new Hudson \"Twenty\" was one of the first low-priced cars on the American market and became successful with 4,508 sold the first year. This was the best first year's production in the history of the automobile industry and put the newly formed company in 17th place industry-wide, \"a remarkable achievement at a time\" when there were hundreds of makes being marketed.\nSuccessful sales volume required a larger factory. A new facility was built on a parcel at Jefferson Avenue and Conner Avenue in Detroit's Fairview section that was diagonally across from the Chalmers Automobile plant. The land was the former farm of D.J. Campau. It was designed by the firm of renowned industrial architect Albert Kahn with 223,500 square feet and opened on October 29, 1910. Production in 1911 increased to 6,486. For 1914, Hudsons for the American market were now left-hand drive.\nCoachbuilder Fisher Body Co. built bodies for Hudson cars (as well as many other automotive marques) until they were bought out by General Motors in 1919. From 1923, Hudson bodies were built exclusively by Massachusetts company Biddle and Smart. The lucrative contract with Hudson would see Biddle and Smart buy up many smaller local coachbuilders to meet the Hudson demand. Peak shipments came in 1926, when the company delivered 41,000 bodies to Hudson. An inability to stamp steel meant that their products were made using aluminum.\nOn 1 July 1926, Hudson's new US$10 million ($ in 2024 dollars ) body plant was completed where the automaker could now build the all-steel closed bodies for both the Hudson and Essex models. Biddle and Smart continued to build aluminum body versions of the Hudson line and were marketed by Hudson as \"custom-built\" although they were the same as the steel-body vehicles. With Hudson now building in-house, Biddle and Smart saw their work for Hudson drop by 60%. From 1927 Hudson gradually began to utilize local coachbuilders Briggs Manufacturing Company and Murray Corporation of America to supplement Hudson's production which was expanding domestically and internationally. With car prices falling due to the Great Depression and the costs to transport vehicles from Massachusetts to Detroit becoming too expensive, the contract with Biddle and Smart was terminated in 1930, and Biddle and Smart went out of business shortly thereafter.\nAt their peak in 1929, Hudson and Essex produced a combined 300,000 cars in one year, including contributions from Hudson's other factories in Belgium and England; a factory had been built in 1925 in Brentford in London. Hudson was the third largest U.S. car maker that year, after Ford Motor Company and Chevrolet.\nHudson had many firsts for the auto industry; these included dual brakes, the use of dashboard oil-pressure and generator warning lights, and the first balanced crankshaft, which allowed the Hudson straight-six engine, dubbed the \"Super Six\" (1916), to work at a higher rotational speed while remaining smooth, developing more power for its size than lower-speed engines. The Super Six was the first engine built by Hudson, previously Hudson had developed engine designs and then had them manufactured by Continental Motors Company. Most Hudsons until 1957 had straight-6 engines. The dual brake system used a secondary mechanical emergency brake system, which activated the rear brakes when the pedal traveled beyond the normal reach of the primary system; a mechanical parking brake was also used. Hudson transmissions also used an oil bath and cork clutch mechanism that proved to be as durable as it was smooth.\nEssex and Terraplane.\nIn 1919, Hudson introduced the Essex brand line of automobiles; the line was originally for budget-minded buyers, designed to compete with Ford and Chevrolet, as opposed to the more up-scale Hudson line competing with Oldsmobile and Studebaker. Local coachbuilder Briggs Manufacturing introduced their first-of-its-kind closed coach body in 1922 for Hudson's Essex. It was the first closed vehicle available at a price close to its open-bodied brethren. The 1922 Essex closed body was priced at only $300 more than the 1922 Essex touring. Within three years, its popularity enabled Hudson to reduce its price so that both the 1925 Essex touring and coach were priced the same. The Essex found great success by offering one of the first affordable sedans, and combined Hudson and Essex sales moved from seventh in the U.S. to third by 1925.\nIn 1932, Hudson began phasing out its Essex nameplate for the modern Terraplane brand name. The new line was launched on July 21, 1932, with a promotional christening by Amelia Earhart. For 1932 and 1933, the restyled cars were named Essex-Terraplane; from 1934 as Terraplane, until 1938 when the Terraplane was renamed the Hudson 112. Hudson also began assembling cars in Canada, contracting Canada Top and Body to build the cars in their Tilbury, Ontario, plant. In England, Terraplanes built at the Brentford factory were still being advertised in 1938.\nAn optional accessory on some 1935\u20131938 Hudson and Terraplane models was a steering column-mounted electric gear pre-selector and electro-mechanical automatic shifting system, known as the \"Electric Hand\", manufactured by the Bendix Corporation. This took the place of the floor-mounted shift lever, but required conventional clutch actions. Cars equipped with the feature also carried a conventional shift lever in clips under the dash, which could be pulled out and put to use in case the Electric Hand should ever fail. Hudson was also noted for offering an optional vacuum-powered automatic clutch, starting in the early 1930s.\nHudson Eight.\nFor the 1930 model year, Hudson debuted a new flathead inline eight cylinder engine with block and crankcase cast as a unit and fitted with two cylinder heads. A 2.75-inch bore and 4.5-inch stroke displaced developing at 3,600 rpm with the standard 5.78:1 compression ratio. The five main bearing crankshaft had eight integral counterweights, an industry first, and also employed a Lanchester vibration damper. Four rubber blocks were used at engine mount points. A valveless oil pump improved the Hudson splash lubrication system.\nThe new eights were the only engine offering in the Hudson line, supplanting the Super Six, which continued in the Essex models.\nAt the 1931 Indianapolis 500, Buddy Marr's #27 \"Hudson Special\" (using a Winfield carburetor) finished the 200 laps in tenth place.\n1936\u20131942.\nIn 1936, Hudson revamped its cars, introducing a new \"radial safety control\" / \"rhythmic ride\" suspension which suspended the live front axle from two steel bars, as well as from leaf springs. Doing this allowed the use of longer, softer leaf springs (\"rhythmic ride\"), and prevented bumps and braking from moving the car off course. The 1936 Hudsons were also considerably larger inside than competitive cars\u00a0\u2014 Hudson claimed a interior, comparing it to the in the \"largest of other popular cars\" of the time. With an optional bulging trunk lid, Hudson claimed the trunk could accommodate of luggage. The 1936 engines were powerful for the time, from .\nThe 1939 models joined other American cars in the use of a column-mounted gearshift lever. This freed front-seat passenger space and remained the industry standard through the 1960s, when \"bucket seats\" came into vogue. Hudson became the first car manufacturer to use foam rubber in its seats. The Hudson Terraplane was dropped. For the 1940 models, Hudson introduced coil spring independent front suspension, aircraft-style shock absorbers mounted within the front springs, and true center-point steering on all its models, a major advance in performance among cars in this price range. The Super Six model was reintroduced as well. Despite all these changes, Hudson's sales for 1940 were lower than in 1939 and the company lost money again. The advent of military contracts the following year brought relief.\nThe 1941 Hudsons retained the front-end styling of the 1940 models but the bodies were new with 5.5 inches added to their length giving more legroom. A new manual 3-speed synchromesh transmission was quieter with all helical gears. Wheelbases increased by 3 inches, with offerings of 116, 121, and 128 inches, and height was decreased with flatter roofs. Convertibles now had a power-operated top. Big Boy trucks now used the 128-inch wheelbase. In 1942, as a response to General Motors' Hydramatic automatic transmission, Hudson introduced its \"Drive-Master\" system. Drive-Master was a more sophisticated combination of the concepts used in the Electric Hand and the automatic clutch. It contained a vacuum-powered module on the transmission to switch between second and third gear and a vacuum-powered module to pull the clutch in and out. At the touch of a button, Drive-Master offered the driver a choice of three modes of operation: ordinary, manual shifting and clutching; manual shifting with automatic clutching; and automatic shifting with automatic clutching. All this was accomplished by a large and complicated mechanism located under the hood. They worked well, and in fully automatic mode served as a good semi-automatic transmission. When coupled with an automatic overdrive, Drive-Master became known as Super-Matic. Re-engineering of the frame rear end to use lower springs reduced car height by . Sheet metal \"spats\" on the lower body now covered the running boards and new wider front and rear fenders accommodated this.\nFemale designer.\nAs the role of women increased in car-purchase decisions, automakers began to hire female designers. Hudson, wanting a female perspective on automotive design, hired Elizabeth Ann Thatcher in 1939, one of America's first female automotive designers. Her contributions to the 1941 Hudson included exterior trim with side lighting, interior instrument panel, interiors and interior trim fabrics. She designed for Hudson from 1939 into 1941, leaving the company when she married Joe Oros, then a designer for Cadillac. He later became head of the design team at Ford that created the Mustang.\nWorld War II.\nAs ordered by the Federal government, Hudson ceased auto production from 1942 until 1945 to manufacture material during World War II, including aircraft parts and naval engines as well as anti-aircraft guns. The Hudson \"Invader\" engine powered many of the landing craft used on the D-Day invasion of Normandy, June 6, 1944.\nDuring World War II Hudson had also an aircraft division that produced ailerons for one large eastern airplane builder. The plant was capable of large scale production of wings and ailerons as well as other airplane parts. On May 22, 1941, Hudson was given a contract for the Oerlikon 20 mm cannon with the Jefferson Avenue Plant, on Jefferson Avenue and Connor Avenue, responsible for converting the original Swiss drawings to American production standards. The company produced 33,201 Oerlikons for the United States Navy with the original mechanism continued in use without major change and with complete interchangeability of parts until the end of the war. Hudson also manufactured millions of other weaponry and vehicle parts for the war effort. Hudson ranked 83rd among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.\nFisher takeover attempt.\nThe Fisher Body Company, later the Fisher Body Division of GM, manufactured bodies for many automobile marques throughout the early 20th Century. From 1926 the business had become part of General Motors. Just before World War II, the Fisher brothers contemplated a takeover of Hudson and commissioned engineer Roscoe C. (Rod) Hoffman, from Detroit, to design and build several rear-engine prototype vehicles for possible eventual production as Hudsons. One prototype was built in secret in 1935.\nWorld War II forced the brothers to shelve their plans while the company shifted its focus to the war effort. When brothers Fred and Charles retired from GM in 1944 they revived the Hudson takeover idea with the view of establishing new, independent automobile manufacturing operations. The brothers contacted Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, Hudson's main stockholder, offering to buy. Using an intermediary, Queen Wilhelmina expressed her interest in selling, prompting the Fisher brothers to begin devoting time to Hudson and their plant in anticipation of a deal. When news of these events reached Wall Street, the price of Hudson stock skyrocketed with the consensus by investors that a Fisher takeover would be the best thing for Hudson. However, the Fisher brothers tender offer fell short of Hudson's sudden increased market value and the deal did not go through.\n1946\u20131954.\nProduction resumed after the war and included a wheelbase three-quarter-ton pickup truck.\nIn 1948, the company launched its \"step-down\" bodies, which lasted through the 1954 model year. The term step-down referred to Hudson's placement of the passenger compartment down inside the perimeter of the frame; riders stepped down onto a floor that was surrounded by the perimeter of the car's frame. The result was not only a safer car, and greater passenger comfort as well, but, through a lower center of gravity, a good handling car. In time almost all U.S. automakers would embrace it as a means of building bodies. Automotive author Richard Langworth described the step-down models as the greatest autos of the era in articles for \"Consumer Guide\" and \"Collectible Automobile\".\nFor the 1951 model year, the 6-cylinder engine received a new block with thicker walls and other improvements to boost horsepower by almost 18% and torque by 28.5% making Hudson a hot performer again. The GM-supplied 4-speed Hydramatic automatic transmission was now optional in Hornets and Commodore Custom 6s and 8s.\nHudson's strong, light-weight bodies, combined with its high-torque inline six-cylinder engine technology, made the company's 1951\u201354 Hornet an auto racing champion, dominating NASCAR in 1951, 1952, 1953, and 1954.\nHerb Thomas won the 1951 and 1954 Southern 500s and Dick Rathmann won in 1952. Some NASCAR records set by Hudson in the 1950s (\"e.g.\" consecutive wins in one racing season) still stand even today. Hudson cars also did very well in races sanctioned by the AAA Contest Board from 1952 until 1954 with Marshall Teague winning the 1952 AAA Stock Car Championship and Frank Mundy in 1953. Often Hudsons finished in most of the top positions in races. Later, these cars met with some success in drag racing, where their high power-to-weight ratio worked to their advantage. Hudsons enjoyed success both in NHRA trials and local dirt track events.\nAs the post-war marketplace shifted from a seller's to a buyer's market the smaller U.S. automakers, such as Hudson and Nash, found it increasingly difficult to compete with the Big Three (Ford, GM and Chrysler) during the 1950s. A sales war between Ford and General Motors conducted during 1953 and 1954 had left little business for the much smaller \"independent\" automakers trying to compete against the standard models offered by the domestic Big Three. The Big Three could afford constant development and styling changes, so that their cars looked fresh every year, whereas the smaller manufacturers could only afford gradual changes. Hudson's once-innovative \"step-down\" unit-body construction, while sturdy and innovative, also made restyling difficult and expensive. Although Hudsons dominated racing during this period, their feats did little to affect showroom traffic despite incorporating their NASCAR success into a marketing campaign known as \"Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday\". Sales fell each year from 1951 until 1954, and only Korean War military contracts kept the company solvent. On March 20, 1954, the Hudson Motor Car Company reported a loss of $10,411,060 in 1953 as compared with a profit of $8,307,847 in 1952.\nAfter the company's high-priced Jet compact car line failed to capture buyers in its second straight year, Hudson CEO A.E. Barit engaged with George W. Mason, CEO of Nash-Kelvinator (makers of Nash and Rambler) to discuss the possibility of a merger with Nash. Mason already had the vision of merging the four independent automakers (Nash, Hudson, Packard, and Studebaker) into one company to compete with the Big Three, having floated the idea as early as 1946 with Packard to no avail. Mason had previously discussed the idea with Barit in 1952. On 14 January 1954 an agreement was reached and Nash and Hudson executives took the first steps to bring the two companies together.\n1954 \u2013 Merger with Nash-Kelvinator.\nOn May 1, 1954, Hudson merged with Nash-Kelvinator to become American Motors Corporation. George W. Mason became CEO and president of AMC while Hudson's president, A.E. Barit retired to become an AMC board member.\nThe Hudson factory, located in Detroit, Michigan, was converted to military contract production at the end of the model year, and the remaining three years of Hudson production took place at the Nash plant in Kenosha, Wisconsin building rebadged Nash cars with the Hudson brand name. Nash would focus most of its marketing resources on its smaller Rambler models, and Hudson would focus its marketing efforts on its full-sized cars. The first Hudson model to terminate production was the Jet. The new company could then focus on the more successful Nash Rambler. Henceforth, Hudson dealers would have badge-engineered versions of the Nash Rambler and Metropolitan compacts to sell as Hudson products.\nOne of the first things Mason did as CEO of the new company was to initiate talks with James J. Nance, president of Packard, for parts-sharing arrangements between AMC and Packard. At this time AMC did not have its own V8 engine and an agreement was made for the new Packard V8 engine and Packard's Ultramatic automatic transmission to be used in the 1955 Nash Ambassador and Hudson Hornet models.\nIn July 1954, Packard acquired Studebaker to form Studebaker-Packard Corporation. However further talks of a merger between AMC and Studebaker-Packard were cut short when Mason died on October 8, 1954. A week after his death, Mason's successor, George W. Romney, announced \"There are no mergers under way either directly or indirectly\". Nevertheless, Romney continued with Mason's commitment to buy components from Studebaker-Packard Corporation. Although Mason and Nance had previously agreed that Studebaker-Packard would purchase parts from AMC, it did not do so. Moreover, Packard's engines and transmissions were comparatively expensive, so AMC began development of its own V8 engine, and replaced the outsourced unit by mid-1956.\n1955\u20131957.\nFor 1955, both Hudson and Nash senior models were built on a common automobile platform using styling themes by Pinin Farina, Edmund E. Anderson, and Frank Spring. Common-body shell production for competing makes of automobiles was a manufacturing technique that had been used by the Big Three for decades. \nAnderson set up separate design studios for Nash, Hudson, and Rambler.\nAlthough the 1955 Hudson used the inner body shell of the Nash, the car incorporated a front cowl originally designed by Spring and the Hudson team to be put on the 1954 Step-Down platform. The 1955 models also used the Hudson dashboard, \"triple safe brakes\" and the Nash Weather Eye heater with Harrison Radiator Corporation-supplied lower cost Freon/compressor type air conditioning.\nFor the first time, Hudson offered a V8 engine starting for the 1955 model year. It was the Packard-designed and -built engine rated at . All cars with the Packard V8 also came with Packard's Ultramatic automatic transmission as an option for $494 with the Nash 3-speed manual was also available at $295.\nHudson dealers also sold Rambler and Metropolitan models under the Hudson brand. A total of 4,357 Metropolitans were sold as \"Hudson.\" When sold by Hudson dealers, both cars were identified as Hudson vehicles via hood/grille emblems and horn buttons. Hudson Ramblers also received \"H\" symbols on fuel filler caps (and, in 1956, also on hubcaps).\nIn 1956, ex-Hudson president A.E Barit resigned from the Board in protest over the likelihood that Hudson would be phased out of production.\nFor 1956, the design of the senior Hudsons was given over to designer Richard Arbib, which resulted in the \"V-Line\" styling motif, a combination of \"V\" motifs that carried Hudson's triangular corporate logo theme. Sales fell below the 1955 figures.\nWith a wider front track than Nash used, Hudson was the better handling car and was powered by the famed Hornet Six with the optional high-compression cylinder head and dual-carburetor manifold (\"Twin-H Power\"); the Twin H would disappear at the end of the 1956 model year.\nThe Wasp used the L-head Jet Six engine (up to ) and this model (in sedan version) was Hudson's top seller. For 1957, Hudson dropped the shorter-wheelbase Wasp line, selling only the Hornet Custom and Super, which featured a lowered profile and slightly updated styling.\nGeorge W. Romney felt that Hudson and Nash were no longer relevant players in the automotive market and retired both names at the end of the 1957 model year production. Both Rambler and Metropolitan became makes in their own right, and no longer were identified as Hudson or Nash.\nEnd of the line.\nThe last Hudson rolled off the Kenosha assembly line on June 25, 1957, although at that time there were proposals of continuing the Hudson and Nash names into the 1958 model year on the Rambler chassis as deluxe, longer-wheelbase senior models. The combined Nash and Hudson production volume was insufficient to justify all-new design and tooling; therefore, the Rambler's platform was expected to be adopted by the longer cars. One major trade magazine said rumors of discontinuance were false and the 1958 Hudsons and Nashes \"would be big and smart\". Factory styling photographs show designs for a 1958 Hudson (and Nash) line based on a longer-wheelbase 1958 Rambler. Front-end prototype photos show separate Hudson and Nash styling themes.\nAmerican Motors' president, George W. Romney, concluded that the only way to compete with the \"Big Three\" was to stake the future of AMC on a new smaller-sized car line. Neither Hudson nor Nash brand names had as much positive market recognition as the successful Rambler and their sales were lagging. Together with AMC's chief engineer Meade Moore, Romney had completely phased out the Nash and Hudson brands at the end of 1957. The decision to retire the brands came so quickly that preproduction photographs of the eventual 1958 Rambler Ambassador show both Nash- and Hudson-badged versions. The Rambler brand was selected for further development and promotion while focusing exclusively on compact cars.\nEventually, however, something close to the Hudson design was chosen for the 1958 Rambler Ambassador. Hudson brand enthusiasts will note the triangular grille guard and 1957-like fender \"gun sights\" and the fast-selling 1958 Rambler Customs wore 1957 Hudson-styled front-fender trim.\nInternational markets.\nHudson, Essex, and Terraplane vehicles were either exported as complete cars or locally built from knock-down kits in many countries making the Hudson marque well-known internationally as well as domestically. In its 1929 report, the banking house Garden Detroit Company reported that in 1928 Hudson shipped 50,587 vehicles overseas, or 17.9% of total production. By March 1929 Hudson had topped all previous production figures having exported 44,295 cars in March alone, bringing the total of shipments for the first quarter of 1929 to an all-time high of 108,298.\nAustralia.\nHudson vehicles were imported into Australia in 1913 by Brisbane company McGhie Motor Company.\nIn 1915 the Sydney branch of Dalgety & Co. Ltd became the distributor of Hudson (and later Essex) vehicles for New South Wales. The company was also the agent for Wolseley, Daimler, and Buick passenger vehicles as well as Lacre and Halley commercial vehicles. Motor bodies were produced by Messrs Henderson, Boulton, and Kirkham in Regent Street, Sydney. The company also did trimming, fitting, painting, mechanical work, and repairs.\nEstablished in 1922, Sydney company Smith & Waddington set up motor vehicle body building operations for NSW and Queensland at premises on Parramatta Road, Camperdown. The company built \"custom\" car bodies which, by the terminology of the day, meant \"built to an individual order and to a special design.\" In addition to assembling Hudson and Essex for Dalgety, the company also built vehicle bodies for Rolls-Royce, Wolseley, Dort, Benz, Fiat, and Turkat M\u00e9ry. After a slump in the economy which caused operations to cease in November 1927, Smith & Waddington resumed production in June 1928, again building Hudson and Essex vehicles for NSW and Queensland, and further adding Dodge, Chrysler, Erskine, and Studebaker for the whole of Australia. Additionally, Sydney coach builder G.H Olding & Sons are known to have built 6 Terraplane phaetons for Dalgety in 1934.\nIn 1926 a new company, Leader Motors Limited was formed to be the exclusive distributor of Hudson and Essex motor vehicles in Queensland. The bodies were made by South Australian company Holden's Motor Body Builders in Brisbane. In its main facility of Adelaide, Holden also made motor bodies for Austin, Buick, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Cleveland, Dodge, Fiat, Oakland, Oldsmobile, Overland, Pontiac, Reo, Studebaker, Vauxhall, and Willys Knight. In 1927 Holden's produced 1252 Essex Standard Tourers, 173 Essex Special Tourers, 171 Essex Coaches, and 46 Essex S/S Roadsters. In the same year the company manufactured 8 Hudson Tourers. 1928 was the last year of Hudson and Essex production by Holden's. In 1930 Holden's was bought out by General Motors.\nHudson and Essex assembly began in Victoria by Neal's Motors of Port Melbourne in 1927. The contract to build the bodies was initially given to TJ Richards & Sons of Keswick, Adelaide to supply for Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, and Tasmania as well as acting as a second source of supply for New South Wales and Queensland. Holden's Motor Body Builders also built bodies. Holden's records show that for 1927 the Adelaide plant built 1,641 Essex vehicles and 8 Hudsons, and for 1928 a total of 1,931 Essex vehicles and 59 Hudsons were assembled. Holden's final year for Hudson and Essex production was in 1928, and in 1931 the company was bought out by General Motors.\nIn February 1934 Ruskins Body Works of West Melbourne secured the contract to build Hudson and Terraplane bodies for the whole of Australia. In June 1937, Neal's Motors celebrated assembling its 30,000th automobile: a 1937 Hudson Terraplane.\nIn 1939 Dalgety sold their automotive business to agent for Packard motor vehicles, Ira L. & A.C Berk in Sydney, which thereafter became the distributors for Hudson in NSW and QLD. The company opened a manufacturing plant in Belmore, Sydney in February 1949.\nAfter the end of World War II, Australia legislated to restrict the use of U.S. dollars which were in desperately short supply. The use of U.S. dollars to import cars thereafter required a government permit restricting the purchase of American cars only to those with access to U.S. funds held overseas such as consular staff and visiting entertainers. Despite this, Australian distributors of Hudson, Nash, Packard, and Studebaker were able to bring in limited numbers of US-built, factory right-hand-drive vehicles from 1946.\nA report by Dunlop Australia about Australian car sales from 1932 until 1949 noted that Hudson vehicles (including Essex and Terraplane) totaled 10,424 units during the 17-years, coming in at 13th place overall. It was noted in the report generally that all marques in Australia experienced the greatest number of sales before World War II.\nIn 1960, six years after the merger of Hudson and Nash-Kelvinator to form American Motors Corporation, Australian Motor Industries (AMI) of Port Melbourne would form an agreement with AMC to assemble Ramblers in Australia.\nCanada.\nCanadian assembly of Hudson vehicles commenced in 1932 by Hudson Motors of Canada in Tilbury, Ontario. The factory building was owned by Canadian Top & Body Co. which built the motor bodies for the vehicles. The first models assembled were a series of Hudson Eights. World War II interrupted operations and production ceased in 1941. Post-war operations resumed in 1950, with Hudsons being assembled by Chatco Steel Products in Tilbury, Ontario. Operations ceased in 1954 following the Nash-Hudson merger that led to the formation of American Motors Corporation. Toronto-based Nash Motors of Canada Ltd. became American Motors (Canada) Ltd. and all subsequent AMC operations continued in Toronto until its closure in 1957. Local production of Ramblers resumed after AMC's Brampton, Ontario plant opened in December 1960.\nGermany.\nHudson and Essex vehicles were assembled in Berlin, Germany, during the 1920s by Hudson Essex Motors Company m.b.H Berlin-Spandau. The cars were built with the speedometer in kilometers, while the fuel, oil, and temperature gauges remained in their original non-metric units.\nNew Zealand.\nHudson and Essex vehicles were imported into North Island by Dominion Motors of Wellington which began operations in 1912. Dominion Motors amalgamated with Universal Motor Company of Christchurch in 1919 forming an assembly operation for Hudson and Essex as well as Oldsmobile, Crossley, Chevrolet, Stutz, Rolls-Royce, and (pre-GM) Vauxhall. Vehicles were assembled and finished in-house from partial knock-down kits.\nFor South Island, Hudson and Essex vehicles were imported by W.G. Vining Limited of Nelson, beginning in 1912. Vining had built a garage in 1908 which was the largest garage in New Zealand at the time. A car assembly plant was established at the premises and shortly thereafter Vinings obtained licenses to import and assemble Cadillac, Maxwell, Haynes, and Ford vehicles from the United States; Bean cars from the United Kingdom; and Darracq and Unic vehicles from France. Along with Hudson and Essex, the plant later assembled Chevrolet and Rover vehicles. The business ceased when it was sold on 30 September 1927 upon W.G. Vining's retirement. Vining's son formed a new business, P. Vining & Scott, and continued the Hudson and Essex franchise, adding Morris in 1932.\nNew Zealand car sales for the first nine months of 1927 saw Essex in third place with 898 vehicles sold, behind Chevrolet in second place with 1,100 vehicles sold, and Ford in first place with 1651 vehicles sold. Hudson made 12th place with 206 sales.\nFrom 1935, Hudson vehicles (along with Nash, Studebaker, and Standard) were assembled by Christchurch company Motor Assemblies Limited. Production ended when the company was acquired by Standard-Triumph International in 1954. Hudson production then went to Motor Holdings Ltd which had been founded in 1936 as the Zealand franchise of Jowett Motors. After Jowett's closure in the United Kingdom in 1954, Motor Holdings won the Volkswagen franchise, and its Auckland operation was renamed VW Motors for the production of VWs in New Zealand. VW Motors assembled Hudsons as a secondary line. Some were fully imported as special orders. \nAfter the Hudson and Nash marques were discontinued by American Motors Corporation, VW Motors assembled AMC's new Rambler motor vehicles at its new Otahuhu Volkswagen plant from 1958 until 1962. AMC formed an agreement in 1963 with Campbell Motor Industries (CMI) of Thames to assemble Ramblers, production of which ran from 1964 until 1971.\nSouth Africa.\nBeginning in the 1920s, Hudson and Willys motor vehicles were assembled in South Africa from right-hand-drive complete knock-down (CKD) kits sourced from Canada by Stanley Motors at their plant, National Motor Assemblers (NMA), in Natalspruit (Gauteng). After World War II, NMA built Austin, Standard, and Triumph vehicles at different times.\nAfter the formation of American Motors Corporation in 1954, NMA continued to assemble AMC Ramblers until 1967.\nUnited Kingdom.\nHudsons were introduced to the United Kingdom in 1911. No shipments were possible during the First World War but as soon as the Armistice was signed exports resumed to the U.K. Hudsons and Essex vehicles were sold through ten concessionaires.\nIn 1922 Hudson-Essex Motors of Great Britain Limited was formed, with new premises on Dordrecht Road, in Acton Vale. Over 100 agents were appointed to sell the vehicles resulting in 2,000 sales in the next 12 months.\nIn 1926 a factory was built on a property next to the recently opened Great West Road in Brentford. The plant opened in 1927 and a year later a three-story building was built as a service department for Hudson and Essex vehicles. The factory assembled the vehicle chassis locally, but the bodies were imported as complete units from Detroit.\nFrom 1932, the bodies came over from the United States in sections to be assembled at the Great West Road factory. After the Essex marque was retired in 1932 the British company was renamed Hudson Motors Ltd.\nHudson's new Terraplane model was equally as popular in the U.K. as it was in the United States. English-designed and built bodies were built on the Terraplane frames and the cars were entered in many automobile races including the Monte Carlo Rally. Some of the cars entered were driven by personnel from the Great West Road factory. A Hudson Pacemaker won first place in the 1931 Scottish Rally and another Pacemaker took 7th place in the 1932 Torquay Rally. The Team Award was won by two Terraplane tourers and a Terraplane saloon in the 1933 Scottish Rally.\nA triangular site from the railway was developed in 1926 for a new Hudson-Essex factory. This was the first major industrial facility and became a major employer along the Great West Road. Other firms followed to establish what became known as the \"Golden Mile.\" The Chiswick Roundabout (the junction of Chiswick High Road, North Circular Road, South Circular Road, and the A4 Great West Road) also became known as \"Hudson's Corner.\" After World War II, the property was used by the Kelvinator Refrigerator Company.\nAfter the Hudson and Nash merger, the British company became a subsidiary of American Motors Corporation and was renamed Rambler Motors (A.M.C.) Limited in 1961, taking over from Nash Concessionaires Ltd. as the importer of AMC's new Rambler vehicles. The company imported AMC vehicles, many in factory right-hand-drive, well into the 1970s.\nLegacy.\nIn 1928, a one yuan coin called the Auto Dollar was minted by the Chinese warlord Zhou Xicheng to commemorate the construction of roadways in Guizhou province. The coin features an image of an automobile reminiscent of a soft-topped Hudson car, although it does not correspond to any particular model exactly.\nFor the 1970 model year, American Motors revived the \"Hornet\" model name for its new series of compact cars (the AMC Hornet). AMC was later purchased by Chrysler, which at one time considered reintroducing the Hornet name in the Dodge model line and ultimately did so for the 2023 model year with a car based on the Alfa Romeo Tonale.\nThe last Hudson dealership was Miller Motors in Ypsilanti, Michigan, which is now part of the Ypsilanti Automotive Heritage Museum.\nThe Hostetler Hudson Auto Museum in Shipshewana, Indiana, featured a collection of restored Hudsons. Eldon Hostetler was an inventor who owned a Hudson as a teenager and later purchased Hudson cars and restored them. The museum closed in 2018 after the Hudson Automobile Museum Board voted in favor of closing the museum and liquidating the collection.\nA restored Hudson Dealership sign still occupies its original site on Highway 32 in Chico, California.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["4469024", "364596"], "permutation_1": ["4469024", "364596"], "permutation_2": ["4469024", "364596"], "permutation_3": ["4469024", "364596"]}
{"id": "2hop__506035_325512", "docs_added": {"122392": "Poplarville, Mississippi\nPoplarville is a city in Pearl River County, Mississippi, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 2,894. It is the county seat of Pearl River County. It hosts an annual Blueberry Jubilee, which includes rides, craft vendors and rodeos.\nHistory.\nPoplarville was named for Poplar Jim Smith, the original owner of the town site.\nFour lynchings have been committed in Poplarville since the Civil War. The most recent occurred in 1959 when Mack Charles Parker, an African-American accused of rape, was abducted from the Pearl River County jail in Poplarville by a mob and shot to death. No charges were filed against anyone.\nOn August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina inflicted damage on Poplarville, with storm's most powerful, unofficially recorded gust of wind reported at Pearl River Community College, at . On September 2, 2005, Ohio Army National Guard arrived in Poplarville to assist with recovery. Initial efforts were the security of banks, pharmacies and gas stations as well as initial responses to rural emergencies. The unit stayed for three weeks ultimately checking on every family and structure in the county. On September 5, 2005, George W. Bush, Laura Bush, and Governor Haley Barbour visited Pearl River Community College in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.\nOn March 25, 2014 citizens voted to allow for beer and wine sales. The final vote count was 361 votes for the measure and 149 against.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which, of it is land and of it (0.52%) is water.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2020 census.\nAs of the 2020 United States census, there were 2,833 people, 733 households, and 499 families residing in the city.\n2000 census.\nAs of the census of 2000, there were 2,601 people, 852 households, and 558 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 936 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 74.32% White, 23.95% African American, 0.50% Asian, 0.15% Native American, 0.12% Pacific Islander, 0.15% from other races, and 0.81% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.65% of the population.\nThere were 852 households, out of which 32.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 42.6% were married couples living together, 19.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 34.4% were non-families. 30.5% of all households were made up of individuals, and 15.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.37 and the average family size was 2.99.\nIn the city, the population was spread out, with 21.6% under the age of 18, 20.8% from 18 to 24, 22.3% from 25 to 44, 18.2% from 45 to 64, and 17.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 32 years. For every 100 females, there were 84.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 81.0 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $26,417, and the median income for a family was $32,339. Males had a median income of $35,250 versus $21,667 for females. The per capita income for the city was $12,833. About 20.8% of families and 25.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 38.8% of those under age 18 and 17.5% of those age 65 or over.\nEducation.\nThe City of Poplarville is served by the Poplarville School District and is home to Pearl River Community College.", "2624316": "Larkin I. Smith\nAmerican politician\nLarkin Irvin Smith (June 26, 1944 \u2013 August 13, 1989) was an American Congressman from Mississippi serving for seven months until he was killed in a plane crash in Perry County, Mississippi in 1989.\nSmith was born in Poplarville, Mississippi to Nona Orene Bounds and her husband Hezekiah K. Smith Sr. Smith was named after his maternal grandfather Larkin Bounds and his maternal uncle Irvin E. Bounds. He received his bachelor's degree from William Carey University and then served at various positions in the police forces in both Pearl River and then Harrison counties. He became the police chief in Gulfport and thereafter the Harrison County sheriff.\nIn 1988, Smith ran for the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican from Mississippi's 5th congressional district in the southern portion of the state after eight-term incumbent Trent Lott gave up the seat to make a successful run for the Senate.\nHe defeated Democratic State Senator Gene Taylor and took office on January 3, 1989. However, Smith died on the night of August 13 in a plane crash in rural Perry County near Gulfport after returning from opening the Little League baseball \"Dixie Youth World Series\" in Hattiesburg. The bodies of Smith and pilot Chuck Vierling were not recovered until the next morning after a search in which rescuers had to bulldoze their way through the forest. Smith's death came only six days after fellow Representative Mickey Leland of Texas died in a plane crash in Ethiopia on August 7, 1989.\nTaylor would succeed Smith in a special election held some two months after the crash, beating Republican candidate Tom Anderson. Taylor was reelected every two years until 2010, when he was defeated by Republican State Representative Steven Palazzo.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections", "31306137": "Larkin Smith (Virginia politician)\nAmerican politician\nLarkin Smith (10 Jul 1745 \u2014 28 Sep 1813) was a Virginia officer, planter and politician who represented King and Queen County in the Virginia House of Delegates, and served as that body's Speaker from 1799 until 1802.\nEarly and family life.\nBorn at Richahock plantation in King and Queen County to Mary Chew and her planter husband, John Smith. A member of the First Families of Virginia, he could trace his ancestors in the colony several generations back to immigrants from England.\nMilitary service.\nSmith enlisted in November 1775 as a private in a company of minutemen. He was promoted to cadet in the 6th Virginia Regiment on February 10, 1776, then cornet of the 4th Regiment Continental Light Dragoons on August 1, 1777. His first officer's commission was issued on September 4, 1778, when he became a lieutenant. He was promoted to captain on April 1, 1780, and received land in southern Virginia as partial compensation for his patriotic service. Following the conflict, Smith became a member of the Society of the Cincinnati and continued in the Virginia militia, retiring as Colonel of the Regiment of Dragoons in 1807.\nCareer.\nFollowing the war, on September 30, 1784, Smith became one of the Justices of the Peace which collectively ruled his native King and Queen County.\nKing and Queen County voters elected Smith as their (part-time) representative in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1784-1785 and both re-elected him and failed to re-elect him many times. In the period June 7, 1794 until 1797 he was ineligible for legislative service because fellow legislators elected him as a member of the Governor's Privy Council which governed the Commonwealth's small executive branch. During their joint Privy Council service, he and Edmund Harrison (who would succeed him as speaker) on October 7, 1794, issued a report to the Governor on the condition of the State Treasury. Smith again won election to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1797, and was re-elected several times. Fellow delegates elected and re-elected him as their Speaker beginning in 1799, and he served until 1802.\nSmith moved to Norfolk, Virginia and accepted the office of tax Collector for the Port of Norfolk, serving from October 12, 1807, until his death on September 28, 1813.\nPersonal life.\nSmith married twice. On April 21, 1781, he married Mary Eleanor Hill. Following her death, on May 25, 1804, Smith married Sophia Ann Tazewell Taliaferro (widow of Benjamin Taliaferro) at the home of her brother, Littleton Waller Tazewell, who would become Governor of Virginia in 1834\u201336. Her father was Judge Henry Tazewell of Williamsburg.\nDeath and legacy.\nSmith died in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 1813. He is buried in Dinwiddie County with a nice toumb stone in the rock wall cemetery at Village View or Diamon Springs or Smith Farm. Same place different names.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\n, in the old House chamber in the Virginia State Capitol", "896958": "James Larkin\nIrish socialist and trade union leader (1874\u20131947)\nJames Larkin (28 January 1874 \u2013 30 January 1947), sometimes known as Jim Larkin or Big Jim, was an Irish republican, socialist and trade union leader. He was one of the founders of the Irish Labour Party along with James Connolly and William O'Brien, and later the founder of the Irish Worker League (a communist party which was recognised by the Comintern as the Irish section of the world communist movement), as well as the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU) and the Workers' Union of Ireland (the two unions later merged to become SIPTU, Ireland's largest trade union). Along with Connolly and Jack White, he was also a founder of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA; a paramilitary group which was integral to both the Dublin lock-out and the Easter Rising). Larkin was a leading figure in the Syndicalist movement.\nLarkin was born to Irish parents in Toxteth, Liverpool, England. Growing up in poverty, he received little formal education and began working in a variety of jobs while still a child. He became a full-time trade union organiser in 1905. Larkin moved to Belfast in 1907, where he was involved in trade unionism and syndicalist strike action including organising the 1907 Belfast Dock strike. Larkin later moved south and organised workers in Dublin, Cork and Waterford, with considerable success. He founded the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union after his expulsion from the National Union of Dock Labourers for his taking part in strike action in Dublin against union instructions, this new union would quickly replace the NUDL in Ireland. He later moved to Dublin which would become the headquarters of his union and the focus of his union activity, as well as where the Irish Labour Party would be formed.\nLarkin is perhaps best known for his role in organising the 1913 strike that led to the Dublin lock-out. The lock-out was an industrial dispute over workers' pay and conditions as well as their right to organise, and received worldwide attention and coverage. It has been described as the \"coming of age of the Irish trade union movement\". The Irish Citizen Army was formed during the lock-out to protect striking workers from police violence. Not long after the lockout Larkin assumed direct command of the ICA, beginning the process of its reform into a revolutionary paramilitary organisation by arming them with Mauser rifles bought from Germany by the Irish Volunteers and smuggled into Ireland at Howth in July 1914.\nIn October 1914 Larkin left Ireland and travelled to America to raise funds for the ITGWU and the ICA, leaving Connolly in charge of both organisations. During his time in America, Larkin became involved in the socialist movement there, becoming a member of the Socialist Party of America. Larkin then became involved in the early communist movement in America, and he was later jailed in 1920 in the midst of the Red Scare after being found guilty of \"criminal anarchy\". He then spent several years in Sing Sing, before he was eventually pardoned by the Governor of New York Al Smith in 1923 and later deported. Larkin then returned to Ireland where he again became involved in Irish socialism and politics, both in the Labour Party and then his newly formed Irish Worker League. Connolly by this time had been executed for his part in the Easter Rising and Larkin mourned the passing of his friend and colleague. \nAfter he lost control of the ITGWU, Larkin formed the Workers' Union of Ireland (WUI). The WUI was affiliated to Red International of Labour Unions (Profintern) soon after its formation. Larkin served as a Teachta D\u00e1la (TD) on three occasions, and two of his sons (James Larkin Jnr and Denis Larkin) also served as TDs. Jim Larkin served as Labour Party deputy in D\u00e1il \u00c9ireann from 1943 to 1944, leaving D\u00e1il \u00c9ireann for the last time in 1944, and dying in Dublin in 1947. Catholic Archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid gave his funeral mass, and the ICA in its last public appearance escorted his funeral procession through Dublin to his burial site at Glasnevin Cemetery.\nLarkin was respected by commentators both during and after his lifetime, with George Bernard Shaw describing him as the \"greatest Irishman since Parnell\", his friend and colleague in the labour movement James Connolly describing him as a \"man of genius, of splendid vitality, great in his conceptions, magnificent in his courage\", and Vladimir Lenin noting him as 'a remarkable speaker and a man of seething energy [who] performed miracles amongst the unskilled workers'. However other commentators have noted that Larkin was \"vilified as a wrecker by former comrades\", with anthologist Donal Nevin noting that some of Larkin's actions, including his attacks on others in the labour movement, meant Larkin had \"alienated practically all the leaders of the movement [and] the mass of trade union members\" by the mid-1920s.\n\"Big Jim\" Larkin continues to occupy a position in Dublin's collective memory and streetscape, with a statue of him unveiled on O'Connell Street in 1979.\nEarly years.\nLarkin was said to have been born on 21 January 1876, and this was the date that he himself believed was accurate. However, it is now believed that he was actually born on 28 January 1874. He was the second eldest son of Irish emigrants, James Larkin, from Drumintee and Mary Ann McNulty, from Burren, County Down. The impoverished Larkin family lived in the slums of Liverpool during the early years of his life. From the age of seven, he attended school in the mornings and worked in the afternoons to supplement the family income, a common arrangement in working-class families at the time. At the age of fourteen, after the death of his father, he was apprenticed to the firm his father had worked for but was dismissed after two years. He was unemployed for a time and then worked as a sailor and docker. By 1903, he was a dock foreman, and on 8 September of that year, he married Elizabeth Brown.\nFrom 1893, Larkin developed an interest in socialism and became a member of the Independent Labour Party. In 1905, he was one of the few foremen to take part in a strike on the Liverpool docks. He was elected to the strike committee and, although he lost his foreman's job as a result, his performance so impressed the National Union of Dock Labourers (NUDL) that he was appointed a temporary organiser. He later gained a permanent position with the union, which, in 1906, sent him to Scotland, where he successfully organised workers in Preston and Glasgow. Larkin campaigned against Chinese immigration, presenting it as a threat that would undercut workers, leading processions in 1906 in Liverpool with fifty dockers dressed as 'Chinamen', wearing faux-'pigtails' and wearing powder to provide a 'yellow countenance'.\nOrganising Irish labour movement (1907\u20131914).\nBelfast Dock Strike.\nIn January 1907, Larkin undertook his first task on behalf of the trade union movement in Ireland, when he arrived in Belfast to organise the city's dock workers for the NUDL. He succeeded in unionising the workforce and, because employers refused to meet the wage demands, he called the dockers out on strike in June. The Belfast Dock strike was soon joined by carters and coalmen, the latter settling their dispute after a month. With active support from the Independent Orange Order and its Grand Master, R. Lindsay Crawford, urging the \"unity of all Irishmen\", Larkin succeeded in uniting Protestant and Catholic workers and even persuaded the local Royal Irish Constabulary to strike at one point, but the strike ended by November without having achieved significant success. Tensions regarding leadership arose between Larkin and NUDL general secretary James Sexton. The latter's handling of negotiations and agreement to a disastrous settlement for the last of the strikers resulted in a lasting rift between Sexton and Larkin.\nFormation of Irish Transport and General Workers' Union and founding of the Irish Labour Party.\nIn 1908, Larkin moved south and organised workers in Dublin, Cork and Waterford, with considerable success. His involvement, against union instructions, in a dispute in Dublin resulted in his expulsion from the NUDL. The union later prosecuted him for diverting union funds to give strike pay to Cork workers engaged in an unofficial dispute. After trial and conviction for embezzlement in 1910, he was sentenced to prison for a year. This was widely regarded as unjust, and the Lord-Lieutenant, Lord Aberdeen, pardoned him after he had served three months in prison. Also in 1908, Arthur Griffith during the Dublin carter's strike described Larkin as an \"Englishman importing foreign political disruption into this country and putting native industry at risk\".\nAfter his expulsion from the NUDL, Larkin founded the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU) at the end of December 1908. The organisation exists today as the Services Industrial Professional & Technical Union (SIPTU). It quickly gained the affiliation of the NUDL branches in Dublin, Cork, Dundalk, Waterford and Sligo. The Derry and Drogheda NUDL branches stayed with the British union, and Belfast split along sectarian lines. Early in the new year, 1909, Larkin moved to Dublin, which became the main base of the ITGWU and the focus of all his future union activity in Ireland.\nIn June 1911, Larkin established a newspaper, \"The Irish Worker and People's Advocate\", as a pro-labour alternative to the capitalist-owned press. This organ was characterised by a campaigning approach and the denunciation of unfair employers and of Larkin's political enemies. Its columns also included pieces by intellectuals. The paper was produced until its suppression by the authorities in 1915. Afterwards, the \"Worker\" metamorphosed into the new \"Ireland Echo\".\nIn May 1912, in partnership with James Connolly and William O'Brien Larkin formed the Irish Labour Party as the political wing of the Irish Trades Union Congress. Later that year, he was elected to Dublin Corporation. He did not hold his seat long, as a month later he was removed because he had a criminal record from his conviction in 1910.\nUnder Larkin's leadership, the union continued to grow, reaching approximately 20,000 members in the time leading up to the Dublin lock-out. In August 1913 during the lock-out, Larkin was described by Vladimir Lenin as a 'talented leader' as well as 'a remarkable speaker and a man of seething energy [who] has performed miracles amongst the unskilled workers'.\nDublin Lockout, 1913.\nBuild up to the lock-out, and its proceedings.\nIn early 1913, Larkin achieved some successes in industrial disputes in Dublin and, notably, in the Sligo Dock strike; these involved frequent recourse to sympathetic strikes and blacking (boycotting) of goods. Two major employers, Guinness and the Dublin United Tramway Company, were the main targets of Larkin's organising ambitions. Both had craft unions for skilled workers, but Larkin's main aim was to unionise the unskilled workers as well. He coined the slogan \"A fair day's work for a fair day's pay\". Larkin advocated Syndicalism, which was a revolutionary brand of socialism. Larkin gained few supporters from within, particularly from the British Trade Union Congress who did not want strike action such as the lock-out to lead to a growth in radicalism.\nGuinness staff were relatively well-paid and enjoyed generous benefits from a paternalistic management that refused to join a lockout of unionised staff by virtually all the major Dublin employers. This was far from the case on the tramways.\nThe chairman of the Dublin United Tramway Company, industrialist and newspaper proprietor William Martin Murphy, was determined not to allow the ITGWU to unionise his workforce. On 15 August, he dismissed 40 workers he suspected of ITGWU membership, followed by another 300 over the next week. On 26 August 1913, the tramway workers officially went on strike. Led by Murphy, over 400 of the city's employers retaliated by requiring their workers to sign a pledge not to be a member of the ITGWU and not to engage in sympathetic strikes.\nThe resulting industrial dispute was the most severe in Ireland's history. Employers in Dublin engaged in a sympathetic lockout of their workers when the latter refused to sign the pledge, employing blackleg labour from Britain and from elsewhere in Ireland. Guinness, the largest employer in Dublin, refused the employers' call to lock out its workers but it sacked 15 workers who struck in sympathy. Dublin's workers, amongst the poorest in the whole of what was then the Great Britain and Ireland, were forced to survive on generous but inadequate donations from the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) and sources in Ireland, distributed by the ITGWU.\nFor seven months, the lockout affected tens of thousands of Dublin workers and employers, with Larkin portrayed as the villain by Murphy's three main newspapers, the \"Irish Independent\", the \"Sunday Independent\" and the \"Evening Herald\", and by other bourgeois publications in Ireland.\nOther leaders in the ITGWU at the time were James Connolly and William O'Brien; influential figures such as Patrick Pearse, Constance Markievicz and W. B. Yeats supported the workers in the generally anti-Larkin Irish press. \"The Irish Worker\" published the names and addresses of strike-breakers, and the \"Irish Independent\" published the names and addresses of men and women who attempted to send their children out of the city to be cared for in foster homes in Belfast and Britain. However, Larkin never resorted to violence. He knew it would play into the hands of the anti-union companies, and that he could not build a mass trade union by wrecking the firms where his members worked.\nA group including Tom Kettle and Thomas MacDonagh formed the Industrial Peace Committee to attempt to negotiate between employers and workers; the employers refused to meet them.\nLarkin and others were arrested for sedition on 28 August, and he was released on bail later that day. Connolly told the authorities \"I do not recognise the English government in Ireland at all. I do not even recognise the King except when I am compelled to do so.\" On 30 August, a warrant for Larkin's arrest was put out, claiming he had again been seditious and had incited people to riot and to pillage shops. When a meeting called by Larkin for Sunday 31 August 1913 was proscribed, Constance Markievicz and her husband Casimir disguised Larkin in Casimir's frock coat and trousers and stage makeup and beard, and Nellie Gifford, who was unknown to the police, led him into William Martin Murphy's Imperial Hotel, pretending to be her stooped, deaf old clergyman uncle (to disguise his instantly recognisable Liverpool accent). Larkin tore off his beard inside the hotel and raced to a balcony, where he shouted his speech to the crowd below. The police \u2013 some 300 Royal Irish Constabulary reinforcing Dublin Metropolitan Police \u2013 savagely baton-charged the crowd, injuring between 400 and 600 people. MP Handel Booth, who was present, said that the police \"behaved like men possessed. They drove the crowd into the side streets to meet other batches of the government's minions, wildly striking with their truncheons at everyone within reach ... The few roughs got away first, most respectable people left their hats and crawled away with bleeding heads. Kicking victims when prostrate was a settled part of the police programme.\" Larkin went into hiding, charged with incitement to breach the peace. Larkin was later re-arrested, charged with sedition and was handed a 7-month imprisonment. The Attorney General claimed Larkin had said: \"People make kings and can unmake them. I never said 'God Save the King', but in derision. I say it now in derision.\" to a crowd of 8,000 people from the windows of Liberty Hall. The sentence was widely seen as unjust. Larkin was released about a week later. As the lock out continued Larkin continued to speak out about the conditions being faced by workers and their families. On 4 October 1913 Larkin spoke at the lock out Tribunal of Inquiry:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />When the position of the workers in Dublin was taken into consideration, was it any wonder that there was necessity for a Larkin to arise, and if there was one thing more than another in my life of which I will always be proud it was the part I have taken in rescuing the workers of Dublin from the brutalizing and degrading conditions under which they labored. We are out to break down racial and sectarian barriers. My suggestion to the employers is that if they want peace we are prepared to meet them, but if they want war, then war they will have.\nFormation of the Irish Citizen Army.\nThe violence at union rallies during the strike prompted Larkin to call for a workers' militia to be formed to protect themselves against the police, so Larkin, James Connolly, and Jack White created the Irish Citizen Army. The Citizen Army for the duration of the lock-out was armed with hurleys (sticks used in hurling, a traditional Irish sport) and bats to protect workers' demonstrations from the police. Jack White, a former Captain in the British Army, volunteered to train this army and offered \u00a350 towards the cost of shoes to workers so that they could train. In addition to its role as a self-defence organisation, the Army, which was drilled in Croydon Park in Fairview by White, provided a diversion for workers unemployed and idle during the dispute.\nEnd of the lock-out.\nThe lock-out eventually concluded in early 1914 when calls by Connolly and Larkin for a sympathetic strike in Britain were rejected by the British TUC. Larkin's attacks on the TUC leadership for this stance also led to the cessation of financial aid to the ITGWU, which in any case was not affiliated with the TUC.\nAlthough the efforts of the ITGWU and the smaller UBLU did not succeed in securing significantly better pay and conditions for the workers, they represented a turning point in Irish labor history. The principle of union action and workers' solidarity was firmly established. Perhaps even more importantly, Larkin's rhetoric condemning poverty and injustice and urging the oppressed to stand up for themselves left a lasting impression.\nNot long after the lockout Jack White resigned as commander and Larkin assumed direct command of the ICA. Beginning the process of its reform into a revolutionary paramilitary organisation by arming them with Mauser rifles bought from Germany by the Irish Volunteers and smuggled into Ireland at Howth in July 1914. A written constitution was established stating the Army's principles as follows: \"the ownership of Ireland, moral and material, is vested of right in the people of Ireland\" and to \"sink all difference of birth property and creed under the common name of the Irish people\".\nIn the US - Socialist, Irish Republican and Communist activism (1914\u20131923).\nAfter the lock-out.\nExhausted by the demands of organising union work, Larkin fell into bouts of depression, took a declining interest in the now crippled ITGWU, and became increasingly difficult to work with. Speculation had risen during the lock-out that he was planning to leave for America. A speaking tour of the New World had been suggested to Larkin by Bill Haywood in November 1913 and the following month. The growing speculation prompted the New York Times to publish an editorial simply titled 'Larkin is coming'. This dismayed colleagues in the ITGWU and Larkin felt obliged to deny that he was planning on running away. However, noting the effect of the strain of the lock-out on Larkin, union officials reluctantly concluded that a break would probably be of great benefit to him. Following the advice given by 'Big Bill', 'Big Jim' therefore left for America. His decision to leave dismayed many union activists, including a large number of his colleagues in the ITGWU. In addition to recuperating from the strain of the lockout and undertaking a tour of the United States, Larkin also intended to raise funds for the union and the fledgling ICA, and to rebuild their headquarters Liberty Hall. Many in the union assumed that Larkin's trip would be a short one and that he would soon return. However, it quickly became clear that this would not be the case. Shortly before his departure, he declined a request by the Irish Trades Union Congress to join a two-man mission to raise funds for the Labour Party, replying that if he went he would be 'going alone and freelance'. His intention was to agitate in America rather than organise, but it is unclear whether he intended to return. Larkin set sail for America on 25 October 1914, leaving long-time associate James Connolly in charge of the ITGWU and the ICA, the latter of which he would soon utilise as a revolutionary force.\nArriving in America - activism and links to espionage.\nLarkin arrived in New York on 5 November 1914. Following his arrival there were positive initial prospects. The lock-out had been widely reported in America and he was well received by socialists there. He found support from both socialists and Irish-Americans, who were eager to hear his position on the World War which was by now raging throughout Europe. Opposition to the war was intended to be his main position whilst in America. Upon presenting his credentials to the Socialist Party of America and John Devoy, the Irish leader of Clan na Gael (the leading Irish republican supporting organisation in America), his services were quickly taken up by both and he also became involved in the Industrial Workers of the World union (the Wobblies). \nWithin days of arriving in the country, he addressed a crowd of 15,000 people gathered at Madison Square Garden to celebrate the election of Socialist candidate Meyer London to the United States House of Representatives. Soon after his speech at Maddison Garden, he was invited by Devoy to speak to a combined audience of German Uhlans and Irish Volunteers in Philadelphia, where he enthusiastically called for money and arms for the Republican cause in Ireland to a cheering crowd. During this speech, Larkin showed one of the rifles that had been smuggled into Ireland at Howth, which he noted could be better but still worked. (He added that better weapons could be obtained with more money.) He compared it with a rifle given to the Irish Volunteers by John Redmond, which was an obsolete weapon for which no new ammunition could be procured, using this to vilify Redmond as a traitor to the Irish people and who had had no intention of arming the movement effectively for Irish independence. He also claimed that in the process of receiving and protecting the guns, 100 of his men from the ICA with no ammunition or bayonets had faced and routed 150 of the King's Own Scottish Borderers, whom he disparagingly said had been referred to as 'England's best'. He went on to attack the First World War directly, particularly the efforts of the British to get men from Ireland to join their war effort, going on to say that if Ireland was to fight it would be against the British in an effort to create an Irish republic: 'Why should Ireland fight for Britain in this war? What has Britain ever done for our people? Whatever we got from her we wrested with struggle and sacrifice. No, men and women of the Irish race, we shall not fight for England. We shall fight for the destruction of the British Empire and the construction of an Irish republic. We shall not fight for the preservation of the enemy, which has laid waste with death and desolation the fields and hills of Ireland for 700 years. We will fight to free Ireland from the grasp of that vile carcase called England'. \nIn a speech to Clan na Gael in November 1914, Larkin promoted his Irish Republican ideals stating 'I assure you that the workers of Ireland are on the side of the dear, dark-haired mother, whose call they never failed to answer yet ... again will the call ring out over hill and dale to the men who have always answered the call of Caithlin-ni-Houlihan. For seven hundred long, weary years we have waited for this hour. The flowing tide is with us ... [and we must be] ready for the Rising of the Moon'. He went on to say, in the same speech, that 'The time is ripe for an active movement. We have waited years for this opportunity, and it could not come at a better time. We have the men and the plans, but only have 5000 rifles and no ammunition. Give us more guns and ammunition and we will not fail you. We have got something better than England ever had\u2014destiny'. His speech was received well by the Clan and other nationalists, and his initial time with the clan was successful being asked to attend other speaking engagements.\nDivisions began to appear, however, largely stemming from his anti-capitalist socialist ideals and pro-worker ideology, which were fundamentally at odds with many of the views of those in the clan and the Irish-America movement. Larkin's religious ideals were also at odds with the largely secular American left, so he effectively alienated himself from both movements and speaking engagements began to dwindle. His speeches had attracted interest from the German embassy and he had been approached by military Attach\u00e9s shortly after his speech in Philadelphia and offered $200 per week to undertake waterfront sabotage work. Larkin refused on humanitarian grounds and informed them that he was already engaged in organising strikes that would effectively hamper the Allied war effort by restricting American war-related industry, and that he had established the Four Winds Fellowship a society open to all trade unionists and socialists born in the British Empire and who were opposed to the war. Elsewhere, he was reported as having said that he did not want a German victory, instead preferring a military deadlock, leading to workers' revolts in the belligerent countries, a desire which came partly true, following the Russian Revolution of 1917. This perceived association with German agents further distanced him from American socialists, and his reputation as a syndicalist and association with the Industrial Workers of the World was looked down on by the right wing of the Socialist Party of America.\nLarkin was reported as having helped to disrupt Allied munitions shipments in New York City during World War I. In 1937, he voluntarily assisted US lawyers investigating the Black Tom explosion by providing an affidavit from his home in Dublin. According to British Army Intelligence officer"}, "descending_order": ["2624316", "31306137", "896958", "122392"], "permutation_1": ["122392", "2624316", "896958", "31306137"], "permutation_2": ["896958", "2624316", "122392", "31306137"], "permutation_3": ["122392", "896958", "31306137", "2624316"]}
{"id": "2hop__208969_11125", "docs_added": {"51585": "New Delhi\nCapital city of India\nNew Delhi (; , ) is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the Government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Sansad Bhavan, and the Supreme Court. New Delhi is a municipality within the NCT, administered by the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), which covers mostly Lutyens' Delhi and a few adjacent areas. The municipal area is part of a larger administrative district, the New Delhi district.\nAlthough colloquially \"Delhi\" and \"New Delhi\" are used interchangeably to refer to the National Capital Territory of Delhi, both are distinct entities, with the municipality and the New Delhi district forming a relatively small part within the megacity of Delhi. The National Capital Region is an even larger entity, comprising the entire NCT along with adjoining districts in the two neighbouring states forming a continuously built-up area with it, including Ghaziabad, Noida, Greater Noida, Meerut, YEIDA City, Gurgaon, and Faridabad.\nThe foundation stone of New Delhi, south of central Delhi, was laid by George V during the Delhi Durbar of 1911. It was designed by British architects Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker. The new capital was inaugurated on 13 February 1931, by Viceroy and Governor-General Irwin.\nHistory.\nEstablishment.\nUntil December 1911, Calcutta was the capital of India during the British Rule. However, it had become the centre of the nationalist movements since the late nineteenth century, which led to the Partition of Bengal by Viceroy Curzon. This created massive political and religious upsurge including political assassinations of British officials in Calcutta. The anti-colonial sentiments among the public led to a complete boycott of British goods, which forced the colonial government to reunite Bengal and immediately shift the capital to New Delhi.\nOld Delhi had served as the political and financial centre of several empires of medieval India and the Delhi Sultanate, most notably of the Mughal Empire from 1649 to 1857. During the early 1900s, a proposal was made to the British administration to shift the capital of the British Indian Empire, as India was officially named, from Calcutta on the east coast, to Delhi. The Government of British India felt that it would be logistically easier to administer India from Delhi, which is in the centre of northern India. The land for building the new city of Delhi was acquired under the Land Acquisition Act 1894.\nDuring the Delhi Durbar on 12 December 1911, George V while laying the foundation stone for the viceroy's residence in the Coronation Park, Kingsway Camp, declared that the capital of the Raj would be shifted from Calcutta to Delhi. Three days later, George V and his consort, Mary, laid the foundation stone of New Delhi at Kingsway Camp. Large parts of New Delhi were planned by Edwin Lutyens, who first visited Delhi in 1912, and Herbert Baker, both leading 20th-century British architects. The contract was given to Sobha Singh. The original plan called for its construction in Tughlaqabad, inside the Tughlaqabad Fort, but this was given up because of the Delhi-Calcutta trunk line that passed through the fort. Construction really began after World War I and was completed by 1931. The gardening and planning of plantations was led by A.E.P. Griessen, and later William Mustoe. The city that was later dubbed \"Lutyens' Delhi\" was inaugurated in ceremonies beginning on 10 February 1931 by Viceroy Irwin. Lutyens designed the central administrative area of the city as a testament to Britain's imperial aspirations.\nSoon Lutyens started considering other places. Indeed, the Delhi Town Planning Committee, set up to plan the new imperial capital, with George Swinton as chairman, and John A. Brodie and Lutyens as members, submitted reports for both north and south sites. However, it was rejected by the Viceroy when the cost of acquiring the necessary properties was found to be too high. The central axis of New Delhi, which today faces east at India Gate, was previously meant to be a north\u2013south axis linking the Viceroy's House at one end with Paharganj at the other. Eventually, owing to space constraints and the presence of a large number of heritage sites on the north side, the committee settled on the south site. A site atop the Raisina Hill, formerly Raisina Village, a Meo village, was chosen for the Rashtrapati Bhawan, then known as the Viceroy's House. The reason for this choice was that the hill lay directly opposite the Dinapanah citadel, which was also considered the site of Indraprastha, the ancient region of Delhi. Subsequently, the foundation stone was shifted from the site of Delhi Durbar of 1911\u20131912, where the Coronation Pillar stood, and embedded in the walls of the forecourt of the Secretariat. The Rajpath, also known as King's Way, stretched from the India Gate to the Rashtrapati Bhawan. The Secretariat building, the two blocks of which flank the Rashtrapati Bhawan and houses ministries of the government of India, and the Parliament House, both designed by Baker, are located at the Sansad Marg and run parallel to the Rajpath.\nIn the south, land up to Safdarjung's Tomb was acquired to create what is today known as Lutyens' Bungalow Zone. Before construction could begin on the rocky ridge of Raisina Hill, a circular railway line around the Council House (now Parliament House), called the \"Imperial Delhi Railway\", was built to transport construction material and workers for the next twenty years. The last stumbling block was the Agra-Delhi railway line that cut right through the site earmarked for the hexagonal All-India War Memorial (India Gate) and Kingsway (Rajpath), which was a problem because the Old Delhi Railway Station served the entire city at that time. The line was shifted to run along the Yamuna River, and it began operating in 1924. The New Delhi Railway Station opened in 1926, with a single platform at Ajmeri Gate near Paharganj, and was completed in time for the city's inauguration in 1931. As construction of the Viceroy's House (the present Rashtrapati Bhavan), Central Secretariat, Parliament House, and All-India War Memorial (India Gate) was winding down, the building of a shopping district and a new plaza, Connaught Place, began in 1929, and was completed by 1933. Named after Prince Arthur, 1st Duke of Connaught (1850\u20131942), it was designed by Robert Tor Russell, chief architect to the Public Works Department (PWD).\nAfter the capital of India moved to Delhi, a temporary secretariat building was constructed in a few months in 1912 in North Delhi. Most of the government offices of the new capital moved here from the 'Old secretariat' in Old Delhi (the building now houses the Delhi Legislative Assembly), a decade before the new capital was inaugurated in 1931. Many employees were brought into the new capital from distant parts of India, including the Bengal Presidency and Madras Presidency. Subsequently, housing for them has developed around Gole Market area in the 1920s. Built in the 1940s, to house government employees, with bungalows for senior officials in the nearby Lodi Estate area, Lodi Colony near historic Lodi Gardens, was the last residential areas built by the British Raj.\nPost-independence.\nAfter India gained independence in 1947, limited autonomy was conferred to New Delhi and was administered by a Chief Commissioner appointed by the Government of India. In 1966, Delhi was converted into a union territory and eventually the Chief Commissioner was replaced by a Lieutenant Governor. The Constitution (Sixty-ninth Amendment) Act, 1991 declared the Union Territory of Delhi to be formally known as the National Capital Territory of Delhi. A system was introduced under which the elected government was given wide powers, excluding law and order which remained with the Central Government. The actual enforcement of the legislation came in 1993.\nThe first major extension of New Delhi outside of Lutyens' Delhi came in the 1950s when the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) developed a large area of land southwest of Lutyens' Delhi to create the diplomatic enclave of Chanakyapuri, where land was allotted for embassies, chanceries, high commissions and residences of ambassadors, around a wide central vista, \"Shanti Path\".\nGeography.\nWith a total area of , the municipality of New Delhi forms a small part of the Delhi metropolitan area. Since the city is located on the Indo-Gangetic Plain, there is little difference in elevation across the city. New Delhi and surrounding areas were once a part of the Aravali Range; all that is left of those mountains is the Delhi Ridge, which is also called the Lungs of Delhi. While New Delhi lies on the floodplains of the Yamuna River, it is essentially a landlocked city. East of the river is the urban area of Shahdara.\nSeismology.\nNew Delhi falls under the seismic zone-IV, making it vulnerable to earthquakes. It lies on several fault lines and thus experiences frequent earthquakes, most of them of mild intensity. There was a spike in the number of earthquakes between 2011 and 2015, most notable being a 5.4 magnitude earthquake in 2015 with its epicentre in Nepal, a 4.7-magnitude earthquake on 25 November 2007, a 4.2-magnitude earthquake on 7 September 2011, a 5.2-magnitude earthquake on 5 March 2012, and a swarm of twelve earthquakes, including four of magnitudes 2.5, 2.8, 3.1, and 3.3, on 12 November 2013.\nClimate.\nThe climate of New Delhi is a dry-winter humid subtropical climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Cwa\") bordering on a hot semi-arid climate (K\u00f6ppen \"BSh\") with high variation between summer and winter in terms of both temperature and rainfall. The temperature varies from in summers to around in winters. The area's version of a humid subtropical climate is noticeably different from many other cities with this climate classification in that it features long and extremely hot summers with dust storms, relatively dry and mild winters with wildfire haze, and a monsoonal period. Summers are long, extending from early April to October, with the monsoon season occurring in the middle of the summer. Winter starts in November and peaks in January. Winters are very mild. The annual mean temperature is around ; monthly daily mean temperatures range from approximately . New Delhi's highest temperature ever recorded is on 28 May 2024 at Met Delhi Mungeshpur while the lowest temperature ever recorded is on 11 January 1967 at Indira Gandhi International Airport (formerly known as Palam Airport). The average annual rainfall is and monsoon rainfall from June to September is about , most of which is during the monsoons in July and August.\nAir quality.\nIn Mercer's 2015 annual quality-of-living survey, New Delhi ranks at number 154 out of 230 cities due to bad air quality and pollution. The World Health Organization ranked New Delhi as the world's worst polluted city in 2014 among about 1,600 cities the organisation tracked around the world. In 2016, United States Environmental Protection Agency listed New Delhi as the most polluted city on Earth and IQAir listed New Delhi as the world's most polluted capital city for the second straight year in year 2019.\nIn an attempt to lessen air pollution in New Delhi, which gets worse during the winter, a temporary alternate-day travel scheme for cars using the odd- and even-numbered licence plates system was announced by Delhi government in December 2015. In addition, trucks were to be allowed to enter India's capital only after 11\u00a0pm, two hours later than the existing restriction. The driving restriction scheme was planned to be implemented as a trial from 1 January 2016 for an initial period of 15 days. The restriction was in force between 8\u00a0am and 8\u00a0pm, and traffic was not restricted on Sundays. Public transportation service was increased during the restriction period.\nOn 16 December 2015, the Supreme Court of India mandated several restrictions on Delhi's transportation system to curb pollution. Among the measures, the court ordered to stop registrations of diesel cars and sport utility vehicles with an engine capacity of 2,000 cc and over until 31 March 2016. The court also ordered all taxis in the Delhi region to switch to compressed natural gas by 1 March 2016. Transportation vehicles that are more than 10 years old were banned from entering the capital.\nAnalysing real-time vehicle speed data from Uber Delhi revealed that during the odd-even program, average speeds went up by a statistically significant 5.4 per cent (2.8 standard deviations from normal). This means vehicles have less idling time in traffic and vehicle engines would run closer to minimum fuel consumption. In bordering areas, PM 2.5 levels were recorded more than 400 (ug/m3) while in inner areas in Delhi, they were recorded between 150 and 210 on an average. However, the sub-city of Dwarka, located in the southwest district, has a substantially low level of air pollution. At the NSIT University campus, located in sector 3 Dwarka, pollution levels were as low as 93 PPM.\nOn 7 November 2017, the Indian Medical Association declared a public health emergency due to high pollution levels. The highest being in the Punjabi Bagh district with an air quality index of 999 and in the RK Puram district with an index of 852. The lowest index recorded was in the Anand Vihar district with an index of 319. Levels of PM2.5 were recorded at 710\u00a0\u03bcg/m3, more than 11 times the World Health Organization's safe limit.\nIn a 2018 study, New Delhi was found to be the most polluted capital out of 61 capital cities around the world. In December 2019, IIT Bombay, in partnership with the McKelvey School of Engineering of Washington University in St. Louis, launched the Aerosol and Air Quality Research Facility to study air pollution in New Delhi, among other Indian cities. During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in India, the water quality of the Yamuna and Ganges river basins have improved as industries are closed due to the lockdown. The air quality has also significantly improved during the lockdown. On 5 November 2020, New Delhi recorded its most toxic day in a year, as the concentration of poisonous PM2.5 particles was recorded at 14 times the WHO's safe limit.\nDemographics.\nAs of 2011, the New Delhi Municipal Council area has a population of 249,998. Hindi is the most widely spoken language in New Delhi and the lingua franca of the city. English is primarily used as the formal language by business and government institutes. New Delhi has a literacy rate of 89.38% according to 2011 census, which is the highest in Delhi.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nReligion.\nAccording to 2011 census, Hinduism is the religion of 89.8% of New Delhi's population. There are also communities of Muslims (4.5%), Christians (2.9%), Sikhs (2.0%), Jains (0.4%). Other religious groups include Parsis, Buddhists, and Jews.\nGovernment.\nThe national capital of India, New Delhi is jointly administered by both the Central Government of India and the local Government of Delhi, it is also the capital of the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi.\nNew Delhi is administered through a municipal government, known as the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC). The other urban areas of the metropolis of Delhi are administered by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and Delhi Cantonment Board. As of 2015[ [update]], the government structure of the New Delhi Municipal Council includes a chairperson, three members of New Delhi's Legislative Assembly, two members nominated by the Chief Minister of the NCT of Delhi and five members nominated by the central government.\nThe districts of the NCT were redrawn in 2012 and include a district called New Delhi, albeit with different borders than the municipality. The New Delhi district includes not only the area of the municipality of the same name but also encompasses the Delhi Cantonment and parts of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi area.\nEconomy.\nNew Delhi is the largest commercial city in northern India. It has an estimated net State Domestic Product (FY 2010) of () in nominal terms and ~ () in PPP terms. As of 2013[ [update]], the per capita income of Delhi was Rs. 230000, second highest in India after Goa. GSDP in Delhi at the prices for 2012\u201313 is estimated at Rs 3.88\u00a0trillion (short scale) against Rs 3.11\u00a0trillion (short scale) in 2011\u201312.\nConnaught Place, one of North India's largest commercial and financial centres, is located in the northern part of New Delhi. Adjoining areas such as Barakhamba Road, ITO are also major commercial centres. The government and quasi-government sector was the primary employer in New Delhi. The city's service sector has expanded due in part to the large skilled English-speaking workforce that has attracted many multinational companies. Key service industries include information technology, telecommunications, hotels, banking, media, and tourism.\nThe 2011 World Wealth Report ranks economic activity in New Delhi at 39, but overall the capital is ranked at 37, above cities like Jakarta and Johannesburg. New Delhi, with Beijing, shares the top position as the most targeted emerging markets retail destination among Asia-Pacific markets.\nThe government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi does not release any economic figures specifically for New Delhi but publishes an official economic report on the whole of Delhi annually. According to the \"Economic Survey of Delhi\", the metropolis has a net State Domestic Product (SDP) of Rs. 830.85\u00a0billion (for the year 2004\u201305) and a per capita income of Rs. 53,976 ($1,200). In the year 2008\u201309 New Delhi had a per capita Income of Rs. ($2,595). It grew by 16.2% to reach Rs. ($3,018) in 2009\u201310 fiscal. New Delhi's per capita GDP (at PPP) was at $6,860 during 2009\u201310 fiscal, making it one of the richest cities in India. The tertiary sector contributes 78.4% of Delhi's gross SDP followed by secondary and primary sectors with 20.2% and 1.4% contribution respectively.\nThe gross state domestic product (GSDP) of Delhi at prices for the year 2011\u201312 has been estimated at Rs 3.13\u00a0trillion (short scale), which is an increase of 18.7 per cent over the previous fiscal.\nCulture.\nNew Delhi is a cosmopolitan city due to the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural presence of the vast Indian bureaucracy and political system. The city's capital status has amplified the importance of national events and holidays. National events such as Republic Day, Independence Day and \"Gandhi Jayanti\" (Gandhi's birthday) are celebrated with great enthusiasm in New Delhi and the rest of India. On India's Independence Day (15 August), the prime minister of India addresses the nation from the Red Fort. Most Delhiites celebrate the day by flying kites, which are considered a symbol of freedom. The Republic Day Parade is a large cultural and military parade showcasing India's cultural diversity and military might.\nReligious festivals include Diwali (the festival of light), Maha Shivaratri, Teej, Durga Puja, Chhath Puja, Mahavir Jayanti, Guru Nanak Jayanti, Holi, Lohri, Eid ul-Fitr, Eid ul-Adha, Easter, Raksha Bandhan, and Christmas. The Qutub Festival is a cultural event during which performances of musicians and dancers from all over India are showcased at night, with the Qutub Minar as the chosen backdrop of the event. Other events such as Kite Flying Festival, International Mango Festival and \"Vasant Panchami\" (the Spring Festival) are held every year in Delhi.\nIn 2007, the Japanese Buddhist organisation Nipponzan Myohoji decided to build a Peace Pagoda in the city containing Buddha relics. It was inaugurated by the Dalai Lama.\nHistoric sites, museums and gardens.\nNew Delhi is home to several historic sites and museums. The National Museum, which began with an exhibition of Indian art and artefacts at the Royal Academy in London in the winter of 1947\u201348, was later at the end was shown at the Rashtrapati Bhawan in 1949. Later it was to form a permanent National Museum. On 15 August 1949, the National Museum was formally inaugurated and has 200,000 works of art, both of Indian and foreign origin, covering over 5,000 years.\nThe India Gate, which was built in 1931, was inspired by the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. It is the national monument of India commemorating the 90,000 soldiers of the Indian Army who died while fighting for the British Raj in World War I and the Third Anglo-Afghan War. The monument is barricaded now with entry to the inside arch restricted.\nThe Rajpath, which was built similar to the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es in Paris, is the ceremonial boulevard for the Republic of India, located in New Delhi. The annual Republic Day parade takes place here on 26 January. The Beating retreat takes place here two days later.\nGandhi Smriti in New Delhi is the location where Mahatma Gandhi spent the last 144 days of his life and was assassinated on 30 January 1948. Rajghat is the place where Gandhi was cremated on 31 January 1948 after his assassination and his ashes were buried and make it a final resting place beside the sanctity of the Yamuna River. The Raj Ghat in the shape of the large square platform with black marble was designed by architect Vanu Bhuta.\nJantar Mantar located in Connaught Place was built by Maharaja Jai Singh II of Jaipur. It consists of 13 architectural astronomy instruments. The primary purpose of the observatory was to compile astronomical tables, and to predict the times and movements of the sun, moon and planets.\nNew Delhi is home to Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum, National Gallery of Modern Art, National Museum of Natural History, National Rail Museum, National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum, National Philatelic Museum, Nehru Planetarium, Shankar's International Dolls Museum. and Supreme Court of India Museum,\nIn the coming years, a new National War Memorial and Museum will be constructed in New Delhi for million ().\nNew Delhi is particularly renowned for its beautifully landscaped gardens that can look quite stunning in spring. The largest of these include Buddha Jayanti Park and the historic Lodi Gardens. In addition, there are the gardens in the Presidential Estate, the gardens along the Rajpath and India Gate, the gardens along Shanti Path, the Rose Garden, Nehru Park and the Railway Garden in Chanakya Puri. Also of note is the garden adjacent to the Jangpura Metro Station near the Defence Colony Flyover, as are the roundabout and neighbourhood gardens throughout the city.\nThe New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) area was declared the cleanest in North India, based on solid waste management, access to sanitation and other parameters of cleanliness, under the zone-wise Swachh Survekshan 2017.\nCityscape.\nMuch of New Delhi, planned by the leading 20th-century British architect Edwin Lutyens, was laid out to be the central administrative area of the city as a testament to Britain's imperial ambitions. New Delhi is structured around two central promenades called the Rajpath and the Janpath. The Rajpath, or King's Way, stretches from the Rashtrapati Bhavan to the India Gate. The Janpath (), formerly Queen's Way, begins at Connaught Circus and cuts the Rajpath at right angles. Nineteen foreign embassies are located on the nearby Shantipath (), making it the largest diplomatic enclave in India.\nAt the heart of the city is the magnificent Rashtrapati Bhavan (formerly known as Viceroy's House) which sits atop Raisina Hill. The Secretariat, which houses ministries of the government of India, flanks out of the Rashtrapati Bhavan. The Parliament House, designed by Herbert Baker, is located at the Sansad Marg, which runs parallel to the Rajpath. Connaught Place is a large, circular commercial area in New Delhi, modelled after the Royal Crescent in England. Twelve separate roads lead out of the outer ring of Connaught Place, one of them being the Janpath.\nArchitecture.\nThe New Delhi town plan, like its architecture, was chosen with one single chief consideration: to be a symbol of British power and supremacy. All other decisions were subordinate to this, and it was this framework that dictated the choice and application of symbology and influences from both Hindu and Islamic architecture.\nIt took about 20 years to build the city from 1911. Many elements of New Delhi architecture borrow from indigenous sources; however, they fit into a British Classical/Palladian tradition. The fact that there were any indigenous features in the design was due to the persistence and urging of both the Viceroy Hardinge and historians like E.B. Havell.\nIn the year 2019, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and Government of India introduced the Central Vista redevelopment project proposing the redevelopment of over , costing \u20b9 crore ().\nTransport.\nAir.\nIndira Gandhi International Airport, situated to the southwest of Delhi, is the main gateway for the city's domestic and international civilian air traffic. In 2012\u201313, the airport was used by more than 35\u00a0million passengers, making it one of the busiest airports in South Asia. Terminal 3, which cost () to construct between 2007 and 2010, handles an additional 37\u00a0million passengers annually.\nThe Delhi Flying Club, established in 1928 with two de Havilland Moth aircraft named \"Delhi\" and \"Roshanara\", was based at \"Safdarjung Airport\" which started operations in 1929, when it was the Delhi's only airport and the second in India. The airport functioned until 2001; however, in January 2002 the government closed the airport for flying activities because of security concerns following the New York attacks in September 2001. Since then, the club only carries out aircraft maintenance courses, and is used for helicopter rides to Indira Gandhi International Airport for VIP including the president and the prime minister.\nIn 2010, Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) was conferred the fourth best airport award in the world in the 15\u201325\u00a0million category, and \"Best Improved Airport\" in the Asia-Pacific Region by Airports Council International. The airport was rated as the \"Best airport in the world\" in the 25\u201340\u00a0million passengers category in 2015, by Airports Council International. Delhi Airport also bags two awards for \"The Best Airport in Central Asia/India\" and \"Best Airport Staff in Central Asia/India\" at the Skytrax World Airport Awards 2015.\nA second airport, Noida International Airport, is currently being built in Jewar.\nRoad.\nNew Delhi has one of India's largest bus transport systems. Buses are operated by the state-owned Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC), which owns the largest fleet of compressed natural gas (CNG)-fueled buses in the world and Delhi Transit. Personal vehicles especially cars also form a major chunk of vehicles plying on New Delhi roads. New Delhi has the highest number of registered cars compared to any other metropolitan city in India. Taxis and Auto Rickshaws also ply on New Delhi roads in large numbers. New Delhi has one of the highest road density in India and average vehicle speed is around in peak hours in the city.\nSome roads and expressways serve as important pillars of New Delhi's road infrastructure:\nNational Highways.\nNew Delhi is connected by road to the rest of India through National highways:\nRailway.\nNew Delhi is a major junction in the Indian railway network and is the headquarters of the Northern Railway. The five main railway stations are New Delhi railway station, Delhi Junction, Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station, Anand Vihar Terminal and Sarai Rohilla. The Delhi Ring Railway, a circular railway network in Delhi that runs parallel to the Ring Road, is a part of Delhi's suburban railway services.\nMetro.\nThe Delhi Metro is a rapid transit system serving Delhi, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon and Noida in the National Capital Region of India. Delhi Metro is the world's 12th largest metro system in terms of length. Delhi Metro was India's first modern public transportation system, which had revolutionised travel by providing a fast, reliable, safe, and comfortable means of transport. Presently, the network consists of 10 colour-coded lines serving 255 stations with a total length of . The network has now crossed the boundaries of Delhi to reach Ghaziabad and Noida in Uttar Pradesh, and Faridabad and Gurgaon in Haryana. All stations have escalators, elevators, and tactile tiles to guide the visually impaired from station entrances to trains. It has a combination of elevated, at-grade, and underground lines, and uses both broad gauge and standard gauge rolling stock. Four types of rolling stock are used: Mitsubishi-ROTEM Broad gauge, Bombardier MOVIA, Mitsubishi-ROTEM Standard gauge, and CAF Beasain Standard gauge. According to a study, Delhi Metro has helped in removing about 390,000 vehicles from the streets of Delhi.\nDelhi Metro is being built and operated by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Limited (DMRC), a state-owned company with equal equity participation from the Government of India and the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi. However, the organisation is under administrative control of the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India. Besides the construction and operation of the Delhi metro, DMRC is also involved in the planning and implementation of metro rail, monorail and high-speed rail projects in India and providing consultancy services to other metro projects in the country as well as abroad. The Delhi Metro project was spearheaded by E. Sreedharan, the managing director of DMRC and popularly known as the \"Metro Man\" of India. He famously resigned from DMRC, taking moral responsibility for a metro bridge collapse which took five lives. Sreedharan was awarded with the Legion of Honour by the French government for his contribution to Delhi Metro.\nSports.\nThe city hosted the 2010 Commonwealth Games and annually hosts Delhi Half Marathon foot-race. The city has previously hosted the 1951 Asian Games and the 1982 Asian Games. New Delhi was interested in bidding for the 2019 Asian Games but was turned down by the government on 2 August 2010 amid allegations of corruption in 2010 Commonwealth Games. The city also had a bid to host the 1992 Summer Olympics, but withdrew in March 1986, seven months before the host selection.\nMajor sporting venues in New Delhi include the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Ambedkar Stadium, Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium, Arun Jaitley Stadium, R.K. Khanna Tennis Complex, Dhyan Chand National Stadium and Siri Fort Sports Complex. \nInternational relations and organisations.\nThe city is home to numerous international organisations. The Asian and Pacific Centre for Transfer of Technology of the UNESCAP servicing the Asia-Pacific region is headquartered in New Delhi. New Delhi is home to most UN regional offices in India namely the UNDP, UNODC, UNESCO, UNICEF, WFP, UNV, UNCTAD, FAO, UNFPA, WHO, World Bank, ILO, IMF, UNIFEM, IFC and UNAIDS. UNHCR Representation in India is also located in the city.\nNew Delhi hosts 145 foreign embassies and high commissions.\nSummits, conferences and conventions.\nUnited Nations Conference on Trade and Development hosted its second meeting conference in the year 1968 at New Delhi.\nNew Delhi hosted the 7th NAM Summit in 1983, 4th BRICS Summit in 2012, IBSA Summit in 2015, and 5th Global Conference on CyberSpace in 2017. India has also host the G20 summit in 2023 in New Delhi.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "31985659": "Ankit Sharma (footballer)\nAnkit Sharma (born on 30 July 1991, in New Delhi) is an Indian professional football player who play as Midfielder and Striker. He has played for Delhi Football Team, Youth Indian National teams, HAL Bangalore and in the Divisiones Regionales de F\u00fatbol in the Community of Madrid, Spain. He is the first Indian to sign a professional contract with a Spanish Club and the fifth Indian to play overseas in the history of Indian Football.\nClub career.\nHAL.\nAnkit's professional career began at the young age of 19 with HAL in the I-league, 2010-11 season.\nSharma got injured in the Dr. B.C Roy Trophy Semi-Final match and had a six-month outing, but he recovered well and came back after recovering from a knee injury.\nHe appeared in all the matches post-signing for Hindustan Aeronautics Limited S.C. in 2010\u201311 season\nHe had one of the rarest and saddest experiences while playing his trade at his first club. HAL goalkeeper Arun Kumar collided with Ankit in a training session just before the match against Pune FC, fracturing his right shin bone and injuring Ankit's right knee, which kept him out of training for a week's rest.\nSan Cristobal.\nAnkit Sharma became the first Indian to sign a professional contract with a Spanish Club in 2011-12 and the fifth Indian to play overseas in the history of Indian Football. He signed for Spanish club in the Divisiones Regionales de F\u00fatbol in the Community of Madrid after a successful season with HAL in I-league 2010-11 season.\nBhawanipore.\nFor 2012-13, he signed a contract with IInd Division I-League and Calcutta Football League outfit Bhawanipore FC.\nHonours.\nIndia U-19\nHAL\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "35917265": "Ankit Sharma (cricketer)\nIndian cricketer (born 1991)\nAnkit Nagendra Sharma (born 20 April 1991) is an Indian cricketer who plays for Puducherry in domestic cricket. He is a left-handed batsman and a slow left-arm orthodox bowler.\nIn the 2015\u201316 season of Ranji Trophy, Ankit was the second-highest wicket-taker for Madhya Pradesh, picking up 33 wickets in 9 matches. Ankit also took his career-best bowling figures of 7 for 91 against Andhra Pradesh in that season, helping his team to quarter-final stage.\nHe scored his first century (104 runs) playing for Madhya Pradesh at Indore against Baroda during Ranji Trophy 2017-18 session.\nIn January 2018, he was bought by the Rajasthan Royals in the 2018 IPL auction.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "51073108": "Ankit Sharma (athlete)\nIndian long jumper\nAnkit Sharma (born 20 July 1992) is an Indian athlete who competes in the long jump event. He holds the long jump national record of 8.19 metres set"}, "descending_order": ["35917265", "51073108", "31985659", "51585"], "permutation_1": ["51073108", "35917265", "31985659", "51585"], "permutation_2": ["51073108", "51585", "31985659", "35917265"], "permutation_3": ["51585", "51073108", "31985659", "35917265"]}
{"id": "2hop__143647_576190", "docs_added": {"33253346": "Country Must Be Country Wide\n\"Country Must Be Country Wide\" is a song co-written and recorded by American country rock singer Brantley Gilbert. It was released in April 2011 as the first single from the deluxe edition of his 2010 album \"Halfway to Heaven\".\nContent.\nIn the song, Gilbert sings about the country music fanbase, saying that it is not limited to the Southern United States. Gilbert told \"Taste of Country\" that he wrote the song while on tour with country rap artist Colt Ford and Mike Dekle. Ford told \"Country Weekly\" that, while touring through Ohio, he realized that \"there are rednecks everywhere[\u2026]I was like, 'those people are all just like us, but they just sound different.'\" Gilbert added that while in Ohio, he saw a man exit a truck while dressed in a cowboy hat and boots, which inspired the first verse of the song.\nCritical reception.\nDan MacIntosh of \"Country Standard Time\" thought that the song \"lives up to that 'up to 11' promise\" that he thought was established in the songs that Gilbert wrote for Jason Aldean (\"Dirt Road Anthem\" and \"My Kinda Party\"). Kevin John Coyne of \"Country Universe\" gave the single a less favorable review, juxtaposing the song to Neal McCoy's \"The City Put the Country Back in Me\" and writing that \"This song is about as country as \"Wanted Dead or Alive\" anyway.\nMusic video.\nThe music video was directed by Shane Drake.\nCommercial performance.\nThe song debuted on the Hot Country Songs chart at No. 44 for the chart date April 23, 2011, and eventually reached No. 1 on that chart on December 3, 2011. It debuted on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 at No. 100 on July 9, 2011, eventually reaching No. 50 the same week it reach No. 1 on the Hot Country Songs chart. The song was certified Platinum by the RIAA on March 25, 2014, and reached its million sales mark in the U.S. in June 2014.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "27964866": "Brantley Gilbert\nAmerican country rock singer (born 1985)\nBrantley Keith Gilbert (born January 20, 1985) is an American country rock singer, songwriter and record producer from Jefferson, Georgia. He was originally signed to Colt Ford's label, Average Joes Entertainment, where he released \"Modern Day Prodigal Son\" and \"Halfway to Heaven\". He is now signed to the Valory division of Big Machine Records where he has released six studio albums\u2014a deluxe edition of \"Halfway to Heaven\", \"Just as I Am\", \"The Devil Don't Sleep\", \"Fire & Brimstone\", \"So Help Me God\", \"Tattoos\", and 14 country chart entries, four of which have gone to number one. He also co-wrote (with Colt Ford) and originally recorded Jason Aldean's singles \"My Kinda Party\" and \"Dirt Road Anthem\".\nCareer.\n2007\u20132013: \"A Modern Day Prodigal Son\" and \"Halfway to Heaven\".\nBrantley Gilbert went to Nashville as a songwriter, where he signed to Warner Chappell Publishing. He continued performing at local venues. In 2009, he released his debut album, \"A Modern Day Prodigal Son\", under independent label Average Joes Entertainment. He followed with \"Halfway to Heaven\" in 2010.\nIn 2011, he signed with Valory Music Co., a division of Big Machine Records, who released a deluxe edition of \"Halfway to Heaven\". The album was produced by Dann Huff. Its first two singles, \"Country Must Be Country Wide\" and \"You Don't Know Her Like I Do\", both went to number one on the Hot Country Songs chart. After them, \"Kick It in the Sticks\" peaked at number 34, and \"More Than Miles\" at number 7 on Country Airplay. He won the ACM New Male Artist award in 2013.\n2014\u20132017: \"Just as I Am\" and \"The Devil Don't Sleep\".\nGilbert's second Valory album (third overall), \"Just as I Am\", was released in May 2014. Its lead single, \"Bottoms Up\", also reached number one. The second single, \"Small Town Throwdown\", featured guest vocals from labelmates Thomas Rhett and Justin Moore. The third single, \"One Hell of an Amen\", became Brantley's fourth number one hit in 2015. The album's fourth single was \"Stone Cold Sober\", released with the album's platinum edition.\nAhead of his fourth album, \"The Devil Don't Sleep\", Gilbert released the single \"The Weekend\" as the album's lead single. Also included on the album is \"The Ones That Like Me\".\nA deluxe edition of \"The Devil Don't Sleep\" includes ten bonus tracks: five demos, and five tracks cut from a live performance at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre.\n2018\u20132023: \"Fire & Brimstone\" and \"So Help Me God\".\nIn December 2018, Gilbert released a duet with Lindsay Ell, \"What Happens in a Small Town\", as the lead single from his fifth studio album, \"Fire & Brimstone\". The album was released in October 2019. \"Fire't Up\" was released as the second single off the album.\nIn June 2020, Gilbert released the single \"Hard Days\". The song was later included on a deluxe edition of \"Fire & Brimstone\".\nIn June 2021, Gilbert released the single \"The Worst Country Song of All Time\", featuring Hardy and Toby Keith, and followed it up with the promotional single \"Gone But Not Forgotten\" in September 2021. The second promotional single, \"How to Talk to Girls\", was released on November 19, 2021. In March 2022, Gilbert and Jason Aldean released the third promotional single, \"Rolex on a Redneck\". In June 2022, Gilbert and Jelly Roll released the fourth promotional single, \"Son of the Dirty South\", which charted on multiple \"Billboard\" charts.\nGilbert released his sixth studio album \"So Help Me God\" on November 10, 2022 and released \"Heaven by Then\", featuring Blake Shelton and Vince Gill, as the album's second single. He opened for Five Finger Death Punch on their late 2022 headlining tour along with Cory Marks in the United States. He released a deluxe edition of \"So Help Me God\" on April 21, 2023, containing five new tracks, including the promotional single \"Bury Me Upside Down\". Gilbert joined Nickelback's \"Get Rollin' Tour\" in summer 2023 in North America as an opening act alongside fellow country artist Josh Ross.\n2024\u2013present: \"Tattoos\".\nOn March 8, 2024, Gilbert released \"Off The Rails\", as the lead promotional single from his seventh studio album. The album's first official single \"Over When We're Sober\", featuring Ashley Cooke, was released on June 20, 2024. \nIn July 2024, Gilbert announced his seventh studio album \"Tattoos,\" which was released on September 13, 2024. He released the songs \"Me and My House\", featuring Struggle Jennings and Demun Jones, and \"Dirty Money\", featuring Justin Moore, as the album's third and fourth promotional singles, respectively.\nSongwriting.\nIn addition to his original work, Gilbert has written songs that Colt Ford and Jason Aldean have recorded. The songs \"Dirt Road Anthem\" (co-written and originally recorded by him and Colt Ford) and \"My Kinda Party\" were released on Aldean's 2010 album \"My Kinda Party\". \"My Kinda Party\" was originally recorded by Gilbert on \"Modern Day Prodigal Son\", while \"Dirt Road Anthem\" was on \"Halfway to Heaven\". Aldean has also covered Gilbert's \"The Best of Me\", available on the iTunes release of his 2009 album \"Wide Open\". Gilbert has also co-written the tracks \"The Same Way\" on Aldean's album \"9\" and \"Small Town Small\" on his album \"Macon, Georgia\".\nPersonal life.\nIn 2013, Gilbert embarked on an eight-day USO tour to entertain American service members stationed in Italy and Kuwait.\nBrantley Gilbert was in a near-fatal truck accident when he was 19. Gilbert is an active Christian, and his song \"My Faith In You\", from his album \"Just as I Am\", speaks of his faith. In May 2015, Gilbert got a tattoo showing his support of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.\nGilbert headlined the NRA's Country Concert in February 2023.\nIn April 2023, Gilbert smashed a can of Bud Light on stage after saying \"Yeah, fuck that\". Bud Light had recently become the focus of a boycott from conservatives because of a sponsored Instagram post by transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney.\nRelationships.\nIt was announced in September 2012 that Brantley Gilbert was dating country music singer and actress Jana Kramer. They were engaged on January 20, 2013, his 28th birthday, but split in August 2013.\nIn October 2014, Gilbert got engaged to Amber Cochran, a teacher, after reconnecting as they first dated in high school. The couple were married in June 2015, and have three children.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18389664": "Wide Open Spaces (song)\n\"Wide Open Spaces\" is a song written by Susan Gibson and recorded by the American country music group Dixie Chicks. It was released in August 1998 as the third single and title track from the band's album \"Wide Open Spaces\". The song hit number one on the U.S. Country singles chart and spent four weeks there in November 1998. It also placed to number 41 on the U.S. Pop singles chart.\nIn 2001, the RIAA placed \"Wide Open Spaces\" at number 259 on its 365 Songs of the Century list. In 2003, CMT named it number 22 in its 100 Greatest Songs in Country Music list.\nHistory.\nAmarillo, Texas-based Susan Gibson wrote the song's first lyrics in 1993, on her first visit back home after leaving for forestry school at the University of Montana. She left the notebook containing the lyrics at home by mistake when she returned to school; her mother found it and included it in a care package, inspiring Gibson to complete a song along the themes of leaving home. She first performed it in local clubs around the University of Montana, where it was sometimes requested.\nBy the late 1990s, Gibson was lead singer of the alt country band The Groobees. They recorded an album, \"Wayside\", that included \"Wide Open Spaces\" and which would be released in 1999. It was produced by Lloyd Maines, father of new Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines.\nLloyd Maines identified with the tale of a daughter leaving home, and thought it would match Natalie's vocal character well; he brought the song to the group, who tested it in concert a few times to a strong response. Both the Chicks and Sony Music agreed with Lloyd Maines' assessment, not only recording it but making it the title tune of the Maines-era group's first album as well.\nThe youthful, romantic, adventurous sense of independence featured in \"Wide Open Spaces\" helped key much of the group's new image; it thus became one of their signature songs and proved very popular among young teenage girls. The lyric speaks of possibilities yet undiscovered:\nShe needs wide open spaces,\nRoom to make her big mistakes\nShe needs new faces \u2014\nShe knows the high stakes\nThe lyric has been considered an exemplar of the songwriting strategy in which lines are not repeated in either the verses or chorus. The Texas, bluegrass-flavored arrangement in the recording begins with a fiddle riff, with the band soon joining in. Verses are sung by Natalie Maines by herself, with drums, fiddle, and soft guitar and piano carrying the accompaniment. Choruses feature sisters Emily Strayer and Martie Seidel backing Maines with harmony vocals, and also add a banjo line. The instrumental break features Strayer and Seidel on mandolin and fiddle respectively. The main fiddle riff then brings the recording to a close.\nEmily Strayer was proud that the group's hits such as this were still able to incorporate the banjo, an instrument the Nashville establishment often frowned upon as being too hillbilly. Susan Gibson and \"Wide Open Spaces\" has been considered an example of the influence of the West Texas influence in country music songwriting; Gibson herself considers Amarillo to be \"where the wide open spaces are. Amarillo has the most beautiful sunsets.\" Gibson's childhood family drives from Amarillo to Missoula, Montana, also trace the song's lyric and settings.\nThe song gained Nashville respect, as it was named the Country Music Association Awards Single of the Year in 1999. It also won Gibson the \"American Songwriter\" Professional Country Songwriter of the Year award in early 2000, as well as a BMI award the previous year. Although the song itself was not nominated for a Grammy Award (the album was, as was its previous single, \"There's Your Trouble\", both of which won in their categories), it was included on the various artists \"1999 Grammy Nominees\" compilation album.\nMusic video.\nThe music video for \"Wide Open Spaces\" portrayed the Chicks in a Rocky Mountains setting, cavorting through wide open fields of wildflowers and the like. Interspersed were scenes of the then-all blonde Chicks on tour: in performance, backstage, and on their tour bus (the last showing the slogan \"Ain't Skeerd\" on the outside). The performance was filmed at West Fest, an annual event in Winter Park, Colorado where the Chicks appeared four years running. The mountain scenes were done around Winter Park as well, and included background shots of some of the Chicks exercising their trampoline talents. It was directed by Thom Oliphant, who previously directed \"There's Your Trouble,\" and would later co-direct \"Without You.\"\nThis effort was directed by Thom Oliphant, and was named the Country Music Association Awards Music Video of the Year in 1999. It was placed at #32 on CMT's 2004 ranking of the 100 Greatest Videos.\nLegacy.\nThe commercial success of the single and album gave songwriter Gibson something of a windfall, which she celebrated by going to San Marcos, Texas and buying gifts for everyone she knew. She would later say the song was both innocent and personal for her, in the latter detailed so much that she was surprised another artist would relate to it. She would say of the song's recording by the Chicks that it was \"beautiful [with] stunning musicianship and very professional production ... [a] gorgeous recording.\" And of the song's popularity, Gibson would say, \"So much of the success of that song belongs to [the Chicks] ... but pairing that song with that group is what made 'Wide Open Spaces' what it is. It really was just a magical combination of right place, right time, right group. I'm glad it happened to me.\"\n\"Wide Open Spaces\" has been a constant on the Chicks' concert tours, and indeed was the only song from \"Wide Open Spaces\" still in the set list as of the 2006 Accidents & Accusations Tour. The \"New York Times\" said that in one such 2006 performance, in light of the still-ongoing Chicks political controversy, \"songs like 'Wide Open Spaces' ..., about women leaving home and striking out on their own, sounded more than ever like mission statements.\" It remained on the playlist during the DCX MMXVI World Tour. Gibson also continues to perform it at her live performance outings.\nThe song appears on the game \"Karaoke Revolution\" edition \"CMT presents Karaoke Revolution Country\". An introspective interpretation by the artist Soccer Mommy has gained some media attention. That singer said in 2018, \"I'm a huge Dixie Chicks fan. I think 'Wide Open Spaces' is one of those perfect '90s alt-country songs. Plus it's relatable to any girl who's moved away from home and had to start a new life somewhere.\"\nThe song was used in the fifth episode of the second series of the British sitcom Gavin and Stacey in a scene where Bryn West, played by Rob Brydon gives his sister-in-law Gwen West, played by Melanie Walters a surprise barn dance birthday party\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "13546211": "It Must Be Love (Ty Herndon song)\n\"It Must Be Love\" is a song by American country music singer Ty Herndon, taken from his third studio album \"Big Hopes\" (1998). The song, penned by Craig Bickhardt and Jack Sundrud and produced by Doug Johnson, was released on July 27, 1998, as the second single from the album. Sons of the Desert is featured in the chorus of the song.\nThis single became a success, becoming his third and final number one single on the US Hot Country Songs chart.\nContent.\nThe song, written by Craig Bickhardt and Jack Sundrud, features the narrator of how he finds himself acting uncharacteristically, unable to control his emotions, because he is in love. The chorus uses a question-and-answer format, with the group Sons of the Desert singing the questions, as the narrator's conscience, and Herndon, the narrator, performing the answers \u2014 until the last line, where they all sing together. The song is in the key of E major.\nSundrud wrote the song while a member of the band Great Plains, and was working with Bickhardt for songs on what would become that band's second album \"Homeland\". According to Sundrud, he wanted to write something that could be sung by all three of the band's vocalists; at the time, Bickhardt was in the process of selling his house and found himself having difficulty concentrating on songwriting until Sundrud engaged him in conversation. Great Plains ultimately did not record the song, thus allowing it to be available for Herndon.\nCritical reception.\nIn a retrospective review, Kevin John Coyne of Country Universe reviewed it positively and called it one of \"the freshest sounding singles of the late nineties.\"\nCommercial performance.\n\"It Must Be Love\" debuted at number 62 on the US \"Billboard\" Hot Country Songs chart the week of August 15, 1998. The track would enter the top ten of the chart on November 14, 1998, becoming Herndon's sixth top-ten hit. On December 7, 1998, \"It Must Be Love\" would rise to the number one spot and stay there for one week, giving Herndon his third and final number one single to date. The track displaced The Chicks's \"Wide Open Spaces\" before being replaced by Faith Hill's \"Let Me Let Go\". The song spent 26 weeks on the chart and would be Epic Nashville's final number one single until 2004 when Gretchen Wilson would reach the top spot with \"Redneck Woman\". \"It Must Be Love\" would also peak at number 38 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, giving Herndon his sole top-forty entry on that chart.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "5247": "Country music\nAmerican music genre\nCountry (also called country and western) is a music genre originating in the southern regions of the United States, both the American South and the Southwest. First produced in the 1920s, country music is primarily focused on singing stories about working-class and blue-collar American life.\nCountry music is known for its ballads and dance tunes (i.e., \"honky-tonk music\") with simple form, folk lyrics, and harmonies generally accompanied by instruments such as banjos, fiddles, harmonicas, and many types of guitar (including acoustic, electric, steel, and resonator guitars). Though it is primarily rooted in various forms of American folk music, such as old-time music and Appalachian music, many other traditions, including Mexican, Irish, and Hawaiian music, have had a formative influence on the genre. Blues modes from blues music have been used extensively throughout its history as well.\nOnce called \"hillbilly music\", the term \"country music\" gained popularity in the 1940s. The genre came to encompass western music, which evolved parallel to hillbilly music from similar roots, in the mid-20th century. Contemporary styles of western music include Texas country, red dirt, and Hispano- and Mexican American-led Tejano and New Mexico music, which still exists alongside longstanding indigenous traditions.\nIn 2009, in the United States, country music was the most-listened-to rush-hour radio genre during the evening commute, and second-most popular in the morning commute.\nOrigins.\nThe main components of the modern country music style date back to music traditions throughout the Southern United States and Southwestern United States, while its place in American popular music was established in the 1920s during the early days of music recording. According to country historian Bill C. Malone, country music was \"introduced to the world as a Southern phenomenon.\"\nMigration into the southern Appalachian Mountains, of the Southeastern United States, brought the folk music and instruments of Europe and the Mediterranean Basin along with it for nearly 300 years, which developed into Appalachian music. As the country expanded westward, the Mississippi River and Louisiana became a crossroads for country music, giving rise to Cajun music. In the Southwestern United States, it was the Rocky Mountains, American frontier, and Rio Grande that acted as a similar backdrop for Native American, Mexican, and cowboy ballads, which resulted in New Mexico music and the development of western music, and it is directly related to Red Dirt, Texas country, and Tejano music styles. In the Asia-Pacific, the steel guitar sound of country music has its provenance in the music of Hawaii.\nRole of East Tennessee.\nThe U.S. Congress has formally recognized Bristol, Tennessee, as the \"Birthplace of Country Music\", based on the historic Bristol recording sessions of 1927. Since 2014, the city has been home to the Birthplace of Country Music Museum. Historians have also noted the influence of the less-known Johnson City sessions of 1928 and 1929, and the Knoxville sessions of 1929 and 1930. In addition, the Mountain City Fiddlers Convention, held in 1925, helped to inspire modern country music. Before these, pioneer settlers, in the Great Smoky Mountains region, had developed a rich musical heritage.\nGenerations.\nThe first generation emerged in the 1920s, with Atlanta's music scene playing a major role in launching country's earliest recording artists. James Gideon \"Gid\" Tanner (1885\u20131960) was an American old-time fiddler and one of the earliest stars of what would come to be known as country music. His band, the Skillet Lickers, was one of the most innovative and influential string bands of the 1920s and 1930s. Its most notable members were Clayton McMichen (fiddle and vocal), Dan Hornsby (vocals), Riley Puckett (guitar and vocal) and Robert Lee Sweat (guitar). New York City record label Okeh Records began issuing hillbilly music records by Fiddlin' John Carson as early as 1923, followed by Columbia Records (series 15000D \"Old Familiar Tunes\") (Samantha Bumgarner) in 1924, and RCA Victor Records in 1927 with the first famous pioneers of the genre Jimmie Rodgers, who is widely considered the \"Father of Country Music\", and the first family of country music the Carter Family. Many \"hillbilly\" musicians recorded blues songs throughout the 1920s.\nDuring the second generation (1930s\u20131940s), radio became a popular source of entertainment, and \"barn dance\" shows featuring country music were started all over the South, as far north as Chicago, and as far west as California. The most important was the \"Grand Ole Opry\", aired starting in 1925 by WSM in Nashville and continuing to the present day. During the 1930s and 1940s, cowboy songs, or western music, which had been recorded since the 1920s, were popularized by films made in Hollywood, many featuring Gene Autry, who was known as king of the \"singing cowboys,\" and Hank Williams. Bob Wills was another country musician from the Lower Great Plains who had become very popular as the leader of a \"hot string band,\" and who also appeared in Hollywood westerns. His mix of country and jazz, which started out as dance hall music, would become known as western swing. Wills was one of the first country musicians known to have added an electric guitar to his band, in 1938. Country musicians began recording boogie in 1939, shortly after it had been played at Carnegie Hall, when Johnny Barfield recorded \"Boogie Woogie\".\nThe third generation (1950s\u20131960s) started at the end of World War II with \"mountaineer\" string band music known as bluegrass, which emerged when Bill Monroe, along with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, were introduced by Roy Acuff at the Grand Ole Opry. Gospel music remained a popular component of country music. The Native American, Hispano, and American frontier music of the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico, became popular among poor communities in New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas; the basic ensemble consisted of classical guitar, bass guitar, dobro or steel guitar, though some larger ensembles featured electric guitars, trumpets, keyboards (especially the honky-tonk piano, a type of tack piano), banjos, and drums. By the early 1950s it blended with rock and roll, becoming the rockabilly sound produced by Sam Phillips, Norman Petty, and Bob Keane. Musicians like Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ritchie Valens, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, and Johnny Cash emerged as enduring representatives of the style. Beginning in the mid-1950s, and reaching its peak during the early 1960s, the Nashville sound turned country music into a multimillion-dollar industry centered in Nashville, Tennessee; Patsy Cline and Jim Reeves were two of the most broadly popular Nashville sound artists, and their deaths in separate plane crashes in the early 1960s were a factor in the genre's decline. Starting in the 1950s to the mid-1960s, western singer-songwriters such as Marty Robbins rose in prominence as did others, throughout western music traditions, like New Mexico music's Al Hurricane. The late 1960s in American music produced a unique blend as a result of traditionalist backlash within separate genres. In the aftermath of the British Invasion, many desired a return to the \"old values\" of rock n' roll. At the same time there was a lack of enthusiasm in the country sector for Nashville-produced music. What resulted was a crossbred genre known as country rock.\nFourth generation (1970s\u20131980s) music included outlaw country with roots in the Bakersfield sound, and country pop with roots in the countrypolitan, folk music and soft rock. Between 1972 and 1975 singer/guitarist John Denver released a series of hugely successful songs blending country and folk-rock musical styles. By the mid-1970s, Texas country and Tejano music gained popularity with performers like Freddie Fender. During the early 1980s country artists continued to see their records perform well on the pop charts. In 1980 a style of \"neocountry disco music\" was popularized. During the mid-1980s a group of new artists began to emerge who rejected the more polished country-pop sound that had been prominent on radio and the charts in favor of more traditional \"back-to-basics\" production.\nDuring the fifth generation (the 1990s), neotraditionalists and stadium country acts prospered.\nThe sixth generation (2000s\u2013present) has seen a certain amount of diversification in regard to country music styles. It has also, however, seen a shift into patriotism and conservative politics since 9/11, though such themes are less prevalent in more modern trends. The influence of rock music in country has become more overt during the late 2000s and early 2010s. Most of the best-selling country songs of this era were those by Lady A, Florida Georgia Line, Carrie Underwood, and Taylor Swift. Hip hop also made its mark on country music with the emergence of country rap.\nHistory.\nFirst generation (1920s).\nThe first commercial recordings of what was considered instrumental music in the traditional country style were \"Arkansas Traveler\" and \"Turkey in the Straw\" by fiddlers Henry Gilliland & A.C. (Eck) Robertson on June 30, 1922, for Victor Records and released in April 1923. Columbia Records began issuing records with \"hillbilly\" music (series 15000D \"Old Familiar Tunes\") as early as 1924.\nThe first commercial recording of what is widely considered to be the first country song featuring vocals and lyrics was Fiddlin' John Carson with \"Little Log Cabin in the Lane\" for Okeh Records on June 14, 1923.\nVernon Dalhart was the first country singer to have a nationwide hit in May 1924 with \"Wreck of the Old 97\". The flip side of the record was \"Lonesome Road Blues\", which also became very popular. In April 1924, \"Aunt\" Samantha Bumgarner and Eva Davis became the first female musicians to record and release country songs. The record 129-D produced by Columbia features Samantha playing fiddle and singing Big-Eyed Rabbit while Eva Davis plays banjo. The other side features Eva Davis playing banjo while singing Wild Bill Jones. Many of the early country musicians, such as the yodeler Cliff Carlisle, recorded blues songs into the 1930s. Other important early recording artists were Riley Puckett, Don Richardson, Fiddlin' John Carson, Uncle Dave Macon, Al Hopkins, Ernest V. Stoneman, Blind Alfred Reed, Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers and the Skillet Lickers. The steel guitar entered country music as early as 1922, when Jimmie Tarlton met famed Hawaiian guitarist Frank Ferera on the West Coast.\nJimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family are widely considered to be important early country musicians. From Scott County, Virginia, the Carters had learned sight reading of hymnals and sheet music using solfege. Their songs were first captured at a historic recording session in Bristol, Tennessee, on August 1, 1927, where Ralph Peer was the talent scout and sound recordist. A scene in the movie \"O Brother, Where Art Thou?\" depicts a similar occurrence in the same timeframe.\nRodgers fused hillbilly country, gospel, jazz, blues, pop, cowboy, and folk, and many of his best songs were his compositions, including \"Blue Yodel\", which sold over a million records and established Rodgers as the premier singer of early country music. Beginning in 1927, and for the next 17 years, the Carters recorded some 300 old-time ballads, traditional tunes, country songs and gospel hymns, all representative of America's southeastern folklore and heritage. Maybelle Carter went on to continue the family tradition with her daughters as The Carter Sisters; her daughter June would marry (in succession) Carl Smith, Rip Nix and Johnny Cash, having children with each who would also become country singers.\nSecond generation (1930s\u20131940s).\nRecord sales declined during the Great Depression. However, radio became a popular source of entertainment, and \"barn dance\" shows featuring country music were started by radio stations all over the South, as far north as Chicago, and as far west as California.\nThe most important was the \"Grand Ole Opry\", aired starting in 1925 by WSM in Nashville and continuing to the present day. Some of the early stars on the \"Opry\" were Uncle Dave Macon, Roy Acuff and African American harmonica player DeFord Bailey. WSM's 50,000-watt signal (in 1934) could often be heard across the country. Many musicians performed and recorded songs in any number of styles. Moon Mullican, for example, played western swing but also recorded songs that can be called rockabilly. Between 1947 and 1949, country crooner Eddy Arnold placed eight songs in the top 10. From 1945 to 1955 Jenny Lou Carson was one of the most prolific songwriters in country music.\nSinging cowboys and western swing.\nIn the 1930s and 1940s, cowboy songs, or western music, which had been recorded since the 1920s, were popularized by films made in Hollywood. Some of the popular singing cowboys from the era were Gene Autry, the Sons of the Pioneers, and Roy Rogers. Country music and western music were frequently played together on the same radio stations, hence the term \"country and western\" music, despite country and western being two distinct genres.\nCowgirls contributed to the sound in various family groups. Patsy Montana opened the door for female artists with her history-making song \"I Want To Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart\". This would begin a movement toward opportunities for women to have successful solo careers. Bob Wills was another country musician from the Lower Great Plains who had become very popular as the leader of a \"hot string band,\" and who also appeared in Hollywood westerns. His mix of country and jazz, which started out as dance hall music, would become known as western swing. Cliff Bruner, Moon Mullican, Milton Brown and Adolph Hofner were other early western swing pioneers. Spade Cooley and Tex Williams also had very popular bands and appeared in films. At its height, western swing rivaled the popularity of big band swing music.\nChanging instrumentation.\nDrums were scorned by early country musicians as being \"too loud\" and \"not pure\", but by 1935 western swing big band leader Bob Wills had added drums to the Texas Playboys. In the mid-1940s, the Grand Ole Opry did not want the Playboys' drummer to appear on stage. Although drums were commonly used by rockabilly groups by 1955, the less-conservative-than-the-Grand-Ole-Opry \"Louisiana Hayride\" kept its infrequently used drummer backstage as late as 1956. By the early 1960s, however, it was rare for a country band not to have a drummer. Bob Wills was one of the first country musicians known to have added an electric guitar to his band, in 1938. A decade later (1948) Arthur Smith achieved top 10 US country chart success with his MGM Records recording of \"Guitar Boogie\", which crossed over to the US pop chart, introducing many people to the potential of the electric guitar. For several decades Nashville session players preferred the warm tones of the Gibson and Gretsch archtop electrics, but a \"hot\" Fender style, using guitars which became available beginning in the early 1950s, eventually prevailed as the signature guitar sound of country.\nHillbilly boogie.\nCountry musicians began recording boogie in 1939, shortly after it had been played at Carnegie Hall, when Johnny Barfield recorded \"Boogie Woogie\". The trickle of what was initially called hillbilly boogie, or okie boogie (later to be renamed country boogie), became a flood beginning in late 1945. One notable release from this period was the Delmore Brothers' \"Freight Train Boogie\", considered"}, "descending_order": ["33253346", "18389664", "13546211", "5247", "27964866"], "permutation_1": ["18389664", "5247", "13546211", "33253346", "27964866"], "permutation_2": ["33253346", "18389664", "27964866", "5247", "13546211"], "permutation_3": ["5247", "18389664", "27964866", "13546211", "33253346"]}
{"id": "2hop__345790_99606", "docs_added": {"11977791": "Vasafua\nVasafua is an islet of Funafuti, Tuvalu. Vasafua is part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, established in 1996 with the aim of preserving the natural fauna and flora of the area.\nVasafua was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nTe Ava Fuagea, also known as Ava Amelia is a deep and narrow passage on the southwestern side of the atoll, 18.3 metres deep and 160 metres wide, separating the southern part of the atoll in the west, south of passage Te Ava Papa and the still more northerly islet of Fuafatu, and north of the islet of Vasafua.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11977791", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["11977791", "30227"], "permutation_2": ["30227", "11977791"], "permutation_3": ["11977791", "30227"]}
{"id": "2hop__261004_31296", "docs_added": {"19265785": "A Different Breed of Killer\nAmerican deathcore band\nA Different Breed of Killer was an American deathcore band from Knoxville, Tennessee. They released their debut album, \"I, Colossus\", on April 29, 2008.\nHistory.\nFormed in October 2006, A Different Breed of Killer quickly made a name for themselves in the deathcore scene. Less than a year after their formation, the band signed with Rise Records and released \"I, Colossus\", which received generally positive reviews. The band has toured with such bands as Whitechapel, Through the Eyes of the Dead, and Impending Doom.\nRecently, A Different Breed Of Killer have announced they are preparing their second full-length to be titled The city. The album will be produced by the band's drummer Nija Walker, who has been a student of recording technologies for 8 years, and worked directly under world-renowned mastering engineer Seva at SoundCurrent Mastering in Knoxville, TN. The album will also be mastered by Seva. Also unique to this recording is plans to record, mix and master the entire album in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround sound. The band stated \"to our knowledge this is the first time this process has been applied to a death metal record.\"\nThe band has also announced that they have left Rise Records and are in the process of securing a new label for The city.\nSome of the members are in a new band named Persaeus.\nIn 2016, the band announced that their new vocalist was Kevin Bivins of American deathcore bands Senor Bivins and What Lies Beneath. Bivins also announced the album would be released soon and that he designed the artwork for it. On June 27, 2016, nearly 8 years after the release of I, Colossus, the band made an announcement that \"The Devouring Storm\", the single from their second album The city, will be released on July 9, with the full album supposedly coming in November 2016. The band has also started an Indiegogo campaign to fund the album.\nThe album was released on May 27, 2017, and the band's last Facebook post was on August 12, 2017. There has been no activity of the band since.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "30395": "Tennessee\nU.S. state\nTennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina to the east, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to the south, Arkansas to the southwest, and Missouri to the northwest. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. According to the United States Census Bureau, the state's estimated population as of 2024 is 7.22 million.\nTennessee is geographically, culturally, and legally divided into three Grand Divisions of East, Middle, and West Tennessee. Nashville is the state's capital and largest city, and anchors its largest metropolitan area. Tennessee has diverse terrain and landforms, and from east to west, contains a mix of cultural features characteristic of Appalachia, the Upland South, and the Deep South. The Blue Ridge Mountains along the eastern border reach some of the highest elevations in eastern North America, and the Cumberland Plateau contains many scenic valleys and waterfalls. The central part of the state is marked by cavernous bedrock and irregular rolling hills, and level, fertile plains define West Tennessee. The state is twice bisected by the Tennessee River, and the Mississippi River forms its western border. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the nation's most visited national park, is in eastern Tennessee.\nTennessee is rooted in the Watauga Association, a 1772 frontier pact generally regarded as the first constitutional government west of the Appalachian Mountains. Its name derives from (), a Cherokee town preceding the first European American settlement. Tennessee was initially part of North Carolina, and later the Southwest Territory, before its admission to the Union as the 16th state on June 1, 1796. It earned the nickname \"The Volunteer State\" due to a strong tradition of military service. A slave state until the American Civil War, Tennessee was politically divided, with most of its western and middle parts supporting the Confederacy, and most of the eastern region harboring pro-Union sentiment. As a result, Tennessee was the last state to officially secede from the Union and join the Confederacy, and the first former Confederate state readmitted to the Union after the war had ended during the Reconstruction era.\nDuring the 20th century, Tennessee transitioned from a predominantly agrarian society to a more diversified economy. This was aided in part by massive federal investment in the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the city of Oak Ridge, which was established during World War II to house the Manhattan Project's uranium enrichment facilities for the construction of the world's first atomic bombs. After the war, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory became a key center of scientific research. The state's economy is dominated by the health care, music, finance, automotive, chemical, electronics, and tourism sectors, and cattle, soybeans, poultry, corn, and cotton are its primary agricultural products. Tennessee has played a major role in the development of many forms of popular music, including country, blues, rock and roll, soul, and gospel.\nEtymology.\nTennessee derives its name most directly from the Cherokee town of Tanasi (or \"Tanase\", in syllabary: \u13d4\u13be\u13cf) in present-day Monroe County, Tennessee, on the Tanasi River, now known as the Little Tennessee River. In 1567, Spanish explorer Captain Juan Pardo and his party encountered a Native American village named \"Tanasqui\" in the area while traveling inland from modern-day South Carolina; however, it is unknown if this was the same settlement as Tanasi. The town appeared on British maps as early as 1725. Recent research suggests that the Cherokees adapted the name from the Yuchi word \"Tana-tsee-dgee\", meaning \"brother-waters-place\" or \"where-the-waters-meet\". The modern spelling, \"Tennessee\", is attributed to Governor James Glen of South Carolina, who used this spelling in his official correspondence during the 1750s. In 1788, North Carolina created \"Tennessee County\", and in 1796, a constitutional convention, organizing the new state out of the Southwest Territory, adopted \"Tennessee\" as the state's name.\nHistory.\nPre-European era.\nThe first inhabitants of Tennessee were Paleo-Indians who arrived about 12,000 years ago at the end of the Last Glacial Period. Archaeological excavations indicate that the lower Tennessee Valley was heavily populated by Ice Age hunter-gatherers, and Middle Tennessee is believed to have been rich with game animals such as mastodons. The names of the cultural groups who inhabited the area before European contact are unknown, but archaeologists have named several distinct cultural phases, including the Archaic (8000\u20131000 BC), Woodland (1000 BC\u20131000 AD), and Mississippian (1000\u20131600 AD) periods. The Archaic peoples first domesticated dogs, and plants such as squash, corn, gourds, and sunflowers were first grown in Tennessee during the Woodland period. Later generations of Woodland peoples constructed the first mounds. Rapid civilizational development occurred during the Mississippian period, when Indigenous peoples developed organized chiefdoms and constructed numerous ceremonial structures throughout the state.\nSpanish conquistadors who explored the region in the 16th century encountered some of the Mississippian peoples, including the Muscogee Creek, Yuchi, and Shawnee. By the early 18th century, most Natives in Tennessee had disappeared, most likely wiped out by diseases introduced by the Spaniards. The Cherokee began migrating into what is now eastern Tennessee from what is now Virginia in the latter 17th century, possibly to escape expanding European settlement and diseases in the north. They forced the Creek, Yuchi, and Shawnee out of the state in the early 18th century. The Chickasaw remained confined to West Tennessee, and the middle part of the state contained few Native Americans, although both the Cherokee and the Shawnee claimed the region as their hunting ground. Cherokee peoples in Tennessee were known by European settlers as the Overhill Cherokee because they lived west of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Overhill settlements grew along the rivers in East Tennessee in the early 18th century.\nExploration and colonization.\nThe first recorded European expeditions into what is now Tennessee were led by Spanish explorers Hernando de Soto in 1540\u20131541, Tristan de Luna in 1559, and Juan Pardo in 1566\u20131567. In 1673, English fur trader Abraham Wood sent an expedition from the Colony of Virginia into Overhill Cherokee territory in modern-day northeastern Tennessee. That same year, a French expedition led by missionary Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet explored the Mississippi River and became the first Europeans to map the Mississippi Valley. In 1682, an expedition led by Ren\u00e9-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle constructed Fort Prudhomme on the Chickasaw Bluffs in West Tennessee. By the late 17th century, French traders began to explore the Cumberland River valley, and in 1714, under Charles Charleville's command, established French Lick, a fur trading settlement at the present location of Nashville near the Cumberland River. In 1739, the French constructed Fort Assumption under Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville on the Mississippi River at the present location of Memphis, which they used as a base against the Chickasaw during the 1739 Campaign of the Chickasaw Wars.\nIn the 1750s and 1760s, longhunters from Virginia explored much of East and Middle Tennessee. Settlers from the Colony of South Carolina built Fort Loudoun on the Little Tennessee River in 1756, the first British settlement in what is now Tennessee and the westernmost British outpost to that date. Hostilities erupted between the British and the Cherokees into an armed conflict, and a siege of the fort ended with its surrender in 1760. After the French and Indian War, Britain issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which forbade settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains in an effort to mitigate conflicts with the Natives. But migration across the mountains continued, and the first permanent European settlers began arriving in northeastern Tennessee in the late 1760s. Most of them were English, but nearly 20% were Scotch-Irish. They formed the Watauga Association in 1772, a semi-autonomous representative government, and three years later reorganized themselves into the Washington District to support the cause of the American Revolutionary War. The next year, after an unsuccessful petition to Virginia, North Carolina agreed to annex the Washington District to provide protection from Native American attacks.\nIn 1775, Richard Henderson negotiated a series of treaties with the Cherokee to sell the lands of the Watauga settlements at Sycamore Shoals on the banks of the Watauga River. An agreement to sell land for the Transylvania Colony, which included the territory in Tennessee north of the Cumberland River, was also signed. Later that year, Daniel Boone, under Henderson's employment, blazed a trail from Fort Chiswell in Virginia through the Cumberland Gap, which became part of the Wilderness Road, a major thoroughfare into Tennessee and Kentucky. The Chickamauga, a Cherokee faction loyal to the British led by Dragging Canoe, opposed the settling of the Washington District and Transylvania Colony, and in 1776 attacked Fort Watauga at Sycamore Shoals. The warnings of Dragging Canoe's cousin Nancy Ward spared many settlers' lives from the initial attacks. In 1779, James Robertson and John Donelson led two groups of settlers from the Washington District to the French Lick. These settlers constructed Fort Nashborough, which they named for Francis Nash, a brigadier general of the Continental Army. The next year, the settlers signed the Cumberland Compact, which established a representative government for the colony called the Cumberland Association. This settlement later grew into the city of Nashville. That same year John Sevier led a group of Overmountain Men from Fort Watauga to the Battle of Kings Mountain in South Carolina, where they defeated the British.\nThree counties of the Washington District broke off from North Carolina in 1784 and formed the State of Franklin. Efforts to obtain admission to the Union failed, and the counties, now numbering eight, rejoined North Carolina by 1788. North Carolina ceded the area to the federal government in 1790, after which it was organized into the Southwest Territory on May 26 of that year. The act allowed the territory to petition for statehood once the population reached 60,000. Administration of the territory was divided between the Washington District and the Mero District, the latter of which consisted of the Cumberland Association and was named for Spanish territorial governor Esteban Rodr\u00edguez Mir\u00f3. President George Washington appointed William Blount as territorial governor. The Southwest Territory recorded a population of 35,691 in the first United States census that year, including 3,417 slaves.\nStatehood and antebellum era.\nAs support for statehood grew among the settlers, Governor Blount called for elections, which were held in December 1793. The 13-member territorial House of Representatives first convened in Knoxville on February 24, 1794, to select ten members for the legislature's upper house, the council. The full legislature convened on August 25, 1794. In June 1795, the legislature conducted a census of the territory, which recorded a population of 77,263, including 10,613 slaves, and a poll that showed 6,504 in favor of statehood and 2,562 opposed. Elections for a constitutional convention were held in December 1795, and the delegates convened in Knoxville on January 17, 1796, to begin drafting a state constitution. During this convention, the name Tennessee was chosen for the new state. The constitution was completed on February 6, which authorized elections for the state's new legislature, the Tennessee General Assembly. The legislature convened on March 28, 1796, and the next day, John Sevier was announced as the state's first governor. Tennessee was admitted to the Union on June 1, 1796, as the 16th state and the first created from federal territory.\nTennessee reportedly earned the nickname \"The Volunteer State\" during the War of 1812, when 3,500 Tennesseans answered a recruitment call by the General Assembly for the war effort. These soldiers, under Andrew Jackson's command, played a major role in the American victory at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, the last major battle of the war. Several Tennesseans took part in the Texas Revolution of 1835\u201336, including Governor Sam Houston and Congressman and frontiersman Davy Crockett, who was killed at the Battle of the Alamo. The state's nickname was solidified during the Mexican\u2013American War when President James K. Polk of Tennessee issued a call for 2,800 soldiers from the state, and more than 30,000 volunteered.\nBetween the 1790s and 1820s, additional land cessions were negotiated with the Cherokee, who had established a national government modeled on the U.S. Constitution. In 1818, Jackson and Kentucky governor Isaac Shelby reached an agreement with the Chickasaw to sell the land between the Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers to the United States, which included all of West Tennessee and became known as the \"Jackson Purchase\". The Cherokee moved their capital from Georgia to the Red Clay Council Grounds in southeastern Tennessee in 1832, due to new laws forcing them from their previous capital at New Echota. In 1838 and 1839, U.S. troops forcibly removed thousands of Cherokees and their black slaves from their homes in southeastern Tennessee and forced them to march to Indian Territory in modern-day Oklahoma. This event is known as the Trail of Tears, and an estimated 4,000 died along the way.\nAs settlers pushed west of the Cumberland Plateau, a slavery-based agrarian economy took hold in these regions. Cotton planters used extensive slave labor on large plantation complexes in West Tennessee's fertile and flat terrain after the Jackson Purchase. Cotton also took hold in the Nashville Basin during this time. Entrepreneurs such as Montgomery Bell used slaves in the production of iron in the Western Highland Rim, and slaves also cultivated such crops as tobacco and corn throughout the Highland Rim. East Tennessee's geography did not allow for large plantations as in the middle and western parts of the state, and as a result, slavery became increasingly rare in the region. A strong abolition movement developed in East Tennessee, beginning as early as 1797, and in 1819, Elihu Embree of Jonesborough began publishing the \"Manumission Intelligencier\" (later \"The Emancipator\"), the nation's first exclusively anti-slavery newspaper.\nCivil War.\nAt the onset of the American Civil War, most Middle and West Tennesseans favored efforts to preserve their slavery-based economies, but many Middle Tennesseans were initially skeptical of secession. In East Tennessee, most people favored remaining in the Union. In 1860, slaves composed about 25% of Tennessee's population, the lowest share among the states that joined the Confederacy. Tennessee provided more Union troops than any other Confederate state, and the second-highest number of Confederate troops, behind Virginia. Due to its central location, Tennessee was a crucial state during the war and saw more military engagements than any state except Virginia.\nAfter Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, secessionists in the state government led by Governor Isham Harris sought voter approval to sever ties with the United States, which was rejected in a referendum by a 54\u201346% margin in February 1861. After the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in April and Lincoln's call for troops in response, the legislature ratified an agreement to enter a military league with the Confederacy on May 7, 1861. On June 8, with Middle Tennesseans having significantly changed their position, voters approved a second referendum on secession by a 69\u201331% margin, becoming the last state to secede. In response, East Tennessee Unionists organized a convention in Knoxville with the goal of splitting the region to form a new state loyal to the Union. In the fall of 1861, Unionist guerrillas in East Tennessee burned bridges and attacked Confederate sympathizers, leading the Confederacy to invoke martial law in parts of the region. Because of this, many southern unionists were sent fleeing to nearby Union states, particularly the border state of Kentucky. Other southern unionists, who stayed in Tennessee after the state's secession, either resisted the Confederate cause or eventually joined it. In March 1862, Lincoln appointed native Tennessean and War Democrat Andrew Johnson as military governor of the state.\nGeneral Ulysses S. Grant and the U.S. Navy captured the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers in February 1862 at the battles of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. Grant then proceeded south to Pittsburg Landing and held off a Confederate counterattack at Shiloh in April in what was at the time the bloodiest battle of the war. Memphis fell to the Union in June after a naval battle on the Mississippi River. Union strength in Middle Tennessee was tested in a series of Confederate offensives beginning in the summer of 1862, which culminated in General William Rosecrans's Army of the Cumberland routing General Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee at Stones River, another one of the war's costliest engagements. The next summer, Rosecrans's Tullahoma campaign forced Bragg's remaining troops in Middle Tennessee to retreat to Chattanooga with little fighting.\nDuring the Chattanooga campaign, Confederates attempted to besiege the Army of the Cumberland into surrendering, but reinforcements from the Army of the Tennessee under the command of Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Joseph Hooker arrived. The Confederates were driven from the city at the battles of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge in November 1863. Despite Unionist sentiment in East Tennessee, Confederates held the area for most of the war. A few days after the fall of Chattanooga, Confederates led by James Longstreet unsuccessfully campaigned to take control of Knoxville by attacking Union General Ambrose Burnside's Fort Sanders. The capture of Chattanooga allowed Sherman to launch the Atlanta campaign from the city in May 1864. The last major battles in the state came when Army of Tennessee regiments under John Bell Hood invaded Middle Tennessee in the fall of 1864 in an effort to draw Sherman back. They were checked by John Schofield at Franklin in November and completely dispersed by George Thomas at Nashville in December. On April 27, 1865, the worst maritime disaster in American history occurred when the \"Sultana\" steamboat, which was transporting freed Union prisoners, exploded in the Mississippi River north of Memphis, killing 1,168 people.\nWhen the Emancipation Proclamation was announced, Tennessee was largely held by Union forces and thus not among the states enumerated, so it freed no slaves there. Andrew Johnson declared all slaves in Tennessee free on October 24, 1864. On February 22, 1865, the legislature approved an amendment to the state constitution prohibiting slavery, which was approved by voters the following month, and would go into effect later on in the year. This made Tennessee the only Southern state to abolish slavery at the time. Tennessee ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery in every state, on April 7, 1865, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which granted citizenship and equal protection under the law to former slaves, on July 18, 1866. Both amendments went into effect after Tennessee's readmission to the union due to the fact that other states had not yet ratified it. Johnson became vice president when Lincoln was reelected, and president after Lincoln's assassination in May 1865. On July 24, 1866, Tennessee became the first Confederate state to have its elected members readmitted to Congress.\nReconstruction and late 19th century.\nThe years after the Civil War were characterized by tension and unrest between blacks and former Confederates, the worst of which occurred in Memphis in 1866. Because Tennessee had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment before its readmission to the Union, it was the only former secessionist state that did not have a military governor during Reconstruction. The Radical Republicans seized control of the state government toward the end of the war, and appointed William G. \"Parson\" Brownlow governor. Under Brownlow's administration from 1865 to 1869, the legislature allowed African American men to vote, disenfranchised former Confederates, and with martial law, took action against the Ku Klux Klan, which was founded in December 1865 in Pulaski as a vigilante group to advance former Confederates' interests. In 1870, Southern Democrats regained control of the state legislature, and over the next two decades, passed Jim Crow laws to enforce racial segregation. A total of 251 lynchings, predominately of Black people, took place in Tennessee.\nA number of epidemics swept through Tennessee in the years after the Civil War, including cholera in 1873, which devastated the Nashville area, and yellow fever in 1878, which killed more than one-tenth of Memphis's residents. Reformers worked to modernize Tennessee into a \"New South\" economy during this time. With the help of Northern investors, Chattanooga became one of the first industrialized cities in the South. Memphis became known as the \"Cotton Capital of the World\" during the late 19th century, and Nashville, Knoxville, and several smaller cities saw modest industrialization. Northerners also began exploiting the coalfields and mineral resources in the Appalachian Mountains. To pay off debts and alleviate overcrowded prisons, the state turned to convict leasing, providing prisoners to mining companies as strikebreakers, which was protested by miners forced to compete with the system. An armed uprising in the Cumberland Mountains known as the Coal Creek War in 1891 and 1892 resulted in the state ending convict leasing.\nDespite New South promoters' efforts, agriculture continued to dominate Tennessee's economy. The majority of freed slaves were forced into sharecropping during the latter 19th century, and many others worked as agricultural wage laborers. In 1897, Tennessee celebrated its statehood centennial one year late with the Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition in Nashville. A full-scale replica of the Parthenon in Athens was designed by architect William Crawford Smith and constructed for the celebration, owing to the city's reputation as the \"Athens of the South\".\nEarly 20th century.\nDue to increasing racial segregation and poor standards of living, many black Tennesseans fled to industrial cities in the Northeast and Midwest as part of the first wave of the Great Migration between 1915 and 1930. Many residents of rural parts of Tennessee relocated to larger cities during this time for more lucrative employment opportunities. As part of the Temperance movement, Tennessee became the first state in the nation to effectively ban the sale, transportation, and production of alcohol in a series of laws passed between 1907 and 1917. During Prohibition, illicit production of moonshine became extremely common in East Tennessee, particularly in the mountains, and continued for many decades afterward.\nSgt. Alvin C. York of Fentress County became one of the most famous and honored American soldiers of World War I. He received the Congressional Medal of Honor for single-handedly capturing an entire German machine gun regiment during the Meuse\u2013Argonne offensive. On July 9, 1918, Tennessee suffered the worst rail accident in U.S. history when two passenger trains collided head on in Nashville, killing 101 and injuring 171. On August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th and final state necessary to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave women the right to vote. In 1925, John T. Scopes, a high school teacher in Dayton, was tried and convicted for teaching evolution in violation of the state's recently passed Butler Act. Scopes was prosecuted by former Secretary of State and presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan and defended by attorney Clarence Darrow. The case was intentionally publicized, and highlighted the creationism-evolution controversy among religious groups. In 1926, Congress authorized the establishment of a national park in the Great Smoky Mountains, which was officially established in 1934 and dedicated in 1940.\nWhen the Great Depression struck in 1929, much of Tennessee was severely impoverished even by national standards. As part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was created in 1933 to provide electricity, jobs, flood control, improved waterway navigation, agricultural development, and economic modernization to the Tennessee River Valley. The TVA built several hydroelectric dams in the state in the 1930s and 1940s, which inundated communities and thousands of farmland acreage, and forcibly displaced families via eminent domain. The agency quickly grew into the country's largest electric utility and initiated a period of dramatic economic growth and transformation that brought many new industries and employment opportunities to the state.\nDuring World War II, East Tennessee was chosen for the production of weapons-grade fissile enriched uranium as part of the Manhattan Project, a research and development undertaking led by the U.S. to produce the world's first atomic bombs. The planned community of Oak Ridge was built to provide accommodations for the facilities and workers; the site was chosen due to the abundance of TVA electric power, its low population density, and its inland geography and topography, which allowed for the natural separation of the facilities and a low vulnerability to attack. The Clinton Engineer Works was established as the production arm of the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, which enriched uranium at three major facilities for use in atomic bombs. The first of the bombs was detonated in Alamogordo, New Mexico, in a test code-named Trinity, and the second, nicknamed \"Little Boy\", was bropped on Imperial Japan at the end of World War II. After the war, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory became an institution for scientific and technological research.\nMid-20th century to present.\nAfter the U.S. Supreme Court ruled racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional in \"Brown v. Board of Education\" in 1954, Oak Ridge High School in 1955 became the first school in Tennessee to be integrated. The next year, nearby Clinton High School was integrated, and Tennessee National Guard troops were sent in after pro-segregationists threatened violence. Between February and May 1960, a series of sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in Nashville organized by the Nashville Student Movement resulted in the desegregation of facilities in the city. On April 4, 1968, James Earl Ray assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis. King had traveled there to support striking African American sanitation workers.\nThe 1962 U.S. Supreme Court case \"Baker v. Carr\" arose out of a challenge to the longstanding rural bias of apportionment of seats in the Tennessee legislature and established the principle of \"one man, one vote\". The construction of Interstate 40 through Memphis became a national talking point on the issue of eminent domain and grassroots lobbying when the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) attempted to construct the highway through the city's Overton Park. A local activist group spent many years contesting the project, and in 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the group and established the framework for judicial review of government agencies in the landmark case of \"Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe\". TVA's construction of the Tellico Dam in Loudon County became the subject of national controversy in the 1970s when the endangered snail darter fish was reported to be affected by the project. After lawsuits by environmental groups, the debate was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court case \"Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill\" in 1978, leading to amendments of the Endangered Species Act.\nThe 1982 World's Fair was held in Knoxville. Also known as the Knoxville International Energy Exposition, the fair's theme was \"Energy Turns the World\". The exposition was one of the most successful, and the most recent world's fair to be held in the U.S. In 1986, Tennessee held a yearlong celebration of the state's heritage and culture called \"Homecoming '86\". Tennessee celebrated its bicentennial in 1996 with a yearlong celebration called \"Tennessee 200\". A new state park that traces the state's history, Bicentennial Mall, was opened at the foot of Capitol Hill in Nashville. The same year, the whitewater slalom events at the Atlanta Summer Olympic Games were held on the Ocoee River in Polk County.\nIn 2002, Tennessee amended its constitution to establish a lottery. In 2006, the state constitution was amended to outlaw same-sex marriage. This amendment was invalidated by the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court case \"Obergefell v. Hodges\". On December 23, 2008, the largest industrial waste spill in United States history occurred at TVA's Kingston Fossil Plant when more than 1.1 billion gallons of coal ash slurry was accidentally released into the Emory and Clinch Rivers. The cleanup cost more than $1 billion and lasted until 2015.\nGeography.\nTennessee is in the Southeastern United States. Culturally, most of the state is considered part of the Upland South, and the eastern third is part of Appalachia. Tennessee covers roughly , of which , or 2.2%, is water. It is the 16th smallest state in land area. The state is about long from east to west and wide from north to south. Tennessee is geographically, culturally, economically, and legally divided into three Grand Divisions: East Tennessee, Middle Tennessee, and West Tennessee. It borders eight other states: Kentucky and Virginia to the north, North Carolina to the east, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi on the south, and Arkansas and Missouri on the west. It is tied with Missouri as the state bordering the most other states. Tennessee is trisected by the Tennessee River, and its geographical center is in Murfreesboro. Nearly three\u2013fourths of the state is in the Central Time Zone, with most of East Tennessee on Eastern Time. The Tennessee River forms most of the division between Middle and West Tennessee.\nTennessee's eastern boundary roughly follows the highest crests of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the Mississippi River forms its western boundary. Due to flooding of the Mississippi that has changed its path, the state's western boundary deviates from the river in some places. The northern border was originally defined as 36\u00b030\u2032 north latitude and the Royal Colonial Boundary of 1665, but due to faulty surveys, begins north of this line in the east, and to the west, gradually veers north before shifting south onto the actual 36\u00b030\u2032 parallel at the Tennessee River in West Tennessee. Uncertainties in the latter 19th century over the location of the state's border with Virginia culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court settling the matter in 1893, which resulted in the division of Bristol between the two states. An 1818 survey erroneously placed Tennessee's southern border south of the 35th parallel; Georgia legislators continue to dispute this placement, as it prevents Georgia from accessing the Tennessee River.\nMarked by a diversity of landforms and topographies, Tennessee features six principal physiographic provinces, from east to west, which are part of three larger regions: the Blue Ridge Mountains, Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, and Cumberland Plateau, part of the Appalachian Mountains; the Highland Rim and Nashville Basin, part of the Interior Low Plateaus of the Interior Plains; and the East Gulf Coastal Plain, part of the Atlantic Plains. Other regions include the southern tip of the Cumberland Mountains, the Western Tennessee Valley, and the Mississippi Alluvial Plain. The state's highest point, which is also the third-highest peak in eastern North America, is Kuwohi, at above sea level. Its lowest point, , is on the Mississippi River at the Mississippi state line in Memphis. Tennessee has the most caves in the United States, with more than 10,000 documented.\nGeological formations in Tennessee largely correspond with the state's topographic features, and, in general, decrease in age from east to west. The state's oldest rocks are igneous strata more than 1 billion years old found in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the youngest deposits in Tennessee are sands and silts in the Mississippi Alluvial Plain and river valleys that drain into the Mississippi River. Tennessee is considered seismically active and contains two major seismic zones, although destructive earthquakes rarely occur there. The Eastern Tennessee seismic zone spans the entirety of East Tennessee from northwestern Alabama to southwestern Virginia, and is considered one of the most active zones in the Southeastern United States, frequently producing low-magnitude earthquakes. The New Madrid seismic zone in the northwestern part of the state produced a series of devastating earthquakes between December 1811 and February 1812 that formed Reelfoot Lake near Tiptonville.\nTopography.\nThe southwestern Blue Ridge Mountains lie within Tennessee's eastern edge, and are divided into several subranges, namely the Great Smoky Mountains, Bald Mountains, Unicoi Mountains, Unaka Mountains, and Iron Mountains. These mountains, which average above sea level in Tennessee, contain some of the highest elevations in eastern North America. The state's border with North Carolina roughly follows the highest peaks of this range, including Kuwohi. Most of the Blue Ridge area is protected by the Cherokee National Forest, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and several federal wilderness areas and state parks. The Appalachian Trail roughly follows the North Carolina state line before shifting westward into Tennessee.\nStretching west from the Blue Ridge Mountains for about are the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, also known as the Tennessee Valley or Great Valley of East Tennessee. This area consists of linear parallel ridges separated by valleys that trend northeast to southwest, the general direction of the entire Appalachian range. Most of these ridges are low, but some of the higher ones are commonly called mountains. Numerous tributaries join to form the Tennessee River in the Ridge and Valley region.\nThe Cumberland Plateau rises to the west of the Tennessee Valley, with an average elevation of . This landform is part of the larger Appalachian Plateau and consists mostly of flat-topped tablelands. The plateau's eastern edge is relatively distinct, but the western escarpment is irregular, containing several long, crooked stream valleys separated by rocky cliffs with numerous waterfalls. The Cumberland Mountains, with peaks above , comprise the northeastern part of the Appalachian Plateau in Tennessee, and the southeastern part of the Cumberland Plateau is divided by the Sequatchie Valley. The Cumberland Trail traverses the eastern escarpment of the Cumberland Plateau and Cumberland Mountains.\nWest of the Cumberland Plateau is the Highland Rim, an elevated plain that surrounds the Nashville Basin, a geological dome. Both of these physiographic provinces are part of the Interior Low Plateaus of the larger Interior Plains. The Highland Rim is Tennessee's largest geographic region, and is often split into eastern and western halves. The Eastern Highland Rim is characterized by relatively level plains dotted by rolling hills, and the Western Highland Rim and western Nashville Basin are covered with uneven rounded knobs with steep ravines separated by meandering streams. The Nashville Basin has rich, fertile farmland, and porous limestone bedrock very close to the surface underlies both the Nashville Basin and Eastern Highland Rim. This results in karst that forms numerous caves, sinkholes, depressions, and underground streams.\nWest of the Highland Rim is the Western Tennessee Valley, which consists of about in width of hilly land along the banks of the Tennessee River. West of this is the Gulf Coastal Plain, a broad feature that begins at the Gulf of Mexico and extends northward into southern Illinois. The plain begins in the east with low rolling hills and wide stream valleys, known as the West Tennessee Highlands, and gradually levels out to the west. It ends at steep loess bluffs overlooking the Mississippi embayment, the westernmost physiographic division of Tennessee, which is part of the larger Mississippi Alluvial Plain. This flat wide strip is commonly known as the Mississippi Bottoms, and contains lowlands, floodplains, and swamps.\nHydrology.\nTennessee is drained by three major rivers, the Tennessee, Cumberland, and Mississippi. The Tennessee River begins at the juncture of the Holston and French Broad rivers in Knoxville, flows southwest to Chattanooga, and exits into Alabama before reemerging in the western part of the state and flowing north into Kentucky. Its major tributaries include the Clinch, Little Tennessee, Hiwassee, Sequatchie, Elk, Beech, Buffalo, Duck, and Big Sandy rivers. The Cumberland River flows through the north-central part of the state, emerging in the northeastern Highland Rim, passing through Nashville, turning northwest to Clarksville, and entering Kentucky east of the Tennessee River. Its principal branches in Tennessee are the Obey, Caney Fork, Stones, Harpeth, and Red rivers. The Mississippi River drains nearly all of West Tennessee. Its tributaries are the Obion, Forked Deer, Hatchie, Loosahatchie, and Wolf rivers. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operate many hydroelectric dams on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers and their tributaries, which form large reservoirs throughout the state.\nAbout half the state's land area is in the Tennessee Valley drainage basin of the Tennessee River. The Cumberland River basin covers the northern half of Middle Tennessee and a small portion of East Tennessee. A small part of north-central Tennessee is in the Green River watershed. All three of these basins are tributaries of the Ohio River watershed. Most of West Tennessee is in the Lower Mississippi River watershed. The entirety of the state is in the Mississippi River watershed, except for a small sliver near the southeastern corner traversed by the Conasauga River, which is part of the Mobile Bay watershed.\nEcology.\nTennessee is within a temperate deciduous forest biome commonly known as the Eastern Deciduous Forest. It has eight ecoregions: the Blue Ridge, Ridge and Valley, Central Appalachian, Southwestern Appalachian, Interior Low Plateaus, Southeastern Plains, Mississippi Valley Loess Plains, and Mississippi Alluvial Plain regions. Tennessee is the most biodiverse inland state, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most biodiverse national park, and the Duck River is the most biologically diverse waterway in North America. The Nashville Basin is renowned for its diversity of flora and fauna. Tennessee is home to 340 species of birds, 325 freshwater fish species, 89 mammals, 77 amphibians, and 61 reptiles.\nForests cover about 52% of Tennessee's land area, with oak\u2013hickory the dominant type. Appalachian oak\u2013pine and cove hardwood forests are found in the Blue Ridge Mountains and Cumberland Plateau, and bottomland hardwood forests are common throughout the Gulf Coastal Plain. Pine forests are also found throughout the state. The Southern Appalachian spruce\u2013fir forest in the highest elevations of the Blue Ridge Mountains is considered the second-most endangered ecosystem in the country. Some of the last remaining large American chestnut trees grow in the Nashville Basin and are being used to help breed blight-resistant trees. Middle Tennessee is home to many unusual and rare ecosystems known as cedar glades, which occur in areas with shallow limestone bedrock that is largely barren of overlying soil and contain many endemic plant species.\nCommon mammals found throughout Tennessee include white-tailed deer, red and gray foxes, coyotes, raccoons, opossums, wild turkeys, rabbits, and squirrels. Black bears are found in the Blue Ridge Mountains and on the Cumberland Plateau. Tennessee has the third-highest number of amphibian species, with the Great Smoky Mountains home to the most salamander species in the world. The state ranks second in the nation for the diversity of its freshwater fish species.\nClimate.\nMost of Tennessee has a humid subtropical climate, with the exception of some of the higher elevations in the Appalachians, which are classified as a cooler mountain temperate or humid continental climate. The Gulf of Mexico is the dominant factor in Tennessee's climate, with winds from the south responsible for most of the state's annual precipitation. Generally, the state has hot summers and mild to cool winters with generous precipitation throughout the year. The highest average monthly precipitation usually occurs between December and April. The driest months, on average, are August to October. The state receives an average of of precipitation annually. Snowfall ranges from in West Tennessee to over in East Tennessee's highest mountains.\nSummers are generally hot and humid, with most of the state averaging a high of around . Winters tend to be mild to cool, decreasing in temperature at higher elevations. For areas outside the highest mountains, the average overnight lows are generally near freezing. The highest recorded temperature was at Perryville on August 9, 1930, while the lowest recorded temperature was at Mountain City on December 30, 1917.\nWhile Tennessee is far enough from the coast to avoid any direct impact from a hurricane, its location makes it susceptible to the remnants of tropical cyclones, which weaken over land and can cause significant rainfall. The state annually averages about 50 days of thunderstorms, which can be severe with large hail and damaging winds. Tornadoes are possible throughout the state, with West and Middle Tennessee the most vulnerable. The state averages 15 tornadoes annually. They can be severe, and the state leads the nation in the percentage of total tornadoes that have fatalities. Winter storms such as in 1993 and 2021 occur occasionally, and ice storms are fairly common. Fog is a persistent problem in some areas, especially in East Tennessee.\nCities, towns, and counties.\nTennessee is divided into 95 counties, each of which has a county seat. The state has 340 municipalities in total. The Office of Management and Budget designates ten metropolitan areas in Tennessee, four of which extend into neighboring states.\nNashville is Tennessee's capital and largest city, with nearly 700,000 residents. Its 13-county metropolitan area has been the state's largest since the early 1990s and is one of the nation's fastest-growing metropolitan areas, with about 2 million residents. Memphis, with more than 630,000 inhabitants, was the state's largest city until 2016, when Nashville surpassed it. It is in Shelby County, Tennessee's largest county in both population and land area. Knoxville, with about 190,000 inhabitants, and Chattanooga, with about 180,000 residents, are the third- and fourth-largest cities, respectively. Clarksville is a significant population center, with about 170,000 residents. Murfreesboro is the sixth-largest city and Nashville's largest suburb, with more than 150,000 residents. In addition to the major cities, the Tri-Cities of Kingsport, Bristol, and Johnson City are considered the sixth major population center.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nThe 2020 United States census reported Tennessee's population at 6,910,840, an increase of 564,735, or 8.90%, since the 2010 census. Between 2010 and 2019, the state received a natural increase of 143,253 (744,274 births minus 601,021 deaths), and an increase from net migration of 338,428 people into the state. Immigration from outside the U.S. resulted in a net increase of 79,086, and migration within the country produced a net increase of 259,342. Tennessee's center of population is in Murfreesboro in Rutherford County.\nAccording to the 2020 census, 5.7% of Tennessee's population were under age5, 22.1% were under 18, and 17.1% were 65 or older. In recent years, Tennessee has been a top source of domestic migration, receiving an influx of people relocating from places such as California, the Northeast, and the Midwest due to the low cost of living and booming employment opportunities. In 2019, about 5.5% of Tennessee's population was foreign-born. Of the foreign-born population, approximately 42.7% were naturalized citizens and 57.3% non-citizens. The foreign-born population consisted of approximately 49.9% from Latin America, 27.1% from Asia, 11.9% from Europe, 7.7% from Africa, 2.7% from Northern America, and 0.6% from Oceania. In 2018, The top countries of origin for Tennessee's immigrants were Mexico, India, Honduras, China and Egypt.\nWith the exception of a slump in the 1980s, Tennessee has been one of the fastest-growing states in the nation since 1970, benefiting from the larger Sun Belt phenomenon. The state has been a top destination for people relocating from Northeastern and Midwestern states. This time period has seen the birth of new economic sectors in the state and has positioned the Nashville and Clarksville metropolitan areas as two of the fastest-growing regions in the country.\nAccording to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 10,567 homeless people in Tennessee.\nThe top languages spoken in Tennessee after English are Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, French, Laotian, Amharic, German, Gujarati, Japanese, Tagalog, Hindi, Russian, and Persian.\nEthnicity.\nIn 2020, 6.9% of the total population was of Hispanic or Latino origin (of any race), up from 4.6% in 2010. Between 2000 and 2010, Tennessee's Hispanic population grew by 134.2%, the third-highest rate of any state. In 2020, Non-Hispanic or Latino Whites were 70.9% of the population, compared to 57.7% of the population nationwide. In 2010, the five most common self-reported ethnic groups in the state were American (26.5%), English (8.2%), Irish (6.6%), German (5.5%), and Scotch-Irish (2.7%). Most Tennesseans who self-identify as having American ancestry are of English and Scotch-Irish ancestry. An estimated 21\u201324% of Tennesseans are of predominantly English ancestry.\nReligion.\nSince colonization, Tennessee has always been predominantly Christian. About 81% of the population identifies as Christian, with Protestants making up 73% of the population. Of the Protestants in the state, Evangelical Protestants compose 52% of the population, Mainline Protestants 13%, and Historically Black Protestants 8%. Roman Catholics make up 6%, Mormons 1%, and Orthodox Christians less than 1%. The largest denominations by number of adherents are the Southern Baptist Convention, the United Methodist Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Churches of Christ. Muslims and Jews each make up about 1% of the population, and adherents of other religions make up about 3% of the population. About 14% of Tennesseans are non-religious, with 11% identifying as \"Nothing in particular\", 3% as agnostics, and 1% as atheists.\nTennessee is included in most definitions of the Bible Belt, and is ranked as one of the nation's most religious states. Several Protestant denominations have their headquarters in Tennessee, including the Southern Baptist Convention and National Baptist Convention (in Nashville); the Church of God in Christ and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church (in Memphis); and the Church of God and the Church of God of Prophecy (in Cleveland); and the National Association of Free Will Baptists (in Antioch). Nashville has publishing houses of several denominations.\nEconomy.\nAs of 2021, Tennessee had a gross state product of $418.3 billion. In 2020, the state's per capita personal income was $30,869. The median household income was $54,833. About 13.6% percent of the population was below the poverty line. In 2019, the state reported a total employment of 2,724,545 and a total number of 139,760 employer establishments. Tennessee is a right-to-work state, like most of its Southern neighbors. Unionization has historically been low and continues to decline, as in most of the U.S.\nTaxation.\nTennessee has a reputation as a low-tax state and is usually ranked as one of the five states with the lowest tax burden on residents. Despite being low-tax, it is ranked third among U.S. states for fiscal health. It is one of nine states that do not have a general income tax; the sales tax is the primary means of funding the government. The Hall income tax was imposed on most dividends and interest at a rate of 6% but was completely phased out by 2021. The first $1,250 of individual income and $2,500 of joint income was exempt from this tax. Property taxes are the primary source of revenue for local governments.\nThe state's sales and use tax rate for most items is 7%, the second-highest in the nation, along with Mississippi, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Indiana. Food is taxed at 4%, but candy, dietary supplements, and prepared foods are taxed at 7%. Local sales taxes are collected in most jurisdictions at rates varying from 1.5% to 2.75%, bringing the total sales tax between 8.5% and 9.75%. The average combined rate is about 9.5%, the nation's highest average sales tax. Intangible property tax is assessed on the shares of stockholders of any loan, investment, insurance, or for-profit cemetery companies. The assessment ratio is 40% of the value times the jurisdiction's tax rate. Since 2016, Tennessee has had no inheritance tax.\nAgriculture.\nTennessee has the eighth-most farms in the nation, which cover more than 40% of its land area and have an average size of about . Cash receipts for crops and livestock have an estimated annual value of $3.5 billion, and the agriculture sector has an estimated annual impact of $81 billion on the state's economy. Beef cattle is the state's largest agricultural commodity, followed by broilers and poultry. Tennessee ranks 12th in the nation for the number of cattle, with more than half of its farmland dedicated to cattle grazing. Soybeans and corn are the state's first and second-most common crops, respectively, and are most heavily grown in West and Middle Tennessee, especially the northwestern corner of the state. Tennessee ranks seventh in the nation in cotton production, most of which is grown in the fertile soils of central West Tennessee.\nThe state ranks fourth nationwide in the production of tobacco, which is predominantly grown in the Ridge-and-Valley region of East Tennessee. Tennessee farmers are also known worldwide for their cultivation of tomatoes and horticultural plants. Other important cash crops in the state include hay, wheat, eggs, and snap beans. The Nashville Basin is a top equestrian region, due to soils that produce grass favored by horses. The Tennessee Walking Horse, first bred in the region in the late 18th century, is one of the world's most recognized horse breeds. Tennessee also ranks second nationwide for mule breeding and the production of goat meat. The state's timber industry is largely concentrated on the Cumberland Plateau and ranks as one of the top producers of hardwood nationwide.\nIndustry.\nUntil World War II, Tennessee, like most Southern states, remained predominantly agrarian. Chattanooga became one of the first industrial cities in the south in the decades after the Civil War, when many factories, including iron foundries, steel mills, and textile mills were constructed there. But most of Tennessee's industrial growth began with the federal investments in the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the Manhattan Project in the 1930s and 1940s. The state's industrial and manufacturing sector continued to expand in the succeeding decades, and Tennessee is now home to more than 2,400 advanced manufacturing establishments, which produce a total of more than $29 billion worth of goods annually.\nThe automotive industry is Tennessee's largest manufacturing sector and one of the nation's largest. Nissan's assembly plant in Smyrna is the largest automotive assembly plant in North America. Two other automakers have assembly plants in Tennessee: General Motors in Spring Hill and Volkswagen in Chattanooga. Ford is constructing an assembly plant in Stanton that is expected to be operational in 2025. In addition, the state contains more than 900 automotive suppliers. Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors have their North American corporate headquarters in Franklin. The state is also one of the top producers of food and drink products, its second-largest manufacturing sector. A number of well-known brands originated in Tennessee, and even more are produced there. Tennessee also ranks as one of the largest producers of chemicals. Chemical products manufactured in Tennessee include industrial chemicals, paints, pharmaceuticals, plastic resins, and soaps and hygiene products. Additional important products manufactured in Tennessee include fabricated metal products, electrical equipment, consumer electronics and electrical appliances, and nonelectrical machinery.\nBusiness.\nTennessee's commercial sector is dominated by a wide variety of companies, but its largest service industries include health care, transportation, music and entertainment, banking, and finance. Large corporations with headquarters in Tennessee include FedEx, AutoZone, International Paper, and First Horizon Corporation, all based in Memphis; Pilot Corporation and Regal Entertainment Group in Knoxville; Hospital Corporation of America based in Nashville; Unum in Chattanooga; Acadia Senior Living and Community Health Systems in Franklin; Eastman Chemical headquartered in Kingsport; Dollar General in Goodlettsville, and LifePoint Health, Tractor Supply Company, and Delek US in Brentwood.\nSince the 1990s, the geographical area between Oak Ridge and Knoxville has been known as the Tennessee Technology Corridor, with more than 500 high-tech firms in the region. The research and development industry in Tennessee is also one of the largest employment sectors, mainly due to the prominence of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the Y-12 National Security Complex in the city of Oak Ridge. ORNL conducts scientific research in materials science, nuclear physics, energy, high-performance computing, systems biology, and national security, and is the largest national laboratory in the Department of Energy (DOE) system by size. The technology sector is also a rapidly growing industry in Middle Tennessee, particularly in the Nashville metropolitan area.\nEnergy and mineral production.\nTennessee's electric utilities are regulated monopolies, as in many other states. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) owns over 90% of the state's generating capacity. Nuclear power is Tennessee's largest source of electricity generation, producing about 43.4% of its power in 2021. The same year, 22.4% of the power was produced from coal, 17.8% from natural gas, 15.8% from hydroelectricity, and 1.3% from other renewables. About 59.7% of the electricity generated in Tennessee produces no greenhouse gas emissions. Tennessee is home to the first nuclear power reactor in the U.S. to begin operation in the 21st century, which is at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant in Rhea County. Tennessee was also an early leader in hydroelectric power, and today is the third-largest hydroelectric power-producing state east of the Rocky Mountains. Tennessee is a net consumer of electricity, receiving power from other TVA facilities in neighboring states.\nTennessee has very little petroleum and natural gas reserves, but is home to one oil refinery, in Memphis. Bituminous coal is mined in small quantities in the Cumberland Plateau and Cumberland Mountains. There are sizable reserves of lignite coal in West Tennessee that remain untapped. Coal production in Tennessee peaked in 1972, and today less than 0.1% of coal in the U.S. comes from Tennessee. Tennessee is the nation's leading producer of ball clay. Other major mineral products produced in Tennessee include sand, gravel, crushed stone, Portland cement, marble, sandstone, common clay, lime, and zinc. The Copper Basin, in Tennessee's southeastern corner in Polk County, was one of the nation's most productive copper mining districts between the 1840s and 1980s, and supplied about 90% of the copper the Confederacy used during the Civil War. Mining activities in the basin resulted in a major environmental disaster, which left the surrounding landscape barren for more than a century. Iron ore was another major mineral mined in Tennessee until the early 20th century. Tennessee was also a top producer of phosphate until the early 1990s.\nTourism.\nTennessee is the 11th-most visited state in the nation, receiving a record of 126 million tourists in 2019. Its top tourist attraction is the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the most visited national park in the U.S., with more than 14 million visitors annually. The park anchors a large tourism industry based primarily in nearby Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, which includes Dollywood, the most visited ticketed attraction in Tennessee. Attractions related to Tennessee's musical heritage are spread throughout the state. Other top attractions include the Tennessee State Museum and Parthenon in Nashville; the National Civil Rights Museum and Graceland in Memphis; Lookout Mountain, the Chattanooga Choo-Choo Hotel, Ruby Falls, and the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga; the American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge, the Bristol Motor Speedway, Jack Daniel's Distillery in Lynchburg, and the Hiwassee and Ocoee rivers in Polk County.\nThe National Park Service preserves four Civil War battlefields in Tennessee: Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, Stones River National Battlefield, Shiloh National Military Park, and Fort Donelson National Battlefield. The NPS also operates Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, Andrew Johnson National Historic Site, and the Manhattan Project National Historical Park. Tennessee is home to eight National Scenic Byways, including the Natchez Trace Parkway, the East Tennessee Crossing Byway, the Great River Road, the Norris Freeway, Cumberland National Scenic Byway, Sequatchie Valley Scenic Byway, The Trace, and the Cherohala Skyway. Tennessee maintains 56 state parks, covering . Many reservoirs created by TVA dams have also generated water-based tourist attractions.\nCulture.\nTennessee blends southern Appalachian and Southern flavors, which originate from its English, Scotch-Irish, and African roots, and has evolved as it has grown. Its Grand Divisions also manifest into distinct cultural regions, with East Tennessee commonly associated with Southern Appalachia, and Middle and West Tennessee commonly associated with Upland Southern culture and sometimes even Deep Southern culture. Parts of West Tennessee, especially Memphis, are sometimes considered part of the Deep South. The Tennessee State Museum in Nashville chronicles the state's history and culture.\nTennessee is perhaps best known culturally for its musical heritage and contributions to the development of many forms of popular music, particularly in the country genre. Notable authors with ties to Tennessee include Cormac McCarthy, Peter Taylor, James Agee, Francis Hodgson Burnett, Thomas S. Stribling, Ida B. Wells, Nikki Giovanni, Shelby Foote, Ann Patchett, Ishmael Reed, and Randall Jarrell. The state's well-known contributions to Southern cuisine include Memphis-style barbecue, Nashville hot chicken, and Tennessee whiskey.\nMusic.\nTennessee has played a critical role in the development of many forms of American popular music, including blues, country, rock and roll, rockabilly, soul, bluegrass, Contemporary Christian, and gospel. Many consider Memphis's Beale Street the epicenter of the blues, with musicians such as W. C. Handy performing in its clubs as early as 1909. Memphis was historically home to Sun Records, where musicians such as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, and Charlie Rich began their recording careers, and where rock and roll took shape in the 1950s. Stax Records in Memphis became one of the most important labels for soul artists in the late 1950s and 1960s, and a subgenre known as Memphis soul emerged. The 1927 Victor recording sessions in Bristol generally mark the beginning of the country music genre and the rise of the \"Grand Ole Opry\" in the 1930s helped make Nashville the center of the country music recording industry. Nashville became known as \"Music City\", and the \"Grand Ole Opry\" remains the nation's longest-running radio show.\nMany museums and historic sites recognize Tennessee's role in nurturing various forms of popular music, including Sun Studio, Memphis Rock N' Soul Museum, Stax Museum of American Soul Music, and Blues Hall of Fame in Memphis, the Ryman Auditorium, Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum, National Museum of African American Music, and Music Row in Nashville, the International Rock-A-Billy Museum in Jackson, the Mountain Music Museum in Kingsport, and the Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol. The Rockabilly Hall of Fame, an online site recognizing the development of rockabilly, is also based in Nashville. Several annual music festivals take place throughout the state, the largest of which are the Beale Street Music Festival in Memphis, the CMA Music Festival in Nashville, Bonnaroo in Manchester, and Riverbend in Chattanooga.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tennessee is administered by the Tennessee Department of Education. The state Board of Education has 11 members: one from each Congressional district, a student member, and the executive director of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission (THEC), who serves as ex-officio nonvoting member. Public primary and secondary education systems are operated by county, city, or special school districts to provide education at the local level, and operate under the direction of the Tennessee Department of Education. The state also has many private schools.\nThe state enrolls approximately 1 million K\u201312 students in 137 districts. In 2021, the four-year high school graduation rate was 88.7%, a decrease of 1.2% from the previous year. According to the most recent data, Tennessee spends $9,544 per student, the 8th lowest in the nation.\nColleges and universities.\nPublic higher education is overseen by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission (THEC), which provides guidance to the state's two public university systems. The University of Tennessee system operates four primary campuses in Knoxville, Chattanooga, Martin, and Pulaski; a Health Sciences Center in Memphis; and an aerospace research facility in Tullahoma. The Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR), also known as The College System of Tennessee, operates 13 community colleges and 27 campuses of the Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology (TCAT). Until 2017, the TBR also operated six public universities in the state; it now only gives them administrative support.\nIn 2014, the Tennessee General Assembly created the Tennessee Promise, which allows in-state high school graduates to enroll in two-year post-secondary education programs such as associate degrees and certificates at community colleges and trade schools in Tennessee tuition-free, funded by the state lottery, if they meet certain requirements. The Tennessee Promise was created as part of then-governor Bill Haslam's \"Drive to 55\" program, which set a goal of increasing the number of college-educated residents to at least 55% of the state's population. The program has also received national attention, with multiple states having since created similar programs modeled on the Tennessee Promise.\nTennessee has 107 private institutions. Vanderbilt University in Nashville is consistently ranked as one of the nation's leading research institutions. Nashville is often called the \"Athens of the South\" due to its many colleges and universities. Tennessee is also home to six historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).\nMedia.\nTennessee is home to more than 120 newspapers. The most-circulated paid newspapers in the state include \"The Tennessean\" in Nashville, \"The Commercial Appeal\" in Memphis, the \"Knoxville News Sentinel\", the \"Chattanooga Times Free Press\", and \"The Leaf-Chronicle\" in Clarksville, \"The Jackson Sun\", and \"The Daily News Journal\" in Murfreesboro. All of these except the \"Times Free Press\" are owned by Gannett.\nSix television media markets\u2014Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Tri-Cities, and Jackson\u2014are based in Tennessee. The Nashville market is the third-largest in the Upland South and the ninth-largest in the southeastern United States, according to Nielsen Media Research. Small sections of the Huntsville, Alabama and Paducah, Kentucky-Cape Girardeau, Missouri-Harrisburg, Illinois markets also extend into the state. Tennessee has 43 full-power and 41 low-power television stations and more than 450 Federal Communications Commission (FCC)-licensed radio stations. The \"Grand Ole Opry\", based in Nashville, is the longest-running radio show in the country, having broadcast continuously since 1925.\nTransportation.\nThe Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) is the primary agency that is tasked with regulating and maintaining Tennessee's transportation infrastructure. Tennessee is currently one of five states with no transportation-related debts.\nRoads.\nTennessee has of roads, of which are maintained by the state. Of the state's highways, are part of the Interstate Highway System. Tennessee has no tolled roads or bridges but has the sixth-highest mileage of high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes, which are utilized on freeways in the congestion-prone Nashville and Memphis metropolitan areas.\nInterstate 40 (I-40) is the longest Interstate Highway in Tennessee, traversing the state for . Known as \"Tennessee's Main Street\", I-40 serves the major cities of Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville, and throughout its entire length in Tennessee, one can observe the diversity of the state's geography and landforms. I-40's branch interstates include I-240 in Memphis; I-440 in Nashville; I-840 around Nashville; I-140 from Knoxville to Maryville; and I-640 in Knoxville. In a north\u2013south orientation, from west to east, are interstates 55, which serves Memphis; 65, which passes through Nashville; 75, which serves Chattanooga and Knoxville; and 81, which begins east of Knoxville, and serves Bristol to the northeast. I-24 is an east\u2013west interstate that enters the state in Clarksville, passes through Nashville, and terminates in Chattanooga. I-26, although technically an east\u2013west interstate, begins in Kingsport and runs southwardly through Johnson City before exiting into North Carolina. I-155 is a branch route of I-55 that serves the northwestern part of the state. I-275 is a short spur route in Knoxville. I-269 runs from Millington to Collierville, serving as an outer bypass of Memphis.\nAirports.\nMajor airports in Tennessee include Nashville International Airport (BNA), Memphis International Airport (MEM), McGhee Tyson Airport (TYS) outside of Knoxville, Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport (CHA), Tri-Cities Regional Airport (TRI) in Blountville, and McKellar-Sipes Regional Airport (MKL) in Jackson. Because Memphis International Airport is the hub of FedEx Corporation, it is the world's second-busiest cargo airport. The state also has 74 general aviation airports and 148 heliports.\nRailroads.\nFor passenger rail service, Memphis and Newbern are served by the Amtrak City of New Orleans line on its run between Chicago and New Orleans. Nashville is served by the WeGo Star commuter rail service. Tennessee currently has of freight trackage in operation, most of which are owned by CSX Transportation. Norfolk Southern Railway also operates lines in East and southwestern Tennessee. BNSF operates a major intermodal facility in Memphis.\nWaterways.\nTennessee has a total of of navigable waterways, the 11th highest in the nation. These include the Mississippi, Tennessee, and Cumberland rivers. Five inland ports are located in the state, including the Port of Memphis, which is the fifth-largest in the United States and the second largest on the Mississippi River.\nLaw and government.\nThe Constitution of Tennessee was adopted in 1870. The state had two previous constitutions. The first was adopted in 1796, the year Tennessee was admitted to the union, and the second in 1834. Since 1826, Nashville has been the capital of Tennessee. The capital was previously in three other cities. Knoxville was the capital from statehood in 1796 until 1812, except for September 21, 1807, when the legislature met in Kingston for a day. The capital was relocated to Nashville in 1812, where it remained until it was relocated back to Knoxville in 1817. The next year, the capital was moved to Murfreesboro, where it remained until 1826. Nashville was officially named Tennessee's permanent capital in 1843.\nExecutive and legislative branches.\nLike the federal government, Tennessee's government has three branches. The executive branch is led by the governor, who holds office for a four-year term and may serve a maximum of two consecutive terms. The governor is the only official elected statewide. The current governor is Bill Lee, a Republican. The governor is supported by 22 cabinet-level departments, most headed by a commissioner the governor appoints. The executive branch also includes several agencies, boards, and commissions, some of which are under the auspices of one of the cabinet-level departments.\nThe bicameral legislative branch, the Tennessee General Assembly, consists of the 33-member Senate and the 99-member House of Representatives. Senators serve four-year terms and House members serve two-year terms. Each chamber chooses a Speaker, who is elected by a joint session of the legislature. The Speaker of the Senate also serves as the lieutenant governor, a practice found only in one other state, and the House Speaker is third in line for the governorship. The legislature can override a veto by a simple majority, and the state has no \"pocket veto\". The legislature convenes at noon on the second Tuesday in January and meets for a total of 90 days over two sessions, usually adjourning in late April or early May. Special sessions may be called by the governor or by two-thirds of the members of both chambers.\nJudicial system.\nTennessee's highest court is the state Supreme Court. It has a chief justice and four associate justices. No more than two justices can be from the same Grand Division. The Supreme Court of Tennessee appoints the state's Attorney General, a practice only found in Tennessee. Both the Court of Appeals and the Court of Criminal Appeals have 12 judges, who are evenly from each Grand Division. Under the Tennessee Plan, the governor appoints justices on all three courts to eight-year terms; they must be retained by the voters during the first general election after appointment and at the end of their term. Tennessee is divided into 31 judicial districts, each with a circuit and chancery court, and a district attorney and judges elected to eight-year terms. Separate criminal courts serve 13 of the 31 judicial districts; circuit courts handle criminal cases in the remaining districts. Local courts include general sessions, juvenile and domestic, and municipal courts.\nTennessee maintains four dedicated law enforcement agencies: the Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP), the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA), the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI), and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC). The Highway Patrol is the primary entity that enforces highway safety regulations and general non-wildlife state laws. It is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Safety. The TWRA is an independent agency tasked with enforcing all wildlife, boating, and fishery regulations outside of state parks. TDEC enforces state environmental laws and regulations. The TBI is the primary state-level criminal investigative department. State park rangers are responsible for all activities and law enforcement inside the Tennessee State Parks system. Tennessee, like many other southern states, has a strong reputation for harsh criminal punishment. Capital punishment is legal in Tennessee and has existed at various times since statehood. Lethal injection is the primary means of execution, but electrocution is also allowed.\nLocal.\nTennessee is divided into 95 counties, with 92 county governments that use a county commission legislative body and a separately elected county executive. The governments of Davidson (Nashville), Moore (Lynchburg), and Trousdale (Hartsville) are consolidated with their county seats. Each county elects a sheriff, property assessor, trustee, register of deeds, and county clerk. Tennessee has more than 340 municipalities. Most cities and towns use the weak mayor-council (mayor-aldermen), strong-mayor council, city commission, or council\u2013manager forms of government. Local law enforcement is divided between county sheriff's offices and municipal police departments. In every county except Davidson, the sheriff is the chief law enforcement officer.\nFederal.\nTennessee sends nine representatives to the United States House of Representatives. The current delegation consists of eight Republicans and one Democrat. Its U.S. senators are Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, both Republicans. Tennessee is under the jurisdiction of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over three district courts in the state: the Eastern, Middle, and Western districts.\nTribal.\nThe Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians is Tennessee's only federally recognized Native American tribe. It owns in Henning, which the tribe placed into federal trust in 2012. This is governed directly by the tribe.\nPolitics.\nTennessee's politics are currently dominated by the Republican Party. Republicans currently hold both of the state's U.S. Senate seats, 8 out of 9 Congressional seats, 75 out of 99 state House seats, and 27 out of 33 state Senate seats. Democratic strength is largely concentrated in Nashville, Memphis, and parts of Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Clarksville. Several suburban areas of Nashville and Memphis also contain significant Democratic minorities. Tennessee is one of thirteen states which holds its presidential primaries on Super Tuesday. Tennessee does not require voters to declare a party affiliation when registering. The state is one of eight states which require voters to present a form of photo identification. Tennessee has one of the highest rates of felony disenfranchisement, with nearly 10% of its voting-age population ineligible to vote. The state also has the highest rate of Black and Latino felony disenfranchisement.\nBetween the end of the Civil War and the mid-20th century, Tennessee was part of the Democratic Solid South, but had the largest Republican minority of any former Confederate state. During Reconstruction, freedmen and former free blacks were granted the right to vote; most joined the Republican Party. Numerous African Americans were elected to local offices, and some to state office. However, the Democratic Party regained control of the state in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Following Reconstruction, Tennessee continued to have competitive party politics, but in the 1880s, the White-dominated state government passed Jim Crow laws, one of which imposed a poll tax requirement for voter registration. These served to disenfranchise most African Americans, and their power in state and local politics was markedly reduced. After the disenfranchisement of blacks, the Republican Party became a primarily white sectional party supported mostly in East Tennessee. In the early 1900s, the state legislature approved legislation allowing cities to adopt a commission form of government based on at-large voting as a means to limit African American political participation. Not until after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were African Americans able to regain their full voting rights.\nBetween the end of Reconstruction and the mid-20th century, Tennessee voted consistently Democratic in Presidential elections, except in two nationwide Republican landslides in the 1920s. Tennesseans narrowly supported Warren G. Harding over Ohio Governor James Cox in 1920, and more decisively voted for Herbert Hoover over New York Governor Al Smith in 1928. During the first half of the 20th century, state politics were dominated by the Democratic Crump machine in Memphis. For most of the second half of the 20th century, Tennessee was a swing state in presidential elections. During this time, Democratic presidential nominees from Southern states, including Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton, tended to fare better in Tennessee than their Northern counterparts, especially among split-ticket voters outside the metropolitan areas. In the 1950s, Tennessee twice voted for Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, former Allied Commander of the Armed Forces during World War II. Howard Baker, first elected in 1966, became the first Republican U.S. Senator from Tennessee since Reconstruction. The Republican Southern strategy did not have as much of an effect in Tennessee as in most Southern states, but the elections of Winfield Dunn as governor and Bill Brock to the U.S. Senate in 1970 further helped make the GOP competitive among Whites in statewide elections. In the 2000 presidential election, Vice President Al Gore, who had previously served as a Democratic U.S. Senator from Tennessee, failed to carry his home state, an unusual occurrence but indicative of strengthening Republican support.\nBeginning in the early 21st century, Tennessee transitioned into a solid Republican state, primarily due to rural white voters who have rejected the increasing liberalism of the Democratic Party. In 2004, Republican President George W. Bush increased his margin of victory in the state from a 4% to a 14% margin in 2000. In 2007, Ron Ramsey became the first Republican Speaker of the State Senate since Reconstruction, and the following year the Republicans gained control of both houses of the state legislature for the first time since Reconstruction. Voters, however, continued to elect moderate Republicans, such as centrists Bill Haslam and Lamar Alexander, until the late 2010s with the rise of Trumpism in the GOP at a nationwide scale. Since 2016, Tennessee has been the most populous state to vote Republican by more than 60% in presidential elections, and in 2020 voted Republican by the largest margin of any state in terms of number of votes.\nSports.\nTennessee is home to four major professional sports franchises: the Tennessee Titans have played in the National Football League (NFL) since 1997, the Nashville Predators have played in the National Hockey League (NHL) since 1998, the Memphis Grizzlies have played in the National Basketball Association (NBA) since 2001, and Nashville SC has played in Major League Soccer (MLS) since 2020.\nThe state is also home to seven minor league teams. Four of these are Minor League Baseball clubs. The Nashville Sounds, which began play in 1978, and Memphis Redbirds, which began in 1998, each compete in the International League at the Triple-A level, the highest before Major League Baseball. The Knoxville Smokies, which have played continuously since 1972, and Chattanooga Lookouts, which have played continuously since 1976, are members of the Double-A classification Southern League. Tennessee has two minor league soccer teams. Chattanooga Red Wolves SC has been a member of the third-tier USL League One since 2019. Founded in 2009, Chattanooga FC began playing in the third-tier National Independent Soccer Association in 2020. The state has one minor league ice hockey team: the Knoxville Ice Bears, which began play in 2002 and are members of the Southern Professional Hockey League.\nThe state is home to 12 NCAA Division I programs. Four of these participate in the top level of college football, the Football Bowl Subdivision. In Knoxville, the Tennessee Volunteers college teams play in the Southeastern Conference (SEC) of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). In Nashville, the Vanderbilt Commodores are also members of the SEC. The Memphis Tigers are members of the American Athletic Conference, and Murfreesboro's Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders play in Conference USA. Nashville is also home to the Belmont Bruins, members of the Ohio Valley Conference (OVC) but moving to the Missouri Valley Conference (MVC) in July 2022; Tennessee State Tigers, OVC members with no plans to change conferences; and the Lipscomb Bisons, members of the ASUN Conference. Tennessee State plays football in Division I's second level, the Football Championship Subdivision, while Belmont and Lipscomb do not have football teams. Through the 2021\u201322 school year, the OVC also includes the Austin Peay Governors from Clarksville, the UT Martin Skyhawks from Martin, and the Tennessee Tech Golden Eagles from Cookeville. UT Martin and Tennessee Tech will remain in the OVC, while Peay will move to the ASUN. The Chattanooga Mocs and Johnson City's East Tennessee State Buccaneers are full members, including football, of the Southern Conference.\nTennessee is also home to the Bristol Motor Speedway, which features NASCAR Cup Series racing two weekends a year, routinely selling out more than 160,000 seats on each date. The Nashville Superspeedway in Lebanon, which previously held Nationwide and IndyCar races until it was shut down in 2011, reopened to host the NASCAR Cup Series in 2021. Tennessee's only graded stakes horserace, the Iroquois Steeplechase, is held in Nashville each May. The WGC Invitational is a PGA Tour golf tournament that has been held in Memphis since 1958.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["19265785", "30395"], "permutation_1": ["19265785", "30395"], "permutation_2": ["19265785", "30395"], "permutation_3": ["30395", "19265785"]}
{"id": "2hop__649598_70763", "docs_added": {"14189": "Haryana\nState in northern India\nHaryana ( , ) is a state located in the northern part of India. It was carved out after the linguistic reorganisation of Punjab on 1 November 1966. It is ranked 21st in terms of area, with less than 1.4% () of India's land area. The state capital is Chandigarh, which it shares with the neighbouring state of Punjab; the most populous city is Faridabad, a part of the National Capital Region. The city of Gurgaon is among India's largest financial and technology hubs. Haryana has administrative divisions, districts, 72 sub-divisions, 93 revenue tehsils, 50 sub-tehsils, 140 community development blocks, 154 cities and towns, 7,356 villages, and 6,222 villages panchayats.\nHaryana contains 32 special economic zones (SEZs), mainly located within the industrial corridor projects connecting the National Capital Region. Gurgaon is considered one of the major information technology and automobile hubs of India. Haryana ranks 11th among Indian states in human development index. The economy of Haryana is the 13th largest in India, with a gross state domestic product (GSDP) of \u20b9 () and has the country's 5th-highest GSDP per capita of ().\nThe state is rich in history, monuments, heritage, flora and fauna and tourism, with a well-developed economy, national highways and state roads. It is bordered by Punjab and Himachal Pradesh to the north, by Rajasthan to the west and south, while river Yamuna forms its eastern border with Uttar Pradesh. Haryana surrounds the country's capital territory of Delhi on three sides (north, west and south), consequently, a large area of Haryana state is included in the economically important National Capital Region of India for the purposes of planning and development.\nEtymology.\nAnthropologists came up with the view that Haryana was known by this name because in the post-Mahabharata period, the \u0100bhiras lived here, who developed special skills in the art of agriculture. According to Pran Nath Chopra, Haryana evolved as a word from \"\u0100bhir\u0101yana\" (from \"\u0101bhira\" and \"ayana\" \"path, way\") to \"Ahir\u0101yana\" to \"Hariy\u0101n\u0101\" (Haryana).\nHistory.\nAncient period.\nThe villages of Rakhigarhi in Hisar district and Bhirrana in Fatehabad district are home to ancient sites of the Indus Valley Civilization, which contain evidence of paved roads, a drainage system, a large-scale rainwater collection storage system, terracotta brick and statue production, and skilled metalworking (in both bronze and precious metals).\nDuring the Vedic era, Haryana was the site of the Kuru Kingdom, one of India's great Mahajanapadas. The south of Haryana is the claimed location of Manu's state of Brahmavarta. The area surrounding Dhosi Hill, and districts of Rewari and Mahendragarh had Ashrams of several Rishis who made valuable contributions to important Hindu scriptures like Vedas, Upanishads, Manusmriti, Brahmanas and Puranas. As per Manusmriti, Manu was the king of Brahmavarta, the flood time state 10,000 years ago surrounded by oldest route of Sarasvati and Drishadwati rivers on the banks of which Sanatan-Vedic or present-day Hindu ethos evolved and scriptures were composed.\nMedieval period.\nAncient bronze and stone idols of Jain Tirthankara were found in archaeological expeditions in Badli, Bhiwani (Ranila, Charkhi Dadri and Badhra), Dadri, Gurgaon (Gurugram), Hansi, Hisar, Kasan, Nahad, Narnaul, Pehowa, Rewari, Rohad, Rohtak (Asthal Bohar) and Sonepat in Haryana.\nPushyabhuti dynasty ruled parts of northern India in the 7th century with its capital at Thanesar. Harsha was a prominent king of the dynasty. Tomara dynasty ruled the south Haryana region in the 10th century. Anangpal Tomar was a prominent king among the Tomaras.\nAfter the sack of Bhatner fort during the Timurid conquests of India in 1398, Timur attacked and sacked the cities of Sirsa, Fatehabad, Sunam, Kaithal and Panipat. When he reached the town of Sarsuti (Sirsa), the residents fled and were chased by a detachment of Timur's troops, with thousands of them being killed and looted by the troops. From there he travelled to Fatehabad, whose residents fled and a large number of those remaining in the town were massacred. The Ahirs resisted him at Ahruni but were defeated, with thousands being killed and many being taken prisoners while the town was burnt to ashes. From there he travelled to Tohana, whose Jat inhabitants were robbers according to Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi. They tried to resist but were defeated and fled. Timur's army pursued and killed 200 Jats, while taking many more as prisoners. He then sent a detachment to chase the fleeing Jats and killed 2,000 of them while their wives and children were enslaved and their property plundered. Timur proceeded to Kaithal whose residents were massacred and plundered, destroying all villages along the way. On the next day, he came to Assandh, whose residents were \"fire-worshippers\" according to Yazdi, and had fled to Delhi. Next, he travelled to and subdued Tughlaqpur fort and Salwan before reaching Panipat whose residents had already fled. He then marched on to Loni fort.\nHem Chandra Vikramaditya, also called Hemu, claimed royal status and the throne of Delhi after defeating Akbar's Mughal forces on 7 October 1556 in the Battle of Delhi, and assumed the ancient title of Vikramaditya. The area that is now Haryana has been ruled by some of the major empires of India. Panipat is known for three seminal battles in the history of India. In the First Battle of Panipat (1526), Babur defeated the Lodis. In the Second Battle of Panipat (1556), Akbar defeated the local Haryanvi Hindu Emperor of Delhi, who belonged to Rewari. Hem Chandra Vikramaditya had earlier won 22 battles across India from 1553 to 1556 from Punjab to Bengal, defeating the Mughals and Afghans. Hemu had defeated Akbar's forces twice at Agra and the Battle of Delhi in 1556 to become the last Hindu Emperor of India with a formal coronation at Purana Quila in Delhi on 7 October 1556. In the Third Battle of Panipat (1761), the Afghan king Ahmad Shah Abdali defeated the Marathas.\nBritish Period.\nThe state was part of the British Punjab province. The Delhi division of Punjab province formed the bulk of Haryana. Among the princely states that were located in the state were Jind, Kalsia, Loharu, Dujana and Pataudi, as well as parts of the Patiala State.\nPartition and aftermath.\nDuring the Partition of India, the Punjab province was one of two British Indian provinces, alongside Bengal, to be partitioned between India and Pakistan. Haryana, along with other Hindu and Sikh-dominated areas of Punjab province, became part of India as East Punjab state. As a result, a significant number of Muslims left for the newly formed country of Pakistan. Similarly, a huge number of Hindu and Sikh refugees poured into the state from West Punjab. Gopi Chand Bhargava, who hailed from Sirsa in present-day Haryana, became the first Chief Minister of East Punjab.\nFormation of Haryana.\nHaryana as a state came into existence on 1 November 1966 the Punjab Reorganisation Act (1966). The Indian government set up the Shah Commission under the chairmanship of Justice JC Shah on 23 April 1966 to divide the existing state of Punjab and determine the boundaries of the new state of Haryana after consideration of the languages spoken by the people. It encompassed the predominantly Hindi-speaking southern part of former Punjab, while the state of Punjab was reduced to the area where Punjabi speakers formed the majority population. The commission delivered its report on 31 May 1966 whereby the then-districts of Hisar, Mahendragarh, Gurgaon, Rohtak and Karnal were to be a part of the new state of Haryana. Further, the tehsils of Jind and Narwana in the Sangrur district \u2013 along with Naraingarh, Ambala and Jagadhri \u2013 were to be included.\nThe commission recommended that the tehsil of Kharar, which includes Chandigarh, the state capital of Punjab, should be a part of Haryana. However, Kharar was given to Punjab. The city of Chandigarh was made a union territory, serving as the capital of both Punjab and Haryana.\nBhagwat Dayal Sharma became the first Chief Minister of Haryana. Chaudhary Devi Lal is credited to be the individual who pushed for the creation of this commission. He was an instrumental figure in the separation of the Haryana state from Punjab in 1966.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nCastes and tribes.\nAs per 2019 estimates, the caste wise composition of Haryana is 25-30% Jats, 21% Scheduled Caste, 8% Punjabis, 7.5% Brahmins, 5.1% Ahir/Yadav, 5% Vaish, 4% Jat Sikhs, 3.8% Meos and other Muslims, 3.4% Rajputs, 3.4% Gujjar, 2.9% Saini, 2.7% Kumhars, 1.1% Ror and 0.7% Bishnois.\nLanguages.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nThe official language of Haryana is Hindi.\nSeveral regional languages or dialects, often subsumed under Hindi, are spoken in the state. Predominant among them is Haryanvi (also known as Bangru), whose territory encompasses the central and eastern portions of Haryana. Hindi and Punjabi is spoken in the northeast, Bagri in the west, Deshwali in the East and Ahirwati, Mewati and Braj Bhasha in the south.\nThere are also significant numbers of speakers of Urdu and Punjabi, the latter of which was recognised as the second official language of Haryana for government and administrative purposes in 2010. After the state's formation, Telugu was made the state's \"second language\" \u2013 to be taught in schools \u2013 but it was not the \"second official language\" for official communication. Due to a lack of students, the language ultimately stopped being taught. Tamil was made the second language in 1969 by Bansi Lal to show the state's differences with Punjab although there were no Tamil speakers in Haryana at the time. In 2010, due to the lack of Tamil speakers, the language was removed from its status.\nThere are also some speakers of several major regional languages of neighbouring states or other parts of the subcontinent, like Bengali, Bhojpuri, Marwari, Mewari, and Nepali, as well as smaller communities of speakers of languages that are dispersed across larger regions, like Bauria, Bazigar, Gujari, Gade Lohar, Oadki, and Sansi.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nAccording to the 2011 census, of the total population of 25,351,462 in Haryana, Hindus (87.46%) constitute the majority of the state's population with Muslims (7.03%) (mainly Meos) and Sikhs (4.91%) being the largest minorities.\nMuslims are mainly found in the Nuh district. Haryana has the second largest Sikh population in India after Punjab, and they mostly live in the districts adjoining Punjab, such as Sirsa, Jind, Fatehabad, Kaithal, Kurukshetra, Ambala and Panchkula.\nCulture.\nMusic.\nHaryana has its own unique traditional folk music, folk dances, saang (folk theatre), cinema, belief system such as Jathera (ancestral worship), and arts such as Phulkari and Shisha embroidery.\nFolk dances.\nFolk music and dances of Haryana are based on satisfying the cultural needs of primarily agrarian and martial natures of Haryanavi tribes.\nHaryanvi musical folk theatre's main types are Saang, Raslila and Ragini. The Saang and Ragini form of theatre was popularised by Lakhmi Chand.\nHaryanvi folk dances and music have fast energetic movements. Three popular categories of dance are festive-seasonal, devotional, and ceremonial-recreational. The festive-seasonal dances and songs are Gogaji/Gugga, Holi, Phaag, Sawan, Teej. The devotional dances and songs are Chaupaiya, Holi, Manjira, Ras Leela, Raginis). The ceremonial-recreational dances and songs are of following types: legendary bravery (Kissa and Ragini of male warriors and female Satis), love and romance (Been and its variant N\u0101gin\u012b dance, and Ragini), ceremonial (Dhamal Dance, Ghoomar, Jhoomar (male), Khoria, Loor, and Ragini).\nFolk music and songs.\nHaryanvi folk music is based on day-to-day themes and injecting earthly humour enlivens the feel of the songs. Haryanvi music takes two main forms: \"Classical folk music\" and \"Desi Folk music\" (Country Music of Haryana), and sung in the form of ballads and love, valor and bravery, harvest, happiness and pangs of the parting of lovers.\nClassical Haryanvi folk music.\nClassical Haryanvi folk music is based on Indian classical music. Hindustani classical ragas, learnt in gharana parampara of guru\u2013shishya tradition, are used to sing songs of heroic bravery (such as Alha-Khand (1163\u20131202 CE) about the bravery of Alha and Udal, Jaimal and Patta of Maharana Udai Singh II), Brahmas worship and festive seasonal songs (such as Teej, Holi and Phaag songs of Phalgun month near Holi). Bravery songs are sung in high pitch.\nDesi Haryanvi folk music.\nDesi Haryanvi folk music, is a form of Haryanvi music, based on Raag Bhairvi, Raag Bhairav, Raag Kafi, Raag Jaijaivanti, Raag Jhinjhoti and Raag Pahadi and used for celebrating community bonhomie to sing seasonal songs, ballads, ceremonial songs (wedding, etc.) and related religious legendary tales such as Puran Bhagat. Relationship and songs celebrating love and life are sung in medium pitch. Ceremonial and religious songs are sung in low pitch. Young girls and women usually sing entertaining and fast seasonal, love, relationship and friendship-related songs such as Phagan (song for eponymous season/month), Katak (songs for the eponymous season/month), Samman (songs for the eponymous season/month), (male-female duet songs), (songs of sharing heartfelt feelings among female friends). Older women usually sing devotional Mangal Geet (auspicious songs) and ceremonial songs such as Bhajan, Bhat (wedding gift to the mother of bride or groom by her brother), Sagai, Ban (Hindu wedding ritual where pre-wedding festivities starts), Kuan-Poojan (a custom that is performed to welcome the birth of a child by worshiping the well or source of drinking water), Sanjhi and Holi festival.\nSocially normative-cohesive impact.\nMusic and dance for Haryanvi people is a way of lessening societal differences as folk singers are highly esteemed and they are sought after and invited for events, ceremonies and special occasions regardless of their caste or status. These inter-caste songs are fluid in nature, and never personalised for any specific caste, and they are sung collectively by women from different strata, castes, and dialects. These songs transform fluidly in dialect, style, words, etc. This adoptive style can be seen in the adoption of tunes of Bollywood movie songs into Haryanvi songs. Despite this continuous fluid transforming nature, Haryanvi songs have a distinct style of their own as explained above.\nWith the coming up of a strongly socio-economic metropolitan culture in the emergence of urban Gurgaon Haryana is also witnessing community participation in public arts and city beautification. Several landmarks across Gurgaon are decorated with public murals and graffiti with cultural cohesive ideologies and stand the testimony of a lived sentiment in Haryana folk.\nCuisine.\nAs per a survey, 13% of males and 7.8% of females of Haryana are non-vegetarian. The cuisine of Haryana, rooted in its predominantly agricultural society, has maintained a simple and uncomplicated essence. The regional cuisine features the staples of roti, saag, vegetarian sabzi and milk products such as ghee, milk, lassi and kheer. Haryana is often referred to as the 'Land of Rotis' due to its residents' fondness for various types of rotis. Wheat rotis are ubiquitous, along with the popular baajre ki roti. In the past, rotis were commonly made from a blend of wheat, gram, and barley flour, offering a nutritious and wholesome combination. Another notable variety is the gochini atta, crafted from wheat and gram flour. Haryana is renowned for its abundant livestock, including the famed Murrah buffalo and the Haryana cow. This cattle wealth ensures a plentiful supply of milk and dairy products in Haryanvi cuisine. Many households produce their own butter and ghee, which are generously incorporated into daily meals. Fresh homemade butter, known as \"nooni\" or \"tindi ghee,\" is commonly churned on a daily basis. When a girl becomes a mother, it's customary for her family to present her with gifts of ghee, edible gum (gondh), laddus (sweetmeats made from gram flour), and dry fruits. Buttermilk, known as \"chaaj,\" is a popular beverage and serves as an instant refresher during the summer months. Lassi, made from yogurt, is another beloved drink that can almost constitute a meal in itself. The Haryanvi fondness for lassi is evident in the fact that \"thandai,\" a sweet milk-based drink, is referred to as \"kachi lassi\" in Haryana.\nSociety.\nHaryanvi people have a concept of inclusive society involving the \"36 J\u0101tis\" or communities. Castes such as Jat, Rajput, Gurjar, Saini, Pasi, Ahirs, Ror, Meo, Charan, Bishnoi, Harijan, Aggarwal, Brahmin, Khatri and Tyagi are some of the notable of these 36 J\u0101tis.\nGeography.\nHaryana is a landlocked state in northern India. It is between 27\u00b039' to 30\u00b035' N latitude and between 74\u00b028' and 77\u00b036' E longitude. The total geographical area of the state is 4.42 m ha, which is 1.4% of the geographical area of the country. The altitude of Haryana varies between 700 and 3600\u00a0ft (200 metres to 1200 metres) above sea level. Haryana has only 4% (compared with national 21.85%) area under forests. Karoh Peak, a tall mountain peak in the Sivalik Hills range of the greater Himalayas range located near Morni Hills area of Panchkula district, is the highest point in Haryana. Most of the state sits atop the fertile Ghaggar Plain, a subsection of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. Haryana has 4 states and 2 union territories on its border \u2013 Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, and Chandigarh.\nPlains and mountains.\nHaryana has four main geographical features.\nHydrography.\nThe Yamuna, a tributary of the Ganges, flows along the state's eastern boundary.\nNorthern Haryana has several northeast to west flowing rivers originating from the Sivalik Hills of Himalayas, such as Ghaggar (palaeochannel of vedic Sarasvati river), Chautang (paleochannel of vedic Drishadvati river, tributary of the Ghagghar), Tangri river (tributary of the Ghagghar), Kaushalya river (tributary of the Ghagghar), Markanda River (tributary of Ghagghar), Sarsuti, Dangri, Somb river. Haryana's main seasonal river, the Ghaggar-Hakra, known as Ghaggar before the Ottu barrage and as the Hakra downstream of the barrage, rises in the outer Himalayas, between the Yamuna and the Satluj and enters the state near Pinjore in the Panchkula district, passes through Ambala and Sirsa, it reaches Bikaner in Rajasthan and runs for before disappearing into the deserts of Rajasthan. The seasonal Markanda River, known as the \"Aruna\" in ancient times, originates from the lower Shivalik Hills and enters Haryana west of Ambala, and swells into a raging torrent during monsoon is notorious for its devastating power, carries its surplus water on to the Sanisa Lake where the Markanda joins the Sarasuti and later the Ghaggar.\nSouthern Haryana has several south-west to east flowing seasonal rivulets originating from the Aravalli Range in and around the hills in Mewat region, including Sahibi River (called Najafgarh drain in Delhi), Dohan river (tributary of Sahibi, originates at Mandoli village near Neem Ka Thana in Jhunjhunu district of Rajasthan and then disappears in Mahendragarh district), Krishnavati river (former tributary of Sahibi river, originates near Dariba and disappears in Mahendragarh district much before reaching Sahibi river) and Indori river (longest tributary of Sahibi River, originates in Sikar district of Rajasthan and flows to Rewari district of Haryana), these once were tributaries of the Drishadwati/Saraswati river.\nMajor canals are Western Yamuna Canal, Sutlej Yamuna link canal (from Sutlej river tributary of Indus), and Indira Gandhi Canal.\nMajor dams are Kaushalya Dam in Panchkula district, Hathnikund Barrage and Tajewala Barrage on Yamuna in Yamunanagar district, Pathrala barrage on Somb river in Yamunanagar district, ancient Anagpur Dam near Surajkund in Faridabad district, and Ottu barrage on Ghaggar-Hakra River in Sirsa district.\nMajor lakes are Dighal Wetland, Basai Wetland, Badkhal Lake in Faridabad, holy Brahma Sarovar and Sannihit Sarovar in Kurukshetra, Blue Bird Lake in Hisar, Damdama Lake at Sohna, Hathni Kund in Yamunanagar district, Karna Lake at Karnal, ancient Surajkund in Faridabad, and Tilyar Lake in Rohtak.\nThe \"Haryana State Waterbody Management Board\" is responsible for the rejuvenation of 14,000 johads of Haryana and up to 60 lakes in National Capital Region falling within the Haryana state.\nThe only hot spring in Haryana is the Sohna Sulphur Hot Spring at Sohna in Gurgaon district. Tosham Hill range has several sacred sulphur ponds of religious significance that are revered for the healing impact of sulphur, such as \"Pandu Teerth Kund\", \"Surya Kund\", \"Kukkar Kund\", \"Gyarasia Kund\" or \"Vyas Kund\".\nSeasonal waterfalls include Tikkar Taal twin lakes at Morni hiills, Dhosi Hill in Mahendragarh district and Pali village on the outskirts of Faridabad.\nClimate.\nHaryana is hot in summer at around and mild in winter. The hottest months are May and June and the coldest are December and January. The climate is arid to semi-arid with an average rainfall of 592.93\u00a0mm. Around 29% of rainfall is received during the months from July to September as a result of the monsoon, and the remaining rainfall is received during the period from December to February as a result of the western disturbance.\nFlora and fauna.\nForests.\nForest cover in the state in 2013 was 3.59% (1586\u00a0km2) and the Tree Cover in the state was 2.90% (1282\u00a0km2), giving a total forest and tree cover of 6.49%. In 2016\u201317, 18,412 hectares were brought under tree cover by planting 14.1\u00a0million seedlings. Thorny, dry, deciduous forest and thorny shrubs can be found all over the state. During the monsoon, a carpet of grass covers the hills. Mulberry, eucalyptus, pine, kikar, shisham and babul are some of the trees found here. The species of fauna found in the state of Haryana include black buck, nilgai, panther, fox, mongoose, jackal and wild dog. More than 450 species of birds are found here.\nWildlife.\nHaryana has two national parks, eight wildlife sanctuaries, two wildlife conservation areas, four animal and bird breeding centers, one deer park and three zoos, all of which are managed by the Haryana Forest Department of the Government of Haryana. Sultanpur National Park is a notable Park located in Gurgaon District\nEnvironmental and ecological issues.\nHaryana Environment Protection Council is the advisory committee and the Department of Environment, Haryana is the department responsible for the administration of the environment. Areas of Haryana surrounding Delhi NCR are the most polluted. During the smog of November 2017, the air quality index of Gurgaon and Faridabad showed that the density of fine particulates (2.5 \u03bcm diameter) was an average a score of 400 and the monthly average of Haryana was 60. Other sources of pollution are exhaust gases from old vehicles, stone crushers and brick kilns. Haryana has 7.5\u00a0million vehicles, of which 40% are old, more polluting vehicles, and 500,000 new vehicles are added every year. Other majorly polluted cities are Bhiwani, Bahadurgarh, Dharuhera, Hisar and Yamunanagar.\nAdministration.\nDivisions.\nThe state is divided into 6 revenue divisions, 5 Police Ranges and 4 Police Commissionerates (c. January 2017). Six revenue divisions are: Ambala, Rohtak, Gurgaon, Hisar, Karnal and Faridabad. Haryana has 11 municipal corporations (Gurgaon, Faridabad, Ambala, Panchkula, Yamunanagar, Rohtak, Hisar, Panipat, Karnal, Sonipat, and Manesar), 18 municipal councils and 52 municipalities.\nWithin these, there are 22 districts, 72 sub-divisions, 93 tehsils, 50 sub-tehsils, 140 blocks, 154 cities and towns, 6,848 villages, 6,226 villages panchayats and numerous smaller dhanis.\nDistricts.\nHaryana consists of six divisions comprising 22 districts. Each district is headed by a Deputy Commissioner (DC), an IAS officer who also functions as the District Magistrate (DM) for maintaining law and order and the Collector for land revenue administration.\nThe districts are further divided into sub-divisions and tehsils for land revenue administration, and into blocks for development administration.\u00a0 The subdivisions and tehsils are headed by Sub-Divisional Magistrates and Tehsildars, respectively.\nLaw and order.\nThe Haryana Police force is the law enforcement agency of Haryana. Five Police Ranges are Ambala, Hissar, Karnal, Rewari and Rohtak. Four Police Commissionerates are Faridabad, Gurgaon, Panchkula and Sonipat. Cybercrime investigation cell is based in Gurgaon's Sector 51.\nThe highest judicial authority in the state is the Punjab and Haryana High Court, with the next higher right of appeal being to the Supreme Court of India. Haryana uses an e-filing facility.\nGovernance and e-governance.\nThe Common Service Centres (CSCs) have been upgraded in all districts to offer hundreds of e-services to citizens, including applications for new water and sanitation connections, electricity bill collection, ration card member registration, the result of HBSE, admit cards for board examinations, online admission forms for government colleges, long route booking of buses, admission forms for Kurukshetra University and HUDA plots status inquiry. Haryana has become the first state to implement Aadhaar-enabled birth registration in all the districts. Thousands of all traditional offline state and central government services are also available 24/7 online through single unified UMANG app and portal as part of Digital India initiative.\nEconomy.\nHaryana's 14th placed 12.96% 2012-17 CAGR estimated a 2017-18 GSDP of US$95\u00a0billion split into 52% services, 30% industries and 18% agriculture.\nThe services sector is split across 45% in real estate and financial and professional services, 26% trade and hospitality, 15% state and central government employees, and 14% transport and logistics & warehousing. In IT services, Gurgaon ranks first in India in growth rate and existing technology infrastructure, and second in startup ecosystem, innovation and livability (Nov 2016).\nThe industrial sector is split across 69% manufacturing, 28% construction, 2% utilities and 1% mining. In industrial manufacturing, Haryana produces 67% of passenger cars, 60% of motorcycles, 50% of tractors and 50% of the refrigerators in India.\nThe service and industrial sectors are boosted by 7 operational SEZs and an additional 23 formally approved SEZs (20 already notified and 3 approved in-principle) that are mostly spread along the Delhi\u2013Mumbai Industrial Corridor, Amritsar Delhi Kolkata Industrial Corridor and Western Peripheral Expressway.\nThe agricultural sector is split across 93% crops and livestock, 4% commercial forestry and logging, and 2% fisheries. Although Haryana has less than 1.4% of the total area of India, it contributes 15% of food grains to the central food security public distribution system, and makes up 7% of total national agricultural exports, including 60% of total national basmati rice exports.\nAgriculture.\nCrops.\nHaryana is traditionally an agrarian society of zamindars (owner-cultivator farmers). About 70% of Haryana's residents are engaged in agriculture. The Green Revolution in Haryana of the 1960s combined with the completion of Bhakra Dam in 1963 and Western Yamuna Command Network canal system in 1970s resulted in the significantly increased food grain production. This movement lead to large-scale investments towards improving irrigation systems, enhancing the quality of fertilizers, and investing in superior seeds. As a result, Haryana is self sufficient in food production and the second largest contributor to India's central pool of food grains \nIn 2015\u20132016, Haryana produced the following principal crops: 13,352,000 tonnes of wheat, 4,145,000 tonnes of rice, 7,169,000 tonnes of sugarcane, 993,000 tonnes of cotton and 855,000 tonnes of oilseeds (mustard seed, sunflower, etc.). In the northeastern area, dairy cattle, buffaloes, and bullocks play a prominent role, being utilised both for agricultural ploughing and as draft animals.\nFruits, vegetables and spices.\nVegetable production was: potato 853,806 tonnes, onion 705,795 tonnes, tomato 675,384 tonnes, cauliflower 578,953 tonnes, leafy vegetables 370,646 tonnes, brinjal 331,169 tonnes, guard 307,793 tonnes, peas 111,081 tonnes and others 269,993 tonnes.\nFruits production was: citrus 301,764 tonnes, guava 152,184 tonnes, mango 89,965 tonnes, chikoo 16,022 tonnes, aonla 12,056 tonnes and other fruits 25,848 tonnes.\nSpices production was: garlic 40,497 tonnes, fenugreek 9,348 tonnes, ginger 4,304 tonnes and others 840 tonnes.\nFlowers and medicinal plants.\nCut flowers production was: marigold 61,830 tonnes, gladiolus 2,448,620\u00a0million, rose 1,861,160\u00a0million and other 691,300 million.\nMedicinal plants production was: aloe vera 1403 tonnes and stevia 13 tonnes.\nLivestock.\nHaryana is well known for its high-yield Murrah buffalo. Other breeds of cattle native to Haryana are Haryanvi, Mewati, Sahiwal and Nili-Ravi.\nResearch.\nTo support its agrarian economy, both the central government (Central Institute for Research on Buffaloes, Central Sheep Breeding Farm, National Research Centre on Equines, Central Institute of Fisheries, National Dairy Research Institute, Regional Centre for Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Wheat and Barley Research and National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources) and the state government (CCS HAU, LUVAS, Government Livestock Farm, Regional Fodder Station and Northern Region Farm Machinery Training and Testing Institute) have opened several institutes for research and education.\nIndustrial sector.\nUtilities.\nHaryana State has always given high priority to the expansion of electricity infrastructure, as it is one of the most important drivers of development for the state. Haryana was the first state in the country to achieve 100% rural electrification in 1970 as well as the first in the country to link all villages with all-weather roads and provide safe drinking water facilities throughout the state.\nSources of power in the state include:\nServices sector.\nTransport.\nRoads and highways.\nHaryana has a total road length of , including comprising 29 national highways, of state highways, of Major District Roads (MDR) and of Other District Roads (ODR) (c. December 2017). A fleet of 3,864 Haryana Roadways buses covers a distance of 1.15\u00a0million km per day, and it was the first state in the country to introduce luxury video coaches.\nAncient Delhi Multan Road and Grand Trunk Road, South Asia's oldest and longest major roads, pass through Haryana. GT Road passes through the districts of Sonipat, Panipat, Karnal, Kurukshetra and Ambala in north Haryana where it enters Delhi and subsequently the industrial town of Faridabad on its way. The Kundli-Manesar-Palwal Expressway (KMP) will provide a high-speed link to northern Haryana with its southern districts such as Sonipat, Gurgaon, and Faridabad.\nThe Delhi-Agra Expressway (NH-2) that passes through Faridabad is being widened to six lanes from the current four lanes. It will further boost Faridabad's connectivity with Delhi.\nRailway.\nThe rail network in Haryana is covered by five rail divisions under three rail zones. Diamond Quadrilateral High-speed rail network, Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (72\u00a0km) and Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (177\u00a0km) pass through Haryana.\nBikaner railway division of the North Western Railway zone manages the rail network in western and southern Haryana covering Bhatinda-Dabwali-Hanumangarh line, Rewari-Bhiwani-Hisar-Bathinda line, Hisar-Sadulpur line and Rewari-Loharu-Sadulpur line. Jaipur railway division of North Western Railway zone manages the rail network in south-west Haryana covering Rewari-Reengas-Jaipur line, Delhi-Alwar-Jaipur line and Loharu-Sikar line.\nThe Delhi railway division of the Northern Railway zone manages the rail network in north and east-central Haryana, covering Delhi-Panipat-Ambala line, Delhi-Rohtak-Tohana line, Rewari\u2013Rohtak line, Jind-Sonepat line and Delhi-Rewari line. Agra railway division of North Central Railway zone manages another very small part of the network in southeast Haryana covering only the Palwal-Mathura line.\nAmbala railway division of Northern Railway zone manages a small part of the rail network in north-east Haryana covering Ambala-Yamunanagar line, Ambala-Kurukshetra line and UNESCO World Heritage Kalka\u2013Shimla Railway.\nMetro.\nDelhi Metro connects the national capital Delhi with the NCR cities of Faridabad, Gurgaon and Bahadurgarh. Faridabad has the longest metro network in the NCR Region consisting of 11 stations and a track length of 17\u00a0km.\nSky Way.\nThe Haryana and Delhi governments have constructed the international standard Delhi Faridabad Skyway, the first of its kind in North India, to connect Delhi and Faridabad.\nCommunication and media.\nHaryana has a statewide network of telecommunication facilities. Haryana Government has its own statewide area network by which all government offices of 22 districts and 126 blocks across the state are connected with each other, thus making it the first SWAN of the country. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited and most of the leading private sector players (such as Reliance Infocom, Tata Teleservices, Bharti Telecom, Idea Vodafone Essar, Aircel, Uninor and Videocon) have operations in the state. The two biggest cities of Haryana, Faridabad and Gurgaon, which are part of the National Capital Region, come under the local Delhi Mobile Telecommunication System. The rest of the cities of Haryana come under Haryana Telecommunication System.\nElectronic media channels include MTV, 9XM, Star Group, SET Max, News Time, NDTV 24x7 and Zee Group. The radio stations include All India Radio and other FM stations.\nPanipat, Hisar, Ambala and Rohtak are the cities in which the leading newspapers of Haryana are printed and circulated throughout Haryana, in which Dainik Bhaskar, Dainik Jagran, Punjab Kesari, The Tribune, , Hari Bhoomi and Amar Ujala are prominent.\nHealthcare.\nThe total fertility rate of Haryana is 2.3. The infant mortality rate is 41 (SRS 2012) and the maternal mortality ratio is 146 (SRS 2010\u20132012). The state of Haryana has various Medical Colleges including Pandit Bhagwat Dayal Sharma Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences Rohtak, Bhagat Phool Singh Medical College in District Sonipat, ESIC Medical College, Faridabad along with notable private medical institutes like Medanta, Max Hospital, Fortis Healthcare\nEducation.\nLiteracy.\nThe literacy rate in Haryana has seen an upward trend and is 76.64 per cent as per the 2011 population census. Male literacy stands at 85.38%, while female literacy is at 66.67%. In 2001, the literacy rate in Haryana stood at 67.91%, of which males and females were 78.49% and 55.73% literate respectively. As of 2013[ [update]], Gurgaon city had the highest literacy rate in Haryana at 86.30% followed by Panchkula at 81.9% and Ambala at 81.7%. In terms of districts, as of 2012[ [update]], Rewari had the highest literacy rate in Haryana at 74%, higher than the national average of 59.5%; male literacy was 79% and female literacy was 67%. In 2011, Haryana's urban literacy rate stood at 84.98%, marking a notable rise from 79.92% in 2001. Similarly, the rural literacy rate in the state experienced an improvement, reaching 68.91% in 2011 compared to 58.74% in 2001.\nSchools.\nHaryana Board of School Education, established in September 1969 and shifted to Bhiwani in 1981, conducts public examinations at middle, matriculation, and senior secondary levels twice a year. Over 700,000 candidates attend annual examinations in February and March; 150,000 attend supplementary examinations each November. The Board also conducts examinations for Haryana Open School at senior and senior secondary levels twice a year. The Haryana government provides free education to women up to the bachelor's degree level.\nIn 2015\u20132016, there were nearly 20,000 schools, including 10,100 state government schools (36 Aarohi Schools, 11 Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas, 21 Model Sanskriti Schools, 8,744 government primary school, 3386 government middle school, 1,284 government high school and 1,967 government senior secondary schools), 7,635 private schools (200 aided, 6,612 recognised unaided, and 821 unrecognised unaided private schools) and several hundred other central government and private schools such as Kendriya Vidyalaya, Indian Army Public Schools, Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya and DAV schools affiliated to central government's CBSE and ICSE school boards.\nUniversities and higher education.\nHaryana has 48 universities and 1,038 colleges, including 115 government colleges, 88 government-aided colleges and 96 self-finance colleges. Hisar has three universities: Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University \u2013 Asia's largest agricultural university, Guru Jambheshwar University of Science and Technology, Lala Lajpat Rai University of Veterinary & Animal Sciences); several national agricultural and veterinary research centres (National Research Centre on Equines), Central Sheep Breeding Farm, National Institute on Pig Breeding and Research, Northern Region Farm Machinery Training and Testing Institute and Central Institute for Research on Buffaloes (CIRB); and more than 20 colleges including Maharaja Agrasen Medical College, Agroha.\nDemographically, Haryana has 471,000 women and 457,000 men pursuing post-secondary school higher education. There are more than 18,616 female teachers and 17,061 male teachers in higher education.\nUnion Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad announced on 27 February 2016 that the National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT) would be set up in Kurukshetra to provide computer training to youth and a Software Technology Park of India (STPI) would be set up in Panchkula's existing HSIIDC IT Park in Sector 23. Hindi and English are compulsory languages in schools whereas Punjabi, Sanskrit and Urdu are chosen as optional languages.\nSports.\nIn the 2010 Commonwealth Games at Delhi, 22 out of 38 gold medals that India won came from Haryana. During the 33rd National Games held in Assam in 2007, Haryana stood first in the nation with a medal tally of 80, including 30 gold, 22 silver and 28 bronze medals.\nThe 1983 World Cup winning captain Kapil Dev made his domestic-cricket debut playing for Haryana. Nahar Singh Stadium was built in Faridabad in the year 1981 for international cricket. This ground has the capacity to hold around 25,000 people as spectators. Tejli Sports Complex is an ultra-modern sports complex in Yamuna Nagar. Tau Devi Lal Stadium in Gurgaon is a multi-sport complex.\nChief Minister of Haryana, Manohar Lal Khattar announced the \"Haryana Sports and Physical Fitness Policy\", a policy to support 26 Olympic sports, on 12 January 2015 with the words \"We will develop Haryana as the sports hub of the country.\"\nHaryana is home to Haryana Gold, one of India's eight professional basketball teams that compete in the country's UBA Pro Basketball League.\nAt the 2016 Summer Olympics, Sakshi Malik won the bronze medal in the 58\u00a0kg category, becoming the first Indian female wrestler to win a medal at the Olympics and the fourth female Olympic medalist from the country.\nNotable badminton player Saina Nehwal is from Hisar in Haryana.\nNotable athlete Neeraj Chopra, who competes in Javelin Throw and won the first track and field gold medal in 2020 Tokyo Olympics for India, was born and raised in Panipat, Haryana.\nWrestling is also very prominent in Haryana, as 2 medals won in wrestling at 2020 Tokyo Olympics were from Haryana.\nNotable athlete Ravi Dahiya, who was born in Nahri village of Sonipat District, won silver medal in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics for India.\nRavi Kumar is an Indian freestyle wrestler who won a silver medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in the 57\u00a0kg category. Dahiya is also a bronze medalist from 2019 World Wrestling Championships and a two-time Asian champion.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "24412569": "Jora Singh\nIndian decathlete\nJora Singh (born 1 January 1979) is an Indian track and field athlete from Haryana who specializes in the decathlon. Jora held the Indian National record of 7502 points set during the Federation Cup held in New Delhi on 2 March 2006 before being broken by Bharatinder Singh in 2011. He broke Kulwinder Singh's previous mark of 7325 points, registered in Chennai in August 2005.\nPersonal bests.\nJora Singh, Deputy Commandant (DC), highly energetic officer of the world's largest border guarding force ie Borders security force. As a coach , now he is training athletes for national and international games. He is a very nice and happy person all the time. His contribution to the nation is priceless.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["24412569", "14189"], "permutation_1": ["24412569", "14189"], "permutation_2": ["14189", "24412569"], "permutation_3": ["24412569", "14189"]}
{"id": "2hop__195466_36180", "docs_added": {"11978507": "Sakalua\nSakalua is an islet of Nukufetau, Tuvalu. In the 19th century whalers established a shore camp on Sakalua where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber. The islet has been known as 'Coal Island'.\nThe island has a large colony of terns.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11978507", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["11978507", "30227"], "permutation_2": ["11978507", "30227"], "permutation_3": ["11978507", "30227"]}
{"id": "2hop__91811_3089", "docs_added": {"191890": "American Idol\nAmerican singing competition\nAmerican Idol is an American singing competition television series created by Simon Fuller, produced by Fremantle North America and 19 Entertainment, and distributed by Fremantle North America. It aired on Fox from June 11, 2002, to April 7, 2016, for 15 seasons. It was on hiatus for two years until March 11, 2018, when a revival of the series began airing on ABC.\nIt started as an addition to the \"Idol\" format that was based on \"Pop Idol\" from British television, in which the programme's first series, which was won by Will Young, ended over four months before the show began, as it later became one of the most successful shows in the history of American television. The concept of the series involves discovering recording stars from unsigned singing talents, with the winner determined by American viewers using phones, Internet platforms, and SMS text voting. The winners of the first twenty-two seasons, as chosen by viewers, are Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Hicks, Jordin Sparks, David Cook, Kris Allen, Lee DeWyze, Scotty McCreery, Phillip Phillips, Candice Glover, Caleb Johnson, Nick Fradiani, Trent Harmon, Maddie Poppe, Laine Hardy, Just Sam, Chayce Beckham, Noah Thompson, Iam Tongi, and Abi Carter.\n\"American Idol\" employs a select panel of judges who critique the contestants' performances. The original judges, for seasons one through eight, were record producer and music manager Randy Jackson, singer and choreographer Paula Abdul, and music executive and manager Simon Cowell. The judging panel for the last three seasons on Fox consisted of singers Keith Urban, Jennifer Lopez, and Harry Connick Jr. Season sixteen brought three new judges: singers Luke Bryan, Katy Perry, and Lionel Richie. Beginning in the twenty-third season, Underwood replaced Perry, alongside returning judges Bryan and Richie. The show has been hosted by television presenter Ryan Seacrest throughout its run, apart from the show's inaugural season when comedian Brian Dunkleman joined Seacrest as co-host.\nThe success of \"American Idol\" has been described as \"unparalleled in broadcasting history\". A rival TV executive said the series was \"the most impactful show in the history of television\". It became a recognized springboard for launching the career of many artists as bona fide stars. According to \"Billboard\" magazine, in its first ten years, \"\"Idol\" has spawned 345 \"Billboard\" chart-toppers and a platoon of pop idols, including Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Chris Daughtry, Fantasia, Ruben Studdard, Jennifer Hudson, Clay Aiken, Adam Lambert, and Jordin Sparks while remaining a TV ratings juggernaut.\" For an unprecedented eight consecutive years, from the 2003\u201304 television season through the 2010\u201311 season, either its performance show or result show was ranked number one in U.S. television ratings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\n\"American Idol\" was based on the British show \"Pop Idol\" created by Simon Fuller, which was in turn inspired by the New Zealand television singing competition \"Popstars\". Television producer Nigel Lythgoe saw a version in Australia and helped bring it over to Britain. Fuller was inspired by the idea from \"Popstars\" of employing a panel of judges to select singers in audition. He then added other elements, including telephone voting by the viewing public (which at the time was already in use in shows, such as the \"Eurovision Song Contest\"), the drama of backstories, and real-life soap opera unfolding in real time. \"Pop Idol\" debuted in Britain in 2001 with Lythgoe as showrunner\u200d\u2014\u200cthe executive producer and production leader\u200d\u2014\u200cand Simon Cowell as one of the judges, and was successful with the viewing public.\nIn 2001, Fuller, Cowell, and TV producer Simon Jones attempted to sell the \"Pop Idol\" format to the United States, but the idea was initially met with poor responses from all the television networks including UPN and Fox. However, Rupert Murdoch, head of Fox's parent company, was later persuaded to buy the series by his daughter, Elisabeth, who had seen the British show. Although Fox's executives wanted to change the format, Murdoch insisted that it should remain the same as the British one. One change was nevertheless made due to the presence of multiple time zones in the United States that made it impractical for the country to vote in the same time period, an additional half-hour results show was therefore added the day following the performance show. The show was renamed \"\" and debuted in the summer of 2002. Cowell was initially offered the job of showrunner but turned down the offer; Lythgoe then took over that position. Much to the surprise of Cowell and Fox, it became one of the biggest shows of the summer. With its successful launch in the summer, the show was then moved to January and expanded. The show grew into a phenomenon largely due to its personal engagement with the contestants by prompting the viewers to vote, and the presence of the acid-tongued Cowell as a judge. By 2004, it had become the most-watched show on American television, a position it then held for seven consecutive seasons until 2011.\nHowever, after a few years of sharp declining ratings starting in 2012, with rating falls of over 20% each season, the fifteenth season would be its last on Fox, ending its run in April 2016. In May 2017, ABC acquired the rights to the series and the program returned for the 2017\u201318 television season. The first season of the revived series, or the sixteenth season overall, started airing in March 2018. Seven seasons have been aired on ABC as of May 2024.\nJudges and hosts.\nJudges.\nThe show had originally planned on having four judges following the \"Pop Idol\" format; however, only three judges had been found by the time of the audition round in the first season, namely Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell. A fourth judge, radio DJ Stryker, was originally chosen but he dropped out citing \"image concerns.\" In the second season, New York radio personality Angie Martinez had been hired as a fourth judge but withdrew after only a few days of auditions, due to being uncomfortable with giving out criticism. The show decided to continue with the three judges format until the eighth season. All three original judges stayed on the judging panel for eight seasons.\nIn the eighth season, Latin Grammy Award-nominated singer-songwriter and record producer Kara DioGuardi was added as a fourth judge. Abdul left the show in 2009, after the eighth season, as a result of failing to agree to terms with the show producers. Emmy Award-winning talk show host Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul for the ninth season, but left in 2010 after just one season. DioGuardi was let go from \"American Idol\" in 2010 after two seasons, as producers favored a return to the three-person judges panel previously used prior to DioGuardi's appearance on the show. Cowell also left the show in 2010 to introduce the American version of his show \"The X Factor\" in 2011. Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth.\nJennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined the judging panel in the tenth season, but both left in 2012 after two seasons. Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. They were replaced by three new judges, Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj, and Keith Urban, who joined Jackson in the twelfth season. However, both Carey and Minaj left after one season. Jackson also departed the judges table after twelve seasons, but would return as the in-house mentor for the thirteenth season in 2014, after which he left the show permanently.\nUrban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. After a one-season hiatus, Lopez returned to \"American Idol\" for the thirteenth season, and was joined by former mentor Harry Connick Jr. After this, Lopez, Urban, and Connick Jr. remained on the show until its cancellation after the fifteenth season in 2016.\nWhen the show was revived by ABC in 2018, Katy Perry, Luke Bryan, and Lionel Richie were selected as judges, marking the sixteenth season of \"Idol\". Bryan and Richie have remained on the show since, while Perry left the show in May 2024 after seven seasons. On July 31, 2024, published reports announced former \"Idol\" winner Carrie Underwood as Perry's replacement, joining Bryan and Richie for the twenty-third season.\nGuest judges may occasionally be introduced. In the second season, guest judges such as Richie and Gladys Knight were used, and in the third season, Donna Summer, Quentin Tarantino, Gloria Estefan, and some of the mentors also joined as judges to critique the performances in the final rounds. Guest judges were sporadically used during the audition rounds: Gene Simmons, LL Cool J, Brandy, Mark McGrath, and Kenny Loggins in the fourth season; Carole Bayer Sager, Jewel, and Olivia Newton-John in the sixth season; Shania Twain, Neil Patrick Harris, Avril Lavigne, Mary J. Blige, Joe Jonas, Kristin Chenoweth, Victoria Beckham, and Perry in the ninth season (substituting in the vacant chair, before DeGeneres was hired); and Adam Lambert filled in for Urban at one audition location during the fourteenth season. In the ABC version, two instances occurred during the live shows: Abdul filled in for Bryan on one episode of the nineteenth season, while Alanis Morissette and Ed Sheeran filled in for Perry and Richie on an episode of the twenty-first season.\nHosts.\nThe first season was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman, following the format of \"Pop Idol\" of using two presenters. Dunkleman quit thereafter, resulting in Seacrest becoming the sole emcee starting with the second season in 2003.\nSeacrest has remained as sole host of \"American Idol\" ever since, with the exception of the two-year hiatus between 2016 and 2018 as well as April 8, 2019, during the seventeenth season, when Bobby Bones subbed for Seacrest after the latter fell ill. Dunkleman did, however, return for the initial in 2016 as a guest.\nCast timeline.\nAnnotations\nSelection process.\nIn a series of steps, the show selected the eventual winner out of many tens of thousands of contestants.\nContestant eligibility.\nThe eligible age-range for contestants is fifteen to twenty-eight years old. The initial age limit was sixteen to twenty-four in the first three seasons, but the upper limit was raised to twenty-eight in the fourth season, and the lower limit was reduced to fifteen in the tenth season. The contestants have to be legal U.S. residents, can not have advanced to particular stages of the competition in previous seasons, and must not have held a current recording or talent representation contract by the semi-final stage (in previous years by the audition stage).\nInitial auditions.\nFor the first eighteen seasons, contestants went through at least three sets of cuts. The first was a brief audition with a few other contestants in front of selectors which may include one of the show's producers. Although auditions can exceed 10,000 in each city, only a few hundred of these made it past the preliminary round of auditions. Successful contestants then sing in front of producers, where more may be cut. Only then can they proceed to audition in front of the judges, which is the only audition stage shown on television. Those selected by the judges are sent to Hollywood. Between 10 and 60 people in each city may make it to Hollywood (the average total is between 150 and 200).\nFrom the nineteenth season onwards, contestants request a Zoom interview and audition remotely for the show's producers. If the audition goes well, they will then invite the contestants to audition in front of the judges, in one of the audition cities.\nHollywood week.\nOnce in Hollywood, the contestants perform individually or in groups in a series of rounds. Until the tenth season, there were usually three rounds of eliminations in Hollywood. In the first round the contestants emerged in groups but performed individually. For the next round, the contestants put themselves in small groups and performed a song together. In the final round, the contestants performed solo with a song of their choice a cappella or accompanied by a band\u200d\u2014\u200cdepending on the season. In the second and third seasons, contestants were also asked to write original lyrics or melody in an additional round after the first round. In the seventh season, the group round was eliminated and contestants may, after a first solo performance and on judges approval, skip a second solo round and move directly to the final Hollywood round. In the twelfth season, the executive producers split up the females and males and chose the members to form the groups in the group round.\nIn the tenth and eleventh seasons, a further round was added in Las Vegas, where the contestants performed in groups based on a theme, followed by one final solo round to determine the semi-finalists. At the end of this stage of the competition, 24 to 36 contestants were selected to move on to the semi-final stage. In the twelfth season the Las Vegas round became a Sudden Death round, where the judges had to choose five guys and five girls each night (four nights) to make the top twenty. In the thirteenth season, the Las Vegas round was eliminated and a new round called \"Hollywood or Home\" was added, where if the judges were uncertain about some contestants, those contestants were required to perform soon after landing in Los Angeles, and those who failed to impress were sent back home before they reached Hollywood. In the fourteenth season, the \"Hollywood or Home\" round was dropped, and a Showcase round was added, where the contestants performed at the House of Blues or auditorium for the judges and a live audience, and these performances determine who makes into the Top 24. In the seventeenth and eighteenth seasons, the showcase round took place in Hawaii. From the nineteenth season onward, a showstopper round was used.\nAudience voting.\nFrom the semi-finals onward, the fate of the contestants is decided by public vote. During the contestant's performance as well as the recap at the end, a toll-free telephone number for each contestant was displayed on the screen. For a two-hour period after the episode ends (up to four hours for the finale) in each US time zone, viewers may call or send a text message to their preferred contestant's telephone number, and each call or text message was registered as a vote for that contestant. Viewers were allowed to vote as many times as they can within the two-hour voting window. However, the show reserves the right to discard votes by power dialers. One or more of the least popular contestants may be eliminated in successive weeks until a winner emerges. Over 110\u00a0million votes were cast in the first season, and by the tenth season the seasonal total had increased to nearly 750 million. Voting via text messaging was made available in the second season when AT&T Wireless joined as a sponsor of the show, and 7.5\u00a0million text messages were sent to \"American Idol\" that season. The number of text messages rapidly increased, reaching 178\u00a0million texts by the eighth season. Online voting was offered for the first time in the tenth season. The votes are counted and verified by Telescope Inc.\nSemi-finals.\nIn the first three seasons, the semi-finalists were split into different groups to perform individually in their respective night. In the first season, there were three groups of ten, with the top three contestants from each group making the finals. In the second and third seasons, there were four groups of eight, and the top two of each selected. These seasons also featured a wildcard round, where contestants who failed to qualify were given another chance. In the first season, only one wildcard contestant was chosen by the judges, giving a total of ten finalists. In the second and third seasons, each of the three judges championed one contestant with the public advancing a fourth into the finals, making 12 finalists in all.\nFrom the fourth through seventh and ninth seasons, the twenty-four semi-finalists were divided by gender in order to ensure an equal gender division in the top twelve. The men and women sang separately on consecutive nights, and the bottom two in each groups were eliminated each week until only six of each remained to form the top twelve.\nThe wildcard round returned in the eighth season, wherein there were three groups of twelve, with three contestants moving forward \u2013 the highest male, the highest female, and the next highest-placed singer \u2013 for each night, and four wildcards were chosen by the judges to produce a final 13. Starting in tenth season, the girls and boys perform on separate nights. In the tenth and eleventh seasons, five of each gender were chosen, and three wildcards were chosen by the judges to form a final 13. In the twelfth season, the top twenty semifinalists were split into gender groups, with five of each gender advancing to form the final 10. In the thirteenth season, there were thirty semifinalists, but only twenty semifinalists (ten for each gender) were chosen by the judges to perform on the live shows, with five in each gender based on the vote and three wildcards chosen by the judges composing the final 13. In the fourteenth season, the top 24 performed at The Fillmore Detroit, starting with the 12 males on one night and then the 12 females on the next night. The following week, the same order went for the top 16, with four males eliminated, followed by four females based on the vote. Then, on the first night of finals, a similar sequence from the thirteenth season was used to determine the final 12, with five of each gender based on the vote and two wildcards chosen by the judges. In the fifteenth season, the top 24 performed at Cathedral of Saint Vibiana in Los Angeles and were split into two groups of twelve and performed twice, one being a solo performance and one being a duet with a former Idol contestant. In each group, the judges chose 7 contestants to advance to the top 14 where the judges chose 4 to advance to the top 10 and remaining 6 contestants were chosen based on the vote. In the sixteenth season, the top 24 performed at the Academy in the Heart of LA, and the show repeated the process from the previous season. However, instead of Idol alumnus as duet partners, superstar celebrity singers were used as the duet partners. In the seventeenth season, the same process was repeated again. However, instead of a top 24, it's a top 20, the contestants performed at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, and performed solos in one episode, and performed the duets in two episodes. In the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the top 20 performed at their homes, and based on the vote, half of the top 20 would advance to the top 10, and the other half would be eliminated. However, a wild card was given to one of the bottom 10 to save them from elimination. In the nineteenth season, the show used a combination of the process from the sixteenth and fourteenth seasons. In the twentieth season, the show repeated the process from the previous season, but they used a top 20 instead of a top 16, and there were no all star duets. In the twenty-first season, the same process was repeated, but they started with a top 26 instead of a top 24. In the twenty-second season, the show repeated the process from the twentieth season.\nFinals.\nThe finals are broadcast in primetime from Los Angeles, in front of a live studio audience (except the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic). From 2002 to 2019 and from 2021 to 2022, the venue was CBS Television City. Starting in 2023, it changed to Red Studios. The finals lasted eight weeks in the first season. From the second to ninth and fourteenth seasons, the finals lasted eleven weeks. The tenth and eleventh seasons lasted for twelve weeks, while the twelfth season lasted for ten weeks. In the thirteenth season, the finals lasted thirteen weeks. The finals lasted seven weeks in the fifteenth season, and six weeks in the sixteenth season. Each finalist performs songs based on a weekly theme which may be a musical genre such as Motown, disco, or big band, songs by artists such as Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley or The Beatles, or more general themes such as \"Billboard\" number-one hits or songs from the contestant's year of birth. Contestants usually worked with a celebrity mentor related to the theme. From the tenth to twelfth seasons, Jimmy Iovine was brought in as a mentor for the season. Initially the contestants sang one song each week, but this was increased to two songs from top four or five onwards, then three songs for the top two or three.\nThe most popular contestants are usually not revealed in the results show. Instead, typically the three contestants (two in later rounds) who received the lowest number of votes was called to the center of the stage. One of these three was usually sent to safety; however the two remaining were not necessarily the bottom two. The contestant with the fewest votes was then revealed and eliminated from the competition. A montage of the eliminated contestant's time on the show was played and they gave their final performance (from the fourteenth season onward, the montage and the final performance were dropped). However, in the sixth season, during the series' first ever Idol Gives Back episode, no contestant was eliminated, but on the following week, two were sent home. Moreover, from the eighth to the fourteenth seasons, and the seventeenth season onward, the judges may overturn viewers' decision with a \"Judges' Save\" if they unanimously agreed to. \"The save\" could only be used once, and only up through the Top 5. In the eighth to tenth and fourteenth seasons, a double elimination then took place in the week following the activation of the save, but in the eleventh and thirteenth seasons, a regular single elimination took place. The save was not activated in the twelfth season and consequently, a non-elimination took place in the week after its expiration with the votes then carrying over into the following week.\nThe \"Fan Save\" was introduced in the fourteenth season. During the finals, viewers were given a five-minute window to vote for the contestants in danger of elimination by using their Twitter account to decide which contestant will move on to the next show, starting with the Top 8.\nSeason finale.\nDuring the original run of \"American Idol\" on Fox, the finale week consisted of a one-hour long final performance night and a two-hour last episode of the season that culminates in revealing the winner, both of which are broadcast live in the U.S. Eastern and Central time zones. For the first, third through sixth and fourteenth through fifteenth seasons it was broadcast from the Dolby Theatre, which has an audience capacity of approximately 3,400. The second-season finale took place at the Gibson Amphitheatre, which had an audience capacity of over 6,000. In the seventh through thirteenth seasons, the venue was at the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live, which holds an audience of over 7,000. Since the show's reboot on ABC, the venue remains the same throughout the entire show (excluding auditions), but was still two episodes in the sixteenth season, and then stretched to a single three-hour season finale that is annually aired live simultaneously in all U.S. territories, starting with the seventeenth season. The eighteenth-season finale was conducted virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nRewards for winner and finalists.\nThe winner usually receives a record deal with a major label, which may be for up to six albums, and secures a management contract with \"American Idol\"-affiliated 19 Management (which has the right of first refusal to sign all contestants), as well as various lucrative contracts. All winners prior to the ninth season reportedly earned at least $1\u00a0million in their first year as winner. At first the contract came with a $250,000-plus advance, but dropped to about $62,500 over the Fox years. All the runners-up of the first ten seasons, as well as some of other finalists, had also received record deals with major labels. However, starting in the eleventh season, the runner-up may only be guaranteed a single-only deal. BMG/Sony (first through ninth seasons), UMG (tenth through fifteenth seasons), and Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records (sixteenth through eighteenth seasons) had the right of first refusal to sign contestants for three months after the season's finale. In the fourteenth and fifteenth seasons, the winner was signed with Big Machine Records. Prominent music mogul Clive Davis also produced some of the selected contestants' albums, such as Kelly Clarkson, Clay Aiken, Fantasia Barrino and Diana DeGarmo. All top 10 (11 in the tenth and twelfth seasons, 5 in the fourteenth season, and 7 in the sixteenth season) finalists earn the privilege of going on a tour, where the participants may each earn a six-figure sum.\nSeason synopses.\nEach season premieres with the audition round, taking place in different cities. The audition episodes typically feature a mix of potential finalists, interesting characters and woefully inadequate contestants. Each successful contestant receives a golden or platinum ticket to proceed on to the next round in Hollywood. Based on their performances during the Hollywood round (Las Vegas round from the tenth through twelfth seasons), 24 to 36 contestants are selected by the judges to participate in the semifinals. From the semifinals onward the contestants perform their songs live, with the judges making their critiques after each performance. The contestants are voted for by the viewing public, and the outcome of the public votes is then revealed during a results segment. The results segment feature group performances by the contestants as well as guest performers. The Top-three results also features homecoming events for the Top 3 finalists. The season reaches its climax in a two-hour results finale show, where the winner of the season is revealed.\nWith the exception of the first two seasons, the contestants in the semifinals onward perform in front of a studio audience. They perform with a full band in the finals. The current musical director is Kris Pooley, who has been with the show since the sixteenth season. In previous seasons, the \"American Idol\" band was led by Rickey Minor (fourth through ninth and thirteenth through fifteenth seasons) and Ray Chew (tenth through twelfth seasons). Assistance has also been given by vocal coaches and song arrangers, such as Michael Orland and Debra Byrd to contestants behind the scene. Starting with the seventh season, contestants may perform with a musical instrument from the Hollywood rounds onward. In later seasons, the contestants were allowed to perform with a musical instrument in the auditions. During the first nine seasons, performances were usually aired live on Tuesday nights, followed by the results shows on Wednesdays, but moved to Wednesdays and Thursdays from the tenth through thirteenth seasons, with the tenth, eleventh and thirteenth-season finales aired on Tuesday and Wednesday. From the fourteenth season onward, there were no separate results shows. On the fourteenth season, the show aired on Wednesday nights, and on the fifteenth season, Thursday nights. Since the sixteenth season, the show has been airing on Sundays and Mondays.\n2002\u20132016: Fox.\nSeason 1 (2002).\nThe first season of \"American Idol\" debuted as a summer replacement show in June 2002 on the Fox network. It was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell served as judges.\nIn the audition rounds, 121 contestants were selected from around 10,000 who attended the auditions. These were cut to 30 for the semifinal, with ten going on to the finals. One semifinalist, Delano Cagnolatti, was disqualified for lying to evade the show's age limit. One of the early favorites, Tamyra Gray, was eliminated at the top four, the first of several such shock eliminations that were to be repeated in later seasons. Christina Christian was hospitalized before the top six result show due to chest pains and palpitations, and she was eliminated while she was in the hospital. Jim Verraros was the first openly gay contestant on the show; his sexual orientation was revealed on his blog, however it was removed during the competition after a request from the show producers over concerns that it might be unfairly influencing votes.\nThe final showdown was between Justin Guarini, one of the early favorites, and Kelly Clarkson. Clarkson was not initially thought of as a contender, but impressed the judges with some good performances in the final rounds, such as her performance of Aretha Franklin's \"Natural Woman\", and Betty Hutton's \"Stuff Like That There\", and eventually won the crown on September 4, 2002.\nIn what was to become a tradition, Clarkson performed the coronation song during the finale, and released the song immediately after the season ended. The single, \"A Moment Like This\", went on to break a 38-year-old record held by The Beatles for the biggest leap to number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. Guarini did not release any song immediately after the show and remains the only runner-up not to do so. Both Clarkson and Guarini made a musical film, \"From Justin to Kelly\", which was released in 2003 but was widely panned. Clarkson has since become one of the most successful \"Idol\" contestants internationally, with worldwide album sales of more than 25\u00a0million.\nStarting September 30, 2006, this season was repackaged as \"\"American Idol Rewind\"\" and syndicated directly to stations in the U.S.\nSeason 2 (2003).\nFollowing the success of the first season, the second season was moved up to air in January 2003. The number of episodes increased, as did the show's budget and the charge for commercial spots. Dunkleman left the show, leaving Ryan Seacrest as the lone host. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Kristin Adams was a correspondent for this season.\nCorey Clark was disqualified during the finals for having an undisclosed police record; however, he later alleged that he and Paula Abdul had an affair while on the show and that this contributed to his expulsion. Clark also claimed that Abdul gave him preferential treatment on the show due to their affair. The allegations were dismissed by Fox after an independent investigation. Two semi-finalists were also disqualified that year \u2013 Jaered Andrews for an arrest on an assault charge, and Frenchie Davis for having previously modeled for an adult website.\nThe season finale drew more than 38 million viewers, marking \"Idol\"'s biggest audience ever for a single episode. Ruben Studdard emerged as the winner, beating Clay Aiken by a small margin. Out of a total of 24 million votes, Studdard finished just 134,000 votes ahead of Aiken. This slim margin of victory was controversial due to the large number of calls that failed to get through. In an interview prior to the fifth season, executive producer Nigel Lythgoe indicated that Aiken had led the fan voting from the wildcard week onward until the finale.\nBoth finalists found success after the show, but Aiken out-performed Studdard's coronation song \"Flying Without Wings\" with his single release from the show \"This Is the Night\", as well as in their subsequent album releases. The fourth-place finisher Josh Gracin also enjoyed some success as a country singer.\nSeason 3 (2004).\nThe third season premiered on January 19, 2004. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. One of the most talked-about contestants during the audition process was William Hung whose off-key rendition of Ricky Martin's \"She Bangs\" received widespread attention. His exposure on \"Idol\" landed him a record deal and surprisingly he became the third bestselling singer from that season.\nMuch media attention on the season had been focused on the three black singers, Fantasia Barrino, LaToya London, and Jennifer Hudson, dubbed the Three Divas. All three unexpectedly landed on the bottom three on the top seven result show, with Hudson controversially eliminated. Elton John, who was one of the mentors that season, called the results of the votes \"incredibly racist\". The prolonged stays of John Stevens and Jasmine Trias in the finals, despite negative comments from the judges, had aroused resentment, so much so that John Stevens reportedly received a death threat, which he dismissed as a joke 'blown out of proportion'.\nThe performance of \"Summertime\" by Barrino, later known simply as \"Fantasia\", at Top 8 was widely praised, and Simon Cowell considered it as his favorite \"Idol\" moment in the nine seasons he was on the show. Fantasia and Diana DeGarmo were the last two finalists, and Fantasia was crowned as the winner. Fantasia released as her coronation single \"I Believe\", a song co-written by the first season finalist Tamyra Gray, and DeGarmo released \"Dreams\".\nSeason 4 (2005).\nThe fourth season premiered on January 18, 2005. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This was the first full season of the series to be aired in high definition; the finale of the third season was also aired in high definition. The number of those attending the auditions by now had increased to over 100,000 from the 10,000 of the first season. The age limit was raised to 28 in this season, and among those who benefited from this new rule were Constantine Maroulis and Bo Bice, the two rockers of the show.\nThe top 12 finalists originally included Mario Vazquez, but he dropped out citing 'personal reasons' and was replaced by Nikko Smith. Later, an employee of Fremantle Media, which produces the show, sued the company for wrongful termination, claiming that he was dismissed after complaining about lewd behavior by Vazquez toward him during the show.\nDuring the top 11 week, due to a mix-up with the contestants' telephone number, voting was repeated on what was normally the result night, with the result reveal postponed until the following night.\nIn May 2005, Underwood was announced the winner, with Bice the runner-up. Both Underwood and Bice released the coronation song \"Inside Your Heaven\", with Underwood's version of the song making her the first country artist ever to debut at number-one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart. As of 2015, Underwood has become the most successful \"Idol\" contestant in the U.S., selling 16 million albums in the country, while selling a total of 65 million records worldwide.\nSeason 5 (2006).\nThe fifth season began on January 17, 2006. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. It remains the highest-rated season in the show's run so far. Two of the more prominent contestants during the Hollywood round were the Brittenum twins who were later disqualified for identity theft.\nChris Daughtry's performance of Fuel's \"Hemorrhage (In My Hands)\" on the show was widely praised and led to an invitation to join the band as Fuel's new lead singer, an invitation he declined. His performance of Live's version of \"I Walk the Line\" was well received by the judges but later criticized in some quarters for not crediting the arrangement to Live. He was eliminated at the top four in a shocking result.\nOn May 30, 2006, Taylor Hicks was named \"American Idol\", with Katharine McPhee the runner-up. \"Do I Make You Proud\" was released as Hicks' first single and McPhee's was \"My Destiny\".\nDespite being eliminated earlier in the season, Chris Daughtry (as lead of the band Daughtry) became the most successful recording artist from this season. Other contestants, such as Hicks, McPhee, Bucky Covington, Mandisa, Kellie Pickler, and Elliott Yamin have had varying levels of success.\nSeason 6 (2007).\nThe sixth season began on Tuesday, January 16, 2007. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The premiere drew a massive audience of 37.3\u00a0million viewers, peaking in the last half hour with more than 41\u00a0million viewers.\nTeenager Sanjaya Malakar was the season's most talked-about contestant for his unusual hairdo, and for managing to survive elimination for many weeks due in part to the weblog Vote for the Worst and satellite radio personality Howard Stern, who both encouraged fans to vote for him. However, on the Top 7 results, Sanjaya was voted off.\nThis season saw the first \"Idol Gives Back\" telethon-inspired event, which raised more than $76\u00a0million in corporate and viewer donations. No contestant was eliminated that week, but two (Phil Stacey and Chris Richardson) were eliminated the next.\nIn the May 23 season finale, Jordin Sparks was declared the winner with the runner-up being Blake Lewis. Sparks has had some success as a recording artist post-\"Idol\".\nThis season also saw the launch of the \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest which allows fans to vote for the \"coronation song\". Thousands of recordings of original songs were submitted by songwriters, and 20 entries selected for the public vote. The winning song, \"This Is My Now\", was performed by both finalists during the finale and released by Sparks on May 24, 2007.\nSeason 7 (2008).\nThe seventh season premiered on January 15, 2008, for a two-day, four-hour premiere. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The media focused on the professional status of the seventh season contestants, the so-called 'ringers', many of whom, including Kristy Lee Cook, Brooke White, Michael Johns, and in particular Carly Smithson, had prior recording contracts. Contestant David Hernandez also attracted some attention due to his past employment as a stripper.\nFor the finals, \"American Idol\" debuted a new state-of-the-art set and stage on March 11, 2008, along with a new on-air look. David Cook's performance of \"Billie Jean\" on top-ten night was lauded by the judges, but provoked controversy when they apparently mistook the Chris Cornell arrangement to be David Cook's own even though the performance was introduced as Cornell's version. Cornell himself said he was 'flattered' and praised David Cook's performance. David Cook was taken to the hospital after the top-nine performance show due to heart palpitations and high blood pressure.\nDavid Archuleta's performance of John Lennon's \"Imagine\" was considered by many as one of the best of the season. Jennifer Lopez, who was brought in as a judge in the tenth season, called it a beautiful song-moment that she will never forget. Jason Castro's semi-final performance of \"Hallelujah\" also received considerable attention, and it propelled Jeff Buckley's version of the song to the top of the \"Billboard\" digital song chart. This was the first season in which contestants' recordings were released onto iTunes after their performances, and although sales information was not released so as not to prejudice the contest, leaked information indicated that contestants' songs frequently reached the top of iTunes sales charts.\n\"Idol Gives Back\" returned on April 9, 2008, and raised $64\u00a0million for charity.\nThe finalists were Cook and Archuleta. David Cook was announced the winner on May 21, 2008, the first rocker to win the show. Both Cook and Archuleta had some success as recording artists with both selling over a million albums in the U.S.\nThe \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest was also held this season. From ten of the most popular submissions, each of the final two contestants chose a song to perform, although neither of their selections was used as the \"coronation song\". The winning song, \"The Time of My Life\", was recorded by David Cook and released on May 22, 2008.\nSeason 8 (2009).\nThe eighth season premiered on January 13, 2009. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This season featured the first major change to the judging panel; a fourth judge, Kara DioGuardi, was introduced. Mike Darnell, the president of alternative programming for Fox, stated that the season would focus more on the contestants' personal life.\nThis was also the first season without executive producer Nigel Lythgoe who left to focus on the international versions of his show \"So You Think You Can Dance\". The Hollywood round was moved to the Kodak Theatre for 2009 and was also extended to two weeks. \"Idol Gives Back\" was canceled for this season due to the global recession at the time.\nThere were 13 finalists this season, but two were eliminated in the first result show of the finals. A new feature introduced was the \"Judges' Save\", and Matt Giraud was saved from elimination at the top seven by the judges when he received the fewest votes. The next week, Lil Rounds and Anoop Desai were eliminated.\nThe two finalists were Kris Allen and Adam Lambert, both of whom had previously landed in the bottom three at the top five. Allen won the contest in the most controversial voting result since the second season. It was claimed, and then later retracted, that 38\u00a0million of the 100\u00a0million votes cast on the night came from Allen's home state of Arkansas alone, and that AT&T employees unfairly influenced the votes by giving lessons on power-texting at viewing parties in Arkansas.\nBoth Allen and Lambert released the coronation song, \"No Boundaries\" which was co-written by DioGuardi. This is the first season in which the winner failed to achieve gold album status.\nSeason 9 (2010).\nThe ninth season premiered on January 12, 2010. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Kara DioGuardi, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Paula Abdul left the show and Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul at the start of Hollywood Week. One of the most prominent auditioners this season was General Larry Platt whose performance of \"Pants on the Ground\" became a viral hit song.\nCrystal Bowersox, who has Type-I diabetes, fell ill due to diabetic ketoacidosis on the morning of the girls performance night for the top 20 week and was hospitalized. The schedule was rearranged so the boys performed first and she could perform the following night instead; she later revealed that Ken Warwick, the show producer, wanted to disqualify her but she begged to be allowed to stay on the show.\nMichael Lynche was the lowest vote getter at top nine and was given the Judges' Save. The next week Katie Stevens and Andrew Garcia were eliminated. That week, Adam Lambert was invited back to be a mentor, the first \"Idol\" alum to do so. \"Idol Gives Back\" returned this season on April 21, 2010, and raised $45 million.\nA special tribute to Simon Cowell was presented in the finale for his final season with the show. Many figures from the show's past, including Paula Abdul, made an appearance.\nThe final two contestants were Lee DeWyze and Bowersox. DeWyze was declared the winner during the May 26 finale. No new song was used as coronation song this year; instead, the two finalists each released a cover song \u2013 DeWyze chose U2's \"Beautiful Day\", and Bowersox chose Patty Griffin's \"Up to the Mountain\". This is the first season where neither finalist achieved significant album sales.\nSeason 10 (2011).\nThe tenth season premiered on January 19, 2011. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Many changes were introduced this season, from the format to the personnel of the show. Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined Randy Jackson as judges following the departures of Simon Cowell (who left to launch the American version of \"The X Factor\"), Kara DioGuardi (whose contract was not renewed) and Ellen DeGeneres, who left the show on her own accord.\nRandy Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth. Nigel Lythgoe returned as executive producer. Jimmy Iovine, chairman of the Interscope Geffen A&M label group, the new partner of \"American Idol\", acted as the in-house mentor in place of weekly guest mentors, although in later episodes special guest mentors such as Beyonc\u00e9, will.i.am and Lady Gaga were brought in.\nThe tenth season is the first to include online auditions where contestants could submit a 40-second video audition via Myspace. Karen Rodriguez was one such auditioner and reached the final rounds.\nOne of the more prominent contestants this year was Chris Medina, whose story of caring for his brain-damaged fianc\u00e9e received widespread coverage. Medina was cut in the Top 40 round. Casey Abrams, who suffers from ulcerative colitis, was hospitalized twice and missed the Top 13 result show. The judges used their one save on Abrams on the Top 11, and as a result this was the first season that 11 finalists went on tour instead of 10. In the following week, Naima Adedapo and Thia Megia were both eliminated.\nPia Toscano, one of the presumed favorites to advance far in the season, was unexpectedly eliminated on April 7, 2011, finishing in ninth place. Her elimination drew criticisms from some former \"Idol\" contestants, as well as actor Tom Hanks. After \"Idol\", Jennifer Lopez helped guide her career.\nThe two finalists in 2011 were Lauren Alaina and Scotty McCreery, both teenage country singers. McCreery won the competition on May 25, being the youngest male winner and the fourth male in a row to win \"American Idol\". McCreery released his first single, \"I Love You This Big\", as his coronation song, and Alaina released \"Like My Mother Does\". McCreery's debut album, \"Clear as Day\", became the first debut album by an \"Idol\" winner to reach No. 1 on the US \"Billboard\" 200 since Ruben Studdard's \"Soulful\" in 2003, and he became the youngest male artist to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200.\nSeason 11 (2012).\nThe eleventh season premiered on January 18, 2012. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez, and Randy Jackson returned as judges. One more finalist would join the Top 24 making it the Top 25, which was later revealed to be Jermaine Jones. However, on March 14, Jones was disqualified in 12th place for concealing arrests and outstanding warrants. Jones denied the accusation that he concealed his arrests.\nFinalist Phillip Phillips suffered from kidney pain and was taken to the hospital before the Top 13 results show, and later received medical procedure to alleviate a blockage caused by kidney stones. He was reported to have eight surgeries during his Idol run, and had considered quitting the show due to the pain. He underwent surgery to remove the stones and reconstruct his kidney soon after the season had finished.\nJessica Sanchez received the fewest votes during the Top 7 week, and the judges decided to use their \"save\" option on her, making her the first female recipient of the save. The following week, unlike previous seasons, Colton Dixon was the only contestant sent home. Sanchez later made the final two, the first season where a recipient of the save reached the finale.\nPhillips became the winner, beating Sanchez. During the finale, fifth season finalist Ace Young proposed marriage to third season runner-up Diana DeGarmo on stage \u2013 which she accepted.\nPhillips released \"Home\" as his coronation song, while Sanchez released \"Change Nothing\". Phillips' \"Home\" has since become the best selling of all coronation songs, with over 5 million copies sold.\nSeason 12 (2013).\nThe twelfth season premiered on January 16, 2013. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Judges Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler left the show after two seasons. Randy Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. This season's judging panel consisted of Randy Jackson, along with Mariah Carey, Keith Urban and Nicki Minaj.\nThis was the first season since the ninth season to have four judges on the panel. The pre-season buzz and the early episodes of the show were dominated by the feud between the judges Minaj and Carey after a video of their dispute was leaked to TMZ.\nThe top 10 contestants started with five males and five females, however, the males were eliminated consecutively in the first five weeks, with Lazaro Arbos the last male to be eliminated. For the first time in the show's history, the top 5 contestants were all female. It was also the first time that the judges' \"save\" was not used, the top four contestants were therefore given an extra week to perform again with their votes carried over with no elimination in the first week.\n23-year-old Candice Glover won the season with Kree Harrison taking the runner-up spot. Glover became the first female to win \"American Idol\" since Jordin Sparks, who won the show in 2007. Glover released \"I Am Beautiful\" as a single while Harrison released \"All Cried Out\" immediately after the show. Glover sold poorly with her debut album, and this is also the first season that the runner-up was not signed by a music label.\nTowards the end of the season, Randy Jackson, the last remaining of the original judges, announced he would no longer serve as a judge to pursue other business ventures. Both judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj also decided to leave after one season to focus on their music careers.\nSeason 13 (2014).\nThe thirteenth season premiered on January 15, 2014. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Keith Urban returned as a judge. Urban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. Randy Jackson returned, though Jackson moved from the judging panel to the role of in-mentor. Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj left the panel after one season. Former judge Jennifer Lopez and former mentor Harry Connick, Jr. joined Urban on the panel. Connick Jr. served as a mentor for \"Idol\" in 2010 and 2012. Also, Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick were replaced as executive producers by Per Blankens, Jesse Ignjatovic and Evan Pragger. Bill DeRonde replaced Warwick as a director of the audition episodes, while Louis J. Horvitz replaced Gregg Gelfand as a director of the show.\nThis was the first season where the contestants were permitted to perform in the final rounds songs they wrote themselves. In the Top 8, Sam Woolf received the fewest votes, but he was saved from elimination by the judges. The 500th episode of the series was the Top 3 performance night.\nCaleb Johnson was named the winner of the season, with Jena Irene as the runner-up. Johnson released \"As Long as You Love Me\" as his coronation single while Irene released \"We Are One\".\nSeason 14 (2015).\nThe fourteenth season premiered on January 7, 2015. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban and Harry Connick, Jr. returned for their respective fourth, third and second seasons as judges. Eighth season runner-up Adam Lambert filled in for Urban during the New York City auditions. Randy Jackson did not return as the in-house mentor and left the show permanently. Scott Borchetta replaced Jackson as the mentor.\nChanges this season include only airing one episode a week during the final ten. Coca-Cola ended their longtime sponsorship of the show and Ford Motor Company maintained a reduced role. The winner of the season also received a recording contract with Big Machine Records.\nNick Fradiani won the season, defeating Clark Beckham. Fradiani became the first winner from the Northeast region. Fradiani released \"Beautiful Life\" as his coronation single while Beckham released \"Champion\". Jax, the third place finalist, also released a single called \"Forcefield\".\nSeason 15 (2016).\nFox announced on May 11, 2015, that the fifteenth season would be the final season of \"American Idol\"; as such, the season was expected to have an additional focus on the program's alumni. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, with Harry Connick Jr., Keith Urban, and Jennifer Lopez all returning as judges. The fifteenth season premiered on January 6, 2016. The season was shortened by four weeks compared to previous years. During the finale episode, President Barack Obama praised the millions of young people that voted for contestants and pitched that they vote in the upcoming election. The farewell season concluded on April 7, 2016. Seacrest signed off by saying: \"And one more time\u2014this is so tough\u2014we say to you from Hollywood, goodnight America\", and then he added, \"for now.\"\nTrent Harmon won the season against runner-up La'Porsha Renae. Harmon released \"Falling\" co-written by Keith Urban as his coronation song. Renae's \"Battles\", third-place finisher Dalton Rapattoni's \"Strike A Match\" and fourth-place finisher MacKenzie Bourg's \"Roses\" were also released as singles.\n2018\u2013present: ABC revival.\nIn early 2017, \"Variety\" reported that Fremantle Media was in talks to revive the show for NBC or for its original network, Fox. A dispute between Fremantle and Core Media Group derailed these plans. In May 2017, ABC was making a bid to revive the program. ABC acquired the rights to the series, and \"American Idol\" returned for the 2017\u201318 television season.\nSeason 16 (2018).\nIn July 2017, it was announced that Ryan Seacrest would return as host, and by September 2017 it was revealed that Katy Perry, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie would serve as judges. The sixteenth season premiered on March 11, 2018. This was the first season of \"American Idol\" to air on ABC. The season was again shortened compared to the previous season to twelve weeks, with multiple elimination in the final rounds. Unlike previous seasons where only two finalists remained in the final episode, three finalists performed in the finale. On May 21, 2018, the season concluded with Maddie Poppe crowned the winner, beating Caleb Lee Hutchinson as runner-up and Gabby Barrett in third place. Her winning song was \"Going, Going, Gone\". Caleb Lee Hutchinson released \"Johnny Cash Heart\" as a single, while Gabby Barrett's song was \"Rivers Deep\".\nSeason 17 (2019).\nABC renewed the revival series for another season. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. The seventeenth season premiered on March 3, 2019. For the finale, the show no longer features separate performance and result shows. On May 19, 2019, the season concluded with three finalists, with Madison VanDenburg eliminated in third place after performing two songs, and the final two performing their last song. For the first time, there were no separate performance and grand finale shows this season. Laine Hardy was crowned the winner and Alejandro Aranda runner-up. Hardy released a single, \"Flame\", immediately after the win, but Aranda did not. However, Aranda later released a song he performed in the finale, \"Tonight\", under the name Scarypoolparty on June 28, 2019.\nSeason 18 (2020).\nOn May 13, 2019, the series was renewed for an eighteenth season and it premiered on February 16, 2020. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. For the first time, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, from the top 20 to the finale, the contestants performed in their own homes, while Ryan Seacrest hosted the show remotely in his own home in Los Angeles with the judges also in their respective homes. The season was also further truncated, with the top 5 performing in the finale. Each finalist also performed only two songs for the finale. On May 17, the season concluded, with Just Sam crowned as the winner, with Arthur Gunn finishing as the runner-up. \"Rise Up\", the song Just Sam performed for their audition and reprised on the finale, was released as their debut song.\nSeason 19 (2021).\nOn May 15, 2020, ABC renewed the series for a nineteenth season and it premiered on February 14, 2021. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. Later in October, it was announced that Bobby Bones will return as mentor. On May 23, the season concluded, with Chayce Beckham crowned the winner, with Willie Spence finishing as the runner-up. \"23\", the song Chayce Beckham wrote and performed for Top 4, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 20 (2022).\nOn May 13, 2021, ABC renewed the series for a twentieth season and it premiered on February 27, 2022. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On December 31, it was announced that Bones would not be returning as a mentor. On May 22, the season concluded, with Noah Thompson crowned as the winner, with HunterGirl finishing as the runner-up. \"One Day Tonight\", the song Noah Thompson performed for the Grand Finale, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 21 (2023).\nOn May 13, 2022, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-first season and it premiered on February 19, 2023. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On May 21, the season concluded, with Iam Tongi crowned as the winner, with Megan Danielle finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 22 (2024).\nOn May 16, 2023, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-second season and it premiered on February 18, 2024. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. In February 2024, Perry announced that the season would be her last. On May 20, the season concluded, with Abi Carter crowned as the winner, with Will Moseley finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 23 (2025).\nOn May 10, 2024, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-third season; it was also announced the network was in-talks with \"high-profile stars\" to replace the outgoing Perry. On July 31, 2024, it was announced Seacrest would return as host, with Bryan and Richie returning as judges; Underwood was named as Perry's successor. The season premiered on March 9, 2025.\nReception.\nU.S. television ratings.\nSeasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of \"American Idol\". It holds the distinction of having the longest winning streak in the Nielsen annual television ratings; it became the highest-rated of all television programs in the United States overall for an unprecedented seven consecutive years, or eight consecutive (and total) years when either its performance or result show was ranked number one overall.\n\"Each U.S. network television season starts in late September and ends in late May, which coincides with the completion of May sweeps.\"\n\"American Idol\" premiered in June 2002 and became the surprise summer hit show of 2002. The first show drew 9.9\u00a0million viewers, giving Fox the best viewing figure for the 8.30\u00a0pm spot in over a year. The audience steadily grew, and by finale night, the audience had averaged 23\u00a0million, with more than 40\u00a0million watching some part of that show. That episode was placed third amongst all age groups, but more importantly it led in the 18\u201349 demographic, the age group most valued by advertisers.\nThe growth continued into the next season, starting with a season premiere of 26.5 million. The season attracted an average of 21.7\u00a0million viewers, and was placed second overall amongst the 18\u201349 age group. The finale night when Ruben Studdard won over Clay Aiken was also the highest-rated ever \"American Idol\" episode at 38.1\u00a0million for the final hour. By the third season, the show had become the top show in the 18\u201349 demographic<ref name=\"realitytvworld_5/24/2007\"></ref> a position it has held for all subsequent years up to and including the tenth season, and its competition stages ranked first in the nationwide overall ratings. By the fourth season, \"American Idol\" had become the most-watched series amongst all viewers on American TV for the first time, with an average viewership of 26.8\u00a0million. The show reached its peak in the fifth season with numbers averaging 30.6\u00a0million per episode, and this season remains the highest-rated of the series.\nThe sixth season premiered with the series' highest-rated debut episode and a few of its succeeding episodes rank among the most-watched episodes of \"American Idol.\" During this time, many television executives begun to regard the show as a programming force unlike any seen before, as its consistent dominance of up to two hours two or three nights a week exceeded the 30- or 60-minute reach of previous hits such as NBC's \"The Cosby Show\". The show was dubbed \"the Death Star\", and competing networks often rearranged their schedules in order to minimize losses. However, the sixth season also showed a steady decline in viewership over the course of the season. The season finale saw a drop in ratings of 16% from the previous year. The sixth season was the first season wherein the average results show rated higher than the competition stages (unlike in the previous seasons), and became the second-highest-rated of the series after the preceding season.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the seventh season. The premiere was down 11% among total viewers, and the results show in which Kristy Lee Cook was eliminated delivered its lowest-rated Wednesday show among the 18\u201334 demo since the first season in 2002. However, the ratings rebounded for the seventh-season finale with the excitement over the battle of the Davids, and improved over the sixth season as the series' third most watched finale. The strong finish of season seven also helped Fox become the most watched TV network in the country for the first time since its inception, a first ever in American television history for a non-Big Three major broadcast network. Overall ratings for the season were down 10% from the sixth season, which is in line with the fall in viewership across all networks due in part to the 2007\u20132008 Writers Guild of America strike.\nThe declining trend however continued into the eighth season, as total viewers numbers fell by 5\u201310% for early episodes compared to the seventh season, and by 9% for the finale. In the ninth season, \"Idol\"'s six-year extended streak of perfection in the ratings was broken, when NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics on February 17 beat \"Idol\" in the same time slot with 30.1\u00a0million viewers over \"Idol\"'s 18.4\u00a0million. Nevertheless, \"American Idol\" overall finished its ninth season as the most watched TV series for the sixth year running, breaking the previous record of five consecutive seasons achieved by CBS' \"All in the Family\" and NBC's \"The Cosby Show\".\nIn the tenth season, the total viewer numbers for the first week of shows fell 12\u201313%, and by up to 23% in the 18\u201349 demo compared to the ninth season. Later episodes, however, retained viewers better, and the season ended on a high with a significant increase in viewership for the finale \u2013 up 12% for the adults 18\u201349 demographic and a 21% increase in total viewers from the ninth-season finale. While the overall viewer number has increased this season, its viewer demographics have continued to age year on year \u2013 the median age this season was 47.2 compared to a median age of 32.1 in its first season. The demographics also became \"whiter\" over time and less diverse. Nevertheless, in the 2010\u201311 television season, Fox maintained its lead on over other networks with its seventh consecutive season of victory overall in the 18\u201349 demographic ratings in the United States.\nThe eleventh season, however, suffered a steep drop in ratings, a drop attributed by some to the arrival of new shows such as \"The Voice\" and \"The X Factor\". The ratings for the first two episodes of the eleventh season fell 16\u201321% in overall viewer numbers and 24\u201327% in the 18/49 demo, while the season finale fell 27% in total viewer number and 30% in the 18\u201349 demo. The average viewership for the season fell below 20 million viewers the first time since 2003, a drop of 23% in total viewers and 30% in the 18/49 demo. For the first time in eight years, \"American Idol\" lost the leading position in both the total viewers number and the 18/49 demo, coming in second to \"NBC Sunday Night Football\", although the strengths of \"Idol\" in its second year in the Wednesday-Thursday primetime slots helped Fox achieve the longest period of 18\u201349 demographic victory in the Nielsen ratings, standing at 8 straight years from 2004 to 2012.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the twelfth season, which saw the show hitting a number of series low in the 18\u201349 demo. The finale had 7.2 million fewer viewers than the previous season, and saw a drop of 44% in the 18\u201349 demo. The season viewers averaged at 13.3 million, a drop of 24% from the previous season. The thirteenth season suffered a huge decline in the 18\u201349 demographic, a drop of 28% from the twelfth season, and \"American Idol\" lost its Top 10 position in the Nielsen ratings by the end of the 2013\u201314 television season for the first time since its entry to the rankings in 2003 as a result, and never regained its Top 10 position by the series' end in 2016.\nThe continuing decline influenced further changes for the fourteenth season, including the loss of Coca-Cola as the show's major sponsor, and a decision to only broadcast one, two-hour show per week during the top 12 rounds (with results from the previous week integrated into the performance show, rather than having a separate results show). On May 11, 2015, prior to the fourteenth-season finale, Fox announced that the fifteenth season of \"American Idol\" would be its last. Despite these changes, the show's ratings would decline more sharply. The fourteenth-season finale was the lowest-rated finale ever, with an average of only 8.03 million viewers watching the finale. The show's ratings, however, rebounded in its final season and ended its run in 2016 as Fox's first-ever program to conclude its run without dropping from the Nielsen Top 30 most-watched television shows in each of its seasons.\nFor the revived series on ABC, the ratings were lower but remained stable compared to previous seasons on Fox. The finale of the seventeenth season was slightly more watched than the sixteenth.\nCritical reception.\nEarly reviews were mixed in their assessment. Ken Tucker of \"Entertainment Weekly\" considered that \"As TV, \"American Idol\" is crazily entertaining; as music, it's dust-mote inconsequential\". Others, however, thought that \"the most striking aspect of the series was the genuine talent it revealed\". It was also described as a \"sadistic musical bake-off\", and \"a romp in humiliation\". Other aspects of the show have attracted criticisms. The product placement in the show in particular was noted, and some critics were harsh about what they perceived as its blatant commercial calculations \u2013 Karla Peterson of \"The San Diego Union-Tribune\" charged that \"American Idol\" is \"a conniving multimedia monster\" that has \"absorbed the sin of our debauched culture and spit them out in a lump of reconstituted evil\". The decision to send the first season winner to sing the national anthem at the Lincoln Memorial on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks in 2002 was also poorly received by many. Lisa de Moraes of \"The Washington Post\" noted sarcastically that \"The terrorists have won\" and, with a sideswipe at the show's commercialism and voting process, that the decision as to who \"gets to turn this important site into just another cog in the 'Great \"American Idol\" Marketing Mandala' is in the hands of the millions of girls who have made \"American Idol\" a hit. Them and a handful of phone-redialer geeks who have been clocking up to 10,000 calls each week for their contestant of choice (but who, according to Fox, are in absolutely no way skewing the outcome).\"\nSome of the later writers about the show were more positive, Michael Slezak, again of \"Entertainment Weekly\", thought that \"for all its bloated, synthetic, product-shilling, money-making trappings, \"Idol\" provides a once-a-year chance for the average American to combat the evils of today's music business.\" Singer Sheryl Crow, who was later to act as a mentor on the show, however took the view that the show \"undermines art in every way and promotes commercialism\". Pop music critic Ann Powers nevertheless suggested that Idol has \"reshaped the American songbook\", \"led us toward a new way of viewing ourselves in relationship to mainstream popular culture\", and connects \"the classic Hollywood dream to the multicentered popular culture of the future.\" Others focused on the personalities in the show; Ramin Setoodeh of \"Newsweek\" accused judge Simon Cowell's cruel critiques in the show of helping to establish in the wider world a culture of meanness, that \"Simon Cowell has dragged the rest of us in the mud with him.\" Some such as singer John Mayer disparaged the contestants, suggesting that those who appeared on \"Idol\" are not real artists with self-respect.\nSome in the entertainment industry were critical of the star-making aspect of the show. Usher, a mentor on the show, bemoaning the loss of the \"true art form of music\", thought that shows like \"American Idol\" made it seem \"so easy that everyone can do it, and that it can happen overnight\", and that \"television is a lie\". Musician Michael Feinstein, while acknowledging that the show had uncovered promising performers, said that \"American Idol\" \"isn't really about music. It's about all the bad aspects of the music business \u2013 the arrogance of commerce, this sense of 'I know what will make this person a star; artists themselves don't know.' \" That \"American Idol\" is seen to be a fast track to success for its contestants has been a cause of resentment for some in the industry. LeAnn Rimes, commenting on Carrie Underwood winning Best Female Artist in Country Music Awards over Faith Hill in 2006, said that \"Carrie has not paid her dues long enough to fully deserve that award\". It is a common theme that has been echoed by many others. Elton John, who had appeared as a mentor in the show but turned down an offer to be a judge on \"American Idol\", commenting on talent shows in general, said that \"there have been some good acts but the only way to sustain a career is to pay your dues in small clubs\". \"American Idol\" revolutionized American pop culture and the pop idol process and has provided an opportunity for many to bypass the small club scene and allow a much larger audience to participate in and select the next potential chart topping performer.\nThe success of the show's alumni, however, has led to a more positive assessment of the show, and the show was described as having \"proven it has a valid way to pick talent and a proven way to sell records\". While the industry is divided on the show success, its impact is felt particularly strongly in the country music format. According to a CMT exec, reflecting on the success of Idol alumni in the country genre, \"if you want to try and get famous fast by going to a cattle call audition on TV, Idol reasonably remains the first choice for anyone\", and that country music and Idol \"go together well\".\n\"American Idol\" was nominated for the Emmy's Outstanding Reality Competition Program for nine years but never won. Director Bruce Gower won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Series in 2009, and the show won a Creative Arts Emmys each in 2007 and 2008, three in 2009, and two in 2011, as well as a Governor's Award in 2007 for its Idol Gives Back edition. It won the People's Choice Award, which honors the popular culture of the previous year as voted by the public, for favorite competition/reality show in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2012. It won the first Critics' Choice Television Award in 2011 for Best Reality Competition.\nIn 2013, TV Guide ranked the series No. 48 on its list of the 60 Best Series of All Time.\nGeographical, ethnic, and gender bias.\nThroughout the series, twelve of the seventeen \"Idol\" winners, including its first five, had come from the Southern United States. A large number of other finalists during the series' run have also hailed from the American South, including Clay Aiken, Kellie Pickler, and Chris Daughtry, who are all from North Carolina. In 2012, an analysis of the 131 contestants who have appeared in the finals of all seasons of the show up to that point found that 48% have some connection to the Southern United States.\nThe show itself was popular in the Southern United States, with households in the Southeastern United States 10% more likely to watch \"American Idol\" during the eighth season in 2009, and those in the East Central region, such as Kentucky, were 16 percent more likely to tune into the series. Data from Nielsen SoundScan, a music-sales tracking service, showed that of the 47\u00a0million CDs sold by \"Idol\" contestants through January 2010, 85 percent were by contestants with ties to the American South.\nTheories given for the success of Southerners on \"Idol\" have been: more versatility with musical genres, as the Southern U.S. is home to several music genre scenes; not having as many opportunities to break into the pop music business; text-voting due to the South having the highest percentage of cell-phone only households; and the strong heritage of music and singing, which is notable in the Bible Belt, where it is in church that many people get their start in public singing. Others also suggest that the Southern character of these contestants appeal to the South, as well as local pride. According to fifth season winner Taylor Hicks, who is from the state of Alabama, \"People in the South have a lot of pride ... So, they're adamant about supporting the contestants who do well from their state or region.\"\nFor five consecutive seasons, starting in the seventh season, the title was given to a white male who plays the guitar \u2013 a trend that \"Idol\" pundits call the \"White guy with guitar\" or \"WGWG\" factor. Just hours before the eleventh-season finale, where Phillip Phillips was named the winner, Richard Rushfield, author of the book \"American Idol: The Untold Story\", said, \"You have this alliance between young girls and grandmas and they see it, not necessarily as a contest to create a pop star competing on the contemporary radio, but as ... who's the nicest guy in a popularity contest\", he says, \"And that has led to this dynasty of four, and possibly now five, consecutive, affable, very nice, good-looking white boys.\"\nStart order bias.\nSome fans call the final performance of the night the \"pimp spot\" because it usually receives a big boost in votes, due to the recency effect. By performing first, a performer may benefit from the primacy effect, but any other early performance may be stifled. The second performance spot is sometimes called the \"un-pimp spot\" because it is the least beneficial.\nControversy.\nThe show was criticized in earlier seasons over the onerous contract contestants had to sign that gave excessive control to 19 Entertainment over their future careers and handed a large part of their future earnings to the management.\nIndividual contestants have generated controversy in this competition for their past actions or for being 'ringers' planted by the producers. A number of contestants have been disqualified for various reasons, such as for having an existing contract or undisclosed criminal record, although the show has also been accused of a double standard for disqualifying some but not others.\nVoting results have been a consistent source of controversy. The mechanism of voting has aroused considerable criticism, most notably in the second season when Ruben Studdard beat Clay Aiken in a close vote, and in the eighth season, when the massive increase in text votes fueled the texting controversy. Concerns about power voting have been expressed from the first season. Since 2004, votes also have been affected to a limited degree by online communities such as DialIdol and Vote for the Worst.\nCultural impact.\nTelevision.\nThe enormous success of the show and the revenue it generated were transformative for the Fox Broadcasting Company. \"American Idol\" and other shows such as \"Survivor\" and \"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?\" were credited for expanding reality television programming in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s, and \"Idol\" became the most watched non-scripted primetime television series, which it remained for almost a decade, from 2003 to 2012, breaking records on U.S. television (dominated by drama shows and sitcoms in the preceding decades). On several occasions, notably in 2003 and 2008, \"American Idol\" overtook the Academy Awards as the most-watched non-sports entertainment event on U.S. television, marking the most recent time as of 2025 that a live regular non-sports primetime series has garnered such viewership in the country.\nThe show pushed Fox to become the number one U.S. TV network in overall viewers in 2008 and among adults aged 18\u201349, the key demographic coveted by advertisers, for an unprecedented eight consecutive years from 2005 to 2012. Its success also helped lift the ratings of other shows that were scheduled around it such as \"House\" and \"Bones\", and \"Idol\", for years, was Fox's strongest platform primetime television program for promoting eventual hit shows of the 2010s (of the same network) such as \"Glee\", \"New Girl\" and \"Empire\". The show, its creator Simon Fuller claimed, \"saved Fox\".\nThe show's massive success in the mid-2000s to early 2010s spawned a number of imitating singing-competition shows, such as \"Rock Star\", \"Nashville Star\", \"The Voice\", \"Rising Star\", \"The Sing-Off\", and \"The X Factor\". The number of imitative singing shows on American television had reached 17 by 2016. Its format also served as a blueprint for non-singing TV shows such as \"Dancing with the Stars\" and \"So You Think You Can Dance\", most of which contribute to the current highly competitive reality TV landscape on American television.\nMusic.\nAs one of the most successful shows on U.S. television history, \"American Idol\" has had a strong impact not just on television, but also in the wider world of entertainment. It helped create a number of highly successful recording artists, such as Kelly Clarkson, Daughtry and Carrie Underwood, as well as others of varying notability. The alumni of the show's original run scored 13 Grammy Award wins out of 54 Grammy nominations up to its end in 2016, with Underwood and Clarkson receiving 10 wins combined.\nVarious \"American Idol\" alumni had success on various record charts around the world; in the U.S. they had achieved 345 number ones on the \"Billboard\" charts in its first 10 years, and 458 by its last year of broadcast in 2016, with 100 achieved by Kelly Clarkson alone. According to Fred Bronson, author of books on the Billboard charts, no other entity has ever created as many hit-making artists and bestselling albums and singles. In 2007, \"American Idol\" alums accounted for 2.1% of all music sales. Its alumni have a massive impact on radio; in 2007, \"American Idol\" had become \"a dominant force in radio\" according to Rich Meyer, president of the radio station monitoring research company Mediabase. By 2010, four winners each had more than a million radio spins, with Kelly Clarkson leading the field with over four million spins.\nAt the end of the show's original run on Fox in 2016, \"Idol\"'s contestants have sold more than 60 million albums in the U.S. and more than 100 million records globally, more than 175 of which are certified platinum or gold. Its participants have generated more than 450 Billboard No. 1 hits and sold more than 260 million digital downloads.\nFilm and theater.\nThe impact of \"American Idol\" was also strongly felt in musical theater, where many of \"Idol\" alumni have forged successful careers. The striking effect of former \"American Idol\" contestants on Broadway has been noted and commented on. The casting of a popular \"Idol\" contestant can lead to significantly increased ticket sales. Other alumni have gone on to work in television and films, the most notable being Jennifer Hudson who, on the recommendation of the \"Idol\" vocal coach Debra Byrd, won a role in \"Dreamgirls\" and eventually went on to win an Academy Award for her performance. She later became the show's first and only alumnus ever to win the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). In all, as of 2025, \"American Idol\" finalists resulted to 5 Grammy Award winners (Clarkson, Barrino, Hudson, Underwood and Mandisa), 2 Emmy Award winners (Clarkson and Hudson), and an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Tony Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Critics' Choice Award winner (Hudson).\nIn 2007, a musical based on the show, \"\", played off-Broadway. The musical closed after its official opening night.\nRevenue and commercial ventures.\nThe dominance of \"American Idol\" in the ratings had made it the most profitable show in U.S. TV for many years. The show was estimated to generate $900\u00a0million for the year 2004 through sales of TV ads, albums, merchandise and concert tickets. By the seventh season, the show was estimated to earn around $900\u00a0million from its ad revenue alone, not including ancillary sponsorship deals and other income. One estimate puts the total TV revenue for the first eight seasons of \"American Idol\" at $6.4\u00a0billion. Sponsors that bought fully integrated packages can expect a variety of promotions of their products on the show, such as product placement, adverts and product promotion integrated into the show, and various promotional opportunities. Other off-air promotional partners pay for the rights to feature \"Idol\" branding on their packaging, products and marketing programs. \"American Idol\" also partnered with Disney in its theme park attraction The American Idol Experience.\nAdvertising revenue.\n\"American Idol\" became the most expensive series on broadcast networks for advertisers starting the fourth season, and by the next season, it had broken the record in advertising rate for a regularly scheduled prime-time network series, selling over $700,000 for a 30-seconds slot, and reaching up to $1.3\u00a0million for the finale. Its ad prices reached a peak in the seventh season at $737,000. Estimated revenue more than doubled from $404\u00a0million in the third season to $870\u00a0million in the sixth season. While that declined from the eighth season onwards, it still earned significantly more than its nearest competitor, with advertising revenue topping $800\u00a0million annually the next few seasons. However, the sharp drop in ratings in the eleventh season also resulted in a sharp drop in advertising rate for the twelfth season, and the show lost its leading position as the costliest show for advertisers. By 2014, ad revenue from had fallen to $427 million where a 30-second spot went for less than $300,000. For the relaunched \"Idol\" on ABC, it has been reported that a 30-second spot may cost between $120,000 and $160,000.\nMedia sponsorship.\nFord Motor Company and Coca-Cola were two of the first sponsors of \"American Idol\" in its first season. The sponsorship deal cost around $10\u00a0million in the first season, rising to $35\u00a0million by the seventh season, and between $50 and $60 million in the tenth season. The third major sponsor AT&T Wireless joined in the second season but ended after the twelfth season, and Coca-Cola officially ended its sponsorship after the thirteenth season amidst the declining ratings of \"Idol\" in the mid-2010s. iTunes sponsored the show since the seventh season.\n\"American Idol\" prominent display of its sponsors' logo and products had been noted since the early seasons. By the sixth season, \"Idol\" showed 4,349 product placements according to Nielsen Media Research. The branded entertainment integration proved beneficial to its advertisers \u2013 promotion of AT&T text-messaging as a means to vote successfully introduced the technology into the wider culture, and Coca-Cola has seen its equity increased during the show.\nCoca-Cola's archrival PepsiCo declined to sponsor \"American Idol\" at the show's start. What the \"Los Angeles Times\" later called \"missing one of the biggest marketing opportunities in a generation\" contributed to Pepsi losing market share, by 2010 falling to third place from second in the United States. PepsiCo sponsored the American version of Cowell's \"The X Factor\" in hopes of not repeating its \"Idol\" mistake until its cancellation.\nFor the revived series on ABC, Macy's and Johnson & Johnson's Zyrtec signed on as the major sponsors of the show.\nAmerican Idol tour.\nThe top ten (eleven in the tenth season, five in the fourteenth season, and seven in the sixteenth season) toured at the end of every season except for the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons. In the twelfth season tour a semi-finalist who won a sing-off was also added to the tour. Kellogg's Pop-Tarts was the sponsor for the first seven seasons, and Guitar Hero was added for the seventh season tour. M&M's Pretzel Chocolate Candies was a sponsor of the ninth season tour. The fifth season tour was the most successful tour with gross of over $35\u00a0million. However no concert tour was organized in the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons, the only seasons not to have an associated tour. The sixteenth season tour featured the band In Real Life as an opener on select dates.\n\"Idol Gives Back\".\n\"Idol Gives Back\" was a special charity event started in season six featuring performances by celebrities and various fund-raising initiatives. This event was also held in seasons seven and nine and has raised nearly $185\u00a0million in total.\nMusic releases.\n\"American Idol\" has traditionally released studio recordings of contestants' performances as well as the winner's coronation single for sale. For the first five seasons, the recordings were released as a compilation album at the end of the season. All five of these albums reached the top ten in Billboard 200 which made \"American Idol\" the most successful soundtrack franchise of any motion picture or television program. Starting late in the fifth season, individual performances were released during the season as digital downloads, initially from the \"American Idol\" official website only. In the seventh season the live performances and studio recordings were made available during the season from iTunes when it joined as a sponsor. In the tenth season the weekly studio recordings were also released as compilation digital album straight after performance night.\n19 Recordings, a recording label owned by 19 Entertainment, currently hold the rights to phonographic material recorded by all the contestants. 19 Recordings originally partnered with Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) to promote and distribute the recordings through its labels RCA Records, Arista Records, J Records, and Jive Records. From 2005\u20132007, BMG partnered with Sony Music Entertainment to form a joint venture known as Sony BMG Music Entertainment. From 2008 to 2010, following their acquisition of BMG, Sony Music handled the distribution of \"American Idol\"'s music. In 2010, UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records replaced Sony as the music label for \"American Idol\".\nTie-ins.\n\"American Idol\" video games\nTheme park attraction.\nOn February 14, 2009, The Walt Disney Company debuted \"The American Idol Experience\" at its Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. In this live production, co-produced by 19 Entertainment, park guests chose from a list of songs and auditioned privately for Disney cast members. Those selected then performed on a stage in a 1000-seat theater replicating the \"Idol\" set. Three judges, whose mannerisms and style mimicked those of the real \"Idol\" judges, critiqued the performances. Audience members then voted for their favorite performer. There were several preliminary-round shows during the day that culminated in a \"finals\" show in the evening where one of the winners of the previous rounds that day was selected as the overall winner. The winner of the finals show received a \"Dream Ticket\" that granted them front-of-the-line privileges at any future \"American Idol\" audition. The attraction closed on August 30, 2014.\nOther broadcasts.\n\"American Idol\" is broadcast to over 100 nations worldwide. In most nations these are not live broadcasts and may be tape delayed by several days or weeks, except for other season finales that are aired live in several countries simulcast with the U.S. broadcast on Fox (2002\u20132016) and ABC (since 2018). In Canada, the first thirteen seasons of American Idol were aired live countrywide by CTV and/or CTV Two, in simulcast with Fox. CTV dropped \"Idol\" after its thirteenth season and in August 2014, Yes TV announced that it had picked up Canadian rights to \"American Idol\" beginning in its 2015 season. In 2017, it was announced the show would return to CTV Two for its sixteenth season. Since season nineteen, the show started airing on Citytv. In Slovakia, American Idol was broadcast on Jednotka.\nIn Latin America, the show is broadcast and subtitled by Sony Entertainment Television. In Southeast Asia, it is broadcast by Sony Channel every Monday and Tuesday nine or ten hours after since its revival. In Philippines, it is aired every Thursday and Friday nine or ten hours after its United States telecast; from 2004 to 2007 on ABC; 2008\u201311 on QTV, then GMA News TV; 2012\u201316, 2018\u201319 on ETC; and since 2024 on TV5. In Indonesia, it was aired on RCTI in the 2002 to 2003 season with the Indonesian subtitles, before Indonesian Idol was held in the 2004, aired after each episode ended, and in the 2011 to 2013 season it was broadcast by B-Channel (now RTV). In Australia, it aired a few hours after the U.S. telecast. It was aired on Network Ten from 2002 to 2008 and then again in 2013. Between 2008 and 2012 it aired on Fox8 and the thirteenth and fourteenth seasons (2014\u201315) it aired on digital channel, Eleven, a sister channel to Network Ten. Its final season (2016) aired on Fox8 hours after the original U.S. broadcast. The show enjoyed a lot of popularity in Australia throughout the 2000s before declining in the ratings. In the United Kingdom, episodes were aired one day after the U.S. broadcast on digital channel ITV2. In the twelfth season, the episodes aired on 5*. It was also aired in Ireland on TV3 two days after the telecast. In Brazil and Israel, the show airs two days after its original broadcast, and broadcast live during the season finale. In the instances where the airing is delayed, the shows may sometimes be combined into one episode to summarize the results. In Italy, the twelfth season was broadcast by La3. In Singapore, The show was broadcast on Mediacorp Channel 5 for the ninth and tenth seasons.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1706918": "A Moment Like This\n2002 single by Kelly Clarkson\n\"A Moment Like This\" is the debut single by American singer Kelly Clarkson. The song was written by J\u00f6rgen Elofsson and John Reid from British house music project Nightcrawlers and produced by Stephen Ferrera and Steve Mac. It was released as a double A-side with \"Before Your Love\" as her coronation single after winning the first season of \"American Idol.\" The song was later included on her debut studio album, \"Thankful\" (2003). \"A Moment Like This\" was a huge hit in North America, topping the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and Canadian Singles Chart.\nIn 2006, the song was recorded and released by British singer Leona Lewis, the winner of the third series of \"The X Factor.\" Her version was the Christmas number one for 2006, outselling the rest of the top 40 combined. Lewis' version has sold 914,000 copies as of 2015.\nBackground.\nThe song was co-written by J\u00f6rgen Elofsson and John Reid (of dance act Nightcrawlers), produced by Stephen Ferrera and Steve Mac, and mixed by Andy Zulla. It was written to be the first single for the winner of the first season of \"American Idol\". As a result, the four remaining finalists, Kelly Clarkson, Justin Guarini, Nikki McKibbin, and Tamyra Gray each recorded a version of the song in case they won. The song was first revealed to the public when Guarini and Clarkson competed in a final showdown while singing this song, along with another track, \"Before Your Love\". After the American public had voted, Guarini performed the song (and Clarkson performed \"Before Your Love\") at the final show before the results were revealed. When Clarkson was announced as the winner, she became emotional, and sang the song as her final performance.\n\"Before Your Love\", was also given to radio and had a video shot, which debuted on MTV's \"Total Request Live\" before \"A Moment Like This\" did; however, it failed to achieve the level of success of \"A Moment Like This\", but shares the Gold certification as a double-a sided single.\n\"A Moment Like This/Before Your Love\" was certified gold by RIAA on October 18, 2002. As of June 4, 2009, the single has sold approximately 1,047,000 copies.\nOn March 5, 2013, \"Billboard\" ranked the song number 11 in its list of Top 100 American Idol Hits of All Time.\nComposition.\nThe song moves at a tempo of 73 beats per minute in common time. The first two verses are in the key of E flat minor, and the chorus after each verse transitions to A flat major. The final chorus transposes to B flat major. Clarkson's vocals span from A\u266d3 to F5.\nCritical reception.\nThis song received moderately positive reviews. \"Entertainment Weekly\" editor Henry Goldblatt wrote about Clarkson's performance of the song on \"American Idol\": \"the woman whose tears during her winning rendition of \"A Moment Like This\" were so heartfelt, grown men cried along with her.\" David Browne, also of \"Entertainment Weekly\", wrote: \"A choir at the end of \"A Moment Like This\" is meant to indicate earthiness.\" Arion Berger of \"Rolling Stone\" wrote that this song \"signaled that Kelly might be headed toward the Mariah-Whitney-Celine radio-ballad sausage mill.\" Sal Cinquemani of \"Slant Magazine\" wrote that this song is \"Adult Contemporary goo. AllMusic senior editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote that the song \"may have been a number one hit, but it was such a staid adult contemporary tune that it suggested that her career was over before it really began, since it was not a work that played to her age or audience, and it gave her no room to grow.\" He also marked this song as a standout on album \"Thankful\". \"The Huffington Post\" ranked the song at number 11 on \"The 33 Greatest Pop Divas' Debut Singles\" list.\nChart performance.\nAs the first single ever from \"American Idol\", much pressure was put on \"A Moment Like This\" to perform well. The debut single from Will Young, the winner of the United Kingdom's \"Pop Idol\" (the forerunner to \"American Idol\"), sold 1.2 million copies in its first week, becoming the fastest-selling British debut single of all time; however, critics argued that the American singles market was different from the British market. The single became a hit in the U.S., debuting at number 60 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 on September 21, 2002, and reaching number one on its third week on the chart. It sold 236,000 in its first week. It topped the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 for two consecutive weeks and remained on the chart for 20 consecutive weeks. Sales of the commercial single also helped the song (as evidenced by its number-one peak on the Hot 100 Singles Sales) break records.\nOn the \"Billboard\" issue dated October 5, 2002, the song topped the Hot 100 chart with a single-week jump of 51 positions, the largest single-week jump to number one on the Hot 100. She held that record until Maroon 5's \"Makes Me Wonder\" single-week jump 63 positions to number one, on May 12, 2007. Clarkson would break the record again when her song \"My Life Would Suck Without You\" jumped 96 spots from 97 to 1 on February 7, 2009.\nMusic video.\nThe music video for \"A Moment Like This\" was directed by Antti J. It has Clarkson exploring a vacant theatre, where she takes the stage to sing and perform the song. Clips of her singing on \"American Idol\" and getting emotional when she won the competition are also shown.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nLeona Lewis version.\nRelease.\nIn December 2006, British singer Leona Lewis, who went on to win the third series of \"The X Factor\", covered \"A Moment Like This\" as her debut single. Lewis was chosen as the winner on the night of December 16, when the live finale aired. The cover was made available for digital download the following day. The physical single was rush-released on Wednesday, December 20\u2013which was unusual as most new singles were released on Mondays to gain maximum amount of sales for the UK Singles Chart the following Sunday\u2013due to Lewis being crowned only four days prior.\nAccolades.\nIn January 2007, \"A Moment Like This\" was shortlisted for the British Single award at the 2007 Brit Awards. It made it to the second round but was eliminated and did not make it to the final selection. In May, it won the Ivor Novello Award for Best-Selling British Single.\nCommercial performance.\nLewis' version of \"A Moment Like This\" broke a world record after it was downloaded 50,000 times within just 30 minutes of release. It sold over 101,000 copies on its first day on sale, setting the record for the fastest-selling \"The X Factor\" winner's single. The song debuted atop the UK Singles Chart dated December 30, thus becoming the Christmas number one for 2006, and spent three additional weeks at the summit. It went on to become the most downloaded song and the second best-selling single of 2006 in the United Kingdom.\n\"A Moment Like This\" peaked atop the Irish Singles Chart, staying at the summit for six weeks. On January 4, 2007, it peaked at number three on the European Hot 100 Singles. The single was certified platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) on January 5. After the release of Lewis's second single \"Bleeding Love\", \"A Moment Like This\" re-entered the UK Singles Chart at number 55 on October 28. According to the Official Charts Company (OCC), the single has sold 943,000 copies in the UK as of December 2015.\nMusic video.\nThe accompanying music video for \"A Moment Like This\" was directed by JT. Like Clarkson's, it's simple, featuring Lewis singing the song on a stage. It also features several clips from Lewis' time on \"The X Factor\", from her first audition to the moment she was announced as the winner. Simon Cowell, Sharon Osbourne, Louis Walsh, Kate Thornton and Ray Quinn are all featured within \"The X Factor\" clips.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\n "}, "descending_order": ["1706918", "191890"], "permutation_1": ["1706918", "191890"], "permutation_2": ["1706918", "191890"], "permutation_3": ["191890", "1706918"]}
{"id": "2hop__766470_134984", "docs_added": {"273777": "John Cassavetes\nAmerican filmmaker and actor (1929\u20131989)\nJohn Nicholas Cassavetes (December 9, 1929 \u2013 February 3, 1989) was an American filmmaker and actor. He began as an actor in film and television before helping to pioneer modern American independent cinema as a writer and director, often self-financing, producing, and distributing his own films. He received nominations for three Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and an Emmy Award.\nAfter studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Cassavetes started his career in television acting in numerous network dramas. From 1959 to 1960 he played the title role in the NBC detective series \"Johnny Staccato\". He acted in notable films, such as Martin Ritt's film noir \"Edge of the City\" (1957), Robert Aldrich's war film \"The Dirty Dozen\" (1967), Roman Polanski's horror film \"Rosemary's Baby\" (1968) and Elaine May's crime drama \"Mikey and Nicky\" (1976). For \"The Dirty Dozen\", he earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.\nAs a director, Cassavetes became known for a string of critically acclaimed independent dramas including \"Shadows\" (1959), \"Faces\" (1968), \"Husbands\" (1970), \"A Woman Under the Influence\" (1974), \"Opening Night\" (1977), and \"Love Streams\" (1984). His films employed an actor-centered approach which prioritized raw character relationships and \"small feelings\" while rejecting traditional Hollywood storytelling, method acting, and stylization. His films became associated with an improvisational aesthetic and a cin\u00e9ma v\u00e9rit\u00e9 feel. He received Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay (\"Faces\") and Best Director (\"A Woman Under the Influence\").\nHe frequently collaborated with American actress Gena Rowlands (to whom he was married from 1954 until his death in 1989) and friends Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara, and Seymour Cassel. Many of his films were shot and edited in his and Rowlands' own Los Angeles home. \nHe and Rowlands had a son named Nick and two daughters, named Alexandra and Zoe, all of whom followed them into acting and filmmaking.\nEarly life and education.\nJohn Nicholas Cassavetes was born in New York City on December 9, 1929, the son of Greek-American actress Katherine Cassavetes (n\u00e9e Demetriou), who was later featured in some of his films, and Greek immigrant Nicholas John Cassavetes. His early years were spent with his family in Greece; when he returned to New York at the age of seven, he spoke no English. He was then raised on Long Island, where he attended Paul D. Schreiber Senior High School (then known as Port Washington High School) from 1945 to 1947 and participated in \"Port Weekly\" (the school paper), \"Red Domino\" (interclass play), football, and the \"Port Light\" (yearbook).\nCassavetes attended Blair Academy in New Jersey and spent a semester at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont, but was expelled due to his failing grades. He spent a few weeks hitchhiking to Florida and then transferred to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, encouraged by recently enrolled friends who told him the school was \"packed with girls\". He graduated in 1950 and met his future wife Gena Rowlands at her audition to enter the Academy in 1953. They were married four months later in 1954. He continued acting in the theater, took small parts in films, and began working on television in anthology series such as \"Alcoa Theatre\".\nCareer.\nActing workshop.\nBy 1956, Cassavetes had begun teaching an alternative to method acting in his own workshop\u2014co-founded with friend Burt Lane in New York City\u2014in which performance would be based on character creation rather than back-story or narrative requirements. Cassavetes particularly scorned Lee Strasberg's Method-based Actors Studio, and the Cassavetes-Lane approach held that acting should be an expression of creative joy rather than the \"moody, broody anguish\" associated with Strasberg's teaching.\nShortly after opening the workshop, Cassavetes was invited to audition at the Actors Studio, and he and Lane devised a prank: they claimed to be performing a scene from a recent stage production but in fact improvised a performance on the spot, fooling an impressed Strasberg. Cassavetes then fabricated a story about his financial troubles, prompting Strasberg to offer him a full scholarship to the Studio; Cassavetes immediately rejected it, feeling that Strasberg did not know anything about acting if he had been so easily fooled by the two ruses.\nAn improvisation exercise in the workshop inspired the idea for his writing and directorial debut, \"Shadows\" (1959; first version 1957). Cassavetes raised the funds for the production from friends and family, as well as listeners to Jean Shepherd's late-night radio talk-show \"Night People\". His stated purpose was to make a film about modest-income \u201clittle people\u201d, unlike Hollywood studio productions, which focused on stories about wealthy people. Cassavetes was unable to gain American distribution of \"Shadows\", but it won the Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival. European distributors later released the movie in the United States as an import. Although the box-office returns of \"Shadows\" in the United States were slight, it did gain attention from the Hollywood studios.\nTelevision and acting jobs.\nCassavetes played bit-parts in B pictures and in television serials, until gaining notoriety in 1955 as a vicious killer in \"The Night Holds Terror,\" and as a juvenile delinquent in the live TV drama \"Crime in the Streets\". Cassavetes would repeat this performance credited as an \u201cintroducing\u201d lead in the 1956 film version, which also included another future director, Mark Rydell, as his gang mate. His first starring role in a feature film was \"Edge of the City\" (1957), which co-starred Sidney Poitier. He was briefly under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and co-starred with Robert Taylor in the western \"Saddle the Wind\", written by Rod Serling. In the late 1950s, Cassavetes guest-starred in Beverly Garland's groundbreaking crime drama, \"Decoy\", about a New York City woman police undercover detective. Thereafter, he played Johnny Staccato, the title character in a television series about a jazz pianist who also worked as a private detective. In total he directed five episodes of the series, which also features a guest appearance by his wife Gena Rowlands. It was broadcast on NBC between September 1959 and March 1960, and then acquired by ABC; although critically acclaimed, the series was cancelled in September 1960. Cassavetes would appear on the NBC interview program, \"Here's Hollywood\".\n1960s.\nIn 1961 Cassavetes signed a seven-year deal with Paramount. Cassavetes directed two movies for Hollywood in the early 1960s: \"Too Late Blues\" (1961); \"A Child Is Waiting (1963)\" starring Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland. He starred in the CBS western series \"Rawhide\" in the episode \"Incident Near Gloomy River\" (1961). In the 1963\u20131964 season he was cast in the ABC medical drama about psychiatry, \"Breaking Point\". In 1964, he again co-starred with his wife, this time in an episode of \"The Alfred Hitchcock Hour\" anthology program, and in 1965, he appeared on ABC's western series, \"The Legend of Jesse James\". In the same year, he also guest-starred in the World War II series \"Combat!\", in the episode \"S.I.W.\", and as the insane nuclear scientist Everett Lang in \"Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea\", season 2, episode \"The Peacemaker\".\nWith payment for his work on television, as well as a handful of film acting jobs, he was able to relocate to California and to make his subsequent films independent of any studio, as \"Shadows\" had been made. The films in which he acted with this intention include Don Siegel's \"The Killers\" (1964), the motorcycle gang movie \"Devil's Angels\" (1967), \"The Dirty Dozen\" (1967), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, the Guy Woodhouse lead (originally intended for Robert Redford) in Roman Polanski's \"Rosemary's Baby\" (1968), and \"The Fury\" (1978). Cassavetes portrayed the murderer in a 1972 episode of the TV crime series \"Columbo\", titled \"\u00c9tude in Black\". Cassavetes and series star Peter Falk had previously starred together in the 1969 mob action thriller \"Machine Gun McCain\". The two later starred in Elaine May's film \"Mikey and Nicky\" (1976).\n\"Faces\" (1968) was the second film to be both directed and independently financed by Cassavetes. The film starred his wife Gena Rowlands\u2014whom he had married during his struggling actor days\u2014John Marley, Seymour Cassel and Val Avery, as well as several first-time actors, such as lead actress Lynn Carlin and industry fringies like Vince Barbi. It depicts the slow disintegration of a contemporary marriage. The film reportedly took three years to make, and was made largely in the Cassavetes home. \"Faces\" was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress. Around this time, Cassavetes formed \"Faces International\" as a distribution company to handle all of his films.\n1970s.\nIn 1970, Cassavetes directed and acted in \"Husbands\", with actors Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara. They played a trio of married men on a spree in New York and London after the funeral of one of their best friends. Cassavetes stated that this was a personal film for him; his elder brother had died at the age of 30.\n\"Minnie and Moskowitz\" (1971), about two unlikely lovers, featured Rowlands and Cassel. \"A Woman Under the Influence\" (1974) stars Rowlands as an increasingly troubled housewife. Rowlands received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, while Cassavetes was nominated for Best Director. In \"The Killing of a Chinese Bookie\" (1976), Gazzara plays a small-time strip-club owner with an out-of-control gambling habit, pressured by mobsters to commit a murder to pay off his debt.\nIn \"Opening Night\" (1977), Rowlands plays the lead alongside Cassavetes; the film also stars Gazzara and Joan Blondell. Rowlands portrays an aging film star named Myrtle Gordon, who is working in the theater and suffering a personal crisis. Alone and unloved by her colleagues, afraid of aging and always removed from others due to her stardom, she succumbs to alcohol and hallucinations after witnessing a young fan accidentally die. Ultimately, Gordon fights through it all, delivering the performance of her life in a play. Rowlands won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 28th Berlin International Film Festival for her performance.\n1980s.\nCassavetes directed the film \"Gloria\" (1980), featuring Rowlands as a Mob moll who tries to protect an orphan boy whom the Mob wants to kill, which earned her another Best Actress nomination. In 1982, Cassavetes starred in Paul Mazursky's \"Tempest,\" which co-starred Rowlands, Susan Sarandon, Molly Ringwald, Ra\u00fal Juli\u00e1 and Vittorio Gassman.\nCassavetes penned the stage play \"Knives\", the earliest version of which he allowed to be published in the 1978 premiere issue of \"On Stage\", the quarterly magazine of the American Community Theatre Association, a division of the American Theatre Association. The play was produced and directed as one of his \"Three Plays of Love and Hate\" at Hollywood, California's Center Theater in 1981. The trio of plays included versions of Canadian playwright Ted Allan's \"The Third Day Comes\" and \"Love Streams,\" the latter of which served as the blueprint for Cassavetes' 1984 film of the same name.\nCassavetes made the Cannon Films-financed \"Love Streams\" (1984), which featured him as an aging playboy who suffers the overbearing affection of his recently divorced sister. It was entered into the 34th Berlin International Film Festival where it won the Golden Bear. The film is often considered Cassavetes' \"last film\" in that it brought together many aspects of his previous films. He despised the film \"Big Trouble\" (1986), which he took over during filming from Andrew Bergman, who wrote the original screenplay. Cassavetes came to refer to the film as \"The aptly titled 'Big Trouble,'\" since the studio vetoed many of his decisions for the film and eventually edited most of it in a way with which Cassavetes disagreed.\nIn January 1987, Cassavetes was facing health problems, but he wrote the three-act play \"Woman of Mystery\" and brought it to the stage in May and June at the Court Theatre, Los Angeles.\nCassavetes worked during the last year of his life to produce a last film that was to be titled \"She's Delovely\". He was in talks with Sean Penn to star, though legal and financial hurdles proved insurmountable and the project was forgotten about until after Cassavetes' death, when his son Nick finally directed it as \"She's So Lovely\" (1997).\nFilmmaking style.\nCassavetes spent the majority of his directing career working 'off the grid' and in a communal atmosphere \"unfettered by the commercial concerns of Hollywood.\" His films aim to capture \"small feelings\" often repressed by Hollywood filmmaking, emphasizing intimate character examination and relationships rather than plot, backstory, or stylization. He often presented difficult characters whose behaviors were not easily understood, rejecting simplistic psychological or narrative explanations for their actions. Cassavetes also disregarded the \"impressionistic cinematography, linear editing, and star-centred scene making\" fashionable in Hollywood and art films. Often unable to interest Hollywood studios in financing his work, Cassavetes typically worked with small but dedicated crew of friends and technicians. He said: \"The hardest thing for a film-maker, or a person like me, is to find people \u2026 who really want to do something.\"\nCassavetes worked to create a comfortable and informal environment where actors could freely experiment with their performances and go beyond acting clich\u00e9s or \"programmed behaviors.\" He dismissed Method acting as \"more a form of psychotherapy than of acting\" which resulted in sentimental cliches and self-indulgent emotion. Instead, he held that acting should be an expression of creative joy and exuberance, with emphasis put on the character's creation of \"masks\" in the process of interacting with other people. Cassavetes also said that he strove \"to put [actors] in a position where they may make asses of themselves without feeling they're revealing things that will eventually be used against them.\" He frequently filmed scenes in long, uninterrupted takes, explaining that:The drama of the scenes comes naturally from the real passage of time lived by the actors [...] The camera isn't content to just follow the characters' words and actions. I focus in on specific gestures and mannerisms. It's from focusing on these little things\u2014the moods, silences, pauses, or anxious moments\u2014that the form arises.\nCassavetes also rejected the dominance of the director's singular vision, instead believing each character must be the actor's \"individual creation\" and refusing to explain the characters to his actors in any significant detail. He claimed that \"stylistic unity drains the humanity out of a text [...] The stories of many different and potentially inarticulate people are more interesting than a contrived narrative that exists only in one articulate man's imagination.\" The manner in which Cassavetes employed improvisation is frequently misunderstood: with the exception of the original version of \"Shadows\", his films were tightly scripted. However, he allowed actors to interpret characters in their own way, and often rewrote scripts based on the results of rehearsals and performances. He explained that \"I believe in improvising on the basis of the written word and not on undisciplined creativity.\"\nCassavetes worked with jazz musicians Charles Mingus and Shafi Hadi to provide the score for \"Shadows\". Mingus's friend, Diane Dorr-Dorynek, described Cassavetes' approach to film-making in jazz terms:\nThe script formed the skeleton around which the actors might change or ad lib lines according to their response to the situation at the moment, so that each performance was slightly different. A jazz musician works in this way, using a given musical skeleton and creating out of it, building a musical whole related to a particular moment by listening to and interacting with his fellow musicians. Jazz musicians working with actors could conceivably provide audiences with some of the most moving and alive theater they have ever experienced.\nWhen asked by Andr\u00e9 S. Labarthe during the making of \"Faces\" whether he had the desire to make a musical film, Cassavetes responded he wanted to make only one musical, Dostoyevsky's \"Crime and Punishment\". Cassavetes was passionate about a wide range of music, from jazz to classical to rock, saying \"I like all music. It makes you feel like living. Silence is death.\"\nCassavetes worked with composer Bo Harwood from 1970 to 1984 on six films in several different capacities, even though Harwood had initially only signed on to do \"a little editing\" for \"Husbands\", and \"a little sound editing\" for \"Minnie and Moskowitz\". Harwood composed poignant music for Cassavetes' following three films, and was also credited as \"Sound\" for two of them. During these projects Harwood wrote several songs, some with Cassavetes contributing lyrics and rudimentary tunes. During his work with Cassavetes, Harwood claimed the notoriously unpredictable director preferred to use the \"scratch track\" version of his compositions, rather than to let Harwood refine and re-record them with an orchestra. Some of these scratch tracks were recorded in Cassavetes' office, with piano or guitar, as demos, and then eventually ended up in the final film. While this matched the raw, unpolished feel that marks most of Cassavetes' films, Harwood was sometimes surprised and embarrassed.\nThe relationship between Harwood and Cassavetes ended amicably. When asked by documentarian Michael Ventura during the making of Cassavetes' last film \"Love Streams\", what he had learned from working with Cassavetes, Harwood replied:\nI learned a lot through John. I've done a lot of editing for him. Picture editing, sound editing, music editing, shot sound, composed score, and I've learned a lot about integrity ... I think you know what I mean. You know, thirty years from now, I can say I rode with Billy the Kid.\nPersonal life.\nMarriage.\nCassavetes was married to American actress Gena Rowlands from 1954 until his death in 1989. Many of his films were shot and edited in his and Rowlands' own Los Angeles home. He and Rowlands had a son named Nick and two daughters named Alexandra and Zoe, all of whom followed them into acting and filmmaking.\nDeath.\nA long-time alcoholic, Cassavetes died in Los Angeles from complications of cirrhosis at the age of 59 on February 3, 1989. He is buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park cemetery in Los Angeles.\nAt the time of his death, Cassavetes had amassed a collection of more than 40 unproduced screenplays, as well as a novel, \"Husbands\". He also left three unproduced plays: \"Sweet Talk\", \"Entrances and Exits\", and \"Begin the Beguine\", the last of which, in German translation, was co-produced by Needcompany of Belgium and Burgtheater of Vienna, and premiered on stage at Vienna's Akademietheater in 2014.\nLegacy and reception.\nCassavetes is the subject of several biographies. \"Cassavetes on Cassavetes\" is a collection of interviews collected or conducted by Boston University film scholar Ray Carney, in which the filmmaker recalled his experiences, influences, and outlook on the film industry. In the 2005 Hollywood issue of \"Vanity Fair\", one article features a tribute to Cassavetes by three members of his stock company, Rowlands, Gazzara, and Falk.\nMany of Cassavetes' films are owned by Faces Distribution, a company overseen by Gena Rowlands and Julian Schlossberg, distributed by Jumer Films (Schlossberg's own company), with additional sales and distribution by Janus Films. In September 2004, The Criterion Collection produced a Region 1 DVD box set of his five independent films: \"Shadows\", \"Faces\", \"A Woman Under the Influence\", \"The Killing of a Chinese Bookie\" and \"Opening Night\". Also featured in the set is a documentary about the life and works of Cassavetes, \"A Constant Forge\", a booklet featuring critical assessments of the director's work and tributes by old friends. Criterion released a Blu-ray version of the set in October 2013. In 2005, a box set of the same films was released in Region 2 by Optimum Releasing. The Optimum DVD of \"Shadows\" has a voice-over commentary by Seymour Cassel. Then, in 2014, the Faces/Jumer library became the property of Shout! Factory, which acquired the films' holding parent company, Westchester Films.\nCassavetes' son Nick followed in his father's footsteps as an actor and director, adapting the \"She's Delovely\" screenplay his father had written into the 1997 film \"She's So Lovely\", which starred Sean Penn, as John Cassavetes had wanted. Alexandra Cassavetes directed the documentary \"\" in 2004, and in 2006 served as 2nd Unit Director on her brother Nick's film, \"Alpha Dog\". Cassavetes' younger daughter Zoe wrote and directed the 2007 film \"Broken English\", featuring Rowlands and Parker Posey.\n\"The New Yorker\" wrote that Cassavetes \"may be the most influential American director of the last half century\"\u2014this in announcing that all the films he directed, plus others he acted in, were being screened in a retrospective tribute at the Brooklyn Academy of Music throughout July 2013. AllMovie called Cassavetes \"an iconoclastic maverick\".\nThe Independent Spirit Awards named one of their categories after Cassavetes, the Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award. A one-person show about John Cassavetes titled \"Independent\" premiered at Essential Theatre in Atlanta in August 2017. The play was written by John D. Babcock III and starred actor Dan Triandiflou as Cassavetes. The song \"What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?\" by the band Le Tigre is about misogynistic themes within John Cassavetes' films and whether they can still be praised after those themes are identified. The song \"Cassavetes\" by the band Fugazi parallels John Cassavetes' independence from the film industry with the band's own independence from the record industry. In concert, singer Guy Picciotto introduced it as \"a song about making your own road.\"\nFilmography.\nAs director\nAwards and nominations.\nAs a filmmaker, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for \"Faces\" (1968) and the Academy Award for Best Director for \"A Woman Under the Influence\" (1974). The Independent Spirit Awards named the John Cassavetes Award in his honor.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "5882475": "Minnie and Moskowitz\n1971 film by John Cassavetes\nMinnie and Moskowitz is a 1971 American romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by John Cassavetes and starring his wife Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel in the title roles of Minnie and Moskowitz, respectively.\nPlot.\nSeymour Moskowitz is an eccentric and uncouth parking attendant who has just moved from New York City to Los Angeles. Minnie Moore is a museum curator in an abusive relationship with a married man named Jim. Following their fight, she becomes disillusioned with love and meaningful relationships. Minnie talks with her co-worker and friend Florence about getting older and her chances of finding the right man.\nThe next day, Florence sets Minnie up on a blind date with a bitter and loudmouthed widower, Zelmo. The date goes badly and ends with Zelmo chasing her out of the restaurant. Seymour, working the parking lot, witnesses the commotion and engages in a physical altercation with Zelmo. Seymour wins the fight, bloodying Zelmo's face, and Zelmo drives away crying, stranding Minnie. Seymour offers to give her a ride, which she refuses, but he pursues her in his truck and forces her inside. He drives her to her workplace, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Jim is waiting inside with his son and ends the relationship, revealing that his wife has attempted suicide. Infuriated and hurt, Minnie slaps Jim.\nSeymour appears at Minnie's house to confront her about costing him his job at the parking lot. He takes her to a bar for a drink and then proclaims his love for her at a hot-dog stand. He berates her for taking herself too seriously when she does not return his affections. After leaving Minnie, Seymour brings a woman to his apartment who stays overnight.\nSeymour takes Minnie to an ice-cream parlor and a country-and-western bar. In the parking lot, they dance to the music and kiss. When Minnie fails to introduce Seymour to her wealthy friends on the way into the bar, he angrily drives away and strands her, just as Zelmo had done. A wealthy male friend drives her home, where Seymour is waiting. The men fight, injuring Minnie in the process.\nSeymour brings Minnie inside to recover, where she admits that she does not see a future with Seymour. Insisting that they are meant for each other, he threatens to kill himself and then cuts his walrus moustache in a frenzy. Minnie finally agrees to marry him and tells her mother about the news. Minnie and Seymour go to dinner with their mothers, who are hesitant and dubious about the marriage. Seymour's mother calls him a \"bum\" and tells Minnie that she could do much better than her son. Minnie's mother is overwhelmed and nearly speechless at the abruptness of the news and Seymour's appearance and personality.\nMinnie and Seymour marry, laughing as the minister forgets his lines and fumbles for his notes. A flashforward shows a sunny backyard birthday party, possibly for their own child.\nCast.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>* Gena Rowlands as Minnie Moore\nProduction.\n\"Minnie and Moskowitz\" is among a small number of low-budget (less than $1 million) films bankrolled by Universal Studios in the early 1970s in an attempt to copy the success of \"Easy Rider\". Several months after the film's release, Universal Studios shortened the film's running time by excising a scene near the beginning of the film, but doing so violated the studio's contract with Cassavetes. All releases (including the DVD) since that time are missing this scene.\nPrincipal photography took place from late March to mid-Jun 1971 in Los Angeles and New York City.\nReception.\nThe film received generally positive reviews. In 1973, Cassavetes was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen.\nOn the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 82% based on 17 reviews, with an average rating of 7.4/10.\nIn other media.\nThe characters Big John and Little John spend Halloween night smoking marijuana and watching \"Minnie and Moskowitz\" in the 2021 horror film \"Halloween Kills\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "23113500": "Minnie Devereaux\nNative American actress (c. 1869 \u2013 1923)\nMinnie Devereaux (c. 1869\u20131923) was a Native American silent film actress. She was a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes in Oklahoma.\nMore commonly known as Minnie Provost and occasionally \"Indian Minnie\", or \"Minnie Ha-Ha\", she held at least 14 roles, beginning in 1913 with \"Old Mammy\u2019s Secret Code\" and ending with the 1923 release of \"The Girl of the Golden West\". A few sources say she was a Cheyenne and the daughter of a Chief Plenty Horses. However, her father is often confused with Plenty Horses who was Lakota and born the same year as Minnie. In a 1917 interview published in the \"Mack Sennett Weekly\" Provost states that she was born to Cheyenne parents who fled G. A. Custer's Army during the Battle of the Little Bighorn, an event that took place when she was eight years old.\nEarly life.\nProvost was born in the Choctaw Nation in a small town called South Canadian (now Canadian, Oklahoma). Movie trade magazines claimed she studied at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, a Pennsylvania boarding school for Native American students, and she appears on the Carlisle rolls as Minerva Burgess of Cheyenne and Arapaho heritage. Her father is listed as \"Plenty of Horses\", not to be confused with Plenty Horses.\nEarly career.\n\"Fatty and Minnie He-Haw\".\nThe actress starred alongside Roscoe Arbuckle in the 1914 silent comedy film \"Fatty and Minnie He-Haw\", directed by Arbuckle. She is featured as a Native American, whom Arbuckle reluctantly marries after being rescued by her tribe. Arbuckle pursues a white woman in town, played by his real-life wife Minta Durfee, but is driven back when He-Haw discovers his disloyalty. Outraged, the tribe prepares to burn him for his traitorous behavior, but He-Haw spares him in an act of love. He-Haw chases her man but ultimately loses him when he disappears into the hills with angry warriors trailing behind. \nOther works.\nProvost worked with producer and \"king of comedy\" Mack Sennett on \"Fatty and Minnie He-Haw\", as well as the 1918 film \"Mickey\" and the 1922 film \"Suzanna\", both directed by F. Richard Jones. In 1920 Minnie worked with director James Cruze on \"Food for Scandal,\" the cinematic version of Paul Kester's play \"A Picture of Rare Delight.\" Provost was an actress in demand, working with various production companies on the east coast, including Kay-Bee Pictures, the New York Motion Picture Company, and Sennett's Keystone Studios.\nReputation.\nThe actress was heralded as a dignified professional who could easily perform slapstick comedy as well as melodrama.\nShe was subject to typecasting, with roles that capitalized upon her heavy frame and her Native American heritage. Reviews at the time often referred to Indian women as a squaw in reference to her characters' titles within such films. Peter Milne, a film critic and eventual screenwriter, berated Provost for her age and appearance, calling her \"ancient\" in his review of \"Mickey\"; she was only 49 years old at the time of the film's release.\nIn an article in \"Photoplay\" Provost recalled an encounter between her and a belligerent white woman. On a crowded street car, the woman intentionally took up available space in order to prevent Provost from sitting nearby. Provost interrupted the conductor of the street car, who insisted that the woman move her belongings. The woman replied saying that she would rather stand than sit next to such a woman.\nDespite this unease, many in the film business were aware of, and respected Provost's wit, dignity, and talents as an actress. \"Motion Picture Magazine\" recounts a chance encounter between Provost and actor Bertram Grassby, who commented on the actress' persona:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />During the conversation, the name of Minnie, a fat, old Indian woman who has almost become a moving picture institution, was mentioned and he commented laughingly on her way of always saying and doing the unexpected.\nThe encounter involved Grassby tipping his hat toward Provost, which prompted her to question the meaning of the act. She often poked fun at other actors and directors during the production of a film.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3922855": "Katherine Cassavetes\nAmerican actress\nKatherine Cassavetes (; n\u00e9e Demetriou; June 24, 1906 \u2013 March 29, 1983) was an American actress of Greek origin. She was the mother of actor-director John Cassavetes and mother-in-law of actress Gena Rowlands. Her grandchildren are actor-directors Nick Cassavetes, Zoe Cassavetes, and Alexandra Cassavetes. \nBiography.\nCassavetes was born in New York City, She appeared in four films, three of which were written and directed by her son, including \"Minnie and Moskowitz\" (1971).\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "886830": "Minnie Marx\nMother and manager of the Marx Brothers (1864-1929)\nMinnie Marx (born Miene Sch\u00f6nberg, 9 November 1864 \u2013 13 September 1929) was the mother and manager of the Marx Brothers, a family of top-billed vaudevillians, top Broadway stars and, finally, film stars. She was also the sister of comedian and vaudeville star Al Shean.\nEarly life.\nMarx was born Miene Sch\u00f6nberg in Dornum, Kingdom of Hanover. Her parents Fanny n\u00e9e Salomons (1829\u2013April 10,1901) and Levy \"Lafe\" Sch\u00f6nberg (1823\u20131919) were members of the local Jewish community. Her mother was a yodeling harpist, her father a ventriloquist. Her younger brother, Abraham Elieser Adolf, the future \"Al Shean,\" was born in 1868.\nAbout 1880 the family immigrated to New York City, where Minnie married Samuel \"Frenchie\" Marx in 1884.\nHer son Manfred died in infancy in 1886. Her other children were Leonard Joseph (born 1887), Adolph (1888), Julius (1890), Milton (1892) and Herbert (1901), who would grow up to perform as the Marx Brothers.\nCareer.\nWhile managing the Marx Brothers, she went under the name of Minnie Palmer, so that booking agents would not know that the agent representing the Marx Brothers was their mother. She played the harp.\nAs a tribute to her, all the brothers' daughters were given names that began with 'M': Chico with Maxine; Harpo with Minnie; and Groucho with Miriam and Melinda. Gummo and Zeppo had no daughters.\nMinnie lived long enough to see her sons' 1929 film debut in \"The Cocoanuts\", but died later that year of a stroke.\nDeath.\nMarx died from a stroke on September 13, 1929, aged 64. She was buried at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Glendale, Queens. When her husband died four years later, he was buried next to her.\nIn popular culture.\nMarx and some of her sons appear briefly as characters in Glen David Gold's novel \"Carter Beats the Devil\"; the narrative identifies her as Minnie Palmer, and only gradually offers clues that the struggling vaudeville act traveling with her are the later-famous Marx Brothers. Marx (played by Shelley Winters) was also the main character in the stage musical \"Minnie's Boys\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "76639": "Minnie Mouse\nDisney cartoon character \nMinerva \"Minnie\" Mouse"}, "descending_order": ["5882475", "23113500", "3922855", "886830", "76639", "273777"], "permutation_1": ["76639", "23113500", "273777", "886830", "3922855", "5882475"], "permutation_2": ["3922855", "5882475", "23113500", "886830", "273777", "76639"], "permutation_3": ["76639", "5882475", "273777", "23113500", "3922855", "886830"]}
{"id": "2hop__142534_126727", "docs_added": {"1600291": "Hawthorne Heights\nAmerican rock band\nHawthorne Heights is an American rock band formed in Dayton, Ohio in 2001. Originally called A Day in the Life, their lineup currently consists of JT Woodruff (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Matt Ridenour (bass guitar, backing vocals), Mark McMillon (lead guitar, unclean vocals), and Chris Popadak (drums, percussion).\nThe band found commercial success with their first two albums, \"The Silence in Black and White\" (2004), and \"If Only You Were Lonely\" (2006), both achieving an RIAA gold certification. Their second album additionally peaked at No.\u00a01 on the \"Billboard\"'s Independent Albums chart and No.\u00a03 on the \"Billboard\" 200 chart. They are also well known for their 2006 single \"Saying Sorry\", which reached gold status and peaked at No.\u00a07 on the Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart. On November 24, 2007, guitarist Casey Calvert died, leaving the band as a four-piece. Their third album and first without Calvert, \"Fragile Future\", was released in August 2008, surprisingly through Victory Records again, after a lengthy legal battle between the two parties.\nThe band's fourth album \"Skeletons\" (2010) peaked at No.\u00a050 on the \"Billboard\" 200. The band's former label, Victory, released their first greatest hits album, entitled \"\", in November 2010. Shortly afterward, Hawthorne Heights left Wind-up Records to begin their own record label, Cardboard Empire. Via this new label, the band released an EP trilogy, beginning with \"Hate\" released in August 2011 and followed by \"Hope\" released in June 2012. After signing with Red River Entertainment in 2013, the band postponed the release of the third EP in the trilogy, and released a full-length concept album titled \"Zero\" in June 2013. The band played on the 2013 Vans Warped Tour.\nIn June 2014, original drummer Eron Bucciarelli left the band. In January 2015, it was announced that Micah Carli (lead guitar, unclean backing vocals) had left as well. Later that year, the band released Hurt, the third EP of the trilogy. The band's sixth studio album, titled \"Bad Frequencies\" followed in 2018, followed by their seventh album \"The Rain Just Follows Me\" in September 2021 via Pure Noise Records.\nHawthrone Heights are regarded as \"one of the biggest breakout successes of the new millennial emo-punk explosion.\"\nHistory.\nEarly days (2001\u20132003).\nA Day in the Life were formed by JT Woodruff, Jesse Blair, Andy Saunders, Josh Bethel, and Andy Lazier in Dayton, Ohio, in 2001. They took their name from the popular Beatles song \"A Day in the Life\".\nTheir first record was a demo titled \"Four Bullets for One Girl\", which sold its 500 copy run in 2 months. This brought them to the attention of Confined Records, with which they released an album titled \"Nine Reasons to Say Goodbye\". Finally, they released a 6-song EP titled \"Paper Chromatography: The Fade from Dark to Light\" (which was partially re-released as part of the compilation \"From Ohio With Love\") in the winter of 2003.\nIn 2003, Matt Ridenour, bassist and backing vocalist, would pass a hotel called Hawthorn Inn & Suites on his way to work. He decided to add an e and Heights to make Hawthorne Heights. The rest of the band agreed.\n\"The Silence in Black and White\" and \"If Only You Were Lonely\" (2004\u20132006).\nTheir first album \"The Silence in Black and White\", was recorded over a four-week period, and was released in 2004. The album was slow to build sales at first; however, soon the video for the song \"Ohio Is for Lovers\" began getting airplay on MTV, and the band enjoyed breakout success at radio as well as a growing nationwide fan base, and the album became Victory Records' highest selling debut. \"The Silence in Black and White\" peaked at number 56 on the Billboard charts. The singles \"Niki FM\" and \"Silver Bullet\" were released in 2005.\nWhen their second album \"If Only You Were Lonely\" was released on Feb 28, 2006, it debuted at number 3 on the Billboard charts, powered by the lead single \"Saying Sorry\" which has received regular airplay on MTV, VH1 and Fuse. The Legion of Doom remixed a song from the album, entitled \"Where Can I Stab Myself in the Ears?\" and it appeared on the \"\". The remix was re-titled \"Where Do I Stab Myself in the Ears\".\nThe band performed on the 2006 Nintendo Fusion Tour. A live CD/DVD was intended to be recorded from this tour, but was cancelled, likely due to complications with Victory.\nDeath of Casey Calvert (2007).\nCasey Calvert, the band's rhythm guitarist, was found dead on the band's tour bus at the age of 26 on November 24, 2007. The band had begun its American tour just the day before in Detroit, Michigan. Toxicology and autopsy reports stated that Calvert died of combined drug intoxication. A statement issued by the members of the band said that Calvert died in his sleep, and that his body was discovered before the band was to carry out a sound check before its show at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. The members of the band spent a few days mourning, reflecting, and writing a song about the death.\nThis song, titled \"Four Become One\", would appear on their third album \"Fragile Future\". The members also dedicated another song to Calvert called \"Sugar in the Engine\". In the end of the song, JT Woodruff can be heard speaking of Calvert. When the band plays old hits from either \"The Silence in Black and White\" or \"If Only You Were Lonely\", Carli stepped in and did all of Calvert's parts, until he left the band in 2015. Mark McMillon is now the current unclean vocalist for the band.\nAccording to the results of an autopsy performed by the office of the chief medical examiner in Washington, and released in December 2007, Calvert's death was accidental. Dr. John Mendelson, a pharmacologist at the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute, told MTV News that \"Cases like Calvert's are so rare that they're almost nonexistent. It's so rare that you can't even put a number on it,\" and that \"It's exceedingly rare that 26-year-olds die of \"anything\" medical. This kind of death is one in several million.\" Both citalopram (also known by the brand name Celexa) and clonazepam (also known by the brand names Klonopin and Rivotril) are prescription drugs, the former an antidepressant and the latter used to treat seizure disorders and panic attacks.\nDrummer Eron Bucciarelli issued the following statement:\nFrom the time of the incident we suspected a possible drug interaction as the cause. Casey wrestled with depression for as long as we knew him. He saw numerous doctors and took an ever-changing array of medicines to get better. He finally had his depression under control. According to the toxicology report, the cause of death was due to a fatal interaction between depression meds, anxiety meds, and an opiate. Opiates being mentioned along with the term \"substance abuse\", coupled with \"rockstar\" stereotypes immediately conjure up images of hard drug use and addiction, which simply couldn't be further from the truth in Casey's instance. What the toxicology report doesn't show is that before our leaving for tour, Casey had a root canal, and he was prescribed Vicodin (an opiate) for the pain. Once again, Casey was not involved in anything illegal, nor was he a substance abuser.\nJT Woodruff has stated that \"We won't add another guitar player or add another screamer\", and that \"In our albums, it'll always say 'Casey Calvert: guitar/vocals.'\" Bucciarelli stated in another interview that, \"We don't need another screamer ... If the fans want screaming, they can provide it themselves.\"\n\"Fragile Future\" and \"Rhapsody Originals\" (2008\u20132009).\nHawthorne Heights released a demo for their new song \"Come Back Home\" on their MySpace page in 2007. A reprised version of the song became one of the twelve tracks that were selected for the band's third studio album. A second song was released on their Myspace, a cover of the Smashing Pumpkins song \"Bullet with Butterfly Wings\", which was contributed to MySpace Tribute to The Smashing Pumpkins. This cover song, however, did not become a track on the album.\nHawthorne Heights and Victory Records patched up their relationship and the band's third album, \"Fragile Future\", was released with the label on August 5, 2008. Jeff Schneeweis produced the album. The lead single \"Rescue Me\" was released on July 22, 2008. Hawthorne Heights played \"Rescue Me\" live as special guests on \"The Tonight Show\" with Jay Leno as host after the album's full release, on September 18, 2010, as promotion for \"Fragile Future\".\n\"Rhapsody Originals\" was released exclusively for Rhapsody as the first EP by Hawthorne Heights on August 26, 2008. It was recorded by Rhapsody, and released as promotion for the studio album \"Fragile Future\". It contains three live acoustic songs from \"Fragile Future\", and one from their second studio album, \"If Only You Were Lonely\".\nHawthorne Heights performed at Linkin Park's Projekt Revolution 2008 tour this year on the Revolution Stage with former labelmates Atreyu, Armor For Sleep, Street Drum Corps, and 10 Years. Joining Linkin Park on the Main Stage was Chris Cornell, The Bravery, Busta Rhymes, and Ashes Divide.\n\"Skeletons\" and \"Midwesterners: The Hits\" (2009\u20132011).\nHawthorne Heights posted a blog through their MySpace profile stating that they had officially been signed to Wind-up Records, and had been writing and recording for a new record. The band revealed that while there is not a new member of the band and no replacement was made for Hawthorne Heights former vocalist, Casey Calvert, the new album would feature a new \"screamer\". While on tour, Hawthorne Heights announced that Micah Carli would now be providing screaming vocals for the band.\nAs the album was being recorded, lead singer JT Woodruff and drummer Eron Bucciarelli named two songs from the record on several occasions, leading many to believe that they would be released as singles. Acoustic versions of the two songs were also said to have been recorded. The songs are entitled \"Here I Am\" and \"Nervous Breakdown\". \"Nervous Breakdown\" did become the first single from the album on March 23, 2010. On October 2, 2009, both Woodruff and Buicarelli posted updates on their Twitter pages saying that they had just finished gang vocals for the record. Woodruff stated \"Just finished up doing gang vocals on a few songs. Return to hardcore!\"\nOn October 14, an e-mail was sent out to the official mailing list telling fans that the new album would be titled \"Skeletons\" and would be released in early 2010. The e-mail stated:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Lots of big HH news for you today folks!\nFor starters, we will release our new album, titled \"Skeletons\", in early 2010! Secondly, as you should know already, we're kicking off Never Sleep Again '09 with Just Surrender, Monty Are I, Punchline, Anarbor, and Nightbeast on November 2! Get your tickets here and get them today because we will be giving away a limited amount of collectible download cards at each show which include one of our new songs, \"Unforgivable\" along with some other goodies.\nThis is your first chance to hear some of our new music, so make sure you get your tickets early and get to the shows early, because once they're gone, you'll have to wait until the album comes out! We'll see you this Fall!\nNot all of the bands mentioned, however, ended up joining Hawthorne Heights for the 2009 Never Sleep Again tour.\nAs promised, download cards for the song \"Unforgivable\" were distributed while on tour. In addition, a song entitled \"End of the Underground\" has been performed live.\nAfter the Never Sleep Again 2009 tour, frontman JT began performing several solo acoustic shows with songs he had written outside of Hawthorne Heights.\nThe track listing for the album was announced on February 5, 2010. \"Skeletons\" was released on June 1, 2010. According to JT Woodruff's February \"SayNow\" voice message (also uploaded on the band's Twitter), Micah Carli plays ukulele, mandolin, and various other \"weird instruments\" in the lute family for many of the bonus tracks on \"Skeletons\".\nVictory Records announced the release date for their \"best of\" compilation of Hawthorne Heights songs, entitled \"\". The album was released on November 9, 2010, and contains 16 songs taken from the band's first three Victory Records' studio albums.\nCardboard Empire and EP trilogy (2011\u20132012).\nIn July 2011, Hawthorne Heights parted ways with Wind-up Records and created their own record label, Cardboard Empire. The band will be self-releasing a trilogy of EPs, beginning with \"Hate\", released August 23, 2011. Each EP will be released within four or five months of the prior release. Between releases the band will embark on various North American tours.\nOn August 11, 2011, the album art and track listing for \"Hate\" was revealed. The next day the band premiered one of the EP's tracks, \"Four White Walls\". The EP leaked onto the internet on August 21, 2011. Hawthorne Heights plans to release a music video for each track from \"Hate\", the first for the song \"Is This What You Wanted?\".\nOn April 24, 2012, the band announced that the second EP in the trilogy, titled \"Hope\", would be released on June 5, 2012. They also announced dates for their Summer of Hope tour, in support of the EP, which began on June 1 and will end on July 14. Their first single from \"Hope\", entitled \"New Winter\", is the only song by Hawthorne Heights to be featured on MTV in almost 5 years. During their Autumn of Hope European tour, they did an interview in a bathtub.\n\"Zero\", line-up changes and \"Bad Frequencies\" (2013\u20132020).\nIt was announced that the band has signed with Red Entertainment. They released a new album titled \"Zero\" on June 25, 2013. The band played at Vans Warped Tour 2013 on all dates. It was as part of this announcement that Mark McMillon of The Story Changes was formally introduced as part of the band, though he had been a touring member for many years.\nOn June 1, exactly 10 years after Hawthorne Heights' debut album \"The Silence in Black and White\" was released, an acoustic version of the album was released via InVogue Records. The band embarked on a tour to celebrate the albums 10-year anniversary, kicking off the European leg in Fibber Magees, Dublin, Ireland. On June 18, it was announced that Eron Bucciarelli had parted ways from the band shortly after its release. On January 20, 2015, it was announced Micah Carli had also departed. On February 13, it was announced on the band's Facebook page that they are recording new material. The Band performed at Emo Nite LA in March 2018. \"Hurt\", the final part of the EP trilogy was released on September 18, 2015. \"Pink Hearts\" was made available for streaming on March 1, 2018. The group's next album, \"Bad Frequencies\", was released on April 27 through Pure Noise Records. The band supported Silverstein on their 15-year anniversary tour of their debut album \"When Broken Is Easily Fixed\".\n\"The Rain Just Follows Me\" and \"Lost Lights\" EP (2021\u2013present).\nDuring their first post-pandemic tour with peers Bayside and Senses Fail, the band released their 7th full-length album titled \"The Rain Just Follows Me\" on September 10, 2021, via Pure Noise Records. The 10-song LP was produced by Grammy-winning producer Cameron Webb. The album's lead single, \"Constant Dread\", features guest vocals by Counterparts frontman Brendan Murphy.\nOn September 8, 2023, the band released a 5-track EP called \"Lost Lights\".\nMusical style and influences.\nTraditionally, Hawthorne Heights' music has been characterized as \"angst-fueled.\" The band has been categorized as emo, post-hardcore, screamo, and pop-punk. Likewise, Hawthorne Heights's albums have been tagged as alternative rock by iTunes. Hawthorne Heights also have been described as indie rock and indie emo. Eron Bucciarelli, the band's drummer, noted that the band's sound has \"always been pigeon holed as emo or screamo\". In the same interview he said that the band prefers to be referred to simply as \"a rock band\".\nWhile commenting on the band's first album, \"The Silence in Black and White\", Eron said that the \"triple guitar attack\" allows them to \"add a lot of layering effects and intricacies to our music along with legitimately pulling in different musical styles.\" The album also includes feminine backing vocals provided by band member Micah Carli's sister, Graci Carli. This gave many of the songs a broader emotional spectrum not limited by gender.\nHawthorne Heights began to be recognized as melodic hardcore due to the release of \"If Only You Were Lonely\". After \"softening their lyrical stance, incorporating melancholy keyboards and adding upbeat melodies that were a perfect counterbalance to their screaming backup chants\" their unique sound became more recognized.\nEven after the death of one of the guitarists, Hawthorne Heights continued to allow its sound to evolve. With the release of \"Fragile Future\", the band used elements of power pop. Hawthorne Heights' fourth album, \"Skeletons\", stylistically reverts to \"music similar to their first two albums\", yet is much softer. The album, however, \"refuses to stomp over old ground\" by incorporating \"electro\" and \"pop punk\" elements into a few of the tracks. The album also \"broke new ground by adding a unique electronica sound.\" In addition, various other musical styles are incorporated into \"Skeletons\". The acclaimed blues rock track, \"Gravestones,\" opens with \"uncharacteristic western acoustics, and then delves into a more fascinating chorus, leaving the wild wild west sound and replacing it with pianos and ethereal presence.\"\nAfter forming their own record label, Hawthorne Heights made plans to release a trilogy of EPs. The first of the trilogy, \"Hate\", lyrically deals with feelings of hate, anger, and solitude. According to Woodruff, \"Hate\" features more \"aggressive songs\" that are \"a lot heavier than anything we've ever done.\" The EP has been compared to other screamo albums, such as releases by Senses Fail. Screamed vocals and breakdowns are prominent features throughout the album, reflecting the musical style of the band's first two albums. One review states \"this aggressive side, dormant for the past few years, has finally boiled over all at once.\"\nHawthorne Heights' influences include Sunny Day Real Estate, Metallica, The Get Up Kids, Taking Back Sunday, The Beatles, Green Day, Foo Fighters, Blink-182, Death Cab for Cutie, Tool, Jimmy Eat World, and Iron Maiden.\nControversy.\nIncident with Ne-Yo.\nIn February 2006, as the band was readying the release of \"If Only You Were Lonely\", Victory Records issued two statements to fans through the band's mailing lists as well as their MySpace profile, stating that \"ROCK music needs your support\" and that \"the No.\u00a01 slot belongs to us.\" They also pleaded with fans to go into chain stores and make sure Hawthorne Heights CDs are in stock and to sabotage the sales count of Ne-Yo's record \"In My Own Words\", which was being released the same day. The statement said:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />As for Ne-Yo, the name of the game is to decrease the chances of a sale here. If you were to pick up a handful of Ne-Yo CDs, as if you were about to buy them, but then changed your mind and didn't bother to put them back in the same place, that would work. Even though this record will be heavily stocked and you might not be able to move all the stock, just relocating a handful creates issues: Even though the store will appear to be out of stock, the computer will see it as in stock and not re-order the title once it sells down and then Ne-Yo will lose a few sales later in the week.\nThey ended their rallying cry by quoting Winston Churchill: \"Victory at all costs, Victory in spite of all terror, Victory however long and hard the road may be; for without Victory, there is no survival.\"\nLater, group members claimed that the statements were issued by their record label without their consent.\nOn August 7, 2006, the band announced they would be leaving Victory Records, and sued the label for breach of contract, copyright and trademark infringement, fraud and abuse.\nVictory Records then countersued for breach of contract and libel in September 2006.\nIn October 2006, a Chicago judge dismissed two of the three main claims in the band's suit, ruling that the trademark and copyright violation allegations were unsound.\nOn March 5, 2007, a federal judge in Chicago ruled that Victory Records does \"not\" hold exclusive rights for the band's recording services and that the band can record for any label. Specifically, the Judge stated: \"The agreement contains no exclusivity provision, nor does any of its language appear to prevent [the band] from recording elsewhere during the life of the agreement\".\nThe judge later reaffirmed this ruling on May 17, 2007, stating that Hawthorne Heights is still contractually bound to deliver two albums to Victory, but may record albums which are released elsewhere.\nWild Justice Records lawsuit.\nOn October 16, 2007, Wild Justice Records sued Hawthorne Heights for breach of an oral contract, stemming from a dispute over the management company's share of the band's revenues.\nBand members.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4572188": "Saying Sorry\n\"Saying Sorry\" is a song by American rock band Hawthorne Heights. It was released on May 22, 2006, as the debut single from their second studio album, \"If Only You Were Lonely\". \"Saying Sorry\" was released to radio on January 31, 2006. The song peaked at #7 on the \"Billboard\" Alternative Songs Chart.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3261346": "Never Gonna Say I'm Sorry\n1996 single by Ace of Base\n\"Never Gonna Say I'm Sorry\" is a song by Swedish band Ace of Base, released as a single on 11 March 1996. It was the third single taken from the band's second album, \"The Bridge\" (1995). In Europe, the song peaked at number six in Hungary, number 12 in Denmark and number 17 in Finland. In the US, it reached number six on the \"Billboard\" Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart. And in Canada, it peaked at number 53 on the Canadian Hot 100 chart.\nBackground.\nThe song was written by band member Jonas Berggren, who was hoping to reproduce the flavour of their 1993 hit \"All That She Wants\". He specifically mentions the similarities between the two songs in the liner notes of the booklet for \"The Bridge\" album. He said, \"We decided early on to do an \"All That She Wants\" arrangement and drums because it's always fun to have something old on a new record.\"\nChart performance.\n\"Never Gonna Say I'm Sorry\" didn't reach the same level of success as \"Lucky Love\" and \"Beautiful Life\", but was a notable hit. It made it to the top 10 in Hungary, where it hit number six. Additionally, the single was a top 20 hit in Denmark and Finland, a top 30 hit in the band's native Sweden and a top 40 hit in Iceland. It didn't chart on the UK Singles Chart in the UK, but peaked at number 78 on the Eurochart Hot 100. Outside Europe, \"Never Gonna Say I'm Sorry\" reached number seven on the \"RPM\" Dance/Urban chart and number 53 on the Canadian Hot 100 in Canada, number six on the \"Billboard\" Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart and number 18 on the \"Billboard\" Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales chart in the United States, number 12 in Chile and number 79 in Australia.\nCritical reception.\nJ.D. Considine from \"The Baltimore Sun\" felt that the song \"tops its \"All That She Wants\"-style arrangement with a vocal so tinged with regret that it's hard not to wince at the irony in lines like \"I will make you happy, make you laugh.\"\" Steve Baltin from \"Cash Box\" wrote that songs like \"Never Gonna Say I'm Sorry\" \"work because the band downplays the dance sound, displaying some nice understated pop hooks.\" Larry Flick from \"Billboard\" described it as a \"wise single selection\" from the act's current album, \"The Bridge\". He added that it \"takes this Swedish foursome right back where they began\u2014chirping atop a glossy reggae/pop melody that instantly triggers memories of the breakthrough hit \"All That She Wants\". It worked once, and chances are good that it will work again. Even the act's harshest critics will have to admit that the hook is instantly memorable.\" \nDave Sholin from the \"Gavin Report\" concluded with that \"by providing the planet with all that it wants in the realm of pop music, this Swedish foursome has yet to disappoint its ever-growing legion of fans. Thanks to the creative power of Jonas Berggren, the Ace of Base sound remains distinctive without getting stale. Early spins paint a positive future for single number three from \"The Bridge\".\" Robbie Daw from \"Idolator\" described it as a \"bouncy\" tune. Brian A. Gnatt from \"The Michigan Daily\" stated that the song \"carries through with the good ol' familiar style\". Pan-European magazine \"Music & Media\" noted it as a \"mid-tempo dance tune with a dominant, deep beat and the bouncy melodies which have become Ace of Base's musical trademark. Short and snappy, this single can be played at any time of the day.\" Bob Waliszewski of \"Plugged In (publication)\" commented in his review, that on the song, \"the singer refuses to compromise who she is\". Chuck Campbell from \"Scripps Howard News Service\" wrote that \"Never Gonna Say I'm Sorry\" \"is an unapologetic and propulsive reworking of the band's \"All That She Wants\". It stands to be another smash.\"\nMusic video.\nThe accompanying music video for the song was directed by British director Richard Heslop and released in 1996. The video includes computer-generated imagery and mirror effects designed to make the video feel like a funhouse, much like the video for ABBA's \"SOS\". In the USA the video was never released as Arista Records was dissatisfied with the video and opted not to release one to accompany the single release.\nIn Europe the single was accompanied by a short promotion tour by the band and two alternate videos. In the USA the only promotion consisted of tiny misspelled stickers on the CD packaging, although the record company did send out promotional copies of the Sweetbox Radio Mix to radio stations. With the band members away in Europe and with no other form of promotion, the single failed to enter the official US charts, peaking at #106. It was the first Ace of Base single to fail to chart inside of the Top 40 in the US.\nThough the US version of the \"Lucky Love\" video was filmed later, \"Never Gonna Say I'm Sorry\" was chronologically the last video that was released with major participation from Malin. It was later published on Ace of Base's official YouTube channel in January 2015. As of August 2023, the video has amassed more than 22 million views on Youtube.\nTrack listings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>", "3552202": "Hard to Say I'm Sorry\n1982 single by Chicago\n\"Hard to Say I'm Sorry\" is a 1982 power ballad by American rock band Chicago. It was written by bassist Peter Cetera, who also sang the lead vocals on the track, and producer David Foster. It was released on May 17, 1982, as the lead single from the album \"Chicago 16\". On September 11 of that year, it reached No. 1 for two weeks on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. It was the group's second No. 1 single. It was their first top 50 hit since \"No Tell Lover\" in 1978 and it spent twelve weeks in the top 5 of the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. The single was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in September of the same year. Songwriter Cetera, a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), won an ASCAP Pop Music Award for the song in the category, Most Performed Songs.\nHistory.\nThe song, as well as the album on which it is featured, was a marked departure from Chicago's traditional soft rock, horn-driven sound, taking on a polished and modern feel. With minimal horns, the track instead featured more layered synthesizers and heavier distorted guitar in a 1980s power ballad styling. A second movement of the song, \"Get Away\", prominently does feature the Chicago horns, and it was co-written by Robert Lamm.\nDeviating from Chicago's practice of having mostly band members playing on their albums, \"Hard to Say I'm Sorry\" featured several session musicians. The song featured producer David Foster on the piano, Michael Landau and Chris Pinnick on guitars as well as two members of the American rock band Toto, including David Paich and Steve Porcaro both contributing synthesizers. The song's vocals were performed by Peter Cetera, who also plays acoustic guitar. The only other member of Chicago besides Cetera that played on the track was drummer Danny Seraphine.\n\"Billboard\" called it a \"stately pop ballad\" with \"even more of an orchestral sweep than usual.\"\nThe song was also featured as the ending theme in the movie and soundtrack for \"Summer Lovers\", a 1982 film written and directed by Randal Kleiser, starring Peter Gallagher, Daryl Hannah and Valerie Quennessen, and filmed on location on the island of Santorini, Greece.\nMusic video.\nChicago made a music video for the song. According to Cetera, the videos for \"Hard to Say I'm Sorry\" and \"Love Me Tomorrow\" were shot on the same day. The band appears in a black colored room with diamonds on the wall.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nAz Yet version.\nAmerican R&B group Az Yet included a cover version of \"Hard to Say I'm Sorry\" on their 1996 self-titled debut album, which was produced by Babyface. A remix version by David Foster was released as a single on February 3, 1997 and features vocals from Peter Cetera. Foster won a BMI Pop Award for this version. The song peaked at number seven on the UK Singles Chart and number eight on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. It reached platinum status and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Performance by an R&B Group or Duo with Vocal. Aside from the David Foster remix, the single includes the album version (without Cetera), an a cappella version, and an extended remix.\nTrack listing.\nCD-single\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "8063998": "Say Anything (band)\nAmerican rock band\nSay Anything is an American rock band from Los Angeles, California. The band was formed in 2000 by Max Bemis and his friends, and within two years, they had self-released two EPs and a full-length album.\nIn 2003, the band signed with their first label, Doghouse Records. A year later, they released their second album, \"...Is a Real Boy\". To support the album, they picked up new members and began touring; however, despite rapidly growing critical and fan acclaim, Bemis' health problems, including bipolar disorder and drug addictions, sidelined the band in 2005 as five band members left during the year.\nSay Anything signed with J Records in 2005 and, following Bemis' successful rehabilitation, re-released \"...Is a Real Boy\" with their new label. They went on co-headlining tours with Saves the Day in 2006 and Hellogoodbye in 2007. In 2008, Say Anything went on a headlining tour across the US and UK and appeared on every date of Warped Tour.\nBemis announced Say Anything's disbandment in 2018, months before the 2019 release of their eighth LP, \"Oliver Appropriate\". The band reunited in 2022 and released their ninth album, \"...Is Committed\", in 2024.\nHistory.\nEarly years (2000\u20132004).\nThe band was formed in 2000 by Max Bemis and four of his friends as Sayanything. Within two years, they self-released two EPs, \"Junior Varsity\" and \"In Your Dreams\", and the full-length \"Baseball: An Album by Sayanything\".\nIn 2002, Sayanything added a space to their name to become Say Anything. In late 2002, Bemis and Linder recorded the \"Menorah/Majora\" EP and released the album online. By this point, Say Anything's releases had generated \"a major bidding war\". Drive-Thru Records pursued the band and called Max Bemis \"the next Bob Dylan.\" Brett Gurewitz of Epitaph Records recorded \"A Boston Peace,\" one of the dorm-room demos, with the band. In early 2003, Say Anything signed with Doghouse Records stating sarcastically that Doghouse \"put out such obscure, borderline D.I.Y. records as \"The All-American Rejects\".\"\nAfter signing with the label, Bemis began writing songs for his band's Doghouse debut. Bemis went into the studio with Florida producer Paul Trust. They recorded 3 songs that were not released although one of the songs entitled \"Spider Song\" would later appear on a Doghouse compilation. With tremendous self-created pressure, he threw himself into pushing the sonic boundaries of the band and maturing their sound, incorporating elements of math-rock, indie-pop and theatrical pomp. He and Linder also started the search for a producer. The two met several"}, "descending_order": ["3261346", "3552202", "8063998", "4572188", "1600291"], "permutation_1": ["3261346", "4572188", "3552202", "1600291", "8063998"], "permutation_2": ["3552202", "3261346", "4572188", "8063998", "1600291"], "permutation_3": ["4572188", "8063998", "3261346", "3552202", "1600291"]}
{"id": "2hop__147094_11125", "docs_added": {"51585": "New Delhi\nCapital city of India\nNew Delhi (; , ) is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the Government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Sansad Bhavan, and the Supreme Court. New Delhi is a municipality within the NCT, administered by the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), which covers mostly Lutyens' Delhi and a few adjacent areas. The municipal area is part of a larger administrative district, the New Delhi district.\nAlthough colloquially \"Delhi\" and \"New Delhi\" are used interchangeably to refer to the National Capital Territory of Delhi, both are distinct entities, with the municipality and the New Delhi district forming a relatively small part within the megacity of Delhi. The National Capital Region is an even larger entity, comprising the entire NCT along with adjoining districts in the two neighbouring states forming a continuously built-up area with it, including Ghaziabad, Noida, Greater Noida, Meerut, YEIDA City, Gurgaon, and Faridabad.\nThe foundation stone of New Delhi, south of central Delhi, was laid by George V during the Delhi Durbar of 1911. It was designed by British architects Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker. The new capital was inaugurated on 13 February 1931, by Viceroy and Governor-General Irwin.\nHistory.\nEstablishment.\nUntil December 1911, Calcutta was the capital of India during the British Rule. However, it had become the centre of the nationalist movements since the late nineteenth century, which led to the Partition of Bengal by Viceroy Curzon. This created massive political and religious upsurge including political assassinations of British officials in Calcutta. The anti-colonial sentiments among the public led to a complete boycott of British goods, which forced the colonial government to reunite Bengal and immediately shift the capital to New Delhi.\nOld Delhi had served as the political and financial centre of several empires of medieval India and the Delhi Sultanate, most notably of the Mughal Empire from 1649 to 1857. During the early 1900s, a proposal was made to the British administration to shift the capital of the British Indian Empire, as India was officially named, from Calcutta on the east coast, to Delhi. The Government of British India felt that it would be logistically easier to administer India from Delhi, which is in the centre of northern India. The land for building the new city of Delhi was acquired under the Land Acquisition Act 1894.\nDuring the Delhi Durbar on 12 December 1911, George V while laying the foundation stone for the viceroy's residence in the Coronation Park, Kingsway Camp, declared that the capital of the Raj would be shifted from Calcutta to Delhi. Three days later, George V and his consort, Mary, laid the foundation stone of New Delhi at Kingsway Camp. Large parts of New Delhi were planned by Edwin Lutyens, who first visited Delhi in 1912, and Herbert Baker, both leading 20th-century British architects. The contract was given to Sobha Singh. The original plan called for its construction in Tughlaqabad, inside the Tughlaqabad Fort, but this was given up because of the Delhi-Calcutta trunk line that passed through the fort. Construction really began after World War I and was completed by 1931. The gardening and planning of plantations was led by A.E.P. Griessen, and later William Mustoe. The city that was later dubbed \"Lutyens' Delhi\" was inaugurated in ceremonies beginning on 10 February 1931 by Viceroy Irwin. Lutyens designed the central administrative area of the city as a testament to Britain's imperial aspirations.\nSoon Lutyens started considering other places. Indeed, the Delhi Town Planning Committee, set up to plan the new imperial capital, with George Swinton as chairman, and John A. Brodie and Lutyens as members, submitted reports for both north and south sites. However, it was rejected by the Viceroy when the cost of acquiring the necessary properties was found to be too high. The central axis of New Delhi, which today faces east at India Gate, was previously meant to be a north\u2013south axis linking the Viceroy's House at one end with Paharganj at the other. Eventually, owing to space constraints and the presence of a large number of heritage sites on the north side, the committee settled on the south site. A site atop the Raisina Hill, formerly Raisina Village, a Meo village, was chosen for the Rashtrapati Bhawan, then known as the Viceroy's House. The reason for this choice was that the hill lay directly opposite the Dinapanah citadel, which was also considered the site of Indraprastha, the ancient region of Delhi. Subsequently, the foundation stone was shifted from the site of Delhi Durbar of 1911\u20131912, where the Coronation Pillar stood, and embedded in the walls of the forecourt of the Secretariat. The Rajpath, also known as King's Way, stretched from the India Gate to the Rashtrapati Bhawan. The Secretariat building, the two blocks of which flank the Rashtrapati Bhawan and houses ministries of the government of India, and the Parliament House, both designed by Baker, are located at the Sansad Marg and run parallel to the Rajpath.\nIn the south, land up to Safdarjung's Tomb was acquired to create what is today known as Lutyens' Bungalow Zone. Before construction could begin on the rocky ridge of Raisina Hill, a circular railway line around the Council House (now Parliament House), called the \"Imperial Delhi Railway\", was built to transport construction material and workers for the next twenty years. The last stumbling block was the Agra-Delhi railway line that cut right through the site earmarked for the hexagonal All-India War Memorial (India Gate) and Kingsway (Rajpath), which was a problem because the Old Delhi Railway Station served the entire city at that time. The line was shifted to run along the Yamuna River, and it began operating in 1924. The New Delhi Railway Station opened in 1926, with a single platform at Ajmeri Gate near Paharganj, and was completed in time for the city's inauguration in 1931. As construction of the Viceroy's House (the present Rashtrapati Bhavan), Central Secretariat, Parliament House, and All-India War Memorial (India Gate) was winding down, the building of a shopping district and a new plaza, Connaught Place, began in 1929, and was completed by 1933. Named after Prince Arthur, 1st Duke of Connaught (1850\u20131942), it was designed by Robert Tor Russell, chief architect to the Public Works Department (PWD).\nAfter the capital of India moved to Delhi, a temporary secretariat building was constructed in a few months in 1912 in North Delhi. Most of the government offices of the new capital moved here from the 'Old secretariat' in Old Delhi (the building now houses the Delhi Legislative Assembly), a decade before the new capital was inaugurated in 1931. Many employees were brought into the new capital from distant parts of India, including the Bengal Presidency and Madras Presidency. Subsequently, housing for them has developed around Gole Market area in the 1920s. Built in the 1940s, to house government employees, with bungalows for senior officials in the nearby Lodi Estate area, Lodi Colony near historic Lodi Gardens, was the last residential areas built by the British Raj.\nPost-independence.\nAfter India gained independence in 1947, limited autonomy was conferred to New Delhi and was administered by a Chief Commissioner appointed by the Government of India. In 1966, Delhi was converted into a union territory and eventually the Chief Commissioner was replaced by a Lieutenant Governor. The Constitution (Sixty-ninth Amendment) Act, 1991 declared the Union Territory of Delhi to be formally known as the National Capital Territory of Delhi. A system was introduced under which the elected government was given wide powers, excluding law and order which remained with the Central Government. The actual enforcement of the legislation came in 1993.\nThe first major extension of New Delhi outside of Lutyens' Delhi came in the 1950s when the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) developed a large area of land southwest of Lutyens' Delhi to create the diplomatic enclave of Chanakyapuri, where land was allotted for embassies, chanceries, high commissions and residences of ambassadors, around a wide central vista, \"Shanti Path\".\nGeography.\nWith a total area of , the municipality of New Delhi forms a small part of the Delhi metropolitan area. Since the city is located on the Indo-Gangetic Plain, there is little difference in elevation across the city. New Delhi and surrounding areas were once a part of the Aravali Range; all that is left of those mountains is the Delhi Ridge, which is also called the Lungs of Delhi. While New Delhi lies on the floodplains of the Yamuna River, it is essentially a landlocked city. East of the river is the urban area of Shahdara.\nSeismology.\nNew Delhi falls under the seismic zone-IV, making it vulnerable to earthquakes. It lies on several fault lines and thus experiences frequent earthquakes, most of them of mild intensity. There was a spike in the number of earthquakes between 2011 and 2015, most notable being a 5.4 magnitude earthquake in 2015 with its epicentre in Nepal, a 4.7-magnitude earthquake on 25 November 2007, a 4.2-magnitude earthquake on 7 September 2011, a 5.2-magnitude earthquake on 5 March 2012, and a swarm of twelve earthquakes, including four of magnitudes 2.5, 2.8, 3.1, and 3.3, on 12 November 2013.\nClimate.\nThe climate of New Delhi is a dry-winter humid subtropical climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Cwa\") bordering on a hot semi-arid climate (K\u00f6ppen \"BSh\") with high variation between summer and winter in terms of both temperature and rainfall. The temperature varies from in summers to around in winters. The area's version of a humid subtropical climate is noticeably different from many other cities with this climate classification in that it features long and extremely hot summers with dust storms, relatively dry and mild winters with wildfire haze, and a monsoonal period. Summers are long, extending from early April to October, with the monsoon season occurring in the middle of the summer. Winter starts in November and peaks in January. Winters are very mild. The annual mean temperature is around ; monthly daily mean temperatures range from approximately . New Delhi's highest temperature ever recorded is on 28 May 2024 at Met Delhi Mungeshpur while the lowest temperature ever recorded is on 11 January 1967 at Indira Gandhi International Airport (formerly known as Palam Airport). The average annual rainfall is and monsoon rainfall from June to September is about , most of which is during the monsoons in July and August.\nAir quality.\nIn Mercer's 2015 annual quality-of-living survey, New Delhi ranks at number 154 out of 230 cities due to bad air quality and pollution. The World Health Organization ranked New Delhi as the world's worst polluted city in 2014 among about 1,600 cities the organisation tracked around the world. In 2016, United States Environmental Protection Agency listed New Delhi as the most polluted city on Earth and IQAir listed New Delhi as the world's most polluted capital city for the second straight year in year 2019.\nIn an attempt to lessen air pollution in New Delhi, which gets worse during the winter, a temporary alternate-day travel scheme for cars using the odd- and even-numbered licence plates system was announced by Delhi government in December 2015. In addition, trucks were to be allowed to enter India's capital only after 11\u00a0pm, two hours later than the existing restriction. The driving restriction scheme was planned to be implemented as a trial from 1 January 2016 for an initial period of 15 days. The restriction was in force between 8\u00a0am and 8\u00a0pm, and traffic was not restricted on Sundays. Public transportation service was increased during the restriction period.\nOn 16 December 2015, the Supreme Court of India mandated several restrictions on Delhi's transportation system to curb pollution. Among the measures, the court ordered to stop registrations of diesel cars and sport utility vehicles with an engine capacity of 2,000 cc and over until 31 March 2016. The court also ordered all taxis in the Delhi region to switch to compressed natural gas by 1 March 2016. Transportation vehicles that are more than 10 years old were banned from entering the capital.\nAnalysing real-time vehicle speed data from Uber Delhi revealed that during the odd-even program, average speeds went up by a statistically significant 5.4 per cent (2.8 standard deviations from normal). This means vehicles have less idling time in traffic and vehicle engines would run closer to minimum fuel consumption. In bordering areas, PM 2.5 levels were recorded more than 400 (ug/m3) while in inner areas in Delhi, they were recorded between 150 and 210 on an average. However, the sub-city of Dwarka, located in the southwest district, has a substantially low level of air pollution. At the NSIT University campus, located in sector 3 Dwarka, pollution levels were as low as 93 PPM.\nOn 7 November 2017, the Indian Medical Association declared a public health emergency due to high pollution levels. The highest being in the Punjabi Bagh district with an air quality index of 999 and in the RK Puram district with an index of 852. The lowest index recorded was in the Anand Vihar district with an index of 319. Levels of PM2.5 were recorded at 710\u00a0\u03bcg/m3, more than 11 times the World Health Organization's safe limit.\nIn a 2018 study, New Delhi was found to be the most polluted capital out of 61 capital cities around the world. In December 2019, IIT Bombay, in partnership with the McKelvey School of Engineering of Washington University in St. Louis, launched the Aerosol and Air Quality Research Facility to study air pollution in New Delhi, among other Indian cities. During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in India, the water quality of the Yamuna and Ganges river basins have improved as industries are closed due to the lockdown. The air quality has also significantly improved during the lockdown. On 5 November 2020, New Delhi recorded its most toxic day in a year, as the concentration of poisonous PM2.5 particles was recorded at 14 times the WHO's safe limit.\nDemographics.\nAs of 2011, the New Delhi Municipal Council area has a population of 249,998. Hindi is the most widely spoken language in New Delhi and the lingua franca of the city. English is primarily used as the formal language by business and government institutes. New Delhi has a literacy rate of 89.38% according to 2011 census, which is the highest in Delhi.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nReligion.\nAccording to 2011 census, Hinduism is the religion of 89.8% of New Delhi's population. There are also communities of Muslims (4.5%), Christians (2.9%), Sikhs (2.0%), Jains (0.4%). Other religious groups include Parsis, Buddhists, and Jews.\nGovernment.\nThe national capital of India, New Delhi is jointly administered by both the Central Government of India and the local Government of Delhi, it is also the capital of the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi.\nNew Delhi is administered through a municipal government, known as the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC). The other urban areas of the metropolis of Delhi are administered by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and Delhi Cantonment Board. As of 2015[ [update]], the government structure of the New Delhi Municipal Council includes a chairperson, three members of New Delhi's Legislative Assembly, two members nominated by the Chief Minister of the NCT of Delhi and five members nominated by the central government.\nThe districts of the NCT were redrawn in 2012 and include a district called New Delhi, albeit with different borders than the municipality. The New Delhi district includes not only the area of the municipality of the same name but also encompasses the Delhi Cantonment and parts of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi area.\nEconomy.\nNew Delhi is the largest commercial city in northern India. It has an estimated net State Domestic Product (FY 2010) of () in nominal terms and ~ () in PPP terms. As of 2013[ [update]], the per capita income of Delhi was Rs. 230000, second highest in India after Goa. GSDP in Delhi at the prices for 2012\u201313 is estimated at Rs 3.88\u00a0trillion (short scale) against Rs 3.11\u00a0trillion (short scale) in 2011\u201312.\nConnaught Place, one of North India's largest commercial and financial centres, is located in the northern part of New Delhi. Adjoining areas such as Barakhamba Road, ITO are also major commercial centres. The government and quasi-government sector was the primary employer in New Delhi. The city's service sector has expanded due in part to the large skilled English-speaking workforce that has attracted many multinational companies. Key service industries include information technology, telecommunications, hotels, banking, media, and tourism.\nThe 2011 World Wealth Report ranks economic activity in New Delhi at 39, but overall the capital is ranked at 37, above cities like Jakarta and Johannesburg. New Delhi, with Beijing, shares the top position as the most targeted emerging markets retail destination among Asia-Pacific markets.\nThe government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi does not release any economic figures specifically for New Delhi but publishes an official economic report on the whole of Delhi annually. According to the \"Economic Survey of Delhi\", the metropolis has a net State Domestic Product (SDP) of Rs. 830.85\u00a0billion (for the year 2004\u201305) and a per capita income of Rs. 53,976 ($1,200). In the year 2008\u201309 New Delhi had a per capita Income of Rs. ($2,595). It grew by 16.2% to reach Rs. ($3,018) in 2009\u201310 fiscal. New Delhi's per capita GDP (at PPP) was at $6,860 during 2009\u201310 fiscal, making it one of the richest cities in India. The tertiary sector contributes 78.4% of Delhi's gross SDP followed by secondary and primary sectors with 20.2% and 1.4% contribution respectively.\nThe gross state domestic product (GSDP) of Delhi at prices for the year 2011\u201312 has been estimated at Rs 3.13\u00a0trillion (short scale), which is an increase of 18.7 per cent over the previous fiscal.\nCulture.\nNew Delhi is a cosmopolitan city due to the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural presence of the vast Indian bureaucracy and political system. The city's capital status has amplified the importance of national events and holidays. National events such as Republic Day, Independence Day and \"Gandhi Jayanti\" (Gandhi's birthday) are celebrated with great enthusiasm in New Delhi and the rest of India. On India's Independence Day (15 August), the prime minister of India addresses the nation from the Red Fort. Most Delhiites celebrate the day by flying kites, which are considered a symbol of freedom. The Republic Day Parade is a large cultural and military parade showcasing India's cultural diversity and military might.\nReligious festivals include Diwali (the festival of light), Maha Shivaratri, Teej, Durga Puja, Chhath Puja, Mahavir Jayanti, Guru Nanak Jayanti, Holi, Lohri, Eid ul-Fitr, Eid ul-Adha, Easter, Raksha Bandhan, and Christmas. The Qutub Festival is a cultural event during which performances of musicians and dancers from all over India are showcased at night, with the Qutub Minar as the chosen backdrop of the event. Other events such as Kite Flying Festival, International Mango Festival and \"Vasant Panchami\" (the Spring Festival) are held every year in Delhi.\nIn 2007, the Japanese Buddhist organisation Nipponzan Myohoji decided to build a Peace Pagoda in the city containing Buddha relics. It was inaugurated by the Dalai Lama.\nHistoric sites, museums and gardens.\nNew Delhi is home to several historic sites and museums. The National Museum, which began with an exhibition of Indian art and artefacts at the Royal Academy in London in the winter of 1947\u201348, was later at the end was shown at the Rashtrapati Bhawan in 1949. Later it was to form a permanent National Museum. On 15 August 1949, the National Museum was formally inaugurated and has 200,000 works of art, both of Indian and foreign origin, covering over 5,000 years.\nThe India Gate, which was built in 1931, was inspired by the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. It is the national monument of India commemorating the 90,000 soldiers of the Indian Army who died while fighting for the British Raj in World War I and the Third Anglo-Afghan War. The monument is barricaded now with entry to the inside arch restricted.\nThe Rajpath, which was built similar to the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es in Paris, is the ceremonial boulevard for the Republic of India, located in New Delhi. The annual Republic Day parade takes place here on 26 January. The Beating retreat takes place here two days later.\nGandhi Smriti in New Delhi is the location where Mahatma Gandhi spent the last 144 days of his life and was assassinated on 30 January 1948. Rajghat is the place where Gandhi was cremated on 31 January 1948 after his assassination and his ashes were buried and make it a final resting place beside the sanctity of the Yamuna River. The Raj Ghat in the shape of the large square platform with black marble was designed by architect Vanu Bhuta.\nJantar Mantar located in Connaught Place was built by Maharaja Jai Singh II of Jaipur. It consists of 13 architectural astronomy instruments. The primary purpose of the observatory was to compile astronomical tables, and to predict the times and movements of the sun, moon and planets.\nNew Delhi is home to Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum, National Gallery of Modern Art, National Museum of Natural History, National Rail Museum, National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum, National Philatelic Museum, Nehru Planetarium, Shankar's International Dolls Museum. and Supreme Court of India Museum,\nIn the coming years, a new National War Memorial and Museum will be constructed in New Delhi for million ().\nNew Delhi is particularly renowned for its beautifully landscaped gardens that can look quite stunning in spring. The largest of these include Buddha Jayanti Park and the historic Lodi Gardens. In addition, there are the gardens in the Presidential Estate, the gardens along the Rajpath and India Gate, the gardens along Shanti Path, the Rose Garden, Nehru Park and the Railway Garden in Chanakya Puri. Also of note is the garden adjacent to the Jangpura Metro Station near the Defence Colony Flyover, as are the roundabout and neighbourhood gardens throughout the city.\nThe New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) area was declared the cleanest in North India, based on solid waste management, access to sanitation and other parameters of cleanliness, under the zone-wise Swachh Survekshan 2017.\nCityscape.\nMuch of New Delhi, planned by the leading 20th-century British architect Edwin Lutyens, was laid out to be the central administrative area of the city as a testament to Britain's imperial ambitions. New Delhi is structured around two central promenades called the Rajpath and the Janpath. The Rajpath, or King's Way, stretches from the Rashtrapati Bhavan to the India Gate. The Janpath (), formerly Queen's Way, begins at Connaught Circus and cuts the Rajpath at right angles. Nineteen foreign embassies are located on the nearby Shantipath (), making it the largest diplomatic enclave in India.\nAt the heart of the city is the magnificent Rashtrapati Bhavan (formerly known as Viceroy's House) which sits atop Raisina Hill. The Secretariat, which houses ministries of the government of India, flanks out of the Rashtrapati Bhavan. The Parliament House, designed by Herbert Baker, is located at the Sansad Marg, which runs parallel to the Rajpath. Connaught Place is a large, circular commercial area in New Delhi, modelled after the Royal Crescent in England. Twelve separate roads lead out of the outer ring of Connaught Place, one of them being the Janpath.\nArchitecture.\nThe New Delhi town plan, like its architecture, was chosen with one single chief consideration: to be a symbol of British power and supremacy. All other decisions were subordinate to this, and it was this framework that dictated the choice and application of symbology and influences from both Hindu and Islamic architecture.\nIt took about 20 years to build the city from 1911. Many elements of New Delhi architecture borrow from indigenous sources; however, they fit into a British Classical/Palladian tradition. The fact that there were any indigenous features in the design was due to the persistence and urging of both the Viceroy Hardinge and historians like E.B. Havell.\nIn the year 2019, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and Government of India introduced the Central Vista redevelopment project proposing the redevelopment of over , costing \u20b9 crore ().\nTransport.\nAir.\nIndira Gandhi International Airport, situated to the southwest of Delhi, is the main gateway for the city's domestic and international civilian air traffic. In 2012\u201313, the airport was used by more than 35\u00a0million passengers, making it one of the busiest airports in South Asia. Terminal 3, which cost () to construct between 2007 and 2010, handles an additional 37\u00a0million passengers annually.\nThe Delhi Flying Club, established in 1928 with two de Havilland Moth aircraft named \"Delhi\" and \"Roshanara\", was based at \"Safdarjung Airport\" which started operations in 1929, when it was the Delhi's only airport and the second in India. The airport functioned until 2001; however, in January 2002 the government closed the airport for flying activities because of security concerns following the New York attacks in September 2001. Since then, the club only carries out aircraft maintenance courses, and is used for helicopter rides to Indira Gandhi International Airport for VIP including the president and the prime minister.\nIn 2010, Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) was conferred the fourth best airport award in the world in the 15\u201325\u00a0million category, and \"Best Improved Airport\" in the Asia-Pacific Region by Airports Council International. The airport was rated as the \"Best airport in the world\" in the 25\u201340\u00a0million passengers category in 2015, by Airports Council International. Delhi Airport also bags two awards for \"The Best Airport in Central Asia/India\" and \"Best Airport Staff in Central Asia/India\" at the Skytrax World Airport Awards 2015.\nA second airport, Noida International Airport, is currently being built in Jewar.\nRoad.\nNew Delhi has one of India's largest bus transport systems. Buses are operated by the state-owned Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC), which owns the largest fleet of compressed natural gas (CNG)-fueled buses in the world and Delhi Transit. Personal vehicles especially cars also form a major chunk of vehicles plying on New Delhi roads. New Delhi has the highest number of registered cars compared to any other metropolitan city in India. Taxis and Auto Rickshaws also ply on New Delhi roads in large numbers. New Delhi has one of the highest road density in India and average vehicle speed is around in peak hours in the city.\nSome roads and expressways serve as important pillars of New Delhi's road infrastructure:\nNational Highways.\nNew Delhi is connected by road to the rest of India through National highways:\nRailway.\nNew Delhi is a major junction in the Indian railway network and is the headquarters of the Northern Railway. The five main railway stations are New Delhi railway station, Delhi Junction, Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station, Anand Vihar Terminal and Sarai Rohilla. The Delhi Ring Railway, a circular railway network in Delhi that runs parallel to the Ring Road, is a part of Delhi's suburban railway services.\nMetro.\nThe Delhi Metro is a rapid transit system serving Delhi, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon and Noida in the National Capital Region of India. Delhi Metro is the world's 12th largest metro system in terms of length. Delhi Metro was India's first modern public transportation system, which had revolutionised travel by providing a fast, reliable, safe, and comfortable means of transport. Presently, the network consists of 10 colour-coded lines serving 255 stations with a total length of . The network has now crossed the boundaries of Delhi to reach Ghaziabad and Noida in Uttar Pradesh, and Faridabad and Gurgaon in Haryana. All stations have escalators, elevators, and tactile tiles to guide the visually impaired from station entrances to trains. It has a combination of elevated, at-grade, and underground lines, and uses both broad gauge and standard gauge rolling stock. Four types of rolling stock are used: Mitsubishi-ROTEM Broad gauge, Bombardier MOVIA, Mitsubishi-ROTEM Standard gauge, and CAF Beasain Standard gauge. According to a study, Delhi Metro has helped in removing about 390,000 vehicles from the streets of Delhi.\nDelhi Metro is being built and operated by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Limited (DMRC), a state-owned company with equal equity participation from the Government of India and the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi. However, the organisation is under administrative control of the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India. Besides the construction and operation of the Delhi metro, DMRC is also involved in the planning and implementation of metro rail, monorail and high-speed rail projects in India and providing consultancy services to other metro projects in the country as well as abroad. The Delhi Metro project was spearheaded by E. Sreedharan, the managing director of DMRC and popularly known as the \"Metro Man\" of India. He famously resigned from DMRC, taking moral responsibility for a metro bridge collapse which took five lives. Sreedharan was awarded with the Legion of Honour by the French government for his contribution to Delhi Metro.\nSports.\nThe city hosted the 2010 Commonwealth Games and annually hosts Delhi Half Marathon foot-race. The city has previously hosted the 1951 Asian Games and the 1982 Asian Games. New Delhi was interested in bidding for the 2019 Asian Games but was turned down by the government on 2 August 2010 amid allegations of corruption in 2010 Commonwealth Games. The city also had a bid to host the 1992 Summer Olympics, but withdrew in March 1986, seven months before the host selection.\nMajor sporting venues in New Delhi include the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Ambedkar Stadium, Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium, Arun Jaitley Stadium, R.K. Khanna Tennis Complex, Dhyan Chand National Stadium and Siri Fort Sports Complex. \nInternational relations and organisations.\nThe city is home to numerous international organisations. The Asian and Pacific Centre for Transfer of Technology of the UNESCAP servicing the Asia-Pacific region is headquartered in New Delhi. New Delhi is home to most UN regional offices in India namely the UNDP, UNODC, UNESCO, UNICEF, WFP, UNV, UNCTAD, FAO, UNFPA, WHO, World Bank, ILO, IMF, UNIFEM, IFC and UNAIDS. UNHCR Representation in India is also located in the city.\nNew Delhi hosts 145 foreign embassies and high commissions.\nSummits, conferences and conventions.\nUnited Nations Conference on Trade and Development hosted its second meeting conference in the year 1968 at New Delhi.\nNew Delhi hosted the 7th NAM Summit in 1983, 4th BRICS Summit in 2012, IBSA Summit in 2015, and 5th Global Conference on CyberSpace in 2017. India has also host the G20 summit in 2023 in New Delhi.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "6080707": "Andr\u00e9 Bloc\nFrench sculptor\nAndr\u00e9 Bloc (Algiers, May 23, 1896 \u2013 New Delhi, November 8, 1966) was a French sculptor, magazine editor, and founder of several specialist journals. He founded the \"Groupe Espace\" in 1949.\nHis work is related to that of architects Auguste Perret, Henri Sauvage, and Jourdain.\nBiography.\nBorn in Algeria, he moved to France in 1898. He studied engineering until 1920, then worked in motor and turbine factories.\nIn 1921 he met Le Corbusier who became influential in his career. After this meeting, Bloc moved towards architecture.\nIn 1922 he became the general secretary of the journal \"Science et Industrie\". One year later, in 1923, he became the general secretary of the journal \"Revue de l'ing\u00e9nieur\".\nIn 1924 he founded the journal \"Revue g\u00e9n\u00e9ral du Caoutchouc\". In 1930 he founded the renowned journal L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui. Bloc ran the publication until 1966. He appointed Pierre Vago as editor-in-chief in 1932.\nStarting in 1940, Bloc turned towards sculpture. He created his first large sculptures in Paris between 1949 and 1956. From 1949 on, he founded several journals, such as \"Art d'Aujourd'hui.\" These projects were part of his perennial interest in the \"synth\u00e8se des arts\", or synthesis of the arts\".\"\nIn 1951, in company with several artists, Bloc formed the group Espace. Its goal was to bring the ideals of constructivism and neo-plasticism to urbanism and the social arena. Artists and urbanists such as Jean Dewasne, Etienne B\u00f3thy, Jean Gorin, F\u00e9lix Del Marle, Edgard Pillet, Victor Vasarely, Sonia Delaunay, Nicolaas Warb (n\u00e9e Sophie Warburg), Simone Servanes and Nicolas Sch\u00f6ffer were members of the group, which considered architecture, painting, sculpture and art in general as a social phenomenon.\nIn 1952 the project and construction of the Bellevue house at Meudon was finished. From then until his death in 1966, Bloc worked primarily as a sculptor and decorator. In 1959 he participated at II. documenta in Kassel. Bloc completed several sculptures, including pieces in Tehran, Nice, Jacksonville, and Dakar. His sculptures demonstrate an organic sculptural form somewhere between architecture and sculpture.\nSculptures.\nCarlson/Bloc Tower.\nAndr\u00e9 Bloc sought to combine the disciplines of sculpture and architecture. The 1965 California International Sculpture Symposium's collaborative merging of art and industry echoed his notions. Bloc's dynamic career pushed the theoretical, social, and technological boundaries of design and function, exemplifying the symposium's organizer Kenn Glenn's desire to \"challenge the sculptors to expand their creative limits.\" Bloc, a renowned engineer, artist, and architect, took on the project and spent eight weeks in the summer of 1965 working with structural engineers, architects, and builders to prepare drawings, blueprints, and a miniature maquette of this massive tower. While financial issues delayed the building of Bloc's design for seven years, the Carlson/Bloc Tower finally soared 65 feet above the CSULB campus, establishing a visible emblem of the institution\u2019s student population of 30,000 students while also showcasing Bloc's innovative oeuvre. Bloc once stated that his idea for the tower design came from his studies since towns used to be distinguished by aesthetically beautiful and functional monuments like this. He connected his project to a lengthy historic past of structures, such as the Islamic minaret, whose winding interiors might evoke in man a spiritual journey to enlightenment, by deploying a coiled framework.\nCalifornia State College at Long Beach released a press announcement on December 2, 1971, six years after the symposium, announcing the long-awaited building of the Carlson/Bloc Tower. The tower's construction had been postponed since the 1965 symposia, with an estimated cost of $44,900. Finally, work on the tower could begin courtesy of Louise Carlson's generous donation and extra funding from the LBCSC Foundation.\nBloc\u2019s effort for carving out relationships between both people and the organic form continues to shine brightly on the CSULB campus thanks to the magnificent grandeur of the Carlson/Bloc Tower.\u00a0 \"With my work, I seek to unite man with his environment in a warmer, more personal relationship,\" he once stated. Bloc's tower will continue to unify the CSULB campus for many years to come.\nThe \"Carlson/ Bloc Tower\" (1965-1972) is a public artwork located in the CSULB campus and created by French artist Andr\u00e9 Bloc. Constructed between the Molecular Science building and the University Student Union, the \"Carlson/ Bloc Tower\" stands as both an historical landmark and an artwork that was included in the 1965 California International Sculpture Symposium (CISS). Designed by Andr\u00e9 Bloc, the 157-ton, white concrete tower came to fruition in 1965, after a seven-year delay related to the funding for the sculpture. During this period, Bloc collaborated with several professionals, including structural engineers, architects, and contractors to develop plans and a maquette for the sculpture. Due to the immense quantity of concrete needed to execute the sculpture, and with the uncertainty of funding, construction of Bloc\u2019s tower came to a halt, and was the only sculpture, out of the nine created for 1965 sculpture symposium, that was incomplete. Six years later in December 1971, and after generous donations from the Louise Carlson fund and the LBCSC foundation, the California State College at Long Beach (name of CSULB at the time) announced that the \"Carlson/ Bloc Tower\" was to be constructed. In the Spring of 1972, the completion of the \"Carlson/ Bloc Tower\" finally came to realization with a total cost of $44,900. Standing at 65 feet, the architectural sculpture tapers lightly toward the sky, and, at the time in 1972, was capable of being seen from a distance of over fifteen miles.\nBefore creating the \"Carlson/ Bloc Tower\", Andr\u00e9 Bloc was completing a series of experimental structures known as \u201csculptures habitacles,\u201d which translates to \u201chabitable\u201d in English. As an artist that merged both sculpture and architecture, Bloc first started experimenting with his habitacles at his home in Meudon, France. After completing \"Habitacle 1\" in 1962, he completed two more on his home grounds. His final habitacle to be realized was his \"Carlson/ Bloc Tower\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["6080707", "51585"], "permutation_1": ["6080707", "51585"], "permutation_2": ["6080707", "51585"], "permutation_3": ["51585", "6080707"]}
{"id": "2hop__846897_99808", "docs_added": {"8950307": "Tahifehifa\nTahifehifa is an island in Tonga. It is located within the Vava'u Group in the far north of the country, 15 kilometers (9 miles) south of the town of Neiafu. The island is 1.09 acres in size, and is owned by the Tongan company 'Pacific Oasis Ltd' on a 99-year Deed of Lease.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "30158": "Tonga\nCountry in the South Pacific\nTonga ( , ; ), officially the Kingdom of Tonga (), is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania. The country has 171 islands - of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in the southern Pacific Ocean. As of 2021,[ [update]] according to Johnson's Tribune, Tonga has a population of 104,494, 70% of whom reside on the main island, Tongatapu. The country stretches approximately north-south. It is surrounded by Fiji and Wallis and Futuna (France) to the northwest, Samoa to the northeast, New Caledonia (France) and Vanuatu to the west, Niue (the nearest foreign territory) to the east and Kermadec (New Zealand) to the southwest. Tonga is about from New Zealand's North Island.\nTonga was first inhabited roughly 2,500 years ago by the Lapita civilization, Polynesian settlers who gradually evolved a distinct and strong ethnic identity, language, and culture as the Tongan people. They quickly established a powerful footing across the South Pacific, and this period of Tongan expansionism and colonization is known as the Tu\u02bbi Tonga Empire. From the rule of the first Tongan king, \u02bbAho\u02bbeitu, Tonga grew into a regional power. It was a thalassocracy that conquered and controlled unprecedented swathes of the Pacific, from parts of the Solomon Islands and the whole of New Caledonia and Fiji in the west to Samoa and Niue and even as far as parts of modern-day French Polynesia in the east. Tu\u02bbi Tonga became renowned for its economic, ethnic, and cultural influence over the Pacific, which remained strong even after the Samoan revolution of the 13th century and Europeans' discovery of the islands in 1616.\nFrom 1900 to 1970, Tonga had British protected-state status. The United Kingdom looked after Tonga's foreign affairs under a Treaty of Friendship, but Tonga never relinquished its sovereignty to any foreign power. In 2010, Tonga took a decisive step away from its traditional absolute monarchy and became a semi-constitutional monarchy, after legislative reforms paved the way for its first partial representative elections.\nTonga is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the United Nations, the Pacific Islands Forum, and the Alliance of Small Island States.\nEtymology.\nIn many Polynesian languages, including Tongan, the word (), comes from , which means 'southwards', and the archipelago is so named because it is the southernmost group among the island groups of western Polynesia. The word is cognate to the Hawaiian word meaning 'leeward', which is the origin of the name for the Kona District in Hawai\u02bbi.\nTonga became known in the West as the \"Friendly Islands\" because of the congenial reception accorded to Captain James Cook on his first visit in 1773. He arrived at the time of the annual festival, which centres on the donation of the First Fruits to the Tu\u02bbi Tonga (the islands' monarch), so he received an invitation to the festivities. Ironically, according to the writer William Mariner, the political leaders actually wanted to kill Cook during the gathering, but did not go through with it because they could not agree on a plan of action for accomplishing it.\nHistory.\nAccording to Tongan mythology, the demigod Maui drew up a group of islands from the ocean, first appearing Tongatapu, the Ha'apai Islands and Vava'u, integrating into what became modern-day Tonga.\nAn Austronesian-speaking group linked to what archaeologists call the Lapita culture covered from Island Melanesia to Samoa, and then on to inhabit Tonga sometime between 1500 and 1000\u00a0BC. Scholars still debate exactly when Tonga was first settled, but thorium dating confirms that settlers had arrived in the earliest known inhabited town, Nukuleka, by 888 BC, \u00b1 8 years. Tonga's precontact history was shared via oral history, which was passed down from generation to generation.\nBy the 12th century, Tongans and the Tongan monarch, the Tu\u02bbi Tonga, had acquired a reputation across the central Pacific\u00a0\u2013 from Niue, Samoa, Rotuma, Wallis and Futuna, New Caledonia to Tikopia, leading some historians to speak of a Tu\u02bbi Tonga Empire having existed during that period. Civil wars are known to have occurred in Tonga in the 15th and 17th centuries.\nThe Tongan people first encountered Europeans in 1616, when the Dutch vessel \"Eendracht\", captained by Willem Schouten, made a short visit to the islands for the purpose of engaging in trade. Later, other Dutch explorers arrived, including Jacob Le Maire (who visited the northern island of Niuatoputapu); and Abel Tasman (who visited Tongatapu and Ha\u02bbapai) in 1643. Later noteworthy European visitors included James Cook, of the British Royal Navy, in 1773, 1774, and 1777; Spanish Navy explorers Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa in 1781; Alessandro Malaspina in 1793; the first London missionaries in 1797; and a Wesleyan Methodist minister, Reverend Walter Lawry, in 1822.\nWhaling vessels were among the earliest regular Western visitors. The first of these on record is the \"Ann and Hope\", which was reported to have been seen among the islands of Tonga in June 1799. The last known whaling visitor was the \"Albatross\" in 1899. That ship arrived in Tonga seeking a resupply of water, food, and wood. The islands most regularly visited by Westerners were Ata, 'Eua, Ha'apai, Tongatapu, and Vava'u. Sometimes, Tongan men were recruited to serve as crewmen on these vessels.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition visited Tonga in 1840.\nIn 1845, an ambitious young Tongan warrior, strategist, and orator named T\u0101ufa\u02bb\u0101hau united Tonga into a kingdom. He held the chiefly title of Tu\u02bbi Kanokupolu, but had been baptised by Methodist missionaries with the name \"Siaosi\" (\"George\") in 1831. In 1875, with the help of missionary Shirley Waldemar Baker, he declared Tonga a constitutional monarchy, formally adopted the Western royal style, emancipated the \"serfs\", enshrined a code of law, land tenure, and freedom of the press, and limited the power of the chiefs.\nTonga became a protected state under a Treaty of Friendship with Britain on 18 May 1900, when European settlers and rival Tongan chiefs unsuccessfully tried to oust the man who had succeeded T\u0101ufa\u02bb\u0101hau as king. The treaty posted no higher permanent representative on Tonga than a British consul (1901\u20131970). Under the protection of Britain, Tonga maintained its sovereignty and remained the only Pacific nation to retain its monarchical government. The Tongan monarchy follows an uninterrupted succession of hereditary rulers from one family.\nThe 1918 flu pandemic, brought to Tonga by a ship from New Zealand, killed 1,800 Tongans, a mortality rate of about 8%.\nThe Treaty of Friendship and Tonga's protection status ended in 1970 under arrangements that had been established by Tonga's Queen Salote Tupou III before her death in 1965. Owing to its British ties, Tonga joined the Commonwealth in 1970 (atypically as a country that had its own monarch, rather than having the United Kingdom's monarch, along with Malaysia, Brunei, Lesotho, and Eswatini). Tonga became a member of the United Nations in September 1999. While exposed to colonial pressures, Tonga has always governed itself, which makes it unique in the Pacific.\nIn January 2022, the Hunga Tonga\u2013Hunga Ha\u02bbapai volcano, north of the main island of Tongatapu, erupted, causing a tsunami which inundated parts of the archipelago, including the capital Nuku\u02bbalofa. The eruption affected the kingdom heavily, cutting off most communications and killing four people in Tonga. In Peru, two women drowned due to abnormal tsunami waves. It took around five weeks to repair a submarine fiber optic cable used in the Tonga Cable System for internet and telephone connectivity.\nPolitics.\nTonga is a constitutional monarchy. It is the only extant indigenous monarchy in the Pacific islands (see also Hawai\u02bbi). Reverence for the monarch replaces that held in earlier centuries for the sacred paramount chief, the Tu\u02bbi Tonga. Criticism of the monarch is held to be contrary to Tongan culture and etiquette. Tonga provides for its citizens a free and mandatory education for all, secondary education with only nominal fees, and foreign-funded scholarships for postsecondary education.\nThe pro-democracy movement in Tonga promotes reforms, including better representation in the Parliament for the majority of commoners, and better accountability in matters of state. An overthrow of the monarchy is not part of the movement, and the institution of monarchy continues to hold popular support, even while reforms are advocated. Until recently, the governance issue was generally ignored by the leaders of other countries, but major aid donors and neighbours New Zealand and Australia are now expressing concerns about some Tongan government actions.\nFollowing the precedents of Queen S\u0101lote and the counsel of numerous international advisors, the government of Tonga under King T\u0101ufa\u02bb\u0101hau Tupou IV (reigned 1965\u20132006) monetised the economy, internationalised the medical and education systems, and enabled access by commoners to increasing forms of material wealth (houses, cars, and other commodities), education, and overseas travel.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tonga, with a maximum penalty of 10 years' imprisonment, but the law is not enforced. Tongans have universal access to a national health care system. The Constitution of Tonga protects land ownership; land cannot be sold to foreigners (although it may be leased).\nPolitical culture.\nKing T\u0101ufa\u02bb\u0101hau Tupou IV and his government made some problematic economic decisions and were accused by democracy activists, including former prime minister \u02bbAkilisi P\u014dhiva, of wasting millions of dollars on unwise investments. The problems have mostly been driven by attempts to increase national revenue through a variety of schemes \u2013 considering making Tonga a nuclear waste disposal site (an idea floated in the mid 1990s by the current crown prince), and selling Tongan Protected Persons Passports (which eventually forced Tonga to naturalise the purchasers, sparking ethnicity-based concerns within Tonga).\nSchemes also included the registering of foreign ships (which proved to be engaged in illegal activities, including shipments for al-Qaeda), claiming geo-orbital satellite slots (the revenue from which seems to belong to the Princess Royal, not the state), holding a long-term charter on an unusable Boeing 757 that was sidelined in Auckland Airport, leading to the collapse of Royal Tongan Airlines, and approving a factory for exporting cigarettes to China (against the advice of Tongan medical officials and decades of health-promotion messaging).\nThe king proved vulnerable to speculators with big promises and lost reportedly US$26\u00a0million to Jesse Bogdonoff, a financial adviser who called himself the king's court jester. The police imprisoned pro-democracy leaders, and the government repeatedly confiscated the newspaper \"The Tongan Times\" (printed in New Zealand and sold in Tonga) because the editor had been vocally critical of the king's mistakes. Notably, the \"Kele\u02bba\", produced specifically to critique the government and printed in Tonga by pro-democracy leader \u02bbAkilisi P\u014dhiva, was not banned during that time. P\u014dhiva, however, had been subjected to harassment in the form of barratry (frequent lawsuits).\nIn mid-2003, the government passed a radical constitutional amendment to \"Tonganize\" the press, by licensing and limiting freedom of the press, so as to protect the image of the monarchy. The amendment was defended by the government and by royalists on the basis of traditional cultural values. Licensure criteria include 80% ownership by Tongans living in the country. As of \u00a02004[ [update]], those papers denied licenses under the new act included the \"Taimi \u02bbo Tonga\" (\"Tongan Times\"), the \"Kele\u02bba,\" and the \"Matangi Tonga\"\u00a0\u2013 while those permitted licenses were uniformly church-based or pro-government.\nThe bill was opposed in a several-thousand-strong protest march in the capital, a call by the Tu\u02bbi Pelehake (a prince, nephew of the king and elected member of parliament) for Australia and other nations to pressure the Tongan government to democratise the electoral system, and a legal writ calling for a judicial investigation of the bill. The latter was supported by some 160 signatures, including seven of the nine elected \"People's Representatives\".\nThe then-Crown Prince Tupouto\u02bba and Pilolevu, the Princess Royal, remained generally silent on the issue. In total, the changes threatened to destabilise the polity, fragment support for the status quo, and place further pressure on the monarchy.\nIn 2005, the government spent several weeks negotiating with striking civil-service workers before reaching a settlement. The civil unrest that ensued was not limited to Tonga; protests outside the King's New Zealand residence made headlines.\nPrime Minister Prince \u02bbAho\u02bbeitu \u02bbUnuaki\u02bbotonga Tuku\u02bbaho (Lavaka Ata \u02bbUluk\u0101lala) (now King Tupou VI) resigned suddenly on 11 February 2006 and also gave up his other cabinet portfolios. The elected minister of labour, Feleti Sevele, replaced him in the interim.\nOn 5 July 2006, a driver in Menlo Park, California, caused the deaths of Prince Tu\u02bbipelehake \u02bbUluvalu, his wife, and their driver. Tu\u02bbipelehake, 55, was the cochairman of the constitutional reform commission and a nephew of the king.\nThe public expected some changes when George Tupou V succeeded his father in September 2006. On 16 November 2006, rioting broke out in the capital city of Nuku\u02bbalofa when it seemed that the parliament would adjourn for the year without having made any advances in increasing democracy in government. Pro-democracy activists burned and looted shops, offices, and government buildings. As a result, more than 60% of the downtown area was destroyed and as many as six\u00a0people died. The disturbances were ended by action from Tongan Security Forces and troops from New Zealand-led Joint Task Force.\nOn 29 July 2008, the Palace announced that King George Tupou V would relinquish much of his power and would surrender his role in day-to-day governmental affairs to the Prime Minister. The royal chamberlain said that this was being done to prepare the monarchy for 2010, when most of the first parliament would be elected, and added: \"The Sovereign of the only Polynesian kingdom ... is voluntarily surrendering his powers to meet the democratic aspirations of many of his people.\" The previous week, the government said the king had sold state assets that had contributed to much of the royal family's wealth.\nOn 15 March 2012, King George Tupou V contracted pneumonia and was brought to Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong. He was later diagnosed with leukaemia. His health deteriorated significantly shortly thereafter, and he died at 3:15\u00a0pm on 18 March 2012. He was succeeded by his brother Tupou VI, who was crowned on 4 July 2015.\nForeign relations.\nTonga's foreign policy as of January 2009[ [update]] was described by Matangi Tonga as \"Look East\"\u00a0\u2013 specifically, as establishing closer diplomatic and economic relations with Asia (which actually lies to the north-west of the Pacific kingdom). As of 2021, China has attained great influence in Tonga, financing infrastructure projects, including a new royal palace and holding two thirds of the country's foreign debt.\nTonga retains cordial relations with the United States. Although it remains on good terms with the United Kingdom, the two countries do not maintain particularly close relations. The United Kingdom closed its High Commission in Tonga in 2006, although it was re-established in January 2020 after a 14-year absence. Tonga's relations with Oceania's regional powers, Australia and New Zealand, are good.\nTonga maintains strong regional ties in the Pacific. It is a full member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission, the South Pacific Tourism Organisation, the Pacific Regional Environment Programme, and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community.\nIn 2023, the governments of Tonga and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the \"rapid and just transition\" to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law, including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nMilitary.\nThe Tongan government supported the American \"coalition of the willing\" action in Iraq and deployed more than 40 soldiers (as part of an American force) in late 2004. The contingent returned home on 17 December 2004. In 2007, a second contingent went to Iraq, and two more were sent during 2008 as part of continued support for the coalition. Tongan involvement concluded at the end of 2008 with no reported loss of life.\nIn 2010, Brigadier General Tau\u02bbaika \u02bbUta\u02bbatu, commander of the Tonga Defence Services, signed an agreement in London committing a minimum of 200 troops to co-operate with Britain's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. The task was completed in April 2014, and the UK presented Operational Service Medals to each of the soldiers involved during a parade held in Tonga.\nTonga has contributed troops and police to the Bougainville conflict in Papua-New Guinea and to the Australian-led RAMSI force in the Solomon Islands.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTonga is subdivided into five administrative divisions: \u02bbEua, Ha\u02bbapai, Niuas, Tongatapu, and Vava\u02bbu.\nGeography.\nLocated in Oceania, Tonga is an archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean, directly south of Samoa and about two-thirds of the way from Hawai'i to New Zealand. Its 171 islands, 45 of them inhabited, are divided into three main groups \u2013 Vava'u, Ha'apai, and Tongatapu \u2013 and cover an -long north\u2013south line.\nThe largest island, Tongatapu, on which the capital city of Nuku\u02bbalofa is located, covers . Geologically, the Tongan islands are of two types: most have a limestone base formed from uplifted coral formations; others consist of limestone overlaying a volcanic base.\nClimate.\nTonga has a tropical rainforest climate (\"Af\") with a distinct warm period (December\u2013April), during which the temperatures rise above , and a cooler period (May\u2013November), with temperatures rarely rising above . The temperature and rainfall range from and on Tongatapu in the south to and on the more northerly islands closer to the Equator.\nThe average wettest period is around March, with on average . The average daily humidity is 80%. The highest temperature recorded in Tonga was on 11 February 1979 in Vava'u. The coldest temperature recorded in Tonga was on 8 September 1994 in Fua'amotu. Temperatures of or lower are usually measured in the dry season and are more frequent in southern Tonga than in the northern islands. The tropical cyclone season currently runs from 1 November to 30 April, though tropical cyclones can form and affect Tonga outside of the season. According to the WorldRiskReport 2021, Tonga ranks third among the countries with the highest disaster risk worldwide \u2013 mainly due to the country's exposure to multiple natural hazards.\nEcology.\nTonga contains the Tongan tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nIn Tonga, dating back to Tongan legend, flying bats are considered sacred and are the property of the monarchy. Thus, they are protected and cannot be harmed or hunted. As a result, flying fox bats have thrived in many of the islands of Tonga.\nThe bird life of Tonga includes a total of 73 species, of which two are endemic, the Tongan whistler and the Tongan megapode. Five species have been introduced by humans, and eight are rare or accidental. Seven species are globally threatened.\nEconomy.\nTonga's economy is characterised by a large nonmonetary sector and a heavy dependence on remittances from the half of the country's population who live abroad (chiefly in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States). The royal family and the nobles dominate and largely own the monetary sector of the economy \u2013 particularly the telecommunications and satellite services. Tonga was named the sixth-most corrupt country in the world by \"Forbes\" magazine in 2008.\nTonga was ranked the 165th-safest investment destination in the world in the March 2011 \"Euromoney\" Country Risk rankings.\nThe manufacturing sector consists of handicrafts and a few other very small-scale industries, which contribute only about 5% of GDP. Commercial business activities also are inconspicuous, and to a large extent, are dominated by the same large trading companies found throughout the South Pacific. In September 1974, the country's first commercial trading bank, the Bank of Tonga, opened.\nTonga's development plans emphasise a growing private sector, upgrading agricultural productivity, revitalising the squash and vanilla-bean industries, developing tourism, and improving communications and transport. Substantial progress has been made, but much work remains to be done. A small, growing construction sector is developing in response to the inflow of aid money and remittances from Tongans abroad. In recognition of such a crucial contribution, the government has created a new department in the Prime Minister's Office with the purpose of catering for the needs of Tongans living abroad. In 2007, the Tongan Parliament amended citizenship laws to allow Tongans to hold dual citizenship.\nThe tourist industry is relatively undeveloped. The government recognises that tourism can play a major role in economic development, and efforts are being made to increase this source of revenue. Cruise ships often stop in Vava\u02bbu, with a reputation for its whale watching, game fishing, surfing, beaches, and is increasingly becoming a major player in the South Pacific tourism market.\nTonga's postage stamps, featuring colourful and often unusual designs (including heart-shaped and banana-shaped stamps), are popular with philatelists.\nIn 2005, the country became eligible to become a member of the World Trade Organization. After an initial voluntary delay, Tonga became a full member of the WTO on 27 July 2007.\nThe Tonga Chamber of Commerce and Industry, incorporated in 1996, endeavours to represent the interests of its members, private sector businesses, and to promote economic growth in the Kingdom.\nTonga is home to some 106,000 people. More than double that number live overseas, mainly in the US, New Zealand, and Australia. Remittances from the overseas population have been declining since the onset of the 2008 global economic crisis. The tourism industry is improving, but remains modest at under 90,000 tourists per year.\nAgriculture.\nIn Tonga, agriculture and forestry (together with fisheries) provide the majority of employment, foreign exchange earnings, and food. Rural Tongans rely on both plantation and subsistence agriculture. Plants grown for both market cash crops and home use include bananas, coconuts, coffee beans, vanilla beans, and root crops such as cassava, sweet potato, and taro. As of 2001[ [update]], two-thirds of agricultural land was in root crops.\nThe processing of coconuts into copra and desiccated (dried) coconut was once the only significant industry, and only commercial export. Deteriorating prices on the world market and lack of replanting brought this once vibrant industry, as in most island nations of the South Pacific, to a complete standstill.\nSwine and poultry are the major types of livestock. Horses are kept for draft purposes, primarily by farmers working their\" \u02bbapi \u02bbuta\" (a plot of bushland). More cattle are being raised, and beef imports are declining.\nThe traditional feudal land ownership system meant that farmers had no incentive to invest in planting long-term tree crops on land they did not own. In the late 20th century, kava and vanilla from larger plantations became the main agricultural exports, together with squash. The export of squash to Japan, beginning in 1987, once brought relief to Tonga's struggling economy, but local farmers became increasingly wary of the Japanese market due to price fluctuations, and the huge financial risks involved.\nEnergy.\nEnergy in Tonga mostly comes from imported diesel. Energy consumption in Tonga is projected to reach around 66 gigawatt hours by 2020. The country aimed to reach 50% of renewable energy by 2020. In 2019, Tonga announced the construction of a 6-megawatt solar farm on Tongatapu. The plant will be the second-largest solar plant in the Pacific upon completion.\nIn view of the decreasing reliability of fossil-fuel electricity generation, its increasing costs, and negative environmental side effects, renewable energy solutions have attracted the government's attention. Together with IRENA, Tonga has planned a renewable energy based strategy to power the main and outer islands. The strategy focuses on solar home systems that turn individual households into small power plants. It calls for the involvement of local operators, finance institutions, and technicians to provide sustainable business models and strategies to ensure the effective operation, management, and maintenance once the systems are installed.\nThe Pacific Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency was established in Tonga in 2016 to advise the private sector on related policy matters, provide capacity development and promote business investment. The centre facilitates a financial mechanism offering competitive grants for start-ups to spur the adoption of renewable energy by the business sector. The centre is part of the Global Network of Regional Sustainable Energy Centres and SIDS DOCK framework designed to attract international investment in the renewable energy sector.\nWith the assistance of IRENA, Tonga has developed the 2010\u20132020 Tonga Energy Road Map, which aims for a 50% reduction of diesel importation. This was to be accomplished through a range of appropriate renewable technologies, including wind and solar, as well as innovative efficiencies. As of 2018, Tonga was generating 10% of its electricity from renewable sources.\nDemographics.\nOver 70% of the inhabitants live on its main island, Tongatapu. Although an increasing number of Tongans have moved into the only urban and commercial centre, Nuku\u02bbalofa, where European and indigenous cultural and living patterns have blended, village life and kinship ties remain influential throughout the country. Despite emigration, Tonga grew in population from about 32,000 in the 1930s to more than 90,000 by 1976.\nEthnic groups.\nAccording to the government portal, Tongans, Polynesian by ethnicity with a mixture of Melanesian, represent more than 98% of the inhabitants. About 1.5% are mixed Tongans and the rest are European (the majority are British), mixed European, and other Pacific Islanders. In 2001, about 3,000 to 4,000 Chinese lived there, comprising 3 to 4% of the total Tongan population. The 2006 Nuku\u02bbalofa riots mainly targeted Chinese-owned businesses, leading to the emigration of several hundred Chinese so that only about 300 remain.\nLanguages.\nTongan is the official language, along with English. Tongan is a Polynesian language of the Tongic branch so is closely related to other languages of the Tongic branch, those being: Niuean and Niuafo\u02bbouan. Tongan is more distantly related to other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, Samoan, M\u0101ori, and Tahitian, among others.\nReligion.\nTonga does not have an official state religion. The Constitution of Tonga (Revised 1998) provides for freedom of religion.\nIn 1928, Queen Salote Tupou III, who was a member of the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga, established the Free Wesleyan Church as the state religion of Tonga. The chief pastor of the Free Wesleyan Church serves as the representative of the people of Tonga and of the church at the coronation of a king or queen of Tonga, where he anoints and crowns the monarch. In opposition to the establishment of the Free Wesleyan Church as a state religion, the Church of Tonga separated from the Free Wesleyan Church in 1928.\nIslam in Tonga is a small minority religion in the country. Muslims in Tonga belong to Sunni denomination. Al-Khadeejah Mosque is a prominent mosque in Tonga.\nEveryday life is heavily influenced by Polynesian traditions and by the Christian faith; for example, all commerce and entertainment activities cease on Sunday, from the beginning of the day at midnight, to the end of the day at midnight. The constitution declares the Sabbath sacred forever. The official figures from the latest government census as of 2011[ [update]] show that 90% of the population are affiliated with a Christian church or sect, with the four major church affiliations in the kingdom:\nThe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent missionaries in 1891 to visit King Siaosi (George) Tupo, where they obtained permission to preach.\nHealth.\nBy some published surveys, Tonga has one of the highest obesity rates in the world. World Health Organization data published in 2014 indicate that Tonga stands fourth overall in terms of countries listed by mean body mass index data. In 2011, 90% of the adult population were considered overweight using NIH interpretation of body mass index (BMI) data, with more than 60% of those obese. 70% of Tongan females aged 15\u201385 are obese. Tonga and Nauru have the world's highest overweight and obese populations.\nIn late October 2021, Tonga reported its first case of COVID-19 based on a New Zealand air passenger's positive test.\nEducation.\nPrimary education between ages 6 and 14 is compulsory and free in state schools. Mission schools provide about 8% of the primary and 90% of the secondary level of education. State schools make up for the rest. Higher education includes teacher training, nursing, and medical training, a small private university, a woman's business college, and a number of private agricultural schools. Most levels of higher education are pursued overseas.\nTongans enjoy a relatively high level of education, with a 98.9% literacy rate, and higher education up to and including medical and graduate degrees (pursued mostly overseas). They hold the body of academic knowledge created by their scholars in high esteem and the Kuk\u016b Kaunaka Collection, which comprises every doctoral and master's dissertation written by any Tongan in any country is archived by Seu'ula Johansson-Fua at the Institute for Education in Tonga.\nEmigration.\nContemporary Tongans often have strong ties to overseas lands. Many Tongans have emigrated to Australia, New Zealand, or the United States to seek employment and a higher standard of living.\nIn 2018, 82,389 Tongans lived in New Zealand. As of 2000, 36,840 Tongans were living in the US. More than 8,000 Tongans live in Australia. The Tongan diaspora retains close ties to relatives at home, and a significant portion of Tonga's income derives from remittances to family members (often aged) who prefer to remain in Tonga.\nCulture.\nHumans have lived in Tonga for nearly 3,000 years since settlement in late Lapita times. Before the arrival of European explorers in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Tongans had frequent contacts with their nearest Oceanic neighbours, Fiji and Niue. In the 19th century, with the arrival of Western traders and missionaries, Tongan culture changed, especially in religion. As of 2013[ [update]], almost 98% of residents profess Christianity. The people discarded some old beliefs and habits and adopted others.\nFahu.\nFahu is a form of social organization practiced by the people of Tonga, built upon a relationship between a person and their father\u2019s sister and paternal cousins. There are a few key superiorities in the social structure of fahu:\nPrior to Western contact, the inner dynamics between the chiefly kinship groups were governed by this social convention. Although fahu rights do not hold the same political strength and implications they historically did, they remain, to a notable degree, a part of the contemporary social practices in Tonga.\nSocio-environmental impact of fahu.\nSimilar social structures to fahu have been cited as significantly beneficial for human adaptation to environmental threats, especially those situated in hurricane-prone regions such as Tonga. The benefit stems from the fahu's ability to provide a network and capacity to allow for relocation or people and resources during environmental events, such as hurricanes or droughts.\nHowever, there have been environmental consequences of note due to the fahu structure, or rather, a disturbance of the structure. In the 1980s, Tonga saw a severe depletion of its sandalwood tree due a disruption of the fahu social hierarchy, which was incited by market demand for the resource. This led to heightened local competition and eventually an overharvest of the tree. Nearly all of the sandalwood resources were depleted over the span of two years.\nSport.\nRugby union.\nRugby union is the national sport, and the national team (\u02bbIkale Tahi, or Sea Eagles) has performed quite well on the international stage. Tonga has competed in six Rugby World Cups since 1987. The 2007 and 2011 Rugby World Cups were Tonga's most successful to date, both winning two out of four matches and in a running chance for the quarterfinals. In the 2007 Rugby World Cup, Tonga won its first two matches, against the USA 25\u201315, and Samoa 19\u201315. They came very close to upsetting the eventual winners of the 2007 tournament, the South African Springboks, losing 30\u201325. A defeat by England, 36\u201320 in their last pool game ended their hopes of making the knockout stages. Nevertheless, by picking up third place in their pool games behind South Africa and England, Tonga earned automatic qualification for the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. In Pool A of the 2011 Rugby World Cup, Tonga beat both Japan 31\u201318 and 5th ranked eventual finalist France 19\u201314 in the latter pool stages. However, a previous heavy defeat by the All Blacks at the tournament's opener (41\u201310) and a subsequent tight defeat by Canada (25\u201320) meant that Tonga lost out to France (who also lost to NZ) for the quarter finals due to 2 bonus points and a points difference of 46.\nTonga's best result before 2007 came in 1995, when they beat C\u00f4te d'Ivoire 29\u201311, and 1999 when they beat Italy 28\u201325 (although with only 14 men they lost heavily to England, 101\u201310). Tonga perform the Ikale Tahi war dance or Sipi Tau (a form of Kailao) before all their matches. Tonga used to compete in the Pacific Tri-Nations against Samoa and Fiji, which has now been replaced by the World Rugby Pacific Nations Cup, which now involves Japan, Canada, and the United States. At club level, there are the Datec Cup Provincial Championship and the Pacific Rugby Cup. Rugby union is governed by the Tonga Rugby Football Union, which was a member of the Pacific Islands Rugby Alliance and contributed to the Pacific Islanders rugby union team, before they were disbanded in 2009.\nMany players of Tongan descent \u2013 e.g., Jonah Lomu, Israel Folau, Viliami \"William\" \u02bbOfahengaue, Malakai Fekitoa, Ben Afeaki, Charles Piutau, Frank Halai, Sekope Kepu, George Smith, Wycliff Palu, Sitaleki Timani, Salesi Ma'afu, Anthony and Saia Fainga'a, Mark Gerrard, Cooper Vuna, Doug Howlett, Toutai Kefu and Tatafu Polota-Nau \u2013 have played for either the All Blacks or the Wallabies. British and Irish Lion and Welsh international player Taulupe \"Toby\" Faletau is Tongan born and the son of Tongan international Kuli Faletau. Taulupe's cousins and England international players Billy and Mako Vunipola (who is also a British and Irish Lion), are sons of former Tonga rugby captain Fe'ao Vunipola. Rugby is popular among the nation's schools, and students from schools such as Tonga College and Tupou College are regularly offered scholarships in New Zealand, Australia and Japan.\nRugby league.\nRugby league has gained some success. Tonga made their first appearance at a Rugby League World Cup in the 1995 edition where they went out in the first stage but narrowly lost to New Zealand. They have since appeared in each subsequent Rugby League World Cup tournament. In the 2008 Rugby League World Cup Tonga recorded wins against Ireland and Scotland. Just before the 2017 World Cup, various high-profile players, led by Jason Taumalolo and Andrew Fifita, defected from their tier one nations to represent their nation of heritage. This led to them defeating New Zealand in Hamilton at Waikato Stadium on 11 November at that tournament. The national team has since also recorded victories against Great Britain and the world number one Australia. In addition to the success of the national team, many players of Tongan descent make it big in the Australian National Rugby League competition. These include Jason Taumalolo, Israel Folau, Tyson Frizell, Tevita Pangai Junior, Konrad Hurrell, David Fusitua, Tuimoala Lolohea, Sio Siua Taukeiaho, Jorge Taufua, William Hopoate, Andrew Fifita, Ben Murdoch-Masila, Felise Kaufusi, Willie Mason, Manu Vatuvei, Brent Kite, Fuifui Moimoi, Willie Tonga, Anthony Tupou, Antonio Kaufusi, Michael Jennings, Tony Williams, Feleti Mateo. Subsequently, some Tongan rugby league players have established successful careers in the Super League such as Antonio Kaufusi.\nOlympics.\nAside from rugby, Tonga has also produced athletes who have competed at both the Summer and Winter Olympics. Tonga's only Olympic medal came from the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, where Paea Wolfgramm won silver in super heavyweight boxing. One athlete, Pita Taufatofua, attended the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.\nAmerican football.\nSeveral Tongans have been football players in the National Football League, including Tuineau Alipate, Sione Takitaki, Spencer Folau, Lakei Heimuli, Steve Kaufusi, Ma'ake Kemoeatu, Deuce Lutui, Siupeli Malamala, Tim Manoa, Stan Mataele, Vili Maumau, Alfred Pupunu, Vai Sikahema, Star Lotulelei, Vita Vea, Talanoa Hufanga, Peter Tuipulotu, Marlon Tuipulotu, and Tuli Tuipulotu.\nContemporary Tongan art.\nThere has been a huge surge of contemporary Tongan artists in the past decade, the majority based in New Zealand. Tanya Edwards works with ngatu (bark cloths), Benjamin Work, Telly Tuita, and Sione Mon\u016b are widely exhibited internationally, S\u0113misi Fetokai Potauaine built a five-storey Tongan sculpture in central Christchurch. In 2023, Bergman Gallery hosted \"Tukufakaholo, Tongan Contemporary\" in Auckland, New Zealand, featuring eight Tongan artists.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["8950307", "30158"], "permutation_1": ["8950307", "30158"], "permutation_2": ["8950307", "30158"], "permutation_3": ["8950307", "30158"]}
{"id": "2hop__521834_58946", "docs_added": {"2381762": "Perqu\u00edn\nPerqu\u00edn is a municipality in the Moraz\u00e1n department of El Salvador.\nIt is home to the Museum of the Revolution, which contains artifacts and exhibits related to the Salvadoran Civil War. Exhibits include a recreation of Radio Venceremos, a civil war-era opposition radio station that was broadcast throughout the country and re-broadcast via short wave radio throughout the world during the 1980s. Today Radio Venceremos is a commercial radio station called la RV.\nPerquin is surrounded by coffee plantations and green pinegroves and hosts an annual festival that takes place during the first week of August.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n Media related to at Wikimedia Commons", "4187252": "Salvadoran Civil War\n1979\u20131992 conflict in El Salvador\nThe Salvadoran Civil War () was a twelve-year civil war in El Salvador that was fought between the government of El Salvador, backed by the United States, and the Farabundo Mart\u00ed National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition of left-wing guerilla groups backed by the Cuban regime of Fidel Castro as well as the Soviet Union. A coup on 15 October 1979 followed by government killings of anti-coup protesters is widely seen as the start of civil war. The war did not formally end until after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when, on 16 January 1992 the Chapultepec Peace Accords were signed in Mexico City.\nThe United Nations (UN) reports that the war killed more than 75,000 people between 1979 and 1992, along with approximately 8,000 disappeared persons. Human rights violations, particularly the kidnapping, torture, and murder of suspected FMLN sympathizers by state security forces and paramilitary death squads \u2013 were pervasive.\nThe Salvadoran government was considered an ally of the U.S. in the context of the Cold War. During the Carter and Reagan administrations, the US provided economic aid to the Salvadoran government. The US also provided significant training and equipment to the military. By May 1983, it was reported that US military officers were working within the Salvadoran High Command and making important strategic and tactical decisions. The United States government believed its extensive assistance to El Salvador's government was justified on the grounds that the insurgents were backed by the Soviet Union.\nCounterinsurgency tactics implemented by the Salvadoran government often targeted civilians. Overall, the United Nations estimated that FMLN guerrillas were responsible for 5 percent of atrocities committed during the civil war, while 85 percent were committed by the Salvadoran security forces.\nAccountability for these civil war-era atrocities has been hindered by a 1993 amnesty law. In 2016, however, the Supreme Court of Justice of El Salvador ruled in case \"Incostitucionalidad 44-2013/145-2013\" that the law was unconstitutional and that the Salvadoran government could prosecute suspected war criminals.\nBackground.\nEl Salvador has historically been characterised by extreme socioeconomic inequality. In the late 19th century, coffee became a major cash crop for El Salvador. The divide between rich and poor grew through the 1920s and was compounded by a drop in coffee prices following the stock-market crash of 1929. In 1932, the Central American Socialist Party was formed and led an uprising of peasants and indigenous people against the government. The FMLN was named after Farabundo Mart\u00ed, one of the leaders of the uprising. The rebellion was brutally suppressed in \"La Matanza\", during which approximately 30,000 civilians were murdered by the armed forces. \"La Matanza \u2013 \"'the slaughter' in Spanish, as it came to be known \u2013 allowed military dictatorships to monopolize political power in El Salvador while protecting the economic dominance of the landed elite. Opposition to this arrangement among middle-class, working-class, and poor Salvadorans grew throughout the 20th century.\nOn 14 July 1969, an armed conflict erupted between El Salvador and Honduras over immigration disputes caused by Honduran land reform laws. The conflict (known as the Football War) lasted only four days but had major long-term effects for Salvadoran society. Trade was disrupted between El Salvador and Honduras, causing tremendous economic damage to both nations. An estimated 300,000 Salvadorans were displaced due to battle, many of whom were exiled from Honduras; in many cases, the Salvadoran government could not meet their needs. The Football War also strengthened the power of the military in El Salvador, leading to heightened corruption. In the years following the war, the government expanded its purchases of arms from sources such as Israel, Brazil, West Germany and the United States.\nThe 1972 Salvadoran presidential election was marred by massive electoral fraud, which favored the military-backed National Conciliation Party (PCN), whose candidate Arturo Armando Molina was a colonel in the Salvadoran Army. Opposition to the Molina government was strong on both the right and the left. Also in 1972, the Marxist\u2013Leninist Fuerzas Populares de Liberaci\u00f3n Farabundo Mart\u00ed (FPL) \u2013 established in 1970 as an offshoot of the Communist Party of El Salvador \u2013 began conducting small-scale guerrilla operations in El Salvador. Other organizations such as the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP) also began to develop.\nThe growth of left-wing insurgency in El Salvador occurred against a backdrop of rising food prices and decreased agricultural output exacerbated by the 1973 oil crisis. This worsened the existing socioeconomic inequality in the country, leading to increased unrest. In response, President Molina enacted a series of land reform measures, calling for large landholdings to be redistributed among the peasant population. The reforms failed, thanks to opposition from the landed elite, reinforcing the widespread discontent with the government.\nOn 20 February 1977, the PCN defeated the National Opposition Union (UNO) in the presidential elections. As was the case in 1972, the results of the 1977 election were fraudulent and favored a military candidate, General Carlos Humberto Romero. State-sponsored paramilitary forces \u2013 such as the infamous Organizaci\u00f3n Democr\u00e1tica Nacionalista (ORDEN) \u2013 reportedly strong-armed peasants into voting for the military candidate by threatening them with machetes. The period between the election and the formal inauguration of President Romero on 1 July 1977 was characterized by massive protests from the popular movement, which were met by state repression. On 28 February 1977, a crowd of political demonstrators gathered in downtown San Salvador to protest the electoral fraud. Security forces arrived on the scene and opened fire, resulting in a massacre as they indiscriminately killed demonstrators and bystanders alike. Estimates of the number of civilians killed range between 200 and 1,500. President Molina blamed the protests on \"foreign Communists\" and immediately exiled a number of top UNO party members from the country.\nRepression continued after the inauguration of President Romero, with his new government declaring a state-of-siege and suspending civil liberties. In the countryside, the agrarian elite organized and funded paramilitary death squads, such as the infamous \"Regalado's Armed Forces\" (FAR) led by Hector Regalado. While the death squads were initially autonomous from the Salvadoran military and composed of civilians (the FAR, for example, had developed out of a Boy Scout troop), they were soon taken over by El Salvador's military intelligence service, National Security Agency of El Salvador (ANSESAL), led by Major Roberto D'Aubuisson, and became a crucial part of the state's repressive apparatus, murdering thousands of union leaders, activists, students and teachers suspected of sympathizing with the left. The Socorro Jur\u00eddico Cristiano (Christian Legal Assistance) \u2013 a legal aid office within the archbishop's office and El Salvador's leading human rights group at the time \u2013 documented the killings of 687 civilians by government forces in 1978. In 1979 the number of documented killings increased to 1,796. The repression prompted many in the Catholic Church to denounce the government, which responded by repressing the clergy.\nHistorian M. A. Serpas posits displacement and dispossession rates with respect to land as a major structural factor leading ultimately to civil war. El Salvador is an agrarian society, with coffee fueling its economy, where \"77 percent of the arable land belonged to .01 percent of the population. Nearly 35 percent of the civilians in El Salvador were disfranchised from land ownership either through historical injustices, war or economic downturns in the commodities market. During this time frame, the country also experienced a growing population amidst major disruption in agrarian commerce and trade.\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />A threat to land change meant a challenge to a state where \"marriages intertwined, making the wealthiest coffee processors and exporters (more so than the growers) also those with the highest ties in the military.\nCoup d'\u00e9tat, repression and insurrection: 1979\u20131981.\nMilitary coup October 1979.\nWith tensions mounting and the country on the verge of an insurrection, the civil-military Revolutionary Government Junta (JRG) deposed Romero in a coup on 15 October 1979. The United States feared that El Salvador, like Nicaragua and Cuba before it, could fall to communist revolution. Thus, Jimmy Carter's administration supported the new military government with vigor, hoping to promote stability in the country. While Carter provided some support to the government, the subsequent Reagan administration significantly increased U.S. spending in El Salvador. By 1984 Ronald Reagan's government would spend nearly $1\u00a0billion on economic aid for the Salvadoran government.\nThe JRG enacted a land reform program that restricted landholdings to a 100-hectare maximum, nationalised the banking, coffee and sugar industries, scheduled elections for February 1982, and disbanded the paramilitary private death squad Organizaci\u00f3n Democr\u00e1tica Nacionalista (ORDEN) on 6 November 1979.\nThe land reform program was received with hostility from El Salvador's military and economic elites, however, which sought to sabotage the process as soon as it began. Upon learning of the government's intent to distribute land to the peasants and organize cooperatives, wealthy Salvadoran landowners began killing their own livestock and moving valuable farming equipment across the border into Guatemala, where many Salvadoran elites owned additional land. In addition, most co-op leaders in the countryside were assassinated or \"disappeared\" soon after being elected and becoming visible to the authorities. The \"Socorro Jur\u00eddico\" documented a jump in documented government killings from 234 in February 1980 to 487 the following month.\nUnder pressure from the military, all three civilian members of the junta resigned on 3 January 1980, along with 10 of the 11 cabinet ministers. On 22 January 1980, the Salvadoran National Guard attacked a massive peaceful demonstration, killing up to 50 people and wounding hundreds more. On 6 February, US ambassador Frank Devine informed the State Department that the extreme right was arming itself and preparing for a confrontation in which it clearly expected to ally itself with the military.\nCriticism of US support.\n\"The immediate goal of the Salvadoran army and security forces\u2014and of the United States in 1980, was to prevent a takeover by the leftist-led guerrillas and their allied political organizations. At this point in the Salvadoran conflict the latter were much more important than the former. The military resources of the rebels were extremely limited and their greatest strength, by far, lay not in force of arms but in their 'mass organizations' made up of labor unions, student and peasant organizations that could be mobilized by the thousands in El Salvador's major cities and could shut down the country through strikes.\"\nCritics of US military aid charged that \"it would legitimate what has become dictatorial violence and that political power in El Salvador lay with old-line military leaders in government positions who practice a policy of 'reform with repression.'\" A prominent Catholic spokesman insisted that \"any military aid you send to El Salvador ends up in the hands of the military and paramilitary rightist groups who are themselves at the root of the problems of the country.\"\n\"In one case that has received little attention\", Human Rights Watch noted, \"US Embassy officials apparently collaborated with the death squad abduction of two law students in January 1980. National Guard troops arrested two youths, Francisco Ventura and Jos\u00e9 Humberto Mej\u00eda, following an anti-government demonstration. The National Guard received permission to bring the youths onto Embassy grounds. Shortly thereafter, a private car drove into the Embassy parking lot. Men in civilian dress put the students in the trunk of their car and drove away. Ventura and Mej\u00eda were never seen again.\"\nMotivation for the resistance.\nAs the government began to expand its violence towards its citizens, not only through death squads but also through the military, any group of citizens that attempted to provide any form of support whether physically or verbally ran the risk of death. Even so, many still chose to participate. But the violence was not limited to activists but also anyone who promoted ideas that \"questioned official policy\" were tacitly assumed to be subversive against the government. A marginalized group that metamorphosed into a guerilla force that would end up confronting these government forces manifested itself in \"campesinos\" or peasants. Many of these insurgents joined collective action campaigns for material gain; in the Salvadoran Civil War, however, many peasants cited reasons other than material benefits in their decision to join the fight.\nPiety was a popular reason for joining the insurrection because they saw their participation as a way of not only advancing a personal cause but a communal sentiment of divine justice. Even prior to the civil war, numerous insurgents took part in other campaigns that tackled social changes much more directly, not only the lack of political representation but also the lack of economic and social opportunities not afforded to their communities.\nWhile the FMLN can be characterized as an insurrectionist group, other scholars have classified it as an \"armed group institution.\" Understanding the differentiation is crucial. Armed group institutions use tactics to reinforce their mission or ideology. Ultimately influencing the behavior and group norms of their combatants. In this regard, the FMLN had a more effective approach than El Salvador's army in politically educating their members about their mission. Individuals who aligned themselves with the FMLN were driven by a profound sense of passion and purpose. They demonstrated a willingness to risk their lives for the greater good of their nation. The FMLN strategy focused on community organization, establishing connections within the church and labor unions. In contrast, El Salvador's army had inadequate training, and many of its combatants reported joining out of job insecurity or under intimidation from the government.These disparities were notably reflected in their respective combat methods. Further, the Salvadoran military caused more civilian casualties than the FMLN.\nIn addition, the insurgents in the civil war viewed their support of the insurrection as a demonstration of their opposition to the powerful elite's unfair treatment of peasant communities that they experienced on an everyday basis, so there was a class element associated with these insurgencies. They reveled in their fight against injustice and in their belief that they were writing their own story, an emotion that Elisabeth Wood titled \"pleasure of agency\". The peasants' organization thus centered on using their struggle to unite against their oppressors, not only towards the government but the elites as well, a struggle that soon evolved into a political machine that came to be associated with the FMLN.\nIn the early months of 1980, Salvadoran guerilla groups, workers, communists, and socialists, unified to form the Farabundo Mart\u00ed National Liberation Front (FMLN). The FMLN immediately announced plans for an insurrection against the government, which began on 10 January 1981, with the FMLN's first major attack. The attack established FMLN control of most of Moraz\u00e1n and Chalatenango departments for the war's duration. Attacks were also launched on military targets throughout the country, leaving hundreds of people dead. FMLN insurgents ranged from children to the elderly, both male and female, and most were trained in FMLN camps in the mountains and jungles of El Salvador to learn military techniques.\nMuch later, in November 1989, the FMLN launched a large offensive that caught Salvadoran military off guard and succeeded in taking control of large sections of the country and entering the capital, San Salvador. In San Salvador, the FMLN quickly took control of many of the poor neighborhoods as the military bombed their positions\u2014including residential neighborhoods to drive out the FMLN. This large FMLN offensive was unsuccessful in overthrowing the government but did convince the government that the FMLN could not be defeated using force of arms and that a negotiated settlement would be necessary.\nAssassination of Archbishop Romero.\nIn February 1980, Archbishop \u00d3scar Romero published an open letter to US President Jimmy Carter in which he pleaded with him to suspend the United States' ongoing program of military aid to the Salvadoran regime. He advised Carter that \"Political power is in the hands of the armed forces. They know only how to repress the people and defend the interests of the Salvadoran oligarchy.\" Romero warned that US support would only \"sharpen the injustice and repression against the organizations of the people which repeatedly have been struggling to gain respect for their fundamental human rights\". On 24 March 1980, the Archbishop was assassinated while celebrating Mass, the day after he called upon Salvadoran soldiers and security force members to not follow their orders to kill Salvadoran civilians. President Carter stated this was a \"shocking and unconscionable act\". At his funeral a week later, government-sponsored snipers in the National Palace and on the periphery of the Gerardo Barrios Plaza were responsible for the shooting of 42 mourners.\nOn 7 May 1980, former army major, Roberto D'Aubuisson, was arrested with a group of civilians and soldiers at a farm. The raiders found documents connecting him and the civilians as organizers and financiers of the death squad who killed Archbishop Romero, and of plotting a \"coup d'\u00e9tat\" against the JRG. Their arrest provoked right-wing terrorist threats and institutional pressures forcing the JRG to release D'Aubuisson. In 1993, a U.N. investigation confirmed that D'Aubuisson ordered the assassination.\nA week after the arrest of D'Aubuisson, the National Guard and the newly reorganized paramilitary ORDEN, with the cooperation of the Military of Honduras, carried out a large massacre at the Sumpul River on 14 May 1980, in which an estimated 600 civilians were killed, mostly women and children. Escaping villagers were prevented from crossing the river by the Honduran armed forces, \"and then killed by Salvadoran troops who fired on them in cold blood\". Over the course of 1980, the Salvadoran Army and three main security forces (National Guard, National Police and Treasury Police) were estimated to have killed 11,895 people, mostly peasants, trade unionists, teachers, students, journalists, human rights advocates, priests, and other prominent demographics among the popular movement. Human rights organizations judged the Salvadoran government to have among the worst human rights records in the hemisphere.\nMurder and rape of US nuns.\nOn 2 December 1980, members of the Salvadoran National Guard were suspected to have raped and murdered four American, Catholic church women (three religious women, or nuns, and a laywoman). Maryknoll missionary sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, Ursuline sister Dorothy Kazel, and laywoman Jean Donovan were on a Catholic relief mission providing food, shelter, transport, medical care, and burial to death squad victims. In 1980 alone, at least 20 religious workers and priests were murdered in El Salvador. Throughout the war, the murders of church figures increased. For example, the Jesuit University of Central America stated that two bishops, sixteen priests, three nuns, one seminarian, and at least twenty-seven lay workers were murdered. By killing Church figures, \"the military leadership showed just how far its position had hardened in daring to eliminate those it viewed as opponents. They saw the Church as an enemy that went against the military and their rule.\" U.S. military aid was briefly cut off in response to the murders but was renewed within six weeks. The outgoing Carter administration increased military aid to the Salvadoran armed forces to $10\u00a0million, which included $5\u00a0million in rifles, ammunition, grenades and helicopters.\nIn justifying these arms shipments, the administration claimed that the regime had taken \"positive steps\" to investigate the murder of four American nuns, but this was disputed by US Ambassador, Robert E. White, who said that he could find no evidence the junta was \"conducting a serious investigation\". White was dismissed from the foreign service by the Reagan administration after he had refused to participate in a coverup of the Salvadoran military's responsibility for the murders at the behest of Secretary of State Alexander Haig.\nRepression stepped up.\nOther countries allied with the United States also intervened in El Salvador. The military government in Chile provided substantial training and tactical advice to the Salvadoran Armed Forces, such that the Salvadoran high command bestowed upon General Augusto Pinochet the prestigious Order of Jos\u00e9 Mat\u00edas Delgado in May 1981 for his government's avid support. The Argentine military dictatorship also supported the Salvadoran armed forces as part of Operation Charly.\nDuring the same month, the JRG strengthened the state of siege, imposed by President Romero in May 1979, by declaring martial law and adopting a new set of curfew regulations. Between 12 January and 19 February 1981, 168 persons were killed by the security forces for violating curfew.\n\"Draining the Sea\".\nIn its effort to defeat the insurgency, the Salvadoran Armed Forces carried out a \"scorched earth\" strategy, and adopted tactics similar to those being employed in neighboring Guatemala by its security forces. These tactics were inspired and adapted from U.S. counterinsurgency strategies used during the Vietnam War. An integral part of the Salvadoran Army's counterinsurgency strategy entailed \"draining the sea\" or \"drying up the ocean\", that is, eliminating the insurgency by eradicating its support base in the countryside. The primary target was the civilian population \u2013 displacing or killing them in order to remove any possible base of support for the rebels. The concept of \"draining the sea\" had its basis in a doctrine by Mao Zedong that emphasized that \"The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.\"\nAryeh Neier, the executive director of Americas Watch, wrote in a 1984 review about the scorched earth approach: \"This may be an effective strategy for winning the war. It is, however, a strategy that involves the use of terror tactics\u2014bombings, strafings, shellings and, occasionally, massacres of civilians.\"\nBeginning in 1984, the Salvadoran Air Force was able to locate guerrilla strongholds reportedly using intelligence from U.S. Air Force planes flying over the country.\nScorched earth offensives of 1981.\nOn 15 March 1981, the Salvadoran Army began a \"sweep\" operation in Caba\u00f1as Department in northern El Salvador near the Honduran border. The sweep was accompanied by the use of scorched earth tactics by the Salvadoran Army and indiscriminate killings of anyone captured by the army. Those displaced by the \"sweep\" who were not killed outright fled the advance of the Salvadoran Army; hiding in caves and under trees to evade capture and probable summary execution. On 18 March, three days after the sweep in Caba\u00f1as began, 4\u20138,000 survivors of the sweep (mostly women and children) attempted to cross the Rio Lempa into Honduras to flee violence. There, they were caught between Salvadoran and Honduran troops. The Salvadoran Air Force, subsequently bombed and strafed the fleeing civilians with machine gun fire, killing hundreds. Among the dead were at least 189 persons who were unaccounted for and registered as \"disappeared\" during the operation.\nA second offensive was launched, also in Caba\u00f1as Department, on 11 November 1981 in which 1,200 troops were mobilized, including members of the Atl\u00e1catl Battalion. Atl\u00e1catl was a rapid response counter-insurgency battalion organized at the U.S. Army School of the Americas in Panama in 1980. Atl\u00e1catl soldiers were trained and equipped by the U.S. military, and were described as \"the pride of the United States military team in San Salvador. Trained in antiguerrilla operations, the battalion was intended to turn a losing war around.\"\nThe November 1981 operation was commanded by Lt. Col. Sigifredo Ochoa, a former Treasury Police chief with a reputation for brutality. Ochoa was close associate of Major Roberto D'Aubuisson and was alleged to have been involved in the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero. D'Aubuisson and Ochoa were both members of La Tandona, the class of 1966 at the Captain General Gerardo Barrios Military School. From the start, the invasion of Cabanas was described as a \"cleansing\" operation by official sources. Hundreds of civilians were massacred by the army as Col. Ochoa's troops moved through the villages. Col. Ochoa claimed that hundreds of guerrillas had been killed but was able to show journalists only fifteen captured weapons, half of them virtual antiques, suggesting that most of those killed in the sweep were unarmed.\nEl Mozote massacre.\nThis operation was followed by additional \"sweeps\" through Moraz\u00e1n Department, spearheaded by the Atl\u00e1catl Battalion. On 11 December 1981, one month after the \"sweep\" through Caba\u00f1as, the Battalion occupied the village of El Mozote and massacred at least 733 and possibly up to 1,000 unarmed civilians, including women and 146 children, in what became known as the El Mozote massacre. The Atl\u00e1catl soldiers accused the adults of collaborating with the guerrillas. The field commander said they were under orders to kill everyone, including the children, who he asserted would just grow up to become guerrillas if they let them live. \"We were going to make an example of these people,\" he said.\nThe US steadfastly denied the existence of the El Mozote massacre, dismissing reports of it as leftist \"propaganda\", until secret US cables were declassified in the 1990s. The US government and its allies in US media smeared reporters of American newspapers who reported on the atrocity and, more generally, undertook a campaign of whitewashing the human rights record of the Salvadoran military and the US role in arming, training and guiding it. The smears, according to journalists like Michael Massing writing in the \"Columbia Journalism Review\" and Anthony Lewis, made other American journalists tone down their reporting on the crimes of the Salvadoran regime and the US role in supporting the regime. As details became more widely known, the event became recognized as one of the worst atrocities of the conflict.\nIn its report covering 1981, Amnesty International identified \"regular security and military units as responsible for widespread torture, mutilation and killings of noncombatant civilians from all sectors of Salvadoran society.\" The report also stated that the killing of civilians by state security forces became increasingly systematic with the implementation of more methodical killing strategies, which allegedly included use of a meat packing plant to dispose of human remains. Between 20 and 25 August 1981, eighty-three decapitations were reported. The murders were later revealed to have been carried out by a death squad using a guillotine.\nThe repression in rural areas resulted in the displacement of large portions of the rural populace, and many peasants fled. Of those who fled or were displaced, some 20,000 resided in makeshift refugee centers on the Honduran border in conditions of poverty, starvation and disease. The army and death squads forced many of them to flee to the United States, but most were denied asylum. A US congressional delegation that, on 17\u201318 January 1981, visited the refugee camps in El Salvador on a fact finding mission, submitted a report to Congress that found: \"[T]he Salvadoran method of 'drying up the ocean' is to eliminate entire villages from the map, to isolate the guerrillas, and deny them any rural base off which they can feed.\"\nIn total, \"Socorro Jur\u00eddico\" registered 13,353 individual cases of summary execution by government forces over the course of 1981. Nonetheless, the true figure for the number of persons killed by the Army and security services could be substantially higher, due to the fact that extrajudicial killings generally went unreported in the countryside and many of the victims' families remained silent in fear of reprisal. An \"Americas Watch\" report described that the \"Socorro Jur\u00eddico\" figures \"tended to be conservative because its standards of confirmation are strict\"; killings of persons were registered individually and required proof of being \"not combat related\". \"Socorro Jur\u00eddico\" later revised its count of government killings for 1981 up to 16,000 with the induction of new cases.\nLieutenant Colonel Domingo Monterrosa was chosen to replace Colonial Jaime Flores and became military commander of the whole eastern zone of El Salvador. He was a rare thing: \"pure, one-hundred-percent soldier, a natural leader, a born military man.\" Monterrosa did not want wholesale bloodshed, but he wanted to win the war at any costs. He tried to be more relatable and less arrogant to the local population in the way he presented his military. When he first executed massacres he didn't think much of it because it was part of his military training and because it was tactically approved by the High Command, but he didn't consider whether it would become a political problem. He was accused of responsibility for what happened at El Mozote, though he denied it. Monterrosa later began to date a Salvadoran woman who worked in the press corps, for an American television network. Monterrosa's girlfriend let her co-worker know that something had gone wrong at El Mozote, though she did not go into detail. But people knew that he had lost radio contact with his men and that it was unfortunate and something that later brought regrettable consequences. Although he says he lost contact with his men, the guerrillas did not believe it and said it was well known to everyone that he had ordered the massacre. In an interview with James LeMoyne, however, he stated that he did in fact order his men to \"clean out\" El Mozote.\nInterim government and continued violence: 1982\u20131984.\nPeace offer and rejection.\nIn 1982, the FMLN began calling for a peace settlement that would establish a \"government of broad participation\". The Reagan administration said the FMLN wanted to create a Communist dictatorship. Elections were interrupted with right-wing paramilitary attacks and FMLN-suggested boycotts. El Salvador's National Federation of Lawyers, which represented all of the country's bar associations, refused to participate in drafting the 1982 electoral law. The lawyers said that the elections couldn't possibly be free and fair during a state of siege that suspended all basic rights and freedoms.\nFMLN steps up campaign.\nAttacks against military and economic targets by the FMLN began to escalate. The FMLN attacked the Ilopango Air Force Base in San Salvador, destroying six of the Air Force's 14 Bell UH-1 Iroquois helicopters, five of its 18 Dassault Ouragan aircraft and three C-47s. Between February and April, a total of 439 acts of sabotage were reported. The number of acts of sabotage involving explosives or arson rose to 782 between January and September. The United States Embassy estimated the damage to the economic infrastructure at US$98\u00a0million. FMLN also carried out large-scale operations in the capital city and temporarily occupied urban centres in the country's interior. According to some reports, the number of rebels ranged between 4,000 and 5,000; other sources put the number at between 6,000 and 9,000.\nInterim government.\nPursuant to measures implemented by the JRG junta on 18 October 1979, elections for an interim government were held on 29 April 1982. The Legislative Assembly voted on three candidates nominated by the armed forces; \u00c1lvaro Alfredo Maga\u00f1a Borja was elected by 36 votes to 17, ahead of the Party of National Conciliation and the hard right Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) candidates. Roberto D'Aubuisson accused Jaime Abdul Guti\u00e9rrez Avenda\u00f1o of imposing on the Assembly \"his personal decision to put \u00c1lvaro Alfredo Maga\u00f1a Borja in the presidency\" in spite of a \"categorical no\" from the ARENA deputies. Magana was sworn into office on 2 May.\nDecree No. 6 of the National Assembly suspended phase III of the implementation of the agrarian reform, and was itself later amended. The Apaneca Pact was signed on 3 August 1982, establishing a Government of National Unity, whose objectives were peace, democratization, human rights, economic recovery, security and a strengthened international position. An attempt was made to form a transitional government that would establish a democratic system. Lack of agreement among the forces that made up the government and the pressures of the armed conflict prevented any substantive changes from being made during Maga\u00f1a's presidency.\nMore atrocities by the government.\n The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights reported that, on 24 May 1982, a clandestine cemetery containing the corpses of 150 disappeared persons was discovered near Puerta del Diablo, Panchimalco, approximately twelve kilometers from San Salvador. On 10 June 1982, almost 4,000 Salvadoran troops carried out a \"cleanup\" operation in the rebel-controlled Chalatenango province. Over 600 civilians were reportedly massacred during the Army sweep. The Salvadoran field commander acknowledged that an unknown number of civilian rebel sympathizers or \"masas\" were killed, while declaring the operation a success. Nineteen days later, the Army massacred 27 unarmed civilians during house raids in a San Salvador neighborhood. The women were raped and murdered. Everyone was dragged from their homes into the street and then executed. \"The operation was a success,\" said the Salvadoran Defense Ministry communique. \"This action was a result of training and professionalization of our officers and soldiers.\"\nDuring 1982 and 1983, government forces killed approximately 8,000 civilians a year. Although the figure is substantially less than the figures reported by human rights groups in 1980 and 1981, targeted executions as well as indiscriminate killings nonetheless remained an integral policy of the army and internal security forces, part of what Professor William Stanley described as a \"strategy of mass murder\" designed to terrorize the civilian population as well as opponents of the government. General Adolfo Bland\u00f3n, the Salvadoran armed forces chief of staff during much of the 1980s, has stated, \"Before 1983, we never took prisoners of war.\"\nGovernment murder of human rights and labor union leaders.\nIn March 1983, Marianella Garc\u00eda Villas, president of the non-governmental Human Rights Commission of El Salvador, was captured by army troops on the Guazapa volcano, and later tortured to death. Garcia Villas had been on Guazapa collecting evidence about the possible army use of white phosphorus munitions.\nDuarte presidency: 1984\u20131989.\nFixed elections and lack of accountability.\nIn 1984 elections, Christian Democrat Jos\u00e9 Napole\u00f3n Duarte won the presidency (with 54 percent of the votes) against Army Major Roberto d'Aubuisson of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA). The elections were held under military rule amidst high levels of repression and violence, however, and candidates to the left of Duarte's brand of Christian Democrats were excluded from participating. Fearful of a d'Aubuisson presidency for public relations purposes, the CIA financed Duarte's campaign with some two million dollars. $10\u00a0million were put into the election as a whole, by the CIA, for electoral technology, administration and international observers.\nAfter Duarte's victory, human rights abuses at the hands of the army and security forces continued, but declined due to modifications made to the security structures. The policies of the Duarte government attempted to make the country's three security forces more accountable to the government by placing them under the direct supervision of a Vice Minister of Defense, but all three forces continued to be commanded individually by regular army officers, which, given the command structure within the government, served to effectively nullify any of the accountability provisions. The Duarte government also failed to decommission personnel within the security structures that had been involved in gross human rights abuses, instead simply dispersing them to posts in other regions of the country.\nDays of Tranquillity.\nFollowing a proposal from Nils Thedin to UNICEF, \"Days of tranquillity\" were brokered between Government and rebel forces, under the direction of UNICEF Executive Director James Grant. For three days in 1985, all hostilities ceased to allow for mass-immunisation of any child against polio, measles, diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough. The program was successful. More than half of El Salvador's 400,000 children were immunised from 2,000 immunisation centres by 20,000 health workers, and the program was repeated in subsequent years until the conclusion of the war. Similar programs have since been instituted in Uganda, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Sudan.\nArmy massacres continue.\nWhile reforms were being made to the security forces, the army continued to massacre unarmed civilians in the country side. An Americas Watch report noted that the Atl\u00e1catl Battalion killed 80 unarmed civilians in Cabanas in July 1984, and carried out another massacre one month later, killing 50 displaced people in the Chalatenango province. The women were raped and then everyone was systematically executed.\nThrough 1984 and 1985, the Salvadoran Armed Forces enacted a series of \"civic-action\" programs in Chalatenango province, consisting of the establishment of \"citizen defense committees\" to guard plantations and businesses against attacks by insurgents and the establishment of a number of free-fire zones. These measures were implemented under former Cabanas commander, Lieutenant Colonel Sigifredo Ochoa Perez, who had previously been exiled to the US Army War College for mutiny. By January 1985 Ochoa's forces had established 12 free-fire zones in Chalatenango in which any inhabitants unidentified by the army were deemed to be insurgents. Ochoa stated in an interview that areas within the free fire zone were susceptible to indiscriminate bombings by the Salvadoran Air Force. Ochoa's forces were implicated in a massacre of about 40 civilians in an Army sweep through one of the free fire zones in August 1985. Ochoa refused to permit the Red Cross to enter these areas to deliver humanitarian aid to the victims. Ochoa's forces reportedly uprooted some 1,400 civilian rebel supporters with mortar fire between September and November 1984.\nIn its annual review of 1987, Amnesty International reported that \"some of the most serious violations of human rights are found in Central America\", particularly Guatemala and El Salvador, where \"kidnappings and assassinations serve as systematic mechanisms of the government against opposition from the left\". On 26 October 1987, unknown gunmen shot and killed Herbert Ernesto Anaya, Director of El Salvador's nongovernmental Human Rights Commission. Anaya was in his car in his driveway with his wife and children at the time. Some human rights groups linked the increase of death squad-style killings and disappearances to the reactivation of the popular organizations, which had been decimated by mass state terror in the early 1980s. Col. Renee Emilio Ponce, the Army operations chief, asserted that the guerrillas were \"returning to their first phase of clandestine organization\" in the city, \"and mobilization of the masses\".\nPeace talks.\nDuring the Central American Peace Accords negotiations in 1987, the FMLN demanded that all death squads be disbanded and the members be held accountable. In October 1987, the Salvadoran Assembly approved an amnesty for civil-war-related crimes. The Amnesty law required the release of all prisoners suspected of being guerrillas and guerrilla sympathizers. Pursuant to these laws, 400 political prisoners were released. Insurgents were given a period of fifteen days to turn themselves over to the security forces in exchange for amnesty. Despite amnesty being granted to guerillas and political prisoners, amnesty was also granted to members of the army, security forces and paramilitary who were involved in human rights abuses.\nArmy death squads continue.\nIn October 1988, Amnesty International reported that death squads had abducted, tortured, and killed, hundreds of suspected dissidents in the preceding eighteen months. Most of the victims were trade unionists and members of cooperatives, human rights workers, members of the judiciary involved in efforts to establish criminal responsibility for human rights violations, returned refugees and displaced persons, and released political prisoners.\nThe squads comprised intelligence sections of the Armed Forces and the security services. They customarily wore plain clothes and made use of trucks or vans with tinted windows and without license plates. They were \"chillingly efficient\", said the report. Victims were sometimes shot from passing cars, in the daytime and in front of eyewitnesses. At other times, victims were kidnapped from their homes or on the streets and their bodies found dumped far from the scene. Others were forcefully \"disappeared.\" Victims were \"customarily found mutilated, decapitated, dismembered, strangled or showing marks of torture or rape.\" The death squad style was \"to operate in secret but to leave mutilated bodies of victims as a means of terrifying the population.\"\nFMLN offensive of 1989 and retaliation.\nOutraged by the results of the 1988 fixed elections and the military's use of terror tactics and voter intimidation, the FMLN launched a major offensive known as the \"final offensive of 1989\" with the aim of unseating the government of President Alfredo Cristiani on 11 November 1989. This offensive brought the epicenter of fighting into the wealthy suburbs of San Salvador for essentially the first time in the history of the conflict, as the FMLN began a campaign of selective assassinations against political and military officials, civil officials, and upper-class private citizens.\nThe government retaliated with a renewed campaign of repression, primarily against activists in the democratic sector. The non-governmental Salvadoran Human Rights Commission (CDHES) counted 2,868 killings by the armed forces between May 1989 and May 1990. In addition, the CDHES stated that government paramilitary organizations illegally detained 1,916 persons and disappeared 250 during the same period.\nOn 13 February, the Atl\u00e1catl Battalion attacked a guerrilla field hospital and killed at least 10 people, including five patients, a physician and a nurse. Two of the female victims showed signs that they had been raped before they were executed.\nUS message.\nNearly two weeks earlier, US Vice President Dan Quayle on a visit to San Salvador told army leaders that human rights abuses committed by the military had to stop. Sources associated with the military said afterword that Quayle's warning was dismissed as propaganda for American consumption aimed at the US Congress and public. At the same time, critics argued US military advisors were possibly sending a different message to the Salvadoran military: \"Do what you need to do to stop the commies, just don't get caught\". A former US intelligence officer suggested the death squads needed to leave less visual evidence, that they should stop dumping bodies on the side of the road because \"they have an ocean and they ought to use it\". The School of the Americas, founded by the United States, trained many members of the Salvadoran military, including Roberto D'Aubuisson, organizer of death squads, and military officers linked to the murder of Jesuit priests.\nIn a 29 November 1989 press conference, Secretary of State James A. Baker III said he believed President Cristiani was in control of the army and defended the government's crackdown on opponents as \"absolutely appropriate\". The US Trade Representative told Human Rights Watch that the government's repression of trade unionists was justified on the grounds that they were guerrilla supporters.\nGovernment terrorism in San Salvador.\nIn San Salvador on 1 October 1989, eight people were killed and 35 others were injured when a death squad bombed the headquarters of the leftist labor confederation, the National Trade Union Federation of Salvadoran Workers (UNTS).\nEarlier the same day, another bomb exploded outside the headquarters of a victims' advocacy group, the Committee of Mothers and Family Members of Political Prisoners, Disappeared and Assassinated of El Salvador, injuring four others.\nArmy units attack the Catholic Church.\nAs early as the 1980s, the University of Central America fell under attack from the army and death squads. On 16 November 1989, five days after the beginning of the FMLN offensive, uniformed soldiers of the Atl\u00e1catl Battalion entered the campus of the University of Central America in the middle of the night and executed six Jesuit priests\u2014Ignacio Ellacur\u00eda, Segundo Montes, Ignacio Mart\u00edn-Bar\u00f3, Joaqu\u00edn L\u00f3pez y L\u00f3pez, Juan Ram\u00f3n Moreno, and Amando L\u00f3pez\u2014and their housekeepers (a mother and daughter, Elba Ramos and Celia Marisela Ramos). The priests were dragged from their beds on the campus, machine gunned to death and their corpses mutilated. The mother and daughter were found shot to death in the bed they shared. The Atl\u00e1catl Battalion was reportedly under the tutelage of U.S. special forces just 48 hours before the killings. One day later, six men and one youth were slaughtered by government soldiers in the capital, San Salvador. According to relatives and neighbors who witnessed the killings, the six men were lined up against a masonry wall and shot to death. The seventh youth who happened to be walking by at the time was also executed.\nThe Salvadoran government then began a campaign to dismantle a liberal Catholic Church network that the army said were \"front organizations\" supporting the guerrillas. Church offices were raided and workers were arrested and expelled. Targets included priests, lay workers and foreign employees of humanitarian agencies, providing social services to the poor: food programs, healthcare, relief for the displaced. One Church volunteer, who was a U.S. citizen, said she was blindfolded, tortured and interrogated in Treasury Police headquarters in San Salvador while a U.S. vice consul \"having coffee with the colonel in charge\" did nothing to intervene.\nPressures to end stalemate.\nThe murder of the six Jesuit priests and the November 1989 \"final offensive\" by the FMLN in San Salvador, however, were key turning points that increased international pressure and domestic pressure from war-weary constituents that alternatives to the military stalemate needed to be found. International support for the FMLN was declining with the end of the Cold War just as international support for the Salvadoran armed forces was weakening as the Reagan administration gave way to the less ideological Bush administration, and the end of the Cold War lessened the anti-Communist concerns about a potential domino effect in Central America.\nBy the late 1980s, 75 percent of the population lived in poverty. The living standards of most Salvadorans declined by 30 percent since 1983. Unemployment or underemployment increased to 50 percent. Most people, moreover, still didn't have access to clean water or healthcare. The armed forces were feared, inflation rose almost 40 percent, capital flight reached an estimated $1\u00a0billion, and the economic elite avoided paying taxes. Despite nearly $3\u00a0billion in American economic assistance, per capita income declined by one third.\nAmerican aid was distributed to urban businesses although the impoverished majority received almost none of it. The concentration of wealth was even higher than before the U.S.-administered land reform program. The agrarian law generated windfall profits for the economic elite and buried the cooperatives in debts that left them incapable of competing in the capital markets. The oligarchs often took back the land from bankrupt peasants who couldn't obtain the credit necessary to pay for seeds and fertilizer. Although, \"few of the poor would dream of seeking legal redress against a landlord because virtually no judge would favor a poor man.\" By 1989, 1 percent of the landowners owned 41 percent of the tillable land, while 60 percent of the rural population owned 0 percent.\nDeath squads and peace accords: 1990\u20131992.\nAfter 10 years of war, more than one million people had been displaced out of a population of 5,389,000. 40 percent of the homes of newly displaced people were completely destroyed and another 25 percent were in need of major repairs. Death squad activities further escalated in 1990, despite a UN Agreement on Human Rights signed 26 July by the Cristiani government and the FMLN. In June 1990, U.S. President George Bush announced an \"Enterprise for the Americas Initiative\" to improve the investment climate by creating \"a hemisphere-wide free trade zone.\"\nPresident Bush authorized the release of $42.5\u00a0million in military aid to the Salvadoran armed forces on 16 January 1991. In late January, the Usulut\u00e1n offices of the Democratic Convergence, a coalition of left-of-center parties, were attacked with grenades. On 21 February, a candidate for the Democratic National Unity (UDN) party and his pregnant wife were assassinated after ignoring death squad threats to leave the country or die. On the last day of the campaign, another UDN candidate was shot in her eye when Arena party gunmen opened fire on campaign activists putting up posters. Despite fraudulent elections orchestrated by Arena through voter intimidation, sabotage of polling stations by the Arena-dominated Central Elections Council and the disappearing of tens of thousands of names from the voting lists, the official U.S. observation team declared them \"free and fair.\"\nDeath squad killings and disappearances remained steady throughout 1991 as well as torture, false imprisonment, and attacks on civilians by the Army and security forces. Opposition politicians, members of church and grassroots organizations representing peasants, women and repatriated refugees suffered constant death threats, arrests, surveillance and break-ins all year. The war intensified in mid-1991, as both the army and the FMLN attempted to gain the advantage in the United Nations-brokered peace talks prior to a cease-fire. Indiscriminate attacks and executions by the armed forces increased as a result.\nEventually, by April 1991, negotiations resumed, resulting in a truce that successfully concluded in January 1992, bringing about the war's end. On 16 January 1992, the Chapultepec Peace Accords were signed in Chapultepec Castle, Mexico City, to bring peace to El Salvador. The Armed Forces were regulated, a civilian police force was established, the FMLN metamorphosed from a guerrilla army to a political party, and an amnesty law was legislated in 1993.\nAftermath.\nThe peace process set up under the Chapultepec Accords was monitored by the United Nations from 1991 until June 1997 when it closed its special monitoring mission in El Salvador.\nIn 1996, U.S. authorities acknowledged for the first time that U.S. military personnel had died in combat during the civil war. Officially, American advisers were prohibited from participating in combat operations, but they carried weapons, and accompanied Salvadoran army soldiers in the field and were subsequently targeted by rebels. 21 Americans were killed in action during the civil war and more than 5,000 served.\nTruth Commission.\nAt war's end, the Commission on the Truth for El Salvador registered more than 22,000 complaints of political violence in El Salvador, dating between January 1980 and July 1991, 60 percent about summary killing, 25 percent about kidnapping, and 20 percent about torture. These complaints attributed almost 85 percent of the violence to the Salvadoran Army and security forces alone. The Salvadoran Armed Forces, which were massively supported by the United States (4.6 billion dollars in 2009), were accused in 60 percent of the complaints, the security forces (i.e. the National Guard, Treasury Police and the National Police) in 25 percent, military escorts and civil defense units in 20 percent of complaints, the death squads in approximately 10 percent, and the FMLN in 5 percent. The Truth Commission could collect only a significant sample of the full number of potential complaints, having had only three months to collect it. The report concluded that more than 70,000 people were killed, many in the course of gross violation of their human rights. More than 25 per cent of the populace was displaced as refugees before the U.N. peace treaty in 1992.\nThe statistics presented in the Truth Commission's report are consistent with both previous and retrospective assessments by the international community and human rights monitors, which documented that the majority of the violence and repression in El Salvador was attributable to government agencies, primarily the National Guard and the Salvadoran Army. A 1984 Amnesty International report stated that many of the 40,000 people killed in the preceding five years had been murdered by government forces, who openly dumped their mutilated corpses in an apparent effort to terrorize the population.\nThe government mostly killed peasants, but many other opponents suspected of sympathy with the guerrillas\u2014clergy (men and women), church lay workers, political activists, journalists, labor unionists (leaders, rank-and-file), medical workers, liberal students and teachers, and human-rights monitors were also killed. The killings were carried out by the security forces, the Army, the National Guard, and the Treasury Police; but it was the paramilitary death squads that gave the Government plausible deniability of, and accountability for the killings. Typically, a death squad dressed in civilian clothes and traveled in anonymous vehicles (dark windows, blank license plates). The deaths squads tactics included publishing future-victim death lists, delivering coffins to said future victims, and sending the target-person an invitation to his/her own funeral. Cynthia Arnson, a Latin American-affairs writer for Human Rights Watch, says: \"the objective of death-squad-terror seemed not only to eliminate opponents, but also, through torture and the gruesome disfigurement of bodies, to terrorize the population\". In the mid-1980s, state terror against civilians became open with indiscriminate bombing from military airplanes, planted mines, and the harassment of national and international medical personnel. Author George Lopez writes that \"although death rates attributable to the death squads have declined in El Salvador since 1983, non-combatant victims of the civil war have increased dramatically\".\nThough the violations of the FMLN accounted for five percent or less of those documented by the Truth Commission, the FMLN continuously violated the human rights of many Salvadorans and other individuals identified as right-wing supporters, military targets, pro-government politicians, intellectuals, public officials, and judges. These violations included kidnapping, bombings, rape, and killing.\nMilitary reform.\nIn accordance with the peace agreements, the constitution was amended to prohibit the military from playing an internal security role except under extraordinary circumstances. During the period of fulfilling of the peace agreements, the Minister of Defense was General Humberto Corado Figueroa. Demobilization of Salvadoran military forces generally proceeded on schedule throughout the process. The Treasury Police and National Guard were abolished, and military intelligence functions were transferred to civilian control. By 1993\u2014nine months ahead of schedule\u2014the military had cut personnel from a wartime high of 63,000 to the level of 32,000 required by the peace accords. By 1999, ESAF's strength stood at less than 15,000, including uniformed and non-uniformed personnel, consisting of personnel in the army, navy, and air force. A purge of military officers accused of human rights abuses and corruption was completed in 1993 in compliance with the Ad Hoc Committee's recommendations.\nNational Civil Police.\nThe new civilian police force, created to replace the discredited public security forces, deployed its first officers in March 1993, and was present throughout the country by the end of 1994. In 1999, the PNC had over 18,000 officers. The PNC faced many challenges in building a completely new police force. With common crime rising dramatically since the end of the war, over 500 PNC officers had been killed in the line of duty by late 1998. PNC officers also have arrested a number of their own in connection with various high-profile crimes, and a \"purification\" process to weed out unfit personnel from throughout the force was undertaken in late 2000.\nHuman Rights Commission of El Salvador.\nOn 26 October 1987, Herbert Ernesto Anaya, head of the Human Rights Commission of El Salvador (CDHES), was assassinated. His killing provoked four days' of political protest\u2014during which his remains were displayed before the U.S. embassy and then before the Salvadoran armed forces headquarters. The National Union of Salvadoran Workers said: \"Those who bear sole responsibility for this crime are Jos\u00e9 Napole\u00f3n Duarte, the U.S. embassy...and the high command of the armed forces\". In its report the Commission on the Truth for El Salvador, established as part of the El Salvador peace agreement, stated that it could not establish for sure whether the death squads, the Salvadoran Army or the FMLN was responsible for Anaya's death.\nMoreover, the FMLN and the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FDR) also protested Mr. Anaya's assassination by suspending negotiations with the Duarte government on 29 October 1987. The same day, Reni Rold\u00e1n resigned from the Commission of National Reconciliation, saying: \"The murder of Anaya, the disappearance of university labor leader Salvador Ubau, and other events do not seem to be isolated incidents. They are all part of an institutionalized pattern of conduct\". Mr. Anaya's assassination evoked international indignation: the West German government, the West German Social Democratic Party, and the French government asked President Duarte to clarify the circumstances of the crime. United Nations Secretary General Javier P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar, Americas Watch, Amnesty International, and other organizations protested against the assassination of the leader of the Human Rights Commission of El Salvador.\nPost-war international litigation.\nGroups seeking investigation or retribution for actions during the war have sought the involvement of other foreign courts. In 2008 the Spanish Association for Human Rights and a California organization called the Center for Justice and Accountability jointly filed a lawsuit in Spain against former President Cristiani and former defense minister Larios in the matter of the 1989 slaying of several Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter. The lawsuit accused Cristiani of a cover-up of the killings and Larios of participating in the meeting where the order to kill them was given; the groups asked the Spanish court to intervene on the principle of universal jurisdiction for crimes against humanity.\nLong after the war, in a U.S. federal court, in the case of \"Ford vs. Garc\u00eda\" the families of the murdered Maryknoll nuns sued the two Salvadoran generals believed responsible for the killings, but lost; the jury found Gen. Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, ex-National Guard Leader and Duarte's defense minister, and Gen. Jos\u00e9 Guillermo Garc\u00eda\u2014defense minister from 1979 to 1984, not responsible for the killings; the families appealed and lost, and, in 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear their final appeal. A second case, against the same generals, succeeded in the same Federal Court; the three plaintiffs in \"Romagoza vs. Garc\u00eda\" won a judgment exceeding US$54\u00a0million compensation for having been tortured by the military during El Salvador's Civil War.\nThe day after losing a court appeal in October 2009, the two generals were put into deportation proceedings by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), at the urging of U.S. Senators Richard Durbin (Democrat) and Tom Coburn (Republican), according to the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA). Those deportation proceedings had been stalled by May 2010.\nThe Spanish Judge Velasco who issued indictments and arrest warrants for 20 former members of the Salvadoran military, charged with murder, Crimes Against Humanity and Terrorism requested that U.S. agencies declassify documents related to the killings of the Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter but were denied access.\n\"The agencies in charge of making the information public have identified 3,000 other documents that remain secret and are not available; the reasoning given is that privacy is needed to protect sources and methods. Many of the documents, from the CIA and the Defense Department, are not available...\"\nThe Cold War with the Soviet Union and other communist nations at least partially explains the backdrop against which the U.S. government aided various pro-government Salvadoran groups and opposed the FMLN. The U.S. State Department reported on intelligence that the FMLN was receiving clandestine guidance and arms from the Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Soviet governments. While this White Paper on El Salvador later received criticism from some academics and journalists, it has also been largely substantiated based on the evidence available at the time. The closure of the Cold War between 1989 and 1991 reduced the incentive for ongoing U.S. involvement and invited broad international support for the negotiation process that would lead to the 1992 peace accords.\nThe political and economic divisions at play in El Salvador during the civil war were complex, which is often overlooked by scholars and analysts eager to vindicate one side or the other. More research is needed, for example, to shed light on Salvadorans that resisted as political independents or as part of pro-democracy coalitions. After a 2012 historians seminar at the University of El Salvador commemorating the 20th anniversary of the peace accords, Michael Allison concluded:\n\"Most postwar discourse has been driven by elites who participated in the conflict either on the part of the guerrillas or the government. It's not that these individuals' perspectives are wrong; it is just healthier if they are challenged or supplemented by outside views.\"\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["2381762", "4187252"], "permutation_1": ["4187252", "2381762"], "permutation_2": ["4187252", "2381762"], "permutation_3": ["2381762", "4187252"]}
{"id": "2hop__733803_26537", "docs_added": {"34079704": "Sino-Nepalese War\nInvasion of Tibet by Nepalese Army and Chinese military intervention\nThe Sino-Nepalese War (), also known as the Sino-Gorkha War and in Chinese as the campaign of Gorkha (), was a war fought between the Qing dynasty of China and the Kingdom of Nepal in the late 18th century following an invasion of Tibet by the Nepalese Gorkhas. It was initially fought between Gorkhas and Tibetan armies in 1788 over a trade dispute related to a long-standing problem of low-quality coins manufactured by Nepal for Tibet. The Nepalese Army under Bahadur Shah plundered Tibet which was a Qing protectorate and Tibetans signed the Treaty of Kerung paying annual tribute to Nepal. However, Tibetans requested Chinese intervention and the Chinese imperial military forces under Fuk'anggan were sent to Tibet and repulsed the Gurkhas from the Tibetan plateau in 1792. Sino-Tibetan forces marched into Nepal up to Nuwakot (near Nepal's capital Kathmandu) but faced a strong Nepalese counterattack. Thus, both countries signed the Treaty of Betrawati as a stalemate. The war ended with Tibet accepting terms dictated by Nepal. Tibet became a tribute state under Qing (Tibet maintains diplomacy and pays tribute). Tibet paid tribute to Nepal in 1792, 1794, 1795, 1823, 1842 and 1865. Both Nepal and Tibet also agreed to accept the suzerainty of the Qing emperor.\nBackground.\nTibet had been using Nepalese silver coins since the time of the Malla kings. When Prithvi Narayan Shah of the Gorkha Kingdom launched an economic blockade on the Kathmandu Valley during his unification campaign, Jaya Prakash Malla of Kathmandu faced an economic crisis which he tried to alleviate by minting low quality coins mixed with copper. After Prithvi Narayan Shah successfully conquered the Kathmandu Valley in 1769 and firmly established the rule of the Shah dynasty in Nepal, he reverted to minting pure silver coins. But by then the damage to the confidence of the Nepalese minted coins had already been done. The Tibetans demanded that all the impure coins in circulation be replaced by pure silver ones, a demand that would place a huge financial burden on the newly founded Shah dynasty. Prithvi Narayan Shah was not willing to bear such a huge loss in a matter for which he was not responsible, but was willing to vouch for the purity of the newly minted coins. Thus two kinds of coins were in circulation in the market. The case remained unresolved due to his demise in 1775, and the problem was inherited by successive rulers of Nepal.\nBy 1788, Bahadur Shah, the youngest son of Prithivi Narayan Shah, and the uncle and regent of the minor king Rana Bahadur Shah, had inherited an aggravated coinage problem. On the plea of debased coins, Tibet had started to spread rumors that it was in a position to attack Nepal; and the Nepalese merchants in Tibet were likewise harassed. Another sore point in the Nepal-Tibet relationship was Nepal's decision to provide refuge to the 10th Shamarpa Lama, Mipam Ch\u00f6drup Gyamtso, and his fourteen Tibetan followers. He had fled from Tibet to Nepal on religious and political grounds. Yet another cause for conflict was the low quality of salt being provided by Tibetans to Nepal, since in those days, all the salt in Nepal came from Tibet. A Nepalese delegation was sent to Tibet to resolve these issues, but the demands made by the Nepalese were rejected by the Tibetans. The Nepalese found the quarrel over coinage a good pretext to expand their kingdom and to raid the rich monasteries in Tibet. Thus, Nepal launched multi-directional attacks on Tibet.\nFirst Invasion.\nIn the year 1788, Bahadur Shah sent Gorkha troops under the joint command of Damodar Pande and Bam Shah to attack Tibet. The Gorkha troops entered Tibet through Kuti (Nyalam Town) and reached as far as Tashilhunpo (about 410\u00a0km. from Kuti). A fierce battle was fought at Shikarjong in which the Tibetans were badly defeated. The Panchen Lama and Sakya Lama then requested the Gorkha troops to have peace talks. So the Gorkha troops left Shikarjong and went towards Kuti and Kerung (Gyirong).\nWhen the Qianlong Emperor of China heard the news of the invasion of Tibet by Nepal, he sent a large troop of the Chinese army under the command of General Chanchu. Chanchu came to know the situation from the Tibetan Lamas. He decided to stay in Tibet till the dispute was settled.\nThe representatives of Tibet and Nepal met at Khiru in 1789 to have peace talks. In the talks Tibet was held responsible for the quarrel and were required to give compensation to Nepal for the losses incurred in the war. Tibet had also to pay tribute to Nepal a sum of Rs. 50,001 every year in return for giving back to Tibet all the territories acquired during the war. It was called the Treaty of Kerung. The Nepalese representatives were given Rs. 50,001 as the first installment. So giving back the territories - Kerung, Kuti, Longa, Jhunga and Falak, they went back to Nepal. But Tibet refused to pay the tributes after the first year of the conclusion of the treaty. As a result, the war between Nepal and Tibet continued.\nSecond Invasion.\nAs Tibet had refused to pay the tribute to Nepal, Bahadur Shah sent a troop under Abhiman Singh Basnet to Kerung and another troop under the command of Damodar Pande to Kuti in 1791. Damodar Pande attacked Digarcha and captured the property of the monastery there. He also arrested the minister of Lhasa, Dhoren Kazi (Tib. Rdo ring Bstan 'dzin dpal 'byor, b.1760) and came back to Nepal. As soon as this news was heard by the Qianlong Emperor, he sent a strong troop of 10,000 soldiers (with a large proportion of Solon Ewenki soldiers) under the leadership of Fuk'anggan to defend Tibet. Fukanggan's forces reached Lhasa within sixty days, traversing nearly two thousand kilometres. \nThe Qing Empire asked Nepal to return the property to Tibet which was looted at Digarcha. They also demanded them to give back Shamarpa Lama who had taken asylum in Nepal. But Nepal turned a deaf ear to these demands. The Qing imperial army responded to Nepal with military intervention. The Qing forces marched along the banks of the Trishuli River until they reached Nuwakot. The Nepalese troops attempted to defend against the Qing attack, but were already faced with overwhelming odds. Heavy damage was inflicted on both sides and the Chinese army pushed the Gurkhas back to the inner hills close to the Nepali capital. However, a comprehensive defeat of the Gorkhali army could not be achieved.\nAt the same time, Nepal was dealing with military confrontations along two other fronts. The nation of Sikkim had begun incursions along Nepal's eastern border. Along the far-western side, the war with Garhwal continued. Within Nepal's own borders, the kingdoms of Achham, Doti and Jumla openly revolted. Thus the problems that Bahadur Shah faced made it much harder to defend against the Qing army. The anxious Bahadur Shah asked for ten artillery guns from the East India Company. Captain William Kirkpatrick arrived in Kathmandu, but he informed the Nepalese the conditions of business treaty which he required the signing of before delivery of the weapons. Wary of what signing the treaty would entail, the deal fell through and the military situation became critical for Bahadur Shah.\nAfter a series of successful battles by Qing where the Ghorkalis lost more than four thousand men, the Qing army had finally suffered a major setback when they tried to cross a monsoon-flooded Betrawati, close to a Gorkhali palace in Nuwakot. As the Qing troops had reached south of the Betravati river, near Nuwakot, it was difficult for the Nepalese troops to wait for them at Kathmandu. At Kathmandu, a Nepalese force of less than 200 soldiers attempted to resist the Qing troops at Betravati. On September 19, 1792, Nepalese troops launched a counterattack against the Qing forces encamped at Jitpurfedi. The Nepalese used a tactic where their soldiers carried lit torches in their hands, tying them to the branches of trees, and tying flaming torches on the horns of domestic animals and driving them towards the enemy. The Qing army suffered a defeat, but the loss failed to dislodge them from Nepal.\nA stalemate ensued, and with their resources low and a looming uncertainty regarding how long they would be able to hold on in addition to the need to continue their expansion drive on the western frontier, the Gorkhalis signed a treaty on terms dictated by the Qing that required, among other obligations, Nepal to send tributes to the Qing emperor every five years.\nOn the 8th day of Bhadra, 10,000 Chinese troops advanced forward from Betrawati river. There were three forts past the Betrawati river namely; Chokde, Dudethumko, and Gerkhu. At Gerkhu, the commanding officer was Kaji Kirtiman Singh Basnyat and at Chokde, the commanding officer was Kaji Damodar Pande. There were serious fightings around all the three forts and heavy repulse from Nepalese forces compelled Chinese troops to retreat to Betrawati river. At Betrawati bridge, the Chinese General Tung Thyang began to punish retreating Chinese soldiers with severe injuries resulting in their death. Two of the Chinese officers who retreated beyond the Betrawati river were punished with injury to their nose. The action of the Chinese General demotivated the troops and increase rapid desertion and retreat through other routes. Many Chinese troops died falling from hills into river and others from the bullets and arrows from Nepalese side. Around 1000 or 1200 Chinese troops were killed in the manner. The Chinese General Tung Thyang lost all hopes of attacking the Nepalese forces and decided to conclude a treaty with Nepal through his letter. The letter from Tung Thyang reached the government of Nepal. In reply, the government of Nepal issued a royal order deputing Kaji Damodar Pande to conclude a treaty with the Chinese Emperor to prevent further hostility and maintain peace with the Emperor. The royal order issued by King Rana Bahadur Shah to Kaji Damodar Pande on Thursday, Bhadra Sudi 13, 1849 (September 1792) is detailed below:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />From King Rana Bahadur Shah,\nTo Damodar Pande.\nGreetings. All is well here. We desire the same there. The news here is good. The Chinese Emperor is not insignificant. He is a great Emperor. We could have repulsed them with the blessing of (Goddess Shri Durga) when they came here this time. But it will not be good for the future to maintain hostility with the Emperor. He too desires to conclude a treaty, and that is what we too desire. Tung Thwang has sent a letter asking that one of the four Kajis be sent with letters and present to offer his respects to the Chinese Emperor. Kajis used to be sent formally to conclude treaties with Tanahu and Lamjung. We realize at present that it will not be proper for us not to depute a Kaji to the Emperor. When the matter was discussed with the other Kajis here, they said that Damdhar(Damodar) Pande, the recipient of Birta (land) grants and senior-most Kaji, should go. So you have to fo. If there is any delay, (the interests) of the State will be harmed. You should therefore depart from there. So far as instructions are concerned, you are a Pande of our court. You are not ignorant of (matters) which will benefit the State and bring you credit. You know (such matters). In this respect, act according to your discretion. Submit a reply to this soon, within 1 ghadi (24 minutes) after you receive this royal order. Delay will be harmful.\nDated Thursday, Bhadra Sudi 13, 1849 (September 1792) at Kantipur.\nAftermath.\nThe Qing general Fuk'anggan then sent a proposal to the Government of Nepal for ratifying a peace treaty. Bahadur Shah also wanted to have cordial relations with the Qing. He readily accepted the proposal and they concluded a friendly treaty at Betravati on 2 October 1792. The terms of the treaty were as follows:\nWhile Tibet came under greater control of the Qing after the war, Nepal still retained its autonomy, but had to subordinate to Qing dynasty terms and present tribute to China every 5 year. However the weakening of the Qing dynasty during the 19th century led to the disregard of this treaty. For instance, during the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814\u201316, when the East India Company launched an invasion of Nepal, not only did China fail to help her feudatory in that conflict, but it also failed to prevent the cession of Nepalese territory to the Company. Similarly, during another Nepalese-Tibetan War of 1855\u201356, China was conspicuously absent. The Qing were not particularly interested in ruling Nepal; their war was primarily aimed at consolidating their control of Tibet which, in turn, was related to military strategy throughout Central Asia.\nAfter the 3rd Nepalese-Tibetan war, the Treaty of Thapathali had been made. The first attempt of the treaty failed with China. The second term of treaty succeeded with all side agreeing. The Nepalese paid their last tribute in 1865 and ended any form of submission to China.\nOwing to their ethnic ties to Tibet, the Bhutia and Tamang communities of Nepal suffered discrimination as a consequence of Nepal's wars against Tibet.\nSubsequent attitude.\nLater Prime Minister Bhimsen Thapa expressed his attitude on the Sino-Nepalese War in a letter to King Girvan Yuddha Bikram Shah. He wrote,\nGallery.\nPaintings and engravings from a series commissioned by the Qianlong emperor and depicting the \"Gurkha Campaign\":\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "31516": "Tibet\nEthno-cultural region in Asia\nTibet (; Tibetan: \u0f56\u0f7c\u0f51, Lhasa dialect: \"B\u00f6d\"; ), or Greater Tibet, is a region in the western part of East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are other ethnic groups such as Mongols, Monpa, Tamang, Qiang, Sherpa, Lhoba, and since the 20th century Han Chinese and Hui. Tibet is the highest region on Earth, with an average elevation of . Located in the Himalayas, the highest elevation in Tibet is Mount Everest, Earth's highest mountain, rising above sea level.\nThe Tibetan Empire emerged in the 7th century. At its height in the 9th century, the Tibetan Empire extended far beyond the Tibetan Plateau, from the Tarim Basin and Pamirs in the west, to Yunnan and Bengal in the southeast. It then divided into a variety of territories. The bulk of western and central Tibet (\u00dc-Tsang) was often at least nominally unified under a series of Tibetan governments in Lhasa, Shigatse, or nearby locations. The eastern regions of Kham and Amdo often maintained a more decentralized indigenous political structure, being divided among a number of small principalities and tribal groups, while also often falling under Chinese rule; most of this area was eventually annexed into the Chinese provinces of Sichuan and Qinghai. The current borders of Tibet were generally established in the 18th century.\nFollowing the Xinhai Revolution against the Qing dynasty in 1912, Qing soldiers were disarmed and escorted out of \u00dc-Tsang, but it has been constitutionally claimed by the Republic of China as the Tibet Area. The 13th Dalai Lama in 1913, although it was neither recognised by the Chinese Republican government nor any foreign power. Lhasa later took control of western Xikang as well. The region maintained its autonomy until 1951 when, following the Battle of Chamdo, it was occupied and annexed by the People's Republic of China (PRC). The entire plateau came under PRC administration. The Tibetan government was abolished after the failure of the 1959 Tibetan uprising. Today, China governs western and central Tibet as the Xizang Autonomous Region while the eastern areas are now mostly autonomous prefectures within Qinghai, Gansu, Yunnan and Sichuan provinces.\nThe Tibetan independence movement is principally led by the Tibetan diaspora. Human rights groups have accused the Chinese government of abuses of human rights in Tibet, including torture, arbitrary arrests, and religious repression, with the Chinese government tightly controlling information and denying external scrutiny. While there are conflicting reports on the scale of human rights violations, including allegations of cultural genocide and the Sinicization of Tibet, widespread suppression of Tibetan culture and dissent continues to be documented.\nThe dominant religion in Tibet is Tibetan Buddhism; other religions include B\u00f6n, an indigenous religion similar to Tibetan Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. Tibetan Buddhism is a primary influence on the art, music, and festivals of the region. Tibetan architecture reflects Chinese and Indian influences. Staple foods in Tibet are roasted barley, yak meat, and butter tea. With the growth of tourism in recent years, the service sector has become the largest sector in Tibet, accounting for 50.1% of the local GDP in 2020.\nNames and etymologies.\nThe Tibetan name for their land, \"Bod\" (\u0f56\u0f7c\u0f51\u0f0b), means 'Tibet' or 'Tibetan Plateau', although it originally meant the central region around Lhasa, now known in Tibetan as \"\u00dc\" (\u0f51\u0f56\u0f74\u0f66). The Standard Tibetan pronunciation of \"Bod\" () is transcribed as: \"Bh\u00f6\" in Tournadre Phonetic Transcription; \"B\u00f6\" in the THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription; and \"Poi\" in Tibetan pinyin. Some scholars believe the first written reference to \"Bod\" ('Tibet') was the ancient Bautai people recorded in the Egyptian-Greek works \"Periplus of the Erythraean Sea\" (1st century CE) and \"Geographia\" (Ptolemy, 2nd century CE), itself from the Sanskrit form \"Bhau\u1e6d\u1e6da\" of the Indian geographical tradition.\nThe best-known medieval Chinese name for Tibet is \"Tubo\" (; or , \u571f\u8543 or , \u571f\u756a). This name first appears in Chinese characters as in the 7th century (Li Tai) and as in the 10th century (\"Old Book of Tang\", describing 608\u2013609 emissaries from Tibetan King Namri Songtsen to Emperor Yang of Sui). In the Middle Chinese language spoken during that period, as reconstructed by William H. Baxter, was pronounced \"thux-phjon\", and was pronounced \"thux-pjon\" (with the \"x\" representing a \"shang\" tone).\nOther pre-modern Chinese names for Tibet include:\nAmerican Tibetologist Elliot Sperling has argued in favor of a recent tendency by some authors writing in Chinese to revive the term \"Tubote\" () for modern use in place of \"Xizang\", on the grounds that \"Tubote\" more clearly includes the entire Tibetan plateau rather than simply the Tibet Autonomous Region.\nThe English word \"Tibet\" or \"Thibet\" dates back to the 18th century. Historical linguists generally agree that \"Tibet\" names in European languages are loanwords from Arabic or (), itself deriving from Turkic \"\" (plural of ), literally 'The Heights'.\nLanguage.\nLinguists generally classify the Tibetan language as a Tibeto-Burman language of the Sino-Tibetan language family, although the boundaries between 'Tibetan' and certain other Himalayan languages can be unclear. According to Matthew Kapstein:\nFrom the perspective of historical linguistics, Tibetan most closely resembles Burmese among the major languages of Asia. Grouping these two together with other apparently related languages spoken in the Himalayan lands, as well as in the highlands of Southeast Asia and the Sino-Tibetan frontier regions, linguists have generally concluded that there exists a Tibeto-Burman family of languages. More controversial is the theory that the Tibeto-Burman family is itself part of a larger language family, called Sino-Tibetan, and that through it Tibetan and Burmese are distant cousins of Chinese.\nThe language has numerous regional dialects which are generally not mutually intelligible. It is employed throughout the Tibetan plateau and Bhutan and is also spoken in parts of Nepal and northern India, such as Sikkim. In general, the dialects of central Tibet (including Lhasa), Kham, Amdo and some smaller nearby areas are considered Tibetan dialects. Other forms, particularly Dzongkha, Sikkimese, Sherpa, and Ladakhi, are considered by their speakers, largely for political reasons, to be separate languages. However, if the latter group of Tibetan-type languages are included in the calculation, then 'greater Tibetan' is spoken by approximately 6\u00a0million people across the Tibetan Plateau. Tibetan is also spoken by approximately 150,000 exile speakers who have fled from modern-day Tibet to India and other countries.\nAlthough spoken Tibetan varies according to the region, the written language, based on Classical Tibetan, is consistent throughout. This is probably due to the long-standing influence of the Tibetan empire, whose rule embraced (and extended at times far beyond) the present Tibetan linguistic area, which runs from Gilgit Baltistan in the west to Yunnan and Sichuan in the east, and from north of Qinghai Lake south as far as Bhutan. The Tibetan language has its own script which it shares with Ladakhi and Dzongkha, and which is derived from the ancient Indian Br\u0101hm\u012b script.\nStarting in 2001, the local deaf sign languages of Tibet were standardized, and Tibetan Sign Language is now being promoted across the country.\nThe first Tibetan-English dictionary and grammar book was written by Alexander Csoma de K\u0151r\u00f6s in 1834.\nHistory.\nEarly history.\nHumans inhabited the Tibetan Plateau at least 21,000 years ago. This population was largely replaced around 3,000 BP by Neolithic immigrants from northern China, but there is a partial genetic continuity between the Paleolithic inhabitants and contemporary Tibetan populations.\nThe earliest Tibetan historical texts identify the Zhang Zhung culture as a people who migrated from the Amdo region into what is now the region of Guge in western Tibet. Zhang Zhung is considered to be the original home of the B\u00f6n religion. By the 1st century BCE, a neighboring kingdom arose in the Yarlung valley, and the Yarlung king, Drigum Tsenpo, attempted to remove the influence of the Zhang Zhung by expelling the Zhang's B\u00f6n priests from Yarlung. He was assassinated and Zhang Zhung continued its dominance of the region until it was annexed by Songtsen Gampo in the 7th century. Prior to Songtsen Gampo, the kings of Tibet were more mythological than factual, and there is insufficient evidence of their existence.\nTibetan Empire.\nThe history of a unified Tibet begins with the rule of Songtsen Gampo (604\u2013650CE), who united parts of the Yarlung River Valley and founded the Tibetan Empire. He also brought in many reforms, and Tibetan power spread rapidly, creating a large and powerful empire. It is traditionally considered that his first wife was the Princess of Nepal, Bhrikuti, and that she played a great role in the establishment of Buddhism in Tibet. In 640, he married Princess Wencheng, the niece of the Chinese emperor Taizong of Tang China.\nUnder the next few Tibetan kings, Buddhism became established as the state religion and Tibetan power increased even further over large areas of Central Asia, while major inroads were made into Chinese territory, even reaching the Tang's capital Chang'an (modern Xi'an) in late 763. However, the Tibetan occupation of Chang'an only lasted for fifteen days, after which they were defeated by Tang and its ally, the Turkic Uyghur Khaganate.\nThe Kingdom of Nanzhao (in Yunnan and neighbouring regions) remained under Tibetan control from 750 to 794, when they turned on their Tibetan overlords and helped the Chinese inflict a serious defeat on the Tibetans.\nIn 747, the hold of Tibet was loosened by the campaign of general Gao Xianzhi, who tried to re-open the direct communications between Central Asia and Kashmir. By 750, the Tibetans had lost almost all of their central Asian possessions to the Chinese. However, after Gao Xianzhi's defeat by the Arabs and Qarluqs at the Battle of Talas (751) and the subsequent civil war known as the An Lushan Rebellion (755), Chinese influence decreased rapidly and Tibetan influence resumed.\nAt its height in the 780s to 790s, the Tibetan Empire reached its highest glory when it ruled and controlled a territory stretching from modern-day Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, China, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan.\nIn 821/822CE, Tibet and China signed a peace treaty. A bilingual account of this treaty, including details of the borders between the two countries, is inscribed on a stone pillar which stands outside the Jokhang temple in Lhasa. Tibet continued as a Central Asian empire until the mid-9th century, when a civil war over succession led to the collapse of imperial Tibet. The period that followed is known traditionally as the \"Era of Fragmentation\", when political control over Tibet became divided between regional warlords and tribes with no dominant centralized authority. An Islamic invasion from Bengal took place in 1206.\nYuan dynasty.\nThe Mongol Yuan dynasty, through the Bureau of Buddhist and Tibetan Affairs, or Xuanzheng Yuan, ruled Tibet through a top-level administrative department. One of the department's purposes was to select a \"dpon-chen\" (\"great administrator\"), usually appointed by the lama and confirmed by the Mongol emperor in Beijing. The Sakya lama retained a degree of autonomy, acting as the political authority of the region, while the \"dpon-chen\" held administrative and military power. Mongol rule of Tibet remained separate from the main provinces of China, but the region existed under the administration of the Yuan dynasty. If the Sakya lama ever came into conflict with the \"dpon-chen\", the \"dpon-chen\" had the authority to send Chinese troops into the region.\nTibet retained nominal power over religious and regional political affairs, while the Mongols managed a structural and administrative rule over the region, reinforced by the rare military intervention. This existed as a \"diarchic structure\" under the Yuan emperor, with power primarily in favor of the Mongols. Mongolian prince Khuden gained temporal power in Tibet in the 1240s and sponsored Sakya Pandita, whose seat became the capital of Tibet. Drog\u00f6n Ch\u00f6gyal Phagpa, Sakya Pandita's nephew became Imperial Preceptor of Kublai Khan, founder of the Yuan dynasty.\nYuan control over the region ended with the Ming overthrow of the Yuan and Tai Situ Changchub Gyaltsen's revolt against the Mongols. Following the uprising, Tai Situ Changchub Gyaltsen founded the Phagmodrupa dynasty, and sought to reduce Yuan influences over Tibetan culture and politics.\nPhagmodrupa, Rinpungpa and Tsangpa dynasties.\nBetween 1346 and 1354, Tai Situ Changchub Gyaltsen toppled the Sakya and founded the Phagmodrupa dynasty. The following 80 years saw the founding of the Gelug school (also known as Yellow Hats) by the disciples of Je Tsongkhapa, and the founding of the important Ganden, Drepung and Sera monasteries near Lhasa. However, internal strife within the dynasty and the strong localism of the various fiefs and political-religious factions led to a long series of internal conflicts. The minister family Rinpungpa, based in Tsang (West Central Tibet), dominated politics after 1435. In 1565 they were overthrown by the Tsangpa dynasty of Shigatse which expanded its power in different directions of Tibet in the following decades and favoured the Karma Kagyu sect.\nRise of Ganden Phodrang and Buddhist Gelug school.\nIn 1578, Altan Khan of the T\u00fcmed Mongols gave Sonam Gyatso, a high lama of the Gelugpa school, the name \"Dalai Lama\", \"Dalai\" being the Mongolian translation of the Tibetan name \"Gyatso\" \"Ocean\".\nThe 5th Dalai Lama (1617\u20131682) is known for unifying the Tibetan heartland under the control of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism, after defeating the rival Kagyu and Jonang sects and the secular ruler, the Tsangpa prince, in a prolonged civil war. His efforts were successful in part because of aid from G\u00fcshi Khan, the Oirat leader of the Khoshut Khanate. With G\u00fcshi Khan as a largely uninvolved overlord, the 5th Dalai Lama and his intimates established a civil administration which is referred to by historians as the \"Lhasa state\". This Tibetan regime or government is also referred to as the Ganden Phodrang.\nQing dynasty.\nQing dynasty rule in Tibet began with their 1720 expedition to the country when they expelled the invading Dzungars. Amdo came under Qing control in 1724, and eastern Kham was incorporated into neighbouring Chinese provinces in 1728. Meanwhile, the Qing government sent resident commissioners called \"Ambans\" to Lhasa. In 1750, the Ambans and the majority of the Han Chinese and Manchus living in Lhasa were killed in a riot, and Qing troops arrived quickly and suppressed the rebels in the next year. Like the preceding Yuan dynasty, the Manchus of the Qing dynasty exerted military and administrative control of the region, while granting it a degree of political autonomy. The Qing commander publicly executed a number of supporters of the rebels and, as in 1723 and 1728, made changes in the political structure and drew up a formal organization plan. The Qing now restored the Dalai Lama as ruler, leading the governing council called \"Kashag\", but elevated the role of \"Ambans\" to include more direct involvement in Tibetan internal affairs. At the same time, the Qing took steps to counterbalance the power of the aristocracy by adding officials recruited from the clergy to key posts.\nFor several decades, peace reigned in Tibet, but in 1792, the Qing Qianlong Emperor sent a large Chinese army into Tibet to push the invading Nepalese out. This prompted yet another Qing reorganization of the Tibetan government, this time through a written plan called the \"Twenty-Nine Regulations for Better Government in Tibet\". Qing military garrisons staffed with Qing troops were now also established near the Nepalese border. Tibet was dominated by the Manchus in various stages in the 18th century, and the years immediately following the 1792 regulations were the peak of the Qing imperial commissioners' authority; but there was no attempt to make Tibet a Chinese province.\nIn 1834, the Sikh Empire invaded and annexed Ladakh, a culturally Tibetan region that was an independent kingdom at the time. Seven years later, a Sikh army led by General Zorawar Singh invaded western Tibet from Ladakh, starting the Sino-Sikh War. A Qing-Tibetan army repelled the invaders but was in turn defeated when it chased the Sikhs into Ladakh. The war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Chushul between the Chinese and Sikh empires.\nAs the Qing dynasty weakened, its authority over Tibet also gradually declined, and by the mid-19th century, its influence was minuscule. Qing authority over Tibet had become more symbolic than real by the late 19th century, although in the 1860s, the Tibetans still chose for reasons of their own to emphasize the empire's symbolic authority and make it seem substantial.\nIn 1774, a Scottish nobleman, George Bogle, travelled to Shigatse to investigate prospects of trade for the East India Company. His efforts, while largely unsuccessful, established permanent contact between Tibet and the Western world. However, in the 19th century, tensions between foreign powers and Tibet increased. The British Empire was expanding its territories in India into the Himalayas, while the Emirate of Afghanistan and the Russian Empire were both doing likewise in Central Asia.\nIn 1904, a British expedition to Tibet, spurred in part by a fear that Russia was extending its power into Tibet as part of the Great Game, was launched. Although the expedition initially set out with the stated purpose of resolving border disputes between Tibet and Sikkim, it quickly turned into a military invasion. The British expeditionary force, consisting of mostly Indian troops, quickly invaded and captured Lhasa, with the Dalai Lama fleeing to the countryside. Afterwards, the leader of the expedition, Sir Francis Younghusband, negotiated the Convention Between Great Britain and Tibet with the Tibetans, which guaranteed the British great economic influence but ensured the region remained under Chinese control. The Qing imperial resident, known as the Amban, publicly repudiated the treaty, while the British government, eager for friendly relations with China, negotiated a new treaty two years later known as the Convention Between Great Britain and China Respecting Tibet. The British agreed not to annex or interfere in Tibet in return for an indemnity from the Chinese government, while China agreed not to permit any other foreign state to interfere with the territory or internal administration of Tibet.\nIn 1910, the Qing government sent a military expedition of its own under Zhao Erfeng to establish direct Manchu-Chinese rule and, in an imperial edict, deposed the Dalai Lama, who fled to British India. Zhao Erfeng defeated the Tibetan military conclusively and expelled the Dalai Lama's forces from the province. His actions were unpopular, and there was much animosity against him for his mistreatment of civilians and disregard for local culture.\nPost-Qing period.\nAfter the Xinhai Revolution (1911\u20131912) toppled the Qing dynasty and the last Qing troops were escorted out of Tibet, the new Republic of China apologized for the actions of the Qing and offered to restore the Dalai Lama's title. The Dalai Lama refused any Chinese title and declared himself ruler of an independent Tibet. In 1913, Tibet and Outer Mongolia concluded a treaty of mutual recognition. The ROC continued to view the former Qing territory as its own, including Tibet.69 For the next 36 years, the 13th Dalai Lama and the regents who succeeded him governed Tibet. During this time, Tibet fought Chinese warlords for control of the ethnically Tibetan areas in Xikang and Qinghai (parts of Kham and Amdo) along the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. In 1914, the Tibetan government signed the Simla Convention with Britain, which recognized Chinese suzerainty over Tibet in return for a border settlement. China refused to sign the convention. Tibet continued to lack clear boundaries or international recognition of its status.69\nWhen in the 1930s and 1940s the regents displayed negligence in affairs, the Kuomintang Government of the Republic of China took advantage of this to expand its reach into the territory. On December 20, 1941, Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-Shek noted in his diary that Tibet would be among the territories which he would demand as restitution for China following the conclusion of World War II.\nFrom 1950 to present.\nEmerging with control over most of mainland China after the Chinese Civil War, the People's Republic of China annexed Tibet in 1950 and negotiated the Seventeen Point Agreement with the newly enthroned 14th Dalai Lama's government, affirming the People's Republic of China's sovereignty but granting the area autonomy. Subsequently, on his journey into exile, the 14th Dalai Lama completely repudiated the agreement, which he has repeated on many occasions. According to the CIA, the Chinese used the Dalai Lama to gain control of the military's training and actions.\nThe Dalai Lama had a strong following as many people from Tibet looked at him not just as their political leader, but as their spiritual leader. After the Dalai Lama's government fled to Dharamsala, India, during the 1959 Tibetan Rebellion, it established a rival government-in-exile. Afterwards, the Central People's Government in Beijing renounced the agreement and began implementation of the halted social and political reforms. During the Great Leap Forward, over 200,000 Tibetans may have died and approximately 6,000 monasteries were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution\u2014destroying the vast majority of historic Tibetan architecture.\nIn 1980, General Secretary and reformist Hu Yaobang visited Tibet and ushered in a period of social, political, and economic liberalization. At the end of the decade, however, before the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, monks in the Drepung and Sera monasteries started protesting for independence. The government halted reforms and started an anti-separatist campaign. Human rights organisations have been critical of the Beijing and Lhasa governments' approach to human rights in the region when cracking down on separatist convulsions that have occurred around monasteries and cities, most recently in the 2008 Tibetan unrest.\nThe central region of Tibet is now an autonomous region within China, the Tibet Autonomous Region. The Tibet Autonomous Region is a province-level entity of the People's Republic of China. It is governed by a People's Government, led by a chairman. In practice, however, the chairman is subordinate to the branch secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In 2010, it was reported that, as a matter of convention, the chairman had almost always been an ethnic Tibetan, while the party secretary had always been ethnically non-Tibetan.\nGeography.\nAll of modern China, including Tibet, is considered a part of East Asia. Historically, some European sources also considered parts of Tibet to lie in Central Asia. Tibet is west of the Central China plain. In China, Tibet is regarded as part of (), a term usually translated by Chinese media as \"the Western section\", meaning \"Western China\".\nMountains and rivers.\nTibet has some of the world's tallest mountains, with several of them making the top ten list. Mount Everest, located on the border with Nepal, is, at , the highest mountain on earth. Several major rivers have their source in the Tibetan Plateau (mostly in present-day Qinghai Province). These include the Yangtze, Yellow River, Indus River, Mekong, Ganges, Salween and the Yarlung Tsangpo River (Brahmaputra River). The Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon, along the Yarlung Tsangpo River, is among the deepest and longest canyons in the world.\nTibet has been called the \"Water Tower\" of Asia, and China is investing heavily in water projects in Tibet.\nThe Indus and Brahmaputra rivers originate from the vicinities of Lake Mapam Yumco in Western Tibet, near Mount Kailash. The mountain is a holy pilgrimage site for both Hindus and Tibetans. The Hindus consider the mountain to be the abode of Lord Shiva. The Tibetan name for Mount Kailash is Khang Rinpoche. Tibet has numerous high-altitude lakes referred to in Tibetan as \"tso\" or \"co\". These include Qinghai Lake, Lake Manasarovar, Namtso, Pangong Tso, Yamdrok Lake, Siling Co, Lhamo La-tso, Lumajangdong Co, Lake Puma Yumco, Lake Paiku, Como Chamling, Lake Rakshastal, Dagze Co and Dong Co. The Qinghai Lake (Koko Nor) is the largest lake in the People's Republic of China.\nClimate.\nThe climate is severely dry nine months of the year, and average annual snowfall is only , due to the rain shadow effect. Western passes receive small amounts of fresh snow each year but remain traversible all year round. Low temperatures are prevalent throughout these western regions, where bleak desolation is unrelieved by any vegetation bigger than a low bush, and where the wind sweeps unchecked across vast expanses of arid plain. The Indian monsoon exerts some influence on eastern Tibet. Northern Tibet is subject to high temperatures in the summer and intense cold in the winter.\nWildlife.\n\"Sus scrofa\" expanded from its origin in southeast Asia into the Plateau, acquiring and fixing adaptive alleles for the high-altitude environment. The forests of Tibet are home to black bears, red pandas, musk deer, barking deer, and squirrels. Monkeys such as rhesus macaques and langurs live in the warmer forest zones. Tibetan antelopes, gazelles, and kiangs gaze on the grasslands of the Tibetan plateau. There are more than 500 bird species in Tibet. Because of the high altitude and harsh climate, there are few insects in Tibet.\nSnow leopards are hunted for their fur and the eggs of black-necked cranes have been collected as a delicacy food.\nRegions.\nCultural Tibet consists of several regions. These include Amdo (\"A mdo\") in the northeast, which is administratively part of the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, and Sichuan. Kham (\"Khams\") in the southeast encompasses parts of western Sichuan, northern Yunnan, southern Qinghai, and the eastern part of the Tibet Autonomous Region. \u00dc-Tsang (\"dBus gTsang\") (\u00dc in the center, Tsang in the center-west, and Ngari (\"mNga' ris\") in the far west) covered the central and western portion of Tibet Autonomous Region.\nTibetan cultural influences extend to the neighboring states of Bhutan, Nepal, regions of India such as Sikkim, Ladakh, Lahaul, and Spiti, Northern Pakistan Baltistan or Balti-yul in addition to designated Tibetan autonomous areas in adjacent Chinese provinces.\nCities, towns and villages.\nThere are over 800 settlements in Tibet. Lhasa is Tibet's traditional capital and the capital of Tibet Autonomous Region. It contains two world heritage sites\u00a0\u2013 the Potala Palace and Norbulingka, which were the residences of the Dalai Lama. Lhasa contains a number of significant temples and monasteries, including Jokhang and Ramoche Temple.\nShigatse is the second largest city in the Tibet AR, west of Lhasa. Gyantse and Qamdo are also amongst the largest.\nOther cities and towns in cultural Tibet include Shiquanhe (Gar), Nagchu, Bamda, Rutog, Nyingchi, Nedong, Coq\u00ean, Barkam, Sagya, Gertse, Pelbar, Lhatse, and Tingri; in Sichuan, Kangding (Dartsedo); in Qinghai, Jyekundo (Yushu), Machen, and Golmud; in India, Tawang, Leh, and Gangtok, and in Pakistan, Skardu, Kharmang, and Khaplu.\nEconomy.\nThe Tibetan economy is dominated by subsistence agriculture. Due to limited arable land, the primary occupation of the Tibetan Plateau is raising livestock, such as sheep, cattle, goats, camels, yaks, dzo, and horses.\nThe main crops grown are barley, wheat, buckwheat, rye, potatoes, and assorted fruits and vegetables. Tibet is ranked the lowest among China's 31 provinces on the Human Development Index according to UN Development Programme data. In recent years, due to increased interest in Tibetan Buddhism, tourism has become an increasingly important sector, and is actively promoted by the authorities. Tourism brings in the most income from the sale of handicrafts. These include Tibetan hats, jewelry (silver and gold), wooden items, clothing, quilts, fabrics, Tibetan rugs and carpets. The Central People's Government exempts Tibet from all taxation and provides 90% of Tibet's government expenditures. However, most of this investment goes to pay migrant workers who do not settle in Tibet and send much of their income home to other provinces.\nForty percent of the rural cash income in the Tibet Autonomous Region is derived from the harvesting of the fungus \"Ophiocordyceps sinensis\" (formerly \"Cordyceps sinensis\"); contributing at least 1.8\u00a0billion yuan, (US$225\u00a0million) to the region's GDP.\nThe Qingzang railway linking the Tibet Autonomous Region to Qinghai Province was opened in 2006, but it was controversial.\nIn January 2007, the Chinese government issued a report outlining the discovery of a large mineral deposit under the Tibetan Plateau. The deposit has an estimated value of $128\u00a0billion and may double Chinese reserves of zinc, copper, and lead. The Chinese government sees this as a way to alleviate the nation's dependence on foreign mineral imports for its growing economy. However, critics worry that mining these vast resources will harm Tibet's fragile ecosystem and undermine Tibetan culture.\nOn January 15, 2009, China announced the construction of Tibet's first expressway, the Lhasa Airport Expressway, a stretch of controlled-access highway in southwestern Lhasa. The project will cost 1.55\u00a0billion yuan (US$227\u00a0million).\nFrom January 18\u201320, 2010, a national conference on Tibet and areas inhabited by Tibetans in Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu and Qinghai was held in China and a plan to improve development of the areas was announced. The conference was attended by General secretary Hu Jintao, Wu Bangguo, Wen Jiabao, Jia Qinglin, Li Changchun, Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, He Guoqiang and Zhou Yongkang, all members of Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. The plan called for improvement of rural Tibetan income to national standards by 2020 and free education for all rural Tibetan children. China has invested 310\u00a0billion yuan (about 45.6\u00a0billion U.S. dollars) in Tibet since 2001.\nDevelopment zone.\nThe State Council approved Tibet Lhasa Economic and Technological Development Zone as a state-level development zone in 2001. It is located in the western suburbs of Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region. It is away from the Gonggar Airport, and away from Lhasa Railway Station and away from 318 national highway.\nThe zone has a planned area of and is divided into two zones. Zone A developed a land area of for construction purposes. It is a flat zone, and has the natural conditions for good drainage.\nDemographics.\nHistorically, the population of Tibet consisted of primarily ethnic Tibetans and some other ethnic groups. According to tradition the original ancestors of the Tibetan people, as represented by the six red bands in the Tibetan flag, are: the Se, Mu, Dong, Tong, Dru and Ra. Other traditional ethnic groups with significant population or with the majority of the ethnic group residing in Tibet (excluding a disputed area with India) include Bai people, Blang, Bonan, Dongxiang, Han, Hui people, Lhoba, Lisu people, Miao, Mongols, Monguor (Tu people), Menba (Monpa), Mosuo, Nakhi, Qiang, Nu people, Pumi, Salar, and Yi people.\nThe proportion of the non-Tibetan population in Tibet is disputed. On the one hand, the Central Tibetan Administration of the Dalai Lama accuses China of actively swamping Tibet with migrants in order to alter Tibet's demographic makeup. On the other hand, according to the 2010 Chinese census ethnic Tibetans comprise 90% of a total population of 3\u00a0million in the Tibet Autonomous Region.\nCulture.\nReligion.\nBuddhism.\nReligion is extremely important to the Tibetans and has a strong influence over all aspects of their lives. B\u00f6n is the indigenous religion of Tibet, but has been almost eclipsed by Tibetan Buddhism, a distinctive form of Mahayana and Vajrayana, which was introduced into Tibet from the Sanskrit Buddhist tradition of northern India. Tibetan Buddhism is practiced not only in Tibet but also in Mongolia, parts of northern India, the Buryat Republic, the Tuva Republic, and in the Republic of Kalmykia and some other parts of China. During China's Cultural Revolution, nearly all Tibet's monasteries were ransacked and destroyed by the Red Guards. A few monasteries have begun to rebuild since the 1980s (with limited support from the Chinese government) and greater religious freedom has been granted\u00a0\u2013 although it is still limited. Monks returned to monasteries across Tibet and monastic education resumed even though the number of monks imposed is strictly limited. Before the 1950s, between 10 and 20% of males in Tibet were monks.\nTibetan Buddhism has five main traditions (the suffix \"pa\" is comparable to \"er\" in English):\nThe Chinese government continued to pursue a strategy of forced assimilation and suppression of Tibetan Buddhism, as demonstrated by the laws designed to control the next reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and those of other Tibetan eminent lamas. Monks and nuns who refused to denounce the Dalai Lama have been expelled from their monasteries, imprisoned, and tortured.\nIt was reported in June 2021 that amidst the 2020\u20132022 China\u2013India skirmishes, the People's Liberation Army had been forming a new unit for Tibetans who would be taken to Buddhist monks for religious blessings after completing their training.\nChristianity.\nThe first Christians documented to have reached Tibet were the Nestorians, of whom various remains and inscriptions have been found in Tibet. They were also present at the imperial camp of M\u00f6ngke Khan at Shira Ordo, where they debated in 1256 with Karma Pakshi (1204/6-83), head of the Karma Kagyu order. Desideri, who reached Lhasa in 1716, encountered Armenian and Russian merchants.\nRoman Catholic Jesuits and Capuchins arrived from Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. Portuguese missionaries Jesuit Father Ant\u00f3nio de Andrade and Brother Manuel Marques first reached the kingdom of Gelu in western Tibet in 1624 and was welcomed by the royal family who allowed them to build a church later on. By 1627, there were about a hundred local converts in the Guge kingdom. Later on, Christianity was introduced to Rudok, Ladakh and Tsang and was welcomed by the ruler of the Tsang kingdom, where Andrade and his fellows established a Jesuit outpost at Shigatse in 1626.\nIn 1661 another Jesuit, Johann Grueber, crossed Tibet from Sining to Lhasa (where he spent a month), before heading on to Nepal. He was followed by others who actually built a church in Lhasa. These included the Jesuit Father Ippolito Desideri, 1716\u20131721, who gained a deep knowledge of Tibetan culture, language and Buddhism, and various Capuchins in 1707\u20131711, 1716\u20131733 and 1741\u20131745, Christianity was used by some Tibetan monarchs and their courts and the Karmapa sect lamas to counterbalance the influence of the Gelugpa sect in the 17th century until in 1745 when all the missionaries were expelled at the lama's insistence.\nIn 1877, the Protestant James Cameron from the China Inland Mission walked from Chongqing to Batang in Garz\u00ea Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan province, and \"brought the Gospel to the Tibetan people.\" Beginning in the 20th century, in D\u00eaq\u00ean Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan, a large number of Lisu people and some Yi and Nu people converted to Christianity. Famous earlier missionaries include James O. Fraser, Alfred James Broomhall and Isobel Kuhn of the China Inland Mission, among others who were active in this area.\nProselytising has been illegal in China since 1949. But as of 2013[ [update]], many Christian missionaries were reported to be active in Tibet with the tacit approval of Chinese authorities, who view the missionaries as a counterforce to Tibetan Buddhism or as a boon to the local economy.\nIslam.\nMuslims have been living in Tibet since as early as the 8th or 9th century. In Tibetan cities, there are small communities of Muslims, known as Kachee (Kache), who trace their origin to immigrants from three main regions: Kashmir (Kachee Yul in ancient Tibetan), Ladakh and the Central Asian Turkic countries. Islamic influence in Tibet also came from Persia. A Muslim Sufi Syed Ali Hamdani preached to the people of Baltistan, then known as little Tibet. After 1959, a group of Tibetan Muslims made a case for Indian nationality based on their historic roots to Kashmir and the Indian government declared all Tibetan Muslims Indian citizens later on that year. Other Muslim ethnic groups who have long inhabited Tibet include Hui, Salar, Dongxiang and Bonan. There is also a well established Chinese Muslim community (gya kachee), which traces its ancestry back to the Hui ethnic group of China.\nTibetan art.\nTibetan representations of art are intrinsically bound with Tibetan Buddhism and commonly depict deities or variations of Buddha in various forms from bronze Buddhist statues and shrines, to highly colorful thangka paintings and mandalas. Thangkas are Tibet's traditional cloth paintings. Rendered on cotton cloth with a thin rod at the top, they portray Buddhist deities or themes in color and detail.\nArchitecture.\nTibetan architecture contains Chinese and Indian influences, and reflects a deeply Buddhist approach. The Buddhist wheel, along with two dragons, can be seen on nearly every Gompa in Tibet. The design of the Tibetan Ch\u00f6rtens can vary, from roundish walls in Kham to squarish, four-sided walls in Ladakh.\nThe most distinctive feature of Tibetan architecture is that many of the houses and monasteries are built on elevated, sunny sites facing the south, and are often made out of a mixture of rocks, wood, cement and earth. Little fuel is available for heat or lighting, so flat roofs are built to conserve heat, and multiple windows are constructed to let in sunlight. Walls are usually sloped inwards at 10 degrees as a precaution against the frequent earthquakes in this mountainous area.\nStanding at in height and in width, the Potala Palace is the most important example of Tibetan architecture. Formerly the residence of the Dalai Lama, it contains over one thousand rooms within thirteen stories, and houses portraits of the past Dalai Lamas and statues of the Buddha. It is divided between the outer White Palace, which serves as the administrative quarters, and the inner Red Quarters, which houses the assembly hall of the Lamas, chapels, 10,000 shrines, and a vast library of Buddhist scriptures. The Potala Palace is a World Heritage Site, as is Norbulingka, the former summer residence of the Dalai Lama.\nMusic.\nThe music of Tibet reflects the cultural heritage of the trans-Himalayan region, centered in Tibet but also known wherever ethnic Tibetan groups are found in India, Bhutan, Nepal and further abroad. First and foremost Tibetan music is religious music, reflecting the profound influence of Tibetan Buddhism on the culture.\nTibetan music often involves chanting in Tibetan or Sanskrit, as an integral part of the religion. These chants are complex, often recitations of sacred texts or in celebration of various festivals. Yang chanting, performed without metrical timing, is accompanied by resonant drums and low, sustained syllables. Other styles include those unique to the various schools of Tibetan Buddhism, such as the classical music of the popular Gelugpa school, and the romantic music of the Nyingmapa, Sakyapa and Kagyupa schools.\nNangma dance music is especially popular in the karaoke bars of the urban center of Tibet, Lhasa. Another form of popular music is the classical gar style, which is performed at rituals and ceremonies. Lu are a type of songs that feature glottal vibrations and high pitches. There are also epic bards who sing of Gesar, who is a hero to ethnic Tibetans.\nFestivals.\nTibet has various festivals, many for worshipping the Buddha, that take place throughout the year. Losar is the Tibetan New Year Festival. Preparations for the festive event are manifested by special offerings to family shrine deities, painted doors with religious symbols, and other painstaking jobs done to prepare for the event. Tibetans eat \"Guthuk\" (barley noodle soup with filling) on New Year's Eve with their families. The Monlam Prayer Festival follows it in the first month of the Tibetan calendar, falling between the fourth and the eleventh days of the first Tibetan month. It involves dancing and participating in sports events, as well as sharing picnics. The event was established in 1049 by Tsong Khapa, the founder of the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama's order.\nCuisine.\nThe most important crop in Tibet is barley, and dough made from barley flour\u2014called tsampa\u2014is the staple food of Tibet. This is either rolled into noodles or made into steamed dumplings called momos. Meat dishes are likely to be yak, goat, or mutton, often dried, or cooked into a spicy stew with potatoes. Mustard seed is cultivated in Tibet, and therefore features heavily in its cuisine. Yak yogurt, butter and cheese are frequently eaten, and well-prepared yogurt is considered something of a prestige item. Butter tea is a very popular drink.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["34079704", "31516"], "permutation_1": ["31516", "34079704"], "permutation_2": ["34079704", "31516"], "permutation_3": ["31516", "34079704"]}
{"id": "2hop__244564_127375", "docs_added": {"12275205": "Rock Show (Grinspoon song)\n\"Rock Show\" was the third single by Grinspoon from their second studio album \"Easy\". It was released on 5 May 2000 on the Grudge label (the Australian imprint of Universal Records), reaching No.\u00a078 on the Australian Singles Chart and polling at No.\u00a033 on Triple J's Hottest 100 for 2000.\nHistory.\nAfter undertaking an extensive tour of the US promoting their debut album, \"Guide to Better Living\", the band set about recording a follow-up album in with producer Jonathan Burnside (Nirvana, Melvins, Depeche Mode, Meat Beat Manifesto) in August 1999. The album, \"Easy\", was recorded in Sydney and mixed in Melbourne. \"Easy\" was released on 1 November 1999, peaking at No.\u00a04 on the Australian Album Chart and was certified platinum in Australia. The first single from the album, \"Ready 1\" was released in October 1999 and peaked at No.\u00a036 on the ARIA Singles Chart. The second single, \"Secrets\", released in January 2000 peaked at No.\u00a083.\nThe third single, \"Rock Show\" was not released until 5 May 2000, it wasn't as successful as \"Ready 1\" only reaching No.\u00a078 on the Australian Singles Chart It was however voted in at No.\u00a033 on Triple J's Hottest 100 for 2000, whereas \"Secrets\" only polled at No.\u00a073. The other tracks on the single were an acoustic version of \"Undercover\" recorded at Triple M's studios and \"Ready 1\" recorded at the Sydney 2000 Big Day Out concert by the ABC.\nMusic video.\nThe music video features Phil Jamieson as a host on a game show similar to \"The Price Is Right\", where the contestants are the other band members and a woman.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "567703": "Grinspoon\nAustralian rock band\nGrinspoon are an Australian rock band from Lismore, New South Wales, which formed in 1995 by Pat Davern on guitar, Joe Hansen on bass guitar, Kristian Hopes on drums and frontman Phil Jamieson on vocals and guitar. Also in that year, Grinspoon won the national youth radio, Triple J\u2013sponsored Unearthed competition for Lismore, with their post-grunge song \"Sickfest\". The band's name references Lester Grinspoon, an associate professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who supported marijuana for medical use.\nAll eight of Grinspoon's studio albums have reached the ARIA albums chart top\u00a010. Their sound changed to mainstream rock with the release of their third studio album, \"New Detention\" (2002), which peaked at No.\u00a02; likewise, their fifth studio album \"Alibis & Other Lies\" (2007) also reached No.\u00a02. The 2004 fourth album, \"Thrills, Kills & Sunday Pills\", peaked at No.\u00a04. At the ARIA Music Awards of 2005 it won the Best Rock Album Award.\nThe band were signed to Universal Records in the United States by late 1998, and were promoted with the songs \"Champion\", which featured in \"Gran Turismo 3\"; \"Post Enebriated Anxiety\", which was on the international version of \"Guide to Better Living\" (1999); \"Chemical Heart\", via the internet; and a cover of the Prong song \"Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck\", from Grinspoon's \"Pushing Buttons\" (1998) EP, which was also included on \"\" (1998). On 4 December 2013, the band members announced an indefinite hiatus to pursue individual projects, although they made a return in earnest in 2017. Their eighth studio album, \"Whatever, Whatever\" (2024) reached No.\u00a03.\nHistory.\n1995-2000: Early years.\nIn July 1995, Pat Davern (guitar), Joe Hansen (bass guitar), Kristian Hopes (drums) and Phil Jamieson (vocals, guitar) met at a Lismore hotel, The Gollan, for a jam night. They decided to form a band and three\u00a0weeks later they recorded a two-track demo, which they entered for the national youth radio station Triple J's Unearthed competition. Their name was taken from Lester Grinspoon, an associate professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who supported marijuana for medical use. They won the competition with their post-grunge, alternative rock song \"Sickfest\" \u2013 their first track ever written together by Davern and Jamieson.\nGrinspoon gained airplay on Triple J and independent radio stations. They developed a strong following among the Australian \"alternative\" and \"mosh pit crowd.\" Their debut extended Play (EP) was the six-track, \"Grinspoon\" (a.k.a. \"Green Album\"), was released in 1995 through the independent Oracle Records. It contained the songs \"Sickfest\" and \"More Than You Are\" that became popular with fans and were rerecorded on later releases.\nGrinspoon's second EP, \"Licker Bottle Cozy\", recorded in June 1996 and produced by Phil McKellar, was released by Grudge Records in December. It had a slightly heavier sound than their earlier EP with five tracks including the songs \"Champion\" and \"Pig Pen\". In September 1997 they released their first full-length album, \"Guide to Better Living\", co-produced by McKellar and well-known Swiss-American heavy metal producer Ulrich Wild. The album peaked at No.\u00a011 on the ARIA Albums Charts and went platinum with sales of over 70,000 in Australia. It represents the Helmet-influenced alternative metal sound of their early career with heavier songs like \"Pressure Tested 1984\". The Australian version of the album features five live songs\u2014illustrating the band's sense of humour and ability to play live\u2014and a hidden track, the acoustic \"Protest\". US branch of Universal Records signed the band by late 1998 and released an altered version of \"Guide to Better Living\" in March 1999.\nWhilst in US touring for ten months as support act for Creed, Lit, Godsmack and Anthrax, Grinspoon released a six track EP, \"Pushing Buttons\", for their Australian market in September 1998. It featured the popular heavy song \"Black Friday\" and the lighter songs \"Busy\" and \"Explain\". After the intense US touring, Grinspoon released their second album, \"Easy\" in September 1999, which peaked at No.\u00a04 and went platinum in Australia. It contained the singles \"Ready 1\" and \"Rock Show\".\n2001-2007: Changing direction.\nAfter a break to reconsider their direction and sound Grinspoon started recording their next album, \"New Detention\", in Sydney's Festival Studios in September 2001 but prior to finishing the studios were shut down and so vocals and guitars were recorded in smaller studios. Further delays occurred after Hopes injured his hand on a studio window. \"New Detention\" was released in June 2002 and was more commercial\u2014it peaked at No.\u00a02 on the ARIA Albums Charts and went platinum. The first single from the album, \"Chemical Heart\", released in February had created a stir with long term fans and the media because it was different from their previous grunge sound. The band insisted the change was a natural one and was an improvement. Nevertheless, the band still performs older tracks in their live shows. They released a four track EP in March 2003, \"Panic Attack\"\u2014containing a cover of INXS's \"Don't Change\"\u2014which reached No.\u00a013 on the ARIA Singles Chart.\nIn August 2004, they released a new single, \"Hard Act To Follow\", which reached the Top 30. It was from the September album \"Thrills, Kills & Sunday Pills\", which peaked at No.\u00a04 and went platinum. Grinspoon also performed at the 2004 NRL grand final before a second single, \"Better Off Alone\", issued in November, also reached the Top 30. The third single was \"Hold on Me\" released in February 2005. For \"Thrills, Kills & Sunday Pills\", the band agreed that they were deliberately seeking a new audience, claiming they wrote a number of songs for the release and rejected any that sounded like earlier work. It won the 2005 'Best Rock Album Award' at the ARIA Music Awards. They had previously been nominated 9 times.\nGrinspoon had built a strong local following after their rise, they were regulars at Australian music festivals. On 26 March 2006, Grinspoon performed \"Hard Act To Follow\" and \"Better Off Alone\" at the 2006 Commonwealth Games Closing Ceremony in Melbourne. They headlined the inaugural \"Thank God It's Over\" in Melbourne, at \"BOBFest '06\" in South Australia in October and at Odyssey 2006 at Dreamworld for New Year's Eve.\nIn February 2007, Jamieson admitted himself to rehab due to addiction to crystal methamphetamine. On Andrew Denton's \"Enough Rope\" in July, Jamieson discussed his drug addictions, an extramarital affair, stealing money from bandmates, detox and rehab experiences.\nThe band completed, \"Alibis & Other Lies\" in July 2007, as their final album for Universal. It was co-produced by the band and Ramesh Sathiah, who had worked with them on their earliest recordings. Earlier albums before this were pop-oriented rock, while \"Easy\" and \"Alibis & Other Lies\" were more heavy rock. The first single from the album, \"Black Tattoo\", was released as a digital download on 23 June and physically a week later. The album peaked at No.\u00a02, their equal highest album chart position (with \"New Detention\" in 2002). Grinspoon released a 2-disc compilation entitled \"Best in Show\". The first disc featured their hits and several older songs, like \"Champion\", which landed the song on \"Gran Turismo 3\". The second disc includes a collection of covers recorded over the years. In the US, all Grinspoon albums had been released on iTunes and other online music stores. The first four were \"Guide To Better Living\", \"Best In Show\", \"Thrills, Kills, and Sunday Pills\", and \"New Detention\". \"Easy\" and \"Alibis & Other Lies\" followed on 31 October 2007.\n2008-2009: Hiatus.\nOn 5 February 2008, Jamieson announced, via the band's official website, that Grinspoon were on hiatus following their appearance at Big Day Out in late January. Grinspoon headlined the Newton's Playground festival, held atop Bathurst's famous Mount Panorama in March, with their song \"Lost Control\" played in advertisements for the festival. On 1 May, Grinspoon announced they would complete more shows before writing a new album.\nGrinspoon recorded The Easybeats' track \"St. Louis\" for a tribute album, \"Easy Fever: A Tribute to The Easybeats and Stevie Wright\"\u2014released in October 2008\u2014while Jamieson's duet with The Wrights on \"Evie part 3: I'm Losing You\" from 2005 was included. The band contributed the track \"Blind Lead Blind\", their B side of 2007's \"Minute By Minute\", to a compilation CD for The Buttery Drug and Alcohol Rehab Centre titled \"Caution: Life Ahead\", which included contributions from other Australian acts such as Powderfinger, Midnight Oil and The Living End, and was released in November.\nGrinspoon performed on 26 July 2009 at the annual Splendour in the Grass Festival in Byron Bay. Jamieson then toured with a supergroup composed of The Living End's Chris Cheney, You Am I's Tim Rogers, and Josh Pyke with a 17-piece band in August 2009. The group performed a tribute to The Beatles' White Album for its 40th anniversary.\n2010: \"Six to Midnight\".\nGrinspoon's next album, titled \"Six to Midnight\", was released on 11 September 2009 on the band's imprint Chk Chk Boom Records, distributed by Universal Records, which peaked at No.\u00a06. Two tracks, \"Dogs\" and the first single, \"Comeback\", were released to radio earlier. For promotion of the album, the band toured in a more intimate setting than most of their previous concerts. On 6 November, Grinspoon played live on Triple J radio and confirmed that \"Summer\" was the second single from the album. In 2010 Premonitions was released as the third single from the album. The band toured for the album including two acoustic shows in London in early 2012 featuring Phil and Pat.\n2011\u20132019: \"Black Rabbits\" and hiatus.\nIn September 2011 Grinspoon announced on their website that they are writing and recording their seventh studio album.\nIn May 2012 the band announced that they were heading to the United States for a month to record the album. The band also hinted that the title of the album would be \"Black Rabbits\". The album was later slated to feature guest musicians including Chris Cheney of The Living End, Tim Rogers of You Am I and Scott Russo of Unwritten Law.\nOn 23 July 2012, Grinspoon released the artwork of the album on their official Facebook page, confirming the name of the release \"Black Rabbits\".\nThe album was released on 28 September, debuting at number 8 on the ARIA charts.\nOn 5 December 2013 a statement on the official Grinspoon website announced that the band would be going on hiatus. A section of the statement reads: \"Thanks to all our families, friends, and especially our fans for the support over the last 18 years \u2013 it's been a wild ride to say the least. We are still a band of brothers but it's time for us to take a break and recharge the batteries. We're excited to see what our future holds\u2026adios amigos, it's been a blast!\"\nIn August 2015, it was announced that the band would be reforming exclusively to play a run of dates opening for Cold Chisel.\nIn 2017, the band announced they would be re-releasing a special 20th Anniversary edition of Guide To Better Living and announced an Australia wide tour. The tour was sold out.\nIn 2019, the group released the compilation, \"Chemical Hearts\".\n2020\u2013present: \"Whatever, Whatever\".\nIn May 2024, the group released the single \"Unknown Pretenders\", which was written in February 2020. At the same time, they announced the release of their eighth studio album \"Whatever, Whatever\".\nAwards and nominations.\nAPRA Awards.\nThe APRA Awards are presented annually from 1982 by the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), \"honouring composers and songwriters\". They commenced in 1982.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Awards table/styles.css\" />\n! scope=\"col\" | Year\n! scope=\"col\" | Nominee / work\n! scope=\"col\" | Award\n! scope=\"col\" | Result\n! Ref.\nARIA Awards.\nThe ARIA Music Awards are a set of annual ceremonies presented by Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), which recognise excellence, innovation, and achievement across all genres of the music of Australia. They commenced in 1987. Grinspoon has won 2 awards from 14 nominations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Awards table/styles.css\" />\n! scope=\"col\" | Year\n! scope=\"col\" | Nominee / work\n! scope=\"col\" | Award\n! scope=\"col\" | Result\nJ Awards.\nThe J Awards are an annual series of Australian music awards that were established by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's youth-focused radio station Triple J. They commenced in 2005.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Awards table/styles.css\" />\n! scope=\"col\" | Year\n! scope=\"col\" | Nominee / work\n! scope=\"col\" | Award\n! scope=\"col\" | Result\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "454832": "Red Rocks Amphitheatre\nConcert venue near Morrison, Colorado, U.S.\nRed Rocks Amphitheatre (also known colloquially as simply Red Rocks) is an open-air amphitheater in the western United States near Morrison, Colorado, approximately southwest of Denver. It is owned and operated by the city of Denver. In addition to several other large sandstone formations nearby, the venue is best recognized by its two massive monoliths, named \"Ship Rock\" and \"Creation Rock\", as well as the smaller \"Stage Rock\", which together flank its 9,525 capacity seating area and naturally form the amphitheater. While the venue is primarily known for hosting concerts and music festivals, other events of various types and sizes are held throughout the year.\nIn 1957, the American Institute of Architects selected Red Rocks to be Colorado's entry at the National Gallery of Art for the AIA's Centennial Exhibition. In 1999, after \"Pollstar\" magazine awarded Red Rocks the annual honor of being the best small outdoor venue for the eleventh time, the magazine changed the name of the award to the \"Red Rocks Award\" and removed Red Rocks from the running.\nConstruction began in October 2020 to replace the existing stage roof and expand the structure's rigging capacity; the work was completed the following summer.\nHistory.\nThe natural features surrounding the amphitheater were formed millions of years ago as part of the Fountain Formation, then lifted and tilted during a geological upheaval event called the Laramide Orogeny, the same time in which the nearby Garden of the Gods and Flatirons were formed. The characteristic reddish colors of the rock formations is the result of oxidized minerals. \nWhile the grounds were likely used by the Ute tribe in earlier times, an Army expedition led by Stephen Long rediscovered present-day Red Rocks in 1820. The prevalence of the nearby Colorado gold rush between 1858-1859 drew further interest from prospectors and new settlers along the Front Range. Originally named the \"Garden of the Angels\", Marion Burts became the first recorded owner of the site in 1872. He sold it to Leonard H. Eicholtz, who in turn developed the property into a park in 1878. Nearly 30 years later, Eicholtz sold Red Rocks to famed magazine editor John Brisben Walker in 1906. \nThe site was renamed to \"Garden of the Titans\" and further developed to incorporate a temporary platform for hosting concerts from. In addition to the platform, Walker also built the Mount Morrison Cable Incline funicular railway, which carried tourists from the lower area of the park up to the top of Mount Morrison. The incline operated for about five years beginning in 1909. In 1927, George Cranmer, Manager of Denver Parks, convinced the City of Denver to purchase the area of Red Rocks from Walker for $54,133 ($ today), officially adopting the title of \"Red Rocks\" Amphitheatre, a name it had been informally referred to since the area was settled. \nCranmer then convinced Mayor Benjamin Stapleton to build upon the foundation laid by Walker. By enlisting the help of Denver architect Burnham F. Hoyt and Stanley E. Morse, along with labor and materials provided by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as part of the New Deal program, construction of the amphitheater began in 1936 and was formally dedicated on June 15, 1941, with a performance by Helen Jepson.\nNotable performances.\nPublic, organizational and private performances have been held at Red Rocks for over a century. The earliest documented performance at the amphitheater was the \"Grand Opening of the Garden of the Titans\", put on by publisher John Brisben Walker on May 31, 1906. Featuring Pietro Satriano and his 25-piece brass band, it was the formal opening of the natural amphitheater for use by the general public after Walker purchased it with the proceeds of his sale of \"Cosmopolitan\".\nThe amphitheater's largest-scale performance to date was the \"Feast of Lanterns\" on September 5, 1908. Commemorating the opening of the scenic road up nearby Mt. Falcon, it was patterned after the festival of Nagasaki, Japan, and featured four military bands and fireworks off Mt. Falcon, Mt. Morrison and two intermediate hills.\nRenowned opera singer Mary Garden put Red Rocks on the world musical map with her performance on May 10, 1911. Having performed at many opera halls around the world, she pronounced Red Rocks the finest venue at which she had ever performed.\nUpon the full construction of the amphitheater to its present form by the Civilian Conservation Corps, the venue was formally dedicated on June 15, 1941. It has held regular concert seasons almost every year since 1947. On July 23, 1948, Igor Stravinsky conducted the Denver Symphony at Red Rocks. In 2020 and 2021, it was shut down temporarily as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first performance of each season is the \"Easter Sunrise Service\", a nondenominational service held on Easter Sunday of each year. In 1958, Van Cliburn played Red Rocks to a sold-out crowd.\nThe earliest notable rock performance at Red Rocks was by The Beatles on August 26, 1964, the only concert not sold out during their US-tour. Beatles drummer Ringo Starr later recalled, \u201cI remember it was very high and the air was thin. They were giving us hits from oxygen canisters.\u201d When Starr returned to Red Rocks with his All-Starr Band on June 28, 2000, he asked if anyone in the crowd had been at the Beatles concert thirty-six years earlier. On August 26, 2004, the East-Coast-based Beatles-tribute band 1964 was flown to Denver to re-enact the Beatles concert held at the site exactly forty years earlier. The first country and western show at Red Rocks was on August 29, 1965, headlined by Johnny Cash.\nThe unique setting has led to the venue's becoming a favorite for many performers: Jimi Hendrix played at Red Rocks on September 1, 1968, along with Vanilla Fudge and Soft Machine. It was the first Red Rocks show booked by concert promoter Barry Fey. Diana Ross & the Supremes performed there on August 14, 1969.\nAn incident during a performance by Jethro Tull on June 10, 1971, led to a five-year ban of rock concerts at Red Rocks. Approximately 1,000 people without tickets arrived at the sold-out show. Denver police directed the overflow, non-paying crowd to an area behind the theater, where they could hear the music but not see the band. The situation seemed satisfactory until some of the people without tickets attempted to enter the amphitheater by charging at, and breaking through, the police line. Some of those without tickets began lobbing rocks at the police, and the police responded by discharging tear gas at the gate-crashers. The wind carried the tear gas over the hill, into the paying crowd and onto the stage. Following the \"Riot at Red Rocks,\" Denver Mayor William H. McNichols Jr. banned rock concerts from the amphitheater. For the next five years, shows at Red Rocks were limited to softer acts, such as John Denver, Sonny & Cher, The Carpenters, Pat Boone, Seals & Crofts and Carole King. The ban on rock and roll was finally lifted through legal action taken by Barry Fey, who tried to book the band America at the venue in 1975. After being denied a permit by the city, Fey took the city to court, and the court ruled that the city had acted \"arbitrarily and capricious[ly]\" in banning rock concerts at Red Rocks. Starting in the summer of 1976, the rock bands were once again welcomed at the venue. Jethro Tull played Red Rocks again on June 7, 1988, August 12, 2008, and June 8, 2011.\nOn June 5, 1983, U2 performed during their War Tour, in front of only 4,400 in very inclement weather. The venue had been sold out, but the crowd size was affected by the weather, with attendees believing the show would be canceled. The show was not canceled because the band could not get their money back for the outlay on filming crews and equipment for the performance. Those who braved the weather and showed up were told personally by Bono, who came to the parking lot and into the crowd more than once, to ignore their seat assignments, and to move as forward as they wished to make the house seem full, since the show was being filmed for what became the group's concert film \"\". The music video for \"Sunday Bloody Sunday,\u201d shown in heavy rotation on MTV, was also the fruit of the filming effort. Some songs from the show appear on the group's 1983 live album \"Under a Blood Red Sky\".\nDepeche Mode performed at the amphitheater four times: July 1, 1986, July 11 and 12, 1990, during their World Violation Tour, and on August 27, 2009, during their \"Tour of the Universe\", in front of a crowd of 8,679 people. The 2009 show was recorded for the group's live albums project \"Recording the Universe\".\nRed Rocks was one of the favored venues for The Grateful Dead and the venue has become a traditional stop for many subsequent jam bands. In total the Grateful Dead played Red Rocks 20 times between 1978 and 1987. The performances on July 7, 1978, and July 8, 1978, were released as part of the \"\nbox set, with July 8 having a stand alone release, \". The Grateful Dead held the record for most sold out performances at Red Rocks until 2015.\nWidespread Panic holds the record for the most sold-out performances at Red Rocks, with 72 as of June 2024. Blues Traveler has played the venue every Fourth of July since 1993, except 1999 when lead singer and harmonica player John Popper was unable to play due to heart surgery. Phish were banned from performing at Red Rocks after they played four concerts there in August 1996. Fans of the band who showed up to the concerts without tickets were accused of starting a riot outside the amphitheater on the second night, and the nearby town of Morrison was unprepared to accommodate the size of the band's following. Phish was not invited to perform at Red Rocks again until July 2009.\nGeddy Lee of Rush said, \"It's an amazing location...One of the most stunning concert venues in the United States... or anywhere. I would hazard a guess that it's one of the most beautiful places in the world.\" Rush played Red Rocks on their , Snakes and Arrows and Time Machine tours.\nColorado musicians who have performed at Red Rocks include John Denver in 1973, Judy Collins in 1973, Big Head Todd and the Monsters in 1994, Earth, Wind & Fire (some members are from Denver) in 2002, The Fray in 2006, DeVotchKa in 2008, 3OH!3 in 2012, Pretty Lights in 2012, OneRepublic in 2013, The Lumineers in 2013, and Strawberry Runners in 2016. As of 2023, Colorado band The String Cheese Incident has played at Red Rocks over 50 times.\nOn August 7, 2000, the \"Film on the Rocks\" series started with a screening of \"Casablanca\".\nIn 2014, after voters in Colorado legalized marijuana, the Colorado Symphony played a cannabis-themed \"Red Rocks on a High Note\" show there. In 2018, Yo-Yo Ma began his tour of Bach's Cello Suites at Red Rocks.\nOn October 5, 2019, AJR played a sold-out show at the amphitheater for their Neotheater World Tour.\nDuring the 2020 pandemic, Red Rocks hosted the Colorado Symphony Strings, which played sold-out Acoustic on the Rocks shows in July and August, following social-distancing guidelines.\nIn September 2020, virtual shows were streamed live. Despite Denver Arts & Venues announcing the closure of all its venues (including Red Rocks) in September, in-person shows did occur. Other events included drive-in movies for mainstream films and the Denver Film Festival's red carpet movies.\nIn 2021, Red Rocks Amphitheatre was named the top-grossing and most-attended concert venue of any size, anywhere in the world.\nOn August 9 and 10, 2022, \"South Park\" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone held a live concert alongside rock bands Primus, Ween and Rush at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, commemorating \"South Park\"'s 25th anniversary. Besides a few original songs from the supporting bands, the concert mainly consisted of Parker and Stone performing music from the series.\nOn June 21, 2023, the largest injury-inducing weather event in the venue's history occurred. Before Louis Tomlinson was scheduled to perform, a hailstorm with apple sized hail injured over 90 people, including 7 who were hospitalized.\nOn October 8, 2023, Noah Kahan played a sold-out show at Red Rocks Amphitheatre as part of his Stick Season Tour. \nNotable recordings.\nRed Rocks has been a popular venue for live recordings, particularly videos, due to the visual uniqueness of the setting. During the 1970s and 1980s, local folk-rocker John Denver recorded several world-televised concerts at Red Rocks. U2's 1983 concert video, \"\", became a bestselling long-form concert video and the performance of \"Sunday Bloody Sunday\" was played frequently on MTV. Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks released a 60-minute-long DVD of her August 1986 concert at the amphitheatre, towards the end of her Rock a Little tour. In 1992, The Moody Blues performed live for the first time with a symphony orchestra for the PBS special \"A Night at Red Rocks with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra\". The concert also was released on CD and DVD, along with a companion DVD, \"The Other Side of Red Rocks\", which documented show rehearsals and preparation, as well as concert excerpts.\nOther Red Rocks material on CD and DVD includes Dave Matthews Band's albums \"Live at Red Rocks 8.15.95\" and the CD/DVD \"Weekend on the Rocks\", which is a compilation of the band's four-night run in 2005, their last performances at the venue. Also recorded are The Samples live album \"Live in Colorado\", John Tesh's \"Live at Red Rocks\" and \"Worship at Red Rocks\", the Incubus DVD \"Alive at Red Rocks\", Blues Traveler's \"Live on the Rocks\" album, Steve Martin's comedy album \"A Wild and Crazy Guy\", The Moody Blues's \"A Night at Red Rocks with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra\", and Boukman Eksperyans' album \"Live At Red Rocks\". Widespread Panic's DVD The Earth Will Swallow You features a 15-minute segment on Red Rocks.\nThe Grateful Dead performed at Red Rocks 20 times. 7/7/78 and 7/8/78 have been released in their entirety on ' and '.\nThe live Neil Young album \"Road Rock Vol. 1\" and its accompanying DVD, \"Red Rocks Live\", were filmed and recorded at Red Rocks in 2000 during the \"Silver and Gold\" tour. Local Colorado band Big Head Todd and the Monsters released a DVD and live album of a 1995 performance in 2003, capturing what has become a local annual early season tradition. In 2009, they followed the original recording with a two-CD/1DVD set from their June 2008 performance.\nA two-volume 2003 album, \"Carved In Stone\u2013 Volume 1\", featured live recordings of 10 artists including R.E.M., Ben Harper, Coldplay, The Allman Brothers Band, and Phish, with proceeds benefiting \"Preserve The Rocks Fund\", a donation-driven reserve dedicated to the rehabilitation and preservation of the historic Red Rocks Amphitheatre. The follow-up live compilation CD, Carved In Stone \u2013 Volume 2, Live at Red Rocks Amphitheatre was released in October 2007. Erik Dyce, Trevor Pryce of Outlook Music Co., and Jeff Giarraputo of Factory Labs were the executive producers, making it the first venue to issue a CD and the first commercial release of these live tunes.\nPhish frontman Trey Anastasio included excerpts from his 2005 performance at Red Rocks on the DVD that accompanied his album \"Shine\". Country musician Gary Allan filmed the music video for his song \"Watching Airplanes\" during a live, sold-out concert at Red Rocks in August 2007. A portion of British rock band Oasis's rockumentary film \"Lord Don't Slow Me Down\" was filmed at Red Rocks. A Perfect Circle also included one live video recording on the CD-DVD \"AMotion\". Insane Clown Posse played with Twiztid, Blaze Ya Dead Homie, Boondox, the Axe Murder Boyz, Grave Plott, The ROC, and Motown Rage in May 2008 at Red Rocks at perform the 'first annual' Hatchet Attacks Super Show, for which they released a video later that year.\nDepeche Mode recorded their show at the amphitheatre on August 29, 2009, for their live album project, \"Recording the Universe\".\nCountry singer Kenny Chesney included a live version of \"You and Tequila\", a duet with Grace Potter, on his album \"Welcome to the Fishbowl\". The recording has a segment with audience participation singing the chorus \"You and Tequila make me crazy, run like poison in my blood, one more night could kill me baby, one is one too many, one more is never enough\".\nA Perfect Circle recorded the DVD portion of their \"\" box set on August 2, 2011. Also included in the box set is a CD of the audio from the show.\nOn August 29, 2012, Mumford & Sons recorded their live performance of their first single, \"I Will Wait\" from their new CD \"Babel\" at the amphitheatre. The performance was released on September 9, 2012, as the band's official video for the song. The band released a full-length DVD of their show at Red Rocks, recorded on August 28 and 29, 2012, entitled \"The Road To Red Rocks\".\nOn September 1, 2014, OneRepublic, a band hailing from Colorado Springs, announced they would be heading back to Red Rocks for a special performance to close out the North American leg of their Native Summer Tour. While performing the song \"I Lived\" they recorded the band, the audience, and one of their fans (Bryan Warnecke) for the \"I Lived\" music video. The video also featured several aerial views of the venue during the day as well as during the concert itself. This performance of the song was done to help spread awareness for cystic fibrosis and to share Bryan's journey with the disease. The music video was released on September 25, 2014.\nOn June 10, "}, "descending_order": ["454832", "12275205", "567703"], "permutation_1": ["454832", "567703", "12275205"], "permutation_2": ["454832", "567703", "12275205"], "permutation_3": ["454832", "567703", "12275205"]}
{"id": "2hop__430048_160137", "docs_added": {"52053": "French Indochina\n1887\u20131954 French dependent territories in Southeast Asia\nFrench Indochina (previously spelled as French Indo-China), officially known as the Indochinese Union and after 1941 as the Indochinese Federation, was a group of French dependent territories in Southeast Asia from 1887 to 1954. It was initially a federation of French colonies (1887-1949), later a confederation of French associated states (1949\u20131954). It comprised Cambodia, Laos (from 1899), Guangzhouwan (1898\u20131945), Cochinchina, and Vietnamese regions of Tonkin and Annam. It was established in 1887 and was dissolved in 1954. In 1949, Vietnam was reunited and it regained Cochinchina. Its capitals were Hanoi (1902\u20131945) and Saigon (1887\u20131902, 1945\u20131954).\nThe Second French Empire colonized Cochinchina in 1862 and established a protectorate in Cambodia in 1863. After the French Third Republic took over northern Vietnam through the Tonkin campaign, the various protectorates were consolidated into one union in 1887. Two more entities were incorporated into the union: the Laotian protectorate and the Chinese territory of Guangzhouwan. The French exploited the resources in the region during their rule, while also contributing to improvements of the health and education system in the region. Deep divides remained between the native population and the colonists, leading to sporadic rebellions by the former. \nAfter the Fall of France during World War II, the colony was administered by the Vichy government and was under Japanese occupation until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese army overthrew the colonial regime. They established puppet states including the Empire of Vietnam. After the Japanese surrender, the communist Viet Minh led by H\u1ed3 Ch\u00ed Minh declared Vietnamese independence. France sought to restore control with the help of the British in the 1945\u20131946 war, which led to all-out Vietnamese resistance in the First Indochina War. \nIn 1945, France returned Guangzhouwan to China. To counter the Viet Minh and as part of decolonization, France formed the anti-communist State of Vietnam as an associated state within the French Union in March 1949. This led to Cochinchina returning to Vietnam in June. Laos and Cambodia also became French associated states the same year. French efforts to retake Indochina were unsuccessful, culminating in defeat at the Battle of \u0110i\u1ec7n Bi\u00ean Ph\u1ee7. On 22 October and 9 November 1953, Laos and Cambodia gained independence, as did Vietnam with the Geneva Accords of 21 July 1954, ending French Indochina.\nHistory.\nBackground.\nFirst French interventions.\nFrench\u2013Vietnamese relations started during the early 17th century with the arrival of the Jesuit missionary Alexandre de Rhodes. Around this time, Vietnam had only just begun its \"Southward\"\u2014\"Nam Ti\u1ebfn\", the occupation of the Mekong Delta, a territory being part of the Khmer Empire and to a lesser extent, the kingdom of Champa which they had defeated in 1471.\nEuropean involvement in Vietnam was confined to trade during the 18th century, as the remarkably successful work of the Jesuit missionaries continued. In 1787, Pierre Pigneau de Behaine, a French Catholic priest, petitioned the French government and organised French military volunteers to aid Nguy\u1ec5n \u00c1nh in retaking lands his family lost to the T\u00e2y S\u01a1n. Pigneau died in Vietnam but his troops fought on until 1802 in the French assistance to Nguy\u1ec5n \u00c1nh.\n19th century.\nFrench conquest of Cochinchina.\nThe French colonial empire was heavily involved in Vietnam in the 19th century; often French intervention was undertaken in order to protect the work of the Paris Foreign Missions Society in the country. For its part, the Nguy\u1ec5n dynasty increasingly saw Catholic missionaries as a political threat; courtesans, for example, an influential faction in the dynastic system, feared for their status in a society influenced by an insistence on monogamy.\nA brief period of unification under the Nguy\u1ec5n dynasty ended in 1858 with French military intervention. Under the pretext of protesting the persecution and expulsion of Catholic missionaries, and following Charles de Montigny's failure to secure concessions, Napoleon III ordered Admiral Charles Rigault de Genouilly to attack Tourane (present day Da Nang).\nFourteen French gunships, 3,300 men including 300 Filipino soldiers provided by the Spanish attacked the port of causing significant damage and occupying the city. After fighting the Vietnamese for three months and finding himself unable to progress further in land, de Genouilly sought and received approval of an alternative attack on Saigon.\nSailing to southern Vietnam, de Genouilly captured the poorly defended city of Saigon on 17 February 1859. Once again, however, de Genouilly and his forces were unable to seize territory outside of the defensive perimeter of the city. De Genouilly was criticised for his actions and was replaced by Admiral Page in November 1859 with instructions to obtain a treaty protecting the Catholic faith in Vietnam while refraining from making territorial gains.\nPeace negotiations proved unsuccessful and the fighting in Saigon continued. Ultimately in 1861, the French brought additional forces to bear in the Saigon campaign, advanced out of the city and began to capture cities in the Mekong Delta. On 5 June 1862, the Vietnamese conceded and signed the Treaty of Saigon whereby they agreed to legalize the free practice of the Catholic religion; to open trade in the Mekong Delta and at three ports at the mouth of the Red River in northern Vietnam; to cede the provinces of Bi\u00ean H\u00f2a, Gia \u0110\u1ecbnh and \u0110\u1ecbnh T\u01b0\u1eddng along with the islands of Poulo Condore to France; and to pay reparations equivalent to one million dollars.\nIn 1864 the aforementioned three provinces ceded to France were formally constituted as the French colony of Cochinchina. Then in 1867, French Admiral Pierre de la Grandi\u00e8re forced the Vietnamese to surrender three additional provinces, Ch\u00e2u \u0110\u1ed1c, H\u00e0 Ti\u00ean and V\u0129nh Long. With these three additions all of southern Vietnam and the Mekong Delta fell under French control.\nEstablishment and early administration.\nIn 1863, the Cambodian king Norodom had requested the establishment of a French protectorate over his country. In 1867, Siam (modern Thailand) renounced suzerainty over Cambodia and officially recognised the 1863 French protectorate on Cambodia, in exchange for the control of Battambang and Siem Reap provinces which officially became part of Thailand. (These provinces would be ceded back to Cambodia by a border treaty between France and Siam in 1906).\nFrance obtained control over northern Vietnam following its victory over China in the Sino-French War (1884\u201385). French Indochina was formed on 17 October 1887 from Annam, Tonkin, Cochinchina (which together form modern Vietnam) and the Kingdom of Cambodia; Laos was added after the Franco-Siamese crisis of 1893.\nThe federation lasted until 21 July 1954. In the four protectorates, the French formally left the local rulers in power, who were the emperors of Vietnam, kings of Cambodia, and kings of Luang Prabang, but in fact gathered all powers in their hands, the local rulers acting only as figureheads.\nJapanese women called Karayuki-san migrated or were trafficked to cities like Hanoi, Haiphong and Saigon in colonial French Indochina in the late 19th century to work as prostitutes and provide sexual services to French soldiers who were occupying Vietnam. Since the French viewed Japanese women as clean, they were highly popular. Images of the Japanese prostitutes in Vietnam were put on French postcards by French photographers. The Japanese government tried to hide the existences of these Japanese prostitutes who went abroad and did not mention them in books on history.\nBeginning in the 1880s there was a rise of an explicitly anti-Catholic French administration in French Indochina. The administration would try to reduce Catholic missionary influence in French Indochinese society, as opposed to the earlier decades where missionaries played an important role in both administration and society in French Cochinchina.\nFrom 1 January 1898, the French directly took over the right to collect all taxes in the protectorate of Annam and to allocate salaries to the Emperor of the Nguy\u1ec5n dynasty and its mandarins. In a notice dated 24 August 1898, the Resident-Superior of Annam wrote: \"From now on, in the Kingdom of Annam there are no longer two governments, but only one\" (meaning that the French government completely took over the administration).\nEarly Vietnamese rebellions.\nWhile the French were trying to establish control over Cambodia, a large scale Vietnamese insurgency \u2013 the C\u1ea7n V\u01b0\u01a1ng movement \u2013 started to take shape, aiming to expel the French and install the boy emperor H\u00e0m Nghi as the leader of an independent Vietnam. Between 1885 and 1889, insurgents, led by Phan \u0110\u00ecnh Ph\u00f9ng, Phan Chu Trinh, Phan B\u1ed9i Ch\u00e2u, Tr\u1ea7n Qu\u00fd C\u00e1p and Hu\u1ef3nh Th\u00fac Kh\u00e1ng, targeted Vietnamese Christians as there were very few French soldiers to overcome, which led to a massacre of around 40,000 Christians. The rebellion was eventually brought down by a French military intervention, in addition to its lack of unity in the movement.\nNationalist sentiments intensified in Vietnam, especially during and after World War I, but all the uprisings and tentative efforts failed to obtain sufficient concessions from the French.\nFranco-Siamese crisis (1893).\nTerritorial conflict in the Indochinese peninsula for the expansion of French Indochina led to the Franco-Siamese crisis of 1893. In 1893 the French authorities in Indochina used border disputes, followed by the Paknam naval incident, to provoke a crisis. French gunboats appeared at Bangkok, and demanded the cession of Lao territories east of the Mekong River.\nKing Chulalongkorn appealed to the British, but the British minister told the king to settle on whatever terms he could get, and he had no choice but to comply. Britain's only gesture was an agreement with France guaranteeing the integrity of the rest of Siam. In exchange, Siam had to give up its claim to the Thai-speaking Shan region of north-eastern Burma to the British, and cede Laos to France.\n20th century.\nFurther encroachments on Siam (1904\u20131907).\nThe French continued to pressure Siam, and in 1902 they manufactured another crisis. This time Siam had to concede French control of territory on the west bank of the Mekong opposite Luang Prabang and around Champasak in southern Laos, as well as western Cambodia. France also occupied the western part of Chantaburi.\nIn 1904, to get back Chantaburi, Siam had to give Trat and Koh Kong to French Indochina. Trat became part of Thailand again on 23 March 1907 in exchange for many areas east of the Mekong like Battambang, Siem Reap and Sisophon.\nIn the 1930s, Siam engaged France in a series of talks concerning the repatriation of Siamese provinces held by the French. In 1938, under the Front Populaire administration in Paris, France had agreed to repatriate Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, Siem Reap, Siem Pang, and the associated provinces (approximately 13) to Siam. Meanwhile, Siam took over control of those areas, in anticipation of the upcoming treaty. Signatories from each country were dispatched to Tokyo to sign the treaty repatriating the lost provinces.\nAnti-French revolts in the early 20th century.\nAlthough during the early 20th century calm was supposed to reign as the French had \"pacified\" the region, constant uprisings contesting French rule characterised French Indochina this period. \"There is ample evidence of the rural populations' involvement in revolts against authority during the first 50 years of the French colonial presence in Cambodia.\" The French \"S\u00fbret\u00e9\" was worried about the Japanese victory during the Russo-Japanese War and its lasting impression on the East as it was considered to be the first victory of \"a yellow people over the white\", as well as the fall of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty to the Xinhai Revolution which established the Republic of China. These events all had significant influence on nationalist sentiments in the territories of French Indochina.\nThe early 20th century saw a number of secret societies launch rebellions in Cochinchina, the Peace and Duty Society (Nghia Hoa Doan Hoi) was introduced to the region by the Minh H\u01b0\u01a1ng refugees following the Manchu conquest of China and the Vietnamese Heaven and Earth Society (\u5929\u5730\u6703, \"Thi\u00ean \u0110\u1ecba H\u1ed9i\"). The Peace and Duty Society was also active supporting anti-Qing insurgents in China.\nThe majority of the traditional mandarin elites would continue to operate under the French protectorate being loyal to their new rulers, but as early period of the \"Ph\u00e1p thu\u1ed9c\" saw an influx of French enterprises significant changes to the social order of the day inspired new forms of resistance against French rule that differed from the earlier \"C\u1ea7n V\u01b0\u01a1ng\" Movement. The new social circumstances in French Indochina were brought about by the establishment of industrial companies by the French such as the \"Union commerciale indochinoise\", the \"Est Asiatique fran\u00e7ais\" shipping company, the \"Chemin de fer fran\u00e7ais de l'Indochine et du Yunan\" railway company, as well as the various coal exploitation companies operating in Tonkin, these modern companies were accompanied by an influx of French tea, coffee, and rubber plantation magnates.\nFollowing the defeat of the Nguy\u1ec5n loyalist \"C\u1ea7n V\u01b0\u01a1ng\" Movement a new generation of anti-French resistance emerged, rather than being rooted in the traditional mandarin elites the new anti-French resistance leaders of the early 20th century were more influenced by international events and revolutions abroad to inspire their resistance and the issue of modernisation. Some Vietnamese revolutionaries like Phan Ch\u00e2u Trinh traveled to the Western World (\"\u0110i T\u00e2y\") to obtain the \"keys\" to modernity and hope to bring these back to Vietnam. While others like the revolutionary leader Phan B\u1ed9i Ch\u00e2u made the \"Journey to the East\" (\"\u0110\u00f4ng Du\") to the Japanese Empire which they saw as the other role-model of modernisation for Vietnam to follow. The \"\u0110\u00f4ng Du\" school of revoluties was supported by Prince C\u01b0\u1eddng \u0110\u1ec3, a direct descendant of the Gia Long Emperor. Prince C\u01b0\u1eddng \u0110\u1ec3 hoped that by financing hundreds of young ambitious Vietnamese people to go get educated in Japan that this would contribute to the liberation of his country from French domination.\nThe \"Duy T\u00e2n H\u1ed9i\" was founded in 1904 by Phan B\u1ed9i Ch\u00e2u and Prince C\u01b0\u1eddng \u0110\u1ec3. The group in a broader sense was also considered a Modernisation Movement. This new group of people consisted only of a few hundred people, with most of its members being either students or nationalists. Notable members of the society included Gilbert Tr\u1ea7n Ch\u00e1nh Chi\u00eau. The members of the \"Duy T\u00e2n H\u1ed9i\" would establish a network of commercial enterprises to both gain capital to finance their activities and to hide their true intentions. A number of other anti-French organisations would support the \"Duy T\u00e2n H\u1ed9i\" such as the Peace and Duty Society and the Heaven and Earth Society.\nThe Tonkin Free School (\"\u0110\u00f4ng Kinh Ngh\u0129a Th\u1ee5c\"), which was created in Hanoi in 1907 by the supporters of both Phan Ch\u00e2u Trinh and Phan B\u1ed9i Ch\u00e2u was closed in the year of its founding by the French authorities because it was perceived as being anti-French. The Tonkin Free School stemmed from the movement of the same name, which aimed to modernise Vietnamese society by abandoning Confucianism and adopting new ideas from both the Western world and Japan. In particular, it promoted the Vietnamese version of the Latin script for writing Vietnamese in place of classical Chinese by publishing educational materials and newspapers using this script, as a new vehicle of instruction. The schools offered free courses to anyone who wanted to learn about the modern spirit. The teachers at the school at 59 H\u00e0ng \u0110\u00e0n included Ph\u1ea1m Duy T\u1ed1n.\nin the years prior to World War I the French arrested thousands of people with some being sentenced to death and others being imprisoned at the Poulo Condore jail island (C\u00f4n S\u01a1n Island). Because of this C\u00f4n S\u01a1n Island would become the best school for political prisoners, nationalists, and communists, as they were gathered together in large, common cells which allowed them to exchange their ideas.\nIn March 1908, mass demonstrations took place in Annam and Tonkin demanding a reduction of the high taxes.\nIn June 1908, the Hanoi Poison Plot took place where a group of Tonkinese indigenous \"tirailleurs\" attempted to poison the entire French colonial army's garrison in the Citadel of Hanoi. The aim of the plot was to neutralise the French garrison and make way for Commander \u0110\u1ec1 Th\u00e1m's rebel army to capture the city of Hanoi. The plot was disclosed, and then was suppressed by the French. In response the French proclaimed martial law. The French accused Phan Ch\u00e2u Trinh and Phan B\u1ed9i Ch\u00e2u of the plot, Phan Ch\u00e2u Trinh was sent to Poulo Condor, and Phan B\u1ed9i Ch\u00e2u fled to Japan and thence, in the year 1910, he went to China. In the years 1912 and 1913 Vietnamese nationalists organised attacks in Tonkin and Cochinchina.\nUsing diplomatic pressure the French persuaded the Japanese to banish the \"Duy T\u00e2n H\u1ed9i\" in 1909 from its shores causing them to seek refuge in Qing China, here they would join the ranks of Sun Yat-Sen's Tongmenghui. While places like Guangdong, Guangxi, and Yunnan were earlier in the French sphere of influence in China, these places would now become hosts of anti-French revolutionary activities due to their borders with Tonkin and Laos, being the primary places of operation for both Chinese and Vietnamese revolutionaries. This allowed for members of the \"Duy T\u00e2n H\u1ed9i\" to perform border raids on both Tonkin and Laos from their bases in China.\nIn March 1913 the mystic millenarist cult leader Phan X\u00edch Long organised an independence demonstration in Cholon which was attended by 600 peasants dressed in white robes. Phan X\u00edch Long claimed descent of the deposed H\u00e0m Nghi Emperor and the Ming dynasty's emperor and declared himself to be the \"Emperor of the Ming Dynasty\".\nThe year 1913 also saw the \"Duy T\u00e2n H\u1ed9i's\" second insurrection campaign, this campaign resulted in the society's members murdering two French Hanoi police officers, attacks on both militia and the military, and the execution of a number of Nguy\u1ec5n dynasty mandarins that were accused of working together with the French government. Another revolt also broke out in Cochinchina in 1913 where prisons and administrative hubs were attacked by crowds of hundreds of peasants using sticks and swords to fight the French, as the French were armed with firearms a large number of protesters ended up dying by gunshot wounds causing the protests to break up ending the revolt.\nDuring the early 20th century the French protectorate over Cambodia was challenged by rebels, just before it saw three separate revolts during the early reign of King Norodom, who had little authority outside Phnom Penh.\nDuring the early 20th century Laos was considered to be the most \"docile\" territory as it saw relatively few uprisings. The French attributed this to them being more stable rulers than the Siamese who had ruled over them for a century before the establishment of the French protectorate. Both the traditional elite and the Laotian peasantry seemed largely content with French rule during this period. Despite this, sporadic revolts occurred in Laos during the late 19th century and early 20th century. During the late 19th century Southern Laos saw upland minority communities rising up in revolt, these were led by Bac My and Ong Ma on the Bolaven Plateau, who demanded the restoration of the \"old order\" and led an armed insurrection against the French until as late as 1936. The Phu Mi Bun Revolt revolt erupted in 1901 and was not suppressed until 1907. It was a \"major rebellion by local Lao Theung tribes (the Alak, Nyaheun, and Laven) against French domination\". Though there is not extensive literature on these particular revolutionary revolts in the Bolaven Plateau, one can see that the native communities desired to rid the region of the extensive and overpowering influence of their colonisers.\nIntroducing French education.\nOn 16 May 1906 the governor-general of French Indochina Jean Baptiste Paul Beau issued a decree establishing the Councils for the Improvement of Indigenous Education. These organisations would oversee the French policies surrounding the education of the indigenous population of French Indochina to \"study educational issues related to each place separately\".\nAccording to researcher Nguy\u1ec5n \u0110\u1eafc Xu\u00e2n, in 1907, the imperial court of the Nguy\u1ec5n dynasty sent Cao Xu\u00e2n D\u1ee5c and Hu\u1ef3nh C\u00f4n, the \"Th\u01b0\u1ee3ng th\u01b0\" of the \"H\u1ed9 B\u1ed9\", to French Cochinchina to \"hold a conference on education\" (\"b\u00e0n ngh\u1ecb h\u1ecdc ch\u00ednh\") with the French authorities on the future of the Annamese education system. This meeting was also recorded in the work \"Ho\u00e0ng Vi\u1ec7t Gi\u00e1p T\u00fd ni\u00ean bi\u1ec3u\" written by Nguy\u1ec5n B\u00e1 Tr\u00e1c. The creation of a ministry of education was orchestrated by the French to reform the Nguy\u1ec5n dynasty's educational system to match French ambitions in the region more. As explained by the Resident-Superior of Annam Ernest Fernand L\u00e9vecque \"Its creation is to better suit the times as more opportunities to study\" opened up in the South to which this new ministry was best suited to help this transition.\nWhile the Nguy\u1ec5n dynasty's Ministry of Education was nominally a part of the Nguy\u1ec5n dynasty's administrative apparatus, actual control was in the hands of the French \"Council for the Improvement of Indigenous Education in Annam\", which dictated its policies. All work done by the ministry was according to the plans and the command of the French \"Director of Education of Annam\". The French administration in Annam continuously revised the curriculum to be taught in order to fit the French system.\nWorld War I.\nThe French entry into World War I saw thousands of volunteers, primarily from the French protectorates of Annam and Tonkin, enlist for service in Europe, around <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />7\u20448 of all French Indochinese serving in Europe were Annamese and Tonkinese volunteers. This period also saw a number of uprisings in Tonkin and Cochinchina. French Indochina contributed significantly to the French war effort in terms of funds, products and human resources.\nPrior to World War I the population of French Indochina stood at around 16,395,000 in 1913 with 14,165,000 being Vietnamese (Tonkinese, Annamese and Cochinchinese), 1,600,000 Cambodians, and 630,000 Laotians. These 16.4 million subjects were ruled over by only around 18,000 French civilians, militaries, and civil servants.\nDuring this period governor-general of French Indochina Albert Sarraut promised a new policy of association and a \"Franco-Annamese Collaboration\" (French: \"Collaboration franco-annamite\"; Vietnamese: \"Ph\u00e1p-Vi\u1ec7t \u0110\u1ec1 hu\u1ec1\") for the wartime contribution by the French Indochinese to their colonial masters. However, beside some liberal reforms, the French administration actually increased economic exploitation and ruthless repression of nationalist movements which rapidly resulted in a disappointment of the promises made by Sarraut.\nDuring the early days of the war around 6 million Frenchmen were drafted causing a severe labour shortage in France. In response, the Undersecretary of State for Artillery and Munitions proposed to hire women, European immigrants, and French colonial subjects, these people were later followed with Chinese immigrants. From 1915 onwards, the French war effort's manpower needs started to rise significantly. Initially the French maintained a racial hierarchy where they believed in \"martial races\" making the early recruitment fall onus primarily on North Africa and French West Africa, but soon the need for additional manpower forced the French to recruit men from the Far East and Madagascar. Almost 100,000 Vietnamese were conscripts and went to Europe to fight and serve on the French battlefront, or work as labourers. Vietnamese troops also served in the Balkans and the Middle Eastern front. This exceptional human mobility offered the French Indochinese, mostly Vietnamese, the unique opportunity of directly access to social life and political debates that were occurring in contemporary France and this resulted in their aspirations to become \"masters of their own destiny\" to increase. Exposed to new political ideals and returning to a colonial occupation of their own country (by a ruler that many of them had fought and died for), resulted in some sour attitudes. Many of these troops sought out and joined the Vietnamese nationalist movement focused on overthrowing the French.\nIn 1925, communist and anti-French activist Nguy\u1ec5n \u00c1i Qu\u1ed1c (later known as H\u1ed3 Ch\u00ed Minh) wrote \"taken in chains, confined in a school compound... Most of them will never again see the sun of their country\" and a number of historians like Joseph Buttinger and Martin Murray, treated his statement by Nguy\u1ec5n \u00c1i Qu\u1ed1c as an article of faith and believed that the Vietnamese men who participated in World War I were \"forcibly recruited\" by means of \"terrorism\", later historians would claim that the recruitment enterprise employed during this period was only \"ostensibly voluntary\". While there is some truth to these claims, the vast majority of the men who volunteered for service in Europe were indeed volunteers. Among the motivations of volunteering were both personal and economic ambitions, some French Indochinese volunteers wished to see what the world looked like \"beyond the bamboo hedges in their villages\" while others preferred the money and the opportunity to see what France actually looks like. Their service would expose them to the brutality of modern warfare and many would change their perception about many social norms and beliefs at home because of their experiences abroad.\nOf the 93,000 French Indochinese soldiers and workers who came to Europe, most were from the poorest parts of Annam and Tonkin, which had been badly hit by famine and cholera, a smaller number (1,150) of French Indochinese soldiers and workers came from Cambodia. In Northeast France around 44,000 Vietnamese troops served in direct combat functions at both the Battle of the Vosges and the Battle of Verdun. French Indochinese battalions were also used in various logistics functions such as serving as drivers to transport soldiers to the front lines, stretcher bearers (\"brancardiers\"), or road crews. Vietnamese soldiers were also used to \"sanitise\" battle fields at the end of the war, where they would perform these duties in the middle of the cold European winters without being provided with warm clothes, in order to let the (White) French soldiers return to their homes earlier.\nThe financial expenses of the 93,000 French Indochinese labourers and soldiers sent to France during the war \u2013 salaries, pensions, family allocations, the levy in kind (mostly rice), and even the functioning of the Indochinese hospital \u2013 were entirely financed from the budget of French Indochina itself and not from France.\nOne of the effects of World War I on French Indochinese society was the introduction of a vibrant political press both in French and in the indigenous languages that led to the political radicalisation of a new generation of nationalists. Because most of the indigenous people that served in France and the rest of Europe during the War were Vietnamese these social and political developments affected the Vietnamese more. Because French Cochinchina was a direct French colony it enjoyed favourable legislation concerning the press which fostered a public sphere of oppositional political activism. Although these developments occurred throughout French Indochina they were more strongly felt in Cochinchina due to its more open society.\nThe French Indochinese in Europe experienced much more egalitarian social relations which were strongly contrasted with the racial hierarchy they experienced at home. In France the French Indochinese serving often engaged in comradery with the French and many had romantic relationships with French women, the latter being unthinkable in their home countries.\nDuring this period, the French protectorates of Annam and Tonkin were initially ruled by the Duy T\u00e2n Emperor. However, in 1916, the Duy T\u00e2n Emperor was accused by the French of calling for his subjects to resist French rule and after his deposition he and his father were exiled to the island of \"La R\u00e9union\" in the Indian Ocean. Thereafter, the Kh\u1ea3i \u0110\u1ecbnh Emperor became the new monarch of Annam and Tonkin and he closely collaborated with the French administration. At the same time Cambodia was ruled by King Sisowath who was crowned in 1904 and cooperated closely with the French administration in his territory. King Sisowath attended the colonial exhibition in Marseille in 1906 and was the King at the time of the retrocession of the provinces of Battambang and Siem Reap to Cambodia by the Siamese in April 1907. During the reign of King Sisowath there was \"an inexorable increase in French control\" and the French residents gained executive authority to issue royal decrees, appoint officials, and collect taxes. The French protectorate of Laos at the time was ruled by King Sisavang Vong, who was crowned king in 1904. King Sisavang Vong was trained at the Lyc\u00e9e Chasseloup-Laubat in Saigon and at the Colonial School in Paris. In 1914, the French built a new palace in Luang Prabang for him, and a new agreement with the French administration signed in 1917 allowed him only formal signs of royal power with actual power over Laos being in the hands of the French.\nThe Great War presented a number of opportunities for the indigenous French Indochinese people serving in the West that didn't exist before, notably for some individuals to obtain levels of education that were simply unattainable at home by acquiring more advanced technical and professional skills. For example Dr. Nguy\u1ec5n Xu\u00e2n Mai, who in 1910 became one of the first indigenous auxiliaries to graduate the Hanoi medical school, hoped to gain his PhD in France so he enlisted to fight in the war. In 1921 he would acquire his doctorate and he became one of the first Vietnamese doctors to enjoy the same rights as his French colleagues.\nWhile World War I saw a number of new economic sectors develop in French Indochina, namely rubber plantations, mines, and other forms of agriculture, these were all French owned and the local trade to the great export-import houses was in the hands of the Overseas Chinese communities. Only a handful of Vietnamese landlords, moneylenders, and middlemen benefitted from the new economic opportunities that arose during this period as the colonial economy of exportation was designed to enrich the French at the expense of the indigenous population. During this same period the average livelihood of the indigenous peasantry was drastically decreased due to both direct taxation and indirect taxes the French used to finance ambitious public works programmes constructed using the \"corv\u00e9e\" system.\nPrior to the year 1914, the \"mise en valeur\" (development and improvement) of French Indochina was primarily financed by European French public loans, French private capital, and higher taxes on the local populations. But during the war French Indochina became completely responsible both for financing itself and the people they sent to Europe to fight in the war as investment funds from Metropolitan France completely stopped. This meant that taxation increased, more rice was being exported, and the locals purchased war bonds. French Indochina provided a Metropolitan France with large financial aid; between the years 1915 and 1920 of the 600,000,000 francs that France received from its colonial empire 367,000,000 francs were sent by French Indochina. Though historian Patrice Morlat places the initial financial contribution of French Indochina at 381,000,000 gold francs (valued at 997,000,000 euros in 2017), roughly 60% of all financial contributions Metropolitan France received from its colonial empire (excluding Algeria). Morlat further noted that French Indochina supplied 340,000 tonnes of raw materials to France during the course of the war, which amounted to 34% of all raw supplies that Metropolitan France received from its colonies. The shipping of these materials was threatened by the presence of German submarines.\nWorld War I also saw the colonial government of Cochinchina authorising the creation of Vietnamese-language newspapers in 1916, this was done to secure popular support for the war effort, the colonial authorities hoped that this would create a loyal indigenous group of politically active people. The Cochinchinese colonial government offered financial support to these loyalist newspapers, but kept close control on the contents written in them to ensure a prevailing pro-French narrative. The editors of these newspapers were often \"retours de France\" (people back from France) and were kept under close surveillance as they often had connections to anti-French dissidents and activists. Among these newspapers was \"La Tribune indig\u00e8ne\" (The Indigenous Forum) launched in 1917 by the agronomist B\u00f9i Quang Chi\u00eau working together with the lawyer D\u01b0\u01a1ng V\u0103n Gi\u00e1o and journalist Nguy\u1ec5n Phan Long. Afterwards they created \"La Tribune indochinoise\" (The Indochinese Forum) and in 1919 these three men would found the Indochinese Constitutionalist Party in Saigon. Because of these activities the French \"Sur\u00eat\u00e9\" regarded their nationalism as dangerous.\nThe French invoked a supposed \"German connection\" between the Vietnamese revolutionaries and the German Empire, alleging that Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Beijing were the sight of German agents hoping to help the Vietnamese revolutionaries as they shared the same goal, namely to defeat the French.\nWorld War I also saw a number of rebellions throughout French Indochina, in 1914 3 major uprisings happened throughout Vietnam, followed by a number of revolts in Cochinchina. From 1914 to 1917 members of the Tai Lue people led by Prince Phra Ong Kham (Chao Fa) of Muang Sing organised a long anti-French campaign, Hmong independence movements in Laos also challenged French rule in the country. 1914 also saw bands of Yunnanese revolutionaries invade French Indochina, who crossed the border and started attacking French military posts parading Chinese Republican flags, these rebels were later joined by various Laotian ethnic minorities (Lao, Kha and Black Tai). The joint Yunnanese and Laotian ethnic minority rebels spread misinformation claiming that \"Paris has been crushed by the German Army\" to make the French seem weaker. The motivations of this revolt are disputed as contemporary French colonial officials attributed it to Chinese opium smugglers, while the Canadian historian Geoffrey C. Gunn thinks that it was a political revolt. In February 1916 in Cochinchina supporters of Phan X\u00edch Long marched on the Saigonese penitentiary where he was held demanding his release, this coincided with other uprisings in the Mekong Delta. The mandarin Tr\u1ea7n Cao V\u0103n engaged with he Duy T\u00e2n Emperor to try and stage a large rebellion in Annam in 1916, but their conspiracy was discovered and foiled by the French. In 1916 the Kingdom of Cambodia saw a 3 month uprising organised by between 30,000 and 100,000 peasants against both the mandatory \"corv\u00e9e\" and the increased taxes, Australian historian Milton Osborne refers to this uprising as \"The 1916 Affair\", the circumstances leading up to this large revolt were directly caused by the war. 30 August 1917 saw the beginning of the Th\u00e1i Nguy\u00ean uprising, which lasted until 1918.\nThe large amount of uprisings and rebellions that occurred during the war would inspire the creation of a political security apparatus that was used to find and arrest political dissidents in the post-war period.\nRelations with Japan during World War I.\nOn 27 August 1914, Japan officially entered the war on the side of the allies (also known as the Entente Powers), Japan invaded and took the German colony of Tsingtao and the rest of the Kiautschou Bay Leased Territory. In November 1914 Japan supplanted the German sphere of influence in southern China with its own political and economic influence, putting it in direct competition with French Indochina. Even though the Japanese openly supported a number of anti-French secessionist movements, such as Prince C\u01b0\u1eddng \u0110\u1ec3's \"Duy T\u00e2n H\u1ed9i\", the French situation in Europe was bad enough for prime minister Georges Clemenceau to ask the Japanese for their help.\nThe war situation in Europe was so bad that in 1914, the French considered exchanging French Indochina with Japan for both financial and military support, but this idea was quickly abandoned.\nClemenceau asked the Empire of Japan to aid them with the transportation of the \"travailleurs et tirailleurs indochinois\" to Europe and by sending its own forces to help fight in Europe. Clemenceau also wanted Japan to help by intervening in Siberia to fight the Bolshevik forces during the Russian Civil War to prevent the loss of the many French-Russian loans, which were important for the French post-war economy.\nIn 1918, the idea of selling French Indochina to Japan was raised again and, like the first time that it was proposed, it was abandoned again.\nBoth during and after the war the economic relations between France and Japan strengthened as Japan became a creditor of France following the latter's financial difficulties which came as a result of the war.\nExpansion of the security apparatus.\nAs Sarraut was determined to secure French rule over the country he created a strong political surveillance apparatus that functioned throughout French Indochina. He centralised all local police forces and developed an intelligence service, these policies would lead to the creation of the \"S\u00fbret\u00e9 g\u00e9n\u00e9rale indochinoise\", which sought to monitor and police anti-French activities both inside and outside of French Indochina.\nFrench security was expanded because of fears of German involvement with their enemies in the Far East, Gaston Ernest Li\u00e9bert, the French consul in Hong Kong and a major player for the intelligence services coordinated by the political affairs bureau of French Indochina, noted that Vietnamese revolutionaries and Germany both shared the same interest (the defeat of the French). Li\u00e9bert argued that French Indochinese who rebelled should be treated according or as traitors to France. Another reason for the expansion of the security state was that the French feared that such a large expulsion of French soldiers to fight against the Germans would inspire a general uprising similar to what the British experienced in Egypt.\nIn April 1916 the administrator of civil services at the Political Affairs Bureau in Hanoi launched two voluminous reports that went into great detail about the parallel histories of what he referred to as the \"Annamese Revolutionary Party\" (how he called the \"Duy T\u00e2n H\u1ed9i\") and of the secret societies of French Cochinchina. These two reports proved to be very important to the Political Affairs Bureau as they would trigger a full-scale reform of the organisation making it into an umbrella organisation. The reform policies were enacted to help control the narrative around French rule through policing and surveillance. The colonial police forces were connected with \"the general control of Indochinese workers and riflemen\" (\"Contr\u00f4le g\u00e9n\u00e9ral des travailleurs et tirailleurs indochinois\"), a political police force, as the military presence was reduced to allocate more soldiers to the home front. In Metropolitan France these nascent surveillance organisations were put in charge of policing the 100,000 French Indochinese present to help fight the Central Powers.\nBoth domestically and internationally, the French Indochinese police maintained a sizeable network of informants, countries where they operated included not only Metropolitan France, but also neighbouring countries like China and Siam as well as Japan, which was a common refuge for Vietnamese nationalists. The French Indochinese police often got foreign authorities to arrest anti-French activists, e.g. Phan B\u1ed9i Ch\u00e2u who was hiding in China since 1909 was arrested there in 1917. Phan B\u1ed9i Ch\u00e2u admitted to being in contact with German and Austro-Hungarian ministers, noting that the Germans and Austro-Hungarians promised his revolutionary activities financial support in the form of 10,000 Siamese ticals (approximately 55,000 euros in 2017). Phan would later be arrested abroad again in 1925, when he arrived in Shanghai on what he thought was a short trip on behalf of his movement. He was to meet with H\u1ed3 Ch\u00ed Minh, who at that time used the name L\u00fd Th\u1ee5y, one of H\u1ed3's many aliases. H\u1ed3 had invited Phan to come to Canton to discuss matters of common interest. H\u1ed3 was in Canton at the Soviet Embassy, purportedly as a Soviet citizen working as a secretary, translator, and interpreter. In exchange for money, H\u1ed3 allegedly informed the French police of Phan's imminent arrival. Phan was arrested by French agents and transported back to Hanoi.\nFollowing the communist victory in the October Revolution the security apparatus of French Indochina was strengthened to fight the \"Bolshevik danger\" in the colonies. While the \"S\u00fbret\u00e9 g\u00e9n\u00e9rale\" was created during World War I, in 1922 it was expanded to become a better instrument to surveil and repress any potential Bolshevik elements, first in Metropolitan France and later in French Indochina. The activities of the \"S\u00fbret\u00e9 g\u00e9n\u00e9rale indochinoise\" were managed by the newly created Department of Political Affairs. The \"S\u00fbret\u00e9 g\u00e9n\u00e9rale indochinoise\" would be used as the paramount tool to gather intelligence of subversive elements within French Indochinese society and to conduct large-scale union-wide registration by the colonial police forces of suspects and convicts.\nThe increase in surveillance and repression was accompanied with a propaganda campaign aimed to convince the indigenous populations of the \"enlightenment\" of French colonialism. Both the indigenous peasantry and the elites had to be won over by being told of the many \"advantages of colonialism\". The Political Affairs Bureau assembled a umber of Vietnamese elites belonging to the indigenous intelligentsia through the French School of the Far East to aid in the pro-French propaganda effort.\nWhile the French hoped to isolate political dissidents by locking them up in prisons, these prisons would ironically turn into \"schools\" for nationalism and Communism as concentrating a large number of political enemies together would allow them to communicate with each other, which contributed to the growth of Communism within French Indochina.\n1920s.\nAs French Indochina was supposed to be a self-financed \"colonie d'exploitation \u00e9conomique\" (colony of economic exploitation) most of its budget during this period was financed through revenue collection, taxes on the local populations, and consumption quotas for monopolised goods such as opium, salt, and alcohol. In 1920 44% of the French Indochinese government budget came from opium, salt, and alcohol alone.\nDuring the 1920s France allowed more Vietnamese to enter Metropolitan France for both studying and work purposes. Both legal and illegal immigrants entered France from French Indochina working various types of jobs, such as sailors, photographers, cooks, restaurant and shop owners and manual labourers. In France many Vietnamese immigrants and their organisations aligned themselves with the French Communist Party (PCF) who promised to represent them both in legal and political matters. As returnees from France were more skilled and spoke fluent French the French colonists in Indochina would hire them to perform better paying jobs and often brought ideas of the successful Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. In provinces like Thanh Ho\u00e1, Ngh\u1ec7 An, and H\u00e0 T\u0129nh where around twenty thousand returnees lived pro-Bolshevik activities would increase during this decade and this region saw the creation of many pro-Bolshevik parties.\nA number of Vietnamese men would serve in occupied parts of Weimar era Germany after the war. Seeing how the French treated the German inhabitants of the occupied regions, some Vietnamese soldiers would empathise with the German people. Official reports on the French Occupation of the Rhineland summarised the contents of the letters written by the soldiers during that period this way: \"The French oppress the Germans in the same way they have the Annamites [sic].\"\nAfter the Great War former governor-general Albert Sarraut became the French minister of the colonies, Sarraut was the architect of the \"collaboration Franco-annamite\" which characterised French colonial policy during the interwar period. Regarding the internal security of the French apparatus in the Far East Sarraut stated \"I have always estimated that Indochina must be protected against the effects of a revolutionary propaganda that I have never underestimated, by carrying out a double action, one political, the other repressive.\" indicating that he saw repressing subversive elements as paramount to the continued French domination of the region. His policies benefited collaborators while they were instrumental in repressing dissidents. Sarraut boasted the image of himself as a liberal \"indigenophile\" who benefited the indigenous people of French Indochina.\nAlbert Sarraut presented the \"collaboration Franco-annamite\" as a necessity of the French protectorate over their countries, the \"collaboration Franco-annamite\" was attractive to the Westernised indigenous elites of French Indochina as it would build a framework of mutually beneficial partnership between France and the Vietnamese before full sovereignty for the latter could be restored. In the colony of Cochinchina a handful of indigenous people were involved in the decision-making processes through political bodies that were established to serve as representative assemblies (Cochinchina's Colonial Council, Saigon Municipal Council, among other local bodies).\nIn 1920, the French established provincial advisory councils in the Kingdom of Laos. In 1923 this was followed by an indigenous consultative assembly, which served an advisory role. Despite the Laotian indigenous consultative assembly not having any real political power, it served as an organisation that brought people from all over Laos together and contributed to the later formation of a modern Laotian national consciousness where prior they associated themselves more with their region.\nIn 1923, Cochinchina saw the creation of the \"Parti Constitutionnaliste Indochinois\" led by Bui Quang Chi\u00eau, which was founded to obtain the right of political participation for the indigenous people in Cochinchina. As a member of this party Nguy\u1ec5n Phan Long was elected a member of Cochinchina's colonial council.\nIn Kopong Chang, Cambodia the French resident F\u00e9lix Bardez was assassinated in the year 1925 by disgruntled indigenous people. F\u00e9lix Bardez visited the village at a time when its inhabitants were frustrated with the colonial policies of the French in Cambodia as the French raised the taxes to finance the Bokor mountain resort, when Bardez visited he refused to free prisoners who were arrested for being unable to pay their debts, this agitated a crowd of around 700 angry peasants who then killed him, his interpreter, and the militiamen present during his visit. This assassination was a sign of the wider political unrest that characterised Cambodia during this decade.\nIn March 1925 the French built a war monument resting on two sculpted Asian elephants to commemorate those that died fighting in World War I in the Cambodian capital city of Phnom Penh, the opening ceremony brought together a crowd which contained \"people of all races and all religions\".\nOn 6 November 1925 a \"Convention\" (\"Quy \u01b0\u1edbc\") was established after Kh\u1ea3i \u0110\u1ecbnh's death that stated that while the sovereign is abroad a council (\"H\u1ed9i \u0111\u1ed3ng ph\u1ee5 ch\u00ednh\") had the power to run all affairs of the Southern court, with the signing of the convention only regulations related to custom, favours, amnesty, conferring titles, dignitaries, among others are given by the emperor. Everything else is up to the French protectorate government. This document also merges the budget of the Southern court with the budget of the French protectorate of Annam and that all the meetings of the Council of Ministers (\"H\u1ed9i \u0111\u1ed3ng th\u01b0\u1ee3ng th\u01b0\") must be chaired by the resident-superior of Annam. Thus, in this document, the French colonialists completely took over all the power of the government of the Southern dynasty, even in \"Trung K\u1ef3\".\nIn 1927 Vietnamese World War I veterans staged an unsuccessful rebellion in B\u1eafc Ninh province using vintage World War I era weapons and tactics.\nAccording to American historian David G. Marr the 1920s marked the transition of what he termed the \"traditional\" to the \"modern\" nation-consciousness among the Vietnamese people, indicating a shift among both the elites and the peasants. Marr argues that the Vietnamese \"retours de France\" \"urbanised\" and \"politicised\" Vietnamese nationalism during the 1920s and 1930s, inspiring more \"modern\" movements to take up the struggle against French domination. This decade saw the emergence of the Vi\u1ec7t Nam Qu\u1ed1c D\u00e2n \u0110\u1ea3ng (VNQD\u0110) and the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) which were often middle class in nature and proved to be more successful in transcending class and geographical divisions to mobilise against the French than earlier movements, relying on better and more organized communication structures than their predecessors.\nDuring the 1920s the contestation of French colonial power in Cambodia and Laos was mostly aimed at the \"corv\u00e9e\" and tax policies, continuing from the war period. The early years of this decade were characterised by widespread violence and a lack of order and security in rural Cambodia, as recorded by French residents in the provinces. Contemporarily Upper Laos was referred to as being \"violently agitated\" by the French administrator Paul Le Boulanger between the years 1914 and 1921. While the nature of Vietnamese resistance changed radically during the 1920s and the 1930s due to various major socio-cultural changes that were occurring at the time by a small, but growing, urbanised Vietnamese middle class, the rebellions in Cambodia and Laos remained to be \"traditional\" in their style and execution in contrast to the more \"modern\" political activism and radicalism that characterised what is now Vietnam during this period.\nY\u00ean B\u00e1i mutiny (1930).\nOn 10 February 1930, there was an uprising by Vietnamese soldiers in the French colonial army's Y\u00ean B\u00e1i garrison. The Y\u00ean B\u00e1i mutiny was sponsored by the Vi\u1ec7t Nam Qu\u1ed1c D\u00e2n \u0110\u1ea3ng (VNQD\u0110). The VNQD\u0110 was the Vietnamese Nationalist Party. The attack was the largest disturbance brewed up by the C\u1ea7n V\u01b0\u01a1ng monarchist restoration movement of the late 19th century.\nThe aim of the revolt was to inspire a wider uprising among the general populace in an attempt to overthrow the colonial authority. The VNQD\u0110 had previously attempted to engage in clandestine activities to undermine French rule, but increasing French scrutiny of their activities led to their leadership group taking the risk of staging a large scale military attack in the Red River Delta in northern Vietnam.\nLeft opposition and the 1940 uprising in Cochinchina.\nIn Cochinchina where French rule had the distinction of being direct and therefore more sensitive to political shifts in Paris, it was punctuated by periods of relative liberalisation. The most significant was during the 1936\u20131938 Popular Front government led by Leon Blum which appointed as governor-general of Indochina Jules Br\u00e9vi\u00e9. Liberal-minded, in Cochinchina Br\u00e9vi\u00e9 tried to defuse an extremely tense political situation by amnestying political prisoners, and by easing restrictions on the press, political parties, and trade unions.\nSaigon witnessed growing labour unrest culminating in the summer of 1937 in general dock and transport strikes. In April of that year the Vietnamese Communists and their Trotskyist left opposition ran a common slate for the municipal elections with both their respective leaders Nguy\u1ec5n V\u0103n T\u1ea1o and T\u1ea1 Thu Th\u00e2u winning seats. The exceptional unity of the left, however, was split by the lengthening shadow of the Moscow Trials and by growing protest over the failure of the Communist-supported Popular Front to deliver constitutional reform. Colonial Minister Marius Moutet, a Socialist commented that he had sought \"a wide consultation with all elements of the popular [will],\" but with \"Trotskyist-Communists intervening in the villages to menace and intimidate the peasant part of the population, taking all authority from the public officials,\" the necessary \"formula\" had not been found.\nIn April 1939 Cochinchina Council elections T\u1ea1 Thu Th\u00e2u led a \"Workers' and Peasants' Slate\" into victory over both the \"bourgeois\" Constitutionalists and the Communists' Democratic Front. Key to their success was popular opposition to the war taxes (\"national defence levy\") that the Communist Party, in the spirit of Franco-Soviet accord, had felt obliged to support. Br\u00e9vi\u00e9 set the election results aside and wrote to Colonial Minister Georges Mandel: \"the Trotskyists under the leadership of Ta Thu Thau, want to take advantage of a possible war in order to win total liberation.\" The Stalinists, on the other hand, are \"following the position of the Communist Party in France\" and \"will thus be loyal if war breaks out\".\nWith the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939, the local communists were ordered by Moscow to return to direct confrontation with the French. Under the slogan \"Land to the Tillers, Freedom for the workers and independence for Vietnam\", in November 1940 the Party in Cochinchina obliged, triggering a widespread insurrection. The revolt did not penetrate Saigon (an attempted uprising in the city was quelled in a day). In the Mekong Delta fighting continued until the end of the year.\nWorld War II.\nIn September 1940, during World War II, the newly created regime of Vichy France granted Japan's demands for military access to Tonkin following the Japanese occupation of French Indochina, which lasted until the end of the Pacific War. This allowed Japan better access to China in the Second Sino-Japanese War against the forces of Chiang Kai-shek, but it was also part of Japan's strategy for dominion over Southeast Asia and later on, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.\nThailand took this opportunity of weakness to reclaim previously lost territories, resulting in the Franco-Thai War between October 1940 and 9 May 1941. The Thai forces generally did well on the ground, but Thai objectives in the war were limited. In January, Vichy French naval forces decisively defeated Thai naval forces in the Battle of Ko Chang. The war ended in May at the instigation of the Japanese, with the French forced to concede territorial gains for Thailand. The general disorganization of French Indochina, coupled with several natural disasters, caused a dreadful famine in Northern and Central Vietnam. Several hundred thousand people \u2013 possibly over one million \u2013 are believed to have starved to death in 1944\u20131945. Approximately 1 million Vietnamese were estimated to have died of food supply disruption caused by the Japanese invasion of Burma.\nOn 9 March 1945, with France liberated, Germany in retreat, and the United States ascendant in the Pacific, Japan launched a coup d'etat against the French Indochina colonial administration to prevent a potential uprising by the colonial forces. Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were established as independent states, members of Japan's Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The Japanese kept power in Indochina until the news of their government's surrender came through in August.\nIn Hanoi, on 15\u201320 April 1945, the Tonkin Revolutionary Military Conference of the Viet Minh issued a resolution that was reprinted on pp. 1\u20134 on 25 August 1970 in the Nhan Dan journal. It called for a general uprising, resistance and guerilla warfare against the Japanese by establishing 7 war zones across Vietnam named after past heroes of Vietnam, calling for propaganda to explain to the people that their only way forward was violent resistance against the Japanese and exposing the Vietnamese puppet government that served them. The conference also called for training propagandists and having women spread military propaganda and target Japanese soldiers with Chinese language leaflets and Japanese language propaganda. The Viet Minh's Vietnamese Liberation Army published the \"Resistance against Japan\" (Khang Nhat) newspaper. They also called for the creation of a group called \"Chinese and Vietnamese Allied against Japan\" by sending leaflets to recruit overseas Chinese in Vietnam to their cause. The resolution called on forcing French in Vietnam to recognize Vietnamese independence and for the DeGaulle France (Allied French) to recognize their independent and cooperate with them against Japan.\nOn 17 August 1970, the North Vietnamese National Assembly Chairman Truong Chinh reprinted an article in Vietnamese in Nhan Dan, published in Hanoi titled \"Policy of the Japanese Pirates Towards Our People\" which was a reprint of his original article written in August 1945 in No 3 of the \"Communist Magazine\" (Tap Chi Cong San) with the same title, describing Japanese atrocities like looting, slaughter and rape against the people of north Vietnam in 1945. He denounced the Japanese claims to have liberated Vietnam from France with the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere announced by Tojo and mentioned how the Japanese looted shrines, temples, eggs, vegetables, straw, rice, chickens, hogs and cattle for their horses and soldiers and built military stations and airstrips after stealing land and taking boats, vehicles, homes and destroying cotton fields and vegetable fields for peanut and jute cultivation in Annam and Tonkin. Japan replaced the French government on 9 March 1945 and started openly looting the Vietnamese even more in addition to taking French owned properties and stole watches, pencils, bicycles, money and clothing in Bac Giang and Bac Can. \nThe Japanese tried to play the Vietnamese against the French, and played the Laotians against the Vietnamese by inciting Lao people to kill Vietnamese as Laotians murdered 7 Vietnamese officials in Luang Prabang and Lao youths were recruited to an anti-Vietnam organization by the Japanese when they took over Luang Prabang. The Japanese spread false rumours that the French were massacring Vietnamese at the time to distract the Vietnamese from Japanese atrocities. The Japanese created groups to counter the Viet Minh Communists like Vietnam Pao ve doan (Vietnam protection group) and Vietnam Ai quoc doan (Vietnam Patriotic Group to force Vietnamese into coolie labour, take taxes and rice and arrested ant-Japanese Vietnamese with their puppet government run by Tran Trong Kim. The Viet Minh rejected the Japanese demands to cease fighting and support Japan, so the Japanese implemented the Three Alls policy (San Kuang) against the Vietnamese, pillaging, burning, killing, looting, and raping Vietnamese women. The Vietnamese called the Japanese \"dwarfed monsters\" (Wa) and the Japanese committed these atrocities in Thai Nguyen province at Dinh Hoa, Vo Nhai and Hung Son. The Japanese attacked the Vietnamese while masquerading as Viet Minh and used terror and deception. \nThe Japanese created the puppet Vietnam Phuc quoc quan (Vietnam restoration army). and tried to disrupt the Viet Minh's redistribution and confiscation of property of pro-Japanese Vietnamese traitors by disguising themselves as Viet Minh and then attacking people who took letters from them and organizing anti-French rallies and Trung sisters celebrations. Japanese soldiers tried to infiltrate Viet Minh bases with Viet Minh flags and brown trousers during their fighting. The Japanese murdered, plundered and raped Vietnamese and beheaded Vietnamese who stole bread and corn while they were starving according to their martial law. They shot a Vietnamese pharmacy student to death outside of his own house when he was coming home from guard duty at a hospital after midnight in Hanoi and also shot a defendant for a political case in the same city. In Thai Nguyen province, Vo Nhai, a Vietnamese boat builder was thrown in a river and had his stomach stabbed by the Japanese under suspicion of helping Viet Minh guerillas. The Japanese slit the abdomen and hung the Dai Tu mayor upside down in Thai Nguyen as well. The Japanese also beat thousands of people in Hanoi for not cooperating. Japanese officers ordered their soldiers to behead and burn Vietnamese. Some claimed that Taiwanese and Manchurian soldiers in the Japanese army were participating in the atrocities against the Vietnamese but Truong Chinh said that even if it was true Taiwanese and Manchurian soldiers were committing the rapes and killing, their Japanese officers were the ones giving the orders and participating along with them. Truong Chinh said that the Japanese wanted to plunder Asians for their own market and take it from the United States and Great Britain and were imperialists with no intent on liberating Vietnam.\nTruong Chinh wrote another article on 12 September 1945, No 16 in Liberation Banner (Co Giai Phong) which was also reprinted on 16 August 1970 in Nhan Dan. He commemorated the August revolution against the Japanese, after the Japanese surrendered on 15 August 1945 then the Viet Minh started attacking and slaughtering Japanese and disarming them in a nationwide rebellion on 19 August 1945. The Japanese had already disarmed the French and the Japanese themselves lost morale so the Viet Minh managed to seize control after attacking the Japanese. Viet Minh had begun fighting in 1944, when the French were attacked on Dinh Ca in October 1944 and in Cao Bang and Bac Can French were attacked by Viet Cong in November 1944 and the French and Japanese fought each other on 9 March 1945, so in Tonkin the Viet Cong began disarming French soldiers and attacking the Japanese. In Quang Ngai, Ba To, Yen Bai and Nghia Lo political prisoners escaped Japanese were attacked din Son La by Meo (Hmong) tribesmen and in Hoa Binh and Lang Son by Muong tribesmen. The Viet Minh took control of 6 provinces in Tonkin after 9 March 1945 within 2 weeks. The Viet Minh led a brutal campaign against the Japanese where many died from 9 March 1945 to 19 August 1945. Truong Chinh ended the article with a quote from Sun Yatsen, \"The revolution is not yet won, All comrades must continue their al out efforts!\"\nOn 26 September 1945 Ho Chi Minh wrote a letter calling for struggle against the French mentioning they were returning after they sold out the Vietnamese to the Japanese twice in 4 years.\nThe Japanese forced Vietnamese women to become comfort women and with Burmese, Indonesia, Thai and Filipino women they made up a notable portion of Asian comfort women in general. Japanese use of Malaysian and Vietnamese women as comfort women was corroborated by testimonies. There were comfort women stations in Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, North Korea and South Korea. A Korean comfort woman named Kim Ch'un-hui stayed behind in Vietnam and died there when she was 44 in 1963, owning a dairy farm, cafe, US cash and diamonds worth 200,000 US dollars. 2 billion US dollars worth (1945 values) of damage, 148 million dollars of them due to destruction of industrial plants was incurred by Vietnam. 90% of heavy vehicles and motorcycles, cars and 16 tons of junks as well as railways, port installations were destroyed as well as one third of bridges. Some Japanese soldiers married Vietnamese women like Nguyen Thi Xuan and Nguyen Thi Thu and fathered multiple children with the Vietnamese women who remained behind in Vietnam while the Japanese soldiers themselves returned to Japan in 1955. The official Vietnamese historical narrative view them as children of rape and prostitution.\nIn the Vietnamese Famine of 1945 1 to 2 million Vietnamese starved to death in the Red river delta of northern Vietnam due to the Japanese, as the Japanese seized Vietnamese rice and didn't pay. In Phat Diem the Vietnamese farmer Di Ho was one of the few survivors who saw the Japanese steal grain. The North Vietnamese government accused both France and Japan of the famine and said 1\u20132 million Vietnamese died. V\u00f5 An Ninh took photographs of dead and dying Vietnamese during the great famine, which were introduced in some foreign books, say, a Japanese book by Katsumoto Saotome published in 1993. Starving Vietnamese were dying throughout northern Vietnam in 1945 due to the Japanese seizure of their crops by the time the Chinese came to disarm the Japanese and Vietnamese corpses were all throughout the streets of Hanoi and had to be cleaned up by students.\nAlthough the death toll of 1945 famine is generally said 1 million to 2 million, the estimated value ranges effectively from 2 hundred thousand to 2 million. Especially 2 million is often cited, which is insisted by the Communist Party of Vietnam, but is not based on academic research since Ho Chin Minh's assertion in the Declaration of Independence of Vietnam on 2 September 1945 is just repeated. Speaking precisely, Ho Chi Minh mentioned over 2 million in the Declaration but 2 million is the official perspective of Communist Party of Vietnam for decades. On the other hand there are Vietnamese considering other numbers, for instance, the Imperial Commissioner in Hanoi Phan K\u1ebf To\u1ea1i, who later joined Viet Minh, insisted four hundred thousand. Based on his research of the joint field works conducted in the northern Vietnam in early 1990s, of which official report was published in the title N\u1ea1n D\u00f3i N\u0103m 1945 \u1edb Vi\u1ec7t Nam: Nh\u1eefng Ch\u1eefng T\u00edch L\u1ecbch S\u1ef1, (edited by V\u0103n T\u1ea1o and Furuta Motoo), Japanese professor Furuta Motoo concluded that the death toll would be likely larger than 1 million but seems skeptical of 2 million. On 25 March 2000, the Vietnamese journalist Tr\u1ea7n Khu\u00ea wrote an article \"D\u00e2n ch\u1ee7: V\u1ea5n \u0111\u1ec1 c\u1ee7a d\u00e2n t\u1ed9c v\u00e0 th\u1eddi \u0111\u1ea1i\" where he harshly criticized ethnographers and historians in Ho Chin Minh city's Institute of Social Sciences like Dr. \u0110inh V\u0103n Li\u00ean and Professor M\u1ea1c \u0110\u01b0\u1eddng who tried to whitewash Japan's atrocities against the Vietnamese by portraying Japan's aid to the South Vietnamese regime against North Vietnam as humanitarian aid, portraying the Vietnam war against America as a civil war. changing the death toll of 2 million Vietnamese dead at the hands of the Japanese famine to 1 million and calling the Japanese invasion as a presence and calling Japanese fascists at simply Japanese at the Vietnam\u2013Japan international conference. He accused them of changing history in exchange for only a few tens of thousands of dollars, and the Presidium of international Vietnamese studies in Hanoi did not include any Vietnamese women. Tr\u1ea7n Khu\u00ea insisted that the Vietnamese professor V\u0103n T\u1ea1o and Furuta admitted that Japan killed 2 million Vietnamese by starvation.\nReturn of the French and initial conflicts with the Vi\u1ec7t Minh.\nAfter the second World War, France petitioned for the nullification of the 1938 Franco-Siamese Treaty and reasserted itself in the region, but came into conflict with the Vi\u1ec7t Minh, a coalition of Communist and Vietnamese nationalists led by H\u1ed3 Ch\u00ed Minh, founder of the Indochinese Communist Party. During World War II, the United States had supported the Vi\u1ec7t Minh in resistance against the Japanese; the group had been in control of the countryside since the French gave way in March 1945.\nAmerican President Roosevelt and General Stilwell privately made it adamantly clear that the French were not to reacquire French Indochina after the war was over. He told Secretary of State Cordell Hull the Indochinese were worse off under the French rule of nearly 100 years than they were at the beginning. Roosevelt asked Chiang Kai-shek if he wanted Indochina, to which Chiang Kai-shek replied: \"Under no circumstances!\"\nAfter the close of hostilities in WWII, 200,000 Chinese troops under General Lu Han sent by Chiang Kai-shek entered French Indochina north of the 16th parallel to accept the surrender of Japanese occupying forces, and remained there until 1946. This was in accordance with the instructions made by General Douglas MacArthur in General Order No. 1, of 2 September 1945. Working with the VNQD\u0110 (broadly the Vietnamese equivalent of the Chinese Kuomintang), to increase their influence in Indochina and put pressure on their opponents.\nChiang Kai-shek threatened the French with war in response to manoeuvering by the French and Ho Chi Minh against each other, forcing them to come to a peace agreement. In February 1946 he forced the French to surrender all of their concessions in China and renounce their extraterritorial privileges in exchange for withdrawing from northern Indochina and allowing French troops to reoccupy the region starting in March 1946.\nGeneral Lu Han's 200,000 Chinese soldiers occupied north Vietnam starting August 1945. 90,000 arrived by October, the 62nd army came on 26 September to Nam Dinh and Haiphong. Lang Son and Cao Bang were occupied by the Guangxi 62nd army corps and the Red River region and Lai Cai were occupied by a column from Yunnan. Vietnamese VNQDD fighters accompanied the Chinese soldiers. Ho Chi Minh ordered his DRV administration to set quotas for rice to give to the Chinese soldiers and rice was sold in Chinese currency in the Red River delta. Lu Han occupied the French governor general's palace after ejecting the French staff under Sainteny. Chinese soldiers occupied French Indochina north of the 16th parallel while the British under the South-East Asia Command of Lord Mountbatten occupied the south. Vietnamese civilians were robbed, raped and killed by French soldiers in Saigon when they came back in August 1945.\nChiang Kai-shek deliberately withheld his crack and well trained soldiers from occupying Vietnam since he was going to use them to fight the Communists inside China and instead sent undisciplined warlord troops from Yunnan under Lu Han to occupy French Indochina north of the 16th parallel for the purpose of disarming the Japanese. Ho Chi Minh confiscated gold taels, jewelry and coins in September 1945 during \"Gold Week\" to give to Chinese forces occupying northern Vietnam. Rice to Cochinchina by the French in October 1945 were divided by Ho Chi Minh, and the northern Vietnamese only received one third while the Chinese soldiers were given two thirds by Ho Chi Minh. For 15 days elections were postponed by Ho Chi Minh in response to a demand by Chinese general Chen Xiuhe on 18 December 1945 so that the Chinese could get the Dong Minh Hoi and VNQDD to prepare. The Chinese left only in April\u2013June 1946. Ho Chi Minh gave golden smoking paraphernalia and a golden opium pipe to the Chinese general Lu Han after gold week and purchased weapons with what was left of the proceeds. Starving Vietnamese were dying throughout northern Vietnam in 1945 due to the Japanese seizure of their crops by the time the Chinese came to disarm the Japanese and Vietnamese corpses were all throughout the streets of Hanoi and had to be cleaned up by students. \nWhile Chiang Kai-shek, Xiao Wen (Hsiao Wen) and the Kuomintang central government of China was disinterested in occupying Vietnam beyond the allotted time period and involving itself in the war between the Vi\u1ec7t Minh and the French, the Yunnan warlord Lu Han held the opposite view and wanted to occupy Vietnam to prevent the French returning and establish a Chinese trusteeship of Vietnam under the principles of the Atlantic Charter with the aim of eventually preparing Vietnam for independence and blocking the French from returning. Ho Chi Minh sent a cable on 17 October 1945 to American President Harry S. Truman calling on him, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Premier Stalin and Premier Attlee to go to the United Nations against France and demand France not be allowed to return to occupy Vietnam, accusing France of having sold out and cheated the Allies by surrendering Indochina to Japan and that France had no right to return. Ho Chi Minh dumped the blame on Dong Minh Hoi and VNDQQ for signing the agreement with France for returning its soldiers to Vietnam after he had to do it himself. \nHo Chi Minh's Vi\u1ec7t Minh tried to organize welcome parades for Chinese soldiers in northern Vietnam and covered for instances of bad behavior by warlord soldiers, trying to reassure Vietnamese that the warlord troops of Lu Han were only there temporarily and that China supported Vietnam's independence. Vi\u1ec7t Minh newspapers said that the same ancestors (huy\u1ebft th\u1ed1ng) and culture were shared by Vietnamese and Chinese and that the Chinese heroically fought Japan and changed in the 1911 revolution and was attacked by western imperialists so it was \"not the same as feudal China\". Ho Chi Minh forbade his soldiers like Tr\u1ea7n Huy Li\u1ec7u in Ph\u00fa Th\u1ecd from attacking Chinese soldiers and Ho Chi Minh even surrendered Vietnamese who attacked Chinese soldiers to be executed as punishment in the Ro-Nha incident in Ki\u1ebfn An district on 6 March 1946 after H\u1ed3 \u0110\u1ee9c Th\u00e0nh and \u0110\u00e0o V\u0103n Bi\u1ec3u, special commissioners sent from Hanoi by Ho's DRV examined the case. Ho Chi Minh appeased and granted numerous concessions to the Chinese soldiers to avoid the possibility of them clashing with the Vi\u1ec7t Minh, with him ordering Vietnamese not to carry out anything against Chinese soldiers and pledging his life on his promise, hoping the Chinese would disarm the Japanese soldiers and finish their mission as fast as possible.\nChinese communist guerilla leader Chu Chia-pi came into northern Vietnam multiple times in 1945 and 1948 and helped the Vi\u1ec7t Minh fight against the French from Yunnan. Other Chinese Communists also did the same.\nAfter persuading Emperor B\u1ea3o \u0110\u1ea1i to abdicate in his favour, on 2 September 1945 President Ho Chi Minh declared independence for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. But before September's end, a force of British and Free French soldiers, along with captured Japanese troops, restored French control. Ho Chi Minh agreed to negotiate with the French in order to gain autonomy, but the Fontainebleau Agreements of 1946 failed to produce a satisfactory solution.\nFirst Indochina War.\nBitter fighting ensued in the First Indochina War as Ho and his government took to the forests and mountains. In 1948, France recognized nominal independence of Vietnam with the H\u1ea1 Long Bay Preliminary Agreement. In 1949, in order to provide a political alternative to Ho Chi Minh, the French favoured the creation of a unified State of Vietnam, and former Emperor B\u1ea3o \u0110\u1ea1i was put back in power. Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia became associated states of the French Union and were granted more autonomy.\nThe first few years of the war involved a low-level rural insurgency against the French. In 1949 the conflict turned into a conventional war between two armies equipped with modern weapons supplied by the United States, China and the Soviet Union. French Union forces included colonial troops from their colonial empire \u2013 Moroccan, Algerian, and Tunisian Arabs/Berbers; Laotian, Cambodian and Vietnamese ethnic minorities; Black Africans \u2013 and French professional troops, European volunteers, and units of the Foreign Legion. The use of metropolitan recruits was forbidden by the government to prevent the war from becoming even more unpopular at home. It was called the \"dirty war\" (\"la sale guerre\") by leftists in France. Vietnamese women were also raped in north Vietnam by the French like in B\u1ea3o H\u00e0, B\u1ea3o Y\u00ean District, L\u00e0o Cai province and Phu Lu, which caused 400 Vietnamese who were trained by the French to defect on 20 June 1948. Buddhist statues were looted and Vietnamese were robbed, raped and tortured by the French after the French crushed the Vi\u1ec7t Minh in northern Vietnam in 1947\u20131948 forcing the Vi\u1ec7t Minh to flee into Yunnan, China for sanctuary and aid from the Chinese Communists. A French reporter was told by Vietnamese village notables \"We know what war always is, We understand your soldiers taking our animals, our jewelry, our Buddhas; it is normal. We are resigned to their raping our wives and our daughters; war has always been like that. But we object to being treated in the same way, not only our sons, but ourselves, old men and dignitaries that we are.\"\nThe strategy of pushing the Vi\u1ec7t Minh into attacking well-defended bases in remote parts of the country at the end of their logistical trails was validated at the Battle of N\u00e0 S\u1ea3n even though the base was relatively weak because of a lack of concrete and steel. French efforts were made more difficult due to the limited usefulness of armoured tanks in a forested and mountainous environment, lack of strong air forces for air cover and carpet bombing, and use of foreign recruits from other French colonies (mainly from Algeria, Morocco and even Vietnam). V\u00f5 Nguy\u00ean Gi\u00e1p, however, used efficient and novel tactics of direct fire artillery, convoy ambushes and massed anti-aircraft guns to impede land and air supply deliveries together with a strategy based on recruiting a sizable regular army facilitated by wide popular support, a guerrilla warfare doctrine and instruction developed in China, and the use of simple and reliable war material provided by the Soviet Union.\nHowever, 1950 was the turning point of the war. Ho's government was recognised by the fellow Communist governments of China and the Soviet Union, and Mao's government subsequently gave a fallback position to Ho's forces, as well as abundant supplies of weapons. In October 1950, the French army suffered its first major defeat with the Battle of Route Coloniale 4. Subsequent efforts by the French military managed to improve their situation only in the short term. B\u1ea3o \u0110\u1ea1i's State of Vietnam proved a weak and unstable government, and Norodom Sihanouk's Cambodia proclaimed its independence in November 1953. Laos became independent in October 1953 and the State of Vietnam became independent on 4 June 1954 (although they were still members of the French Union). Fighting lasted until May 1954, when the Vi\u1ec7t Minh won the decisive victory against French forces at the gruelling Battle of Dien Bien Phu.\nGeneva Agreements.\nOn 21 July 1954, the Geneva Conference produced the Geneva Agreements between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and France. Provisions included supporting the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Indochina, re-recognising its independence from France, declaring the cessation of hostilities and foreign involvement in internal Indochina affairs, and delineating northern and southern zones into which opposing troops were to withdraw. The Agreements mandated unification on the basis of internationally supervised free elections to be held in July 1956.\nAt this conference France recognized the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam led by the communist Vi\u1ec7t Minh, leading to the division of Vietnam into two \"de facto\" countries. The United States and South Vietnam rejected the Geneva Accords and never signed. South Vietnamese Prime Minister Di\u1ec7m rejected the idea of nationwide election as proposed in the agreement, saying that a free election was impossible in the communist North and that his government was not bound by the Geneva Accords. France did withdraw, turning the north over to the Communists while the B\u1ea3o \u0110\u1ea1i regime, with American support, kept control of the South. Di\u1ec7m would overthrow B\u1ea3o \u0110\u1ea1i and established a republic led by him in 1955.\nThe events of 1954 marked the beginnings of serious United States involvement in Vietnam and the ensuing Vietnam War. Laos and Cambodia also became independent in 1954, but were both drawn into the Vietnam War.\nThe remnants of the Indochinese Federation were abolished on 30 December 1954. The Geneva Agreement did not state that the French Union had to withdraw its troops from South Vietnam. However, Di\u1ec7m's government and the US asked the French Union to withdraw its troops. The French withdrew on 28 April 1954. And on 9 December 1955, South Vietnam withdrew from the French Union.\nUnited States involvement.\nIn 1954 the French defeat at \u0110i\u1ec7n Bi\u00ean Ph\u1ee7 renewed the United States interest in intervening, including some senators who called out for large scale bombing campaigns, potentially even nuclear weapons. President Dwight Eisenhower, even though he did not believe a military victory, believed in the domino theory, where if Vietnam were to fall to communism then there would be multiple other countries that would fall to the ideology in Southeast Asia, from Vietnam to India there would be a dramatic shift in global power. Eisenhower chose to not put boots on the ground, but his decision to start to get involved likely is more important to the countries eventual step into the country than Johnson's decision to take that last step.\nEisenhower had a further impact in that he would continue to provide support for future presidents policy in the country, Lyndon B. Johnson and Gerald Ford both used him to large extents, Kennedy did have several meetings with him in the White House, and Nixon was mostly on his own, but considering their familial ties there was inevitably some ideas that were considered that otherwise would not have been. As he was so involved the United States policy in French Indochina his influence is hard to underestimate.\nAdministration.\nThe government of French Indochina was headed by a governor-general and a number of French residents. The governor-general was assisted by a system of different government agencies; however, these agencies functioned only to be consultants to help the governor-general perform his role and exercise his powers. The protectorates of Cambodia, Annam, Tonkin, and Laos all had residents-superior while the colony of Cochinchina had a governor. In the protectorates the indigenous administrations were nominally combined with the French administration, but in the colony of Cochinchina as well as \"colonial cities\", such as \u0110\u00e0 N\u1eb5ng in Annam, the French maintained direct rule. All constituent countries of French Indochina had their own legal systems. In Annam and Tonkin the laws of the Nguy\u1ec5n dynasty, such as \"S\u1eafc\" (\u6555, \"Imperial Order\"), \"Ch\u00ed\" (\u8a8c, \"Ordinance\"), and \"D\u1ee5\" (\u8aed, \"Decree\"), remained in effect but were subordinate to the laws of the French administration.\nThe government-general of French Indochina as well as its powers were established and amended through presidential decrees. The governor-general held supreme power in French Indochina over the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the government and had the power to appoint the residents below him. The governor-general was also in charge of all the military affairs of the country, among their responsibilities were the ability to set up an army corps, deploy the French Indochinese military forces, and issue conscription orders. However, the governor-general was not in charge of actually commanding the military forces during actual military campaigns and battles. The governor-general was also the chairman of the \"Indochinese Supreme Council\" (later renamed to the \"Indochinese Government Council\") which was the highest government agency in charge of general affairs.\nOther government agencies of the Government-General of French Indochina include the Indochinese Defense Council, Mine Consultancy Committee, the Indochinese Education Consultancy Council, the Supreme Council for Exploitation of Colonies, the Indochinese Economic and Financial Interests Assembly, etc.\nIn the protectorates of Annam and Tonkin the government of the Nguy\u1ec5n dynasty shared its power with the French administration \"de jure\" but were \"de facto\" directly ruled by the French colonial apparatus. The residents-superior and governor of Cochinchina did not have legislative powers only executive. While the Emperors of the Nguy\u1ec5n dynasty did maintain their legislative powers, all imperial decrees had to be approved by either the Resident-Superior of Annam or by the governor-general of French Indochina. Until the early 20th century the Gia Long era \"Ho\u00e0ng Vi\u1ec7t lu\u1eadt l\u1ec7\" (\u7687\u8d8a\u5f8b\u4f8b), sometimes known as the \"Gia Long Code\", remained the main civil code of the Nguy\u1ec5n dynasty until the Emperor issued the nearly identical \"Civil Code of Annam\" and \"Civil Code of Tonkin\".\nA number of the legal documents in effect in the French Republic were also applied to French Indochina, these included the \"Code Napol\u00e9on\" of 1804, the \"Code de commerce\" of 1807, the \"Code d'instruction criminelle\", and the French penal code of 1810. These laws took effect in French Indochina on the date that the governor-general issued decrees that they would also apply to the federation.\nThe legislative decrees of the governor-general had to be sent to the minister of colonies for consideration; the minister would then approve or disapprove the decrees. However, the minister of colonies was not entitled to make any amendments to the decrees, and if they wished to alter it they would have to draft it and then send the draft to the president of France. Only French presidential decrees could overturn the decrees of the governor-general. Executive decrees did not have to be sent to Metropolitan France for review and immediately came into effect.\nThroughout Vietnam thousands of villages had their own independent legal codes that governed the social relations within the village community, thousands of written regulations existed and the central administration often recognised them. These legal codes were known as the \"H\u01b0\u01a1ng \u01b0\u1edbc\" (\u9109\u7d04), \"H\u01b0\u01a1ng l\u1ec7\" (\u9109\u4f8b) and \"L\u1ec7 l\u00e0ng\" (\u4f8b\u5eca), which could be translated as \"rural covenants\", and also existed in China and Korea. The \"H\u01b0\u01a1ng \u01b0\u1edbc\" contained rules about various legal practices like land management, marriage, labour relations, arbitration of disputes, as well as local customs such as family relations, village relations, ghosts, ancestor worship, sacrifice, mourning, and longing. Both the government-general of French Indochina and the government of the Nguy\u1ec5n dynasty attempted reform these rules and regulations in their favour. To expand their power into Vietnamese hamlets and villages the French administration issued models for the villages to follow, but many Vietnamese villages still functioned independent of the French and Nguy\u1ec5n administrations.\nDemographics.\nPopulation.\nThe Vietnamese, Lao and Khmer ethnic groups formed the majority of their respective colony's populations. Minority groups, such as the Muong, Tay, Chams, and Jarai, were collectively known as Montagnards and resided principally in the mountain regions of Indochina. Ethnic Han Chinese were largely concentrated in major cities, especially the \"Hoa\" in Cochinchina and the \"Chen\" in Cambodia, where they became heavily involved in trade and commerce. In addition, there was also a tiny French minority which accounted for 0.2% of the population (or 39,000 people) by 1940. Around 95% of French Indochina's population was rural in a 1913 estimate, although urbanisation did slowly grow over the course of French rule.\nReligion.\nThe principal religion in French Indochina was Buddhism, with Mahayana Buddhism influenced by Confucianism more dominant in Vietnam, while Therav\u0101da Buddhism was more widespread in Laos and Cambodia. In addition, active Roman Catholic missionaries were widespread throughout Indochina and roughly 10% of Tonkin's population identified as Catholic by the end of French rule. Cao \u0110\u00e0i's and H\u00f2a H\u1ea3o's origins began during this period as well.\nFrench settlements.\nUnlike Algeria, French settlement in Indochina did not occur at a grand scale. By 1940, only about 34,000 French civilians lived in French Indochina, along with a smaller number of French military personnel and government workers (6,000). Of these almost half, 16,550, lived in Cochinchina, the vast majority living in Saigon.\nThe principal reasons why French settlement did not grow in a manner similar to that in French North Africa (which had a population of over 1 million French civilians) were because French Indochina was seen as a (colony for economic exploitation) rather than a (settlement colony helping Metropolitan France from being overpopulated), and because Indochina was distant from France itself.\nLanguage.\nDuring French colonial rule, the French language was the principal language of education, government, trade, and media and French was widely introduced to the general population. French became widespread among urban and semi-urban populations and became the principal language of the elite and educated. This was most notable in the colonies of Tonkin and Cochinchina (Northern and Southern Vietnam respectively), where French influence was most heavy, while Annam, Laos and Cambodia were less influenced by French education. Despite the dominance of French in official and educational settings, local populations still largely spoke their native languages. After French rule ended, the French language was still largely used among the new governments (with the exception of North Vietnam). Today, French continues to be taught as a second language in the former colonies and used in some administrative affairs.\nEconomy.\nFrench Indochina was designated as a (colony of economic exploitation) by the French government. Funding for the colonial government came by means of taxes on locals and the French government established a near monopoly on the trade of opium, salt and rice alcohol. The French administration established quotas of consumption for each Vietnamese village, thereby compelling villagers to purchase and consume set amounts of these monopolised goods. The trade of those three products formed about 44% of the colonial government's budget in 1920 but declined to 20% by 1930 as the colony began to economically diversify.\nThe colony's principal bank was the Banque de l'Indochine, established in 1875 and was responsible for minting the colony's currency, the Indochinese piastre. Indochina was the second most invested-in French colony by 1940 after Algeria, with investments totalling up to 6.7 million francs.\nDuring the first six months of World War I, the government-general would expel all German and Austro-Hungarian people living in French Indochina. The two pre-war import/export houses, Speidel & Co. and F. Engler & Co., were officially re-organised as French companies; however, in reality they continued to operate under both German control and using German capital. During the 1910s, Speidel & Co. was the largest importer of European goods into the country with Engler being one of its major competitors. After the German owners were expelled from the company lower level employees tried to continue running these companies despite increasing push back from the French colonial authorities by means of arbitrary customs enforcement, freight interference, and regulatory aggravations. Later the French would seize all of the German Speidel Company's warehouses and would sell the seized goods at low prices both to Vietnamese consumers and Chinese exporters to try to increase revenue. These goods included rice, wine, and canned goods.\nDuring World War I, export regulations kept changing which the Chinese export businesses took advantage of by purchasing rice for minimal prices from the Vietnamese farmers who grew it and then deliberately passing along the risks of the export trade to those small Vietnamese farmers who were the least able to bear the losses involved.\nAs the war made both imports and exports from and to Europe more difficult, French Indochina would increase trade with other Pacific countries. During the war period, import businesses would import flour from the United States and dairy products from Australia, though at lower levels than during the pre-war period. Prior to World War I, French Indochina had an annual flour import worth $950,000 and an annual condensed milk import worth $135,000, but during the war they would import only half this amount from the United States and about one fifth the amount of condensed milk from Australia.\nIn this context, the French colonizers opened the country's first business school in Hanoi for colonized students.\nBeginning in the 1930s, France began to exploit the region for its natural resources and to economically diversify the colony. Cochinchina, Annam and Tonkin (encompassing modern-day Vietnam) became a source of tea, rice, coffee, pepper, coal, zinc, and tin, while Cambodia became a centre for rice and pepper crops. Only Laos was seen initially as an economically unviable colony, although timber was harvested at a small scale from there.\nAt the turn of the 20th century, the growing automobile industry in France resulted in the growth of the rubber industry in French Indochina, and plantations were built throughout the colony, especially in Annam and Cochinchina. France soon became a leading producer of rubber through its Indochina colony and Indochinese rubber became prized in the industrialised world. The success of rubber plantations in French Indochina resulted in an increase in investment in the colony by various firms, such as Michelin. With the growing number of investments in the colony's mines and rubber, tea and coffee plantations, French Indochina began to industrialise as factories opened in the colony. These new factories produced textiles, cigarettes, beer and cement which were then exported throughout the French Empire.\nInfrastructure.\nWhen French Indochina was viewed as an economically important colony for France, the French government set a goal to improve the transport and communications networks in the colony. Saigon became a principal port in Southeast Asia and rivalled the British port of Singapore as the region's busiest commercial centre. By 1937 Saigon was the sixth busiest port in the entire French Empire.\nIn the 19th century, the French colonial administration worked to develop regular trading networks and an efficient transport infrastructure between Indochina and southwest China. The primary motivation for such an effort was to facilitate export of European goods to China. A railway would also give France access to Yunnan's natural resources, mineral resources and opium, and open up the Chinese market for Indochinese products, such as rice, dry fish, wood and coal. Thus in the early 20th century, they completed the Kunming\u2013Haiphong railway connecting the important port city of Haiphong with the Yunnanese capital city of Kunming.\nIn 1936, the Trans-Indochinois railway linking Hanoi and Saigon opened. Further improvements in the colony's transport infrastructures led to easier travel between France and Indochina. By 1939, it took no more than a month by ship to travel from Marseille to Saigon and around five days by aeroplane from Paris to Saigon. Underwater telegraph cables were installed in 1921.\nAs elsewhere in the world, the railways in French Indochina were the sites of active union and labour organisation.\nFrench settlers further added their influence on the colony by constructing buildings in the form of Beaux-Arts and added French-influenced landmarks, such as the Hanoi Opera House (modeled on the Palais Garnier), the Hanoi St. Joseph's Cathedral (resembling the Notre Dame de Paris) and the Saigon Notre-Dame Basilica. The French colonists also built a number of cities and towns in Indochina which served various purposes from trading outposts to resort towns. The most notable examples include Sa Pa in northern Vietnam, \u0110\u00e0 L\u1ea1t in central Vietnam and Pakse in Laos.\nArchitectural legacy.\nThe governments of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia have previously been reluctant to promote their colonial architecture as an asset for tourism; however, in recent times, the new generation of local authorities has somewhat \"embraced\" the architecture and advertise it. The heaviest concentration of French-era buildings are in Hanoi, \u0110\u00e0 L\u1ea1t, Haiphong, Ho Chi Minh City, Hu\u1ebf, and various places in Cambodia and Laos such as Luang Prabang, Vientiane, Phnom Penh, Battambang, Kampot, and Kep.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "3974227": "Temple of Literature, Hanoi\nV\u0103n Mi\u1ebfu (, ch\u1eef H\u00e1n: \u6587\u5edf), literally translated as Temple of Literature (although a more accurate name should be Temple of Confucius, as \"V\u0103n\" refers to Confucius), is a temple dedicated to Confucius in Hanoi, northern Vietnam. The temple was founded and first built in 1070 at the time of Emperor L\u00fd Th\u00e1nh T\u00f4ng, and it hosted the Imperial Academy (, \u570b\u5b50\u76e3), Vietnam's first national university, from 1076 to 1779. In 1803, The academy was moved to the new capital of Nguyen dynasty in Hue.\nTemple dedicated to Confucius\nThe V\u0103n Mi\u1ebfu is one of several temples in Vietnam which is dedicated to Confucius, sages, and scholars. The temple is located to the south of the Imperial Citadel of Th\u0103ng Long. The various pavilions, halls, statues, and stelae of doctors are places where offering ceremonies, study sessions, and the strict exams of the \u0110\u1ea1i Vi\u1ec7t took place. The temple is featured on the back of the 100,000 Vietnamese \u0111\u1ed3ng banknote. Just before the T\u1ebft Vietnamese New Year celebration, calligraphists will assemble outside the temple and write wishes in Ch\u1eef H\u00e1n. The art works are given away as gifts or are used as home decorations for special occasions.\nHistory.\nThe V\u0103n Mi\u1ebfu was founded and first built in 1070 and was reconstructed during the Tr\u1ea7n dynasty (1225\u20131400) and in the subsequent dynasties. For nearly two centuries, despite wars and disasters, the temple has preserved ancient architectural styles of many dynasties as well as precious relics. Major restorations have taken place in 1920, 1954 and 2000. \n\"In the autumn of the year Canh Tu\u1ea5t, the second year of Th\u1ea7n V\u0169 (1070), in the 8th lunar month, during the reign of King L\u00fd Th\u00e1nh T\u00f4ng, the V\u0103n Mi\u1ebfu was built. The statues of Confucius, his four best disciples: Yan Hui (), Zengzi (), Zisi (), and Mencius (), as well as the Duke of Zhou (), were carved and 72 other statues of Confucian scholars were painted. Ceremonies were dedicated to them in each of the four seasons. The Crown Princes studied here.\"\nIn 1076, Vietnam's first university, the \"Qu\u1ed1c T\u1eed Gi\u00e1m\" or Imperial Academy, was established within the temple during the reign of L\u00fd Nh\u00e2n T\u00f4ng to educate Vietnam's bureaucrats, nobles, royalty, and other members of the elite. The university remained open from 1076 to 1779. In 1802, the Nguy\u1ec5n dynasty's monarchs founded the Hu\u1ebf capital where they established a new imperial academy. The academy at the Hanoi temple lost its prominence and became a school of the Ho\u00e0i \u0110\u1ee9c District.\nUnder the French protectorate, the V\u0103n Mi\u1ebfu - Qu\u1ed1c T\u1eed Gi\u00e1m was registered as a \"Monument historique\" in 1906. During the period of 1945\u20131954, the French demolished parts of the temple to make additional room for the Saint Paul Hospital since hospital capacity was full during times of war. Campaigns of restoration were pursued in 1920 and 1947 under the responsibility of \u00c9cole fran\u00e7aise d'Extr\u00eame-Orient (French School of the Far East).\nLayout.\nThe temple layout is similar to that of the temple at Qufu, Shandong, Confucius' birthplace. It covers an area of over , including the V\u0103n lake, Gi\u00e1m park and the interior courtyards which are surrounded by a brick wall. In front of the Great Gate are four tall pillars. On either side of the pillars are two stelae commanding horsemen to dismount.\nThe gate opens onto three pathways which continues through the complex. The centre path was reserved for the monarch and above the center path there is a big bronze bell, The path to the left is for the administrative Mandarins and the path to the right is for military Mandarins. The interior of the site is divided into five courtyards. The first two courtyards are quiet areas with ancient trees and trimmed lawns, where scholars would relax away from the bustle of the outside world.\nThe bell located above the main gate was used to signify that an important person was coming through and was added to the V\u0103n Mi\u1ebfu in the 19th century. The bell was made out of Bronze and could only be touched by monks. On the bell several patterns can be found including an outline of a phoenix, which represents beauty, and a dragon, which represents power. Both of these symbols are used to represent the Emperor and Queen. A bell can be found in all of the pagodas in Vietnam.\nFirst Courtyard.\nThe first courtyard extends from the Great Portico to the \u0110\u1ea1i Trung, which is flanked by two smaller gates: the \u0110\u1ea1t T\u00e0i gate and the Th\u00e0nh \u0110\u1ee9c gate.\nSecond Courtyard.\nThe second courtyard is known as the great central courtyard or sometimes the courtyard of great success. It features the Khu\u00ea V\u0103n pavilion (\u594e\u6587\u95a3), a unique architectural work built in 1805 and a symbol of present-day Hanoi. The Khu\u00ea V\u0103n pavilion is built on four white-washed stone stilts. At the top is a red-coloured with two circular windows and an elaborate roof. Inside, a bronze bell hangs from the ceiling to be rung on auspicious occasions. Many poetic phrases preserved on the pavilion glorify Vietnamese traditional culture. Beside the Khu\u00ea V\u0103n pavilion are the S\u00fac V\u0103n gate and the Bi V\u0103n gate. These two gates are dedicated to the beauty of literature, both its content and its form. In the first and second courtyards there are topiaries (bushes that are cut into particular shapes) that represent the 12 zodiac animals.\nThird Courtyard.\n One enters the third courtyard from the Khu\u00ea V\u0103n pavilion. In the third courtyard is the Thi\u00ean Quang well. On either side of the well stand two great halls which house the treasures of the temple.\nDoctor's stone tablets.\n The construction of the stone stelae began in 1484 under the Emperor L\u00ea Th\u00e1nh T\u00f4ng. He erected 116 steles of carved blue stone turtles with elaborate motifs to honour talent and encourage study. The Turtle (Quy, \u9f9c) is one of the nation's four holy creatures - the others are the Dragon (Long, \u9f8d), the Unicorn (L\u00e2n, \u9e9f) and the Phoenix (Ph\u01b0\u1ee3ng, \u9cf3). The turtle is a symbol of longevity and wisdom. The shape and size of the turtle changed with the passage of time.\nThe doctors' steles are a valuable historical resource for the study of culture, education and sculpture in Vietnam. 82 stelae remain. They depict the names and birthplaces of 1307 graduates of 82 triennial royal exams. Between 1442 and 1779, eighty-one exams were held by the L\u00ea dynasty and one was held by the M\u1ea1c dynasty. The ancient Chinese engravings on each stele praise the merits of the monarch and cite the reason for holding royal exams. They also record the mandarins who were tasked with organising the exams. It used to be common to rub the stone turtles' heads, but now there is a fence that is meant to prevent people from doing this in order to preserve the turtles.\nThey are a valuable historical resource for the study of philosophy history, culture, education, society and sculpture in Vietnam. The stelae were inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2011.\nFourth Courtyard.\nOne enters the fourth courtyard through the \u0110\u1ea1i Th\u00e0nh gate. On either side are two smaller gates: Kim Thanh gate and the Ng\u1ecdc Ch\u1ea5n gate. This courtyard is the ceremonial heart of the complex. \nOn each side of the ceremonial fourth courtyard stand two halls. Their original purpose was to house altars to the seventy-two most honoured disciples of Confucius and Chu V\u0103n An (a rector of the Imperial Academy). In the centre of the fourth courtyard is the House of Ceremonies (\"\u0110\u1ea1i B\u00e1i \u0110\u01b0\u1eddng\"). The next building is the \"Th\u01b0\u1ee3ng \u0110i\u1ec7n\", where Confucius and his four closest disciples Yanhui, Zengshen, Zisi and Mencius are worshipped. The sanctuary also hosts altars to ten honoured philosophers. These pavilions reflect the style of the early 19th century. A small museum displays ink wells, pens, books and personal artefacts belonging to some of the students that studied at the temple.\nFifth Courtyard.\nIn 1077, Emperor L\u00fd Nh\u00e2n T\u00f4ng ordered the construction of an imperial academy as a fifth courtyard. Literate mandarins were selected as students. In 1236, the academy was enlarged and named \"Qu\u1ed1c T\u1eed Vi\u1ec7n\" and later \"Qu\u1ed1c H\u1ecdc Vi\u1ec7n\". In the L\u00ea dynasty it was called Th\u00e1i H\u1ecdc Vi\u1ec7n and was developed further. This development included the Minh Lu\u00e2n house, west and east classrooms, a storehouse for wooden printing blocks and two sets of three 25 room dormitories. The Kh\u1ea3i Th\u00e1nh shrine was built to honour the parents of Confucius. In 1946, the courtyard was destroyed during the First Indochina War. In the year 2000, the fifth courtyard was reconstructed on grounds of the original \"Imperial Academy\". It honours the talents, the national traditions and the culture and education of Vietnam.\nThe design of the new fifth courtyard were based on the traditional architecture in harmony with the surrounding sights of the temple. Several buildings were constructed including the front building, the rear building, the left and right buildings, a bell house and a drum house. The Th\u00e1i H\u1ecdc courtyard occupies 1530 sq.m. of the temple's total area of 6150 sq.m.\nThe front building has a number of functions. Ceremonies in memory of cultural scholars are organised from the front building as are scientific activities and cultural events. \nThe rear building has two levels. The ground floor has a statue of Chu V\u0103n An (a rector of the academy) and shows exhibits of the temple and the academy with a display on Confucian education in Vietnam. \nThe upper floor is dedicated to the three monarchs who contributed most to the foundation of the temple and the academy: L\u00fd Th\u00e1nh T\u00f4ng (1023\u20131072), who founded the temple in 1070, L\u00fd Nh\u00e2n T\u00f4ng (1066\u20131127), who founded the Imperial Academy, and L\u00ea Th\u00e1nh T\u00f4ng (1442\u20131497), who ordered the erection of the turtle stone stelae of doctor laureates in 1484.\nOn either side of the rear building are square buildings which hold a drum and a bronze bell. The drum is wide, high, has a volume of 10 m3 and weighs . The bell was cast in 2000, with dimensions of .\nStudy at the Imperial Academy.\nThe organization of instruction and learning at the Imperial Academy began in 1076 under the L\u00fd dynasty and was further developed in the 15th century under the Le dynasty. The academy was headed by a rector (\"T\u1ebf t\u1eedu\") and a vice-rector (\"T\u01b0 nghi\u1ec7p\"). The professors of the academy held different titles: \"Gi\u00e1o th\u1ee5\", \"Tr\u1ef1c gi\u1ea3ng\", \"Tr\u1ee3 gi\u00e1o\" and \"B\u00e1c s\u0129\".\nMany students lived and studied at the Temple. Most students (\"Gi\u00e1m sinh\") had passed the regional exam (H\u01b0\u01a1ng Examination - \"Thi H\u01b0\u01a1ng\") before enrolling at the academy. During the course of study at the academy, the students focused on discussion of literature and wrote poetry as well. The students learned Chinese, Chinese philosophy, and Chinese history. They had textbooks printed on paper which were in both Chinese and Vietnamese. They read \"The Four Books\" (\"T\u1ee9 th\u01b0\", \u56db\u66f8): \"The Great Learning\" (\u0110\u1ea1i H\u1ecdc, \u5927\u5b78), \"Doctrine of the Mean\" (Trung Dung, \u4e2d\u5eb8), \"The Analects\" (Lu\u1eadn Ng\u1eef, \u8ad6\u8a9e) and \"Mencius\" (M\u1ea1nh T\u1eed, \u5b5f\u5b50); \"Five Pre-Confucian Classics\" (\"Ng\u0169 Kinh\", \u4e94\u7d93): \"\"Classic of Poetry\" (Kinh Thi, \u7d93\u8a69), \"Book of Documents\" (Kinh Th\u01b0, \u7d93\u66f8), \"Book of Rites\" (Kinh L\u1ec5, \u7d93\u79ae), \"Book of Change\" (Kinh D\u1ecbch, \u7d93\u6613) and \"Spring and Autumn Annals\" (Kinh Xu\u00e2n Thu, \u7d93\u6625\u79cb); ancient poetry and Chinese history among others.\nThe students enrolled for three to seven years. They had minor tests each month and four major tests per year. Success in the exams, certified by the Ministry of Rites (B\u1ed9 L\u1ec5, \u90e8\u79ae) qualified them to sit the national exam (H\u1ed9i Examination - \"Thi H\u1ed9i\"). Success at the H\u1ed9i Examination qualified the student to sit the royal exam, the \u0110\u00ecnh Examination (\"Thi \u0110\u00ecnh\"), held at court. At this exam, the monarch himself posed the questions, responded to the candidate's answer and then ranked those who passed into different grades. The Imperial Academy was the largest centre in the country.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["3974227", "52053"], "permutation_1": ["3974227", "52053"], "permutation_2": ["3974227", "52053"], "permutation_3": ["3974227", "52053"]}
{"id": "2hop__313926_22238", "docs_added": {"24028": "Pope Paul VI\nHead of the Catholic Church from 1963 to 1978\nPope Paul VI (; ; born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini, ; 26 September 1897\u00a0\u2013 6 August 1978) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 21 June 1963 to his death on 6 August 1978. Succeeding John XXIII, he continued the Second Vatican Council, which he closed in 1965, implementing its numerous reforms. He fostered improved ecumenical relations with Eastern Orthodox and Protestant churches, which resulted in many historic meetings and agreements. In January 1964, he flew to Jordan, the first time a reigning pontiff had left Italy in more than a century.\nMontini served in the Holy See's Secretariat of State from 1922 to 1954, and along with Domenico Tardini was considered the closest and most influential advisor of Pope Pius XII. In 1954, Pius named Montini Archbishop of Milan, the largest Italian diocese. Montini later became the Secretary of the Italian Bishops' Conference. John XXIII elevated Montini to the College of Cardinals in 1958, and after his death, Montini was, with little to no opposition, elected his successor, taking the name Paul VI.\nHe reconvened the Second Vatican Council, which had been suspended during the interregnum. After its conclusion, Paul VI took charge of the interpretation and implementation of its mandates, finely balancing the conflicting expectations of various Catholic groups. The resulting reforms were among the widest and deepest in the Church's history.\nPaul VI spoke repeatedly to Marian conventions and Mariological meetings, visited Marian shrines and issued three Marian encyclicals. Following Ambrose of Milan, he named Mary as the Mother of the Church during the Second Vatican Council. He described himself as a humble servant of a suffering humanity and demanded significant changes from the rich in North America and Europe in favour of the poor in the Third World. His opposition to birth control was published in the 1968 encyclical .\nPope Benedict XVI, citing his heroic virtue, proclaimed him venerable on 20 December 2012. Pope Francis beatified Paul VI on 19 October 2014, after the recognition of a miracle attributed to his intercession. His liturgical feast was celebrated on the date of his birth, 26 September, until 2019 when it was changed to the date of his priestly ordination, 29 May. Pope Francis canonised him on 14 October 2018.\nEarly life.\nGiovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini was born in the village of Concesio, in the Province of Brescia, Lombardy, Italy, in 1897. His father, (1860\u20131943), was a lawyer, journalist, director of the Catholic Action, and member of the Italian Parliament. His mother, Giudetta Alghisi (1874\u20131943), was from a family of rural nobility. He had two brothers, Francesco Montini (1900\u20131971), who became a physician, and (1896\u20131990), who became a lawyer and politician. On 30 September 1897, he was baptised with the name Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini. He attended the Cesare Arici school, run by the Jesuits, and in 1916 received a diploma from the Arnaldo da Brescia public school in Brescia. His education was often interrupted by bouts of illness.\nIn 1916, he entered the seminary to become a Catholic priest. He was ordained on 29 May 1920 in Brescia and celebrated his first Mass at the Santa Maria delle Grazie, Brescia. Montini concluded his studies in Milan with a doctorate in canon law in the same year. He later studied at the Gregorian University, the University of Rome La Sapienza and, at the request of Giuseppe Pizzardo, the Pontifical Academy of Ecclesiastical Nobles. In 1922, at the age of twenty-five, again at the request of Giuseppe Pizzardo, Montini entered the Secretariat of State, where he worked under Pizzardo together with Francesco Borgongini-Duca, Alfredo Ottaviani, Carlo Grano, Domenico Tardini and Francis Spellman. Consequently, he never had an appointment as a parish priest. In 1925 he helped found the publishing house Morcelliana in Brescia, focused on promoting a 'Christian-inspired culture'.\nVatican career.\nDiplomatic service.\nMontini had just one foreign posting in the diplomatic service of the Holy See as Secretary in the office of the papal nuncio to Poland in 1923. Of the nationalism he experienced there he wrote: \"This form of nationalism treats foreigners as enemies, especially foreigners with whom one has common frontiers. Then one seeks the expansion of one's own country at the expense of the immediate neighbours. People grow up with a feeling of being hemmed in. Peace becomes a transient compromise between wars.\" He described his experience in Warsaw as \"useful, though not always joyful\". When he became pope, the Communist government of Poland refused him permission to visit Poland on a Marian pilgrimage.\nRoman Curia.\nHis organisational skills led him to a career in the Roman Curia, the papal civil service. On 19 October 1925, he was appointed a papal chamberlain in the rank of Supernumerary Privy Chamberlain of His Holiness. In 1931, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli appointed him to teach history at the Pontifical Academy for Diplomats; he was promoted to Domestic Prelate of His Holiness on 8 July of the same year. On 24 September 1936, he was appointed a Referendary Prelate of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura.\nOn 16 December 1937, after his mentor Giuseppe Pizzardo was named a cardinal and was succeeded by Domenico Tardini, Montini was named Substitute for Ordinary Affairs under Cardinal Pacelli, the Secretary of State. His immediate supervisor was Domenico Tardini, with whom he got along well. He was further appointed Consultor of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office and of the Sacred Consistorial Congregation on 24 December, and was promoted to Protonotary apostolic (\"ad instar participantium\"), the most senior class of papal prelate, on 10 May 1938.\nPacelli became Pope Pius XII in 1939 and confirmed Montini's appointment as Substitute under the new Cardinal Secretary of State Luigi Maglione. In that role, roughly that of a chief of staff, he met the Pope every morning until 1954 and developed a rather close relationship with him. Of his service to two popes he wrote:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />It is true, my service to the Pope was not limited to the political or extraordinary affairs according to Vatican language. The goodness of Pope Pius XII opened to me the opportunity to look into the thoughts, even into the soul of this great pontiff. I could quote many details how Pius XII, always using measured and moderate speech, was hiding, nay revealing a noble position of great strength and fearless courage.\nWhen war broke out, Maglione, Tardini, and Montini were the principal figures in the Secretariat of State of the Holy See. Montini dispatched \"ordinary affairs\" in the morning, while in the afternoon he moved informally to the third floor Office of the Private Secretary of the Pontiff, serving in place of a personal secretary. During the war years, he replied to thousands of letters from all parts of the world with understanding and prayer, and arranging for help when possible.\nAt the request of the Pope, Montini created an information office regarding prisoners of war and refugees, which from 1939 to 1947 received almost ten million requests for information about missing persons and produced over eleven million replies. Montini was several times attacked by Benito Mussolini's government for meddling in politics, but the Holy See consistently defended him. When Maglione died in 1944, Pius XII appointed Tardini and Montini as joint heads of the Secretariat, each a Pro-Secretary of State. Montini described Pius XII with a filial admiration:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />His richly cultivated mind, his unusual capacity for thought and study led him to avoid all distractions and every unnecessary relaxation. He wished to enter fully into the history of his own afflicted time: with a deep understanding, that he was himself a part of that history. He wished to participate fully in it, to share his sufferings in his own heart and soul.\nAs Pro-Secretary of State, Montini coordinated the activities of assistance to persecuted fugitives hidden in Catholic convents, parishes, seminaries, and schools.\nAt the Pope's instruction, Montini, Ferdinando Baldelli, and Otto Faller established the Pontificia Commissione di Assistenza (\"Pontifical Commission for Assistance\"), which supplied a large number of Romans and refugees from everywhere with shelter, food and other necessities. In Rome alone it distributed almost two million portions of free food in 1944. The Papal Residence of Castel Gandolfo was opened to refugees, as was Vatican City in so far as space allowed. Some 15,000 lived in Castel Gandolfo, supported by the Pontificia Commissione di Assistenza. Montini was also involved in the re-establishment of Church Asylum, extending protection to hundreds of Allied soldiers escaped from prison camps, to Jews, anti-Fascists, Socialists, Communists, and after the liberation of Rome, to German soldiers, partisans, displaced persons and others. As pope in 1971, Montini turned the Pontificia Commissione di Assistenza into \"Caritas Italiana\".\nArchbishop of Milan.\nAfter the death of Cardinal Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster in 1954, Montini was appointed to succeed him as Archbishop of Milan, which made him the secretary of the Italian Bishops Conference. Pius XII presented the new archbishop \"as his personal gift to Milan\". He was consecrated bishop in Saint Peter's Basilica by Cardinal Eug\u00e8ne Tisserant, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, since Pius XII was severely ill.\nOn 12 December 1954, Pius XII delivered a radio address from his sick bed about Montini's appointment to the crowd in St. Peter's Basilica. Both Montini and the Pope had tears in their eyes when Montini departed for his diocese with its 1,000 churches, 2,500 priests and 3,500,000 souls. On 5 January 1955, Montini formally took possession of his Cathedral of Milan. Montini settled well into his new tasks among all groups of the faithful in the city, meeting cordially with intellectuals, artists, and writers.\nMontini's philosophy.\nIn his first months, Montini showed his interest in working conditions and labour issues by speaking to many unions and associations. He initiated the building of over 100 new churches, believing them the only non-utilitarian buildings in modern society, places for spiritual rest.\nHis public speeches were noticed in Milan, Rome, and elsewhere. Some considered him a liberal when he asked lay people to love not only Catholics but also schismatics, Protestants, Anglicans, the indifferent, Muslims, pagans, and atheists. He gave a friendly welcome to a group of Anglican clergy visiting Milan in 1957 and subsequently exchanged letters with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher.\nPope Pius XII revealed at the 1952 secret consistory that both Montini and Tardini had declined appointments to the cardinalate,\nand, in fact, Montini was never to be made a cardinal by Pius XII, who held no consistory and created no cardinals between the time he appointed Montini to Milan and his own death four years later. After Montini's friend Angelo Roncalli became Pope John XXIII, he made Montini a cardinal in December 1958.\nWhen the new pope announced an Ecumenical Council, Cardinal Montini reacted with disbelief and said to Giulio Bevilacqua: \"This old boy does not know what a hornets nest he is stirring up.\" Montini was appointed to the Central Preparatory Commission in 1961. During the council, Pope John XXIII asked him to live in the Vatican, where he was a Commission for Extraordinary Affairs member, though he did not engage much in the floor debates. His main advisor was Giovanni Colombo, whom he later appointed as his successor in Milan The commission was significantly overshadowed by the insistence of John XXIII that the Council complete all its work before Christmas 1962, to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the Council of Trent, an insistence which may have also been influenced by the Pope's having recently been told that he had cancer.\nJohn had a vision but \"did not have a clear agenda. His rhetoric seems to have had a note of over-optimism, a confidence in progress, which was characteristic of the 1960s.\"\nPastoral progressivism.\nDuring his period in Milan, Montini was widely seen as a progressive member of the Catholic hierarchy. He adopted new approaches to reach the faithful with pastoral care and carried through the liturgical reforms of Pius XII at the local level. For example, huge posters announced throughout the city that 1,000 voices would speak to them from 10 to 24 November 1957: more than 500 priests and many bishops, cardinals, and lay people delivered 7,000 sermons, not only in churches but in factories, meeting halls, houses, courtyards, schools, offices, military barracks, hospitals, hotels and wherever people congregated. His goal was re-introducing faith to a city without much religion. \"If only we can say Our Father and know what this means, then we would understand the Christian faith.\"\nPius XII asked Archbishop Montini to Rome in October 1957, where he gave the main presentation to the Second World Congress of Lay Apostolate. As Pro-Secretary of State, he had worked hard to form this worldwide organisation of lay people in 58 nations, representing 42 national organisations. He presented them to Pius XII in Rome in 1951. The second meeting in 1957 gave Montini an opportunity to express the lay apostolate in modern terms: \"Apostolate means love. We will love all, but especially those, who need help... We will love our time, our technology, our art, our sports, our world.\"\nCardinal.\nOn 20 June 1958, Saul Alinsky recalled meeting with Montini: \"I had three wonderful meetings with Montini and I am sure that you have heard from him since.\u201d Alinsky also wrote to George Nauman Shuster, two days before the papal conclave that elected John XXIII: \"No, I don't know who the next Pope will be, but if it's to be Montini, the drinks will be on me for years to come.\"\nAlthough some cardinals seem to have viewed Montini as a likely papabile candidate, possibly receiving some votes in the 1958 conclave, he had the handicap of not yet being a cardinal. Angelo Roncalli was elected pope on 28 October 1958 and took the name John XXIII. On 17 November 1958, \"L'Osservatore Romano\" announced a consistory for the creation of new cardinals, with Montini at the top of the list. When the Pope raised Montini to the cardinalate on 15 December 1958, he became Cardinal-Priest of Ss. Silvestro e Martino ai Monti. The Pope appointed him simultaneously to several Vatican congregations, drawing him frequently to Rome in the coming years.\nCardinal Montini journeyed to Africa in 1962, visiting Ghana, Sudan, Kenya, Congo, Rhodesia, South Africa, and Nigeria. After this journey, John XXIII called Montini to a private audience to report on his trip, speaking for several hours. In fifteen other trips, he visited Brazil (1960) and the USA (1960), including New York City, Washington DC, Chicago, the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. He usually vacationed in Engelberg Abbey, a secluded Benedictine monastery in Switzerland.\nPapacy.\nPapal conclave.\nMontini was generally seen as the most likely papal successor, being close to both Popes Pius XII and John XXIII, as well as his pastoral and administrative background, his insight, and his determination. John XXIII had previously known the Vatican as an official until his appointment to Venice was a papal diplomat, but returning to Rome at age 66, he may at times have felt uncertain in dealing with the professional Roman Curia, but Montini had learned its innermost workings while working in it for a generation.\nUnlike the papabile cardinals Giacomo Lercaro of Bologna and Giuseppe Siri of Genoa, Montini was identified neither left nor right nor as a radical reformer. He was viewed as most likely to continue the Second Vatican Council, which had adjourned without tangible results.\nIn the conclave after John XXIII's death, Montini was elected pope on the sixth ballot on 21 June. When the Dean of the College of Cardinals Eug\u00e8ne Tisserant asked if he accepted the election, Montini said \"Accepto, in nomine Domini\" (\"I accept, in the name of the Lord\"). He took the name \"Paul VI\" in honor of Paul the Apostle.\nAt one point during the conclave on 20 June, it was said that Cardinal Gustavo Testa lost his temper and demanded that opponents of Montini halt their efforts to thwart his election. Montini, fearful of causing strife, started to rise to dissuade the cardinals from voting for him, but Cardinal Giovanni Urbani dragged him back, muttering, \"Eminence, shut up!\"\nThe white smoke first rose from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel at 11:22 am, when Protodeacon Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani announced to the public the successful election of Montini. When the new pope appeared on the central loggia, he gave the shorter episcopal blessing as his first apostolic blessing rather than the longer, traditional \"Urbi et Orbi\".\nOf the papacy, Paul VI wrote in his journal: \"The position is unique. It brings great solitude. 'I was solitary before, but now my solitude becomes complete and awesome.'\"\nLess than two years later, on 2 May 1965, Paul informed the dean of the College of Cardinals that his health might make it impossible to function as pope. He wrote, \"In case of infirmity, which is believed to be incurable or is of long duration and which impedes us from sufficiently exercising the functions of our apostolic ministry; or in the case of another serious and prolonged impediment\", he would renounce his office \"both as bishop of Rome as well as head of the same holy Catholic Church\".\nReforms of papal ceremony.\nPaul VI did away with much of the papacy's regal splendor. His coronation on 30 June 1963 was the last such ceremony; his successor Pope John Paul I substituted an inauguration (which Paul had substantially modified, but which he left mandatory in his 1975 apostolic constitution \"Romano Pontifici Eligendo\"). At his coronation, Paul wore a tiara presented by the Archdiocese of Milan. Near the end of the third session of the Second Vatican Council in 1964, Paul VI descended the steps of the papal throne in St. Peter's Basilica and ascended the altar, on which he laid the tiara as a sign of the renunciation of human glory and power in keeping with the innovative spirit of the council. It was announced that the tiara would be sold for charity. The purchasers arranged for it to be displayed as a gift to American Catholics in the crypt of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.\nIn 1968, with the motu proprio \"Pontificalis Domus\", he discontinued most of the ceremonial functions of the old Papal nobility at the court (reorganized as the household), save for the Prince Assistants to the Papal Throne. He also abolished the Palatine Guard and the Noble Guard, leaving the Pontifical Swiss Guard as the sole military order of the Vatican.\nCompletion of the Vatican Council.\nPaul VI decided to reconvene Vatican II and completed it in 1965. Faced with conflicting interpretations and controversies, he directed the implementation of its reform goals.\nEcumenical orientation.\nDuring Vatican II, the council fathers avoided statements that might anger non-Catholic Christians. Cardinal Augustin Bea, the President of the Christian Unity Secretariat, always had the full support of Paul VI in his attempts to ensure that the Council language was friendly and open to the sensitivities of Protestant and Orthodox churches, whom he had invited to all sessions at the request of Pope John XXIII. Bea also was strongly involved in the passage of \"Nostra aetate\", which regulates the Church's relations with Judaism and members of other religions.\nDialogue with the world.\nAfter being elected Bishop of Rome, Paul VI first met with the priests in his new diocese. He told them that he started a dialogue with the modern world in Milan and asked them to seek contact with people from all walks of life. Six days after his election, he announced that he would continue Vatican II and convened the opening on 29 September 1963. In a radio address to the world, Paul VI praised his predecessors, the strength of Pius XI, the wisdom and intelligence of Pius XII, and the love of John XXIII. As his pontifical goals, he mentioned the continuation and completion of Vatican II, the Canon Law reform, and improved social peace and justice worldwide. The unity of Christianity would be central to his activities.\nCouncil priorities.\nThe Pope re-opened the Ecumenical Council on 29 September 1963, giving it four key priorities:\nHe reminded the Council Fathers that only a few years earlier, Pope Pius XII had issued the encyclical \"Mystici corporis\" about the mystical body of Christ. He asked them not to repeat or create new dogmatic definitions but to simply explain how the Church sees itself. He thanked the representatives of other Christian communities for their attendance and asked for their forgiveness if the Catholic Church was at fault for their separation. He also reminded the Council Fathers that many bishops from the East had been forbidden to attend by their national governments.\nThird and fourth sessions.\nPaul VI opened the third period on 14 September 1964, telling the Council Fathers that he viewed the text about the Church as the most important document to come out from the council. As the Council discussed the role of bishops in the papacy, Paul VI issued an explanatory note confirming the primacy of the papacy, a step that was viewed by some as meddling in the council's affairs. American bishops pushed for a speedy resolution on religious freedom, but Paul VI insisted this be approved together with related texts on topics such as ecumenism. The Pope concluded the session on 21 November 1964 with the formal pronouncement of Mary as Mother of the Church.\nBetween the third and fourth sessions, the Pope announced reforms in the areas of Roman Curia, revision of Canon law, regulations for interfaith marriages, and birth control issues. He opened the council's final session, concelebrating with bishops from countries where the Church was persecuted. Several texts proposed for his approval had to be changed, but all were finally agreed upon. The council was concluded on 8 December 1965: the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.\nIn the council's final session, Paul VI announced that he would open the canonisation processes of his immediate predecessors: Pope Pius XII and Pope John XXIII.\nUniversal call to holiness.\nAccording to Paul VI, \"the most characteristic and ultimate purpose of the teachings of the Council\" is the universal call to holiness: \"all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity; by this holiness as such a more human manner of living is promoted in this earthly society.\" This teaching is found in \"Lumen Gentium\", the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, promulgated by Paul VI on 21 November 1964.\nChurch reforms.\nSynod of Bishops.\nOn 14 September 1965, he established the Synod of Bishops as a permanent institution of the Catholic Church and an advisory body to the papacy. Several meetings were held on specific issues during his pontificate, such as the Synod of Bishops on evangelization in the modern world, which started on 9 September 1974.\nCuria reform.\nPope Paul VI knew the Roman Curia well, having worked there for a generation from 1922 to 1954. He implemented his reforms in stages. On 1 March 1968, he issued a regulation, a process initiated by Pius XII and continued by John XXIII. On 28 March, with \"Pontificalis Domus\", and in several additional Apostolic Constitutions in the following years, he revamped the entire Curia, which included reduction of bureaucracy, streamlining of existing congregations, and a broader representation of non-Italians in the Curial positions.\nAge limits and restrictions.\nOn 6 August 1966, Paul VI asked all bishops to submit their resignations to the pontiff by their 75th birthday. They were not required to do so but \"earnestly requested of their own free will to tender their resignation from office\". He extended this request to all cardinals in \"Ingravescentem aetatem\" on 21 November 1970, with the further provision that cardinals would relinquish their offices in the Roman Curia upon reaching their 80th birthday. These retirement rules enabled the Pope to fill several positions with younger prelates and reduce the Italian domination of the Roman Curia. His 1970 measures also revolutionised papal elections by restricting the right to vote in papal conclaves to cardinals who had not yet reached their 80th birthday, a class known since then as \"cardinal electors\". This reduced the power of the Italians and the Curia in the next conclave. Some senior cardinals objected to losing their voting privilege without effect.\nPaul VI's measures also limited the number of cardinal electors to a maximum of 120, a rule disregarded on several occasions by each of his successors. Previously, Paul VI himself had been the first pope to increase the number above 120 (from 82 in 1963 to 134 in April 1969; but he reduced the number of cardinal electors below 120 in 1971 by simultaneously introducing the voting age limit).\nSome prelates questioned whether he should not apply these retirement rules to himself. When Pope Paul was asked towards the end of his papacy whether he would retire at age 80, he replied \"Kings can abdicate, Popes cannot.\"\nLiturgy.\nReform of the liturgy, an aim of the 20th-century liturgical movement, mainly in France and Germany, was officially recognised as legitimate by Pius XII in his encyclical \"Mediator Dei\". During his pontificate, he eased regulations on the obligatory use of Latin in Catholic liturgies, permitting some use of vernacular languages during baptisms, funerals, and other events. In 1951 and 1955, he revised the Easter liturgies, most notably that of the Easter Triduum. The Second Vatican Council (1962\u20131965) gave some directives in its document \"Sacrosanctum Concilium\" for a general revision of the Roman Missal. Within four years of the close of the council, Paul VI promulgated in 1969 the first postconciliar edition, which included three new Eucharistic Prayers in addition to the Roman Canon, until then the only anaphora in the Roman Rite. Use of vernacular languages was expanded by decision of episcopal conferences, not by papal command. In addition to his revision of the Roman Missal, Pope Paul VI issued instructions in 1964, 1967, 1968, 1969, and 1970, reforming other elements of the liturgy of the Roman Church.\nThese reforms were not universally welcomed. Questions were raised about the need to replace the 1962 Roman Missal, which, though decreed on 23 June 1962, became available only in 1963, a few months before the Second Vatican Council's \"Sacrosanctum Concilium\" decree ordered that it be altered. attachment to it led to open ruptures, of which the most widely known is that of Marcel Lefebvre. Pope John Paul II granted bishops the right to authorise the use of the 1962 Missal (\"Quattuor abhinc annos\" and \"Ecclesia Dei\") and in 2007 Pope Benedict XVI, while stating that the Mass of Paul VI and John Paul II \"obviously is and continues to be the normal Form \u2013 the \"Forma ordinaria\" \u2013 of the Eucharistic Liturgy\", gave general permission to priests of the Latin Church to use either the 1962 Missal or the post-Vatican II Missal both privately and, under certain conditions, publicly. In 2021, Pope Francis removed many of faculties granted by Pope Benedict XVI with the publishing of his \"motu proprio\", \"Traditionis Custodes\", thus limiting the use of 1962 Roman Missal.\nRelations and dialogues.\nTo Paul VI, a dialogue with all of humanity was essential not as an aim but as a means to find the truth. According to Paul, dialogue is based on the full equality of all participants. This equality is rooted in the common search for the truth. He said: \"Those who have the truth, are in a position as not having it, because they are forced to search for it every day in a deeper and more perfect way. Those who do not have it, but search for it with their whole heart, have already found it.\"\nDialogues.\nIn 1964, Paul VI created a Secretariat for non-Christians, later renamed the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and a year later, a new Secretariat (later Pontifical Council) for Dialogue with Non-Believers. This latter one was in 1993 incorporated by Pope John Paul II in the Pontifical Council for Culture, which he had established in 1982. In 1971, Paul VI created a papal office for economic development and catastrophic assistance. To foster common bonds with all persons of goodwill, he decreed an annual peace day to be celebrated on 1 January every year. Trying to improve the condition of Christians behind the Iron Curtain, Paul VI engaged in dialogue with Communist authorities at several levels, receiving Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet Nikolai Podgorny in 1966 and 1967 in the Vatican. The situation of the Church in Hungary, Poland, and Romania improved during his pontificate.\nForeign travels.\nPope Paul VI became the first pope to visit six continents. He was also the first pontiff to travel on an airplane, visit the Holy Land on pilgrimage, and travel outside Italy in a century. He travelled more widely than any of his predecessors, earning the nickname \"the Pilgrim Pope\". He visited the Holy Land in 1964 and participated in Eucharistic congresses in Bombay, India, and Bogot\u00e1, Colombia. In 1966, he was twice denied permission to visit Poland for the thousandth anniversary of the introduction of Christianity in Poland. In 1967, he visited the shrine of Our Lady of F\u00e1tima in Portugal on the fiftieth anniversary of the apparitions there. He undertook a pastoral visit to Uganda in 1969, the first by a reigning pope to Africa. Pope Paul VI became the first reigning pontiff to visit the Western hemisphere when he addressed the United Nations in New York City in October 1965. As the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was escalating, Paul VI pleaded for peace before the U.N.:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Our very brief visit has given us a great honour; that of proclaiming to the whole world, from the Headquarters of the United Nations, Peace! We shall never forget this extraordinary hour. Nor can We bring it to a more fitting conclusion than by expressing the wish that this central seat of human relationships for the civil peace of the world may ever be conscious and worthy of this high privilege.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />No more war, never again war. Peace, it is peace that must guide the destinies of people and of all mankind.\"\nAttempted assassination.\nShortly after arriving at Manila International Airport, the Philippines on 27 November 1970, the Pope, closely followed by President Ferdinand Marcos and personal aide Pasquale Macchi, who was private secretary to Pope Paul VI, were encountered suddenly by a crew-cut, cassock-clad man who tried to attack the Pope with a knife. Macchi pushed the man away; police identified the would-be assassin as Benjam\u00edn Mendoza y Amor Flores of La Paz, Bolivia. Mendoza was an artist living in the Philippines. The Pope continued his trip and thanked Marcos and Macchi, who had moved to protect him during the attack.\nNew diplomacy.\nLike his predecessor Pius XII, Paul VI put much emphasis on the dialogue with all nations of the world through establishing diplomatic relations. The number of foreign embassies accredited to the Vatican doubled during his pontificate. This was a reflection of a new understanding between church and state, which had been formulated first by Pius XI and Pius XII but decreed by Vatican II. The pastoral constitution \"Gaudium et spes\" stated that the Catholic Church is not bound to any form of government and is willing to cooperate with all forms. The Church maintained its right to select bishops on its own without any interference by the State.\nPope Paul VI sent one of 73 Apollo 11 Goodwill Messages to NASA for the historic first lunar landing. The message still rests on the lunar surface today. It has the words of the 8th Psalm, and the Pope wrote, \"To the Glory of the name of God who gives such power to men, we ardently pray for this wonderful beginning.\"\nTheology.\nMariology.\nPope Paul VI made extensive contributions to Mariology (theological teaching and devotions) during his pontificate. Given its new ecumenical orientation, he attempted to present the Marian teachings of the church. In his inaugural encyclical \"Ecclesiam suam\" (section below), the Pope called Mary the ideal of Christian perfection. He regards \"devotion to the Mother of God as of paramount importance in living the life of the Gospel.\"\nEncyclicals.\nPaul VI authored seven encyclicals.\n\"Ecclesiam suam\".\n\"Ecclesiam suam\" was given at St. Peter's Basilica, Rome, on the Feast of the Transfiguration, 6 August 1964, the second year of his pontificate. It is considered an important document, identifying the Catholic Church with the Body of Christ. A later Council document, \"Lumen gentium\", stated that the Church subsists in the Body of Christ, raising questions as to the difference between \"is\" and \"subsists in\". Paul VI appealed to \"all people of good will\" and discussed necessary dialogues within the Church, between the churches, and with atheism.\n\"Mense maio\".\nThe encyclical \"Mense maio\" (from 29 April 1965) focused on the Virgin Mary, to whom traditionally the month of May is dedicated as the Mother of God. Paul VI writes that Mary is rightly regarded as how people are led to Christ. Therefore, the person who encounters Mary cannot help but encounter Christ.\n\"Mysterium fidei\".\nOn 3 September 1965, Paul VI issued \"Mysterium fidei\", on the mystery of the faith. He opposed relativistic notions that would have only given the Eucharist a symbolic character. The Church, according to Paul VI, has no reason to give up the deposit of faith in such a vital matter.\n\"Christi Matri\".\nOn 15 September 1966, Paul VI issued \"Christi Matri\", a request for the faithful to pray for peace during October 1966. As reasons for this call to prayer, Paul VI alludes to the Vietnam War and lists concern about \"the growing nuclear armaments race, the senseless nationalism, the racism, the obsession for revolution, the separations imposed upon citizens, the nefarious plots, the slaughter of innocent people.\"\n\"Populorum progressio\".\n\"Populorum progressio\", released on 26 March 1967, dealt with \"the development of peoples\" and that the world's economy should serve humanity and not just a few. It touches on a variety of traditional principles of Catholic social teaching: the right to a just wage, the right to security of employment, the right to fair and reasonable working conditions, the right to join a union and strike as a last resort, and the universal destination of resources and goods.\nIn addition, \"Populorum progressio\" opines that real peace in the world is conditional on justice. He repeated his demands expressed in Bombay in 1964 for a large-scale World Development Organization as a matter of international justice and peace. He rejected notions of instigating revolution and force in changing economic conditions.\n\"Sacerdotalis caelibatus\".\n\"Sacerdotalis caelibatus\" (Latin for \"Of the celibate priesthood\"), promulgated on 24 June 1967, defends the Catholic Church's tradition of priestly celibacy in the West. This encyclical was written in the wake of Vatican II when the Catholic Church was questioning and revising many long-held practices. Priestly celibacy is considered a discipline rather than dogma, and some had expected that it might be relaxed. In response to these questions, the Pope reaffirmed the discipline as a long-held practice important to the Catholic Church. The encyclical \"Sacerdotalis caelibatus\" from 24 June 1967 confirms the traditional Church teaching that celibacy is an ideal state and continues to be mandatory for Catholic priests. To Catholic conceptions of the priesthood, celibacy symbolizes the reality of the kingdom of God amid modern society. The priestly celibacy is closely linked to the sacramental priesthood. However, during his pontificate, Paul VI was permissive in allowing bishops to grant laicisation of priests who wanted to leave the sacerdotal state. John Paul II changed this policy in 1980, and the 1983 Code of Canon Law made it explicit that only the Pope can, in exceptional circumstances, grant laicization.\n\"Humanae vitae\".\nOf his seven encyclicals, Pope Paul VI is best known for his encyclical \"Humanae vitae\" (\"Of Human Life\", subtitled \"On the Regulation of Birth\"), published on 25 July 1968. In this encyclical, he reaffirmed the Catholic Church's traditional view of marriage and marital relations and its condemnation of artificial birth control. There were two papal committees and numerous independent experts looking into the latest advancement of science and medicine on the question of artificial birth control. which the Pope noted in his encyclical The expressed views of Paul VI reflected the teachings of his predecessors, especially Pius XI, Pius XII and John XXIII and never changed, as he repeatedly stated them in the first few years of his Pontificate.\nTo the Pope, as to all his predecessors, marital relations are much more than a union of two people. They constitute a union of the loving couple with a loving God, in which the two persons create a new person materially, while God completes the creation by adding the soul. For this reason, Paul VI taught in the first sentence of \"Humanae vitae\" that the transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God. This divine partnership, according to Paul VI, does not allow for arbitrary human decisions, which may limit divine providence. The Pope does not paint an overly romantic picture of marriage: marital relations are a source of great joy, but also of difficulties and hardships. The question of human procreation exceeds in the view of Paul VI specific disciplines such as biology, psychology, demography or sociology. The reason for this, according to Paul VI, is that married love takes its origin from God, who \"is love\". From this basic dignity, he defines his position:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Love is total\u2014that very special form of personal friendship in which husband and wife generously share everything, allowing no unreasonable exceptions and not thinking solely of their own convenience. Whoever really loves his partner loves not only for what he receives, but loves that partner for the partner's own sake, content to be able to enrich the other with the gift of himself.\nThe reaction to the encyclical's continued prohibitions of artificial birth control was very mixed. The encyclical was welcomed in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Poland. In Latin America, much support developed for the Pope and his encyclical. As World Bank president Robert McNamara declared at the 1968 Annual Meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group that countries permitting birth control practices would get preferential access to resources, doctors in La Paz, Bolivia, called it insulting that money should be exchanged for the conscience of a Catholic nation. In Colombia, Cardinal Archbishop An\u00edbal Mu\u00f1oz Duque declared, \"If American conditionality undermines Papal teachings, we prefer not to receive one cent.\" The Senate of Bolivia passed a resolution stating that \"Humanae vitae\" could be discussed in its implications for individual consciences but was of greatest significance because the papal document defended the rights of developing nations to determine their own population policies. The Jesuit journal \"Sic\" dedicated one edition to the encyclical with supportive contributions.\nPaul VI was concerned but not surprised by the adverse reaction in Western Europe and the United States. He fully anticipated this reaction to be a temporary one: \"Don't be afraid,\" he reportedly told Edouard Gagnon on the eve of the encyclical, \"in twenty years' time, they'll call me a prophet.\" His biography on the Vatican's website notes his reaffirmations of priestly celibacy and the traditional teaching on contraception that \"[t]he controversies over these two pronouncements tended to overshadow the last years of his pontificate\". Pope John Paul II later reaffirmed and expanded upon \"Humanae vitae\" with the encyclical \"Evangelium vitae\".\nEvangelism.\nBy taking the name of Paul, the newly elected pope showed his intention to take Paul the Apostle as a model for his papal ministry. In 1967, when he reorganised the Roman Curia, Pope Paul renamed the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith as the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. Pope Paul was the first pope in history to make apostolic journeys to other continents. The Pope chose the theme of evangelism for the synod of bishops in 1974. From materials generated by that synod, he composed the 1975 apostolic exhortation on evangelisation, \"Evangelii nuntiandi\".\nEcumenism and ecumenical relations.\nAfter the council, Paul VI contributed in two ways to the continued growth of ecumenical dialogue: The separated brothers and sisters, as he called them, could not contribute to the council as invited observers. After the council, many took the initiative to seek out their Catholic counterparts and the Pope in Rome, who welcomed such visits. However, the Catholic Church recognized from the many previous ecumenical encounters that much needed to be done within to be an open partner for ecumenism. To those entrusted with the highest and deepest truth, therefore, Paul VI believed that he had the most challenging part to communicate. Ecumenical dialogue, in the view of Paul VI, requires from a Catholic the whole person: one's entire reason, will, and heart. Paul VI, like Pius XII before him, was reluctant to give in on a lowest possible point. And yet, Paul felt compelled to admit his ardent Gospel-based desire to be everything to everybody and to help all people Being the successor of Peter, he felt the words of Christ, \"Do you love me more\" like a sharp knife penetrating to the marrow of his soul. These words meant to Paul VI love without limits, and they underscore the church's fundamental approach to ecumenism.\nOriental Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox Apostolic.\nPaul VI visited the Eastern Orthodox Apostolic Patriarchs of Jerusalem and Constantinople in 1964 and 1967. He was the first pope since the ninth century to visit the East, labelling the Eastern Churches as sister churches. He was also the first pope in centuries to meet the heads of various Eastern Orthodox communities. Notably, his meeting with Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I in 1964 in Jerusalem led to rescinding the excommunications of the Great Schism, which took place in 1054.\nThis was a significant step towards restoring communion between Rome and Constantinople. It produced the Catholic-Eastern Orthodox Apostolic Joint Declaration of 1965, read on 7 December 1965, simultaneously at a public meeting of the Second Vatican Council in Rome and at a special ceremony in Istanbul. The declaration did not end the schism but showed a desire for greater reconciliation between the two churches. In May 1973, the Coptic Patriarch Shenouda III of Alexandria from the Coptic Orthodox Church visited the Vatican, where he met three times with Pope Paul VI. A common declaration and a joint creed issued after the visit proclaimed unity in a number of theological issues, but also that other theological differences \"since the year 451\" \"cannot be ignored\" while both traditions work to a greater unity.\nAnglicans.\nPaul VI was the first pope to receive an Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, in official audience as Head of Church, after the private audience visit of Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher to Pope John XXIII on 2 December 1960. Ramsey met Paul three times during his visit and opened the Anglican Centre in Rome to increase their mutual knowledge. He praised Paul VI and his contributions in the service of unity. Paul replied, \"By entering into our house, you are entering your own house; we are happy to open our door and heart to you.\" The two church leaders signed a joint declaration, ending past disputes and outlining a common future agenda.\nCardinal Augustin Bea, the head of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, added at the end of the visit, \"Let us move forward in Christ. God wants it. Humanity is waiting for it.\" Unmoved by a harsh condemnation by the Congregation of Faith on mixed marriages precisely at this time of the visit, Paul VI and Ramsey appointed a preparatory commission which was to put the common agenda into practice on such issues as mixed marriages. This resulted in a joint Malta declaration, the first joint agreement on the Creed since the Reformation. Paul VI was a good friend of the Anglican Church, which he described as \"our beloved sister Church.\" This description was unique to Paul and not used by later popes.\nProtestants.\nIn 1965, Paul VI decided to create a joint working group with the World Council of Churches to map all possible avenues of dialogue and cooperation. Eight sessions were held in the following three years, resulting in many joint proposals. It was proposed to work closely together in social justice and development and \u201cThird World\u201d issues such as hunger and poverty. On the religious side, it was agreed to be shared in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which would be held annually. The joint working group was to prepare texts which were to be used by all Christians. On 19 July 1968, the meeting of the World Council of Churches took place in Uppsala, Sweden, which Pope Paul called a sign of the times. He sent his blessing ecumenically: \"May the Lord bless everything you do for the case of Christian Unity.\" The World Council of Churches decided on including Catholic theologians in its committees, provided they have the backing of the Vatican.\nThe Lutherans were the first Protestant church offering a dialogue to the Catholic Church in September 1964 in Reykjav\u00edk, Iceland. It resulted in joint study groups of several issues. The dialogue with the Methodist Church began in October 1965, after its representatives officially applauded the past five years' remarkable changes, friendship, and cooperation. The Reformed Churches entered four years later into a dialogue with the Catholic Church. The President of the Lutheran World Federation and member of the central committee of the World Council of Churches Fredrik A. Schiotz stated during the 450th anniversary of the Reformation, that earlier commemorations were viewed almost as a triumph. He welcomed the announcement of Pope Paul VI to celebrate the 1900th anniversary of the death of the Apostle Peter and Apostle Paul, and promised participation and co-operation in the festivities.\nPaul VI supported the new-found harmony and cooperation with Protestants on many levels. When Cardinal Augustin Bea went to see him for permission for a joint Catholic-Protestant translation of the Bible with Protestant Bible societies, the Pope walked towards him and exclaimed, \"As far as the cooperation with Bible societies is concerned, I am totally in favour.\" He issued a formal approval on Pentecost 1967, the feast on which the Holy Spirit descended on the Christians, overcoming all linguistic difficulties, according to Christian tradition.\nBeatifications and canonisations.\nPaul VI beatified 38 individuals in his pontificate and canonized 84 saints in 21 causes. Among the beatifications included Maximilian Kolbe (1971) and the Korean Martyrs (1968). He canonised saints such as Nikola Taveli\u0107 (1970) and the Ugandan Martyrs (1964).\nPaul VI also named two Doctors of the Church and, in so doing, named the first two female Doctors of the Church. He named Teresa of \u00c1vila (he titled her \"Doctor orationis\" or \"Doctor of Prayer\") on 27 September 1970 and Catherine of Siena on 4 October 1970.\nConsistories.\nPope Paul VI held six consistories between 1965 and 1977 that raised 143 men to the cardinalate in his fifteen years as pope:\nThe successive three popes were created cardinals by him. His immediate successor, Albino Luciani, who took the name Pope John Paul I, was created a cardinal in the consistory of 5 March 1973. Karol J\u00f3zef Wojty\u0142a (later Pope John Paul II) was created a cardinal in the consistory of 26 June 1967. Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) was made a cardinal in the small four-appointment consistory of 27 June 1977 that was the Pope's last. Paul VI named \u0160t\u011bp\u00e1n Trochta and Iuliu Hossu as cardinals \"\" in 1969 and only revealed Hossu's name in 1973 after Hossu died while formally naming Trochta. Similarly, Paul VI named both Franti\u0161ek Tom\u00e1\u0161ek and Joseph-Marie Tr\u1ecbnh Nh\u01b0 Khu\u00ea \"in pectore\" in 1976, only announcing the former in 1977 and the latter at the 1976 consistory itself, a month after having announced it and his hidden selection.\nWith the six consistories, Paul VI continued the internationalisation policies started by Pius XII in 1946 and continued by John XXIII. In his 1976 consistory, five of twenty cardinals originated from Africa, one of them a son of a tribal chief with fifty wives. Several prominent Latin Americans like Eduardo Francisco Pironio of Argentina; Luis Aponte Martinez of Puerto Rico, Eug\u00eanio de Ara\u00fajo Sales and Aloisio Lorscheider from Brazil were also elevated by him. There were voices within the church at the time saying that the European period of the church was coming to a close, a view shared by Britain's Cardinal Basil Hume. At the same time, the members of the College of Cardinals lost some of their previous influences, after Paul VI decreed, that membership by bishops in committees and other bodies of the Roman Curia would not be limited to cardinals. The age limit of eighty years imposed by the Pope, a numerical increase of Cardinals by almost 100%, and a reform of the formal dress of the \"Princes of the Church\" further contributed to a service-oriented perception of Cardinals under his pontificate. The increased number of Cardinals from the Third World and the papal emphasis on related issues were nevertheless welcomed by many in Western Europe. The consistory of 1969 was the largest consistory since 1946 and would be surpassed later in 2001.\nIn 1965, the theologian Romano Guardini declined an invitation by Paul VI to be inducted into the College of Cardinals. In 1967, he also intended to nominate Pietro Sigismondi, but he died a month before the consistory was held. Also in 1967, according to the memoirs of Louis Bouyer, Paul VI intended to name Bouyer to the cardinalate after the Second Vatican Council; however, Paul VI was forced to abandon the idea after realizing that the French episcopacy would not warmly receive the appointment since Bouyer had been very critical of many of the positions taken by the French bishops. Other sources indicate that the Pope intended to name his friend Jacques Maritain to the cardinalate in 1969. Not only did Maritain decline, but if he had been elevated, it would have made him the first lay cardinal since 1858. On 22 February 1969, Paul VI and Monsignor Hieronymus Menges discussed nominating Iuliu Hossu and \u00c1ron M\u00e1rton to the cardinalate (Pius XII dropped an idea to name M\u00e1rton to the cardinalate in 1946), however, M\u00e1rton's potential elevation was not considered acceptable, hence, Hossu was named \"in pectore\" since the Romanians would not have accepted Hossu either.\nFinal years and death.\nAllegations of homosexuality.\nIn 1976 Paul VI became the first pontiff in the modern era to deny the accusation of homosexuality. On 29 December 1975, the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a document entitled \"Persona Humana: Declaration on Certain Questions concerning Sexual Ethics\", that reaffirmed church teaching that pre- or extramarital sex, homosexual activity, and masturbation are sinful acts. In response, Roger Peyrefitte, who had already written in two of his books that Paul VI had a longtime homosexual relationship, repeated his charges in a magazine interview with a French gay magazine that, when reprinted in Italian, brought the rumours to a wider public and caused an uproar. He said that the Pope was a hypocrite who had a longtime sexual relationship with an actor. Widespread rumours identified the actor as Paolo Carlini, who had a small part in the Audrey Hepburn film \"Roman Holiday\" (1953). In a brief address to a crowd of approximately 20,000 in St Peter's Square on 18 April 1976, Paul VI called the charges \"horrible and slanderous insinuations\" and appealed for prayers on his behalf. Special prayers for the Pope were said in all Italian Catholic churches in \"a day of consolation\". The charges have resurfaced periodically. In 1994, Franco Bellegrandi, a former Vatican honour chamberlain and correspondent for the Vatican newspaper \"L'Osservatore Romano\", alleged that Paul VI had been blackmailed and had promoted other gay men to positions of power within the Vatican. In 2006, the newspaper \"L'Espresso\" reported that the private papers of police commander General Giorgio Manes confirmed the blackmail story as true, and that Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro had been asked to help.\nHealth.\nPaul VI had been in good health prior to his pontifical election. His health following his papal election took a turn when he needed to undergo a serious operation to treat an enlarged prostate. The Pope procrastinated in this but relented in November 1967; the operation took place on a simple table in an improvised operating theatre in the papal apartments by a team led by Professor Pietro Valdoni. The Vatican was delicate in their description of what the Pope underwent and referred to it as \"the malaise from which the Holy Father had been suffering for weeks\". As a result of the delay in having the operation, the Pope had to wear a catheter for a period following the operation and still was by December.\nThe Pope discussed business from his bed about 48 hours after the operation with Cardinal Amleto Giovanni Cicognani and at that point was off intravenous feeding in favour of orange juice and hot broth. Cardinal Cicognani said the Pope was \"in good general condition\" and that he spoke in a \"clear and firm voice\". The Pope's two brothers also visited him at his bedside following a \"tranquil night\" for the Pope. The doctors also reported the Pope's condition to have been \"excellent\".\nKidnapping and death of Aldo Moro.\nOn 16 March 1978, former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro\u2014a friend of Paul VI's from his FUCI student days\u2014was kidnapped by a far-left Italian terrorist group known as the Red Brigades. The kidnapping kept the world and the Pope in suspense for 55 days. On 20 April, Moro directly appealed to the Pope to intervene as Pope Pius XII had intervened in the case of Professor Giuliano Vassalli in the same situation. The eighty-year-old Paul VI wrote a letter to the Red Brigades:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nSome in the Italian government accused the Pope of treating the Red Brigades too kindly. Paul VI continued looking for ways to pay ransom for Moro, but his efforts were fruitless. On 9 May, the bullet-riddled body of Aldo Moro was found in a car in Rome. Pope Paul VI later celebrated his State Funeral Mass.\nFinal days.\nPope Paul VI left the Vatican to go to the papal summer residence, the Palace of Castel Gandolfo, on 14 July 1978, visiting on the way the tomb of Cardinal Giuseppe Pizzardo, who had introduced him to the Vatican half a century earlier. Although he was sick, he agreed to see the new Italian President Sandro Pertini for over two hours. In the evening he watched a Western on television, happy only when he saw \"horses, the most beautiful animals that God had created.\" He had breathing problems and needed oxygen. On Sunday, at the Feast of the Transfiguration, he was tired, but wanted to say the Angelus. He was neither able nor permitted to do so and instead stayed in bed, his temperature rising.\nDeath.\nFrom his bed he participated in Sunday Mass at 18:00. After receiving communion, the Pope suffered a massive heart attack, after which he lived on for three more hours. On 6 August 1978 at 21:41, Paul VI died in Castel Gandolfo. Before he died, the pontiff had been lucid after the first heart attack. An hour before his death, he said he felt dizzy and asked those present to continue the prayers in his stead. Present at his bedside at the time of his death were Cardinal Jean-Marie Villot, Bishop Giuseppe Caprio, and his personal secretary Pasquale Macchi, as well as two nuns and his personal physician. By the time the Pope died, he was already confined to bed due to a flare up in his chronic joint arthritis and could not get up to personally celebrate the Mass. Upon the initial heart attack, the Pope was immediately given oxygen; however, the Holy See indicated that his heart condition was aggravated by a pulmonary edema, or the seeping of fluid into the lungs.\nSyria declared nine days of mourning; Egypt declared seven days of mourning; Spain declared four days of mourning; Brazil, Italy Lebanon and Zaire declared three days of mourning; The Philippines declared one day of mourning.\nPaul VI left a will and a spiritual testament. Those were released by the Vatican shortly after his death. In it, he asked for his burial to be simple, and that his correspondence, personal memos and other writings be destroyed. He also legated all his belongings to the Vatican.\nPaul VI does not have an ornate sarcophagus, but is buried in a grave beneath the floor of Saint Peter's Basilica, in the Vatican Grottoes near the tombs of other popes.\nHis position mirrors the statements attributed to Pius XI: \"a Pope may suffer but he must be able to function\" and by Pius XII. Pope Paul, reflecting on \"Hamlet\", wrote the following in a private note in 1978:<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />What is my state of mind? Am I Hamlet? Or Don Quixote? On the left? On the right? I do not think I have been properly understood. I am filled with 'great joy (Superabundo gaudio)' With all our affliction, I am overjoyed (2 Cor 2:4).\nHis confessor, the Jesuit Paolo Dezza, said that \"this pope is a man of great joy\", and that:\nIf Paul VI was not a saint, when he was elected Pope, he became one during his pontificate. I was able to witness not only with what energy and dedication he toiled for Christ and the Church but also and above all, how much he suffered for Christ and the Church. I always admired not only his deep inner resignation but also his constant abandonment to divine providence. \nCanonisation.\nThe diocesan process for beatification for Paul VI\u2014titled then as a Servant of God\u2014opened in Rome on 11 May 1993 under Pope John Paul II after the \"nihil obstat\" (\"nothing against\") was declared the previous 18 March. Cardinal Camillo Ruini opened the diocesan process in Rome. The title of Servant of God is the first of four steps toward possible canonisation. The diocesan process concluded its business on 18 March 1998.\nOn 20 December 2012, Pope Benedict XVI, in an audience with the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints Angelo Amato, declared that the late pontiff had lived a life of heroic virtue, which means that he could be called \"Venerable\".\nOn 12 December 2013, Vatican officials comprising a medical panel approved a supposed miracle that was attributed to the intercession of the late pontiff, which was the curing of an unborn child in California, U.S.A in the 1990s. This miracle was investigated in California from 7 July 2003 until 12 July 2004. It was expected that Pope Francis would approve the miracle in the near future, thus, warranting the beatification of the late pontiff. In February 2014, it was reported that the consulting Vatican theologians to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints recognised the miracle attributed to the late pontiff on 18 February.\nOn 24 April 2014, it was reported in the Italian magazine \"Credere\" that the late pope could possibly be beatified on 19 October 2014. This report from the magazine further stated that several cardinals and bishops would meet on 5 May to confirm the miracle that had previously been approved, and then present it to Pope Francis who may sign the decree for beatification shortly after that. The Congregation for the Causes of Saints' cardinal and bishop members held that meeting and positively concluded that the healing was indeed a miracle that could be attributed to the late pope. The matter would then be presented by the Cardinal Prefect to the Pope for approval.\nThe second miracle required for his canonisation was reported to have occurred in 2014 not long after his beatification. The vice-postulator, Antonio Lanzoni, suggested that the canonisation could be approved in the near future which would allow for the canonisation sometime in spring 2016; this did not materialise because the investigations were still ongoing at that stage. It was further reported in January 2017 that Pope Francis was considering canonising Paul VI either in that year, or in 2018 (marking 40 years since the late pope's death), without the second miracle required for sainthood. This too was proven false since the miracle from 2014 was being presented to the competent Vatican officials for assessment.\nThe late pope's liturgical feast day was then established to be celebrated on the date of his birth, 26 September, rather than the day of his death, as is usual since the latter falls on the Feast of the Transfiguration, a major feast in the liturgical year.\nThe final miracle needed for the late pope's canonisation was investigated in Verona, the investigation beining closed on 11 March 2017. The miracle in question involves the healing of an unborn girl, Amanda Maria Paola (born 25 December 2014), after her parents (Vanna and Alberto) went to the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Brescia, to pray for the late pope's intercession the previous 29 October, just ten days after Paul VI was beatified. The miracle regarding Amanda was the fact that she had survived for months despite the fact that the placenta was broken. On 23 September, a month before the beatification, Amanda's mother Vanna Pironato (aged 35) was hospitalised due to the premature rupture of the placenta, with doctors declaring her pregnancy to be at great risk. The documents regarding the alleged miracle were by now in Rome awaiting approval, so he should be canonised should this healing be approved. Theologians advising the Congregation for the Causes of Saints voiced their approval to this miracle on 13 December 2017 (following the confirmation of doctors on 26 October) and had this sent to the cardinal and bishop members of the C.C.S. who had to vote on the cause also before taking it to Pope Francis for his approval. Brescian media reported the canonisation could take place in October 2018 to coincide with the synod on the youth. The cardinal and bishop members of the C.C.S. issued their unanimous approval to this miracle in their meeting held on 6 February 2018. Pope Francis confirmed that the canonisation would be approved and celebrated in 2018 in remarks made during a meeting with Roman priests on 14 February 2018. On 6 March 2018, the Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, speaking at a plenary meeting of the International Catholic Migration Commission in Rome, confirmed that Paul VI would be canonised in at the close of the synod on 28 October 2018. On 6 March, the Pope confirmed the healing as a miracle, thereby approving Paul VI's canonisation; a consistory of cardinals on 19 May 2018 determined that the official date for Paul VI's canonisation, along with that of the assassinated Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, would be 14 October 2018.\nPaul VI's liturgical feast day, which had previously been celebrated on 26 September, the date of his birth, was moved to 29 May, the day of his priestly ordination, in 2019.\nLegacy and controversies.\nIn 2011, newly uncovered documents went up for auction and contained, among other items, proof that beginning in September 1950, while then serving as deputy of foreign affairs for the Vatican, Montini worked with former Nazis and members of the Spanish military in planning for a mercenary style army to operate within the African continent. Another revelation was a letter from the priest of former Nazi Lieutenant Colonel Otto Skorzeny to Montini in which the priest praised Montini's efforts to fund, harbour, and give safe passage to former Nazis evading Allied capture and punishment.\nPope Paul VI continued the opening and internationalisation of the church that began under Pius XII and implemented the reforms of John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council. Yet, unlike these popes, Paul VI faced criticism throughout his papacy from both traditionalists and liberals for steering a middle course during Vatican II and during the implementation of its reforms thereafter. He expressed a desire for peace during the Vietnam War.\nOn basic Church teachings, the Pope was unwavering. On the tenth anniversary of \"Humanae vitae\", he reconfirmed this teaching. In his style and methodology, he was a disciple of Pius XII, whom he deeply revered. He suffered for the attacks on Pius XII for his alleged silences during the Holocaust. Pope Paul VI was said to have been less intellectually gifted than his predecessors: he was not credited with an encyclopaedic memory, nor a gift for languages, nor the brilliant writing style of Pius XII, nor did he have the charisma and outpouring love, sense of humor and human warmth of John XXIII. He took on himself the unfinished reform work of these two popes, bringing them diligently with great humility and common sense and without much fanfare to conclusion. In doing so, Paul VI saw himself following in the footsteps of the Apostle Paul, who, being torn to several directions, said, \"I am attracted to two sides at once, because the Cross always divides.\"\nPaul VI refused to excommunicate opponents. He admonished but did not punish those with other views. The new theological freedoms which he fostered\u00a0resulted in a pluralism of opinions and uncertainties among the faithful. New demands were voiced, which were taboo at the council: the reintegration of divorced Catholics, the sacramental character of the confession, and the role of women in the church and its ministries. Conservatives complained \"women wanted to be priests, priests wanted to get married, bishops became regional popes and theologians claimed absolute teaching authority. Protestants claimed equality, homosexuals and the divorced called for full acceptance.\" Changes such as the reorientation of the liturgy, alterations to the ordinary of the Mass, alterations to the liturgical calendar in the motu proprio \"Mysterii Paschalis\", and the relocation of the tabernacle were controversial among some Catholics.\nWhile the total number of Catholics increased during the pontificate of Paul VI, the number of priests did not keep up. In the United States, at beginning of Paul's reign there were almost 1,600 priestly ordinations a year, while the number dropped to nearly 900 a year at his death. The number of seminarians at the same time dropped by three quarters. More pronounced declines were evident in religious life where the number of sisters and brothers declined sharply. Infant baptisms began to decline almost at once after Paul's election and did not begin to recover until 1980. In the same period adult conversions to the church declined by a third. While marriages increased annulments also increased but at a much greater rate. There was a 1,322% increase in declarations of nullity between 1968 and 1970 alone. While 65% of US Catholics went to Sunday Mass in 1965, that percentage had slipped to 40% by the time of Paul's death. Similar collapses occurred in other developed countries.\nPaul VI renounced many traditional symbols of the papacy and the Catholic Church; some of his changes to the papal dress were temporarily reversed by Pope Benedict XVI in the early 21st century. Refusing a Vatican army of colourful military uniforms from past centuries, he got rid of them, leaving only the Swiss Guard in function. He became the first pope to visit five continents. Paul VI systematically continued and completed the efforts of his predecessors, to turn the Euro-centric church into a church of the world, by integrating the bishops from all continents in its government and in the Synods which he convened. His 6 August 1967 motu proprio \"Pro Comperto Sane\" opened the Roman Curia to the bishops of the world. Until then, only Cardinals could be leading members of the Curia.\nSome critiqued Paul VI's decision; the newly created Synod of Bishops had an advisory role only and could not make decisions on their own, although the Council decided exactly that. During the pontificate of Paul VI, five such synods took place, and he is on record of implementing all their decisions. Related questions were raised about the new National Bishop Conferences, which became mandatory after Vatican II. Others questioned his Ostpolitik and contacts with Communism and the deals he engaged in for the faithful.\nPaul VI suffered from the responses within the church to \"Humanae vitae\". Most regions and bishops supported the pontiff, including notable support from Patrick O'Boyle. However, a small part of the church, especially in the Netherlands, Canada, and Germany openly disagreed with the Pope, which deeply wounded him for the rest of his life.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "1893169": "Romano Pontifici eligendo\nApostolic constitution by Paul VI\nRomano Pontifici eligendo was the apostolic constitution governing the election of popes that was promulgated by Pope Paul VI on 1 October 1975. It instituted a number of far-reaching reforms in the process of electing popes. It set the maximum number of electors at 120 and restated in a more formal context the rule he had already instituted that cardinals over the age of 80 not participate in electing a pope.\nThe constitution was superseded by \"Universi Dominici gregis\".\nProvisions.\nIn November 1970, in \"Ingravescentem aetatem\", Pope Paul VI had prohibited cardinals over the age of eighty from participating in a papal conclave to elect a pope. This new apostolic constitution incorporated that rule in the context of setting out regulations for the organization of a conclave.\nIn March 1973, during a consistory to create new cardinals, Pope Paul VI had discussed plans to modify procedures for papal elections, including limiting the number of electors to 120 and adding as voters the patriarchs of the Eastern Rite churches, even if not cardinals, and the leadership of the Synod of Bishops. He abandoned all of those ideas except one, and set the maximum number of cardinal electors at 120 in this apostolic constitution. When his 80-year-old limit had taken effect on 1 January 1971, there were 102 cardinals eligible to participate in a conclave. \nPope Paul VI also imposed strict regulations on the physical organization of a conclave, including a requirement that the windows of the Sistine Chapel be boarded up. Cardinals found the restrictions excessive during the two conclaves of 1978 and Pope John Paul II dropped them in his 1996 apostolic constitution \"Universi Dominici gregis\" (1996).\nPope Paul had been crowned in June 1963 following his election but abandoned the wearing of a papal tiara in November 1964. Nevertheless, in this apostolic constitution he wrote that a coronation would follow the election. His immediate successors John Paul I and John Paul II chose not to be crowned, and John Paul II made no mention of a coronation when he revised the election process in 1996.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nText of \"Romano Pontifici eligendo\":"}, "descending_order": ["1893169", "24028"], "permutation_1": ["1893169", "24028"], "permutation_2": ["1893169", "24028"], "permutation_3": ["24028", "1893169"]}
{"id": "3hop1__660065_23998_24055", "docs_added": {"357108": "James Hillhouse\nAmerican lawyer, real estate developer and politician (1754-1832)\nJames Hillhouse (October 20, 1754 \u2013 December 29, 1832) was an American lawyer, real estate developer, and politician from New Haven, Connecticut. He represented the state in both chambers of the US Congress. From February to March 1801, Hillhouse briefly served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate.\nYouth and Family life.\nHillhouse was born in Montville in the Connecticut Colony, the son of William Hillhouse and Sarah (Griswold) Hillhouse. He had at least nine siblings, seven of which survived to adulthood. At the age of seven, he was adopted by his childless uncle and aunt, James Abraham and Mary Lucas Hillhouse. He attended the Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven, Connecticut, and graduated from Yale College in 1773. At Yale, he was a member of the Linonian Society. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1775, and practiced law in New Haven.\nFamily Life.\nHe married Sarah Lloyd in 1779 and that same year they had their one and only child together, Mary. However, Mary would pass away aged just three days, and Sarah would pass away three days after that. In 1782, he married Rebecca Woolsey. They had five children together: Sarah, Mary, James, Augustus, and Rebecca. All five would survive to adulthood. His wife, Rebecca Woolsey, would pass away in December, 1813 after 31 years of marriage.\nRevolutionary War.\nDuring the Revolutionary War, Hillhouse served as captain of the Second \nCompany of the Governor's Foot Guard. During the successful British invasion of New Haven on July 5, 1779, he commanded troops alongside Aaron Burr, with Yale student volunteers.\nCareer and Death.\nHillhouse was a member of the Connecticut House of Representatives from 1780 to 1785. He was a member of the Connecticut council of Assistants from 1789 to 1790 and was elected as a US representative from Connecticut at large for the Second, Third, and Fourth Congresses and served from March 4, 1791, to his resignation, in the fall of 1796. He also served as a judge of the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors from 1789 to 1793.\nElected as a US senator on May 12, 1796, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Oliver Ellsworth, Hillhouse was re-elected in 1797, 1803, and 1809, and he served from December 1796 to June 10, 1810, when he resigned. During the Sixth Congress he was President pro tempore of the Senate. During his time in this role, he administered the oath of office to Aaron Burr as Vice President, within the first inauguration of Thomas Jefferson on March 4, 1801.\nIn 1803, Hillhouse and several other New England politicians proposed secession of New England from the union because of the growing influence of Jeffersonian Democrats, especially after the Louisiana Purchase, which would further diminish Northern and Federalist influence.\nHillhouse was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1813.\nIn 1814, he was a Connecticut delegate to the Hartford Convention, and he was treasurer of Yale College from 1782 to 1832.\nHillhouse was a slaveholder.\nHillhouse passed away in New Haven on December 29th, 1832 at the age of 78. He was buried at Grove Street Cemetery located in the same city along with both his wives.\nLegacy.\nHillhouse made major contributions to the beautification of New Haven. He was active in the drive to plant the elm trees, which gave New Haven the nickname of \"Elm City.\" Hillhouse Avenue and James Hillhouse High School, in New Haven, are named after him.\nHe was a nephew of Matthew Griswold and an uncle of Thomas Hillhouse.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "53825": "New Haven, Connecticut\nNew Haven is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is the third largest city in Connecticut after Bridgeport and Stamford, the largest city in the South Central Connecticut Planning Region, and the principal municipality of Greater New Haven, which had a total population of 864,835 in 2020.\nNew Haven was one of the first planned cities in the U.S. A year after its founding by English Puritans in 1638, eight streets were laid out in a four-by-four grid, creating the \"Nine Square Plan\". The central common block is the New Haven Green, a square at the center of Downtown New Haven. The Green is now a National Historic Landmark, and the \"Nine Square Plan\" is recognized by the American Planning Association as a National Planning Landmark.\nNew Haven is the home of Yale University, New Haven's biggest taxpayer and employer, and an integral part of the city's economy. Health care, professional and financial services and retail trade also contribute to the city's economic activity.\nThe city served as co-capital of Connecticut from 1701 until 1873, when sole governance was transferred to the more centrally located city of Hartford. New Haven has since billed itself as the \"Cultural Capital of Connecticut\" for its supply of established theaters, museums, and music venues. New Haven had the first public tree planting program in the U.S., producing a canopy of mature trees (including some large elms) that gave the city the nickname \"The Elm City\".\nHistory.\nPre-colonial foundation as an independent colony.\nBefore Europeans arrived, the New Haven area was the home of the Quinnipiac tribe of Native Americans, who lived in villages around the harbor and sustained an economy of local fisheries and the farming of maize. The area was briefly visited by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block in 1614. Dutch traders set up a small trading system of beaver pelts with the local inhabitants, but trade was sporadic and the Dutch did not settle permanently in the area.\nIn 1637, a small party of Puritans did a reconnaissance of the New Haven harbor area and wintered over. In April 1638, the main party of five hundred Puritans, who had left the Massachusetts Bay Colony under the leadership of Reverend John Davenport and London merchant Theophilus Eaton, sailed into the harbor. It was their hope to set up a theological community with the government more closely linked to the church than that in Massachusetts, and to exploit the area's potential as a port. The Quinnipiacs, who were under attack by neighboring Pequots, sold their land to the settlers in return for a pledge of protection.\nBy 1640, \"Quinnipiac's\" theocratic government and nine-square grid plan were in place, and the town was renamed New Haven, with 'haven' meaning harbor or port. However, the area to the north remained Quinnipiac until 1678, when it was renamed Hamden. The settlement became the headquarters of the New Haven Colony, distinct from the Connecticut Colony previously established to the north centering on Hartford. Reflecting its theocratic roots, the New Haven Colony forbade the establishment of other churches, whereas the Connecticut Colony permitted them.\nEconomic disaster struck New Haven in 1646, when the town sent its first fully loaded ship of local goods (the \"Great Shippe\") back to England. It never reached its destination, and its disappearance hindered New Haven's development as compared to the rising trade powers of Boston and New Amsterdam (modern day New York City).\nIn 1660, Colony founder John Davenport's wishes were fulfilled, and Hopkins School was founded in New Haven with money from the estate of Edward Hopkins.\nIn 1661, the Regicides who had signed the death warrant of Charles I of England were pursued by Charles II. Two of them, Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe, fled to New Haven for refuge. Davenport arranged for them to hide in the West Rock hills northwest of the town. A third judge, John Dixwell, later joined the others. None of the three were ever returned to England for trial; Dixwell died of old age in New Haven, the others likewise elsewhere in New England.\nAs part of the Connecticut Colony.\nIn 1664, New Haven became part of the Connecticut Colony when the two colonies were merged under political pressure from England. Seeking to establish a new theocracy elsewhere, some members of the New Haven Colony went on to establish Newark, New Jersey.\nNew Haven was made co-capital of Connecticut in 1701, a status it retained until 1873.\nIn 1716, the Collegiate School relocated from Old Saybrook to New Haven, establishing it as a center of learning. In 1718, in response to a large donation from East India Company merchant Elihu Yale, former Governor of Madras, the Collegiate School was renamed Yale College.\nFor over a century, New Haven citizens had fought in the colonial militia alongside regular British forces, including the French and Indian War. As the American Revolution approached, General David Wooster and other influential residents hoped that the conflict with the British parliament could be resolved short of rebellion. On April 23, 1775, Captain Benedict Arnold commanded the Second Company, Governor's Foot Guard, of New Haven to break into the powder house to arm themselves for a three-day march to Cambridge, Massachusetts, an event still celebrated in New Haven as Powder House Day. Other New Haven militia members were on hand to escort George Washington from his overnight stay in New Haven on his way to Cambridge. Contemporary reports, from both sides, remark on the New Haven volunteers' professional military bearing, including uniforms.\nOn July 5, 1779, 2,600 loyalists and British regulars under General William Tryon, governor of New York, landed in New Haven Harbor and raided the town of 3,500. A militia of Yale students had been preparing for battle, and former Yale president and Yale Divinity School professor Naphtali Daggett rode out to confront the Redcoats. Yale president Ezra Stiles recounted in his diary that while he moved furniture in anticipation of battle, he still couldn't quite believe the revolution had begun. New Haven was not torched as the invaders did with Danbury in 1777, or Fairfield and Norwalk a week after the New Haven raid, preserving many of the town's colonial features.\nPost-colonial period and industrialization.\nNew Haven was incorporated as a city in 1784, and Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Constitution and author of the \"Connecticut Compromise\", became the new city's first mayor.\nThe city struck fortune in the late 18th century with the inventions and industrial activity of Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate who remained in New Haven to develop the cotton gin and establish a gun-manufacturing factory in the northern part of the city near the Hamden town line. That area is still known as Whitneyville, and the main road through both towns is known as Whitney Avenue. The factory is now the Eli Whitney Museum, which has a particular emphasis on activities for children and exhibits pertaining to the A. C. Gilbert Company. His factory, along with that of Simeon North, and the lively clock-making and brass hardware sectors, contributed to making early Connecticut a powerful manufacturing economy; so many arms manufacturers sprang up that the state became known as \"The Arsenal of America\". It was in Whitney's gun-manufacturing plant that Samuel Colt invented the automatic revolver in 1836. Many other talented machinists and firearms designers would go on to found successful firearms manufacturing companies in New Haven, including Oliver Winchester and O.F. Mossberg & Sons.\nThe Farmington Canal, created in the early 19th century, was a short-lived transporter of goods into the interior regions of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and ran from New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts.\nNew Haven was to be the site of the first college for African Americans in the United States, but the plan was obstructed by efforts led by Yale Law School founder and former New Haven Mayor David Daggett, who went on to serve as a U.S. Senator and judge on Connecticut's highest court. Daggett denigrated African Americans, denied they were citizens, and presided over the trial of a woman persecuted for trying to admit an African American girl to her boarding school and, having that effort blocked, running a boarding school for African American girls.\nNew Haven was home to one of the important early events in the burgeoning anti-slavery movement when, in 1839, the trial of mutineering Mende tribesmen being transported as slaves on the Spanish slaveship \"Amistad\" was held in New Haven's United States District Court. There is a statue of Joseph Cinqu\u00e9, the informal leader of the slaves, beside City Hall. See \"Museums\" below for more information. Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech on slavery in New Haven in 1860, shortly before he secured the Republican nomination for President.\nThe American Civil War boosted the local economy with wartime purchases of industrial goods, including that of the New Haven Arms Company, which would later become the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. (Winchester would continue to produce arms in New Haven until 2006, and many of the buildings that were a part of the Winchester plant are now a part of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company Historic District). After the war, population grew and doubled by the start of the 20th century, most notably due to the influx of immigrants from southern Europe, particularly Italy. Today, roughly half the populations of East Haven, West Haven, and North Haven are Italian-American. Jewish immigration to New Haven has left an enduring mark on the city. Westville was the center of Jewish life in New Haven, though today many have fanned out to suburban communities such as Woodbridge and Cheshire. Lowell House, the city's first settlement, opened in 1900.\nPost-industrial era and urban redevelopment.\nNew Haven's expansion continued during the two World Wars, with most new inhabitants being African Americans from the American South, and Puerto Ricans. The city reached its peak population after World War II. The area of New Haven is only , encouraging further development of new housing after 1950 in adjacent, suburban towns. Moreover, as in other U.S. cities in the 1950s, New Haven began to suffer white flight of middle-class workers. One author suggested that aggressive redlining and rezoning made it difficult for residents to obtain financing for older, deteriorating urban housing stock, thereby condemning such structures to deterioration.\nIn 1954, then-mayor Richard C. Lee began some of the earliest major urban renewal projects in the United States. Certain sections of downtown New Haven were redeveloped to include museums, new office towers, a hotel, and large shopping complexes. Other parts of the city, particularly the Wooster Square and Fair Haven neighborhoods were affected by the construction of Interstate 95 along the Long Wharf section, Interstate 91, and the Oak Street Connector. The Oak Street Connector (Route 34), running between Interstate 95, downtown, and The Hill neighborhood, was originally intended as a highway to the city's western suburbs but was only completed as a highway to the downtown area, with the area to the west becoming a boulevard (See \"Redevelopment\" below).\nIn 1970, a series of criminal prosecutions against various members of the Black Panther Party took place in New Haven, inciting mass protests on the New Haven Green involving twelve thousand demonstrators and many well-known New Left political activists. (See \"Political Culture\" below for more information). From the 1960s through the early 1990s, some areas of New Haven continued to decline both economically and in terms of population despite attempts to resurrect certain neighborhoods through renewal projects. In conjunction with its declining population, New Haven experienced a steep rise in its crime rate.\nSince approximately 2000, many parts of downtown New Haven have been revitalized with new restaurants, nightlife, and small retail stores. In particular, the area surrounding the New Haven Green has experienced an influx of apartments and condominiums. In addition, two new supermarkets opened to serve downtown's growing residential population: a Stop & Shop opened just west of downtown, while Elm City Market, located one block from the Green, opened in 2011. The recent turnaround of downtown New Haven has received positive press from various periodicals.\nMajor projects include the current construction of a new campus for Gateway Community College downtown, and also a 32-story, 500-unit apartment/retail building called 360 State Street. The 360 State Street project is now occupied and is the largest residential building in Connecticut. A new boathouse and dock is planned for New Haven Harbor, and the linear park Farmington Canal Trail is set to extend into downtown New Haven within the coming year. Additionally, foundation and ramp work to widen I-95 to create a new harbor crossing for New Haven, with an extradosed bridge to replace the 1950s-era Q Bridge, has begun. The city still hopes to redevelop the site of the New Haven Coliseum, which was demolished in 2007.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 18 white firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no black firefighters scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. In the subsequent \"Ricci v. DeStefano\" decision the court found 5\u20134 that New Haven's decision to ignore the test results violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a result, a district court subsequently ordered the city to promote 14 of the white firefighters.\nIn 2010 and 2011, state and federal funds were awarded to Connecticut (and Massachusetts) to construct the Hartford Line, with a southern terminus at New Haven's Union Station and a northern terminus at Springfield's Union Station. According to the White House, \"This corridor [currently] has one train per day connecting communities in Connecticut and Massachusetts to the Northeast Corridor and Vermont. The vision for this corridor is to restore the alignment to its original route via the Knowledge Corridor in western Massachusetts, improving trip time and increasing the population base that can be served.\" Set for construction in 2013, the \"Knowledge Corridor high speed intercity passenger rail\" project will cost approximately $1\u00a0billion, and the ultimate northern terminus for the project is reported to be Montreal in Canada. Train speeds between will reportedly exceed and increase both cities' rail traffic exponentially.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 6.67%, is water.\nNew Haven's best-known geographic features are its large, shallow harbor, and two reddish basalt trap rock ridges which rise to the northeast and northwest of the city core. These trap rocks are known respectively as East Rock and West Rock, and both serve as extensive parks. West Rock has been tunneled through to make way for the east\u2013west passage of the Wilbur Cross Parkway (the only highway tunnel through a natural obstacle in Connecticut), and once served as the hideout of the \"Regicides\" (see: Regicides Trail). Most New Haveners refer to these men as \"The Three Judges\". East Rock features the prominent Soldiers and Sailors war monument on its peak as well as the \"Great/Giant Steps\" which run up the rock's cliffside.\nThe city is drained by three rivers; the West, Mill, and Quinnipiac, named in order from west to east. The West River discharges into West Haven Harbor, while the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers discharge into New Haven Harbor. Both harbors are embayments of Long Island Sound. In addition, several smaller streams flow through the city's neighborhoods, including Wintergreen Brook, the Beaver Ponds Outlet, Wilmot Brook, Belden Brook, and Prospect Creek. Not all of these small streams have continuous flow year-round.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen classification, New Haven experiences a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\"), bordering a hot-summer humid continental climate (\"Dfa\"). The city has hot, humid summers and cool to cold winters. From May to late September, the weather is typically hot and humid, with average temperatures exceeding on 70 days per year. In summer, the Bermuda High creates as southern flow of warm and humid air, with frequent (but brief) thundershowers. October to early December is normally mild to cool late in the season, while early spring (April) can be cool to warm. Winters are more variable, with cool to cold temperatures, mixed with warmer spells, with both rain and snow fall.\nWhile the weather patterns that affect New Haven result from a primarily offshore direction, thus reducing the marine influence of Long Island Sound, the location on Long Island Sound often influences the weather along the coastline compared to inland. During summer heat waves, temperatures may reach or higher on occasion with heat-index values of over . Tropical cyclones have struck New Haven in the past, including 1938 Hurricane (Long Island Express), Hurricane Carol in 1954, Hurricane Gloria in 1985. The hardiness zone is 7a.\nStreetscape.\nNew Haven has a long tradition of urban planning and a purposeful design for the city's layout. The city could be argued to have some of the first preconceived layouts in the country. Upon founding, New Haven was laid out in a grid plan of nine square blocks; the central square was left open, in the tradition of many New England towns, as the city green (a commons area). The city also instituted the first public tree planting program in America. As in other cities, many of the elms that gave New Haven the nickname \"Elm City\" perished in the mid-20th century due to Dutch elm disease, although many have since been replanted. The New Haven Green is currently home to three separate historic churches which speak to the original theocratic nature of the city. The Green remains the social center of the city today. It was named a National Historic Landmark in 1970.\nDowntown New Haven, occupied by nearly 7,000 residents, has a more residential character than most downtowns. The downtown area provides about half of the city's jobs and half of its tax base and in recent years has become filled with dozens of new upscale restaurants, in addition to shops and thousands of apartments and condominium units which subsequently help overall growth of the city.\nNeighborhoods.\nThe city has many distinct neighborhoods. In addition to Downtown, centered on the central business district and the Green, are the following neighborhoods: the west central neighborhoods of Dixwell and Dwight; the southern neighborhoods of The Hill, historic water-front City Point (or Oyster Point), and the harborside district of Long Wharf; the western neighborhoods of Beaver Hills, Edgewood, West River, Westville, Amity, and West Rock-Westhills; East Rock, Cedar Hill, Prospect Hill, and Newhallville in the northern side of town; the east central neighborhoods of Mill River and Wooster Square, an Italian-American neighborhood; Fair Haven, an immigrant community located between the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers; Quinnipiac Meadows and Fair Haven Heights across the Quinnipiac River; and facing the eastern side of the harbor, The Annex and East Shore (or Morris Cove).\nDemographics.\nCensus data.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nThe U.S. Census Bureau reports a 2010 population of 129,779, with 47,094 households and 25,854 families within the city of New Haven. The population density was . There were 52,941 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 42.6% White, 35.4% African American, 0.5% Native American, 4.6% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 12.9% from other races, and 3.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 27.4% of the population. Non-Hispanic Whites were 31.8% of the population in 2010, down from 69.6% in 1970. The city's Latino population is growing rapidly. Previous influxes among ethnic groups have been African-Americans in the postwar era, and Irish, Italian and (to a lesser degree) Slavic peoples in the prewar period.\nAs of the 2010 census, of the 47,094 households, 29.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 27.5% include married couples living together, 22.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 36.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.5% had someone living alone who was 65\u00a0years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40 and the average family size 3.19.\nThe ages of New Haven's residents were 25.4% under the age of 18, 16.4% from 18 to 24, 31.2% from 25 to 44, 16.7% from 45 to 64, and 10.2% who were 65\u00a0years of age or older. The median age was 29\u00a0years, which was significantly lower than the national average. There were 91.8 males per 100 females. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.6 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $29,604, and the median income for a family was $35,950. Median income for males was $33,605, compared with $28,424 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,393. About 20.5% of families and 24.4% of the population were living below the poverty line, including 32.2% of those under age 18 and 17.9% of those age 65 or over.\nOther data.\nIt is estimated that 14% of New Haven residents are pedestrian commuters, ranking it number four by highest percentage in the United States. This is primarily due to New Haven's small area and the presence of Yale University.\nNew Haven is noted for having the highest percentage of Italian American residents of any US city, and is noted for its local style of pizza.\nA study of the demographics of the New Haven metro area, based on age, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity, found that they were the closest of any American city to the national average.\nEconomy.\nNew Haven's economy originally was based in manufacturing, but the postwar period brought rapid industrial decline; the entire Northeast was affected, and medium-sized cities with large working-class populations, like New Haven, were hit particularly hard. Simultaneously, the growth and expansion of Yale University further affected the economic shift. Today, over half (56%) of the city's economy is now made up of services, in particular education and health care; Yale is the city's largest employer, followed by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital. Other large employers include Southern Connecticut State University, Assa Abloy lock manufacturing, the Knights of Columbus headquarters, Higher One, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Covidien and United Illuminating. Clothing stores Gant and Ann Taylor were founded in the city.\nIn 2017, New Haven was ranked by a Verizon study as one of the top 10 cities in America for launching tech startups, and top two in New England.\nIndustry sectors: Agriculture (.6%), Construction and Mining (4.9%), Manufacturing (2.9%), Transportation and Utilities (2.9%), Trade (21.7%), Finance and Real Estate (7.1%), Services (55.9%), Government (4.0%)\nHeadquarters.\nThe Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization and a Fortune 1000 company, is headquartered in New Haven. Amphenol, based in Greater New Haven (Wallingford), is a Fortune 100 company. Eight Courant 100 companies are based in Greater New Haven, with four headquartered in New Haven proper. New Haven-based companies traded on stock exchanges include NewAlliance Bank, the second largest bank in Connecticut and fourth-largest in New England (NYSE: NAL), Higher One Holdings (NYSE: ONE), a financial services firm, United Illuminating, the electricity distributor for southern Connecticut (NYSE: UIL), and Transpro Inc. (AMEX: TPR). The American division of Assa Abloy (one of the world's leading manufacturers of locks) is located in the city. The Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET) began operations in the city as the District Telephone Company of New Haven in 1878; the company remains headquartered in New Haven as a subsidiary of Frontier Communications and provides telephone service for all but two municipalities in Connecticut. SeeClickFix was founded and has been headquartered in the city since 2007. Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company (a candy-making division of the Hershey Company) was formerly located in the city. Achillion Pharmaceuticals and Alexion Pharmaceuticals were also formerly headquartered in New Haven.\nLaw and government.\nPolitical structure.\nNew Haven is governed via the mayor-council system. Connecticut municipalities (like those of neighboring states Massachusetts and Rhode Island) provide nearly all local services (such as fire and rescue, education, snow removal, etc.), as county government has been abolished since 1960.\nNew Haven County merely refers to a grouping of towns and a judicial district, not a governmental entity. New Haven is a member of the South Central Connecticut Regional Council of Governments (SCRCOG), a regional agency created to facilitate coordination between area municipal governments and state and federal agencies, in the absence of county government.\nJustin Elicker is the mayor of New Haven. He was sworn in as the 51st mayor of New Haven on January 1, 2020.\nThe city council, called the Board of Alders, consists of thirty members, each elected from single-member wards. Each of the 30 wards consists of slightly over 4,300 residents; redistricting takes place every ten years.\nThe city is overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2017, of the town's 83,694 voters, 66% were registered as Democrats (\u22124% since 2015), 4% were registered as Republicans (+1%), and 29% were unaffiliated (+3). The board of alders is dominated by Democrats; a Republican has not served as a New Haven alder since 2011.\nNew Haven is served by the New Haven Police Department, which had 443 sworn officers in 2011. The city is also served by the New Haven Fire Department.\nNew Haven lies within Connecticut's 3rd congressional district and has been represented by Rosa DeLauro since 1991. Martin Looney and Gary Holder-Winfield represent New Haven in the Connecticut State Senate, and the city lies within six districts (numbers 92 through 97) of the Connecticut House of Representatives.\nThe Greater New Haven area is served by the New Haven Judicial District Court and the New Haven Superior Court, both headquartered at the New Haven County Courthouse. The federal District Court for the District of Connecticut has a New Haven facility, the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse.\nPolitical history.\nNew Haven is the birthplace of former president George W. Bush, who was born when his father, former president George H. W. Bush, was living in New Haven while a student at Yale. In addition to being the site of the college educations of both Presidents Bush, as Yale students, New Haven was also the temporary home of former presidents William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, and Bill Clinton, as well as Secretary of State John Kerry. President Clinton met his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while the two were students at Yale Law School. Former vice presidents John C. Calhoun and Dick Cheney also studied in New Haven (although the latter did not graduate from Yale). Before the 2008 election, the last time there was not a person with ties to New Haven and Yale on either major party's ticket was 1968. James Hillhouse, a New Haven native, served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate in 1801.\nNew Haven voters overwhelmingly supported Al Gore in the 2000 election, Yale graduate John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. In the 2008 election, New Haven County was third among all Connecticut counties in campaign contributions, after Fairfield and Hartford counties. (Connecticut, in turn, was ranked 14th among all states in total campaign contributions.)\nNew Haven was the subject of \" Who Governs? Democracy and Power in An American City\", a very influential book in political science by preeminent Yale professor Robert A. Dahl, which includes an extensive history of the city and thorough description of its politics in the 1950s. New Haven's theocratic history is also mentioned several times by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic volume on 19th-century American political life, \"Democracy in America\". New Haven was the residence of conservative thinker William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1951, when he wrote his influential \"God and Man at Yale\". William Lee Miller's \"The Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society\" (1966) similarly explores the relationship between local politics in New Haven and national political movements, focusing on Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and urban renewal.\nGeorge Williamson Crawford, a Yale Law School graduate, served as the city's first black corporation counsel from 1954 to 1962, under Mayor Richard C. Lee.\nIn 1970, the New Haven Black Panther trials took place, the largest and longest trials in Connecticut history. Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale and ten other party members were tried for murdering an alleged informant. Beginning on May Day, the city became a center of protest for 12,000 Panther supporters, college students, and New Left activists (including Jean Genet, Benjamin Spock, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and John Froines), who amassed on the New Haven Green, across the street from where the trials were being held. Violent confrontations between the demonstrators and the New Haven Police occurred, and several bombs were set off in the area by radicals. The event became a rallying point for the New Left and critics of the Nixon Administration.\nDuring the summer of 2007, New Haven was the center of protests by anti-immigration groups who opposed the city's program of offering municipal ID cards, known as the Elm City Resident Card, to illegal immigrants. In 2008, the country of Ecuador opened a consulate in New Haven to serve the large Ecuadorean immigrant population in the area. It is the first foreign mission to open in New Haven since Italy opened a consulate (now closed) in the city in 1910.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 20 white and Hispanic firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no blacks scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. On June 29, 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the firefighters, agreeing that they were improperly denied promotion because of their race. The case, \"Ricci v. DeStefano\", became highly publicized and brought national attention to New Haven politics due to the involvement of then-Supreme Court nominee (and Yale Law School graduate) Sonia Sotomayor in a lower court decision.\nGarry Trudeau, creator of the political \"Doonesbury\" comic strip, attended Yale University. There he met fellow student and later Green Party candidate for Congress Charles Pillsbury, a long-time New Haven resident for whom Trudeau's comic strip is named. During his college years, Pillsbury was known by the nickname \"The Doones\". A theory of international law, which argues for a sociological normative approach in regards to jurisprudence, is named the New Haven Approach, after the city. Connecticut US senator Richard Blumenthal is a Yale graduate, as is former Connecticut US Senator Joe Lieberman who also was a New Haven resident for many years, before moving back to his hometown of Stamford.\nCrime.\nCrime increased in the 1990s, with New Haven having one of the ten highest violent crime rates per capita in the United States. In the late 1990s New Haven's crime began to stabilize. The city, adopting a policy of community policing, saw crime rates drop during the 2000s.\nViolent crime levels vary dramatically among New Haven's neighborhoods, with some areas having crime rates in line with the state of Connecticut average, and others having extremely high rates of crime. A 2011 New Haven Health Department report identifies these issues in greater detail.\nIn 2010, New Haven ranked as the 18th most dangerous city in the United States (albeit below the safety benchmark of 200.00 for the second consecutive year). However, according to a completely different analysis conducted by the \"24/7 Wall Street Blog\", in 2011 New Haven had risen to become the fourth most dangerous city in the United States, and was widely cited in the press as such.\nHowever, an analysis by the Regional Data Cooperative for Greater New Haven, Inc., has shown that due to issues of comparative denominators and other factors, such municipality-based rankings can be considered inaccurate. For example, two cities of identical population can cover widely differing land areas, making such analyses irrelevant. The research organization called for comparisons based on neighborhoods, blocks, or standard methodologies (similar to those used by Brookings, DiversityData, and other established institutions), not based on municipalities.\nEducation.\nColleges and universities.\nNew Haven is a notable center for higher education. Yale University, at the heart of downtown, is one of the city's best known features and its largest employer. New Haven is also home to Southern Connecticut State University, part of the Connecticut State University System, and Albertus Magnus College, a private institution. Gateway Community College has a campus in downtown New Haven, formerly located in the Long Wharf district; Gateway consolidated into one campus downtown into a new state-of-the-art campus (on the site of the old Macy's building) and was open for the Fall 2012 semester.\nThere are several institutions immediately outside of New Haven, as well. Quinnipiac University and the Paier College of Art are located just to the north, in the town of Hamden. The University of New Haven is located not in New Haven but in neighboring West Haven.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nNew Haven Public Schools is the school district serving the city. Wilbur Cross High School and Hillhouse High School are New Haven's two largest public secondary schools.\nHopkins School, a private school, was founded in 1660 and is the fifth-oldest educational institution in the United States. New Haven is home to a number of other private schools as well as public magnet schools, including Metropolitan Business Academy, High School in the Community, Hill Regional Career High School, Co-op High School, New Haven Academy, Edgewood Magnet School, ACES Educational Center for the Arts, the Foote School and the Sound School, all of which draw students from New Haven and suburban towns. New Haven is also home to two Achievement First charter schools, Amistad Academy and Elm City College Prep, and to Common Ground, an environmental charter school.\nThe city is renowned for its progressive school lunch programs, and participation in statewide bussing efforts toward increased diversity in schools.\nCulture.\nCuisine.\nLivability.com named New Haven as the Best Foodie City in the country in 2014. There are dozens of Zagat-rated restaurants in New Haven, the most in Connecticut and the third most in New England (after Boston and Cambridge). More than 120 restaurants are located within two blocks of the New Haven Green. The city is home to an eclectic mix of ethnic restaurants and small markets specializing in various foreign foods. Represented cuisines include Malaysian, Ethiopian, Spanish, Belgian, French, Greek, Latin American, Mexican, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Cuban, Peruvian, Syrian/Lebanese, and Turkish.\nNew Haven's greatest culinary claim to fame may be its pizza, which has been claimed to be among the best in the country, or even in the world. New Haven-style pizza, called \"apizza\", made its debut at the iconic Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana (known as Pepe's) in 1925. Apizza is baked in coal- or wood-fired brick ovens, and is notable for its thin crust. Apizza may be red (with a tomato-based sauce) or white (with a sauce of garlic and olive oil), and pies ordered \"plain\" are made without the otherwise customary mozzarella (originally smoked mozzarella, known as \"scamorza\" in Italian). A white clam pie is a well-known specialty of the restaurants on Wooster Street in the Little Italy section of New Haven, including Pepe's and Sally's Apizza (which opened in 1938). Modern Apizza on State Street, which opened in 1934, is also well-known.\nA second New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Louis' Lunch, which is located in a small brick building on Crown Street and has been serving fast food since 1895. Though fiercely debated, the restaurant's founder Louis Lassen is credited by the Library of Congress with inventing the hamburger and steak sandwich. Louis' Lunch broils hamburgers, steak sandwiches and hot dogs vertically in original antique 1898 cast iron stoves using gridirons, patented by local resident Luigi Pieragostini in 1939, that hold the meat in place while it cooks.\nA third New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Miya's, the first sustainable sushi restaurant in the world. Miya's, founded by Chef Yoshiko Lai in 1982, featured the first sustainable seafood-based sushi menu, the first plant-based sushi menu, and the first invasive species menu in the world. Second generation Miya's chef, Bun Lai, is the 2016 White House Champions of Change for Sustainable Seafood and a James Beard Foundation Award nominee. Chef Bun Lai is credited as the first chef in the world for implementing a sustainability paradigm to the cuisine of sushi.\nDuring weekday lunchtime, over 150 lunch carts and food trucks cater to diners around the city. The carts and food trucks cluster at four main points: on Long Wharf Drive, along the city's shoreline with quick access off Interstate 95, by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital in the center of the Hospital Green (Cedar and York streets), by Yale's Trumbull College (Elm and York streets), and on the intersection of Prospect and Sachem streets by the Yale School of Management.\nPopular farmers' markets, managed by the local non-profit CitySeed, set up shop weekly in several neighborhoods, including Westville/Edgewood Park, Fair Haven, Upper State Street, Wooster Square, and Downtown/New Haven Green.\nA large grocery store, the Elm City Market, opened on 360 State Street in New Haven in early fall 2011 and served local produce and groceries to the community. Originally, the market was a member-owned co-op, but debt defaults in August 2014 forced a sale of the business. It is now an employee-owned business; the co-op's previous owners received no equity in the new business.\nIn the past several years, two separate Downtown food tour companies have started offering popular restaurant tours on weekends.\nTaste of New Haven Tours offers several different weekly restaurant/bar tours and a popular pizza, bike, and pints tour. Culinary Walking Tours offers monthly restaurant tours and sponsors an annual Elm City Iron Chef competition.\nTheatre and film.\nThe city hosts numerous theatres and production houses, including the Yale Repertory Theatre, the Long Wharf Theatre, and the Shubert Theatre. There is also theatre activity from the Yale School of Drama, which works through the Yale University Theatre and the student-run Yale Cabaret. Southern Connecticut State University hosts the Lyman Center for the Performing Arts. The shuttered Palace Theatre (opposite the Shubert Theatre) was renovated and reopened as the College Street Music Hall in May 2015. Smaller theatres include the Little Theater on Lincoln Street. Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School also has a theatre on College Street. The theatre is used for student productions, and is the home to weekly services to a local non-denominational church, the City Church New Haven.\nThe Shubert Theatre once premiered many major theatrical productions before their Broadway debuts. Productions that premiered at the Shubert include \"Oklahoma!\" (which was also written in New Haven), \"Carousel\", \"South Pacific\", \"My Fair Lady\", \"The King and I\", and \"The Sound of Music\", and the Tennessee Williams play \"A Streetcar Named Desire\".\nBow Tie Cinemas owns and operates the Criterion Cinemas, the first new movie theater to open in New Haven in over 30 years and the first luxury movie complex in the city's history. The Criterion has seven screens and opened in November 2004, showing a mix of upscale first run commercial and independent film.\nMuseums.\nNew Haven has a variety of museums, many of them associated with Yale. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library features an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible. There is also the Connecticut Children's Museum; the Knights of Columbus museum near that organization's world headquarters; the Peabody Museum of Natural History; the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments; the Eli Whitney Museum (across the town line in Hamden, Connecticut, on Whitney Avenue); the Yale Center for British Art, which houses the largest collection of British art outside the U.K., and the Yale University Art Gallery, the western hemisphere's oldest college art museum. New Haven is also home to the New Haven Museum and Historical Society on Whitney Avenue, which has a library of many primary source treasures dating from Colonial times to the present.\nArtspace on Orange Street is one of several contemporary art galleries around the city, showcasing the work of local, national, and international artists. Others include City Gallery and A. Leaf Gallery in the downtown area. Westville galleries include Kehler Liddell, Jennifer Jane Gallery, and The Hungry Eye. The Erector Square complex in the Fair Haven neighborhood houses, the Parachute Factory gallery along with numerous artist studios, and the complex serves as an active destination during City-Wide Open Studios held yearly in October.\nNew Haven is the home port of a life-size replica of the historical \"Freedom Schooner Amistad\", which is open for tours at Long Wharf pier at certain times during the summer. Also at Long Wharf pier is the \"Quinnipiack\" schooner, offering sailing cruises of the harbor area throughout the summer. The \"Quinnipiack\" also functions as a floating classroom for hundreds of local students.\nMusic.\nThe New Haven Green is the site of many free music concerts, especially during the summer months. These have included the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the July Free Concerts on the Green, and the New Haven Jazz Festival in August. The Jazz Festival, which began in 1982, is one of the longest-running free outdoor festivals in the U.S., until it was canceled for 2007. Headliners such as Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles and Celia Cruz have historically drawn 30,000 to 50,000 fans, filling up the New Haven Green to capacity. The New Haven Jazz Festival was revived in 2008 and has been sponsored since by Jazz Haven.\nNew Haven is home to the concert venue Toad's Place, and a new venue, College Street Music Hall. The city has retained an alternative art and music underground that has helped to influence post-punk era music movements such as indie, college rock and underground hip-hop.\nThe Yale School of Music contributes to the city's music scene by offering hundreds of free concerts throughout the year at venues in and around the Yale campus. Large performances are held in the 2,700-seat Woolsey Hall auditorium, which contains the world's largest symphonic organs, while chamber music and recitals are performed in Sprague Hall.\nHardcore band Hatebreed are from Wallingford, but got their start in New Haven under the name Jasta 14. The band Miracle Legion formed in New Haven in 1983. Folk musicians from New Haven include Loren Mazzacane Connors and Kath Bloom.\nThe Hillhouse Opera Company is a U.S. non-profit opera company based in New Haven that performs in the New Haven area. Founded in 2008 by Victoria Leigh Gardner, Nicole Rodriguez and Jim Coatsworth Hillhouse Opera Company has performed operas as well as opera scenes programs, master classes and concert series. In 2011, the Company professionally staged the works created through the Riverview Opera Project. The Riverview Opera Project created workshops for children and adolescents at Riverview Hospital, Connecticut's only state-funded psychiatric hospital for youth, and helped them to successfully create, produce, and perform four original operas.\nFestivals.\nIn addition to the Jazz Festival (described above), New Haven serves as the home city of the annual International Festival of Arts and Ideas. New Haven's Saint Patrick's Day parade, which began in 1842, is New England's oldest and draws the largest crowds of any one-day spectator event in Connecticut. The St. Andrew the Apostle Italian Festival has taken place in the historic Wooster Square neighborhood every year since 1900. Other parishes in the city celebrate the Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua and a carnival in honor of St. Bernadette Soubirous. New Haven celebrates Powder House Day every April on the New Haven Green to commemorate the city's entrance into the Revolutionary War. The annual Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival commemorates the 1973 planting of 72 Yoshino Japanese cherry blossom trees by the New Haven Historic Commission in collaboration with the New Haven Parks Department and residents of the neighborhood. The Festival now draws well over 5,000 visitors. The Film Fest New Haven has been held annually since 1995.\nNightlife.\nIn the past decade downtown has seen an influx of new restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Large crowds are drawn to the Crown Street area downtown on weekends where many of the restaurants and bars are located. Crown Street between State and High Streets has dozens of establishments, as do nearby Temple and College Streets. Away from downtown, Upper State Street has a number of restaurants and bars popular with local residents and weekend visitors.\nNewspapers and media.\nNew Haven is served by the daily \"New Haven Register\", the weekly \"alternative\" \"New Haven Advocate\" (which is run by Tribune, the corporation owning the \"Hartford Courant\"), the online daily \"New Haven Independent\", and the monthly \"Grand News Community Newspaper.\" Downtown New Haven is covered by an in-depth civic news forum, Design New Haven. The \"Register\" also backs \"PLAY\" magazine, a weekly entertainment publication. The city is also served by several student-run papers, including the \"Yale Daily News\", the weekly \"Yale Herald\" and a humor tabloid, \"Rumpus Magazine\".\nWTNH Channel 8, the ABC affiliate for Connecticut, WCTX Channel 59, the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the state, Connecticut Public Television station WEDY channel 65, a PBS affiliate, and WTXX Channel 34, the IntrigueTV affiliate, broadcast from New Haven. All New York City news and sports team stations broadcast to New Haven County.\nSports and athletics.\nNew Haven has a history of professional sports franchises dating back to the 19th century and has been the home to professional baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer teams\u2014including the New York Giants of the National Football League from 1973 to 1974, who played at the Yale Bowl. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, New Haven consistently had minor league hockey and baseball teams, which played at the New Haven Arena (built in 1926, demolished in 1972), New Haven Coliseum (1972\u20132002), and Yale Field (1928\u2013present).\nWhen John DeStefano, Jr., became mayor of New Haven in 1995, he outlined a plan to transform the city into a major cultural and arts center in the Northeast, which involved investments in programs and projects other than sports franchises. As nearby Bridgeport built new sports facilities, the brutalist New Haven Coliseum rapidly deteriorated. Believing the upkeep on the venue to be a drain of tax dollars, the DeStefano administration closed the Coliseum in 2002; it was demolished in 2007. New Haven's last professional sports team, the New Haven County Cutters, left in 2009. The DeStefano administration did, however, see the construction of the New Haven Athletic Center in 1998, a indoor athletic facility with a seating capacity of over 3,000. The NHAC, built adjacent to Hillhouse High School, is used for New Haven public schools athletics, as well as large-scale area and state sporting events; it is the largest high school indoor sports complex in the state.\nNew Haven was the host of the 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games; then-President Bill Clinton spoke at the opening ceremonies. The city is home to the Pilot Pen International tennis event, which takes place every August at the Connecticut Tennis Center, one of the largest tennis venues in the world. New Haven biannually hosts \"The Game\" between Yale and Harvard, the country's second-oldest college football rivalry. Numerous road races take place in New Haven, including the USATF 20K Championship during the New Haven Road Race.\nGreater New Haven is home to a number of college sports teams. The Yale Bulldogs play Division I college sports, as do the Quinnipiac Bobcats in neighboring Hamden. Division II athletics are played by Southern Connecticut State University and the University of New Haven (actually located in neighboring West Haven), while Albertus Magnus College athletes perform at the Division III level.\nNew Haven is home to many New York Yankees, New York Mets, & Boston Red Sox fans due to the proximity of New York City & Boston.\nWalter Camp, deemed the \"father of American football\", was a New Havener.\nThe New Haven Warriors rugby league team play in the AMNRL. They have a large number of Pacific Islanders playing for them. Their field is located at the West Haven High School's Ken Strong Stadium. They won the 2008 AMNRL Grand Final.\nStructures.\nArchitecture.\nNew Haven has many architectural landmarks dating from every important time period and architectural style in American history. The city has been home to a number of architects and architectural firms that have left their mark on the city including Ithiel Town and Henry Austin in the 19th century and Cesar Pelli, Warren Platner, Kevin Roche, Herbert Newman and Barry Svigals in the 20th. The Yale School of Architecture has fostered this important component of the city's economy. Cass Gilbert, of the Beaux-Arts school, designed New Haven's Union Station and the New Haven Free Public Library and was also commissioned for a City Beautiful plan in 1919. Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, Alexander Jackson Davis, Philip C. Johnson, Gordon Bunshaft, Louis Kahn, James Gamble Rogers, Frank Gehry, Charles Willard Moore, Stefan Behnisch, James Polshek, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen and Robert Venturi all have designed buildings in New Haven. Yale's 1950s-era Ingalls Rink, designed by Eero Saarinen, was included on the \"America's Favorite Architecture\" list created in 2007.\nSeveral residential homes in New Haven were designed by Alice Washburn, a noted female architect whose Colonial Revival style set a standard for homes in the region.\nMany of the city's neighborhoods are well-preserved as walkable \"museums\" of 19th- and 20th-century American architecture, particularly by the New Haven Green, Hillhouse Avenue and other residential sections close to Downtown New Haven. Overall, a large proportion of the city's land area is National (NRHP) historic districts. One of the best sources on local architecture is \"New Haven: Architecture and Urban Design\", by Elizabeth Mills Brown.\nThe five tallest buildings in New Haven are:\nHistoric points of interest.\nMany historical sites exist throughout the city, including 59 properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Of these, nine are among the 60 U.S. National Historic Landmarks in Connecticut. The New Haven Green, one of the National Historic Landmarks, was formed in 1638, and is home to three 19th-century churches. Below the First Church of Christ in New Haven (referred to as the Center Church on the Green) lies a 17th-century crypt, which is open to visitors. Some of the more famous burials include the first wife of Benedict Arnold and the aunt and grandmother of President Rutherford B. Hayes; Hayes visited the crypt while President in 1880. The Old Campus of Yale University is located next to the Green, and includes Connecticut Hall, Yale's oldest building and a National Historic Landmark. The Hillhouse Avenue area, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a part of Yale's campus, has been called a walkable museum, due to its 19th-century mansions and street scape; Charles Dickens is said to have called Hillhouse Avenue \"the most beautiful street in America\" when visiting the city in 1868.\nIn 1660, Edward Whalley (a cousin and friend of Oliver Cromwell) and William Goffe, two English Civil War generals who signed the death warrant of King Charles I, hid in a rock formation in New Haven after having fled England upon the restoration of Charles II to the English throne. They were later joined by a third regicide, John Dixwell. The rock formation, which is now a part of West Rock Park, is known as Judges' Cave, and the path leading to the cave is called the Regicides Trail.\nAfter the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, the Connecticut colonial government ordered the construction of Black Rock Fort (to be built on top of an older 17th-century fort) to protect the port of New Haven. In 1779, during the Battle of New Haven, British soldiers captured Black Rock Fort and burned the barracks to the ground. The fort was reconstructed in 1807 by the federal government (on orders from the Thomas Jefferson administration), and rechristened Fort Nathan Hale, after the Revolutionary War hero who had lived in New Haven. The cannons of Fort Nathan Hale were successful in defying British war ships during the War of 1812. In 1863, during the Civil War, a second Fort Hale was built next to the original, complete with bomb-resistant bunkers and a moat, to defend the city should a Southern raid against New Haven be launched. The United States Congress deeded the site to the state in 1921, and all three versions of the fort have been restored. The site is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and receives thousands of visitors each year.\nGrove Street Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark which lies adjacent to Yale's campus, contains the graves of Roger Sherman, Eli Whitney, Noah Webster, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Charles Goodyear and Walter Camp, among other notable burials. The cemetery is noted for its Egyptian Revival gateway, and is the oldest planned burial ground in the United States. The Union League Club of New Haven building, located on Chapel Street, is notable for not only being a historic Beaux-Arts building, but also is built on the site where Roger Sherman's home once stood; George Washington is known to have stayed at the Sherman residence while President in 1789 (one of three times Washington visited New Haven throughout his lifetime).\nTwo sites pay homage to the time President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft lived in the city, as both a student and later Professor at Yale: a plaque on Prospect Street marks the site where Taft's home formerly stood, and downtown's Taft Apartment Building (formerly the Taft Hotel) bears the name of the former president who resided in the building for eight years before becoming Chief Justice of the United States.\nLighthouse Point Park, a public beach run by the city, was a popular tourist destination during the Roaring Twenties, attracting luminaries of the period such as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. The park remains popular among New Haveners, and is home to the Five Mile Point Lighthouse, constructed in 1847, and the Lighthouse Point Carousel, constructed in 1916. Five Mile Point Light was decommissioned in 1877 following the construction of Southwest Ledge Light at the entrance of the harbor, which remains in service to this day. Both of the lighthouses and the carousel are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nOther historic sites in the city include the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, which stands at the summit of East Rock, the Marsh Botanical Garden, Wooster Square, Dwight Street, Louis' Lunch, and the Farmington Canal, all of which date back to the 19th century. Other historic parks besides the Green include Edgerton Park, Edgewood Park, and East Rock Park, each of which is included on the National Register of Historic Places.\nTransportation.\nRail.\nNew Haven has two railroad stations, connected to New York City and points along the Northeast Corridor by commuter rail, regional rail and inter-city rail. Service is provided by:\nThe city's main railroad station is the historic Beaux-Arts Union Station, which serves Metro-North, Hartford Line, and Shore Line East commuter trains. Approximately 175 trains serve Union Station on weekdays. Union Station is also served by four Amtrak lines: the \"Northeast Regional\" and the high-speed \"Acela Express\" provide service to New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston, and rank as the first and second busiest routes in the country; the New Haven\u2013Springfield Line provides service to Hartford and Springfield, Massachusetts; and the \"Vermonter\" provides service to both Washington, D.C., and Vermont, from the Canada\u2013US border.\nAn additional station, State Street Station, was opened in 2002, providing passengers easier access to downtown New Haven. State Street Station is currently serviced by Shore Line East and Hartford Line trains, plus some peak-hour Metro-North trips.\nBus.\nThe New Haven Division of Connecticut Transit (CT Transit), the state's bus system, is the second largest division in the state with 24 routes. All routes originate from the New Haven Green, making it the central transfer hub of the city. Service is provided to 19 different municipalities throughout Greater New Haven. Bus routes were formerly identified by letters, but as of October 8, 2017, all service was renamed using 200-series numbers, in accordance with a renumbering of CTtransit's statewide services.\nCT Transit's Union Station Shuttle provides free service from Union Station to the New Haven Green and several New Haven parking garages. Peter Pan and Greyhound bus lines have scheduled stops at Union Station, and connections downtown can be made via the Union Station Shuttle. A private company operates the New Haven/Hartford Express which provides commuter bus service to Hartford. The Yale University Shuttle provides free transportation around New Haven for Yale students, faculty, and staff.\nThe New Haven Division buses follow routes that had originally been covered by trolley service. Horse-drawn streetcars began operating in New Haven in the 1860s, and by the mid-1890s all the lines had become electric. In the 1920s and 1930s, some of the trolley lines began to be replaced by bus lines, with the last trolley route converted to bus in 1948. The City of New Haven is in the very early stages of considering the restoration of streetcar (light-rail) service, which has been absent since the postwar period.\nBicycle.\nBikeshare.\nOn February 21, 2018, New Haven officially launched its Bike New Haven bikeshare program. based on dockless technology powered by Noa Technologies At time of launch, the program features 10 docking stations and 100 bikes, spread throughout the urban core; there are plans to reach 30 bike stations and 300 bikes by the end of April 2018. The launch of the New Haven bikeshare program coincided with the launch of Yale University's own bikeshare program, which uses the same technology powered by Noa.\nBike lanes.\nIn 2004, the first bike lane in the city was added to Orange Street, connecting East Rock Park and the East Rock neighborhood to downtown. Since then, bike lanes have also been added to sections of Howard Ave, Elm St, Dixwell Avenue, Water Street, Clinton Avenue and State Street. The city has created recommended bike routes for getting around New Haven, including use of the Canal Trail and the Orange Street lane. As of the end of 2012, bicycle lanes have also been added in both directions on Dixwell Avenue along most of the street from downtown to the Hamden town line, as well as along Howard Avenue from Yale New Haven Hospital to City Point.\nThe city has plans to create two additional bike lanes connecting Union Station with downtown, and the Westville neighborhood with downtown. The city has added dozens of covered bike parking spots at Union Station, in order to facilitate more bike commuting to the station.\nFarmington Canal Greenway.\nThe Farmington Canal Trail is a rail trail that will eventually run continuously from downtown New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts. The scenic trail follows the path of the historic New Haven and Northampton Company and the Farmington Canal. Currently, there is a continuous stretch of the trail from downtown, through Hamden and into Cheshire, making bicycle commuting between New Haven and those suburbs possible. The trail is part of the East Coast Greenway, a proposed bike path that would link every major city on the East Coast from Florida to Maine.\nRoads.\nNew Haven lies at the intersection of Interstate 95 on the coast\u2014which provides access southwards and/or westwards to the western coast of Connecticut and to New York City, and eastwards to the eastern Connecticut shoreline, Rhode Island, and eastern Massachusetts\u2014and Interstate 91, which leads northward to the interior of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont and the Canada\u2013US border. I-95 is notorious for traffic jams increasing with proximity to New York City; on the east side of New Haven it passes over the Quinnipiac River via the Pearl Harbor Memorial, or \"Q Bridge\", which often presents a major bottleneck to traffic. I-91, however, is relatively less congested, except at the intersection with I-95 during peak travel times.\nThe Oak Street Connector (Connecticut Route 34) intersects I-91 at exit 1, just south of the I-95/I-91 interchange, and runs northwest for a few blocks as an expressway spur into downtown before emptying onto surface roads. The Wilbur Cross Parkway (Connecticut Route 15) runs parallel to I-95 west of New Haven, turning northwards as it nears the city and then running northwards parallel to I-91 through the outer rim of New Haven and Hamden, offering an alternative to the I-95/I-91 journey (restricted to non-commercial vehicles). Route 15 in New Haven is the site of the only highway tunnel in the state (officially designated as Heroes Tunnel), running through West Rock, home to West Rock Park and the Three Judges Cave.\nThe city also has several major surface arteries. U.S. Route 1 (Columbus Avenue, Union Avenue, Water Street, Forbes Avenue) runs in an east\u2013west direction south of downtown serving Union Station and leading out of the city to Milford, West Haven, East Haven and Branford. The main road from downtown heading northwest is Whalley Avenue (partly signed as Route 10 and Route 63) leading to Westville and Woodbridge. Heading north towards Hamden, there are two major thoroughfares, Dixwell Avenue and Whitney Avenue. To the northeast are Middletown Avenue (Route 17), which leads to the Montowese section of North Haven, and Foxon Boulevard (Route 80), which leads to the Foxon section of East Haven and to the town of North Branford. To the west is Route 34, which leads to the city of Derby. Other major intracity arteries are Ella Grasso Boulevard (Route 10) west of downtown, and College Street, Temple Street, Church Street, Elm Street, and Grove Street in the downtown area.\nTraffic safety is a major concern for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists in New Haven. In addition to many traffic-related fatalities in the city each year, since 2005, over a dozen Yale students, staff and faculty have been killed or injured in traffic collisions on or near the campus.\nAirport.\nTweed New Haven Airport is located within the city limits east of the business district, straddling the border with neighboring East Haven. Service to approximately 25 cities is provided by Avelo Airlines, which established its first East Coast base at the airport in 2021. Breeze Airways plans to begin operations at Tweed in December 2024, and will provide service to 10 destinations. The airport is currently planning a runway lengthening and new terminal on the East Haven side of the airport.\nBus service between Downtown New Haven and Tweed is available via the CT Transit New Haven Division.\nSeaport.\nNew Haven Harbor is home to the Port of New Haven, a deep-water seaport with three berths capable of hosting vessels and barges as well as the facilities required to handle break bulk cargo. The port has the capacity to load 200 trucks a day from the ground or via loading docks. Providence and Worcester Railroad provides freight rail transportation to the port, with the railroad operating a switch engine for yard movements, a private siding for loading and unloading, and trackage over the Tomlinson Lift Bridge toward the Northeast Corridor. Approximately of inside storage and of outside storage are available at the site. Five shore cranes with a 250-ton capacity and 26 forklifts, each with a 26-ton capacity, are also available.\nOn June 17, 2013, the city commissioned the \"Nathan Hale\", a port security vessel capable of serving search and rescue, firefighting, and constabulary roles.\nInfrastructure.\nHospitals and medicine.\nThe New Haven area supports several medical facilities that are considered some of the best hospitals in the country. There are two major medical centers downtown: Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital has four pavilions, including the Yale \u2013 New Haven Children's Hospital and the Smilow Cancer Hospital; the Hospital of Saint Raphael is several blocks north, and touts its excellent cardiac emergency care program. Smaller downtown health facilities are the Temple Medical Center located downtown on Temple Street, Connecticut Mental Health Center/ across Park Street from Y-NHH, and the Hill Health Center, which serves the working-class Hill neighborhood. A large Veterans Affairs hospital is located in neighboring West Haven. To the west in Milford is Milford Hospital, and to the north in Meriden is the MidState Medical Center.\nIn recent years, Yale and the City of New Haven have been working to build a medical and biotechnology research hub in the city and Greater New Haven region. The city, state and Yale together run Science Park, a large site three blocks northwest of Yale's Science Hill campus. This multi-block site, approximately bordered by Mansfield Street, Division Street, and Shelton Avenue, is the former home of Winchester's and Olin Corporation's 45 large-scale factory buildings. Currently, sections of the site are large-scale parking lots or abandoned structures, but there is also a large remodeled and functioning area of buildings (leased primarily by a private developer) with numerous Yale employees, financial service and biotech companies.\nA second biotechnology district is being planned for the median strip on Frontage Road, on land cleared for the never-built Route 34 extension. As of late 2009, a Pfizer drug-testing clinic, a medical laboratory building serving Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital, and a mixed-use structure containing parking, housing and office space, have been constructed on this corridor. A former SNET telephone building at 300 George Street is being converted into lab space, and has been quite successful so far in attracting biotechnology and medical firms.\nPower supply facilities.\nElectricity for New Haven is generated by a 448\u00a0MW oil and gas-fired generating station located on the shore at New Haven Harbor. PPL Corporation operates a 220\u00a0MW peaking natural gas turbine plant in nearby Wallingford.\nNear New Haven there is the static inverter plant of the HVDC Cross Sound Cable.\nThere are three PureCell Model 400 fuel cells placed in the city of New Haven\u2014one at the New Haven Public Schools and newly constructed Roberto Clemente School, one at the mixed-use 360 State Street building, and one at City Hall. According to Giovanni Zinn of the city's Office of Sustainability, each fuel cell may save the city up to $1 million in energy costs over a decade. The fuel cells were provided by ClearEdge Power, formerly UTC Power. Additional fuel cells are located at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and at the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority (GNHWPCA). Ikea's New Haven facility also utilizes a 250\u00a0kW fuel cell and 940.8\u00a0kW solar array.\nNew Haven recently installed solar panels at 11 city schools with a combined power generation capacity of 1.8 MW. Owned and maintained by Greenskies, the panels allow New Haven to purchase electricity at a discounted rate through a power-purchasing agreement. The panels bring New Haven's solar capacity to 2.8 MW and will help New Haven meet its commitment to powering 100% of its municipal operations through clean energy, which it made in Summer 2017 and reaffirmed in the 2018 New Haven Climate and Sustainability Framework.\nIn popular culture.\nSeveral movies have been filmed in New Haven since 2000, including \"Mona Lisa Smile\" (2003), with Julia Roberts, \"The Life Before Her Eyes\" (2007), with Uma Thurman, and \"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull\" (2008) directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett and Shia LaBeouf. The filming of \"Crystal Skull\" involved an extensive chase sequence through the streets of New Haven. Several downtown streets were closed to traffic and received a \"makeover\" to look like streets of 1957, when the film is set. 500 locals were cast as extras for the film. In \"Everybody's Fine\" (2009), Robert De Niro has a close encounter in what is supposed to be the Denver train station; the scene was filmed in New Haven's Union Station.\n New Haven is mentioned in the song Peace Frog by the Doors, referencing a 1967 incident where vocalist Jim Morrison was arrested for \"attempting to incite a riot\" in the middle of a concert at the New Haven Arena.\nSister cities.\nNew Haven's sister cities are:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSome of these were selected because of historical connection\u2014Freetown because of the \"Amistad\" trial. Others, such as Amalfi and Afula, reflect ethnic groups in New Haven.\nIn 1990, the United Nations named New Haven a \"Peace Messenger City\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["357108", "53825"], "permutation_1": ["53825", "357108"], "permutation_2": ["53825", "357108"], "permutation_3": ["357108", "53825"]}
{"id": "2hop__132710_120035", "docs_added": {"4466614": "Hudson Wasp\nFull-sized automobile produced by Hudson and American Motors\nThe Hudson Wasp is an automobile built and marketed by the Hudson Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan, from the 1952 through the 1956 model years. After Hudson merged with Nash Motors, the Wasp was then built by American Motors Corporation in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and marketed under its Hudson marque for model years 1955 and 1956.\nTwo distinct model year generations can classify the Hudson Wasp: from 1952 until 1954, when it used Hudson's existing short-wheelbase platform, and in 1955 and 1956, when it was built on the full-sized Nash platform. The two generations resulted in fundamentally different vehicles because of their platform design, engine options, and body styles. The second generation also received unique styling for their two model years.\nFirst generation.\n1952.\nThe Wasp (Series 58) was introduced by Hudson for the 1952 model year as an upgraded version of the Hudson Pacemaker, replacing the Hudson Super Custom models from 1951. The Wasp was available in two- and four-door sedan, convertible, and a 2-door hardtop designated the Hollywood. The new models were promoted as a \"lower-priced running mate\" to the Hudson Hornet.\nThe Wasp was built on Hudson's shorter wheelbase, using the company's unitized, \"Monobilt\" step-down chassis design with an overall length of . Hudson's unitized structure used a perimeter frame, providing a rigid structure, low center of gravity, and side-impact protection for passengers, including a box-section steel girder outside the rear wheels.\nStandard features for 1952 included the Wasp model name on the front fenders, which began the full-length stainless steel body side molding, illuminated medallion in the front grille, rear bumper guard that houses the license plate and a concealed light, a carpeted trunk with an upright-mounted spare tire, a 30-hour mechanical clock on the dashboard, illuminated ignition switch keyway, an interior finished in tan cord upholstery with red and brown wide and narrow stripes as well as hand grips, ash receiver, robe cord, and a large magazine pocket for rear seat passengers.\n1953.\nThe 1953 model year Hudson large-car line was introduced in November 1952. For the 1953 model year, Hudson focused on introducing its new compact-sized car, the Jet that was unveiled in December 1952.\nThe large cars were carryovers but added an upper-level Super Wasp line, which replaced the discontinued \"Commodore 6\" models. At the same time, the base Wasp was repositioned and priced lower to replace the discontinued \"Pacemaker\" models.\nThe base Hudson Wasp used the L-Head I6 from the Pacemaker. Hudson also offered the Super Wasp, which used improved interior materials and a more powerful Hudson I6 engine. Instead of using the Pacemaker's I6, the Super Wasp used Hudson's L-Head I6 with a single two-barrel carburetor. The engine was rated at (with single 2-barrel carburetor) while the top-of-the-line Commodore Custom Eight's I8 was rated at . The six's power was underrated, so it would not outshine the flagship straight-eight engine. The narrow block engine was the basis for the stroked and reinforced Hornet I6 engine, introduced in 1951 which dominated NASCAR from 1952 until 1954. The Super Wasp was also offered with an aluminum \"twin H\" manifold and twin two-barrel carburetors. Super Wasp performance with the \"twin H\" induction matched the performance of the big two-barrel equipped, but heavier, Hudson Hornet.\nA sales war between Ford and Chevrolet during 1953 negatively impacted the production and profits of other automakers. Wasp model year production saw 21,876 units in 1953. Moreover, the decline in Hudson sales was due to a lack of a V8 engine and the annual styling changes the domestic Big Three automakers offered.\n1954.\nFor the 1954 model year, Hudson reskinned the senior line of large cars, Hornet, Super Wasp, and Wasp. Hudson also simplified the 1954 model year full-size cars to include the longer wheelbase Hornet featuring I6 engine, while the Wasp models continued the wheelbase. A new linear front-to-rear body characterized the 1954 model year. This was an expensive undertaking, given the unibody design of the Hudson vehicles. The basic roofline of the sedans indicated the continuation of the unibody, and the drivetrain was unchanged. The hardtops and coupes featured new rooflines. The front end was restyled to a simpler grille with a functional hood scoop and a new one-piece curved windshield. The formerly sloped rear end was squared off to the rear fender's end, which featured new high-mounted, larger taillamps. The exterior changes made the Hudsons look longer, while the interior was updated with a new dash and instrument cluster.\nThe dealer introduction date was on 2 October 1953. The 1954 Wasps were available in a two-door coupe or sedan as well as a four-door sedan, while the Super Wasp also offered a two-door \"Holywood\" (pillar-less) hardtop and a \"Brougham\" convertible.\nThe standard engine on the Super Wasp was the I6 producing of torque. Optional was an aluminum cylinder head with a 7.5-to-1 compression ratio rated at . A Twin H-Power version developing was also available.\nThe I6 engine was standard on the Wasp within available version that included an aluminum cylinder head and 7.5-to-1 compression ratio. All Hudson engines were \"Instant Action with Super Induction\" to describe the L-head engine upgrades for 1954.\nA Hudson Wasp competed in the grueling Carrera Panamericana race from 19 to 23 November 1954. It was held in eight stages over . Malcolm Eckart and Carroll Hamplemann drove their #219 car for 23 hours and 28 minutes to finish in eleventh place in the stock car class (Tourismo Especial). Of the 150 cars that started the race, only 85 finished all eight stages and several drivers died in crashes. The 1954 event was the last road race of its kind, one of the motorsport's most challenging and dangerous.\nAfter approval from the boards and shareholders, Hudson officially merged with Nash-Kelvinator Corporation on 1 May 1954, and on 2 October 1954, the last \"true\" Hudson was built in Detroit. A total of 17,792 Wasps were produced in 1954.\nSecond generation.\n1955.\nFor 1955, the Wasp became a product of the newly formed American Motors Corporation (AMC). Following the end of 1954 model year production, Hudson's Detroit manufacturing facility was closed, and assembly of Hudson models was shifted to Nash's factory in Kenosha, Wisconsin. All Hudsons would be based on the senior Nash models, but would have exclusive Hudson styling.\nAfter Hudson's 1954 merger with Nash, the 1955 Hudsons were built on the unitized Nash platforms. To differentiate the two models, the 1955 Hornet was built on the 1955 Nash Ambassador platform and offered with the as well as the Hornet I6 engine, as well as a detuned V8 engine supplied by Packard. On the other hand, the 1955 Hudson Wasp was built on the Nash Statesman platform and included Hudson's I6 engine previously used in the Hudson Jet compact sedan and the Hudson Italia. The was available with twin H-Power rated at .\nThe 1955 Hudsons used Nash's long travel coil spring suspension, integrated and advanced Heating and ventilation system, and were offered with air conditioning and reclining seats. Although comfortable, the Nash-based Hudsons were no longer competitive on the race tracks they dominated from 1952 through 1954.\nHudson Wasp sales dropped to 7,191 units for the year as traditional Hudson buyers left the marque, viewing the cars as less than the legendary Hudsons of the past.\n1956.\nFor the 1956 model year, AMC executives decided to give the Wasp and Hornet more character to boost sales. Design for the vehicles was given to Richard Arbib. He provided Hudson with a distinctive look, which he called \"V-Line Styling\". Taking the traditional Hudson triangle, Arbib applied its \"V\" form in every conceivable manner across the car's interior and exterior. Arbib's design for the front end combined a tightly woven egg-crate grille (a nod to the 1931 Hudson Greater Eight) bisected by a prominent \"V\" (a nod to the 1954 Hudson Italia). Combined with tri-tone paint combinations, Hudson's new look was unique. However, the plan to build a better Hudson identity was unsuccessful, even with the car's flashy design. It did not excite buyers, and production ended after one year. \nThe Wasp was available only as a four-door sedan, and its sales fell to 2,519 units in its final year of production.\nEnd of production.\nIn 1957, AMC stripped Hudson of eleven of its fifteen models, including the Wasp.\nAustralian assembly.\nThe Wasp was assembled in Australia from complete knock down (CKD) kits.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "364596": "Hudson Motor Car Company\nAmerican auto company\nThe Hudson Motor Car Company made Hudson and other branded automobiles in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., from 1909 until 1954. In 1954, Hudson merged with Nash-Kelvinator to form American Motors Corporation (AMC). The Hudson name was continued through the 1957 model year, after which it was discontinued.\nCompany strategy.\nThe name \"Hudson\" came from Joseph L. Hudson, a Detroit department store entrepreneur and founder of Hudson's department store, who provided the necessary capital and gave permission for the company to be named after him. A total of eight Detroit businessmen formed the company on February 20, 1909, to produce an automobile which would sell for less than US$1,000 (equivalent to approximately $ in 2024 funds).\nOne of the lead \"car men\" and an organizer of the company was Roy D. Chapin Sr., a young executive who had worked with Ransom E. Olds. (Chapin's son, Roy Jr., would later be president of Hudson-Nash descendant American Motors Corporation in the 1960s). The company quickly started production, with the first car driven out of a small factory in Detroit on July 3, 1909, at Mack Avenue and Beaufait Street on the East Side of Detroit, occupying the old Aerocar factory.\nThe new Hudson \"Twenty\" was one of the first low-priced cars on the American market and became successful with 4,508 sold the first year. This was the best first year's production in the history of the automobile industry and put the newly formed company in 17th place industry-wide, \"a remarkable achievement at a time\" when there were hundreds of makes being marketed.\nSuccessful sales volume required a larger factory. A new facility was built on a parcel at Jefferson Avenue and Conner Avenue in Detroit's Fairview section that was diagonally across from the Chalmers Automobile plant. The land was the former farm of D.J. Campau. It was designed by the firm of renowned industrial architect Albert Kahn with 223,500 square feet and opened on October 29, 1910. Production in 1911 increased to 6,486. For 1914, Hudsons for the American market were now left-hand drive.\nCoachbuilder Fisher Body Co. built bodies for Hudson cars (as well as many other automotive marques) until they were bought out by General Motors in 1919. From 1923, Hudson bodies were built exclusively by Massachusetts company Biddle and Smart. The lucrative contract with Hudson would see Biddle and Smart buy up many smaller local coachbuilders to meet the Hudson demand. Peak shipments came in 1926, when the company delivered 41,000 bodies to Hudson. An inability to stamp steel meant that their products were made using aluminum.\nOn 1 July 1926, Hudson's new US$10 million ($ in 2024 dollars ) body plant was completed where the automaker could now build the all-steel closed bodies for both the Hudson and Essex models. Biddle and Smart continued to build aluminum body versions of the Hudson line and were marketed by Hudson as \"custom-built\" although they were the same as the steel-body vehicles. With Hudson now building in-house, Biddle and Smart saw their work for Hudson drop by 60%. From 1927 Hudson gradually began to utilize local coachbuilders Briggs Manufacturing Company and Murray Corporation of America to supplement Hudson's production which was expanding domestically and internationally. With car prices falling due to the Great Depression and the costs to transport vehicles from Massachusetts to Detroit becoming too expensive, the contract with Biddle and Smart was terminated in 1930, and Biddle and Smart went out of business shortly thereafter.\nAt their peak in 1929, Hudson and Essex produced a combined 300,000 cars in one year, including contributions from Hudson's other factories in Belgium and England; a factory had been built in 1925 in Brentford in London. Hudson was the third largest U.S. car maker that year, after Ford Motor Company and Chevrolet.\nHudson had many firsts for the auto industry; these included dual brakes, the use of dashboard oil-pressure and generator warning lights, and the first balanced crankshaft, which allowed the Hudson straight-six engine, dubbed the \"Super Six\" (1916), to work at a higher rotational speed while remaining smooth, developing more power for its size than lower-speed engines. The Super Six was the first engine built by Hudson, previously Hudson had developed engine designs and then had them manufactured by Continental Motors Company. Most Hudsons until 1957 had straight-6 engines. The dual brake system used a secondary mechanical emergency brake system, which activated the rear brakes when the pedal traveled beyond the normal reach of the primary system; a mechanical parking brake was also used. Hudson transmissions also used an oil bath and cork clutch mechanism that proved to be as durable as it was smooth.\nEssex and Terraplane.\nIn 1919, Hudson introduced the Essex brand line of automobiles; the line was originally for budget-minded buyers, designed to compete with Ford and Chevrolet, as opposed to the more up-scale Hudson line competing with Oldsmobile and Studebaker. Local coachbuilder Briggs Manufacturing introduced their first-of-its-kind closed coach body in 1922 for Hudson's Essex. It was the first closed vehicle available at a price close to its open-bodied brethren. The 1922 Essex closed body was priced at only $300 more than the 1922 Essex touring. Within three years, its popularity enabled Hudson to reduce its price so that both the 1925 Essex touring and coach were priced the same. The Essex found great success by offering one of the first affordable sedans, and combined Hudson and Essex sales moved from seventh in the U.S. to third by 1925.\nIn 1932, Hudson began phasing out its Essex nameplate for the modern Terraplane brand name. The new line was launched on July 21, 1932, with a promotional christening by Amelia Earhart. For 1932 and 1933, the restyled cars were named Essex-Terraplane; from 1934 as Terraplane, until 1938 when the Terraplane was renamed the Hudson 112. Hudson also began assembling cars in Canada, contracting Canada Top and Body to build the cars in their Tilbury, Ontario, plant. In England, Terraplanes built at the Brentford factory were still being advertised in 1938.\nAn optional accessory on some 1935\u20131938 Hudson and Terraplane models was a steering column-mounted electric gear pre-selector and electro-mechanical automatic shifting system, known as the \"Electric Hand\", manufactured by the Bendix Corporation. This took the place of the floor-mounted shift lever, but required conventional clutch actions. Cars equipped with the feature also carried a conventional shift lever in clips under the dash, which could be pulled out and put to use in case the Electric Hand should ever fail. Hudson was also noted for offering an optional vacuum-powered automatic clutch, starting in the early 1930s.\nHudson Eight.\nFor the 1930 model year, Hudson debuted a new flathead inline eight cylinder engine with block and crankcase cast as a unit and fitted with two cylinder heads. A 2.75-inch bore and 4.5-inch stroke displaced developing at 3,600 rpm with the standard 5.78:1 compression ratio. The five main bearing crankshaft had eight integral counterweights, an industry first, and also employed a Lanchester vibration damper. Four rubber blocks were used at engine mount points. A valveless oil pump improved the Hudson splash lubrication system.\nThe new eights were the only engine offering in the Hudson line, supplanting the Super Six, which continued in the Essex models.\nAt the 1931 Indianapolis 500, Buddy Marr's #27 \"Hudson Special\" (using a Winfield carburetor) finished the 200 laps in tenth place.\n1936\u20131942.\nIn 1936, Hudson revamped its cars, introducing a new \"radial safety control\" / \"rhythmic ride\" suspension which suspended the live front axle from two steel bars, as well as from leaf springs. Doing this allowed the use of longer, softer leaf springs (\"rhythmic ride\"), and prevented bumps and braking from moving the car off course. The 1936 Hudsons were also considerably larger inside than competitive cars\u00a0\u2014 Hudson claimed a interior, comparing it to the in the \"largest of other popular cars\" of the time. With an optional bulging trunk lid, Hudson claimed the trunk could accommodate of luggage. The 1936 engines were powerful for the time, from .\nThe 1939 models joined other American cars in the use of a column-mounted gearshift lever. This freed front-seat passenger space and remained the industry standard through the 1960s, when \"bucket seats\" came into vogue. Hudson became the first car manufacturer to use foam rubber in its seats. The Hudson Terraplane was dropped. For the 1940 models, Hudson introduced coil spring independent front suspension, aircraft-style shock absorbers mounted within the front springs, and true center-point steering on all its models, a major advance in performance among cars in this price range. The Super Six model was reintroduced as well. Despite all these changes, Hudson's sales for 1940 were lower than in 1939 and the company lost money again. The advent of military contracts the following year brought relief.\nThe 1941 Hudsons retained the front-end styling of the 1940 models but the bodies were new with 5.5 inches added to their length giving more legroom. A new manual 3-speed synchromesh transmission was quieter with all helical gears. Wheelbases increased by 3 inches, with offerings of 116, 121, and 128 inches, and height was decreased with flatter roofs. Convertibles now had a power-operated top. Big Boy trucks now used the 128-inch wheelbase. In 1942, as a response to General Motors' Hydramatic automatic transmission, Hudson introduced its \"Drive-Master\" system. Drive-Master was a more sophisticated combination of the concepts used in the Electric Hand and the automatic clutch. It contained a vacuum-powered module on the transmission to switch between second and third gear and a vacuum-powered module to pull the clutch in and out. At the touch of a button, Drive-Master offered the driver a choice of three modes of operation: ordinary, manual shifting and clutching; manual shifting with automatic clutching; and automatic shifting with automatic clutching. All this was accomplished by a large and complicated mechanism located under the hood. They worked well, and in fully automatic mode served as a good semi-automatic transmission. When coupled with an automatic overdrive, Drive-Master became known as Super-Matic. Re-engineering of the frame rear end to use lower springs reduced car height by . Sheet metal \"spats\" on the lower body now covered the running boards and new wider front and rear fenders accommodated this.\nFemale designer.\nAs the role of women increased in car-purchase decisions, automakers began to hire female designers. Hudson, wanting a female perspective on automotive design, hired Elizabeth Ann Thatcher in 1939, one of America's first female automotive designers. Her contributions to the 1941 Hudson included exterior trim with side lighting, interior instrument panel, interiors and interior trim fabrics. She designed for Hudson from 1939 into 1941, leaving the company when she married Joe Oros, then a designer for Cadillac. He later became head of the design team at Ford that created the Mustang.\nWorld War II.\nAs ordered by the Federal government, Hudson ceased auto production from 1942 until 1945 to manufacture material during World War II, including aircraft parts and naval engines as well as anti-aircraft guns. The Hudson \"Invader\" engine powered many of the landing craft used on the D-Day invasion of Normandy, June 6, 1944.\nDuring World War II Hudson had also an aircraft division that produced ailerons for one large eastern airplane builder. The plant was capable of large scale production of wings and ailerons as well as other airplane parts. On May 22, 1941, Hudson was given a contract for the Oerlikon 20 mm cannon with the Jefferson Avenue Plant, on Jefferson Avenue and Connor Avenue, responsible for converting the original Swiss drawings to American production standards. The company produced 33,201 Oerlikons for the United States Navy with the original mechanism continued in use without major change and with complete interchangeability of parts until the end of the war. Hudson also manufactured millions of other weaponry and vehicle parts for the war effort. Hudson ranked 83rd among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.\nFisher takeover attempt.\nThe Fisher Body Company, later the Fisher Body Division of GM, manufactured bodies for many automobile marques throughout the early 20th Century. From 1926 the business had become part of General Motors. Just before World War II, the Fisher brothers contemplated a takeover of Hudson and commissioned engineer Roscoe C. (Rod) Hoffman, from Detroit, to design and build several rear-engine prototype vehicles for possible eventual production as Hudsons. One prototype was built in secret in 1935.\nWorld War II forced the brothers to shelve their plans while the company shifted its focus to the war effort. When brothers Fred and Charles retired from GM in 1944 they revived the Hudson takeover idea with the view of establishing new, independent automobile manufacturing operations. The brothers contacted Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, Hudson's main stockholder, offering to buy. Using an intermediary, Queen Wilhelmina expressed her interest in selling, prompting the Fisher brothers to begin devoting time to Hudson and their plant in anticipation of a deal. When news of these events reached Wall Street, the price of Hudson stock skyrocketed with the consensus by investors that a Fisher takeover would be the best thing for Hudson. However, the Fisher brothers tender offer fell short of Hudson's sudden increased market value and the deal did not go through.\n1946\u20131954.\nProduction resumed after the war and included a wheelbase three-quarter-ton pickup truck.\nIn 1948, the company launched its \"step-down\" bodies, which lasted through the 1954 model year. The term step-down referred to Hudson's placement of the passenger compartment down inside the perimeter of the frame; riders stepped down onto a floor that was surrounded by the perimeter of the car's frame. The result was not only a safer car, and greater passenger comfort as well, but, through a lower center of gravity, a good handling car. In time almost all U.S. automakers would embrace it as a means of building bodies. Automotive author Richard Langworth described the step-down models as the greatest autos of the era in articles for \"Consumer Guide\" and \"Collectible Automobile\".\nFor the 1951 model year, the 6-cylinder engine received a new block with thicker walls and other improvements to boost horsepower by almost 18% and torque by 28.5% making Hudson a hot performer again. The GM-supplied 4-speed Hydramatic automatic transmission was now optional in Hornets and Commodore Custom 6s and 8s.\nHudson's strong, light-weight bodies, combined with its high-torque inline six-cylinder engine technology, made the company's 1951\u201354 Hornet an auto racing champion, dominating NASCAR in 1951, 1952, 1953, and 1954.\nHerb Thomas won the 1951 and 1954 Southern 500s and Dick Rathmann won in 1952. Some NASCAR records set by Hudson in the 1950s (\"e.g.\" consecutive wins in one racing season) still stand even today. Hudson cars also did very well in races sanctioned by the AAA Contest Board from 1952 until 1954 with Marshall Teague winning the 1952 AAA Stock Car Championship and Frank Mundy in 1953. Often Hudsons finished in most of the top positions in races. Later, these cars met with some success in drag racing, where their high power-to-weight ratio worked to their advantage. Hudsons enjoyed success both in NHRA trials and local dirt track events.\nAs the post-war marketplace shifted from a seller's to a buyer's market the smaller U.S. automakers, such as Hudson and Nash, found it increasingly difficult to compete with the Big Three (Ford, GM and Chrysler) during the 1950s. A sales war between Ford and General Motors conducted during 1953 and 1954 had left little business for the much smaller \"independent\" automakers trying to compete against the standard models offered by the domestic Big Three. The Big Three could afford constant development and styling changes, so that their cars looked fresh every year, whereas the smaller manufacturers could only afford gradual changes. Hudson's once-innovative \"step-down\" unit-body construction, while sturdy and innovative, also made restyling difficult and expensive. Although Hudsons dominated racing during this period, their feats did little to affect showroom traffic despite incorporating their NASCAR success into a marketing campaign known as \"Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday\". Sales fell each year from 1951 until 1954, and only Korean War military contracts kept the company solvent. On March 20, 1954, the Hudson Motor Car Company reported a loss of $10,411,060 in 1953 as compared with a profit of $8,307,847 in 1952.\nAfter the company's high-priced Jet compact car line failed to capture buyers in its second straight year, Hudson CEO A.E. Barit engaged with George W. Mason, CEO of Nash-Kelvinator (makers of Nash and Rambler) to discuss the possibility of a merger with Nash. Mason already had the vision of merging the four independent automakers (Nash, Hudson, Packard, and Studebaker) into one company to compete with the Big Three, having floated the idea as early as 1946 with Packard to no avail. Mason had previously discussed the idea with Barit in 1952. On 14 January 1954 an agreement was reached and Nash and Hudson executives took the first steps to bring the two companies together.\n1954 \u2013 Merger with Nash-Kelvinator.\nOn May 1, 1954, Hudson merged with Nash-Kelvinator to become American Motors Corporation. George W. Mason became CEO and president of AMC while Hudson's president, A.E. Barit retired to become an AMC board member.\nThe Hudson factory, located in Detroit, Michigan, was converted to military contract production at the end of the model year, and the remaining three years of Hudson production took place at the Nash plant in Kenosha, Wisconsin building rebadged Nash cars with the Hudson brand name. Nash would focus most of its marketing resources on its smaller Rambler models, and Hudson would focus its marketing efforts on its full-sized cars. The first Hudson model to terminate production was the Jet. The new company could then focus on the more successful Nash Rambler. Henceforth, Hudson dealers would have badge-engineered versions of the Nash Rambler and Metropolitan compacts to sell as Hudson products.\nOne of the first things Mason did as CEO of the new company was to initiate talks with James J. Nance, president of Packard, for parts-sharing arrangements between AMC and Packard. At this time AMC did not have its own V8 engine and an agreement was made for the new Packard V8 engine and Packard's Ultramatic automatic transmission to be used in the 1955 Nash Ambassador and Hudson Hornet models.\nIn July 1954, Packard acquired Studebaker to form Studebaker-Packard Corporation. However further talks of a merger between AMC and Studebaker-Packard were cut short when Mason died on October 8, 1954. A week after his death, Mason's successor, George W. Romney, announced \"There are no mergers under way either directly or indirectly\". Nevertheless, Romney continued with Mason's commitment to buy components from Studebaker-Packard Corporation. Although Mason and Nance had previously agreed that Studebaker-Packard would purchase parts from AMC, it did not do so. Moreover, Packard's engines and transmissions were comparatively expensive, so AMC began development of its own V8 engine, and replaced the outsourced unit by mid-1956.\n1955\u20131957.\nFor 1955, both Hudson and Nash senior models were built on a common automobile platform using styling themes by Pinin Farina, Edmund E. Anderson, and Frank Spring. Common-body shell production for competing makes of automobiles was a manufacturing technique that had been used by the Big Three for decades. \nAnderson set up separate design studios for Nash, Hudson, and Rambler.\nAlthough the 1955 Hudson used the inner body shell of the Nash, the car incorporated a front cowl originally designed by Spring and the Hudson team to be put on the 1954 Step-Down platform. The 1955 models also used the Hudson dashboard, \"triple safe brakes\" and the Nash Weather Eye heater with Harrison Radiator Corporation-supplied lower cost Freon/compressor type air conditioning.\nFor the first time, Hudson offered a V8 engine starting for the 1955 model year. It was the Packard-designed and -built engine rated at . All cars with the Packard V8 also came with Packard's Ultramatic automatic transmission as an option for $494 with the Nash 3-speed manual was also available at $295.\nHudson dealers also sold Rambler and Metropolitan models under the Hudson brand. A total of 4,357 Metropolitans were sold as \"Hudson.\" When sold by Hudson dealers, both cars were identified as Hudson vehicles via hood/grille emblems and horn buttons. Hudson Ramblers also received \"H\" symbols on fuel filler caps (and, in 1956, also on hubcaps).\nIn 1956, ex-Hudson president A.E Barit resigned from the Board in protest over the likelihood that Hudson would be phased out of production.\nFor 1956, the design of the senior Hudsons was given over to designer Richard Arbib, which resulted in the \"V-Line\" styling motif, a combination of \"V\" motifs that carried Hudson's triangular corporate logo theme. Sales fell below the 1955 figures.\nWith a wider front track than Nash used, Hudson was the better handling car and was powered by the famed Hornet Six with the optional high-compression cylinder head and dual-carburetor manifold (\"Twin-H Power\"); the Twin H would disappear at the end of the 1956 model year.\nThe Wasp used the L-head Jet Six engine (up to ) and this model (in sedan version) was Hudson's top seller. For 1957, Hudson dropped the shorter-wheelbase Wasp line, selling only the Hornet Custom and Super, which featured a lowered profile and slightly updated styling.\nGeorge W. Romney felt that Hudson and Nash were no longer relevant players in the automotive market and retired both names at the end of the 1957 model year production. Both Rambler and Metropolitan became makes in their own right, and no longer were identified as Hudson or Nash.\nEnd of the line.\nThe last Hudson rolled off the Kenosha assembly line on June 25, 1957, although at that time there were proposals of continuing the Hudson and Nash names into the 1958 model year on the Rambler chassis as deluxe, longer-wheelbase senior models. The combined Nash and Hudson production volume was insufficient to justify all-new design and tooling; therefore, the Rambler's platform was expected to be adopted by the longer cars. One major trade magazine said rumors of discontinuance were false and the 1958 Hudsons and Nashes \"would be big and smart\". Factory styling photographs show designs for a 1958 Hudson (and Nash) line based on a longer-wheelbase 1958 Rambler. Front-end prototype photos show separate Hudson and Nash styling themes.\nAmerican Motors' president, George W. Romney, concluded that the only way to compete with the \"Big Three\" was to stake the future of AMC on a new smaller-sized car line. Neither Hudson nor Nash brand names had as much positive market recognition as the successful Rambler and their sales were lagging. Together with AMC's chief engineer Meade Moore, Romney had completely phased out the Nash and Hudson brands at the end of 1957. The decision to retire the brands came so quickly that preproduction photographs of the eventual 1958 Rambler Ambassador show both Nash- and Hudson-badged versions. The Rambler brand was selected for further development and promotion while focusing exclusively on compact cars.\nEventually, however, something close to the Hudson design was chosen for the 1958 Rambler Ambassador. Hudson brand enthusiasts will note the triangular grille guard and 1957-like fender \"gun sights\" and the fast-selling 1958 Rambler Customs wore 1957 Hudson-styled front-fender trim.\nInternational markets.\nHudson, Essex, and Terraplane vehicles were either exported as complete cars or locally built from knock-down kits in many countries making the Hudson marque well-known internationally as well as domestically. In its 1929 report, the banking house Garden Detroit Company reported that in 1928 Hudson shipped 50,587 vehicles overseas, or 17.9% of total production. By March 1929 Hudson had topped all previous production figures having exported 44,295 cars in March alone, bringing the total of shipments for the first quarter of 1929 to an all-time high of 108,298.\nAustralia.\nHudson vehicles were imported into Australia in 1913 by Brisbane company McGhie Motor Company.\nIn 1915 the Sydney branch of Dalgety & Co. Ltd became the distributor of Hudson (and later Essex) vehicles for New South Wales. The company was also the agent for Wolseley, Daimler, and Buick passenger vehicles as well as Lacre and Halley commercial vehicles. Motor bodies were produced by Messrs Henderson, Boulton, and Kirkham in Regent Street, Sydney. The company also did trimming, fitting, painting, mechanical work, and repairs.\nEstablished in 1922, Sydney company Smith & Waddington set up motor vehicle body building operations for NSW and Queensland at premises on Parramatta Road, Camperdown. The company built \"custom\" car bodies which, by the terminology of the day, meant \"built to an individual order and to a special design.\" In addition to assembling Hudson and Essex for Dalgety, the company also built vehicle bodies for Rolls-Royce, Wolseley, Dort, Benz, Fiat, and Turkat M\u00e9ry. After a slump in the economy which caused operations to cease in November 1927, Smith & Waddington resumed production in June 1928, again building Hudson and Essex vehicles for NSW and Queensland, and further adding Dodge, Chrysler, Erskine, and Studebaker for the whole of Australia. Additionally, Sydney coach builder G.H Olding & Sons are known to have built 6 Terraplane phaetons for Dalgety in 1934.\nIn 1926 a new company, Leader Motors Limited was formed to be the exclusive distributor of Hudson and Essex motor vehicles in Queensland. The bodies were made by South Australian company Holden's Motor Body Builders in Brisbane. In its main facility of Adelaide, Holden also made motor bodies for Austin, Buick, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Cleveland, Dodge, Fiat, Oakland, Oldsmobile, Overland, Pontiac, Reo, Studebaker, Vauxhall, and Willys Knight. In 1927 Holden's produced 1252 Essex Standard Tourers, 173 Essex Special Tourers, 171 Essex Coaches, and 46 Essex S/S Roadsters. In the same year the company manufactured 8 Hudson Tourers. 1928 was the last year of Hudson and Essex production by Holden's. In 1930 Holden's was bought out by General Motors.\nHudson and Essex assembly began in Victoria by Neal's Motors of Port Melbourne in 1927. The contract to build the bodies was initially given to TJ Richards & Sons of Keswick, Adelaide to supply for Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, and Tasmania as well as acting as a second source of supply for New South Wales and Queensland. Holden's Motor Body Builders also built bodies. Holden's records show that for 1927 the Adelaide plant built 1,641 Essex vehicles and 8 Hudsons, and for 1928 a total of 1,931 Essex vehicles and 59 Hudsons were assembled. Holden's final year for Hudson and Essex production was in 1928, and in 1931 the company was bought out by General Motors.\nIn February 1934 Ruskins Body Works of West Melbourne secured the contract to build Hudson and Terraplane bodies for the whole of Australia. In June 1937, Neal's Motors celebrated assembling its 30,000th automobile: a 1937 Hudson Terraplane.\nIn 1939 Dalgety sold their automotive business to agent for Packard motor vehicles, Ira L. & A.C Berk in Sydney, which thereafter became the distributors for Hudson in NSW and QLD. The company opened a manufacturing plant in Belmore, Sydney in February 1949.\nAfter the end of World War II, Australia legislated to restrict the use of U.S. dollars which were in desperately short supply. The use of U.S. dollars to import cars thereafter required a government permit restricting the purchase of American cars only to those with access to U.S. funds held overseas such as consular staff and visiting entertainers. Despite this, Australian distributors of Hudson, Nash, Packard, and Studebaker were able to bring in limited numbers of US-built, factory right-hand-drive vehicles from 1946.\nA report by Dunlop Australia about Australian car sales from 1932 until 1949 noted that Hudson vehicles (including Essex and Terraplane) totaled 10,424 units during the 17-years, coming in at 13th place overall. It was noted in the report generally that all marques in Australia experienced the greatest number of sales before World War II.\nIn 1960, six years after the merger of Hudson and Nash-Kelvinator to form American Motors Corporation, Australian Motor Industries (AMI) of Port Melbourne would form an agreement with AMC to assemble Ramblers in Australia.\nCanada.\nCanadian assembly of Hudson vehicles commenced in 1932 by Hudson Motors of Canada in Tilbury, Ontario. The factory building was owned by Canadian Top & Body Co. which built the motor bodies for the vehicles. The first models assembled were a series of Hudson Eights. World War II interrupted operations and production ceased in 1941. Post-war operations resumed in 1950, with Hudsons being assembled by Chatco Steel Products in Tilbury, Ontario. Operations ceased in 1954 following the Nash-Hudson merger that led to the formation of American Motors Corporation. Toronto-based Nash Motors of Canada Ltd. became American Motors (Canada) Ltd. and all subsequent AMC operations continued in Toronto until its closure in 1957. Local production of Ramblers resumed after AMC's Brampton, Ontario plant opened in December 1960.\nGermany.\nHudson and Essex vehicles were assembled in Berlin, Germany, during the 1920s by Hudson Essex Motors Company m.b.H Berlin-Spandau. The cars were built with the speedometer in kilometers, while the fuel, oil, and temperature gauges remained in their original non-metric units.\nNew Zealand.\nHudson and Essex vehicles were imported into North Island by Dominion Motors of Wellington which began operations in 1912. Dominion Motors amalgamated with Universal Motor Company of Christchurch in 1919 forming an assembly operation for Hudson and Essex as well as Oldsmobile, Crossley, Chevrolet, Stutz, Rolls-Royce, and (pre-GM) Vauxhall. Vehicles were assembled and finished in-house from partial knock-down kits.\nFor South Island, Hudson and Essex vehicles were imported by W.G. Vining Limited of Nelson, beginning in 1912. Vining had built a garage in 1908 which was the largest garage in New Zealand at the time. A car assembly plant was established at the premises and shortly thereafter Vinings obtained licenses to import and assemble Cadillac, Maxwell, Haynes, and Ford vehicles from the United States; Bean cars from the United Kingdom; and Darracq and Unic vehicles from France. Along with Hudson and Essex, the plant later assembled Chevrolet and Rover vehicles. The business ceased when it was sold on 30 September 1927 upon W.G. Vining's retirement. Vining's son formed a new business, P. Vining & Scott, and continued the Hudson and Essex franchise, adding Morris in 1932.\nNew Zealand car sales for the first nine months of 1927 saw Essex in third place with 898 vehicles sold, behind Chevrolet in second place with 1,100 vehicles sold, and Ford in first place with 1651 vehicles sold. Hudson made 12th place with 206 sales.\nFrom 1935, Hudson vehicles (along with Nash, Studebaker, and Standard) were assembled by Christchurch company Motor Assemblies Limited. Production ended when the company was acquired by Standard-Triumph International in 1954. Hudson production then went to Motor Holdings Ltd which had been founded in 1936 as the Zealand franchise of Jowett Motors. After Jowett's closure in the United Kingdom in 1954, Motor Holdings won the Volkswagen franchise, and its Auckland operation was renamed VW Motors for the production of VWs in New Zealand. VW Motors assembled Hudsons as a secondary line. Some were fully imported as special orders. \nAfter the Hudson and Nash marques were discontinued by American Motors Corporation, VW Motors assembled AMC's new Rambler motor vehicles at its new Otahuhu Volkswagen plant from 1958 until 1962. AMC formed an agreement in 1963 with Campbell Motor Industries (CMI) of Thames to assemble Ramblers, production of which ran from 1964 until 1971.\nSouth Africa.\nBeginning in the 1920s, Hudson and Willys motor vehicles were assembled in South Africa from right-hand-drive complete knock-down (CKD) kits sourced from Canada by Stanley Motors at their plant, National Motor Assemblers (NMA), in Natalspruit (Gauteng). After World War II, NMA built Austin, Standard, and Triumph vehicles at different times.\nAfter the formation of American Motors Corporation in 1954, NMA continued to assemble AMC Ramblers until 1967.\nUnited Kingdom.\nHudsons were introduced to the United Kingdom in 1911. No shipments were possible during the First World War but as soon as the Armistice was signed exports resumed to the U.K. Hudsons and Essex vehicles were sold through ten concessionaires.\nIn 1922 Hudson-Essex Motors of Great Britain Limited was formed, with new premises on Dordrecht Road, in Acton Vale. Over 100 agents were appointed to sell the vehicles resulting in 2,000 sales in the next 12 months.\nIn 1926 a factory was built on a property next to the recently opened Great West Road in Brentford. The plant opened in 1927 and a year later a three-story building was built as a service department for Hudson and Essex vehicles. The factory assembled the vehicle chassis locally, but the bodies were imported as complete units from Detroit.\nFrom 1932, the bodies came over from the United States in sections to be assembled at the Great West Road factory. After the Essex marque was retired in 1932 the British company was renamed Hudson Motors Ltd.\nHudson's new Terraplane model was equally as popular in the U.K. as it was in the United States. English-designed and built bodies were built on the Terraplane frames and the cars were entered in many automobile races including the Monte Carlo Rally. Some of the cars entered were driven by personnel from the Great West Road factory. A Hudson Pacemaker won first place in the 1931 Scottish Rally and another Pacemaker took 7th place in the 1932 Torquay Rally. The Team Award was won by two Terraplane tourers and a Terraplane saloon in the 1933 Scottish Rally.\nA triangular site from the railway was developed in 1926 for a new Hudson-Essex factory. This was the first major industrial facility and became a major employer along the Great West Road. Other firms followed to establish what became known as the \"Golden Mile.\" The Chiswick Roundabout (the junction of Chiswick High Road, North Circular Road, South Circular Road, and the A4 Great West Road) also became known as \"Hudson's Corner.\" After World War II, the property was used by the Kelvinator Refrigerator Company.\nAfter the Hudson and Nash merger, the British company became a subsidiary of American Motors Corporation and was renamed Rambler Motors (A.M.C.) Limited in 1961, taking over from Nash Concessionaires Ltd. as the importer of AMC's new Rambler vehicles. The company imported AMC vehicles, many in factory right-hand-drive, well into the 1970s.\nLegacy.\nIn 1928, a one yuan coin called the Auto Dollar was minted by the Chinese warlord Zhou Xicheng to commemorate the construction of roadways in Guizhou province. The coin features an image of an automobile reminiscent of a soft-topped Hudson car, although it does not correspond to any particular model exactly.\nFor the 1970 model year, American Motors revived the \"Hornet\" model name for its new series of compact cars (the AMC Hornet). AMC was later purchased by Chrysler, which at one time considered reintroducing the Hornet name in the Dodge model line and ultimately did so for the 2023 model year with a car based on the Alfa Romeo Tonale.\nThe last Hudson dealership was Miller Motors in Ypsilanti, Michigan, which is now part of the Ypsilanti Automotive Heritage Museum.\nThe Hostetler Hudson Auto Museum in Shipshewana, Indiana, featured a collection of restored Hudsons. Eldon Hostetler was an inventor who owned a Hudson as a teenager and later purchased Hudson cars and restored them. The museum closed in 2018 after the Hudson Automobile Museum Board voted in favor of closing the museum and liquidating the collection.\nA restored Hudson Dealership sign still occupies its original site on Highway 32 in Chico, California.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["4466614", "364596"], "permutation_1": ["364596", "4466614"], "permutation_2": ["364596", "4466614"], "permutation_3": ["364596", "4466614"]}
{"id": "2hop__644317_159106", "docs_added": {"6065907": "Chuping\nChuping is a suburb of Kangar and a small town in Perlis, Malaysia. It is located to the northeast of Kangar, the state capital. The town has 22,000 hectares of plantations, which consist of rubber estates and the largest sugar cane plantation in Malaysia.\nChuping's name may be taken from a limestone hill in the area called Bukit Chuping. There are many limestone hills in the area, and several caves containing bats. The guano used to be collected for use as a fertiliser, for crops such as rice, as it contains nitrates and iron(III) phosphate.\nThe highest temperature in the country was recorded in Chuping on April 9, 1998, at .\nClimate.\nChuping receives just above of rainfall annually and with that cumulative of rainfall if compares with other places in Malaysia, Chuping is categorised as one of the driest area in Malaysia. The dry season occurs during December until February but still monthly can reach up more than of rainfall. March till November is a wet season.\nAccessibility.\nChuping is accessible from a trunk road bound for Kangar and Kodiang. The trunk road is situated after the Jitra Selatan exit of the North\u2013South Expressway. Buses that travel along the Kuala Perlis\u2013Kangar route pass through this town.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3607937": "Malaysia\nCountry in Southeast Asia\nMalaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. A federal constitutional monarchy, it consists of 13 states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions: Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo's East Malaysia. Peninsular Malaysia shares a land and maritime border with Thailand and maritime borders with Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia. East Malaysia shares land borders with Brunei and Indonesia, as well as a maritime border with the Philippines and Vietnam. Kuala Lumpur is the national capital, the country's largest city, and the seat of the legislative branch of the federal government.\nPutrajaya is the federal administrative capital, which represents the seat of both the executive branch (the Cabinet, federal ministries, and federal agencies) and the judicial branch of the federal government. With a population of over 34 million, the country is the world's 42nd-most populous country. Malaysia is tropical and is one of 17 megadiverse countries; it is home to numerous endemic species. Tanjung Piai in the Malaysian state of Johor is the southernmost point of continental Eurasia.\nThe country has its origins in the Malay kingdoms, which, from the 18th century on, became subject to the British Empire, along with the British Straits Settlements protectorate. During World War II, British Malaya, along with other nearby British and American colonies, was occupied by the Empire of Japan. Following three years of occupation, Peninsular Malaysia was briefly unified as the Malayan Union in 1946 until 1948 when it was restructured as the Federation of Malaya. The country achieved independence on 31 August 1957. On 16 September 1963, independent Malaya united with the then British crown colonies of North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore to become Malaysia. In August 1965, Singapore was expelled from the federation and became a separate, independent country.\nThe country is multiethnic and multicultural, which has a significant effect on its politics. About half the population is ethnically Malay, with minorities of Chinese, Indians, and indigenous peoples. The official language is Malaysian Malay, a standard form of the Malay language. English remains an active second language. It is also home to 111 living indigenous languages. While recognising Islam as the official religion, the constitution grants freedom of religion to non-Muslims. The government is modelled on the Westminster parliamentary system, and the legal system is based on common law. The head of state is an elected monarch, chosen from among the nine state sultans every five years. The head of government is the prime minister.\nThe country's economy has traditionally been driven by its natural resources but is expanding into commerce, tourism, and medical tourism. The country has a newly industrialised market economy, which is relatively open and state-oriented. The country is a founding member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the East Asia Summit (EAS), and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and a member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the Commonwealth, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).\nEtymology.\nThe name \"Malaysia\" is a combination of the word \"Malays\" and the Latin-Greek suffix \"-ia\"/-\u03af\u03b1 which can be translated as 'land of the Malays'. Similar-sounding variants have also appeared in accounts older than the 11th century, as toponyms for areas in Sumatra or referring to a larger region around the Strait of Malacca. The Sanskrit text \"Vayu Purana\", thought to have been in existence since the first millennium CE, mentioned a land named 'Malayadvipa' which was identified by certain scholars as the modern Malay Peninsula. Other notable accounts are by Ptolemy's 2nd-century \"Geographia\" that used the name \"Malayu Kulon\" for the west coast of Golden Chersonese, and the 7th-century Yijing's account of \"Malayu\".\nAt some point, the Melayu Kingdom took its name from the \"Sungai Melayu\". \"Melayu\" then became associated with Srivijaya, and remained associated with various parts of Sumatra, especially Palembang, where the founder of the Malacca Sultanate is thought to have come from. It is only thought to have developed into an ethnonym as Malacca became a regional power in the 15th century. Islamisation established an ethnoreligious identity in Malacca, with the term \"Melayu\" beginning to appear as interchangeable with \"Melakans\". It may have specifically referred to local Malay speakers who were loyal to the Malaccan Sultan. The initial Portuguese use of reflected this, referring only to the ruling people of Malacca. The prominence of traders from Malacca led \"Melayu\" to be associated with Muslim traders, and from there became associated with the wider cultural and linguistic group. Malacca and later Johor claimed they were the centre of Malay culture, a position supported by the British which led to the term \"Malay\" becoming more usually linked to the Malay peninsula rather than Sumatra.\nBefore the onset of European colonisation, the Malay Peninsula was known natively as \"Tanah Melayu\" ('Malay Land'). Under a racial classification created by a German scholar Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, the natives of maritime Southeast Asia were grouped into a single category, the Malay race. Following the expedition of French navigator Jules Dumont d'Urville to Oceania in 1826, he later proposed the terms of \"Malaysia\", \"Micronesia\" and \"Melanesia\" to the \"Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 de G\u00e9ographie\" in 1831, distinguishing these Pacific cultures and island groups from the existing term \"Polynesia\". Dumont d'Urville described Malaysia as \"an area commonly known as the East Indies\". In 1850, the English ethnologist George Samuel Windsor Earl, writing in the \"Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia\", proposed naming the islands of Southeast Asia as \"Melayunesia\" or \"Indunesia\", favouring the former. The name Malaysia gained some use to label what is now the Malay Archipelago. In modern terminology, \"Malay\" remains the name of an ethnoreligious group of Austronesian people predominantly inhabiting the Malay Peninsula and portions of the adjacent islands of Southeast Asia, including the east coast of Sumatra, the coast of Borneo, and smaller islands that lie between these areas.\nThe state that gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1957 took the name \"the Federation of Malaya\", chosen in preference to other potential names such as \"Malaysia\" and \"Langkasuka\", after the historic kingdom located at the upper section of the Malay Peninsula in the first millennium CE. Nonetheless, the name \"Malaysia\" was adopted in 1963 when the existing states of the Federation of Malaya, plus Singapore, North Borneo and Sarawak formed a new federation. One theory posits the name was chosen so that \"si\" represented the inclusion of Singapore, North Borneo, and Sarawak to Malaya in 1963. Politicians in the Philippines contemplated renaming their state Malaysia before the modern country took the name.\nHistory.\nEvidence of modern human habitation in Malaysia dates back 40,000\u00a0years. In the Malay Peninsula, the first inhabitants are thought to be Negritos. Areas of Malaysia participated in the Maritime Jade Road between 2000 BC to 1000 AD. Traders and settlers from India and China arrived as early as the first century AD, establishing trading ports and coastal towns in the second and third centuries. Their presence resulted in strong Indian and Chinese influences on the local cultures, and the people of the Malay Peninsula adopted the religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. Sanskrit inscriptions appear as early as the fourth or fifth century. The Kingdom of Langkasuka arose around the second century in the northern area of the Malay Peninsula, lasting until about the 15th century. Between the 7th and 13th centuries, much of the southern Malay Peninsula was part of the maritime Srivijayan empire. By the 13th and the 14th century, the Majapahit empire had successfully wrested control over most of the peninsula and the Malay Archipelago from Srivijaya. In the early 15th century, Parameswara, a runaway king of the former Kingdom of Singapura linked to the old Srivijayan court, founded the Malacca Sultanate. The spread of Islam increased following Parameswara's conversion to that religion. Malacca was an important commercial centre during this time, attracting trade from around the region.\nIn 1511, Malacca was conquered by Portugal, after which it was taken by the Dutch in 1641. In 1786, the British Empire established a presence in Malaya, when the Sultan of Kedah leased Penang Island to the British East India Company. The British obtained the town of Singapore in 1819, and in 1824 took control of Malacca following the Anglo-Dutch Treaty. By 1826, the British directly controlled Penang, Malacca, Singapore, and the island of Labuan, which they established as the crown colony of the Straits Settlements. By the 20th century, the states of Pahang, Selangor, Perak, and Negeri Sembilan, known together as the Federated Malay States, had British residents appointed to advise the Malay rulers, to whom the rulers were bound to defer by treaty. The remaining five states on the peninsula, known as the Unfederated Malay States, while not directly under British rule, also accepted British advisers around the turn of the 20th century. Development on the peninsula and Borneo were generally separate until the 19th century. Under British rule the immigration of Chinese and Indians to serve as labourers was encouraged. The area that is now Sabah came under British control as North Borneo when both the Sultan of Brunei and the Sultan of Sulu transferred their respective territorial rights of ownership, between 1877 and 1878. In 1842, Sarawak was ceded by the Sultan of Brunei to James Brooke, whose successors ruled as the White Rajahs over an independent kingdom until 1946, when it became a crown colony.\nIn the Second World War, the Japanese Army invaded and occupied Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore for over three years. During this time, ethnic tensions were raised and nationalism grew. Popular support for independence increased after Malaya was reconquered by Allied forces. Post-war British plans to unite the administration of Malaya under a single crown colony called the Malayan Union met with strong opposition from the Malays, who opposed the weakening of the Malay rulers and the granting of citizenship to the ethnic Chinese. The Malayan Union, established in 1946, and consisting of all the British possessions in the Malay Peninsula except for Singapore, was quickly dissolved and replaced on 1 February 1948 by the Federation of Malaya, which restored the autonomy of the rulers of the Malay states under British protection.\nDuring this time, the mostly ethnically Chinese rebels under the leadership of the Malayan Communist Party launched guerrilla operations designed to force the British out of Malaya. The Malayan Emergency (1948\u20131960) involved a long anti-insurgency campaign by Commonwealth troops in Malaya. On 31 August 1957, Malaya became an independent member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Subsequently, a comprehensive plan was devised to unite Malaya with the crown colonies of North Borneo (known as Sabah upon joining), Sarawak, and Singapore. The envisioned federation was originally intended to take place on 31 August 1963, to coincide with the commemoration of Malayan independence. However, due to the necessity of conducting a survey on the level of support for the federation in Sabah and Sarawak by the United Nations, as requested by opponents of the federation such as Indonesia's Sukarno and the Sarawak United Peoples' Party, the date of the federation was postponed until 16 September 1963.\nThe federation brought heightened tensions including a conflict with Indonesia as well as continual conflicts against the Communists in Borneo and the Malay Peninsula, which escalated to the Sarawak Communist Insurgency and Second Malayan Emergency together with several other issues such as the cross-border attacks into Sabah by Moro pirates from the southern islands of the Philippines, Singapore being expelled from the Federation in 1965, and racial strife. This strife culminated in the 13 May race riots in 1969. After the riots, the controversial New Economic Policy was launched by Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak, trying to increase the share of the economy held by the \"bumiputera\". Under Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad there was a period of rapid economic growth and urbanization beginning in the 1980s. The economy shifted from being agriculturally based to one based on manufacturing and industry. Numerous mega-projects were completed, such as the Petronas Towers, the North\u2013South Expressway, the Multimedia Super Corridor, and the new federal administrative capital of Putrajaya.\nIn the late 1990s, the Asian financial crisis impacted the country, nearly causing their currency, stock, and property markets to crash; however, they later recovered. The 1MDB scandal was a major global corruption scandal that implicated then-Prime Minister Najib Razak in 2015. The scandal contributed to the first change in the ruling political party since independence in the 2018 general election. In the 2020s, the country was gripped by a political crisis that coincided with health and economic crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This was then followed by an earlier general election in November 2022, which resulted in the first hung parliament in the nation's history. On 24 November 2022, Anwar Ibrahim was sworn in as the 10th Prime Minister of Malaysia, leading a grand coalition government.\nGovernment and politics.\nMalaysia is a federal constitutional elective monarchy and the only federal country in Southeast Asia. The system of government is closely modelled on the Westminster parliamentary system, a legacy of British rule. The head of state is the King, whose official title is the Yang\u00a0di-Pertuan\u00a0Agong. The King is elected to a five-year term by and from among the nine hereditary rulers of the Malay states. The other four states, which have titular Governors, do not participate in the selection. By informal agreement the position is rotated among the nine, and has been held by Ibrahim Iskandar of Johor since 31 January 2024. The King's role has been largely ceremonial since changes to the constitution in 1994, picking ministers and members of the upper house.\nLegislative power is divided between federal and state legislatures. The bicameral federal parliament consists of the lower house, the House of Representatives and the upper house, the Senate. The 222-member House of Representatives is elected for a maximum term of five years from single-member constituencies. All 70 senators sit for three-year terms; 26 are elected by the 13 state assemblies, and the remaining 44 are appointed by the King upon the Prime Minister's recommendation. The parliament follows a multi-party system and the government is elected through a first-past-the-post system. Parliamentary elections are held at least once every five years. Before 2018, only registered voters aged 21 and above could vote for the members of the House of Representatives and, in most of the states, for the state legislative chamber. Voting is not mandatory. In July 2019, a bill to lower the voting age to 18 years old was officially passed.\nExecutive power is vested in the Cabinet, led by the Prime Minister. The prime minister must be a member of the House of Representatives, who in the opinion of His Majesty the King, commands the support of a majority of members. The Cabinet is chosen from members of both houses of Parliament. The Prime Minister is both the head of cabinet and the head of government. As a result of the 2018 general election Malaysia was governed by the Pakatan Harapan (PH) political alliance, although Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad resigned amid a political crisis in 2020. In March 2020, the Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition formed under Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, before Muhyiddin lost majority support and was replaced by deputy Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob, a veteran politician from the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), in August 2021. As a result of the 2022 Malaysian general election, a hung parliament was elected. Anwar Ibrahim of the PH coalition was appointed as the new Prime Minister to lead the coalition government of PH, Barisan Nasional, Gabungan Parti Sarawak, Gabungan Rakyat Sabah and several other political parties and independents. Meanwhile, PN, the only political coalition not in the coalition government became the Opposition.\nMalaysia's legal system is based on common law. Although the judiciary is theoretically independent, its independence has been called into question and the appointment of judges lacks accountability and transparency. The highest court in the judicial system is the Federal Court, followed by the Court of Appeal and two high courts, one for Peninsular Malaysia and one for East Malaysia. Malaysia also has a special court to hear cases brought by or against royalty.\nRace is a significant force in politics. Affirmative actions such as the New Economic Policy and the National Development Policy which superseded it, were implemented to advance the standing of the \"bumiputera\", consisting of Malays and the indigenous tribes who are considered the original inhabitants of Malaysia, over non-\"bumiputera\" such as Malaysian Chinese and Malaysian Indians. These policies provide preferential treatment to \"bumiputera\" in employment, education, scholarships, business, and access to cheaper housing and assisted savings. However, it has generated greater interethnic resentment. There is ongoing debate over whether the laws and society of Malaysia should reflect Islamism or secularism. Islamic criminal laws passed by the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party with the support of UMNO state assemblymen in the state legislative assembly of Kelantan have been unenforced by the federal government on the basis that criminal laws are the responsibility of the federal government.\nAfter UMNO lost power at the 2018 Malaysian general election, Malaysia's ranking increased by 9 places in the 2019 Democracy Index to 43rd compared to the previous year and is classified as a 'flawed democracy'. Malaysia's ranking in the 2020 Press Freedom Index increased by 22 places to 101st compared to the previous year, making it one of two countries in Southeast Asia without a 'Difficult situation' or 'Very Serious situation' with regards to press freedom. However, it fell 18 places the following year due to the policies of the PN government.\nMalaysia is marked at 48th and 62nd place according to the 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index, indicating above-average levels of corruption. Freedom House noted Malaysia as \"partly free\" in its 2018 survey. A lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice alleged that at least $3.5 billion involving former prime minister Najib Razak had been stolen from Malaysia's 1MDB state-owned fund, known as the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal.\nAdministrative divisions.\nMalaysia is a federation of 13 states and three federal territories. Out of these, eleven states and two federal territories are in Peninsular Malaysia, whereas the other two states and one federal territory comprise East Malaysia.\nThe country has three tiers of government \u2013 federal, state and local. Governance of the states is divided between the federal and the state governments, with different powers reserved for each, and the federal government has direct administration of the federal territories. Each state has a unicameral State Legislative Assembly whose members are elected from single-member constituencies. State governments are led by Chief Ministers, who are state assembly members from the majority party in the assembly. In each of the states with a hereditary ruler, the Chief Minister is normally required to be a Malay, appointed by the ruler upon the recommendation of the Prime Minister. Until 2018, state elections were held concurrently with the general election by convention, except for those in Sarawak. Following the 2020\u20132022 political crisis, only Pahang, Perak and Perlis opted to conduct their state elections simultaneously with the general elections.\nPositioned below the federal and state governments, local governments represent the lowest tier of governance in Malaysia. As of 2024[ [update]], Malaysia is divided between 19 cities, 40 municipalities, 91 district-level councils, and four statutory agencies. While the federal constitution assigns local authorities to the exclusive jurisdiction of state governments, in practice, the federal Ministry of Housing and Local Government oversees the regulation of local laws and policies. Mayors (or presidents for municipal and district councils) and councillors are appointed by the respective state governments, or in the case of the federal territories, by the federal government.\nFederal laws assign land matters, including the delineation of districts, to the purview of state governments. Except Perlis and the federal territories, each state is divided into districts, which are further subdivided into mukims. In Sabah and Sarawak, districts are grouped into divisions. In contrast to local governments that manage municipal administration and infrastructure development, districts are solely utilised for land taxation.\nThe 13 states are based on historical Malay kingdoms, and 9 of the 11 Peninsular states, known as the Malay states, retain their royal families. The King is elected by and from the nine rulers to serve a five-year term. This King appoints governors serving a four-year term for the states without monarchies, after consultations with the chief minister of that state. Each state has its written constitution. Sabah and Sarawak have considerably more autonomy than the other states, most notably having separate immigration policies and controls, and unique residency status. Federal intervention in state affairs, lack of development, and disputes over oil royalties have occasionally led to statements about secession from leaders in several states such as Penang, Johor, Kelantan, Sabah and Sarawak, although these have not been followed up and no serious independence movements exist.\nA list of thirteen states and each state capital (in parentheses):\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nForeign relations and military.\nA founding member of ASEAN and OIC, the country participates in many international organisations such as the United Nations (U.N.), APEC, the D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation, and NAM. It has chaired ASEAN, OIC, and NAM in the past. A former British colony, it is also a member of the Commonwealth. Kuala Lumpur was the site of the first EAS in 2005.\nMalaysia's foreign policy is officially based on the principle of neutrality and maintaining peaceful relations with all countries, regardless of their political system. The government attaches a high priority to the security and stability of Southeast Asia, and seeks to further develop relations with other countries in the region. Historically the government has tried to portray Malaysia as a progressive Islamic nation while strengthening relations with other Islamic states. A strong tenet of Malaysia's policy is national sovereignty and right of a country to control its domestic affairs. Malaysia signed the U.N. treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.\nThe Spratly Islands are disputed by many states in the area, and a large portion of the South China Sea is claimed by China. Unlike its neighbours of Vietnam and the Philippines, Malaysia historically avoided conflicts with China. However, after the encroachment of Chinese ships in Malaysian territorial waters, and breach of airspace by their military aircraft, Malaysia has become active in condemning China. Brunei and Malaysia in 2009 announced an end to claims of each other's land, and committed to resolve issues related to their maritime borders. The Philippines has a dormant claim to the eastern part of Sabah. Singapore's land reclamation has caused tensions, and minor maritime and land border disputes exist with Indonesia.\nThe Malaysian Armed Forces has three branches: the Malaysian Army, Royal Malaysian Navy and the Royal Malaysian Air Force. There is no conscription, and the required age for voluntary military service is 18. The military uses 1.5% of the country's GDP, and employs 1.23% of Malaysia's manpower. Malaysian peacekeeping forces of MALBATT have contributed to many U.N. peacekeeping missions, such as in Congo, Iran\u2013Iraq, Namibia, Cambodia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Somalia, Kosovo, East Timor, and Lebanon.\nThe Five Power Defence Arrangements is a regional security initiative that has been in place for almost 40 years. It involves joint military exercises held among Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Joint exercises and war games have also been held with Brunei, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States. Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam have agreed to host joint security force exercises to secure their maritime border and tackle issues such as illegal immigration, piracy, and smuggling. Previously there were fears that extremist militant activities in the Muslim areas of the southern Philippines and southern Thailand would spill over into Malaysia. Because of this, Malaysia began to increase its border security.\nHuman rights.\nHomosexuality is illegal in Malaysia, and authorities have imposed punishments such as caning and imprisonment. Human trafficking and sex trafficking in Malaysia are significant problems. There have also been cases of vigilante executions and beatings against LGBT individuals in Malaysia. The illegality of homosexuality in Malaysia has also been the forefront of Anwar Ibrahim's sodomy trials, which Anwar has called politically motivated, a characterization supported by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, along with Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch.\nThe death penalty is in use for serious crimes such as murder, terrorism, drug trafficking, and kidnapping, but in June 2022, Malaysian law minister Wan Junaidi pledged to abolish capital punishment and replace it with other punishments at the discretion of the court.\nGeography.\nMalaysia is the 66th largest country by total land area, with a total area of . It has land borders with Thailand in West Malaysia, and Indonesia and Brunei in East Malaysia. It is linked to Singapore by a narrow causeway and a bridge. The country also has maritime boundaries with Vietnam and the Philippines. The land borders are defined in large part by geological features such as the Perlis River, the Golok River and the Pagalayan Canal, whilst some of the maritime boundaries are the subject of ongoing contention. Brunei forms what is almost an enclave in Malaysia, with the state of Sarawak dividing it into two parts. Malaysia is the only country with territory on both the Asian mainland and the Malay archipelago. The Strait of Malacca, lying between Sumatra and Peninsular Malaysia, is one of the most important thoroughfares in global commerce, carrying 40 percent of the world's trade.\nThe two parts of Malaysia, separated from each other by the South China Sea, share a largely similar landscape in that both Peninsular and East Malaysia feature coastal plains rising to hills and mountains. Peninsular Malaysia, containing 40 per cent of Malaysia's land area, extends from north to south, and its maximum width is . It is divided between its east and west coasts by the Titiwangsa Mountains, rising to a peak elevation of at Mount Korbu, part of a series of mountain ranges running down the centre of the peninsula. These mountains are heavily forested, and mainly composed of granite and other igneous rocks. Much of it has been eroded, creating a karst landscape. The range is the origin of some of Peninsular Malaysia's river systems. The coastal plains surrounding the peninsula reach a maximum width of , and the peninsula's coastline is nearly long, although harbours are only available on the western side.\nEast Malaysia, on the island of Borneo, has a coastline of . It is divided between coastal regions, hills and valleys, and a mountainous interior. The Crocker Range extends northwards from Sarawak, dividing the state of Sabah. It is the location of the high Mount Kinabalu, the tallest mountain in Malaysia. Mount Kinabalu is located in the Kinabalu National Park, which is protected as one of the four UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Malaysia. The highest mountain ranges form the border between Malaysia and Indonesia. Sarawak contains the Mulu Caves, the largest cave system in the world, in the Gunung Mulu National Park which is also a World Heritage Site. The largest river in Malaysia is the Rajang.\nAround these two halves of Malaysia are numerous islands, the largest of which is Banggi. The local climate is equatorial and characterised by the annual southwest (April to October) and northeast (October to February) monsoons. The temperature is moderated by the presence of the surrounding oceans. Humidity is usually high, and the average annual rainfall is . The climates of the Peninsula and the East differ, as the climate on the peninsula is directly affected by wind from the mainland, as opposed to the more maritime weather of the East. Local climates can be divided into three regions, highland, lowland, and coastal. Climate change will cause sea level rise and increased rainfall, increasing flood risks and leading to droughts.\nBiodiversity and conservation.\nMalaysia signed the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity on 12 June 1993, and became a party to the convention on 24 June 1994. It has subsequently produced a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, which was received by the convention on 16 April 1998. The country is megadiverse with a high number of species and high levels of endemism. It is estimated to contain 20\u00a0per\u00a0cent of the world's animal species. High levels of endemism are found on the diverse forests of Borneo's mountains, as species are isolated from each other by lowland forest.\nThere are about 210 mammal species in the country. Over 620 species of birds have been recorded in Peninsular Malaysia, with many endemic to the mountains there. A high number of endemic bird species are also found in Malaysian Borneo. 250 reptile species have been recorded in the country, with about 150 species of snakes and 80 species of lizards. There are about 150 species of frogs, and thousands of insect species. The Exclusive economic zone of Malaysia is and 1.5 times larger than its land area. It is mainly in the South China Sea. Some of its waters are in the Coral Triangle, a biodiversity hotspot. The waters around Sipadan island are the most biodiverse in the world. Bordering East Malaysia, the Sulu Sea is a biodiversity hotspot, with around 600 coral species and 1200 fish species. The unique biodiversity of Malaysian Caves always attracts lovers of ecotourism from all over the world.\nNearly 4,000 species of fungi, including lichen-forming species have been recorded from Malaysia. Of the two fungal groups with the largest number of species in Malaysia, the Ascomycota and their asexual states have been surveyed in some habitats (decaying wood, marine, and freshwater ecosystems, as parasites of some plants, and as agents of biodegradation), but have not been or have been only poorly surveyed in other habitats (as endobionts, in soils, on dung, as human and animal pathogens); the Basidiomycota are only partly surveyed: bracket fungi, and mushrooms and toadstools have been studied, but Malaysian rust and smut fungi remain very poorly known. Without a doubt, many more fungal species in Malaysia are yet to be recorded, and it is likely that many of those, when found, will be new to science.\nAbout two\u00a0thirds of Malaysia was covered in forest as of 2007, with some forests believed to be 130\u00a0million years old. The forests are dominated by dipterocarps. Lowland forest covers areas below , and formerly East Malaysia was covered in such rainforest, which is supported by its hot wet climate. There are around 14,500 species of flowering plants and trees. Besides rainforests, there are over of mangroves in Malaysia, and a large amount of peat forest. At higher altitudes, oaks, chestnuts, and rhododendrons replace dipterocarps. There are an estimated 8,500 species of vascular plants in Peninsular Malaysia, with another 15,000 in the East. The forests of East Malaysia are estimated to be the habitat of around 2,000 tree species, and are one of the most biodiverse areas in the world, with 240 different species of trees every hectare. These forests host many members of the Rafflesia genus, the largest flowers in the world, with a maximum diameter of .\nLogging, along with cultivation practices, has devastated tree cover, causing severe environmental degradation in the country. Over 80\u00a0per\u00a0cent of Sarawak's rainforest has been logged. Floods in East Malaysia have been worsened by the loss of trees, and over 60\u00a0per\u00a0cent of the peninsula's forests have been cleared. With current rates of deforestation, mainly for the palm oil industry, the forests are predicted to be extinct by 2020. Deforestation is a major problem for animals, fungi and plants, having caused species such as \"Begonia eiromischa\" to go extinct. Most remaining forest is found inside reserves and national parks. Habitat destruction has proved a threat for marine life. Illegal fishing is another major threat, with fishing methods such as dynamite fishing and poisoning depleting marine ecosystems. Leatherback turtle numbers have dropped 98\u00a0per\u00a0cent since the 1950s. Hunting has also been an issue for some animals, with overconsumption and the use of animal parts for profit endangering many animals, from marine life to tigers. Marine life is also detrimentally affected by uncontrolled tourism.\nThe Malaysian government aims to balance economic growth with environmental protection, but has been accused of favouring big business over the environment. Some state governments are now trying to counter the environmental impact and pollution created by deforestation; and the federal government is trying to cut logging by 10\u00a0per\u00a0cent each year. A total of 28 national parks have been established, 23 in East Malaysia and five in the peninsula. Tourism has been limited in biodiverse areas such as Sipadan island. Wildlife trafficking is a large issue, and the Malaysian government has held talks with the governments of Brunei and Indonesia to standardise anti-trafficking laws.\nEconomy.\nMalaysia is a relatively open state-oriented and newly industrialised market economy. It has the world's 36th-largest economy by nominal GDP and the 31st-largest by PPP. In 2017, the large service sector contributed to 53.6% of total GDP, the industrial sector 37.6%, and the small agricultural sector roughly 8.8%. Malaysia has a low official unemployment rate of 3.4% as of 2024. Its foreign exchange reserves are the world's 24th-largest. It has a labour force of about 15 million, which is the world's 34th-largest. Malaysia's large automotive industry ranks as the world's 22nd-largest by production.\nMalaysia is the world's 23rd-largest exporter and 25th-largest importer. However, economic inequalities exist between different ethnic groups. The Chinese make up about one-quarter of the population, but account for 70 per cent of the country's market capitalisation. Chinese businesses in Malaysia are part of the larger bamboo network, a network of overseas Chinese businesses in the Southeast Asian market sharing common family and cultural ties.\nInternational trade, facilitated by the shipping route in adjacent Strait of Malacca, and manufacturing are the key sectors. Malaysia is an exporter of natural and agricultural resources, and petroleum is a major export. Malaysia has once been the largest producer of tin, rubber and palm oil in the world. Manufacturing has a large influence in the country's economy, although Malaysia's economic structure has been moving away from it. Malaysia remains one of the world's largest producers of palm oil.\nTourism is the third-largest contributor to Malaysia's GDP, after the manufacturing and commodities sectors. In 2019, the sector contributed about 15.9 percent to the total GDP. According to the World Tourism Organization, Malaysia was the fourteenth-most visited country in the world, and the fourth-most visited country in Asia in 2019, with over 26.1 million visits. Malaysia was ranked 38th in the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report 2019. Its international tourism receipts in 2019 amounted to $19.8 billion.\nThe country has developed into a centre of Islamic banking and has the highest number of female workers in that industry. Knowledge-based services are also expanding. In 2020, Malaysia exported high-tech products worth $92.1 billion, the second-highest in ASEAN, after Singapore. Malaysia was ranked 33rd in the Global Innovation Index in 2024, and 32nd in the Global Competitiveness Report in 2022.\nInfrastructure.\nRailway transport in Malaysia is state-run, and spans some . As of 2016[ [update]], Malaysia has the world's 26th-largest road network, with some of roads. Malaysia's inland waterways are the world's 22nd-longest, and total . Among Malaysia's 114 airports, among which the busiest is Kuala Lumpur International Airport located south of Kuala Lumpur in Sepang District, which is also the twelfth-busiest airport in Asia. Among the 7 federal ports, the major one is Port Klang, which is the thirteenth-busiest container port. Malaysia's flag carrier is Malaysia Airlines, providing international and domestic air services.\nMalaysia's telecommunications network is second only to Singapore's in Southeast Asia, with 4.7\u00a0million fixed-line subscribers and more than 30\u00a0million cellular subscribers. There are 200 industrial parks along with specialised parks such as Technology Park Malaysia and Kulim Hi-Tech Park. Fresh water is available to over 95% of the population, with ground water accounting for 90% of the freshwater resources. Although rural areas have been the focus of great development, they still lag behind areas such as the West Coast of Peninsular Malaysia. The telecommunication network, although strong in urban areas, is less available to the rural population.\nMalaysia's energy infrastructure sector is largely dominated by Tenaga Nasional, the largest electric utility company in Southeast Asia. Customers in Peninsular Malaysia are connected to electricity through the National Grid. The other two electric utility companies in the country are Sarawak Energy and Sabah Electricity. In 2013, Malaysia's total power generation capacity was over 29,728 megawatts. Total electricity generation was 140,985.01 GWh and total electricity consumption was 116,087.51 GWh. Energy production in Malaysia is largely based on oil and natural gas, owing to Malaysia's oil and natural gas reserves, which are the fourth largest in the Asia-Pacific region.\nDemographics.\nAccording to the Malaysian Department of Statistics, the country's population was 32,447,385 in 2020, making it the 42nd most populated country. According to a 2012 estimate, the population is increasing by 1.54 percent per year. Malaysia has an average population density of 96 people per km2, ranking it 116th in the world for population density. People within the 15\u201364 age group constitute 69.5 percent of the total population; the 0\u201314 age group corresponds to 24.5 percent; while senior citizens aged 65 years or older make up 6.0 percent. In 1960, when the first official census was recorded in Malaysia, the population was 8.11\u00a0million. 91.8 percent of the population are Malaysian citizens.\nMalaysian citizens are divided along local ethnic lines, with 69.7 percent considered \"bumiputera\". The largest group of bumiputera are Malays, who are defined in the constitution as Muslims who practise Malay customs and culture. They play a dominant role politically. Bumiputera status is also accorded to the non-Malay indigenous groups of Sabah and Sarawak: which includes Dayaks (Iban, Bidayuh, Orang Ulu), Kadazan-Dusun, Melanau, Bajau and others. Non-Malay bumiputeras make up more than half of Sarawak's population and over two-thirds of Sabah's population. There are also indigenous or aboriginal groups in much smaller numbers on the peninsular, where they are collectively known as the Orang Asli. Laws over who gets bumiputera status vary between states.\nThere are also two other non-Bumiputera local ethnic groups. 22.8 percent of the population are Malaysian Chinese, while 6.8 percent are Malaysian Indian. The local Chinese have historically been more dominant in the business community. Local Indians are mostly of Tamil descent. Malaysian citizenship is not automatically granted to those born in Malaysia, but is granted to a child born of two Malaysian parents outside Malaysia. Dual citizenship is not permitted. Citizenship in the states of Sabah and Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo are distinct from citizenship in Peninsular Malaysia for immigration purposes. Every citizen is issued a biometric smart chip identity card known as \"MyKad\" at the age of 12 and must carry the card at all times.\nThe population is concentrated on Peninsular Malaysia, where 20\u00a0million out of approximately 28\u00a0million Malaysians live. 70 per cent of the population is urban. Due to the rise in labour-intensive industries, the country is estimated to have over 3\u00a0million migrant workers; about 10 per cent of the population. Sabah-based NGOs estimate that out of the 3\u00a0million that make up the population of Sabah, 2\u00a0million are illegal immigrants. Malaysia hosts a population of refugees and asylum seekers numbering approximately 171,500. Of this population, approximately 79,000 are from Burma, 72,400 from the Philippines, and 17,700 from Indonesia. Malaysian officials are reported to have turned deportees directly over to human smugglers in 2007, and Malaysia employs RELA, a volunteer militia with a history of controversies, to enforce its immigration law.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nReligion.\nThe constitution grants freedom of religion, while establishing Islam as the \"religion of the Federation\". According to the Population and Housing Census 2020 figures, ethnicity and religious beliefs correlate highly. Approximately 63.5% of the population practise Islam, 18.7% practise Buddhism, 9.1% Christianity, 6.1% Hinduism and 1.3% practise Confucianism, Taoism and other traditional Chinese religions. 2.7% declared no religion or practised other religions or did not provide any information. The states of Sarawak, Penang and the federal territory of Kuala Lumpur have non-Muslim majorities.\nSunni Islam of the Shafi'i school of jurisprudence is the dominant branch of Islam in Malaysia, while 18% are nondenominational Muslims. The Malaysian constitution strictly defines what makes a \"Malay\", defining Malays as those who are Muslim, speak Malay regularly, practise Malay customs, and lived in or have ancestors from Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore. Statistics from the 2010 Census indicate that 83.6% of the Chinese population identify as Buddhist, with significant numbers of adherents following Taoism (3.4%) and Christianity (11.1%), along with small Muslim populations in areas like Penang. The majority of the Indian population follows Hinduism (86.2%), with a significant minority identifying as Christians (6.0%) or Muslims (4.1%). Christianity is the predominant religion of the non-Malay \"bumiputera\" community (46.5%), while 40.4% identify as Muslims.\nMuslims are obliged to follow the decisions of Syariah Courts (i.e. Shariah courts) in matters concerning their religion. The Islamic judges are expected to follow the Shafi'i legal school of Islam, which is the main \"madh'hab\" of Malaysia. The jurisdiction of Syariah courts is limited to Muslims in matters such as marriage, inheritance, divorce, apostasy, religious conversion, custody and limited Islamic criminal law. No other criminal or civil offences are under the jurisdiction of the Syariah courts, which have a similar hierarchy to the civil courts. The civil courts do not hear matters related to Islamic practices.\nLanguages.\nThe official and national language of Malaysia is Malaysian Malay, a standardised form of the Malay language. The previous official terminology was (lit.\u2009'Malaysian language') but now government policy uses (Malay language) to refer to the official language and both terms remain in use. The National Language Act 1967 specifies the Latin (Rumi) script as the official script of the national language, but does not prohibit the use of the traditional Jawi script.\nEnglish remains an active second language, with its use allowed for some official purposes under the National Language Act of 1967. In Sarawak, English is an official state language alongside Malay. Historically, English was the de facto administrative language; Malay became predominant after the 1969 race riots (13 May incident). Malaysian English, also known as Malaysian Standard English, is a form of English derived from British English. Malaysian English is widely used in business, along with Manglish, which is a colloquial form of English with heavy Malay, Chinese, and Tamil influences. The government discourages the use of non-standard Malay but has no power to issue compounds or fines to those who use what is perceived as improper Malay on their advertisements.\nMany other languages are used in Malaysia, which contains speakers of 137 living languages. Peninsular Malaysia contains speakers of 41 of these languages. The native tribes of East Malaysia have their own languages which are related to, but easily distinguishable from, Malay. Iban is the main tribal language in Sarawak while Dusunic and Kadazan languages are spoken by the natives in Sabah. Chinese Malaysians predominantly speak Chinese dialects from the southern part of China. The more common Chinese varieties in the country are Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, and so on. The Tamil language is used predominantly by the majority of Malaysian Indians. A small number of Malaysians have European ancestry and speak creole languages, such as the Portuguese-based Malaccan Creoles, and the Spanish-based Chavacano language.\nHealth.\nMalaysia operates an efficient and widespread two-tier healthcare system, consisting of a universal healthcare system and a co-existing private healthcare system; provided by highly subsidized healthcare through its extensive network of public hospitals and clinics. The Ministry of Health is the main provider of healthcare services to the country's population. Malaysia's healthcare system is considered to be among the most developed in Asia, which contributes to its thriving medical tourism industry.\nMalaysia spent 3.83% of its GDP on healthcare in 2019. In 2020, the overall life expectancy in Malaysia at birth was 76 years (74 years for males and 78 years for females), and it had an infant mortality rate of 7 deaths per 1000 births. Malaysia had a total fertility rate of 2.0 in 2020, which is just below the replacement level of 2.1. In 2020, the country's crude birth rate was 16 per 1000 people, and the crude death rate was 5 per 1000 people.\nIn 2021, the principal cause of death among Malaysian adults was coronary artery disease, representing 17% of the medically certified deaths in 2020\u2014being followed by pneumonia; which accounted for 11% of the deaths. Transport accidents are considered a major health hazard, as Malaysia, relative to its population, has one of the highest traffic fatality rates in the world. Smoking is also considered a major health issue across the country.\nEducation.\nThe education system of Malaysia features a non-compulsory kindergarten education followed by six years of compulsory primary education and five years of optional secondary education. Schools in the primary education system are divided into two categories: national primary schools, which teach in Malay (i.e.:Sekolah Kebangsaan Sungai Binjai, SK Bukit Tiu), and vernacular schools, which teach in Chinese or Tamil (i.e.:SJK(C) Pin Hwa 2, SJK(T) Bandar Mentakab). Secondary education (i.e.:SMK Sura, Kajang High School) is conducted for five years. In the final year of secondary education, students sit for the Malaysian Certificate of Education examination. Since the introduction of the matriculation programme in 1999, students who completed the 12-month programme in matriculation colleges can enroll in local universities. However, in the matriculation system, only 10 percent of places are open to non-\"bumiputera\" students.\nCulture.\nMalaysia has a multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multilingual society. Substantial influence exists from Chinese and Indian culture, dating back to when foreign trade began. Other cultural influences include the Persian, Arabic, and British cultures. Due to the structure of the government, coupled with the social contract theory, there has been minimal cultural assimilation of ethnic minorities. Some cultural disputes exist between Malaysia and neighbouring countries, notably Indonesia.\nIn 1971, the government created a \"National Cultural Policy\", defining Malaysian culture. It stated that Malaysian culture must be based on the culture of the indigenous peoples of Malaysia, that it may incorporate suitable elements from other cultures, and that Islam must play a part in it. It also promoted the Malay language above others. This government intervention into culture has caused resentment among non-Malays who feel their cultural freedom was lessened. Both Chinese and Indian associations have submitted memorandums to the government, accusing it of formulating an undemocratic culture policy.\nFine arts.\nTraditional Malaysian art was mainly centred on the areas of carving, weaving, and silversmithing. Traditional art ranges from handwoven baskets from rural areas to the silverwork of the Malay courts. Common artworks included ornamental kris, beetle nut sets, and woven batik and songket fabrics. Indigenous East Malaysians are known for their wooden masks. Each ethnic group have distinct performing arts, with little overlap between them. However, Malay art does show some North Indian influence due to the historical influence of India.\nTraditional Malay music and performing arts appear to have originated in the Kelantan-Pattani region with influences from India, China, Thailand, and Indonesia. The music is based around percussion instruments, the most important of which is the gendang (drum). There are at least 14 types of traditional drums. Drums and other traditional percussion instruments and are often made from natural materials. Music is traditionally used for storytelling, celebrating life-cycle events, and occasions such as a harvest. It was once used as a form of long-distance communication. In East Malaysia, gong-based musical ensembles such as agung and kulintang are commonly used in ceremonies such as funerals and weddings. These ensembles are also common in neighbouring regions such as in Mindanao in the Philippines, Kalimantan in Indonesia and Brunei.\nMalaysia has a strong oral tradition that has existed since before the arrival of writing and continues today. Each of the Malay Sultanates created their own literary tradition, influenced by pre-existing oral stories and by the stories that came with Islam. The first Malay literature was in the Arabic script. The earliest known Malay writing is on the Terengganu stone, made in 1303. Chinese and Indian literature became common as the number of speakers increased in Malaysia, and locally produced works based on languages from those areas began to be produced in the 19th century. English has also become a common literary language. In 1971, the government took the step of defining the literature of different languages. Literature written in Malay was called \"the national literature of Malaysia\", literature in other \"bumiputera\" languages was called \"regional literature\", while literature in other languages was called \"sectional literature\". Malay poetry is highly developed, and uses many forms. The \"Hikayat\" form is popular, and the \"pantun\" has spread from Malay to other languages.\nCuisine.\nMalaysia's cuisine reflects the multi-ethnic makeup of its population. Many cultures from within the country and from surrounding regions have greatly influenced the cuisine. Much of the influence comes from the Malay, Chinese, Indian, Thai, Javanese, and Sumatran cultures, largely due to the country being part of the ancient spice route. The cuisine is very similar to that of Singapore and Brunei, and also bears resemblance to Filipino cuisine. The different states have varied dishes, and often the food in Malaysia is different from the original dishes.\nSometimes food not found in its original culture is assimilated into another; for example, Chinese restaurants in Malaysia often serve Malay dishes. Food from one culture is sometimes also cooked using styles taken from another culture, For example, \"sambal belacan\" (shrimp paste) are commonly used as ingredients by Chinese restaurants to create the stir fried water spinach (\"kangkung belacan\"). This means that although much of Malaysian food can be traced back to a certain culture, they have their own identity. Rice is a staple food and an important constituent of the country's culture. Chili is commonly found in local cuisine, although this does not necessarily make them spicy.\nMedia.\nMalaysia's main newspapers are owned by the government and political parties in the ruling coalition, although some major opposition parties also have their own, which are openly sold alongside regular newspapers. A divide exists between the media in the two halves of the country. Peninsular-based media gives a low priority to news from the East and often treats the eastern states as colonies of the peninsula. As a result of this, the East Malaysia region of Sarawak launched TV Sarawak as internet streaming beginning in 2014, and as TV station on 10 October 2020 to overcome the low priority and coverage of Peninsular-based media and to solidify the representation of East Malaysia. The media have been blamed for increasing tension between Indonesia and Malaysia, and giving Malaysians a bad image of Indonesians. The country has Malay, English, Chinese, and Tamil daily newspapers. Kadazandusun and Bajau news are available only via TV broadcast Berita RTM. Written Kadazan news was once included in publications such as The Borneo Post, the Borneo Mail, the Daily Express, and the New Sabah Times, but publication has ceased with the newspaper or as a section.\nFreedom of the press is limited, with numerous restrictions on publishing rights and information dissemination. The government has previously tried to crack down on opposition papers before elections. In 2007, a government agency issued a directive to all private television and radio stations to refrain from broadcasting speeches made by opposition leaders, a move condemned by politicians from the opposition Democratic Action Party. Sabah, where all tabloids but one are independent of government control, has the freest press in Malaysia. Laws such as the Printing Presses and Publications Act have also been cited as curtailing freedom of expression.\nHolidays and festivals.\nMalaysians observe several holidays and festivities throughout the year. Some are federally gazetted public holidays and some are observed by individual states. Other festivals are observed by particular ethnic or religious groups, and the main holiday of each major group has been declared a public holiday. The most observed national holiday is \"Hari Merdeka\" (Independence Day) on 31 August, commemorating the independence of the Federation of Malaya in 1957. Malaysia Day on 16 September commemorates federation in 1963. Other notable national holidays are Labour Day (1 May) and the King's birthday (first week of June).\nMuslim holidays are prominent as Islam is the state religion; \"Hari Raya Puasa\" (also called \"Hari Raya Aidilfitri\", Malay for Eid al-Fitr), \"Hari Raya Haji\" (also called \"Hari Raya Aidiladha\", Malay for Eid al-Adha), \"Maulidur Rasul\" (birthday of the Prophet), and others being observed. Malaysian Chinese celebrate festivals such as Chinese New Year and others relating to traditional Chinese beliefs. Wesak Day is observed and celebrated by Buddhists. Hindus in Malaysia celebrate \"Deepavali\", the festival of lights, while \"Thaipusam\" is a religious rite which sees pilgrims from all over the country converge at the Batu Caves. Malaysia's Christian community celebrates most of the holidays observed by Christians elsewhere, most notably Christmas and Easter. In addition to this, the Dayak community in Sarawak celebrate a harvest festival known as \"Gawai\", and the Kadazandusun community celebrate \"Kaamatan\". Despite most festivals being identified with a particular ethnic or religious group, celebrations are universal. In a custom known as \"open house\" Malaysians participate in the celebrations of others, often visiting the houses of those who identify with the festival.\nSports.\nPopular sports in Malaysia include association football, badminton, field hockey, bowls, tennis, squash, martial arts, horse riding, sailing, and skate boarding. Football is the most popular sport in Malaysia. Badminton matches also attract thousands of spectators, and since 1948 Malaysia has been one of four countries to hold the Thomas Cup, the world team championship trophy of men's badminton. The Malaysian Lawn Bowls Federation was registered in 1997. Squash was brought to the country by members of the British army, with the first competition being held in 1939. The Squash Racquets Association of Malaysia was created on 25 June 1972. The men's national field hockey team ranked 10th in the world as of June\u00a02022[ [update]]. The 3rd Hockey World Cup was hosted at Merdeka Stadium in Kuala Lumpur, as well as the 10th cup. The country also has its own Formula One track \u2013 the Sepang International Circuit, with the first Malaysian Grand Prix held in 1999. Traditional sports include Silat Melayu, the most common style of martial arts practised by ethnic Malays.\nThe Federation of Malaya Olympic Council was formed in 1953, and received recognition by the IOC in 1954. It first participated in the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games. The council was renamed the Olympic Council of Malaysia in 1964, and has participated in all but one Olympic games since its inception. The largest number of athletes ever sent to the Olympics was 57 to the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Besides the Olympic Games, Malaysia also participates in the Paralympic Games. Malaysia has competed at the Commonwealth Games since 1950 as Malaya, and 1966 as Malaysia, and the games were hosted in Kuala Lumpur in 1998.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["6065907", "3607937"], "permutation_1": ["3607937", "6065907"], "permutation_2": ["6065907", "3607937"], "permutation_3": ["6065907", "3607937"]}
{"id": "2hop__12247_44760", "docs_added": {"49728": "San Francisco\nConsolidated city-county in California, United States\nSan Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, financial, and cultural center within Northern California, United States. With a population of 827,526 residents as of 2024, San Francisco is the fourth-most populous city in California and the 17th-most populous in the U.S.; with a land area of at the upper end of the San Francisco Peninsula, it is the fifth-most densely populated U.S. county. Among U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco is ranked first by per capita income and sixth by aggregate income as of 2023. San Francisco anchors the 13th-most populous metropolitan statistical area in the U.S., with almost 4.6 million residents in 2023. The larger San Jose\u2013San Francisco\u2013Oakland combined statistical area, the fifth-largest urban region in the U.S., had a 2023 estimated population of over nine million.\nPrior to European settlement, the modern city proper was inhabited by the Yelamu. On June 29, 1776, settlers from New Spain established the Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate, and the Mission San Francisco de As\u00eds a few miles away, both named for Francis of Assisi. The California gold rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. In 1856, San Francisco became a consolidated city-county. After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, it was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama\u2013Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, it was a major port of embarkation for naval service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, significant immigration, liberalizing attitudes, the rise of the beatnik and hippie countercultures, the sexual revolution, opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, and other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a center of liberal activism.\nSan Francisco and the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area are a global center of economic activity and the arts and sciences, spurred by leading universities, high-tech, healthcare, finance, insurance, real estate, and professional services sectors. As of 2020[ [update]], the metropolitan area, with 4.5 million residents, ranked 5th by GDP ($874 billion) and 2nd by GDP per capita ($131,082) across the OECD countries. In 2023, San Francisco proper had a GDP of $263.1 billion and a GDP per capita of $325,000. Despite an accelerating exodus of businesses from the downtown area of San Francisco, the city is still home to numerous companies inside and outside of technology, including Salesforce, Uber, Airbnb, OpenAI, Levi's, Gap, Dropbox, and Lyft.\nIn 2022, San Francisco had more than 1.7 million international visitors and approximately 20 million domestic ones. It is known for its steep rolling hills and eclectic mix of architecture across varied neighborhoods; its Chinatown and Mission districts; mild climate; and landmarks including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, and Alcatraz. The city is home to educational and cultural institutions such as the University of California, San Francisco, the University of San Francisco, San Francisco State University, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Legion of Honor (museum), the de Young Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Symphony, the San Francisco Ballet, the San Francisco Opera, the SFJAZZ Center, and the California Academy of Sciences. Two major league sports teams, the San Francisco Giants and the Golden State Warriors, play their home games within San Francisco proper. San Francisco International Airport (SFO) offers flights to over 125 destinations, while a light rail and bus network, in tandem with the BART and Caltrain systems, connects nearly every part of San Francisco with the wider region.\nEtymology.\nSan Francisco, which is Spanish for \"Saint Francis\", takes its name from Mission San Francisco de As\u00eds, which in turn was named after Saint Francis of Assisi. The mission received its name in 1776, when it was founded by the Spanish under the leadership of Padre Francisco Pal\u00f3u. The city has officially been known as San Francisco since 1847, when Washington Allon Bartlett, then serving as the city's alcalde, renamed it from Yerba Buena (Spanish for \"Good Herb\"), which had been the name of the first civilian in San Francisco. Earlier in San Francisco's history, the uninhabited area on the northeastern side of San Francisco was called , after the herb that was growing abundantly there. The name Yerba Buena continues to be used in locations in the city, such as on Yerba Buena Island.\nWhile people residing outside the San Francisco Bay Area use nicknames including \"Frisco\" and \"San Fran\", local residents generally refer to San Francisco as \"the City\" or \"SF\". The choice of nickname a person uses is a common way for locals to distinguish long-time residents from tourists and recent arrivals. The nicknames \"San Fran\" and \"Frisco\" are somewhat controversial among San Francisco residents.\nThe California Cantonese who came for the California Gold Rush named California and specifically San Francisco , , \"Gold Mountain\".\nWhen gold was discovered in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia, it was named \"New Gold Mountain\" (, ) and California and San Francisco as \"Old Gold Mountain\" (, ).\nHistory.\nIndigenous history.\nThe earliest archeological evidence of human habitation of the territory of San Francisco dates to 3000\u00a0BCE. The Yelamu group of the Ramaytush people resided in a few small villages when an overland Spanish exploration party arrived on November 2, 1769, the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay. The Ohlone name for San Francisco was \"Ahwaste\", meaning \"place at the bay\". The arrival of Spanish colonists, and the implementation of their Mission system, marked the beginning of the assimilation of the Ramaytush people, and the decline of their language and culture.\nSpanish era.\nThe Spanish Empire claimed San Francisco as part of Las Californias, a province of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The Spanish first arrived in what is now San Francisco on November 2, 1769, when the Portol\u00e1 expedition led by Don Gaspar de Portol\u00e1 and Juan Cresp\u00ed arrived at San Francisco Bay. Having noted the strategic benefits of the area due to its large natural harbor, the Spanish dispatched Pedro Fages in 1770 to find a more direct route to the San Francisco Peninsula from Monterey, which would become part of the El Camino Real route. By 1774, Juan Bautista de Anza had arrived to the area to select the sites for a mission and presidio. The first European maritime presence in San Francisco Bay occurred on August 5, 1775, when the Spanish ship \"San Carlos\", commanded by Juan Manuel de Ayala, became the first ship to anchor in the bay.\nSoon after, on March 28, 1776, Anza established the Presidio of San Francisco. On October 9, Mission San Francisco de As\u00eds, also known as Mission Dolores, was founded by Padre Francisco Pal\u00f3u. In 1794, the Presidio established the Castillo de San Joaqu\u00edn, a fortification on the southern side of the Golden Gate, which later came to be known as Fort Point.\nIn 1804, the province of Alta California was created, which included San Francisco. At its peak in 1810\u20131820, the average population at the Mission Dolores settlement was about 1,100 people.\nMexican era.\nIn 1821, the Californias were ceded to Mexico by Spain. The extensive California mission system gradually lost its influence during the period of Mexican rule, although it was not until 1833 that the missions would be secularized. Agricultural land became largely privatized as ranchos, as was occurring in other parts of California. Coastal trade increased, including a half-dozen barques from various Atlantic ports which regularly sailed in California waters.\nWith the enactment of the Mexican Secularization Act of 1833, the missions were made to divest themselves of their extensive landholdings and emancipate the indigenous people under their control. As part of the process of secularization, Governor Jos\u00e9 Figueroa opened up San Francisco to civilian settlement. Prior to secularization, the only settlements in San Francisco had been the military settlement at the Presidio and the religious settlement at Mission Dolores. In 1835, the Presidio garrison, commanded by Mariano Vallejo, relocated to the Presidio of Sonoma, which was regarded as needing a greater military presence due the proximity of the Russian settlement at Fort Ross. Only a small detachment remained at the Presidio of San Francisco. Mission Dolores sold most of its property in 1836, retaining only the church and related structures. \nIn 1833, Juana Briones de Miranda was granted a small rancho at El Pol\u00edn Spring, near the Presidio, founding the first non-indigenous civilian household in San Francisco. In 1834, the \"pueblo\" of Yerba Buena was founded. Yerba Buena Cove (named after a native herb) was already a favored anchorage spot and the new settlement and trading post was founded by its shores. Yerba Buena was located in what is now the city's Chinatown and Financial District and was centered on a plaza that is now Portsmouth Square. A land survey of Yerba Buena was made by the Swiss immigrant Jean Jacques Vioget as prelude to the city plan. \nFrancisco de Haro became the first alcalde of Yerba Buena. In 1835, the second alcalde, Jos\u00e9 Joaqu\u00edn Estudillo, approved the first land grant in Yerba Buena: to William Richardson. Yerba Buena began to attract American and European settlers; an 1842 census listed 21 residents (11%) born in the United States or Europe, as well as one Filipino merchant. \nFollowing the Bear Flag Revolt in Sonoma and the beginning of the U.S. Conquest of California, American forces from the \"USS Portsmouth\" under the command of John B. Montgomery captured Yerba Buena on July 9, 1846, with little resistance from the local Californio population, raising the American flag over Yerba Buena plaza (later renamed Portsmouth Square in commemoration of this event). \nFollowing the capture, U.S. forces appointed both Jos\u00e9 de Jes\u00fas No\u00e9 and Washington Allon Bartlett to serve as co-alcaldes (mayors), while the conquest continued on in the rest of California. On January 30, 1847, Mayor Bartlett ordained that the city should officially change its name from \"Yerba Buena\" to \"San Francisco\", as the former name was only locally recognized and the latter name was in use on international maps. There was also concern that a new town being planned by General Vallejo on the Carquinez Strait was to be called \"Francisca\", after the first name of his wife. After the name change to \"San Francisco\", the name of Vallejo's town was changed to Benicia, after his wife's middle name. Following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, Alta California was ceded from Mexico to the United States.\nPost-Conquest era.\nDespite its attractive location as a port and naval base, post-Conquest San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. Situated at the tip of a windswept peninsula without water or firewood, San Francisco lacked most of the basic facilities for a 19th-century settlement. Its 1847 population was said to be 459.\nThe California gold rush brought a flood of treasure seekers. Prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849. The promise of wealth was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons, and hotels; many were left to rot, and some were sunk to establish title to the underwater lot. By 1851, the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870, Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land. Buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings.\nCalifornia was quickly granted statehood in 1850, and the U.S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate and a fort on Alcatraz Island to secure San Francisco Bay. San Francisco County was one of the state's 18 original counties established at California statehood in 1850. Until 1856, San Francisco's city limits extended west to Divisadero Street and Castro Street, and south to 20th Street. In 1856, the California state government divided the county. A straight line was then drawn across the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula just north of San Bruno Mountain. Everything south of the line became the new San Mateo County while everything north of the line became the new consolidated City and County of San Francisco.\nThe California gold rush triggered a wave of entrepreneurial activity as individuals sought to capitalize on the newfound wealth. The discovery of silver deposits, notably the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further fueled rapid population growth and economic expansion.\nSan Francisco, as the gateway to the goldfields, experienced a surge in population and commercial activity. However, the influx of fortune seekers also brought challenges. Lawlessness was rampant, and the Barbary Coast district became synonymous with vice, attracting criminals, prostitutes, and illicit activities, including but not limited to prostitution, bootlegging, and gambling. The rapidly growing population, with its lawlessness, gambling and other vices, and the fact that there were no churches to be found, prompted missionaries like William Taylor to come to San Francisco where he began preaching in the streets, using an upright barrel as his pulpit. Taylor garnered enough generous donations from successful gold miners to build a church.\nOne of the most influential figures of this era was William Chapman Ralston. A shrewd banker and investor, Ralston amassed considerable wealth and influence in San Francisco. He gained control over a significant portion of the Comstock Lode's gold and silver mines, establishing a virtual monopoly. Using his incredible clout, Ralston was able to generate millions of dollars for San Francisco during its heady boom years. He founded the Bank of California, the first bank in the Western United States, and built the opulent Palace Hotel, a symbol of San Francisco's newfound prosperity and the largest hotel in the country at the time. His financial empire, however, collapsed in 1875 as a result of the Panic of 1873, triggering a major economic crisis in San Francisco.\nDevelopment of the Port of San Francisco and the establishment in 1869 of overland access to the eastern U.S. rail system via the newly completed Pacific Railroad (the construction of which the city only reluctantly helped support) helped make the Bay Area a center for trade. Catering to the needs and tastes of the growing population, Levi Strauss opened a dry goods business and Domingo Ghirardelli began manufacturing chocolate. Chinese immigrants made the city a polyglot culture, drawn to \"Old Gold Mountain\", creating the city's Chinatown quarter. By 1880, Chinese made up 9.3% of the population. \nThe first cable cars carried San Franciscans up Clay Street in 1873. The city's sea of Victorian houses began to take shape, and civic leaders campaigned for a spacious public park, resulting in plans for Golden Gate Park. San Franciscans built schools, churches, theaters, and all the hallmarks of civic life. The Presidio developed into the most important American military installation on the Pacific coast. By 1890, San Francisco's population approached 300,000, making it the eighth-largest city in the United States at the time. Around 1901, San Francisco was a major city known for its flamboyant style, stately hotels, ostentatious mansions on Nob Hill, and a thriving arts scene. The first North American plague epidemic was the San Francisco plague of 1900\u20131904.\n1906 earthquake and interwar era.\nAt 5:12\u00a0am on April 18, 1906, a major earthquake struck San Francisco and northern California. As buildings collapsed from the shaking, ruptured gas lines ignited fires that spread across the city and burned out of control for several days. With water mains out of service, the Presidio Artillery Corps attempted to contain the inferno by dynamiting blocks of buildings to create firebreaks. More than three-quarters of the city lay in ruins, including almost all of the downtown core. Contemporary accounts reported that 498 people died, though modern estimates put the number in the several thousands. More than half of the city's population of 400,000 was left homeless. Refugees settled temporarily in makeshift tent villages in Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, on the beaches, and elsewhere. Many fled permanently to the East Bay. Jack London is remembered for having famously eulogized the earthquake: \"Not in history has a modern imperial city been so completely destroyed. San Francisco is gone.\"\nRebuilding was rapid and performed on a grand scale. Rejecting calls to completely remake the street grid, San Franciscans opted for speed. Amadeo Giannini's Bank of Italy, later to become Bank of America, provided loans for many of those whose livelihoods had been devastated. The influential San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association or SPUR was founded in 1910 to address the quality of housing after the earthquake. The earthquake hastened development of western neighborhoods that survived the fire, including Pacific Heights, where many of the city's wealthy rebuilt their homes. In turn, the destroyed mansions of Nob Hill became grand hotels. City Hall rose again in the Beaux Arts style, and the city celebrated its rebirth at the Panama\u2013Pacific International Exposition in 1915.\nDuring this period, San Francisco built some of its most important infrastructure. Civil Engineer Michael O'Shaughnessy was hired by San Francisco Mayor James Rolph as chief engineer for the city in September 1912 to supervise the construction of the Twin Peaks Reservoir, the Stockton Street Tunnel, the Twin Peaks Tunnel, the San Francisco Municipal Railway, the Auxiliary Water Supply System, and new sewers. San Francisco's streetcar system was pushed to completion by O'Shaughnessy between 1915 and 1927. It was the O'Shaughnessy Dam, Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, and Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct that would have the largest effect on San Francisco. An abundant water supply enabled San Francisco to develop into the city it has become today.\nIn ensuing years, the city solidified its standing as a financial capital; in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, not a single San Francisco-based bank failed. Indeed, it was at the height of the Great Depression that San Francisco undertook two great civil engineering projects, simultaneously constructing the San Francisco\u2013Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, completing them in 1936 and 1937, respectively. It was in this period that the island of Alcatraz, a former military stockade, began its service as a federal maximum security prison, housing notorious inmates such as Al Capone, and Robert Franklin Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz. San Francisco later celebrated its regained grandeur with a World's fair, the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939\u201340, creating Treasure Island in the middle of the bay to house it.\nContemporary era.\nDuring World War II, the city-owned Sharp Park in Pacifica was used as an internment camp to detain Japanese Americans. Hunters Point Naval Shipyard became a hub of activity, and Fort Mason became the primary port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater of Operations. The explosion of jobs drew many people, especially African Americans from the South, to the area. After the end of the war, many military personnel returning from service abroad and civilians who had originally come to work decided to stay. The United Nations Charter creating the United Nations was drafted and signed in San Francisco in 1945 and, in 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco re-established peaceful relations between Japan and the Allied Powers.\nUrban planning projects in the 1950s and 1960s involved widespread destruction and redevelopment of west-side neighborhoods and the construction of new freeways, of which only a series of short segments were built before being halted by citizen-led opposition. The onset of containerization made San Francisco's small piers obsolete, and cargo activity moved to the larger Port of Oakland. The city began to lose industrial jobs and turned to tourism as the most important segment of its economy. The suburbs experienced rapid growth, and San Francisco underwent significant demographic change, as large segments of the white population left the city, supplanted by an increasing wave of immigration from Asia and Latin America. From 1950 to 1980, the city lost over 10 percent of its population.\nOver this period, San Francisco became a magnet for America's counterculture movement. Beat Generation writers fueled the San Francisco Renaissance and centered on the North Beach neighborhood in the 1950s. Hippies flocked to Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, reaching a peak with the 1967 Summer of Love. In 1974, the Zebra murders left at least 16 people dead. In the 1970s, the city became a center of the gay rights movement, with the emergence of The Castro as an urban gay village, the election of Harvey Milk to the Board of Supervisors, and his assassination, along with that of Mayor George Moscone, in 1978.\nBank of America, now based in Charlotte, North Carolina, was founded in San Francisco; the bank completed 555 California Street in 1969. The Transamerica Pyramid was completed in 1972, igniting a wave of \"Manhattanization\" that lasted until the late 1980s, a period of extensive high-rise development downtown. The 1980s also saw a dramatic increase in the number of homeless people in the city, an issue that remains today, despite many attempts to address it. \nThe 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused destruction and loss of life throughout the Bay Area. In San Francisco, the quake severely damaged structures in the Marina and South of Market districts and precipitated the demolition of the damaged Embarcadero Freeway and much of the damaged Central Freeway, allowing the city to reclaim The Embarcadero as its historic downtown waterfront and revitalizing the Hayes Valley neighborhood.\nThe three recent decades have seen booms driven by the internet industry. During the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, startup companies invigorated the San Francisco economy. Large numbers of entrepreneurs and computer application developers moved into the city, followed by marketing, design, and sales professionals, changing the social landscape as once poorer neighborhoods became increasingly gentrified. Demand for new housing and office space ignited a second wave of high-rise development, this time in the South of Market district. By 2000, the city's population reached new highs, surpassing the previous record set in 1950. When the bubble burst in 2001, many of these companies folded and their employees were laid off. Yet high technology and entrepreneurship remain mainstays of the San Francisco economy. By the mid-2000s (decade), the social media boom had begun, with San Francisco becoming a popular location for tech offices and a common place to live for people employed in Silicon Valley companies such as Apple and Google.\nThe early 2020s saw a reduction of tech companies' presence in Downtown San Francisco in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, increased popularity of working at home, and struggles with homelessness. Although some observers have raised the possibility that office vacancies and declining tax revenues could cause San Francisco to enter an economic doom loop, other sources have refuted this broad-based characterization of the city as a whole, asserting that the issues of concern are restricted primarily to the urban core of San Francisco. As of March 2024, Union Square was in \"sorry shape\" and had lost its traditional position as the Bay Area's regional shopping hub to Westfield Valley Fair in San Jose.\nThe Ferry Station Post Office Building, Armour & Co. Building, Atherton House, and YMCA Hotel are historic buildings among dozens of historical landmarks in the city, according to the National Register of Historic Places listings in San Francisco.\nGeography.\nSan Francisco is located on the West Coast of the United States, at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula and includes significant stretches of the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay within its boundaries. Several picturesque islands\u2014Alcatraz, Treasure Island and the adjacent Yerba Buena Island, and small portions of Alameda Island, Red Rock Island, and Angel Island\u2014are part of the city. Also included are the uninhabited Farallon Islands, offshore in the Pacific Ocean. The mainland within the city limits roughly forms a \"seven-by-seven-mile square\", a common local colloquialism referring to the city's shape, though its total area, including water, is nearly .\nThere are more than 50 hills within the city limits. Some neighborhoods are named after the hill on which they are situated, including Nob Hill, Potrero Hill, and Russian Hill. Near the geographic center of the city, southwest of the downtown area, are a series of less densely populated hills. Twin Peaks, a pair of hills forming one of the city's highest points, forms an overlook spot. San Francisco's tallest hill, Mount Davidson, is high and is capped with a tall cross built in 1934. Dominating this area is Sutro Tower, a large red and white radio and television transmission tower reaching 1,811\u00a0ft (552 m) above sea level.\nThe nearby San Andreas and Hayward Faults are responsible for much earthquake activity, although neither physically passes through the city itself. The San Andreas Fault caused the earthquakes in 1906 and 1989. Minor earthquakes occur on a regular basis. The threat of major earthquakes plays a large role in the city's infrastructure development. The city constructed an auxiliary water supply system and has repeatedly upgraded its building codes, requiring retrofits for older buildings and higher engineering standards for new construction. However, there are still thousands of smaller buildings that remain vulnerable to quake damage. USGS has released the California earthquake forecast which models earthquake occurrence in California.\nSan Francisco's shoreline has grown beyond its natural limits. Entire neighborhoods such as the Marina, Mission Bay, and Hunters Point, as well as large sections of the Embarcadero, sit on areas of landfill. Treasure Island was constructed from material dredged from the bay as well as material resulting from the excavation of the Yerba Buena Tunnel through Yerba Buena Island during the construction of the Bay Bridge. Such land tends to be unstable during earthquakes. The resulting soil liquefaction causes extensive damage to property built upon it, as was evidenced in the Marina district during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. A few natural lakes and creeks (Lake Merced, Mountain Lake, Pine Lake, Lobos Creek, El Polin Spring) are within parks and remain protected in what is essentially their original form, but most of the city's natural watercourses, such as Islais Creek and Mission Creek, have been partially or completely culverted and built over. Since the 1990s, however, the Public Utilities Commission has been studying proposals to daylight or restore some creeks.\nNeighborhoods.\nAn \"Historical Center of San Francisco\" monument,<ref name=\"sfG/rs/unP\"></ref> where the 1899\u20131906 City Hall was once located,<ref name=\"a&A/Csf\"></ref> is in United Nations Plaza, at \nThe earliest center of San Francisco is Portsmouth Square, in the northeast quadrant of the city anchored by Market Street and the waterfront. Here in the northeast quadrant, the Financial District is centered, with Union Square, the principal shopping and hotel district, and the Tenderloin nearby. Cable cars carry riders up steep inclines to the summit of Nob Hill, once the home of the city's business tycoons, and down to the waterfront tourist attractions of Fisherman's Wharf, and Pier 39, where many restaurants feature Dungeness crab from a still-active fishing industry. Also in this quadrant are Russian Hill, a residential neighborhood with the famously crooked Lombard Street; North Beach, the city's Little Italy and the former center of the Beat Generation; and Telegraph Hill, which features Coit Tower. Abutting Russian Hill and North Beach is San Francisco's Chinatown, the oldest Chinatown in North America. The South of Market, which was once San Francisco's industrial core, has seen significant redevelopment following the construction of Oracle Park and an infusion of startup companies. New skyscrapers, live-work lofts, and condominiums dot the area. Further development is taking place just to the south in Mission Bay area, a former railroad yard, which now has a second campus of the University of California, San Francisco and Chase Center, which opened in 2019 as the new home of the Golden State Warriors.\nWest of downtown, across Van Ness Avenue, lies the large Western Addition neighborhood, which became established with a large African American population after World War II. The Western Addition is usually divided into smaller neighborhoods including Hayes Valley, the Fillmore, and Japantown, which was once the largest Japantown in North America but suffered when its Japanese American residents were forcibly removed and interned during World War II. The Western Addition survived the 1906 earthquake with its Victorians largely intact, including the famous \"Painted Ladies\", standing alongside Alamo Square. To the south, near the geographic center of the city is Haight-Ashbury, famously associated with 1960s hippie culture.\nNorth of the Western Addition is Pacific Heights, an affluent neighborhood that features the homes built by wealthy San Franciscans in the wake of the 1906 earthquake. Directly north of Pacific Heights facing the waterfront is the Marina, a neighborhood popular with young professionals that was largely built on reclaimed land from the Bay.\nIn the southeast quadrant of the city is the Mission District\u2014populated in the 19th century by Californios and working-class immigrants from Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Scandinavia. In the 1910s, a wave of Central American immigrants settled in the Mission and, in the 1950s, immigrants from Mexico began to predominate. In recent years, gentrification has changed the demographics of parts of the Mission from Latino, to twenty-something professionals. Noe Valley to the southwest and Bernal Heights to the south are both increasingly popular among young families with children. East of the Mission is the Potrero Hill neighborhood, a mostly residential neighborhood that features sweeping views of downtown San Francisco. West of the Mission, the area historically known as Eureka Valley, now popularly called the Castro, was once a working-class Scandinavian and Irish area. It has become North America's first gay village, and is now the center of gay life in the city. Located near the city's southern border, the Excelsior District is one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in San Francisco. The Bayview-Hunters Point in the far southeast corner of the city is one of the poorest neighborhoods, though the area has been the focus of several revitalizing and urban renewal projects.\nThe West Side of the city remained largely undeveloped until the early 20th century, due to the region being isolated from downtown because of the rugged terrain of Twin Peaks, Mount Sutro and Mount Davidson. Vast sand dunes made up the costal plain with the uninhibited area being dubbed the Outside Lands. The creation of Golden Gate Park in 1870\u20131900 contributed to the area being developed. The construction of the Twin Peaks Tunnel in 1918 connected southwest neighborhoods to downtown via streetcar, hastening the development of West Portal, and nearby affluent Forest Hill and St. Francis Wood. Further west, stretching all the way to the Pacific Ocean and north to Golden Gate Park lies the vast Sunset District, a large middle-class area with a predominantly Asian population.\nThe northwestern quadrant of the city contains the Richmond, a mostly middle-class neighborhood north of Golden Gate Park, home to immigrants from other parts of Asia as well as many Russian and Ukrainian immigrants. Together, these areas are known as The Avenues.\nMany piers remained derelict for years until the demolition of the Embarcadero Freeway reopened the downtown waterfront, allowing for redevelopment. The centerpiece of the port, the Ferry Building, while still receiving commuter ferry traffic, has been restored and redeveloped as a gourmet marketplace.\nClimate.\nSan Francisco has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate (K\u00f6ppen: \"Csb\", Trewartha: Csll), characteristic of California's coast, with moist winters and dry summers. San Francisco's weather is strongly influenced by the cool currents of the Pacific Ocean on the west side of the city, and the water of San Francisco Bay to the north and east. This moderates temperature swings and produces a remarkably mild year-round climate with little seasonal temperature variation.\nAmong major U.S. cities, San Francisco has the coolest daily mean, maximum, and minimum temperatures for June, July, and August. During the summer, rising hot air in California's interior valleys creates a low-pressure area that draws winds from the North Pacific High through the Golden Gate, which creates the city's characteristic cool winds and fog. The fog is less pronounced in eastern neighborhoods and during the late summer and early fall. The year's warmest month, on average, is September, and on average, October is warmer than July, especially in daytime.\nTemperatures reach or exceed on an average of only 21 and 23\u00a0days a year at downtown and San Francisco International Airport (SFO), respectively. The dry period of May to October is mild to warm, with the normal monthly mean temperature peaking in September at . The rainy period of November to April is slightly cooler, with the normal monthly mean temperature reaching its lowest in January at . On average, there are 73 rainy days a year, and annual precipitation averages . Variation in precipitation from year to year is high. Above-average rain years are often associated with warm El Ni\u00f1o conditions in the Pacific while dry years often occur in cold water La Ni\u00f1a periods. In 2013 (a \"La Ni\u00f1a\" year), a record low of rainfall was recorded at downtown San Francisco, where records have been kept since 1849. Snowfall in the city is very rare, with only 10 measurable accumulations recorded since 1852, most recently in 1976 when up to fell on Twin Peaks.\nThe highest recorded temperature at the official National Weather Service downtown observation station was on September 1, 2017. During that hot spell, the warmest ever night of was also recorded. The lowest recorded temperature was on December 11, 1932.\nDuring an average year between 1991 and 2020, San Francisco recorded a warmest night at and a coldest day at . The coldest daytime high since the station's opening in 1945 was recorded in December 1972 at .\nAs a coastal city, San Francisco will be heavily affected by climate change. As of 2021[ [update]], sea levels are projected to rise by as much as , resulting in periodic flooding, rising groundwater levels, and lowland floods from more severe storms.\nSan Francisco falls under the USDA 10b Plant hardiness zone, though some areas, particularly downtown, border zone 11a.\nEcology.\nHistorically, tule elk were present in San Francisco County, based on archeological evidence of elk remains in at least five different Native American shellmounds: at Hunter's Point, Fort Mason, Stevenson Street, Market Street, and Yerba Buena. Perhaps the first historical observer record was from the De Anza Expedition on March 23, 1776. Herbert Eugene Bolton wrote about the expedition camp at Mountain Lake, near the southern end of today's Presidio: \"Round about were grazing deer, and scattered here and there were the antlers of large elk.\"\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nThe 2020 United States census showed San Francisco's population to be 873,965, an increase of 8.5% from the 2010 census. With roughly one-quarter the population density of Manhattan, San Francisco is the second-most densely populated large American city, behind only New York City among cities greater than 200,000 population, and the fifth-most densely populated U.S. county, following only four of the five New York City boroughs.\nSan Francisco is part of the five-county San Francisco\u2013Oakland\u2013Hayward, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area, a region of 4.7\u00a0million people (13th most populous in the U.S.), and has served as its traditional demographic focal point. It is also part of the greater 14-county San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area, whose population is over 9.6\u00a0million, making it the fifth-largest in the United States as of 2018[ [update]].\nRace, ethnicity, religion, and languages.\nAs of the 2020[ [update]] census, the racial makeup and population of San Francisco included: 361,382 Whites (41.3%), 296,505 Asians (33.9%), 46,725 African Americans (5.3%), 86,233 Multiracial Americans (9.9%), 6,475 Native Americans and Alaska Natives (0.7%), 3,476 Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders (0.4%) and 73,169 persons of other races (8.4%). There were 136,761 Hispanic or Latino residents of any race (15.6%).\nSan Francisco is a majority minority city, as non-Hispanic White residents comprise less than half of the population; in 1940 they formed 92.5% of the population.\nIn 2010, residents of Chinese ethnicity constituted the largest single ethnic minority group in San Francisco at 21% of the population; other large Asian groups include Filipinos (5%) and Vietnamese (2%), with Japanese, Koreans and many other Asian and Pacific Islander groups represented in the city. The population of Chinese ancestry is most heavily concentrated in Chinatown and the Sunset and Richmond Districts. Filipinos are most concentrated in SoMa and the Crocker-Amazon; the latter neighborhood shares a border with Daly City, which has one of the highest concentrations of Filipinos in North America. The Tenderloin District is home to a large portion of the city's Vietnamese population as well as businesses and restaurants, which is known as the city's Little Saigon.\nThe principal Hispanic groups in the city were those of Mexican (7%) and Salvadoran (2%) ancestry. The Hispanic population is most heavily concentrated in the Mission District, Tenderloin District, and Excelsior District. The city's percentage of Hispanic residents is less than half of that of the state.\nAfrican Americans constituted about 5% of San Francisco's population in 2020; their share of the city's population has been decreasing since the 1970s. The majority of the city's Black residents live in the neighborhoods of Bayview-Hunters Point, Visitacion Valley, and the Fillmore District. There are smaller Black communities in Diamond Heights, Glen Park, and Mission District.\nUnlike many other Western cities, San Francisco has a significant Irish American population. Drawn by the California Gold Rush, the Irish were one of the first major White immigrant groups to arrive in California, settling in the city of San Francisco. The Irish historically settled in Irish Hill, which was razed following World War II. Despite this, San Francisco is still one of only three counties in the entire Western United States whose White population is plurality (20.6%) Irish.\nThe city has long been home to a significant Jewish community; in 2018 Jewish Americans made up an estimated 10% (80,000) of the city's population. It the third-largest Jewish community in proportional terms in the United States, behind only those of New York City, and Los Angeles, respectively, and it is also relatively young compared to other major U.S. cities. The Jewish community resides throughout the city, but the Richmond District is home to an ethnic enclave of mostly Russian Jews. The Fillmore District was formerly a mostly Jewish neighborhood from the 1920s until the 1970s, when many of its Jewish residents moved to other neighborhoods of the city as well as the suburbs of nearby Marin County.\nAccording to a 2018 study by the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, Jews make up 10% (80,000) of the city's population, making Judaism the second-largest religion in San Francisco after Christianity. A prior 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, the largest religious groupings in San Francisco's metropolitan area are Christians (48%), followed by those of no religion (35%), Hindus (5%), Jews (3%), Buddhists (2%), Muslims (1%) and a variety of other religions have smaller followings. According to the same study by the Pew Research Center, about 20% of residents in the area are Protestant, and 25% professing Roman Catholic beliefs. Meanwhile, 10% of the residents in metropolitan San Francisco identify as agnostics, while 5% identify as atheists.\nAs of 2010[ [update]], 55% (411,728) of San Francisco residents spoke only English at home, while 19% (140,302) spoke a variety of Chinese (mostly Taishanese and Cantonese), 12% (88,147) Spanish, 3% (25,767) Tagalog, and 2% (14,017) Russian. In total, 45% (342,693) of San Francisco's population spoke a language at home other than English.\nEthnic clustering.\nSan Francisco has several prominent Chinese, Mexican, and Filipino neighborhoods including Chinatown and the Mission District. Research collected on the immigrant clusters in the city show that more than half of the Asian population in San Francisco is either Chinese-born (40.3%) or Philippine-born (13.1%), and of the Mexican population 21% were Mexican-born, meaning these are people who recently immigrated to the United States. Between the years of 1990 and 2000, the number of foreign-born residents increased from 33% to nearly 40%. During this same time period, the San Francisco metropolitan area received 850,000 immigrants, ranking third in the United States after Los Angeles and New York.\nEducation, households, and income.\nOf all major cities in the United States, San Francisco has the second-highest percentage of residents with a college degree, second only to Seattle. Over 44% of adults have a bachelor's or higher degree. San Francisco had the highest rate at 7,031 per square mile, or over 344,000 total graduates in the city's .\nSan Francisco has the highest estimated percentage of gay and lesbian individuals of any of the 50 largest U.S. cities, at 15%. San Francisco also has the highest percentage of same-sex households of any American county, with the Bay Area having a higher concentration than any other metropolitan area.\nSan Francisco ranks third of American cities in median household income with a 2007 value of $65,519. Median family income is $81,136. An emigration of middle-class families has left the city with a lower proportion of children than any other large American city, with the dog population cited as exceeding the child population of 115,000, in 2018. The city's poverty rate is 12%, lower than the national average.\nHomelessness has been a chronic problem for San Francisco since the early 1970s.\nThe city is believed to have the highest number of homeless inhabitants per capita of any major U.S. city.\nThere are 345,811 households in the city, out of which: 133,366 households (39%) were individuals, 109,437 (32%) were opposite-sex married couples, 63,577 (18%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 21,677 (6%) were unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 10,384 (3%) were same-sex married couples or partnerships. The average household size was 2.26; the average family size was 3.11. 452,986 people (56%) lived in rental housing units, and 327,985 people (41%) lived in owner-occupied housing units.\nThe median age of the city population is 38 years.\nSan Francisco declared itself a sanctuary city in 1989, and city officials strengthened the stance in 2013 with its 'Due Process for All' ordinance. The law declared local authorities could not hold immigrants for immigration offenses if they had no violent felonies on their records and did not currently face charges. The city issues a Resident ID Card regardless of the applicant's immigration status.\nHomelessness.\nHomelessness in San Francisco emerged as a major issue in the late 20th century and remains a growing problem in modern times.\n8,035 homeless people were counted in San Francisco's 2019 point-in-time street and shelter count. This was an increase of more than 17% over the 2017 count of 6,858 people. 5,180 of the people were living unsheltered on the streets and in parks. 26% of respondents in the 2019 count identified job loss as the primary cause of their homelessness, 18% cited alcohol or drug use, and 13% cited being evicted from their residence. \nThe city of San Francisco has been dramatically increasing its spending to service the growing population homelessness crisis: spending jumped by $241 million in 2016\u201317 to total $275 million, compared to a budget of just $34 million the previous year. In 2017\u201318 the budget for combatting homelessness stood at $305 million. In the 2019\u20132020 budget year, the city budgeted $368 million for homelessness services. In the proposed 2020\u20132021 budget the city budgeted $850 million for homelessness services.\nIn January 2018 a United Nations special rapporteur on homelessness, Leilani Farha, stated that she was \"completely shocked\" by San Francisco's homelessness crisis during a visit to the city. She compared the \"deplorable conditions\" of the homeless camps she witnessed on San Francisco's streets to those she had seen in Mumbai. In May 2020, San Francisco officially sanctioned homeless encampments.\nAccording to San Francisco's Point-in-Time (PIT) count, the homeless population in 2024 was approximately 8,323 individuals. Additionally, over 20,000 people in the city were seeking homeless services.\nCrime.\nSan Francisco's violent crime rate is low compared to other major cities, though many residents are still concerned about it.\nIn 2011, 50 murders were reported, which is 6.1 per 100,000 people. There were about 134 rapes, 3,142 robberies, and about 2,139 assaults. There were about 4,469 burglaries, 25,100 thefts, and 4,210 motor vehicle thefts. The Tenderloin area has the highest crime rate in San Francisco: 70% of the city's violent crimes, and around one-fourth of the city's murders, occur in this neighborhood. The Tenderloin also sees high rates of drug abuse, gang violence, and prostitution. Another area with high crime rates is the Bayview-Hunters Point area. In the first six months of 2015 there were 25 murders compared to 14 in the first six months of 2014. However, the murder rate is still much lower than in past decades. That rate, though, did rise again by the close of 2016. According to the San Francisco Police Department, there were 59 murders in the city in 2016, an annual total that marked a 13.5% increase in the number of homicides (52) from 2015. The city has also gained a reputation for car break-ins, with over 19,000 car break-ins occurring in 2021.\nDuring the first half of 2018, human feces on San Francisco sidewalks were the second-most-frequent complaint of city residents, with about 65 calls per day. The city has formed a \"poop patrol\" to attempt to combat the problem.\nSeveral street gangs have operated in the city over the decades, including MS-13, the Sure\u00f1os and Norte\u00f1os in the Mission District.\nAfrican-American street gangs familiar in other cities, including the Bloods, Crips, and their sets, have struggled to establish footholds in San Francisco, while police and prosecutors have been accused of liberally labeling young African-American males as gang members.\nCriminal gangs with shot callers in China, including Triad groups such as the Wo Hop To, were active in San Francisco in the 20th century. According to statistics released by SFPD in April 2024, the crime figures were down in the first 100 days of the year, namely in terms of robberies, burglaries and larceny. In the first half of 2024, San Francisco experienced a 32% decrease in overall crime compared to the previous year. Personal property theft saw a 41% reduction, and violent crimes, including gun-related incidents, decreased by 30%.\nEconomy.\nThe city has a diversified service economy, with employment spread across a wide range of professional services, including tourism, financial services, and high technology. In 2016, approximately 27% of workers were employed in professional business services; 14% in leisure and hospitality; 13% in government services; 12% in education and health care; 11% in trade, transportation, and utilities; and 8% in financial activities. In 2023, GDP in the five-county San Francisco metropolitan area grew 3.4% in real terms to $779\u00a0billion. Additionally, in 2023 the 14-county San Jose\u2013San Francisco\u2013Oakland combined statistical area had a GDP of $1.397\u00a0trillion, ranking 3rd among CSAs, and ahead of all but 15 countries. As of 2023[ [update]], San Francisco County ranked 11th by income per capita among U.S. counties, with a per capita personal income of $164,807. Marin County, directly to the north over the Golden Gate Bridge, and San Mateo County, directly to the south on the Peninsula, were the 7th and 9th highest-income counties respectively.\nThe legacy of the California gold rush turned San Francisco into the principal banking and finance center of the West Coast in the early twentieth century. Montgomery Street in the Financial District became known as the \"Wall Street of the West\", home to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and the site of the now-defunct Pacific Coast Stock Exchange. Bank of America, a pioneer in making banking services accessible to the middle class, was founded in San Francisco and in the 1960s, built the landmark modern skyscraper at 555 California Street for its corporate headquarters, since relocated to Charlotte, North Carolina. Many large financial institutions, multinational banks, and venture capital firms are based in or have regional headquarters in the city. With over 30 international financial institutions, six Fortune 500 companies, and a large supporting infrastructure of professional services\u2014including law, public relations, architecture and design\u2014San Francisco is designated as an Alpha(-) World City. The 2024 Global Financial Centres Index ranked San Francisco as the fifth-most competitive financial center in the world.\nBeginning in the 1990s, San Francisco's economy diversified away from finance and tourism towards the growing fields of high tech, biotechnology, and medical research. Technology jobs accounted for just 1 percent of San Francisco's economy in 1990, growing to 4 percent in 2010 and an estimated 8 percent by the end of 2013. San Francisco became a center of Internet start-up companies during the dot-com bubble of the 1990s and the subsequent social media boom of the late 2000s (decade). Since 2010, San Francisco proper has attracted an increasing share of venture capital investments as compared to nearby Silicon Valley, attracting 423 financings worth US$4.58\u00a0billion in 2013. In 2004, the city approved a payroll tax exemption for biotechnology companies to foster growth in the Mission Bay neighborhood, site of a second campus and hospital of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Mission Bay hosts the UCSF Medical Center, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, and Gladstone Institutes, as well as more than 40 private-sector life sciences companies.\nAccording to academic Rob Wilson, San Francisco is a global city, a status that pre-dated the city's popularity during the California gold rush. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to high office vacancy rates and the accelerating evacuation of many retail and tech businesses out of the downtown core of San Francisco. Attributed causes include a shift to remote work in the technology and professional services sectors, as well as high levels of homelessness, drug use, and crime in areas around downtown San Francisco, such as the Tenderloin and Mid-Market neighborhoods.\nThe top employer in San Francisco is the city government itself, employing 5.6% (35,000+ people) of the city's workforce, followed by UCSF with over 29,000 employees. The largest private-sector employer is Salesforce, with 11,953 employees, as of 2024[ [update]]. Small businesses with fewer than 10 employees and self-employed firms made up 85% of city establishments in 2006, and the number of San Franciscans employed by firms of more than 1,000 employees has fallen by half since 1977. The growth of national big box and formula retail chains into the city has been made intentionally difficult by political and civic consensus. In an effort to buoy small privately owned businesses in San Francisco and preserve the unique retail personality of the city, the Small Business Commission started a publicity campaign in 2004 to keep a larger share of retail dollars in the local economy, and the Board of Supervisors has used the planning code to limit the neighborhoods where formula retail establishments can set up shop, an effort affirmed by San Francisco voters. However, by 2016, San Francisco was rated low by small businesses in a Business Friendliness Survey.\nLike many U.S. cities, San Francisco once had a significant manufacturing sector employing nearly 60,000 workers in 1969, but nearly all production left for cheaper locations by the 1980s. As of 2014[ [update]], San Francisco has seen a small resurgence in manufacturing, with more than 4,000 manufacturing jobs across 500 companies, doubling since 2011. The city's largest manufacturing employer is Anchor Brewing Company, and the largest by revenue is Timbuk2.\nAs of the first quarter of 2022[ [update]], the median value of homes in San Francisco County was $1,297,030. It ranked third in the U.S. for counties with highest median home value, behind Nantucket, Massachusetts and San Mateo County, California.\nTechnology.\nSan Francisco became a hub for technology-driven economic growth during the internet boom of the 1990s, and still holds an important position in the world city network today. Intense redevelopment towards the \"new economy\" makes business more technologically minded. Between the years of 1999 and 2000, the job growth rate was 4.9%, creating over 50,000 jobs in technology firms and internet content production. However, the technology industry has become geographically dispersed.\nIn the second technological boom driven by social media in the mid-2000s, San Francisco became a location for companies such as Apple, Google, Ubisoft, Facebook, and Twitter (now known as X) to base their tech offices and for their employees to live.\nThe final wave of technology materialized as AI companies have either been founded in the city or moved there attracted to a large talent pool, proximity to venture capital, and serendipitous connections.\nThe Sunset Reservoir Solar Project, completed in 2010, installed 24,000 solar panels on the roof of the reservoir. The 5-megawatt plant more than tripled the city's 2-megawatt solar generation capacity when it opened in December 2010.\nTourism and conventions.\nTourism is one of San Francisco's most important private-sector industries, accounting for more than one out of seven jobs in the city. The city's frequent portrayal in music, film, and popular culture has made the city and its landmarks recognizable worldwide. In 2016, it attracted the fifth-highest number of foreign tourists of any city in the United States. More than 25\u00a0million visitors arrived in San Francisco in 2016, adding US$9.96\u00a0billion to the economy.\nWith a large hotel infrastructure and a major convention facility in the Moscone Center, San Francisco is a popular destination for annual conventions and conferences.\nSome of the most popular tourist attractions in San Francisco, as noted by the Travel Channel, include the Golden Gate Bridge and Alamo Square Park, home to the famous \"Painted Ladies\". Both of these locations were often used as landscape shots for the hit American television sitcom \"Full House\". There is also Lombard Street, known for its \"crookedness\" and extensive views. Tourists also visit Pier 39, which offers dining, shopping, entertainment, and views of the bay, sunbathing California sea lions, the Aquarium of the Bay, and the famous Alcatraz Island.\nSan Francisco also offers tourists varied nightlife in its neighborhoods.\nThe new Terminal Project at Pier 27 opened September 25, 2014, as a replacement for the old Pier 35.\nA heightened interest in conventioneering in San Francisco, marked by the establishment of convention centers such as Yerba Buena, acted as a feeder into the local tourist economy and resulted in an increase in the hotel industry: \"In 1959, the city had fewer than thirty-three hundred first-class hotel rooms; by 1970, the number was nine thousand; and by 1999, there were more than thirty thousand.\" The commodification of the Castro District has contributed to San Francisco's tourist economy.\nArts and culture.\n \nAlthough the Financial District, Union Square, and Fisherman's Wharf are well known around the world, San Francisco is also characterized by its numerous culturally rich streetscapes featuring mixed-use neighborhoods anchored around central commercial corridors to which residents and visitors alike can walk. Because of these characteristics, San Francisco is ranked the \"most walkable\" city in the United States by Walk Score. Many neighborhoods feature a mix of businesses, restaurants and venues that cater to the daily needs of local residents while also serving many visitors and tourists. Some neighborhoods are dotted with boutiques, caf\u00e9s and nightlife such as Union Street in Cow Hollow, 24th Street in Noe Valley, Valencia Street in the Mission, Grant Avenue in North Beach, and Irving Street in the Inner Sunset. This approach especially has influenced the continuing South of Market neighborhood redevelopment with businesses and neighborhood services rising alongside high-rise residences.\nSince the 1990s, the demand for skilled information technology workers from local startups and nearby Silicon Valley has attracted white-collar workers from all over the world and created a high standard of living in San Francisco. Many neighborhoods that were once blue-collar, middle, and lower class have been gentrifying, as many of the city's traditional business and industrial districts have experienced a renaissance driven by the redevelopment of the Embarcadero, including the neighborhoods South Beach and Mission Bay. The city's property values and household income have risen to among the highest in the nation, creating a large and upscale restaurant, retail, and entertainment scene. According to a 2014 quality of life survey of global cities, San Francisco has the highest quality of living of any U.S. city. However, due to the exceptionally high cost of living, many of the city's middle and lower-class families have been leaving the city for the outer suburbs of the Bay Area, or for California's Central Valley. By June 2, 2015, the median rent was reported to be as high as $4,225. The high cost of living is due in part to restrictive planning laws which limit new residential construction.\nThe international character that San Francisco has enjoyed since its founding is continued today by large numbers of immigrants from Asia and Latin America. With 39% of its residents born overseas, San Francisco has numerous neighborhoods filled with businesses and civic institutions catering to new arrivals. In particular, the arrival of many ethnic Chinese, which began to accelerate in the 1970s, has complemented the long-established community historically based in Chinatown throughout the city and has transformed the annual Chinese New Year Parade into the largest event of its kind on the West Coast.\nWith the arrival of the \"beat\" writers and artists of the 1950s and societal changes culminating in the Summer of Love in the Haight-Ashbury district during the 1960s, San Francisco became a center of liberal activism and of the counterculture that arose at that time. The Democrats and to a lesser extent the Green Party have dominated city politics since the late 1970s, after the last serious Republican challenger for city office lost the 1975 mayoral election by a narrow margin. San Francisco has not voted more than 20% for a Republican presidential or senatorial candidate since 1988. In 2007, the city expanded its Medicaid and other indigent medical programs into the Healthy San Francisco program, which subsidizes certain medical services for eligible residents.\nSince 1993, the San Francisco Department of Public Health has distributed 400,000 free syringes every month aimed at reducing HIV and other health risks for drug users, as well as providing disposal sites and services.\nSan Francisco also has had a very active environmental community. Starting with the founding of the Sierra Club in 1892 to the establishment of the non-profit Friends of the Urban Forest in 1981, San Francisco has been at the forefront of many global discussions regarding the environment. The 1980 San Francisco Recycling Program was one of the earliest curbside recycling programs. The city's GoSolarSF incentive promotes solar installations and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is rolling out the CleanPowerSF program to sell electricity from local renewable sources. SF Greasecycle is a program to recycle used cooking oil for conversion to biodiesel.\nLGBT.\nSan Francisco has long had an LGBT-friendly history. It was home to the first lesbian-rights organization in the United States, Daughters of Bilitis; the first openly gay person to run for public office in the United States, Jos\u00e9 Sarria; the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, Harvey Milk; the first openly lesbian judge appointed in the U.S., Mary C. Morgan; and the first transgender police commissioner, Theresa Sparks. The city's large gay population has created and sustained a politically and culturally active community over many decades, developing a powerful presence in San Francisco's civic life. Survey data released in 2015 by Gallup places the proportion of LGBT adults in the San Francisco metro area at 6.2%, which is the highest proportion of the 50 most populous metropolitan areas as measured by the polling organization.\nOne of the most popular destinations for gay tourists internationally, the city hosts San Francisco Pride, one of the largest and oldest pride parades. San Francisco Pride events have been held continuously since 1972. The events are themed and a new theme is created each year. In 2013, over 1.5\u00a0million people attended, around 500,000 more than the previous year. Pink Saturday is an annual street party held the Saturday before the pride parade, which coincides with the Dyke march.\nThe Folsom Street Fair (FSF) is an annual BDSM and leather subculture street fair that is held in September, endcapping San Francisco's \"Leather Pride Week\". It started in 1984 and is California's third-largest single-day, outdoor spectator event and the world's largest leather event and showcase for BDSM products and culture.\nPerforming arts.\nSan Francisco's War Memorial and Performing Arts Center hosts some of the most enduring performing arts companies in the country. The War Memorial Opera House houses the San Francisco Opera, the second-largest opera company in North America as well as the San Francisco Ballet, while the San Francisco Symphony plays in Davies Symphony Hall. Opened in 2013, the SFJAZZ Center hosts jazz performances year round.\nThe Fillmore is a music venue located in the Western Addition. It is the second incarnation of the historic venue that gained fame in the 1960s, housing the stage where now-famous musicians such as the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, and Jefferson Airplane first performed, fostering the San Francisco Sound. It closed its doors in 1971 with a final performance by Santana and reopened in 1994 with a show by the Smashing Pumpkins.\nSan Francisco has a large number of theaters and live performance venues. Local theater companies have been noted for risk taking and innovation. The Tony Award-winning non-profit American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) is a member of the national League of Resident Theatres. Other local winners of the Regional Theatre Tony Award include the San Francisco Mime Troupe.\nSan Francisco theaters frequently host pre-Broadway engagements and tryout runs, and some original San Francisco productions have later moved to Broadway.\nMuseums.\nThe San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) houses 20th century and contemporary works of art. It moved to its current building in the South of Market neighborhood in 1995 and attracted more than 600,000 visitors annually. SFMOMA closed for renovation and expansion in 2013. The museum reopened on May 14, 2016, with an addition, designed by Sn\u00f8hetta, that has doubled the museum's size.\nThe Palace of the Legion of Honor holds primarily European antiquities and works of art at its Lincoln Park building modeled after its Parisian namesake. The de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park features American decorative pieces and anthropological holdings from Africa, Oceania and the Americas, while Asian art is housed in the Asian Art Museum. Opposite the de Young stands the California Academy of Sciences, a natural history museum that also hosts the Morrison Planetarium and Steinhart Aquarium. Located on Pier 15 on the Embarcadero, the Exploratorium is an interactive science museum. The Contemporary Jewish Museum is a non-collecting institution that hosts a broad array of temporary exhibitions. On Nob Hill, the Cable Car Museum is a working museum featuring the cable car powerhouse, which drives the cables. Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts was founded in 1998 and is part of the California College of the Arts.\nSports.\nMajor League Baseball's San Francisco Giants have played in San Francisco since moving from New York in 1958. The Giants play at Oracle Park, which opened in 2000. The Giants won World Series titles in 2010, 2012, and in 2014. The Giants have boasted stars such as Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, and Barry Bonds (MLB's career home run leader). In 2012, San Francisco was ranked No. 1 in a study that examined which U.S. metro areas have produced the most Major Leaguers since 1920.\nThe San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League (NFL) began playing in 1946 as an All-America Football Conference (AAFC) league charter member, moved to the NFL in 1950 and into Candlestick Park in 1971. The team left San Francisco in 2014, moving approximately 50 miles south to Santa Clara, and began playing its home games at Levi's Stadium, Despite this, the 49ers are still branded as a San Francisco team, and when the team hosted Super Bowl 50 events were hosted in San Francisco such as the annual NFL Experience which was held at the Moscone Center and \"Super Bowl City\" which opened on January 30 at Justin Herman Plaza on The Embarcadero. The 49ers have won five Super Bowl titles between 1982 and 1995.\nThe NBA's Golden State Warriors have played in the San Francisco Bay Area since moving from Philadelphia in 1962. The Warriors played as the San Francisco Warriors, from 1962 to 1971, before being renamed the Golden State Warriors prior to the 1971\u20131972 season in an attempt to present the team as a representation of the whole state of California, which had already adopted \"The Golden State\" nickname. The Warriors' arena, Chase Center, is located in San Francisco. After winning two championships in Philadelphia, they have won five championships since moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, and made five consecutive NBA Finals from 2015 to 2019, winning three of them. They won again in 2022, the franchise's first championship while residing in San Francisco proper.\nAt the collegiate level, the San Francisco Dons compete in NCAA Division I. Bill Russell led the Dons basketball team to NCAA championships in 1955 and 1956. There is also the San Francisco State Gators, who compete in NCAA Division II. Oracle Park hosted the annual Fight Hunger Bowl college football game from 2002 through 2013 before it moved to Santa Clara.\nThere are a handful of lower-league soccer clubs in San Francisco playing mostly from April \u2013 June.\nThe Bay to Breakers footrace, held annually since 1912, is best known for colorful costumes and a celebratory community spirit. The San Francisco Marathon attracts more than 21,000 participants. The Escape from Alcatraz triathlon has, since 1980, attracted 2,000 top professional and amateur triathletes for its annual race. The Olympic Club, founded in 1860, is the oldest athletic club in the United States. Its private golf course has hosted the U.S. Open on five occasions. San Francisco hosted the 2013 America's Cup yacht racing competition.\nWith an ideal climate for outdoor activities, San Francisco has ample resources and opportunities for amateur and participatory sports and recreation. There are more than of bicycle paths, lanes and bike routes in the city.\nSan Francisco residents have often ranked among the fittest in the country. Golden Gate Park has miles of paved and unpaved running trails as well as a golf course and disc golf course.\nBoating, sailing, windsurfing and kitesurfing are among the popular activities on San Francisco Bay, and the city maintains a yacht harbor in the Marina District.\nSan Francisco also has had Esports teams, such as the Overwatch League's San Francisco Shock. Established in 2017, they won two back-to-back championship titles in 2019 and 2020.\nParks and recreation.\nSeveral of San Francisco's parks and nearly all of its beaches form part of the regional Golden Gate National Recreation Area, one of the most visited units of the National Park system in the United States with over 13\u00a0million visitors a year. Among the GGNRA's attractions within the city are Ocean Beach, which runs along the Pacific Ocean shoreline and is frequented by a surfing community, and Baker Beach, which is located in a cove west of the Golden Gate Bridge, as well as the California Academy of Sciences, a research institute and natural history museum.\nThe Presidio of San Francisco is the former 18th century Spanish military base, which today is one of the city's largest parks and home to numerous museums and institutions. Also within the Presidio is Crissy Field, a former airfield that was restored to its natural salt marsh ecosystem. The GGNRA also administers Fort Funston, Lands End, Fort Mason, and Alcatraz. The National Park Service separately administers the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park \u2013 a fleet of historic ships and waterfront property around Aquatic Park.\nThere are more than 220 parks maintained by the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department. The largest and best-known city park is Golden Gate Park, which stretches from the center of the city west to the Pacific Ocean. Once covered in native grasses and sand dunes, the park was conceived in the 1860s and was created by the extensive planting of thousands of non-native trees and plants. The large park is rich with cultural and natural attractions such as the Conservatory of Flowers, Japanese Tea Garden and San Francisco Botanical Garden. The Dahlia is the official flower of San Francisco. \nLake Merced is a fresh-water lake surrounded by parkland and near the San Francisco Zoo, a city-owned park that houses more than 250 animal species, many of which are endangered. The only park managed by the California State Park system located principally in San Francisco, Candlestick Point was the state's first urban recreation area.\nMost of San Francisco's islands are protected as parkland or nature reserves. Alcatraz Island, operated by the National Park Service, is open to the public. The Farallon Islands are protected wildlife refuges. The Seal Rocks are protected as part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Red Rock Island is the only privately owned island in San Francisco Bay, but is uninhabited. Yerba Buena Island is largely utilized by the military.\nSan Francisco is the first city in the U.S. to have a park within a 10-Minute Walk of every resident. It also ranks fifth in the U.S. for park access and quality in the 2018 ParkScore ranking of the top 100 park systems across the United States, according to the nonprofit Trust for Public Land.\nGovernment.\nThe mayor is also the county executive, and the county Board of Supervisors acts as the city council. The government of San Francisco is a charter city and is constituted of two co-equal branches: the executive branch is headed by the mayor and includes other citywide elected and appointed officials as well as the civil service; the 11-member Board of Supervisors, the legislative branch, is headed by a president and is responsible for passing laws and budgets, though San Franciscans also make use of direct ballot initiatives to pass legislation.\nBecause of its unique city-county status, the local government is able to exercise jurisdiction over certain property outside city limits. San Francisco International Airport, though located in San Mateo County, is owned and operated by the City and County of San Francisco. San Francisco's largest jail complex (County Jail No. 5) is located in San Mateo County, in an unincorporated area adjacent to San Bruno. San Francisco was also granted a perpetual leasehold over the Hetch Hetchy Valley and watershed in Yosemite National Park by the Raker Act in 1913.\nThe members of the Board of Supervisors are elected as representatives of specific districts within the city. Upon the death or resignation of the mayor, the President of the Board of Supervisors becomes acting mayor until the full Board elects an interim replacement for the remainder of the term. In 2011, Ed Lee was selected by the board to finish the term of Gavin Newsom, who resigned to take office as Lieutenant Governor of California. Lee (who won two elections to remain mayor) was temporarily replaced by San Francisco Board of Supervisors President London Breed after he died on December 12, 2017. Supervisor Mark Farrell was appointed by the Board of Supervisors to finish Lee's term on January 23, 2018.\nMost local offices in San Francisco are elected using ranked choice voting.\nSan Francisco serves as the regional hub for many arms of the federal bureaucracy, including the U.S. Court of Appeals, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the U.S. Mint. Until decommissioning in the early 1990s, the city had major military installations at the Presidio, Treasure Island, and Hunters Point\u2014a legacy still reflected in the annual celebration of Fleet Week. The State of California uses San Francisco as the home of the state supreme court and other state agencies. Foreign governments maintain more than seventy consulates in San Francisco.\nThe municipal budget for fiscal year 2015\u201316 was $8.99\u00a0billion, and is one of the largest city budgets in the United States. The City of San Francisco spends more per resident than any city other than Washington, D.C., over $10,000 in FY 2015\u20132016. The city employs around 27,000 workers.\nIn the California State Senate, San Francisco is in the Senate District, represented by Democrat Scott Wiener. In the California State Assembly, it is split between the Assembly District, represented by Democrat Matt Haney, and the Assembly District, represented by Democrat Catherine Stefani.\nIn the United States House of Representatives, San Francisco is split between two congressional districts. Most of the city is in the 11th District, represented by Nancy Pelosi (D\u2013San Francisco). A sliver in the southwest is part of the 15th District represented by Kevin Mullin (D\u2013South San Francisco).\nOne of San Francisco's most notable achievements is its ambitious zero-waste goal, which aims to divert 100% of waste from landfills by 2025. The city has already made significant strides, with widespread recycling and composting programs that encourage residents to minimize waste. San Francisco was one of the first U.S. cities to ban plastic bags and continues to lead in banning single-use plastics, setting a standard for cities across the country.\nEducation.\nColleges and universities.\nThe University of California, San Francisco is the sole campus of the University of California system entirely dedicated to graduate education in health and biomedical sciences. It is ranked among the top five medical schools in the United States and operates the UCSF Medical Center, which ranks as the number one hospital in California and the number 5 in the country. UCSF is a major local employer, second in size only to the city and county government. A Mission Bay campus was opened in 2003, complementing its original facility in Parnassus Heights. It contains research space and facilities to foster biotechnology and life sciences entrepreneurship and will double the size of UCSF's research enterprise. All in all, UCSF operates more than 20 facilities across San Francisco.\nThe University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, founded in Civic Center in 1878, is the oldest law school in California and claims more judges on the state bench than any other institution.\nSan Francisco's two University of California institutions have recently formed an official affiliation in the UCSF/UC Law SF Consortium on Law, Science & Health Policy.\nSan Francisco State University is part of the California State University system and is located near Lake Merced. The school has approximately 30,000 students and awards undergraduate, master's and doctoral degrees in more than 100 disciplines. The City College of San Francisco, with its main facility in the Ingleside district, is one of the largest two-year community colleges in the country. It has an enrollment of about 100,000 students and offers an extensive continuing education program.\nFounded in 1855, the University of San Francisco, a private Jesuit university located on Lone Mountain, is the oldest institution of higher education in San Francisco and one of the oldest universities established west of the Mississippi River. Golden Gate University is a private, nonsectarian university formed in 1901 and located in the Financial District.\nCalifornia Institute of Integral Studies, founded in 1968, offers graduate programs in its Schools of Professional Psychology & Health, and Consciousness and Transformation.\nWith an enrollment of 13,000 students, the Academy of Art University is the largest institute of art and design in the nation. The California College of the Arts, located north of Potrero Hill, has programs in architecture, fine arts, design, and writing. The San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the only independent music school on the West Coast, grants degrees in orchestral instruments, chamber music, composition, and conducting. The San Francisco Art Institute, founded in 1871 and the oldest art school west of the Mississippi, closed in 2022.\nThe California Culinary Academy had programs in the culinary arts, baking and pastry arts, and hospitality and restaurant management, and is now closed.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nPublic schools are run by the San Francisco Unified School District, which covers the entire city and county, as well as the California State Board of Education for some charter schools. Lowell High School, the oldest public high school in the U.S. west of the Mississippi, and the smaller School of the Arts High School are two of San Francisco's magnet schools at the secondary level. Public school students attend schools based on an assignment system rather than neighborhood proximity.\nJust under 30% of the city's school-age population attends one of San Francisco's more than 100 private or parochial schools, compared to a 10% rate nationwide. Nearly 40 of those schools are Catholic schools managed by the Archdiocese of San Francisco.\nSan Francisco has nearly 300 preschool programs primarily operated by Head Start, San Francisco Unified School District, private for-profit, private non-profit and family child care providers. All four-year-old children living in San Francisco are offered universal access to preschool.\nMedia.\nThe major daily newspaper in San Francisco is the \"San Francisco Chronicle\", which is currently Northern California's most widely circulated newspaper. The Chronicle is most famous for a former columnist, the late Herb Caen, whose daily musings attracted critical acclaim and represented the \"voice of San Francisco\". \"The San Francisco Examiner\", once the cornerstone of William Randolph Hearst's media empire and the home of Ambrose Bierce, declined in circulation over the years and now takes the form of a free daily tabloid, under new ownership.\n\"Sing Tao Daily\" claims to be the largest of several Chinese language dailies that serve the Bay Area. \"SF\u00a0Weekly\" is the city's alternative weekly newspaper. \"San Francisco\" and \"7x7\" are major glossy magazines about San Francisco. The national newsmagazine \"Mother Jones\" is also based in San Francisco. San Francisco is home to online-only media publications such as SFist, and \"AsianWeek\".\nThe San Francisco Bay Area is the sixth-largest television\u00a0market in the U.S. It is the fourth-largest radio market after that of New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.\nAll major U.S. television networks have affiliates serving the region, with most of them based in the city. CNN, MSNBC, BBC, Russia Today, and CCTV America also have regional news bureaus in San Francisco. Bloomberg West was launched in 2011 from a studio on the Embarcadero and CNBC broadcasts from One Market Plaza since 2015. ESPN uses the local ABC studio for their broadcasting. The regional sports network, Comcast SportsNet Bay Area and its sister station Comcast SportsNet California, are both located in San Francisco. The Pac-12 Network is also based in San Francisco.\nPublic broadcasting outlets include both a television station and a radio station, both broadcasting under the call letters KQED from a facility near the Potrero Hill neighborhood. KQED-FM is the most-listened-to National Public Radio affiliate in the country.\nKUSF is a student-run radio station by college students from the University of San Francisco. Another local broadcaster, KPOO, is an independent, African-American owned and operated noncommercial radio station established in 1971. CNET, founded 1994, and Salon.com, 1995, are based in San Francisco. Sutro Tower is an important broadcast tower located between Mount Sutro and the Twin Peaks, built in 1973 for KTVU, KRON, and KPIX.\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nPublic transportation.\nTransit is the most used form of transportation every day in San Francisco. Every weekday, more than 560,000 people travel on Muni's 69 bus routes and more than 140,000 customers ride the Muni Metro light rail system. 32% of San Francisco residents use public transportation for their daily commute to work, ranking it fourth in the United States and first on the West Coast. The San Francisco Municipal Railway, primarily known as Muni, is the primary public transit system of San Francisco. As of 2023, Muni is the eighth-largest transit system in the United States. The system operates a combined light rail and subway system, the Muni Metro, as well as large bus and trolley coach networks. Additionally, it runs a historic streetcar line, which runs on Market Street from Castro Street to Fisherman's Wharf. It also operates the famous cable cars, which have been designated as a National Historic Landmark and are a major tourist attraction.\nBay Area Rapid Transit (BART), a regional Rapid Transit system, connects San Francisco with the East Bay and San Jose through the underwater Transbay Tube. The line, which contains all except the Orange Line, runs under Market Street to Civic Center where it turns south to the Mission District, the southern part of the city, and through northern San Mateo County, to the San Francisco International Airport, and Millbrae. BART also shares stations with SFMTA Muni Metro under Market Street.\nAnother commuter rail system, Caltrain, runs from San Francisco along the San Francisco Peninsula to San Jose. Historically, trains operated by Southern Pacific Lines ran from San Francisco to Los Angeles, via Palo Alto and San Jose.\nAmtrak Thruway runs a shuttle bus from three locations in San Francisco to its station across the bay in Emeryville. Additionally, BART offers connections to San Francisco from Amtrak's stations in Emeryville, Oakland and Richmond, and Caltrain offers connections in San Jose and Santa Clara. Thruway service also runs south to San Luis Obispo with connection to the Pacific Surfliner.\nSan Francisco was an early adopter of carsharing in America. The non-profit City CarShare opened in 2001 and Zipcar closely followed.\nSan Francisco Bay Ferry operates from the Ferry Building and Pier 39 to points in Oakland, Alameda, Bay Farm Island, South San Francisco, Richmond, and north to Vallejo in Solano County. The Golden Gate Ferry is the other ferry operator with service between San Francisco and Marin County. SolTrans runs supplemental bus service between the Ferry Building and Vallejo.\nTo accommodate the large amount of San Francisco citizens who commute to the Silicon Valley daily, employers like Genentech, Google, and Apple have begun to provide private bus transportation for their employees, from San Francisco locations. These buses have quickly become a heated topic of debate within the city, as protesters claim they block bus lanes and delay public buses.\nFreeways and roads.\nIn 2014, only 41.3% of residents commuted by driving alone or carpooling in private vehicles in San Francisco, a decline from 48.6% in 2000. There are 1,088 miles of streets in San Francisco with 946 miles of these streets being surface streets, and 59 miles of freeways. Due to its unique geography, and the freeway revolts of the late 1950s,\nInterstate 80 begins at the approach to the Bay Bridge and is the only direct automobile link to the East Bay. U.S. Route 101 connects to the western terminus of Interstate 80 and provides access to the south of the city along San Francisco Bay toward Silicon Valley. Northward, the routing for U.S. 101 uses arterial streets to connect to the Golden Gate Bridge, the only direct automobile link to Marin County and the North Bay.\nAs part of the retrofitting of the Golden Gate Bridge and installation of a suicide barrier, starting in 2019 the railings on the west side of the pedestrian walkway were replaced with thinner, more flexible slats in order to improve the bridge's aerodynamic tolerance of high wind to . Starting in June 2020, reports were received of a loud hum produced by the new railing slats, heard across the city when a strong west wind was blowing.\nState Route 1 also enters San Francisco from the north via the Golden Gate Bridge and bisects the city as the 19th Avenue arterial thoroughfare, joining with Interstate 280 at the city's southern border. Interstate 280 continues south from San Francisco, and also turns to the east along the southern edge of the city, terminating just south of the Bay Bridge in the South of Market neighborhood. After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, city leaders demolished the Embarcadero Freeway and a portion of the Central Freeway, converting them into street-level boulevards.\nState Route 35 enters the city from the south as Skyline Boulevard and terminates at its intersection with Highway 1. State Route 82 enters San Francisco from the south as Mission Street, and terminates shortly thereafter at its junction with 280. The western terminus of the historic transcontinental Lincoln Highway, the first road across America, is in San Francisco's Lincoln Park.\nVision Zero.\nIn 2014, San Francisco committed to Vision Zero, with the goal of ending all traffic fatalities caused by motor vehicles within the city by 2024. San Francisco's Vision Zero plan calls for investing in engineering, enforcement, and education, and focusing on dangerous intersections. In 2013, 25 people were killed by car and truck drivers while walking and biking in the city and 9 car drivers and passengers were killed in collisions. In 2019, 42 people were killed in traffic collisions in San Francisco.\nAirports.\nThough located south of downtown in unincorporated San Mateo County, San Francisco International Airport (SFO) is under the jurisdiction of the City and County of San Francisco. SFO is a hub for United Airlines and Alaska Airlines. SFO is a major international gateway to Asia and Europe, with the largest international terminal in North America. In 2011, SFO was the eighth-busiest airport in the U.S. and the 22nd-busiest in the world, handling over 40.9\u00a0million passengers.\nLocated in the South Bay, the San Jose International Airport (SJC) is the second-busiest airport in the Bay Area, followed by Oakland International Airport, which is a popular, low-cost alternative to SFO.\nCycling and walking.\nCycling is a popular mode of transportation in San Francisco, with 75,000 residents commuting by bicycle each day. In recent years, the city has installed better cycling infrastructure such as protected bike lanes and parking racks. Bay Wheels, previously named Bay Area Bike Share at inception, launched in August 2013 with 700 bikes in downtown San Francisco, selected cities in the East Bay, and San Jose. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and Bay Area Air Quality Management District are responsible for the operation with management provided by Motivate. A major expansion started in 2017, along with a rebranding as Ford GoBike; the company received its current name in 2019.\nPedestrian traffic is also widespread. In 2015, Walk Score ranked San Francisco the second-most walkable city in the United States.\nSan Francisco has significantly higher rates of pedestrian and bicyclist traffic deaths than the United States on average. In 2013, 21 pedestrians were killed in vehicle collisions, the highest since 2001, which is 2.5 deaths per 100,000 population \u2013 70% higher than the national average of 1.5.\nCycling is becoming increasingly popular in the city. The 2010 Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) annual bicycle count showed the number of cyclists at 33 locations had increased 58% from the 2006 baseline counts. In 2008, the MTA estimated that about 128,000 trips were made by bicycle each day in the city, or 6% of total trips. As of 2019[ [update]], 2.6% of the city's streets have protected bike lanes, with 28 miles of protected bike lanes in the city. Since 2006, San Francisco has received a Bicycle Friendly Community status of \"Gold\" from the League of American Bicyclists. In 2022 a measure on the ballot passed to protect JFK drive in Golden Gate Park as a pedestrian and biking space with 59% of voters in favor.\nPublic safety.\nThe San Francisco Police Department was founded in 1849. The portions of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area located within the city, including the Presidio and Ocean Beach, are patrolled by the United States Park Police.\nThe San Francisco Fire Department provides both fire suppression and emergency medical services to the city.\nSister cities.\nSan Francisco participates in the Sister Cities program. A total of 41 consulates general and 23 honorary consulates have offices in the San Francisco Bay Area.\nIn January 1980, Mayor Dianne Feinstein signed a sister cities agreement with Shanghai during a visit to China.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "7398": "Computer security\nProtection of computer systems from information disclosure, theft or damage\nComputer security (also cybersecurity, digital security, or information technology (IT) security) is a subdiscipline within the field of information security. It consists of the protection of computer software, systems and networks from threats that can lead to unauthorized information disclosure, theft or damage to hardware, software, or data, as well as from the disruption or misdirection of the services they provide.\nThe significance of the field stems from the expanded reliance on computer systems, the Internet, and wireless network standards. Its importance is further amplified by the growth of smart devices, including smartphones, televisions, and the various devices that constitute the Internet of things (IoT). Cybersecurity has emerged as one of the most significant new challenges facing the contemporary world, due to both the complexity of information systems and the societies they support. Security is particularly crucial for systems that govern large-scale systems with far-reaching physical effects, such as power distribution, elections, and finance.\nAlthough many aspects of computer security involve digital security, such as electronic passwords and encryption, physical security measures such as metal locks are still used to prevent unauthorized tampering. IT security is not a perfect subset of information security, therefore does not completely align into the security convergence schema.\nVulnerabilities and attacks.\nA vulnerability refers to a flaw in the structure, execution, functioning, or internal oversight of a computer or system that compromises its security. Most of the vulnerabilities that have been discovered are documented in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database. An \"exploitable\" vulnerability is one for which at least one working attack or \"exploit\" exists. Actors maliciously seeking vulnerabilities are known as \"threats\". Vulnerabilities can be researched, reverse-engineered, hunted, or exploited using automated tools or customized scripts.\nVarious people or parties are vulnerable to cyber attacks; however, different groups are likely to experience different types of attacks more than others.\nIn April 2023, the United Kingdom Department for Science, Innovation & Technology released a report on cyber attacks over the previous 12 months. They surveyed 2,263 UK businesses, 1,174 UK registered charities, and 554 education institutions. The research found that \"32% of businesses and 24% of charities overall recall any breaches or attacks from the last 12 months.\" These figures were much higher for \"medium businesses (59%), large businesses (69%), and high-income charities with \u00a3500,000 or more in annual income (56%).\" Yet, although medium or large businesses are more often the victims, since larger companies have generally improved their security over the last decade, small and midsize businesses (SMBs) have also become increasingly vulnerable as they often \"do not have advanced tools to defend the business.\" SMBs are most likely to be affected by malware, ransomware, phishing, man-in-the-middle attacks, and Denial-of Service (DoS) Attacks.\nNormal internet users are most likely to be affected by untargeted cyberattacks. These are where attackers indiscriminately target as many devices, services, or users as possible. They do this using techniques that take advantage of the openness of the Internet. These strategies mostly include phishing, ransomware, water holing and scanning.\nTo secure a computer system, it is important to understand the attacks that can be made against it, and these threats can typically be classified into one of the following categories:\nBackdoor.\nA backdoor in a computer system, a cryptosystem, or an algorithm is any secret method of bypassing normal authentication or security controls. These weaknesses may exist for many reasons, including original design or poor configuration. Due to the nature of backdoors, they are of greater concern to companies and databases as opposed to individuals.\nBackdoors may be added by an authorized party to allow some legitimate access or by an attacker for malicious reasons. Criminals often use malware to install backdoors, giving them remote administrative access to a system. Once they have access, cybercriminals can \"modify files, steal personal information, install unwanted software, and even take control of the entire computer.\"\nBackdoors can be very hard to detect and are usually discovered by someone who has access to the application source code or intimate knowledge of the operating system of the computer.\nDenial-of-service attack.\nDenial-of-service attacks (DoS) are designed to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users. Attackers can deny service to individual victims, such as by deliberately entering a wrong password enough consecutive times to cause the victim's account to be locked, or they may overload the capabilities of a machine or network and block all users at once. While a network attack from a single IP address can be blocked by adding a new firewall rule, many forms of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are possible, where the attack comes from a large number of points. In this case, defending against these attacks is much more difficult. Such attacks can originate from the zombie computers of a botnet or from a range of other possible techniques, including distributed reflective denial-of-service (DRDoS), where innocent systems are fooled into sending traffic to the victim. With such attacks, the amplification factor makes the attack easier for the attacker because they have to use little bandwidth themselves. To understand why attackers may carry out these attacks, see the 'attacker motivation' section.\nPhysical access attacks.\nA direct-access attack is when an unauthorized user (an attacker) gains physical access to a computer, most likely to directly copy data from it or steal information. Attackers may also compromise security by making operating system modifications, installing software worms, keyloggers, covert listening devices or using wireless microphones. Even when the system is protected by standard security measures, these may be bypassed by booting another operating system or tool from a CD-ROM or other bootable media. Disk encryption and the Trusted Platform Module standard are designed to prevent these attacks.\nDirect service attackers are related in concept to direct memory attacks which allow an attacker to gain direct access to a computer's memory. The attacks \"take advantage of a feature of modern computers that allows certain devices, such as external hard drives, graphics cards, or network cards, to access the computer's memory directly.\"\nEavesdropping.\nEavesdropping is the act of surreptitiously listening to a private computer conversation (communication), usually between hosts on a network. It typically occurs when a user connects to a network where traffic is not secured or encrypted and sends sensitive business data to a colleague, which, when listened to by an attacker, could be exploited. Data transmitted across an \"open network\" allows an attacker to exploit a vulnerability and intercept it via various methods.\nUnlike malware, direct-access attacks, or other forms of cyber attacks, eavesdropping attacks are unlikely to negatively affect the performance of networks or devices, making them difficult to notice. In fact, \"the attacker does not need to have any ongoing connection to the software at all. The attacker can insert the software onto a compromised device, perhaps by direct insertion or perhaps by a virus or other malware, and then come back some time later to retrieve any data that is found or trigger the software to send the data at some determined time.\"\nUsing a virtual private network (VPN), which encrypts data between two points, is one of the most common forms of protection against eavesdropping. Using the best form of encryption possible for wireless networks is best practice, as well as using HTTPS instead of an unencrypted HTTP.\nPrograms such as Carnivore and NarusInSight have been used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and NSA to eavesdrop on the systems of internet service providers. Even machines that operate as a closed system (i.e., with no contact with the outside world) can be eavesdropped upon by monitoring the faint electromagnetic transmissions generated by the hardware. TEMPEST is a specification by the NSA referring to these attacks.\nMalware.\nMalicious software (malware) is any software code or computer program \"intentionally written to harm a computer system or its users.\" Once present on a computer, it can leak sensitive details such as personal information, business information and passwords, can give control of the system to the attacker, and can corrupt or delete data permanently.\nMan-in-the-middle attacks.\nMan-in-the-middle attacks (MITM) involve a malicious attacker trying to intercept, surveil or modify communications between two parties by spoofing one or both party's identities and injecting themselves in-between. Types of MITM attacks include:\nMulti-vector, polymorphic attacks.\nSurfacing in 2017, a new class of multi-vector, polymorphic cyber threats combine several types of attacks and change form to avoid cybersecurity controls as they spread.\nMulti-vector polymorphic attacks, as the name describes, are both multi-vectored and polymorphic. Firstly, they are a singular attack that involves multiple methods of attack. In this sense, they are \"multi-vectored (i.e. the attack can use multiple means of propagation such as via the Web, email and applications.\" However, they are also multi-staged, meaning that \"they can infiltrate networks and move laterally inside the network.\" The attacks can be polymorphic, meaning that the cyberattacks used such as viruses, worms or trojans \"constantly change (\"morph\") making it nearly impossible to detect them using signature-based defences.\"\nPhishing.\nPhishing is the attempt of acquiring sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details directly from users by deceiving the users. Phishing is typically carried out by email spoofing, instant messaging, text message, or on a phone call. They often direct users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. The fake website often asks for personal information, such as login details and passwords. This information can then be used to gain access to the individual's real account on the real website.\nPreying on a victim's trust, phishing can be classified as a form of social engineering. Attackers can use creative ways to gain access to real accounts. A common scam is for attackers to send fake electronic invoices to individuals showing that they recently purchased music, apps, or others, and instructing them to click on a link if the purchases were not authorized. A more strategic type of phishing is spear-phishing which leverages personal or organization-specific details to make the attacker appear like a trusted source. Spear-phishing attacks target specific individuals, rather than the broad net cast by phishing attempts.\nPrivilege escalation.\nPrivilege escalation describes a situation where an attacker with some level of restricted access is able to, without authorization, elevate their privileges or access level. For example, a standard computer user may be able to exploit a vulnerability in the system to gain access to restricted data; or even become \"root\" and have full unrestricted access to a system. The severity of attacks can range from attacks simply sending an unsolicited email to a ransomware attack on large amounts of data. Privilege escalation usually starts with social engineering techniques, often phishing.\nPrivilege escalation can be separated into two strategies, horizontal and vertical privilege escalation:\nSide-channel attack.\nAny computational system affects its environment in some form. This effect it has on its environment can range from electromagnetic radiation, to residual effect on RAM cells which as a consequence make a Cold boot attack possible, to hardware implementation faults that allow for access or guessing of other values that normally should be inaccessible. In Side-channel attack scenarios, the attacker would gather such information about a system or network to guess its internal state and as a result access the information which is assumed by the victim to be secure. The target information in a side channel can be challenging to detect due to its low amplitude when combined with other signals \nSocial engineering.\nSocial engineering, in the context of computer security, aims to convince a user to disclose secrets such as passwords, card numbers, etc. or grant physical access by, for example, impersonating a senior executive, bank, a contractor, or a customer. This generally involves exploiting people's trust, and relying on their cognitive biases. A common scam involves emails sent to accounting and finance department personnel, impersonating their CEO and urgently requesting some action. One of the main techniques of social engineering are phishing attacks.\nIn early 2016, the FBI reported that such business email compromise (BEC) scams had cost US businesses more than $2 billion in about two years.\nIn May 2016, the Milwaukee Bucks NBA team was the victim of this type of cyber scam with a perpetrator impersonating the team's president Peter Feigin, resulting in the handover of all the team's employees' 2015 W-2 tax forms.\nSpoofing.\nSpoofing is an act of pretending to be a valid entity through the falsification of data (such as an IP address or username), in order to gain access to information or resources that one is otherwise unauthorized to obtain. Spoofing is closely related to phishing. There are several types of spoofing, including:\nIn 2018, the cybersecurity firm Trellix published research on the life-threatening risk of spoofing in the healthcare industry.\nTampering.\nTampering describes a malicious modification or alteration of data. It is an intentional but unauthorized act resulting in the modification of a system, components of systems, its intended behavior, or data. So-called Evil Maid attacks and security services planting of surveillance capability into routers are examples.\nHTML smuggling.\nHTML smuggling allows an attacker to \"smuggle\" a malicious code inside a particular HTML or web page. HTML files can carry payloads concealed as benign, inert data in order to defeat content filters. These payloads can be reconstructed on the other side of the filter.\nWhen a target user opens the HTML, the malicious code is activated; the web browser then \"decodes\" the script, which then unleashes the malware onto the target's device.\nInformation security practices.\nEmployee behavior can have a big impact on information security in organizations. Cultural concepts can help different segments of the organization work effectively or work against effectiveness toward information security within an organization. Information security culture is the \"...totality of patterns of behavior in an organization that contributes to the protection of information of all kinds.\"\nAndersson and Reimers (2014) found that employees often do not see themselves as part of their organization's information security effort and often take actions that impede organizational changes. Indeed, the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report 2020, which examined 3,950 security breaches, discovered 30% of cybersecurity incidents involved internal actors within a company. Research shows information security culture needs to be improved continuously. In \"Information Security Culture from Analysis to Change\", authors commented, \"It's a never-ending process, a cycle of evaluation and change or maintenance.\" To manage the information security culture, five steps should be taken: pre-evaluation, strategic planning, operative planning, implementation, and post-evaluation.\n# Commitment of the management\n# Communication with organizational members\n# Courses for all organizational members\n# Commitment of the employees\nComputer protection (countermeasures).\nIn computer security, a countermeasure is an action, device, procedure or technique that reduces a threat, a vulnerability, or an attack by eliminating or preventing it, by minimizing the harm it can cause, or by discovering and reporting it so that corrective action can be taken.\nSome common countermeasures are listed in the following sections:\nSecurity by design.\nSecurity by design, or alternately secure by design, means that the software has been designed from the ground up to be secure. In this case, security is considered a main feature.\nThe UK government's National Cyber Security Centre separates secure cyber design principles into five sections:\nThese design principles of security by design can include some of the following techniques:\nSecurity architecture.\nSecurity architecture can be defined as the \"practice of designing computer systems to achieve security goals.\" These goals have overlap with the principles of \"security by design\" explored above, including to \"make initial compromise of the system difficult,\" and to \"limit the impact of any compromise.\" In practice, the role of a security architect would be to ensure the structure of a system reinforces the security of the system, and that new changes are safe and meet the security requirements of the organization.\nSimilarly, Techopedia defines security architecture as \"a unified security design that addresses the necessities and potential risks involved in a certain scenario or environment. It also specifies when and where to apply security controls. The design process is generally reproducible.\" The key attributes of security architecture are:\nPracticing security architecture provides the right foundation to systematically address business, IT and security concerns in an organization.\nSecurity measures.\nA state of computer security is the conceptual ideal, attained by the use of three processes: threat prevention, detection, and response. These processes are based on various policies and system components, which include the following:\nToday, computer security consists mainly of preventive measures, like firewalls or an exit procedure. A firewall can be defined as a way of filtering network data between a host or a network and another network, such as the Internet. They can be implemented as software running on the machine, hooking into the network stack (or, in the case of most UNIX-based operating systems such as Linux, built into the operating system kernel) to provide real-time filtering and blocking. Another implementation is a so-called \"physical firewall\", which consists of a separate machine filtering network traffic. Firewalls are common amongst machines that are permanently connected to the Internet.\nSome organizations are turning to big data platforms, such as Apache Hadoop, to extend data accessibility and machine learning to detect advanced persistent threats.\nIn order to ensure adequate security, the confidentiality, integrity and availability of a network, better known as the CIA triad, must be protected and is considered the foundation to information security. To achieve those objectives, administrative, physical and technical security measures should be employed. The amount of security afforded to an asset can only be determined when its value is known.\nVulnerability management.\nVulnerability management is the cycle of identifying, fixing or mitigating vulnerabilities, especially in software and firmware. Vulnerability management is integral to computer security and network security.\nVulnerabilities can be discovered with a vulnerability scanner, which analyzes a computer system in search of known vulnerabilities, such as open ports, insecure software configuration, and susceptibility to malware. In order for these tools to be effective, they must be kept up to date with every new update the vendor release. Typically, these updates will scan for the new vulnerabilities that were introduced recently.\nBeyond vulnerability scanning, many organizations contract outside security auditors to run regular penetration tests against their systems to identify vulnerabilities. In some sectors, this is a contractual requirement.\nReducing vulnerabilities.\nThe act of assessing and reducing vulnerabilities to cyber attacks is commonly referred to as information technology security assessments. They aim to assess systems for risk and to predict and test for their vulnerabilities. While formal verification of the correctness of computer systems is possible, it is not yet common. Operating systems formally verified include seL4, and SYSGO's PikeOS \u2013 but these make up a very small percentage of the market.\nIt is possible to reduce an attacker's chances by keeping systems up to date with security patches and updates and by hiring people with expertise in security. Large companies with significant threats can hire Security Operations Centre (SOC) Analysts. These are specialists in cyber defences, with their role ranging from \"conducting threat analysis to investigating reports of any new issues and preparing and testing disaster recovery plans.\"\nWhilst no measures can completely guarantee the prevention of an attack, these measures can help mitigate the damage of possible attacks. The effects of data loss/damage can be also reduced by careful backing up and insurance.\nOutside of formal assessments, there are various methods of reducing vulnerabilities. Two factor authentication is a method for mitigating unauthorized access to a system or sensitive information. It requires \"something you know:\" a password or PIN, and \"something you have\": a card, dongle, cellphone, or another piece of hardware. This increases security as an unauthorized person needs both of these to gain access.\nProtecting against social engineering and direct computer access (physical) attacks can only happen by non-computer means, which can be difficult to enforce, relative to the sensitivity of the information. Training is often involved to help mitigate this risk by improving people's knowledge of how to protect themselves and by increasing people's awareness of threats. However, even in highly disciplined environments (e.g. military organizations), social engineering attacks can still be difficult to foresee and prevent.\nInoculation, derived from inoculation theory, seeks to prevent social engineering and other fraudulent tricks and traps by instilling a resistance to persuasion attempts through exposure to similar or related attempts.\nHardware protection mechanisms.\nHardware-based or assisted computer security also offers an alternative to software-only computer security. Using devices and methods such as dongles, trusted platform modules, intrusion-aware cases, drive locks, disabling USB ports, and mobile-enabled access may be considered more secure due to the physical access (or sophisticated backdoor access) required in order to be compromised. Each of these is covered in more detail below.\nSecure operating systems.\nOne use of the term \"computer security\" refers to technology that is used to implement secure operating systems. Using secure operating systems is a good way of ensuring computer security. These are systems that have achieved certification from an external security-auditing organization, the most popular evaluations are Common Criteria (CC).\nSecure coding.\nIn software engineering, secure coding aims to guard against the accidental introduction of security vulnerabilities. It is also possible to create software designed from the ground up to be secure. Such systems are \"secure by design\". Beyond this, formal verification aims to prove the correctness of the algorithms underlying a system;\nimportant for cryptographic protocols for example.\nCapabilities and access control lists.\nWithin computer systems, two of the main security models capable of enforcing privilege separation are access control lists (ACLs) and role-based access control (RBAC).\nAn access-control list (ACL), with respect to a computer file system, is a list of permissions associated with an object. An ACL specifies which users or system processes are granted access to objects, as well as what operations are allowed on given objects.\nRole-based access control is an approach to restricting system access to authorized users, used by the majority of enterprises with more than 500 employees, and can implement mandatory access control (MAC) or discretionary access control (DAC).\nA further approach, capability-based security has been mostly restricted to research operating systems. Capabilities can, however, also be implemented at the language level, leading to a style of programming that is essentially a refinement of standard object-oriented design. An open-source project in the area is the E language.\nUser security training.\nThe end-user is widely recognized as the weakest link in the security chain and it is estimated that more than 90% of security incidents and breaches involve some kind of human error. Among the most commonly recorded forms of errors and misjudgment are poor password management, sending emails containing sensitive data and attachments to the wrong recipient, the inability to recognize misleading URLs and to identify fake websites and dangerous email attachments. A common mistake that users make is saving their user id/password in their browsers to make it easier to log in to banking sites. This is a gift to attackers who have obtained access to a machine by some means. The risk may be mitigated by the use of two-factor authentication.\nAs the human component of cyber risk is particularly relevant in determining the global cyber risk an organization is facing, security awareness training, at all levels, not only provides formal compliance with regulatory and industry mandates but is considered essential in reducing cyber risk and protecting individuals and companies from the great majority of cyber threats.\nThe focus on the end-user represents a profound cultural change for many security practitioners, who have traditionally approached cybersecurity exclusively from a technical perspective, and moves along the lines suggested by major security centers to develop a culture of cyber awareness within the organization, recognizing that a security-aware user provides an important line of defense against cyber attacks.\nDigital hygiene.\nRelated to end-user training, digital hygiene or cyber hygiene is a fundamental principle relating to information security and, as the analogy with personal hygiene shows, is the equivalent of establishing simple routine measures to minimize the risks from cyber threats. The assumption is that good cyber hygiene practices can give networked users another layer of protection, reducing the risk that one vulnerable node will be used to either mount attacks or compromise another node or network, especially from common cyberattacks. Cyber hygiene should also not be mistaken for proactive cyber defence, a military term.\nThe most common acts of digital hygiene can include updating malware protection, cloud back-ups, passwords, and ensuring restricted admin rights and network firewalls. As opposed to a purely technology-based defense against threats, cyber hygiene mostly regards routine measures that are technically simple to implement and mostly dependent on discipline or education. It can be thought of as an abstract list of tips or measures that have been demonstrated as having a positive effect on personal or collective digital security. As such, these measures can be performed by laypeople, not just security experts.\nCyber hygiene relates to personal hygiene as computer viruses relate to biological viruses (or pathogens). However, while the term \"computer virus\" was coined almost simultaneously with the creation of the first working computer viruses, the term \"cyber hygiene\" is a much later invention, perhaps as late as 2000 by Internet pioneer Vint Cerf. It has since been adopted by the Congress and Senate of the United States, the FBI, EU institutions and heads of state.\nDifficulty of responding to breaches.\nResponding to attempted security breaches is often very difficult for a variety of reasons, including:\nWhere an attack succeeds and a breach occurs, many jurisdictions now have in place mandatory security breach notification laws.\nTypes of security and privacy.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSystems at risk.\nThe growth in the number of computer systems and the increasing reliance upon them by individuals, businesses, industries, and governments means that there are an increasing number of systems at risk.\nFinancial systems.\nThe computer systems of financial regulators and financial institutions like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, SWIFT, investment banks, and commercial banks are prominent hacking targets for cybercriminals interested in manipulating markets and making illicit gains. Websites and apps that accept or store credit card numbers, brokerage accounts, and bank account information are also prominent hacking targets, because of the potential for immediate financial gain from transferring money, making purchases, or selling the information on the black market. In-store payment systems and ATMs have also been tampered with in order to gather customer account data and PINs.\nThe UCLA Internet Report: Surveying the Digital Future (2000) found that the privacy of personal data created barriers to online sales and that more than nine out of 10 internet users were somewhat or very concerned about credit card security.\nThe most common web technologies for improving security between browsers and websites are named SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), and its successor TLS (Transport Layer Security), identity management and authentication services, and domain name services allow companies and consumers to engage in secure communications and commerce. Several versions of SSL and TLS are commonly used today in applications such as web browsing, e-mail, internet faxing, instant messaging, and VoIP (voice-over-IP). There are various interoperable implementations of these technologies, including at least one implementation that is open source. Open source allows anyone to view the application's source code, and look for and report vulnerabilities.\nThe credit card companies Visa and MasterCard cooperated to develop the secure EMV chip which is embedded in credit cards. Further developments include the Chip Authentication Program where banks give customers hand-held card readers to perform online secure transactions. Other developments in this arena include the development of technology such as Instant Issuance which has enabled shopping mall kiosks acting on behalf of banks to issue on-the-spot credit cards to interested customers.\nUtilities and industrial equipment.\nComputers control functions at many utilities, including coordination of telecommunications, the power grid, nuclear power plants, and valve opening and closing in water and gas networks. The Internet is a potential attack vector for such machines if connected, but the Stuxnet worm demonstrated that even equipment controlled by computers not connected to the Internet can be vulnerable. In 2014, the Computer Emergency Readiness Team, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, investigated 79 hacking incidents at energy companies.\nAviation.\nThe aviation industry is very reliant on a series of complex systems which could be attacked. A simple power outage at one airport can cause repercussions worldwide, much of the system relies on radio transmissions which could be disrupted, and controlling aircraft over oceans is especially dangerous because radar surveillance only extends 175 to 225 miles offshore. There is also potential for attack from within an aircraft.\nImplementing fixes in aerospace systems poses a unique challenge because efficient air transportation is heavily affected by weight and volume. Improving security by adding physical devices to airplanes could increase their unloaded weight, and could potentially reduce cargo or passenger capacity.\nIn Europe, with the (Pan-European Network Service) and NewPENS, and in the US with the NextGen program, air navigation service providers are moving to create their own dedicated networks.\nMany modern passports are now biometric passports, containing an embedded microchip that stores a digitized photograph and personal information such as name, gender, and date of birth. In addition, more countries are introducing facial recognition technology to reduce identity-related fraud. The introduction of the ePassport has assisted border officials in verifying the identity of the passport holder, thus allowing for quick passenger processing. Plans are under way in the US, the UK, and Australia to introduce SmartGate kiosks with both retina and fingerprint recognition technology. The airline industry is moving from the use of traditional paper tickets towards the use of electronic tickets (e-tickets). These have been made possible by advances in online credit card transactions in partnership with the airlines. Long-distance bus companies are also switching over to e-ticketing transactions today.\nThe consequences of a successful attack range from loss of confidentiality to loss of system integrity, air traffic control outages, loss of aircraft, and even loss of life.\nConsumer devices.\nDesktop computers and laptops are commonly targeted to gather passwords or financial account information or to construct a botnet to attack another target. Smartphones, tablet computers, smart watches, and other mobile devices such as quantified self devices like activity trackers have sensors such as cameras, microphones, GPS receivers, compasses, and accelerometers which could be exploited, and may collect personal information, including sensitive health information. WiFi, Bluetooth, and cell phone networks on any of these devices could be used as attack vectors, and sensors might be remotely activated after a successful breach.\nThe increasing number of home automation devices such as the Nest thermostat are also potential targets.\nHealthcare.\nToday many healthcare providers and health insurance companies use the internet to provide enhanced products and services. Examples are the use of tele-health to potentially offer better quality and access to healthcare, or fitness trackers to lower insurance premiums. Patient records are increasingly being placed on secure in-house networks, alleviating the need for extra storage space.\nLarge corporations.\nLarge corporations are common targets. In many cases attacks are aimed at financial gain through identity theft and involve data breaches. Examples include the loss of millions of clients' credit card and financial details by Home Depot, Staples, Target Corporation, and Equifax.\nMedical records have been targeted in general identify theft, health insurance fraud, and impersonating patients to obtain prescription drugs for recreational purposes or resale. Although cyber threats continue to increase, 62% of all organizations did not increase security training for their business in 2015.\nNot all attacks are financially motivated, however: security firm HBGary Federal had a serious series of attacks in 2011 from hacktivist group Anonymous in retaliation for the firm's CEO claiming to have infiltrated their group, and Sony Pictures was hacked in 2014 with the apparent dual motive of embarrassing the company through data leaks and crippling the company by wiping workstations and servers.\nAutomobiles.\nVehicles are increasingly computerized, with engine timing, cruise control, anti-lock brakes, seat belt tensioners, door locks, airbags and advanced driver-assistance systems on many models. Additionally, connected cars may use WiFi and Bluetooth to communicate with onboard consumer devices and the cell phone network. Self-driving cars are expected to be even more complex. All of these systems carry some security risks, and such issues have gained wide attention.\nSimple examples of risk include a malicious compact disc being used as an attack vector, and the car's onboard microphones being used for eavesdropping. However, if access is gained to a car's internal controller area network, the danger is much greater \u2013 and in a widely publicized 2015 test, hackers remotely carjacked a vehicle from 10 miles away and drove it into a ditch.\nManufacturers are reacting in numerous ways, with Tesla in 2016 pushing out some security fixes \"over the air\" into its cars' computer systems. In the area of autonomous vehicles, in September 2016 the United States Department of Transportation announced some initial safety standards, and called for states to come up with uniform policies.\nAdditionally, e-Drivers' licenses are being developed using the same technology. For example, Mexico's licensing authority (ICV) has used a smart card platform to issue the first e-Drivers' licenses to the city of Monterrey, in the state of Nuevo Le\u00f3n.\nShipping.\nShipping companies have adopted RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology as an efficient, digitally secure, tracking device. Unlike a barcode, RFID can be read up to 20 feet away. RFID is used by FedEx and UPS.\nGovernment.\nGovernment and military computer systems are commonly attacked by activists and foreign powers. Local and regional government infrastructure such as traffic light controls, police and intelligence agency communications, personnel records, as well as student records.\nThe FBI, CIA, and Pentagon, all utilize secure controlled access technology for any of their buildings. However, the use of this form of technology is spreading into the entrepreneurial world. More and more companies are taking advantage of the development of digitally secure controlled access technology. GE's ACUVision, for example, offers a single panel platform for access control, alarm monitoring and digital recording.\nInternet of things and physical vulnerabilities.\nThe Internet of things (IoT) is the network of physical objects such as devices, vehicles, and buildings that are embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity that enables them to collect and exchange data. Concerns have been raised that this is being developed without appropriate consideration of the security challenges involved.\nWhile the IoT creates opportunities for more direct integration of the physical world into computer-based systems,\nit also provides opportunities for misuse. In particular, as the Internet of Things spreads widely, cyberattacks are likely to become an increasingly physical (rather than simply virtual) threat. If a front door's lock is connected to the Internet, and can be locked/unlocked from a phone, then a criminal could enter the home at the press of a button from a stolen or hacked phone. People could stand to lose much more than their credit card numbers in a world controlled by IoT-enabled devices. Thieves have also used electronic means to circumvent non-Internet-connected hotel door locks.\nAn attack aimed at physical infrastructure or human lives is often called a cyber-kinetic attack. As IoT devices and appliances become more widespread, the prevalence and potential damage of cyber-kinetic attacks can increase substantially.\nMedical systems.\nMedical devices have either been successfully attacked or had potentially deadly vulnerabilities demonstrated, including both in-hospital diagnostic equipment and implanted devices including pacemakers and insulin pumps. There are many reports of hospitals and hospital organizations getting hacked, including ransomware attacks, Windows XP exploits, viruses, and data breaches of sensitive data stored on hospital servers. On 28 December 2016 the US Food and Drug Administration released its recommendations for how medical device manufacturers should maintain the security of Internet-connected devices \u2013 but no structure for enforcement.\nEnergy sector.\nIn distributed generation systems, the risk of a cyber attack is real, according to \"Daily Energy Insider\". An attack could cause a loss of power in a large area for a long period of time, and such an attack could have just as severe consequences as a natural disaster. The District of Columbia is considering creating a Distributed Energy Resources (DER) Authority within the city, with the goal being for customers to have more insight into their own energy use and giving the local electric utility, Pepco, the chance to better estimate energy demand. The D.C. proposal, however, would \"allow third-party vendors to create numerous points of energy distribution, which could potentially create more opportunities for cyber attackers to threaten the electric grid.\"\nTelecommunications.\nPerhaps the most widely known digitally secure telecommunication device is the SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card, a device that is embedded in most of the world's cellular devices before any service can be obtained. The SIM card is just the beginning of this digitally secure environment.\nThe Smart Card Web Servers draft standard (SCWS) defines the interfaces to an HTTP server in a smart card. Tests are being conducted to secure OTA (\"over-the-air\") payment and credit card information from and to a mobile phone. \nCombination SIM/DVD devices are being developed through Smart Video Card technology which embeds a DVD-compliant optical disc into the card body of a regular SIM card.\nOther telecommunication developments involving digital security include mobile signatures, which use the embedded SIM card to generate a legally binding electronic signature.\nCost and impact of security breaches.\nSerious financial damage has been caused by security breaches, but because there is no standard model for estimating the cost of an incident, the only data available is that which is made public by the organizations involved. \"Several computer security consulting firms produce estimates of total worldwide losses attributable to virus and worm attacks and to hostile digital acts in general. The 2003 loss estimates by these firms range from $13 billion (worms and viruses only) to $226 billion (for all forms of covert attacks). The reliability of these estimates is often challenged; the underlying methodology is basically anecdotal.\"\nHowever, reasonable estimates of the financial cost of security breaches can actually help organizations make rational investment decisions. According to the classic Gordon-Loeb Model analyzing the optimal investment level in information security, one can conclude that the amount a firm spends to protect information should generally be only a small fraction of the expected loss (i.e., the expected value of the loss resulting from a cyber/information security breach).\nAttacker motivation.\nAs with physical security, the motivations for breaches of computer security vary between attackers. Some are thrill-seekers or vandals, some are activists, others are criminals looking for financial gain. State-sponsored attackers are now common and well resourced but started with amateurs such as Markus Hess who hacked for the KGB, as recounted by Clifford Stoll in \"The Cuckoo's Egg\".\nAttackers motivations can vary for all types of attacks from pleasure to political goals. For example, hacktivists may target a company or organization that carries out activities they do not agree with. This would be to create bad publicity for the company by having its website crash.\nHigh capability hackers, often with larger backing or state sponsorship, may attack based on the demands of their financial backers. These attacks are more likely to attempt more serious attack. An example of a more serious attack was the 2015 Ukraine power grid hack, which reportedly utilised the spear-phising, destruction of files, and denial-of-service attacks to carry out the full attack.\nAdditionally, recent attacker motivations can be traced back to extremist organizations seeking to gain political advantage or disrupt social agendas. The growth of the internet, mobile technologies, and inexpensive computing devices have led to a rise in capabilities but also to the risk to environments that are deemed as vital to operations. All critical targeted environments are susceptible to compromise and this has led to a series of proactive studies on how to migrate the risk by taking into consideration motivations by these types of actors. Several stark differences exist between the hacker motivation and that of nation state actors seeking to attack based on an ideological preference.\nA key aspect of threat modeling for any system is identifying the motivations behind potential attacks and the individuals or groups likely to carry them out. The level and detail of security measures will differ based on the specific system being protected. For instance, a home personal computer, a bank, and a classified military network each face distinct threats, despite using similar underlying technologies.\nComputer security incident management.\nComputer security incident management is an organized approach to addressing and managing the aftermath of a computer security incident or compromise with the goal of preventing a breach or thwarting a cyberattack. An incident that is not identified and managed at the time of intrusion typically escalates to a more damaging event such as a data breach or system failure. The intended outcome of a computer security incident response plan is to contain the incident, limit damage and assist recovery to business as usual. Responding to compromises quickly can mitigate exploited vulnerabilities, restore services and processes and minimize losses.\nIncident response planning allows an organization to establish a series of best practices to stop an intrusion before it causes damage. Typical incident response plans contain a set of written instructions that outline the organization's response to a cyberattack. Without a documented plan in place, an organization may not successfully detect an intrusion or compromise and stakeholders may not understand their roles, processes and procedures during an escalation, slowing the organization's response and resolution.\nThere are four key components of a computer security incident response plan:\nNotable attacks and breaches.\nSome illustrative examples of different types of computer security breaches are given below.\nRobert Morris and the first computer worm.\nIn 1988, 60,000 computers were connected to the Internet, and most were mainframes, minicomputers and professional workstations. On 2 November 1988, many started to slow down, because they were running a malicious code that demanded processor time and that spread itself to other computers \u2013 the first internet computer worm. The software was traced back to 23-year-old Cornell University graduate student Robert Tappan Morris who said \"he wanted to count how many machines were connected to the Internet\".\nRome Laboratory.\nIn 1994, over a hundred intrusions were made by unidentified crackers into the Rome Laboratory, the US Air Force's main command and research facility. Using trojan horses, hackers were able to obtain unrestricted access to Rome's networking systems and remove traces of their activities. The intruders were able to obtain classified files, such as air tasking order systems data and furthermore able to penetrate connected networks of National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Space Flight Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, some Defense contractors, and other private sector organizations, by posing as a trusted Rome center user.\nTJX customer credit card details.\nIn early 2007, American apparel and home goods company TJX announced that it was the victim of an unauthorized computer systems intrusion and that the hackers had accessed a system that stored data on credit card, debit card, check, and merchandise return transactions.\nStuxnet attack.\nIn 2010, the computer worm known as Stuxnet reportedly ruined almost one-fifth of Iran's nuclear centrifuges. It did so by disrupting industrial programmable logic controllers (PLCs) in a targeted attack. This is generally believed to have been launched by Israel and the United States to disrupt Iran's nuclear program \u2013 although neither has publicly admitted this.\nGlobal surveillance disclosures.\nIn early 2013, documents provided by Edward Snowden were published by \"The Washington Post\" and \"The Guardian\" exposing the massive scale of NSA global surveillance. There were also indications that the NSA may have inserted a backdoor in a NIST standard for encryption. This standard was later withdrawn due to widespread criticism. The NSA additionally were revealed to have tapped the links between Google's data centers.\nTarget and Home Depot breaches.\nA Ukrainian hacker known as Rescator broke into Target Corporation computers in 2013, stealing roughly 40 million credit cards, and then Home Depot computers in 2014, stealing between 53 and 56 million credit card numbers. Warnings were delivered at both corporations, but ignored; physical security breaches using self checkout machines are believed to have played a large role. \"The malware utilized is absolutely unsophisticated and uninteresting,\" says Jim Walter, director of threat intelligence operations at security technology company McAfee \u2013 meaning that the heists could have easily been stopped by existing antivirus software had administrators responded to the warnings. The size of the thefts has resulted in major attention from state and Federal United States authorities and the investigation is ongoing.\nOffice of Personnel Management data breach.\nIn April 2015, the Office of Personnel Management discovered it had been hacked more than a year earlier in a data breach, resulting in the theft of approximately 21.5\u00a0million personnel records handled by the office. The Office of Personnel Management hack has been described by federal officials as among the largest breaches of government data in the history of the United States. Data targeted in the breach included personally identifiable information such as Social Security numbers, names, dates and places of birth, addresses, and fingerprints of current and former government employees as well as anyone who had undergone a government background check. It is believed the hack was perpetrated by Chinese hackers.\nAshley Madison breach.\nIn July 2015, a hacker group is known as The Impact Team successfully breached the extramarital relationship website Ashley Madison, created by Avid Life Media. The group claimed that they had taken not only company data but user data as well. After the breach, The Impact Team dumped emails from the company's CEO, to prove their point, and threatened to dump customer data unless the website was taken down permanently. When Avid Life Media did not take the site offline the group released two more compressed files, one 9.7GB and the second 20GB. After the second data dump, Avid Life Media CEO Noel Biderman resigned; but the website remained to function.\nColonial Pipeline ransomware attack.\nIn June 2021, the cyber attack took down the largest fuel pipeline in the U.S. and led to shortages across the East Coast.\nLegal issues and global regulation.\nInternational legal issues of cyber attacks are complicated in nature. There is no global base of common rules to judge, and eventually punish, cybercrimes and cybercriminals - and where security firms or agencies do locate the cybercriminal behind the creation of a particular piece of malware or form of cyber attack, often the local authorities cannot take action due to lack of laws under which to prosecute. Proving attribution for cybercrimes and cyberattacks is also a major problem for all law enforcement agencies. \"Computer viruses switch from one country to another, from one jurisdiction to another \u2013 moving around the world, using the fact that we don't have the capability to globally police operations like this. So the Internet is as if someone [had] given free plane tickets to all the online criminals of the world.\" The use of techniques such as dynamic DNS, fast flux and bullet proof servers add to the difficulty of investigation and enforcement.\nRole of government.\nThe role of the government is to make regulations to force companies and organizations to protect their systems, infrastructure and information from any cyberattacks, but also to protect its own national infrastructure such as the national power-grid.\nThe government's regulatory role in cyberspace is complicated. For some, cyberspace was seen as a virtual space that was to remain free of government intervention, as can be seen in many of today's libertarian blockchain and bitcoin discussions.\nMany government officials and experts think that the government should do more and that there is a crucial need for improved regulation, mainly due to the failure of the private sector to solve efficiently the cybersecurity problem. R. Clarke said during a panel discussion at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco, he believes that the \"industry only responds when you threaten regulation. If the industry doesn't respond (to the threat), you have to follow through.\" On the other hand, executives from the private sector agree that improvements are necessary, but think that government intervention would affect their ability to innovate efficiently. Daniel R. McCarthy analyzed this public-private partnership in cybersecurity and reflected on the role of cybersecurity in the broader constitution of political order.\nOn 22 May 2020, the UN Security Council held its second ever informal meeting on cybersecurity to focus on cyber challenges to international peace. According to UN Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres, new technologies are too often used to violate rights.\nInternational actions.\nMany different teams and organizations exist, including:\nEurope.\nOn 14 April 2016, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union adopted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR, which came into force on 25 May 2018, grants individuals within the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA) the right to the protection of personal data. The regulation requires that any entity that processes personal data incorporate data protection by design and by default. It also requires that certain organizations appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO). \nThe IT Security Association TeleTrusT exist in Germany since June 1986, which is an international competence network for IT security.\nNational actions.\nComputer emergency response teams.\nMost countries have their own computer emergency response team to protect network security.\nCanada.\nSince 2010, Canada has had a cybersecurity strategy. This functions as a counterpart document to the National Strategy and Action Plan for Critical Infrastructure. The strategy has three main pillars: securing government systems, securing vital private cyber systems, and helping Canadians to be secure online. There is also a Cyber Incident Management Framework to provide a coordinated response in the event of a cyber incident.\nThe Canadian Cyber Incident Response Centre (CCIRC) is responsible for mitigating and responding to threats to Canada's critical infrastructure and cyber systems. It provides support to mitigate cyber threats, technical support to respond & recover from targeted cyber attacks, and provides online tools for members of Canada's critical infrastructure sectors. It posts regular cybersecurity bulletins & operates an online reporting tool where individuals and organizations can report a cyber incident.\nTo inform the general public on how to protect themselves online, Public Safety Canada has partnered with STOP.THINK.CONNECT, a coalition of non-profit, private sector, and government organizations, and launched the Cyber Security Cooperation Program. They also run the GetCyberSafe portal for Canadian citizens, and Cyber Security Awareness Month during October.\nPublic Safety Canada aims to begin an evaluation of Canada's cybersecurity strategy in early 2015.\nAustralia.\nAustralian federal government announced an $18.2 million investment to fortify the cybersecurity resilience of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and enhance their capabilities in responding to cyber threats. This financial backing is an integral component of the soon-to-be-unveiled 2023-2030 Australian Cyber Security Strategy, slated for release within the current week. A substantial allocation of $7.2 million is earmarked for the establishment of a voluntary cyber health check program, facilitating businesses in conducting a comprehensive and tailored self-assessment of their cybersecurity upskill.\nThis avant-garde health assessment serves as a diagnostic tool, enabling enterprises to ascertain the robustness of Australia's cyber security regulations. Furthermore, it affords them access to a repository of educational resources and materials, fostering the acquisition of skills necessary for an elevated cybersecurity posture. This groundbreaking initiative was jointly disclosed by Minister for Cyber Security Clare O'Neil and Minister for Small Business Julie Collins.\nIndia.\nSome provisions for cybersecurity have been incorporated into rules framed under the Information Technology Act 2000.\nThe National Cyber Security Policy 2013 is a policy framework by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) which aims to protect the public and private infrastructure from cyberattacks, and safeguard \"information, such as personal information (of web users), financial and banking information and sovereign data\". CERT- In is the nodal agency which monitors the cyber threats in the country. The post of National Cyber Security Coordinator has also been created in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO).\nThe Indian Companies Act 2013 has also introduced cyber law and cybersecurity obligations on the part of Indian directors. Some provisions for cybersecurity have been incorporated into rules framed under the Information Technology Act 2000 Update in 2013.\nSouth Korea.\nFollowing cyberattacks in the first half of 2013, when the government, news media, television stations, and bank websites were compromised, the national government committed to the training of 5,000 new cybersecurity experts by 2017. The South Korean government blamed its northern counterpart for these attacks, as well as incidents that occurred in 2009, 2011, and 2012, but Pyongyang denies the accusations.\nUnited States.\nCyber Plan.\nThe United States has its first fully formed cyber plan in 15 years, as a result of the release of this National Cyber plan. In this policy, the US says it will: Protect the country by keeping networks, systems, functions, and data safe; Promote American wealth by building a strong digital economy and encouraging strong domestic innovation; Peace and safety should be kept by making it easier for the US to stop people from using computer tools for bad things, working with friends and partners to do this; and increase the United States' impact around the world to support the main ideas behind an open, safe, reliable, and compatible Internet.\nThe new U.S. cyber strategy seeks to allay some of those concerns by promoting responsible behavior in cyberspace, urging nations to adhere to a set of norms, both through international law and voluntary standards. It also calls for specific measures to harden U.S. government networks from attacks, like the June 2015 intrusion into the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which compromised the records of about 4.2 million current and former government employees. And the strategy calls for the U.S. to continue to name and shame bad cyber actors, calling them out publicly for attacks when possible, along with the use of economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure.\nLegislation.\nThe 1986 \u00a0\u00a7\u00a01030, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is the key legislation. It prohibits unauthorized access or damage of \"protected computers\" as defined in \u00a0\u00a7\u00a01030(e)(2). Although various other measures have been proposed \u2013 none have succeeded.\nIn 2013, executive order \"Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity\" was signed, which prompted the creation of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework.\nIn response to the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 14028 on May 12, 2021, to increase software security standards for sales to the government, tighten detection and security on existing systems, improve information sharing and training, establish a Cyber Safety Review Board, and improve incident response.\nStandardized government testing services.\nThe General Services Administration (GSA) has standardized the \"penetration test\" service as a pre-vetted support service, to rapidly address potential vulnerabilities, and stop adversaries before they impact US federal, state and local governments. These services are commonly referred to as Highly Adaptive Cybersecurity Services (HACS).\nAgencies.\nThe Department of Homeland Security has a dedicated division responsible for the response system, risk management program and requirements for cybersecurity in the United States called the National Cyber Security Division. The division is home to US-CERT operations and the National Cyber Alert System. The National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center brings together government organizations responsible for protecting computer networks and networked infrastructure.\nThe third priority of the FBI is to: \"Protect the United States against cyber-based attacks and high-technology crimes\", and they, along with the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), and the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) are part of the multi-agency task force, The Internet Crime Complaint Center, also known as IC3.\nIn addition to its own specific duties, the FBI participates alongside non-profit organizations such as InfraGard.\nThe Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) operates in the United States Department of Justice Criminal Division. The CCIPS is in charge of investigating computer crime and intellectual property crime and is specialized in the search and seizure of digital evidence in computers and networks. In 2017, CCIPS published A Framework for a Vulnerability Disclosure Program for Online Systems to help organizations \"clearly describe authorized vulnerability disclosure and discovery conduct, thereby substantially reducing the likelihood that such described activities will result in a civil or criminal violation of law under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. \u00a7 1030).\"\nThe United States Cyber Command, also known as USCYBERCOM, \"has the mission to direct, synchronize, and coordinate cyberspace planning and operations to defend and advance national interests in collaboration with domestic and international partners.\" It has no role in the protection of civilian networks.\nThe U.S. Federal Communications Commission's role in cybersecurity is to strengthen the protection of critical communications infrastructure, to assist in maintaining the reliability of networks during disasters, to aid in swift recovery after, and to ensure that first responders have access to effective communications services.\nThe Food and Drug Administration has issued guidance for medical devices, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is concerned with automotive cybersecurity. After being criticized by the Government Accountability Office, and following successful attacks on airports and claimed attacks on airplanes, the Federal Aviation Administration has devoted funding to securing systems on board the planes of private manufacturers, and the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System. Concerns have also been raised about the future Next Generation Air Transportation System.\nThe US Department of Defense (DoD) issued DoD Directive 8570 in 2004, supplemented by DoD Directive 8140, requiring all DoD employees and all DoD contract personnel involved in information assurance roles and activities to earn and maintain various industry Information Technology (IT) certifications in an effort to ensure that all DoD personnel involved in network infrastructure defense have minimum levels of IT industry recognized knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA). Andersson and Reimers (2019) report these certifications range from CompTIA's A+ and Security+ through the ICS2.org's CISSP, etc.\nComputer emergency readiness team.\n\"Computer emergency response team\" is a name given to expert groups that handle computer security incidents. In the US, two distinct organizations exist, although they do work closely together.\nU.S. NRC, 10 CFR 73.54 Cybersecurity.\nIn the context of U.S. nuclear power plants, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) outlines cybersecurity requirements under 10 CFR Part 73, specifically in \u00a773.54.\nNEI 08-09: Cybersecurity Plan for Nuclear Power Plants.\nThe Nuclear Energy Institute's NEI 08-09 document, \"Cyber Security Plan for Nuclear Power Reactors\", outlines a comprehensive framework for cybersecurity in the nuclear power industry. Drafted with input from the U.S. NRC, this guideline is instrumental in aiding licensees to comply with the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), which mandates robust protection of digital computers and equipment and communications systems at nuclear power plants against cyber threats.\nModern warfare.\nThere is growing concern that cyberspace will become the next theater of warfare. As Mark Clayton from \"The Christian Science Monitor\" wrote in a 2015 article titled \"The New Cyber Arms Race\":\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />In the future, wars will not just be fought by soldiers with guns or with planes that drop bombs. They will also be fought with the click of a mouse a half a world away that unleashes carefully weaponized computer programs that disrupt or destroy critical industries like utilities, transportation, communications, and energy. Such attacks could also disable military networks that control the movement of troops, the path of jet fighters, the command and control of warships.\nThis has led to new terms such as \"cyberwarfare\" and \"cyberterrorism\". The United States Cyber Command was created in 2009 and many other countries have similar forces.\nThere are a few critical voices that question whether cybersecurity is as significant a threat as it is made out to be.\nCareers.\nCybersecurity is a fast-growing field of IT concerned with reducing organizations' risk of hack or data breaches. According to research from the Enterprise Strategy Group, 46% of organizations say that they have a \"problematic shortage\" of cybersecurity skills in 2016, up from 28% in 2015. Commercial, government and non-governmental organizations all employ cybersecurity professionals. The fastest increases in demand for cybersecurity workers are in industries managing increasing volumes of consumer data such as finance, health care, and retail. However, the use of the term \"cybersecurity\" is more prevalent in government job descriptions.\nTypical cybersecurity job titles and descriptions include:\n Analyzes and assesses vulnerabilities in the infrastructure (software, hardware, networks), investigates using available tools and countermeasures to remedy the detected vulnerabilities and recommends solutions and best practices. Analyzes and assesses damage to the data/infrastructure as a result of security incidents, examines available recovery tools and processes, and recommends solutions. Tests for compliance with security policies and procedures. May assist in the creation, implementation, or management of security solutions.\n Performs security monitoring, security and data/logs analysis, and forensic analysis, to detect security incidents, and mount the incident response. Investigates and utilizes new technologies and processes to enhance security capabilities and implement improvements. May also review code or perform other security engineering methodologies.\n Designs a security system or major components of a security system, and may head a security design team building a new security system.\n A high-level management position responsible for the entire information security division/staff. The position may include hands-on technical work.\n A high-level management position responsible for the entire security division/staff. A newer position is now deemed needed as security risks grow.\n A DPO is tasked with monitoring compliance with data protection laws (such as GDPR), data protection policies, awareness-raising, training, and audits.\n Broad titles that encompass any one or all of the other roles or titles tasked with protecting computers, networks, software, data or information systems against viruses, worms, spyware, malware, intrusion detection, unauthorized access, denial-of-service attacks, and an ever-increasing list of attacks by hackers acting as individuals or as part of organized crime or foreign governments.\nSecurity Consultant/Specialist/Intelligence.\nStudent programs are also available for people interested in beginning a career in cybersecurity. Meanwhile, a flexible and effective option for information security professionals of all experience levels to keep studying is online security training, including webcasts. A wide range of certified courses are also available.\nIn the United Kingdom, a nationwide set of cybersecurity forums, known as the U.K Cyber Security Forum, were established supported by the Government's cybersecurity strategy in order to encourage start-ups and innovation and to address the skills gap identified by the U.K Government.\nIn Singapore, the Cyber Security Agency has issued a Singapore Operational Technology (OT) Cybersecurity Competency Framework (OTCCF). The framework defines emerging cybersecurity roles in Operational Technology. The OTCCF was endorsed by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA). It outlines the different OT cybersecurity job positions as well as the technical skills and core competencies necessary. It also depicts the many career paths available, including vertical and lateral advancement opportunities.\nTerminology.\nThe following terms used with regards to computer security are explained below:\nHistory.\nSince the Internet's arrival and with the digital transformation initiated in recent years, the notion of cybersecurity has become a familiar subject in both our professional and personal lives. Cybersecurity and cyber threats have been consistently present for the last 60 years of technological change. In the 1970s and 1980s, computer security was mainly limited to academia until the conception of the Internet, where, with increased connectivity, computer viruses and network intrusions began to take off. After the spread of viruses in the 1990s, the 2000s marked the institutionalization of organized attacks such as distributed denial of service. This led to the formalization of cybersecurity as a professional discipline.\nThe April 1967 session organized by Willis Ware at the Spring Joint Computer Conference, and the later publication of the Ware Report, were foundational moments in the history of the field of computer security. Ware's work straddled the intersection of material, cultural, political, and social concerns.\nA 1977 NIST publication introduced the \"CIA triad\" of confidentiality, integrity, and availability as a clear and simple way to describe key security goals. While still relevant, many more elaborate frameworks have since been proposed.\nHowever, in the 1970s and 1980s, there were no grave computer threats because computers and the internet were still developing, and security threats were easily identifiable. More often, threats came from malicious insiders who gained unauthorized access to sensitive documents and files. Although malware and network breaches existed during the early years, they did not use them for financial gain. By the second half of the 1970s, established computer firms like IBM started offering commercial access control systems and computer security software products.\nOne of the earliest examples of an attack on a computer network was the computer worm Creeper written by Bob Thomas at BBN, which propagated through the ARPANET in 1971. The program was purely experimental in nature and carried no malicious payload. A later program, Reaper, was created by Ray Tomlinson in 1972 and used to destroy Creeper.\nBetween September 1986 and June 1987, a group of German hackers performed the first documented case of cyber espionage. The group hacked into American defense contractors, universities, and military base networks and sold gathered information to the Soviet KGB. The group was led by Markus Hess, who was arrested on 29 June 1987. He was convicted of espionage (along with two co-conspirators) on 15 Feb 1990.\nIn 1988, one of the first computer worms, called the Morris worm, was distributed via the Internet. It gained significant mainstream media attention.\nNetscape started developing the protocol SSL, shortly after the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) launched Mosaic 1.0, the first web browser, in 1993. Netscape had SSL version 1.0 ready in 1994, but it was never released to the public due to many serious security vulnerabilities. However, in 1995, Netscape launched Version 2.0.\nThe National Security Agency (NSA) is responsible for the protection of U.S. information systems and also for collecting foreign intelligence. The agency analyzes commonly used software and system configurations to find security flaws, which it can use for offensive purposes against competitors of the United States.\nNSA contractors created and sold \"click-and-shoot\" attack tools to US agencies and close allies, but eventually, the tools made their way to foreign adversaries. In 2016, NSAs own hacking tools were hacked, and they have been used by Russia and North Korea. NSA's employees and contractors have been recruited at high salaries by adversaries, anxious to compete in cyberwarfare. In 2007, the United States and Israel began exploiting security flaws in the Microsoft Windows operating system to attack and damage equipment used in Iran to refine nuclear materials. Iran responded by heavily investing in their own cyberwarfare capability, which it began using against the United States.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["7398", "49728"], "permutation_1": ["7398", "49728"], "permutation_2": ["49728", "7398"], "permutation_3": ["49728", "7398"]}
{"id": "2hop__132192_91253", "docs_added": {"14568465": "Shakespeare quadrangle\nQuadrangle on Mercury\nThe Shakespeare quadrangle is a region of Mercury running from 90 to 180\u00b0 longitude and 20 to 70\u00b0 latitude. It is also called Caduceata.\nThe Borealis quadrangle is north of Shakespeare quadrangle. To the west is Raditladi quadrangle, and to the east is Victoria quadrangle. To the southwest is Tolstoj quadrangle, and to the southeast is Beethoven quadrangle.\nMariner 10 imaging.\nPrior to the images taken by MESSENGER, the only spacecraft images of Mercury were those taken by the Mariner 10 spacecraft, which made three passes of the planet in 1974\u201375 (Murray and others, 1974a,b; Strom and others, 1975a). Most images used in mapping the geology of the Shakespeare quadrangle were taken during the near-equatorial first pass, with close encounter or the dark side of the planet. The second, south-polar pass did not image the Shakespeare quadrangle at high resolution. High-resolution images of small areas within the quadrangle were also obtained during the third pass, when the spacecraft was on a near-encounter north-polar trajectory. Because the spacecraft viewed the same areas from different positions during the first and second passes, stereoscopic pictures are available for certain areas of the southern hemisphere; however, such pictures are not available for the Shakespeare quadrangle. All of the Mariner 10 passes occurred under similar lighting conditions. Across the Shakespeare quadrangle, these conditions varied from low light at the terminator near the west boundary to higher sun at the east boundary. Consequently, lighting conditions were favorable for determining fine-scale relief in the west, but progressively less so toward the east. Conversely, albedo features such as bright crater rays, which are conspicuous in the eastern part, become increasingly difficult to recognize westward toward the terminator. This range of lighting conditions across the quadrangle results in inconsistent geologic mapping, because topography, albedo, and surface texture are critical for characterizing individual materials units. The average resolution of the pictures used from the first pass is just over 1\u00a0km.\n\"MESSENGER\" images.\nThe \"MESSENGER\" spacecraft mapped all of Mercury's quadrangles at much greater detail than that of \"Mariner 10\". For example, the fresh crater Degas was imaged at very high resolution, and the possible volcanic vents within To Ngoc Van, Scarlatti, and Gibran craters were imaged.\nRegional setting.\nThe dominant feature in the Shakespeare quadrangle is the Caloris Basin, 1,300\u00a0km in diameter. This impact basin is the largest and best preserved on the hemisphere of Mercury observed by Mariner 10. Almost the entire eastern half of the basin is in the Raditladi quadrangle; the west half was in the nightside hemisphere of Mercury during all the Mariner 10 passes, and part of the southern half lies in the adjacent Tolstoj quadrangle (Schaber and McCauley, 1980). Surrounding Caloris is a discontinuous annulus of its ejecta deposits, called the Caloris Group. Caloris ejecta are embayed and partly covered by a plains unit that lies mostly in large, roughly circular depressions, some of which may be ancient degraded basins. This plains material also occurs in the floors of old craters and in small irregular topographic lows.\nThe eastern part of the Shakespeare quadrangle consists mainly of cratered terrain and intercrater plains. Over the whole of the mapped area are scattered fresh craters superposed on other units; in the eastern part the large fresh craters show well- developed bright rays.\nStratigraphy.\nPre-Caloris materials.\nThe oldest recognizable unit in the quadrangle is the intercrater plains material. These plains were originally described by Trask and Guest as intercrater plains. The unit has a surface expression of rolling to hummocky plains in the areas between large craters and is exposed mainly in the eastern part of the mapped area. The surface of the unit is pockmarked with craters, many of which are small (about 5 to 10\u00a0km in diameter), elliptical, and shallow; they are inferred from their shape to be secondary craters associated with larger craters and basins. Trask and Guest concluded that the surface of these plains represents a primordial surface of Mercury on which craters have been superposed. The large extent of this surface compared to its counterpart on the Moon was thought to reflect the restricted distribution of ejecta around each individual crater caused by the relatively high gravity on Mercury. Because of this high gravity, considerable areas were unaffected by crater and basin ejecta. However, Malin and Guest and O'Donnell (1977) have shown that in some areas the intercrater plains overlie highly degraded craters, a relation suggesting either that the intercrater plains were formed during a specific time in Mercury's history and that cratering occurred both before and after their emplacement, or, alternatively, that the intercrater plains were formed by a continuous process throughout cratering history.\nIn several parts of the quadrangle, especially on the margins of large expanses of smooth plains materials, is a unit of smoother and less rolling plains that have a lower crater density. Following Schaber and McCauley (1980), this unit is called intermediate plains material. It is difficult to map with precision because it grades into both the intercrater plains and the smooth plains. Also, its recognition depends on lighting conditions that vary across the mapped areas, especially east of longitude 120\u00b0. The presence of this unit suggests that the plains-forming process spanned much of the early geologic history of Mercury and continued long after the peak of cratering. In the southern part of Sobkou Planitia, intermediate plains have a lower albedo than the adjacent plains. In some places, they may simply represent areas of intercrater plains that have been partly flooded by the younger smooth plains material.\nLineated plains material was recognized by Trask and Guest as forming terrain consisting of lines of hills and valleys, some of which are as much as 300\u00a0km long. This unit modified older large craters and intercrater plains. Its features are similar to those of the lunar Imbrium sculpture (Gilbert 1893) and to the hills and valleys radial to the Nectaris Basin on the Moon (Stuart-Alexander, 1971). The lineations were probably formed in a similar way to those of the Imbrium sculpture, which resulted from excavation by projectiles ejected at low angles from the Imbrium Basin; however, some of the mercurian valleys may be the result of faulting. Most of the lineated material in the Shakespeare quadrangle appears to be subradial to an ancient basin lying between Odin Planitia and Budh Planitia centered at latitude 28\u00b0 N., longitude 158\u00b0 W. However, except for its northernmost exposure, the surface of this unit is mantled by a facies of the Odin Formation.\nHilly plains material consists of low, rounded, closely spaced hills with relatively few superposed craters. The hills range in size from 1 to 2\u00a0km across and were estimated to have heights of 100 to 200 m by Trask and Guest, who first recognized this unit and named it hilly terrain. The main tracts of hilly material occur in a roughly concentric band outside the Caloris ejecta. It is possible that this unit is associated with Caloris, although apart from geographical distribution, there is no supporting evidence. In some places, contact relations suggest that the hilly plains material may be older than intermediate plains material. Also, patches of the hilly material may be associated with intercrater plains materials in the eastern part of the quadrangle, where lighting conditions do not allow its recognition.\nCaloris group.\nRock units associated with the Caloris Basin are particularly important for the stratigraphy of Mercury. It has been demonstrated that the history of the Moon was punctuated by a series of major impacts that have emplaced ejecta over widespread areas; the rock units associated with these impact basins were used to divide the lunar stratigraphic column into a series of well-defined time units (Shoemaker and Hackman, 1962; McCauley, 1967; Wilhelms, 1972). These relations are particularly clear for the Imbrium Basin (Wilhelms and McCauley, 1971) and Orientale Basin (Scott and others, 1977).\nRecognizable ejecta units extend outward from the Caloris Basin as far as one basin diameter; these units can be used to divide the mercurian stratigraphic column in much the same way as basin ejecta were used on the Moon. A stratigraphic and structural comparison between the Caloris and Orientale Basins has been made by McCauley (1977).\nIn the Shakespeare quadrangle, only a lineated facies of the Van Eyck Formation is recognized, whereas in the Tolstoj quadrangle to the south, both it and a secondary crater facies are mapped (Schaber and McCauley, 1980; McCauley and others, 1981).\nPost-Caloris materials.\nThe plains material that forms the floor of the Caloris Basin has not been included in the Caloris Group and is mapped separately from the smooth plains. In many way, the Caloris-floor plains are similar to the smooth plains, except that they have been buckled and fractured into numerous ridges and grooves that intersect to form a grossly polygonal pattern. The dominant trends of these features are concentric and radial to the center of Caloris. On the basis of photometric evidence, Hapke and others (1975) suggested that the central part of the basin floor may be 7\u00b13\u00a0km lower than the outer edge. Strom and others argued that the ridges were formed by compressive stress generated by subsidence of the floor, and the fractures by subsequent uplift of the center of the basin to produce crustal lengthening and the observed fracture pattern. The origin of the material itself is doubtful. It may consist of sheets of volcanic material emplaced shortly after the basin was formed or it may be material formed by the Caloris event either as melt or as the upper part of a plug of plastic material that rose in the crater floor as part of the impact process. Whatever the origin of this material, it seems clear that it covers the original floor of the excavated crater.\nThe smooth plains material forms essentially level tracts, flooring depressions in the mercurian surface. The most extensive of such areas in this quadrangle are Sobkou and Budh Planitiae. The surface of the smooth plains material is relatively sparsely cratered, and overlap relations indicate that these plains units are younger than the intercrater plains and intermediate plains. Smooth plains also embay units of the Caloris Group. Smaller patches of smooth plains occur in depressions and old crater floors. In many areas, especially those closer to the Caloris Basin, they exhibit mare ridges like those on the Moon and thus have a rolling appearance. The boundary between smooth plains and the Odin Formation is not everywhere clear, except at high resolution. Smooth plains are mapped in the Shakespeare quadrangle only where there is no clear evidence of small hills characteristic of the Odin Formation.\nInterpretation of the origin of the smooth plains is difficult but significant, because it bears directly on the internal constitution and thermal history of Mercury. Like the lunar maria, the smooth plains occur on the floors of large craters and basins, and the broad swath of plains around Caloris finds an analogy with Oceanus Procellarum around Imbrium on the Moon. However, the Caloris plains differ from the maria in having no observed positive-relief volcanic features such as those sparsely scattered on the lunar maria. The absence of sharp albedo differences between the smooth plains and the older terrain (Hapke and others, 1975), compared with the distinct difference in albedo between the lunar maria and highlands, may be more indicative of composition than of origin of the rocks. On the basis of distribution and volume, Strom and others argued that in most areas the smooth plains consist of extensive sheets of basic lava similar to the lunar maria. Schultz (1977), studying modified impact craters, also argued in favor of volcanism. On the other hand, Wilhelms pointed out that the lunar light plains could also serve as an analog of the mercurian smooth plains: Apollo 16 samples indicate that lunar light plains consist of cataclastic breccia and impact melt, interpreted as being emplaced by large impact events (James, 1977). Wilhelms, therefore, proposed that the smooth plains on Mercury may be related to the Caloris impact directly, as breccias and impact melts, rather than as lavas. However, the light plains on the Moon are nowhere so well developed or extensive as the plains around Caloris, and if Wilhelms' explanation is correct, considerable differences must exist between large impact events on the Moon and Mercury. Most likely, large parts of the smooth plains are of volcanic origin, although in some areas they may be of impact-melt origin.\nThe very smooth plains on Mercury were included in the smooth plains unit by Trask and Guest. Here the geologic units are mapped separately, because very smooth plains material is clearly younger than smooth plains material. The very smooth plains unit, which is featureless and has no resolvable superposed craters, is possibly ejecta fallback on the floors of craters. However not all craters contain this material; some are floored by material with a rugged surface mapped as crater floor material, because it is analogous to the floor material in younger lunar craters such as Copernicus or Aristarchus. One other possibility is that the very smooth plains are volcanic.\nCrater materials.\nThe craters on Mercury show various states of preservation, ranging from crisp-featured craters with bright rays to those that are almost totally obliterated and consist only of a subdued ring of heavily cratered hills. As on the Moon, the principal eroding process is likely impact; thus, a fresh crater will be degraded systematically over time. Craters of similar size that show similar states of preservation are therefore considered to be of about the same age. Craters are mapped according to a fivefold classification on the basis of their states of degradation (McCauley and others, 1981). The components used to define the crater ages are rays, secondary craters, ejecta facies, central peaks and rings, rim form, and inner terraces. As a crater ages, the number of superposed craters increases and each of the morphologic elements becomes more subdued. Volcanic activity also may bury or destroy certain crater components, but the crater may still be dated by the preservation of the remaining rim. On the basis of mapping in this quadrangle and in the adjacent Tolstoj quadrangle (Schaber and McCauley, 1980), the Caloris impact is considered to have occurred in late c3 time (McCauley and others, 1981).\nOne problem with the above-mentioned crater-dating technique on Mercury is that secondary craters occur closer to the principal crater and are thus more clustered than on the Moon, where they are relatively widespread. In consequence, an older crater adjacent to a fresh one becomes strongly degraded as a result of heavy bombardment by secondary craters from the younger crater and appears much older than it is.\nGhost craters are unusual forms that occur in the Suisei Planitia. They are buried and rounded in profile, with only their rim crests rising above the surrounding smooth plains. Therefore, these craters cannot be assigned a specific age; they may be of any age from late c1 to late c3.\nStructure.\nThe most conspicuous structural elements in the quadrangle are the radial and concentric ridges and cracks inside the Caloris Basin and the ridges developed in the Odin Formation and smooth plains unit immediately outside Caloris. O'Donnell and Thomas (personal communication, 1979) have suggested, on the basis of orientation of features outside Caloris, that these ridges and scarps largely follow preexisting radial and concentric fracture patterns in the mercurian lithosphere initiated by the Caloris impact, similar in character to those around Imbrium on the Moon (Mason and others, 1976). Caloris itself consists of a single mountain ring and a weak outer scarp. A few sinuous scarps also occur in this quadrangle, including the Heemskerck Rupes which cuts the older intercrater plains. Scarps of this type are considered by Strom and others to be compressive thrust faults resulting from overall shortening of the mercurian crust early in its history.\nGeologic history.\nThe history of the Shakespeare quadrangle as evidenced by materials exposed at the surface begins with the formation of intercrater plains material and of impact craters both older and younger than these plains. Some c1 and c2 craters were superposed on the intercrater plains. The intermediate plains material and lineated plains unit were emplaced over the intercrater plains, as were most craters of c3 age. Then followed the major asteroidal impact that produced the Caloris Basin and the emplacement of rocks of the Caloris Group around the basin. Comparison of crater populations on surfaces older and younger than Caloris suggests that at the time of the Caloris impact, the population of craters smaller than 30\u00a0km in diameter was eradicated from the pre-Caloris terrain (Guest and Gault, 1976). Gault and others (1976) suggested that the smaller craters were destroyed by the Caloris event and by other basin-forming events elsewhere on the planet at about the same time.\nThe smooth plains material was then emplaced. Some c3 craters were formed after the Caloris event and after some of the smooth plains were formed. Superposed on the smooth plains unit and on all older deposits were craters of c4 age, inside which was emplaced the very smooth plains material (unit pvs). Analogy with the Moon suggests that most of the recorded events in the history of Mercury occurred during the first 1.5 b.y. of the planet's life; the oldest major rock units in this quadrangle are probably at least 2 to 3 b.y. old. The geologic history of Mercury has been summarized by Guest and O'Donnell (1977), Davies and others, and Strom.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "19694": "Mercury (planet)\nFirst planet from the Sun\nMercury is the first planet from the Sun and the smallest in the Solar System. In English, it is named after the ancient Roman god (Mercury), god of commerce and communication, and the messenger of the gods. Mercury is classified as a terrestrial planet, with roughly the same surface gravity as Mars. The surface of Mercury is heavily cratered, as a result of countless impact events that have accumulated over billions of years. Its largest crater, Caloris Planitia, has a diameter of , which is about one-third the diameter of the planet (). Similarly to the Earth's Moon, Mercury's surface displays an expansive rupes system generated from thrust faults and bright ray systems formed by impact event remnants.\nMercury's sidereal year (88.0 Earth days) and sidereal day (58.65 Earth days) are in a 3:2 ratio. This relationship is called spin\u2013orbit resonance, and \"sidereal\" here means \"relative to the stars\". Consequently, one solar day (sunrise to sunrise) on Mercury lasts for around 176 Earth days: twice the planet's sidereal year. This means that one side of Mercury will remain in sunlight for one Mercurian year of 88 Earth days; while during the next orbit, that side will be in darkness all the time until the next sunrise after another 88 Earth days.\nCombined with its high orbital eccentricity, the planet's surface has widely varying sunlight intensity and temperature, with the equatorial regions ranging from at night to during sunlight. Due to the very small axial tilt, the planet's poles are permanently shadowed. This strongly suggests that water ice could be present in the craters. Above the planet's surface is an extremely tenuous exosphere and a faint magnetic field that is strong enough to deflect solar winds. Mercury has no natural satellites.\nAs of the early 2020s, many broad details of Mercury's geological history are still under investigation or pending data from space probes. Like other planets in the Solar System, Mercury was formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago. Its mantle is highly homogeneous, which suggests that Mercury had a magma ocean early in its history, like the Moon. According to current models, Mercury may have a solid silicate crust and mantle overlying a solid outer core, a deeper liquid core layer, and a solid inner core. There are many competing hypotheses about Mercury's origins and development, some of which incorporate collision with planetesimals and rock vaporization.\nNomenclature.\nHistorically, humans knew Mercury by different names depending on whether it was an evening star or a morning star. By about 350 BC, the ancient Greeks had realized the two stars were one. They knew the planet as , meaning \"twinkling\", and , for its fleeting motion, a name that is retained in modern [[Greek language|Greek]] ( ). The Romans named the planet after the swift-footed Roman messenger god, [[Mercury (mythology)|Mercury]] (Latin ), whom they equated with the Greek Hermes, because it moves across the sky faster than any other planet, though some associated the planet with [[Apollo]] instead, as detailed by [[Pliny the Elder]]. The [[astronomical symbol]] for Mercury is a stylized version of Hermes' [[caduceus]]; a [[Christian cross]] was added in the 16th century:[[File:Mercury symbol (fixed width).svg|16px|\u263f]].\nPhysical characteristics.\n[[File:Terrestrial planet size comparisons-2.jpg|thumb|upright=1.4|Mercury to scale among the [[Inner Solar System]] [[planetary-mass object]]s beside the Sun, arranged by the order of their orbits outward from the Sun (from left: Mercury, [[Venus]],\n[[Earth]], the [[Moon]], [[Mars]] and [[Ceres (dwarf planet)|Ceres]])]]\nMercury is one of four [[terrestrial planet]]s in the [[Solar System]], which means it is a rocky body like Earth. It is the smallest planet in the Solar System, with an [[equator]]ial [[radius]] of . Mercury is also [[list of Solar System objects by radius|smaller]]\u2014albeit more massive\u2014than the largest [[natural satellite]]s in the Solar System, [[Ganymede (moon)|Ganymede]] and [[Titan (moon)|Titan]]. Mercury consists of approximately 70% metallic and 30% [[silicate]] material.\nInternal structure.\n[[File:Mercury with magnetic field.svg|left|thumb|upright=1.6|Mercury's internal structure and magnetic field]]\nMercury appears to have a solid silicate [[Crust (geology)|crust]] and mantle overlying a solid, metallic outer core layer, a deeper liquid core layer, and a solid inner core. The composition of the iron-rich core remains uncertain, but it likely contains nickel, silicon and perhaps sulfur and carbon, plus trace amounts of other elements. The planet's density is the second highest in the Solar System at 5.427\u00a0g/cm3, only slightly less than Earth's density of 5.515\u00a0g/cm3. If the effect of [[gravitational compression]] were to be factored out from both planets, the materials of which Mercury is made would be denser than those of Earth, with an uncompressed density of 5.3\u00a0g/cm3 versus Earth's 4.4\u00a0g/cm3. Mercury's density can be used to infer details of its inner structure. Although Earth's high density results appreciably from gravitational compression, particularly at the [[planetary core|core]], Mercury is much smaller and its inner regions are not as compressed. Therefore, for it to have such a high density, its core must be large and rich in iron.\nThe radius of Mercury's core is estimated to be , based on interior models constrained to be consistent with a [[moment of inertia factor]] of . Hence, Mercury's core occupies about 57% of its volume; for Earth this proportion is 17%. Research published in 2007 suggests that Mercury has a molten core. The mantle-crust layer is in total thick. Projections differ as to the size of the crust specifically; data from the \"Mariner 10\" and \"MESSENGER\" probes suggests a thickness of , whereas an [[Airy isostacy]] model suggests a thickness of . One distinctive feature of Mercury's surface is the presence of numerous narrow ridges, extending up to several hundred kilometers in length. It is thought that these were formed as Mercury's core and mantle cooled and contracted at a time when the crust had already solidified.\nMercury's core has a higher iron content than that of any other planet in the Solar System, and several theories have been proposed to explain this. The most widely accepted theory is that Mercury originally had a metal\u2013silicate ratio similar to common [[chondrite]] meteorites, thought to be typical of the Solar System's rocky matter, and a mass approximately 2.25 times its current mass. Early in the Solar System's history, Mercury may have been struck by a [[planetesimal]] of approximately <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1\u20446 Mercury's mass and several thousand kilometers across. The impact would have stripped away much of the original crust and mantle, leaving the core behind as a relatively major component. A similar process, known as the [[giant impact hypothesis]], has been proposed to explain the formation of Earth's Moon.\nAlternatively, Mercury may have formed from the [[solar nebula]] before the Sun's energy output had stabilized. It would initially have had twice its present mass, but as the [[protostar|protosun]] contracted, temperatures near Mercury could have been between 2,500 and 3,500\u00a0K and possibly even as high as 10,000\u00a0K. Much of Mercury's surface rock could have been vaporized at such temperatures, forming an atmosphere of \"rock vapor\" that could have been carried away by the [[solar wind]]. A third hypothesis proposes that the solar nebula caused [[drag (physics)|drag]] on the particles from which Mercury was [[Accretion (astrophysics)|accreting]], which meant that lighter particles were lost from the accreting material and not gathered by Mercury.\nEach hypothesis predicts a different surface composition, and two space missions have been tasked with making observations of this composition. The first \"[[MESSENGER]]\", which ended in 2015, found higher-than-expected potassium and sulfur levels on the surface, suggesting that the giant impact hypothesis and vaporization of the crust and mantle did not occur because said potassium and sulfur would have been driven off by the extreme heat of these events. \"[[BepiColombo]]\", which will arrive at Mercury in 2025, will make observations to test these hypotheses. The findings so far would seem to favor the third hypothesis; however, further analysis of the data is needed.\nSurface geology.\nMercury's surface is similar in appearance to that of the Moon, showing extensive [[Lunar mare|mare]]-like plains and heavy cratering, indicating that it has been geologically inactive for billions of years. It is more [[heterogeneous]] than the surface of [[Mars]] or the Moon, both of which contain significant stretches of similar geology, such as [[Lunar mare|maria]] and plateaus. [[Albedo]] features are areas of markedly different reflectivity, which include impact craters, the resulting ejecta, and [[ray system]]s. Larger albedo features correspond to higher reflectivity plains. Mercury has \"[[wrinkle-ridge]]s\" (dorsa), Moon-like [[highland]]s, mountains (montes), plains (planitiae), escarpments (rupes), and valleys ([[Vallis (planetary geology)|valles]]).\n[[File:Unmasking the Secrets of Mercury.jpg|thumb|left|[[MESSENGER#Scientific instruments|MASCS]] spectrum scan of Mercury's surface by \"MESSENGER\"]]\nThe planet's mantle is chemically heterogeneous, suggesting the planet went through a [[magma ocean]] phase early in its history. Crystallization of minerals and convective overturn resulted in a layered, chemically heterogeneous crust with large-scale variations in chemical composition observed on the surface. The crust is low in iron but high in sulfur, resulting from the stronger early [[Chemical reduction|chemically reducing]] conditions than is found on other terrestrial planets. The surface is dominated by iron-poor [[pyroxene]] and [[olivine]], as represented by [[enstatite]] and [[forsterite]], respectively, along with sodium-rich [[plagioclase]] and minerals of mixed magnesium, calcium, and iron-sulfide. The less reflective regions of the crust are high in carbon, most likely in the form of graphite.\nNames for features on Mercury come from a variety of sources and are set according to the [[IAU]] [[planetary nomenclature]] system. Names coming from people are limited to the deceased. Craters are named for artists, musicians, painters, and authors who have made outstanding or fundamental contributions to their field. Ridges, or dorsa, are named for scientists who have contributed to the study of Mercury. Depressions or [[fossa (geology)|fossae]] are named for works of architecture. Montes are named for the word \"hot\" in a variety of languages. [[Plain]]s or planitiae are named for [[Mercury (god)|Mercury]] in various languages. [[Escarpment]]s or [[rup\u0113s]] are named for ships of scientific expeditions. Valleys or valles are named for abandoned cities, towns, or settlements of antiquity.\nImpact basins and craters.\n[[File:PIA19421-Mercury-Craters-MunchSanderPoe-20150416.jpg|thumb|left|Enhanced-color image of craters [[Munch (crater)|Munch]] (left), [[Sander (crater)|Sander]] (center), and [[Poe (crater)|Poe]] (right) amid volcanic plains (orange) near [[Caloris Basin]]]]\nMercury was heavily bombarded by comets and [[asteroid]]s during and shortly following its formation 4.6 billion years ago, as well as during a possibly separate subsequent episode called the [[Late Heavy Bombardment]] that ended 3.8 billion years ago. Mercury received impacts over its entire surface during this period of intense crater formation, facilitated by the lack of any [[atmosphere]] to slow impactors down. During this time Mercury was [[volcano|volcanically]] active; basins were filled by [[magma]], producing smooth plains similar to the maria found on the Moon. One of the most unusual craters is [[Apollodorus (crater)|Apollodorus]], or \"the Spider\", which hosts a series of radiating troughs extending outwards from its impact site.\n[[Craters on Mercury]] range in diameter from small bowl-shaped cavities to [[multi-ringed impact basin]]s hundreds of kilometers across. They appear in all states of degradation, from relatively fresh rayed craters to highly degraded crater remnants. Mercurian craters differ subtly from lunar craters in that the area blanketed by their ejecta is much smaller, a consequence of Mercury's stronger surface gravity. According to [[International Astronomical Union]] rules, each new crater must be named after an artist who was famous for more than fifty years, and dead for more than three years, before the date the crater is named.\nThe largest known crater is [[Caloris Planitia]], or Caloris Basin, with a diameter of . The impact that created the Caloris Basin was so powerful that it caused [[lava]] eruptions and left a concentric mountainous ring ~ tall surrounding the [[impact crater]]. The floor of the Caloris Basin is filled by a geologically distinct flat plain, broken up by ridges and fractures in a roughly polygonal pattern. It is not clear whether they were volcanic lava flows induced by the impact or a large sheet of impact melt.\nAt the [[antipodes|antipode]] of the Caloris Basin is a large region of unusual, hilly terrain known as the \"Weird Terrain\". One hypothesis for its origin is that shock waves generated during the Caloris impact traveled around Mercury, converging at the basin's antipode (180 degrees away). The resulting high stresses fractured the surface. Alternatively, it has been suggested that this terrain formed as a result of the convergence of ejecta at this basin's antipode.\n[[File:EW1027346412Gnomap.png|thumb|Tolstoj basin is along the bottom of this image of Mercury's limb]]\nOverall, 46 impact basins have been identified. A notable basin is the -wide, multi-ring [[Tolstoj Basin]] that has an ejecta blanket extending up to from its rim and a floor that has been filled by smooth plains materials. [[Beethoven Basin]] has a similar-sized ejecta blanket and a -diameter rim. Like the Moon, the surface of Mercury has likely incurred the effects of [[space weathering]] processes, including solar wind and [[micrometeorite]] impacts.\nPlains.\nThere are two geologically distinct plains regions on Mercury. Gently rolling, hilly [[Inter-crater plains on Mercury|plains in the regions between craters]] are Mercury's oldest visible surfaces, predating the heavily cratered terrain. These inter-crater plains appear to have obliterated many earlier craters, and show a general paucity of smaller craters below about in diameter.\nSmooth plains are widespread flat areas that fill depressions of various sizes and bear a strong resemblance to lunar maria. Unlike lunar maria, the smooth plains of Mercury have the same albedo as the older inter-crater plains. Despite a lack of unequivocally volcanic characteristics, the localization and rounded, lobate shape of these plains strongly support volcanic origins. All the smooth plains of Mercury formed significantly later than the Caloris basin, as evidenced by appreciably smaller crater densities than on the Caloris ejecta blanket.\nCompressional features.\nAn unusual feature of Mercury's surface is the numerous compression folds, or [[rupes]], that crisscross the plains. These exist on the Moon, but are much more prominent on Mercury. As Mercury's interior cooled, it contracted and its surface began to deform, creating [[wrinkle ridge]]s and [[lobate scarp]]s associated with [[thrust fault]]s. The scarps can reach lengths of and heights of . These compressional features can be seen on top of other features, such as craters and smooth plains, indicating they are more recent. Mapping of the features has suggested a total shrinkage of Mercury's radius in the range of ~. Most activity along the major thrust systems probably ended about 3.6\u20133.7\u00a0billion years ago. Small-scale thrust fault scarps have been found, tens of meters in height and with lengths in the range of a few kilometers, that appear to be less than 50 million years old, indicating that compression of the interior and consequent surface geological activity continue to the present.\nVolcanism.\n[[File:Picasso crater.png|thumb|[[Picasso (crater)|Picasso crater]]\u2014the large arc-shaped pit located on the eastern side of its floor is postulated to have formed when subsurface magma subsided or drained, causing the surface to collapse into the resulting void.]]\nThere is evidence for [[pyroclastic flow]]s on Mercury from low-profile [[shield volcano]]es. Fifty-one pyroclastic deposits have been identified, where 90% of them are found within impact craters. A study of the degradation state of the impact craters that host pyroclastic deposits suggests that pyroclastic activity occurred on Mercury over a prolonged interval.\nA \"rimless depression\" inside the southwest rim of the Caloris Basin consists of at least nine overlapping volcanic vents, each individually up to in diameter. It is thus a \"[[compound volcano]]\". The vent floors are at least below their brinks and they bear a closer resemblance to volcanic craters sculpted by explosive eruptions or modified by collapse into void spaces created by magma withdrawal back down into a conduit. Scientists could not quantify the age of the volcanic complex system but reported that it could be on the order of a billion years.\nSurface conditions and exosphere.\n[[File:North pole of Mercury -- NASA.jpg|thumb|Composite of the north pole of Mercury, where NASA confirmed the discovery of a large volume of water ice, in permanently dark craters that are found there.]]\nThe surface temperature of Mercury ranges from . It never rises above 180\u00a0K at the poles, due to the absence of an atmosphere and a steep temperature gradient between the equator and the poles. At [[perihelion]], the equatorial [[subsolar point]] is located at latitude 0\u00b0W or 180\u00b0W, and it climbs to a temperature of about . During [[aphelion]], this occurs at 90\u00b0 or 270\u00b0W and reaches only . On the dark side of the planet, temperatures average . The intensity of [[sunlight]] on Mercury's surface ranges between 4.59 and 10.61 times the [[solar constant]] (1,370 W\u00b7m\u22122).\nAlthough daylight temperatures at the surface of Mercury are generally extremely high, observations strongly suggest that ice (frozen water) exists on Mercury. The floors of deep craters at the poles are never exposed to direct sunlight, and temperatures there remain below 102\u00a0K, far lower than the global average. This creates a [[Cold trap (astronomy)|cold trap]] where ice can accumulate. Water ice strongly reflects [[radar]], and observations by the 70-meter [[Goldstone Solar System Radar]] and the [[Very Large Array|VLA]] in the early 1990s revealed that there are patches of high radar [[Reflection (physics)|reflection]] near the poles. Although ice was not the only possible cause of these reflective regions, astronomers thought it to be the most likely explanation. The presence of [[ice|water ice]] was confirmed using \"MESSENGER\" images of craters at the north pole.\nThe icy crater regions are estimated to contain about 1014\u20131015\u00a0kg of ice, and may be covered by a layer of [[regolith]] that inhibits [[Sublimation (phase transition)|sublimation]]. By comparison, the [[Antarctica|Antarctic]] ice sheet on Earth has a mass of about 4\u00d71018\u00a0kg, and Mars's south polar cap contains about 1016\u00a0kg of water. The origin of the ice on Mercury is not yet known, but the two most likely sources are from [[outgassing]] of water from the planet's interior and deposition by impacts of comets.\nMercury is too small and hot for its [[gravity]] to retain any significant [[atmosphere]] over long periods of time; it does have a tenuous surface-bounded [[exosphere]] at a surface pressure of less than approximately 0.5\u00a0nPa (0.005 picobars). It includes [[hydrogen]], [[helium]], [[oxygen]], [[sodium]], [[calcium]], [[potassium]], [[magnesium]], [[silicon]], and [[hydroxide]], among others. This exosphere is not stable\u2014atoms are continuously lost and replenished from a variety of sources. [[Hydrogen atom]]s and [[helium atom]]s probably come from the solar wind, [[diffusion|diffusing]] into Mercury's [[magnetosphere]] before later escaping back into space. The [[radioactive decay]] of elements within Mercury's crust is another source of helium, as well as sodium and potassium. Water vapor is present, released by a combination of processes such as comets striking its surface, [[sputtering]] creating water out of hydrogen from the solar wind and oxygen from rock, and sublimation from reservoirs of water ice in the permanently shadowed polar craters. The detection of high amounts of water-related ions like O+, OH\u2212, and [[hydronium|H3O+]] was a surprise. Because of the quantities of these ions that were detected in Mercury's space environment, scientists surmise that these molecules were blasted from the surface or exosphere by the solar wind.\nSodium, potassium, and calcium were discovered in the atmosphere during the 1980s\u20131990s, and are thought to result primarily from the vaporization of surface rock struck by micrometeorite impacts including presently from [[Comet Encke]]. In 2008, magnesium was discovered by \"MESSENGER\". Studies indicate that, at times, sodium emissions are localized at points that correspond to the planet's magnetic poles. This would indicate an interaction between the magnetosphere and the planet's surface.\nAccording to NASA, Mercury is not a suitable planet for Earth-like life. It has a [[exosphere|surface boundary exosphere]] instead of a layered atmosphere, extreme temperatures, and high solar radiation. It is unlikely that any living beings can withstand those conditions. Some parts of the subsurface of Mercury may have been [[Planetary habitability|habitable]], and perhaps [[life form]]s, albeit likely primitive [[microorganism]]s, may have existed on the planet.\nMagnetic field and magnetosphere.\n[[File:Mercury Magnetic Field NASA.jpg|thumb|Graph showing relative strength of Mercury's magnetic field]]\nDespite its small size and slow 59-day-long rotation, Mercury has a significant, and apparently global, [[magnetic field]]. According to measurements taken by \"Mariner 10\", it is about 1.1% the strength of [[Earth's magnetic field|Earth's]]. The magnetic-field strength at Mercury's equator is about 300 [[Tesla (unit)|nT]]. Like that of Earth, Mercury's magnetic field is [[dipolar]] and nearly aligned with the planet's spin axis (10\u00b0 dipolar tilt, compared to 11\u00b0 for Earth). Measurements from both the \"Mariner 10\" and \"MESSENGER\" space probes have indicated that the strength and shape of the magnetic field are stable.\nIt is likely that this magnetic field is generated by a [[Dynamo theory|dynamo]] effect, in a manner similar to the magnetic field of Earth. This dynamo effect would result from the circulation of the planet's iron-rich liquid core. Particularly strong [[tidal heating]] effects caused by the planet's high orbital eccentricity would serve to keep part of the core in the liquid state necessary for this dynamo effect.\nMercury's magnetic field is strong enough to deflect the solar wind around the planet, creating a magnetosphere. The planet's magnetosphere, though small enough to fit within Earth, is strong enough to trap solar wind [[plasma (physics)|plasma]]. This contributes to the space weathering of the planet's surface. Observations taken by the \"Mariner 10\" spacecraft detected this low energy plasma in the magnetosphere of the planet's nightside. Bursts of energetic particles in the planet's magnetotail indicate a dynamic quality to the planet's magnetosphere.\nDuring its second flyby of the planet on October 6, 2008, \"MESSENGER\" discovered that Mercury's magnetic field can be extremely \"leaky\". The spacecraft encountered magnetic \"tornadoes\"\u2014twisted bundles of magnetic fields connecting the planetary magnetic field to interplanetary space\u2014that were up to 800 km wide or a third of the radius of the planet. These twisted magnetic flux tubes, technically known as [[flux transfer event]]s, form open windows in the planet's magnetic shield through which the solar wind may enter and directly impact Mercury's surface via [[magnetic reconnection]]. This also occurs in Earth's magnetic field. The \"MESSENGER\" observations showed the reconnection rate was ten times higher at Mercury, but its proximity to the Sun only accounts for about a third of the reconnection rate observed by \"MESSENGER\".\nOrbit, rotation, and longitude.\nMercury has the most [[Orbital eccentricity|eccentric]] orbit of all the planets in the Solar System; its eccentricity is 0.21 with its distance from the Sun ranging from . It takes 87.969 Earth days to complete an orbit. The diagram illustrates the effects of the eccentricity, showing Mercury's orbit overlaid with a circular orbit having the same [[semi-major axis]]. Mercury's higher velocity when it is near perihelion is clear from the greater distance it covers in each 5-day interval. In the diagram, the varying distance of Mercury to the Sun is represented by the size of the planet, which is inversely proportional to Mercury's distance from the Sun.\nThis varying distance to the Sun leads to Mercury's surface being flexed by [[tidal bulge]]s raised by the [[Sun]] that are about 17 times stronger than the Moon's on Earth. Combined with a 3:2 [[#Spin-orbit resonance|spin\u2013orbit resonance]] of the planet's rotation around its axis, it also results in complex variations of the surface temperature. The resonance makes a single [[solar day]] (the length between two [[meridian (astronomy)|meridian]] transits of the Sun) on Mercury last exactly two Mercury years, or about 176 Earth days.\nMercury's orbit is inclined by 7 degrees to the plane of Earth's orbit (the [[ecliptic]]), the largest of all eight known solar planets. As a result, [[transits of Mercury]] across the face of the Sun can only occur when the planet is crossing the plane of the ecliptic at the time it lies between Earth and the Sun, which is in May or November. This occurs about every seven years on average.\nMercury's [[axial tilt]] is almost zero, with the best measured value as low as 0.027 degrees. This is significantly smaller than that of [[Jupiter]], which has the second smallest axial tilt of all planets at 3.1 degrees. This means that to an observer at Mercury's poles, the center of the Sun never rises more than 2.1 [[arcminutes]] above the horizon. By comparison, the [[angular size]] of the Sun as seen from Mercury ranges from <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1+1\u20444 to 2 degrees across.\nAt certain points on Mercury's surface, an observer would be able to see the Sun peek up a little more than two-thirds of the way over the horizon, then reverse and set before rising again, all within the same [[Extraterrestrial skies#Mercury|Mercurian day]]. This is because approximately four Earth days before perihelion, Mercury's angular [[orbital speed|orbital velocity]] equals its angular [[rotational velocity]] so that the Sun's [[improper motion|apparent motion]] ceases; closer to perihelion, Mercury's angular orbital velocity then exceeds the angular rotational velocity. Thus, to a hypothetical observer on Mercury, the Sun appears to move in a [[apparent retrograde motion|retrograde]] direction. Four Earth days after perihelion, the Sun's normal apparent motion resumes. A similar effect would have occurred if Mercury had been in synchronous rotation: the alternating gain and loss of rotation over a revolution would have caused a libration of 23.65\u00b0 in longitude.\nFor the same reason, there are two points on Mercury's equator, 180 degrees apart in [[longitude]], at either of which, around perihelion in alternate Mercurian years (once a Mercurian day), the Sun passes overhead, then reverses its apparent motion and passes overhead again, then reverses a second time and passes overhead a third time, taking a total of about 16 Earth-days for this entire process. In the other alternate Mercurian years, the same thing happens at the other of these two points. The amplitude of the retrograde motion is small, so the overall effect is that, for two or three weeks, the Sun is almost stationary overhead, and is at its most brilliant because Mercury is at perihelion, its closest to the Sun. This prolonged exposure to the Sun at its brightest makes these two points the hottest places on Mercury. Maximum temperature occurs when the Sun is at an angle of about 25 degrees past noon due to [[Diurnal temperature variation#Temperature lag|diurnal temperature lag]], at 0.4 Mercury days and 0.8 Mercury years past sunrise. Conversely, there are two other points on the equator, 90 degrees of longitude apart from the first ones, where the Sun passes overhead only when the planet is at aphelion in alternate years, when the apparent motion of the Sun in Mercury's sky is relatively rapid. These points, which are the ones on the equator where the apparent retrograde motion of the Sun happens when it is crossing the horizon as described in the preceding paragraph, receive much less solar heat than the first ones described above.\nMercury attains an inferior conjunction (nearest approach to Earth) every 116 Earth days on average, but this interval can range from 105 days to 129 days due to the planet's eccentric orbit. Mercury can come as near as to Earth, and that is slowly declining: The next approach to within is in 2679, and to within in 4487, but it will not be closer to Earth than until 28,622. Its period of retrograde motion as seen from Earth can vary from 8 to 15 days on either side of an inferior conjunction. This large range arises from the planet's high orbital eccentricity. Essentially, because Mercury is closest to the Sun, when taking an average over time, Mercury is most often the closest planet to the Earth, and\u2014in that measure\u2014it is the closest planet to each of the other planets in the Solar System.\nLongitude convention.\nThe longitude convention for Mercury puts the zero of longitude at one of the two hottest points on the surface, as described above. However, when this area was first visited, by \"Mariner 10\", this zero meridian was in darkness, so it was impossible to select a feature on the surface to define the exact position of the meridian. Therefore, a small crater further west was chosen, called [[Hun Kal]], which provides the exact reference point for measuring longitude. The center of Hun Kal defines the 20\u00b0\u00a0west meridian. A 1970 International Astronomical Union resolution suggests that longitudes be measured positively in the westerly direction on Mercury. The two hottest places on the equator are therefore at longitudes 0\u00b0\u00a0W and 180\u00b0\u00a0W, and the coolest points on the equator are at longitudes 90\u00b0\u00a0W and 270\u00b0\u00a0W. However, the \"MESSENGER\" project uses an east-positive convention.\nSpin-orbit resonance.\n[[File:Mercury's orbital resonance.svg|thumb|After one orbit, Mercury has rotated 1.5 times, so after two complete orbits the same hemisphere is again illuminated.]]\nFor many years it was thought that Mercury was synchronously [[tidally locked]] with the Sun, [[rotating]] once for each orbit and always keeping the same face directed towards the Sun, in the same way that the same side of the Moon always faces Earth. Radar observations in 1965 proved that the planet has a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance, rotating three times for every two revolutions around the Sun. The eccentricity of Mercury's orbit makes this resonance stable\u2014at perihelion, when the solar tide is strongest, the Sun is nearly stationary in Mercury's sky.\nThe 3:2 resonant tidal locking is stabilized by the variance of the tidal force along Mercury's eccentric orbit, acting on a permanent dipole component of Mercury's mass distribution. In a circular orbit there is no such variance, so the only resonance stabilized in such an orbit is at 1:1 (e.g., Earth\u2013Moon), when the tidal force, stretching a body along the \"center-body\" line, exerts a torque that aligns the body's axis of least inertia (the \"longest\" axis, and the axis of the aforementioned dipole) to always point at the center. However, with noticeable eccentricity, like that of Mercury's orbit, the tidal force has a maximum at perihelion and therefore stabilizes resonances, like 3:2, ensuring that the planet points its axis of least inertia roughly at the Sun when passing through perihelion.\nThe original reason astronomers thought it was synchronously locked was that, whenever Mercury was best placed for observation, it was always nearly at the same point in its 3:2 resonance, hence showing the same face. This is because, coincidentally, Mercury's rotation period is almost exactly half of its synodic period with respect to Earth. Due to Mercury's 3:2 spin-orbit resonance, a solar day lasts about 176 Earth days. A [[sidereal day]] (the period of rotation) lasts about 58.7 Earth days.\nSimulations indicate that the orbital eccentricity of Mercury varies [[chaos theory|chaotically]] from nearly zero (circular) to more than 0.45 over millions of years due to [[Perturbation (astronomy)|perturbations]] from the other planets. This was thought to explain Mercury's 3:2 spin-orbit resonance (rather than the more usual 1:1), because this state is more likely to arise during a period of high eccentricity. However, accurate modeling based on a realistic model of tidal response has demonstrated that Mercury was captured into the 3:2 spin-orbit state at a very early stage of its history, within 20 (more likely, 10) million years after its formation.\nNumerical simulations show that a future [[Secular resonance|secular]] [[Orbital resonance|orbital resonant]] interaction with the perihelion of Jupiter may cause the eccentricity of Mercury's orbit to increase to the point where there is a 1% chance that the orbit will be destabilized in the next five billion years. If this happens, Mercury may fall into the Sun, collide with Venus, be ejected from the Solar System, or even disrupt the rest of the inner Solar System.\nAdvance of perihelion.\n[[File:Drehung der Apsidenlinie light.svg|right|thumb|[[Apsidal precession]] of Mercury's orbit]]\nIn 1859, the French mathematician and astronomer [[Urbain Le Verrier]] reported that the slow [[precession]] of Mercury's orbit around the Sun could not be completely explained by [[Newtonian mechanics]] and perturbations by the known planets. He suggested, among possible explanations, that another planet (or perhaps instead a series of smaller \"corpuscules\") might exist in an orbit even closer to the Sun than that of Mercury, to account for this perturbation. Other explanations considered included a slight oblateness of the Sun. The success of the search for [[Neptune]] based on its perturbations of the orbit of [[Uranus]] led astronomers to place faith in this possible explanation, and the hypothetical planet was named [[Vulcan (hypothetical planet)|Vulcan]], but no such planet was ever found.\nThe observed [[perihelion precession]] of Mercury is 5,600 [[arcseconds]] (1.5556\u00b0) per century relative to Earth, or per century relative to the inertial [[International Celestial Reference Frame|ICRF]]. Newtonian mechanics, taking into account all the effects from the other planets and including 0.0254 arcseconds per century due to the oblateness of the Sun, predicts a precession of 5,557 arcseconds (1.5436\u00b0) per century relative to Earth, or per century relative to ICRF. In the early 20th century, [[Albert Einstein]]'s [[general theory of relativity]] provided the explanation for the observed precession, by formalizing gravitation as being mediated by the curvature of spacetime. The effect is small: just per century (or 0.43 arcsecond per year, or 0.1035 arcsecond per orbital period) for Mercury; it therefore requires a little over 12.5 million orbits, or 3 million years, for a full excess turn. Similar, but much smaller, effects exist for other Solar System bodies: 8.6247 arcseconds per century for Venus, 3.8387 for Earth, 1.351 for Mars, and 10.05 for [[1566 Icarus]].\nObservation.\n[[File:Mercury.jpg|thumb|Image mosaic by \"Mariner 10\", 1974]]\nMercury's [[apparent magnitude]] is calculated to vary between \u22122.48 (brighter than [[Sirius]]) around [[superior conjunction]] and +7.25 (below the limit of naked-eye visibility) around [[inferior conjunction]]. The mean apparent magnitude is 0.23 while the standard deviation of 1.78 is the largest of any planet. The mean apparent magnitude at superior conjunction is \u22121.89 while that at inferior conjunction is +5.93. Observation of Mercury is complicated by its proximity to the Sun, as it is lost in the Sun's glare for much of the time. Mercury can be observed for only a brief period during either morning or evening twilight.\nGround-based telescope observations of Mercury reveal only an illuminated partial disk with limited detail. The [[Hubble Space Telescope]] cannot observe Mercury at all, due to safety procedures that prevent its pointing too close to the Sun. Because the shift of 0.15 revolutions of Earth in a Mercurian year makes up a seven-Mercurian-year cycle (0.15 \u00d7 7 \u2248 1.0), in the seventh Mercurian year, Mercury follows almost exactly (earlier by 7 days) the sequence of phenomena it showed seven Mercurian years before.\nLike the Moon and Venus, Mercury exhibits [[Lunar phase|phases]] as seen from Earth. It is \"new\" at [[inferior conjunction]] and \"full\" at superior conjunction. The planet is rendered invisible from Earth on both of these occasions because of its being obscured by the Sun, except at its new phase during a transit. Mercury is technically brightest as seen from Earth when it is at a full phase. Although Mercury is farthest from Earth when it is full, the greater illuminated area that is visible and the [[opposition effect|opposition brightness surge]] more than compensates for the distance. The opposite is true for Venus, which appears brightest when it is a [[crescent]], because it is much closer to Earth than when [[gibbous]].\n[[File:PIA19247-Mercury-NPolarRegion-Messenger20150316.jpg|thumb|left|False-color map showing the maximum temperatures of the north polar region]]\n[[File:Mercury Venus Moon over San Jose 08 Jan 2024.png|thumb|right|Mercury (lower left) as seen from [[San Jose, California]] with Venus and the Moon.]]\nMercury is best observed at the first and last quarter, although they are phases of lesser brightness. The first and last quarter phases occur at greatest [[elongation (astronomy)|elongation]] east and west of the Sun, respectively. At both of these times, Mercury's separation from the Sun ranges anywhere from 17.9\u00b0 at perihelion to 27.8\u00b0 at aphelion. At greatest \"western\" elongation, Mercury rises at its earliest before sunrise, and at greatest \"eastern\" elongation, it sets at its latest after sunset.\n[[File:PIA19422-Mercury-CarnegieRupes-MDIS-MLA-20150416.jpg|thumb|right|False-color image of [[Carnegie Rupes]], a tectonic landform\u2014high terrain (red); low (blue).]]\nMercury is more often and easily visible from the [[Southern Hemisphere]] than from the [[Northern Hemisphere|Northern]]. This is because Mercury's maximum western elongation occurs only during early autumn in the Southern Hemisphere, whereas its greatest eastern elongation happens only during late winter in the Southern Hemisphere. In both of these cases, the angle at which the planet's orbit intersects the horizon is maximized, allowing it to rise several hours before sunrise in the former instance and not set until several hours after sundown in the latter from southern mid-latitudes, such as Argentina and South Africa.\nAn alternate method for viewing Mercury involves observing the planet with a [[telescope]] during daylight hours when conditions are clear, ideally when it is at its greatest elongation. This allows the planet to be found easily, even when using telescopes with apertures. However, great care must be taken to obstruct the Sun from sight because of the extreme risk for eye damage. This method bypasses the limitation of twilight observing when the ecliptic is located at a low elevation (e.g. on autumn evenings). The planet is higher in the sky and less atmospheric effects affect the view of the planet. Mercury can be viewed as close as 4\u00b0 to the Sun near superior conjunction when it is almost at its brightest.\nMercury can, like several other planets and the brightest stars, be seen during a total [[solar eclipse]].\nObservation history.\nAncient astronomers.\n[[File:Mercury-bonatti.png|thumb|Mercury, from \"Liber astronomiae\", 1550]]\nThe earliest known recorded observations of Mercury are from the [[MUL.APIN]] tablets. These observations were most likely made by an [[Assyria]]n astronomer around the 14th century BC. The [[cuneiform]] name used to designate Mercury on the MUL.APIN tablets is transcribed as UDU.IDIM.GU\\U4.UD (\"the jumping planet\"). [[Babylonian astronomy|Babylonian records]] of Mercury date back to the 1st millennium BC. The [[Babylonia]]ns called the planet [[Nabu]] after the messenger to the gods in [[Babylonian mythology|their mythology]].\nThe [[Greeks in Egypt|Greco]]-[[Ancient Egypt|Egyptian]] astronomer [[Ptolemy]] wrote about the possibility of planetary transits across the face of the Sun in his work \"Planetary Hypotheses\". He suggested that no transits had been observed either because planets such as Mercury were too small to see, or because transits were too infrequent.\n[[File:Shatir500.jpg|thumb|left|[[Ibn al-Shatir]]'s model for the appearances of Mercury, showing the multiplication of [[epicycles]] using the [[Tusi couple]], thus eliminating the Ptolemaic eccentrics and [[equant]].]]\nIn [[ancient China]], Mercury was known as \"the Hour Star\" (\"Chen-xing\" ). It was associated with the direction north and the phase of water in the [[Five Phases]] system of metaphysics. Modern [[Chinese culture|Chinese]], [[Korean culture|Korean]], [[Japanese culture|Japanese]] and [[Vietnamese culture|Vietnamese]] cultures refer to the planet literally as the \"water star\" (), based on the [[Five elements (Chinese philosophy)|Five elements]]. [[Hindu mythology]] used the name [[Budha]] for Mercury, and this god was thought to preside over Wednesday. The god [[Odin]] (or Woden) of [[Germanic paganism]] was associated with the planet Mercury and Wednesday. The [[Maya civilization|Maya]] may have represented Mercury as an owl (or possibly four owls; two for the morning aspect and two for the evening) that served as a messenger to the [[underworld]]. Mercury was sometimes known as [[Stilbon (mythology)|Stilbon]] ([[Greek language|Greek]]: \u03a3\u03c4\u03af\u03bb\u03b2\u03c9\u03bd) meaning 'the shining, glittering'.\nIn [[medieval Islamic astronomy]], the [[Al-Andalus|Andalusian]] astronomer [[Ab\u016b Ish\u0101q Ibr\u0101h\u012bm al-Zarq\u0101l\u012b]] in the 11th century described the [[deferent]] of Mercury's [[geocentric orbit]] as being oval, like an egg or a [[Pine nut|pignon]], although this insight did not influence his astronomical theory or his astronomical calculations. In the 12th century, [[Ibn Bajjah]] observed \"two planets as black spots on the face of the Sun\", which was later suggested as the transit of Mercury and/or Venus by the [[Maragheh observatory|Maragha]] astronomer [[Qotb al-Din Shirazi]] in the 13th century. Most such medieval reports of transits were later taken as observations of [[sunspot]]s.\nIn India, the [[Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics|Kerala school]] astronomer [[Nilakantha Somayaji]] in the 15th century developed a partially heliocentric planetary model in which Mercury orbits the Sun, which in turn orbits Earth, similar to the [[Tychonic system]] later proposed by [[Tycho Brahe]] in the late 16th century.\nGround-based telescopic research.\nThe first telescopic observations of Mercury were made by [[Thomas Harriot]] and [[Galileo]] from 1610. In 1612, [[Simon Marius]] observed the brightness of Mercury varied with the planet's orbital position and concluded it had phases \"in the same way as Venus and the Moon\". In 1631, [[Pierre Gassendi]] made the first telescopic observations of the transit of a planet across the Sun when he saw a transit of Mercury predicted by [[Johannes Kepler]]. In 1639, [[Giovanni Zupi]] used a telescope to discover that the planet had orbital phases similar to Venus and the Moon. The observation demonstrated conclusively that Mercury orbited the Sun.\nA rare event in astronomy is the passage of one planet in front of another ([[occultation]]), as seen from Earth. Mercury and Venus occult each other every few centuries, and the event of May 28, 1737, is the only one historically observed, having been seen by [[John Bevis]] at the [[Royal Greenwich Observatory]]. The next occultation of Mercury by Venus will be on December 3, 2133.\nThe difficulties inherent in observing Mercury meant that it was far less studied than the other planets. In 1800, [[Johann Schr\u00f6ter]] made observations of surface features, claiming to have observed mountains. [[Friedrich Bessel]] used Schr\u00f6ter's drawings to erroneously estimate the rotation period as 24 hours and an axial tilt of 70\u00b0. In the 1880s, [[Giovanni Schiaparelli]] mapped the planet more accurately, and suggested that Mercury's rotational period was 88 days, the same as its orbital period due to tidal locking. This phenomenon is known as [[synchronous rotation]]. The effort to map the surface of Mercury was continued by [[Eugenios Antoniadi]], who published a book in 1934 that included both maps and his own observations. Many of the planet's surface features, particularly the [[List of albedo features on Mercury|albedo features]], take their names from Antoniadi's map.\nIn June 1962, Soviet scientists at the [[Institute of Radio-engineering and Electronics]] of the [[USSR Academy of Sciences]], led by [[Vladimir Kotelnikov]], became the first to bounce a radar signal off Mercury and receive it, starting radar observations of the planet. Three years later, radar observations by Americans [[Gordon H. Pettengill]] and Rolf B. Dyce, using the [[Arecibo radio telescope]] in [[Puerto Rico]], showed conclusively that the planet's rotational period was about 59 days. The theory that Mercury's rotation was synchronous had become widely held, and it was a surprise to astronomers when these radio observations were announced. If Mercury were tidally locked, its dark face would be extremely cold, but measurements of radio emission revealed that it was much hotter than expected. Astronomers were reluctant to drop the synchronous rotation theory and proposed alternative mechanisms such as powerful heat-distributing winds to explain the observations.\nIn 1965, Italian astronomer [[Giuseppe Colombo]] noted that the rotation value was about two-thirds of Mercury's orbital period, and proposed that the planet's orbital and rotational periods were locked into a 3:2 rather than a 1:1 resonance. Data from \"Mariner 10\" subsequently confirmed this view. This means that Schiaparelli's and Antoniadi's maps were not \"wrong\". Instead, the astronomers saw the same features during every \"second\" orbit and recorded them, but disregarded those seen in the meantime, when Mercury's other face was toward the Sun, because the orbital geometry meant that these observations were made under poor viewing conditions.\nGround-based optical observations did not shed much further light on Mercury, but radio astronomers using interferometry at microwave wavelengths, a technique that enables removal of the solar radiation, were able to discern physical and chemical characteristics of the subsurface layers to a depth of several meters. Not until the first space probe flew past Mercury did many of its most fundamental morphological properties become known. Moreover, technological advances have led to improved ground-based observations. In 2000, high-resolution [[lucky imaging]] observations were conducted by the [[Mount Wilson Observatory]] Hale telescope. They provided the first views that resolved surface features on the parts of Mercury that were not imaged in the \"Mariner 10\" mission. Most of the planet has been mapped by the Arecibo radar telescope, with resolution, including polar deposits in shadowed craters of what may be water ice.\nResearch with space probes.\n[[File:MESSENGER Assembly.jpg|thumb|left|\"MESSENGER\" being prepared for launch]]\n[[File:PIA18389-MarsCuriosityRover-MercuryTransitsSun-20140603.gif|thumb|Mercury transiting the [[Sun]] as viewed by the Mars rover [[Curiosity (rover)|\"Curiosity\"]] (June 3, 2014).]]\nReaching Mercury from Earth poses significant technical challenges, because it orbits so much closer to the Sun than Earth. A Mercury-bound spacecraft launched from Earth must travel over into the Sun's gravitational [[potential well]]. Mercury has an [[orbital speed]] of , whereas Earth's orbital speed is . Therefore, the spacecraft must make a larger change in [[velocity]] ([[delta-v]]) to get to Mercury and then enter orbit, as compared to the delta-v required for, say, [[Exploration of Mars|Mars planetary missions]].\nThe [[potential energy]] liberated by moving down the Sun's potential well becomes [[kinetic energy]], requiring a delta-v change to do anything other than pass by Mercury. Some portion of this [[delta-v budget]] can be provided from a [[gravity assist]] during one or more fly-bys of Venus. To land safely or enter a stable orbit the spacecraft would rely entirely on rocket motors. [[Aerobraking]] is ruled out because Mercury has a negligible atmosphere. A trip to Mercury requires more rocket fuel than that required to [[escape velocity|escape]] the Solar System completely. As a result, only three space probes have visited it so far. A proposed alternative approach would use a [[solar sail]] to attain a Mercury-synchronous orbit around the Sun.\n\"Mariner 10\".\n[[File:Mariner 10.jpg|thumb|\"Mariner 10\", the first probe to visit Mercury]]\nThe first spacecraft to visit Mercury was NASA's \"Mariner 10\" (1974\u20131975). The spacecraft used the gravity of Venus to adjust its orbital velocity so that it could approach Mercury, making it both the first spacecraft to use this gravitational \"slingshot\" effect and the first NASA mission to visit multiple planets. \"Mariner 10\" provided the first close-up images of Mercury's surface, which immediately showed its heavily cratered nature, and revealed many other types of geological features, such as the giant scarps that were later ascribed to the effect of the planet shrinking slightly as its iron core cools. Unfortunately, the same face of the planet was lit at each of \"Mariner 10\"'s close approaches. This made close observation of both sides of the planet impossible, and resulted in the mapping of less than 45% of the planet's surface.\nThe spacecraft made three close approaches to Mercury, the closest of which took it to within of the surface. At the first close approach, instruments detected a magnetic field, to the great surprise of planetary geologists\u2014Mercury's rotation was expected to be much too slow to generate a significant [[dynamo]] effect. The second close approach was primarily used for imaging, but at the third approach, extensive magnetic data were obtained. The data revealed that the planet's magnetic field is much like Earth's, which deflects the solar wind around the planet. For many years after the \"Mariner 10\" encounters, the origin of Mercury's magnetic field remained the subject of several competing theories.\nOn March 24, 1975, just eight days after its final close approach, \"Mariner 10\" ran out of fuel. Because its orbit could no longer be accurately controlled, mission controllers instructed the probe to shut down. \"Mariner 10\" is thought to be still orbiting the Sun, passing close to Mercury every few months.\n\"MESSENGER\".\n[[File:Details of MESSENGER's Impact Location.jpg|thumb|Estimated details of the impact of \"MESSENGER\" on April 30, 2015]]\nA second NASA mission to Mercury, named \"MESSENGER\" (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging), was launched on August 3, 2004. It made a fly-by of Earth in August 2005, and of Venus in October 2006 and June 2007 to place it onto the correct trajectory to reach an orbit around Mercury. A first fly-by of Mercury occurred on January 14, 2008, a second on October 6, 2008, and a third on September 29, 2009. Most of the hemisphere not imaged by \"Mariner 10\" was mapped during these fly-bys. The probe successfully entered an elliptical orbit around the planet on March 18, 2011. The first orbital image of Mercury was obtained on March 29, 2011. The probe finished a one-year mapping mission, and then entered a one-year extended mission into 2013. In addition to continued observations and mapping of Mercury, \"MESSENGER\" observed the 2012 [[solar maximum]].\n[[File:MercuryTopo.png|thumb|right|Topography of Mercury based on MDIS (Mercury Dual Imaging System) data]] The mission was designed to clear up six key issues: Mercury's high density, its geological history, the nature of its magnetic field, the structure of its core, whether it has ice at its poles, and where its tenuous atmosphere comes from. To this end, the probe carried imaging devices that gathered much-higher-resolution images of much more of Mercury than \"Mariner 10\", assorted [[spectrometer]]s to determine the abundances of elements in the crust, and [[magnetometer]]s and devices to measure velocities of charged particles. Measurements of changes in the probe's orbital velocity were expected to be used to infer details of the planet's interior structure. \"MESSENGER\"'s final maneuver was on April 24, 2015, and it crashed into Mercury's surface on April 30, 2015. The spacecraft's impact with Mercury occurred at 3:26:01\u00a0p.m. [[Eastern Time Zone|EDT]] on April 30, 2015, leaving a crater estimated to be in diameter.\n\"BepiColombo\".\nThe [[European Space Agency]] and the [[Japanese Space Agency]] developed and launched a joint mission called \"BepiColombo\", which will orbit Mercury with two probes: one to map the planet and the other to study its magnetosphere. Launched on October 20, 2018, \"BepiColombo\" is expected to reach Mercury in 2025. It will release a magnetometer probe into an elliptical orbit, then chemical rockets will fire to deposit the mapper probe into a circular orbit. Both probes will operate for one terrestrial year. The mapper probe carries an array of spectrometers similar to those on \"MESSENGER\", and will study the planet at many different wavelengths including [[infrared]], [[ultraviolet]], [[X-ray]] and [[gamma ray]]. \"BepiColombo\" conducted the first of its six planned Mercury flybys on October 1, 2021, and the sixth was completed on January 9, 2025. The spacecraft will enter the planet's orbit in 2026.\n\"Perseverance\" rover.\nOn March 5, 2024, NASA released images of transits of the moon [[Deimos (moon)|Deimos]], the moon [[Phobos (moon)|Phobos]] and the planet Mercury as viewed by the \"Perseverance\" rover on the planet Mars.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n[[Category:Mercury (planet)| ]]\n[[Category:Planets of the Solar System]]\n[[Category:Terrestrial planets]]\n[[Category:Astronomical objects known since antiquity]]\n[[Category:Solar System]]"}, "descending_order": ["14568465", "19694"], "permutation_1": ["14568465", "19694"], "permutation_2": ["19694", "14568465"], "permutation_3": ["14568465", "19694"]}
{"id": "2hop__128598_11396", "docs_added": {"13982431": "WNJN-FM\nPublic radio station in New Jersey\nWNJN-FM (89.7 FM) is a radio station licensed to Atlantic City, New Jersey. The station is owned by WHYY, Inc., and simulcasts the public radio news and talk programming of WHYY-FM in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.\nHistory.\nThe station was formerly owned and operated by the New Jersey Network. NJN's radio network began operation May 20, 1991, when WNJT-FM in Trenton signed on. Eight other stations would be established over the following seventeen years.\nOn June 6, 2011, the New Jersey Public Broadcasting Authority agreed to sell five FM stations in southern New Jersey to WHYY. The transaction was announced by Governor Chris Christie, as part of his long-term goal to end State-subsidized public broadcasting. The five stations previously belonged to New Jersey Network's statewide radio service. WHYY assumed control of the stations through a management agreement on July 1, 2011, pending Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval for the acquisition; at that point, the stations began to carry the WHYY-FM schedule.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "106211": "Atlantic City, New Jersey\nCity in Atlantic County, New Jersey, US\nAtlantic City, sometimes referred to by its initials A.C., is a Jersey Shore seaside resort city in Atlantic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.\nAtlantic City comprises the second half of the Atlantic City-Hammonton metropolitan statistical area, which encompasses those cities and all of Atlantic County for statistical purposes. Both Atlantic City and Hammonton, as well as the surrounding Atlantic County, are culturally tied to Philadelphia and constitute part of the larger Philadelphia metropolitan area or Delaware Valley, the nation's seventh-largest metropolitan area as of 2020.\nLocated in South Jersey on Absecon Island and known for its taxis, casinos, nightlife, boardwalk, and Atlantic Ocean beaches and coastline, the city is prominently known as the \"Las Vegas of the East Coast\" and inspired the U.S. version of the board game \"Monopoly\", which uses various Atlantic City street names and destinations in the game. New Jersey voters legalized casino gambling in Atlantic City in 1976, and the first casino opened two years later. From 1921 to 2004, Atlantic City hosted the Miss America pageant, which later returned to the city from 2013 to 2018.\nAs of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 38,497, a decline of 1,061 (\u22122.7%) from the 2010 census count of 39,558, which in turn reflected a decrease of 959 (\u22122.4%) from the 40,517 counted in the 2000 census.\nThe city was incorporated on May 1, 1854, from portions of Egg Harbor Township and Galloway Township. It is located on Absecon Island and borders Absecon, Brigantine, Egg Harbor Township, Galloway Township, Pleasantville, Ventnor City, and the Atlantic Ocean.\nHistory.\nPrior to Atlantic City's founding, the region served as a summer home for the Lenape, a Native American tribe. While the precise date of European settlement in present-day Atlantic City is not precisely determined, it is commonly thought that it was in 1783, when Jeremiah Leeds built and occupied a year-round home there.\n19th century.\nIn 1850, present-day Atlantic City was developed into a resort town. Three years later, in early 1853, it was named Atlantic City.\nBecause of its location in South Jersey, which hugs the Atlantic Ocean between marshlands and islands, Atlantic City was then viewed by developers as prime real estate and a potential resort town. In 1853, the city's first commercial hotel, the Belloe House, was built at the intersection of Massachusetts and Atlantic Avenues.\nThe following year, in 1854, the city was incorporated. The same year, train service began on the Camden and Atlantic Railroad. Built on the edge of the bay, this served as the direct link of this remote parcel of land with Philadelphia, the second-most populous city in the United States at the time and the largest city in Pennsylvania. The same year, construction of the Absecon Lighthouse, designed by George Meade of the Corps of Topographical Engineers, was approved, with work initiated the next year.\nBy 1874, almost 500,000 passengers a year were coming to Atlantic City by rail. In \"Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City\", \"Atlantic City's Godfather\" Jonathan Pitney, known as the \"Father of Atlantic City\", initially sought to develop Atlantic City as a health resort. Pitney persuaded municipal authorities that a railroad to the beach in Atlantic City would be beneficial. His successful business relationship with Samuel Richards, an entrepreneur and member of what was then the most influential family in South Jersey, was designed to construct the railroad with the first 600 riders, who \"were chosen carefully by Samuel Richards and Jonathan Pitney\":\nAfter arriving in Atlantic City, a second train brought the visitors to the door of the resort's first public lodging, the United States Hotel. The hotel was owned by the railroad. It was a sprawling, four-story structure built to house 2,000 guests. It opened while it was still under construction, with only one wing standing, and even that wasn't completed. By year's end, when it was fully constructed, the United States Hotel was not only the first hotel in Atlantic City but also the largest in the nation. Its rooms totaled more than 600, and its grounds covered some 14 acres.\nThe first boardwalk was built in 1870 along a portion of the beach in an effort to help hotel owners keep sand out of their lobbies. Businesses were restricted and the boardwalk was removed each year at the end of the peak season. Because of its effectiveness and popularity, the boardwalk was expanded in length and width, and modified several times in subsequent years.\nPrior to the destructive 1944 Great Atlantic Hurricane, the historic length of the boardwalk was about and it extended from Atlantic City to Longport, through Ventnor and Margate.\nThe first road connecting the city to the mainland at Pleasantville was completed in 1870 and charged a 30-cent toll. Albany Avenue was the first road to the mainland available without a toll.\nBy 1878, because of the growing popularity of the city, one railroad line could no longer keep up with demand. Soon, the Philadelphia and Atlantic City Railway was also constructed to transport tourists to Atlantic City. At this point massive hotels like the United States Hotel and Surf House, as well as smaller rooming houses, had sprung up all over town. The United States Hotel took up a full city block between Atlantic, Pacific, Delaware, and Maryland Avenues. These hotels were not only impressive in size, but featured the most up-to-date amenities, and were considered quite luxurious for their time.\nIn 1883, salt water taffy was conceived in Atlantic City by David Bradley. The traditional story is that Bradley's shop close to the beach was flooded with ocean water after a storm, soaking his taffy. He sold the \"salt water taffy\" to a girl, who walked down to the beach to show her friends. Bradley's mother was in the back of the store when the sale was made, and loved the name, giving the candy its name.\n20th century.\nIn the early 20th century, Atlantic City experienced a radical building boom. Many of the modest boarding houses that dotted the boardwalk were replaced with large hotels. Two of the city's most distinctive hotels were the Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel and the Traymore Hotel.\nIn 1902, Josiah White III bought a parcel of land near Ohio Avenue and the boardwalk, where he started construction and built the Queen Anne style Marlborough House. The hotel was a success. In 1905, he chose to expand the hotel and bought another parcel of land adjacent to his Marlborough House. In an effort to make his new hotel a source of conversation, White hired the architectural firm of Price and McLanahan. The firm made use of reinforced concrete, a new building material invented by Jean-Louis Lambot in 1848, and Joseph Monier received the patent in 1867. The hotel's Spanish and Moorish themes, capped off with its signature dome and chimneys, represented a step forward from other hotels that had a classically designed influence. White named the new hotel the Blenheim and merged the two hotels into the Marlborough-Blenheim. Bally's Atlantic City was later constructed at this location.\nThe Traymore Hotel was located at the corner of Illinois Avenue and the boardwalk. Constructed in 1879 as a small boarding house, the hotel grew through a series of uncoordinated expansions. By 1914, the hotel's owner, Daniel White, Josiah White's half-brother, taking a hint from the Marlborough-Blenheim, commissioned the firm of Price and McLanahan to build an even bigger hotel. Rising 16 stories, the tan brick and gold-capped hotel would become one of the city's best-known landmarks. The hotel made use of ocean-facing hotel rooms by jutting its wings farther from the main portion of the hotel along Pacific Avenue.\nOne by one, additional large hotels were constructed along the boardwalk, including the Brighton, Chelsea, Shelburne, Ambassador, Ritz Carlton, Mayflower, Madison House, and the Breakers. The Quaker-owned Chalfonte House, opened in 1868, and Haddon House, opened in 1869, flanked North Carolina Avenue at the beach end. Over the years, their original wood-frame structures would be enlarged, and even moved closer to the beach. The modern Chalfonte Hotel, eight stories tall, opened in 1904. The modern Haddon Hall was built in stages and was completed in 1929, at eleven stories. By this time, they were under the same ownership and merged into the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall Hotel, becoming the city's largest hotel with nearly 1,000 rooms. By 1930, the Claridge, the city's last large hotel before the casinos, opened its doors.\nThe 400-room Claridge was built by a partnership that included renowned Philadelphia contractor John McShain. At 24 stories, it would become known as the \"Skyscraper by the Sea\".\nWith tourism peaking in the 1920s, the period is often considered by historians to be Atlantic City's golden age. During Prohibition, which was enacted nationally in 1919 and lasted until 1933, much liquor was consumed and gambling regularly took place in the back rooms of nightclubs and restaurants. During Prohibition, racketeer and political boss Enoch L. \"Nucky\" Johnson rose to power. Prohibition was largely unenforced in Atlantic City. Because alcohol that had been smuggled into the city with the implicit approval of local officials, it was easily obtained at restaurants and other establishments, and the resort's popularity grew further. The city then dubbed itself as \"The World's Playground\". Nucky Johnson's income, which reached as much as $500,000 annually, came from the kickbacks he took on illegal liquor, gambling and prostitution operating in the city, as well as from kickbacks on construction projects.\nDuring this time, Atlantic City was led by mayor Edward L. Bader, known for his contributions to the construction, athletics and aviation of Atlantic City. Despite opposition, he had Atlantic City purchase the land that became the city's municipal airport and high school football stadium, both of which were later named Bader Field in his honor. He led the initiative, in 1923, to construct the Atlantic City High School at Albany and Atlantic Avenues. Bader, in November 1923, initiated a public referendum, during the general election, at which time residents approved the construction of a Convention Center. The city passed an ordinance approving a bond issue for $1.5\u00a0million to be used for the purchase of land for Convention Hall, now known as the Boardwalk Hall, finalized on September 30, 1924. Bader was also a driving force behind the creation of the Miss America competition.\nIn May 1929, Johnson hosted a conference for organized crime figures from all across America that created a National Crime Syndicate. The men who called this meeting were Masseria family lieutenant Charles \"Lucky\" Luciano and former Chicago South Side Gang boss Johnny \"the Fox\" Torrio, with heads of the Bugs and Meyer Mob, Meyer Lansky and Benjamin Siegel, being used as muscle for the meeting.\nGangster and businessman Al Capone attended the conference and was photographed walking along the Atlantic City boardwalk with Johnson.\nThe 1930s through the 1960s were a heyday for nightclub entertainment. Popular venues on the white-populated south side included the 500 Club, the Clicquot Club, and the Jockey Club. In the Northside neighborhood, home to African Americans in the racially segregated city, a black entertainment district reigned on Kentucky Avenue.\nFour major nightclubs, Club Harlem, the Paradise Club, Grace's Little Belmont, and Wonder Gardens, drew both black and white patrons. During the summer tourist season, jazz and R&B music could be heard into the wee hours of the morning. Soul food restaurants and ribs joints also lined Kentucky Avenue, including Wash's Restaurant, Jerry's and Sap's.\nLike many older East Coast cities after World War II, Atlantic City became plagued with poverty, crime, corruption, and general economic decline in the mid-to-late 20th century. The neighborhood known as the \"Inlet\" became particularly impoverished. The reasons for the resort's decline were multi-layered. First, the automobile became more readily available to many Americans after the war. Atlantic City had initially relied upon visitors coming by train and staying for a couple of weeks. The car allowed them to come and go as they pleased, and many people would spend only a few days, rather than weeks. The advent of suburbia also played a significant role. With many families moving to their own private houses, luxuries such as home air conditioning and swimming pools diminished their interest in flocking to the luxury beach resorts during the hot summer. Finally, the rise of relatively cheap jet airline service allowed visitors to travel to year-round resort places such as Miami Beach and the Bahamas.\nThe city hosted the 1964 Democratic National Convention which nominated Lyndon Johnson for president and Hubert Humphrey as vice president. The convention and the press coverage it generated, however, cast a harsh light on Atlantic City, which by then was in the midst of a long period of economic decline. Many felt that the friendship between Johnson and Governor of New Jersey Richard J. Hughes led Atlantic City to host the Democratic Convention.\nBy the late 1960s, many of the resort's once great hotels were suffering from high vacancy rates. Most of them were either shut down, converted to cheap apartments, or converted to nursing home facilities by the end of the decade. Prior to and during the advent of legalized gambling, many of these hotels were demolished. The Breakers, The Chelsea, the Brighton, the Shelburne, the Mayflower, the Traymore and the Marlborough-Blenheim were demolished in the 1970s and 1980s. Of the many pre-casino resorts that bordered the boardwalk, only the Claridge, the Dennis, the Ritz-Carlton, and the Haddon Hall survive to this day as parts of Bally's Atlantic City, a condo complex, and Resorts Atlantic City. The old Ambassador Hotel was purchased by Ramada in 1978 and was gutted to become the Tropicana Casino and Resort Atlantic City, only reusing the steelwork of the original building. Smaller hotels off the boardwalk, such as the Madison also survived.\nLegalized gambling.\nIn an effort at revitalizing the city, New Jersey voters in 1976 passed a referendum, approving casino gambling for Atlantic City; this came after a 1974 referendum on legalized gambling failed to pass. Immediately after the legislation passed, the owners of the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall Hotel began converting it into the Resorts International. It was the first legal casino in the eastern United States when it opened on May 26, 1978.\nOther casinos were soon constructed along the Boardwalk and, later, in the marina district for a total of nine today. The introduction of gambling did not, however, quickly eliminate many of the urban problems that plagued Atlantic City. Many people have suggested that it only served to exacerbate those problems, as attested to by the stark contrast between tourism intensive areas and the adjacent impoverished working-class neighborhoods.\nWhile Atlantic City has been less popular than Las Vegas as a gambling city in the United States, Donald Trump helped bring big name boxing bouts to the city to attract customers to his casinos. Mike Tyson fought most of his fights in Atlantic City in the 1980s, which helped Atlantic City achieve national attention as a gambling resort and vacation destination.\nSeveral highrise condominiums were built for use as permanent residences or second homes. By end of the decade, it was one of the most popular tourist destinations in the United States.\n21st century.\nLegalized sports betting.\nOn June 27, 2017, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear \"Christie v. National Collegiate Athletic Association\" and heard oral arguments in December 2017. Then, on May 14, 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) was unconstitutional. The act was overturned, allowing New Jersey to move ahead with plans to implement legalized sports betting.\nDespite being the state to initiate the landmark ruling, New Jersey was actually the third state to legalize sports betting after Nevada and Delaware. In June 2018, New Jersey governor Phil Murphy signed the legislation into law, and several New Jersey\u2013based casino brands subsequently opened sportsbooks, especially in Atlantic City.\nWith the redevelopment of the Las Vegas Strip and the opening of Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun in Connecticut in the early 1990s, along with newly built casinos in the nearby Philadelphia metro area in the 2000s, Atlantic City's tourism began to decline due to its failure to diversify away from gambling. In 1999 the Atlantic City Redevelopment Authority partnered with Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn to develop a new roadway to a barren section of the city near the Marina. Nicknamed \"The Tunnel Project\", Steve Wynn planned the proposed 'Mirage Atlantic City' around the idea that he would connect the $330\u00a0million tunnel stretching from the Atlantic City Expressway to his new resort. The roadway was later officially named the Atlantic City-Brigantine Connector, and funnels incoming traffic off of the expressway into the city's marina district and the city of Brigantine.\nAlthough Wynn's plans for development in the city were scrapped in 2002, the tunnel opened in 2001. The new roadway prompted Boyd Gaming in partnership with MGM/Mirage to build Atlantic City's newest casino. Borgata opened in July 2003, and its success brought an influx of developers to Atlantic City with plans for building grand, Las Vegas-style mega casinos to revitalize the aging city.\nOwing to economic conditions and the late 2000s recession, many of the proposed mega casinos never advanced further than the initial planning stage. One of these developers was Pinnacle Entertainment, which purchased the Sands Atlantic City for $250\u2013$270 million and closed it on November 11, 2006 with plans to replace it with a larger casino. The following year, the resort was demolished in an implosion, the first of its kind in Atlantic City. While Pinnacle Entertainment intended to replace it with a $1.5-$2-billion casino resort, the company canceled its construction plans and sold the land for $29.5 million. MGM Resorts International announced in October 2007 that it would pull out of all development for Atlantic City, effectively ending its plans for the MGM Grand Atlantic City.\nIn 2006, Morgan Stanley purchased directly north of the Showboat Atlantic City for a new $2-billion-plus casino resort. Revel Entertainment Group was named as the project's developer for the Revel Casino. Revel was hindered with many problems, the biggest setback occurring in April 2010 when Morgan Stanley, the owner of 90% of Revel Entertainment Group, decided to discontinue funding for continued construction and put its stake in Revel up for sale. Early in 2010, the New Jersey state legislature passed a bill offering tax incentives to attract new investors and complete the job, but a poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind released in March 2010 showed that 60% of voters opposed the legislation, and two of three of those who opposed it \"strongly\" opposed it. Ultimately, Governor Chris Christie offered Revel $261\u00a0million in state tax credits to assist the casino once it opened.\nRevel completed all of the exterior work and had continued work on the interior after finally receiving the funding necessary to complete construction, and had a soft opening in April 2012 before being fully open the next month. Ten months later, in February 2013, after serious losses and a write-down in the value of the resort from $2.4\u00a0billion to $450\u00a0million, Revel filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It was restructured but still could not carry on and re-entered bankruptcy on June 19, 2014. It was put up for sale, however as no suitable bids were received the resort closed its doors in September 2014. The property was bought by AC Ocean Walk, LLC for $200\u00a0million in 2017, and reopened in 2018 as Ocean Casino Resort.\nIn the wake of the closures and declining revenue from casinos, Governor Christie said in September 2014 that the state would consider a 2015 referendum to end the 40-year-old monopoly that Atlantic City holds on casino gambling and allowing gambling in other municipalities. With casino revenue declining from $5.2\u00a0billion in 2006 to $2.9\u00a0billion in 2013, the state saw a drop in money from its 8% tax on those earnings, which is used to fund programs for senior citizens and the disabled.\nOn October 29, 2012, \"Superstorm Sandy\" struck Atlantic City and caused flooding and power-outages but left minimal damage to any of the tourist areas. The storm produced an all-time record low barometric pressure reading of 943 mb (27.85\") for not only Atlantic City, but the state of New Jersey.\nIn 2019, the Atlantic City area had the highest rates of foreclosures in the nation. This has disproportionately affected Black residents in neighborhoods segregated by redlining, a legacy that is mirrored by the values of properties on the Monopoly game board.\nAfter several casino closures and the COVID-19 pandemic, strikes and pickets were being threatened in June 2022 by casino employees which were short-staffed and wanted pay raises.\nFood desert.\nAtlantic City is widely known as a food desert, with the nearest fully-functioning supermarket being located in neighboring Ventnor City, which is away from the majority of Atlantic City's population. As a result, proposals for a supermarket were floated beginning in May 2021, and Atlantic City's City Council gave permission to the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority to look for a contender to build a supermarket.\nAs of December 2023, there was only one functioning supermarket in Atlantic City, the Save-A-Lot food store located in Renaissance Plaza, an area of the city known for its significant homeless population and drug use. The Casino Reinvestment Development Authority has proposed a new supermarket that would be located on an empty parking lot behind the Tanger Outlets and near the Atlantic City Expressway.\nGroundbreaking for a ShopRite supermarket had taken place in October 2021, after Village Super Market received $18.7 million from the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority to construct the store. The supermarket was expected to be completed by December 2022, although no construction or building had happened on the site, which drew attention from residents. After the time for the contract expired, the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA) announced that the deal with Village Super Market (VSM) was dead and that they were looking for new contenders. VSM created a new plan for CRDA and the city's Council to review and by July 2023, it and a Chinese conglomerate headquartered in Hong Kong emerged as the two candidates to build the supermarket. However, as of November 2023, no further progress had been made on the construction plans and the two proposals were still \"being reviewed.\"\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, Atlantic City had a total area of 17.21 square miles (44.59\u00a0km2), including 10.76 square miles (27.87\u00a0km2) of land and 6.45 square miles (16.72\u00a0km2) of water (37.50%).\nThe city is located on Absecon Island, along with Ventnor City, Margate City and Longport to the southwest.\nAtlantic City borders the Atlantic County municipalities of Absecon, Brigantine, Egg Harbor Township, Galloway Township, Pleasantville, and Ventnor City.\nThe city is located southeast of Philadelphia and south of New York City.\nUnincorporated communities, localities and place names located partially or completely within the city include Chelsea, City Island, Great Island and Venice Park.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen climate classification system, Atlantic City has a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\") with warm, moderately humid summers, cool winters and year-around precipitation. Cfa climates are characterized by all months having an average mean temperature above , at least four months with an average mean temperature at or above , at least one month with an average mean temperature at or above and no significant precipitation difference between seasons. During the summer months in Atlantic City, a cooling afternoon sea breeze is present on most days, but episodes of extreme heat and humidity can occur with heat index values at or above . During the winter months, episodes of extreme cold and wind can occur with wind chill values below . The plant hardiness zone at Atlantic City Beach is 7b with an average annual extreme minimum air temperature of . The average seasonal (November\u2013April) snowfall total is , and the average snowiest month is February which corresponds with the annual peak in nor'easter activity.\nEcology.\nAccording to the A. W. Kuchler U.S. potential natural vegetation types, Atlantic City would have a dominant vegetation type of Northern Cordgrass (\"73\") with a dominant vegetation form of Coastal Prairie (\"20\").\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nThe 2010 United States census counted 39,558 people, 15,504 households, and 8,558 families in the city. The population density was . There were 20,013 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup was 26.65% (10,543) White, 38.29% (15,148) Black or African American, 0.61% (242) Native American, 15.55% (6,153) Asian, 0.05% (18) Pacific Islander, 14.03% (5,549) from other races, and 4.82% (1,905) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 30.45% (12,044) of the population.\nOf the 15,504 households, 27.3% had children under the age of 18; 25.9% were married couples living together; 22.2% had a female householder with no husband present and 44.8% were non-families. Of all households, 37.5% were made up of individuals and 14.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.50 and the average family size was 3.34.\nPeople under the age of 18 account for 24.6%, 10.2% from 18 to 24, 26.8% from 25 to 44, 25.8% from 45 to 64, and 12.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36.3 years. For every 100 females, the population had 96.2 males. For every 100 females ages 18 and older there were 94.4 males.\nThe Census Bureau's 2006\u20132010 American Community Survey showed that (in 2010 inflation-adjusted dollars) median household income was $30,237 (with a margin of error of +/\u2212 $2,354) and the median family income was $35,488 (+/\u2212 $2,607). Males had a median income of $32,207 (+/\u2212 $1,641) versus $29,298 (+/\u2212 $1,380) for females. The per capita income for the city was $20,069 (+/\u2212 $2,532). About 23.1% of families and 25.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 36.6% of those under age 18 and 16.8% of those age 65 or over.\n2000 census.\nAs of the 2000 United States census, there were 40,517 people, 15,848 households, and 8,700 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 20,219 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 44.16% black or African American, 26.68% White, 0.48% Native American, 10.40% Asian, 0.06% Pacific Islander, 13.76% other races, and 4.47% from two or more races. 24.95% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. 19.44% of the population was non-Hispanic whites.\nThere were 15,848 households, out of which 27.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 24.8% were married couples living together, 23.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 37.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 15.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.46 and the average family size was 3.26.\nIn the city the age distribution of the population shows 25.7% under the age of 18, 8.9% from 18 to 24, 31.0% from 25 to 44, 20.2% from 45 to 64, and 14.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females, there were 96.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.2 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $26,969, and the median income for a family was $31,997. Males had a median income of $25,471 versus $23,863 for females. The per capita income for the city was $15,402. About 19.1% of families and 23.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 29.1% of those under age 18 and 18.9% of those age 65 or over.\nEconomy.\nIn September 2014, the greater Atlantic City area had one of the highest unemployment rates in the country at 13.8%, out of a labor force of around 141,000.\nTourism district.\nIn July 2010, Governor Chris Christie announced that a state takeover of the city and local government \"was imminent\". Comparing regulations in Atlantic City to an \"antique car\", Atlantic City regulatory reform was a key piece of Governor Chris Christie's plan to reinvigorate an industry mired in a four-year slump in revenue and hammered by fresh competition from casinos in the surrounding states of Delaware, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and more recently, Maryland. In January 2011, Chris Christie announced the creation of the Atlantic City Tourism District, a state-run district encompassing the boardwalk casinos, the marina casinos, the Atlantic City Outlets, and Bader Field. Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind poll surveyed New Jersey voters' attitudes on the takeover. A February 2011 survey showed that 43% opposed the measure while 29% favored direct state oversight. The poll also found that even South Jersey voters expressed opposition to the plan; 40% reported they opposed the measure and 37% reported they were in favor of it.\nOn April 29, 2011, the boundaries for the state-run tourism district were set. The district would include heavier police presence, as well as beautification projects and infrastructure improvements. The CRDA would oversee all functions of the district and make changes to attract new businesses and attractions. New construction has already resulted in cases of eminent domain being used to seize properties for development.\nThe tourism district would comprise several key areas in the city: the Marina District, Ducktown, Chelsea, South Inlet, Bader Field, and Gardner's Basin. Also included are 10 roadways that lead into the district, including several in the city's northern end, or North Beach. Gardner's Basin, which is home to the Atlantic City Aquarium, was initially left out of the tourism district, while a residential neighborhood in the Chelsea section was removed from the final boundaries, owing to complaints from the city. Also, the inclusion of Bader Field in the district was controversial and received much scrutiny from mayor Lorenzo Langford, who cast the lone \"no\" vote on the creation of the district citing its inclusion.\nCasinos and gambling.\nThe history of gambling in Atlantic City traces back to Prohibition and the 1920s, with racketeer Louis Kuehnle running an underground hotel and casino. Enoch \"Nucky\" Johnson followed and furthered Atlantic City's rise through the Roaring Twenties as a destination for drinking, gambling, and nightlife. In 1974, New Jersey voters voted 60%\u201340% against legalizing casino gambling at four sites statewide, but two years later approved by 56%\u201344% a new referendum which legalized casinos, but restricted them to Atlantic City. Resorts Atlantic City was the first casino to open, in May 1978, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony featuring Governor of New Jersey Brendan Byrne. Atlantic City is considered the \"Gambling Capital of the East Coast\", and currently has nine large casinos. In 2011, New Jersey's then 12 casinos employed approximately 33,000 employees, had 28.5\u00a0million visitors, made $3.3\u00a0billion in gaming revenue, and paid $278\u00a0million in taxes. They are regulated by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission and the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement.\nIn the wake of the economic downturn following the Great Recession and the legalization of gambling in adjacent and nearby states (including Delaware, Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania), four casino closures took place in 2014: the Atlantic Club on January 13; the Showboat on August 31; the Revel, which was Atlantic City's second-newest casino, on September 2; and Trump Plaza, which originally opened in 1984, and was the poorest performing casino in the city, on September 16.\nExecutives at Trump Entertainment Resorts, whose sole remaining property at the time was the Trump Taj Mahal, said in 2013 that they were considering the option of selling the Taj and winding down and exiting the gaming and hotel business. Trump Taj Mahal closed October 10, 2016, after failing to come to terms with union workers.\nCaesars Entertainment executives have been reconsidering the future of their three remaining Atlantic City properties (Bally's, Caesars and Harrah's), in the wake of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by the company's casino operating unit in January 2015. In 2020, Bally's Atlantic City was acquired by Bally's Corporation. Gross gaming revenue of the city's nine operating casinos in 2022 totaled $2.79 billion, a 9% increase from the $2.55 billion earned the previous year.\na The Wild Wild West Casino, which opened on July 2, 1997, and has an American Old West theme, was part of Bally's Atlantic City until 2020, when it became part of Caesars.\nBoardwalk.\nThe Atlantic City Boardwalk opened on June 26, 1870, a temporary structure erected for the summer season that was the first boardwalk in the world. At long, the Atlantic City Boardwalk is also the world's longest and busiest boardwalk.\nThe Boardwalk starts at Absecon Inlet in the north and runs along the beach south-west to the city limit away then continues into Ventnor City. Casino/hotels front the boardwalk, as well as retail stores, restaurants, and amusements. Notable attractions include the Boardwalk Hall, House of Blues, and the Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum.\nIn October 2012, Hurricane Sandy destroyed the northern part of the boardwalk fronting Absecon Inlet, in the residential section called South Inlet. The oceanfront boardwalk in front of the Atlantic City casinos survived the storm with minimal damage.\nThe first pier along the boardwalk, Applegate's Pier, opened in 1884. It was acquired by John L. Young in 1891, who expanded and operated it as Young's Ocean Pier, but it was mostly destroyed in a 1912 fire. The remaining part of the pier was rebuilt in 1922 as the Central Pier, which is still in operation.\nA Heinz-owned pier named Heinz Pier was destroyed in the 1944 Great Atlantic hurricane.\nThe most famous Atlantic City pier was Steel Pier, which opened in 1898, and which once billed itself as \"The Showplace of the Nation\". It closed in 1978, and was mostly destroyed in a 1982 fire. It was rebuilt in the late 1980s and is now operated as an amusement pier across from the Hard Rock.\nSteeplechase Pier opened in 1899 and operated until 1986. It suffered significant damage in a 1988 fire, and the remnants of the pier were removed in 1996. The \"Steeplechase Pier Heliport\" on Steel Pier is named in its honor.\nCaptain John L. Young opened \"Young's Million Dollar Pier\" in 1906, and on the seaward side \"erected a marble mansion\", fronted by a formal garden, with lighting and landscaping designed by Young's longtime friend Thomas Alva Edison. Million Dollar Pier once rivaled Steel Pier as Atlantic City's leading pier, but after suffering decades of decline, was rebuilt into a shopping mall in the 1980s, known as \"Shops on Ocean One\". In 2006, the Ocean One mall was bought, renovated and re-branded as \"The Pier Shops at Caesars\" and in 2015, it was renamed \"Playground Pier\". In September 2023, it was renamed \"ACX1 Studios\" for the film and entertainment production studios that took over the building, with a planned grand reopening containing a mixture of retail, restaurants, creative space, and production studios in summer of 2024.\nGarden Pier, located opposite Ocean Casino Resort, once housed a movie theater, and is now home to the Atlantic City Historical Museum.\nShopping.\nAtlantic City has many different shopping districts and malls, many of which are located inside or adjacent to the casino resorts. Several smaller themed retail and dining areas in casino hotels include the Borgata Shops and The Shoppes at Water Club inside Borgata, the Waterfront Shops inside of Harrah's, Spice Road inside the Trump Taj Mahal, while Resorts Casino Hotel has a small collection of stores and restaurants. Major shopping malls are also located in and around Atlantic City.\nAtlantic City shops include:\nExhibition.\nBoardwalk Hall, formally known as the \"Historic Atlantic City Convention Hall\", is an arena in Atlantic City along the boardwalk. Boardwalk Hall was Atlantic City's primary convention center until the opening of the Atlantic City Convention Center in 1997. The Atlantic City Convention Center includes of showroom space, 5 exhibit halls, 45 meeting rooms with of space, a garage with 1,400 parking spaces, and an adjacent Sheraton hotel. Both the Boardwalk Hall and Convention Center are operated by the Atlantic City Convention & Visitors Authority.\nArts and culture.\n\"Monopoly\".\nAtlantic City (sometimes referred to as \"Monopoly City\") has become well-known over the years for its portrayal in the U.S. version of the popular board game \"Monopoly\", in which properties on the board are named after locations in and near Atlantic City. While the original incarnation of the game did not feature Atlantic City, it was in Indianapolis that Ruth Hoskins learned the game, and took it back to Atlantic City. After she arrived, Hoskins made a new board with Atlantic City street names, and taught it to a group of friends, who ultimately passed in on to Charles Darrow, who made some modifications to the game and claimed it as his own invention. The relative prices of the places on the board reflect to some extent the social status of neighborhoods at the time, with wealthy white streets being worth more, and streets where Black and Asian residents lived being cheaper.\nMarvin Gardens, the leading yellow property on the board, is actually a misspelling of the original location name, \"Marven Gardens\". The misspelling was said to have been introduced by Charles Todd and passed on when his home-made \"Monopoly\" board was copied by Charles Darrow and thence Parker Brothers. It was not until 1995 that Parker Brothers acknowledged this mistake and formally apologized to the residents of Marven Gardens for the misspelling, although the spelling error was not corrected.\nSome of the actual locations that correspond to board elements have changed since the game's release. Illinois Avenue was renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in the 1980s. St. Charles Place no longer exists, as the Showboat Casino Hotel was developed where it once ran.\nThe \"Short Line\" is believed to refer to the Shore Fast Line, a streetcar line that served Atlantic City, or a bus route. The B&O Railroad did not serve Atlantic City. A booklet included with the reprinted 1935 edition states that the four railroads that served Atlantic City in the mid-1930s were the Jersey Central, the Seashore Lines, the Reading Railroad, and the Pennsylvania Railroad.\nThe actual \"Electric Company\" and \"Water Works\" serving the city are the Atlantic City Electric Company and the Atlantic City Municipal Utilities Authority, respectively.\nAttractions.\nEver since Atlantic City's growth as a resort town, numerous attractions and tourist traps have originated in the city. A popular fixture in the early 20th century at the Steel Pier was horse diving, which was introduced by William \"Doc\" Carver. The Steel Pier featured several other novelty attractions, including the Diving Bell, human high-divers and a water circus. Advertisements for the Steel Pier in its heyday featured plaster sculptures set upon wooden bases along roads leading up to Atlantic City. By the end of World War II, many animal demonstrations declined in popularity after criticisms of animal abuse and neglect.\nRolling chairs, which were introduced in 1876 and in continuous use since 1887, have been a boardwalk fixture to this day. While powered carts appeared in the 1960s, the original and most common were made of wicker. The wicker canopied chairs-on-wheels are manually pushed the length of the boardwalk by attendants, much like a rickshaw. A tram service was introduced in 2015, initially using the warning announcements that had been used on Wildwood's tram cars until it was changed after complaints from Wildwood.\nThe Absecon Lighthouse is a coastal lighthouse located in the South Inlet section of Atlantic City overlooking Absecon Inlet. It is the tallest lighthouse in the state of New Jersey and is the third tallest masonry lighthouse in the United States. Construction began in 1854, with the light first lit on January 15, 1857. The lighthouse was deactivated in 1933 and although the light still shines every night, it is no longer an active navigational aid. Gardner's Basin, which is home to the Atlantic City Aquarium as well as small shops and restaurants, is located a short distance north of Absecon Light.\nWhile located south of Atlantic City in Margate City, Lucy the Elephant has become almost an icon for the Atlantic City area. Lucy is a six-story elephant-shaped example of novelty architecture, constructed of wood and tin sheeting in 1882 by James V. Lafferty in an effort to sell real estate and attract tourism. Over the years, Lucy had served as a restaurant, business office, cottage, and tavern (the last closed by Prohibition). Lucy had fallen into disrepair by the 1960s and was scheduled for demolition. The structure was moved and refurbished as a result of a \"Save Lucy\" campaign in 1970 and received designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1976, and is open as a museum.\nMiss America pageant.\nAtlantic City was the home of the Miss America competition, hosting the event from its inception until 2004, and again from 2013 to 2018. The Miss America competition originated on September 7, 1921, as a two-day beauty contest, and it included state contestants as well as women from various cities around the country. The event that year was called the \"Atlantic City Pageant\", and the winner of the grand prize, Margaret Gorman, took home the 3-foot Golden Mermaid trophy. Gorman was not called \"Miss America\" until 1922, when she re-entered the pageant and lost to Mary Campbell. The pageant was initiated to extend the tourist season after the Labor Day weekend. The pageant has been nationally televised since 1954. It peaked in the early 1960s, when it was repeatedly the highest-rated program on American television. It was seen as a symbol of the United States, with Miss America often being referred to as the female equivalent of the President. The pageant's longtime emcee, Bert Parks, hosted the event from 1955 to 1979. At the Atlantic City Convention Center, there is a interactive statue of Parks holding a crown. When a visitor puts their head inside the crown, sensors activate a recorded playback of his \"There She Is...\" line through speakers hidden behind nearby bushes.\n\"Boardwalk Empire\".\nThe television show \"Boardwalk Empire\", an American series from cable network HBO set in Atlantic City during the Prohibition era, raised interest in the Roaring Twenties-era city. Starring Steve Buscemi, the show was adapted from a chapter about historical criminal kingpin Enoch \"Nucky\" Johnson (who is renamed \"Enoch Thompson\" in the show) in Nelson Johnson's book, \"Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City\".\nThe Orange Loop.\nThe Orange Loop is a neighborhood near the beach in Atlantic City with a focus on live music establishments like Anchor Rock Club and Tennessee Beer Hall.\nIt runs perpendicular from the boardwalk inland roughly to St. Nicholas of Tolentine Church.\nIt is bounded by Tennessee Avenue, St. James Place, Pacific Avenue and the boardwalk, and derives its name from the orange color of those streets on a traditional Monopoly gameboard. The Orange Loop Amphitheater hosted the Frantic City indie rock music festival on the loop in 2022.\nSports.\nThe Atlantic City Race Course in Hamilton Township was a horse racing track that operated from 1946 to 2015.\nThe ShopRite LPGA Classic is an LPGA Tour women's golf tournament held near Atlantic City since it started in 1986.\nProfessional boxing.\nSince February 2, 1887, the city of Atlantic City has seen 2,538 (as of September 2018) professional boxing fight programs, the first one being one with a main event fight between Willie Clark, 3-0-3, and debuting Horace Leeds, won by Clark on points over four rounds. During the 1980s, professional boxing activity boomed in Atlantic City, at times rivaling Las Vegas, Nevada, in staging major boxing fights. Fighters who fought in Atlantic City at that era include Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns, Wilfredo G\u00f3mez, Jeff Chandler, Larry Holmes, George Foreman, Mike Tyson and others. Fights included The Brawl For it All, Tyson versus Holmes, Tyson versus Michael Spinks, and Roberto Dur\u00e1n versus Iran Barkley. Many boxing matches were held at Donald Trump's Trump Plaza, promoted either by Bob Arum or Don King.\nParks and recreation.\nAtlantic City is one of five municipalities in the state\u2014and the only one outside of Cape May County\u2014that offer free public access to oceanfront beaches monitored by lifeguards, joining Wildwood, North Wildwood, Wildwood Crest and Upper Township's Strathmere section.\nGovernment.\nLocal government.\nAtlantic City is governed within the Faulkner Act (formally known as the Optional Municipal Charter Law) under the Mayor-Council system of municipal government (Plan D), implemented by direct petition effective as of July 1, 1982. The city is one of 71 municipalities (of the 564) statewide governed under this form. The governing body of Atlantic City comprises the Mayor and the City Council, all elected on a partisan basis to serve four-year terms of office as part of the November general election. The council includes nine members, who are elected on a staggered basis, with one member from each of six wards and three serving at-large. The six ward seats are up for election together and the mayoral seat and the council at-large seats are up for vote together two years later. The City Council exercises the legislative power of the municipality for the purpose of holding Council meetings to introduce ordinances and resolutions to regulate City government. In addition, Council members review budgets submitted by the Mayor; provide for an annual audit of the city's accounts and financial transactions; organize standing committees and hold public hearings to address important issues which impact Atlantic City. Former Mayor Bob Levy created the Atlantic City Ethics Board in 2007, but the Board was dissolved two years later by vote of the Atlantic City Council.\nAs of 2024[ [update]], the Mayor is Democrat Marty Small Sr., whose term of office ends December 31, 2025. Small succeeded Frank M. Gilliam Jr. following his resignation on October 3, 2019. Small initially served as mayor on an interim basis for an unexpired term ending on December 31, 2021. Members of the City Council are Council President Council President Aaron \"Sporty\" Randolph (D, 2027; 1st Ward), Council Vice President Kaleem Shabazz (D, 2027; 3rd Ward), George \"Animal\" Crouch (D, 2027; 4th Ward), LaToya Dunston (D, 2027; Second Ward \u2013 elected to serve an unexpired term), Jesse O. Kurtz (R, 2027; 6th Ward), Stephanie Marshall (D, 2025; At-Large), George Tibbitt (D, 2025; At-Large), Bruce Weekes (D, 2025; At-Large) and Maria Lacca (R, 2027; 5th Ward).\nIn 2024, Democrat Muhammed \"Anjum\" Zia, who served as a councilman for the 5th ward, was removed from office after it was found the he did not reside in Atlantic City, but instead with his family in Egg Harbor Township. He was ousted from the city council, and in a court-ordered special election that November, Republican Maria Lacca, who brought about the investigation against Zia, flipped the seat, becoming the first Republican to win it since 1988. She became one out of two Republicans now currently on Atlantic City's council, with the other being councilman Jesse O. Kurtz of the 6th ward.\nIn May 2020, voters rejected by a 3\u20131 margin a referendum that would have changed the city to a council-manager form of government which would have reduced the size of the city council and shifted responsibility for day-to-day operation from an elected mayor to an appointed city manager.\nIn December 2019, LaToya Dunston was selected from a list of three candidates nominated by the Democratic municipal committee to serve the remainder of the term of the Second Ward seat that had been held by Marty Small until he stepped down when he was appointed as mayor. In January 2020, Dunston was appointed to fill the Second Ward seat expiring in December 2023 that Small had won in November 2019 but declined to fill; Dunston will serve on an interim basis until the November 2020 general election, when voters will select a candidate to serve the balance of the term of office.\nMayoral disappearance and resignation.\nFollowing questions about false claims he had made about his military record, Mayor Bob Levy left City Hall in September 2007 in a city-owned vehicle for an unknown destination. After a 13-day absence, his lawyer revealed that Levy was in Carrier Clinic, a rehabilitation hospital. Levy resigned in October 2007 and then-Council President William Marsh assumed the office of Mayor and served six weeks until an interim mayor was named.\nFederal, state and county representation.\nAtlantic City is located in the 2nd Congressional district and is part of New Jersey's 2nd state legislative district.\nFor the 119th United States Congress, New Jersey congressional district is represented by Jeff Van Drew (R, Dennis Township). New Jersey is represented in the United States Senate by Democrats Cory Booker (Newark, term ends 2027) and Andy Kim (Moorestown, term ends 2031).\nFor the 2024-2025 session, the 2nd legislative district of the New Jersey Legislature is represented in the New Jersey Senate by Vincent J. Polistina (R, Egg Harbor Township) and in the General Assembly by Don Guardian (R, Atlantic City) and Claire Swift (R, Margate City).\nAtlantic County is governed by a directly elected county executive and a nine-member Board of County Commissioners, responsible for legislation. The executive serves a four-year term and the commissioners are elected to staggered three-year terms, of which four are elected from the county on an at-large basis and five of the commissioners represent equally populated districts. As of 2025[ [update]], Atlantic County's Executive is Dennis Levinson (R, Northfield), whose term of office ends December 31, 2027. Members of the Board of County Commissioners are:\nErnest D. Coursey (D, District 1-- Atlantic City, Egg Harbor Township (part), Longport, Margate City, and Ventnor City; 2025, Atlantic City), Chair Maureen Kern (R, District 2-- Egg Harbor Township (part), Linwood, Northfield, Somers Point and Pleasantville; 2027, Somers Point), Andrew Parker III (R, District 3-- Egg Harbor Township (part) and Hamilton Township (part); 2026, Egg Harbor Township), Richard R. Dase (R, District 4, including Brigantine, Galloway Township, Egg Harbor Township (part), and Port Republic; 2025, Galloway Township), Vice Chair James A. Bertino (R, District 5-- Buena, Buena Vista Township, Corbin City, Egg Harbor City, Estell Manor, Folsom, Hamilton Township (part), Hammonton, Mullica Township and Weymouth Township; 2027, Hammonton), June Byrnes (R, At-Large; 2026, Linwood), Michael Ruffu (R, At-Large; Margate, 2027) Amy L. Gatto (R, At-large; 2025, Hamilton Township) and John W. Risley (R, At-Large; 2026, Egg Harbor Township)\nAtlantic County's constitutional officers are: \nClerk Joesph J. Giralo (R, 2026, Hammonton), \nSheriff Joe O'Donoghue (R, 2026, Egg Harbor Township) and \nSurrogate James Curcio (R, 2025, Hammonton).\nPolitics.\nAs of March 23, 2011, there were a total of 20,001 registered voters in Atlantic City, of which 12,063 (60.3% vs. 30.5% countywide) were registered as Democrats, 1,542 (7.7% vs. 25.2%) were registered as Republicans and 6,392 (32.0% vs. 44.3%) were registered as Unaffiliated. There were 4 voters registered to other parties. Among the city's 2010 Census population, 50.6% (vs. 58.8% in Atlantic County) were registered to vote, including 67.0% of those ages 18 and over (vs. 76.6% countywide).\nIn the 2012 presidential election, Democrat Barack Obama received 9,948 votes (86.6% vs. 57.9% countywide), ahead of Republican Mitt Romney with 1,548 votes (13.5% vs. 41.1%) and other candidates with 49 votes (0.4% vs. 0.9%), among the 11,489 ballots cast by the city's 21,477 registered voters, for a turnout of 53.5% (vs. 65.8% in Atlantic County). In the 2008 presidential election, Democrat Barack Obama received 10,975 votes (82.1% vs. 56.5% countywide), ahead of Republican John McCain with 2,175 votes (16.3% vs. 41.6%) and other candidates with 82 votes (0.6% vs. 1.1%), among the 13,370 ballots cast by the city's 26,030 registered voters, for a turnout of 51.4% (vs. 68.1% in Atlantic County). In the 2004 presidential election, Democrat John Kerry received 8,487 votes (74.5% vs. 52.0% countywide), ahead of Republican George W. Bush with 2,687 votes (23.6% vs. 46.2%) and other candidates with 96 votes (0.8% vs. 0.8%), among the 11,389 ballots cast by the city's 23,310 registered voters, for a turnout of 48.9% (vs. 69.8% in the whole county).\nIn the 2013 gubernatorial election, Democrat Barbara Buono received 4,293 ballots cast (52.6% vs. 34.9% countywide), ahead of Republican Chris Christie with 2,897 votes (35.5% vs. 60.0%) and other candidates with 63 votes (0.8% vs. 1.3%), among the 8,155 ballots cast by the city's 23,049 registered voters, yielding a 35.4% turnout (vs. 41.5% in the county). In the 2009 gubernatorial election, Democrat Jon Corzine received 4,988 ballots cast (69.9% vs. 44.5% countywide), ahead of Republican Chris Christie with 1,578 votes (22.1% vs. 47.7%), Independent Chris Daggett with 157 votes (2.2% vs. 4.8%) and other candidates with 99 votes (1.4% vs. 1.2%), among the 7,141 ballots cast by the city's 22,585 registered voters, yielding a 31.6% turnout (vs. 44.9% in the county).\nCity and state agencies.\nNew Jersey Casino Control Commission.\nThe New Jersey Casino Control Commission is a New Jersey state governmental agency that was founded in 1977 as the state's Gaming Control Board, responsible for administering the Casino Control Act and its regulations to assure public trust and confidence in the credibility and integrity of the casino industry and casino operations in Atlantic City. Casinos operate under licenses granted by the commission. The commission is headquartered in the Arcade Building at Tennessee Avenue and Boardwalk in Atlantic City.\nNew Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement.\nThe New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement is a division of the New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety and is responsible for certifying casino gaming revenue, registering casino employees and non-gaming vendors, licensing gaming vendors, and handling all casino patron complaints.\nCasino Reinvestment Development Authority.\nThe CRDA was founded in 1984 and is responsible for directing the spending of casino reinvestment funds in public and private projects to benefit Atlantic City and other areas of the state. From 1985 through April 2008, CRDA spent US$1.5\u00a0billion on projects in Atlantic City and US$300\u00a0million throughout New Jersey.\nAtlantic City Convention and Visitors Authority.\nThe Convention & Visitors Authority (ACCVA) was in charge of advertising and marketing for the city as well as promoting economic growth through convention and leisure tourism development. The ACCVA managed the Boardwalk Hall and Atlantic City Convention Center, as well as the Boardwalk Welcome Center inside Boardwalk Hall and a welcome center on the Atlantic City Expressway. In 2011, the ACCVA was absorbed into the CRDA as part of the state takeover that created the tourism district.\nAtlantic City Special Improvement District.\nThe Atlantic City Special Improvement District (SID) was a nonprofit organization created in 1992, funded by a special assessment tax on businesses within the improvement district. It carried out various activities to improve the city's business community, including street cleaning and promotional efforts. In 2011, the SID was absorbed by the CRDA; the former SID boundaries would be expanded to the include all areas in the newly formed tourism district. Under the new structure, established by state legislation, the CRDA assumed responsibility for the staff, equipment and programs of the SID. The new SID division includes a SID committee made up of CRDA board members and an advisory council consisting of the current trustees and others.\nFire department.\nThe Atlantic City Fire Department (ACFD) provides fire protection and first responder emergency medical services to the city. The ACFD operates out of six fire stations, located throughout the city in one battalion, under the command of a battalion chief, who in-turn reports to an on-duty Deputy Chief, or Tour Commander each shift.\nPolice department.\nThe city is protected by the Atlantic City Police Department, which handles 150,000 calls per year. The Chief of Police is James A. Sarkos.\nEducation.\nThe Atlantic City School District serves students in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grades. As of the 2020\u201321 school year, the district, consisting of 11 schools, had an enrollment of 6,553 students and 617.3 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student\u2013teacher ratio of 10.6:1. Schools in the district (with 2020\u201321 enrollment data from the National Center for Education Statistics) are \nVenice Park School (36 students in PreK), \nBrighton Avenue School (315 students; in grades PreK-5), \nChelsea Heights School (332; PreK-8), \nDr. Martin Luther King Jr. School Complex (543; PreK-8), \nNew York Avenue School (548; PreK-8), \nPennsylvania Avenue School (549; PreK-8), \nRichmond Avenue School (615; PreK-8), \nSovereign Avenue School (696; PreK-8),\nTexas Avenue School (499; K-8), \nUptown School Complex (536; PreK-8) and \nAtlantic City High School (1,771; 9\u201312). Pennsylvania Avenue School opened for the 2012\u201313 school year, with most students shifting from New Jersey Avenue School, which had been one of the district's oldest and most rundown schools.\nStudents from Brigantine, Longport, Margate City and Ventnor City attend Atlantic City High School as part of sending/receiving relationships with the respective school districts.\nCity public school students are also eligible to attend the Atlantic County Institute of Technology in the Mays Landing section of Hamilton Township or the Charter-Tech High School for the Performing Arts, located in Somers Point.\nOceanside Charter School, which offered pre-Kindergarten through eighth grade, was founded in 1999 and closed in June 2013 when its charter was not renewed by the New Jersey Department of Education.\nFounded in 1908, Our Lady Star of the Sea Regional School is a Catholic elementary school, operates under the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Camden.\nNearby college campuses include those of Atlantic Cape Community College and Stockton University, the latter of which offers classes and resources in the city such as the Carnegie Library Center, which was turned back to the control of the city in April 2022.\nMedia outlets.\nNewspapers and magazines.\n\"Former publications\":\nTelevision stations.\nAtlantic City is part of the Philadelphia television market. There are six stations licensed in the area.\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nRoads and highways.\nAs of \u00a02010[ [update]], the city had a total of of roadways, of which were maintained by the municipality, by Atlantic County, by the New Jersey Department of Transportation and by the South Jersey Transportation Authority.\nThe three roadways that enter Atlantic City are: Black Horse Pike/Harding Highway (US 322/40 via the Albany Avenue drawbridge), White Horse Pike (US 30), and the Atlantic City Expressway through the Brigantine Connector. Atlantic City is roughly south of New York City via the Garden State Parkway and southeast of Philadelphia.\nPublic transportation.\nAtlantic City is connected to other cities in several ways. NJ Transit's Atlantic City Rail Terminal at the Atlantic City Convention Center provides service from 30th Street Station in Philadelphia through several smaller South Jersey communities via the Atlantic City Line.\nOn June 20, 2006, the board of NJ Transit approved a three-year trial of express train service between New York Penn Station and the Atlantic City Rail Terminal. The line, known as ACES (Atlantic City Express Service), ran from February 2009 to March 2012. The approximate travel time was <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />2+1\u20442 hours, with a stop at Newark's Penn Station, and was part of the casinos' multimillion-dollar investments in Atlantic City. Most of the funding for the transit line was provided by Harrah's Entertainment (owners of both Harrah's Atlantic City and Caesars Atlantic City) and the Borgata.\nThe Atlantic City Bus Terminal is the home to local, intrastate and interstate bus companies including NJ Transit, OurBus and Greyhound bus lines. The Greyhound Lucky Streak Express offers service to Atlantic City from New York City, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. In addition to stopping at the Atlantic City Bus Terminal, Greyhound buses stop at various casinos in Atlantic City. Martz Trailways provides bus service to various casinos in Atlantic City from Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, and White Haven in Pennsylvania. Klein Transportation provides bus service to various casinos in Atlantic City from Shillington, Douglassville, Royersford, and Audubon in Pennsylvania.\nWithin the city, public transportation is provided by NJ Transit along 13 routes, including service between the city and the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown Manhattan on the 319 route, and service to and from Atlantic City on routes 501 (to Brigantine Beach), 502 (to Atlantic Cape Community College), 504 (to Ventnor Plaza), 505 (to Longport), 507 (to Ocean City), 508 (to the Hamilton Mall), 509 (to Ocean City), 551 (to Philadelphia), 552 (to Cape May), 553 (to Upper Deerfield Township), 554 (to the Lindenwold PATCO station) and 559 (to Lakewood Township).\nThe Atlantic City Jitney Association (ACJA) offers service on four fixed-route lines and on shuttles to and from the rail terminal.\nAirline service.\nCommercial airlines serving Atlantic City include Atlantic City International Airport, located northwest of the city in Egg Harbor Township. Many travelers also fly into Philadelphia International Airport, Trenton-Mercer Airport, or Newark Liberty International Airport, where there are wider selections of carriers from which to choose. The historic downtown Bader Field airport is now permanently closed and plans are in the works to redevelop the land.\nAtlantic City International Airport, which is served by various scheduled chartered flight company, is a focus city for Spirit Airlines\nHealthcare.\nThe AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center is a health system based in Atlantic City. Founded in 1898, it includes two hospitals; the Atlantic City Campus and the Mainland Campus in Pomona, New Jersey. It has Atlantic City's only cancer institute, heart institute, and neonatal intensive care unit.\nUtilities.\nSouth Jersey Industries provides natural gas to the city under the South Jersey Gas division. Marina Energy and its subsidiary, Energenic, a joint business venture with a long-time business partner, operate two thermal power stations in the city. The Marina Thermal Plant serves the Borgata while a second plant serves the Resorts Hotel and Casino. Another thermal plant is the Midtown Thermal Control Center on Atlantic and Ohio Avenues built by Conectiv, which opened in 1997 and provides chilled water for hotels and other facilities along the Boardwalk.\nElectrical power in Atlantic City and its immediate surrounding area is provided primarily served Atlantic City Electric, which was incorporated in 1924 and provides power from the Beesley's Point Generating Station in Upper Township and other locations.\nThe Jersey-Atlantic Wind Farm, opened in 2005, is the first onshore coastal wind farm in the United States. In October 2010, North American Offshore Wind Conference was held in the city and included tours of the facility and potential sites for further development. In February 2011, the state passed legislation permitting the construction of windmills for electricity along pre-existing piers, such as the Steel Pier. The first phase of the Atlantic Wind Connection, a planned electrical transmission backbone along the Jersey Shore was planned to be operational in 2013.\nIn popular culture.\nAtlantic City is featured prominently in films, television, and music, including:\nNotable people.\nPeople who were born in, residents of, or otherwise closely associated with Atlantic City include:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["13982431", "106211"], "permutation_1": ["106211", "13982431"], "permutation_2": ["13982431", "106211"], "permutation_3": ["106211", "13982431"]}
{"id": "2hop__208743_159106", "docs_added": {"30280111": "Sebeliau\nSebeliau is a riverside village in the Lubok Antu division of Sarawak, Malaysia. It lies approximately east-southeast of the state capital Kuching.\nSebeliau jetty is the embarkation point for tourists travelling up the Lemanak River to visit an Iban longhouse.\nNeighbouring settlements include:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3607937": "Malaysia\nCountry in Southeast Asia\nMalaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. A federal constitutional monarchy, it consists of 13 states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions: Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo's East Malaysia. Peninsular Malaysia shares a land and maritime border with Thailand and maritime borders with Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia. East Malaysia shares land borders with Brunei and Indonesia, as well as a maritime border with the Philippines and Vietnam. Kuala Lumpur is the national capital, the country's largest city, and the seat of the legislative branch of the federal government.\nPutrajaya is the federal administrative capital, which represents the seat of both the executive branch (the Cabinet, federal ministries, and federal agencies) and the judicial branch of the federal government. With a population of over 34 million, the country is the world's 42nd-most populous country. Malaysia is tropical and is one of 17 megadiverse countries; it is home to numerous endemic species. Tanjung Piai in the Malaysian state of Johor is the southernmost point of continental Eurasia.\nThe country has its origins in the Malay kingdoms, which, from the 18th century on, became subject to the British Empire, along with the British Straits Settlements protectorate. During World War II, British Malaya, along with other nearby British and American colonies, was occupied by the Empire of Japan. Following three years of occupation, Peninsular Malaysia was briefly unified as the Malayan Union in 1946 until 1948 when it was restructured as the Federation of Malaya. The country achieved independence on 31 August 1957. On 16 September 1963, independent Malaya united with the then British crown colonies of North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore to become Malaysia. In August 1965, Singapore was expelled from the federation and became a separate, independent country.\nThe country is multiethnic and multicultural, which has a significant effect on its politics. About half the population is ethnically Malay, with minorities of Chinese, Indians, and indigenous peoples. The official language is Malaysian Malay, a standard form of the Malay language. English remains an active second language. It is also home to 111 living indigenous languages. While recognising Islam as the official religion, the constitution grants freedom of religion to non-Muslims. The government is modelled on the Westminster parliamentary system, and the legal system is based on common law. The head of state is an elected monarch, chosen from among the nine state sultans every five years. The head of government is the prime minister.\nThe country's economy has traditionally been driven by its natural resources but is expanding into commerce, tourism, and medical tourism. The country has a newly industrialised market economy, which is relatively open and state-oriented. The country is a founding member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the East Asia Summit (EAS), and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and a member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the Commonwealth, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).\nEtymology.\nThe name \"Malaysia\" is a combination of the word \"Malays\" and the Latin-Greek suffix \"-ia\"/-\u03af\u03b1 which can be translated as 'land of the Malays'. Similar-sounding variants have also appeared in accounts older than the 11th century, as toponyms for areas in Sumatra or referring to a larger region around the Strait of Malacca. The Sanskrit text \"Vayu Purana\", thought to have been in existence since the first millennium CE, mentioned a land named 'Malayadvipa' which was identified by certain scholars as the modern Malay Peninsula. Other notable accounts are by Ptolemy's 2nd-century \"Geographia\" that used the name \"Malayu Kulon\" for the west coast of Golden Chersonese, and the 7th-century Yijing's account of \"Malayu\".\nAt some point, the Melayu Kingdom took its name from the \"Sungai Melayu\". \"Melayu\" then became associated with Srivijaya, and remained associated with various parts of Sumatra, especially Palembang, where the founder of the Malacca Sultanate is thought to have come from. It is only thought to have developed into an ethnonym as Malacca became a regional power in the 15th century. Islamisation established an ethnoreligious identity in Malacca, with the term \"Melayu\" beginning to appear as interchangeable with \"Melakans\". It may have specifically referred to local Malay speakers who were loyal to the Malaccan Sultan. The initial Portuguese use of reflected this, referring only to the ruling people of Malacca. The prominence of traders from Malacca led \"Melayu\" to be associated with Muslim traders, and from there became associated with the wider cultural and linguistic group. Malacca and later Johor claimed they were the centre of Malay culture, a position supported by the British which led to the term \"Malay\" becoming more usually linked to the Malay peninsula rather than Sumatra.\nBefore the onset of European colonisation, the Malay Peninsula was known natively as \"Tanah Melayu\" ('Malay Land'). Under a racial classification created by a German scholar Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, the natives of maritime Southeast Asia were grouped into a single category, the Malay race. Following the expedition of French navigator Jules Dumont d'Urville to Oceania in 1826, he later proposed the terms of \"Malaysia\", \"Micronesia\" and \"Melanesia\" to the \"Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 de G\u00e9ographie\" in 1831, distinguishing these Pacific cultures and island groups from the existing term \"Polynesia\". Dumont d'Urville described Malaysia as \"an area commonly known as the East Indies\". In 1850, the English ethnologist George Samuel Windsor Earl, writing in the \"Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia\", proposed naming the islands of Southeast Asia as \"Melayunesia\" or \"Indunesia\", favouring the former. The name Malaysia gained some use to label what is now the Malay Archipelago. In modern terminology, \"Malay\" remains the name of an ethnoreligious group of Austronesian people predominantly inhabiting the Malay Peninsula and portions of the adjacent islands of Southeast Asia, including the east coast of Sumatra, the coast of Borneo, and smaller islands that lie between these areas.\nThe state that gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1957 took the name \"the Federation of Malaya\", chosen in preference to other potential names such as \"Malaysia\" and \"Langkasuka\", after the historic kingdom located at the upper section of the Malay Peninsula in the first millennium CE. Nonetheless, the name \"Malaysia\" was adopted in 1963 when the existing states of the Federation of Malaya, plus Singapore, North Borneo and Sarawak formed a new federation. One theory posits the name was chosen so that \"si\" represented the inclusion of Singapore, North Borneo, and Sarawak to Malaya in 1963. Politicians in the Philippines contemplated renaming their state Malaysia before the modern country took the name.\nHistory.\nEvidence of modern human habitation in Malaysia dates back 40,000\u00a0years. In the Malay Peninsula, the first inhabitants are thought to be Negritos. Areas of Malaysia participated in the Maritime Jade Road between 2000 BC to 1000 AD. Traders and settlers from India and China arrived as early as the first century AD, establishing trading ports and coastal towns in the second and third centuries. Their presence resulted in strong Indian and Chinese influences on the local cultures, and the people of the Malay Peninsula adopted the religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. Sanskrit inscriptions appear as early as the fourth or fifth century. The Kingdom of Langkasuka arose around the second century in the northern area of the Malay Peninsula, lasting until about the 15th century. Between the 7th and 13th centuries, much of the southern Malay Peninsula was part of the maritime Srivijayan empire. By the 13th and the 14th century, the Majapahit empire had successfully wrested control over most of the peninsula and the Malay Archipelago from Srivijaya. In the early 15th century, Parameswara, a runaway king of the former Kingdom of Singapura linked to the old Srivijayan court, founded the Malacca Sultanate. The spread of Islam increased following Parameswara's conversion to that religion. Malacca was an important commercial centre during this time, attracting trade from around the region.\nIn 1511, Malacca was conquered by Portugal, after which it was taken by the Dutch in 1641. In 1786, the British Empire established a presence in Malaya, when the Sultan of Kedah leased Penang Island to the British East India Company. The British obtained the town of Singapore in 1819, and in 1824 took control of Malacca following the Anglo-Dutch Treaty. By 1826, the British directly controlled Penang, Malacca, Singapore, and the island of Labuan, which they established as the crown colony of the Straits Settlements. By the 20th century, the states of Pahang, Selangor, Perak, and Negeri Sembilan, known together as the Federated Malay States, had British residents appointed to advise the Malay rulers, to whom the rulers were bound to defer by treaty. The remaining five states on the peninsula, known as the Unfederated Malay States, while not directly under British rule, also accepted British advisers around the turn of the 20th century. Development on the peninsula and Borneo were generally separate until the 19th century. Under British rule the immigration of Chinese and Indians to serve as labourers was encouraged. The area that is now Sabah came under British control as North Borneo when both the Sultan of Brunei and the Sultan of Sulu transferred their respective territorial rights of ownership, between 1877 and 1878. In 1842, Sarawak was ceded by the Sultan of Brunei to James Brooke, whose successors ruled as the White Rajahs over an independent kingdom until 1946, when it became a crown colony.\nIn the Second World War, the Japanese Army invaded and occupied Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore for over three years. During this time, ethnic tensions were raised and nationalism grew. Popular support for independence increased after Malaya was reconquered by Allied forces. Post-war British plans to unite the administration of Malaya under a single crown colony called the Malayan Union met with strong opposition from the Malays, who opposed the weakening of the Malay rulers and the granting of citizenship to the ethnic Chinese. The Malayan Union, established in 1946, and consisting of all the British possessions in the Malay Peninsula except for Singapore, was quickly dissolved and replaced on 1 February 1948 by the Federation of Malaya, which restored the autonomy of the rulers of the Malay states under British protection.\nDuring this time, the mostly ethnically Chinese rebels under the leadership of the Malayan Communist Party launched guerrilla operations designed to force the British out of Malaya. The Malayan Emergency (1948\u20131960) involved a long anti-insurgency campaign by Commonwealth troops in Malaya. On 31 August 1957, Malaya became an independent member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Subsequently, a comprehensive plan was devised to unite Malaya with the crown colonies of North Borneo (known as Sabah upon joining), Sarawak, and Singapore. The envisioned federation was originally intended to take place on 31 August 1963, to coincide with the commemoration of Malayan independence. However, due to the necessity of conducting a survey on the level of support for the federation in Sabah and Sarawak by the United Nations, as requested by opponents of the federation such as Indonesia's Sukarno and the Sarawak United Peoples' Party, the date of the federation was postponed until 16 September 1963.\nThe federation brought heightened tensions including a conflict with Indonesia as well as continual conflicts against the Communists in Borneo and the Malay Peninsula, which escalated to the Sarawak Communist Insurgency and Second Malayan Emergency together with several other issues such as the cross-border attacks into Sabah by Moro pirates from the southern islands of the Philippines, Singapore being expelled from the Federation in 1965, and racial strife. This strife culminated in the 13 May race riots in 1969. After the riots, the controversial New Economic Policy was launched by Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak, trying to increase the share of the economy held by the \"bumiputera\". Under Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad there was a period of rapid economic growth and urbanization beginning in the 1980s. The economy shifted from being agriculturally based to one based on manufacturing and industry. Numerous mega-projects were completed, such as the Petronas Towers, the North\u2013South Expressway, the Multimedia Super Corridor, and the new federal administrative capital of Putrajaya.\nIn the late 1990s, the Asian financial crisis impacted the country, nearly causing their currency, stock, and property markets to crash; however, they later recovered. The 1MDB scandal was a major global corruption scandal that implicated then-Prime Minister Najib Razak in 2015. The scandal contributed to the first change in the ruling political party since independence in the 2018 general election. In the 2020s, the country was gripped by a political crisis that coincided with health and economic crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This was then followed by an earlier general election in November 2022, which resulted in the first hung parliament in the nation's history. On 24 November 2022, Anwar Ibrahim was sworn in as the 10th Prime Minister of Malaysia, leading a grand coalition government.\nGovernment and politics.\nMalaysia is a federal constitutional elective monarchy and the only federal country in Southeast Asia. The system of government is closely modelled on the Westminster parliamentary system, a legacy of British rule. The head of state is the King, whose official title is the Yang\u00a0di-Pertuan\u00a0Agong. The King is elected to a five-year term by and from among the nine hereditary rulers of the Malay states. The other four states, which have titular Governors, do not participate in the selection. By informal agreement the position is rotated among the nine, and has been held by Ibrahim Iskandar of Johor since 31 January 2024. The King's role has been largely ceremonial since changes to the constitution in 1994, picking ministers and members of the upper house.\nLegislative power is divided between federal and state legislatures. The bicameral federal parliament consists of the lower house, the House of Representatives and the upper house, the Senate. The 222-member House of Representatives is elected for a maximum term of five years from single-member constituencies. All 70 senators sit for three-year terms; 26 are elected by the 13 state assemblies, and the remaining 44 are appointed by the King upon the Prime Minister's recommendation. The parliament follows a multi-party system and the government is elected through a first-past-the-post system. Parliamentary elections are held at least once every five years. Before 2018, only registered voters aged 21 and above could vote for the members of the House of Representatives and, in most of the states, for the state legislative chamber. Voting is not mandatory. In July 2019, a bill to lower the voting age to 18 years old was officially passed.\nExecutive power is vested in the Cabinet, led by the Prime Minister. The prime minister must be a member of the House of Representatives, who in the opinion of His Majesty the King, commands the support of a majority of members. The Cabinet is chosen from members of both houses of Parliament. The Prime Minister is both the head of cabinet and the head of government. As a result of the 2018 general election Malaysia was governed by the Pakatan Harapan (PH) political alliance, although Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad resigned amid a political crisis in 2020. In March 2020, the Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition formed under Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, before Muhyiddin lost majority support and was replaced by deputy Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob, a veteran politician from the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), in August 2021. As a result of the 2022 Malaysian general election, a hung parliament was elected. Anwar Ibrahim of the PH coalition was appointed as the new Prime Minister to lead the coalition government of PH, Barisan Nasional, Gabungan Parti Sarawak, Gabungan Rakyat Sabah and several other political parties and independents. Meanwhile, PN, the only political coalition not in the coalition government became the Opposition.\nMalaysia's legal system is based on common law. Although the judiciary is theoretically independent, its independence has been called into question and the appointment of judges lacks accountability and transparency. The highest court in the judicial system is the Federal Court, followed by the Court of Appeal and two high courts, one for Peninsular Malaysia and one for East Malaysia. Malaysia also has a special court to hear cases brought by or against royalty.\nRace is a significant force in politics. Affirmative actions such as the New Economic Policy and the National Development Policy which superseded it, were implemented to advance the standing of the \"bumiputera\", consisting of Malays and the indigenous tribes who are considered the original inhabitants of Malaysia, over non-\"bumiputera\" such as Malaysian Chinese and Malaysian Indians. These policies provide preferential treatment to \"bumiputera\" in employment, education, scholarships, business, and access to cheaper housing and assisted savings. However, it has generated greater interethnic resentment. There is ongoing debate over whether the laws and society of Malaysia should reflect Islamism or secularism. Islamic criminal laws passed by the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party with the support of UMNO state assemblymen in the state legislative assembly of Kelantan have been unenforced by the federal government on the basis that criminal laws are the responsibility of the federal government.\nAfter UMNO lost power at the 2018 Malaysian general election, Malaysia's ranking increased by 9 places in the 2019 Democracy Index to 43rd compared to the previous year and is classified as a 'flawed democracy'. Malaysia's ranking in the 2020 Press Freedom Index increased by 22 places to 101st compared to the previous year, making it one of two countries in Southeast Asia without a 'Difficult situation' or 'Very Serious situation' with regards to press freedom. However, it fell 18 places the following year due to the policies of the PN government.\nMalaysia is marked at 48th and 62nd place according to the 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index, indicating above-average levels of corruption. Freedom House noted Malaysia as \"partly free\" in its 2018 survey. A lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice alleged that at least $3.5 billion involving former prime minister Najib Razak had been stolen from Malaysia's 1MDB state-owned fund, known as the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal.\nAdministrative divisions.\nMalaysia is a federation of 13 states and three federal territories. Out of these, eleven states and two federal territories are in Peninsular Malaysia, whereas the other two states and one federal territory comprise East Malaysia.\nThe country has three tiers of government \u2013 federal, state and local. Governance of the states is divided between the federal and the state governments, with different powers reserved for each, and the federal government has direct administration of the federal territories. Each state has a unicameral State Legislative Assembly whose members are elected from single-member constituencies. State governments are led by Chief Ministers, who are state assembly members from the majority party in the assembly. In each of the states with a hereditary ruler, the Chief Minister is normally required to be a Malay, appointed by the ruler upon the recommendation of the Prime Minister. Until 2018, state elections were held concurrently with the general election by convention, except for those in Sarawak. Following the 2020\u20132022 political crisis, only Pahang, Perak and Perlis opted to conduct their state elections simultaneously with the general elections.\nPositioned below the federal and state governments, local governments represent the lowest tier of governance in Malaysia. As of 2024[ [update]], Malaysia is divided between 19 cities, 40 municipalities, 91 district-level councils, and four statutory agencies. While the federal constitution assigns local authorities to the exclusive jurisdiction of state governments, in practice, the federal Ministry of Housing and Local Government oversees the regulation of local laws and policies. Mayors (or presidents for municipal and district councils) and councillors are appointed by the respective state governments, or in the case of the federal territories, by the federal government.\nFederal laws assign land matters, including the delineation of districts, to the purview of state governments. Except Perlis and the federal territories, each state is divided into districts, which are further subdivided into mukims. In Sabah and Sarawak, districts are grouped into divisions. In contrast to local governments that manage municipal administration and infrastructure development, districts are solely utilised for land taxation.\nThe 13 states are based on historical Malay kingdoms, and 9 of the 11 Peninsular states, known as the Malay states, retain their royal families. The King is elected by and from the nine rulers to serve a five-year term. This King appoints governors serving a four-year term for the states without monarchies, after consultations with the chief minister of that state. Each state has its written constitution. Sabah and Sarawak have considerably more autonomy than the other states, most notably having separate immigration policies and controls, and unique residency status. Federal intervention in state affairs, lack of development, and disputes over oil royalties have occasionally led to statements about secession from leaders in several states such as Penang, Johor, Kelantan, Sabah and Sarawak, although these have not been followed up and no serious independence movements exist.\nA list of thirteen states and each state capital (in parentheses):\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nForeign relations and military.\nA founding member of ASEAN and OIC, the country participates in many international organisations such as the United Nations (U.N.), APEC, the D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation, and NAM. It has chaired ASEAN, OIC, and NAM in the past. A former British colony, it is also a member of the Commonwealth. Kuala Lumpur was the site of the first EAS in 2005.\nMalaysia's foreign policy is officially based on the principle of neutrality and maintaining peaceful relations with all countries, regardless of their political system. The government attaches a high priority to the security and stability of Southeast Asia, and seeks to further develop relations with other countries in the region. Historically the government has tried to portray Malaysia as a progressive Islamic nation while strengthening relations with other Islamic states. A strong tenet of Malaysia's policy is national sovereignty and right of a country to control its domestic affairs. Malaysia signed the U.N. treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.\nThe Spratly Islands are disputed by many states in the area, and a large portion of the South China Sea is claimed by China. Unlike its neighbours of Vietnam and the Philippines, Malaysia historically avoided conflicts with China. However, after the encroachment of Chinese ships in Malaysian territorial waters, and breach of airspace by their military aircraft, Malaysia has become active in condemning China. Brunei and Malaysia in 2009 announced an end to claims of each other's land, and committed to resolve issues related to their maritime borders. The Philippines has a dormant claim to the eastern part of Sabah. Singapore's land reclamation has caused tensions, and minor maritime and land border disputes exist with Indonesia.\nThe Malaysian Armed Forces has three branches: the Malaysian Army, Royal Malaysian Navy and the Royal Malaysian Air Force. There is no conscription, and the required age for voluntary military service is 18. The military uses 1.5% of the country's GDP, and employs 1.23% of Malaysia's manpower. Malaysian peacekeeping forces of MALBATT have contributed to many U.N. peacekeeping missions, such as in Congo, Iran\u2013Iraq, Namibia, Cambodia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Somalia, Kosovo, East Timor, and Lebanon.\nThe Five Power Defence Arrangements is a regional security initiative that has been in place for almost 40 years. It involves joint military exercises held among Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Joint exercises and war games have also been held with Brunei, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States. Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam have agreed to host joint security force exercises to secure their maritime border and tackle issues such as illegal immigration, piracy, and smuggling. Previously there were fears that extremist militant activities in the Muslim areas of the southern Philippines and southern Thailand would spill over into Malaysia. Because of this, Malaysia began to increase its border security.\nHuman rights.\nHomosexuality is illegal in Malaysia, and authorities have imposed punishments such as caning and imprisonment. Human trafficking and sex trafficking in Malaysia are significant problems. There have also been cases of vigilante executions and beatings against LGBT individuals in Malaysia. The illegality of homosexuality in Malaysia has also been the forefront of Anwar Ibrahim's sodomy trials, which Anwar has called politically motivated, a characterization supported by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, along with Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch.\nThe death penalty is in use for serious crimes such as murder, terrorism, drug trafficking, and kidnapping, but in June 2022, Malaysian law minister Wan Junaidi pledged to abolish capital punishment and replace it with other punishments at the discretion of the court.\nGeography.\nMalaysia is the 66th largest country by total land area, with a total area of . It has land borders with Thailand in West Malaysia, and Indonesia and Brunei in East Malaysia. It is linked to Singapore by a narrow causeway and a bridge. The country also has maritime boundaries with Vietnam and the Philippines. The land borders are defined in large part by geological features such as the Perlis River, the Golok River and the Pagalayan Canal, whilst some of the maritime boundaries are the subject of ongoing contention. Brunei forms what is almost an enclave in Malaysia, with the state of Sarawak dividing it into two parts. Malaysia is the only country with territory on both the Asian mainland and the Malay archipelago. The Strait of Malacca, lying between Sumatra and Peninsular Malaysia, is one of the most important thoroughfares in global commerce, carrying 40 percent of the world's trade.\nThe two parts of Malaysia, separated from each other by the South China Sea, share a largely similar landscape in that both Peninsular and East Malaysia feature coastal plains rising to hills and mountains. Peninsular Malaysia, containing 40 per cent of Malaysia's land area, extends from north to south, and its maximum width is . It is divided between its east and west coasts by the Titiwangsa Mountains, rising to a peak elevation of at Mount Korbu, part of a series of mountain ranges running down the centre of the peninsula. These mountains are heavily forested, and mainly composed of granite and other igneous rocks. Much of it has been eroded, creating a karst landscape. The range is the origin of some of Peninsular Malaysia's river systems. The coastal plains surrounding the peninsula reach a maximum width of , and the peninsula's coastline is nearly long, although harbours are only available on the western side.\nEast Malaysia, on the island of Borneo, has a coastline of . It is divided between coastal regions, hills and valleys, and a mountainous interior. The Crocker Range extends northwards from Sarawak, dividing the state of Sabah. It is the location of the high Mount Kinabalu, the tallest mountain in Malaysia. Mount Kinabalu is located in the Kinabalu National Park, which is protected as one of the four UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Malaysia. The highest mountain ranges form the border between Malaysia and Indonesia. Sarawak contains the Mulu Caves, the largest cave system in the world, in the Gunung Mulu National Park which is also a World Heritage Site. The largest river in Malaysia is the Rajang.\nAround these two halves of Malaysia are numerous islands, the largest of which is Banggi. The local climate is equatorial and characterised by the annual southwest (April to October) and northeast (October to February) monsoons. The temperature is moderated by the presence of the surrounding oceans. Humidity is usually high, and the average annual rainfall is . The climates of the Peninsula and the East differ, as the climate on the peninsula is directly affected by wind from the mainland, as opposed to the more maritime weather of the East. Local climates can be divided into three regions, highland, lowland, and coastal. Climate change will cause sea level rise and increased rainfall, increasing flood risks and leading to droughts.\nBiodiversity and conservation.\nMalaysia signed the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity on 12 June 1993, and became a party to the convention on 24 June 1994. It has subsequently produced a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, which was received by the convention on 16 April 1998. The country is megadiverse with a high number of species and high levels of endemism. It is estimated to contain 20\u00a0per\u00a0cent of the world's animal species. High levels of endemism are found on the diverse forests of Borneo's mountains, as species are isolated from each other by lowland forest.\nThere are about 210 mammal species in the country. Over 620 species of birds have been recorded in Peninsular Malaysia, with many endemic to the mountains there. A high number of endemic bird species are also found in Malaysian Borneo. 250 reptile species have been recorded in the country, with about 150 species of snakes and 80 species of lizards. There are about 150 species of frogs, and thousands of insect species. The Exclusive economic zone of Malaysia is and 1.5 times larger than its land area. It is mainly in the South China Sea. Some of its waters are in the Coral Triangle, a biodiversity hotspot. The waters around Sipadan island are the most biodiverse in the world. Bordering East Malaysia, the Sulu Sea is a biodiversity hotspot, with around 600 coral species and 1200 fish species. The unique biodiversity of Malaysian Caves always attracts lovers of ecotourism from all over the world.\nNearly 4,000 species of fungi, including lichen-forming species have been recorded from Malaysia. Of the two fungal groups with the largest number of species in Malaysia, the Ascomycota and their asexual states have been surveyed in some habitats (decaying wood, marine, and freshwater ecosystems, as parasites of some plants, and as agents of biodegradation), but have not been or have been only poorly surveyed in other habitats (as endobionts, in soils, on dung, as human and animal pathogens); the Basidiomycota are only partly surveyed: bracket fungi, and mushrooms and toadstools have been studied, but Malaysian rust and smut fungi remain very poorly known. Without a doubt, many more fungal species in Malaysia are yet to be recorded, and it is likely that many of those, when found, will be new to science.\nAbout two\u00a0thirds of Malaysia was covered in forest as of 2007, with some forests believed to be 130\u00a0million years old. The forests are dominated by dipterocarps. Lowland forest covers areas below , and formerly East Malaysia was covered in such rainforest, which is supported by its hot wet climate. There are around 14,500 species of flowering plants and trees. Besides rainforests, there are over of mangroves in Malaysia, and a large amount of peat forest. At higher altitudes, oaks, chestnuts, and rhododendrons replace dipterocarps. There are an estimated 8,500 species of vascular plants in Peninsular Malaysia, with another 15,000 in the East. The forests of East Malaysia are estimated to be the habitat of around 2,000 tree species, and are one of the most biodiverse areas in the world, with 240 different species of trees every hectare. These forests host many members of the Rafflesia genus, the largest flowers in the world, with a maximum diameter of .\nLogging, along with cultivation practices, has devastated tree cover, causing severe environmental degradation in the country. Over 80\u00a0per\u00a0cent of Sarawak's rainforest has been logged. Floods in East Malaysia have been worsened by the loss of trees, and over 60\u00a0per\u00a0cent of the peninsula's forests have been cleared. With current rates of deforestation, mainly for the palm oil industry, the forests are predicted to be extinct by 2020. Deforestation is a major problem for animals, fungi and plants, having caused species such as \"Begonia eiromischa\" to go extinct. Most remaining forest is found inside reserves and national parks. Habitat destruction has proved a threat for marine life. Illegal fishing is another major threat, with fishing methods such as dynamite fishing and poisoning depleting marine ecosystems. Leatherback turtle numbers have dropped 98\u00a0per\u00a0cent since the 1950s. Hunting has also been an issue for some animals, with overconsumption and the use of animal parts for profit endangering many animals, from marine life to tigers. Marine life is also detrimentally affected by uncontrolled tourism.\nThe Malaysian government aims to balance economic growth with environmental protection, but has been accused of favouring big business over the environment. Some state governments are now trying to counter the environmental impact and pollution created by deforestation; and the federal government is trying to cut logging by 10\u00a0per\u00a0cent each year. A total of 28 national parks have been established, 23 in East Malaysia and five in the peninsula. Tourism has been limited in biodiverse areas such as Sipadan island. Wildlife trafficking is a large issue, and the Malaysian government has held talks with the governments of Brunei and Indonesia to standardise anti-trafficking laws.\nEconomy.\nMalaysia is a relatively open state-oriented and newly industrialised market economy. It has the world's 36th-largest economy by nominal GDP and the 31st-largest by PPP. In 2017, the large service sector contributed to 53.6% of total GDP, the industrial sector 37.6%, and the small agricultural sector roughly 8.8%. Malaysia has a low official unemployment rate of 3.4% as of 2024. Its foreign exchange reserves are the world's 24th-largest. It has a labour force of about 15 million, which is the world's 34th-largest. Malaysia's large automotive industry ranks as the world's 22nd-largest by production.\nMalaysia is the world's 23rd-largest exporter and 25th-largest importer. However, economic inequalities exist between different ethnic groups. The Chinese make up about one-quarter of the population, but account for 70 per cent of the country's market capitalisation. Chinese businesses in Malaysia are part of the larger bamboo network, a network of overseas Chinese businesses in the Southeast Asian market sharing common family and cultural ties.\nInternational trade, facilitated by the shipping route in adjacent Strait of Malacca, and manufacturing are the key sectors. Malaysia is an exporter of natural and agricultural resources, and petroleum is a major export. Malaysia has once been the largest producer of tin, rubber and palm oil in the world. Manufacturing has a large influence in the country's economy, although Malaysia's economic structure has been moving away from it. Malaysia remains one of the world's largest producers of palm oil.\nTourism is the third-largest contributor to Malaysia's GDP, after the manufacturing and commodities sectors. In 2019, the sector contributed about 15.9 percent to the total GDP. According to the World Tourism Organization, Malaysia was the fourteenth-most visited country in the world, and the fourth-most visited country in Asia in 2019, with over 26.1 million visits. Malaysia was ranked 38th in the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report 2019. Its international tourism receipts in 2019 amounted to $19.8 billion.\nThe country has developed into a centre of Islamic banking and has the highest number of female workers in that industry. Knowledge-based services are also expanding. In 2020, Malaysia exported high-tech products worth $92.1 billion, the second-highest in ASEAN, after Singapore. Malaysia was ranked 33rd in the Global Innovation Index in 2024, and 32nd in the Global Competitiveness Report in 2022.\nInfrastructure.\nRailway transport in Malaysia is state-run, and spans some . As of 2016[ [update]], Malaysia has the world's 26th-largest road network, with some of roads. Malaysia's inland waterways are the world's 22nd-longest, and total . Among Malaysia's 114 airports, among which the busiest is Kuala Lumpur International Airport located south of Kuala Lumpur in Sepang District, which is also the twelfth-busiest airport in Asia. Among the 7 federal ports, the major one is Port Klang, which is the thirteenth-busiest container port. Malaysia's flag carrier is Malaysia Airlines, providing international and domestic air services.\nMalaysia's telecommunications network is second only to Singapore's in Southeast Asia, with 4.7\u00a0million fixed-line subscribers and more than 30\u00a0million cellular subscribers. There are 200 industrial parks along with specialised parks such as Technology Park Malaysia and Kulim Hi-Tech Park. Fresh water is available to over 95% of the population, with ground water accounting for 90% of the freshwater resources. Although rural areas have been the focus of great development, they still lag behind areas such as the West Coast of Peninsular Malaysia. The telecommunication network, although strong in urban areas, is less available to the rural population.\nMalaysia's energy infrastructure sector is largely dominated by Tenaga Nasional, the largest electric utility company in Southeast Asia. Customers in Peninsular Malaysia are connected to electricity through the National Grid. The other two electric utility companies in the country are Sarawak Energy and Sabah Electricity. In 2013, Malaysia's total power generation capacity was over 29,728 megawatts. Total electricity generation was 140,985.01 GWh and total electricity consumption was 116,087.51 GWh. Energy production in Malaysia is largely based on oil and natural gas, owing to Malaysia's oil and natural gas reserves, which are the fourth largest in the Asia-Pacific region.\nDemographics.\nAccording to the Malaysian Department of Statistics, the country's population was 32,447,385 in 2020, making it the 42nd most populated country. According to a 2012 estimate, the population is increasing by 1.54 percent per year. Malaysia has an average population density of 96 people per km2, ranking it 116th in the world for population density. People within the 15\u201364 age group constitute 69.5 percent of the total population; the 0\u201314 age group corresponds to 24.5 percent; while senior citizens aged 65 years or older make up 6.0 percent. In 1960, when the first official census was recorded in Malaysia, the population was 8.11\u00a0million. 91.8 percent of the population are Malaysian citizens.\nMalaysian citizens are divided along local ethnic lines, with 69.7 percent considered \"bumiputera\". The largest group of bumiputera are Malays, who are defined in the constitution as Muslims who practise Malay customs and culture. They play a dominant role politically. Bumiputera status is also accorded to the non-Malay indigenous groups of Sabah and Sarawak: which includes Dayaks (Iban, Bidayuh, Orang Ulu), Kadazan-Dusun, Melanau, Bajau and others. Non-Malay bumiputeras make up more than half of Sarawak's population and over two-thirds of Sabah's population. There are also indigenous or aboriginal groups in much smaller numbers on the peninsular, where they are collectively known as the Orang Asli. Laws over who gets bumiputera status vary between states.\nThere are also two other non-Bumiputera local ethnic groups. 22.8 percent of the population are Malaysian Chinese, while 6.8 percent are Malaysian Indian. The local Chinese have historically been more dominant in the business community. Local Indians are mostly of Tamil descent. Malaysian citizenship is not automatically granted to those born in Malaysia, but is granted to a child born of two Malaysian parents outside Malaysia. Dual citizenship is not permitted. Citizenship in the states of Sabah and Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo are distinct from citizenship in Peninsular Malaysia for immigration purposes. Every citizen is issued a biometric smart chip identity card known as \"MyKad\" at the age of 12 and must carry the card at all times.\nThe population is concentrated on Peninsular Malaysia, where 20\u00a0million out of approximately 28\u00a0million Malaysians live. 70 per cent of the population is urban. Due to the rise in labour-intensive industries, the country is estimated to have over 3\u00a0million migrant workers; about 10 per cent of the population. Sabah-based NGOs estimate that out of the 3\u00a0million that make up the population of Sabah, 2\u00a0million are illegal immigrants. Malaysia hosts a population of refugees and asylum seekers numbering approximately 171,500. Of this population, approximately 79,000 are from Burma, 72,400 from the Philippines, and 17,700 from Indonesia. Malaysian officials are reported to have turned deportees directly over to human smugglers in 2007, and Malaysia employs RELA, a volunteer militia with a history of controversies, to enforce its immigration law.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nReligion.\nThe constitution grants freedom of religion, while establishing Islam as the \"religion of the Federation\". According to the Population and Housing Census 2020 figures, ethnicity and religious beliefs correlate highly. Approximately 63.5% of the population practise Islam, 18.7% practise Buddhism, 9.1% Christianity, 6.1% Hinduism and 1.3% practise Confucianism, Taoism and other traditional Chinese religions. 2.7% declared no religion or practised other religions or did not provide any information. The states of Sarawak, Penang and the federal territory of Kuala Lumpur have non-Muslim majorities.\nSunni Islam of the Shafi'i school of jurisprudence is the dominant branch of Islam in Malaysia, while 18% are nondenominational Muslims. The Malaysian constitution strictly defines what makes a \"Malay\", defining Malays as those who are Muslim, speak Malay regularly, practise Malay customs, and lived in or have ancestors from Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore. Statistics from the 2010 Census indicate that 83.6% of the Chinese population identify as Buddhist, with significant numbers of adherents following Taoism (3.4%) and Christianity (11.1%), along with small Muslim populations in areas like Penang. The majority of the Indian population follows Hinduism (86.2%), with a significant minority identifying as Christians (6.0%) or Muslims (4.1%). Christianity is the predominant religion of the non-Malay \"bumiputera\" community (46.5%), while 40.4% identify as Muslims.\nMuslims are obliged to follow the decisions of Syariah Courts (i.e. Shariah courts) in matters concerning their religion. The Islamic judges are expected to follow the Shafi'i legal school of Islam, which is the main \"madh'hab\" of Malaysia. The jurisdiction of Syariah courts is limited to Muslims in matters such as marriage, inheritance, divorce, apostasy, religious conversion, custody and limited Islamic criminal law. No other criminal or civil offences are under the jurisdiction of the Syariah courts, which have a similar hierarchy to the civil courts. The civil courts do not hear matters related to Islamic practices.\nLanguages.\nThe official and national language of Malaysia is Malaysian Malay, a standardised form of the Malay language. The previous official terminology was (lit.\u2009'Malaysian language') but now government policy uses (Malay language) to refer to the official language and both terms remain in use. The National Language Act 1967 specifies the Latin (Rumi) script as the official script of the national language, but does not prohibit the use of the traditional Jawi script.\nEnglish remains an active second language, with its use allowed for some official purposes under the National Language Act of 1967. In Sarawak, English is an official state language alongside Malay. Historically, English was the de facto administrative language; Malay became predominant after the 1969 race riots (13 May incident). Malaysian English, also known as Malaysian Standard English, is a form of English derived from British English. Malaysian English is widely used in business, along with Manglish, which is a colloquial form of English with heavy Malay, Chinese, and Tamil influences. The government discourages the use of non-standard Malay but has no power to issue compounds or fines to those who use what is perceived as improper Malay on their advertisements.\nMany other languages are used in Malaysia, which contains speakers of 137 living languages. Peninsular Malaysia contains speakers of 41 of these languages. The native tribes of East Malaysia have their own languages which are related to, but easily distinguishable from, Malay. Iban is the main tribal language in Sarawak while Dusunic and Kadazan languages are spoken by the natives in Sabah. Chinese Malaysians predominantly speak Chinese dialects from the southern part of China. The more common Chinese varieties in the country are Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, and so on. The Tamil language is used predominantly by the majority of Malaysian Indians. A small number of Malaysians have European ancestry and speak creole languages, such as the Portuguese-based Malaccan Creoles, and the Spanish-based Chavacano language.\nHealth.\nMalaysia operates an efficient and widespread two-tier healthcare system, consisting of a universal healthcare system and a co-existing private healthcare system; provided by highly subsidized healthcare through its extensive network of public hospitals and clinics. The Ministry of Health is the main provider of healthcare services to the country's population. Malaysia's healthcare system is considered to be among the most developed in Asia, which contributes to its thriving medical tourism industry.\nMalaysia spent 3.83% of its GDP on healthcare in 2019. In 2020, the overall life expectancy in Malaysia at birth was 76 years (74 years for males and 78 years for females), and it had an infant mortality rate of 7 deaths per 1000 births. Malaysia had a total fertility rate of 2.0 in 2020, which is just below the replacement level of 2.1. In 2020, the country's crude birth rate was 16 per 1000 people, and the crude death rate was 5 per 1000 people.\nIn 2021, the principal cause of death among Malaysian adults was coronary artery disease, representing 17% of the medically certified deaths in 2020\u2014being followed by pneumonia; which accounted for 11% of the deaths. Transport accidents are considered a major health hazard, as Malaysia, relative to its population, has one of the highest traffic fatality rates in the world. Smoking is also considered a major health issue across the country.\nEducation.\nThe education system of Malaysia features a non-compulsory kindergarten education followed by six years of compulsory primary education and five years of optional secondary education. Schools in the primary education system are divided into two categories: national primary schools, which teach in Malay (i.e.:Sekolah Kebangsaan Sungai Binjai, SK Bukit Tiu), and vernacular schools, which teach in Chinese or Tamil (i.e.:SJK(C) Pin Hwa 2, SJK(T) Bandar Mentakab). Secondary education (i.e.:SMK Sura, Kajang High School) is conducted for five years. In the final year of secondary education, students sit for the Malaysian Certificate of Education examination. Since the introduction of the matriculation programme in 1999, students who completed the 12-month programme in matriculation colleges can enroll in local universities. However, in the matriculation system, only 10 percent of places are open to non-\"bumiputera\" students.\nCulture.\nMalaysia has a multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multilingual society. Substantial influence exists from Chinese and Indian culture, dating back to when foreign trade began. Other cultural influences include the Persian, Arabic, and British cultures. Due to the structure of the government, coupled with the social contract theory, there has been minimal cultural assimilation of ethnic minorities. Some cultural disputes exist between Malaysia and neighbouring countries, notably Indonesia.\nIn 1971, the government created a \"National Cultural Policy\", defining Malaysian culture. It stated that Malaysian culture must be based on the culture of the indigenous peoples of Malaysia, that it may incorporate suitable elements from other cultures, and that Islam must play a part in it. It also promoted the Malay language above others. This government intervention into culture has caused resentment among non-Malays who feel their cultural freedom was lessened. Both Chinese and Indian associations have submitted memorandums to the government, accusing it of formulating an undemocratic culture policy.\nFine arts.\nTraditional Malaysian art was mainly centred on the areas of carving, weaving, and silversmithing. Traditional art ranges from handwoven baskets from rural areas to the silverwork of the Malay courts. Common artworks included ornamental kris, beetle nut sets, and woven batik and songket fabrics. Indigenous East Malaysians are known for their wooden masks. Each ethnic group have distinct performing arts, with little overlap between them. However, Malay art does show some North Indian influence due to the historical influence of India.\nTraditional Malay music and performing arts appear to have originated in the Kelantan-Pattani region with influences from India, China, Thailand, and Indonesia. The music is based around percussion instruments, the most important of which is the gendang (drum). There are at least 14 types of traditional drums. Drums and other traditional percussion instruments and are often made from natural materials. Music is traditionally used for storytelling, celebrating life-cycle events, and occasions such as a harvest. It was once used as a form of long-distance communication. In East Malaysia, gong-based musical ensembles such as agung and kulintang are commonly used in ceremonies such as funerals and weddings. These ensembles are also common in neighbouring regions such as in Mindanao in the Philippines, Kalimantan in Indonesia and Brunei.\nMalaysia has a strong oral tradition that has existed since before the arrival of writing and continues today. Each of the Malay Sultanates created their own literary tradition, influenced by pre-existing oral stories and by the stories that came with Islam. The first Malay literature was in the Arabic script. The earliest known Malay writing is on the Terengganu stone, made in 1303. Chinese and Indian literature became common as the number of speakers increased in Malaysia, and locally produced works based on languages from those areas began to be produced in the 19th century. English has also become a common literary language. In 1971, the government took the step of defining the literature of different languages. Literature written in Malay was called \"the national literature of Malaysia\", literature in other \"bumiputera\" languages was called \"regional literature\", while literature in other languages was called \"sectional literature\". Malay poetry is highly developed, and uses many forms. The \"Hikayat\" form is popular, and the \"pantun\" has spread from Malay to other languages.\nCuisine.\nMalaysia's cuisine reflects the multi-ethnic makeup of its population. Many cultures from within the country and from surrounding regions have greatly influenced the cuisine. Much of the influence comes from the Malay, Chinese, Indian, Thai, Javanese, and Sumatran cultures, largely due to the country being part of the ancient spice route. The cuisine is very similar to that of Singapore and Brunei, and also bears resemblance to Filipino cuisine. The different states have varied dishes, and often the food in Malaysia is different from the original dishes.\nSometimes food not found in its original culture is assimilated into another; for example, Chinese restaurants in Malaysia often serve Malay dishes. Food from one culture is sometimes also cooked using styles taken from another culture, For example, \"sambal belacan\" (shrimp paste) are commonly used as ingredients by Chinese restaurants to create the stir fried water spinach (\"kangkung belacan\"). This means that although much of Malaysian food can be traced back to a certain culture, they have their own identity. Rice is a staple food and an important constituent of the country's culture. Chili is commonly found in local cuisine, although this does not necessarily make them spicy.\nMedia.\nMalaysia's main newspapers are owned by the government and political parties in the ruling coalition, although some major opposition parties also have their own, which are openly sold alongside regular newspapers. A divide exists between the media in the two halves of the country. Peninsular-based media gives a low priority to news from the East and often treats the eastern states as colonies of the peninsula. As a result of this, the East Malaysia region of Sarawak launched TV Sarawak as internet streaming beginning in 2014, and as TV station on 10 October 2020 to overcome the low priority and coverage of Peninsular-based media and to solidify the representation of East Malaysia. The media have been blamed for increasing tension between Indonesia and Malaysia, and giving Malaysians a bad image of Indonesians. The country has Malay, English, Chinese, and Tamil daily newspapers. Kadazandusun and Bajau news are available only via TV broadcast Berita RTM. Written Kadazan news was once included in publications such as The Borneo Post, the Borneo Mail, the Daily Express, and the New Sabah Times, but publication has ceased with the newspaper or as a section.\nFreedom of the press is limited, with numerous restrictions on publishing rights and information dissemination. The government has previously tried to crack down on opposition papers before elections. In 2007, a government agency issued a directive to all private television and radio stations to refrain from broadcasting speeches made by opposition leaders, a move condemned by politicians from the opposition Democratic Action Party. Sabah, where all tabloids but one are independent of government control, has the freest press in Malaysia. Laws such as the Printing Presses and Publications Act have also been cited as curtailing freedom of expression.\nHolidays and festivals.\nMalaysians observe several holidays and festivities throughout the year. Some are federally gazetted public holidays and some are observed by individual states. Other festivals are observed by particular ethnic or religious groups, and the main holiday of each major group has been declared a public holiday. The most observed national holiday is \"Hari Merdeka\" (Independence Day) on 31 August, commemorating the independence of the Federation of Malaya in 1957. Malaysia Day on 16 September commemorates federation in 1963. Other notable national holidays are Labour Day (1 May) and the King's birthday (first week of June).\nMuslim holidays are prominent as Islam is the state religion; \"Hari Raya Puasa\" (also called \"Hari Raya Aidilfitri\", Malay for Eid al-Fitr), \"Hari Raya Haji\" (also called \"Hari Raya Aidiladha\", Malay for Eid al-Adha), \"Maulidur Rasul\" (birthday of the Prophet), and others being observed. Malaysian Chinese celebrate festivals such as Chinese New Year and others relating to traditional Chinese beliefs. Wesak Day is observed and celebrated by Buddhists. Hindus in Malaysia celebrate \"Deepavali\", the festival of lights, while \"Thaipusam\" is a religious rite which sees pilgrims from all over the country converge at the Batu Caves. Malaysia's Christian community celebrates most of the holidays observed by Christians elsewhere, most notably Christmas and Easter. In addition to this, the Dayak community in Sarawak celebrate a harvest festival known as \"Gawai\", and the Kadazandusun community celebrate \"Kaamatan\". Despite most festivals being identified with a particular ethnic or religious group, celebrations are universal. In a custom known as \"open house\" Malaysians participate in the celebrations of others, often visiting the houses of those who identify with the festival.\nSports.\nPopular sports in Malaysia include association football, badminton, field hockey, bowls, tennis, squash, martial arts, horse riding, sailing, and skate boarding. Football is the most popular sport in Malaysia. Badminton matches also attract thousands of spectators, and since 1948 Malaysia has been one of four countries to hold the Thomas Cup, the world team championship trophy of men's badminton. The Malaysian Lawn Bowls Federation was registered in 1997. Squash was brought to the country by members of the British army, with the first competition being held in 1939. The Squash Racquets Association of Malaysia was created on 25 June 1972. The men's national field hockey team ranked 10th in the world as of June\u00a02022[ [update]]. The 3rd Hockey World Cup was hosted at Merdeka Stadium in Kuala Lumpur, as well as the 10th cup. The country also has its own Formula One track \u2013 the Sepang International Circuit, with the first Malaysian Grand Prix held in 1999. Traditional sports include Silat Melayu, the most common style of martial arts practised by ethnic Malays.\nThe Federation of Malaya Olympic Council was formed in 1953, and received recognition by the IOC in 1954. It first participated in the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games. The council was renamed the Olympic Council of Malaysia in 1964, and has participated in all but one Olympic games since its inception. The largest number of athletes ever sent to the Olympics was 57 to the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Besides the Olympic Games, Malaysia also participates in the Paralympic Games. Malaysia has competed at the Commonwealth Games since 1950 as Malaya, and 1966 as Malaysia, and the games were hosted in Kuala Lumpur in 1998.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["30280111", "3607937"], "permutation_1": ["3607937", "30280111"], "permutation_2": ["30280111", "3607937"], "permutation_3": ["3607937", "30280111"]}
{"id": "2hop__259942_126711", "docs_added": {"855708": "Deacon Blue\nScottish band\nDeacon Blue are a Scottish pop rock band formed in Glasgow in 1985. The line-up of the band consists of vocalists Ricky Ross and Lorraine McIntosh, keyboard player James Prime, drummer Dougie Vipond, guitarist Gregor Philp and bassist Lewis Gordon. In 2013, their estimated album sales stood at six million, and by 2020 were estimated to have risen to in excess of seven million, with twelve UK top 40 singles, along with two number one albums in both the United Kingdom and their native Scotland.\nThe band released their debut album, \"Raintown\" (1987) to critical and commercial success, with their second album, \"When the World Knows Your Name\" (1989), topping the UK Albums Chart for two weeks. The single \"Real Gone Kid\" became their first top ten single in the UK Singles Chart and reached number one in Spain. Deacon Blue followed up the success of their first two albums with \"Fellow Hoodlums\" (1991) and \"Whatever You Say, Say Nothing\" (1993). The band split in 1994 until five years later, holding a reunion gig which led on to a new album, \"Walking Back Home\" (1999). The band released another album, \"Homesick\" (2001), the last to feature guitarist Graeme Kelling following his death from pancreatic cancer in 2004. In 2006, the band recorded three new songs for a \"Singles\" album \u2013 including the single \"Bigger than Dynamite\". \nDeacon Blue returned after a period of absence to release \"The Hipsters\" (2012), their first studio album since \"Homesick\" in 2001. The band released a further four albums following their reunion \u2013 \"A New House\", (2014), \"Believers\" (2016), \"City of Love\" (2020) and \"Riding on the Tide of Love\" (2021) to commercial success. In 2024, they released \"Late 88\" as the lead single from their eleventh studio album \"The Great Western Road\" (2025).\nCareer.\n1985\u20131987: Formation and early years.\nTaking their name from the 1977 Steely Dan song \"Deacon Blues\", Deacon Blue were formed in 1985 following Ricky Ross's move from Dundee to Glasgow. Along with Ross, the group originally consisted of Lorraine McIntosh, James Prime, Dougie Vipond, Ewen Vernal and Graeme Kelling.\nRoss, a former school teacher originally from Dundee, was the group's frontman, penning the majority of Deacon Blue's songs. He married vocalist Lorraine McIntosh in 1990. In 1986, the band contributed a track (\"Take the Saints Away\") to a compilation cassette entitled \"Honey at the Core\", featuring then up-and-coming Glasgow bands, including Wet Wet Wet, The Bluebells, Kevin McDermott, The Big Dish, and Hue and Cry.\n1987\u20131991: \"Raintown\" and \"When The World Knows Your Name\".\nThe band's debut album, \"Raintown\", produced by Jon Kelly was released in 1987. It spawned the singles \"Dignity\", \"Chocolate Girl\" and \"Loaded\". The city that the album's title refers to is Glasgow and the cover art of the album is a photograph (by the Scottish-Italian photographer Oscar Marzaroli) of the River Clyde's docks taken from Kelvingrove Park. It proved a commercial success and has to date sold around a million copies, peaking in the UK Albums Chart at no. 14 and remaining in that chart for a year and a half. On 27 February 2006, \"Raintown\" was reissued as part of Columbia's Legacy Edition series. The reissue was expanded to two CDs, the first of which featured the original 11 track album. The second CD featured alternate cuts of all 11 album tracks, as well as the two original CD bonus tracks \"Riches\" and \"Kings of the Western World\". The new edition did not include the varied bonus cuts (remixes and b-sides) that were found on the singles from the album.\nThe second album, 1989's \"When the World Knows Your Name\", was the band's most commercially successful, reaching No. 1 in the UK Albums Chart and generating five UK top 30 hits, including \"Real Gone Kid\", \"Wages Day\", and \"Fergus Sings the Blues\" (all five singles from the album were top 10 hits in Ireland). The following year saw the band play in front of an estimated 250,000 fans at the free concert on Glasgow Green, \"The Big Day\", which was held to celebrate Glasgow being named that year's European City of Culture. The band also played Glastonbury and the Roskilde festivals that summer, as well as released \"Ooh Las Vegas\", a double album of B-sides, extra tracks, film tracks, and sessions which reached No. 3 in the UK Albums Chart.\n1991\u20131994: Continued success and split.\nJon Kelly returned to the producer's chair in 1991 for the album \"Fellow Hoodlums\". The album was met with more critical approval and peaked at No. 2 on the UK Albums Chart. \"Fellow Hoodlums\" was followed up by 1993's \"Whatever You Say, Say Nothing\", a much more experimental album. The album was not as commercially successful as the previous two albums, peaking at No. 4 on the UK Albums Chart. Changing from producer Jon Kelly to the team of Steve Osborne and Paul Oakenfold, this album presented a change in musical style for Deacon Blue. While the band's songwriting remained based in rock and blues, many of the tracks moved into alternative rock territory in their presentation.\nThe band embarked on another sold out UK tour in 1994, after recording new material for their greatest hits compilation album, \"Our Town\". This saw the band return to No. 1 in the UK Albums Chart and was one of the year's top sellers, while \"I Was Right and You Were Wrong\" and a re-release of \"Dignity\" saw the band re-enter the Top 20 of the UK Singles Chart. The album contained the previous singles from the band, minus \"Closing Time\" and \"Hang Your Head\". The album also contained three new tracks. \"I Was Right and You Were Wrong\", the first single from this album, was an alternative rock track that continued and expanded the musical direction the band had taken with \"Whatever You Say, Say Nothing\". \"Bound to Love\" and \"Still in the Mood\" were pop songs in the tradition of Deacon Blue's earlier albums. The vinyl LP version of the album contained a fourth new track, \"Beautiful Stranger\". \"Dignity\" was released, now for the third time, as the second single from the album.\nWith Vipond's decision to quit the group in favour of a career in television, Deacon Blue split up in 1994.\n1999\u20132012: Re\u2013union and \"Walking Back Home\".\nFive years later, the band held a reunion gig in 1999, and this led on to a new album, \"Walking Back Home\", with the band now working on a part-time basis. The \"Walking Back Home\" album combined eight songs that were brand new compositions, previously unreleased tracks, or released only with limited availability, with nine previously released Deacon Blue songs. This was followed by another album, \"Homesick\", in 2001. Graeme Kelling died from pancreatic cancer in 2004, but the band continued and recorded three new tracks for a \"Singles\" album \u2013 including the track \"Bigger than Dynamite\" in 2006.\nThe band performed at Manchester United's Old Trafford stadium, as the pre-match entertainment for the Rugby league Super League Grand Final on 14 October 2006, and continued on to a full UK tour in November. They were also due to open Stirling's New Year party in 2006, but this was cancelled at the last minute due to extreme weather. A further tour followed in November 2007 and the band then provided support for Simple Minds in 2008. They also appeared at Stirling's Hogmanay in 2008.\nDeacon Blue appeared at The Homecoming Live Final Fling Show, at Glasgow's SECC on 28 November 2009, and headlined Glasgow's Hogmanay on 31 December 2009. The band performed several gigs, including Glastonbury, and the Liverpool Echo Arena on 29 July 2011. Ross, who had released a solo album before the formation of Deacon Blue, released two solo albums during the time between Deacon Blue's breakup in 1994 and reformation in 1999. Due to Deacon Blue's part-time status after reformation, Ross released additional solo albums in 2002 and 2005 and has written for and with other recording artists. In 2009, Ross and McIntosh recorded an album together under the name 'McIntosh Ross'.\n2012\u20132018: New record label and subsequent releases.\nDeacon Blue released a studio album in 2001, \"Homesick\" and in 2006, they issued a compilation album, \"Singles\". In 2012, it was announced Deacon Blue had new management, Paul Loasby and Tom O'Rourke, and had signed a recording contract and would release a new album that year.\nTo promote the upcoming release of their new album, the group released a single, \"The Hipsters\". The single was released in the United Kingdom on 23 September 2012. The album \"The Hipsters\" was released on 24 September 2012 and was produced by Paul Savage. A 25th anniversary tour, starting in October 2012, followed. The band performed with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at the Grand Hall in Glasgow to promote the release of the album. All of the band's studio albums were reissued as deluxe editions by Edsel Records in October 2012, as well as a new compilation entitled \"The Rest\". Deacon Blue arranged dates in 2014 for a comeback tour. It was announced in April 2014 that their seventh studio album, \"A New House\", would be released on 8 September that year. Deacon Blue also performed at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games closing ceremony on 3 August 2014, performing their hit, \"Dignity\".\nA new studio album, \"Believers\", was released on 30 September 2016. Three promo singles, the title track, \"This Is A Love Song\" and \"Gone\" have been released. A tour was undertaken to promote the album, culminating in a return to the Glasgow Barrowlands on 4 December 2016, which was recorded for a live album as well as video. This was released on 31 March 2017 on vinyl, CD, DVD, Blu-Ray as well as digital download of both audio and video versions. A special screening event was held, the day before, at the Glasgow Film Theatre.\nBetween February and March 2018, Deacon Blue embarked on a tour of Spain, marking the first time that the band has played a series of live shows in Spain. The band described the shows as \"an incredible experience for us all\", and later confirmed that Deacon Blue will be returning to Spain in 2019 for another series of live shows, stating that \"Spain has a very special place in our hearts\".\n2018\u20132025: \"City of Love\" and \"Riding on the Tide of Love\".\nThe band released their ninth studio album entitled \"City of Love\" on 6 March 2020, to critical acclaim. The album received positive reviews and achieved commercial success. The album charted at number one in their native Scotland, number four in the United Kingdom and peaked at number fifty in Spain.\nDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, the band recorded and released their tenth studio album entitled \"Riding on the Tide of Love\" which was released in February 2021. The album failed to reach the same level of commercial success in the United Kingdom that the band experienced with their previous album, \"City of Love\", with the album debuting at number 23 on the UK Albums Chart. In their native Scotland, the album performed better, debuting at number two and spending additional weeks within the Scottish Top 40 albums charts.\nTo promote the release of the album, the band announced the \"Riding on the Tide of Love\" tour which is scheduled to begin in June 2021 in Brighton and concludes on 19 December 2021 at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow. In September 2023, they released the compilation album \"All The Old 45s \u2013 The Very Best of Deacon Blue\" via Cooking Vinyl. It debuted at number two on the official Scottish Albums Chart on 8 September, behind \"Back To The Water Below\" by Royal Blood. It went to spend eight weeks within the Top 100 of the Scottish Albums Chart. In the United Kingdom, it was a moderate success, debuting at number 42 on the UK Albums Chart, spending one week within the Top 100. The band embarked on a tour of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, beginning in September 2023, to promote the release of \"All the Old 45s\".\n2025\u2013present: \"The Great Western Road\" and arena tour.\nThe band's eleventh studio album, \"The Great Western Road\", is scheduled to be released on 21 March 2025. During the same month, they are set to embark on an arena tour across the United Kingdom and Ireland which includes their first date at the Wembley Arena in London since 1990. The tour will conclude with two shows at the OVO Hydro in their native Glasgow. The album is said to be a reflection of the bands journey since they first began performing during the 1980s, with lead single \"Late 88\" being said to be a \"fondly reminder of the care-free excitement of those early days\" for the band. The album was recorded at Rockfield Studios.\nAwards and nominations.\nIn 2020, Deacon Blue's 1987 single \"Dignity\" was voted as Scotland's greatest song after a public vote voted through the radio programme \"Ewen Cameron in the Morning\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "10655571": "Hang Your Head\n1993 single by Deacon Blue\n\"Hang Your Head\" is the fourth and final single from Scottish band Deacon Blue's fourth studio album, \"Whatever You Say, Say Nothing\" (1993). It was written by Ricky Ross and produced by Steve Osborne and Paul Oakenfold. The single version was released in July 1993 by Columbia Records and is very similar to the album version, except that it has a slightly longer introduction and also has a cold start in place of the album version's fade-in. This was the first Deacon Blue single release to exclude all vinyl formats. It reached a peak of number 21 on the UK Singles Chart in July 1993.\nB-sides.\nThe first B-side is the upbeat rock song, \"Freedom Train\", which is an original composition by the band, but is only presented in a live version. The other two B-sides are the soaring \"Here on the Wind\" and Ricky and Lorraine's gentle duet, \"Indigo Sky\", both of which contain imagery related to the biblical account of Adam and Eve. \"Indigo Sky\" would later be released on \"The Very Best of Deacon Blue\".\nAs with the previous release, \"Only Tender Love\", a special-edition CD single entitled \"The Riches Collection Part 2\" was issued. In addition to \"Hang Your Head\", it again contained three tracks from the \"Riches\" bonus album.\nTrack listings.\nAll songs were written by Ricky Ross except where noted.\nCassette single \nCD single \nSpecial Edition CD single: The Riches Collection Part 2 \nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "47996213": "Hang Down Your Head\nSingle by Tom Waits\n\"Hang Down Your Head\" is a song by Tom Waits appearing on his 1985 album \"Rain Dogs\" and released as a single that year by Island Records. It is in the same vein as Tom Waits' earlier work, featuring a more conventional melodic structure compared to other songs on \"Rain Dogs\", albeit featuring an idiosyncratic arrangement. Allmusic critic Stewart Mason called the song \"among the most direct and effective things Waits has ever written.\"\nCover versions.\nLucinda Williams recorded a version of the song for the soundtrack of the crime/drama series \"Crossing Jordan\", released in 2003. It was later appended as a bonus track on the vinyl release of her 2003 album \"World Without Tears\". Gothic rock ensemble Human Drama recorded the song for their covers' album \"Pinups\", which was intended as a tribute to the various artists that had influenced them. Country artist Jack Ingram has played the song at live concerts, and his version was recorded for his live debut \"Live at Adair's\" in 1995.\nPersonnel.\nAdapted from the \"Hang Down Your Head\" liner notes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4565024": "Hanging by a Moment\n2000 single by Lifehouse\n\"Hanging by a Moment\" is a song by American alternative rock band Lifehouse. It was the first single released from their debut studio album, \"No Name Face\" (2000), issued through DreamWorks Records. The track was written by lead singer Jason Wade, who said that he wrote the song in about five minutes without thinking about what would happen to it. It was produced by American record producer Ron Aniello and was mixed by Brendan O'Brien. Musically, \"Hanging by a Moment\" is a post-grunge song that contains influences of alternative rock.\nThe song was first released as a radio single on September 25, 2000, rising slowly on the US charts and eventually peaking at number two on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, becoming the band's most successful single on the chart and the most successful song of 2001 in the US. The track became an international success as well, peaking atop the Australian Singles Chart for five weeks and reaching the top 40 in the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. In 2001, the song was certified double platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) and was the most-played radio track of that year in Canada. The song received positive reviews from critics, who applauded its instrumentation.\nThe official music video for the song premiered on Vh1.com on December 7, 2000. In the video, Wade is seen singing the lyrics of the song in many locations around a town. The band went on tours with Matchbox Twenty and 3 Doors Down as an opening act before going on their first headline tour that featured rock band the Calling and singer Michelle Branch.\nBackground and composition.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"I was eight songs into finishing the record, doing a vocal, and I heard the melody in my head before it was written. I couldn't tell if it was a song on the radio that I had heard or if it was a song my friend wrote or something. I picked up a guitar and it was kind of creepy, because the song was almost already written by itself. Within five minutes, the lyrics and everything else were finished. We tracked it the next week and it ended up being the first single. It was funny, because I felt there was another song that needed to be written during the project that was more upbeat and less moody.\"\n\u2014Wade talking about the development of \"Hanging by a Moment\".\nThe song was written by Lifehouse lead singer Jason Wade. It was produced by American record producer Ron Aniello and was mixed by Brendan O'Brien. When asked about the song in an interview with \"Billboard\", Wade said, \"It was the most uptempo, radio-friendly song. We all decided it was the right choice to release it as the first single.\" He went on to describe his expectations when writing songs, saying, \"My ultimate goal in writing songs is to connect with people. In the lyrics, you don't tell the whole picture: You give a road to start on that people can relate to. We're honest, nice guys and I hope that comes across in everything we do.\" After being asked how he wrote the song in an interview with \"Launch\", Wade explained, \"I wrote that song without thinking about what was gonna happen to it and then it just kinda took over from there.\" He also said in the interview that he wrote \"Hanging by a Moment\" in about five minutes.\n\"Hanging by a Moment\" was described as a post-grunge and alternative rock song that contains a strong melody. According to the sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, the song is set in common time with a \"moderate rock\" tempo of 124 beats per minute. It is composed in the key of D-flat major. In an interview with \"Billboard\", lead singer and guitarist of Lifehouse, Jason Wade, described the song as an \"uptempo, radio-friendly song\". Bill Lamb of About.com called the song \"one of the biggest rock hits ever by a Contemporary Christian band crossing over into the mainstream. The song was the biggest hit of summer 2001 and was eventually named the most played song of the year on the radio.\" Sean Rizzo of Sputnikmusic says that the song \"presents one of the best with the guitar's plucking during the verses and a chorus infectious enough to infiltrate your brain for a few days.\" In a 2017 interview with Billboard on the core theme of the song, Wade said, \"I didn't really think about it when I was writing it. I knew at the end of it that it was a love song, and I kind of come from that world, so it can be interpreted as a spiritual song or a love song.\"\nChart performance.\n\"Hanging by a Moment\" debuted at number 76 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 during the week of February 10, 2001. It gradually ascended on the chart and eventually peaked at number two on June 16, 2001. It remained on the Hot 100 for 54 consecutive weeks. The song was also a hit on rock radio, holding number one for three weeks beginning on January 27, 2001. On the \"Billboard\" Modern Rock Tracks chart, the song debuted at number 36 for the week of October 28, 2000, and eventually peaked at number one, remaining on the chart for 35 weeks. The song debuted at number 32 on the \"Billboard\" Pop Songs chart during the week of March 3, 2001. After moving around the chart for 37 consecutive weeks, the song peaked at number two on May 19, 2001. The song debuted at number 37 on the \"Billboard\" Adult Pop Songs chart for the week of February 24, 2001. It eventually peaked at number one on June 23, 2001, spending 74 consecutive weeks on the chart.\nDespite not peaking at number one on the weekly Hot 100, \"Hanging by a Moment\" was the most successful single of 2001 according to \"Billboard\". In 2009, \"Billboard\" named \"Hanging by a Moment\" as the 26th-most-successful single of the 2000s decade. Even though it never peaked at number one, it was one of only three (now four) songs in the history of the Hot 100 to be named the number one single of the year without making it to the top of the chart on any of the weekly surveys. (The first was \"Wooly Bully\" by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs in 1965, the second was \"Breathe\" by Faith Hill in 2000, and the fourth was \"Levitating\" by Dua Lipa in 2021.)\nThe song also achieved international success. In Australia, the song debuted at number 36 on the ARIA Charts during the week of June 17, 2001. On August 12, 2001, it peaked at number one, staying on the chart for 24 consecutive weeks. Because of its success in Australia, \"Hanging by a Moment\" was certified double platinum by the ARIA in 2001. The track debuted on the Netherlands' Single Top 100 chart at number 95 for the week of June 9, 2001, and reached number 31 the following month. On the New Zealand Singles Chart, \"Hanging by a Moment\" debuted at number 48 for the week of March 11, 2001. After climbing for 16 consecutive weeks, it peaked at number six for five weeks. The song debuted at number 25 on the UK Singles Chart for the week of September 8, 2001, which became its peak position, and it spent four weeks on the chart.\nMusic video.\nThe music video, directed by Gavin Bowden, was first released on December 7, 2000, on Vh1.com. It served as an official video for the song, after an unofficial version was released by DreamWorks as a \"temporary video\" that was played on MTV2. In an interview with MTV Radio, Wade explained the process of making the music video, and said, \"We shot the video at this really cool place in Crenshaw, in L.A., that was a bowling alley upstairs and a roller rink downstairs. It had this really weird, retro vibe to it. When they were setting up the different sets, we'd have to stop every 10 seconds because a bowling league would walk in. It was the coolest thing. At night, we got all of our friends to come down.\"\nThe video begins with Wade singing and playing his guitar in a hotel room. While singing, Wade is seen packing his clothes into a suit case in separate camera shots. He then leaves the hotel room and it shows a time-lapse scene of a car going down a highway. Then, the video cuts to a restaurant, where Wade is seen lying on a restaurant booth and singing the lyrics of the song. After this, Wade is seen with the rest of Lifehouse in a concert setting in a restaurant. It then splits to shots of Wade singing the lyrics of the song to the camera. Toward the end of the video, it switches to Lifehouse playing the song in front of a crowd while showing shots of Wade in a car going down a highway. It ends with the scene of Lifehouse in a restaurant and then switches to a camera shot of all of the band members with the video fading out on Wade.\nPromotion.\nOn January 10, 2001, MTV confirmed that Lifehouse would serve as an opening act on a fourteen-day tour for Matchbox Twenty, who were promoting their album \"Mad Season\" (2000). The tour started February 27, 2001, in Minneapolis and ended on March 29, 2001, in Universal City. While on tour with Matchbox Twenty, Lifehouse went on \"The Tonight Show with Jay Leno\" for the first time and performed \"Hanging by a Moment\" on March 28, 2001. Several months later, the band performed the song at the River Rave Festival in Foxboro Stadium on May 26, 2001. In July 2001, Lifehouse went on tour, opening for 3 Doors Down on twelve select dates, and performed songs from \"No Name Face\", including \"Hanging by a Moment\".\nCredits and personnel.\nCredits are adapted from AllMusic.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "723063": "Gerome Ragni\nAmerican actor, singer, and songwriter\nGerome Ragni (born Jerome Bernard Ragni; September 11, 1935 \u2013 July 10, 1991) was an American actor, singer, and songwriter, best known as one of the stars and co-writers of the 1967 musical \"Hair\". On June 18, 2009, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.\nEarly life.\nBorn Jerome Bernard Ragni in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he was one of ten Italian-American siblings. He attended suburban Scott Township High School, where he appeared in various school productions. He attended Georgetown University and The Catholic University of America. At Catholic University, he discovered an interest in theater, and began studying acting with Philip Burton. Ragni made his acting debut in Washington, D.C. in 1954, playing Father Corr in \"Shadow and Substance\". He continued to act whenever he could find work. In 1963, he appeared in the New York production of \"War\" at the Village South Theatre, for which he won the Barter Theatre Award for Outstanding Actor.\nCareer.\nIn 1954, Ragni made his professional stage debut in a Washington D.C. production, \"Shadow and Substance\". In 1964, he was an understudy for the role of Horatio at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in the Broadway production of \"Hamlet\", starring Richard Burton. He then appeared as the Messenger (uncredited) in \"Richard Burton's Hamlet\", the film version of the production, released by Warner Bros. in 1964.\nThat same year, Ragni made his first Off-Broadway appearance in New York City in the anti-capital punishment musical \"Hang Down Your Head and Die\" at the Mayfair Theatre on October 18 with James Rado, a fellow actor and friend who was studying with Lee Strasberg. \"Hang Down Your Head and Die\" was a success in London. It was first produced in the UK by the Oxford University Experimental Theatre Club in 1964; two cast members and writers were students Terry Jones and Michael Palin, who would later achieve fame as members of the Monty Python comedy troupe. It then moved from Oxford to the Comedy Theatre in London's West End, was well-received and ran six weeks. But when it moved to New York the musical only had one performance, opening and closing on October 18, 1964. Theater critic Howard Taubman wrote in \"The New York Times\", \"Death by hanging is swift, but \"Hang Down Your Head and Die\" makes a long evening of it... After a while, one feels as if one were being bludgeoned.\"\nIn 1965, Ragni performed in the role of Tom in \"The Knack\", the play that opened at the New Theatre, and later appeared in the touring company along with Rado. During the show's Chicago run at the Harper Theater, Rado and Ragni tried to revive \"Hang Down Your Head and Die\" with what they could remember from the script. They also planned to introduce new material in collaboration with Corky Siegel and Jim Schwall, of the Siegel-Schwall Band, whom they met playing in a beatnik coffee house off the Harper Street strip. They spent time writing ideas for the production, which was to be performed by Rado, Ragni, Schwall, and Siegel in a house on the South Side of Chicago and an apartment on Stony Island Avenue. Rado and Ragni rented the Harper Theatre to put on the production. After two weeks of working on the production, \"The Knack\" company went back to New York and Ragni and Rado had to abandon their plans to revive \"Hang Down Your Head and Die\" with Siegel and Schwall.\n\"Hair\".\nRagni had been involved with The Open Theater since it was begun as part of the Living Theatre in 1962. In 1966, Open Theatre began rehearsals for the Megan Terry play \"Viet Rock\". Ragni took a leading role in the show, which opened at the Martinique Theatre in New York and had a successful run.\n\"Viet Rock\" and experimental theatre inspired Ragni to work with Rado on a musical about hippie culture. As research, they associated with a group of youths in the East Village who were dropping out and dodging the draft. They talked to people in the streets and people they knew, and read articles about hippie culture and youths being kicked out of school for growing their hair long. They wrote lyrics to thirteen songs (\"Ain't Got No\", \"I Got Life\", \"Reading and Writing\", \"Don't Put It Down\", \"Sodomy\", \"Colored Spade\", \"Manchester, England\", \"Frank Mills\", \"We Look at One Another\", \"Hair\", \"Aquarius\", \"Easy to Be Hard\", \"Good Morning Starshine\" and \"Where Do I Go?\"), and completed the first version of their musical, called \"Hair\". Two of the thirteen songs were removed, many songs were revised, titles were changed, and more songs were written as they continued to work on the show.\nOnce they agreed on a draft, Ragni and Rado brought the idea to producer Nat Shapiro for consideration. He responded to the songs by asking, \"Where's the music?\" Shapiro introduced Ragni and Rado to composer Galt MacDermot, who took the script and returned three weeks later with music for the songs Ragni and Rado had written. Their agent, Janet Roberts, tried to sell the show to Broadway producers, but it was rejected. Joseph Papp, of the New York Shakespeare Festival, called to say he wanted to produce it at his new theatre on Lafayette Street. Gerald Freedman was artistic director for the theater and signed on to direct the first production of \"Hair\". On October 29, 1967, \"Hair\" opened at The Public Theater with Ragni as Berger, MacDermot as a cop who busts the show at the end of the first act, and Rado as Claude. Michael Butler attended the opening night and subsequent performances, and was dissatisfied when Rado did not regularly play Claude, as he felt Rado had a natural affinity for the part.\nButler became interested in moving the show to Broadway. He bought the rights from Papp for $50,000 and began planning a grander production directed by Tom O'Horgan, who Ragni knew from off-Broadway. In the meantime, the show moved to a nightclub in Midtown, called Cheetah, where it had a month-long run. When O'Horgan signed on, the show hired choreographer Julie Arenal, assistant to Anna Sokolow, who had choreographed the Public Theater run.\nOn April 29, 1968, the show re-opened in its revised form at the Biltmore Theatre on Broadway. Rado and Ragni reprised their roles from the off-Broadway production, and MacDermot was the musical director. The songs became hit singles for MacDermot, Liza Minnelli, Nelson Riddle, The Staples Singers, Quincy Jones, Three Dog Night, The Cowsills, Madeline Bell, Paul Jones, Sonja Kristina, The 5th Dimension, Oliver, Caterina Valente, and Barbra Streisand. The Broadway cast \"Hair\" album, released on RCA Records, topped the US billboard charts for a year. The 1970 album \"DisinHAIRited\" was then released with songs that were cut from the revised production.\nThe Broadway production was a traumatic experience for Ragni. He became wealthy, his marriage broke up, and he became disengaged from mainstream society. He joined a cult and contributed money to the Black Panther Party and the Yippies. Following the Broadway production, Ragni and Rado went to Los Angeles and played their original roles in a production of \"Hair\" for five months, making changes to the show as they performed. When they returned to the Broadway production, Ragni's practice of spontaneously changing the show became a"}, "descending_order": ["47996213", "10655571", "4565024", "723063", "855708"], "permutation_1": ["10655571", "855708", "723063", "4565024", "47996213"], "permutation_2": ["4565024", "10655571", "855708", "47996213", "723063"], "permutation_3": ["47996213", "4565024", "10655571", "855708", "723063"]}
{"id": "2hop__767347_36163", "docs_added": {"30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "11978509": "Savave\nSavave is a village and islet of Nukufetau, Tuvalu, which is on the lagoon side of Fale islet. It is also the name of the small village on the island. In the late 19th century, after the coming of the missionaries, the people of Nukufetau lived on Fale islet before shifting to Savave which is on the lagoon side of the Fale settlement.\nIn 1951 the school that was located on Motumua islet was transferred to Savave and became the government primary school for Nukufetau. It was named the Tutasi Memorial School in honour of its predecessor. It has 586 inhabitants. The Monument to the Friendship between Nukufetau and Nanumea is located on the islet. \nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11978509", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["30227", "11978509"], "permutation_2": ["30227", "11978509"], "permutation_3": ["11978509", "30227"]}
{"id": "2hop__34121_84230", "docs_added": {"180968": "Colorado River\nMajor river in the western United States and Mexico\nThe Colorado River () is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The river, the 5th longest in the United States, drains an expansive, arid watershed that encompasses parts of seven U.S. states and two Mexican states. The name Colorado derives from the Spanish language for \"colored reddish\" due to its heavy silt load. Starting in the central Rocky Mountains of Colorado, it flows generally southwest across the Colorado Plateau and through the Grand Canyon before reaching Lake Mead on the Arizona\u2013Nevada border, where it turns south toward the international border. After entering Mexico, the Colorado approaches the mostly dry Colorado River Delta at the tip of the Gulf of California between Baja California and Sonora.\nKnown for its dramatic canyons, whitewater rapids, and eleven U.S. National Parks, the Colorado River and its tributaries are a vital source of water for 40 million people. An extensive system of dams, reservoirs, and aqueducts divert almost its entire flow for agricultural irrigation and urban water supply. Its large flow and steep gradient are used to generate hydroelectricity, meeting peaking power demands in much of the Intermountain West. Intensive water consumption has dried up the lower of the river, which has rarely reached the sea since the 1960s.\nNative Americans have inhabited the Colorado River basin for at least 8,000 years. Starting around 1 CE, large agriculture-based societies were established, but a combination of drought and poor land use practices led to their collapse in the 1300s. Their descendants include tribes such as the Puebloans, while others including the Navajo settled in the Colorado Basin after the 1000s. In the 1500s, Spanish explorers began mapping and claiming the watershed, which became part of Mexico upon winning its independence from Spain in 1821. Even after most of the watershed became US territory in 1846, much of the river's course remained unknown. Several expeditions charted the Colorado in the mid-19th\u00a0century\u2014one of which, led by John Wesley Powell, was the first to run the rapids of the Grand Canyon. Large-scale settlement of the lower basin began in the mid- to late-1800s, with steamboats sailing from the Gulf of California to landings along the river that linked to wagon roads to the interior. Starting in the 1860s, gold and silver strikes drew prospectors to the upper Colorado River basin.\nLarge-scale river management began in the early 1900s, with major guidelines established in a series of international and US interstate treaties known as the \"Law of the River\". The US federal government constructed most of the major dams and aqueducts between 1910 and 1970; the largest, Hoover Dam, was completed in 1935. Numerous water projects have also involved state and local governments. With all of their waters fully allocated, both the Colorado and the neighboring Rio Grande are now considered among the most controlled and litigated river systems in the world. Since 2000, extended drought has conflicted with increasing demands for Colorado River water, and the level of human development and control of the river continues to generate controversy.\nCourse.\nThe Colorado begins at La Poudre Pass in the Never Summer Mountains in Rocky Mountain National Park, above sea level. After a short run south, the river turns west below Grand Lake, the largest natural lake in the state. For the first of its course, the Colorado carves its way through the mountainous Western Slope, a sparsely populated region defined by the portion of the state west of the Continental Divide. As it flows southwest, it gains strength from many small tributaries, as well as larger ones including the Blue, Eagle and Roaring Fork rivers. After passing through De Beque Canyon, the Colorado emerges from the Rockies into the Grand Valley, a major farming and ranching region where it meets one of its largest tributaries, the Gunnison River, at Grand Junction. Most of the upper river is a swift whitewater stream ranging from wide, the depth ranging from , with a few notable exceptions, such as the Blackrocks reach where the river is nearly deep. In a few areas, such as the marshy Kawuneeche Valley near the headwaters and the Grand Valley, it exhibits braided characteristics.\nFrom Grand Junction, the Colorado turns northwest before cutting southwest across the eponymous Colorado Plateau, a vast area of high desert centered at the Four Corners of the southwestern United States. Here, the climate becomes significantly drier than that in the Rocky Mountains, and the river becomes entrenched in progressively deeper gorges of bare rock, beginning with Ruby Canyon and then Westwater Canyon as it enters Utah, now once again heading southwest. Farther downstream it receives the Dolores River and defines the southern border of Arches National Park, before passing Moab and flowing through \"The Portal\", where it exits the Moab Valley between a pair of sandstone cliffs.\nIn Utah, the Colorado flows primarily through the \"slickrock\" country, which is characterized by its narrow canyons and unique \"folds\" created by the tilting of sedimentary rock layers along faults. This is one of the most inaccessible regions of the continental United States. Below the confluence with the Green River, its largest tributary, in Canyonlands National Park, the Colorado enters Cataract Canyon, named for its dangerous rapids, and then Glen Canyon, known for its arches and erosion-sculpted Navajo sandstone formations. Here, the San Juan River, carrying runoff from the southern slope of Colorado's San Juan Mountains, joins the Colorado from the east. The Colorado then enters northern Arizona, where since the 1960s Glen Canyon Dam near Page has flooded the Glen Canyon reach of the river, forming Lake Powell for hydroelectricity generation.\nIn Arizona, the river passes Lee's Ferry, an important crossing for early explorers and settlers and since the early 20th\u00a0century the principal point where Colorado River flows are measured for apportionment to the seven U.S. and two Mexican states in the basin. Downstream, the river enters Marble Canyon, the beginning of the Grand Canyon, passing under the Navajo Bridges on a now southward course. Below the confluence with the Little Colorado River, the river swings west into Granite Gorge, the most dramatic portion of the Grand Canyon, where the river cuts up to into the Colorado Plateau, exposing some of the oldest visible rocks on Earth, dating as long ago as 2\u00a0billion years. The of the river that flow through the Grand Canyon are largely encompassed by Grand Canyon National Park and are known for their difficult whitewater, separated by pools that reach up to in depth.\nAt the lower end of Grand Canyon, the Colorado widens into Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the continental United States, formed by Hoover Dam on the border of Arizona and Nevada. Situated southeast of metropolitan Las Vegas, the dam is an integral component for management of the Colorado River, controlling floods and storing water for farms and cities in the lower Colorado River basin. Below the dam the river passes under the Mike O'Callaghan\u2013Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge\u2014which at nearly above the water is the highest concrete arch bridge in the Western Hemisphere\u2014and then turns due south towards Mexico, defining the Arizona\u2013Nevada and Arizona\u2013California borders.\nAfter leaving the confines of the Black Canyon, the river emerges from the Colorado Plateau into the Lower Colorado River Valley (LCRV), a desert region dependent on irrigation agriculture and tourism and also home to several major Indian reservations. The river widens here to a broad, moderately deep waterway averaging wide and reaching up to across, with depths ranging from . Before channelization of the Colorado in the 20th\u00a0century, the lower river was subject to frequent course changes caused by seasonal flow variations. Joseph C. Ives, who surveyed the lower river in 1861, wrote that \"the shifting of the channel, the banks, the islands, the bars is so continual and rapid that a detailed description, derived from the experiences of one trip, would be found incorrect, not only during the subsequent year, but perhaps in the course of a week, or even a day.\"\nThe LCRV is one of the most densely populated areas along the river, and there are numerous towns including Bullhead City, Arizona, Needles, California, and Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Here, several large diversions draw from the river, providing water for both local uses and distant regions including the Salt River Valley of Arizona and metropolitan Southern California. The last major U.S. diversion is at Imperial Dam, where over 90\u00a0percent of the river's flow is moved into the Gila Gravity Canal and Yuma Area Project, and the much bigger All-American Canal to irrigate California's Imperial Valley, the most productive winter agricultural region in the United States.\nBelow Imperial Dam, only a small portion of the Colorado River makes it beyond Yuma, Arizona, and the confluence with the intermittent Gila River\u2014which carries runoff from western New Mexico and most of Arizona\u2013before defining of the Mexico\u2013United States border. At Morelos Dam, the entire remaining flow of the Colorado is diverted to irrigate the Mexicali Valley, among Mexico's most fertile agricultural lands. Below San Luis R\u00edo Colorado, the Colorado passes entirely into Mexico, defining the Baja California\u2013Sonora border. Since 1960, the stretch of the Colorado between here and the Gulf of California has been dry or a trickle formed by irrigation return flows. The Hardy River provides most of the flow into the Colorado River Delta, a vast alluvial floodplain covering about of northwestern Mexico. A large estuary is formed here before the Colorado empties into the Gulf about south of Yuma. Occasionally the International Boundary and Water Commission allows a springtime pulse flow to recharge the delta.\nBefore 20th-century development dewatered the lower Colorado, a major tidal bore was present in the delta and estuary; the first historical record was made by the Croatian missionary in Spanish service Father Ferdinand Kon\u0161\u010dak on July 18, 1746. During spring tide conditions, the tidal bore\u2014locally called \"El Burro\"\u2014formed in the estuary about Montague Island in Baja California and propagated upstream.\nMajor tributaries.\nThe Colorado is joined by over 25 significant tributaries, of which the Green River is the largest by both length and discharge. The Green River takes drainage from the Wind River Range of west-central Wyoming, from Utah's Uinta Mountains, and from the Rockies of northwestern Colorado. The Gila River is the second longest and drains a greater area than the Green, but has a significantly lower flow because of a more arid climate and larger diversions for irrigation and cities. Both the Gunnison and San Juan rivers, which derive most of their water from Rocky Mountains snowmelt, contribute more water than the Gila contributed naturally.\nDrainage basin.\nThe Colorado River Basin consists of , making it the seventh largest drainage basin in North America. About , or 97\u00a0percent of the basin, is in the United States. The basin extends into western Colorado and New Mexico, southwestern Wyoming, eastern and southern Utah, southeastern Nevada and California, and most of Arizona. The areas drained within Baja California and Sonora in Mexico are very small and do not contribute significant runoff. Aside from the Colorado River Delta, the basin extends into Sonora at a few locations further east, including the headwaters of the Santa Cruz River and San Pedro River (both tributaries of the Gila River). For hydrological management purposes, the Colorado River Basin is divided into the Upper Basin (the drainage area above Lees Ferry), and the Lower Basin. The Upper Basin covers only 45\u00a0percent of the land area of the Colorado River Basin, but contributes 92\u00a0percent of the runoff.\nThe entire eastern boundary of the Colorado River Basin runs along the North American Continental Divide and is defined largely by the Rocky Mountains and the Rio Grande Basin. The Wind River Range in Wyoming marks the northern extent of the basin, and is separated from the Colorado Rockies by the endorheic Great Divide Basin in southwestern Wyoming. Streams that are nearby the east side of the divide drain into the Mississippi River and Rio Grande, while nearby areas north of the Wind River Range drain into the Columbia River. The western boundary of the Colorado River Basin is formed by various ranges and plateaus that border the Great Basin, including the Uinta Mountains and Wasatch Range. Major Great Basin watersheds bordering the Colorado River Basin are the Great Salt Lake and Sevier Lake watersheds. To the south, the Colorado River Basin borders several watersheds in Mexico draining into the Gulf of California, including the Sonoyta, Concepci\u00f3n, and Yaqui rivers. Much of the basin is at high elevation; the mean elevation is . Lees Ferry, more than halfway along the Colorado River from its source, is above sea level. The highest point in the Colorado River Basin is Uncompahgre Peak in Colorado's San Juan Mountains, while some water from the river drains via irrigation run-off into California's Salton Sea, below sea level.\nAbout 72\u00a0percent of the Colorado River Basin is classified as arid, with the Sonoran and Mojave deserts covering the southern portion and the Colorado Plateau encompassing much of the central portion. The Colorado Plateau is home to most of the major canyon systems formed by the Colorado River and its tributaries, particularly those of the Green and San Juan rivers. About 23\u00a0percent of the basin is forest, with the largest area in the Rocky Mountains; other significant forested areas include the Kaibab, Aquarius, and Markagunt plateaus in southern Utah and northern Arizona, and the Mogollon Rim in central Arizona. These high plateaus and escarpments, often exceeding in elevation, form the northern and southern edges of the Colorado Plateau geological province. Developed land use in the basin is mostly irrigated agriculture, chiefly in the Grand Valley, the Lower Colorado River Valley, and the Salt River Valley, but the total area of crop and pasture land is only 2\u20133\u00a0percent of the entire basin. Urban areas cover less than 1\u00a0percent.\nClimate in the Colorado River Basin ranges from subtropical hot desert at southern, lower elevations to alpine in the Rocky Mountains. Mean monthly high temperatures are in the Upper Basin and in the Lower Basin, and lows average , respectively. Annual precipitation averages , ranging from over in some areas of the Rockies to less than in dry desert valleys. The Upper Basin generally receives snow and rain during the winter and early spring, while precipitation in the Lower Basin falls mainly during intense but infrequent summer thunderstorms brought on by the North American Monsoon. Precipitation is influenced by the El Ni\u00f1o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) with El Ni\u00f1o being associated with wetter conditions and La Ni\u00f1a with drier conditions. The effect of ENSO is significantly more pronounced in the Lower Basin, where it has a strong impact on monsoonal rainfall. Runoff patterns across the Colorado River Basin reflect this; most of the perennial tributaries originate in the Upper Basin, while tributaries in the Lower Basin are either ephemeral (such as the Little Colorado River) or highly seasonal (such as the Gila and Salt rivers).\nAs of 2010, approximately 13\u00a0million people lived within the Colorado River basin, while about 40\u00a0million people live in areas supplied by Colorado River water. Colorado River basin states are among the fastest-growing in the US; the population of Nevada alone increased by about 66\u00a0percent between 1990 and 2000 as Arizona grew by some 40\u00a0percent. Phoenix, Arizona, Las Vegas, Nevada and Mexicali, Baja California are the largest cities by population within the Colorado River Basin. Other significant cities include Tucson, Arizona, St. George, Utah and Flagstaff, Arizona. Due to the rugged and inhospitable topography through which the river flows, there are only a few major towns along the Colorado River itself, including Grand Junction, Colorado and Yuma, Arizona.\nDischarge.\nThe unimpaired annual runoff of the Colorado River at Lees Ferry, Arizona is estimated at , or an annualized discharge of , for the 1906\u20132023 period. River flows at the Lees Ferry stream gauge, about halfway along the length of the Colorado and below Glen Canyon Dam, are used to determine water allocations in the Colorado River basin. Flows originating above Lees Ferry represent the majority of Colorado River runoff. Tributaries between there and Imperial Dam near the US\u2013Mexico border contribute a further , and the Gila\u2013Salt River system historically accounted for another . While much of this water was lost to evaporation in the deserts of the Lower Basin, anywhere from per year reached the Colorado River Delta prior to the early 20th century.\nUp to 90\u00a0percent of the river's flow originates as snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains and other smaller mountain ranges of the Colorado Plateau. Natural seasonal flows at its mouth varied widely, often exceeding in the spring melt and falling as low as in winter. Snowmelt typically begins in April, peaks in May or June, and can extend into August in wet years. Monsoon rainstorms often occur in the Lower Basin from August through October, contributing much of the flow in tributaries below Lees Ferry and often causing flash flooding. Since the initial closure of Hoover Dam in 1934, lower Colorado River flows have been greatly moderated, with monthly means below the dam ranging from in May to in October. Upstream of the massive Hoover and Glen Canyon Dams, inflows to Lake Powell still experience distinct spring highs and winter lows, though overall volumes have been reduced due to Upper Basin water diversions. Flow regimes in a few Upper Basin tributaries, such as the Yampa River, remain almost completely unaltered.\nBy the 1950s, the Colorado delta was regularly drying up in fall and winter, though spring high flows often still made it to the ocean. After the initial closure of Glen Canyon Dam in 1963, these seasonal flows were almost completely eliminated, with the exception of a few very wet years, such as 1983\u20131987. In 1984, of excess runoff reached the ocean. Flows have further declined due to evaporation from reservoirs and, particularly after 2000, reduced snowpack with warming winter temperatures in the Rockies. Water diversions have effectively removed some tributaries entirely, including the Gila River, once the Colorado's largest tributary below Lees Ferry. Most Colorado River water is diverted in the United States, with only about per year reaching Mexico since 1950. At Morelos Dam, the remaining flow is diverted to irrigate the Mexicali Valley, leaving the Colorado River Delta almost entirely dry except for small amounts of agricultural wastewater. \nGeology.\nAs recently as the Cretaceous period about 100\u00a0million years ago, much of western North America was still part of the Pacific Ocean. Tectonic forces from the collision of the Farallon Plate with the North American Plate pushed up the Rocky Mountains between 50 and 75\u00a0million years ago in a mountain-building episode known as the Laramide orogeny. The Colorado River first formed as a west-flowing stream draining the southwestern portion of the range, and the uplift also diverted the Green River, once a tributary of the Mississippi River, west towards the Colorado. About 30 to 20\u00a0million years ago, volcanic activity related to the orogeny led to the Mid-Tertiary ignimbrite flare-up, which created smaller formations such as the Chiricahua Mountains in Arizona and deposited massive amounts of volcanic ash and debris over the watershed. The Colorado Plateau first began to rise during the Eocene, between about 55 and 34\u00a0million years ago, but did not attain its present height until about 5\u00a0million years ago, about when the Colorado River established its present course into the Gulf of California.\nThe time scale and sequence over which the river's present course and the Grand Canyon were formed is uncertain. Before the Gulf of California was formed around 12 to 5\u00a0million years ago by faulting processes along the boundary of the North American and Pacific plates, the Colorado flowed west to an outlet on the Pacific Ocean\u2014possibly Monterey Bay on the Central California coast, and may have played a role in the formation of the Monterey submarine canyon. Crustal extension in the Basin and Range Province began about 20 million years ago and the modern Sierra Nevada began forming about 10 million years ago, eventually diverting the Colorado southwards towards the Gulf. As the Colorado Plateau continued to rise between 5 and 2.5\u00a0million years ago, the river maintained its ancestral course (as an antecedent stream) and began to cut the Grand Canyon. Antecedence played a major part in shaping other peculiar geographic features in the watershed, including the Dolores River's bisection of Paradox Valley in Colorado and the Green River's cut through the Uinta Mountains in Utah.\nSediments carried from the plateau by the Colorado River created a vast delta made of more than of material that walled off the northernmost part of the gulf in approximately 1\u00a0million years. Cut off from the ocean, the portion of the gulf north of the delta eventually evaporated and formed the Salton Sink, which reached about below sea level. Since then the river has changed course into the Salton Sink at least three times, transforming it into Lake Cahuilla, which at maximum size flooded up the valley to present-day Indio, California. The lake took about 50 years to evaporate after the Colorado resumed flowing to the Gulf. The present-day Salton Sea can be considered the most recent incarnation of Lake Cahuilla, though on a much smaller scale.\nBetween 1.8\u00a0million and 10,000 years ago, massive flows of basalt from the Uinkaret volcanic field in northern Arizona dammed the Colorado River within the Grand Canyon. At least 13 lava dams were formed, the largest of which was more than high, backing the river up for nearly to present-day Moab, Utah. The lack of associated sediment deposits along this stretch of the Colorado River, which would have accumulated in the impounded lakes over time, suggests that most of these dams did not survive for more than a few decades before collapsing or being washed away. Failure of the lava dams caused by erosion, leaks and cavitation caused catastrophic floods, which may have been some of the largest ever to occur in North America, rivaling the late-Pleistocene Missoula Floods of the northwestern United States. Mapping of flood deposits indicate that crests as high as passed through the Grand Canyon, reaching peak discharges as great as .\nHistory.\nPre-colonial indigenous peoples.\nSmall numbers of Paleo-Indians of the Clovis and Folsom cultures inhabited the Colorado Plateau as early as 10,000 BCE, with populations beginning to increase in the Desert Archaic period (6000 BCE\u20130 CE). While most early inhabitants were hunter-gatherers, evidence of agriculture, masonry dwellings and petroglyphs begins with the Fremont culture period (0\u20131300 CE). The Ancient Puebloan culture, also known as Anasazi or Hisatsinom, were descended from the Desert Archaic culture and became established in the Four Corners region around 1000 CE.\nWhile there is much evidence of ancient habitation along the Colorado River, including stone dwellings, petroglyphs and pottery in places such as Glen Canyon, the first major agriculture-based societies arose a significant distance from the river. The Puebloan people built many multi-story pueblos or \"great houses\", and developed complex distribution systems to supply drinking and irrigation water in Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico and Mesa Verde in southwest Colorado. The Hohokam, present in the modern Phoenix area since about 0 CE, experienced prolific growth around 600\u2013700 CE as they constructed a large system of irrigation canals making use of the Salt River. Both civilizations supported large populations at their height, with 6,000\u201315,000 in Chaco Canyon and as many as 30,000\u2013200,000 Hohokam.\nPuebloan and Hohokam settlements were abruptly abandoned in the 1400s CE, due both to over-exploitation of natural resources such as timber, and severe drought that made it impossible to maintain irrigation systems. Many Puebloans migrated east to the Rio Grande Valley, while others persisted in smaller settlements on the Colorado Plateau. Puebloan descendants include the Hopi, Zuni, Laguna and Acoma peoples of modern Arizona and New Mexico. O'odham peoples, including the Akimel O'odham (Pima) and Maricopa who continue to live in southern Arizona, are believed to be descended from the Hohokam. \nThe lower Colorado River valley was inhabited for thousands of years by numerous tribes of the Patayan cultures, many of which belong to the Yuman-Cochimi language group. These include the Walapai, Havasupai and Yavapai in the Grand Canyon region; the Mohave, Halchidhoma, Quechan, and Halyikwamai along the Colorado River between Black Canyon and the Mexican border, and the Cocopah around the Colorado River Delta. The Chemehuevi (a branch of the Southern Paiute) and the Kumeyaay inhabited the desert to the river's west. Those living along the lower Colorado River depended more on fishing and floodplain agriculture than on irrigation, and mostly did not live in permanent settlements. The site of modern-day Yuma has been an important river crossing since ancient times, as the channel here is much narrower compared to the expansive, swampy river bottoms to the north and south, and enabled the expansion of trade to the Pima and Maricopa in the east and coastal California tribes in the west.\nThe Navajo (Din\u00e9) began migrating into the Colorado River Basin around 1000\u20131500 CE, and eventually exercised influence over much of the Colorado Plateau. Originally hunter-gatherers, they acquired knowledge of farming from the Puebloans and adopted a more sedentary lifestyle over time, making extensive use of irrigation in their settlements. The Navajo gradually displaced Hopi settlements as they expanded into northern Arizona after the 1500s. Navajo Mountain and Rainbow Bridge in the Glen Canyon area came to hold particular religious significance for the Navajo, and the nearby confluence of the Colorado and San Juan River is regarded as the birthplace of clouds and rain.\nThe Ute also became established in the Colorado Plateau around 1500 CE, although they had inhabited more northerly parts of the Colorado basin (modern Wyoming and northern Colorado) since at least 0 CE. They are the first known inhabitants of this part of the Rocky Mountains, and made use of an extensive network of trails crisscrossing the mountains to move between summer and winter camps. The Ute were divided into numerous bands with separate territories but shared a common language and customs. The Uncompahgre or Tabeguache lived around the confluence of the upper Colorado and Gunnison Rivers, an area including the Grand Mesa; the Weenuchiu lived along the San Juan River, and the Parianuche and Yamparika lived in the Yampa, White and Duchesne River valleys. The Ute ranged as far as the river's headwaters; one Ute story recounts a battle with the Arapaho at Grand Lake, which they believe still hosts the spirits of the deceased.\nSpanish exploration and early settlement.\nStarting in the 1500s, the Spanish began to explore and colonize western North America. Francisco de Ulloa may have been the first European to see the river, when in 1536 he sailed to the head of the Gulf of California. In 1540 Garc\u00eda L\u00f3pez de C\u00e1rdenas became the first European to see the Grand Canyon, during Coronado's expedition to find the Seven Cities of Gold (\"Cibola\"). C\u00e1rdenas was apparently unimpressed with the canyon, greatly underestimating its size, and left in disappointment with no gold to be found. In the same year Melchior D\u00edaz explored the Colorado River's delta and named it \"Rio del Tizon\" (\"fire brand river\"), after seeing a practice used by the local people for warming themselves. \nBy the late 1500s or early 1600s, the Utes had acquired horses from the Spanish, and their use for hunting, trade and warfare soon became widespread among Utes and Navajo in the Colorado River basin. This conferred them a military advantage over Goshutes and Southern Paiutes that were slower to adopt horses. The Navajo also adopted a culture of livestock herding as they acquired sheep and goats from the Spanish. Juan Bautista de Anza in 1774 was the first Spaniard to reach Yuma Crossing, where he established friendly relations with the Quechan people and opened the Anza trail between Arizona and the California coast. The Spanish soon founded Mission Puerto de Purisima Concepcion and Mission San Pedro y San Pablo de Bicuner along the lower Colorado River. However, Spanish attempts to control the crossing led to the 1781 Yuma revolt, in which over 100 soldiers and colonists were killed, and the settlements were abandoned. The Quechan blocked foreigners' use of the crossing until the arrival of American mountain men and fur trappers in the 1820s.\nThe name \"Rio Colorado\" first appears in 1701, on the map \"Paso por Tierra a la California\" published by missionary Eusebio Kino, who also determined during that time that Baja California was a peninsula, not an island as previously believed. In the 1700s and early 1800s many Spanish and American explorers believed in the existence of a Buenaventura River that ran from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific coast. In 1776, Silvestre V\u00e9lez de Escalante attached this name to the upper Green River, and a number of later maps showed this connecting to Lake Timpanogos (now Utah Lake) and flowing west to California. The Dominguez\u2013Escalante expedition first reached the Colorado River near the junction with the Dolores River, naming the larger river \"Rio San Rafael\". They later forded the Colorado in southeastern Utah at Crossing of the Fathers, now submerged in Lake Powell.\nAmerican exploration.\nIn the 1820s, American fur trappers along the upper Green River in Wyoming (known to them as the \"Seedskeedee\" or variants thereof), seeking a route to export furs to the coast, surmised that this and what the Spanish called the Colorado were in fact connected. William H. Ashley made an unsuccessful attempt to navigate from the Green River to the Colorado's mouth in 1825. In 1826, Jedediah Smith arrived at the lower Colorado River, referring to it as the Seedskeedee, and proceeded upstream, exploring as far as Black Canyon. During the 1830s, various fur trappers from Wyoming made it as far downstream as Cataract Canyon and Glen Canyon, but none were able to navigate the full length of the river. In 1843 John C. Fr\u00e9mont explored the Great Basin and conclusively determined no Buenaventura River flowed west to California; thus, the direction of river flow must be southwest.\nBy the early 19th century, the stretch of the Colorado above the confluence of the Green River at Cataract Canyon, Utah, became known to fur trappers as the \"Grand River\", though the exact origin of this name is unknown. The Grand River above the confluence with the Gunnison River was also called the Bunkara River, the Blue River, or the North Fork of the Grand River until the 1870s. By the early 1900s the name \"Grand River\" had been attached to the entire stream as far as Grand Lake, which was then considered its official source. Although the Grand River was renamed the Colorado in 1921, its name survives in numerous places such as Grand County and Grand Junction, Colorado.\nIn 1848 the U.S. Army established Fort Yuma, creating the first permanent U.S. settlement along the river. This served as a military garrison and supply point for settlers headed to California along the Southern Emigrant Trail. Due to the arduous task of ferrying supplies overland, the schooner \"Invincible\" attempted to bring supplies up the river but was thwarted by the delta's strong tides. Steamboats were brought to the river, starting in 1852 with the sidewheeler \"Uncle Sam\", whose first voyage from the Gulf to Yuma took fifteen days. Exploration by steamboat soon advanced upriver. In 1857, George A. Johnson in the \"General Jesup\" was able to reach Pyramid Canyon, over north of Fort Yuma. He was followed by Lt. Joseph Christmas Ives who used a specially built shallow-draft steamboat, \"Explorer\", to reach Black Canyon, where Hoover Dam stands today. Having set out to determine the river's suitability as a navigation route, Ives remarked: \"Ours has been the first, and will doubtless be the last, party of whites to visit this profitless locality. It seems intended by nature that the Colorado River, along the greater portion of its lonely and majestic way, shall be forever unvisited and undisturbed.\"\nThe last part of the Colorado River to be surveyed was the Grand Canyon itself. In 1869, John Wesley Powell with nine men set out on an expedition from Green River Station, Wyoming. They were the first part of non-natives to travel the length of the Grand Canyon, and the first to successfully travel by boat from the upper Green River to the lower Colorado. Powell led a second expedition in 1871, with financial backing from the U.S. government, and continued to conduct geographical and botanical surveys across the region until the 1890s. Another Grand Canyon river expedition was led in 1889\u20131890 by Robert Brewster Stanton to survey a route for a proposed railroad through the canyon, which was never built.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />We are now ready to start on our way down the Great Unknown. Our boats, tied to a common stake, are chafing each other, as they are tossed by the fretful river. They ride high and buoyant, for their loads are lighter than we could desire. We have but a month's rations remaining\u2026 The lighting of the boats has this advantage: they will ride the waves better, and we shall have little to carry when we make a portage.\nWe are three-quarters of a mile in the depths of the earth, and the great river shrinks into insignificance, as it dashes its angry waves against the walls and cliffs, that rise to the world above; they are but puny ripples, and we but pigmies, running up and down the sands, or lost among the boulders.\nWe have an unknown distance yet to run; an unknown river yet to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not; Ah, well! we may conjecture many things. The men talk as cheerfully as ever; jests are bandied about freely this morning; but to me the cheer is somber and the jests are ghastly.\nU.S. westward expansion and military campaigns.\nIn 1858, gold was discovered on the Gila River east of Yuma, then along the Colorado River at El Dorado Canyon, Nevada and La Paz, Arizona. As prospectors and settlers entered the region, they became involved in skirmishes with the Mohave, spurring U.S. Army expeditions that culminated in the 1859 Battle of the Colorado River which concluded the Mohave War. In the 1870s the Mohave were moved to the Fort Mohave and Colorado River reservations. Chemehuevi and later some Hopi and Navajo peoples were also moved to the Colorado River reservation, where they today form the Colorado River Indian Tribes.\nAs the American frontier expanded into the Colorado Plateau, an effort to expel the Navajo from the Four Corners region was begun by General James Henry Carleton, who in 1864 enlisted mountain man Kit Carson to lead a campaign against the Navajo. Carson, with the help of the Navajo's Ute enemies, captured more than 8,000 Navajo and forcibly marched them to Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Hundreds died during what is now known as the Long Walk and while enduring appalling conditions at Fort Sumner. After the failure of the Army to maintain the reservation there, the Treaty of Bosque Redondo established the Navajo Nation in the Four Corners, where the Navajo were allowed to return in 1868.\nGold and silver were also discovered in the Upper Basin, beginning with the 1859 Blue River strike that led to the founding of Breckenridge, Colorado. Up until the 1860s, southwestern Colorado had remained relatively untouched by U.S. westward expansion, as the Americans had recognized Ute sovereignty by treaty. Following the 1861 carving out of Colorado Territory and further mineral strikes including Ouray and Telluride, Ute leaders were coerced into signing the 1873 Brunot Agreement, in which they lost rights to most of their land. A flood of mineral prospecting and settlement ensued in western Colorado. By 1881, the Army had driven out the remaining pockets of Ute resistance on the Western Slope, officially opening the Grand River country to settlement, and the town of Grand Junction was incorporated a year later. The Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad (D&RGW) quickly expanded into this area to serve mining boomtowns, crossing the Rockies to the south via the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River. By 1883 the railroad had reached Grand Junction, and a spur up the Colorado to Glenwood Springs was completed in 1887.\nIn Arizona and Utah Territories, many early settlers were Mormons fleeing religious persecution in the Midwest. Mormons founded agricultural colonies at Fort Santa Clara in 1855 and St. Thomas, now flooded under Lake Mead, in 1865. Stone's Ferry, crossing the Colorado at the mouth of the Virgin River, enabled shipping of their produce by wagon to gold mining districts further south. Although the Mormons abandoned St. Thomas in 1871, a salt-mining industry persisted here, and steamboats operated up to nearby Rioville into the 1880s. In 1879 a group of Mormon settlers made their way to southeastern Utah, blasting the precarious Hole in the Rock Trail to cross the Colorado River at Glen Canyon, subsequently establishing the community of Bluff. Due to the dry climate, these settlements depended heavily on irrigation. In central Arizona, settlers uncovered and re-established canals previously used by the Hohokam.\nFollowing tensions between Mormon settlers and the U.S. government in the Utah War, a local militia including John D. Lee perpetrated the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre, in which 120 non-Mormon settlers were killed. Fearing retribution, Lee moved in 1870 to the remote Pahreah Crossing in Arizona, where he took over a ferry first established in 1864 by Jacob Hamblin. This, the only river crossing for hundreds of miles not hemmed in by vertical canyon walls, became known as Lee's Ferry. While Lee was tried and subsequently executed in 1877, the ferry remained a major transportation link until the Navajo Bridge was completed nearby in 1928, rendering the ferry obsolete.\nThe Denver and Salt Lake Railway (D&SL), incorporated in 1902, sought to provide a more direct connection between Denver and Salt Lake City than either the transcontinental railroad through Wyoming or the D&RGW's route via Black Canyon and Durango. The D&SL completed a rail line into the upper headwaters of the Colorado River and blasted the Moffat Tunnel under the Continental Divide, but ran out of money before even reaching Utah. In 1931 the D&RGW completed the \"Dotsero Cutoff\" linking Glenwood Springs to the D&SL route at Bond, Colorado, finally completing the direct Denver\u2013Salt Lake link with its acquisition of the bankrupt D&SL. The Gunnison River route was eventually abandoned in favor of the shorter Colorado River route, which today is owned by Union Pacific.\nRenaming of the upper Colorado River.\nAs late as 1921, the Colorado River upstream from the confluence with the Green River in Utah was still known as the Grand River. For over a decade, U.S. Representative Edward T. Taylor of Colorado had petitioned the Congressional Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce to rename the Grand River as the Colorado River. Representatives from Wyoming, Utah, and the United States Geological Survey objected, noting that the Green River was longer and drained a larger area. Taylor argued that the Grand River should be considered the main stream, as it carried the larger volume of water. Taylor felt \"slighted\" that the Colorado River, as named, did not begin in the state of Colorado, and \"he wasn't going to let Utah or Wyoming lay claim to the river's headwaters, despite the fact that the Green River is the larger drainage basin.\" On July 25, 1921, President Warren G. Harding signed House Joint Resolution 32 - \"To change the name of the Grand River in Colorado and Utah to the Colorado River.\" \nEngineering and development.\nAbout 40\u00a0million people depend on the Colorado River's water for agricultural, industrial and domestic needs. The Colorado irrigates 5.5\u00a0million acres (2.2\u00a0million hectares) of farmland, and its hydroelectric plants produce 12\u00a0billion kilowatt hours (KWh) of hydroelectricity each year. Hydroelectricity from the Colorado is a key supplier of peaking power on the Southwest electric grid. Often called \"America's Nile\", the Colorado is so intensively managed that each drop of its water is used an average of 17 times in a single year. Southern Nevada Water Authority has called the Colorado River one of the \"most controlled, controversial and litigated rivers in the world\".\nIn 1922, six U.S. states signed the Colorado River Compact, which divided half of the river's flow to both the Upper Basin (the drainage area above Lee's Ferry, comprising parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming and a small portion of Arizona) and the Lower Basin (Arizona, California, Nevada, and parts of New Mexico and Utah). The Upper and Lower Basin were each allocated of water per year, a figure believed to represent half of the river's annual flow at Lee's Ferry. The allotments operated under the premise that approximately 17.5 million acre-feet of water flowed through the river annually.\nArizona initially refused to ratify the compact because it feared that California would take too much of the lower basin allotment. In 1944 a compromise was reached in which Arizona was allocated , but with the caveat that California's allocation was prioritized during drought years. These and nine other decisions, compacts, federal acts and agreements made between 1922 and 1973 constitute what is now known as the Law of the River.\nIn 1944, a treaty between the U.S. and Mexico allocated of Colorado River water to Mexico each year. Morelos Dam was constructed in 1950 to enable Mexico to utilize its share of the river. Water allocated to Mexico from the Colorado River is regulated by the International Boundary and Water Commission, which also apportions waters from the Rio Grande between the two countries.\nTransmountain diversions.\nLarge-scale development of Colorado River water supplies started in the late 19th century, at the river's headwaters in La Poudre Pass. The Grand Ditch, directing runoff from the river's headwaters across the Continental Divide to arid eastern Colorado, was considered an engineering marvel when completed in 1890. This was the first of twenty-four \"transmountain diversions\" constructed to draw water across the Rocky Mountains as the Front Range corridor increased in population. These diversions draw water from the upper Colorado and its tributaries into the South Platte River, Arkansas River and Rio Grande basins. Today, about 80\u00a0percent of Colorado's population lives on the eastern slope of the Rockies, while 80\u00a0percent of precipitation falls on the western slope.\nWhile first planned at the same time as the Grand Ditch, construction on the Colorado\u2013Big Thompson Project (C-BT) did not begin until the 1930s. Today, the C-BT is the largest of the transmountain diversions, delivering per year from the Colorado River to cities north of Denver. Numerous other projects followed, with the largest including the Roberts Tunnel, which delivers water from the Blue River to the city of Denver, and the Fryingpan\u2013Arkansas Project, which diverts water from the Fryingpan River to the Arkansas River basin.\nCombined, the transmountain diversions draw about of water per year out of the Colorado River basin. Historically, most of the water has been used for irrigation, although water usage is increasing for urban water supply and for recreational purposes such as snowmaking and increasing Eastern Slope streamflows for boating and fishing. Denver Water receives about 50\u00a0percent of its supply from the Colorado River basin. However, diversions have caused environmental harm to the upper Colorado River system by reducing streamflows in many tributaries. A number of reservoirs have been built to offset the impact of transmountain diversions by storing water for dry season release on the Western Slope, including Williams Fork Reservoir in 1959 and Wolford Mountain Reservoir in 1996.\nThe Imperial Valley and the Salton Sea.\nThe Colorado River delta region in Mexico became a favored place for Americans to invest in agriculture in the late 19th century when Mexican President Porfirio D\u00edaz welcomed foreign capital to develop the country. The Colorado River Land Company, formed by Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler, his father-in-law Harrison Gray Otis, and others, developed the Mexicali Valley in Baja California as a thriving land company. The company headquarters was nominally based in Mexico, but its real headquarters was in Los Angeles, California. Land was leased mainly to Americans who were required to develop it. Colorado River water was used to irrigate the rich soil. The company largely escaped the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution (1910\u201320), but in the postrevolutionary period, the Mexican government expropriated the company's land to satisfy the demand for land reform.\nIn 1900, the California Development Company (CDC) envisioned irrigating the Imperial Valley, a then dry basin on the California\u2013Mexico border, using water from the Colorado River. Due to the valley's location below sea level, water could be diverted and allowed to flow there entirely by gravity. Engineer George Chaffey was hired to design the Alamo Canal, which split from the Colorado near Pilot Knob, California and ran south into Mexico, where it joined the Alamo River, a dry arroyo which had historically carried overflowing floodwaters from the Colorado into the Salton Sink at the bottom of Imperial Valley. The scheme worked initially; by 1903, about four thousand people lived in the valley and more than of farmland had been developed.\nThe Alamo Canal experienced continual problems due to the Colorado's high sediment content and its varying water levels. During low flows, the river often dropped below the level of the canal intake, while high flows silted up the intake, forcing the repeated excavation of new cuts. In early 1905, flooding destroyed the intake gates and water began to flow uncontrolled down the canal towards the Salton Sink. By August, the breach had grown large enough to swallow the entire flow of the river, which began to flood the bottom of the valley. The Southern Pacific Railroad attempted to dam the flow in order to protect their tracks which ran through the valley, but was hampered by repeated flooding. It took seven attempts, more than $3\u00a0million, and two years for the railroad, the CDC, and the federal government to permanently block the breach and restore the river's original course \u2013 but not before part of the Imperial Valley was flooded under a lake, today's Salton Sea. The Imperial Valley fiasco demonstrated that further economic development of the region would require a dam to control the Colorado's unpredictable flows.\nBoulder Canyon Project.\nA large dam on the Colorado River had been envisioned since the 1920s. In 1928, Congress authorized the Reclamation Service (today's U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, or USBR) to build the Boulder Canyon Project, whose key feature would be a dam on the Colorado in Black Canyon southeast of Las Vegas, Nevada. On September 30, 1935, Hoover Dam was completed, forming Lake Mead, capable of holding more than two years of the Colorado's flow. Lake Mead was, and still is, the largest artificial lake in the U.S. by storage capacity. The construction of Hoover Dam stabilized the lower channel of the Colorado River, stored water for irrigation in times of drought, captured sediment and controlled floods. Hoover was the tallest dam in the world at the time of construction and also had the world's largest hydroelectric power plant.\nThe Boulder Canyon Project Act also authorized the All-American Canal, which was built as a permanent replacement for the Alamo Canal and follows a route entirely within the U.S. on its way to the Imperial Valley. The canal's intake is located at Imperial Dam, above Yuma, Arizona, which diverts the majority of the Colorado's flow with only a small portion continuing to Mexico. With a capacity of over , the All-American Canal is the largest irrigation canal in the world. Because the hot, sunny climate lends to a year-round growing season, the Imperial Valley has become one of the most productive farming regions in North America, providing much of the winter produce supply in the U.S. The Imperial Irrigation District supplies water to south of the Salton Sea. The Coachella Canal, which branches northward from the All-American Canal, irrigates another in the Coachella Valley.\nParker Dam was initially built as the diversion point for the Colorado River Aqueduct, planned by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to supply water to Los Angeles. The construction of the dam was opposed by Arizona, which feared that California would take too much water from the Colorado; at one point, Arizona sent members of its National Guard to stop work on the dam. Ultimately, a compromise was reached, with Arizona dropping its objections in exchange for the USBR constructing the Gila Project, which irrigates on the Arizona side of the river. By 1941, the long Colorado River Aqueduct was completed, delivering of water west to Southern California. The aqueduct enabled the continued growth of Los Angeles and its suburbs, and provides water to about 10\u00a0million people today. The San Diego Aqueduct, which branches off from the Colorado River Aqueduct in Riverside County, California, opened in stages between 1954 and 1971 and provides water to another 3\u00a0million people in the San Diego metro area.\nThe Las Vegas Valley of Nevada experienced rapid growth after Hoover Dam, and by 1937 Las Vegas had tapped a pipeline into Lake Mead. Nevada officials, believing that groundwater resources in the southern part of the state were sufficient for future growth, were more concerned with securing a large amount of the dam's power supply than water from the Colorado; thus they settled for the smallest water allocation of all the states in the Colorado River Compact. In 2018, due to declining water levels in Lake Mead, a second pipeline was completed with a lower intake elevation.\nColorado River Storage Project.\nIn the first half of the 20th century, the Upper Basin states, with the exception of Colorado, had developed very little of their water allocations from the Colorado River Compact. By the 1950s, however, water demand was rapidly increasing in Utah's Wasatch Front (Salt Lake City metro area) and the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico, which both began exploring ways to divert water from the Colorado Basin. The Upper Basin states were concerned that they would not be able to use their full Compact allocations due to increasing water demands in the Lower Basin. The Compact requires the Upper Basin to deliver a minimum annual flow of past Lee's Ferry (measured on a 10-year rolling average). Without additional reservoir storage, the Upper Basin states could not utilize their allocations without impacting water deliveries to the Lower Basin in dry years.\nIn 1956 Congress authorized the USBR to construct the Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP), which planned several large reservoirs on the upper Colorado, Green, Gunnison and San Juan Rivers. The initial blueprints for the CRSP included two dams on the Green River within Echo Park Canyon in Dinosaur National Monument \u2013 a move criticized by both the National Park Service and environmental groups such as the Sierra Club. The controversy received nationwide media attention, and the USBR dropped its plans for the Dinosaur dams in exchange for increasing the size of a proposed dam at Glen Canyon.\nThe controversy associated with Glen Canyon Dam did not build momentum until construction was well underway. Due to Glen Canyon's remote location, most of the American public did not even know of its existence; the few who did contended that it had much greater scenic value than Echo Park. The environmental movement in the American Southwest has opposed the damming and diversion of the Colorado River system due to negative effects on the ecology and natural beauty of the river and its tributaries. During the construction of Glen Canyon Dam (1956\u201366), environmental organizations vowed to block any further development of the river, and a number of later dam and aqueduct proposals were defeated by citizen opposition. Sierra Club leader David Brower fought the dam both during the construction and for many years afterwards until his death in 2000. Brower believed that he was personally responsible for the failure to prevent Glen Canyon's flooding, calling it his \"greatest mistake, greatest sin\".\nIn addition to Glen Canyon Dam, the CRSP includes the Flaming Gorge Dam on the Green River, the Blue Mesa, Morrow Point and Crystal Dams on the Gunnison River, and the Navajo Dam on the San Juan River. A total of 22 \"participating projects\" (of which 16 have been constructed) were later authorized in order to develop local water supplies at various locations across the Upper Basin states. These include the Central Utah Project, which delivers per year from the Green River basin to the Wasatch Front, and the San Juan\u2013Chama Project, which diverts per year from the San Juan River to the Rio Grande Valley. Both are multi-purpose projects serving a variety of agricultural, municipal and industrial uses.\nPacific Southwest Water Plan.\nBy the middle of the 20th century, planners were concerned that continued growth in water demand would outstrip the available water supply from the Colorado River. After exploring a multitude of potential projects, the USBR published a study in January 1964 known as the Pacific Southwest Water Plan, which proposed diverting water from the northwestern United States into the Colorado River basin. Arizona's water allocation was a significant focus of the plan, due to the growing concern that its water supply could be curtailed due to California's seniority of water rights. In addition, the plan would guarantee full water supplies to Nevada, California and Mexico, allowing the Upper Basin states to utilize their full allocations without risking reductions in the Lower Basin. The project would cost an estimated $3.1 billion.\nThe first stage of this plan would divert water from Northern California's Trinity, Klamath and Eel Rivers to Southern California, allowing more Colorado River water to be used, by exchange, in Arizona. A canal system, which ultimately would become the Central Arizona Project (CAP), would be constructed to deliver Arizona's Colorado River allocation to Phoenix and Tucson, both located far away from the Colorado River in the middle of the state. At this point, central Arizona was still entirely dependent on local water supplies, such as the 1911 Theodore Roosevelt Dam, and was quickly running out of surplus water.\nIn order to supply the massive amount of power required to pump Colorado River water to central Arizona, two hydroelectric dams were proposed in the Grand Canyon (Bridge Canyon Dam and Marble Canyon Dam), which while not directly located in Grand Canyon National Park, would greatly impact flows of the Colorado River through the park. With the controversy over Glen Canyon Dam still ongoing, the public pressure against these dams was immense. As a result, the two Grand Canyon dams were omitted from the final CAP authorization in 1968. In addition, the boundaries of Grand Canyon National Park were redrawn to prevent future dam projects in the area. The pumping power was replaced by the building of the coal-fired Navajo Generating Station near Page, Arizona, in 1976. In 2019, the Navajo Generating Station ceased operation.\nThe CAP was constructed in stages from 1973 to 1993, ultimately extending from the Colorado River at Parker Dam to Tucson, Arizona. It delivers of water per year, irrigates of farmland and provides municipal water to about 5\u00a0million people. Due to environmental concerns, most of the facilities proposed in the Pacific Southwest Water Plan were never built (though a smaller version of the Trinity River project was constructed as part of the unrelated Central Valley Project), leaving Arizona and Nevada vulnerable to future water reductions under the Compact.\nIndigenous water rights.\nWater rights of Native Americans in the Colorado River basin were largely ignored during the extensive water resources development carried out on the river and its tributaries in the 19th and 20th\u00a0centuries. The construction of dams has often had negative impacts on tribal peoples, such as the Chemehuevi when their riverside lands were flooded after the completion of Parker Dam in 1938. Ten Native American tribes in the basin now hold or continue to claim water rights to the Colorado River. The U.S. government has taken some actions to help quantify and develop the water resources of Native American reservations. The first federally funded irrigation project in the U.S. was the construction of an irrigation canal on the Colorado River Indian Reservation in 1867. Other water projects include the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project, authorized in 1962 for the irrigation of lands in part of the Navajo Nation in north-central New Mexico. The Navajo continue to seek expansion of their water rights because of difficulties with the water supply on their reservation; about 40\u00a0percent of its inhabitants must haul water by truck many miles to their homes. In the 21st\u00a0century, they have filed legal claims against the governments of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah for increased water rights. Some of these claims have been successful for the Navajo, such as a 2004 settlement in which they received a allotment from New Mexico.\nPost-2000 water supply.\n<templatestyles src=\"Rquote/styles.css\"/>{ class=\"rquote pullquote floatright\" role=\"presentation\" style=\"display:table; border-collapse:collapse; border-style:none; float:right; margin:0.5em 0.75em; width:33%; \"\nWhen the Colorado River Compact was drafted in the 1920s, it was based on barely 30 years of streamflow records that suggested an average annual flow of past Lee's Ferry. Modern studies of tree rings revealed that those three decades were probably the wettest in the past 500 to 1,200 years and that the natural long-term annual flow past Lee's Ferry is probably closer to , with a natural flow at the mouth around . This has resulted in more water being allocated to river users than actually exists in the Colorado. Droughts have exacerbated the issue of water over-allocation.\nThe most severe drought on record, the southwestern North American megadrought, began in the early 21st\u00a0century, in which the river basin has produced above-average runoff in only five years between 2000 and 2021. The region is experiencing a warming trend, which is accompanied by earlier snowmelt, lower precipitation and greater evapotranspiration. A 2004 study showed that a 1\u20136\u00a0percent decrease of precipitation would lead to runoff declining by as much as 18\u00a0percent by 2050.\nSince 2000, reservoir levels have fluctuated greatly from year to year, but have experienced a steady long-term decline. The particularly dry spell between 2000 and 2004 brought Lake Powell to just a third of capacity in 2005, the lowest level on record since initial filling in 1969. In late 2010, Lake Mead was approaching the \"drought trigger\" elevation of , at which water supplies to Arizona and Nevada would be reduced in accordance with the Colorado River Compact. Due to Arizona and Nevada's water rights being junior to California's, their allocations can legally be cut to zero before any reductions are made on the California side.\nA wet winter in 2011 temporarily raised lake levels, but dry conditions returned in the next two years. In 2014, the Bureau of Reclamation cut releases from Lake Powell by 10\u00a0percent \u2014the first such reduction since the 1960s, when Lake Powell was being filled for the first time. This resulted in Lake Mead dropping to its lowest recorded level since 1937, when it was first being filled.\nWater year 2018 had a much lower-than-average snowpack. In July 2021, after two more extremely dry winters, Lake Powell fell below the previous low set in 2005. In response, the Bureau of Reclamation began releasing water from upstream reservoirs in order to keep Powell above the minimum level for hydropower generation. Lake Mead fell below the level expected to trigger federally mandated cuts to Arizona and Nevada's water supplies for the first time in history, and is expected to continue declining into 2022.\nOn August 16, 2021, the Bureau of Reclamation released the Colorado River Basin August 2021 24-Month Study, and for the first time declared a shortage and that because of \"ongoing historic drought and low runoff conditions in the Colorado River Basin, downstream releases from Glen Canyon Dam and Hoover Dam will be reduced in 2022 due to declining reservoir levels.\"\nThe Lower Basin reductions will reduce the annual apportionments \u2013 Arizona's by 18 percent, Nevada's by 7 percent, and Mexico's by 5 percent.\nOn June 14, 2022, Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural resources that additional cuts of 2\u20134 million acre-feet were required to stabilize reservoir levels in 2023. Touton warned that if states were unable to negotiate the requisite cuts the Interior department may use its legal authority to cut releases. When the states were unable to come to an agreement about how to share the proposed cuts, Reclamation began the legal steps to unilaterally reduce releases from Hoover and Glen Canyon Dams in 2023. As of December 2022 the lower basin states of Nevada, Arizona, and California had not agreed on how to reduce water use by the approximately 30% required to keep levels in lakes Mead and Powell from crashing. The Bureau of Reclamation had projected that water levels at Lake Powell could fall low enough that by July 2023 Glen Canyon Dam would no longer be able to generate any hydropower, a scenario referred to as \"dead pool\". Arizona proposed a plan that severely cut allocations to California, and California responded with a plan that severely cut allocations to Arizona, failing to reach consensus. In April 2023, the federal government proposed cutting allocations to Nevada, Arizona, and California evenly which would cut deliveries by as much as one-quarter to each state, rather than according to senior water rights.\nIn May 2023, the states finally reached a temporary agreement to prevent a \"dead pool\", reducing allocations by 3 million acre-feet over three years (until the end of 2026). 700,000 acre-feet were to be negotiated later among California, Arizona, and Nevada. The cuts were less than the federal government had demanded, and so further cuts will be needed after 2026. Fewer cuts were needed in the short term because the Colorado River Basin experienced an unusually rainy and snowy weather in early 2023.\nThe agreement also became easier to negotiate because many cuts are being offset by one-time federal funding. Billions of dollars in funding for programs in the Colorado River Basin to recycle water, increase efficiency, and competitive grants to pay water rights holders not to use water from the river are being provided by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act, and other programs funded through the United States Environmental Protection Agency and United States Department of the Interior. These are projected to reduce demand by hundreds of thousands of acre-feet per year.\nEcology.\nWildlife and plants.\nThe Colorado River and its tributaries often nourish extensive corridors of riparian growth as they traverse the arid desert regions of the watershed. Although riparian zones represent a relatively small proportion of the basin and have been affected by engineering projects and river diversion in many places, they have the greatest biodiversity of any habitat in the basin. The most prominent riparian zones along the river occur along the lower Colorado below Davis Dam, especially in the Colorado River Delta, where riparian areas support 358 species of birds despite the reduction in freshwater flow and invasive plants such as tamarisk (salt cedar). Reduction of the delta's size has also threatened animals such as jaguars and the vaquita porpoise, which is endemic to the gulf. Human development of the Colorado River has also helped to create new riparian zones by smoothing the river's seasonal flow, notably through the Grand Canyon.\nMore than 1,600 species of plants grow in the Colorado River watershed, ranging from the creosote bush, saguaro cactus, and Joshua trees of the Sonoran and Mojave Deserts to the forests of the Rocky Mountains and other uplands, composed mainly of ponderosa pine, subalpine fir, Douglas-fir and Engelmann spruce. Before logging in the 19th\u00a0century, forests were abundant in high elevations as far south as the Mexico\u2013U.S. border, and runoff from these areas nourished abundant grassland communities in river valleys. Some arid regions of the watershed, such as the upper Green River valley in Wyoming, Canyonlands National Park in Utah and the San Pedro River valley in Arizona and Sonora, supported extensive reaches of grassland roamed by large mammals such as buffalo and antelope as late as the 1860s. Near Tucson, Arizona, \"where now there is only powder-dry desert, the grass once reached as high as the head of a man on horse back\".\nRivers and streams in the Colorado basin were once home to 49 species of native fish, of which 42 were endemic. Engineering projects and river regulation have led to the extinction of four species and severe declines in the populations of 40 species. Bonytail chub, razorback sucker, Colorado pikeminnow, and humpback chub are among those considered the most at risk; all are unique to the Colorado River system and well adapted to the river's natural silty conditions and flow variations. Clear, cold water released by dams has significantly changed characteristics of habitat for these and other Colorado River basin fishes. A further 40 species that occur in the river today, notably the brown trout, were introduced during the 19th and 20th\u00a0centuries, mainly for sport fishing.\nImpacts of development.\nHistorically, the Colorado transported from of sediment or silt to the Gulf of California each year \u2013 second only to the Mississippi among North American rivers. This sediment nourished wetlands and riparian areas along the river's lower course, particularly in its delta, once the largest desert estuary on the continent. Currently, the majority of sediments carried by the Colorado River are deposited at the upper end of Lake Powell, and most of the remainder ends up in Lake Mead. Various estimates place the time it would take for Powell to completely fill with silt at 300 to 700 years. Dams trapping sediment not only pose damage to river habitat but also threaten future operations of the Colorado River reservoir system.\nReduction in flow caused by dams, diversions, water for thermoelectric power stations, and evaporation losses from reservoirs \u2013 the latter of which consumes more than 15\u00a0percent of the river's natural runoff\u2014has had severe ecological consequences in the Colorado River Delta and the Gulf of California. Historically, the delta with its large freshwater outflow and extensive salt marshes provided an important breeding ground for aquatic species in the Gulf. Today's desiccated delta, at only a fraction of its former size, no longer provides suitable habitat, and populations of fish, shrimp and sea mammals in the gulf have seen a dramatic decline. Since 1963, the only times when the Colorado River has reached the ocean have been during El Ni\u00f1o events in the 1980s and 1990s.\nReduced flows have led to increases in the concentration of certain substances in the lower river that have impacted water quality. Salinity is one of the major issues and also leads to the corrosion of pipelines in agricultural and urban areas. The lower Colorado's salt content was about 50 parts per million (ppm) in its natural state, but by the 1960s, it had increased to well over 2000 ppm. By the early 1970s, there was also serious concern about salinity caused by salts leached from local soils by irrigation drainage water, which were estimated to add of excess salt to the river per year. The Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Act was passed in 1974, mandating conservation practices including the reduction of saline drainage. The program reduced the annual load by about , but salinity remains an ongoing issue. In 1997, the USBR estimated that saline irrigation water caused crop damages exceeding $500\u00a0million in the U.S. and $100\u00a0million in Mexico. Further efforts have been made to combat the salt issue in the lower Colorado, including the construction of a desalination plant at Yuma. In 2011, the seven U.S. states agreed upon a \"Plan of Implementation\", which aims to reduce salinity by per year by 2030. In 2013, the Bureau of Reclamation estimated that around $32\u00a0million was spent each year to prevent around 1.2\u00a0million tons of salt from entering and damaging the Colorado River.\nAgricultural runoff containing pesticide residues has also been concentrated in the lower river in greater amounts. This has led to fish kills; six of these events were recorded between 1964 and 1968 alone. The pesticide issue is even greater in streams and water bodies near agricultural lands irrigated by the Imperial Irrigation District with Colorado River water. In the Imperial Valley, Colorado River water used for irrigation overflows into the New and Alamo rivers and into the Salton Sea. Both rivers and the sea are among the most polluted bodies of water in the United States, posing dangers not only to aquatic life but to contact by humans and migrating birds. Pollution from agricultural runoff is not limited to the lower river; the issue is also significant in upstream reaches such as Colorado's Grand Valley, also a major center of irrigated agriculture.\nLarge dams such as Hoover and Glen Canyon typically release water from lower levels of their reservoirs, resulting in stable and relatively cold year-round temperatures in long reaches of the river. The Colorado's average temperature once ranged from at the height of summer to near freezing in winter, but modern flows through the Grand Canyon, for example, rarely deviate significantly from . Changes in temperature regime have caused declines of native fish populations, and stable flows have enabled increased vegetation growth, obstructing riverside habitat. These flow patterns have also made the Colorado more dangerous to recreational boaters; people are more likely to die of hypothermia in the colder water, and the general lack of flooding allows rockslides to build up, making the river more difficult to navigate.\nMinute 319.\nIn the 21st\u00a0century, there has been renewed interest in restoring a limited water flow to the delta. In November 2012, the U.S. and Mexico reached an agreement, known as Minute 319, permitting Mexico storage of its water allotment in U.S. reservoirs during wet years, thus increasing the efficiency with which the water can be used. In addition to renovating irrigation canals in the Mexicali Valley to reduce leakage, this will make about per year available for release to the delta on average. The water will be used to provide both an annual base flow and a spring \"pulse flow\" to mimic the river's original snowmelt-driven regime. The first pulse flow, an eight-week release of , was initiated on March 21, 2014, with the aim of revitalising of wetland. This pulse reached the sea on May 16, 2014, marking the first time in 16 years that any water from the Colorado flowed into the ocean, and was hailed as \"an experiment of historic political and ecological significance\" and a landmark in U.S.\u2013Mexican cooperation in conservation. The pulse will be followed by the steady release of over the following three years, just a small fraction of its average flow before damming.\nRecreation.\nFamed for its dramatic rapids and canyons, the Colorado is one of the most well-known whitewater rivers in the United States, and its Grand Canyon section\u2014run by more than 22,000 people annually\u2014has been called the \"granddaddy of rafting trips\". Grand Canyon trips typically begin at Lee's Ferry and take out at Diamond Creek or Lake Mead; they range from one to eighteen days for commercial trips and from two to twenty-five days for private trips. Private (noncommercial) trips are extremely difficult to arrange because the National Park Service limits river traffic for environmental purposes; people who desire such a trip often have to wait more than 10 years for the opportunity.\nSeveral other sections of the river and its tributaries are popular whitewater runs, and many of these are also served by commercial outfitters. The Colorado's Cataract Canyon and many reaches in the Colorado headwaters are even more heavily used than the Grand Canyon, and about 60,000 boaters run a single section above Radium, Colorado, each year. The upper Colorado also includes many of the river's most challenging rapids, including those in Gore Canyon, which is considered so dangerous that \"boating is not recommended\". Another section of the river above Moab, known as the Colorado \"Daily\" or \"Fisher Towers Section\", is the most visited whitewater run in Utah, with more than 77,000 visitors in 2011 alone. The rapids of the Green River's Gray and Desolation Canyons and the less difficult \"Goosenecks\" section of the lower San Juan River are also frequently traversed by boaters.\nEleven U.S. national parks\u2014Arches, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, Petrified Forest, Rocky Mountain, Saguaro, and Zion\u2014are in the watershed, in addition to many national forests, state parks, and recreation areas. Hiking, backpacking, camping, skiing, and fishing are among the multiple recreation opportunities offered by these areas. Fisheries have declined in many streams in the watershed, especially in the Rocky Mountains, because of polluted runoff from mining and agricultural activities. The Colorado's major reservoirs are also heavily traveled summer destinations. Houseboating and water-skiing are popular activities on Lakes Mead, Powell, Havasu, and Mojave, as well as Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Utah and Wyoming, and Navajo Reservoir in New Mexico and Colorado. Lake Powell and surrounding Glen Canyon National Recreation Area received more than two\u00a0million visitors per year in 2007, while nearly 7.9\u00a0million people visited Lake Mead and the Lake Mead National Recreation Area in 2008. Colorado River recreation employs some 250,000 people and contributes $26\u00a0billion each year to the Southwest economy.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nWorks cited.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>", "57180": "Tucson, Arizona\nCity in Arizona, United States\nTucson (; ; ) is a city in Pima County, Arizona, United States, and its county seat. It is the second-most populous city in Arizona, behind Phoenix, with a population of 542,629 in the 2020 United States census. The Tucson metropolitan statistical area had 1.043 million residents in 2020 and forms part of the Tucson-Nogales combined statistical area. Both Tucson and Phoenix anchor the Arizona Sun Corridor. The city is southeast of Phoenix and north of the United States\u2013Mexico border It is home to the University of Arizona.\nMajor incorporated suburbs of Tucson include Oro Valley and Marana northwest of the city, Sahuarita south of the city, and South Tucson in an enclave south of downtown. Communities in the vicinity of Tucson (some within or overlapping the city limits) include Casas Adobes, Catalina Foothills, Flowing Wells, Midvale Park, Tanque Verde, Tortolita, and Vail. Towns outside the Tucson metropolitan area include Three Points, Benson to the southeast, Catalina and Oracle to the north, and Green Valley to the south.\nTucson was founded as a military fort by the Spanish when Hugo O'Conor authorized the construction of Presidio San Agust\u00edn del Tucs\u00f3n in 1775. It was included in the state of Sonora after Mexico gained independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821. The United States acquired a region of present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico from Mexico under the Gadsden Purchase in 1853. Tucson served as the capital of the Arizona Territory from 1867 to 1877. Tucson was Arizona's largest city by population during the territorial period and early statehood, until it was surpassed by Phoenix by 1920. Nevertheless, its population growth remained strong during the late 20th century. Tucson was the first American city to be designated a \"City of Gastronomy\" by UNESCO in 2015.\nThe Spanish name of the city, (), is derived from the O'odham (). is a stative verb meaning \"(be) black, (be) dark\". is (in this usage) a noun referring to the base or foundation of something. The name is commonly translated into English as \"the base [of the hill] is black\", a reference to a basalt-covered hill now known as Sentinel Peak. Tucson is sometimes referred to as the Old Pueblo and Optics Valley, the latter referring to its optical science and telescopes known worldwide.\nHistory.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nHistorical affiliations\n Spanish Empire 1775\u20131821 First Mexican Empire 1821\u20131823 United Mexican States 1823\u20131854 1854\u2013present\nThe Tucson area was probably first visited by Paleo-Indians, who were known to have been in southern Arizona about 12,000 years ago. Recent archaeological excavations near the Santa Cruz River found a village site dating from 2100 BC. The floodplain of the Santa Cruz River was extensively farmed during the Early Agricultural Period, c. 1200 BC to AD 150. These people hunted, gathered wild plants and nuts, and ate corn, beans, and other crops grown using irrigation canals they constructed.\nThe Early Ceramic period occupation of Tucson had the first extensive use of pottery vessels for cooking and storage. The groups designated as the Hohokam lived in the area from AD 600 to 1450 and are known for their vast irrigation canal systems and their red-on-brown pottery.\nItalian Jesuit missionary Eusebio Francisco Kino first visited the Santa Cruz River valley in 1692. He founded the Mission San Xavier del Bac in 1700, about upstream from the site of the settlement of Tucson. A separate Convento settlement was founded downstream along the Santa Cruz River, near the base of what is now known as \"A\" mountain. Hugo Ocon\u00f3r (Hugo O'Conor), the founding father of the city of Tucson, Arizona, authorized the construction of a military fort in that location, \"Presidio San Agust\u00edn del Tucs\u00f3n,\" on August 20, 1775 (the present downtown Pima County Courthouse was built near this site). During the Spanish period of the presidio, attacks such as the Second Battle of Tucson were repeatedly mounted by the Apache. Eventually, the town came to be called \"Tucs\u00f3n,\" a Spanish version of the O'odham word for the area. It was included in the state of Sonora after Mexico gained independence from the Kingdom of Spain and its Spanish Empire in 1821\nDuring the Mexican\u2013American War in 1846\u20131848, Tucs\u00f3n was captured by Philip St. George Cooke with the Mormon Battalion, but it soon returned to Mexican control as Cooke proceeded to the west, establishing Cooke's Wagon Road to California. Tucs\u00f3n was not included in the Mexican Cession to the United States following the war. Cooke's road through Tucs\u00f3n became one of the important routes into California during the California Gold Rush of 1849.\nThe US acquired those portions of modern-day Arizona that lay south of the Gila River by treaty from Mexico in the Gadsden Purchase on June 8, 1854. Under this treaty and purchase, Tucs\u00f3n became a part of the United States of America. The American military did not formally take over control until March 1856. In time, the name of the town became standardized in English in its current form, where the stress is on the first syllable, the \"u\" is long, and the \"c\" is silent.\nIn 1857, Tucson was established as a stage station on the San Antonio\u2013San Diego Mail Line. In 1858, it became third division headquarters of the Butterfield Overland Mail and operated until the line was shut down in March 1861. The Overland Mail Corporation attempted to continue running, but following the Bascom Affair, devastating Apache attacks on the stations and coaches ended operations in August 1861.\nTucson was incorporated in 1877, making it the oldest incorporated city in Arizona.\nFrom 1877 to 1878, the area suffered a rash of stagecoach robberies. Most notable were the two holdups committed by masked road agent William Whitney Brazelton. Brazelton held up two stages in the summer of 1878 near Point of Mountain Station, about northwest of Tucson. John Clum, of Tombstone, Arizona, fame, was one of the passengers. Pima County Sheriff Charles A. Shibell and his citizen posse killed Brazelton on August 19, 1878, in a mesquite bosque along the Santa Cruz River south of Tucson. Brazelton had been suspected of highway robbery in the Tucson area, the Prescott region, and the Silver City, New Mexico area. Because of the crimes and threats to his business, John J. Valentine Sr. of Wells, Fargo & Co. had sent Bob Paul, a special agent and future Pima County sheriff, to investigate. The US Army established Fort Lowell, then east of Tucson, to help protect settlers and travelers from Apache attacks.\nIn 1882, Morgan Earp was fatally shot, in what was later referred to in the press as the \"Earp\u2013Clanton Tragedy\". Marietta Spence, wife of Pete Spence, one of the Cochise County Cowboys, testified at the coroner's inquest on Earp's killing and implicated Frank Stilwell in the murder. The coroner's jury concluded Pete Spence, Stilwell, Frederick Bode, and Florentino \"Indian Charlie\" Cruz were the prime suspects in the assassination of Morgan Earp.\nDeputy U.S. Marshal Wyatt Earp gathered a few trusted friends and accompanied Virgil Earp and his family as they traveled to Benson to take a train to California. They found Stilwell apparently lying in wait for Virgil Earp at the Tucson station and killed Stilwell on the tracks. After killing Stilwell, Wyatt deputized others and conducted a vendetta, killing three more cowboys over the next few days before leaving the territory.\nJim Leavy had built a reputation of having fought in at least 16 gunfights. On June 5, 1882, Leavy had an argument with faro dealer John Murphy in Tucson. The two agreed to have a duel on the Mexican border, but after hearing of Leavy's exploits as a gunfighter, Murphy decided to ambush Leavy instead. Together with two of his friends, Murphy ambushed Leavy as he was leaving the Palace Hotel, killing him. According to Wright, the three co-defendants in Leavy's murder later escaped from the Pima County Jail, but were later recaptured. Murphy and Gibson were found in Fenner, California, living under assumed names; they were retried for the murder before being found not guilty. Moyer was captured in Denver and sentenced to life in Yuma Territorial Prison, but was pardoned in 1888.\nPost-frontier life.\nAs other settlers tried to overcome violent frontier society, in 1885, the territorial legislature founded the University of Arizona as a land-grant college on what was overgrazed ranchland between Tucson and Fort Lowell.\nIn 1890, Asians made up 4.2% of the city's population. They were predominantly Chinese men who had been recruited as workers on the railroads.\nBy 1900, 7,531 people lived in Tucson. By 1910, the population increased to 13,913. About this time, the U.S. Veterans Administration had begun construction of the present Veterans Hospital. The city's clean, dry air made it a destination for many veterans who had been gassed in World War I and needed respiratory therapy. In addition, these dry and high-altitude conditions were thought to be ideal for the treatment of tuberculosis, for which no cures were known before antibiotics were developed against it.\nThe city continued to grow, with the population increasing to 20,292 in 1920 and 36,818 in 1940. In 2006, the estimated population of Pima County, in which Tucson is located, passed one million, while the City of Tucson's population was 535,000.\nIn 1912, Arizona was admitted as a state. This increased the number of flags that had been flown over Tucson to five: Spanish, Mexican, United States, Confederate, and the State of Arizona.\nDuring the territorial and early statehood periods, Tucson was Arizona's largest city and commercial center, while Phoenix was the seat of state government (beginning in 1889) and agriculture. The development of Tucson Municipal Airport increased the city's prominence. Between 1910 and 1920, though, Phoenix surpassed Tucson in population, and has continued to outpace Tucson in growth. In recent years, both Tucson and Phoenix have had some of the highest growth rates of any jurisdiction in the United States.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, as of 2010, the City of Tucson has a land area of . The city's elevation is above sea level (as measured at the Tucson International Airport). Tucson is on an alluvial plain in the Sonoran Desert, surrounded by five minor ranges of mountains: the Santa Catalina Mountains and the Tortolita Mountains to the north, the Santa Rita Mountains to the south, the Rincon Mountains to the east, and the Tucson Mountains to the west. Tucson Mountains include Wasson Peak. The highest point in the area is Mount Wrightson, found in the Santa Rita Mountains at above sea level.\nTucson is southeast of Phoenix and north of the United States\u2013Mexico border. The 2020 United States census puts the city's population at 542,629 with a metropolitan area population at 1,043,433. In 2020, Tucson ranked as the 33rd-largest city and 53rd-largest metropolitan area in the United States. A major city in the Arizona Sun Corridor, Tucson is the largest city in southern Arizona, and the second-largest in the state after Phoenix. It is also the largest city in the area of the historic Gadsden Purchase. As of 2015, the Greater Tucson Metro area has exceeded a population of 1 million.\nThe city is built along the Santa Cruz River, formerly a perennial river. Now a dry riverbed for much of the year, it regularly floods during significant seasonal rains.\nInterstate 10 runs northwest through town, connecting Tucson to Phoenix to the northwest (on the way to its western terminus in Santa Monica, California), and to Las Cruces, New Mexico and El Paso, Texas to the southeast. (Its eastern terminus is in Jacksonville, Florida).\nI-19 runs south from Tucson toward Nogales and the U.S.\u2013Mexico border. I-19 is the only Interstate highway that uses \"kilometer posts\" instead of \"mileposts\". However, speed limits are marked in miles per hour and kilometers per hour.\nNeighborhoods.\nDowntown and Central Tucson.\nSimilar to many other cities in the Western US, Tucson was developed by European Americans on a grid plan starting in the late 19th century, with the city center at Stone Avenue and Broadway Boulevard. While this intersection was initially near the geographic center of Tucson, the center has shifted as the city has expanded far to the east. Development to the west was effectively blocked by the Tucson Mountains. Covering a large geographic area, Tucson has many distinct neighborhoods.\nTucson's earliest neighborhoods, some of which were redeveloped and covered by the Tucson Convention Center (TCC), include:\nOther historical neighborhoods near downtown include:\nAt the end of the 2010s, city planners and the business community worked to redevelop downtown Tucson. The primary project was Rio Nuevo, a large retail and community center that had been stalled in planning for more than a decade. One Rio Nuevo project that was successful is Mission Garden. Related to Tucson's City of Gastronomy designation, this living agricultural museum at the base of Sentinel Peak west of downtown grows heritage crops and heirloom trees that represent people who have lived in the area for thousands of years. Downtown is generally regarded as the area bordered by 17th Street to the south, I-10 to the west, and 6th Street to the north, and Toole Avenue and the Union Pacific (formerly Southern Pacific) railroad tracks, site of the historic train depot on the east side. Downtown is divided into the Presidio District, the Barrio Viejo, and the Congress Street Arts and Entertainment District. Some authorities include the 4th Avenue shopping district, northeast of the rest of downtown and connected by an underpass beneath the UPRR tracks.\nHistoric attractions downtown with rich architecture include the Hotel Congress designed in 1919, the Art Deco Fox Theatre designed in 1929, the Rialto Theatre opened in 1920, and St. Augustine Cathedral completed in 1896. Included on the National Register of Historic Places is the old Pima County Courthouse, designed by Roy Place in 1928. El Charro Caf\u00e9, Tucson's oldest restaurant, operates its main location downtown.\nAs one of the oldest parts of town, Central Tucson is anchored by the Broadway Village shopping center, designed by local architect Josias Joesler at the intersection of Broadway Boulevard and Country Club Road. The 4th Avenue Shopping District between downtown, the university, and the Lost Barrio just east of downtown, also has many unique and popular stores. Local retail business in Central Tucson is densely concentrated along Fourth Avenue and the Main Gate Square on University Boulevard near the UA campus. El Con Mall is also in the eastern part of midtown.\nThe University of Arizona, chartered in 1885, is in midtown and includes Arizona Stadium and McKale Center (named for J.F. \"Pop\" McKale, a prominent coach and athletics administrator at the university).\nThe historic Tucson High School (designed by Roy Place in 1924) was featured in the 1987 film \"Can't Buy Me Love\". The Arizona Inn (built in 1930) and the Tucson Botanical Gardens are also in Central Tucson.\nTucson's largest park, Reid Park, is in midtown and includes Reid Park Zoo and Hi Corbett Field. Speedway Boulevard, a major east\u2013west arterial road in central Tucson, was named the \"ugliest street in America\" by \"Life\" in the early 1970s, quoting Tucson Mayor James Corbett.\nIn the late 1990s, Speedway Boulevard was awarded \"Street of the Year\" by \"Arizona Highways.\" Speedway Boulevard was named after an historic horse racetrack, known as the Harlem River Speedway, and more commonly called \"The Speedway\", in New York City. The Tucson street was called \"The Speedway\" from 1904 to about 1906, when \"The\" was removed from the title.\nAs of the early 21st century, Central Tucson is considered bicycle-friendly. To the east of the University of Arizona, Third Street is bike-only except for local traffic; it passes by the historic homes of the Sam Hughes neighborhood. To the west, East University Boulevard leads to the Fourth Avenue Shopping District. To the North, North Mountain Avenue has a full bike-only lane for half of the to the Rillito River Park bike and walk multi-use path. To the south, North Highland Avenue leads to the Barraza-Aviation Parkway bicycle path.\nSouthern Tucson.\nSouth Tucson is the name of an independent, incorporated town of south of downtown. It is surrounded by the City of Tucson and was incorporated in 1936 and reincorporated in 1940.\nThe population is about 83% Mexican-American and 10% Native American, as residents self-identify in the census. South Tucson is widely known for its many Mexican restaurants and architectural styles. Bright murals have been painted on some walls, but city policy discourages this and many have been painted over.\nThe south side of the city of Tucson is generally considered to be the area around south of 22nd Street, east of I-19, west of Davis Monthan Air Force Base and southwest of Aviation Parkway, and north of Los Reales Road. The Tucson International Airport and Tucson Electric Park are located here.\nWestern Tucson.\nThe West Side has areas of both urban and suburban development. It is generally defined as the area west of I-10. Western Tucson encompasses the banks of the Santa Cruz River and the foothills of the Tucson Mountains. Area attractions include the International Wildlife Museum and Sentinel Peak. The Marriott Starr Pass Resort and Spa serves travelers and residents. As travelers pass the Tucson Mountains, they enter the area commonly referred to as \"west of\" Tucson or \"Old West Tucson\". In this large, undulating plain extending south into the Altar Valley, rural residential development predominates. Attractions include Saguaro National Park West, and movie set/theme park developed at the Old Tucson Studios.\nOn Sentinel Peak, just west of downtown, a giant \"A\" was installed in honor of the University of Arizona, resulting in the nickname \"A\" Mountain. Starting in about 1915, an annual tradition developed for freshmen to whitewash the A, which was visible for miles. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, the A was painted red, white, and blue. At the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003, antiwar activists painted the A black. Competition ensued, with various sides repainting the A in different colors until the city council intervened and made the red, white, and blue colors official. In 2013, the color scheme changed back to white. Another color may be decided by a biennial election. With the tricolor scheme, some observers complain the shape of the A is hard to distinguish from the background of the peak. Since 1993, the A has been painted green for St. Patrick's Day. It has also been given other color schemes for different causes.\nNorthern Tucson.\nNorth Tucson includes the urban neighborhoods of Amphitheater and Flowing Wells. Usually considered the area north of Fort Lowell Road, North Tucson includes some of Tucson's primary commercial zones (Tucson Mall and the Oracle Road Corridor). Many of the city's most upscale boutiques, restaurants, and art galleries are also on the north side, including St. Philip's Plaza. The plaza is directly adjacent to the historic St. Philip's in the Hills Episcopal Church (built in 1936).\nThe north side also is home to the suburban community of Catalina Foothills, in the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains just north of the city limits. This community includes many of the area's most expensive homes, sometimes multimillion-dollar estates. The Foothills area is generally defined as north of River Road, east of Oracle Road and west of Sabino Creek. Some of the Tucson area's major resorts are in the Catalina Foothills, including Hacienda Del Sol, Westin La Paloma Resort, Loews Ventana Canyon Resort and Canyon Ranch Resort. La Encantada, an outdoor shopping mall, is also in the Foothills.\nThe DeGrazia Gallery of the Sun is near the intersection of Swan Road and Skyline Drive. Built by artist Ted DeGrazia starting in 1951, the property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and features an eclectic chapel, an art gallery, and a museum.\nThe expansive area northwest of the city limits is diverse, ranging from the rural communities of Catalina and parts of the town of Marana, the small suburb of Picture Rocks, the town of Oro Valley in the western foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains, and residential areas in the northeastern foothills of the Tucson Mountains. Continental Ranch (Marana), Dove Mountain (Marana), and Rancho Vistoso (Oro Valley), and Saddlebrooke (North Oro Valley) are all master planned communities in the northwest that have thousands of residents.\nThe community of Casas Adobes is also on the Northwest side, with the distinction of being Tucson's first suburb, established in the late 1940s. Casas Adobes is centered on the historic Casas Adobes Plaza (built in 1948). Casas Adobes is also home to Tohono Chul Park, which is now within the town of Oro Valley, (a nature preserve) near the intersection of North Oracle Road and West Ina Road. The attempted assassination of Representative Gabby Giffords, which resulted in the murders of chief judge for the U.S. District Court for Arizona, John Roll, and five other people on January 8, 2011, occurred at the La Toscana Village in Casas Adobes. The Foothills Mall is also on the northwest side in Casas Adobes.\nThis area is home to many of the Tucson area's golf courses and resorts, including the Preserve and Mountainview Golf Clubs at Saddlebrooke, Hilton El Conquistador Golf & Tennis Resort in Oro Valley, the Omni Tucson National Resort & Spa, and Westward Look Resort. The Ritz Carlton at Dove Mountain, the second Ritz Carlton resort in Arizona, which also includes a golf course, opened in the foothills of the Tortolita Mountains in northeast Marana in 2009.\nEastern Tucson.\nEast Tucson is relatively new compared to other parts of the city, developed between the 1950s and the 1970s, with developments such as Desert Palms Park. It is generally classified as the area of the city east of Swan Road, with above-average real estate values relative to the rest of the city. The area includes urban and suburban development near the Rincon Mountains. East Tucson includes Saguaro National Park East. Tucson's \"Restaurant Row\" is also on the east side, along with a significant corporate and financial presence. Restaurant Row is sandwiched by three of Tucson's storied Vicinages: Harold Bell Wright Estates, named after the author's ranch which occupied some of that area before the depression; the Tucson Country Club (the third to bear the name Tucson Country Club), and the Dorado Country Club. Tucson's largest office building is 5151 East Broadway in east Tucson, completed in 1975. The first phases of Williams Centre, a mixed-use, master-planned development on Broadway near Craycroft Road, were opened in 1987. Park Place, a recently renovated shopping center, is also along Broadway (west of Wilmot Road).\nNear the intersection of Craycroft and Ft. Lowell Roads are the remnants of the Historic Fort Lowell. This area has become one of Tucson's iconic neighborhoods. In 1891, the Fort was abandoned and much of the interior was stripped of their useful components and it quickly fell into ruin. In 1900, three of the officer buildings were purchased for use as a sanitarium. The sanitarium was then sold to Harvey Adkins in 1928. The Bolsius family \u2013 Pete, Nan and Charles \u2013 purchased and renovated surviving adobe buildings of the Fort, transforming them into spectacular artistic southwestern architectural examples. Their woodwork, plaster treatment and sense of proportion drew on their Dutch heritage and New Mexican experience.\nOther artists and academics throughout the middle of the 20th century, including Win Ellis, Jack Maul, Madame Germaine Cheruy and Ren\u00e9 Cheruy, Giorgio Belloli, Charles Bode, Veronica Hughart, Edward H. Spicer and Rosamond Spicer, Hazel Larson Archer and Ruth Brown, renovated adobes, built homes and lived in the area. The artist colony attracted writers and poets including beat generation Alan Harrington and Jack Kerouac whose visit is documented in his iconic book \"On the Road\". This rural pocket in the middle of the city is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Each year in February the vicinage celebrates its history in the City Landmark it owns and restored the San Pedro Chapel.\nSituated between the Santa Catalina Mountains and the Rincon Mountains near Redington Pass northeast of the city limits is the affluent community of Tanque Verde. The Arizona National Golf Club, Forty-Niners Country Club, and the historic Tanque Verde Guest Ranch are also in northeast Tucson.\nSoutheast Tucson continues to experience rapid residential development. The area includes Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. The area is considered to be south of Golf Links Road. It is the home of Santa Rita High School, Chuck Ford Park (Lakeside Park), Lakeside Lake, Lincoln Park (upper and lower), The Lakecrest Vicinagess, and Pima Community College East Campus. The Atterbury Wash with its access to excellent bird watching is also in the Southeast Tucson area. The suburban community of Rita Ranch houses many of the military families from Davis-Monthan, and is near the southeasternmost expansion of the current city limits. Close by Rita Ranch and also within the city limits lies Civano, a planned development meant to showcase ecologically sound building practices and lifestyles.\nClimate.\nTucson has a hot desert climate (K\u00f6ppen \"BWh\"), with two major seasons, a hot summer and mild winter. Tucson averages of precipitation per year, concentrated during the Pacific storms of winter and the North American Monsoon of summer. Fall and spring tend to be sunny and dry. Despite being at a more southerly latitude than Phoenix, Tucson is slightly cooler and wetter due to a variety of factors, including elevation and orographic lift in surrounding mountains, though Tucson does occasionally see warmer daytime temperatures in the winter.\nSummer is characterized by average daily high temperatures between and low temperatures between . Early summer is characterized by low humidity and clear skies; mid- and late summer are characterized by higher humidity, cloudy skies, and frequent rain. The sun is intense in Tucson during part of the year, and those who spend time outdoors need protection. Recent studies show that the rate of skin cancer in Arizona is at least three times higher than in more northerly regions. Additionally, heat stroke is a concern for hikers, mountain bikers, and adventurers who explore canyons, open desert lands, and other exposed areas.\nWhile monsoon season officially begins on June 15, the arrival of the North American Monsoon is unpredictable, as it varies from year to year. On average, Tucson receives its first monsoon storms around July 3. Monsoon activity generally persists through August and often into September. During the monsoon, the humidity is much higher than the rest of the year. It begins with clouds building up from the south in the early afternoon, followed by intense thunderstorms and rainfall, which can cause flash floods. The evening sky at this time of year is often pierced with dramatic lightning strikes. Large areas of the city do not have storm sewers, so monsoon rains flood the main thoroughfares, usually for no longer than a few hours. A few underpasses in Tucson have \"feet of water\" scales painted on their supports to discourage fording by automobiles during a rainstorm. Arizona traffic code Title 28\u2013910, the so-called \"Stupid Motorist Law\", was instituted in 1995 to discourage people from entering flooded roadways. If the road is flooded and a barricade is in place, motorists who drive around the barricade can be charged up to $2000 for costs involved in rescuing them. Despite the warnings and precautions, three Tucson drivers have drowned between 2004 and 2010.\nThe weather in the fall is much like spring, dry, with warm/cool nights and warm/hot days. Temperatures above are possible into early October. Temperatures decline at the quickest rate in October and November, and are normally the coolest in late December and early January.\nWinters in Tucson are mild relative to other parts of the United States. Average daytime highs range between , with overnight lows between . Tucson typically averages three hard freezes per winter season, with temperatures dipping to the mid- or low 20 degrees F (\u22124 to \u22127\u00a0\u00b0C), but this is typically limited to only a very few nights. Although rare, snow occasionally falls in lower elevations in Tucson and is common in the Santa Catalina Mountains. The most recent snowfall was on March 2, 2023, when a winter storm caused snow to fall throughout most of the southwest. Tucson airport recorded of snow, the seventh heaviest March snowfall on record.\nEarly spring is characterized by gradually rising temperatures and several weeks of vivid wildflower blooms beginning in late February and into March. During this time of year the diurnal temperature variation occurs with a temperature change often surpassing daily.\nSince records began in 1894, the record maximum temperature was on June 27, 1990, and the record minimum temperature was on January 7, 1913. There are an average of 158 days annually with highs of or higher and an average of 12 days with lows reaching or below the freezing mark. Average annual precipitation is . On average, 47.4 days have measurable precipitation. The wettest year was 1905, with and the driest year was 2020 with . The most precipitation in one month was in July 2021. The most precipitation in 24 hours was on July 29, 1958. Annual snowfall averages . The most snow in one winter was in winter 1971\u20131972. The most snow in one month was in December 1971.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nAccording to 2020 United States census, the racial composition of Tucson was:\nAccording to the 2010 American Census Bureau, the racial composition of Tucson was:\n2020 census.\nAs of the census of 2010, 520,116 people, 229,762 households, and 112,455 families resided in the city. The population density was . The 209,609 dwelling units had an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 69.7% White (down from 94.8% in 1970), 5.0% Black or African-American, 2.7% Native American, 2.9% Asian, 0.2% Pacific Islander, 16.9% from other races, and 3.8% from two or more races. Hispanics or Latinos of any race were 41.6% of the population. Non-Hispanic Whites were 47.2% of the population in 2010, down from 72.8% in 1970.\nThe largest ancestries reported in Tucson according to 2022 estimates were Mexican (39.9%), German (11%), English (7.7%), Italian (3.4%), American (2.8%), and Polish (1.8%).\nAccording to research by demographer William H. Frey using data from the 2010 United States census, Tucson has the lowest level of Black-White segregation of any of the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the United States.\nOf the 192,891 households, 29.0% had children under 18 living with them, 39.7% were married couples living together, 13.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 41.7% were not families. About 32.3% of all households were made up of individuals, and 9.3% had someone living alone who was 65 or older. The average household size was 2.42, and the average family size was 3.12.\nIn the inner city, the population has 24.6% under 18, 13.8% from 18 to 24, 30.5% from 25 to 44, 19.2% from 45 to 64, and 11.9% who were 65 or older. The median age was 32 years. For every 100 females, there were 96.0 males. For every 100 females 18 and over, there were 93.3 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $30,981, and for a family was $37,344. Males had a median income of $28,548 versus $23,086 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,322. About 13.7% of families and 18.4% of the population were below the poverty line, including 23.6% of those under 18 and 11.0% of those 65 or over.\nEconomy.\nMuch of Tucson's economic development has centered on the development of the University of Arizona, which is the city's largest employer. Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, on the city's southeastern edge, also provides many jobs for Tucson residents. Its presence, as well as the presence of the US Army Intelligence Center (Fort Huachuca, the region's largest employer, in nearby Sierra Vista), has led to the development of many high-technology industries, including government contractors. The city of Tucson is also a major hub for the Union Pacific Railroad's Sunset Route that links the Los Angeles ports with the South/Southeast regions of the country.\nRaytheon Missiles and Defense (formerly Hughes Aircraft Co.), Texas Instruments, IBM, Intuit Inc., Universal Avionics, Honeywell Aerospace, Sunquest Information Systems, Sanofi-Aventis, Ventana Medical Systems, Inc., and Bombardier Aerospace all have a large presence in Tucson. Roughly 150 Tucson companies are involved in the design and manufacture of optics and optoelectronics systems, earning Tucson the nickname \"Optics Valley\". Much of this comes from the Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona, which is one of few locations in the world that can cast the enormous mirrors used in telescopes around the world and in space.\nTourism is another major industry in Tucson. The city's many resorts, hotels, and attractions bring in $2\u00a0billion and over 3.5\u00a0million visitors annually.\nOne of the major annual attractions is the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show, and its associated shows, all held generally in the first two weeks of February. These associated shows (such as gems, jewelry, beads, and fossils) are held throughout the city, with 43 different shows in 2010. This makes Tucson's the largest such exposition in the world. Its yearly economic impact in 2015 was evaluated at $120\u00a0million.\nIn addition to vacationers, many winter residents, or \"snowbirds\", are attracted to Tucson's mild winters and live here on a seasonal basis. They also contribute to the local economy. Snowbirds often purchase second homes in Tucson and nearby areas, contributing significantly to the property tax base.\nTop employers.\nAccording to Tucson's 2023 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, the top employers in the city are:\nArts and culture.\nAnnual cultural events and fairs.\nTucson Gem and Mineral Show.\nThe Tucson Gem & Mineral Show is one of the largest gem and mineral shows in the world and has been held for over 50 years. The show is only one part of the gem, mineral, fossil and bead gathering held across more than 45 different sites in Tucson. The shows run from late January to mid-February, with the official show lasting two weeks in February.\nTucson Festival of Books.\nSince 2009, the Tucson Festival of Books has been held annually over a two-day period in March at the University of Arizona. By 2010 it had become the fourth largest book festival in the United States, with 450 authors and 80,000 attendees. In addition to readings and lectures, it features a science fair, varied entertainment, food, and exhibitors ranging from local retailers and publishers to regional and national nonprofit organizations.\nEl Tour de Tucson.\nEl Tour de Tucson is a cycling race that has been happening in Tucson since 1983. The race tends to happen in the month of November, before American Thanksgiving. There are a number of distances available to ride, from 1-mile fun rides to a long distance ride that spans the whole city resulting in 102 miles. In addition to being a competitive race, this race also allows non-profit charities to raise funds for their organizations. The race was first held by the Perimeter Bicycling Association in 1983 with less than 200 cyclists, and raised $4,500; by 2023 there have been close to 9,000 cyclists and raised $5.8 million. It was recently named a top 10 road race in the United States, ranking at #4.\nTucson Folk Festival.\nFor the past 33 years, the Tucson Folk Festival has taken place the first Saturday and Sunday of May in downtown Tucson's El Presidio Park. In addition to nationally known headline acts each evening, the Festival highlights over 100 local and regional musicians on five stages and is one of the largest free festivals in the country. All stages are within easy walking distance. Organized by the Tucson Kitchen Musicians' Association, volunteers make this festival possible. KXCI 91.3-FM, Arizona's only community radio station, is a major partner, broadcasting from the Plaza Stage throughout the weekend. There are also many workshops, events for children, sing-alongs, and a popular singer-songwriter contest. Musicians typically play 30-minute sets, supported by professional audio staff volunteers. A variety of food and crafts are available at the festival, as well as local microbrews. All proceeds help fund future festivals.\nFourth Avenue Street Fair.\nThere are two Fourth Avenue Street Fairs, in December and late March/early April, staged between 9th Street and University Boulevard, that feature arts and crafts booths, food vendors and street performers. The fairs began in 1970 when Fourth Avenue, which at the time had half a dozen thrift shops, several New Age bookshops and the Food Conspiracy Co-Op, was a gathering place for hippies, and a few merchants put tables in front of their stores to attract customers before the holidays.\nThese days, the street fair has grown into a large corporate event, with most tables owned by outside merchants. It hosts mostly traveling craftsmen selling various arts such as pottery, paintings, wood working, metal decorations, candles, and many others.\nTucson Rodeo (Fiesta de los Vaqueros).\nAnother popular event held in February, which is early spring in Tucson, is the Fiesta de los Vaqueros, or rodeo week, founded by winter visitor, Leighton Kramer. While at its heart the Fiesta is a sporting event, it includes what is billed as \"the world's largest non-mechanized parade\". The Rodeo Parade is a popular event as most schools give two rodeo days off instead of Presidents' Day. The exception is Presidio High (a non-public charter school), which does not get either. Western wear is seen throughout the city as corporate dress codes are cast aside during the Fiesta. The Fiesta de los Vaqueros marks the beginning of the rodeo season in the United States.\nTucson Meet Yourself.\nEvery October for the past 30 years, the Tucson Meet Yourself festival has celebrated the city's many ethnic groups. For one weekend, the downtown area features dancing, singing, artwork, and food from more than 30 different ethnicities. The event is held at and around the Jacome Plaza, located in front of the Joel D. Valdez Main Library. All performers are from Tucson and the surrounding area, in keeping with the idea of \"meeting yourself\". The records of the Tucson Meet Yourself Festival reside at the University of Arizona Special Collections Library.\nTucson Modernism Week.\nSince 2012, during the first two weekends of October, the Tucson Historic Preservation Foundation hosts Tucson Modernism Week. The event includes more than 30 programs including tours, lectures, exhibits, films and parties. The events are in mid-century modern buildings and neighborhoods throughout the city and highlight the work of significant architects and designers who contributed to the development and history of southern Arizona including: architect Arthur Brown, fashion designer Dolores Gonzales, architect Bob Swaim, architect Anne Rysdale, textile designers Harwood and Sophie Steiger, architect Nick Sakellar, architectural designer Tom Gist, furniture designer Max Gottschalk, architect Ned Nelson, landscape architect Guy Green, architect Juan Worner Baz, and many others.\nAll Souls Procession Weekend.\nThe All Souls Procession, held in early November, is one of Tucson's largest festivals. Modeled on the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), it combines aspects of many different cultural traditions. The first All Souls Procession was organized by local artist Susan Kay Johnson in 1990 and involved 35 participants; by 2013, participation was estimated at 50,000.\nThe Procession, held at sundown, consists of a non-motorized parade through downtown Tucson featuring many floats, sculptures, and memorials, in which the community is encouraged to participate. The parade is followed by performances on an outdoor stage, culminating in the burning of an urn in which written prayers have been collected from participants and spectators. The event is organized and funded by the non-profit arts organization Many Mouths One Stomach, with the help of volunteers and donations from the public and local businesses.\nCyclovia Tucson.\nCyclovia Tucson is an annual event supported by Living Streets Alliance that invites people of all ages and abilities to walk, bike, and roll down car-free streets for a day. Cyclovia is an Open Streets initiative designed to maximize the enormous amount of space taken up by roads in sprawling cities like Tucson. Since 2012, Cyclovia transforms the streets of metro Tucson into a block party atmosphere to socialize, incorporating partnerships with small businesses, and giving people the opportunity to move freely through the streets without moving cars. Cyclovia happens twice a year, typically in the spring and in the fall.\nCultural and other attractions.\nCultural and other attractions include:\nFourth Avenue, near the University of Arizona, is home to many shops, restaurants, and bars, and hosts the annual 4th Avenue Street Fair every December and March. University Boulevard, leading directly to the UA Main Gate, is also the center of numerous bars, retail shops, and restaurants most commonly frequented by the large student population of the UA.\nEl Tiradito is a religious shrine in the downtown area. The shrine dates back to the early days of Tucson. It is based on a love story of revenge and murder. People stop by the shrine to light a candle for someone in need, a place for people to go give hope.\nBiosphere 2 is a educational facility designed to mimic a tropical or sub-tropical climate-controlled environment.\nLiterary arts.\nThe accomplished and awarded writers (poets, novelists, dramatists, nonfiction writers) who have lived in Tucson include Edward Abbey, Erskine Caldwell, Barbara Kingsolver and David Foster Wallace. Some were associated with the University of Arizona, but many were independent writers who chose to make Tucson their home. The city is particularly active in publishing and presenting contemporary innovative poetry in various ways. Examples are the Chax Press, a publisher of poetry books in trade and book arts editions, and the University of Arizona Poetry Center, which has a sizable poetry library and presents readings, conferences, and workshops.\nPerforming arts.\nTheater groups include the Arizona Theatre Company, which performs in the Temple of Music and Art, and Arizona Onstage Productions, a not-for-profit theater company devoted to musical theater. Broadway in Tucson presents the touring reproductions of many Broadway-style events. The Gaslight Theater produces musical melodrama parodies in the old Jerry Lewis Theater and has been in Tucson since 1977.\nTucson is home to the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, the oldest performing arts organization in the state of Arizona.\nThe annual Tucson Fringe Festival, held in various local venues in and around Downtown Tucson, offers non-traditional artistic performances at low cost to the public. The festival is held in early January each year.\nMusic.\nMusical organizations include the Tucson Symphony Orchestra (founded in 1929) and Arizona Opera (founded as the Tucson Opera Company in 1971). The Tucson Arizona Boys Chorus, founded in 1939 and performing a wide-ranging repertoire that incorporates rope tricks, has represented the city as \"Ambassadors in Levi's\" at local, national, and international concerts. The Tucson Girls Chorus runs six choirs and numerous satellite choirs which perform locally, nationally, and internationally.\nTucson is considered an influential center for Mariachi music and is home to a large number of Mariachi musicians and singers. The Tucson International Mariachi Conference, hosted annually since 1982, involves several hundred mariachi bands and folklorica dance troops during a three-day festival in April. The Norte\u00f1o Festival and Street Fair in the enclave city of South Tucson is held annually at the end of summer.\nTucson is also known nationally for its punk scene. Since the late 1970s punk subculture has flourished in Tucson. At present there are multiple punk bars downtown and house venues in the surrounding neighborhoods.\nProminent musicians based in Tucson or with ties to the city include Linda Ronstadt, Lalo Guerrero, The Dusty Chaps, Howe Gelb, Bob Log III, Calexico, Giant Sand, Hipster Daddy-O and the Handgrenades, The Bled, AJJ, Ramshackle Glory, and Tucson's official troubadour Ted Ramirez. The Tucson Area Music Awards, or TAMMIES, are an annual event.\nTelevision and film.\nTucson has been the setting and filming location for multiple films. Some notable films that have been filmed in Tucson include \"Revenge of the Nerds\", \"Can't Buy Me Love\", \"Major League\", \"Tombstone\", and \"Tin Cup\". The city is also a common filming location and setting for Western films, most were filmed at Old Tucson. The television show \"Hey Dude\" was filmed at Tanque Verde Ranch. Additionally, the fictional motorcycle clubs the Sons of Anarchy and Mayans from the television shows \"Sons of Anarchy\" and \"Mayans M.C.\" both have Tucson chapters that are featured in the show. In the season 4 \"Sons of Anarchy\" episode \"Una Venta\", the cast travels to Tucson to discuss an issue with the Tucson chapter. The upcoming TV series \"Duster\" began filming in Tucson in October 2021. The series is specifically being filmed in downtown Tucson and the Tucson Mountains region of Saguaro National Park.\nCuisine.\nTucson is well known for its Sonoran-style Mexican food. Since the turn of the century, other ethnic restaurants and fine dining choices have proliferated.\nIn 2015 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated Tucson a \"world city of gastronomy\" under the Creative Cities Network program, becoming thus the first city of gastronomy in the United States. The city's focus on food includes Mission Garden, a living agricultural museum that showcases the crops and trees that have been grown in the area for over 4000 years.\nThe Sonoran hot dog is very popular in Tucson. A hot dog is wrapped in bacon and grilled, served on a bolillo-style hot dog bun, and topped with pinto beans, onions, tomatoes, and a variety of additional condiments, often including mayonnaise, mustard, and jalape\u00f1o salsa. Tucson also has a strong, though contested, claim to being the place of origin of the chimichanga.\nNicknames.\nTucson is commonly known as \"The Old Pueblo\". While the exact origin of this nickname is uncertain, it is commonly traced back to Mayor R. N. \"Bob\" Leatherwood. When rail service was established to the city on March 20, 1880, Leatherwood celebrated the fact by sending telegrams to various leaders, including the President of the United States and the Pope, announcing the \"ancient and honorable pueblo\" of Tucson was now connected by rail to the outside world. The term became popular with newspaper writers who often abbreviated it as \"A. and H. Pueblo\". This in turn transformed into the current form of \"The Old Pueblo\".\nIn the early 1980s, city leaders ran a contest searching for a new nickname. The winning entry was the \"Sunshine Factory\". The new nickname never gained popular acceptance, allowing the old name to remain in common use. Tucson was dubbed \"Optics Valley\" in 1992 when \"Business Week\" ran a cover story on the Arizona Optics Industry Association.\nSports.\nTucson is not represented in any of the five major sports leagues of the United States: the NFL, MLB, the NBA, the NHL, or MLS.\nThe University of Arizona's athletic teams, most notably the men's basketball, football, baseball, and softball teams, have strong local interest. The men's basketball team, formerly coached by Hall of Fame head coach Lute Olson and currently coached by Tommy Lloyd, made 25 straight NCAA Tournaments appearances (1985\u20132009) and won the 1997 National Championship. Arizona's softball team has reached the NCAA National Championship game 12 times and has won 8 times, most recently in 2007. Arizona's baseball team won NCAA National Championships in 1976, 1980, 1986, and 2012. The university's swim teams have gained international recognition, with swimmers coming from as far as Japan and Africa to train with coach Frank Busch, who has also worked with the U.S. Olympic swim team for numerous years. Both men's and women's swim teams won the 2008 NCAA National Championships.\nIn ice hockey, the Tucson Roadrunners of the American Hockey League began play during the 2016\u20132017 season after relocating to Tucson in 2016. They play at the Tucson Convention Center Arena from October to April, and are the top affiliate of the Utah Hockey Club. Between 1975 and 1979, there were three professional ice hockey teams in Arizona. The Tucson Mavericks of the Central Hockey League from 1975 to 1976, the Tucson Icemen of the Southwest Hockey League from 1976 to 1977, and the Tucson Rustlers of the Pacific Hockey League from 1978 to 1979. Later in 1997, the Tucson Gila Monsters were unvieled and played from 1997 to 1999 in the West Coast Hockey League. After the Gila Monsters folded in 1999 a team was announced that were to begin play for the Western Professional Hockey League called the Tucson Scorch they never played a game due to the owner not posting a financial guarantee which was required for a team to begin play in the league.\nIn American football, the Indoor Football League announced in 2018 they were bringing an expansion team to Tucson to play at the Tucson Convention Center's newly renovated Tucson Arena starting in 2019. That team would be announced as the Tucson Sugar Skulls.\nIn baseball, the Tucson Saguaros of the independent Pecos League began play in 2016 and play at the Kino Veterans Memorial Stadium. They won the league in their inaugural season and won two more championships in 2020 and 2021. The Tucson Padres played at Kino Veterans Memorial Stadium from 2011 to 2013. They served as the AAA affiliate of the San Diego Padres. The team, formerly known as the Portland Beavers, temporarily moved to Tucson from Portland while the team awaited a new stadium in Escondido. Legal issues derailed the plans to build the Escondido stadium, so they moved to El Paso, Texas for the 2014 season and onward. Previously, the Tucson Sidewinders, a triple-A affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks from 1998 to 2008, won the Pacific Coast League championship and unofficial AAA championship in 2006. The Sidewinders played at Tucson Electric Park (now called Kino Sports Complex) and were in the Pacific Conference South of the PCL. The Sidewinders were sold in 2007 and moved to Reno, Nevada after the 2008 season. They now compete as the Reno Aces, who have served as a triple-A affiliate for the Arizona Diamondbacks since 2009.\nIn soccer, Tucson is host to the Mobile Mini Sun Cup, the largest pre-season Major League Soccer (MLS) tournament in the country. As many as 11 MLS soccer clubs train in Tucson every winter. Tucson is also host to FC Tucson, a professional soccer club that plays at the Kino Sports Complex North Stadium in the third-tier USL League Two.\nThe United States Handball Association Hall of Fame is in Tucson.\nTracks include Tucson Raceway Park and Rillito Downs. Tucson Raceway Park hosts NASCAR-sanctioned auto racing events and is one of only two asphalt short tracks in Arizona. Rillito Downs is an in-town destination on weekends in January and February each year. This historic track held the first organized quarter horse races in the world, and they are still racing there. The racetrack is threatened by development. The Moltacqua racetrack, was another historic horse racetrack on what is now Sabino Canyon Road and Vactor Ranch Trail, but it no longer exists.\nParks and recreation.\nThe city has more than 120 parks, from small and local to larger parks with ballfields, natural areas, lakes, 5 public golf courses, and Reid Park Zoo. The Loop is a popular system of shared-use paths encircling the city primarily along washes and is usually well-separated from traffic. Several scenic parks and points of interest are also nearby, including the Tucson Botanical Gardens, Tohono Chul Park, Saguaro National Park, Sabino Canyon, and Biosphere 2 (just north of the city, near the town of Oracle).\nTumamoc Hill is an active research site maintained by the University of Arizona and Pima County that doubles as a popular walking/running trail. The paved trail on Tumamoc Hill is 1.5 miles uphill (3 miles full trip), divided into two parts. The lower half is a much more gradual slope compared to the steep upper half reaching a final elevation of 2,340\u00a0ft where it overlooks most of the city of Tucson. The trail attracts around 1500 visits a day from various demographics of the Tucson area.\nMt. Lemmon is north (by the Catalina Highway) and over above Tucson in the Santa Catalina Mountains in the Coronado National Forest. Outdoor activities in the Catalinas include hiking, mountain biking, birding, rock climbing, picnicking, camping, swimming in mountain stream pools, sky rides at Ski Valley, fishing, and photography. In winter with enough snow, the sky ride converts back to skiing at the southernmost ski resort in the continental United States. Summerhaven, a community near the top of Mt. Lemmon, is also a popular destination.\nThe League of American Bicyclists gave Tucson a gold rating for bicycle friendliness in late April 2007. Tucson hosts the largest perimeter cycling event in the United States. The ride, called \"El Tour de Tucson\", takes place each November on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. El Tour de Tucson produced and promoted by Perimeter Bicycling has had as many as 10,000 participants from all over the world. In 2019, ridership is expected to be 6,000 cyclists. Tucson is one of only nine cities in the U.S. to receive a gold rating or higher for cycling friendliness from the League of American Bicyclists. The city is known for its winter cycling opportunities, with teams and riders from around the world spending a portion of the year training in Tucson's year-round biking climate. Popular mountain biking areas include Tucson Mountain Park, Sweetwater Preserve, the Tortolita Mountain trail systems, and Fantasy Island. Road cyclists take on Catalina Highway's steep climb year-round.\nGovernment.\nPima County supported John Kerry 53% to 47% in the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election, and Barack Obama 54% to 46% in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election. In the latter year, Pima was the only county to vote against Arizona's gay marriage ban. In 2013, Tucson became the second city in Arizona to approve of civil unions for same-sex partners. The city was the first in the state to pass a domestic partnership registry earlier in 2003.\nIn general, Tucson and Pima County support the Democratic Party, while the state's largest metropolitan area, greater Phoenix, has traditionally supported the Republican Party. Congressional redistricting in 2013, following the publication of the 2010 Census, divided the Tucson area into three Federal Congressional districts (the first, second and third of Arizona). The city center is in the 7th District, represented by Raul Grijalva, a Democrat, since 2003, while the more affluent residential areas to the east are in the 6th District, represented by Republican Juan Ciscomani since 2022, and the exurbs north and west between Tucson and Phoenix in the 2nd District are represented by Republican Eli Crane since 2022.\nThe United States Postal Service operates post offices in Tucson. The Tucson Main Post Office is at 1501 South Cherrybell Stravenue.\nCity government.\nTucson follows the \"weak mayor\" model of the council-manager form of local government. The six-member city council holds exclusive legislative authority, and shares executive authority with the mayor, who is elected by the voters independently of the council. An appointed city manager is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the city. Tucson is the only city in Arizona that holds officially partisan elections for city offices, with candidates nominated through party primaries.\nBoth the council members and the mayor serve four-year terms; none face term limits. Council members are nominated by their wards via a ward-level primary held in August. The top vote-earners from each party then compete at-large for their ward's seat on the November ballot. In other words, on election day the whole city votes on all the council races up for that year. Council elections are severed: Wards 1, 2, and 4 (as well as the mayor) are up for election in the same year (most recently 2015), while Wards 3, 5, and 6 share another year (most recently 2017).\nTucson is known for being a trailblazer in voluntary partial publicly financed campaigns. Since 1985, both mayoral and council candidates have been eligible to receive matching public funds from the city. To become eligible, council candidates must receive 200 donations of $10 or more (300 for a mayoral candidate). Candidates must then agree to spending limits equal to 33\u00a2 for every registered Tucson voter, or $79,222 in 2005 (the corresponding figures for mayor are 64\u00a2 per registered voter, or $142,271 in 2003). In return, candidates receive matching funds from the city at a 1:1 ratio of public money to private donations. The only other limitation is that candidates may not exceed 75% of the limit by the date of the primary. Many cities, such as San Francisco and New York City, have copied this system, albeit with more complex spending and matching formulas.\nMayor Regina Romero (D) was sworn into office on December 2, 2019, succeeding Jonathan Rothschild (D) who was sworn into office on December 5, 2011, succeeding Robert E. Walkup (R), who took office in 1999. Walkup was preceded by George Miller (D), 1991\u20131999; Tom Volgy (D), 1987\u20131991; Lew Murphy (R), 1971\u20131987; and Jim Corbett (D), 1967\u20131971.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nPrimarily, students of the Tucson area attend public schools in the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD). TUSD has the second highest enrollment of any school district in Arizona, behind Mesa Unified School District in the Phoenix metropolitan area. There are also many publicly funded charter schools with a specialized curriculum. Other notable districts include Sunnyside Unified School District, Marana Unified School District, Amphitheater Unified School District, Vail Unified School District, and Flowing Wells Unified School District.\nIn 1956, Tucson High School had the largest enrollment of any secondary school in the United States, with a total of more than 6,800 students. In 2018, Tucson High School enrollment was just over 3,000. The facility operated on a two-shift basis while construction went on for two other high schools that opened within a year to educate children in the rapidly booming Tucson population.\nMedia.\nPrint.\nTucson has one daily newspaper, the morning \"Arizona Daily Star\". Wick Communications publishes the daily legal paper \"The Daily Territorial\", while Boulder, Colo.-based 10/13 Communications publishes \"Tucson Weekly\" (an \"alternative\" publication), \"Inside Tucson Business\" and the \"Explorer\". TucsonSentinel.com is a nonprofit independent online news organization. \"Tucson Lifestyle Magazine\", \"Lovin' Life in Tucson\", \"DesertLeaf\", and \"Z\u00f3calo Magazine\" are monthly publications covering arts, architecture, decor, fashion, entertainment, business, history, and other events. The \"Arizona Daily Wildcat\" is the University of Arizona's student newspaper, and the \"Aztec News\" is the Pima Community College student newspaper. \"Catholic Outlook\" is the newspaper for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson, and the \"Arizona Jewish Post\" is the newspaper of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona.\nTelevision.\nThe Tucson metro area is served by many local television stations and is the 65th largest designated market area (DMA) in the U.S. with 433,330 homes (0.39% of the total U.S.). It is limited to the three counties of southeastern Arizona (Pima, Santa Cruz, and Cochise)\nThe major television networks serving Tucson are:\nInfrastructure.\nEnergy.\nTucson's primary electrical power source is a natural gas power plant managed by Tucson Electric Power that is within the city limits on the southwestern boundary of Davis-Monthan Air-force base adjacent to Interstate 10. The air pollution generated has raised some concerns as the Sundt operating station has been online since 1962 and is exempt from many pollution standards and controls due to its age.\nSolar has been gaining ground in Tucson with its ideal over 300 days of sunshine climate. Federal, state, and even local utility credits and incentives have also enticed residents to equip homes with solar systems.\nDavis-Monthan AFB has a 3.3 Megawatt (MW) ground-mounted solar photovoltaic (PV) array and a 2.7 MW rooftop-mounted PV array, both of which are in the Base Housing area. The base will soon have the largest solar-generating capacity in the United States Department of Defense after awarding a contract on September 10, 2010, to SunEdison to construct a 14.5 MW PV field on the northwestern side of the base.\nGlobal Solar Energy, which is at the University of Arizona's science and technology park, is one of the planet's largest CIGS solar fields at 750 kilowatts.\nLight pollution.\nTucson and Pima County adopted dark sky ordinances to control light pollution in support of the region's astronomical observatories in 1972. Last amended in 2012, the City of Tucson/Pima County Outdoor Lighting Code establishes maximum illumination levels, shielding requirements, and limits on signage in \"continuing support of astronomical activity and minimizing wasted energy, while not compromising the safety, security, and well-being of persons engaged in outdoor nighttime activities.\"\nWater.\nLess than 100 years ago, the Santa Cruz River flowed nearly year-round through Tucson. This supply of water has slowly disappeared, causing Tucson to seek alternative sources.\nIn 1881, water was pumped from a well on the banks of the Santa Cruz River and flowed by gravity through pipes into the distribution system.\nTucson currently draws water from two main sources: Central Arizona Project (CAP) water and groundwater. In 1992, Tucson Water delivered CAP water to some customers that was unacceptable due to discoloration, bad odor and flavor, as well as problems it caused with some customers' plumbing and appliances. Tucson's city water currently consists of CAP water mixed with groundwater.\nIn an effort to conserve water, Tucson is recharging groundwater supplies by running part of its share of CAP water into various open portions of local rivers to seep into their aquifer. Additional study is scheduled to determine how much water is lost through evaporation from the open areas, especially during the summer. The City of Tucson provides reclaimed water to its inhabitants, but it is only used for \"applications such as irrigation, dust control, and industrial uses\". These resources have been in place for more than 27 years, and deliver to over 900 locations.\nTo prevent further loss of groundwater, Tucson has been involved in water conservation and groundwater preservation efforts, shifting away from its reliance on a series of Tucson area wells in favor of conservation, consumption-based pricing for residential and commercial water use, and new wells in the more sustainable Avra Valley aquifer, northwest of the city. An allocation from the Central Arizona Project Aqueduct (CAP), which passes more than across the desert from the Colorado River, has been incorporated into the city's water supply, annually providing over 20 million gallons of \"recharged\" water which is pumped into the ground to replenish water pumped out. Since 2001, CAP water has allowed the city to remove or turn off over 80 wells.\nWater harvesting.\nThe city of Tucson, Arizona provides financial incentives for residents to harvest their rainwater. Tucson's water supply, like many Western cities, is drawn from two main sources: surface water that is pumped more than 300 miles from the Colorado River and groundwater. The pump expends a significant amount of energy and the Colorado River is diminishing as a result of climate change and overuse.\nIn 2012, the city began a program that rebates residents as much as $2,000 for the purchase of water harvesting systems. \"Water harvesting\" refers to rainwater, which is gathered from building surfaces, and stormwater\",\" which collects nonpotable storm runoff from streets and earth. The program is financed by a water bill fee of 10 cents per 748 gallons of city water used. In the first few years, the rebate program was not conserving water as efficiently as they anticipated. But in fiscal year 2018 to 2019, the rebate program saved 52.1 million gallons of water. That is enough water to meet the annual usage of 160 households. The city has been trying to grow the approximately 250 people who obtain active rebates each year by introducing a loan program to bring rebates within reach of lower-income residents.\nThe city government has an ambitious goal to be carbon neutral by 2030 and is integrating changes that will help change local resident's conventional thinking and practices. On May 1, 2020, Tucson began charging residents and businesses within city limits a monthly Green Stormwater Infrastructure fee (13 cents per 748 gallons of city water used), which is projected to raise some $3\u00a0million a year for public stormwater capture installations and other projects. But this comes at a time when unemployment is rising and the number of low income residents facing unaffordable bills between 2010 and 2018 doubled to 46% as the average bill increased by 119% in Tucson. Additionally, as part of the citywide climate resiliency effort, Mayor Regina Romero recently announced the planting of a million trees over the next decade.\nTransportation.\nPublic transit.\nTucson's Sun Tran bus system serves greater Tucson with standard, express, regional shuttle, and on-demand shuttle bus service. It was awarded Best Transit System in 1988 and 2005. A streetcar line, Sun Link, connects the University of Arizona campus with 4th Avenue, downtown, and the Mercado District west of Interstate 10 and the Santa Cruz River. Ten-minute headway passenger service began July 25, 2014. The streetcar uses Sun Tran's card payment and transfer system, connecting with the University of Arizona's CatTran shuttles, Amtrak, and Greyhound intercity bus service. Sun Tran has been fare-free since the spring of 2020. Initially this change was made to limit contact between riders and drivers due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the city council voted to eliminate fares indefinitely in 2023.\nRail.\nAmtrak, the national passenger rail system, provides service to Tucson three times weekly in both directions, operating its \"Sunset Limited\" between Los Angeles, California and New Orleans, Louisiana; and \"Texas Eagle\" service between Los Angeles and Chicago, Illinois.\nAirport.\nTucson International Airport (), is south of the city's center. TIA is the second-largest commercial airport in Arizona, providing nonstop flights to 15 destinations throughout the United States. In addition to passenger and freight service, TIA supports the 162nd Fighter Wing's fleet of seventy F-16s stationed at the Tucson Air National Guard Base. There are two general aviation reliever airports in the area. The city of Tucson operates Ryan Airfield southwest of the city center, and the town of Marana operates Marana Regional Airport to the northwest. Pinal Airpark is also within the metropolitan area.\nRoadways.\nThere are two Interstate highways in the metropolitan area. Interstate 10 runs southeast from Phoenix through Marana, passes west of downtown, and continues east toward El Paso. Interstate 19 leaves the I-10 south of downtown and heads south to the Mexican border. Arizona State Route 210 is a shorter expressway that links downtown with Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and Tucson's southeast side. Tucson does not have a beltway system, and relies almost entirely on surface streets.\nFreeways and state highways in Tucson include:\nCycling.\nCycling is popular in Tucson. Tucson and Pima County maintain an extensive network of marked bike routes, signal crossings, on-street bike lanes, mountain-biking trails, and dedicated shared-use paths. The Loop is a network of seven linear parks, built mainly along river beds, comprising of paved, vehicle-free trails that encircles the majority of the city with links to Marana and Oro Valley. The Tucson\u2013Pima County Bicycle Advisory Committee (TPCBAC) serves in an advisory capacity to local governments on issues relating to bicycle recreation, transportation, and safety. The League of American Bicyclists awarded Tucson a gold rating for bicycle-friendliness in 2006.\nSister cities.\nTucson's sister cities are:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["180968", "57180"], "permutation_1": ["180968", "57180"], "permutation_2": ["57180", "180968"], "permutation_3": ["57180", "180968"]}
{"id": "2hop__27073_5348", "docs_added": {"57848": "Oklahoma City\nCapital city of Oklahoma, United States\nOklahoma City (), officially the City of Oklahoma City, and often shortened to OKC, is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat of Oklahoma County, its population ranks 20th among United States cities and 8th in the Southern United States. The population grew following the 2010 census and reached 681,054 in the 2020 United States census. The Oklahoma City metropolitan area had a population of 1,396,445, and the Oklahoma City\u2013Shawnee Combined Statistical Area had a population of 1,469,124, making it Oklahoma's largest municipality and metropolitan area by population.\nOklahoma City's city limits extend somewhat into Canadian, Cleveland, and Pottawatomie counties. However, much of those areas outside the core Oklahoma County area are suburban tracts or protected rural zones (watershed). The city is the tenth-largest in the United States by area including consolidated city-counties; it is the second-largest, after Houston, not including consolidated cities. The city is also the second-largest by area among state capital cities in the United States, after Juneau, Alaska.\nOklahoma City has one of the world's largest livestock markets. Oil, natural gas, petroleum products, and related industries are its economy's largest sector. The city is in the middle of an active oil field, and oil derricks dot the capitol grounds. The federal government employs a large number of workers at Tinker Air Force Base and the United States Department of Transportation's Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center (which house offices of the Federal Aviation Administration and the Transportation Department's Enterprise Service Center, respectively).\nOklahoma City is on the I-35 and I-40 corridors, one of the primary travel corridors south into neighboring Texas and New Mexico, north towards Wichita and Kansas City, west to Albuquerque, and east towards Little Rock and Memphis. Located in the state's Frontier Country region, the city's northeast section lies in an ecological region known as the Cross Timbers. The city was founded during the Land Run of 1889 and grew to a population of over 10,000 within hours of its founding. It was the site of the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, in which 167 people died, the deadliest terror attack in U.S. history until the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.\nSince weather records have been kept beginning in 1890, Oklahoma City has been struck by 14 violent tornadoes, 11 of which were rated F4 or EF4 on the Fujita and Enhanced Fujita scales, and two rated F5 and EF5.\nHistory.\nOklahoma City was settled on April 22, 1889, when the area known as the \"Unassigned Lands\" was opened for settlement in an event known as \"The Land Run\". On April 26 of that year, its first mayor was elected, William Couch. Some 10,000 homesteaders settled in the area that would become the capital of Oklahoma. The town grew quickly; the population doubled between 1890 and 1900. Early leaders of the development of the city included Anton H. Classen, John Wilford Shartel, Henry Overholser, Oscar Ameringer, Jack C. Walton, Angelo C. Scott, and James W. Maney.\nBy the time Oklahoma was admitted to the Union in 1907, Oklahoma City had surpassed Guthrie, the territorial capital, as the new state's population center and commercial hub. Soon after, the capital was moved from Guthrie to Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City was a significant stop on Route 66 during the early part of the 20th century; it was prominently mentioned in Bobby Troup's 1946 jazz song \"(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66\" made famous by artist Nat King Cole.\nBefore World War II, Oklahoma City developed significant stockyards, attracting jobs and revenue formerly in Chicago and Omaha, Nebraska. With the 1928 discovery of oil within the city limits (including under the State Capitol), Oklahoma City became a major center of oil production. Post-war growth accompanied the construction of the Interstate Highway System, which made Oklahoma City a major interchange as the convergence of I-35, I-40, and I-44. It was also aided by the federal development of Tinker Air Force Base after successful lobbying efforts by the director of the Chamber of Commerce Stanley Draper.\nIn 1950, the Census Bureau reported the city's population as 8.6% black and 90.7% white.\nIn 1959, the city government launched a \"Great Annexation Drive\" that expanded the city's area from by the end of 1961, making it the largest U.S. city by land mass at the time.\nPatience Latting was elected Mayor of Oklahoma City in 1971, becoming the city's first female mayor. Latting was also the first woman to serve as mayor of a U.S. city with over 350,000 residents.\nLike many other American cities, the center city population declined in the 1970s and 1980s as families followed newly constructed highways to move to newer housing in nearby suburbs. Urban renewal projects in the 1970s, including the Pei Plan, removed older structures but failed to spark much new development, leaving the city dotted with vacant lots used for parking. A notable exception was the city's construction of the Myriad Gardens and Crystal Bridge, a botanical garden and modernistic conservatory in the heart of downtown. Architecturally significant historic buildings lost to clearances were the Criterion Theater, the Baum Building, the Hales Building, and the Biltmore Hotel.\nIn 1993, the city passed a massive redevelopment package known as the Metropolitan Area Projects (MAPS), intended to rebuild the city's core with civic projects to establish more activities and life in downtown. The city added a new baseball park; a central library; renovations to the civic center, convention center, and fairgrounds; and a water canal in the Bricktown entertainment district. Water taxis transport passengers within the district, adding color and activity along the canal. MAPS has become one of the most successful public-private partnerships undertaken in the U.S., exceeding $3\u00a0billion in private investment as of 2010. As a result of MAPS, the population in downtown housing has exponentially increased, with the demand for additional residential and retail amenities, such as groceries, services, and shops.\nSince the completion of the MAPS projects, the downtown area has seen continued development. Several downtown buildings are undergoing renovation/restoration. Notable among these was the restoration of the Skirvin Hotel in 2007. The famed First National Center is also being renovated.\nResidents of Oklahoma City suffered substantial losses on April 19, 1995, when Timothy McVeigh detonated a bomb in front of the Murrah building. The building was destroyed (the remnants of which had to be imploded in a controlled demolition later that year), more than 100 nearby buildings suffered severe damage, and 168 people were killed. The site has been commemorated as the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum. Since its opening in 2000, over three million people have visited. Every year on April 19, survivors, families, and friends return to the memorial to read the names of each person lost. McVeigh was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001.\nThe \"Core-to-Shore\" project was created to relocate I-40 one mile (1.6\u00a0km) south and replace it with a boulevard to create a landscaped entrance to the city. This also allows the central portion of the city to expand south and connect with the shore of the Oklahoma River. Several elements of \"Core to Shore\" were included in the MAPS 3 proposal approved by voters in late 2009.\nGeography.\nOklahoma City lies along one of the primary corridors into Texas and Mexico and is a three-hour drive from the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. The city is in the Frontier Country region in the state's center, making it ideal for state government.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and is water.\nOklahoma City lies in the Sandstone Hills region of Oklahoma, known for hills of and two species of oak: blackjack oak (\"Quercus marilandica\") and post oak (\"Q. stellata\"). The northeastern part of the city and its eastern suburbs fall into an ecological region known as the Cross Timbers.\nThe city is roughly bisected by the North Canadian River (recently renamed the Oklahoma River inside city limits). The North Canadian once had sufficient flow to flood every year, wreaking destruction on surrounding areas, including the central business district and the original Oklahoma City Zoo. In the 1940s, a dam was built on the river to manage the flood control and reduce its level. In the 1990s, as part of the citywide revitalization project known as MAPS, the city built a series of low-water dams, returning water to the portion of the river flowing near downtown. The city has three large lakes: Lake Hefner and Lake Overholser, in the northwestern quarter of the city; and the largest, Lake Stanley Draper, in the city's sparsely populated far southeast portion.\nThe population density typically reported for Oklahoma City using the area of its city limits can be misleading. Its urbanized zone covers roughly resulting in a 2013 estimated density of , compared with larger rural watershed areas incorporated by the city, which cover the remaining of the city limits.\nOklahoma City is one of the largest cities in the nation in compliance with the Clean Air Act.\nNeighborhoods.\nOklahoma City neighborhoods are highly varied, with affluent historic neighborhoods located next to districts that have not wholly recovered from the economic and social decline of the 1970s and 1980s.\nThe city is bisected geographically and culturally by the North Canadian River, which divides North Oklahoma City and South Oklahoma City. The north side is characterized by diverse and fashionable urban neighborhoods near the city center and sprawling suburbs further north. South Oklahoma City is generally more blue-collar working class and significantly more industrial, having grown up around the Stockyards and meat packing plants at the turn of the century. It is also the center of the city's rapidly growing Latino community.\nDowntown Oklahoma City, which has 7,600 residents, is seeing an influx of new private investment and large-scale public works projects, which have helped to revitalize a central business district left almost deserted by the Oil Bust of the early 1980s. The centerpiece of downtown is the newly renovated Crystal Bridge and Myriad Botanical Gardens, one of the few elements of the Pei Plan to be completed. In 2021, a massive new central park will link the gardens near the CBD and the new convention center to be built just south of it to the North Canadian River as part of a massive works project known as \"Core to Shore\"; the new park is part of MAPS3, a collection of civic projects funded by a one-cent temporary (seven-year) sales tax increase.\nClimate.\nOklahoma City has a temperate humid subtropical climate (K\u00f6ppen: \"Cfa\", Trewartha: \"Cfak\"), along with significant continental influences. The city features hot, humid summers and cool winters. Prolonged and severe droughts (sometimes leading to wildfires in the vicinity) and hefty rainfall leading to flash flooding and flooding occur regularly. Consistent winds, usually from the south or south-southeast during the summer, help temper the hotter weather. Consistent northerly winds during the winter can intensify cold periods. Severe ice storms and snowstorms happen sporadically during the winter.\nThe average temperature is , with the monthly daily average ranging from in January to in July. Extremes range from on February 12, 1899 to on August 11, 1936, and August 3, 2012; The last sub-zero (Fahrenheit) reading was on February 16, 2021. Temperatures reach on 10.4 days of the year, on nearly 70 days, and fail to rise above freezing on 8.3 days. The city receives about of precipitation annually, of which is snow.\nThe report \"Regional Climate Trends and Scenarios for the U.S. National Climate Assessment\" (NCA) from 2013 by NOAA projects that parts of the Great Plains region can expect up to 30% (high emissions scenario based on CMIP3 and NARCCAP models) increase in extreme precipitation days by mid-century. This definition is based on days receiving more than one inch of rainfall.\nExtreme weather.\nOklahoma City has an active severe weather season from March through June, especially during April and May. Being in the center of what is colloquially referred to as Tornado Alley, it is prone to widespread and severe tornadoes, as well as severe hailstorms and occasional derechoes. Tornadoes occur every month of the year, and a secondary smaller peak also occurs during autumn, especially in October. The Oklahoma City metropolitan area is one of the most tornado-prone major cities in the world, with about 150 tornadoes striking within the city limits since 1890. Since the time weather records have been kept, Oklahoma City has been struck by 13 violent tornadoes, eleven rated F/EF4 and two rated F/EF5.\nOn May 3, 1999, parts of Oklahoma City and surrounding communities were impacted by a tornado. It was the last U.S. tornado to be given a rating of F5 on the Fujita scale before the Enhanced Fujita scale replaced it in 2007. While the tornado was in the vicinity of Bridge Creek to the southwest, wind speeds of were estimated by a mobile Doppler radar, the highest wind speeds ever recorded on Earth. A second top-of-the-scale tornado occurred on May 20, 2013; South Oklahoma City, along with Newcastle and Moore, was hit by an EF5 tornado. The tornado was wide and killed 23 people. On May 31, less than two weeks after the May 20 event, another outbreak affected the Oklahoma City area. Within Oklahoma City, the system spawned an EF1 and an EF0 tornado, and in El Reno to the west, an EF3 tornado occurred. This lattermost tornado, which was heading in the direction of Oklahoma City before it dissipated, had a width of , making it the widest tornado ever recorded. Additionally, winds over were measured, one of the two highest wind records for a tornado.\nWith of rainfall, May 2015 was Oklahoma City's record-wettest month since record-keeping began in 1890. Across Oklahoma and Texas generally, there was a record flooding in the latter part of the month.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nIn the 2010 census, there were 579,999 people, 230,233 households, and 144,120 families in the city. The population density was 956.4 inhabitants per square mile (321.9/km2). There were 256,930 housing units at an average density of 375.9 per square mile (145.1/km2). By the 2020 United States census, its population grew to 681,054.\nOf Oklahoma City's 579,999 people in 2010, 44,541 resided in Canadian County, 63,723 lived in Cleveland County, 471,671 resided in Oklahoma County, and 64 resided in Pottawatomie County.\nIn 2010, there were 230,233 households, 29.4% of which had children under 18 living with them, 43.4% were married couples living together, 13.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 37.4% were non-families. One person households account for 30.5% of all households, and 8.7% of all households had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.47 and the average family size was 3.11.\nAccording to the American Community Survey 1-year estimates in 2022, the median income for a household in the city was $63,713, and the median income for a family was $80,833. Married-couple families $99,839, and nonfamily households $40,521. The per capita income for the city was $35,902. 15.5% of the population and 11.2% of families were below the poverty line. Of the total population, 20.1% of those under 18 and 10.6% of those 65 and older lived below the poverty line.\nIn the 2000 census, Oklahoma City's age composition was 25.5% under the age of 18, 10.7% from 18 to 24, 30.8% from 25 to 44, 21.5% from 45 to 64, and 11.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females, there were 95.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 92.7 males.\nOklahoma City has experienced significant population increases since the late 1990s. It is the first city in the state to record a population greater than 600,000 residents and the first city in the Great Plains region to record a population greater than 600,000 residents. It is the largest municipal population of the Great Plains region (Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota).\nIn the 2020 United States census, there were 268,035 households in the city, out of which 81,374 households (30.4%) were individuals, 113,161 (42.2%) were opposite-sex married couples, 17,699 (6.6%) were unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 2,930 (1.1%) were same-sex married couples or partnerships.\nRace and ethnicity.\nAccording to the 2020 census, the racial composition of Oklahoma City was as follows: White or European American 49.5%, Hispanic or Latino 21.3%, Black or African American 13.8%, Asian 4.6%, Native American 2.8%, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander 0.2%, other race 0.4%, and two or more races (non-Hispanic) 7.6%. Its population has diversified since the 1940s census, where 90.4% was non-Hispanic white. An analysis in 2017 found Oklahoma City to be the 8th least racially segregated significant city in the United States.\nOf the 20 largest US cities, Oklahoma City has the second-highest percentage of the population reporting two or more races on the Census, 7.6%, second to 8.9% in New York City.\nMetropolitan statistical area.\nOklahoma City is the principal city of the eight-county Oklahoma City metropolitan statistical Area in Central Oklahoma and is the state's largest urbanized area. As of 2015, the metro area was the 41st largest in the nation based on population.\nReligion.\nThe Association of Religion Data Archives in 2020 reported that the Southern Baptist Convention was the city and metropolitan area's most prominent Christian tradition with 213,008 members, Christianity being the area's predominant religion. Non/interdenominational Protestants were the second largest tradition with 195,158 members. The Roman Catholic Church claimed 142,491 adherents throughout the metropolitan region and Pentecostals within the Assemblies of God USA numbered 48,470. The remainder of Christians in the area held to predominantly Evangelical Christian beliefs in numerous evangelical Protestant denominations. Outside of Christendom, there were 4,230 practitioners of Hinduism and 2,078 Mahayana Buddhists. An estimated 8,904 residents practiced Islam during this study.\nCrime.\nLaw enforcement claims Oklahoma City has traditionally been the territory of the notorious Ju\u00e1rez Cartel, but the Sinaloa Cartel has been reported as trying to establish a foothold in Oklahoma City. There are many rival gangs in Oklahoma City, one whose headquarters has been established in the city, the Southside Locos, traditionally known as Sure\u00f1os.\nOklahoma City also has its share of violent crimes, particularly in the 1970s. The worst occurred in 1978 when six employees of a Sirloin Stockade restaurant on the city's south side were murdered execution-style in the restaurant's freezer. An intensive investigation followed, and the three individuals involved, who also killed three others in Purcell, Oklahoma, were identified. One, Harold Stafford, died in a motorcycle accident in Tulsa not long after the restaurant murders. Another, Verna Stafford, was sentenced to life without parole after being granted a new trial after she had been sentenced to death. Roger Dale Stafford, considered the mastermind of the murder spree, was executed by lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in 1995.\nThe Oklahoma City Police Department has a uniformed force of 1,169 officers and 300+ civilian employees. The department has a central police station and five substations covering 2,500 police reporting districts that average 1/4 square mile in size.\nOn April 19, 1995, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was destroyed by a fertilizer bomb manufactured and detonated by Timothy McVeigh. The blast and catastrophic collapse killed 168 people and injured over 680. The blast shock-wave destroyed or damaged 324 buildings within a 340-meter radius, destroyed or burned 86 cars, and shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings, causing at least an estimated $652 million of damage. McVeigh was convicted and subsequently executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001.\nEconomy.\nThe economy of Oklahoma City, once just a regional power center of government and energy exploration, has since diversified to include the sectors of information technology, services, health services, and administration. The city is headquarters to two Fortune 500 companies: Expand Energy and Devon Energy, as well as being home to Love's Travel Stops & Country Stores, which is ranked thirteenth on Forbes' list of private companies.\nAs of March 2024, the top 20 employers in the city were:\nOther major corporations with a significant presence (over 1,000 employees) in the city of Oklahoma City include the United Parcel Service, Farmers Insurance Group, Great Plains Coca-Cola Bottling Company, Deaconess Hospital, Johnson Controls, MidFirst Bank, Rose State College, and Continental Resources.\nWhile not in the city limits, other large employers within the Oklahoma City MSA include United States Air Force \u2013 Tinker AFB (27,000); University of Oklahoma (11,900); University of Central Oklahoma (2,900); and Norman Regional Hospital (2,800).\nAccording to the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce, the metropolitan area's economic output grew by 33% between 2001 and 2005 due chiefly to economic diversification. Its gross metropolitan product (GMP) was $43.1\u00a0 billion in 2005 and grew to $61.1\u00a0billion in 2009. By 2016 the GMP had grown to $73.8\u00a0billion.\nIn 2008, \"Forbes\" magazine reported that the city had falling unemployment, one of the strongest housing markets in the country and solid growth in energy, agriculture, and manufacturing. However, during the early 1980s, Oklahoma City had one of the worst job and housing markets due to the bankruptcy of Penn Square Bank in 1982 and then the post-1985 crash in oil prices (oil bust).\nTourism.\nApproximately 23.2 million visitors contributed $4.3 billion to Oklahoma City's economy. These visitors directly spent $2.6 billion, sustained nearly 34,000 jobs, and generated $343 million in state and local taxes.\nBusiness districts.\nBusiness and entertainment districts (and, to a lesser extent, local neighborhoods) tend to maintain their boundaries and character by applying zoning regulations and business improvement districts (districts where property owners agree to a property tax surcharge to support additional services for the community). Through zoning regulations, historic districts, and other special zoning districts, including overlay districts, are well established. Oklahoma City has three business improvement districts, including one encompassing the central business district.\nCulture.\nMuseums and theaters.\nThe Donald W. Reynolds Visual Arts Center is the new downtown home for the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. The museum features visiting exhibits, original selections from its collection, a theater showing various foreign, independent, and classic films each week, and a restaurant. OKCMOA is also home to the most comprehensive collection of Chihuly glass in the world, including the 55-foot Eleanor Blake Kirkpatrick Memorial Tower in the Museum's atrium. The art deco Civic Center Music Hall, which was renovated most recently in 2023, has performances from the Oklahoma City Ballet, the Oklahoma City Opera, the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, and also various concerts and traveling Broadway shows.\nOther theaters include the Lyric Theatre, Jewel Box Theatre, Kirkpatrick Auditorium, the Poteet Theatre, the Oklahoma City Community College Bruce Owen Theater, and the 488-seat Petree Recital Hall at the Oklahoma City University campus. The university opened the Wanda L Bass School of Music and Auditorium in April 2006.\nThe Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center (formerly City Arts Center) moved downtown in 2020, near Campbell Art Park at 11th and Broadway, after being at the Oklahoma State Fair fairgrounds since 1989. It features exhibitions, performances, classes, workshops, camps, and weekly programs.\nThe Science Museum Oklahoma (formerly Kirkpatrick Science and Air Space Museum at Omniplex) houses exhibits on science and aviation and an IMAX theater. The museum formerly housed the International Photography Hall of Fame (IPHF), which displays photographs and artifacts from an extensive collection of cameras and other artifacts preserving the history of photography. IPHF honors those who have contributed significantly to the art and/or science of photography and relocated to St. Louis, Missouri in 2013.\nThe Museum of Osteology displays over 450 real skeletons and houses over 7,000. Focusing on the form and function of the skeletal system, this museum displays hundreds of skulls and skeletons from all corners of the world. Exhibits include adaptation, locomotion, classification, and diversity of the vertebrate kingdom. The Museum of Osteology is the only one of its kind in America.\nThe National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum has galleries of western art and is home to the Hall of Great Western Performers.\nIn September 2021, the First Americans Museum opened to the public, focusing on the histories and cultures of the numerous tribal nations and many Indigenous peoples in the state of Oklahoma.\nThe Oklahoma City National Memorial in the northern part of Oklahoma City's downtown was created as the inscription on its eastern gate of the Memorial reads, \"to honor the victims, survivors, rescuers, and all who were changed forever on April 19, 1995\"; the memorial was built on the land formerly occupied by the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building complex before its 1995 bombing. The outdoor Symbolic Memorial can be visited 24 hours a day for free, and the adjacent Memorial Museum, in the former \"Journal Record\" building damaged by the bombing, can be entered for a small fee. The site is also home to the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, a non-partisan, nonprofit think tank devoted to preventing terrorism.\nThe American Banjo Museum in the Bricktown Entertainment district is dedicated to preserving and promoting the music and heritage of the banjo. Its collection is valued at $3.5\u00a0 million, and an interpretive exhibit tells the evolution of the banjo from its roots in American slavery, to bluegrass, to folk, and to world music.\nThe Oklahoma History Center is the state's history museum. Across the street from the governor's mansion at 800 Nazih Zuhdi Drive in northeast Oklahoma City, the museum opened in 2005 and is operated by the Oklahoma Historical Society. It preserves Oklahoma's history from the prehistoric to the present day.\nThe Oklahoma State Firefighters Museum contains early colonial firefighting tools, the first fire station in Oklahoma, and modern fire trucks.\nThe historic 23rd Street Armory in Oklahoma City is set to be transformed into a $23 million entertainment venue by Fischer Companies and TempleLive, featuring a 4,500-capacity theater, a 500-capacity venue for local artists, dining options, and a microbrewery, with construction beginning in spring 2024 and anticipated completion in 2026.\nRestaurants.\nFlorence's Restaurant in 2022 was named one of America's Classics by the James Beard Foundation. It was the first James Beard award for an Oklahoma entity. \"The Oklahoman\" called Florence's \"The Grand Dame of all local restaurants\". Andrew Black, chef/owner of Grey Sweater, won the for Best Chef Southwest.\nThe Food Network show \"Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives\" has been to several restaurants in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. Some of these include Cattlemen's Steakhouse, Chick N Beer, Clanton's Cafe, The Diner, Eischen's Bar, Florence's Restaurant, and Guyutes, among several others.\nSports.\nOklahoma City is home to several professional sports teams, including the Oklahoma City Thunder of the National Basketball Association. The Thunder is the city's second \"permanent\" major professional sports franchise after the now-defunct AFL Oklahoma Wranglers. It is the third major-league team to call the city home when considering the temporary hosting of the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets for the 2005\u201306 and 2006\u201307 NBA seasons. However, the Thunder was formerly the Sonics before the movement of the Sonics to OKC in 2008.\nOther professional sports clubs in Oklahoma City include the Oklahoma City Comets, the Triple-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Oklahoma City Energy FC of the United Soccer League, and the Crusaders of Oklahoma Rugby Football Club of USA Rugby. The Oklahoma City Blazers, a name used for decades of the city's hockey team in the Central Hockey League, has been used for a junior team in the Western States Hockey League since 2014.\nThe Paycom Center in downtown is the main multipurpose arena in the city, which hosts concerts, NHL exhibition games, and many of the city's pro sports teams. In 2008, the Oklahoma City Thunder became the primary tenant. Nearby in Bricktown, the Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark is the home to the city's baseball team, the Comets. \"The Brick\", as it is locally known, is considered one of the finest minor league parks in the nation.\nOklahoma City hosts the World Cup of Softball and the annual NCAA Women's College World Series. The city has held 2005 NCAA Men's Basketball First and Second round and hosted the Big 12 Men's and women's basketball tournaments in 2007 and 2009. The major universities in the area \u2013 University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City University, and Oklahoma State University \u2013 often schedule major basketball games and other sporting events at Paycom Center and Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark. However, most home games are played at their campus stadiums.\nOther major sporting events include Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse racing circuits at Remington Park and numerous horse shows and equine events that take place at the state fairgrounds each year. There are multiple golf courses and country clubs spread around the city.\nHigh school football.\nThe state of Oklahoma hosts a highly competitive high school football culture, with many teams in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. The Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association organizes high school football into eight distinct classes based on school enrollment size. Beginning with the largest, the classes are 6A, 5A, 4A, 3A, 2A, A, B, and C. Class 6A is broken into two divisions. Oklahoma City schools in include: Westmoore, Putnam City North, Putnam City, Putnam City West, Southeast, Capitol Hill, U.S. Grant, and Northwest Classen.\nOklahoma City Thunder.\nThe Oklahoma City Thunder of the National Basketball Association (NBA) has called Oklahoma City home since the 2008\u201309 season, when owner Clay Bennett relocated the franchise from Seattle, Washington. The Thunder plays home games in downtown Oklahoma City at the Paycom Center. The Thunder is known by several nicknames, including \"OKC Thunder\" and simply \"OKC\", and its mascot is Rumble the Bison.\nAfter arriving in Oklahoma City for the 2008\u201309 season, the Oklahoma City Thunder secured a berth (8th) in the 2010 NBA Playoffs the following year after boasting its first 50-win season, winning two games in the first round against the Los Angeles Lakers. In 2012, Oklahoma City made it to the NBA Finals but lost to the Miami Heat in five games. In 2013, the Thunder reached the Western Conference semi-finals without All-Star guard Russell Westbrook, who was injured in their first-round series against the Houston Rockets, only to lose to the Memphis Grizzlies. In 2014, Oklahoma City reached the NBA's Western Conference Finals again but eventually lost to the San Antonio Spurs in six games.\nSports analysts have regarded the Oklahoma City Thunder as one of the elite franchises of the NBA's Western Conference and a media darling of the league's future. Oklahoma City earned Northwest Division titles every year from 2011 to 2014 and again in 2016 and has consistently improved its win record to 59 wins in 2014. The Thunder is led by third-year head coach Mark Daigneault and is anchored by All-Star point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander; acquired from the Los Angeles Clippers in a trade in the summer of 2019.\nHornets.\nIn the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the NBA's New Orleans Hornets temporarily relocated to the Ford Center, playing the majority of its home games there during the 2005\u201306 and 2006\u201307 seasons. The team became the first NBA franchise to play regular-season games in Oklahoma. The team was known as the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets while playing in Oklahoma City.\nThe team returned to New Orleans full-time for the 2007\u201308 season. The Hornets played their final home game in Oklahoma City during the exhibition season on October 9, 2007, against the Houston Rockets.\n2028 Olympics.\nVenues in Oklahoma City will host two events during the 2028 Summer Olympics, which will primarily be held in Los Angeles. The LA Olympic Organizing Committee opted to have canoe slalom and softball in Oklahoma City, given the lack of acceptable venues for those sports in Los Angeles. Riversport OKC will host the canoe slalom competition, while Devon Park will host the softball competition. Oklahoma City is located approximately 1,300 miles away from Los Angeles.\nParks and recreation.\nOklahoma City has more than 170 parks that cover 6,256 acres, and 100 miles of trails.\nOne of the more prominent landmarks of downtown Oklahoma City is the Crystal Bridge tropical conservatory at the Myriad Botanical Gardens, a large downtown urban park. Designed by I. M. Pei, the park also includes the Water Stage amphitheater, a bandshell, and lawn, a sunken pond complete with koi, an interactive children's garden complete with a carousel and water sculpture, various trails and interactive exhibits that rotate throughout the year including the ice skating in the Christmas winter season. In 2007, following a renovation of the stage, \"Oklahoma Shakespeare In The Park\" relocated to the Myriad Gardens. Bicentennial Park, also downtown located near the Oklahoma City Civic Center campus, is home to the annual \"Festival of the Arts\" in April.\nThe Scissortail Park is just south of the Myriad Gardens, a large interactive park that opened in 2021. This park contains a large lake with paddleboats, a dog park, a concert stage with a great lawn, a promenade including the Skydance Bridge, a children's interactive splash park and playground, and numerous athletic facilities. Farmers Market is a common attraction at Scissortail Park during the season, and there are multiple film showings, food trucks, concerts, festivals, and civic gatherings.\nReturning to the city's first parks masterplan, Oklahoma City has at least one major park in each quadrant outside downtown. Will Rogers Park, the Grand Boulevard loop once connected Lincoln Park, Trosper Park, and Woodson Park, some sections of which no longer exist. Martin Park Nature Center is a natural habitat in far northwest Oklahoma City. Will Rogers Park is home to the \"Lycan Conservatory\", the Rose Garden, and the Butterfly Garden, all built in the WPA era. In April 2005, the \"Oklahoma City Skate Park\" at Wiley Post Park was renamed the \"Mat Hoffman Action Sports Park\" to recognize Mat Hoffman, an Oklahoma City area resident and businessman who was instrumental in the design of the skate park and is a 10-time BMX World Vert champion.\nWalking trails line the Bricktown Canal and the Oklahoma River in downtown. The city's bike trail system follows around Lake Hefner and Lake Overholser in the northwest and west quadrants of the city. The majority of the east shore area of Lake Hefner is taken up by parks and bike trails, including a new leashless dog park and the postwar-era \"Stars and Stripes Park\", and eateries near the lighthouse. Lake Stanley Draper, in southeast Oklahoma City, is the city's largest and most remote lake, offering a genuine rural yet still urban experience.\nThe Oklahoma City Zoo and Botanical Garden is home to numerous natural habitats, WPA era architecture and landscaping, and major touring concerts during the summer at its amphitheater. Nearby is a combination racetrack and casino, Remington Park, which hosts both Quarter Horse (March \u2013 June) and Thoroughbred (August\u2014December) seasons.\nOklahoma City is also home to the American Banjo Museum, which houses a large collection of highly decorated banjos from the early 20th century and exhibits the banjo's history and its place in American history. Concerts and lectures are also held there.\nGovernment.\nThe City of Oklahoma City has operated under a council-manager form of city government since 1927. David Holt assumed the office of Mayor on April 10, 2018, after being elected two months earlier. Eight councilpersons represent each of the eight wards of Oklahoma City. The City Council appointed current City Manager Craig Freeman on November 20, 2018. Freeman took office on January 2, 2018, succeeding James D. Couch, who had served in the role since 2000. Before becoming City Manager, Craig Freeman served as Finance Director for the city.\nPolitics.\nSimilar to many American cities, Oklahoma City is politically conservative in its suburbs and liberal in the central city. In the United States House of Representatives, it is represented by Republicans Stephanie Bice and Tom Cole of the 5th and 4th districts, respectively. The city has called on residents to vote for sales tax-based projects to revitalize parts of the city. The Bricktown district is the best example of such an initiative. In the recent MAPS 3 vote, the city's fraternal police order criticized the project proposals for not doing enough to expand the police presence to keep up with the growing residential population and increased commercial activity. In September 2013, Oklahoma City area attorney David Slane announced he would pursue legal action regarding MAPS3 on claims the multiple projects that made up the plan violate a state constitutional law limiting voter ballot issues to a single subject.\nInternational relations.\nTwin towns \u2013 sister cities.\nOklahoma City's sister cities are:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nEducation.\nHigher education.\nThe city is home to several colleges and universities. Oklahoma City University, formerly known as Epworth University, was founded by the United Methodist Church on September 1, 1904, and is known for its performing arts, science, mass communications, business, law, and athletic programs. OCU has its main campus in the north-central section of the city, near the city's Asia District area. OCU Law is in the old Central High School building in the Midtown district near downtown.\nThe University of Oklahoma has several institutions of higher learning in the city and metropolitan area, with OU Medicine and the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center campuses east of downtown in the Oklahoma Health Center district, and the main campus to the south in the suburb of Norman. OU Medical Center hosts the state's only Level-One trauma center. OU Health Sciences Center is one of the nation's largest independent medical centers, employing over 12,000 people. OU is one of only four major universities in the nation to operate six medical schools.\nThe third-largest university in the state, the University of Central Oklahoma, is just north of the city in the suburb of Edmond. Oklahoma Christian University, one of the state's private liberal arts institutions, is just south of the Edmond border, inside the Oklahoma City limits.\nOklahoma City Community College in south Oklahoma City is the second-largest community college in the state. Rose State College is east of Oklahoma City in suburban Midwest City. Oklahoma State University\u2013Oklahoma City is in the \"Furniture District\" on the Westside. Northeast of the city is Langston University, the state's historically black college (HBCU). Langston also has an urban campus in the eastside section of the city. Southern Nazarene University, which was founded by the Church of the Nazarene, is a university in suburban Bethany, which is surrounded by the Oklahoma City city limits.\nAlthough technically not a university, the FAA's Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center has many aspects of an institution of higher learning. Its FAA Academy is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. Its Civil Aerospace Medical Institute (CAMI) has a medical education division responsible for aeromedical education in general, as well as the education of aviation medical examiners in the U.S. and 93 other countries. In addition, The National Academy of Science offers Research Associateship Programs for fellowship and other grants for CAMI research.\nPrimary and secondary.\nOklahoma City is home to (as of 2009) the state's largest school district, Oklahoma City Public Schools, which covers the most significant portion of the city. The district's Classen School of Advanced Studies and Harding Charter Preparatory High School rank high among public schools nationally according to a formula that looks at the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and/or Cambridge tests taken by the school's students divided by the number of graduating seniors. In addition, OKCPS's Belle Isle Enterprise Middle School was named the top middle school in the state according to the Academic Performance Index and recently received the Blue Ribbon School Award, in 2004 and again in 2011.\nDue to Oklahoma City's explosive growth, parts of several suburban districts spill into the city. All but one of the school districts in Oklahoma County includes portions of Oklahoma City. The other districts in that county covering OKC include: Choctaw/Nicoma Park, Crooked Oak, Crutcho, Deer Creek, Edmond, Harrah, Jones, Luther, McLoud, Mid-Del, Millwood, Moore, Mustang, Oakdale, Piedmont, Putnam City, and Western Heights. School districts in Cleveland County covering portions of Oklahoma City include: Little Axe, McLoud, Mid-Del, Moore, and Robin Hill. Within Canadian County, Banner, Mustang, Piedmont, Union City, and Yukon school districts include parts of OKC.\nThere are also charter schools. KIPP Reach College Preparatory School in Oklahoma City received the 2012 National Blue Ribbon, and its school leader, Tracy McDaniel Sr., was awarded the Terrel H. Bell Award for Outstanding Leadership.\nThe city also boasts several private and parochial schools. Casady School and Heritage Hall School are both examples of a private college preparatory school with rigorous academics that range among the top in Oklahoma. Providence Hall is a Protestant school. Two prominent schools of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City include Bishop McGuinness High School and Mount Saint Mary High School. Other private schools include the Advanced Science and Technology Education Center and Crossings Christian School.\nThe Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics, a school for some of the state's most gifted math and science pupils, is also in Oklahoma City.\nCareerTech.\nOklahoma City has several public career and technology education schools associated with the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education, the largest of which are Metro Technology Center and Francis Tuttle Technology Center.\nPrivate career and technology education schools in Oklahoma City include Oklahoma Technology Institute, Platt College, Vatterott College, and Heritage College. The Dale Rogers Training Center is a nonprofit vocational training center for individuals with disabilities.\nMedia.\nPrint.\n\"The Oklahoman\" is Oklahoma City's major daily newspaper and is the most widely circulated in the state. NewsOK.com is the Oklahoman's online presence. \"Oklahoma Gazette\" is Oklahoma City's independent newsweekly, featuring such staples as local commentary, feature stories, restaurant reviews, movie listings, and music and entertainment. \"The Journal Record\" is the city's daily business newspaper, and \"okcBIZ\" is a monthly publication that covers business news affecting those who live and work in Central Oklahoma.\nNumerous community and international newspapers cater to the city's ethnic mosaic, such as \"The Black Chronicle\", headquartered in the Eastside, the OK VIETIMES and \"Oklahoma Chinese Times\", in Asia District, and various Hispanic community publications. \"The Campus\" is the student newspaper at Oklahoma City University. Gay publications include \"The Gayly Oklahoman\".\nAn upscale lifestyle publication called \"405 Magazine\" (formerly Slice Magazine) is circulated throughout the metropolitan area. In addition, there is a magazine published by \"Back40 Design Group\" called \"The Edmond Outlook\". It contains local commentary and human interest pieces directly mailed to over 50,000 Edmond residents.\n\"Ready Player One\" is set in Oklahoma City in the year 2045.\nBroadcast.\nOklahoma City was home to several pioneers in radio and television broadcasting. Oklahoma City's WKY Radio was the first radio station transmitting west of the Mississippi River and the third radio station in the United States. WKY received its federal license in 1921 and has continually broadcast under the same call letters since 1922. In 1928, WKY was purchased by E.K. Gaylord's Oklahoma Publishing Company and affiliated with the NBC Red Network; in 1949, WKY-TV (channel 4) went on the air and later became the first independently owned television station in the U.S. to broadcast in color. In mid-2002, WKY radio was purchased outright by Citadel Broadcasting, who was bought out by Cumulus Broadcasting in 2011. The Gaylord family earlier sold WKY-TV in 1976, which has gone through a succession of owners (what is now KFOR-TV is owned by Nexstar Media Group as of October 2019).\nThe major U.S. broadcast television networks have affiliates in the Oklahoma City market (ranked 41st for television by Nielsen and 48th for radio by Arbitron, covering a 34-county area serving the central, north-central and west-central sections of Oklahoma); including NBC affiliate KFOR-TV (channel 4), ABC affiliate KOCO-TV (channel 5), CBS affiliate KWTV-DT (channel 9, the flagship of locally based Griffin Media), PBS station KETA-TV (channel 13, the flagship of the state-run OETA member network), Fox affiliate KOKH-TV (channel 25), independent station KOCB (channel 34), CW owned-and-operated station KAUT-TV (channel 43), MyNetworkTV affiliate KSBI-TV (channel 52), and Ion Television affiliate KOPX-TV (channel 62). The market is also home to several religious stations, including TBN owned-and-operated station KTBO-TV (channel 14) and Norman-based Daystar owned-and-operated station KOCM (channel 46).\nDespite the market's geographical size, none of the English-language commercial affiliates in the Oklahoma City designated market area operate full-power satellite stations covering the far northwestern part of the state (requiring cable or satellite to view them). However, KFOR-TV, KOCO-TV, KWTV-DT, and KOKH-TV each operate low-power translators in that portion of the market. Oklahoma City is one of the few markets between Chicago and Dallas to have affiliates of two or more of the significant Spanish-language broadcast networks: Telemundo affiliate KTUZ-TV (channel 30), Woodward-based Univision/UniM\u00e1s affiliate KUOK 35 (whose translator KUOK-CD, channel 36, serves the immediate Oklahoma City area), and Estrella TV affiliate KOCY-LD (channel 48). (Locally based Tyler Media Group, which owns the three stations above, also owns eight radio stations in the market, including Regional Mexican-formatted KTUZ-FM (106.7) and news\u2013talk outlet KOKC (1520 AM).)\nInfrastructure.\nFire department.\nOklahoma City is protected by the Oklahoma City Fire Department (OKCFD), which employs 1015 paid, professional firefighters. The current Chief of Department is Richard Kelley, and the department is commanded by three Deputy Chiefs, who \u2013 along with the department chief \u2013 oversee the Operational Services, Prevention Services, and Support Services bureaus. The OKCFD operates out of 37 fire stations throughout the city in six battalions. The OKCFD operates a fire apparatus fleet of 36 engine companies (including 30 paramedic engines), 13 ladder companies, 16 brush pumper units, six water tankers, two hazardous materials units, one Technical Rescue Unit, one Air Supply Unit, six Arson Investigation Units, and one Rehabilitation Unit along with several special units. Each engine Company is staffed with a driver, an officer, and one to two firefighters, while each ladder company is staffed with a driver, an officer, and one firefighter. The minimum staffing for each shift is 213 personnel. The Oklahoma City Fire Department responds to over 70,000 emergency calls annually.\nTransportation.\nHighway.\nOklahoma City is an integral point on the United States Interstate Network, with three major interstate highways \u2013 Interstate 35, Interstate 40, and Interstate 44 \u2013 bisecting the city. Interstate 240 connects Interstate 40 and Interstate 44 in south Oklahoma City. At the same time, Interstate 235 spurs from Interstate 44 in north-central Oklahoma City into downtown. Interstate 44, between NW 23rd St and NW 36th St, is the busiest roadway in the city and state, with an average daily traffic count of 167,200 vehicles per day in 2018.\nMajor state expressways through the city include Lake Hefner Parkway (SH-74), the Kilpatrick Turnpike, Airport Road (SH-152), and Broadway Extension (US-77) which continues from I-235 connecting Central Oklahoma City to Edmond. Lake Hefner Parkway runs through northwest Oklahoma City, while Airport Road runs through southwest Oklahoma City and leads to Will Rogers World Airport. The Kilpatrick Turnpike loops around north and west Oklahoma City.\nOklahoma City also has several major national and state highways within its city limits. Shields Boulevard (US-77) continues from E.K. Gaylord Boulevard in downtown Oklahoma City and runs south, eventually connecting to I-35 near the suburb of Moore, Oklahoma. Northwest Expressway (Oklahoma State Highway 3) runs from North Classen Boulevard in north-central Oklahoma City to the northwestern suburbs.\nThe following significant expressways traverse Oklahoma City:\nAir.\nOklahoma City is served by two primary airports, Will Rogers World Airport and the much smaller Wiley Post Airport (incidentally, the two honorees died in the same plane crash in Alaska) Will Rogers World Airport is the state's busiest commercial airport, with 4,341,159 passengers served in 2018, a historical record.\nTinker Air Force Base, in southeast Oklahoma City, is the largest military air depot in the nation. It is a major maintenance and deployment facility for the Navy and the Air Force and the second largest military institution in the state (after Fort Sill in Lawton).\nRail and intercity bus.\nAmtrak has a station downtown at the Santa Fe Depot, with daily service to Fort Worth and the nation's rail network via the Heartland Flyer. Oklahoma City once was the crossroads of several interstate passenger railroads at the Santa Fe Depot, the Union Station, and the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad station. But service at that level has long since been discontinued. However, several proposals to extend the current train service have been made, including a plan to expand the Heartland Flyer to Newton, Kansas, which is currently being connected through Amtrak Thruway. Freight service is provided by BNSF Railway, Union Pacific Railroad, and Stillwater Central.\nGreyhound and several other intercity bus companies serve Oklahoma City at the Union Bus Station in downtown.\nPublic transit.\nEmbark (formerly Metro Transit) is the city's public transit company. The primary transfer terminal is downtown at NW 5th Street and Hudson Avenue. Embark maintains limited coverage of the city's primary street grid using a hub-and-spoke system from the main terminal, making many journeys impractical due to the relatively small number of bus routes offered and that most trips require a transfer downtown. The city has recognized transit as a significant issue for the rapidly growing and urbanizing city. It has initiated several recent studies to improve the existing bus system, starting with a plan known as the Fixed Guideway Study. This study identified several potential commuter transit routes from the suburbs into downtown OKC as well as feeder-line bus and/or rail routes throughout the city.\nThough Oklahoma City has no light rail or commuter rail service, city residents identified improved transit as one of their top priorities. From the fruits of the Fixed Guideway and other studies, city leaders strongly desire to incorporate urban rail transit into the region's future transportation plans. The greater Oklahoma City metropolitan transit plan identified from the Fixed Guideway Study includes a streetcar system in the downtown area, to be fed by enhanced city bus service and commuter rail from the suburbs including Edmond, Norman, and Midwest City. There is a significant push for a commuter rail line connecting downtown OKC with the eastern suburbs of Del City, Midwest City, and Tinker Air Force Base. In addition to commuter rail, a short heritage rail line that would run from Bricktown just a few blocks away from the Amtrak station to the Adventure District in northeast Oklahoma City is under reconstruction.\nIn December 2009, Oklahoma City voters passed MAPS 3, the $777\u00a0million (7-year, 1-cent tax) initiative. This initiative would generate funding (approx. $130\u00a0million) for the modern Oklahoma City Streetcar system in downtown Oklahoma City and the establishment of a transit hub.\nOn September 10, 2013, the federal government announced that Oklahoma City would receive a $13.8-million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation's TIGER program. This was the first-ever grant for Oklahoma City for a rail-based initiative and is thought to be a turning point for city leaders who have applied for grants in the past, only to be denied continuously. It is believed the city will use the TIGER grant along with approximately $10\u00a0 million from the MAPS 3 Transit budget to revitalize the city's Amtrak station, becoming an Intermodal Transportation Hub, taking over the role of the existing transit hub at NW 5th/Hudson Ave.\nConstruction of the Oklahoma City Streetcar system in Downtown OKC began in early 2017, and the system opened for service in December 2018. Also known as the Maps 3 Streetcar, it connects the areas of Bricktown, Midtown and Downtown. The system serves the greater Downtown area using modern low-floor streetcars. The initial system consists of two lines connecting Oklahoma City's Central Business District with the entertainment district, Bricktown, and the Midtown District. Expansion to other districts surrounding downtown and more routes in the CBD is already underway.\nWalkability.\nA 2013 study by Walk Score ranked Oklahoma City the 43rd most walkable out of the 50 largest U.S. cities. Oklahoma City has 18 neighborhoods with a Walk Score above 60, mainly close to the downtown core.\nHealth.\nOklahoma City and the surrounding metropolitan area have several healthcare facilities and specialty hospitals. In Oklahoma City's MidTown district near downtown resides the state's oldest and largest single-site hospital, St. Anthony Hospital and Physicians Medical Center.\nOU Medicine, an academic medical institution on the campus of The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, is home to OU Medical Center. OU Medicine operates Oklahoma's only level-one trauma center at the OU Medical Center and the state's only level-one trauma center for children at Children's Hospital at OU Medicine, both of which are in the Oklahoma Health Center district. Other medical facilities operated by OU Medicine include OU Physicians and OU Children's Physicians, the OU College of Medicine, the Oklahoma Cancer Center, and OU Medical Center Edmond, the latter in the northern suburb of Edmond.\nINTEGRIS Health owns several hospitals, including INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center, the INTEGRIS Cancer Institute of Oklahoma, and the INTEGRIS Southwest Medical Center. INTEGRIS Health operates hospitals, rehabilitation centers, physician clinics, mental health facilities, independent living centers, and home health agencies throughout much of Oklahoma. INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center ranks high-performing in the following categories: Cardiology and Heart Surgery; Diabetes and Endocrinology; Ear, Nose and Throat; Gastroenterology; Geriatrics; Nephrology; Orthopedics; Pulmonology and Urology.\nThe Midwest Regional Medical Center is in the suburb of Midwest City; other significant hospitals include the Oklahoma Heart Hospital and the Mercy Health Center. There are 347 physicians for every 100,000 people in the city.\nIn the American College of Sports Medicine's annual ranking of the United States' 50 most populous metropolitan areas on the basis of community health, Oklahoma City took last place in 2010, falling five spots from its 2009 rank of 45. The ACSM's report, published as part of its American Fitness Index program, cited, among other things, the poor diet of residents, low levels of physical fitness, higher incidences of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease than the national average, low access to recreational facilities like swimming pools and baseball diamonds, the paucity of parks and low investment by the city in their development, the high percentage of households below the poverty level, and the lack of state-mandated physical education curriculum as contributing factors.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "22489": "Oklahoma\nU.S. state\nOklahoma ( ; Choctaw: , ) is a landlocked state in the South Central region of the United States. It borders Texas to the south and west, Kansas to the north, Missouri to the northeast, Arkansas to the east, New Mexico to the west, and Colorado to the northwest. Partially in the western extreme of the Upland South, it is the 20th-most extensive and the 28th-most populous of the 50 United States. Its residents are known as Oklahomans and its capital and largest city is Oklahoma City.\nThe state's name is derived from the Choctaw words , 'people' and , which translates as 'red'. Oklahoma is also known informally by its nickname, \"The Sooner State\", in reference to the Sooners, American settlers who staked their claims in formerly American Indian-owned lands until the Indian Appropriations Act of 1889 authorized the Land Rush of 1889 opening the land to settlement.\nWith ancient mountain ranges, prairie, mesas, and eastern forests, most of Oklahoma lies in the Great Plains, Cross Timbers, and the U.S. Interior Highlands, all regions prone to severe weather. Oklahoma is at a confluence of three major American cultural regions. Historically, it served as a government-sanctioned territory for American Indians moved from east of the Mississippi River, a route for cattle drives from Texas and related regions, and a destination for Southern settlers. There are currently 25 . According to the 2020 U.S. census, 14.2 percent of Oklahomans identify as American Indians, the highest indigenous population by percentage in any state.\nA major producer of natural gas, oil, and agricultural products, Oklahoma relies on an economic base of aviation, energy, telecommunications, and biotechnology. Oklahoma City and Tulsa serve as Oklahoma's primary economic anchors, with nearly two-thirds of Oklahomans living within their metropolitan statistical areas.\nEtymology.\nThe name \"Oklahoma\" comes from the Choctaw language phrase , 'people', and , translated as 'red'. Choctaw Nation Chief Allen Wright suggested the name in 1865 during treaty negotiations with the federal US government on the use of Indian Territory. He envisioned an all exclusive American Indian state controlled by the United States bureau of Indian Affairs. A painting of the 1865 Council now hangs in the Oklahoma Senate. \"Oklahoma\" later became the de facto name for Oklahoma Territory, and it was officially approved in 1890, two years after that area was opened to American settlers.\nHistory.\nPre-Columbian.\nIndigenous peoples were present in what is now Oklahoma by the last ice age. Ancestors of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes (including Teyas and Escanjaques and Tawakoni), Tonkawa, and Caddo (including Kichai) lived in what is now Oklahoma. Southern Plains villagers lived in the central and west of the state, with a subgroup, the Panhandle culture people, living in the panhandle region. Caddoan Mississippian culture peoples lived in the eastern part of the state. Spiro Mounds, in what is now Spiro, Oklahoma, was a major Mississippian mound complex that flourished between AD 850 and 1450. Plains Apache people settled in the Southern Plains and in Oklahoma between 1300 and 1500.\nEuropean exploration and colonization.\nThe expedition of Spaniard Francisco V\u00e1zquez de Coronado traveled through the area in 1541, but French explorers claimed the area in the early 18th century. By the 18th century, Comanche and Kiowa entered the region from the west and Quapaw and Osage peoples moved into what is now eastern Oklahoma. French colonists claimed the region until 1803, when all the French territory west of the Mississippi River was acquired by the United States in the Louisiana Purchase. The territory was a part of the Arkansas Territory from 1819 until 1828.\n19th century.\nDuring the 19th century, the U.S. federal government forcibly removed tens of thousands of American Indians from their ancestral homelands from across North America and transported them to the area including and surrounding present-day Oklahoma. The Choctaw was the first of the Five Civilized Tribes to be removed from the Southeastern United States. The phrase \"Trail of Tears\" originated from a description of the removal of the Choctaw Nation in 1831, although the term is usually used for the Cherokee removal.\nSeventeen thousand Cherokees and 2,000 of their black slaves were deported. The area, already occupied by Osage and Quapaw tribes, was called for the Choctaw Nation until revised Native American and then later American policy redefined the boundaries to include other Native Americans. By 1890, more than 30 Native American nations and tribes had been concentrated on land within Indian Territory or \"Indian Country\".\nAll Five Civilized Tribes signed treaties with the Confederate military during the American Civil War. The Cherokee Nation had an internal civil war. Slavery in Indian Territory was not abolished until 1866.\nIn the period between 1866 and 1899, cattle ranches in Texas strove to meet the demands for food in eastern cities and railroads in Kansas promised to deliver in a timely manner. Cattle trails and cattle ranches developed as cowboys either drove their product north or settled illegally in Indian Territory. In 1881, four of five major cattle trails on the western frontier traveled through Indian Territory.\nIncreased presence of white settlers in Indian Territory and their demand for land owned and guaranteed to Indian tribes by treaties with the U.S. government prompted the United States to enact the Dawes Act in 1887 and the Curtis Act of 1898. The acts abolished tribal governments, eliminated tribal ownership of land, and allotted of land to each head of an Indian family. An objective of the acts was the forced assimilation of Indians into white society. Land not allotted to individual Indians was owned by the U.S. government and sold or distributed to settlers and railroads. The proceeds of the land sales were used to educate Indian children and advance the policy of assimilation. As a result of the two acts about one-half of land previously owned by Indian tribes was owned by whites by 1900. Moreover, much of the land allotted to individual Indian heads of families became white-owned. Allottees often sold or were fraudulently deprived of their land.\nThe acquisition of tribal lands by the U.S. government led to land runs, also called \"land rushes,\" from 1887 and 1895. Major land runs, including the Land Rush of 1889, opened up millions of acres of formerly tribal lands to white settlement. The \"rushes\" began at a precise times as each prospective settler literally raced with other prospective settlers to claim ownership of of land under the Homestead Act of 1862. Usually land was claimed by settlers on a first come, first served basis. Those who broke the rules by crossing the border into the territory before the official opening time were said to have been crossing the border \"sooner\", leading to the term \"sooners\", which eventually became the state's official nickname. George Washington Steele was appointed the first governor of the territory of Oklahoma in 1890.\n20th century.\nAttempts to create an all-Indian state named \"Oklahoma\" and a later attempt to create an all-Indian state named \"Sequoyah\" failed but the Sequoyah Statehood Convention of 1905 eventually laid the groundwork for the Oklahoma Statehood Convention, which took place two years later. On June 16, 1906, Congress enacted a statute authorizing the people of the Oklahoma and Indian Territories (as well what would become the states of Arizona and New Mexico) to form a constitution and state government in order to be admitted as a state. On November 16, 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt issued Presidential Proclamation no. , establishing Oklahoma as the 46th state in the Union.\nThe new state became a focal point for the emerging oil industry, as discoveries of oil pools prompted towns to grow rapidly in population and wealth. Tulsa eventually became known as the \"Oil Capital of the World\" for most of the 20th century and oil investments fueled much of the state's early economy. In 1927, Oklahoman businessman Cyrus Avery, known as the \"Father of Route 66\", began the campaign to create U.S. Route 66. Using a stretch of highway from Amarillo, Texas to Tulsa, Oklahoma to form the original portion of Highway 66, Avery spearheaded the creation of the U.S. Highway 66 Association to oversee the planning of Route 66, based in his hometown of Tulsa.\nIn late September 1918, the first cases of the Spanish flu appeared in Oklahoma. Though public health authorities statewide had some indication that the pandemic was westward, the turmoil caused by the rapid advancement of the disease quickly overwhelmed both health workers and local governing bodies. In Oklahoma City, shortages of both supplies and personnel were mitigated, in part, by the mobilization of the American Red Cross. Rough estimates based on contemporary reports indicate that approximately 100,000 people fell ill with the disease before the pandemic ebbed in 1919. Of those 100,000 cases, it is assumed that around 7,500 proved fatal, placing total mortality rates for the state in the area of 7.5%.\nOklahoma also has a rich African-American history. Many Black towns, founded by the Freedmen of the Five Tribes during Reconstruction, thrived in the early 20th century with the arrival of Black Exodusters who migrated from neighboring states, especially Kansas. The politician Edward P. McCabe encouraged Black settlers to come to what was then Indian Territory. McCabe discussed with President Theodore Roosevelt the possibility of making Oklahoma a majority-Black state.\nBy the early 20th century, the Greenwood district of Tulsa was one of the most prosperous African-American communities in the United States. Jim Crow laws had established racial segregation since before the start of the 20th century, but Tulsa's Black residents had created a thriving area.\nSocial tensions were exacerbated by the revival of the Ku Klux Klan after 1915. The Tulsa race massacre broke out in 1921, with White mobs attacking Black people and carrying out a pogrom in Greenwood. In one of the costliest episodes of racist violence in American history, sixteen hours of rioting resulted in the destruction of 35 city blocks, $1.8 million in property damage, and an estimated death toll of between 75 and 300 people. By the late 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan had declined to negligible influence within the state.\nDuring the 1930s, parts of the state began to suffer from the consequences of poor farming practices. This period was known as the Dust Bowl, throughout which areas of Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, and northwestern Oklahoma were hampered by long periods of little rainfall, strong winds, abnormally high temperatures, and most notably, severe dust storms sending thousands of farmers into poverty and forcing them to relocate to more fertile areas of the western United States. Over a twenty-year period ending in 1950, the state saw its only historical decline in population, dropping 6.9 percent as impoverished families migrated out of the state after the Dust Bowl.\nSoil and water conservation projects markedly changed practices in the state, leading to the construction of massive flood control systems and dams to supply water for domestic needs and agricultural irrigation. As of 2024, Oklahoma had more than 4,700 dams, about 20% of all dams in the U.S.\nIn 1995, Oklahoma City was the site of the most destructive act of domestic terrorism in American history. The Oklahoma City bombing of April 19, 1995, in which Timothy McVeigh detonated a large, crude explosive device outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killed 168 people, including 19 children. For his crime, McVeigh was executed by the federal government on June 11, 2001. His accomplice, Terry Nichols, is serving life in prison without parole for helping plan the attack and prepare the explosive.\n21st century.\nOn May 31, 2016, several cities experienced record setting flooding.\nOn July 9, 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States determined in \"McGirt v. Oklahoma\" that the reservations of the Five Tribes, comprising much of Eastern Oklahoma, were never disestablished by Congress and thus are still \"Indian Country\" for the purposes of criminal law.\nLater decisions by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals also found the Quapaw Nation, Ottawa Tribe, Peoria Tribe, and Miami Tribe also had existing reservations. The Osage Nation is awaiting for a possible appellate decision after a district judge had ruled that the Osage reservation was disestablished.\nGeography.\nOklahoma is the 20th-largest state in the United States, covering an area of , with of land and of water. It lies partly in the Great Plains near the geographical center of the 48 contiguous states. It is bordered on the east by Arkansas and Missouri, on the north by Kansas, on the northwest by Colorado, on the far west by New Mexico, and on the south and near-west by Texas.\nBorders.\nOklahoma's border with Kansas was defined as the 37th Parallel in the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act. This was disputed with the Cherokee and Osage Nations, which claimed their border extended North of this line and could not be part of the Kansas Territory. This was resolved in 1870 with the Drum Creek Treaty, which reestablished Kansas's southern border as the 37th parallel. This also applied to the then No-Man's Land that became the Oklahoma Panhandle.\nThe Oklahoma-Texas border consists of the Red River of the South in the south and the 100th meridian west as the western border between Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. These were first established in the 1819 Adams\u2013On\u00eds Treaty between the United States and Spain.\nThe Oklahoma panhandle was originally part of the Panhandle of the Republic of Texas, but when Texas joined the Union as a slave state, it could not retain any lands north of 36 degrees 30 minutes, as specified in the Missouri Compromise. The Panhandle existed as a no-man's land until 1907 when Oklahoma acquired the territory upon gaining statehood.\nOklahoma's Eastern border is divided between Missouri and Arkansas. The Missouri-Oklahoma border is defined as the Meridian passing through the Kawsmouth, where the Kansas River meets the Missouri River. This is the same Meridian as the Kansas-Missouri border.\nThe Oklahoma-Arkansas border was originally defined by two lines: the borders between Arkansas and the Cherokee and Choctaw Reservations. This formed two diagonal lines meeting at the western edge of Fort Smith Arkansas, with one line running northeast from the Red River and the other running southeast from the Oklahoma-Arkansas-Missouri border. The Choctaw-Arkansas border was established in the 1820 Treaty of Doak's Sand, and later refined in the 1830 Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. These treaties left a 57-acre exclave of the Choctaw reservation bounded by Arkansas, the Arkansas River and the Poteau River. This became the site of a smuggling camp called \"Coke Hill\", noted mostly for its importance in cocaine smuggling.\nAfter Petitioning congress to hand over jurisdiction, the 57 acres was given to Arkansas in 1905. The 1985 US Supreme Court Case Oklahoma v. Arkansas decided the land would remain Arkansas, even though the Choctaw had not been notified or asked about the territory being handed over. Therefore, the Poteau River serves as the Oklahoma-Arkansas boundary for approximately 1 mile, reducing the Choctaw Reservation and later Oklahoma by 57 acres as established in the treaties of the early 1800s.\nTopography.\nOklahoma is between the Great Plains and the Ozark Plateau in the Gulf of Mexico watershed, generally sloping from the high plains of its western boundary to the low wetlands of its southeastern boundary. Its highest and lowest points follow this trend, with its highest peak, Black Mesa, at above sea level, situated near its far northwest corner in the Oklahoma Panhandle. The state's lowest point is on the Little River near its far southeastern boundary near the town of Idabel, which dips to above sea level.\nAmong the most geographically diverse states, Oklahoma is one of four to harbor more than 10 distinct ecological regions, with 11 in its borders\u2014more per square mile than in any other state. Its western and eastern halves, however, are marked by extreme differences in geographical diversity: Eastern Oklahoma touches eight ecological regions and its western half contains three. Although having fewer ecological regions Western Oklahoma contains many rare, relic species.\nOklahoma has four primary mountain ranges: the Ouachita Mountains, the Arbuckle Mountains, the Wichita Mountains, and the Ozark Mountains. Contained within the U.S. Interior Highlands region, the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains are the only major mountainous region between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians. A portion of the Flint Hills stretches into north-central Oklahoma, and near the state's eastern border, The Oklahoma Tourism & Recreation Department regards Cavanal Hill as the world's tallest hill; at , it fails their definition of a mountain by one foot.\nThe semi-arid high plains in the state's northwestern corner harbor few natural forests; the region has a rolling to flat landscape with intermittent canyons and mesa ranges like the Glass Mountains. Partial plains interrupted by small, sky island mountain ranges like the Antelope Hills and the Wichita Mountains dot southwestern Oklahoma; transitional prairie and oak savannas cover the central portion of the state. The Ozark and Ouachita Mountains rise from west to east over the state's eastern third, gradually increasing in elevation in an eastward direction.\nMore than 500 named creeks and rivers make up Oklahoma's waterways, and with 200 lakes created by dams, it holds the nation's highest number of artificial reservoirs. Most of the state lies in two primary drainage basins belonging to the Red and Arkansas Rivers, though the Lee and Little Rivers also contain significant drainage basins.\nFlora and fauna.\nDue to Oklahoma's location at the confluence of many geographic regions, the state's climatic regions have a high rate of biodiversity. Forests cover 24 percent of Oklahoma and prairie grasslands composed of shortgrass, mixed-grass, and tallgrass prairie, harbor expansive ecosystems in the state's central and western portions, although cropland has largely replaced native grasses. Where rainfall is sparse in the state's western regions, shortgrass prairie and shrublands are the most prominent ecosystems, though pinyon pines, red cedar (junipers), and ponderosa pines grow near rivers and creek beds in the panhandle's far western reaches. Southwestern Oklahoma contains many rare, disjunct species, including sugar maple, bigtooth maple, nolina, and Texas live oak.\nMarshlands, cypress forests, and mixtures of shortleaf pine, loblolly pine, blue palmetto, and deciduous forests dominate the state's southeastern quarter, while mixtures of largely post oak, elm, red cedar (\"Juniperus virginiana\"), and pine forests cover northeastern Oklahoma.\nThe state holds populations of white-tailed deer, mule deer, antelope, coyotes, mountain lions, bobcats, elk, and birds such as quail, doves, cardinals, bald eagles, red-tailed hawks, and pheasants. In prairie ecosystems, American bison, greater prairie chickens, badgers, and armadillo are common, and some of the nation's largest prairie dog towns inhabit shortgrass prairie in the state's panhandle. The Cross Timbers, a region transitioning from prairie to woodlands in Central Oklahoma, harbors 351 vertebrate species. The Ouachita Mountains are home to black bear, red fox, gray fox, and river otter populations, which coexist with 328 vertebrate species in southeastern Oklahoma. Also in southeastern Oklahoma lives the American alligator.\nProtected lands.\nOklahoma has fifty-one state parks, six national parks or protected regions, two national protected forests or grasslands, and a network of wildlife preserves and conservation areas. Six percent of the state's of forest is public land, including the western portions of the Ouachita National Forest, the largest and oldest national forest in the Southern United States.\nWith , the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in north-central Oklahoma is the largest protected area of tallgrass prairie in the world and is part of an ecosystem that encompasses only ten percent of its former land area, once covering fourteen states. In addition, the Black Kettle National Grassland covers of prairie in southwestern Oklahoma. The Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge is the oldest and largest of nine National Wildlife Refuges in the state and was founded in 1901, encompassing .\nOf Oklahoma's federally protected parks or recreational sites, the Chickasaw National Recreation Area is the largest, with . Other sites include the Santa Fe and Trail of Tears national historic trails, the Fort Smith and Washita Battlefield national historic sites, and the Oklahoma City National Memorial.\nClimate.\nOklahoma is in a humid subtropical region that lies in a transition zone between semiarid further to the west, humid continental to the north, and humid subtropical to the east and southeast. Most of the state lies in an area known as Tornado Alley characterized by frequent interaction between cold, dry air from Canada, warm to hot, dry air from Mexico and the Southwestern U.S., and warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico. The interactions between these three contrasting air currents produces severe weather (severe thunderstorms, damaging thunderstorm winds, large hail and tornadoes) with a frequency virtually unseen anywhere else on planet Earth. An average 62 tornadoes strike the state per year\u2014one of the highest rates in the world.\nBecause of Oklahoma's position between zones of differing prevailing temperature and winds, weather patterns within the state can vary widely over relatively short distances, and they can change drastically in a short time. On November 11, 1911, the temperature at Oklahoma City reached (the record high for that date), then a cold front of unprecedented intensity slammed across the state, causing the temperature to reach (the record low for that date) by midnight. This type of phenomenon is also responsible for many of the tornadoes in the area, such as the 1912 Oklahoma tornado outbreak when a warm front traveled along a stalled cold front, resulting in an average of about one tornado per hour.\nThe humid subtropical climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Cfa\") of central, southern, and eastern Oklahoma is influenced heavily by southerly winds bringing moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. Traveling westward, the climate transitions progressively toward a semiarid zone (K\u00f6ppen \"BSk\") in the high plains of the Panhandle and other western areas from about Lawton westward, less frequently touched by southern moisture. Precipitation and temperatures decline from east to west accordingly, with areas in the southeast averaging an annual temperature of and an annual rainfall of generally over and up to , while areas of the (higher-elevation) panhandle average , with annual rainfall under .\nOver almost all of Oklahoma, winter is the driest season. Average monthly precipitation increases dramatically in the spring to a peak in May, the wettest month over most of the state, with its frequent and not uncommonly severe thunderstorm activity. Early June can still be wet, but most years see a marked decrease in rainfall during June and early July. Mid-summer (July and August) represents a secondary dry season over much of Oklahoma, with long stretches of hot weather with only sporadic thunderstorm activity not uncommon many years. Severe drought is common in the hottest summers, such as those of 1934, 1954, 1980 and 2011, all of which featured weeks on end of virtual rainlessness and highs well over . Average precipitation rises again from September to mid-October, representing a secondary wetter season, then declines from late October through December.\nThe entire state frequently experiences temperatures above or below , though below-zero temperatures are rare in south-central and southeastern Oklahoma. Snowfall ranges from an average of less than in the south to just over on the border of Colorado in the panhandle. The state is home to the Storm Prediction Center, the National Severe Storms Laboratory, the Warning Decision Training Division, and the Radar Operations Center, all part of the National Weather Service and in Norman.\nCities and towns.\nOklahoma had 598 incorporated places in 2010, including four cities over 100,000 in population and 43 over 10,000. Two of the fifty largest cities in the United States are in Oklahoma, Oklahoma City and Tulsa, and sixty-five percent of Oklahomans live within their metropolitan areas, or spheres of economic and social influence defined by the United States Census Bureau as a metropolitan statistical area. Oklahoma City, the state's capital and largest city, had the largest metropolitan area in the state in 2020, with 1,425,695 people, and the metropolitan area of Tulsa had 1,015,331 residents. Between 2000 and 2010, the leading cities in population growth were Blanchard (172.4%), Elgin (78.2%), Jenks (77.0%), Piedmont (56.7%), Bixby (56.6%), and Owasso (56.3%).\nIn descending order of population, Oklahoma's largest cities in 2010 were: Oklahoma City (579,999, +14.6%), Tulsa (391,906, \u22120.3%), Norman (110,925, +15.9%), Broken Arrow (98,850, +32.0%), Lawton (96,867, +4.4%), Edmond (81,405, +19.2%), Moore (55,081, +33.9%), Midwest City (54,371, +0.5%), Enid (49,379, +5.0%), and Stillwater (45,688, +17.0%). Of the state's ten largest cities, three are outside the metropolitan areas of Oklahoma City and Tulsa, and only Lawton has a metropolitan statistical area of its own as designated by the United States Census Bureau, though the metropolitan statistical area of Fort Smith, Arkansas extends into the state.\nUnder Oklahoma law, municipalities are divided into two categories: cities, defined as having more than 1,000 residents, and towns, with under 1,000 residents. Both have legislative, judicial, and public power within their boundaries, but cities can choose between a mayor\u2013council, council\u2013manager, or strong mayor form of government, while towns operate through an elected officer system.<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nFrom a 1920 U.S. census population of 2,028,283, Oklahoma's population has continued to increase. At the 2010 census, its population was 3,751,675. The 2020 census revealed its population to be was 3,959,353, an 5.5% increase since 2010. A 2022 American Community Survey estimate found that the population had surpassed 4 million residents for the first time. Among the states of the South Central region, Oklahoma had the second-largest population increase from 2010 to 2020, behind Texas.\nOf the state's total resident population, approximately 236,882 were immigrants according to a study in 2018, making up 6% of the state's population at the time. Most of its immigrant population came from Mexico (45%), Vietnam (5%), India (5%), Germany (3%), and Guatemala (3%). In the state, 246,550 residents were native-born Americans who had at least one immigrant parent. An estimated 85,000 immigrants were undocumented with 125,989 Oklahomans having lived with at least one undocumented family member between 2010 and 2014. Immigrants to Oklahoma have contributed more than a billion U.S. dollars in taxes in 2018. In 2011, the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey data from 2005 to 2009 indicated about 5% of Oklahoma's residents were born outside the United States. This was lower than the national figure (about 12.5% of U.S. residents were foreign-born).\nIn 2010, the center of population of Oklahoma was in Lincoln County near the town of Sparks.\nAccording to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 3,754 homeless people in Oklahoma.\nRace and ethnicity.\nAs with majority of the U.S., Oklahoma has experienced diversification since the beginning of the 21st century; in 1940, 90.1% of the state's population was non-Hispanic White; in 2020, 75.5% of the population was White, down from 1990's 81% yet up from 2010's 72.2%. Among its population at the 2020 census, the remainder of its increasingly diverse population was 11.9% Hispanic or Latino of any race, 16% American Indian and Alaska Native, 9.7% Black or African American, 3.1% Asian, 0.4% Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, and 9% some other race. According to the 2010 census, 8.6% were American Indian and Alaska Native, 7.4% Black or African American, 1.7% Asian, 0.1% Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, 4.1% from some other race and 5.9% of two or more races; 8.9% of Oklahoma's population were of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin (they may be of any race).\nIn 2005, Oklahoma's estimated ancestral makeup was 14.5% German, 13.1% American, 11.8% Irish, 9.6% English, 8.1% African American, and 11.4% Native American (including 7.9% Cherokee), though the percentage of people claiming American Indian as their only race was 8.1%. Most people from Oklahoma who self-identify as having American ancestry are of overwhelmingly English and Scots-Irish ancestry with significant amounts of Scottish, Welsh and Irish ancestry as well. The majority of Hispanics in Oklahoma are of Mexican origin. There are 38 federally recognized Native American tribes in the state.\nIn 2011, 47.3% of Oklahoma's population younger than age1 were minorities, meaning they had at least one parent who was not non-Hispanic white.\nLanguage.\nEnglish.\nThe English language has been official in the state of Oklahoma since 2010. The variety of North American English spoken is called Oklahoma English, which is \"quite diverse with its uneven blending of features of North Midland, South Midland, and Southern dialects\". In 2000, 2,977,187 Oklahomans\u201492.6% of the resident population, five years or older\u2014spoke only English at home, a decrease from 95% in 1990. 238,732 Oklahoma residents reported speaking a language other than English at home in the 2000 census, about 7.4% of the state's population.\nNative American languages.\nThe two most commonly spoken native North American languages are Cherokee and Choctaw, with 10,000 Cherokee speakers living within the Cherokee Nation tribal jurisdiction area of eastern Oklahoma and another 10,000 Choctaw speakers living in the Choctaw Nation directly south of the Cherokees. Cherokee is an official language in the Cherokee Nation tribal jurisdiction area and in the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians.\nTwenty-five Native American languages are spoken in Oklahoma, second only to California. However, only Cherokee, if any, exhibits some language vitality at present. \"Ethnologue\" sees Cherokee as moribund because the only remaining active users of the language are members of the grandparent generation and older.\nOther languages.\nSpanish is the second-most commonly spoken language in the state, with 141,060 speakers counted in 2000. German has 13,444 speakers representing about 0.4% of the state's population, and Vietnamese is spoken by 11,330 people, or about 0.4% of the population, many of whom live in the Asia District of Oklahoma City. Other languages include French with 8,258 speakers (0.3%), Chinese with 6,413 (0.2%), Korean with 3,948 (0.1%), Arabic with 3,265 (0.1%), other Asian languages with 3,134 (0.1%), Tagalog with 2,888 (0.1%), Japanese with 2,546 (0.1%), and African languages with 2,546 (0.1%).\nReligion.\nOklahoma is part of a geographical region characterized by conservative and Evangelical Protestant Christianity known as the \"Bible Belt\". Spanning the southern and eastern parts of the United States, the area is known for politically and socially conservative views, with the Republican Party having the greater number of voters registered between the two major parties. Tulsa, the state's second-largest city, home to Oral Roberts University, is sometimes called the \"buckle of the Bible Belt\".\nIn 2000, there were about 5,000 Jews and 6,000 Muslims, with ten congregations to each group.\nAccording to the Pew Research Center in 2008, the majority of Oklahoma's religious adherents were Christian, accounting for about 80% of the population. The percentage of Catholics was half the national average, while the percentage of Evangelical Protestants was more than twice the national average (tied with Arkansas for the largest percentage of any state).\nIn 2010, the state's largest church memberships were in the Southern Baptist Convention (886,394 members), the United Methodist Church (282,347), the Roman Catholic Church (178,430), and the Assemblies of God (85,926) and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) (47,349). Other religions represented in the state include Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam.\nAccording to the Pew Research Center in 2014, the majority of Oklahoma's religious adherents remained Christian accounting for 79% of the population, 9 percent higher than the national average. The percentage of Evangelical Protestants declined since the last study, but they remain the largest religious group in the state at 47% over 20 percent higher than the national average. The largest growth over the six years between Pew's 2008 and 2014 survey was in the number of people who identify as unaffiliated in the state with an increase of 6% of the total population.\nBy the 2020 Public Religion Research Institute's survey, 73% of the population were Christian. Evangelicalism made up 29% of the state population, followed by Mainline Protestantism at 19%. Historically and predominantly African-American and Latino churches collectively made up 8% of the religious demographic. An estimated 13% of the state's religious population were Roman Catholic. About 22% of the population had no religious affiliation.\nIncarceration.\nOklahoma has been described as \"the world's prison capital\", with 1,079 of every 100,000 residents imprisoned in 2018, the fourth-highest incarceration rate of any American state, and by comparison, higher than the incarceration rates of any country in the world.\nGender issues.\nIn an April 2023 report, The Sentencing Project highlighted Oklahoma's Failure to Protect law, which has \"been used primarily against women\" and has \"sometimes resulted in survivors of abuse facing longer sentences for allegedly failing to protect their children from harm than the person who committed the abuse.\" The report states that \"since the law went into effect in 2009, 139 women in Oklahoma have been imprisoned solely for failure-to-protect charges.\" The Human Rights Campaign has also pointed out cases of the Oklahoma legislature's actions against the LGBTQ population and censuring of a nonbinary lawmaker.\nEconomy.\nOklahoma is host to a diverse range of sectors including aviation, energy, transportation equipment, food processing, electronics, and telecommunications. Oklahoma is an important producer of natural gas, aircraft, and food. The state ranks third in the nation for production of natural gas, is the 27th-most agriculturally productive state, and also ranks 5th in production of wheat. Four Fortune 500 companies and six Fortune 1000 companies are headquartered in Oklahoma, and it has been rated one of the most business-friendly states in the nation, with the 7th-lowest tax burden in 2007.\nIn 2010, Oklahoma City-based Love's Travel Stops & Country Stores ranked 18th on the Forbes list of largest private companies, Tulsa-based QuikTrip ranked 37th, and Oklahoma City-based Hobby Lobby ranked 198th in 2010 report.\nOklahoma's gross domestic product was $254.13 billion in 2023. The state had a per capita income of $58,499 in 2023, which ranked 43rd in the U.S., and its median household income ranked 46th at $59,673. Additionally, Oklahoma ranks consistently among the lowest states in cost of living index.\nThough oil has historically dominated the state's economy, a collapse in the energy industry during the 1980s led to the loss of nearly 90,000 energy-related jobs between 1980 and 2000, severely damaging the local economy. Oil accounted for 35 billion dollars in Oklahoma's economy in 2007, and employment in the state's oil industry was outpaced by five other industries in 2007. As of September 2020[ [update]], the state's unemployment rate was 5.3%.\nIndustry.\nIn mid-2011, Oklahoma had a civilian labor force of 1.7 million and non-farm employment fluctuated around 1.5 million. The government sector provides the most jobs, with 339,300 in 2011, followed by the transportation and utilities sector, providing 279,500 jobs, and the sectors of education, business, and manufacturing, providing 207,800, 177,400, and 132,700 jobs, respectively. Among the state's largest industries, the aerospace sector generates $11 billion annually.\nTulsa is home to the largest airline maintenance base in the world, which serves as the global maintenance and engineering headquarters for American Airlines. In total, aerospace accounts for more than 10 percent of Oklahoma's industrial output, and it is one of the top 10 states in aerospace engine manufacturing. Because of its position in the center of the United States, Oklahoma is also among the top states for logistic centers, and a major contributor to weather-related research.\nThe state is the top manufacturer of tires in North America and contains one of the fastest-growing biotechnology industries in the nation. In 2005, international exports from Oklahoma's manufacturing industry totaled $4.3 billion, accounting for 3.6 percent of its economic impact. Tire manufacturing, meat processing, oil and gas equipment manufacturing, and air conditioner manufacturing are the state's largest manufacturing industries.\nEnergy.\nOklahoma is the nation's third-largest producer of natural gas, and its fifth-largest producer of crude oil. The state also has the second-greatest number of active drilling rigs, and it is even ranked fifth in crude oil reserves. While the state was ranked eighth for installed wind energy capacity in 2011, it still was at the bottom of states in usage of renewable energy in 2009, with 94% of its electricity being generated by non-renewable sources in 2009, including 25% from coal and 46% from natural gas.\nTen years later in 2019, 53.5% of electricity was produced from natural gas and 34.6% from wind power.\nRanking 13th for total energy consumption per capita in 2009, the state's energy costs were eighth-lowest in the nation.\nOil, gas, and coal.\nAs a whole, the oil energy industry contributes $35 billion to Oklahoma's gross domestic product (GDP), and employees of the state's oil-related companies earn an average of twice the state's typical yearly income. In 2009, the state had 83,700 commercial oil wells churning of crude oil. A tabulated 8.5% of the nation's natural gas supply is held in Oklahoma, with being produced in 2009.\nThe Oklahoma Stack Play is a geographic referenced area in the Anadarko Basin. The oil field \"Sooner Trend\", Anadarko basin and the counties of Kingfisher and Canadian make up the basis for the \"Oklahoma STACK\". Other Plays such as the Eagle Ford are geological rather than geographical.\nAll of the Fortune 500 companies based in Oklahoma are energy-related, including some of the largest companies in the petroleum industry in the U.S. Tulsa's ONEOK and Williams Companies are the state's largest and second-largest companies respectively, also ranking as the nation's second- and third-largest companies in the field of energy, according to \"Fortune\" magazine.\nOklahoma Gas & Electric, commonly referred to as OG&E (NYSE: OGE) operates four base electric power plants in Oklahoma. Two of them are coal-fired power plants: one in Muskogee, and the other in Red Rock. Two are gas-fired power plants: one in Harrah and the other in Konawa. OG&E was the first electric company in Oklahoma to generate electricity from wind farms in 2003.\nNuclear power.\nOklahoma had no operational nuclear power plants as of March 2021.\nIn 1973, the Public Service Company of Oklahoma proposed the Black Fox Nuclear Power Plant near Inola, Oklahoma. Protestors disrupted project construction in 1979, several months after the Three Mile Island accident, and the project was cancelled in 1982 after nine years of legal challenges.\nAgriculture.\nThe 27th-most agriculturally productive state, Oklahoma is fifth in cattle production and fifth in production of wheat. Approximately 5.5 percent of American beef comes from Oklahoma, while the state produces 6.1 percent of American wheat, 4.2 percent of American pig products, and 2.2 percent of dairy products.\nThe state had 85,500 farms in 2012, collectively producing $4.3 billion in animal products and fewer than one billion dollars in crop output with more than $6.1 billion added to the state's gross domestic product. Poultry and swine are its second- and third-largest agricultural industries.\nEducation.\nWith an educational system made up of public school districts and independent private institutions, Oklahoma had 638,817 students enrolled in 1,845 public primary, secondary, and vocational schools in 533 school districts as of 2008[ [update]]. Oklahoma has the highest enrollment of Native American students in the nation with 126,078 students in the 2009\u201310 school year. Oklahoma spent $7,755 for each student in 2008, and was 47th in the nation in expenditures per student, though its growth of total education expenditures between 1992 and 2002 ranked 22nd.\nThe state is among the best in pre-kindergarten education, and the National Institute for Early Education Research rated it first in the United States with regard to standards, quality, and access to pre-kindergarten education in 2004, calling it \"a model for early childhood schooling\". High school dropout rate decreased from 3.1 to 2.5 percent between 2007 and 2008 with Oklahoma ranked among 18 other states with 3 percent or less dropout rate. In 2004, the state ranked 36th in the nation for the relative number of adults with high school diplomas, though at 85.2 percent, it had the highest rate among Southern states. According to a study conducted by the Pell Institute, Oklahoma ranks 48th in college-participation for low-income students.\nThe University of Oklahoma, The University of Tulsa, Oklahoma State University, the University of Central Oklahoma, and Northeastern State University are the largest institutions of higher education in Oklahoma, each operating through one primary campus and satellite campuses throughout the state. The two state universities, along with Oklahoma City University and the University of Tulsa, rank among the country's best universities.\nOklahoma City University School of Law, University of Oklahoma College of Law, and University of Tulsa College of Law are the state's only ABA-accredited institutions. Both University of Oklahoma and University of Tulsa are Tier2 institutions, with the University of Oklahoma ranked 55th and the University of Tulsa ranked 120th in the nation.\nOklahoma holds eleven public regional universities, including Northeastern State University, the second-oldest institution of higher education west of the Mississippi River, also containing the only College of Optometry in Oklahoma and the largest enrollment of Native American students in the nation by percentage and amount. Langston University is Oklahoma's only historically black college. Six of the state's universities were placed in the Princeton Review's list of best 122 regional colleges in 2007, and three made the list of top colleges for best value. The state has 55 post-secondary technical institutions operated by Oklahoma's CareerTech program for training in specific fields of industry or trade.\nIn the 2007\u20132008 school year, there were 181,973 undergraduate students, 20,014 graduate students, and 4,395 first-professional degree students enrolled in Oklahoma colleges. Of these students, 18,892 received a bachelor's degree, 5,386 received a master's degree, and 462 received a first professional degree. This means the state of Oklahoma produces an average of 38,278-degree-holders per completions component (i.e. July 1, 2007\u00a0\u2013 June 30, 2008). National average is 68,322 total degrees awarded per completions component.\nBeginning on April 2, 2018, tens of thousands of K\u201312 public school teachers went on strike due to lack of funding. According to the National Education Association, teachers in Oklahoma had ranked 49th out of the 50 states in terms of teacher pay in 2016. The Oklahoma Legislature had passed a measure a week earlier to raise teacher salaries by $6,100, but it fell short of the $10,000 raise for teachers, $5,000 raise for other school employees, and $200 million increase in extra education funding many had sought. A survey in 2019 found that the pay raise obtained by the strike lifted the State's teacher pay ranking to 34th in the nation.\nNon-English education.\nThe Cherokee Nation instigated a ten-year plan in 2005 that involved growing new speakers of the Cherokee language from childhood as well as speaking it exclusively at home. The plan was part of an ambitious goal that in fifty years would have at least 80% of their people fluent. The Cherokee Preservation Foundation has invested $3 million into opening schools, training teachers, and developing curricula for language education, as well as initiating community gatherings where the language can be actively used.\nA Cherokee language immersion school in Tahlequah, Oklahoma educates students from pre-school through eighth grade.\nCulture.\nOklahoma is placed in the South by the United States Census Bureau, but other definitions place the state at least partly in the Southwest, Midwest, Upland South, and Great Plains. Oklahomans have a high rate of English, Scotch-Irish, German, and Native American ancestry, with 25 different Indigenous languages spoken in the state.\nBecause many American Indians were forced to move to Indian territory (modern day Oklahoma) when American settlement within North America had increased, Oklahoma has much linguistic diversity. Mary Linn, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma and the associate curator of Native American languages at the Sam Noble Museum, notes Oklahoma also has high levels of language endangerment.\nSixty-seven Native American tribes and bands are represented in Oklahoma, including 38 federally recognized tribes, who are headquartered and have tribal jurisdictional areas or Indian reservations in the state. Native American tribes, Western ranchers, Southern settlers, and Eastern oil barons have shaped the state's cultural predisposition, and its largest cities have been named among the most underrated cultural destinations in the United States.\nResidents of Oklahoma are associated with traits of Southern hospitality\u2014the 2006 Catalogue for Philanthropy (with data from 2004) ranks Oklahomans 7th in the nation for overall generosity. The state has also been associated with a negative cultural stereotype first popularized by John Steinbeck's 1939 novel \"The Grapes of Wrath\", which described the plight of uneducated, poverty-stricken Dust Bowl-era farmers deemed \"Okies\". While the term is often used in a positive manner by Oklahomans, it is still considered a derogatory term by many.\nArts.\nIn the state's largest urban areas, pockets of jazz culture flourish, and African American, Mexican American, and Asian American communities produce music and art of their respective cultures. The Oklahoma Mozart Festival in Bartlesville is one of the largest classical music festivals on the Southern Plains, and Oklahoma City's Festival of the Arts has been named one of the top fine arts festivals in the nation.\nThe state has a rich history in ballet with five Native American ballerinas attaining worldwide fame. These were Yvonne Chouteau, sisters Marjorie and Maria Tallchief, Rosella Hightower and Moscelyne Larkin, known collectively as the Five Moons. \"The New York Times\" rates the Tulsa Ballet as one of the top ballet companies in the United States. The Oklahoma City Ballet and University of Oklahoma's dance program were formed by ballerina Yvonne Chouteau and husband Miguel Terekhov. The university program was founded in 1962 and was the first fully accredited program of its kind in the United States.\nIn Sand Springs, an outdoor amphitheater called \"Discoveryland!\" (since closed) is the official performance headquarters for the musical \"Oklahoma!\" Ridge Bond, native of McAlester, Oklahoma, starred in the Broadway and International touring productions of \"Oklahoma!\", playing the role of \"Curly McClain\" in more than 2,600 performances. In 1953 he was featured along with the \"Oklahoma!\" cast on a CBS Omnibus television broadcast. Bond was instrumental in the Oklahoma! title song becoming the Oklahoma state song and is also featured on the U.S. postage stamp commemorating the musical's 50th anniversary. Historically, the state has produced musical styles such as The Tulsa Sound and western swing, which was popularized at Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa. The building, known as the \"Carnegie Hall of Western Swing\", served as the performance headquarters of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys during the 1930s. Stillwater is known as the epicenter of Red Dirt music, the best-known proponent of which is the late Bob Childers.\nProminent theatre companies in Oklahoma include, in the capital city, Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City Theatre Company, Carpenter Square Theatre, Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park, and CityRep. CityRep is a professional company affording equity points to those performers and technical theatre professionals. In Tulsa, Oklahoma's oldest resident professional company is American Theatre Company, and Theatre Tulsa is the oldest community theatre company west of the Mississippi. Other companies in Tulsa include Heller Theatre and Tulsa Spotlight Theater. The cities of Norman, Lawton, and Stillwater, among others, also host well-reviewed community theatre companies.\nOklahoma is in the nation's middle percentile in per capita spending on the arts, ranking 17th, and contains more than 300 museums. The Philbrook Museum of Tulsa is considered one of the top 50 fine art museums in the United States, and the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in Norman, one of the largest university-based art and history museums in the country, documents the natural history of the region. The collections of Thomas Gilcrease are housed in the Gilcrease Museum of Tulsa, which also holds the world's largest, most comprehensive collection of art and artifacts of the American West.\nThe Egyptian art collection at the Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art in Shawnee is considered to be the finest Egyptian collection between Chicago and Los Angeles. The Oklahoma City Museum of Art contains the most comprehensive collection of glass sculptures by artist Dale Chihuly in the world, and Oklahoma City's National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum documents the heritage of the American Western frontier. With remnants of the Holocaust and artifacts relevant to Judaism, the Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art of Tulsa preserves the largest collection of Jewish art in the Southwest United States.\nFestivals and events.\nOklahoma's centennial celebration was named the top event in the United States for 2007 by the American Bus Association, and consisted of multiple celebrations saving with the 100th anniversary of statehood on November 16, 2007. Annual ethnic festivals and events take place throughout the state such as ceremonial events, include festivals (as examples) in Scottish, Irish, German, Italian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Czech, Jewish, Arab, Mexican and African-American communities depicting cultural heritage or traditions.\nOklahoma City is home to a few reoccurring events and festivals. During a ten-day run in Oklahoma City, the State Fair of Oklahoma attracts roughly one million people along with the annual Festival of the Arts. Such as various Latin American and Asian heritage festivals, and cultural festivals such as the Juneteenth celebrations are held in Oklahoma City each year. The Oklahoma City Pride Parade has been held annually in late June since 1987 in the gay district of Oklahoma City on 39th and Penn. The First Friday Art Walk in the Paseo Arts District is an art appreciation festival held the first Friday of every month. Additionally, an annual art festival is held in the Paseo on Memorial Day Weekend.\nThe Tulsa State Fair attracts more than a million people each year during its ten-day run, and the city's Mayfest festival entertained more than 375,000 in four days during 2007. In 2006, Tulsa's Oktoberfest was named one of the top 10 in the world by \"USA Today\".\nNorman plays host to the Norman Music Festival, a festival that highlights native Oklahoma bands and musicians. Norman is also host to the Medieval Fair of Norman, which has been held annually since 1976 and was Oklahoma's first medieval fair. The Fair was held first on the south oval of the University of Oklahoma campus and in the third year moved to the Duck Pond in Norman until the Fair became too big and moved to Reaves Park in 2003. The Medieval Fair of Norman is Oklahoma's \"largest weekend event and the third-largest event in Oklahoma, and was selected by Events Media Network as one of the top 100 events in the nation\".\nSports.\nThe Oklahoma City Thunder of the National Basketball Association (NBA) is the state's only major league sports franchise. The state had a team in the Women's National Basketball Association, the Tulsa Shock, from 2010 through 2015, but the team relocated to Dallas\u2013Fort Worth after that season and became the Dallas Wings.\nOklahoma has teams in several minor leagues, including Minor League Baseball at the Triple-A and Double-A levels (the Oklahoma City Comets and Tulsa Drillers, respectively), hockey's ECHL with the Tulsa Oilers, and a number of indoor football leagues. In the last-named sport, the state's most notable team was the Tulsa Talons, which played in the Arena Football League until 2012, when the team was moved to San Antonio, Texas. The Oklahoma Defenders replaced the Talons as Tulsa's only professional arena football team, playing the CPIFL. The Oklahoma City Blue, of the NBA G League, relocated to Oklahoma City from Tulsa in 2014, where they were formerly known as the Tulsa 66ers. Tulsa is the base for the Tulsa Revolution, which plays in the American Indoor Soccer League. Enid and Lawton host professional basketball teams in the USBL and the CBA.\nCollegiate athletics are a popular draw in the state. The state has four schools that compete at the highest level of college sports, NCAA Division I. The Oklahoma Sooners participate in the Southeastern Conference, and the Oklahoma State Cowboys and Cowgirls participate in the Big 12 Conference. The Big 12 and SEC are two of the so-called Power Four conferences of the top tier of college football, Division I FBS. The Sooners and Cowboys average well over 50,000 fans attending their football games, and Oklahoma's football program ranked 12th in attendance among American colleges in 2010, with an average of 84,738 people attending its home games. The two universities meet several times each year in rivalry matches known as the Bedlam Series, which are some of the greatest sporting draws to the state. \"Sports Illustrated\" magazine rates Oklahoma and Oklahoma State among the top colleges for athletics in the nation.\nTwo private institutions in Tulsa, the University of Tulsa and Oral Roberts University; are also Division I members. Tulsa competes in FBS football and other sports in the American Athletic Conference, while Oral Roberts, which does not sponsor football, is a member of the Summit League. In addition, 12 of the state's smaller colleges and universities compete in NCAA Division II as members of three different conferences, and eight other Oklahoma institutions participate in the NAIA, mostly within the Sooner Athletic Conference.\nRegular LPGA tournaments are held at Cedar Ridge Country Club in Tulsa, and major championships for the PGA or LPGA have been played at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oak Tree Country Club in Oklahoma City, and Cedar Ridge Country Club in Tulsa. Rated one of the top golf courses in the nation, Southern Hills has hosted five PGA Championships, including one in 2022, and three U.S. Opens, the most recent in 2001. Rodeos are popular throughout the state, and Guymon, in the state's panhandle, hosts one of the largest in the nation.\nESPN called Oklahoma City \"the center of the softball universe\", specifically referring to the fast-pitch version, in a 2020 story. Oklahoma City is home to the governing body of the sport in the United States, USA Softball, which has its headquarters in a complex that also includes Devon Park. It annually hosts the Women's College World Series, the eight-team final round of the NCAA Division I softball tournament. Devon Park will host softball at the 2028 Summer Olympics, and the Riversport OKC complex will host canoe slalom at the Games.\nCollege wrestling has strong tradition in Oklahoma. Oklahoma State has the most NCAA national championships of any collegiate team with 34, with the Oklahoma Sooners having 7 NCAA wrestling titles. The National Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum is headquartered in Stillwater.\nA teqball competition was held in Tulsa June 14\u201316, 2024.\nHealth.\nOklahoma was the 21st-largest recipient of medical funding from the federal government in 2005, with health-related federal expenditures in the state totaling $75,801,364; immunizations, bioterrorism preparedness, and health education were the top three most funded medical items. Instances of major diseases are near the national average in Oklahoma, and the state ranks at or slightly above the rest of the country in percentage of people with asthma, diabetes, cancer, and hypertension.\nIn 2000, Oklahoma ranked 45th in physicians per capita and slightly below the national average in nurses per capita, but was slightly above the national average in hospital beds per 100,000 people and above the national average in net growth of health services over a twelve-year period. One of the worst states for percentage of insured people, nearly 25 percent of Oklahomans between the age of 18 and 64 did not have health insurance in 2005, the fifth-highest rate in the nation.\nOklahomans are in the upper half of Americans in terms of obesity prevalence, and the state is the 5th most obese in the nation, with 30.3 percent of its population at or near obesity. Oklahoma ranked last among the 50 states in a 2007 study by the Commonwealth Fund on health care performance.\nThe OU Medical Center, Oklahoma's largest collection of hospitals, is the only hospital in the state designated a LevelI trauma center by the American College of Surgeons. OU Medical Center is on the grounds of the Oklahoma Health Center in Oklahoma City, the state's largest concentration of medical research facilities.\nThe Cancer Treatment Centers of America at Southwestern Regional Medical Center in Tulsa is one of four such regional facilities nationwide, offering cancer treatment to the entire southwestern United States, and is one of the largest cancer treatment hospitals in the country. The largest osteopathic teaching facility in the nation, Oklahoma State University Medical Center at Tulsa, also rates as one of the largest facilities in the field of neuroscience.\nOn June 26, 2018, Oklahoma made marijuana legal for medical purposes, making it one of the most conservative states to approve medical marijuana.\nLife expectancy.\nThe residents of Oklahoma have a lower life expectancy than the U.S. national average. In 2014, males in Oklahoma lived an average of 73.7 years compared to a male national average of 76.7 years and females lived an average of 78.5 years compared to a female national average of 81.5 years. Moreover, increases in life expectancy have been below the national average. Male life expectancy in Oklahoma between 1980 and 2014, increased by an average of 4.0 years, compared to a male national average of a 6.7 year increase. Life expectancy for females in Oklahoma between 1980 and 2014, increased by 1.0 years, compared to a female national average of a 4.0 year increase.\nUsing 2016\u20132018 data, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation calculated that life expectancy (all sexes) for Oklahoma counties ranged from 71.2 years for Okfuskee County to 79.7 years for Cimarron and Logan counties. Life expectancy for the state as a whole was 76.0 years.\nImpact of Covid.\nAs of December 22, 2022, Oklahoma has been impacted more by the Covid pandemic (2020\u20132023) than the average U.S. state. Statistics for the U.S. as a whole are 331 deaths per 100,000 population with 68 percent of the population fully vaccinated. The comparable statistics for Oklahoma are 405 deaths per 100,000 population with 59 percent of the population fully vaccinated; 16,041 deaths from Covid have been recorded in Oklahoma. A wide variation in deaths from Covid exists among Oklahoma counties. Greer County recorded the highest death rate of .00753 (753 deaths per 100,000 residents). Payne County recorded the lowest death rate of .00231 (231 deaths per 100,000 residents).\nMedia.\nOklahoma City and Tulsa are the 45th- and 61st-largest media markets in the United States as ranked by Nielsen Media Research. The state's third-largest media market, Lawton-Wichita Falls, Texas, is ranked 149th nationally by the agency. Broadcast television in Oklahoma began in 1949 when KFOR-TV (then WKY-TV) in Oklahoma City and KOTV-TV in Tulsa began broadcasting a few months apart. Currently, all major American broadcast networks have affiliated television stations in the state.\nThe state has two primary newspapers. \"The Oklahoman\", based in Oklahoma City, is the largest newspaper in the state and 54th-largest in the nation by circulation, with a weekday readership of 138,493 and a Sunday readership of 202,690. The \"Tulsa World\", the second-most widely circulated newspaper in Oklahoma and 79th in the nation, holds a Sunday circulation of 132,969 and a weekday readership of 93,558. Oklahoma's first newspaper was established in 1844, called the \"Cherokee Advocate\", and was written in both Cherokee and English. In 2006, there were more than 220 newspapers in the state, including 177 with weekly publications and 48 with daily publications.\nThe state's first radio station, WKY in Oklahoma City, began broadcasting in 1920. In 2006, there were more than 500 radio stations in Oklahoma broadcasting with various local or nationally owned networks. Five universities in Oklahoma operate non-commercial, public radio stations/networks.\nOklahoma has a few ethnic-oriented TV stations broadcasting in Spanish and Asian languages, and there is some Native American programming. TBN, a Christian religious television network, has a studio in Tulsa, and built its first entirely TBN-owned affiliate in Oklahoma City in 1980.\nTransportation.\nTransportation in Oklahoma is generated by an anchor system of Interstate Highways, inter-city rail lines, airports, inland ports, and mass transit networks. Situated along an integral point in the United States Interstate network, Oklahoma contains three primary Interstate highways and four auxiliary Interstate Highways. In Oklahoma City, Interstate 35 intersects with Interstate 44 and Interstate 40, forming one of the most important intersections along the United States highway system.\nMore than of roads make up the state's major highway skeleton, including state-operated highways, ten turnpikes or major toll roads, and the longest drivable stretch of Route 66 in the nation. In 2008, Interstate 44 in Oklahoma City was Oklahoma's busiest highway, with a daily traffic volume of 123,300 cars. In 2010, the state had the nation's third-highest number of bridges classified as structurally deficient, with nearly 5,212 bridges in disrepair, including 235 National Highway System Bridges.\nOklahoma's largest commercial airport is Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City, averaging a yearly passenger count of more than 3.5 million (1.7 million boardings) in 2010. Tulsa International Airport, the state's second-largest commercial airport, served more than 1.3 million boardings in 2010. Between the two, six airlines operate in Oklahoma. In terms of traffic, R. L. Jones Jr. (Riverside) Airport in Tulsa is the state's busiest airport, with 335,826 takeoffs and landings in 2008. Oklahoma has more than 150 public-use airports.\nOklahoma is connected to the nation's rail network via Amtrak's \"Heartland Flyer\", its only regional passenger rail line. It currently stretches from Oklahoma City to Fort Worth, Texas. Lawmakers began seeking funding in early 2007 to connect the \"Heartland Flyer\" to Tulsa, but nothing came of this. In June 2023, following studies and negotiations, Oklahoma and Kansas state officials began seeking federal approval and funding to extend the \"Heartland Flyer\" from Oklahoma City to Newton, Kansas. The two locations are currently connected by an Amtrak Thruway Bus route that includes a stop in Wichita, Kansas. In November 2023, KDOT said the service would start in 2029 if approved, but could begin sooner were the project to be fast tracked.\nTwo inland ports on rivers serve Oklahoma: the Port of Muskogee and the Tulsa Port of Catoosa. The Tulsa Port of Catoosa is one of the United States' most inland international ports, at head of navigation of the McClellan\u2013Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, which connects barge traffic from Tulsa and Muskogee to the Mississippi River. The port ships over two million tons of goods annually and is a designated foreign trade zone.\nLaw and government.\nOklahoma is a constitutional republic with a government modeled after the federal government of the United States, with executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The state has 77 counties with jurisdiction over most local government functions within each respective domain, five congressional districts, and a voting base with a majority in the Republican Party. State officials are elected by plurality voting in the state of Oklahoma.\nOklahoma has capital punishment as a legal sentence, and the state has had (between 1976 through mid-2011) the highest per capita execution rate in the nation. Authorized methods of execution include the electric chair, the gas chamber and the firing squad.\nIn a 2020 study, Oklahoma was ranked as the 14th most difficult state for citizens to vote in. In May 2020, it became the first state to enact an anti-red flag law, prohibiting the acceptance of any grants or funding to enact red flag laws. Abortion in Oklahoma is illegal in nearly all circumstances.\nState government.\nThe Legislature of Oklahoma consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives. As the lawmaking branch of the state government, it is responsible for raising and distributing the money necessary to run the government. The Senate has 48 members serving four-year terms, while the House has 101 members with two-year terms. The state has a term limit for its legislature that restricts any one person to twelve cumulative years service between both legislative branches.\nOklahoma's judicial branch consists of the Oklahoma Supreme Court, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, and 77 District Courts that each serve one county. The Oklahoma judiciary also contains two independent courts: a Court of Impeachment (for impeachment trials) and the Oklahoma Court on the Judiciary. Oklahoma has two courts of last resort: the state Supreme Court hears civil cases, and the state Court of Criminal Appeals hears criminal cases (this split system exists only in Oklahoma and neighboring Texas). Judges of those two courts, as well as the Court of Civil Appeals are appointed by the governor upon the recommendation of the state Judicial Nominating Commission, and are subject to a non-partisan retention vote on a six-year rotating schedule.\nThe executive branch consists of the governor, their staff, and other elected officials. The principal head of government, the governor is the chief executive of the Oklahoma executive branch, serving as the ex officio Commander-in-chief of the Oklahoma National Guard when not called into Federal use and reserving the power to veto bills passed through the legislature. The responsibilities of the Executive branch include submitting the budget, ensuring state laws are enforced, and ensuring peace within the state is preserved.\nLocal government.\nThe state is divided into 77 counties that govern locally, each headed by a three-member council of elected commissioners, a tax assessor, clerk, court clerk, treasurer, and sheriff. While each municipality operates as a separate and independent local government with executive, legislative and judicial power, county governments maintain jurisdiction over both incorporated cities and non-incorporated areas within their boundaries, and have executive power but no legislative or judicial power. Both county and municipal governments collect taxes, employ a separate police force, hold elections, and operate emergency response services within their jurisdiction. Other local government units include school districts, technology center districts, community college districts, rural fire departments, rural water districts, and other special use districts.\nThirty-nine Native American tribal governments are based in Oklahoma, each holding limited powers within designated areas. While Indian reservations are typical in most of the United States, they are not present in Oklahoma, tribal governments hold land granted during the Indian Territory era, but with limited jurisdiction and no control over state governing bodies such as municipalities and counties. Tribal governments are recognized by the United States as quasi-sovereign entities with executive, judicial, and legislative powers over tribal members and functions, but are subject to the authority of the United States Congress to revoke or withhold certain powers. The tribal governments are required to submit a constitution and any subsequent amendments to the United States Congress for approval.\nOklahoma has 11 substate districts including the two large Councils of Governments, INCOG in Tulsa (Indian Nations Council of Governments) and ACOG (Association of Central Oklahoma Governments).\nNational politics.\nDuring the first half-century of statehood, Oklahoma was considered a Democratic stronghold, being carried by the Republican Party in only two presidential elections (1920 and 1928). After the 1948 election, the state turned firmly Republican. Although registered Republicans were a minority in the state until 2015, Oklahoma has been carried by Republican presidential candidates in all but one election since 1952: Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 landslide victory. Every single county in the state has been won by the Republican candidate in each election since 2004. In fact, it was the only state where Barack Obama failed to carry any counties in 2008. Oklahoma City was the largest city in the United States carried by Republican Donald Trump in both the 2016 and 2020 elections.\nDemocrats are strongest in urban areas, such as the inner parts of Oklahoma City and Tulsa, as well as the college towns of Norman and Stillwater, and areas which are most heavily African American. The party once held dominance in the eastern part of the state and Little Dixie before the area gradually shifted Republican in the late 2000s. As of the 2020 election, Native American voters, 16% of the state's population, are split, with urban populations supporting the Democrats and rural reservation populaces favoring the Republicans.\nFollowing the 2000 census, the Oklahoma delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives was reduced from six to five representatives, each serving one congressional district. Oklahoma has had an all-Republican congressional delegation since 2021 and previously from 2013 to 2019.\nState symbols.\nState law codifies Oklahoma's state emblems and honorary positions; the Oklahoma Senate or House of Representatives may adopt resolutions designating others for special events and to benefit organizations. In 2012 the House passed HCR 1024, which would change the state motto from \"Labor Omnia Vincit\" to \"Oklahoma\u2014In God We Trust!\" The author of the resolution stated a constituent researched the Oklahoma Constitution and found no \"official\" vote regarding \"Labor Omnia Vincit\", therefore opening the door for an entirely new motto.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["57848", "22489"], "permutation_1": ["57848", "22489"], "permutation_2": ["57848", "22489"], "permutation_3": ["22489", "57848"]}
{"id": "2hop__257989_136211", "docs_added": {"27208": "Saint Lucia\nCountry in the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean Sea\nSaint Lucia is an island country of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean. Part of the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, it is located north/northeast of the island of Saint Vincent, northwest of Barbados and south of Martinique. It covers a land area of with an estimated population of over 180,000 people as of 2018. The nation's capital and largest city is Castries.\nThe first proven inhabitants of the island, the Arawaks, are believed to have been the first to settle on the island in 200\u2013400 AD. In 800 AD, the island was taken over by the Kalinago. The French were the first European colonists to settle on the island, and they signed a treaty with the native Caribs in 1660. The English took control of the island in 1663. In ensuing years, England and France fought 14 times for control of the island; consequently control over this immensely valuable geopolitical position changed frequently. Eventually, the British took complete control in 1814, shortly after the victory over French Emperor Napoleon I. Because the island switched so often between British and French control, Saint Lucia was also known as the \"Helen of the West\" after the Greek mythological character, Helen of Troy.\nRepresentative government was introduced in 1924 with universal suffrage being established in 1951. From 1958 to 1962, the island was a member of the West Indies Federation. On 22 February 1979, Saint Lucia became an independent state, while remaining as a Commonwealth realm.\nSaint Lucia is a member of the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the World Trade Organization, CARICOM and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). It is also a member of .\nEtymology.\nSaint Lucia is named after Saint Lucy of Syracuse (AD 283 \u2013 304). Saint Lucia is one of two sovereign states in the world named after a female and is the only one named after a woman (Ireland is named after a goddess). Legend states that French sailors were shipwrecked on the island on 13 December, the feast day of St. Lucy, and therefore named the island in her honour. \nA globe in the Vatican from 1520 shows the island as Sancta Lucia, indicating that the island was instead named by early Spanish explorers. Saint Lucia was first known as \"Louanalao\" by the Arawak Indians in 200 AD, meaning \"Island of the Iguanas,\" and then as \"Hewanorra\", in 800 AD, meaning \"there where iguanas are found,\" when the Carib Indians arrived and assimilated their culture into Saint Lucia.\nHistory.\nPre-Columbian.\nThe first proven inhabitants of Saint Lucia were the Arawaks, though there may have been other native peoples prior to them. The Arawaks are believed to have come from northern South America, sometime around AD 200\u2013400, as there are numerous archaeological sites on the island where specimens of their pottery have been found.\nThe Kalinago (Island Caribs) arrived around AD 800, and seized control from the Arawaks by killing their men and assimilating the women into their own society. \nEarly European exploration and colonization.\nIt is possible that Christopher Columbus may have sighted the island during his fourth voyage in 1502, but he does not mention the island in his log. Juan de la Cosa noted the island on his map of 1500, calling it \"El Falcon\", and another island to the south \"Las Agujas\". A Spanish c\u00e9dula from 1511 mentions the island within the Spanish domain, and a globe in the Vatican made in 1520, shows the island as Sancta Lucia.\nIn the late 1550s, the French pirate Fran\u00e7ois le Clerc (known as \"Jambe de Bois\", due to his wooden leg) set up a camp on Pigeon Island, from where he attacked passing Spanish ships. In 1605, an English vessel called the \"Oliphe Blossome\" was blown off-course on its way to Guyana, and the 67 colonists started a settlement on Saint Lucia, after initially being welcomed by the Carib chief Anthonie. By 26 September 1605, only 19 survived following continued attacks by the Carib chief Augraumart, so the settlers fled the island. The English tried to settle the island again in 1638, but the Caribs continued to be hostile. Eventually, the French successfully claimed the island in 1650 and they signed a treaty with the Caribs in 1660. In 1664, Thomas Warner (son of Sir Thomas Warner, the governor of St Kitts) claimed Saint Lucia for England but the English fled again in 1666, with the French gaining full control of the island after the signing of the Treaty of Breda. Saint Lucia was made an official French crown colony in 1674, as a dependency of Martinique.\n18th and 19th centuries.\nAfter the slave-based sugar industry developed, both the British and the French found the island attractive. During the 18th century, the island changed ownership, or was declared neutral territory, a dozen times, although the French settlements remained and the island was a de facto French colony well into the eighteenth century.\nIn 1722, George I of Great Britain granted both Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent to the 2nd Duke of Montagu. Montague appointed Nathaniel Uring, a merchant sea captain and adventurer, as deputy-governor. Uring went to the islands with a group of seven ships, and established settlement at Petit Carenage. Unable to get enough support from British warships, he and the new colonists were quickly run off by the French.\nDuring the Seven Years' War, Britain occupied Saint Lucia for a year, but handed the island back to the French in 1763, under the Treaty of Paris. Like the English and Dutch on other islands, in 1765, the French began to develop the land for the cultivation of sugar cane as a commodity crop on large plantations. The British occupied the island again in 1778.\nFrom 1782 to 1803, control of the island switched multiple times. In January 1791, during the French Revolution, the National Assembly sent four \"commissaires\" to St Lucia to spread the revolutionary philosophy. By August 1791, slaves began to abandon their estates and Governor Jean-Joseph Sourbader de Gimat fled. In December 1792, Lt. Jean-Baptiste Raymond de Lacrosse arrived with revolutionary pamphlets, and the impoverished whites and free people of colour began to arm themselves as \"patriots\". On 1 February 1793, France declared war on England and Holland, and General Nicolas Xavier de Ricard took over as Governor. The National Convention abolished enslavement on 4 February 1794. On 1 April 1794, St. Lucia was captured by a British expeditionary force led by Vice Admiral John Jervis. Morne Fortune was renamed \"Fort Charlotte\". Soon, a combined force of French Revolutionary Army soldiers and maroons, \"L'Armee Fran\u00e7aise dans les Bois\", began to fight back, starting the First Brigand War.\nA short time later, the British invaded the island as a part of the war with France that had recently broken out. On 21 February 1795, French forces under the nominal control of Victor Hugues, defeated a battalion of British troops at Vieux Fort and Rabot. In 1796, Castries was burned as part of the conflict. Leading the 27th (Inniskilling) Regiment, General John Moore retook Fort Charlotte in 1796, after two days of bitter fighting. As an honour, the Fusiliers' regimental colour was displayed on the flagstaff of the captured fortress at Morne Fortune for an hour before being replaced by the Union Jack. Upon the capture of the fort, Moore's superior, Ralph Abercromby, departed the island and placed Moore in charge of the British garrison. Moore remained at this post until falling ill with yellow fever, leading to his return to Britain before 1798.\nIn 1803, the British regained control of the island. Many members of the \"L'Armee Fran\u00e7aise dans les Bois\" escaped into the thick rainforest where they evaded capture and established maroon communities.\nSlavery on the island continued for a short time, but anti-slavery sentiment was rising in Britain. The British stopped the import of slaves by anyone, white or coloured, when they abolished the slave trade in 1807.\nFrance and Great Britain continued to contest Saint Lucia until the British secured it in 1814, as part of the Treaty of Paris, ending the Napoleonic Wars. Thereafter, Saint Lucia was considered one of the British Windward Islands colonies.\nThe institution of slavery was abolished on the island in 1834, as it was throughout the British Empire. After abolition, all former slaves had to serve a four-year \"apprenticeship\", to accustom them to the idea of freedom. During that period, they worked for their former masters for at least three-quarters of the work week. Full freedom was duly granted by the British in 1838. By that time, people of African ethnicity greatly outnumbered those of ethnic European background. People of Carib descent also comprised a minority on the island.\n20th century.\nSaint Lucia's first representative government was introduced in 1924, with the first election taking place in 1925. Many Saint Lucians served during the Second World War, and the conflict visited the island directly during the Battle of the Caribbean, when a German U-boat attacked and sank two British ships in Castries harbour on 9 March 1942. The United States used the island as a military hub during the war, including setting up a secondary naval base in Gros Islet and using what is now the island's international airport as an air force base.\nUniversal suffrage was introduced in 1951 and elections were held the same year. In 1958, Saint Lucia joined the West Indies Federation, although the federation was dissolved just a few years later in 1962. In 1967, Saint Lucia became one of the six members of the West Indies Associated States, with internal self-government. Independence was peacefully gained in 1979 under Sir John Compton of United Workers Party, with the island remaining within the British Commonwealth, keeping then-Queen Elizabeth II as Monarch, represented locally by a Governor-General.\nPost-independence era.\nDespite leading the country to independence, Compton's initial term as prime minister lasted only a few months, being defeated by the Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) under Allan Louisy in the 1979 Saint Lucian general election. In 1980, Hurricane Allen struck the island, destroying much of its infrastructure and reducing economic growth. Compton returned to power after the 1982 Saint Lucian general election after much instability during the labour government's term. During Compton's second term as the island's leader, banana exports significantly increased and became the nation's main source of revenue. There were improvements to infrastructure, and education was expanded to rural areas. Saint Lucia was key to the US invasion of Grenada. During the 1990s and 2000s, the nation's economy began shifting from agriculture to tourism under the leadership of Kenny Anthony. The 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001 killed two Saint Lucians, and caused an economic slowdown, although moderate growth continued until the Great Recession. The recession, as well as the landfall of Hurricane Tomas in 2010, led to slow economic growth during the early 2010s, although the economy picked up during the later part of the decade and avoided contraction until 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic caused major economic issues globally.\nIn June 2016, the United Workers Party (UWP), led by Allen Michael Chastanet, won 11 of the 17 seats in the general election, ousting the St Lucia Labour Party (SLP) of the incumbent Prime Minister Kenny Anthony. However, Saint Lucia Labour Party won the next election in July 2021, meaning its leader Philip J Pierre became the ninth Prime Minister of Saint Lucia since independence.\nGeography.\nSaint Lucia has a total area of 617 square kilometers (238 sq mi). As a volcanic island, Saint Lucia is very mountainous, with its highest point being Mount Gimie, at above sea level. The Pitons, two mountainous volcanic plugs, form the island's most famous landmark. Saint Lucia is also home to the world's only drive-in volcano, the Sulphur Springs. There are a number of small islands off the coast, the largest of which are the Maria Islands, located in the south-east of the island.\nSaint Lucia lies at latitude 14\u00b0 N and longitude 61\u00b0 W. The population tends to be concentrated around the coast, with the interior more sparsely populated, due to the presence of dense forests. \nFlora and fauna.\nMany species are endemic to the island, including \"Anolis luciae\", a species of lizard, and \"Boa orophias\", a species of boid snake.\nEcoregions.\nSaint Lucia has five terrestrial ecoregions: Windward Islands moist forests, Leeward Islands dry forests, Windward Islands dry forests, Windward Islands xeric scrub, and Lesser Antilles mangroves. The country had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 6.17/10, ranking it 84th globally out of 172 countries.\nClimate.\nSaint Lucia has a tropical climate, specifically a tropical rainforest climate (Af), moderated by northeast trade winds, with a dry season from 1 December to 31 May, and a wet/rainy season from 1 June to 30 November.\nAverage daytime and nighttime temperatures are around , and respectively. Being fairly close to the equator, the island's temperature does not fluctuate much between winter and summer.\nGeology.\nThe geology of St. Lucia can be described as composing three main areas. The oldest, 16\u201318 Ma, volcanic rocks are exposed from Castries northward and consist of eroded basalt and andesite centres. The middle, central highlands, portion of the island consists of dissected andesite centres, 10.4 to 1 Mya, while the lower southwest portion of the island contains recent activity from the Soufriere Volcanic Centre (SVC). This SVC, centred about the Qualibou depression, contains pyroclastic flow deposits, lava flows, domes, block and ash flow deposits, and explosion craters. This depression's perimeter includes the town of Soufriere, Mount Tabac, Mt. Gimie, Morne Bonin, and Gros Piton. At in diameter, though the western portion is open towards the Grenada basin, the depression formed as recently as 100 kya. The depression is noted for its geothermal activity, especially at Sulphur Springs and Soufri\u00e8re Estates, a phreatic eruption in 1776, and recent seismic activity (2000\u20132001).\nEroded andesitic stratovolcanoes to the north east of the depression include Mt. Gimie, Piton St Esprit, and Mt. Grand Magazin, all greater than 1 Ma in age. Andesitic and dacite pyroclastic flows from these volcanoes are found at Morne Tabac dome (532 ka), Morne Bonin dome (273 kya), and Bellevue (264 kya). Avalanche deposits from the formation of the Qualibou depression are found offshore, and in the massive blocks of Rabot, Pleisance, and Coubaril. The dacitic domes of Petit Piton (109 kya) and Gros Piton (71 kya) were then extruded onto the depression floor accompanied by the Anse John (104 kya) and La Pointe (59.8 kya) pyroclastic flows. Later, pyroclastic flows include pumice-rich Belfond and Anse Noir (20 kya). Finally, the dacitic domes of Terre Blanche (15.3 kya) and Belfond (13.6 kya) formed within the depression.\nGovernment.\nLike most Caribbean countries, Saint Lucia is a unitary state with a parliamentary system. It is a Commonwealth realm and a constitutional monarchy, with the current monarch being Charles III, who is represented on the island by a governor-general, currently Errol Charles. The prime minister (currently Philip J. Pierre) is the head of government, the head of the cabinet, and is normally the leader of the largest party in the House of Assembly. The house has 17 seats, with each member being elected via a plurality of votes in their constituency. The upper chamber of Parliament is the Senate which has 11 appointed members, the majority of which are appointed by the prime minister.\nAdministrative divisions.\nSaint Lucia is made up of 10 districts. The districts were created and named by French colonials, and the British chose to keep the names in an anglicised form. The largest district in both size and population is Castries, where the nation's capital of the same name is located. The following are the 10 districts placed in alphabetical order:\nLaw and crime.\nSaint Lucia is a mixed jurisdiction, meaning that it has a legal system based in part on both the civil law and English common law. The Civil Code of St. Lucia of 1867 was based on the Quebec Civil Code of 1866, as supplemented by English common law-style legislation. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was Saint Lucia's final court of appeal until 2023, when a constitutional amendment transferred this to the Caribbean Court of Justice.\nSaint Lucia's homicide rate has hit record highs in recent years. There were 75 homicides in 2021, a 34.5% increase compared with 55 homicides in 2020. 2021 saw the island record the most homicides in its history, and also its highest murder rate in its history, at 40 murders per 100,000 people.\nForeign relations.\nSaint Lucia is a member of the Caribbean Community, OECS, the Organization of American States and La Francophonie. As a Commonwealth Realm, Saint Lucia has relatively friendly relations with United Kingdom and Canada. France is also a major ally, in part due to Saint Lucia's border with Martinique. The United States is the island's largest trading partner, and Saint Lucia was key to the US invasion of Grenada in 1983, and voted against condemning the invasion. Saint Lucia became the 152nd member of the United Nations on 18 September 1979.\nSaint Lucia does not have a military although the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force has a Special Service Unit (SSU) and a Coast Guard. The island signed the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2018.\nEconomy.\nSaint Lucia is a Small Island Developing State, a designation similar to a developing country with a few substantial differences due to Saint Lucia's island nature. The service sector is the largest sector of the economy, accounting for 86.9% of GDP in 2020, followed by industrial and agricultural sectors at 10.9% and 2.2%, respectively.\nSaint Lucia has been able to attract foreign business and investment due to its educated workforce and improvements in roads, communications, water supply, sewerage, and port facilities. Like most small islands, Tourism and offshore banking are Saint Lucia's main sources of revenue. Agriculture, specifically the banana industry, was previously the largest sector of the economy, although its importance has declined significantly. The island's manufacturing sector has been called the most diverse in the Eastern Caribbean, with goods such as plastic being produced on a large scale.\nSaint Lucia's currency is the Eastern Caribbean Dollar (EC$), a regional currency shared among members of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECU). The country's main trade partners are the US, UK, EU and other CARICOM countries.\nTourism.\nTourism is the largest contributor to Saint Lucia's economy. Tourist numbers tend to be more substantial during the dry season (January to April), often referred to as the tourist season. Saint Lucia's tropical weather, scenery, beaches and resorts have made it a popular tourist destination, with 1.29\u00a0million visitors arriving in 2019.\nSome of Saint Lucia's tourist attractions include the Sulphur Springs, the Botanical Gardens, Pigeon Island and The Pitons.\nAgriculture.\nThe agricultural sector was once the main contributor to Saint Lucia's economy. This was especially thanks to the exporting of bananas. However, its importance to the economy has declined significantly, in part due to increased competition from South American countries in the banana industry. Nevertheless, agriculture is still an important part of the country's economy, providing 7.9% of jobs and contributing to 2.2% of the GDP in 2021.\nAbout 18% of land is used for agricultural practices. Bananas remain the main agricultural product grown in Saint Lucia, as well as coconuts, cocoa beans, mangoes, avocados, vegetables, citrus fruits, and root crops such as yams and sweet potatoes.\nSaint Lucia also has a small livestock sector, which is dominated by poultry. The island is self-sufficient in egg production and production of poultry and pork has increased in recent years. Fishing has also been of considerable importance to the nation's economy.\nInfrastructure.\nSaint Lucia has a wide-ranging public bus network which covers most of the island. Busses are owned by private individuals, whilst the government is responsible for setting up routes and hubs. The road network covers most of the island, although some rural areas still lack access to proper roads.\nThe island has two airports, including one International airport. Cruising and yachting are very important to the country's economy, with the main sea port being located in Castries, while the main marina is located in Rodney Bay which is also home to the St. Lucia Yacht Club. Meanwhile, the nation's main oil refinery is located in Bexon.\nThe main source of electricity in Saint Lucia is oil through its sole power station, the Cul De Sac Power Station, although solar energy is also a major source. There have also been attempts to introduce geothermal and wind energy to the island.\nDemographics.\nA census is normally held in Saint Lucia every 10 years. In the 2010 census, Saint Lucia reported a population of 165,595 in 58,920 households. This was a 5.1% increase from the 157,490 recorded at the previous census in 2001. Ages 0\u201314 made up 24.1% of the population whilst those 65 and over made up 8.6%. Nearly 40% of the island's population lived in the District of Castries, where the nation's capital of the same name is located.\nSaint Lucia had a fertility rate of 1.4 children per woman in 2021, the lowest in the Americas. This is much lower than in 1990, when the birth rate was 3.4 children per woman, and significantly lower than in 1959, when the birth rate peaked at 6.98 children per woman. Most emigration from Saint Lucia is primarily to Anglophone countries, with the United Kingdom having almost 10,000 Saint Lucian-born citizens, and over 30,000 of Saint Lucian heritage. The United States is home to many Saint Lucians, especially areas such as Miami and New York City. Canada is also home to many Saint Lucians, and especially in the French-speaking province of Quebec in the city of Montr\u00e9al. The median age of Saint Lucians was 33.1 years in 2021.\nEthnic groups.\nSaint Lucia was originally populated by Amerindian peoples. However, European colonisation led to a significant drop in the indigenous populations. Most residents of the island were white planters, but African slaves and indentured servants brought by the Europeans eventually came to outnumber them. Because of this, Saint Lucia's population is predominantly of African and mixed descent. As of 2010, 85.3% of the population are black and 10.9% are of multiracial descent. Other groups include Indo-Caribbean persons (2.2%), whites (0.6%), and Indigenous Persons (0.6%). A small number of Kalinago live in the Choiseul region and in other towns on the western coast. There is also a small population of Lebanese and Syrians.\nLanguages.\nThe official language of Saint Lucia is English, though Saint Lucian French Creole (Kw\u00e9y\u00f2l) is widely spoken. Referred to colloquially as \"Patois\" (\"Patwa\"), it is spoken by a majority of the population. It is a dialect of Antillean Creole and is also related to Haitian Creole, though it nonetheless has a number of distinctive features from the latter. The Creole language developed during the early period of French colonisation and is derived chiefly from French and West African languages. There have been some attempts to make the language official, but they have not yet been successful.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nIn the 2010 census, a majority of Saint Lucians identified as Christians. This can be traced back to the nation's colonization by French and British settlers. Due to heavy French influence, most Christians on the island are Catholics, with 62.5% of the island's residents identifying as such. 24.5% of the island's residents identify as Protestants. In addition, 1.9% of the population identified as members of the Rastafari movement and 1.4% of the population practice Hinduism. The number of residents claiming no religion stood at 5.9% in 2010.\nThere is no state religion in Saint Lucia. The nation's constitution guarantees freedom of religion and prohibits forcing persons to take oath to any religion in which they do not follow. Religious groups are also guaranteed the freedom to establish places of education.\nEducation.\nMost primary and secondary schools in Saint Lucia are operated by the government. Education is free and compulsory for children aged five to fifteen. This includes seven years of primary school and three to five years of secondary school. In the last two years of secondary school, students are allowed to choose the subjects that they would like to do, in preparation for regional CSEC examinations. In 2020, public spending on education was at 3.6%.\nTertiary educational facilities on the island are normally private institutions. These include Monroe College and International American University. However, there are still a few public institutions, including the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College and the University of the West Indies.\nHealthcare.\nHealth services in Saint Lucia are split between the government and private institutions. The island is served by 2 public hospitals and multiple health centers, although most dental and vision services are private. Public expenditure on healthcare stood at 2.1% in 2019.\nIn 2021, life expectancy was at 71.1 years (67.8 for men and 74.7 for women). This was compared to 73.4 years in 2019. The drop in life expectancy was largely attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nCulture.\nThe culture of Saint Lucia has been influenced by African, East Indian, French, and English heritage. The main secondary language of the island is Saint Lucian Creole (Kw\u00e9y\u00f2l), a French-based creole spoken by most of the population. The island boasts the highest ratio of Nobel laureates produced with respect to the total population of any sovereign country in the world. Two winners have come from Saint Lucia: Sir Arthur Lewis, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1979, and the poet Derek Walcott, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.\nSaint Lucia has two flower festivals, the La Rose festival, celebrated on 30 August, and the La Marguerite festival, celebrated on 17 October. Every summer, the island hosts a carnival as a way to present the country's culture and music. Annually, there are normally many festivals, most of them being music related.\nMusic.\nSaint Lucian music is heavily influenced by elements of African music, especially rhythmically. The most popular music genres in Saint Lucia are calypso, soca, dancehall, reggae, zouk, and folk music. Dennery Segment, a genre influenced by Angolan Kuduro, Saint Lucian Solo music and Dancehall was developed on the island. The internationally renowned Saint Lucia Jazz Festival is held annually, and the festival is a major source of revenue for the country's economy.\nFood.\nSaint Lucian cuisine is a mix of African, European, Indian and Caribbean dishes. Some common dishes include macaroni pie, stewed chicken, rice and peas, roti (Indian flatbreads) and soups packed full with fresh locally produced vegetables. All mainstream meat and poultry are eaten in St. Lucia; meat and seafood are normally stewed and browned to create a rich gravy sometimes served over \"ground provisions\" (vegetables) or rice. Johnny Cakes (known as bakes) are also common, and are served with different sides, such as saltfish. The national dish of Saint Lucia is green figs and saltfish.\nSports.\nAs with most Caribbean islands, cricket is the most popular sport in Saint Lucia. The Windward Islands cricket team includes players from Saint Lucia and plays in the West Indies regional tournament. Daren Sammy became the first Saint Lucian to represent the West Indies on his debut in 2007, and was made captain in 2010. The Saint Lucia Kings is a T20 franchise playing in the Caribbean Premier League based in this said island nation. Sailing is also a major sport in Saint Lucia, with the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) race beginning in the Canary Islands and ending on the island. Other sports that are popular on the island include football, basketball, tennis, golf and volleyball. Karate and boxing have also seen increased popularity in recent years. \nJulien Alfred won the nation's first-ever Olympic medal, when she won the women's 100 meters event in 10.72 seconds at the 2024 Summer Olympics held in Paris, France.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "14954827": "Roseau, Saint Lucia\nRoseau is a community on the island of Saint Lucia; it is located on the western side of the island, south of Marigot.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "57402": "Roseau\nCapital and largest city of Dominica\n \nRoseau (Dominican Creole: \"Wozo\") is the capital and largest city of Dominica, with a population of 14,725 as of 2011. It is a small and compact urban settlement, in the Saint George parish and surrounded by the Caribbean Sea, the Roseau River and Morne Bruce. Built on the site of the ancient Island Carib village of Sairi, it is the oldest and most important urban settlement on the island of Dominica.\nIt is on the west (leeward) coast of Dominica and has a combination of modern and colonial French architecture.\nRoseau is Dominica's most important port for foreign trade. Some exports include bananas, bay oil, vegetables, grapefruit, oranges, and cocoa. The service sector is also a large part of the local economy. There are several private institutions registered in Dominica, like Ross University, International University for Graduate Studies, All Saints University, New World University, and Western Orthodox University.\nThere is a prominent diocese called Roman Catholic Diocese of Roseau.\nHistory.\nThe city of Roseau sits on an alluvial fan formed hundreds of years ago as the Roseau River meandered across the area from what is now known as Newtown to its current location. Over the last 2,000 years, Amerindians migrating through the islands settled the area attracted by the nearby river. With the arrival of the Europeans in the 16th and 17th centuries, a small settlement was established by the French who, in their tradition of naming places after what they found there, used their name for the river reeds that grew along the banks. A plan was created for the settlement that mirrored examples in France where streets extended from a central point \u2013 what is today the Old Market \u2013 and spread out to the rest of the settlement.\nConflict raged between the French and the British over the area on several occasions. In 1699, the French built a fort to protect Roseau. In 1770, the British built Fort Young in place of the previous fort. In 1778, the French invaded Dominica, capturing Fort Young and Roseau and taking control of the island. In 1784, Dominica was returned to British control under the Treaty of Paris. \nBy the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the British set out plans for the city that included fortifications and government structures, the grid street system, and blocks and new urban areas to the north and south, known today as Potter's Ville and Newtown. Goodwill was established in the 1950s and Bath Estate in the early 1980s. Since then several new semi-urban settlements \u2013 such as Stock Farm, Castle Comfort, and Wall House \u2013 have been constructed around the existing ones. Some older settlements like Fond Cole and Canefield nowadays belong to the semi-urban area around Roseau.\nThe French influence can still be seen today, however, in its architecture and crooked streets that extend from the Old Market Plaza. Examples of the English influence are evident in architecture and street names.\nClimate and scenery.\nRoseau's nearby scenery (mostly in its so-called valley) includes Boiling Lake, east, in the Morne Trois Pitons National Park, waterfalls, thermal springs, and scenic plateaus.\nMorne Bruce provides panoramic views of most of downtown Roseau and north toward Woodbridge Bay deepwater port and Fond Cole. From Morne Bruce there are views of the Botanic Gardens at its base as well as the Caribbean Sea which look quite spectacular when cruise liners are in port.\nRoseau's climate is a tropical monsoon climate, featuring relatively constant temperatures throughout the year with average high temperatures generally between and average low temperatures between . Rainfall is common throughout the year, with the city seeing an annual average nearly . Roseau features a noticeably drier stretch from February through April, though each of these months on average sees at least of rain.\nArchitecture.\nThe central district of Roseau is tightly packed with small and large houses and even larger modern concrete structures. There is little green or open space in the city; there is even less today, as many of the courtyards that were once commonplace are giving way to office space. The district is, however, framed in every direction by natural elements. The sea and the river provide water elements while the Botanical gardens and the Government House gardens frame the city with green space. These elements are rare in the Caribbean. No other centre in the region has such extensive botanical gardens with such central location, and the Roseau River is among the largest that flow through any Caribbean capital.\nThe urban structure of Central Roseau is based on an irregular grid system of miniature proportions, making it a highly illegible city. Even though the grid area is not extensive, it is relatively easy for a visitor to get lost. The grid area has some 80 blocks in an area of . In comparison, the grid areas of Kingstown and Castries \u2014 capitals of Saint Vincent and Saint Lucia \u2014 have some 50 and 60 blocks in the areas of over . The average block size in Central Roseau is thus some \u2153 hectare (1 acre), i.e., about half of the figure of Central Kingstown.\nThere are some fine examples of West Indian architecture in Roseau. The ones that stand out the most are the French Colonial style and the vernacular form. Much of the French influence can be found along King George V Street. Around the city there are good examples of the English influence in large colonial town houses and colonial public/government buildings.\nThe churches in Roseau are fine examples of Europe in Dominica with a bit of creolization. The Roman Catholic Cathedral stands prominent in Gothic Romanesque revival and the Anglican Church on Victoria Street in Georgian style.\nCity life.\nBecause of the suburban sprawl, few people live in Central Roseau, but"}, "descending_order": ["57402", "14954827", "27208"], "permutation_1": ["14954827", "57402", "27208"], "permutation_2": ["14954827", "27208", "57402"], "permutation_3": ["57402", "14954827", "27208"]}
{"id": "2hop__20961_85304", "docs_added": {"27552742": "Law of the United States\n \nThe law of the United States comprises many levels of codified and uncodified forms of law, of which the supreme law is the nation's Constitution, which prescribes the foundation of the federal government of the United States, as well as various civil liberties. The Constitution sets out the boundaries of federal law, which consists of Acts of Congress, treaties ratified by the Senate, regulations promulgated by the executive branch, and case law originating from the federal judiciary. The United States Code is the official compilation and codification of general and permanent federal statutory law.\nThe Constitution provides that it, as well as federal laws and treaties that are made pursuant to it, preempt conflicting state and territorial laws in the 50 U.S. states and in the territories. However, the scope of federal preemption is limited because the scope of federal power is not universal. In the dual sovereign system of American federalism (actually tripartite because of the presence of Indian reservations), states are the plenary sovereigns, each with their own constitution, while the federal sovereign possesses only the limited supreme authority enumerated in the Constitution. Indeed, states may grant their citizens broader rights than the federal Constitution as long as they do not infringe on any federal constitutional rights. Thus U.S. law (especially the actual \"living law\" of contract, tort, property, probate, criminal and family law, experienced by citizens on a day-to-day basis) consists primarily of state law, which, while sometimes harmonized, can and does vary greatly from one state to the next. Even in areas governed by federal law, state law is often supplemented, rather than preempted.\nAt both the federal and state levels, with the exception of the legal system of Louisiana, the law of the United States is largely derived from the common law system of English law, which was in force in British America at the time of the American Revolutionary War. However, American law has diverged greatly from its English ancestor both in terms of substance and procedure and has incorporated a number of civil law innovations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nGeneral overview.\nSources of law.\nIn the United States, the law is derived from five sources: constitutional law, statutory law, treaties, administrative regulations, and the common law (which includes case law).\nConstitutionality.\nIf Congress enacts a statute that conflicts with the Constitution, state or federal courts may rule that law to be unconstitutional and declare it invalid.\nNotably, a statute does not automatically disappear merely because it has been found unconstitutional; it may, however, be deleted by a subsequent statute. Many federal and state statutes have remained on the books for decades after they were ruled to be unconstitutional. However, under the principle of \"stare decisis\", a lower court that enforces a statute of a kind previously declared unconstitutional will risk reversal by the Supreme Court. Conversely, any court that refuses to enforce a statute previously held by higher courts to be constitutional will risk reversal by the Supreme Court.\nAmerican common law.\nThe United States and most Commonwealth countries are heirs to the common law legal tradition of English law. Certain practices traditionally allowed under English common law were expressly outlawed by the Constitution, such as bills of attainder and general search warrants.\nAs common law courts, U.S. courts have inherited the principle of \"stare decisis\". American judges, like common law judges elsewhere, not only apply the law, they also make the law, to the extent that their decisions in the cases before them become precedent for decisions in future cases.\nThe actual substance of English law was formally \"received\" into the United States in several ways. First, all U.S. states except Louisiana have enacted \"reception statutes\" which generally state that the common law of England (particularly judge-made law) is the law of the state to the extent that it is not repugnant to domestic law or indigenous conditions. Some reception statutes impose a specific cutoff date for reception, such as the date of a colony's founding, while others are deliberately vague. Thus, contemporary U.S. courts often cite pre-Revolution cases when discussing the evolution of an ancient judge-made common law principle into its modern form, such as the heightened duty of care traditionally imposed upon common carriers.\nSecond, a small number of important British statutes in effect at the time of the Revolution have been independently reenacted by U.S. states. Two examples are the Statute of Frauds (still widely known in the U.S. by that name) and the Statute of 13 Elizabeth (the ancestor of the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act). Such English statutes are still regularly cited in contemporary American cases interpreting their modern American descendants.\nDespite the presence of reception statutes, much of \"contemporary\" American common law has diverged significantly from English common law. Although the courts of the various Commonwealth nations are often influenced by each other's rulings, American courts rarely follow post-Revolution precedents from England or the British Commonwealth.\nEarly on, American courts, even after the Revolution, often did cite contemporary English cases, because appellate decisions from many American courts were not regularly reported until the mid-19th century. Lawyers and judges used English legal materials to fill the gap. Citations to English decisions gradually disappeared during the 19th century as American courts developed their own principles to resolve the legal problems of the American people. The number of published volumes of American reports soared from eighteen in 1810 to over 8,000 by 1910. By 1879 one of the delegates to the California constitutional convention was already complaining: \"Now, when we require them to state the reasons for a decision, we do not mean they shall write a hundred pages of detail. We [do] not mean that they shall include the small cases, and impose on the country all this fine judicial literature, for the Lord knows we have got enough of that already.\"\nToday, in the words of Stanford law professor Lawrence M. Friedman: \"American cases rarely cite foreign materials. Courts occasionally cite a British classic or two, a famous old case, or a nod to Blackstone; but current British law almost never gets any mention.\" Foreign law has never been cited as binding precedent, but as a reflection of the shared values of Anglo-American civilization or even Western civilization in general.\nLevels of law.\nFederal law.\nFederal law originates with the Constitution, which gives Congress the power to enact statutes for certain limited purposes like regulating interstate commerce. The United States Code is the official compilation and codification of the general and permanent federal statutes. Many statutes give executive branch agencies the power to create regulations, which are published in the Federal Register and codified into the Code of Federal Regulations. From 1984 to 2024, regulations generally also carried the force of law under the \"Chevron\" doctrine, but are now subject only to a lesser form of judicial deference known as \"Skidmore\" deference. Many lawsuits turn on the meaning of a federal statute or regulation, and judicial interpretations of such meaning carry legal force under the principle of \"stare decisis\".\nDuring the 18th and 19th centuries, federal law traditionally focused on areas where there was an express grant of power to the federal government in the federal Constitution, like the military, money, foreign relations (especially international treaties), tariffs, intellectual property (specifically patents and copyrights), and mail. Since the start of the 20th century, broad interpretations of the Commerce and Spending Clauses of the Constitution have enabled federal law to expand into areas like aviation, telecommunications, railroads, pharmaceuticals, antitrust, and trademarks. In some areas, like aviation and railroads, the federal government has developed a comprehensive scheme that preempts virtually all state law, while in others, like family law, a relatively small number of federal statutes (generally covering interstate and international situations) interacts with a much larger body of state law. In areas like antitrust, trademark, and employment law, there are powerful laws at both the federal and state levels that coexist with each other. In a handful of areas like insurance, Congress has enacted laws expressly refusing to regulate them as long as the states have laws regulating them (see, e.g., the McCarran\u2013Ferguson Act).\nStatutes.\nAfter the president signs a bill into law (or Congress enacts it over the president's veto), it is delivered to the Office of the Federal Register (OFR) of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) where it is assigned a law number, and prepared for publication as a slip law. Public laws, but not private laws, are also given legal statutory citation by the OFR. At the end of each session of Congress, the slip laws are compiled into bound volumes called the United States Statutes at Large, and they are known as session laws. The Statutes at Large present a chronological arrangement of the laws in the exact order that they have been enacted.\nPublic laws are incorporated into the United States Code, which is a codification of all general and permanent laws of the United States. The main edition is published every six years by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the House of Representatives, and cumulative supplements are published annually. The U.S. Code is arranged by subject matter, and it shows the present status of laws (with amendments already incorporated in the text) that have been amended on one or more occasions.\nRegulations.\nCongress often enacts statutes that grant broad rulemaking authority to federal agencies. Often, Congress is simply too gridlocked to draft detailed statutes that explain how the agency should react to every possible situation, or Congress believes the agency's technical specialists are best equipped to deal with particular fact situations as they arise. Therefore, federal agencies are authorized to promulgate regulations. Under the principle of \"Chevron\" deference, regulations normally carry the force of law as long as they are based on a reasonable interpretation of the relevant statutes.\nRegulations are adopted pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Regulations are first proposed and published in the Federal Register (FR or Fed. Reg.) and subject to a public comment period. Eventually, after a period for public comment and revisions based on comments received, a final version is published in the Federal Register. The regulations are codified and incorporated into the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) which is published once a year on a rolling schedule.\nBesides regulations formally promulgated under the APA, federal agencies also frequently promulgate an enormous amount of forms, manuals, policy statements, letters, and rulings. These documents may be considered by a court as persuasive authority as to how a particular statute or regulation may be interpreted (known as \"Skidmore\" deference), but are not entitled to \"Chevron\" deference.\nCommon law, case law, and precedent.\nUnlike the situation with the states, there is no plenary reception statute at the federal level that continued the common law and thereby granted federal courts the power to formulate legal precedent like their English predecessors. Federal courts are solely creatures of the federal Constitution and the federal Judiciary Acts. However, it is universally accepted that the Founding Fathers of the United States, by vesting \"judicial power\" into the Supreme Court and the inferior federal courts in Article Three of the United States Constitution, thereby vested in them the implied judicial power of common law courts to formulate persuasive precedent; this power was widely accepted, understood, and recognized by the Founding Fathers at the time the Constitution was ratified. Several legal scholars have argued that the federal judicial power to decide \"cases or controversies\" necessarily includes the power to decide the precedential effect of those cases and controversies.\nThe difficult question is whether federal judicial power extends to formulating binding precedent through strict adherence to the rule of \"stare decisis\". This is where the act of deciding a case becomes a limited form of lawmaking in itself, in that an appellate court's rulings will thereby bind itself and lower courts in future cases (and therefore also implicitly binds all persons within the court's jurisdiction). Prior to a major change to federal court rules in 2007, about one-fifth of federal appellate cases were published and thereby became binding precedents, while the rest were unpublished and bound only the parties to each case.\nAs federal judge Alex Kozinski has pointed out, binding precedent as we know it today simply did not exist at the time the Constitution was framed. Judicial decisions were not consistently, accurately, and faithfully reported on both sides of the Atlantic (reporters often simply rewrote or failed to publish decisions which they disliked), and the United Kingdom lacked a coherent court hierarchy prior to the end of the 19th century. Furthermore, English judges in the eighteenth century subscribed to now-obsolete natural law theories of law, by which law was believed to have an existence independent of what individual judges said. Judges saw themselves as merely declaring the law which had always theoretically existed, and not as making the law. Therefore, a judge could reject another judge's opinion as simply an incorrect statement of the law, in the way that scientists regularly reject each other's conclusions as incorrect statements of the laws of science.\nIn turn, according to Kozinski's analysis, the contemporary rule of binding precedent became possible in the U.S. in the nineteenth century only after the creation of a clear court hierarchy (under the Judiciary Acts), and the beginning of regular \"verbatim\" publication of U.S. appellate decisions by West Publishing. The rule gradually developed, case-by-case, as an extension of the judiciary's public policy of effective judicial administration (that is, in order to efficiently exercise the judicial power). The rule of binding precedent is generally justified today as a matter of public policy, first, as a matter of fundamental fairness, and second, because in the absence of case law, it would be completely unworkable for every minor issue in every legal case to be briefed, argued, and decided from first principles (such as relevant statutes, constitutional provisions, and underlying public policies), which in turn would create hopeless inefficiency, instability, and unpredictability, and thereby undermine the rule of law. The contemporary form of the rule is descended from Justice Louis Brandeis's \"landmark dissent in 1932's \"Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co\".\", which \"catalogued the Court's actual overruling practices in such a powerful manner that his attendant stare decisis analysis immediately assumed canonical authority.\" \nHere is a typical exposition of how public policy supports the rule of binding precedent in a 2008 majority opinion signed by Justice Breyer:\nJustice Brandeis once observed that \"in most matters it is more important that the applicable rule of law be settled than that it be settled right.\" \"Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co.\" [...] To overturn a decision settling one such matter simply because we might believe that decision is no longer \"right\" would inevitably reflect a willingness to reconsider others. And that willingness could itself threaten to substitute disruption, confusion, and uncertainty for necessary legal stability. We have not found here any factors that might overcome these considerations.\nIt is now sometimes possible, over time, for a line of precedents to drift from the express language of any underlying statutory or constitutional texts until the courts' decisions establish doctrines that were not considered by the texts' drafters. This trend has been strongly evident in federal substantive due process and Commerce Clause decisions. Originalists and political conservatives, such as Associate Justice Antonin Scalia have criticized this trend as anti-democratic.\nUnder the doctrine of \"Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins\" (1938), there is \"no general federal common law\". Although federal courts can create federal common law in the form of case law, such law must be linked one way or another to the interpretation of a particular federal constitutional provision, statute, or regulation (which was either enacted as part of the Constitution or pursuant to constitutional authority). Federal courts lack the plenary power possessed by state courts to simply make up law, which the latter are able to do in the absence of constitutional or statutory provisions replacing the common law. Only in a few narrow limited areas, like maritime law, has the Constitution expressly authorized the continuation of English common law at the federal level (meaning that in those areas federal courts can continue to make law as they see fit, subject to the limitations of \"stare decisis\").\nThe other major implication of the \"Erie\" doctrine is that federal courts cannot dictate the content of state law when there is no federal issue (and thus no federal supremacy issue) in a case. When hearing claims under state law pursuant to diversity jurisdiction, federal trial courts \"must\" apply the statutory and decisional law of the state in which they sit, as if they were a court of that state, even if they believe that the relevant state law is irrational or just bad public policy. \nUnder \"Erie\", such federal deference to state law applies only in one direction: state courts are not bound by federal interpretations of state law. Similarly, state courts are also not bound by most federal interpretations of federal law. In the vast majority of state courts, interpretations of federal law from federal courts of appeals and district courts can be cited as persuasive authority, but state courts are not bound by those interpretations. The U.S. Supreme Court has never squarely addressed the issue, but has signaled in dicta that it sides with this rule. Therefore, in those states, there is only one federal court that binds all state courts as to the interpretation of federal law and the federal Constitution: the U.S. Supreme Court itself.\nState and territory law.\nThe fifty American states are separate sovereigns, with their own state constitutions, state governments, and state courts. All states have a legislative branch which enacts state statutes, an executive branch that promulgates state regulations pursuant to statutory authorization, and a judicial branch that applies, interprets, and occasionally overturns both state statutes and regulations, as well as local ordinances. They retain plenary power to make laws covering anything not preempted by the federal Constitution, federal statutes, or international treaties ratified by the federal Senate. Normally, state supreme courts are the final interpreters of state constitutions and state law, unless their interpretation itself presents a federal issue, in which case a decision may be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by way of a petition for writ of certiorari. State laws have dramatically diverged in the centuries since independence, to the extent that the United States cannot be regarded as one legal system as to the majority of types of law traditionally under state control, but must be regarded as 50 \"separate\" systems of tort law, family law, property law, contract law, criminal law, and so on.\nMost cases are litigated in state courts and involve claims and defenses under state laws. In a 2018 report, the National Center for State Courts' Court Statistics Project found that state trial courts received 83.8\u00a0million newly filed cases in 2018, which consisted of 44.4\u00a0million traffic cases, 17.0\u00a0million criminal cases, 16.4\u00a0million civil cases, 4.7\u00a0million domestic relations cases, and 1.2\u00a0million juvenile cases. In 2018, state appellate courts received 234,000 new cases. By way of comparison, all federal district courts in 2016 together received only about 274,552 new civil cases, 79,787 new criminal cases, and 833,515 bankruptcy cases, while federal appellate courts received 53,649 new cases.\nTerritorial legal systems.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nLocal law.\nStates have delegated lawmaking powers to thousands of agencies, townships, counties, cities, and special districts. And all the state constitutions, statutes and regulations (as well as all the ordinances and regulations promulgated by local entities) are subject to judicial interpretation like their federal counterparts.\nIt is common for residents of major U.S. metropolitan areas to live under six or more layers of special districts as well as a town or city, and a county or township (in addition to the federal and state governments). Thus, at any given time, the average American citizen is subject to the rules and regulations of several dozen different agencies at the federal, state, and local levels, depending upon one's current location and behavior.\nLegal subjects.\nAmerican lawyers draw a fundamental distinction between procedural law (which controls the procedure by which legal rights and duties are vindicated) and substantive law (the actual substance of law, which is usually expressed in the form of various legal rights and duties). (The remainder of this article requires the reader to be already familiar with the contents of the separate article on state law.) \nCriminal law and procedure.\nCriminal law involves the prosecution by the state of wrongful acts which are considered to be so serious that they are a breach of the sovereign's peace (and cannot be deterred or remedied by mere lawsuits between private parties). Generally, crimes can result in incarceration, but torts (see below) cannot. The majority of the crimes committed in the United States are prosecuted and punished at the state level. Federal criminal law focuses on areas specifically relevant to the federal government like evading payment of federal income tax, mail theft, or physical attacks on federal officials, as well as interstate crimes like drug trafficking and wire fraud.\nAll states have somewhat similar laws in regard to \"higher crimes\" (or felonies), such as murder and rape, although penalties for these crimes may vary from state to state. Capital punishment is permitted in some states but not others. Three strikes laws in certain states impose harsh penalties on repeat offenders.\nSome states distinguish between two levels: felonies and misdemeanors (minor crimes). Generally, most felony convictions result in lengthy prison sentences as well as subsequent probation, large fines, and orders to pay restitution directly to victims; while misdemeanors may lead to a year or less in jail and a substantial fine. To simplify the prosecution of traffic violations and other relatively minor crimes, some states have added a third level, infractions. These may result in fines and sometimes the loss of one's driver's license, but no jail time.\nOn average, only three percent of criminal cases are resolved by jury trial; 97 percent are terminated either by plea bargaining or dismissal of the charges.\nFor public welfare offenses where the state is punishing merely risky (as opposed to injurious) behavior, there is significant diversity across the various states. For example, punishments for drunk driving varied greatly prior to 1990. State laws dealing with drug crimes still vary widely, with some states treating possession of small amounts of drugs as a misdemeanor offense or as a medical issue and others categorizing the same offense as a serious felony.\nThe law of criminal procedure in the United States consists of a massive overlay of federal constitutional case law interwoven with the federal and state statutes that actually provide the foundation for the creation and operation of law enforcement agencies and prison systems as well as the proceedings in criminal trials. Due to the perennial inability of legislatures in the U.S. to enact statutes that would actually force law enforcement officers to respect the constitutional rights of criminal suspects and convicts, the federal judiciary gradually developed the exclusionary rule as a method to enforce such rights. In turn, the exclusionary rule spawned a family of judge-made remedies for the abuse of law enforcement powers, of which the most famous is the Miranda warning. The writ of \"habeas corpus\" is often used by suspects and convicts to challenge their detention, while the Third Enforcement Act and \"Bivens\" actions are used by suspects to recover tort damages for police brutality.\nCivil procedure.\nThe law of civil procedure governs process in all judicial proceedings involving lawsuits between private parties. Traditional common law pleading was replaced by code pleading in 27 states after New York enacted the Field Code in 1850 and code pleading in turn was subsequently replaced again in most states by modern notice pleading during the 20th century. The old English division between common law and equity courts was abolished in the federal courts by the adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 1938; it has also been independently abolished by legislative acts in nearly all states. The Delaware Court of Chancery is the most prominent of the small number of remaining equity courts.\nThirty-five states have adopted rules of civil procedure modeled after the FRCP (including rule numbers). However, in doing so, they had to make some modifications to account for the fact that state courts have broad general jurisdiction while federal courts have relatively limited jurisdiction.\nNew York, Illinois, and California are the most significant states that have not adopted the FRCP. Furthermore, all three states continue to maintain most of their civil procedure laws in the form of codified statutes enacted by the state legislature, as opposed to court rules promulgated by the state supreme court, on the ground that the latter are undemocratic. But certain key portions of their civil procedure laws have been modified by their legislatures to bring them closer to federal civil procedure.\nGenerally, American civil procedure has several notable features, including extensive pretrial discovery, heavy reliance on live testimony obtained at deposition or elicited in front of a jury, and aggressive pretrial \"law and motion\" practice designed to result in a pretrial disposition (that is, summary judgment) or a settlement. U.S. courts pioneered the concept of the opt-out class action, by which the burden falls on class members to notify the court that they do not wish to be bound by the judgment, as opposed to opt-in class actions, where class members must join into the class. Another unique feature is the so-called American Rule under which parties generally bear their own attorneys' fees (as opposed to the English Rule of \"loser pays\"), though American legislators and courts have carved out numerous exceptions.\nContract law.\nContract law covers obligations established by agreement (express or implied) between private parties. Generally, contract law in transactions involving the sale of goods has become highly standardized nationwide as a result of the widespread adoption of the Uniform Commercial Code. However, there is still significant diversity in the interpretation of other kinds of contracts, depending upon the extent to which a given state has codified its common law of contracts or adopted portions of the Restatement (Second) of Contracts.\nParties are permitted to agree to arbitrate disputes arising from their contracts. Under the Federal Arbitration Act (which has been interpreted to cover \"all\" contracts arising under federal or state law), arbitration clauses are generally enforceable unless the party resisting arbitration can show unconscionability or fraud or something else which undermines the entire contract.\nTort law.\nTort law generally covers any civil action between private parties arising from wrongful acts that amount to a breach of general obligations imposed by law and not by contract. This broad family of civil wrongs involves interference \"with person, property, reputation, or commercial or social advantage.\"\nTort law covers the entire imaginable spectrum of wrongs that humans can inflict upon each other, and it partially overlaps with wrongs also punishable by criminal law. It is primarily a matter of state law and is usually developed through case law from state appellate courts; it is rarely a matter of federal law, although some federal statutes, such as the Volunteer Protection Act and the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, limit the liability of people who commit torts under state law. State tort-related statutes focus on discrete issues such as authorizing wrongful death claims (which did not exist at common law). Although the American Law Institute has attempted to standardize tort law through the development of several versions of the Restatement of Torts, many states have chosen to adopt only certain sections of the Restatements and to reject others. Thus, because of its immense size and diversity, American tort law cannot be easily summarized.\nFor example, a few jurisdictions allow actions for negligent infliction of emotional distress even in the absence of physical injury to the plaintiff, but most do not. For any particular tort, states differ on the causes of action, types and scope of remedies, statutes of limitations, and the amount of specificity with which one must plead the cause. With practically any aspect of tort law, there is a \"majority rule\" adhered to by most states, and one or more \"minority rules.\"\nNotably, the most broadly influential innovation of 20th-century American tort law was the rule of strict liability for defective products, which originated with judicial glosses on the law of warranty. In 1963, Roger J. Traynor of the Supreme Court of California threw away legal fictions based on warranties and imposed strict liability for defective products as a matter of public policy in the landmark case of \"Greenman v. Yuba Power Products\". The American Law Institute subsequently adopted a slightly different version of the \"Greenman\" rule in Section 402A of the \"Restatement (Second) of Torts\", which was published in 1964 and was very influential throughout the United States. Outside the U.S., the rule was adopted by the European Economic Community in the Product Liability Directive of July 1985, by Australia in July 1992, and by Japan in June 1994.\nBy the 1990s, the avalanche of American cases resulting from \"Greenman\" and Section 402A had become so complicated that another restatement was needed, which occurred with the 1997 publication of the \"Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability\".\nProperty law.\nHistorically, American property law has been heavily influenced by English land law, and is therefore concerned with real property first and personal property second. It is also primarily a matter of state law, and the level of interstate diversity in the law of property is much more substantial than in contract and tort. Efforts by both the American Law Institute and the Uniform Law Commission to reduce such interstate diversity were spectacular failures. \nThe majority of states use a title recording system (coupled with privately provided title insurance) to manage title to real property, although title registration (\"Torrens\" title) is also allowed in a small minority of states. Title to personal property is usually not registered, with the notable exceptions of motor vehicles (through a state department of motor vehicles or equivalent), bicycles (in certain cities and counties), and some types of firearms (in certain states).\nFamily law.\nIn the United States, family law governs relationships between adults, and relationships between parents and their children. As a discrete area of law worthy of its own specialists and law professors, American family law is relatively young in comparison to European family law; it did not take flight until the no-fault divorce revolution of the 1960s. Before the 1950s, widespread religious, legal, and social prohibitions against divorce in the United States meant that divorces were rare, were often seen as fact-driven matters (meaning that they were perceived as turning on each case's facts and not broadly generalizable legal principles), and rarely went up on appeal. The rise of no-fault divorce caused divorce litigation to shift away from the question of who was at fault for the collapse of the marital relationship and to focus instead on issues such as division of property, spousal support, and child support. \nFamily cases are traditionally a matter of state law and are virtually always heard only in state courts. Certain kinds of contract, tort, and property civil actions involving state law issues can be heard in federal courts under diversity jurisdiction, but federal courts decline to hear family cases under the \"domestic relations exception\" to diversity jurisdiction. \nAlthough family cases are heard in state courts, there has been a trend towards federalization of certain specific issues in family law. State courts and the lawyers who practice before them must be aware of federal income tax and bankruptcy implications of a divorce judgment, federal constitutional rights to abortion and paternity, and federal statutes governing interstate child custody disputes and interstate child support enforcement.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "33730953": "Supremacy Clause\nClause of the U.S. constitution\nThe Supremacy Clause of the Constitution of the United States (Article VI, Clause 2) establishes that the Constitution, federal laws made pursuant to it, and treaties made under its authority, constitute the \"supreme Law of the Land\", and thus take priority over any conflicting state laws. It provides that state courts are bound by, and state constitutions subordinate to, the supreme law. However, federal statutes and treaties must be within the parameters of the Constitution; that is, they must be pursuant to the federal government's enumerated powers, and not violate other constitutional limits on federal power, such as the Bill of Rights\u2014of particular interest is the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which states that the federal government has only those powers that are delegated to it by the Constitution. It is the responsibility of the United States Supreme Court in that case to exercise the power of judicial review: the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution.\nThe Supremacy Clause is essentially a conflict-of-laws rule specifying that certain federal acts take priority over any state acts that conflict with federal law. Some jurists further argue that the clause also nullifies federal law that is in conflict with the Constitution, although this is disputed. The Supremacy Clause follows Article XIII of the Articles of Confederation, the predecessor of the Constitution, which provided that \"Every State shall abide by the determination of the [Congress], on all questions which by this confederation are submitted to them.\" \nAs a constitutional provision identifying the supremacy of federal law, the Supremacy Clause assumes the underlying priority of federal authority, albeit only when that authority is expressed in the Constitution itself; no matter what the federal or state governments might wish to do, they must stay within the boundaries of the Constitution. Consequently, the Supremacy Clause is considered a cornerstone of the United States' federal political structure.\nText.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.\nBackground.\nConstitutional Convention.\nAccording to Madison's Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, the Supremacy Clause was introduced as part of the New Jersey Plan. During the debate, it was first put up for a motion by Luther Martin on July 17, when it passed unanimously.\nDuring Pennsylvania's ratifying convention in late 1787, James Wilson stated, \"the power of the Constitution predominates. Anything, therefore, that shall be enacted by Congress contrary thereto, will not have the force of law.\"\n\"The Federalist Papers\".\nIn Federalist No. 33, Alexander Hamilton writes about the Supremacy Clause that federal laws by definition must be supreme. If the laws do not function from that position, then they amount to nothing, noting that \"A law, by the very meaning of the term, includes supremacy. It is a rule which those to whom it is prescribed are bound to observe. This results from every political association. If individuals enter into a state of society, the laws of that society must be the supreme regulator of their conduct. If a number of political societies enter into a larger political society, the laws which the latter may enact, pursuant to the powers entrusted to it by its constitution, must necessarily be supreme over those societies, and the individuals of whom they are composed.\"\nIn Federalist No. 44, James Madison defends the Supremacy Clause as vital to the functioning of the nation. He noted that state legislatures were invested with all powers not specifically defined in the Constitution, but also said that having the federal government subservient to various state constitutions would be an inversion of the principles of government, concluding that if supremacy were not established \"it would have seen the authority of the whole society everywhere subordinate to the authority of the parts; it would have seen a monster, in which the head was under the direction of the members\".\nAlexander Hamilton, wrote in Federalist No. 78 that, \"There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.\"\nPreemption doctrine.\nThe constitutional principle derived from the Supremacy Clause is federal preemption. Preemption applies regardless of whether the conflicting laws come from legislatures, courts, administrative agencies, or constitutions. For example, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, an act of Congress, preempts state constitutions, and Food and Drug Administration regulations may preempt state court judgments in cases involving prescription drugs.\nCongress has preempted state regulation in many areas. In some cases, such as the 1976 Medical Device Regulation Act, Congress preempted all state regulation. In others, such as labels on prescription drugs, Congress allowed federal regulatory agencies to set federal minimum standards but did not preempt state regulations imposing more stringent standards than those imposed by federal regulators. Where rules or regulations do not clearly state whether or not preemption should apply, the Supreme Court tries to follow lawmakers\u2019 intent and prefers interpretations that avoid preempting state laws.\nSubsequent federal case law.\n\"Chy Lung v. Freeman\" was brought to court when a passenger arriving in California on the Chinese vessel \"Japan\" was detained by the Commissioner of Immigration on the charge of being included by a state statute in the caste of \"lewd and debauched women,\" which require separate bonds from the owner of the vessel they came on in order to land on California's coast. The Supreme Court ruled against the plaintiff's detention on the basis that the statute preempted the federal legislation's ability to regulate the \"admission of citizens and subjects of foreign nations to our shores\".\n\"LULAC v. Wilson\" was brought to the Supreme Court in order to determine the constitutionality of California's Proposition 187, which the League of United Latin American Citizens argued was preempted by the federal government's authority over the regulation of foreign nationals in America. Proposition 187 was meant to assist cooperative efforts undertaken by national and sub-national governments to place stricter restrictions on undocumented immigrants \"from receiving benefits or public services in the State of California\". The Court decided that only a small portion of Proposition 187 was not preempted by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996\".\"\n\"Villas at Parkside Partners v. City of Farmers Branch\" dealt with an ordinance passed by the City of Farmers Branch. Ordinance 2952 forced individuals seeking to reside in a \"rented apartment or 'single-family residence.'\" need to obtain a license first. The Court ruled that Ordinance 2952 did in fact conflict with preexisting federal law and thus affirmed the lower court's decision.\nTreaties.\nThe supremacy of treaties over state law has been described as an \"unquestioned axiom of the founding\" of the United States. Under the Supremacy Clause, treaties and federal statutes are regarded equally as \"supreme law of the land\" with \"no superior efficacy ... given to either over the other\". Thus, international agreements made pursuant to the Treaty Clause\u2014namely, ratified with the advice and consent of a two-thirds supermajority of the Senate\u2014are treaties in the constitutional sense and thereby incorporated into U.S. federal law no differently than an act of Congress. Treaties are likewise subject to judicial interpretation and review just as any federal statute, and courts have consistently recognized them as legally binding under the Constitution.\nThe U.S. Supreme Court applied the Supremacy Clause for the first time in the 1796 case, \"Ware v. Hylton,\" ruling that a treaty superseded conflicting state law. The Court held that both states and private citizens were bound to comply with the treaty obligations of the federal government, which was in turn bound by the \"law of nations\" to honor treaties. Shortly thereafter, in the 1801 case, \"United States v. Schooner Peggy,\" the court ruled in favor of a private citizen's lawsuit against the government on the basis of a treaty, and for the first time elaborated upon supreme nature of ratified treaties:[W]here a treaty is the law of the land, and as such affects the rights of parties litigating in court, that treaty as much binds those rights and is as much to be regarded by the court as an act of congress; and although restoration may be an executive, when viewed as a substantive act, independent of and unconnected with other circumstances, yet to condemn a vessel, the restoration of which is directed by a law of the land, would be a direct infraction of that law, and of consequence improper.In \"Foster v. Nielson\" (1829), Chief Justice John Marshall, writing for the majority, affirmed that a treaty is constitutionally the \"law of the land\", but for the first time articulated a distinction between self-executing and non-self-executing agreements with respect to domestic law:Our constitution declares a treaty to be the law of the land. It is, consequently, to be regarded in courts of justice as equivalent to an act of the legislature, whenever it operates of itself, without the aid of any legislative provision. But when the terms of the stipulation import a contract\u2014when either of the parties engages to perform a particular act, the treaty addresses itself to the political, not the judicial department; and the legislature must execute the contract, before it can become a rule for the court.While it is generally agreed by constitutional scholars that treaties are as binding as domestic federal law, courts have differed on the enforceability of some types of international agreements and on the precise scope of a treaty's legal obligations. Beginning with the 1884 Head Money Cases, the Supreme Court has consistently held that Congress can abrogate a treaty by legislative action even if this amounts to a violation of the treaty under international law; indeed, courts will enforce congressional modifications of a treaty regardless of whether foreign actors still consider the treaty to be binding on the U.S. Nevertheless, in \"Missouri v. Holland\" (1920), the Supreme Court held that the Supremacy Clause allows the federal government to make treaties that supersede state law even if such treaties might abrogate states' rights arising under the Tenth Amendment. The decision implied that treaties can be used to legislate in areas otherwise within the exclusive authority of the states, and by extension in areas not within the scope of the federal government or its branches.\nHowever, \"Missouri\"'s potentially broad interpretation was circumscribed in the 1957 case, \"Reid v. Covert,\" when the Supreme Court held that treaties and the laws made pursuant to them must comply with the Constitution. The enforceability of treaties was further limited in the 2008 Supreme Court decision in \"Medell\u00edn v. Texas\", which held that even if a treaty may constitute an international commitment, it is not binding domestic law unless it has been implemented by an act of Congress or is itself explicitly \"self-executing\". Law scholars called the ruling \"an invisible constitutional change\" that departed from both longtime historical practice and the plain language of the Supremacy Clause.\nSupreme Court interpretations.\nIn \"Marbury v. Madison\", 5 U.S. 137 (1803), the Supreme Court held that Congress cannot pass laws that are contrary to the Constitution, and it is the role of the Judicial system to interpret what the Constitution permits. Citing the Supremacy Clause, the Court found Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 to be unconstitutional to the extent it purported to enlarge the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court beyond that permitted by the Constitution.\nIn \"Martin v. Hunter's Lessee\", 14 U.S. 304 (1816), and \"Cohens v. Virginia\", 19 U.S. 264 (1821), the Supreme Court held that the Supremacy Clause and the judicial power granted in Article III give the Supreme Court the ultimate power to review state court decisions involving issues arising under the Constitution and laws of the United States. Therefore, the Supreme Court has the final say in matters involving federal law, including constitutional interpretation, and can overrule decisions by state courts.\nIn \"McCulloch v. Maryland\", 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316 (1819), the Supreme Court reviewed a tax levied by Maryland on the federally incorporated Bank of the United States. The Court found that if a state had the power to tax a federally incorporated institution, then the state effectively had the power to destroy the federal institution, thereby thwarting the intent and purpose of Congress. This would make the states superior to the federal government. The Court found that this would be inconsistent with the Supremacy Clause, which makes federal law superior to state law. The Court therefore held that Maryland's tax on the bank was unconstitutional because the tax violated the Supremacy Clause.\nIn \"Ableman v. Booth\", 62 U.S. 506 (1859), the Supreme Court held that state courts cannot issue rulings that contradict the decisions of federal courts, citing the Supremacy Clause, and overturning a decision by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. Specifically, the court found it was illegal for state officials to interfere with the work of U.S. Marshals enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act or to order the release of federal prisoners held for violation of that Act. The Supreme Court reasoned that because the Supremacy Clause established federal law as the law of the land, the Wisconsin courts could not nullify the judgments of a federal court. The Supreme Court held that under Article III of the Constitution, the federal courts have the final jurisdiction in all cases involving the Constitution and laws of the United States, and that the states therefore cannot interfere with federal court judgments.\nIn \"Pennsylvania v. Nelson\", 350 U.S. 497 (1956) the Supreme Court struck down the Pennsylvania Sedition Act, which made advocating the forceful overthrow of the federal government a crime under Pennsylvania state law. The Supreme Court held that when federal interest in an area of law is sufficiently dominant, federal law must be assumed to preclude enforcement of state laws on the same subject; and a state law is not to be declared a help when state law goes farther than Congress has seen fit to go.\nIn \"Cooper v. Aaron\", 358 U.S. 1 (1958), the Supreme Court rejected attempts by Arkansas to nullify the Court's school desegregation decision, \"Brown v. Board of Education\". The state of Arkansas, acting on a theory of states' rights, had adopted several statutes designed to nullify the desegregation ruling. The Supreme Court relied on the Supremacy Clause to hold that the federal law controlled and could not be nullified by state statutes or officials.\nIn \"Edgar v. MITE Corp.\", 457 U.S. 624 (1982), the Supreme Court ruled: \"A state statute is void to the extent that it actually conflicts with a valid Federal statute\". In effect, this means that a state law will be found to violate the Supremacy Clause when either of the following two conditions (or both) exist:\nThe Supreme Court has also held that only specific, \"unmistakable\" acts of Congress may be held to trigger the Supremacy Clause. Montana had imposed a 30 percent tax on most sub-bituminous coal mined there. The Commonwealth Edison Company and other utility companies argued, in part, that the Montana tax \"frustrated\" the broad goals of the federal energy policy. However, in the case of \"Commonwealth Edison Co. v. Montana\", 453 U.S. 609 (1981), the Supreme Court disagreed. Any appeal to claims about \"national policy\", the Court said, were insufficient to overturn a state law under the Supremacy Clause unless \"the nature of the regulated subject matter permits no other conclusion, or that the Congress has unmistakably so ordained\".\nHowever, in the case of \"California v. ARC America Corp.\", 490 U.S. 93 (1989), the Supreme Court held that if Congress expressly \"intended\" to act in an area, this would trigger the enforcement of the Supremacy Clause, and hence nullify the state action. The Supreme Court further found in \"Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council\", 530 U.S. 363 (2000), that even when a state law is not in direct conflict with a federal law, the state law could still be found unconstitutional under the Supremacy Clause if the \"state law is an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of Congress's full purposes and objectives\". Congress need not expressly assert any preemption over state laws either, because Congress may implicitly assume this preemption under the Constitution. Finally, in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association the Supreme Court enforced the Supremacy Clause by overturning Federal law as an unconstitutional encroachment into the domain of the states not within of the limits of the Delegated powers, stating that \"The Constitution confers on Congress not plenary legislative power but only certain enumerated powers\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["33730953", "27552742"], "permutation_1": ["27552742", "33730953"], "permutation_2": ["27552742", "33730953"], "permutation_3": ["27552742", "33730953"]}
{"id": "2hop__528348_276103", "docs_added": {"134350": "North Kingstown, Rhode Island\nNorth Kingstown is a town in Washington County, Rhode Island, United States, and is part of the Providence metropolitan area. The population was 27,732 in the 2020 census. North Kingstown is home to the birthplace of American portraitist Gilbert Stuart, who was born in the village of Saunderstown. Within the town is Quonset Point, location of the former Naval Air Station Quonset Point, known for the invention of the Quonset hut, as well as the historic village of Wickford.\nHistory.\nThe area was first settled by Roger Williams and Richard Smith who set up trading posts near Wickford where Smith's Castle is today. The town of Kings Towne was founded in 1674, by the colonial government, and included the present day towns of North Kingstown, South Kingstown, Exeter, and Narragansett. In 1723, Kings Towne was split into two parts, North Kingstown and South Kingstown, with North Kingstown, having the earliest settlements, retaining the 1674 establishment date. In 1742, the town of Exeter was taken from the western part of North Kingstown.\nOn September 17, 2024, the National Park Service announced that North Kingstown was named a World War II Heritage City.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of which is land and (25.28%) is water. It is bordered on the east by Narragansett Bay.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nAs of the 2020 census, there were 27,732 people and 11,338 households in the town. The population density was . There were 12,189 housing units in the town. The racial makeup of the town was 89.59% White, 1.27% African American, 0.57% American Indian/Alaska Native, 1.90% Asian, 1.19% from some other race other races, and 5.42% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 3.65% of the population.\nThere were 11,338 households, out of which 28.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 54.7% were married couples living together, 23.6% had a female householder with no spouse present and 14.2% had a male householder with no spouse present. 11.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 4.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.42 and the average family size was 2.98.\nIn the town, the population was spread out, with 18.4% under the age of 18, 9.5% from 18 to 24, 22.6% from 25 to 44, 28.1% from 45 to 64, and 21.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 44 years.\nThe median income for a household in the town was $120,565, and the median income for a family was $144,898. The per capita income for the town was $61,280. About 6.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 9.1% of those under age 18 and 6.6% of those age 65 or over.\nTransportation.\nWickford Junction is a terminus station on the Providence/Stoughton Line of the MBTA Commuter Rail, providing weekday train service to Providence Station and Boston's South Station. At 63 miles from Boston, it is the most distant station in the MBTA's 135-station commuter-rail network, and the only one in its most expensive fare zone.\nRIPTA also services in the town inbound to Providence and outbound to Narragansett or Newport.\nNorth Kingstown is also served by a passenger ferry connecting to the island of Martha's Vineyard.\nEducation.\nNorth Kingstown School Department is the municipal school district. It operates North Kingstown High School.\nOther National Historic Places in North Kingstown.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>", "31534787": "Augusto Grace\nAmerican politician\nAugusto Francisco Grace (born April 9, 1954) is an American lawyer and politician who represented the 23rd Middlesex District in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1987 to 1991 and the Burlington School Committee from 1977 to 1983.\nHe was born in North Kingstown, Rhode Island. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1976 and from Boston College Law School with a Juris Doctor in 1984.\nHe practiced law in Boston until 2007. From 2007 to 2009 he served as the director of professional development for the Massachusetts Highway Department. From 2009 to 2015 he worked in the Talent Management and Professional Development Division of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation rising to the position of department manager. Since 2015 he has served as the deputy director of education and development at the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. He is a former executive director, president, and treasurer of the National Guard Association of Massachusetts and National Guard Executive Directors Association.\nGrace was defeated by Republican Marianne Brenton in the 1990 election. He was a candidate for Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1994, but lost in the Democratic Primary to William F. Galvin.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "34119": "W. G. Grace\nEnglish cricketer (1848\u20131915)\nWilliam Gilbert Grace (18 July 1848 \u2013 23 October 1915) was an English cricketer who is widely considered one of the sport's all-time greatest players. Always known by his initials as \"WG\", his first-class career spanned a record-equalling 44 seasons from 1865 to 1908. Test cricket originated during his career, and he represented England in 22 matches from 1880 to 1899. In domestic cricket, he was mostly associated with Gloucestershire, the Gentlemen, Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), and the United South of England Eleven (USEE).\nRight-handed as both batsman and bowler, Grace was an outstanding all-rounder who excelled at all the essential skills of batting, bowling, and fielding, though it is for his batting that he is most renowned, as he is held to have invented modern batsmanship. He dominated the sport during his career, and his technical innovations and enormous influence have left a lasting legacy. Usually opening the innings, he was particularly admired for his mastery of all strokes, and his level of expertise was said by contemporary reviewers to be unique. He generally captained the teams he played for at all levels because of his skill and tactical acumen. Grace nominally held amateur status as a player, but he was said to have made more money from his cricketing activities than any contemporary professional. He was an extremely competitive player and, though he was one of the most famous men in England, he was also one of the most controversial on account of his gamesmanship and moneymaking.\nHe came from a cricketing family which included his elder brother Edward (\"EM\"), and his younger brother Fred. In 1880, they were members of the same England team, the first time three brothers played together in a Test match. Grace took part in other sports\u2014as a young man, he was a champion 440-yard hurdler, and played football for the Wanderers. In later life, he developed enthusiasm for golf, lawn bowls, and curling. He qualified as a medical practitioner in 1879.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nEarly years.\nFamily.\nGrace was born in Downend, near Bristol, on 18 July 1848 at his parents' home, Downend House, and was baptised at the local church on 8 August. He was called Gilbert in the family circle, except by his mother, who apparently called him Willie, but otherwise, as \"WG\", he was universally known by his initials. His parents were Henry Mills Grace and Martha (\"n\u00e9e\" Pocock), who were married in Bristol on Thursday, 3 November 1831 and lived out their lives at Downend, where Henry Grace was the local GP. Downend is near Mangotsfield and, although it is now a suburb of Bristol, it was then a detached village surrounded by countryside, and about four miles from Bristol. Henry and Martha Grace had nine children in all. Biographer Simon Rae commented that this was \"the same number as Victoria and Albert\u2014and in every respect they were the typical Victorian family\". Grace was the eighth child in the family; he had three older brothers, including Edward (always known as \"EM\"), and four older sisters. The ninth child was his younger brother Fred, born in 1850.\nEducation.\nGrace was \"notoriously unscholarly\". His first schooling was with a Miss Trotman in Downend village and then with a Mr Curtis of Winterbourne. He subsequently attended a day school called Ridgway House, run by a Mr Malpas, until he was fourteen. One of his schoolmasters, David Bernard, later married Grace's sister Alice. In 1863, Grace was taken seriously ill with pneumonia and his father removed him from Ridgway House. After this illness, Grace grew rapidly to his full height of 6\u00a0ft 2\u00a0in (1.88 m). He continued his education at home where one of his tutors was the Reverend John Dann, the Downend parish church curate; like Mr Bernard before him, Mr Dann became Grace's brother-in-law, marrying Blanche Grace in 1869.\nGrace never went to university because his father wanted him to pursue a medical career. Nevertheless, Grace received approaches from both Oxford University Cricket Club and Cambridge University Cricket Club. In 1866, when he played a match at Oxford, one of the Oxford players, Edmund Carter, tried to interest him in becoming an undergraduate. Then, in 1868, Grace received overtures from Caius College, Cambridge, which had a long medical tradition. Grace said he would have gone to either Oxford or Cambridge if his father had allowed it. Instead, he enrolled at Bristol Medical School in October 1868, when he was 20.\nGrace's entire life, including his cricket and medical careers, is inseparable from his close-knit family background which was strongly influenced by his father, who set great store by qualifications and determination to succeed. Henry, whose medical qualifications were Licenciate of the Society of Apothecaries (LSA) in 1828 and Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons (MRCS) in 1830, passed this purposeful attitude on to each of his five sons. Therefore, like his father and his brothers, Grace chose a professional career in medicine\u2014because of his cricketing commitments, however, he did not complete his qualification as a doctor until 1879, when he was 31 years old.\nDevelopment as a cricketer.\nGrace began his \"Cricketing Reminiscences\" (1899) by answering a question he had frequently been asked\u2014\"was he born a cricketer\"? His answer was in the negative because he believed that \"cricketers are made by coaching and practice\", though he added that if he was not born a cricketer, he was born \"in the atmosphere of cricket\". His father and mother were \"full of enthusiasm for the game\" and it was \"a common theme of conversation at home\". In 1850, when WG was two and Fred was expected, the family moved to a nearby house called \"The Chesnuts\" which had a sizeable orchard and Henry Grace organised clearance of this to establish a practice pitch. All nine children in the Grace family, including the four daughters, were encouraged to play cricket although the girls, along with the dogs, were required for fielding only. Grace claimed that he first handled a cricket bat at the age of two.\nIt was in the Downend orchard and as members of their local cricket clubs that he and his brothers developed their skills, mainly under the tutelage of their uncle, Alfred Pocock, who spent long hours coaching them at Downend. EM, who was seven years older than WG, had always played with a full size bat and so developed a tendency, that he never lost, to hit across the line, the bat being too big for him to \"play straight\". Pocock recognised this problem and determined that WG and Fred should not follow suit. He therefore fashioned smaller bats for them, to suit their sizes, and they were taught to play straight and \"learn defence, with the left shoulder well forward\", before attempting to hit. Apart from his cricket and his schooling, Grace lived the life of a country boy and roamed freely with the other village boys. One of his regular activities was stone throwing at birds in the fields and he later claimed that this was the source of his eventual skill as an outfielder.\nHenry Grace founded Mangotsfield Cricket Club in 1845 to represent several neighbouring villages including Downend. In 1846, this club merged with the West Gloucestershire Cricket Club whose name was adopted until 1867; it has been said that the Grace family ran the West Gloucestershire \"almost as a private club\". Henry Grace managed to organise matches against Lansdown Cricket Club in Bath, which was the premier West Country club. West Gloucestershire fared poorly in these games and, sometime in the 1850s, Henry Grace and Alfred Pocock decided to join Lansdown, although they continued to run the West Gloucestershire and this remained their primary club.\nGrace recorded in his \"Reminiscences\" that he saw his first \"great\" cricket match in 1854 when he was barely six years old, the occasion being a game between William Clarke's All-England Eleven (the AEE) and twenty-two of West Gloucestershire. He first played for the West Gloucestershire club himself as early as 1857, when he was nine years old, and he had eleven innings in 1859. The first time he made a substantial score was in July 1860 when he scored 51 for West Gloucestershire against Clifton\u2014forty years later, he said no innings ever gave him more pleasure.\nIt was through Grace's elder brother EM, however, that the family name first became famous. Their mother, Martha, wrote the following in a letter to William Clarke's successor George Parr in 1860 or 1861:\nI am writing to ask you to consider the inclusion of my son, E. M. Grace\u2014a splendid hitter and most excellent catch\u2014in your England XI. I am sure he would play very well and do the team much credit. It may interest you to learn that I have another son, now twelve years of age, who will in time be a much better player than his brother because his back stroke is sounder, and he always plays with a straight bat.\nGrace was just short of his thirteenth birthday when, on 5 July 1861, he made his debut for Lansdown and played two matches that month. EM had made his debut in 1857, aged sixteen. In August 1862, aged 14, Grace played for West Gloucestershire against a Devonshire team. A year later, following the bout of pneumonia which had left him bed-ridden for several weeks, he scored 52 not out and took five wickets to help Gentlemen of Gloucestershire defeat Gentlemen of Somerset by 87 runs at the Sydenham Field ground in Bath. Soon afterwards, he was one of four family members who played for a Bristol and Didcot XVIII against the All-England Eleven. He scored 32 off the bowling of John Jackson, George Tarrant, Cris Tinley, and Ned Willsher\u2014before Tinley bowled him. EM took ten wickets in the match, which Bristol and Didcot won by an innings, and as a result EM was invited to tour Australia a few months later with George Parr's England team.\nEM did not return from Australia until July 1864 and his absence presented Grace with an opportunity to appear on cricket's greatest stages. He and his elder brother Henry were invited to play for the South Wales team which had arranged a series of matches in London and Sussex, though Grace wondered humorously how they were qualified to represent South Wales. It was the first time that Grace left the West Country and he made his debut appearances at both The Oval and Lord's.\nBesides his cricketing skills, Grace was an outstanding athlete as a young man and took part in several meetings. He threw a cricket ball during a field event at Eastbourne. He won the hurdling title at the National Olympian Games at Crystal Palace in August 1866, and claimed the silver medal in the quarter-mile event at the 1869 AAC Championships. Also, Grace is known to have played football for the Wanderers, although he did not feature in any of their FA Cup-winning teams.\nFirst-class career.\nGentlemen v Players.\nHaving scored 5 and 38 for South Wales in his first match at The Oval, Grace was outstanding in the next match, scoring 170 and 56* against Gentlemen of Sussex at the Royal Brunswick Ground in Hove. The innings of 170 was his first-ever century in a serious match. The third match, against Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) was Grace's debut at Lord's, and he was joined there by EM who had just disembarked from his voyage. Grace scored 50 in the first innings, only three days after his sixteenth birthday.\nHis name now well known in cricketing circles, Grace played for Gentlemen of the South against Players of the South in June 1865, when he was still only 16 but already tall and weighing . This match is recognised as his first-class debut. Gentlemen of the South, batting first, won the match by an innings and 58 runs. Grace was out, stumped, without scoring but he bowled extremely well and had match figures of 13 for 84 to earn his first selection for the Gentlemen v Players fixture.\nDuring this period, before the start of Test cricket in 1877, Gentlemen v Players was the most prestigious fixture in which a player could take part. This is apart from North v South, which was technically a fixture of higher quality given that the amateur Gentlemen were usually (until Grace took a hand) outclassed by the professional Players. Grace was to represent the Gentlemen in their matches against the Players from 1865 to 1906. It was he who enabled the amateurs to meet the paid professionals on level terms and to defeat them more often than not. His ability to master fast bowling was the key factor. Before Grace's debut in the fixture, the Gentlemen had lost 19 consecutive games; of the next 39 games, they won 27 and lost only 4. In seven consecutive innings against the Players from 1871 to 1873, Grace scored 217, 77, 112, 117, 163, 158 and 70. In his whole career, he scored a record 15 centuries in the fixture.\nHis 1865 debut for the Gentlemen did not turn the tide as the Players won at The Oval by 118 runs. He had been selected as a bowler and took seven wickets in the match. Batting late in the order, he scored 23 and 12*. In the second 1865 match, this time at Lord's, the Gentlemen finally ended their losing streak and won by 8 wickets, but it was EM who made the difference with 11 wickets in the match. Even so, Grace made his mark by scoring 34 out of 77/2 in the second innings to steer the Gentlemen to victory.\n\"The Champion\".\nCricket in the 1860s underwent a revolution with the legalisation of overarm bowling in June 1864, and Grace himself said it was \"no exaggeration to say that, between 1860 and 1870, English cricket passed through its most critical period\" with the game in transition, and \"it was quite a revolutionary period so far as its rules were concerned\". He was still 15 when the 1864 season began and had turned 20 when he began his medical career by enrolling at Bristol Medical School on 7 October 1868. During those five seasons, and especially in 1866, he became widely recognised as the finest cricketer in England. Just after his eighteenth birthday in July 1866, he confirmed his potential with an innings of 224* for All-England against Surrey at The Oval. It was his maiden first-class century and, according to Harry Altham, he was \"thenceforward the biggest name in cricket and the main spectator attraction with the successes (coming) thick and fast\".\nTwo years later, Grace scored two centuries in a match, only the second time in cricket history that this is known to have been done, following William Lambert in 1817. Summarising the 1868 season, Simon Rae wrote that Grace was: \nNow indisputably the cricketer of the age, the Champion.\nGrace had numerous nicknames during his career including \"The Doctor\", after he achieved his medical qualification, and \"The Old Man\", as he reached the veteran stage. \"The Champion\" was the most auspicious\u2014in the poem \"At Lord's\" by Francis Thompson, he was hailed as \"The Champion of the Centuries\". Grace was first acclaimed as the \"Champion Cricketer\" by \"Lillywhite's Companion\" in recognition of his exploits in 1871.\nMCC membership.\nGrace became a member of MCC in 1869 after being proposed by the treasurer, Thomas Burgoyne, and seconded by the secretary, Robert Allan Fitzgerald. Given an ongoing rift in the sport during the 1860s between the northern professionals and Surrey, MCC feared the loss of its authority should Grace \"throw in his lot with the professionals\" so it was considered vital for them and their interests to get him onside. As it happens, the dispute was nearly over but it has been said that \"MCC regained its authority over the game by hanging onto WG's shirt-tails\". Grace wore MCC colours for the rest of his career, playing for them on an irregular basis until 1904, and their red and yellow hooped cap became as synonymous with him as his large black beard. He played for MCC on an expenses only basis, but any hopes the club had of keeping him firmly within the amateur ranks would soon be disappointed for his services were much in demand.\nGrace scored four centuries in July 1869, including an innings of 180 at The Oval. That was achieved as part of the highest wicket partnership involving Grace in his entire career: he shared 283 runs for the first wicket with Bransby Cooper. Later in the month, Grace scored 122 out of 173 in difficult batting conditions during a North v South match at Bramall Lane, prompting the laconic Tom Emmett to call him a \"nonsuch\" (without equal), and declare: \"He ought to be made to play with a littler bat\".\nGloucestershire.\nIt is generally understood that Gloucestershire County Cricket Club was formally constituted in 1870, having developed from Dr Henry Grace's West Gloucestershire club. Gloucestershire acquired first-class status when its team played against Surrey at Durdham Down on 2, 3 and 4 June 1870. With Grace and his brothers EM and Fred playing, Gloucestershire won by 51 runs. The club soon had one of the best teams in England and was unanimously rated Champion County in 1876 and 1877, as well as sharing the unofficial title in 1873 and staking a claim for it in 1874. Surrey and Gloucestershire played a return match at The Oval in July 1870, and Gloucestershire won it by an innings and 129 runs. Grace scored 143, sharing a second wicket partnership of 234 with Frank Townsend, who scored 89. The Grace family \"ran the show\" at Gloucestershire and EM was chosen as secretary which, as Derek Birley pointed out, \"put him in charge of expenses, a source of scandal that was to surface before the end of the decade\". WG, though aged only 21, was from the start the team captain and Birley put that down to his \"commercial drawing power\".\nGrace, a medical student at the time, was first on the scene in June 1870, when George Summers received the blow on the head that caused his death four days later. This was in the MCC v Nottinghamshire match at Lord's. Grace was fielding nearby when Summers was struck, and took his pulse. Summers recovered consciousness and Grace advised him to leave the field. Summers did not go to hospital, but it transpired later that his skull had been fractured. The Lord's pitch had a poor reputation for being rough, uneven, and unpredictable all through the 19th century and many players including Grace considered it dangerous.\nIt was in 1870 that, as Birley put it, Grace \"scorned the puny modern fashion of moustaches\" and grew the enormous black beard that made him so recognisable. In addition, his \"ample girth\" had developed for he weighed 15\u00a0stone (95\u00a0kg) in his early twenties. Grace was a non-smoker but he enjoyed good food and wine; many years later, when discussing the overheads incurred during Lord Sheffield's profitless tour of Australia in 1891\u201392, Arthur Shrewsbury commented: \"I told you what wine would be drunk by the amateurs; Grace himself would drink enough to swim a ship\".\n\"Annus mirabilis\".\nAccording to Harry Altham, 1871 was Grace's \"annus mirabilis\". In all first-class matches in 1871, a total of seventeen centuries were scored and Grace accounted for ten of them, including the first in a first-class match at Trent Bridge. He averaged 78.25 runs per innings, and the next best average by a batsman playing more than a single innings was 39.57, barely more than half his figure. His aggregate for the season was 2,739 runs\u2014the first time anyone had scored 2,000 first-class runs in a season\u2014and the next highest was Harry Jupp with 1,068.\nGrace produced two outstanding batting performances in the season. Playing for the Single against the Married at Lord's, Grace carried his bat to score 189*. He and his brother Fred shared a third wicket partnership of 108. The innings was played on a \"sticky wicket\" after rain, and many people considered it the finest of Grace's career, though Grace himself disagreed. He began cautiously and took fifteen minutes to score his first run but then, as Rae put it, he \"scored at a cracking pace\". MCC Secretary Harry Perkins had no doubts and insisted that it was Grace's greatest-ever performance with rain frequently stopping play and making the wicket at times \"unplayable\". Later, when he represented the South against the North at The Oval, he made his highest career score to date of 268, having been dismissed by Jem Shaw for nought in the first innings. It was to no avail as the match was drawn, but the occasion produced a memorable and oft-quoted comment by Shaw who ruefully said: \"I puts the ball where I likes, and he puts it where he likes\". \nThe United South and the first overseas tour.\n1871 was a great year for Grace on the field, but it was marred by the death of his father in December. Grace and his younger brother Fred still lived with their mother, who had been left just enough to retain the family home in Downend. As medical students (Fred started his course in the autumn of 1872), the brothers faced considerable outlay in addition to their living expenses, and it became imperative for them to make what they could out of cricket, especially the United South of England Eleven (USEE).\nUSEE had been formed by Ned Willsher in 1865 but the heyday of the travelling teams was over and their organisers were desperate to feature new attractions. In 1872, USEE played six matches, including games in Edinburgh and Glasgow, Grace's first visit to Scotland. \nThe Graces had formally joined the club in 1870, playing for expenses only. As its match organisers, however, they also received wages. They had to find gaps in the first-class fixture list and then pull together a team to visit a location where a suitable profit could be made. It has been estimated that the standard fee paid to the USEE was \u00a3100 for a three-day match () with \u00a35 (\u00a3) each going to the nine professionals in the team and the other \u00a345 (\u00a3) to WG and Fred. Otherwise, Grace played for expenses but these were loaded as, for example, he is known to have claimed \u00a315 per appearance for Gloucestershire and \u00a320 for representing the Gentlemen. To put it in context, a domestic servant earned less than \u00a350 a year.\n1872 was a wet summer and Grace ended his season in early August so that he could join a tour of North America. He made three overseas tours during his career, and this first one was to the United States and Canada with R. A. Fitzgerald's team in August and September 1872. All expenses were paid by the Montreal Club who had written to Fitzgerald the previous winter and invited him to form a team. Grace and his all-amateur colleagues made short work of the weak teams they faced. The team included two other future England captains in A. N. Hornby, who became a rival of Grace in later years; and the Honourable George Harris, the future Lord Harris, who became a very close friend and a most useful ally. The team met in Liverpool on 8 August and sailed on the SS \"Sarmatian\", docking at Quebec on 17 August. Rae recounted that the bond between Grace and Harris was forged by their mutual sea-sickness. Matches were played in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, London, New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. The team sailed back from Quebec on 27 September and arrived at Liverpool on 8 October. Grace wrote that the tour was \"a high point of (his) early years\" and he \"retained fond memories of it\" for the rest of his life, calling it \"a prolonged and happy picnic\" in his ghost-written \"Reminiscences\".\nTowards a county championship.\n1873 was the year that some semblance of organisation was brought into county cricket with the introduction of a residence qualification. This was aimed principally at England's outstanding bowler James Southerton who had been playing for both Surrey and Sussex, having been born in one county and living in the other. Southerton chose to play for his county of residence, Surrey, from then on but remained the country's top bowler. The counties agreed on residence but not on a means of deciding a County Championship and so the title, known as \"Champion County\", remained an unofficial award by newspapers until 1890. Grace's Gloucestershire had a very strong claim to this unofficial title in 1873 but consensus was that they shared it with Nottinghamshire. These two did not play each other and both were unbeaten in six matches, though Nottinghamshire won five and Gloucestershire won four.\nNottinghamshire and Gloucestershire were due to meet at the end of July, only for a row to erupt after Nottinghamshire requested a change of date. The Gloucestershire committee agreed to the new date, but Grace objected because he had promised to play in a benefit match at Sheffield for Yorkshire's Joseph Rowbotham. The clubs insisted on the change, so the Graces closed ranks and refused to play, and the match was cancelled. That caused uproar among the Gloucestershire committee, where EM as club secretary found himself defending the family against multiple complaints of \"high-handedness\". It changed nothing except that the entire committee boycotted the next meeting, so EM recorded himself as sole attendee in the minutes.\nGrace had another outstanding season on the field in 1873, when he became the first player ever to complete the \"double\" of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in a season. He went on to do the double eight times in all from 1873 to 1886.\nEnglish cricket dishonoured.\nOn 9 October 1873, Grace was married to Agnes Nicholls Day (1853\u20131930), who was the daughter of his first cousin William Day. Two weeks later, they began their honeymoon by taking ship to Australia for Grace's 1873\u201374 tour. They returned from the tour in May 1874 with Agnes six months pregnant. Their eldest son William Gilbert junior (1874\u20131905) was born on 6 July. Grace had to catch up with his studies at Bristol Medical School, and he and his wife and son lived at Downend until February 1875 with his mother, brother Fred and sister Fanny.\nThe English team in Australia was called W. G. Grace's XI. On the morning of their departure from Southampton, Grace responded to well-wishers by saying that his team \"had a duty to perform to maintain the honour of English cricket, and to uphold the high character of English cricketers\". But both his and the team's performances fell well short of this goal. The tour was not a success and the only positive outcome was the fact of it having taken place, ten years after the previous one, as it \"gave Australian cricket a much needed fillip\". Most of the problems lay with Grace himself and his \"overbearing personality\", which quickly exhausted all personal goodwill towards him. There was also bad feeling within the team itself because Grace, who normally got on well with professional players, enforced the class divide throughout the tour.\nGloucestershire the Champion County.\nHaving toured Australia in the winter of 1873\u201374, Grace arrived in England on 18 May 1874 and was quickly back into domestic cricket. The 1874 season was very successful for him as he completed a second successive double. Gloucestershire again had a strong claim to the Champion County title although some sources have awarded it to Derbyshire, and Grace himself said that it should have gone to Yorkshire.\nAnother good season followed in 1875 when he again completed the double with 1,498 runs and 191 wickets, his most successful season as a bowler. The family moved to London in February 1875\u2014after Grace was assigned to St Bartholomew's Hospital\u2014and lived at Earl's Court, about five miles from the City. Their second son, Henry Edgar, was born there in July 1876.\nOne of the most outstanding phases of Grace's career occurred in the 1876 season, beginning with his career highest score of 344 for MCC against Kent at the St Lawrence Ground, Canterbury, in August. Two days after his innings at Canterbury, he made 177 for Gloucestershire against Nottinghamshire, and two days after that 318* for Gloucestershire v Yorkshire, these two innings against counties with exceptionally strong bowling attacks. Thus, in three consecutive innings, Grace scored 839 runs and was only out twice. His innings of 344 was the first triple century scored in first-class cricket and broke the record for the highest individual score in all classes of cricket, previously held by William Ward, who had scored 278 in 1820. Ward's record had stood for 56 years and, within a week, Grace bettered it twice. His 318* against Yorkshire was the record score in county cricket.\nGloucestershire were recognised as champions for the third and final time in 1877, largely thanks to another outstanding season by Grace who scored 1,474 runs and took 179 wickets. In the autumn of that year, the family"}, "descending_order": ["31534787", "34119", "134350"], "permutation_1": ["31534787", "34119", "134350"], "permutation_2": ["34119", "31534787", "134350"], "permutation_3": ["31534787", "34119", "134350"]}
{"id": "2hop__802353_125776", "docs_added": {"12332877": "Piano Sonata No. 9 (Mozart)\nWolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 9 in D major, K. 311 / 284c, was written on the composer's stay in Augsburg and Mannheim in November-December 1777, and is contemporaneous with his Sonata No. 7 in C Major K. 309 (Mozart wrote his Sonata K. 310 in the summer of the following year, in Paris). The three sonatas K. 309\u2013311 were published as a set 'Opus IV' in about 1782, by Franz Joseph Heina in Paris.\n<templatestyles src=\"Stack/styles.css\"/>\nThe work has three movements:\nA typical performance takes about 15 to 17 minutes.\nThe first movement is in sonata form. Its first subject has a quasi-orchestral opening, and its second subject in the dominant key (A major) is quieter. The development section is almost entirely based on the last four bars of the exposition.\nThe second movement has an episodic structure A\u2013B\u2013A\u2013B\u2013A\u2013coda. The second theme's melody is gently decorated with syncopation, accompanied by broken chords in the left hand. This key is G major, the subdominant of D major.\nLastly, the most technically demanding movement of the three is a sonata rondo, with a short central episode in B minor (the main key's relative minor). A slow cadenza-like passage containing a rapid ascending chromatic scale leads back to the first theme. In this passage the beginnings of the main theme of the famous second movement of the Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467, can be heard emerging - 8 years before he wrote it in 1785.", "33163": "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart\nComposer (1756\u20131791)\nWolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 \u2013 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age resulted in more than 800 works representing virtually every Western classical genre of his time. Many of these compositions are acknowledged as pinnacles of the symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral repertoires. Mozart is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music, with his music admired for its \"melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture\".\nBorn in Salzburg, Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. At age five, he was already competent on keyboard and violin, had begun to compose, and performed before European royalty. His father took him on a grand tour of Europe and then three trips to Italy. At 17, he was a musician at the Salzburg court but grew restless and travelled in search of a better position. Mozart's search for employment led to positions in Paris, Mannheim, Munich, and again in Salzburg, during which he wrote his five violin concertos, Sinfonia Concertante, and Concerto for Flute and Harp, as well as sacred pieces and masses, the motet\u00a0\"Exsultate Jubilate\", and the opera \"Idomeneo,\" among other works.\nWhile visiting Vienna in 1781, Mozart was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He stayed in Vienna, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During Mozart's early years in Vienna, he produced several notable works, such as the opera \"Die Entf\u00fchrung aus dem Serail\", the \"Great Mass in C minor\", the \"Haydn\" Quartets and a number of symphonies. Throughout his Vienna years, Mozart composed over a dozen piano concertos, many considered some of his greatest achievements. In the final years of his life, Mozart wrote many of his best-known works, including his last three symphonies, culminating in the \"Jupiter\" Symphony, the serenade \"Eine kleine Nachtmusik\", his Clarinet Concerto, the operas \"The Marriage of Figaro\", \"Don Giovanni\", \"Cos\u00ec fan tutte\" and \"The Magic Flute\" and his Requiem. The Requiem was largely unfinished at the time of his death at age 35, the circumstances of which are uncertain and much mythologised.\nLife and career.\nEarly life.\nFamily and childhood.\nWolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on 27 January 1756 to Leopold Mozart and Anna Maria, n\u00e9e Pertl, at Getreidegasse 9 in Salzburg. Salzburg was the capital of the Archbishopric of Salzburg, an ecclesiastic principality in the Holy Roman Empire (today in Austria). He was the youngest of seven children, five of whom died in infancy. His elder sister was Maria Anna Mozart, nicknamed \"Nannerl\". Mozart was baptised the day after his birth, at St. Rupert's Cathedral in Salzburg. The baptismal record gives his name in Latinised form, as \"Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart\". He generally called himself \"Wolfgang Amad\u00e8 Mozart\" as an adult, but his name had many variants.\nLeopold Mozart, a native of Augsburg, then an Imperial Free City in the Holy Roman Empire, was a minor composer and an experienced teacher. In 1743, he was appointed as the fourth violinist in the musical establishment of Count Leopold Anton von Firmian, the ruling Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. Four years later, he married Anna Maria in Salzburg. Leopold became the orchestra's deputy Kapellmeister in 1763. During the year of his son's birth, Leopold published a violin textbook, \"Versuch einer gr\u00fcndlichen Violinschule\", which achieved success.\nWhen Nannerl was seven, she began keyboard lessons with her father, while her three-year-old brother looked on. Years later, after her brother's death, she reminisced:\nHe often spent much time at the clavier, picking out thirds, which he was ever striking, and his pleasure showed that it sounded good... In the fourth year of his age his father, for a game as it were, began to teach him a few minuets and pieces at the clavier... He could play it faultlessly and with the greatest delicacy, and keeping exactly in time... At the age of five, he was already composing little pieces, which he played to his father who wrote them down.\nThese early pieces, K. 1\u20135, were recorded in the \"Nannerl Notenbuch\". There is some scholarly debate about whether Mozart was four or five years old when he created his first musical compositions, though there is little doubt that Mozart composed his first three pieces of music within a few weeks of each other: K. 1a, 1b, and 1c.\nIn his early years, Wolfgang's father was his only teacher. Along with music, he taught his children languages and academic subjects. Biographer Solomon notes that, while Leopold was a devoted teacher to his children, there is evidence that Mozart was keen to progress beyond what he was taught. His first ink-spattered composition and his precocious efforts with the violin were of his initiative and came as a surprise to Leopold, who eventually gave up composing when his son's musical talents became evident.\n1762\u201373: Travel.\nWhile Wolfgang was young, his family made several European journeys in which he and Nannerl performed as child prodigies. These began with an exhibition in 1762 at the court of Prince-elector Maximilian III of Bavaria in Munich, and at the Imperial Courts in Vienna and Prague. A long concert tour followed, spanning three and a half years, taking the family to the courts of Munich, Mannheim, Paris, London, Dover, The Hague, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Mechelen and again to Paris, and back home via Z\u00fcrich, Donaueschingen, and Munich. During this trip, Wolfgang met many musicians and acquainted himself with the works of other composers. A particularly significant influence was Johann Christian Bach, whom he visited in London in 1764 and 1765. When he was eight years old, Mozart wrote his first symphony, most of which was probably transcribed by his father.\nThe family trips were often challenging, and travel conditions were primitive. They had to wait for invitations and reimbursement from the nobility, and they endured long, near-fatal illnesses far from home: first Leopold (London, summer 1764), then both children (The Hague, autumn 1765). The family again went to Vienna in late 1767 and remained there until December 1768.\nAfter one year in Salzburg, Leopold and Wolfgang set off for Italy, leaving Anna Maria and Nannerl at home. This tour lasted from December 1769 to March 1771. As with earlier journeys, Leopold wanted to display his son's abilities as a performer and a rapidly maturing composer. Wolfgang met Josef Myslive\u010dek and Giovanni Battista Martini in Bologna and was accepted as a member of the famous Accademia Filarmonica. There exists a myth, according to which, while in Rome, he heard Gregorio Allegri's \"Miserere\" twice in performance in the Sistine Chapel. Allegedly, he subsequently wrote it out from memory, thus producing the \"first unauthorised copy of this closely guarded property of the Vatican\". However, both the origin and plausibility of this account are disputed.\nIn Milan, Mozart wrote the opera \"Mitridate, re di Ponto\" (1770), which was performed with success. This led to further opera commissions. He returned with his father twice to Milan (August\u2013December 1771; October 1772\u00a0\u2013 March 1773) for the composition and premieres of \"Ascanio in Alba\" (1771) and \"Lucio Silla\" (1772). Leopold hoped these visits would result in a professional appointment for his son, and indeed ruling Archduke Ferdinand contemplated hiring Mozart, but owing to his mother Empress Maria Theresa's reluctance to employ \"useless people\", the matter was dropped and Leopold's hopes were never realised. Toward the end of the journey, Mozart wrote the solo motet \"Exsultate, jubilate\", K.165.\n1773\u201377: Employment at the Salzburg court.\nAfter finally returning with his father from Italy on 13 March 1773, Mozart was employed as a court musician by the ruler of Salzburg, Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. The composer had many friends and admirers in Salzburg and had the opportunity to work in many genres, including symphonies, sonatas, string quartets, masses, serenades, and a few minor operas. Between April and December 1775, Mozart developed an enthusiasm for violin concertos, producing a series of five (the only ones he ever wrote), which steadily increased in their musical sophistication. The last three\u2014K.\u00a0216, K.\u00a0218, K.\u00a0219\u2014are now staples of the repertoire. In 1776, he turned his efforts to piano concertos, culminating in the E\u266d concerto K.\u00a0271 of early 1777, considered by critics to be a breakthrough work.\nDespite these artistic successes, Mozart grew increasingly discontented with Salzburg and redoubled his efforts to find a position elsewhere. One reason was his low salary, 150 florins a year; Mozart longed to compose operas, and Salzburg provided only rare occasions for these. The situation worsened in 1775 when the court theatre was closed, especially since the other theatre in Salzburg was primarily reserved for visiting troupes.\nTwo long expeditions in search of work interrupted this long Salzburg stay. Mozart and his father visited Vienna from 14 July to 26 September 1773, and Munich from 6December 1774 to March 1775. Neither visit was successful, though the Munich journey resulted in a popular success with the premiere of Mozart's opera \"La finta giardiniera\".\n1777\u201378: Journey to Paris.\nIn August 1777, Mozart resigned his position at Salzburg and on 23 September ventured out once more in search of employment, with visits to Augsburg, Mannheim, Paris, and Munich.\nMozart became acquainted with members of the famous orchestra in Mannheim, the best in Europe at the time. He also fell in love with Aloysia Weber, one of four daughters of a musical family. There were prospects of employment in Mannheim, but they came to nothing, and Mozart left for Paris on 14 March 1778 to continue his search. One of his letters from Paris hints at a possible post as an organist at Versailles, but Mozart was not interested in such an appointment. He fell into debt and took to pawning valuables. The nadir of the visit occurred when Mozart's mother was taken ill and died on 3July 1778. There had been delays in calling a doctor\u2014probably, according to Halliwell, because of a lack of funds. Mozart stayed with Melchior Grimm at Marquise d'\u00c9pinay's residence, 5 rue de la Chauss\u00e9e-d'Antin.\nWhile Mozart was in Paris, his father was pursuing opportunities of employment for him in Salzburg. With the support of the local nobility, Mozart was offered a post as court organist and concertmaster. The annual salary was 450 florins, but he was reluctant to accept. By that time, relations between Grimm and Mozart had cooled, and Mozart moved out. After leaving Paris in September 1778 for Strasbourg, he lingered in Mannheim and Munich, still hoping to obtain an appointment outside Salzburg. In Munich, he again encountered Aloysia, now a very successful singer, but she was no longer interested in him. Mozart finally returned to Salzburg on 15 January 1779 and took up his new appointment, but his discontent with Salzburg remained undiminished.\nAmong the better-known works which Mozart wrote on the Paris journey are the A minor piano sonata, K.\u00a0310/300d, the \"Paris\" Symphony (No.\u00a031), which were performed in Paris on 12 and 18 June 1778; and the Concerto for Flute and Harp in C major, K. 299/297c.\nVienna.\n1781: Departure.\nIn January 1781, Mozart's opera \"Idomeneo\" premiered with \"considerable success\" in Munich. The following March, Mozart was summoned to Vienna, where his employer, Archbishop Colloredo, was attending the celebrations for the accession of Joseph II to the Austrian throne. For Colloredo, this was simply a matter of wanting his musical servant to be at hand (Mozart indeed was required to dine in Colloredo's establishment with the valets and cooks). He planned a bigger career as he continued in the archbishop's service; for example, he wrote to his father:\nMy main goal right now is to meet the emperor in some agreeable fashion, I am absolutely determined he should get to know me. I would be so happy if I could whip through my opera for him and then play a fugue or two, for that's what he likes.\nMozart did indeed soon meet the Emperor, who eventually was to support his career substantially with commissions and a part-time position.\nIn the same letter to his father just quoted, Mozart outlined his plans to participate as a soloist in the concerts of the \"Tonk\u00fcnstler-Societ\u00e4t\", a prominent benefit concert series; this plan as well came to pass after the local nobility prevailed on Colloredo to drop his opposition.\nColloredo's wish to prevent Mozart from performing outside his establishment was in other cases carried through, raising the composer's anger; one example was a chance to perform before the Emperor at Countess Thun's for a fee equal to half of his yearly Salzburg salary.\nThe quarrel with the archbishop came to a head in May: Mozart attempted to resign and was refused. The following month, permission was granted, but in a grossly insulting way: the composer was dismissed literally \"with a kick in the arse\", administered by the archbishop's steward, Count Arco. Mozart decided to settle in Vienna as a freelance performer and composer.\nThe quarrel with Colloredo was more difficult for Mozart because his father sided against him. Hoping fervently that he would obediently follow Colloredo back to Salzburg, Mozart's father exchanged intense letters with his son, urging him to be reconciled with their employer. Mozart passionately defended his intention to pursue an independent career in Vienna. The debate ended when Mozart was dismissed by the archbishop, freeing himself both of his employer and of his father's demands to return. Solomon characterizes Mozart's resignation as a \"revolutionary step\" that significantly altered the course of his life.\nEarly years.\nMozart's new career in Vienna began well. He often performed as a pianist, notably in a competition before the Emperor with Muzio Clementi on 24 December 1781, and he soon \"had established himself as the finest keyboard player in Vienna\". He also prospered as a composer, and in 1782 completed the opera \"Die Entf\u00fchrung aus dem Serail\" (\"The Abduction from the Seraglio\"), which premiered on 16 July 1782 and achieved considerable success. The work was soon being performed \"throughout German-speaking Europe\", and thoroughly established Mozart's reputation as a composer.\nNear the height of his quarrels with Colloredo, Mozart moved in with the Weber family, who had moved to Vienna from Mannheim. The family's father, Fridolin, had died, and the Webers were now taking in lodgers to make ends meet.\nMarriage and children.\nAfter failing to win the hand of Aloysia Weber, who was now married to the actor and artist Joseph Lange, Mozart's interest shifted to the third daughter of the family, Constanze.\nThe courtship did not go entirely smoothly; surviving correspondence indicates that Mozart and Constanze briefly broke up in April 1782, over an episode involving jealousy (Constanze had permitted another young man to measure her calves in a parlour game). Mozart also faced a very difficult task getting permission for the marriage from his father, Leopold.\nThe marriage took place in an atmosphere of crisis. Daniel Heartz suggests that eventually, Constanze moved in with Mozart, which would have placed her in disgrace by the mores of the time. Mozart wrote to Leopold on 31 July 1782, \"All the good and well-intentioned advice you have sent fails to address the case of a man who has already gone so far with a maiden. Further postponement is out of the question.\" Heartz relates, \"Constanze's sister Sophie had tearfully declared that her mother would send the police after Constanze if she did not return home [presumably from Mozart's apartment].\" On 4 August, Mozart wrote to Baroness von Waldst\u00e4tten, asking: \"Can the police here enter anyone's house in this way? Perhaps it is only a ruse of Madame Weber to get her daughter back. If not, I know no better remedy than to marry Constanze tomorrow morning or if possible today.\"\nThe couple were finally married on 4August 1782 in St. Stephen's Cathedral, the day before his father's consenting letter arrived in the mail. In the marriage contract, Constanze \"assigns to her bridegroom five hundred gulden which ... the latter has promised to augment with one thousand gulden\", with the total \"to pass to the survivor\". Further, all joint acquisitions during the marriage were to remain the common property of both. \nThe couple had six children, of whom only two survived infancy:\n1782\u201387.\nIn 1782 and 1783, Mozart became intimately acquainted with the work of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel as a result of the influence of Gottfried van Swieten, who owned many manuscripts of the Baroque masters. Mozart's study of these scores inspired compositions in the Baroque style and later influenced his musical language, for example in fugal passages in \"Die Zauberfl\u00f6te\" (\"The Magic Flute\") and the finale of Symphony No.\u00a041.\nIn 1783, Mozart and his wife visited his family in Salzburg. His father and sister were cordially polite to Constanze, but the visit prompted the composition of one of Mozart's great liturgical pieces, the Mass in C minor. Though not completed, it was premiered in Salzburg, with Constanze singing a solo part.\nMozart met Joseph Haydn in Vienna around 1784, and the two composers became friends. When Haydn visited Vienna, they sometimes played together in an impromptu string quartet. Mozart's six quartets dedicated to Haydn (K.\u00a0387, K.\u00a0421, K.\u00a0428, K.\u00a0458, K.\u00a0464, and K.\u00a0465) date from the period 1782 to 1785, and are judged to be a response to Haydn's Opus 33 set from 1781. Haydn wrote, \"posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years\" and in 1785 told Mozart's father: \"I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition.\"\nFrom 1782 to 1785 Mozart mounted concerts with himself as a soloist, presenting three or four new piano concertos in each season. Since space in the theatres was scarce, he booked unconventional venues: a large room in the Trattnerhof apartment building, and the ballroom of the Mehlgrube restaurant. The concerts were very popular, and his concertos premiered there are still firm fixtures in the repertoire. Solomon writes that during this period, Mozart created \"a harmonious connection between an eager composer-performer and a delighted audience, which was given the opportunity of witnessing the transformation and perfection of a major musical genre\".\nWith substantial returns from his concerts and elsewhere, Mozart and his wife adopted a more luxurious lifestyle. They moved to an expensive apartment, with a yearly rent of 460 florins. Mozart bought a fine fortepiano from Anton Walter for about 900 florins, and a billiard table for about 300. The Mozarts sent their son Karl Thomas to an expensive boarding school and kept servants. During this period Mozart saved little of his income.\nOn 14 December 1784, Mozart became a Freemason, admitted to the lodge Zur Wohlt\u00e4tigkeit (\"Beneficence\"). Freemasonry played an essential role in the remainder of Mozart's life: he attended meetings, a number of his friends were Masons, and on various occasions, he composed Masonic music, e.g. the Maurerische Trauermusik.\n1786\u201387: Return to opera.\nDespite the great success of \"Die Entf\u00fchrung aus dem Serail\", Mozart did little operatic writing for the next four years, producing only two unfinished works and the one-act \"Der Schauspieldirektor\". He focused instead on his career as a piano soloist and writer of concertos. Around the end of 1785, Mozart moved away from keyboard writing and began his famous operatic collaboration with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. The year 1786 saw the successful premiere of \"Le nozze di Figaro\" in Vienna. Its reception in Prague later in the year was even warmer, and this led to a second collaboration with Da Ponte: the opera \"Don Giovanni\", which premiered in October 1787 to acclaim in Prague, but less success in Vienna during 1788. The two are among Mozart's most famous works and are mainstays of operatic repertoire today, though at their premieres their musical complexity caused difficulty both for listeners and for performers. These developments were not witnessed by Mozart's father, who had died on 28 May 1787.\nIn December 1787, Mozart finally obtained a steady post under aristocratic patronage. Emperor Joseph II appointed him as his \"chamber composer\", a post that had fallen vacant the previous month on the death of Gluck. It was a part-time appointment, paying just 800 florins per year, and required Mozart only to compose dances for the annual balls in the Redoutensaal (see \"Mozart and dance\"). This modest income became important to Mozart when hard times arrived. Court records show that Joseph aimed to keep the esteemed composer from leaving Vienna in pursuit of better prospects.\nIn 1787, the young Ludwig van Beethoven spent several weeks in Vienna, hoping to study with Mozart. No reliable records survive to indicate whether the two composers ever met.\nLater years.\n1788\u201390.\nToward the end of the decade, Mozart's circumstances worsened. Around 1786, he ceased to appear frequently in public concerts, and his income shrank. This was a difficult time for musicians in Vienna because of the Austro-Turkish War: both the general level of prosperity and the ability of the aristocracy to support music had declined. According to Solomon, in 1788, Mozart saw a 66% decline in his income compared to his best years in 1781.\nBy mid-1788, Mozart and his family had moved from central Vienna to the suburb of Alsergrund. Although it has been suggested that Mozart aimed to reduce his rental expenses by moving to a suburb, as he wrote in his letter to Michael von Puchberg, Mozart had not reduced his expenses but merely increased the housing space at his disposal. Mozart began to borrow money, most often from his friend and fellow mason Puchberg; \"a pitiful sequence of letters pleading for loans\" survives. Maynard Solomon and others have suggested that Mozart was suffering from depression, and it seems his musical output slowed. Major works of the period include the last three symphonies (Nos.\u00a039, 40, and 41, all from 1788), and the last of the three Da Ponte operas, \"Cos\u00ec fan tutte\", premiered in 1790.\nAround this time, Mozart made some long journeys hoping to improve his fortunes, visiting Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin in the spring of 1789, and Frankfurt, Mannheim, and other German cities in 1790.\n1791.\nMozart's last year was, until his final illness struck, a time of high productivity\u2014and by some accounts, one of personal recovery. He composed a great deal, including some of his most admired works: the opera \"The Magic Flute\"; the final piano concerto (K.\u00a0595 in B\u266d); the Clarinet Concerto K.\u00a0622; the last in his series of string quintets (K.\u00a0614 in E\u266d); the motet Ave verum corpus K.\u00a0618; and the unfinished Requiem K.\u00a0626.\nMozart's financial situation, a source of anxiety in 1790, finally began to improve. Although the evidence is inconclusive, it appears that wealthy patrons in Hungary and Amsterdam pledged annuities to Mozart in return for the occasional composition. He is thought to have benefited from the sale of dance music written in his role as Imperial chamber composer. Mozart no longer borrowed large sums from Puchberg and began to pay off his debts.\nHe experienced great satisfaction in the public success of some of his works, notably \"The Magic Flute\" (which was performed several times in the short period between its premiere and Mozart's death) and the Little Masonic Cantata K.\u00a0623, premiered on 17 November 1791.\nFinal illness and death.\nMozart fell ill while in Prague for the premiere, on 6September 1791, of his opera \"La clemenza di Tito\", which was written in that same year on commission for Emperor Leopold II's coronation festivities. He continued his professional functions for some time and conducted the premiere of \"The Magic Flute\" on 30 September. His health deteriorated on 20 November, at which point he became bedridden, suffering from swelling, pain, and vomiting.\nMozart was nursed in his final days by his wife and her youngest sister and was attended by the family doctor, Thomas Franz Closset. He was mentally occupied with the task of finishing his Requiem, but the evidence that he dictated passages to his student Franz Xaver S\u00fcssmayr is minimal.\nMozart died in his home on at 12:55 am. The \"New Grove\" describes his funeral:\nMozart was interred in a common grave, in accordance with contemporary Viennese custom, at the St. Marx Cemetery outside the city on 7December. If, as later reports say, no mourners attended, that too is consistent with Viennese burial customs at the time; later Otto Jahn (1856) wrote that Salieri, S\u00fcssmayr, van Swieten and two other musicians were present. The tale of a storm and snow is false; the day was calm and mild.\nThe expression \"common grave\" refers to neither a communal grave nor a pauper's grave, but an individual grave for a member of the common people (i.e., not the aristocracy). Common graves were subject to excavation after ten years; the graves of aristocrats were not.\nThe cause of Mozart's death is not known with certainty. The official record of \"hitziges Frieselfieber\" (\"severe miliary fever\", referring to a rash that looks like millet seeds) is more a symptomatic description than a diagnosis. Researchers have suggested more than a hundred causes of death, including acute rheumatic fever, streptococcal infection, trichinosis, influenza, mercury poisoning, and a rare kidney ailment.\nMozart's modest funeral did not reflect his standing with the public as a composer; memorial services and concerts in Vienna and Prague were well attended. Indeed, in the period immediately after his death, his reputation rose substantially. Solomon describes an \"unprecedented wave of enthusiasm\" for his work; biographies were written first by Schlichtegroll, Niemetschek, and Nissen, and publishers vied to produce complete editions of his works.\nAppearance and character.\nMozart's physical appearance was described by tenor Michael Kelly in his \"Reminiscences\": \"a remarkably small man, very thin and pale, with a profusion of fine, fair hair of which he was rather vain\". His early biographer Niemetschek wrote, \"there was nothing special about [his] physique... He was small and his countenance, except for his large intense eyes, gave no signs of his genius.\" His facial complexion was pitted, a reminder of his childhood case of smallpox. Of his voice, his wife later wrote that it \"was a tenor, rather soft in speaking and delicate in singing, but when anything excited him, or it became necessary to exert it, it was both powerful and energetic.\"\nHe loved elegant clothing. Kelly remembered him at a rehearsal: \"[He] was on the stage with his crimson pelisse and gold-laced cocked hat, giving the time of the music to the orchestra.\" Based on paintings that researchers were able to find of Mozart, he seemed to wear a white wig for most of his formal occasions\u2014researchers of the Salzburg Mozarteum declared that only one of his fourteen portraits they had found showed him without his wig.\nMozart usually worked long and hard, finishing compositions at a tremendous pace as deadlines approached. He often made sketches and drafts; unlike Beethoven's, these are mostly not preserved, as his wife sought to destroy them after his death.\nMozart lived at the centre of the Viennese musical world and knew a significant number and variety of people: fellow musicians, theatrical performers, fellow Salzburgers, and aristocrats, including some acquaintance with Emperor Joseph II. Solomon considers his three closest friends to have been Gottfried von Jacquin, Count August Hatzfeld, and Sigmund Barisani; others included his elder colleague Joseph Haydn, singers Franz Xaver Gerl and Benedikt Schack, and the horn player Joseph Leutgeb. Leutgeb and Mozart carried on a kind of friendly mockery, often with Leutgeb as the butt of Mozart's practical jokes.\nHe enjoyed billiards, dancing, and kept pets, including a canary, a starling, a dog, and a horse for recreational riding. He had a startling fondness for scatological humour, which is preserved in his surviving letters, notably those written to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart around 1777\u20131778, and in his correspondence with his sister and parents. Mozart also wrote scatological music, a series of canons that he sang with his friends. He had an ear for languages, and having travelled all over Europe as a boy, was fluent in Latin, Italian, and French in addition to his native Salzburg dialect of German. He possibly also understood and spoke some English, having jokingly written \"You are an ass\" after his 19-year-old student Thomas Attwood made a thoughtless mistake on his exercise papers.\nMozart was raised a Catholic and remained a devout member of the Church throughout his life. He embraced the teachings of Freemasonry in 1784.\nWorks, musical style, and innovations.\nStyle.\nMozart's music, like Haydn's, stands as an archetype of the Classical style. At the time he began composing, European music was dominated by the \"style galant\", a reaction against the highly evolved intricacy of the Baroque. Progressively, and in large part at the hands of Mozart himself, the contrapuntal complexities of the late Baroque emerged once more, moderated and disciplined by new forms, and adapted to a new aesthetic and social milieu. Mozart was a versatile composer, and wrote in every major genre, including symphony, opera, the solo concerto, chamber music including string quartet and string quintet, and the piano sonata. These forms were not new, but Mozart advanced their technical sophistication and emotional reach. He almost single-handedly developed and popularised the Classical piano concerto. He wrote a great deal of religious music, including large-scale masses, as well as dances, divertimenti, serenades, and other forms of light entertainment.\nThe central traits of the Classical style are all present in Mozart's music. Clarity, balance, and transparency are the hallmarks of his work, but simplistic notions of its delicacy mask the exceptional power of his finest masterpieces, such as the Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K.\u00a0491; the Symphony No.\u00a040 in G minor, K.\u00a0550; and the opera \"Don Giovanni\". Charles Rosen makes the point forcefully:\nIt is only through recognising the violence and sensuality at the centre of Mozart's work that we can make a start towards a comprehension of his structures and an insight into his magnificence. In a paradoxical way, Schumann's superficial characterisation of the G minor Symphony can help us to see Mozart's daemon more steadily. In all of Mozart's supreme expressions of suffering and terror, there is something shockingly voluptuous.\nDuring his last decade, Mozart frequently exploited chromatic harmony. A notable instance is his \"String Quartet in C major\", K.\u00a0465 (1785), whose introduction abounds in chromatic suspensions, giving rise to the work's nickname, the \"Dissonance\" quartet.\nMozart had a gift for absorbing and adapting the valuable features of others' music. His travels helped in the forging of a unique compositional language. In London as a child, he met J.\u00a0C. Bach and heard his music. In Paris, Mannheim, and Vienna he met with other compositional influences, as well as the avant-garde capabilities of the Mannheim orchestra. In Italy, he encountered the Italian overture and opera buffa, both of which deeply affected the evolution of his practice. In London and Italy, the galant style was in the ascendent: simple, light music with a mania for cadencing; an emphasis on tonic, dominant, and subdominant to the exclusion of other harmonies; symmetrical phrases; and clearly articulated partitions in the overall form of movements. Some of Mozart's early symphonies are Italian overtures, with three movements running into each other; many are homotonal (all three movements having the same key signature, with the slow middle movement being in the relative minor). Others mimic the works of J.\u00a0C. Bach, and others show the simple rounded binary forms turned out by Viennese composers.\nAs Mozart matured, he progressively incorporated more features adapted from the Baroque. For example, the Symphony No.\u00a029 in A major K.\u00a0201 has a contrapuntal main theme in its first movement, and experimentation with irregular phrase lengths. Some of his quartets from 1773 have fugal finales, probably influenced by Haydn, who had included three such finales in his recently published Opus\u00a020 set. The influence of the \"Sturm und Drang\" (\"Storm and Stress\") period in music, with its brief foreshadowing of the Romantic era, is evident in the music of both composers at that time. Mozart's Symphony No.\u00a025 in G minor K.\u00a0183 is another excellent example.\nMozart would sometimes switch his focus between operas and instrumental music. He produced operas in each of the prevailing styles: opera buffa, such as \"Le nozze di Figaro\", \"Don Giovanni\", and \"Cos\u00ec fan tutte\"; opera seria, such as \"Idomeneo\"; and Singspiel, of which \"Die Zauberfl\u00f6te\" is the most famous example by any composer. In his later operas, he employed subtle changes in instrumentation, orchestral texture, and tone colour, for emotional depth and to mark dramatic shifts. Here, his advances in opera and instrumental composing interacted: his increasingly sophisticated use of the orchestra in the symphonies and concertos influenced his operatic orchestration, and his developing subtlety in using the orchestra to psychological effect in his operas was in turn reflected in his later non-operatic compositions.\nK\u00f6chel catalogue.\nFor unambiguous identification of works by Mozart, a \"K\u00f6chel catalogue number\" is used. This is a unique number assigned, in regular chronological order, to every one of his known works. A work is referenced by the abbreviation \"K.\" or \"KV\" followed by this number. The first edition of the catalogue was completed in 1862 by Ludwig von K\u00f6chel. It has since been repeatedly updated, as scholarly research improves knowledge of the dates and authenticity of individual works.\nInstruments.\nAlthough some of Mozart's early pieces were written for harpsichord, he also became acquainted in his early years with fortepianos made by Regensburg builder Franz Jakob Sp\u00e4th. Later when Mozart was visiting Augsburg, he was impressed by Stein fortepianos and shared this in a letter to his father. On 22 October 1777, Mozart had premiered his triple-piano concerto, K. 242, on instruments provided by Stein. The Augsburg Cathedral organist Demmler was playing the first, Mozart the second and Stein the third part. In 1783, when living in Vienna he purchased an instrument by Walter. Leopold Mozart confirmed the attachment which Mozart had with his Walter fortepiano: \"It is impossible to describe the hustle and bustle. Your brother's pianoforte has been moved at least twelve times from his house to the theatre or to someone else's house.\"\nInfluence.\nHis most famous pupil was Johann Nepomuk Hummel, a transitional figure between the Classical and Romantic eras whom the Mozarts took into their Vienna home for two years as a child. More important is the influence Mozart had on composers of later generations. Ever since the surge in his reputation after his death, studying his scores has been a standard part of a classical musician's training.\nLudwig van Beethoven, Mozart's junior by fifteen years, was deeply influenced by his work, with which he was acquainted as a teenager. He is thought to have performed Mozart's operas while playing in the court orchestra at Bonn and travelled to Vienna in 1787 hoping to study with the older composer. Some of have direct models in comparable works by Mozart, and he wrote cadenzas (WoO\u00a058) to Mozart's D minor piano concerto K.\u00a0466.\nComposers have paid homage to Mozart by writing sets of variations on his themes. Beethoven wrote four such sets (Op.\u00a066, WoO\u00a028, WoO\u00a040, WoO\u00a046). Others include Fernando Sor's Introduction and Variations on a Theme by Mozart (1821), Mikhail Glinka's Variations on a Theme from Mozart's Opera \"The Magic Flute\" (1822), Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin's Variations on \"L\u00e0 ci darem la mano\" from \"Don Giovanni\" (1827), and Max Reger's Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart (1914), based on the variation theme in the piano sonata K.\u00a0331. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who revered Mozart, wrote his Orchestral Suite No.\u00a04 in G, \"Mozartiana\" (1887), as a tribute to him.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nFurther reading.\n\"See for an extensive bibliography\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nExternal links.\nDigitized documents\nSheet music"}, "descending_order": ["12332877", "33163"], "permutation_1": ["12332877", "33163"], "permutation_2": ["12332877", "33163"], "permutation_3": ["12332877", "33163"]}
{"id": "2hop__347_59409", "docs_added": {"6521181": "Song Cry\n2002 single by Jay-Z\n\"Song Cry\" is a song by American rapper Jay-Z and produced by Just Blaze. Released on April 16, 2002, it was the fourth and final single from his sixth studio album \"The Blueprint\" and also appears on the 2001 live album \"\".\n\"Song Cry\" was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Male Rap Solo Performance but lost to \"Hot in Herre\" by Nelly. The song samples Bobby Glenn's \"Sounds Like a Love Song\".\nBackground and content.\nIn an interview with Bill Maher, Jay-Z stated that this song was actually inspired by three different relationships he had in the past, and he wrote about his different experiences all together in different verses.\nThe song is a slow and quiet melodic rap ballad in which Jay-Z laments the break-up of an earlier relationship due to his own neglect and infidelity. Admitting that he is too prideful to publicly display his emotions (\"I can't see 'em coming down my eyes\"), Jay-Z forces the song to \"cry\" instead. This allows Jay-Z to mourn the break-up free of any damage to his masculine image as a street hustler. This furthers the notion that emotional vulnerability is a sign of weakness, especially within the Black community, as Black men in particular suppress vulnerability \"in order to survive.\"\nLive performances.\nThe live performance of \"Song Cry\" from Jay-Z's 2001 MTV Unplugged album features female vocalist Jaguar Wright singing a sample of \"Sounds Like a Love Song\" by Bobby Glenn, though Wright is not identified in the liner notes of the album.\nDuring his 2006 \"Water for Life\" Tour, Jay-Z performed \"Song Cry\" at the Royal Albert Hall, the venue's first ever hip hop show. American actress Gwyneth Paltrow did the chorus.\nThe song was also included on the set-lists of his all-stadium tours On the Run Tour in 2014 and OTR II in 2018, both with co-headliner and wife Beyonc\u00e9.\nCredits and personnel.\nThe credits for \"Song Cry\" are adapted from the liner notes of \"The Blueprint\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "83688": "Beyonc\u00e9\nAmerican singer (born 1981) \nBeyonc\u00e9 Giselle Knowles-Carter ( ; n\u00e9e Knowles; born September 4, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, actress and businesswoman. She has had a significant impact on the music industry and is known for her vocal ability, musical versatility, live performances, and culturally important works.\nBeyonc\u00e9 rose to fame in 1997 as a member of Destiny's Child, one of the best-selling girl groups of all time. Her debut solo album, \"Dangerously in Love\" (2003), became one of the best-selling albums of the 21st century and spawned the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100 number-one singles \"Crazy in Love\" and \"Baby Boy\". Beyonc\u00e9's commercial success continued with the albums \"B'Day\" (2006), \"I Am... Sasha Fierce\" (2008) and \"4\" (2011), all of which featured hit singles including \"Check on It\", \"Irreplaceable\", \"If I Were a Boy\", \"Single Ladies (Put a Ring on it)\", \"Halo\", \"Run the World (Girls)\", and \"Love On Top\". She has also ventured into acting, starring in the films \"Austin Powers in Goldmember\" (2002), \"Dreamgirls\" (2006), \"Cadillac Records\" (2008), \"Obsessed\" (2009) and \"Black Is King\" (2020), as well as voicing Nala in \"The Lion King\" (2019) and \"\" (2024).\nBeyonc\u00e9's career shifted after forming her own management company Parkwood Entertainment, creating monocultural events through acclaimed concept albums. She explored personal and political themes on \"Beyonc\u00e9\" (2013) and \"Lemonade\" (2016), which are credited with popularizing the surprise album and visual album. The former inspired setting Friday as the Global Release Day, while the latter was the best-selling album worldwide in 2016. Her ongoing trilogy project \u2013 currently consisting of the queer-inspired dance album \"Renaissance\" (2022) and Americana epic \"Cowboy Carter\" (2024) \u2013 has highlighted the contributions of Black pioneers to American musical and cultural history, spawning the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100 number-one singles \"Break My Soul\" and \"Texas Hold 'Em\".\nBeyonc\u00e9 is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with estimated sales of over 200 million records. She is the only female artist to debut all of their eight studio albums at number one on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200. She is the most awarded and nominated artist of all time in the history of the Grammy Awards, as well as the most awarded artist at the BET, NAACP Image, and Soul Train Music Awards. Her inductions include the \"Guinness World Records\" Hall of Fame and the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame. The first woman to headline an all-stadium tour, Beyonc\u00e9 is one of the highest-grossing live acts in history. \"Billboard\" named her the Top Female Artist of the 2000s and the Greatest Pop Star of the 21st Century. \"Rolling Stone\" listed her as one of the greatest singers ever and included several of her albums, singles, and music videos among the greatest of all time.\nEarly life.\nBeyonc\u00e9 Giselle Knowles was born on September 4, 1981, at the Park Plaza Hospital in Houston, Texas, to Tina Knowles (n\u00e9e\u00a0Beyonc\u00e9), a hairdresser and salon owner, and Mathew Knowles, a Xerox sales manager. Tina is Louisiana Creole and Mathew is African American. Beyonc\u00e9's younger sister, Solange Knowles, is also a singer and a former backup dancer for Destiny's Child. Solange and Beyonc\u00e9 are the first sisters both to have had number one solo albums. Beyonc\u00e9 researched her ancestry and discovered that she is descended from a slave owner who married his slave. Her mother is also of distant Irish and Jewish ancestry. Beyonc\u00e9 also has Belgian ancestry from Hainaut Province, Wallonia and is related to a former mayor of Froidchapelle, Belgium.\nBeyonc\u00e9 was raised with multiple religious traditions, attending St. John's United Methodist Church in Houston as well as St. Mary of the Purification Catholic Church. She went to St. Mary's Catholic Montessori School in Houston and enrolled in dance classes there. Her singing ability was discovered when dance instructor Darlette Johnson began humming a song and Beyonc\u00e9 finished it, able to hit the high-pitched notes. Beyonc\u00e9's interest in music and performing continued after winning a school talent show at age seven, singing John Lennon's \"Imagine\" to beat 15/16-year-olds. In the fall of 1990, Beyonc\u00e9 enrolled in Parker Elementary School, a music magnet school in Houston, where she performed with the school's choir. She also attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and later Alief Elsik High School. Beyonc\u00e9 was also a member of the choir at St. John's United Methodist Church where she sang her first solo and was a soloist for two years.\nCareer.\nCareer beginnings.\nWhen Beyonc\u00e9 was eight, she met LaTavia Roberson at an audition for an all-girl entertainment group. They were placed into a group called Girl's Tyme with three other girls, and rapped and danced on the talent show circuit in Houston. After seeing the group, R&B producer Arne Frager brought them to his Northern California studio and placed them in \"Star Search\", the largest talent show on national TV at the time. Girl's Tyme failed to win, and Beyonc\u00e9 later said the song they performed was not good. In 1995, Beyonc\u00e9's father, Mathew, resigned from his job to manage the group. The move reduced the family's income by half, and Beyonc\u00e9's parents were forced to sell their house and cars and move into separated apartments.\nMathew cut the original line-up to four and the group continued performing as an opening act for other established R&B girl groups. The girls auditioned before record labels and were finally signed to Elektra Records, moving to Atlanta Records briefly to work on their first recording, only to be cut by the company. This put further strain on the family, and Beyonc\u00e9's parents separated. On October 5, 1995, Dwayne Wiggins's Grass Roots Entertainment signed the group. In 1996, the girls began recording their debut album under an agreement with Sony Music, the Knowles family reunited, and shortly after, the group got a contract with Columbia Records with the assistance of Columbia talent scout Teresa LaBarbera Whites.\n1997\u20132002: Destiny's Child.\nThe group changed their name to Destiny's Child in 1996, based upon a passage in the Book of Isaiah. In 1997, Destiny's Child released their major label debut song \"Killing Time\" on the soundtrack to the 1997 film \"Men in Black\". In November, the group released their debut single and first major hit, \"No, No, No\". They released their self-titled debut album in February 1998, which established the group as a viable act in the music industry. The group released their Multi-Platinum second album \"The Writing's on the Wall\" in 1999. The record features songs such as \"Bills, Bills, Bills\", the group's first number-one single, \"Jumpin' Jumpin'\" and \"Say My Name\", which became their most successful song at the time, and would remain one of their signature songs. \"Say My Name\" won the Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals and the Best R&B Song at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards. \"The Writing's on the Wall\" sold more than eight million copies worldwide. During this time, Beyonc\u00e9 recorded a duet with Marc Nelson, an original member of Boyz II Men, on the song \"After All Is Said and Done\" for the soundtrack to the 1999 film, \"The Best Man\", as well as \"Ways To Get Cut Off\", a collaboration with fellow Columbia Records signee JoJo Robinson that was later shelved.\nThe remaining band members recorded \"Independent Women Part I\", which appeared on the soundtrack to the 2000 film \"Charlie's Angels\". It became their best-charting single, topping the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart for eleven consecutive weeks. In early 2001, while Destiny's Child was completing their third album, Beyonc\u00e9 landed a major role in the MTV made-for-television film, \"\", starring alongside American actor Mekhi Phifer. Set in Philadelphia, the film is a modern interpretation of the 19th-century opera \"Carmen\" by French composer Georges Bizet. When the third album \"Survivor\" was released in May 2001, Luckett and Roberson filed a lawsuit claiming that the songs were aimed at them. The album debuted at number one on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200, with first-week sales of 663,000 copies sold. The album spawned other number-one hits, \"Bootylicious\" and the title track, \"Survivor\", the latter of which earned the group a Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. After releasing their holiday album \"8 Days of Christmas\" in October 2001, the group announced a hiatus to further pursue solo careers.\nIn July 2002, Beyonc\u00e9 made her theatrical film debut, playing Foxxy Cleopatra alongside Mike Myers in the comedy film \"Austin Powers in Goldmember\", which spent its first weekend atop the U.S. box office and grossed $73\u00a0million. Beyonc\u00e9 released \"Work It Out\" as the lead single from its soundtrack album which entered the top ten in the UK, Norway, and Belgium. In 2003, Beyonc\u00e9 starred opposite Cuba Gooding Jr. in the musical comedy \"The Fighting Temptations\" as Lilly, a single mother with whom Gooding's character falls in love. The film received mixed reviews from critics but grossed $30\u00a0million in the U.S. Beyonc\u00e9 released \"Fighting Temptation\" as the lead single from the film's soundtrack album, with Missy Elliott, MC Lyte, and Free which was also used to promote the film. Another of Beyonc\u00e9's contributions to the soundtrack, \"Summertime\", fared better on the U.S. charts.\n2003\u20132007: \"Dangerously in Love\", \"B'Day\", and \"Dreamgirls\".\nBeyonc\u00e9's first solo recording was a feature on Jay-Z's song \"'03 Bonnie & Clyde\" that was released in October 2002, peaking at number four on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart. On June 14, 2003, Beyonc\u00e9 premiered songs from her first solo album \"Dangerously in Love\" during her first solo concert and the pay-per-view television special, \"Ford Presents Beyonc\u00e9 Knowles, Friends & Family, Live From Ford's 100th Anniversary Celebration in Dearborn, Michigan\". The album was released on June 24, 2003, after Michelle Williams and Kelly Rowland had released their solo efforts. The album sold 317,000 copies in its first week, debuted atop the \"Billboard\" 200, and has since sold 11\u00a0million copies worldwide.\nThe album's lead single, \"Crazy in Love\", featuring Jay-Z, became Beyonc\u00e9's first number-one single as a solo artist in the US. The single \"Baby Boy\" also reached number one, and singles, \"Me, Myself and I\" and \"Naughty Girl\", both reached the top-five. The album earned Beyonc\u00e9 a then record-tying five awards at the 46th Annual Grammy Awards; Best Contemporary R&B Album, Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for \"Dangerously in Love 2\", Best R&B Song and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for \"Crazy in Love\", and Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals for \"The Closer I Get to You\" with Luther Vandross. During the ceremony, she performed with Prince.\nIn November 2003, she embarked on the Dangerously in Love Tour in Europe and later toured alongside Missy Elliott and Alicia Keys for the Verizon Ladies First Tour in North America. On February 1, 2004, Beyonc\u00e9 performed the American national anthem at Super Bowl XXXVIII, at the Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas. After the release of \"Dangerously in Love\", Beyonc\u00e9 had planned to produce a follow-up album using several of the left-over tracks. However, this was put on hold so she could concentrate on recording \"Destiny Fulfilled\", the final studio album by Destiny's Child. Released on November 15, 2004, in the U.S. and peaking at number two on the \"Billboard\" 200, \"Destiny Fulfilled\" included the singles \"Lose My Breath\" and \"Soldier\", which reached the top five on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart.\nDestiny's Child embarked on a worldwide concert tour, Destiny Fulfilled... and Lovin' It sponsored by McDonald's Corporation, and performed songs such as \"No, No, No\", \"Survivor\", \"Say My Name\", \"Independent Women\" and \"Lose My Breath\". In addition to renditions of the group's recorded material, they also performed songs from each singer's solo careers, including numbers from \"Dangerously in Love\". During the last stop of their European tour, in Barcelona on June 11, 2005, Rowland announced that Destiny's Child would disband following the North American leg of the tour. The group released their first compilation album \"Number\u00a01's\" on October 25, 2005, in the U.S. and accepted a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in March 2006. The group has sold 60\u00a0million records worldwide.\nBeyonc\u00e9's second solo album \"B'Day\" was released on September 4, 2006, in the U.S., to coincide with her twenty-fifth birthday. It sold 541,000 copies in its first week and debuted atop the \"Billboard\" 200, becoming Beyonc\u00e9's second consecutive number-one album in the United States. The album's lead single \"D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu\", featuring Jay-Z, reached the top five on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart. The second international single \"Irreplaceable\" was a commercial success worldwide, reaching number one in Australia, Hungary, Ireland, New Zealand and the United States. \"B'Day\" also produced three other singles; \"Ring the Alarm\", \"Get Me Bodied\", and \"Green Light\" (released in the United Kingdom only).\nAt the 49th Annual Grammy Awards (2007), \"B'Day\" was nominated for five Grammy Awards, including Best Contemporary R&B Album, Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for \"Ring the Alarm\" and Best R&B Song and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration\"for \"D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu\"; the Freemasons club mix of \"D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu\" without the rap was put forward in the Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical category. \"B'Day\" won the award for Best Contemporary R&B Album. The following year, \"B'Day\" received two nominations \u2013 for Record of the Year for \"Irreplaceable\" and Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for \"Beautiful Liar\" (with Shakira), also receiving a nomination for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for Motion Pictures, Television or Other Visual Media for her appearance on \"\" (2006).\nHer first acting role of 2006 was in the comedy film \"The Pink Panther\" starring opposite Steve Martin, grossing $158.8\u00a0million at the box office worldwide. Her second film \"Dreamgirls\", the film version of the 1981 Broadway musical loosely based on The Supremes, received acclaim from critics and grossed $154\u00a0million internationally. In it, she starred opposite Jennifer Hudson, Jamie Foxx, and Eddie Murphy playing a pop singer based on Diana Ross. To promote the film, Beyonc\u00e9 released \"Listen\" as the lead single from the . In April 2007, Beyonc\u00e9 embarked on The Beyonc\u00e9 Experience, her first worldwide concert tour, visiting 97 venues and grossed over $24\u00a0million. Beyonc\u00e9 conducted pre-concert food donation drives during six major stops in conjunction with her pastor at St. John's and America's Second Harvest. At the same time, \"B'Day\" was re-released with five additional songs, including her duet with Shakira \"Beautiful Liar\".\n2008\u20132012: \"I Am... Sasha Fierce\" and \"4\".\n\"I Am... Sasha Fierce\" was released in November 2008 and formally introduced Beyonc\u00e9's alter ego Sasha Fierce. It was met with mixed reviews from critics, but sold 482,000 copies in its first week, debuting atop the \"Billboard\" 200, and giving Beyonc\u00e9 her third consecutive number-one album in the U.S. The album featured her fourth UK number-one single \"If I Were a Boy\" and her fifth U.S. number-one song \"Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)\". \"Halo\" achieved the accomplishment of becoming her longest-running Hot 100 single in her career, \"Halo\"'s success in the U.S. helped Beyonc\u00e9 attain more top-ten singles on the list than any other woman during the 2000s.\nThe music video for \"Single Ladies\" has been parodied and imitated around the world, spawning the \"first major dance craze\" of the Internet age according to the \"Toronto Star\". At the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, the video won three categories, including Video of the Year. In March 2009, Beyonc\u00e9 embarked on the I Am... Tour, her second headlining worldwide concert tour, consisting of 108 shows, grossing $119.5\u00a0million.\nBeyonc\u00e9 further expanded her acting career, starring as blues singer Etta James in the 2008 musical biopic \"Cadillac Records\". Her performance in the film received praise from critics, and she garnered several nominations for her portrayal of James, including a Satellite Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and an NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress. Beyonc\u00e9 donated her entire salary from the film to Phoenix House, an organization of rehabilitation centers for heroin addicts around the country. Beyonc\u00e9 starred opposite Ali Larter and Idris Elba in the thriller, \"Obsessed\". She played Sharon Charles, a mother and wife whose family is threatened by her husband's stalker. The film received negative reviews from critics, and did well at the U.S. box office, grossing $68 million \u2013 $60 million more than \"Cadillac Records\"\u00a0\u2013 on a budget of $20\u00a0million.\nAt the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards, Beyonc\u00e9 received ten nominations, tying with Lauryn Hill for most Grammy nominations in a single year by a female artist. Beyonc\u00e9 went on to win six of those nominations, breaking a record she previously tied in 2004 for the most Grammy awards won in a single night by a female artist with six. In 2010, Beyonc\u00e9 provide guest vocals on Lady Gaga's single \"Telephone\". The song topped the U.S. Pop Songs chart, becoming the sixth number-one for both Beyonc\u00e9 and Gaga, tying them with Mariah Carey for most number-ones since the Nielsen Top 40 airplay chart launched in 1992.\nBeyonc\u00e9 announced a hiatus from her music career in January 2010, heeding her mother's advice, \"to live life, to be inspired by things again\". During the break, she and her father parted ways as business partners. Beyonc\u00e9's musical break lasted nine months and saw her visit multiple European cities, the Great Wall of China, the Egyptian pyramids, Australia, English music festivals and various museums and ballet performances. \"Eat, Play, Love\", a cover story written by Beyonc\u00e9 for \"Essence\" that detailed her 2010 career break, won her a writing award from the New York Association of Black Journalists.\nOn June 26, 2011, she became the first solo female artist to headline the main Pyramid stage at the 2011 Glastonbury Festival in over twenty years. The performance was lauded, with several publications noting an ascension in Knowles' capabilities as a live performer. Other publications discussed the polarized attitude of the UK music establishment in response to a Black woman performing on the same stages and to the same crowd sizes that were past reserved for legacy rock acts. Her fourth studio album \"4\" was released two days prior in the U.S. \"4\" sold 310,000 copies in its first week and debuted atop the \"Billboard\" 200 chart, giving Beyonc\u00e9 her fourth consecutive number-one album in the U.S. The album was preceded by two of its singles \"Run the World (Girls)\" and \"Best Thing I Never Had\". The fourth single \"Love on Top\" spent seven consecutive weeks at number one on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, while peaking at number 20 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, the highest peak from the album.\nIn late 2011, she took the stage at New York's Roseland Ballroom for four nights of special performances: the 4 Intimate Nights with Beyonc\u00e9 concerts saw the performance of her \"4\" album to a standing room only. On August 1, 2011, the album was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), having shipped 1\u00a0million copies to retail stores. By December 2015, it reached sales of 1.5\u00a0million copies in the U.S. The album reached one billion Spotify streams on February 5, 2018, making Beyonc\u00e9 the first female artist to have three of their albums surpass one billion streams on the platform. In June 2012, she at Revel Atlantic City's Ovation Hall to celebrate the resort's opening, her first performances since giving birth to her daughter.\n2013\u20132014: \"Beyonc\u00e9\".\nIn January 2013, Beyonc\u00e9 performed the American national anthem singing along with a pre-recorded track at President Obama's second inauguration in Washington, D.C. The following month, Beyonc\u00e9 performed at the Super Bowl XLVII halftime show, held at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans. The performance stands as the second most tweeted about moment in history at 268,000 tweets per minute. Her feature-length documentary film, \"Life Is But a Dream\", first aired on HBO on February 16, 2013. The film was co-directed by Beyonc\u00e9 herself.\nBeyonc\u00e9 embarked on The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour on April 15 in Belgrade, Serbia; the tour included 132 dates that ran through to March 2014. It became the one of the most successful tours of her career. In May, Beyonc\u00e9's cover of Amy Winehouse's \"Back to Black\" with Andr\u00e9 3000 on \"The Great Gatsby\" soundtrack was released. Beyonc\u00e9 voiced Queen Tara in the 3D CGI animated film, \"Epic\", released by 20th Century Fox on May 24, and recorded an original song for the film, \"Rise Up\", co-written with Sia.\nOn December 13, 2013, Beyonc\u00e9 unexpectedly released her eponymous fifth studio album on the iTunes Store without any prior announcement or promotion. The album debuted atop the \"Billboard\" 200 chart, giving Beyonc\u00e9 her fifth consecutive number-one album in the U.S. This made her the first woman in the chart's history to have her first five studio albums debut at number one. \"Beyonc\u00e9\" received critical acclaim and commercial success, selling one million digital copies worldwide in six days; Musically an electro-R&B album, it concerns darker themes previously unexplored in her work, such as \"bulimia, postnatal depression [and] the fears and insecurities of marriage and motherhood\". The single \"Drunk in Love\", featuring Jay-Z, peaked at number two on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart.\nAccording to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), \"Beyonc\u00e9\" sold 2.3\u00a0million units worldwide, becoming the tenth best-selling album of 2013. The album also went on to become the twentieth best-selling album of 2014. As of November\u00a02014[ [update]], \"Beyonc\u00e9\" has sold over 5\u00a0million copies worldwide and has generated over 1\u00a0billion streams, as of March\u00a02015[ [update]]. At the 57th Annual Grammy Awards in February 2015, Beyonc\u00e9 was nominated for six awards, ultimately winning three: Best R&B Performance and Best R&B Song for \"Drunk in Love\", and Best Surround Sound Album for \"Beyonc\u00e9\".\nIn April 2014, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z officially announced their On the Run Tour. It served as the couple's first co-headlining stadium tour together. On August 24, 2014, she received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards. Beyonc\u00e9 also won home three competitive awards: Best Video with a Social Message and Best Cinematography for \"Pretty Hurts\", as well as best collaboration for \"Drunk in Love\". In November, \"Forbes\" reported that Beyonc\u00e9 was the top-earning woman in music for the second year in a row\u00a0\u2013 earning $115\u00a0million in the year, more than double her earnings in 2013.\n2015\u20132017: \"Lemonade\".\nBeyonc\u00e9 released \"Formation\" in on February 6, 2016, and performed it live for the first time during the NFL Super Bowl 50 halftime show. The appearance was considered controversial as it appeared to reference the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party and the NFL forbids political statements in its performances. Immediately following the performance, Beyonc\u00e9 announced The Formation World Tour, which highlighted stops in both North America and Europe. It marked the first ever all-stadium tour by a female artist and ended on October 7, with Beyonc\u00e9 bringing out her husband Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, and Serena Williams for the last show. The tour went on to win Tour of the Year at the 44th American Music Awards.\nIn April 2016, Beyonc\u00e9 released a teaser clip for a project called \"Lemonade\". A one-hour film which aired on HBO on April 23, a corresponding album with the same title was released on the same day exclusively on Tidal. \"Lemonade\" debuted at number one on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200, making Beyonc\u00e9 the first act in \"Billboard\" history to have their first six studio albums debut atop the chart; she broke a record previously tied with DMX in 2013. With all 12 tracks of \"Lemonade\" debuting on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart, Beyonc\u00e9 also became the first female act to chart 12 or more songs at the same time. \"Lemonade\" was streamed 115\u00a0million times through Tidal, setting a record for the most-streamed album in a single week by a female artist in history. It was 2016's third highest-selling album in the U.S. with 1.554\u00a0million copies sold in that time period within the country as well as the best-selling album worldwide with global sales of 2.5\u00a0million throughout the year.\n\"Lemonade\" became the most critically acclaimed work of her career. Several music publications included the album among the best of 2016, including \"Rolling Stone\", which listed \"Lemonade\" at number one. The album's visuals were nominated in 11 categories at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards, the most ever received by Beyonc\u00e9 in a single year, and went on to win 8 awards, including Video of the Year for \"Formation\". The eight wins made Beyonc\u00e9 the most-awarded artist in the history of the VMAs (24), surpassing Madonna (20). Beyonc\u00e9 occupied the sixth place for \"Time\" magazine's 2016 Person of the Year.\nIn January 2017, it was announced that Beyonc\u00e9 would headline the Coachella Music and Arts Festival. This would have made Beyonc\u00e9 only the second female headliner of the festival since it was founded in 1999. It was later announced on February 23, 2017, that Beyonc\u00e9 would no longer be able to perform at the festival due to doctor's concerns regarding her pregnancy. The festival owners announced that she would instead headline the 2018 festival. Upon the announcement of Beyonc\u00e9's departure from the festival lineup, ticket prices dropped by 12%. At the 59th Grammy Awards in February 2017, \"Lemonade\" led the nominations with nine, including Album, Record, and Song of the Year for \"Lemonade\" and \"Formation\" respectively, ultimately winning two, Best Urban Contemporary Album for \"Lemonade\" and Best Music Video for \"Formation\".\nIn September 2017, Beyonc\u00e9 collaborated with J Balvin and Willy William, to release a remix of the song \"Mi Gente\". Beyonc\u00e9 donated all proceeds from the song to hurricane charities for those affected by Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma in Texas, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and other Caribbean Islands. On November 10, Eminem released \"Walk on Water\" featuring Beyonc\u00e9 as the lead single from his album \"Revival\". On November 30, Ed Sheeran announced that Beyonc\u00e9 would feature on the remix to his song \"Perfect\". \"Perfect Duet\" was released on December 1, 2017. The song reached number-one in the United States, becoming Beyonc\u00e9's sixth song of her solo career to do so.\n2018\u20132021: \"Everything Is Love\" and \"The Lion King\".\nOn January 4, 2018, the music video of Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z's \"\" collaboration, \"Family Feud\" was released. It was directed by Ava DuVernay. On March 1, 2018, DJ Khaled released \"Top Off\" as the first single from his forthcoming album \"Father of Asahd\" featuring Beyonc\u00e9, husband Jay-Z, and Future. On April 14, 2018, Beyonc\u00e9 played the first of two weekends as the headlining act of the Coachella Music Festival. Her performance of April 14, attended by 125,000 festival-goers, was immediately praised, with multiple media outlets describing it as historic. It was also named one of the greatest concert performances of all time. The performance became the most-tweeted-about performance of weekend one, as well as the most-watched live Coachella performance and the most-watched live performance on YouTube of all time. The show paid tribute to black culture, specifically historically black colleges and universities and featured a live band with over 100 dancers. Destiny's Child also reunited during the show. Its livestream on YouTube was the most watched of all time.\nOn June 6, 2018, Beyonc\u00e9 and husband Jay-Z kicked-off the On the Run II Tour in Cardiff, United Kingdom. Ten days later, at their final London performance, the pair unveiled \"Everything Is Love\", their joint studio album, credited under the name The Carters, and initially available exclusively on Tidal. The pair also released the video for the album's lead single, \"Apeshit\", on Beyonc\u00e9's official YouTube channel. \"Everything Is Love\" received generally positive reviews, and debuted at number two on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200, with 123,000 album-equivalent units, of which 70,000 were pure album sales. On December 2, 2018, Beyonc\u00e9 alongside Jay-Z headlined the Global Citizen Festival: Mandela 100 which was held at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa. Their 2-hour performance had concepts similar to the On the Run II Tour and Beyonc\u00e9 was praised for her outfits, which paid tribute to Africa's diversity.\n', a documentary and concert film focusing on Beyonc\u00e9's historic 2018 Coachella performances, was released by Netflix on April 17, 2019. The film was accompanied by the surprise live album '. It was later reported that Beyonc\u00e9 and Netflix had signed a $60\u00a0million deal to produce three different projects, one of which is \"Homecoming\". \"Homecoming: A Film by Beyonc\u00e9\" received six nominations at the 71st Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards.\nBeyonc\u00e9 starred as the voice of Nala in the remake \"The Lion King\", which was released in July 2019. Beyonc\u00e9 is featured on the film's soundtrack, released on July 11, 2019, with a remake of the song \"Can You Feel the Love Tonight\" alongside Donald Glover, Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen, which was originally composed by Elton John. An original song from the film by Beyonc\u00e9, \"Spirit\", was released as the lead single from both the soundtrack and \"\" \u2013 a companion album released alongside the film, produced and curated by Beyonc\u00e9.\nBeyonc\u00e9 called \"The Lion King: The Gift\" a \"sonic cinema\". She stated that the album was influenced by R&B,\u00a0pop,\u00a0hip hop, gqom and\u00a0Afro Beat. The songs were produced by African producers, which Beyonc\u00e9 said was because \"authenticity and heart were important to [her]\", since the film is set in Africa. In September of the same year, a documentary chronicling the development, production and early music video filming of \"The Lion King: The Gift\" entitled \"\" was aired on ABC.\nIn April 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 was featured on the remix of Megan Thee Stallion's song \"Savage\", marking her first music release for the year. The song peaked at number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, marking Beyonc\u00e9's eleventh song to do so across all acts. On June 19, 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 released the nonprofit charity single \"Black Parade\". On June 23, she followed up the release of its studio version with an a cappella version exclusively on Tidal. \"Black Is King\", a visual album based on the music of \"The Lion King: The Gift\", premiered globally on Disney+ on July 31, 2020. Produced by Disney and Parkwood Entertainment, the film was written, directed and executively produced by Beyonc\u00e9. The film was described by Disney as \"a celebratory memoir for the world on the Black experience\". Beyonc\u00e9 received the most nominations (9) at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards and the most awards (4), which made her the most-awarded singer, most-awarded female artist, and second-most-awarded artist in Grammy history. In 2021, Beyonc\u00e9 wrote and recorded a song titled \"Be Alive\" for the biographical drama film \"King Richard\". She received her first Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song at the 94th Academy Awards for the song, alongside co-writer Dixson.\n2022\u2013present: \"Renaissance\" and \"Cowboy Carter\".\nOn March 27, 2022, Beyonc\u00e9 performed \"Be Alive\" at the 94th Academy Awards. Choreographed by friend and past collaborator Fatima Robinson, Beyonc\u00e9 was applauded for choosing to perform on the Compton tennis courts Venus and Serena Williams practiced on in their childhood instead of at the venue.\nOn June 9, 2022, Beyonc\u00e9 removed her profile pictures across various social media platforms, causing speculation that she would be releasing new music. Days later, Beyonc\u00e9 caused further speculation via her nonprofit BeyGood's Twitter account hinting at her upcoming seventh studio album. On June 15, 2022, Beyonc\u00e9 officially announced her seventh studio album, titled \"Renaissance\". The lead single of \"Renaissance\", \"Break My Soul\", was released on June 20, 2022. The album was released on July 29, 2022. \"Break My Soul\" became Beyonc\u00e9's 20th top ten single on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, which made her join Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson as the only artists in Hot 100 history to achieve at least twenty top tens as a solo artist and ten as a member of a group.\nAs \"Renaissance\" was released, Beyonc\u00e9 announced that the album was the first installment of a trilogy she conceived and recorded over three years during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time she found to be her \"most creative [period].\" The three recorded projects are designated into acts under Roman numerals. Upon release, \"Renaissance\" received universal acclaim from critics. \"Renaissance\" debuted at number one on the \"Billboard\" 200 chart, making her the first female artist to have her first seven studio albums debut at number one in the United States. \"Break My Soul\" concurrently rose to number-one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, becoming the twelfth song to do so across her career discography.\nOn January 21, 2023, Beyonc\u00e9 performed in Dubai at a private show. The performance, which was her first full concert in more than four years, was delivered to an audience of influencers and journalists. Beyonc\u00e9 was reportedly paid $24 million to perform. Beyonc\u00e9 faced criticism for her decision to perform in the United Arab Emirates where homosexuality is illegal. On February 1, Beyonc\u00e9 announced the Renaissance World Tour with dates in North America and Europe, which would become for a short-span the highest-grossing tour by a female artist. On July 28, Beyonc\u00e9 appeared on \"Delresto (Echoes)\", the second single from rapper Travis Scott's album \"Utopia\", eventually becoming her 100th career appearance on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart (encompassing Destiny's Child, her solo career, and musical duo The Carters). On November 30, 2023, Beyonc\u00e9 released documentary concert film \"\" written, directed, and produced by her in collaboration with film distributor AMC Theatres. The film chronicles the development and execution of Beyonc\u00e9's Renaissance World Tour, and contained new song \"My House\" in the end credits.\nIn February 2024, Beyonc\u00e9 launched her hair care brand C\u00e9cred. On February 11, 2024, immediately following a partner commercial with Verizon for the Super Bowl LVIII, she announced the second installment of her trilogy project and released its first two songs, \"Texas Hold 'Em\" and \"16 Carriages\". \"Texas Hold 'Em\" became her highest chart debut in her career, her ninth solo number-one and her thirteenth across all credits on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. On March 12, 2024, she announced the album's title, \"Cowboy Carter\". A country and gospel-tinged record, it was released on March 29 to universal acclaim from critics, and includes collaborations with artists including Tanner Adell and her daughter Rumi Carter, Miley Cyrus, Tiera Kennedy, Willie Jones, Post Malone, Linda Martell, Willie Nelson, Shaboozey, Brittney Spencer, Dolly Parton, and Reyna Roberts.\nIn July 2024, NBC released two promotional commercials featuring Beyonc\u00e9 for their coverage of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France. Set to \"Cowboy Carter\" songs \"Ya Ya\" and \"Just For Fun\", she introduced the entire USA Olympic Team and Gold-medal gymnast Simone Biles, respectively. On August 20, Beyonc\u00e9 announced SirDavis, a whiskey in collaboration with Mo\u00ebt Hennessy developed for years prior and co-founded with master distiller Dr. Bill Lumsden. In October 2024, Levi's launched a four-part global campaign with Beyonc\u00e9 titled \"Reiimagine\" that will stretch into 2025 and focus on women's history of the company, using \"Cowboy Carter\" track \"Levii's Jeans\". The first commercial starring Beyonc\u00e9 amassed 2.4 billion impressions in under a month.\nBeyonc\u00e9 reprised her role as Nala for \"\", a prequel to the 2019 remake, released in December 2024. She headlined the first ever NFL Christmas Gameday Halftime Show that month, performing songs from \"Cowboy Carter\" for the first time. The \"Cowboy Carter Tour\" was announced on February 1, 2025. At the 67th Annual Grammy Awards, Beyonc\u00e9 became the first Black artist in 50 years, since Charley Pride and the Pointer Sisters, to win an award in the country music categories. She is the first Black artist ever to win the Grammy Award for Best Country Album. She additionally won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, becoming the first Black woman to do so since Lauryn Hill won for \"The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill\" in 1999.\nArtistry.\nVoice and musical style.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n With \"Single Ladies\", clearly I'd just gotten married, and people want to get married every day\u00a0\u2013 then there was the whole Justin Timberlake thing [recreating the video] on \"Saturday Night Live\", and it was also the year YouTube blew up. With \"Irreplaceable\", the aggressive lyrics, the acoustic guitar, and the 808 drum machine\u00a0\u2013 those things don't typically go together, and it sounded fresh. \"Crazy in Love\" was another one of those classic moments in pop culture that none of us expected. I asked Jay to get on the song the night before I had to turn my album in \u2013 thank God he did. It still never gets old, no matter how many times I sing it.\n\u2014Beyonc\u00e9\nCritics have described Beyonc\u00e9's voice as being mezzo-soprano. Jody Rosen highlights her tone and timbre as particularly distinctive, describing her voice as \"one of the most compelling instruments in popular music\". Her vocal abilities mean she is identified as the centerpiece of Destiny's Child. Jon Pareles of \"The New York Times\" commented that her voice is \"velvety yet tart, with an insistent flutter and reserves of soul belting\". Rosen notes that the hip hop era highly influenced Beyonc\u00e9's unique rhythmic vocal style, but also finds her quite traditionalist in her use of balladry, gospel and falsetto.\nOther critics praise her range and power, with Chris Richards of \"The Washington Post\" saying she was \"capable of punctuating any beat with goose-bump-inducing whispers or full-bore diva-roars.\" On the 2023 \"Rolling Stone\"'s list of the 200 Greatest Singers of all time, Beyonc\u00e9 ranked at number 8, with the publication noting that \"in [her] voice lies the entire history of Black music\".\nBeyonc\u00e9's music is generally R&B, pop and hip hop but she also incorporates soul and funk into her songs. \"4\" demonstrated Beyonc\u00e9's exploration of 1990s-style R&B, as well as further use of soul and hip hop than compared to previous releases. While she almost exclusively releases English songs, Beyonc\u00e9 recorded several Spanish songs for \"Irreemplazable\" (re-recordings of songs from \"B'Day\" for a Spanish-language audience), and the re-release of \"B'Day\". To record these, Beyonc\u00e9 was coached phonetically by American record producer Rudy Perez.\nSongwriting.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has received co-writing credits for most of her songs. Her early songs with Destiny's Child were personally driven and female-empowerment themed compositions like \"Independent Women\" and \"Survivor\", but after the start of her relationship with Jay-Z, she transitioned to more man-tending anthems such as \"Cater 2 U\".\nBeyonc\u00e9's songwriting process is also known for combining parts of different tracks, resulting in alteration of song structures. Sia, who co-wrote \"Pretty Hurts\", called Beyonc\u00e9 \"very Frankenstein when she comes to songs\"; Diana Gordon, who co-wrote \"Don't Hurt Yourself\" called her a \"scientist of songs\"; Caroline Polachek who co-wrote \"No Angel\", called her a \"genius writer and producer for this reason. She's so good at seeing connections.\"\nIn 2001, she became the first Black woman and second female lyricist to win the Pop Songwriter of the Year award at the ASCAP Pop Music Awards. Beyonc\u00e9 was the third woman to have writing credits on three number-one songs (\"Irreplaceable\", \"Grillz\" and \"Check on It\") in the same year, after Carole King in 1971 and Mariah Carey in 1991. She is tied with American lyricist Diane Warren at third with nine songwriting credits on number-one singles. The latter wrote her song \"I Was Here\" for \"4\", which was motivated by the September 11 attacks. In May 2011, \"Billboard\" magazine listed Beyonc\u00e9 at number 17 on their list of the Top 20 Hot 100 Songwriters for having co-written eight singles that hit number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart. She was one of only three women on that list, along with Alicia Keys and Taylor Swift.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has received criticism, including from journalists and musicians, for the extensive writing credits on her songs. The controversy surrounding her songwriting credits began with interviews in which she attributed herself as the songwriter for songs in which she was a co-writer or for which her contributions were marginal. In a cover story for \"Vanity Fair\" in 2005, she claimed to have \"written\" several number-one songs for Destiny's Child, contrary to the credits, which list her as a co-writer among others. During a 2007 interview with Barbara Walters, she claimed to have conceived the musical idea for the Destiny's Child song \"Bootylicious\", which provoked the song's producer Rob Fusari to call her father and then-manager Mathew Knowles in protest over the claim. In 2010, Fusari told \"Billboard\": \"[Knowles] explained to me, in a nice way, he said, 'People don't want to hear about Rob Fusari, producer from Livingston, N.J. No offense, but that's not what sells records. What sells records is people believing that the artist is everything.'\" However, in an interview for \"Entertainment Weekly\" in 2016, Fusari said Beyonc\u00e9 \"had the 'Bootylicious' concept in her head. That was totally her. She knew what she wanted to say. It was very urban pop angle that they were taking on the record.\"\nProduction.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I am really passionate about all of the steps [during] the production [...] I love to stack vocals, and I love to create my own little Oreo with arrangements, sometimes it can be thousands of vocals [and then] I go back and then kind of piece things together, because usually the songs are way too long [...] I go back and edit the structure of the song. [I] make sure that [...] every section has an intention, so that takes months. [...] I hear certain elements of things that go with things that are opposites. I am rarely happy with one track, it's usually four or five things put together that again don't really go together. I am so excited when I'm able to adjust the tempo and key and mute certain elements that don't complement and put opposites together. Sometimes it's just like the EQ of a synth or the warmth of a bass or the distortion of a bass that's on a different song and I can hear like, 'Ah! That's exactly what is missing to make the track full and complete!'\nBeyonc\u00e9's collaborators frequently mention her involvement in the record production of her songs, sometimes describing her as a genius in the skill. She is known to have favorite saturation and distortion plug\u2011ins and intentionality about stereo imaging.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />She is a true genius at producing and she\u2019s brilliantly right on it, all the time. [...] We have very similar taste in sonics and we\u2019re always painting in the sense that there\u2019s a focal point \u2014 the lead vocals, the drums, the bass, the chords, all the stuff that\u2019s the meat of the track \u2014 and then we\u2019ve got all these sounds that are more in the distance, as in \u2018Let\u2019s make this sound like it\u2019s down a long hallway, or in a fishbowl.\u2019 I work closely with her in terms of where stuff goes in a 3D space.\nInfluences.\nBeyonc\u00e9 names Michael Jackson as her major musical influence. Aged five, Beyonc\u00e9 attended her first ever concert where Jackson performed and she claims to have realized her purpose. When she presented him with a tribute award at the World Music Awards in 2006, Beyonc\u00e9 said, \"if it wasn't for Michael Jackson, I would never ever have performed.\" Beyonc\u00e9 was heavily influenced by Tina Turner, and once said \"Tina Turner is someone that I admire, because she made her strength feminine and sexy\".\nShe admires Diana Ross as an \"all-around entertainer\", and Whitney Houston, who she said \"inspired me to get up there and do what she did\". Beyonc\u00e9 cited Madonna as an influence \"not only for her musical style, but also for her business sense\", saying that she wanted to \"follow in the footsteps of Madonna and be a powerhouse and have my own empire\". She also credits Mariah Carey's singing and her song \"Vision of Love\" as influencing her to begin practicing vocal runs as a child. Her other musical influences include Rachelle Ferrell, Aaliyah, Janet Jackson, Prince, Lauryn Hill, Sade Adu, Donna Summer, Fairuz, Mary J. Blige, Selena, Anita Baker, and Toni Braxton.\nThe feminism and female empowerment themes on Beyonc\u00e9's second solo album \"B'Day\" were inspired by her role in \"Dreamgirls\" and by singer Josephine Baker. Beyonc\u00e9 paid homage to Baker by performing \"D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu\" at the 2006 Fashion Rocks concert wearing Baker's trademark mini-hula skirt embellished with fake bananas. Beyonc\u00e9's third solo album, \"I Am... Sasha Fierce\", was inspired by Jay-Z and especially by Etta James, whose \"boldness\" inspired Beyonc\u00e9 to explore other musical genres and styles. Her fourth solo album, \"4\", was inspired by Fela Kuti, 1990s R&B, Earth, Wind & Fire, DeBarge, Lionel Richie, Teena Marie, The Jackson 5, New Edition, Adele, Florence and the Machine, and Prince.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has stated that she is personally inspired by Michelle Obama (the 44th First Lady of the United States), saying \"she proves you can do it all\", and has described Oprah Winfrey as \"the definition of inspiration and a strong woman\". She has also discussed how Jay-Z is a continuing inspiration to her, both with what she describes as his lyrical genius and in the obstacles he has overcome in his life. Beyonc\u00e9 has expressed admiration for the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, posting in a letter \"what I find in the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, I search for in every day in music\u00a0... he is lyrical and raw\". Beyonc\u00e9 has also cited Cher as a fashion inspiration.\nVideography and stage.\nIn 2006, Beyonc\u00e9 introduced her all-female tour band Suga Mama (also the name of a song on \"B'Day\") which includes bassists, drummers, guitarists, horn players, keyboardists and percussionists. Her background singers, The Mamas, consist of Montina Cooper-Donnell, Crystal Collins and Tiffany Moniqu\u00e9 Riddick. They made their debut appearance at the 2006 BET Awards and re-appeared in the music videos for \"Irreplaceable\" and \"Green Light\". The band have supported Beyonc\u00e9 in most subsequent live performances, including her 2007 concert tour The Beyonc\u00e9 Experience, I Am... Tour (2009\u20132010), The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour (2013\u20132014) and The Formation World Tour (2016).\nBeyonc\u00e9 has received praise for her stage presence and voice during live performances. According to Barbara Ellen of \"The Guardian,\" Beyonc\u00e9 is the most in-charge female artist she's seen onstage. Similarly, Alice Jones of \"The Independent\" wrote she \"takes her role as entertainer so seriously she's almost too good\". The ex-President of Def Jam L.A. Reid has described Beyonc\u00e9 as the greatest entertainer alive. Jim Farber of the \"Daily News\" and Stephanie Classen of \"The StarPhoenix\" both praised her strong voice and her stage presence. \nBeyonc\u00e9 has worked with numerous directors for her music videos throughout her career, including Melina Matsoukas, Jonas \u00c5kerlund, and Jake Nava. Bill Condon, director of \"Beauty and the Beast\", stated that the \"Lemonade\" visuals in particular served as inspiration for his film, commenting, \"You look at Beyonc\u00e9's brilliant movie \"Lemonade\", this genre is taking on so many different forms\u00a0... I do think that this very old-school break-out-into-song traditional musical is something that people understand again and really want.\"\nAlter ego.\nDescribed as being \"sexy, seductive and provocative\" when performing on stage, Beyonc\u00e9 has said that she originally created the alter ego \"Sasha Fierce\" to keep that stage persona separate from who she really is. She described Sasha Fierce as being \"too aggressive, too strong, too sassy [and] too sexy\", stating, \"I'm not like her in real life at all.\" Sasha was conceived during the making of \"Crazy in Love\", and Beyonc\u00e9 introduced her with the release of her 2008 album, \"I Am... Sasha Fierce\". In February 2010, she announced in an interview with \"Allure\" magazine that she was comfortable enough with herself to no longer need Sasha Fierce. However, Beyonc\u00e9 announced in May 2012 that she would bring her back for her \"Revel Presents: Beyonc\u00e9 Live\" shows later that month.\nPublic image.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has been described as having sex appeal, with music journalist Tour\u00e9 writing that since the release of \"Dangerously in Love\", she has \"become a crossover sex symbol\". When off stage, Beyonc\u00e9 says that while she likes to dress sexily, her onstage dress \"is absolutely for the stage\". Due to her curves and the term's catchiness, in the 2000s, the media often used the term \"bootylicious\" (a portmanteau of the words \"booty\" and \"delicious\") to describe Beyonc\u00e9, the term popularized by the single of the same name by her group Destiny's Child. In 2006, it was added to the \"Oxford English Dictionary\".\nIn September 2010, Beyonc\u00e9 made her runway modelling debut at Tom Ford's Spring/Summer 2011 fashion show. She was named the \"World's Most Beautiful Woman\" by \"People\" and the \"Hottest Female Singer of All Time\" by \"Complex\" in 2012. In January 2013, \"GQ\" placed her on its cover, featuring her atop its \"100 Sexiest Women of the 21st Century\" list. VH1 listed her at number 1 on its 100 Sexiest Artists list. Several wax figures of Beyonc\u00e9 are found at Madame Tussauds Wax Museums in major cities around the world.\nAccording to Italian fashion designer Roberto Cavalli, Beyonc\u00e9 uses different fashion styles to work with her music while performing. Her mother co-wrote a book, published in 2002, titled \"Destiny's Style\", an account of how fashion affected the trio's success. The \"B'Day Anthology Video Album\" showed many instances of fashion-oriented footage, depicting classic to contemporary wardrobe styles. In 2007, Beyonc\u00e9 was featured on the cover of the \"Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue\", becoming the second African American woman after model and television personality Tyra Banks, and \"People\" magazine recognized Beyonc\u00e9 as the best-dressed celebrity.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has been nicknamed \"Queen Bey\" by publications over the years. The term is a reference to the common phrase \"queen bee\", a term used for the leader of a group of females. The nickname also refers to the Queen bee of a beehive, with her fan base being named \"BeyHive\". \"BeyHive\" was previously titled \"The Beyontourage\", (a portmanteau of Beyonc\u00e9 and entourage), but was changed after online petitions on Twitter and online news reports during competitions.\nIn 2006, the animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), criticized Beyonc\u00e9 for wearing and using fur in her clothing line House of Der\u00e9on. Emmett Price, a professor of music at Northeastern University, wrote in 2007 that he thinks race plays a role in many criticisms of Beyonc\u00e9's image, saying white celebrities who dress similarly do not attract as many comments. In 2008, the French personal care company L'Or\u00e9al was accused of whitening her skin in Feria hair color advertisements, responding that \"it is categorically untrue\", while Beyonc\u00e9 reportedly pressured H&M to use \"only natural pictures\" instead of retouching images in a 2013 campaign.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has been a vocal advocate for the Black Lives Matter movement. The release of \"Formation\" on February 6, 2016, saw her celebrate her Sub-Saharan Black African ancestry, with the song's music video featuring pro-black imagery and a shot of wall graffiti that says \"Stop shooting us\". The day after the song's release, she performed it at the 2016 Super Bowl halftime show with back up dancers dressed to represent the Black Panther Party. This incited criticism from conservative politicians and police officers, with some police boycotting Beyonc\u00e9's then upcoming Formation World Tour. Beyonc\u00e9 responded to the backlash by releasing tour merchandise that said \"Boycott Beyonc\u00e9\", and later clarified her sentiment, saying: \"Anyone who perceives my message as anti-police is completely mistaken. I have so much admiration and respect for officers and the families of officers who sacrifice themselves to keep us safe,\" Beyonc\u00e9 said. \"But let's be clear: I am against police brutality and injustice. Those are two separate things.\"\nPersonal life.\nMarriage and children.\nIn 2002, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z collaborated on the song \"'03 Bonnie & Clyde\", which appeared on his seventh album \"\" (2002). Beyonc\u00e9 appeared as Jay-Z's girlfriend in the music video for the song, fueling speculation about their relationship. On April 4, 2008, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z married without publicity. As of April\u00a02014[ [update]], the couple had sold a combined 300\u00a0million records together. They are known for their private relationship, although they have appeared to become more relaxed since 2013. Both have acknowledged difficulty that arose in their marriage after Jay-Z had an affair.\nBeyonc\u00e9 miscarried around 2010 or 2011, describing it as \"the saddest thing\" she had ever endured. She returned to the studio and wrote music to cope with the loss. In April 2011, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z traveled to Paris to shoot the album cover for \"4\", where she unexpectedly became pregnant. In August, the couple attended the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, at which Beyonc\u00e9 performed \"Love On Top\" and ended the performance by revealing she was pregnant. Her appearance helped that year's MTV Video Music Awards become the most-watched broadcast in MTV history, pulling in 12.4\u00a0million viewers; the announcement was listed in \"Guinness World Records\" for \"most tweets per second recorded for a single event\" on Twitter, receiving 8,868 tweets per second and \"Beyonce pregnant\" was the most Googled phrase the week of August 29, 2011. On January 7, 2012, Beyonc\u00e9 gave birth to a daughter, Blue Ivy, at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.\nFollowing the release of \"Lemonade\", which included the single \"Sorry\", in 2016, speculations arose about Jay-Z's alleged infidelity with a mistress referred to as \"Becky\". Jon Pareles in \"The New York Times\" pointed out that many of the accusations were \"aimed specifically and recognizably\" at him. Similarly, Rob Sheffield of \"Rolling Stone\" noted the lines \"Suck on my balls, I've had enough\" were an \"unmistakable hint\" that the lyrics revolve around Jay-Z.\nOn February 1, 2017, she revealed on her Instagram account that she was expecting twins. Her announcement gained over 6.3\u00a0million likes within eight hours, breaking the world record for the most liked image on the website at the time. On July 13, 2017, Beyonc\u00e9 uploaded the first image of herself and the twins onto her Instagram account, confirming their birth date as a month prior, on June 13, 2017, with the post becoming the second most liked on Instagram, behind her own pregnancy announcement. The twins, a daughter named Rumi and a son named Sir, were born at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in California via caesarean section. She wrote of her pregnancy and its aftermath in the September 2018 issue of \"Vogue\", in which she had full control of the cover, shot at Hammerwood Park by photographer Tyler Mitchell.\nPolitics.\nBeyonc\u00e9 performed \"America the Beautiful\" at President Barack Obama's 2009 presidential inauguration, as well as \"At Last\" during the first inaugural dance at the Neighborhood Ball two days later. The couple held a fundraiser at Jay-Z's 40/40 Club in Manhattan for President Obama's 2012 presidential campaign which raised $4\u00a0million. Beyonc\u00e9 voted for Obama in the 2012 presidential election. She performed the American national anthem \"The Star-Spangled Banner\" at his second inauguration in January 2013.\n\"The Washington Post\" reported in May 2015, that Beyonc\u00e9 attended a major celebrity fundraiser for 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. She also headlined for Clinton in a concert held the weekend before Election Day the next year. In this performance, Beyonc\u00e9 and her entourage of backup dancers wore pantsuits; a clear allusion to Clinton's frequent dress-of-choice. The backup dancers also wore\u00a0\"I'm with her\"\u00a0tee shirts, the campaign slogan for Clinton. In a brief speech at this performance Beyonc\u00e9 said, \"I want my daughter to grow up seeing a woman lead our country and knowing that her possibilities are limitless.\" She endorsed the bid of Beto O'Rourke during the 2018 United States Senate election in Texas.\nIn July 2024, Beyonc\u00e9 gave Vice President Kamala Harris permission to use \"Lemonade\" promotional single \"Freedom\" as the official song for her 2024 presidential campaign. Harris subsequently launched a digital ad in support of her candidacy featuring the song. In October 2024, Beyonc\u00e9, alongside her mother Tina and Kelly Rowland endorsed Harris for president at a campaign rally in her hometown of Houston.\nActivism.\nIn a 2013 interview with \"Vogue\", Beyonc\u00e9 stated that she considered herself to be \"a modern-day feminist\". She would later align herself more publicly with the movement, sampling \"We should all be feminists\", a speech delivered by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at a TEDx talk in April 2013, in her song \"Flawless\", released later that year. The next year she performed live at the MTV Video Awards in front a giant backdrop reading \"Feminist\". Her self-identification incited a circulation of opinions and debate about whether her feminism is aligned with older, more established feminist ideals. Annie Lennox, celebrated artist and feminist advocate, referred to Beyonc\u00e9's use of her word feminist as 'feminist lite'.\nAdichie responded with \"her type of feminism is not mine, as it is the kind that, at the same time, gives quite a lot of space to the necessity of men.\" Adichie expands upon what \"feminist lite\" means to her, referring that \"more troubling is the idea, in Feminism Lite, that men are naturally superior but should be expected to 'treat women well'\" and \"we judge powerful women more harshly than we judge powerful men. And Feminism Lite enables this.\" Beyonc\u00e9 responded about her intent by utilizing the definition of feminist with her platform was to \"give clarity to the true meaning\" behind it. She says to understand what being a feminist is, \"it's very simple. It's someone who believes in equal rights for men and women.\"\nShe has also contributed to the Ban Bossy campaign, which uses TV and social media to encourage leadership in girls. Following Beyonc\u00e9's public identification as a feminist, the sexualized nature of her performances and the fact that she championed her marriage was questioned.\nIn December 2012, Beyonc\u00e9 along with a variety of other celebrities teamed up and produced a video campaign for \"Demand A Plan\", a bipartisan effort by a group of 950 U.S. mayors and others designed to influence the federal government into rethinking its gun control laws, following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Beyonc\u00e9 publicly endorsed same-sex marriage on March 26, 2013, after the Supreme Court debate on California's Proposition 8. She spoke against North Carolina's Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, a bill passed (and later repealed) that discriminated against the LGBT community in public places in a statement during her concert in Raleigh as part of the Formation World Tour in 2016.\nShe has condemned police brutality against black Americans. She and Jay-Z attended a rally in 2013 in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin. The film for her sixth album \"Lemonade\" included the mothers of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner, holding pictures of their sons in the video for \"Freedom\". In a 2016 interview with \"Elle\", Beyonc\u00e9 responded to the controversy surrounding her song \"Formation\" which was perceived to be critical of the police. She clarified, \"I am against police brutality and injustice. Those are two separate things. If celebrating my roots and culture during Black History Month made anyone uncomfortable, those feelings were there long before a video and long before me\".\nIn February 2017, Beyonc\u00e9 spoke out against the withdrawal of protections for transgender students in public schools by Donald Trump's presidential administration. Posting a link to the \"100 Days of Kindness\" campaign on her Facebook page, Beyonc\u00e9 voiced her support for transgender youth and joined a roster of celebrities who spoke out against Trump's decision.\nInterests.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has been documented pursuing many passions, sometimes being described as a renaissance woman. Some of these include canvas painting, video editing, poetry, scriptwriting, lighting and stage design, animation and clothes design, photography, cultural historiography and beekeeping (with around 80,000 bees).\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I started painting portraits of women [in 2002], while filming \"Austin Powers\" [...] I got hooked and wouldn't sleep. I made this special room with saris and pillows. I would light candles, play Miles Davis and Bj\u00f6rk, and paint all night. It was very therapeutic. Whenever I finish one of my paintings, I try to figure out what it represents in my life. I'll be like, 'It's dark behind her and light in front of her, so a dark period must be coming to an end. Something light and beautiful is going to happen.'\nWealth.\n\"Forbes\" magazine began reporting on Beyonc\u00e9's earnings in 2008, calculating that the $80\u00a0million earned between June 2007 to June 2008, for her music, tour, films and clothing line made her the world's best-paid music personality at the time, above Madonna and Celine Dion. It placed her fourth on the Celebrity 100 list in 2009 and ninth on the \"Most Powerful Women in the World\" list in 2010. The following year, the magazine placed her eighth on the \"Best-Paid Celebrities Under 30\" list, having earned $35\u00a0million in the past year for her clothing line and endorsement deals. In 2012, \"Forbes\" placed Beyonc\u00e9 at number 16 on the Celebrity 100 list, twelve places lower than three years ago yet still having earned $40\u00a0million in the past year for her album \"4\", clothing line and endorsement deals.\nIn 2012, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z placed at number one on the \"World's Highest-Paid Celebrity Couples\", for collectively earning $78\u00a0million. The couple made it into the previous year's \"Guinness World Records\" as the \"highest-earning power couple\" for collectively earning $122\u00a0million in 2009. For the years 2009 to 2011, Beyonc\u00e9 earned an average of $70\u00a0million per year, and earned $40\u00a0million in 2012. In 2013, Beyonc\u00e9's endorsements of Pepsi and H&M made her and Jay-Z the world's first billion-dollar couple in the music industry. That year, Beyonc\u00e9 was listed as the fourth-most-powerful celebrity in the \"Forbes\" rankings.\nIn June 2014, Beyonc\u00e9 ranked at number one on the \"Forbes\" Celebrity 100 list, earning an estimated $115\u00a0million throughout June 2013 \u2013 June 2014. This in turn was the first time she had topped the Celebrity 100 list as well as being her highest yearly earnings to date. In 2016, Beyonc\u00e9 ranked at number 34 on the Celebrity 100 list with earnings of $54\u00a0million. She and Jay-Z also topped the highest-paid celebrity couple list, with combined earnings of $107.5\u00a0million.\nBeyonc\u00e9 is one of the wealthiest musical artists. As of 2018[ [update]], \"Forbes\" calculated her net worth to be $355\u00a0million, and in June of the same year, ranked her as the 35th-highest-earning celebrity, with annual earnings of $60\u00a0million. This tied Beyonc\u00e9 with Madonna as the only two female artists to earn more than $100\u00a0million within a single year twice. As a couple, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z have a combined net worth of $1.16\u00a0billion. In July 2017, \"Billboard\" announced that Beyonc\u00e9 was the highest-paid musician of 2016, with an estimated total of $62.1\u00a0million. By December 2023, \"Forbes\" estimated Beyonc\u00e9's net worth to be $800 million.\nIn 2023, the couple bought a house in Malibu, California, designed by the architect Tadao Ando, for $200 million. It established a record for the most expensive residence sold in the state of California.\nLegacy.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has been recognized as one of the most influential figures in music history by numerous publications, including \"Rolling Stone\" and the Associated Press. She was named \"Billboard\"'s Greatest Pop Star of the 21st Century, and topped NPR list of the \"21st Century's Most Influential Women Musicians\". She was repeatedly named the defining artist of both the 2000s decade and the 2010s decade. In \"The New Yorker\", music critic Jody Rosen described Beyonc\u00e9 as \"the most important and compelling popular musician of the twenty-first century\u00a0... the result, the logical end point, of a century-plus of pop.\" James Clear, in his book \"Atomic Habits\" (2018), draws a parallel between Beyonc\u00e9's success and the dramatic transformations in modern society: \"In the last one hundred years, we have seen the rise of the car, the airplane, the television, the personal computer, the internet, the smartphone, and Beyonc\u00e9.\" In 2018, \"Rolling Stone\" included her on its Millennial 100 list.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has revolutionized the music industry, transforming the production, distribution, promotion, and consumption of music. Beyonc\u00e9 has been credited with reviving the album format in an era dominated by singles and streaming, with albums becoming increasingly cohesive and narrative-led. She revolutionized how music is released and marketed with the invention of the surprise album, which became a common practice in the 2010s and 2020s. This move was \"arguably the single most pivotal moment in all of 21st-century pop music\" according to \"Billboard\", with Beyonc\u00e9 reorienting the music market to cohesive albums and unconventional promotional rollouts. She is also credited with reviving the music video as an art form and popularizing the visual album. Her impact on the music industry led to the Global Release Day being moved to Friday.\nBeyonc\u00e9's use of staccato rap-singing and chopped and re-pitched vocals have changed the sound of popular music and became defining features of the 21st-century music landscape. With her work frequently transcending traditional genre boundaries, Beyonc\u00e9 has created new artistic standards that have shaped contemporary music and set the precedent for music artists to move between and beyond genre confines. Beyonc\u00e9 has helped to revive and popularize several genres of music, including hip-hop in the 2000s, R&B in the 2010s, Afrobeats in the late 2010s / early 2020s, and country music in the 2020s.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has been recognized as setting the playbook for music artists in the modern era, with musicians from across genres, generations and countries citing her as a major influence on their career. Taylor Swift described Beyonc\u00e9's as a major influence and a \"guiding light throughout my career\", who has \"paved the road\" and shown how to \"break rules and defy industry norms\". Lady Gaga explained how Beyonc\u00e9 gave her the determination to become a musician, recalling seeing her in Destiny's Child music video and saying: \"Oh, she's a star. I want that.\" Rihanna was inspired to start her singing career after watching Beyonc\u00e9, telling \"etalk\" that after Beyonc\u00e9 released \"Dangerously In Love\" (2003), \"I was like 'wow, I want to be just like that.' She's huge and just an inspiration.\" Ariana Grande learned to sing by mimicking Beyonc\u00e9. Adele cited Beyonc\u00e9 as her inspiration and favorite artist, telling \"Vogue\": \"She's been a huge and constant part of my life as an artist since I was about ten or eleven\u00a0... I think she's inspiring. She's beautiful. She's ridiculously talented, and she is one of the kindest people I've ever met\u00a0... She makes me want to do things with my life.\" Both Paul McCartney and Garth Brooks said they watch Beyonc\u00e9's performances to get inspiration for their shows, with Brooks saying that when watching one of her performances, \"take out your notebook and take notes. No matter how long you've been on the stage \u2013 take notes on that one.\"\nShe is known for coining popular phrases such as \"put a ring on it\", a term for marriage proposal, \"I woke up like this\", which started a trend of posting morning selfies with the hashtag #iwokeuplikethis, and \"boy, bye\", which was used as part of the Democratic National Committee's campaign for the 2020 election. In January 2012, research scientist Bryan Lessard named \"Scaptia beyonceae\", a species of horse-fly found in Northern Queensland, Australia after Beyonc\u00e9 due to the fly's unique golden hairs on its abdomen.\nAchievements.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has received numerous awards and is the most-awarded female artist of all time. Having sold over 200 million records worldwide (a further 60 million additionally with Destiny's Child), Beyonc\u00e9 is one of the best-selling music artists of all time. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) listed Beyonc\u00e9 as the top certified artist of the 2000s decade, with a total of 64 certifications. In 2009, \"Billboard\" named her the Top Female Artist and Top Radio Songs Artist of the Decade.\nIn 2010, \"Billboard\" named her in their Top 50 R&B/Hip-Hop Artists of the Past 25 Years list at number 15. In 2012, VH1 ranked her third on their list of the \"100 Greatest Women in Music\", behind Mariah Carey and Madonna. In 2002, she received Songwriter of the Year from American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers becoming the First African American woman to win the award. In 2004 and 2019, she received NAACP Image Award for Entertainer of the Year and the Soul Train Music Award for Sammy Davis Jr. \u2013 Entertainer of the Year.\nIn 2005, she also received APEX Award at the Trumpet Award honoring the achievements of Black African Americans. In 2007, Beyonc\u00e9 received the International Artist of Excellence award by the American Music Awards. She also received Honorary Otto at the Bravo Otto. The following year, she received the Legend Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts at the World Music Awards and Career Achievement Award at the LOS40 Music Awards. In 2010, she received the Award of Honor for Artist of the Decade at the NRJ Music Award. At the 2011 \"Billboard\" Music Awards, Beyonc\u00e9 received the inaugural \"Billboard\" Millennium Award.\nBeyonc\u00e9 received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards and was honored as Honorary Mother of the Year at the Australian Mother of the Year Award in Barnardo's Australia for her Humanitarian Effort in the region and the Council of Fashion Designers of America Fashion Icon Award in 2016. In 2019, alongside Jay-Z, she received GLAAD Vanguard Award which is presented to a member of the entertainment community who does not identify as LGBT but who has made a significant difference in promoting equal rights for LGBT people. In 2020, she was awarded the BET Humanitarian Award. \"Consequence\" named her the 30th best singer of all time.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has won 35 Grammy Awards, both as a solo artist and member of Destiny's Child and The Carters, making her the most honored individual by the Grammys. She is also the most nominated artist in Grammy Award history with a total of 88 nominations. \"Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)\" won Song of the Year in 2010 while \"Say My Name\", \"Crazy in Love\" and \"Drunk in Love\" have each won Best R&B Song. \"Dangerously in Love\", \"B'Day\" and \"I Am... Sasha Fierce\" have won Best Contemporary R&B Album, while \"Lemonade\" has won Best Urban Contemporary Album. Beyonc\u00e9 set the record for the most Grammy awards won by a female artist in one night in 2010 when she won six awards, breaking the tie she previously held with Alicia Keys, Norah Jones, Alison Krauss, and Amy Winehouse, with Adele equaling this in 2012.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has won 30 MTV Video Music Awards, making her the joint most-decorated artist in Video Music Award history. She won 26 awards as a solo artist, two awards each with The Carters and Destiny's Child, making her lifetime total of 30 VMAs. \"Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)\" and \"Formation\" won Video of the Year in 2009 and 2016 respectively. Beyonc\u00e9 tied the record set by Lady Gaga in 2010 for the most VMAs won in one night for a female artist with eight in 2016. She is also the most-awarded and nominated artist in BET Award history, winning 36 awards (including two with Destiny's Child) from over 80 nominations, the most-awarded artist of the Soul Train Music Awards with 25 wins (21 as a soloist and four with Destiny's child), and the most-decorated artist at the NAACP Image Awards with 27 wins as a solo artist and five with Destiny's Child.\nFollowing her role in \"Dreamgirls\", Beyonc\u00e9 was nominated for Best Original Song for \"Listen\" and Best Actress at the Golden Globe Awards, and Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture at the NAACP Image Awards. Beyonc\u00e9 won two awards at the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards 2006; Best Song for \"Listen\" and Best Original Soundtrack for \"Dreamgirls: Music from the Motion Picture\". According to Fuse in 2014, Beyonc\u00e9 is the second-most award-winning artist of all time, after Michael Jackson. \"Lemonade\" won a Peabody Award in 2017. In 2022, \"Be Alive\" was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song, the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Song, and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.\nShe was named on the 2016 BBC Radio 4 \"Woman's Hour\" Power List as one of seven women judged to have had the biggest impact on women's lives over the past 70 years, alongside Margaret Thatcher, Barbara Castle, Helen Brook, Germaine Greer, Jayaben Desai and Bridget Jones, She was named the Most Powerful Woman in Music on the same list in 2020. In the same year, \"Billboard\" named her with Destiny's Child the third Greatest Music Video artists of all time, behind Madonna and Michael Jackson.\nIn June 2021, Beyonc\u00e9 won the award of \"top touring artist\" of the decade (2010s) at the \"Pollstar\" Awards. In that same month, Beyonc\u00e9 was inducted into the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame as a member of the inaugural class.\nBusiness and ventures.\nIn 2010, Beyonc\u00e9 founded her own entertainment company Parkwood Entertainment which formed as an imprint based from Columbia Records, the company began as a production unit for videos and films in 2008. Parkwood Entertainment is named after a street in Houston, Texas where Beyonc\u00e9 once lived. With headquarters in New York City, the company serves as an umbrella for the entertainer's various brands in music, movies, videos, and fashion. The staff of Parkwood Entertainment have experiences in arts and entertainment, from filmmaking and video production to web and fashion design. In addition to departments in marketing, digital, creative, publicity, fashion design and merchandising, the company houses a state-of-the-art editing suite, where Beyonc\u00e9 works on content for her worldwide tours, music videos, and television specials. Parkwood Entertainment's first production was the musical biopic \"Cadillac Records\" (2008), in which Beyonc\u00e9 starred and co-produced. The company has distributed Beyonc\u00e9's albums such as her self-titled fifth studio album (2013), \"Lemonade\" (2016) and The Carters, \"Everything is Love\" (2018). Beyonc\u00e9 has signed other artists to Parkwood such as Chloe x Halle, who performed at Super Bowl LIII in February 2019.\nIn February 2024, Beyonc\u00e9 launched C\u00e9cred, a hair care product line developed to fit different hair textures. Following its launch, she established an annual grant in collaboration with BeyGood. This is an effort to provide financial support to cosmetology students and professional hair stylists within the beauty industry. A yearly $500,000 is funding cosmetology school scholarships and salon business grants across five cities chosen for their large, diverse community of hair stylists: Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and Clementon.\nEndorsements and partnerships.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has worked with Pepsi since 2002, and in 2004 appeared in a Gladiator-themed commercial with Britney Spears, Pink, and Enrique Iglesias. In 2012, Beyonc\u00e9 signed a $50\u00a0million deal to endorse Pepsi. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPINET) wrote Beyonc\u00e9 an open letter asking her to reconsider the deal because of the unhealthiness of the product and to donate the proceeds to a medical organisation. Nevertheless, NetBase found that Beyonc\u00e9's campaign was the most talked about endorsement in April 2013, with a 70 percent positive audience response to the commercial and print ads.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has worked with Tommy Hilfiger for the fragrances True Star (singing a cover version of \"Wishing on a Star\") and True Star Gold; she also promoted Emporio Armani's Diamonds fragrance in 2007. Beyonc\u00e9 launched her first official fragrance, Heat, in 2010. In February 2011, Beyonc\u00e9 launched her second fragrance, Heat Rush. Beyonc\u00e9's third fragrance, Pulse, was launched in September 2011. In 2013, The Mrs. Carter Show Limited Edition version of Heat was released. The six editions of Heat are the world's best-selling celebrity fragrance line, with sales of over $400\u00a0million.\nThe release of a video-game \"Starpower: Beyonc\u00e9\" was cancelled after Beyonc\u00e9 pulled out of a $100 million deal with GateFive who alleged the cancellation meant the sacking of 70 staff and millions of pounds lost in development. It was settled out of court by her lawyers in June 2013 who said that they had cancelled because GateFive had lost its financial backers. Beyonc\u00e9 also has had deals with American Express, Nintendo DS and L'Or\u00e9al since the age of 18.\nIn March 2015, Beyonc\u00e9 became a co-owner, with other artists, of the music streaming service Tidal. The service specializes in lossless audio and high definition music videos. Beyonc\u00e9's husband Jay-Z acquired the parent company of Tidal, Aspiro, in the first quarter of 2015. Including Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z, sixteen artist stakeholders (such as Kanye West, Rihanna, Madonna, Chris Martin, Nicki Minaj and more) co-own Tidal, with the majority owning a 3% equity stake. The idea of having an all artist owned streaming service was created by those involved to adapt to the increased demand for streaming within the current music industry.\nIn November 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 formed a multi-year partnership with exercise equipment and media company Peloton. The partnership was formed to celebrate homecoming season in historically black colleges and universities, providing themed workout experiences inspired by Beyonc\u00e9's 2019 \"Homecoming\" film and after 2020's homecoming celebrations were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of the partnership, Beyonc\u00e9 and Peloton are donating free memberships to all students at 10 HBCUs, and Peloton are pursuing long-term recruiting partnerships at the HCBUs. Gwen Bethel Riley, head of music at Peloton, said: \"When we had conversations with Beyonc\u00e9 around how critical a social impact component was to all of us, it crystallized how important it was to embrace Homecoming as an opportunity to celebrate and create dialogue around Black culture and music, in partnership with HBCUs.\" Upon news of the partnership, a decline in Peloton's shares reversed, and its shares rose by 8.6%.\nIn 2021, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z partnered with Tiffany & Co. for the company's \"About Love\" campaign. Beyonc\u00e9 became the fourth woman, and first Black woman, to wear the 128.54-carat Tiffany Yellow Diamond. The campaign featured a robin egg blue painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat titled \"Equals Pi\" (1982). Both Beyonce and the brand faced significant backlash for the campaign, as the Tiffany Yellow Diamond, which was discovered in the Kimberley diamond mines in South Africa in 1877, is classified as a blood diamond and viewed as a symbol of British colonialism over Africa.\nFashion lines.\nBeyonc\u00e9 and her mother introduced House of Der\u00e9on, a women's fashion line, in 2005. The concept is inspired by three generations of women in their family, with the name paying tribute to Beyonc\u00e9's grandmother, Agn\u00e8z Der\u00e9on, a respected seamstress. According to Tina, the overall style of the line best reflects her and Beyonc\u00e9's taste and style. Beyonc\u00e9 and her mother founded their family's company Beyond Productions, which provides the licensing and brand management for House of Der\u00e9on, and its junior collection, Der\u00e9on. House of Der\u00e9on pieces were exhibited in Destiny's Child's shows and tours, during their \"Destiny Fulfilled\" era. The collection features sportswear, denim offerings with fur, outerwear and accessories that include handbags and footwear, and are available at department and specialty stores across the U.S. and Canada.\nIn 2005, Beyonc\u00e9 teamed up with House of Brands, a shoe company, to produce a range of footwear for House of Der\u00e9on. In January 2008, Starwave Mobile launched Beyonc\u00e9 Fashion Diva, a \"high-style\" mobile game with a social networking component, featuring the House of Der\u00e9on collection. In July 2009, Beyonc\u00e9 and her mother launched a new junior apparel label, Sasha Fierce for Der\u00e9on, for back-to-school selling. The collection included sportswear, outerwear, handbags, footwear, eyewear, lingerie and jewelry. It was available at department stores including Macy's and Dillard's, and specialty stores Jimmy Jazz and Against All Odds. \nIn October 2014, Beyonc\u00e9 signed a deal to launch an activewear line of clothing with British fashion retailer Topshop. The 50\u201350 venture is called Ivy Park and was launched in April 2016. The brand's name is a nod to Beyonc\u00e9's daughter and her favorite number four (IV in Roman numerals), and also references the park where she used to run in Texas. She has since bought out Topshop owner Philip Green from his 50% share after he was alleged to have sexually harassed, bullied and racially abused employees. She now owns the brand herself.\nIn April 2019, it was announced that Beyonc\u00e9 would become a creative partner with Adidas and further develop her athletic brand Ivy Park with the company. Knowles will also develop new clothes and footwear for Adidas. Shares for the company rose 1.3% upon the news release. In December 2019, they announced a launch date of January 18, 2020. Beyonc\u00e9 uploaded a teaser on her website and Instagram. The collection was previewed on the upcoming \"Elle\" January 2020 issue, where Beyonc\u00e9 is seen wearing several garments, accessories and footwear from the first collection. In February 2023, \"The Wall Street Journal\" reported that the line was struggling financially with revenue falling by more than 50% over the past fiscal year to $40 million; well short of the company's $250 million projected forecast. In March 2023, it was announced that Beyonc\u00e9 and Adidas reached a mutual decision to end their partnership.\nIn March 2023, Olivier Rousteing, the creative director of Balmain, announced that he and Beyonc\u00e9 collaborated on a couture collection complete with sixteen looks corresponding to the sixteen tracks on her album \"Renaissance\". This \"Renaissance Couture\" collection marked the first time that a Black woman oversaw the development of a collection from a Parisian couture house.\nIn September 2024, Beyonc\u00e9 partnered with Levi Strauss & Co. to remake a classic '80s 'Launderette' campaign. Michelle Gass, the CEO of Levis Strauss & Co., shared insights regarding the advantages of the company's collaboration with Beyonc\u00e9, emphasizing that the advertising campaign could significantly enhance sales in the women's clothing segment.\nPhilanthropy.\nIn 2002, Beyonc\u00e9, Kelly Rowland and Tina Knowles built the Knowles-Rowland Center for Youth, a community center in Downtown Houston. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Beyonc\u00e9 and Rowland founded the Survivor Foundation to provide transitional housing to displaced families and provide means for new building construction, to which Beyonc\u00e9 contributed an initial $250,000. The foundation has since expanded to work with other charities in the city, and also provided relief following Hurricane Ike three years later. Beyonc\u00e9 also donated $100,000 to the Gulf Coast Ike Relief Fund. In 2007, Beyonc\u00e9 founded the Knowles-Temenos Place Apartments, a housing complex offering living space for 43 displaced individuals. As of 2016, Beyonc\u00e9 had donated $7\u00a0million for the maintenance of the complex.\nAfter starring in \"Cadillac Records\" in 2009 and learning about Phoenix House, a non-profit drug and alcohol rehabilitation organization, Beyonc\u00e9 donated her full $4\u00a0million salary from the film to the organization. Beyonc\u00e9 and her mother subsequently established the Beyonc\u00e9 Cosmetology Center, which offers a seven-month cosmetology training course helping Phoenix House's clients gain career skills during their recovery.\nIn January 2010, Beyonc\u00e9 participated in George Clooney and Wyclef Jean's telethon, donated a large sum to the organization, and was named the official face of the limited edition Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) \"Fashion For Haiti\" T-shirt. In April 2011, Beyonc\u00e9 joined forces with U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama and the National Association of Broadcasters Education Foundation, to help boost the latter's campaign against child obesity by reworking her single \"Get Me Bodied\". Following the death of Osama bin Laden, Beyonc\u00e9 released her cover of the Lee Greenwood song \"God Bless the U.S.A.\", as a charity single to help raise funds for the New York Police and Fire Widows' and Children's Benefit Fund.\nBeyonc\u00e9 became an ambassador for the 2012 World Humanitarian Day campaign donating her song \"I Was Here\" and its music video, shot in the UN, to the campaign. In 2013, it was announced that Beyonc\u00e9 would work with Salma Hayek and Frida Giannini on a Gucci \"Chime for Change\" campaign that aims to spread female empowerment. The campaign, which aired on February 28, was set to her new music. A concert for the cause took place on June 1, 2013, in London. With help of the crowdfunding platform Catapult, visitors of the concert could choose between several projects promoting education of women and girls. Beyonc\u00e9 also took part in \"Miss a Meal\", a food-donation campaign, and supported Goodwill Industries through online charity auctions at Charitybuzz that support job creation throughout Europe and the U.S.\nBeyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z secretly donated tens of thousands of dollars to bail out Black Lives Matter protesters in Baltimore and Ferguson, as well as funded infrastructure for the establishment of Black Lives Matter chapters across the U.S. Before Beyonc\u00e9's Formation World Tour show in Tampa, her team held a private luncheon for more than 20 community leaders to discuss how Beyonc\u00e9 could support local charitable initiatives, including pledging on the spot to fund 10 scholarships to provide students with financial aid. Tampa Sports Authority board member Thomas Scott said: \"I don't know of a prior artist meeting with the community, seeing what their needs are, seeing how they can invest in the community. It says a lot to me about Beyonc\u00e9. She not only goes into a community and walks away with (money), but she also gives money back to that community.\"\nIn June 2016, Beyonc\u00e9 donated over $82,000 to the United Way of Genesee County to support victims of the Flint water crisis. Beyonc\u00e9 additionally donated money to support 14 students in Michigan with their college expenses. In August 2016, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z donated $1.5 million to civil rights groups including Black Lives Matter, Hands Up United and Dream Defenders. After Hurricane Matthew, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z donated $15 million to the Usain Bolt Foundation to support its efforts in rebuilding homes in Haiti.\nDuring Hurricane Harvey in August 2017, Beyonc\u00e9 launched BeyGOOD Houston to support those affected by the hurricane in Houston. The organization donated necessities such as cots, blankets, pillows, baby products, feminine products and wheelchairs, and funded long-term revitalization projects. On September 8, Beyonc\u00e9 visited Houston, where she sponsored a lunch for 400 survivors at her local church, visited the George R Brown Convention Center to discuss with people displaced by the flooding about their needs, served meals to those who lost their homes, and made a significant donation to local causes. Beyonc\u00e9 additionally donated $75,000 worth of new mattresses to survivors of the hurricane. Later that month, Beyonc\u00e9 released a remix of J Balvin and Willy William's \"Mi Gente\", with all of her proceeds being donated to disaster relief charities in Puerto Rico, Mexico, the U.S. and the Caribbean after hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, and the Chiapas and Puebla earthquakes.\nIn April 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 donated $6\u00a0million to the National Alliance in Mental Health, UCLA and local community-based organizations in order to provide mental health and personal wellness services to essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. BeyGOOD also teamed up with local organizations to help provide resources to communities of color, including food, water, cleaning supplies, medicines and face masks. The same month, Beyonc\u00e9 released a remix of Megan Thee Stallion's \"Savage\", with all proceeds benefiting Bread of Life Houston's COVID-19 relief efforts, which includes providing over 14 tons of food and supplies to 500 families and 100 senior citizens in Houston weekly.\nIn May 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 provided 1,000 free COVID-19 tests in Houston as part of her and her mother's #IDidMyPart initiative, which was established due to the disproportionate deaths in African-American communities. Additionally, 1,000 gloves, masks, hot meals, essential vitamins, grocery vouchers and household items were provided. In July 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 established the Black-Owned Small Business Impact Fund in partnership with the NAACP, which offers $10,000 grants to black-owned small businesses in need following the George Floyd protests. All proceeds from Beyonc\u00e9's single \"Black Parade\" were donated to the fund. In September 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 announced that she had donated an additional $1\u00a0million to the fund. As of December 31, 2020, the fund had given 715 grants to black-owned small businesses, amounting to $7.15 million donated.\nIn October 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 released a statement that she has been working with the Feminist Coalition to assist supporters of the End SARS movement in Nigeria, including covering medical costs for injured protestors, covering legal fees for arrested protestors, and providing food, emergency shelter, transportation and telecommunication means to those in need. Beyonc\u00e9 also showed support for those fighting against other issues in Africa, such as the Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon, ShutItAllDown in Namibia, Zimbabwean Lives Matter in Zimbabwe and the Rape National Emergency in Liberia. In December 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 donated $500,000 to help alleviate the housing crisis in the U.S. caused by the cessation of the eviction moratorium, giving 100 $5,000 grants to individuals and families facing foreclosures and evictions.\nDiscography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nTours and residencies.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["83688", "6521181"], "permutation_1": ["83688", "6521181"], "permutation_2": ["83688", "6521181"], "permutation_3": ["6521181", "83688"]}
{"id": "2hop__122645_7672", "docs_added": {"10722679": "William C. Perry\nAmerican judge\nWilliam C. Perry (March 11, 1900 \u2013 October 27, 1985) was an American attorney and jurist in Oregon. He was the 34th Chief Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court. He served in that role twice for a total of five years. Perry was appointed to the court by soon to be ex-governor Douglas McKay after McKay had already appointed him as a county circuit court judge. A native of Kansas, he also worked as a county prosecuting attorney and city attorney prior to joining the state's highest court.\nEarly life.\nWilliam C. Perry was born on March 11, 1900, in Belleville, Kansas, where he then grew up before he served in the military during World War I. He graduated from the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1922. There Perry was a member of the fraternity Phi Gamma Delta and earned both his undergraduate degree and a law degree. He married Enola Miller of Riley, Kansas in June 1924 at Salina, Kansas, and they had one son, William junior, and one daughter, JoAnne Kay (1930\u20131944). In Kansas, he worked for the county as a prosecutor, earning $75 per month. In 1937, the family moved to Pendleton, Oregon, where he served as the city's attorney from 1944 to 1950.\nJudicial career.\nPerry was appointed to the county court for Umatilla County in 1950 by Douglas McKay. On December 26, 1952, Oregon Governor McKay appointed Perry to the Oregon Supreme Court to fill the vacancy created by the death of Arthur Hay, who had died on December 19. McKay resigned as governor the following day. Then in 1954 Perry won election to a full six-year term followed by re-election in 1960 and 1966. During his tenure on Oregon's highest court, he was selected to serve as chief justice twice. First in 1957 until 1959, and then from 1967 to 1970. Justice Perry then resigned from the court on June 1, 1970. After leaving the bench he criticized the Supreme Court of the United States for their decisions regarding free lawyers for defendants and the one person one vote principle.\nOther.\nOne of Justice Perry's law clerks while he was Chief Justice was Jack Gore Collins, who later was the assistant U.S. Attorney who signed the indictment for skyjacker D. B. Cooper just prior to the statute of limitations running out in 1976. Another clerk, Ken Morrow, was a high-profile defense attorney in Oregon.\nAfter retiring from the bench, Perry served as Chair of the Natural Resources section at the House of Delegates for the American Bar Association in 1974. William C. Perry died in Chula Vista, California, on October 27, 1985, at the age of 85 years.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "163327": "University of Kansas\nPublic university in Lawrence, Kansas, US\nThe University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States. Two branch campuses are in the Kansas City metropolitan area on the Kansas side: the university's medical school and hospital in Kansas City, Kansas, the Edwards Campus in Overland Park. There are also educational and research sites in Garden City, Hays, Leavenworth, Parsons, and Topeka, an agricultural education center in rural north Douglas County, and branches of the medical school in Salina and Wichita. The university is a member of the Association of American Universities and is classified among \"R1: Doctoral Universities \u2013 Very high research activity\".\nFounded March 21, 1865, the university was opened in 1866 under a charter granted by the Kansas State Legislature in 1864 and legislation passed in 1863 under the state constitution, which was adopted two years after the 1861 admission of the former Kansas Territory as the 34th state into the Union.\nAs of fall 2022[ [update]], 23,872 students were enrolled at the Lawrence and Edwards campuses with an additional 2,836 students enrolled at the University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC) for a total enrollment of 26,708 students across the three campuses. Overall, the university (including KUMC) employed 3,196 faculty members (faculty, faculty administrators, librarians, and unclassified academic staff) in fall 2022[ [update]].\nKansas's athletic teams compete in NCAA Division I sports as the Jayhawks, as members of the Big 12 Conference. They field 16 varsity sports, as well as club-level sports for ice hockey, rugby, men's volleyball, soccer, basketball, rock climbing, triathlon, cross country, track, swim, pickleball, table tennis, and water skiing.\nHistory.\nOn February 20, 1863, Kansas Governor Thomas Carney signed into law a bill creating the state university in Lawrence. The law was conditioned upon a gift from Lawrence of a $15,000 endowment fund and a site for the university, in or near the town, of not less than of land. If Lawrence failed to meet these conditions, Emporia instead of Lawrence would get the university.\nThe site selected for the university was a hill known as Hogback Ridge (later known as Mount Oread), which was privately donated by Charles L. Robinson, the Republican governor of the state of Kansas from 1861 to 1863, and one of the original settlers of Lawrence, Kansas. Robinson and his wife Sara bestowed the site to the State of Kansas in exchange for land elsewhere. The philanthropist Amos Adams Lawrence donated $10,000 of the necessary endowment fund, and the citizens of Lawrence raised the remaining money themselves via private donations. On November 2, 1863, Governor Carney announced Lawrence had met the conditions to get into the state university, and the following year the university was officially organized.\nThe school's Board of Regents held its first meeting in March 1865, which is the event that KU dates its founding from. Work on the first college building began later that year. The school opened for classes on September 12, 1866, and the first class graduated in 1873. According to William L. Burdick, the first degree awarded by the university was a Doctor of Divinity, bestowed upon noted abolitionist preacher Richard Cordley.\nDuring the early development of the University of Kansas, Chancellors Joshua Lippincott, Francis H. Snow, and Frank Strong, along with the Kansas Board of Regents, worked to establish the university as not only a center for higher education but also a representative agency of the state. Snow, who served from 1890 to 1901, emphasized scientific research and public engagement, while Strong, beginning in 1902, advanced the university\u2019s role in public service. This vision aligned with the sentiments expressed by Professor M. S. Ward, who stated in 1891 that \"Students should find in the University preparation for all the various pursuits and callings of society. The ultimate aim of our own State University ought to be [promoting] the highest Christian culture, an ample professional training, [which] will make our civilization the highest possible on earth.\"\nIn an effort to appeal to the predominantly Christian population of Kansas, many of who in the early history of the university were critical of state money being used to fund a secular institution, Chancellor Lippincott sought to reassure the public that the University of Kansas maintained strong Christian values. In response to a concerned parent questioning the university\u2019s mission, Lippincott wrote, \"The University is a Christian institution founded by a Christian state. We have daily prayers conducted for the most part by members of the Faculty of whom nearly all are Christian and several ministers of the Gospel.\"\nAlthough the university was a secular institution, religion remained a central cultural force among students. In an 1880 community letter, an anonymous student reflected on the broader moral and spiritual purpose of education at KU, writing, \"We are all seeking the truth, we are all earnest in our effort to correctly solve the great problem of a worthy and useful existence\u2014we all recognize the wonderful features of a Christian age and a Christian country and we all hope to be true men and women [of the country] and almost all acknowledge that in accomplishing this we need an inspiration which is not of this earth nor fashioned after this world.\"\nChancellor Lippincott emphasized the importance of individual development in higher education, distinguishing universities from more rigid collegiate institutions in other parts of the country. In a lecture to students, James Marvin, the third Chancellor of the University stated, \"Higher education should aid students to realize all their potentialities, but only in a university are all individualities respected. Colleges that require all students [to] follow the same course have a factory air about them. Students go through the same milling process and come out machines, but God did not intend man to be a machine, and the University of Kansas should be about His work.\"\nBeginning in 1880, the University began to field intercollegiate athletics programs, starting with baseball. The University would introduce football in 1890, men's basketball in 1898, a women's club basketball team in 1902, and various other varsity athletics programs throughout the 20th century.\nDuring World War I, the University of Kansas became a key training ground for military personnel, and courses were added for male students to reflect this. Military drills and coursework in military science were made mandatory for male students, and in 1918, KU established a unit of the Students' Army Training Corps (SATC) to provide academic and military instruction. Faculty contributed to war-related research, while female students supported Red Cross efforts. Chancellor Frank Strong emphasized KU\u2019s role in preparing students for both military service and national responsibility. Strong was a vocal opponent of the United States entering a foreign war, and helped found the Kansas Branch of the League to Enforce Peace in 1915, which was a collection of activists who were opposed to American involvement in foreign conflicts. Strong advocated for patriotism during his later years as Chancellor, stating at the University Assembly in 1915 that \"it is America's destiny to preserve Western Civilization, which seems to be destroying itself abroad. While the youth of Europe are on its battlefields, the youth of America must seek higher education to enable them to carry on the material for the leadership of the world. America and its universities, with the University of Kansas having a big place among them, must become the center of the greatest intellectual life that the next generation should know.\" In April 1917, after Congress declared a state of war, Strong sent a letter to Congress stating that the University \"has always been loyal to country and to the flag, and always will be.\"\nDuring World War II, Kansas was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program, which offered students a path to a Navy commission.\nLandmarks and structures.\nKU is home to the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics, the Beach Center on Disability, Lied Center of Kansas and radio stations KJHK, 90.7 FM, and KANU, 91.5 FM. The university is also host to several significant museums. These include the University of Kansas Natural History Museum, founded in 1927, which contains important collections in mammalogy, ornithology, vertebrate paleontology, and entomology; and the Spencer Museum of Art, founded in 1928, home to a wide variety of cultural materials from all around the world, with a particular emphasis on American Indian materials. The libraries of the university include Watson Library, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, the Murphy Art and Architecture Library, Thomas Gorton Music & Dance Library, and Anschutz Library. Of athletic note, the university is home to Allen Fieldhouse, which is heralded as one of the greatest basketball arenas in the world, and David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium, which is the eighth oldest college football stadium in the country.\nAcademics.\nThe University of Kansas is a large, state-sponsored university with five campuses. KU is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU) and is classified among \"R1: Doctoral Universities \u2013 Very high research activity\". KU features the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, which includes the School of the Arts and the School of Public Affairs & Administration; and the schools of Architecture, Design & Planning; Business; Education; Engineering; Health Professions; Journalism & Mass Communications; Law; Medicine; Music; Nursing; Pharmacy; and Social Welfare. The university offers more than 345 degree programs. In 2017 Johnson County accounted for most of instate enrollment.\nAccording to the National Science Foundation, KU spent $339 million on research and development in 2018, ranking it 74th in the nation.\nSchool of Architecture and Design.\nThe University of Kansas School of Architecture and Design (ArcD), with its main building being Marvin Hall, traces its architectural roots to the creation of the architectural engineering degree program in KU's School of Engineering in 1912. The Bachelor of Architecture degree was added in 1920. In 1969, the School of Architecture and Urban Design (SAUD) was formed. In 2001, architectural engineering merged with civil and environmental engineering. The design programs from the discontinued School of Fine Arts were merged into the school in 2009, forming the School of Architecture and Design.\nThe Department of Design began in 1921. The Bachelor of Fine Arts degree program began eight years later. Industrial Design was added in 1941, interior design in 1946, jewelry and silversmithing, art history, and the Masters of Fine Arts program in 1948.\nIn 2009, the university reorganized the School of Fine Arts. The professional design practice programs became the Department of Design, administratively located in the School of Architecture and Design.\nSchool of Business.\nThe University of Kansas School of Business is a public business school on the main campus of the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. The KU School of Business was founded in 1924 and has more than 80 faculty members and approximately 1500 students.\nNamed one of the best business schools in the Midwest by Princeton Review, the KU School of Business has been continually accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) for its undergraduate and graduate programs in business and accounting.\nFor 2021, \"U.S. News & World Report\" ranked KU's business school 68th out of 477 evaluated.\nIn 2016, The University of Kansas completed construction on a new home for the business school, named Capitol Federal Hall. It is located at 1654 Naismith Drive, near KU's Rec Center and across the street from Allen Fieldhouse. Capitol Federal Hall is a 166,500 square-foot building complete with state-of-the-art technology and several research labs.\nSchool of Law.\nThe University of Kansas School of Law, founded in 1878, was the top law school in the state of Kansas, and tied for 70th out of 198 nationally, according to the 2021 \"U.S. News & World Report\" rankings. Classes are held in Green Hall at W 15th St and Burdick Dr, which is named after former dean James Green.\nSchool of Engineering.\nThe KU School of Engineering is a public engineering school located on the main campus. The School of Engineering was founded officially in 1891, although engineering degrees were awarded as early as 1873.\nIn the \"U.S. News & World Report\"'s \"America's Best Colleges\" 2021 issue, KU's School of Engineering was ranked tied for 102nd among 218 engineering schools whose highest degree is a doctorate.\nNotable alumni include Charles E. Spahr (1934), the former CEO of Standard Oil of Ohio.\nSchool of Journalism and Mass Communications.\nIn addition to its academic programs, the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications sponsors publications including \"The University Daily Kansan\", \"Jayplay\" magazine, and KUJH TV.\nMedical Center.\nThe University of Kansas Medical Center features three schools: the School of Medicine, School of Nursing, and School of Health Professions that each has its own programs of graduate study. As of the Fall 2013 semester, there were 3,349 students enrolled at KU Med. The Medical Center also offers four-year instruction at the Wichita campus, and features a medical school campus in Salina, Kansas devoted to rural health care.\nThe University of Kansas Health System is co-located at the University of Kansas Medical Center.\nEdwards Campus, Overland Park.\nKU's Edwards Campus is in Overland Park, Kansas. Established in 1993, its goal is to provide adults with the opportunity to complete undergraduate, graduate, and certificate programs. About 2,000 students attend the Edwards Campus, with an average age of 31.\nUniversity of Kansas Leavenworth.\nNear the beginning of the 2018\u20132019 school year, KU launched classes in Leavenworth, Kansas, offering classes to \"both civilian and military\" students, emphasizing a \"high priority in supporting military-affiliated students\". The Leavenworth classes offer both undergraduate and graduate courses.\nComputing innovations.\nKU's School of Business launched interdisciplinary management science graduate studies in operations research during Fall Semester 1965. The program provided the foundation for decision science applications supporting NASA Project Apollo Command Capsule Recovery Operations.\nKU's academic computing department was an active participant in setting up the Internet and is the developer of the early Lynx text-based web browser. Lynx provided hypertext browsing and navigation prior to Tim Berners Lee's invention of HTTP and HTML.\nStudent activities.\nAthletics.\nThe University of Kansas has had teams representing them athletically since at least 1867, a year after classes officially started. Starting in 1866, a baseball team made up of KU students represented the University of Kansas in games played at the Kansas State Fair against local teams from around the state of Kansas. \nThe school's sports teams, wearing crimson and blue, are called the Kansas Jayhawks. They participate in the NCAA's Division I and in the Big 12 Conference. The University of Kansas has won thirteen National Championships all-time: six in men's basketball (two Helms Foundation championships and four NCAA championships, most recently in 2022), three in men's indoor track and field, three in men's outdoor track and field, one in men's cross country and one in women's outdoor track and field. The home course for KU Cross Country is Rim Rock Farm. Their most recent championship came in 2022, the men's basketball team won the 2022 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament.\nKansas football dates from 1890 and is one of the oldest continuous programs in the nation. They have played in the Orange Bowl three times: 1948, 1969, and 2008, as well as nine other bowl games. They are currently coached by Lance Leipold, who was hired in May 2021. From its inception in 1890 to 1929, the program saw consistent success, winning several conference titles in 4 different conferences. After joining the Big 6 Conference (which would eventually become the Big 8) in 1929, Kansas began to struggle in the win-loss column. With the formation of the Big 8 conference in 1960, Kansas became a consistent winner again and fielded legendary coaches like Pepper Rodgers, Don Fambrough, Bud Moore, and Glen Mason. In 2008, under the leadership of Mark Mangino, the #7 Jayhawks emerged victorious in their first BCS bowl game, the FedEx Orange Bowl, with a 24\u201321 victory over the #3 Virginia Tech Hokies. This capstone victory marked the end of the most successful season in school history, in which the Jayhawks went 12\u20131 (.923). The team plays at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium, which recently underwent an $85 million renovation to add an indoor practice facility with a 120-yard field, an outdoor practice facility with 2 full fields and three partial fields, new locker rooms, a new weight training facility, new residencies for players, new offices, new turf, new seats, and a state-of-the-art video board.\nThe KU men's basketball team has fielded a team every year since 1898. The Jayhawks are a perennial national contender, coached by Hall of Fame coach Bill Self. The team has won six national titles, including four NCAA tournament championships in 1952, 1988, 2008, and 2022. The basketball program is currently the winningest program in college basketball history with an overall record of 2,355\u2013877 up to their Final Four appearance in the 2021\u201322 season. The team plays at Allen Fieldhouse. Perhaps its best-recognized player was Wilt Chamberlain, who played in the 1950s, later becoming an NBA star and Harlem Globetrotter.\nKansas has counted among its coaches James Naismith (the inventor of basketball), Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Phog Allen (\"the Father of basketball coaching\" and a Kansas alumnus himself), Dick Harp, Ted Owens, Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Roy Williams, and Basketball Hall of Fame inductee and former NBA Champion Detroit Pistons coach Larry Brown. Currently, Kansas is coached by Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Bill Self. In addition, legendary University of Kentucky coach and Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Adolph Rupp played for KU's 1922 and 1923 Helms National Championship teams, and NCAA Hall of Fame inductee and University of North Carolina Coach Dean Smith played for KU's 1952 NCAA Championship team. Both Rupp and Smith played under Phog Allen. Allen also coached Hall of Fame coaches Dutch Lonborg and Ralph Miller. Allen founded the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC), which started what is now the NCAA Tournament. The Tournament began in 1939 under the NABC and the next year was handed off to the newly formed NCAA.\nKansas fielded its first women's soccer team in 1995. The women's soccer team launched in 1980 as a club sport, but was promoted to varsity play in the NCAA in 1995 when Lori Walker was hired as the head coach. Since 1995 they've appeared in the NCAA tournament ten times, and have won the Big 12 championship three times. They compete at Rock Chalk Park, a 2,500 seat stadium built in 2014. In cooperation with Kansas Athletics, FIFA is using Rock Chalk Park as a training facility and team base camp for the 2026 World Cup, with one of the host sites being nearby Kansas City. \nNotable non-varsity sports include rugby, men's hockey, and men's soccer. The rugby team owns its private facility and tours internationally every two years. The men's hockey team plays at AdventHealth Sports Park in Overland Park, Kansas. They also practice in Topeka and Lawrence. They compete in the American Collegiate Hockey Association. Men's soccer competes in the South Conference of the Upper Midwest Collegiate Soccer League. They play on an artificial turf field next to student dorms next to Allen Fieldhouse.\nDebate teams.\nThe University of Kansas has had more teams (70) compete in the National Debate Tournament than any other university. Kansas has won the tournament 6 times (1954, 1970, 1976, 1983, 2009, and 2018) and had 15 teams make it to the final four. Kansas trails only Northwestern (15) and Harvard (7) for most tournaments won and is tied with Dartmouth (6). Kansas also won the Copeland Award in 1981\u201382 and 2017\u201318.\nMedia.\nThe university's newspaper is \"University Daily Kansan\", which placed first in the Intercollegiate Writing Competition of the prestigious William Randolph Hearst Writing Foundation competition. In the winter of 2008, a group of students created KUpedia, a wiki about all things KU. They received student funding for operations in 2008\u201309. The KU Department of English publishes the \"Coal City Review\", an annual literary journal of prose, poetry, reviews, and illustrations. The \"Review\" typically features the work of many writers, but periodically spotlights one author, as in the case of 2006 Nelson Poetry Book Award-winner \"Voyeur Poems\" by Matthew Porubsky.\nThe \"University Daily Kansan\" operates outside of the university's William Allen White School of Journalism and reaches at least 30,000 daily readers through its print and online publications.\nThe university houses the following public broadcasting stations: KJHK, a student-run campus radio station, KUJH-LP, an independent station that primarily broadcasts public affairs programs, and KANU, the NPR-affiliated radio station. Kansas Public Radio station KANU was one of the nation's first public radio stations. KJHK, the campus radio has roots back to 1952 and is completely run by students.\nCenter for Community Health and Development.\nThe university's Center for Community Health and Development (formerly KU Work Group) was designated as a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Community Health and Development in 2004. It is affiliated with the Department of Applied Behavioral Science and the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies at the university, and supports community health and development through a variety of means, including its free online resource, the Community Tool Box.\nFoundations.\nUniversity of Kansas Memorial Corporation.\nThe first union was built on campus in 1926 as a campus community center. The unions are still the \"living rooms\" of campus and include three locations \u2013 the Kansas Union and Burge Union at the Lawrence Campus and Jayhawk Central at the Edwards Campus. The KU Memorial Unions Corporation manages the KU Bookstore (with seven locations). The KU Bookstore is the official bookstore of KU. The corporation also includes KU Dining Services, with more than 20 campus locations, including The Market (inside the Kansas Union) and The Underground (located in Wescoe Hall). The KU Bookstore and KU Dining Services are not-for-profit, with proceeds supporting student programs, such as Student Union Activities.\nKU Endowment.\nKU Endowment was established in 1891 as the university's primary institutional foundation to manage and build the university's endowment.\nNotable alumni and faculty.\nAffiliated with the university as students, researchers, or faculty members have been 325 Fulbright Scholars, 27 Rhodes Scholars, 10 Marshall Scholars, 2 Mitchell Scholars, 12 MacArthur Fellows, 7 Pulitzer Prize winners, 5 NASA astronauts, 3 Nobel Prize laureates, 2 Fields Medal winners, 3 Hugo Award or Nebula Award winners and 1 Academy Award winner.\nAdditionally, two people associated with the school have been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Dean Smith, who played basketball at Kansas from 1949 to 1953 and was a Hall of Fame men's basketball coach at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was given the award by Barack Obama in 2013. Politician Bob Dole, who played football and basketball at the school but did not graduate, was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom award by Bill Clinton in 1997.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "60373919": "James Perry (American football)\nAmerican football player and coach\nJames Perry is an American football coach and former player. He is the head football coach at his alma mater, Brown University, where he was a starting quarterback in the late 1990s.\nBiography.\nPerry is the youngest of seven children by Massachusetts hall of fame track and field coach Ernest Perry Jr. While a student at Malden Catholic High School, Perry played football, basketball, and track, receiving the Phelps Scholar-Athlete Award in 1996. He played quarterback at Brown, earning a number of school and Ivy League passing records.\nPerry served as the head coach at Bryant University from 2017 to 2018, where he posted a record of 12\u201310.\nPersonal life.\nPerry is the uncle of E. J. Perry, who was also his quarterback at Brown from 2019 to 2021. His older brother is John Perry, who is also a football coach. \nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "38216224": "Jack Perri\nJohn Perri (born 1975) is the head men's basketball coach at Southern New Hampshire University. He previously served as the head men's basketball coach for LIU Brooklyn from 2012 to 2017, and was the head coach at Rhode Island College from 2004 to 2005. Perri also has been an assistant coach at his alma mater Bentley and Boston University.\nPerri grew up in Manalapan Township, New Jersey and scored 1,200 points playing basketball at Manalapan High School.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "32531915": "Hal Perry (basketball)\nAmerican basketball player and attorney\nHarold L. Perry (December 15, 1933 \u2013 April 30, 2009) was an American basketball player and attorney famous for being a starter on the University of San Francisco back to back NCAA championship teams of 1955 and 1956.\nPerry, a guard from Ukiah High School in Ukiah, California, made history when he teamed up with future Hall of Fame players K. C. Jones and Bill Russell to make San Francisco the first college to win an NCAA tournament title with three black starters in the 1954\u201355 NCAA men's basketball season, Perry's junior year. Hal Perry averaged 6.9 points and 1.9 rebounds per game that year.\nHis senior season, the Dons outdid themselves, going undefeated and repeating as national champions. Perry increased his scoring average to 9.1 points per game for the year and was named second team all-conference. However, when star guard Jones was declared ineligible for the 1956 NCAA tournament, coach Phil Woolpert asked Perry to take a larger role. Perry responded by averaging 14 points per game in the Final Four and joined national player of the year Russell on the All-Tournament team.\nFollowing his graduation from USF, Perry played briefly for the Harlem Globetrotters. However, Globetrotters owner Abe Saperstein told Perry he was too smart for the barnstorming life and offered to pay his way to law school. Perry took him up on his offer and went to Lincoln Law School. He ran a successful private practice for many years.\nPerry died on April 30, 2009, after a long illness.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "73310268": "Ron Perry (athletic director)\nAmerican college athete, coach and administrator (1932\u20132024)\nRonald Stanley Perry (May 22, 1932 \u2013 October 25, 2024) was an American athlete, coach, and athletics administrator who served as athletic director at the College of the Holy Cross from 1972 to 1998.\nAthletic career.\nPerry was born on May 22, 1932. He was one of three sons born to Portuguese immigrants Manuel to Tiolinda Pereira, who Americanized their name to Perry. Perry a standout athlete at Somerville High School and is the school's all-time leading scorer in basketball. He led Somerville to a state championship his junior year and to the New England title game as a senior. He also led the school's baseball team to the state championship game his senior year.\nPerry attended the College of the Holy Cross, where he pitched for the Holy Cross Crusaders baseball team and played point guard for the basketball team. As a sophomore, he helped lead Holy Cross to victory in the 1952 College World Series. As a senior he pitched a no-hitter against Harvard on his 22nd birthday. He finished with a career record of 23\u20132. As a junior, Perry was the second leading scorer on the Crusaders' basketball team (averaging 13.3 points per game) behind Togo Palazzi and helped lead Holy Cross to the Elite Eight in the 1953 NCAA basketball tournament. The following year he took a lesser scoring role in favor of Palazzi and newcomer Tom Heinsohn. As a senior, Perry averaged 12.6 points on a Holy Cross team that won the 1954 National Invitation Tournament.\nPerry was drafted in the 4th Round of the 1954 NBA draft by the Boston Celtics, but instead decided to sign with the Milwaukee Braves. However, his playing career was halted by a three-year stint in the United States Marine Corps. While in the Marines, he played on the Marine Corps Base Quantico team with future Basketball Hall of Famer Richie Guerin. In 1957 he was named the United States Armed Forces Athlete of the Year in both basketball and baseball.\nHe attended spring training with the Braves in 1958, but at 26 years old, decided it was too late to begin a baseball career and returned to Massachusetts to coach and officiate.\nCoaching.\nIn 1959, Perry became the athletic director at Catholic Memorial School and established the school's basketball and baseball programs. He led the basketball team to a 292\u201334 record, including two state basketball titles, five Tech tournament championships, and ten consecutive Catholic Conference championships. He also coached the baseball team to a 186\u201353 record. Perry was offered the position of director of recreation for the city of Boston in 1971, but turned it down to remain at Catholic Memorial.\nAthletic director.\nOn April 6, 1972, Perry was named athletic director at Holy Cross. As AD, Perry oversaw the construction of the school's $2.5 million athletic complex, which included the Hart Center, a renovation of Fitton Field, the construction of a new track and field facility, and the development of a $1.5 million wellness center. He also saw the school expand from 9 varsity sports to 25, including the addition of women's teams after the school went co-ed. In 1979, Holy Cross was asked to become a charter member of the Big East Conference, however school president John E. Brooks overruled Perry and rejected the invitation.\nFrom 1976 to 1981, Perry's son, Ron Perry Jr., played baseball and basketball for the Crusaders. He set a then school-record by scoring 2,542 points for the Crusaders basketball team.\nIn 1985, all four of the black players on the Crusaders men's basketball team, including leading scorer Larry Westbrook and leading rebounder Walter Coates, walked out following a fight between a black player and a white player. Westbrook accused coach George Blaney of having a double standard when punishing black players and that the team's \"environment is one where racist sentiment can grow and grow\". Blaney decided not to invite two of the players, Larry Westbrook and Jim Runcie, back due to their conduct after the fight. One of the other two players, Walter Coates returned to the team after a short absence while Doug McCrory chose to transfer to another school.\nIn 1985 the school moved to the newly formed Colonial League (later known as the Patriot League), which prohibited its members from awarding athletic scholarships and did not allow its football teams to play in the NCAA Division I-AA Football Playoffs. The decision to join the Patriot League was made by school president Brooks without consulting Perry. Perry believed that recruiting without scholarships along with the school's school's high admission standards made it hard to bring top athletes to Holy Cross. Holy Cross struggled in the Patriot League, finishing near the bottom most years in the standings for the Presidents' Cup. In 1987, Holy Cross ended its annual football game with rival Boston College in order to focus on Division "}, "descending_order": ["60373919", "38216224", "32531915", "73310268", "10722679", "163327"], "permutation_1": ["73310268", "163327", "32531915", "38216224", "60373919", "10722679"], "permutation_2": ["73310268", "163327", "10722679", "38216224", "60373919", "32531915"], "permutation_3": ["32531915", "73310268", "163327", "38216224", "60373919", "10722679"]}
{"id": "2hop__607165_56101", "docs_added": {"8238848": "Mick Gr\u00f8ndahl\nDanish-American bass guitarist (born 1968)\nMichael Christian Gr\u00f8ndahl (often spelled Grondahl) (born 7 May 1968) is a Danish-American bass guitarist. Born in Copenhagen, he was raised in Manhattan, New York with his mother and grandmother, Vava. He is widely known for playing bass guitar and composing on Jeff Buckley's debut album, \"Grace\".\nGr\u00f8ndahl attended Skidmore College where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in Art History and English. He also played in local bands, playing the local bar scene on Saratoga's Broadway strip. He then moved to New York City where he played with several bands. He met Jeff Buckley after seeing him at Columbia University's Postcrypt Cafe. They played later that Spring of 1993, and he soon joined forces with Buckley. Gr\u00f8ndahl became an integral part of Buckley's live sound, and wrote the songs, \"Dream Brother\", \"Vancouver\", \"Tongue\" and \"Edna Frau\" which Buckley would sing. Before and after Buckley's death, he played in several bands including Elysian Fields, Beth Orton and the Greenlandic singer Angu. As of 2020 he is living in Denmark with his daughter, recording and performing with the group, \"Tongue\".\nGr\u00f8ndahl is known for playing an olympic white 1966 Fender Jazz Bass with a tortoiseshell pick guard, of which was owned by Buckley, and the instrument Gr\u00f8ndahl borrowed from Buckley to jam at their first session. Gr\u00f8ndahl also toured with a black Jazz Bass as a backup on the Mystery White Boy tour. Gr\u00f8ndahl played through a Mesa/Boogie 400+ bass amp with a custom matching Mesa/Boogie cabinet. \nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3916": "Bass guitar\nElectric plucked string instrument\nThe bass guitar, electric bass () is the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family. It is similar in appearance and construction to an electric but with a longer neck and scale length. The electric bass guitar most commonly has four strings, though five- and six-stringed models are also built. Since the mid-1950s, the bass guitar has replaced the double bass in popular music due to its lighter weight, smaller size, most models' inclusion of frets for easier intonation, and electromagnetic pickups for amplification. \nThe bass guitar is usually tuned the same as the double bass, corresponding to pitches one octave lower than the four lowest-pitched strings of a guitar (typically E, A, D, and G). It is played with the fingers and thumb or with a pick. \nBecause the electric bass guitar is acoustically a quiet instrument, it requires external amplification, generally via electromagnetic or piezo-electric pickups. It can also be used with direct input boxes, audio interfaces, mixing consoles, computers, or bass-effects processors which offer headphone jacks. \nTerminology.\nThe \"New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians\" refers to this instrument as an \"Electric bass guitar, usually with four heavy strings tuned E1'\u2013A1'\u2013D2\u2013G2.\" It also defines \"bass\" as \"Bass (iv). A contraction of Double bass or Electric bass guitar.\" \"Mottola's Cyclopedic Dictionary of Lutherie Terms\" begins its definition of the instrument as \"A bass guitar that produces sound primarily with the aid of electronic devices.\" According to some authors the proper term is \"electric bass\". Common names for the instrument are \"bass guitar\", \"electric bass guitar\", and \"electric bass\" and some authors claim that they are historically accurate. A bass guitar whose neck lacks frets is termed a fretless bass.\nScale.\nThe scale of a bass is defined as the length of the vibrating strings between the nut and the bridge saddles. On a modern 4-string bass guitar, 30\" (76 cm) or less is considered short scale, 32\" (81 cm) medium scale, 34\" (86 cm) standard scale and 35\" (89 cm) long scale.\nPickup.\nBass pickups are attached to the body of the guitar and located beneath the strings. They are responsible for converting the vibrations of the strings into analogous electrical voltage sent as input to an instrument amplifier.\nStrings.\nBass guitar strings are composed of a core and winding. The core is a wire which runs through the center of the string and is made of steel, nickel, or an alloy. The winding is a smaller gauge wire wrapped around the core. Bass guitar strings vary by the material and cross-sectional shape of the winding. \nCommon string variants include roundwound, flatwound, halfwound (groundwound), coated, tapewound and taperwound strings. Roundwound and flatwound strings feature windings with circular and rounded-square cross-sections, respectively, with half-round strings being a hybrid between the two. Coated strings have their surface coated with a synthetic layer while tapewound strings feature a metal core with a plastic winding. Taperwound strings have a tapered end where the exposed core sits on the bridge saddle without windings. The choice of winding has considerable impact on the sound of the instrument, with certain winding styles often being preferred for certain musical genres.\nHistory.\n1930s.\nIn the 1930s, musician and inventor Paul Tutmarc of Seattle, Washington, developed the first electric bass guitar in its modern form, a fretted instrument designed to be played horizontally. The 1935 sales catalog for Tutmarc's company Audiovox featured the \"Model 736 Bass Fiddle\", a solid body electric bass guitar with four strings, a scale length, and a single pickup. Around 100 were made during this period.\nAudiovox also sold their \"Model 236\" bass amplifier.\n1950s.\nIn the 1950s, Leo Fender and George Fullerton developed the first mass-produced electric bass guitar. The Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company began producing the Precision Bass, or P-Bass, in October 1951. The design featured a simple uncontoured \"slab\" body design (with no edge contours) and a single coil pickup, both features similar to a Telecaster. By 1957, the Precision Bass began to resemble the Fender Stratocaster with the body edges beveled for comfort and the pickup changed to a separate halves split coil design.\nThe Fender Bass was a revolutionary instrument for working musicians. In comparison to the upright bass, the bass guitar could be easily transported. When amplified, the bass guitar was also much less prone than acoustic basses to audio feedback. The addition of frets enabled bassists to play in tune more easily than on upright basses, and allowed guitarists to more easily play the instrument.\nIn 1953, Monk Montgomery became the first bassist to tour with the Fender bass, in Lionel Hampton's postwar big band. Montgomery was also possibly the first to record with the electric bass, on July 2, 1953, with the Art Farmer Septet. Roy Johnson (with Lionel Hampton), and Shifty Henry (with Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five), were other early Fender bass pioneers. Bill Black, who played with Elvis Presley and James Jamerson switched from upright bass to the Fender Precision Bass around 1957. The bass guitar was intended to appeal to guitarists as well as upright bass players, and many early pioneers of the instrument, such as Joe Osborn, and Paul McCartney were originally guitarists.\nAlso in 1953, Gibson released the first short-scale violin-shaped electric bass, the EB-1, with an extendable end pin so a bassist could play it upright or horizontally. In 1958, Gibson released the maple arched-top EB-2 described in the Gibson catalog as a \"hollow-body electric bass that features a Bass/Baritone pushbutton for two different tonal characteristics\". In 1959, these were followed by the more conventional-looking EB-0 Bass. The EB-0 was very similar to a Gibson SG in appearance (although the earliest examples have a slab-sided body shape closer to that of the double-cutaway Les Paul Special). The Fender and Gibson versions used bolt-on and set necks.\nSeveral other companies also began manufacturing bass guitars during the 1950s. Kay Musical Instrument Company began production of the K162 in 1952. Also in 1956, at the German trade fair \"Musikmesse Frankfurt\", the distinctive H\u00f6fner 500/1 viola-shaped bass first appeared, constructed using violin techniques by Walter H\u00f6fner, a second-generation violin luthier. Due to its use by Paul McCartney, it became known as the \"Beatle bass\". In 1957, Rickenbacker introduced the model 4000, the first bass to feature a neck-through-body design in which the neck is part of the body wood. The Burns London Supersound was introduced in 1958.\n1960s.\nWith the explosion in popularity of rock music in the 1960s, many more manufacturers began making electric basses, including Yamaha, Teisco and Guyatone. Introduced in 1960, the Fender Jazz Bass, initially known as the \"Deluxe Bass\", used a body design known as an offset waist which was first seen on the Jazzmaster guitar in an effort to improve comfort while playing seated. The Jazz bass, or J-Bass, features two single-coil pickups.\nProviding a more \"Gibson-scale\" instrument, rather than the Jazz and Precision, Fender produced the Mustang Bass, a scale-length instrument. The Fender VI, a 6-string bass, was tuned one octave lower than standard guitar tuning. It was released in 1961, and was briefly favored by Jack Bruce of Cream.\nGibson introduced its short-scale EB-3 in 1961, also used by Bruce. The EB-3 had a \"mini-humbucker\" at the bridge position. Gibson basses tended to be instruments with a shorter 30.5\" scale length than the Precision. Gibson did not produce a -scale bass until 1963 with the release of the Thunderbird.\nThe first commercial fretless bass guitar was the Ampeg AUB-1, introduced in 1966. In the late 1960s, eight-string basses, with four octave paired courses (similar to a 12 string guitar), were introduced, such as the Hagstr\u00f6m H8.\n1970s.\nIn 1972, Alembic established what became known as \"boutique\" or \"high-end\" electric bass guitars. These expensive, custom-tailored instruments, as used by Phil Lesh, Jack Casady, and Stanley Clarke, featured unique designs, premium hand-finished wood bodies, and innovative construction techniques such as multi-laminate neck-through-body construction and graphite necks. Alembic also pioneered the use of onboard electronics for pre-amplification and equalization. \nActive electronics increase the output of the instrument, and allow more options for controlling tonal flexibility, giving the player the ability to amplify as well as to attenuate certain frequency ranges while improving the overall frequency response (including more low-register and high-register sounds). 1976 saw the UK company Wal begin production of their own range of active basses. In 1974 Music Man Instruments, founded by Tom Walker, Forrest White and Leo Fender, introduced the StingRay, the first widely produced bass with active (powered) electronics built into the instrument. Basses with active electronics can include a preamplifier and knobs for boosting and cutting the low and high frequencies.\nIn the mid-1970s, five-string basses, with a very low \"B\" string, were introduced. In 1975, bassist Anthony Jackson commissioned luthier Carl Thompson to build a six-string bass tuned (low to high) B0, E1, A1, D2, G2, C3, adding a low B string and a high C string.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "49182724": "Music technology (electric)\nMusical instruments and recording devices that use electrical circuits\n \nElectric music technology refers to musical instruments and recording devices that use electrical circuits, which are often combined with mechanical technologies. Examples of electric musical instruments include the electro-mechanical electric piano (invented in 1929), the electric guitar (invented in 1931), the electro-mechanical Hammond organ (developed in 1934) and the electric bass (invented in 1935). All of these electric instruments do not produce a sound that is audible by the performer or audience in a performance setting unless they are connected to instrument amplifiers and loudspeaker cabinets, which made them sound loud enough for performers and the audience to hear. Amplifiers and loudspeakers are separate from the instrument in the case of the electric guitar (which uses a guitar amplifier), electric bass (which uses a bass amplifier) and some electric organs (which use a Leslie speaker or similar cabinet) and most electric pianos. Some electric organs and electric pianos include the amplifier and speaker cabinet within the main housing for the instrument.\nElectric sound recording and reproduction are electrical or mechanical techniques and devices for the inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. Acoustic analog recording is achieved by a small microphone diaphragm that can record sound waves on a phonograph (in which a stylus senses grooves on a record) or magnetic tape. The first practical sound recording and reproduction device was the mechanical phonograph cylinder, invented by Thomas Edison in 1877 and patented in 1878. \nThe next major technical development was the invention of the gramophone disc in 1889. For much of the 20th century, records were the most common way of selling sound recordings. The widespread availability of records and the development of radio broadcasting enabled a much larger proportion of people to listen to songs and pieces performed by the top artists, enabling the development of national and even international musical stars. In the 1970s, the compact cassette became a major consumer audio format. Advances in electronic and mechanical miniaturization led to the development of the Sony Walkman, a pocket-sized cassette player introduced in 1979, which allowed consumers to listen to their favourite albums outside of their home.\nElectric instruments.\nElectric piano.\nAn electric piano is an electric musical instrument which produces sounds when a performer presses the keys of the piano-style musical keyboard. Pressing keys causes mechanical hammers to strike metal strings or tines, leading to vibrations which are converted into electrical signals by magnetic pickups, which are then connected to an instrument amplifier and loudspeaker to make a sound loud enough for the performer and audience to hear. Unlike a synthesizer, the electric piano is not an electronic instrument. Instead, it is an electro-mechanical instrument. Some early electric pianos used lengths of wire to produce the tone, like a traditional piano. Smaller electric pianos used short slivers of steel, metal tines or short wires to produce the tone. The earliest electric pianos were invented in the late 1920s; the 1929 \"Neo-Bechstein\" electric grand piano was among the first. Probably the earliest stringless model was Lloyd Loar's Vivi-Tone Clavier. A few other noteworthy producers of electric pianos include Baldwin Piano and Organ Company and the Wurlitzer company.\nEarly electric piano recordings include Duke Ellington's in 1955 and Sun Ra's \"India\" as well as other tracks from the 1956 sessions included on his second album \"Super Sonic Jazz\" (aka \"Super Sonic Sounds\"). The popularity of the electric piano began to grow in the late 1950s after Ray Charles's 1959 hit record \"What'd I Say\", reaching its height during the 1970s, after which they were progressively displaced by more lightweight electronic pianos capable of piano-like sounds without the disadvantages of electric pianos' heavy weight and moving mechanical parts. Another factor driving their development and acceptance was the progressive electrification of popular music and the need for a portable keyboard instrument capable of high-volume amplification. Musicians adopted a number of types of domestic electric pianos for rock and pop use. This encouraged their manufacturers to modify them for stage use and then develop models primarily intended for stage use.\nDigital electronic stage pianos have largely replaced most of the original electro-mechanical instruments in the 2000s, due to the small size, low weight and versatility of digital instruments, which can produce a huge range of tones besides piano tones (e.g., emulations of Hammond organ sounds, synthesizer sounds, etc.). However, some performers still perform and record with vintage electric pianos. In 2009, Fender Rhodes produced a new line of electro-mechanical pianos, known as the Rhodes Mark 7 followed by an offering from Vintage Vibe.\nElectric guitar.\nAn electric guitar is a guitar that uses a pickup to convert the vibration of its strings into electrical impulses. The most common guitar pickup uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before being sent to a loudspeaker. The output of an electric guitar is an electric signal, and the signal can easily be altered by electronic circuits to add \"color\" to the sound. Often the signal is modified using electronic effects such as reverb and distortion.\nInvented in 1931, the electric guitar became a necessity as jazz guitarists sought to amplify their sound in the big band format. Early proponents of the electric guitar on record included Les Paul, Lonnie Johnson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, T-Bone Walker, and Charlie Christian. During the 1950s and 1960s, the electric guitar became the most important instrument in pop music. It has evolved into an instrument that is capable of a multitude of sounds and styles. It served as a major component in the development of electric blues, rock and roll, rock music, and many other genres of music.\nElectric guitar design and construction vary greatly in the shape of the body and the configuration of the neck, bridge, and pickups. Guitars have a fixed bridge or a spring-loaded hinged bridge that lets players bend notes or chords up or down in pitch or perform a vibrato. The sound of a guitar can be modified by new playing techniques such as string bending, tapping, hammering on, using audio feedback, or slide guitar playing. There are several types of electric guitar, including the solid-body guitar, various types of hollow-body guitars, the seven-string guitar, which typically adds a low B string below the low E, and the twelve-string electric guitar, which has six pairs of strings.\nPopular music and rock groups often use the electric guitar in two roles: as a rhythm guitar, which provides the chord sequence or progression and sets the beat (as part of a rhythm section), and as a lead guitar, which is used to perform melody lines, melodic instrumental fill passages, and solos.\nHammond organ.\nThe Hammond organ is an electric organ, invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Various models have been produced, most of which use sliding drawbars to create a variety of sounds. Until 1975, Hammond organs generated sound by creating an electric current from rotating a metal tonewheel near an electromagnetic pickup. Around two million Hammond organs have been manufactured, and it has been described as one of the most successful organs. The organ is commonly used with, and associated with, the Leslie speaker.\nThe organ was originally marketed and sold by the Hammond Organ Company to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, or instead of a piano. It quickly became popular with professional jazz musicians, who found it a cheaper alternative to the big band. Jimmy Smith's use of the Hammond B-3, with its additional harmonic percussion feature, inspired a generation of organ players, and its use became more widespread in the 1960s and 1970s in rhythm and blues, rock and reggae, as well as being an important instrument in progressive rock.\nThe Hammond Organ Company struggled financially during the 1970s as they abandoned tonewheel organs and switched to manufacturing instruments using integrated circuits. These instruments were not as popular with musicians as the tonewheels had been, and the company went out of business in 1985. The Hammond name was purchased by the Suzuki Musical Instrument Corporation, which proceeded to manufacture digital simulations of the most popular tonewheel organs. This culminated in the production of the \"New B-3\" in 2002, which provided an accurate recreation of the original B-3 organ using modern digital technology.\nHammond-Suzuki continues to manufacture a variety of organs for both professional players and churches. Other companies, such as Korg, Roland and Clavia, have also achieved success in providing emulations of the original tonewheel organs. The sound of a tonewheel Hammond can also be emulated using modern software such as Native Instruments B4.\nElectric bass.\nThe electric bass (or bass guitar) is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb, by plucking, slapping, popping, strumming, tapping, thumping, or picking with a plectrum, often known as a pick. The bass guitar is similar in appearance and construction to an electric guitar, but with a longer neck and scale length, and four to six strings or courses. The four-string bass, by far the most common, is usually tuned the same as the double bass, which corresponds to pitches one octave lower than the four lowest pitched strings of a guitar (E, A, D, and G). The bass guitar is a transposing instrument, as it is notated in bass clef an octave higher than it sounds (as is the double bass) to avoid excessive ledger lines. Like the electric guitar, the bass guitar is plugged into an amplifier and speaker for live performances.\nSince the 1960s, the bass guitar has largely replaced the double bass in popular music as the bass instrument in the rhythm section. While types of bass lines vary widely from one style of music to another, the bassist usually fulfills a similar role: anchoring the harmonic framework and establishing the beat. Many styles of music utilise the bass guitar, including rock, metal, pop, punk rock, country, reggae, gospel, blues, and jazz. It is often a solo instrument in jazz, jazz fusion, Latin, funk, progressive rock and other rock and metal styles.\nElectric sound recording and reproduction.\nElectric sound recording and reproduction are electrical or mechanical techniques and devices for the inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. Acoustic analog recording is achieved by a small microphone diaphragm that can detect changes in atmospheric pressure (acoustic sound waves) and record them as a graphic representation of the sound waves on a medium such as a phonograph (in which a stylus senses grooves on a record). In magnetic tape recording, the sound waves vibrate the microphone diaphragm and are converted into a varying electric current, which is then converted to a varying magnetic field by an electromagnet, which makes a representation of the sound as magnetized areas on a plastic tape with a magnetic coating on it. Analog sound reproduction is the reverse process, with a bigger loudspeaker diaphragm causing changes to atmospheric pressure to form acoustic sound waves. Electrically generated signals may also be recorded directly from devices such as an electric guitar pickup, without the use of acoustic sounds or amplifiers in the recording process (other than the need for musicians to hear herself playing during recording session).\nPhonautograph.\nThe first device that could record actual sounds as they passed through the air (but could not play them back\u2014the purpose was only visual study) was the phonautograph, patented in 1857 by Parisian inventor \u00c9douard-L\u00e9on Scott de Martinville. The earliest known recordings of the human voice are phonautograph recordings, called \"phonautograms\", made in 1857. They consist of sheets of paper with sound-wave-modulated white lines created by a vibrating stylus that cut through a coating of soot as the paper was passed under it.\nPhonograph.\nPhonograph cylinder.\nThe first practical sound recording and reproduction device was the mechanical phonograph cylinder, invented by Thomas Edison in 1877 and patented in 1878. The invention soon spread across the globe and over the next two decades the commercial recording, distribution and sale of sound recordings became a growing new international industry, with the most popular titles selling millions of units by the early 1900s. The development of mass-production techniques enabled cylinder recordings to become a major new consumer item in industrial countries and the cylinder was the main consumer format from the late 1880s until around 1910.\nDisc phonograph.\nThe next major technical development was the invention of the gramophone disc, generally credited to Emile Berliner and commercially introduced in the United States in 1889, though others had demonstrated similar disk apparatus earlier, most notably Alexander Graham Bell in 1881. Discs were easier to manufacture, transport and store, and they had the additional benefit of being louder (marginally) than cylinders, which by necessity, were single-sided. Sales of the gramophone record overtook the cylinder ca. 1910, and by the end of World War I the disc had become the dominant commercial recording format. In various permutations, the audio disc format became the primary medium for consumer sound recordings until the end of the 20th century, and the double-sided 78 rpm shellac disc was the standard consumer music format from the early 1910s to the late 1950s.\nThe long-playing 33<templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1\u20443 rpm microgroove vinyl record, or \"LP\", was developed at Columbia Records and introduced in 1948. The short-playing but convenient 7-inch 45 rpm microgroove vinyl single was introduced by RCA Victor in 1949. In the US and most developed countries, the two new vinyl formats completely replaced 78 rpm shellac discs by the end of the 1950s, but in some corners of the world the \"78\" lingered on far into the 1960s. Vinyl was much more expensive than shellac, one of several factors that made its use for 78 rpm records very unusual, but with a long-playing disc the added cost was acceptable and the compact \"45\" format required very little material. Vinyl offered improved performance, both in stamping and in playback. If played with a good diamond stylus mounted in a lightweight pickup on a well-adjusted tonearm, it was long-lasting. If protected from dust, scuffs and scratches there was very little noise. Vinyl records were, over-optimistically, advertised as \"unbreakable\". They were not, but they were much less fragile than shellac, which had itself once been touted as \"unbreakable\" compared to wax cylinders.\nElectrical recording.\nBetween the invention of the phonograph in 1877 and the advent of digital media, arguably the most important milestone in the history of sound recording was the introduction of what was then called \"electrical recording\", in which a microphone was used to convert the sound into an electrical signal that was amplified and used to actuate the recording stylus. This innovation eliminated the \"horn sound\" resonances characteristic of the acoustical process, produced clearer and more full-bodied recordings by greatly extending the useful range of audio frequencies, and allowed previously unrecordable distant and feeble sounds to be captured.\nSound recording began as a purely mechanical process. Except for a few crude telephone-based recording devices with no means of amplification, such as the Telegraphone, it remained so until the 1920s, when several recent radio-related developments in electronics converged to revolutionize the recording process. These included improved microphones and auxiliary devices such as electronic filters, all dependent on electronic amplification to be of practical use in recording. In 1906, Lee De Forest invented the \"Audion\" triode vacuum tube, an electronic valve that could amplify weak electrical signals. By 1915, it was in use in long-distance telephone circuits that made conversations between New York and San Francisco practical. Refined versions of this tube were the basis of all electronic sound systems until the commercial introduction of the first transistor-based audio devices in the 1950s.\nMagnetic tape.\nAn important field of invention during this period was the tape recorder. Magnetic tape recording uses an amplified electrical audio signal to generate analogous variations of the magnetic field produced by a tape head, which impresses corresponding variations of magnetization on the moving tape. In playback mode, the signal path is reversed, the tape head acting as a miniature electric generator as the varyingly magnetized tape passes over it.\nMagnetic tape brought about sweeping changes in both radio and the recording industry. Sound could be recorded, erased and re-recorded on the same tape many times, sounds could be duplicated from tape to tape with only minor loss of quality, and recordings could now be very precisely edited by physically cutting the tape and rejoining it. Within a few years of the introduction of the first commercial tape recorder\u2014the Ampex 200 model, launched in 1948\u2014American musician-inventor Les Paul had invented the first multitrack tape recorder, ushering in another technical revolution in the recording industry. Tape made possible the first sound recordings totally created by electronic means, opening the way for the bold sonic experiments of the Musique Concr\u00e8te school and avant garde composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen, which in turn led to the innovative pop music recordings of artists such as Frank Zappa, The Beatles and The Beach Boys.\nThe ease and accuracy of tape editing, as compared to the cumbersome disc-to-disc editing procedures previously in some limited use, together with tape's consistently high audio quality finally convinced radio networks to routinely prerecord their entertainment programming, most of which had formerly been broadcast live. Also, for the first time, broadcasters, regulators and other interested parties were able to undertake comprehensive audio logging of each day's radio broadcasts. Innovations like multitracking and tape echo allowed radio programs and advertisements to be produced to a high level of complexity and sophistication. The combined impact with innovations such as the endless loop broadcast cartridge led to significant changes in the pacing and production style of radio program content and advertising.\nStereo and hi-fi.\nMagnetic tape enabled the development of the first practical commercial sound systems that could record and reproduce high-fidelity stereophonic sound. The experiments with stereo during the 1930s and 1940s were hampered by problems with synchronization. A major breakthrough in practical stereo sound was made by Bell Laboratories, who in 1937 demonstrated a practical system of two-channel stereo, using dual optical sound tracks on film. Major movie studios quickly developed three-track and four-track sound systems, and the first stereo sound recording for a commercial film was made by Judy Garland for the MGM movie \"Listen, Darling\" in 1938.\nThe first commercially released movie with a stereo soundtrack was Walt Disney's \"Fantasia\", released in 1940. The 1941 release of Fantasia used the Fantasound sound system. This system used a separate film for the sound, synchronized with the film carrying the picture. The sound film had four double-width optical soundtracks, three for left, center, and right audio\u2014and a fourth as a \"control\" track with three recorded tones that controlled the playback volume of the three audio channels. Because of the complex equipment this system required, Disney exhibited the movie as a roadshow, and only in the United States. Regular releases of the movie used standard mono optical 35\u00a0mm stock until 1956, when Disney released the film with a stereo soundtrack that used the Cinemascope four-track magnetic sound system.\nEMI (UK) was the first company to release commercial stereophonic tapes. They issued their first \"Stereosonic\" tape in 1954. Others quickly followed, under the His Master's Voice and Columbia labels. 161 Stereosonic tapes were released, mostly classical music or lyric recordings. RCA imported these tapes into the US. Two-track stereophonic tapes were more successful in America during the second half of the 1950s. They were duplicated at real time (1:1) or at twice the normal speed (2:1) when later 4-track tapes were often duplicated at up to 16 times the normal speed, providing a lower sound quality in many cases. Early American 2-track stereophonic tapes were very expensive. A typical example is the price list of the Sonotape/Westminster reels: $6.95, $11.95 and $17.95 for the 7000, 9000 and 8000 series respectively. Some RCA tapes released in the USA also cost up to $15. Record companies mixed most popular music singles into monophonic sound until the mid-1960s\u2014then commonly released major recordings in both mono and stereo until the early 1970s. Many Sixties pop albums now available only in stereo were originally released only in mono, and record companies produced the stereo versions of these albums by simply separating the two tracks of the master tape.\nMagnetic tape transformed the recording industry. By the early 1950s, most commercial recordings were mastered on tape instead of recorded directly to disc. Tape facilitated a degree of manipulation in the recording process that was impractical with mixes and multiple generations of directly recorded discs. An early example is Les Paul's 1951 recording of \"How High the Moon\", on which Paul played eight overdubbed guitar tracks. In the 1960s Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, Frank Zappa, and The Beatles (with producer George Martin) were among the first popular artists to explore the possibilities of multitrack recording techniques and effects on their landmark albums \"Pet Sounds\", \"Freak Out!\", and \"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band\".\nThe compact cassette became a major consumer audio format and advances in electronic and mechanical miniaturization led to the development of the Sony Walkman, a pocket-sized cassette player introduced in 1979. The Walkman was the first personal music player and it gave a major boost to sales of prerecorded cassettes, which became the first widely successful release format that used a re-recordable medium: the vinyl record was a playback-only medium and commercially prerecorded tapes for reel-to-reel tape decks, which many consumers found difficult to operate, were never more than an uncommon niche market item.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3884609": "Guild Guitar Company\nUnited States-based guitar manufacturer\nThe Guild Guitar Company is a United States\u2013based guitar manufacturer founded in 1952 by Alfred Dronge, a guitarist and music-store owner. The brand name currently exists as a brand under C\u00f3rdoba Music Group. In February 2023, The Yamaha Guitar Group acquired Cordoba Music Group. \nOrigin.\nThe first Guild workshop was located in Manhattan, New York, where Dronge (who soon took over full ownership) focused on electric and acoustic archtop jazz guitars. Much of the initial workforce consisted of former Epiphone workers who lost their jobs following their 1951 strike and the subsequent relocation of the company from Queens to Philadelphia. Rapid expansion forced the company to move to much larger quarters, on Newark St. in Hoboken, New Jersey, in the old R. Neumann Leathers building. The advent of the folk music craze in the early 1960s had shifted the company into production of an important line of acoustic folk and blues guitars, including a dreadnought series (D-40, D-50 and, later, D-55) that competed successfully with Martin's D-18 and D-28 models, and jumbo and Grand Concert \"F\" models that were particularly popular with blues guitarists such as Dave Van Ronk. Notable also was the Guild 12-string guitar, which used a Jumbo \"F\" body and dual truss rods in the neck to produce a workhorse instrument with a deep, rich tone distinctive from the chimier twelve-strings put out by Martin.\nThe company continued to expand, and was sold to the Avnet Corporation, which moved production to Westerly, Rhode Island, in 1966. As the folk scene quieted, a new generation of folk-rockers took Guild guitars on stage. The most notable Guild performance of that era was on the D-40 that Richie Havens played when he opened Woodstock in 1969.\nDuring the 1960s, Guild moved aggressively into the electric guitar market, successfully promoting the Starfire line of semi-acoustic (Starfire I, II and III) and semi-solid (Starfire IV, V and VI) guitars and basses. A number of early West-Coast psychedelic bands used these instruments, notably guitarists Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia and bassist Phil Lesh of Grateful Dead, as well as Jefferson Airplane's bassist Jack Casady. Instrument maker"}, "descending_order": ["8238848", "49182724", "3884609", "3916"], "permutation_1": ["8238848", "49182724", "3884609", "3916"], "permutation_2": ["49182724", "3916", "8238848", "3884609"], "permutation_3": ["8238848", "49182724", "3916", "3884609"]}
{"id": "2hop__8531_24846", "docs_added": {"29440": "Slavs\nGrouping of related Eurasian ethnicities\nThe Slavs or Slavic people are groups of people who speak Slavic languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout the northern parts of Eurasia; they predominantly inhabit Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, and Northern Asia, though there is a large Slavic minority scattered across the Baltic states and Central Asia, and a substantial Slavic diaspora in the Americas, Western Europe, and Northern Europe.\nEarly Slavs lived during the Migration Period and the Early Middle Ages (approximately from the 5th to the 10th century AD), and came to control large parts of Central, Eastern, and Southeast Europe between the sixth and seventh centuries. Beginning in the 7th century, they were gradually Christianized. By the 12th century, they formed the core population of a number of medieval Christian states: East Slavs in the Kievan Rus', South Slavs in the Bulgarian Empire, the Principality of Serbia, the Duchy of Croatia and the Banate of Bosnia, and West Slavs in the Principality of Nitra, Great Moravia, the Duchy of Bohemia, and the Kingdom of Poland.\nBeginning in the mid-19th century, a pan-Slavic movement has emphasized the common heritage and unity of all the Slavic peoples. The main focus of the movement was in the Balkans, whereas the Russian Empire was opposed to it.\nThe Slavic languages belong to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. Present-day Slavs are classified into three groups:\nThough the majority of Slavs are Christians, some groups, such as the Bosniaks, mostly identify as Muslims. Modern Slavic nations and ethnic groups are considerably diverse, both genetically and culturally, and relations between them may range from \"ethnic solidarity to mutual feelings of hostility\" \u2014 even within the individual groups.\nEthnonym.\nThe oldest mention of the Slavic ethnonym is from the 6th century AD, when Procopius, writing in Byzantine Greek, used various forms such as \"Sklaboi\" (), \"Sklab\u0113noi\" (), \"Sklauenoi\" (), \"Sthlabenoi\" (), or \"Sklabinoi\" (), and his contemporary Jordanes refers to the in Latin. The oldest documents written in Old Church Slavonic, dating from the 9th century, attest the autonym as \"Slov\u011bne\" (). Those forms point back to a Slavic autonym, which can be reconstructed in Proto-Slavic as , plural \"Slov\u011bne\".\nThe reconstructed autonym is usually considered a derivation from (\"word\"), originally denoting \"people who speak (the same language)\", meaning \"people who understand one another\", in contrast to the Slavic word denoting \"German people\", namely , meaning \"silent, mute people\" (from Slavic \"mute, mumbling\"). The word \"slovo\" (\"word\") and the related \"slava\" (\"glory, fame\") and \"\" (\"hearing\") originate from the Proto-Indo-European root (\"be spoken of, glory\"), cognate with Ancient Greek ( \"fame\"), as in the name Pericles, Latin (\"be called\"), and English .\nIn medieval and early modern sources written in Latin, Slavs are most commonly referred to as \"Sclaveni\" or the shortened version \"Sclavi\".\nHistory.\nOrigins.\nFirst mentions.\nAncient Roman sources refer to the Early Slavic peoples as \"Veneti\", who dwelt in a region of central Europe east of the Germanic tribe of Suebi and west of the Iranian Sarmatians in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, between the upper Vistula and Dnieper rivers. Slavs - called \"Antes\" and \"Sclaveni\" - first appear in Byzantine records in the early 6th century AD. Byzantine historiographers of the era of the emperor Justinian I (r.\u2009527\u00a0\u2013\u00a0565), such as Procopius of Caesarea, Jordanes and Theophylact Simocatta, describe tribes of these names emerging from the area of the Carpathian Mountains, the lower Danube and the Black Sea to invade the Danubian provinces of the Eastern Empire.\nJordanes, in his work \"Getica\" (written in 551 AD), describes the Veneti as a \"populous nation\" whose dwellings begin at the sources of the Vistula and occupy \"a great expanse of land\". He also describes the Veneti as the ancestors of Antes and Slaveni, two early Slavic tribes, who appeared on the Byzantine frontier in the early-6th century.\nProcopius wrote in 545 that \"the Sclaveni and the Antae actually had a single name in the remote past; for they were both called \"Sporoi\" in olden times\". The name \"Sporoi\" derives from Greek \u03c3\u03c0\u03b5\u03af\u03c1\u03c9 (\"to sow\"). He described them as barbarians, who lived under democracy and believed in one god, \"the maker of lightning\" (Perun), to whom they made sacrifice. They lived in scattered housing and constantly changed settlement. In war, they were mainly foot soldiers with shields, spears, bows, and little armour, which was reserved mainly for chiefs and their inner circle of warriors. Their language is \"barbarous\" (that is, not Greek), and the two tribes are alike in appearance, being tall and robust, \"while their bodies and hair are neither very fair or blond, nor indeed do they incline entirely to the dark type, but they are all slightly ruddy in color. And they live a hard life, giving no heed to bodily comforts...\"\nJordanes describes the Sclaveni as having swamps and forests for their cities. Another 6th-century source refers to them living among nearly-impenetrable forests, rivers, lakes, and marshes.\nMenander Protector mentions Daurentius (r.\u2009c. 577\u00a0\u2013\u00a0579) who slew an Avar envoy of Khagan Bayan I for asking the Slavs to accept the suzerainty of the Avars; Daurentius declined and is reported as saying: \"Others do not conquer our land, we conquer theirs \u2013 so it shall always be for us as long as there are wars and weapons\".\nMigrations.\nAccording to eastern homeland theory, prior to becoming known to the Roman world, Slavic-speaking tribes formed part of successive multi-ethnic confederacies of Eurasia \u2013 such as the Sarmatian, Hun and Gothic empires. The Slavs emerged from obscurity when the westward movement of Germanic tribes in the 5th and 6th centuries AD (thought to be in conjunction with the movement of peoples from Siberia and Eastern Europe: Huns, and later Avars and Bulgars) started the great migration of the Slavs, who settled the lands abandoned by Germanic tribes who had fled from the Huns and their allies. Slavs, according to this account, moved westward into the country between the Oder and the Elbe-Saale line; southward into Bohemia, Moravia, much of present-day Austria, the Pannonian plain and the Balkans; and northward along the upper Dnieper river. It has also been suggested that some Slavs migrated with the Vandals to the Iberian Peninsula and even to North Africa.\nAround the 6th century, Slavs appeared on Byzantine borders in large numbers. Byzantine records note that Slav numbers were so great, that grass would not regrow where the Slavs had marched through. Military movements resulted in even the Peloponnese and Asia Minor being reported to have Slavic settlements. This southern movement has traditionally been seen as an invasive expansion. By the end of the 6th century, Slavs had settled the Eastern Alps regions.\nPope Gregory I in 600 AD wrote to Maximus, the bishop of Salona (in Dalmatia), expressing concern about the arrival of the Slavs,\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Latin: \"Et quidem de Sclavorum gente, quae vobis valde imminet, et affligor vehementer et conturbor. Affligor in his quae jam in vobis patior; conturbor, quia per Istriae aditum jam ad Italiam intrare coeperunt.\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />English: I am both distressed and disturbed about the Slavs, who are pressing hard on you. I am distressed because I sympathize with you; I am disturbed because they have already begun to arrive in Italy through the entry-point of Istria.\nMiddle Ages.\nWhen Slav migrations ended, their first state organizations appeared, each headed by a prince with a treasury and a defense force. In the 7th century, the Frankish merchant Samo supported the Slavs against their Avar rulers and became the ruler of the first known Slav state in Central Europe, Samo's Empire. This early Slavic polity probably did not outlive its founder and ruler, but it was the foundation for later West Slavic states on its territory.\nThe oldest of them was Carantania; others are the Principality of Nitra, the Moravian principality (see under Great Moravia) and the Balaton Principality. The First Bulgarian Empire was founded in 681 as an alliance between the ruling Bulgars and the numerous Slavs in the area, and their South Slavic language, the Old Church Slavonic, became the main and official language of the empire in 864 AD. Bulgaria was instrumental in the spread of Slavic literacy and Christianity to the rest of the Slavic world. Duchy of Croatia was founded in 7th century and later became Kingdom of Croatia. Principality of Serbia was founded in 8th, Duchy of Bohemia and Kievan Rus' both in the 9th century.\nThe expansion of the Magyars into the Carpathian Basin and the Germanization of Austria gradually separated the South Slavs from the West and East Slavs. Later Slavic states, which formed in the following centuries included the Second Bulgarian Empire, the Kingdom of Poland, Banate of Bosnia, Duklja and Kingdom of Serbia which later grew into Serbian Empire.\nModern era.\nPan-Slavism, a movement which came into prominence in the mid-19th century, emphasized the common heritage and unity of all the Slavic peoples. The main focus was in the Balkans where the South Slavs had been ruled for centuries by other empires: the Byzantine Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Venice. Austro-Hungary envisioned its own political concept of Austro-Slavism, in opposition of Pan-Slavism that was predominantly led by the Russian Empire. \nAs of 1878, there were only three majority Slavic states in the world: the Russian Empire, Principality of Serbia and Principality of Montenegro. Bulgaria was effectively independent but was \"de jure\" vassal to the Ottoman Empire until official independence was declared in 1908. The Slavic peoples who were, for the most part, denied a voice in the affairs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, were calling for national self-determination. \nDuring World War I, representatives of the Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes set up organizations in the Allied countries to gain sympathy and recognition. In 1918, after World War I ended, the Slavs established such independent states as Czechoslovakia, the Second Polish Republic, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.\nThe first half of the 20th century in Russia and the Soviet Union was marked by a succession of wars, famines and other disasters, each accompanied by large-scale population losses. The two major famines were in 1921 to 1922 and 1932 to 1933, which caused millions of deaths mostly around the Volga region, Ukraine and the Northern Caucasus. The latter resulted from Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's collectivization of agriculture in Ukraine. \nDuring the war, Nazi Germany used hundreds of thousands of people for slave labor in their concentration camps, the majority of whom were Jewish or Slavic. Both groups were a part of what Germans claimed to be a \"vast racially subhuman surplus population\" that they \"intended to eliminate in time from their new empire\", their term for \"racial subhumans\" being \"Untermensch\". Thus, one of Adolf Hitler's ambitions at the start of World War II was to exterminate, expel, or enslave most or all West and East Slavs from their native lands, so as to make \"living space\" for German settlers.\nIn early 1941, Germany began planning Generalplan Ost, the genocide of Slavs in Eastern Europe which was supposed to start after a major expansion of German concentration camps in occupied Poland and the fall of Stalin's regime. This plan was to be carried out gradually over 25 to 30 years. After an approximate 30 million Slavs would be killed through starvation and their major cities depopulated, the Germans were supposed to repopulate Eastern Europe. In June 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, Hitler paused the plan to focus on the extermination of the Jews. However, some of the plan was nonetheless implemented. Millions of Slavs were murdered in Eastern Europe; this includes victims of the Hunger Plan, Germany's intentional starvation of the region, as well as the murders of 3.3. million Soviet prisoners of war. Germany's Heinrich Himmler also ordered his subordinate Ludolf-Hermann von Alvensleben to start repopulating Crimea, and hundreds of ethnic Germans were forcibly moved to cities and villages there. The Soviet Red Army took back their land from the Germans in 1944. Stephen J. Lee estimates that, by the end of World War II in 1945, the Russian population was about 90 million fewer than it could have been otherwise. \nThe ultra-nationalist, fascist Usta\u0161e committed genocide against Serbs during World War II. The Serbian nationalist Chetniks committed genocide against Croats and Bosniaks. Also during World War II, fascist Italy sent tens of thousands of Slavs to concentration camps in mainland Italy, Libya, and the Balkans.\nIn 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, and many former Soviet republics became independent countries. Currently, former Soviet states in Central Asia such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have very large minority Slavic populations, with most being Russians. Kazakhstan has the largest Slavic minority population.\nLanguages.\nProto-Slavic, the supposed ancestor language of all Slavic languages, is a descendant of common Proto-Indo-European, via a Balto-Slavic stage in which it developed numerous lexical and morphophonological isoglosses with the Baltic languages. In the framework of the Kurgan hypothesis, \"the Indo-Europeans who remained after the migrations [from the steppe] became speakers of Balto-Slavic\".\nProto-Slavic is defined as the last stage of the language preceding the geographical split of the historical Slavic languages. That language was uniform, and on the basis of borrowings from foreign languages and Slavic borrowings into other languages, it cannot be said to have any recognizable dialects, which suggests that there was, at one time, a relatively-small Proto-Slavic homeland. However, from a historical and archaeological point of view, the existence of a homogeneous Proto-Slavic people is judged improbable.\nSlavic linguistic unity was to some extent visible as late as Old Church Slavonic (or Old Bulgarian) manuscripts which, though based on local Slavic speech of Thessaloniki, could still serve the purpose of the first common Slavic literary language.\nStandardised Slavic languages that have official status in at least one country are: Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, and Ukrainian. Russian is the most spoken Slavic language, and is the most spoken native language in Europe.\nThe alphabets used for Slavic languages are usually connected to the dominant religion among the respective ethnic groups. Orthodox Christians use the Cyrillic alphabet while Catholics use the Latin alphabet; the Bosniaks, who are Muslim, also use the Latin alphabet and Cyrillic alphabet in Serbia. Additionally, some Eastern Catholics and Western Catholics use the Cyrillic alphabet. Serbian and Montenegrin use both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. There is also a Latin script to write in Belarusian, called \u0141acinka and in Ukrainian, called Latynka.\nEthno-cultural subdivisions.\nWest Slavs originate from early Slavic tribes which settled in Central Europe after the East Germanic tribes had left this area during the migration period. They are noted as having mixed with Germanics, Hungarians, Celts (particularly the Boii), Old Prussians, and the Pannonian Avars. The West Slavs came under the influence of the Western Roman Empire (Latin) and of the Catholic Church.\nEast Slavs have origins in early Slavic tribes who mixed and contacted with Finns, Balts and with the remnants of the people of the Goths. Their early Slavic component, Antes, mixed or absorbed Iranians, and later received influence from the Khazars and Vikings. The East Slavs trace their national origins to the tribal unions of Kievan Rus' and Rus' Khaganate, beginning in the 10th century. They came particularly under the influence of the Byzantine Empire and of the Eastern Orthodox Church.\nSouth Slavs from most of the region have origins in early Slavic tribes who mixed with the local Proto-Balkanic tribes (Illyrian, Dacian, Thracian, Paeonian, Hellenic tribes), and Celtic tribes (particularly the Scordisci), as well as with Romans (and the Romanized remnants of the former groups), and also with remnants of temporarily settled invading East Germanic, Asiatic or Caucasian tribes such as Gepids, Huns, Avars, Goths and Bulgars. The original inhabitants of present-day Slovenia and continental Croatia have origins in early Slavic tribes who mixed with Romans and romanized Celtic and Illyrian people as well as with Avars and Germanic peoples (Lombards and East Goths). The South Slavs (except the Slovenes and Croats) came under the cultural sphere of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire), of the Ottoman Empire and of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Islam, while the Slovenes and the Croats were influenced by the Western Roman Empire (Latin) and thus by the Catholic Church in a similar fashion to that of the West Slavs.\nGenetics.\nConsistent with the proximity of their languages, analyses of Y chromosomes, mDNA, and autosomal marker CCR5de132 shows that East Slavs and West Slavs are genetically very similar, but demonstrating significant differences from neighboring Finno-Ugric, Turkic, and North Caucasian peoples. Such genetic homogeneity is somewhat unusual, given such a wide dispersal of Slavic populations. Together they form the basis of the \"East European\" gene cluster, which also includes non-Slavic Hungarians and Aromanians.\nOnly Northern Russians among East and West Slavs belong to a different, \"Northern European\" genetic cluster, along with Balts, Germanic and Baltic Finnic peoples (Northern Russian populations are very similar to Balts).\nThe 2006 Y-DNA study results \"suggest that the Slavic expansion started from the territory of present-day Ukraine, thus supporting the hypothesis placing the earliest known homeland of Slavs in the basin of the middle Dnieper\". According to genetic studies until 2020, the distribution, variance and frequency of the Y-DNA haplogroups R1a and I2 and their subclades R-M558, R-M458 and I-CTS10228 among South Slavs correlate with the spread of Slavic languages during the medieval Slavic expansion from Eastern Europe, most probably from the territory of present-day Ukraine and Southeastern Poland.\nAccording to a 2017 study, Slavic speakers like Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians have similar genetic components. Ukrainians and Belarusians have near-equal amounts of two \"European components\", which are commonly found in North Europe and Caucasus respectively. There is also no evidence of Asian admixture. However, samples of Novosibirsk residents and Old Believers in Siberia have 5-10% Central Siberian ancestry despite being genetically close to European Slavs.\nReligion.\nThe pagan Slavic populations were Christianized between the 7th and 12th centuries. Orthodox Christianity is predominant among East and South Slavs, while Catholicism is predominant among West Slavs and some western South Slavs. The religious borders are largely comparable to the East\u2013West Schism which began in the 11th century. Islam first arrived in the 7th century during the early Muslim conquests, and was gradually adopted by a number of Slavic ethnic groups through the centuries in the Balkans.\nAmong Slavic populations who profess a religion, the majority of contemporary Christian Slavs are Orthodox, followed by Catholic. The majority of Muslim Slavs follow the Hanafi school of the Sunni branch of Islam. Religious delineations by nationality can be very sharp; usually in the Slavic ethnic groups, the vast majority of religious people share the same religion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nRelations with non-Slavic people.\nThroughout their history, Slavs came into contact with non-Slavic groups. In the postulated homeland region (present-day Ukraine), they had contacts with the Iranian Sarmatians and the Germanic Goths. After their subsequent spread, the Slavs began assimilating non-Slavic peoples. For example, in the Northern Black Sea region, the Slavs assimilated the remnants of the Goths. In the Balkans, there were Paleo-Balkan peoples, such as Romanized and Hellenized (Jire\u010dek Line) Illyrians, Thracians and Dacians, as well as Greeks and Celtic Scordisci and Serdi. Because Slavs were so numerous, most indigenous populations of the Balkans were Slavicized. Thracians and Illyrians mixed as ethnic groups in this period. \nA notable exception is Greece, where Slavs were Hellenized because Greeks were more numerous, especially with more Greeks returning to Greece in the 9th century and the influence of the church and administration, however, Slavicized regions within Macedonia, Thrace and Moesia Inferior also had a larger portion of locals compared to migrating Slavs. Other notable exceptions are the territory of present-day Romania and Hungary, where Slavs settled en route to present-day Greece, North Macedonia, Bulgaria and East Thrace but assimilated, and the modern Albanian nation which claims descent from Illyrians and other Balkan tribes.\nThe status of the Bulgars as a ruling class and their control of the land nominally left their legacy in the Bulgarian country and people, but Bulgars were gradually also Slavicized into the present-day South Slavic ethnic group known as Bulgarians. The Romance speakers within the fortified Dalmatian cities retained their culture and language for a long time. Dalmatian Romance was spoken until the high Middle Ages, but, they too were eventually assimilated into the body of Slavs.\nIn the Western Balkans, South Slavs and Germanic Gepids intermarried with invaders, eventually producing a Slavicized population. In Central Europe, the West Slavs intermixed with Germanic, Hungarian, and Celtic peoples, while in Eastern Europe the East Slavs had encountered Finnic and Scandinavian peoples. Scandinavians (Varangians) and Finnic peoples were involved in the early formation of the Rus' state but were completely Slavicized after a century. Some Finno-Ugric tribes in the north were also absorbed into the expanding Rus population. In the 11th and 12th centuries, constant incursions by nomadic Turkic tribes, such as the Kipchak and the Pecheneg, caused a massive migration of East Slavic populations to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north. In the Middle Ages, groups of Saxon ore miners settled in medieval Bosnia, Serbia and Bulgaria, where they were Slavicized.\n\"Saqaliba\" refers to the Slavic mercenaries and slaves in the medieval Arab world in North Africa, Sicily and Al-Andalus. Saqaliba served as caliph's guards. In the 12th century, Slavic piracy in the Baltics increased. The Wendish Crusade was started against the Polabian Slavs in 1147, as a part of the Northern Crusades. The pagan chief of the Slavic Obodrite tribes, Niklot, began his open resistance when Lothar III, Holy Roman Emperor, invaded Slavic lands. In August 1160, Niklot was killed, and German colonization (\"Ostsiedlung\") of the Elbe-Oder region began. In Hanoverian Wendland, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Lusatia, invaders started germanization. Early forms of germanization were described by German monks: Helmold in the manuscript \"Chronicon Slavorum\" and Adam of Bremen in \"Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum.\" The Polabian language survived until the beginning of the 19th century in what is now the German state of Lower Saxony. In Eastern Germany, around 20% of Germans have historic Slavic paternal ancestry, as revealed in Y-DNA testing. Similarly, in Germany, around 20% of the foreign surnames are of Slavic origin.\nCossacks, although Slavic and practicing Orthodox Christianity, came from a mix of ethnic backgrounds, including Tatars and other peoples. The Gorals of southern Poland and northern Slovakia are partially descended from the originally Balkan Romance speaking Vlachs, who migrated into the region from the 14th to 17th centuries and were quickly absorbed into the local population, especially since the majority of Vlachs were already slavicized and the term became synonymous with Ruthenians. The populations of Moravian Wallachia, Carpathian Ruthenia and parts of northern Slovakia are also descended partially from the Vlachs. Conversely, some Slavs were assimilated into other populations. Although the majority continued towards Southeast Europe, attracted by the riches of the area that became the state of Bulgaria, a few remained in the Carpathian Basin in Central Europe and were assimilated into the Magyar people. Numerous rivers and places in Romania have a name with Slavic origins.\nPopulation.\n\"Winkler Prins\" (2002) estimated the number of Slavs worldwide to be around c. 260 million at the time. Currently it is estimated that there are 300 million Slavic inhabitants in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>", "40494892": "Dissolution of the Soviet Union\n1988\u20131991 breakup of a sovereign state\nThe Soviet Union was formally dissolved as a sovereign state and subject of international law on 26 December 1991 by Declaration \u2116 142-\u041d of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. It also brought an end to the Soviet Union's federal government and General Secretary (also President) Mikhail Gorbachev's effort to reform the Soviet political and economic system in an attempt to stop a period of political stalemate and economic backslide. The Soviet Union had experienced internal stagnation and ethnic separatism. Although highly centralized until its final years, the country was made up of 15 top-level republics that served as the homelands for different ethnicities. By late 1991, amid a catastrophic political crisis, with several republics already departing the Union and Gorbachev continuing the waning of centralized power, the leaders of three of its founding members, the Russian, Belorussian, and Ukrainian SSRs, declared that the Soviet Union no longer existed. Eight more republics joined their declaration shortly thereafter. Gorbachev resigned on 25 December 1991 and what was left of the Soviet parliament voted to dissolve the union the following day.\nThe process began with growing unrest in the country's various constituent national republics developing into an incessant political and legislative conflict between them and the central government. Estonia was the first Soviet republic to declare state sovereignty inside the Union on 16 November 1988. Lithuania was the first republic to declare full independence restored from the Soviet Union by the Act of 11 March 1990 with its Baltic neighbors and the Southern Caucasus republic of Georgia joining it over the next two months.\nDuring the failed 1991 August coup, communist hardliners and military elites attempted to overthrow Gorbachev and stop the failing reforms. However, the turmoil led to the central government in Moscow losing influence, ultimately resulting in many republics proclaiming independence in the following days and months. The secession of the Baltic states was recognized in September 1991. The Belovezha Accords were signed on 8 December by President Boris Yeltsin of Russia, President Kravchuk of Ukraine, and Chairman Shushkevich of Belarus, recognizing each other's independence and creating the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) to replace the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan was the last republic to leave the Union, proclaiming independence on 16 December. All the ex-Soviet republics, with the exception of Georgia and the Baltic states, joined the CIS on 21 December, signing the Alma-Ata Protocol. Russia, as by far the largest and most populous republic, became the Soviet Union's de facto successor state. On 25 December, Gorbachev resigned and turned over his presidential powers\u00a0\u2013 including control of the nuclear launch codes\u00a0\u2013 to Yeltsin, who was now the first president of the Russian Federation. That evening, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the Russian tricolor flag. The following day, the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union's upper chamber, the Soviet of the Republics, formally dissolved the Union. The events of the dissolution resulted in its 15 constituent republics gaining full independence which also marked the major conclusion of the Revolutions of 1989 and the end of the Cold War.\nIn the aftermath of the Cold War, several of the former Soviet republics have retained close links with Russia and formed multilateral organizations such as the CIS, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and the Union State, for economic and military cooperation. On the other hand, the Baltic states and all of the other former Warsaw Pact states became part of the European Union (EU) and joined NATO, while some of the other former Soviet republics like Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova have been publicly expressing interest in following the same path since the 1990s, despite Russian attempts to persuade them otherwise.\nBackground.\n1985: Gorbachev elected.\nMikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo on 11 March 1985, just over four hours after his predecessor Konstantin Chernenko died at the age of 73. Gorbachev, aged 54, was the youngest member of the Politburo. His initial goal as general secretary was to revive the stagnating Soviet economy, and he realized that doing so would require reforming underlying political and social structures. The reforms began with personnel changes of senior Brezhnev-era officials who would impede political and economic change. On 23 April 1985, Gorbachev brought two prot\u00e9g\u00e9s, Yegor Ligachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov, into the Politburo as full members. He kept the \"power\" ministries favorable by promoting KGB Chief Viktor Chebrikov from candidate to full member and appointing Minister of Defence Marshal Sergei Sokolov as a Politburo candidate.\nThe freedom of speech brought by Gorbachev's reforms allowed nationalist movements and ethnic disputes within the Soviet Union to be expressed and grow into dominant political movements. It also led indirectly to the revolutions of 1989 in which Soviet-imposed socialist regimes of the Warsaw Pact were toppled peacefully (with the notable exception of Romania), which in turn increased pressure on Gorbachev to introduce greater democracy and autonomy for the Soviet Union's constituent republics. Under Gorbachev's leadership, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1989 introduced limited competitive elections to a new central legislature, the Congress of People's Deputies (although the ban on other political parties was not lifted until 1990).\nOn 1 July 1985, Gorbachev sidelined his main rival by removing Grigory Romanov from the Politburo and brought Boris Yeltsin into the Central Committee Secretariat. On 23 December 1985, Gorbachev appointed Yeltsin First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party, replacing Viktor Grishin.\n1986: Sakharov returns.\nGorbachev continued to press for greater liberalization. On 23 December 1986 Andrei Sakharov, the most prominent Soviet dissident, returned to Moscow shortly after receiving a personal telephone call from Gorbachev telling him that after almost seven years his internal exile for defying the authorities was over.\n1987: One-party democracy.\nAt the 28\u201330 January Central Committee plenum, Gorbachev suggested a new policy of \"demokratizatsiya\" throughout Soviet society. He proposed that future Communist Party elections should offer a choice between multiple candidates, elected by secret ballot. However, the party delegates at the Plenum watered down Gorbachev's proposal, and democratic choice within the Communist Party was never significantly implemented.\nGorbachev also radically expanded the scope of \"glasnost\" and stated that no subject was off limits for open discussion in the media. On 7 February, dozens of political prisoners were freed in the first group release since the Khrushchev Thaw in the mid-1950s.\nOn 10 September, Boris Yeltsin wrote a letter of resignation to Gorbachev. At the 27 October plenary meeting of the Central Committee, Yeltsin, frustrated that Gorbachev had not addressed any of the issues outlined in his resignation letter, criticized the slow pace of reform, and servility to the general secretary. In his reply, Gorbachev accused Yeltsin of \"political immaturity\" and \"absolute irresponsibility\". Nevertheless, news of Yeltsin's insubordination and \"secret speech\" spread, and soon \"samizdat\" versions began to circulate. That marked the beginning of Yeltsin's rebranding as a rebel and rise in popularity as an anti-establishment figure. The following four years of political struggle between Yeltsin and Gorbachev played a large role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union. On 11 November, Yeltsin was fired from the post of First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party.\nProtest activity.\nIn the years leading up to the dissolution, various protests and resistance movements occurred or took hold throughout the Soviet Union, which were variously suppressed or tolerated.\nThe CTAG () Helsinki-86 was founded in July 1986 in the Latvian port town of Liep\u0101ja. Helsinki-86 was the first openly anti-Communist organization in the Soviet Union, and the first openly organized opposition to the Soviet regime, setting an example for other ethnic minorities' pro-independence movements.\nOn 26 December 1986, 300 Latvian youths gathered in Riga's Cathedral Square and marched down Lenin Avenue toward the Freedom Monument, shouting, \"Soviet Russia out! Free Latvia!\" Security forces confronted the marchers, and several police vehicles were overturned.\nThe \"Jeltoqsan\" ('December') of 1986 were riots in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, sparked by Gorbachev's dismissal of Dinmukhamed Kunaev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan and an ethnic Kazakh, who was replaced with Gennady Kolbin, an outsider from the Russian SFSR. Demonstrations started in the morning of 17 December 1986, with 200 to 300 students in front of the Central Committee building on Brezhnev Square. On the next day, 18 December, protests turned into civil unrest as clashes between troops, volunteers, militia units, and Kazakh students turned into a wide-scale confrontation. The clashes could only be controlled on the third day.\nOn 6 May 1987, Pamyat, a Russian nationalist group, held an unsanctioned demonstration in Moscow. The authorities did not break up the demonstration and even kept traffic out of the demonstrators' way while they marched to an impromptu meeting with Boris Yeltsin.\nOn 14 June 1987, about 5,000 people gathered again at Freedom Monument in Riga, and laid flowers to commemorate the anniversary of Stalin's mass deportation of Latvians in 1941. The authorities did not crack down on demonstrators, which encouraged more and larger demonstrations throughout the Baltic States. On 18 November 1987, hundreds of police and civilian militiamen cordoned off the central square to prevent any demonstration at Freedom Monument, but thousands lined the streets of Riga in silent protest regardless.\nOn 25 July 1987, 300 Crimean Tatars staged a noisy demonstration near the Kremlin Wall for several hours, calling for the right to return to their homeland, from which they were deported in 1944; police and soldiers looked on.\nOn 23 August 1987, the 48th anniversary of the secret protocols of the 1939 Molotov Pact, thousands of demonstrators marked the occasion in the three Baltic capitals to sing independence songs and attend speeches commemorating Stalin's victims. The gatherings were sharply denounced in the official press and closely watched by the police but were not interrupted.\nOn 17 October 1987, about 3,000 Armenians demonstrated in Yerevan complaining about the condition of Lake Sevan, the Nairit chemicals plant, and the Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant, and air pollution in Yerevan. Police tried to prevent the protest but took no action to stop it once the march was underway. The following day 1,000 Armenians participated in another demonstration calling for Armenian national rights in Karabakh and the proposed unification of both Nakhchivan and Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia. The police tried to physically prevent the march and after a few incidents, dispersed the demonstrators.\nTimeline.\n1988.\nMoscow loses control.\nIn 1988, Gorbachev started to lose control of two regions of the Soviet Union, as the Baltic republics were now leaning towards independence, and the Caucasus descended into violence and civil war.\nOn 1 July 1988, the fourth and last day of a bruising 19th Party Conference, Gorbachev won the backing of the tired delegates for his last-minute proposal to create a new supreme legislative body called the Congress of People's Deputies. Frustrated by the old guard's resistance, Gorbachev embarked on a set of constitutional changes to attempt separation of party and state, thereby isolating his Party opponents. Detailed proposals for the new Congress of People's Deputies were published on 2 October 1988, and to enable the creation of the new legislature. The Supreme Soviet, during its 29 November \u2013 1 December 1988, session, implemented amendments to the 1977 Soviet Constitution, enacted a law on electoral reform, and set the date of the election for 26 March 1989.\nOn 29 November 1988, the Soviet Union ceased jamming all foreign radio stations, allowing Soviet citizens \u2013 for the first time since a brief period in the 1960s \u2013 to have unrestricted access to news sources beyond Communist Party control.\nBaltic republics.\nIn 1986 and 1987, Latvia had been in the vanguard of the Baltic states in pressing for reform. In 1988, Estonia took over the lead role with the foundation of the Soviet Union's first popular front and starting to influence state policy.\nThe Estonian Popular Front was founded in April 1988. On 16 June 1988, Gorbachev replaced Karl Vaino, the \"old guard\" leader of the Communist Party of Estonia, with the comparatively liberal Vaino V\u00e4ljas. In late June 1988, V\u00e4ljas bowed to pressure from the Estonian Popular Front and legalized the flying of the old blue-black-white flag of Estonia, and agreed to a new state language law that made Estonian the official language of the Republic.\nOn 2 October, the Popular Front formally launched its political platform at a two-day congress. V\u00e4ljas attended, gambling that the Front could help Estonia become a model of economic and political revival, while moderating separatist and other radical tendencies. On 16 November 1988, the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR adopted a declaration of national sovereignty under which Estonian laws would take precedence over those of the Soviet Union. Estonia's parliament also laid claim to the republic's natural resources including land, inland waters, forests, mineral deposits, and to the means of industrial production, agriculture, construction, state banks, transportation, and municipal services within the territory of Estonia's borders. At the same time the Estonian Citizens' Committees started registration of citizens of the Republic of Estonia to carry out the elections of the Congress of Estonia.\nThe Latvian Popular Front was founded in June 1988. On 4 October, Gorbachev replaced Boris Pugo, the \"old guard\" leader of the Communist Party of Latvia, with the more liberal J\u0101nis Vagris. In October 1988 Vagris bowed to pressure from the Latvian Popular Front and legalized flying the former carmine red-and-white flag of independent Latvia, and on 6 October he passed a law making Latvian the country's official language.\nThe Popular Front of Lithuania, called S\u0105j\u016bdis (\"Movement\"), was founded in May 1988. On 19 October 1988, Gorbachev replaced Ringaudas Songaila, the \"old guard\" leader of the Communist Party of Lithuania \u2013 who had been in office for nearly a year \u2013 with the relatively liberal Algirdas Mykolas Brazauskas. In October 1988, Brazauskas bowed to pressure from S\u0105j\u016bdis members, and legalized the flying of the historic yellow-green-red flag of independent Lithuania, and in November 1988 he passed a law making Lithuanian the country's official language; also, the former national anthem, \"Tauti\u0161ka giesm\u0117\", was later reinstated. Following a violent protest action in the capital on 28 October, many of Songalia's remaining holdovers within the CPL either resigned or retired in protest of the police brutality of that day.\nRebellion in the Caucasus.\nOn 20 February 1988, after a week of growing demonstrations in Stepanakert, capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (the ethnically Armenian-majority area within the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic), the Regional Soviet voted to secede and join with the Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia. This local vote in a small, remote part of the Soviet Union made headlines around the world; it was an unprecedented defiance of republican and national authorities. On 22 February 1988, in what became known as the \"Askeran clash\", thousands of Azerbaijanis marched towards Nagorno-Karabakh, demanding information about rumors of an Azerbaijani having been killed in Stepanakert. They were informed that no such incident had occurred, but refused to believe it. Dissatisfied with what they were told, thousands began marching toward Nagorno-Karabakh, killing (or injuring?) 50. Karabakh authorities mobilised over a thousand police to stop the march, with the resulting clashes leaving two Azerbaijanis dead. These deaths, announced on state radio, led to the Sumgait Pogrom. Between 26 February and 1 March, the city of Sumgait (Azerbaijan) saw violent anti-Armenian rioting during which at least 32 people were killed. The authorities totally lost control and occupied the city with paratroopers and tanks; nearly all of the 14,000 Armenian residents of Sumgait fled.\nGorbachev refused to make any changes to the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, which remained part of Azerbaijan. He instead sacked the Communist Party Leaders in both Republics in response \u2013 on 21 May 1988, Kamran Baghirov was replaced by Abdulrahman Vezirov as First Secretary of the Azerbaijan Communist Party. From 23 July to September 1988, a group of Azerbaijani intellectuals began working for a new organization called the Popular Front of Azerbaijan, loosely based on the Estonian Popular Front. On 17 September, when gun battles broke out between the Armenians and Azerbaijanis near Stepanakert, two soldiers were killed and more than two dozen injured. This led to almost tit-for-tat ethnic polarization in Nagorno-Karabakh's two main towns: the Azerbaijani minority was expelled from Stepanakert, and the Armenian minority was expelled from Shusha. On 17 November 1988, in response to the exodus of tens of thousands of Azerbaijanis from Armenia, a series of mass demonstrations began in Baku's Lenin Square, lasting 18 days and attracting half a million demonstrators in support of their compatriots in that region. On 5 December 1988, the Soviet police and civilian militiamen moved in, cleared the square by force, and imposed a curfew that lasted ten months.\nThe rebellion of fellow Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh had an immediate effect in Armenia itself. Daily demonstrations, which began in the Armenian capital Yerevan on 18 February, initially attracted few people, but each day the Nagorno-Karabakh issue became increasingly prominent and the numbers swelled. On 20 February, a 30,000-strong crowd demonstrated in the Theater Square, by 22 February, there were 100,000, the next day 300,000, and a transport strike was declared, by 25 February, there were close to a million demonstrators\u00a0\u2013 more than a quarter of Armenia's population. This was the first of the large, peaceful public demonstrations that would become a feature of communism's overthrow in Prague, Berlin, and, ultimately, Moscow. Leading Armenian intellectuals and nationalists, including the future first president of independent Armenia Levon Ter-Petrossian, formed the eleven-member Karabakh Committee to lead and organize the new movement.\nOn the same day, when Gorbachev replaced Baghirov with Vezirov as First Secretary of the Azerbaijan Communist Party, he also replaced Karen Demirchian with Suren Harutyunyan as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia, however, Harutyunyan quickly decided to run before the nationalist wind and on 28 May, allowed Armenians to unfurl the red-blue-orange First Armenian Republic flag for the first time in almost 70 years to mark the 1918 declaration of the First Republic. On 15 June 1988, the Armenian Supreme Soviet adopted a resolution formally approving the idea of Nagorno-Karabakh's unification as part of the republic. Armenia, formerly one of the most loyal republics, had suddenly turned into the leading rebel republic. On 5 July 1988, when a contingent of troops was sent in to remove demonstrators by force from Yerevan's Zvartnots International Airport, shots were fired and one student protester was killed. In September, further large demonstrations in Yerevan led to the deployment of armored vehicles. In the autumn of 1988 almost all of the 200,000 Azerbaijani minority in Armenia was expelled by Armenian nationalists, with over 100 killed in the process. That, after the Sumgait pogrom earlier that year, which had been carried out by Azerbaijanis to ethnic Armenians and led to the expulsion of Armenians from Azerbaijan, was for many Armenians considered an act of revenge for the killings at Sumgait. On 25 November 1988, a military commandant took control of Yerevan as the Soviet government moved to prevent further ethnic violence.\nOn 7 December 1988, the Spitak earthquake struck, killing an estimated 25,000 to 50,000 people. When Gorbachev rushed back from a visit to the United States, he was so angered with being confronted by protesters calling for Nagorno-Karabakh to be made part of the Armenian Republic during a natural disaster that on 11 December 1988, he ordered that the entire Karabakh Committee be arrested.\nIn Tbilisi, the capital of Soviet Georgia, many demonstrators camped out in front of the republic's legislature in November 1988 calling for Georgia's independence and in support of Estonia's declaration of sovereignty.\nWestern republics.\nBeginning in February 1988, the Democratic Movement of Moldova (formerly Moldavia) organized public meetings, demonstrations, and song festivals, which gradually grew in size and intensity. In the streets, the center of public manifestations was the Stephen the Great Monument in Chi\u0219in\u0103u, and the adjacent park harboring \"Aleea Clasicilor\" (The \"Alley of Classics [of Literature]\"). On 15 January 1988, in a tribute to Mihai Eminescu at his bust on the Aleea Clasicilor, Anatol \u0218alaru submitted a proposal to continue the meetings. In the public discourse, the movement called for national awakening, freedom of speech, the revival of Moldovan traditions, and for the attainment of official status for the Romanian language and return to the Latin alphabet. The transition from \"movement\" (an informal association) to \"front\" (a formal association) was seen as a natural \"upgrade\" once a movement gained momentum with the public, and the Soviet authorities no longer dared to crack down on it.\nOn 26 April 1988, about 500 people participated in a march organized by the Ukrainian Cultural Club on Kyiv's Khreschatyk Street to mark the second anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, carrying placards with slogans like \"Openness and Democracy to the End\". Between May and June 1988, Ukrainian Catholics in western Ukraine celebrated the Millennium of Christianity in Kyivan Rus in secret by holding services in the forests of Buniv, Kalush, Hoshi, and Zarvanytsia. On 5 June 1988, as the official celebrations of the Millennium were held in Moscow, the Ukrainian Cultural Club hosted its own observances in Kyiv at the monument to St. Volodymyr the Great, the grand prince of Kyivan Rus.\nOn 16 June 1988, 6,000 to 8,000 people gathered in Lviv to hear speakers declare no confidence in the local list of delegates to the 19th Communist Party conference, to begin on 29 June. On 21 June, a rally in Lviv attracted 50,000 people who had heard about a revised delegate list. Authorities attempted to disperse the rally in front of Druzhba Stadium. On 7 July, 10,000 to 20,000 people witnessed the launch of the Democratic Front to Promote Perestroika. On 17 July, a group of 10,000 gathered in the village Zarvanytsia for Millennium services celebrated by Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Bishop Pavlo Vasylyk. The militia tried to disperse attendees, but it turned out to be the largest gathering of Ukrainian Catholics since Stalin outlawed the Church in 1946. On 4 August, which came to be known as \"Bloody Thursday\", local authorities violently suppressed a demonstration organized by the Democratic Front to Promote Perestroika. Forty-one people were detained, fined, or sentenced to 15 days of administrative arrest. On 1 September, local authorities violently displaced 5,000 students at a public meeting lacking official permission at Ivan Franko State University.\nOn 13 November 1988, approximately 10,000 people attended an officially sanctioned meeting organized by the cultural heritage organization \"Spadschyna\", the Kyiv University student club \"Hromada\", and the environmental groups \"Zelenyi Svit\" (\"Green World\") and \"Noosfera\", to focus on ecological issues. From 14 to 18 November, 15 Ukrainian activists were among the 100 human-, national- and religious-rights advocates invited to discuss human rights with Soviet officials and a visiting delegation of the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (also known as the Helsinki Commission). On 10 December, hundreds gathered in Kyiv to observe International Human Rights Day at a rally organized by the Democratic Union. The unauthorized gathering resulted in the detention of local activists.\nThe Belarusian Popular Front was established in 1988 as a political party and cultural movement for democracy and independence, similar to the Baltic republics' popular fronts. The discovery of mass graves in Kurapaty outside Minsk by historian Zianon Pazniak, the Belarusian Popular Front's first leader, gave additional momentum to the pro-democracy and pro-independence movement in Belarus. It claimed that the NKVD performed secret killings in Kurapaty. Initially the Front had significant visibility because its numerous public actions almost always ended in clashes with the police and the KGB.\n1989.\nMoscow: limited democratization.\nSpring 1989 saw the people of the Soviet Union exercising a democratic choice, albeit limited, for the first time since 1917, when they elected the new Congress of People's Deputies. Just as important was the uncensored live TV coverage of the legislature's deliberations, where people witnessed the previously feared Communist leadership being questioned and held accountable. This example fueled a limited experiment with democracy in Poland, which quickly led to the toppling of the Communist government in Warsaw that summer and in turn sparked uprisings that overthrew governments in the other five Warsaw Pact countries before the end of 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell.\nThis was also the year that CNN became the first non-Soviet broadcaster allowed to beam its TV news programs to Moscow. Officially, CNN was available only to foreign guests in the Savoy Hotel, but Muscovites quickly learned how to pick up signals on their home televisions. That had a major effect on how Soviets saw events in their country and made censorship almost impossible.\nThe month-long nomination period for candidates for the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union lasted until 24 January 1989. For the next month, selection among the 7,531 district nominees took place at meetings organized by constituency-level electoral commissions. On 7 March, a final list of 5,074 candidates was published; about 85% were Party members.\nIn the two weeks prior to the 1,500 district polls, elections to fill 750 reserved seats of public organizations, contested by 880 candidates, were held. Of these seats, 100 were allocated to the CPSU, 100 to the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, 75 to the Communist Youth Union (Komsomol), 75 to the Committee of Soviet Women, 75 to the War and Labour Veterans' Organization, and 325 to other organizations such as the Academy of Sciences. The selection process was done in April.\nIn the 26 March general elections, voter participation was an impressive 89.8%, and 1,958 (including 1,225 district seats) of the 2,250 CPD seats were filled. In district races, run-off elections were held in 76 constituencies on 2 and 9 April and fresh elections were organized on 14 and 20 April to 23 May, in the 199 remaining constituencies where the required absolute majority was not attained. While most CPSU-endorsed candidates were elected, more than 300 lost to independent candidates such as Yeltsin, the physicist Andrei Sakharov and the lawyer Anatoly Sobchak.\nIn the first session of the new Congress of People's Deputies (from 25 May to 9 June), hardliners retained control but reformers used the legislature as a platform for debate and criticism, which was broadcast live and uncensored. This transfixed the population since nothing like such a freewheeling debate had ever been witnessed in the Soviet Union. On 29 May, Yeltsin managed to secure a seat on the Supreme Soviet, and in the summer he formed the first opposition, the Inter-Regional Deputies Group, composed of Russian nationalists and liberals. Composing the final legislative group in the Soviet Union, those elected in 1989 played a vital part in reforms and the eventual breakup of the Soviet Union during the next two years.\nOn 30 May 1989, Gorbachev proposed that local elections across the country, scheduled for November 1989, be postponed until early 1990 because there were still no laws governing the conduct of such elections. This was seen by some as a concession to local Party officials, who feared they would be swept from power in a wave of anti-establishment sentiment.\nOn 25 October 1989, the Supreme Soviet voted to eliminate special seats for the Communist Party and other official organizations in union-level and republic-level elections, responding to sharp popular criticism that such reserved slots were undemocratic. After vigorous debate, the 542-member Supreme Soviet passed the measure 254\u201385 (with 36 abstentions). The decision required a constitutional amendment, ratified by the full congress, which met 12\u201325 December. It also passed measures that would allow direct elections for presidents of each of the 15 constituent republics. Gorbachev strongly opposed such a move during debate but was defeated.\nThe vote expanded the power of republics in local elections, enabling them to decide for themselves how to organize voting. Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia had already proposed laws for direct presidential elections. Local elections in all the republics had already been scheduled to take place between December and March 1990.\nThe six Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern Europe, while nominally independent, were widely recognized as the Soviet satellite states (along with Mongolia). All had been occupied by the Soviet Red Army in 1945, had Soviet-style socialist states imposed upon them, and had very restricted freedom of action in either domestic or international affairs. Any moves towards real independence were suppressed by military force \u2013 in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Prague Spring in 1968. Gorbachev abandoned the oppressive and expensive Brezhnev Doctrine, which mandated intervention in the Warsaw Pact states, in favor of non-intervention in the internal affairs of allies \u2013 jokingly termed the Sinatra Doctrine in a reference to the Frank Sinatra song \"My Way\". Poland was the first republic to democratize following the enactment of the April Novelization, as agreed upon following the Polish Round Table Agreement talks from February to April between the government and the Solidarity trade union. The Polish Solidarity Union, as established through the 1980 August Accords, presented Lech Wa\u0142\u0119sa as their candidate, who became the first democratically elected president of Poland. The elections in Poland inspired other Eastern European Soviet Nations to pursue peaceful democratic transitions, and soon the Pact began to dissolve itself. The last of the countries to overthrow Communist leadership, Romania, only did so following the violent Romanian Revolution.\nBaltic Chain of Freedom.\nThe Baltic Way or Baltic Chain (also Chain of Freedom; , , , ) was a peaceful political demonstration on 23 August 1989. An estimated 2\u00a0million people joined hands to form a human chain extending across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which had been forcibly reincorporated into the Soviet Union in 1944. The colossal demonstration marked the 50th anniversary of the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact that divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence and led to the occupation of the Baltic states in 1940.\nJust months after the Baltic Way protests, in December 1989, the Congress of People's Deputies accepted\u00a0\u2013 and Gorbachev signed\u00a0\u2013 the report by the Yakovlev Commission condemning the secret protocols of the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop pact which led to the annexations of the three Baltic republics.\nIn the March 1989 elections to the Congress of Peoples Deputies, 36 of the 42 deputies from Lithuania were candidates from the independent national movement S\u0105j\u016bdis. That was the greatest victory for any national organization within the Soviet Union and was a devastating revelation to the Lithuanian Communist Party of its growing unpopularity.\nOn 7 December 1989, the Communist Party of Lithuania, under the leadership of Algirdas Brazauskas, split from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and abandoned its claim to have a constitutional \"leading role\" in politics. A smaller loyalist faction of the Communist Party, headed by hardliner Mykolas Burokevi\u010dius, was established and remained affiliated with the party. However, Lithuania's governing Communist Party was formally independent from Moscow's control, a first for a Soviet republics and a political earthquake that prompted Gorbachev to arrange a visit to Lithuania the following month in a futile attempt to bring the local party back under control. The following year, the Communist Party lost power altogether in multiparty parliamentary elections, which had caused Vytautas Landsbergis to become the first noncommunist leader (Chairman of the Supreme Council of Lithuania) of Lithuania since its forced incorporation into the Soviet Union.\nCaucasus.\nOn 16 July 1989, the Popular Front of Azerbaijan held its first congress and elected Abulfaz Elchibey, who would become president, as its chairman. On 19 August, 600,000 protesters jammed Baku's Lenin Square (now Azadliq Square) to demand the release of political prisoners. In the second half of 1989, weapons were handed out in Nagorno-Karabakh. When Karabakhis got hold of small arms to replace hunting rifles and crossbows, casualties began to mount; bridges were blown up, roads were blockaded, and hostages were taken.\nIn a new and effective tactic, the Popular Front launched a rail blockade of Armenia, which caused petrol and food shortages because 85 percent of Armenia's freight came from Azerbaijan. Under pressure from the Popular Front the Communist authorities in Azerbaijan started making concessions. On 25 September, they passed a sovereignty law that gave precedence to Azerbaijani law, and on 4 October, the Popular Front was permitted to register as a legal organization as long as it lifted the blockade. Transport communications between Azerbaijan and Armenia never fully recovered. Tensions continued to escalate and on 29 December, Popular Front activists seized local party offices in Jalilabad, wounding dozens.\nOn 31 May 1989, the 11 members of the Karabakh Committee, who had been imprisoned without trial in Moscow's Matrosskaya Tishina prison, were released and returned home to a hero's welcome. Soon after his release, Levon Ter-Petrossian, an academic, was elected chairman of the anti-communist opposition Pan-Armenian National Movement, and later stated that it was in 1989 that he first began considering full independence as his goal.\nOn 7 April 1989, Soviet troops and armored personnel carriers were sent to Tbilisi after more than 100,000 people protested in front of Communist Party headquarters with banners calling for Georgia to secede from the Soviet Union and for Abkhazia to be fully integrated into Georgia. On 9 April 1989, troops attacked the demonstrators; some 20 people were killed and more than 200 wounded. This event radicalized Georgian politics, prompting many to conclude that independence was preferable to continued Soviet rule. Given the abuses by members of the armed forces and police, Moscow acted fast. On 14 April, Gorbachev removed Jumber Patiashvili as First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party as a result of the killings and replaced him with former Georgian KGB chief Givi Gumbaridze.\nOn 16 July 1989, in Abkhazia's capital Sukhumi, a protest against the opening of a Georgian university branch in the town led to violence that quickly degenerated into a large-scale inter-ethnic confrontation in which 18 died and hundreds were injured before Soviet troops restored order. This riot marked the start of the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict.\nOn 17 November 1989, the Supreme Council of Georgia held its fall plenary session, which lasted two days. One of the resolutions that came out of it was as a declaration against what it called an \"illegal\" accession into the Soviet Union of the country 68 years ago, forced against its will by the Red Army, the CPSU and the All-Russian Council of People's Commissars.\nWestern republics.\nOn 26 March 1989, elections to the Congress of People's Deputies, 15 of the 46 Moldovan deputies elected for congressional seats in Moscow were supporters of the Nationalist/Democratic movement. The Popular Front of Moldova founding congress took place two months later, on 20 May. During its second congress (30 June \u2013 1 July 1989), Ion Had\u00e2rc\u0103 was elected its president.\nA series of demonstrations that became known as the Grand National Assembly () was the Front's first major achievement. Such mass demonstrations, including one attended by 300,000 people on 27 August, convinced the Moldovan Supreme Soviet on 31 August to adopt the language law making Romanian the official language, and replacing the Cyrillic alphabet with Latin characters.\nIn Ukraine, Lviv and Kyiv celebrated Ukrainian Independence Day on 22 January 1989. Thousands gathered in Lviv for an unauthorized \"moleben\" (religious service) in front of St. George's Cathedral. In Kyiv, 60 activists met in a Kyiv apartment to commemorate the proclamation of the Ukrainian People's Republic in 1918. On 11\u201312 February 1989, the Ukrainian Language Society held its founding congress. On 15 February 1989, the formation of the Initiative Committee for the Renewal of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was announced. The program and statutes of the movement were proposed by the Writers' Union of Ukraine and were published in the journal \"Literaturna Ukraina\" on 16 February 1989. The organization heralded Ukrainian dissidents such as Vyacheslav Chornovil.\nIn late February, large public rallies took place in Kyiv to protest the election laws, on the eve of the 26 March elections to the USSR Congress of People's Deputies, and to call for the resignation of the first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, lampooned as \"the mastodon of stagnation\". The demonstrations coincided with a visit to Ukraine by Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. On 26 February 1989, between 20,000 and 30,000 people participated in an unsanctioned ecumenical memorial service in Lviv, marking the anniversary of the death of 19th-century Ukrainian artist and nationalist Taras Shevchenko.\nOn 4 March 1989, the Memorial Society, committed to honoring the victims of Stalinism and cleansing society of Soviet practices, was founded in Kyiv. A public rally was held the next day. On 12 March, A pre-election meeting organized in Lviv by the Ukrainian Helsinki Union and the Marian Society \"Myloserdia\" (Compassion) was violently dispersed, and nearly 300 people were detained. On 26 March, elections were held to the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union; by-elections were held on 9 April 14 May, and 21 May. Among the 225 Ukrainian representatives to the Congress, most were conservatives, though a handful of progressives were also elected.\nFrom 20 to 23 April 1989, pre-election meetings were held in Lviv for four consecutive days, drawing crowds of up to 25,000. The action included a one-hour warning strike at eight local factories and institutions. It was the first labor strike in Lviv since 1944. On 3 May, a pre-election rally attracted 30,000 in Lviv. On 7 May, The Memorial Society organized a mass meeting at Bykivnia, site of a mass grave of Ukrainian and Polish victims of Stalinist terror. After a march from Kyiv to the site, a memorial service was staged.\nFrom mid-May to September 1989, Ukrainian Greek-Catholic hunger strikers staged protests on Moscow's Arbat to call attention to the plight of their Church. They were especially active during the July session of the World Council of Churches held in Moscow. The protest ended with the arrests of the group on 18 September. On 27 May 1989, the founding conference of the Lviv regional Memorial Society was held. On 18 June 1989, an estimated 100,000 faithful participated in public religious services in Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine, responding to Cardinal Myroslav Lubachivsky's call for an international day of prayer.\nOn 19 August 1989, the Russian Orthodox Parish of Saints Peter and Paul announced it would be switching to the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. On 2 September 1989, tens of thousands across Ukraine protested a draft election law that reserved special seats for the Communist Party and for other official organizations for parliamentary seats: 50,000 in Lviv, 40,000 in Kyiv, 10,000 in Zhytomyr, 5,000 each in Dniprodzerzhynsk and Chervonohrad, and 2,000 in Kharkiv. From 8\u201310 September 1989, writer Ivan Drach was elected to head Rukh, the People's Movement of Ukraine, at its founding congress in Kyiv. On 17 September, between 150,000 and 200,000 people marched in Lviv, demanding the legalization of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. On 21 September 1989, exhumation of a mass grave began in Demianiv Laz, a nature preserve south of Ivano-Frankivsk. On 28 September, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, a holdover from the Brezhnev era, was replaced in this office by Vladimir Ivashko.\nOn 1 October 1989, a peaceful demonstration of 10,000 to 15,000 people was violently dispersed by police constables in front of Lviv's Druzhba Stadium, where a concert celebrating the Soviet \"reunification\" of Ukrainian lands was being held. On 10 October, Ivano-Frankivsk was the site of a pre-election protest attended by 30,000 people. On 15 October, several thousand people gathered in Chervonohrad, Chernivtsi, Rivne, and Zhytomyr; 500 in Dnipropetrovsk; and 30,000 in Lviv to protest the election law. On 20 October, faithful and clergy of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church participated in a synod in Lviv, the first since its forced liquidation in the 1930s.\nOn 24 October, the union Supreme Soviet passed a law eliminating special seats for Communist Party and other official organizations' representatives in parliament. On 26 October, twenty factories in Lviv held strikes and meetings to protest the police brutality of 1 October and the authorities' unwillingness to prosecute those responsible. From 26 to 28 October, the \"Zelenyi Svit\" (Friends of the Earth \u2013 Ukraine) environmental association held its founding congress, and on 27 October the Ukrainian Parliament passed a law eliminating the special status of party and other official organizations as deputies of parliament.\nOn 28 October 1989, the Ukrainian Parliament decreed that effective 1 January 1990, Ukrainian would be the official language of Ukraine, while Russian would be used for communication between ethnic groups. On the same day, The Congregation of the Church of the Transfiguration in Lviv left the Russian Orthodox Church and proclaimed itself the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. The following day, thousands attended a memorial service at Demianiv Laz, and a temporary marker was placed to indicate that a monument to the \"victims of the repressions of 1939\u20131941\" soon would be erected.\nIn mid-November, The Shevchenko Ukrainian Language Society was officially registered. On 19 November 1989, a public gathering in Kyiv attracted thousands of mourners, friends, and family to the reburial in Ukraine of three inmates of the infamous Gulag Camp No.\u00a036 in Perm in the Ural Mountains: human-rights activists Vasyl Stus, Oleksiy Tykhy, and Yuriy Lytvyn. Their remains were reinterred in Baikove Cemetery. On 26 November 1989, a day of prayer and fasting was proclaimed by Cardinal Myroslav Lubachivsky, thousands of faithful in western Ukraine participated in religious services on the eve of a meeting between Pope John Paul II and General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Gorbachev. On 28 November 1989, the Ukrainian SSR's Council for Religious Affairs issued a decree allowing Ukrainian Catholic congregations to register as legal organizations. The decree was proclaimed on December\u00a01, coinciding with a meeting at the Vatican between the pope and the Soviet General Secretary.\nOn 10 December 1989, the first officially sanctioned observance of International Human Rights Day was held in Lviv. On 17 December, an estimated 30,000 attended a public meeting organized in Kyiv by Rukh in memory of Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov, who died on 14 December. On 26 December, the Supreme Soviet of Ukrainian SSR adopted a law designating Christmas, Easter, and the Feast of the Holy Trinity official holidays.\nIn May 1989, a Soviet dissident, Mustafa Dzhemilev, was elected to lead the newly founded Crimean Tatar National Movement. He also led the campaign for the return of Crimean Tatars to their homeland in Crimea after 45 years of exile.\nOn 24 January 1989, the Soviet authorities in Byelorussia agreed to the demand of the democratic opposition (the Belarusian Popular Front) to build a monument to thousands of people shot by Stalin-era police in the Kuropaty Forest near Minsk in the 1930s.\nOn 30 September 1989, thousands of Belarusians, denouncing local leaders, marched through Minsk to demand additional cleanup of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster site in Ukraine. Up to 15,000 protesters wearing armbands bearing radioactivity symbols and carrying the banned red-and-white national flag used by the government-in-exile filed through torrential rain in defiance of a ban by local authorities. Later, they gathered in the city center near the government's headquarters, where speakers demanded the resignation of Yefrem Sokolov, the republic's Communist Party leader, and called for the evacuation of half a million people from the contaminated zones.\nMiners' strikes.\nStrike actions by coal miners in the Kuznetsk Basin, or Kuzbass, began on 10 or 11 July 1989, in reaction to increased prices, unsafe working conditions and popular frenzy against corruption as a result of \"perestroika\". Miners in the Kuzbass were soon joined by other miners in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region and the northern city of Vorkuta. Shcherbytsky, Ukraine's first secretary, came under significant political pressure as the strikes in the Donbas became particularly militant and connected themselves to Ukrainian dissident groups. The strikes came to an end from 24 to 27 July after the Soviet government agreed to codify the workers' demands into law, but by that point the damage had already been done. Following a 7 August meeting of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Shcherbytsky was forced to retire.\nThe government's accession to the miners' demands failed to prevent the growth of public anger, particularly in Ukraine, where the miners had become especially militant. The Independent Union of Miners, the Soviet Union's first independent trade union, would go on to be founded in July 1990 as the Ukrainian dissident movement continued to gain broader public support.\nCentral Asian republics.\nThousands of Soviet troops were sent to the Fergana Valley, southeast of the Uzbek capital Tashkent, to re-establish order after clashes in which local Uzbeks hunted down members of the Meskhetian minority in several days of rioting between 4\u201311 June 1989 in what would be called the Fergana massacre; about 100 people were killed. As a consequence, most of the Meskhetian community fled away from Uzbekistan. Uzbek outrage over the events soon reached the capital and soon Moscow acted fast. On 23 June 1989, Gorbachev removed Rafiq Nishonov as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Uzbek SSR for being unable to stop the race riots in the region and replaced him with Islam Karimov, who went on to lead Uzbekistan as a Soviet Republic and subsequently as an independent state until his death in 2016. \nIn Kazakhstan on 19 June 1989, young men carrying guns, firebombs, iron bars, and stones rioted in Zhanaozen, causing a number of deaths. The youths tried to seize a police station and a water-supply station. They brought public transportation to a halt and shut down various shops and industries. By 25 June, the rioting had spread to five other towns near the Caspian Sea. A mob of about 150 people armed with sticks, stones and metal rods attacked the police station in Mangishlak, about from Zhanaozen before they were dispersed by government troops flown in by helicopters. Mobs of young people also rampaged through Yeraliev, Shepke, Fort-Shevchenko and Kulsary, where they poured flammable liquid on trains housing temporary workers and set them on fire.\nWith the government and CPSU shocked by the riots, on 22 June 1989, as a result of the riots, Gorbachev removed Gennady Kolbin (the ethnic Russian whose appointment caused riots in December 1986) as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan for his poor handling of the June events and replaced him with Nursultan Nazarbayev, an ethnic Kazakh who went on to lead Kazakhstan as the Soviet Republic and subsequently to independence. Nazarbayev would lead Kazakhstan for 27 years until he stepped down as president on 19 March 2019.\n1990.\nMoscow loses five republics.\nOn 7 February 1990, the Central Committee of the CPSU accepted Gorbachev's recommendation that the party give up its monopoly on political power. In 1990, all fifteen constituent republics of the USSR held their first competitive elections, with reformers and ethnic nationalists winning many seats. The CPSU lost the elections in five republics:\nThe constituent republics began to declare their fledgling states' sovereignty and began a \"war of laws\" with the Moscow central government; they rejected union-wide legislation that conflicted with local laws, asserted control over their local economies, and refused to pay taxes to the Soviet government. Landsbergis, Chairman of the Supreme Council of Lithuania, also exempted Lithuanian men from mandatory service in the Soviet Armed Forces. This conflict caused economic dislocation as supply lines were disrupted, and caused the Soviet economy to decline further.\nRivalry between USSR and RSFSR.\nOn 4 March 1990, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic held relatively free elections for the Congress of People's Deputies of Russia. Boris Yeltsin was elected, representing Sverdlovsk, garnering 72 percent of the vote. On 29 May 1990, Yeltsin was elected chair of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, despite the fact that Gorbachev asked Russian deputies not to vote for him.\nYeltsin was supported by democratic and conservative members of the Supreme Soviet, who sought power in the developing political situation. A new power struggle emerged between the RSFSR and the Soviet Union. On 12 June 1990, the Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR adopted a declaration of sovereignty. On 12 July 1990, Yeltsin resigned from the Communist Party in a dramatic speech at the 28th Congress.\nBaltic republics.\nGorbachev's visit to the Lithuanian capital Vilnius on 11\u201313 January 1990, provoked a pro-independence rally attended by an estimated 250,000 people.\nOn 11 March, the newly elected parliament of the Lithuanian SSR elected Vytautas Landsbergis, the leader of S\u0105j\u016bdis, as its chairman and proclaimed the Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania, making Lithuania the first Soviet Republic to declare independence from the Soviet Union. Moscow reacted with an economic blockade keeping the troops in Lithuania ostensibly \"to secure the rights of ethnic Russians\".\nOn 25 March 1990, the Estonian Communist Party voted to split from the CPSU after a six-month transition.\nOn 30 March 1990, the Estonian Supreme Council declared the Soviet occupation of Estonia since the Second World War to be illegal and began a period of national transition towards the formal reestablishment of national independence within the republic.\nOn 3 April 1990, Edgar Savisaar of the Popular Front of Estonia was elected chairman of the Council of Ministers (the equivalent of being Prime Minister), and soon a majority-pro independence cabinet was formed.\nLatvia declared the restoration of independence on 4 May 1990, with the declaration stipulating a transitional period to complete independence. The Declaration stated that although Latvia had de facto lost its independence in World War II, the country had \"de jure\" remained a sovereign country because the annexation had been unconstitutional and against the will of the Latvian people. The declaration also stated that Latvia would base its relationship with the Soviet Union on the basis of the Latvian\u2013Soviet Peace Treaty of 1920, in which the Soviet Union recognized Latvia's independence as inviolable \"for all future time\". 4 May is now a national holiday in Latvia.\nOn 7 May 1990, Ivars Godmanis of the Latvian Popular Front was elected chairman of the Council of Ministers (the equivalent of being Latvia's Prime Minister), becoming the first premier of the restored Latvian republic.\n\u041en 8 May 1990, the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR adopted a law officially declaring the reinstatement of the 1938 Constitution of the independent Republic of Estonia.\nCaucasus.\nDuring the first week of January 1990, in the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan, the Popular Front led crowds in the storming and destruction of the frontier fences and watchtowers along the border with Iran, and thousands of Soviet Azerbaijanis crossed the border to meet their ethnic cousins in Iranian Azerbaijan.\nEthnic tensions had escalated between the Armenians and Azerbaijanis in spring and summer 1988. On 9 January 1990, after the Armenian parliament voted to include Nagorno-Karabakh within its budget, renewed fighting broke out, hostages were taken, and four Soviet soldiers were killed. On 11 January, Popular Front radicals stormed party buildings and effectively overthrew the communist powers in the southern town of Lenkoran. Gorbachev resolved to regain control of Azerbaijan; the events that ensued are known as \"Black January\". Late on 19 January 1990, after blowing up the central television station and cutting the phone and radio lines, 26,000 Soviet troops entered the Azerbaijani capital Baku, smashing barricades, attacking protesters, and firing into crowds. On that night and during subsequent confrontations (which lasted until February), more than 130 people died. Most of these were civilians. More than 700 civilians were wounded, hundreds were detained, but only a few were actually tried for alleged criminal offenses.\nCivil liberties suffered. Soviet Defence Minister Dmitry Yazov stated that the use of force in Baku was intended to prevent the \"de facto\" takeover of the Azerbaijani government by the non-communist opposition, to prevent their victory in upcoming free elections (scheduled for March 1990), to destroy them as a political force, and to ensure that the Communist government remained in power.\nThe army had gained control of Baku, but by 20 January it had essentially lost Azerbaijan. Nearly the entire population of Baku turned out for the mass funerals of \"martyrs\" buried in the Alley of Martyrs. Thousands of Communist Party members publicly burned their party cards. First Secretary Vezirov decamped to Moscow and Ayaz Mutalibov was appointed his successor in a free vote of party officials. The ethnic Russian Viktor Polyanichko remained second secretary. In reaction to the Soviet actions in Baku, Sakina Aliyeva, Chair of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic called a special session where it was debated whether or not Nakhchivan could secede from the USSR under Article 81 of the Soviet Constitution. Deciding that it was legal, deputies prepared a declaration of independence, which Aliyeva signed and presented on 20 January on national television. It was the first declaration of secession by a recognized region in the USSR. Aliyeva and the Nakhchivan Soviet's actions were denounced by government officials who forced her to resign and the attempt at independence was aborted.\nFollowing the hardliners' takeover, the 30 September 1990 elections (runoffs on 14 October) were characterized by intimidation; several Popular Front candidates were jailed, two were murdered, and unabashed ballot stuffing took place, even in the presence of Western observers. The election results reflected the threatening environment; out of the 350 members, 280 were Communists, with only 45 opposition candidates from the Popular Front and other non-communist groups, who together formed a Democratic Bloc (\"Dembloc\"). In May 1990 Mutalibov was elected chairman of the Supreme Soviet unopposed.\nOn 23 August 1990, the Supreme Soviet of the Armenian SSR adopted the Declaration of Independence of Armenia. The document proclaimed the independent Republic of Armenia with its own symbols, army, financial institutions, foreign and tax policy.\nWestern republics.\nOn 21 January 1990, Rukh organized a human chain between Kyiv, Lviv, and Ivano-Frankivsk. Hundreds of thousands joined hands to commemorate the proclamation of Ukrainian independence in 1918 and the reunification of Ukrainian lands one year later (1919 Unification Act). On 23 January 1990, the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church held its first synod since its liquidation by the Soviets in 1946 (an act which the gathering declared invalid). On 9 February 1990, the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice officially registered Rukh. However, the registration came too late for Rukh to field its own candidates for the parliamentary and local elections on 4 March. At those 1990 elections of people's deputies to the Supreme Council (\"Verkhovna Rada\"), candidates from the Democratic Bloc won landslide victories in western Ukrainian oblasts. A majority of the seats had to hold run-off elections. On 18 March, Democratic candidates scored further victories in the run-offs. The Democratic Bloc gained about 90 out of 450 seats in the new parliament.\nOn 6 April 1990, the Lviv City Council voted to return St. George Cathedral to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. The Russian Orthodox Church refused to yield. On 29\u201330 April 1990, the Ukrainian Helsinki Union disbanded to form the Ukrainian Republican Party. On 15 May the new parliament convened. The bloc of conservative communists held 239 seats; the Democratic Bloc, which had evolved into the National Council, had 125 deputies. On 4 June 1990, two candidates remained in the protracted race for parliament chair. The leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU), Volodymyr Ivashko, was elected with 60 percent of the vote as more than 100 opposition deputies boycotted the election. On 5\u20136 June 1990, Metropolitan Mstyslav of the U.S.-based Ukrainian Orthodox Church was elected patriarch of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) during that Church's first synod. The UAOC declared its full independence from the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, which in March had granted autonomy to the Ukrainian Orthodox church headed by the Metropolitan Filaret.\nOn 22 June 1990, Volodymyr Ivashko withdrew his candidacy for leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine in view of his new position in parliament. Stanislav Hurenko was elected first secretary of the CPU. On 11 July, Ivashko resigned from his post as chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament after he was elected deputy general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Parliament accepted the resignation a week later, on 18 July. On 16 July Parliament overwhelmingly approved the Declaration on State Sovereignty of Ukraine \u2013 with a vote of 355 in favour and four against. The people's deputies voted 339 to 5 to proclaim 16 July a Ukrainian national holiday.\nOn 23 July 1990, Leonid Kravchuk was elected to replace Ivashko as parliament chairman. On 30 July, Parliament adopted a resolution on military service ordering Ukrainian soldiers \"in regions of national conflict such as Armenia and Azerbaijan\" to return to Ukrainian territory. On August\u00a01, Parliament voted overwhelmingly to shut down the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. On 3 August, it adopted a law on the economic sovereignty of the Ukrainian republic. On 19 August, the first Ukrainian Catholic liturgy in 44 years was celebrated at St. George Cathedral. On 5\u20137 September, the International Symposium on the Great Famine of 1932\u20131933 was held in Kyiv. On 8 September, The first \"Youth for Christ\" rally since 1933 took place held in Lviv, with 40,000 participants. In 28\u201330 September, the Green Party of Ukraine held its founding congress. On 30 September, nearly 100,000 people marched in Kyiv to protest against the new union treaty proposed by Gorbachev.\nOn 1 October 1990, parliament reconvened amid mass protests calling for the resignations of Kravchuk and of Prime Minister Vitaliy Masol, a leftover from the previous r\u00e9gime. Students erected a tent city on October Revolution Square, where they continued the protest.\nOn 17 October Masol resigned, and on 20 October, Patriarch Mstyslav\u00a0I of Kyiv and all Ukraine arrived at Saint Sophia's Cathedral, ending a 46-year banishment from his homeland. On 23 October 1990, Parliament voted to delete Article\u00a06 of the Ukrainian Constitution, which referred to the \"leading role\" of the Communist Party.\nOn 25\u201328 October 1990, Rukh held its second congress and declared that its principal goal was the \"renewal of independent statehood for Ukraine\". On 28 October UAOC faithful, supported by Ukrainian Catholics, demonstrated near St. Sophia's Cathedral as newly elected Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Aleksei and Metropolitan Filaret celebrated liturgy at the shrine. On 1 November, the leaders of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, respectively, Metropolitan Volodymyr Sterniuk and Patriarch Mstyslav, met in Lviv during anniversary commemorations of the 1918 proclamation of the Western Ukrainian National Republic.\nOn 18 November 1990, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church enthroned Mstyslav as Patriarch of Kyiv and all Ukraine during ceremonies at Saint Sophia's Cathedral. Also on 18 November, Canada announced that its consul-general to Kyiv would be Ukrainian-Canadian Nestor Gayowsky. On 19 November, the United States announced that its consul to Kyiv would be Ukrainian-American John Stepanchuk. On 19 November, the chairmen of the Ukrainian and Russian parliaments, respectively, Kravchuk and Yeltsin, signed a 10-year bilateral pact. In early December 1990 the Party of Democratic Rebirth of Ukraine was founded; on 15 December, the Democratic Party of Ukraine was founded.\nOn 27 July 1990 the Supreme Soviet of the Byelorussian SSR passed a Declaration of State Sovereignty, asserting its sovereignty as a republic inside the Soviet Union.\nCentral Asian republics.\nOn 12\u201314 February 1990, anti-government riots took place in Tajikistan's capital, Dushanbe, as tensions rose between nationalist Tajiks and ethnic Armenian refugees, after the Sumgait pogrom and anti-Armenian riots in Azerbaijan in 1988. A state of emergency was declared in the capital on 12 February following disturbances caused by demonstrators at the republican party headquarters demanding that the refugees leave Tajikistan. Demonstrations sponsored by the nationalist Rastokhez movement turned violent. Radical economic and political reforms were demanded by the protesters, who torched government buildings; shops and other businesses were attacked and looted. During these riots 26 people were killed and 565 injured.\nIn June 1990, the city of Osh and its environs experienced bloody ethnic clashes between ethnic Kirghiz nationalist group Osh Aymaghi and Uzbek nationalist group Adolat over the land of a former collective farm. There were about 1,200 casualties, including over 300 dead and 462 seriously injured. The riots broke out over the division of land resources in and around the city.\nIn Turkmen SSR, the national conservative became a supporter of independence, uniting the Turkmen intelligentsia and moderate and radical Turkmen nationalists. They did not have a pronounced and eminent leader. Since 1989, small rallies have been held in Ashghabad and Krasnovodsk for the independence of Turkmenistan, as well as for the assignment of the status of the \"state language\" to the Turkmen language in the republic. The rallies also demanded that the republican leadership leave most of the oil revenues in the republic itself, and \"\"not feed Moscow\"\". Turkmen oppositionists and dissidents actively cooperated with opposition from Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Georgia. The leadership of Soviet Turkmenistan, led by Saparmurat Niyazov, opposed independence, suppressing Turkmen dissidents and oppositionists, but following the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the Turkmen SSR in January 1990, several dissidents were able to be elected to the republican parliament as independent candidates, who, together with their supporters, managed to actively participate in political life and express their opinions. The role of the Communist Party of Turkmenistan was very strong in this republic, especially in the west and south, where the Russian-speaking population lived. Over 90% of the seats in the republican parliament were held by communists. Despite all of the above, during the dissolution of the USSR, there were practically no high-profile events in Turkmenistan, and the Turkmen SSR was considered by the CPSU to be one of the \"most exemplary and loyal republics\" of the Soviet Union to Moscow.\n1991.\nMoscow's crisis.\nOn 14 January 1991, Nikolai Ryzhkov resigned from his post as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or premier of the Soviet Union, and was succeeded by Valentin Pavlov in the newly established post of Prime Minister of the Soviet Union.\nOn 17 March 1991, in a Union-wide referendum 77.85% percent of voters endorsed retention of a reformed Soviet Union. The Baltic republics, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova boycotted the referendum as well as Checheno-Ingushetia (an autonomous republic within Russia that had a strong desire for independence, and by now referred to itself as Ichkeria). In each of the other nine republics, a majority of the voters supported the retention of a reformed Soviet Union, the same in the Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia who also voted for the continuation of the state.\nRussia's President Boris Yeltsin.\nOn 12 June 1991, Boris Yeltsin was elected President of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic with 57 percent of the popular vote in the country's first Presidential election, defeating Gorbachev's preferred candidate, Nikolai Ryzhkov, who won 16 percent of the vote. Following Yeltsin's election as president, the RSFSR declared itself autonomous from the Soviet Union. In his election campaign, Yeltsin criticized the \"dictatorship of the center\", but did not yet suggest that he would introduce a market economy.\nThe Caucasus: Georgia takes the lead.\nIn response to the USSR-wide referendum, on 31 March 1991, an independence referendum was held on the matter of Georgian independence. Boycotted by the South Ossetian and Abkhaz minorities, who showed up in the all-Union plebiscite earlier that month, a record 99.5% of Georgian voters voted for the restoration of Georgian independence as against 0.5% against. Voter turnout was 90.6%.\nOn 9 April 1991, two years after the massacres in Tbilisi and a year and two months after Lithuania's declaration of restored independence, the Supreme Council of the Georgian SSR in plenary session declared the formal reconstitution of Georgia's independence from the Soviet Union, 70 years after the Soviet Armed Forces overthrew the Democratic Republic. This landmark declaration of independence by Georgia made it the first of the Caucasian republics to officially secede from the Soviet Union and the 3rd republic overall so far.\nBaltic republics.\nOn 13 January 1991, Soviet troops, along with the KGB Spetsnaz Alpha Group, stormed the Vilnius TV Tower in Lithuania to suppress the independence movement. Fourteen unarmed civilians were killed and hundreds more injured. On the night of 31 July, Russian OMON from Riga, the Soviet military headquarters in the Baltics, assaulted the Lithuanian border post in Medininkai and killed seven Lithuanian servicemen. This event further weakened the Soviet Union's position internationally and domestically, and stiffened Lithuanian resistance.\nThe bloody attacks in Lithuania prompted Latvians to organize defensive barricades (the events are still today known as \"The Barricades\") blocking access to strategically important buildings and bridges in Riga. Soviet attacks in the ensuing days resulted in six deaths and several injuries; one person died later of their wounds.\n\u041en 9 February, Lithuania held an independence referendum with 93.2% voting in favor of independence.\nOn 12 February, the independence of Lithuania was recognized by Iceland.\nOn 3 March, a referendum was held on the independence of the Republic of Estonia, which was attended by those who lived in Estonia before the Soviet annexation and their descendants, as well as persons who have received the so-called \"green cards\" of the Congress of Estonia. 77.8% of those who voted supported the idea of restoring independence.\nOn 11 March, Denmark recognized Estonia's independence.\nWhen Estonia reaffirmed its independence during the coup (see below) in the dark hours of 20 August 1991, at 11:03 pm Tallinn time, many Estonian volunteers surrounded the Tallinn TV Tower in an attempt to prepare to cut off the communication channels after the Soviet troops seized it and refused to be intimidated by the Soviet troops. When Edgar Savisaar confronted the Soviet troops for ten minutes, they finally retreated from the TV tower after a failed resistance against the Estonians.\nAugust coup.\nFaced with growing separatism, Gorbachev sought to restructure the Soviet Union into a less centralized state. On 20 August, the Russian SFSR was scheduled to sign a New Union Treaty that would have converted the Soviet Union into a federation of independent republics with a common president, foreign policy and military. It was strongly supported by the Central Asian republics, which needed the economic advantages of a common market to prosper. However, it would have meant some degree of continued Communist Party control over economic and social life.\nMore radical reformists were increasingly convinced that a rapid transition to a market economy was required, even if the eventual outcome meant the disintegration of the Soviet Union into several independent states. Independence also accorded with Yeltsin's desires as president of the RSFSR, as well as those of regional and local authorities to get rid of Moscow's pervasive control. In contrast to the reformers' lukewarm response to the treaty, the conservatives, \"patriots\", and Russian nationalists of the USSR \u2013 still strong within the CPSU and the military \u2013 were opposed to weakening the Soviet state and its centralized power structure.\nOn 19 August 1991, Gorbachev's vice president, Gennady Yanayev, Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov, KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov and other senior officials acted to prevent the union treaty from being signed by forming the \"General Committee on the State Emergency\", which put Gorbachev \u2013 on holiday in Foros, Crimea \u2013 under house arrest and cut off his communications. The coup leaders issued an emergency decree suspending political activity and banning most newspapers.\nThousands of Muscovites came out to defend the White House (the Russian Federation's parliament and Yeltsin's office), the symbolic seat of Russian sovereignty at the time. The organizers of the coup tried but ultimately failed to arrest Yeltsin, who rallied opposition to the coup by making speeches from atop a tank. The special forces dispatched by the coup leaders took up positions near the White House, but members refused to storm the barricaded building. The coup leaders also neglected to jam foreign news broadcasts, so many Muscovites watched it unfold live on CNN. Even the isolated Gorbachev was able to stay abreast of developments by tuning into the BBC World Service on a small transistor radio.\nAfter three days, on 21 August 1991, the coup collapsed. The organizers were detained and Gorbachev was reinstated as president, albeit with his power much depleted.\nFall: August to December.\nOn 24 August 1991, Gorbachev resigned as general secretary of the CPSU and dissolved all party units in the government. On the same day, the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR passed a Declaration of Independence of Ukraine, calling for a national referendum on the independence of Ukraine from the Soviet Union. Five days later, the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union indefinitely suspended all CPSU activity on Soviet territory, effectively ending Communist rule in the Soviet Union and dissolving the only remaining unifying force in the country. Gorbachev established a State Council of the Soviet Union on 5 September, designed to bring him and the highest officials of the remaining republics into a collective leadership. The State Council was also empowered to appoint a premier of the Soviet Union. The premiership never functioned properly, though Ivan Silayev \"de facto\" took the post through the Committee on the Operational Management of the Soviet Economy and the Inter-Republican Economic Committee and tried to form a government, though with rapidly shrinking powers.\nThe Soviet Union collapsed with dramatic speed in the last quarter of 1991. Between August and December, 10 republics seceded from the union, largely out of fear of another coup. By the end of September, Gorbachev no longer had the ability to influence events outside of Moscow. He was challenged even there by Yeltsin, who had begun taking over what remained of the Soviet government, including the Kremlin.\nThe Soviet Union recognized the independence of Baltic republics on 6 September 1991. Georgia cut all ties with the Soviet Union on 7 September, citing the failure to receive a \"sufficiently grounded answer\" why the USSR did not recognise its independence when it had recognised the Baltic States' secession.\nOn 17 September 1991, General Assembly resolution numbers 46/4, 46/5, and 46/6 admitted Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to the United Nations, conforming to Security Council resolution numbers 709, 710, and 711 passed on 12 September without a vote.\nOn 6 November, Yeltsin\u00a0\u2013 who had by then taken over much of the Soviet government\u00a0\u2013 issued a decree banning all Communist Party activities on Russian territory.\nBy 7 November 1991, most newspapers referred to the 'former Soviet Union'.\nThe final round of the Soviet Union's collapse began on 1 December 1991. That day, a Ukrainian popular referendum resulted in 91 percent of Ukraine's voters voting to affirm the independence declaration passed in August and formally secede from the Union. The secession of Ukraine, long second only to Russia in economic and political power, ended any realistic chance of Gorbachev keeping the Soviet Union together even on a limited scale. The leaders of the three Slavic republics, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (formerly Byelorussia), agreed to discuss possible alternatives to the union.\nOn 8 December, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus secretly met in Belavezhskaya Pushcha, in western Belarus, and signed the Belavezha Accords, which proclaimed the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and announced formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as a looser association to take its place. They also invited other republics to join the CIS. Gorbachev called it an unconstitutional coup. However, by this time there was no longer any reasonable doubt that, as the preamble of the Accords put it, that the Soviet Union no longer existed \"as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality\".\nOn 10 December, the agreement was ratified by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and the Supreme Council of Belarus.\nOn 12 December, the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR formally ratified the Belavezha Accords, denounced the 1922 Union Treaty, and recalled the Russian deputies from the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The legality of this ratification raised doubts among some members of the Russian parliament, since according to the 1978 RSFSR Constitution consideration of this document was in the exclusive jurisdiction of the Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR. Additionally, the Soviet Constitution did not allow a republic to unilaterally recall its deputies. However, no one in either Russia or the Kremlin objected. Any objections from the latter would have likely had no effect, since what was left of the Soviet government had effectively been rendered impotent long before December. A number of lawyers believe that the denunciation of the union treaty was meaningless since it became invalid in 1924 with the adoption of the first constitution of the USSR. (In 1996 the State Duma had voiced the same position.) Later that day, Gorbachev hinted for the first time that he was considering stepping down. On the surface, it appeared that the largest republic had formally seceded. However, this is not the case. Rather, Russia apparently took the line that it did not need to follow the secession process delineated in the Soviet Constitution because it was not possible to secede from a country that no longer existed.\nOn 16 December 1991, the Kazakh SSR became the last republic to formally secede from the Soviet Union, causing the Soviet Union to neither control any territory nor claim to control any territory (although Soviet embassies still existed).\nOn 17 December 1991, along with 28 European countries, the European Economic Community, and four non-European countries, the three Baltic Republics and nine of the twelve remaining Soviet republics signed the European Energy Charter in the Hague as sovereign states. On the same day, members of the lower house of the union parliament (Council of the Union) held a meeting of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union. The meeting adopted a statement in connection with the signing of the Belovezhskaya Agreement and its ratification by the parliaments of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, in which it noted that it considers the decisions made on the liquidation of state power and administration bodies illegal and not meeting the current situation and the vital interests of the peoples and stated that in the event further complication of the situation in the country reserves the right to convene in the future the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR.\nOn 18 December, the upper chamber of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (Council of Republics) adopted a statement, according to which it accepts with understanding the Agreement on the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States and considers it a real guarantee of a way out of the acute political and economic crisis.\nGorbachev met with Yeltsin and accepted the \"fait accompli\" of the Soviet Union's dissolution. On the same day, the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR adopted a statute to change Russia's legal name from \"Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic\" to \"Russian Federation\", showing that it was now a fully sovereign non-communist state.\nDoubts remained over whether the Belavezha Accords had legally dissolved the Soviet Union, since they were signed by only three republics. However, on 21 December, representatives of 11 of the 12 remaining republics \u2013 all except Georgia \u2013 signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, which confirmed the dissolution of the Soviet Union and formally established the CIS. They also \"accepted\" Gorbachev's resignation. The command of the Armed Forces of the USSR was entrusted to the Minister of Defense Yevgeny Shaposhnikov. Even at this moment, Gorbachev had not made any formal plans to leave the scene yet. However, with a majority of republics now agreeing that the Soviet Union no longer existed, Gorbachev bowed to the inevitable, telling CBS News that he would resign as soon as he saw that the CIS was indeed a reality.\nIn a nationally televised speech in the evening of 25 December, Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union \u2013 or, as he put it, \"I hereby discontinue my activities at the post of President of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.\" He declared the office extinct, and ceded all of its powers (such as control of the nuclear arsenal) to Yeltsin.\nOn the night of 25 December, at 7:35\u00a0p.m. Moscow time, after Gorbachev appeared on television, the Soviet flag was lowered and the Russian tricolor raised in its place at 7:45 pm, symbolically marking the end of the Soviet Union. In his parting words, Gorbachev defended his record on domestic reform and d\u00e9tente, but conceded, \"The old system collapsed before a new one had time to start working.\" On that same day, the President of the United States George H. W. Bush held a brief televised speech officially recognizing the independence of the 11 remaining republics.\nGorbachev's speech, as well as the replacement of the Soviet flag with the Russian flag, symbolically marked the end of the Soviet Union. However, the final legal step in the Soviet Union's demise came on 26 December, when the Soviet of Nationalities, the upper chamber of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, ratified the Belavezha Accords, effectively voting the Soviet Union out of existence (the lower chamber, the Soviet of the Union, had been unable to work since 12 December, when the recall of the Russian deputies left it without a quorum). The following day Yeltsin moved into Gorbachev's former office, though the Russian authorities had taken over the suite two days earlier. The Soviet Armed Forces were placed under the command of the Commonwealth of Independent States, but were eventually subsumed by the newly independent republics, with the bulk becoming the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. By the end of 1991, the few remaining Soviet institutions that had not been taken over by Russia ceased operation, and individual republics assumed the central government's role.\nOther issues were also addressed at Alma-Ata on 21 December 1991, including UN membership. In a document additional to the main Alma-Ata Declaration, Russia was authorized to assume the Soviet Union's UN membership, including its permanent seat on the Security Council. The Soviet Ambassador to the UN delivered a letter signed by Russian President Yeltsin to the UN Secretary-General dated 24 December 1991, informing him that \"with the support of the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States\", Russia was the successor state to the USSR. After being circulated among the other UN member states, Russia attended the UN Security Council meeting on the last day of the year, 31 December 1991, with no objection raised. But questions of state succession, settlement of external debt, and division of assets abroad remain disputed between Russia and Ukraine to this day.\nIn April 1992, the Congress of People's Deputies of Russia refused to ratify the Belovezhskaya Agreements and to exclude references to the Constitution and laws of the USSR from the text of the Constitution of the RSFSR. According to some Russian politicians, this was one of the reasons for the political crisis of September \u2013 October 1993. In a referendum on 12 December 1993, a new Russian constitution was adopted, in which there was no mention of the union state.\nConsequences.\nEconomic decline, hunger, and excess mortality.\nIn the decades following the end of the Cold War, only five or six of the post-Soviet states are on a path to joining the wealthy capitalist states of the West, and most are falling behind, some to such an extent that over 50 years will be needed before they catch up to how they were before the end of communism. However, virtually all the former Soviet republics were able to turn their economies around and increase GDP to multiple times what it was under the USSR. In a 2001 study by the economist Steven Rosefielde, he calculated that there were 3.4\u00a0million premature deaths in Russia from 1990 to 1998, which he partly blames on the \"shock therapy\" that came with the Washington Consensus. Nearly all of the post-Soviet states suffered deep and prolonged recessions after shock therapy, with poverty increasing more than tenfold. Catastrophic drops in caloric intake followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union.\nPost-Soviet conflicts.\nAccording to the scholar Marcel H. Van Herpen, the end of the Soviet Union marked the end of the last European empire, and some authors called it the death of Russian colonialism and imperialism.\nAs the Soviet Union began to collapse, social disintegration and political instability fueled a surge in ethnic conflict. Social and economic disparities, along with ethnic differences, created an upsurge in nationalism within groups and discrimination between groups. In particular, disputes over territorial boundaries have been the source of conflict between states experiencing political transition and upheaval. Territorial conflicts can involve several different issues: the reunification of ethnic groups which have been separated, restoration of territorial rights to those who experienced forced deportation, and restoration of boundaries arbitrarily changed during the Soviet era. Territorial disputes remain significant points of controversy as minority groups consistently oppose election outcomes and seek autonomy and self-determination. In addition to territorial disputes and other structural causes of conflict, legacies from the Soviet and pre-Soviet eras, along with the suddenness of the actual sociopolitical change, have resulted in conflict throughout the region. As each group experiences dramatic economic reform and political democratization, there has been a surge in nationalism and interethnic conflict. Overall, the fifteen independent states that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union face problems stemming from uncertain identities, contested boundaries, apprehensive minorities, and an overbearing Russian hegemony.\nChina.\nAfter decades of hardship following the Sino-Soviet split, the People's Republic of China entered a gradual rapprochement with the Soviet Union in 1989 when Gorbachev visited the country. Afterwards, the border treaty was demarcated in 1991, and they signed the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation in 2001, which was renewed in June 2021 for five more years. Both countries are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation which was founded in 1996.\nOn the eve of a 2013 state visit to Moscow by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin remarked that the two nations were forging a special relationship. The two countries have enjoyed close relations militarily, economically, and politically, while supporting each other on various global issues. Commentators have debated whether the bilateral strategic partnership constitutes an alliance. Russia and China officially declared their relations 'Not allies, but better than allies'. The relations between the two countries are currently being put to the test after Russia invading Ukraine. Unlike in the Soviet era, Putin ruled Russia as increasingly China's \"junior partner\".\nCuba.\nThe \"Special Period\", officially known as the \"Special Period in the Time of Peace\" was an extended period of economic crisis in Cuba that began in 1991 It was defined primarily by extreme reductions of rationed foods at state-subsidized prices, the severe shortages of hydrocarbon energy resources in the form of gasoline, diesel, and other petroleum derivatives that occurred upon the implosion of economic agreements between the petroleum-rich Soviet Union and Cuba, and the shrinking of an economy overdependent on Soviet imports.\nDuring its existence, the Soviet Union provided Cuba with large amounts of oil, food, and machinery. In the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba's gross domestic product shrunk 35%, imports and exports both fell over 80%, and many domestic industries shrank considerably. In a speculated attempt to re-join the IMF and the World Bank, executive director Jacques de Groote and another IMF official were invited to Havana in late 1993. After assessing the economic situation in the country they concluded that from 1989 to 1993, Cuba's economic decline was more grave than that experienced by any other socialist Eastern European country.\nIn 1993 a series of economic reforms began to go into effect, initially enacted to offset the economic imbalances which was a result of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The main aspect of these reforms was to legalize the then illegal U.S. Dollar and regulate its usage in the island's economy.\nNorth Korea.\nWhen the Soviet Union dissolved, it ended all aid and trade concessions such as cheap oil to North Korea. Without Soviet aid, the flow of imports to the North Korean agricultural sector ended, and the government proved to be too inflexible to respond. Energy imports fell by 75%. The economy went into a downward spiral, with imports and exports falling in tandem. Flooded coal mines required electricity to operate pumps, and the shortage of coal worsened the shortage of electricity. Agriculture reliant on electrically powered irrigation systems, artificial fertilizers and pesticides was hit particularly hard by the economic collapse.\nIsrael.\nBetween 1989 and 2006, about 1.6 million Soviet Jews and their non-Jewish spouses and their relatives, as defined by the Law of Return, emigrated from the former Soviet Union. About 979,000, or 61%, migrated to Israel.\nAfghanistan.\nAs the Soviet Union began to disintegrate, it also lost support to Mohammad Najibullah's regime in Afghanistan following the withdrawal in 1989. The end of Soviet war in Afghanistan would lead into a continuing multi-sided civil war, only for the Taliban to rise in 1996. Because of this, U.S. policies in the war are also thought to have contributed to a \"blowback\" of unintended consequences against American interests, which led to the United States entering into its own war in Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks in 2001, only to end with the US' withdrawal in 2021 and the Taliban regaining control of Afghanistan.\nSports and \"Unified Team\".\nThe breakup of the Soviet Union saw a massive impact in the sporting world. Before its dissolution, the Soviet football team had just qualified for Euro 1992, but its place was instead taken by the CIS national football team. After the tournament, the former Soviet Republics competed as separate independent nations, with FIFA allocating the Soviet team's record to Russia.\nBefore the start of the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville and the Summer Olympics in Barcelona, the Olympic Committee of the Soviet Union formally existed until 12 March 1992, when it disbanded but it was succeeded by the Russian Olympic Committee. However, 12 of the 15 former Soviet Republics competed together as the Unified Team and marched under the Olympic flag in Barcelona, where they finished first in the medal rankings. Separately, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia also competed as independent nations in the 1992 Games. The Unified Team also competed in Albertville earlier in the year (represented by six of the twelve ex-republics) and finished second in the medal ranking at those Games. Afterwards, the individual NOCs of the non-Baltic former republics were established. Some NOCs made their debuts at the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer, and others did so at the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta.\nMembers of the Unified Team at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona consisted of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. At those Summer Games, the Unified Team secured 45 gold medals, 38 silver medals, and 29 bronze medals; four medals more than second-place United States, and 30 more than third-place Germany. In addition to great team success, the Unified Team also saw great personal success. Vitaly Scherbo of Belarus secured six gold medals for the team in gymnastics and also became the most decorated athlete of the Summer Games. Gymnastics, athletics, wrestling, and swimming were the strongest sports for the team, as the four combined earned 28 gold medals and 64 medals in total.\nOnly six of the countries competed earlier at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. The Unified team placed second, three fewer medals than Germany. However, much like the Summer Games, the Unified team had the most decorated medalist in the Winter Games as well, with Lyubov Yegorova of Russia, a cross-country skier winning five total medals.\nTelecommunications.\nThe Soviet Union's calling code of +7 is still used by Russia and Kazakhstan. Between 1993 and 1997, many newly independent republics implemented their own numbering plans such as Belarus (+375) and Ukraine (+380). The Internet domain \".su\" remains in use alongside the internet domains of the newly created countries.\nGlasnost and \"Memorial\".\nThe lifting of total censorship and communist propaganda led to disclosure to public of such political and historical issues as the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact, the Katyn massacre, revision of the Stalinist repressions, revision of the Russian Civil War, the White movement, the New Economic Policy, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, censorship, pacification and procrastination by the Soviet authorities.\nIn 1989, the Soviet Union established a civil rights society, Memorial, which specialized in research and recovery of memory for victims of political repressions as well as support for a general human rights movement.\nChronology of declarations.\n\"States with limited recognition are shown in italics.\"\nLegacy.\nIn 2013, the American Gallup analytics company found that a majority of citizens in four former Soviet countries regretted the dissolution of the Soviet Union: Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Ukraine. In Armenia, 12% of respondents in 2013 said the Soviet collapse did good, while 66% said it did harm. In Kyrgyzstan, 16% of respondents in 2013 said the Soviet collapse did good, while 61% said it did harm. Ever since the Soviet collapse, annual polling by the Levada Center has shown that over 50 percent of Russia's population regretted its collapse. Consistently, 57% of citizens of Russia regretted the collapse of the Soviet Union in a poll in 2014 (while 30 percent said otherwise), and in 2018 a Levada Center poll showed that 66% of Russians lamented the fall of the Soviet Union. In 2005, Russian president Vladimir Putin called the dissolution of the USSR as \"the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century\".\nIn a similar poll held in February 2005, 50% of respondents in Ukraine stated they regretted the disintegration of the Soviet Union. In 2013, according to Gallup, 56% of Ukrainians said that the dissolution of the Soviet Union did more harm than good, with only 23% saying it did more good than harm. However, a similar poll conducted in 2016 by a Ukrainian group showed only 35% Ukrainians regretting the Soviet collapse and 50% not regretting it.\nThe breakdown of economic ties that followed the Soviet collapse led to a severe economic crisis and catastrophic fall in the standard of living in post-Soviet states and the former Eastern Bloc, which was even worse than the Great Depression. An estimated seven million premature deaths took place in the former USSR after it collapsed, with around four million in Russia alone. Poverty and economic inequality surged between 1988 and 1989 and between 1993 and 1995, with the Gini ratio increasing by an average of 9 points for all former socialist countries. Even before the 1998 Russian financial crisis, the Russian GDP was half of what it had been in the early 1990s. By 1999, around 191 million people in post-Soviet states and former Eastern Bloc countries were living on less than $5.50 a day. It has been posited by several scholars that the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of communism as a global force in the post-Cold War era allowed neoliberal capitalism to become the dominant global system, which has resulted in rising economic inequality.\nIn the Kitchen Debate of 1959, Nikita Khrushchev claimed that then US Vice-president Richard Nixon's grandchildren would live \"under communism\", and Nixon claimed that Khrushchev's grandchildren would live \"under freedom\". In a 1992 interview, Nixon commented that during the debate, he was sure Khrushchev's claim was wrong, but Nixon was not sure that his own assertion was correct. Nixon said that events had proved that he was indeed right because Khrushchev's grandchildren now lived \"in freedom\" in reference to the recent end of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev's son Sergei Khrushchev became a naturalized American citizen.\nUnited Nations membership.\nIn a letter dated 24 December 1991, Boris Yeltsin, the Russian President, informed the United Nations Secretary-General that the membership of the Soviet Union in the Security Council and all other UN organs would be continued by the Russian Federation with the support of the 11 member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States.\nHowever, the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic had already joined the UN as original members on 24 October 1945, together with the Soviet Union. After declaring independence, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic changed its name to Ukraine on 24 August 1991, and on 19 September, the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic informed the UN that it had changed its name to the Republic of Belarus.\nAll of the twelve other independent states that were established from the former Soviet republics were admitted to the UN:\nHistoriographic explanations.\nHistoriography on the Soviet collapse can be roughly classified in two groups: intentionalist accounts and structuralist accounts.\nThe end of the Soviet Union caught many people by surprise. Before 1991, many thought that Soviet Union collapse was impossible or unlikely.\nIntentionalist accounts contend that Soviet collapse was not inevitable and resulted from the policies and decisions of specific individuals, usually Gorbachev and Yeltsin. One characteristic example of intentionalist writing is the historian Archie Brown's \"The Gorbachev Factor\", which argues Gorbachev was the main force in Soviet politics at least from 1985 to 1988 and even later and that he largely spearheaded the political reforms and developments, as opposed to being led by events. That was especially true of the policies of \"perestroika\" and \"glasnost\", market initiatives, and foreign policy stance, as the political scientist George Breslauer has seconded by labelling Gorbachev a \"man of the events\". In a slightly different vein, David Kotz and Fred Weir have contended that Soviet elites were responsible for spurring on both nationalism and capitalism from which they could personally benefit, which is demonstrated also by their continued presence in the higher economic and political echelons of post-Soviet republics.\nIn contrast, structuralist accounts take a more deterministic view in which Soviet dissolution was an outcome of deeply rooted structural issues, which planted a time bomb. For example, Edward Walker has argued that minority nationalities were denied power at the Union level, confronted by a culturally destabilizing form of economic modernization, and subjected to a certain amount of Russification, but they were at the same time strengthened by several policies pursued by the Soviet government (indigenization of leadership, support for local languages, etc.). Over time, they created conscious nations. Furthermore, the basic legitimating myth of the Soviet federative system (that it was a voluntary and mutual union of allied peoples) eased the task of secession and independence. On 25 January 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin supported that view by calling Lenin's support of the right of secession for the Soviet republics a \"delayed-action bomb\".\nAn opinion piece by Gorbachev in April 2006 stated: \"The nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl 20 years ago this month, even more than my launch of perestroika, was perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union.\"\nIt also had a profound impact on the policy-making circles of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), in particular on CCP general secretary Xi Jinping, who states:Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Communist Party of the Soviet Union fall from power? An important reason was that the struggle in the field of ideology was extremely intense, completely negating the history of the Soviet Union, negating the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, negating Lenin, negating Stalin, creating historical nihilism and confused thinking. Party organs at all levels had lost their functions, the military was no longer under Party leadership. In the end, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, a great party, was scattered, the Soviet Union, a great socialist country, disintegrated. This is a cautionary tale!\nAccording to political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way in their book In \"Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism\" (2022), the cohesion of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) leadership had declined by the 1980s. Most party leaders were born after the Soviet Union's origins during the Russian Civil War, and memories of the Eastern Front during World War II were fading.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["40494892", "29440"], "permutation_1": ["40494892", "29440"], "permutation_2": ["29440", "40494892"], "permutation_3": ["29440", "40494892"]}
{"id": "2hop__367567_3430", "docs_added": {"191890": "American Idol\nAmerican singing competition\nAmerican Idol is an American singing competition television series created by Simon Fuller, produced by Fremantle North America and 19 Entertainment, and distributed by Fremantle North America. It aired on Fox from June 11, 2002, to April 7, 2016, for 15 seasons. It was on hiatus for two years until March 11, 2018, when a revival of the series began airing on ABC.\nIt started as an addition to the \"Idol\" format that was based on \"Pop Idol\" from British television, in which the programme's first series, which was won by Will Young, ended over four months before the show began, as it later became one of the most successful shows in the history of American television. The concept of the series involves discovering recording stars from unsigned singing talents, with the winner determined by American viewers using phones, Internet platforms, and SMS text voting. The winners of the first twenty-two seasons, as chosen by viewers, are Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Hicks, Jordin Sparks, David Cook, Kris Allen, Lee DeWyze, Scotty McCreery, Phillip Phillips, Candice Glover, Caleb Johnson, Nick Fradiani, Trent Harmon, Maddie Poppe, Laine Hardy, Just Sam, Chayce Beckham, Noah Thompson, Iam Tongi, and Abi Carter.\n\"American Idol\" employs a select panel of judges who critique the contestants' performances. The original judges, for seasons one through eight, were record producer and music manager Randy Jackson, singer and choreographer Paula Abdul, and music executive and manager Simon Cowell. The judging panel for the last three seasons on Fox consisted of singers Keith Urban, Jennifer Lopez, and Harry Connick Jr. Season sixteen brought three new judges: singers Luke Bryan, Katy Perry, and Lionel Richie. Beginning in the twenty-third season, Underwood replaced Perry, alongside returning judges Bryan and Richie. The show has been hosted by television presenter Ryan Seacrest throughout its run, apart from the show's inaugural season when comedian Brian Dunkleman joined Seacrest as co-host.\nThe success of \"American Idol\" has been described as \"unparalleled in broadcasting history\". A rival TV executive said the series was \"the most impactful show in the history of television\". It became a recognized springboard for launching the career of many artists as bona fide stars. According to \"Billboard\" magazine, in its first ten years, \"\"Idol\" has spawned 345 \"Billboard\" chart-toppers and a platoon of pop idols, including Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Chris Daughtry, Fantasia, Ruben Studdard, Jennifer Hudson, Clay Aiken, Adam Lambert, and Jordin Sparks while remaining a TV ratings juggernaut.\" For an unprecedented eight consecutive years, from the 2003\u201304 television season through the 2010\u201311 season, either its performance show or result show was ranked number one in U.S. television ratings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\n\"American Idol\" was based on the British show \"Pop Idol\" created by Simon Fuller, which was in turn inspired by the New Zealand television singing competition \"Popstars\". Television producer Nigel Lythgoe saw a version in Australia and helped bring it over to Britain. Fuller was inspired by the idea from \"Popstars\" of employing a panel of judges to select singers in audition. He then added other elements, including telephone voting by the viewing public (which at the time was already in use in shows, such as the \"Eurovision Song Contest\"), the drama of backstories, and real-life soap opera unfolding in real time. \"Pop Idol\" debuted in Britain in 2001 with Lythgoe as showrunner\u200d\u2014\u200cthe executive producer and production leader\u200d\u2014\u200cand Simon Cowell as one of the judges, and was successful with the viewing public.\nIn 2001, Fuller, Cowell, and TV producer Simon Jones attempted to sell the \"Pop Idol\" format to the United States, but the idea was initially met with poor responses from all the television networks including UPN and Fox. However, Rupert Murdoch, head of Fox's parent company, was later persuaded to buy the series by his daughter, Elisabeth, who had seen the British show. Although Fox's executives wanted to change the format, Murdoch insisted that it should remain the same as the British one. One change was nevertheless made due to the presence of multiple time zones in the United States that made it impractical for the country to vote in the same time period, an additional half-hour results show was therefore added the day following the performance show. The show was renamed \"\" and debuted in the summer of 2002. Cowell was initially offered the job of showrunner but turned down the offer; Lythgoe then took over that position. Much to the surprise of Cowell and Fox, it became one of the biggest shows of the summer. With its successful launch in the summer, the show was then moved to January and expanded. The show grew into a phenomenon largely due to its personal engagement with the contestants by prompting the viewers to vote, and the presence of the acid-tongued Cowell as a judge. By 2004, it had become the most-watched show on American television, a position it then held for seven consecutive seasons until 2011.\nHowever, after a few years of sharp declining ratings starting in 2012, with rating falls of over 20% each season, the fifteenth season would be its last on Fox, ending its run in April 2016. In May 2017, ABC acquired the rights to the series and the program returned for the 2017\u201318 television season. The first season of the revived series, or the sixteenth season overall, started airing in March 2018. Seven seasons have been aired on ABC as of May 2024.\nJudges and hosts.\nJudges.\nThe show had originally planned on having four judges following the \"Pop Idol\" format; however, only three judges had been found by the time of the audition round in the first season, namely Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell. A fourth judge, radio DJ Stryker, was originally chosen but he dropped out citing \"image concerns.\" In the second season, New York radio personality Angie Martinez had been hired as a fourth judge but withdrew after only a few days of auditions, due to being uncomfortable with giving out criticism. The show decided to continue with the three judges format until the eighth season. All three original judges stayed on the judging panel for eight seasons.\nIn the eighth season, Latin Grammy Award-nominated singer-songwriter and record producer Kara DioGuardi was added as a fourth judge. Abdul left the show in 2009, after the eighth season, as a result of failing to agree to terms with the show producers. Emmy Award-winning talk show host Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul for the ninth season, but left in 2010 after just one season. DioGuardi was let go from \"American Idol\" in 2010 after two seasons, as producers favored a return to the three-person judges panel previously used prior to DioGuardi's appearance on the show. Cowell also left the show in 2010 to introduce the American version of his show \"The X Factor\" in 2011. Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth.\nJennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined the judging panel in the tenth season, but both left in 2012 after two seasons. Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. They were replaced by three new judges, Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj, and Keith Urban, who joined Jackson in the twelfth season. However, both Carey and Minaj left after one season. Jackson also departed the judges table after twelve seasons, but would return as the in-house mentor for the thirteenth season in 2014, after which he left the show permanently.\nUrban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. After a one-season hiatus, Lopez returned to \"American Idol\" for the thirteenth season, and was joined by former mentor Harry Connick Jr. After this, Lopez, Urban, and Connick Jr. remained on the show until its cancellation after the fifteenth season in 2016.\nWhen the show was revived by ABC in 2018, Katy Perry, Luke Bryan, and Lionel Richie were selected as judges, marking the sixteenth season of \"Idol\". Bryan and Richie have remained on the show since, while Perry left the show in May 2024 after seven seasons. On July 31, 2024, published reports announced former \"Idol\" winner Carrie Underwood as Perry's replacement, joining Bryan and Richie for the twenty-third season.\nGuest judges may occasionally be introduced. In the second season, guest judges such as Richie and Gladys Knight were used, and in the third season, Donna Summer, Quentin Tarantino, Gloria Estefan, and some of the mentors also joined as judges to critique the performances in the final rounds. Guest judges were sporadically used during the audition rounds: Gene Simmons, LL Cool J, Brandy, Mark McGrath, and Kenny Loggins in the fourth season; Carole Bayer Sager, Jewel, and Olivia Newton-John in the sixth season; Shania Twain, Neil Patrick Harris, Avril Lavigne, Mary J. Blige, Joe Jonas, Kristin Chenoweth, Victoria Beckham, and Perry in the ninth season (substituting in the vacant chair, before DeGeneres was hired); and Adam Lambert filled in for Urban at one audition location during the fourteenth season. In the ABC version, two instances occurred during the live shows: Abdul filled in for Bryan on one episode of the nineteenth season, while Alanis Morissette and Ed Sheeran filled in for Perry and Richie on an episode of the twenty-first season.\nHosts.\nThe first season was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman, following the format of \"Pop Idol\" of using two presenters. Dunkleman quit thereafter, resulting in Seacrest becoming the sole emcee starting with the second season in 2003.\nSeacrest has remained as sole host of \"American Idol\" ever since, with the exception of the two-year hiatus between 2016 and 2018 as well as April 8, 2019, during the seventeenth season, when Bobby Bones subbed for Seacrest after the latter fell ill. Dunkleman did, however, return for the initial in 2016 as a guest.\nCast timeline.\nAnnotations\nSelection process.\nIn a series of steps, the show selected the eventual winner out of many tens of thousands of contestants.\nContestant eligibility.\nThe eligible age-range for contestants is fifteen to twenty-eight years old. The initial age limit was sixteen to twenty-four in the first three seasons, but the upper limit was raised to twenty-eight in the fourth season, and the lower limit was reduced to fifteen in the tenth season. The contestants have to be legal U.S. residents, can not have advanced to particular stages of the competition in previous seasons, and must not have held a current recording or talent representation contract by the semi-final stage (in previous years by the audition stage).\nInitial auditions.\nFor the first eighteen seasons, contestants went through at least three sets of cuts. The first was a brief audition with a few other contestants in front of selectors which may include one of the show's producers. Although auditions can exceed 10,000 in each city, only a few hundred of these made it past the preliminary round of auditions. Successful contestants then sing in front of producers, where more may be cut. Only then can they proceed to audition in front of the judges, which is the only audition stage shown on television. Those selected by the judges are sent to Hollywood. Between 10 and 60 people in each city may make it to Hollywood (the average total is between 150 and 200).\nFrom the nineteenth season onwards, contestants request a Zoom interview and audition remotely for the show's producers. If the audition goes well, they will then invite the contestants to audition in front of the judges, in one of the audition cities.\nHollywood week.\nOnce in Hollywood, the contestants perform individually or in groups in a series of rounds. Until the tenth season, there were usually three rounds of eliminations in Hollywood. In the first round the contestants emerged in groups but performed individually. For the next round, the contestants put themselves in small groups and performed a song together. In the final round, the contestants performed solo with a song of their choice a cappella or accompanied by a band\u200d\u2014\u200cdepending on the season. In the second and third seasons, contestants were also asked to write original lyrics or melody in an additional round after the first round. In the seventh season, the group round was eliminated and contestants may, after a first solo performance and on judges approval, skip a second solo round and move directly to the final Hollywood round. In the twelfth season, the executive producers split up the females and males and chose the members to form the groups in the group round.\nIn the tenth and eleventh seasons, a further round was added in Las Vegas, where the contestants performed in groups based on a theme, followed by one final solo round to determine the semi-finalists. At the end of this stage of the competition, 24 to 36 contestants were selected to move on to the semi-final stage. In the twelfth season the Las Vegas round became a Sudden Death round, where the judges had to choose five guys and five girls each night (four nights) to make the top twenty. In the thirteenth season, the Las Vegas round was eliminated and a new round called \"Hollywood or Home\" was added, where if the judges were uncertain about some contestants, those contestants were required to perform soon after landing in Los Angeles, and those who failed to impress were sent back home before they reached Hollywood. In the fourteenth season, the \"Hollywood or Home\" round was dropped, and a Showcase round was added, where the contestants performed at the House of Blues or auditorium for the judges and a live audience, and these performances determine who makes into the Top 24. In the seventeenth and eighteenth seasons, the showcase round took place in Hawaii. From the nineteenth season onward, a showstopper round was used.\nAudience voting.\nFrom the semi-finals onward, the fate of the contestants is decided by public vote. During the contestant's performance as well as the recap at the end, a toll-free telephone number for each contestant was displayed on the screen. For a two-hour period after the episode ends (up to four hours for the finale) in each US time zone, viewers may call or send a text message to their preferred contestant's telephone number, and each call or text message was registered as a vote for that contestant. Viewers were allowed to vote as many times as they can within the two-hour voting window. However, the show reserves the right to discard votes by power dialers. One or more of the least popular contestants may be eliminated in successive weeks until a winner emerges. Over 110\u00a0million votes were cast in the first season, and by the tenth season the seasonal total had increased to nearly 750 million. Voting via text messaging was made available in the second season when AT&T Wireless joined as a sponsor of the show, and 7.5\u00a0million text messages were sent to \"American Idol\" that season. The number of text messages rapidly increased, reaching 178\u00a0million texts by the eighth season. Online voting was offered for the first time in the tenth season. The votes are counted and verified by Telescope Inc.\nSemi-finals.\nIn the first three seasons, the semi-finalists were split into different groups to perform individually in their respective night. In the first season, there were three groups of ten, with the top three contestants from each group making the finals. In the second and third seasons, there were four groups of eight, and the top two of each selected. These seasons also featured a wildcard round, where contestants who failed to qualify were given another chance. In the first season, only one wildcard contestant was chosen by the judges, giving a total of ten finalists. In the second and third seasons, each of the three judges championed one contestant with the public advancing a fourth into the finals, making 12 finalists in all.\nFrom the fourth through seventh and ninth seasons, the twenty-four semi-finalists were divided by gender in order to ensure an equal gender division in the top twelve. The men and women sang separately on consecutive nights, and the bottom two in each groups were eliminated each week until only six of each remained to form the top twelve.\nThe wildcard round returned in the eighth season, wherein there were three groups of twelve, with three contestants moving forward \u2013 the highest male, the highest female, and the next highest-placed singer \u2013 for each night, and four wildcards were chosen by the judges to produce a final 13. Starting in tenth season, the girls and boys perform on separate nights. In the tenth and eleventh seasons, five of each gender were chosen, and three wildcards were chosen by the judges to form a final 13. In the twelfth season, the top twenty semifinalists were split into gender groups, with five of each gender advancing to form the final 10. In the thirteenth season, there were thirty semifinalists, but only twenty semifinalists (ten for each gender) were chosen by the judges to perform on the live shows, with five in each gender based on the vote and three wildcards chosen by the judges composing the final 13. In the fourteenth season, the top 24 performed at The Fillmore Detroit, starting with the 12 males on one night and then the 12 females on the next night. The following week, the same order went for the top 16, with four males eliminated, followed by four females based on the vote. Then, on the first night of finals, a similar sequence from the thirteenth season was used to determine the final 12, with five of each gender based on the vote and two wildcards chosen by the judges. In the fifteenth season, the top 24 performed at Cathedral of Saint Vibiana in Los Angeles and were split into two groups of twelve and performed twice, one being a solo performance and one being a duet with a former Idol contestant. In each group, the judges chose 7 contestants to advance to the top 14 where the judges chose 4 to advance to the top 10 and remaining 6 contestants were chosen based on the vote. In the sixteenth season, the top 24 performed at the Academy in the Heart of LA, and the show repeated the process from the previous season. However, instead of Idol alumnus as duet partners, superstar celebrity singers were used as the duet partners. In the seventeenth season, the same process was repeated again. However, instead of a top 24, it's a top 20, the contestants performed at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, and performed solos in one episode, and performed the duets in two episodes. In the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the top 20 performed at their homes, and based on the vote, half of the top 20 would advance to the top 10, and the other half would be eliminated. However, a wild card was given to one of the bottom 10 to save them from elimination. In the nineteenth season, the show used a combination of the process from the sixteenth and fourteenth seasons. In the twentieth season, the show repeated the process from the previous season, but they used a top 20 instead of a top 16, and there were no all star duets. In the twenty-first season, the same process was repeated, but they started with a top 26 instead of a top 24. In the twenty-second season, the show repeated the process from the twentieth season.\nFinals.\nThe finals are broadcast in primetime from Los Angeles, in front of a live studio audience (except the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic). From 2002 to 2019 and from 2021 to 2022, the venue was CBS Television City. Starting in 2023, it changed to Red Studios. The finals lasted eight weeks in the first season. From the second to ninth and fourteenth seasons, the finals lasted eleven weeks. The tenth and eleventh seasons lasted for twelve weeks, while the twelfth season lasted for ten weeks. In the thirteenth season, the finals lasted thirteen weeks. The finals lasted seven weeks in the fifteenth season, and six weeks in the sixteenth season. Each finalist performs songs based on a weekly theme which may be a musical genre such as Motown, disco, or big band, songs by artists such as Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley or The Beatles, or more general themes such as \"Billboard\" number-one hits or songs from the contestant's year of birth. Contestants usually worked with a celebrity mentor related to the theme. From the tenth to twelfth seasons, Jimmy Iovine was brought in as a mentor for the season. Initially the contestants sang one song each week, but this was increased to two songs from top four or five onwards, then three songs for the top two or three.\nThe most popular contestants are usually not revealed in the results show. Instead, typically the three contestants (two in later rounds) who received the lowest number of votes was called to the center of the stage. One of these three was usually sent to safety; however the two remaining were not necessarily the bottom two. The contestant with the fewest votes was then revealed and eliminated from the competition. A montage of the eliminated contestant's time on the show was played and they gave their final performance (from the fourteenth season onward, the montage and the final performance were dropped). However, in the sixth season, during the series' first ever Idol Gives Back episode, no contestant was eliminated, but on the following week, two were sent home. Moreover, from the eighth to the fourteenth seasons, and the seventeenth season onward, the judges may overturn viewers' decision with a \"Judges' Save\" if they unanimously agreed to. \"The save\" could only be used once, and only up through the Top 5. In the eighth to tenth and fourteenth seasons, a double elimination then took place in the week following the activation of the save, but in the eleventh and thirteenth seasons, a regular single elimination took place. The save was not activated in the twelfth season and consequently, a non-elimination took place in the week after its expiration with the votes then carrying over into the following week.\nThe \"Fan Save\" was introduced in the fourteenth season. During the finals, viewers were given a five-minute window to vote for the contestants in danger of elimination by using their Twitter account to decide which contestant will move on to the next show, starting with the Top 8.\nSeason finale.\nDuring the original run of \"American Idol\" on Fox, the finale week consisted of a one-hour long final performance night and a two-hour last episode of the season that culminates in revealing the winner, both of which are broadcast live in the U.S. Eastern and Central time zones. For the first, third through sixth and fourteenth through fifteenth seasons it was broadcast from the Dolby Theatre, which has an audience capacity of approximately 3,400. The second-season finale took place at the Gibson Amphitheatre, which had an audience capacity of over 6,000. In the seventh through thirteenth seasons, the venue was at the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live, which holds an audience of over 7,000. Since the show's reboot on ABC, the venue remains the same throughout the entire show (excluding auditions), but was still two episodes in the sixteenth season, and then stretched to a single three-hour season finale that is annually aired live simultaneously in all U.S. territories, starting with the seventeenth season. The eighteenth-season finale was conducted virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nRewards for winner and finalists.\nThe winner usually receives a record deal with a major label, which may be for up to six albums, and secures a management contract with \"American Idol\"-affiliated 19 Management (which has the right of first refusal to sign all contestants), as well as various lucrative contracts. All winners prior to the ninth season reportedly earned at least $1\u00a0million in their first year as winner. At first the contract came with a $250,000-plus advance, but dropped to about $62,500 over the Fox years. All the runners-up of the first ten seasons, as well as some of other finalists, had also received record deals with major labels. However, starting in the eleventh season, the runner-up may only be guaranteed a single-only deal. BMG/Sony (first through ninth seasons), UMG (tenth through fifteenth seasons), and Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records (sixteenth through eighteenth seasons) had the right of first refusal to sign contestants for three months after the season's finale. In the fourteenth and fifteenth seasons, the winner was signed with Big Machine Records. Prominent music mogul Clive Davis also produced some of the selected contestants' albums, such as Kelly Clarkson, Clay Aiken, Fantasia Barrino and Diana DeGarmo. All top 10 (11 in the tenth and twelfth seasons, 5 in the fourteenth season, and 7 in the sixteenth season) finalists earn the privilege of going on a tour, where the participants may each earn a six-figure sum.\nSeason synopses.\nEach season premieres with the audition round, taking place in different cities. The audition episodes typically feature a mix of potential finalists, interesting characters and woefully inadequate contestants. Each successful contestant receives a golden or platinum ticket to proceed on to the next round in Hollywood. Based on their performances during the Hollywood round (Las Vegas round from the tenth through twelfth seasons), 24 to 36 contestants are selected by the judges to participate in the semifinals. From the semifinals onward the contestants perform their songs live, with the judges making their critiques after each performance. The contestants are voted for by the viewing public, and the outcome of the public votes is then revealed during a results segment. The results segment feature group performances by the contestants as well as guest performers. The Top-three results also features homecoming events for the Top 3 finalists. The season reaches its climax in a two-hour results finale show, where the winner of the season is revealed.\nWith the exception of the first two seasons, the contestants in the semifinals onward perform in front of a studio audience. They perform with a full band in the finals. The current musical director is Kris Pooley, who has been with the show since the sixteenth season. In previous seasons, the \"American Idol\" band was led by Rickey Minor (fourth through ninth and thirteenth through fifteenth seasons) and Ray Chew (tenth through twelfth seasons). Assistance has also been given by vocal coaches and song arrangers, such as Michael Orland and Debra Byrd to contestants behind the scene. Starting with the seventh season, contestants may perform with a musical instrument from the Hollywood rounds onward. In later seasons, the contestants were allowed to perform with a musical instrument in the auditions. During the first nine seasons, performances were usually aired live on Tuesday nights, followed by the results shows on Wednesdays, but moved to Wednesdays and Thursdays from the tenth through thirteenth seasons, with the tenth, eleventh and thirteenth-season finales aired on Tuesday and Wednesday. From the fourteenth season onward, there were no separate results shows. On the fourteenth season, the show aired on Wednesday nights, and on the fifteenth season, Thursday nights. Since the sixteenth season, the show has been airing on Sundays and Mondays.\n2002\u20132016: Fox.\nSeason 1 (2002).\nThe first season of \"American Idol\" debuted as a summer replacement show in June 2002 on the Fox network. It was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell served as judges.\nIn the audition rounds, 121 contestants were selected from around 10,000 who attended the auditions. These were cut to 30 for the semifinal, with ten going on to the finals. One semifinalist, Delano Cagnolatti, was disqualified for lying to evade the show's age limit. One of the early favorites, Tamyra Gray, was eliminated at the top four, the first of several such shock eliminations that were to be repeated in later seasons. Christina Christian was hospitalized before the top six result show due to chest pains and palpitations, and she was eliminated while she was in the hospital. Jim Verraros was the first openly gay contestant on the show; his sexual orientation was revealed on his blog, however it was removed during the competition after a request from the show producers over concerns that it might be unfairly influencing votes.\nThe final showdown was between Justin Guarini, one of the early favorites, and Kelly Clarkson. Clarkson was not initially thought of as a contender, but impressed the judges with some good performances in the final rounds, such as her performance of Aretha Franklin's \"Natural Woman\", and Betty Hutton's \"Stuff Like That There\", and eventually won the crown on September 4, 2002.\nIn what was to become a tradition, Clarkson performed the coronation song during the finale, and released the song immediately after the season ended. The single, \"A Moment Like This\", went on to break a 38-year-old record held by The Beatles for the biggest leap to number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. Guarini did not release any song immediately after the show and remains the only runner-up not to do so. Both Clarkson and Guarini made a musical film, \"From Justin to Kelly\", which was released in 2003 but was widely panned. Clarkson has since become one of the most successful \"Idol\" contestants internationally, with worldwide album sales of more than 25\u00a0million.\nStarting September 30, 2006, this season was repackaged as \"\"American Idol Rewind\"\" and syndicated directly to stations in the U.S.\nSeason 2 (2003).\nFollowing the success of the first season, the second season was moved up to air in January 2003. The number of episodes increased, as did the show's budget and the charge for commercial spots. Dunkleman left the show, leaving Ryan Seacrest as the lone host. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Kristin Adams was a correspondent for this season.\nCorey Clark was disqualified during the finals for having an undisclosed police record; however, he later alleged that he and Paula Abdul had an affair while on the show and that this contributed to his expulsion. Clark also claimed that Abdul gave him preferential treatment on the show due to their affair. The allegations were dismissed by Fox after an independent investigation. Two semi-finalists were also disqualified that year \u2013 Jaered Andrews for an arrest on an assault charge, and Frenchie Davis for having previously modeled for an adult website.\nThe season finale drew more than 38 million viewers, marking \"Idol\"'s biggest audience ever for a single episode. Ruben Studdard emerged as the winner, beating Clay Aiken by a small margin. Out of a total of 24 million votes, Studdard finished just 134,000 votes ahead of Aiken. This slim margin of victory was controversial due to the large number of calls that failed to get through. In an interview prior to the fifth season, executive producer Nigel Lythgoe indicated that Aiken had led the fan voting from the wildcard week onward until the finale.\nBoth finalists found success after the show, but Aiken out-performed Studdard's coronation song \"Flying Without Wings\" with his single release from the show \"This Is the Night\", as well as in their subsequent album releases. The fourth-place finisher Josh Gracin also enjoyed some success as a country singer.\nSeason 3 (2004).\nThe third season premiered on January 19, 2004. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. One of the most talked-about contestants during the audition process was William Hung whose off-key rendition of Ricky Martin's \"She Bangs\" received widespread attention. His exposure on \"Idol\" landed him a record deal and surprisingly he became the third bestselling singer from that season.\nMuch media attention on the season had been focused on the three black singers, Fantasia Barrino, LaToya London, and Jennifer Hudson, dubbed the Three Divas. All three unexpectedly landed on the bottom three on the top seven result show, with Hudson controversially eliminated. Elton John, who was one of the mentors that season, called the results of the votes \"incredibly racist\". The prolonged stays of John Stevens and Jasmine Trias in the finals, despite negative comments from the judges, had aroused resentment, so much so that John Stevens reportedly received a death threat, which he dismissed as a joke 'blown out of proportion'.\nThe performance of \"Summertime\" by Barrino, later known simply as \"Fantasia\", at Top 8 was widely praised, and Simon Cowell considered it as his favorite \"Idol\" moment in the nine seasons he was on the show. Fantasia and Diana DeGarmo were the last two finalists, and Fantasia was crowned as the winner. Fantasia released as her coronation single \"I Believe\", a song co-written by the first season finalist Tamyra Gray, and DeGarmo released \"Dreams\".\nSeason 4 (2005).\nThe fourth season premiered on January 18, 2005. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This was the first full season of the series to be aired in high definition; the finale of the third season was also aired in high definition. The number of those attending the auditions by now had increased to over 100,000 from the 10,000 of the first season. The age limit was raised to 28 in this season, and among those who benefited from this new rule were Constantine Maroulis and Bo Bice, the two rockers of the show.\nThe top 12 finalists originally included Mario Vazquez, but he dropped out citing 'personal reasons' and was replaced by Nikko Smith. Later, an employee of Fremantle Media, which produces the show, sued the company for wrongful termination, claiming that he was dismissed after complaining about lewd behavior by Vazquez toward him during the show.\nDuring the top 11 week, due to a mix-up with the contestants' telephone number, voting was repeated on what was normally the result night, with the result reveal postponed until the following night.\nIn May 2005, Underwood was announced the winner, with Bice the runner-up. Both Underwood and Bice released the coronation song \"Inside Your Heaven\", with Underwood's version of the song making her the first country artist ever to debut at number-one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart. As of 2015, Underwood has become the most successful \"Idol\" contestant in the U.S., selling 16 million albums in the country, while selling a total of 65 million records worldwide.\nSeason 5 (2006).\nThe fifth season began on January 17, 2006. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. It remains the highest-rated season in the show's run so far. Two of the more prominent contestants during the Hollywood round were the Brittenum twins who were later disqualified for identity theft.\nChris Daughtry's performance of Fuel's \"Hemorrhage (In My Hands)\" on the show was widely praised and led to an invitation to join the band as Fuel's new lead singer, an invitation he declined. His performance of Live's version of \"I Walk the Line\" was well received by the judges but later criticized in some quarters for not crediting the arrangement to Live. He was eliminated at the top four in a shocking result.\nOn May 30, 2006, Taylor Hicks was named \"American Idol\", with Katharine McPhee the runner-up. \"Do I Make You Proud\" was released as Hicks' first single and McPhee's was \"My Destiny\".\nDespite being eliminated earlier in the season, Chris Daughtry (as lead of the band Daughtry) became the most successful recording artist from this season. Other contestants, such as Hicks, McPhee, Bucky Covington, Mandisa, Kellie Pickler, and Elliott Yamin have had varying levels of success.\nSeason 6 (2007).\nThe sixth season began on Tuesday, January 16, 2007. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The premiere drew a massive audience of 37.3\u00a0million viewers, peaking in the last half hour with more than 41\u00a0million viewers.\nTeenager Sanjaya Malakar was the season's most talked-about contestant for his unusual hairdo, and for managing to survive elimination for many weeks due in part to the weblog Vote for the Worst and satellite radio personality Howard Stern, who both encouraged fans to vote for him. However, on the Top 7 results, Sanjaya was voted off.\nThis season saw the first \"Idol Gives Back\" telethon-inspired event, which raised more than $76\u00a0million in corporate and viewer donations. No contestant was eliminated that week, but two (Phil Stacey and Chris Richardson) were eliminated the next.\nIn the May 23 season finale, Jordin Sparks was declared the winner with the runner-up being Blake Lewis. Sparks has had some success as a recording artist post-\"Idol\".\nThis season also saw the launch of the \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest which allows fans to vote for the \"coronation song\". Thousands of recordings of original songs were submitted by songwriters, and 20 entries selected for the public vote. The winning song, \"This Is My Now\", was performed by both finalists during the finale and released by Sparks on May 24, 2007.\nSeason 7 (2008).\nThe seventh season premiered on January 15, 2008, for a two-day, four-hour premiere. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The media focused on the professional status of the seventh season contestants, the so-called 'ringers', many of whom, including Kristy Lee Cook, Brooke White, Michael Johns, and in particular Carly Smithson, had prior recording contracts. Contestant David Hernandez also attracted some attention due to his past employment as a stripper.\nFor the finals, \"American Idol\" debuted a new state-of-the-art set and stage on March 11, 2008, along with a new on-air look. David Cook's performance of \"Billie Jean\" on top-ten night was lauded by the judges, but provoked controversy when they apparently mistook the Chris Cornell arrangement to be David Cook's own even though the performance was introduced as Cornell's version. Cornell himself said he was 'flattered' and praised David Cook's performance. David Cook was taken to the hospital after the top-nine performance show due to heart palpitations and high blood pressure.\nDavid Archuleta's performance of John Lennon's \"Imagine\" was considered by many as one of the best of the season. Jennifer Lopez, who was brought in as a judge in the tenth season, called it a beautiful song-moment that she will never forget. Jason Castro's semi-final performance of \"Hallelujah\" also received considerable attention, and it propelled Jeff Buckley's version of the song to the top of the \"Billboard\" digital song chart. This was the first season in which contestants' recordings were released onto iTunes after their performances, and although sales information was not released so as not to prejudice the contest, leaked information indicated that contestants' songs frequently reached the top of iTunes sales charts.\n\"Idol Gives Back\" returned on April 9, 2008, and raised $64\u00a0million for charity.\nThe finalists were Cook and Archuleta. David Cook was announced the winner on May 21, 2008, the first rocker to win the show. Both Cook and Archuleta had some success as recording artists with both selling over a million albums in the U.S.\nThe \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest was also held this season. From ten of the most popular submissions, each of the final two contestants chose a song to perform, although neither of their selections was used as the \"coronation song\". The winning song, \"The Time of My Life\", was recorded by David Cook and released on May 22, 2008.\nSeason 8 (2009).\nThe eighth season premiered on January 13, 2009. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This season featured the first major change to the judging panel; a fourth judge, Kara DioGuardi, was introduced. Mike Darnell, the president of alternative programming for Fox, stated that the season would focus more on the contestants' personal life.\nThis was also the first season without executive producer Nigel Lythgoe who left to focus on the international versions of his show \"So You Think You Can Dance\". The Hollywood round was moved to the Kodak Theatre for 2009 and was also extended to two weeks. \"Idol Gives Back\" was canceled for this season due to the global recession at the time.\nThere were 13 finalists this season, but two were eliminated in the first result show of the finals. A new feature introduced was the \"Judges' Save\", and Matt Giraud was saved from elimination at the top seven by the judges when he received the fewest votes. The next week, Lil Rounds and Anoop Desai were eliminated.\nThe two finalists were Kris Allen and Adam Lambert, both of whom had previously landed in the bottom three at the top five. Allen won the contest in the most controversial voting result since the second season. It was claimed, and then later retracted, that 38\u00a0million of the 100\u00a0million votes cast on the night came from Allen's home state of Arkansas alone, and that AT&T employees unfairly influenced the votes by giving lessons on power-texting at viewing parties in Arkansas.\nBoth Allen and Lambert released the coronation song, \"No Boundaries\" which was co-written by DioGuardi. This is the first season in which the winner failed to achieve gold album status.\nSeason 9 (2010).\nThe ninth season premiered on January 12, 2010. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Kara DioGuardi, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Paula Abdul left the show and Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul at the start of Hollywood Week. One of the most prominent auditioners this season was General Larry Platt whose performance of \"Pants on the Ground\" became a viral hit song.\nCrystal Bowersox, who has Type-I diabetes, fell ill due to diabetic ketoacidosis on the morning of the girls performance night for the top 20 week and was hospitalized. The schedule was rearranged so the boys performed first and she could perform the following night instead; she later revealed that Ken Warwick, the show producer, wanted to disqualify her but she begged to be allowed to stay on the show.\nMichael Lynche was the lowest vote getter at top nine and was given the Judges' Save. The next week Katie Stevens and Andrew Garcia were eliminated. That week, Adam Lambert was invited back to be a mentor, the first \"Idol\" alum to do so. \"Idol Gives Back\" returned this season on April 21, 2010, and raised $45 million.\nA special tribute to Simon Cowell was presented in the finale for his final season with the show. Many figures from the show's past, including Paula Abdul, made an appearance.\nThe final two contestants were Lee DeWyze and Bowersox. DeWyze was declared the winner during the May 26 finale. No new song was used as coronation song this year; instead, the two finalists each released a cover song \u2013 DeWyze chose U2's \"Beautiful Day\", and Bowersox chose Patty Griffin's \"Up to the Mountain\". This is the first season where neither finalist achieved significant album sales.\nSeason 10 (2011).\nThe tenth season premiered on January 19, 2011. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Many changes were introduced this season, from the format to the personnel of the show. Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined Randy Jackson as judges following the departures of Simon Cowell (who left to launch the American version of \"The X Factor\"), Kara DioGuardi (whose contract was not renewed) and Ellen DeGeneres, who left the show on her own accord.\nRandy Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth. Nigel Lythgoe returned as executive producer. Jimmy Iovine, chairman of the Interscope Geffen A&M label group, the new partner of \"American Idol\", acted as the in-house mentor in place of weekly guest mentors, although in later episodes special guest mentors such as Beyonc\u00e9, will.i.am and Lady Gaga were brought in.\nThe tenth season is the first to include online auditions where contestants could submit a 40-second video audition via Myspace. Karen Rodriguez was one such auditioner and reached the final rounds.\nOne of the more prominent contestants this year was Chris Medina, whose story of caring for his brain-damaged fianc\u00e9e received widespread coverage. Medina was cut in the Top 40 round. Casey Abrams, who suffers from ulcerative colitis, was hospitalized twice and missed the Top 13 result show. The judges used their one save on Abrams on the Top 11, and as a result this was the first season that 11 finalists went on tour instead of 10. In the following week, Naima Adedapo and Thia Megia were both eliminated.\nPia Toscano, one of the presumed favorites to advance far in the season, was unexpectedly eliminated on April 7, 2011, finishing in ninth place. Her elimination drew criticisms from some former \"Idol\" contestants, as well as actor Tom Hanks. After \"Idol\", Jennifer Lopez helped guide her career.\nThe two finalists in 2011 were Lauren Alaina and Scotty McCreery, both teenage country singers. McCreery won the competition on May 25, being the youngest male winner and the fourth male in a row to win \"American Idol\". McCreery released his first single, \"I Love You This Big\", as his coronation song, and Alaina released \"Like My Mother Does\". McCreery's debut album, \"Clear as Day\", became the first debut album by an \"Idol\" winner to reach No. 1 on the US \"Billboard\" 200 since Ruben Studdard's \"Soulful\" in 2003, and he became the youngest male artist to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200.\nSeason 11 (2012).\nThe eleventh season premiered on January 18, 2012. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez, and Randy Jackson returned as judges. One more finalist would join the Top 24 making it the Top 25, which was later revealed to be Jermaine Jones. However, on March 14, Jones was disqualified in 12th place for concealing arrests and outstanding warrants. Jones denied the accusation that he concealed his arrests.\nFinalist Phillip Phillips suffered from kidney pain and was taken to the hospital before the Top 13 results show, and later received medical procedure to alleviate a blockage caused by kidney stones. He was reported to have eight surgeries during his Idol run, and had considered quitting the show due to the pain. He underwent surgery to remove the stones and reconstruct his kidney soon after the season had finished.\nJessica Sanchez received the fewest votes during the Top 7 week, and the judges decided to use their \"save\" option on her, making her the first female recipient of the save. The following week, unlike previous seasons, Colton Dixon was the only contestant sent home. Sanchez later made the final two, the first season where a recipient of the save reached the finale.\nPhillips became the winner, beating Sanchez. During the finale, fifth season finalist Ace Young proposed marriage to third season runner-up Diana DeGarmo on stage \u2013 which she accepted.\nPhillips released \"Home\" as his coronation song, while Sanchez released \"Change Nothing\". Phillips' \"Home\" has since become the best selling of all coronation songs, with over 5 million copies sold.\nSeason 12 (2013).\nThe twelfth season premiered on January 16, 2013. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Judges Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler left the show after two seasons. Randy Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. This season's judging panel consisted of Randy Jackson, along with Mariah Carey, Keith Urban and Nicki Minaj.\nThis was the first season since the ninth season to have four judges on the panel. The pre-season buzz and the early episodes of the show were dominated by the feud between the judges Minaj and Carey after a video of their dispute was leaked to TMZ.\nThe top 10 contestants started with five males and five females, however, the males were eliminated consecutively in the first five weeks, with Lazaro Arbos the last male to be eliminated. For the first time in the show's history, the top 5 contestants were all female. It was also the first time that the judges' \"save\" was not used, the top four contestants were therefore given an extra week to perform again with their votes carried over with no elimination in the first week.\n23-year-old Candice Glover won the season with Kree Harrison taking the runner-up spot. Glover became the first female to win \"American Idol\" since Jordin Sparks, who won the show in 2007. Glover released \"I Am Beautiful\" as a single while Harrison released \"All Cried Out\" immediately after the show. Glover sold poorly with her debut album, and this is also the first season that the runner-up was not signed by a music label.\nTowards the end of the season, Randy Jackson, the last remaining of the original judges, announced he would no longer serve as a judge to pursue other business ventures. Both judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj also decided to leave after one season to focus on their music careers.\nSeason 13 (2014).\nThe thirteenth season premiered on January 15, 2014. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Keith Urban returned as a judge. Urban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. Randy Jackson returned, though Jackson moved from the judging panel to the role of in-mentor. Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj left the panel after one season. Former judge Jennifer Lopez and former mentor Harry Connick, Jr. joined Urban on the panel. Connick Jr. served as a mentor for \"Idol\" in 2010 and 2012. Also, Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick were replaced as executive producers by Per Blankens, Jesse Ignjatovic and Evan Pragger. Bill DeRonde replaced Warwick as a director of the audition episodes, while Louis J. Horvitz replaced Gregg Gelfand as a director of the show.\nThis was the first season where the contestants were permitted to perform in the final rounds songs they wrote themselves. In the Top 8, Sam Woolf received the fewest votes, but he was saved from elimination by the judges. The 500th episode of the series was the Top 3 performance night.\nCaleb Johnson was named the winner of the season, with Jena Irene as the runner-up. Johnson released \"As Long as You Love Me\" as his coronation single while Irene released \"We Are One\".\nSeason 14 (2015).\nThe fourteenth season premiered on January 7, 2015. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban and Harry Connick, Jr. returned for their respective fourth, third and second seasons as judges. Eighth season runner-up Adam Lambert filled in for Urban during the New York City auditions. Randy Jackson did not return as the in-house mentor and left the show permanently. Scott Borchetta replaced Jackson as the mentor.\nChanges this season include only airing one episode a week during the final ten. Coca-Cola ended their longtime sponsorship of the show and Ford Motor Company maintained a reduced role. The winner of the season also received a recording contract with Big Machine Records.\nNick Fradiani won the season, defeating Clark Beckham. Fradiani became the first winner from the Northeast region. Fradiani released \"Beautiful Life\" as his coronation single while Beckham released \"Champion\". Jax, the third place finalist, also released a single called \"Forcefield\".\nSeason 15 (2016).\nFox announced on May 11, 2015, that the fifteenth season would be the final season of \"American Idol\"; as such, the season was expected to have an additional focus on the program's alumni. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, with Harry Connick Jr., Keith Urban, and Jennifer Lopez all returning as judges. The fifteenth season premiered on January 6, 2016. The season was shortened by four weeks compared to previous years. During the finale episode, President Barack Obama praised the millions of young people that voted for contestants and pitched that they vote in the upcoming election. The farewell season concluded on April 7, 2016. Seacrest signed off by saying: \"And one more time\u2014this is so tough\u2014we say to you from Hollywood, goodnight America\", and then he added, \"for now.\"\nTrent Harmon won the season against runner-up La'Porsha Renae. Harmon released \"Falling\" co-written by Keith Urban as his coronation song. Renae's \"Battles\", third-place finisher Dalton Rapattoni's \"Strike A Match\" and fourth-place finisher MacKenzie Bourg's \"Roses\" were also released as singles.\n2018\u2013present: ABC revival.\nIn early 2017, \"Variety\" reported that Fremantle Media was in talks to revive the show for NBC or for its original network, Fox. A dispute between Fremantle and Core Media Group derailed these plans. In May 2017, ABC was making a bid to revive the program. ABC acquired the rights to the series, and \"American Idol\" returned for the 2017\u201318 television season.\nSeason 16 (2018).\nIn July 2017, it was announced that Ryan Seacrest would return as host, and by September 2017 it was revealed that Katy Perry, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie would serve as judges. The sixteenth season premiered on March 11, 2018. This was the first season of \"American Idol\" to air on ABC. The season was again shortened compared to the previous season to twelve weeks, with multiple elimination in the final rounds. Unlike previous seasons where only two finalists remained in the final episode, three finalists performed in the finale. On May 21, 2018, the season concluded with Maddie Poppe crowned the winner, beating Caleb Lee Hutchinson as runner-up and Gabby Barrett in third place. Her winning song was \"Going, Going, Gone\". Caleb Lee Hutchinson released \"Johnny Cash Heart\" as a single, while Gabby Barrett's song was \"Rivers Deep\".\nSeason 17 (2019).\nABC renewed the revival series for another season. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. The seventeenth season premiered on March 3, 2019. For the finale, the show no longer features separate performance and result shows. On May 19, 2019, the season concluded with three finalists, with Madison VanDenburg eliminated in third place after performing two songs, and the final two performing their last song. For the first time, there were no separate performance and grand finale shows this season. Laine Hardy was crowned the winner and Alejandro Aranda runner-up. Hardy released a single, \"Flame\", immediately after the win, but Aranda did not. However, Aranda later released a song he performed in the finale, \"Tonight\", under the name Scarypoolparty on June 28, 2019.\nSeason 18 (2020).\nOn May 13, 2019, the series was renewed for an eighteenth season and it premiered on February 16, 2020. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. For the first time, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, from the top 20 to the finale, the contestants performed in their own homes, while Ryan Seacrest hosted the show remotely in his own home in Los Angeles with the judges also in their respective homes. The season was also further truncated, with the top 5 performing in the finale. Each finalist also performed only two songs for the finale. On May 17, the season concluded, with Just Sam crowned as the winner, with Arthur Gunn finishing as the runner-up. \"Rise Up\", the song Just Sam performed for their audition and reprised on the finale, was released as their debut song.\nSeason 19 (2021).\nOn May 15, 2020, ABC renewed the series for a nineteenth season and it premiered on February 14, 2021. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. Later in October, it was announced that Bobby Bones will return as mentor. On May 23, the season concluded, with Chayce Beckham crowned the winner, with Willie Spence finishing as the runner-up. \"23\", the song Chayce Beckham wrote and performed for Top 4, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 20 (2022).\nOn May 13, 2021, ABC renewed the series for a twentieth season and it premiered on February 27, 2022. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On December 31, it was announced that Bones would not be returning as a mentor. On May 22, the season concluded, with Noah Thompson crowned as the winner, with HunterGirl finishing as the runner-up. \"One Day Tonight\", the song Noah Thompson performed for the Grand Finale, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 21 (2023).\nOn May 13, 2022, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-first season and it premiered on February 19, 2023. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On May 21, the season concluded, with Iam Tongi crowned as the winner, with Megan Danielle finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 22 (2024).\nOn May 16, 2023, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-second season and it premiered on February 18, 2024. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. In February 2024, Perry announced that the season would be her last. On May 20, the season concluded, with Abi Carter crowned as the winner, with Will Moseley finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 23 (2025).\nOn May 10, 2024, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-third season; it was also announced the network was in-talks with \"high-profile stars\" to replace the outgoing Perry. On July 31, 2024, it was announced Seacrest would return as host, with Bryan and Richie returning as judges; Underwood was named as Perry's successor. The season premiered on March 9, 2025.\nReception.\nU.S. television ratings.\nSeasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of \"American Idol\". It holds the distinction of having the longest winning streak in the Nielsen annual television ratings; it became the highest-rated of all television programs in the United States overall for an unprecedented seven consecutive years, or eight consecutive (and total) years when either its performance or result show was ranked number one overall.\n\"Each U.S. network television season starts in late September and ends in late May, which coincides with the completion of May sweeps.\"\n\"American Idol\" premiered in June 2002 and became the surprise summer hit show of 2002. The first show drew 9.9\u00a0million viewers, giving Fox the best viewing figure for the 8.30\u00a0pm spot in over a year. The audience steadily grew, and by finale night, the audience had averaged 23\u00a0million, with more than 40\u00a0million watching some part of that show. That episode was placed third amongst all age groups, but more importantly it led in the 18\u201349 demographic, the age group most valued by advertisers.\nThe growth continued into the next season, starting with a season premiere of 26.5 million. The season attracted an average of 21.7\u00a0million viewers, and was placed second overall amongst the 18\u201349 age group. The finale night when Ruben Studdard won over Clay Aiken was also the highest-rated ever \"American Idol\" episode at 38.1\u00a0million for the final hour. By the third season, the show had become the top show in the 18\u201349 demographic<ref name=\"realitytvworld_5/24/2007\"></ref> a position it has held for all subsequent years up to and including the tenth season, and its competition stages ranked first in the nationwide overall ratings. By the fourth season, \"American Idol\" had become the most-watched series amongst all viewers on American TV for the first time, with an average viewership of 26.8\u00a0million. The show reached its peak in the fifth season with numbers averaging 30.6\u00a0million per episode, and this season remains the highest-rated of the series.\nThe sixth season premiered with the series' highest-rated debut episode and a few of its succeeding episodes rank among the most-watched episodes of \"American Idol.\" During this time, many television executives begun to regard the show as a programming force unlike any seen before, as its consistent dominance of up to two hours two or three nights a week exceeded the 30- or 60-minute reach of previous hits such as NBC's \"The Cosby Show\". The show was dubbed \"the Death Star\", and competing networks often rearranged their schedules in order to minimize losses. However, the sixth season also showed a steady decline in viewership over the course of the season. The season finale saw a drop in ratings of 16% from the previous year. The sixth season was the first season wherein the average results show rated higher than the competition stages (unlike in the previous seasons), and became the second-highest-rated of the series after the preceding season.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the seventh season. The premiere was down 11% among total viewers, and the results show in which Kristy Lee Cook was eliminated delivered its lowest-rated Wednesday show among the 18\u201334 demo since the first season in 2002. However, the ratings rebounded for the seventh-season finale with the excitement over the battle of the Davids, and improved over the sixth season as the series' third most watched finale. The strong finish of season seven also helped Fox become the most watched TV network in the country for the first time since its inception, a first ever in American television history for a non-Big Three major broadcast network. Overall ratings for the season were down 10% from the sixth season, which is in line with the fall in viewership across all networks due in part to the 2007\u20132008 Writers Guild of America strike.\nThe declining trend however continued into the eighth season, as total viewers numbers fell by 5\u201310% for early episodes compared to the seventh season, and by 9% for the finale. In the ninth season, \"Idol\"'s six-year extended streak of perfection in the ratings was broken, when NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics on February 17 beat \"Idol\" in the same time slot with 30.1\u00a0million viewers over \"Idol\"'s 18.4\u00a0million. Nevertheless, \"American Idol\" overall finished its ninth season as the most watched TV series for the sixth year running, breaking the previous record of five consecutive seasons achieved by CBS' \"All in the Family\" and NBC's \"The Cosby Show\".\nIn the tenth season, the total viewer numbers for the first week of shows fell 12\u201313%, and by up to 23% in the 18\u201349 demo compared to the ninth season. Later episodes, however, retained viewers better, and the season ended on a high with a significant increase in viewership for the finale \u2013 up 12% for the adults 18\u201349 demographic and a 21% increase in total viewers from the ninth-season finale. While the overall viewer number has increased this season, its viewer demographics have continued to age year on year \u2013 the median age this season was 47.2 compared to a median age of 32.1 in its first season. The demographics also became \"whiter\" over time and less diverse. Nevertheless, in the 2010\u201311 television season, Fox maintained its lead on over other networks with its seventh consecutive season of victory overall in the 18\u201349 demographic ratings in the United States.\nThe eleventh season, however, suffered a steep drop in ratings, a drop attributed by some to the arrival of new shows such as \"The Voice\" and \"The X Factor\". The ratings for the first two episodes of the eleventh season fell 16\u201321% in overall viewer numbers and 24\u201327% in the 18/49 demo, while the season finale fell 27% in total viewer number and 30% in the 18\u201349 demo. The average viewership for the season fell below 20 million viewers the first time since 2003, a drop of 23% in total viewers and 30% in the 18/49 demo. For the first time in eight years, \"American Idol\" lost the leading position in both the total viewers number and the 18/49 demo, coming in second to \"NBC Sunday Night Football\", although the strengths of \"Idol\" in its second year in the Wednesday-Thursday primetime slots helped Fox achieve the longest period of 18\u201349 demographic victory in the Nielsen ratings, standing at 8 straight years from 2004 to 2012.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the twelfth season, which saw the show hitting a number of series low in the 18\u201349 demo. The finale had 7.2 million fewer viewers than the previous season, and saw a drop of 44% in the 18\u201349 demo. The season viewers averaged at 13.3 million, a drop of 24% from the previous season. The thirteenth season suffered a huge decline in the 18\u201349 demographic, a drop of 28% from the twelfth season, and \"American Idol\" lost its Top 10 position in the Nielsen ratings by the end of the 2013\u201314 television season for the first time since its entry to the rankings in 2003 as a result, and never regained its Top 10 position by the series' end in 2016.\nThe continuing decline influenced further changes for the fourteenth season, including the loss of Coca-Cola as the show's major sponsor, and a decision to only broadcast one, two-hour show per week during the top 12 rounds (with results from the previous week integrated into the performance show, rather than having a separate results show). On May 11, 2015, prior to the fourteenth-season finale, Fox announced that the fifteenth season of \"American Idol\" would be its last. Despite these changes, the show's ratings would decline more sharply. The fourteenth-season finale was the lowest-rated finale ever, with an average of only 8.03 million viewers watching the finale. The show's ratings, however, rebounded in its final season and ended its run in 2016 as Fox's first-ever program to conclude its run without dropping from the Nielsen Top 30 most-watched television shows in each of its seasons.\nFor the revived series on ABC, the ratings were lower but remained stable compared to previous seasons on Fox. The finale of the seventeenth season was slightly more watched than the sixteenth.\nCritical reception.\nEarly reviews were mixed in their assessment. Ken Tucker of \"Entertainment Weekly\" considered that \"As TV, \"American Idol\" is crazily entertaining; as music, it's dust-mote inconsequential\". Others, however, thought that \"the most striking aspect of the series was the genuine talent it revealed\". It was also described as a \"sadistic musical bake-off\", and \"a romp in humiliation\". Other aspects of the show have attracted criticisms. The product placement in the show in particular was noted, and some critics were harsh about what they perceived as its blatant commercial calculations \u2013 Karla Peterson of \"The San Diego Union-Tribune\" charged that \"American Idol\" is \"a conniving multimedia monster\" that has \"absorbed the sin of our debauched culture and spit them out in a lump of reconstituted evil\". The decision to send the first season winner to sing the national anthem at the Lincoln Memorial on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks in 2002 was also poorly received by many. Lisa de Moraes of \"The Washington Post\" noted sarcastically that \"The terrorists have won\" and, with a sideswipe at the show's commercialism and voting process, that the decision as to who \"gets to turn this important site into just another cog in the 'Great \"American Idol\" Marketing Mandala' is in the hands of the millions of girls who have made \"American Idol\" a hit. Them and a handful of phone-redialer geeks who have been clocking up to 10,000 calls each week for their contestant of choice (but who, according to Fox, are in absolutely no way skewing the outcome).\"\nSome of the later writers about the show were more positive, Michael Slezak, again of \"Entertainment Weekly\", thought that \"for all its bloated, synthetic, product-shilling, money-making trappings, \"Idol\" provides a once-a-year chance for the average American to combat the evils of today's music business.\" Singer Sheryl Crow, who was later to act as a mentor on the show, however took the view that the show \"undermines art in every way and promotes commercialism\". Pop music critic Ann Powers nevertheless suggested that Idol has \"reshaped the American songbook\", \"led us toward a new way of viewing ourselves in relationship to mainstream popular culture\", and connects \"the classic Hollywood dream to the multicentered popular culture of the future.\" Others focused on the personalities in the show; Ramin Setoodeh of \"Newsweek\" accused judge Simon Cowell's cruel critiques in the show of helping to establish in the wider world a culture of meanness, that \"Simon Cowell has dragged the rest of us in the mud with him.\" Some such as singer John Mayer disparaged the contestants, suggesting that those who appeared on \"Idol\" are not real artists with self-respect.\nSome in the entertainment industry were critical of the star-making aspect of the show. Usher, a mentor on the show, bemoaning the loss of the \"true art form of music\", thought that shows like \"American Idol\" made it seem \"so easy that everyone can do it, and that it can happen overnight\", and that \"television is a lie\". Musician Michael Feinstein, while acknowledging that the show had uncovered promising performers, said that \"American Idol\" \"isn't really about music. It's about all the bad aspects of the music business \u2013 the arrogance of commerce, this sense of 'I know what will make this person a star; artists themselves don't know.' \" That \"American Idol\" is seen to be a fast track to success for its contestants has been a cause of resentment for some in the industry. LeAnn Rimes, commenting on Carrie Underwood winning Best Female Artist in Country Music Awards over Faith Hill in 2006, said that \"Carrie has not paid her dues long enough to fully deserve that award\". It is a common theme that has been echoed by many others. Elton John, who had appeared as a mentor in the show but turned down an offer to be a judge on \"American Idol\", commenting on talent shows in general, said that \"there have been some good acts but the only way to sustain a career is to pay your dues in small clubs\". \"American Idol\" revolutionized American pop culture and the pop idol process and has provided an opportunity for many to bypass the small club scene and allow a much larger audience to participate in and select the next potential chart topping performer.\nThe success of the show's alumni, however, has led to a more positive assessment of the show, and the show was described as having \"proven it has a valid way to pick talent and a proven way to sell records\". While the industry is divided on the show success, its impact is felt particularly strongly in the country music format. According to a CMT exec, reflecting on the success of Idol alumni in the country genre, \"if you want to try and get famous fast by going to a cattle call audition on TV, Idol reasonably remains the first choice for anyone\", and that country music and Idol \"go together well\".\n\"American Idol\" was nominated for the Emmy's Outstanding Reality Competition Program for nine years but never won. Director Bruce Gower won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Series in 2009, and the show won a Creative Arts Emmys each in 2007 and 2008, three in 2009, and two in 2011, as well as a Governor's Award in 2007 for its Idol Gives Back edition. It won the People's Choice Award, which honors the popular culture of the previous year as voted by the public, for favorite competition/reality show in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2012. It won the first Critics' Choice Television Award in 2011 for Best Reality Competition.\nIn 2013, TV Guide ranked the series No. 48 on its list of the 60 Best Series of All Time.\nGeographical, ethnic, and gender bias.\nThroughout the series, twelve of the seventeen \"Idol\" winners, including its first five, had come from the Southern United States. A large number of other finalists during the series' run have also hailed from the American South, including Clay Aiken, Kellie Pickler, and Chris Daughtry, who are all from North Carolina. In 2012, an analysis of the 131 contestants who have appeared in the finals of all seasons of the show up to that point found that 48% have some connection to the Southern United States.\nThe show itself was popular in the Southern United States, with households in the Southeastern United States 10% more likely to watch \"American Idol\" during the eighth season in 2009, and those in the East Central region, such as Kentucky, were 16 percent more likely to tune into the series. Data from Nielsen SoundScan, a music-sales tracking service, showed that of the 47\u00a0million CDs sold by \"Idol\" contestants through January 2010, 85 percent were by contestants with ties to the American South.\nTheories given for the success of Southerners on \"Idol\" have been: more versatility with musical genres, as the Southern U.S. is home to several music genre scenes; not having as many opportunities to break into the pop music business; text-voting due to the South having the highest percentage of cell-phone only households; and the strong heritage of music and singing, which is notable in the Bible Belt, where it is in church that many people get their start in public singing. Others also suggest that the Southern character of these contestants appeal to the South, as well as local pride. According to fifth season winner Taylor Hicks, who is from the state of Alabama, \"People in the South have a lot of pride ... So, they're adamant about supporting the contestants who do well from their state or region.\"\nFor five consecutive seasons, starting in the seventh season, the title was given to a white male who plays the guitar \u2013 a trend that \"Idol\" pundits call the \"White guy with guitar\" or \"WGWG\" factor. Just hours before the eleventh-season finale, where Phillip Phillips was named the winner, Richard Rushfield, author of the book \"American Idol: The Untold Story\", said, \"You have this alliance between young girls and grandmas and they see it, not necessarily as a contest to create a pop star competing on the contemporary radio, but as ... who's the nicest guy in a popularity contest\", he says, \"And that has led to this dynasty of four, and possibly now five, consecutive, affable, very nice, good-looking white boys.\"\nStart order bias.\nSome fans call the final performance of the night the \"pimp spot\" because it usually receives a big boost in votes, due to the recency effect. By performing first, a performer may benefit from the primacy effect, but any other early performance may be stifled. The second performance spot is sometimes called the \"un-pimp spot\" because it is the least beneficial.\nControversy.\nThe show was criticized in earlier seasons over the onerous contract contestants had to sign that gave excessive control to 19 Entertainment over their future careers and handed a large part of their future earnings to the management.\nIndividual contestants have generated controversy in this competition for their past actions or for being 'ringers' planted by the producers. A number of contestants have been disqualified for various reasons, such as for having an existing contract or undisclosed criminal record, although the show has also been accused of a double standard for disqualifying some but not others.\nVoting results have been a consistent source of controversy. The mechanism of voting has aroused considerable criticism, most notably in the second season when Ruben Studdard beat Clay Aiken in a close vote, and in the eighth season, when the massive increase in text votes fueled the texting controversy. Concerns about power voting have been expressed from the first season. Since 2004, votes also have been affected to a limited degree by online communities such as DialIdol and Vote for the Worst.\nCultural impact.\nTelevision.\nThe enormous success of the show and the revenue it generated were transformative for the Fox Broadcasting Company. \"American Idol\" and other shows such as \"Survivor\" and \"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?\" were credited for expanding reality television programming in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s, and \"Idol\" became the most watched non-scripted primetime television series, which it remained for almost a decade, from 2003 to 2012, breaking records on U.S. television (dominated by drama shows and sitcoms in the preceding decades). On several occasions, notably in 2003 and 2008, \"American Idol\" overtook the Academy Awards as the most-watched non-sports entertainment event on U.S. television, marking the most recent time as of 2025 that a live regular non-sports primetime series has garnered such viewership in the country.\nThe show pushed Fox to become the number one U.S. TV network in overall viewers in 2008 and among adults aged 18\u201349, the key demographic coveted by advertisers, for an unprecedented eight consecutive years from 2005 to 2012. Its success also helped lift the ratings of other shows that were scheduled around it such as \"House\" and \"Bones\", and \"Idol\", for years, was Fox's strongest platform primetime television program for promoting eventual hit shows of the 2010s (of the same network) such as \"Glee\", \"New Girl\" and \"Empire\". The show, its creator Simon Fuller claimed, \"saved Fox\".\nThe show's massive success in the mid-2000s to early 2010s spawned a number of imitating singing-competition shows, such as \"Rock Star\", \"Nashville Star\", \"The Voice\", \"Rising Star\", \"The Sing-Off\", and \"The X Factor\". The number of imitative singing shows on American television had reached 17 by 2016. Its format also served as a blueprint for non-singing TV shows such as \"Dancing with the Stars\" and \"So You Think You Can Dance\", most of which contribute to the current highly competitive reality TV landscape on American television.\nMusic.\nAs one of the most successful shows on U.S. television history, \"American Idol\" has had a strong impact not just on television, but also in the wider world of entertainment. It helped create a number of highly successful recording artists, such as Kelly Clarkson, Daughtry and Carrie Underwood, as well as others of varying notability. The alumni of the show's original run scored 13 Grammy Award wins out of 54 Grammy nominations up to its end in 2016, with Underwood and Clarkson receiving 10 wins combined.\nVarious \"American Idol\" alumni had success on various record charts around the world; in the U.S. they had achieved 345 number ones on the \"Billboard\" charts in its first 10 years, and 458 by its last year of broadcast in 2016, with 100 achieved by Kelly Clarkson alone. According to Fred Bronson, author of books on the Billboard charts, no other entity has ever created as many hit-making artists and bestselling albums and singles. In 2007, \"American Idol\" alums accounted for 2.1% of all music sales. Its alumni have a massive impact on radio; in 2007, \"American Idol\" had become \"a dominant force in radio\" according to Rich Meyer, president of the radio station monitoring research company Mediabase. By 2010, four winners each had more than a million radio spins, with Kelly Clarkson leading the field with over four million spins.\nAt the end of the show's original run on Fox in 2016, \"Idol\"'s contestants have sold more than 60 million albums in the U.S. and more than 100 million records globally, more than 175 of which are certified platinum or gold. Its participants have generated more than 450 Billboard No. 1 hits and sold more than 260 million digital downloads.\nFilm and theater.\nThe impact of \"American Idol\" was also strongly felt in musical theater, where many of \"Idol\" alumni have forged successful careers. The striking effect of former \"American Idol\" contestants on Broadway has been noted and commented on. The casting of a popular \"Idol\" contestant can lead to significantly increased ticket sales. Other alumni have gone on to work in television and films, the most notable being Jennifer Hudson who, on the recommendation of the \"Idol\" vocal coach Debra Byrd, won a role in \"Dreamgirls\" and eventually went on to win an Academy Award for her performance. She later became the show's first and only alumnus ever to win the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). In all, as of 2025, \"American Idol\" finalists resulted to 5 Grammy Award winners (Clarkson, Barrino, Hudson, Underwood and Mandisa), 2 Emmy Award winners (Clarkson and Hudson), and an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Tony Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Critics' Choice Award winner (Hudson).\nIn 2007, a musical based on the show, \"\", played off-Broadway. The musical closed after its official opening night.\nRevenue and commercial ventures.\nThe dominance of \"American Idol\" in the ratings had made it the most profitable show in U.S. TV for many years. The show was estimated to generate $900\u00a0million for the year 2004 through sales of TV ads, albums, merchandise and concert tickets. By the seventh season, the show was estimated to earn around $900\u00a0million from its ad revenue alone, not including ancillary sponsorship deals and other income. One estimate puts the total TV revenue for the first eight seasons of \"American Idol\" at $6.4\u00a0billion. Sponsors that bought fully integrated packages can expect a variety of promotions of their products on the show, such as product placement, adverts and product promotion integrated into the show, and various promotional opportunities. Other off-air promotional partners pay for the rights to feature \"Idol\" branding on their packaging, products and marketing programs. \"American Idol\" also partnered with Disney in its theme park attraction The American Idol Experience.\nAdvertising revenue.\n\"American Idol\" became the most expensive series on broadcast networks for advertisers starting the fourth season, and by the next season, it had broken the record in advertising rate for a regularly scheduled prime-time network series, selling over $700,000 for a 30-seconds slot, and reaching up to $1.3\u00a0million for the finale. Its ad prices reached a peak in the seventh season at $737,000. Estimated revenue more than doubled from $404\u00a0million in the third season to $870\u00a0million in the sixth season. While that declined from the eighth season onwards, it still earned significantly more than its nearest competitor, with advertising revenue topping $800\u00a0million annually the next few seasons. However, the sharp drop in ratings in the eleventh season also resulted in a sharp drop in advertising rate for the twelfth season, and the show lost its leading position as the costliest show for advertisers. By 2014, ad revenue from had fallen to $427 million where a 30-second spot went for less than $300,000. For the relaunched \"Idol\" on ABC, it has been reported that a 30-second spot may cost between $120,000 and $160,000.\nMedia sponsorship.\nFord Motor Company and Coca-Cola were two of the first sponsors of \"American Idol\" in its first season. The sponsorship deal cost around $10\u00a0million in the first season, rising to $35\u00a0million by the seventh season, and between $50 and $60 million in the tenth season. The third major sponsor AT&T Wireless joined in the second season but ended after the twelfth season, and Coca-Cola officially ended its sponsorship after the thirteenth season amidst the declining ratings of \"Idol\" in the mid-2010s. iTunes sponsored the show since the seventh season.\n\"American Idol\" prominent display of its sponsors' logo and products had been noted since the early seasons. By the sixth season, \"Idol\" showed 4,349 product placements according to Nielsen Media Research. The branded entertainment integration proved beneficial to its advertisers \u2013 promotion of AT&T text-messaging as a means to vote successfully introduced the technology into the wider culture, and Coca-Cola has seen its equity increased during the show.\nCoca-Cola's archrival PepsiCo declined to sponsor \"American Idol\" at the show's start. What the \"Los Angeles Times\" later called \"missing one of the biggest marketing opportunities in a generation\" contributed to Pepsi losing market share, by 2010 falling to third place from second in the United States. PepsiCo sponsored the American version of Cowell's \"The X Factor\" in hopes of not repeating its \"Idol\" mistake until its cancellation.\nFor the revived series on ABC, Macy's and Johnson & Johnson's Zyrtec signed on as the major sponsors of the show.\nAmerican Idol tour.\nThe top ten (eleven in the tenth season, five in the fourteenth season, and seven in the sixteenth season) toured at the end of every season except for the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons. In the twelfth season tour a semi-finalist who won a sing-off was also added to the tour. Kellogg's Pop-Tarts was the sponsor for the first seven seasons, and Guitar Hero was added for the seventh season tour. M&M's Pretzel Chocolate Candies was a sponsor of the ninth season tour. The fifth season tour was the most successful tour with gross of over $35\u00a0million. However no concert tour was organized in the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons, the only seasons not to have an associated tour. The sixteenth season tour featured the band In Real Life as an opener on select dates.\n\"Idol Gives Back\".\n\"Idol Gives Back\" was a special charity event started in season six featuring performances by celebrities and various fund-raising initiatives. This event was also held in seasons seven and nine and has raised nearly $185\u00a0million in total.\nMusic releases.\n\"American Idol\" has traditionally released studio recordings of contestants' performances as well as the winner's coronation single for sale. For the first five seasons, the recordings were released as a compilation album at the end of the season. All five of these albums reached the top ten in Billboard 200 which made \"American Idol\" the most successful soundtrack franchise of any motion picture or television program. Starting late in the fifth season, individual performances were released during the season as digital downloads, initially from the \"American Idol\" official website only. In the seventh season the live performances and studio recordings were made available during the season from iTunes when it joined as a sponsor. In the tenth season the weekly studio recordings were also released as compilation digital album straight after performance night.\n19 Recordings, a recording label owned by 19 Entertainment, currently hold the rights to phonographic material recorded by all the contestants. 19 Recordings originally partnered with Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) to promote and distribute the recordings through its labels RCA Records, Arista Records, J Records, and Jive Records. From 2005\u20132007, BMG partnered with Sony Music Entertainment to form a joint venture known as Sony BMG Music Entertainment. From 2008 to 2010, following their acquisition of BMG, Sony Music handled the distribution of \"American Idol\"'s music. In 2010, UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records replaced Sony as the music label for \"American Idol\".\nTie-ins.\n\"American Idol\" video games\nTheme park attraction.\nOn February 14, 2009, The Walt Disney Company debuted \"The American Idol Experience\" at its Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. In this live production, co-produced by 19 Entertainment, park guests chose from a list of songs and auditioned privately for Disney cast members. Those selected then performed on a stage in a 1000-seat theater replicating the \"Idol\" set. Three judges, whose mannerisms and style mimicked those of the real \"Idol\" judges, critiqued the performances. Audience members then voted for their favorite performer. There were several preliminary-round shows during the day that culminated in a \"finals\" show in the evening where one of the winners of the previous rounds that day was selected as the overall winner. The winner of the finals show received a \"Dream Ticket\" that granted them front-of-the-line privileges at any future \"American Idol\" audition. The attraction closed on August 30, 2014.\nOther broadcasts.\n\"American Idol\" is broadcast to over 100 nations worldwide. In most nations these are not live broadcasts and may be tape delayed by several days or weeks, except for other season finales that are aired live in several countries simulcast with the U.S. broadcast on Fox (2002\u20132016) and ABC (since 2018). In Canada, the first thirteen seasons of American Idol were aired live countrywide by CTV and/or CTV Two, in simulcast with Fox. CTV dropped \"Idol\" after its thirteenth season and in August 2014, Yes TV announced that it had picked up Canadian rights to \"American Idol\" beginning in its 2015 season. In 2017, it was announced the show would return to CTV Two for its sixteenth season. Since season nineteen, the show started airing on Citytv. In Slovakia, American Idol was broadcast on Jednotka.\nIn Latin America, the show is broadcast and subtitled by Sony Entertainment Television. In Southeast Asia, it is broadcast by Sony Channel every Monday and Tuesday nine or ten hours after since its revival. In Philippines, it is aired every Thursday and Friday nine or ten hours after its United States telecast; from 2004 to 2007 on ABC; 2008\u201311 on QTV, then GMA News TV; 2012\u201316, 2018\u201319 on ETC; and since 2024 on TV5. In Indonesia, it was aired on RCTI in the 2002 to 2003 season with the Indonesian subtitles, before Indonesian Idol was held in the 2004, aired after each episode ended, and in the 2011 to 2013 season it was broadcast by B-Channel (now RTV). In Australia, it aired a few hours after the U.S. telecast. It was aired on Network Ten from 2002 to 2008 and then again in 2013. Between 2008 and 2012 it aired on Fox8 and the thirteenth and fourteenth seasons (2014\u201315) it aired on digital channel, Eleven, a sister channel to Network Ten. Its final season (2016) aired on Fox8 hours after the original U.S. broadcast. The show enjoyed a lot of popularity in Australia throughout the 2000s before declining in the ratings. In the United Kingdom, episodes were aired one day after the U.S. broadcast on digital channel ITV2. In the twelfth season, the episodes aired on 5*. It was also aired in Ireland on TV3 two days after the telecast. In Brazil and Israel, the show airs two days after its original broadcast, and broadcast live during the season finale. In the instances where the airing is delayed, the shows may sometimes be combined into one episode to summarize the results. In Italy, the twelfth season was broadcast by La3. In Singapore, The show was broadcast on Mediacorp Channel 5 for the ninth and tenth seasons.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "34995948": "Blown Away (album)\nBlown Away is the fourth studio album by American singer and songwriter Carrie Underwood. It was released in the United States and Canada on May 1, 2012, by Arista Nashville. After finishing her successful \"Play On Tour\" in December 2010 to promote her third studio album \"Play On,\" Underwood started working on the album, but took her time, as she \"wanted to change things up\", and needed to step away from the \"celebrity bubble\" to \"have real things to write about and to sing about\". It took her over one year to finish the album, which, according to Underwood, ended up having a \"darker storyline\" than her previous efforts.\nMet with mostly positive reviews from music critics, the album became a commercial success. It debuted at number one on \"Billboard\" 200, with first-week sales of 267,000 copies, achieving the third-largest opening of 2012. With \"Blown Away\" reaching number one, Underwood became the third female to chart at number one on the \"Billboard\" 200 with three country albums, tying her with Linda Ronstadt and Faith Hill. Like her three previous albums, \"Blown Away\" debuted at the top of the Top Country Albums chart. The album remained at number one for a second week on the \"Billboard\" 200, becoming her first album to spend more than one week at the top of that chart. It topped the \"Top Country Albums\" chart for seven weeks.\n\"Blown Away\" was the seventh best selling album overall and second best-selling country album of 2012 in the US. It finished 2012 with over 1.4 million copies sold worldwide, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. \"Blown Away\" has since sold around 1.8 million copies in the US and over two million copies worldwide. In January 2020, the album was certified 3\u00d7 Platinum by the RIAA.\nIt spawned the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 Top 20 and Country Airplay number-one singles \"Good Girl\" and \"Blown Away\", along with the Country Airplay top-two hits \"Two Black Cadillacs\" and \"See You Again\". All singles received multi-Platinum or Platinum certifications.\nIn 2013, at the 55th Grammy Awards, Underwood won the Grammy Award for Best Country Solo Performance for \"Blown Away\", which also won Best Country Song for its songwriters. The album won the American Music Award for Favorite Country Album.\nBackground and composition.\nAfter Underwood's Play On Tour ended in December 2010, she started to work on her fourth studio album. Underwood took her time working on \"Blown Away\". She stated that she \"wanted to change things up\", and she needed to step away from the \"celebrity bubble\" to \"have real things to write about and real things to sing about.\" Sony Music Nashville chairman/CEO Gary Overton said that the singer \"took nearly a year to compile and record the songs.\" Songwriters Chris Tompkins and Josh Kear wrote \"Blown Away\" and sent it to the singer. Underwood loved the song and recorded it, also naming her album \"Blown Away\" as it was the song that defined the album's darker direction. She then started writing material with several songwriters, including Hillary Lindsey and Kear. Together, the trio wrote \"Two Black Cadillacs\", which is about two women finding out that they both are involved in a relationship with the same man and set their differences aside to kill him. Underwood said that \"it was so much fun to write and just be in that room\" with Lindsey and Kear, as they \"didn't really know what to expect or where we were headed or what we would end up with.\"\nUnderwood has stated that the album would contain material that is different from her previous efforts, since stating that \"Blown Away\" features songs with a \"darker storyline.\" She has stated that she isn't trying to impress people with what [she] can do\" and she doesn't \"have to sing to the moon with every single song\" with this project. The lead single, \"Good Girl,\" is said to be the album's most upbeat track, with the other tracks creating a much darker record.\nThe album combines country, pop and rock genres. Ashley Gorley described writing the single, \"Good Girl\", saying, \"I was out in Los Angeles working on projects with Chris [DeStefano.] Carrie happened to be out there, and Carrie\u2019s management team had an idea for the three of us to all get together to write. I had written with Carrie and Chris several times separately, but never together. We all thought it would be a great combination and turns out we were right!\u201d\nCritical reception.\n\"Blown Away\" received mostly positive reviews from music critics. On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 70 based on 12 reviews, indicating \"generally favorable reviews\". Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic gave a positive review to the album, awarding it with four stars out of five and said: naturally, this showstopping act suits a former American Idol winner but, better still, this exercise in turn-of-the-millennium nostalgia is executed with skill and savvy, offering the kind of larger-than-life power ballads and cheerful, clomping arena country. This is Carrie's wheelhouse\u2014she's meant to sing these oversized ballads and hooks, she's meant to look as unattainable as she does on the cover. She's meant to be a superstar and she's never seemed as comfortable with her calling as she does on Blown Away. Deborah Evans Price of \"Billboard\" praised the album, saying, \"Underwood delivers her most adventurous album yet, tackling a variety of emotional topics, including abuse, infidelity, revenge and regret.\" Ian Ewing of \"Keepin' It Country\" rated the album 9.5 on a scale of 10, and highlighted the title track, saying, \"Although there's nothing to mark it as a country song, it's a stunning piece of music that can't help but impress.\" Daryl Addison of GAC praised the album, saying, \"Carrie doesn't shy away from complexities, and with a powerful voice unafraid to push the envelope, \"Blown Away\" could be just the album to show what's possible for pop-influenced country.\" Jessica Nicholson of Country Weekly rated the album with four stars out of five and said: \"This is easily Carrie\u2019s most well-rounded and confident work to date\". \"The New York Times\" gave a positive review to the album and said: Ms. Underwood enjoys rage; her huge voice, both na\u00efve and muscular, is well suited to it. Her best songs have historically been in the range between fury and resentment. \u201cBlown Away\u201d is only her fourth album, but that number belies her concrete-hard place in the country firmament, with a combination of vocal ambition and toughness that recalls a younger Martina McBride. Eric Allen of \"American Songwriter\" gave a positive review, awarding it with four stars out of five and said: Blown Away displays considerable artistic and creative growth in both Underwood's songwriting and selection of material. Is more thematic and unified, resulting in Underwood's strongest effort to date, which easily leaves her previous releases twisting in the wind. Melissa Maerz of \"Entertainment Weekly\" gave the album a B+, and referred to \"Blown Away\" as Underwood's \"most stadium-rock-friendly album yet. At \"USA Today\", Elysa Garnder told that the release \"both reaffirms her natural gifts and makes us continue to root for her to push beyond them.\"\nMikael Wood of the \"Los Angeles Times\" was less than enthusiastic about the album, giving it two stars out of four, and saying that much of the album \"finds Underwood using her remarkable voice to deliver feel-good bromides like those in the lightly-reggae-inflected 'One Way Ticket.'\" While Johnathan Keefe of \"Slant\" magazine wasn't overly impressed with the album in his review, giving the album 3 stars, he did give Underwood credit for \"at least tak[ing] far more creative risks than she ever has before and occasionally stray[ing] from a formula that had become stale and predictable.\" Melissa Newman of \"Hitfix\" gave the album a B, but criticized the album's material, calling it \"a mixed bag, with the songs running the gamut from ranking among her best to wondering who the hell let some of them on the album.\" Sean Daly of \"Tampa Bay Times\" gave the album a C, saying, \"Cliche pleadings for lost love dominate \"Blown Away\", which sounds a lot more Hollywood safe than Nashville tough.\" Jody Rosen of \"Rolling Stone\" gave the album 2.5 out of 5 stars saying that \"Underwood's voice is as powerful as ever, but Blown Away tries too hard, ratcheting up melodrama with strings and effects.\" At \"The Guardian\", Caroline Sullivan felt that the album \"may be too formulaic to give her much of a foothold.\"\nCommercial performance.\n\"Blown Away\" debuted at number one in the United States on the \"Billboard\" 200 chart with first-week sales of 267,000 copies. It is Carrie Underwood's third number-one album on the chart, following \"Carnival Ride\" (2007) and \"Play On\" (2009). She is the third female to chart at number one on the \"Billboard\" 200 with three country albums, thus tying her with Linda Ronstadt and Faith Hill. Like her three previous albums, \"Blown Away\" also debuted at the top of the Top Country Albums chart, making Underwood only the second female to achieve that feat. In its second week, \"Blown Away\" stayed at number one, being Underwood's first album to spend more than a week at the top, selling 120,000 copies. \"Blown Away\" has topped the US Top Country Albums chart for seven weeks, being Underwood's longest run at number one on the chart since her debut album, \"Some Hearts\", logged 27 weeks on top.\nThe album was the seventh best selling album of 2012 in the US, being the second time Underwood has an album inside the top 10 albums since her debut album \"Some Hearts\" (2005) landed at number three in 2006. It was number two for country albums. \"Blown Away\" finished 2012 with over 1,400,000 copies sold worldwide, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. As of October 2019, \"Blown Away\" has sold 1,853,200 copies in the US. It has sold over two million copies worldwide, becoming Underwood's fourth consecutive album to sell at least two million copies. In January 2020, the album received a 3\u00d7 Platinum certification from the RIAA for 3 million units in sales and streams.\nIn Canada, the album debuted at number one, with first-week sales of 17,300 copies. It also debuted at number four on the ARIA Top 50 Albums, and at number one on the ARIA Top 20 Country Albums charts in Australia. Her first-ever officially released album in the United Kingdom, \"Blown Away\" debuted at number eleven on the UK Top 100 Albums, and at number one on the UK Top Country Albums. It has since sold 61,000 copies in the United Kingdom and has been certified Silver by the BPI.\nPromotion.\nWith the release of her highly anticipated fourth album, Underwood made numerous television, radio, and online appearances. On April 29, Underwood was featured on \"Nightline\", and on April 30, \"Good Morning America\" aired an exclusive interview. Later that evening, Underwood performed \"Good Girl\" on \"Late Show with David Letterman\" as well as holding a concert on the \"Live on Letterman\" webcast concert series streaming live online. On May 1, Underwood returned to \"Good Morning America\" to perform a special live outdoor concert in Times Square, followed by an iHeartRadio Live performance streaming live online that evening. Underwood appeared on \"American Idol\" on May 3 with a special performance of the title track from her album. Underwood also made appearances on \"The Ellen DeGeneres Show\" on May 9, \"Jimmy Kimmel Live!\" on May 10, and \"Dancing with the Stars\" on May 15, followed by the Billboard Music Awards on May 20. On May 26, she headlined at Bayou Country Superfest in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, performing several new songs from the album. Underwood kicked off the Blown Away Tour during the summer of 2012.\nSingles.\nThe first single of the album, \"Good Girl\" was released on February 23, 2012, and it debuted at number thirty on the Hot Country Songs chart and number twenty-four on Hot 100. It eventually climbed to a peak of eighteen on the Hot 100, number one on the Hot Country Songs, number twenty on the Adult Pop Songs chart and number twenty-one on the Canadian Hot 100. It has been certified 2\u00d7 Platinum by the RIAA and Platinum by Music Canada.\nThe second single of the album is \"Blown Away\". Before the official release of the song, it charted at number 66 on the Hot 100 and number 49 on the Hot Country Songs, and has since reached a peak of number twenty and two, respectively. It became Underwood's 16th number one single when it topped the Country Airplay chart. It is also her first song to chart in the UK Singles Chart where it has reached 155. It has been certified 3\u00d7 Platinum by the RIAA and Platinum by the CRIA.\nThe third single of the album is \"Two Black Cadillacs\". It was released on November 18, 2012. The music video was released on January 23, 2013. The song peaked at number two on the Billboard Country Airplay chart and number four on Hot Country Songs and has been certified Platinum by the RIAA.\nOn March 18, 2013, Underwood announced via Twitter that \"See You Again\" would be the fourth single off the album. \"See You Again\" impacted Country radio on April 15. It reached number two on the Country Airplay chart and number seven on Hot Country Songs. On August 10, 2015, \"See You Again\" was certified Platinum by the RIAA.\nTour.\nThe tour included an international run of shows during the summer of 2012, including her first-ever United Kingdom concert, taking place at the prestigious Royal Albert Hall in London on June 21. The Royal Albert Hall concert sold out within the first 90 minutes of public ticket sales. The opening act for Underwood on the North American leg of the tour was country singer Hunter Hayes. Underwood donated $1 from each ticket sold on the North American leg of the tour to support the Red Cross disaster relief. The first leg of The Blown Away Tour began in September 14 in Manchester and continued deep into December. Due to positive reception and successful touring revenue from the first North American leg of the tour, a second North American leg of the tour was announced for the spring of 2013. The tour ultimately ran through May 2013 and played to over one million fans over the course of 112 shows.\nA concert DVD, \"\", was released on August 13, 2013. The footage was captured during Underwood's concert in Ontario, California on March 3, 2013. The DVD includes more than twenty songs performed by Underwood on tour, as well as exclusive interviews with Underwood, tour director of The Blown Away Tour, Raj Kapoor, and other behind-the-scenes footage about the tour. The DVD has since been certified Gold by the RIAA.\nPersonnel.\nCredits adapted from AllMusic.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["34995948", "191890"], "permutation_1": ["34995948", "191890"], "permutation_2": ["191890", "34995948"], "permutation_3": ["34995948", "191890"]}
{"id": "2hop__195466_99606", "docs_added": {"11978507": "Sakalua\nSakalua is an islet of Nukufetau, Tuvalu. In the 19th century whalers established a shore camp on Sakalua where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber. The islet has been known as 'Coal Island'.\nThe island has a large colony of terns.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11978507", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["30227", "11978507"], "permutation_2": ["30227", "11978507"], "permutation_3": ["30227", "11978507"]}
{"id": "2hop__222431_126539", "docs_added": {"43970329": "Ilhas (album)\nIlhas (Portuguese for \"Islands\") is the fourth studio album by Brazilian psychedelic rock band Violeta de Outono, released on May 9, 2005, by Voiceprint Records. It was the last album of the band to feature the original line-up of Fabio Golfetti, Cl\u00e1udio Souza and Angelo Pastorello.\nThe track \"Dan\u00e7a\" previously appeared in \"Em Toda Parte\", and was re-recorded for this release.\nJo\u00e3o Parahyba of Trio Mocot\u00f3 fame provided additional percussion instruments for some of the tracks.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "43360336": "Violeta de Outono\nBrazilian progressive rock band\nVioleta de Outono (Portuguese for Autumn Violet) is a Brazilian psychedelic/progressive rock band from S\u00e3o Paulo. Heavily influenced by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Gong, they were originally a post-punk band with some psychedelic elements intertwined, but would gradually drop their post-punk influences and add more prog elements to their sonority as time went by.\nThe band underwent numerous changes in its line-up since its inception; the only founding member remaining today is vocalist/guitarist Fabio Golfetti.\nHistory.\nFabio Golfetti founded Violeta de Outono in 1985 alongside Cl\u00e1udio Souza; both had just parted ways with pioneering New Romantic band Zero. They would later be joined by Angelo Pastorello, and with this line-up they released a demo tape, \"Memories\", in the same year. The tape got the attention of independent record label Wop-Bop Records, that released their first recording, the extended play \"Reflexos da Noite\", in 1986.\nIn 1987, Violeta de Outono's eponymous debut was released through RCA Records. It was very well-received; particular praise went to their cover of The Beatles' song \"Tomorrow Never Knows\".\nIn 1988 they released a four-track EP called \"The Early Years\", containing cover versions of The Rolling Stones' \"Citadel\", Pink Floyd's \"Interstellar Overdrive\", The Beatles' \"Within You Without You\" and Gong's \"Blues for Findlay\". Those recordings trace to as far as 1985\u20131986. In the next year, their second studio album, \"Em Toda Parte\", was released by Ariola Records. Beginning with this album, Violeta de Outono would drop their previous post-punk instrumentation, heading towards a more progressive and experimental vein.\nIn 1990, Cl\u00e1udio Souza left the band, and was replaced by Cl\u00e1udio Fontes (Souza would return to the band in 1993 though). From 1993 to 1995, Violeta de Outono entered a short hiatus period; they returned to active with a live album, \"Eclipse\", and their third full-length, \"Mulher na Montanha\", that began to be recorded in 1995 but would be released only in 1999. In 2000, they would release their second live album, \"Live at Rio ArtRock Festival '97\", a recording of their performance at the in Rio de Janeiro in 1997. (A DVD containing the footage of their performance at the festival would be released 15 years later.) During Violeta de Outono's hiatus, Golfetti released three albums with The Invisible Opera Company of Tibet (Tropical Version Brazil), a side project he formed in 1988; however, the project was not as successful and memorable as Violeta de Outono itself and would come to an end in 1995, only to return in 2010.\nAlso in 2000, Violeta de Outono changed its line-up almost completely, with Gregor Izidro replacing Cl\u00e1udio Souza and Sandro Garcia replacing Pastorello. However, they would return for the recording of the band's fourth studio album in 2003, \"Ilhas\", that was released in 2005.\n\"Violeta de Outono & Orquestra\", their first video release, came out in 2006, recorded during a performance in S\u00e3o Paulo two years prior, with the special participation of the USP Symphonic Orchestra. In the same year, Pastorello left the band and was replaced by Gabriel Costa, while new member Fernando Cardoso assumed the position of keyboardist. With this line-up they released their fifth full-length album (and seventh studio release overall), \"Volume 7\", in 2007.\nIn 2009, Cl\u00e1udio Souza left Violeta de Outono for the third time, but beforehand they recorded another video release, \"\", in which they covered songs by Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett live, and also played their first studio album in its entirety in a show which took place in the Theatro Municipal in S\u00e3o Paulo. Souza was replaced by Fred Barley \u2013 however, Barley left the band in 2011 in order to join O Ter\u00e7o, and was replaced by Jos\u00e9 Luiz Dinola (former A Chave do Sol member); Violeta de Outono's line-up remains unchanged ever since.\nTheir sixth full-length album, \"Espectro\", was released in 2012.\nOn September 19, 2016, the band announced that they began work on their seventh studio album, \"Spaces\", which was eventually released on October 14, 2016.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1620875": "Ilha (Santana)\nIlha (Portuguese for \"island\") is a civil parish in the municipality of Santana in the Portuguese archipelago of Madeira. The population in 2011 was 255, in an area of 14.19\u00a0km\u00b2.\nHistory.\nThe history of this parish extends from the end of the 20th century, when it was created in 1989 by de-annexation from the civil parish of S\u00e3o Jorge. Its name was an extension of geomorphological characteristics, since it was an \"island\" between many of its other neighbours (\"ilha\" is the Portuguese word for \"island\"), one of the few landlocked parishes on the island of Madeira.\nGeography.\nIlha is located along the northern coast, buttressed by the neighbouring civil parishes of Arco de S\u00e3o Jorge (in the west) and S\u00e3o Jorge (to the east). It contains the localities Achadinha, Corrida, Ermida, Garnal, Lombada do Meio and Lombo Grande.\nThe site of Achada do Marques is classified as a protected landscape () and part of the \"Parque Natural da Madeira\". The classification was made to not only preserve the natural environment and landscape, but also to maintain the habits and traditions of the zone. Caldeir\u00e3o Verde, another popular tourist destination in the parish, is part of the pedestrian trails that cross the island. In particular, from Caldeir\u00e3o Verde, it is possible to follow a trail through the UNESCO protected Laurisilva forests to the locally-known \"Cascata do Caldeir\u00e3o Verde\" (\"waterfall of Caldeir\u00e3o Verde\"). In addition, Pico Ruivo, the highest point on the island at falls within the parishes frontiers, and although a highly difficult climb (third highest nationally), its summit can be reached from within the trail network. Other pedestrian trails of note: Levada da Ilha-Vale da Lapa-Caldeir\u00e3o Verde and Pico Ruivo-Encumeada.\nEconomy.\nIts primary economic resource is the agricultural industry, served by dairy and cattle-raising. In addition it supports a small economic collectivity that includes small shops, cafes and bars, in addition to health care centre. A locally produced beverage/liquor, \"Ponchilha\", based on lemons is produced in this region and originally commercialized by the \"Empresa de Inser\u00e7\u00e3o Social da Casa do Povo da Ilha\" (the local community/social centre).\nCulture.\nIn the month of August, the Casa do Povo da Ilha organizes a \"Dia do Emigrante\" (\"Emigrant Day\") for those former residents who left Ilha in search of better economic conditions. On the last weekend of September and first of October, the festivals in honour of the \"Santissimo Sacramento\" (\"Holy Sacrament\") and patron saint (\"Our Lady of the Rosary\") are also celebrated. Finally, at the end of November and beginning of December, the \"Semana Cultural da Ilha\" (\"Cultural Week of Ilha\") result in various cultural activities based on a specific theme.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2067635": "Municipality of Ilhas\nMunicipality of the Macau SAR\nThe Municipality of Ilhas () was one of the two municipalities of Macau, along with the Municipality of Macau. Its organs were the Municipal Council of Ilhas () and the Municipal Assembly of Ilhas ().\nFollowing the handover of Macau to China on 20 December 1999, they were renamed as Provisional Municipal Council of Ilhas () and the Provisional Municipal Assembly of Ilhas (). The municipality along with the institutions were formally abolished on 31 December 2001 and replaced by the Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau the following day.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "70997150": "Ilha Record 1\nThe first season of \"Ilha Record\" premiered on Monday, July 26, 2021, at 10:30 p.m. on RecordTV.\nThe show features a group of celebrities, known as Explorers, living together on a desert island and competing against each other in extreme challenges to avoid being exiled and continue their quest for lost treasures and the grand prize of R$500.000. Prior to the live finale, a public vote is held to determine who would become the season's Favorite Explorer and win the special prize of R$250.000. The inaugural season of \"Ilha Record\" was filmed in Paraty, Rio de Janeiro from June 1 to July 6, 2021.\nAny Borges won competition after defeating Pyong Lee at the Island's final treasure hunt and took home the grand prize of R$500.000. Mirella Santos won the public's special prize of R$250.000 with 79.33% of the final vote against Nadja Pessoa. In addition, Pyong Lee received R$100.000 as runner-up, while Claudinho Matos and Nanah Damasceno earned R$10.000 each for being part of Any's crew in the final.\nCast.\nExplorers.\nThe celebrities were officially revealed by RecordTV on May 27, 2021.\nFuture Appearances.\nAfter this season, in 2022, Dinei appeared with his wife Erika Dias in \"Power Couple Brasil 6\", they finished in 12th place in the competition.\nIn 2022, Thomaz Costa appeared in \"A Fazenda 14\", he finished in 17th place in the competition.\nIn 2023, Nadja Pessoa also appeared in \"A Fazenda 15\", she finished in 7th place in the competition.\nRatings and reception.\nBrazilian ratings.\nAll numbers are in points and provided by Kantar Ibope Media.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "15261847": "Son\u00edfera Ilha\n1984 single by Tit\u00e3s\n\"Son\u00edfera Ilha\" (Sleepy Island) is the debut single by Brazilian rock band Tit\u00e3s, released in 1984. The song, as well as its b-side \"Toda Cor\", was co-composed by Ciro Pessoa, one of the lead singers and founding members of the group, who would leave the band before the release of their first, self-titled album, in which the single and the b-side were included. \"Son\u00edfera Ilha\" is among a few of Ciro's contributions to Tit\u00e3s.\nThe song has been covered by artists such as Adriana Calcanhotto, Pato Fu and Blitz, among others (see details below).\n\"Toda Cor\" was included in the soundtrack of the 1984 film \"Bete Balan\u00e7o\".\nBackground and composition.\nUnlike what was common practice at the time of the song's creation, the single would only be released after the album since the band - composed of nine members up until shortly before the album recording - didn't want to be represented by a single song.\nThen vocalist Paulo Miklos (main singer of the song) described the track in 2012 as follows: \"A ska with a kinda dodecaphonic thing, a kinda weird phrase, telling a cock-and-bull story. I never knew what the song is about.\"\nReception.\nAlthough coming from an album that sold poorly, the song was a great hit in Brazil. According to website \"A Vitrine do R\u00e1dio\" and the \"Rolling Stone Brasil\" magazine, it was the song with most airplay in the country in 1984.\nIn a 2020 video, then former vocalist and bassist Nando Reis commented that \"Son\u00edfera Ilha\" was the only song that the audience knew at the time of its release and their other songs sounded too different from the track, and that because of it they would sometimes perform the song three times in a single show.\n\"Tit\u00e3s Trio Ac\u00fastico\" version.\nIn 2020, the band, then reduced to a trio (Branco Mello on vocals, acoustic guitar and bass; S\u00e9rgio Britto on vocal, keyboards and bass; and Tony Bellotto on vocals, acoustic and electric guitar, re-recorded the track as part of their \"Tit\u00e3s Trio Ac\u00fastico\" project.\nThe new version, sung by Mello, received a video with guest appearances by band Os Paralamas do Sucesso; musicians Rita Lee, Roberto de Carvalho, Andreas Kisser, Lulu Santos, Cyz Mendes (singer who guest performed on the band's opera rock, \"Doze Flores Amarelas\"), \u00c9rika Martins, Elza Soares and marcelo fEdi Rock; actors F\u00e1bio Assun\u00e7\u00e3o and Fernanda Montenegro; sports commentator and former football player Casagrande; and Marcelo Fromer's (the band's guitarist until his death in 2001 and co-author of the track) daughter, Alice.\nThe video was directed by Ot\u00e1vio Juliano, who said: \"'Son\u00edfera Ilha' is a song that left a deep mark in generations. When I listened to the new acoustic version, I felt it was more than a song, it was a state of mind. It came from there the idea of inviting artists and friends that were part of Tit\u00e3s' history, bringing their personalities and embarking on this state of mind with the band\".\nThe guest appearances were recorded by the artists themselves in their houses; such aesthetics would end up coinciding with the quarantine to which several people subjected themselves due to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. By then, Bellotto said in an interview to \"O Globo\" newspaper:", "23145569": "A Ilha dos Amores\n1982 film\nA Ilha dos Amores () is a 1982 Portuguese-Japanese drama film directed by Paulo Rocha. It was entered into the 1982 Cannes Film Festival.\nThe film follows the life and loves of Portuguese writer and Navy officer Wenceslau de Moraes in Macau and Japan. The filmmaker plays the role of poet Camilo Pessanha.\nThe film is structured following \"The Nine Songs\" by the Chinese poet Qu Yuan.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "61352730": "Ilha dos Frades\nIsland in the Bay of all Saints\nIlha dos Frades (English: \"Isle of the Friars\") is an island in the Bay of All Saints. It is administered as part of the city of Salvador in the state of Bahia. The island is located in the center of the bay. It is in length, covers , and shaped like a fifteen-pointed star. Ilha dos Frades has preserved vegetation of the Atlantic Forest (\"Mata Atl\u00e2ntica\"), including native Brazil wood. The island is protected as part of the Environmental Protection Area of the Bay of All Saints.\nIlha dos Frades served as an important part of the slave trade in Bahia. Enslaved Africans were transported from the port at Salvador to the interior Rec\u00f4ncavo region of Bahia. The island became part of the illegal slave trade in Brazil in the 19th century; enslaved people were brought directly to the island and led to the interior of Bahia. The practice only ended with the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888.\nEtymology.\nThe name of the island, which translates to \"Island of the Friars\" refers to the murder of two friars murdered by the Tupinamb\u00e1 people early in the Portuguese colonial period. The friars traveled to the Ilha dos Frades in order to catechize and ultimately disappeared.\nHistory.\nBy the early 18th century, the island belonged to Jo\u00e3o Nogueira. Nogueira lived on the island with six or seven tenant farmers. The island had streams too small to support sugar cane cultivation; the tenant farmers only raised cows and pigs and grew subsistence crops. Francisco da Costa is recorded as an early owner of the island; he constructed the first Chapel of Loreto, or Church of Our Lady of Loreto (\"Igreja de Nossa Senhora de Loreto\") in 1645. It was reconstructed in a new location in 1756. The Ilha dos Frades played an important part in the illegal slave trade in Bahia in the 19th century. Illegal landings were made at the Ilha da Itaparica and Ilha da Mare and enslaved people were led directly to the interior of Bahia, a practice that only ended with the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888.\nFranklin Am\u00e9rico de Meneses D\u00f3ria, the Baron of Loreto, was born on the Ilha dos Frades in 1836. Loreto was a lawyer, politician, poet, and founding member of the Academia Brasileira de Letras. Gabriel Viana, a plantation owner, ruled the island in the manner of a feudal lord during the \"Rep\u00fablica Velha\", or First Brazilian Republic (1889-1930). Viana alternately decided on the punishment and execution of residents of the island and served as a benefactor of the local community.\nAccess.\nAccess to the island is from the nearby island of Madre de Deus, or by private boat from Salvador.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "79143864": "Ilha do Mel\nBrazilian island\nIlha do Mel (English: Island of Honey) is a Brazilian island, located in the state of Paran\u00e1, 4 kilometers from the coast. Although the closest part of the mainland to the island is the city of Pontal do Paran\u00e1, Ilha do Mel belongs to the municipality of Paranagu\u00e1, 24 kilometers away.\nThe island is a permanent environmental conservation area, and 95% of the territory is reserved for local flora and fauna. Therefore, human presence is strictly controlled: the maximum admission is 5,000 people per day. This arrangement directly affects tourism, which is the island's main economic activity. Ilha do Mel's beaches are considered among Brazil's most beautiful. No motor vehicles of any kind can enter the island, nor can animal-drawn vehicles. There are no paved grounds, nor is there any public lighting system in operation.\nHistory.\nThe earliest records of human presence on the island date back about 6,000 years. Two sambaquis were discovered: deposits of organic material or limestone (such as pieces of shells) accumulated by human activity. These archaeological finds indicate the presence of humans on the island. Before Portuguese colonization, the region of Ilha do Mel was populated by an indigenous group known as carij\u00f3s, from the Tupi-Guaran family. Then Europeans landed on the island and mixed with the indigenous people.\nThere are no sure traces of the first arrival of Europeans in Ilha do Mel, however, it is known that settlers arrived on the Island of Superagui (a geographical point very close to Ilha do Mel) in 1545. The inhabitants who settled there exploited the natural resources, fished, and cultivated plants such as banana and aipim, a local tuber species.\nOver the years, the island has maintained the characteristic of being secretive and somewhat mysterious. In fact, until the 1980s, Ilha do Mel had no water system or even electricity in homes. Water came in 1985 and electric light in 1988. At first, the generator ran from seven to two in the morning. Only since 1998 did power become available 24 hours a day.\nEnvironment.\n Ilha do Mel is located in the middle of the Atlantic Forest, the ecosystem originally characteristic of the Brazilian coast. Before the arrival of Portuguese colonizers, the Atlantic Forest covered 1,315,460\u00a0km\u00b2, 15% of Brazil's total area. Today, only 102,012\u00a0km\u00b2 remains, 7% of the original area. Ilha do Mel, however, is an example of environmental preservation. The administration of the island has been in charge of IAP (Environmental Institute of Paran\u00e1) since 1980.\nOf the 2,710 hectares of total area on the island, 2,241 are protected by the Ilha do Mel Ecological Station, created by the Parana State Government in 1982. More than 338 hectares belong to the Ilha do Mel State Park. Only 120 hectares of the island (7.8 percent of the total area) are designated for human settlement. In addition, under a 2004 law, it is prohibited to construct any new buildings on the island. Only modifications in existing structures are accepted.\nThe law aims to preserve not only the area already protected in environmental parks but also the nature present in the area of habitation. In recent years, it has been observed that while environmental preservation areas have been kept in excellent condition, the same has not been true for areas around human settlements.\nGeography.\n Ilha do Mel is located in the Southern Region of Brazil, at latitude 25\u00b030'S and longitude 48\u00b020'W, about 4 kilometers from the nearest city, Pontal do Paran\u00e1, and 24 kilometers from Paranagu\u00e1. The state capital of Paran\u00e1, Curitiba, is about 100 kilometers away. The island map is similar to number eight, however, with one part much larger than the other. The larger part contains the Ecological Station and the Fortress. There are buildings only in the regions near the coast, facing the sea. No paths are passing through this part of the island.\nThe smaller part, on the other hand, is the most populated part and the one that houses the most restaurants, small stores, and homes of the natives. There, some paths allow people to pass through. The two piers where boats moor are located in this section of Ilha do Mel. Encantadas is located at the far end of the island while Nova Bras\u00edlia is near the isthmus, which joins the two parts of the island. The isthmus has been the subject of geological study for many years, mainly because of the fear that the erosion process will split Ilha do Mel into two different islands. There is no consensus on the future of the site. Some say it is only a matter of time until the final separation.\nOther research, however, has found that the extent of the isthmus is very influential due to tides and it cannot be said when or if separation will happen.\n\"Source: Ilha do Mel Preserve\"\nThe island is characterized by a large amount of relief. The highest point is Morro do Miguel (English: Miguel's Mountain), with 151 meters.\nTourism.\n Tourism is the main economic activity on the island. The busiest periods are summer and holidays. Since there is a limit of 5,000 people per day, there is a possibility for tourists not to be allowed on the ferry to Ilha do Mel. However, this situation is not very common and usually only happens on the New Year's Eve holiday or Carnival.\nThere is only one way to get to Ilha do Mel: by boat. Boats from Paranagu\u00e1 arrive at the island after 1h30. The other option via Pontal do Paran\u00e1 is faster: about a 30-minute trip. When purchasing the ticket, tourists can choose between two destinations: Nova Bras\u00edlia or Encantadas. These are the names of the two main beaches. Cars cannot be transported in boats. There are no hotels on the island. The most common choice is \u201cpousadas,\u201d less complex structures than hotels, however, with the same function. The most common camping spot is the garden in front of the native house. Prices vary throughout the year.\nIlha do Mel attracts different types of tourists. A large presence of foreigners is observed mainly other South Americans. Surfers also appear frequently on the island. In fact, according to the Brazilian Professional Surfing Association, the beaches of Ilha do Mel are the best in the state of Paran\u00e1 to practice the sport.\nTourist attractions.\nIlha do Mel is known for its combination of natural and historical beauty. These locales are the main attractions of the island:\nFarol das Conchas.\nLocated near the pier in Nova Bras\u00edlia, the Farol das Conchas (English: Lighthouse of shells) was built in 1872 by order of Dom Pedro I, then Emperor of Brazil. The building material was brought from Scotland, a land at the time strongly associated with lighthouse construction. The purpose of the lighthouse was to help locate ships passing towards the Ba\u00eda de Paranagu\u00e1 (English: Bay of Paranagu\u00e1). Today the lighthouse continues to function. For that matter, it is a tourist attraction because it is located above a mountain from where much of the island, the sea, the beaches, and even the isthmus can be seen.\nFortress of Nossa Senhora dos Prazeres.\n The only building of historical significance in the largest part of the island, the Fortress of Nossa Senhora dos Prazeres was built in the 18th century. Work was finished in 1769. The building has walls 1.5m thick. The construction was made because of the war between Portugal and Spain over territories in South America. The Portuguese considered Ilha do Mel a strategic location to protect. However, it turned out to be less important than expected since Spanish ships had been known to reach Paranagu\u00e1 without intervention from the fortress.\nDuring World War II, Ilha do Mel became a \u201cwar zone.\u201d About 200 soldiers occupied the site. Another section was activated above Morro da Baleia (English: Whale Hill), just in front of the Fortress, with cannons and mazes to hide them. Up there, there is also a vantage point with a view of the sea.\nEncantadas Cave.\nThe Encantadas cave is the main attraction of that beach and the most important natural attraction on the entire island. The cave was built through the constant action of the sea on the rocks during the passage of years. Beyond the natural process, the cave is full of mystery.\nPeople's legend has it that an Indigenous couple had fallen in love, but the families were not in favor of the relationship. Nevertheless, they had decided to marry. The girl's father, however, found out about them and cast a curse on them: all of the couple's daughters would become killers mermaids. The young people stayed together, but they could not escape the curse. According to legend, the mermaids chose the very cave of Encantadas as the place to attract men with their songs and then kill them.\nName.\nThe origin of the name Ilha do Mel is not known. One of the most credible hypotheses concerns a German Admiral named Mehl and his family who, before World War I, had engaged in beekeeping on the island. There are records of other members of the armed forces producing honey there. The same word \u201cMehl,\u201d which means \u201cflour\u201d in German, may be the origin of the island's name keeping in mind that Ilha do Mel was in the past a place where a variety of goods were traded, among them flour.\nThere is another island called Ilha do Mel somewhat to the south, in the Ba\u00eda of Babitonga, in the State of Santa Catarina. Before the current name was made official, the island was called Ilha da Baleia (\u201cWhale Island\u201d) because of the design of its map, which resembles the animal.\nTransport.\n Since all types of motor vehicles are prohibited from entering the island, there are no proper streets there, only small footpaths. The only way of transportation inside Ilha do Mel is by bicycle. There are several places to rent it and no public transportation system. Transportation between the beaches of Nova Bras\u00edlia and Encantadas is done with the same boats that go to the mainland. Near the piers, boats can be taken to specific places such as the Fortress. Prices vary according to the time of year and the boat owner.\nInfrastructure.\n Ilha do Mel does not have some basic services for the populace such as hospitals or pharmacies. In the area of health, the only facility available is an emergency room near the Nova Bras\u00edlia pier, therefore, tourists are requested to bring their medicines. There are only two elementary schools on the entire island: one in the Nova Bras\u00edlia area and the other in Encantadas. The school in Encantadas takes the student up to grade four and the one in Nova Bras\u00edlia, up to grade six. From the seventh year on, pupils must take the boat to Pontal do Paran\u00e1 or Parangu\u00e1 to go to school.\nAlthough the island has received electricity for more than 20 years, there is no public lighting system in operation. Therefore, it is recommended that people bring flashlights during the evenings. Also, in the evenings, the lands of Nova Bras\u00edlia and Encantadas become incommunicable with each other. Communication options during the day are through boats or by walking between the beaches and stones-there are no paths inland. These two options are not available in the evening.\nClimate.\n Ilha do Mel is located in a transition zone between tropical and humid subtropical climate. Because of its proximity to the sea, the temperature variation during the day is not as great as in cities such as Curitiba. The same characteristic of being close to the Ocean limits the heat in summer and the cold in winter.\nThe hottest month in Ilha do Mel is January, which coincides with the vacation season for most Brazilians. The average maximum temperature is about 28 degrees, while the minimum remains around 19. Summer, however, is also the wettest season of the year. February is the month when it rains the most: nearly 300\u00a0mm.\nWinter, on the other hand, represents the dry period: July is the month with the least rain of the year: only 67\u00a0mm. The coldest month is September, at the end of winter, instead of July or June, when the lowest temperatures in Brazil are recorded. The coldest season is also the time when the island most often has fog, usually at dawn.", "24418097": "Uni\u00e3o da Ilha do Governador\nThe Gr\u00eamio Recreativo Escola de Samba Uni\u00e3o da Ilha do Governador (Recreation Guild Samba School Union of Governor's Island) was founded on March 7, 1953 by the friends Maur\u00edcio Gazelle, and Quincas Orphylo, who were in Cacuia, the main site of the carnival parade of the Ilha do Governador, watching the presentation of small schools of samba and blocks of various districts of the island. It was then decided that the neighborhood of Cacuia should be represented by a samba school. Currently, the school is based in Estrada do Gale\u00e3o in the neighborhood of Cacuia.\nHistory.\nThe Uni\u00e3o da Ilha do Governador remained some time between the second and third groups, and in 1974, were crowned champions when the second group received access to the main group from the years following.\nFrom 1977, with the theme \"Sunday\", till 1980, when they took second place with the theme \"Good, Nice and Cheap\", the Island has made a fashionable impression, with no definitive one of the samba schools more sympathetic to the judges. The school took to the parade Sapuca\u00ed light, cheap and cheerful. This would be the hallmark of the Island, held today. Their costumes are usually mild, without great splendor, making the parade for the performance. The school also can establish a good communication with the public and is considered one of the nicest of the carnival. The \"Today\" was the samba of the Island in 1978 and that same year was recorded by Elizeth Cardoso, but it was the first recording of Simone in 1983 (CD \"Delights and Delusions\" and re-recorded the live CD \"Simone\"), when she became popular.\nIn recent years, the best remembered parade of the island was in 1989. The theme song \"Party profane\" had the refrain \"I'll get drunk with happiness\" that, to date, is sung all over the country. That year, the school was in third place.\nThe last good result was obtained in 1994, with \"Abrakadabra,\" which came in fourth, their last appearance in the Parade of Champions. Since then, they have achieved good placements.\nIn 2000, with \"Not to say I did not speak of flowers\", the Island came in eighth place, addressing some of the darkest of the 500 years of Brazil: a military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985.\nIn 2001, the school won 13th place in the Special Group, and were thus lowered to Access Group A in 2002, where they had ups and downs.\nIn 2008, even without many resources, the school had a parade of claw, and revived \"\u00c9 hoje o dia\" (\"Today is the Day\"), which earned them fifth place.\nFrom 2008, the samba-school based at the Ilha do Governador neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro city, literally 2 or 3 miles from the Rio de Janeiro-Gale\u00e3o International Airport, started a professionalization process, with the introduction of a series of management techniques. A marketing department was established, the renovation of its headquarters started to gain interest (it was finalized May 2012), the financial department re-structured and a series of partnerships started to sprout. Today, Uni\u00e3o da Ilha do Governador Samba School has as one of its main partners Grupo Petr\u00f3polis, with Itaipava beer.\nIn 2009, the \"insulana\" (islander) samba-school, as it is sometimes called by its revelers, chose the parade theme \"Travel is necessary \u2013 extraordinary journeys through worlds familiar and unknown\". The carnival parade organizer Jack Vasconcelos became Carnival Champion of Group A with 239.9 points, returning after his demotion in 2001 to the so sought after Rio Carnival Special Group in 2010.\nIn 2010, as the Task Force came up with the story \"Don Quixote the knight of impossible dreams,\" the carnival organizer Rosa Magalh\u00e3es was overshadowed by just a few problems on the floats. In front of the drums came drums queen Bruna Bruno, who has been the front of the drums for years, along with Luciana Picorelli (current sponsor of the drums). They finished in 11th place, escaping relegation anew and still in the Special for Carnival 2011.\nAfter the carnival, a school that has defined its plot in 2016, before the carnival 2015. That will be on the 2016 Summer Olympics in which after the departure of Alex de Souza backed the return Paulo Menezes and Jack Vasconcelos, as carnival. and had a change of queen of battery where after 11 years ahead of the battery Bruna Bruno abdicated the throne and was replaced by Bianca Le\u00e3o. However, in a parade is shorter than the previous years, finished in 11th place.\nHowever, for 2017 the school has changed the whole team starting with the carnival producer Severo Luzardo, director of carnival Wilsinho and the mestre"}, "descending_order": ["1620875", "2067635", "43970329", "70997150", "15261847", "23145569", "61352730", "79143864", "24418097", "43360336"], "permutation_1": ["70997150", "61352730", "23145569", "43360336", "24418097", "79143864", "1620875", "2067635", "43970329", "15261847"], "permutation_2": ["43360336", "1620875", "2067635", "70997150", "23145569", "24418097", "43970329", "61352730", "15261847", "79143864"], "permutation_3": ["2067635", "70997150", "24418097", "79143864", "15261847", "43970329", "23145569", "61352730", "1620875", "43360336"]}
{"id": "2hop__444566_851569", "docs_added": {"107615": "Compton, California\nCity in California, United States\nCompton is a city located in the Gateway Cities region of southern Los Angeles County, California, United States, situated south of downtown Los Angeles. Compton is one of the oldest cities in the county, and on May 11, 1888, was the eighth city in Los Angeles County to incorporate. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total population of 95,740. It is known as the \"Hub City\" due to its alleged geographic centrality in Los Angeles County, though it is actually near the southern end of the county. Neighborhoods in Compton include Sunny Cove, Leland, downtown Compton, and Richland Farms.\nHistory.\nThe Tongva inhabited the Los Angeles Basin.\nThe Spanish Empire had expanded into this area when the Viceroy of New Spain commissioned Juan Rodr\u00edguez Cabrillo to explore the Pacific Ocean in 1542\u20131543. In 1767, the area became part of the Province of the Californias (), and the area was explored by the Portol\u00e1 expedition in 1769\u20131770. In 1784, the Spanish Crown deeded Rancho San Pedro, a tract of over , to soldier Juan Jos\u00e9 Dom\u00ednguez. Dom\u00ednguez's descendants partitioned the land amongst family members, sold parcels to newly arriving settlers, and relinquished some when validating their legal claim with the Mexican government at in 1828, and with the United States government through a patent validating in 1858. The Dom\u00ednguez family name is still applied throughout the area, including the Dominguez Rancho Adobe historical landmark, in the unincorporated community of Rancho Dominguez, located between the cities of Compton, Long Beach and Carson. The tree that marked the original northern boundary of the rancho still stands at the corner of Poppy and Short streets.\nIn 1867, Griffith Dickenson Compton led a group of 30 pioneers to the area. These families had traveled by wagon train south from Stockton, California, in search of ways to earn a living other than the rapid exhaustion of gold fields. Originally named Gibsonville, after one of the tract owners, it was later called Comptonville. However, to avoid confusion with the Camptonville located in Yuba County, the name was shortened to Compton. Compton's earliest settlers were faced with terrible hardships as they farmed the land in bleak weather to get by with just the barest subsistence. The weather continued to be harsh, rainy and cold, and fuel was difficult to find. To gather firewood it was necessary to travel to mountains close to Pasadena. The round trip took almost a week. Many in the Compton party wanted to relocate to a friendlier climate and settle down, but as there were two general stores within traveling distance\u2014one in the pueblo of Los Angeles, the other in Wilmington\u2014they eventually decided to stay put.\nBy 1887, the settlers realized it was time to make improvements to the local government. A series of town meetings were held to discuss incorporation of their little town. Griffith D. Compton donated his land to incorporate and create the city of Compton in 1889, but he did stipulate that a certain acreage be zoned solely for agriculture and named Richland Farms. In January 1888, a petition supporting the incorporation of Compton was forwarded to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, who in turn forwarded the petition to the State Legislature. On May 11, 1888, the city of Compton was incorporated with a population of 5000 people. The first City Council meeting was held on May 14, 1888.\nIn 1890, a series of votes were held by the residents of Compton, with the aim of shedding significant portions of the city. By the end of the year, Compton was down to only eighty acres of land, with five remaining voters residing within that territory. Due to the limited number of people able to fill positions within the city government, Compton effectively ceased to exist as a functioning city. By 1906, lawyers Emmett Wilson and E.T. Sherer filed suits to nullify the 1890 elections, which in turn restored Compton to a size of 600 acres. Compton was reborn, with elections held to fill open positions.\nThe ample residential lots of Richland Farms gave residents enough space to raise a family, and food to feed them, along with building a barn, and caring for livestock. The farms attracted the black families who had begun migrating from the rural South in the 1950s, and there they found their 'home away from home'. Compton could not support large-scale agricultural business, but it did give the residents the opportunity to work the land for their families.\nThe 1920s saw the opening of the Compton Airport. Compton Junior College was founded and city officials moved to a new City Hall on Alameda Street. On March 10, 1933, a destructive earthquake caused many casualties: schools were destroyed and there was major damage to the central business district. While it would eventually be home to a large black population, in 1930 there was only one black resident.\nFrom the 1920s through the early 1940s, the Compton area was home to a sizable Japanese American population, a large proportion of whom were farmers. Shortly after President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, Compton residents of Japanese descent were forcibly removed from their homes and interned for the duration of World War II. Most were initially detained at the Santa Anita Assembly Center; they were later transferred to and incarcerated at Manzanar and other internment centers, called \"Relocation Centers.\"\nIn the 1950s, middle-class black families began moving into the area, mostly on the west side. Compton grew quickly throughout the decade. This is partially due to its proximity to Watts, where there was an established black population. The eastern side of the city was predominantly white until the 1970s. Despite being located in the middle of a major metropolitan area, thanks to the legacy of Griffith D. Compton, there still remains one small pocket of agriculture from its earliest years.\nDuring the 1950s and 1960s, after the Supreme Court declared all racially exclusive housing covenants (title deeds) unconstitutional in the case \"Shelley v. Kraemer\", the first black families moved to the area. Compton's growing black population was still largely ignored and neglected by the city's elected officials. Centennial High School was finally built to accommodate a burgeoning student population. A black man first ran for City Council in 1958, and the first black councilman was elected in 1961.\nIn 1969, Douglas Dollarhide became the mayor, the first black man elected mayor of any metropolitan city in California. Two African Americans and one Mexican-American were also elected to the local school board. Four years later, in 1973, Doris A. Davis defeated Dollarhide's bid for re-election to become the first female black mayor of a metropolitan American city. By the early 1970s, the city had one of the largest concentrations of African Americans in the country, at over sixty five percent. In 2013, Aja Brown, age 31, became the city's youngest mayor to date; she was re-elected in 2017.\nFor many years, Compton was a much sought-after suburb for the black middle class of Los Angeles. This past affluence is reflected in the area's appearance: Compton's streets are lined with relatively spacious and attractive single family houses. However, several factors have contributed to Compton's gradual decline. One of the most significant factors was a steady erosion of its tax base, something that was already sparse due to limited commercial properties. In later years, there were middle-class whites who fled to the newly incorporated cities of Artesia, Bellflower, Cerritos, Paramount and Norwalk in the late 1950s. These nearby cities remained largely white early on, despite integration. This white middle class flight accelerated following the 1965 Watts Riots and the 1992 Los Angeles riots.\nBy the late 1960s, middle-class and upper-middle-class African Americans found other areas to be more attractive to them. Some were unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County such as Ladera Heights, View Park and Windsor Hills, and others were cities such as Inglewood and Carson. Carson was particularly significant, because it had successfully thwarted attempts at annexation by neighboring Compton. The city opted instead for incorporation in 1968; notably, its black population was actually more affluent than its white population. As a newer city, it also offered more favorable tax rates and lower crime.\nGeography and climate.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau's 2020 data, the city has a total area of . of it is land and of it (1.03%) is water.\nCompton is bordered by the unincorporated Willowbrook on the north and northwest, the unincorporated West Compton on the west, the city of Carson on the southwest, the unincorporated Rancho Dominguez on the south, the city of Long Beach on the southeast, the city of Paramount and the unincorporated East Compton on the east, and by the city of Lynwood on the northeast.\nEast Compton.\nEast Compton, also known as East Rancho Dominguez, is a mostly industrial unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP). The population was 15,135 according to the 2010 Census. East Rancho Dominguez is an accepted city name according to the USPS, and shares the 90221 ZIP Code with Compton. Its sphere of influence is the city of Compton, which has tried to annex East Rancho Dominguez, but business and property owners in the area have opposed the annexation. \nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nCompton first appeared as a city in the 1870 U.S. Census. \n2020 census.\nThe U.S. Census Bureau, Population Estimates Program (PEP), updated annually, reported that the City of Compton has a population of 91,988 as of its 2022 estimate. The following household information is based on 5-year census estimates between 2018 and 2022:\nNo Compton households reported speaking a non-English language at home as their primary shared language. This does not consider the potential multilingual nature of households, but only the primary self-reported language spoken by all members of the household. 83.1% of the residents of Compton are U.S. citizens.\n2010.\nThe 2010 United States census reported that Compton had a population of 96,455. The population density was . The racial makeup of Compton was 31,688 (32.9%) Black; 24,942 (25.9%) White, (0.8% Non-Hispanic White); 655 (0.7%) Native American; 292 (0.3%) Asian; 718 (0.7%) Pacific Islander; 34,914 (36.2%) from other races; and 3,246 (3.4%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 62,669 persons (65.0%).\nThe Census reported that 95,700 people (99.2% of the population) lived in households, 643 (0.7%) lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 112 (0.1%) were institutionalized.\nThere were 23,062 households, out of which 13,376 (58.0%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 10,536 (45.7%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 6,373 (27.6%) had a female householder with no husband present, 2,354 (10.2%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 1,725 (7.5%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 158 (0.7%) same-sex married couples or partnerships. 2,979 households (12.9%) were made up of individuals, and 1,224 (5.3%) had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 4.15. There were 19,263 families (83.5% of all households); the average family size was 4.41.\nThe age distribution of the population was as follows: 31,945 people (33.1%) under the age of 18, 11,901 people (12.3%) aged 18 to 24, 26,573 people (27.5%) aged 25 to 44, 18,838 people (19.5%) aged 45 to 64, and 7,198 people (7.5%) who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 28.0 years. For every 100 females, there were 94.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 90.7 males.\nThere were 24,523 housing units at an average density of , of which 12,726 (55.2%) were owner-occupied, and 10,336 (44.8%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 2.9%; the rental vacancy rate was 5.9%. 53,525 people (55.5% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 42,175 people (43.7%) lived in rental housing units.\nDuring 2009\u20132013, Compton has a median household income of $42,953, with 26.3% of the population living below the federal poverty line.\nCrime.\nFollowing the Watts riots in 1965, crime in Compton rose sharply. Although the city was largely exempt from the destruction of the 1965 riot, it prompted middle-class residents to flee over the next few years. By 1969, it had the highest crime rate in the state of California.\nIn \"Black, Brown, and White: Stories Straight Outta Compton\", Lynne Isbell and two friends from other ethnic backgrounds have written about their lives growing up in Compton during the 1960s and early 1970s. They tell how Compton changed from a mostly white town to a mostly black one and became known as \"the Murder Capital of the United States\".\nCompton's violent reputation reached the national spotlight in the late 1980s with the rise of local gangsta rap groups Compton's Most Wanted and N.W.A, the latter of whom released the album \"Straight Outta Compton\" in 1989. The city became notorious for gang violence, primarily caused by the Bloods and Crips. After years of decline in crime, Compton's murder rate skyrocketed in 2004 with racial conflicts between Blacks and Latinos.\n2005 was the city's deadliest year on record when the city murder rate reached 72 killings with a total population of 90,000 residents. The spike was the highest since 1991, when the city had more than 100,000 residents. The rise in homicides frightened residents who had long lived with high levels of gang violence but had seen a downturn in violent crime in recent years.\nIn 2013, the homicide rate was 36.8 per 100,000 residents, a decrease from the mid-2000s peak. Guns are used in the vast majority of homicides in Compton. Between 2000 and 2016, 91.5% were killed with guns compared to the national average of 67.7%. In 2015, there was a record low of 15 homicides while the homicide rate in the rest of the US increased. In recent years, homicides have increased while remaining well below the 1980s and 90s, with 32 in 2021.\nThe neighborhood lost residents with the worsening safety problems and, after the 1992 riots in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, many African Americans left the city.\nAlthough \"U.S. News & World Report\" did not list Compton in the 2011 \"11 Most Dangerous Cities\" for overall crime rates in the United States, the \"CQ Press\", using data from the FBI's annual report of crime statistics \"Crime in the United States 2010,\" which ranked Compton as having the eighth highest crime rate in the country.\nCompton experienced a drop in homicide in the late 1990s and 2000s. Crime has stabilized overall since the 2010s. The decrease in homicides has been attributed to various factors, including changing demographics, faster response times by police (reducing shots fired) and better medical care (increasing survival rates). Aja Brown, mayor elected in 2013, helped to settle turf wars between the gangs, which has further reduced the homicide rate.\nMexican and Central American immigrants have increasingly replaced African Americans who moved to safer cities.\n\"Gifts for Guns\".\nThe Los Angeles Sheriff's Department began the annual \"Gifts for Guns\" program within that same year where the citizens of Compton were given the option to turn in firearms and receive a $50\u2013$100 check for various goods in an effort to combat gun violence. People have turned in about 7,000 guns over the last few years, KABC-TV reported. The program's success has prompted the LASD to expand the program countywide.\nHomelessness.\nIn 2022, Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority's Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count counted 644 homeless individuals in Compton.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nMapping L.A..\nMexican was the most common ancestry according to the 2000 census. Mexico and El Salvador were the most common foreign places of birth in 2000.\nEconomy.\nIn 1994, Compton was designated as an \"Entrepreneurial Hot Spot\" by Cognetics, Inc., an independent economic research firm. Compton made the national list for best places to start and grow a business, and ranked #2 in Los Angeles County out of a field of 88 cities. The city's Planning and Economic Development department provides a business assistance program consisting of a comprehensive mix of resources to small business owners and entrepreneurs. The grocery chains Ralphs and Food 4 Less, subsidiaries of Kroger, are headquartered in Compton. Gelson's Market, a subsidiary of Arden Group, Inc., a holding company, is also based there.\nCompton is surrounded by multiple freeways that provide access to destinations throughout the region. The Long Beach and Los Angeles Ports are less than 20 minutes from downtown Compton, providing access to international destinations for customers and suppliers. The Alameda Corridor, a passageway for 25% of all U.S. waterborne international trade, runs directly through Compton from north to south.\nThe City of Compton's Parks and Recreation Department operates and maintains a total of 16 playgrounds for a combined of active park space. Facilities include six community centers, seven neighborhood parks, two walking parks, two competition-size swimming pools, three regulation size gymnasiums, a skate park, Jackie Robinson Baseball Stadium, Nine-Hole Par 3 Golf Course, and the two-story Douglas F. Dollarhide Community Center.\nArts and culture.\nSome episodes of the sitcom \"The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air\" took place in Compton because Will Smith's friend, DJ Jazzy Jeff, lived there. Many rap artists' careers started in Compton, including N.W.A (Eazy-E, MC Ren, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, DJ Yella), Coolio, DJ Quik, 2nd II None, Hi-C, Tweedy Bird Loc, The Game, Kendrick Lamar, YG, Vince Staples, Roddy Ricch, and Compton's Most Wanted. In their lyrics, they rap about the streets and their lives in Compton and the areas nearby. Steve Lacy and Blues musician Keb' Mo' are also from Compton.\nCompton has been referred to on numerous occasions in gang affiliation, gangsta rap and g-funk songs, especially in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, and so has attained an association not only with gang violence and crime, but with hip hop music as well. The city is known as the home of many famous rappers. The Compton Swap Meet is featured prominently in the remix version of the 1995 #1 song California Love.<br>\n<br>Championed by the Compton Entertainment Chamber of Commerce, the city of Compton honored Musical Entertainer rapper Eazy-E, with a symbolic street in his stage name. On November 22, 2023, the 100 block of Auto Drive South, which runs off Alameda Street and into the Gateway Towne Center shopping plaza was renamed to Eazy Street. It is also a reference to a song of the same name.<br>\n<br>Eazy-E grew into the music industry as part the N.W.A group that spawned hip hop icons, such as Easy-E, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Mc Ren, DJ Yella and many others. In 1989, N.W.A released the colossal hit song Straight Outta Compton, which is the incontestable communicable global catchphrase for the City of Compton. [Eric Lynn Wright, was born September 7, 1964, in Compton, and passed away March 26, 1995.]\nMany NBA players attended high school in the city as well. Arron Afflalo attended Centennial High School; DeMar DeRozan attended Compton High School; and Tayshaun Prince, Tyson Chandler, Brandon Jennings, Cedric Ceballos and the late Dennis Johnson attended Dominguez High. Actor/comedian Paul Rodriguez Sr. also attended Dominguez High.\nAlthough an inner suburb of Los Angeles, Compton has seen an increase of middle-class residents in the last few years, due to its affordable housing. With the influx of immigrants and the demographic shift in ethnic population, it was after the 2000 U.S. Census that Latinos were recognized as the majority.\nCompton has evolved into a younger population; the median age of people living in Compton was 25 at the time of the census survey in 2010; the United States average at the time was 35.3.\nCompton is home to the Compton Cricket Club, the only all American-born exhibition cricket team. Its founder, Ted Hayes, said, \"The aim of playing cricket is to teach people how to respect themselves and respect authority so they stop killing each other.\" Tam's Burgers has been seen as a symbol of the city.\nHistorical landmarks.\nAngeles Abbey Memorial Park contains examples of Byzantine, Moorish and Spanish architectural styles. The cemetery was built in 1923 and survived the 1933 Long Beach earthquake.\nCompton Airport opened on May 10, 1924. Located on Alondra Boulevard, the airport offers flight training, has accommodations for more than 200 planes, and is home to several aviation clubs.\nThe Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial sits in a plaza surrounded by the Civic Center, Compton Court House, Compton City Hall, and Compton Public Library.\nThe Eagle Tree is a natural boundary marker of Rancho San Pedro dating to 1858. It contains a historic marker and plaque placed by the Daughters of the Golden West in 1947.\nThe 'Heritage House' was built in 1869 and is a California Historical Landmark, and a Los Angeles County Historic Landmark. The oldest house in Compton, it was restored as a tribute to early settlers. It is an important landmark of Compton's rich history. At the corner of Myrrh and Willowbrook near the Civic Center Plaza, the Heritage House is a rustic-looking home that will eventually have a museum detailing early life in Compton. For now it shows the stark difference between the simple life of the 19th century and the fast-paced urban environment of the 21st. The oldest tree in Compton was the Eagle Tree, which marked the boundary of Rancho San Pedro. It fell in 2022.\nWoodlawn Memorial Park contains the graves of 17 American Civil War veterans.\nGovernment.\nMunicipal government.\nAfter Lionel Cade, an accountant, assumed the mayor's office in 1977, one of the first orders of business was to conduct an audit of the city's finances. It was discovered that the city was $2 million in debt. The administration was able to eliminate the huge deficit in one year by making cuts in every department. It also aggressively sought federal funding to help pay for essential services, which was at least partially effective. However, with the passage of the property tax cutting initiative Proposition 13 by California voters, Compton was one of the cities hardest hit, since it had already eliminated most of the excess from its budget.\nCorruption.\nCivic corruption has also been a widespread problem in Compton. \nIn 2000, the Compton Police Department was disbanded amidst controversy and charges of corruption. The police department claims it was disbanded after investigations of gang activity led to then-Compton Mayor Omar Bradley. Once this became public, the mayor charged it was the police who were themselves corrupt, and he disbanded the police department. Omar Bradley has since faced serious corruption charges. \nEric J. Perrodin, the city's former mayor, was investigated in 2007 by the California State Bar for threatening to violate a local newspaper's First Amendment rights after the paper printed an investigative report relative to a contract granted to one of Perrodin's associates. Following the report, Perrodin threatened to yank the city's advertising contract with the paper. A Times review of city records shows Perrodin was absent from city board and commission meetings nearly two-thirds of the time between July 2009 and July 2010.\nCurrent recall efforts are a direct response from residents of the accusations of corruption of the city's mayor and council. Some of the accusations involve the issuing of city contracts to personal donors and friends. One particular accusation involved the trash and recycling contract of the city to Pacific Coast Waste and Recycling LLC in 2007.\nNotices of intent to circulate recall petitions against four Compton city officials are expected to be filed in August 2010, by a group of citizens who claim corruption in Compton is being ignored by the same authorities who were shocked by the recent salary controversy in the city of Bell.\nCompton had discharged its city manager, in 2010, the second time in three years. \"The Los Angeles Times\" says the City Council voted in a closed meeting, September 9, 2010, to fire Charles Evans. \"The Times\" says council members refused to discuss the reasons for their decision. Evans took office in 2007, after the dismissal of previous City Manager Barbara Kilroy. City Controller Willie Norfleet will take over until a permanent manager can be named.\nIn July 2021, U.S. Representative Maxine Waters called for a Department of Justice inquiry into whether a deputy gang called the Executioners was operating out of the Compton station of the LASD.\nState and federal representation.\nIn the state legislature, Compton is in the Senate District, represented by Democrat Laura Richardson, and in the Assembly District, represented by Democrat Mike Gipson.\nIn the U.S. House of Representatives, Compton is in California's congressional district, represented by Democrat Maxine Waters.\nEducation.\nThe city is served by Compton Unified School District. All of Compton is in CUSD, except for a small sliver of land in the Paramount Unified School District. The CUSD district is a participant of the FOCUS program conducted by the University of California, Irvine. The goals of the program are to improve mathematics and science achievement by uniting the efforts of mathematics, science, education and research library faculty and staff with educators of the school district.\nThe CUSD provides public education for grades K\u201312. The district operates 24 elementary schools, eight middle schools, three high schools, and one adult school, which also serves as an alternative school. The district maintains five alternative learning schools.\nThe four high schools of the CUSD are Centennial High School, Compton Early College High School, Dominguez High School, and Compton High School.\nThe city is also served by Compton College, which offers community college courses for those planning to enter a four-year degree program, as well as those seeking further education in specific trade fields.\nThe Compton Library offers adult, children's and Spanish language materials; reference services; a Literacy Center and a Homework Center; public computers with Internet access and word processing capabilities; public typewriters; and a bilingual story time every Saturday at 12:00 noon.\nOccidental's Center for Food and Justice and its Compton Farm-to-School project were featured in a segment of \"Life and Times\", a half-hour news program on PBS member television station KCET in Los Angeles.\nBarack Obama Charter School is a kindergarten through sixth grade public charter school.\nInfrastructure.\nThe Los Angeles County Department of Health Services operates the South Health Center in Watts, Los Angeles, serving Compton.\nThe United States Postal Service operates the Compton Post Office at 701 South Santa Fe Avenue, the Hub City Post Office at 101 South Willowbrook Avenue, and the Fashion Square Post Office at 2100 North Long Beach Boulevard. \nLaw enforcement.\nThe Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department operates the Compton Station in Compton. When the LASD replaced the Compton Police Department in 2000, they increased patrol service hours from 127,410 to 141,692. Compton Station is centrally located in the Los Angeles area. The station is easily accessible from the Century Freeway (I-105) to the north, the Gardena Freeway (SR-91) to the south, the Harbor Freeway (I-110) to the west, and the Long Beach Freeway (I-710) to the east. Diane Walker, a 30-year veteran of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, was promoted to the rank of captain by Sheriff Lee Baca, and is now commander of Compton Station. There is also a LASD substation located in the Gateway Town Center.\nTransportation.\nFour freeways are within or near the city's boundaries and provide access to destinations throughout the region. Interstate 710 runs through the eastern boundary, State Route 91 runs through the southern boundary. Interstate 105 runs slightly along the north of the city, and Interstate 110 along to the west.\nThe Metro A Line (formerly the Blue Line) light rail runs north\u2013south through Compton. Compton station is in the heart of the city, adjacent to the Renaissance Shopping Center. Artesia station serves the southern part of the city. The A Line connects Compton to downtown Los Angeles and downtown Long Beach.\nThere is also a Compton Renaissance Transit System that serves the area.\nCompton/Woodley Airport is a small general aviation airport located in the city. The airport lies within busy airspace, as it is situated within a few miles of both Los Angeles International Airport and Long Beach Airport.\nGreyhound Lines operates the Compton station.\nCollectively, these multifaceted transportation links lend justification to the city's familiar nickname of \"the Hub City.\"\nFrom 1902 to 1961, Compton was served by the Pacific Electric Long Beach Line.\nSister cities.\nOn January 19, 2010, the Compton City Council passed a resolution creating a sister cities program, to be managed as a chapter of the Compton Chamber of Commerce. The city has established partnerships:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "34172818": "Van C. Gessel\nAmerican academic\nVan Craig Gessel (born August 1, 1950, Compton, California) is a former Dean of the BYU College of Humanities at Brigham Young University. He also served as chair of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages at BYU. He has become renowned for his work as the primary translator for Japanese novelist Endo Shusaku. He is also a co-editor of several Japanese translations including \"The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature\" (Volume 1 published in 2005, Volume 2 in 2007).\nBiography.\nGessel is a graduate of the University of Utah from which he received a bachelor's degree and Columbia University from which he received a PhD in Japanese literature in 1979. He has taught as a faculty member at Columbia University, Notre Dame, UC Berkeley, and Brigham Young University. He has served as a bishop, stake president, and the president of the Portland, Oregon Mission (2005-2008) of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Gessel and his wife Elizabeth have three children. In 2016, Gessel received a rare commendation from the Foreign Minister of Japan for \"outstanding contributions to mutual understanding and goodwill between Japan and other nations\". On April 29, 2018, Gessel was honored by the Emperor of Japan with the Order of the Rising Sun for his outstanding work in Japanese literature, promoting mutual understanding between the United States and Japan. Gessel was awarded the Lindsley and Masao Miyoshi Translation Prize in 2020-2021 for lifetime achievement as a translator of modern Japanese fiction.\nAs the primary translator for novelist Endo Shusaku Gessel has translated nine novels/story collections from Japanese to English and consulted on the adaptation film by Martin Scorsese, \"Silence\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "53794712": "Ira Gessel\nAmerican mathematician (born 1951)\nIra Martin Gessel (born 9 April 1951 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American mathematician, known for his work in combinatorics. He is a long-time faculty member at Brandeis University and resides in Arlington, Massachusetts.\nEducation and career.\nGessel studied at Harvard University graduating \"magna cum laude\" in 1973. There, he became a Putnam Fellow in 1972, alongside Arthur Rubin and David Vogan.\nHe received his Ph.D. at MIT and was the first student of Richard P. Stanley. He was then a postdoctoral fellow at the IBM Watson Research Center and MIT. He then joined Brandeis University faculty in 1984. He was promoted to Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science in 1990, became a chair in 1996\u201398, and Professor Emeritus in 2015.\nGessel is a prolific contributor to enumerative and algebraic combinatorics. He is credited with the invention of quasisymmetric functions in 1984 and foundational work on the Lagrange inversion theorem. As of 2017, Gessel was an advisor of 27 Ph.D. students.\nGessel was elected a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society in the inaugural class of 2012. Since 2015, he is an Associate Editor of the \"Digital Library of Mathematical Functions\".\nGessel's lattice path conjecture.\nGessel has made significant contributions to an area in combinatorics known as lattice walks, which usually take place on the integer lattice and are sometimes confined to the upper right quadrant. An excursion is a lattice walk which starts at the origin and returns to the origin. A lattice excursion in the upper right quadrant with four possible steps, up, down, northeast, and southwest, is now known as a Gessel excursion. \nBy 2001 Gessel had noted empirically, and conjectured, that the number of Gessel excursions with 2n steps admit a simple hypergeometric closed form. This closed form counting function equation became known as Gessel's lattice path conjecture. A computer aided proof of Gessel's conjecture by Manuel Kauers, Christoph Koutschan, and Doron Zeilberger, was published in 200"}, "descending_order": ["53794712", "34172818", "107615"], "permutation_1": ["34172818", "107615", "53794712"], "permutation_2": ["53794712", "34172818", "107615"], "permutation_3": ["34172818", "53794712", "107615"]}
{"id": "2hop__468121_62776", "docs_added": {"3382": "Britney Spears\nAmerican singer (born 1981)\nBritney Jean Spears (born December 2, 1981) is an American singer. Often referred to as the \"Princess of Pop\", she has sold over 150 million records worldwide, making her one of the world's best-selling music artists. An influential figure in popular music, Spears became the best-selling teenage artist of all time, credited with the revival of teen pop during the late 1990s and early 2000s.\nSpears was born in McComb, Mississippi. After appearing in the television shows \"Star Search\" and \"The Mickey Mouse Club\", Spears signed with Jive Records in 1997 at age 15. Her first two studio albums, \"...Baby One More Time\" (1999) and \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" (2000), are among the best-selling albums of all time. She adopted a more mature and provocative style for her albums \"Britney\" (2001) and \"In the Zone\" (2003). Spears was the executive producer of her fifth studio album, \"Blackout\" (2007), often referred to as her best work. She returned to the top of the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200 chart with the albums \"Circus\" (2008) and \"Femme Fatale\" (2011), and embarked on a four-year concert residency, (2013\u20132017), to promote her next two albums, \"Britney Jean\" (2013) and \"Glory\" (2016). Spears' catalog of high-charting singles includes \"...Baby One More Time\", \"Oops!... I Did It Again\", \"I'm a Slave 4 U\", \"Toxic\", \"Gimme More\", \"Womanizer\", \"3\", \"Hold It Against Me\", and \"Scream & Shout\".\nSpears' life, including her high-profile relationships and personal struggles during the 2000s, received widespread media coverage. In 2008, she was involuntarily placed in a conservatorship following a highly publicized breakdown. In 2019, her legal battle over her conservatorship led to the establishment of the #FreeBritney movement and a release of the documentary \"Framing Britney Spears\" (2021). The conservatorship was terminated in 2021, following her public testimony in which she accused her management team and family of abuse. Spears' 2023 memoir, \"The Woman in Me\", reached number one on \"The New York Times\" Best Seller list in its first week of release. Her other ventures include starring in the film \"Crossroads\" (2002) and launching numerous products, with her 2005 fragrance Fantasy with Elizabeth Arden, Inc. generating over $1.5 billion in sales.\nIn the United States, Spears is the fourth best-selling female album artist of the Nielsen SoundScan era, as well as the best-selling female album artist of the 2000s. Her accolades include a Grammy Award, 15 Guinness World Records, six MTV Video Music Awards, seven \"Billboard\" Music Awards (including the Millennium Award), the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. \"Billboard\" ranked her sixth on their list of the Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century. \"...Baby One More Time\" was named the greatest debut single of all time by \"Rolling Stone\" in 2020. \"Forbes\" listed Spears as the world's highest-paid female musician in 2001 and 2012. By 2012, she had topped Yahoo!'s list of most searched celebrities seven times in twelve years. \"Time\" named Spears one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2021, placing first in the reader poll.\nLife and career.\n1981\u20131997: Early life, family, and career beginnings.\nBritney Jean Spears was born on December 2, 1981, in McComb, Mississippi, the second child of James \"Jamie\" Parnell Spears and Lynne Irene Bridges. Her maternal grandmother, Lillian Portell, was English and born in London, and one of Spears' maternal great-grandfathers was Maltese. Her siblings are Bryan James Spears and Jamie Lynn Spears.\nBorn in the Bible Belt, where socially conservative evangelical Protestantism is a particularly strong religious influence, she was baptized as a Southern Baptist and sang in a church choir as a child. As an adult, she has studied Kabbalist teachings. On August 5, 2021, Spears announced that she had converted to Catholicism. Her mother, sister, and nieces Maddie Aldridge and Ivey Joan Watson, are also Catholic. However, on September 5, 2022, after Spears' ex-husband, Kevin Federline, and youngest son did an interview defending her father's actions during her conservatorship, she stated: \"I don't believe in God anymore because of the way my children and my family have treated me. There is nothing to believe in anymore. I'm an atheist y'all\".\nAt age three, Spears began attending dance lessons in her hometown of Kentwood, Louisiana, and was selected to perform as a solo artist at the annual recital. Aged five she made her local stage debut, singing \"What Child Is This?\" at her kindergarten graduation. During her childhood, she also had gymnastics and voice lessons and won many state-level competitions and children's talent shows. In gymnastics, Spears attended B\u00e9la K\u00e1rolyi's training camp. She said of her ambition as a child, \"I was in my own world,\u00a0... I found out what I'm supposed to do at an early age\".\nWhen Spears was eight, she and her mother Lynne traveled to Atlanta, Georgia, to audition for the 1990s revival of \"The Mickey Mouse Club\". Casting director Matt Casella rejected her as too young, but introduced her to Nancy Carson, a New York City talent agent. Carson was impressed with Spears' singing and suggested enrolling her at the Professional Performing Arts School.\nSpears was hired for her first professional role as the understudy for the lead role of Tina Denmark in the off-Broadway musical \"Ruthless!\" She also appeared as a contestant on the popular television show \"Star Search\" and was cast in a number of commercials. In December 1992, she was cast in \"The All-New Mickey Mouse Club\". Other fellow cast members included Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, Ryan Gosling, Keri Russell, and JC Chasez. After the show was canceled in 1994, she returned to Mississippi and enrolled at McComb's Parklane Academy. Although she made friends with most of her classmates, she compared the school to \"the opening scene in \"Clueless\" with all the cliques.\u00a0... I was so bored. I was the point guard on the basketball team. I had my boyfriend, and I went to homecoming and Christmas formal. But I wanted more.\"\nIn June 1997, Spears was in talks with manager Lou Pearlman to join the female pop group Innosense. Lynne asked family friend and entertainment lawyer Larry Rudolph for his opinion and submitted a tape of Spears singing over a Whitney Houston karaoke song along with some pictures. Rudolph decided that he wanted to pitch her to record labels, for which she needed a professional demo made. He sent Spears an unused song of Toni Braxton; she rehearsed for a week and recorded her vocals in a studio. Spears traveled to New York with the demo and met with executives from four labels, returning to Kentwood the same day. Three of the labels rejected her, saying that audiences wanted pop bands such as the Backstreet Boys and the Spice Girls, and \"there wasn't going to be another Madonna, another Debbie Gibson, or another Tiffany.\"\nTwo weeks later, executives from Jive Records returned calls to Rudolph. Senior vice president of A&R Jeff Fenster said about Spears' audition that \"it's very rare to hear someone that age who can deliver emotional content and commercial appeal\u00a0... For any artist, the motivation\u2014the 'eye of the tiger'\u2014is extremely important. And Britney had that.\" Spears sang Houston's \"I Have Nothing\" (1992) for the executives, and was subsequently signed to the label. They assigned her to work with producer Eric Foster White for a month; he reportedly shaped her voice from \"lower and less poppy\" delivery to \"distinctively, unmistakably Britney\". After hearing the recorded material, president Clive Calder ordered a full album. Spears had originally envisioned \"Sheryl Crow music, but younger; more adult contemporary\". She felt secure with her label's appointment of producers, since \"It made more sense to go pop, because I can dance to it\u2014it's more me.\" She flew to Cheiron Studios in Stockholm, Sweden, where half of the album was recorded from March to April 1998, with producers Max Martin, Denniz Pop, and Rami Yacoub, among others.\n1998\u20132000: \"...Baby One More Time\" and \"Oops!... I Did It Again\".\nAfter Spears returned to the United States, she embarked on a shopping mall promotional tour, titled L'Oreal Hair Zone Mall Tour, to promote her upcoming debut album. Her show was a four-song set and she was accompanied by two back-up dancers. Her first concert tour followed, as an opening act for NSYNC. Her debut studio album, \"...Baby One More Time\", was released on January 12, 1999. It debuted at number one on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200 and was certified two-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America after a month. Worldwide, the album topped the charts in fifteen countries and sold over 10 million copies in a year. It became the biggest-selling album ever by a teenage artist.\n\"...Baby One More Time\" was released as the lead single from the album on September 29, 1998. Originally, Jive Records wanted the associated music video to be animated; however, Spears rejected this idea, and suggested the final concept of a Catholic schoolgirl. The single peaked at number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, topping the chart for two consecutive weeks in January\u2013February 1999. It sold more than 10 million copies, making it one of the best-selling singles of all time. \"...Baby One More Time\" later received a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. The title track also topped the singles chart for two weeks in the United Kingdom, and became the fastest-selling single ever by a female artist, shipping over 460,000 copies. It would later become the 25th-most successful song of all time in British chart history. Spears is the youngest female artist to have a million seller in the UK. The album's third single, \"(You Drive Me) Crazy\", became a top-ten hit worldwide and further propelled the success of the \"...Baby One More Time\" album. The album has sold 30 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. It is the best-selling debut album by any artist.\nOn June 28, 1999, Spears began her first headlining ...Baby One More Time Tour in North America, which was positively received by critics. It also generated some controversy due to her racy outfits. An extension of the tour, titled (You Drive Me) Crazy Tour, followed in March 2000. Spears premiered songs from her upcoming second album during the show.\n\"Oops!... I Did It Again\", Spears' second studio album, was released in May 2000. It debuted at number one in the US, selling 1.3 million copies, breaking the Nielsen SoundScan record for the highest debut sales by any solo artist. It has sold over 20 million copies worldwide to date, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. Rob Sheffield of \"Rolling Stone\" said that \"the great thing about \"Oops!\"\u00a0\u2013 under the cheese surface, Britney's demand for satisfaction is complex, fierce and downright scary, making her a true child of rock & roll tradition.\" The album's lead single, \"Oops!... I Did It Again\", peaked at the top of the charts in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and many other European nations, while the second single, \"Lucky\", peaked at number one in Austria, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland. The album as well as the title track received Grammy nominations for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, respectively.\nThe same year, Spears embarked on the Oops!... I Did It Again Tour, which grossed $40.5 million; she also released her first book, \"Britney Spears' Heart to Heart\", co-written with her mother. On September 7, 2000, Spears performed at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards. Halfway through the performance, she ripped off her black suit to reveal a sequined flesh-colored bodysuit, followed by heavy dance routine. It is noted by critics as the moment that Spears showed signs of becoming a more provocative performer. Amidst media speculation, Spears confirmed she was dating NSYNC member Justin Timberlake. Spears and Timberlake both graduated from high school via distance learning from the University of Nebraska High School. She also bought a home in Destin, Florida. In her 2023 memoir, Spears revealed that she had an abortion in late 2000 while dating Timberlake after he said they were not prepared for parenthood. Spears called the abortion \"one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.\"\n2001\u20132002: \"Britney\" and \"Crossroads\".\nIn January 2001, Spears hosted the 28th Annual American Music Awards, starred at Rock in Rio alongside NSYNC, and performed as a special guest in the Super Bowl XXXV halftime show headlined by Aerosmith and NSYNC. In February 2001, she signed a $7\u20138 million promotional deal with Pepsi, and released another book co-written with her mother, \"A Mother's Gift\". Her third studio album, \"Britney\", was released in November 2001, with a funkier sound inspired by hip hop artists such as Jay-Z and the Neptunes. \"Britney\" debuted at number one in the \"Billboard\" 200 and reached top five positions in Australia, the United Kingdom, and mainland Europe, and has sold 10 million copies worldwide.\nStephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic called \"Britney\" \"the record where she strives to deepen her persona, making it more adult while still recognizably Britney.\u00a0... It does sound like the work of a star who has now found and refined her voice, resulting in her best record yet.\" It was nominated for the Grammy awards for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for \"Overprotected\", and in 2007 it was named one of the best albums of the preceding 25 years by \"Entertainment Weekly\". The lead single, \"I'm a Slave 4 U\", became a top-ten hit in several countries.\nSpears' performance of the single at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards featured a caged tiger (wrangled by Bhagavan Antle) and a large albino python draped over her shoulders. It was harshly received by animal rights organization PETA, who claimed the animals were mistreated and scrapped plans for an anti-fur billboard that was to feature Spears. Jocelyn Vena of MTV News summarized Spears' performance at the ceremony, saying, \"draping herself in a white python and slithering around a steamy garden setting \u2013 surrounded by dancers in zebra and tiger outfits \u2013 Spears created one of the most striking visuals in the 27-year history of the show.\"\nTo support the album, Spears embarked on the Dream Within a Dream Tour. The show was critically praised for its technical innovations, the \"pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance\" being a water screen that pumped two tons of water into the stage. The tour grossed $53.3 million, becoming the second highest-grossing tour of 2002 by a female artist, behind Cher's . Her career success was highlighted by \"Forbes\" in 2002, as Spears was ranked the world's most powerful celebrity. Spears also landed her first starring role in \"Crossroads\", released in February 2002. Although the film was largely panned, critics praised Spears' acting. The film was a box office success, grossing over $61.1 million worldwide on a $12 million budget.\nIn June 2002, Spears opened her first restaurant, Nyla, in New York City, but terminated her relationship in November due to mismanagement and \"management's failure to keep her fully apprised\". In July 2002, Spears announced she would take a six-month break from her career; however, she went back into the studio in November to record her new album. Spears' relationship with Justin Timberlake ended after three years. In November 2002, Timberlake released the song \"Cry Me a River\" as the second single from his solo debut album. The music video featured a Spears look-alike and fueled the rumors that she had been engaging in an affair, fueled by further rumors of possible relationships involving Timberlake's choreographer Wade Robson and Limp Bizkit's frontman Fred Durst. Spears had initially denied the allegations of a possible affair involving Durst, despite the two being spotted together on multiple occasions; even claiming the two had a friendly connection. In 2023, she admitted to engaging in an affair with Robson. As a response, Spears wrote the ballad \"Everytime\" with her backing vocalist and friend Annet Artani.\n2003\u20132005: \"In the Zone\" and first two marriages.\nIn August 2003, Spears opened the MTV Video Music Awards with Christina Aguilera, performing \"Like a Virgin\". Halfway through they were joined by Madonna, whom they both kissed. The incident was highly publicized. In 2008, MTV listed the performance as the number-one opening moment in the history of MTV Video Music Awards, while \"Blender\" cited it as one of the 25 sexiest music moments on television history.\nSpears released her fourth studio album, \"In the Zone\", in November 2003. She assumed more creative control by writing and co-producing most of the material. \"Vibe\" called it \"a supremely confident dance record that also illustrates Spears' development as a songwriter\". NPR named it one of the most important recordings of the decade, writing that \"the decade's history of impeccably crafted pop is written on her body of work\". \"In the Zone\" sold over 609,000 copies during its first week of availability in the United States, debuting at the top of the charts, making Spears the first female artist in the SoundScan era to have her first four studio albums to debut at number one. It also debuted at the top of the charts in France and the top ten in Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands. The album produced four singles: \"Me Against the Music\", a collaboration with Madonna; \"Toxic\"\u2014which won Spears her first Grammy for Best Dance Recording; \"Everytime\", and \"Outrageous\".\nIn January 2004, Spears married her childhood friend <templatestyles src=\"Template:Visible anchor/styles.css\" />Jason Allen Alexander at A Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada. The marriage was annulled 55 hours later, following a petition to the court that stated that Spears \"lacked understanding of her actions\".\nIn March 2004, Spears embarked on the Onyx Hotel Tour in support of \"In the Zone\". The tour was canceled in June 2004, when she fell and injured her left knee during the music video shoot for \"Outrageous\". She underwent arthroscopic surgery and wore a thigh brace for six weeks, followed by eight to twelve weeks of rehabilitation. That year, Spears became involved in the Kabbalah Centre through her friendship with Madonna.\nIn July 2004, Spears became engaged to dancer Kevin Federline, whom she had met three months earlier. The romance was the subject of intense media attention, since Federline had recently broken up with actress Shar Jackson, who was still pregnant with their second child at the time. The stages of their relationship were chronicled in Spears' first reality show \"\", which premiered on May 17, 2005, on UPN. Spears later referred to the show in a 2013 interview as \"probably the worst thing I've done in my career\". They held a wedding ceremony on September 18, 2004, but were not legally married until three weeks later on October 6 due to a delay finalizing the couple's prenuptial agreement.\nShortly after, she released her first perfume, Curious, with Elizabeth Arden, which broke the company's first-week gross for a perfume. In October 2004, Spears took a career break to start a family. ', her first greatest hits compilation album, was released in November 2004. Spears' cover version of Bobby Brown's \"My Prerogative\" was released as the lead single from the album, reaching the top of the charts in Finland, Ireland, Italy, and Norway. The second single, \"Do Somethin'\", was a top ten hit in Australia, the United Kingdom, and other countries of mainland Europe. In August 2005, Spears released \"Someday (I Will Understand)\", which was dedicated to her first child, a son named Sean Preston, who was born the following month. In November 2005, she released her first remix compilation, ', which consists of 11 remixes.\n2006\u20132007: Personal struggles and \"Blackout\".\nIn February 2006, pictures surfaced of Spears driving with her son, Sean, on her lap instead of in a car seat. Child advocates were horrified by the photos of her holding the wheel with one hand and Sean with the other. Spears claimed that the situation happened because of a frightening encounter with paparazzi, and that it was a mistake on her part. The following month, she guest-starred on the \"Will & Grace\" episode \"Buy, Buy Baby\" as closeted lesbian Amber-Louise. She announced she no longer studied Kabbalah in May 2006, explaining, \"my baby is my religion\". Spears posed nude for the August 2006 cover of \"Harper's Bazaar\"; the photograph was compared to Demi Moore's August 1991 \"Vanity Fair\" cover. In September 2006, she gave birth to her second son, Jayden James. In November 2006, Spears filed for divorce from Federline, citing irreconcilable differences. Their divorce was finalized in July 2007, when the two reached a global settlement and agreed to share joint custody of their sons.\nSpears' maternal aunt Sandra Bridges Covington, with whom she had been very close, died of ovarian cancer in January 2007. In February, Spears stayed in a drug rehabilitation facility in Antigua for less than a day. The following night, she shaved her head with electric clippers at a hair salon in Tarzana, Los Angeles. She admitted herself to other treatment facilities during the following weeks. In May 2007, she produced a series of promotional concerts at House of Blues venues, titled The M+M's Tour. In October 2007, Spears lost physical custody of her sons to Federline. The reasons of the court ruling were not revealed to the public. Spears was also sued by Louis Vuitton over her 2005 music video \"Do Somethin'\" for upholstering her Hummer interior in counterfeit Louis Vuitton cherry blossom fabric, which resulted in the video being banned on European TV stations.\nIn October 2007, Spears released her fifth studio album, \"Blackout\". The album debuted atop the charts in Canada and Ireland, at number two in the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200, France, Japan, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, and the top ten in Australia, South Korea, New Zealand, and many European nations. In the United States, it was Spears' first album not to debut at number one, although, she did become the only female artist to have her first five studio albums debut at the two top slots of the chart. The album received positive reviews from critics and had sold 3.1 million copies worldwide by the end of 2008. \"Blackout\" won Album of the Year at the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards and was listed as the fifth Best Pop Album of the Decade by \"The Times\".\nSpears performed the lead single, \"Gimme More\", at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards. The performance was widely panned by critics. Despite the criticism, the single enjoyed worldwide success, peaking at number one in Canada and within the top ten in almost every country it charted. The second single, \"Piece of Me\", reached the top of the charts in Ireland and reached the top five in Australia, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The third single, \"Break the Ice\", was released the following year, and respectively reached numbers seven and nine in Ireland and Canada. In December 2007, Spears began a relationship with paparazzo Adnan Ghalib.\n2008\u20132010: Conservatorship and \"Circus\".\nIn January 2008, Spears refused to relinquish custody of her sons to Federline's representatives. She was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after police that had arrived at her house noted she appeared to be under the influence of an unidentified substance. The following day, Spears' visitation rights were suspended at an emergency court hearing, and Federline was given sole physical and legal custody of their sons. She was committed to the psychiatric ward of Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and put on 5150 involuntary psychiatric hold under California state law. The court placed her under a conservatorship led by her father, Jamie Spears, and attorney Andrew Wallet, giving them complete control of her assets. She was released five days later.\nThe following month, Spears guest-starred on the \"How I Met Your Mother\" episode \"Ten Sessions\" as receptionist Abby. She received positive reviews for her performance, as well as bringing the series its highest ratings ever. In July 2008, Spears regained some visitation rights after coming to an agreement with Federline and his counsel. In September 2008, Spears opened the MTV Video Music Awards with a pre-taped comedy sketch with Jonah Hill and an introduction speech. She won Best Female Video, Best Pop Video, and Video of the Year for \"Piece of Me\". A 60-minute introspective documentary, \"\", was produced to chronicle Spears' return to the recording industry. Directed by Phil Griffin, \"For the Record\" was shot in Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and New York City during the third quarter of 2008. The documentary was broadcast on MTV to 5.6 million viewers for the two airings on the premiere night. It was the highest rating in its Sunday night timeslot and in the network's history. \nIn December 2008, Spears' sixth studio album, \"Circus\", was released. It received positive reviews from critics and debuted at number one in Canada, Czech Republic, and the United States, and within the top ten in many European nations. In the United States, Spears became the youngest female artist to have five albums debut at number one, earning a place in \"Guinness World Records\". She also became the only act in the SoundScan era to have four albums debut with 500,000 or more copies sold. The album was one of the fastest-selling albums of the year, and has sold 4 million copies worldwide. Its lead single, \"Womanizer\", became Spears' first chart-topper on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 since \"...Baby One More Time\". The single also topped the charts in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Norway, and Sweden. It was also nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording.\nIn January 2009, Spears and her father obtained a restraining order against her former manager Sam Lutfi, ex-boyfriend Adnan Ghalib, and attorney Jon Eardley, all of whom had been accused of conspiring to gain control of Spears' affairs. Spears embarked on The Circus Starring Britney Spears tour in March 2009. With a gross of U.S. $131.8 million, it became the fifth highest-grossing tour of the year. In November 2009, Spears released her second greatest hits album, \"The Singles Collection\". The album's lead and only single, \"3\", became her third number-one single in the U.S.\nIn May 2010, Spears' representatives confirmed she was dating her agent, Jason Trawick, and that they had decided to end their professional relationship to focus on their personal relationship. Spears designed a limited edition clothing line for Candie's, which was released in stores in July 2010. In September 2010, she made a cameo appearance on a Spears-themed tribute episode of the television series \"Glee\", titled \"Britney/Brittany\"; the episode drew the highest Nielsen rating\u00a0\u2013 up to that point in the series's run\u00a0\u2013 in the 18\u201349 demographic.\n2011\u20132012: \"Femme Fatale\" and \"The X Factor\".\nIn March 2011, Spears released her seventh studio album, \"Femme Fatale\". The album peaked at number one in the United States, Canada, and Australia, and within the top ten on nearly every other chart. Its peak in the United States tied Spears with Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson for the third-most number ones among women. \"Femme Fatale\" has been certified platinum by the RIAA and as of February 2014, it had sold 2.4 million copies worldwide.\nThe album's lead single, \"Hold It Against Me\", debuted atop the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, becoming Spears' fourth number-one single on the chart and making her the second artist in history to have two consecutive singles debut at number one, after Mariah Carey. The second single, \"Till the World Ends\", peaked at number three on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 in May, while the third single, \"I Wanna Go\", reached number seven in August. \"Femme Fatale\" became Spears' first album in which three of its songs reached the top ten of the chart. The fourth and final single \"Criminal\" was released in September 2011. The music video sparked controversy when British politicians criticized Spears for using replica guns while filming the video in a London area that had been badly affected by the 2011 England riots. Spears' management briefly responded, stating, \"The video is a fantasy story featuring Britney's boyfriend, Jason Trawick, which literally plays out the lyrics of a song written three years before the riots ever happened.\" In April 2011, Spears appeared in a remix of Rihanna's song \"S&M\". It reached number one in the US later that month, giving Spears her fifth number one on the chart. On \"Billboard\"'s 2011 Year-End list, Spears was ranked number fourteen on the Artists of the Year, thirty-two on \"Billboard\" 200 artists, and ten on \"Billboard\" Hot 100 artists. Spears co-wrote \"Whiplash\", a song from the album \"When the Sun Goes Down\" (2011) by Selena Gomez & the Scene.\nIn June 2011, Spears embarked on her Femme Fatale Tour. The first ten dates of the tour grossed $6.2 million, landing the fifty-fifth spot on \"Pollstar\"'s Top 100 North American Tours list for the half-way point of the year. The tour ended on December 10, 2011, in Puerto Rico, after 79 performances. A DVD of the tour was released in November 2011. In August 2011, Spears received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards. The next month, she released her second remix album, \"\". In December 2011, Spears became engaged to her long-time boyfriend Jason Trawick, who had formerly been her agent. Trawick was legally granted a role as co-conservator, alongside her father, in April 2012.\nIn May 2012, Spears was hired to replace Paula Abdul as a judge for the second season of the USA show of \"The X Factor\", joining Simon Cowell, L.A. Reid, and fellow new judge Demi Lovato, who replaced Nicole Scherzinger. With a reported salary of $15 million, she became the highest-paid judge on a singing competition series in television history. However, Katy Perry broke her record in 2018 after Perry was signed for a $25-million salary to serve as a judge on ABC's revival of \"American Idol\". Spears mentored the Teens category; her final act, Carly Rose Sonenclar, was named the runner-up of the season. Spears did not return for the show's third season and was replaced by Paulina Rubio.\nSpears appeared on the song \"Scream & Shout\" with will.i.am, which was released as the third single from his fourth studio album, \"#willpower\" (2013). The song later became Spears' sixth number-one single on the UK Singles Chart and peaked at number three on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. \"Scream & Shout\" was among the best-selling songs of 2012 and 2013 with denoting sales of over 8.1 million worldwide, the accompanying music video was the third most-viewed video in 2013 on Vevo despite the video being released in 2012. In December 2012, \"Forbes\" named her music's top-earning woman of 2012, with estimated earnings of $58 million.\n2013\u20132015: \"Britney Jean\" and Britney: Piece of Me.\nSpears began work on her eighth studio album, \"Britney Jean\", in December 2012, and enlisted will.i.am as its executive producer in May 2013. In January 2013, Spears and Jason Trawick ended their engagement. Trawick was also removed as Spears' co-conservator, restoring her father as the sole conservator. Following the breakup, she began dating David Lucado in March; the couple split in August 2014. During the production of \"Britney Jean\", Spears recorded the song \"Ooh La La\" for the soundtrack of \"The Smurfs 2\", which was released in June 2013.\nOn September 17, 2013, she appeared on \"Good Morning America\" to announce her two-year concert residency at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, titled . It began on December 27, 2013, and included a total of 100 shows throughout 2014 and 2015. During the same appearance, Spears announced that \"Britney Jean\" would be released on December 3, 2013, in the United States. It was released through RCA Records due to the disbandment of Jive Records in 2011, which had formed the joint RCA/Jive Label Group (initially known as BMG Label Group) between 2007 and 2011.\n\"Britney Jean\" became Spears' final project under her original recording contract with Jive, which had guaranteed the release of eight studio albums. The record received a low amount of promotion and had little commercial impact, reportedly due to time conflicts involving preparations for Britney: Piece of Me. Upon its release, the record debuted at number four on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200 with first-week sales of 107,000 copies, becoming her lowest-peaking and lowest-selling album in the United States. \"Britney Jean\" debuted at number 34 on the UK Albums Chart, selling 12,959 copies in its first week. In doing so, it became Spears' lowest-charting and lowest-selling album in the country.\n\"Work Bitch\" was released as the lead single from \"Britney Jean\" in September 2013. It debuted and peaked at number 12 on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100 marking Spears' 31st entry on the chart and the fifth highest debut of her career on the chart, and her seventh in the top 20. It also marked Spears' 19th top 20 entry and overall her 23rd top 40 single. The song marked Spears' highest sales debut since her 2011 number-one single \"Hold It Against Me\". \"Work Bitch\" debuted and peaked at number seven on the UK Singles Chart. The song also peaked within the top ten of the charts in Brazil, Canada, France, Italy, Mexico, and Spain.\nThe second single, \"Perfume\", premiered in November 2013. It debuted and peaked at number 76 on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100. In October 2013, she was featured as a guest vocalist on the song \"SMS (Bangerz)\" by Miley Cyrus, from the latter's fourth studio album, \"Bangerz\" (2013). On January 8, 2014, Spears won Favorite Pop Artist at the 40th People's Choice Awards at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. In August 2014, Spears confirmed she had renewed her contract with RCA and that she was writing and recording new music for her next album.\nSpears announced via Twitter in August 2014 that she would be releasing an intimate apparel line called \"The Intimate Britney Spears\". It was available to be purchased beginning on September 9, 2014, in the United States and Canada through Spears' Intimate Collection website. It was later available on September 25 for purchase in Europe. The company now ships to over 200 countries including Australia and New Zealand. On September 25, 2014, Spears confirmed on \"Good Morning Britain\" that she extended her contract to perform her Britney: Piece of Me concert residency at Planet Hollywood Las Vegas for two additional years. Spears began dating television producer Charlie Ebersol in October 2014. The pair were split in June 2015.\nOn May 14, 2015, Spears released a single, \"Pretty Girls\", with Iggy Azalea. It reached number 29 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and charted moderately in international territories. Spears and Azalea performed the track live at the 2015 \"Billboard\" Music Awards from The AXIS, the home of Spears' residency, to positive critical response. \"Entertainment Weekly\" praised the performance, noting \"Spears gave one of her most energetic televised performances in years.\"\nOn June 16, 2015, Giorgio Moroder released the album \"D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu\", which featured Spears on \"Tom's Diner\". The song was released as the fourth single from the album on October 9, 2015. In an interview, Moroder praised Spears' vocals and said she \"sounds so good that you would hardly recognize her\". At the 2015 Teen Choice Awards, Spears received the Candie's Style Icon Award, her ninth Teen Choice Award. In November 2015, Spears guest-starred as a fictionalized version of herself on the CW series \"Jane the Virgin\". On the show, she danced to \"Toxic\" with Gina Rodriguez's character.\n2016\u20132018: \"Glory\", continued residency, and the Piece of Me Tour.\nIn November 2015, Spears confirmed via social media that she had begun recording her ninth studio album. On March 1, 2016, \"V\" announced that Spears would appear on the cover of its 100th issue, dated March 8, 2016, in addition to revealing three different covers shot by photographer Mario Testino for the milestone publication. The \"V\" editor-in-chief, Stephen Gan, said Spears was selected because of her status as an icon in the industry, and asked: \"Who in our world did not grow up listening to her music?\" In May 2016, Spears launched a casual role-play gaming application, \"\". The app, created by Glu Mobile, was made available through both iOS and Google Play.\nOn May 22, 2016, Spears performed a medley of her past singles at the 2016 \"Billboard\" Music Awards. In addition to opening the show, Spears was honored with the \"Billboard\" Millennium Award. On July 15, 2016, Spears released the lead single, \"Make Me\", from her ninth studio album, featuring guest vocals from American rapper G-Eazy. The album, \"Glory\", was formally released on August 26, 2016. On August 16, 2016, MTV and Spears announced that she would perform at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards. The performance marked Spears' first time returning to the VMA stage after her widely panned performance of \"Gimme More\" at the 2007 show nine years earlier. Along with \"Make Me\", Spears and G-Eazy also performed the latter's hit song \"Me, Myself & I\".\nSpears appeared on the cover of \"Marie Claire\" UK for the October 2016 issue. In the publication, Spears revealed that she had suffered from crippling anxiety in the past, and that motherhood played a major role in helping her overcome it. \"My boys don't care if everything isn't perfect. They don't judge me\", Spears said in the issue. In November 2016, during an interview with Las Vegas Blog, Spears confirmed she had already begun work on her next album, stating: \"I'm not sure what I want the next album to sound like.\u00a0... I just know that I'm excited to get into the studio again and actually have already been back recording.\" In the same month, she released a remix version of \"Slumber Party\" as the second single from \"Glory\", featuring Tinashe.\nShe began dating \"Slumber Party\"'s music video co-star Sam Asghari after the two met on set. In January 2017, Spears received four wins out of four nominations at the 43rd People's Choice Awards, including Favorite Pop Artist, Female Artist, Social Media Celebrity, as well as Comedic Collaboration for a skit with Ellen DeGeneres for \"The Ellen DeGeneres Show\". In March 2017, Spears announced that her residency concert would be performed abroad as a world tour, , with dates in select Asian cities. In April 2017, the Israeli Labor Party announced that it would reschedule its July primary election to avoid conflict with Spears' sold-out Tel Aviv concert, citing traffic, and security concerns.\nSpears' manager Larry Rudolph also announced the residency would not be extended following her contract expiration with Caesars Entertainment at the end of 2017. On April 29, 2017, Spears became the first recipient of the Icon Award at the 2017 Radio Disney Music Awards. On November 4, 2017, Spears attended the grand opening of the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation Britney Spears Campus in Las Vegas. Later that month, \"Forbes\" announced that Spears was the 8th highest earning female musician, earning $34 million in 2017. On December 31, 2017, Spears performed the final show of Britney: Piece of Me. The final performance reportedly brought in $1.172 million, setting a new box office record for a single show in Las Vegas, and breaking the record previously held by Jennifer Lopez. Performances of \"Toxic\" and \"Work Bitch\" were recorded on earlier dates and aired on ABC's \"Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve\" to a record audience of 25.6 million.\nIn January 2018, Spears released her 24th perfume with Elizabeth Arden, Sunset Fantasy, and announced the Piece of Me Tour which took place in July 2018 in North America and Europe. Tickets were sold out within minutes for major cities, and additional dates were added to meet the demand. Pitbull was the supporting act for the European leg. The tour ranked at 86 and 30 on \"Pollstar\"'s 2018 Year-End Top 100 Tours chart both in North America and worldwide, respectively. In total, the tour grossed $54.3 million with 260,531 tickets sold and was the sixth highest-grossing female tour of 2018, and was the United Kingdom's second best-selling female tour of 2018.\nOn March 20, 2018, Spears was announced as part of a campaign for French luxury fashion house Kenzo. The company said it aimed to shake up the 'jungle' world of fashion with Spears' 'La Collection Memento No. 2' campaign. On April 12, 2018, Spears was honored with the 2018 GLAAD Vanguard Award at the GLAAD Media Awards for her role in \"accelerating acceptance for the LGBTQ community\". On April 27, 2018, Epic Rights announced a new partnership with Spears to debut her own fashion line in 2019, which would include clothing, fitness apparel, accessories, and electronics.\nIn July 2018, Spears released her first unisex fragrance, Prerogative. On October 18, 2018, Spears announced her second Las Vegas residency show, Britney: Domination, which was set to launch at Park MGM's Park Theatre on February 13, 2019. Spears was slated to make $507,000 per show, which would have made her the highest paid act on the Las Vegas Strip. On October 21, 2018, Spears performed at the Formula One Grand Prix in Austin, the final performance of her Piece of Me Tour.\n2019\u20132021: Conservatorship dispute, #FreeBritney, and abuse allegations.\nOn January 4, 2019, Spears announced an indefinite hiatus and the cancellation of her Las Vegas residency after her father, Jamie, suffered a near-fatal colon rupture. In March 2019, Andrew Wallet resigned as co-conservator of her estate after 11 years. Spears entered a psychiatric facility amidst stress from her father's illness that same month. The following month, a fan podcast, \"Britney's Gram\", released a voicemail message from a source who claimed to be a former member of Spears' legal team. They alleged that Jamie had canceled the residency due to Spears' refusal to take her medication, that he had been holding her in the facility against her will since January 2019 after she violated a no-driving rule, and that her conservatorship was supposed to have ended in 2009. The allegations gave rise to a movement to terminate the conservatorship, #FreeBritney, which received support from celebrities including singers Cher, Paris Hilton, and Miley Cyrus, and the nonprofit organization American Civil Liberties Union. On April 22, 2019, fans protested outside the West Hollywood City Hall and demanded Spears' release. Spears said \"all [was] well\" two days later and left the facility later that month.\nIn a May 2019 hearing, Judge Brenda Penny ordered a professional evaluation of the conservatorship. In September, Spears' ex-husband Federline obtained a restraining order against Britney's father, Jamie, following an alleged physical altercation between Jamie and one of her sons. Spears' longtime care manager, Jodi Montgomery, temporarily replaced Jamie as her conservator that same month, which also saw a hearing where no decisions about the arrangement were reached. An interactive pop-up museum dedicated to Spears, dubbed \"The Zone\", opened in Los Angeles in February 2020, though it was later suspended in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. She released \"Glory\"'s Japanese-exclusive bonus track, \"Mood Ring\" as a single, and debuted a new cover of the album to streaming and digital platforms worldwide in May 2020. In August, Jamie called the #FreeBritney movement \"a joke\" and its organizers \"conspiracy theorists\".\nOn August 17, 2020, Spears' court-appointed lawyer, Samuel D. Ingham III, submitted a court filing that documented Spears' desire to have her conservatorship altered to reflect her wishes as well as lifestyle, to instate Montgomery as her permanent conservator, and to replace Jamie with a fiduciary as conservator of her estate. Four days later, Penny extended the established arrangement until February 2021. In November 2020, Penny approved Bessemer Trust as co-conservator of Spears' estate alongside Jamie. The following month, Spears released a new deluxe edition of \"Glory\", which includes \"Mood Ring\" and new songs \"Swimming in the Stars\" and \"Matches\".\nA documentary about Spears' career and conservatorship, \"Framing Britney Spears\", premiered on FX in February 2021. Spears later revealed that she had seen parts of the documentary, stating that she felt humiliated by the perception of her that was presented and that she \"cried for two weeks\" following the initial broadcast. The following month, Ingham filed a petition to permanently replace Jamie with Montgomery as the conservator of Spears' person, citing a 2014 order that determined that Spears did not have the capacity to consent to medical treatment of any form.\nOn June 22, 2021, shortly before Spears was set to speak to the court, \"The New York Times\" obtained confidential court documents stating that Spears had pushed for years to end her conservatorship. Spears spoke to the court on June 23, calling the conservatorship \"abusive\". She said she had lied by \"telling the whole world I'm OK and I'm happy\", and that she was traumatized and angry. The court statement received widespread media coverage and generated over 1 million shares on Twitter, over 500,000 messages using the tag #FreeBritney, and more than 150,000 messages with a new hashtag referencing the court appearance, #BritneySpeaks.\nOn July 1, Bessemer Trust asked the judge to allow them to withdraw from the conservatorship, saying that they had been misled and had entered into the arrangement on the understanding that the conservatorship was voluntary. The same day, senators Elizabeth Warren and Bob Casey Jr. called on federal agencies to increase oversight of the country's conservatorship systems. Spears' manager of 25 years, Larry Rudolph, resigned on July 6 due to her \"intention to officially retire\" and on that same day, it was reported that Ingham planned to file documents to the court asking to be dismissed. In a July 14 hearing, Judge Penny approved the resignations of Bessemer Trust and Ingham. The court also approved of Spears' request to hire attorney Mathew S. Rosengart to represent her. Rosengart informed the court that he would be working to terminate the conservatorship. Later that day, Spears publicly endorsed the #FreeBritney movement for the first time, using the hashtag in a caption on an Instagram post. She mentioned feeling \"blessed\" after earning \"real representation\", referring to Judge Penny's decision to allow her to choose her own counsel.\nOn July 26, Rosengart filed a petition seeking to remove Jamie as conservator of Spears' estate and to replace him with Jason Rubin, a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) at Certified Strategies Inc. in Woodland Hills, California. On August 12, Jamie agreed to step down as conservator at some future date, with his lawyers stating that he wanted \"an orderly transition to a new conservator\". On September 7, Jamie filed a petition to end the conservatorship. Five days later, Spears announced her engagement to her longtime boyfriend, Sam Asghari, through an Instagram post. On September 29, Judge Penny suspended Jamie as conservator of Spears' estate, with accountant John Zabel replacing him on a temporary basis. On November 12, Judge Penny terminated the conservatorship.\n2022\u2013present: Third marriage, \"The Woman in Me\", and retirement from singing.\nIn April 2022, she announced her pregnancy with Asghari's child, which ended in a miscarriage the following month. The couple married on June 9 at her home in Thousand Oaks, Los Angeles. None of Spears' immediate family (including her parents, sister, and brother) were invited; her two sons did not attend. Spears' first husband, Jason Alexander, attempted to crash the wedding by breaking into her home, armed with a knife, but was arrested. Spears had a three-year restraining order against him. On August 26, Spears and English musician Elton John released the duet \"Hold Me Closer\", a remake of John's 1972 single \"Tiny Dancer\". It was Spears' first musical release since the termination of her conservatorship. \"Hold Me Closer\" debuted at number six on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100, becoming her 14th top-ten single and her highest-charting song in the chart since \"Scream & Shout\" (2012). It debuted at number three on the UK Singles Chart, earning Spears her 24th top-ten.\nSince the termination of her conservatorship, Spears' personal life, social media presence, and overall well-being have been subject to renewed media interest and fan speculation, giving rise to conspiracy theories. On January 24, 2023, deputies from the Ventura County Sheriff's Office performed a welfare check at Spears' residence after receiving several calls from fans who were concerned after she deleted her Instagram account. A spokesperson for the Sheriff's Department stated that Spears \"was safe and in no danger\". Spears addressed the incident on her Twitter account, asking fans to respect her privacy. Spears and the rapper will.i.am released their single, \"Mind Your Business\", on July 21, 2023. On August 16, it was announced Spears and Asghari separated after 14 months of marriage. On May 1, 2024, they reached a divorce settlement. The following day, the judge signed off on the settlement and the couple were divorced on December 2, 2024. In September 2023, an additional welfare check was initiated when Spears posted an Instagram video of herself dancing with knives. Her security team assured the attending officer that there was no immediate threat to her safety, and the officer departed. Spears also clarified that the knives were not real.\nIn February 2022, Spears signed a $15 million book deal for a memoir in one of the biggest book deals of all time. The memoir, \"The Woman in Me,\" was released on October 24, 2023. It details her rise to fame, public media events, her conservatorship, and her newfound freedom. In the United States, it sold 1.1 million copies, while worldwide it sold 2.4 million copies in print sales during its first week of release.\nIn January 2024, reports circulated that Charli XCX and Julia Michaels had been asked to write songs for Spears, and \"Rolling Stone\" reported that \"management and A&R are trying to get her excited for the music\". Spears denied the reports, saying she would never return to the music industry. However, she also said that she had written more than 20 songs for other artists in the previous two years. In May 2024, Charli XCX confirmed in an interview that she was indeed asked to write for Spears, for which she traveled to Malibu, but that she did not know if Spears was a part of the process explaining that \"the team were present... But she didn't record it. She obviously didn't.\"\nArtistry.\nInfluences.\nSpears has cited Madonna, Janet Jackson, and Whitney Houston as major influences, her \"three favorite artists\" as a child, whom she would \"sing along to\u00a0... day and night in [her] living room\"; Houston's \"I Have Nothing\" was the song she auditioned to that landed her record deal with Jive Records. Spears also named Mariah Carey as \"one of the main reasons I started singing\". Throughout her career, Spears has drawn frequent comparisons to Madonna and Jackson in particular, in terms of vocals, choreography, and stage presence. According to Spears: \"I know when I was younger, I looked up to people\u00a0... like, you know, Janet Jackson and Madonna. And they were major inspirations for me. But I also had my own identity and I knew who I was.\"\nIn the 2002 book \"Madonnastyle\" by Carol Clerk, she is quoted saying: \"I have been a huge fan of Madonna since I was a little girl. She's the person that I've really looked up to. I would really, really like to be a legend like Madonna.\" Spears cited \"That's the Way Love Goes\" as the inspiration for her song \"Touch of My Hand\" from her album \"In the Zone\", saying \"I like to compare it to 'That's the Way Love Goes,' kind of a Janet Jackson thing.\" She also said her song \"Just Luv Me\" from her \"Glory\" album also reminded her of \"That's the Way Love Goes\".\nAfter meeting Spears face to face, Janet Jackson stated: \"she said to me, 'I'm such a big fan; I really admire you.' That's so flattering. Everyone gets inspiration from some place. And it's awesome to see someone else coming up who's dancing and singing, and seeing how all these kids relate to her. A lot of people put it down, but what she does is a positive thing.\" Madonna said of Spears in the documentary \"\": \"I admire her talent as an artist\u00a0... There are aspects about her that I recognize in myself when I first started out in my career\". Spears has also named Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Sheryl Crow, Otis Redding, Shania Twain, Brandy, Beyonc\u00e9, Natalie Imbruglia, Cher, and Prince as inspirations, and younger artists such as Selena Gomez and Ariana Grande.\nMusical style.\nSpears is described as a pop artist and generally explores the genre in the form of Following her debut, she was credited with influencing the revival of teen pop in the late 1990s. Rob Sheffield of \"Rolling Stone\" wrote: \"Spears carries on the classic archetype of the rock & roll teen queen, the dungaree doll, the angel baby who just has to make a scene.\" In a review of \"...Baby One More Time\", Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic described her music as a \"blend of infectious, rap-inflected dance-pop and smooth balladry\". \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" saw Spears working with several R&B producers to create \"a combination of bubblegum, urban soul, and raga\". Her third studio album, \"Britney\", derived from the teen pop niche \"[r]hythmically and melodically\", but was described as \"sharper, tougher than what came before\", incorporating genres such as R&B, disco, and funk.\nSpears has explored and heavily incorporated the genres of electropop and dance music in her records, as well as influences of urban and hip hop, which are most present on \"In the Zone\" and \"Blackout\". \"In the Zone\" also experiments with Euro trance, reggae, and Middle Eastern music. \"Femme Fatale\" and \"Britney Jean\" were also heavily influenced by electronic music genres. Spears' ninth studio album, \"Glory\", is more eclectic and experimental than her previous released work. She commented that it \"took a lot of time\u00a0... it's really different\u00a0... there are like two or three songs that go in the direction of more urban that I've wanted to do for a long time now, and I just haven't really done that.\"\n\"...Baby One More Time\" and \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" address themes such as love and relationships from a teenager's point of view. Following the massive commercial success of her first two studio albums, Spears' team and producers wanted to maintain the formula that took her to the top of the charts. Spears, however, was no longer satisfied with the sound and themes covered on her records. She co-wrote five songs and choose each track's producer on her third studio album, \"Britney\", which lyrics address the subjects of reaching adulthood, sexuality, and self-discovery. Sex, dancing, freedom, and love continued to be Spears' music main subjects on her subsequent albums. Her fifth studio effort, \"Blackout\", also addresses issues such as fame and media scrutiny, including on the song \"Piece of Me\".\nSpears' music has also been noted for some catchphrases. The opening in her debut single \"...Baby One More Time\", \"Oh, baby baby\" is considered to be one of her signature lines and has been parodied in the media by various artists such as Nicole Scherzinger and Ariana Grande. It has been used in variating forms throughout her music, such as simply, \"baby\" and \"oh baby\", as well as the \"Blackout\" track, \"Ooh Ooh Baby\". On the initial development of \"...Baby One More Time\", Barry Weiss noted Spears' inception of the catchphrase from her strange ad-libbing during the recording of the song. He commented further, \"We thought it was really weird at first. It was strange. It was not the way Max wrote it. But it worked! We thought it could be a really good opening salvo for her.\" The opening line in \"Gimme More\", \"It's Britney, bitch\" has become another signature phrase. An early review of \"Blackout\" suggested the phrase was \"simply laughable\". Amy Roberts of \"Bustle\" called it \"an indelible cultural turning point, transforming a frenetic, floundering moment in the superstar's career to one of strength and empowerment\".\nVoice.\nSpears is a soprano. Other sources state that she possesses a contralto vocal range. Prior to her breakthrough success, she is described as having sung \"much deeper than her highly recognizable trademark voice of today\", with Eric Foster White, who worked with Spears on her debut album, \"...Baby One More Time\", being cited as \"[shaping] her voice over the course of a month\" upon being signed to Jive Records \"to where it is today\u2014distinctively, unmistakably Britney\". Rami Yacoub, who co-produced Spears' debut album with lyricist Max Martin, commented, \"I know from Denniz Pop and Max's previous productions, when we do songs, there's kind of a nasal thing. With N' Sync and the Backstreet Boys, we had to push for that mid-nasal voice. When Britney did that, she got this kind of raspy, sexy voice.\"\nGuy Blackman of \"The Age\" wrote that \"[t]he thing about Spears, though, is that her biggest songs, no matter how committee-created or impossibly polished, have always been convincing because of her delivery, her commitment and her presence.\u00a0... Spears expresses perfectly the conflicting urges of adolescence, the tension between chastity and sexual experience, between hedonism and responsibility, between confidence and vulnerability.\" Producer William Orbit, who worked with Spears on her album \"Britney Jean\", stated regarding her vocals: \"[Britney] didn't get so big just because [she] put on great shows; [she] got to be that way because [her voice is] unique: you hear two words and you know who is singing\".\nSpears has also been criticized for her reliance on Auto-Tune and her vocals being \"over-processed\" on records. Erlewine criticized Spears' singing abilities in a review of her \"Blackout\" album, stating: \"Never the greatest vocalist, her thin squawk could be dismissed early in her career as an adolescent learning the ropes, but nearly a decade later her singing hasn't gotten any better, even if the studio tools to masquerade her weaknesses have.\" Joan Anderman of \"The Boston Globe\" remarked that \"Spears sounds robotic, nearly inhuman, on her records, so processed is her voice by digital pitch-shifters and synthesizers.\"\nKayla Upadhyaya of \"The Michigan Daily\" has provided a different point of view, stating: \"Auto-tuned and over-processed vocals define [Spears]'s voice as an artist, and in her music, auto-tune isn't so much a gimmick as it is an instrument used to highlight, contort and make a statement.\" Adam Markovitz of \"Entertainment Weekly\" opines that \"Spears is no technical singer, that's for sure. But backed by Martin and Dr. Luke's wall of sound, her vocals melt into a mix of babytalk coo and coital panting that is, in its own overprocessed way, just as iconic and propulsive as Michael Jackson's yips or Eminem's snarls.\"\nStage performances and videos.\nSpears is known for her stage performances, particularly the elaborate dance routines which incorporate \"belly-dancing and tempered erotic moves\" that are credited with influencing \"dance-heavy acts\" such as Danity Kane and the Pussycat Dolls. \"Rolling Stone\" readers voted Spears their second-favorite dancing musician. Spears is described as being much more shy than her stage persona suggests. She said that performing is \"a boost to [her] confidence. It's like an alter-ego type thing. Something clicks and I go and turn into this different person. I think it's kind of a gift to be able to do that.\" Her 2000, 2001, and 2003 MTV Video Music Awards performances were lauded, while her 2007 presentation was widely panned by critics, as she \"teetered through her dance steps and mouthed only occasional words\". \"Billboard\" called her 2016 \"comeback\" performance at the show \"an effective, but not entirely glorious, bid to regain pop superstardom\".\nAfter her knee injuries and personal problems, Spears' \"showmanship\" and dance abilities came under criticism. Serge F. Kovaleski of \"The New York Times\" watched her in 2016 and stated: \"Once a fluid, natural dancer, Ms. Spears can appear stiff, even robotic, today, relying on flailing arms and flashy sets.\" \"Las Vegas Sun\"'s Robin Leach seemed more impressed over Spears' efforts on the concert by saying that she delivered a \"flawless performance\" on the residency's opening night.\nIt has been widely reported that Spears lip-syncs during live performances, which often prompts criticism from music critics and concert goers. Some, however, claimed that, although she \"got plenty of digital support\", she \"doesn't merely lip-sync\" during her live shows. In 2016, Sabrina Weiss of Refinery29 referred to her lip-syncing as a \"well-known fact that's not even taboo anymore.\" Noting on the prevalence of lip-syncing, the \"Los Angeles Daily News\" opined: \"In the context of a Britney Spears concert, does it really matter?\u00a0... you [just] go for the somewhat-ridiculous spectacle of it all\". Spears herself has commented on the topic, arguing: \"Because I'm dancing so much, I do have a little bit of playback, but there's a mixture of my voice and the playback.\u00a0... It really pisses me off because I'm busting my ass out there and singing at the same time and nobody ever gives me credit for it\".\nIn 2012, VH1 ranked Spears as the fourth Greatest Woman of the Video Era, while \"Billboard\" ranked her as the eight Greatest Music Video Artist of All Time in 2020, explaining: \"The storylines, the dancing, the \"outfits\". Right from the start, the pop princess established the lengths of her creativity with some of the most memorable videos of the last three decades.\" She has been retroactively noted as the pioneer for her early career videography. She conceptualized the \"iconic Catholic schoolgirl and cheerleader motif\" in the \"...Baby One More Time\" video, rejecting the animation video idea. She also made the \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" video \"dance-centric rather than space-centric as her producers suggested\". She also used her dancer's intuition to help select the beats for each track.\nPublic image.\nUpon launching her music career with \"...Baby One More Time\", Spears was labeled a teen idol, and \"Rolling Stone\" described her as \"the latest model of a classic product: the unneurotic pop star who performs her duties with vaudevillian pluck and spokesmodel charm.\" The April 1999 cover of \"Rolling Stone\" pictured a 17-year-old Spears reclining on a bed, wearing an exposed bra and hot pants while cradling a Teletubby in one arm. The American Family Association (AFA) decried the image as \"a disturbing mix of childhood innocence and adult sexuality\" and called on \"God-loving Americans to boycott stores selling Britney's albums\". Spears addressed the outcry, commenting: \"What's the big deal? I have strong morals.\u00a0... I'd do it again. I thought the pictures were fine. And I was tired of being compared to Debbie Gibson and all of this bubblegum pop all the time.\" Shortly before this, Spears had announced publicly she would remain abstinent until marriage.\nAn early criticism of Spears dismissed her as \"the product of a Swedish songwriting factory that had no real hand in either her music or her persona\". \"Vox\" editor Constance Grady wrote this was perpetuated from the fact that Spears debuted in the late 1990s, when music was dominated by rockism, that prizes \"so-called authenticity and grittiness of rock above all else\". Spears' \"slick, breezy pop was an affront to rockist sensibilities, and claiming that Spears was fake was an easy way to dismiss her.\" Ron Levy for \"Rolling Stone\" noted that \"I have to tell you, if the record company could have created more than one Britney Spears, they would have done it, and they tried!\"\n\"Billboard\" opined that, by the time Spears released her second album, \"Oops!... I Did It Again\", \"There was a shift occurring in both the music and her public image: She was sharper, sexier and singing about more grown-up fare, setting the stage for 2001's \"Britney\", which shed her innocent skin and ushered her into adulthood.\" \"Britney\"'s lead single, \"I'm a Slave 4 U\", and its music video were also credited for distancing her from her previous \"wholesome bubblegum star\" image. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic remarked, \"If 2001's \"Britney\" was a transitional album, capturing Spears at the point when she wasn't a girl and not yet a woman, its 2003 follow-up, \"In the Zone\", is where she has finally completed that journey and turned into Britney, the Adult Woman.\" Erlewine likened Spears to fellow singer Christina Aguilera, explaining that both equated \"maturity with transparent sexuality and the pounding sounds of nightclubs\". Brittany Spanos of \"LA Weekly\" stated that Spears \"set the bar for the 'adulthood' transition teen pop stars often struggle with\".\nSpears' erratic behavior and personal problems during 2006\u20132008 were highly publicized and affected both her career and public image. Erlewine writes that \"each new disaster [was] stripping away any residual sexiness in her public image\". In a 2008 article, \"Rolling Stone\"'s Vanessa Grigoriadis described her much-publicized personal issues as \"the most public downfall of any star in history\". Spears later received favorable media attention; \"Billboard\" wrote that her appearance at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards \"was a picture of professionalism and poise\" after her \"disastrous\" performance the previous year, while \"Business Insider\" ran an article on how she had \"lost control of her life\u00a0... and then made an incredible career comeback\". In 2017, Spears said: \"I think I had to give myself more breaks through my career and take responsibility for my mental health.\u00a0... I wrote back then, that I was lost and didn't know what to do with myself. I was trying to please everyone around me because that's who I am deep inside. There are moments where I look back and think: 'What the hell was I thinking?'\"\nIn September 2002, Spears was placed at number eight on VH1's 100 Sexiest Artists list. She was placed at number one on \"FHM\"'s 100 Sexiest Women in the World list in 2004, and, in December 2012, \"Complex\" ranked her 12th on its 100 Hottest Female Singers of All Time list. Remarking upon her perceived image as a sex symbol, Spears stated: \"When I'm on stage, that's my time to do my thing and go there and be that \u2014 and it's fun. It's exhilarating just to be something that you're not. And people tend to believe it.\" In 2003, \"People\" cited her as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People.\nSpears is recognized as a gay icon and received the 2018 GLAAD Vanguard Award at the GLAAD Media Awards for her role in \"accelerating acceptance for the LGBTQ community\". She addressed the \"unwavering loyalty\" and \"lack of judgment\" of her LGBTQ fans in \"Billboard\"'s Love Letters to the LGBTQ Community. She said: \"Your stories are what inspire me, bring me joy, and make me and my sons strive to be better people.\" Manuel Betancourt of \"Vice\" wrote about the \"queer adoration\", especially of gay men, on Spears, and said that \"Where other gay icons exude self-possession, Spears' fragile resilience has made her an even more fascinating role model, closer to Judy Garland than to Lady Gaga\u00a0... she's a glittering mirror ball, a fractured reflection of those men on the dance floor back onto themselves.\" \"HuffPost\"'s Ben Appel attributed Spears' status as a gay icon to her \"oh-so-innocent/not that innocent\" Monroe-like sensuality, her sweet, almost saccharine nature, her beyond basic but addictive pop songs, her dance moves, her phoenix-out-of-the-fire comeback from a series of mental health crises, and her unmistakable tenderness. \"Britney is camp. She is a fashion plate. A doll. Britney is a drag queen.\"\nSince her early years in the public eye, Spears has been a tabloid fixture and a paparazzi target. According to \"Vanity Fair\", photos of Spears sold for a combined value of $100 million in 2007. Harvey Levin, the founder of \"TMZ\", said in an interview, \"Britney is gold. She is crack to our readers. Her life is a complete train-wreck, and I thank God for her every day.\" Steve Huey of AllMusic remarked that \"among female singers of [Spears'] era\u00a0... her celebrity star power was rivaled only by Jennifer Lopez.\" 'Britney Spears' was Yahoo!'s most popular search term between 2005 and 2008, and has been in a total of seven different years. Spears was named as Most Searched Person in the \"Guinness World Records\" book edition 2007 and 2009. She was later named as the most searched person of the decade 2000\u20132009.\nAs a public figure, Spears \"has never been known to her fans as a politically active, committed\u2014or even aware\u2014entertainer.\" In a 2003 interview with Tucker Carlson, she commented on President George W. Bush and the Iraq War, saying that \"we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes\u00a0... and be faithful in what happens\". Michael Moore included the footage of Spears' answer in his \"anti-Bush\" documentary \"Fahrenheit 9/11\", which, according to \"The Washington Times\"'s James Frazier, presented her \"as an example of a naive American blindly trusting a dishonest commander in chief\" and fueled the \"urban legend\" of a \"conservative\" Spears. Frazier also said that \"the few positions she has taken can hardly be considered conservative\", such as supporting same-sex marriage. In 2016, Spears posted pictures of a meeting with Hillary Clinton on social media. She described Clinton as \"an inspiration and [a] beautiful voice for women around the world\".\nIn December 2017, Spears publicly showed support for the DREAM Act in the wake of the announcement that Donald Trump would end the DACA policy, which previously granted undocumented immigrants who came to the country as minors a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation. She posted a photo of herself on social media wearing a black T-shirt that reads \"We Are All Dreamers\" in white letters. The caption read, \"Tell Congress to pass the #DreamAct\".\nOn September 15, 2021, Spears was named one of the 100 most influential people of 2021 by \"Time.\" A few days before the editors's list was released, Spears was put at the top of the readers voting list of which personalities should be included on the annual \"Time\" 100 list. Deemed an icon of 2021, editors highlighted the impact of her fight against her conservatorship as well as of the #FreeBritney movement. In October 2021, Spears thanked her fans and the #FreeBritney movement for \"freeing me from my conservatorship\". Britney Spears was also named most famous celebrity from Louisiana according to a study done by Baton Rouge.\nLegacy.\nReferred to as the \"Princess of Pop\", Spears was credited as one of the \"driving force[s] behind the return of teen pop in the late 1990s\". \"Rolling Stone\"'s Stacy Lambe explained that she \"help[ed] to usher in a new era for the genre that had gone dormant in the decade that followed New Kids on the Block.\u00a0... Spears would lead an army of pop stars\u00a0... built on slick Max Martin productions, plenty of sexual innuendo and dance-heavy performances. [She became] one of the most successful artists of all time\u2014and a cautionary tale for a generation, whether they paid attention or not.\" In a 2021 article for \"Time\", Maura Johnston opined that \"Spears' legacy as a pop artist is complex, made up of dazzling musical heights and music-business-borne lows\". Johnston also commented: \"While Spears' catalog is part of the canon that defines the first 20 years of this millennium, one hopes that her public struggles, and the strength she's shown while enduring them, will lead to her cementing her true legacy: Reshaping the machine that turns those songs into cultural touchstones.\"\n\"Glamour\" contributor Christopher Rosa described her as \"one of pop music's defining voices.\u00a0... When she emerged onto the scene in 1998 with \"...Baby One More Time\", the world hadn't seen a performer like her. Not since Madonna had a female artist affected the genre so profoundly.\" \"Billboard\"'s Robert Kelly observed that Spears' \"sexy and coy\" vocals on her debut single \"...Baby One More Time\" \"kicked off a new era of pop vocal stylings that would influence countless artists to come\". In 2020, \"Rolling Stone\" ranked the song at number one on a list of the 100 Greatest Debut Singles of All Time and Rob Sheffield described it as \"One of those pop manifestos that announces a new sound, a new era, a new century. But most of all, a new star\u00a0... With \"...Baby One More Time\", [Spears] changed the sound of pop forever: It's Britney, bitch. Nothing was ever the same.\"\nSpears was at the forefront of the female teen pop explosion starting in 1999 and extending through the 2000s, leading the pack of Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, and Mandy Moore. All of these performers had been developing material in 1998, but the market changed dramatically in December 1998 when Spears' single and video were charting highly. RCA Records quickly signed Aguilera and released her debut single to capitalize on Spears' success, producing her debut hit single \"Genie in a Bottle\". Simpson consciously modeled her persona as more mature than Spears; her \"I Wanna Love You Forever\" charted in September 1999, and her album \"Sweet Kisses\" followed shortly after. Moore's first single, \"Candy\", hit the airwaves a month before Simpson's single, but it did not perform as well on the charts; Moore was often seen as less accomplished than Spears and the others, coming in fourth of the \"pop princesses\". Fueling media stories about their competition for first place, Spears and Aguilera traded barbs but also compliments through the 2000s.\nAlim Kheraj of \"Dazed\" called Spears \"one of pop's most important pioneers\". After eighteen years as a performer, \"Billboard\" described her as having \"earned her title as one of pop's reigning queens. Since her early days as a Mouseketeer, [Spears] has pushed the boundaries of 21st century sounds, paving the way for a generation of artists to shamelessly embrace glossy pop and redefine how one can accrue consistent success in the music industry.\" \"Entertainment Weekly\"'s Adam Markovitz described Spears as \"an American institution, as deeply sacred and messed up as pro wrestling or the filibuster.\" In 2012, she was ranked as the fourth VH1's 50 Greatest Women of the Video Era show list. VH1 also cited her among its choices on the 100 Greatest Women in Music in 2012 and the 200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons in 2003. In 2020, \"Billboard\" ranked her eight on its 100 Greatest Music Video Artists of all-time list. In October 2024, \"Billboard\" placed Spears at number six on their Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century list.\nSpears and her work have influenced various artists including Katy Perry, Meghan Trainor, Demi Lovato, Kelly Key, Kristinia DeBarge, Little Boots, Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, Marina Diamandis, the Weeknd, Tegan and Sara, Pixie Lott, Grimes, Selena Gomez, Hailee Steinfeld, Pabllo Vittar, Tinashe, Victoria Justice, Cassie, Leah Wellbaum of Slothrust, the Saturdays, Normani, Miley Cyrus, Cheryl, Lana Del Rey, Ava Max, Sam Smith, and Rina Sawayama. During the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, Lady Gaga said that Spears \"taught us all how to be fearless, and the industry wouldn't be the same without her.\" Gaga has also cited Spears as an influence, calling her \"the most provocative performer of my time\".\nBefore Spears joined \"The X Factor\", Simon Cowell explained that he is \"fascinated by [Britney]. The fact that she's one of the most talked about \u2013 not just pop stars \u2013 but people in the world today, means that you've got this star power.\u00a0... She's still hot, she's still having hit records and she's still controversial, there's a reason for that.\" Marina Diamandis named Spears as the main influence behind her album \"Electra Heart\". Lana Del Rey said that the music video for \"Toxic\" inspires her. Porcelain Black describes her music as a \"love child\" of Spears and Marilyn Manson. Rita Ora's 2019 music video for \"Only Want You\" was inspired by Spears' \"Everytime\" music video, and said in a stories from Instagram, \"Hey @britneyspears this was for you because I love you so. Pay homage to the ones who inspire! #icon.\"\nSpears has been credited with redefining Las Vegas residencies as a retirement place for musicians. Her debut concert residency was described as \"the natural evolution of Celine Dion's powerhourse Vegas residency, a still-charting star of another generation redefining the role of Strip headliner.\" \"Forbes\" named Spears the sixth-highest-earning female musician of 2015.\" She is credited with influencing and paving the way for other artists's residencies such as Jennifer Lopez's , Bruno Mars's Bruno Mars at Park MGM, and Backstreet Boys' . The arrival of Spears \"saw the pop promoters finally tap into the younger crowd arriving in town for a good time\".\nSpears' much-publicized personal problems and her subsequent career comeback have inspired some artists. Gwyneth Paltrow's character in the 2010 film \"Country Strong\" was inspired by Spears' treatment by the media. According to film director Shana Fest, \"that's where this movie came from. I mean, I was seeing what was happening in the media to Britney Spears. I think it's tragic how we treat people who give us so much, and we love to see them knocked down to build them back up again, to knock them down again.\" Nicki Minaj has cited Spears' comeback after her much-publicized personal issues as an inspiration. Spears' hounding by paparazzi and personal problems also inspired Barry Manilow's album \"15 Minutes\". Manilow said: \"She couldn't have a life without them pulling up next to her car and following her and driving her crazy to the point where, that was around the time she shaved off her hair.\u00a0... We all looked at it in horror\u00a0... So it seemed like a thing to be writing an album about.\" Bebo Norman wrote a song about Spears, called \"Britney\", which was inspired by \"culture's make-or-break treatment of celebrities\".\nIn 2008, \"Salon\" published an article titled \"The Britney Economy\" describing how Spears is a driving force in music and fashion, stimulating consumer purchases and media coverage. Magazines, paparazzi, and record labels make millions of dollars, and Spears profits to a lesser degree. Along with Alicia Silverstone, Christy Turlington, and Naomi Campbell, Spears has been credited with introducing the navel piercing to mainstream culture.\nAchievements.\nSpears' awards and accolades include a Grammy Award; 15 Guinness World Records; six MTV Video Music Awards, including the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award; seven \"Billboard\" Music Awards, including the Millennium Award; the inaugural Radio Disney Icon Award; the GLAAD Media Award's Vanguard Award; and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.\nSpears is listed by the \"Guinness World Records\" as having the \"Best-selling album by a teenage solo artist\" for her debut studio album, \"...Baby One More Time\", which sold over 13 million copies in the United States. Melissa Ruggieri of the \"Richmond Times-Dispatch\" reported: \"She's also marked for being the best-selling teenage artist. Before she turned 20 in 2001, Spears had sold over 37 million albums worldwide\".\nAs of 2023[ [update]], according to the \"Evening Standard\", Spears has sold over 150 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time. She also sold more than 70 million records in United States, including 36.9 million digital singles and 33.6 million digital albums. Spears is further recognized as the best-selling female albums artist of the 2000s in the United States, as well as the fifth overall. In December 2009, \"Billboard\" ranked Spears the 8th Artist of the 2000s decade in the United States. She is one of the few artists in history to have had a number-one single and a number-one studio album in the US during each of the three decades of her career. With \"3\" in 2009 and \"Hold It Against Me\" in 2011, she became the second artist after Mariah Carey in the Hot 100's history to debut at number one with two or more songs. In 2016, Spears ranked at number twenty on \"Billboard\"'s Greatest Of All Time Top Dance Club Artists list.\nOther ventures.\nProduct and endorsements.\nIn 2000, Spears released a limited edition of sunglasses titled Shades of Britney. In 2001, she signed a deal with shoe company Skechers, and a $7\u20138 million promotional deal with Pepsi, their biggest entertainment deal at the time. Aside from numerous commercials with the latter during that year, she also appeared in a 2004 Pepsi television commercial in the theme of \"Gladiators\" with singers Beyonc\u00e9, Pink, and Enrique Iglesias. On June 19, 2002, she released her first multi-platform video game, \"Britney's Dance Beat\", which received positive reviews.\nIn March 2009, Spears was announced as the new face of clothing brand Candie's. Dari Marder, chief marketing officer for the brand, said: \"Everybody loves a comeback and nobody's doing it better than Britney. She's just poised for even greater success.\" In 2010, Spears designed a limited edition line for the brand, which was released in stores in July 2010. In 2011, she teamed up with Sony, Make Up For Ever, and Plenty of Fish to release her music video for \"Hold It Against Me\", earning her $500,000 for the product placement.\nSpears also teamed up with Hasbro in 2012 to release an exclusive version of \"Twister Dance\", which includes a remix of \"Till the World Ends\". She was also featured on a commercial, which was directed by Ray Kay, to promote the game. Spears was also featured on the commercial of \"Twister Dance Rave\", and the game included a Twister remix of \"Circus\". In March 2018, it was revealed that Spears would be the face of Kenzo, a contemporary French luxury clothing house.\nSpears' range of commercial deals and products also includes beauty care products and perfumes. She released her first perfume with Elizabeth Arden, Curious in 2004, which broke the company's first-week gross for a perfume. By 2009, she had released seven more perfumes including Fantasy. In 2010, Spears released her eighth fragrance, Radiance.\nIn 2011, Radiance was reissued as a new perfume titled Cosmic Radiance. Worldwide, Spears sold over one million bottles in the first five years, with gross receipts of $1.5 billion. In 2016, Spears contacted Glu Mobile to create her own role-playing game, \"\". The app officially launched in May 2016 and is compatible with iOS and Android. On June 17, 2016, Spears announced the release of her twentieth fragrance, Private Show. As of January\u00a02018[ [update]], Spears has released 24 fragrances through Elizabeth Arden.\nPhilanthropy.\nSpears founded The Britney Spears Foundation, a charitable entity set up to help children in need. The philosophy behind the Foundation was that music and entertainment has a healing quality that can benefit children. The Foundation also supported the annual Britney Spears Camp for the Performing Arts, where campers had the opportunity to explore and develop their talents. In April 2002, through the efforts of Spears and The Britney Spears Foundation, a grant of $1 million was made to the Twin Towers Fund to support the children of uniformed service heroes affected by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, including New York City Fire Department and its Emergency Medical Services Command, the New York City Police Department, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the New York State Office of court Administration and other government offices. However, it was reported in 2008 that the Foundation had a deficit of $200,000. After Spears went through conservatorship, her father and lawyer Andrew Wallet zeroed out the effort, leading to its closure in 2011.\nOn October 30, 2001, Spears, alongside Bono and other popular recording artists under the name \"Artists Against AIDS Worldwide\", released an album consisting of multiple versions of Marvin Gaye's \"What's Going On\", intending to benefit AIDS programs in Africa and other impoverished regions. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Spears donated $350,000 to Music Rising. Spears has also helped several charities during her career, including Madonna's Kabbalah-based Spirituality for Kids, cancer charity Gilda's Club Worldwide, Promises Foundation, and United Way, with the latter two focused on giving families from various disadvantaged situations new hope and stable foundations for the future.\nOn October 24, 2015, Spears donated $120,000 to the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation. In addition, $1 of each ticket sale for her Las Vegas residency, Britney: Piece of Me, was donated to the nonprofit organization. Spears also fundraised for the charity through social media, in addition to selling limited edition merchandise, with all proceeds going to the NCCF. On October 27, 2016, Spears partnered with Zappos and XCYCLE to host the \"Britney Spears Piece of Me Charity Ride\" in Boca Park, Las Vegas to raise additional money toward her goal of $1 million for the NCCF, with $450,000 having already been raised from Spears' ticket sales and merchandise. Participants were entered for a chance to win a spin class with Spears herself. The event ultimately went on to raise $553,130. The fundraising ultimately led to the development of the NCCF Britney Spears Campus in Las Vegas, which saw its grand opening on November 4, 2017. Spears also regularly participates in Spirit Day to combat bullying of LGBTQ youth and bullying.\nIn March 2020, Spears was participating in the #DoYourPartChallenge, which entails helping people with anything they might need during the COVID-19 pandemic. She told fans to send her messages on Instagram if they need supportive words during the coronavirus pandemic, with Spears picking three fans. In February 2024, Spears partnered with New York City dessert shop Glace, to create the \"Britney Br\u00fbl\u00e9e\" dessert, with a portion of the proceeds from its sales being donated to The Trevor Project.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBook sources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "13995413": "Radar (song)\n2009 single by Britney Spears\n\"Radar\" is a song by American singer Britney Spears from her fifth studio album, \"Blackout\" (2007). It was written and produced by Bloodshy & Avant and the Clutch, with additional writing from Henrik Jonback. The recording sessions took place the day after Spears filed for divorce from Kevin Federline, and members of the Clutch claimed to be surprised by her work ethic. \"Radar\" was originally planned to be released as the third single from \"Blackout\", but \"Break the Ice\" was chosen instead. The song was then planned as the fourth single, but the release was cancelled as Spears began recording her sixth studio album, \"Circus\" (2008). \"Radar\" was later included on \"Circus\", and officially released as the fourth and final single from the album on June 22, 2009, by Jive Records.\nMusically, \"Radar\" runs through a midtempo dance groove. Spears' vocals are auto tuned and accompanied by sonar pulses and a heavy usage of distorted synthesizers. The lyrics refer to an attraction between the protagonist and a man, while she wonders if he knows what she is feeling. \"Radar\" received mixed reviews from critics; some called it one of the highlights of \"Circus\", while others felt that it was over-produced and also criticized her vocals for being processed. In July 2008, \"Radar\" charted in the top 40 of Ireland and New Zealand, and inside the top ten in Sweden and El Salvador. After it was released as a single from \"Circus\" in 2009, the track performed poorly on the charts and failed to enter the top 40 in most countries.\nThe single's accompanying music video was directed by Dave Meyers, and pays tribute to the music video of Madonna's \"Take a Bow\" (1994). In the video, Spears is an aristocratic woman involved in a love triangle with two men who are polo players. The video received mixed reviews from critics, who complimented the fashion but called the idea unoriginal. \"Radar\" was performed by Spears at The Circus Starring Britney Spears (2009), with the accompanying dance routine featuring her pole dancing.\nBackground.\nThe main instrumentation was recorded by Bloodshy & Avant at Bloodshy & Avant Studios in Stockholm, Sweden. In November 2006, Spears recorded \"Radar\" with Ezekiel Lewis and Patrick M. Smith of the Clutch at Sony Music Studios in New York City. Lewis had wanted to work with her for a long time and was motivated to produce something for her that was going to \"help her project become a great project to come back with\". Smith stated that the team tried to create a record \"for the Britney Spears that we know and love\" and that it did not \"touch on anything that was really dealing with all the stuff that she was dealing with.\" Both commented that although Spears arrived late to the recording sessions, she caught them off guard with her efficiency and professionalism, with Lewis adding, \"It was absolutely nuts, and she took directions very well. [...] I don\u2019t know what I was expecting because we went in to cut that record the day after she filed divorce from Kevin [Federline].\" The song was later mixed by Niklas Flyckt at Mandarine Studios in Stockholm, Sweden. \"Radar\" was originally planned to be released as the third single from \"Blackout\", according to Lewis. \"Break the Ice\" was released instead and \"Radar\" was chosen as the fourth single. In July 2008, a physical promotional single was released in countries such as New Zealand and Sweden. However, a wider release was scrapped when Spears began recording new material for her sixth studio album, \"Circus\". On May 7, 2009, the song was announced as the fourth single from \"Circus\".\nMusic and lyrics.\n\"Radar\" runs through a midtempo dance groove. The song is an electro, Euro disco and electronic disco composition influenced by R&B, and rave music. It has a bouncy and skipping beat, and a repetitive melody reminiscent of a nursery rhyme. Spears' vocals are auto tuned and kept \"more in the foreground\", according to Jennifer Vineyard of MTV. Her voice is accompanied by sonar pulses and distorted synthesizers. The synthesizers have been compared by Kimberly Chou of \"The Michigan Daily\" to those of Soft Cell's \"Tainted Love\" (1981). During the outro, Spears repeats Vocodered da-da-das.\nCritics noted that \"Radar\" is influenced by the music of Rihanna; Cameron Adams of the \"Herald Sun\" said the song sounds \"like an inferior take\" of Rihanna's single \"SOS\" (2006). Roger Friedman of Fox News said that along with \"Break the Ice\", \"Radar\" was more \"straight-ahead electronic disco\" than the rest of \"Blackout\" and added that it \"sounds like Las Vegas goes Eurodisco.\"\nIn the lyrics, Spears lets the subject know he is on her radar, while she lists the qualities the man has. Kimberly Chou said Spears' delivery \"[is] so aggressive it's almost threatening.\" Spears sings lyrics such as \"Confidence is a must / cockiness is a plus / edginess is a rush / edges I like 'em rough / A man with a Midas touch / Intoxicate me I'm a lush.\" During the bridge she sings \"I got my eye on you / And I can't let you get away\", making clear her attraction.\nCritical reception.\n\"Blender\" gave the song four and a half stars, named it the second potential hit from the album, and called it \"a bubblegum-electro dance floor jam with a hook most pop stars would kill for\". Eric R. Danton of \"The Hartford Courant\" deemed it as \"crackling\" and \"club-ready\", while calling it one of the \"killer tracks\" off the album along with \"Break the Ice\" and \"Hot as Ice\". \"Denton Record-Chronicle\"'s Mike Daniel said the best tracks of \"Blackout\" are \"the unwaveringly catchy 'Radar' and the neo-wave curveball of 'Heaven and Earth'\". Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic said some of the songs of \"Blackout\", \"really show off the skills of the producers\", exemplifying \"Gimme More\", \"Radar\", \"Break the Ice\", \"Heaven on Earth\" and \"Hot as Ice\". He also selected it as one of his 'track picks' of the album. Jedd Rosche of \"The Maneater\" deemed it as one of the standout tracks of \"Blackout\" along with \"Ooh Ooh Baby.\"\nNekesa Mumbi Moody of \"USA Today\" called it \"a sexy techno groove that you can't help but bounce to.\" Theon Weber of \"The Village Voice\" said that \"Spears's writers present her with the goofiest, most vivacious productions she's ever had, filling 'Radar' with pinging noises and polishing Madonna's dance-floor trash bright.\" Nick Levine of Digital Spy called it \"a rave-tinged electro blipathon on which Spears is vocodered to the point of sounding extra-terrestrial.\" Alexis Petridis from \"The Guardian\" said that the song \"seems to be bending over backwards to annoy the listener. Perhaps it's a last desperate tactic to win back some privacy: she's trying to get people to leave her alone by making as irritating a noise as possible.\" A reviewer from the \"Ottawa Citizen\" said that \"some tracks [of the album] just don't work, such as Radar, in which Britney's voice is tuned up so high she sounds like she's 14.\"\nLaura Herbert of BBC News said that many of the album's songs, including \"Radar\" and \"Toy Soldier\" \"are repetitive and over-produced.\" Jim Abbott of the \"Orlando Sentinel\" said that \"Musically, songs such as 'Piece of Me,' 'Radar' and 'Break the Ice' are one-dimensional, robotic exercises.\" Chris Wasser from the \"Irish Independent\" said the album had single potential, exemplifying that \"There's little doubting we'll hear the bouncing and digitally affected vocals of Radar and the livelier Hot As Ice on the radio soon enough, but both tracks still seem a little under par.\" After the release of \"Radar\" as a single from \"Circus\", Nick Levine of Digital Spy said it \"still sounds pretty ace, one of the best examples of the robopop sound \"Blackout\" essentially invented, but its fresh-out-the-box sheen has long since faded\". On July 29, 2009, \"Radar\" was chosen as single of the week by \"FHM\".\nCommercial performance.\nOn November 17, 2007, due to digital downloads for the \"Blackout\" release, \"Radar\" peaked at number 52 on the US \"Billboard\" Hot Digital Songs and number seven on the US \"Billboard\" Bubbling Under Hot 100. The song also charted in several countries based on strong digital sales and airplay alone, surprisingly reaching high chart positions. In Ireland, the song debuted at number 47 on July 15, 2008. It peaked at number 32 on August 5, 2008. In Sweden, \"Radar\" debuted at number 46 on July 24, 2008. The single peaked at number eight on July 28, 2008, becoming the second highest-charting single from the album after \"Gimme More\". It stayed on the position for two weeks, and for eight weeks on the chart overall. In New Zealand, the song debuted at number 37 on August 18, 2008, and peaked at number 32 two weeks later. It stayed on the chart for five weeks.\nAfter being confirmed as the fourth single from \"Circus\", \"Radar\" re-entered the charts in several countries. On August 29, 2009, the song peaked at number 30 on the US \"Billboard\" Pop Songs. On September 5, 2009, \"Radar\" finally entered the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 at number 90, and peaked at number 88 on the following week. It became her fifth song from \"Circus\" to chart on the Hot 100, marking the first time five songs from one of her albums entered the chart. It was also her 22nd Hot 100 hit. \"Radar\" also became her 21st chart entry on the Pop Songs chart, the most for any artist of the decade at the time. As of July 2010, \"Radar\" has sold 481,000 paid digital downloads in the United States. On the same week, the song peaked at number 65 in Canada. The track re-entered the ARIA Singles Chart at number 46 on July 20, 2009, and stayed on the chart for just one week. In the UK, the song peaked at number 46 on August 2, 2009.\nMusic video.\nDevelopment.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"She kind of filled [Madonna's] shoes. [But] everything is done in a Britney way. She's not Madonna, and Madonna is not Britney. It seems like Madonna made the same choices that were right for her at the time, to class her up when she had just done a sexpot video. She was riding that image train too. She was leading that image train, and I think that Britney has done that as well.\"\n\u2014Dave Meyers, explaining the tribute to the music video of Madonna's \"Take a Bow\".\nIn June 2008, a video for \"Radar\" was planned that would have Spears and her friends chasing a man in different clubs. However, this was scrapped along with the single's release. The music video for \"Radar\" from \"Circus\" was filmed on May 27 and 28, 2009, at the Bacara Resort & Spa located in Santa Barbara, California. It was directed by Dave Meyers, who previously worked with Spears on her music videos for \"Lucky\", \"Boys\" and \"Outrageous\" as well as the Curious commercials. Meyers claimed the video pays tribute to the music video of Madonna's 1994 single \"Take a Bow\". He added, \"[we were] looking for a way to take her into a contemporary, classy environment. I felt empowered by referencing Madonna's video. Britney hasn't done anything like that\". He had a very clear idea of how he wanted the story line to work: \"There is a narrative going on, a romantic triangle on a weekend at this polo mansion,\" he said. \"A soap-opera romance.\" Meyers commented that working with Spears again was \"a great celebration of trusting one another\", explaining that both wanted \"to do something fresh and new, seeking out an actual different technique and stylistic choices and trying to find a form to celebrate them in.\" Since the song was not the first single from \"Circus\", Meyers chose to experiment and not have dancing scenes, saying that \"the videos are a chance for her to vocalize a sense of herself. The media tends to attack her, so I thought, 'Let's show the classy side of Britney and focus on a classy experience, very European-inspired'. And she's at the point in her career where I think this would be a nice step.\" After the video was finished, Meyers said he was happy with the lack of dancing scenes, because the cuts and dissolves kept the pace of the song.\nSynopsis.\nThe video begins with Spears arriving at a polo mansion. She comes out from the car wearing a vest, jeans and showing her midriff. She starts singing while her boyfriend welcomes her. They walk past a barn, where a polo player is sitting. They look at each other briefly and she starts to sing in a balcony, watching the second man with a pair of binoculars. At the end of the first chorus, her boyfriend comes and puts a studded necklace around her neck, as a surprise gift. Until the end of the second chorus, we see scenes of Spears singing and watching the polo player as he gets ready. When the bridge begins, Spears arrives at a match wearing a white dress and a large hat. She looks at the polo player over her shoulder and sings the lines \"I got my eye on you / And I can\u2019t let you get away\". When the match ends, she leaves and the second man follows her. They flirt inside a hallway and leave. Her boyfriend notices her absence, walks into the hallway and sees her necklace on the floor. The video ends with Spears and the second man walking into the sunset.\nRelease and reception.\nThe music video leaked online on July 1, 2009. Daniel Kreps of \"Rolling Stone\" said the music video was her weakest since \"Gimme More\" and highlighted the comparisons with \"Take a Bow\", saying, \"while Madonna dressed the role of a distressed aristocratic senorita in the stands, Spears\u2019 wardrobe and giant hat mirror the elite at the Kentucky Derby\". He also said the idea was unoriginal and compared it to Spears' fragances commercials. Peter Gicas of E! commented that the video was a nice departure from her recent more choreographed videos, such as \"Womanizer\" and \"If U Seek Amy\". He commended it for its \"more straightforward approach in telling a so-called story\", but felt it was \"a bit too much like one of those overly dramatic fragrance commercials\". \"OK!\" said the video was \"posh\" and also noted the difference from her recent videos.\nLive performances and cover.\nSpears performed the song during The Circus Starring Britney Spears (2009). After the performance of \"Piece of Me\", there was a brief interlude in which acrobats hanging from fabric simulated a thunderstorm. Spears took the stage again to perform \"Radar\", which featured her pole dancing. She wore a black bra encrusted with Swarovski crystals, fishnet stockings and high-heeled laced up boots, designed by Dean and Dan Caten. Spears ended the performance with her and her dancers posing in the middle of the three-ring stage as a red curtain slowly descended in the closing. A contest in DanceJam.com was announced to promote the song. The contestants had to upload a video of them dancing to \"Radar\", and Spears and Jive Records picked the winner. In the revamped concert (2016), \"Radar\" plays during an interlude that features multiple excerpts of Spears' music videos. A cover version of the song by singer-songwriter Christopher Dallman was included in an extended play titled \"Sad Britney\", released on November 9, 2009, along with covers of \"...Baby One More Time\", \"Toxic\" and \"Gimme More\".\nUsage in media.\nThe song appears on the 2023 TV series \"Wilderness\"' third episode, titled \"Repent at Leisure\", while the character Liv, portrayed by Jenna Coleman, runs through the forest.\nTrack listings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["13995413", "3382"], "permutation_1": ["3382", "13995413"], "permutation_2": ["13995413", "3382"], "permutation_3": ["13995413", "3382"]}
{"id": "2hop__564042_36134", "docs_added": {"11978458": "Motulalo\nMotulalo is the largest islet of Nukufetau, Tuvalu. The traditional history of Nukufetau recalls that in order to protect the atoll from raiders from Tonga, Tauasa, an aliki (chief), was given Motulalo. Tauasa would pull up coconut trees and throw them at the raiders.\nDuring World War II the American forces built an airfield and a deepwater wharf on Motulalo. After the war the airfield was dismantled and the land returned to its owners. Beginning in October 2023, the airfield returns to use, with domestic flights to Funafuti International Airport.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11978458", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["11978458", "30227"], "permutation_2": ["30227", "11978458"], "permutation_3": ["11978458", "30227"]}
{"id": "2hop__326404_120065", "docs_added": {"21012": "Merseburg\nTown in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany\n \nMerseburg () is a town in central Germany in southern Saxony-Anhalt, situated on the river Saale, and approximately 14\u00a0km south of Halle (Saale) and 30\u00a0km west of Leipzig. It is the capital of the Saalekreis district. It had a diocese founded by Archbishop Adalbert of Magdeburg.\nThe University of Merseburg is located within the town. Merseburg has around 35,000 inhabitants. \nGeography.\nThe town Merseburg consists of Merseburg proper and the following four \"Ortschaften\" or municipal divisions:\nAdministrative reforms.\nVenenien was incorporated into Merseburg on 1 January 1949. The parish K\u00f6tzschen followed on 1 July 1950. Since 30 May 1994, Meuschau is part of Merseburg. Trebnitz, previously part of Kreypau, followed in 2003. Beuna was annexed on 1 January 2009. Geusa is a part of Merseburg since 1 January 2010.\nHistory.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nHistorical affiliations\n Bishopric of Merseburg 1004-1565<br>\n\u00a0Electorate of Saxony 1565-1657<br>\n Duchy of Saxe-Merseburg 1657-1738<br>\n Poland-Saxony 1738-1763<br>\n\u00a0Electorate of Saxony 1763-1806<br>\n Kingdom of Saxony 1806-1815<br>\n\u00a0Kingdom of Prussia 1815-1871<br>\n\u00a0German Empire 1871-1918<br>\n\u00a0Weimar Republic 1918-1933<br>\n\u00a0Nazi Germany 1933-1945<br>\n\u00a0Allied-occupied Germany 1945-1949<br>\n\u00a0East Germany 1949-1990<br>\n 1990-present\nPre-history and Middle Ages.\nMerseburg was first mentioned in 850. King Henry the Fowler built a royal palace at Merseburg; in the 933 Battle of Riade, he gained his great victory over the Hungarians in the vicinity.\nThietmar, appointed in 973, became the first bishop of the newly created bishopric of Prague in Bohemia. Prague had been part of the archbishopric of Mainz for a hundred years before that. From 968 until the Protestant Reformation, Merseburg was the seat of the Bishop of Merseburg, and in addition to being for a time the residence of the margraves of Meissen, it was a favorite residence of the German kings during the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries. Fifteen diets were held here during the Middle Ages, during which time its fairs enjoyed the importance which was afterwards transferred to those of Leipzig. After Ekkehard's treacherous death on 3 April 1002, Boles\u0142aw I Chrobry took Merseburg and Meissen, and then Milsko with Bautzen and Strehla, with the help of the local Slavic population. The German princes accepted the sovereignty of the Polish prince in these areas. Some historians believe that since the convention in Gniezno, the Brave might have had certain rights to the German throne after Otto III, guaranteed by some succession document. Merseburg was later the site of a failed assassination attempt on Polish ruler Boles\u0142aw I Chrobry in 1002. The town suffered severely during the German Peasants' War and also during the Thirty Years' War.\n17th century to 20th century.\nFrom 1657 to 1738 Merseburg was the residence of the Dukes of Saxe-Merseburg, after which it fell to the Electorate of Saxony. In 1815 following the Napoleonic Wars, the town became part of the Prussian Province of Saxony.\nMerseburg is where the Merseburg Incantations were rediscovered in 1841. Written down in Old High German, they are hitherto the only preserved German documents with a heathen theme. One of them is a charm to release warriors caught during battle, and the other is a charm to heal a horse's sprained foot.\nAt the beginning of the 20th century, Merseburg was transformed into an industrial town, largely due to the pioneering work done by Carl Bosch and Friedrich Bergius, who laid down the scientific fundamentals of the catalytic high-pressure ammonia synthesis from 1909 to 1913. The nearby Leuna works continue this tradition of chemical industry. The \"Merseburger Tageblatt\" was published as a local newspaper in Merseburg.\nMerseburg was badly damaged in World War II. In 23 air raids, 6,200 dwellings were completely or partly destroyed. The historic town centre was almost completely destroyed.\nBriefly part of Saxony-Anhalt after the war, it was then administered within the \"Bezirk\" Halle in East Germany. It became part of Saxony-Anhalt again after the reunification of Germany.\nDemographics.\nLike many towns in the former East Germany, Merseburg has had a general decline in population since German Reunification despite annexing and merging with a number of smaller nearby villages.\nPopulation of Merseburg \"(from 1960, population on 31 December, unless otherwise indicated)\":\nSights.\nAmong the notable buildings of Merseburg are the Merseburg Cathedral of St John the Baptist (founded 1015, rebuilt in the 13th and 16th centuries) and the episcopal palace (15th century). The cathedral-and-palace ensemble also features a palace garden.\nOther sights include the Merseburg House of Trades with a cultural stage and the German Museum of Chemistry, Merseburg.\nArts and culture.\nThe Merseburg Palace Festival with the Historical Pageant, the International Palace-Moat Concerts, Merseburg Organ Days and the Puppet Show Festival Week are events celebrated every year.\nTransport.\nMerseburg station is located on the Halle\u2013Bebra railway. Leipzig/Halle Airport is 25 kilometers away.\nMerseburg is connected with the Halle (Saale) tramway network. A tram ride from Halle's city centre to Merseburg takes about 50 minutes.\nTwin towns \u2013 sister cities.\nMerseburg is twinned with:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "34316596": "Charles Frederick II, Duke of W\u00fcrttemberg-Oels\nCharles Frederick II of W\u00fcrttemberg-Oels (7 February 1690 in Merseburg \u2013 14 December 1761 in Ole\u015bnica) was a Duke of Oels-W\u00fcrttemberg and Regent of the Duchy of W\u00fcrttemberg.\nLife.\nCharles Frederick was a son of the Duke Christian Ulrich I of W\u00fcrttemberg-Oels (1652\u20131704) from his second marriage to Duchess Sibylle Marie of Saxe-Merseburg (1667\u20131693), daughter of the Duke Christian I of Saxe-Merseburg. When his father died in 1704, Charles Frederick was still a minor, so he stood under guardianship until he was declared an adult in 1707.\nCharles Frederick married on 21 April 1709 in Stuttgart with Sibylle Charlotte (1690\u20131735), the daughter of Duke Frederick Ferdinand of W\u00fcrttemberg-Weiltingen, a grandson of Julius Frederick, Duke of W\u00fcrttemberg-Weiltingen.\nFrom 1738, he acted as guardian of Duke Charles Eugene and regent of W\u00fcrttemberg. In this r\u00f4le, he succeeded Duke Charles Rudolph of W\u00fcrttemberg-Neuenstadt, who had resigned from the regency for reasons of old age. During his time as regent, the War of the Austrian Succession broke out in 1740. In 1742, the Treaty of Breslau awarded his homeland Silesia to Prussia. Nevertheless, Charles Frederick and his successors did not participate in this war. During his regency, the administration was significantly improved and good relations with the Estates were restored. Georg Bernhard Bilfinger, Johann Eberhard Georgii and Frederick Augustus von Hardenberg served as ministers in his government.\nIn 1744, Emperor Charles VII declared Charles Eugene an adult, thereby ending Charles Frederick time as regent of W\u00fcrttemberg.\nCharles Frederick's marriage remained childless. In 1744, he resigned from the government in Oels, in favour of the son of his younger brother Charles Christian Erdmann. He then resided for some time in Mi\u0119dzyb\u00f3rz, and then moved to Oels, where he died in 1761, at the age of 72.", "164700": "Frederick V of the Palatinate\nElector Palatine and King of Bohemia (1596\u20131632)\nFrederick V (; 26 August 1596 \u2013 29 November 1632) was the Elector Palatine of the Rhine in the Holy Roman Empire from 1610 to 1623, and reigned as King of Bohemia from 1619 to 1620. He was forced to abdicate both roles, and the brevity of his reign in Bohemia earned him the derisive sobriquet \"the Winter King\" (Czech: \"Zimn\u00ed kr\u00e1l\"; German: \"Winterk\u00f6nig\").\nFrederick was born at the hunting lodge () in Deinschwang, Palatinate (present-day Lauterhofen, Germany). He was the son of Frederick IV and of Louise Juliana of Orange-Nassau, the daughter of William the Silent and Charlotte de Bourbon-Montpensier. An intellectual, a mystic, and a Calvinist, he succeeded his father as Prince-Elector of the Rhenish Palatinate in 1610, and at the age of 17 was married to the Protestant princess Elizabeth Stuart.\nIn 1618 the largely Protestant Czech nobility of Bohemia rebelled against their Catholic king, Ferdinand II, beginning a conflict that would become the Thirty Years' War. Frederick was asked to assume the crown of Bohemia. He accepted the offer and was crowned on 4 November 1619, as Frederick I. The estates chose Frederick because he was the leader of the Protestant Union, a military alliance founded by his father, and hoped for the support of Frederick's father-in-law, James VI of Scotland and I of England. However, James opposed his son-in-law's takeover of Bohemia from the Habsburgs and Frederick's allies in the Protestant Union failed to support him militarily by signing the Treaty of Ulm. His brief reign as king of Bohemia ended with his defeat at the Battle of White Mountain on 8 November 1620 \u2013 a year and four days after his coronation.\nAfter the battle, the Imperial forces invaded Frederick's Palatine lands, forcing him to flee to his uncle Prince Maurice, Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic in 1622. An Imperial edict formally deprived him of the Palatinate in 1623. He lived the rest of his life in exile with his wife and family, mostly at The Hague, and died in Mainz in 1632.\nHis eldest surviving son Charles Louis was restored to the electorate in 1648 under the Peace of Westphalia. Another son was Prince Rupert of the Rhine, one of the most colourful figures of his time. His daughter Princess Sophia was eventually named heiress presumptive to the British throne, and is the founder of the Hanoverian line of kings.\nYouth, 1596\u20131610.\nFrederick was born on 26 August 1596 was born at the hunting lodge () in Deinschwang, Palatinate (present-day Lauterhofen, Germany). His father, Frederick IV, was the ruler of Electoral Palatinate; his mother was Louise Juliana of Nassau, the daughter of William I of Orange and Charlotte de Bourbon-Monpensier. Frederick was related to almost all of the ruling families of the Holy Roman Empire and a number of diplomats and dignitaries attended his baptism at Amberg on 6 October 1596. The Palatine Simmerns, the elder branch of the House of Wittelsbach, were noted for their attachment to Calvinism; this was in marked contrast to the other cadet branch of Wittelsbachs, headed by Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, which was deeply devoted to the Roman Catholic Church.\nThe capital of the Palatinate, Heidelberg, was suffering from an outbreak of bubonic plague at this time, so Frederick spent his first two years in the Upper Palatinate before being brought to Heidelberg in 1598. In 1604, at his mother's urging, he was sent to Sedan to live in the court of his uncle Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, Duke of Bouillon. During his time at Sedan, Frederick was a frequent visitor to the court of Henry IV of France. His tutor was Calvinist theologian Daniel Tilenus, a professor of theology at the Academy of Sedan. During the Eighty Years' War and the French Wars of Religion, Tilenus called for the unity of Protestant princes, and taught that it was their Christian duty to intervene if their brethren were being harassed. These views are likely to have shaped Frederick's future policies.\nControversy over guardianship, 1610\u20131614.\nOn 19 September 1610, Frederick's father, Frederick IV, died from \"extravagant living\"; his son being 14 years old at the time. Under the terms of the Golden Bull of 1356, Frederick's closest male relative would serve as his guardian and as regent of the Palatinate until Frederick reached the age of majority. However, his nearest male relative, Wolfgang William, Count Palatine of Neuburg, was a Catholic, so, shortly before his death, Frederick IV had named another Wittelsbach, John II, Count Palatine of Zweibr\u00fccken, as his son's guardian. Frederick V welcomed John to Heidelberg, whereas Wolfgang William was denied entry. This led to a heated dispute among the princes of the Holy Roman Empire. \nIn 1613, Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor intervened in the dispute, with the result being that Frederick V was able to begin his personal rule in the Palatinate even though he was still underage. The dispute ended in 1614, when Frederick attained his eighteenth birthday. However, much bad blood among the houses was caused by this dispute.\nMarriage to Elizabeth Stuart.\nFrederick IV's marriage policy had been designed to solidify the Palatinate's position within the Reformed camp in Europe. Two of Frederick V's sisters were married to leading Protestant princes: his sister Luise Juliane to his one-time guardian John II, Count Palatine of Zweibr\u00fccken, and his sister Elizabeth Charlotte to George William, Elector of Brandenburg. Frederick IV had hoped that his daughter Katharina would marry the future Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, although this never came to pass.\nIn keeping with his father's policy, Frederick V sought a marriage to Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James VI of Scotland and I of England. James had initially considered marrying Elizabeth to Louis XIII of France, but these plans were rejected by his advisors. Frederick's advisors in the Palatinate were worried that if Elizabeth were married to a Catholic prince, this would upset the confessional balance of Europe, and they were thus resolved that she should marry Frederick V. Hans Meinhard von Sch\u00f6nberg, who had served as Frederick V's \"Hofmeister\" since his return to Heidelberg, was sent to London to court the princess in spring 1612. After intense negotiations, a marriage contract was signed on 26 May 1612, over the objection of her mother, Queen Anne.\nFrederick travelled to London to collect his bride, landing on English soil on 16 October 1612. Frederick and Elizabeth, who had previously corresponded in French, now met each other for the first time, and got on well together. They were formally engaged in January 1613 and married on 14 February 1613 at the royal chapel at the Palace of Whitehall. The event was celebrated in John Donne's poetic masterpiece \"Epithalamion, or Mariage Song on the Lady Elizabeth, and Count Palatine being married on St. Valentines Day\". Shortly before the ceremony, Frederick was inducted into the Order of the Garter and he wore the Order's chain during the wedding ceremony. Elaborate celebrations, organised by Francis Bacon, followed the ceremony; these included a performance of \"The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn\" by Francis Beaumont and \"The Memorable Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn\" by George Chapman.\nOn their return trip to Heidelberg, Frederick and Elizabeth travelled to The Hague to visit Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange before leaving for Germany on 5 May 1613. The couple entered Heidelberg on 12 June 1613, amidst widespread celebration. Elizabeth was popular with Frederick's subjects, and this popularity grew when, on 1 January 1614, she gave birth to a son, Frederick Henry.\nAs part of the marriage negotiations, Frederick had agreed to expand Heidelberg Castle. These renovations were completed in 1615 and the \"Elizabeth Entrance\" to Heidelberg Castle was dedicated.\nElectoral reign before the Thirty Years' War, 1614\u20131618.\nOne of Frederick's first acts upon taking the reins of government was attendance at a meeting of the Protestant Union, during which he was struck by fever and nearly died. Subsequently contemporaries described him as changed, melancholy and possibly depressed. As such, Frederick transferred much responsibility to his chancellor, Christian I, Prince of Anhalt-Bernburg.\nFrederick undertook a large building campaign, designed to glorify his regime. In addition to the renovations to Heidelberg Castle mentioned above, he commissioned a courtyard garden, the \"Hortus Palatinus\", designed by English gardener Inigo Jones and French engineer Salomon de Caus. Frederick was depicted therein as Apollo and as Hercules.\nPolitically, Frederick positioned himself as a leader of the Protestant princes in the Holy Roman Empire, and as a defender of the liberty of the German nobles against the Catholic Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor. Since the Peace of Augsburg, the Empire had been delicately balanced between Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist principalities (although Calvinism was not recognised in the Peace of Augsburg). The conflicts between princes of these three faiths developed into a deep struggle over the Empire's constitution. Furthermore, the Twelve Years' Truce, a hiatus in the Eighty Years' War, was set to expire in 1621, and was likely to lead to renewed fighting between the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Empire.\nWith its central location in Germany, the Palatinate was vulnerable to incursions of imperial troops from the Habsburg hereditary lands. Unlike many principalities of the Holy Roman Empire, the Electoral Palatinate was not a solid dominion, but instead consisted of two unconnected provinces surrounded by foreign lands. The Lower Palatinate centred on Heidelberg, while the Upper Palatinate centred on Amberg. The Lower Palatinate's economy was dominated by agriculture, while the Upper Palatinate was a mining region with one of the most successful economies in Europe.\nKing of Bohemia, 1619\u201320.\nBackground and plans.\nThe Kingdom of Bohemia was an elective monarchy, and despite being a kingdom, was a part of the Holy Roman Empire. Since 1526, the kings of Bohemia had all been members of the House of Habsburg; since 1555, these kings had also been emperors. In the early seventeenth century, however, Bohemia faced a political crisis. The Estates of the realm of Bohemia became worried that the Habsburgs were planning to transform Bohemia into an absolute monarchy. A large number of Bohemian nobles were Protestant and feared that a Catholic emperor would attempt to impose Catholicism on Bohemia. Thus, a substantial opposition movement developed to the rule of Emperor Rudolf II. Rudolf had waged the Long War against the Ottoman Empire from 1593 to 1606. Dissatisfied with the outcome, Rudolf sought to launch a new war against the Ottomans. To gain Bohemian support, Rudolf agreed to guarantee Bohemia's religious liberty, issuing his so-called Letter of Majesty in 1609. Still, the Bohemian nobles remained suspicious of Rudolf and in contact with the Protestant Union.\nThe Bohemian Estates elected the Habsburg Matthias as Rudolf's heir, and Matthias became king of Bohemia in 1611 and emperor in 1612. Yet in the latter year there was discussion within the Protestant Union about fielding a Protestant candidate to supplant Matthias as king of Bohemia, and Frederick's name was discussed in this regard. Strategists in the Palatinate believed that if Frederick became king, this would lead John George I, Elector of Saxony, to break his alliance with the Habsburgs and come fully to the Protestant cause. This assumption proved unfounded.\nMeanwhile, the sectarian conflicts in Bohemia continued. In 1617, Matthias prevailed on the Bohemian Estates to elect the Habsburg Ferdinand, Duke of Styria, as heir to the throne of Bohemia. Ferdinand was an intensely loyal Catholic, and many Protestant noblemen believed that Ferdinand intended to withdraw the protections of Rudolf II's Letter of Majesty. These suspicions were further aroused when Imperial officials ordered Protestants to stop erecting Protestant churches on the \"Stifts\", lands held by ecclesiastical lords who were not subject to the Bohemian Estates. The Protestants claimed the status of these lands fell under the term \"royal land\", and thus were subject to Bohemia's authority by the Letter of Majesty \u2013 a very disputed legal interpretation which the Habsburg government rejected. On 23 May 1618, an assembly of Protestant noblemen, led by Count Jind\u0159ich Maty\u00e1\u0161 Thurn, stormed Prague Castle, and seized two Imperial governors, Vilem Slavata of Chlum and Jaroslav Borzita of Martinice. The rebels charged them with violating the Letter of Majesty, found them guilty, and threw them and their scribe Philip Fabricius out of the windows of the Bohemian Chancellery. This event \u2013 known as the Second Defenestration of Prague \u2013 marked the beginning of the Bohemian Revolt, and with it, the beginning of the Thirty Years' War.\nIn these circumstances Christian I, Prince of Anhalt-Bernburg, Frederick V's governor of the Upper Palatinate, moved to intervene in Bohemia. He did not initially propose nominating Frederick as king because the young elector was still seen as politically inexperienced, and was a Calvinist, while there were virtually no Calvinists in Bohemia. At any rate, Frederick was not initially eager to defy the Emperor, who had praised Frederick's loyalty. Frederick did not publicly break with the Emperor, but in a letter to his father-in-law, James I of England, he placed the blame for the Bohemian vote on the Jesuits and the Spanish party at the Habsburg court. This was a questionable evasion of the role played by Frederick's own agents.\nThe first mention in Prague of Frederick's name as a possible candidate as king of Bohemia came in November 1618. It is not known if Frederick's agents played a role in talking up his possible candidacy. Palatine diplomat Christoph von Dohna approached James I of England with the possibility of Frederick becoming king, but James reacted negatively to this idea. The princes of the Protestant Union similarly rejected the idea, fearing it might lead to religious war and the Elector of Saxony was staunchly opposed.\nBehind the scenes, Frederick authorised sending a force under Count Ernst von Mansfeld to support the Bohemian rebels. In August 1618, forces under Mansfeld entered Bohemia and led the Siege of Pilsen, which saw Pilsen fall to rebel forces on 21 November 1618, leaving the entire kingdom in Protestant hands.\nMatthias, Holy Roman Emperor died on 20 March 1619. Although his successor, the future Emperor Ferdinand II, had previously been crowned King of Bohemia, the Estates of Bohemia now refused to recognise him as their king. Fearing an invasion by Imperial forces, the Estates sought an alliance with the other members of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown (Silesia, Lusatia, Moravia) and on 31 July 1619 at Prague, these states formed the Bohemian Confederacy, dedicated to opposing the Habsburgs; under the terms of this agreement, Protestantism became virtually the state religion of the Bohemian lands. In August 1619, the general parliament of all the Bohemian lands declared that Ferdinand had forfeited the Bohemian throne. This formally severed all ties between Bohemia and the Habsburgs and made war inevitable. Ferdinand of Bavaria, Archbishop of Cologne predicted this decision would lead to twenty, forty, or sixty years of war.\nThe preferred candidate of Bohemians as their new king was the Elector of Saxony, but he let it be known he would not accept the throne. This left Frederick as the most senior Protestant prince available, since no one else was willing to risk conflict with the emperor. In August 1619, the chances of Frederick becoming King of Bohemia became greater when Gabriel Bethlen launched an anti-Habsburg revolt in Royal Hungary. This was also precisely the period when Ferdinand was travelling to Frankfurt for his coronation.\nFrederick in Prague.\nOn 26 August 1619, the states of the Bohemian Confederacy elected Frederick as the new King of Bohemia, Frederick receiving news of his election on 29 August in Amberg.\nTwo days later, Ferdinand II was elected Holy Roman Emperor. Frederick was the only elector who voted against Ferdinand; even the Protestant prince-electors John George I of Saxony and John Sigismund of Brandenburg adhered to the tradition of supporting the Habsburg Imperial candidate. The electoral college also condemned the Bohemian Confederation's attempt to remove Ferdinand from the throne of Bohemia and declared that the 1617 vote of the Estates of Bohemia, making Ferdinand King of Bohemia, was binding.\nFrederick's decision to accept the Bohemian crown has been the subject of much historical speculation. Later Catholic propaganda, in a view accepted by Friedrich Schiller, portrayed the decision as based mainly on Elizabeth Stuart's desire to be a queen. More recently, historians have concluded that Frederick's decision was based primarily on a sense of duty to his fellow Protestants, although Frederick wavered between his obligations to the emperor and his commitment to his religious brethren. There also seems to have been economic considerations; the Upper Palatinate was at that time Europe's center for iron production, while Bohemia was a focal point for the tin and glass trade. Christian I, Prince of Anhalt-Bernburg, told Frederick that a union of the two areas could be commercially advantageous.\nOn 12 September 1619, the Protestant Union met at Rothenburg ob der Tauber and called on Frederick not to intervene in Bohemian affairs. Other possible allies \u2013 the Dutch Republic, Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy, and the Republic of Venice \u2013 sent letters saying they would not be able to offer Frederick assistance if he accepted the Bohemian offer. Only Gabriel Bethlen offered words of encouragement.\nBetween 24 September and 28, Frederick reached his decision \"not to resist the will of the Almighty\" and thus decided to accept the Bohemian crown. The Dutch Republic, the Republic of Venice, Denmark, and Sweden recognised Frederick as King of Bohemia.\nOn 29 September 1619, Frederick left Heidelberg for Prague. He travelled through Ansbach, Amberg, Neumarkt, and Waldsassen, where he was met by representatives from the Bohemian Estates. Together, they then travelled through Cheb, Sokolov, \u017datec, Louny, and Slan\u00fd. Finally on 31 October 1619, Frederick entered Prague, along with 568 people and 100 cars, and was greeted enthusiastically.\nCoronation.\nFrederick donned the Crown of Saint Wenceslas in St. Vitus Cathedral on 4 November 1619. The coronation was conducted not by the Archbishop of Prague but by the Utraquist administrator of the diocese, Ji\u0159\u00edk Dicastus, and a Protestant elder, Jan Cyril \u0160palek z T\u0159eb\u00ed\u010de. The liturgy was modelled on that used at the coronation of Charles IV, with only a few parts altered. The litany was sung \u2013 per the Catholic tradition \u2013 rather than spoken as was normally done by the Calvinists. Frederick was anointed with little objection. At the end of the coronation, the Estates paid homage to Frederick.\nAlthough a large part of the country was already devastated by war, and many refugees were encamped in the town, the coronation was celebrated with lavish parties.\nReign.\nFrederick assumed a weak crown and a state torn with internal divisions. The state's finances had been disrupted for years, and, at any rate, Bohemian kings had only very limited ability to raise funds, being primarily dependent on the goodwill of the nobility and the tax allocations of the diets. The Protestant nobles felt that higher taxes were necessary to pay for war against the German Catholic League, but the country already felt overburdened in the wake of the Long War. Further limiting Frederick's ability to manoeuvre was the need to distribute royal bounty to supporters in order to ensure their loyalty to his regime.\nIn Prague, Frederick soon came to be alienated from a portion of the nobility and the clergy. Neither Frederick nor his wife spoke Czech, so court offices were staffed primarily with foreigners, while the administration of the localities was left to the local nobles. This made an alliance of the royal family with the corporate bodies of the realm difficult.\nFurther alienation was caused by Frederick V's court preacher, Abraham Scultetus, who was determined to use his new post to advance the cause of Calvinism in Bohemia. The Utraquist churches had retained the use of relics and images in church, but Scultetus now launched an iconoclastic crusade against images: beginning on 21 December 1619, images were removed from St. Vitus Cathedral, and on 27\u201328 December, the famous Prague Altarpiece of Lucas Cranach the Elder depicting the Virgin Mary was destroyed. There was even a rumour that the grave of St. Wenceslaus was to be desecrated. Scultetus' iconoclasm was deeply unpopular, and Frederick attempted to distance himself from it, claiming that his orders were not being carried out by his followers.\nThe nickname \"The Winter King\" appeared shortly after the beginning of Frederick's reign and our first printed reference using the term came in a 1619 Imperial pamphlet that presented the phrase in the context of a royal chronogram. Frederick's propagandists attempted to respond to the phrase by arguing that Frederick was in fact a \"Winter Lion\" who defended the crown of Bohemia against troublemakers and liars, and that he would also be a \"Summer Lion.\"\nMeanwhile, Ferdinand II rallied his forces against Frederick. On 21 October 1619, he signed a treaty with Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria, leader of the Catholic League. This treaty provided that Maximilian would be commander of the forces against Frederick, promised that Maximilian would retain all of the occupied Bohemian lands for himself, and that he would be granted Frederick's electoral title as well. The Emperor was also able to obtain the support of Elector John George I of Saxony; John George's court preacher, Matthias Hoe von Hoenegg, encouraged the Emperor to smash Frederick and the Bohemians.\nFrederick's chancellor, Christian of Anhalt, urged Frederick to call a meeting of Protestant princes at Nuremberg in December 1619. This conference was a fiasco, as few princes bothered to send representatives. John George of Saxony declined to send a representative. Those who did attend half-heartedly promised to secure Frederick's Rhineland territories during Frederick's absence in Bohemia.\nIn March 1620, during a meeting of the Imperial party at Mulhouse, Frederick despatched a legal defense of his actions. He argued that he had not broken the imperial peace because Bohemia was located outside of the Holy Roman Empire and there was not, therefore, a conflict between an imperial prince and the emperor. Frederick argued that it would therefore be illegal for Ferdinand to use imperial power against him. This meeting, which included John George of Saxony and Maximilian of Bavaria, rejected Frederick's argument, finding that Bohemia was an indivisible part of the Empire.\nOn 1 April 1620, the Imperial party issued an ultimatum calling on Frederick to leave Bohemia by 1 June. If Frederick did not comply by this date, Ferdinand threatened to enforce his right as Holy Roman Emperor and rightful King of Bohemia to overthrow the usurper.\nA little later, John George of Saxony signed a treaty with Ferdinand in which Ferdinand guaranteed the practice of Lutheranism in Bohemia and recognized the secular areas in the Netherlands. Ferdinand also agreed to give John George Lusatia, thus cementing John George's dominance of the Upper Saxon Circle.\nThis was the context when the parliament of the Bohemian Confederacy met on 25 March 1620. Frederick called for massive tax increases and conscription to fight the impending Imperial threat. To raise money for the Bohemian forces, Frederick used his private funds, pawned his jewels and, in May 1620, drove the Palatinate into insolvency when he decided to move two tons of gold to Bohemia.\nBad news continued to arrive for Frederick. James VI of Scotland and I of England refused to support his son-in-law militarily. The Netherlands sent only a small force and promised only 50,000 florins a month for Frederick. Worst of all for Frederick, on 3 July 1620, the Protestant Union signed the Treaty of Ulm (1620), thereby withdrawing their support for Frederick and declaring neutrality in the conflict between Frederick and the Catholic League.\nBattle of White Mountain, 8 November 1620.\nWith the signing of the Treaty of Ulm Ambrogio Spinola, 1st Marquis of the Balbases, began raising Imperial troops in the Spanish Netherlands and in the Alsace region.\nIn early August 1620, 25,000 troops, under the command of Spinola, marched into Bohemia. In the third week of August, they shifted their focus and marched into the nearly unarmed Electoral Palatinate, occupying Mainz. The Electoral Palatinate was defended by only 2,000 English volunteers and the country was easily taken. Imperial troops set up camp in Frankenthal and Mannheim. Spinola crossed the Rhine on 5 September 1620 and proceeded to capture Bad Kreuznach on 10 September and Oppenheim on 14 September. From Bohemia, Frederick was powerless to stop the occupation of his ancestral homeland.\nAfter capturing Linz, Upper Austria, Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria crossed the Bohemian border on 26 September 1620. At Rokycany, Maximilian's forces first met with the 15,000 ragtag, poorly paid and poorly equipped troops that Frederick had managed to raise. Frederick visited his army on 28 September 1620, but, lacking a military background, left the conduct of the war to his generals. Frederick focused his attention on organizing supplies and preparing fortifications.\nAfter a series of skirmishes, on 5 November 1620, Frederick drew his forces back towards Prague and Imperial troops followed them. On 7 November, Bohemian forces determined to make a stand at White Mountain, just outside Prague. The day before, King Frederick had ridden down the lines and exhorted the soldiers. He then rushed to Prague to implore the Bohemian Estates to raise money for his troops and to receive the envo"}, "descending_order": ["34316596", "164700", "21012"], "permutation_1": ["34316596", "164700", "21012"], "permutation_2": ["21012", "164700", "34316596"], "permutation_3": ["34316596", "21012", "164700"]}
{"id": "2hop__427142_36090", "docs_added": {"30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "11977826": "Tengako\nTengako is a peninsula at the north end of Fongafale islet of Funafuti, Tuvalu. At the end of the peninsula is Amatuku islet on which the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute is located. Further past that is Mulitefala.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11977826", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["11977826", "30227"], "permutation_2": ["11977826", "30227"], "permutation_3": ["30227", "11977826"]}
{"id": "2hop__193086_159106", "docs_added": {"3607937": "Malaysia\nCountry in Southeast Asia\nMalaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. A federal constitutional monarchy, it consists of 13 states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions: Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo's East Malaysia. Peninsular Malaysia shares a land and maritime border with Thailand and maritime borders with Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia. East Malaysia shares land borders with Brunei and Indonesia, as well as a maritime border with the Philippines and Vietnam. Kuala Lumpur is the national capital, the country's largest city, and the seat of the legislative branch of the federal government.\nPutrajaya is the federal administrative capital, which represents the seat of both the executive branch (the Cabinet, federal ministries, and federal agencies) and the judicial branch of the federal government. With a population of over 34 million, the country is the world's 42nd-most populous country. Malaysia is tropical and is one of 17 megadiverse countries; it is home to numerous endemic species. Tanjung Piai in the Malaysian state of Johor is the southernmost point of continental Eurasia.\nThe country has its origins in the Malay kingdoms, which, from the 18th century on, became subject to the British Empire, along with the British Straits Settlements protectorate. During World War II, British Malaya, along with other nearby British and American colonies, was occupied by the Empire of Japan. Following three years of occupation, Peninsular Malaysia was briefly unified as the Malayan Union in 1946 until 1948 when it was restructured as the Federation of Malaya. The country achieved independence on 31 August 1957. On 16 September 1963, independent Malaya united with the then British crown colonies of North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore to become Malaysia. In August 1965, Singapore was expelled from the federation and became a separate, independent country.\nThe country is multiethnic and multicultural, which has a significant effect on its politics. About half the population is ethnically Malay, with minorities of Chinese, Indians, and indigenous peoples. The official language is Malaysian Malay, a standard form of the Malay language. English remains an active second language. It is also home to 111 living indigenous languages. While recognising Islam as the official religion, the constitution grants freedom of religion to non-Muslims. The government is modelled on the Westminster parliamentary system, and the legal system is based on common law. The head of state is an elected monarch, chosen from among the nine state sultans every five years. The head of government is the prime minister.\nThe country's economy has traditionally been driven by its natural resources but is expanding into commerce, tourism, and medical tourism. The country has a newly industrialised market economy, which is relatively open and state-oriented. The country is a founding member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the East Asia Summit (EAS), and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and a member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the Commonwealth, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).\nEtymology.\nThe name \"Malaysia\" is a combination of the word \"Malays\" and the Latin-Greek suffix \"-ia\"/-\u03af\u03b1 which can be translated as 'land of the Malays'. Similar-sounding variants have also appeared in accounts older than the 11th century, as toponyms for areas in Sumatra or referring to a larger region around the Strait of Malacca. The Sanskrit text \"Vayu Purana\", thought to have been in existence since the first millennium CE, mentioned a land named 'Malayadvipa' which was identified by certain scholars as the modern Malay Peninsula. Other notable accounts are by Ptolemy's 2nd-century \"Geographia\" that used the name \"Malayu Kulon\" for the west coast of Golden Chersonese, and the 7th-century Yijing's account of \"Malayu\".\nAt some point, the Melayu Kingdom took its name from the \"Sungai Melayu\". \"Melayu\" then became associated with Srivijaya, and remained associated with various parts of Sumatra, especially Palembang, where the founder of the Malacca Sultanate is thought to have come from. It is only thought to have developed into an ethnonym as Malacca became a regional power in the 15th century. Islamisation established an ethnoreligious identity in Malacca, with the term \"Melayu\" beginning to appear as interchangeable with \"Melakans\". It may have specifically referred to local Malay speakers who were loyal to the Malaccan Sultan. The initial Portuguese use of reflected this, referring only to the ruling people of Malacca. The prominence of traders from Malacca led \"Melayu\" to be associated with Muslim traders, and from there became associated with the wider cultural and linguistic group. Malacca and later Johor claimed they were the centre of Malay culture, a position supported by the British which led to the term \"Malay\" becoming more usually linked to the Malay peninsula rather than Sumatra.\nBefore the onset of European colonisation, the Malay Peninsula was known natively as \"Tanah Melayu\" ('Malay Land'). Under a racial classification created by a German scholar Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, the natives of maritime Southeast Asia were grouped into a single category, the Malay race. Following the expedition of French navigator Jules Dumont d'Urville to Oceania in 1826, he later proposed the terms of \"Malaysia\", \"Micronesia\" and \"Melanesia\" to the \"Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 de G\u00e9ographie\" in 1831, distinguishing these Pacific cultures and island groups from the existing term \"Polynesia\". Dumont d'Urville described Malaysia as \"an area commonly known as the East Indies\". In 1850, the English ethnologist George Samuel Windsor Earl, writing in the \"Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia\", proposed naming the islands of Southeast Asia as \"Melayunesia\" or \"Indunesia\", favouring the former. The name Malaysia gained some use to label what is now the Malay Archipelago. In modern terminology, \"Malay\" remains the name of an ethnoreligious group of Austronesian people predominantly inhabiting the Malay Peninsula and portions of the adjacent islands of Southeast Asia, including the east coast of Sumatra, the coast of Borneo, and smaller islands that lie between these areas.\nThe state that gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1957 took the name \"the Federation of Malaya\", chosen in preference to other potential names such as \"Malaysia\" and \"Langkasuka\", after the historic kingdom located at the upper section of the Malay Peninsula in the first millennium CE. Nonetheless, the name \"Malaysia\" was adopted in 1963 when the existing states of the Federation of Malaya, plus Singapore, North Borneo and Sarawak formed a new federation. One theory posits the name was chosen so that \"si\" represented the inclusion of Singapore, North Borneo, and Sarawak to Malaya in 1963. Politicians in the Philippines contemplated renaming their state Malaysia before the modern country took the name.\nHistory.\nEvidence of modern human habitation in Malaysia dates back 40,000\u00a0years. In the Malay Peninsula, the first inhabitants are thought to be Negritos. Areas of Malaysia participated in the Maritime Jade Road between 2000 BC to 1000 AD. Traders and settlers from India and China arrived as early as the first century AD, establishing trading ports and coastal towns in the second and third centuries. Their presence resulted in strong Indian and Chinese influences on the local cultures, and the people of the Malay Peninsula adopted the religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. Sanskrit inscriptions appear as early as the fourth or fifth century. The Kingdom of Langkasuka arose around the second century in the northern area of the Malay Peninsula, lasting until about the 15th century. Between the 7th and 13th centuries, much of the southern Malay Peninsula was part of the maritime Srivijayan empire. By the 13th and the 14th century, the Majapahit empire had successfully wrested control over most of the peninsula and the Malay Archipelago from Srivijaya. In the early 15th century, Parameswara, a runaway king of the former Kingdom of Singapura linked to the old Srivijayan court, founded the Malacca Sultanate. The spread of Islam increased following Parameswara's conversion to that religion. Malacca was an important commercial centre during this time, attracting trade from around the region.\nIn 1511, Malacca was conquered by Portugal, after which it was taken by the Dutch in 1641. In 1786, the British Empire established a presence in Malaya, when the Sultan of Kedah leased Penang Island to the British East India Company. The British obtained the town of Singapore in 1819, and in 1824 took control of Malacca following the Anglo-Dutch Treaty. By 1826, the British directly controlled Penang, Malacca, Singapore, and the island of Labuan, which they established as the crown colony of the Straits Settlements. By the 20th century, the states of Pahang, Selangor, Perak, and Negeri Sembilan, known together as the Federated Malay States, had British residents appointed to advise the Malay rulers, to whom the rulers were bound to defer by treaty. The remaining five states on the peninsula, known as the Unfederated Malay States, while not directly under British rule, also accepted British advisers around the turn of the 20th century. Development on the peninsula and Borneo were generally separate until the 19th century. Under British rule the immigration of Chinese and Indians to serve as labourers was encouraged. The area that is now Sabah came under British control as North Borneo when both the Sultan of Brunei and the Sultan of Sulu transferred their respective territorial rights of ownership, between 1877 and 1878. In 1842, Sarawak was ceded by the Sultan of Brunei to James Brooke, whose successors ruled as the White Rajahs over an independent kingdom until 1946, when it became a crown colony.\nIn the Second World War, the Japanese Army invaded and occupied Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore for over three years. During this time, ethnic tensions were raised and nationalism grew. Popular support for independence increased after Malaya was reconquered by Allied forces. Post-war British plans to unite the administration of Malaya under a single crown colony called the Malayan Union met with strong opposition from the Malays, who opposed the weakening of the Malay rulers and the granting of citizenship to the ethnic Chinese. The Malayan Union, established in 1946, and consisting of all the British possessions in the Malay Peninsula except for Singapore, was quickly dissolved and replaced on 1 February 1948 by the Federation of Malaya, which restored the autonomy of the rulers of the Malay states under British protection.\nDuring this time, the mostly ethnically Chinese rebels under the leadership of the Malayan Communist Party launched guerrilla operations designed to force the British out of Malaya. The Malayan Emergency (1948\u20131960) involved a long anti-insurgency campaign by Commonwealth troops in Malaya. On 31 August 1957, Malaya became an independent member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Subsequently, a comprehensive plan was devised to unite Malaya with the crown colonies of North Borneo (known as Sabah upon joining), Sarawak, and Singapore. The envisioned federation was originally intended to take place on 31 August 1963, to coincide with the commemoration of Malayan independence. However, due to the necessity of conducting a survey on the level of support for the federation in Sabah and Sarawak by the United Nations, as requested by opponents of the federation such as Indonesia's Sukarno and the Sarawak United Peoples' Party, the date of the federation was postponed until 16 September 1963.\nThe federation brought heightened tensions including a conflict with Indonesia as well as continual conflicts against the Communists in Borneo and the Malay Peninsula, which escalated to the Sarawak Communist Insurgency and Second Malayan Emergency together with several other issues such as the cross-border attacks into Sabah by Moro pirates from the southern islands of the Philippines, Singapore being expelled from the Federation in 1965, and racial strife. This strife culminated in the 13 May race riots in 1969. After the riots, the controversial New Economic Policy was launched by Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak, trying to increase the share of the economy held by the \"bumiputera\". Under Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad there was a period of rapid economic growth and urbanization beginning in the 1980s. The economy shifted from being agriculturally based to one based on manufacturing and industry. Numerous mega-projects were completed, such as the Petronas Towers, the North\u2013South Expressway, the Multimedia Super Corridor, and the new federal administrative capital of Putrajaya.\nIn the late 1990s, the Asian financial crisis impacted the country, nearly causing their currency, stock, and property markets to crash; however, they later recovered. The 1MDB scandal was a major global corruption scandal that implicated then-Prime Minister Najib Razak in 2015. The scandal contributed to the first change in the ruling political party since independence in the 2018 general election. In the 2020s, the country was gripped by a political crisis that coincided with health and economic crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This was then followed by an earlier general election in November 2022, which resulted in the first hung parliament in the nation's history. On 24 November 2022, Anwar Ibrahim was sworn in as the 10th Prime Minister of Malaysia, leading a grand coalition government.\nGovernment and politics.\nMalaysia is a federal constitutional elective monarchy and the only federal country in Southeast Asia. The system of government is closely modelled on the Westminster parliamentary system, a legacy of British rule. The head of state is the King, whose official title is the Yang\u00a0di-Pertuan\u00a0Agong. The King is elected to a five-year term by and from among the nine hereditary rulers of the Malay states. The other four states, which have titular Governors, do not participate in the selection. By informal agreement the position is rotated among the nine, and has been held by Ibrahim Iskandar of Johor since 31 January 2024. The King's role has been largely ceremonial since changes to the constitution in 1994, picking ministers and members of the upper house.\nLegislative power is divided between federal and state legislatures. The bicameral federal parliament consists of the lower house, the House of Representatives and the upper house, the Senate. The 222-member House of Representatives is elected for a maximum term of five years from single-member constituencies. All 70 senators sit for three-year terms; 26 are elected by the 13 state assemblies, and the remaining 44 are appointed by the King upon the Prime Minister's recommendation. The parliament follows a multi-party system and the government is elected through a first-past-the-post system. Parliamentary elections are held at least once every five years. Before 2018, only registered voters aged 21 and above could vote for the members of the House of Representatives and, in most of the states, for the state legislative chamber. Voting is not mandatory. In July 2019, a bill to lower the voting age to 18 years old was officially passed.\nExecutive power is vested in the Cabinet, led by the Prime Minister. The prime minister must be a member of the House of Representatives, who in the opinion of His Majesty the King, commands the support of a majority of members. The Cabinet is chosen from members of both houses of Parliament. The Prime Minister is both the head of cabinet and the head of government. As a result of the 2018 general election Malaysia was governed by the Pakatan Harapan (PH) political alliance, although Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad resigned amid a political crisis in 2020. In March 2020, the Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition formed under Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, before Muhyiddin lost majority support and was replaced by deputy Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob, a veteran politician from the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), in August 2021. As a result of the 2022 Malaysian general election, a hung parliament was elected. Anwar Ibrahim of the PH coalition was appointed as the new Prime Minister to lead the coalition government of PH, Barisan Nasional, Gabungan Parti Sarawak, Gabungan Rakyat Sabah and several other political parties and independents. Meanwhile, PN, the only political coalition not in the coalition government became the Opposition.\nMalaysia's legal system is based on common law. Although the judiciary is theoretically independent, its independence has been called into question and the appointment of judges lacks accountability and transparency. The highest court in the judicial system is the Federal Court, followed by the Court of Appeal and two high courts, one for Peninsular Malaysia and one for East Malaysia. Malaysia also has a special court to hear cases brought by or against royalty.\nRace is a significant force in politics. Affirmative actions such as the New Economic Policy and the National Development Policy which superseded it, were implemented to advance the standing of the \"bumiputera\", consisting of Malays and the indigenous tribes who are considered the original inhabitants of Malaysia, over non-\"bumiputera\" such as Malaysian Chinese and Malaysian Indians. These policies provide preferential treatment to \"bumiputera\" in employment, education, scholarships, business, and access to cheaper housing and assisted savings. However, it has generated greater interethnic resentment. There is ongoing debate over whether the laws and society of Malaysia should reflect Islamism or secularism. Islamic criminal laws passed by the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party with the support of UMNO state assemblymen in the state legislative assembly of Kelantan have been unenforced by the federal government on the basis that criminal laws are the responsibility of the federal government.\nAfter UMNO lost power at the 2018 Malaysian general election, Malaysia's ranking increased by 9 places in the 2019 Democracy Index to 43rd compared to the previous year and is classified as a 'flawed democracy'. Malaysia's ranking in the 2020 Press Freedom Index increased by 22 places to 101st compared to the previous year, making it one of two countries in Southeast Asia without a 'Difficult situation' or 'Very Serious situation' with regards to press freedom. However, it fell 18 places the following year due to the policies of the PN government.\nMalaysia is marked at 48th and 62nd place according to the 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index, indicating above-average levels of corruption. Freedom House noted Malaysia as \"partly free\" in its 2018 survey. A lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice alleged that at least $3.5 billion involving former prime minister Najib Razak had been stolen from Malaysia's 1MDB state-owned fund, known as the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal.\nAdministrative divisions.\nMalaysia is a federation of 13 states and three federal territories. Out of these, eleven states and two federal territories are in Peninsular Malaysia, whereas the other two states and one federal territory comprise East Malaysia.\nThe country has three tiers of government \u2013 federal, state and local. Governance of the states is divided between the federal and the state governments, with different powers reserved for each, and the federal government has direct administration of the federal territories. Each state has a unicameral State Legislative Assembly whose members are elected from single-member constituencies. State governments are led by Chief Ministers, who are state assembly members from the majority party in the assembly. In each of the states with a hereditary ruler, the Chief Minister is normally required to be a Malay, appointed by the ruler upon the recommendation of the Prime Minister. Until 2018, state elections were held concurrently with the general election by convention, except for those in Sarawak. Following the 2020\u20132022 political crisis, only Pahang, Perak and Perlis opted to conduct their state elections simultaneously with the general elections.\nPositioned below the federal and state governments, local governments represent the lowest tier of governance in Malaysia. As of 2024[ [update]], Malaysia is divided between 19 cities, 40 municipalities, 91 district-level councils, and four statutory agencies. While the federal constitution assigns local authorities to the exclusive jurisdiction of state governments, in practice, the federal Ministry of Housing and Local Government oversees the regulation of local laws and policies. Mayors (or presidents for municipal and district councils) and councillors are appointed by the respective state governments, or in the case of the federal territories, by the federal government.\nFederal laws assign land matters, including the delineation of districts, to the purview of state governments. Except Perlis and the federal territories, each state is divided into districts, which are further subdivided into mukims. In Sabah and Sarawak, districts are grouped into divisions. In contrast to local governments that manage municipal administration and infrastructure development, districts are solely utilised for land taxation.\nThe 13 states are based on historical Malay kingdoms, and 9 of the 11 Peninsular states, known as the Malay states, retain their royal families. The King is elected by and from the nine rulers to serve a five-year term. This King appoints governors serving a four-year term for the states without monarchies, after consultations with the chief minister of that state. Each state has its written constitution. Sabah and Sarawak have considerably more autonomy than the other states, most notably having separate immigration policies and controls, and unique residency status. Federal intervention in state affairs, lack of development, and disputes over oil royalties have occasionally led to statements about secession from leaders in several states such as Penang, Johor, Kelantan, Sabah and Sarawak, although these have not been followed up and no serious independence movements exist.\nA list of thirteen states and each state capital (in parentheses):\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nForeign relations and military.\nA founding member of ASEAN and OIC, the country participates in many international organisations such as the United Nations (U.N.), APEC, the D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation, and NAM. It has chaired ASEAN, OIC, and NAM in the past. A former British colony, it is also a member of the Commonwealth. Kuala Lumpur was the site of the first EAS in 2005.\nMalaysia's foreign policy is officially based on the principle of neutrality and maintaining peaceful relations with all countries, regardless of their political system. The government attaches a high priority to the security and stability of Southeast Asia, and seeks to further develop relations with other countries in the region. Historically the government has tried to portray Malaysia as a progressive Islamic nation while strengthening relations with other Islamic states. A strong tenet of Malaysia's policy is national sovereignty and right of a country to control its domestic affairs. Malaysia signed the U.N. treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.\nThe Spratly Islands are disputed by many states in the area, and a large portion of the South China Sea is claimed by China. Unlike its neighbours of Vietnam and the Philippines, Malaysia historically avoided conflicts with China. However, after the encroachment of Chinese ships in Malaysian territorial waters, and breach of airspace by their military aircraft, Malaysia has become active in condemning China. Brunei and Malaysia in 2009 announced an end to claims of each other's land, and committed to resolve issues related to their maritime borders. The Philippines has a dormant claim to the eastern part of Sabah. Singapore's land reclamation has caused tensions, and minor maritime and land border disputes exist with Indonesia.\nThe Malaysian Armed Forces has three branches: the Malaysian Army, Royal Malaysian Navy and the Royal Malaysian Air Force. There is no conscription, and the required age for voluntary military service is 18. The military uses 1.5% of the country's GDP, and employs 1.23% of Malaysia's manpower. Malaysian peacekeeping forces of MALBATT have contributed to many U.N. peacekeeping missions, such as in Congo, Iran\u2013Iraq, Namibia, Cambodia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Somalia, Kosovo, East Timor, and Lebanon.\nThe Five Power Defence Arrangements is a regional security initiative that has been in place for almost 40 years. It involves joint military exercises held among Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Joint exercises and war games have also been held with Brunei, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States. Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam have agreed to host joint security force exercises to secure their maritime border and tackle issues such as illegal immigration, piracy, and smuggling. Previously there were fears that extremist militant activities in the Muslim areas of the southern Philippines and southern Thailand would spill over into Malaysia. Because of this, Malaysia began to increase its border security.\nHuman rights.\nHomosexuality is illegal in Malaysia, and authorities have imposed punishments such as caning and imprisonment. Human trafficking and sex trafficking in Malaysia are significant problems. There have also been cases of vigilante executions and beatings against LGBT individuals in Malaysia. The illegality of homosexuality in Malaysia has also been the forefront of Anwar Ibrahim's sodomy trials, which Anwar has called politically motivated, a characterization supported by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, along with Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch.\nThe death penalty is in use for serious crimes such as murder, terrorism, drug trafficking, and kidnapping, but in June 2022, Malaysian law minister Wan Junaidi pledged to abolish capital punishment and replace it with other punishments at the discretion of the court.\nGeography.\nMalaysia is the 66th largest country by total land area, with a total area of . It has land borders with Thailand in West Malaysia, and Indonesia and Brunei in East Malaysia. It is linked to Singapore by a narrow causeway and a bridge. The country also has maritime boundaries with Vietnam and the Philippines. The land borders are defined in large part by geological features such as the Perlis River, the Golok River and the Pagalayan Canal, whilst some of the maritime boundaries are the subject of ongoing contention. Brunei forms what is almost an enclave in Malaysia, with the state of Sarawak dividing it into two parts. Malaysia is the only country with territory on both the Asian mainland and the Malay archipelago. The Strait of Malacca, lying between Sumatra and Peninsular Malaysia, is one of the most important thoroughfares in global commerce, carrying 40 percent of the world's trade.\nThe two parts of Malaysia, separated from each other by the South China Sea, share a largely similar landscape in that both Peninsular and East Malaysia feature coastal plains rising to hills and mountains. Peninsular Malaysia, containing 40 per cent of Malaysia's land area, extends from north to south, and its maximum width is . It is divided between its east and west coasts by the Titiwangsa Mountains, rising to a peak elevation of at Mount Korbu, part of a series of mountain ranges running down the centre of the peninsula. These mountains are heavily forested, and mainly composed of granite and other igneous rocks. Much of it has been eroded, creating a karst landscape. The range is the origin of some of Peninsular Malaysia's river systems. The coastal plains surrounding the peninsula reach a maximum width of , and the peninsula's coastline is nearly long, although harbours are only available on the western side.\nEast Malaysia, on the island of Borneo, has a coastline of . It is divided between coastal regions, hills and valleys, and a mountainous interior. The Crocker Range extends northwards from Sarawak, dividing the state of Sabah. It is the location of the high Mount Kinabalu, the tallest mountain in Malaysia. Mount Kinabalu is located in the Kinabalu National Park, which is protected as one of the four UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Malaysia. The highest mountain ranges form the border between Malaysia and Indonesia. Sarawak contains the Mulu Caves, the largest cave system in the world, in the Gunung Mulu National Park which is also a World Heritage Site. The largest river in Malaysia is the Rajang.\nAround these two halves of Malaysia are numerous islands, the largest of which is Banggi. The local climate is equatorial and characterised by the annual southwest (April to October) and northeast (October to February) monsoons. The temperature is moderated by the presence of the surrounding oceans. Humidity is usually high, and the average annual rainfall is . The climates of the Peninsula and the East differ, as the climate on the peninsula is directly affected by wind from the mainland, as opposed to the more maritime weather of the East. Local climates can be divided into three regions, highland, lowland, and coastal. Climate change will cause sea level rise and increased rainfall, increasing flood risks and leading to droughts.\nBiodiversity and conservation.\nMalaysia signed the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity on 12 June 1993, and became a party to the convention on 24 June 1994. It has subsequently produced a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, which was received by the convention on 16 April 1998. The country is megadiverse with a high number of species and high levels of endemism. It is estimated to contain 20\u00a0per\u00a0cent of the world's animal species. High levels of endemism are found on the diverse forests of Borneo's mountains, as species are isolated from each other by lowland forest.\nThere are about 210 mammal species in the country. Over 620 species of birds have been recorded in Peninsular Malaysia, with many endemic to the mountains there. A high number of endemic bird species are also found in Malaysian Borneo. 250 reptile species have been recorded in the country, with about 150 species of snakes and 80 species of lizards. There are about 150 species of frogs, and thousands of insect species. The Exclusive economic zone of Malaysia is and 1.5 times larger than its land area. It is mainly in the South China Sea. Some of its waters are in the Coral Triangle, a biodiversity hotspot. The waters around Sipadan island are the most biodiverse in the world. Bordering East Malaysia, the Sulu Sea is a biodiversity hotspot, with around 600 coral species and 1200 fish species. The unique biodiversity of Malaysian Caves always attracts lovers of ecotourism from all over the world.\nNearly 4,000 species of fungi, including lichen-forming species have been recorded from Malaysia. Of the two fungal groups with the largest number of species in Malaysia, the Ascomycota and their asexual states have been surveyed in some habitats (decaying wood, marine, and freshwater ecosystems, as parasites of some plants, and as agents of biodegradation), but have not been or have been only poorly surveyed in other habitats (as endobionts, in soils, on dung, as human and animal pathogens); the Basidiomycota are only partly surveyed: bracket fungi, and mushrooms and toadstools have been studied, but Malaysian rust and smut fungi remain very poorly known. Without a doubt, many more fungal species in Malaysia are yet to be recorded, and it is likely that many of those, when found, will be new to science.\nAbout two\u00a0thirds of Malaysia was covered in forest as of 2007, with some forests believed to be 130\u00a0million years old. The forests are dominated by dipterocarps. Lowland forest covers areas below , and formerly East Malaysia was covered in such rainforest, which is supported by its hot wet climate. There are around 14,500 species of flowering plants and trees. Besides rainforests, there are over of mangroves in Malaysia, and a large amount of peat forest. At higher altitudes, oaks, chestnuts, and rhododendrons replace dipterocarps. There are an estimated 8,500 species of vascular plants in Peninsular Malaysia, with another 15,000 in the East. The forests of East Malaysia are estimated to be the habitat of around 2,000 tree species, and are one of the most biodiverse areas in the world, with 240 different species of trees every hectare. These forests host many members of the Rafflesia genus, the largest flowers in the world, with a maximum diameter of .\nLogging, along with cultivation practices, has devastated tree cover, causing severe environmental degradation in the country. Over 80\u00a0per\u00a0cent of Sarawak's rainforest has been logged. Floods in East Malaysia have been worsened by the loss of trees, and over 60\u00a0per\u00a0cent of the peninsula's forests have been cleared. With current rates of deforestation, mainly for the palm oil industry, the forests are predicted to be extinct by 2020. Deforestation is a major problem for animals, fungi and plants, having caused species such as \"Begonia eiromischa\" to go extinct. Most remaining forest is found inside reserves and national parks. Habitat destruction has proved a threat for marine life. Illegal fishing is another major threat, with fishing methods such as dynamite fishing and poisoning depleting marine ecosystems. Leatherback turtle numbers have dropped 98\u00a0per\u00a0cent since the 1950s. Hunting has also been an issue for some animals, with overconsumption and the use of animal parts for profit endangering many animals, from marine life to tigers. Marine life is also detrimentally affected by uncontrolled tourism.\nThe Malaysian government aims to balance economic growth with environmental protection, but has been accused of favouring big business over the environment. Some state governments are now trying to counter the environmental impact and pollution created by deforestation; and the federal government is trying to cut logging by 10\u00a0per\u00a0cent each year. A total of 28 national parks have been established, 23 in East Malaysia and five in the peninsula. Tourism has been limited in biodiverse areas such as Sipadan island. Wildlife trafficking is a large issue, and the Malaysian government has held talks with the governments of Brunei and Indonesia to standardise anti-trafficking laws.\nEconomy.\nMalaysia is a relatively open state-oriented and newly industrialised market economy. It has the world's 36th-largest economy by nominal GDP and the 31st-largest by PPP. In 2017, the large service sector contributed to 53.6% of total GDP, the industrial sector 37.6%, and the small agricultural sector roughly 8.8%. Malaysia has a low official unemployment rate of 3.4% as of 2024. Its foreign exchange reserves are the world's 24th-largest. It has a labour force of about 15 million, which is the world's 34th-largest. Malaysia's large automotive industry ranks as the world's 22nd-largest by production.\nMalaysia is the world's 23rd-largest exporter and 25th-largest importer. However, economic inequalities exist between different ethnic groups. The Chinese make up about one-quarter of the population, but account for 70 per cent of the country's market capitalisation. Chinese businesses in Malaysia are part of the larger bamboo network, a network of overseas Chinese businesses in the Southeast Asian market sharing common family and cultural ties.\nInternational trade, facilitated by the shipping route in adjacent Strait of Malacca, and manufacturing are the key sectors. Malaysia is an exporter of natural and agricultural resources, and petroleum is a major export. Malaysia has once been the largest producer of tin, rubber and palm oil in the world. Manufacturing has a large influence in the country's economy, although Malaysia's economic structure has been moving away from it. Malaysia remains one of the world's largest producers of palm oil.\nTourism is the third-largest contributor to Malaysia's GDP, after the manufacturing and commodities sectors. In 2019, the sector contributed about 15.9 percent to the total GDP. According to the World Tourism Organization, Malaysia was the fourteenth-most visited country in the world, and the fourth-most visited country in Asia in 2019, with over 26.1 million visits. Malaysia was ranked 38th in the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report 2019. Its international tourism receipts in 2019 amounted to $19.8 billion.\nThe country has developed into a centre of Islamic banking and has the highest number of female workers in that industry. Knowledge-based services are also expanding. In 2020, Malaysia exported high-tech products worth $92.1 billion, the second-highest in ASEAN, after Singapore. Malaysia was ranked 33rd in the Global Innovation Index in 2024, and 32nd in the Global Competitiveness Report in 2022.\nInfrastructure.\nRailway transport in Malaysia is state-run, and spans some . As of 2016[ [update]], Malaysia has the world's 26th-largest road network, with some of roads. Malaysia's inland waterways are the world's 22nd-longest, and total . Among Malaysia's 114 airports, among which the busiest is Kuala Lumpur International Airport located south of Kuala Lumpur in Sepang District, which is also the twelfth-busiest airport in Asia. Among the 7 federal ports, the major one is Port Klang, which is the thirteenth-busiest container port. Malaysia's flag carrier is Malaysia Airlines, providing international and domestic air services.\nMalaysia's telecommunications network is second only to Singapore's in Southeast Asia, with 4.7\u00a0million fixed-line subscribers and more than 30\u00a0million cellular subscribers. There are 200 industrial parks along with specialised parks such as Technology Park Malaysia and Kulim Hi-Tech Park. Fresh water is available to over 95% of the population, with ground water accounting for 90% of the freshwater resources. Although rural areas have been the focus of great development, they still lag behind areas such as the West Coast of Peninsular Malaysia. The telecommunication network, although strong in urban areas, is less available to the rural population.\nMalaysia's energy infrastructure sector is largely dominated by Tenaga Nasional, the largest electric utility company in Southeast Asia. Customers in Peninsular Malaysia are connected to electricity through the National Grid. The other two electric utility companies in the country are Sarawak Energy and Sabah Electricity. In 2013, Malaysia's total power generation capacity was over 29,728 megawatts. Total electricity generation was 140,985.01 GWh and total electricity consumption was 116,087.51 GWh. Energy production in Malaysia is largely based on oil and natural gas, owing to Malaysia's oil and natural gas reserves, which are the fourth largest in the Asia-Pacific region.\nDemographics.\nAccording to the Malaysian Department of Statistics, the country's population was 32,447,385 in 2020, making it the 42nd most populated country. According to a 2012 estimate, the population is increasing by 1.54 percent per year. Malaysia has an average population density of 96 people per km2, ranking it 116th in the world for population density. People within the 15\u201364 age group constitute 69.5 percent of the total population; the 0\u201314 age group corresponds to 24.5 percent; while senior citizens aged 65 years or older make up 6.0 percent. In 1960, when the first official census was recorded in Malaysia, the population was 8.11\u00a0million. 91.8 percent of the population are Malaysian citizens.\nMalaysian citizens are divided along local ethnic lines, with 69.7 percent considered \"bumiputera\". The largest group of bumiputera are Malays, who are defined in the constitution as Muslims who practise Malay customs and culture. They play a dominant role politically. Bumiputera status is also accorded to the non-Malay indigenous groups of Sabah and Sarawak: which includes Dayaks (Iban, Bidayuh, Orang Ulu), Kadazan-Dusun, Melanau, Bajau and others. Non-Malay bumiputeras make up more than half of Sarawak's population and over two-thirds of Sabah's population. There are also indigenous or aboriginal groups in much smaller numbers on the peninsular, where they are collectively known as the Orang Asli. Laws over who gets bumiputera status vary between states.\nThere are also two other non-Bumiputera local ethnic groups. 22.8 percent of the population are Malaysian Chinese, while 6.8 percent are Malaysian Indian. The local Chinese have historically been more dominant in the business community. Local Indians are mostly of Tamil descent. Malaysian citizenship is not automatically granted to those born in Malaysia, but is granted to a child born of two Malaysian parents outside Malaysia. Dual citizenship is not permitted. Citizenship in the states of Sabah and Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo are distinct from citizenship in Peninsular Malaysia for immigration purposes. Every citizen is issued a biometric smart chip identity card known as \"MyKad\" at the age of 12 and must carry the card at all times.\nThe population is concentrated on Peninsular Malaysia, where 20\u00a0million out of approximately 28\u00a0million Malaysians live. 70 per cent of the population is urban. Due to the rise in labour-intensive industries, the country is estimated to have over 3\u00a0million migrant workers; about 10 per cent of the population. Sabah-based NGOs estimate that out of the 3\u00a0million that make up the population of Sabah, 2\u00a0million are illegal immigrants. Malaysia hosts a population of refugees and asylum seekers numbering approximately 171,500. Of this population, approximately 79,000 are from Burma, 72,400 from the Philippines, and 17,700 from Indonesia. Malaysian officials are reported to have turned deportees directly over to human smugglers in 2007, and Malaysia employs RELA, a volunteer militia with a history of controversies, to enforce its immigration law.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nReligion.\nThe constitution grants freedom of religion, while establishing Islam as the \"religion of the Federation\". According to the Population and Housing Census 2020 figures, ethnicity and religious beliefs correlate highly. Approximately 63.5% of the population practise Islam, 18.7% practise Buddhism, 9.1% Christianity, 6.1% Hinduism and 1.3% practise Confucianism, Taoism and other traditional Chinese religions. 2.7% declared no religion or practised other religions or did not provide any information. The states of Sarawak, Penang and the federal territory of Kuala Lumpur have non-Muslim majorities.\nSunni Islam of the Shafi'i school of jurisprudence is the dominant branch of Islam in Malaysia, while 18% are nondenominational Muslims. The Malaysian constitution strictly defines what makes a \"Malay\", defining Malays as those who are Muslim, speak Malay regularly, practise Malay customs, and lived in or have ancestors from Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore. Statistics from the 2010 Census indicate that 83.6% of the Chinese population identify as Buddhist, with significant numbers of adherents following Taoism (3.4%) and Christianity (11.1%), along with small Muslim populations in areas like Penang. The majority of the Indian population follows Hinduism (86.2%), with a significant minority identifying as Christians (6.0%) or Muslims (4.1%). Christianity is the predominant religion of the non-Malay \"bumiputera\" community (46.5%), while 40.4% identify as Muslims.\nMuslims are obliged to follow the decisions of Syariah Courts (i.e. Shariah courts) in matters concerning their religion. The Islamic judges are expected to follow the Shafi'i legal school of Islam, which is the main \"madh'hab\" of Malaysia. The jurisdiction of Syariah courts is limited to Muslims in matters such as marriage, inheritance, divorce, apostasy, religious conversion, custody and limited Islamic criminal law. No other criminal or civil offences are under the jurisdiction of the Syariah courts, which have a similar hierarchy to the civil courts. The civil courts do not hear matters related to Islamic practices.\nLanguages.\nThe official and national language of Malaysia is Malaysian Malay, a standardised form of the Malay language. The previous official terminology was (lit.\u2009'Malaysian language') but now government policy uses (Malay language) to refer to the official language and both terms remain in use. The National Language Act 1967 specifies the Latin (Rumi) script as the official script of the national language, but does not prohibit the use of the traditional Jawi script.\nEnglish remains an active second language, with its use allowed for some official purposes under the National Language Act of 1967. In Sarawak, English is an official state language alongside Malay. Historically, English was the de facto administrative language; Malay became predominant after the 1969 race riots (13 May incident). Malaysian English, also known as Malaysian Standard English, is a form of English derived from British English. Malaysian English is widely used in business, along with Manglish, which is a colloquial form of English with heavy Malay, Chinese, and Tamil influences. The government discourages the use of non-standard Malay but has no power to issue compounds or fines to those who use what is perceived as improper Malay on their advertisements.\nMany other languages are used in Malaysia, which contains speakers of 137 living languages. Peninsular Malaysia contains speakers of 41 of these languages. The native tribes of East Malaysia have their own languages which are related to, but easily distinguishable from, Malay. Iban is the main tribal language in Sarawak while Dusunic and Kadazan languages are spoken by the natives in Sabah. Chinese Malaysians predominantly speak Chinese dialects from the southern part of China. The more common Chinese varieties in the country are Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, and so on. The Tamil language is used predominantly by the majority of Malaysian Indians. A small number of Malaysians have European ancestry and speak creole languages, such as the Portuguese-based Malaccan Creoles, and the Spanish-based Chavacano language.\nHealth.\nMalaysia operates an efficient and widespread two-tier healthcare system, consisting of a universal healthcare system and a co-existing private healthcare system; provided by highly subsidized healthcare through its extensive network of public hospitals and clinics. The Ministry of Health is the main provider of healthcare services to the country's population. Malaysia's healthcare system is considered to be among the most developed in Asia, which contributes to its thriving medical tourism industry.\nMalaysia spent 3.83% of its GDP on healthcare in 2019. In 2020, the overall life expectancy in Malaysia at birth was 76 years (74 years for males and 78 years for females), and it had an infant mortality rate of 7 deaths per 1000 births. Malaysia had a total fertility rate of 2.0 in 2020, which is just below the replacement level of 2.1. In 2020, the country's crude birth rate was 16 per 1000 people, and the crude death rate was 5 per 1000 people.\nIn 2021, the principal cause of death among Malaysian adults was coronary artery disease, representing 17% of the medically certified deaths in 2020\u2014being followed by pneumonia; which accounted for 11% of the deaths. Transport accidents are considered a major health hazard, as Malaysia, relative to its population, has one of the highest traffic fatality rates in the world. Smoking is also considered a major health issue across the country.\nEducation.\nThe education system of Malaysia features a non-compulsory kindergarten education followed by six years of compulsory primary education and five years of optional secondary education. Schools in the primary education system are divided into two categories: national primary schools, which teach in Malay (i.e.:Sekolah Kebangsaan Sungai Binjai, SK Bukit Tiu), and vernacular schools, which teach in Chinese or Tamil (i.e.:SJK(C) Pin Hwa 2, SJK(T) Bandar Mentakab). Secondary education (i.e.:SMK Sura, Kajang High School) is conducted for five years. In the final year of secondary education, students sit for the Malaysian Certificate of Education examination. Since the introduction of the matriculation programme in 1999, students who completed the 12-month programme in matriculation colleges can enroll in local universities. However, in the matriculation system, only 10 percent of places are open to non-\"bumiputera\" students.\nCulture.\nMalaysia has a multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multilingual society. Substantial influence exists from Chinese and Indian culture, dating back to when foreign trade began. Other cultural influences include the Persian, Arabic, and British cultures. Due to the structure of the government, coupled with the social contract theory, there has been minimal cultural assimilation of ethnic minorities. Some cultural disputes exist between Malaysia and neighbouring countries, notably Indonesia.\nIn 1971, the government created a \"National Cultural Policy\", defining Malaysian culture. It stated that Malaysian culture must be based on the culture of the indigenous peoples of Malaysia, that it may incorporate suitable elements from other cultures, and that Islam must play a part in it. It also promoted the Malay language above others. This government intervention into culture has caused resentment among non-Malays who feel their cultural freedom was lessened. Both Chinese and Indian associations have submitted memorandums to the government, accusing it of formulating an undemocratic culture policy.\nFine arts.\nTraditional Malaysian art was mainly centred on the areas of carving, weaving, and silversmithing. Traditional art ranges from handwoven baskets from rural areas to the silverwork of the Malay courts. Common artworks included ornamental kris, beetle nut sets, and woven batik and songket fabrics. Indigenous East Malaysians are known for their wooden masks. Each ethnic group have distinct performing arts, with little overlap between them. However, Malay art does show some North Indian influence due to the historical influence of India.\nTraditional Malay music and performing arts appear to have originated in the Kelantan-Pattani region with influences from India, China, Thailand, and Indonesia. The music is based around percussion instruments, the most important of which is the gendang (drum). There are at least 14 types of traditional drums. Drums and other traditional percussion instruments and are often made from natural materials. Music is traditionally used for storytelling, celebrating life-cycle events, and occasions such as a harvest. It was once used as a form of long-distance communication. In East Malaysia, gong-based musical ensembles such as agung and kulintang are commonly used in ceremonies such as funerals and weddings. These ensembles are also common in neighbouring regions such as in Mindanao in the Philippines, Kalimantan in Indonesia and Brunei.\nMalaysia has a strong oral tradition that has existed since before the arrival of writing and continues today. Each of the Malay Sultanates created their own literary tradition, influenced by pre-existing oral stories and by the stories that came with Islam. The first Malay literature was in the Arabic script. The earliest known Malay writing is on the Terengganu stone, made in 1303. Chinese and Indian literature became common as the number of speakers increased in Malaysia, and locally produced works based on languages from those areas began to be produced in the 19th century. English has also become a common literary language. In 1971, the government took the step of defining the literature of different languages. Literature written in Malay was called \"the national literature of Malaysia\", literature in other \"bumiputera\" languages was called \"regional literature\", while literature in other languages was called \"sectional literature\". Malay poetry is highly developed, and uses many forms. The \"Hikayat\" form is popular, and the \"pantun\" has spread from Malay to other languages.\nCuisine.\nMalaysia's cuisine reflects the multi-ethnic makeup of its population. Many cultures from within the country and from surrounding regions have greatly influenced the cuisine. Much of the influence comes from the Malay, Chinese, Indian, Thai, Javanese, and Sumatran cultures, largely due to the country being part of the ancient spice route. The cuisine is very similar to that of Singapore and Brunei, and also bears resemblance to Filipino cuisine. The different states have varied dishes, and often the food in Malaysia is different from the original dishes.\nSometimes food not found in its original culture is assimilated into another; for example, Chinese restaurants in Malaysia often serve Malay dishes. Food from one culture is sometimes also cooked using styles taken from another culture, For example, \"sambal belacan\" (shrimp paste) are commonly used as ingredients by Chinese restaurants to create the stir fried water spinach (\"kangkung belacan\"). This means that although much of Malaysian food can be traced back to a certain culture, they have their own identity. Rice is a staple food and an important constituent of the country's culture. Chili is commonly found in local cuisine, although this does not necessarily make them spicy.\nMedia.\nMalaysia's main newspapers are owned by the government and political parties in the ruling coalition, although some major opposition parties also have their own, which are openly sold alongside regular newspapers. A divide exists between the media in the two halves of the country. Peninsular-based media gives a low priority to news from the East and often treats the eastern states as colonies of the peninsula. As a result of this, the East Malaysia region of Sarawak launched TV Sarawak as internet streaming beginning in 2014, and as TV station on 10 October 2020 to overcome the low priority and coverage of Peninsular-based media and to solidify the representation of East Malaysia. The media have been blamed for increasing tension between Indonesia and Malaysia, and giving Malaysians a bad image of Indonesians. The country has Malay, English, Chinese, and Tamil daily newspapers. Kadazandusun and Bajau news are available only via TV broadcast Berita RTM. Written Kadazan news was once included in publications such as The Borneo Post, the Borneo Mail, the Daily Express, and the New Sabah Times, but publication has ceased with the newspaper or as a section.\nFreedom of the press is limited, with numerous restrictions on publishing rights and information dissemination. The government has previously tried to crack down on opposition papers before elections. In 2007, a government agency issued a directive to all private television and radio stations to refrain from broadcasting speeches made by opposition leaders, a move condemned by politicians from the opposition Democratic Action Party. Sabah, where all tabloids but one are independent of government control, has the freest press in Malaysia. Laws such as the Printing Presses and Publications Act have also been cited as curtailing freedom of expression.\nHolidays and festivals.\nMalaysians observe several holidays and festivities throughout the year. Some are federally gazetted public holidays and some are observed by individual states. Other festivals are observed by particular ethnic or religious groups, and the main holiday of each major group has been declared a public holiday. The most observed national holiday is \"Hari Merdeka\" (Independence Day) on 31 August, commemorating the independence of the Federation of Malaya in 1957. Malaysia Day on 16 September commemorates federation in 1963. Other notable national holidays are Labour Day (1 May) and the King's birthday (first week of June).\nMuslim holidays are prominent as Islam is the state religion; \"Hari Raya Puasa\" (also called \"Hari Raya Aidilfitri\", Malay for Eid al-Fitr), \"Hari Raya Haji\" (also called \"Hari Raya Aidiladha\", Malay for Eid al-Adha), \"Maulidur Rasul\" (birthday of the Prophet), and others being observed. Malaysian Chinese celebrate festivals such as Chinese New Year and others relating to traditional Chinese beliefs. Wesak Day is observed and celebrated by Buddhists. Hindus in Malaysia celebrate \"Deepavali\", the festival of lights, while \"Thaipusam\" is a religious rite which sees pilgrims from all over the country converge at the Batu Caves. Malaysia's Christian community celebrates most of the holidays observed by Christians elsewhere, most notably Christmas and Easter. In addition to this, the Dayak community in Sarawak celebrate a harvest festival known as \"Gawai\", and the Kadazandusun community celebrate \"Kaamatan\". Despite most festivals being identified with a particular ethnic or religious group, celebrations are universal. In a custom known as \"open house\" Malaysians participate in the celebrations of others, often visiting the houses of those who identify with the festival.\nSports.\nPopular sports in Malaysia include association football, badminton, field hockey, bowls, tennis, squash, martial arts, horse riding, sailing, and skate boarding. Football is the most popular sport in Malaysia. Badminton matches also attract thousands of spectators, and since 1948 Malaysia has been one of four countries to hold the Thomas Cup, the world team championship trophy of men's badminton. The Malaysian Lawn Bowls Federation was registered in 1997. Squash was brought to the country by members of the British army, with the first competition being held in 1939. The Squash Racquets Association of Malaysia was created on 25 June 1972. The men's national field hockey team ranked 10th in the world as of June\u00a02022[ [update]]. The 3rd Hockey World Cup was hosted at Merdeka Stadium in Kuala Lumpur, as well as the 10th cup. The country also has its own Formula One track \u2013 the Sepang International Circuit, with the first Malaysian Grand Prix held in 1999. Traditional sports include Silat Melayu, the most common style of martial arts practised by ethnic Malays.\nThe Federation of Malaya Olympic Council was formed in 1953, and received recognition by the IOC in 1954. It first participated in the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games. The council was renamed the Olympic Council of Malaysia in 1964, and has participated in all but one Olympic games since its inception. The largest number of athletes ever sent to the Olympics was 57 to the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Besides the Olympic Games, Malaysia also participates in the Paralympic Games. Malaysia has competed at the Commonwealth Games since 1950 as Malaya, and 1966 as Malaysia, and the games were hosted in Kuala Lumpur in 1998.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "20132029": "Stadthuys\nBuilding in Malacca City, Malacca, Malaysia\nThe Stadthuys (an old Dutch spelling, meaning city hall) is a historical structure situated in the heart of Malacca City, the administrative capital of the state of Malacca, Malaysia, in a place known as the Red Square. The Stadthuys is known for its red exterior and nearby red clocktower. It was built by the Dutch in 1650 as the office of the Dutch governor and deputy governor. It continued to be used as the Treasury, Post Office, Government Offices, and suites of apartments for the high officials after the takeover by the British.\nWhen Malacca was handed over to the British in the 19th century, the Malacca Free School was opened in the vicinity of the Stadthuys on 7 December 1826, by missionaries residing in the state, in response to a letter dated 19 April 1825, signed by a J. Humprey, J. W. Overee and A. W. Baumgarten, which called for an English educational institution to be built in Malacca. The school which the British provided free education to residents was eventually renamed Malacca High School in 1871 upon a takeover by the British government, and moved out to its present site at Chan Koon Cheng Road in 1931.\nSituated at Laksamana Road, beside Christ Church, the supposed oldest remaining Dutch historical building in the Orient, is now home to the History and Ethnography Museum. Among the displays in the museum are traditional costumes and artifacts throughout the history of Malacca.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["20132029", "3607937"], "permutation_1": ["3607937", "20132029"], "permutation_2": ["20132029", "3607937"], "permutation_3": ["20132029", "3607937"]}
{"id": "2hop__151454_15815", "docs_added": {"771418": "Balloon Kid\n1990 video game\nBalloon Kid is a platform game developed and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy. It was released in October 1990 in North America and in January 1991 in Europe. It is the sequel to \"Balloon Fight\". It was never released in Japan for the original Game Boy, but two years after its original release, a licensed Family Computer port titled was reprogrammed and released by Sanrio's subsidiary Character Soft exclusively in Japan on March 27, 1992. A Game Boy Color edition with a few new features titled was released in Japan on July 31, 2000.\nGameplay.\nIn 1-player mode, the gameplay is an arrangement of the \"Balloon Trip\" mode of \"Balloon Fight\", where the screen automatically scrolls toward the left, while the player controls Alice who uses two balloons to float into the air with. To make her float in the air, the player must press (and sometimes hold) the A button to make her wave her arms to hover upward. Alice also has the ability to remove her balloons and walk on the ground, as well as jumping. If both of her balloons are popped or removed, and if she lands safely, she can inflate two new balloons and fly again.\nThe object of this mode is to travel from the beginning to the end while collecting balloons left by Alice's brother, Jim, along the way. The player must also prevent Alice from bumping into enemies that are attempting to pop her balloons, push her or kill her altogether. Some enemies, such as Balloon Birds, came from \"Balloon Fight\". The giant fish that eats anyone who flies too close to the water also came from \"Balloon Fight\". There are four bosses in \"Balloon Kid\". To defeat them, the player must make Alice fly about them and make her detach her balloons to bounce on them. She also can jump and stomp on them, whenever it is safe for her, like in other typical platformers.\nThe 2-player mode is loosely based on \"Balloon Fight\"'s Game A and Game B modes, where one player battles against another player. One player controls Alice, while the other controls Alice's friend and eternal rival: Samm. The goal is to collect more balloons than the other player before they arrive at the end of the stage.\n\"Balloon Kid\"'s \"Balloon Trip\" mode is based on Balloon Fight's mode of the same name, but with Alice instead of a Balloon Fighter. Everything else, including the BGM itself, are unchanged from \"Balloon Fight\"'s Balloon Trip mode.\nPlot and setting.\nSetting.\n\"Balloon Kid\" takes place in a small part of an unnamed, Earth-like world. The only city in this part of the world is a town known as Pencilvania, a little town with pencil-shaped skyscrapers. Other places in this part of the world are these unnamed locations in order of appearance: a forest, an ocean with a giant whale, an icy mountain, and an industrial building. The first place a player starts from is a small house in a rural part of Pencilvania. There lived a brother and sister who loved to play with balloons. Alice and her younger brother, Jim, would spend endless days filling the skies with their balloons.\nOne day, Jim filled all his balloons and tied them together to make a beautiful balloon rainbow across the sky. Alice said: \"What a great idea this was, Jim, but please be careful!\". Just then, a strong wind blew and Jim was carried away into the sky. \"Oh, no! This is terrible, I must save Jim!\", thought Alice. Meanwhile, Jim, who was a very clever boy, thought, \"I wonder how Alice will find me...Wait! I've got an idea. I'll leave a trail of balloons for Alice to follow!\".\nPorts and related releases.\nOn March 27, 1992, a subsidiary of Hello Kitty creator Sanrio, known as Character Soft, reprogrammed and published a Family Computer version of \"Balloon Kid\", titled as . This version was released in Japan, where \"Balloon Kid\" was not. \"Balloon Kid\" was created after it was brought to North America. The notable changes to the game were \"Balloon Kid\"'s plot being replaced with Hello Kitty's, as well as updated/changed visuals.\nOn July 31, 2000, \"Balloon Kid\" was remade and renamed as , and was also developed by Pax Softnica and published by Nintendo, but released in Japan for the Game Boy Color through the Nintendo Power flash RAM cartridge series. This version features colored graphics, battery-backed memory for helping players save their progress in order to pick any stage of their choice after they completed them. Super Game Boy compatible features such as frames were added as well. \"Balloon Fight GB\" was later added to the Virtual Console for the Nintendo 3DS in Japan on October 19, 2011, while \"Balloon Kid\" was added to the same platform in North America on November 3, and in Europe on January 26, 2012.\nSome of the game's BGM was added in some parts of the \"Game Boy Camera\", such as the \"Hot Spot\" section.\nDevelopment and reception.\n\"Balloon Kid\" was designed by Yoshio Sakamoto and developed by Nintendo in co-operation with the external company Pax Softnica. It was first published in North America in February, and finally in Europe on September 28. As such, it is one of the few first-party Nintendo games that were not published in Japan, until Nintendo licensed it to Sanrio's subsidiary Character Soft for reprogramming and publishing it to the Family Computer as \"Hello Kitty World\" in Japan on March 27, 1992, while \"Balloon Kid\" was remade for Game Boy Color and released in Japan on July 31, 2000. According to Hitoshi Yamagami, director of \"Balloon Fight GB\", the Game Boy Color version was developed due to demand for a \"Balloon Fight\" sequel and that the success of \"Game Boy Gallery\" made them consider making an updated version of \"Balloon Kid\" for the Japanese market. Both \"Balloon Kid\" and \"Balloon Fight GB\" were later re-released in their original regions as part of the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console lineup, but \"VS Mode\" became incompatible.\n\"IGN\" editor Lucas M. Thomas called the game \"a solid little adventure game\" that stood out to him because of its improvements over the gameplay of the original Balloon Trip mode of \"Balloon Fight\". Although he found it to be \"not mind-blowing, but it is fun and adds a bit of tension to things\", he thought that \"Balloon Kid\" is \"a nice little lost sequel from yesteryear that is pleasant to play through again for just three bucks\". \"Mean Machines\" rated the game 51%, describing it as \"full of promise\", then adding that the repetitive gameplay and low difficulty caused the game to become boring. They added that while the premise was interesting, they couldn't \"help thinking that this is a mediocre game\". Author Jeff Rovin in the book \"How to Win at Game Boy Games\" noted the gameplay as \"novel\" if repetitive after the second stage of the game, adding that regardless the game was entertaining for all ages, and \"a worthy addition to the Game Boy library\", grading the game B.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18944028": "Nintendo Entertainment System\nHome video game console\nThe Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on July 15, 1983, as the It was released in US test markets as the redesigned NES in October 1985, and fully launched in the US the following year. The NES was distributed in Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia throughout the 1980s under various names. As a third-generation console, it mainly competed with Sega's Master System.\nThe NES was designed by Masayuki Uemura. Nintendo's president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, called for a simple, cheap console that could run arcade games on cartridges. The controller design was reused from Nintendo's portable Game & Watch hardware. The western model was redesigned to resemble a video cassette recorder. Nintendo released add-ons such as the NES Zapper light gun for several shooting games, and R.O.B, a toy robot accessory.\nThe NES is regarded as one of the most influential consoles. It helped revitalise the American gaming industry following the video game crash of 1983, and pioneered a now-standard business model of licensing third-party developers to produce and distribute games. The NES features several influential games, including \"Super Mario Bros.\" (1985), \"The Legend of Zelda\" (1986), \"Metroid\" (1986) and \"Mega Man\" (1987), which became major franchises.\nThe NES dominated Japanese and North American markets, but initially underperformed in Europe, where it faced strong competition from the Sega Master System and microcomputers. With 61.91\u00a0million units sold, it is one of the best-selling consoles. It was succeeded in 1990 by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.\nHistory.\nBackground.\nThe video game industry experienced rapid growth and popularity from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, marked by the golden age of arcade games and the second generation of consoles. Games like \"Space Invaders\" (1978) became a phenomenon across arcades worldwide, while home consoles such as the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision gained footholds in the American market. Many companies emerged to capitalise on the growing industry, including the playing card manufacturer Nintendo.\nHiroshi Yamauchi, who had been Nintendo's president since 1949, realised that breakthroughs in the electronics industry meant that entertainment products could be produced at lower prices. Companies such as Atari and Magnavox were already selling gaming devices for use with television sets, to moderate success. Yamauchi negotiated a licence with Magnavox to sell its game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. Since Nintendo's operation was not yet sophisticated enough to design its own hardware, Yamauchi forged an alliance with Mitsubishi Electric and hired several Sharp Electronics employees to assist in developing the Color TV-Game 6 in Japan. This was followed by a more successful sequel, the Color TV-Game 15, and the handheld Game & Watch series. The successes of these machines gave Yamauchi the confidence to expand Nintendo's influence in the fledgling video game industry.\nIn 1978, Yamauchi split Nintendo into separate research and development divisions. He appointed Masayuki Uemura as head of Nintendo Research & Development 2, a division that focused solely on hardware. Yamauchi, through extensive discussions with Uemura and other engineers, recognised the potential of the developing console beyond gaming. He envisioned a home-computer system disguised as a toy, which could significantly expand Nintendo's reach if it became popular with children. This popularity would drive demand for games, with Nintendo as the sole provider. Indeed, by 1980 several systems had already been released in Japan by both American and Japanese companies. Yamauchi tasked Uemura with developing a system that would be superior to its competitors and difficult to replicate for at least a year. Uemura's main challenge was economic rather than technological; Yamauchi wanted the system to be affordable enough for widespread household adoption, aiming for a price of \u00a59,800 (less than $75) compared to existing machines priced at \u00a530,000 to \u00a550,000 ($200 to $350). The new system had to outperform other systems, both Japanese and American, while being significantly more affordable.\nInception.\nAs development progressed on the new video game system, engineers sought Yamauchi's guidance on its features. They questioned whether to include a disk drive, keyboard, data port, as well as the potential for a modem, expanded memory, and other computer-like capabilities. Yamauchi ultimately instructed Uemura to prioritise simplicity and affordability, omitting these peripherals entirely. Game cartridges, which Uemura saw as \"less intimidating\" to consumers, were chosen as the format. The team designed the system with 2,000 bytes of random-access memory (RAM), significantly more than Atari's 256 bytes. Larger cartridges also allowed for far more complex games, with thirty-two times the code capacity of Atari cartridges.\nThe console's hardware was largely based on arcade video games, particularly the hardware for Namco's \"Galaxian\" (1979) and Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\", with the goal of matching their powerful sprite and scrolling capabilities in a home system. A test model was constructed in October 1982 to verify the functionality of the hardware, and work began on programming tools. Because 65xx CPUs had not been manufactured or sold in Japan by that time, no cross-development software was available and it had to be developed from scratch. Early Famicom games were written on a NEC PC-8001 computer. LEDs on a grid were used with a digitizer to design graphics as no such software design tools existed at that time.\nThe codename for the project was \"GameCom\", but Masayuki Uemura's wife proposed the name \"Famicom\", arguing that \"In Japan, 'pasokon' is used to mean a personal computer, but it is neither a home nor personal computer. Perhaps we could say it is a family computer.\" Meanwhile, Hiroshi Yamauchi decided that the console should use a red and white theme after seeing a billboard for DX Antenna (a Japanese antenna manufacturer) which used those colors.\nDevelopment.\nThe Famicom was influenced by the ColecoVision, Coleco's competition against the Atari 2600 in the United States; the ColecoVision's top-seller was a port of Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\". The project's chief manager Takao Sawano brought a ColecoVision home to his family, impressed by its smooth graphics, which contrasts with the flicker and slowdown commonly seen on Atari 2600 games. Uemura said the ColecoVision set the bar for the Famicom. They wanted to surpass it and match the more powerful \"Donkey Kong\" arcade hardware; they took a \"Donkey Kong\" arcade cabinet to chip manufacturer Ricoh for analysis, which led to Ricoh producing the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) chip for the NES.\nOriginal plans called for the Famicom's cartridges to be the size of a cassette tape, but ultimately they ended up being twice as big. Careful design attention was paid to the cartridge connectors because loose and faulty connections often plagued arcade machines. As it necessitated 60 connection lines for the memory and expansion, Nintendo decided to produce its own connectors.\nThe controllers are hard-wired to the console with no connectors for cost reasons. The controller designs were reused from the Game & Watch machines, although the Famicom design team originally wanted to use arcade-style joysticks, even dismantling some from American game consoles to see how they worked. There were concerns regarding the durability of the joystick design and that children might step on joysticks on the floor. Katsuya Nakawaka attached a Game & Watch D-pad to the Famicom prototype and found that it was easy to use and caused no discomfort. Ultimately though, they installed a 15-pin expansion port on the front of the console so that an optional arcade-style joystick could be used.\nGunpei Yokoi suggested an eject lever, which was not necessary, but he believed that children could be entertained by pressing it. Uemura adopted his idea. Uemura added a microphone to the second controller with the idea that it could be used to make players\u2019 voices sound through the TV speaker.\nJapanese release.\nThe console was released on July 15, 1983, as the for \u00a5 () with three ports of Nintendo's successful arcade games \"Donkey Kong\", \"Donkey Kong Jr.\", and \"Popeye\". The Famicom was slow to gather success; a bad chip set caused the early revisions to crash. Following a product recall and a reissue with a new motherboard, the Famicom's popularity soared, becoming the bestselling game console in Japan by the end of 1984 in what came to be called the \"Famicom Boom\".\nNintendo launched the system with only first-party games, but after being approached by Namco and Hudson Soft in 1984, agreed to produce third-party games for a 30% fee for console licensing and production costs. This rate continued in the industry for consoles and digital storefront into the 21st century.\nNorth American release.\nNintendo targeted the North American market, entering distribution negotiations with Atari, Inc. to release a redesigned Famicom with Atari's name as the Nintendo Advanced Video Gaming System. The deal was set to be finalized and signed at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in June 1983. However, Atari discovered at that show that its competitor Coleco was illegally demonstrating its Coleco Adam computer with Nintendo's \"Donkey Kong\" game. This violation of Atari's exclusive license with Nintendo to publish the game for its own computer systems delayed the implementation of Nintendo's game console marketing contract with Atari. Atari's CEO Ray Kassar was fired the next month, so the deal went nowhere, and Nintendo decided to market its system on its own.\nSubsequent plans for the Nintendo Advanced Video System likewise never materialized. It was privately demonstrated as a repackaged Famicom console featuring a keyboard, cassette data recorder, wireless joystick controller, and a special BASIC cartridge. By the beginning of 1985, more than 2.5\u00a0million Famicom units had been sold in Japan, and Nintendo soon announced plans to release it in North America as the Advanced Video Entertainment System (AVS) that year. The American video game press was skeptical that the console could have any success in the region, as the industry was still recovering from the video game crash of 1983. The March 1985 issue of \"Electronic Games\" magazine stated that \"the videogame market in America has virtually disappeared\" and that \"this could be a miscalculation on Nintendo's part\".\nThe Famicom hardware first made its North American debut in the arcades, in the form of the Nintendo VS. System in 1984. The system's success in arcades paved the way for the official release of the NES console. With US retailers refusing to stock game consoles, Yamauchi realized there was still a market for video games in the arcades, so he introduced the Famicom to North America through the arcade industry. The VS. System became a major success in North American arcades, becoming the highest-grossing arcade machine of 1985 in the United States. By the time the NES launched, nearly 100,000 VS. Systems had been sold to American arcades. The success of the VS. System gave Nintendo the confidence to release the Famicom in North America as a video game console, for which there was growing interest due to Nintendo's positive reputation in the arcades. It also gave Nintendo the opportunity to test new games as VS. Paks in the arcades, to determine which games to release for the NES launch.\nAt the 1985 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of the Famicom: a stripped-down and cost-reduced redesign of the Advanced Video System (AVS), having abandoned the home computer approach. Nintendo purposefully designed the system to avoid resembling a video game console and avoided terms associated with game consoles. Marketing manager Gail Tilden chose the term \"Game Pak\" for cartridges, \"Control Deck\" for the console, and \"Entertainment System\" for the whole platform. Renamed the \"Nintendo Entertainment System\" (\"NES\"), the new and cost-reduced version lacked most of the upscale features added in the AVS but retained many of its audiophile-inspired design elements, such as the grey colour scheme and boxy form factor. Disappointed with the cosmetically raw prototype part they received from Japan, which they nicknamed \"the lunchbox\", Nintendo of America designers Lance Barr and Don James added the two-tone gray, the black stripe, and the red lettering. To obscure the video game connotation, the NES replaced the top-loading cartridge slot of the Famicom and AVS with a front-loading chamber for software cartridges that kept the inserted cartridge out of view, reminiscent of a video cassette recorder. The Famicom's pair of hard-wired controllers and the AVS's wireless controllers were replaced with two custom 7-pin sockets for detachable wired controllers.\nAt June 1985's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of its Famicom, with a new case redesigned by Lance Barr and featuring a \"zero insertion force\" cartridge slot. The change from a top-loader in the Famicom to a front-loader was to make the new console more like a video cassette recorder, which had grown in popularity by 1985, and differentiate the unit from past video game consoles. Additionally, Uemura explained that Nintendo developers had feared that the console's electronics might face electrostatic hazards in dry American states such as Arizona and Texas, and a front-loading design would be safer if children handled the console carelessly.\nThis was deployed as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Nintendo seeded these first systems to limited American test markets starting in New York City on October 18, 1985, and followed up in Los Angeles in February 1986; the American nationwide release came on September 27, 1986. Nintendo released 17 launch games: \"10-Yard Fight\", \"Baseball\", \"Clu Clu Land\", \"Duck Hunt\", \"Excitebike\", \"Golf\", \"Gyromite\", \"Hogan's Alley\", \"Ice Climber\", \"Kung Fu\", \"Pinball\", \"Soccer\", \"Stack-Up\", \"Super Mario Bros.\", \"Tennis\", \"Wild Gunman\", and \"Wrecking Crew\". Nintendo contracted Worlds of Wonder to distribute the console physically. WoW salesman Jim Whims distinctly recalled delivering an ultimatum: \"if you want to sell Teddy Ruxpin and you want to sell Lazer Tag, you're gonna sell Nintendo as well. And if you feel that strongly about it, then you ought to just resign the line now.\" This marketing tactic led to the NES' financial success in North America in its first year; Nintendo of America would later terminate the contract and hired the company's sales staff (whom Atari offered them in 1983), while taking on physical distribution of the console itself.\nThe system's launch represented not only a new product, but also a reframing of the severely damaged home video game market in North America. The 1983 video game crash had occurred in large part due to a lack of consumer and retailer confidence in video games, which had been partially due to confusion and misrepresentation in video game marketing. Prior to the NES, the packaging of many video games presented bombastic artwork which did not represent a game's actual graphics. Furthermore, a single game such as \"Pac-Man\" appeared across consoles with substantial variations in graphics, sound, and general quality. In contrast, Nintendo's marketing strategy aimed to regain consumer and retailer confidence by delivering a singular platform whose graphics could be represented truthfully and whose qualities were clearly defined.\nTo differentiate Nintendo's new home platform from the perception of a troubled and shallow video game market still reeling from the 1983 crash, the company freshened its product nomenclature and established a strict product approval and licensing policy. The overall platform is referred to as \"Entertainment System\" instead of a \"video game system\", is centered upon a machine called a \"Control Deck\" instead of a \"console\", and features software cartridges called \"Game Paks\" instead of \"video games\". This allowed Nintendo to gain more traction in selling the system in toy stores. To deter production of games which had not been licensed by Nintendo, and to prevent copying, the 10NES lockout chip system acts as a lock-and-key coupling of each Game Pak and Control Deck. The packaging of the launch lineup of NES games bear pictures of close representations of actual onscreen graphics. To reduce consumer confusion, symbols on the games' packaging clearly indicate the genre of the game. A seal of quality is on all licensed game and accessory packaging. The initial seal states, \"This seal is your assurance that Nintendo has approved and guaranteed the quality of this product\". This text was later changed to \"Official Nintendo Seal of Quality\".\nUnlike with the Famicom, Nintendo of America marketed the console primarily to children, instituting a strict policy of censoring profanity, sexual, religious, or political content. The most famous example is Lucasfilm Games's attempts to port the comedy-horror game \"Maniac Mansion\" to the NES, which Nintendo insisted be considerably watered down.\nThe optional Robotic Operating Buddy, or R.O.B., was part of a marketing plan to portray the NES's technology as being novel and sophisticated when compared to previous game consoles, and to portray its position as being within reach of the better established toy market. Though at first, the American public exhibited limited excitement for the console itself, peripherals such as the light gun and R.O.B. attracted extensive attention.\nOther markets.\nIn Europe and Oceania, the NES was released in two separate marketing regions. The first consisted of mainland Europe (excluding Italy) where distribution was handled by several different companies, with Nintendo responsible for manufacturing. The NES saw an early launch in Europe in 1986 although most of the European countries received the console in 1987. The release in Scandinavia was on September 1, 1986, where it was released by Bergsala. In the Netherlands, it was released in the last quarter of 1987 and was distributed by Bandai BV. In France, it was released in October 1987, and in Spain most likely in 1988 through distributor Spaco. Also in 1987, Mattel handled distribution for the second region, consisting of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Australia and New Zealand. In other European countries, distribution was taken over by smaller companies like Bienengr\u00e4ber in Germany, ASD in France, Concentra in Portugal, Itochu in Greece and Cyprus, Stadlbauer in Austria, Switzerland and the former Eastern Bloc. In Poland, the NES had its release on October 6, 1994 along with the SNES and the Game Boy. In November 1994, Nintendo signed an agreement with Steepler to permit the continued sale of the Dendy, an unauthorized hardware clone of the Famicom, in Russia in exchange for also distributing the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo anticipated the NES would have a 25 per cent share in these countries, and saw particular potential in the United Kingdom. It sold modestly in Europe, however.\nIn Brazil, the console was released late in 1993 by Playtronic, even after the SNES. But the Brazilian market had been dominated by unlicensed NES clones \u2013 both locally made, and smuggled from Taiwan. One of the most successful local clones was the Phantom System, manufactured by Gradiente, which licensed Nintendo products in the country for the following decade. The sales of officially licensed products were low, due to the cloning, the quite late official launch, and the high prices of Nintendo's licensed products.\nOutside of Japan, regions in greater Asia received an \"Asian version\" of the front-loader NES though imported Famicom systems were prevalent. Due to import restrictions, NES consoles in India and South Korea were rebranded and distributed by local licensees. The Indian version is called the \"Samurai Electronic TV Game System\" and the Korean version is called the \"Hyundai Comboy\". The console sold very poorly in India due to affordability and a lack of consumer awareness.\nBundles and redesigns.\nFor its complete North American release, the Nintendo Entertainment System was progressively released over the ensuing years in several different bundles, beginning with the Deluxe Set, the Basic Set, the Action Set, and the Power Set. The Deluxe Set was launched in the 1985 test markets, retailing at US$, including R.O.B., a light gun called the NES Zapper, two controllers, and the two Game Paks \"Gyromite\" and \"Duck Hunt\". The Control Deck bundle was first released in 1987 at $ with no game, and $ bundled with the \"Super Mario Bros.\" cartridge. The Action Set, released April 14, 1988, for $, has the Control Deck, two controllers, an NES Zapper, and a dual Game Pak containing both \"Super Mario Bros.\" and \"Duck Hunt\".\nThe Power Set of 1989 includes the console, two game controllers, an NES Zapper, a Power Pad, and a triple Game Pak containing \"Super Mario Bros\", \"Duck Hunt\", and \"World Class Track Meet\". In 1990, a Sports Set bundle was released, including the console, an NES Satellite infrared wireless multitap adapter, four game controllers, and a dual Game Pak containing \"Super Spike V'Ball\" and \"Nintendo World Cup\". Two more bundle packages were later released with the original model NES console. In 1992, the Challenge Set was released for $ with the console, two controllers, and a \"Super Mario Bros. 3\" Game Pak. The Basic Set retailed at US$; it included only the console and two controllers, and no pack-in game. Instead, it contained a book called the \"Official Nintendo Player's Guide\", which contained detailed information for every NES game made up to that point.\nFinally, the console was redesigned for the Australian, North American, and Japanese markets, including the New-Style NES, or NES-101, and one redesigned \"dogbone\" game controller. In Australia, this console revision was released with a cartridge compiling \"Super Mario Bros\", \"Tetris\", and \"Nintendo World Cup\". Released in October 1993 in North America and 1994 in Australia, this final bundle retailed for $ and A$ (A$ with the pack-in game) respectively, and was discontinued with the NES in 1995.\nDiscontinuation.\nOn August 14, 1995, Nintendo discontinued the Nintendo Entertainment System in both North America and Europe. In North America, replacements for the original front-loading NES were available for $ in exchange for a broken system until at least December 1996, under Nintendo's Power Swap program. The Game Boy and Super NES were covered for $ and $ respectively.\nOn May 30, 2003, Nintendo announced the discontinuation of the Famicom in September alongside the Super Famicom and the disk rewriting services for the Famicom Disk System. The last Famicom, serial number HN11033309, was manufactured on September 25; it was kept by Nintendo and subsequently loaned to the organizers of Level X, a video game exhibition held from December 4, 2003, to February 8, 2004, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, for a Famicom retrospective in commemoration of the console's 20th anniversary. Nintendo offered repair service for the Famicom in Japan until 2007, when it was discontinued due to a shortage of available parts.\nHardware.\nConfigurations.\nAlthough all versions of the Famicom and NES include essentially similar hardware, they vary in physical characteristics. The original Famicom's design is predominantly white plastic, with dark red trim; it featured a top-loading cartridge slot, grooves on both sides of the deck in which the hardwired game controllers could be placed when not in use, and a 15-pin expansion port located on the unit's front panel for accessories. In contrast, the design of the original NES features a more subdued gray, black, and red color scheme; it includes a front-loading cartridge slot covered by a small, hinged door that can be opened to insert or remove a cartridge and closed at other times, and an expansion port on the bottom of the unit. Compared to the Famicom, the NES includes the 10NES lockout chip and incorporates a matching chip validation check in its cartridge connector.\nIn late 1993, Nintendo introduced a redesigned version of the Famicom and NES (officially named the New Famicom in Japan and the New-Style NES in the US) to complement the Super Famicom and SNES, to prolong interest in the console, and to reduce costs. The redesigned NES features a top-loading cartridge slot and omits the 10NES lockout chip to avoid reliability issues with the original console; the redesign also omits AV output. Conversely, the redesigned Famicom features such output and introduces detachable game controllers, though the microphone functionality is omitted as a result. The redesigned Famicom and NES models are cosmetically similar aside from the presence of a cartridge \"bump\" on the NES model, which the Famicom model lacks to accommodate its shorter cartridges and the RAM Adapter for the Famicom Disk System.\nSharp Corporation produced three licensed variants of the Famicom in Japan, all of which prominently display the shortened moniker rather than the official name, Family Computer. One variant was a television set with an integrated Famicom; originally released in 1983 as the My Computer TV in and models, it was later released in the United States in 1989 as a 19-inch model named the Video Game Television. Another variant is the Twin Famicom console released in 1986 to combine a Famicom with a Famicom Disk System. Sharp then produced the Famicom Titler in 1989. Intended for video capture and production, it features internal RGB video generation and video output via S-Video, plus inputs for adding subtitles and voice-overs.\nHardware clones.\nA thriving market of unlicensed NES hardware clones emerged during the climax of the console's popularity. Initially, such clones were popular in markets with weak copyright law and where Nintendo issue it's systems after famiclones become well known across specific region, making legal products hard to market or create brand awareness. In particular, the Dendy (), an unlicensed hardware clone produced in Taiwan and sold in the former Soviet Union by Steepler, emerged as the most popular video game console of its time in that setting and it enjoyed a degree of fame roughly equivalent to that experienced by the NES/Famicom in North America and Japan, eventually selling 6 million units. Poland had a similar story with Pegasus distributed by Bobmark International which sold more than 1 million units. In China, a place where many of these clones were manufactured, the media reported 30 million units sold until late 1995. A range of Famicom clones was marketed in Latin America during the late 1980s and 1990s with the name Family Game, resembling the original hardware design. Thailand got Family FR brand famiclones, Brazil a superior to the original Phantom System, the Micro Genius (Simplified Chinese: \u5c0f\u5929\u624d) was marketed in Southeast Asia as an alternative to the Famicom; Ending-Man Terminator enjoyed popularity in European Eastern Bloc, parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America. It happened that these clones reached countries with very good copyright law and high awareness of the Nintendo brand such as Power Player Super Joy III in US.\nThe unlicensed clone market has flourished following Nintendo's discontinuation of the NES. Some of the more exotic of these resulting systems surpass the functionality of the original hardware, such as a portable system with a color LCD (PocketFami). Others have been produced for certain specialized markets, such as a rather primitive personal computer with a keyboard and basic word processing software. These unauthorized clones have been helped by the invention of the so-called NES-on-a-chip.\nAs was the case with unlicensed games, Nintendo has typically gone to the courts to prohibit the manufacture and sale of unlicensed cloned hardware. Many of the clone vendors have included built-in copies of licensed Nintendo software, which constitutes copyright infringement in most countries.\nDesign flaws.\nNintendo's design styling for US release was made deliberately different from that of other game consoles. Nintendo wanted to distinguish its product from those of competitors and to avoid the generally poor reputation that game consoles had acquired following the video game crash of 1983. One result of this philosophy is to disguise the cartridge slot design as a front-loading zero-insertion force (ZIF) cartridge socket, designed to resemble the front-loading mechanism of a VCR. The socket works well when both the connector and the cartridges are clean and the pins on the connector are new. However, the socket is not truly zero-insertion force. When a user inserts the cartridge into the NES, the force of pressing the cartridge into place bends the contact pins slightly and presses the cartridge's ROM board back into the cartridge. Frequent insertion and removal of cartridges wears out the pins, and the ZIF design proved more prone to interference by dirt and dust than an industry-standard card edge connector.\nThe design problems were exacerbated by Nintendo's choice of materials. The console slot nickel connector springs wear due to design and the game cartridge's brass plated nickel connectors are also prone to tarnishing and oxidation. Nintendo sought to fix these problems by redesigning the next generation Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) as a top loader similar to the Famicom. Many players try to alleviate issues in the game caused by this corrosion by blowing into the cartridges, then reinserting them, which actually speeds up the tarnishing due to moisture. One way to slow down the tarnishing process and extend the life of the cartridges is to use isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs.\nUsers have attempted to solve these problems by blowing air onto the cartridge connectors, inserting the cartridge just far enough to get the ZIF to lower, licking the edge connector, slapping the side of the system after inserting a cartridge, shifting the cartridge from side to side after insertion, pushing the ZIF up and down repeatedly, holding the ZIF down lower than it should have been, and cleaning the connectors with alcohol. Many frequently used methods to fix this problem actually risk damaging gaming cartridges or the system. In 1989, Nintendo released an official NES Cleaning Kit to help users clean malfunctioning cartridges and consoles.\nIn response to these hardware flaws, \"Nintendo Authorized Repair Centers\" sprang up across the U.S. According to Nintendo, the authorization program was designed to ensure that the machines were properly repaired. Nintendo would ship the necessary replacement parts only to shops that had enrolled in the authorization program.\nWith the release of the top-loading NES-101 (New-Style NES) in 1993 toward the end of the NES's lifespan, Nintendo resolved the problems by switching to a standard card edge connector and eliminating the lockout chip. All of the Famicom systems use standard card edge connectors, as do Nintendo's two subsequent game consoles, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Nintendo 64.\nLockout.\nThe Famicom as released in Japan contains no lockout hardware, which led to unlicensed cartridges (both legitimate and bootleg) becoming extremely common throughout Japan and East Asia. Nintendo tried to promote its \"Seal of Quality\" in these regions to identify licensed games to combat bootlegs, but bootleg Famicom games continued to be produced even after Nintendo moved production onto the Super Famicom, effectively extending the lifetime of the Famicom.\nThe original NES released for Western countries in 1985 contains the 10NES lockout chip, which prevents it from running cartridges unapproved by Nintendo. The inclusion of the 10NES was a direct influence from the 1983 video game crash in North America, partially caused by a market flooded with uncontrolled publishing of games of poor quality for the home consoles. Nintendo did not want to see that happen with the NES and used the lockout chip to restrict games to only those they licensed and approved for the system. This means of protection worked in combination with the Nintendo \"Seal of Quality\", which a developer had to acquire before they would be able to have access to the required 10NES information prior to publication of their game.\nInitially, the 10NES chip proved a significant barrier to unlicensed developers seeking to develop and sell games for the console. However, hobbyists in later years discovered that disassembling the NES and cutting the fourth pin of the lockout chip would change the chip's mode of operation from \"lock\" to \"key\", removing all effects and greatly improving the console's ability to play legal games, bootlegs, and converted imports.\nOriginal NES consoles sold in different regions have different lockout chips, thereby enforcing regional lockout (regardless of TV signal compatibility). Such regions include North America; most of continental Europe (PAL-B); Asia; and the British Isles, Italy, and Australasia (PAL-A).\nProblems with the 10NES lockout chip frequently result in one of the console's most common issues: the blinking red power light, in which the system appears to turn itself on and off repeatedly because the 10NES would reset the console once per second. The lockout chip required constant communication with the chip in the game to work. Dirty, aging, and bent connectors often disrupt the communication, resulting in the blink effect. In other cases, the console turns on but only displays a solid white, gray, or green screen.\nTechnical specifications.\nThe console's main central processing unit (CPU) was produced by Ricoh, which manufactured different versions between NTSC and PAL regions; NTSC consoles have a 2A03 clocked at 1.79\u00a0MHzTooltip megahertz, and PAL consoles have a 2A07 clocked at 1.66\u00a0MHz. Both CPUs are unlicensed variants of the MOS Technology 6502, an 8-bit microprocessor prevalent in contemporary home computers and consoles; Nintendo ostensibly disabled the 6502's binary-coded decimal mode on them to avoid patent infringement against or licensing fees towards MOS Technology, which was owned by then-rival Commodore International. The CPU has access to 2\u00a0KBTooltip kilobyte of onboard work RAMTooltip random-access memory.\nThe console's graphics are handled by a Ricoh 2C02, a processor known as the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) that is clocked at 5.37\u00a0MHz. A derivative of the Texas Instruments TMS9918\u2014a video display controller used in the ColecoVision\u2014the PPU features 2\u00a0KB of video RAM, 256\u00a0bytes of on-die \"object attribute memory\" (OAM) to store sprite display information on up to 64 sprites, and 28\u00a0bytes of RAM to store information on the YIQ-based color palette; the console can display up to 25 colors simultaneously out of 54 usable colors.\nThe console's standard display resolution is 256 \u00d7 240 pixels, though video output options vary between models. The original Famicom features only radio frequency (RF) modulator output, and the NES additionally supports composite video via RCA connectors. The redesigned Famicom omits the RF modulator entirely, only outputting composite video via a proprietary \"multi-out\" connector first introduced on the Super Famicom/SNES; conversely, the redesigned NES features RF modulator output only, though a version of the model including the \"multi-out\" connector was produced in rare quantities.\nThe console produces sound via an audio processing unit (APU) integrated into the processor. It supports a total of five sound channels: two pulse wave channels, one triangle wave channel, one white noise channel, and one DPCMTooltip differential pulse-code modulation channel for sample playback. Audio playback speed is dependent on the CPU clock rate, which is set by a crystal oscillator.\nAccessories.\nControllers.\nThe game controller for both the NES and the Famicom has an oblong brick-like design with a simple four button layout: two round buttons labeled \"A\" and \"B\", a \"START\" button, and a \"SELECT\" button. Additionally, the controllers use the cross-shaped D-pad, designed by Nintendo employee Gunpei Yokoi for Nintendo Game & Watch systems, to replace the bulkier joysticks on controllers of earlier gaming consoles.\nThe original model Famicom features two game controllers, both of which are hardwired to the back of the console. The second controller lacks the START and SELECT button, featuring a small microphone instead; however, few games use this feature. The earliest produced Famicom units have square A and B buttons; issues with them getting stuck when pressed down led Nintendo to change their shape to a circular design in subsequent units following the console's recall.\nInstead of the Famicom's hardwired controllers, the NES has two proprietary seven-pin ports on the front of the console to support detachable controllers and third-party peripherals. The controllers bundled with the NES are identical and include the START and SELECT buttons, lacking the microphone on the original Famicom's second controller. The cables for NES controllers are also generally three times longer than their Famicom counterparts.\nSeveral special controllers are intended for use with specific games, though are not commonly used. Such peripherals include the NES Zapper (a light gun), R.O.B. (a toy robot), and the Power Pad (a dance pad). The original Famicom has a deepened DA-15 expansion port on the front of the unit to accommodate them.\nTwo official advanced controllers were produced for the NES: the NES Advantage, an arcade controller produced by Asciiware and licensed by Nintendo of America; and the NES Max, a controller with grip handles and a \"cycloid\" sliding-disc D-pad in place of the traditional one. Both controllers have a \"Turbo\" feature, which simulates multiple rapid button presses, for the A and B buttons; the NES Max has manually pressed Turbo buttons, and the NES Advantage offers toggle buttons for Turbo functionality along with knobs that adjust the firing rate of each button. The latter also includes a \"Slow\" button that rapidly pauses games, though this function is not intended for games that invoke a pause menu or screen.\nThe standard game controller was redesigned upon the introduction of the redesigned console. Though the original button layout was retained, the shape of the redesigned controller\u2014nicknamed the \"dog bone\" controller\u2014resembles that of the Super Famicom and SNES. It retained NES-style detachable controller ports.\nThe original NES controller has become one of the most recognizable symbols of the console. Nintendo has mimicked the look of the controller in several other products, from promotional merchandise to limited edition versions of the Game Boy Advance.\nJapanese accessories.\nFew of the numerous peripheral devices and software packages for the Famicom were released outside Japan.\nThe Famicom 3D System, an active shutter 3D headset peripheral released in 1987, enabled the ability to play stereoscopic video games. It was a commercial failure and never released outside Japan; users described the headset as bulky and uncomfortable. Seven games are compatible with the glasses, with three of them developed by Square; two titles received worldwide releases as \"Rad Racer\" and \"The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner\".\n\"Family BASIC\" is an implementation of BASIC for the Famicom, packaged with a keyboard. Similar in concept to the Atari 2600 \"BASIC\" cartridge, it allows the user to write programs, especially games, which can be saved on an included cassette recorder. Nintendo of America rejected releasing \"Famicom BASIC\" in the US in favor of its primary marketing demographic of children.\nThe Famicom Modem connected a Famicom to a now defunct proprietary network in Japan which provided content such as financial services. A dial-up modem was never released for the NES after a partnership with Fidelity Investments.\nFamicom Disk System.\nBy 1986, the cost and size limitations of ROM chips used in the Famicom's ROM cartridges were apparent, with no new advancements present to address them. With this in mind, Nintendo looked at the personal computer (PC) market, where the floppy disk was gaining wide adoption as a computer data storage medium. Partnering with Mitsumi to develop a floppy disk add-on for the Famicom based on the latter's Quick Disk format, Nintendo officially released it as the Family Computer Disk System in Japan on February 21, 1986, at a retail price of \u00a515,000.\nThe advantages of the format (called \"Disk Card\") were apparent on launch. It has more than triple the data storage capacity of the then-largest cartridge (used for \"Super Mario Bros.\") and introduced game save capability and lower production costs compared to cartridges, which resulted in lower retail prices for consumers. The add-on also has a new wavetable synthesis sound channel and more data storage for the Famicom's audio sample channel. Taking advantage of the disk's re-writability, Nintendo set up Disk Writer interactive kiosks at retail stores throughout Japan; at each kiosk, consumers could buy new games to rewrite onto their old disks or onto new disks. Disk Fax kiosks allowed players to submit their high scores on special blue disks for contests and rankings, predating the online leaderboard by several years.\nAlthough Nintendo committed to exclusively releasing games on the Disk System after its release, numerous external issues plagued its long-term viability. Just four months after launch, Capcom released a Famicom port of \"Makaimura\" (known as \"Ghosts 'n Goblins\" in the U.S.) on a cartridge with more data storage capacity than what was possible on Disk Cards, nullifying one of the Disk System's major advantages by using discrete logic chips to perform bank switching. Nintendo also demanded half of the copyright ownership for each game it selected for release on the Disk System, resulting in developers electing to remain on cartridge instead as the latter gained functionality previously considered unique to the former. Developers disliked the lower profit margin of the Disk Writer kiosks, and retailers complained of their use of valuable space as demand for the format waned.\nUsage of a floppy disk-based medium brought about further complications; Disk Cards were more fragile than cartridges and were prone to data corruption from magnetic exposure. Their unreliability was exacerbated by their lack of a shutter, which Nintendo substituted with a wax sleeve and clear keep case to reduce costs; blue disks and later Disk Cards included shutters. The rubber belt-based disk drives were also unreliable, with cryptic error codes complicating troubleshooting; even when fully functional, players accustomed to cartridges were annoyed with the introduction of loading times and disk flipping. Furthermore, the rewritable nature of the format resulted in rampant software piracy, with Nintendo's attempts at anti-piracy measures quickly defeated.\nThough selling close to two million units for all of 1986, Nintendo only managed to increase the total to 4.4\u00a0million units by 1990, falling well short of internal projections. By then, the Disk System was rendered obsolete due to advancements in ROM cartridge production: memory mapping chips for expanded data storage capacity, battery-backed SRAMTooltip static random-access memory for game saving, and declining overall production costs. Nintendo alluded to a Western release for the Disk System, going so far as to successfully file a U.S. patent for it and having the Famicom's cartridge pins used by its RAM Adapter for enhanced audio rerouted to the NES's little-used bottom expansion port. However, such a release never materialized due to its reception in Japan. Most of its games were re-released with workarounds on cartridge for both the Famicom and NES, without the enhanced audio. Although the last game for the Disk System was released in December 1992, Nintendo continued repair and rewrite services for it until September 2003.\nNES Test Station.\nThe NES Test Station diagnostics machine was introduced in 1988. It is an NES-based unit designed for testing NES hardware, components, and games. It was only provided for use in World of Nintendo boutiques as part of the Nintendo World Class Service program. Visitors were to bring items to test with the station, and could be assisted by a store technician or employee.\nThe NES Test Station's front has a Game Pak slot and connectors for testing various components (AC adapter, RF switch, Audio/Video cable, NES Control Deck, accessories and games), with a centrally-located selector knob to choose which component to test. The unit itself weighs approximately 11.7 pounds without a TV. It connects to a television via a combined A/V and RF Switch cable. By actuating the green button, a user can toggle between an A/V Cable or RF Switch connection. The television it is connected to (typically 11\" to 14\") is meant to be placed atop it.\nIn 1991, Nintendo provided an add-on called the \"Super NES Counter Tester\" that tests Super NES components and games. The Super NES Counter Tester is a standard Control Deck on a metal fixture with the connection from the back of the unit re-routed to the front. These connections may be made directly to the test station or to the TV, depending on what is to be tested.\nGames.\nGame Pak.\nThe NES uses a 72-pin design, as compared with 60 pins on the Famicom. To reduce costs and inventory, some early games released in North America are simply Famicom cartridges attached to an adapter to fit inside the NES hardware. Early NES cartridges are held together with five small slotted screws. Games released after 1987 were redesigned slightly to incorporate two plastic clips molded into the plastic itself, removing the need for the top two screws.\nThe back of the cartridge bears a label with handling instructions. Production and software revision codes were imprinted as stamps on the back label to correspond with the software version and producer. All licensed NTSC and PAL cartridges are a standard shade of gray plastic, with the exception of \"The Legend of Zelda\" and ', which were manufactured in gold-plastic carts. Unlicensed carts were produced in black, robin egg blue, and gold, and are all slightly different shapes than standard NES cartridges. Nintendo also produced yellow-plastic carts for internal use at Nintendo Service Centers, although these \"test carts\" were never made available for purchase. All licensed US cartridges were made by Nintendo, Konami, and Acclaim. For promotion of ', Capcom sent 150 limited-edition gold NES cartridges with the original game, featuring the \"Remastered\" art as the sticker, to different gaming news agencies. The instruction label on the back includes the opening lyric from the show's theme song, \"Life is like a hurricane\".\nFamicom cartridges are shaped slightly differently. Unlike NES games, official Famicom cartridges were produced in many colors of plastic. Adapters, similar in design to the popular accessory Game Genie, are available that allow Famicom games to be played on an NES. In Japan, several companies manufactured the cartridges for the Famicom. This allowed these companies to develop customized chips designed for specific purposes, such as superior sound and graphics.\nThird-party licensing.\nNintendo's near monopoly on the home video game market left it with a dominant influence over the industry. Unlike Atari, which never actively pursued third-party developers (and even went to court in an attempt to force Activision to cease production of Atari 2600 games), Nintendo had anticipated and encouraged the involvement of third-party software developers, though strictly on Nintendo's terms. Some of the Nintendo platform-control measures were adopted in a less stringent way by later console manufacturers such as Sega, Sony, and Microsoft.\nTo this end, a 10NES authentication chip is in every console and in every licensed cartridge. If the console's chip can not detect a counterpart chip inside the cartridge, the game does not load. Nintendo portrayed these measures as intended to protect the public against poor-quality games, and placed a golden seal of approval on all licensed games released for the system.\nNintendo found success with Japanese arcade manufacturers such as Konami, Capcom, Taito, and Namco, which signed on as third-party developers. However, they found resistance with US game developers including Atari Games, Activision, Electronic Arts, and Epyx refusing Nintendo's one-sided terms. Acclaim Entertainment, a fledgling game publisher founded by former Activision employees, was the first major third-party licensee in the United States to sign on with Nintendo in late 1987. Atari Games (through Tengen) and Activision signed on soon after.\nNintendo was not as restrictive as Sega, which did not permit third-party publishing until Mediagenic in late summer 1988. Nintendo's intention was to reserve a large part of NES game revenue for itself. Nintendo required that it be the sole manufacturer of all cartridges, and that the publisher had to pay in full before the cartridges for that game be produced. Cartridges could not be returned to Nintendo, so publishers assumed all the risk. As a result, some publishers lost more money due to distress sales of remaining inventory at the end of the NES era than they ever earned in profits from sales of the games. Because Nintendo controlled the production of all cartridges, it was able to enforce strict rules on its third-party developers, who were required to sign a contract that would obligate them to develop exclusively for the system, order at least 10,000 cartridges, and only make five games per year. The global 1988 shortage of DRAM and ROM chips reportedly caused Nintendo to only permit an average of 25% of publishers' requests for cartridges, with some receiving much higher amounts and others almost none. GameSpy noted that Nintendo's \"iron-clad terms\" made the company many enemies during the 1980s. Some developers tried to circumvent the five game limit by creating additional company brands like Konami's Ultra Games label; others tried circumventing the 10NES chip.\nNintendo was accused of antitrust violations because of the strict licensing requirements. The United States Department of Justice and several states began probing Nintendo's business practices, leading to the involvement of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC conducted an extensive investigation which included interviewing hundreds of retailers. During the FTC probe, Nintendo changed the terms of its publisher licensing agreements to eliminate the two-year rule and other restrictive terms. Nintendo and the FTC settled the case in April 1991, with Nintendo required to send vouchers giving a $5 discount off to a new game, to every person that had purchased an NES game between June 1988 and December 1990. GameSpy remarked that Nintendo's punishment was particularly weak given the case's findings, although it has been speculated that the FTC did not want to damage the video game industry in the United States.\nWith the NES near the end of its life, many third-party publishers such as Electronic Arts supported upstart competing consoles with less strict licensing terms such as the Sega Genesis and then the PlayStation, which eroded and then took over Nintendo's dominance in the home console market, respectively. Consoles from Nintendo's rivals in the post-SNES era had always enjoyed much stronger third-party support than Nintendo, which relied more heavily on first-party games.\nUnlicensed games.\nCompanies that refused to pay the licensing fee or were rejected by Nintendo found ways to circumvent the console's authentication system. Most of these companies created circuits that use a voltage spike to temporarily disable the 10NES chip. A few unlicensed games released in Europe and Australia are in the form of a dongle to connect to a licensed game, to use the licensed game's 10NES chip for authentication. To combat unlicensed games, Nintendo of America threatened retailers who sold them with losing their supply of licensed games, and multiple revisions were made to the NES PCBs to prevent unlicensed games from working.\nAtari Games took a different approach with its line of NES products, Tengen. The company attempted to reverse engineer the lockout chip to develop its own \"Rabbit\" chip. Tengen also obtained a description of the lockout chip from the United States Patent and Trademark Office by falsely claiming that it was required to defend against present infringement claims. Nintendo successfully sued Tengen for copyright infringement. Tengen's antitrust claims against Nintendo were never decided.\nColor Dreams made Christian video games under the subsidiary name Wisdom Tree. Historian Steven Kent wrote, \"Wisdom Tree presented Nintendo with a prickly situation. The general public did not seem to pay close attention to the court battle with Atari Games, and industry analysts were impressed with Nintendo's legal acumen; but going after a tiny company that published innocuous religious games was another story.\"\nGame rentals.\nAs the Nintendo Entertainment System grew in popularity and entered millions of American homes, some small video rental shops began buying their own copies of NES games, and renting them out to customers for around the same price as a video cassette rental for a few days. Nintendo received no profit from the practice beyond the initial cost of their game, and unlike movie rentals, a newly released game could hit store shelves and be available for rent on the same day. Nintendo took steps to stop game rentals, but did not take any formal legal action until Blockbuster Video began to make game rentals a large-scale service. Nintendo claimed that allowing customers to rent games would significantly hurt sales and drive up the cost of games. Nintendo lost the lawsuit, but did win on a claim of copyright infringement. Blockbuster was banned from including photocopies of original, copyrighted instruction booklets with its rented games. In compliance with the ruling, Blockbuster produced original short instructions\u2014usually in the form of a small booklet, card, or label stuck on the back of the rental box\u2014that explained the game's basic premise and controls. Video rental shops continued the practice of renting video games.\nReception.\nBy 1988, industry observers stated that the NES's popularity had grown so quickly that the market for Nintendo cartridges was larger than that for all home computer software. \"Compute!\" reported in 1989 that Nintendo had sold seven million NES systems in 1988 alone, almost as many as the number of Commodore 64s sold in its first five years. \"Computer game makers [are] scared stiff\", the magazine said, stating that Nintendo's popularity caused most competitors to have poor sales during the previous Christmas and resulted in serious financial problems for some.\nIn June 1989, Nintendo of America's vice president of marketing Peter Main, said that the Famicom was present in 37% of Japan's households. By 1990, 30% of American households owned the NES, compared to 23% for all personal computers. By 1990, the NES had outsold all previously released consoles worldwide. The slogan for this brand was \"It can't be beaten\". The Nintendo Entertainment System was not available in the Soviet Union.\nIn the early 1990s, gamers predicted that competition from technologically superior systems such as the 16-bit Sega Genesis would mean the immediate end of the NES's dominance. Instead, during the first year of Nintendo's successor console the Super Famicom (named Super Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan), the Famicom remained the second highest-selling video game console in Japan, outselling the newer and more powerful NEC PC Engine and Sega Mega Drive by a wide margin. The console remained popular in Japan and North America until late 1993, when the demand for new NES software abruptly plummeted. The final licensed Famicom game released in Japan is \"Takahashi Meijin no B\u014dken Jima IV (Adventure Island IV)\", in North America is \"Wario's Woods\", and in Europe is \"The Lion King\" in 1995. In the wake of ever decreasing sales and the lack of new games, Nintendo of America officially discontinued the NES by 1995. Nintendo produced new Famicom units in Japan until September 25, 2003, and continued to repair Famicom consoles until October 31, 2007, attributing the discontinuation of support to insufficient supplies of parts.\nThe NES was initially not as successful in Europe during the late 1980s, when it was outsold by the Master System in the United Kingdom. By 1990, the Master System was the highest-selling console in Europe, though the NES was beginning to have a fast-growing user base in the United Kingdom. During the early 1990s, NES sales caught up with and narrowly overtook the Master System overall in Western Europe, though the Master System maintained its lead in several markets such as the United Kingdom, Belgium and Spain.\nLegacy.\nThe NES was released two years after the video game crash of 1983, when many retailers and adult consumers regarded electronic games as a passing fad, so many believed at first that the NES would soon fade. Before the NES and Famicom, Nintendo was known as a moderately successful Japanese toy and playing card manufacturer, but the consoles' popularity helped the company grow into an internationally recognized name almost synonymous with video games as Atari had been, and set the stage for Japanese dominance of the video game industry. With the NES, Nintendo also changed the relationship between console manufacturers and third-party software developers by restricting developers from publishing and distributing software without licensed approval. This led to higher-quality games, which helped change the attitude of a public that had grown weary from poorly produced games for earlier systems.\nThe NES hardware design is also very influential. Nintendo chose the name \"Nintendo Entertainment System\" for the US market and redesigned the system so it would not give the appearance of a child's toy. The front-loading cartridge input allowed it to be used more easily in a TV stand with other entertainment devices, such as a videocassette recorder.\nThe system's hardware limitations led to design principles that still influence the development of modern video games. Many prominent game franchises originated on the NES, including Nintendo's own \"Super Mario Bros.\",| \"The Legend of Zelda\" and \"Metroid\", Capcom's \"Mega Man\" franchise, Konami's \"Castlevania\" franchise, Square's \"Final Fantasy\",| and Enix's \"Dragon Quest\"| franchises.\nNES imagery, especially its controller, has become a popular motif for a variety of products, including Nintendo's Game Boy Advance.\nAt the Tokyo Game Show in 2023, the \"Famicom\" was bestowed \"The Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Award\" in honour of the console's influence and laying down the foundations for the games industry.\nThe NES library includes some influential games. \"Super Mario Bros.\" is the forerunner of side-scrolling games, while \"The Legend of Zelda\" had mostly influenced action-adventure games and helped popularizing the save data in video games. Other two influential games are \"Metroid\" and \"Castlevania II\", which had established the metroidvania genre.\nIn 2011, \"IGN\" named the NES the greatest video game console of all time.\nEmulation.\nThe NES can be emulated on many other systems. The first emulator was the Japanese-only Pasofami. It was soon followed by iNES, which is available in English and is cross-platform, in 1996. It was described as being the first NES emulation software that could be used by a non-expert. The first version of NESticle, an unofficial MS-DOS-based emulator, was released on April 3, 1997. Nintendo offers licensed emulation of some NES games via its Virtual Console service for the Wii, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U, and via its Nintendo Switch Online service.\nRe-release.\nOn July 14, 2016, Nintendo announced the November 2016 launch of a miniature replica of the NES, named the Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition in the United States and Nintendo Classic Mini: Nintendo Entertainment System in Europe and Australia. The emulation-based console includes 30 permanently bundled games from the vintage NES library, including the \"Super Mario Bros.\" series and \"The Legend of Zelda\" series. The system has HDMI display output and a new replica controller, which can also connect to the Wii Remote for use with Virtual Console games. It was discontinued in North America on April 13, 2017, and worldwide on April 15, 2017. However, Nintendo announced in September 2017 that the NES Classic Mini would return to production on June 29, 2018, only to be discontinued again permanently by December of that year.\nNotes.\nTransliterations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["771418", "18944028"], "permutation_1": ["771418", "18944028"], "permutation_2": ["771418", "18944028"], "permutation_3": ["771418", "18944028"]}
{"id": "2hop__128895_11396", "docs_added": {"6133743": "WPUR\nWPUR (107.3 FM) is a country music formatted radio station in Atlantic City, New Jersey. WPUR is more commonly known as \"Cat Country 107.3\". Its transmitter is located in Atlantic City, while studios are in Northfield, New Jersey.\nHistory.\nThe construction permit for a new station on 107.3 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, was granted the random WZZP call sign on March 17, 1997. It went on the air on February 28, 1998, with a mix of classic rock, oldies, and newer songs. This test broadcast was erratic and mostly heard on weekends through March 17, 1998. Chief engineer Tom McNally was the first voice heard on the station, as a \"conducting equipment tests\" message aired between the music.\nOn April 9 and 10, 1998, WZZP began broadcasting a mix of country songs. Later on April 10 and into April 11, the station played \"Tubthumping\" by Chumbawamba over and over. Another stunt format aired from April 12 to April 14, this time with all classic rock songs as \"ZZ-107\". From April 14 to April 17, CHR was featured with IDs only saying \"107.3\". This was expanded upon from April 17 to April 25, when more CHR songs were added to the playlist and the station's name shifted to \"ZZ-107 The Zipper\".\nOn April 25, 1998, \"Fun 107\" debuted with a rhythmic CHR format, which was easy to do since WZZP's sister station, at the time, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, was \"Fun 107\" WFHN. Most people thought this was going to be the final format, but it was just another long drawn-out stunt that ultimately lasted for a little over two months.\nAt 3 p.m. on June 29, 1998, the real format and name finally debuted: \"Cat Country 107.3\", with \"Fancy\" by Reba McEntire as the station's first song. The call letters officially changed to WPUR on July 20, 1998.\nOwnership.\nSpring Broadcasting, LLC, purchased the construction permit for 107.3 in Atlantic City from Radio-Vision II in the late 1990s. In November 1999, Citadel Communications entered the Atlantic City market as it purchased Spring Broadcasting. In July 2001, Citadel Communications sold WPUR and its Atlantic City sister stations to newly formed Millennium Radio Group for $19.4 million. In 2011, Millennium's radio stations were turned over to Townsquare Media.\nPositioning.\nWPUR positions itself as \"Cat Country 107.3\", \"#1 for new country\". Originally, WPUR was positioned as \"South Jersey's Hot New Country\" and later \"Continuous Country Favorites\". WPUR currently uses the 360 Country imaging service from TM Studios. Carter Davis served as the station's voiceover talent for years. All of Cat Country 107.3's previous jingle packages came from Reelworld.\nTechnical.\nWPUR is a class B1 FM radio station, operating with 25,000 watts ERP from an antenna 94 meters (308\u00a0ft) high (HAAT) on the WFPG tower in Atlantic City. Until early 2008, WPUR's antenna was located on the roof of the Trump Taj Mahal casino on the Atlantic City boardwalk.\nWPUR had a severe null in its signal over land until WSNJ-FM 107.7 Bridgeton, New Jersey, went off the air in February 2004. When WSNJ-FM went off the air, WPUR was able to bring a full 25,000-watt ERP signal over land.\nCharity work.\nWPUR supports local non-profit organizations throughout South Jersey. In addition, since 2000, WPUR has held annual two-day radiothons for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, raising over $1,000,000, and also holds a yearly quest for One Million Pennies for St. Jude.", "106211": "Atlantic City, New Jersey\nCity in Atlantic County, New Jersey, US\nAtlantic City, sometimes referred to by its initials A.C., is a Jersey Shore seaside resort city in Atlantic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.\nAtlantic City comprises the second half of the Atlantic City-Hammonton metropolitan statistical area, which encompasses those cities and all of Atlantic County for statistical purposes. Both Atlantic City and Hammonton, as well as the surrounding Atlantic County, are culturally tied to Philadelphia and constitute part of the larger Philadelphia metropolitan area or Delaware Valley, the nation's seventh-largest metropolitan area as of 2020.\nLocated in South Jersey on Absecon Island and known for its taxis, casinos, nightlife, boardwalk, and Atlantic Ocean beaches and coastline, the city is prominently known as the \"Las Vegas of the East Coast\" and inspired the U.S. version of the board game \"Monopoly\", which uses various Atlantic City street names and destinations in the game. New Jersey voters legalized casino gambling in Atlantic City in 1976, and the first casino opened two years later. From 1921 to 2004, Atlantic City hosted the Miss America pageant, which later returned to the city from 2013 to 2018.\nAs of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 38,497, a decline of 1,061 (\u22122.7%) from the 2010 census count of 39,558, which in turn reflected a decrease of 959 (\u22122.4%) from the 40,517 counted in the 2000 census.\nThe city was incorporated on May 1, 1854, from portions of Egg Harbor Township and Galloway Township. It is located on Absecon Island and borders Absecon, Brigantine, Egg Harbor Township, Galloway Township, Pleasantville, Ventnor City, and the Atlantic Ocean.\nHistory.\nPrior to Atlantic City's founding, the region served as a summer home for the Lenape, a Native American tribe. While the precise date of European settlement in present-day Atlantic City is not precisely determined, it is commonly thought that it was in 1783, when Jeremiah Leeds built and occupied a year-round home there.\n19th century.\nIn 1850, present-day Atlantic City was developed into a resort town. Three years later, in early 1853, it was named Atlantic City.\nBecause of its location in South Jersey, which hugs the Atlantic Ocean between marshlands and islands, Atlantic City was then viewed by developers as prime real estate and a potential resort town. In 1853, the city's first commercial hotel, the Belloe House, was built at the intersection of Massachusetts and Atlantic Avenues.\nThe following year, in 1854, the city was incorporated. The same year, train service began on the Camden and Atlantic Railroad. Built on the edge of the bay, this served as the direct link of this remote parcel of land with Philadelphia, the second-most populous city in the United States at the time and the largest city in Pennsylvania. The same year, construction of the Absecon Lighthouse, designed by George Meade of the Corps of Topographical Engineers, was approved, with work initiated the next year.\nBy 1874, almost 500,000 passengers a year were coming to Atlantic City by rail. In \"Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City\", \"Atlantic City's Godfather\" Jonathan Pitney, known as the \"Father of Atlantic City\", initially sought to develop Atlantic City as a health resort. Pitney persuaded municipal authorities that a railroad to the beach in Atlantic City would be beneficial. His successful business relationship with Samuel Richards, an entrepreneur and member of what was then the most influential family in South Jersey, was designed to construct the railroad with the first 600 riders, who \"were chosen carefully by Samuel Richards and Jonathan Pitney\":\nAfter arriving in Atlantic City, a second train brought the visitors to the door of the resort's first public lodging, the United States Hotel. The hotel was owned by the railroad. It was a sprawling, four-story structure built to house 2,000 guests. It opened while it was still under construction, with only one wing standing, and even that wasn't completed. By year's end, when it was fully constructed, the United States Hotel was not only the first hotel in Atlantic City but also the largest in the nation. Its rooms totaled more than 600, and its grounds covered some 14 acres.\nThe first boardwalk was built in 1870 along a portion of the beach in an effort to help hotel owners keep sand out of their lobbies. Businesses were restricted and the boardwalk was removed each year at the end of the peak season. Because of its effectiveness and popularity, the boardwalk was expanded in length and width, and modified several times in subsequent years.\nPrior to the destructive 1944 Great Atlantic Hurricane, the historic length of the boardwalk was about and it extended from Atlantic City to Longport, through Ventnor and Margate.\nThe first road connecting the city to the mainland at Pleasantville was completed in 1870 and charged a 30-cent toll. Albany Avenue was the first road to the mainland available without a toll.\nBy 1878, because of the growing popularity of the city, one railroad line could no longer keep up with demand. Soon, the Philadelphia and Atlantic City Railway was also constructed to transport tourists to Atlantic City. At this point massive hotels like the United States Hotel and Surf House, as well as smaller rooming houses, had sprung up all over town. The United States Hotel took up a full city block between Atlantic, Pacific, Delaware, and Maryland Avenues. These hotels were not only impressive in size, but featured the most up-to-date amenities, and were considered quite luxurious for their time.\nIn 1883, salt water taffy was conceived in Atlantic City by David Bradley. The traditional story is that Bradley's shop close to the beach was flooded with ocean water after a storm, soaking his taffy. He sold the \"salt water taffy\" to a girl, who walked down to the beach to show her friends. Bradley's mother was in the back of the store when the sale was made, and loved the name, giving the candy its name.\n20th century.\nIn the early 20th century, Atlantic City experienced a radical building boom. Many of the modest boarding houses that dotted the boardwalk were replaced with large hotels. Two of the city's most distinctive hotels were the Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel and the Traymore Hotel.\nIn 1902, Josiah White III bought a parcel of land near Ohio Avenue and the boardwalk, where he started construction and built the Queen Anne style Marlborough House. The hotel was a success. In 1905, he chose to expand the hotel and bought another parcel of land adjacent to his Marlborough House. In an effort to make his new hotel a source of conversation, White hired the architectural firm of Price and McLanahan. The firm made use of reinforced concrete, a new building material invented by Jean-Louis Lambot in 1848, and Joseph Monier received the patent in 1867. The hotel's Spanish and Moorish themes, capped off with its signature dome and chimneys, represented a step forward from other hotels that had a classically designed influence. White named the new hotel the Blenheim and merged the two hotels into the Marlborough-Blenheim. Bally's Atlantic City was later constructed at this location.\nThe Traymore Hotel was located at the corner of Illinois Avenue and the boardwalk. Constructed in 1879 as a small boarding house, the hotel grew through a series of uncoordinated expansions. By 1914, the hotel's owner, Daniel White, Josiah White's half-brother, taking a hint from the Marlborough-Blenheim, commissioned the firm of Price and McLanahan to build an even bigger hotel. Rising 16 stories, the tan brick and gold-capped hotel would become one of the city's best-known landmarks. The hotel made use of ocean-facing hotel rooms by jutting its wings farther from the main portion of the hotel along Pacific Avenue.\nOne by one, additional large hotels were constructed along the boardwalk, including the Brighton, Chelsea, Shelburne, Ambassador, Ritz Carlton, Mayflower, Madison House, and the Breakers. The Quaker-owned Chalfonte House, opened in 1868, and Haddon House, opened in 1869, flanked North Carolina Avenue at the beach end. Over the years, their original wood-frame structures would be enlarged, and even moved closer to the beach. The modern Chalfonte Hotel, eight stories tall, opened in 1904. The modern Haddon Hall was built in stages and was completed in 1929, at eleven stories. By this time, they were under the same ownership and merged into the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall Hotel, becoming the city's largest hotel with nearly 1,000 rooms. By 1930, the Claridge, the city's last large hotel before the casinos, opened its doors.\nThe 400-room Claridge was built by a partnership that included renowned Philadelphia contractor John McShain. At 24 stories, it would become known as the \"Skyscraper by the Sea\".\nWith tourism peaking in the 1920s, the period is often considered by historians to be Atlantic City's golden age. During Prohibition, which was enacted nationally in 1919 and lasted until 1933, much liquor was consumed and gambling regularly took place in the back rooms of nightclubs and restaurants. During Prohibition, racketeer and political boss Enoch L. \"Nucky\" Johnson rose to power. Prohibition was largely unenforced in Atlantic City. Because alcohol that had been smuggled into the city with the implicit approval of local officials, it was easily obtained at restaurants and other establishments, and the resort's popularity grew further. The city then dubbed itself as \"The World's Playground\". Nucky Johnson's income, which reached as much as $500,000 annually, came from the kickbacks he took on illegal liquor, gambling and prostitution operating in the city, as well as from kickbacks on construction projects.\nDuring this time, Atlantic City was led by mayor Edward L. Bader, known for his contributions to the construction, athletics and aviation of Atlantic City. Despite opposition, he had Atlantic City purchase the land that became the city's municipal airport and high school football stadium, both of which were later named Bader Field in his honor. He led the initiative, in 1923, to construct the Atlantic City High School at Albany and Atlantic Avenues. Bader, in November 1923, initiated a public referendum, during the general election, at which time residents approved the construction of a Convention Center. The city passed an ordinance approving a bond issue for $1.5\u00a0million to be used for the purchase of land for Convention Hall, now known as the Boardwalk Hall, finalized on September 30, 1924. Bader was also a driving force behind the creation of the Miss America competition.\nIn May 1929, Johnson hosted a conference for organized crime figures from all across America that created a National Crime Syndicate. The men who called this meeting were Masseria family lieutenant Charles \"Lucky\" Luciano and former Chicago South Side Gang boss Johnny \"the Fox\" Torrio, with heads of the Bugs and Meyer Mob, Meyer Lansky and Benjamin Siegel, being used as muscle for the meeting.\nGangster and businessman Al Capone attended the conference and was photographed walking along the Atlantic City boardwalk with Johnson.\nThe 1930s through the 1960s were a heyday for nightclub entertainment. Popular venues on the white-populated south side included the 500 Club, the Clicquot Club, and the Jockey Club. In the Northside neighborhood, home to African Americans in the racially segregated city, a black entertainment district reigned on Kentucky Avenue.\nFour major nightclubs, Club Harlem, the Paradise Club, Grace's Little Belmont, and Wonder Gardens, drew both black and white patrons. During the summer tourist season, jazz and R&B music could be heard into the wee hours of the morning. Soul food restaurants and ribs joints also lined Kentucky Avenue, including Wash's Restaurant, Jerry's and Sap's.\nLike many older East Coast cities after World War II, Atlantic City became plagued with poverty, crime, corruption, and general economic decline in the mid-to-late 20th century. The neighborhood known as the \"Inlet\" became particularly impoverished. The reasons for the resort's decline were multi-layered. First, the automobile became more readily available to many Americans after the war. Atlantic City had initially relied upon visitors coming by train and staying for a couple of weeks. The car allowed them to come and go as they pleased, and many people would spend only a few days, rather than weeks. The advent of suburbia also played a significant role. With many families moving to their own private houses, luxuries such as home air conditioning and swimming pools diminished their interest in flocking to the luxury beach resorts during the hot summer. Finally, the rise of relatively cheap jet airline service allowed visitors to travel to year-round resort places such as Miami Beach and the Bahamas.\nThe city hosted the 1964 Democratic National Convention which nominated Lyndon Johnson for president and Hubert Humphrey as vice president. The convention and the press coverage it generated, however, cast a harsh light on Atlantic City, which by then was in the midst of a long period of economic decline. Many felt that the friendship between Johnson and Governor of New Jersey Richard J. Hughes led Atlantic City to host the Democratic Convention.\nBy the late 1960s, many of the resort's once great hotels were suffering from high vacancy rates. Most of them were either shut down, converted to cheap apartments, or converted to nursing home facilities by the end of the decade. Prior to and during the advent of legalized gambling, many of these hotels were demolished. The Breakers, The Chelsea, the Brighton, the Shelburne, the Mayflower, the Traymore and the Marlborough-Blenheim were demolished in the 1970s and 1980s. Of the many pre-casino resorts that bordered the boardwalk, only the Claridge, the Dennis, the Ritz-Carlton, and the Haddon Hall survive to this day as parts of Bally's Atlantic City, a condo complex, and Resorts Atlantic City. The old Ambassador Hotel was purchased by Ramada in 1978 and was gutted to become the Tropicana Casino and Resort Atlantic City, only reusing the steelwork of the original building. Smaller hotels off the boardwalk, such as the Madison also survived.\nLegalized gambling.\nIn an effort at revitalizing the city, New Jersey voters in 1976 passed a referendum, approving casino gambling for Atlantic City; this came after a 1974 referendum on legalized gambling failed to pass. Immediately after the legislation passed, the owners of the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall Hotel began converting it into the Resorts International. It was the first legal casino in the eastern United States when it opened on May 26, 1978.\nOther casinos were soon constructed along the Boardwalk and, later, in the marina district for a total of nine today. The introduction of gambling did not, however, quickly eliminate many of the urban problems that plagued Atlantic City. Many people have suggested that it only served to exacerbate those problems, as attested to by the stark contrast between tourism intensive areas and the adjacent impoverished working-class neighborhoods.\nWhile Atlantic City has been less popular than Las Vegas as a gambling city in the United States, Donald Trump helped bring big name boxing bouts to the city to attract customers to his casinos. Mike Tyson fought most of his fights in Atlantic City in the 1980s, which helped Atlantic City achieve national attention as a gambling resort and vacation destination.\nSeveral highrise condominiums were built for use as permanent residences or second homes. By end of the decade, it was one of the most popular tourist destinations in the United States.\n21st century.\nLegalized sports betting.\nOn June 27, 2017, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear \"Christie v. National Collegiate Athletic Association\" and heard oral arguments in December 2017. Then, on May 14, 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) was unconstitutional. The act was overturned, allowing New Jersey to move ahead with plans to implement legalized sports betting.\nDespite being the state to initiate the landmark ruling, New Jersey was actually the third state to legalize sports betting after Nevada and Delaware. In June 2018, New Jersey governor Phil Murphy signed the legislation into law, and several New Jersey\u2013based casino brands subsequently opened sportsbooks, especially in Atlantic City.\nWith the redevelopment of the Las Vegas Strip and the opening of Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun in Connecticut in the early 1990s, along with newly built casinos in the nearby Philadelphia metro area in the 2000s, Atlantic City's tourism began to decline due to its failure to diversify away from gambling. In 1999 the Atlantic City Redevelopment Authority partnered with Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn to develop a new roadway to a barren section of the city near the Marina. Nicknamed \"The Tunnel Project\", Steve Wynn planned the proposed 'Mirage Atlantic City' around the idea that he would connect the $330\u00a0million tunnel stretching from the Atlantic City Expressway to his new resort. The roadway was later officially named the Atlantic City-Brigantine Connector, and funnels incoming traffic off of the expressway into the city's marina district and the city of Brigantine.\nAlthough Wynn's plans for development in the city were scrapped in 2002, the tunnel opened in 2001. The new roadway prompted Boyd Gaming in partnership with MGM/Mirage to build Atlantic City's newest casino. Borgata opened in July 2003, and its success brought an influx of developers to Atlantic City with plans for building grand, Las Vegas-style mega casinos to revitalize the aging city.\nOwing to economic conditions and the late 2000s recession, many of the proposed mega casinos never advanced further than the initial planning stage. One of these developers was Pinnacle Entertainment, which purchased the Sands Atlantic City for $250\u2013$270 million and closed it on November 11, 2006 with plans to replace it with a larger casino. The following year, the resort was demolished in an implosion, the first of its kind in Atlantic City. While Pinnacle Entertainment intended to replace it with a $1.5-$2-billion casino resort, the company canceled its construction plans and sold the land for $29.5 million. MGM Resorts International announced in October 2007 that it would pull out of all development for Atlantic City, effectively ending its plans for the MGM Grand Atlantic City.\nIn 2006, Morgan Stanley purchased directly north of the Showboat Atlantic City for a new $2-billion-plus casino resort. Revel Entertainment Group was named as the project's developer for the Revel Casino. Revel was hindered with many problems, the biggest setback occurring in April 2010 when Morgan Stanley, the owner of 90% of Revel Entertainment Group, decided to discontinue funding for continued construction and put its stake in Revel up for sale. Early in 2010, the New Jersey state legislature passed a bill offering tax incentives to attract new investors and complete the job, but a poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind released in March 2010 showed that 60% of voters opposed the legislation, and two of three of those who opposed it \"strongly\" opposed it. Ultimately, Governor Chris Christie offered Revel $261\u00a0million in state tax credits to assist the casino once it opened.\nRevel completed all of the exterior work and had continued work on the interior after finally receiving the funding necessary to complete construction, and had a soft opening in April 2012 before being fully open the next month. Ten months later, in February 2013, after serious losses and a write-down in the value of the resort from $2.4\u00a0billion to $450\u00a0million, Revel filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It was restructured but still could not carry on and re-entered bankruptcy on June 19, 2014. It was put up for sale, however as no suitable bids were received the resort closed its doors in September 2014. The property was bought by AC Ocean Walk, LLC for $200\u00a0million in 2017, and reopened in 2018 as Ocean Casino Resort.\nIn the wake of the closures and declining revenue from casinos, Governor Christie said in September 2014 that the state would consider a 2015 referendum to end the 40-year-old monopoly that Atlantic City holds on casino gambling and allowing gambling in other municipalities. With casino revenue declining from $5.2\u00a0billion in 2006 to $2.9\u00a0billion in 2013, the state saw a drop in money from its 8% tax on those earnings, which is used to fund programs for senior citizens and the disabled.\nOn October 29, 2012, \"Superstorm Sandy\" struck Atlantic City and caused flooding and power-outages but left minimal damage to any of the tourist areas. The storm produced an all-time record low barometric pressure reading of 943 mb (27.85\") for not only Atlantic City, but the state of New Jersey.\nIn 2019, the Atlantic City area had the highest rates of foreclosures in the nation. This has disproportionately affected Black residents in neighborhoods segregated by redlining, a legacy that is mirrored by the values of properties on the Monopoly game board.\nAfter several casino closures and the COVID-19 pandemic, strikes and pickets were being threatened in June 2022 by casino employees which were short-staffed and wanted pay raises.\nFood desert.\nAtlantic City is widely known as a food desert, with the nearest fully-functioning supermarket being located in neighboring Ventnor City, which is away from the majority of Atlantic City's population. As a result, proposals for a supermarket were floated beginning in May 2021, and Atlantic City's City Council gave permission to the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority to look for a contender to build a supermarket.\nAs of December 2023, there was only one functioning supermarket in Atlantic City, the Save-A-Lot food store located in Renaissance Plaza, an area of the city known for its significant homeless population and drug use. The Casino Reinvestment Development Authority has proposed a new supermarket that would be located on an empty parking lot behind the Tanger Outlets and near the Atlantic City Expressway.\nGroundbreaking for a ShopRite supermarket had taken place in October 2021, after Village Super Market received $18.7 million from the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority to construct the store. The supermarket was expected to be completed by December 2022, although no construction or building had happened on the site, which drew attention from residents. After the time for the contract expired, the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA) announced that the deal with Village Super Market (VSM) was dead and that they were looking for new contenders. VSM created a new plan for CRDA and the city's Council to review and by July 2023, it and a Chinese conglomerate headquartered in Hong Kong emerged as the two candidates to build the supermarket. However, as of November 2023, no further progress had been made on the construction plans and the two proposals were still \"being reviewed.\"\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, Atlantic City had a total area of 17.21 square miles (44.59\u00a0km2), including 10.76 square miles (27.87\u00a0km2) of land and 6.45 square miles (16.72\u00a0km2) of water (37.50%).\nThe city is located on Absecon Island, along with Ventnor City, Margate City and Longport to the southwest.\nAtlantic City borders the Atlantic County municipalities of Absecon, Brigantine, Egg Harbor Township, Galloway Township, Pleasantville, and Ventnor City.\nThe city is located southeast of Philadelphia and south of New York City.\nUnincorporated communities, localities and place names located partially or completely within the city include Chelsea, City Island, Great Island and Venice Park.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen climate classification system, Atlantic City has a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\") with warm, moderately humid summers, cool winters and year-around precipitation. Cfa climates are characterized by all months having an average mean temperature above , at least four months with an average mean temperature at or above , at least one month with an average mean temperature at or above and no significant precipitation difference between seasons. During the summer months in Atlantic City, a cooling afternoon sea breeze is present on most days, but episodes of extreme heat and humidity can occur with heat index values at or above . During the winter months, episodes of extreme cold and wind can occur with wind chill values below . The plant hardiness zone at Atlantic City Beach is 7b with an average annual extreme minimum air temperature of . The average seasonal (November\u2013April) snowfall total is , and the average snowiest month is February which corresponds with the annual peak in nor'easter activity.\nEcology.\nAccording to the A. W. Kuchler U.S. potential natural vegetation types, Atlantic City would have a dominant vegetation type of Northern Cordgrass (\"73\") with a dominant vegetation form of Coastal Prairie (\"20\").\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nThe 2010 United States census counted 39,558 people, 15,504 households, and 8,558 families in the city. The population density was . There were 20,013 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup was 26.65% (10,543) White, 38.29% (15,148) Black or African American, 0.61% (242) Native American, 15.55% (6,153) Asian, 0.05% (18) Pacific Islander, 14.03% (5,549) from other races, and 4.82% (1,905) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 30.45% (12,044) of the population.\nOf the 15,504 households, 27.3% had children under the age of 18; 25.9% were married couples living together; 22.2% had a female householder with no husband present and 44.8% were non-families. Of all households, 37.5% were made up of individuals and 14.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.50 and the average family size was 3.34.\nPeople under the age of 18 account for 24.6%, 10.2% from 18 to 24, 26.8% from 25 to 44, 25.8% from 45 to 64, and 12.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36.3 years. For every 100 females, the population had 96.2 males. For every 100 females ages 18 and older there were 94.4 males.\nThe Census Bureau's 2006\u20132010 American Community Survey showed that (in 2010 inflation-adjusted dollars) median household income was $30,237 (with a margin of error of +/\u2212 $2,354) and the median family income was $35,488 (+/\u2212 $2,607). Males had a median income of $32,207 (+/\u2212 $1,641) versus $29,298 (+/\u2212 $1,380) for females. The per capita income for the city was $20,069 (+/\u2212 $2,532). About 23.1% of families and 25.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 36.6% of those under age 18 and 16.8% of those age 65 or over.\n2000 census.\nAs of the 2000 United States census, there were 40,517 people, 15,848 households, and 8,700 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 20,219 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 44.16% black or African American, 26.68% White, 0.48% Native American, 10.40% Asian, 0.06% Pacific Islander, 13.76% other races, and 4.47% from two or more races. 24.95% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. 19.44% of the population was non-Hispanic whites.\nThere were 15,848 households, out of which 27.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 24.8% were married couples living together, 23.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 37.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 15.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.46 and the average family size was 3.26.\nIn the city the age distribution of the population shows 25.7% under the age of 18, 8.9% from 18 to 24, 31.0% from 25 to 44, 20.2% from 45 to 64, and 14.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females, there were 96.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.2 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $26,969, and the median income for a family was $31,997. Males had a median income of $25,471 versus $23,863 for females. The per capita income for the city was $15,402. About 19.1% of families and 23.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 29.1% of those under age 18 and 18.9% of those age 65 or over.\nEconomy.\nIn September 2014, the greater Atlantic City area had one of the highest unemployment rates in the country at 13.8%, out of a labor force of around 141,000.\nTourism district.\nIn July 2010, Governor Chris Christie announced that a state takeover of the city and local government \"was imminent\". Comparing regulations in Atlantic City to an \"antique car\", Atlantic City regulatory reform was a key piece of Governor Chris Christie's plan to reinvigorate an industry mired in a four-year slump in revenue and hammered by fresh competition from casinos in the surrounding states of Delaware, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and more recently, Maryland. In January 2011, Chris Christie announced the creation of the Atlantic City Tourism District, a state-run district encompassing the boardwalk casinos, the marina casinos, the Atlantic City Outlets, and Bader Field. Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind poll surveyed New Jersey voters' attitudes on the takeover. A February 2011 survey showed that 43% opposed the measure while 29% favored direct state oversight. The poll also found that even South Jersey voters expressed opposition to the plan; 40% reported they opposed the measure and 37% reported they were in favor of it.\nOn April 29, 2011, the boundaries for the state-run tourism district were set. The district would include heavier police presence, as well as beautification projects and infrastructure improvements. The CRDA would oversee all functions of the district and make changes to attract new businesses and attractions. New construction has already resulted in cases of eminent domain being used to seize properties for development.\nThe tourism district would comprise several key areas in the city: the Marina District, Ducktown, Chelsea, South Inlet, Bader Field, and Gardner's Basin. Also included are 10 roadways that lead into the district, including several in the city's northern end, or North Beach. Gardner's Basin, which is home to the Atlantic City Aquarium, was initially left out of the tourism district, while a residential neighborhood in the Chelsea section was removed from the final boundaries, owing to complaints from the city. Also, the inclusion of Bader Field in the district was controversial and received much scrutiny from mayor Lorenzo Langford, who cast the lone \"no\" vote on the creation of the district citing its inclusion.\nCasinos and gambling.\nThe history of gambling in Atlantic City traces back to Prohibition and the 1920s, with racketeer Louis Kuehnle running an underground hotel and casino. Enoch \"Nucky\" Johnson followed and furthered Atlantic City's rise through the Roaring Twenties as a destination for drinking, gambling, and nightlife. In 1974, New Jersey voters voted 60%\u201340% against legalizing casino gambling at four sites statewide, but two years later approved by 56%\u201344% a new referendum which legalized casinos, but restricted them to Atlantic City. Resorts Atlantic City was the first casino to open, in May 1978, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony featuring Governor of New Jersey Brendan Byrne. Atlantic City is considered the \"Gambling Capital of the East Coast\", and currently has nine large casinos. In 2011, New Jersey's then 12 casinos employed approximately 33,000 employees, had 28.5\u00a0million visitors, made $3.3\u00a0billion in gaming revenue, and paid $278\u00a0million in taxes. They are regulated by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission and the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement.\nIn the wake of the economic downturn following the Great Recession and the legalization of gambling in adjacent and nearby states (including Delaware, Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania), four casino closures took place in 2014: the Atlantic Club on January 13; the Showboat on August 31; the Revel, which was Atlantic City's second-newest casino, on September 2; and Trump Plaza, which originally opened in 1984, and was the poorest performing casino in the city, on September 16.\nExecutives at Trump Entertainment Resorts, whose sole remaining property at the time was the Trump Taj Mahal, said in 2013 that they were considering the option of selling the Taj and winding down and exiting the gaming and hotel business. Trump Taj Mahal closed October 10, 2016, after failing to come to terms with union workers.\nCaesars Entertainment executives have been reconsidering the future of their three remaining Atlantic City properties (Bally's, Caesars and Harrah's), in the wake of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by the company's casino operating unit in January 2015. In 2020, Bally's Atlantic City was acquired by Bally's Corporation. Gross gaming revenue of the city's nine operating casinos in 2022 totaled $2.79 billion, a 9% increase from the $2.55 billion earned the previous year.\na The Wild Wild West Casino, which opened on July 2, 1997, and has an American Old West theme, was part of Bally's Atlantic City until 2020, when it became part of Caesars.\nBoardwalk.\nThe Atlantic City Boardwalk opened on June 26, 1870, a temporary structure erected for the summer season that was the first boardwalk in the world. At long, the Atlantic City Boardwalk is also the world's longest and busiest boardwalk.\nThe Boardwalk starts at Absecon Inlet in the north and runs along the beach south-west to the city limit away then continues into Ventnor City. Casino/hotels front the boardwalk, as well as retail stores, restaurants, and amusements. Notable attractions include the Boardwalk Hall, House of Blues, and the Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum.\nIn October 2012, Hurricane Sandy destroyed the northern part of the boardwalk fronting Absecon Inlet, in the residential section called South Inlet. The oceanfront boardwalk in front of the Atlantic City casinos survived the storm with minimal damage.\nThe first pier along the boardwalk, Applegate's Pier, opened in 1884. It was acquired by John L. Young in 1891, who expanded and operated it as Young's Ocean Pier, but it was mostly destroyed in a 1912 fire. The remaining part of the pier was rebuilt in 1922 as the Central Pier, which is still in operation.\nA Heinz-owned pier named Heinz Pier was destroyed in the 1944 Great Atlantic hurricane.\nThe most famous Atlantic City pier was Steel Pier, which opened in 1898, and which once billed itself as \"The Showplace of the Nation\". It closed in 1978, and was mostly destroyed in a 1982 fire. It was rebuilt in the late 1980s and is now operated as an amusement pier across from the Hard Rock.\nSteeplechase Pier opened in 1899 and operated until 1986. It suffered significant damage in a 1988 fire, and the remnants of the pier were removed in 1996. The \"Steeplechase Pier Heliport\" on Steel Pier is named in its honor.\nCaptain John L. Young opened \"Young's Million Dollar Pier\" in 1906, and on the seaward side \"erected a marble mansion\", fronted by a formal garden, with lighting and landscaping designed by Young's longtime friend Thomas Alva Edison. Million Dollar Pier once rivaled Steel Pier as Atlantic City's leading pier, but after suffering decades of decline, was rebuilt into a shopping mall in the 1980s, known as \"Shops on Ocean One\". In 2006, the Ocean One mall was bought, renovated and re-branded as \"The Pier Shops at Caesars\" and in 2015, it was renamed \"Playground Pier\". In September 2023, it was renamed \"ACX1 Studios\" for the film and entertainment production studios that took over the building, with a planned grand reopening containing a mixture of retail, restaurants, creative space, and production studios in summer of 2024.\nGarden Pier, located opposite Ocean Casino Resort, once housed a movie theater, and is now home to the Atlantic City Historical Museum.\nShopping.\nAtlantic City has many different shopping districts and malls, many of which are located inside or adjacent to the casino resorts. Several smaller themed retail and dining areas in casino hotels include the Borgata Shops and The Shoppes at Water Club inside Borgata, the Waterfront Shops inside of Harrah's, Spice Road inside the Trump Taj Mahal, while Resorts Casino Hotel has a small collection of stores and restaurants. Major shopping malls are also located in and around Atlantic City.\nAtlantic City shops include:\nExhibition.\nBoardwalk Hall, formally known as the \"Historic Atlantic City Convention Hall\", is an arena in Atlantic City along the boardwalk. Boardwalk Hall was Atlantic City's primary convention center until the opening of the Atlantic City Convention Center in 1997. The Atlantic City Convention Center includes of showroom space, 5 exhibit halls, 45 meeting rooms with of space, a garage with 1,400 parking spaces, and an adjacent Sheraton hotel. Both the Boardwalk Hall and Convention Center are operated by the Atlantic City Convention & Visitors Authority.\nArts and culture.\n\"Monopoly\".\nAtlantic City (sometimes referred to as \"Monopoly City\") has become well-known over the years for its portrayal in the U.S. version of the popular board game \"Monopoly\", in which properties on the board are named after locations in and near Atlantic City. While the original incarnation of the game did not feature Atlantic City, it was in Indianapolis that Ruth Hoskins learned the game, and took it back to Atlantic City. After she arrived, Hoskins made a new board with Atlantic City street names, and taught it to a group of friends, who ultimately passed in on to Charles Darrow, who made some modifications to the game and claimed it as his own invention. The relative prices of the places on the board reflect to some extent the social status of neighborhoods at the time, with wealthy white streets being worth more, and streets where Black and Asian residents lived being cheaper.\nMarvin Gardens, the leading yellow property on the board, is actually a misspelling of the original location name, \"Marven Gardens\". The misspelling was said to have been introduced by Charles Todd and passed on when his home-made \"Monopoly\" board was copied by Charles Darrow and thence Parker Brothers. It was not until 1995 that Parker Brothers acknowledged this mistake and formally apologized to the residents of Marven Gardens for the misspelling, although the spelling error was not corrected.\nSome of the actual locations that correspond to board elements have changed since the game's release. Illinois Avenue was renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in the 1980s. St. Charles Place no longer exists, as the Showboat Casino Hotel was developed where it once ran.\nThe \"Short Line\" is believed to refer to the Shore Fast Line, a streetcar line that served Atlantic City, or a bus route. The B&O Railroad did not serve Atlantic City. A booklet included with the reprinted 1935 edition states that the four railroads that served Atlantic City in the mid-1930s were the Jersey Central, the Seashore Lines, the Reading Railroad, and the Pennsylvania Railroad.\nThe actual \"Electric Company\" and \"Water Works\" serving the city are the Atlantic City Electric Company and the Atlantic City Municipal Utilities Authority, respectively.\nAttractions.\nEver since Atlantic City's growth as a resort town, numerous attractions and tourist traps have originated in the city. A popular fixture in the early 20th century at the Steel Pier was horse diving, which was introduced by William \"Doc\" Carver. The Steel Pier featured several other novelty attractions, including the Diving Bell, human high-divers and a water circus. Advertisements for the Steel Pier in its heyday featured plaster sculptures set upon wooden bases along roads leading up to Atlantic City. By the end of World War II, many animal demonstrations declined in popularity after criticisms of animal abuse and neglect.\nRolling chairs, which were introduced in 1876 and in continuous use since 1887, have been a boardwalk fixture to this day. While powered carts appeared in the 1960s, the original and most common were made of wicker. The wicker canopied chairs-on-wheels are manually pushed the length of the boardwalk by attendants, much like a rickshaw. A tram service was introduced in 2015, initially using the warning announcements that had been used on Wildwood's tram cars until it was changed after complaints from Wildwood.\nThe Absecon Lighthouse is a coastal lighthouse located in the South Inlet section of Atlantic City overlooking Absecon Inlet. It is the tallest lighthouse in the state of New Jersey and is the third tallest masonry lighthouse in the United States. Construction began in 1854, with the light first lit on January 15, 1857. The lighthouse was deactivated in 1933 and although the light still shines every night, it is no longer an active navigational aid. Gardner's Basin, which is home to the Atlantic City Aquarium as well as small shops and restaurants, is located a short distance north of Absecon Light.\nWhile located south of Atlantic City in Margate City, Lucy the Elephant has become almost an icon for the Atlantic City area. Lucy is a six-story elephant-shaped example of novelty architecture, constructed of wood and tin sheeting in 1882 by James V. Lafferty in an effort to sell real estate and attract tourism. Over the years, Lucy had served as a restaurant, business office, cottage, and tavern (the last closed by Prohibition). Lucy had fallen into disrepair by the 1960s and was scheduled for demolition. The structure was moved and refurbished as a result of a \"Save Lucy\" campaign in 1970 and received designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1976, and is open as a museum.\nMiss America pageant.\nAtlantic City was the home of the Miss America competition, hosting the event from its inception until 2004, and again from 2013 to 2018. The Miss America competition originated on September 7, 1921, as a two-day beauty contest, and it included state contestants as well as women from various cities around the country. The event that year was called the \"Atlantic City Pageant\", and the winner of the grand prize, Margaret Gorman, took home the 3-foot Golden Mermaid trophy. Gorman was not called \"Miss America\" until 1922, when she re-entered the pageant and lost to Mary Campbell. The pageant was initiated to extend the tourist season after the Labor Day weekend. The pageant has been nationally televised since 1954. It peaked in the early 1960s, when it was repeatedly the highest-rated program on American television. It was seen as a symbol of the United States, with Miss America often being referred to as the female equivalent of the President. The pageant's longtime emcee, Bert Parks, hosted the event from 1955 to 1979. At the Atlantic City Convention Center, there is a interactive statue of Parks holding a crown. When a visitor puts their head inside the crown, sensors activate a recorded playback of his \"There She Is...\" line through speakers hidden behind nearby bushes.\n\"Boardwalk Empire\".\nThe television show \"Boardwalk Empire\", an American series from cable network HBO set in Atlantic City during the Prohibition era, raised interest in the Roaring Twenties-era city. Starring Steve Buscemi, the show was adapted from a chapter about historical criminal kingpin Enoch \"Nucky\" Johnson (who is renamed \"Enoch Thompson\" in the show) in Nelson Johnson's book, \"Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City\".\nThe Orange Loop.\nThe Orange Loop is a neighborhood near the beach in Atlantic City with a focus on live music establishments like Anchor Rock Club and Tennessee Beer Hall.\nIt runs perpendicular from the boardwalk inland roughly to St. Nicholas of Tolentine Church.\nIt is bounded by Tennessee Avenue, St. James Place, Pacific Avenue and the boardwalk, and derives its name from the orange color of those streets on a traditional Monopoly gameboard. The Orange Loop Amphitheater hosted the Frantic City indie rock music festival on the loop in 2022.\nSports.\nThe Atlantic City Race Course in Hamilton Township was a horse racing track that operated from 1946 to 2015.\nThe ShopRite LPGA Classic is an LPGA Tour women's golf tournament held near Atlantic City since it started in 1986.\nProfessional boxing.\nSince February 2, 1887, the city of Atlantic City has seen 2,538 (as of September 2018) professional boxing fight programs, the first one being one with a main event fight between Willie Clark, 3-0-3, and debuting Horace Leeds, won by Clark on points over four rounds. During the 1980s, professional boxing activity boomed in Atlantic City, at times rivaling Las Vegas, Nevada, in staging major boxing fights. Fighters who fought in Atlantic City at that era include Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns, Wilfredo G\u00f3mez, Jeff Chandler, Larry Holmes, George Foreman, Mike Tyson and others. Fights included The Brawl For it All, Tyson versus Holmes, Tyson versus Michael Spinks, and Roberto Dur\u00e1n versus Iran Barkley. Many boxing matches were held at Donald Trump's Trump Plaza, promoted either by Bob Arum or Don King.\nParks and recreation.\nAtlantic City is one of five municipalities in the state\u2014and the only one outside of Cape May County\u2014that offer free public access to oceanfront beaches monitored by lifeguards, joining Wildwood, North Wildwood, Wildwood Crest and Upper Township's Strathmere section.\nGovernment.\nLocal government.\nAtlantic City is governed within the Faulkner Act (formally known as the Optional Municipal Charter Law) under the Mayor-Council system of municipal government (Plan D), implemented by direct petition effective as of July 1, 1982. The city is one of 71 municipalities (of the 564) statewide governed under this form. The governing body of Atlantic City comprises the Mayor and the City Council, all elected on a partisan basis to serve four-year terms of office as part of the November general election. The council includes nine members, who are elected on a staggered basis, with one member from each of six wards and three serving at-large. The six ward seats are up for election together and the mayoral seat and the council at-large seats are up for vote together two years later. The City Council exercises the legislative power of the municipality for the purpose of holding Council meetings to introduce ordinances and resolutions to regulate City government. In addition, Council members review budgets submitted by the Mayor; provide for an annual audit of the city's accounts and financial transactions; organize standing committees and hold public hearings to address important issues which impact Atlantic City. Former Mayor Bob Levy created the Atlantic City Ethics Board in 2007, but the Board was dissolved two years later by vote of the Atlantic City Council.\nAs of 2024[ [update]], the Mayor is Democrat Marty Small Sr., whose term of office ends December 31, 2025. Small succeeded Frank M. Gilliam Jr. following his resignation on October 3, 2019. Small initially served as mayor on an interim basis for an unexpired term ending on December 31, 2021. Members of the City Council are Council President Council President Aaron \"Sporty\" Randolph (D, 2027; 1st Ward), Council Vice President Kaleem Shabazz (D, 2027; 3rd Ward), George \"Animal\" Crouch (D, 2027; 4th Ward), LaToya Dunston (D, 2027; Second Ward \u2013 elected to serve an unexpired term), Jesse O. Kurtz (R, 2027; 6th Ward), Stephanie Marshall (D, 2025; At-Large), George Tibbitt (D, 2025; At-Large), Bruce Weekes (D, 2025; At-Large) and Maria Lacca (R, 2027; 5th Ward).\nIn 2024, Democrat Muhammed \"Anjum\" Zia, who served as a councilman for the 5th ward, was removed from office after it was found the he did not reside in Atlantic City, but instead with his family in Egg Harbor Township. He was ousted from the city council, and in a court-ordered special election that November, Republican Maria Lacca, who brought about the investigation against Zia, flipped the seat, becoming the first Republican to win it since 1988. She became one out of two Republicans now currently on Atlantic City's council, with the other being councilman Jesse O. Kurtz of the 6th ward.\nIn May 2020, voters rejected by a 3\u20131 margin a referendum that would have changed the city to a council-manager form of government which would have reduced the size of the city council and shifted responsibility for day-to-day operation from an elected mayor to an appointed city manager.\nIn December 2019, LaToya Dunston was selected from a list of three candidates nominated by the Democratic municipal committee to serve the remainder of the term of the Second Ward seat that had been held by Marty Small until he stepped down when he was appointed as mayor. In January 2020, Dunston was appointed to fill the Second Ward seat expiring in December 2023 that Small had won in November 2019 but declined to fill; Dunston will serve on an interim basis until the November 2020 general election, when voters will select a candidate to serve the balance of the term of office.\nMayoral disappearance and resignation.\nFollowing questions about false claims he had made about his military record, Mayor Bob Levy left City Hall in September 2007 in a city-owned vehicle for an unknown destination. After a 13-day absence, his lawyer revealed that Levy was in Carrier Clinic, a rehabilitation hospital. Levy resigned in October 2007 and then-Council President William Marsh assumed the office of Mayor and served six weeks until an interim mayor was named.\nFederal, state and county representation.\nAtlantic City is located in the 2nd Congressional district and is part of New Jersey's 2nd state legislative district.\nFor the 119th United States Congress, New Jersey congressional district is represented by Jeff Van Drew (R, Dennis Township). New Jersey is represented in the United States Senate by Democrats Cory Booker (Newark, term ends 2027) and Andy Kim (Moorestown, term ends 2031).\nFor the 2024-2025 session, the 2nd legislative district of the New Jersey Legislature is represented in the New Jersey Senate by Vincent J. Polistina (R, Egg Harbor Township) and in the General Assembly by Don Guardian (R, Atlantic City) and Claire Swift (R, Margate City).\nAtlantic County is governed by a directly elected county executive and a nine-member Board of County Commissioners, responsible for legislation. The executive serves a four-year term and the commissioners are elected to staggered three-year terms, of which four are elected from the county on an at-large basis and five of the commissioners represent equally populated districts. As of 2025[ [update]], Atlantic County's Executive is Dennis Levinson (R, Northfield), whose term of office ends December 31, 2027. Members of the Board of County Commissioners are:\nErnest D. Coursey (D, District 1-- Atlantic City, Egg Harbor Township (part), Longport, Margate City, and Ventnor City; 2025, Atlantic City), Chair Maureen Kern (R, District 2-- Egg Harbor Township (part), Linwood, Northfield, Somers Point and Pleasantville; 2027, Somers Point), Andrew Parker III (R, District 3-- Egg Harbor Township (part) and Hamilton Township (part); 2026, Egg Harbor Township), Richard R. Dase (R, District 4, including Brigantine, Galloway Township, Egg Harbor Township (part), and Port Republic; 2025, Galloway Township), Vice Chair James A. Bertino (R, District 5-- Buena, Buena Vista Township, Corbin City, Egg Harbor City, Estell Manor, Folsom, Hamilton Township (part), Hammonton, Mullica Township and Weymouth Township; 2027, Hammonton), June Byrnes (R, At-Large; 2026, Linwood), Michael Ruffu (R, At-Large; Margate, 2027) Amy L. Gatto (R, At-large; 2025, Hamilton Township) and John W. Risley (R, At-Large; 2026, Egg Harbor Township)\nAtlantic County's constitutional officers are: \nClerk Joesph J. Giralo (R, 2026, Hammonton), \nSheriff Joe O'Donoghue (R, 2026, Egg Harbor Township) and \nSurrogate James Curcio (R, 2025, Hammonton).\nPolitics.\nAs of March 23, 2011, there were a total of 20,001 registered voters in Atlantic City, of which 12,063 (60.3% vs. 30.5% countywide) were registered as Democrats, 1,542 (7.7% vs. 25.2%) were registered as Republicans and 6,392 (32.0% vs. 44.3%) were registered as Unaffiliated. There were 4 voters registered to other parties. Among the city's 2010 Census population, 50.6% (vs. 58.8% in Atlantic County) were registered to vote, including 67.0% of those ages 18 and over (vs. 76.6% countywide).\nIn the 2012 presidential election, Democrat Barack Obama received 9,948 votes (86.6% vs. 57.9% countywide), ahead of Republican Mitt Romney with 1,548 votes (13.5% vs. 41.1%) and other candidates with 49 votes (0.4% vs. 0.9%), among the 11,489 ballots cast by the city's 21,477 registered voters, for a turnout of 53.5% (vs. 65.8% in Atlantic County). In the 2008 presidential election, Democrat Barack Obama received 10,975 votes (82.1% vs. 56.5% countywide), ahead of Republican John McCain with 2,175 votes (16.3% vs. 41.6%) and other candidates with 82 votes (0.6% vs. 1.1%), among the 13,370 ballots cast by the city's 26,030 registered voters, for a turnout of 51.4% (vs. 68.1% in Atlantic County). In the 2004 presidential election, Democrat John Kerry received 8,487 votes (74.5% vs. 52.0% countywide), ahead of Republican George W. Bush with 2,687 votes (23.6% vs. 46.2%) and other candidates with 96 votes (0.8% vs. 0.8%), among the 11,389 ballots cast by the city's 23,310 registered voters, for a turnout of 48.9% (vs. 69.8% in the whole county).\nIn the 2013 gubernatorial election, Democrat Barbara Buono received 4,293 ballots cast (52.6% vs. 34.9% countywide), ahead of Republican Chris Christie with 2,897 votes (35.5% vs. 60.0%) and other candidates with 63 votes (0.8% vs. 1.3%), among the 8,155 ballots cast by the city's 23,049 registered voters, yielding a 35.4% turnout (vs. 41.5% in the county). In the 2009 gubernatorial election, Democrat Jon Corzine received 4,988 ballots cast (69.9% vs. 44.5% countywide), ahead of Republican Chris Christie with 1,578 votes (22.1% vs. 47.7%), Independent Chris Daggett with 157 votes (2.2% vs. 4.8%) and other candidates with 99 votes (1.4% vs. 1.2%), among the 7,141 ballots cast by the city's 22,585 registered voters, yielding a 31.6% turnout (vs. 44.9% in the county).\nCity and state agencies.\nNew Jersey Casino Control Commission.\nThe New Jersey Casino Control Commission is a New Jersey state governmental agency that was founded in 1977 as the state's Gaming Control Board, responsible for administering the Casino Control Act and its regulations to assure public trust and confidence in the credibility and integrity of the casino industry and casino operations in Atlantic City. Casinos operate under licenses granted by the commission. The commission is headquartered in the Arcade Building at Tennessee Avenue and Boardwalk in Atlantic City.\nNew Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement.\nThe New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement is a division of the New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety and is responsible for certifying casino gaming revenue, registering casino employees and non-gaming vendors, licensing gaming vendors, and handling all casino patron complaints.\nCasino Reinvestment Development Authority.\nThe CRDA was founded in 1984 and is responsible for directing the spending of casino reinvestment funds in public and private projects to benefit Atlantic City and other areas of the state. From 1985 through April 2008, CRDA spent US$1.5\u00a0billion on projects in Atlantic City and US$300\u00a0million throughout New Jersey.\nAtlantic City Convention and Visitors Authority.\nThe Convention & Visitors Authority (ACCVA) was in charge of advertising and marketing for the city as well as promoting economic growth through convention and leisure tourism development. The ACCVA managed the Boardwalk Hall and Atlantic City Convention Center, as well as the Boardwalk Welcome Center inside Boardwalk Hall and a welcome center on the Atlantic City Expressway. In 2011, the ACCVA was absorbed into the CRDA as part of the state takeover that created the tourism district.\nAtlantic City Special Improvement District.\nThe Atlantic City Special Improvement District (SID) was a nonprofit organization created in 1992, funded by a special assessment tax on businesses within the improvement district. It carried out various activities to improve the city's business community, including street cleaning and promotional efforts. In 2011, the SID was absorbed by the CRDA; the former SID boundaries would be expanded to the include all areas in the newly formed tourism district. Under the new structure, established by state legislation, the CRDA assumed responsibility for the staff, equipment and programs of the SID. The new SID division includes a SID committee made up of CRDA board members and an advisory council consisting of the current trustees and others.\nFire department.\nThe Atlantic City Fire Department (ACFD) provides fire protection and first responder emergency medical services to the city. The ACFD operates out of six fire stations, located throughout the city in one battalion, under the command of a battalion chief, who in-turn reports to an on-duty Deputy Chief, or Tour Commander each shift.\nPolice department.\nThe city is protected by the Atlantic City Police Department, which handles 150,000 calls per year. The Chief of Police is James A. Sarkos.\nEducation.\nThe Atlantic City School District serves students in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grades. As of the 2020\u201321 school year, the district, consisting of 11 schools, had an enrollment of 6,553 students and 617.3 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student\u2013teacher ratio of 10.6:1. Schools in the district (with 2020\u201321 enrollment data from the National Center for Education Statistics) are \nVenice Park School (36 students in PreK), \nBrighton Avenue School (315 students; in grades PreK-5), \nChelsea Heights School (332; PreK-8), \nDr. Martin Luther King Jr. School Complex (543; PreK-8), \nNew York Avenue School (548; PreK-8), \nPennsylvania Avenue School (549; PreK-8), \nRichmond Avenue School (615; PreK-8), \nSovereign Avenue School (696; PreK-8),\nTexas Avenue School (499; K-8), \nUptown School Complex (536; PreK-8) and \nAtlantic City High School (1,771; 9\u201312). Pennsylvania Avenue School opened for the 2012\u201313 school year, with most students shifting from New Jersey Avenue School, which had been one of the district's oldest and most rundown schools.\nStudents from Brigantine, Longport, Margate City and Ventnor City attend Atlantic City High School as part of sending/receiving relationships with the respective school districts.\nCity public school students are also eligible to attend the Atlantic County Institute of Technology in the Mays Landing section of Hamilton Township or the Charter-Tech High School for the Performing Arts, located in Somers Point.\nOceanside Charter School, which offered pre-Kindergarten through eighth grade, was founded in 1999 and closed in June 2013 when its charter was not renewed by the New Jersey Department of Education.\nFounded in 1908, Our Lady Star of the Sea Regional School is a Catholic elementary school, operates under the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Camden.\nNearby college campuses include those of Atlantic Cape Community College and Stockton University, the latter of which offers classes and resources in the city such as the Carnegie Library Center, which was turned back to the control of the city in April 2022.\nMedia outlets.\nNewspapers and magazines.\n\"Former publications\":\nTelevision stations.\nAtlantic City is part of the Philadelphia television market. There are six stations licensed in the area.\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nRoads and highways.\nAs of \u00a02010[ [update]], the city had a total of of roadways, of which were maintained by the municipality, by Atlantic County, by the New Jersey Department of Transportation and by the South Jersey Transportation Authority.\nThe three roadways that enter Atlantic City are: Black Horse Pike/Harding Highway (US 322/40 via the Albany Avenue drawbridge), White Horse Pike (US 30), and the Atlantic City Expressway through the Brigantine Connector. Atlantic City is roughly south of New York City via the Garden State Parkway and southeast of Philadelphia.\nPublic transportation.\nAtlantic City is connected to other cities in several ways. NJ Transit's Atlantic City Rail Terminal at the Atlantic City Convention Center provides service from 30th Street Station in Philadelphia through several smaller South Jersey communities via the Atlantic City Line.\nOn June 20, 2006, the board of NJ Transit approved a three-year trial of express train service between New York Penn Station and the Atlantic City Rail Terminal. The line, known as ACES (Atlantic City Express Service), ran from February 2009 to March 2012. The approximate travel time was <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />2+1\u20442 hours, with a stop at Newark's Penn Station, and was part of the casinos' multimillion-dollar investments in Atlantic City. Most of the funding for the transit line was provided by Harrah's Entertainment (owners of both Harrah's Atlantic City and Caesars Atlantic City) and the Borgata.\nThe Atlantic City Bus Terminal is the home to local, intrastate and interstate bus companies including NJ Transit, OurBus and Greyhound bus lines. The Greyhound Lucky Streak Express offers service to Atlantic City from New York City, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. In addition to stopping at the Atlantic City Bus Terminal, Greyhound buses stop at various casinos in Atlantic City. Martz Trailways provides bus service to various casinos in Atlantic City from Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, and White Haven in Pennsylvania. Klein Transportation provides bus service to various casinos in Atlantic City from Shillington, Douglassville, Royersford, and Audubon in Pennsylvania.\nWithin the city, public transportation is provided by NJ Transit along 13 routes, including service between the city and the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown Manhattan on the 319 route, and service to and from Atlantic City on routes 501 (to Brigantine Beach), 502 (to Atlantic Cape Community College), 504 (to Ventnor Plaza), 505 (to Longport), 507 (to Ocean City), 508 (to the Hamilton Mall), 509 (to Ocean City), 551 (to Philadelphia), 552 (to Cape May), 553 (to Upper Deerfield Township), 554 (to the Lindenwold PATCO station) and 559 (to Lakewood Township).\nThe Atlantic City Jitney Association (ACJA) offers service on four fixed-route lines and on shuttles to and from the rail terminal.\nAirline service.\nCommercial airlines serving Atlantic City include Atlantic City International Airport, located northwest of the city in Egg Harbor Township. Many travelers also fly into Philadelphia International Airport, Trenton-Mercer Airport, or Newark Liberty International Airport, where there are wider selections of carriers from which to choose. The historic downtown Bader Field airport is now permanently closed and plans are in the works to redevelop the land.\nAtlantic City International Airport, which is served by various scheduled chartered flight company, is a focus city for Spirit Airlines\nHealthcare.\nThe AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center is a health system based in Atlantic City. Founded in 1898, it includes two hospitals; the Atlantic City Campus and the Mainland Campus in Pomona, New Jersey. It has Atlantic City's only cancer institute, heart institute, and neonatal intensive care unit.\nUtilities.\nSouth Jersey Industries provides natural gas to the city under the South Jersey Gas division. Marina Energy and its subsidiary, Energenic, a joint business venture with a long-time business partner, operate two thermal power stations in the city. The Marina Thermal Plant serves the Borgata while a second plant serves the Resorts Hotel and Casino. Another thermal plant is the Midtown Thermal Control Center on Atlantic and Ohio Avenues built by Conectiv, which opened in 1997 and provides chilled water for hotels and other facilities along the Boardwalk.\nElectrical power in Atlantic City and its immediate surrounding area is provided primarily served Atlantic City Electric, which was incorporated in 1924 and provides power from the Beesley's Point Generating Station in Upper Township and other locations.\nThe Jersey-Atlantic Wind Farm, opened in 2005, is the first onshore coastal wind farm in the United States. In October 2010, North American Offshore Wind Conference was held in the city and included tours of the facility and potential sites for further development. In February 2011, the state passed legislation permitting the construction of windmills for electricity along pre-existing piers, such as the Steel Pier. The first phase of the Atlantic Wind Connection, a planned electrical transmission backbone along the Jersey Shore was planned to be operational in 2013.\nIn popular culture.\nAtlantic City is featured prominently in films, television, and music, including:\nNotable people.\nPeople who were born in, residents of, or otherwise closely associated with Atlantic City include:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["6133743", "106211"], "permutation_1": ["106211", "6133743"], "permutation_2": ["6133743", "106211"], "permutation_3": ["106211", "6133743"]}
{"id": "2hop__849534_122868", "docs_added": {"62133": "Pierre Berton\nCanadian author (1920\u20132004)\nPierre Francis de Marigny Berton, CC, O.Ont. (July 12, 1920 \u2013 November 30, 2004) was a Canadian historian, writer, journalist and broadcaster. Berton wrote 50 best-selling books, mainly about Canadiana, Canadian history and popular culture. He also wrote critiques of mainstream religion, anthologies, children's books and historical works for youth. He was a reporter and war correspondent, an editor at \"Maclean's Magazine\" and \"The Toronto Star\" and, for 39 years, a guest on Front Page Challenge. He was a founder of the Writers' Trust of Canada, and won many honours and awards.\nEarly years.\nBerton was born on July 12, 1920, in Whitehorse, Yukon, where his father had moved for the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush. His family moved to Dawson City, Yukon in 1921. His mother, Laura Beatrice Berton (maiden name Laura Beatrice Thompson), was a schoolteacher in Toronto until she was offered a job as a teacher in Dawson City at the age of 29 in 1907. She met Frank Berton in the nearby mining town of Granville shortly after settling in Dawson and teaching kindergarten. Laura Beatrice Berton's autobiography of life in the Yukon entitled \"I Married the Klondike\" was published in her later years and gave her what her son Pierre describes as \"a modicum of fame, which she thoroughly enjoyed.\" At the time, Dawson City was a highly remote place. After visiting Dawson City in the summer of 1939 to see some old friends, it took Berton a week to go from Dawson City to Whitehorse as the only means of a transport was an old paddle-wheeler named the \"Casca\" that moved slowly down the Yukon river. Growing up in Dawson City, which had briefly during the Klondike gold rush of the 1890s been one of Canada's largest cities, left Berton with an eye for the colourful. During his childhood he encountered numerous eccentric people who had gone north during the gold rush and ended up staying in Dawson City after the gold rush ended.\nBerton's family moved to Victoria, British Columbia in 1932. At age 12, he joined the Scout Movement. Berton later wrote that \"The Scout Movement was the making of me\". He credited Scouting with keeping him from becoming a juvenile delinquent. He started his journalism career in scouting and later wrote that \"the first newspaper I was ever associated with was a weekly typewritten publication issued by the Seagull Patrol of St. Mary\u2019s Troop.\" He remained in scouting for seven years and wrote about his experiences in an article titled \"My Love Affair with the Scout Movement\". Like his father, Pierre Berton worked in Klondike mining camps during his years as a history major at the University of British Columbia, where he also worked on the student paper \"The Ubyssey\".\nWar-time career.\nHe spent his early newspaper career in Vancouver, where at 21 he was the youngest city editor on any Canadian daily, at the Vancouver News-Herald, replacing editorial staff that had been called up to serve in the Second World War. On 7 December 1941, the Japanese Navy bombed the American naval base at Pearl Harbor while on the same day, the Japanese Army invaded the British colonies of Hong Kong and Malaya. The extent and rapidity of the Japanese victories in the winter of 1941-1942 came as a considerable surprise, and Berton stated that from his vantage in Vancouver that the war felt much closer than it had done before. In February 1942, he noted Japanese-Canadians being held in Vancouver's Hastings Park prior to being sent to internment camps in the interior of the province. Meanwhile all over Greater Vancouver the businesses and homes of Japanese-Canadians were seized by the federal government, which proceeded to promptly auction off most of the assets it seized.\nBerton himself was conscripted into the Canadian Army under the National Resources Mobilization Act in 1942 and attended basic training in British Columbia, nominally as a reinforcement soldier intended for The Seaforth Highlanders of Canada. Under the National Resources Mobilization Act, the government had the power to impose conscription for the defence of Canada and only volunteers were sent to fight overseas until late 1944. The men who were conscripted and chose to remain in Canada were popularly known as \"the Zombies\", a term that was highly disparaging. Because the \"Zombies\" refused to fight overseas, in many quarters they were viewed as cowards. He elected to \"go Active\" (the euphemism for volunteering for overseas service). By 1942, the Axis powers were winning the war, and Berton came to feel that the two very different visions of the world offered up by the respective sides were such that he had to take a stand by \"going active\", instead of remaining safely in Canada as a \"Zombie\". His aptitude as a soldier was such that he was appointed Lance Corporal and attended NCO school, and became a basic training instructor in the rank of corporal. Due to a background in university Canadian Officers' Training Corps (COTC) and inspired by other citizen-soldiers who had been commissioned, he sought training as an officer.\nBerton spent the next several years attending a variety of military courses, becoming, in his words, the most highly trained officer in the military. He was warned for overseas duty many times, and was granted embarkation leave many times, each time finding his overseas draft being cancelled. A coveted trainee slot with the Canadian Intelligence Corps saw Berton, now a Captain, trained to act as an Intelligence Officer (IO), and after a stint as an instructor at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, he finally went overseas in March 1945. In the UK, he was told that he would have to requalify as an IO because the syllabus in the UK was different from that in the intelligence school in Canada. By the time Berton had requalified, the war in Europe had ended. During his time in Britain, he dated a woman named Frances who informed him on V Day that she was pregnant with his child and did not want him involved, as told by Berton in his autobiography and retold in his Biography. Berton never knew his British child. He volunteered for the Canadian Army Pacific Force (CAPF), granted a final \"embarkation leave\", and found himself no closer to combat employment by the time the Japanese surrendered in September 1945.\nFame as a journalist.\nIn 1947 he went on an expedition to the Nahanni River with pilot Russ Baker. Berton's account for the \"Vancouver Sun\" was picked up by International News Service, making him a noted adventure-travel writer. On 1 February 1948, an article by Berton appeared in \"Maclean's\" under the title \"They're Only Japs\", which was the first account of the internment of Japanese Canadians to appear in the Canadian media that provided interviews with some of the interned people. Most notably, Berton interviewed Marie Suzuki, a second-generation Japanese Canadian school-teacher whose career had been ruined by the internment. Berton was quite critical of the decision made by Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King to order the internment on 24 February 1942 that saw all Japanese Canadians interned, regardless if they were immigrants or Canadian-born, unlike the case-by-case policy with interning German Canadians and the partial internment of Italian Canadians that saw all Italian immigrants interned. Berton's article was also the first to note that greed was a major factor behind the demand for the internment as many of the people in British Columbia who agitated for total internment of all Japanese Canadians were very interested in seizing their assets for themselves.\nWar correspondent in Korea.\nIn 1951, Berton covered the Korean War as the war correspondent of \"Maclean's\". To make up for not seeing action in World War Two, Berton was highly keen to work as a war correspondent and lobbied Ralph Allen, the editor of \"Maclean's\", to go to Korea as soon as the Korean War started in 1950. In late 1950 Berton wrote profiles in \"Maclean's\" of the two commanding officers of the all-volunteer Canadian Special Brigade, namely Brigadier John Meredith Rockingham and Colonel Jacques Dextraze, which were highly flattering to the subjects of his profiles and led the Canadian Army to expect that Berton would take a pro-war line in his reportage. In February 1951, Berton's profile of Rockingham was published in \"Maclean's\" under the title \"Rocky\" noted that Rockingham was a highly decorated Second World War veteran who had won the Distinguished Service Order at Dieppe in 1942 who was much liked and respected by the men who served under him. The arrival of Canadian Special Brigade at the front in February 1951 finally provided the occasion for him to work as a war correspondent. Berton arrived in South Korea in March 1951 at a critical moment as the Chinese had just taken Seoul and were preparing for a spring offensive that was launched in April 1951 that was aimed at winning the war by driving out United Nations forces of Korea. The Chinese Spring Offensive was launched, which saw the Anglo-Canadian-Australian-New Zealander 27th Infantry Commonwealth Brigade in the thick of the fighting. After the failure of the Chinese spring offensive, the United Nations launched a counter-offensive that saw Seoul retaken. By June 1951, the war had reached a stalemate and negotiations were opened for an armistice, which took two years to conclude with the armistice finally being signed on 27 July 1953.\nDuring the stalemate phase of the war, both sides sought limited advantages to improve their bargaining positions in the armistice talks by capturing hills, which improved the tactical situation while having no impact on the wider strategical situation in Korea. Berton in his reportage noted that the Canadian soldiers were frustrated by the \"war of the hills\", complaining that it seemed pointless to them to be used essentially as pawns to improve the bargaining positions in the armistice talks by fighting to capture or hold some barren hill in Korea. Berton reported that the average Canadian soldier in Korea hated their Chinese enemies, but had a grudging respect for their fighting abilities while holding their South Korean allies in complete and utter contempt as the South Koreans always broke under Chinese assaults. Berton also noted, but was prevented by censorship from saying that though the Canadian soldiers respected the British, Australians and New Zealand soldiers they served alongside, but held a lower opinion of the U.S. Army. The majority of American soldiers in Korea were teenage draftees, who generally came from the more poorer and less educated elements of American society, which led to morale problems. Berton's experiences in Korea left him with a dislike for the U.S. Army, whose mostly white and middle-class officers he charged were callous in their treatment of their own soldiers, especially if they were black or Hispanic. Berton was to later to write in the 1990s that all of the problems that the U.S. Army had experienced during the Vietnam war such as morale issues, racial tensions, drug use, and a wide gap between officers and the other ranks he had seen first-hand in Korea, led to his conclusion that the U.S. Army had failed to learn anything from the Korean war.\nThough most of the Canadians in Korea routinely referred to the Koreans as \"gooks\", Berton's articles often mentioned the suffering of Korean civilians such as one profile he did of a Mrs. Sook whose son was shot by the North Koreans in 1950 when he refused to join the North Korean People's Army, leaving her broken and destitute. In another article entitled \"Seoul, the saddest city in the world\" Berton described the war devastated city of Seoul as being in ruins with the people living there reduced to begging to stay alive and that the deeply corrupt South Korean government of President Syngman Rhee had no interest in helping its own people. Berton complied with the requests of the military censors during his time in Korea, altering one story about the killing of 60 black American soldiers in a Chinese raid that began with the line \"Killed in their sleeping bags with their boots on\" to instead say that the 60 American soldiers were heroically killed in battle resisting the Chinese raid. Berton came to deeply dislike the censorship that he was faced during the Korean war, complaining that he was writing reports that were full of lies and half-truths. Despite agreeing to the requests of the censors, Berton's reports focusing on the bleakness and savagery of the Korean War led to accusations that he was anti-war, and hence pro-Communist. Berton was later to write that though he had much respect for the Canadian veterans of Korea, he felt that Canada's involvement in the Korean war was a major mistake.\nEditor in Toronto.\nBerton moved to Toronto in 1947. At the age of 31 he was named managing editor of \"Maclean's\". In the 1950s, he published a series of articles in \"Maclean's\" that was later turned into his 1956 book \"The Mysterious North\", which recounted his experiences in the far north of Canada in a highly romanticized way. The book had only modest sales, but it led to Berton being perceived within the Canadian media as an expert on the far north, causing him to appear on television as the resident northern expert. In 1957, he became a key member of the CBC's public affairs flagship program, Close-Up, and a permanent panelist on the popular television show \"Front Page Challenge\". That same year, he also narrated the Academy Award-nominated National Film Board of Canada documentary \"City of Gold\", exploring life in his hometown of Dawson City during the Klondike Gold Rush. He then released an album in conjunction with Folkways Records, entitled \"The Story of the Klondike: Stampede for Gold \u2013 The Golden Trail.\"\nIn 1958, he published his best-selling book \"Klondike The Last Great Gold Rush\", a social history about the Klondike gold rush. Berton traced the appalling hardships faced by the thousands of people who came from around the world to seek their fortunes in the Klondike, the vast majority of whom failed to achieve their dreams of riches. Berton also covered the rise and fall of Dawson City, a boomtown that was full of bars, brothels and gambling halls that catered to the gold prospectors, giving it a disreputable reputation both at the time and since. The book's hero was the tough and stern Colonel Sam Steele, the Yukon commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police, a policeman with an almost legendary reputation who upheld law and order during the gold rush. Berton's background as someone who grew up in the Yukon added to the book's appeal as many reviewers praised \"Klondike The Last Great Gold Rush\" for its sense of \"authenticity\".\nBerton joined the \"Toronto Star\" as associate editor of the \"Star Weekly\" and columnist for the daily paper in 1958. In April 1959, Berton went to Cairo with a camera crew from the \"Close-Up\" television show with the aim of interviewing President Gamal Abdel Nasser who turned out to be unwilling to be interviewed. To relieve the boredom as he waited for an entire month to interview Nasser, Berton had the \"Close-Up\" camera crew make a documentary about life in Egypt, which he credited with broadening his perspective. Following the Sharpeville massacre of 21 March 1960, when the South African police opened fire on a crowd of black South Africans protesting apartheid, killing 69 people while wounding about 180 people, Berton was one of the speakers at a fundraiser at Massey Hall that sought to raise money to treat those wounded in the massacre. Greatly shaken by the massacre, Berton used his column to criticize the apartheid system in South Africa, writing: \"The time has come for this country to finally take a stand on South Africa\". At the time, there was a split within the Commonwealth (considered more important at the time than today) between its predominately white members such as Britain, Australia, and New Zealand who wanted South Africa to stay vs. nonwhite members such as India, Pakistan, Ghana, and Malaya who were pressing to have South Africa expelled while Canada initially equivocated about where it stood. At the time, there were concerns that the question of South African membership might cause the break-up of the Commonwealth. Berton argued that Canada should side with the nonwhite bloc and use its influence to have South Africa expelled from the Commonwealth and not be permitted to return until apartheid ended.\nIn 1960, he performed an experiment, which demonstrated widespread anti-Semitism in the resort industry when he first mailed out a letter under the name Sol Cohen to 106 resorts in the Ontario countryside, asking to stay for two weeks, and the next day he mailed another set of letters to the same resorts under the name D.M. Douglas, again asking to stay for two weeks. The majority of the letters sent out under the name Cohen received the reply that the resorts were all booked up and there was no space or alternatively did not answer at all. By contrast, the majority of the letters sent out under the name Douglas all received the replies that he could stay for the requested two weeks. Berton compared the replies he received, noting there was a frosty tone to the replies to the Cohen letters while there was more warmth in the replies to the Douglas letters. Only the Green Gables lodge in Muskoka had been willing to allow Berton under the name Cohen to stay. In his column, Berton named all of the resorts that they were willing to rent to someone with the typically Scottish surname of Douglas while refusing to rent to someone with the typically Jewish surname of Cohen. The column provoked much discussion at the time, and led to demands to end the anti-Semitic policies of the resort owners.\nIn 1960, he visited Japan as part of his duties as a \"Toronto Star\" columnist to investigate Japan 15 years after the end of World War Two, where he was stunned by Japanese economic miracle as he noted all of the Japanese cities had been rebuilt after having bombed to utter ruin during the war. Berton visited Hiroshima and its Peace Memorial, where he found himself sickened by the photographs of the survivors of the atomic bombing of that city, writing that: \"for sheer horror it outdoes everything save the relics of Belsen and Buchenwald...I seemed to feel the little eyes of the Japanese boring into my back as I stared at those terrible pictures of heaped and peeling human bodies...The Germans, we are told, were stunned by motion pictures of the extermination camps. No sensitive Westerner can escape the same sense of guilt in the museum of Hiroshima. We roasted people to death over a slow fire. We tortured them just as surely as the Nazis tortured the Jews\". The comparison of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima to the Holocaust provoked controversy. Berton expressed much sadness in his columns about the fading of traditional Japanese culture as he noted the most popular form of plastic surgery for Japanese women was making their eyes appear Western; that Western music was being played everywhere including Shinto shrines; and the \"this typical Japanese family [that he had stayed with] was about typical as John David Eaton's would be in Toronto\". By the early 1960s, Berton's company, Pierre Berton Enterprises, was making an annual income of $37,000 at a time when the typical Canadian had an annual income of $5,187, making him and his family comfortably upper middle-class.\nAs a columnist, he turned the beating of the gambler Maxie Bluestein by the gangster Johnny Papalia on 21 March 1961 who used a steel pipe to nearly beat Bluestein to death in public into a \"cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre\". Berton called the beating of Bluestein a \"semi-execution\" brazenly committed in the front lobby of the popular Town Tavern nightclub of Toronto, and demanded that the police bring Papalia to justice despite the unwillingness of nearly 100 witnesses to testify. Berton described the beating: \"...as terrible a beating as it is possible to give a man without killing him...Iron bars with ropes attached to them for greater leverage rained down on Bluestein's head and across his forehead, eyes and cheekbones. His scalp was split seven or eight times. Knuckledusters were smashed into his eyes and a broken bottle was ground into his mouth. When Bluestein dropped to the floor, he was kicked in the face. His overcoat, torn and slashed, was literally drenched in his own blood... When I saw Bluestein, some 10 days after the affair, he looked like a piece of meat\". Papalia finally turned himself in as the case was attracting too much media attention for the comfort of his underworld associates.\nIn 1961, Berton wrote a children's book, \"The Secret World Of Og\" based on the whimsical stories he told his daughters in the 1950s. Berton's publisher, Jack McClelland, was skeptical about the sales potential of \"The Secret World of Og\", which he reluctantly published in the fall of 1961, apparently as a favor to Berton. The book turned out be very popular, selling out its first print run of 8,284 copies by the summer of 1962, and by the 1980s \"The Secret World of Og\" had sold 70,000 copies worldwide, making it into one of Berton's most successful books. Berton always answered the fan mail he received from children who liked \"The Secret World of Og\" right up to his death, which was the only fan mail that he consistently answered.\nPublic intellectual.\nBerton left the \"Star\" in 1962 to commence \"The Pierre Berton Show\", which ran until 1973. In January 1963, Berton started to work as a \"Maclean's\" columnist, where the other writers such as Robert Fulford and Peter Gzowski wanted to have him fired because the often frivolous and trivial nature of his columns were felt to be embarrassing. In May 1963, Berton was fired from \"Maclean's\" for a column he wrote entitled \"Let's Stop Hoaxing the Kids About Sex\", where he wrote that he would not object if his teenage daughters engaged in premarital sex, saying he hoped that they had enough wisdom to use a comfortable bed instead of a dingy backseat of a car. The column, which was intended as a criticism of sexualized advertising as Berton contended that teenage sex was the logical consequence of sexualized marketing, provoked national outrage and led to calls for a boycott of \"Maclean's\" if Berton continued to write. Berton always felt that being fired was unjustified, especially because the editors of \"Maclean's\" had wanted him to write provocative columns about contemporary issues to boost circulation.\nIn 1963, Berton received death threats when an episode about the \"Front de lib\u00e9ration du Qu\u00e9bec\" (FLQ) aired on \"The Pierre Berton Show\". The show featured an interview with Sergeant Walter \"Rocky\" Leja of the Canadian Army, who had been badly injured when he attempted to dismantle a bomb planted by the FLQ in Montreal. The same episode featured an interview with Pierre Trudeau, at the time a law professor at the Universit\u00e9 de Montr\u00e9al. In his interview with Berton, Trudeau stated that Quebec had received a \"raw deal\" from the rest of Canada, but went on to denounce Quebec separatism. Trudeau stated that the FLQ's claims that Quebec's situation was analogous to Algeria under French rule (with the FLQ playing the same role as the FLN) was nonsense; he said that French-Canadians like himself had nothing remotely like the status of Algerian Muslims under French rule. Trudeau stated that if Quebec became independent, it would be a \"banana republic\". Berton's interview with Trudeau is credited with first introducing him to an English-Canadian audience. Berton was able to persuade famous people to appear on his television show; in September 1964, during a visit to London, Berton interviewed the philosopher Bertrand Russell, the actress Vivien Leigh, the singer No\u00ebl Coward and the actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr.\nIn November 1964, Berton devoted an episode of his show to the youth culture of Britain, which had attracted worldwide attention following the success of the Beatles. In the episode, Berton unknowingly scored a scoop when he interviewed Mick Jagger and the other members of the newly formed Rolling Stones. When Berton asked Jagger about the charge that he was a bad influence on young people, he replied, \"I don't feel morally responsible for anyone\". The episode was credited with helping to popularize hairstyles and clothing associated with the mods and rockers, the two major sub-cultures within British culture at the time. In 1964, an episode of \"The Pierre Berton Show\" attracted national controversy when Berton examined the subject of homosexuality, which was illegal in Canada at the time. Berton interviewed several American homosexuals (no Canadian gays were willing to appear on the show) about their lifestyles, but the CBC would not air the episode again after receiving a flood of complaints. Like many journalists, Berton was interested in the \"Banks affair\", concerning an American gangster, Hal C. Banks, who, with the support of the Canadian government, had been allowed to take over the Communist-dominated Seafarers International Union in 1949. The way that Banks had operated as a sort of state-sanctioned criminal who had been allowed to engage in many acts of violence was immensely controversial. In an episode aired on 22 November 1964, Berton pressed Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson about the Banks affair, leading Pearson to admit that Banks had been a major campaign donor to the Liberal Party in the 1950s, which Pearson had denied up until that time. Starting in December 1964, Berton started to broadcast a Christmas special on his TV show from his home in Kleinburg, covering his family's celebration of Christmas.\nIn 1965, Berton published a best-selling book, \"The Comfortable Pew\", which was quite critical of the Anglican Church, whose teachings Berton condemned as sanctimonious, conformist, submissive to power, and hypocritical with respect to sexuality and other social issues. Within weeks of its publication, the book's first print run of 100,000 copies sold out, making Berton about $25,000. At the time, the Church of England was one of the leading social institutions in English-Canadian society, and the book produced a storm of controversy as Berton urged church leaders to accept birth control, premarital sex and homosexuality. Berton called for the Anglican Church to accept what he called \"real Christian love, in all its flexibility, with all of its concern for real people rather than for any fixed set of principles\".\nThe controversy caused by \"The Comfortable Pew\" made Berton an ubiquitous figure in Canadian media, leading the columnist Denis Braithwaite to complain in \"The Globe & Mail\" that Canadians were now living in the \"Berton era\". Braithwaite wrote: \"Virtually every media outlet is preoccupied with Pierre Berton and his new book. We get Berton in the morning and Berton at night. He is in the book section, the religion section, the TV section of our daily newspapers; he is the subject of feature articles and gossipy items in the national magazines; he is interviewed by every disc jockey, advice to the housewife dispenser, numerologist and pitchmen on every radio station in the land; he is on every television program, on every Canadian television channel, not just once in a while or two or three times a day, but all day, everyday-or so it seems. Our children lisp his name, our teenagers take his advice on sex; our wives curtsey to his image\".\nIn the 1960s, Berton was a leading member of the Sordsmen's Club [\"sic\"], a group of Toronto intellectuals and businessmen who met for expensive lunches with women who were not their wives, and who were forbidden to attend its meetings unless their husband was not present. Other members included Jack McCllelland, John C. Parkin, Harold Town, George Fryer, Chuck Rathgreb, Arthur Hailey, and Ralph McCreath. Women who attended the lunches included the columnist Nancy Philips; the journalist Adrienne Clarkson; the singer Dinah Carroll; the journalist Barbara Moon; Joan Taylor, the wife of a sports journalist; the broadcaster Joan McCormack; and the art gallery owner Dorothy Cameron. About the club, Philips said in 1986: \"We had an idea that we shouldn't go home alone, let's put it that way\". A later controversy developed when it emerged that at end of the lunches, which typically occurred on a Friday afternoon and lasted five hours, each man stood behind a woman of his choosing with whom he expected to have sex.\nIn 1968, Berton became concerned that his books dealing with contemporary issues would become dated and forgotten with the passage of time. He noted that \"Klondike\", his account of the Klondike gold rush of the 1890s, had a more timeless quality since it covered a subject that would not become dated, and indeed was the subject of enduring popular fascination. At the same time, he noted that with the notable exceptions of Donald Creighton and W. L. Morton, Canada had no story-teller historians who wrote popular and accessible narratives of Canadian history. For reasons of pride and Canadian nationalism, Berton set out to become a story-teller historian who would write books for a mass audience. For his first book, his subject was the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in the 19th century, which he intended as a national epic. Berton wanted to give the struggle to build the CPR a role analogous to that of the Revolutionary War in American memory, as the founding national epic. In this regard, Berton acknowledged the importance of Confederation in 1867, but argued that Canada did not truly become a nation until the CPR was completed in 1885. Berton defined the building of the railroad as a struggle of man against nature, seeing it as a triumph of human ingenuity and willpower, as the builders defeated the harsh landscape of northern Ontario, the seemingly endless Prairies, and the imposing Rocky Mountains. In the spring of 1968, Berton began his research for his railroad saga, which became \"The National Dream\" and \"The Last Spike\". Before the 1960s, the major divisions in English-Canadian society were between continentalism (i.e., moving Canada closer to the United States), associated with the Liberal Party, and imperialism (which in a Canadian context meant closer ties with Great Britain), associated with the Conservative party. The 1960s saw the emergence of the \"new nationalism\" that rejected both continentalism and imperialism as options. Berton became one of the principle spokesmen for this new nationalism, as he argued that Canada could stand alone as a great nation.\n\"The Pierre Berton Show\" was a popular television show owing to famous guests from Canada and around the world. In the 1968\u20131969 season, Berton interviewed from the United States the burlesque entertainer Gypsy Rose Lee, the actress Sharon Tate, the pornographer Bob Guccione, the \"playmate novelist\" Alice Denham, the actor Charlton Heston, and Rachel Jones (an airline stewardess who was presented at the time as one of the co-authors of the bestselling 1967 pseudo-memoir \"Coffee, Tea or Me?\" detailing her supposed erotic history). That season, Canadian guests included the singer Neil Young, Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau, the journalist Laurier LaPierre, the columnist Peter C. Newman and the feminist activist June Callwood. In early 1969, Berton's show aired a five-part series called \"The Indian Revolution\", about the emerging Red Power movement. One of the episodes, \"The Rape of the Languages\", featured an early expose of the residential schools. Berton interviewed several First Nations people in support of his thesis that indigenous peoples had been \"beaten, starved, and otherwise punished by church and federal schools\". The choice of guests and themes that season reflected what had become the show's main focus, namely a mixture of \"celebrities, sex, and social justice\". In July 1969, Berton had the telephone removed from his house in Kleinburg, and claimed he was leaving for Mexico. He spent the summer of 1969 writing his railroad epic, which came to be divided into two volumes owing to its length with his work finally being finished in December 1969.\nIn 1971 Berton interviewed Bruce Lee, the famous martial artist's only surviving television interview. Berton's television career included spots as host and writer on \"My Country\", \"The Great Debate\", \"Heritage Theatre\", \"The Secret of My Success\" and \"The National Dream\". From 1966 to 1984, Berton and long-time collaborator Charles Templeton made the daily syndicated radio debate show \"Dialogue\", based first at CFRB and later at CKEY.\nBerton came to be Canada's best-known intellectual. His biographer, Brian McKillop wrote: \"No one in Canada or for that matter in North America, managed to take hold of the full range of the mainstream media with the same kind of commanding presence and authority. One searches in vain for an American or British equivalent. It is if he somehow carried the DNA of Edward R. Murrow and Jack Paar, Vance Packard and Michael Harrington, Bernard DeVoto and Studs Terkel, with more than a little Garrison Keillor in the mix. Each of these figures\u2014a war correspondent who spoke truth to power; a host of the most watched and enduring television interview program of its era; a muckraking journalist in the age of the consumer; a left-wing critic of North American society; a popular and respected historian of nation and empire in North America; a collector of the kind of folklore that serves as the first draft of history; a folksy, story-telling humorist of nostalgic bent\u2014was or is a man of exceptional accomplishment in his own area. The magnitude of Berton's achievement was that he spanned them all and become more than their sum\".\nHistorian.\nIn 1970, book one of Berton's epic about the building of the CPR, \"The National Dream\" was published, becoming a great critical and commercial success by 1971. Book two of the series, \"The Last Spike\", was published in 1971 and was even more successful with the public. The success of \"The Last Spike\" transformed Berton into a sort of \"national institution\" as he became the popular story-teller historian that he set out to be. Such was the popularity of \"The Last Spike\" that in 1972 that stores sold mementoes related to the book, which was most unusual for a history book. In a review, the American historian Ralph Hidy wrote that Berton's railroad saga was an \"essentially sound\" history that was relatively free of errors. Hidy stated that though Berton broke no new ground in his railroad saga, his work was very \"lively\" and carried \"the reader through one cliff-hanging situation after another\". The sections dealing with the building of the Rocky mountains section of the CPR are generally considered to be the vivid and exciting part of Berton's railroad epic. Berton described how the railroad builders had to quite literally blast and hack their way through the sheer granite of the Rocky mountains, which was an extremely difficult, dangerous and arduous task, given the technology of the time. Hidy wrote that as a work of narrative popular history, Berton succeeded admirably in telling the story of the construction of the CPR over daunting odds, and in impressing the reader as to why the building of the CPR, which was completed five years ahead of schedule, was considered one of the great engineering feats of the 19th century. However, other historians were more critical. Michael Bliss felt that Berton's picture of the Prime Minister, Sir John A. MacDonald, was too colored by hero-worship as Bliss in a critical review stated that Berton went beyond even Creighton (whose two-volume biography of MacDonald was very sympathetic towards its subject) in portraying MacDonald as the heroic prime minister.\nIn common with many other Canadians, Berton found the 1970s to be an unpleasant decade as the recession caused by the Arab oil shock of 1973\u201374 put an end to the \"long summer\" of prosperity that had begun in 1945 while the election of the separatist PQ government in Quebec in 1976 led to doubts about whatever Canada would even last as a nation. By 1979, on the threshold of a new decade that seemed to promise only more trouble, Berton came to feel that Canada needed another national epic to give hope in dark and uncertain times. As the subject of his new national epic, Berton chose the War of 1812 with the first of his books, \"The Invasion of Canada\" dealing with the subject being published in 1980, and the second one, \"Flames Across the Border\" in 1981. Berton chose to interpret the War of 1812 as not a war between the United States and Great Britain which just happened to be fought in North America, but rather as the beginning of a Canadian national identity. Though Berton's nationalist interpretation of the War of 1812 was not accepted by most historians it certainly appealed to the Canadian public and his books dealing with the War of 1812 sold very well.\nIn his 1984 book \"The Promised Land\", he covered the settlement of the Prairie provinces in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Pierre set out to debunk the heroic image of the colonization of the West by focusing on the hardships and suffering of the farmers who could be easily ruined by crop failures. He focused instead on the tenacity and sheer determination of the settlers and provided a new heroic image of the settlement of the West. In 1986, he published \"Vimy\", which was one of his more successful books dealing with the Battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917. Berton provoked much controversy that his thesis that Vimy may have been a great victory that saw all the four divisions of the Canadian corps fight together for the first time to achieve what had been considered an impossible task, namely to take the heavily fortified Vimy ridge that towered about the Douai plain, but the victory were not worth the sacrifices of thousands of young men who were either killed or wounded. Berton noted that 1 out of 10 Canadians who stormed up the heights of Vimy Ridge on 9 April 1917 were either killed or wounded, leading him to the conclusion that it would be better if the battle had not been fought at all.\n1990s-2000s.\nIn 1992, he published \"Niagara: A History\", a social history dealing with the people associated with the Niagara Falls together with a follow-up picture book of Niagara falls in 1993. Unlike his other books, the Niagara books sold poorly, which marked the beginning of his decline from his position as Canada's preeminent public intellectual. The decline of the appeal of his books was linked to the decline of the \"new nationalism\" he had been associated with. Berton almost seemed to acknowledge the decline of the \"new nationalism\" in his 1997 book \"1967 The Last Good Year\", arguing that the Centennial year of 1967 was the highpoint of Canadian history and everything that had happened since 1967 had been a story of decline and decay. In a review of \"Onward to War\" in the \"Globe & Mail\" in October 2001, the historian Modris Eksteins wrote: \"'Canada's historian', as his publishers are describing him in recent advertising, takes us with his usual narrative verve across sundry battlefields, of South Africa, northern Europe and Korea, but also Ottawa and other venues of our domestic political strife...is this kind of judgmental narrative what history should be in the 21st century? If the world changed in the last century as dramatically as Berton insists, can - or should - history be written in much the same way Carlyle and Macaulay presented it over a century ago? ...That vision of the past as an interconnected whole has shattered over the century about which Berton writes, as if hit by a mammoth artillery shell, but there's no sign of this in his account.\nHonours.\nBerton served as the chancellor of Yukon College and, along with numerous honorary degrees, received over 30 literary awards such as the Governor General's Award for Creative Non-Fiction (three times), the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, and the Gabrielle L\u00e9ger Award for Lifetime Achievement in Heritage Conservation in 1989. He is a member of Canada's Walk of Fame, having been inducted in 1998. In The Greatest Canadian project, he was voted No. 31 in the list of great Canadians. Berton was named Toronto Humanist of the Year 2003 by the Humanist Association of Toronto. The honour is presented by H.A.T. to men and women who, in their actions and creative endeavours, exemplify the principles of Humanism: a commitment to reason, compassion, ethics and human dignity. In 1992, he was named a member of the Order of Ontario. In 1974, he was named an Officer of the Order of Canada; in 1986, he was named a Companion of the Order of Canada, Canada's highest decoration.\nRetirement.\nIn 2004, Berton published his 50th book, \"Prisoners of the North\", after which he announced in an interview with CanWest News Service that he was retiring from writing. On October 17, 2004, the CA$12.6-million Pierre Berton Resource Library, named in his honour, was opened in Vaughan, Ontario.\nHe had lived in nearby Kleinburg, Ontario, for about 50 years.\nBerton attracted attention in October 2004 by discussing his 40 years of recreational use of marijuana on two CBC Television programs, \"Play\" and \"Rick Mercer Report\". On the latter show he gave a \"celebrity tip\" on how to roll a joint.\nPersonal life.\nBerton married Janet Walker in 1946. They had eight children. Berton was an atheist.\nDeath.\nBerton died at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, of heart failure, at the age of 84 on November 30, 2004. His cremated remains were scattered at his home in Kleinburg. He was survived by his wife and their eight children, along with 14 grandchildren.\nLegacy.\nEstablished in 1994, the Pierre Berton Award is presented annually by Canada's National History Society for distinguished achievement in presenting Canadian history in an informative and engaging manner. Berton was the first recipient and agreed to lend his name to future awards.\nHis childhood home in Dawson City, Yukon, now called Berton House, is currently used as a retreat for professional Canadian writers. Established authors apply for a three-month-long subsidized residency, adding to the area's literary community with events such as local public readings. Previously, the Berton House Writers' Retreat was administered by the Berton House Writers' Retreat Society and Elsa Franklin, Pierre Berton's long-time editor and agent. In October 2007, the deed to Berton House was passed to the Writers' Trust of Canada; the literary organization now oversees the program as part of its roster of literary support.\nA school in Vaughan, Ontario, was named for Pierre Berton in the York Region District School Board in September 2011. The Berton family visited and had an official opening of the school in front of the students.\nHonorary degrees.\nPierre Berton received many honorary degrees in recognition of his work as a writer and historian. These include:\nBibliography.\nHistory for Young Canadians.\nThe Great Klondike Gold Rush.\nThere is also Berton's abridged version of \"The National Dream\" and \"The Last Spike\" that was published in 1974 and a compendium of the two books \u201cThe Invasion of Canada\u201d and Flames Across the Border\u201d entitled the \u201cWar of 1812\u201d published in 1980,\nA comprehensive biography of Pierre Berton was written by A. B. McKillop. It was published in 2008, four years after Berton's death aged 84.\nAll of Pierre Berton's writings, including finished books and articles as well as manuscripts, drafts, and research material are now held in the Pierre Berton fonds at the McMaster University Archives.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "5489505": "The Secret World of Og\n1961 novel by Pierre Berton\nThe Secret World of Og is a children's novel written by Pierre Berton and illustrated by his daughter Patsy. It was first published in 1961 by McClelland and Stewart.\nThis Canadian classic has sold more than 200,000 copies in four editions.\nOf his forty-seven books, this was Berton's personal favourite, partly because the characters were inspired by his own children. \"The Secret World of Og\" brought the author more fan mail than anything else he wrote \u2013 at least a dozen letters a week from children across Canada.\nPlot introduction.\nIn this fantasy adventure, four children \u2014 Penny, the leader; Pamela, her common-sense sister; Peter, whose life's ambition is to become a garbageman; and Patsy, who collects frogs in her pockets \u2014 set out in search of their baby brother, Paul, better known as \u201cThe Pollywog,\u201d who has vanished mysteriously from their playhouse. Accompanied by their fearless pets, the children descend through a secret trapdoor into a strange underground world of mushrooms, whose green inhabitants know only one word: \u201cOG!\u201d\nFilm, TV or theatrical adaptations.\n\"The Secret World of Og\" served to inspire an animated action-adventure television series produced in 2006 and airing on CBC Television, Canada's national public broadcaster. The series also airs in the United States on Starz Kids and Family with a TV-PG rating, despite its family-oriented nature.\nAn animated television special based on the book, also called \"The Secret World of Og\" produced by Hanna-Barbera, was previously broadcast in 1983 in the United States as part of \"ABC Weekend Specials\" during its sixth season.\nThe TV series extends the storyline of the original book, following the five Berton siblings as they descend through a hole in the floor of their playhouse to explore the underground world of Og. There, amid subterranean rivers, caverns and elaborate villages built of mushrooms, they interact with little green creatures called Ogs, and their myriad neighbours - trolls, ogres and fairies, and a mysterious sea monster named Nessie.\nCarousel Theatre produced a stage version of \"The Secret World of Og\" in April 2009 in Vancouver, BC, adapted by Governor General's Award winning playwright Kevin Kerr.\nThe Canadian Children's Opera Company (CCOC) produced an operatic version in May 2010 at the Enwave Theatre of the Harbourfront Centre, Toronto. \"The Secret World of Og\", with libretto and music by Dean Burry, is directed by Joel Ivany and conducted by Ann Cooper Gay.\nThe Sarasota Youth Opera of the Sarasota Opera presented the United States premiere of the operatic version on November 12, 2016 at the historic Sarasota Opera House. The piece was directed by Martha Collins and conducted by Jesse Martins.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["5489505", "62133"], "permutation_1": ["5489505", "62133"], "permutation_2": ["5489505", "62133"], "permutation_3": ["5489505", "62133"]}
{"id": "2hop__35137_22940", "docs_added": {"1130": "Avicenna\nPersian polymath, physician and philosopher (c. 980\u20131037)\nIbn Sina (; c.\u2009980 \u2013 22 June 1037), commonly known in the West as Avicenna (), was a preeminent philosopher and physician of the Muslim world, flourishing during the Islamic Golden Age, serving in the courts of various Iranian rulers. He is often described as the father of early modern medicine. His philosophy was of the Peripatetic school derived from Aristotelianism.\nHis most famous works are \"The Book of Healing\", a philosophical and scientific encyclopedia, and \"The Canon of Medicine\", a medical encyclopedia which became a standard medical text at many medieval European universities and remained in use as late as 1650. Besides philosophy and medicine, Avicenna's corpus includes writings on astronomy, alchemy, geography and geology, psychology, Islamic theology, logic, mathematics, physics, and works of poetry.\nAvicenna wrote most of his philosophical and scientific works in Arabic, but also wrote several key works in Persian, while his poetic works were written in both languages. Of the 450 works he is believed to have written, around 240 have survived, including 150 on philosophy and 40 on medicine.\nName.\n' is a Latin corruption of the Arabic patronym Ibn S\u012bn\u0101 (), meaning \"Son of Sina\". However, Avicenna was not the son but the great-great-grandson of a man named Sina. His formal Arabic name was Ab\u016b \u02bfAl\u012b al-\u1e24usayn bin \u02bfAbdull\u0101h ibn al-\u1e24asan bin \u02bfAl\u012b bin S\u012bn\u0101 al-Balkhi al-Bukhari ().\nCircumstances.\nAvicenna created an extensive corpus of works during what is commonly known as the Islamic Golden Age, in which the translations of Byzantine, Greco-Roman, Persian, and Indian texts were studied extensively. Greco-Roman (Middle Platonic, Neoplatonic, and Aristotelian) texts translated by the Kindi school were commented, redacted and developed substantially by Islamic intellectuals, who also built upon Persian and Indian mathematical systems, astronomy, algebra, trigonometry and medicine.\nThe Samanid Empire in the eastern part of Persia, Greater Khorasan, and Central Asia, as well as the Buyid dynasty in the western part of Persia and Iraq, provided a thriving atmosphere for scholarly and cultural development. Under the Samanids, Bukhara rivaled Baghdad for cultural capital of the Muslim world. There, Avicenna had access to the great libraries of Balkh, Khwarazm, Gorgan, Rey, Isfahan and Hamadan.\nVarious texts (such as the 'Ahd with Bahmanyar) show that Avicenna debated philosophical points with the greatest scholars of the time. Nizami Aruzi described how before ibn Sina left Khwarazm, he had met al-Biruni (a scientist and astronomer), Abu Nasr Mansur (a renowned mathematician), Abu Sahl 'Isa ibn Yahya al-Masihi (a respected philosopher) and ibn al-Khammar (a great physician). The study of the Quran and the Hadith also thrived, and Islamic philosophy, fiqh \"jurisprudence\", and kalam \"speculative theology\" were all further developed by ibn Sina and his opponents at this time.\nBiography.\nEarly life and education.\nAvicenna was born in c.\u2009980 in the village of Afshana in Transoxiana to a Persian family. The village was near the Samanid capital of Bukhara, which was his mother's hometown. His father Abd Allah was a native of the city of Balkh in Bactria. An official of the Samanid bureaucracy, he had served as the governor of a village of the royal estate of Harmaytan near Bukhara during the reign of Nuh II (r.\u2009976\u00a0\u2013\u00a0997). Avicenna also had a younger brother. A few years later, the family settled in Bukhara, a center of learning, which attracted many scholars. It was there that Avicenna was educated, which early on was seemingly administered by his father. \nAlthough both Avicenna's father and brother had converted to Isma'ilism, he himself did not follow the faith. He was instead a Hanafi Sunni, the same school followed by the Samanids.\nAvicenna was first schooled in the Quran and literature, and by the age of 10, he had memorized the entire Quran. He was later sent by his father to an Indian greengrocer, who taught him arithmetic. Afterwards, he was schooled in fiqh by the Hanafi jurist Ismail al-Zahid. Sometime later, his father invited the physician and philosopher al-Natili to their house to educate ibn Sina. Together, they studied the \"Isagoge\" of Porphyry (died 305) and possibly the \"Categories\" of Aristotle (died 322 BCE) as well. After Avicenna had read the \"Almagest\" of Ptolemy (died 170) and Euclid's \"Elements\", al-Natili told him to continue his research independently. By the time Avicenna was eighteen, he was well-educated in Greek sciences. Although ibn Sina only mentions al-Natili as his teacher in his autobiography, he most likely had other teachers as well, such as the physicians Qumri and Abu Sahl 'Isa ibn Yahya al-Masihi.\nCareer.\nIn Bukhara and Gurganj.\nAt the age of seventeen, Avicenna was made a physician of Nuh II. By the time Avicenna was at least 21 years old, his father died. He was subsequently given an administrative post, possibly succeeding his father as the governor of Harmaytan. Avicenna later moved to Gurganj, the capital of Khwarazm, which he reports that he did due to \"necessity\". The date he went to the place is uncertain, as he reports that he served the Khwarazmshah, the ruler of Khwarazm, the Ma'munid ruler Abu al-Hasan Ali. The latter ruled from 997 to 1009, which indicates that Avicenna moved sometime during that period.\nHe may have moved in 999, the year in which the Samanid Empire fell after the Kara-Khanid Khanate captured Bukhara and imprisoned the Samanid emir Abd al-Malik II. Due to his high position and strong connection with the Samanids, ibn Sina may have found himself in an unfavorable position after the fall of his suzerain.\nIt was through the minister of Gurganj, Abu'l-Husayn as-Sahi, a patron of Greek sciences, that Avicenna entered into the service of Abu al-Hasan Ali. Under the Ma'munids, Gurganj became a centre of learning, attracting many prominent figures, such as ibn Sina and his former teacher Abu Sahl al-Masihi, the mathematician Abu Nasr Mansur, the physician ibn al-Khammar, and the philologist al-Tha'alibi.\nIn Gorgan.\nAvicenna later moved due to \"necessity\" once more (in 1012), this time to the west. There he travelled through the Khurasani cities of Nasa, Abivard, Tus, Samangan and Jajarm. He was planning to visit the ruler of the city of Gorgan, the Ziyarid Qabus (r.\u2009977\u00a0\u2013\u00a0981,\u00a0997\u00a0\u2013\u00a01012), a cultivated patron of writing, whose court attracted many distinguished poets and scholars. However, when Avicenna eventually arrived, he discovered that the ruler had been dead since the winter of 1013. Avicenna then left Gorgan for Dihistan, but returned after becoming ill. There he met Abu 'Ubayd al-Juzjani (died 1070) who became his pupil and companion. Avicenna stayed briefly in Gorgan, reportedly serving Qabus's son and successor Manuchihr (r.\u20091012\u00a0\u2013\u00a01031) and resided in the house of a patron.\nIn Ray and Hamadan.\nIn c.\u20091014, Avicenna went to the city of Ray, where he entered into the service of the Buyid amir Majd al-Dawla (r.\u2009997\u00a0\u2013\u00a01029) and his mother Sayyida Shirin, the \"de facto\" ruler of the realm. There he served as the physician at the court, treating Majd al-Dawla, who was suffering from melancholia. Avicenna reportedly later served as the \"business manager\" of Sayyida Shirin in Qazvin and Hamadan, though details regarding this tenure are unclear. During this period, Avicenna finished writing \"The Canon of Medicine\" and started writing his \"The Book of Healing\".\nIn 1015, during Avicenna's stay in Hamadan, he participated in a public debate, as was customary for newly arrived scholars in western Iran at that time. The purpose of the debate was to examine one's reputation against a prominent resident. The person whom Avicenna debated against was Abu'l-Qasim al-Kirmani, a member of the school of philosophers of Baghdad. The debate became heated, resulting in ibn Sina accusing Abu'l-Qasim of lack of basic knowledge in logic, while Abu'l-Qasim accused ibn Sina of impoliteness.\nAfter the debate, Avicenna sent a letter to the Baghdad Peripatetics, asking if Abu'l-Qasim's claim that he shared the same opinion as them was true. Abu'l-Qasim later retaliated by writing a letter to an unknown person in which he made accusations so serious that ibn Sina wrote to Abu Sa'd, the deputy of Majd al-Dawla, to investigate the matter. The accusation made towards Avicenna may have been the same as he had received earlier, in which he was accused by the people of Hamadan of copying the stylistic structures of the Quran in his \"Sermons on Divine Unity\". The seriousness of this charge, in the words of the historian Peter Adamson, \"cannot be underestimated in the larger Muslim culture\".\nNot long afterwards, Avicenna shifted his allegiance to the rising Buyid amir Shams al-Dawla, the younger brother of Majd al-Dawla, which Adamson suggests was due to Abu'l-Qasim also working under Sayyida Shirin. Avicenna had been called upon by Shams al-Dawla to treat him, but after the latter's campaign in the same year against his former ally, the Annazid ruler Abu Shawk (r.\u20091010\u00a0\u2013\u00a01046), he forced Avicenna to become his vizier.\nAlthough Avicenna would sometimes clash with Shams al-Dawla's troops, he remained vizier until the latter died of colic in 1021. Avicenna was asked to stay as vizier by Shams al-Dawla's son and successor Sama' al-Dawla (r.\u20091021\u00a0\u2013\u00a01023), but he instead went into hiding with his patron, Abu Ghalib al-Attar, to wait for better opportunities to emerge. It was during this period that Avicenna was secretly in contact with Ala al-Dawla Muhammad (r.\u20091008\u00a0\u2013\u00a01041), the Kakuyid ruler of Isfahan and uncle of Sayyida Shirin.\nIt was during his stay at Attar's home that Avicenna completed \"The Book of Healing\", writing 50 pages a day. The Buyid court in Hamadan, particularly the Kurdish vizier Taj al-Mulk, suspected Avicenna of correspondence with Ala al-Dawla, and as a result, had the house of Attar ransacked and ibn Sina imprisoned in the fortress of Fardajan, outside Hamadan. Juzjani blames one of ibn Sina's informers for his capture. He was imprisoned for four months until Ala al-Dawla captured Hamadan, ending Sama al-Dawla's reign.\nIn Isfahan.\nAvicenna was subsequently released, and went to Isfahan, where he was well received by Ala al-Dawla. In the words of Juzjani, the Kakuyid ruler gave Avicenna \"the respect and esteem which someone like him deserved\". Adamson also says that Avicenna's service under Ala al-Dawla \"proved to be the most stable period of his life\". Avicenna served as the advisor, if not vizier of Ala al-Dawla, accompanying him in many of his military expeditions and travels. Avicenna dedicated two Persian works to him, a philosophical treatise named \"Danish-nama-yi Ala'i\" (\"Book of Science for Ala\"), and a medical treatise about the pulse.\nDuring the brief occupation of Isfahan by the Ghaznavids in January 1030, Avicenna and Ala al-Dawla relocated to the southwestern Iranian region of Khuzistan, where they stayed until the death of the Ghaznavid ruler Mahmud (r.\u2009998\u00a0\u2013\u00a01030), which occurred two months later. It was seemingly when Avicenna returned to Isfahan that he started writing his \"Pointers and Reminders\". In 1037, while Avicenna was accompanying Ala al-Dawla to a battle near Isfahan, he contracted a severe colic, having suffered from colic throughout his life. He died shortly afterwards in Hamadan, where he was buried.\nPhilosophy.\nAvicenna wrote extensively on early Islamic philosophy, especially the subjects logic, ethics and metaphysics, including treatises named \"Logic\" and \"Metaphysics\". Most of his works were written in Arabic, then the language of science in the Muslim world, and some in Early New Persian. Of linguistic significance even to this day are a few books that he wrote in Persian, particularly the \"Danishnama\". Avicenna's commentaries on Aristotle often criticized the philosopher, encouraging a lively debate in the spirit of ijtihad.\nAvicenna's Neoplatonic scheme of emanations became fundamental in kalam in the 12th century.\n\"The Book of Healing\" became available in Europe in a partial Latin translation some fifty years after its composition under the title \"Sufficientia\", and some authors have identified a \"Latin Avicennism\" as flourishing for some time paralleling the more influential Latin Averroism, but it was suppressed by the Parisian decrees of 1210 and 1215.\nAvicenna's psychology and theory of knowledge influenced the theologian William of Auvergne and Albertus Magnus, while his metaphysics influenced the thought of Thomas Aquinas.\nMetaphysical doctrine.\nEarly Islamic philosophy and Islamic metaphysics, imbued as it is with kalam, distinguishes between essence and existence more clearly than Aristotelianism. Whereas existence is the domain of the contingent and the accidental, essence endures within a being beyond the accidental. The philosophy of Avicenna, particularly that part relating to metaphysics, owes much to al-Farabi. The search for a definitive Islamic philosophy separate from Occasionalism can be seen in what is left of his work.\nFollowing al-Farabi's lead, Avicenna initiated a full-fledged inquiry into the question of being, in which he distinguished between essence () and existence (). He argued that the fact of existence cannot be inferred from or accounted for by the essence of existing things, and that form and matter by themselves cannot interact and originate the movement of the universe or the progressive actualization of existing things. Existence must, therefore, be due to an agent-cause that necessitates, imparts, gives, or adds existence to an essence. To do so, the cause must be an existing thing and coexist with its effect.\nImpossibility, contingency, necessity.\nAvicenna's consideration of the essence-attributes question may be elucidated in terms of his ontological analysis of the modalities of being; namely impossibility, contingency and necessity. Avicenna argued that the impossible being is that which cannot exist, while the contingent in itself (\"mumkin bi-dhatihi\") has the potentiality to be or not to be without entailing a contradiction. When actualized, the contingent becomes a 'necessary existent due to what is other than itself' (\"wajib al-wujud bi-ghayrihi\"). Thus, contingency-in-itself is potential beingness that could eventually be actualized by an external cause other than itself. The metaphysical structures of necessity and contingency are different. Necessary being due to itself (\"wajib al-wujud bi-dhatihi\") is true in itself, while the contingent being is 'false in itself' and 'true due to something else other than itself'. The necessary is the source of its own being without borrowed existence. It is what always exists.\nDifferentia.\nThe Necessary exists 'due-to-Its-Self', and has no quiddity/essence other than existence. Furthermore, It is 'One' (\"wahid ahad\") since there cannot be more than one 'Necessary-Existent-due-to-Itself' without differentia (fasl) to distinguish them from each other. Yet, to require differentia entails that they exist 'due-to-themselves' as well as 'due to what is other than themselves'; and this is contradictory. If no differentia distinguishes them from each other, then, in no sense are these 'Existents' not the same. Avicenna adds that the 'Necessary-Existent-due-to-Itself' has no genus (\"jins\"), nor a definition (\"hadd\"), nor a counterpart (\"nadd\"), nor an opposite (\"did\"), and is detached (\"bari\") from matter (\"madda\"), quality (\"kayf\"), quantity (\"kam\"), place (\"ayn\"), situation (\"wad\") and time (\"waqt\").\nReception.\nAvicenna's theology on metaphysical issues (\"il\u0101hiyy\u0101t\") has been criticized by some Islamic scholars, among them al-Ghazali, ibn Taymiyya, and ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya. While discussing the views of the theists among the Greek philosophers, namely Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in \"Al-Munqidh min ad-Dalal\" \"Deliverance from Error\", al-Ghazali noted: \n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />[the Greek philosophers] must be taxed with unbelief, as must their partisans among the Muslim philosophers, such as Avicenna and al-Farabi and their likes. None, however, of the Muslim philosophers engaged so much in transmitting Aristotle's lore as did the two men just mentioned. [...] The sum of what we regard as the authentic philosophy of Aristotle, as transmitted by al-Farabi and Avicenna, can be reduced to three parts: a part which must be branded as unbelief; a part which must be stigmatized as innovation; and a part which need not be repudiated at all.\nArgument for God's existence.\nAvicenna made an argument for the existence of God which would be known as the \"Proof of the Truthful\" (\"wajib al-wujud\"). Avicenna argued that there must be a Proof of the Truthful, an entity that cannot \"not\" exist and through a series of arguments, he identified it with God in Islam. Present-day historian of philosophy Peter Adamson called this argument one of the most influential medieval arguments for God's existence, and Avicenna's biggest contribution to the history of philosophy.\nAl-Biruni correspondence.\nCorrespondence between ibn Sina with his student Ahmad ibn \u02bfAli al-Ma\u02bfsumi and al-Biruni has survived in which they debated Aristotelian natural philosophy and the Peripatetic school. al-Biruni began by asking eighteen questions, ten of which were criticisms of Aristotle's \"On the Heavens\".\nTheology.\nIbn Sina was a devout Muslim and sought to reconcile rational philosophy with Islamic theology. He aimed to prove the existence of God and His creation of the world scientifically and through reason and logic. His views on Islamic theology and philosophy were enormously influential, forming part of the core of the curriculum at Islamic religious schools until the 19th century.\nAvicenna wrote several short treatises dealing with Islamic theology. These included treatises on the prophets and messengers in Islam, whom he viewed as \"inspired philosophers\", and also on various scientific and philosophical interpretations of the Quran, such as how Quranic cosmology corresponds to his philosophical system. In general, these treatises linked his philosophical writings to Islamic religious ideas; for example, the body's afterlife.\nThere are occasional brief hints and allusions in his longer works, however, that Avicenna considered philosophy as the only sensible way to distinguish real prophecy from illusion. He did not state this more clearly because of the political implications of such a theory if prophecy could be questioned, and also because most of the time he was writing shorter works which concentrated on explaining his theories on philosophy and theology clearly, without digressing to consider epistemological matters which could only be properly considered by other philosophers.\nLater interpretations of Avicenna's philosophy split into three different schools; those (such as al-Tusi) who continued to apply his philosophy as a system to interpret later political events and scientific advances; those (such as al-Razi) who considered Avicenna's theological works in isolation from his wider philosophical concerns; and those (such as al-Ghazali) who selectively used parts of his philosophy to support their own attempts to gain greater spiritual insights through a variety of mystical means. It was the theological interpretation championed by those such as al-Razi which eventually came to predominate in the madrasahs.\nAvicenna memorized the Quran by the age of ten, and as an adult, wrote five treatises commenting on surahs of the Quran. One of these texts included the \"Proof of Prophecies\", in which he comments on several Quranic verses and holds the Quran in high esteem. Avicenna argued that the Islamic prophets should be considered higher than philosophers.\nAvicenna is generally understood to have been aligned with the Hanafi school of Sunni thought. Avicenna studied Hanafi law, many of his notable teachers were Hanafi jurists, and he served under the Hanafi court of Ali ibn Mamun. Avicenna said at an early age that he remained \"unconvinced\" by Ismaili missionary attempts to convert him.\nMedieval historian \u1e92ah\u012br al-d\u012bn al-Bayhaq\u012b (d. 1169) believed Avicenna to be a follower of the Brethren of Purity.\nThought experiments.\nWhile he was imprisoned in the castle of Fardajan near Hamadhan, Avicenna wrote his famous \"floating man\"\u2014literally falling man\u2014a thought experiment to demonstrate human self-awareness and the substantiality and immateriality of the soul. Avicenna believed his \"Floating Man\" thought experiment demonstrated that the soul is a substance, and claimed humans cannot doubt their own consciousness, even in a situation that prevents all sensory data input. The thought experiment told its readers to imagine themselves created all at once while suspended in the air, isolated from all , which includes no sensory contact with even their own bodies. He argued that, in this scenario, one would still have self-consciousness. Because it is conceivable that a person, suspended in air while cut off from sense experience, would still be capable of determining his own existence, the thought experiment points to the conclusions that the soul is a perfection, independent of the body, and an immaterial substance. The conceivability of this \"Floating Man\" indicates that the soul is perceived intellectually, which entails the soul's separateness from the body. Avicenna referred to the living human intelligence, particularly the active intellect, which he believed to be the hypostasis by which God communicates truth to the human mind and imparts order and intelligibility to nature. Following is an English translation of the argument:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />One of us (i.e. a human being) should be imagined as having been created in a single stroke; created perfect and complete but with his vision obscured so that he cannot perceive external entities; created falling through air or a void, in such a manner that he is not struck by the firmness of the air in any way that compels him to feel it, and with his limbs separated so that they do not come in contact with or touch each other. Then contemplate the following: can he be assured of the existence of himself? He does not have any doubt in that his self exists, without thereby asserting that he has any exterior limbs, nor any internal organs, neither heart nor brain, nor any one of the exterior things at all; but rather he can affirm the existence of himself, without thereby asserting there that this self has any extension in space. Even if it were possible for him in that state to imagine a hand or any other limb, he would not imagine it as being a part of his self, nor as a condition for the existence of that self; for as you know that which is asserted is different from that which is not asserted and that which is inferred is different from that which is not inferred. Therefore the self, the existence of which has been asserted, is a unique characteristic, in as much that it is not as such the same as the body or the limbs, which have not been ascertained. Thus that which is ascertained (i.e. the self), does have a way of being sure of the existence of the soul as something other than the body, even something non-bodily; this he knows, this he should understand intuitively, if it is that he is ignorant of it and needs to be beaten with a stick [to realize it].\nHowever, Avicenna posited the brain as the place where reason interacts with sensation. Sensation prepares the soul to receive rational concepts from the universal Agent Intellect. The first knowledge of the flying person would be \"I am,\" affirming his or her essence. That essence could not be the body, obviously, as the flying person has no sensation. Thus, the knowledge that \"I am\" is the core of a human being: the soul exists and is self-aware. Avicenna thus concluded that the idea of the self is not logically dependent on any physical thing, and that the soul should not be seen in relative terms, but as a primary given, a substance. The body is unnecessary; in relation to it, the soul is its perfection. In itself, the soul is an immaterial substance.\nPrincipal works.\n\"The Canon of Medicine\".\nAvicenna authored a five-volume medical encyclopedia, \"The Canon of Medicine\" (). It was used as the standard medical textbook in the Islamic world and Europe up to the 18th century. The \"Canon\" still plays an important role in Unani medicine.\n\"Liber Primus Naturalium\".\nAvicenna considered whether events like rare diseases or disorders have natural causes. He used the example of polydactyly to explain his perception that causal reasons exist for all medical events. This view of medical phenomena anticipated developments in the Enlightenment by seven centuries.\n\"The Book of Healing\".\nEarth sciences.\nAvicenna wrote on Earth sciences such as geology in \"The Book of Healing\". While discussing the formation of mountains, he explained:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nPhilosophy of science.\nIn the \"Al-Burhan\" (\"On Demonstration\") section of \"The Book of Healing\", Avicenna discussed the philosophy of science and described an early scientific method of inquiry. He discussed Aristotle's \"Posterior Analytics\" and significantly diverged from it on several points. Avicenna discussed the issue of a proper methodology for scientific inquiry and the question of \"How does one acquire the first principles of a science?\" He asked how a scientist would arrive at \"the initial axioms or hypotheses of a deductive science without inferring them from some more basic premises?\" He explained that the ideal situation is when one grasps that a \"relation holds between the terms, which would allow for absolute, universal certainty\". Avicenna then added two further methods for arriving at the first principles: the ancient Aristotelian method of induction (\"istiqra\"), and the method of examination and experimentation (\"tajriba\"). Avicenna criticized Aristotelian induction, arguing that \"it does not lead to the absolute, universal, and certain premises that it purports to provide.\" In its place, he developed a \"method of experimentation as a means for scientific inquiry.\"\nLogic.\nAn early formal system of temporal logic was studied by Avicenna. Although he did not develop a real theory of temporal propositions, he did study the relationship between \"temporalis\" and the implication. Avicenna's work was further developed by Najm al-D\u012bn al-Qazw\u012bn\u012b al-K\u0101tib\u012b and became the dominant system of Islamic logic until modern times. Avicennian logic also influenced several early European logicians such as Albertus Magnus and William of Ockham. Avicenna endorsed the law of non-contradiction proposed by Aristotle, that a fact could not be both true and false at the same time and in the same sense of the terminology used. He stated, \"Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned.\"\nPhysics.\nIn mechanics, Avicenna, in \"The Book of Healing\", developed a theory of motion, in which he made a distinction between the inclination (tendency to motion) and force of a projectile, and concluded that motion was a result of an inclination (\"mayl\") transferred to the projectile by the thrower, and that projectile motion in a vacuum would not cease. He viewed inclination as a permanent force whose effect is dissipated by external forces such as air resistance.\nThe theory of motion presented by Avicenna was probably influenced by the 6th-century Alexandrian scholar John Philoponus. Avicenna's is a less sophisticated variant of the theory of impetus developed by Buridan in the 14th century. It is unclear if Buridan was influenced by Avicenna, or by Philoponus directly.\nIn optics, Avicenna was among those who argued that light had a speed, observing that \"if the perception of light is due to the emission of some sort of particles by a luminous source, the speed of light must be finite.\" He also provided a wrong explanation of the rainbow phenomenon. Carl Benjamin Boyer described Avicenna's (\"Ibn S\u012bn\u0101\") theory on the rainbow as follows:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Independent observation had demonstrated to him that the bow is not formed in the dark cloud but rather in the very thin mist lying between the cloud and the sun or observer. The cloud, he thought, serves as the background of this thin substance, much as a quicksilver lining is placed upon the rear surface of the glass in a mirror. Ibn S\u012bn\u0101 would change the place not only of the bow, but also of the color formation, holding the iridescence to be merely a subjective sensation in the eye.\nIn 1253, a Latin text entitled \"Speculum Tripartitum\" stated the following regarding Avicenna's theory on heat:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Avicenna says in his book of heaven and earth, that heat is generated from motion in external things.\nPsychology.\nAvicenna's legacy in classical psychology is primarily embodied in the \"Kitab al-nafs\" parts of his \"Kitab al-shifa\" (\"The Book of Healing\") and \"Kitab al-najat\" (\"The Book of Deliverance\"). These were known in Latin under the title De Anima (treatises \"on the soul\"). Notably, Avicenna develops what is called the Flying Man argument in the Psychology of \"The Cure\" I.1.7 as defence of the argument that the soul is without quantitative extension, which has an affinity with Descartes's \"cogito\" argument (or what phenomenology designates as a form of an \"epoche\").\nAvicenna's psychology requires that connection between the body and soul be strong enough to ensure the soul's individuation, but weak enough to allow for its immortality. Avicenna grounds his psychology on physiology, which means his account of the soul is one that deals almost entirely with the natural science of the body and its abilities of perception. Thus, the philosopher's connection between the soul and body is explained almost entirely by his understanding of perception; in this way, bodily perception interrelates with the immaterial human intellect. In sense perception, the perceiver senses the form of the object; first, by perceiving features of the object by our external senses. This sensory information is supplied to the internal senses, which merge all the pieces into a whole, unified conscious experience. This process of perception and abstraction is the nexus of the soul and body, for the material body may only perceive material objects, while the immaterial soul may only receive the immaterial, universal forms. The way the soul and body interact in the final abstraction of the universal from the concrete particular is the key to their relationship and interaction, which takes place in the physical body.\nThe soul completes the action of intellection by accepting forms that have been abstracted from matter. This process requires a concrete particular (material) to be abstracted into the universal intelligible (immaterial). The material and immaterial interact through the Active Intellect, which is a \"divine light\" containing the intelligible forms. The Active Intellect reveals the universals concealed in material objects much like the sun makes colour available to our eyes.\nOther contributions.\nAstronomy and astrology.\nAvicenna wrote an attack on astrology titled \"Missive on the Champions of the Rule of the Stars\" () in which he cited passages from the Quran to dispute the power of astrology to foretell the future. He believed that each classical planet had some influence on the Earth but argued against current astrological practices.\nAvicenna's astronomical writings had some influence on later writers, although in general his work could be considered less developed than that of ibn al-Haytham or al-Biruni. One important feature of his writing is that he considers mathematical astronomy a separate discipline from astrology. He criticized Aristotle's view of the stars receiving their light from the Sun, stating that the stars are self-luminous, and believed that the planets are also self-luminous. He claimed to have observed the transit of Venus. This is possible as there was a transit on 24 May 1032, but ibn Sina did not give the date of his observation and modern scholars have questioned whether he could have observed the transit from his location at that time; he may have mistaken a sunspot for Venus. He used his transit observation to help establish that Venus was, at least sometimes, below the Sun in the geocentric model, i.e. the sphere of Venus comes before the sphere of the Sun when moving out from the Earth.\nHe also wrote the \"Summary of the Almagest\" based on Ptolemy's \"Almagest\" with an appended treatise \"to bring that which is stated in the Almagest and what is understood from Natural Science into conformity\". For example, ibn Sina considers the motion of the solar apsis, which Ptolemy had taken to be fixed.\nChemistry.\nAvicenna was first to derive the attar of flowers from distillation and used steam distillation to produce essential oils such as rose essence, which he used as aromatherapeutic treatments for heart conditions.\nUnlike al-Razi, Avicenna explicitly disputed the theory of the transmutation of substances commonly believed by alchemists:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Those of the chemical craft know well that no change can be effected in the different species of substances, though they can produce the appearance of such change.\nFour works on alchemy attributed to Avicenna were translated into Latin as:\n was the most influential, having influenced later medieval chemists and alchemists such as Vincent of Beauvais. However, Anawati argues (following Ruska) that the de Anima is a fake by a Spanish author. Similarly the Declaratio is believed not to be actually by Avicenna. The third work (\"The Book of Minerals\") is agreed to be Avicenna's writing, adapted from the \"Kitab al-Shifa\" (\"Book of the Remedy\"). Avicenna classified minerals into stones, fusible substances, sulfurs and salts, building on the ideas of Aristotle and Jabir. The \"epistola de Re recta\" is somewhat less sceptical of alchemy; Anawati argues that it is by Avicenna, but written earlier in his career when he had not yet firmly decided that transmutation was impossible.\nPoetry.\nAlmost half of Avicenna's works are versified. His poems appear in both Arabic and Persian. As an example, Edward Granville Browne claims that the following Persian verses are incorrectly attributed to Omar Khayy\u00e1m, and were originally written by Ibn S\u012bn\u0101:\n<templatestyles src=\"Verse translation/styles.css\" />\nLegacy.\nClassical Islamic civilization.\nRobert Wisnovsky, a scholar of Avicenna attached to McGill University, says that \"Avicenna was the central figure in the long history of the rational sciences in Islam, particularly in the fields of metaphysics, logic and medicine\" but that his works didn't only have an influence in these \"secular\" fields of knowledge alone, as \"these works, or portions of them, were read, taught, copied, commented upon, quoted, paraphrased and cited by thousands of post-Avicennian scholars\u2014not only philosophers, logicians, physicians and specialists in the mathematical or exact sciences, but also by those who specialized in the disciplines of \u02bfilm al-kal\u0101m (rational theology, but understood to include natural philosophy, epistemology and philosophy of mind) and us\u016bl al-fiqh (jurisprudence, but understood to include philosophy of law, dialectic, and philosophy of language).\"\nMedieval and Renaissance Europe.\nAs early as the 14th century when Dante Alighieri depicted him in Limbo alongside the virtuous non-Christian thinkers in his \"Divine Comedy\" such as Virgil, Averroes, Homer, Horace, Ovid, Lucan, Socrates, Plato and Saladin. Avicenna has been recognized by both East and West as one of the great figures in intellectual history. Johannes Kepler cites Avicenna's opinion when discussing the causes of planetary motions in Chapter 2 of \"Astronomia Nova\".\nGeorge Sarton, the author of \"The History of Science\", described Avicenna as \"one of the greatest thinkers and medical scholars in history\" and called him \"the most famous scientist of Islam and one of the most famous of all races, places, and times\". He was one of the Islamic world's leading writers in the field of medicine.\nAlong with Rhazes, Abulcasis, Ibn al-Nafis and al-Ibadi, Avicenna is considered an important compiler of early Muslim medicine. He is remembered in the Western history of medicine as a major historical figure who made important contributions to medicine and the European Renaissance. His medical texts were unusual in that where controversy existed between Galen and Aristotle's views on medical matters (such as anatomy), he preferred to side with Aristotle, where necessary updating Aristotle's position to take into account post-Aristotelian advances in anatomical knowledge. Aristotle's dominant intellectual influence among medieval European scholars meant that Avicenna's linking of Galen's medical writings with Aristotle's philosophical writings in the \"Canon of Medicine\" (along with its comprehensive and logical organisation of knowledge) significantly increased Avicenna's importance in medieval Europe in comparison to other Islamic writers on medicine. His influence following translation of the \"Canon\" was such that from the early fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries he was ranked with Hippocrates and Galen as one of the acknowledged authorities, (\"prince of physicians\").\nModern reception.\nInstitutions in a variety of counties have been named after Avicenna in honour of his scientific accomplishments, including the Avicenna Mausoleum and Museum, Bu-Ali Sina University, Avicenna Research Institute and Ibn Sina Academy of Medieval Medicine and Sciences. There is also a crater on the Moon named Avicenna.\nThe Avicenna Prize, established in 2003, is awarded every two years by UNESCO and rewards individuals and groups for their achievements in the field of ethics in science.\nThe Avicenna Directories (2008\u201315; now the World Directory of Medical Schools) list universities and schools where doctors, public health practitioners, pharmacists and others, are educated. The original project team stated: <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Why Avicenna? Avicenna\u00a0... was\u00a0... noted for his synthesis of knowledge from both east and west. He has had a lasting influence on the development of medicine and health sciences. The use of Avicenna's name symbolises the worldwide partnership that is needed for the promotion of health services of high quality.\nIn June 2009, Iran donated a \"Persian Scholars Pavilion\" to the United Nations Office in Vienna. It now sits in the Vienna International Center.\nIn popular culture.\nThe 1982 Soviet film \"Youth of Genius\" () by Elyor Ishmukhamedov recounts Avicenna's younger years. The film is set in Bukhara at the turn of the millennium.\nIn Louis L'Amour's 1985 historical novel \"The Walking Drum\", Kerbouchard studies and discusses Avicenna's \"The Canon of Medicine\".\nIn his book \"The Physician\" (1988) Noah Gordon tells the story of a young English medical apprentice who disguises himself as a Jew to travel from England to Persia and learn from Avicenna, the great master of his time. The novel was adapted into a feature film, \"The Physician\", in 2013. Avicenna was played by Ben Kingsley.\nList of works.\nThe treatises of Avicenna influenced later Muslim thinkers in many areas including theology, philology, mathematics, astronomy, physics and music. His works numbered almost 450 volumes on a wide range of subjects, of which around 240 have survived. In particular, 150 volumes of his surviving works concentrate on philosophy and 40 of them concentrate on medicine. His most famous works are \"The Book of Healing\", and \"The Canon of Medicine\".\nAvicenna wrote at least one treatise on alchemy, but several others have been falsely attributed to him. His \"Logic\", \"Metaphysics\", \"Physics\", and \"De Caelo\", are treatises giving a synoptic view of Aristotelian doctrine, though \"Metaphysics\" demonstrates a significant departure from the brand of Neoplatonism known as Aristotelianism in Avicenna's world; Arabic philosophers have hinted at the idea that Avicenna was attempting to \"re-Aristotelianise\" Muslim philosophy in its entirety, unlike his predecessors, who accepted the conflation of Platonic, Aristotelian, Neo- and Middle-Platonic works transmitted into the Muslim world.\nThe \"Logic\" and \"Metaphysics\" have been extensively reprinted, the latter, e.g., at Venice in 1493, 1495 and 1546. Some of his shorter essays on medicine, logic, etc., take a poetical form (the poem on logic was published by Schmoelders in 1836). Two encyclopedic treatises, dealing with philosophy, are often mentioned. The larger, \"Al-Shifa'\" (\"Sanatio\"), exists nearly complete in manuscript in the Bodleian Library and elsewhere; part of it on the \"De Anima\" appeared at Pavia (1490) as the \"Liber Sextus Naturalium\", and the long account of Avicenna's philosophy given by Muhammad al-Shahrastani seems to be mainly an analysis, and in many places a reproduction, of the Al-Shifa'. A shorter form of the work is known as the An-najat (\"Liberatio\"). The Latin editions of part of these works have been modified by the corrections which the monastic editors confess that they applied. There is also a (\"hikmat-al-mashriqqiyya\", in Latin \"Philosophia Orientalis\"), mentioned by Roger Bacon, the majority of which is lost in antiquity, which according to Averroes was pantheistic in tone.\nAvicenna's works further include:\nPersian works.\nAvicenna's most important Persian work is the \"Danishnama\" (, \"Book of Knowledge\". Avicenna created a new scientific vocabulary that had not previously existed in Persian. The \"Danishnama\" covers such topics as logic, metaphysics, music theory and other sciences of his time. It has been translated into English by Parwiz Morewedge in 1977. The book is also important in respect to Persian scientific works.\n\"Andar D\u0101nish-i Rag\" (, \"On the Science of the Pulse\") contains nine chapters on the science of the pulse and is a condensed synopsis.\nPersian poetry from Avicenna is recorded in various manuscripts and later anthologies such as \"Nozhat al-Majales\".\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNamesakes of Ibn Sina.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\n This is, on the whole, an informed and good account of the life and accomplishments of one of the greatest influences on the development of thought both Eastern and Western.\u00a0... It is not as philosophically thorough as the works of D. Saliba, A.M. Goichon, or L. Gardet, but it is probably the best essay in English on this important thinker of the Middle Ages. (Julius R. Weinberg, \"The Philosophical Review\", Vol. 69, No. 2, Apr. 1960, pp.\u00a0255\u2013259)\n This is a distinguished work which stands out from, and above, many of the books and articles which have been written in this century on Avicenna (Ibn S\u012bn\u0101) (980\u20131037). It has two main features on which its distinction as a major contribution to Avicennan studies may be said to rest: the first is its clarity and readability; the second is the comparative approach adopted by the author.\u00a0... (Ian Richard Netton, \"Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society\", Third Series, Vol. 4, No. 2, July 1994, pp.\u00a0263\u2013264)\n This German publication is both one of the most comprehensive general introductions to the life and works of the philosopher and physician Avicenna (Ibn S\u012bn\u0101, d. 1037) and an extensive and careful survey of his contribution to the history of science. Its author is a renowned expert in Greek and Arabic medicine who has paid considerable attention to Avicenna in his recent studies.\u00a0... (Amos Bertolacci, \"Isis\", Vol. 96, No. 4, December 2005, p.\u00a0649)", "191429": "Muslim world\nMuslim-majority countries, states, districts, or towns\nThe terms Muslim world and Islamic world () commonly refer to the Islamic community, which is also known as the Ummah. This consists of all those who adhere to the religious beliefs, politics, and laws of Islam or to societies in which Islam is practiced. In a modern geopolitical sense, these terms refer to countries in which Islam is widespread, although there are no agreed criteria for inclusion. The term Muslim-majority countries is an alternative often used for the latter sense.\nThe history of the Muslim world spans about 1,400 years and includes a variety of socio-political developments, as well as advances in the arts, science, medicine, philosophy, law, economics and technology during the Islamic Golden Age. Muslims look for guidance to the Quran and believe in the prophetic mission of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, but disagreements on other matters have led to the appearance of different religious schools of thought and sects within Islam. The Islamic conquests, which culminated in the Caliphate being established across three continents (Asia, Africa, and Europe), enriched the Muslim world, achieving the economic preconditions for the emergence of this institution owing to the emphasis attached to Islamic teachings. In the modern era, most of the Muslim world came under European colonial domination. The nation states that emerged in the post-colonial era have adopted a variety of political and economic models, and they have been affected by secular as well as religious trends.\nAs of 2013[ [update]], the combined GDP (nominal) of 50 Muslim majority countries was US$5.7\u00a0trillion. As of 2016[ [update]], they contributed 8% of the world's total. In 2020, the Economy of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation which consists of 57 member states had a combined GDP(PPP) of US$ 24 trillion which is equal to about 18% of world's GDP or US$ 30 trillion with 5 OIC observer states which is equal to about 22% of the world's GDP. Some OIC member countries -Ivory Coast, Guyana, Gabon, Mozambique, Nigeria, Suriname, Togo and Uganda are not Muslim-majority.\nAs of 2020, 1.8 billion or more than 25% of the world population are Muslims. By the percentage of the total population in a region considering themselves Muslim, 91% in the Middle East-North Africa (MENA), 89% in Central Asia, 40% in Southeast Asia, 31% in South Asia, 30% in Sub-Saharan Africa, 25% in Asia, 1.4% in Oceania, 6% in Europe, and 1% in the Americas.\nMost Muslims are of one of two denominations: Sunni Islam (87\u201390%) and Shia (10\u201313%). However, other denominations exist in pockets, such as Ibadi (primarily in Oman). Muslims who do not belong to, do not self-identify with, or cannot be readily classified under one of the identifiable Islamic schools and branches are known as non-denominational Muslims. About 13% of Muslims live in Indonesia, the largest Muslim-majority country; % of Muslims live in South Asia, the largest population of Muslims in the world; % in the Middle East\u2013North Africa, where it is the dominant religion; and 15% in Sub-Saharan Africa and West Africa (primarily in Nigeria). Muslims are the overwhelming majority in Central Asia, the majority in the Caucasus, and widespread in Southeast Asia. India has the largest Muslim population outside Muslim-majority countries. Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, and Egypt are home to the world\u2019s second, fourth, sixth and seventh largest Muslim populations respectively. Sizeable Muslim communities are also found in the Americas, Russia, India, China, and Europe. Islam is the fastest-growing major religion in the world partially due to their high birth rate, according to the same study, religious switching has no impact on Muslim population, since the number of people who embrace Islam and those who leave Islam are roughly equal. China has the third largest Muslim population outside Muslim-majority countries, while Russia has the fifth largest Muslim population. Nigeria has the largest Muslim population in Africa, while Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in Asia.\nTerminology.\nThe term has been documented as early as 1912 to encompass the influence of perceived pan-Islamic propaganda. \"The Times\" described Pan-Islamism as a movement with power, importance, and cohesion born in Paris, where Turks, Arabs and Persians congregated. The correspondent's focus was on India: it would take too long to consider the progress made in various parts of the Muslim world. The article considered the position of the Amir, the effect of the Tripoli Campaign, Anglo-Russian action in Persia, and \"Afghan Ambitions\".\nIn a modern geopolitical sense, the terms 'Muslim world' and 'Islamic world' refer to countries in which Islam is widespread, although there are no agreed criteria for inclusion. Some scholars and commentators have criticised the term 'Muslim/Islamic world' and its derivative terms 'Muslim/Islamic country' as \"simplistic\" and \"binary\", since no state has a religiously homogeneous population (e.g. Egypt's citizens are c. 10% Christians), and in absolute numbers, there are sometimes fewer Muslims living in countries in which they make up the majority than in countries in which they form a minority. Moreover, the idea of a uniform Muslim world is imagined. Emerging in popular discourse in the nineteenth century, imperialists used the term to emphasize the civilizational differences between east and west. In opposition to colonization some Muslims started using the term in attempts at providing a unified front against western imperialism. Hence, the term 'Muslim-majority countries' is often preferred in literature.\nHistory.\nThe history of the Islamic faith as a religion and social institution begins with its inception around 610 CE, when the Islamic prophet Muhammad, a native of Mecca, is believed by Muslims to have received the first revelation of the Quran, and began to preach his message. In 622 CE, facing opposition in Mecca, he and his followers migrated to Yathrib (now Medina), where he was invited to establish a new constitution for the city under his leadership. This migration, called the Hijra, marks the first year of the Islamic calendar. By the time of his death, Muhammad had become the political and spiritual leader of Medina, Mecca, the surrounding region, and numerous other tribes in the Arabian Peninsula.\nAfter Muhammad died in 632, his successors (the Caliphs) continued to lead the Muslim community based on his teachings and guidelines of the Quran. The majority of Muslims consider the first four successors to be 'rightly guided' or Rashidun. The conquests of the Rashidun Caliphate helped to spread Islam beyond the Arabian Peninsula, stretching from northwest India, across Central Asia, the Near East, North Africa, southern Italy, and the Iberian Peninsula, to the Pyrenees. The Arab Muslims were unable to conquer the entire Christian Byzantine Empire in Asia Minor during the Arab\u2013Byzantine wars, however. The succeeding Umayyad Caliphate attempted two failed sieges of Constantinople in 674\u2013678 and 717\u2013718. Meanwhile, the Muslim community tore itself apart into the rivalling Sunni and Shia sects since the killing of caliph Uthman in 656, resulting in a succession crisis that has never been resolved. The following First, Second and Third Fitnas and finally the Abbasid Revolution (746\u2013750) also definitively destroyed the political unity of the Muslims, who have been inhabiting multiple states ever since. Ghaznavids' rule was succeeded by the Ghurid Empire of Muhammad of Ghor and Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad, whose reigns under the leadership of Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khalji extended until the Bengal, where South Asian Islamic missionaries achieved their greatest success in terms of dawah and number of converts to Islam. Qutb ud-Din Aibak conquered Delhi in 1206 and began the reign of the Delhi Sultanate, a successive series of dynasties that synthesized Indian civilization with the wider commercial and cultural networks of Africa and Eurasia, greatly increased demographic and economic growth in India and deterred Mongol incursion into the prosperous Indo-Gangetic Plain and enthroned one of the few female Muslim rulers, Razia Sultana.\nNotable major empires dominated by Muslims, such as those of the Abbasids, Fatimids, Almoravids, Gao Empire, Seljukids, largest contiguous Songhai Empire (15th-16th centuries) of Sahel, West Africa, southern North Africa and western Central Africa which dominated the centers of Islamic knowledge of Timbuktu, Djenne, Oualata and Gao, Ajuran, Adal and Warsangali in Somalia, Mughals in the Indian subcontinent (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, etc.), Safavids in Persia and Ottomans in Anatolia, Massina Empire, Sokoto Caliphate of northern Nigeria, Toucouleur Empire, were among the influential and distinguished powers in the world. 19th-century colonialism and 20th-century decolonisation have resulted in several independent Muslim-majority states around the world, with vastly differing attitudes towards and political influences granted to, or restricted for, Islam from country to country. These have revolved around the question of Islam's compatibility with other ideological concepts such as secularism, nationalism (especially Arab nationalism and Pan-Arabism, as opposed to Pan-Islamism), socialism (see also Arab socialism and socialism in Iran), democracy (see Islamic democracy), republicanism (see also Islamic republic), liberalism and progressivism, feminism, capitalism and more.\nGunpowder empires.\nScholars often use the term Age of the Islamic Gunpowders to describe period the Safavid, Ottoman and Mughal states. Each of these three empires had considerable military exploits using the newly developed firearms, especially cannon and small arms, to create their empires. They existed primarily between the fourteenth and the late seventeenth centuries. During the 17th\u201318th centuries, when the Indian subcontinent was ruled by Mughal Empire's sixth ruler Muhammad Auranzgeb through sharia and Islamic economics, India became the world's largest economy, valued 25% of world GDP.\nGreat Divergence.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"Why do the Christian nations, which were so weak in the past compared with Muslim nations begin to dominate so many lands in modern times and even defeat the once victorious Ottoman armies?\"...\"Because they have laws and rules invented by reason.\"\nIbrahim Muteferrika, \"Rational basis for the Politics of Nations\" (1731)\nThe Great Divergence was the reason why European colonial powers militarily defeated preexisting Oriental powers like the Mughal Empire, starting from the wealthy Bengal Subah, Tipu Sultan's Kingdom of Mysore, the Ottoman Empire and many smaller states in the pre-modern Greater Middle East, and initiated a period known as 'colonialism'.\nColonialism.\nBeginning with the 15th century, colonialism by European powers profoundly affected Muslim-majority societies in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Colonialism was often advanced by conflict with mercantile initiatives by colonial powers and caused tremendous social upheavals in Muslim-dominated societies.\nA number of Muslim-majority societies reacted to Western powers with zealotry and thus initiating the rise of Pan-Islamism; or affirmed more traditionalist and inclusive cultural ideals; and in rare cases adopted modernity that was ushered by the colonial powers.\nThe only Muslim-majority regions not to be colonized by the Europeans were Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, and Afghanistan. Turkey was one of the first colonial powers of the world with the Ottoman empire ruling several states for over 6 centuries.\nPostcolonial era.\nIn the 20th century, the end of the European colonial domination has led to creation of a number of nation states with significant Muslim populations. These states drew on Islamic traditions to varying degree and in various ways in organizing their legal, educational and economic systems. The Times first documented the term \"Muslim world\" in 1912 when describing Pan-Islamism as a movement with power importance and cohesion born in Paris where Turks, Arabs and Persians congregated. The article considered The position of the Amir; the effect of the Tripoli Campaign; Anglo-Russian action in Persia; and \"Afghan Ambitions\".\nA significant change in the Muslim world was the defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (1908\u20131922), to which the Ottoman officer and Turkish revolutionary statesman Mustafa Kemal Atat\u00fcrk had an instrumental role in ending and replacing it with the Republic of Turkey, a modern, secular democracy (see Abolition of the Ottoman sultanate). The secular values of Kemalist Turkey, which separated religion from the state with the abolition of the Caliphate in 1924, have sometimes been seen as the result of Western influence.\nIn the 21st century, after the September 11 attacks (2001) coordinated by the Wahhabi Islamist terrorist group Al-Qaeda against the United States, scholars considered the ramifications of seeking to understand Muslim experience through the framework of secular Enlightenment principles. Muhammad Atta, one of the 11 September hijackers, reportedly quoted from the Quran to allay his fears: \"Fight them, and God will chastise them at your hands/And degrade them, and He will help you/Against them, and bring healing to the breasts of a people who believe\", referring to the \"ummah\", the community of Muslim believers, and invoking the imagery of the early warriors of Islam who lead the faithful from the darkness of \"jahiliyyah\".\nBy Sayyid Qutb's definition of Islam, the faith is \"a complete divorce from jahiliyyah\". He complained that American churches served as centers of community social life that were \"very hard [to] distinguish from places of fun and amusement\". For Qutb, Western society was the modern \"jahliliyyah\". His understanding of the \"Muslim world\" and its \"social order\" was that, presented to the Western world as the result of practicing Islamic teachings, would impress \"by the beauty and charm of true Islamic ideology\". He argued that the values of the Enlightenment and its related precursor, the Scientific Revolution, \"denies or suspends God's sovereignty on earth\" and argued that strengthening \"Islamic character\"\nwas needed \"to abolish the negative influences of \"jahili\" life.\"\nIslam by country.\nAs the Muslim world came into contact with secular ideals, societies responded in different ways. Some Muslim-majority countries are secular. Azerbaijan became the first secular republic in the Muslim world, between 1918 and 1920, before it was incorporated into the Soviet Union. Turkey has been governed as a secular state since the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atat\u00fcrk. By contrast, the 1979 Iranian Revolution replaced a monarchial semi-secular regime with an Islamic republic led by the Ayatollah, Ruhollah Khomeini.\nSome countries have declared Islam as the official state religion. In those countries, the legal code is largely secular. Only personal status matters pertaining to inheritance and marriage are governed by Sharia law. In some places, Muslims implement Islamic law, called sharia in Arabic. The Islamic law exists in a number of variations, called schools of jurisprudence. The Amman Message, which was endorsed in 2005 by prominent Islamic scholars around the world, recognized four Sunni schools (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali), two Shia schools (Ja'fari, Zaidi), the Ibadi school, and the Zahiri school.\nGovernment and religion.\nIslamic states.\nEight Islamic states have adopted Islam as the ideological foundation of state and constitution.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nState religion.\nThe following nineteen Muslim-majority states have endorsed Islam as their state religion, and though they may guarantee freedom of religion for citizens, do not declare a separation of state and religion:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSecular states.\nTwenty-two Secular states in the Muslim world have declared separation between civil/government affairs and religion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nOthers.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nMuslim-minority states.\nAccording to the Pew Research Center in 2015 there were 50 Muslim-majority countries, which are shown in the Government and religion section above in the article. Apart from these, large Muslim populations exist in some countries where Muslims are a minority, and their Muslim communities are larger than many Muslim-majority nations:\nPolitics.\nDuring much of the 20th century, the Islamic identity and the dominance of Islam on political issues have arguably increased during the early 21st century. The fast-growing interests of the Western world in Islamic regions, international conflicts and globalization have changed the influence of Islam on the world in contemporary history.\nDemographics.\nMore than 24.1% of the world's population is Muslim, with an estimated total of approximately 1.9 billion. Muslims are the majority in 49 countries, they speak hundreds of languages and come from diverse ethnic backgrounds. The city of Karachi has the largest Muslim population in the world. \nGeography.\nBecause the terms 'Muslim world' and 'Islamic world' are disputed, since no country is homogeneously Muslim, and there is no way to determine at what point a Muslim minority in a country is to be considered 'significant' enough, there is no consensus on how to define the Muslim world geographically. The only rule of thumb for inclusion which has some support, is that countries need to have a Muslim population of more than 50%. \nIn 2010, 73% of the world's Muslim population lived in countries where Muslims are in the majority, while 27% of the world's Muslim population lived in countries where Muslims are in the minority. India's Muslim population is the world's largest Muslim-minority population in the world (11% of the world's Muslim population). Jones (2005) defines a \"large minority\" as being between 30% and 50%, which described nine countries in 2000, namely Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, North Macedonia, and Tanzania. As of 2024, however, Nigeria has become a Muslim-majority country.\nReligion.\nIslam.\nThe two main denominations of Islam are the Sunni and Shia sects. They differ primarily upon of how the life of the ummah (\"faithful\") should be governed, and the role of the imam. Sunnis believe that the true political successor of Muhammad according to the Sunnah should be selected based on \u064dShura (consultation), as was done at the Saqifah which selected Abu Bakr, Muhammad's father-in-law, to be Muhammad's political but not his religious successor. Shia, on the other hand, believe that Muhammad designated his son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib as his true political as well as religious successor.\nThe overwhelming majority of Muslims in the world, between 87 and 90%, are Sunni. Shias and other groups make up the rest, about 10\u201313% of overall Muslim population. The countries with the highest concentration of Shia populations are: Iran \u2013 89%, Azerbaijan \u2013 65%, Iraq \u2013 60%, Bahrain \u2013 60%, Yemen \u2013 35%, Turkey \u2013 10%, Lebanon \u2013 27%, Syria \u2013 13%, Afghanistan \u2013 10%, Pakistan \u2013 10%, and India \u2013 10%.\nNon-denominational Muslims make up a majority of the Muslims in seven countries (and a plurality in three others): Albania (65%), Kyrgyzstan (64%), Kosovo (58%), Indonesia (56%), Mali (55%), Bosnia and Herzegovina (54%), Uzbekistan (54%), Azerbaijan (45%), Russia (45%), and Nigeria (42%). They are found primarily in Central Asia. Kazakhstan has the largest number of non-denominational Muslims, who constitute about 74% of the population. Southeastern Europe also has a large number of non-denominational Muslims.\nThe Kharijite Muslims, who are less known, have their own stronghold in the country of Oman holding about 75% of the population.\nIslamic schools and branches.\nThe first centuries of Islam gave rise to three major sects: Sunnis, Shi'as and Kharijites. Each sect developed distinct jurisprudence schools (\"madhhab\") reflecting different methodologies of jurisprudence (\"fiqh\").\nThe major Sunni madhhabs are Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali.\nThe major Shi'a branches are Twelver (Imami), Ismaili (Sevener) and Zaidi (Fiver). Isma'ilism later split into Nizari Ismaili and Musta\u2019li Ismaili, and then Mustaali was divided into Hafizi and Taiyabi Ismailis. It also gave rise to the Qarmatian movement and the Druze faith, although Druzes do not identify as Muslims. Twelver Shiism developed Ja'fari jurisprudence whose branches are Akhbarism and Usulism, and other movements such as Alawites, Shaykism and Alevism.\nSimilarly, Kharijites were initially divided into five major branches: Sufris, Azariqa, Najdat, Adjarites and Ibadis.\nAmong these numerous branches, only Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali, Imamiyyah-Ja'fari-Usuli, Niz\u0101r\u012b Ism\u0101'\u012bl\u012b, Alevi, Zaydi, Ibadi, Zahiri, Alawite, Druze and Taiyabi communities have survived. In addition, new schools of thought and movements like Quranist Muslims and Ahmadi Muslims later emerged independently.\nOther religions.\nThere are sizeable non-Muslim minorities in many Muslim-majority countries, includes, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds, Druzes, Yazidis, Mandaeans, Yarsanis and Zoroastrians.\nThe Muslim world is home to some of the world's most ancient Christian communities, and some of the most important cities of the Christian world\u2014including three of its five great patriarchates (Alexandria, Antioch, and Constantinople). Scholars and intellectuals agree Christians have made significant contributions to Arab and Islamic civilization since the introduction of Islam, and they have had a significant impact contributing the culture of the Middle East and North Africa and other areas. Pew Research Center estimates indicate that in 2010, more than 64 million Christians lived in countries with Muslim majorities (excluding Nigeria). The Pew Forum study finds that Indonesia (21.1 million) has the largest Christian population in the Muslim world, followed by Egypt, Chad and Kazakhstan. While according to Adly A. Youssef and Martyn Thomas, in 2004, there were around 30 million Christians who lived in countries with Muslim majorities, with the largest Christian population number lived in Indonesia, followed by Egypt. Nigeria is divided almost evenly between Muslims and Christians, with more than 80 million Christians and Muslims.\nIn 2018, the Jewish Agency estimated that around 27,000 Jews live in Arab and Muslim countries. Jewish communities have existed across the Middle East and North Africa since the rise of Islam. Today, Jews residing in Muslim countries have been reduced to a small fraction of their former sizes, with the largest communities of Jews in Muslim countries exist in the non-Arab countries of Iran (9,500) and Turkey (14,500); both, however, are much smaller than they historically have been. Among Arab countries, the largest Jewish community now exists in Morocco with about 2,000 Jews and in Tunisia with about 1,000. The number of Druze worldwide is between 800,000 and one million, with the vast majority residing in the Levant (primarily in Syria and Lebanon).\nIn 2010, the Pew Forum study finds that Bangladesh (13.5 million), Indonesia (4 million), Pakistan (3.3 million) and Malaysia (1.7 million) has a sizeable Hindu minorities. Malaysia (5 million) has the largest Buddhist population in the Muslim world. Zoroastrians are the oldest remaining religious community in Iran. \nLiteracy and education.\nThe literacy rate in the Muslim world varies. Azerbaijan is in second place in the Index of Literacy of World Countries. Some members such as Iran, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan have over 97% literacy rates, whereas literacy rates are the lowest in Mali, Afghanistan, Chad and other parts of Africa. Several Muslim-majority countries, such as Turkey, Iran and Egypt have a high rate of citable scientific publications.\nIn 2015, the International Islamic News Agency reported that nearly 37% of the population of the Muslim world is unable to read or write, basing that figure on reports from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. In Egypt, the largest Muslim-majority Arab country, the youth female literacy rate exceeds that for males. Lower literacy rates are more prevalent in South Asian countries such as in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but are rapidly increasing. In the Eastern Middle East, Iran has a high level of youth literacy at 98%, but Iraq's youth literacy rate has sharply declined from 85% to 57% during the American-led war and subsequent occupation. Indonesia, the largest Muslim-majority country in the world, has a 99% youth literacy rate.\nA 2011 Pew Research Center showed that at the time about 36% of all Muslims had no formal schooling, with only 8% having graduate and post-graduate degrees.\nThe highest of years of schooling among Muslim-majority countries found in Uzbekistan (11.5), Kuwait (11.0) and Kazakhstan (10.7). In addition, the average of years of schooling in countries in which Muslims are the majority is 6.0 years of schooling, which lag behind the global average (7.7 years of schooling). In the youngest age (25\u201334) group surveyed, Young Muslims have the lowest average levels of education of any major religious group, with an average of 6.7 years of schooling, which lag behind the global average (8.6 years of schooling). The study found that Muslims have a significant amount of gender inequality in educational attainment, since Muslim women have an average of 4.9 years of schooling, compared to an average of 6.4 years of schooling among Muslim men.\nRefugees.\nAccording to the UNHCR, Muslim-majority countries hosted 18 million refugees by the end of 2010.\nSince then Muslim-majority countries have absorbed refugees from recent conflicts, including the uprising in Syria. In July 2013, the UN stated that the number of Syrian refugees had exceeded 1.8\u00a0million.\nIn Asia, an estimated 625,000 refugees from Rakhine, Myanmar, mostly Muslim, had crossed the border into Bangladesh since August 2017.\nCulture.\nThroughout history, Muslim cultures have been diverse ethnically, linguistically and regionally. According to M. M. Knight, this diversity includes diversity in beliefs, interpretations and practices and communities and interests. Knight says perception of Muslim world among non-Muslims is usually supported through introductory literature about Islam, mostly present a version as per scriptural view which would include some prescriptive literature and abstracts of history as per authors own point of views, to which even many Muslims might agree, but that necessarily would not reflect Islam as lived on the ground, 'in the experience of real human bodies'.\nClassical culture.\nThe term \"Islamic Golden Age\" has been attributed to a period in history during which science, economic development and cultural works in most of the Muslim-dominated world flourished. The age is traditionally understood to have begun during the reign of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (786\u2013809) with the inauguration of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, where scholars from various parts of the world sought to translate and gather all the known world's knowledge into Arabic, and to have ended with the collapse of the Abbasid caliphate due to Mongol invasions and the Siege of Baghdad in 1258. The Abbasids were influenced by the Quranic injunctions and hadiths, such as \"the ink of a scholar is more holy than the blood of a martyr,\" that stressed the value of knowledge. The major Islamic capital cities of Baghdad, Cairo, and C\u00f3rdoba became the main intellectual centers for science, philosophy, medicine, and education. During this period, the Muslim world was a collection of cultures; they drew together and advanced the knowledge gained from the ancient Greek, Roman, Persian, Chinese, Vedic, Egyptian, and Phoenician civilizations.\nCeramics.\nBetween the 8th and 18th centuries, the use of ceramic glaze was prevalent in Islamic art, usually assuming the form of elaborate pottery. Tin-opacified glazing was one of the earliest new technologies developed by the Islamic potters. The first Islamic opaque glazes can be found as blue-painted ware in Basra, dating to around the 8th century. Another contribution was the development of fritware, originating from 9th-century Iraq. Other centers for innovative ceramic pottery in the Old world included Fustat (from 975 to 1075), Damascus (from 1100 to around 1600) and Tabriz (from 1470 to 1550).\nLiterature.\nThe best known work of fiction from the Islamic world is \"One Thousand and One Nights\", a compilation of folk tales from Sanskrit, Persian, and later Arabian fables. The concept had been influenced by a pre-Islamic Persian prototype Hez\u0101r Afs\u0101n (Thousand Fables) that relied on particular Indian elements. It reached its final form by the 14th century; the number and type of tales have varied from one manuscript to another. This work has been very influential in the West since it was translated in the 18th century, first by Antoine Galland. Imitations were written, especially in France. Various characters from this epic have themselves become cultural icons in Western culture, such as Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor and Ali Baba.\nAn example of Arabic poetry and Persian poetry on romance is \"Layla and Majnun\", dating back to the Umayyad era in the 7th century. It is a tragic story of undying love. Ferdowsi's \"Shahnameh\", the national epic of Greater Iran, is a mythical and heroic retelling of Persian history. \"Amir Arsalan\" was also a popular mythical Persian story.\nIbn Tufayl (Abubacer) and Ibn al-Nafis were pioneers of the philosophical novel. Ibn Tufail wrote the first Arabic novel \"Hayy ibn Yaqdhan\" (\"Philosophus Autodidactus\") as a response to Al-Ghazali's \"The Incoherence of the Philosophers\", and then Ibn al-Nafis also wrote a novel \"Theologus Autodidactus\" as a response to Ibn Tufail's \"Philosophus Autodidactus\". Both of these narratives had protagonists (Hayy in \"Philosophus Autodidactus\" and Kamil in \"Theologus Autodidactus\") who were autodidactic feral children living in seclusion on a desert island, both being the earliest examples of a desert island story. However, while Hayy lives alone with animals on the desert island for the rest of the story in \"Philosophus Autodidactus\", the story of Kamil extends beyond the desert island setting in \"Theologus Autodidactus\", developing into the earliest known coming of age plot and eventually becoming the first example of a science fiction novel.\n\"Theologus Autodidactus\", written by the Arabian polymath Ibn al-Nafis (1213\u20131288), deals with various science fiction elements such as spontaneous generation, futurology, the end of the world and doomsday, resurrection, and the afterlife. Rather than giving supernatural or mythological explanations for these events, Ibn al-Nafis attempted to explain these plot elements using the scientific knowledge of biology, astronomy, cosmology and geology known in his time. Ibn al-Nafis' fiction explained Islamic religious teachings via science and Islamic philosophy. Translations of Ibn Tufail's \"Philosophus Autodidactus\" appeared in Latin (1671), English (1708), German, and Dutch. These European-language translations may have later inspired Daniel Defoe's \"Robinson Crusoe\" and Robert Boyle's \"The Aspiring Naturalist\".\nPhilosophy.\nOne of the common definitions for \"Islamic philosophy\" is \"the style of philosophy produced within the framework of Islamic culture.\" Islamic philosophy, in this definition is neither necessarily concerned with religious issues, nor is exclusively produced by Muslims. The Persian scholar Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (980\u20131037) had more than 450 books attributed to him. His writings were concerned with various subjects, most notably philosophy and medicine. His medical textbook \"The Canon of Medicine\" was used as the standard text in European universities for centuries. He also wrote \"The Book of Healing\", an influential scientific and philosophical encyclopedia.\nAnother figure from the Islamic Golden Age, Avicenna, also founded his own Avicennism school of philosophy, which was influential in both Islamic and Christian lands.\nYet another influential philosopher who had an influence on modern philosophy was Ibn Tufail. His philosophical novel, \"Hayy ibn Yaqdhan\", translated into Latin as \"Philosophus Autodidactus\" in 1671, developed the themes of empiricism, tabula rasa, nature versus nurture, condition of possibility, materialism, and Molyneux's problem. European scholars and writers influenced by this novel include John Locke, Gottfried Leibniz, Melchis\u00e9dech Th\u00e9venot, John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, George Keith, Robert Barclay, the Quakers, and Samuel Hartlib.\nIslamic philosophers continued making advances in philosophy through to the 17th century, when Mulla Sadra founded his school of Transcendent theosophy and developed the concept of existentialism.\nOther influential Muslim philosophers include Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), a pioneer of phenomenology and the philosophy of science and a critic of Aristotelian natural philosophy and Aristotle's concept of place (topos); Al-Biruni, a critic of Aristotelian natural philosophy; Ibn Tufail and Ibn al-Nafis, pioneers of the philosophical novel; Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi, founder of Illuminationist philosophy; Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, a critic of Aristotelian logic and a pioneer of inductive logic; and Ibn Khaldun, a pioneer in the philosophy of history.\nSciences.\nIbn al-Haytham is also regarded as the father of optics, especially for his empirical proof of the intromission theory of light. Jim Al-Khalili stated in 2009 that Ibn al-Haytham is 'often referred to as the \"world's first true scientist\".' al-Khwarzimi's invented the log base systems that are being used today, he also contributed theorems in trigonometry as well as limits. Recent studies show that it is very likely that the Medieval Muslim artists were aware of advanced decagonal quasicrystal geometry (discovered half a millennium later in the 1970s and 1980s in the West) and used it in intricate decorative tilework in the architecture.\nMuslim physicians contributed to the field of medicine, including the subjects of anatomy and physiology: such as in the 15th-century Persian work by Mansur ibn Muhammad ibn al-Faqih Ilyas entitled \"Tashrih al-badan\" (\"Anatomy of the body\") which contained comprehensive diagrams of the body's structural, nervous and circulatory systems; or in the work of the Egyptian physician Ibn al-Nafis, who proposed the theory of pulmonary circulation. Avicenna's \"The Canon of Medicine\" remained an authoritative medical textbook in Europe until the 18th century. Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (also known as \"Abulcasis\") contributed to the discipline of medical surgery with his \"Kitab al-Tasrif\" (\"Book of Concessions\"), a medical encyclopedia which was later translated to Latin and used in European and Muslim medical schools for centuries. Other medical advancements came in the fields of pharmacology and pharmacy.\nSome most famous scientists from the medieval Islamic world include J\u0101bir ibn Hayy\u0101n, al-Farabi, Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi, Ibn al-Haytham, Al-Biruni, Avicenna, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, and Ibn Khaldun.\nTechnology.\nIn technology, the Muslim world adopted papermaking from China. The knowledge of gunpowder was also transmitted from China via predominantly Islamic countries, where formulas for pure potassium nitrate were developed.\nAdvances were made in irrigation and farming, using new technology such as the windmill. Crops such as almonds and citrus fruit were brought to Europe through al-Andalus, and sugar cultivation was gradually adopted by the Europeans. Arab merchants dominated trade in the Indian Ocean until the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16th century. Hormuz was an important center for this trade. There was also a dense network of trade routes in the Mediterranean, along which Muslim-majority countries traded with each other and with European powers such as Venice, Genoa and Catalonia (see also: Indo-Mediterranean). The Silk Road crossing Central Asia passed through Islamic states between China and Europe. The emergence of major economic empires with technological resources after the conquests of Timur (Tamerlane) and the resurgence of the Timurid Renaissance include the Mali Empire and the Bengal Sultanate in particular, a major global trading nation in the world, described by the Europeans to be the \"richest country to trade with\".\nMuslim engineers in the Islamic world made a number of innovative industrial uses of hydropower, and early industrial uses of tidal power and wind power. The industrial uses of watermills in the Islamic world date back to the 7th century, while horizontal-wheeled and vertical-wheeled water mills were both in widespread use since at least the 9th century. A variety of industrial mills were being employed in the Islamic world, including early fulling mills, gristmills, paper mills, hullers, sawmills, ship mills, stamp mills, steel mills, sugar mills, tide mills and windmills. By the 11th century, every province throughout the Islamic world had these industrial mills in operation, from al-Andalus and North Africa to the Middle East and Central Asia. Muslim engineers also invented crankshafts and water turbines, employed gears in mills and water-raising machines, and pioneered the use of dams as a source of water power, used to provide additional power to watermills and water-raising machines. Such advances made it possible for industrial tasks that were previously driven by manual labour in ancient times to be mechanized and driven by machinery instead in the medieval Islamic world. The transfer of these technologies to medieval Europe had an influence on the Industrial Revolution, particularly from the proto-industrialised Mughal Bengal and Tipu Sultan's Kingdom, through the conquests of the East India Company.\nArts.\nThe term \"Islamic art and architecture\" denotes the works of art and architecture produced from the 7th century onwards by people who lived within the territory that was inhabited by culturally Islamic populations.\nAniconism.\nNo Islamic visual images or depictions of God are meant to exist because it is believed that such artistic depictions may lead to idolatry. Muslims describe God by the names and attributes that, according to Islam, he revealed to his creation. All but one sura of the Quran begins with the phrase \"In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful\". Images of Mohammed are likewise prohibited. Such aniconism and iconoclasm can also be found in Jewish and some Christian theology.\nArabesque.\nIslamic art frequently adopts the use of geometrical floral or vegetal designs in a repetition known as arabesque. Such designs are highly nonrepresentational, as Islam forbids representational depictions as found in pre-Islamic pagan religions. Despite this, there is a presence of depictional art in some Muslim societies, notably the miniature style made famous in Persia and under the Ottoman Empire which featured paintings of people and animals, and also depictions of Quranic stories and Islamic traditional narratives. Another reason why Islamic art is usually abstract is to symbolize the transcendence, indivisible and infinite nature of God, an objective achieved by arabesque. Islamic calligraphy is an omnipresent decoration in Islamic art, and is usually expressed in the form of Quranic verses. Two of the main scripts involved are the symbolic \"kufic\" and \"naskh\" scripts, which can be found adorning the walls and domes of mosques, the sides of minbars, and so on.\nDistinguishing motifs of Islamic architecture have always been ordered repetition, radiating structures, and rhythmic, metric patterns. In this respect, fractal geometry has been a key utility, especially for mosques and palaces. Other features employed as motifs include columns, piers and arches, organized and interwoven with alternating sequences of niches and colonnettes. The role of domes in Islamic architecture has been considerable. Its usage spans centuries, first appearing in 691 with the construction of the Dome of the Rock mosque, and recurring even up until the 17th century with the Taj Mahal. And as late as the 19th century, Islamic domes had been incorporated into European architecture.\nCalendar.\nTwo calendars are used all over the Muslim world. One is a lunar calendar that is most widely used among Muslims. The other one is a solar calendar officially used in Iran and Afghanistan.\nWomen.\nAccording to \"Riada Asimovic Akyol,\" while Muslim women's experiences differ a lot by location and personal situations such as family upbringing, class and education; the difference between culture and religions is often ignored by community and state leaders in many of the Muslim majority countries. The key issue in the Muslim world regarding gender issues is that religious texts constructed in highly patriarchal environments and based on biological essentialism are still valued highly in Islam, hence views emphasizing on men's superiority in unequal gender roles are widespread among many conservative Muslims (men and women). Orthodox Muslims often believe that rights and responsibilities of women in Islam are different from that of men and sacrosanct since assigned by the God. According to Asma Barlas, patriarchal behaviour among Muslims is based in an ideology which jumbles sexual and biological differences with gender dualisms and inequality. Modernist discourse of liberal progressive movements like Islamic feminism have been revisiting hermeneutics of feminism in Islam in terms of respect for Muslim women's lives and rights. \"Riada Asimovic Akyol\" further says that equality for Muslim women needs to be achieved through self-criticism.\nReferences.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["1130", "191429"], "permutation_1": ["191429", "1130"], "permutation_2": ["1130", "191429"], "permutation_3": ["191429", "1130"]}
{"id": "2hop__564042_36180", "docs_added": {"11978458": "Motulalo\nMotulalo is the largest islet of Nukufetau, Tuvalu. The traditional history of Nukufetau recalls that in order to protect the atoll from raiders from Tonga, Tauasa, an aliki (chief), was given Motulalo. Tauasa would pull up coconut trees and throw them at the raiders.\nDuring World War II the American forces built an airfield and a deepwater wharf on Motulalo. After the war the airfield was dismantled and the land returned to its owners. Beginning in October 2023, the airfield returns to use, with domestic flights to Funafuti International Airport.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11978458", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["11978458", "30227"], "permutation_2": ["11978458", "30227"], "permutation_3": ["30227", "11978458"]}
{"id": "2hop__129292_160863", "docs_added": {"52924": "East of England\nRegion of England\nThe East of England is one of nine official regions of England at the first level of ITL for statistical purposes. It consists of the ceremonial counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. The northern part of the region, consisting of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, is known as East Anglia. Unlike many other regions of England, it is considered an informal region so is often considered either part of either the Southern England or Midlands grouping or a separate area of land in its own right, equivalent to the latter.\nThe population of the East of England in 2022 was 6,398,497. Bedford, Luton, Basildon, Peterborough, Southend-on-Sea, Norwich, Ipswich, Colchester, Chelmsford and Cambridge are the most populous settlements. Peterborough is the largest city in the East of England at 215,000. The southern part of the region lies in the London commuter belt.\nGeography.\nThe East of England has the lowest elevation range in the UK. Twenty per cent of the region is below mean sea level, most of this in North Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and on the Essex Coast. Most of the remaining area is of low elevation, with extensive glacial deposits. The Fens, a large area of reclaimed marshland, are mostly in North Cambridgeshire. The Fens include the lowest point in the country in the village of Holme: 2.75 metres (9.0\u00a0ft) below mean sea level. This area formerly included the body of open water known as Whittlesey Mere. The highest point in the region is at Clipper Down at 817\u00a0ft (249 m) above mean sea level, in the far southwestern corner of the region in the Ivinghoe Hills.\nCommunities known as New Towns, responses to urban congestion and World War II destruction, appeared in Basildon and Harlow (Essex), as well as in Stevenage and Hemel Hempstead (Hertfordshire), in the 1950s and 1960s. In the late 1960s, the Roskill Commission considered Cublington in Buckinghamshire, Thurleigh in Bedfordshire, Nuthampstead in Hertfordshire and Foulness in Essex as locations for a possible third airport for London. A new airport was not built, but a former Royal Air Force base at Stansted, which had previously been converted to civilian use redeveloped and expanded in the following decades.\nHistorical use.\nThe East of England succeeded the standard statistical region East Anglia (which excluded Essex, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, then in the South East). The East of England civil defence region was identical to today's region.\nEast Anglia with Home Counties.\nEssex, despite meaning East-Saxons, previously formed part of South East England, along with Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, a mixture of definite and debatable Home counties. The earliest use of the term is from 1695. Charles Davenant, in \"An essay upon ways and means of supplying the war\", wrote, \"The Eleven Home Counties, which are thought in Land Taxes to pay more than their proportion...\" then cited a list including these four. The term does not appear to have been used in taxation since the 18th century.\nDespite The East Of England being an informal region, there are many theories of what grouping it falls into, with the most popular theories being that it falls into either the Southern England or Midlands grouping, with many parts of The East Of England falling into other definitions. Furthermore, due to The East Of England serving as the area of land between The Midlands and Southern England, there are many theories that several areas in The East Of England correspond to different groupings, the most popular belief being that there is an official divide between the northern side, East Anglia, and the southern side. This means the northern side, East Anglia, is considered the area of land within The East Of England that corresponds with The Midlands and the southern side is considered the area of land that corresponds with Southern England, backed by the idea that Hertfordshire and Essex are considered Home Counties. The latter counties can also be considered part of South East England for that reason. \nSome native Eastern English citizens believe The East Of England should be its own independent state. This also came into play during the Brexit debacle where many citizens wanted Eastern England to leave The United Kingdom and become a separate state respectively to avoid the European Union split. However, these plans never came into fruition. \nClimate.\nEast Anglia is one of the driest parts of the United Kingdom, with average rainfall ranging from . The area receives such low rainfall amounts because low pressure systems and weather fronts from the Atlantic lose a lot of moisture over land (and therefore are usually much weaker) by the time they reach Eastern England.\nWinter (mid-November \u2013 mid-March) is mostly cool, but non-prevailing cold easterly winds can affect the area from the continent. These can bring heavy snowfall if the winds interact with a low-pressure system over the Atlantic or France. Northerly winds also can be cold but are not usually as cold as easterly winds. Westerly winds bring milder and, typically, wetter weather. Southerly winds usually bring mild air (if from the Atlantic or North Africa) but chill if coming from further east than Spain.\nSpring (mid-March \u2013 May) is a transitional season that initially can be chilly but is usually warm by late-April/May. The weather at this time is often changeable (within each day) and occasionally showery.\nSummer (June \u2013 mid-September) is usually warm. Continental air from mainland Europe or the Azores High usually leads to at least a few weeks of hot, balmy weather with prolonged warm to hot temperatures. The number of summer storms from the Atlantic, such as the remnants of a tropical storm, usually coincides with the location of the jet stream. The East tends to receive much less rain than the other regions.\nAutumn (mid-September \u2013 mid-November) is usually mild with some days being very unsettled and rainy and others warm. At least part of September and early October in the East have warm and settled weather, but only in rare years is there an Indian summer where fine weather marks the entire traditional harvest season.\nDust devils were reported in Essex and Cambridgeshire on 17 August 2024, causing minor injuries and some disruption. These small whirlwinds, which form from the ground up, are less powerful than tornadoes. In Essex, they caused tents and gazebos to be lifted during a local event, resulting in minor injuries. Witnesses described the event as unexpected, noting that such phenomena are rare in the area.\nPolitics.\nElections.\nIn the 2015 general election there was an overall swing of 0.25% from the Conservatives to Labour and the Liberal Democrats lost 16% of its vote. All of Hertfordshire and Suffolk became Conservative. The region's electorate voted 49% Conservative, 22% Labour, 16% UKIP, 8% Liberal Democrat and 4% Green. Like other regions, the division of seats favours the dominant party in the region and the Conservatives had 52, Labour 4 (Cambridge, Luton South, Luton North and Norwich South), UKIP 1 (Clacton) and 1 Liberal Democrat (North Norfolk).\nIn the 2019 United Kingdom general election, the Conservatives gained Peterborough and Ipswich from Labour. They also gained North Norfolk from the Liberal Democrats but lost St Albans to Daisy Cooper.\nGovernance and regions.\nEast of England Plan.\nThe East of England Plan, a revision of the Regional Spatial Strategy for the East of England, was published on 12 May 2008. It was revoked on 3 January 2013.\nLocal government.\nThe official region consists of the following subdivisions:\nEurostat NUTS.\nIn the Eurostat Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS), the East of England was a level-1 NUTS region, coded \"UKH\", which was subdivided as follows:\nAfter the UK's departure from the EU, the UK NUTS regions were renamed as International Territorial Level regions in 2021.\nHistory.\nCivil War and the Protectorate.\nThe East of England was a major force and resource for Parliament and, in particular, in the form of the Eastern Association. Oliver Cromwell came from Huntingdon.\nSecond World War.\nNorfolk, Suffolk and Essex played host to the American VIII Bomber Command and Ninth Air Force. The Imperial War Museum at Duxford has an exhibition, commemorating their participation and sacrifice, near to the M11 south of Cambridge.\nStansted Airport was RAF Stansted Mountfitchet, home to the 344th Bombardment Group. The de Havilland Mosquito was mainly assembled at Hatfield and Leavesden, although much of the innovative wooden structure originated outside the region from the furniture industry of High Wycombe; the Mosquito entered service in 1942 with 105 Sqn at RAF Horsham St Faith. RAF Tempsford in Bedford is the airfield from where SOE secret agents for Europe took off, with 138 Sqn which parachuted agents and equipment and 161 Sqn which landed and retrieved agents. 19 Sqn at Duxford was the first to be equipped with the Spitfire on 4 August 1938.\nCold War.\nThe 81st Tactical Fighter Wing was at RAF Bentwaters from January 1952 and also at RAF Woodbridge; in the late 1980s some of the aircraft went to RAF Alconbury. Alconbury closed in 1992 and Bentwaters closed in 1993, with the American air forces being in the area for 42 years; the USAF aircraft subsequently moved to Spangdahlem Air Base in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.\nAt RAF Marham in west Norfolk, 214 Sqn with the Vickers Valiant developed the RAF's refuelling system; later the squadron would be equipped with the Handley Page Victor. Work on refuelling had also taken place at RAF Tarrant Rushton in Dorset.\nFrom the 1950s, RAF Wyton was an important reconnaissance base for the RAF, mainly 543 Sqn. The base is now home of the Defence Intelligence Fusion Centre, previously known as JARIC, or the Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre from 1956.\nOfficial region.\nThe East of England region was officially created in 1994 and was adopted for statistics purposes from 1999.\nHealthcare.\nNHS East of England, which was the strategic health authority for the area until the abolition of these areas in 2013, is on Capital Park, next to Fulbourn Tesco, Fulbourn Hospital, and the Cambridge-Ipswich railway, on the eastern edge of Cambridge. The East of England Ambulance Service is on Cambourne Business Park on Cambourne, of the A428 (the former A45) west of Cambridge. The East Anglian Air Ambulance operates from Cambridge Airport and Norwich Airport; Essex Air Ambulance operates from Boreham.\nEconomy.\nThe former electricity company for the area, Eastern Electricity, has the area's distribution now looked after by UK Power Networks at Fore Hamlet in Ipswich. UK Power Networks also looks after London and most of the South-East. Business Link in the East of England is near to the headquarters of Ocado in Hatfield, at the roundabout of the A1057 and the A1001 on the Bishops Square Business Park. The region's Manufacturing Advisory Service is at Melbourn in Cambridgeshire, off the A10 and north of Royston. UK Trade & Investment for the region is in Histon with its international trade team based next to Magdalene College.\nHertfordshire.\nThe Greater Watford area is home to British Waterways, Vinci (which bought Taylor Woodrow in 2008), the UK of the international firm Total Oil, retailers TK Maxx, Bathstore, Majestic Wine, Mothercare, Costco and Smiths Detection, Iveco, BrightHouse (at Abbots Langley), Leavesden Film Studios, Sanyo, Europcar, Olympus, Kenwood and Beko electronic goods manufacturers, Wetherspoons pub chains, the European HQ of the Hilton hotel group and Nestl\u00e9 Waters; in Garston is the UK headquarters of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, on the A412 and the Building Research Establishment. Comet was previously, and Camelot Group (owners of the National Lottery) currently is, on the A4145, are in Rickmansworth. Ferrero (maker of Nutella and Kinder Chocolate) is in Croxley Green. Renault and Skanska (construction) are in Maple Cross.\nBedfordshire.\nMoto Hospitality has its headquarters at Toddington in Bedfordshire (at the Toddington services).\nLuton is home to EasyJet,(based at the airport), Hain Celestial Group (which makes Linda McCartney Foods and is based on the B579 in Biscot), Eurolines (UK office), Thomson Holidays (based at Wigmore on the eastern edge of the town) and Chevrolet (at Griffin House, the Vauxhall head office). At the 85-acre Capability Green off the A1081 and junction 10a of the M1, is the Stonegate Pub Company (owner of Scream Pubs, Yates's, Slug and Lettuce and Hogshead), InBev UK (which bought most of Whitbread's beer brands), Chargemaster (electric vehicle network under the POLAR brand), AstraZeneca's UK Marketing Company division and Alexon Group (ladies clothing). Vauxhall produced its last Vauxhall Vectra in March 2002 at the plant near the A6/A505 roundabout, and now makes vans (Vivaro/Renault Trafic) at the former Bedford Vehicles plant, based in the north of the town at the GM Manufacturing Luton plant.\nEast Anglia.\nThe economy in Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk is traditionally mostly agricultural. Norfolk is the UK's biggest producer of potatoes. Nationally known companies include the RAC, Archant (publishing), Virgin Money and Aviva (formerly Norwich Union) in Norwich. In Carrow, to the east of the city, Colman's makes a wide range of mustards, and Britvic makes Robinsons squash, which was owned by Colman's until 1995. Across the River Yare near the A47/A146 junction in Trowse with Newton is May Gurney, the construction company. Bernard Matthews Farms has a large turkey farm on the former RAF Attlebridge in Weston Longville. Campbell Soup was made in Kings Lynn until 2008, and on the Hardwick Industrial Estate at the A47/A149 junction is PinguinLutosa the UK, which packs frozen vegetables, and Caithness Crystal.\nFoster Refrigerator is the UK's leading manufacturer of commercial refrigerators and blast chillers, owned by Illinois Tool Works, based on the industrial estate; with Multitone Electronics, which has a manufacturing plant there, and which invented the pager in 1956, for St Thomas' Hospital; and Snap-on Diagnostics makes diagnostic tools for garages. British Sugar's Wissington is the world's largest sugar beet factory in Methwold, on the B1160 near the River Wissey. Lotus Cars and Team Lotus are on the eastern edge of the former RAF Hethel, east of Wymondham (A11) at Hethel (Bracon Ash). Jeyes Group makes household chemicals in Thetford, off the A134; Multiyork makes furniture and Baxter Healthcare has a manufacturing plant in the south of the town. Aunt Bessie vegetable products (roast potatoes) are made by Heinz at Westwick, in a factory built by Ross Group.\nAround Cambridge on numerous science parks, are high technology (electronics and biochemistry) companies, such as ARM Holdings on Peterhouse Technology Park in the south-east of the town, Adder Technology (KVM switches) at Bar Hill at the A14/B1050 junction north of the town, Monsanto, Play.com on the Cambridge Business Centre. The Wellcome Trust Genome Campus has the European Bioinformatics Institute at Hinxton east of Duxford near the M11 spur for the A11. These form the so-called Silicon Fen. Marshall Aerospace is at Cambridge Airport on the A1303 in the east of the town, towards Teversham. South of the airport, Carl Zeiss NTS makes scanning electron microscopes in Cherry Hinton. Syngenta is to the east of Cambridge, on Capital Park at Fulbourn. Premier Foods has a large plant in Histon making Robertson's and Hartley's jam, Gale's honey, Smash instant potato, and Rose's marmalade. Addenbrooke's Hospital is a pioneering hospital in the UK, based at Cambridge Biomedical Campus.\nUniversities.\nThe most famous university in the region is the University of Cambridge. The university has been officially rated as the best in the world in 2010. It has the second-best medicine course in the world, and in 2010 became the only university outside of the US to raise over \u00a31 billion in charitable donations.\nThere are eight universities in the region. Cambridge hosts two universities: the University of Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin University. It is also the home of the Open University's East of England branch. Norwich also hosts two universities: the University of East Anglia and Norwich University of the Arts. There are also other towns and cities in the region which have universities including Bedford and Luton (University of Bedfordshire), Colchester (University of Essex) and Hatfield (University of Hertfordshire). Other higher education centres in the region include University Centre Peterborough, University of Suffolk and Writtle College.\nThe University of Cambridge receives almost three times as much funding as any other university in the region, due to its huge research grant\u2014the largest in England (and the UK). The next largest, by funding, is UEA in Norwich. The University of Essex and Cranfield University also have moderately large research grants, but no other universities in the region do. The largest university by student numbers is ARU, and the next biggest is Cambridge. The smallest is Essex.\nFor total income to universities, Cambridge receives around \u00a31 billion\u2014around six times larger than any other university in the region. The University of Bedfordshire receives the least income. Cambridge has the lowest drop-out (discontinuation) rate in the region. Once graduated, over 50% of students stay in the region, with 25% going to London and 10% going to the South East. Very few go elsewhere\u2014especially the North of England.\nSport.\nFootball.\nDuring the nineteenth century, several formulations of the laws of football, known as the Cambridge rules, were created by students at the University. One of these codes, dating from 1863, had a significant influence on the creation of the original laws of The Football Association.\nEast of England's top representatives in the English football league system today are Ipswich Town, Norwich City, Watford and Luton Town, who have competed in the top flight at various points. Alongside teams Peterborough United, and Cambridge United.\nLiterature.\nChildren's author Dodie Smith lived near the town of Sudbury in Suffolk, and part of her famous novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians which inspired the Disney animated film of the same name takes place in the town at St Peter's Church.\nMedia.\nTelevision.\nMuch of the region receives the BBC East and ITV Anglia television services, both based in Norwich (the BBC moving from All Saints' Green to The Forum in 2003, and Anglia remaining at its original base, Angia House.) These services broadcast from the Sandy Heath, Sudbury and Tacolneston transmitter groups. Some areas in close proximity to London, including Luton and south Essex, may receive their service from BBC London and ITV London; in addition, the Hemel Hempstead relay transmitter is a relay of the London services from Crystal Palace, bringing London television into parts of Hertfordshire. Northwestern parts of Norfolk including Kings Lynn receive a better TV signal from the Belmont transmitter that broadcast BBC East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire and ITV Calendar. Some editions of \"Look East\" and \"ITV News Anglia\" broadcast split news programming for the West (Home Counties) and East (East Anglia/Essex) of the region, with the West subregions broadcasting from Sandy Heath; the BBC's Western opt-outs are broadcast from studios in Cambridge, also the base of BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, whilst both versions of the ITV Anglia output have broadcast from Anglia House in Norwich since the split service was introduced in 1990.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "13986": "Hertfordshire\nCounty of England\nHertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is a ceremonial county in the East of England and one of the home counties. It borders Bedfordshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the north-east, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south and Buckinghamshire to the west. The largest settlement is Watford, and the county town is Hertford.\nThe county has an area of and had a population of 1,198,800 at the 2021 census. After Watford (131,325), the largest settlements are Hemel Hempstead (95,985), Stevenage (94,470) and the city of St Albans (75,540). For local government purposes Hertfordshire is a non-metropolitan county with ten districts beneath Hertfordshire County Council.\nElevations are higher in the north and west, reaching more than in the Chilterns near Tring. The county centres on the headwaters and upper valleys of the rivers Lea and the Colne; both flow south and each is accompanied by a canal. Hertfordshire's undeveloped land is mainly agricultural and much of the county is covered by the Metropolitan green belt.\nSince 1903, Letchworth has served as the prototype garden city while Stevenage became the first town to expand under post-war Britain's New Towns Act 1946 (9 & 10 Geo. 6. c. 68). Services have become the largest sector of the county's economy.\nHistory.\nThe county's landmarks span many centuries, ranging from the Six Hills in Stevenage built by local inhabitants during the Roman period, to Leavesden Film Studios. The volume of intact medieval and Tudor buildings surpasses London, in places in well-preserved conservation areas, especially in St Albans, which includes remains of the Roman town of Verulamium.\nIn 913, Hertfordshire was the area assigned to a fortress constructed at Hertford under the rule of Edward the Elder. Hertford is derived from the Anglo-Saxon \"heort ford,\" meaning deer crossing (of a watercourse). The name Hertfordshire is first recorded in the \"Anglo-Saxon Chronicle\" in 1011. Deer feature in many county emblems. Many of the names of the current settlements date back to the Anglo-Saxon period, with many featuring standard placename suffixes attributed to the Anglo-Saxons: \"ford\", \"ton\", \"den\", \"bourn\", \"ley\", \"stead\", \"ing\", \"lett\", \"wood\", and \"worth\", are represented in this county by Hertford, Royston, Harpenden, Redbourn, Cuffley, Wheathampstead, Tring, Radlett, Borehamwood and Rickmansworth.\nThere is evidence of human life in Hertfordshire from the Mesolithic period. It was first farmed during the Neolithic period and permanent habitation appeared at the beginning of the Bronze Age. This was followed by tribes settling in the area during the Iron Age.\nFollowing the Roman conquest of Britain in AD 43, the Catuvellauni tribe accepted peace and adapted to the Roman life; resulting in the development of several new towns, including Verulamium (St Albans) where in c.\u2009293 the first recorded British martyrdom is traditionally believed to have taken place. Saint Alban, a Romano-British soldier, took the place of a Christian priest and was beheaded on Holywell Hill. His martyr's cross of a yellow saltire on a blue field is reflected in the flag and coat of arms of Hertfordshire as the yellow field to the stag or Hart representing the county. He is the Patron Saint of Hertfordshire.\nWith the departure of the Roman Legions in the early 5th century, the now-unprotected territory was invaded and colonised by the Anglo-Saxons. By the 6th century, the majority of the modern county was part of the East Saxon kingdom. This relatively short-lived kingdom collapsed in the 9th century, ceding the territory of Hertfordshire to the control of the West Anglians of Mercia. The region finally became an English shire in the 10th century, on the merger of the West Saxon and Mercian kingdoms.\nIn the midst of the Norse invasions, Hertfordshire was on the front lines of much of the fighting. King Edward the Elder, in his reconquest of Norse-held lands in what was to become England, established a \"burh\" or fort in Hertford, which was to curb Norse activities in the area. His father, King Alfred the Great, established the River Lea as a boundary between his kingdom and that of the Norse lord Guthrum, with the north and eastern parts of the county being within the Danelaw. There is little evidence however of Norse placenames within this region, and many of the Anglo-Saxon features remained intact to this day. The county however suffered from renewed Norse raids in the late 10th to early 11th centuries, as armies led by Danish kings Swein Forkbeard and Cnut the Great harried the country as part of their attempts to undermine and overthrow English king Athelred the Unready.\nNorman invasion onwards.\nA century later, William of Normandy received the surrender of some senior English Lords and Clergy at Berkhamsted, before entering London unopposed and being crowned at Westminster. Hertfordshire was used for some of the new Norman castles at Bishop's Stortford, and at King's Langley, a staging post between London and the royal residence of Berkhamsted.\nThe Domesday Book recorded the county as having nine hundreds. Tring and Danais became one\u2014Dacorum\u2014from Danis Corum or Danish rule harking back to a Viking not Saxon past. The other seven were Braughing, Stevenage, Cashio, Buntingford, Hertford, Hitchin and Odsey.\nIn the later Plantagenet period, St. Albans Abbey was an initial drafting place of what was to become Magna Carta. And in the later Wars of the Roses, St. Albans was the scene of two major battles between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists.\nIn Tudor times, Hatfield House was often frequented by Queen Elizabeth I. Stuart King James I used the locale for hunting and facilitated the construction of a waterway, the New River, supplying drinking water to London.\nAs London grew, Hertfordshire became conveniently close to the English capital; much of the area was owned by the nobility and aristocracy, this patronage helped to boost the local economy. However, the greatest boost to Hertfordshire came during the Industrial Revolution, after which the population rose dramatically. In 1903, Letchworth became the world's first garden city and Stevenage became the first town to redevelop under the New Towns Act 1946 (9 & 10 Geo. 6. c. 68).\nThe first shooting-down of a zeppelin over Great Britain during WW1 happened in Cuffley.\nFrom the 1920s until the late 1980s, the town of Borehamwood was home to one of the major British film studio complexes, including the MGM-British Studios. Many well-known films were made here including the first three \"Star Wars\" movies (IV, V, & VI). The studios generally used the name of Elstree. American director Stanley Kubrick not only used to shoot in those studios but also lived in the area until his death. \"Big Brother UK\" and \"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?\" have been filmed there. \"EastEnders\" is filmed at Elstree. Hertfordshire has seen development at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden; the \"Harry Potter\" series was filmed here and the 1995 James Bond film \"GoldenEye\".\nOn 17 October 2000, the Hatfield rail crash killed four people with over 70 injured. The crash exposed the shortcomings of Railtrack, and resulted in speed restrictions and major track replacement. On 10 May 2002, seven people died in the fourth of the Potters Bar rail accidents; the train was travelling at high speed when it derailed and flipped into the air when one of the carriages slid along the platform where it came to rest.\nIn early December 2005, there were explosions at the Hertfordshire Oil Storage Terminal at Buncefield on the edge of Hemel Hempstead.\nGeography.\nHertfordshire is located in the south-eastern part of England and is the county immediately north of London. It is officially part of the East of England region, a mainly statistical unit. To the east is Essex, to the west is Buckinghamshire and to the north are Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. A significant minority of the population across all districts commute to Central London.\nThe county's boundaries were roughly fixed by the Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844 which eliminated exclaves; amended when, in 1965 under the London Government Act 1963, East Barnet Urban District and Barnet Urban District were abolished, their area was transferred to form part of the present-day London Borough of Barnet and the Potters Bar Urban District of Middlesex was transferred to Hertfordshire.\nThe highest point in the county is at (AOD) on the Ridgeway long distance national path, on the border of Hastoe near Tring with Drayton Beauchamp, Buckinghamshire.\nAt the 2011 census, among the county's ten districts, East Hertfordshire had the lowest population density (290 people per km2) and Watford the highest (4210 per km2). Compared with neighbouring Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire lacks large towns or cities on the scale of Luton or Milton Keynes, whose populations exceed 200,000, but its overall population (1.2 million in 2021) is greater than those of the two aforementioned counties.\nThe River Lea near Harpenden runs through Wheathampstead, Welwyn Garden City, Hertford, Ware, and Broxbourne before reaching Cheshunt and ultimately the River Thames. The far west of the county is the most hilly, with the Chiltern Hills surrounding Tring, Berkhamsted and the Ashridge estate. This Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty runs from near Hitchin in the north to Berkshire and Oxfordshire.\nMany of the county's major settlements are in the central, northern and southern areas, such as Watford, Hemel Hempstead, Kings Langley, Rickmansworth, St. Albans, Harpenden, Redbourn, Radlett, Borehamwood, Potters Bar, Stevenage, Hatfield, Welwyn and Welwyn Garden City, Hitchin, Letchworth and Baldock. These are all small to medium-sized locations, featuring a mix of post-WWII new towns and older/more historical locales. The City of St. Albans is an example of a historical settlement, as its cathedral and abbey date to the Norman period, and there are ruins from the Roman settlement of Verulamium nearby the current city centre. Stevenage is a mix of post-WWII new town planning amidst its prior incarnation as a smaller town. The Old Town in Stevenage represents this historic core and has many shops and buildings reflecting its pre-WWII heritage. Hitchin also has a historic centre, with many Tudor and Stuart era buildings interspersed amongst more contemporary structures.\nHertfordshire's eastern regions are predominantly rural and arable, intermixed with villages and small to medium-sized towns. Royston, Buntingford and Bishop's Stortford, along with Ware and the county town of Hertford are major settlements in this regard. The physical geography of eastern Hertfordshire is less elevated than the far west, but with lower rising hills and prominent rivers such as the Stort. This river rises in Essex and terminates via a confluence with the Lea near to Ware. \nApart from the Lea and Stort, the River Colne is the major watercourse in the county's west. This runs near Watford and Radlett, and has a complex system/drainage area running south into both Greater London and Buckinghamshire.\nAn unofficial status, the purple star-shaped flower with yellow stamens, the Pasqueflower is among endemic county flowers.\nGeology.\nThe rocks of Hertfordshire belong to the great shallow syncline known as the London Basin. The beds dip in a south-easterly direction towards the syncline's lowest point roughly under the River Thames. The most important formations are the Cretaceous Chalk, exposed as the high ground in the north and west of the county, forming the Chiltern Hills and the younger Palaeocene, Reading Beds and Eocene, London Clay which occupy the remaining southern part. The eastern half of the county was covered by glaciers during the Ice Age and has a superficial layer of glacial boulder clays.\nNatural resources and environment.\nMuch of the west \u2013 and much more in the east \u2013 have richly diverse countryside. These range from beech woods of the Chilterns, clayland buffer zone countryside of Braughing and the Hadhams across to ancient hornbeam coppices west of the upper Lea valley. The county has sweeping panoramas of chalklands near Royston, Baldock, Hexton and Tring.\nLarge parts of the county are used for agriculture.\nSome quarrying of sand and gravel occurs around St Albans. In the past, clay has supplied local brick-making and still does in Bovingdon, just south-west of Hemel Hempstead. The chalk that is the bedrock of much of the county provides an aquifer that feeds streams and is also exploited to provide water supplies for much of the county and beyond. Chalk has also been used as a building material and, once fired, the resultant lime was spread on agricultural land to improve fertility. The mining of chalk since the early 18th century has left unrecorded underground galleries that occasionally collapse unexpectedly and endanger buildings.\nFresh water is supplied to London from Ware, using the New River built by Hugh Myddleton and opened in 1613. Local rivers, although small, supported developing industries such as paper production at Nash Mills.\nHertfordshire affords habitat for a variety of flora and fauna. A bird once common in the shire is the hooded crow, the old name of which is the eponymous name of the regional newspaper, the \"Royston Crow\" published in Royston. A product, now largely defunct, was watercress, based in Hemel Hempstead and Berkhamsted supported by reliable, clean chalk rivers.\nEconomy.\nThis is a table of trends of regional gross value added of Hertfordshire at current basic prices with figures in millions of British Pounds Sterling.\nHertfordshire has the main operational and/or headquarters UK site of some very large employers. Clockwise from north:\nIn Stevenage (a subsidiary of: BAE Systems, Airbus and Finmeccanica) MBDA, develops missiles. In the same town, Airbus (Defence & Space Division) produces satellites.\nHatfield was where de Havilland developed the first commercial jet liner, the Comet. Now the site is a business park and new campus for the University of Hertfordshire. This major employment site notably hosts EE, Computacenter and Ocado groceries and other goods e-commerce.\nWelwyn Garden City hosts Tesco's UK base, hosts the UK Cereal Partners factory and in pharmaceuticals it hosts Roche UK's headquarters (subsidiary of the Swiss Hoffman-La Roche). GlaxoSmithKline has plants in Ware and Stevenage.\nHemel Hempstead has large premises of Dixons Carphone.\nThe National Pharmacy Association (NPA), the trade association for UK pharmacies, is based in St Albans.\nKings Langley has the plant-office of Pure, making DAB digital radios.\nWatford hosts national companies such as J D Wetherspoon, Camelot Group, Bathstore, and Caversham Finance (BrightHouse). It is also the UK base of multi-nationals Hilton Worldwide, TotalEnergies, TK Maxx, Costco, JJ Kavanagh and Sons, Vinci and Beko. The 2006 World Golf Championship and the 2013 Bilderberg Conference, took place at The Grove hotel. Warner Bros. owns and runs its main UK base since the 2000s, Warner Bros. Studios, in Leavesden, Watford.\nRickmansworth hosts Skanska.\nMedia.\nTelevision.\nMost of the county is served by BBC London & ITV London, however Stevenage and North Hertfordshire is served by BBC East & ITV Anglia. Some northwestern parts of the county around Tring can also receive BBC South and ITV Meridian.\nRadio.\nLocal radio for the county is provided by BBC Three Counties Radio, BBC Radio Cambridgeshire (covering Royston), Heart Hertfordshire, Greatest Hits Radio Bucks, Beds and Herts (formerly Mix 96), Mix 92.6 (formerly Radio Verulam St. Albans) and Community Radio Dacorum (Hemel Hempstead).\nNewspapers.\nLocal newspapers in the county are:\nSport.\nWatersports.\nWaltham Cross, Broxbourne, is the location of the Lee Valley White Water Centre, a purpose-built venue opened in 2010 for the 2012 Summer Olympics. The site consists of two white water courses; one 300m Grade IV \"Olympic\" run; and one 160m Grade III \"legacy\" run.\nDuring the games the center was the venue for the canoe and kayak slalom events.\nLee Valley has since hosted the ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships twice. First in 2015, and most recently in 2023, where Britain topped the medal table with 5 golds.\nFootball.\nAs of the 2024\u201325 season, there are four professional football teams in Hertfordshire: Watford, Stevenage, Arsenal WFC and Boreham Wood\nWatford have played their home games at Vicarage Road since 1922. The club joined the Football League in 1920 as a founding member of the Third Division and first played in the First Division of English football in 1982, finishing as runners-up to champions Liverpool. Watford was promoted to the Premier League at the end of the 2020\u20132021 season. After spending one season in the Premier League, they were relegated to the Championship again for the 2022\u20132023 season.\nStevenage F.C. was formed in 1976 as Stevenage Borough and have played at Broadhall Way since 1980. Stevenage was the first club to win a competitive match at the new Wembley Stadium, beating Kidderminster Harriers 3\u20132 in the 2007 FA Trophy Final. The club currently play in the EFL League One and have been managed by former player Alex Revell since February 2020.\nArsenal, whilst based at the Emirates Stadium in the London Borough of Islington, has long held a training ground in the county. Until 1999, it held the London Colney University of London facility, until it built a new purpose-built compound adjacent to it. Watford FC currently utilises the old Arsenal training area as its training facility.\nArsenal W.F.C. play at Meadow Park in Borehamwood. The club was formed in 1987 and have played in the FA Women's Super League since its inaugural season in 2011.\nHertfordshire has many semi-professional and amateur clubs. The highest placed are Boreham Wood, Hemel Hempstead Town and St Albans City, who all play in the National League South, the sixth tier of English football.\nRugby.\nRugby league.\nHemel Stags are a rugby league team based in Hemel Hempstead. Hemel Stags have played at Pennine Way Stadium since the club's founding in 1981. Until 2018, the club played in league 1, the of the British rugby league system, and now compete in the Conference League South.\nRugby union.\nThe Hertfordshire Rugby Football Union is the governing body for rugby union in Hertfordshire and is responsible for any interested parties involved in rugby.\nTring Rugby play matches at Cow Lane, Tring. The first XV currently play in the Regional 1 South East, League. A league.\nGAA.\nGaelic Football is played within Hertfordshire, with clubs from Oxfordshire all the way to Cambridge playing in the Hertfordshire League and Championship. Eire \u00d3g, Oxford are the 2022 County Champions. Hurling is played by an amalgamated team, St Declan's CLG, with players contributed from all football teams across Hertfordshire. St Declan's currently play in the Warwickshire League and Championship, having previously played in the London GAA championship. A number of St Declan's players have also played for the Warwickshire Senior Hurling team, playing in the Lory Meagher and Nicky Rackard competitions, including Patrick Lancaster, Eamon Doherty, Alan Hayes, and Alex Hanley.\nLandmarks.\nBelow is a list of notable visitor attractions in Hertfordshire:\nTransport.\nHertfordshire is a home county with many towns forming part of the London commuter belt and has some of the principal roads in England including the A1, A1(M), A41, A414, M1, M11, and the M25.\nFour principal national railway lines pass through the county:\nA number of other local rail routes also cross Hertfordshire:\nThree commuter lines operated by Transport for London enter the county:\nThe distance travelled by buses in Hertfordshire has reduced by 56.5% since 2017.\nStansted Airport and Luton Airport are both within of the county's borders in Essex and Bedfordshire, respectively. The commercial airfield at Elstree is for light aircraft.\nThe Grand Union Canal passes through Rickmansworth, Watford, Hemel Hempstead, Berkhamsted and Tring.\nEducation.\nHertfordshire has 26 independent schools and 73 state secondary schools.\nThe state secondary schools are entirely comprehensive, although 7 schools in the south and southwest of the county are partially selective (see Education in Watford).\nAll state schools have sixth forms, and there are no sixth form colleges.\nThe tertiary colleges, each with multiple campuses, are Hertford Regional College, North Hertfordshire College, Oaklands College and West Herts College.\nThe University of Hertfordshire is a modern university based largely in Hatfield. It has more than 23,000 students.\nLiterature.\nHertfordshire is the location of Jack Worthing's country house in Oscar Wilde's play \"The Importance of Being Earnest\".\nJane Austen's novel \"Pride and Prejudice\" is primarily set in Hertfordshire.\nThe location of Mr Jarndyce's Bleak House in Charles Dickens's \"Bleak House\" is near St Albans.\nThe eponymous residence in E. M. Forster's novel \"Howards End\" was based on Rooks Nest House just outside Stevenage.\nGeorge Orwell based \"Animal Farm\" on Wallington, Hertfordshire, where he lived between 1936 and 1940. Manor Farm and The Great Barn both feature in the novel.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["13986", "52924"], "permutation_1": ["52924", "13986"], "permutation_2": ["13986", "52924"], "permutation_3": ["13986", "52924"]}
{"id": "2hop__427142_36180", "docs_added": {"30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "11977826": "Tengako\nTengako is a peninsula at the north end of Fongafale islet of Funafuti, Tuvalu. At the end of the peninsula is Amatuku islet on which the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute is located. Further past that is Mulitefala.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11977826", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["11977826", "30227"], "permutation_2": ["30227", "11977826"], "permutation_3": ["30227", "11977826"]}
{"id": "2hop__278107_159106", "docs_added": {"991308": "Sarikei\nSarikei is a town, and the capital of Sarikei District in Sarikei Division, Sarawak, Malaysia. It is located on the Rajang River, near where the river empties into the South China Sea. The district population (year 2010 census) was 56,798.\nThe most distinctive feature of the bustling waterfront is a 3.6-m-high pineapple statue and also the tallest building in Sarikei - Wisma Jubli Mutiara.\nThe town itself consists of a main road, Repok Road which is bisected by another road leading to the new development in Kampung Seberang which is known as Susur Jambu.\nEtymology.\nThere are many theories regarding the origin of the name of Sarikei. Once upon a time, Sarikei was the centre for buying and selling chickens and hence it was called \"Sa-rie-kei\" (\"Sa-rie\" in most Chinese dialects means \"centre\" and \"kei\" means \"street\"). Later the spelling was changed to Sarikei. Another explanation is that it comes from the name of a settlement named \"Sa-ley\" (\u6c99\u5398) along Rajang River which later had a bazaar called \"Ba-sha\" (\u5df4\u5239). The Cantonese people living there called the bazaar as \"Jie-shi\" or \"Shi-jie\" (\u8857\u5e02 or \u5e02\u8857); and going to bazaar is known as \"Li-jie\" (\u91cc\u8857). Thus when \u6c99\u91cc\u8857 (Sa-li-jie) is romanised to English, it became \"Sarikei\". Another theory stated that there was a stall selling red wood tile (\u7ea2\u67f4\u74e6) in the bazaar where the Cantonese people also called \"Sa-ley\" (\u6c99\u5398), giving rise to the name of \"Sarikei\". For the indigenous people living there, Sarikei is known as \"Siriki\". Another theory was that Sarikei\" was named after a beautiful woman named \"Sareke\" who was married to the son (named \"Bujang\") of a headman (named \"Sigalang\") of the Sigalang community which existed since 300 years ago.\nHistory.\nThe town Sarikei already existed prior to the rule of Brooke when it was part of the Bruneian Empire. The Sigalang community is known to be the first community to exist in the Sarikei area 300 years ago which was located between Sarikei and Nyelong rivers where both rivers drained into the Rajang river. They were known to be skillful farmers, hunters, and house builders. The Sigalang community was named of its headman who was fair and just and took great care of the community. In the 1840s, the trade at Rajang River was controlled by Malays at Sarikei. Among the most powerful Malays was Datuk Patinggi Abdul Rahman. Among the popular items being traded at Sarikei was rice, beeswax, jungle produce, fine clothes and dried fish. Rajah James Brooke first visited Sarikei on 30 April 1845 in his steamer H.E.I.C.S. Phlegethon. In 1846, James Brooke wanted Abdul Rahman to control the piracy of the Iban people but Abdul Rahman failed to contain the Ibans. Rentap, an Iban freedom fighter against the Brookes from 1849 to 1861, was buried in the present day Bukit Sibau, Pakan District of the Sarikei Division. Syarif Masahor with his ally (the Iban people) attacked Abdul Rahman. He gained control of Sarikei from 1849. In 1851, (A.H.1267) Omar Ali Saifuddin II granted James Brooke the rights to control the Rajang River and its surrounding settlements. On 4 January 1856, Sarikei was burnt by Dayaks from Julau. In the same month, James Brooke set up a fort in Sarikei to suppress any piracy activities by the upriver Iban people. The fort was built for Brooke allies led by Abang Ali and Abang Asop. This has angered Syarif Masahor. Syarif responded by building a bigger military force. This led the Brookes to reinstate Syarif as the leader of Sarikei in September 1857 in exchange for Brooke's control of Mukah. On 19 June 1856, Sir Charles Brooke led an expedition to Julau in order to counter the native resistance in Julau. The fort at Sarikei was burnt by Charles Johnson Brooke's forces five years after 1856 when they tried to capture Syarif Masahor, Syarif's rule ended in 1861. The administration of Sarikei was later taken over by the Brookes.\nHoklo people and the Cantonese people were the first ones to arrive in Sarikei in 1864. They built Attap dwellings and live alongside the Malays near the riverside. The Chinese rear chickens and planted vegetables. Later the Chinese used timber to build shophouses and started to do grocery businesses. After that, their businesses expanded to include trading with Singapore companies. The number of shophouses grew from four to six shops in 1905. In 1907, Fuzhounese migrants arrived Sarikei. As the population and the shophouses near the riverside increased, with several old shophouses tilting towards the riverside; the Brooke government ordered all the shophouses to migrate inland (now Repok road, also known as \"backstreet\") for safety purposes. The road near the river is known as \"frontstreet\". Most of the shophouses were family owned. River was the main mode of transport for Sarikei. Sarikei was connected to Singapore through a steamship that came once a month. As the shipping frequencies increased, warehouses and wharf was built. In 1923, the Chinese in Sarikei constructed the first part of Sarikei-Durin road. In 1932, all the wooden shophouses in Sarikei were rebuilt using concrete. Chinese schools started to increase from the same year. In 1941, Japanese troops occupied Sarawak. However, the Japanese did not take over the local government in Sibu. This created a power vacuum in the central region of Sarawak. This has caused chaos in Sarikei. The people in Sarikei had to form their own protection squad to deter piracy activities from the upriver Dayaks. Three months later, the Japanese formally installed a provincial governor at Sibu. Peace was restored but life became harder due to stagnated economic activities. By 1943, Sarikei had 40 concrete shops. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, Sarawak was liberated and became British crown colony. In 1952, Cathay cinema was opened.\nInitially, the Chinese were involved in land disputes with the local indigenous people. However, with Rajah intervention, boundaries between Chinese and indigenous people lands were drawn and both sides agreed to settle down in their own lands. In 1949, black pepper prices started to rise. Residents of Sarikei planted a large number of black pepper plantations. In 1950, the price of rubber rose due to the Korean War. This had caused a booming rubber plantation in Sarikei. Sarikei Chinese Chamber of Commerce was established in 1932 in order to protect Chinese commercial interests. In 1954, the Sarawak colonial government presented a 1955 budget deficit. In order to increase income, the colonial government decided to increase the price of business permit tax. In December 1954, the legislation to increase business permit tax was approved in the Council Negri (now Sarawak State Legislative Assembly). This has caused the permit tax to increase from 500% to 900%. Sarikei Chinese chamber of Commerce decided to organise a strike for ten days in protest of increased taxes. The third division (today Sibu Division) Resident came to persuade the Chinese in Sarikei to stop the strike but to no avail. The strike proceed from 1 January 1955 to 10 January 1955. This strike received full support from Chinese merchants from Kuching, Sibu, Bintangor, and Selangau. Chinese merchants from Kapit strike for eight days while Miri, Bintulu, Mukah, and Saratok strike for three days. However, the strike failed to stop the business permit tax; and the taxation continues after the formation of Malaysia and is listed under the jurisdiction of Sarawak state government.\nIn the 1950s, Sarikei was a district under the jurisdiction of Sibu Division. In 1973, Sarikei was upgraded into the sixth division of Sarawak, covering 6,969\u00a0km2, consisting of Sarikei, Meradong, Julau, Matu, Daro, Balawai, and Pakan districts with a population of 151,300 people. The creation of Sarikei Division was to more effectively counter the communist insurgency in Sarawak. In 2002, the Sarawak government separated Matu, Daro, and Tanjung Manis districts from Sarikei to be incorporated into the newly created Mukah Division, thus leaving Sarikei Division with only Sarikei, Pakan, Meradong, and Julau districts, covering 4,857\u00a0km2 with a population of 117,837 people.\nGovernment.\nSarikei District Council was set up in January 1955. The council was tasked to administer the Sarikei district, public health, local sanitary system, public works, and fire rescue. Sarikei is also within the Tanjong Manis (Kampung Seberang area) constituencies.\nGeography.\nSarikei is located within the Rejang river basin beside the Rajang river, there is also Repok river (also known as Sarikei river) and Nyelong river located near the town.\nClimate.\nSarikei has a tropical rainforest climate (Af) with heavy to very heavy rainfall year-round.\nDemographics.\nThe total population for Sarikei District is 56,228 as of year 2010. Major ethnic groups in Sarikei District are: Chinese, Iban, and Malay.\nChristianity first set foot in Sarikei in the early 1900s with the establishment of churches and missionary schools.\nBesides that, the town has a fairly large population of Christians. The majority of the Christians belong to the Methodist denomination which has about four churches in the town area and surrounding residential areas. The Roman Catholic parish of St Anthony's in Sarikei has its church along Repok Road. The mission also runs two schools, St. Anthony's Secondary School and St. Anne's Primary School as well as a kindergarten, St. Clement's. Other Christian churches include the Anglican Church centre in the Nyelong Park Housing Estate as well as the SIB (Borneo Evangelical Church). In 1999, a new church was built at Jalan Kwong Ming named the Sarawak Full Gospel Church (Sarikei Branch).\nThere was an old mosque in Sarikei which served the Muslim population from 1984 to 1983. A new mosque named Al-Muttaqin mosque was built in 1983 to replace the old mosque.\nSarikei Buddhist Orthodox Association is also located in the town.\nEconomy.\nRubber and black pepper were the major agricultural products from Sarikei before the second world war. After the war, most of the Chinese shift their focus to black pepper cultivation. After the war, there was 12,000 acres of rubber plantations and 15,5000 acres of black pepper plantations. Before the war, monthly production of rubber was less than 3,000 picul and black pepper production was between 6,000 and 7,000 picul per year. After the war, the rate of black pepper production increased to more than 10,000 picul per year. Other businesses such as rice mills, rubber dyeing, grocery shops, exports, groceries, and drapery can also be found in the 1950s.\nToday, Sarikei is known for its sweet and juicy pineapple production. Thus, Sarikei is also known as \"pineapple town\". Sarikei has also become the main supplier of fruit, vegetables for Sarawak. Thus, the town is also nicknamed as the \"food basket\" of Sarawak. In the 1980s to 1990s, as the black pepper price increased to RM 1000 per 100\u00a0kg, more black pepper plantations were opened in Sarikei. As of 2010, the black pepper production in Sarikei accounted for two-thirds of tohe ttal black pepper production in Sarawak.\nThere is one light industrial estate in Sarikei that caters food processing, ceramic art, and handicrafts.\nTransport.\nLand.\nAs the road connectivity improved, the time taken from Sibu to Sarikei reduced from two hours to one hour. The time taken to reach Bintangor from Sarikei also reduced from 45 minutes to 20 minutes. Bus transportation flourished since then.\nlocal bus.\nSarikei has two bus stations. The short-distance bus terminal is located near the Sarikei Express Wharf Terminal while the long-distance bus terminal located 1\u00a0km from town centre (started to operate since year 2002). The short-distance bus terminal is for the short-distance travel within Sarikei town, and to Sibu and Bintangor. For long-distance bus terminal, it serves as the main hub for express buses to further destinations in Sarawak such as Kuching, Sri Aman, Sibu, Bintulu and Miri through the Pan Borneo Highway.\nGrab started to offer services in Sarikei since May 2018.\nWater.\nIn the 1970s, as the road connections was not advanced, water was the major form of transport from Sarikei to other towns near the Rajang river. Sarikei is located between Sibu and Kuching. Therefore, Sarikei become the relaystation between the two places. As the road condition improved over the years especially in the 1990s, water transport in Sarikei become less favourable.\nThere is one express boat terminal in Sarikei that provides water transport to Kuching.\nFacilities.\nEducation.\nSeveral Chinese primary schools were set up before the Japanese occupation. Amongst them were: Su Kwon primary school (1920), Su Hua primary school (1926), and Kwang Chien primary school (1927). St Anthony school was set up by Catholic missionaries in 1936. Secondary schools offer the highest level of education is Sarikei. Among these is Sarikei Hwa Chiew secondary school which was established in 1938. In 1970, upon request by Malaysian Ministry of Education, the name was changed to SMK Tinggi Sarikei. Established in 1967, Ming Lik secondary school is the only Chinese independent high school in Sarikei. Other secondary schools include: SMK Sarikei Baru and SMK Bandar Sarikei. The Sarikei Community College offers certificate courses on culinary and computer systems and support.\nHealthcare.\nThe first hospital in Sarikei was built in 1962 at Repok road, which can accommodate only 40 beds. Labour and delivery ward was constructed only in 1974, followed by increasing the number of hospital beds to 104 in 1982. In 2006, a new hospital was constructed at Rentap road, costing RM250 million. It has 212 beds, an operating theatre, and specialist clinics, covering a total of 30 hectares. There is also Sarikei public health clinic located inside the town and Jakar community clinic located 12\u00a0km away from the town.\nLibrary.\nSarikei public library was opened to the public on 1 August 2003.\nCulture and leisure.\nAttractions and recreational spots.\nCultural.\nSarikei pineapple festival is held annually since 2003. Besides showcasing various agricultural products, there are trade shows, dance performances, and live performances by singers.\nHistorical.\nSarikei clock tower was officiated in 1974.\nLeisure and conservation areas.\nKing George VI square was established in 1953 as a recreational spot for Sarikei people. Sarikei civic centre was later built near the square in 1987. Sarikei Civic Centre has been hosting gatherings and events since 1988. There is a Sarikei jetty where the visitors can watch speedboats, ferries, and longboats at the dock.\nSarikei Lake Garden was opened to public since 1995. The park includes a fish pond, fountains, pedestrian walkways, and children playground. The Sebangkoi forest park is located at 23\u00a0km away from town. Sebangkoi Deer Farm is located opposite to the forest park. Rumah Nyuka Longhouse was built in 1955. It is located at 17\u00a0km away from Bayong junction (Betong-Sarikei highway). Visitors can tap rubber in the morning, collect fruits, jungle trekking, and swimming in two nearby waterfalls.\nShopping.\nThere is a wet market in Sarikei selling fruits, vegetables, and other local produce.\nCuisine.\nThe more famous local cuisine include:\nMedia.\nSarikei has been featured in several local and international TV pragrammes.\nDocumentaries\nDramas\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3607937": "Malaysia\nCountry in Southeast Asia\nMalaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. A federal constitutional monarchy, it consists of 13 states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions: Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo's East Malaysia. Peninsular Malaysia shares a land and maritime border with Thailand and maritime borders with Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia. East Malaysia shares land borders with Brunei and Indonesia, as well as a maritime border with the Philippines and Vietnam. Kuala Lumpur is the national capital, the country's largest city, and the seat of the legislative branch of the federal government.\nPutrajaya is the federal administrative capital, which represents the seat of both the executive branch (the Cabinet, federal ministries, and federal agencies) and the judicial branch of the federal government. With a population of over 34 million, the country is the world's 42nd-most populous country. Malaysia is tropical and is one of 17 megadiverse countries; it is home to numerous endemic species. Tanjung Piai in the Malaysian state of Johor is the southernmost point of continental Eurasia.\nThe country has its origins in the Malay kingdoms, which, from the 18th century on, became subject to the British Empire, along with the British Straits Settlements protectorate. During World War II, British Malaya, along with other nearby British and American colonies, was occupied by the Empire of Japan. Following three years of occupation, Peninsular Malaysia was briefly unified as the Malayan Union in 1946 until 1948 when it was restructured as the Federation of Malaya. The country achieved independence on 31 August 1957. On 16 September 1963, independent Malaya united with the then British crown colonies of North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore to become Malaysia. In August 1965, Singapore was expelled from the federation and became a separate, independent country.\nThe country is multiethnic and multicultural, which has a significant effect on its politics. About half the population is ethnically Malay, with minorities of Chinese, Indians, and indigenous peoples. The official language is Malaysian Malay, a standard form of the Malay language. English remains an active second language. It is also home to 111 living indigenous languages. While recognising Islam as the official religion, the constitution grants freedom of religion to non-Muslims. The government is modelled on the Westminster parliamentary system, and the legal system is based on common law. The head of state is an elected monarch, chosen from among the nine state sultans every five years. The head of government is the prime minister.\nThe country's economy has traditionally been driven by its natural resources but is expanding into commerce, tourism, and medical tourism. The country has a newly industrialised market economy, which is relatively open and state-oriented. The country is a founding member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the East Asia Summit (EAS), and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and a member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the Commonwealth, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).\nEtymology.\nThe name \"Malaysia\" is a combination of the word \"Malays\" and the Latin-Greek suffix \"-ia\"/-\u03af\u03b1 which can be translated as 'land of the Malays'. Similar-sounding variants have also appeared in accounts older than the 11th century, as toponyms for areas in Sumatra or referring to a larger region around the Strait of Malacca. The Sanskrit text \"Vayu Purana\", thought to have been in existence since the first millennium CE, mentioned a land named 'Malayadvipa' which was identified by certain scholars as the modern Malay Peninsula. Other notable accounts are by Ptolemy's 2nd-century \"Geographia\" that used the name \"Malayu Kulon\" for the west coast of Golden Chersonese, and the 7th-century Yijing's account of \"Malayu\".\nAt some point, the Melayu Kingdom took its name from the \"Sungai Melayu\". \"Melayu\" then became associated with Srivijaya, and remained associated with various parts of Sumatra, especially Palembang, where the founder of the Malacca Sultanate is thought to have come from. It is only thought to have developed into an ethnonym as Malacca became a regional power in the 15th century. Islamisation established an ethnoreligious identity in Malacca, with the term \"Melayu\" beginning to appear as interchangeable with \"Melakans\". It may have specifically referred to local Malay speakers who were loyal to the Malaccan Sultan. The initial Portuguese use of reflected this, referring only to the ruling people of Malacca. The prominence of traders from Malacca led \"Melayu\" to be associated with Muslim traders, and from there became associated with the wider cultural and linguistic group. Malacca and later Johor claimed they were the centre of Malay culture, a position supported by the British which led to the term \"Malay\" becoming more usually linked to the Malay peninsula rather than Sumatra.\nBefore the onset of European colonisation, the Malay Peninsula was known natively as \"Tanah Melayu\" ('Malay Land'). Under a racial classification created by a German scholar Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, the natives of maritime Southeast Asia were grouped into a single category, the Malay race. Following the expedition of French navigator Jules Dumont d'Urville to Oceania in 1826, he later proposed the terms of \"Malaysia\", \"Micronesia\" and \"Melanesia\" to the \"Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 de G\u00e9ographie\" in 1831, distinguishing these Pacific cultures and island groups from the existing term \"Polynesia\". Dumont d'Urville described Malaysia as \"an area commonly known as the East Indies\". In 1850, the English ethnologist George Samuel Windsor Earl, writing in the \"Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia\", proposed naming the islands of Southeast Asia as \"Melayunesia\" or \"Indunesia\", favouring the former. The name Malaysia gained some use to label what is now the Malay Archipelago. In modern terminology, \"Malay\" remains the name of an ethnoreligious group of Austronesian people predominantly inhabiting the Malay Peninsula and portions of the adjacent islands of Southeast Asia, including the east coast of Sumatra, the coast of Borneo, and smaller islands that lie between these areas.\nThe state that gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1957 took the name \"the Federation of Malaya\", chosen in preference to other potential names such as \"Malaysia\" and \"Langkasuka\", after the historic kingdom located at the upper section of the Malay Peninsula in the first millennium CE. Nonetheless, the name \"Malaysia\" was adopted in 1963 when the existing states of the Federation of Malaya, plus Singapore, North Borneo and Sarawak formed a new federation. One theory posits the name was chosen so that \"si\" represented the inclusion of Singapore, North Borneo, and Sarawak to Malaya in 1963. Politicians in the Philippines contemplated renaming their state Malaysia before the modern country took the name.\nHistory.\nEvidence of modern human habitation in Malaysia dates back 40,000\u00a0years. In the Malay Peninsula, the first inhabitants are thought to be Negritos. Areas of Malaysia participated in the Maritime Jade Road between 2000 BC to 1000 AD. Traders and settlers from India and China arrived as early as the first century AD, establishing trading ports and coastal towns in the second and third centuries. Their presence resulted in strong Indian and Chinese influences on the local cultures, and the people of the Malay Peninsula adopted the religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. Sanskrit inscriptions appear as early as the fourth or fifth century. The Kingdom of Langkasuka arose around the second century in the northern area of the Malay Peninsula, lasting until about the 15th century. Between the 7th and 13th centuries, much of the southern Malay Peninsula was part of the maritime Srivijayan empire. By the 13th and the 14th century, the Majapahit empire had successfully wrested control over most of the peninsula and the Malay Archipelago from Srivijaya. In the early 15th century, Parameswara, a runaway king of the former Kingdom of Singapura linked to the old Srivijayan court, founded the Malacca Sultanate. The spread of Islam increased following Parameswara's conversion to that religion. Malacca was an important commercial centre during this time, attracting trade from around the region.\nIn 1511, Malacca was conquered by Portugal, after which it was taken by the Dutch in 1641. In 1786, the British Empire established a presence in Malaya, when the Sultan of Kedah leased Penang Island to the British East India Company. The British obtained the town of Singapore in 1819, and in 1824 took control of Malacca following the Anglo-Dutch Treaty. By 1826, the British directly controlled Penang, Malacca, Singapore, and the island of Labuan, which they established as the crown colony of the Straits Settlements. By the 20th century, the states of Pahang, Selangor, Perak, and Negeri Sembilan, known together as the Federated Malay States, had British residents appointed to advise the Malay rulers, to whom the rulers were bound to defer by treaty. The remaining five states on the peninsula, known as the Unfederated Malay States, while not directly under British rule, also accepted British advisers around the turn of the 20th century. Development on the peninsula and Borneo were generally separate until the 19th century. Under British rule the immigration of Chinese and Indians to serve as labourers was encouraged. The area that is now Sabah came under British control as North Borneo when both the Sultan of Brunei and the Sultan of Sulu transferred their respective territorial rights of ownership, between 1877 and 1878. In 1842, Sarawak was ceded by the Sultan of Brunei to James Brooke, whose successors ruled as the White Rajahs over an independent kingdom until 1946, when it became a crown colony.\nIn the Second World War, the Japanese Army invaded and occupied Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore for over three years. During this time, ethnic tensions were raised and nationalism grew. Popular support for independence increased after Malaya was reconquered by Allied forces. Post-war British plans to unite the administration of Malaya under a single crown colony called the Malayan Union met with strong opposition from the Malays, who opposed the weakening of the Malay rulers and the granting of citizenship to the ethnic Chinese. The Malayan Union, established in 1946, and consisting of all the British possessions in the Malay Peninsula except for Singapore, was quickly dissolved and replaced on 1 February 1948 by the Federation of Malaya, which restored the autonomy of the rulers of the Malay states under British protection.\nDuring this time, the mostly ethnically Chinese rebels under the leadership of the Malayan Communist Party launched guerrilla operations designed to force the British out of Malaya. The Malayan Emergency (1948\u20131960) involved a long anti-insurgency campaign by Commonwealth troops in Malaya. On 31 August 1957, Malaya became an independent member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Subsequently, a comprehensive plan was devised to unite Malaya with the crown colonies of North Borneo (known as Sabah upon joining), Sarawak, and Singapore. The envisioned federation was originally intended to take place on 31 August 1963, to coincide with the commemoration of Malayan independence. However, due to the necessity of conducting a survey on the level of support for the federation in Sabah and Sarawak by the United Nations, as requested by opponents of the federation such as Indonesia's Sukarno and the Sarawak United Peoples' Party, the date of the federation was postponed until 16 September 1963.\nThe federation brought heightened tensions including a conflict with Indonesia as well as continual conflicts against the Communists in Borneo and the Malay Peninsula, which escalated to the Sarawak Communist Insurgency and Second Malayan Emergency together with several other issues such as the cross-border attacks into Sabah by Moro pirates from the southern islands of the Philippines, Singapore being expelled from the Federation in 1965, and racial strife. This strife culminated in the 13 May race riots in 1969. After the riots, the controversial New Economic Policy was launched by Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak, trying to increase the share of the economy held by the \"bumiputera\". Under Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad there was a period of rapid economic growth and urbanization beginning in the 1980s. The economy shifted from being agriculturally based to one based on manufacturing and industry. Numerous mega-projects were completed, such as the Petronas Towers, the North\u2013South Expressway, the Multimedia Super Corridor, and the new federal administrative capital of Putrajaya.\nIn the late 1990s, the Asian financial crisis impacted the country, nearly causing their currency, stock, and property markets to crash; however, they later recovered. The 1MDB scandal was a major global corruption scandal that implicated then-Prime Minister Najib Razak in 2015. The scandal contributed to the first change in the ruling political party since independence in the 2018 general election. In the 2020s, the country was gripped by a political crisis that coincided with health and economic crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This was then followed by an earlier general election in November 2022, which resulted in the first hung parliament in the nation's history. On 24 November 2022, Anwar Ibrahim was sworn in as the 10th Prime Minister of Malaysia, leading a grand coalition government.\nGovernment and politics.\nMalaysia is a federal constitutional elective monarchy and the only federal country in Southeast Asia. The system of government is closely modelled on the Westminster parliamentary system, a legacy of British rule. The head of state is the King, whose official title is the Yang\u00a0di-Pertuan\u00a0Agong. The King is elected to a five-year term by and from among the nine hereditary rulers of the Malay states. The other four states, which have titular Governors, do not participate in the selection. By informal agreement the position is rotated among the nine, and has been held by Ibrahim Iskandar of Johor since 31 January 2024. The King's role has been largely ceremonial since changes to the constitution in 1994, picking ministers and members of the upper house.\nLegislative power is divided between federal and state legislatures. The bicameral federal parliament consists of the lower house, the House of Representatives and the upper house, the Senate. The 222-member House of Representatives is elected for a maximum term of five years from single-member constituencies. All 70 senators sit for three-year terms; 26 are elected by the 13 state assemblies, and the remaining 44 are appointed by the King upon the Prime Minister's recommendation. The parliament follows a multi-party system and the government is elected through a first-past-the-post system. Parliamentary elections are held at least once every five years. Before 2018, only registered voters aged 21 and above could vote for the members of the House of Representatives and, in most of the states, for the state legislative chamber. Voting is not mandatory. In July 2019, a bill to lower the voting age to 18 years old was officially passed.\nExecutive power is vested in the Cabinet, led by the Prime Minister. The prime minister must be a member of the House of Representatives, who in the opinion of His Majesty the King, commands the support of a majority of members. The Cabinet is chosen from members of both houses of Parliament. The Prime Minister is both the head of cabinet and the head of government. As a result of the 2018 general election Malaysia was governed by the Pakatan Harapan (PH) political alliance, although Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad resigned amid a political crisis in 2020. In March 2020, the Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition formed under Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, before Muhyiddin lost majority support and was replaced by deputy Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob, a veteran politician from the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), in August 2021. As a result of the 2022 Malaysian general election, a hung parliament was elected. Anwar Ibrahim of the PH coalition was appointed as the new Prime Minister to lead the coalition government of PH, Barisan Nasional, Gabungan Parti Sarawak, Gabungan Rakyat Sabah and several other political parties and independents. Meanwhile, PN, the only political coalition not in the coalition government became the Opposition.\nMalaysia's legal system is based on common law. Although the judiciary is theoretically independent, its independence has been called into question and the appointment of judges lacks accountability and transparency. The highest court in the judicial system is the Federal Court, followed by the Court of Appeal and two high courts, one for Peninsular Malaysia and one for East Malaysia. Malaysia also has a special court to hear cases brought by or against royalty.\nRace is a significant force in politics. Affirmative actions such as the New Economic Policy and the National Development Policy which superseded it, were implemented to advance the standing of the \"bumiputera\", consisting of Malays and the indigenous tribes who are considered the original inhabitants of Malaysia, over non-\"bumiputera\" such as Malaysian Chinese and Malaysian Indians. These policies provide preferential treatment to \"bumiputera\" in employment, education, scholarships, business, and access to cheaper housing and assisted savings. However, it has generated greater interethnic resentment. There is ongoing debate over whether the laws and society of Malaysia should reflect Islamism or secularism. Islamic criminal laws passed by the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party with the support of UMNO state assemblymen in the state legislative assembly of Kelantan have been unenforced by the federal government on the basis that criminal laws are the responsibility of the federal government.\nAfter UMNO lost power at the 2018 Malaysian general election, Malaysia's ranking increased by 9 places in the 2019 Democracy Index to 43rd compared to the previous year and is classified as a 'flawed democracy'. Malaysia's ranking in the 2020 Press Freedom Index increased by 22 places to 101st compared to the previous year, making it one of two countries in Southeast Asia without a 'Difficult situation' or 'Very Serious situation' with regards to press freedom. However, it fell 18 places the following year due to the policies of the PN government.\nMalaysia is marked at 48th and 62nd place according to the 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index, indicating above-average levels of corruption. Freedom House noted Malaysia as \"partly free\" in its 2018 survey. A lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice alleged that at least $3.5 billion involving former prime minister Najib Razak had been stolen from Malaysia's 1MDB state-owned fund, known as the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal.\nAdministrative divisions.\nMalaysia is a federation of 13 states and three federal territories. Out of these, eleven states and two federal territories are in Peninsular Malaysia, whereas the other two states and one federal territory comprise East Malaysia.\nThe country has three tiers of government \u2013 federal, state and local. Governance of the states is divided between the federal and the state governments, with different powers reserved for each, and the federal government has direct administration of the federal territories. Each state has a unicameral State Legislative Assembly whose members are elected from single-member constituencies. State governments are led by Chief Ministers, who are state assembly members from the majority party in the assembly. In each of the states with a hereditary ruler, the Chief Minister is normally required to be a Malay, appointed by the ruler upon the recommendation of the Prime Minister. Until 2018, state elections were held concurrently with the general election by convention, except for those in Sarawak. Following the 2020\u20132022 political crisis, only Pahang, Perak and Perlis opted to conduct their state elections simultaneously with the general elections.\nPositioned below the federal and state governments, local governments represent the lowest tier of governance in Malaysia. As of 2024[ [update]], Malaysia is divided between 19 cities, 40 municipalities, 91 district-level councils, and four statutory agencies. While the federal constitution assigns local authorities to the exclusive jurisdiction of state governments, in practice, the federal Ministry of Housing and Local Government oversees the regulation of local laws and policies. Mayors (or presidents for municipal and district councils) and councillors are appointed by the respective state governments, or in the case of the federal territories, by the federal government.\nFederal laws assign land matters, including the delineation of districts, to the purview of state governments. Except Perlis and the federal territories, each state is divided into districts, which are further subdivided into mukims. In Sabah and Sarawak, districts are grouped into divisions. In contrast to local governments that manage municipal administration and infrastructure development, districts are solely utilised for land taxation.\nThe 13 states are based on historical Malay kingdoms, and 9 of the 11 Peninsular states, known as the Malay states, retain their royal families. The King is elected by and from the nine rulers to serve a five-year term. This King appoints governors serving a four-year term for the states without monarchies, after consultations with the chief minister of that state. Each state has its written constitution. Sabah and Sarawak have considerably more autonomy than the other states, most notably having separate immigration policies and controls, and unique residency status. Federal intervention in state affairs, lack of development, and disputes over oil royalties have occasionally led to statements about secession from leaders in several states such as Penang, Johor, Kelantan, Sabah and Sarawak, although these have not been followed up and no serious independence movements exist.\nA list of thirteen states and each state capital (in parentheses):\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nForeign relations and military.\nA founding member of ASEAN and OIC, the country participates in many international organisations such as the United Nations (U.N.), APEC, the D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation, and NAM. It has chaired ASEAN, OIC, and NAM in the past. A former British colony, it is also a member of the Commonwealth. Kuala Lumpur was the site of the first EAS in 2005.\nMalaysia's foreign policy is officially based on the principle of neutrality and maintaining peaceful relations with all countries, regardless of their political system. The government attaches a high priority to the security and stability of Southeast Asia, and seeks to further develop relations with other countries in the region. Historically the government has tried to portray Malaysia as a progressive Islamic nation while strengthening relations with other Islamic states. A strong tenet of Malaysia's policy is national sovereignty and right of a country to control its domestic affairs. Malaysia signed the U.N. treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.\nThe Spratly Islands are disputed by many states in the area, and a large portion of the South China Sea is claimed by China. Unlike its neighbours of Vietnam and the Philippines, Malaysia historically avoided conflicts with China. However, after the encroachment of Chinese ships in Malaysian territorial waters, and breach of airspace by their military aircraft, Malaysia has become active in condemning China. Brunei and Malaysia in 2009 announced an end to claims of each other's land, and committed to resolve issues related to their maritime borders. The Philippines has a dormant claim to the eastern part of Sabah. Singapore's land reclamation has caused tensions, and minor maritime and land border disputes exist with Indonesia.\nThe Malaysian Armed Forces has three branches: the Malaysian Army, Royal Malaysian Navy and the Royal Malaysian Air Force. There is no conscription, and the required age for voluntary military service is 18. The military uses 1.5% of the country's GDP, and employs 1.23% of Malaysia's manpower. Malaysian peacekeeping forces of MALBATT have contributed to many U.N. peacekeeping missions, such as in Congo, Iran\u2013Iraq, Namibia, Cambodia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Somalia, Kosovo, East Timor, and Lebanon.\nThe Five Power Defence Arrangements is a regional security initiative that has been in place for almost 40 years. It involves joint military exercises held among Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Joint exercises and war games have also been held with Brunei, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States. Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam have agreed to host joint security force exercises to secure their maritime border and tackle issues such as illegal immigration, piracy, and smuggling. Previously there were fears that extremist militant activities in the Muslim areas of the southern Philippines and southern Thailand would spill over into Malaysia. Because of this, Malaysia began to increase its border security.\nHuman rights.\nHomosexuality is illegal in Malaysia, and authorities have imposed punishments such as caning and imprisonment. Human trafficking and sex trafficking in Malaysia are significant problems. There have also been cases of vigilante executions and beatings against LGBT individuals in Malaysia. The illegality of homosexuality in Malaysia has also been the forefront of Anwar Ibrahim's sodomy trials, which Anwar has called politically motivated, a characterization supported by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, along with Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch.\nThe death penalty is in use for serious crimes such as murder, terrorism, drug trafficking, and kidnapping, but in June 2022, Malaysian law minister Wan Junaidi pledged to abolish capital punishment and replace it with other punishments at the discretion of the court.\nGeography.\nMalaysia is the 66th largest country by total land area, with a total area of . It has land borders with Thailand in West Malaysia, and Indonesia and Brunei in East Malaysia. It is linked to Singapore by a narrow causeway and a bridge. The country also has maritime boundaries with Vietnam and the Philippines. The land borders are defined in large part by geological features such as the Perlis River, the Golok River and the Pagalayan Canal, whilst some of the maritime boundaries are the subject of ongoing contention. Brunei forms what is almost an enclave in Malaysia, with the state of Sarawak dividing it into two parts. Malaysia is the only country with territory on both the Asian mainland and the Malay archipelago. The Strait of Malacca, lying between Sumatra and Peninsular Malaysia, is one of the most important thoroughfares in global commerce, carrying 40 percent of the world's trade.\nThe two parts of Malaysia, separated from each other by the South China Sea, share a largely similar landscape in that both Peninsular and East Malaysia feature coastal plains rising to hills and mountains. Peninsular Malaysia, containing 40 per cent of Malaysia's land area, extends from north to south, and its maximum width is . It is divided between its east and west coasts by the Titiwangsa Mountains, rising to a peak elevation of at Mount Korbu, part of a series of mountain ranges running down the centre of the peninsula. These mountains are heavily forested, and mainly composed of granite and other igneous rocks. Much of it has been eroded, creating a karst landscape. The range is the origin of some of Peninsular Malaysia's river systems. The coastal plains surrounding the peninsula reach a maximum width of , and the peninsula's coastline is nearly long, although harbours are only available on the western side.\nEast Malaysia, on the island of Borneo, has a coastline of . It is divided between coastal regions, hills and valleys, and a mountainous interior. The Crocker Range extends northwards from Sarawak, dividing the state of Sabah. It is the location of the high Mount Kinabalu, the tallest mountain in Malaysia. Mount Kinabalu is located in the Kinabalu National Park, which is protected as one of the four UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Malaysia. The highest mountain ranges form the border between Malaysia and Indonesia. Sarawak contains the Mulu Caves, the largest cave system in the world, in the Gunung Mulu National Park which is also a World Heritage Site. The largest river in Malaysia is the Rajang.\nAround these two halves of Malaysia are numerous islands, the largest of which is Banggi. The local climate is equatorial and characterised by the annual southwest (April to October) and northeast (October to February) monsoons. The temperature is moderated by the presence of the surrounding oceans. Humidity is usually high, and the average annual rainfall is . The climates of the Peninsula and the East differ, as the climate on the peninsula is directly affected by wind from the mainland, as opposed to the more maritime weather of the East. Local climates can be divided into three regions, highland, lowland, and coastal. Climate change will cause sea level rise and increased rainfall, increasing flood risks and leading to droughts.\nBiodiversity and conservation.\nMalaysia signed the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity on 12 June 1993, and became a party to the convention on 24 June 1994. It has subsequently produced a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, which was received by the convention on 16 April 1998. The country is megadiverse with a high number of species and high levels of endemism. It is estimated to contain 20\u00a0per\u00a0cent of the world's animal species. High levels of endemism are found on the diverse forests of Borneo's mountains, as species are isolated from each other by lowland forest.\nThere are about 210 mammal species in the country. Over 620 species of birds have been recorded in Peninsular Malaysia, with many endemic to the mountains there. A high number of endemic bird species are also found in Malaysian Borneo. 250 reptile species have been recorded in the country, with about 150 species of snakes and 80 species of lizards. There are about 150 species of frogs, and thousands of insect species. The Exclusive economic zone of Malaysia is and 1.5 times larger than its land area. It is mainly in the South China Sea. Some of its waters are in the Coral Triangle, a biodiversity hotspot. The waters around Sipadan island are the most biodiverse in the world. Bordering East Malaysia, the Sulu Sea is a biodiversity hotspot, with around 600 coral species and 1200 fish species. The unique biodiversity of Malaysian Caves always attracts lovers of ecotourism from all over the world.\nNearly 4,000 species of fungi, including lichen-forming species have been recorded from Malaysia. Of the two fungal groups with the largest number of species in Malaysia, the Ascomycota and their asexual states have been surveyed in some habitats (decaying wood, marine, and freshwater ecosystems, as parasites of some plants, and as agents of biodegradation), but have not been or have been only poorly surveyed in other habitats (as endobionts, in soils, on dung, as human and animal pathogens); the Basidiomycota are only partly surveyed: bracket fungi, and mushrooms and toadstools have been studied, but Malaysian rust and smut fungi remain very poorly known. Without a doubt, many more fungal species in Malaysia are yet to be recorded, and it is likely that many of those, when found, will be new to science.\nAbout two\u00a0thirds of Malaysia was covered in forest as of 2007, with some forests believed to be 130\u00a0million years old. The forests are dominated by dipterocarps. Lowland forest covers areas below , and formerly East Malaysia was covered in such rainforest, which is supported by its hot wet climate. There are around 14,500 species of flowering plants and trees. Besides rainforests, there are over of mangroves in Malaysia, and a large amount of peat forest. At higher altitudes, oaks, chestnuts, and rhododendrons replace dipterocarps. There are an estimated 8,500 species of vascular plants in Peninsular Malaysia, with another 15,000 in the East. The forests of East Malaysia are estimated to be the habitat of around 2,000 tree species, and are one of the most biodiverse areas in the world, with 240 different species of trees every hectare. These forests host many members of the Rafflesia genus, the largest flowers in the world, with a maximum diameter of .\nLogging, along with cultivation practices, has devastated tree cover, causing severe environmental degradation in the country. Over 80\u00a0per\u00a0cent of Sarawak's rainforest has been logged. Floods in East Malaysia have been worsened by the loss of trees, and over 60\u00a0per\u00a0cent of the peninsula's forests have been cleared. With current rates of deforestation, mainly for the palm oil industry, the forests are predicted to be extinct by 2020. Deforestation is a major problem for animals, fungi and plants, having caused species such as \"Begonia eiromischa\" to go extinct. Most remaining forest is found inside reserves and national parks. Habitat destruction has proved a threat for marine life. Illegal fishing is another major threat, with fishing methods such as dynamite fishing and poisoning depleting marine ecosystems. Leatherback turtle numbers have dropped 98\u00a0per\u00a0cent since the 1950s. Hunting has also been an issue for some animals, with overconsumption and the use of animal parts for profit endangering many animals, from marine life to tigers. Marine life is also detrimentally affected by uncontrolled tourism.\nThe Malaysian government aims to balance economic growth with environmental protection, but has been accused of favouring big business over the environment. Some state governments are now trying to counter the environmental impact and pollution created by deforestation; and the federal government is trying to cut logging by 10\u00a0per\u00a0cent each year. A total of 28 national parks have been established, 23 in East Malaysia and five in the peninsula. Tourism has been limited in biodiverse areas such as Sipadan island. Wildlife trafficking is a large issue, and the Malaysian government has held talks with the governments of Brunei and Indonesia to standardise anti-trafficking laws.\nEconomy.\nMalaysia is a relatively open state-oriented and newly industrialised market economy. It has the world's 36th-largest economy by nominal GDP and the 31st-largest by PPP. In 2017, the large service sector contributed to 53.6% of total GDP, the industrial sector 37.6%, and the small agricultural sector roughly 8.8%. Malaysia has a low official unemployment rate of 3.4% as of 2024. Its foreign exchange reserves are the world's 24th-largest. It has a labour force of about 15 million, which is the world's 34th-largest. Malaysia's large automotive industry ranks as the world's 22nd-largest by production.\nMalaysia is the world's 23rd-largest exporter and 25th-largest importer. However, economic inequalities exist between different ethnic groups. The Chinese make up about one-quarter of the population, but account for 70 per cent of the country's market capitalisation. Chinese businesses in Malaysia are part of the larger bamboo network, a network of overseas Chinese businesses in the Southeast Asian market sharing common family and cultural ties.\nInternational trade, facilitated by the shipping route in adjacent Strait of Malacca, and manufacturing are the key sectors. Malaysia is an exporter of natural and agricultural resources, and petroleum is a major export. Malaysia has once been the largest producer of tin, rubber and palm oil in the world. Manufacturing has a large influence in the country's economy, although Malaysia's economic structure has been moving away from it. Malaysia remains one of the world's largest producers of palm oil.\nTourism is the third-largest contributor to Malaysia's GDP, after the manufacturing and commodities sectors. In 2019, the sector contributed about 15.9 percent to the total GDP. According to the World Tourism Organization, Malaysia was the fourteenth-most visited country in the world, and the fourth-most visited country in Asia in 2019, with over 26.1 million visits. Malaysia was ranked 38th in the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report 2019. Its international tourism receipts in 2019 amounted to $19.8 billion.\nThe country has developed into a centre of Islamic banking and has the highest number of female workers in that industry. Knowledge-based services are also expanding. In 2020, Malaysia exported high-tech products worth $92.1 billion, the second-highest in ASEAN, after Singapore. Malaysia was ranked 33rd in the Global Innovation Index in 2024, and 32nd in the Global Competitiveness Report in 2022.\nInfrastructure.\nRailway transport in Malaysia is state-run, and spans some . As of 2016[ [update]], Malaysia has the world's 26th-largest road network, with some of roads. Malaysia's inland waterways are the world's 22nd-longest, and total . Among Malaysia's 114 airports, among which the busiest is Kuala Lumpur International Airport located south of Kuala Lumpur in Sepang District, which is also the twelfth-busiest airport in Asia. Among the 7 federal ports, the major one is Port Klang, which is the thirteenth-busiest container port. Malaysia's flag carrier is Malaysia Airlines, providing international and domestic air services.\nMalaysia's telecommunications network is second only to Singapore's in Southeast Asia, with 4.7\u00a0million fixed-line subscribers and more than 30\u00a0million cellular subscribers. There are 200 industrial parks along with specialised parks such as Technology Park Malaysia and Kulim Hi-Tech Park. Fresh water is available to over 95% of the population, with ground water accounting for 90% of the freshwater resources. Although rural areas have been the focus of great development, they still lag behind areas such as the West Coast of Peninsular Malaysia. The telecommunication network, although strong in urban areas, is less available to the rural population.\nMalaysia's energy infrastructure sector is largely dominated by Tenaga Nasional, the largest electric utility company in Southeast Asia. Customers in Peninsular Malaysia are connected to electricity through the National Grid. The other two electric utility companies in the country are Sarawak Energy and Sabah Electricity. In 2013, Malaysia's total power generation capacity was over 29,728 megawatts. Total electricity generation was 140,985.01 GWh and total electricity consumption was 116,087.51 GWh. Energy production in Malaysia is largely based on oil and natural gas, owing to Malaysia's oil and natural gas reserves, which are the fourth largest in the Asia-Pacific region.\nDemographics.\nAccording to the Malaysian Department of Statistics, the country's population was 32,447,385 in 2020, making it the 42nd most populated country. According to a 2012 estimate, the population is increasing by 1.54 percent per year. Malaysia has an average population density of 96 people per km2, ranking it 116th in the world for population density. People within the 15\u201364 age group constitute 69.5 percent of the total population; the 0\u201314 age group corresponds to 24.5 percent; while senior citizens aged 65 years or older make up 6.0 percent. In 1960, when the first official census was recorded in Malaysia, the population was 8.11\u00a0million. 91.8 percent of the population are Malaysian citizens.\nMalaysian citizens are divided along local ethnic lines, with 69.7 percent considered \"bumiputera\". The largest group of bumiputera are Malays, who are defined in the constitution as Muslims who practise Malay customs and culture. They play a dominant role politically. Bumiputera status is also accorded to the non-Malay indigenous groups of Sabah and Sarawak: which includes Dayaks (Iban, Bidayuh, Orang Ulu), Kadazan-Dusun, Melanau, Bajau and others. Non-Malay bumiputeras make up more than half of Sarawak's population and over two-thirds of Sabah's population. There are also indigenous or aboriginal groups in much smaller numbers on the peninsular, where they are collectively known as the Orang Asli. Laws over who gets bumiputera status vary between states.\nThere are also two other non-Bumiputera local ethnic groups. 22.8 percent of the population are Malaysian Chinese, while 6.8 percent are Malaysian Indian. The local Chinese have historically been more dominant in the business community. Local Indians are mostly of Tamil descent. Malaysian citizenship is not automatically granted to those born in Malaysia, but is granted to a child born of two Malaysian parents outside Malaysia. Dual citizenship is not permitted. Citizenship in the states of Sabah and Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo are distinct from citizenship in Peninsular Malaysia for immigration purposes. Every citizen is issued a biometric smart chip identity card known as \"MyKad\" at the age of 12 and must carry the card at all times.\nThe population is concentrated on Peninsular Malaysia, where 20\u00a0million out of approximately 28\u00a0million Malaysians live. 70 per cent of the population is urban. Due to the rise in labour-intensive industries, the country is estimated to have over 3\u00a0million migrant workers; about 10 per cent of the population. Sabah-based NGOs estimate that out of the 3\u00a0million that make up the population of Sabah, 2\u00a0million are illegal immigrants. Malaysia hosts a population of refugees and asylum seekers numbering approximately 171,500. Of this population, approximately 79,000 are from Burma, 72,400 from the Philippines, and 17,700 from Indonesia. Malaysian officials are reported to have turned deportees directly over to human smugglers in 2007, and Malaysia employs RELA, a volunteer militia with a history of controversies, to enforce its immigration law.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nReligion.\nThe constitution grants freedom of religion, while establishing Islam as the \"religion of the Federation\". According to the Population and Housing Census 2020 figures, ethnicity and religious beliefs correlate highly. Approximately 63.5% of the population practise Islam, 18.7% practise Buddhism, 9.1% Christianity, 6.1% Hinduism and 1.3% practise Confucianism, Taoism and other traditional Chinese religions. 2.7% declared no religion or practised other religions or did not provide any information. The states of Sarawak, Penang and the federal territory of Kuala Lumpur have non-Muslim majorities.\nSunni Islam of the Shafi'i school of jurisprudence is the dominant branch of Islam in Malaysia, while 18% are nondenominational Muslims. The Malaysian constitution strictly defines what makes a \"Malay\", defining Malays as those who are Muslim, speak Malay regularly, practise Malay customs, and lived in or have ancestors from Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore. Statistics from the 2010 Census indicate that 83.6% of the Chinese population identify as Buddhist, with significant numbers of adherents following Taoism (3.4%) and Christianity (11.1%), along with small Muslim populations in areas like Penang. The majority of the Indian population follows Hinduism (86.2%), with a significant minority identifying as Christians (6.0%) or Muslims (4.1%). Christianity is the predominant religion of the non-Malay \"bumiputera\" community (46.5%), while 40.4% identify as Muslims.\nMuslims are obliged to follow the decisions of Syariah Courts (i.e. Shariah courts) in matters concerning their religion. The Islamic judges are expected to follow the Shafi'i legal school of Islam, which is the main \"madh'hab\" of Malaysia. The jurisdiction of Syariah courts is limited to Muslims in matters such as marriage, inheritance, divorce, apostasy, religious conversion, custody and limited Islamic criminal law. No other criminal or civil offences are under the jurisdiction of the Syariah courts, which have a similar hierarchy to the civil courts. The civil courts do not hear matters related to Islamic practices.\nLanguages.\nThe official and national language of Malaysia is Malaysian Malay, a standardised form of the Malay language. The previous official terminology was (lit.\u2009'Malaysian language') but now government policy uses (Malay language) to refer to the official language and both terms remain in use. The National Language Act 1967 specifies the Latin (Rumi) script as the official script of the national language, but does not prohibit the use of the traditional Jawi script.\nEnglish remains an active second language, with its use allowed for some official purposes under the National Language Act of 1967. In Sarawak, English is an official state language alongside Malay. Historically, English was the de facto administrative language; Malay became predominant after the 1969 race riots (13 May incident). Malaysian English, also known as Malaysian Standard English, is a form of English derived from British English. Malaysian English is widely used in business, along with Manglish, which is a colloquial form of English with heavy Malay, Chinese, and Tamil influences. The government discourages the use of non-standard Malay but has no power to issue compounds or fines to those who use what is perceived as improper Malay on their advertisements.\nMany other languages are used in Malaysia, which contains speakers of 137 living languages. Peninsular Malaysia contains speakers of 41 of these languages. The native tribes of East Malaysia have their own languages which are related to, but easily distinguishable from, Malay. Iban is the main tribal language in Sarawak while Dusunic and Kadazan languages are spoken by the natives in Sabah. Chinese Malaysians predominantly speak Chinese dialects from the southern part of China. The more common Chinese varieties in the country are Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, and so on. The Tamil language is used predominantly by the majority of Malaysian Indians. A small number of Malaysians have European ancestry and speak creole languages, such as the Portuguese-based Malaccan Creoles, and the Spanish-based Chavacano language.\nHealth.\nMalaysia operates an efficient and widespread two-tier healthcare system, consisting of a universal healthcare system and a co-existing private healthcare system; provided by highly subsidized healthcare through its extensive network of public hospitals and clinics. The Ministry of Health is the main provider of healthcare services to the country's population. Malaysia's healthcare system is considered to be among the most developed in Asia, which contributes to its thriving medical tourism industry.\nMalaysia spent 3.83% of its GDP on healthcare in 2019. In 2020, the overall life expectancy in Malaysia at birth was 76 years (74 years for males and 78 years for females), and it had an infant mortality rate of 7 deaths per 1000 births. Malaysia had a total fertility rate of 2.0 in 2020, which is just below the replacement level of 2.1. In 2020, the country's crude birth rate was 16 per 1000 people, and the crude death rate was 5 per 1000 people.\nIn 2021, the principal cause of death among Malaysian adults was coronary artery disease, representing 17% of the medically certified deaths in 2020\u2014being followed by pneumonia; which accounted for 11% of the deaths. Transport accidents are considered a major health hazard, as Malaysia, relative to its population, has one of the highest traffic fatality rates in the world. Smoking is also considered a major health issue across the country.\nEducation.\nThe education system of Malaysia features a non-compulsory kindergarten education followed by six years of compulsory primary education and five years of optional secondary education. Schools in the primary education system are divided into two categories: national primary schools, which teach in Malay (i.e.:Sekolah Kebangsaan Sungai Binjai, SK Bukit Tiu), and vernacular schools, which teach in Chinese or Tamil (i.e.:SJK(C) Pin Hwa 2, SJK(T) Bandar Mentakab). Secondary education (i.e.:SMK Sura, Kajang High School) is conducted for five years. In the final year of secondary education, students sit for the Malaysian Certificate of Education examination. Since the introduction of the matriculation programme in 1999, students who completed the 12-month programme in matriculation colleges can enroll in local universities. However, in the matriculation system, only 10 percent of places are open to non-\"bumiputera\" students.\nCulture.\nMalaysia has a multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multilingual society. Substantial influence exists from Chinese and Indian culture, dating back to when foreign trade began. Other cultural influences include the Persian, Arabic, and British cultures. Due to the structure of the government, coupled with the social contract theory, there has been minimal cultural assimilation of ethnic minorities. Some cultural disputes exist between Malaysia and neighbouring countries, notably Indonesia.\nIn 1971, the government created a \"National Cultural Policy\", defining Malaysian culture. It stated that Malaysian culture must be based on the culture of the indigenous peoples of Malaysia, that it may incorporate suitable elements from other cultures, and that Islam must play a part in it. It also promoted the Malay language above others. This government intervention into culture has caused resentment among non-Malays who feel their cultural freedom was lessened. Both Chinese and Indian associations have submitted memorandums to the government, accusing it of formulating an undemocratic culture policy.\nFine arts.\nTraditional Malaysian art was mainly centred on the areas of carving, weaving, and silversmithing. Traditional art ranges from handwoven baskets from rural areas to the silverwork of the Malay courts. Common artworks included ornamental kris, beetle nut sets, and woven batik and songket fabrics. Indigenous East Malaysians are known for their wooden masks. Each ethnic group have distinct performing arts, with little overlap between them. However, Malay art does show some North Indian influence due to the historical influence of India.\nTraditional Malay music and performing arts appear to have originated in the Kelantan-Pattani region with influences from India, China, Thailand, and Indonesia. The music is based around percussion instruments, the most important of which is the gendang (drum). There are at least 14 types of traditional drums. Drums and other traditional percussion instruments and are often made from natural materials. Music is traditionally used for storytelling, celebrating life-cycle events, and occasions such as a harvest. It was once used as a form of long-distance communication. In East Malaysia, gong-based musical ensembles such as agung and kulintang are commonly used in ceremonies such as funerals and weddings. These ensembles are also common in neighbouring regions such as in Mindanao in the Philippines, Kalimantan in Indonesia and Brunei.\nMalaysia has a strong oral tradition that has existed since before the arrival of writing and continues today. Each of the Malay Sultanates created their own literary tradition, influenced by pre-existing oral stories and by the stories that came with Islam. The first Malay literature was in the Arabic script. The earliest known Malay writing is on the Terengganu stone, made in 1303. Chinese and Indian literature became common as the number of speakers increased in Malaysia, and locally produced works based on languages from those areas began to be produced in the 19th century. English has also become a common literary language. In 1971, the government took the step of defining the literature of different languages. Literature written in Malay was called \"the national literature of Malaysia\", literature in other \"bumiputera\" languages was called \"regional literature\", while literature in other languages was called \"sectional literature\". Malay poetry is highly developed, and uses many forms. The \"Hikayat\" form is popular, and the \"pantun\" has spread from Malay to other languages.\nCuisine.\nMalaysia's cuisine reflects the multi-ethnic makeup of its population. Many cultures from within the country and from surrounding regions have greatly influenced the cuisine. Much of the influence comes from the Malay, Chinese, Indian, Thai, Javanese, and Sumatran cultures, largely due to the country being part of the ancient spice route. The cuisine is very similar to that of Singapore and Brunei, and also bears resemblance to Filipino cuisine. The different states have varied dishes, and often the food in Malaysia is different from the original dishes.\nSometimes food not found in its original culture is assimilated into another; for example, Chinese restaurants in Malaysia often serve Malay dishes. Food from one culture is sometimes also cooked using styles taken from another culture, For example, \"sambal belacan\" (shrimp paste) are commonly used as ingredients by Chinese restaurants to create the stir fried water spinach (\"kangkung belacan\"). This means that although much of Malaysian food can be traced back to a certain culture, they have their own identity. Rice is a staple food and an important constituent of the country's culture. Chili is commonly found in local cuisine, although this does not necessarily make them spicy.\nMedia.\nMalaysia's main newspapers are owned by the government and political parties in the ruling coalition, although some major opposition parties also have their own, which are openly sold alongside regular newspapers. A divide exists between the media in the two halves of the country. Peninsular-based media gives a low priority to news from the East and often treats the eastern states as colonies of the peninsula. As a result of this, the East Malaysia region of Sarawak launched TV Sarawak as internet streaming beginning in 2014, and as TV station on 10 October 2020 to overcome the low priority and coverage of Peninsular-based media and to solidify the representation of East Malaysia. The media have been blamed for increasing tension between Indonesia and Malaysia, and giving Malaysians a bad image of Indonesians. The country has Malay, English, Chinese, and Tamil daily newspapers. Kadazandusun and Bajau news are available only via TV broadcast Berita RTM. Written Kadazan news was once included in publications such as The Borneo Post, the Borneo Mail, the Daily Express, and the New Sabah Times, but publication has ceased with the newspaper or as a section.\nFreedom of the press is limited, with numerous restrictions on publishing rights and information dissemination. The government has previously tried to crack down on opposition papers before elections. In 2007, a government agency issued a directive to all private television and radio stations to refrain from broadcasting speeches made by opposition leaders, a move condemned by politicians from the opposition Democratic Action Party. Sabah, where all tabloids but one are independent of government control, has the freest press in Malaysia. Laws such as the Printing Presses and Publications Act have also been cited as curtailing freedom of expression.\nHolidays and festivals.\nMalaysians observe several holidays and festivities throughout the year. Some are federally gazetted public holidays and some are observed by individual states. Other festivals are observed by particular ethnic or religious groups, and the main holiday of each major group has been declared a public holiday. The most observed national holiday is \"Hari Merdeka\" (Independence Day) on 31 August, commemorating the independence of the Federation of Malaya in 1957. Malaysia Day on 16 September commemorates federation in 1963. Other notable national holidays are Labour Day (1 May) and the King's birthday (first week of June).\nMuslim holidays are prominent as Islam is the state religion; \"Hari Raya Puasa\" (also called \"Hari Raya Aidilfitri\", Malay for Eid al-Fitr), \"Hari Raya Haji\" (also called \"Hari Raya Aidiladha\", Malay for Eid al-Adha), \"Maulidur Rasul\" (birthday of the Prophet), and others being observed. Malaysian Chinese celebrate festivals such as Chinese New Year and others relating to traditional Chinese beliefs. Wesak Day is observed and celebrated by Buddhists. Hindus in Malaysia celebrate \"Deepavali\", the festival of lights, while \"Thaipusam\" is a religious rite which sees pilgrims from all over the country converge at the Batu Caves. Malaysia's Christian community celebrates most of the holidays observed by Christians elsewhere, most notably Christmas and Easter. In addition to this, the Dayak community in Sarawak celebrate a harvest festival known as \"Gawai\", and the Kadazandusun community celebrate \"Kaamatan\". Despite most festivals being identified with a particular ethnic or religious group, celebrations are universal. In a custom known as \"open house\" Malaysians participate in the celebrations of others, often visiting the houses of those who identify with the festival.\nSports.\nPopular sports in Malaysia include association football, badminton, field hockey, bowls, tennis, squash, martial arts, horse riding, sailing, and skate boarding. Football is the most popular sport in Malaysia. Badminton matches also attract thousands of spectators, and since 1948 Malaysia has been one of four countries to hold the Thomas Cup, the world team championship trophy of men's badminton. The Malaysian Lawn Bowls Federation was registered in 1997. Squash was brought to the country by members of the British army, with the first competition being held in 1939. The Squash Racquets Association of Malaysia was created on 25 June 1972. The men's national field hockey team ranked 10th in the world as of June\u00a02022[ [update]]. The 3rd Hockey World Cup was hosted at Merdeka Stadium in Kuala Lumpur, as well as the 10th cup. The country also has its own Formula One track \u2013 the Sepang International Circuit, with the first Malaysian Grand Prix held in 1999. Traditional sports include Silat Melayu, the most common style of martial arts practised by ethnic Malays.\nThe Federation of Malaya Olympic Council was formed in 1953, and received recognition by the IOC in 1954. It first participated in the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games. The council was renamed the Olympic Council of Malaysia in 1964, and has participated in all but one Olympic games since its inception. The largest number of athletes ever sent to the Olympics was 57 to the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Besides the Olympic Games, Malaysia also participates in the Paralympic Games. Malaysia has competed at the Commonwealth Games since 1950 as Malaya, and 1966 as Malaysia, and the games were hosted in Kuala Lumpur in 1998.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["991308", "3607937"], "permutation_1": ["991308", "3607937"], "permutation_2": ["3607937", "991308"], "permutation_3": ["991308", "3607937"]}
{"id": "2hop__606439_127399", "docs_added": {"6674053": "Madina Lake\nAmerican alternative rock band\nMadina Lake is an American rock band formed in Chicago, Illinois, United States, in 2005. The band released their debut album, \"From Them, Through Us, to You\", through Roadrunner Records on March 27, 2007. Madina Lake won Best International Newcomer at the Kerrang! Awards 2007. The group disbanded in September 2013 before reuniting in February 2017.\nHistory.\nFormation and \"The Disappearance of Adalia\" EP (2005\u20132006).\nNathan and Matthew Leone were first in a band known as the Blank Theory, based in Chicago, Illinois. Drummer Dan Torelli and Mateo Camargo were in a band called Reforma that had relocated to Chicago and both bands shared the same manager and often toured together. Nathan and Matthew Leone befriended Torelli and Camargo, and unhappy with their current situations decided to disband their respective bands, and form Madina Lake. Shawn Currie of The Blank Theory was in the original line up as the band's keyboardist for Madina Lake, but left shortly after the band started working on material causing Camargo to become the band's keyboardist. They played their first show as Madina Lake on May 21, 2005, at Chicago's historic Metro.\nNathan and Matthew Leone first gained nationwide media recognition when they appeared in a special edition of \"Twin Fear Factor\". They won $45,000 \u2013 $20,000 from finishing the first stunt the fastest, and $25,000 from finishing one of the two last stunts the fastest \u2013 and used it to pay for a recording process and demo of Madina Lake's first self-produced EP entitled \"The Disappearance of Adalia\", which was released on August 22, 2006.\n\"From Them, Through Us, to You\" (2006\u20132008).\nAfter releasing \"The Disappearance of Adalia\", Madina Lake gained a recording contract and signed with Roadrunner Records in April 2006 and created their first full length album entitled \"From Them, Through Us, to You,\" which was released on March 27, 2007. It was produced, engineered and mixed by Mark Trombino. The album debuted at No.\u00a0154 on the \"Billboard\" 200 album charts, and at No.\u00a060 on the UK album charts.\nThe release of \"From Them, Through Us, to You\" was followed up by a headlining tour with Fightstar and participating in the Projekt Revolution tour. At first they had originally planned to play Warped Tour 2007, but dropped out to play on the Revolution Stage when Linkin Park specifically chose them. The band has also toured (at different times) alongside such acts as Story of the Year, Aiden, Halifax, and Mayday Parade, among others.\nBetween Jan and Feb 2008 they toured the UK playing in the Kerrang tour alongside Fightstar and Coheed and Cambria.\nOn May 3, 2008, Madina Lake played their third year of The Bamboozle festival in New Jersey and on June 14, 2008, they also played the infamous Download Festival in Donington Park on the Main stage and wrapped up touring \"From Them, Through Us, to You\" on Warped Tour 2008 from July 9 to July 25.\nA DVD that chronicles the writing and recording process of \"From Them, Through Us, to You\" as well as tours and events that followed was scheduled to be released before the end of 2008.\nMadina Lake was also given a slot to play in Osaka, Japan at the Summer Sonic Festival 2007. Madina Lake recorded a cover of Caught Somewhere In Time from the Iron Maiden Album Somewhere in Time for a cover CD called , which was given away with the July 16 issue of \"Kerrang!\" magazine.\n\"Attics to Eden\" (2009\u20132010).\nMadina Lake recorded their second studio album, and it was produced by David Bendeth and was released on May 5, 2009.\nTo start off the touring stint for Attics to Eden, Madina Lake supported Anberlin on their Canadian tour. They will also play a show with Emery and Silverstein at the Pipeline Cafe in Honolulu, Hawaii in late February.\nMadina Lake are scheduled to play Soundwave festival 2009 from February 21 through March 2. After Soundwave they will be playing three shows in Japan with Less Than Jake.\nThey are also confirmed to play all dates in the 2009 Vans Warped Tour.\nThey have also confirmed that \"Let's Get Outta Here\" will be the second single released from their 2009 second studio album \"Attics to Eden\", they will shoot a video for the song, as confirmed via their website. Madina Lake is doing a few shows with Escape The Fate and A Skylit Drive.\nTo begin the promotional tour for \"Attics to Eden\", Madina Lake supported Anberlin on their Canadian tour. They will also play a show with Emery and Silverstein at the Pipeline Cafe in Honolulu, Hawaii in late February. Madina Lake is also a supporting act of Alesana's VS. Tour, along with The Bled, Broadway, Enter Shikari, and Asking Alexandria at select locations.\nMadina Lake played at the Soundwave festival 2009 from February 21 through March 2. After Soundwave they played three shows in Japan with Less Than Jake, followed by a slot in Leeds and Reading festivals in August, an East Coast tour in America in September, and a UK and Europe tour in October.\n\"The Dresden Codex\" (2010).\nThe band toured the UK as part of the 'Arlene Ball tour' in March and April 2010, with support from We Are The Ocean and Mayday Parade. Local bands got the chance of a support slot through a competition Madina Lake ran with Atticus Clothing. It was intended to support their new EP, \"The Dresden Codex\", which according to vocalist Nathan Leone sounds closer to their debut \"From Them, Through Us, To You\" than \"Attics to Eden\". The name of the album refers to a Mayan astrological codex, one of the oldest existing, as it is thought to be a copy of an even older text. This holds with Madina Lake's tradition of bringing astrology into their backstory, known colloquially as 'The Folklore'. The Dresden Codex was recorded in South Beach, Florida, in early 2010, and made appearances at the UK Sonisphere Festival on August 1 and Hevy Music Festival on August 8, 2010 in Kent. In May 2010 it was announced via an interview with Rocksound that they had left their record label, Roadrunner.\nOn 30 June, bassist Matthew Leone was hospitalized after intervening in a domestic violence incident involving a man beating his wife. He suffered many injuries including a fractured skull, broken jaw and a swollen brain. On August 2, it was reported that Leone was recovering from \"a second significant surgery, and is on his way to recovery.\" Just days earlier, The Smashing Pumpkins, the favorite band of both Leone brothers, played a benefit show in Chicago for Matthew to pay his hospital bills. They raised $80,000.\n\"World War III\", From Them, Through Us, To You reunion (2011\u20132013, 2017\u2013Present).\nThe band played the first two weeks of the 2011 Vans Warped Tour.\nIt was confirmed via an interview with NBC that Sony had signed the band at the beginning of April and their new record \"World War III\" will be released September 13, 2011, as recording was complete as of April 17. The new album will be the third and final installment of their concept trilogy, \"World War III\", which continues the Leone brothers' tales of a metaphorical universe.\nIn the final chapter, \"World War III\", concludes with the discovery of Adalia and an epic battle of good and evil that mirrors human internal struggles with self. The album was produced, engineered and mixed by Mateo Camargo and Madina Lake except the song \"Imagineer\" which was produced and written by Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins) and Madina Lake.\nOn July 5, 2012 Madina Lake announced the 'Trilogy Finale Tour' that would spread across 8 days, playing 8 shows in small and intimate venues across the UK. Along with this tour they announced that guitarist Mateo would be joining them on the finale tour across the UK. Madina Lake went on to announce that they would be playing their debut album 'From Them, Through Us, To You' in its entirety as well as other songs from their next 2 albums to wrap up the story of fictional character 'Adalia.' As well as general admission tickets, package deals would be available, the \u00a325 package offered a 'disappearance' t-shirt, trilogy book as well as entrance to the show. The \u00a350 package would offer the same as the \u00a325 package along with a pre-show meet and greet as well as a Q and A session with the band regarding the story and concept behind the disappearance of Adalia.\nOn 21 January 2017, Madina Lake updated their Facebook cover photo with an old style 'programme interruption' picture with the words 'Please Stand By', hinting at a possible reunion.\nOn 15 February, Madina Lake announced a six show United Kingdom Reunion Tour, including three dates at Slam Dunk Festival, in May 2017.\nOn 21 February 2017, Madina Lake announced that they would release new music in support of the reunion shows.\nOn 3 April 2020, the band released a new song called \"Playing With Fire\", their first offering of new material since 2011.\nIn July 2020, the band announced details of a new EP called 'The Beginning Of New Endings', which was originally set to be released on 4 September 2020. After a few set backs, the EP was eventually released on 28 September 2020.\nIn an interview with DEAD PRESS! in September 2020, bassist Matthew Leone confirmed that the band were working on releasing another EP before the end of 2020.\nConcept.\nThe band sets its music in a fictional town from the 1950s isolated from the rest of the world that's been turned upside-down with the mysterious disappearance of their most famous socialite, Adalia. The music provides an outlet for the band's views on politics, culture, and the media's obsession with celebrity status. The theme behind the band's music is in relation to the mystery of Adalia. The album artwork shows images of her and the mysteries behind her and the town of Madina Lake. It's a concept from the mind of Matthew Leone that is set to span three albums and includes a book (Lila, the Divine Game) as well as a website devoted to helping fans solve the case by uncovering \"clues\" hidden in the lyrics, album art, and videos.\nMembers.\nCurrent members\nFormer members\nTimeline\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "9197780": "From Them, Through Us, to You\nFrom Them, Through Us, to You is the debut album by Chicago-based rock band Madina Lake. The album was released in the United States on March 27, 2007, via Roadrunner Records; it was released a day earlier in the UK.\nThe album debuted at number 154 on the US \"Billboard\" 200 albums chart, number three on the \"Billboard\" Top Heatseekers chart, and number 60 on the UK Albums Chart.\nThe first single off the album was \"House of Cards\", followed by \"Here I Stand\", \"One Last Kiss\" and \"Pandora\", all of which have music videos.\nReception.\nAllMusic stated that \"The in-your-face intensity on tracks like the opening anthemic rocker \"Here I Stand\" is balanced by a tight sense of vocal harmony and an infectious melodicism that prevails most of the way through. It juxtaposes harsh background vocals with a heavy grooving drumbeat. If you like your music loud, take a dip in Madina Lake, bang your head and have a blast!\" Sputnikmusic felt that \"On paper, it reads just like a form of angst-filled high school poetry and with Nathan's nasally voice screeching and defecating the lyrics, it just makes it all that worse. This had the potential to be a great album but falls short by quite a margin.\"\n\"MusicOMH\" said: \"It's an album beset with clunking visuals and broader-than-thou riffs, complementing twin brother Nathan's expansive, excessive vocals tenfold to a beating post-hardcore centre.\" AbsolutePunk.net wrote: \"\"From Them, Through Us, to You\" is an album that offers a glimpse into the nature of Madina Lake, people, and society and places them to hard rock music laced with electronica and pop undertones. This blend of melody and aggression is the same kind that has launched the band's peers onto the fast track of success, and may very well do the same for Madina Lake.\"\nTrack listing.\nFor unknown reasons, the iTunes release includes the whole advanced track listing with \"The Auspice\" but \"Now or Never\", \"Morning Sadness\" and \"True Love\" are omitted with the advanced version lengths not the retail lengths. The iTunes version also indicates three segues in the subtitles of two songs (\"Pandora\" and \"True Love\"; \"True Love\" has two segues) but the tracks appear the same as in the advanced version.\nThe song \"Again and Again\" was available for free download on the band's website shortly after the release of the album through a Flash-based game that tied into the fictional story of Madina Lake.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2065753": "Botch (band)\nAmerican mathcore band\nBotch was an American mathcore band formed in 1993 in Tacoma, Washington. The band, featuring Brian Cook, Dave Knudson, Tim Latona and Dave Verellen, spent four years as a garage band and released several demos and EPs before signing to Hydra Head Records. Through the label, Botch released two studio albums: \"American Nervoso\" (1998) and \"We Are the Romans\" (1999). The group toured extensively and internationally in support of their albums with like-minded bands such as The Blood Brothers, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Ink & Dagger and Jesuit. Botch struggled to write a third studio album, and in 2002 the group broke up due to tensions among the band members and creative differences. Hydra Head posthumously released an EP of songs the group had been working on before they split titled \"An Anthology of Dead Ends\" and a live album documenting their final show titled \"061502\" in 2006.\nAfter Botch broke up, most of the members went on to form or join new bands in the Seattle/Tacoma area including: Minus the Bear, Narrows, Roy, Russian Circles and These Arms Are Snakes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nEarly years (1993\u20131997).\nBassist Brian Cook, guitarist Dave Knudson, drummer Tim Latona and vocalist Dave Verellen formed Botch in 1993 while they were all still in high school. Tim Latona, who at the time was a jazz drummer considering attending the performing arts school Juilliard, was approached by Dave Knudson in the high school cafeteria and asked if he would like to start a rock band. According to Knudson, \"We were probably 16 or 17. I brought my amp over to Tim's house, and we ended up on his back deck playing Helmet covers for a couple of hours.\" Dave Knudson enticed Brian Cook to join the band by promising that the group would record a Dead Kennedys cover, but this recording never took place. Dave Verellen was the last to join the band, and only became the vocalist because he couldn't play an instrument. The group selected the name Botch simply by \"opening a dictionary.\"\nEarly songs written by Botch were described by Knudson as, \"some of the worst music you've probably heard in your life,\" which he attributed to each of the members' differing tastes in music and the lack of experience in composing songs. Some of their early song titles included: \"Barney the Purple Dinosaur,\" \"Vegetarianism Is Anarchy,\" \"Barbed Rectal Thermometer\" and \"Pudenda.\"\nBotch released \"Faction\", a 7-inch EP in 1995; that same year, Botch went on their first tour outside of the Seattle-area. Dave Verellen's dad drove the group on a mini-tour through Canada in an old van he owned. John Pettibone, then of Undertow and Nineironspitfire, praised Botch's ability to tour outside of their hometown, commenting: \"Botch was the first band from the next generation that went out and pushed it\u2014and pushed it \"their\" way. It was remarkable.\" In 1996, the band released another EP, titled \"The John Birch Conspiracy Theory\".\nIn early 1997, Botch went on a seven-week tour throughout the United States and Canada with Ink & Dagger and Nineironspitfire, which gained them a significant amount of exposure. According to Brian Cook, \"Ink & Dagger were kind of a big deal at that point, so we were playing a lot of club shows. I think we did a show at some theater in Buffalo, New York, with Snapcase and there were, like, a thousand people or something like that.\" Also in 1997, Excursion Records released \"The Unifying Themes of Sex, Death and Religion\"\u2014a nine-track compilation album composed of the EPs \"The John Birch Conspiracy Theory\" and \"Faction\" in their entirety, and \"Closure\" from the various artists compilation \"I Can't Live Without It\".\nHydra Head Records (1997\u20132002).\n\"American Nervoso\".\nAaron Turner, former vocalist for the post-metal band Isis and founder of the record label Hydra Head Records, was following Botch's early career. He praised the group's interpretation of Carl Orff's classical piece \"O Fortuna\" off of \"The John Birch Conspiracy Theory\" EP, describing it as \"amazing\" and also saying that, \"anytime I made a mix tape for someone else, I'd put ['O Fortuna'] on there.\" Turner contacted Botch and asked them to contribute a song to Hydra Head's \"In These Black Days\"\u2014a compilation album of Black Sabbath cover songs released as a series of split singles. Botch recorded a cover of \"The Wizard\" from Black Sabbath's 1970 album \"Black Sabbath\", and also sent Turner a demo album they had been working on at the time. About the demo, Aaron Turner said, \"I can't remember if I had solicited it or if they just sent it to me. In any event, it was more than I was expecting from them even though I already thought they were good. I think I gave them about six or seven grand to do the record, which was probably more than I had given any other band that we had worked with at that point.\"\nThe demos were re-recorded with Matt Bayles at Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard's own Studio Litho. After three days of recording and two days of mixing, the completed songs became Botch's debut studio album \"American Nervoso\", released in 1998 through Hydra Head Records. In support of \"American Nervoso\", Botch headlined a North American tour with The Dillinger Escape Plan and Jesuit. Beginning with this tour, John Pettibone was hired as the group's manager, and it also was Botch's first time bringing their own lighting equipment with them. Their stage setup included several halogen work lamps plugged into a power strip with a switch. Commenting on the lights, Dave Verellen said, \"I hated the lights at clubs, which were always on the band, so we figured we'd turn them on the audience. [...] I liked it because I could see people's reaction in the crowd because their faces were totally illuminated.\" Also during this tour, Botch played music from the girl group Destiny's Child before they went on stage, which was intentionally drastically different from the more traditional \"metal music [being played] in between the metal bands.\" Botch were also rumored to be recording a Destiny's Child covers EP\u2014however, this release never materialized.\n\"We Are the Romans\".\nIn 1999, Botch recorded some live demos with Matt Bayles for their second studio album and follow-up to \"American Nervoso\". Two months later, Botch returned to Litho Studios with Bayles to record what would become \"We Are the Romans\". The group only had approximately one week to track the album, and according to Knudson, the group \"[rushed] to get everything done and do it as well as we wanted to.\" As a last minute addition to the album, Botch rewrote and rerecorded the song \"Frequenting Mass Transit\"\u2014originally released on a split release with Murder City Devils\u2014and changed the title to \"Frequency Ass Bandit\". \"We Are the Romans\" was released in November 1999 through Hydra Head Records on both CD and double LP vinyl formats. The title of the album was derived from the lyrics to the album's closing track \"Man the Ramparts\". According to Verellen: \"Brian [Cook] thought it'd make a great title, but I thought it was a totally silly gladiator song. The riff is kinda huge, so I was thinking about chariots and fire and stuff like that. It sounds like I pulled the words out of \"Conan the Barbarian\". But then we started talking about the social decline of Western civilization, and how Americans are the new Romans\u2014it's all slaves and Caesars. So we made it work.\"\nBotch's first show in support of \"We Are the Romans\" was the final show for the Seattle venue Rkcndy with The Blood Brothers, Playing Enemy and Kill Sadie in October 1999. The club was an all-ages venue that was being demolished to make way for a hotel. Verellen expressed his admiration for playing all-ages shows stating that, \"People go to all-ages shows to see the bands, but people will go to bars... and while they're at the show, they're just hanging out with their friends. That doesn't mean all bar shows are like that, but that's what makes me not want to play bars, basically.\" In 2000, Botch toured Europe with The Dillinger Escape Plan, and also went on a smaller North American tour later that year. On July 28, 2001, Botch performed at Louisville, Kentucky's hardcore festival Krazy Fest 4 which also featured Coalesce, Converge, Poison the Well and Harkonen among others.\nBreakup (2002).\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"The way I look at it, Botch didn't break up because of personality conflicts. The conflicts that existed the day of the last show were present since the beginning. Botch broke up because we just weren't meshing anymore on a creative level. Some of us had different musical areas we wanted to explore.\"\n \u2014Tim Latona, interview with \"Alternative Press\"\nBotch officially decided to break up the band in February 2002. Tensions between Tim Latona and Dave Knudson that originated from the \"We Are the Romans\" sessions and supporting tours built up to the point where members weren't communicating anymore. According to Dave Verellen, \"it was the best idea for us just to break up while we were on top of things, rather than torture ourselves and keep chipping away till we hated each other.\" Botch also struggled to write a third studio album citing pressures to write a follow-up to their critically acclaimed \"We Are the Romans\" and suffering from \"crazy writer's block.\" Knudson had also begun writing softer-sounding songs that didn't fit Botch's style, and formed the side-project Minus the Bear in 2001. Botch performed their final show on June 15, 2002, at The Showbox in downtown Seattle, Washington with The Blood Brothers, Harkonen and Playing Enemy.\nWhen asked about the possibility of a reunion in a 2002 interview with the band, Dave Verellen said, \"I'd be first in line to keep this goddamn band together.\" However, in the same interview, Knudson said, \"I could totally see doing anything with any of those people that's not Botch but something else that's creative and fun... and maybe more aggressive.\" In a 2009 interview with Brian Cook, he revealed that Botch get asked to play reunion shows \"on a regular basis.\" After Botch disbanded, Cook maintained that he would never reunite the band, but in a 2014 interview, he revealed that the other members of Botch felt like the band ended too early and that they had been urging him to stop saying the word \"never\" regarding a possible reunion.\nPost-Break up activities (2002\u20132022).\nPosthumous releases and reissues.\nBefore disbanding, Botch recorded a six-song EP titled \"An Anthology of Dead Ends\"\u2014a small collection of songs Botch had written before breaking up. The EP was recorded in March 2002, an event which was described by producer Matt Bayles as being \"incredibly tense.\" On the album's content, Verellen said: \"Two of the tracks are things we did live that we just wanted to record\" and one of the songs was \"just a riff we never got a song written for, but it was just such a good riff.\" Hydra Head Records released \"An Anthology of Dead Ends\" on October 15, 2002; about four months after Botch played their final show. Also in 2002, Excursion Records reissued \"The Unifying Themes Of Sex, Death, And Religion\" under the name \"Unifying Themes Redux\" with seven additional tracks from Botch's split albums and compilation contributions.\nIn July 2006, Hydra Head announced they would release four Botch albums over the next year. The label first reissued the compilation album \"Unifying Themes Redux\" on September 26, 2006. A live two-disc set titled \"061502\" was released on December 5, 2006. The CD/DVD package features a live recording of Botch's final performance from June 15, 2002, at The Showbox. A remastered version of \"American Nervoso\" was released on July 7, 2007. This updated version was also packaged with various bonus features, including demos and extended versions of some tracks. For example, parts of the song \"Hives\" that were accidentally removed on the original recording were added back. And finally, Hydra Head Records released a two-disc remastered version of \"We Are the Romans\" on September 11, 2007. The second disc featured demo versions of \"We Are the Romans\" tracks and four live songs.\nIn September 2011, Hydra Head announced that they discovered approximately 450 vinyl record jackets for \"We Are the Romans\" in their storage space, and would repress the record using the album's original plates. After the records sold out in less than 20 minutes, the label stated they would make Botch reissues a \"priority for 2012.\" For Record Store Day in 2012, Hydra Head reissued \"An Anthology of Dead Ends\" on vinyl. To commemorate the 10-year anniversary of Botch's final show, Hydra Head released a limited edition windbreaker that was only available for 24 hours on June 15, 2012. In March 2016, Hydra Head released a limited-edition vinyl set featuring all previously released LP editions of Botch's albums spread across nine discs compiled in a silver-foil stamped box featuring a 36-page extended liner note booklet.\nPost-Botch bands.\nAfter Botch broke up, three of the four members continued to compose and perform music with new bands\u2014drummer Tim Latona instead chose to continue his education. The complex tree of interchanging band members among these newly formed groups has been described as \"incestuous.\"\nKnudson continued performing with the math rock/indie rock band Minus the Bear with vocalist Jake Snider formerly of Sharks Keep Moving, drummer Erin Tate formerly of Kill Sadie, former Botch producer Matt Bayles on keys, and bassist Cory Murchy. Minus the Bear quickly signed to Suicide Squeeze Records and released two EPs, \"This Is What I Know About Being Gigantic\" and \"Bands Like It When You Yell \"Yar!\" at Them\", before releasing their debut full-length \"Highly Refined Pirates\" in November 2002. The group released two more albums through Suicide Squeeze, \"Menos el Oso\" (2005) and \"Planet of Ice\" (2007), before signing to Dangerbird Records and releasing \"Omni\" (2010) and \"Infinity Overhead\" (2012).\nThe post-hardcore group These Arms Are Snakes was formed in 2002 by Brian Cook, Steve Snere formerly of Kill Sadie, Ryan Frederiksen of formerly of Nineironspitfire, Joe Preston and Jesse Robertson. The group signed to Jade Tree Records and released the EP \"This Is Meant to Hurt You\" (2003) and their debut full-length \"Oxeneers or the Lion Sleeps When Its Antelope Go Home\" (2004). These Arms Are Snakes went through a few lineup changes, one of which included Erin Tate of Minus the Bear and Kill Sadie, before solidifying their lineup with Chris Common on drums. With this formation, they released two more albums, \"Easter\" (2006) and \"Tail Swallower and Dove\" (2008)\u2014the later of which was released on Suicide Squeeze Records\u2014before disbanding in 2009.\nAside from working as a firefighter, Dave Verellen also formed the folk rock band Roy in 2002 with Brian Cook, Ben Verellen of Harkonen and Mike Cooper. The group released the EP \"Tacomatose\" (2003) and the full-length \"Big City Sin and Small Town Redemption\" (2004) before going on hiatus. During the break, Cook and Ben Verellen worked on These Arms Are Snakes' debut album \"Oxeneers or the Lion Sleeps When Its Antelope Go Home\". Roy briefly reformed and released \"Killed John Train\" in 2006.\nBrian Cook also joined the instrumental post-rock group Russian Circles in 2007, replacing former member Colin DeKuiper. Cook contributed to Russian Circles' second and third studio albums \"Station\" (2008) and \"Geneva\" (2009); both of which were released through Suicide Squeeze Records. The group then signed to Sargent House and released \"Empros\" (2011) and \"Memorial\" (2013). As of 2014, Brian is a part of Sumac, as a permanent bassist with Aaron Turner and Nick Yacyshyn. They have released their debut album The Deal in February 2015.\nIn 2008, vocalist Dave Verellen formed the mathcore band Narrows with Rob Moran of Unbroken and Some Girls, Sam Stothers of Makeout Boys, Jodie Cox of Bullet Union, and Ryan Frederiksen of These Arms Are Snakes and Nineironspitfire. Narrows signed to Deathwish Inc. and subsequently released a self-titled EP (2008) and two full-lengths: \"New Distances\" (2009) and \"Painted\" (2012).\nReunion (2022\u20132024).\nHydra Head Records went out of business in 2020, leaving Botch's catalog without a home and was subsequently entirely removed from online streaming services. In October 2021, Sargent House announced it had acquired Botch's full catalog and would maintain the band's digital presence as well as future vinyl represses going forward. The announcement from members of the band also teased \"exciting things in 2022,\" which created speculation among Botch's fanbase that this alluded to a reunion. Cook later clarified: \"You might have seen the news that Sargent House is bringing the Botch catalog back. We're very stoked. But to dispel any confusion, we are not reuniting.\" The first Sargent House reissued \"We Are the Romans\" in November 2022 and featuring a new song, \"One Twenty Two\". Despite regrouping to write and record the song, the members of Botch stated the band has not reunited and was not active.\nOn October 15, 2022, These Arms Are Snakes and Sandrider performed at a private birthday party for producer Matt Bayles. After These Arms Are Snakes' set, the members of Botch took to the stage without prior announcement to perform one song \u2013 \"Saint Matthew Returns to the Womb\". The night also marked the 20-year anniversary of the release of \"An Anthology of Dead Ends\", Botch's final studio recording before disbanding. \nThe following week, Botch announced a pair of reunion shows in Seattle on February 24 and 25, 2023. After the tickets to these shows sold out in 13 seconds, Botch announced a third reunion show in their hometown of Tacoma on February 17. Coinciding with the Sargent House re-release of \"American Nervoso\" and their Tacoma reunion show, Botch announced a 14-date U.S. tour for October\u2013December 2023. \nBotch initially had no plans for their reunion beyond the late-2023 tour; in an interview with \"Gut Feeling\", Knudson said: \"There's no more music for Botch on the horizon; we're doing these shows, and then it's done [...] it's going to happen for a very finite amount of time.\" However, in October 2023, the band announced a final EU and UK tour for March 2024, spanning fourteen dates, with three of these being in the UK. In May 2024, the band embarked on their first and only tour of Australia. The band played their final show at the Showbox in Seattle on June 15, 2024\u201422 years to the date of their original final performance (\"061502\") in 2002.\nInfluence and legacy.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n \"To me, Botch is as important to what's going on today as Minor Threat was to hardcore in the late '80s. When you look at the evolution of independent music, Botch will be one of those bands that made a difference.\"\n \u2014Mark Thompson of Hydra Head, interview with \"Alternative Press\"\nBotch's music was a major early influence on the mathcore and metalcore styles, and their final album \"We Are the Romans\" is specifically cited as a highly influential album. \"Decibel\" and \"Rock Sound\" both inducted the album into their publication's \"Hall of Fame\" features in November 2005 and August 2011 respectively. \"Rock Sound\" also declared \"We Are the Romans\" as one of the \"big four\" math metal albums in May 2008, and featured Botch in the publication's \"Revolutionaries\" column, which pays tribute to \"the bands we just couldn't live without\" in November 2006. In August 2005, \"Alternative Press\" listed \"We Are the Romans\" as a classic \"other punk album\"\u2014or an album that was influential, but not commercially successful. In October 2009, Botch was featured in AbsolutePunk's \"Weekly Nostalgia\" piece, which pays tribute to disbanded musical groups. In November 2009, Jason Heller listed \"We Are the Romans\" as one of the albums that didn't make \"The A.V. Club\"'s top 50 albums of previous decade list, but was still an important album of this period. In 2012, \"Rock Sound\" added Botch's \"We Are the Romans\" into its \"101 Modern Classics,\" ranking at number"}, "descending_order": ["2065753", "9197780", "6674053"], "permutation_1": ["2065753", "6674053", "9197780"], "permutation_2": ["9197780", "6674053", "2065753"], "permutation_3": ["9197780", "2065753", "6674053"]}
{"id": "2hop__511215_10038", "docs_added": {"96602": "Zhejiang\nProvince of China\nZhejiang is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Hangzhou, and other notable cities include Ningbo and Wenzhou. Zhejiang is bordered by Jiangsu and Shanghai to the north, Anhui to the northwest, Jiangxi to the west and Fujian to the south. To the east is the East China Sea, beyond which lies the Ryukyu Islands. The population of Zhejiang stands at 64.6 million, the 8th largest in China. It has been called \"the backbone of China\" because it is a major driving force in the Chinese economy and being the birthplace of several notable people, including the Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and entrepreneur Jack Ma. Zhejiang consists of 90 counties (incl. county-level cities and districts).\nThe area of Zhejiang was controlled by the Kingdom of Yue during the Spring and Autumn period. The Qin Empire later annexed it in 222 BC. Under the late Ming dynasty and the Qing dynasty that followed it, Zhejiang's ports became important centers of international trade. It was occupied by the Empire of Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese war and placed under the control of the Japanese puppet state known as the Reorganized National Government of China. After the establishment of the PRC, Zhejiang's economy became stagnant under Mao Zedong's policies. Nevertheless, after China's economic reform, Zhejiang has grown to be considered one of China's wealthiest provinces, ranking fourth in GDP nationally and sixth by GDP per capita, with a nominal GDP of US$1.14 trillion as of 2022.\nZhejiang consists mostly of hills, which account for about 70% of its total area, with higher altitudes towards the south and the west. Zhejiang also has a longer coastline than any other mainland province of China. The Qiantang River runs through the province, from which it derives its name. Included in the province are three thousand islands, the most in China. The capital Hangzhou marks the end of the Grand Canal and lies on Hangzhou Bay on the north of Zhejiang, which separates Shanghai and Ningbo. The bay contains many small islands collectively called the Zhoushan Islands.\nHangzhou is a historically important city of China and is considered a World City with a \"Beta+\" classification according to GaWC. It includes the notable West Lake. Various varieties of Chinese are spoken in Zhejiang, the most prominent being Wu Chinese. Zhejiang is also one of China's leading provinces in research and education. As of 2024[ [update]], two major cities in Zhejiang ranked in the world's top 200 cities (Hangzhou 13th and Ningbo 123rd) by scientific research output, as tracked by Nature Index.\nEtymology.\nThe province's name originates from the Zhe River (), the former name of the Qiantang River which flows past Hangzhou and whose mouth forms Hangzhou Bay. It is usually understood as meaning \"Crooked\" or \"Bent River\", from the meaning of Chinese , but is more likely a phono-semantic compound formed from adding (the \"water\" radical used for river names) to phonetic (Pinyin \"zh\u00e9\" but reconstructed Old Chinese *\"tet\"), preserving a proto-Wu name of the local Yue, similar to Yuhang, Kuaiji and Jiang.\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nKuahuqiao culture was an early Neolithic culture that flourished in the Hangzhou area in 6,000-5,000 BC.\nZhejiang was the site of the Neolithic cultures of the Hemudu (starting in 5500 BC) and Liangzhu (starting in 3400 BC).\nAncient history.\nThe area of modern Zhejiang was outside the major sphere of influence of Shang civilization during the second millennium BC. Instead, this area was populated by peoples collectively known as Dongyue.\nThe kingdom of Yue began to appear in the chronicles and records written during the Spring and Autumn period. According to the chronicles, the kingdom of Yue was in Northern Zhejiang. Shiji claims that its leaders were descended from the Xia founder Yu the Great. The \"Song of the Yue Boatman\" () was transliterated into Chinese and recorded by authors in North China or inland China of Hebei and Henan around 528 BC. The song shows that the Yue people spoke a language that was mutually unintelligible with the dialects spoken in north and inland China. The Sword of Goujian bears bird-worm seal script. Yuen\u00fc () was a swordswoman from the state of Yue. To check the growth of the kingdom of Wu, Chu pursued a policy of strengthening Yue.\nUnder King Goujian, Yue recovered from its early reverses and fully annexed the lands of its rival in 473 BC. The Yue kings then moved their capital center from their original home around Mount Kuaiji in present-day Shaoxing to the former Wu capital at present-day Suzhou. With no southern power to turn against Yue, Chu opposed it directly and, in 333\u00a0BC, succeeded in destroying it. Yue's former lands were annexed by the Qin Empire in 222\u00a0BC and organized into a commandery named for Kuaiji in Zhejiang but initially headquartered in Wu in Jiangsu.\nHan and the Three Kingdoms.\nKuaiji Commandery was the initial power base for Xiang Liang and Xiang Yu's rebellion against the Qin Empire which initially succeeded in restoring the kingdom of Chu but eventually fell to the Han. Under the Later Han, control of the area returned to the settlement below Mount Kuaiji but authority over the Minyue hinterland was nominal at best and its Yue inhabitants largely retained their own political and social structures.\nAt the beginning of the Three Kingdoms era (AD 220\u2013280), Zhejiang was home to the warlords Yan Baihu and Wang Lang prior to their defeat by Sun Ce and Sun Quan, who eventually established the Kingdom of Wu. Despite the removal of their court from Kuaiji to Jianye (present-day Nanjing) and they continued development of the region and benefitted from influxes of refugees fleeing the turmoil in northern China. Industrial kilns were established and trade reached as far as Manchuria and Funan (southern Mainland Southeast Asia).\nZhejiang was part of the Wu during the Three Kingdoms. Wu (229\u2013280), commonly known as Eastern Wu or Sun Wu, had been the economically most developed state among the Three Kingdoms (220\u2013280). The historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms records that Zhejiang had the best-equipped naval force. The story depicts how the states of Wei () and Shu (), lack of material resources, avoided direct confrontation with the Wu. In armed military conflicts with Wu, the two states relied intensively on tactics of camouflage and deception to steal Wu's military resources including arrows and bows.\nSix Dynasties.\nDespite the continuing prominence of Nanjing (then known as Jiankang), the settlement of Qiantang, the former name of Hangzhou, remained one of the three major metropolitan centers in the south to provide major tax revenue to the imperial centers in the north China. The other two centers in the south were Jiankang and Chengdu. In 589, Qiantang was raised in status and renamed Hangzhou.\nFollowing the fall of Wu and the turmoil of the Wu Hu uprising against the Jin dynasty (266\u2013420), most of elite Chinese families had collaborated with the non-Chinese rulers and military conquerors in the north. Some may have lost social privilege and took refuge in areas south of the Yangtze River. Some of the Chinese refugees from North China might have resided in areas near Hangzhou. For example, the clan of Zhuge Liang (181\u2013234), a chancellor of the state of Shu Han from Central Plain in north China during the Three Kingdoms period, gathered together at the suburb of Hangzhou, forming an exclusive, closed village Zhuge Village (Zhege Cun), consisting of villagers all with family name \"Zhuge.\" The village has intentionally isolated itself from the surrounding communities for centuries to this day and only recently came to be known in public. It suggests that a small number of powerful, elite Chinese refugees from the Central Plain might have taken refuge south of the Yangtze River. However, considering the mountainous geography and relative lack of agrarian lands in Zhejiang, most of these refugees might have resided in some areas in South China beyond Zhejiang, where fertile agrarian lands and metropolitan resources were available, mainly Southern Jiangsu, Eastern Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Anhui and provinces where less cohesive, organized regional governments had been in place. Metropolitan areas of Sichuan was another hub for refugees, given that the state of Shu had long been founded and ruled by political and military elites from the Central Plain and North China. Some refugees from North China might have found residence in South China depending on their social status and military power in the north. The rump Jin state or the Southern dynasties vied against some elite Chinese from the Central Plain and south of the Yangtze River.\nSui and Tang eras.\nZhejiang, as the heartland of the Jiangnan (Yangtze River Delta), remained the wealthiest area during the Six Dynasties (220 or 222\u2013589), Sui and Tang. After being incorporated into the Sui dynasty, its economic richness was used for the Sui dynasty's ambitions to expand north and south, particularly into Korea and Vietnam. The plan led the Sui dynasty to restore and expand the network which became the Grand Canal of China. The Canal regularly transported grains and resources from Zhejiang, through its metropolitan center Hangzhou (and its hinterland along both the Zhe River and the shores of Hangzhou Bay) and from Suzhou and thence to the North China Plain. The d\u00e9b\u00e2cle of the Korean war led to Sui's overthrow by the Tang, who then presided over a centuries-long golden age for the country. Zhejiang was an important economic center of the empire's Jiangnan East Circuit and was considered particularly prosperous. Throughout the Tang dynasty, The Grand Canal had remained effective, transporting grains and material resources to North China plain and metropolitan centers of the empire. As the Tang dynasty disintegrated, Zhejiang constituted most of the territory of the regional kingdom of Wuyue.\nWuyue era.\nAfter the collapse of the Tang dynasty in 907, the entire area of what is now Zhejiang fell under the control of the kingdom Wuyue established by King Qian Liu, who selected Hangzhou (a city in the modern day area of Zhejiang) as his kingdom's capital. Despite being under Wuyue rule for a relatively short period of time, Zhejiang underwent a long period of financial and cultural prosperity which continued even after the kingdom fell.\nAfter Wuyue was conquered during the reunification of China, many shrines were erected across the former territories of Wuyue, mainly in Zhejiang, where the kings of Wuyue were memorialised, and sometimes, worshipped as being able to dictate weather and agriculture. Many of these shrines, known as \"Shrine of the Qian King\" or \"Temple to the Qian King\", still remain today, with the most popularly visited example being that near West Lake in Hangzhou.\nChina's province of Zhejiang during the 940s was also the place of origin of the H\u00fa family (H\u1ed3 in Vietnamese) from which the founder of the H\u1ed3 dynasty who ruled Vietnam, Emperor H\u1ed3 Qu\u00fd Ly, came from.\nSong era.\nThe Song dynasty re-established unity around 960. Under the Song, the prosperity of South China began to overtake that of North China. After the north was lost to the Jurchen Jin dynasty in 1127 following the Jingkang Incident, Hangzhou became the capital of the Song dynasty under the name Lin'an, which was renowned for its prosperity and beauty, it was suspected to have been the largest city in the world at the time.\nFrom then on, northern Zhejiang and neighboring southern Jiangsu have been synonymous with luxury and opulence in Chinese culture. The Mongol conquest and the establishment of the Yuan dynasty in 1279 ended Hangzhou's political clout, but its economy continued to prosper. The famous traveler Marco Polo visited the city, which he called \"Kinsay\" (after the Chinese \"Jingshi\", meaning \"Capital City\") claiming it was \"the finest and noblest city in the world.\"\nGreenware ceramics made from celadon had been made in the area since the 3rd-century Jin dynasty, but it returned to prominence\u2014particularly in Longquan\u2014during the Southern Song and Yuan. Longquan greenware is characterized by a thick unctuous glaze of a particular bluish-green tint over an otherwise undecorated light-grey porcellaneous body that is delicately potted. Yuan Longquan celadons feature a thinner, greener glaze on larger vessels with decoration and shapes derived from Middle Eastern ceramic and metalwares. These were produced in large quantities for the Chinese export trade to Southeast Asia, the Middle East and (during the Ming) Europe. By the Ming, however, production was notably deficient in quality. It is in this period that the Longquan kilns declined, to be eventually replaced in popularity and ceramic production by the kilns of Jingdezhen in Jiangxi.\nYuan and Ming eras.\nZhejiang was finally conquered by the Mongols in the late 13th century who later established the short lived Yuan dynasty. Zhejiang became part of the much larger Jiangzhe Province.\nThe Ming dynasty, which drove out the Mongols in 1368, finally established the present day province of Zhejiang with its borders having little changes since this establishment.\nAs in other coastal provinces, number of fortresses were constructed along the Zhejiang coast during the early Ming to defend the land against pirate incursions. Some of them have been preserved or restored, such as Pucheng in the south of the province (Cangnan County).\nQing era.\nUnder the late Ming dynasty and the Qing dynasty that followed it, Zhejiang's ports were important centers of international trade.\n\"In 1727 the to-min or 'idle people' of Cheh Kiang province (a Ningpo name still existing), the yoh-hu or 'music people' of Shanxi province, the si-min or 'small people' of Kiang Su (Jiangsu) province and the Tanka people or 'egg-people' of Canton (to this day the boat population there), were all freed from their social disabilities and allowed to count as free men.\" \"Cheh Kiang\" is another romanization for Zhejiang. The Duomin () are a caste of outcasts in this province.\nDuring the First Opium War, the British navy defeated Eight Banners forces at Ningbo and Dinghai. Under the terms of the Treaty of Nanking, signed in 1843, Ningbo became one of the five Chinese treaty ports opened to virtually unrestricted foreign trade. Much of Zhejiang came under the control of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom during the Taiping Rebellion, which resulted in a considerable loss of life in the north-western and central parts of the province, sparing the rest of Zhejiang from the disastrous depopulation that occurred. In 1876, Wenzhou became Zhejiang's second treaty port. Jianghuai Mandarin speakers later came to settle in these depopulated regions of northern Zhejiang.\nRepublican era.\nDuring the Second Sino-Japanese War, which led into World War II, much of Zhejiang was occupied by Japan and placed under the control of the Japanese puppet state known as the Reorganized National Government of China. Following the Doolittle Raid, most of the B-25 American crews that came down in China eventually made it to safety with the help of Chinese civilians and soldiers. The Chinese people who helped them, however, paid dearly for sheltering the Americans. The Imperial Japanese Army began the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign to intimidate the Chinese out of helping downed American airmen. Imperial Japanese forces killed an estimated 250,000 Chinese civilians from the area of Hangzhou to Nanchang and also Zhuzhou while searching for Doolittle's men.\nPeople's Republic era.\nAfter the People's Republic of China took control of Mainland China in 1949, the Republic of China government based in Taiwan continued to control the Dachen Islands off the coast of Zhejiang until 1955, even establishing a rival Zhejiang provincial government there. During the Cultural Revolution (1966\u201376), Zhejiang was in chaos and disunity and its economy was stagnant, especially during the high tide (1966\u201369) of the revolution. The agricultural policy favoring grain production at the expense of industrial and cash crops intensified economic hardships in the province. Mao's self-reliance policy and the reduction in maritime trade cut off the lifelines of the port cities of Ningbo and Wenzhou. While Mao invested heavily in railroads in interior China, no major railroads were built in South Zhejiang, where transportation remained poor.\nZhejiang benefited less from central government investment than some other provinces due to its lack of natural resources, a location vulnerable to potential flooding from the sea and an economic base at the national average. Zhejiang, however, has been an epicenter of capitalist development in China and has led the nation in the development of a market economy and private enterprises. Northeast Zhejiang, as part of the Yangtze Delta, is flat, more developed and industrial.\nGeography.\nZhejiang consists mostly of hills, which account for about 70% of its total area. Altitudes tend to be the highest to the south and west and the highest peak of the province, Huangmaojian Peak (), is located there. Other prominent mountains include Mounts Yandang, Tianmu, Tiantai and Mogan, which reach altitudes of .\nValleys and plains are found along the coastline and rivers. The north of the province lies just south of the Yangtze Delta and consists of plains around the cities of Hangzhou, Jiaxing and Huzhou, where the Grand Canal of China enters from the northern border to end at Hangzhou. Another relatively flat area is found along the Qu River around the cities of Quzhou and Jinhua. Major rivers include the Qiangtang and Ou Rivers. Most rivers carve out valleys in the highlands, with plenty of rapids and other features associated with such topography. Well-known lakes include the West Lake of Hangzhou and the South Lake of Jiaxing.\nThere are over three thousand islands along the rugged coastline of Zhejiang. The largest, Zhoushan Island, is mainland China's third largest island, after Hainan and Chongming. There are also many bays, of which Hangzhou Bay is the largest. Zhejiang has a humid subtropical climate with four distinct seasons. Spring starts in March and is rainy with changeable weather. Summer, from June to September is long, hot, rainy and humid. Fall is generally dry, warm and sunny. Winters are short but cold except in the far south. Average annual temperature is around , average January temperature is around and average July temperature is around . Annual precipitation is about . There is plenty of rainfall in early summer and by late summer Zhejiang is directly threatened by typhoons forming in the Pacific.\nAdministrative divisions.\nZhejiang is divided into eleven prefecture-level divisions: all prefecture-level cities (including two sub-provincial cities):\nThe eleven prefecture-level divisions of Zhejiang are subdivided into 90 county-level divisions (37 districts, 20 county-level cities, 32 counties, and one autonomous county). Those are in turn divided into 1,364 township-level divisions (618 towns, 488 townships, and 258 subdistricts). Hengdian belongs to Jinhua, which is the largest base of shooting films and TV dramas in China. Hengdian World Studios is called \"China's Hollywood.\" At the year end of 2021, the total population was 65.40 million.\nUrban areas.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nPolitics.\nThe politics of Zhejiang is structured in a dual party-government system like all other governing institutions in mainland China. The Governor of Zhejiang is the highest-ranking official in the People's Government of Zhejiang. However, in the province's dual party-government governing system, the Governor is subordinate to the secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.\nSeveral political figures who served as Zhejiang's top political office of Party Secretary have played key roles in various events in PRC history. Tan Zhenlin (term 1949\u20131952), the inaugural Party Secretary, was one of the leading voices against Mao's Cultural Revolution during the so-called February Countercurrent of 1967. Jiang Hua (term 1956\u20131968), was the \"chief justice\" on the Special Court in the case against the Gang of Four in 1980. Three provincial Party Secretaries since the 1990s have gone onto prominence at the national level. They include CPC General Secretary and President Xi Jinping (term 2002\u20132007), National People's Congress Chairman and former Vice-Premier Zhang Dejiang (term 1998\u20132002), and Zhao Hongzhu (term 2007\u20132012), the Deputy Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, China's top anti-corruption body. Of Zhejiang's fourteen Party Secretaries since 1949, none were native to the province.\nZhejiang was home to Chiang Kai-shek and many high-ranking officials in the Kuomintang, who fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Civil War.\nEconomy.\nZhejiang is one of the richest and most developed provinces in China. As of 2022[ [update]], its nominal GDP was US$1.15 trillion (CN\u00a5 7.77 trilion), about 6.42% of the country's GDP and ranked 4th among province-level administrative units; the province's primary, secondary and tertiary industries were worth CN\u00a5232.48 billion (US$34.56 billion), CN\u00a53.3205 trillion (US$493.67 billion) and CN\u00a54.2185 trillion (US$627.18 billion) respectively. Its nominal GDP per capita was US$17,617 (CN\u00a5118,496) and ranked the 6th in the country. The private sector in the province has been playing an increasingly important role in boosting the regional economy since Economic Reform in 1978. Zhejiang is generally regarded as having one of the strongest private sectors among Chinese provinces and its local governments typically adopt permissive business policies.186\nZhejiang's main manufacturing sectors are electromechanical industries, textiles, chemical industries, food and construction materials. In recent years Zhejiang has followed its own development model, dubbed the \"Zhejiang model\", which is based on prioritizing and encouraging entrepreneurship, an emphasis on small businesses responsive to the whims of the market, large public investments into infrastructure, and the production of low-cost goods in bulk for both domestic consumption and export. As a result, Zhejiang has made itself one of the richest provinces and the \"Zhejiang spirit\" has become something of a legend within China. However, some economists now worry that this model is not sustainable, in that it is inefficient and places unreasonable demands on raw materials and public utilities, and also a dead end, in that the myriad small businesses in Zhejiang producing cheap goods in bulk are unable to move to more sophisticated or technologically more advanced industries. The economic heart of Zhejiang is moving from North Zhejiang, centered on Hangzhou, southeastward to the region centered on Wenzhou and Taizhou. The per capita disposable income of urbanites in Zhejiang reached 55,574 yuan (US$8,398) in 2018, an annual real growth of 8.4%. The per capita disposable income of rural residents stood at 27,302 yuan (US$4,126), a real growth of 9.4%.\nZhejiang was the first province to pilot a common prosperity pilot program.166\nTraditionally, the province is known as the \"Land of Fish and Rice.\" True to its name, rice is the main crop, followed by wheat; north Zhejiang is also a center of aquaculture in China, and the Zhoushan fishery is the largest fishery in the country. The main cash crops include jute and cotton and the province also leads the provinces of China in tea production. (The renowned Longjing tea is a product of Hangzhou.) Zhejiang's towns have been known for handicraft production of goods such as silk, for which it is ranked second among the provinces. Its many market towns connect the cities with the countryside.\nIn 1832, the province was exporting silk, paper, fans, pencils, wine, dates, tea and \"golden-flowered\" hams.\nZhejiang has been leading the digital economy development in China, in recent years, the provincial economy has been boosted by the economic surge brought by internet corporations such as Alibaba and NetEase.\nNingbo, Wenzhou, Taizhou and Zhoushan are important commercial ports. The Hangzhou Bay Bridge between Haiyan County and Cixi, is the longest bridge over a continuous body of sea water in the world.\nEconomic and technological development concerns.\nWaste disposal.\nOn Thursday, September 15, 2011, more than 500 people from Hongxiao Village protested over the large-scale death of fish in a nearby river. Angry protesters stormed the Zhejiang Jinko Solar Company factory compound, overturned eight company vehicles, and destroyed the offices before police came to disperse the crowd. Protests continued on the two following nights with reports of scuffles, officials said. Chen Hongming, a deputy head of Haining's environmental protection bureau, said the factory's waste disposal had failed pollution tests since April. The environmental watchdog had warned the factory, but it had not effectively controlled the pollution, Chen added.\nDemographics.\nHan Chinese make up the vast majority of the population and the largest Han subgroup are the speakers of Wu varieties of Chinese. There are also 400,000 members of ethnic minorities, including approximately 200,000 She people and approximately 20,000 Hui Chinese. Jingning She Autonomous County in Lishui is the only She autonomous county in China.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nThe predominant religions in Zhejiang are Chinese folk religions, Taoist traditions and Chinese Buddhism. According to surveys conducted in 2007 and 2009, 23.02% of the population believes and is involved in ancestor veneration, while 2.62% of the population identifies as Christian, decreasing from 3.92% in 2004. The reports did not give figures for other types of religion; 74.36% of the population may be either irreligious or involved in worship of nature deities, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, folk religious sects. As of the mid-2010s, Zhejiang has 34,880 registered folk religious temples greater than 20 sqm and 10,000 registered places of worship of the five doctrines (Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam).\nIn mid-2015 the government of Zhejiang recognised folk religion as \"civil religion\" beginning the formal registration of the province's folk religious temples under the aegis of the provincial Bureau of Folk Faith. Buddhism has an important presence since its arrival in Zhejiang 1,800 years ago.\nCatholicism arrived 400 years ago in the province and Protestantism 150 years ago. Zhejiang is one of the provinces of China with the largest concentrations of Protestants, especially notable in the city of Wenzhou. In 1999, Zhejiang's Protestant population comprised 2.8% of the provincial population, a small percentage but higher than the national average.\nThe rapid development of religions in Zhejiang has driven the local committee of ethnic and religious affairs to enact policies to rationalise them in 2014, variously named \"Three Remodelings and One Demolition\" operations or \"Special Treatment Work on Illegally Constructed Sites of Religious and Folk Religion Activities\" according to the locality. These regulations have led to cases of demolition of churches and folk religion temples or the removal of crosses from churches' roofs and spires. An exemplary case was that of the Sanjiang Church. Despite English-language media focused on Christian churches, only 2.3% of the buildings affected by the regulations were Christian churches; most of them were folk religious temples.\nIslam arrived 1,400 years ago in Zhejiang. Today Islam is practiced by a small number of people including virtually all the Hui Chinese living in Zhejiang. In 2020, there are 117,000 Muslims in Zhejiang. Another religion present in the province is She shamanism (practiced by She ethnic minority).\nMedia.\nThe Zhejiang Radio & Television Group, Hangzhou Radio & Television Group, Ningbo Radio & Television Group are the local broadcasters in Zhejiang Province.\nCulture.\nLanguages.\nZhejiang is mountainous and has therefore fostered the development of many distinct local cultures. Linguistically speaking, Zhejiang is extremely diverse. Most inhabitants of Zhejiang speak varieties of Wu, but those Wu dialects are very diverse, especially in the south, where one valley may speak a dialect completely unintelligible to the next valley a few kilometers away. Other varieties of Chinese are spoken as well, mostly along the borders; Mandarin and Huizhou dialects are spoken on the border with Anhui, while Min dialects are spoken on the border with Fujian. (See Hangzhou dialect, Shaoxing dialect, Ningbo dialect, Wenzhou dialect, Taizhou dialect, Jinhua dialect and Quzhou dialect for more information)\nThroughout history there have been a series of \"lingua francas\" in the area to allow for better communication. The dialects spoken in Hangzhou, Shaoxing and Ningbo have taken on this role historically. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Mandarin, which is not mutually intelligible with any of the Wu dialects, has been promoted as the standard language of communication throughout China. As a result, most of the population now can, to some degree, speak and comprehend Mandarin and can code-switch when necessary. A majority of the population educated since 1978 can speak some Mandarin. Urban residents tend to be more fluent in Mandarin than rural people. Nevertheless, a Zhejiang accent is detectable in almost everyone from the area communicating in Mandarin and the home dialect remains an important part of the everyday lives and cultural identities of most Zhejiang residents.\nMusic.\nZhejiang is the home of Yue opera, one of the most prominent forms of Chinese opera. \"Yueju\" originated in Shengzhou and is traditionally performed by actresses only, in both male and female roles. Other important opera traditions include Yongju (of Ningbo), Shao opera (of Shaoxing), Ouju (of Wenzhou), Wuju (of Jinhua), Taizhou Luantan (of Taizhou) and Zhuji Luantan (of Zhuji).\nCuisine.\nLongjing tea (also called dragon well tea), originating in Hangzhou, is one of the most prestigious, if not \"the\" most prestigious Chinese tea. Hangzhou is also renowned for its silk umbrellas and hand fans. Zhejiang cuisine (itself subdivided into many traditions, including Hangzhou cuisine) is one of the eight great traditions of Chinese cuisine.\nPlace names.\nSince ancient times, north Zhejiang and neighboring south Jiangsu have been famed for their prosperity and opulence and simply inserting north Zhejiang place names (Hangzhou, Jiaxing, etc.) into poetry gave an effect of dreaminess, a practice followed by many noted poets. In particular, the fame of Hangzhou (as well as Suzhou in neighboring Jiangsu province) has led to the popular saying: \"Above there is heaven; below there is Suzhou and Hangzhou\" (), a saying that continues to be a source of pride for the people of these two still prosperous cities.\nTourism.\nTourist destinations in Zhejiang include:\nSports.\nProfessional sports teams based in Zhejiang include:\nEducation and research.\nZhejiang is one of China's leading provinces in research and education. As of 2024[ [update]], two major cities in Zhejiang ranked in the world's top 200 cities (Hangzhou 13th and Ningbo 123rd) by scientific research output, as tracked by Nature Index.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "6294442": "Yang Yu (swimmer)\nChinese swimmer\nYang Yu (; born February 6, 1985, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang) is an Olympic medal-winning swimmer from the People's Republic of China. She became part of the Chinese national swimming team in 1999, and competed for Team China at the 2008 Summer Olympics.\nCareer.\nInternational debut and the 2000 Olympics.\nYang competed in her big international meet in the 2000 World Short Course Championships in Athens, where she won the 200 freestyle in 1:56.06. Later she qualified to swim at the Sydney Olympics, where she placed 17th in the 200 free (2:01.34).\n2001, 02 and 03 World Aquatic Championships.\nYang competed at the 2001 Fukuoka World Championships and won the silver medal in the Women's 200 m Freestyle event (1:58.78), after Australia's Giaan Rooney (1:58.57). At the 2001 Chinese National Games, she placed 2nd in both the 100 (54.94) and 200 free (1:58.71).\nIn the 2002 World Short Course Championships in Moscow, Yang took gold in the 4x200 free relay (7:46.30, world record), silver in the 200 free (1:55.34, Asian record) and 200 fly (2:06.10), and bronze in the 4x100 free relay (3:36.18). She won gold in the 200 free (1:58.43), 4x100 free relay (3:40.95), 4x200 free relay (7:58.46) and silver in the 100 free (55.51) at the 2002 Asian Games in Busan.\nYang started the 2003 season strongly by posting a world-leading 1:57.70 at the Chinese Nationals in April 2003, but at the 2003 World Championships (Barcelona), she only managed 3rd in this event (1:58.54). She also took bronze in the 4x200 free relay (7:58.53. Yang split 1:57.24, the fastest in history), and gold in the 4x100 medley relay (3:59.89, Asian record and 2nd fastest time in history. Yang swam the freestyle leg and split 53.71).\n2004 Olympic Games.\nYang competed at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. There she was a member of China's 4 \u00d7 200 m freestyle relay team, which won the silver medal in 7:55.97 (Asian record), beaten by the USA team who won in the world record of 7:53.42. Yang was also part of China's 4 \u00d7 100 m women's freestyle relay team. China reached the final in this event but finished a disappointing 8th.\nYang competed as an individual in the 200m freestyle event, and qualified for the semi-final, but did not progress to the final.\n2005-06.\nYang did compete at the 2005 World Championships in Montreal, winning the bronze medal in the 200m freestyle event. She posted strong times at the 2005 Chinese National Games, winning the 200 free in 1:57.86, 2nd fastest in the world globally. At the 2006 World Short Course Championships in Shanghai, she took gold in the 200 free (1:54.94). She failed to defend her 200 free title at the Asian Games in Doha, Qatar, beaten by teammate Pang Jiaying (1:59.26 to 2:00.73).\n2007 World Aquatic Championships.\nYang Yu took part in the 2007 World Aquatic Championships in Melbourne. She did not progress beyond the heat stage in the Women's 200 m freestyle, finishing 18th. She was also a member of China's 4 \u00d7 200 m freestyle relay (which barely missed the final, placing 9th in the heats) and the 4 \u00d7 100 m freestyle relay which ranked seventh.\nNotable Achievements.\nOn January 18, 2004, she broke Susie O'Neill's world record in the women's short course 200 butterfly during a World Cup meet in Berlin, Germany, clocking a time of 2:04.04.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["6294442", "96602"], "permutation_1": ["96602", "6294442"], "permutation_2": ["6294442", "96602"], "permutation_3": ["96602", "6294442"]}
{"id": "2hop__662293_99808", "docs_added": {"14846628": "Curacoa volcano\nSubmarine volcano in Tonga\nCuracoa is a submarine volcano located south of the Curacoa Reef in northern Tonga. The reef is 24fm North of Tafahi in the Niua Islands. Eruptions were observed in 1973 and 1979 from two separate vents. The 1973 eruption produced a large raft of dacitic pumice, and had a volcanic explosivity index (VEI) of 3.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "30158": "Tonga\nCountry in the South Pacific\nTonga ( , ; ), officially the Kingdom of Tonga (), is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania. The country has 171 islands - of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in the southern Pacific Ocean. As of 2021,[ [update]] according to Johnson's Tribune, Tonga has a population of 104,494, 70% of whom reside on the main island, Tongatapu. The country stretches approximately north-south. It is surrounded by Fiji and Wallis and Futuna (France) to the northwest, Samoa to the northeast, New Caledonia (France) and Vanuatu to the west, Niue (the nearest foreign territory) to the east and Kermadec (New Zealand) to the southwest. Tonga is about from New Zealand's North Island.\nTonga was first inhabited roughly 2,500 years ago by the Lapita civilization, Polynesian settlers who gradually evolved a distinct and strong ethnic identity, language, and culture as the Tongan people. They quickly established a powerful footing across the South Pacific, and this period of Tongan expansionism and colonization is known as the Tu\u02bbi Tonga Empire. From the rule of the first Tongan king, \u02bbAho\u02bbeitu, Tonga grew into a regional power. It was a thalassocracy that conquered and controlled unprecedented swathes of the Pacific, from parts of the Solomon Islands and the whole of New Caledonia and Fiji in the west to Samoa and Niue and even as far as parts of modern-day French Polynesia in the east. Tu\u02bbi Tonga became renowned for its economic, ethnic, and cultural influence over the Pacific, which remained strong even after the Samoan revolution of the 13th century and Europeans' discovery of the islands in 1616.\nFrom 1900 to 1970, Tonga had British protected-state status. The United Kingdom looked after Tonga's foreign affairs under a Treaty of Friendship, but Tonga never relinquished its sovereignty to any foreign power. In 2010, Tonga took a decisive step away from its traditional absolute monarchy and became a semi-constitutional monarchy, after legislative reforms paved the way for its first partial representative elections.\nTonga is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the United Nations, the Pacific Islands Forum, and the Alliance of Small Island States.\nEtymology.\nIn many Polynesian languages, including Tongan, the word (), comes from , which means 'southwards', and the archipelago is so named because it is the southernmost group among the island groups of western Polynesia. The word is cognate to the Hawaiian word meaning 'leeward', which is the origin of the name for the Kona District in Hawai\u02bbi.\nTonga became known in the West as the \"Friendly Islands\" because of the congenial reception accorded to Captain James Cook on his first visit in 1773. He arrived at the time of the annual festival, which centres on the donation of the First Fruits to the Tu\u02bbi Tonga (the islands' monarch), so he received an invitation to the festivities. Ironically, according to the writer William Mariner, the political leaders actually wanted to kill Cook during the gathering, but did not go through with it because they could not agree on a plan of action for accomplishing it.\nHistory.\nAccording to Tongan mythology, the demigod Maui drew up a group of islands from the ocean, first appearing Tongatapu, the Ha'apai Islands and Vava'u, integrating into what became modern-day Tonga.\nAn Austronesian-speaking group linked to what archaeologists call the Lapita culture covered from Island Melanesia to Samoa, and then on to inhabit Tonga sometime between 1500 and 1000\u00a0BC. Scholars still debate exactly when Tonga was first settled, but thorium dating confirms that settlers had arrived in the earliest known inhabited town, Nukuleka, by 888 BC, \u00b1 8 years. Tonga's precontact history was shared via oral history, which was passed down from generation to generation.\nBy the 12th century, Tongans and the Tongan monarch, the Tu\u02bbi Tonga, had acquired a reputation across the central Pacific\u00a0\u2013 from Niue, Samoa, Rotuma, Wallis and Futuna, New Caledonia to Tikopia, leading some historians to speak of a Tu\u02bbi Tonga Empire having existed during that period. Civil wars are known to have occurred in Tonga in the 15th and 17th centuries.\nThe Tongan people first encountered Europeans in 1616, when the Dutch vessel \"Eendracht\", captained by Willem Schouten, made a short visit to the islands for the purpose of engaging in trade. Later, other Dutch explorers arrived, including Jacob Le Maire (who visited the northern island of Niuatoputapu); and Abel Tasman (who visited Tongatapu and Ha\u02bbapai) in 1643. Later noteworthy European visitors included James Cook, of the British Royal Navy, in 1773, 1774, and 1777; Spanish Navy explorers Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa in 1781; Alessandro Malaspina in 1793; the first London missionaries in 1797; and a Wesleyan Methodist minister, Reverend Walter Lawry, in 1822.\nWhaling vessels were among the earliest regular Western visitors. The first of these on record is the \"Ann and Hope\", which was reported to have been seen among the islands of Tonga in June 1799. The last known whaling visitor was the \"Albatross\" in 1899. That ship arrived in Tonga seeking a resupply of water, food, and wood. The islands most regularly visited by Westerners were Ata, 'Eua, Ha'apai, Tongatapu, and Vava'u. Sometimes, Tongan men were recruited to serve as crewmen on these vessels.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition visited Tonga in 1840.\nIn 1845, an ambitious young Tongan warrior, strategist, and orator named T\u0101ufa\u02bb\u0101hau united Tonga into a kingdom. He held the chiefly title of Tu\u02bbi Kanokupolu, but had been baptised by Methodist missionaries with the name \"Siaosi\" (\"George\") in 1831. In 1875, with the help of missionary Shirley Waldemar Baker, he declared Tonga a constitutional monarchy, formally adopted the Western royal style, emancipated the \"serfs\", enshrined a code of law, land tenure, and freedom of the press, and limited the power of the chiefs.\nTonga became a protected state under a Treaty of Friendship with Britain on 18 May 1900, when European settlers and rival Tongan chiefs unsuccessfully tried to oust the man who had succeeded T\u0101ufa\u02bb\u0101hau as king. The treaty posted no higher permanent representative on Tonga than a British consul (1901\u20131970). Under the protection of Britain, Tonga maintained its sovereignty and remained the only Pacific nation to retain its monarchical government. The Tongan monarchy follows an uninterrupted succession of hereditary rulers from one family.\nThe 1918 flu pandemic, brought to Tonga by a ship from New Zealand, killed 1,800 Tongans, a mortality rate of about 8%.\nThe Treaty of Friendship and Tonga's protection status ended in 1970 under arrangements that had been established by Tonga's Queen Salote Tupou III before her death in 1965. Owing to its British ties, Tonga joined the Commonwealth in 1970 (atypically as a country that had its own monarch, rather than having the United Kingdom's monarch, along with Malaysia, Brunei, Lesotho, and Eswatini). Tonga became a member of the United Nations in September 1999. While exposed to colonial pressures, Tonga has always governed itself, which makes it unique in the Pacific.\nIn January 2022, the Hunga Tonga\u2013Hunga Ha\u02bbapai volcano, north of the main island of Tongatapu, erupted, causing a tsunami which inundated parts of the archipelago, including the capital Nuku\u02bbalofa. The eruption affected the kingdom heavily, cutting off most communications and killing four people in Tonga. In Peru, two women drowned due to abnormal tsunami waves. It took around five weeks to repair a submarine fiber optic cable used in the Tonga Cable System for internet and telephone connectivity.\nPolitics.\nTonga is a constitutional monarchy. It is the only extant indigenous monarchy in the Pacific islands (see also Hawai\u02bbi). Reverence for the monarch replaces that held in earlier centuries for the sacred paramount chief, the Tu\u02bbi Tonga. Criticism of the monarch is held to be contrary to Tongan culture and etiquette. Tonga provides for its citizens a free and mandatory education for all, secondary education with only nominal fees, and foreign-funded scholarships for postsecondary education.\nThe pro-democracy movement in Tonga promotes reforms, including better representation in the Parliament for the majority of commoners, and better accountability in matters of state. An overthrow of the monarchy is not part of the movement, and the institution of monarchy continues to hold popular support, even while reforms are advocated. Until recently, the governance issue was generally ignored by the leaders of other countries, but major aid donors and neighbours New Zealand and Australia are now expressing concerns about some Tongan government actions.\nFollowing the precedents of Queen S\u0101lote and the counsel of numerous international advisors, the government of Tonga under King T\u0101ufa\u02bb\u0101hau Tupou IV (reigned 1965\u20132006) monetised the economy, internationalised the medical and education systems, and enabled access by commoners to increasing forms of material wealth (houses, cars, and other commodities), education, and overseas travel.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tonga, with a maximum penalty of 10 years' imprisonment, but the law is not enforced. Tongans have universal access to a national health care system. The Constitution of Tonga protects land ownership; land cannot be sold to foreigners (although it may be leased).\nPolitical culture.\nKing T\u0101ufa\u02bb\u0101hau Tupou IV and his government made some problematic economic decisions and were accused by democracy activists, including former prime minister \u02bbAkilisi P\u014dhiva, of wasting millions of dollars on unwise investments. The problems have mostly been driven by attempts to increase national revenue through a variety of schemes \u2013 considering making Tonga a nuclear waste disposal site (an idea floated in the mid 1990s by the current crown prince), and selling Tongan Protected Persons Passports (which eventually forced Tonga to naturalise the purchasers, sparking ethnicity-based concerns within Tonga).\nSchemes also included the registering of foreign ships (which proved to be engaged in illegal activities, including shipments for al-Qaeda), claiming geo-orbital satellite slots (the revenue from which seems to belong to the Princess Royal, not the state), holding a long-term charter on an unusable Boeing 757 that was sidelined in Auckland Airport, leading to the collapse of Royal Tongan Airlines, and approving a factory for exporting cigarettes to China (against the advice of Tongan medical officials and decades of health-promotion messaging).\nThe king proved vulnerable to speculators with big promises and lost reportedly US$26\u00a0million to Jesse Bogdonoff, a financial adviser who called himself the king's court jester. The police imprisoned pro-democracy leaders, and the government repeatedly confiscated the newspaper \"The Tongan Times\" (printed in New Zealand and sold in Tonga) because the editor had been vocally critical of the king's mistakes. Notably, the \"Kele\u02bba\", produced specifically to critique the government and printed in Tonga by pro-democracy leader \u02bbAkilisi P\u014dhiva, was not banned during that time. P\u014dhiva, however, had been subjected to harassment in the form of barratry (frequent lawsuits).\nIn mid-2003, the government passed a radical constitutional amendment to \"Tonganize\" the press, by licensing and limiting freedom of the press, so as to protect the image of the monarchy. The amendment was defended by the government and by royalists on the basis of traditional cultural values. Licensure criteria include 80% ownership by Tongans living in the country. As of \u00a02004[ [update]], those papers denied licenses under the new act included the \"Taimi \u02bbo Tonga\" (\"Tongan Times\"), the \"Kele\u02bba,\" and the \"Matangi Tonga\"\u00a0\u2013 while those permitted licenses were uniformly church-based or pro-government.\nThe bill was opposed in a several-thousand-strong protest march in the capital, a call by the Tu\u02bbi Pelehake (a prince, nephew of the king and elected member of parliament) for Australia and other nations to pressure the Tongan government to democratise the electoral system, and a legal writ calling for a judicial investigation of the bill. The latter was supported by some 160 signatures, including seven of the nine elected \"People's Representatives\".\nThe then-Crown Prince Tupouto\u02bba and Pilolevu, the Princess Royal, remained generally silent on the issue. In total, the changes threatened to destabilise the polity, fragment support for the status quo, and place further pressure on the monarchy.\nIn 2005, the government spent several weeks negotiating with striking civil-service workers before reaching a settlement. The civil unrest that ensued was not limited to Tonga; protests outside the King's New Zealand residence made headlines.\nPrime Minister Prince \u02bbAho\u02bbeitu \u02bbUnuaki\u02bbotonga Tuku\u02bbaho (Lavaka Ata \u02bbUluk\u0101lala) (now King Tupou VI) resigned suddenly on 11 February 2006 and also gave up his other cabinet portfolios. The elected minister of labour, Feleti Sevele, replaced him in the interim.\nOn 5 July 2006, a driver in Menlo Park, California, caused the deaths of Prince Tu\u02bbipelehake \u02bbUluvalu, his wife, and their driver. Tu\u02bbipelehake, 55, was the cochairman of the constitutional reform commission and a nephew of the king.\nThe public expected some changes when George Tupou V succeeded his father in September 2006. On 16 November 2006, rioting broke out in the capital city of Nuku\u02bbalofa when it seemed that the parliament would adjourn for the year without having made any advances in increasing democracy in government. Pro-democracy activists burned and looted shops, offices, and government buildings. As a result, more than 60% of the downtown area was destroyed and as many as six\u00a0people died. The disturbances were ended by action from Tongan Security Forces and troops from New Zealand-led Joint Task Force.\nOn 29 July 2008, the Palace announced that King George Tupou V would relinquish much of his power and would surrender his role in day-to-day governmental affairs to the Prime Minister. The royal chamberlain said that this was being done to prepare the monarchy for 2010, when most of the first parliament would be elected, and added: \"The Sovereign of the only Polynesian kingdom ... is voluntarily surrendering his powers to meet the democratic aspirations of many of his people.\" The previous week, the government said the king had sold state assets that had contributed to much of the royal family's wealth.\nOn 15 March 2012, King George Tupou V contracted pneumonia and was brought to Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong. He was later diagnosed with leukaemia. His health deteriorated significantly shortly thereafter, and he died at 3:15\u00a0pm on 18 March 2012. He was succeeded by his brother Tupou VI, who was crowned on 4 July 2015.\nForeign relations.\nTonga's foreign policy as of January 2009[ [update]] was described by Matangi Tonga as \"Look East\"\u00a0\u2013 specifically, as establishing closer diplomatic and economic relations with Asia (which actually lies to the north-west of the Pacific kingdom). As of 2021, China has attained great influence in Tonga, financing infrastructure projects, including a new royal palace and holding two thirds of the country's foreign debt.\nTonga retains cordial relations with the United States. Although it remains on good terms with the United Kingdom, the two countries do not maintain particularly close relations. The United Kingdom closed its High Commission in Tonga in 2006, although it was re-established in January 2020 after a 14-year absence. Tonga's relations with Oceania's regional powers, Australia and New Zealand, are good.\nTonga maintains strong regional ties in the Pacific. It is a full member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission, the South Pacific Tourism Organisation, the Pacific Regional Environment Programme, and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community.\nIn 2023, the governments of Tonga and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the \"rapid and just transition\" to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law, including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nMilitary.\nThe Tongan government supported the American \"coalition of the willing\" action in Iraq and deployed more than 40 soldiers (as part of an American force) in late 2004. The contingent returned home on 17 December 2004. In 2007, a second contingent went to Iraq, and two more were sent during 2008 as part of continued support for the coalition. Tongan involvement concluded at the end of 2008 with no reported loss of life.\nIn 2010, Brigadier General Tau\u02bbaika \u02bbUta\u02bbatu, commander of the Tonga Defence Services, signed an agreement in London committing a minimum of 200 troops to co-operate with Britain's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. The task was completed in April 2014, and the UK presented Operational Service Medals to each of the soldiers involved during a parade held in Tonga.\nTonga has contributed troops and police to the Bougainville conflict in Papua-New Guinea and to the Australian-led RAMSI force in the Solomon Islands.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTonga is subdivided into five administrative divisions: \u02bbEua, Ha\u02bbapai, Niuas, Tongatapu, and Vava\u02bbu.\nGeography.\nLocated in Oceania, Tonga is an archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean, directly south of Samoa and about two-thirds of the way from Hawai'i to New Zealand. Its 171 islands, 45 of them inhabited, are divided into three main groups \u2013 Vava'u, Ha'apai, and Tongatapu \u2013 and cover an -long north\u2013south line.\nThe largest island, Tongatapu, on which the capital city of Nuku\u02bbalofa is located, covers . Geologically, the Tongan islands are of two types: most have a limestone base formed from uplifted coral formations; others consist of limestone overlaying a volcanic base.\nClimate.\nTonga has a tropical rainforest climate (\"Af\") with a distinct warm period (December\u2013April), during which the temperatures rise above , and a cooler period (May\u2013November), with temperatures rarely rising above . The temperature and rainfall range from and on Tongatapu in the south to and on the more northerly islands closer to the Equator.\nThe average wettest period is around March, with on average . The average daily humidity is 80%. The highest temperature recorded in Tonga was on 11 February 1979 in Vava'u. The coldest temperature recorded in Tonga was on 8 September 1994 in Fua'amotu. Temperatures of or lower are usually measured in the dry season and are more frequent in southern Tonga than in the northern islands. The tropical cyclone season currently runs from 1 November to 30 April, though tropical cyclones can form and affect Tonga outside of the season. According to the WorldRiskReport 2021, Tonga ranks third among the countries with the highest disaster risk worldwide \u2013 mainly due to the country's exposure to multiple natural hazards.\nEcology.\nTonga contains the Tongan tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nIn Tonga, dating back to Tongan legend, flying bats are considered sacred and are the property of the monarchy. Thus, they are protected and cannot be harmed or hunted. As a result, flying fox bats have thrived in many of the islands of Tonga.\nThe bird life of Tonga includes a total of 73 species, of which two are endemic, the Tongan whistler and the Tongan megapode. Five species have been introduced by humans, and eight are rare or accidental. Seven species are globally threatened.\nEconomy.\nTonga's economy is characterised by a large nonmonetary sector and a heavy dependence on remittances from the half of the country's population who live abroad (chiefly in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States). The royal family and the nobles dominate and largely own the monetary sector of the economy \u2013 particularly the telecommunications and satellite services. Tonga was named the sixth-most corrupt country in the world by \"Forbes\" magazine in 2008.\nTonga was ranked the 165th-safest investment destination in the world in the March 2011 \"Euromoney\" Country Risk rankings.\nThe manufacturing sector consists of handicrafts and a few other very small-scale industries, which contribute only about 5% of GDP. Commercial business activities also are inconspicuous, and to a large extent, are dominated by the same large trading companies found throughout the South Pacific. In September 1974, the country's first commercial trading bank, the Bank of Tonga, opened.\nTonga's development plans emphasise a growing private sector, upgrading agricultural productivity, revitalising the squash and vanilla-bean industries, developing tourism, and improving communications and transport. Substantial progress has been made, but much work remains to be done. A small, growing construction sector is developing in response to the inflow of aid money and remittances from Tongans abroad. In recognition of such a crucial contribution, the government has created a new department in the Prime Minister's Office with the purpose of catering for the needs of Tongans living abroad. In 2007, the Tongan Parliament amended citizenship laws to allow Tongans to hold dual citizenship.\nThe tourist industry is relatively undeveloped. The government recognises that tourism can play a major role in economic development, and efforts are being made to increase this source of revenue. Cruise ships often stop in Vava\u02bbu, with a reputation for its whale watching, game fishing, surfing, beaches, and is increasingly becoming a major player in the South Pacific tourism market.\nTonga's postage stamps, featuring colourful and often unusual designs (including heart-shaped and banana-shaped stamps), are popular with philatelists.\nIn 2005, the country became eligible to become a member of the World Trade Organization. After an initial voluntary delay, Tonga became a full member of the WTO on 27 July 2007.\nThe Tonga Chamber of Commerce and Industry, incorporated in 1996, endeavours to represent the interests of its members, private sector businesses, and to promote economic growth in the Kingdom.\nTonga is home to some 106,000 people. More than double that number live overseas, mainly in the US, New Zealand, and Australia. Remittances from the overseas population have been declining since the onset of the 2008 global economic crisis. The tourism industry is improving, but remains modest at under 90,000 tourists per year.\nAgriculture.\nIn Tonga, agriculture and forestry (together with fisheries) provide the majority of employment, foreign exchange earnings, and food. Rural Tongans rely on both plantation and subsistence agriculture. Plants grown for both market cash crops and home use include bananas, coconuts, coffee beans, vanilla beans, and root crops such as cassava, sweet potato, and taro. As of 2001[ [update]], two-thirds of agricultural land was in root crops.\nThe processing of coconuts into copra and desiccated (dried) coconut was once the only significant industry, and only commercial export. Deteriorating prices on the world market and lack of replanting brought this once vibrant industry, as in most island nations of the South Pacific, to a complete standstill.\nSwine and poultry are the major types of livestock. Horses are kept for draft purposes, primarily by farmers working their\" \u02bbapi \u02bbuta\" (a plot of bushland). More cattle are being raised, and beef imports are declining.\nThe traditional feudal land ownership system meant that farmers had no incentive to invest in planting long-term tree crops on land they did not own. In the late 20th century, kava and vanilla from larger plantations became the main agricultural exports, together with squash. The export of squash to Japan, beginning in 1987, once brought relief to Tonga's struggling economy, but local farmers became increasingly wary of the Japanese market due to price fluctuations, and the huge financial risks involved.\nEnergy.\nEnergy in Tonga mostly comes from imported diesel. Energy consumption in Tonga is projected to reach around 66 gigawatt hours by 2020. The country aimed to reach 50% of renewable energy by 2020. In 2019, Tonga announced the construction of a 6-megawatt solar farm on Tongatapu. The plant will be the second-largest solar plant in the Pacific upon completion.\nIn view of the decreasing reliability of fossil-fuel electricity generation, its increasing costs, and negative environmental side effects, renewable energy solutions have attracted the government's attention. Together with IRENA, Tonga has planned a renewable energy based strategy to power the main and outer islands. The strategy focuses on solar home systems that turn individual households into small power plants. It calls for the involvement of local operators, finance institutions, and technicians to provide sustainable business models and strategies to ensure the effective operation, management, and maintenance once the systems are installed.\nThe Pacific Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency was established in Tonga in 2016 to advise the private sector on related policy matters, provide capacity development and promote business investment. The centre facilitates a financial mechanism offering competitive grants for start-ups to spur the adoption of renewable energy by the business sector. The centre is part of the Global Network of Regional Sustainable Energy Centres and SIDS DOCK framework designed to attract international investment in the renewable energy sector.\nWith the assistance of IRENA, Tonga has developed the 2010\u20132020 Tonga Energy Road Map, which aims for a 50% reduction of diesel importation. This was to be accomplished through a range of appropriate renewable technologies, including wind and solar, as well as innovative efficiencies. As of 2018, Tonga was generating 10% of its electricity from renewable sources.\nDemographics.\nOver 70% of the inhabitants live on its main island, Tongatapu. Although an increasing number of Tongans have moved into the only urban and commercial centre, Nuku\u02bbalofa, where European and indigenous cultural and living patterns have blended, village life and kinship ties remain influential throughout the country. Despite emigration, Tonga grew in population from about 32,000 in the 1930s to more than 90,000 by 1976.\nEthnic groups.\nAccording to the government portal, Tongans, Polynesian by ethnicity with a mixture of Melanesian, represent more than 98% of the inhabitants. About 1.5% are mixed Tongans and the rest are European (the majority are British), mixed European, and other Pacific Islanders. In 2001, about 3,000 to 4,000 Chinese lived there, comprising 3 to 4% of the total Tongan population. The 2006 Nuku\u02bbalofa riots mainly targeted Chinese-owned businesses, leading to the emigration of several hundred Chinese so that only about 300 remain.\nLanguages.\nTongan is the official language, along with English. Tongan is a Polynesian language of the Tongic branch so is closely related to other languages of the Tongic branch, those being: Niuean and Niuafo\u02bbouan. Tongan is more distantly related to other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, Samoan, M\u0101ori, and Tahitian, among others.\nReligion.\nTonga does not have an official state religion. The Constitution of Tonga (Revised 1998) provides for freedom of religion.\nIn 1928, Queen Salote Tupou III, who was a member of the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga, established the Free Wesleyan Church as the state religion of Tonga. The chief pastor of the Free Wesleyan Church serves as the representative of the people of Tonga and of the church at the coronation of a king or queen of Tonga, where he anoints and crowns the monarch. In opposition to the establishment of the Free Wesleyan Church as a state religion, the Church of Tonga separated from the Free Wesleyan Church in 1928.\nIslam in Tonga is a small minority religion in the country. Muslims in Tonga belong to Sunni denomination. Al-Khadeejah Mosque is a prominent mosque in Tonga.\nEveryday life is heavily influenced by Polynesian traditions and by the Christian faith; for example, all commerce and entertainment activities cease on Sunday, from the beginning of the day at midnight, to the end of the day at midnight. The constitution declares the Sabbath sacred forever. The official figures from the latest government census as of 2011[ [update]] show that 90% of the population are affiliated with a Christian church or sect, with the four major church affiliations in the kingdom:\nThe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent missionaries in 1891 to visit King Siaosi (George) Tupo, where they obtained permission to preach.\nHealth.\nBy some published surveys, Tonga has one of the highest obesity rates in the world. World Health Organization data published in 2014 indicate that Tonga stands fourth overall in terms of countries listed by mean body mass index data. In 2011, 90% of the adult population were considered overweight using NIH interpretation of body mass index (BMI) data, with more than 60% of those obese. 70% of Tongan females aged 15\u201385 are obese. Tonga and Nauru have the world's highest overweight and obese populations.\nIn late October 2021, Tonga reported its first case of COVID-19 based on a New Zealand air passenger's positive test.\nEducation.\nPrimary education between ages 6 and 14 is compulsory and free in state schools. Mission schools provide about 8% of the primary and 90% of the secondary level of education. State schools make up for the rest. Higher education includes teacher training, nursing, and medical training, a small private university, a woman's business college, and a number of private agricultural schools. Most levels of higher education are pursued overseas.\nTongans enjoy a relatively high level of education, with a 98.9% literacy rate, and higher education up to and including medical and graduate degrees (pursued mostly overseas). They hold the body of academic knowledge created by their scholars in high esteem and the Kuk\u016b Kaunaka Collection, which comprises every doctoral and master's dissertation written by any Tongan in any country is archived by Seu'ula Johansson-Fua at the Institute for Education in Tonga.\nEmigration.\nContemporary Tongans often have strong ties to overseas lands. Many Tongans have emigrated to Australia, New Zealand, or the United States to seek employment and a higher standard of living.\nIn 2018, 82,389 Tongans lived in New Zealand. As of 2000, 36,840 Tongans were living in the US. More than 8,000 Tongans live in Australia. The Tongan diaspora retains close ties to relatives at home, and a significant portion of Tonga's income derives from remittances to family members (often aged) who prefer to remain in Tonga.\nCulture.\nHumans have lived in Tonga for nearly 3,000 years since settlement in late Lapita times. Before the arrival of European explorers in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Tongans had frequent contacts with their nearest Oceanic neighbours, Fiji and Niue. In the 19th century, with the arrival of Western traders and missionaries, Tongan culture changed, especially in religion. As of 2013[ [update]], almost 98% of residents profess Christianity. The people discarded some old beliefs and habits and adopted others.\nFahu.\nFahu is a form of social organization practiced by the people of Tonga, built upon a relationship between a person and their father\u2019s sister and paternal cousins. There are a few key superiorities in the social structure of fahu:\nPrior to Western contact, the inner dynamics between the chiefly kinship groups were governed by this social convention. Although fahu rights do not hold the same political strength and implications they historically did, they remain, to a notable degree, a part of the contemporary social practices in Tonga.\nSocio-environmental impact of fahu.\nSimilar social structures to fahu have been cited as significantly beneficial for human adaptation to environmental threats, especially those situated in hurricane-prone regions such as Tonga. The benefit stems from the fahu's ability to provide a network and capacity to allow for relocation or people and resources during environmental events, such as hurricanes or droughts.\nHowever, there have been environmental consequences of note due to the fahu structure, or rather, a disturbance of the structure. In the 1980s, Tonga saw a severe depletion of its sandalwood tree due a disruption of the fahu social hierarchy, which was incited by market demand for the resource. This led to heightened local competition and eventually an overharvest of the tree. Nearly all of the sandalwood resources were depleted over the span of two years.\nSport.\nRugby union.\nRugby union is the national sport, and the national team (\u02bbIkale Tahi, or Sea Eagles) has performed quite well on the international stage. Tonga has competed in six Rugby World Cups since 1987. The 2007 and 2011 Rugby World Cups were Tonga's most successful to date, both winning two out of four matches and in a running chance for the quarterfinals. In the 2007 Rugby World Cup, Tonga won its first two matches, against the USA 25\u201315, and Samoa 19\u201315. They came very close to upsetting the eventual winners of the 2007 tournament, the South African Springboks, losing 30\u201325. A defeat by England, 36\u201320 in their last pool game ended their hopes of making the knockout stages. Nevertheless, by picking up third place in their pool games behind South Africa and England, Tonga earned automatic qualification for the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. In Pool A of the 2011 Rugby World Cup, Tonga beat both Japan 31\u201318 and 5th ranked eventual finalist France 19\u201314 in the latter pool stages. However, a previous heavy defeat by the All Blacks at the tournament's opener (41\u201310) and a subsequent tight defeat by Canada (25\u201320) meant that Tonga lost out to France (who also lost to NZ) for the quarter finals due to 2 bonus points and a points difference of 46.\nTonga's best result before 2007 came in 1995, when they beat C\u00f4te d'Ivoire 29\u201311, and 1999 when they beat Italy 28\u201325 (although with only 14 men they lost heavily to England, 101\u201310). Tonga perform the Ikale Tahi war dance or Sipi Tau (a form of Kailao) before all their matches. Tonga used to compete in the Pacific Tri-Nations against Samoa and Fiji, which has now been replaced by the World Rugby Pacific Nations Cup, which now involves Japan, Canada, and the United States. At club level, there are the Datec Cup Provincial Championship and the Pacific Rugby Cup. Rugby union is governed by the Tonga Rugby Football Union, which was a member of the Pacific Islands Rugby Alliance and contributed to the Pacific Islanders rugby union team, before they were disbanded in 2009.\nMany players of Tongan descent \u2013 e.g., Jonah Lomu, Israel Folau, Viliami \"William\" \u02bbOfahengaue, Malakai Fekitoa, Ben Afeaki, Charles Piutau, Frank Halai, Sekope Kepu, George Smith, Wycliff Palu, Sitaleki Timani, Salesi Ma'afu, Anthony and Saia Fainga'a, Mark Gerrard, Cooper Vuna, Doug Howlett, Toutai Kefu and Tatafu Polota-Nau \u2013 have played for either the All Blacks or the Wallabies. British and Irish Lion and Welsh international player Taulupe \"Toby\" Faletau is Tongan born and the son of Tongan international Kuli Faletau. Taulupe's cousins and England international players Billy and Mako Vunipola (who is also a British and Irish Lion), are sons of former Tonga rugby captain Fe'ao Vunipola. Rugby is popular among the nation's schools, and students from schools such as Tonga College and Tupou College are regularly offered scholarships in New Zealand, Australia and Japan.\nRugby league.\nRugby league has gained some success. Tonga made their first appearance at a Rugby League World Cup in the 1995 edition where they went out in the first stage but narrowly lost to New Zealand. They have since appeared in each subsequent Rugby League World Cup tournament. In the 2008 Rugby League World Cup Tonga recorded wins against Ireland and Scotland. Just before the 2017 World Cup, various high-profile players, led by Jason Taumalolo and Andrew Fifita, defected from their tier one nations to represent their nation of heritage. This led to them defeating New Zealand in Hamilton at Waikato Stadium on 11 November at that tournament. The national team has since also recorded victories against Great Britain and the world number one Australia. In addition to the success of the national team, many players of Tongan descent make it big in the Australian National Rugby League competition. These include Jason Taumalolo, Israel Folau, Tyson Frizell, Tevita Pangai Junior, Konrad Hurrell, David Fusitua, Tuimoala Lolohea, Sio Siua Taukeiaho, Jorge Taufua, William Hopoate, Andrew Fifita, Ben Murdoch-Masila, Felise Kaufusi, Willie Mason, Manu Vatuvei, Brent Kite, Fuifui Moimoi, Willie Tonga, Anthony Tupou, Antonio Kaufusi, Michael Jennings, Tony Williams, Feleti Mateo. Subsequently, some Tongan rugby league players have established successful careers in the Super League such as Antonio Kaufusi.\nOlympics.\nAside from rugby, Tonga has also produced athletes who have competed at both the Summer and Winter Olympics. Tonga's only Olympic medal came from the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, where Paea Wolfgramm won silver in super heavyweight boxing. One athlete, Pita Taufatofua, attended the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.\nAmerican football.\nSeveral Tongans have been football players in the National Football League, including Tuineau Alipate, Sione Takitaki, Spencer Folau, Lakei Heimuli, Steve Kaufusi, Ma'ake Kemoeatu, Deuce Lutui, Siupeli Malamala, Tim Manoa, Stan Mataele, Vili Maumau, Alfred Pupunu, Vai Sikahema, Star Lotulelei, Vita Vea, Talanoa Hufanga, Peter Tuipulotu, Marlon Tuipulotu, and Tuli Tuipulotu.\nContemporary Tongan art.\nThere has been a huge surge of contemporary Tongan artists in the past decade, the majority based in New Zealand. Tanya Edwards works with ngatu (bark cloths), Benjamin Work, Telly Tuita, and Sione Mon\u016b are widely exhibited internationally, S\u0113misi Fetokai Potauaine built a five-storey Tongan sculpture in central Christchurch. In 2023, Bergman Gallery hosted \"Tukufakaholo, Tongan Contemporary\" in Auckland, New Zealand, featuring eight Tongan artists.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["14846628", "30158"], "permutation_1": ["14846628", "30158"], "permutation_2": ["30158", "14846628"], "permutation_3": ["30158", "14846628"]}
{"id": "2hop__523855_79070", "docs_added": {"23071": "Prince Edward Island\nProvince of Canada\nPrince Edward Island is an island province of Canada. While it is the smallest province in terms of land area and population, it is the most densely populated. The island has several nicknames: \"Garden of the Gulf\", \"Birthplace of Confederation\" and \"Cradle of Confederation\". Its capital and largest city is Charlottetown. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces.\nPart of the traditional lands of the Mi'kmaq, it was colonized by the French in 1604 as part of the colony of Acadia. The island, known as Isle St-Jean (St. John's Island), was ceded to the British at the conclusion of the Seven Years' War in 1763 and became part of the colony of Nova Scotia. In 1769, St. John's Island became its own British colony and its name was changed to Prince Edward Island (PEI) in 1798. PEI hosted the Charlottetown Conference in 1864 to discuss a union of the Maritime provinces; however, the conference became the first in a series of meetings which led to Canadian Confederation on July 1, 1867. Prince Edward Island initially balked at Confederation but, facing bankruptcy from the Land Question and construction of a railroad, joined as Canada's seventh province on July 1, 1873.\nAccording to Statistics Canada, the province of Prince Edward Island had 179,280 residents in 2025. The backbone of the island economy is farming; it produces 25% of Canada's potatoes. Other important industries include fisheries, tourism, aerospace, biotechnology, information technology and renewable energy. As Prince Edward Island is one of Canada's older settled areas, its population still reflects the origins of its earliest settlers, with Acadian, Scottish, Irish, and English surnames being dominant.\nPrince Edward Island is located in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, about 10\u00a0km (6 miles) across the Northumberland Strait from both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. It is about north of Halifax and east of Quebec City. It has a land area of , is the 104th-largest island in the world and Canada's 23rd-largest island. It is the only Canadian province consisting entirely of islands.\nEtymology.\nThe island is known in the Mi'kmaq language of its historic indigenous occupants as \"Abegweit\" or \"Epekwitk\", roughly translated as \"land cradled in the waves\".\nWhen the island was part of Acadia, originally settled by French colonists, its French name was \"\u00cele Saint-Jean\" (St. John's Island). In French, the island is today called \"\u00cele-du-Prince-\u00c9douard (\u00ceP\u00c9).\"\nThe island was split from the British colony of Nova Scotia in 1769, and renamed in 1798 after Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn (1767\u20131820), the fourth son of King George III and, in 1819, father of the future Queen Victoria. Thus, Prince Edward has been called \"Father of the Canadian Crown\". The following island landmarks are also named after the Duke of Kent:\nIn Scottish Gaelic, the island's name is \"Eilean a' Phrionnsa\" (lit. \"the Island of the Prince\", the local form of the longer 'Eilean a' Phrionnsa Iomhair/Eideard'), or \"Eilean E\u00f2in\" (literally, \"John's Island\" in reference to the island's former French name) for some Gaelic speakers in Nova Scotia, though not on PEI.\nGeography.\nPrince Edward Island is located in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, west of Cape Breton Island, north of the Nova Scotia peninsula, and northeast of New Brunswick. Its southern shore bounds the Northumberland Strait. The island has two urban areas, and in total, is the most densely populated province in Canada.\nThe larger urban area surrounds Charlottetown Harbour, situated centrally on the island's southern shore. It consists of the capital city Charlottetown, the suburban towns of Cornwall and Stratford, and a developing urban fringe. A much smaller urban area developed around Summerside Harbour, situated on the southern shore west of Charlottetown. This consists primarily of the city of Summerside. As with all natural harbours on the island, Charlottetown and Summerside harbours are created by rias.\nThe coastline has a combination of long beaches, dunes, red sandstone cliffs, salt water marshes, and numerous bays and harbours. The beaches, dunes and sandstone cliffs consist of sedimentary rock and other material with a high iron concentration, which oxidizes upon exposure to the air. The geological properties of the white silica sand found at Basin Head are unique in the province; the sand grains cause a scrubbing noise as they rub against each other when walked on, and have been called the \"singing sands\". Large dune fields on the north shore can be found on barrier islands at the entrances to various bays and harbours. The sand dunes at Greenwich are of particular significance as the shifting, parabolic dune system is home to a variety of birds and rare plants, and it is also a site of significant archeological interest.\nClimate.\nThe climate of the island is a maritime climate considered to be moderate and strongly influenced by the surrounding Gulf of St. Lawrence. As such, it is generally milder than many areas of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia due to the warmer waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The climate is characterized by changeable weather throughout the year; in which specific weather conditions seldom last for long.\nDuring July and August, the average daytime high in PEI is ; however, the temperature can sometimes exceed during these months. In the winter months of January and February, the average daytime high is . The Island receives an average yearly rainfall of and an average yearly snowfall of .\nWinters are moderately cold and long but are milder than inland locations, with clashes of cold Arctic air and milder Atlantic air causing frequent temperature swings. The climate is considered to be more humid continental climate than oceanic since the Gulf of St. Lawrence freezes over, thus eliminating any moderation. The mean temperature is in January. During the winter months, the island usually has many storms (which may produce rain as well as snow) and blizzards since during this time, storms originating from the North Atlantic or the Gulf of Mexico frequently pass through. Springtime temperatures typically remain cool until the sea ice has melted, usually in late April or early May.\nSummers are moderately warm, with the daily maximum temperature only occasionally reaching as high as . Autumn is a pleasant season, as the moderating Gulf waters delay the onset of frost, although storm activity increases compared to the summer. There is ample precipitation throughout the year, although it is heaviest in the late autumn, early winter and mid spring.\nThe following climate chart depicts the average conditions of Charlottetown, as an example of the province's climate.\nGeology.\nBetween 250 and 300 million years ago, freshwater streams flowing from ancient mountains brought silt, sand and gravel into what is now the Gulf of St. Lawrence. These sediments accumulated to form a sedimentary basin, and make up the island's bedrock. When the Pleistocene glaciers receded about 15,000 years ago, glacial debris such as till were left behind to cover most of the area that would become the island. This area was connected to the mainland by a strip of land, but when ocean levels rose as the glaciers melted, this land strip was flooded, forming the island. As the land rebounded from the weight of the ice, the island rose up to elevate it farther from the surrounding water.\nMost of the bedrock in Prince Edward Island is composed of red sandstone, part of the Permian age Pictou Group.\nAlthough commercial deposits of minerals have not been found, exploration in the 1940s for natural gas beneath the northeastern end of the province resulted in the discovery of an undisclosed quantity of gas. The Island was reported by government to have only 0.08\u00a0tcf of \"technically recoverable\" natural gas. Twenty exploration wells for hydrocarbon resources have been drilled on Prince Edward Island and offshore. The first reported well was Hillsborough No.#1, drilled in Charlottetown Harbour in 1944 (the world's first offshore well), and the most recent was New Harmony No.#1 in 2007. Since the resurgence of exploration in the mid-1990s, all wells that have shown promising gas deposits have been stimulated through hydraulic fracture or \"fracking\". All oil and natural gas exploration and exploitation activities on the Island are governed by the \"Oil and Natural Gas Act\" R.S.P.E.I. 1988, Cap. 0-5 and its associated regulations and orders.\nWater supply.\nThe Province of Prince Edward Island is completely dependent on groundwater for its source of drinking water, with approximately 305 high capacity wells in use as of December 2018. As groundwater flows through an aquifer, it is naturally filtered. The water for the city of Charlottetown is extracted from thirteen wells in three wellfields and distributed to customers. The water removed is replenished by precipitation.\nInfrastructure in Charlottetown that was installed in 1888 is still in existence. With the age of the system in the older part of Charlottetown, concern has been raised regarding lead pipes. The Utility has been working with its residents on a lead-replacement program. A plebiscite in 1967 was held in Charlottetown over fluoridation, and residents voted in favour. Under provincial legislation, the Utility is required to report to its residents on an annual basis. It is also required to do regular sampling of the water and an overview is included in each annual report. The Winter River watershed provides about 92 per cent of the water supply for the city of Charlottetown, which had difficulty in each of 2011, 2012 and 2013 with its supply, until water meters were installed.\nGovernment tabled a discussion paper on the proposed \"Water Act\" for the province on July 8, 2015. The use of groundwater came under scrutiny as the potato industry, which accounts for $1 billion every year and 50% of farm receipts, has pressed the government to lift a moratorium on high-capacity water wells for irrigation. The release of the discussion paper was to set off a consultation process in the autumn of 2015.\nDetailed information about the quality of drinking water in PEI communities and watersheds can be found on the provincial government's official website. It provides a summary of the ongoing testing of drinking water done by the Prince Edward Island Analytical Laboratories. Average drinking-water quality results are available, and information on the following parameters are provided: alkalinity; cadmium; calcium; chloride; chromium; iron; magnesium; manganese; nickel; nitrate; pH; phosphorus; potassium; sodium; and sulfate, as well as the presence of pesticides. Water-testing services are provided for a variety of clients through the PEI Analytical Laboratories which assesses according to the recommendations of the Guidelines for Canadian Drinking Water Quality published by Health Canada.\nFlora and fauna.\nPrince Edward Island used to have native moose, bear, caribou, wolf, and other larger species. Due to hunting and habitat disruption these species are no longer found on the island. Some species common to P.E.I. are red foxes, coyote, blue jays, and robins. Skunks and raccoons are common non-native species. Species at risk in P.E.I. include piping plovers, American eel, bobolinks, little brown bat, and beach pinweed.\nSome species are unique to the province. In 2008, a new ascomycete species, \"Jahnula apiospora\" (Jahnulales, Dothideomycetes), was collected from submerged wood in a freshwater creek on Prince Edward Island.\nNorth Atlantic right whales, one of the rarest whale species, once thought to be rare visitors into St. Lawrence regions until 1994, have been showing dramatic increases (annual concentrations were discovered off Perc\u00e9 in 1995 and gradual increases across the regions since 1998), and since 2014, notable numbers of whales have been recorded around Cape Breton to Prince Edward Island as 35 to 40 whales were seen in these areas in 2015.\nHistory.\nBefore the influx of Europeans, the Mi'kmaq First Nations have inhabited Prince Edward Island as part of the region of Mi'kma'ki. They named the Island \"Epekwitk\", meaning \"cradled on the waves\"; Europeans represented the pronunciation as \"Abegweit\". Another name is \"Minegoo\". The Mi'kmaq's legend is that the island was formed by the Great Spirit placing on the Blue Waters some dark red crescent-shaped clay. The two Mi'kmaq First Nation communities of Prince Edward Island today are Abegweit First Nation and Lennox Island First Nation.\nFrench colony.\nIn 1534, Jacques Cartier was the first European to see the island. In 1604, the Kingdom of France laid claim to the lands of the Maritimes under the discovery doctrine, including Prince Edward Island, establishing the French colony of Acadia. The island was named \"\u00cele Saint-Jean\" (St. John's Island) by the French. The Mi'kmaq never recognized the claim but welcomed the French as trading partners and allies.\nDuring the 18th century, the French were engaged in a series of conflicts with the Kingdom of Great Britain and its colonies. Several battles between the two belligerents occurred on Prince Edward Island during this period. Following the British capture of Louisbourg during the War of the Austrian Succession, New Englanders launched an attack on \u00cele Saint-Jean (now Prince Edward Island); with a British detachment landed at Port-la-Joye. The island's capital had a garrison of 20 French soldiers under the command of Joseph du Pont Duvivier. The troops fled the settlement, and the New Englanders burned the settlement to the ground. Duvivier and the twenty men retreated up the Northeast River (Hillsborough River), pursued by the New Englanders until the French troops were reinforced with the arrival of the Acadian militia and the Mi'kmaq. The French troops and their allies were able to drive the New Englanders to their boats. Nine New Englanders were killed, wounded or made prisoner. The New Englanders took six Acadian hostages, who would be executed if the Acadians or Mi'kmaq rebelled against New England control. The New England troops left for Louisbourg. Duvivier and his 20 troops left for Quebec. After the fall of Louisbourg, the resident French population of \u00cele Royale (now Cape Breton Island) were deported to France, with the remaining Acadians of \u00cele Saint-Jean living under the threat of deportation for the remainder of the war.\nNew Englanders had a force of 200 soldiers stationed at Port-La-Joye, as well as two warships boarding supplies for its journey of Louisbourg. To regain Acadia, Ramezay was sent from Quebec to the region to join forces with the Duc d'Anville expedition. Upon arriving at Chignecto, he sent Boishebert to \u00cele Saint-Jean to ascertain the size of the New England force. After Boishebert returned, Ramezay sent Joseph-Michel Legardeur de Croisille et de Montesson along with over 500 men, 200 of whom were Mi'kmaq, to Port-La-Joye. In July 1746, the battle happened near York River. Montesson and his troops killed forty New Englanders and captured the rest. Montesson was commended for having distinguished himself in his first independent command. Hostilities between the British and French were ended in 1748 with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748.\nRoughly one thousand Acadians lived on the island prior to the Acadian Exodus from Nova Scotia. The population grew to nearly 5,000 the late 1740s and early 1750s, as Acadians from Nova Scotia fled to the island during the Acadian Exodus, and the subsequent British-ordered expulsions beginning in 1755.\nHostilities between British and French colonial forces resumed in 1754, although formal declarations of war were not issued until 1756. After French forces were defeated at the siege of Louisbourg, the British performed a military campaign on Ile Saint-Jean (now Prince Edward Island) to secure the island. The campaign was led by Colonel Andrew Rollo under orders from General Jeffery Amherst. The following campaigns saw the deportation of most Acadians from the island. Many Acadians died in the expulsion en route to France; on December 13, 1758, the transport ship \"Duke William\" sank and 364 died. A day earlier the \"Violet\" sank and 280 died; several days later sank with 213 on board. The French formally ceded the island, and most of New France to the British in the Treaty of Paris of 1763.\nBritish colony.\nInitially named St. John's Island by the British, the island was administered as part of the colony of Nova Scotia, until it was split into a separate colony in 1769. In the mid-1760s, a survey team led by Samuel Holland divided the Island into 67 lots. On July 1, 1767, these properties were allocated to supporters of King George III by means of a lottery. Ownership of the land remained in the hands of landlords in England, angering Island settlers who were unable to gain title to land on which they worked and lived. Significant rent charges (to absentee landlords) created further anger. The land had been given to the absentee landlords with a number of conditions attached regarding upkeep and settlement terms, many of which were not satisfied. Islanders spent decades trying to convince the Crown to confiscate the lots; however, the descendants of the original owners were generally well connected to the British government and refused to give up the land.\nAfter the island was detached from Nova Scotia to become a separate colony, Walter Patterson was appointed the first British governor of St. John's Island in 1769. Assuming the office in 1770, he had a controversial career during which land title disputes and factional conflict slowed the initial attempts to populate and develop the island under a feudal system. In an attempt to attract settlers from Ireland, in one of his first acts (1770) Patterson led the island's colonial assembly to rename the island \"New Ireland\", but the British Government promptly vetoed this as it exceeded the authority vested in the colonial government; only the Privy Council in London could change the name of a colony.\nDuring the American Revolutionary War Charlottetown was raided in 1775 by a pair of American-employed privateers. Two armed schooners, \"Franklin\" and \"Hancock\", from Beverly, Massachusetts, made prisoner of the attorney-general at Charlottetown, on advice given them by some Pictou residents after they had taken eight fishing vessels in the Gut of Canso.\nDuring and after the American Revolutionary War, from 1776 to 1783, the colony's efforts to attract exiled Loyalist refugees from the rebellious North American colonies met with some success. Walter Patterson's brother, John Patterson, one of the original grantees of land on the island, was a temporarily exiled Loyalist and led efforts to persuade others to come. Governor Patterson dismissal in 1787, and his recall to London in 1789 dampened his brother's efforts, leading John to focus on his interests in the United States. Edmund Fanning, also a Loyalist exiled by the Revolution, took over as the second governor, serving until 1804. His tenure was more successful than Patterson's. A large influx of Scottish Highlanders in the late 1700s also resulted in St. John's Island having the highest proportion of Scottish immigrants in Canada. This led to a higher proportion of Scottish Gaelic speakers and thriving culture surviving on the island than in Scotland itself, as the settlers could more easily avoid English influence overseas.\nOn November 29, 1798, during Fanning's administration, the British government granted approval to change the colony's name from St. John's Island to Prince Edward Island to distinguish it from areas with similar names in what is now Atlantic Canada, such as the cities of Saint John in New Brunswick and St. John's in Newfoundland. The colony's new name honoured the fourth son of King George III, Prince Edward Augustus, the Duke of Kent (1767\u20131820), who subsequently led the British military forces on the continent as Commander-in-Chief, North America (1799\u20131800), with his headquarters in Halifax.\nIn 1853, the Island government passed the Land Purchase Act which empowered them to purchase lands from those owners who were willing to sell, and then resell the land to settlers for low prices. This scheme collapsed when the Island ran short of money to continue with the purchases. Many of these lands also were fertile, and were some of the key factors to sustaining Prince Edward Island's economy.\nConfederation.\nFrom September 1 to 7, 1864, Prince Edward Island hosted the Charlottetown Conference, which was the first meeting in the process leading to the Quebec Resolutions and the creation of Canada in 1867. Prince Edward Island found the terms of union unfavourable and balked at joining in 1867, choosing to remain a colony of the United Kingdom. In the late 1860s, the colony examined various options, including the possibility of becoming a discrete dominion unto itself, as well as entertaining delegations from the United States, who were interested in Prince Edward Island joining the United States.\nIn 1871, the colony began construction of the Prince Edward Island Railway (PEIR) and, frustrated by Great Britain's Colonial Office, began negotiations with the United States. In 1873, Canadian Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, anxious to thwart American expansionism and facing the distraction of the Pacific Scandal, negotiated for Prince Edward Island to join Canada. The Dominion Government of Canada assumed the colony's extensive railway debts and agreed to finance a buy-out of the last of the colony's absentee landlords to free the island of leasehold tenure and from any new immigrants entering the island (accomplished through the passage of the \"Land Purchase Act, 1875\"). Prince Edward Island entered Confederation on July 1, 1873.\nAs a result of having hosted the inaugural meeting of Confederation, the Charlottetown Conference, Prince Edward Island presents itself as the \"Birthplace of Confederation\" and this is commemorated through several buildings, a ferry vessel, and the Confederation Bridge (constructed 1993 to 1997). The most prominent building in the province honouring this event is the Confederation Centre of the Arts, presented as a gift to Prince Edward Islanders by the 10 provincial governments and the Federal Government upon the centenary of the Charlottetown Conference, where it stands in Charlottetown as a national monument to the \"Fathers of Confederation\". The centre is one of the 22 National Historic Sites of Canada located in Prince Edward Island.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nEthnicity.\nAccording to the 2016 Canadian Census of the 139,690 people who self-identified with an ethnic origin, 98,615 were of European origins and 85,145 chose British Isles Origins. The largest ethnic group consists of people of Scottish descent (36%), followed by English (29%), Irish (28%), French (21%), German (5%), and Dutch (3%) descent.\nPrince Edward Island's population is largely white; there are few visible minorities. Chinese Canadians are the largest visible minority group of Prince Edward Island, comprising 1.3% of the province's population. Almost half of respondents identified their ethnicity as \"Canadian\".\n\"Source: Statistics Canada\"\nLanguage.\nAs of the 2021 Canadian Census, the ten most spoken languages in the province included English (149,525 or 99.36%), French (19,445 or 12.92%), Mandarin (2,940 or 1.95%), Hindi (1,660 or 1.1%), Tagalog (1,630 or 1.08%), Punjabi (1,550 or 1.03%), Spanish (1,425 or 0.95%), Arabic (1,165 or 0.77%), German (1,040 or 0.69%), and Vietnamese (785 or 0.52%). The question on knowledge of languages allows for multiple responses.\nThe Canada 2016 Census showed a population of 142,910. Of the 140,020 singular responses to the census question concerning mother tongue, the most commonly reported languages were as follows:\nIn addition, there were 460 responses of both English and a \"non-official language\"; 30 of both French and a \"non-official language\"; 485 of both English and French; and 20 of English, French, and a \"non-official language\". (Figures shown are for the number of single language responses and the percentage of total single-language responses.)\nReligion.\nAccording to the 2021 census, religious groups in Prince Edward Island included:\nTraditionally, the population has been evenly divided between Catholic and Protestant affiliations. The 2001 census indicated number of adherents for the Roman Catholic Church with 63,240 (47%) and various Protestant churches with 57,805 (43%). This included the United Church of Canada with 26,570 (20%); the Presbyterian Church with 7,885 (6%) and the Anglican Church of Canada with 6,525 (5%); those with no religion were among the lowest of the provinces with 8,705 (6.5%). If one considers that the founders of the United Church of Canada were largely Presbyterians in Prince Edward Island, the Island has one of the highest percentages of Presbyterians in the country. Since 2016 there are two Amish settlements on Prince Edward Island.\nEconomy.\nThe provincial economy is dominated by the seasonal industries of agriculture, tourism, and the fishery. The island also has tourists who visit year-round. Tourists engage in a variety of leisure activities, including the beaches, various golf courses, eco-tourism adventures, touring the countryside, and varied cultural events in local communities around the island. The economy of most rural communities on the island is based on small-scale agriculture. Industrial farming has increased as businesses buy and consolidate older farm properties. The province is limited in terms of heavy industry and manufacturing, though Cavendish Farms runs extensive food manufacturing operations on PEI.\nAgriculture remains the dominant industry in the provincial economy, as it has since colonial times. In 2015, agriculture and agri-food manufacturing was responsible for 7.6% of the province's GDP. The Island has a total land area of with approximately cleared for agricultural use. In 2016, the Census of Agriculture counted 1,353 farms on the Island, which is a 9.5% decrease from the previous census (2011). During the 20th century, potatoes were grown as a cash crop across more than a million acres of farmland. Traditionally, crops were grown on a rotational basis: common examples would be either potatoes, hay, clover, or oats being grown on a piece of land at any given time. More recently, the total amount of farms used for potatoes has decreased, but the province is still Canada's largest supplier of the crop. The number of acres under potato production in 2010 was 88,000, while soy accounted for 55,000. There are approximately 330 potato growers on PEI, with the grand majority of these being family farms, often with multiple generations working together. The province currently accounts for a quarter of Canada's total potato production, producing approximately annually. Comparatively, the state of Idaho produces approximately annually, with a population approximately 9.5 times greater. The province is a major producer of seed potatoes, exporting to more than twenty countries around the world. An estimated total of 70% of the land is cultivated and 25% of all potatoes grown in Canada originate from P.E.I. The processing of frozen fried potatoes, green vegetables, and berries is a leading business activity.\nAs a legacy of the island's colonial history, the provincial government enforces extremely strict rules for non-resident land ownership, especially since the PEI \"Lands Protection Act\" of 1982. Residents and corporations are limited to maximum holdings of 400 and 1,200 hectares respectively. There are also restrictions on non-resident ownership of shorelines.\nMany of the province's coastal communities rely upon shellfish harvesting, particularly lobster fishing as well as oyster fishing and mussel farming.\nThe island's economy has grown significantly over the last decade in key areas of innovation. Aerospace, bioscience, information and communications technology, and renewable energy have been a focus for growth and diversification. Aerospace alone now accounts for over 25% of the province's international exports and is the island's fourth largest industry at $355 million in annual sales. The bioscience industry employs over 1,300 people and generates over $150 million in sales.\nThe sale of carbonated beverages such as beer and soft drinks in non-refillable containers, such as aluminum cans or plastic bottles, was banned in 1976 as an environmental measure in response to public concerns over litter. Beer and soft drink companies opted to use refillable glass bottles for their products which were redeemable at stores and bottle depots.\nThough often environmental and economic agendas may be at odds, the \u2018ban the can\u2019 legislation, along with being environmentally driven, was also economically motivated as it protected jobs. Seaman's Beverages, a bottling company and carbonated beverage manufacturer, was established in 1939 and a major employer in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Making it illegal to retail cans led to a bigger share of the carbonated beverage market for Seamans. Seamans Beverages was eventually acquired by Pepsi Bottling Group Inc in 2002 prior to the lifting of the legislation.\nThe introduction of recycling programs for cans and plastic bottles in neighbouring provinces in recent years (also using a redemption system) has seen the provincial government introduce legislation to reverse this ban with the restriction lifted on May 3, 2008.\nPrior to harmonization in 2013, Prince Edward Island had one of Canada's highest provincial retail sales tax rates at 10%. On April 1, 2013, the provincial tax was harmonized with the federal Goods and Services Tax, and became known as the \"harmonized sales tax\". The 15% tax is applied to almost all goods and services except some clothing, food and home heating fuel. This rate is the same as the neighbouring Atlantic provinces.\nThe provincial government provides consumer protection in the form of regulation for certain items, ranging from apartment rent increases to petroleum products including gas, diesel, propane and heating oil. These are regulated through the Prince Edward Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission (IRAC). IRAC is authorized to limit the number of companies who are permitted to sell petroleum products.\nAs of 2015[ [update]], the median family income on Prince Edward Island is $76,607/year. The minimum wage is $16.00/hour as of \u00a01, 2024[ [update]].\nEnergy.\nSince 1918, Maritime Electric has delivered electricity to customers on the Island. The utility is currently owned and operated by Fortis Inc. Approximately twenty-five percent of electricity consumed on the island is generated from renewable energy (largely wind turbines); the provincial government had set a renewable energy target for 30\u201350% for electricity consumed by 2015, though this goal has not been met. The total capacity of wind power on the island is 204 MW from 89 turbines. There are eight wind farms on the island, the largest being West Cape Wind Park with a capacity of 99 MW from 55 turbines. All of the turbines have been manufactured by Vestas: the Vestas V-80, Vestas V90, and Vestas V-47. A thermal oil-fired generating station, the Charlottetown Thermal Generating Station, is used sometimes for emergencies. It is being decommissioned. A second thermal generation station exists in Borden, the Borden Generating Station. The majority of electricity consumed on Prince Edward Island comes from New Brunswick through undersea cables. A recent $140M upgrade brought the capacity of the cable system from 200 MW to 560 MW.\nThe Point Lepreau nuclear plant in New Brunswick was closed for refurbishments from 2008 to 2012, resulting in a steep price hike of about 25 per cent, but the province later subsidized rates. Residents were to pay 11.2 per cent more for electricity when the harmonized sales tax was adopted in April 2013, according to the P.E.I. Energy Accord that was tabled in the legislature on December 7, 2012. and passed as the \"Electric Power (Energy Accord Continuation) Amendment Act\", which establishes electric pricing from April 1, 2013, to March 1, 2016. Regulatory powers are derived for IRAC from the \"Electric Power Act\".\nEducation.\nPrince Edward Island's public school system has an English school district named the Public Schools Branch (previously the English Language School Board), as well as a Francophone district, the Commission scolaire de langue fran\u00e7aise. The English language district has a total of 10 secondary schools and 54 intermediate and elementary schools while the Francophone district has 6 schools covering all grades. 22 per cent of the student population is enrolled in French immersion. This is one of the highest levels in the country.\nThree public post-secondary institutions operate in the province, including one university, and two colleges. The University of Prince Edward Island is the province's only public university, and is located in the city of Charlottetown. The university was created by the Island legislature to replace Prince of Wales College and St. Dunstan's University. UPEI is also home to the Atlantic Veterinary College, which offers the region's only veterinary medicine program.\nColl\u00e8ge de l'\u00cele, and Holland College are two public colleges that operate in the province; the former being a French first language institution, while the latter is an English first language institution. Holland College includes specialized facilities such as the Atlantic Police Academy, Marine Training Centre, and the Culinary Institute of Canada. In addition to public post-secondary institutions, Prince Edward Island is also home to a private post-secondary institution, Maritime Christian College.\nToday 23.5 per cent of residents aged 15 to 19 have bilingual skills, an increase of 100 per cent in a decade. Prince Edward Island, along with most rural regions in North America, is experiencing an accelerated rate of youth emigration. The provincial government .\nGovernment and politics.\nThe provincial government is responsible for such areas as health and social services, education, economic development, labour legislation and civil law. These matters of government are overseen in the provincial capital, Charlottetown.\nPrince Edward Island is governed by a parliamentary government within the construct of constitutional monarchy; the monarchy in Prince Edward Island is the foundation of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The sovereign is King Charles III, who also serves as head of state of 14 other Commonwealth countries, each of Canada's nine other provinces, and the Canadian federal realm, and resides in the United Kingdom. As such, the King's representative, the Lieutenant Governor of Prince Edward Island (presently Wassim Salamoun), carries out most of the royal duties in Prince Edward Island.\nThe direct participation of the royal and viceroyal figures in any of these areas of governance is limited; in practice, their use of the executive powers is directed by the Executive Council, a committee of ministers of the Crown responsible to the unicameral, elected Legislative Assembly and chosen and headed by the Premier of Prince Edward Island (presently Rob Lantz), the head of government. To ensure the stability of government, the lieutenant governor will usually appoint as premier the person who is the current leader of the political party that can obtain the confidence of a plurality in the Legislative Assembly. The leader of the party with the second-most seats usually becomes the Leader of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition (presently Hal Perry) and is part of an adversarial parliamentary system intended to keep the government in check.\nEach of the 27 Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) is elected by simple plurality in an electoral district. General elections are called by the lieutenant governor for the first Monday in October four years after the previous election, or may be called earlier on the advice of the premier. Historically, politics in the province have been dominated by the Liberal and the Progressive Conservative Parties since the province joined Confederation. From the 2015 election, the Green Party of Prince Edward Island gained a small representation in the Legislative Assembly, and in the 2019 election gained an additional six seats to form the Official Opposition.\nThe Mi'kmaq Confederacy of PEI is the tribal council and provincial-territorial organization in the province that represents both the Lennox Island and Abegweit First Nations.\nAdministrative divisions.\nPrince Edward Island is divided into three counties that have historically been used as administrative divisions for the provincial government, and prior to Confederation (in 1873), the colonial government.\nToday, the counties are no longer used as administrative boundaries for the provincial government, though they continue to be used as census divisions by Statistics Canada for statistical purposes in administering the Canadian census.\nZoning.\nRolling hills, woods, reddish white sand beaches, ocean coves and the famous red soil have given Prince Edward Island a reputation as a province of outstanding natural beauty. As a result, the provincial government has enacted laws to preserve the landscape through regulation, although there is a lack of consistent enforcement.\nThere is no province-wide zoning and land-use planning. Under the Planning Act of the province, municipalities have the option to assume responsibility for land-use planning through the development and adoption of official plans and land use bylaws. Thirty-one municipalities have taken responsibility for planning. In areas where municipalities have not assumed responsibility for planning, the Province remains responsible for development control.\nHealth care and sanitation.\nThe province has a single health administrative region (or district health authority) called Health PEI. Health PEI receives funding for its operations and is regulated by the Department of Health and Wellness.\nMany PEI homes and businesses are served by central sewage collection and treatment systems. These are operated either by a municipality or a private utility. Many industrial operations have their own wastewater treatment facilities. Staff members with the Department of Environment, Water and Climate Change provide advice to operators, as needed, on proper system maintenance. The IRAC regulates municipal water and sewer in the province, now under the \"Environmental Protection Act\". Since around 1900, the residents of the City of Charlottetown have benefited from a central sanitary sewer service. Early disposal practices, while advanced for their time, eventually were found to compromise the ecological integrity of the nearby Hillsborough River and the Charlottetown Harbour. By 1974, the commission had spearheaded the development of a primary wastewater treatment plant, known as the Charlottetown Pollution Control Plant, together with the construction of several pumping stations along the city's waterfront, and outfall piping deep into the Hillsborough River.\nThere are eight hospitals in the province.\nPrince Edward Island offers programs and services in areas such as acute care, primary care, home care, palliative care, public health, chronic disease prevention, and mental health and addictions, to name a few. The provincial government has opened several family health centres in recent years in various rural and urban communities. A provincial cancer treatment centre at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital provides support to those dealing with various types of cancer-related illnesses. A family medicine residency program was established in 2009 with the Dalhousie University Faculty of Medicine as a means to encourage new physicians to work in Prince Edward Island.\nLong-term-care services are also available with several programs in place to support seniors wishing to remain independent in their communities. Many medications for seniors are subsidized through a provincial pharmaceutical plan.\nThe provincial government has several programs for early illness detection, including mammography and pap screening clinics. There are also asthma education and diabetes education programs, as well as prenatal programs, immunization programs and dental health risk prevention programs for children. The government is also attempting to implement a comprehensive integrated Electronic Health Record system.\nThe provincial government has recently committed to enhancing primary care and home care services and has invested in health care facilities in recent capital budgets; mostly replacements and upgrades to provincial government operated nursing homes and hospitals.\nSome specialist services require patients to be referred to clinics and specialists in neighbouring provinces. Specialist operations and treatments are also provided at larger tertiary referral hospitals in neighbouring provinces such as the IWK Health Centre and Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre in Nova Scotia or the Saint John Regional Hospital, Moncton Hospital, and Dr. Georges-L.-Dumont University Hospital Centre in New Brunswick.\nGround ambulance service in Prince Edward Island is provided under contract by Island EMS. Air ambulance service is provided under contract by LifeFlight.\nIn recent decades, Prince Edward Island's population has shown statistically significant and abnormally high rates of diagnosed rare cancers, particularly in rural areas. Health officials, ecologists and environmental activists point to the use of pesticides for industrial potato farming as a primary contaminant.\nUntil 2016, Prince Edward Island was the only province in Canada that did not provide abortion services through its hospitals. Until that time, the last abortion that had been performed in the province was in 1982 prior to the opening of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital which saw the closure of the Roman Catholic-affiliated Charlottetown Hospital and the non-denominational Prince Edward Island Hospital; a condition of the \"merger\" being that abortions not be performed in the province. In 1988, following the court decision \"R. v. Morgentaler\", the then-opposition Progressive Conservative Party of Prince Edward Island tabled a motion demanding that the ban on abortions be upheld at the province's hospitals; the then-governing Prince Edward Island Liberal Party under Premier Joe Ghiz acquiesced and the ban was upheld. Until more local access was guaranteed, the Government of Prince Edward Island funded abortions for women who travelled to another province. Women from Prince Edward Island also travelled to the nearest private user-pay clinic, where they were required pay for the procedure using their own funds. Formerly this was the Morgentaler Clinic in Fredericton, New Brunswick until this clinic closed due to lack of funds in July 2014. The clinic was reopened under new ownership in 2016 as Clinic 554 with expanded services. During that gap, women had to travel to Halifax or further. In 2016, the Liberal government led by Premier Wade MacLauchlan announced they would open a women's reproductive health clinic to provide abortions within the province. Abortions are now provided in Prince Edward Island.\nTransportation.\nPrince Edward Island's transportation network has traditionally revolved around its seaports of Charlottetown, Summerside, Borden, Georgetown, and Souris\u00a0\u2014linked to its railway system, and the two main airports in Charlottetown and Summerside, for communication with mainland North America. The Prince Edward Island Railway system was abandoned by CN in 1989 in favour of an agreement with the federal government to improve major highways.\nUntil May 1997, the province was linked by two passenger-vehicle ferry services to the mainland: one, provided by Marine Atlantic, operated year-round between Borden and Cape Tormentine, New Brunswick; the other, provided by Northumberland Ferries Limited, operates seasonally between Wood Islands and Caribou, Nova Scotia. A third ferry service provided by CTMA operates all year round with seasonal times between Souris and Cap-aux-Meules, Quebec, in the Magdalen Islands. In May 1997, the Confederation Bridge opened, connecting Borden-Carleton to Cape Jourimain, New Brunswick. The world's longest bridge over ice-covered waters, it replaced the Marine Atlantic ferry service. Since then, the Confederation Bridge's assured transportation link to the mainland has altered the province's tourism and agricultural and fisheries export economies.\nThe Island has the highest concentration of roadways in Canada. The provincially managed portion of the network consists of of paved roadways and of non-paved or clay roads. The province has very strict laws regarding use of roadside signs. Billboards and the use of portable signs are banned. There are standard direction information signs on roads in the province for various businesses and attractions in the immediate area. The by-laws of some municipalities also restrict the types of permanent signs that may be installed on private property.\nSeveral airlines service the Charlottetown Airport (CYYG); the Summerside Airport (CYSU) is an additional option for general aviation.\nThere is an extensive bicycling and hiking trail that spans the island. The Confederation Trail is a recreational trail system. The land was once owned and used by Canadian National Railway (CN) as a rail line on the island.\nCulture.\nArts.\nThe island's cultural traditions of art, music and creative writing are supported through the public education system. There is an annual arts festival, the Charlottetown Festival, hosted at the Confederation Centre of the Arts.\nLucy Maud Montgomery, who was born in Clifton (now New London) in 1874, drew inspiration from the land during the late Victorian Era for the setting of her classic novel \"Anne of Green Gables\" (1908). The musical play \"Anne of Green Gables\" has run every year at the Charlottetown festival for more than four decades. The sequel, \"Anne & Gilbert\", premiered in the Playhouse in Victoria in 2005. The actual location of Green Gables, the house featured in Montgomery's \"Anne\" books, is in Cavendish, on the north shore of PEI.\nElmer Blaney Harris founded an artists colony at Fortune Bridge and set his famous play \"Johnny Belinda\" on the island. Robert Harris was a well-known artist.\nPrince Edward Island's documented music history begins in the 19th century with religious music, some written by the local pump and block maker and organ-importer Watson Duchemin. Several big bands including the Sons of Temperance Band and the Charlottetown Brass Band were active. Today, Acadian, Celtic, folk, and rock music prevail, with exponents including Gene MacLellan, his daughter Catherine MacLellan, Al Tuck, Lennie Gallant, Two Hours Traffic and Paper Lions. The celebrated singer-songwriter Stompin' Tom Connors spent his formative years in Skinners Pond. Celtic music is certainly the most common traditional music on the island, with fiddling and step dancing being very common. This tradition, largely Scottish, Irish and Acadian in origin is very similar to the music of Cape Breton and to a lesser extent, Newfoundland and is unique to the region. Due to the Islands influence as a former Highlander Clans Scottish colony, a March 4/4 for bagpipes was composed in honour of Prince Edward Island.\nFestivals.\nThere is an annual arts festival, the Charlottetown Festival, hosted at the Confederation Centre of the Arts as well as the Island Fringe Festival that takes place around Charlottetown. An annual jazz festival, the P.E.I. Jazz and Blues Festival. is a week-long series of concerts taking place at several venues including Murphy's Community Centre, outdoor stages, and churches in Charlottetown. The moving of its date to mid-August caused in 2011 a serious loss in funding from Ottawa's regional development agency ACOA. The musician's line up in 2011 included Oliver Jones, Sophie Milman, Matt Dusk, Jack de Keyzer, Jack Semple, Meaghan Smith and Jimmy Bowskill. There is also Canada Rocks, and the Cavendish Beach Music Festival. With agriculture and fishery playing a large role in the economy, P.E.I. has been marketed as a food tourism destination. Several food festivals have become popular such as the Fall Flavours festival and the Shellfish Festival.\nSports.\nThe most common sports played on the Island are hockey, curling, golf, horse racing, baseball, soccer, rugby, football and basketball. Water sports are also popular on Prince Edward Island during the summer.\nThe province is home to a major junior ice hockey team, the Charlottetown Islanders of the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League, and a Junior A ice hockey team, the Summerside Western Capitals, which play in the Maritime Junior A Hockey League. The Prince Edward Island Senators played in the American Hockey League from 1993 to 1996. Relocated from New Haven, Connecticut, the team was affiliated with the Ottawa Senators. The team eventually ended up in Binghamton, New York and became the Binghamton Senators in 2002.\nThe Island Storm were a professional basketball team that played in the National Basketball League of Canada. The team was founded in 2011 as the Summerside Storm for the league's inaugural season and became the Island Storm in 2013. The team was granted a one-year leave of absence in 2021 but have not returned since.\nIn 2008 and 2009, Prince Edward Island hosted the Tour de PEI, a province-wide cycling race consisting of women from around the world.\nPrince Edward Island has also hosted three Canada Games: two winter editions in 1991 and 2023; and a summer edition in 2009.\nThe two major indoor arenas in the province are: the Eastlink Centre (formerly the Civic Centre) in Charlottetown, home to the Charlottetown Islanders; and the Consolidated Credit Union Place in Summerside, home to the Summerside Western Capitals. The Credit Union Place was built to replace Cahill Stadium.\nThe UPEI Panthers represent the University of Prince Edward Island in the Atlantic University Sport conference of U Sports. The Holland Hurricanes represent Holland College in the Atlantic Collegiate Athletic Association conference of the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association.\nSister province.\nHainan, China, has been the sister province of Prince Edward Island since 2001. This came about after Vice-Governor Lin Fanglue stayed for two days to hold discussions about partnership opportunities and trade.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "23833363": "North Cape Light\nThe North Cape Light is an active lighthouse on Prince Edward Island, Canada. It was built in 1867, and is still active.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["23833363", "23071"], "permutation_1": ["23071", "23833363"], "permutation_2": ["23833363", "23071"], "permutation_3": ["23071", "23833363"]}
{"id": "2hop__128478_11438", "docs_added": {"6132689": "WAYV\nRadio station in Atlantic City, New Jersey\nWAYV (95.1 MHz) is a commercial FM radio station located in Atlantic City, New Jersey, owned by iHeartMedia. It airs a contemporary hit radio format. The stations studio is located at the Bayport One complex in West Atlantic City, and its transmitter is located north of Atlantic City.\nHistory.\n95.1 started broadcasting in April 1961, with call letters WRNJ. Mel Gollub, owner of WIFI (now WXTU) in Philadelphia, built WRNJ on top of the Ritz Carlton Hotel on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. He owned and operated it for its first two years.\nIn 1963, Gollub sold WRNJ to Eddie Newman, a nighttime talk host at WPEN, Philadelphia.\nOn July 1, 1974, Newman sold the station to Radio WAYV, Inc., and its call letters were changed to WAYV. The station featured a \"Beautiful Music\" format that lasted until 1977. The music was provided by Jim Schulke's Stereo Radio Productions.\nIn 1978, under Program Director Bob Everland, the format evolved into \"The Music People\", a soft-rock format similar to \"Magic\" stations, such as WMGK in Philadelphia.\nIn January 1979, with the arrival of Kingsley Smith as Program Director, the format was made more contemporary and disco was added at night. The response to \"Disco nights at the Jersey shore\" was large enough so that in late 1979 WAYV became the \"Rhythm of South Jersey\" with full-time disco, and had its first time as #1 in the Spring 1980 Atlantic City Arbitron.\nWith the wane of disco in 1981, the format again evolved into Hot Adult Contemporary (Hot AC) daytime / Contemporary Hit Radio (CHR) nighttime, with the arrival of John Barab as Program Director. That combination remained into the early '90s through a number of program directors. In April 1990, WAYV started calling itself \"Hot 95\", which lasted for a short period of time. With some updates and adjustments over the last twenty years, the Hot AC format still existed until 2011. Despite the disco and Hot AC formats, WAYV also provided the first Atlantic City broadcast home for Jerry Blavat and his live broadcasts from Memories in Margate.\nDuring the 1980s, WAYV's studios were located on the Atlantic City boardwalk at Chelsea Ave., and before that, the broadcast studio was located on the rooftop of the Ritz Apartments (formerly the Ritz Carlton Hotel). From 1980 through 1981 the business office was located in a rowhouse on the beach block of California Avenue. The General Manager at this time was Vi Trofa, a former school administrator who was hired by Radio WAYV, Inc.'s then-owners Bob McMurtrie, Carl Monk, and Tom Donatucci to run the business operation. Trofa was married to the former mayor of Ocean City, Nick Trofa, and would remain as General Manager through 1993. Throughout the mid-to-late 1980s, WAYV was an affiliate of \"The Rockin' America Top 30 Countdown\" with Scott Shannon.\nIn 1986, Radio WAYV Inc. was purchased by Robert Forrest. In 1991, WAYV moved from its Boardwalk location to its present studio site at the Bayport One building in West Atlantic City. In the fall of 1993, Atlantic City Broadcasting Corp., a subsidiary of Frank Osborn's Osborn Communications, began operating WAYV and purchased it in March 1994.\nIn June 1996, WAYV was purchased by Equity Communications. It remains in the Bayport One building, and was joined by Equity's other acquisitions, which included 100.7 WZXL, 99.3 The Buzz, and 96.1 WTTH (and formerly Classic Oldies WMID and Easy 93.1). In 2003, WAYV began simulcasting on 102.3 WAIV, giving the station better coverage in the southern portion of the market as well as some penetration into Lewes, Delaware and coastal Sussex County.\nBy July 4, 2011, following their flashback weekend, the station changed to contemporary hit radio with Mediabase & Nielsen BDS moving the station to that panel later on.\nOn August 7, 2023, Equity announced that it would sell WAYV, along with its three other FM stations in the Atlantic City-Cape May market, to iHeartMedia. While the company did not retain WMID, WAIV, and WEZW, all three would later be sold to other broadcasters (with WEZW going to Educational Media Foundation and WAIV sold to Mighty Voice Broadcasting). On December 5, 2023, at midnight, iHeart officially took over all operations of four of the six stations owned by Equity, ending the sixty\u2013two year run of local ownership.\nPrevious logos.\nLogo used when simulcasting its programming on the 102.3 frequency.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "106211": "Atlantic City, New Jersey\nCity in Atlantic County, New Jersey, US\nAtlantic City, sometimes referred to by its initials A.C., is a Jersey Shore seaside resort city in Atlantic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.\nAtlantic City comprises the second half of the Atlantic City-Hammonton metropolitan statistical area, which encompasses those cities and all of Atlantic County for statistical purposes. Both Atlantic City and Hammonton, as well as the surrounding Atlantic County, are culturally tied to Philadelphia and constitute part of the larger Philadelphia metropolitan area or Delaware Valley, the nation's seventh-largest metropolitan area as of 2020.\nLocated in South Jersey on Absecon Island and known for its taxis, casinos, nightlife, boardwalk, and Atlantic Ocean beaches and coastline, the city is prominently known as the \"Las Vegas of the East Coast\" and inspired the U.S. version of the board game \"Monopoly\", which uses various Atlantic City street names and destinations in the game. New Jersey voters legalized casino gambling in Atlantic City in 1976, and the first casino opened two years later. From 1921 to 2004, Atlantic City hosted the Miss America pageant, which later returned to the city from 2013 to 2018.\nAs of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 38,497, a decline of 1,061 (\u22122.7%) from the 2010 census count of 39,558, which in turn reflected a decrease of 959 (\u22122.4%) from the 40,517 counted in the 2000 census.\nThe city was incorporated on May 1, 1854, from portions of Egg Harbor Township and Galloway Township. It is located on Absecon Island and borders Absecon, Brigantine, Egg Harbor Township, Galloway Township, Pleasantville, Ventnor City, and the Atlantic Ocean.\nHistory.\nPrior to Atlantic City's founding, the region served as a summer home for the Lenape, a Native American tribe. While the precise date of European settlement in present-day Atlantic City is not precisely determined, it is commonly thought that it was in 1783, when Jeremiah Leeds built and occupied a year-round home there.\n19th century.\nIn 1850, present-day Atlantic City was developed into a resort town. Three years later, in early 1853, it was named Atlantic City.\nBecause of its location in South Jersey, which hugs the Atlantic Ocean between marshlands and islands, Atlantic City was then viewed by developers as prime real estate and a potential resort town. In 1853, the city's first commercial hotel, the Belloe House, was built at the intersection of Massachusetts and Atlantic Avenues.\nThe following year, in 1854, the city was incorporated. The same year, train service began on the Camden and Atlantic Railroad. Built on the edge of the bay, this served as the direct link of this remote parcel of land with Philadelphia, the second-most populous city in the United States at the time and the largest city in Pennsylvania. The same year, construction of the Absecon Lighthouse, designed by George Meade of the Corps of Topographical Engineers, was approved, with work initiated the next year.\nBy 1874, almost 500,000 passengers a year were coming to Atlantic City by rail. In \"Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City\", \"Atlantic City's Godfather\" Jonathan Pitney, known as the \"Father of Atlantic City\", initially sought to develop Atlantic City as a health resort. Pitney persuaded municipal authorities that a railroad to the beach in Atlantic City would be beneficial. His successful business relationship with Samuel Richards, an entrepreneur and member of what was then the most influential family in South Jersey, was designed to construct the railroad with the first 600 riders, who \"were chosen carefully by Samuel Richards and Jonathan Pitney\":\nAfter arriving in Atlantic City, a second train brought the visitors to the door of the resort's first public lodging, the United States Hotel. The hotel was owned by the railroad. It was a sprawling, four-story structure built to house 2,000 guests. It opened while it was still under construction, with only one wing standing, and even that wasn't completed. By year's end, when it was fully constructed, the United States Hotel was not only the first hotel in Atlantic City but also the largest in the nation. Its rooms totaled more than 600, and its grounds covered some 14 acres.\nThe first boardwalk was built in 1870 along a portion of the beach in an effort to help hotel owners keep sand out of their lobbies. Businesses were restricted and the boardwalk was removed each year at the end of the peak season. Because of its effectiveness and popularity, the boardwalk was expanded in length and width, and modified several times in subsequent years.\nPrior to the destructive 1944 Great Atlantic Hurricane, the historic length of the boardwalk was about and it extended from Atlantic City to Longport, through Ventnor and Margate.\nThe first road connecting the city to the mainland at Pleasantville was completed in 1870 and charged a 30-cent toll. Albany Avenue was the first road to the mainland available without a toll.\nBy 1878, because of the growing popularity of the city, one railroad line could no longer keep up with demand. Soon, the Philadelphia and Atlantic City Railway was also constructed to transport tourists to Atlantic City. At this point massive hotels like the United States Hotel and Surf House, as well as smaller rooming houses, had sprung up all over town. The United States Hotel took up a full city block between Atlantic, Pacific, Delaware, and Maryland Avenues. These hotels were not only impressive in size, but featured the most up-to-date amenities, and were considered quite luxurious for their time.\nIn 1883, salt water taffy was conceived in Atlantic City by David Bradley. The traditional story is that Bradley's shop close to the beach was flooded with ocean water after a storm, soaking his taffy. He sold the \"salt water taffy\" to a girl, who walked down to the beach to show her friends. Bradley's mother was in the back of the store when the sale was made, and loved the name, giving the candy its name.\n20th century.\nIn the early 20th century, Atlantic City experienced a radical building boom. Many of the modest boarding houses that dotted the boardwalk were replaced with large hotels. Two of the city's most distinctive hotels were the Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel and the Traymore Hotel.\nIn 1902, Josiah White III bought a parcel of land near Ohio Avenue and the boardwalk, where he started construction and built the Queen Anne style Marlborough House. The hotel was a success. In 1905, he chose to expand the hotel and bought another parcel of land adjacent to his Marlborough House. In an effort to make his new hotel a source of conversation, White hired the architectural firm of Price and McLanahan. The firm made use of reinforced concrete, a new building material invented by Jean-Louis Lambot in 1848, and Joseph Monier received the patent in 1867. The hotel's Spanish and Moorish themes, capped off with its signature dome and chimneys, represented a step forward from other hotels that had a classically designed influence. White named the new hotel the Blenheim and merged the two hotels into the Marlborough-Blenheim. Bally's Atlantic City was later constructed at this location.\nThe Traymore Hotel was located at the corner of Illinois Avenue and the boardwalk. Constructed in 1879 as a small boarding house, the hotel grew through a series of uncoordinated expansions. By 1914, the hotel's owner, Daniel White, Josiah White's half-brother, taking a hint from the Marlborough-Blenheim, commissioned the firm of Price and McLanahan to build an even bigger hotel. Rising 16 stories, the tan brick and gold-capped hotel would become one of the city's best-known landmarks. The hotel made use of ocean-facing hotel rooms by jutting its wings farther from the main portion of the hotel along Pacific Avenue.\nOne by one, additional large hotels were constructed along the boardwalk, including the Brighton, Chelsea, Shelburne, Ambassador, Ritz Carlton, Mayflower, Madison House, and the Breakers. The Quaker-owned Chalfonte House, opened in 1868, and Haddon House, opened in 1869, flanked North Carolina Avenue at the beach end. Over the years, their original wood-frame structures would be enlarged, and even moved closer to the beach. The modern Chalfonte Hotel, eight stories tall, opened in 1904. The modern Haddon Hall was built in stages and was completed in 1929, at eleven stories. By this time, they were under the same ownership and merged into the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall Hotel, becoming the city's largest hotel with nearly 1,000 rooms. By 1930, the Claridge, the city's last large hotel before the casinos, opened its doors.\nThe 400-room Claridge was built by a partnership that included renowned Philadelphia contractor John McShain. At 24 stories, it would become known as the \"Skyscraper by the Sea\".\nWith tourism peaking in the 1920s, the period is often considered by historians to be Atlantic City's golden age. During Prohibition, which was enacted nationally in 1919 and lasted until 1933, much liquor was consumed and gambling regularly took place in the back rooms of nightclubs and restaurants. During Prohibition, racketeer and political boss Enoch L. \"Nucky\" Johnson rose to power. Prohibition was largely unenforced in Atlantic City. Because alcohol that had been smuggled into the city with the implicit approval of local officials, it was easily obtained at restaurants and other establishments, and the resort's popularity grew further. The city then dubbed itself as \"The World's Playground\". Nucky Johnson's income, which reached as much as $500,000 annually, came from the kickbacks he took on illegal liquor, gambling and prostitution operating in the city, as well as from kickbacks on construction projects.\nDuring this time, Atlantic City was led by mayor Edward L. Bader, known for his contributions to the construction, athletics and aviation of Atlantic City. Despite opposition, he had Atlantic City purchase the land that became the city's municipal airport and high school football stadium, both of which were later named Bader Field in his honor. He led the initiative, in 1923, to construct the Atlantic City High School at Albany and Atlantic Avenues. Bader, in November 1923, initiated a public referendum, during the general election, at which time residents approved the construction of a Convention Center. The city passed an ordinance approving a bond issue for $1.5\u00a0million to be used for the purchase of land for Convention Hall, now known as the Boardwalk Hall, finalized on September 30, 1924. Bader was also a driving force behind the creation of the Miss America competition.\nIn May 1929, Johnson hosted a conference for organized crime figures from all across America that created a National Crime Syndicate. The men who called this meeting were Masseria family lieutenant Charles \"Lucky\" Luciano and former Chicago South Side Gang boss Johnny \"the Fox\" Torrio, with heads of the Bugs and Meyer Mob, Meyer Lansky and Benjamin Siegel, being used as muscle for the meeting.\nGangster and businessman Al Capone attended the conference and was photographed walking along the Atlantic City boardwalk with Johnson.\nThe 1930s through the 1960s were a heyday for nightclub entertainment. Popular venues on the white-populated south side included the 500 Club, the Clicquot Club, and the Jockey Club. In the Northside neighborhood, home to African Americans in the racially segregated city, a black entertainment district reigned on Kentucky Avenue.\nFour major nightclubs, Club Harlem, the Paradise Club, Grace's Little Belmont, and Wonder Gardens, drew both black and white patrons. During the summer tourist season, jazz and R&B music could be heard into the wee hours of the morning. Soul food restaurants and ribs joints also lined Kentucky Avenue, including Wash's Restaurant, Jerry's and Sap's.\nLike many older East Coast cities after World War II, Atlantic City became plagued with poverty, crime, corruption, and general economic decline in the mid-to-late 20th century. The neighborhood known as the \"Inlet\" became particularly impoverished. The reasons for the resort's decline were multi-layered. First, the automobile became more readily available to many Americans after the war. Atlantic City had initially relied upon visitors coming by train and staying for a couple of weeks. The car allowed them to come and go as they pleased, and many people would spend only a few days, rather than weeks. The advent of suburbia also played a significant role. With many families moving to their own private houses, luxuries such as home air conditioning and swimming pools diminished their interest in flocking to the luxury beach resorts during the hot summer. Finally, the rise of relatively cheap jet airline service allowed visitors to travel to year-round resort places such as Miami Beach and the Bahamas.\nThe city hosted the 1964 Democratic National Convention which nominated Lyndon Johnson for president and Hubert Humphrey as vice president. The convention and the press coverage it generated, however, cast a harsh light on Atlantic City, which by then was in the midst of a long period of economic decline. Many felt that the friendship between Johnson and Governor of New Jersey Richard J. Hughes led Atlantic City to host the Democratic Convention.\nBy the late 1960s, many of the resort's once great hotels were suffering from high vacancy rates. Most of them were either shut down, converted to cheap apartments, or converted to nursing home facilities by the end of the decade. Prior to and during the advent of legalized gambling, many of these hotels were demolished. The Breakers, The Chelsea, the Brighton, the Shelburne, the Mayflower, the Traymore and the Marlborough-Blenheim were demolished in the 1970s and 1980s. Of the many pre-casino resorts that bordered the boardwalk, only the Claridge, the Dennis, the Ritz-Carlton, and the Haddon Hall survive to this day as parts of Bally's Atlantic City, a condo complex, and Resorts Atlantic City. The old Ambassador Hotel was purchased by Ramada in 1978 and was gutted to become the Tropicana Casino and Resort Atlantic City, only reusing the steelwork of the original building. Smaller hotels off the boardwalk, such as the Madison also survived.\nLegalized gambling.\nIn an effort at revitalizing the city, New Jersey voters in 1976 passed a referendum, approving casino gambling for Atlantic City; this came after a 1974 referendum on legalized gambling failed to pass. Immediately after the legislation passed, the owners of the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall Hotel began converting it into the Resorts International. It was the first legal casino in the eastern United States when it opened on May 26, 1978.\nOther casinos were soon constructed along the Boardwalk and, later, in the marina district for a total of nine today. The introduction of gambling did not, however, quickly eliminate many of the urban problems that plagued Atlantic City. Many people have suggested that it only served to exacerbate those problems, as attested to by the stark contrast between tourism intensive areas and the adjacent impoverished working-class neighborhoods.\nWhile Atlantic City has been less popular than Las Vegas as a gambling city in the United States, Donald Trump helped bring big name boxing bouts to the city to attract customers to his casinos. Mike Tyson fought most of his fights in Atlantic City in the 1980s, which helped Atlantic City achieve national attention as a gambling resort and vacation destination.\nSeveral highrise condominiums were built for use as permanent residences or second homes. By end of the decade, it was one of the most popular tourist destinations in the United States.\n21st century.\nLegalized sports betting.\nOn June 27, 2017, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear \"Christie v. National Collegiate Athletic Association\" and heard oral arguments in December 2017. Then, on May 14, 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) was unconstitutional. The act was overturned, allowing New Jersey to move ahead with plans to implement legalized sports betting.\nDespite being the state to initiate the landmark ruling, New Jersey was actually the third state to legalize sports betting after Nevada and Delaware. In June 2018, New Jersey governor Phil Murphy signed the legislation into law, and several New Jersey\u2013based casino brands subsequently opened sportsbooks, especially in Atlantic City.\nWith the redevelopment of the Las Vegas Strip and the opening of Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun in Connecticut in the early 1990s, along with newly built casinos in the nearby Philadelphia metro area in the 2000s, Atlantic City's tourism began to decline due to its failure to diversify away from gambling. In 1999 the Atlantic City Redevelopment Authority partnered with Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn to develop a new roadway to a barren section of the city near the Marina. Nicknamed \"The Tunnel Project\", Steve Wynn planned the proposed 'Mirage Atlantic City' around the idea that he would connect the $330\u00a0million tunnel stretching from the Atlantic City Expressway to his new resort. The roadway was later officially named the Atlantic City-Brigantine Connector, and funnels incoming traffic off of the expressway into the city's marina district and the city of Brigantine.\nAlthough Wynn's plans for development in the city were scrapped in 2002, the tunnel opened in 2001. The new roadway prompted Boyd Gaming in partnership with MGM/Mirage to build Atlantic City's newest casino. Borgata opened in July 2003, and its success brought an influx of developers to Atlantic City with plans for building grand, Las Vegas-style mega casinos to revitalize the aging city.\nOwing to economic conditions and the late 2000s recession, many of the proposed mega casinos never advanced further than the initial planning stage. One of these developers was Pinnacle Entertainment, which purchased the Sands Atlantic City for $250\u2013$270 million and closed it on November 11, 2006 with plans to replace it with a larger casino. The following year, the resort was demolished in an implosion, the first of its kind in Atlantic City. While Pinnacle Entertainment intended to replace it with a $1.5-$2-billion casino resort, the company canceled its construction plans and sold the land for $29.5 million. MGM Resorts International announced in October 2007 that it would pull out of all development for Atlantic City, effectively ending its plans for the MGM Grand Atlantic City.\nIn 2006, Morgan Stanley purchased directly north of the Showboat Atlantic City for a new $2-billion-plus casino resort. Revel Entertainment Group was named as the project's developer for the Revel Casino. Revel was hindered with many problems, the biggest setback occurring in April 2010 when Morgan Stanley, the owner of 90% of Revel Entertainment Group, decided to discontinue funding for continued construction and put its stake in Revel up for sale. Early in 2010, the New Jersey state legislature passed a bill offering tax incentives to attract new investors and complete the job, but a poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind released in March 2010 showed that 60% of voters opposed the legislation, and two of three of those who opposed it \"strongly\" opposed it. Ultimately, Governor Chris Christie offered Revel $261\u00a0million in state tax credits to assist the casino once it opened.\nRevel completed all of the exterior work and had continued work on the interior after finally receiving the funding necessary to complete construction, and had a soft opening in April 2012 before being fully open the next month. Ten months later, in February 2013, after serious losses and a write-down in the value of the resort from $2.4\u00a0billion to $450\u00a0million, Revel filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It was restructured but still could not carry on and re-entered bankruptcy on June 19, 2014. It was put up for sale, however as no suitable bids were received the resort closed its doors in September 2014. The property was bought by AC Ocean Walk, LLC for $200\u00a0million in 2017, and reopened in 2018 as Ocean Casino Resort.\nIn the wake of the closures and declining revenue from casinos, Governor Christie said in September 2014 that the state would consider a 2015 referendum to end the 40-year-old monopoly that Atlantic City holds on casino gambling and allowing gambling in other municipalities. With casino revenue declining from $5.2\u00a0billion in 2006 to $2.9\u00a0billion in 2013, the state saw a drop in money from its 8% tax on those earnings, which is used to fund programs for senior citizens and the disabled.\nOn October 29, 2012, \"Superstorm Sandy\" struck Atlantic City and caused flooding and power-outages but left minimal damage to any of the tourist areas. The storm produced an all-time record low barometric pressure reading of 943 mb (27.85\") for not only Atlantic City, but the state of New Jersey.\nIn 2019, the Atlantic City area had the highest rates of foreclosures in the nation. This has disproportionately affected Black residents in neighborhoods segregated by redlining, a legacy that is mirrored by the values of properties on the Monopoly game board.\nAfter several casino closures and the COVID-19 pandemic, strikes and pickets were being threatened in June 2022 by casino employees which were short-staffed and wanted pay raises.\nFood desert.\nAtlantic City is widely known as a food desert, with the nearest fully-functioning supermarket being located in neighboring Ventnor City, which is away from the majority of Atlantic City's population. As a result, proposals for a supermarket were floated beginning in May 2021, and Atlantic City's City Council gave permission to the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority to look for a contender to build a supermarket.\nAs of December 2023, there was only one functioning supermarket in Atlantic City, the Save-A-Lot food store located in Renaissance Plaza, an area of the city known for its significant homeless population and drug use. The Casino Reinvestment Development Authority has proposed a new supermarket that would be located on an empty parking lot behind the Tanger Outlets and near the Atlantic City Expressway.\nGroundbreaking for a ShopRite supermarket had taken place in October 2021, after Village Super Market received $18.7 million from the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority to construct the store. The supermarket was expected to be completed by December 2022, although no construction or building had happened on the site, which drew attention from residents. After the time for the contract expired, the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA) announced that the deal with Village Super Market (VSM) was dead and that they were looking for new contenders. VSM created a new plan for CRDA and the city's Council to review and by July 2023, it and a Chinese conglomerate headquartered in Hong Kong emerged as the two candidates to build the supermarket. However, as of November 2023, no further progress had been made on the construction plans and the two proposals were still \"being reviewed.\"\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, Atlantic City had a total area of 17.21 square miles (44.59\u00a0km2), including 10.76 square miles (27.87\u00a0km2) of land and 6.45 square miles (16.72\u00a0km2) of water (37.50%).\nThe city is located on Absecon Island, along with Ventnor City, Margate City and Longport to the southwest.\nAtlantic City borders the Atlantic County municipalities of Absecon, Brigantine, Egg Harbor Township, Galloway Township, Pleasantville, and Ventnor City.\nThe city is located southeast of Philadelphia and south of New York City.\nUnincorporated communities, localities and place names located partially or completely within the city include Chelsea, City Island, Great Island and Venice Park.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen climate classification system, Atlantic City has a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\") with warm, moderately humid summers, cool winters and year-around precipitation. Cfa climates are characterized by all months having an average mean temperature above , at least four months with an average mean temperature at or above , at least one month with an average mean temperature at or above and no significant precipitation difference between seasons. During the summer months in Atlantic City, a cooling afternoon sea breeze is present on most days, but episodes of extreme heat and humidity can occur with heat index values at or above . During the winter months, episodes of extreme cold and wind can occur with wind chill values below . The plant hardiness zone at Atlantic City Beach is 7b with an average annual extreme minimum air temperature of . The average seasonal (November\u2013April) snowfall total is , and the average snowiest month is February which corresponds with the annual peak in nor'easter activity.\nEcology.\nAccording to the A. W. Kuchler U.S. potential natural vegetation types, Atlantic City would have a dominant vegetation type of Northern Cordgrass (\"73\") with a dominant vegetation form of Coastal Prairie (\"20\").\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nThe 2010 United States census counted 39,558 people, 15,504 households, and 8,558 families in the city. The population density was . There were 20,013 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup was 26.65% (10,543) White, 38.29% (15,148) Black or African American, 0.61% (242) Native American, 15.55% (6,153) Asian, 0.05% (18) Pacific Islander, 14.03% (5,549) from other races, and 4.82% (1,905) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 30.45% (12,044) of the population.\nOf the 15,504 households, 27.3% had children under the age of 18; 25.9% were married couples living together; 22.2% had a female householder with no husband present and 44.8% were non-families. Of all households, 37.5% were made up of individuals and 14.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.50 and the average family size was 3.34.\nPeople under the age of 18 account for 24.6%, 10.2% from 18 to 24, 26.8% from 25 to 44, 25.8% from 45 to 64, and 12.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36.3 years. For every 100 females, the population had 96.2 males. For every 100 females ages 18 and older there were 94.4 males.\nThe Census Bureau's 2006\u20132010 American Community Survey showed that (in 2010 inflation-adjusted dollars) median household income was $30,237 (with a margin of error of +/\u2212 $2,354) and the median family income was $35,488 (+/\u2212 $2,607). Males had a median income of $32,207 (+/\u2212 $1,641) versus $29,298 (+/\u2212 $1,380) for females. The per capita income for the city was $20,069 (+/\u2212 $2,532). About 23.1% of families and 25.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 36.6% of those under age 18 and 16.8% of those age 65 or over.\n2000 census.\nAs of the 2000 United States census, there were 40,517 people, 15,848 households, and 8,700 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 20,219 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 44.16% black or African American, 26.68% White, 0.48% Native American, 10.40% Asian, 0.06% Pacific Islander, 13.76% other races, and 4.47% from two or more races. 24.95% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. 19.44% of the population was non-Hispanic whites.\nThere were 15,848 households, out of which 27.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 24.8% were married couples living together, 23.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 37.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 15.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.46 and the average family size was 3.26.\nIn the city the age distribution of the population shows 25.7% under the age of 18, 8.9% from 18 to 24, 31.0% from 25 to 44, 20.2% from 45 to 64, and 14.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females, there were 96.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.2 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $26,969, and the median income for a family was $31,997. Males had a median income of $25,471 versus $23,863 for females. The per capita income for the city was $15,402. About 19.1% of families and 23.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 29.1% of those under age 18 and 18.9% of those age 65 or over.\nEconomy.\nIn September 2014, the greater Atlantic City area had one of the highest unemployment rates in the country at 13.8%, out of a labor force of around 141,000.\nTourism district.\nIn July 2010, Governor Chris Christie announced that a state takeover of the city and local government \"was imminent\". Comparing regulations in Atlantic City to an \"antique car\", Atlantic City regulatory reform was a key piece of Governor Chris Christie's plan to reinvigorate an industry mired in a four-year slump in revenue and hammered by fresh competition from casinos in the surrounding states of Delaware, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and more recently, Maryland. In January 2011, Chris Christie announced the creation of the Atlantic City Tourism District, a state-run district encompassing the boardwalk casinos, the marina casinos, the Atlantic City Outlets, and Bader Field. Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind poll surveyed New Jersey voters' attitudes on the takeover. A February 2011 survey showed that 43% opposed the measure while 29% favored direct state oversight. The poll also found that even South Jersey voters expressed opposition to the plan; 40% reported they opposed the measure and 37% reported they were in favor of it.\nOn April 29, 2011, the boundaries for the state-run tourism district were set. The district would include heavier police presence, as well as beautification projects and infrastructure improvements. The CRDA would oversee all functions of the district and make changes to attract new businesses and attractions. New construction has already resulted in cases of eminent domain being used to seize properties for development.\nThe tourism district would comprise several key areas in the city: the Marina District, Ducktown, Chelsea, South Inlet, Bader Field, and Gardner's Basin. Also included are 10 roadways that lead into the district, including several in the city's northern end, or North Beach. Gardner's Basin, which is home to the Atlantic City Aquarium, was initially left out of the tourism district, while a residential neighborhood in the Chelsea section was removed from the final boundaries, owing to complaints from the city. Also, the inclusion of Bader Field in the district was controversial and received much scrutiny from mayor Lorenzo Langford, who cast the lone \"no\" vote on the creation of the district citing its inclusion.\nCasinos and gambling.\nThe history of gambling in Atlantic City traces back to Prohibition and the 1920s, with racketeer Louis Kuehnle running an underground hotel and casino. Enoch \"Nucky\" Johnson followed and furthered Atlantic City's rise through the Roaring Twenties as a destination for drinking, gambling, and nightlife. In 1974, New Jersey voters voted 60%\u201340% against legalizing casino gambling at four sites statewide, but two years later approved by 56%\u201344% a new referendum which legalized casinos, but restricted them to Atlantic City. Resorts Atlantic City was the first casino to open, in May 1978, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony featuring Governor of New Jersey Brendan Byrne. Atlantic City is considered the \"Gambling Capital of the East Coast\", and currently has nine large casinos. In 2011, New Jersey's then 12 casinos employed approximately 33,000 employees, had 28.5\u00a0million visitors, made $3.3\u00a0billion in gaming revenue, and paid $278\u00a0million in taxes. They are regulated by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission and the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement.\nIn the wake of the economic downturn following the Great Recession and the legalization of gambling in adjacent and nearby states (including Delaware, Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania), four casino closures took place in 2014: the Atlantic Club on January 13; the Showboat on August 31; the Revel, which was Atlantic City's second-newest casino, on September 2; and Trump Plaza, which originally opened in 1984, and was the poorest performing casino in the city, on September 16.\nExecutives at Trump Entertainment Resorts, whose sole remaining property at the time was the Trump Taj Mahal, said in 2013 that they were considering the option of selling the Taj and winding down and exiting the gaming and hotel business. Trump Taj Mahal closed October 10, 2016, after failing to come to terms with union workers.\nCaesars Entertainment executives have been reconsidering the future of their three remaining Atlantic City properties (Bally's, Caesars and Harrah's), in the wake of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by the company's casino operating unit in January 2015. In 2020, Bally's Atlantic City was acquired by Bally's Corporation. Gross gaming revenue of the city's nine operating casinos in 2022 totaled $2.79 billion, a 9% increase from the $2.55 billion earned the previous year.\na The Wild Wild West Casino, which opened on July 2, 1997, and has an American Old West theme, was part of Bally's Atlantic City until 2020, when it became part of Caesars.\nBoardwalk.\nThe Atlantic City Boardwalk opened on June 26, 1870, a temporary structure erected for the summer season that was the first boardwalk in the world. At long, the Atlantic City Boardwalk is also the world's longest and busiest boardwalk.\nThe Boardwalk starts at Absecon Inlet in the north and runs along the beach south-west to the city limit away then continues into Ventnor City. Casino/hotels front the boardwalk, as well as retail stores, restaurants, and amusements. Notable attractions include the Boardwalk Hall, House of Blues, and the Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum.\nIn October 2012, Hurricane Sandy destroyed the northern part of the boardwalk fronting Absecon Inlet, in the residential section called South Inlet. The oceanfront boardwalk in front of the Atlantic City casinos survived the storm with minimal damage.\nThe first pier along the boardwalk, Applegate's Pier, opened in 1884. It was acquired by John L. Young in 1891, who expanded and operated it as Young's Ocean Pier, but it was mostly destroyed in a 1912 fire. The remaining part of the pier was rebuilt in 1922 as the Central Pier, which is still in operation.\nA Heinz-owned pier named Heinz Pier was destroyed in the 1944 Great Atlantic hurricane.\nThe most famous Atlantic City pier was Steel Pier, which opened in 1898, and which once billed itself as \"The Showplace of the Nation\". It closed in 1978, and was mostly destroyed in a 1982 fire. It was rebuilt in the late 1980s and is now operated as an amusement pier across from the Hard Rock.\nSteeplechase Pier opened in 1899 and operated until 1986. It suffered significant damage in a 1988 fire, and the remnants of the pier were removed in 1996. The \"Steeplechase Pier Heliport\" on Steel Pier is named in its honor.\nCaptain John L. Young opened \"Young's Million Dollar Pier\" in 1906, and on the seaward side \"erected a marble mansion\", fronted by a formal garden, with lighting and landscaping designed by Young's longtime friend Thomas Alva Edison. Million Dollar Pier once rivaled Steel Pier as Atlantic City's leading pier, but after suffering decades of decline, was rebuilt into a shopping mall in the 1980s, known as \"Shops on Ocean One\". In 2006, the Ocean One mall was bought, renovated and re-branded as \"The Pier Shops at Caesars\" and in 2015, it was renamed \"Playground Pier\". In September 2023, it was renamed \"ACX1 Studios\" for the film and entertainment production studios that took over the building, with a planned grand reopening containing a mixture of retail, restaurants, creative space, and production studios in summer of 2024.\nGarden Pier, located opposite Ocean Casino Resort, once housed a movie theater, and is now home to the Atlantic City Historical Museum.\nShopping.\nAtlantic City has many different shopping districts and malls, many of which are located inside or adjacent to the casino resorts. Several smaller themed retail and dining areas in casino hotels include the Borgata Shops and The Shoppes at Water Club inside Borgata, the Waterfront Shops inside of Harrah's, Spice Road inside the Trump Taj Mahal, while Resorts Casino Hotel has a small collection of stores and restaurants. Major shopping malls are also located in and around Atlantic City.\nAtlantic City shops include:\nExhibition.\nBoardwalk Hall, formally known as the \"Historic Atlantic City Convention Hall\", is an arena in Atlantic City along the boardwalk. Boardwalk Hall was Atlantic City's primary convention center until the opening of the Atlantic City Convention Center in 1997. The Atlantic City Convention Center includes of showroom space, 5 exhibit halls, 45 meeting rooms with of space, a garage with 1,400 parking spaces, and an adjacent Sheraton hotel. Both the Boardwalk Hall and Convention Center are operated by the Atlantic City Convention & Visitors Authority.\nArts and culture.\n\"Monopoly\".\nAtlantic City (sometimes referred to as \"Monopoly City\") has become well-known over the years for its portrayal in the U.S. version of the popular board game \"Monopoly\", in which properties on the board are named after locations in and near Atlantic City. While the original incarnation of the game did not feature Atlantic City, it was in Indianapolis that Ruth Hoskins learned the game, and took it back to Atlantic City. After she arrived, Hoskins made a new board with Atlantic City street names, and taught it to a group of friends, who ultimately passed in on to Charles Darrow, who made some modifications to the game and claimed it as his own invention. The relative prices of the places on the board reflect to some extent the social status of neighborhoods at the time, with wealthy white streets being worth more, and streets where Black and Asian residents lived being cheaper.\nMarvin Gardens, the leading yellow property on the board, is actually a misspelling of the original location name, \"Marven Gardens\". The misspelling was said to have been introduced by Charles Todd and passed on when his home-made \"Monopoly\" board was copied by Charles Darrow and thence Parker Brothers. It was not until 1995 that Parker Brothers acknowledged this mistake and formally apologized to the residents of Marven Gardens for the misspelling, although the spelling error was not corrected.\nSome of the actual locations that correspond to board elements have changed since the game's release. Illinois Avenue was renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in the 1980s. St. Charles Place no longer exists, as the Showboat Casino Hotel was developed where it once ran.\nThe \"Short Line\" is believed to refer to the Shore Fast Line, a streetcar line that served Atlantic City, or a bus route. The B&O Railroad did not serve Atlantic City. A booklet included with the reprinted 1935 edition states that the four railroads that served Atlantic City in the mid-1930s were the Jersey Central, the Seashore Lines, the Reading Railroad, and the Pennsylvania Railroad.\nThe actual \"Electric Company\" and \"Water Works\" serving the city are the Atlantic City Electric Company and the Atlantic City Municipal Utilities Authority, respectively.\nAttractions.\nEver since Atlantic City's growth as a resort town, numerous attractions and tourist traps have originated in the city. A popular fixture in the early 20th century at the Steel Pier was horse diving, which was introduced by William \"Doc\" Carver. The Steel Pier featured several other novelty attractions, including the Diving Bell, human high-divers and a water circus. Advertisements for the Steel Pier in its heyday featured plaster sculptures set upon wooden bases along roads leading up to Atlantic City. By the end of World War II, many animal demonstrations declined in popularity after criticisms of animal abuse and neglect.\nRolling chairs, which were introduced in 1876 and in continuous use since 1887, have been a boardwalk fixture to this day. While powered carts appeared in the 1960s, the original and most common were made of wicker. The wicker canopied chairs-on-wheels are manually pushed the length of the boardwalk by attendants, much like a rickshaw. A tram service was introduced in 2015, initially using the warning announcements that had been used on Wildwood's tram cars until it was changed after complaints from Wildwood.\nThe Absecon Lighthouse is a coastal lighthouse located in the South Inlet section of Atlantic City overlooking Absecon Inlet. It is the tallest lighthouse in the state of New Jersey and is the third tallest masonry lighthouse in the United States. Construction began in 1854, with the light first lit on January 15, 1857. The lighthouse was deactivated in 1933 and although the light still shines every night, it is no longer an active navigational aid. Gardner's Basin, which is home to the Atlantic City Aquarium as well as small shops and restaurants, is located a short distance north of Absecon Light.\nWhile located south of Atlantic City in Margate City, Lucy the Elephant has become almost an icon for the Atlantic City area. Lucy is a six-story elephant-shaped example of novelty architecture, constructed of wood and tin sheeting in 1882 by James V. Lafferty in an effort to sell real estate and attract tourism. Over the years, Lucy had served as a restaurant, business office, cottage, and tavern (the last closed by Prohibition). Lucy had fallen into disrepair by the 1960s and was scheduled for demolition. The structure was moved and refurbished as a result of a \"Save Lucy\" campaign in 1970 and received designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1976, and is open as a museum.\nMiss America pageant.\nAtlantic City was the home of the Miss America competition, hosting the event from its inception until 2004, and again from 2013 to 2018. The Miss America competition originated on September 7, 1921, as a two-day beauty contest, and it included state contestants as well as women from various cities around the country. The event that year was called the \"Atlantic City Pageant\", and the winner of the grand prize, Margaret Gorman, took home the 3-foot Golden Mermaid trophy. Gorman was not called \"Miss America\" until 1922, when she re-entered the pageant and lost to Mary Campbell. The pageant was initiated to extend the tourist season after the Labor Day weekend. The pageant has been nationally televised since 1954. It peaked in the early 1960s, when it was repeatedly the highest-rated program on American television. It was seen as a symbol of the United States, with Miss America often being referred to as the female equivalent of the President. The pageant's longtime emcee, Bert Parks, hosted the event from 1955 to 1979. At the Atlantic City Convention Center, there is a interactive statue of Parks holding a crown. When a visitor puts their head inside the crown, sensors activate a recorded playback of his \"There She Is...\" line through speakers hidden behind nearby bushes.\n\"Boardwalk Empire\".\nThe television show \"Boardwalk Empire\", an American series from cable network HBO set in Atlantic City during the Prohibition era, raised interest in the Roaring Twenties-era city. Starring Steve Buscemi, the show was adapted from a chapter about historical criminal kingpin Enoch \"Nucky\" Johnson (who is renamed \"Enoch Thompson\" in the show) in Nelson Johnson's book, \"Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City\".\nThe Orange Loop.\nThe Orange Loop is a neighborhood near the beach in Atlantic City with a focus on live music establishments like Anchor Rock Club and Tennessee Beer Hall.\nIt runs perpendicular from the boardwalk inland roughly to St. Nicholas of Tolentine Church.\nIt is bounded by Tennessee Avenue, St. James Place, Pacific Avenue and the boardwalk, and derives its name from the orange color of those streets on a traditional Monopoly gameboard. The Orange Loop Amphitheater hosted the Frantic City indie rock music festival on the loop in 2022.\nSports.\nThe Atlantic City Race Course in Hamilton Township was a horse racing track that operated from 1946 to 2015.\nThe ShopRite LPGA Classic is an LPGA Tour women's golf tournament held near Atlantic City since it started in 1986.\nProfessional boxing.\nSince February 2, 1887, the city of Atlantic City has seen 2,538 (as of September 2018) professional boxing fight programs, the first one being one with a main event fight between Willie Clark, 3-0-3, and debuting Horace Leeds, won by Clark on points over four rounds. During the 1980s, professional boxing activity boomed in Atlantic City, at times rivaling Las Vegas, Nevada, in staging major boxing fights. Fighters who fought in Atlantic City at that era include Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns, Wilfredo G\u00f3mez, Jeff Chandler, Larry Holmes, George Foreman, Mike Tyson and others. Fights included The Brawl For it All, Tyson versus Holmes, Tyson versus Michael Spinks, and Roberto Dur\u00e1n versus Iran Barkley. Many boxing matches were held at Donald Trump's Trump Plaza, promoted either by Bob Arum or Don King.\nParks and recreation.\nAtlantic City is one of five municipalities in the state\u2014and the only one outside of Cape May County\u2014that offer free public access to oceanfront beaches monitored by lifeguards, joining Wildwood, North Wildwood, Wildwood Crest and Upper Township's Strathmere section.\nGovernment.\nLocal government.\nAtlantic City is governed within the Faulkner Act (formally known as the Optional Municipal Charter Law) under the Mayor-Council system of municipal government (Plan D), implemented by direct petition effective as of July 1, 1982. The city is one of 71 municipalities (of the 564) statewide governed under this form. The governing body of Atlantic City comprises the Mayor and the City Council, all elected on a partisan basis to serve four-year terms of office as part of the November general election. The council includes nine members, who are elected on a staggered basis, with one member from each of six wards and three serving at-large. The six ward seats are up for election together and the mayoral seat and the council at-large seats are up for vote together two years later. The City Council exercises the legislative power of the municipality for the purpose of holding Council meetings to introduce ordinances and resolutions to regulate City government. In addition, Council members review budgets submitted by the Mayor; provide for an annual audit of the city's accounts and financial transactions; organize standing committees and hold public hearings to address important issues which impact Atlantic City. Former Mayor Bob Levy created the Atlantic City Ethics Board in 2007, but the Board was dissolved two years later by vote of the Atlantic City Council.\nAs of 2024[ [update]], the Mayor is Democrat Marty Small Sr., whose term of office ends December 31, 2025. Small succeeded Frank M. Gilliam Jr. following his resignation on October 3, 2019. Small initially served as mayor on an interim basis for an unexpired term ending on December 31, 2021. Members of the City Council are Council President Council President Aaron \"Sporty\" Randolph (D, 2027; 1st Ward), Council Vice President Kaleem Shabazz (D, 2027; 3rd Ward), George \"Animal\" Crouch (D, 2027; 4th Ward), LaToya Dunston (D, 2027; Second Ward \u2013 elected to serve an unexpired term), Jesse O. Kurtz (R, 2027; 6th Ward), Stephanie Marshall (D, 2025; At-Large), George Tibbitt (D, 2025; At-Large), Bruce Weekes (D, 2025; At-Large) and Maria Lacca (R, 2027; 5th Ward).\nIn 2024, Democrat Muhammed \"Anjum\" Zia, who served as a councilman for the 5th ward, was removed from office after it was found the he did not reside in Atlantic City, but instead with his family in Egg Harbor Township. He was ousted from the city council, and in a court-ordered special election that November, Republican Maria Lacca, who brought about the investigation against Zia, flipped the seat, becoming the first Republican to win it since 1988. She became one out of two Republicans now currently on Atlantic City's council, with the other being councilman Jesse O. Kurtz of the 6th ward.\nIn May 2020, voters rejected by a 3\u20131 margin a referendum that would have changed the city to a council-manager form of government which would have reduced the size of the city council and shifted responsibility for day-to-day operation from an elected mayor to an appointed city manager.\nIn December 2019, LaToya Dunston was selected from a list of three candidates nominated by the Democratic municipal committee to serve the remainder of the term of the Second Ward seat that had been held by Marty Small until he stepped down when he was appointed as mayor. In January 2020, Dunston was appointed to fill the Second Ward seat expiring in December 2023 that Small had won in November 2019 but declined to fill; Dunston will serve on an interim basis until the November 2020 general election, when voters will select a candidate to serve the balance of the term of office.\nMayoral disappearance and resignation.\nFollowing questions about false claims he had made about his military record, Mayor Bob Levy left City Hall in September 2007 in a city-owned vehicle for an unknown destination. After a 13-day absence, his lawyer revealed that Levy was in Carrier Clinic, a rehabilitation hospital. Levy resigned in October 2007 and then-Council President William Marsh assumed the office of Mayor and served six weeks until an interim mayor was named.\nFederal, state and county representation.\nAtlantic City is located in the 2nd Congressional district and is part of New Jersey's 2nd state legislative district.\nFor the 119th United States Congress, New Jersey congressional district is represented by Jeff Van Drew (R, Dennis Township). New Jersey is represented in the United States Senate by Democrats Cory Booker (Newark, term ends 2027) and Andy Kim (Moorestown, term ends 2031).\nFor the 2024-2025 session, the 2nd legislative district of the New Jersey Legislature is represented in the New Jersey Senate by Vincent J. Polistina (R, Egg Harbor Township) and in the General Assembly by Don Guardian (R, Atlantic City) and Claire Swift (R, Margate City).\nAtlantic County is governed by a directly elected county executive and a nine-member Board of County Commissioners, responsible for legislation. The executive serves a four-year term and the commissioners are elected to staggered three-year terms, of which four are elected from the county on an at-large basis and five of the commissioners represent equally populated districts. As of 2025[ [update]], Atlantic County's Executive is Dennis Levinson (R, Northfield), whose term of office ends December 31, 2027. Members of the Board of County Commissioners are:\nErnest D. Coursey (D, District 1-- Atlantic City, Egg Harbor Township (part), Longport, Margate City, and Ventnor City; 2025, Atlantic City), Chair Maureen Kern (R, District 2-- Egg Harbor Township (part), Linwood, Northfield, Somers Point and Pleasantville; 2027, Somers Point), Andrew Parker III (R, District 3-- Egg Harbor Township (part) and Hamilton Township (part); 2026, Egg Harbor Township), Richard R. Dase (R, District 4, including Brigantine, Galloway Township, Egg Harbor Township (part), and Port Republic; 2025, Galloway Township), Vice Chair James A. Bertino (R, District 5-- Buena, Buena Vista Township, Corbin City, Egg Harbor City, Estell Manor, Folsom, Hamilton Township (part), Hammonton, Mullica Township and Weymouth Township; 2027, Hammonton), June Byrnes (R, At-Large; 2026, Linwood), Michael Ruffu (R, At-Large; Margate, 2027) Amy L. Gatto (R, At-large; 2025, Hamilton Township) and John W. Risley (R, At-Large; 2026, Egg Harbor Township)\nAtlantic County's constitutional officers are: \nClerk Joesph J. Giralo (R, 2026, Hammonton), \nSheriff Joe O'Donoghue (R, 2026, Egg Harbor Township) and \nSurrogate James Curcio (R, 2025, Hammonton).\nPolitics.\nAs of March 23, 2011, there were a total of 20,001 registered voters in Atlantic City, of which 12,063 (60.3% vs. 30.5% countywide) were registered as Democrats, 1,542 (7.7% vs. 25.2%) were registered as Republicans and 6,392 (32.0% vs. 44.3%) were registered as Unaffiliated. There were 4 voters registered to other parties. Among the city's 2010 Census population, 50.6% (vs. 58.8% in Atlantic County) were registered to vote, including 67.0% of those ages 18 and over (vs. 76.6% countywide).\nIn the 2012 presidential election, Democrat Barack Obama received 9,948 votes (86.6% vs. 57.9% countywide), ahead of Republican Mitt Romney with 1,548 votes (13.5% vs. 41.1%) and other candidates with 49 votes (0.4% vs. 0.9%), among the 11,489 ballots cast by the city's 21,477 registered voters, for a turnout of 53.5% (vs. 65.8% in Atlantic County). In the 2008 presidential election, Democrat Barack Obama received 10,975 votes (82.1% vs. 56.5% countywide), ahead of Republican John McCain with 2,175 votes (16.3% vs. 41.6%) and other candidates with 82 votes (0.6% vs. 1.1%), among the 13,370 ballots cast by the city's 26,030 registered voters, for a turnout of 51.4% (vs. 68.1% in Atlantic County). In the 2004 presidential election, Democrat John Kerry received 8,487 votes (74.5% vs. 52.0% countywide), ahead of Republican George W. Bush with 2,687 votes (23.6% vs. 46.2%) and other candidates with 96 votes (0.8% vs. 0.8%), among the 11,389 ballots cast by the city's 23,310 registered voters, for a turnout of 48.9% (vs. 69.8% in the whole county).\nIn the 2013 gubernatorial election, Democrat Barbara Buono received 4,293 ballots cast (52.6% vs. 34.9% countywide), ahead of Republican Chris Christie with 2,897 votes (35.5% vs. 60.0%) and other candidates with 63 votes (0.8% vs. 1.3%), among the 8,155 ballots cast by the city's 23,049 registered voters, yielding a 35.4% turnout (vs. 41.5% in the county). In the 2009 gubernatorial election, Democrat Jon Corzine received 4,988 ballots cast (69.9% vs. 44.5% countywide), ahead of Republican Chris Christie with 1,578 votes (22.1% vs. 47.7%), Independent Chris Daggett with 157 votes (2.2% vs. 4.8%) and other candidates with 99 votes (1.4% vs. 1.2%), among the 7,141 ballots cast by the city's 22,585 registered voters, yielding a 31.6% turnout (vs. 44.9% in the county).\nCity and state agencies.\nNew Jersey Casino Control Commission.\nThe New Jersey Casino Control Commission is a New Jersey state governmental agency that was founded in 1977 as the state's Gaming Control Board, responsible for administering the Casino Control Act and its regulations to assure public trust and confidence in the credibility and integrity of the casino industry and casino operations in Atlantic City. Casinos operate under licenses granted by the commission. The commission is headquartered in the Arcade Building at Tennessee Avenue and Boardwalk in Atlantic City.\nNew Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement.\nThe New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement is a division of the New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety and is responsible for certifying casino gaming revenue, registering casino employees and non-gaming vendors, licensing gaming vendors, and handling all casino patron complaints.\nCasino Reinvestment Development Authority.\nThe CRDA was founded in 1984 and is responsible for directing the spending of casino reinvestment funds in public and private projects to benefit Atlantic City and other areas of the state. From 1985 through April 2008, CRDA spent US$1.5\u00a0billion on projects in Atlantic City and US$300\u00a0million throughout New Jersey.\nAtlantic City Convention and Visitors Authority.\nThe Convention & Visitors Authority (ACCVA) was in charge of advertising and marketing for the city as well as promoting economic growth through convention and leisure tourism development. The ACCVA managed the Boardwalk Hall and Atlantic City Convention Center, as well as the Boardwalk Welcome Center inside Boardwalk Hall and a welcome center on the Atlantic City Expressway. In 2011, the ACCVA was absorbed into the CRDA as part of the state takeover that created the tourism district.\nAtlantic City Special Improvement District.\nThe Atlantic City Special Improvement District (SID) was a nonprofit organization created in 1992, funded by a special assessment tax on businesses within the improvement district. It carried out various activities to improve the city's business community, including street cleaning and promotional efforts. In 2011, the SID was absorbed by the CRDA; the former SID boundaries would be expanded to the include all areas in the newly formed tourism district. Under the new structure, established by state legislation, the CRDA assumed responsibility for the staff, equipment and programs of the SID. The new SID division includes a SID committee made up of CRDA board members and an advisory council consisting of the current trustees and others.\nFire department.\nThe Atlantic City Fire Department (ACFD) provides fire protection and first responder emergency medical services to the city. The ACFD operates out of six fire stations, located throughout the city in one battalion, under the command of a battalion chief, who in-turn reports to an on-duty Deputy Chief, or Tour Commander each shift.\nPolice department.\nThe city is protected by the Atlantic City Police Department, which handles 150,000 calls per year. The Chief of Police is James A. Sarkos.\nEducation.\nThe Atlantic City School District serves students in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grades. As of the 2020\u201321 school year, the district, consisting of 11 schools, had an enrollment of 6,553 students and 617.3 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student\u2013teacher ratio of 10.6:1. Schools in the district (with 2020\u201321 enrollment data from the National Center for Education Statistics) are \nVenice Park School (36 students in PreK), \nBrighton Avenue School (315 students; in grades PreK-5), \nChelsea Heights School (332; PreK-8), \nDr. Martin Luther King Jr. School Complex (543; PreK-8), \nNew York Avenue School (548; PreK-8), \nPennsylvania Avenue School (549; PreK-8), \nRichmond Avenue School (615; PreK-8), \nSovereign Avenue School (696; PreK-8),\nTexas Avenue School (499; K-8), \nUptown School Complex (536; PreK-8) and \nAtlantic City High School (1,771; 9\u201312). Pennsylvania Avenue School opened for the 2012\u201313 school year, with most students shifting from New Jersey Avenue School, which had been one of the district's oldest and most rundown schools.\nStudents from Brigantine, Longport, Margate City and Ventnor City attend Atlantic City High School as part of sending/receiving relationships with the respective school districts.\nCity public school students are also eligible to attend the Atlantic County Institute of Technology in the Mays Landing section of Hamilton Township or the Charter-Tech High School for the Performing Arts, located in Somers Point.\nOceanside Charter School, which offered pre-Kindergarten through eighth grade, was founded in 1999 and closed in June 2013 when its charter was not renewed by the New Jersey Department of Education.\nFounded in 1908, Our Lady Star of the Sea Regional School is a Catholic elementary school, operates under the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Camden.\nNearby college campuses include those of Atlantic Cape Community College and Stockton University, the latter of which offers classes and resources in the city such as the Carnegie Library Center, which was turned back to the control of the city in April 2022.\nMedia outlets.\nNewspapers and magazines.\n\"Former publications\":\nTelevision stations.\nAtlantic City is part of the Philadelphia television market. There are six stations licensed in the area.\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nRoads and highways.\nAs of \u00a02010[ [update]], the city had a total of of roadways, of which were maintained by the municipality, by Atlantic County, by the New Jersey Department of Transportation and by the South Jersey Transportation Authority.\nThe three roadways that enter Atlantic City are: Black Horse Pike/Harding Highway (US 322/40 via the Albany Avenue drawbridge), White Horse Pike (US 30), and the Atlantic City Expressway through the Brigantine Connector. Atlantic City is roughly south of New York City via the Garden State Parkway and southeast of Philadelphia.\nPublic transportation.\nAtlantic City is connected to other cities in several ways. NJ Transit's Atlantic City Rail Terminal at the Atlantic City Convention Center provides service from 30th Street Station in Philadelphia through several smaller South Jersey communities via the Atlantic City Line.\nOn June 20, 2006, the board of NJ Transit approved a three-year trial of express train service between New York Penn Station and the Atlantic City Rail Terminal. The line, known as ACES (Atlantic City Express Service), ran from February 2009 to March 2012. The approximate travel time was <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />2+1\u20442 hours, with a stop at Newark's Penn Station, and was part of the casinos' multimillion-dollar investments in Atlantic City. Most of the funding for the transit line was provided by Harrah's Entertainment (owners of both Harrah's Atlantic City and Caesars Atlantic City) and the Borgata.\nThe Atlantic City Bus Terminal is the home to local, intrastate and interstate bus companies including NJ Transit, OurBus and Greyhound bus lines. The Greyhound Lucky Streak Express offers service to Atlantic City from New York City, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. In addition to stopping at the Atlantic City Bus Terminal, Greyhound buses stop at various casinos in Atlantic City. Martz Trailways provides bus service to various casinos in Atlantic City from Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, and White Haven in Pennsylvania. Klein Transportation provides bus service to various casinos in Atlantic City from Shillington, Douglassville, Royersford, and Audubon in Pennsylvania.\nWithin the city, public transportation is provided by NJ Transit along 13 routes, including service between the city and the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown Manhattan on the 319 route, and service to and from Atlantic City on routes 501 (to Brigantine Beach), 502 (to Atlantic Cape Community College), 504 (to Ventnor Plaza), 505 (to Longport), 507 (to Ocean City), 508 (to the Hamilton Mall), 509 (to Ocean City), 551 (to Philadelphia), 552 (to Cape May), 553 (to Upper Deerfield Township), 554 (to the Lindenwold PATCO station) and 559 (to Lakewood Township).\nThe Atlantic City Jitney Association (ACJA) offers service on four fixed-route lines and on shuttles to and from the rail terminal.\nAirline service.\nCommercial airlines serving Atlantic City include Atlantic City International Airport, located northwest of the city in Egg Harbor Township. Many travelers also fly into Philadelphia International Airport, Trenton-Mercer Airport, or Newark Liberty International Airport, where there are wider selections of carriers from which to choose. The historic downtown Bader Field airport is now permanently closed and plans are in the works to redevelop the land.\nAtlantic City International Airport, which is served by various scheduled chartered flight company, is a focus city for Spirit Airlines\nHealthcare.\nThe AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center is a health system based in Atlantic City. Founded in 1898, it includes two hospitals; the Atlantic City Campus and the Mainland Campus in Pomona, New Jersey. It has Atlantic City's only cancer institute, heart institute, and neonatal intensive care unit.\nUtilities.\nSouth Jersey Industries provides natural gas to the city under the South Jersey Gas division. Marina Energy and its subsidiary, Energenic, a joint business venture with a long-time business partner, operate two thermal power stations in the city. The Marina Thermal Plant serves the Borgata while a second plant serves the Resorts Hotel and Casino. Another thermal plant is the Midtown Thermal Control Center on Atlantic and Ohio Avenues built by Conectiv, which opened in 1997 and provides chilled water for hotels and other facilities along the Boardwalk.\nElectrical power in Atlantic City and its immediate surrounding area is provided primarily served Atlantic City Electric, which was incorporated in 1924 and provides power from the Beesley's Point Generating Station in Upper Township and other locations.\nThe Jersey-Atlantic Wind Farm, opened in 2005, is the first onshore coastal wind farm in the United States. In October 2010, North American Offshore Wind Conference was held in the city and included tours of the facility and potential sites for further development. In February 2011, the state passed legislation permitting the construction of windmills for electricity along pre-existing piers, such as the Steel Pier. The first phase of the Atlantic Wind Connection, a planned electrical transmission backbone along the Jersey Shore was planned to be operational in 2013.\nIn popular culture.\nAtlantic City is featured prominently in films, television, and music, including:\nNotable people.\nPeople who were born in, residents of, or otherwise closely associated with Atlantic City include:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["6132689", "106211"], "permutation_1": ["106211", "6132689"], "permutation_2": ["6132689", "106211"], "permutation_3": ["6132689", "106211"]}
{"id": "2hop__181339_661969", "docs_added": {"13505160": "Bobby Hicks\nRobert Caldwell Hicks (July 21, 1933 \u2013 August 16, 2024) was a Grammy Award-winning American bluegrass fiddler and musician with more than fifty years of experience. He was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2017.\nLife and career.\nHicks was born in Newton, North Carolina, and learned to play the fiddle before he was 9 years old. He attended several fiddlers conventions and at the age of eleven, he won the \"North Carolina State Championship\" playing the tune \"Black Mountain Rag\". He joined Jim Eanes's band in the early 1950s.\nIn 1953, he was, through the bluegrass festival organizer Carlton Haney, hired as a bass player in Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys. He did not record with the Bluegrass Boys until December 31, 1954, by then he had switched to fiddle. During this period, he learned to play \"Nashville swing\" by the session fiddler Dale Potter, a style Hicks often used when playing with Bill Monroe on the road. Monroe dubbed Hicks \"the truest fiddler he had ever heard\". He recorded seven tunes with Monroe but left in 1956 to join the army. In 1958, after his discharge, he rejoined the Bluegrass Boys, recording ten more songs. He left in 1959 to join Porter Wagoner. Later in 1963, he moved to Las Vegas, Nevada and became a fixture on the Judy Lynn Show for the next seven years. In 1981, he joined Ricky Skaggs, a stint that would last for 23 years.\nIn the mid and late 1980s, he frequently performed with Bill Monroe on stage and on records. He was inducted into the \"Fiddlers Hall of Fame\" in 2002. He appeared as a member of \"Jesse McReynolds and the Virginia Boys\" in 2003. The next year, he performed with \"Hazel Creek\".\nIn 2004, he celebrated 50 years at the Grand Ole Opry. Bobby Hicks is a 10 time Grammy winner. His discography includes over 10 albums.\nHicks died from complications of heart disease on August 16, 2024, at the age of 91.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "127781": "Newton, North Carolina\nNewton is a city in Catawba County, North Carolina, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 12,968. It is the county seat of Catawba County. Newton is part of the Hickory\u2013Lenoir\u2013Morganton Metropolitan Statistical Area.\nHistory.\nNewton was established in 1845 and incorporated in 1855.\nGeography.\nNewton is located at the center of Catawba County. It is bordered to the north by Conover and to the northwest by Hickory. Claremont is to the northeast, and Maiden is to the south.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 0.37%, is water.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2020 census.\nAs of the 2020 United States census, there were 13,148 people, 5,076 households, and 3,332 families residing in the city.\n2000 census.\nAs of the census of 2000, there were 12,560 people, 5,007 households, and 3,314 families living in the city. The population density was . There were 5,368 housing units at an average density of . The racial composition of the city was: 77.58% White, 12.33% Black or African American, 9.52% Hispanic or Latino American, 3.40% Asian American, 0.43% Native American, 0.03% Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, 4.63% some other race, and 1.60% two or more races.\nThere were 5,007 households, out of which 29.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 47.2% were married couples living together, 14.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 33.8% were non-families. 28.8% of all households were made up of individuals, and 13.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.46 and the average family size was 3.00.\nIn the city, the population was spread out, with 23.8% under the age of 18, 8.8% from 18 to 24, 29.3% from 25 to 44, 21.4% from 45 to 64, and 16.8% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 37 years. For every 100 females, there were 91.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 88.6 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $36,696, and the median income for a family was $44,330. Males had a median income of $27,237 versus $22,963 for females. The per capita income for the city was $18,427. 12.1% of the population and 8.4% of families were below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 19.1% of those under the age of 18 and 13.2% of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line.\nPlaces of interest.\nListings on the National Register of Historic Places for places in Newton, North Carolina:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "5098600": "John Hicks (pianist)\nAmerican jazz pianist, composer, and arranger (1941\u20132006)\nJohn Josephus Hicks Jr. (December 21, 1941 \u2013 May 10, 2006) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. He was leader of more than 30 recordings and played as a sideman on more than 300.\nAfter early experiences backing blues musicians, Hicks moved to New York in 1963. He was part of Art Blakey's band for two years, accompanied vocalist Betty Carter from 1965 to 1967, before joining Woody Herman's big band, where he stayed until 1970. Following these associations, Hicks expanded into freer bands, including those of trumpeters Charles Tolliver and Lester Bowie. He rejoined Carter in 1975; the five-year stay brought him more attention and helped to launch his recording career as a leader. He continued to play and record extensively in the United States and internationally. Under his own leadership, his recordings were mostly bebop-influenced, while those for other leaders continued to be in a diversity of styles, including multi-year associations with saxophonists Arthur Blythe, David Murray, David \"Fathead\" Newman, and Pharoah Sanders.\nEarly life.\nHicks was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on December 21, 1941, the eldest of five children. As a child, he moved with his family around the United States, as his father, Rev. John Hicks Sr, took up jobs with the Methodist church. His family was middle-class: \"I was brought up as a decent human being, where you had aspirations and there were expectations\", he commented. His mother, Pollie, was his first piano teacher, after he began playing aged six or seven in Los Angeles. \nHe took organ lessons, sang in choirs and tried the violin and trombone. Around the age of 11, once he could read music, Hicks started playing the piano in church.\nHis development accelerated once his family moved to St. Louis, when Hicks was 14 and he settled on the piano. There, he attended Sumner High School and played in schoolmate Lester Bowie's band, the Continentals, which performed in a variety of musical styles. Hicks cited influences \"from Fats Waller to Thelonious Monk to Methodist church hymns\", as well as local pianists. He was initially interested in the blues-based compositions of Horace Silver and popular songs such as \"I Got Rhythm\" and \"There Will Never Be Another You\", for their easily recognised harmonies.\nHicks worked summer gigs in the southern United States with blues musicians Little Milton and Albert King. His stint with Little Milton provided his first professional work, in 1958; Hicks stated that his playing in a variety of keys improved because the venue's piano was so out of tune that he had to transpose each piece that they played. He studied music in 1958 at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where he shared a room with drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson. He also studied for a short time at the Berklee School of Music in Boston before moving to New York in 1963.\nLater life and career.\n1963\u201380.\nIn New York, Hicks first accompanied singer Della Reese. He then played with Joe Farrell and toured with trombonist Al Grey and tenor saxophonist Billy Mitchell. In 1963 he was also part of saxophonist Pharoah Sanders' first band, and appeared on CBC Television backing vocalist Jimmy Witherspoon. After periods with Kenny Dorham and Joe Henderson, Hicks joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in 1964. His recording debut was with Blakey in November that year on the album \"'S Make It\". Early in 1965, Hicks toured with Blakey to Japan, France, Switzerland, and England. Blakey encouraged his band members, including Hicks, to compose for the band, although they also played compositions by previous members of the band. He stayed with Blakey for two years, during which time his playing was compared with that of McCoy Tyner, for the level of energy displayed and for some of the intervals that they used.\nIn the period 1965 to 1967, Hicks worked on and off with vocalist Betty Carter; her liking for slow ballads helped him develop his sense of time. He then joined Woody Herman's big band, where he stayed until 1970, playing as well as writing arrangements for the band. Hicks also began recording as a sideman with a wide range of leaders \u2013 in the 1960s these included Booker Ervin, Hank Mobley, and Lee Morgan \u2013 a trend that continued for the remainder of his career. From 1972 to 1973, Hicks taught jazz history and improvisation at Southern Illinois University. From the 1970s, he also played in more avant garde bands, beginning with recordings led by Oliver Lake and performances and recordings in the Netherlands with Charles Tolliver. He played with Blakey again in 1973. Hicks' debut recording as leader was on May 21, 1975, in England. The session resulted in two albums \u2013 the trio \"Hells Bells\", with bassist Clint Houston and drummer Cliff Barbaro, and the solo piano \"Steadfast\" \u2013 that were released by Strata-East Records several years later.\nHicks reunited with Carter in 1975, including accompanying her in a musical play, \"Don't Call Me Man\", that year. After recording with Carter on her \"Now It's My Turn\" in 1976, Hicks returned to her band full-time; this raised his profile and led to his own recording \u2013 \"After the Morning\". His sideman recording also continued, including with Carter Jefferson (1978) and Chico Freeman (1978\u201379). Hicks was dismissed in 1980 by Carter, a forceful bandleader, for drinking.\n1981\u201389.\n\"Some Other Time\" in 1981, with bassist Walter Booker and drummer Idris Muhammad, revealed more of Hicks as a composer, and included his best-known song, \"Naima's Love Song\".\nHicks was the leader of groups from the mid-1970s onwards. His small groups included a quartet featuring Sonny Fortune, Walter Booker, and Jimmy Cobb (1975\u201382, from 1990); a group featuring the flutist Elise Wood (with or without a drummer); and other groups featuring Gary Bartz, Vincent Herring, saxophonist Craig Handy, bassists Curtis Lundy or Ray Drummond and drummers Idris Muhammad or Victor Lewis. His quintets and sextets included Robin Eubanks and Tolliver (both from 1982), Branford Marsalis (1982\u20134), Hannibal Peterson (from 1983), Wynton Marsalis (1983\u20134), Craig Harris (1985\u20136), Eddie Henderson (1985\u20136, 1988\u201390), and Freeman (1985\u20138). A big band was created in autumn 1982 and revived on occasion subsequently. He played in the UK with Freeman's band in 1989.\nFrom 1983, the flautist Elise Wood was frequently a member of his groups. As a duo, they played mostly jazz, but also some classical music. They formed a business partnership \u2013 John Hicks-Elise Wood, Inc. \u2013 and toured the US, Europe and Japan in the 1980s.\nHe also freelanced, including with players such as Arthur Blythe, David Murray, and Pharoah Sanders. During the 1980s, was a sideman for Richie Cole (1980), Arthur Blythe (In the Tradition), David Murray, Hamiet Bluiett, Art Davis, and Pharoah Sanders; recording with as Ricky Ford (1980, 1982), Alvin Queen (1981), Peter Leitch (1984), Herring (1986), and Bobby Watson (1986, 1988). In 1984, he had a big band that rehearsed; a sextet from it played concerts. From around 1989 into the 1990s, he played with the Mingus Dynasty band, including for performances of the symphony \"Epitaph\". He recorded two albums in Japan in 1988 \u2013 the trio \"East Side Blues\" and the quartet \"Naima's Love Song\", with altoist Bobby Watson added. By now making regular appearances at jazz festivals internationally, Hicks continued to perform in New York City.\n1990\u20132006.\nHicks divorced his wife, Olympia, in the early 1990s. The couple had a son and daughter (Jamil Malik and Naima).\nLike many jazz musicians in the 1990s, Hicks recorded for multiple labels proposing different recording ideas. The resultant recordings included duo sessions with Jay McShann (1992) and Leitch (1994) for the American Reservoir Records, and several trio-based sessions for Japanese labels \u2013 the New York Unit with bassist Richard Davis and drummer Tatsuya Nakamura for Paddle Wheel Records, and the New York Rhythm Machine with bassist Marcus McLaurine and drummer Victor Lewis for Venus Records. These were followed by more trio recordings for other labels \u2013 the Keystone Trio of George Mraz and Muhammad for the Milestone label from 1995, and a longer-lasting band with Dwayne Dolphin on bass and Cecil Brooks III on drums for HighNote Records from 1997. The last of these included his most commercially successful recordings, which were tributes to other pianists, including ', \"Impressions of Mary Lou\", and '. There were five such albums, all linked to Pittsburgh-associated pianist-composers; the other two were \"\", and \"Music in the Key of Clark\" for Sonny Clark. Hicks played on five of David \"Fathead\" Newman's albums for HighNote, and was described in 2000 as the \"HighNote house pianist\".\nThere were also more dates as a sideman for Murray, Leitch, Blythe, Freeman, and Roy Hargrove (1989\u201390, 1995), Bartz (1990), Lake (1991), Steve Marcus and Valery Ponomarev (both 1993), Nick Brignola, Russell Gunn, and Kevin Mahogany (all 1994), the Mingus Big Band (c1995), Fortune (1996), and Jimmy Ponder (1997). As leader, his repertoire in the 1990s was often of familiar standards. He performed in the UK with the Mingus Big Band in 1999, and played on their album \"Blues and Politics\" in the same year. The pianist recorded the seventh instalment of the \"Live at Maybeck Recital Hall\" series of solo piano concerts which were recorded for Concord Records. He was part of Joe Lovano's quartet in 1998, which led to Hicks being part of the saxophonist's nonet from its formation the following year.\nHicks and Wood married in June 2001. He made a rare recording on organ (Hammond B3) on saxophonist Arthur Blythe's \"Exhale\". Over the last decade or so of Hicks life, he recorded several collaborations with Elise Wood to mixed reviews (\"Single Petal of a Rose\", \"Trio & Strings\", \"Beautiful Friendship\").\nTowards the end of his life, Hicks taught at New York University and The New School in New York. Asked about his teaching in January 2006, Hicks replied that \"I don't care how advanced my students are, I always start them off with the blues. It all comes from there.\" Early in 2006, Hicks again played in a big band, this time led by Charles Tolliver. In January and February, he toured Israel, chiefly playing Thelonious Monk compositions. Hicks' final studio recording was \"On the Wings of an Eagle\" in March 2006. His last performance was at St Mark's United Methodist Church in New York City a few days before he died. He died on May 10, 2006, from internal bleeding. Hicks is buried at South-View Cemetery in his hometown of Atlanta.\nWood survived him, and has led a band dedicated to his music. In the view of AllMusic reviewer Michael G. Nastos, \"Hicks died before reaping the ultimate rewards and high praise he deserved\". A collection of his papers and compositions, as well as video and audio recordings, is held by Duke University.\nPlaying style.\nFellow pianist George Cables stated that Hicks \"was a very strong and energetic player, and a very warm player, very much part of the tradition\". Hicks's playing was sometimes criticized as being insubstantial; \"The Penguin Guide to Jazz\" commented that \"This [...] is missing the point. Almost always, he is more concerned to work within the dimensions of a song than to go off into the stratosphere.\"\nHicks had a style of his own, containing a \"combination of irresistible creativity and responsiveness [...] encompassing swing, hard bop and the avant garde, and made him a first-call choice for many of the most important American modern jazz groups\". A reviewer of a 1993 release, \"\", commented that Hicks \"mastered the technique of shaping a piano chord so it sounds like the rising and falling of a breath\". A few years later, another reviewer highlighted the \"subtle dynamic shadings\" of Hicks's left hand, and his \"reverence for melody and a sense of musical destination that gives form to his improvisations.\" As an accompanist, Hicks played delicately, with carefully voiced chords.\nCompositions and arrangements.\nHis compositions \"are wandering and melodic, suggestive and malleable yet memorable\". He \"enjoyed writing arrangements for a quintet or sextet, often, like the finest jazz composers, tailoring parts to specific musicians. In the past, these have included artists of the caliber of Bobby Watson and Vincent Herring; more recently he has been working with Javon Jackson and Elise [Wood]\".\nDiscography.\nAn asterisk (*) after the year indicates that it is the year of release.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "7753092": "Charles R. Hicks\nCherokee leader\nCharles Renatus Hicks (December 23, 1767 \u2013 January 20, 1827) (Cherokee) was one of the three most important leaders of his people in the early 19th century, together with James Vann and Major Ridge. The three men all had some European ancestry, as did numerous other Cherokee, but they identified as Cherokee. The people had a matrilineal kinship system, so children were considered born into their mother's family and clan. \nThese three leaders were among those who urged their people to acculturate to European-American ways, in order to succeed in a rapidly changing world. An increasing number of European Americans were entering their territory.\nHicks supported a Moravian mission school in Cherokee territory in order to formally educate the tribe's children. He served as the \"second\" chief. In 1827 when Principal Chief Pathkiller died in office; Hicks succeeded to that position. He died two weeks later.\nEarly life and education.\nCharles Renatus Hicks was born December 23, 1767, in the town of \"Tomotley\" near the Hiwassee River, at its confluence with the Tennessee River in present-day eastern Tennessee. He was the son of \"Nan-Ye-Hi,\" a half-blood Cherokee woman, and a white (probably Scots) trader named Nathan Hicks. At the time, both the Cherokee people and European traders thought that such strategic alliances benefited them. Among his younger siblings was his brother William Hicks. \nAs the Cherokee were a matrilineal culture, the children of \"Nan-Ye-Hi\" were considered to belong to her family and Paint Clan. Her brothers and other senior males were considered more important to the boys' upbringing than their biological father was. They grew up within the Cherokee Nation and gained status from her clan, but the boys also learned English. This gave them advantages for dealing with the European Americans and advancing politically.\n\"Nan-Ye-Hi\" and her brother Gunrod were the children of a Jennie (Oconostota) Taylor, a Cherokee woman, and Jacob (aka Johann) Conrad, a Swiss immigrant. Gunrod married Onai (Cherokee), and had several children: Hair Conrad, Rattlinggourd, Terrapin Head, Young Wolf, and Quatie.\nMarriage and children.\nCharles Hicks married Nancy Anna Felicitas Broom as his principal wife. She was the daughter of Chief Broom of Broomstown, located on the northeastern border of present-day Alabama. Some Cherokee had moved there under pressure from the Creek and British. The village was later abandoned. \nNancy and Charles Hicks had several children: Elsie (1760\u20131826), Nathan Wolf (b.1795), Elijah 1797, Elizabeth (Betsy) 1797, Sarah Elizabeth 1798, Jesse Hicks 1801, Edward, and Leonard Looney 1804. Their son Elijah married Margaret Ross, a half-sister of Chief John Ross. Their son, Nathan, married Elsy (Alice) Shorey. (As a successful Cherokee man, Hicks later took other wives, a traditional practice among his people.)\nCareer.\nHicks was bilingual and he served as an interpreter to the U.S. Indian Agent Return Jonathan Meigs, Sr. (1740\u20131823). Meigs served as agent for more than two decades to the Cherokee in southeastern Tennessee/Western North Carolina, from 1801 to his death. Hicks also acted as treasurer for the Cherokee Nation, which organized in a more centralized way in 1794.\nThe Creek, traditional competitors and enemies of the Cherokee, became divided over acculturation and land issues, resulting in the Creek War. It spilled over into the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain, as some of the Creek were allied with the British. Hicks fought with United States troops and southern militia under General Andrew Jackson against the Creek Red Sticks (the conservative faction) in the 1814 Battle of Horseshoe Bend in what is now central Alabama.\nAllied with other former warriors James Vann and Major Ridge, Hicks formed a triumvirate with them; they were among the most influential younger leaders in the Nation. The three men were prominent from the late eighteenth century, after the Cherokee\u2013American wars, to just past the first quarter of the 19th century. They supported acculturation and adoption of some European-American ways.\nAfter reading a book called \"Idea Fidei Fratrum\", an exposition of Moravian doctrine, Hicks embraced Christianity. He was baptized on April 20, 1813, by Moravian missionaries as Charles \"Renatus\" (\"Born Again\") Hicks. His wife was baptized the next day. As the Moravians recognized that the Cherokee had a matrilineal society, they were glad to have converted a Cherokee mother, expecting her to influence her children.\nHicks was extremely well-read and acculturated, and had collected one of the largest personal libraries in North America at the time, public or private. In an 1826 letter to John Ross, whom he was grooming as a future Principal Chief, Charles Hicks recounted the history of the Cherokee tribe. He related events from his youth, including his encounters with the chiefs \"Attacullaculla\" and \"Oconostota\", and early European trader Cornelius Dougherty, as well as stories of traditions.\nIn 1817, Hicks was elected Second Principal Chief under Pathkiller. After the \"revolt of the young chiefs\" two years later, partly over land deals, Hicks became the \"de facto\" head of government, with Pathkiller serving as a figurehead. When Pathkiller died in January 1827, Hicks succeeded him as Principal Chief, the first Cherokee of any European ancestry to serve in that position.\nOn January 20, 1827, Hicks died, two weeks after assuming office. His younger brother William Abraham Hicks served as interim Principal Chief. John Ross, as President of the National Committee, and Major Ridge, as Speaker of the National Council, had more true political power. The tribe ended its traditional government and formed a constitutional republic. \nIn 1828 it elected John Ross as the new Principal Chief. Popular with full-bloods, who outnumbered the mixed-race members by a three-to-one margin, Ross was repeatedly re-elected. He served as Principal Chief until his death in 1867, after the American Civil War.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "5381635": "Tony Hicks\nEnglish guitarist and singer (born 1945)\nAnthony Christopher Hicks (born 16 December 1945) is an English guitarist and singer who has been a member of the British rock/pop band the Hollies since 1963, and as such was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010. His main roles within the band are lead guitarist and backing singer.\nCareer.\nEarly years.\nHicks first had a taste of fame at age 12 as a member of Les Skifflettes when they were featured on the Carroll Levis talent show in 1957. By the early 1960s, he was a respected member of the Manchester music scene and had become the lead guitarist with Ricky Shaw and the Dolphins, while working as an apprentice electrician. When then local rivals the Hollies needed a replacement for their guitarist Vic Steele in February 1963, Hicks was immediately approached to join the band and although initially reluctant, he was finally persuaded to join after listening to The Hollies through the air vent of the Twisted Wheel club in Manchester. Hicks shrewdly negotiated an \u00a318 per week wage to join, despite the other members being paid just \u00a39 per week. They had by this time secured a test recording session with EMI's Parlophone label with staff producer Ron Richards, whom the band later credited with creating and choosing their greatest hits. Hicks duly attended the session as their new guitarist in April 1963 and the audition resulted in a recording contract with Parlophone.\nWith the Hollies.\nThe Hollies soon became one of the most successful bands in Britain; they had a distinctive, breezy pop style built around the three-part harmony of Hicks (lower harmony) and bandmates Allan Clarke (lead vocals) and Graham Nash (high harmony). Hicks contributed his first solo composition for the group (\"When I'm Not There\") to an EP release in 1964 and co-wrote a B-side (\"Keep Off That Friend of Mine\") with drummer Bobby Elliott that year. Hicks then joined Clarke and Nash as the group's in-house songwriting team, who from 1964 to mid-1966 wrote as \"Chester Mann\" and \"L. Ransford\" before adopting the Clarke-Hicks-Nash banner. By the mid-1960s the threesome had become responsible for writing most of their songs, including singles hits such as \"Stop! Stop! Stop!\", \"On a Carousel\", \"Carrie Anne\" and \"King Midas in Reverse\". Hicks rarely sang lead vocals on Hollies songs, but was featured on \"Look Through Any Window\" (1965), and sang verse leads on \"Too Much Monkey Business\" (1964), \"Carrie Anne\" (a song he began for the band in Stavanger, Norway in 1967) and \"Open Up Your Eyes\" (1968). Hicks took solo lead vocals on his song \"Pegasus\" (1967), the Clarke-Sylvester-penned \"Look at Life\" (1969), his \"Born A Man\" (1973), \"Hillsborough\" (1989) and Bobby Elliott's \"Then, Now, Always (Dolphin Days)\" (2009).\nIn 1966, with contributions from fellow Hollies Clarke and Nash, Hicks contributed guitar work alongside Yardbirds guitarist and session musician Jimmy Page to The Everly Brothers' album \"Two Yanks in England\" (which included cover versions of a number of Hollies songs co-written by Hicks).\nIn the 1960s, with Nash performing few guitar duties except for the occasional rhythm part and acoustic work, Hicks became an integral part of the Hollies sound. Apart from contributing distinctive lead-guitar parts, he could be relied on to add unusual instrumentation to their sessions\u2014such as the banjo which was a key component of their hit \"Stop! Stop! Stop!\", Greek-type (\"Tell Me to My Face\"), electric sitar (\"The Baby\"), and fuzz guitar (\"Have You Ever Loved Somebody\"). When no original material was available, Hicks discovered demos of Hollies hits \"Just One Look\" (UK No. 2 in 1964), \"I Can't Let Go\" (UK No. 2 in 1966) and \"He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother\" (UK No. 3 in 1969) (which became one of their biggest hits).\nHicks suggested the band do an album of Bob Dylan songs in late 1968; Nash disagreed, one of the reasons for his exit from the band (although he had already sung with David Crosby and Stephen Stills in the US). The Hollies replaced Nash with Terry Sylvester and \"Hollies Sing Dylan\" (1969) was No. 3 in the UK Albums Chart, although it failed to chart in the US. This was one of the first \"tribute albums\" devoted to a single artist by a vocal group.\nAfter Nash's December 1968 departure from the group Hicks began to write more solo songs, which were used as either B-sides or album tracks (such as \"Cos You Like To Love Me\" and \"Don't Give Up Easily\" in 1969 and \"Dandelion Wine\" in 1970). He wrote much of The Hollies' 1970 album \"Confessions of the Mind\", including \"Too Young To Be Married\" (a No. 1 single in Australia and New Zealand).\nHicks also co-wrote songs with UK singer Kenny Lynch for The Hollies, such as \"What A Life I've Led\", \"Look What We've Got\", \"Promised Land\", the US hit single \"Long Dark Road\" (all 1971) and \"Blue in the Morning\" (1972) and \"Faded Images\", recorded by Cilla Black on her 1971 album \"Images\". He co-wrote Hollies songs between 1974 and 1978 with Allan Clarke and Terry Sylvester. In 1974, Hicks produced the eponymous group album \"Taggett\" on EMI Records in the UK.\nIn 1990, Hicks co-wrote \"Naomi\" for The Hollies with his son Paul. In 1993 he added new guitar parts and harmony vocals (with Clarke and Nash) to an \"alternate\" version of \"Peggy Sue Got Married\" by Buddy Holly (credited to \"Buddy Holly and The Hollies\"), which led off the \"Not Fade Away\" tribute album to Holly by various artists.\nThe Hollies continued to have hits beyond the 1970s, including a UK chart hit with the medley \"Holliedaze\" in 1981, a US Top 30 hit cover of \"Stop! In the Name of Love\" in 1983, a UK No. 1 single in 1988 (a re-issue of \"He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother\"), and in 1993 \"The Woman I Love\". The group still performs and records today; however, with the retirement of Allan Clarke in 1999, only Hicks and drummer Bobby Elliott remain from the band's 1960s heyday.\nAwards and honours.\nIn 2010, The Hollies (who had already won an Ivor Novello Award in 1995 for outstanding contribution to British popular music and were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2006) were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Hicks and Elliott were absent from the induction ceremony because of UK touring commitments with the current Hollies band.\nPersonal life.\nHicks dated model Jane Lumb in the mid-Sixties. Hicks has been married to Jane Dalton since 1974.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "73887057": "Edward Hicks (pioneer)\n19th century American politician\nEdward Hicks (October 24, 1818\u00a0\u2013 May 15, 1873) was an American merchant, Democratic politician, and Wisconsin pioneer. He was a member of the Wisconsin Senate (1862, 1863) and State Assembly (1870), representing Brown County. He was postmaster of Green Bay for about 12 years during the 1840s and 1850s.\nBiography.\nEdward Hicks was born in Conneaut, Ohio, in October 1818. He received a common school and academic education, and moved west to the Wisconsin Territory in the early 1840s. He settled in Green Bay, where he remained for nearly three decades. Hicks was affiliated with the Democratic Party, and under President James K. Polk, he was appointed postmaster at Green Bay, serving until the end of the Polk administration. He was subsequently re-appointed postmaster in 1853, under President Franklin Pierce, and was retained as postmaster under President James Buchanan.\nIn 1861, Hicks was the Democratic Party nominee for Wisconsin Senate in the 2nd Senate district, which then comprised Brown and Kewaunee counties. Hicks faced no opponent in the general election and went on to serve in the 1862 and 1863 sessions of the legislature. He"}, "descending_order": ["13505160", "5098600", "7753092", "5381635", "73887057", "127781"], "permutation_1": ["13505160", "127781", "5098600", "5381635", "7753092", "73887057"], "permutation_2": ["7753092", "13505160", "73887057", "127781", "5381635", "5098600"], "permutation_3": ["7753092", "5381635", "13505160", "5098600", "127781", "73887057"]}
{"id": "2hop__65929_82827", "docs_added": {"1815726": "I Will Always Love You\n1974 single by Dolly Parton\n\"I Will Always Love You\" is a song written and originally recorded in 1973 by American singer-songwriter Dolly Parton. Written as a farewell to her business partner and mentor Porter Wagoner, expressing Parton's decision to pursue a solo career, the country single was released in 1974. The song was a commercial success for Parton, twice reaching the top spot of the US \"Billboard\" Hot Country Songs chart: first in June 1974, then again in October 1982, with a re-recording for \"The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas\" soundtrack.\nWhitney Houston recorded a Pop-ballad arrangement of the song for the 1992 film \"The Bodyguard\". Houston's version peaked at number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 for a then-record-breaking 14 weeks. The single was certified diamond by the RIAA, making Houston's first diamond single, the third female artist who had both a diamond single and a diamond album, and becoming the best-selling single by a woman in the U.S. The song was an enormous success worldwide, going number one in 34 official singles charts. With over 24 million copies sold worldwide, it became the best-selling single of all time by a female solo artist. It was also the world's best-selling single of 1992. Houston won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female in 1994 for \"I Will Always Love You\". Houston also won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year for \"The Bodyguard - Original Soundtrack Album\".\nThe song has been recorded by many other artists including Linda Ronstadt, John Doe, Amber Riley, Kenny Rogers, LeAnn Rimes, and Sarah Washington, whose dance version reached number 12 on the UK Singles Chart. \"I Will Always Love You\" has been recognized by BMI for over ten million broadcast performances.\nBackground and composition.\nCountry music singer-songwriter Dolly Parton wrote the song in 1973 for her one-time partner and mentor Porter Wagoner, from whom she was separating professionally after a seven-year partnership. She recorded it in RCA Studio B in Nashville on June 12, 1973.\nAuthor Curtis W. Ellison stated that the song \"speaks about the breakup of a relationship between a man and a woman that does not descend into unremitting domestic turmoil, but instead envisions parting with respect \u2013 because of the initiative of the woman\". The country love track is set in a time signature of common time with a tempo of 66 beats per minute. (Larghetto/Adagio) Although Parton found much success with the song, many people are unaware of its origin; during an interview, Parton's manager Danny Nozel said that \"one thing we found out from \"American Idol\" is that most people don't know that Dolly Parton wrote [the track]\". During an interview on \"The Bobby Bones Show\", Dolly Parton revealed that she wrote her signature song \"Jolene\" on the same day that she wrote \"I Will Always Love You.\" Parton clarified later, \"I don\u2019t really know if they were written in the same night.\"\nSeveral times (long before Whitney Houston recorded the song), Dolly Parton suggested to singer Patti LaBelle that she record \"I Will Always Love You\" because she felt LaBelle could have sung it so well. However, LaBelle admitted she kept putting off the opportunity to do so and later deeply regretted it after she heard Whitney Houston's rendition.\n1974 version.\n\"I Will Always Love You\" was issued on March 18, 1974, as the second single from Parton's thirteenth solo studio album, \"Jolene\" (1974). During its original release in 1974, \"I Will Always Love You\" reached number four in Canada on the Canadian \"RPM\" Country Tracks chart and peaked at number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot Country Songs chart, becoming one of the best selling singles of 1974.\nWhen the 1974 recording of the song reached number one on the country charts, Elvis Presley indicated that he wanted to record the song. Parton was interested until Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, told her that it was standard procedure for the songwriter to sign over half of the publishing rights to any song Elvis recorded. Parton refused. She recalls:I said, 'I'm really sorry,' and I cried all night. I mean, it was like the worst thing. You know, it's like, Oh, my God\u2026 Elvis Presley.' And other people were saying, 'You're nuts. It's Elvis Presley.' \u2026I said, 'I can't do that. Something in my heart says, 'Don't do that. And I just didn't do it\u2026 He would have killed it. But anyway, so he didn't. Then when Whitney [Houston's version] came out, I made enough money to buy Graceland.\nThe song won Parton Female Vocalist of the Year at the 1975 CMA Awards.\nCritical reception.\nIn Curtis W. Ellison's book, \"Country Music Culture: From Hard Times to Heaven\" (1995), he stated: \"In the early 1990s, when ambiguity in romantic relationships accompanies changing expectations for both men and women, this song demonstrates Dolly Parton's appeal as a songwriter in the pop music market.\" Writer Paul Simpson criticized the singer, stating that the track was only written to \"soften the blow\" of Parton and Wagoner's split.\nCredits and personnel.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCharts.\nWeekly\nYear-End\n1982 version.\nParton re-recorded the song for \"The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas\", released July 12, 1982, as the first single from the soundtrack album. The single eventually hit number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot Country Singles chart, earning Parton a rare distinction: reaching the number one position twice with the same song.\nCritical reception.\n\"Billboard\" gave a positive review which said, \"The first single from \"The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas\" isn't the sort of brassy main theme normally used to launch a major movie musical: here Parton reinterprets one of her earliest exercises in pure pop writing, and while older fans may be divided over the breathier, more stylized reading she offers here, the song itself is still a lovely ballad with a soaring chorus.\" \"Cashbox\" also reviewed the single favorably, saying that \"hoisted over a building arrangement, Parton's vocals have never been more convincing or moving. The single choice from her Hollywood flick, \"The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas\", the tune is sentiment wrapped in an appropriate package replete with strings, oboe and harp in addition to a delicate rhythm section.\"\n1995 version.\nParton recorded \"I Will Always Love You\" in 1995 as a duet with Vince Gill for her album, \"Something Special\". Following an August 26 performance of the duet at the Grand Ole Opry which aired on TNN, radio stations began giving the duet unsolicited airplay, causing it to debut on the \"Billboard\" Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart at number 53. After a performance at the 29th Annual CMA Awards, the song was officially released as a single in November 1995, peaking at number 15. This marked the third time Parton had a top 20 hit with the song. The song was nominated at the 38th Annual Grammy Awards for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals and was named Vocal Event of the Year at the 30th Annual CMA Awards.\nPersonnel.\nAdapted from the album liner notes.\nWhitney Houston version.\nIn 1992, American singer and actress Whitney Houston recorded a new arrangement of \"I Will Always Love You\" for the soundtrack to \"The Bodyguard\", her film debut. Houston's cover of \"I Will Always Love You\" received widespread acclaim from music critics, being now regarded as one of her \"signature\" songs. The single spent 14 weeks at the top of the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100, which at the time was a record. Houston's \"I Will Always Love You\" was also a massive international hit, topping the singles charts in almost every country, including the Eurochart Hot 100 Singles, where it spent 13 weeks at the top. The single ruled the summit position for ten weeks in Australia, five weeks in Austria, seven weeks for Belgium, eight weeks in France, six weeks in Germany, eight weeks in Ireland, six weeks in the Netherlands, fourteen weeks in New Zealand, nine weeks in Norway, one week in Spain and Uruguay, six weeks in Sweden, eight weeks in Switzerland, and ten weeks in the UK.\n\"I Will Always Love You\" won the 1994 Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, Houston's third win in the latter category after earlier wins in 1986 and 1988. In addition, it received Favorite Pop/Rock Single and Favorite Soul/R&B Single awards at the 21st American Music Awards, which was the first record by a solo female artist to win both categories. \"I Will Always Love You\" won two Japan Gold Disc Awards in 1993 for International Song of the Year, and a 1994 International Song of the Year Special Award for Japanese sales of over one million units. In 2020, \"I Will Always Love You\" was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being \"culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant\". In 2021, \"I Will Always Love You\" was listed at number 94 on the updated list of \"Rolling Stone\"'s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In 2023, \"I Will Always Love You\" was listed at number 60 on \"Billboard's\" list of the 500 Best Pop Songs of All Time, Houston's second highest-ranked song on the list.\nSarah Washington version.\nBritish singer Sarah Washington released a dance-cover of \"I Will Always Love You\" in August 1993. It became her highest-charting hit, reaching number three in Spain, number 12 in the UK, number 15 in Ireland, and number 32 in Sweden. On the Eurochart Hot 100, it peaked at number 44 in September 1993. It was released on Almighty Records, which described Washington as \"an eager young hopeful\" and cited her \"sensational studio performance\" as being key to the ultimate success of the track, also giving credit to London radio station 95.8 Capital FM and its heavy rotation of the song. A black-and-white music video was produced to promote the single. In 2006, Almighty Records released an 11-mixes package of \"I Will Always Love You\".\nCritical reception.\nLarry Flick from \"Billboard\" commented, \"There are no less than nine dance music covers of the Whitney Houston megahit \"I Will Always Love You\". So far, only Sarah Washington's hi-NRG rendering on Almighty Records is worth a spin.\" In his weekly UK chart commentary, James Masterton wrote, \"If anything this new version adds a little more to the song, and at least proves it had genuine soul to start with. Top 10 for sure.\" Chris Roberts from \"Melody Maker\" added, \"And now you can shake a tailfeather to it as well.\" Alan Jones from \"Music Week\" gave it four out of five, complimenting \"a sinewy garage groove with a powerful vocal from the Donna Summer school of disco divas.\" Stephen Dalton from \"NME\" felt the record \"hop, skip and pump along with a breezy, good-natured charm.\" James Hamilton from the \"Record Mirror\" Dance Update described it as a \"I Will Survive-ish\" remake.\nRik Waller version.\nIn 2002, English pop singer Rik Waller took his own version of \"I Will Always Love You\" into the top ten of the UK Singles Chart, peaking at number 6. It was his debut single and the first released from his debut studio album \"From Now...\", after his taking part in the \"Pop Idol\" series.\nKristin Chenoweth version.\n\"I Will Always Love You\" was covered by American actress and singer Kristin Chenoweth as a duet with Dolly Parton. It was released on August 9, 2019, as the first single from Chenoweth's album, \"For the Girls\".\nBackground.\nChenoweth reflected on recording \"I Will Always Love You\" with ET Online, saying \"it is a song I've loved since I was a child.\" She went on to say, \"I used to think, 'One day I'm gonna sing that song.' Little did I know that I'd get to sing it with the queen herself.\"\n\"Forever Country\".\nThe song found further chart success as part of the \"Forever Country\" medley, created in 2016 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Country Music Association Awards. The medley also features \"Take Me Home, Country Roads\" and \"On the Road Again\". Parton performs on the medley, along with 29 other country music artists. The medley debuted at number one on the \"Billboard\" US Hot Country Songs chart and number 21 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart on October 8, 2016.\nDolly Said No To Elvis.\nIn February 2018, Fairground Attraction member Mark Nevin released \"Dolly Said No To Elvis\", a single that recounts Parton's refusal to let Presley cover \"I Will Always Love You\", yet allowing Houston to sing it for \"The Bodyguard\". A few days prior, the official stop motion animated music video for \"Dolly Said No To Elvis\" was uploaded on Nevin's YouTube channel and the director Heather Colbert's Vimeo channel.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "36001084": "The Greatest Love of All\nPopular song by Michael Masser and Linda Creed\n\"The Greatest Love of All\" is a song written by Michael Masser, who composed the music, and Linda Creed, who wrote the lyrics. It was originally recorded in 1977 by George Benson, who made the song a substantial hit, peaking at number two on the US Hot Soul Singles chart that year, the first R&B chart top-ten hit for Arista Records. The song was written and recorded to be the main theme of the 1977 film \"The Greatest,\" a biopic of the boxer Muhammad Ali, and is performed during the opening credits.\nBenson's original recording was released in 1977 in the United States, Japan, France, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, Italy, Brazil, Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Thailand, on an extended play (EP). He officially recorded the song four times; in addition to the studio single, Benson also recorded three live versions, the last time in a duet with Luciano Pavarotti in 2001. Since 1977, a great number of artists have recorded this song, including Shirley Bassey, Oleta Adams, Alexandra Burke, Deborah Cox, Ferrante & Teicher and Kevin Rowland.\nEight years after Benson's original recording, the song became even more well known when Whitney Houston's 1985 cover (with the slightly amended title \"Greatest Love of All\") eventually topped the charts, peaking at number one in the United States, Australia, Canada and on the US R&B chart in early 1986.\nBackground and composition.\nThe song's music was composed by Michael Masser, and its lyrics were written by Linda Creed, in 1976 for \"The Greatest\". According to the \"Los Angeles Times\", after he had been asked to write the song for the movie, Masser felt drawn to Jerusalem, even though he was not a religious man, \"to get the feelings\u2014not just my own.\" Masser also told the \"Los Angeles Times\" his special feelings about Ali:\nHere was a man who wanted to change his name and religion. That's all. Ali hadn't believed in the war in Vietnam and had refused to fight in it. He won that battle through the legal system. Still, he lost everything\u2014including his title. But Ali retained the most important thing of all\u2014his dignity.\nIn an interview with the \"Ocala Star-Banner\" in 1988, similarly, Masser said that \"He (Ali) represented to me a tremendous athlete who suffered prejudice from the white man's world. He didn't give up what he believed even though he lost his title.\" Masser also told the \"Los Angeles Times\" that the song had another personal meaning for him to give up a legal career to pursue his interest in music, adding, \"People thought I was crazy. I had to starve. Had no money. Marriage broke up. But I had to do what I'd wanted to do since I was 6... write music.\" Upon his return from Jerusalem, he contracted with lyricist Creed to work on the song and wrote it right from the heart, with Creed drawing inspiration from her family. Then Masser had George Benson perform the song for the soundtrack. He said, \"The record came out and the song became an underground theme for black people.\"\nBenson recorded \"The Greatest Love of All\" for the soundtrack album of \"The Greatest.\" The song was released as a single in the same year and was a substantial hit, reaching number 2 on the \"Billboard\" R&B chart, the first R&B Top Ten hit for Arista Records, and ended the year at position 33. The single also reached positions number 3 on the \"Cash Box\" Top 100 R&B and number 4 on the \"Record World\" R&B Singles. In other charts, the single was between positions number 22 and number 29 in the US, number 27 in the UK, and number 25 and 42 in Canada. \"The Greatest Love of All\" is one of George Benson's most successful hits, and for this reason was included in two of his many collections, \"The Greatest Hits of All\" and \"\".\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nWhitney Houston version.\nThe song was further popularized by American singer Whitney Houston under the title \"Greatest Love of All\", without the definite article \"The\". The song was recorded in December 1984 for her 1985 self-titled debut studio album. The song became a major hit, topping the charts in Australia, Canada and the US, while reaching the top 20 in most countries, including Italy, Sweden and the UK. It remains her third biggest US hit, after \"I Will Always Love You\" and \"I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)\". All three songs, in order of their former popularity, re-entered the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart, after Houston's death in 2012, debuting the same week at numbers 7, 35 and 41, respectively, giving Houston three posthumous chart hits.\nClive Davis, founder of Houston's label Arista Records, was initially against Houston recording the song for her debut studio album, \"Whitney Houston\", but he eventually gave in after persuasion from Houston and Masser. It was released as the B-side to the single \"You Give Good Love\", a previous Top 5 hit by Houston. The song, eventually released as a single in its own right on March 18, 1986, was the seventh release from Houston's debut album, and spent three weeks at No. 1 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart in May of that year. The single cemented Houston\u2019s status as a global pop star.\nHer live performance in 1990 in \"the 15th anniversary of Arista Records\" concert in Radio City Music Hall was included in the 25th anniversary deluxe edition of \"Whitney Houston\" and the 2014 CD/DVD release, \"\". \nBackground.\nMasser said, \"When I first met Whitney in 1981\u201382, she was about 19 or 20 and unknown. I went into Sweetwater's, and I thought I must be totally out of it\u2014I said, 'I must be going crazy, I think I'm hearing one of my songs.' She was singing 'The Greatest Love of All' just as I walked in, and that meant something to me. Two and a half years later when I was doing Teddy Pendergrass there was a duet and everybody wanted me to use this or that known person. Only because I had heard Whitney singing 'The Greatest Love of All'. I chose her.\"\nMusic video.\nHouston's music video was filmed at Harlem's Apollo Theater in New York City. In the video, she is a successful singer who is about to perform in front of an audience. She reminisces about the time when she was a child performing in a talent competition and receiving encouragement from her mother. The video features Houston's mother Cissy Houston playing herself, supporting a young Houston, as well as hugging present Houston at the end of the video. It was directed by Peter Israelson, filmed with James Contner as DP and Steadicam operator Robin Buerki shooting 35mm film. In February 2020, the music video was restored in 4K.\nReception.\nCritical reception.\nMany critics called the song the centerpiece of Houston's debut album. Stephen Holden of \"The New York Times\" wrote that \"Houston sings it with a forceful directness that gives its message of self-worth an astounding resonance and conviction\" and called the song a compelling assertion of spiritual devotion, black pride, and family loyalty, all at once. Don Shewey of \"Rolling Stone\" wrote that as the song builds, Houston \"slowly pours on the soul, slips in some churchy phrasing, holds notes a little longer and shows off her glorious voice.\"\nChart performance.\nBenson's 1977 version was an R&B hit, reaching number 2 on the R&B chart. It was a moderate pop hit, making the top 40 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. Houston's version reached number one on the Hot 100 chart for three weeks in 1986. The single was the fourth hit (and third number 1) from her debut album, she became the first female artist to score three number ones from one album.\nTo date, this song was her second longest stay atop this chart, behind 1992's \"I Will Always Love You\". The song also reached number one on both component charts, the Hot 100 Singles Sales and the Hot 100 Airplay, her second consecutive release to do so, and stayed for 14 weeks inside the top 40. On other \"Billboard\" charts, Houston also performed well, reaching number three on the R&B chart. The song topped the adult contemporary chart for five weeks, Houston's longest stay at the top of that chart at the time. The song ranked No. 11 on \"Billboard's\" year end pop singles chart.\nAfter her death, the single returned to the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, debuting at number 41.\nUsage in media.\nHouston's version of the song was featured in the first season of \"RuPaul's Drag Race\", being performed by contestants Akashia and Shannel in a \"lipsync for your life\".\nAccolades.\nHouston won the American Music Award for Favorite Soul/R&B Video Single, and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Record of the Year and a Soul Train Music Award for Single of the Year.\nTrack listings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nOther versions.\nA number of other artists have covered this song, including Shirley Bassey, Oleta Adams, Alexandra Burke, Deborah Cox, Lea Salonga, Ferrante & Teicher, Kevin Rowland and Jane Olivor.\nOn May 29, 2001, the Italian operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti performed the concert \"Pavarotti & Friends\" in his hometown of Modena, Italy. Intended to raise money for refugees from Afghanistan under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, this concert was called \"Pavarotti & Friends for Afghanistan\" and featured various guest artists, one of them being his friend George Benson. The song performed in duet by the two was Benson's song \"The Greatest Love of All\", sung in parts by Benson in English and elsewhere by Pavarotti in Italian. This complete concert \"Pavarotti & Friends for Afghanistan\" raised $3.3\u00a0million for its cause, and was recorded and released in CD in 2001. The song was credited with the original title \"The Greatest Love of All\" recorded by Benson.\nCopyright infringement lawsuit and settlement.\nIn April 1987, Gordon Lightfoot filed a lawsuit against Michael Masser, alleging that Masser's song \"The Greatest Love of All\" stole twenty-four bars from Lightfoot's 1970 hit \"If You Could Read My Mind\". According to \"Maclean's\", Lightfoot commented, \"It really rubbed me the wrong way. I don't want the present-day generation to think that I stole my song from him.\" Lightfoot has stated that he dropped the suit when he felt it was having a negative effect on Houston, as the suit was about Masser and not her. Ultimately the case was settled out of court and Masser issued a public apology.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1735219": "The Bodyguard (soundtrack)\n1992 soundtrack album by Whitney Houston / various artists\nThe Bodyguard: Original Soundtrack Album is the first soundtrack album by American singer Whitney Houston. It was released on November 17, 1992, by Arista Records to promote the film of the same name. It also contains songs by her label mates Lisa Stansfield, Kenny G, The S.O.U.L. S.Y.S.T.E.M. and Curtis Stigers as well as artists such as Aaron Neville and Joe Cocker. The album is credited as a Whitney Houston album because she recorded the majority of the tracks. \"The Bodyguard\" was Houston's first box office film, after turning down offers from film producers such as Robert Townsend, Spike Lee and Robert De Niro in the past. Initially, Houston was reluctant to take on the role and was convinced by co-producer and co-star Kevin Costner to pursue it, to which she agreed. Arista Records president Clive Davis had apprehensions of Houston's role in the film without much music from the script, convincing Costner and the film's distributor Warner Bros Pictures to add songs to the film, in which Houston made a deal for back royalties for its music and attained creative control. Houston agreed to record six tracks, four of which were featured in the film.\nHouston began working on the soundtrack in November 1991, and contacted previous producers of her work, including Babyface, Antonio \"L.A.\" Reid, BeBe Winans and Narada Michael Walden, to participate in the album. It also marked the first time Houston worked with renowned producer David Foster, who would produce three of the six Houston tracks, as well as the production duo of Clivill\u00e9s and Cole, while Houston herself co-produced two songs. Both Houston and Clive Davis were listed as executive producers on the album.\nUpon its release in November 1992, \"The Bodyguard\" was praised by music critics for Houston's vocal performance and its production. The album was a global success, topping the charts in 21 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Germany, Austria, Belgium, France, Italy and Japan as well as the European album chart. In the United States, the album debuted at number two on the \"Billboard\" 200, before climbing to number one in its second week of release, remaining there for 20 non-consecutive weeks, making it the first album by a female artist to top the charts for that many weeks. In its sixth week, it sold one million copies within a single week, making Houston the first artist to accomplish this following verification by Nielsen SoundScan. It would continue to sell a million copies per week for several weeks in a row and would eventually be certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America for sales of ten million copies in November 1993, becoming the first female album to sell that many copies in the United States and would be one of three Houston albums to receive that milestone, eventually selling 18 million in the country alone. Overall, the album would sell 45 million copies worldwide, becoming the best-selling soundtrack album of all time, the best-selling album by a woman in music history, and the best-selling album of the decade.\nThe soundtrack resulted in several awards and accolades for Houston, including seven American Music Awards, a Brit Award, a Juno Award and the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, marking only the second time in Grammy history that an African American woman won the Grammy in that category. Two of the tracks on the soundtrack, \"Run to You\" and \"I Have Nothing\" were each nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song, while Houston herself won the MTV Movie Award for Best Song for the soundtrack's leading single and its biggest hit, \"I Will Always Love You\".\nFive of the Houston tracks were released as singles. \"I Will Always Love You\" became Houston's tenth number one single on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, matching the number for most number one singles by a female artist at the time and eventually topped the charts in 34 countries entirely and went on to sell more than 24 million copies worldwide, becoming the best-selling single by a female artist of all time. \"I'm Every Woman\" was released as the second single and became another international top ten hit and peaked inside the top five of the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, as did its third single, \"I Have Nothing\". In March 1993, the three aforementioned singles were placed inside the top 11 for two consecutive weeks, marking the first time in the Nielsen SoundScan era that an artist had three singles simultaneously chart at the same time. \"Run to You\" was the fourth single released from the album and became a modest hit globally, reaching the top 40 in the United States and the top 20 in the United Kingdom. \"Queen of the Night\" was a European market only release and reached the top 20 in the United Kingdom while a dance remix of the song topped the \"Billboard\" dance chart. In Europe, the only non-Houston single to be released was Lisa Stansfield's \"Someday (I'm Coming Back)\", while in the United States and Canada, the dance group, The S.O.U.L. S.Y.S.T.E.M., released the tune, \"It's Going to Be a Lovely Day\". \"The Bodyguard\" received further promotion from the successful Bodyguard World Tour. In 2017, a 25th anniversary re-release, \"\", was issued. In 2024, \"The Bodyguard\" was included in \"Rolling Stone's\" list of the 101 Greatest Soundtracks of All Time. The album and film cemented Houston\u2019s status as a pop culture icon.\nBackground.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nI got a call saying that there is a script that Kevin Costner has, called \"The Bodyguard\", that he wanted me to do. He wanted me to costar with him. I went, \u201cYeah, sure.\u201d Then I called my agent, and she said, \u201cYeah, it\u2019s true.\u201d So I read the script. I liked the story, but in the beginning Rachel was very rough, very hard \u2013 a little bitch. - Whitney Houston to \"Rolling Stone\" (1993) \nBy the late summer of 1990, Houston had become a commercially successful recording artist. Her first two albums, \"Whitney Houston\" and \"Whitney\", sold 25 and 20 million copies worldwide respectively. Houston was planning on releasing her third album, \"I'm Your Baby Tonight\", when Houston received a call from actor Kevin Costner to accept a leading role in a film titled \"The Bodyguard\". Back in December 1986, \"Billboard\" magazine mentioned that Houston would take part in the film, only with Clint Eastwood as the co-lead. Costner convinced \"Silverado\" director and friend Lawrence Kasdan to let him be a co-producer for the project. Kasdan had originally written the script for the film back in 1975 and after his script was sold off to Warner Bros. Pictures, the film had originally been pegged as a project for Diana Ross and Steve McQueen in 1977, but stalled.\nA year later, in November 1978, Ross rejoined the project after Warner brought in Ryan O'Neal, only for the film to return to development hell a year later. Following Houston's rise, she had been sought after for film roles by the likes of Robert Townsend, Spike Lee and Robert De Niro. It's claimed Costner was convinced Houston was right for the role after viewing her concert at the Assembly Hall in Champaign, Illinois in September 1987. Another claim was that after watching her music video for her 1988 hit, \"Where Do Broken Hearts Go\", was Costner convinced that Houston was the one to play the role of Rachel Marron. Still, it took three years before Houston was contacted for the film. When Costner finally reached Houston, the singer, who had only took brief acting cameos on television shows such as \"Silver Spoons\", was reluctant but agreed to read the script. A nervous Houston still held off on the film until Costner convinced the singer in another phone call that he will \"not let [her] fall\".\nThe film's director Mick Jackson initially was unsure of Houston's chances of leading a film and, according to Costner, suggested veteran actresses such as Michelle Pfeiffer or Kim Basinger for the role, to which Costner flatly turned down. Jackson then agreed to give Houston a screen test in January 1991, to which she passed. In April 1991, Houston and Costner announced that they would co-star in \"The Bodyguard\". Costner delayed production on the film until Houston finished her world tour that year to late November 1991.\nRecording.\nPrior to shooting the film, Arista Records CEO Clive Davis wasn't sure about the film that, at the time, had little music attached to it and didn't understand why Houston's character, Rachel Marron, \"needed a bodyguard\". Davis admitted later he was \"nervous\" of Houston's acting aspirations. After reading the initial script, Davis wrote a letter to Costner and the film's director Mick Jackson, arguing to them that the film \"is nowhere near fulfilling the potential of what Whitney could contribute to the role\". Costner agreed with Davis and Houston, in a deal with Warner Bros Pictures, signed a deal for rights to the soundtrack's back royalties and agreed to record at least six tracks, with four of them to be featured on the film. Maureen Crowe became the film's music supervisor and worked with Houston and Costner on finding songs for the film; once Davis learned of Houston's deal, he joined the team in assembling songs, to which he and Houston would then spend days alone at Davis' hotel suite going over the material. Though Davis and Houston went over the songs together, Houston was the one to attain full creative control over the project, continuing her career as an executive producer on the album.\nTwo weeks before filming commenced, Houston began working on the album. Unlike her previous first two albums, Houston sought after the producers herself after years of Davis picking the producers, something that had started with the production of \"I'm Your Baby Tonight\" (1990). According to collaborator BeBe Winans, Houston \"was truly in control. She grew into that confidence. She was playing catch-up for the first and second album, and then she caught up to how to become immune to what people would do or say... For the \"Bodyguard\" soundtrack, she was who she was.\" Winans added that by the time Houston began working on the soundtrack, she had become \"more understanding of a song, more so than just singing the song, and was part of those decisions of what songs she was going to sing. Now if she trusted you, as she did other musicians and songwriters, she would allow you to do what you do, and again take that song and make it her own.\" According to session dates, the first song to be recorded was the rock song \"Queen of the Night\", to which Houston played a part in composing after the song's original writers Kenneth \"Babyface\" Edmonds and Daryl Simmons struggled to compose the song themselves. Longtime collaborator Antonio \"L.A.\" Reid became"}, "descending_order": ["1735219", "1815726", "36001084"], "permutation_1": ["1735219", "36001084", "1815726"], "permutation_2": ["1735219", "1815726", "36001084"], "permutation_3": ["36001084", "1815726", "1735219"]}
{"id": "2hop__341176_711757", "docs_added": {"14926819": "Gmina Ryki\nGmina Ryki is an urban-rural gmina (administrative district) in Ryki County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. Its seat is the town of Ryki, which lies approximately north-west of the regional capital Lublin.\nThe gmina covers an area of , and as of 2006 its total population is 20,504 (out of which the population of Ryki amounts to 9,716, and the population of the rural part of the gmina is 10,788).\nVillages.\nApart from the town of Ryki, Gmina Ryki contains the villages and settlements of Bobrowniki, Brus\u00f3w, Budki-Rososz, Chrustne, Chud\u00f3w, Edward\u00f3w, Falentyn, Janisze, Karczmiska, Kazimierzyn, Kleszcz\u00f3wka, Krasnogliny, Kruk\u00f3w, Lasocin, Laso\u0144, Moszczanka, Niwa Babicka, Nowa D\u0105bia, Nowiny, Nowy Bazan\u00f3w, Nowy D\u0119blin, Ogon\u00f3w, Oszczywilk, Ownia, Podwierzbie, Potok, Rososz, S\u0119dowice, Sierskowola, Stara D\u0105bia, Stary Bazan\u00f3w, Swaty, Zalesie and Zalesie-Kolonia.\nNeighbouring gminas.\nGmina Ryki is bordered by the town of D\u0119blin and by the gminas of K\u0142oczew, Nowodw\u00f3r, Pu\u0142awy, St\u0119\u017cyca, Trojan\u00f3w, U\u0142\u0119\u017c and \u017byrzyn.\nReferences.\n<br>", "14926933": "Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca, Lublin Voivodeship\nGmina St\u0119\u017cyca is a rural gmina (administrative district) in Ryki County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. Its seat is the village of St\u0119\u017cyca, which lies approximately west of Ryki and north-west of the regional capital Lublin.\nThe gmina covers an area of , and as of 2006 its total population is 5,473.\nVillages.\nGmina St\u0119\u017cyca contains the villages of Brze\u017ace, Brzeziny, D\u0142ugowola, Drachalica, Kletnia, Kruk\u00f3wka, Nadwi\u015blanka, Nowa Rokitnia, Paprotnia, Paw\u0142owice, Piotrowice, Pra\u017cm\u00f3w, Stara Rokitnia, St\u0119\u017cyca and Zielonka.\nNeighbouring gminas.\nGmina St\u0119\u017cyca is bordered by the town of D\u0119blin and by the gminas of Kozienice, Maciejowice, Ryki, Sieciech\u00f3w and Trojan\u00f3w.\nReferences.\n<br>", "15057414": "Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca, Pomeranian Voivodeship\nGmina St\u0119\u017cyca () is a rural gmina (administrative district) in Kartuzy County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. Its seat is the village of St\u0119\u017cyca, which lies approximately south-west of Kartuzy and west of the regional capital Gda\u0144sk.\nThe gmina covers an area of , and as of 2006 its total population is 8,695.\nVillages.\nGmina St\u0119\u017cyca contains the villages and settlements of Betlejem, Bolwerk, Borucino, Chr\u00f3stowo, Czapielski M\u0142yn, Czysta Woda, D\u0105bniak, D\u0105browa, Danachowo, Delowo, Drozdowo, Dubowo, Gapowo, Go\u0142ubie, Go\u0142ubie-Wybudowanie, Kamienica Szlachecka, Kamienny D\u00f3\u0142, Klukowa Huta, Kolano, Krzeszna, Krzeszna-Stacja, Kucborowo, Kuk\u00f3wka, \u0141\u0105czyno, \u0141\u0105czy\u0144ski M\u0142yn, Ma\u0142a Krzeszna, Malbork, Mestwin, Niebo, Niesio\u0142owice, Nowa Sikorska Huta, Nowa Wie\u015b, Nowe Czaple, Nowe \u0141osienice, Nowy Ostr\u00f3w, Ostrowo, Pa\u017c\u0119ce, Piek\u0142o, Pierszczewko, Pierszczewo, Potu\u0142y, Przyrowie, Pustka, Pypkowo, Rzepiska, Sikorzyno, Smokowo, Stara Sikorska Huta, Stare Czaple, Stare \u0141osienice, St\u0119\u017cyca, St\u0119\u017cyca-Wybudowanie, St\u0119\u017cycka Huta, Szczukowo, Szymbark, Teklowo, Uniradze, Wie\u017cyca, Wygoda \u0141\u0105czy\u0144ska, Zdr\u0119bowo, Zgorza\u0142e and \u017buromino.\nNeighbouring gminas.\nGmina St\u0119\u017cyca is bordered by the gminas of Chmielno, Kartuzy, Ko\u015bcierzyna, Sierakowice, Somonino and Sul\u0119czyno.", "19017263": "St\u0119\u017cyca, Lublin Voivodeship\nSt\u0119\u017cyca is a village in Ryki County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca. It lies approximately west of Ryki and north-west of the regional capital Lublin.\nHistory.\nThe village is located in northeastern corner of the historic region of Lesser Poland. The settlement was first mentioned in the 12th century, for hundreds of centuries it was the center of the St\u0119\u017cyca Land. It was granted Magdeburg rights in 1330 from King Casimir the Great. In the early Kingdom of Poland and the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth, St\u0119\u017cyca was a major urban center and royal town in the Sandomierz Voivodeship in the Lesser Poland Province, and the seat of a \"powiat\" (county).\nFollowing the Third Partition of Poland, it was annexed by Austria. After the Polish victory in the Austro-Polish War of 1809, it was regained by Poles and included within the short-lived Duchy of Warsaw, and after its dissolution, from 1815 to 1918 it was part of Russian-controlled Congress Poland. It lost its town charter in 1875, as a punishment for the unsuccessful Polish January Uprising.\nIn the late Middle Ages, St\u0119\u017cyca was spelled as \"Stanzitia\" (1325\u20131327), \"Stazicza\" (1365), \"Stanzicza\" (1441), and \"Sthezicza\" (1569). The early settlement was founded near a fortified gord, which guarded the Vistula river crossing. Its name probably comes from ancient Polish word \"st\u0119\u017cy\u0107\", which means \"to strengthen\". In the spring of 1575, after the escape of King Henry of Poland and France, the town was the seat of the so-called \"St\u0119\u017cyca Sejm\" from 12 May to 4 June 1575. The village has a Gothic church of St. Martin (1434).\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21666659": "St\u0119\u017cyca, Pomeranian Voivodeship\nSt\u0119\u017cyca is a village in Kartuzy County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca. It lies approximately south-west of Kartuzy and west of the regional capital Gda\u0144sk. It is located between the St\u0119\u017cyckie and Radu\u0144skie G\u00f3rne lakes within the ethnocultural region of Kashubia in the historic region of Pomerania.\nHistory.\nSt\u0119\u017cyca was a royal village of the Polish Crown, administratively located in the Tczew County in the Pomeranian Voivodeship.\nDuring the Nazi occupation of Poland (World War II), several Poles from St\u0119\u017cyca, including the local Catholic priest, were murdered in 1939 by the Germans in large massacres in the Kaliska forest (see \"Intelligenzaktion\"). Several Polish families were expelled from the village in 1941, and the entire remaining Polish population was expelled in 1943, while their farms were handed over to German colonists as part of the \"Lebensraum\" policy.\nSport.\nThe village is home to the football club Radunia St\u0119\u017cyca.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "13309069": "Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca\nGmina St\u0119\u017cyca may refer to either of the following rural administrative districts in Poland:\n<templatestyles src=\"Dmbox/styles.css\" />\n Topics referred to by the same termThis page lists articles about distinct geographical locations with the same name. ", "21666660": "St\u0119\u017cyca-Wybudowanie\nSt\u0119\u017cyca-Wybudowanie is a village in the administrative district of Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca, within Kartuzy County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately north-east of St\u0119\u017cyca, south-west of Kartuzy, and west of the regional capital Gda\u0144sk.\nFor details of the history of the region, see History of Pomerania.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "20975555": "St\u0119\u017cyca, Greater Poland Voivodeship\nSt\u0119\u017cyca is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Gosty\u0144, within Gosty\u0144 County, Greater Poland Voivodeship, in west-central Poland. It lies approximately north-west of Gosty\u0144 and south of the regional capital Pozna\u0144.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18615344": "St\u0119\u017cyca-Kolonia\nSt\u0119\u017cyca-Kolonia is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Krasnystaw, within Krasnystaw County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18615339": "St\u0119\u017cyca \u0141\u0119czy\u0144ska\nSt\u0119\u017cyca \u0141\u0119czy\u0144ska is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Krasnystaw, within Krasnystaw County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21666602": "Kuk\u00f3wka, Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca\nKuk\u00f3wka is a settlement in the administrative district of Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca, within Kartuzy County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately west of St\u0119\u017cyca, south-west of Kartuzy, and west of the regional capital Gda\u0144sk.\nFor details of the history of the region, see History of Pomerania.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21666662": "St\u0119\u017cycka Huta\nSt\u0119\u017cycka Huta is a village in the administrative district of Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca, within Kartuzy County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately north-west of St\u0119\u017cyca, south-west of Kartuzy, and west of the regional capital Gda\u0144sk.\nFor details of the history of the region, see History of Pomerania.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18615341": "St\u0119\u017cyca Nadwieprza\u0144ska\nSt\u0119\u017cyca Nadwieprza\u0144ska is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Krasnystaw, within Krasnystaw County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It lies approximately north of Krasnystaw and south-east of the regional capital Lublin.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21666639": "Pustka, Kartuzy County\nPustka is a settlement in the administrative district of Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca, within Kartuzy County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately west of St\u0119\u017cyca, south-west of Kartuzy, and west of the regional capital Gda\u0144sk.\nFor details of the history of the region, see History of Pomerania.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "19017219": "Brzeziny, Ryki County\nBrzeziny is a village in the administrative district of Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca, within Ryki County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It lies approximately east of St\u0119\u017cyca, west of Ryki, and north-west of the regional capital Lublin.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21666632": "Pierszczewo\nPierszczewo is a village in the administrative district of Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca, within Kartuzy County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately east of St\u0119\u017cyca, south-west of Kartuzy, and west of the regional capital Gda\u0144sk.\nFor details of the history of the region, see History of Pomerania.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "42587550": "St\u0119\u017cyca Land\nFormer administrative area in Poland\nSt\u0119\u017cyca Land (Polish: ziemia st\u0119\u017cycka) was an administrative unit, the so called ziemia, of both the Kingdom of Poland and the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth. The land was composed of only one county, or powiat, and had its seat in the town of St\u0119\u017cyca after which it was named. Until the end of the 16th century, this area was called \"ziemia\" or \"powiat\" alternatively. From the beginning of the 17th century up to its dissolution, it was usually referred to, especially in official sources, as St\u0119\u017cyca Land. However, this did not mean that it had special political or administrative rights as could be the case with other ziemias. It was called a land because of its peripheral geographic location, being the only county in the northeastern corner of Sandomierz Voivodeship located east of the Vistula river. Today, the territory of former St\u0119\u017cyca Land covers all of Ryki County, the southern part of Garwolin County, and the southwestern corner of \u0141uk\u00f3w County. Its biggest urban center is D\u0119blin, which was granted town rights in 1954.\nHistory.\nFrom the time of the fragmentation of Poland until the Late Middle Ages, the area of the later St\u0119\u017cyca Land belonged to Sieciech\u00f3w Castellany within the Duchy of Sandomierz. Due to the decline of Sieciech\u00f3w as an urban centre caused by the changing course of the Vistula river, beginning in the 14th century its trade and administrative functions were gradually taken over by St\u0119\u017cyca. In 1397, the St\u0119\u017cyca County was created from the right-bank part of the Sieciech\u00f3w Castellany. It was an area mostly covered with primeval forest, with a small number of settlements concentrated along the valleys of Vistula, Wieprz, and Okrzejka rivers.\nDuring the reign of W\u0142adys\u0142aw Jagie\u0142\u0142o the county became a part of Radom Land. In the 15th century, the area underwent an increase in settlement, mainly from Mazovia and Radom Land. Its dense forests began to be cut down and replaced with arable land.As an administrative division of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, St\u0119\u017cyca Land was created in 1568. To the south and east, it bordered Lublin Voivodeship, in the north Mazovia\u2019s Czersk Land, and in the west its border went along the Vistula river. St\u0119\u017cyca was the seat of the starosta and of the land court.\nIn the 17th century, the area of St\u0119\u017cyca Land was 1780 sq. kilometres, with nine towns: St\u0119\u017cyca, \u017belech\u00f3w, \u0141askarzew, Bobrowniki, Okrzeja, Adam\u00f3w, \u0141ysobyki, Wojcieszk\u00f3w and Maciejowice. The land existed until 1793, when its territory was merged into Lublin Voivodeship.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21666631": "Pierszczewko\nPierszczewko is a village in the administrative district of Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca, within Kartuzy County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately north-east of St\u0119\u017cyca, south-west of Kartuzy, and west of the regional capital Gda\u0144sk.\nFor details of the history of the region, see History of Pomerania.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "19017249": "Piotrowice, Ryki County\nPiotrowice is a village in the administrative district of Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca, within Ryki County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It lies approximately east of St\u0119\u017cyca, west of Ryki, and north-west of the regional capital Lublin.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "14924471": "Gmina Krasnystaw\nGmina Krasnystaw is a rural gmina (administrative district) in Krasnystaw County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. Its seat is the town of Krasnystaw, although the town is not part of the territory of the gmina.\nThe gmina covers an area of , and as of 2006 its total population is 9,142.\nThe gmina contains part of the protected area called Skierbiesz\u00f3w Landscape Park.\nVillages.\nGmina Krasnystaw contains the villages and settlements of Bzite, Czarnoziem, Ja\u015blik\u00f3w, J\u00f3zef\u00f3w, Kasjan, Krupe, Krupiec, Krynica, Latycz\u00f3w, Ma\u0142ochwiej Du\u017cy, Ma\u0142ochwiej Ma\u0142y, Niemienice, Niemienice-Kolonia, Ostr\u00f3w Krupski, Ro\u0144sko, Siennica Nadolna; Bia\u0142ka, \u0141any, St\u0119\u017cyca \u0141\u0119czy\u0144ska, St\u0119\u017cyca Nadwieprza\u0144ska, St\u0119\u017cyca-Kolonia, Tulig\u0142owy, Widni\u00f3wka, Wincent\u00f3w, Zakr\u0119cie, Zastawie-Kolonia and Za\u017c\u00f3\u0142kiew.\nNeighbouring gminas.\nGmina Krasnystaw is bordered by the town of Krasnystaw and by the gminas of Gorzk\u00f3w, Izbica, Kra\u015bniczyn, \u0141opiennik G\u00f3rny, Rejowiec and Siennica R\u00f3\u017cana.", "21666641": "Pypkowo\nPypkowo is a village in the administrative district of Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca, within Kartuzy County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately south of St\u0119\u017cyca, south-west of Kartuzy, and south-west of the regional capital Gda\u0144sk.\nFor details of the history of the region, see History of Pomerania.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21666627": "Ostrowo, Kartuzy County\nOstrowo is a village in the administrative district of Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca, within Kartuzy County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately north of St\u0119\u017cyca, west of Kartuzy, and west of the regional capital Gda\u0144sk.\nFor details of the history of the region, see History of Pomerania.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21666629": "Pa\u017c\u0119ce\nPa\u017c\u0119ce is a settlement in the administrative district of Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca, within Kartuzy County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately south-west of St\u0119\u017cyca, south-west of Kartuzy, and west of the regional capital Gda\u0144sk.\nFor details of the history of the region, see History of Pomerania.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21666671": "Wie\u017cyca, Kartuzy County\nWie\u017cyca is a village in the administrative district of Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca, within Kartuzy County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately east of St\u0119\u017cyca, south-west of Kartuzy, and south-west of the regional capital Gda\u0144sk.\nFor details of the history of the region, see History of Pomerania.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21666573": "D\u0105browa, Kartuzy County\nD\u0105browa is a village in the administrative district of Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca, within Kartuzy County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately north of St\u0119\u017cyca, south-west of Kartuzy, and west of the regional capital Gda\u0144sk.\nFor details of the history of the region, see History of Pomerania.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "15117901": "Gmina St\u0119szew\nGmina St\u0119szew is an urban-rural gmina (administrative district) in Pozna\u0144 County, Greater Poland Voivodeship, in west-central Poland. Its seat is the town of St\u0119szew, which lies approximately south-west of the regional capital Pozna\u0144.\nThe gmina covers an area of , and as of 2006 its total population is 13,919 (out of which the population of St\u0119szew amounts to 5,339, and the population of the rural part of the gmina is 8,580).\nVillages.\nApart from the town of St\u0119szew, Gmina St\u0119szew contains the villages and settlements of B\u0119dlewo, D\u0119bienko, D\u0119bno, Drogos\u0142awiec, Dro\u017cd\u017cyce, G\u00f3rka, Jeziorki, Kr\u0105plewo, \u0141\u00f3d\u017a, Miros\u0142awki, Modrze, Piekary, Rybojedzko, Sapowice, Skrzynki, S\u0142upia, Sm\u0119t\u00f3wko, Srocko Ma\u0142e, Stryk\u00f3wko, Strykowo, Tomice, Tomiczki, Trzebaw, Twardowo, Wielka Wie\u015b, Witobel, Wronczyn, Zamys\u0142owo and Zaparcin.\nNeighbouring gminas.\nGmina St\u0119szew is bordered by the gminas of Buk, Czempi\u0144, Dopiewo, Granowo, Kamieniec, Komorniki, Ko\u015bcian and Mosina.\nReferences.\n<br>", "15058138": "Gmina Sztutowo\nGmina Sztutowo is a rural gmina (administrative district) in Nowy Dw\u00f3r Gda\u0144ski County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland.\nThe seat of gmina is Sztutowo, which lies approximately north of Nowy Dw\u00f3r Gda\u0144ski and east of the regional capital Gda\u0144sk.\nThe gmina covers an area of , and as of 2006 its total population is 3,517.\nThe gmina contains part of the protected area called Vistula Spit Landscape Park.\nVillages.\nGmina Sztutowo contains the villages and settlements of Do\u0142y, Dublewo, Graniczna, Grochowo Drugie, Grochowo Pierwsze, Grochowo Trzecie, Groszkowo, K\u0105ty Rybackie, Kobyla K\u0119pa, \u0141aszka, P\u0142onina, Przy\u0142ap, Skowronki, Sztutowo, Sztutowska K\u0119pa and Wydmina.\nNeighbouring gminas.\nGmina Sztutowo is bordered by the town of Krynica Morska and by the gminas of Nowy Dw\u00f3r Gda\u0144ski, Stegna and Tolkmicko.", "19017247": "Paw\u0142owice, Lublin Voivodeship\nPaw\u0142owice is a village in the administrative district of Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca, within Ryki County, Lublin, Poland, in eastern Poland. It lies approximately east of St\u0119\u017cyca, west of Ryki, and north-west of the regional capital Lublin.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21666587": "Gapowo, Kartuzy County\nGapowo is a village in the administrative district of Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca, within Kartuzy County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately west of St\u0119\u017cyca, south-west of Kartuzy, and west of the regional capital Gda\u0144sk.\nFor details of the history of the region, see History of Pomerania.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21666580": "Drozdowo, Kartuzy County\nDrozdowo is a settlement in the administrative district of Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca, within Kartuzy County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately east of St\u0119\u017cyca, south of Kartuzy, and south-west of the regional capital Gda\u0144sk.\nFor details of the history of the region, see History of Pomerania.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21666630": "Piek\u0142o, Kartuzy County\nPiek\u0142o is a settlement in the administrative district of Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca, within Kartuzy County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately east of St\u0119\u017cyca, south-west of Kartuzy, and south-west of the regional capital Gda\u0144sk.\nFor details of the history of the region, see History of Pomerania.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "15058851": "Gmina Sztum\nGmina Sztum is an urban-rural gmina (administrative district) in Sztum County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. Its seat is the town of Sztum, which lies approximately south-east of the regional capital Gda\u0144sk.\nThe gmina covers an area of , and as of 2006 its total population is 17,873 (out of which the population of Sztum amounts to 9,945, and the population of the rural part of the gmina is 7,928).\nVillages.\nApart from the town of Sztum, Gmina Sztum contains the villages and settlements of Barlewice, Barlewiczki, Bia\u0142a G\u00f3ra, Brzezi Ostr\u00f3w, Cygusy, Czernin, Goraj, G\u00f3rki, Go\u015bciszewo, Gronajny, Grz\u0119pa, K\u0119pina, Koniecwa\u0142d, Ko\u015blinka, Kuliki, Lipka, Michorowo, Nowa Wie\u015b, Nowiny, Parowy, Parpary, Piek\u0142o, Pietrzwa\u0142d, Polaszki, Postolin, Ramzy Ma\u0142e, Ramzy Wielkie, Szpitalna Wie\u015b, Sztumska Wie\u015b, Sztumskie Pole, U\u015bnice, W\u0119gry and Zajezierze.\nNeighbouring gminas.\nGmina Sztum is bordered by the gminas of Gniew, Malbork, Miko\u0142ajki Pomorskie, Mi\u0142oradz, Pelplin, Ryjewo and Stary Targ.\nReferences.\n<br>", "21031522": "St\u0119szewko\nSt\u0119szewko is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Pobiedziska, within Pozna\u0144 County, Greater Poland Voivodeship, in west-central Poland. It lies approximately north-west of Pobiedziska and north-east of the regional capital Pozna\u0144.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21666610": "Malbork, Kartuzy County\nMalbork is a village in the administrative district of Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca, within Kartuzy County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately west of St\u0119\u017cyca, south-west of Kartuzy, and west of the regional capital Gda\u0144sk.\nFor details of the history of the region, see History of Pomerania.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "15039585": "Gmina Strzy\u017c\u00f3w\nGmina Strzy\u017c\u00f3w is an urban-rural gmina (administrative district) in Strzy\u017c\u00f3w County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in south-eastern Poland. Its seat is the town of Strzy\u017c\u00f3w, which lies approximately south-west of the regional capital Rzesz\u00f3w.\nThe gmina covers an area of , and as of 2006 its total population is 20,645 (out of which the population of Strzy\u017c\u00f3w amounts to 8,703, and the population of the rural part of the gmina is 11,942).\nThe gmina contains part of the protected area called Czarnorzeki-Strzy\u017c\u00f3w Landscape Park.\nVillages.\nApart from the town of Strzy\u017c\u00f3w, Gmina Strzy\u017c\u00f3w contains the villages and settlements of Bonar\u00f3wka, Brze\u017canka, Dobrzech\u00f3w, Gbiska, Glinik Charzewski, Glinik Zaborowski, Godowa, Grodzisko, \u0141\u0119townia, Tropie, Wysoka Strzy\u017cowska, \u017barnowa, Zawadka and \u017byzn\u00f3w.\nNeighbouring gminas.\nGmina Strzy\u017c\u00f3w is bordered by the gminas of Czudec, Korczyna, Niebylec, Wielopole Skrzy\u0144skie, Wi\u015bniowa and Wojasz\u00f3wka.\nReferences.\n<br>", "21666624": "Nowy Ostr\u00f3w, Kartuzy County\nNowy Ostr\u00f3w is a village in the administrative district of Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca, within Kartuzy County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately north of St\u0119\u017cyca, west of Kartuzy, and west of the regional capital Gda\u0144sk.\nFor details of the history of the region, see History of Pomerania.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21732900": "Sta\u015bwiny\nSta\u015bwiny is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Mi\u0142ki, within Gi\u017cycko County, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, in northern Poland.\nIt lies approximately south-east of Gi\u017cycko and east of the regional capital Olsztyn.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21666618": "Nowa Wie\u015b, Kartuzy County\nNowa Wie\u015b is a village in the administrative district of Gmina St\u0119\u017cyca, within Kartuzy County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately north of St\u0119\u017cyca, south-west of Kartuzy, and west of the regional capital Gda\u0144sk.\nFor details of the history of the region, see History of Pomerania.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "19521685": "Stojewsko\nStojewsko is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Krasocin, within W\u0142oszczowa County, \u015awi\u0119tokrzyskie Voivodeship, in south-central Poland. It lies approximately north-east of Krasocin, north-east of W\u0142oszczowa, and west of the regional capital Kielce.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "14925384": "Gmina Strzy\u017cewice\nGmina Strzy\u017cewice is a rural gmina (administrative district) in Lublin County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. Its seat is the village of Strzy\u017cewice, which lies approximately south-west of the regional capital Lublin.\nThe gmina covers an area of , and as of 2019 its total population is 8,078 (7,936 in 2013).\nVillages.\nGmina Strzy\u017cewice contains the villages and settlements of Borkowizna, Bystrzyca Nowa, Bystrzyca Stara, D\u0119bina, D\u0119bszczyzna, Franciszk\u00f3w, I\u017cyce, Kajetan\u00f3wka, Kie\u0142czewice Dolne, Kie\u0142czewice G\u00f3rne, Kie\u0142czewice Maryjskie, Kie\u0142czewice Pierwsze, Kolonia Kie\u0142czewice Dolne, Osmolice, Paw\u0142\u00f3w, Paw\u0142\u00f3wek, Piotrowice, Polan\u00f3wka, Pszczela Wola, Strzy\u017cewice and \u017babia Wola.\nNeighbouring gminas.\nGmina Strzy\u017cewice is bordered by the gminas of Bychawa, G\u0142usk, Jab\u0142onna, Niedrzwica Du\u017ca, Wilko\u0142az and Zakrz\u00f3wek.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "19019732": "Stojowice\nStojowice is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Dobczyce, within My\u015blenice County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, in southern Poland. It lies approximately west of Dobczyce, north-east of My\u015blenice, and south-east of the regional capital Krak\u00f3w.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "15106827": "Gmina Stasz\u00f3w\nGmina Stasz\u00f3w is an urban-rural gmina (administrative district) in Stasz\u00f3w County, \u015awi\u0119tokrzyskie Voivodeship, in south-central Poland. Its seat is the town of Stasz\u00f3w, which lies approximately south-east of the regional capital Kielce.\nThe gmina covers an area of , and as of 2010 its total population is 26,077 (out of which the population of Stasz\u00f3w amounts to 15,108, and the population of the rural part of the gmina is 10,969).\nDemography.\nAccording to the 2011 Poland census, there were 26,077 people residing in Stasz\u00f3w Commune, of whom 48.8% were male and 51.2% were female (out of which the population in rural areas amounts to 10,969, of whom 49.6% were male and 50.4% were female). In the commune, the population was spread out, with 19.4% under the age of 18, 38.3% from 18 to 44, 25.1% from 45 to 64, and 17.1% who were 65 years of age or older (out of which the population in rural areas amounts to 20% under the age of 18, 38.5% from 18 to 44, 22.8% from 45 to 64, and 18.6% who were 65 years of age or older).\n Figure 1. Population pyramid of commune in 2010 \u2013 by age group and sex\n Figure 2. Population pyramid in rural areas in 2010 \u2013 by age group and sex\nVillages.\nApart from the town of Stasz\u00f3w, Gmina Stasz\u00f3w contains the villages and settlements of Czajk\u00f3w P\u00f3\u0142nocny, Czajk\u00f3w Po\u0142udniowy,"}, "descending_order": ["15057414", "14926933", "19017263", "21666659", "13309069", "21666660", "20975555", "18615344", "18615339", "21666602", "21666662", "18615341", "21666639", "19017219", "21666632", "42587550", "21666631", "19017249", "14924471", "21666641", "21666627", "21666629", "21666671", "21666573", "15117901", "15058138", "19017247", "21666587", "21666580", "21666630", "15058851", "21031522", "21666610", "15039585", "21666624", "21732900", "21666618", "19521685", "14925384", "19019732", "15106827", "14926819"], "permutation_1": ["13309069", "14926819", "18615339", "21666627", "21666659", "19019732", "19017247", "21666660", "18615341", "15057414", "21666610", "19017263", "21732900", "19017249", "21666573", "21666631", "15058138", "42587550", "21666618", "14926933", "19017219", "14925384", "21666639", "14924471", "18615344", "15039585", "20975555", "21666587", "21666662", "21666630", "21666632", "15117901", "21666629", "21666671", "15058851", "21666624", "21666580", "21666602", "21031522", "15106827", "19521685", "21666641"], "permutation_2": ["19019732", "21666659", "21732900", "19521685", "14926819", "18615339", "21666610", "14924471", "21666573", "21666632", "15039585", "19017219", "20975555", "15117901", "18615341", "21666630", "14925384", "18615344", "19017263", "21666641", "14926933", "21666580", "42587550", "21666671", "21666627", "21666662", "21666639", "19017249", "21666618", "21031522", "21666587", "21666624", "21666660", "15058138", "21666629", "21666631", "15058851", "13309069", "15106827", "19017247", "21666602", "15057414"], "permutation_3": ["19019732", "19017219", "20975555", "21666660", "21031522", "19521685", "21666659", "14926933", "15058851", "21666631", "21666610", "15058138", "21666627", "21666580", "19017249", "15057414", "15106827", "21666624", "18615339", "21666632", "15117901", "13309069", "14926819", "21666618", "18615344", "21666629", "21666630", "21666639", "14925384", "21666641", "19017263", "21732900", "21666662", "18615341", "19017247", "15039585", "42587550", "21666602", "21666587", "21666573", "21666671", "14924471"]}
{"id": "2hop__147094_11179", "docs_added": {"51585": "New Delhi\nCapital city of India\nNew Delhi (; , ) is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the Government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Sansad Bhavan, and the Supreme Court. New Delhi is a municipality within the NCT, administered by the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), which covers mostly Lutyens' Delhi and a few adjacent areas. The municipal area is part of a larger administrative district, the New Delhi district.\nAlthough colloquially \"Delhi\" and \"New Delhi\" are used interchangeably to refer to the National Capital Territory of Delhi, both are distinct entities, with the municipality and the New Delhi district forming a relatively small part within the megacity of Delhi. The National Capital Region is an even larger entity, comprising the entire NCT along with adjoining districts in the two neighbouring states forming a continuously built-up area with it, including Ghaziabad, Noida, Greater Noida, Meerut, YEIDA City, Gurgaon, and Faridabad.\nThe foundation stone of New Delhi, south of central Delhi, was laid by George V during the Delhi Durbar of 1911. It was designed by British architects Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker. The new capital was inaugurated on 13 February 1931, by Viceroy and Governor-General Irwin.\nHistory.\nEstablishment.\nUntil December 1911, Calcutta was the capital of India during the British Rule. However, it had become the centre of the nationalist movements since the late nineteenth century, which led to the Partition of Bengal by Viceroy Curzon. This created massive political and religious upsurge including political assassinations of British officials in Calcutta. The anti-colonial sentiments among the public led to a complete boycott of British goods, which forced the colonial government to reunite Bengal and immediately shift the capital to New Delhi.\nOld Delhi had served as the political and financial centre of several empires of medieval India and the Delhi Sultanate, most notably of the Mughal Empire from 1649 to 1857. During the early 1900s, a proposal was made to the British administration to shift the capital of the British Indian Empire, as India was officially named, from Calcutta on the east coast, to Delhi. The Government of British India felt that it would be logistically easier to administer India from Delhi, which is in the centre of northern India. The land for building the new city of Delhi was acquired under the Land Acquisition Act 1894.\nDuring the Delhi Durbar on 12 December 1911, George V while laying the foundation stone for the viceroy's residence in the Coronation Park, Kingsway Camp, declared that the capital of the Raj would be shifted from Calcutta to Delhi. Three days later, George V and his consort, Mary, laid the foundation stone of New Delhi at Kingsway Camp. Large parts of New Delhi were planned by Edwin Lutyens, who first visited Delhi in 1912, and Herbert Baker, both leading 20th-century British architects. The contract was given to Sobha Singh. The original plan called for its construction in Tughlaqabad, inside the Tughlaqabad Fort, but this was given up because of the Delhi-Calcutta trunk line that passed through the fort. Construction really began after World War I and was completed by 1931. The gardening and planning of plantations was led by A.E.P. Griessen, and later William Mustoe. The city that was later dubbed \"Lutyens' Delhi\" was inaugurated in ceremonies beginning on 10 February 1931 by Viceroy Irwin. Lutyens designed the central administrative area of the city as a testament to Britain's imperial aspirations.\nSoon Lutyens started considering other places. Indeed, the Delhi Town Planning Committee, set up to plan the new imperial capital, with George Swinton as chairman, and John A. Brodie and Lutyens as members, submitted reports for both north and south sites. However, it was rejected by the Viceroy when the cost of acquiring the necessary properties was found to be too high. The central axis of New Delhi, which today faces east at India Gate, was previously meant to be a north\u2013south axis linking the Viceroy's House at one end with Paharganj at the other. Eventually, owing to space constraints and the presence of a large number of heritage sites on the north side, the committee settled on the south site. A site atop the Raisina Hill, formerly Raisina Village, a Meo village, was chosen for the Rashtrapati Bhawan, then known as the Viceroy's House. The reason for this choice was that the hill lay directly opposite the Dinapanah citadel, which was also considered the site of Indraprastha, the ancient region of Delhi. Subsequently, the foundation stone was shifted from the site of Delhi Durbar of 1911\u20131912, where the Coronation Pillar stood, and embedded in the walls of the forecourt of the Secretariat. The Rajpath, also known as King's Way, stretched from the India Gate to the Rashtrapati Bhawan. The Secretariat building, the two blocks of which flank the Rashtrapati Bhawan and houses ministries of the government of India, and the Parliament House, both designed by Baker, are located at the Sansad Marg and run parallel to the Rajpath.\nIn the south, land up to Safdarjung's Tomb was acquired to create what is today known as Lutyens' Bungalow Zone. Before construction could begin on the rocky ridge of Raisina Hill, a circular railway line around the Council House (now Parliament House), called the \"Imperial Delhi Railway\", was built to transport construction material and workers for the next twenty years. The last stumbling block was the Agra-Delhi railway line that cut right through the site earmarked for the hexagonal All-India War Memorial (India Gate) and Kingsway (Rajpath), which was a problem because the Old Delhi Railway Station served the entire city at that time. The line was shifted to run along the Yamuna River, and it began operating in 1924. The New Delhi Railway Station opened in 1926, with a single platform at Ajmeri Gate near Paharganj, and was completed in time for the city's inauguration in 1931. As construction of the Viceroy's House (the present Rashtrapati Bhavan), Central Secretariat, Parliament House, and All-India War Memorial (India Gate) was winding down, the building of a shopping district and a new plaza, Connaught Place, began in 1929, and was completed by 1933. Named after Prince Arthur, 1st Duke of Connaught (1850\u20131942), it was designed by Robert Tor Russell, chief architect to the Public Works Department (PWD).\nAfter the capital of India moved to Delhi, a temporary secretariat building was constructed in a few months in 1912 in North Delhi. Most of the government offices of the new capital moved here from the 'Old secretariat' in Old Delhi (the building now houses the Delhi Legislative Assembly), a decade before the new capital was inaugurated in 1931. Many employees were brought into the new capital from distant parts of India, including the Bengal Presidency and Madras Presidency. Subsequently, housing for them has developed around Gole Market area in the 1920s. Built in the 1940s, to house government employees, with bungalows for senior officials in the nearby Lodi Estate area, Lodi Colony near historic Lodi Gardens, was the last residential areas built by the British Raj.\nPost-independence.\nAfter India gained independence in 1947, limited autonomy was conferred to New Delhi and was administered by a Chief Commissioner appointed by the Government of India. In 1966, Delhi was converted into a union territory and eventually the Chief Commissioner was replaced by a Lieutenant Governor. The Constitution (Sixty-ninth Amendment) Act, 1991 declared the Union Territory of Delhi to be formally known as the National Capital Territory of Delhi. A system was introduced under which the elected government was given wide powers, excluding law and order which remained with the Central Government. The actual enforcement of the legislation came in 1993.\nThe first major extension of New Delhi outside of Lutyens' Delhi came in the 1950s when the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) developed a large area of land southwest of Lutyens' Delhi to create the diplomatic enclave of Chanakyapuri, where land was allotted for embassies, chanceries, high commissions and residences of ambassadors, around a wide central vista, \"Shanti Path\".\nGeography.\nWith a total area of , the municipality of New Delhi forms a small part of the Delhi metropolitan area. Since the city is located on the Indo-Gangetic Plain, there is little difference in elevation across the city. New Delhi and surrounding areas were once a part of the Aravali Range; all that is left of those mountains is the Delhi Ridge, which is also called the Lungs of Delhi. While New Delhi lies on the floodplains of the Yamuna River, it is essentially a landlocked city. East of the river is the urban area of Shahdara.\nSeismology.\nNew Delhi falls under the seismic zone-IV, making it vulnerable to earthquakes. It lies on several fault lines and thus experiences frequent earthquakes, most of them of mild intensity. There was a spike in the number of earthquakes between 2011 and 2015, most notable being a 5.4 magnitude earthquake in 2015 with its epicentre in Nepal, a 4.7-magnitude earthquake on 25 November 2007, a 4.2-magnitude earthquake on 7 September 2011, a 5.2-magnitude earthquake on 5 March 2012, and a swarm of twelve earthquakes, including four of magnitudes 2.5, 2.8, 3.1, and 3.3, on 12 November 2013.\nClimate.\nThe climate of New Delhi is a dry-winter humid subtropical climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Cwa\") bordering on a hot semi-arid climate (K\u00f6ppen \"BSh\") with high variation between summer and winter in terms of both temperature and rainfall. The temperature varies from in summers to around in winters. The area's version of a humid subtropical climate is noticeably different from many other cities with this climate classification in that it features long and extremely hot summers with dust storms, relatively dry and mild winters with wildfire haze, and a monsoonal period. Summers are long, extending from early April to October, with the monsoon season occurring in the middle of the summer. Winter starts in November and peaks in January. Winters are very mild. The annual mean temperature is around ; monthly daily mean temperatures range from approximately . New Delhi's highest temperature ever recorded is on 28 May 2024 at Met Delhi Mungeshpur while the lowest temperature ever recorded is on 11 January 1967 at Indira Gandhi International Airport (formerly known as Palam Airport). The average annual rainfall is and monsoon rainfall from June to September is about , most of which is during the monsoons in July and August.\nAir quality.\nIn Mercer's 2015 annual quality-of-living survey, New Delhi ranks at number 154 out of 230 cities due to bad air quality and pollution. The World Health Organization ranked New Delhi as the world's worst polluted city in 2014 among about 1,600 cities the organisation tracked around the world. In 2016, United States Environmental Protection Agency listed New Delhi as the most polluted city on Earth and IQAir listed New Delhi as the world's most polluted capital city for the second straight year in year 2019.\nIn an attempt to lessen air pollution in New Delhi, which gets worse during the winter, a temporary alternate-day travel scheme for cars using the odd- and even-numbered licence plates system was announced by Delhi government in December 2015. In addition, trucks were to be allowed to enter India's capital only after 11\u00a0pm, two hours later than the existing restriction. The driving restriction scheme was planned to be implemented as a trial from 1 January 2016 for an initial period of 15 days. The restriction was in force between 8\u00a0am and 8\u00a0pm, and traffic was not restricted on Sundays. Public transportation service was increased during the restriction period.\nOn 16 December 2015, the Supreme Court of India mandated several restrictions on Delhi's transportation system to curb pollution. Among the measures, the court ordered to stop registrations of diesel cars and sport utility vehicles with an engine capacity of 2,000 cc and over until 31 March 2016. The court also ordered all taxis in the Delhi region to switch to compressed natural gas by 1 March 2016. Transportation vehicles that are more than 10 years old were banned from entering the capital.\nAnalysing real-time vehicle speed data from Uber Delhi revealed that during the odd-even program, average speeds went up by a statistically significant 5.4 per cent (2.8 standard deviations from normal). This means vehicles have less idling time in traffic and vehicle engines would run closer to minimum fuel consumption. In bordering areas, PM 2.5 levels were recorded more than 400 (ug/m3) while in inner areas in Delhi, they were recorded between 150 and 210 on an average. However, the sub-city of Dwarka, located in the southwest district, has a substantially low level of air pollution. At the NSIT University campus, located in sector 3 Dwarka, pollution levels were as low as 93 PPM.\nOn 7 November 2017, the Indian Medical Association declared a public health emergency due to high pollution levels. The highest being in the Punjabi Bagh district with an air quality index of 999 and in the RK Puram district with an index of 852. The lowest index recorded was in the Anand Vihar district with an index of 319. Levels of PM2.5 were recorded at 710\u00a0\u03bcg/m3, more than 11 times the World Health Organization's safe limit.\nIn a 2018 study, New Delhi was found to be the most polluted capital out of 61 capital cities around the world. In December 2019, IIT Bombay, in partnership with the McKelvey School of Engineering of Washington University in St. Louis, launched the Aerosol and Air Quality Research Facility to study air pollution in New Delhi, among other Indian cities. During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in India, the water quality of the Yamuna and Ganges river basins have improved as industries are closed due to the lockdown. The air quality has also significantly improved during the lockdown. On 5 November 2020, New Delhi recorded its most toxic day in a year, as the concentration of poisonous PM2.5 particles was recorded at 14 times the WHO's safe limit.\nDemographics.\nAs of 2011, the New Delhi Municipal Council area has a population of 249,998. Hindi is the most widely spoken language in New Delhi and the lingua franca of the city. English is primarily used as the formal language by business and government institutes. New Delhi has a literacy rate of 89.38% according to 2011 census, which is the highest in Delhi.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nReligion.\nAccording to 2011 census, Hinduism is the religion of 89.8% of New Delhi's population. There are also communities of Muslims (4.5%), Christians (2.9%), Sikhs (2.0%), Jains (0.4%). Other religious groups include Parsis, Buddhists, and Jews.\nGovernment.\nThe national capital of India, New Delhi is jointly administered by both the Central Government of India and the local Government of Delhi, it is also the capital of the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi.\nNew Delhi is administered through a municipal government, known as the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC). The other urban areas of the metropolis of Delhi are administered by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and Delhi Cantonment Board. As of 2015[ [update]], the government structure of the New Delhi Municipal Council includes a chairperson, three members of New Delhi's Legislative Assembly, two members nominated by the Chief Minister of the NCT of Delhi and five members nominated by the central government.\nThe districts of the NCT were redrawn in 2012 and include a district called New Delhi, albeit with different borders than the municipality. The New Delhi district includes not only the area of the municipality of the same name but also encompasses the Delhi Cantonment and parts of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi area.\nEconomy.\nNew Delhi is the largest commercial city in northern India. It has an estimated net State Domestic Product (FY 2010) of () in nominal terms and ~ () in PPP terms. As of 2013[ [update]], the per capita income of Delhi was Rs. 230000, second highest in India after Goa. GSDP in Delhi at the prices for 2012\u201313 is estimated at Rs 3.88\u00a0trillion (short scale) against Rs 3.11\u00a0trillion (short scale) in 2011\u201312.\nConnaught Place, one of North India's largest commercial and financial centres, is located in the northern part of New Delhi. Adjoining areas such as Barakhamba Road, ITO are also major commercial centres. The government and quasi-government sector was the primary employer in New Delhi. The city's service sector has expanded due in part to the large skilled English-speaking workforce that has attracted many multinational companies. Key service industries include information technology, telecommunications, hotels, banking, media, and tourism.\nThe 2011 World Wealth Report ranks economic activity in New Delhi at 39, but overall the capital is ranked at 37, above cities like Jakarta and Johannesburg. New Delhi, with Beijing, shares the top position as the most targeted emerging markets retail destination among Asia-Pacific markets.\nThe government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi does not release any economic figures specifically for New Delhi but publishes an official economic report on the whole of Delhi annually. According to the \"Economic Survey of Delhi\", the metropolis has a net State Domestic Product (SDP) of Rs. 830.85\u00a0billion (for the year 2004\u201305) and a per capita income of Rs. 53,976 ($1,200). In the year 2008\u201309 New Delhi had a per capita Income of Rs. ($2,595). It grew by 16.2% to reach Rs. ($3,018) in 2009\u201310 fiscal. New Delhi's per capita GDP (at PPP) was at $6,860 during 2009\u201310 fiscal, making it one of the richest cities in India. The tertiary sector contributes 78.4% of Delhi's gross SDP followed by secondary and primary sectors with 20.2% and 1.4% contribution respectively.\nThe gross state domestic product (GSDP) of Delhi at prices for the year 2011\u201312 has been estimated at Rs 3.13\u00a0trillion (short scale), which is an increase of 18.7 per cent over the previous fiscal.\nCulture.\nNew Delhi is a cosmopolitan city due to the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural presence of the vast Indian bureaucracy and political system. The city's capital status has amplified the importance of national events and holidays. National events such as Republic Day, Independence Day and \"Gandhi Jayanti\" (Gandhi's birthday) are celebrated with great enthusiasm in New Delhi and the rest of India. On India's Independence Day (15 August), the prime minister of India addresses the nation from the Red Fort. Most Delhiites celebrate the day by flying kites, which are considered a symbol of freedom. The Republic Day Parade is a large cultural and military parade showcasing India's cultural diversity and military might.\nReligious festivals include Diwali (the festival of light), Maha Shivaratri, Teej, Durga Puja, Chhath Puja, Mahavir Jayanti, Guru Nanak Jayanti, Holi, Lohri, Eid ul-Fitr, Eid ul-Adha, Easter, Raksha Bandhan, and Christmas. The Qutub Festival is a cultural event during which performances of musicians and dancers from all over India are showcased at night, with the Qutub Minar as the chosen backdrop of the event. Other events such as Kite Flying Festival, International Mango Festival and \"Vasant Panchami\" (the Spring Festival) are held every year in Delhi.\nIn 2007, the Japanese Buddhist organisation Nipponzan Myohoji decided to build a Peace Pagoda in the city containing Buddha relics. It was inaugurated by the Dalai Lama.\nHistoric sites, museums and gardens.\nNew Delhi is home to several historic sites and museums. The National Museum, which began with an exhibition of Indian art and artefacts at the Royal Academy in London in the winter of 1947\u201348, was later at the end was shown at the Rashtrapati Bhawan in 1949. Later it was to form a permanent National Museum. On 15 August 1949, the National Museum was formally inaugurated and has 200,000 works of art, both of Indian and foreign origin, covering over 5,000 years.\nThe India Gate, which was built in 1931, was inspired by the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. It is the national monument of India commemorating the 90,000 soldiers of the Indian Army who died while fighting for the British Raj in World War I and the Third Anglo-Afghan War. The monument is barricaded now with entry to the inside arch restricted.\nThe Rajpath, which was built similar to the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es in Paris, is the ceremonial boulevard for the Republic of India, located in New Delhi. The annual Republic Day parade takes place here on 26 January. The Beating retreat takes place here two days later.\nGandhi Smriti in New Delhi is the location where Mahatma Gandhi spent the last 144 days of his life and was assassinated on 30 January 1948. Rajghat is the place where Gandhi was cremated on 31 January 1948 after his assassination and his ashes were buried and make it a final resting place beside the sanctity of the Yamuna River. The Raj Ghat in the shape of the large square platform with black marble was designed by architect Vanu Bhuta.\nJantar Mantar located in Connaught Place was built by Maharaja Jai Singh II of Jaipur. It consists of 13 architectural astronomy instruments. The primary purpose of the observatory was to compile astronomical tables, and to predict the times and movements of the sun, moon and planets.\nNew Delhi is home to Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum, National Gallery of Modern Art, National Museum of Natural History, National Rail Museum, National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum, National Philatelic Museum, Nehru Planetarium, Shankar's International Dolls Museum. and Supreme Court of India Museum,\nIn the coming years, a new National War Memorial and Museum will be constructed in New Delhi for million ().\nNew Delhi is particularly renowned for its beautifully landscaped gardens that can look quite stunning in spring. The largest of these include Buddha Jayanti Park and the historic Lodi Gardens. In addition, there are the gardens in the Presidential Estate, the gardens along the Rajpath and India Gate, the gardens along Shanti Path, the Rose Garden, Nehru Park and the Railway Garden in Chanakya Puri. Also of note is the garden adjacent to the Jangpura Metro Station near the Defence Colony Flyover, as are the roundabout and neighbourhood gardens throughout the city.\nThe New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) area was declared the cleanest in North India, based on solid waste management, access to sanitation and other parameters of cleanliness, under the zone-wise Swachh Survekshan 2017.\nCityscape.\nMuch of New Delhi, planned by the leading 20th-century British architect Edwin Lutyens, was laid out to be the central administrative area of the city as a testament to Britain's imperial ambitions. New Delhi is structured around two central promenades called the Rajpath and the Janpath. The Rajpath, or King's Way, stretches from the Rashtrapati Bhavan to the India Gate. The Janpath (), formerly Queen's Way, begins at Connaught Circus and cuts the Rajpath at right angles. Nineteen foreign embassies are located on the nearby Shantipath (), making it the largest diplomatic enclave in India.\nAt the heart of the city is the magnificent Rashtrapati Bhavan (formerly known as Viceroy's House) which sits atop Raisina Hill. The Secretariat, which houses ministries of the government of India, flanks out of the Rashtrapati Bhavan. The Parliament House, designed by Herbert Baker, is located at the Sansad Marg, which runs parallel to the Rajpath. Connaught Place is a large, circular commercial area in New Delhi, modelled after the Royal Crescent in England. Twelve separate roads lead out of the outer ring of Connaught Place, one of them being the Janpath.\nArchitecture.\nThe New Delhi town plan, like its architecture, was chosen with one single chief consideration: to be a symbol of British power and supremacy. All other decisions were subordinate to this, and it was this framework that dictated the choice and application of symbology and influences from both Hindu and Islamic architecture.\nIt took about 20 years to build the city from 1911. Many elements of New Delhi architecture borrow from indigenous sources; however, they fit into a British Classical/Palladian tradition. The fact that there were any indigenous features in the design was due to the persistence and urging of both the Viceroy Hardinge and historians like E.B. Havell.\nIn the year 2019, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and Government of India introduced the Central Vista redevelopment project proposing the redevelopment of over , costing \u20b9 crore ().\nTransport.\nAir.\nIndira Gandhi International Airport, situated to the southwest of Delhi, is the main gateway for the city's domestic and international civilian air traffic. In 2012\u201313, the airport was used by more than 35\u00a0million passengers, making it one of the busiest airports in South Asia. Terminal 3, which cost () to construct between 2007 and 2010, handles an additional 37\u00a0million passengers annually.\nThe Delhi Flying Club, established in 1928 with two de Havilland Moth aircraft named \"Delhi\" and \"Roshanara\", was based at \"Safdarjung Airport\" which started operations in 1929, when it was the Delhi's only airport and the second in India. The airport functioned until 2001; however, in January 2002 the government closed the airport for flying activities because of security concerns following the New York attacks in September 2001. Since then, the club only carries out aircraft maintenance courses, and is used for helicopter rides to Indira Gandhi International Airport for VIP including the president and the prime minister.\nIn 2010, Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) was conferred the fourth best airport award in the world in the 15\u201325\u00a0million category, and \"Best Improved Airport\" in the Asia-Pacific Region by Airports Council International. The airport was rated as the \"Best airport in the world\" in the 25\u201340\u00a0million passengers category in 2015, by Airports Council International. Delhi Airport also bags two awards for \"The Best Airport in Central Asia/India\" and \"Best Airport Staff in Central Asia/India\" at the Skytrax World Airport Awards 2015.\nA second airport, Noida International Airport, is currently being built in Jewar.\nRoad.\nNew Delhi has one of India's largest bus transport systems. Buses are operated by the state-owned Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC), which owns the largest fleet of compressed natural gas (CNG)-fueled buses in the world and Delhi Transit. Personal vehicles especially cars also form a major chunk of vehicles plying on New Delhi roads. New Delhi has the highest number of registered cars compared to any other metropolitan city in India. Taxis and Auto Rickshaws also ply on New Delhi roads in large numbers. New Delhi has one of the highest road density in India and average vehicle speed is around in peak hours in the city.\nSome roads and expressways serve as important pillars of New Delhi's road infrastructure:\nNational Highways.\nNew Delhi is connected by road to the rest of India through National highways:\nRailway.\nNew Delhi is a major junction in the Indian railway network and is the headquarters of the Northern Railway. The five main railway stations are New Delhi railway station, Delhi Junction, Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station, Anand Vihar Terminal and Sarai Rohilla. The Delhi Ring Railway, a circular railway network in Delhi that runs parallel to the Ring Road, is a part of Delhi's suburban railway services.\nMetro.\nThe Delhi Metro is a rapid transit system serving Delhi, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon and Noida in the National Capital Region of India. Delhi Metro is the world's 12th largest metro system in terms of length. Delhi Metro was India's first modern public transportation system, which had revolutionised travel by providing a fast, reliable, safe, and comfortable means of transport. Presently, the network consists of 10 colour-coded lines serving 255 stations with a total length of . The network has now crossed the boundaries of Delhi to reach Ghaziabad and Noida in Uttar Pradesh, and Faridabad and Gurgaon in Haryana. All stations have escalators, elevators, and tactile tiles to guide the visually impaired from station entrances to trains. It has a combination of elevated, at-grade, and underground lines, and uses both broad gauge and standard gauge rolling stock. Four types of rolling stock are used: Mitsubishi-ROTEM Broad gauge, Bombardier MOVIA, Mitsubishi-ROTEM Standard gauge, and CAF Beasain Standard gauge. According to a study, Delhi Metro has helped in removing about 390,000 vehicles from the streets of Delhi.\nDelhi Metro is being built and operated by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Limited (DMRC), a state-owned company with equal equity participation from the Government of India and the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi. However, the organisation is under administrative control of the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India. Besides the construction and operation of the Delhi metro, DMRC is also involved in the planning and implementation of metro rail, monorail and high-speed rail projects in India and providing consultancy services to other metro projects in the country as well as abroad. The Delhi Metro project was spearheaded by E. Sreedharan, the managing director of DMRC and popularly known as the \"Metro Man\" of India. He famously resigned from DMRC, taking moral responsibility for a metro bridge collapse which took five lives. Sreedharan was awarded with the Legion of Honour by the French government for his contribution to Delhi Metro.\nSports.\nThe city hosted the 2010 Commonwealth Games and annually hosts Delhi Half Marathon foot-race. The city has previously hosted the 1951 Asian Games and the 1982 Asian Games. New Delhi was interested in bidding for the 2019 Asian Games but was turned down by the government on 2 August 2010 amid allegations of corruption in 2010 Commonwealth Games. The city also had a bid to host the 1992 Summer Olympics, but withdrew in March 1986, seven months before the host selection.\nMajor sporting venues in New Delhi include the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Ambedkar Stadium, Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium, Arun Jaitley Stadium, R.K. Khanna Tennis Complex, Dhyan Chand National Stadium and Siri Fort Sports Complex. \nInternational relations and organisations.\nThe city is home to numerous international organisations. The Asian and Pacific Centre for Transfer of Technology of the UNESCAP servicing the Asia-Pacific region is headquartered in New Delhi. New Delhi is home to most UN regional offices in India namely the UNDP, UNODC, UNESCO, UNICEF, WFP, UNV, UNCTAD, FAO, UNFPA, WHO, World Bank, ILO, IMF, UNIFEM, IFC and UNAIDS. UNHCR Representation in India is also located in the city.\nNew Delhi hosts 145 foreign embassies and high commissions.\nSummits, conferences and conventions.\nUnited Nations Conference on Trade and Development hosted its second meeting conference in the year 1968 at New Delhi.\nNew Delhi hosted the 7th NAM Summit in 1983, 4th BRICS Summit in 2012, IBSA Summit in 2015, and 5th Global Conference on CyberSpace in 2017. India has also host the G20 summit in 2023 in New Delhi.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "6080707": "Andr\u00e9 Bloc\nFrench sculptor\nAndr\u00e9 Bloc (Algiers, May 23, 1896 \u2013 New Delhi, November 8, 1966) was a French sculptor, magazine editor, and founder of several specialist journals. He founded the \"Groupe Espace\" in 1949.\nHis work is related to that of architects Auguste Perret, Henri Sauvage, and Jourdain.\nBiography.\nBorn in Algeria, he moved to France in 1898. He studied engineering until 1920, then worked in motor and turbine factories.\nIn 1921 he met Le Corbusier who became influential in his career. After this meeting, Bloc moved towards architecture.\nIn 1922 he became the general secretary of the journal \"Science et Industrie\". One year later, in 1923, he became the general secretary of the journal \"Revue de l'ing\u00e9nieur\".\nIn 1924 he founded the journal \"Revue g\u00e9n\u00e9ral du Caoutchouc\". In 1930 he founded the renowned journal L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui. Bloc ran the publication until 1966. He appointed Pierre Vago as editor-in-chief in 1932.\nStarting in 1940, Bloc turned towards sculpture. He created his first large sculptures in Paris between 1949 and 1956. From 1949 on, he founded several journals, such as \"Art d'Aujourd'hui.\" These projects were part of his perennial interest in the \"synth\u00e8se des arts\", or synthesis of the arts\".\"\nIn 1951, in company with several artists, Bloc formed the group Espace. Its goal was to bring the ideals of constructivism and neo-plasticism to urbanism and the social arena. Artists and urbanists such as Jean Dewasne, Etienne B\u00f3thy, Jean Gorin, F\u00e9lix Del Marle, Edgard Pillet, Victor Vasarely, Sonia Delaunay, Nicolaas Warb (n\u00e9e Sophie Warburg), Simone Servanes and Nicolas Sch\u00f6ffer were members of the group, which considered architecture, painting, sculpture and art in general as a social phenomenon.\nIn 1952 the project and construction of the Bellevue house at Meudon was finished. From then until his death in 1966, Bloc worked primarily as a sculptor and decorator. In 1959 he participated at II. documenta in Kassel. Bloc completed several sculptures, including pieces in Tehran, Nice, Jacksonville, and Dakar. His sculptures demonstrate an organic sculptural form somewhere between architecture and sculpture.\nSculptures.\nCarlson/Bloc Tower.\nAndr\u00e9 Bloc sought to combine the disciplines of sculpture and architecture. The 1965 California International Sculpture Symposium's collaborative merging of art and industry echoed his notions. Bloc's dynamic career pushed the theoretical, social, and technological boundaries of design and function, exemplifying the symposium's organizer Kenn Glenn's desire to \"challenge the sculptors to expand their creative limits.\" Bloc, a renowned engineer, artist, and architect, took on the project and spent eight weeks in the summer of 1965 working with structural engineers, architects, and builders to prepare drawings, blueprints, and a miniature maquette of this massive tower. While financial issues delayed the building of Bloc's design for seven years, the Carlson/Bloc Tower finally soared 65 feet above the CSULB campus, establishing a visible emblem of the institution\u2019s student population of 30,000 students while also showcasing Bloc's innovative oeuvre. Bloc once stated that his idea for the tower design came from his studies since towns used to be distinguished by aesthetically beautiful and functional monuments like this. He connected his project to a lengthy historic past of structures, such as the Islamic minaret, whose winding interiors might evoke in man a spiritual journey to enlightenment, by deploying a coiled framework.\nCalifornia State College at Long Beach released a press announcement on December 2, 1971, six years after the symposium, announcing the long-awaited building of the Carlson/Bloc Tower. The tower's construction had been postponed since the 1965 symposia, with an estimated cost of $44,900. Finally, work on the tower could begin courtesy of Louise Carlson's generous donation and extra funding from the LBCSC Foundation.\nBloc\u2019s effort for carving out relationships between both people and the organic form continues to shine brightly on the CSULB campus thanks to the magnificent grandeur of the Carlson/Bloc Tower.\u00a0 \"With my work, I seek to unite man with his environment in a warmer, more personal relationship,\" he once stated. Bloc's tower will continue to unify the CSULB campus for many years to come.\nThe \"Carlson/ Bloc Tower\" (1965-1972) is a public artwork located in the CSULB campus and created by French artist Andr\u00e9 Bloc. Constructed between the Molecular Science building and the University Student Union, the \"Carlson/ Bloc Tower\" stands as both an historical landmark and an artwork that was included in the 1965 California International Sculpture Symposium (CISS). Designed by Andr\u00e9 Bloc, the 157-ton, white concrete tower came to fruition in 1965, after a seven-year delay related to the funding for the sculpture. During this period, Bloc collaborated with several professionals, including structural engineers, architects, and contractors to develop plans and a maquette for the sculpture. Due to the immense quantity of concrete needed to execute the sculpture, and with the uncertainty of funding, construction of Bloc\u2019s tower came to a halt, and was the only sculpture, out of the nine created for 1965 sculpture symposium, that was incomplete. Six years later in December 1971, and after generous donations from the Louise Carlson fund and the LBCSC foundation, the California State College at Long Beach (name of CSULB at the time) announced that the \"Carlson/ Bloc Tower\" was to be constructed. In the Spring of 1972, the completion of the \"Carlson/ Bloc Tower\" finally came to realization with a total cost of $44,900. Standing at 65 feet, the architectural sculpture tapers lightly toward the sky, and, at the time in 1972, was capable of being seen from a distance of over fifteen miles.\nBefore creating the \"Carlson/ Bloc Tower\", Andr\u00e9 Bloc was completing a series of experimental structures known as \u201csculptures habitacles,\u201d which translates to \u201chabitable\u201d in English. As an artist that merged both sculpture and architecture, Bloc first started experimenting with his habitacles at his home in Meudon, France. After completing \"Habitacle 1\" in 1962, he completed two more on his home grounds. His final habitacle to be realized was his \"Carlson/ Bloc Tower\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["6080707", "51585"], "permutation_1": ["6080707", "51585"], "permutation_2": ["6080707", "51585"], "permutation_3": ["6080707", "51585"]}
{"id": "2hop__219029_77478", "docs_added": {"21757": "New York Giants\nNational Football League franchise in East Rutherford, New Jersey\nThe New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) East division. The team plays its home games at MetLife Stadium (which it shares with the New York Jets) at the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey, west of New York City. The Giants are headquartered and practice at the Quest Diagnostics Training Center, also in the Meadowlands.\nThe Giants were one of five teams that joined the NFL in 1925, and they are the only one of that group still existing, as well as the league's longest-established team in the Northeastern United States. The team ranks third among all NFL franchises with eight NFL championship titles: four in the pre\u2013Super Bowl era (1927, 1934, 1938, 1956) and four since the advent of the Super Bowl (XXI (1986), XXV (1990), XLII (2007), and XLVI (2011)), along with more championship appearances than any other team, with 19 overall appearances. Their championship tally is surpassed only by the Green Bay Packers (13) and the Chicago Bears (9). Throughout their history, the Giants have featured 29 Hall of Fame players, including NFL Most Valuable Player (MVP) award winners Mel Hein, Frank Gifford, Y. A. Tittle, and Lawrence Taylor.\nTo distinguish themselves from the professional baseball team of the same name, the football team was incorporated as the \"New York National League Football Company, Inc.\" in 1929 and then changed to \"New York Football Giants, Inc.\" in 1937. While the baseball team moved to San Francisco after the 1957 season, the football team continues to legally use it as its corporate name, which the team is often referred to by fans and sportscasters alike. The team has also acquired several nicknames, including \"Big Blue\", the \"G-Men\", and the \"Jints\", an intentionally mangled contraction seen frequently in the \"New York Post\" and \"New York Daily News\", originating from the baseball team when they were based in New York. In addition, the team as a whole is occasionally referred to as the \"Big Blue Wrecking Crew\", even though this moniker primarily and originally refers to the Giants defensive unit during the 1980s and early-1990s.\nThe team's heated rivalry with the Philadelphia Eagles is the oldest of the NFC East rivalries, dating back to 1933, and has been called the best rivalry in the NFL in the 21st century.\nHistory.\nMara family era (1925\u20131990).\nOn August 1, 1925, Timothy Mara and Will Gibson were granted a franchise by the NFL for their newly organized team in New York City \u2014 the New York Football Giants. Cost of the franchise was $2,500.\nThe Giants played their first game as an exhibition against All New Britain (which was not an NFL team) in New Britain, Connecticut, on October 4. They defeated New Britain 26\u20130 in front of a crowd of 10,000. \nThe New York Giants' first NFL game was a week later, on October 11, 1925, at the Cycledrome in Providence, Rhode Island, in a 0 to 14 loss to the Providence Steam Roller. The Giants were successful in their first season, finishing in fourth place in a 20-team league with an 8\u20134-0 record. \nEarl Potteiger years (1927\u20131928).\nNFL champions (1927).\nIn its third season, the team finished with the best record in the league at 11\u20131\u20131 and was awarded the NFL title. After a disappointing fourth season (1928) owner Tim Mara bought the entire squad of the Detroit Wolverines, principally to acquire star quarterback Benny Friedman, and merged the two teams under the Giants name.\nIn 1930, there were still many who questioned the quality of the professional game, claiming the college \"amateurs\" played with more intensity than professionals. In December 1930, the Giants played a team of Notre Dame All Stars at the Polo Grounds to raise money for the unemployed of New York City. It was also an opportunity to establish the skill and prestige of the pro game. Knute Rockne reassembled his Four Horsemen along with the stars of his 1924 Championship squad and told them to score early, then defend. Rockne, like much of the public, thought little of pro football and expected an easy win. But from the beginning it was a one-way contest, with Friedman running for two Giant touchdowns and Hap Moran passing for another. Notre Dame failed to score. When it was all over, Coach Rockne told his team, \"That was the greatest football machine I ever saw. I am glad none of you got hurt.\" The game raised $100,000 for the homeless, and is often credited with establishing the legitimacy of the professional game for those who were critical. It also was the last game the legendary Rockne ever coached; he was killed in an airplane crash on March 31, 1931.\nSteve Owen years (1931\u20131953).\nIn a 16-year span from 1931 to 1947, the Giants qualified to play in the NFL championship game 8 times, winning twice. During this period the Giants were led by Hall of Fame coach Steve Owen, and Hall of Fame players Mel Hein, Red Badgro, and Tuffy Leemans. In 1933 the Giants faced the Chicago Bears in the championship game and were defeated 23\u201321.\nNFL champions (1934).\nThe famous \"Sneakers Game\" was played in this era where the Giants defeated the Chicago Bears on an icy field in the 1934 NFL Championship Game, while wearing sneakers for better traction. The team would return to the championship game the following year but would fall to the Detroit Lions 26\u20137.\nNFL champions (1938).\nThe Giants captured their third NFL championship in 1938 with a 23\u201317 win over the Green Bay Packers. Both teams returned to the championship game the following year in 1939, with the Packers shutting out the Giants 27\u20130.\nThe period also featured the 1944 Giants, which are ranked as the #1 defensive team in NFL history, \"...a truly awesome unit\". They gave up only 7.5 points per game (a record that still stands) and shut out five of their 10 opponents, though they lost 14\u20137 to the Green Bay Packers in the 1944 NFL Championship Game. The Giants played the Detroit Lions to a scoreless tie on November 7, 1943. To this day, no NFL game played since then has ended in a scoreless tie. The Giants were particularly successful from the latter half of the 1930s until the United States entry into World War II.\nJim Lee Howell years (1954\u20131960).\nNFL champions (1956).\nThe Giants won their next championship in 1956, the first year the team began playing at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx borough of New York City. Aided by a number of future Pro Football Hall of Fame players such as running back Frank Gifford, linebacker Sam Huff, and offensive tackle Roosevelt Brown, as well as all-pro running back Alex Webster. The Giants' 1956 championship team not only included players who would eventually find their way to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but a Hall of Fame coaching staff, as well. Head coach Jim Lee Howell's staff had Vince Lombardi coaching the offense and Tom Landry coaching the defense. From 1958 to 1963, the Giants played in the NFL Championship Game five times, but failed to win. Most significantly, the Giants played the Colts in the 1958 NFL Championship Game, which is considered a event in the history of the NFL. The game, which the Giants lost in overtime 23\u201317, is often called \"The Greatest Game Ever Played\" and is considered one of the most important events in furthering the NFL's popularity. The following year, they lost the championship to the Colts again, giving up a 9\u20137 fourth-quarter lead en route to a 31\u201316 loss.\nAllie Sherman years (1961\u20131968).\nBoth the 1961 and 1962 championship game matched the Giants up against the Green Bay Packers, with the Giants losing both 37\u20130 and 16\u20137 respectively. In 1963, led by league MVP quarterback Y. A. Tittle, who threw a then-NFL record 36 touchdown passes, the Giants advanced to the NFL Championship Game, where they lost to the Bears 14\u201310 for their third consecutive championship loss, as well as their fifth loss in the title game in 6 years.\nFrom 1964 to 1978, the Giants registered only two winning seasons and no playoff appearances. With players, such as Tittle and Gifford approaching their mid 30s, the team declined rapidly, finishing 2\u201310\u20132 in 1964. They rebounded with a 7\u20137 record in 1965, before compiling a league-worst 1\u201312\u20131 record, and allowing more than 500 points on defense in 1966. During the 1969 preseason, the Giants lost their first meeting with the New York Jets, 37\u201314, in front of 70,874 fans at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut. Following the game, Wellington Mara fired coach Allie Sherman, and replaced him with former Giants fullback Alex Webster.\nIn 1967, the team acquired quarterback Fran Tarkenton from the Minnesota Vikings. Despite having several respectable seasons with Tarkenton at quarterback, including a 7\u20137 finish in 1967 and 9\u20135 in 1970, the Giants traded him back to the Vikings after a 4\u201310 finish in 1971. Tarkenton would go on to lead the Vikings to three Super Bowls and earn a place in the Hall of Fame, while the Giants suffered through one of the worst stretches in their history, winning only 23 games from 1973 to 1979. Before the 1976 season, the Giants tried to revive a weak offense by replacing retired RB Ron Johnson with future Hall of Fame fullback Larry Csonka, but Csonka was often injured and ineffective during his 3 years in New York. The 1977 season featured a roster which included three rookie quarterbacks.\nThe Giants were allowed to play their home games at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut in 1973 and 1974, and at Shea Stadium (home of the Mets and Jets) in Queens, New York in 1975, due to the renovation of Yankee Stadium. They finally moved into their own dedicated state-of-the-art stadium in 1976, when they moved into Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, New Jersey, located 5 miles west of New York City. One of the low points during this period was the play known as the \"Miracle at the Meadowlands\", which occurred in 1978. With the Giants trying to kill the clock and secure a win against the Philadelphia Eagles, offensive coordinator, Bob Gibson, chose to call a running play. This resulted in \"The Fumble\" by QB Joe Pisarcik that was returned for a game-winning touchdown by the Eagles' Herman Edwards.\nThe Giants' front office operations were complicated by a long-standing feud between Wellington Mara and his nephew, Tim Mara. Jack Mara had died in 1965, leaving his share of the club to his son Tim. Wellington and Tim's personal styles and their visions for the club clashed, and eventually they stopped talking to each other. NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle intervened and appointed a neutral general manager, George Young, allowing the club to operate more smoothly. The feud became moot on February 20, 1991, when Tim Mara sold his shares in the club to Preston Robert Tisch.\nIn 1979, the Giants began the steps that would, in time, return them to the pinnacle of the NFL. These included the drafting of quarterback Phil Simms in 1979, and linebacker Lawrence Taylor in 1981. In 1981, Taylor won the NFL's Defensive Rookie of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year awards and the Giants made the playoffs for the first time since 1963. One of the few bright spots during this time was the team's excellent linebackers, who were known as the Crunch Bunch. After the strike-shortened 1982 season, in which they finished 4\u20135, head coach Ray Perkins resigned to succeed the legendary Bear Bryant as head coach at the University of Alabama. In a change that would prove crucial in the coming years, he was replaced by the team's defensive coordinator, Bill Parcells.\nBill Parcells years (1983\u20131990).\nIn 1983, Bill Parcells was promoted to head coach from defensive coordinator. One of his first moves was to change his starting quarterback, sitting the injury-prone and struggling Phil Simms (who had missed the entire 1982 season with an injury) and electing instead to go with Scott Brunner, who had gone 4\u20135 as the starter in place of Simms in the strike-shortened previous season. Parcells went as far as to demote Simms to the third-string position, promoting Jeff Rutledge over Simms to be Brunner's backup. Parcells later said the move was a mistake and one he \"nearly paid for dearly\" as the team finished with a 3\u201312\u20131 record and his job security was called into question.\nIn the off-season the Giants released Brunner and named Simms the starter. The move paid off as the team won nine games and returned to the playoffs. After beating the Los Angeles Rams in the wild-card round, the Giants prepared for a showdown against the top-seeded San Francisco 49ers. The 49ers defeated the Giants 21\u201310 in the divisional round.\nSuper Bowl XXI champions (1986).\nAfter 9\u20137 and 10\u20136 finishes in 1984 and 1985 respectively, the Giants compiled a 14\u20132 record in 1986 led by league MVP and Defensive Player of the Year Lawrence Taylor and the Big Blue Wrecking Crew defense. As of 2023, this is the Giants' best regular season record since the NFL began playing 16-game seasons in 1978. After clinching the top seed in the NFC, the Giants defeated the 49ers 49\u20133 in the divisional round of the NFC playoffs and the Redskins 17\u20130 in the NFC championship game, advancing to their first Super Bowl, Super Bowl XXI, against the Denver Broncos at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Led by MVP Simms who completed 22 of 25 passes for a Super Bowl record 88% completion percentage, they defeated the Broncos 39\u201320, to win their first championship since 1956. In addition to Phil Simms and Lawrence Taylor, the team was led during this period by head coach Bill Parcells, tight end Mark Bavaro, running back Joe Morris, and Hall of Fame linebacker Harry Carson.\nThe Giants struggled to a 6\u20139 record in the strike-marred 1987 season, due largely to a decline in the running game, as Morris managed only 658 yards behind an injury-riddled offensive line. The early portion of the 1988 season was marred by a scandal involving Lawrence Taylor. Taylor had abused cocaine and was suspended for the first four games of the season for his second violation of the league's substance-abuse policy. Despite the controversy, the Giants finished 10\u20136, and Taylor recorded 15.5 sacks after his return from the suspension; however, the team missed the playoffs in their last game of the season. They surged to a 12\u20134 record in 1989, but lost to the Los Angeles Rams in their opening playoff game when Flipper Anderson caught a 47-yard touchdown pass to give the Rams a 19\u201313 overtime win.\nSuper Bowl XXV champions (1990).\nIn 1990, the Giants went 13\u20133 and, at the time, set an NFL record for fewest turnovers in a season (14). They defeated the San Francisco 49ers, who were attempting to win the Super Bowl for an unprecedented third straight year, 15\u201313 at San Francisco and then defeated the Buffalo Bills 20\u201319 in Super Bowl XXV.\nMara and Tisch era (1991\u2013present).\nFollowing the 1990 season, Parcells resigned as head coach and was replaced by the team's offensive-line coach Ray Handley. Handley served as coach for two disappointing seasons (1991 and 1992), which saw the Giants fall from Super Bowl champions to an 8\u20138 record in 1991 and a 6\u201310 record in 1992. He was fired following the 1992 season, and replaced by former Denver Broncos' coach Dan Reeves. In the early 1990s, Simms and Taylor, two of the stars of the 1980s, played out the last seasons of their careers with steadily declining production. The Giants experienced a resurgent season with Reeves at the helm in 1993 however, and Simms and Taylor ended their careers as members of a playoff team.\nThe Giants initially struggled in the post Simms/Taylor era. After starting 3\u20137 in 1994, the Giants won their final six games to finish 9\u20137 but missed the playoffs. Quarterback Dave Brown received heavy criticism throughout the season. Brown performed poorly the following two seasons, and the Giants struggled to 5\u201311 and 6\u201310 records. Reeves was fired following the 1996 season.\nJim Fassel years (1997\u20132003).\nIn 1997, the Giants named Jim Fassel, who had spent the previous season as offensive coordinator of the Arizona Cardinals, as their 16th head coach. Fassel named Danny Kanell the team's starting quarterback. The Giants finished the 1997 season with a record of 10\u20135\u20131 and qualified for the playoffs for the first time in four years. However, they lost in the wild-card round to the Vikings at home. The following year, the Giants began the season 4\u20138 before rallying to finish the season 8\u20138. One of the notable games of that season was a win over the eventual Super Bowl champion Denver Broncos in week 15, giving the Broncos their first loss of the season after starting 13\u20130.\nBefore the 1999 season, the Giants signed ex-Carolina Panthers quarterback Kerry Collins. Collins was the first-ever draft choice of the expansion Carolina Panthers in 1995 and led the Panthers to the NFC Championship game in his second season. However, problems with alcohol, conflicts with his teammates, and questions about his character led to his release from the Panthers. The Giants finished the season with a 7\u20139 record, Fassel's first losing season as head coach.\nIn 2000, the Giants were looking to make the playoffs for the first time in three seasons. The Giants started the season 7\u20132, but suffered back-to-back home losses to St. Louis and Detroit to make their record 7\u20134 and call their playoff prospects into question. At a press conference following the Giants' loss to Detroit, Fassel guaranteed that \"this team is going to the playoffs\". The Giants responded, winning the rest of their regular season games to finish the season 12\u20134 and clinch the top seed in the NFC. In the divisional round, the Giants beat the Philadelphia Eagles 20\u201310 at home to qualify for the NFC Championship Game, in which they defeated the Minnesota Vikings 41\u20130. They advanced to play the Baltimore Ravens in Super Bowl XXXV. Though the Giants went into halftime down only 10\u20130, the Ravens dominated the second half. Their defense harassed Kerry Collins all game long, resulting in Collins completing only 15 of 39 passes for 112\u00a0yards and 4 interceptions. The Ravens won the game 34\u20137.\nAfter a disappointing 7\u20139 record in 2001, the Giants finished the 2002 season with a record of 10\u20136, qualifying for the playoffs as a wild card. This set up a meeting with the San Francisco 49ers in Candlestick Park in the wild-card round. The Giants built up a sizable lead throughout the game and led 38\u201314 with 4:27 left in the third quarter. However, San Francisco rallied to win the game by one point, with the final score of 39\u201338.\nAfter a dismal 2003 season in which the Giants finished with a 4\u201312 record, Jim Fassel was released by the Giants. His head coaching record with the Giants during this time was 58\u201353\u20131.\nTom Coughlin years (2004\u20132015).\nIn 2004, three years after their last Super Bowl appearance, Fassel was replaced by Tom Coughlin. Although Collins had several solid seasons as the Giants quarterback, he experienced his share of struggles. In 2004, the Giants completed a draft day trade for University of Mississippi quarterback Eli Manning. Manning became the team's starting quarterback in the middle of the 2004 season, taking over for Kurt Warner. During the three-year period from 2004 to 2006, Tom Coughlin's Giants compiled a 25\u201323 regular season record and two appearances in the wild-card round \u2014 both losses (to the Carolina Panthers in 2005 and to the Philadelphia Eagles in 2006.) and spawned intense media scrutiny concerning the direction of the team. During this period in their history, standout players included defensive end Michael Strahan, who set the NFL single season record in sacks in 2001, and running back Tiki Barber, who set a team record for rushing yards in a season in 2005. Barber retired at the end of the 2006 season.\nSuper Bowl XLII champions (2007).\nGoing into 2007, the Giants had made the playoffs in back-to-back seasons. In 2007, the Giants became the third NFL franchise to win at least 600 games when they defeated the Atlanta Falcons 31\u201310 on \"Monday Night Football\". For the 2007 season, the NFL scheduled the Giants' road game against the Miami Dolphins on October 28 in London's Wembley Stadium; this was the first NFL regular season game to be played outside of North America. The Giants defeated the Dolphins, 13\u201310. The Giants finished 10\u20136 and became NFC Champions after defeating the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Dallas Cowboys, and Green Bay Packers in the NFC Playoffs. They set a record for most consecutive road wins in a single season with 10 (a streak which ended with a loss to the Cleveland Browns during week 6 of the 2008 season).\nThe Patriots (18\u20130) entered the Super Bowl undefeated and were 12-point favorites going into game weekend. The Giants defeated the Patriots 17\u201314 in Super Bowl XLII, aided by the famous \"Manning to Tyree\" pass. On this famous play, Manning escaped the grip of several Patriots defensive linemen, stepped up in the pocket, and heaved the ball down the middle of the field to a double-covered David Tyree. With Rodney Harrison, a Patriots defensive back, all over Tyree, David managed to hold on to the ball by holding it on his helmet until he fell to the ground. This catch set up a Manning to Plaxico Burress touchdown pass in the back of the end zone to put the Giants in the lead. It was the third biggest upset by betting line in Super Bowl history (the Baltimore Colts were favored by 17 over the New York Jets in Super Bowl III, and the St. Louis Rams were favored by 14 over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXVI). Co-owner John Mara described it as \"the greatest victory in the history of this franchise, without question\".\nThe Giants began the 2008 season with a record of 11\u20131 but lost three of their last four regular season games partially due to a self-inflicted gunshot wound to wide receiver Plaxico Burress. However, the Giants still won the NFC East with a record of 12\u20134, and clinched the number one seed in the NFC after beating the Carolina Panthers for home-field advantage and a first-round bye. In the divisional round of the playoffs, the Giants lost 23\u201311 to the Philadelphia Eagles at home.\nIn 2009, the Giants opened a new training complex, the Timex Performance Center, also located in the Meadowlands. After starting 5\u20130 in the 2009 season, New York lost to the likewise undefeated New Orleans Saints at the Louisiana Superdome 48\u201327, beginning a four-game losing streak, in which they lost to the Arizona Cardinals 24\u201317, the San Diego Chargers 21\u201320 and the Philadelphia Eagles 40\u201317. The streak was broken with a 34\u201331 overtime victory against the Atlanta Falcons. On Thanksgiving night, they lost to the Denver Broncos 26\u20136. The Giants next beat the division-leading Dallas Cowboys. A week later, with a record of 7\u20135, they lost to the Philadelphia Eagles, 45\u201338. On December 27, the Giants lost to the Carolina Panthers 41\u20139 in their final game at Giants Stadium and were eliminated from playoff eligibility. The Giants finished the season 8\u20138.\nFollowing the season, the Giants fired first-year defensive coordinator Bill Sheridan, and replaced him with the former Buffalo Bills interim head coach, Perry Fewell. The Giants defense finished 13th overall under Sheridan, giving up 324.9 yards per game, and the final two losses of the season against Carolina and Minnesota, in which the Giants gave up 85 points, ultimately led to the firing.\nIn 2010, the Giants moved from Giants Stadium into MetLife Stadium, then known as the \"New Meadowlands Stadium\". They won against the Carolina Panthers in the first game at New Meadowlands Stadium but then lost to the Indianapolis Colts in the second \"Manning Bowl\", so-called due to Eli Manning's brother Peyton playing for the Colts. The Giants dropped one game to the Tennessee Titans before going on a five-game winning streak, beating the Chicago Bears, Houston Texans, Detroit Lions, Dallas Cowboys, and Seattle Seahawks. Before long, the Giants were 6\u20132 but lost two straight to division foes: to the Cowboys 33\u201320 at home, and to the Philadelphia Eagles on the road, putting the Giants in second place in the NFC East at 6\u20134. In first place was the Eagles, but at December 19 the two teams tied at 8\u20134, setting up a match for first place. The Giants were at home and led 24\u20133 over the Eagles at halftime. The score was 31\u201310 with 5:40 left in the game, but Michael Vick led the Eagles to three touchdown drives to tie the game up at 31 with 40 seconds left. After a Giants three-and-out, Matt Dodge punted the ball to DeSean Jackson, who returned it for a touchdown, concluding the Giants' epic collapse. The next game, the Giants lost to the eventual Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers 45\u201317, and at 9\u20136, they faced the Redskins. They had to win and have the Packers lose in order to get into the playoffs. The Giants won 17\u201314, but the Packers beat the Bears 10\u20133, so the Giants missed out on the playoffs again, ending a collapse in which the Giants went 4\u20134 in their last eight games.\nSuper Bowl XLVI champions (2011).\nDuring the 2011 preseason, the Giants lost Kevin Boss, Steve Smith, Rich Seubert, Keith Bulluck, Derek Hagan, and Pro Bowl center Shaun O'Hara to free agency. However, the season also saw the emergence of second-year wide receiver Victor Cruz and second-year tight end Jake Ballard. The Giants opened their season with a 28\u201314 loss to the Washington Redskins at FedEx Field on the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. However, the Giants secured a 6\u20132 record by the midpoint of the season, including road victories over the Philadelphia Eagles and the New England Patriots. The latter victory ended the Patriots' NFL record home-game winning streak, after a touchdown pass from Manning to Jake Ballard with 15 seconds left in the game.\nHowever, the Giants then suffered a four-game losing streak, including road losses against the resurgent San Francisco 49ers and the New Orleans Saints and home losses to the Eagles and the then-undefeated Green Bay Packers, to make their record 6\u20136 entering December. The Giants broke their losing streak with a tightly contested 37\u201334 road victory over the Cowboys on December 11 with Jason Pierre-Paul blocking a last second field goal attempt, but lost at home to the Washington Redskins the following week to make their record 7\u20137 with a Christmas Eve showdown against their crosstown rival New York Jets the following week. The Giants won, 29\u201314, and knocked the Eagles out of playoff contention, to set up a Week 17 home game against the Cowboys in which the winner would clinch the NFC East while the loser would be eliminated from playoff contention. The game was flexed into Sunday Night Football. The Giants defeated the Cowboys, 31\u201314 and clinched the NFC East title and the fourth seed in the playoffs. Wide receiver Victor Cruz finished the regular season with 1,536 receiving yards, breaking the Giants franchise record previously held by Amani Toomer.\nOn January 8, 2012, in the first round of the playoffs, the Giants defeated the Atlanta Falcons 24\u20132. After giving up an early safety in the first half, quarterback Eli Manning threw for three consecutive touchdowns. Running backs Ahmad Bradshaw and Brandon Jacobs combined for 172 yards rushing, a season-high for the Giants. With the victory, the Giants advanced to the second round against the top-ranked Green Bay Packers 37\u201320.\nOn January 15, 2012, the Giants defeated the Green Bay Packers 37\u201320. Eli Manning threw for 330 yards and 3 touchdowns, two of which to wide receiver Hakeem Nicks. This earned the Giants a spot in the NFC Championship Game on January 22, 2012, against the San Francisco 49ers. They won this game 20\u201317, in overtime, with Tynes scoring the winning field goal as he did four years earlier in the same game against the Packers.\nThe New York Giants won Super Bowl XLVI against the New England Patriots with a score of 21\u201317. The winning touchdown was preceded by a 38-yard reception by receiver Mario Manningham. As in Super Bowl XLII, Eli Manning was Super Bowl MVP, defeating the Patriots for a second time in the Super Bowl.\nAhmad Bradshaw scored the game-winning touchdown by falling into the end zone. The Patriots were allowing Bradshaw to get the touchdown so they would get the ball with some time remaining. When Eli Manning handed the ball to Bradshaw, he told him not to score. Bradshaw was about to fall down at the 1-yard line but his momentum carried him in, thus the \"reluctant touchdown.\"\nAs was the case in each of their four previous Super Bowl appearances, the Giants trailed at halftime. They are the only team in NFL history to have more than two second half, come-from-behind, Super Bowl victories (4). The Pittsburgh Steelers, who accomplished the feat in Super Bowl X and Super Bowl XIV, are the only other team to do it more than once.\nThe Giants began the 2012 season with a home loss to the Dallas Cowboys, but rebounded to finish October with a 6\u20132 record and on a four-game winning streak that included a 26\u20133 road victory against the eventual NFC champion San Francisco 49ers. Following the arrival of Hurricane Sandy in the Northeastern United States, the Giants lost back-to-back games against the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Cincinnati Bengals to fall to 6\u20134. Despite impressive blowout home victories over the Green Bay Packers, New Orleans Saints and Philadelphia Eagles, the Giants finished the season 9\u20137 and out of the playoffs. Quarterback Eli Manning, defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul, wide receiver Victor Cruz, and guard Chris Snee represented the Giants at the Pro Bowl.\nThe 2013 season began with hope that the Giants could become the first team to play in the Super Bowl in their home stadium, as MetLife Stadium was scheduled to host Super Bowl XLVIII that February. However, the Giants' playoff hopes took a massive hit when they lost the first six games of the season. They rebounded to win the next four games in a row to improve to 4\u20136, but lost a critical home game to the Dallas Cowboys on a last-minute field goal. They finished the season 7\u20139 and with a losing record for the first time since 2004. The Giants drafted rookie wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. in the 2014 NFL draft, who would later go on to win the AP Offensive Rookie of the Year award. However, the Giants missed the playoffs for a third straight season, finishing with a 6\u201310 record. The 2015 season was another disappointing campaign, as the Giants showcased a struggling defense and several late-game collapses. The Giants finished the season with a 6\u201310 record and missed the playoffs.\n2016\u2013present.\nOn January 14, 2016, the Giants announced that Ben McAdoo would become the team's head coach. He replaced Tom Coughlin, who had resigned the previous week. The Giants turned it around in 2016 with an 11\u20135 record, ending their five-year playoff drought. The Giants later lost to the Green Bay Packers 38\u201313 in the wild-card round.\nAfter having high expectations due to their 11\u20135 record in 2016, the Giants had an unexpected 0\u20135 start to the 2017 season, before pulling a massive upset versus the Denver Broncos at Sports Authority Field at Mile High for their first win of the season. However, during the Week 5 game against the Los Angeles Chargers, Odell Beckham Jr. fractured his ankle, an injury that ended his season. During the same game, the Giants also lost wide receivers Brandon Marshall and Dwayne Harris to season-ending injuries. The season was also marred by the suspensions of Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and Janoris Jenkins. The Giants finished the 2017 season with a 3\u201313 record, the second-worst in the league. This was also the first time since 1983 in which the Giants finished the regular season with three or less wins, and their worst record since the 16-game season was adopted in the NFL.\nThe season was also highlighted the controversial benching of longtime quarterback Eli Manning in Week 13, and the high-profile firings of head coach Ben McAdoo and general manager Jerry Reese, who were the first mid-season staff firings since the 1976 Giants' season. Manning was eventually renamed the starter in Week 14. Subsequently, the disastrous season led to the team being awarded the second overall pick in the 2018 NFL draft, which they utilized to select Saquon Barkley from Penn State. Despite Barkley's selection, several questions pertained into the following season around the team's offensive line and long-term future at quarterback.\nThe 2018 season began with Pat Shurmur being hired as the new head coach. Despite starting 1\u20137 for the second consecutive year, the Giants managed to marginally improve on their 3\u201313 campaign by finishing the season 5\u201311 in a 30\u201327 overtime win against the Chicago Bears. After defeating the Washington Redskins in Week 14, the Giants became the first team in NFL history to win 100 regular season games against an opponent. However, this ensured last place in the NFC East for the second straight year, marking the first time they were division rock bottom in back-to-back years since 1977 and 1978. The season was also highlighted by blown fourth-quarter leads which was similar to their 2015 team, where the Giants were in 12 one-possession games, and lost 8 of those by 7 points or less. Following the season's end, the team was placed to select sixth overall in the 2019 NFL draft. Barkley impressed in his rookie season, breaking several NFL and Giants team records for a rookie, including having the most receptions by a running back (91), most rushing touchdowns (11), most rushing yards (1,307), and most touchdowns in a season (15). He was also selected to the 2019 Pro Bowl, alongside teammates Olivier Vernon, Landon Collins, and Aldrick Rosas in addition to winning offensive rookie of the year honors.\nThe team used their sixth overall pick in the 2019 NFL Draft on Duke quarterback Daniel Jones. The Giants went 4\u201312 in the 2019 season. After the 2019 season, the Giants' longtime quarterback, Eli Manning, retired after spending 16 seasons with the organization, while the team finished the season with a 4\u201312 record. Following the season, Shurmur was fired as head coach. Prior to the 2020 season, the Giants hired Joe Judge as head coach. At the start of the 2020 season, Daniel Jones took over as starting quarterback as the Giants finished 6\u201310, while tight end Evan Engram and cornerback James Bradberry were named to the 2021 Pro Bowl as reserves.\nIn the 2021 season the Giants failed to improve on their 2020 record by finishing 4\u201313. Then after the season, general manager Dave Gettleman retired and head coach Joe Judge was fired. During the season the squad's starting quarterback Daniel Jones sprained his neck and was temporarily replaced in the lineup by Mike Glennon and then Jake Fromm.\nOn January 21, 2022, the team hired Joe Schoen as the team's general manager, and on January 28, hired Brian Daboll as the team's new head coach. The 2022 season showed a much improved record, with the Giants finishing 9\u20137\u20131. On January 1, 2023, the Giants clinched a playoff berth for the first time since the 2016 season. On January 15, the Giants defeated the Minnesota Vikings 31\u201324 in the wild-card round, winning their first postseason game since their victory at Super Bowl XLVI in 2012. The Giants proceeded to lose the next game to the eventual NFC champion Philadelphia Eagles 38\u20137 in the divisional round.\nIn the 2023 season, the Giants regressed on their successful 2022 season, finishing 6\u201311. Daniel Jones was injured several times in the season and was placed on injured reserve after tearing his ACL in week 9. He was temporarily replaced in the lineup by Tyrod Taylor and Tommy DeVito.\nChampionships.\nThe Giants have won a total of eight league championships: 1927, 1934, 1938, 1956, 1986, 1990, 2007 and 2011. The first four of those championships came in the pre-Super Bowl era. New York's eight championships put them third among all active and defunct NFL teams, trailing only the Green Bay Packers (13) and the Chicago Bears (9).\nNFL championships (pre-Super Bowl era).\nBefore the Super Bowl was instituted, the Giants won four officially recognized NFL championships.\nSuper Bowl championships.\nThe Giants have won four Super Bowls, tied with Green Bay for the fifth most behind Dallas, San Francisco (both with 5), and New England and Pittsburgh (6 each).\nNFC championships.\nThe Giants have won five NFC Championship Games, including two in overtime in 2007 and 2011.\nLogos and uniforms.\nWith nearly 100 years of team history, the Giants have used numerous uniforms and logos, while maintaining a consistent identity. The Giants' logos include several incarnations of a giant quarterback preparing to throw a football, a lowercase \"ny\", and stylized versions of the team nickname.\nGiants' jerseys are traditionally blue or red (or white with blue or red accents), and their pants alternate between white and gray. Currently, the Giants wear home jerseys that are solid blue with white block numbering, white pants with five thin blue/gray/red/gray/blue stripes on the pant legs, and solid blue socks. For this they gained their most renowned nickname, \"Big Blue\". For road uniforms, they wear a white jersey with red block numbering and red \"Northwestern\" stripes on the sleeves, gray pants with three thin non-contiguous red/blue/red stripes on the pant legs, and solid red socks. The Giants' current helmet is metallic blue with white block numbers, which are frontally mounted and base mounted on either side of a red stripe running down the center or frontally mounted and base mounted on the red center stripe itself. The Giants, along with the Pittsburgh Steelers, are one of only two teams in the NFL to have the players' uniform numbers on both the front and back of the helmets. The helmet is adorned on both sides with the stylized white lower case \"ny\" logo and features a gray facemask. The home uniforms are generally similar to the design used from 1966 to 1974, but with some slight elements from the 1956\u20131961 uniforms. The road uniforms are essentially a modernization of the design used from 1956 to 1961. Additionally, the Giants had a third jersey until the 2009 season, which recalled the Giants' solid red home jerseys from the early 1950s: a solid red alternate with white block numbers. These jerseys were used a total of four times, but have since been retired. They were used once in 2004 against the Philadelphia Eagles and in three consecutive years \u2013 2005, 2006, and 2007 \u2013 against the Dallas Cowboys.\nOwnerships, financial history and fan base.\nThe Giants have had a long and, at times, turbulent financial history. The team was founded by Tim Mara with an investment of US$500 in 1925 and became one of the first teams in the then five-year-old NFL. To differentiate themselves from the baseball team of the same name, they took the name \"New York Football Giants\", which they still use as their legal corporate name.\nAlthough the Giants were successful on the field in their initial seasons, their financial status was a different story. Overshadowed by baseball, boxing, and college football, professional football was not a popular sport in 1925. The Giants were in dire financial straits until the 11th game of the season when Red Grange and the Chicago Bears came to town, attracting over 73,000 fans. This gave the Giants a much needed influx of revenue, and perhaps altered the history of the franchise. The following year, Grange and his agent formed a rival league and stationed a competing team, led by Grange, in New York. Though the Giants lost $50,000 that season, the rival league folded and was subsumed into the NFL. Following the 1930 season, Mara transferred ownership of the team over to his two sons to insulate the team from creditors, and by 1946, he had given over complete control of the team to them. Jack, the older son, controlled the business aspects, while Wellington controlled the on-field operations. After their initial struggles the Giants financial status stabilized, and they led the league in attendance several times in the 1930s and 1940s.\nBy the early 1960s, the Giants had firmly established themselves as one of the league's biggest attractions. However, rather than continuing to receive their higher share of the league television revenue, the Mara sons pushed for equal sharing of revenue for the benefit of the entire league. Revenue sharing is still practiced in the NFL today, and is credited with strengthening the league. After their struggles in the latter half of the 1960s and the entire 1970s, the Giants hired an outsider, George Young, to run the football operations for the first time in franchise history. The Giants' on-field product and business aspects improved rapidly following the move.\nIn 1991, Tim Mara, grandson of the founder, was struggling with cancer and sold his half of the team to Bob Tisch for a reported $80 million. This marked the first time in franchise history the team had not been solely owned by the Mara family. In 2005, Wellington Mara, who had been with the team since its inception in 1925 when he worked as a ball boy, died at the age of 89. His death was followed two weeks later by the death of Tisch. In 2015, Wellington's widow and Giants co-owner Ann died due to complications from a head injury suffered in a fall. She was 85 years old.\nIn 2010, MetLife Stadium opened, replacing Giants Stadium. The new stadium is a 50/50 partnership between the Giants and Jets, and while the stadium is owned by the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority on paper, the two teams jointly built the stadium using private funds, and administer it jointly through New Meadowlands Stadium Corporation. The Giants had previously planned a $300 million renovation to the Meadowlands, before deciding in favor of the new stadium which was originally estimated to cost approximately $600 million, before rising to an estimated cost of one billion dollars. One advantage gained by owning the stadium is that the teams saved considerable money in tax payments. The teams leased the land from the state at a cost of $6.3 million per year. The state paid for all utilities, including the $30 million needed to install them.\nThe Giants are owned and operated by John Mara and Steve Tisch. \"Forbes\" magazine estimated the value of the team in 2012 to be $1.3 billion. This ranks the New York Giants as the fourth most valuable franchise in the NFL and the ninth most valuable professional sports franchise in the world. The value has steadily increased from $288 million in 1998, to their current value. The magazine estimated their revenue in 2006 at $182 million, of which $46 million came from gate receipts. Operating income was $26.9 million, and player salary was $102 million. Current major sponsors include Gatorade, Anheuser Busch, Toyota, and Verizon Wireless. Recent former sponsors include Miller Brewing and North Fork Bank. Luxury suites, retail and game day concessions at the new stadium are provisioned and operated by global hospitality giant Delaware North. The team's average ticket price is $72.\nThe Giants draw their fans from the New York metropolitan area. Since their move to New Jersey in 1976, fans from each state have claimed the team as their own. In January 1987, shortly before the team won Super Bowl XXI, then New York City mayor Ed Koch labeled the team \"foreigners\" and said they were not entitled to a ticker-tape parade in New York City. On February 5, 2008, the city, under mayor Michael Bloomberg, threw a ticker tape parade in honor of the Giants' Super Bowl XLII victory at the Canyon of Heroes in lower Manhattan. New York City held another ticker tape parade on February 7, 2012, in honor of the Giants' Super Bowl XLVI victory. According to a team spokesman, in 2001, 52 percent of the Giants' season ticket-holders lived in New Jersey. Most of the remaining ticket holders lived in New York State with some coming from other states. The Giants also draw fans from the Canadian province of Quebec mostly due to the province sharing a significant international border with New York State \u2014 New York City is only five to six hours away from Montreal by car.\nThrough the lean years of the 1960s and 1970s the Giants, in spite of a 17-year-long playoff drought, still accumulated a 20-year-long waiting list for season tickets. It has been estimated that the Giants have a waiting list of 135,000 people, the largest of any North American professional sports franchise.\nRivalries.\nDivisional.\nPhiladelphia Eagles.\nThe rivalry between the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Eagles is one of the oldest in the NFL, dating back to 1933. The two teams have frequently fought for playoff contention, NFC East titles, and respect. While the Giants had the edge this rivalry early on in its history, the series began to even after the 1980s, with the Eagles going 22\u201321 against New York through the 1990s and 2000s. Philadelphia then dominated New York in the 2010s with a 16\u20134 record to claim their first lead in the series. The Eagles lead the all-time series 94\u201389\u20132 as of the 2023 season. The two teams have met five times in the postseason, with the Giants winning two games to the Eagles three. Three of those four playoff meetings were held in the 2000s decade. New York City and Philadelphia have a strong geographic rivalry, as seen in other professional sports such as the Mets\u2013Phillies rivalry in Major League Baseball, and the Flyers\u2013Rangers, Flyers\u2013Islanders and Devils\u2013Flyers rivalries in the National Hockey League.\nWashington Commanders.\nThe Giants have an old and storied rivalry with the Washington Commanders, dating back to 1932. While this rivalry is typically given less significance than the rivalries with the Eagles and Cowboys, there have been periods of great competition between the two. In the 1980s the Giants and Redskins, as they were then known, clashed as both struggled against each other for division titles and even Super Bowl Championships. Most notable among these is the 1986 NFC Championship game in which the Giants defeated the Redskins 17\u20130 to earn their first ever trip to the Super Bowl. Wellington Mara always felt this was the Giants oldest and truest rival, and after passing away in 2005, the Giants honored their longtime owner by defeating the Redskins 36\u20130 at home. The Giants lead this series 107\u201370\u20134 as of the 2023 season. The Giants 107 wins against the Washington Redskins are the most wins for one team against one opponent in NFL history.\nDallas Cowboys.\nThe Giants have maintained a fierce divisional rivalry with the Dallas Cowboys since the Cowboys first began play in 1960. The two teams have a combined nine Super Bowl victories between them, and have played many games in which the NFC East title was at stake. The rivalry is unique among professional sports as it is the only divisional rivalry between sports teams from New York City and Dallas, partially due to the large distance between the two cities. The Cowboys lead the regular season series 75\u201347\u20132, while the Giants hold the lone playoff victory between the two teams, held at the conclusion of the 2007 season.\nConference.\nSan Francisco 49ers.\nDespite never being in the same division, the Giants and San Francisco 49ers have developed a heated rivalry over the years. The two teams have met eight times in the playoffs (including two NFC Championship Games, both won by New York) since 1982, which is the most of any two teams in that span. In the overall series the 49ers lead 22\u201321, while the postseason series are also tied 4\u20134. Five of the eight times the Giants and 49ers have played in the postseason, the winner of their game has gone on to win the Super Bowl.\nInter Conference.\nNew York Jets.\nThe Giants and New York Jets for many years had the only intracity rivalry in the NFL, made even more unusual by sharing a stadium. They have met annually in the preseason since 1969. Since 2011, this meeting has been known as the \"MetLife Bowl\", after the naming sponsor of the teams' stadium. Regular season matchups between the teams occur once every four years, as they follow the NFL scheduling formula for interconference games. Since the two teams play each other so infrequently in the regular season, some, including players on both teams, have questioned whether the Giants and Jets have a real rivalry. A memorable regular season game was in 1988, when the Giants faced off against the Jets in the last game of the season, needing a victory to make the playoffs. The Jets played spoiler, however, beating the Giants 27\u201321 and ruining the latter's playoff hopes. A different scenario unfolded during the penultimate regular season game of 2011 as the \"visiting\" Giants defeated the Jets 29\u201314. The victory simultaneously helped eliminate the Jets from playoff contention and propel the Giants to their own playoff run and eventual win in Super Bowl XLVI. The Giants lead the overall regular season series 8\u20137.\nNew England Patriots.\nThe Giants and New England Patriots rarely played each other given they were on opposite conferences, but the rivalry gained notoriety in the late 2000s thanks to some close contests and memorable moments between Tom Brady and Eli Manning. In the 2007 season, the Patriots defeated the Giants 38\u201335 to clinch a perfect 16\u20130 regular season, but could not finish a perfect 19\u20130 season in Super Bowl XLII following a 17\u201314 defeat. That game featured the now-iconic Helmet Catch from David Tyree. The Giants also defeated the Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI, a 21\u201317 victory. As of the 2023 season, the all-time series is tied 7\u20137.\nHistoric.\nChicago Bears.\nThe Giants and Chicago Bears squared off in six NFL championship games, more than any common matchup in either the NFL championship game or Super Bowl. Though the Bears won four of the six championship games, one of the Giants' two championship victories included the Sneakers Game that took place in the 1934 NFL Championship Game. The two teams also met in the 1985 and 1990 playoffs, splitting each meeting en route to a Super Bowl championship (Bears in Super Bowl XX, Giants in Super Bowl XXV). The Bears lead the all-time series 36\u201324\u20132, including a 5\u20133 postseason record.\nGreen Bay Packers.\nThe Giants\u2013Packers rivalry is a National Football League (NFL) rivalry between the New York Giants and the Green Bay Packers. The two teams have played since 1970 in the National Football Conference, and they play each other in the regular season either every three years or depending on its NFC division placement, and in the postseason, The Packers lead the all-time series 34\u201328\u20132 and postseason series 5\u20133.\nPlayers.\nPro Football Hall of Famers.\nIn the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Giants boast the second-most enshrined members with 29. Tim Mara, Mel Hein, Pete Henry, Cal Hubbard and Jim Thorpe were a part of the original class of inductees in 1963, while defensive end Michael Strahan, the most recent Giant inducted, was a part of the Class of 2014. Numerous members, including Larry Csonka, Ray Flaherty, Joe Guyon, Pete Henry, Arnie Herber, Cal Hubbard, Tom Landry, Don Maynard, Hugh McElhenny, Jim Thorpe, and Kurt Warner were at one time associated with the New York Giants, but they were inducted largely based on their careers with other teams.\nRing of Honor.\nThe New York Giants unveiled their own Ring of Honor on October 3, 2010, during halftime of their . John Mara had long wished to create a Giants Ring of Honor and Hall of Fame to honor Giants who helped the franchise achieve each of their championships, and the building of MetLife Stadium resulted in the realization of that ambition. The organization had an inaugural induction class of 30 including players, coaches, owners and executives that have had a great impact on the organization. While the entire list of inductees was not revealed until the actual induction, the organization did confirm about a week before the ceremony that Phil Simms, Bill Parcells, Michael Strahan, Tiki Barber, Frank Gifford and Pete Gogolak would all be inducted.\nTop 100 greatest Giants of all-time.\nIn celebration of the Giants 100th season, the team announced the top 100 players in franchise history.\nNFL MVP award winners.\nThe Giants have had six players win NFL MVP in franchise history.\nSuper Bowl MVP award winners.\nThe Giants have had three players win Super Bowl MVP in franchise history.\nFirst-round draft picks.\nThe Giants have had the number one overall pick in the NFL Draft two times in their history.\nCoaches.\nThe Giants have had 22 head coaches serve in the capacity.\nMedia, radio and television.\nAs of 2010, the Giants' flagship radio station is WFAN, with games simulcast on WFAN-FM as of November 2012. Since WFAN also has the rights to carry baseball, as they currently are the flagship station for the New York Yankees and previously served the same role for the New York Mets, early season Giants games come into conflict; since 2019, WFAN has split the coverage across both of its dial positions, with the Giants carried on 660 AM and the Yankees on 101.9 FM. Prior to that, the Giants' games would air on one of WFAN's designated overflow stations.\nBob Papa on play-by-play and Carl Banks on color commentary are the Giants' radio broadcast team, with Howard Cross as the sideline reporter. When Papa is unavailable to call games Chris Carrino, WFAN's lead broadcaster for the Brooklyn Nets, substitutes for him. Games are carried over the New York Giants Radio Network over various stations in New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut.\nPreseason telecasts not seen nationally air in the area on WNBC, with WWOR-TV serving as an overflow station for when WNBC is airing other programming such as the Summer Olympic Games. Papa and Banks call these games on television, with studio host Paul Dottino as Papa's substitute.\nWPIX-TV or WABC-TV will also air any Giants broadcast that is carried exclusively by ESPN, as per the local carriage rules (WABC-TV's corporate parent, The Walt Disney Company, holds an 80% majority ownership stake in ESPN, and has a right of first refusal for these telecasts). Thursday Night Football broadcasts, which are streamed on Amazon Prime Video, are simulcast on WNYW.\nThe Giants' public address announcer at MetLife Stadium is Gordon Deal. Deal replaced Jim Hall, who for years was Bob Sheppard's substitute at Yankee Stadium due to their very similar voices. Hall took over the Giants PA job after Sheppard elected to leave the position in 2005 to focus solely on his Yankee Stadium duties.\nPast.\nWFAN has produced the Giants' radio broadcasts since 1995, but has not always aired them on the station. For 1995, then-Giants flagship WOR continued to carry the games as they had for the previous two seasons. In 1996 the games were simulcast on WFAN and WOR, which caused some conflict as at the time, WFAN was the radio flagship of the New York Jets as well. To remedy the situation, beginning the next year WFAN moved the Giants' radio broadcasts to the FM dial and sister station WNEW-FM, where they remained until the end of the 1999 season. In 2000 WFAN lost the Jets' radio contract to WABC and the Giants moved back to WFAN where they have been ever since.\nThe Giants' longtime radio home was WNEW, where games aired from the mid-1950s until 1993 when the station was bought by Bloomberg L.P. and changed its format. Marty Glickman teamed with Al DeRogatis for a long stretch beginning in the early 1960s on WNEW. Chip Cipolla and later Sam Huff joined Glickman after DeRogatis left to join Curt Gowdy on NBC. After the WNEW split, games began airing on WOR. Glickman moved to the crosstown Jets in 1973 and was succeeded by Marv Albert. Jim Gordon succeeded Albert in 1977, beginning an 18-year tenure as the Giants' play-by-play voice. Meanwhile, Dick Lynch took over as color analyst in 1976 and continued in that role through 2007, with his last game being Super Bowl XLII, and retired following the season due to his advancing leukemia, which took his life in September 2008.\nEventually Gordon and Lynch were joined by Karl Nelson, a former lineman for the Giants. Gordon and Nelson were fired after the 1994 season, after which Papa took over the play-by-play (after being studio host) and led a two-man booth with Lynch. Dave Jennings joined the broadcast team in 2002 following his firing by the Jets, with whom he had worked since his 1987 retirement from the NFL. Jennings was moved to the pregame show after the 2006 season and was replaced by Carl Banks, leaving broadcasting altogether in 2008 due to his ongoing battle with Parkinson's disease that he lost in 2013.\nAfter WFAN began airing games Richard Neer served as pregame and postgame host. He was replaced by Sid Rosenberg, who was in turn fired by the station due to troubles and replaced by Chris Carlin. Carlin left in 2008 to focus full-time on his duties as SNY studio host and Rutgers athletics radio voice and was replaced by WWOR sports reporter and former WFAN host Russ Salzberg, who cohosted with Roman Oben after Jennings left. WEPN Giants beat reporter Paul Dottino was hired by WFAN to host the pregame show for 2009 and continues to be a part of the program. As of the 2020 season, Lance Medow is the host for the pregame show as well as halftime and postgame, with former Giants punter Jeff Feagles as analyst.\nThe Giants were carried on the DuMont Network, then CBS in the early TV days of the NFL, when home games were blacked out within a 75-mile radius of New York City. Chris Schenkel was their play-by-play announcer in that early era when each team was assigned its own network voice on its regional telecasts. At the time, there were few if any true national telecasts until the NFL championship game, which was carried by NBC. Schenkel was joined by Jim McKay, later Johnny Lujack through the 1950s and the early 1960s. As Giants players retired to the broadcast booth in the early and 1960s, first Pat Summerall, then Frank Gifford took the color analyst slot next to Schenkel. As the 1970 merger of the NFL and AFL approached, CBS moved to a more generic announcer approach and Schenkel was off the broadcasts.\nGiants regular season Sunday telecasts moved to Fox when that network took over NFC telecasts in 1994 and are carried locally by WNYW.\nWCBS-TV and WPIX were previously home to Giants preseason telecasts in the 1990s, with WPIX serving as the Giants' (and Jets') long-time preseason home. After the NFC rights were lost by CBS, the Giants followed the conference's broadcast rights to WNYW. WWOR became the Giants' flagship TV station in the late 1990s, and stayed so up until WNBC took over rights in 2005.\nWhen the Giants first moved to WNYW, Mike Breen was their preseason play-by-play man. Sam Rosen was the television voice for some time afterward, except for two years when Curt Menefee (then of WNYW) was the voice. When the games moved to WWOR, Rosen regained the position and held it until 2004. Former Giant receiver Phil McConkey became the early season analyst after his retirement and stayed in the booth for many years.\nNotes and references.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nclass=\"wikitable succession-box noprint\" style=\"margin:0.5em auto; font-size:small;clear:both;\"", "11321708": "Wayne Lucier\nAmerican football player (born 1979)\nWayne W. Lucier (born December 5, 1979) is an American former professional football center and guard who played in the National Football League (NFL) for the New York Giants. He played college football at Northwestern and Colorado. He was selected by the Giants in the seventh round of the 2003 NFL draft.\nEarly life.\nLucier attended St. John's Preparatory School in Danvers, Massachusetts. He played both offensive and defensive line in high school, lettering four times. He was named the Super Prep Player of the Year in New England and earned All-State honors. Lucier also letted twice in basketball, garnering All-Conference recognition his junior and senior season. He lettered once in track as well.\nCollege career.\nLucier first played college football for the Northwestern Wildcats from 1998 to 1999. He started his first career game at tight end, catching one pass for four yards. He then started the next six games that year at offensive guard. Lucier started every game at right guard in 1999.\nLucier then transferred to play for the Colorado Buffaloes from 2000 to 2002 under head coach Gary Barnett, who was Lucier's head coach during his freshman season at Northwestern in 1998. He sat out the 2000 season due to NCAA transfer rules. He started every game at center in 2001, earning second-team All-Big 12 Conference honors. Lucier was moved back to right guard in 2002, garnering \"Sporting News\" first-team All-American and first-team All-Big 12 recognition.\nProfessional career.\nLucier was selected by the New York Giants in the seventh round, with the 249th overall pick, of the 2003 NFL draft. He officially signed with the team on July 16, 2003. He played in 12 games, starting 11, during the 2003 season. Lucier was placed on injured reserve on December 3, 2003. He appeared in 15 games, starting nine, in 2004. He was waived by the Giants on September 3, 2005.\nLucier signed a reserve/future contract with the Green Bay Packers on February 2, 2006. He was waived on August 15, 2006.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11321708", "21757"], "permutation_1": ["21757", "11321708"], "permutation_2": ["11321708", "21757"], "permutation_3": ["11321708", "21757"]}
{"id": "2hop__671417_62776", "docs_added": {"3382": "Britney Spears\nAmerican singer (born 1981)\nBritney Jean Spears (born December 2, 1981) is an American singer. Often referred to as the \"Princess of Pop\", she has sold over 150 million records worldwide, making her one of the world's best-selling music artists. An influential figure in popular music, Spears became the best-selling teenage artist of all time, credited with the revival of teen pop during the late 1990s and early 2000s.\nSpears was born in McComb, Mississippi. After appearing in the television shows \"Star Search\" and \"The Mickey Mouse Club\", Spears signed with Jive Records in 1997 at age 15. Her first two studio albums, \"...Baby One More Time\" (1999) and \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" (2000), are among the best-selling albums of all time. She adopted a more mature and provocative style for her albums \"Britney\" (2001) and \"In the Zone\" (2003). Spears was the executive producer of her fifth studio album, \"Blackout\" (2007), often referred to as her best work. She returned to the top of the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200 chart with the albums \"Circus\" (2008) and \"Femme Fatale\" (2011), and embarked on a four-year concert residency, (2013\u20132017), to promote her next two albums, \"Britney Jean\" (2013) and \"Glory\" (2016). Spears' catalog of high-charting singles includes \"...Baby One More Time\", \"Oops!... I Did It Again\", \"I'm a Slave 4 U\", \"Toxic\", \"Gimme More\", \"Womanizer\", \"3\", \"Hold It Against Me\", and \"Scream & Shout\".\nSpears' life, including her high-profile relationships and personal struggles during the 2000s, received widespread media coverage. In 2008, she was involuntarily placed in a conservatorship following a highly publicized breakdown. In 2019, her legal battle over her conservatorship led to the establishment of the #FreeBritney movement and a release of the documentary \"Framing Britney Spears\" (2021). The conservatorship was terminated in 2021, following her public testimony in which she accused her management team and family of abuse. Spears' 2023 memoir, \"The Woman in Me\", reached number one on \"The New York Times\" Best Seller list in its first week of release. Her other ventures include starring in the film \"Crossroads\" (2002) and launching numerous products, with her 2005 fragrance Fantasy with Elizabeth Arden, Inc. generating over $1.5 billion in sales.\nIn the United States, Spears is the fourth best-selling female album artist of the Nielsen SoundScan era, as well as the best-selling female album artist of the 2000s. Her accolades include a Grammy Award, 15 Guinness World Records, six MTV Video Music Awards, seven \"Billboard\" Music Awards (including the Millennium Award), the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. \"Billboard\" ranked her sixth on their list of the Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century. \"...Baby One More Time\" was named the greatest debut single of all time by \"Rolling Stone\" in 2020. \"Forbes\" listed Spears as the world's highest-paid female musician in 2001 and 2012. By 2012, she had topped Yahoo!'s list of most searched celebrities seven times in twelve years. \"Time\" named Spears one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2021, placing first in the reader poll.\nLife and career.\n1981\u20131997: Early life, family, and career beginnings.\nBritney Jean Spears was born on December 2, 1981, in McComb, Mississippi, the second child of James \"Jamie\" Parnell Spears and Lynne Irene Bridges. Her maternal grandmother, Lillian Portell, was English and born in London, and one of Spears' maternal great-grandfathers was Maltese. Her siblings are Bryan James Spears and Jamie Lynn Spears.\nBorn in the Bible Belt, where socially conservative evangelical Protestantism is a particularly strong religious influence, she was baptized as a Southern Baptist and sang in a church choir as a child. As an adult, she has studied Kabbalist teachings. On August 5, 2021, Spears announced that she had converted to Catholicism. Her mother, sister, and nieces Maddie Aldridge and Ivey Joan Watson, are also Catholic. However, on September 5, 2022, after Spears' ex-husband, Kevin Federline, and youngest son did an interview defending her father's actions during her conservatorship, she stated: \"I don't believe in God anymore because of the way my children and my family have treated me. There is nothing to believe in anymore. I'm an atheist y'all\".\nAt age three, Spears began attending dance lessons in her hometown of Kentwood, Louisiana, and was selected to perform as a solo artist at the annual recital. Aged five she made her local stage debut, singing \"What Child Is This?\" at her kindergarten graduation. During her childhood, she also had gymnastics and voice lessons and won many state-level competitions and children's talent shows. In gymnastics, Spears attended B\u00e9la K\u00e1rolyi's training camp. She said of her ambition as a child, \"I was in my own world,\u00a0... I found out what I'm supposed to do at an early age\".\nWhen Spears was eight, she and her mother Lynne traveled to Atlanta, Georgia, to audition for the 1990s revival of \"The Mickey Mouse Club\". Casting director Matt Casella rejected her as too young, but introduced her to Nancy Carson, a New York City talent agent. Carson was impressed with Spears' singing and suggested enrolling her at the Professional Performing Arts School.\nSpears was hired for her first professional role as the understudy for the lead role of Tina Denmark in the off-Broadway musical \"Ruthless!\" She also appeared as a contestant on the popular television show \"Star Search\" and was cast in a number of commercials. In December 1992, she was cast in \"The All-New Mickey Mouse Club\". Other fellow cast members included Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, Ryan Gosling, Keri Russell, and JC Chasez. After the show was canceled in 1994, she returned to Mississippi and enrolled at McComb's Parklane Academy. Although she made friends with most of her classmates, she compared the school to \"the opening scene in \"Clueless\" with all the cliques.\u00a0... I was so bored. I was the point guard on the basketball team. I had my boyfriend, and I went to homecoming and Christmas formal. But I wanted more.\"\nIn June 1997, Spears was in talks with manager Lou Pearlman to join the female pop group Innosense. Lynne asked family friend and entertainment lawyer Larry Rudolph for his opinion and submitted a tape of Spears singing over a Whitney Houston karaoke song along with some pictures. Rudolph decided that he wanted to pitch her to record labels, for which she needed a professional demo made. He sent Spears an unused song of Toni Braxton; she rehearsed for a week and recorded her vocals in a studio. Spears traveled to New York with the demo and met with executives from four labels, returning to Kentwood the same day. Three of the labels rejected her, saying that audiences wanted pop bands such as the Backstreet Boys and the Spice Girls, and \"there wasn't going to be another Madonna, another Debbie Gibson, or another Tiffany.\"\nTwo weeks later, executives from Jive Records returned calls to Rudolph. Senior vice president of A&R Jeff Fenster said about Spears' audition that \"it's very rare to hear someone that age who can deliver emotional content and commercial appeal\u00a0... For any artist, the motivation\u2014the 'eye of the tiger'\u2014is extremely important. And Britney had that.\" Spears sang Houston's \"I Have Nothing\" (1992) for the executives, and was subsequently signed to the label. They assigned her to work with producer Eric Foster White for a month; he reportedly shaped her voice from \"lower and less poppy\" delivery to \"distinctively, unmistakably Britney\". After hearing the recorded material, president Clive Calder ordered a full album. Spears had originally envisioned \"Sheryl Crow music, but younger; more adult contemporary\". She felt secure with her label's appointment of producers, since \"It made more sense to go pop, because I can dance to it\u2014it's more me.\" She flew to Cheiron Studios in Stockholm, Sweden, where half of the album was recorded from March to April 1998, with producers Max Martin, Denniz Pop, and Rami Yacoub, among others.\n1998\u20132000: \"...Baby One More Time\" and \"Oops!... I Did It Again\".\nAfter Spears returned to the United States, she embarked on a shopping mall promotional tour, titled L'Oreal Hair Zone Mall Tour, to promote her upcoming debut album. Her show was a four-song set and she was accompanied by two back-up dancers. Her first concert tour followed, as an opening act for NSYNC. Her debut studio album, \"...Baby One More Time\", was released on January 12, 1999. It debuted at number one on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200 and was certified two-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America after a month. Worldwide, the album topped the charts in fifteen countries and sold over 10 million copies in a year. It became the biggest-selling album ever by a teenage artist.\n\"...Baby One More Time\" was released as the lead single from the album on September 29, 1998. Originally, Jive Records wanted the associated music video to be animated; however, Spears rejected this idea, and suggested the final concept of a Catholic schoolgirl. The single peaked at number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, topping the chart for two consecutive weeks in January\u2013February 1999. It sold more than 10 million copies, making it one of the best-selling singles of all time. \"...Baby One More Time\" later received a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. The title track also topped the singles chart for two weeks in the United Kingdom, and became the fastest-selling single ever by a female artist, shipping over 460,000 copies. It would later become the 25th-most successful song of all time in British chart history. Spears is the youngest female artist to have a million seller in the UK. The album's third single, \"(You Drive Me) Crazy\", became a top-ten hit worldwide and further propelled the success of the \"...Baby One More Time\" album. The album has sold 30 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. It is the best-selling debut album by any artist.\nOn June 28, 1999, Spears began her first headlining ...Baby One More Time Tour in North America, which was positively received by critics. It also generated some controversy due to her racy outfits. An extension of the tour, titled (You Drive Me) Crazy Tour, followed in March 2000. Spears premiered songs from her upcoming second album during the show.\n\"Oops!... I Did It Again\", Spears' second studio album, was released in May 2000. It debuted at number one in the US, selling 1.3 million copies, breaking the Nielsen SoundScan record for the highest debut sales by any solo artist. It has sold over 20 million copies worldwide to date, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. Rob Sheffield of \"Rolling Stone\" said that \"the great thing about \"Oops!\"\u00a0\u2013 under the cheese surface, Britney's demand for satisfaction is complex, fierce and downright scary, making her a true child of rock & roll tradition.\" The album's lead single, \"Oops!... I Did It Again\", peaked at the top of the charts in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and many other European nations, while the second single, \"Lucky\", peaked at number one in Austria, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland. The album as well as the title track received Grammy nominations for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, respectively.\nThe same year, Spears embarked on the Oops!... I Did It Again Tour, which grossed $40.5 million; she also released her first book, \"Britney Spears' Heart to Heart\", co-written with her mother. On September 7, 2000, Spears performed at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards. Halfway through the performance, she ripped off her black suit to reveal a sequined flesh-colored bodysuit, followed by heavy dance routine. It is noted by critics as the moment that Spears showed signs of becoming a more provocative performer. Amidst media speculation, Spears confirmed she was dating NSYNC member Justin Timberlake. Spears and Timberlake both graduated from high school via distance learning from the University of Nebraska High School. She also bought a home in Destin, Florida. In her 2023 memoir, Spears revealed that she had an abortion in late 2000 while dating Timberlake after he said they were not prepared for parenthood. Spears called the abortion \"one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.\"\n2001\u20132002: \"Britney\" and \"Crossroads\".\nIn January 2001, Spears hosted the 28th Annual American Music Awards, starred at Rock in Rio alongside NSYNC, and performed as a special guest in the Super Bowl XXXV halftime show headlined by Aerosmith and NSYNC. In February 2001, she signed a $7\u20138 million promotional deal with Pepsi, and released another book co-written with her mother, \"A Mother's Gift\". Her third studio album, \"Britney\", was released in November 2001, with a funkier sound inspired by hip hop artists such as Jay-Z and the Neptunes. \"Britney\" debuted at number one in the \"Billboard\" 200 and reached top five positions in Australia, the United Kingdom, and mainland Europe, and has sold 10 million copies worldwide.\nStephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic called \"Britney\" \"the record where she strives to deepen her persona, making it more adult while still recognizably Britney.\u00a0... It does sound like the work of a star who has now found and refined her voice, resulting in her best record yet.\" It was nominated for the Grammy awards for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for \"Overprotected\", and in 2007 it was named one of the best albums of the preceding 25 years by \"Entertainment Weekly\". The lead single, \"I'm a Slave 4 U\", became a top-ten hit in several countries.\nSpears' performance of the single at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards featured a caged tiger (wrangled by Bhagavan Antle) and a large albino python draped over her shoulders. It was harshly received by animal rights organization PETA, who claimed the animals were mistreated and scrapped plans for an anti-fur billboard that was to feature Spears. Jocelyn Vena of MTV News summarized Spears' performance at the ceremony, saying, \"draping herself in a white python and slithering around a steamy garden setting \u2013 surrounded by dancers in zebra and tiger outfits \u2013 Spears created one of the most striking visuals in the 27-year history of the show.\"\nTo support the album, Spears embarked on the Dream Within a Dream Tour. The show was critically praised for its technical innovations, the \"pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance\" being a water screen that pumped two tons of water into the stage. The tour grossed $53.3 million, becoming the second highest-grossing tour of 2002 by a female artist, behind Cher's . Her career success was highlighted by \"Forbes\" in 2002, as Spears was ranked the world's most powerful celebrity. Spears also landed her first starring role in \"Crossroads\", released in February 2002. Although the film was largely panned, critics praised Spears' acting. The film was a box office success, grossing over $61.1 million worldwide on a $12 million budget.\nIn June 2002, Spears opened her first restaurant, Nyla, in New York City, but terminated her relationship in November due to mismanagement and \"management's failure to keep her fully apprised\". In July 2002, Spears announced she would take a six-month break from her career; however, she went back into the studio in November to record her new album. Spears' relationship with Justin Timberlake ended after three years. In November 2002, Timberlake released the song \"Cry Me a River\" as the second single from his solo debut album. The music video featured a Spears look-alike and fueled the rumors that she had been engaging in an affair, fueled by further rumors of possible relationships involving Timberlake's choreographer Wade Robson and Limp Bizkit's frontman Fred Durst. Spears had initially denied the allegations of a possible affair involving Durst, despite the two being spotted together on multiple occasions; even claiming the two had a friendly connection. In 2023, she admitted to engaging in an affair with Robson. As a response, Spears wrote the ballad \"Everytime\" with her backing vocalist and friend Annet Artani.\n2003\u20132005: \"In the Zone\" and first two marriages.\nIn August 2003, Spears opened the MTV Video Music Awards with Christina Aguilera, performing \"Like a Virgin\". Halfway through they were joined by Madonna, whom they both kissed. The incident was highly publicized. In 2008, MTV listed the performance as the number-one opening moment in the history of MTV Video Music Awards, while \"Blender\" cited it as one of the 25 sexiest music moments on television history.\nSpears released her fourth studio album, \"In the Zone\", in November 2003. She assumed more creative control by writing and co-producing most of the material. \"Vibe\" called it \"a supremely confident dance record that also illustrates Spears' development as a songwriter\". NPR named it one of the most important recordings of the decade, writing that \"the decade's history of impeccably crafted pop is written on her body of work\". \"In the Zone\" sold over 609,000 copies during its first week of availability in the United States, debuting at the top of the charts, making Spears the first female artist in the SoundScan era to have her first four studio albums to debut at number one. It also debuted at the top of the charts in France and the top ten in Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands. The album produced four singles: \"Me Against the Music\", a collaboration with Madonna; \"Toxic\"\u2014which won Spears her first Grammy for Best Dance Recording; \"Everytime\", and \"Outrageous\".\nIn January 2004, Spears married her childhood friend <templatestyles src=\"Template:Visible anchor/styles.css\" />Jason Allen Alexander at A Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada. The marriage was annulled 55 hours later, following a petition to the court that stated that Spears \"lacked understanding of her actions\".\nIn March 2004, Spears embarked on the Onyx Hotel Tour in support of \"In the Zone\". The tour was canceled in June 2004, when she fell and injured her left knee during the music video shoot for \"Outrageous\". She underwent arthroscopic surgery and wore a thigh brace for six weeks, followed by eight to twelve weeks of rehabilitation. That year, Spears became involved in the Kabbalah Centre through her friendship with Madonna.\nIn July 2004, Spears became engaged to dancer Kevin Federline, whom she had met three months earlier. The romance was the subject of intense media attention, since Federline had recently broken up with actress Shar Jackson, who was still pregnant with their second child at the time. The stages of their relationship were chronicled in Spears' first reality show \"\", which premiered on May 17, 2005, on UPN. Spears later referred to the show in a 2013 interview as \"probably the worst thing I've done in my career\". They held a wedding ceremony on September 18, 2004, but were not legally married until three weeks later on October 6 due to a delay finalizing the couple's prenuptial agreement.\nShortly after, she released her first perfume, Curious, with Elizabeth Arden, which broke the company's first-week gross for a perfume. In October 2004, Spears took a career break to start a family. ', her first greatest hits compilation album, was released in November 2004. Spears' cover version of Bobby Brown's \"My Prerogative\" was released as the lead single from the album, reaching the top of the charts in Finland, Ireland, Italy, and Norway. The second single, \"Do Somethin'\", was a top ten hit in Australia, the United Kingdom, and other countries of mainland Europe. In August 2005, Spears released \"Someday (I Will Understand)\", which was dedicated to her first child, a son named Sean Preston, who was born the following month. In November 2005, she released her first remix compilation, ', which consists of 11 remixes.\n2006\u20132007: Personal struggles and \"Blackout\".\nIn February 2006, pictures surfaced of Spears driving with her son, Sean, on her lap instead of in a car seat. Child advocates were horrified by the photos of her holding the wheel with one hand and Sean with the other. Spears claimed that the situation happened because of a frightening encounter with paparazzi, and that it was a mistake on her part. The following month, she guest-starred on the \"Will & Grace\" episode \"Buy, Buy Baby\" as closeted lesbian Amber-Louise. She announced she no longer studied Kabbalah in May 2006, explaining, \"my baby is my religion\". Spears posed nude for the August 2006 cover of \"Harper's Bazaar\"; the photograph was compared to Demi Moore's August 1991 \"Vanity Fair\" cover. In September 2006, she gave birth to her second son, Jayden James. In November 2006, Spears filed for divorce from Federline, citing irreconcilable differences. Their divorce was finalized in July 2007, when the two reached a global settlement and agreed to share joint custody of their sons.\nSpears' maternal aunt Sandra Bridges Covington, with whom she had been very close, died of ovarian cancer in January 2007. In February, Spears stayed in a drug rehabilitation facility in Antigua for less than a day. The following night, she shaved her head with electric clippers at a hair salon in Tarzana, Los Angeles. She admitted herself to other treatment facilities during the following weeks. In May 2007, she produced a series of promotional concerts at House of Blues venues, titled The M+M's Tour. In October 2007, Spears lost physical custody of her sons to Federline. The reasons of the court ruling were not revealed to the public. Spears was also sued by Louis Vuitton over her 2005 music video \"Do Somethin'\" for upholstering her Hummer interior in counterfeit Louis Vuitton cherry blossom fabric, which resulted in the video being banned on European TV stations.\nIn October 2007, Spears released her fifth studio album, \"Blackout\". The album debuted atop the charts in Canada and Ireland, at number two in the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200, France, Japan, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, and the top ten in Australia, South Korea, New Zealand, and many European nations. In the United States, it was Spears' first album not to debut at number one, although, she did become the only female artist to have her first five studio albums debut at the two top slots of the chart. The album received positive reviews from critics and had sold 3.1 million copies worldwide by the end of 2008. \"Blackout\" won Album of the Year at the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards and was listed as the fifth Best Pop Album of the Decade by \"The Times\".\nSpears performed the lead single, \"Gimme More\", at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards. The performance was widely panned by critics. Despite the criticism, the single enjoyed worldwide success, peaking at number one in Canada and within the top ten in almost every country it charted. The second single, \"Piece of Me\", reached the top of the charts in Ireland and reached the top five in Australia, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The third single, \"Break the Ice\", was released the following year, and respectively reached numbers seven and nine in Ireland and Canada. In December 2007, Spears began a relationship with paparazzo Adnan Ghalib.\n2008\u20132010: Conservatorship and \"Circus\".\nIn January 2008, Spears refused to relinquish custody of her sons to Federline's representatives. She was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after police that had arrived at her house noted she appeared to be under the influence of an unidentified substance. The following day, Spears' visitation rights were suspended at an emergency court hearing, and Federline was given sole physical and legal custody of their sons. She was committed to the psychiatric ward of Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and put on 5150 involuntary psychiatric hold under California state law. The court placed her under a conservatorship led by her father, Jamie Spears, and attorney Andrew Wallet, giving them complete control of her assets. She was released five days later.\nThe following month, Spears guest-starred on the \"How I Met Your Mother\" episode \"Ten Sessions\" as receptionist Abby. She received positive reviews for her performance, as well as bringing the series its highest ratings ever. In July 2008, Spears regained some visitation rights after coming to an agreement with Federline and his counsel. In September 2008, Spears opened the MTV Video Music Awards with a pre-taped comedy sketch with Jonah Hill and an introduction speech. She won Best Female Video, Best Pop Video, and Video of the Year for \"Piece of Me\". A 60-minute introspective documentary, \"\", was produced to chronicle Spears' return to the recording industry. Directed by Phil Griffin, \"For the Record\" was shot in Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and New York City during the third quarter of 2008. The documentary was broadcast on MTV to 5.6 million viewers for the two airings on the premiere night. It was the highest rating in its Sunday night timeslot and in the network's history. \nIn December 2008, Spears' sixth studio album, \"Circus\", was released. It received positive reviews from critics and debuted at number one in Canada, Czech Republic, and the United States, and within the top ten in many European nations. In the United States, Spears became the youngest female artist to have five albums debut at number one, earning a place in \"Guinness World Records\". She also became the only act in the SoundScan era to have four albums debut with 500,000 or more copies sold. The album was one of the fastest-selling albums of the year, and has sold 4 million copies worldwide. Its lead single, \"Womanizer\", became Spears' first chart-topper on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 since \"...Baby One More Time\". The single also topped the charts in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Norway, and Sweden. It was also nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording.\nIn January 2009, Spears and her father obtained a restraining order against her former manager Sam Lutfi, ex-boyfriend Adnan Ghalib, and attorney Jon Eardley, all of whom had been accused of conspiring to gain control of Spears' affairs. Spears embarked on The Circus Starring Britney Spears tour in March 2009. With a gross of U.S. $131.8 million, it became the fifth highest-grossing tour of the year. In November 2009, Spears released her second greatest hits album, \"The Singles Collection\". The album's lead and only single, \"3\", became her third number-one single in the U.S.\nIn May 2010, Spears' representatives confirmed she was dating her agent, Jason Trawick, and that they had decided to end their professional relationship to focus on their personal relationship. Spears designed a limited edition clothing line for Candie's, which was released in stores in July 2010. In September 2010, she made a cameo appearance on a Spears-themed tribute episode of the television series \"Glee\", titled \"Britney/Brittany\"; the episode drew the highest Nielsen rating\u00a0\u2013 up to that point in the series's run\u00a0\u2013 in the 18\u201349 demographic.\n2011\u20132012: \"Femme Fatale\" and \"The X Factor\".\nIn March 2011, Spears released her seventh studio album, \"Femme Fatale\". The album peaked at number one in the United States, Canada, and Australia, and within the top ten on nearly every other chart. Its peak in the United States tied Spears with Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson for the third-most number ones among women. \"Femme Fatale\" has been certified platinum by the RIAA and as of February 2014, it had sold 2.4 million copies worldwide.\nThe album's lead single, \"Hold It Against Me\", debuted atop the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, becoming Spears' fourth number-one single on the chart and making her the second artist in history to have two consecutive singles debut at number one, after Mariah Carey. The second single, \"Till the World Ends\", peaked at number three on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 in May, while the third single, \"I Wanna Go\", reached number seven in August. \"Femme Fatale\" became Spears' first album in which three of its songs reached the top ten of the chart. The fourth and final single \"Criminal\" was released in September 2011. The music video sparked controversy when British politicians criticized Spears for using replica guns while filming the video in a London area that had been badly affected by the 2011 England riots. Spears' management briefly responded, stating, \"The video is a fantasy story featuring Britney's boyfriend, Jason Trawick, which literally plays out the lyrics of a song written three years before the riots ever happened.\" In April 2011, Spears appeared in a remix of Rihanna's song \"S&M\". It reached number one in the US later that month, giving Spears her fifth number one on the chart. On \"Billboard\"'s 2011 Year-End list, Spears was ranked number fourteen on the Artists of the Year, thirty-two on \"Billboard\" 200 artists, and ten on \"Billboard\" Hot 100 artists. Spears co-wrote \"Whiplash\", a song from the album \"When the Sun Goes Down\" (2011) by Selena Gomez & the Scene.\nIn June 2011, Spears embarked on her Femme Fatale Tour. The first ten dates of the tour grossed $6.2 million, landing the fifty-fifth spot on \"Pollstar\"'s Top 100 North American Tours list for the half-way point of the year. The tour ended on December 10, 2011, in Puerto Rico, after 79 performances. A DVD of the tour was released in November 2011. In August 2011, Spears received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards. The next month, she released her second remix album, \"\". In December 2011, Spears became engaged to her long-time boyfriend Jason Trawick, who had formerly been her agent. Trawick was legally granted a role as co-conservator, alongside her father, in April 2012.\nIn May 2012, Spears was hired to replace Paula Abdul as a judge for the second season of the USA show of \"The X Factor\", joining Simon Cowell, L.A. Reid, and fellow new judge Demi Lovato, who replaced Nicole Scherzinger. With a reported salary of $15 million, she became the highest-paid judge on a singing competition series in television history. However, Katy Perry broke her record in 2018 after Perry was signed for a $25-million salary to serve as a judge on ABC's revival of \"American Idol\". Spears mentored the Teens category; her final act, Carly Rose Sonenclar, was named the runner-up of the season. Spears did not return for the show's third season and was replaced by Paulina Rubio.\nSpears appeared on the song \"Scream & Shout\" with will.i.am, which was released as the third single from his fourth studio album, \"#willpower\" (2013). The song later became Spears' sixth number-one single on the UK Singles Chart and peaked at number three on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. \"Scream & Shout\" was among the best-selling songs of 2012 and 2013 with denoting sales of over 8.1 million worldwide, the accompanying music video was the third most-viewed video in 2013 on Vevo despite the video being released in 2012. In December 2012, \"Forbes\" named her music's top-earning woman of 2012, with estimated earnings of $58 million.\n2013\u20132015: \"Britney Jean\" and Britney: Piece of Me.\nSpears began work on her eighth studio album, \"Britney Jean\", in December 2012, and enlisted will.i.am as its executive producer in May 2013. In January 2013, Spears and Jason Trawick ended their engagement. Trawick was also removed as Spears' co-conservator, restoring her father as the sole conservator. Following the breakup, she began dating David Lucado in March; the couple split in August 2014. During the production of \"Britney Jean\", Spears recorded the song \"Ooh La La\" for the soundtrack of \"The Smurfs 2\", which was released in June 2013.\nOn September 17, 2013, she appeared on \"Good Morning America\" to announce her two-year concert residency at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, titled . It began on December 27, 2013, and included a total of 100 shows throughout 2014 and 2015. During the same appearance, Spears announced that \"Britney Jean\" would be released on December 3, 2013, in the United States. It was released through RCA Records due to the disbandment of Jive Records in 2011, which had formed the joint RCA/Jive Label Group (initially known as BMG Label Group) between 2007 and 2011.\n\"Britney Jean\" became Spears' final project under her original recording contract with Jive, which had guaranteed the release of eight studio albums. The record received a low amount of promotion and had little commercial impact, reportedly due to time conflicts involving preparations for Britney: Piece of Me. Upon its release, the record debuted at number four on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200 with first-week sales of 107,000 copies, becoming her lowest-peaking and lowest-selling album in the United States. \"Britney Jean\" debuted at number 34 on the UK Albums Chart, selling 12,959 copies in its first week. In doing so, it became Spears' lowest-charting and lowest-selling album in the country.\n\"Work Bitch\" was released as the lead single from \"Britney Jean\" in September 2013. It debuted and peaked at number 12 on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100 marking Spears' 31st entry on the chart and the fifth highest debut of her career on the chart, and her seventh in the top 20. It also marked Spears' 19th top 20 entry and overall her 23rd top 40 single. The song marked Spears' highest sales debut since her 2011 number-one single \"Hold It Against Me\". \"Work Bitch\" debuted and peaked at number seven on the UK Singles Chart. The song also peaked within the top ten of the charts in Brazil, Canada, France, Italy, Mexico, and Spain.\nThe second single, \"Perfume\", premiered in November 2013. It debuted and peaked at number 76 on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100. In October 2013, she was featured as a guest vocalist on the song \"SMS (Bangerz)\" by Miley Cyrus, from the latter's fourth studio album, \"Bangerz\" (2013). On January 8, 2014, Spears won Favorite Pop Artist at the 40th People's Choice Awards at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. In August 2014, Spears confirmed she had renewed her contract with RCA and that she was writing and recording new music for her next album.\nSpears announced via Twitter in August 2014 that she would be releasing an intimate apparel line called \"The Intimate Britney Spears\". It was available to be purchased beginning on September 9, 2014, in the United States and Canada through Spears' Intimate Collection website. It was later available on September 25 for purchase in Europe. The company now ships to over 200 countries including Australia and New Zealand. On September 25, 2014, Spears confirmed on \"Good Morning Britain\" that she extended her contract to perform her Britney: Piece of Me concert residency at Planet Hollywood Las Vegas for two additional years. Spears began dating television producer Charlie Ebersol in October 2014. The pair were split in June 2015.\nOn May 14, 2015, Spears released a single, \"Pretty Girls\", with Iggy Azalea. It reached number 29 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and charted moderately in international territories. Spears and Azalea performed the track live at the 2015 \"Billboard\" Music Awards from The AXIS, the home of Spears' residency, to positive critical response. \"Entertainment Weekly\" praised the performance, noting \"Spears gave one of her most energetic televised performances in years.\"\nOn June 16, 2015, Giorgio Moroder released the album \"D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu\", which featured Spears on \"Tom's Diner\". The song was released as the fourth single from the album on October 9, 2015. In an interview, Moroder praised Spears' vocals and said she \"sounds so good that you would hardly recognize her\". At the 2015 Teen Choice Awards, Spears received the Candie's Style Icon Award, her ninth Teen Choice Award. In November 2015, Spears guest-starred as a fictionalized version of herself on the CW series \"Jane the Virgin\". On the show, she danced to \"Toxic\" with Gina Rodriguez's character.\n2016\u20132018: \"Glory\", continued residency, and the Piece of Me Tour.\nIn November 2015, Spears confirmed via social media that she had begun recording her ninth studio album. On March 1, 2016, \"V\" announced that Spears would appear on the cover of its 100th issue, dated March 8, 2016, in addition to revealing three different covers shot by photographer Mario Testino for the milestone publication. The \"V\" editor-in-chief, Stephen Gan, said Spears was selected because of her status as an icon in the industry, and asked: \"Who in our world did not grow up listening to her music?\" In May 2016, Spears launched a casual role-play gaming application, \"\". The app, created by Glu Mobile, was made available through both iOS and Google Play.\nOn May 22, 2016, Spears performed a medley of her past singles at the 2016 \"Billboard\" Music Awards. In addition to opening the show, Spears was honored with the \"Billboard\" Millennium Award. On July 15, 2016, Spears released the lead single, \"Make Me\", from her ninth studio album, featuring guest vocals from American rapper G-Eazy. The album, \"Glory\", was formally released on August 26, 2016. On August 16, 2016, MTV and Spears announced that she would perform at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards. The performance marked Spears' first time returning to the VMA stage after her widely panned performance of \"Gimme More\" at the 2007 show nine years earlier. Along with \"Make Me\", Spears and G-Eazy also performed the latter's hit song \"Me, Myself & I\".\nSpears appeared on the cover of \"Marie Claire\" UK for the October 2016 issue. In the publication, Spears revealed that she had suffered from crippling anxiety in the past, and that motherhood played a major role in helping her overcome it. \"My boys don't care if everything isn't perfect. They don't judge me\", Spears said in the issue. In November 2016, during an interview with Las Vegas Blog, Spears confirmed she had already begun work on her next album, stating: \"I'm not sure what I want the next album to sound like.\u00a0... I just know that I'm excited to get into the studio again and actually have already been back recording.\" In the same month, she released a remix version of \"Slumber Party\" as the second single from \"Glory\", featuring Tinashe.\nShe began dating \"Slumber Party\"'s music video co-star Sam Asghari after the two met on set. In January 2017, Spears received four wins out of four nominations at the 43rd People's Choice Awards, including Favorite Pop Artist, Female Artist, Social Media Celebrity, as well as Comedic Collaboration for a skit with Ellen DeGeneres for \"The Ellen DeGeneres Show\". In March 2017, Spears announced that her residency concert would be performed abroad as a world tour, , with dates in select Asian cities. In April 2017, the Israeli Labor Party announced that it would reschedule its July primary election to avoid conflict with Spears' sold-out Tel Aviv concert, citing traffic, and security concerns.\nSpears' manager Larry Rudolph also announced the residency would not be extended following her contract expiration with Caesars Entertainment at the end of 2017. On April 29, 2017, Spears became the first recipient of the Icon Award at the 2017 Radio Disney Music Awards. On November 4, 2017, Spears attended the grand opening of the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation Britney Spears Campus in Las Vegas. Later that month, \"Forbes\" announced that Spears was the 8th highest earning female musician, earning $34 million in 2017. On December 31, 2017, Spears performed the final show of Britney: Piece of Me. The final performance reportedly brought in $1.172 million, setting a new box office record for a single show in Las Vegas, and breaking the record previously held by Jennifer Lopez. Performances of \"Toxic\" and \"Work Bitch\" were recorded on earlier dates and aired on ABC's \"Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve\" to a record audience of 25.6 million.\nIn January 2018, Spears released her 24th perfume with Elizabeth Arden, Sunset Fantasy, and announced the Piece of Me Tour which took place in July 2018 in North America and Europe. Tickets were sold out within minutes for major cities, and additional dates were added to meet the demand. Pitbull was the supporting act for the European leg. The tour ranked at 86 and 30 on \"Pollstar\"'s 2018 Year-End Top 100 Tours chart both in North America and worldwide, respectively. In total, the tour grossed $54.3 million with 260,531 tickets sold and was the sixth highest-grossing female tour of 2018, and was the United Kingdom's second best-selling female tour of 2018.\nOn March 20, 2018, Spears was announced as part of a campaign for French luxury fashion house Kenzo. The company said it aimed to shake up the 'jungle' world of fashion with Spears' 'La Collection Memento No. 2' campaign. On April 12, 2018, Spears was honored with the 2018 GLAAD Vanguard Award at the GLAAD Media Awards for her role in \"accelerating acceptance for the LGBTQ community\". On April 27, 2018, Epic Rights announced a new partnership with Spears to debut her own fashion line in 2019, which would include clothing, fitness apparel, accessories, and electronics.\nIn July 2018, Spears released her first unisex fragrance, Prerogative. On October 18, 2018, Spears announced her second Las Vegas residency show, Britney: Domination, which was set to launch at Park MGM's Park Theatre on February 13, 2019. Spears was slated to make $507,000 per show, which would have made her the highest paid act on the Las Vegas Strip. On October 21, 2018, Spears performed at the Formula One Grand Prix in Austin, the final performance of her Piece of Me Tour.\n2019\u20132021: Conservatorship dispute, #FreeBritney, and abuse allegations.\nOn January 4, 2019, Spears announced an indefinite hiatus and the cancellation of her Las Vegas residency after her father, Jamie, suffered a near-fatal colon rupture. In March 2019, Andrew Wallet resigned as co-conservator of her estate after 11 years. Spears entered a psychiatric facility amidst stress from her father's illness that same month. The following month, a fan podcast, \"Britney's Gram\", released a voicemail message from a source who claimed to be a former member of Spears' legal team. They alleged that Jamie had canceled the residency due to Spears' refusal to take her medication, that he had been holding her in the facility against her will since January 2019 after she violated a no-driving rule, and that her conservatorship was supposed to have ended in 2009. The allegations gave rise to a movement to terminate the conservatorship, #FreeBritney, which received support from celebrities including singers Cher, Paris Hilton, and Miley Cyrus, and the nonprofit organization American Civil Liberties Union. On April 22, 2019, fans protested outside the West Hollywood City Hall and demanded Spears' release. Spears said \"all [was] well\" two days later and left the facility later that month.\nIn a May 2019 hearing, Judge Brenda Penny ordered a professional evaluation of the conservatorship. In September, Spears' ex-husband Federline obtained a restraining order against Britney's father, Jamie, following an alleged physical altercation between Jamie and one of her sons. Spears' longtime care manager, Jodi Montgomery, temporarily replaced Jamie as her conservator that same month, which also saw a hearing where no decisions about the arrangement were reached. An interactive pop-up museum dedicated to Spears, dubbed \"The Zone\", opened in Los Angeles in February 2020, though it was later suspended in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. She released \"Glory\"'s Japanese-exclusive bonus track, \"Mood Ring\" as a single, and debuted a new cover of the album to streaming and digital platforms worldwide in May 2020. In August, Jamie called the #FreeBritney movement \"a joke\" and its organizers \"conspiracy theorists\".\nOn August 17, 2020, Spears' court-appointed lawyer, Samuel D. Ingham III, submitted a court filing that documented Spears' desire to have her conservatorship altered to reflect her wishes as well as lifestyle, to instate Montgomery as her permanent conservator, and to replace Jamie with a fiduciary as conservator of her estate. Four days later, Penny extended the established arrangement until February 2021. In November 2020, Penny approved Bessemer Trust as co-conservator of Spears' estate alongside Jamie. The following month, Spears released a new deluxe edition of \"Glory\", which includes \"Mood Ring\" and new songs \"Swimming in the Stars\" and \"Matches\".\nA documentary about Spears' career and conservatorship, \"Framing Britney Spears\", premiered on FX in February 2021. Spears later revealed that she had seen parts of the documentary, stating that she felt humiliated by the perception of her that was presented and that she \"cried for two weeks\" following the initial broadcast. The following month, Ingham filed a petition to permanently replace Jamie with Montgomery as the conservator of Spears' person, citing a 2014 order that determined that Spears did not have the capacity to consent to medical treatment of any form.\nOn June 22, 2021, shortly before Spears was set to speak to the court, \"The New York Times\" obtained confidential court documents stating that Spears had pushed for years to end her conservatorship. Spears spoke to the court on June 23, calling the conservatorship \"abusive\". She said she had lied by \"telling the whole world I'm OK and I'm happy\", and that she was traumatized and angry. The court statement received widespread media coverage and generated over 1 million shares on Twitter, over 500,000 messages using the tag #FreeBritney, and more than 150,000 messages with a new hashtag referencing the court appearance, #BritneySpeaks.\nOn July 1, Bessemer Trust asked the judge to allow them to withdraw from the conservatorship, saying that they had been misled and had entered into the arrangement on the understanding that the conservatorship was voluntary. The same day, senators Elizabeth Warren and Bob Casey Jr. called on federal agencies to increase oversight of the country's conservatorship systems. Spears' manager of 25 years, Larry Rudolph, resigned on July 6 due to her \"intention to officially retire\" and on that same day, it was reported that Ingham planned to file documents to the court asking to be dismissed. In a July 14 hearing, Judge Penny approved the resignations of Bessemer Trust and Ingham. The court also approved of Spears' request to hire attorney Mathew S. Rosengart to represent her. Rosengart informed the court that he would be working to terminate the conservatorship. Later that day, Spears publicly endorsed the #FreeBritney movement for the first time, using the hashtag in a caption on an Instagram post. She mentioned feeling \"blessed\" after earning \"real representation\", referring to Judge Penny's decision to allow her to choose her own counsel.\nOn July 26, Rosengart filed a petition seeking to remove Jamie as conservator of Spears' estate and to replace him with Jason Rubin, a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) at Certified Strategies Inc. in Woodland Hills, California. On August 12, Jamie agreed to step down as conservator at some future date, with his lawyers stating that he wanted \"an orderly transition to a new conservator\". On September 7, Jamie filed a petition to end the conservatorship. Five days later, Spears announced her engagement to her longtime boyfriend, Sam Asghari, through an Instagram post. On September 29, Judge Penny suspended Jamie as conservator of Spears' estate, with accountant John Zabel replacing him on a temporary basis. On November 12, Judge Penny terminated the conservatorship.\n2022\u2013present: Third marriage, \"The Woman in Me\", and retirement from singing.\nIn April 2022, she announced her pregnancy with Asghari's child, which ended in a miscarriage the following month. The couple married on June 9 at her home in Thousand Oaks, Los Angeles. None of Spears' immediate family (including her parents, sister, and brother) were invited; her two sons did not attend. Spears' first husband, Jason Alexander, attempted to crash the wedding by breaking into her home, armed with a knife, but was arrested. Spears had a three-year restraining order against him. On August 26, Spears and English musician Elton John released the duet \"Hold Me Closer\", a remake of John's 1972 single \"Tiny Dancer\". It was Spears' first musical release since the termination of her conservatorship. \"Hold Me Closer\" debuted at number six on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100, becoming her 14th top-ten single and her highest-charting song in the chart since \"Scream & Shout\" (2012). It debuted at number three on the UK Singles Chart, earning Spears her 24th top-ten.\nSince the termination of her conservatorship, Spears' personal life, social media presence, and overall well-being have been subject to renewed media interest and fan speculation, giving rise to conspiracy theories. On January 24, 2023, deputies from the Ventura County Sheriff's Office performed a welfare check at Spears' residence after receiving several calls from fans who were concerned after she deleted her Instagram account. A spokesperson for the Sheriff's Department stated that Spears \"was safe and in no danger\". Spears addressed the incident on her Twitter account, asking fans to respect her privacy. Spears and the rapper will.i.am released their single, \"Mind Your Business\", on July 21, 2023. On August 16, it was announced Spears and Asghari separated after 14 months of marriage. On May 1, 2024, they reached a divorce settlement. The following day, the judge signed off on the settlement and the couple were divorced on December 2, 2024. In September 2023, an additional welfare check was initiated when Spears posted an Instagram video of herself dancing with knives. Her security team assured the attending officer that there was no immediate threat to her safety, and the officer departed. Spears also clarified that the knives were not real.\nIn February 2022, Spears signed a $15 million book deal for a memoir in one of the biggest book deals of all time. The memoir, \"The Woman in Me,\" was released on October 24, 2023. It details her rise to fame, public media events, her conservatorship, and her newfound freedom. In the United States, it sold 1.1 million copies, while worldwide it sold 2.4 million copies in print sales during its first week of release.\nIn January 2024, reports circulated that Charli XCX and Julia Michaels had been asked to write songs for Spears, and \"Rolling Stone\" reported that \"management and A&R are trying to get her excited for the music\". Spears denied the reports, saying she would never return to the music industry. However, she also said that she had written more than 20 songs for other artists in the previous two years. In May 2024, Charli XCX confirmed in an interview that she was indeed asked to write for Spears, for which she traveled to Malibu, but that she did not know if Spears was a part of the process explaining that \"the team were present... But she didn't record it. She obviously didn't.\"\nArtistry.\nInfluences.\nSpears has cited Madonna, Janet Jackson, and Whitney Houston as major influences, her \"three favorite artists\" as a child, whom she would \"sing along to\u00a0... day and night in [her] living room\"; Houston's \"I Have Nothing\" was the song she auditioned to that landed her record deal with Jive Records. Spears also named Mariah Carey as \"one of the main reasons I started singing\". Throughout her career, Spears has drawn frequent comparisons to Madonna and Jackson in particular, in terms of vocals, choreography, and stage presence. According to Spears: \"I know when I was younger, I looked up to people\u00a0... like, you know, Janet Jackson and Madonna. And they were major inspirations for me. But I also had my own identity and I knew who I was.\"\nIn the 2002 book \"Madonnastyle\" by Carol Clerk, she is quoted saying: \"I have been a huge fan of Madonna since I was a little girl. She's the person that I've really looked up to. I would really, really like to be a legend like Madonna.\" Spears cited \"That's the Way Love Goes\" as the inspiration for her song \"Touch of My Hand\" from her album \"In the Zone\", saying \"I like to compare it to 'That's the Way Love Goes,' kind of a Janet Jackson thing.\" She also said her song \"Just Luv Me\" from her \"Glory\" album also reminded her of \"That's the Way Love Goes\".\nAfter meeting Spears face to face, Janet Jackson stated: \"she said to me, 'I'm such a big fan; I really admire you.' That's so flattering. Everyone gets inspiration from some place. And it's awesome to see someone else coming up who's dancing and singing, and seeing how all these kids relate to her. A lot of people put it down, but what she does is a positive thing.\" Madonna said of Spears in the documentary \"\": \"I admire her talent as an artist\u00a0... There are aspects about her that I recognize in myself when I first started out in my career\". Spears has also named Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Sheryl Crow, Otis Redding, Shania Twain, Brandy, Beyonc\u00e9, Natalie Imbruglia, Cher, and Prince as inspirations, and younger artists such as Selena Gomez and Ariana Grande.\nMusical style.\nSpears is described as a pop artist and generally explores the genre in the form of Following her debut, she was credited with influencing the revival of teen pop in the late 1990s. Rob Sheffield of \"Rolling Stone\" wrote: \"Spears carries on the classic archetype of the rock & roll teen queen, the dungaree doll, the angel baby who just has to make a scene.\" In a review of \"...Baby One More Time\", Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic described her music as a \"blend of infectious, rap-inflected dance-pop and smooth balladry\". \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" saw Spears working with several R&B producers to create \"a combination of bubblegum, urban soul, and raga\". Her third studio album, \"Britney\", derived from the teen pop niche \"[r]hythmically and melodically\", but was described as \"sharper, tougher than what came before\", incorporating genres such as R&B, disco, and funk.\nSpears has explored and heavily incorporated the genres of electropop and dance music in her records, as well as influences of urban and hip hop, which are most present on \"In the Zone\" and \"Blackout\". \"In the Zone\" also experiments with Euro trance, reggae, and Middle Eastern music. \"Femme Fatale\" and \"Britney Jean\" were also heavily influenced by electronic music genres. Spears' ninth studio album, \"Glory\", is more eclectic and experimental than her previous released work. She commented that it \"took a lot of time\u00a0... it's really different\u00a0... there are like two or three songs that go in the direction of more urban that I've wanted to do for a long time now, and I just haven't really done that.\"\n\"...Baby One More Time\" and \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" address themes such as love and relationships from a teenager's point of view. Following the massive commercial success of her first two studio albums, Spears' team and producers wanted to maintain the formula that took her to the top of the charts. Spears, however, was no longer satisfied with the sound and themes covered on her records. She co-wrote five songs and choose each track's producer on her third studio album, \"Britney\", which lyrics address the subjects of reaching adulthood, sexuality, and self-discovery. Sex, dancing, freedom, and love continued to be Spears' music main subjects on her subsequent albums. Her fifth studio effort, \"Blackout\", also addresses issues such as fame and media scrutiny, including on the song \"Piece of Me\".\nSpears' music has also been noted for some catchphrases. The opening in her debut single \"...Baby One More Time\", \"Oh, baby baby\" is considered to be one of her signature lines and has been parodied in the media by various artists such as Nicole Scherzinger and Ariana Grande. It has been used in variating forms throughout her music, such as simply, \"baby\" and \"oh baby\", as well as the \"Blackout\" track, \"Ooh Ooh Baby\". On the initial development of \"...Baby One More Time\", Barry Weiss noted Spears' inception of the catchphrase from her strange ad-libbing during the recording of the song. He commented further, \"We thought it was really weird at first. It was strange. It was not the way Max wrote it. But it worked! We thought it could be a really good opening salvo for her.\" The opening line in \"Gimme More\", \"It's Britney, bitch\" has become another signature phrase. An early review of \"Blackout\" suggested the phrase was \"simply laughable\". Amy Roberts of \"Bustle\" called it \"an indelible cultural turning point, transforming a frenetic, floundering moment in the superstar's career to one of strength and empowerment\".\nVoice.\nSpears is a soprano. Other sources state that she possesses a contralto vocal range. Prior to her breakthrough success, she is described as having sung \"much deeper than her highly recognizable trademark voice of today\", with Eric Foster White, who worked with Spears on her debut album, \"...Baby One More Time\", being cited as \"[shaping] her voice over the course of a month\" upon being signed to Jive Records \"to where it is today\u2014distinctively, unmistakably Britney\". Rami Yacoub, who co-produced Spears' debut album with lyricist Max Martin, commented, \"I know from Denniz Pop and Max's previous productions, when we do songs, there's kind of a nasal thing. With N' Sync and the Backstreet Boys, we had to push for that mid-nasal voice. When Britney did that, she got this kind of raspy, sexy voice.\"\nGuy Blackman of \"The Age\" wrote that \"[t]he thing about Spears, though, is that her biggest songs, no matter how committee-created or impossibly polished, have always been convincing because of her delivery, her commitment and her presence.\u00a0... Spears expresses perfectly the conflicting urges of adolescence, the tension between chastity and sexual experience, between hedonism and responsibility, between confidence and vulnerability.\" Producer William Orbit, who worked with Spears on her album \"Britney Jean\", stated regarding her vocals: \"[Britney] didn't get so big just because [she] put on great shows; [she] got to be that way because [her voice is] unique: you hear two words and you know who is singing\".\nSpears has also been criticized for her reliance on Auto-Tune and her vocals being \"over-processed\" on records. Erlewine criticized Spears' singing abilities in a review of her \"Blackout\" album, stating: \"Never the greatest vocalist, her thin squawk could be dismissed early in her career as an adolescent learning the ropes, but nearly a decade later her singing hasn't gotten any better, even if the studio tools to masquerade her weaknesses have.\" Joan Anderman of \"The Boston Globe\" remarked that \"Spears sounds robotic, nearly inhuman, on her records, so processed is her voice by digital pitch-shifters and synthesizers.\"\nKayla Upadhyaya of \"The Michigan Daily\" has provided a different point of view, stating: \"Auto-tuned and over-processed vocals define [Spears]'s voice as an artist, and in her music, auto-tune isn't so much a gimmick as it is an instrument used to highlight, contort and make a statement.\" Adam Markovitz of \"Entertainment Weekly\" opines that \"Spears is no technical singer, that's for sure. But backed by Martin and Dr. Luke's wall of sound, her vocals melt into a mix of babytalk coo and coital panting that is, in its own overprocessed way, just as iconic and propulsive as Michael Jackson's yips or Eminem's snarls.\"\nStage performances and videos.\nSpears is known for her stage performances, particularly the elaborate dance routines which incorporate \"belly-dancing and tempered erotic moves\" that are credited with influencing \"dance-heavy acts\" such as Danity Kane and the Pussycat Dolls. \"Rolling Stone\" readers voted Spears their second-favorite dancing musician. Spears is described as being much more shy than her stage persona suggests. She said that performing is \"a boost to [her] confidence. It's like an alter-ego type thing. Something clicks and I go and turn into this different person. I think it's kind of a gift to be able to do that.\" Her 2000, 2001, and 2003 MTV Video Music Awards performances were lauded, while her 2007 presentation was widely panned by critics, as she \"teetered through her dance steps and mouthed only occasional words\". \"Billboard\" called her 2016 \"comeback\" performance at the show \"an effective, but not entirely glorious, bid to regain pop superstardom\".\nAfter her knee injuries and personal problems, Spears' \"showmanship\" and dance abilities came under criticism. Serge F. Kovaleski of \"The New York Times\" watched her in 2016 and stated: \"Once a fluid, natural dancer, Ms. Spears can appear stiff, even robotic, today, relying on flailing arms and flashy sets.\" \"Las Vegas Sun\"'s Robin Leach seemed more impressed over Spears' efforts on the concert by saying that she delivered a \"flawless performance\" on the residency's opening night.\nIt has been widely reported that Spears lip-syncs during live performances, which often prompts criticism from music critics and concert goers. Some, however, claimed that, although she \"got plenty of digital support\", she \"doesn't merely lip-sync\" during her live shows. In 2016, Sabrina Weiss of Refinery29 referred to her lip-syncing as a \"well-known fact that's not even taboo anymore.\" Noting on the prevalence of lip-syncing, the \"Los Angeles Daily News\" opined: \"In the context of a Britney Spears concert, does it really matter?\u00a0... you [just] go for the somewhat-ridiculous spectacle of it all\". Spears herself has commented on the topic, arguing: \"Because I'm dancing so much, I do have a little bit of playback, but there's a mixture of my voice and the playback.\u00a0... It really pisses me off because I'm busting my ass out there and singing at the same time and nobody ever gives me credit for it\".\nIn 2012, VH1 ranked Spears as the fourth Greatest Woman of the Video Era, while \"Billboard\" ranked her as the eight Greatest Music Video Artist of All Time in 2020, explaining: \"The storylines, the dancing, the \"outfits\". Right from the start, the pop princess established the lengths of her creativity with some of the most memorable videos of the last three decades.\" She has been retroactively noted as the pioneer for her early career videography. She conceptualized the \"iconic Catholic schoolgirl and cheerleader motif\" in the \"...Baby One More Time\" video, rejecting the animation video idea. She also made the \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" video \"dance-centric rather than space-centric as her producers suggested\". She also used her dancer's intuition to help select the beats for each track.\nPublic image.\nUpon launching her music career with \"...Baby One More Time\", Spears was labeled a teen idol, and \"Rolling Stone\" described her as \"the latest model of a classic product: the unneurotic pop star who performs her duties with vaudevillian pluck and spokesmodel charm.\" The April 1999 cover of \"Rolling Stone\" pictured a 17-year-old Spears reclining on a bed, wearing an exposed bra and hot pants while cradling a Teletubby in one arm. The American Family Association (AFA) decried the image as \"a disturbing mix of childhood innocence and adult sexuality\" and called on \"God-loving Americans to boycott stores selling Britney's albums\". Spears addressed the outcry, commenting: \"What's the big deal? I have strong morals.\u00a0... I'd do it again. I thought the pictures were fine. And I was tired of being compared to Debbie Gibson and all of this bubblegum pop all the time.\" Shortly before this, Spears had announced publicly she would remain abstinent until marriage.\nAn early criticism of Spears dismissed her as \"the product of a Swedish songwriting factory that had no real hand in either her music or her persona\". \"Vox\" editor Constance Grady wrote this was perpetuated from the fact that Spears debuted in the late 1990s, when music was dominated by rockism, that prizes \"so-called authenticity and grittiness of rock above all else\". Spears' \"slick, breezy pop was an affront to rockist sensibilities, and claiming that Spears was fake was an easy way to dismiss her.\" Ron Levy for \"Rolling Stone\" noted that \"I have to tell you, if the record company could have created more than one Britney Spears, they would have done it, and they tried!\"\n\"Billboard\" opined that, by the time Spears released her second album, \"Oops!... I Did It Again\", \"There was a shift occurring in both the music and her public image: She was sharper, sexier and singing about more grown-up fare, setting the stage for 2001's \"Britney\", which shed her innocent skin and ushered her into adulthood.\" \"Britney\"'s lead single, \"I'm a Slave 4 U\", and its music video were also credited for distancing her from her previous \"wholesome bubblegum star\" image. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic remarked, \"If 2001's \"Britney\" was a transitional album, capturing Spears at the point when she wasn't a girl and not yet a woman, its 2003 follow-up, \"In the Zone\", is where she has finally completed that journey and turned into Britney, the Adult Woman.\" Erlewine likened Spears to fellow singer Christina Aguilera, explaining that both equated \"maturity with transparent sexuality and the pounding sounds of nightclubs\". Brittany Spanos of \"LA Weekly\" stated that Spears \"set the bar for the 'adulthood' transition teen pop stars often struggle with\".\nSpears' erratic behavior and personal problems during 2006\u20132008 were highly publicized and affected both her career and public image. Erlewine writes that \"each new disaster [was] stripping away any residual sexiness in her public image\". In a 2008 article, \"Rolling Stone\"'s Vanessa Grigoriadis described her much-publicized personal issues as \"the most public downfall of any star in history\". Spears later received favorable media attention; \"Billboard\" wrote that her appearance at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards \"was a picture of professionalism and poise\" after her \"disastrous\" performance the previous year, while \"Business Insider\" ran an article on how she had \"lost control of her life\u00a0... and then made an incredible career comeback\". In 2017, Spears said: \"I think I had to give myself more breaks through my career and take responsibility for my mental health.\u00a0... I wrote back then, that I was lost and didn't know what to do with myself. I was trying to please everyone around me because that's who I am deep inside. There are moments where I look back and think: 'What the hell was I thinking?'\"\nIn September 2002, Spears was placed at number eight on VH1's 100 Sexiest Artists list. She was placed at number one on \"FHM\"'s 100 Sexiest Women in the World list in 2004, and, in December 2012, \"Complex\" ranked her 12th on its 100 Hottest Female Singers of All Time list. Remarking upon her perceived image as a sex symbol, Spears stated: \"When I'm on stage, that's my time to do my thing and go there and be that \u2014 and it's fun. It's exhilarating just to be something that you're not. And people tend to believe it.\" In 2003, \"People\" cited her as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People.\nSpears is recognized as a gay icon and received the 2018 GLAAD Vanguard Award at the GLAAD Media Awards for her role in \"accelerating acceptance for the LGBTQ community\". She addressed the \"unwavering loyalty\" and \"lack of judgment\" of her LGBTQ fans in \"Billboard\"'s Love Letters to the LGBTQ Community. She said: \"Your stories are what inspire me, bring me joy, and make me and my sons strive to be better people.\" Manuel Betancourt of \"Vice\" wrote about the \"queer adoration\", especially of gay men, on Spears, and said that \"Where other gay icons exude self-possession, Spears' fragile resilience has made her an even more fascinating role model, closer to Judy Garland than to Lady Gaga\u00a0... she's a glittering mirror ball, a fractured reflection of those men on the dance floor back onto themselves.\" \"HuffPost\"'s Ben Appel attributed Spears' status as a gay icon to her \"oh-so-innocent/not that innocent\" Monroe-like sensuality, her sweet, almost saccharine nature, her beyond basic but addictive pop songs, her dance moves, her phoenix-out-of-the-fire comeback from a series of mental health crises, and her unmistakable tenderness. \"Britney is camp. She is a fashion plate. A doll. Britney is a drag queen.\"\nSince her early years in the public eye, Spears has been a tabloid fixture and a paparazzi target. According to \"Vanity Fair\", photos of Spears sold for a combined value of $100 million in 2007. Harvey Levin, the founder of \"TMZ\", said in an interview, \"Britney is gold. She is crack to our readers. Her life is a complete train-wreck, and I thank God for her every day.\" Steve Huey of AllMusic remarked that \"among female singers of [Spears'] era\u00a0... her celebrity star power was rivaled only by Jennifer Lopez.\" 'Britney Spears' was Yahoo!'s most popular search term between 2005 and 2008, and has been in a total of seven different years. Spears was named as Most Searched Person in the \"Guinness World Records\" book edition 2007 and 2009. She was later named as the most searched person of the decade 2000\u20132009.\nAs a public figure, Spears \"has never been known to her fans as a politically active, committed\u2014or even aware\u2014entertainer.\" In a 2003 interview with Tucker Carlson, she commented on President George W. Bush and the Iraq War, saying that \"we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes\u00a0... and be faithful in what happens\". Michael Moore included the footage of Spears' answer in his \"anti-Bush\" documentary \"Fahrenheit 9/11\", which, according to \"The Washington Times\"'s James Frazier, presented her \"as an example of a naive American blindly trusting a dishonest commander in chief\" and fueled the \"urban legend\" of a \"conservative\" Spears. Frazier also said that \"the few positions she has taken can hardly be considered conservative\", such as supporting same-sex marriage. In 2016, Spears posted pictures of a meeting with Hillary Clinton on social media. She described Clinton as \"an inspiration and [a] beautiful voice for women around the world\".\nIn December 2017, Spears publicly showed support for the DREAM Act in the wake of the announcement that Donald Trump would end the DACA policy, which previously granted undocumented immigrants who came to the country as minors a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation. She posted a photo of herself on social media wearing a black T-shirt that reads \"We Are All Dreamers\" in white letters. The caption read, \"Tell Congress to pass the #DreamAct\".\nOn September 15, 2021, Spears was named one of the 100 most influential people of 2021 by \"Time.\" A few days before the editors's list was released, Spears was put at the top of the readers voting list of which personalities should be included on the annual \"Time\" 100 list. Deemed an icon of 2021, editors highlighted the impact of her fight against her conservatorship as well as of the #FreeBritney movement. In October 2021, Spears thanked her fans and the #FreeBritney movement for \"freeing me from my conservatorship\". Britney Spears was also named most famous celebrity from Louisiana according to a study done by Baton Rouge.\nLegacy.\nReferred to as the \"Princess of Pop\", Spears was credited as one of the \"driving force[s] behind the return of teen pop in the late 1990s\". \"Rolling Stone\"'s Stacy Lambe explained that she \"help[ed] to usher in a new era for the genre that had gone dormant in the decade that followed New Kids on the Block.\u00a0... Spears would lead an army of pop stars\u00a0... built on slick Max Martin productions, plenty of sexual innuendo and dance-heavy performances. [She became] one of the most successful artists of all time\u2014and a cautionary tale for a generation, whether they paid attention or not.\" In a 2021 article for \"Time\", Maura Johnston opined that \"Spears' legacy as a pop artist is complex, made up of dazzling musical heights and music-business-borne lows\". Johnston also commented: \"While Spears' catalog is part of the canon that defines the first 20 years of this millennium, one hopes that her public struggles, and the strength she's shown while enduring them, will lead to her cementing her true legacy: Reshaping the machine that turns those songs into cultural touchstones.\"\n\"Glamour\" contributor Christopher Rosa described her as \"one of pop music's defining voices.\u00a0... When she emerged onto the scene in 1998 with \"...Baby One More Time\", the world hadn't seen a performer like her. Not since Madonna had a female artist affected the genre so profoundly.\" \"Billboard\"'s Robert Kelly observed that Spears' \"sexy and coy\" vocals on her debut single \"...Baby One More Time\" \"kicked off a new era of pop vocal stylings that would influence countless artists to come\". In 2020, \"Rolling Stone\" ranked the song at number one on a list of the 100 Greatest Debut Singles of All Time and Rob Sheffield described it as \"One of those pop manifestos that announces a new sound, a new era, a new century. But most of all, a new star\u00a0... With \"...Baby One More Time\", [Spears] changed the sound of pop forever: It's Britney, bitch. Nothing was ever the same.\"\nSpears was at the forefront of the female teen pop explosion starting in 1999 and extending through the 2000s, leading the pack of Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, and Mandy Moore. All of these performers had been developing material in 1998, but the market changed dramatically in December 1998 when Spears' single and video were charting highly. RCA Records quickly signed Aguilera and released her debut single to capitalize on Spears' success, producing her debut hit single \"Genie in a Bottle\". Simpson consciously modeled her persona as more mature than Spears; her \"I Wanna Love You Forever\" charted in September 1999, and her album \"Sweet Kisses\" followed shortly after. Moore's first single, \"Candy\", hit the airwaves a month before Simpson's single, but it did not perform as well on the charts; Moore was often seen as less accomplished than Spears and the others, coming in fourth of the \"pop princesses\". Fueling media stories about their competition for first place, Spears and Aguilera traded barbs but also compliments through the 2000s.\nAlim Kheraj of \"Dazed\" called Spears \"one of pop's most important pioneers\". After eighteen years as a performer, \"Billboard\" described her as having \"earned her title as one of pop's reigning queens. Since her early days as a Mouseketeer, [Spears] has pushed the boundaries of 21st century sounds, paving the way for a generation of artists to shamelessly embrace glossy pop and redefine how one can accrue consistent success in the music industry.\" \"Entertainment Weekly\"'s Adam Markovitz described Spears as \"an American institution, as deeply sacred and messed up as pro wrestling or the filibuster.\" In 2012, she was ranked as the fourth VH1's 50 Greatest Women of the Video Era show list. VH1 also cited her among its choices on the 100 Greatest Women in Music in 2012 and the 200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons in 2003. In 2020, \"Billboard\" ranked her eight on its 100 Greatest Music Video Artists of all-time list. In October 2024, \"Billboard\" placed Spears at number six on their Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century list.\nSpears and her work have influenced various artists including Katy Perry, Meghan Trainor, Demi Lovato, Kelly Key, Kristinia DeBarge, Little Boots, Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, Marina Diamandis, the Weeknd, Tegan and Sara, Pixie Lott, Grimes, Selena Gomez, Hailee Steinfeld, Pabllo Vittar, Tinashe, Victoria Justice, Cassie, Leah Wellbaum of Slothrust, the Saturdays, Normani, Miley Cyrus, Cheryl, Lana Del Rey, Ava Max, Sam Smith, and Rina Sawayama. During the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, Lady Gaga said that Spears \"taught us all how to be fearless, and the industry wouldn't be the same without her.\" Gaga has also cited Spears as an influence, calling her \"the most provocative performer of my time\".\nBefore Spears joined \"The X Factor\", Simon Cowell explained that he is \"fascinated by [Britney]. The fact that she's one of the most talked about \u2013 not just pop stars \u2013 but people in the world today, means that you've got this star power.\u00a0... She's still hot, she's still having hit records and she's still controversial, there's a reason for that.\" Marina Diamandis named Spears as the main influence behind her album \"Electra Heart\". Lana Del Rey said that the music video for \"Toxic\" inspires her. Porcelain Black describes her music as a \"love child\" of Spears and Marilyn Manson. Rita Ora's 2019 music video for \"Only Want You\" was inspired by Spears' \"Everytime\" music video, and said in a stories from Instagram, \"Hey @britneyspears this was for you because I love you so. Pay homage to the ones who inspire! #icon.\"\nSpears has been credited with redefining Las Vegas residencies as a retirement place for musicians. Her debut concert residency was described as \"the natural evolution of Celine Dion's powerhourse Vegas residency, a still-charting star of another generation redefining the role of Strip headliner.\" \"Forbes\" named Spears the sixth-highest-earning female musician of 2015.\" She is credited with influencing and paving the way for other artists's residencies such as Jennifer Lopez's , Bruno Mars's Bruno Mars at Park MGM, and Backstreet Boys' . The arrival of Spears \"saw the pop promoters finally tap into the younger crowd arriving in town for a good time\".\nSpears' much-publicized personal problems and her subsequent career comeback have inspired some artists. Gwyneth Paltrow's character in the 2010 film \"Country Strong\" was inspired by Spears' treatment by the media. According to film director Shana Fest, \"that's where this movie came from. I mean, I was seeing what was happening in the media to Britney Spears. I think it's tragic how we treat people who give us so much, and we love to see them knocked down to build them back up again, to knock them down again.\" Nicki Minaj has cited Spears' comeback after her much-publicized personal issues as an inspiration. Spears' hounding by paparazzi and personal problems also inspired Barry Manilow's album \"15 Minutes\". Manilow said: \"She couldn't have a life without them pulling up next to her car and following her and driving her crazy to the point where, that was around the time she shaved off her hair.\u00a0... We all looked at it in horror\u00a0... So it seemed like a thing to be writing an album about.\" Bebo Norman wrote a song about Spears, called \"Britney\", which was inspired by \"culture's make-or-break treatment of celebrities\".\nIn 2008, \"Salon\" published an article titled \"The Britney Economy\" describing how Spears is a driving force in music and fashion, stimulating consumer purchases and media coverage. Magazines, paparazzi, and record labels make millions of dollars, and Spears profits to a lesser degree. Along with Alicia Silverstone, Christy Turlington, and Naomi Campbell, Spears has been credited with introducing the navel piercing to mainstream culture.\nAchievements.\nSpears' awards and accolades include a Grammy Award; 15 Guinness World Records; six MTV Video Music Awards, including the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award; seven \"Billboard\" Music Awards, including the Millennium Award; the inaugural Radio Disney Icon Award; the GLAAD Media Award's Vanguard Award; and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.\nSpears is listed by the \"Guinness World Records\" as having the \"Best-selling album by a teenage solo artist\" for her debut studio album, \"...Baby One More Time\", which sold over 13 million copies in the United States. Melissa Ruggieri of the \"Richmond Times-Dispatch\" reported: \"She's also marked for being the best-selling teenage artist. Before she turned 20 in 2001, Spears had sold over 37 million albums worldwide\".\nAs of 2023[ [update]], according to the \"Evening Standard\", Spears has sold over 150 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time. She also sold more than 70 million records in United States, including 36.9 million digital singles and 33.6 million digital albums. Spears is further recognized as the best-selling female albums artist of the 2000s in the United States, as well as the fifth overall. In December 2009, \"Billboard\" ranked Spears the 8th Artist of the 2000s decade in the United States. She is one of the few artists in history to have had a number-one single and a number-one studio album in the US during each of the three decades of her career. With \"3\" in 2009 and \"Hold It Against Me\" in 2011, she became the second artist after Mariah Carey in the Hot 100's history to debut at number one with two or more songs. In 2016, Spears ranked at number twenty on \"Billboard\"'s Greatest Of All Time Top Dance Club Artists list.\nOther ventures.\nProduct and endorsements.\nIn 2000, Spears released a limited edition of sunglasses titled Shades of Britney. In 2001, she signed a deal with shoe company Skechers, and a $7\u20138 million promotional deal with Pepsi, their biggest entertainment deal at the time. Aside from numerous commercials with the latter during that year, she also appeared in a 2004 Pepsi television commercial in the theme of \"Gladiators\" with singers Beyonc\u00e9, Pink, and Enrique Iglesias. On June 19, 2002, she released her first multi-platform video game, \"Britney's Dance Beat\", which received positive reviews.\nIn March 2009, Spears was announced as the new face of clothing brand Candie's. Dari Marder, chief marketing officer for the brand, said: \"Everybody loves a comeback and nobody's doing it better than Britney. She's just poised for even greater success.\" In 2010, Spears designed a limited edition line for the brand, which was released in stores in July 2010. In 2011, she teamed up with Sony, Make Up For Ever, and Plenty of Fish to release her music video for \"Hold It Against Me\", earning her $500,000 for the product placement.\nSpears also teamed up with Hasbro in 2012 to release an exclusive version of \"Twister Dance\", which includes a remix of \"Till the World Ends\". She was also featured on a commercial, which was directed by Ray Kay, to promote the game. Spears was also featured on the commercial of \"Twister Dance Rave\", and the game included a Twister remix of \"Circus\". In March 2018, it was revealed that Spears would be the face of Kenzo, a contemporary French luxury clothing house.\nSpears' range of commercial deals and products also includes beauty care products and perfumes. She released her first perfume with Elizabeth Arden, Curious in 2004, which broke the company's first-week gross for a perfume. By 2009, she had released seven more perfumes including Fantasy. In 2010, Spears released her eighth fragrance, Radiance.\nIn 2011, Radiance was reissued as a new perfume titled Cosmic Radiance. Worldwide, Spears sold over one million bottles in the first five years, with gross receipts of $1.5 billion. In 2016, Spears contacted Glu Mobile to create her own role-playing game, \"\". The app officially launched in May 2016 and is compatible with iOS and Android. On June 17, 2016, Spears announced the release of her twentieth fragrance, Private Show. As of January\u00a02018[ [update]], Spears has released 24 fragrances through Elizabeth Arden.\nPhilanthropy.\nSpears founded The Britney Spears Foundation, a charitable entity set up to help children in need. The philosophy behind the Foundation was that music and entertainment has a healing quality that can benefit children. The Foundation also supported the annual Britney Spears Camp for the Performing Arts, where campers had the opportunity to explore and develop their talents. In April 2002, through the efforts of Spears and The Britney Spears Foundation, a grant of $1 million was made to the Twin Towers Fund to support the children of uniformed service heroes affected by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, including New York City Fire Department and its Emergency Medical Services Command, the New York City Police Department, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the New York State Office of court Administration and other government offices. However, it was reported in 2008 that the Foundation had a deficit of $200,000. After Spears went through conservatorship, her father and lawyer Andrew Wallet zeroed out the effort, leading to its closure in 2011.\nOn October 30, 2001, Spears, alongside Bono and other popular recording artists under the name \"Artists Against AIDS Worldwide\", released an album consisting of multiple versions of Marvin Gaye's \"What's Going On\", intending to benefit AIDS programs in Africa and other impoverished regions. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Spears donated $350,000 to Music Rising. Spears has also helped several charities during her career, including Madonna's Kabbalah-based Spirituality for Kids, cancer charity Gilda's Club Worldwide, Promises Foundation, and United Way, with the latter two focused on giving families from various disadvantaged situations new hope and stable foundations for the future.\nOn October 24, 2015, Spears donated $120,000 to the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation. In addition, $1 of each ticket sale for her Las Vegas residency, Britney: Piece of Me, was donated to the nonprofit organization. Spears also fundraised for the charity through social media, in addition to selling limited edition merchandise, with all proceeds going to the NCCF. On October 27, 2016, Spears partnered with Zappos and XCYCLE to host the \"Britney Spears Piece of Me Charity Ride\" in Boca Park, Las Vegas to raise additional money toward her goal of $1 million for the NCCF, with $450,000 having already been raised from Spears' ticket sales and merchandise. Participants were entered for a chance to win a spin class with Spears herself. The event ultimately went on to raise $553,130. The fundraising ultimately led to the development of the NCCF Britney Spears Campus in Las Vegas, which saw its grand opening on November 4, 2017. Spears also regularly participates in Spirit Day to combat bullying of LGBTQ youth and bullying.\nIn March 2020, Spears was participating in the #DoYourPartChallenge, which entails helping people with anything they might need during the COVID-19 pandemic. She told fans to send her messages on Instagram if they need supportive words during the coronavirus pandemic, with Spears picking three fans. In February 2024, Spears partnered with New York City dessert shop Glace, to create the \"Britney Br\u00fbl\u00e9e\" dessert, with a portion of the proceeds from its sales being donated to The Trevor Project.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBook sources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "24449241": "3 (Britney Spears song)\n2009 single by Britney Spears\n\"3\" is a song by American singer Britney Spears from her second greatest hits album, \"The Singles Collection\" (2009). It was written and produced by Max Martin and Shellback, with additional writing from Tiffany Amber. The song was released on September 29, 2009, by Jive Records, as the only single from \"The Singles Collection\". \"3\" is an uptempo electropop song that features a heavy bassline and synthesizers, and lyrics that talk about threesomes, while referencing American folk-singing trio Peter, Paul and Mary during the chorus as sexual slang.\n\"3\" received positive reception from contemporary music critics, with some reviewers calling it a classic Spears song. The song was a commercial success, topping the charts in the United States and Canada, as well as reaching the top ten in many countries around the world, including Australia, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom. In the United States, the song debuted at number one in the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, and became her third number-one single in the country.\nAn accompanying music video for \"3\", directed by Diane Martel, features Spears and her dancers in front of different black and white backgrounds. Martel described it as sexy and playful, while contemporary critics gave it positive reviews, complimenting its simplicity. A director's cut was leaked on December 15, 2009. Spears has performed \"3\" during her Femme Fatale Tour (2011) and her concert residency (2013\u20132016).\nBackground.\nOn July 12, 2009, Spears confirmed through her Twitter account that she had begun recording new material, stating she was going into the studio with Swedish songwriter and producer Max Martin, while she was in Stockholm during the European leg of The Circus Starring Britney Spears. They had previously collaborated on earlier hits including \"...Baby One More Time\", \"Oops!...I Did It Again\", \"Stronger\" and \"If U Seek Amy\". \"3\" was written and produced by Martin and Shellback, while additional writing was done by Tiffany Amber. Spears recorded her vocals for the song with the producers at Maratone Studios. John Hanes was responsible for Spears' vocal editing on \"3\", which was later mixed by Serban Ghenea at MixStar Studios in Virginia Beach, Virginia. On September 23, 2009, Jive Records officially announced the release of a greatest hits titled \"The Singles Collection\" through Spears's official website, in celebration of Spears's ten-year anniversary in the music industry, also announcing the release of \"3\" as the lead single from the album. The artwork for the single was unveiled through Spears' official website on September 28, 2009. \"3\" was sent to radio stations on September 29, 2009, while being digitally released on October 2, 2009.\nComposition.\n\"3\" is an uptempo electropop song that opens with synths and vocal effects. The song has a basic sequence of Fm\u2013E\u266d\u2013B\u266dm\u2013Fm as its chord progression. Spears' vocals span from C4 to the high note of C5. During the middle eight, the song slows down with synthetic strings and bass beats, and the section ends with a beat similar to a four-on-the floor, a rhythm pattern popularized in 1970s disco music. Throughout the song, Spears' vocals are autotuned. The song lasts for three minutes and twenty-five seconds. However, eight seconds of silence are added in the end to total the duration to 3:33; a nod to the title of the song.\nThe song's lyrics are about threesomes. Unlike \"If U Seek Amy\", the song has no double entendre and it's more straightforward lyrically. The innuendo in the lyrics such as \"Merrier the more, triple fun that way\" have been compared to the songs in Prince's 1980 studio album \"Dirty Mind\". The chorus has been compared to a playground chant and closes with an extended moan. During the second part of the chorus, there is a reference to the folk group Peter, Paul & Mary. Todd Martens of the \"Los Angeles Times\" called the reference \"the cut's biggest oddity\".\nCritical reception.\n\"3\" received positive reviews from contemporary music critics. Monica Herrera of \"Billboard\" commented that the song \"builds to a climax of wildly pulsing bass that summons fans to the dancefloor\" and added that \"[it] will be another notch in this pop provocateur's belt\". On its online edition, \"Rolling Stone\"'s writer Daniel Kreps praised the song for its up-tempo melody and racy lyrics, while comparing it to Flo Rida's recent work, saying that \"3\" \"is more of a surefire dance-floor stomper than anything Brit loaded onto \"Blackout\" or \"Circus\"\". On the printed issue, the magazine gave the song four stars and called it an \"instant Britney classic\". Clark Collis of \"Entertainment Weekly\" called it \"a fembot voice, near-seizure-inducing dance-floor frenzy\". While crediting the production for \"elevating the song above typical dance products\", the \"Los Angeles Times\" said that Spears sounded \"sweetly generic\".\nIn his review of \"The Singles Collection\", Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic selected \"3\" as one of the \"track picks\" and commented, \"[it is] much better than any of the three new cuts on \"\"\". Bill Lamb of About.com said that although the lyrics are controversial, \"the bottom line is this is another irresistibly catchy pop confection that beats out most everything else on pop radio today\". He praised the chorus and the middle section and called the track \"classic Britney\". The song was also compared to Madonna's \"Celebration\", since they \"musically present nothing particularly new, but they do manage to encapsulate many of the elements that make the singer a star\". A.J. Mayers of MTV picked it as the eighth best song of 2009.\nChart performance.\nOn October 8, 2009, \"3\" entered at number fourteen on the US \"Billboard\" Bubbling Under Hot 100 and at number thirty-eight on the US \"Billboard\" Pop Songs, becoming Spears' twenty-fourth career entry in the latter chart, most among all artists. The following week, the song debuted at number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, becoming Spears' third number-one single in the United States and breaking many of the chart records. It made Spears the first artist in over three years to debut at the top position and the only non-\"American Idol\" artist in eleven years to do so. It was the fifteenth song in the chart history to debut at the top position and also the shortest title for a song reaching the top of the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. The song also charted at number one on the \"Billboard\" Digital Songs, selling 255,000 downloads in its first week and having the highest one week total of any song, since The Black Eyed Peas' \"Boom Boom Pow\" back in April 2009. As of October 2015, \"3\" has sold 2.4 million digital downloads in the United States according to Nielsen SoundScan. It is her fourth best-selling digital single in the country. In Canada, the song debuted at number eighty-six on the Canadian Hot 100 on October 17, 2009, and rose up to number one the following week, making it the biggest jump to number one in the history of the chart. It was certified double platinum by the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) for sales over 80,000 copies.\n\"3\" debuted at number fifty on the Australian Singles Chart on October 12, 2009, with only two days of digital sales. It peaked at number six on the week of October 26, 2009. \"3\" has been certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) with sales of over 70,000 copies. On October 12, 2009, the song debuted at number sixteen in New Zealand, making it her highest chart debut since \"Womanizer\". On its fifth week on the chart, \"3\" reached its peak position at number twelve. On the UK Singles Chart, \"3\" debuted at number seven on November 16, 2009, becoming Spears' twentieth top ten hit on the chart. According to The Official Charts Company, the song has sold 145,000 copies there. \"3\" achieved similar success throughout Europe reaching the top ten in Belgium (Wallonia), Czech Republic, Finland, Norway, Sweden as well as the top twenty in Austria, Belgium (Flanders) and Denmark.\nMusic video.\nThe music video was filmed on October 5 and October 6, 2009, in Los Angeles, California. It was directed by Diane Martel and choreographed by Tone & Rich. On October 15, 2009, images of the video were released. A countdown, including images and video previews, was announced on her official website and the release date was revealed to be on October 30, 2009. When asked about the video, Diane Martel said,\n\"I think it's her next sexy video. It's a very simple video for her \u2013 I don't think you've seen her this much under a magnifying glass. Everything's really strong and playful. We collaborated on the wardrobe and had meetings about hair and makeup people, we talked a lot on the phone and met Tone and Rich \u2014 two of the best choreographers. [..] [Spears]' so sweet and funny and so normal and down to earth. It's really fun as a director to see her in front of the camera. She's so creative with this stuff. The video is very simple, it's very, very minimal. So it's her, her, her. And she's totally engaging every second. She really knows how to work with a camera and move. I was really impressed, and I have worked almost with every female artist in the business\".\nThe video begins with Spears wearing a sparkly black dress at a dressing table, putting mascara and \"Circus Fantasy\" on. Then, it cuts to her holding her hair up and singing the first lines in front of a white background. There are also black and white scenes of her wearing a white leotard behind a foggy glass. She then appears wearing the leotard and glasses, while surrounded by four female dancers wearing black outfits, hanging from a raised barre. The word \"sin\" is censored and changed for the word \"this\" during the pre-chorus. In the chorus, she dances in front of a white wall with barcode-like light installations with six male dancers. There also scenes of her dancing provocatively with two male dancers. At the bridge, there are intercut close-ups of her that end with a smirk. The video concludes with Spears dancing with the two male dancers and cuts to a close-up of her looking into the camera.\n\"Rolling Stone\" writer Daniel Kreps compared the video with the music video of \"Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)\" and complimented the choreography saying Spears had not danced with so much conviction since the \"In the Zone\" era. Bradley Stern of MuuMuse likened the video's choreography and dancer's wardrobe to Janet Jackson's \"Feedback\" video. Jocelyn Vena of MTV gave the video a positive review, stating that it's a \"sexy, fast-paced clip\" and that \"there are a few moments in the video where Britney's personality shines\" adding that \"she smiles at the song's tongue-in-cheek lyrics, particularly when she finishes the song's bridge.\" Tanner Stransky of \"Entertainment Weekly\" complimented the video's choice of wardrobe, but said that the video was \"sparse\", adding \"there's not much to the single besides trite, ridiculous advocation for a m\u00e9nage \u00e0 trois anyway, so why would the video go any deeper?\".\nOn December 15, 2009, a director's cut version of the video for \"3\" leaked online. Kreps commented that the new version \"offers up a slightly more NSFW edit of Martel's dance-heavy vid that seems to find a better cadence with the music, as opposed to the original version, which was essentially filmed and edited in the matter of days to coincide with \"The Singles Collection\" release\".\nLive performances and cover version.\nOn March 25, 2011, Spears performed a special show at Rain Nightclub in Las Vegas. The setlist of the show consisted on three songs from her seventh studio album, \"Femme Fatale\", including \"Hold It Against Me\", \"Big Fat Bass\" and \"Till the World Ends\". During the performance of \"Big Fat Bass\", Spears wore a latex bodysuit and an excerpt of \"3\" was included in the middle of the performance. Additionally, elements of \"Womanizer, \"Gimme More\" and \"I'm a Slave 4 U\" were also included. On March 27, 2011, \"Big Fat Bass\" was also performed at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium that aired on \"Good Morning America\" on March 29, 2011, and the same day, Spears performed the set at \"Jimmy Kimmel Live!\", both with the same \"3\" excerpt.\n\"3\" was performed at 2011's Femme Fatale Tour, for the first time in its entirety. After \"Up n' Down\", Spears put on a white fedora and trench coat and performed the song with her female dancers, dressed in a similar style. Shirley Halperin of \"The Hollywood Reporter\" named it one of the best performances of the show along with \"Piece of Me\" and \"Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know\", stating that \"ironically enough, [they] were the ones with fewest frills.\" Rick Florino of Artistdirect said \"'3' gave way to a massive sing-a-long\" and added that it \"[spoke] right to the noir-ish connotations of the Femme Fatale tour. However, she built a one-of-a-kind space where Kim Basinger's elegant \"L.A. Confidential\" beauty becomes enveloped by edgy modern dance attitude.\"\nSpears performed \"3\" as the third song on her Las Vegas residency, , as part of the original setlist. After a brief talk with the audience, the singer began a performance of the song, jumping into a triangular cage which was wheeled around by her dancers across the stage. A parallel bar then dropped out of the ceiling, and Spears performed choreography similar to the choreography in song's music video. For \"Billboard\"'s Keith Caulfield, the song \"served as the sexiest jungle gym in Vegas, as Spears and her dancers undulated their way across and around the bar\". Girls' Generation member Sunny performed a cover version of the song during the Girls' Generation Tour that took place in 2011 and 2012. A studio version was also released online alongside the live version featuring on the tour album.\nTrack listings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["24449241", "3382"], "permutation_1": ["3382", "24449241"], "permutation_2": ["3382", "24449241"], "permutation_3": ["24449241", "3382"]}
{"id": "2hop__738564_62776", "docs_added": {"31164641": "I Wanna Go\n2011 single by Britney Spears\n\"I Wanna Go\" is a song by American singer Britney Spears from her seventh studio album, \"Femme Fatale\" (2011). It was written and produced by Max Martin and Shellback, with additional writing by Savan Kotecha. Spears first posted on her Twitter account a link to a clip of the song in February 2011, a month prior to the album's release. Following a poll on her official website, \"I Wanna Go\" was chosen as the third single of the album, and Jive Records released it on June 14, 2011.\n\"I Wanna Go\" is a dance-pop and Hi-NRG song that features a heavy bassline and drum fills reminiscent of English rock band New Order. The pre-chorus has a whistled hook that received comparisons to the music of Bob Sinclar and Frankie Knuckles. The lyrics of \"I Wanna Go\" feature Spears singing about losing inhibitions. The song received favorable reviews from critics, some praised it for being effective and highlighted its hook, while others dismissed the processed vocals. The song was treated with different remixes, including a Bollywood mix with guest vocals by Sonu Nigam and another one by DJ Frank E and Alex Dreamz.\nAfter the release of \"Femme Fatale\", \"I Wanna Go\" charted due to digital sales in the upper end of the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and the Canadian Hot 100, and also topped the South Korean International chart. Following its release as a single, the song reached the top ten in several music markets, including Canada, France, Finland and the United States. In the United States, \"I Wanna Go\" made \"Femme Fatale\" the first album by Spears to have three top ten singles and with Spears' best radio airplay performance.\nAn accompanying music video for the song, directed by Chris Marrs Piliero, premiered on June 22, 2011. It depicts Spears daydreaming at a press conference about a series of events, including being chased by paparazzi cyborgs and being rescued by actor Guillermo D\u00edaz. Piliero described the video as \"a ridiculous, exaggerated rumor about her life and career\". The video references the films \"Half Baked\", \"Crossroads\", \"\" and \"Michael Jackson's Thriller\". It received positive reviews from critics, who praised its fun spirit. Spears has performed \"I Wanna Go\" on her Femme Fatale Tour (2011) and during her Las Vegas residency show (2013\u20132015).\nBackground and artwork.\n\"I Wanna Go\" was written and produced by Max Martin and Shellback, with additional writing by Savan Kotecha. The song was written in 2009 and registered on Broadcast Music Incorporated under the legal title \"I I I Wanna Go O O\". On February 22, 2011, Spears posted on her Twitter account a link to a 29-second clip of the song, while calling Martin \"amazing\". In an interview with \"Rolling Stone\", Spears stated that the song's signature whistle gets her \"every time [she] hears it\", adding that Martin's melodies are \"Incredible\u00a0... Who would have thought of that? There is nobody I feel more comfortable collaborating with in the studio.\" Kotecha told Digital Spy in May 2011 that the song was likely a contender for third single due to positive reaction. On May 11, 2011, a poll was launched on Britney.com in which fans could choose the third single of the album. Two days later, \"I Wanna Go\" was officially announced as the third single from \"Femme Fatale\" by Jive Records through a press release after winning the poll. The cover art was revealed on June 6, 2011, and featured Spears on set of the music video, wearing colored hair extensions and crop top with a skeletal Mickey Mouse by designer Mila Fargo.\nComposition.\n\"I Wanna Go\" is a dance-pop and hi-NRG song, which features a heavy bassline and drum fills; the latter are reminiscent of English band New Order's song \"Blue Monday\" (1983). Spears squeals and chuckles throughout the song, and her vocals are processed. In the pre-chorus, she draws out the \"e\"'s in lines such as \"Shame on me / To need release / Uncontrollably.\" The section also has a whistled hook, which was compared by Rich Juzwiak of \"The Village Voice\" to the music of French recording artist Bob Sinclar and American recording artist Frankie Knuckles. In the chorus, Spears stutters \"I-I-I wanna go-o-o/All the wa-a-ay/ Taking out my freak tonight\". Ryan Brockington of the \"New York Post\" compared \"I Wanna Go\" to the music of her fifth studio album \"Blackout\" (2007). In the lyrics, Spears sings about losing inhibitions, as evident in lines such as \"I-I-I wanna sho-o-ow/All the dir-ir-irt/I got (sic) running through my mind.\", while playfully apologizing for her need for sexual release. Jon Caramanica of \"The New York Times\" stated that she sings about \"the scrum that surrounds her\" in \"Lately people got me all tied up / There's a countdown waiting for me to erupt\". According to the sheet music published by EMI Music Publishing, \"I Wanna Go\" is written in the key of D minor, with an electropop beat infused metronome of 130 beats per minute. Spears' vocals range from the low note of D3 to the high note of D5.\nCritical reception.\n\"I Wanna Go\" received generally favorable reviews from music critics. A reviewer for Samesame.com.au called \"I Wanna Go\" Spears' best song since \"Toxic\", and added that \"I\u2019d go so far as to say that it is probably the best song that she has ever recorded. [...] How the decision was made that 'Hold It Against Me' would be a better first single over this is baffling\". Parker Bruce of the \"Washington Square News\" stated that the song functions as \"a sort of formal declaration and mission statement\" for \"Femme Fatale\", saying that \"It is not an innovative song, but it is fantastically effective and endlessly enticing with its liberating, toss-your-cares-away, dance-like-a-complete\u2013and-utter-fool cathartic chorus, repeated words and typically saucy Britney lyrics\". \"The Daily Collegian\" writer Hannah Rishel said \"I Wanna Go\" would have been \"another good lead single\", while \"The Washington Times\"'s Andrew Leahey said that along with \"Till the World Ends\", they are \"bass-heavy tributes to club culture.\"\nRobert Copsey of Digital Spy called it \"anthemic\" and noted the song would become a future single. Rich Juzwiak of \"The Village Voice\" called \"I Wanna Go\" the highlight of the album, and said \"get ready for [it] to score your summer\". However, Juzwiak went on to note that Spears' vocals are heavily manipulated to maximize the chorus's potential, even though \"the joy she sings about is palpable\". The \"Chicago Sun-Times\" journalist Thomas Conner also noted that the singer's vocals were processed to the point \"these songs could be sung by anyone\", exemplifying \"'I Wanna Go' tweaks her up so high she could be Jackie Evancho\". Andy Gill of \"The Independent\" also criticized the singer's vocals on \"Femme Fatale\", stating that they sounded more programmed than natural, with \"even the little whistling hook in 'I Wanna Go' has a synthetic character about it\".\nSal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine noted that \"If not for its infectious pre-chorus whistle, 'I Wanna Go' would be just another song off the Max Martin assembly line\". \"The Guardian\" contributor Alexis Petridis gave the song a negative review, and said that although most of tracks of the album are \"genuinely exciting [...] there's certainly some unremarkable stuff on offer, notably 'Seal It With a Kiss' and 'I Wanna Go'\". Evan Sawdey of PopMatters also noted that \"I Wanna Go\" is the point of the album in which \"things stop being fun and start becoming intensely repetitious\", criticizing specifically \"[the] utterly stupid set of syllables repeated ad nauseam for no reason whatsoever? [..] the 'ably' part of 'uncontrollably' gets recycled far beyond the point where it just sounds stupid\". Nicholas Hautman, from \"Us Weekly\", called it \"so beyond AutoTuned at points that it could be Ozzy Osbourne singing for all we know\". In September 2011, \"I Wanna Go\" topped \"Rolling Stone\"'s reader's poll of The Best Songs of the Summer.\nChart performance.\nOn the chart issue of April 3, 2011, \"I Wanna Go\" debuted at number 73 on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart, and at number 52 on the Hot Digital Songs component chart due to strong digital sales. The song debuted at number 60 on the Canadian Hot 100 on the chart issue of April 16, 2011. It also debuted at number one on South Korea's Gaon International Chart, and remained on the same position for three consecutive weeks. After its release as a single, the song debuted at number 37 on the \"Billboard\" Pop Songs chart on the chart issue of July 2, 2011. It also re-entered the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 at number 89. The following week, it surged up to number 29 on the Hot 100 due to the premiere of the music video, with sales of 67,000 copies (up 282% from the previous week). \"I Wanna Go\" became Spears's 21st top-forty single, the third-highest female total since her first week on the chart on November 21, 1998, and only behind Taylor Swift with 27 and Rihanna with 22.\nOn the chart issue of August 4, 2011, the song climbed from number 11 to number nine on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, making \"Femme Fatale\" the first album by Spears to achieve three top ten singles. It became her fifth top ten single in a row, and her twelfth top ten entry overall, the third-highest female total since her first week on the chart, behind Rihanna with eighteen and Beyonc\u00e9 Knowles with fifteen. \"I Wanna Go\" peaked at number seven on the Hot 100 on the chart issue of August 24, 2011. The song peaked atop the Pop Songs chart on September 24, 2011, becoming Spears' sixth single to top the chart, and setting a record for the longest span of number-one singles by an artist (12 years, seven months and four days). Spears scored her first number-one single on the chart with \"...Baby One More Time\" on the chart issue of February 20, 1999. She also tied Mariah Carey and Knowles for the third-highest female total of number-one singles. As of July 2016, \"I Wanna Go\" has sold 1,780,000 digital downloads in the United States. It is her eighth best-selling digital single in the country.\nIn Australia, \"I Wanna Go\" debuted at number 33 on the ARIA Singles Chart on the chart issue of July 10, 2011. It peaked at number 31 three weeks later, on July 31, 2011. The song became the third lowest peaking single of Spears' career in the country, after \"Radar\" (2009) at 46 and \"From the Bottom of My Broken Heart\" (1999) at 37. It spent nine weeks on the chart. It has since been certified gold by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) for sales of 35,000 units. In New Zealand, the song debuted at number 25 on the New Zealand Singles Chart, and peaked at number 22 the following week. It became her lowest peaking single since \"Radar\", and her sixth single to not enter the top twenty. The song spent 10 weeks on the chart. On July 7, 2011, \"I Wanna Go\" debuted at 41 on the Irish Singles Chart. It became her first single to not chart in the inside the top 100 in the United Kingdom, peaking at number 138 on the chart issue of June 9, 2011. Across Europe, the song has peaked at number five on Belgium (Flanders) and France; number 10 in Finland; the top twenty in Belgium (Wallonia), Norway and Denmark; and the top forty in Czech Republic and Sweden.\nMusic video.\nDevelopment.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"Let me tell you, all of that is bulls[hit]. Every artist has management, that's their job. It's what they're paid for. I work with the artist. Your question goes along perfectly with the whole concept of the video and that press conference \u2013 it's a ridiculous, exaggerated rumor about her life and career. I met with her, talked with her, went over the concept with her. It was extremely collaborative. She suggested alternatives and tweaked other things. As much as the management is there, this was a concept that Britney really dug. She was a big part of the decision-making process.\"\n\u2014Chris Marrs Piliero, on how the rumors of Spears being 'a puppet' related the concept of the music video.\nThe music video for \"I Wanna Go\" was directed by Chris Marrs Piliero and filmed in Los Angeles, California. Spears first contacted Piliero and asked him to put together a concept for the video. The main idea for Piliero came from the lyric \"be a little inappropriate\", which stood out for him, but he did not want to make a video about sexual inappropriateness. Piliero wrote the opening press conference scene as a tribute to the film \"Half Baked\" (1998), which he is a fan of. He explained, \"That scene resonates with everyone as the epitome of the greatest way to quit your job, and just blow people off. [...] I felt like that would just be such a perfect way for her to tell the reporters to eff off.\" Marrs Piliero first asked actor Kellan Lutz to co-star the clip with Spears; however, Lutz turned down the role, saying that \"there were a couple of weird things about the part that didn't make sense\", including the scene where he was going to pour milk on himself. Piliero then thought of asking one of the stars of \"Half Baked\", Guillermo D\u00edaz, to be part of the video, explaining that it \"would make it come full circle.\" Piliero watched all of Spears' videos and wanted to pull what he loved from them, but also give it something fresh. Piliero felt that all of her references to the paparazzi in her previous videos had been more of a statement than an action, and for \"I Wanna Go\", he wanted her to have the opportunity to fight back.\nPiliero had the concept nearly finished by the time he met with Spears. Both wanted to explore fun ways for Spears to be inappropriate in the video, who had several ideas, such as a cop frisking her. Having seen Spears on \"How I Met Your Mother\" and \"Saturday Night Live\", Piliero felt that none of her videos had really taken advantage of her comedic timing, saying, \"She never had a music video where she could show her acting chops and have fun with comedy while being super badass. That was my goal from day one: I wanted her to be funny, badass and super cool.\" During the first day of the shoot, he requested Spears to \"have as much fun as possible over these next two days\". Piliero also stated that the \"Crossroads\" (2002) reference \"[i]s a fun Easter egg for fans. Plus, \"Die Hard 2: Die Harder\" is the most ridiculously awesome way to title a sequel. It just felt like the right thing to do. When Britney saw it, she loved it.\"\nSynopsis.\nThe video begins at a press conference where Spears, wearing a cropped Mickey Mouse Skull top by \"Mila Fargo\" (paying homage to her days in \"The New Mickey Mouse Club\"), is being asked inappropriate questions by news reporters, such as \"Is it true you banned junk food, smiles, candy, sunshine and laughter from your Femme Fatale Tour?\" and \"Is it true that you hate puppies?\" Angered by the questions, Spears replies (albeit censored): \"Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you're cool, fuck you \u2013 I'm out\", referencing a scene from the film \"Half Baked\". After leaving the press conference, Spears walks out of the building and out into the street, wearing a white leather jacket and a black skirt with matching with studded combat boots. She signs a fan's copy of \"Femme Fatale\" and then blows a kiss to a baby as he whistles the melody of the chorus. As Spears walks along the street, she flashes several men, including a policeman (played by Adrien Galo). As a criminal offence, the policeman searches Spears, feeling up and down her legs, as she is bent over a car. Spears later walks away from the policeman, swinging handcuffs around her finger while he buttons his shirt.\nShe continues walking down the street, where she smashes the camera of a paparazzi photographer who takes pictures of her. More paparazzi appear as she runs away and jumps on top of a taxi. Spears then stands atop of it, wielding the microphone as a weapon against the paparazzi who are hassling her. Across the street, a marquee of the cinema besides her reads \"Crossroads 2: Cross Harder\", referencing her film debut \"Crossroads\". After all the paparazzi, revealed to be cyborgs, have been knocked to the floor, they start crawling back with their eyes glowing red and their faces bursting with wires, reminiscent to a scene in \"\" (1991). A car suddenly pulls up near to Spears, and the driver Guillermo D\u00edaz tells her to get inside. In the next scene, Spears dances in the passenger seat in a pink bikini top, as Guillermo drives. He attempts to drink some milk while driving but pours the carton of milk over his face. His chest starts to spark, and Spears pulls open his jacket to reveal that he too is a cyborg. The video then cuts back to the press conference, indicating that Spears was daydreaming, due to being asked monotonous and inappropriate questions. Guillermo steps in and leads Spears out of the room following him putting seashells in Spears' hand. Then, he turns to the camera with his eyes glowing red, and his laugh is heard, referencing \"Michael Jackson's Thriller\" (1983).\nRelease and reception.\nOn June 17, 2011, Jive Records announced through a press release that an exclusive 30-second teaser would premiere on June 19, 2011, on Bravo's \"Watch What Happens: Live\" and on VEVO simultaneously. The full length video was revealed to premiere on MTV and Vevo on June 22, 2011. Following the premiere, the video was played hourly on MTV, during video hours, and on VH1's \"Best Morning Buzz Live\". Jen McDonnell of \"Dose\" said, \"damn if [the video] doesn't rock. [...] It all sounds very weird \u2013 and it is. But it's also buckets of fun.\" Megan Gibson of \"Time\" stated that the video is \"random, weird and intended to be funny\" and that despite the lack of dancing \"Britney seems pleasantly energetic and spunky in 'I Wanna Go' which is a comforting change from her usual blank-eyed look.\" Sarah Anne Hughes of \"The Washington Post\" commented that the video \"shows a much livelier Britney than the world has seen since the 'Toxic' years.\"\nJason Lipshutz of \"Billboard\" said that the video continues the visual representation of Spears' relationship with the paparazzi and her public image, as previously seen in the videos for \"Everytime\" (2004) and \"Piece of Me\" (2008), but \"the new clip is arguably her most playful yet.\" Amos Barshad of \"New York\" stated the video \"is awe-inspiring in \"almost exactly the way it intended to be\"\" and that \"the spirit of the song, as reflected in the video, is that of free will and dream fulfillment in the face of a repressive society.\" Jocelyn Vena of MTV commented that \"Britney displays the sass and charm fans fell in love with a decade ago during performance shots, where she flirts with the camera, her eyes as big and wide as her smile.\" An editor for VH1 called the video \"fan-freakin'-tastic\" and compared it favorably to the music video for Katy Perry's \"Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)\" (2011), saying that \"they share a silly temperament, a flirty star, and funny cameos. Upon closer examination, though, Britney's video blows Katy Perry's out of the water.\"\nDevin Brown of CBS News called it her best video from \"Femme Fatale\", and added that unlike \"Piece of Me\", \"'I Wanna Go' offers a bevy of pop culture references meant to ridicule the rumors about the star \u2013 and finally no 'dancing.'\" An editor from \"Rolling Stone\" said \"The weirdness seems very calculated, but that doesn't make the video any less delightful.\" Another critic from \"Rolling Stone\" noted that the press conference \"is hysterical because she's one of the least media-accessible singers in the world. It's easier to get a sit-down with Bob Dylan than it is with Britney.\" Becky Bain of Idolator called the video \"delightful\" and \"flat out funny\", explaining that Spears \"focuses her energy on being too darn cute (and deliciously naughty) instead of having to worry about dancing, [she] is in on the joke and loving it all.\"\nThe video was Spears' first to be Vevo Certified, which means that it was the first of her videos to have received over 100 million views on Vevo.\nLive performances, remixes and other versions.\nThough the song has never been performed live as part of a televised performance, \"I Wanna Go\" was featured on the set list of the Femme Fatale Tour (2011). Spears and her dancers bring fans onstage and dance with them throughout the performance. Shirley Halperin of \"The Hollywood Reporter\" stated that \"[the] mid-tempo numbers [...] seemed to stall out quickly, where faster offerings like 'Womanizer,' 'I Wanna Go' and 'Toxic' had the sold out crowd jumping in place and pumping their number twos in the air.\" Shaunna Murphy of \"Entertainment Weekly\" said, \"Of the newer songs, 'How I Roll' and 'I Wanna Go' were standouts, the former for its bubblegum fun and the latter for the uproarious fan participation on stage.\" Spears also included the song on her residency show in Las Vegas, . After a rendition of \"Circus\", a performance of \"I Wanna Go\" followed, where Spears dances with six mirror images of herself. The mirrors, that are moved around by her dancers, are screens showing pre-recorded images of the singer. Keith Caulfield from \"Billboard\" considered the performance \"cool\".\n\"I Wanna Go\" was remixed with guest vocals by Indian singer Sonu Nigam and released on the DesiHits website in June 2011. In the remix, Sonu mirrors Spears' vocals in Hindi over Indian instruments. Spears said about the song, \"I'm so excited about having Sonu on I Wanna Go. His vocals add such a different feel, which I love! Watch out Bollywood \u2013 it's Britney and Sonu!\". A remix done by DJ Frank E and Alex Dreamz removes the whistled hook and adds an extra beat to the song. The accompanying video for the remix contains footage of the music video for the song with a glowing yellow tint. The version of the song that was published on her official SoundCloud page on June 12, 2011 contains an extended bridge before the final chorus, making the song 26 seconds longer than the standard version that appears in other streaming platforms and physical releases.\nTrack listings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCredits and personnel.\nCredits adapted from \"Femme Fatale\" booklet liner notes.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3382": "Britney Spears\nAmerican singer (born 1981)\nBritney Jean Spears (born December 2, 1981) is an American singer. Often referred to as the \"Princess of Pop\", she has sold over 150 million records worldwide, making her one of the world's best-selling music artists. An influential figure in popular music, Spears became the best-selling teenage artist of all time, credited with the revival of teen pop during the late 1990s and early 2000s.\nSpears was born in McComb, Mississippi. After appearing in the television shows \"Star Search\" and \"The Mickey Mouse Club\", Spears signed with Jive Records in 1997 at age 15. Her first two studio albums, \"...Baby One More Time\" (1999) and \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" (2000), are among the best-selling albums of all time. She adopted a more mature and provocative style for her albums \"Britney\" (2001) and \"In the Zone\" (2003). Spears was the executive producer of her fifth studio album, \"Blackout\" (2007), often referred to as her best work. She returned to the top of the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200 chart with the albums \"Circus\" (2008) and \"Femme Fatale\" (2011), and embarked on a four-year concert residency, (2013\u20132017), to promote her next two albums, \"Britney Jean\" (2013) and \"Glory\" (2016). Spears' catalog of high-charting singles includes \"...Baby One More Time\", \"Oops!... I Did It Again\", \"I'm a Slave 4 U\", \"Toxic\", \"Gimme More\", \"Womanizer\", \"3\", \"Hold It Against Me\", and \"Scream & Shout\".\nSpears' life, including her high-profile relationships and personal struggles during the 2000s, received widespread media coverage. In 2008, she was involuntarily placed in a conservatorship following a highly publicized breakdown. In 2019, her legal battle over her conservatorship led to the establishment of the #FreeBritney movement and a release of the documentary \"Framing Britney Spears\" (2021). The conservatorship was terminated in 2021, following her public testimony in which she accused her management team and family of abuse. Spears' 2023 memoir, \"The Woman in Me\", reached number one on \"The New York Times\" Best Seller list in its first week of release. Her other ventures include starring in the film \"Crossroads\" (2002) and launching numerous products, with her 2005 fragrance Fantasy with Elizabeth Arden, Inc. generating over $1.5 billion in sales.\nIn the United States, Spears is the fourth best-selling female album artist of the Nielsen SoundScan era, as well as the best-selling female album artist of the 2000s. Her accolades include a Grammy Award, 15 Guinness World Records, six MTV Video Music Awards, seven \"Billboard\" Music Awards (including the Millennium Award), the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. \"Billboard\" ranked her sixth on their list of the Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century. \"...Baby One More Time\" was named the greatest debut single of all time by \"Rolling Stone\" in 2020. \"Forbes\" listed Spears as the world's highest-paid female musician in 2001 and 2012. By 2012, she had topped Yahoo!'s list of most searched celebrities seven times in twelve years. \"Time\" named Spears one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2021, placing first in the reader poll.\nLife and career.\n1981\u20131997: Early life, family, and career beginnings.\nBritney Jean Spears was born on December 2, 1981, in McComb, Mississippi, the second child of James \"Jamie\" Parnell Spears and Lynne Irene Bridges. Her maternal grandmother, Lillian Portell, was English and born in London, and one of Spears' maternal great-grandfathers was Maltese. Her siblings are Bryan James Spears and Jamie Lynn Spears.\nBorn in the Bible Belt, where socially conservative evangelical Protestantism is a particularly strong religious influence, she was baptized as a Southern Baptist and sang in a church choir as a child. As an adult, she has studied Kabbalist teachings. On August 5, 2021, Spears announced that she had converted to Catholicism. Her mother, sister, and nieces Maddie Aldridge and Ivey Joan Watson, are also Catholic. However, on September 5, 2022, after Spears' ex-husband, Kevin Federline, and youngest son did an interview defending her father's actions during her conservatorship, she stated: \"I don't believe in God anymore because of the way my children and my family have treated me. There is nothing to believe in anymore. I'm an atheist y'all\".\nAt age three, Spears began attending dance lessons in her hometown of Kentwood, Louisiana, and was selected to perform as a solo artist at the annual recital. Aged five she made her local stage debut, singing \"What Child Is This?\" at her kindergarten graduation. During her childhood, she also had gymnastics and voice lessons and won many state-level competitions and children's talent shows. In gymnastics, Spears attended B\u00e9la K\u00e1rolyi's training camp. She said of her ambition as a child, \"I was in my own world,\u00a0... I found out what I'm supposed to do at an early age\".\nWhen Spears was eight, she and her mother Lynne traveled to Atlanta, Georgia, to audition for the 1990s revival of \"The Mickey Mouse Club\". Casting director Matt Casella rejected her as too young, but introduced her to Nancy Carson, a New York City talent agent. Carson was impressed with Spears' singing and suggested enrolling her at the Professional Performing Arts School.\nSpears was hired for her first professional role as the understudy for the lead role of Tina Denmark in the off-Broadway musical \"Ruthless!\" She also appeared as a contestant on the popular television show \"Star Search\" and was cast in a number of commercials. In December 1992, she was cast in \"The All-New Mickey Mouse Club\". Other fellow cast members included Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, Ryan Gosling, Keri Russell, and JC Chasez. After the show was canceled in 1994, she returned to Mississippi and enrolled at McComb's Parklane Academy. Although she made friends with most of her classmates, she compared the school to \"the opening scene in \"Clueless\" with all the cliques.\u00a0... I was so bored. I was the point guard on the basketball team. I had my boyfriend, and I went to homecoming and Christmas formal. But I wanted more.\"\nIn June 1997, Spears was in talks with manager Lou Pearlman to join the female pop group Innosense. Lynne asked family friend and entertainment lawyer Larry Rudolph for his opinion and submitted a tape of Spears singing over a Whitney Houston karaoke song along with some pictures. Rudolph decided that he wanted to pitch her to record labels, for which she needed a professional demo made. He sent Spears an unused song of Toni Braxton; she rehearsed for a week and recorded her vocals in a studio. Spears traveled to New York with the demo and met with executives from four labels, returning to Kentwood the same day. Three of the labels rejected her, saying that audiences wanted pop bands such as the Backstreet Boys and the Spice Girls, and \"there wasn't going to be another Madonna, another Debbie Gibson, or another Tiffany.\"\nTwo weeks later, executives from Jive Records returned calls to Rudolph. Senior vice president of A&R Jeff Fenster said about Spears' audition that \"it's very rare to hear someone that age who can deliver emotional content and commercial appeal\u00a0... For any artist, the motivation\u2014the 'eye of the tiger'\u2014is extremely important. And Britney had that.\" Spears sang Houston's \"I Have Nothing\" (1992) for the executives, and was subsequently signed to the label. They assigned her to work with producer Eric Foster White for a month; he reportedly shaped her voice from \"lower and less poppy\" delivery to \"distinctively, unmistakably Britney\". After hearing the recorded material, president Clive Calder ordered a full album. Spears had originally envisioned \"Sheryl Crow music, but younger; more adult contemporary\". She felt secure with her label's appointment of producers, since \"It made more sense to go pop, because I can dance to it\u2014it's more me.\" She flew to Cheiron Studios in Stockholm, Sweden, where half of the album was recorded from March to April 1998, with producers Max Martin, Denniz Pop, and Rami Yacoub, among others.\n1998\u20132000: \"...Baby One More Time\" and \"Oops!... I Did It Again\".\nAfter Spears returned to the United States, she embarked on a shopping mall promotional tour, titled L'Oreal Hair Zone Mall Tour, to promote her upcoming debut album. Her show was a four-song set and she was accompanied by two back-up dancers. Her first concert tour followed, as an opening act for NSYNC. Her debut studio album, \"...Baby One More Time\", was released on January 12, 1999. It debuted at number one on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200 and was certified two-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America after a month. Worldwide, the album topped the charts in fifteen countries and sold over 10 million copies in a year. It became the biggest-selling album ever by a teenage artist.\n\"...Baby One More Time\" was released as the lead single from the album on September 29, 1998. Originally, Jive Records wanted the associated music video to be animated; however, Spears rejected this idea, and suggested the final concept of a Catholic schoolgirl. The single peaked at number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, topping the chart for two consecutive weeks in January\u2013February 1999. It sold more than 10 million copies, making it one of the best-selling singles of all time. \"...Baby One More Time\" later received a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. The title track also topped the singles chart for two weeks in the United Kingdom, and became the fastest-selling single ever by a female artist, shipping over 460,000 copies. It would later become the 25th-most successful song of all time in British chart history. Spears is the youngest female artist to have a million seller in the UK. The album's third single, \"(You Drive Me) Crazy\", became a top-ten hit worldwide and further propelled the success of the \"...Baby One More Time\" album. The album has sold 30 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. It is the best-selling debut album by any artist.\nOn June 28, 1999, Spears began her first headlining ...Baby One More Time Tour in North America, which was positively received by critics. It also generated some controversy due to her racy outfits. An extension of the tour, titled (You Drive Me) Crazy Tour, followed in March 2000. Spears premiered songs from her upcoming second album during the show.\n\"Oops!... I Did It Again\", Spears' second studio album, was released in May 2000. It debuted at number one in the US, selling 1.3 million copies, breaking the Nielsen SoundScan record for the highest debut sales by any solo artist. It has sold over 20 million copies worldwide to date, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. Rob Sheffield of \"Rolling Stone\" said that \"the great thing about \"Oops!\"\u00a0\u2013 under the cheese surface, Britney's demand for satisfaction is complex, fierce and downright scary, making her a true child of rock & roll tradition.\" The album's lead single, \"Oops!... I Did It Again\", peaked at the top of the charts in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and many other European nations, while the second single, \"Lucky\", peaked at number one in Austria, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland. The album as well as the title track received Grammy nominations for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, respectively.\nThe same year, Spears embarked on the Oops!... I Did It Again Tour, which grossed $40.5 million; she also released her first book, \"Britney Spears' Heart to Heart\", co-written with her mother. On September 7, 2000, Spears performed at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards. Halfway through the performance, she ripped off her black suit to reveal a sequined flesh-colored bodysuit, followed by heavy dance routine. It is noted by critics as the moment that Spears showed signs of becoming a more provocative performer. Amidst media speculation, Spears confirmed she was dating NSYNC member Justin Timberlake. Spears and Timberlake both graduated from high school via distance learning from the University of Nebraska High School. She also bought a home in Destin, Florida. In her 2023 memoir, Spears revealed that she had an abortion in late 2000 while dating Timberlake after he said they were not prepared for parenthood. Spears called the abortion \"one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.\"\n2001\u20132002: \"Britney\" and \"Crossroads\".\nIn January 2001, Spears hosted the 28th Annual American Music Awards, starred at Rock in Rio alongside NSYNC, and performed as a special guest in the Super Bowl XXXV halftime show headlined by Aerosmith and NSYNC. In February 2001, she signed a $7\u20138 million promotional deal with Pepsi, and released another book co-written with her mother, \"A Mother's Gift\". Her third studio album, \"Britney\", was released in November 2001, with a funkier sound inspired by hip hop artists such as Jay-Z and the Neptunes. \"Britney\" debuted at number one in the \"Billboard\" 200 and reached top five positions in Australia, the United Kingdom, and mainland Europe, and has sold 10 million copies worldwide.\nStephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic called \"Britney\" \"the record where she strives to deepen her persona, making it more adult while still recognizably Britney.\u00a0... It does sound like the work of a star who has now found and refined her voice, resulting in her best record yet.\" It was nominated for the Grammy awards for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for \"Overprotected\", and in 2007 it was named one of the best albums of the preceding 25 years by \"Entertainment Weekly\". The lead single, \"I'm a Slave 4 U\", became a top-ten hit in several countries.\nSpears' performance of the single at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards featured a caged tiger (wrangled by Bhagavan Antle) and a large albino python draped over her shoulders. It was harshly received by animal rights organization PETA, who claimed the animals were mistreated and scrapped plans for an anti-fur billboard that was to feature Spears. Jocelyn Vena of MTV News summarized Spears' performance at the ceremony, saying, \"draping herself in a white python and slithering around a steamy garden setting \u2013 surrounded by dancers in zebra and tiger outfits \u2013 Spears created one of the most striking visuals in the 27-year history of the show.\"\nTo support the album, Spears embarked on the Dream Within a Dream Tour. The show was critically praised for its technical innovations, the \"pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance\" being a water screen that pumped two tons of water into the stage. The tour grossed $53.3 million, becoming the second highest-grossing tour of 2002 by a female artist, behind Cher's . Her career success was highlighted by \"Forbes\" in 2002, as Spears was ranked the world's most powerful celebrity. Spears also landed her first starring role in \"Crossroads\", released in February 2002. Although the film was largely panned, critics praised Spears' acting. The film was a box office success, grossing over $61.1 million worldwide on a $12 million budget.\nIn June 2002, Spears opened her first restaurant, Nyla, in New York City, but terminated her relationship in November due to mismanagement and \"management's failure to keep her fully apprised\". In July 2002, Spears announced she would take a six-month break from her career; however, she went back into the studio in November to record her new album. Spears' relationship with Justin Timberlake ended after three years. In November 2002, Timberlake released the song \"Cry Me a River\" as the second single from his solo debut album. The music video featured a Spears look-alike and fueled the rumors that she had been engaging in an affair, fueled by further rumors of possible relationships involving Timberlake's choreographer Wade Robson and Limp Bizkit's frontman Fred Durst. Spears had initially denied the allegations of a possible affair involving Durst, despite the two being spotted together on multiple occasions; even claiming the two had a friendly connection. In 2023, she admitted to engaging in an affair with Robson. As a response, Spears wrote the ballad \"Everytime\" with her backing vocalist and friend Annet Artani.\n2003\u20132005: \"In the Zone\" and first two marriages.\nIn August 2003, Spears opened the MTV Video Music Awards with Christina Aguilera, performing \"Like a Virgin\". Halfway through they were joined by Madonna, whom they both kissed. The incident was highly publicized. In 2008, MTV listed the performance as the number-one opening moment in the history of MTV Video Music Awards, while \"Blender\" cited it as one of the 25 sexiest music moments on television history.\nSpears released her fourth studio album, \"In the Zone\", in November 2003. She assumed more creative control by writing and co-producing most of the material. \"Vibe\" called it \"a supremely confident dance record that also illustrates Spears' development as a songwriter\". NPR named it one of the most important recordings of the decade, writing that \"the decade's history of impeccably crafted pop is written on her body of work\". \"In the Zone\" sold over 609,000 copies during its first week of availability in the United States, debuting at the top of the charts, making Spears the first female artist in the SoundScan era to have her first four studio albums to debut at number one. It also debuted at the top of the charts in France and the top ten in Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands. The album produced four singles: \"Me Against the Music\", a collaboration with Madonna; \"Toxic\"\u2014which won Spears her first Grammy for Best Dance Recording; \"Everytime\", and \"Outrageous\".\nIn January 2004, Spears married her childhood friend <templatestyles src=\"Template:Visible anchor/styles.css\" />Jason Allen Alexander at A Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada. The marriage was annulled 55 hours later, following a petition to the court that stated that Spears \"lacked understanding of her actions\".\nIn March 2004, Spears embarked on the Onyx Hotel Tour in support of \"In the Zone\". The tour was canceled in June 2004, when she fell and injured her left knee during the music video shoot for \"Outrageous\". She underwent arthroscopic surgery and wore a thigh brace for six weeks, followed by eight to twelve weeks of rehabilitation. That year, Spears became involved in the Kabbalah Centre through her friendship with Madonna.\nIn July 2004, Spears became engaged to dancer Kevin Federline, whom she had met three months earlier. The romance was the subject of intense media attention, since Federline had recently broken up with actress Shar Jackson, who was still pregnant with their second child at the time. The stages of their relationship were chronicled in Spears' first reality show \"\", which premiered on May 17, 2005, on UPN. Spears later referred to the show in a 2013 interview as \"probably the worst thing I've done in my career\". They held a wedding ceremony on September 18, 2004, but were not legally married until three weeks later on October 6 due to a delay finalizing the couple's prenuptial agreement.\nShortly after, she released her first perfume, Curious, with Elizabeth Arden, which broke the company's first-week gross for a perfume. In October 2004, Spears took a career break to start a family. ', her first greatest hits compilation album, was released in November 2004. Spears' cover version of Bobby Brown's \"My Prerogative\" was released as the lead single from the album, reaching the top of the charts in Finland, Ireland, Italy, and Norway. The second single, \"Do Somethin'\", was a top ten hit in Australia, the United Kingdom, and other countries of mainland Europe. In August 2005, Spears released \"Someday (I Will Understand)\", which was dedicated to her first child, a son named Sean Preston, who was born the following month. In November 2005, she released her first remix compilation, ', which consists of 11 remixes.\n2006\u20132007: Personal struggles and \"Blackout\".\nIn February 2006, pictures surfaced of Spears driving with her son, Sean, on her lap instead of in a car seat. Child advocates were horrified by the photos of her holding the wheel with one hand and Sean with the other. Spears claimed that the situation happened because of a frightening encounter with paparazzi, and that it was a mistake on her part. The following month, she guest-starred on the \"Will & Grace\" episode \"Buy, Buy Baby\" as closeted lesbian Amber-Louise. She announced she no longer studied Kabbalah in May 2006, explaining, \"my baby is my religion\". Spears posed nude for the August 2006 cover of \"Harper's Bazaar\"; the photograph was compared to Demi Moore's August 1991 \"Vanity Fair\" cover. In September 2006, she gave birth to her second son, Jayden James. In November 2006, Spears filed for divorce from Federline, citing irreconcilable differences. Their divorce was finalized in July 2007, when the two reached a global settlement and agreed to share joint custody of their sons.\nSpears' maternal aunt Sandra Bridges Covington, with whom she had been very close, died of ovarian cancer in January 2007. In February, Spears stayed in a drug rehabilitation facility in Antigua for less than a day. The following night, she shaved her head with electric clippers at a hair salon in Tarzana, Los Angeles. She admitted herself to other treatment facilities during the following weeks. In May 2007, she produced a series of promotional concerts at House of Blues venues, titled The M+M's Tour. In October 2007, Spears lost physical custody of her sons to Federline. The reasons of the court ruling were not revealed to the public. Spears was also sued by Louis Vuitton over her 2005 music video \"Do Somethin'\" for upholstering her Hummer interior in counterfeit Louis Vuitton cherry blossom fabric, which resulted in the video being banned on European TV stations.\nIn October 2007, Spears released her fifth studio album, \"Blackout\". The album debuted atop the charts in Canada and Ireland, at number two in the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200, France, Japan, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, and the top ten in Australia, South Korea, New Zealand, and many European nations. In the United States, it was Spears' first album not to debut at number one, although, she did become the only female artist to have her first five studio albums debut at the two top slots of the chart. The album received positive reviews from critics and had sold 3.1 million copies worldwide by the end of 2008. \"Blackout\" won Album of the Year at the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards and was listed as the fifth Best Pop Album of the Decade by \"The Times\".\nSpears performed the lead single, \"Gimme More\", at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards. The performance was widely panned by critics. Despite the criticism, the single enjoyed worldwide success, peaking at number one in Canada and within the top ten in almost every country it charted. The second single, \"Piece of Me\", reached the top of the charts in Ireland and reached the top five in Australia, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The third single, \"Break the Ice\", was released the following year, and respectively reached numbers seven and nine in Ireland and Canada. In December 2007, Spears began a relationship with paparazzo Adnan Ghalib.\n2008\u20132010: Conservatorship and \"Circus\".\nIn January 2008, Spears refused to relinquish custody of her sons to Federline's representatives. She was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after police that had arrived at her house noted she appeared to be under the influence of an unidentified substance. The following day, Spears' visitation rights were suspended at an emergency court hearing, and Federline was given sole physical and legal custody of their sons. She was committed to the psychiatric ward of Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and put on 5150 involuntary psychiatric hold under California state law. The court placed her under a conservatorship led by her father, Jamie Spears, and attorney Andrew Wallet, giving them complete control of her assets. She was released five days later.\nThe following month, Spears guest-starred on the \"How I Met Your Mother\" episode \"Ten Sessions\" as receptionist Abby. She received positive reviews for her performance, as well as bringing the series its highest ratings ever. In July 2008, Spears regained some visitation rights after coming to an agreement with Federline and his counsel. In September 2008, Spears opened the MTV Video Music Awards with a pre-taped comedy sketch with Jonah Hill and an introduction speech. She won Best Female Video, Best Pop Video, and Video of the Year for \"Piece of Me\". A 60-minute introspective documentary, \"\", was produced to chronicle Spears' return to the recording industry. Directed by Phil Griffin, \"For the Record\" was shot in Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and New York City during the third quarter of 2008. The documentary was broadcast on MTV to 5.6 million viewers for the two airings on the premiere night. It was the highest rating in its Sunday night timeslot and in the network's history. \nIn December 2008, Spears' sixth studio album, \"Circus\", was released. It received positive reviews from critics and debuted at number one in Canada, Czech Republic, and the United States, and within the top ten in many European nations. In the United States, Spears became the youngest female artist to have five albums debut at number one, earning a place in \"Guinness World Records\". She also became the only act in the SoundScan era to have four albums debut with 500,000 or more copies sold. The album was one of the fastest-selling albums of the year, and has sold 4 million copies worldwide. Its lead single, \"Womanizer\", became Spears' first chart-topper on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 since \"...Baby One More Time\". The single also topped the charts in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Norway, and Sweden. It was also nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording.\nIn January 2009, Spears and her father obtained a restraining order against her former manager Sam Lutfi, ex-boyfriend Adnan Ghalib, and attorney Jon Eardley, all of whom had been accused of conspiring to gain control of Spears' affairs. Spears embarked on The Circus Starring Britney Spears tour in March 2009. With a gross of U.S. $131.8 million, it became the fifth highest-grossing tour of the year. In November 2009, Spears released her second greatest hits album, \"The Singles Collection\". The album's lead and only single, \"3\", became her third number-one single in the U.S.\nIn May 2010, Spears' representatives confirmed she was dating her agent, Jason Trawick, and that they had decided to end their professional relationship to focus on their personal relationship. Spears designed a limited edition clothing line for Candie's, which was released in stores in July 2010. In September 2010, she made a cameo appearance on a Spears-themed tribute episode of the television series \"Glee\", titled \"Britney/Brittany\"; the episode drew the highest Nielsen rating\u00a0\u2013 up to that point in the series's run\u00a0\u2013 in the 18\u201349 demographic.\n2011\u20132012: \"Femme Fatale\" and \"The X Factor\".\nIn March 2011, Spears released her seventh studio album, \"Femme Fatale\". The album peaked at number one in the United States, Canada, and Australia, and within the top ten on nearly every other chart. Its peak in the United States tied Spears with Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson for the third-most number ones among women. \"Femme Fatale\" has been certified platinum by the RIAA and as of February 2014, it had sold 2.4 million copies worldwide.\nThe album's lead single, \"Hold It Against Me\", debuted atop the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, becoming Spears' fourth number-one single on the chart and making her the second artist in history to have two consecutive singles debut at number one, after Mariah Carey. The second single, \"Till the World Ends\", peaked at number three on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 in May, while the third single, \"I Wanna Go\", reached number seven in August. \"Femme Fatale\" became Spears' first album in which three of its songs reached the top ten of the chart. The fourth and final single \"Criminal\" was released in September 2011. The music video sparked controversy when British politicians criticized Spears for using replica guns while filming the video in a London area that had been badly affected by the 2011 England riots. Spears' management briefly responded, stating, \"The video is a fantasy story featuring Britney's boyfriend, Jason Trawick, which literally plays out the lyrics of a song written three years before the riots ever happened.\" In April 2011, Spears appeared in a remix of Rihanna's song \"S&M\". It reached number one in the US later that month, giving Spears her fifth number one on the chart. On \"Billboard\"'s 2011 Year-End list, Spears was ranked number fourteen on the Artists of the Year, thirty-two on \"Billboard\" 200 artists, and ten on \"Billboard\" Hot 100 artists. Spears co-wrote \"Whiplash\", a song from the album \"When the Sun Goes Down\" (2011) by Selena Gomez & the Scene.\nIn June 2011, Spears embarked on her Femme Fatale Tour. The first ten dates of the tour grossed $6.2 million, landing the fifty-fifth spot on \"Pollstar\"'s Top 100 North American Tours list for the half-way point of the year. The tour ended on December 10, 2011, in Puerto Rico, after 79 performances. A DVD of the tour was released in November 2011. In August 2011, Spears received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards. The next month, she released her second remix album, \"\". In December 2011, Spears became engaged to her long-time boyfriend Jason Trawick, who had formerly been her agent. Trawick was legally granted a role as co-conservator, alongside her father, in April 2012.\nIn May 2012, Spears was hired to replace Paula Abdul as a judge for the second season of the USA show of \"The X Factor\", joining Simon Cowell, L.A. Reid, and fellow new judge Demi Lovato, who replaced Nicole Scherzinger. With a reported salary of $15 million, she became the highest-paid judge on a singing competition series in television history. However, Katy Perry broke her record in 2018 after Perry was signed for a $25-million salary to serve as a judge on ABC's revival of \"American Idol\". Spears mentored the Teens category; her final act, Carly Rose Sonenclar, was named the runner-up of the season. Spears did not return for the show's third season and was replaced by Paulina Rubio.\nSpears appeared on the song \"Scream & Shout\" with will.i.am, which was released as the third single from his fourth studio album, \"#willpower\" (2013). The song later became Spears' sixth number-one single on the UK Singles Chart and peaked at number three on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. \"Scream & Shout\" was among the best-selling songs of 2012 and 2013 with denoting sales of over 8.1 million worldwide, the accompanying music video was the third most-viewed video in 2013 on Vevo despite the video being released in 2012. In December 2012, \"Forbes\" named her music's top-earning woman of 2012, with estimated earnings of $58 million.\n2013\u20132015: \"Britney Jean\" and Britney: Piece of Me.\nSpears began work on her eighth studio album, \"Britney Jean\", in December 2012, and enlisted will.i.am as its executive producer in May 2013. In January 2013, Spears and Jason Trawick ended their engagement. Trawick was also removed as Spears' co-conservator, restoring her father as the sole conservator. Following the breakup, she began dating David Lucado in March; the couple split in August 2014. During the production of \"Britney Jean\", Spears recorded the song \"Ooh La La\" for the soundtrack of \"The Smurfs 2\", which was released in June 2013.\nOn September 17, 2013, she appeared on \"Good Morning America\" to announce her two-year concert residency at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, titled . It began on December 27, 2013, and included a total of 100 shows throughout 2014 and 2015. During the same appearance, Spears announced that \"Britney Jean\" would be released on December 3, 2013, in the United States. It was released through RCA Records due to the disbandment of Jive Records in 2011, which had formed the joint RCA/Jive Label Group (initially known as BMG Label Group) between 2007 and 2011.\n\"Britney Jean\" became Spears' final project under her original recording contract with Jive, which had guaranteed the release of eight studio albums. The record received a low amount of promotion and had little commercial impact, reportedly due to time conflicts involving preparations for Britney: Piece of Me. Upon its release, the record debuted at number four on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200 with first-week sales of 107,000 copies, becoming her lowest-peaking and lowest-selling album in the United States. \"Britney Jean\" debuted at number 34 on the UK Albums Chart, selling 12,959 copies in its first week. In doing so, it became Spears' lowest-charting and lowest-selling album in the country.\n\"Work Bitch\" was released as the lead single from \"Britney Jean\" in September 2013. It debuted and peaked at number 12 on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100 marking Spears' 31st entry on the chart and the fifth highest debut of her career on the chart, and her seventh in the top 20. It also marked Spears' 19th top 20 entry and overall her 23rd top 40 single. The song marked Spears' highest sales debut since her 2011 number-one single \"Hold It Against Me\". \"Work Bitch\" debuted and peaked at number seven on the UK Singles Chart. The song also peaked within the top ten of the charts in Brazil, Canada, France, Italy, Mexico, and Spain.\nThe second single, \"Perfume\", premiered in November 2013. It debuted and peaked at number 76 on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100. In October 2013, she was featured as a guest vocalist on the song \"SMS (Bangerz)\" by Miley Cyrus, from the latter's fourth studio album, \"Bangerz\" (2013). On January 8, 2014, Spears won Favorite Pop Artist at the 40th People's Choice Awards at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. In August 2014, Spears confirmed she had renewed her contract with RCA and that she was writing and recording new music for her next album.\nSpears announced via Twitter in August 2014 that she would be releasing an intimate apparel line called \"The Intimate Britney Spears\". It was available to be purchased beginning on September 9, 2014, in the United States and Canada through Spears' Intimate Collection website. It was later available on September 25 for purchase in Europe. The company now ships to over 200 countries including Australia and New Zealand. On September 25, 2014, Spears confirmed on \"Good Morning Britain\" that she extended her contract to perform her Britney: Piece of Me concert residency at Planet Hollywood Las Vegas for two additional years. Spears began dating television producer Charlie Ebersol in October 2014. The pair were split in June 2015.\nOn May 14, 2015, Spears released a single, \"Pretty Girls\", with Iggy Azalea. It reached number 29 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and charted moderately in international territories. Spears and Azalea performed the track live at the 2015 \"Billboard\" Music Awards from The AXIS, the home of Spears' residency, to positive critical response. \"Entertainment Weekly\" praised the performance, noting \"Spears gave one of her most energetic televised performances in years.\"\nOn June 16, 2015, Giorgio Moroder released the album \"D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu\", which featured Spears on \"Tom's Diner\". The song was released as the fourth single from the album on October 9, 2015. In an interview, Moroder praised Spears' vocals and said she \"sounds so good that you would hardly recognize her\". At the 2015 Teen Choice Awards, Spears received the Candie's Style Icon Award, her ninth Teen Choice Award. In November 2015, Spears guest-starred as a fictionalized version of herself on the CW series \"Jane the Virgin\". On the show, she danced to \"Toxic\" with Gina Rodriguez's character.\n2016\u20132018: \"Glory\", continued residency, and the Piece of Me Tour.\nIn November 2015, Spears confirmed via social media that she had begun recording her ninth studio album. On March 1, 2016, \"V\" announced that Spears would appear on the cover of its 100th issue, dated March 8, 2016, in addition to revealing three different covers shot by photographer Mario Testino for the milestone publication. The \"V\" editor-in-chief, Stephen Gan, said Spears was selected because of her status as an icon in the industry, and asked: \"Who in our world did not grow up listening to her music?\" In May 2016, Spears launched a casual role-play gaming application, \"\". The app, created by Glu Mobile, was made available through both iOS and Google Play.\nOn May 22, 2016, Spears performed a medley of her past singles at the 2016 \"Billboard\" Music Awards. In addition to opening the show, Spears was honored with the \"Billboard\" Millennium Award. On July 15, 2016, Spears released the lead single, \"Make Me\", from her ninth studio album, featuring guest vocals from American rapper G-Eazy. The album, \"Glory\", was formally released on August 26, 2016. On August 16, 2016, MTV and Spears announced that she would perform at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards. The performance marked Spears' first time returning to the VMA stage after her widely panned performance of \"Gimme More\" at the 2007 show nine years earlier. Along with \"Make Me\", Spears and G-Eazy also performed the latter's hit song \"Me, Myself & I\".\nSpears appeared on the cover of \"Marie Claire\" UK for the October 2016 issue. In the publication, Spears revealed that she had suffered from crippling anxiety in the past, and that motherhood played a major role in helping her overcome it. \"My boys don't care if everything isn't perfect. They don't judge me\", Spears said in the issue. In November 2016, during an interview with Las Vegas Blog, Spears confirmed she had already begun work on her next album, stating: \"I'm not sure what I want the next album to sound like.\u00a0... I just know that I'm excited to get into the studio again and actually have already been back recording.\" In the same month, she released a remix version of \"Slumber Party\" as the second single from \"Glory\", featuring Tinashe.\nShe began dating \"Slumber Party\"'s music video co-star Sam Asghari after the two met on set. In January 2017, Spears received four wins out of four nominations at the 43rd People's Choice Awards, including Favorite Pop Artist, Female Artist, Social Media Celebrity, as well as Comedic Collaboration for a skit with Ellen DeGeneres for \"The Ellen DeGeneres Show\". In March 2017, Spears announced that her residency concert would be performed abroad as a world tour, , with dates in select Asian cities. In April 2017, the Israeli Labor Party announced that it would reschedule its July primary election to avoid conflict with Spears' sold-out Tel Aviv concert, citing traffic, and security concerns.\nSpears' manager Larry Rudolph also announced the residency would not be extended following her contract expiration with Caesars Entertainment at the end of 2017. On April 29, 2017, Spears became the first recipient of the Icon Award at the 2017 Radio Disney Music Awards. On November 4, 2017, Spears attended the grand opening of the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation Britney Spears Campus in Las Vegas. Later that month, \"Forbes\" announced that Spears was the 8th highest earning female musician, earning $34 million in 2017. On December 31, 2017, Spears performed the final show of Britney: Piece of Me. The final performance reportedly brought in $1.172 million, setting a new box office record for a single show in Las Vegas, and breaking the record previously held by Jennifer Lopez. Performances of \"Toxic\" and \"Work Bitch\" were recorded on earlier dates and aired on ABC's \"Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve\" to a record audience of 25.6 million.\nIn January 2018, Spears released her 24th perfume with Elizabeth Arden, Sunset Fantasy, and announced the Piece of Me Tour which took place in July 2018 in North America and Europe. Tickets were sold out within minutes for major cities, and additional dates were added to meet the demand. Pitbull was the supporting act for the European leg. The tour ranked at 86 and 30 on \"Pollstar\"'s 2018 Year-End Top 100 Tours chart both in North America and worldwide, respectively. In total, the tour grossed $54.3 million with 260,531 tickets sold and was the sixth highest-grossing female tour of 2018, and was the United Kingdom's second best-selling female tour of 2018.\nOn March 20, 2018, Spears was announced as part of a campaign for French luxury fashion house Kenzo. The company said it aimed to shake up the 'jungle' world of fashion with Spears' 'La Collection Memento No. 2' campaign. On April 12, 2018, Spears was honored with the 2018 GLAAD Vanguard Award at the GLAAD Media Awards for her role in \"accelerating acceptance for the LGBTQ community\". On April 27, 2018, Epic Rights announced a new partnership with Spears to debut her own fashion line in 2019, which would include clothing, fitness apparel, accessories, and electronics.\nIn July 2018, Spears released her first unisex fragrance, Prerogative. On October 18, 2018, Spears announced her second Las Vegas residency show, Britney: Domination, which was set to launch at Park MGM's Park Theatre on February 13, 2019. Spears was slated to make $507,000 per show, which would have made her the highest paid act on the Las Vegas Strip. On October 21, 2018, Spears performed at the Formula One Grand Prix in Austin, the final performance of her Piece of Me Tour.\n2019\u20132021: Conservatorship dispute, #FreeBritney, and abuse allegations.\nOn January 4, 2019, Spears announced an indefinite hiatus and the cancellation of her Las Vegas residency after her father, Jamie, suffered a near-fatal colon rupture. In March 2019, Andrew Wallet resigned as co-conservator of her estate after 11 years. Spears entered a psychiatric facility amidst stress from her father's illness that same month. The following month, a fan podcast, \"Britney's Gram\", released a voicemail message from a source who claimed to be a former member of Spears' legal team. They alleged that Jamie had canceled the residency due to Spears' refusal to take her medication, that he had been holding her in the facility against her will since January 2019 after she violated a no-driving rule, and that her conservatorship was supposed to have ended in 2009. The allegations gave rise to a movement to terminate the conservatorship, #FreeBritney, which received support from celebrities including singers Cher, Paris Hilton, and Miley Cyrus, and the nonprofit organization American Civil Liberties Union. On April 22, 2019, fans protested outside the West Hollywood City Hall and demanded Spears' release. Spears said \"all [was] well\" two days later and left the facility later that month.\nIn a May 2019 hearing, Judge Brenda Penny ordered a professional evaluation of the conservatorship. In September, Spears' ex-husband Federline obtained a restraining order against Britney's father, Jamie, following an alleged physical altercation between Jamie and one of her sons. Spears' longtime care manager, Jodi Montgomery, temporarily replaced Jamie as her conservator that same month, which also saw a hearing where no decisions about the arrangement were reached. An interactive pop-up museum dedicated to Spears, dubbed \"The Zone\", opened in Los Angeles in February 2020, though it was later suspended in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. She released \"Glory\"'s Japanese-exclusive bonus track, \"Mood Ring\" as a single, and debuted a new cover of the album to streaming and digital platforms worldwide in May 2020. In August, Jamie called the #FreeBritney movement \"a joke\" and its organizers \"conspiracy theorists\".\nOn August 17, 2020, Spears' court-appointed lawyer, Samuel D. Ingham III, submitted a court filing that documented Spears' desire to have her conservatorship altered to reflect her wishes as well as lifestyle, to instate Montgomery as her permanent conservator, and to replace Jamie with a fiduciary as conservator of her estate. Four days later, Penny extended the established arrangement until February 2021. In November 2020, Penny approved Bessemer Trust as co-conservator of Spears' estate alongside Jamie. The following month, Spears released a new deluxe edition of \"Glory\", which includes \"Mood Ring\" and new songs \"Swimming in the Stars\" and \"Matches\".\nA documentary about Spears' career and conservatorship, \"Framing Britney Spears\", premiered on FX in February 2021. Spears later revealed that she had seen parts of the documentary, stating that she felt humiliated by the perception of her that was presented and that she \"cried for two weeks\" following the initial broadcast. The following month, Ingham filed a petition to permanently replace Jamie with Montgomery as the conservator of Spears' person, citing a 2014 order that determined that Spears did not have the capacity to consent to medical treatment of any form.\nOn June 22, 2021, shortly before Spears was set to speak to the court, \"The New York Times\" obtained confidential court documents stating that Spears had pushed for years to end her conservatorship. Spears spoke to the court on June 23, calling the conservatorship \"abusive\". She said she had lied by \"telling the whole world I'm OK and I'm happy\", and that she was traumatized and angry. The court statement received widespread media coverage and generated over 1 million shares on Twitter, over 500,000 messages using the tag #FreeBritney, and more than 150,000 messages with a new hashtag referencing the court appearance, #BritneySpeaks.\nOn July 1, Bessemer Trust asked the judge to allow them to withdraw from the conservatorship, saying that they had been misled and had entered into the arrangement on the understanding that the conservatorship was voluntary. The same day, senators Elizabeth Warren and Bob Casey Jr. called on federal agencies to increase oversight of the country's conservatorship systems. Spears' manager of 25 years, Larry Rudolph, resigned on July 6 due to her \"intention to officially retire\" and on that same day, it was reported that Ingham planned to file documents to the court asking to be dismissed. In a July 14 hearing, Judge Penny approved the resignations of Bessemer Trust and Ingham. The court also approved of Spears' request to hire attorney Mathew S. Rosengart to represent her. Rosengart informed the court that he would be working to terminate the conservatorship. Later that day, Spears publicly endorsed the #FreeBritney movement for the first time, using the hashtag in a caption on an Instagram post. She mentioned feeling \"blessed\" after earning \"real representation\", referring to Judge Penny's decision to allow her to choose her own counsel.\nOn July 26, Rosengart filed a petition seeking to remove Jamie as conservator of Spears' estate and to replace him with Jason Rubin, a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) at Certified Strategies Inc. in Woodland Hills, California. On August 12, Jamie agreed to step down as conservator at some future date, with his lawyers stating that he wanted \"an orderly transition to a new conservator\". On September 7, Jamie filed a petition to end the conservatorship. Five days later, Spears announced her engagement to her longtime boyfriend, Sam Asghari, through an Instagram post. On September 29, Judge Penny suspended Jamie as conservator of Spears' estate, with accountant John Zabel replacing him on a temporary basis. On November 12, Judge Penny terminated the conservatorship.\n2022\u2013present: Third marriage, \"The Woman in Me\", and retirement from singing.\nIn April 2022, she announced her pregnancy with Asghari's child, which ended in a miscarriage the following month. The couple married on June 9 at her home in Thousand Oaks, Los Angeles. None of Spears' immediate family (including her parents, sister, and brother) were invited; her two sons did not attend. Spears' first husband, Jason Alexander, attempted to crash the wedding by breaking into her home, armed with a knife, but was arrested. Spears had a three-year restraining order against him. On August 26, Spears and English musician Elton John released the duet \"Hold Me Closer\", a remake of John's 1972 single \"Tiny Dancer\". It was Spears' first musical release since the termination of her conservatorship. \"Hold Me Closer\" debuted at number six on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100, becoming her 14th top-ten single and her highest-charting song in the chart since \"Scream & Shout\" (2012). It debuted at number three on the UK Singles Chart, earning Spears her 24th top-ten.\nSince the termination of her conservatorship, Spears' personal life, social media presence, and overall well-being have been subject to renewed media interest and fan speculation, giving rise to conspiracy theories. On January 24, 2023, deputies from the Ventura County Sheriff's Office performed a welfare check at Spears' residence after receiving several calls from fans who were concerned after she deleted her Instagram account. A spokesperson for the Sheriff's Department stated that Spears \"was safe and in no danger\". Spears addressed the incident on her Twitter account, asking fans to respect her privacy. Spears and the rapper will.i.am released their single, \"Mind Your Business\", on July 21, 2023. On August 16, it was announced Spears and Asghari separated after 14 months of marriage. On May 1, 2024, they reached a divorce settlement. The following day, the judge signed off on the settlement and the couple were divorced on December 2, 2024. In September 2023, an additional welfare check was initiated when Spears posted an Instagram video of herself dancing with knives. Her security team assured the attending officer that there was no immediate threat to her safety, and the officer departed. Spears also clarified that the knives were not real.\nIn February 2022, Spears signed a $15 million book deal for a memoir in one of the biggest book deals of all time. The memoir, \"The Woman in Me,\" was released on October 24, 2023. It details her rise to fame, public media events, her conservatorship, and her newfound freedom. In the United States, it sold 1.1 million copies, while worldwide it sold 2.4 million copies in print sales during its first week of release.\nIn January 2024, reports circulated that Charli XCX and Julia Michaels had been asked to write songs for Spears, and \"Rolling Stone\" reported that \"management and A&R are trying to get her excited for the music\". Spears denied the reports, saying she would never return to the music industry. However, she also said that she had written more than 20 songs for other artists in the previous two years. In May 2024, Charli XCX confirmed in an interview that she was indeed asked to write for Spears, for which she traveled to Malibu, but that she did not know if Spears was a part of the process explaining that \"the team were present... But she didn't record it. She obviously didn't.\"\nArtistry.\nInfluences.\nSpears has cited Madonna, Janet Jackson, and Whitney Houston as major influences, her \"three favorite artists\" as a child, whom she would \"sing along to\u00a0... day and night in [her] living room\"; Houston's \"I Have Nothing\" was the song she auditioned to that landed her record deal with Jive Records. Spears also named Mariah Carey as \"one of the main reasons I started singing\". Throughout her career, Spears has drawn frequent comparisons to Madonna and Jackson in particular, in terms of vocals, choreography, and stage presence. According to Spears: \"I know when I was younger, I looked up to people\u00a0... like, you know, Janet Jackson and Madonna. And they were major inspirations for me. But I also had my own identity and I knew who I was.\"\nIn the 2002 book \"Madonnastyle\" by Carol Clerk, she is quoted saying: \"I have been a huge fan of Madonna since I was a little girl. She's the person that I've really looked up to. I would really, really like to be a legend like Madonna.\" Spears cited \"That's the Way Love Goes\" as the inspiration for her song \"Touch of My Hand\" from her album \"In the Zone\", saying \"I like to compare it to 'That's the Way Love Goes,' kind of a Janet Jackson thing.\" She also said her song \"Just Luv Me\" from her \"Glory\" album also reminded her of \"That's the Way Love Goes\".\nAfter meeting Spears face to face, Janet Jackson stated: \"she said to me, 'I'm such a big fan; I really admire you.' That's so flattering. Everyone gets inspiration from some place. And it's awesome to see someone else coming up who's dancing and singing, and seeing how all these kids relate to her. A lot of people put it down, but what she does is a positive thing.\" Madonna said of Spears in the documentary \"\": \"I admire her talent as an artist\u00a0... There are aspects about her that I recognize in myself when I first started out in my career\". Spears has also named Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Sheryl Crow, Otis Redding, Shania Twain, Brandy, Beyonc\u00e9, Natalie Imbruglia, Cher, and Prince as inspirations, and younger artists such as Selena Gomez and Ariana Grande.\nMusical style.\nSpears is described as a pop artist and generally explores the genre in the form of Following her debut, she was credited with influencing the revival of teen pop in the late 1990s. Rob Sheffield of \"Rolling Stone\" wrote: \"Spears carries on the classic archetype of the rock & roll teen queen, the dungaree doll, the angel baby who just has to make a scene.\" In a review of \"...Baby One More Time\", Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic described her music as a \"blend of infectious, rap-inflected dance-pop and smooth balladry\". \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" saw Spears working with several R&B producers to create \"a combination of bubblegum, urban soul, and raga\". Her third studio album, \"Britney\", derived from the teen pop niche \"[r]hythmically and melodically\", but was described as \"sharper, tougher than what came before\", incorporating genres such as R&B, disco, and funk.\nSpears has explored and heavily incorporated the genres of electropop and dance music in her records, as well as influences of urban and hip hop, which are most present on \"In the Zone\" and \"Blackout\". \"In the Zone\" also experiments with Euro trance, reggae, and Middle Eastern music. \"Femme Fatale\" and \"Britney Jean\" were also heavily influenced by electronic music genres. Spears' ninth studio album, \"Glory\", is more eclectic and experimental than her previous released work. She commented that it \"took a lot of time\u00a0... it's really different\u00a0... there are like two or three songs that go in the direction of more urban that I've wanted to do for a long time now, and I just haven't really done that.\"\n\"...Baby One More Time\" and \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" address themes such as love and relationships from a teenager's point of view. Following the massive commercial success of her first two studio albums, Spears' team and producers wanted to maintain the formula that took her to the top of the charts. Spears, however, was no longer satisfied with the sound and themes covered on her records. She co-wrote five songs and choose each track's producer on her third studio album, \"Britney\", which lyrics address the subjects of reaching adulthood, sexuality, and self-discovery. Sex, dancing, freedom, and love continued to be Spears' music main subjects on her subsequent albums. Her fifth studio effort, \"Blackout\", also addresses issues such as fame and media scrutiny, including on the song \"Piece of Me\".\nSpears' music has also been noted for some catchphrases. The opening in her debut single \"...Baby One More Time\", \"Oh, baby baby\" is considered to be one of her signature lines and has been parodied in the media by various artists such as Nicole Scherzinger and Ariana Grande. It has been used in variating forms throughout her music, such as simply, \"baby\" and \"oh baby\", as well as the \"Blackout\" track, \"Ooh Ooh Baby\". On the initial development of \"...Baby One More Time\", Barry Weiss noted Spears' inception of the catchphrase from her strange ad-libbing during the recording of the song. He commented further, \"We thought it was really weird at first. It was strange. It was not the way Max wrote it. But it worked! We thought it could be a really good opening salvo for her.\" The opening line in \"Gimme More\", \"It's Britney, bitch\" has become another signature phrase. An early review of \"Blackout\" suggested the phrase was \"simply laughable\". Amy Roberts of \"Bustle\" called it \"an indelible cultural turning point, transforming a frenetic, floundering moment in the superstar's career to one of strength and empowerment\".\nVoice.\nSpears is a soprano. Other sources state that she possesses a contralto vocal range. Prior to her breakthrough success, she is described as having sung \"much deeper than her highly recognizable trademark voice of today\", with Eric Foster White, who worked with Spears on her debut album, \"...Baby One More Time\", being cited as \"[shaping] her voice over the course of a month\" upon being signed to Jive Records \"to where it is today\u2014distinctively, unmistakably Britney\". Rami Yacoub, who co-produced Spears' debut album with lyricist Max Martin, commented, \"I know from Denniz Pop and Max's previous productions, when we do songs, there's kind of a nasal thing. With N' Sync and the Backstreet Boys, we had to push for that mid-nasal voice. When Britney did that, she got this kind of raspy, sexy voice.\"\nGuy Blackman of \"The Age\" wrote that \"[t]he thing about Spears, though, is that her biggest songs, no matter how committee-created or impossibly polished, have always been convincing because of her delivery, her commitment and her presence.\u00a0... Spears expresses perfectly the conflicting urges of adolescence, the tension between chastity and sexual experience, between hedonism and responsibility, between confidence and vulnerability.\" Producer William Orbit, who worked with Spears on her album \"Britney Jean\", stated regarding her vocals: \"[Britney] didn't get so big just because [she] put on great shows; [she] got to be that way because [her voice is] unique: you hear two words and you know who is singing\".\nSpears has also been criticized for her reliance on Auto-Tune and her vocals being \"over-processed\" on records. Erlewine criticized Spears' singing abilities in a review of her \"Blackout\" album, stating: \"Never the greatest vocalist, her thin squawk could be dismissed early in her career as an adolescent learning the ropes, but nearly a decade later her singing hasn't gotten any better, even if the studio tools to masquerade her weaknesses have.\" Joan Anderman of \"The Boston Globe\" remarked that \"Spears sounds robotic, nearly inhuman, on her records, so processed is her voice by digital pitch-shifters and synthesizers.\"\nKayla Upadhyaya of \"The Michigan Daily\" has provided a different point of view, stating: \"Auto-tuned and over-processed vocals define [Spears]'s voice as an artist, and in her music, auto-tune isn't so much a gimmick as it is an instrument used to highlight, contort and make a statement.\" Adam Markovitz of \"Entertainment Weekly\" opines that \"Spears is no technical singer, that's for sure. But backed by Martin and Dr. Luke's wall of sound, her vocals melt into a mix of babytalk coo and coital panting that is, in its own overprocessed way, just as iconic and propulsive as Michael Jackson's yips or Eminem's snarls.\"\nStage performances and videos.\nSpears is known for her stage performances, particularly the elaborate dance routines which incorporate \"belly-dancing and tempered erotic moves\" that are credited with influencing \"dance-heavy acts\" such as Danity Kane and the Pussycat Dolls. \"Rolling Stone\" readers voted Spears their second-favorite dancing musician. Spears is described as being much more shy than her stage persona suggests. She said that performing is \"a boost to [her] confidence. It's like an alter-ego type thing. Something clicks and I go and turn into this different person. I think it's kind of a gift to be able to do that.\" Her 2000, 2001, and 2003 MTV Video Music Awards performances were lauded, while her 2007 presentation was widely panned by critics, as she \"teetered through her dance steps and mouthed only occasional words\". \"Billboard\" called her 2016 \"comeback\" performance at the show \"an effective, but not entirely glorious, bid to regain pop superstardom\".\nAfter her knee injuries and personal problems, Spears' \"showmanship\" and dance abilities came under criticism. Serge F. Kovaleski of \"The New York Times\" watched her in 2016 and stated: \"Once a fluid, natural dancer, Ms. Spears can appear stiff, even robotic, today, relying on flailing arms and flashy sets.\" \"Las Vegas Sun\"'s Robin Leach seemed more impressed over Spears' efforts on the concert by saying that she delivered a \"flawless performance\" on the residency's opening night.\nIt has been widely reported that Spears lip-syncs during live performances, which often prompts criticism from music critics and concert goers. Some, however, claimed that, although she \"got plenty of digital support\", she \"doesn't merely lip-sync\" during her live shows. In 2016, Sabrina Weiss of Refinery29 referred to her lip-syncing as a \"well-known fact that's not even taboo anymore.\" Noting on the prevalence of lip-syncing, the \"Los Angeles Daily News\" opined: \"In the context of a Britney Spears concert, does it really matter?\u00a0... you [just] go for the somewhat-ridiculous spectacle of it all\". Spears herself has commented on the topic, arguing: \"Because I'm dancing so much, I do have a little bit of playback, but there's a mixture of my voice and the playback.\u00a0... It really pisses me off because I'm busting my ass out there and singing at the same time and nobody ever gives me credit for it\".\nIn 2012, VH1 ranked Spears as the fourth Greatest Woman of the Video Era, while \"Billboard\" ranked her as the eight Greatest Music Video Artist of All Time in 2020, explaining: \"The storylines, the dancing, the \"outfits\". Right from the start, the pop princess established the lengths of her creativity with some of the most memorable videos of the last three decades.\" She has been retroactively noted as the pioneer for her early career videography. She conceptualized the \"iconic Catholic schoolgirl and cheerleader motif\" in the \"...Baby One More Time\" video, rejecting the animation video idea. She also made the \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" video \"dance-centric rather than space-centric as her producers suggested\". She also used her dancer's intuition to help select the beats for each track.\nPublic image.\nUpon launching her music career with \"...Baby One More Time\", Spears was labeled a teen idol, and \"Rolling Stone\" described her as \"the latest model of a classic product: the unneurotic pop star who performs her duties with vaudevillian pluck and spokesmodel charm.\" The April 1999 cover of \"Rolling Stone\" pictured a 17-year-old Spears reclining on a bed, wearing an exposed bra and hot pants while cradling a Teletubby in one arm. The American Family Association (AFA) decried the image as \"a disturbing mix of childhood innocence and adult sexuality\" and called on \"God-loving Americans to boycott stores selling Britney's albums\". Spears addressed the outcry, commenting: \"What's the big deal? I have strong morals.\u00a0... I'd do it again. I thought the pictures were fine. And I was tired of being compared to Debbie Gibson and all of this bubblegum pop all the time.\" Shortly before this, Spears had announced publicly she would remain abstinent until marriage.\nAn early criticism of Spears dismissed her as \"the product of a Swedish songwriting factory that had no real hand in either her music or her persona\". \"Vox\" editor Constance Grady wrote this was perpetuated from the fact that Spears debuted in the late 1990s, when music was dominated by rockism, that prizes \"so-called authenticity and grittiness of rock above all else\". Spears' \"slick, breezy pop was an affront to rockist sensibilities, and claiming that Spears was fake was an easy way to dismiss her.\" Ron Levy for \"Rolling Stone\" noted that \"I have to tell you, if the record company could have created more than one Britney Spears, they would have done it, and they tried!\"\n\"Billboard\" opined that, by the time Spears released her second album, \"Oops!... I Did It Again\", \"There was a shift occurring in both the music and her public image: She was sharper, sexier and singing about more grown-up fare, setting the stage for 2001's \"Britney\", which shed her innocent skin and ushered her into adulthood.\" \"Britney\"'s lead single, \"I'm a Slave 4 U\", and its music video were also credited for distancing her from her previous \"wholesome bubblegum star\" image. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic remarked, \"If 2001's \"Britney\" was a transitional album, capturing Spears at the point when she wasn't a girl and not yet a woman, its 2003 follow-up, \"In the Zone\", is where she has finally completed that journey and turned into Britney, the Adult Woman.\" Erlewine likened Spears to fellow singer Christina Aguilera, explaining that both equated \"maturity with transparent sexuality and the pounding sounds of nightclubs\". Brittany Spanos of \"LA Weekly\" stated that Spears \"set the bar for the 'adulthood' transition teen pop stars often struggle with\".\nSpears' erratic behavior and personal problems during 2006\u20132008 were highly publicized and affected both her career and public image. Erlewine writes that \"each new disaster [was] stripping away any residual sexiness in her public image\". In a 2008 article, \"Rolling Stone\"'s Vanessa Grigoriadis described her much-publicized personal issues as \"the most public downfall of any star in history\". Spears later received favorable media attention; \"Billboard\" wrote that her appearance at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards \"was a picture of professionalism and poise\" after her \"disastrous\" performance the previous year, while \"Business Insider\" ran an article on how she had \"lost control of her life\u00a0... and then made an incredible career comeback\". In 2017, Spears said: \"I think I had to give myself more breaks through my career and take responsibility for my mental health.\u00a0... I wrote back then, that I was lost and didn't know what to do with myself. I was trying to please everyone around me because that's who I am deep inside. There are moments where I look back and think: 'What the hell was I thinking?'\"\nIn September 2002, Spears was placed at number eight on VH1's 100 Sexiest Artists list. She was placed at number one on \"FHM\"'s 100 Sexiest Women in the World list in 2004, and, in December 2012, \"Complex\" ranked her 12th on its 100 Hottest Female Singers of All Time list. Remarking upon her perceived image as a sex symbol, Spears stated: \"When I'm on stage, that's my time to do my thing and go there and be that \u2014 and it's fun. It's exhilarating just to be something that you're not. And people tend to believe it.\" In 2003, \"People\" cited her as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People.\nSpears is recognized as a gay icon and received the 2018 GLAAD Vanguard Award at the GLAAD Media Awards for her role in \"accelerating acceptance for the LGBTQ community\". She addressed the \"unwavering loyalty\" and \"lack of judgment\" of her LGBTQ fans in \"Billboard\"'s Love Letters to the LGBTQ Community. She said: \"Your stories are what inspire me, bring me joy, and make me and my sons strive to be better people.\" Manuel Betancourt of \"Vice\" wrote about the \"queer adoration\", especially of gay men, on Spears, and said that \"Where other gay icons exude self-possession, Spears' fragile resilience has made her an even more fascinating role model, closer to Judy Garland than to Lady Gaga\u00a0... she's a glittering mirror ball, a fractured reflection of those men on the dance floor back onto themselves.\" \"HuffPost\"'s Ben Appel attributed Spears' status as a gay icon to her \"oh-so-innocent/not that innocent\" Monroe-like sensuality, her sweet, almost saccharine nature, her beyond basic but addictive pop songs, her dance moves, her phoenix-out-of-the-fire comeback from a series of mental health crises, and her unmistakable tenderness. \"Britney is camp. She is a fashion plate. A doll. Britney is a drag queen.\"\nSince her early years in the public eye, Spears has been a tabloid fixture and a paparazzi target. According to \"Vanity Fair\", photos of Spears sold for a combined value of $100 million in 2007. Harvey Levin, the founder of \"TMZ\", said in an interview, \"Britney is gold. She is crack to our readers. Her life is a complete train-wreck, and I thank God for her every day.\" Steve Huey of AllMusic remarked that \"among female singers of [Spears'] era\u00a0... her celebrity star power was rivaled only by Jennifer Lopez.\" 'Britney Spears' was Yahoo!'s most popular search term between 2005 and 2008, and has been in a total of seven different years. Spears was named as Most Searched Person in the \"Guinness World Records\" book edition 2007 and 2009. She was later named as the most searched person of the decade 2000\u20132009.\nAs a public figure, Spears \"has never been known to her fans as a politically active, committed\u2014or even aware\u2014entertainer.\" In a 2003 interview with Tucker Carlson, she commented on President George W. Bush and the Iraq War, saying that \"we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes\u00a0... and be faithful in what happens\". Michael Moore included the footage of Spears' answer in his \"anti-Bush\" documentary \"Fahrenheit 9/11\", which, according to \"The Washington Times\"'s James Frazier, presented her \"as an example of a naive American blindly trusting a dishonest commander in chief\" and fueled the \"urban legend\" of a \"conservative\" Spears. Frazier also said that \"the few positions she has taken can hardly be considered conservative\", such as supporting same-sex marriage. In 2016, Spears posted pictures of a meeting with Hillary Clinton on social media. She described Clinton as \"an inspiration and [a] beautiful voice for women around the world\".\nIn December 2017, Spears publicly showed support for the DREAM Act in the wake of the announcement that Donald Trump would end the DACA policy, which previously granted undocumented immigrants who came to the country as minors a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation. She posted a photo of herself on social media wearing a black T-shirt that reads \"We Are All Dreamers\" in white letters. The caption read, \"Tell Congress to pass the #DreamAct\".\nOn September 15, 2021, Spears was named one of the 100 most influential people of 2021 by \"Time.\" A few days before the editors's list was released, Spears was put at the top of the readers voting list of which personalities should be included on the annual \"Time\" 100 list. Deemed an icon of 2021, editors highlighted the impact of her fight against her conservatorship as well as of the #FreeBritney movement. In October 2021, Spears thanked her fans and the #FreeBritney movement for \"freeing me from my conservatorship\". Britney Spears was also named most famous celebrity from Louisiana according to a study done by Baton Rouge.\nLegacy.\nReferred to as the \"Princess of Pop\", Spears was credited as one of the \"driving force[s] behind the return of teen pop in the late 1990s\". \"Rolling Stone\"'s Stacy Lambe explained that she \"help[ed] to usher in a new era for the genre that had gone dormant in the decade that followed New Kids on the Block.\u00a0... Spears would lead an army of pop stars\u00a0... built on slick Max Martin productions, plenty of sexual innuendo and dance-heavy performances. [She became] one of the most successful artists of all time\u2014and a cautionary tale for a generation, whether they paid attention or not.\" In a 2021 article for \"Time\", Maura Johnston opined that \"Spears' legacy as a pop artist is complex, made up of dazzling musical heights and music-business-borne lows\". Johnston also commented: \"While Spears' catalog is part of the canon that defines the first 20 years of this millennium, one hopes that her public struggles, and the strength she's shown while enduring them, will lead to her cementing her true legacy: Reshaping the machine that turns those songs into cultural touchstones.\"\n\"Glamour\" contributor Christopher Rosa described her as \"one of pop music's defining voices.\u00a0... When she emerged onto the scene in 1998 with \"...Baby One More Time\", the world hadn't seen a performer like her. Not since Madonna had a female artist affected the genre so profoundly.\" \"Billboard\"'s Robert Kelly observed that Spears' \"sexy and coy\" vocals on her debut single \"...Baby One More Time\" \"kicked off a new era of pop vocal stylings that would influence countless artists to come\". In 2020, \"Rolling Stone\" ranked the song at number one on a list of the 100 Greatest Debut Singles of All Time and Rob Sheffield described it as \"One of those pop manifestos that announces a new sound, a new era, a new century. But most of all, a new star\u00a0... With \"...Baby One More Time\", [Spears] changed the sound of pop forever: It's Britney, bitch. Nothing was ever the same.\"\nSpears was at the forefront of the female teen pop explosion starting in 1999 and extending through the 2000s, leading the pack of Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, and Mandy Moore. All of these performers had been developing material in 1998, but the market changed dramatically in December 1998 when Spears' single and video were charting highly. RCA Records quickly signed Aguilera and released her debut single to capitalize on Spears' success, producing her debut hit single \"Genie in a Bottle\". Simpson consciously modeled her persona as more mature than Spears; her \"I Wanna Love You Forever\" charted in September 1999, and her album \"Sweet Kisses\" followed shortly after. Moore's first single, \"Candy\", hit the airwaves a month before Simpson's single, but it did not perform as well on the charts; Moore was often seen as less accomplished than Spears and the others, coming in fourth of the \"pop princesses\". Fueling media stories about their competition for first place, Spears and Aguilera traded barbs but also compliments through the 2000s.\nAlim Kheraj of \"Dazed\" called Spears \"one of pop's most important pioneers\". After eighteen years as a performer, \"Billboard\" described her as having \"earned her title as one of pop's reigning queens. Since her early days as a Mouseketeer, [Spears] has pushed the boundaries of 21st century sounds, paving the way for a generation of artists to shamelessly embrace glossy pop and redefine how one can accrue consistent success in the music industry.\" \"Entertainment Weekly\"'s Adam Markovitz described Spears as \"an American institution, as deeply sacred and messed up as pro wrestling or the filibuster.\" In 2012, she was ranked as the fourth VH1's 50 Greatest Women of the Video Era show list. VH1 also cited her among its choices on the 100 Greatest Women in Music in 2012 and the 200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons in 2003. In 2020, \"Billboard\" ranked her eight on its 100 Greatest Music Video Artists of all-time list. In October 2024, \"Billboard\" placed Spears at number six on their Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century list.\nSpears and her work have influenced various artists including Katy Perry, Meghan Trainor, Demi Lovato, Kelly Key, Kristinia DeBarge, Little Boots, Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, Marina Diamandis, the Weeknd, Tegan and Sara, Pixie Lott, Grimes, Selena Gomez, Hailee Steinfeld, Pabllo Vittar, Tinashe, Victoria Justice, Cassie, Leah Wellbaum of Slothrust, the Saturdays, Normani, Miley Cyrus, Cheryl, Lana Del Rey, Ava Max, Sam Smith, and Rina Sawayama. During the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, Lady Gaga said that Spears \"taught us all how to be fearless, and the industry wouldn't be the same without her.\" Gaga has also cited Spears as an influence, calling her \"the most provocative performer of my time\".\nBefore Spears joined \"The X Factor\", Simon Cowell explained that he is \"fascinated by [Britney]. The fact that she's one of the most talked about \u2013 not just pop stars \u2013 but people in the world today, means that you've got this star power.\u00a0... She's still hot, she's still having hit records and she's still controversial, there's a reason for that.\" Marina Diamandis named Spears as the main influence behind her album \"Electra Heart\". Lana Del Rey said that the music video for \"Toxic\" inspires her. Porcelain Black describes her music as a \"love child\" of Spears and Marilyn Manson. Rita Ora's 2019 music video for \"Only Want You\" was inspired by Spears' \"Everytime\" music video, and said in a stories from Instagram, \"Hey @britneyspears this was for you because I love you so. Pay homage to the ones who inspire! #icon.\"\nSpears has been credited with redefining Las Vegas residencies as a retirement place for musicians. Her debut concert residency was described as \"the natural evolution of Celine Dion's powerhourse Vegas residency, a still-charting star of another generation redefining the role of Strip headliner.\" \"Forbes\" named Spears the sixth-highest-earning female musician of 2015.\" She is credited with influencing and paving the way for other artists's residencies such as Jennifer Lopez's , Bruno Mars's Bruno Mars at Park MGM, and Backstreet Boys' . The arrival of Spears \"saw the pop promoters finally tap into the younger crowd arriving in town for a good time\".\nSpears' much-publicized personal problems and her subsequent career comeback have inspired some artists. Gwyneth Paltrow's character in the 2010 film \"Country Strong\" was inspired by Spears' treatment by the media. According to film director Shana Fest, \"that's where this movie came from. I mean, I was seeing what was happening in the media to Britney Spears. I think it's tragic how we treat people who give us so much, and we love to see them knocked down to build them back up again, to knock them down again.\" Nicki Minaj has cited Spears' comeback after her much-publicized personal issues as an inspiration. Spears' hounding by paparazzi and personal problems also inspired Barry Manilow's album \"15 Minutes\". Manilow said: \"She couldn't have a life without them pulling up next to her car and following her and driving her crazy to the point where, that was around the time she shaved off her hair.\u00a0... We all looked at it in horror\u00a0... So it seemed like a thing to be writing an album about.\" Bebo Norman wrote a song about Spears, called \"Britney\", which was inspired by \"culture's make-or-break treatment of celebrities\".\nIn 2008, \"Salon\" published an article titled \"The Britney Economy\" describing how Spears is a driving force in music and fashion, stimulating consumer purchases and media coverage. Magazines, paparazzi, and record labels make millions of dollars, and Spears profits to a lesser degree. Along with Alicia Silverstone, Christy Turlington, and Naomi Campbell, Spears has been credited with introducing the navel piercing to mainstream culture.\nAchievements.\nSpears' awards and accolades include a Grammy Award; 15 Guinness World Records; six MTV Video Music Awards, including the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award; seven \"Billboard\" Music Awards, including the Millennium Award; the inaugural Radio Disney Icon Award; the GLAAD Media Award's Vanguard Award; and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.\nSpears is listed by the \"Guinness World Records\" as having the \"Best-selling album by a teenage solo artist\" for her debut studio album, \"...Baby One More Time\", which sold over 13 million copies in the United States. Melissa Ruggieri of the \"Richmond Times-Dispatch\" reported: \"She's also marked for being the best-selling teenage artist. Before she turned 20 in 2001, Spears had sold over 37 million albums worldwide\".\nAs of 2023[ [update]], according to the \"Evening Standard\", Spears has sold over 150 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time. She also sold more than 70 million records in United States, including 36.9 million digital singles and 33.6 million digital albums. Spears is further recognized as the best-selling female albums artist of the 2000s in the United States, as well as the fifth overall. In December 2009, \"Billboard\" ranked Spears the 8th Artist of the 2000s decade in the United States. She is one of the few artists in history to have had a number-one single and a number-one studio album in the US during each of the three decades of her career. With \"3\" in 2009 and \"Hold It Against Me\" in 2011, she became the second artist after Mariah Carey in the Hot 100's history to debut at number one with two or more songs. In 2016, Spears ranked at number twenty on \"Billboard\"'s Greatest Of All Time Top Dance Club Artists list.\nOther ventures.\nProduct and endorsements.\nIn 2000, Spears released a limited edition of sunglasses titled Shades of Britney. In 2001, she signed a deal with shoe company Skechers, and a $7\u20138 million promotional deal with Pepsi, their biggest entertainment deal at the time. Aside from numerous commercials with the latter during that year, she also appeared in a 2004 Pepsi television commercial in the theme of \"Gladiators\" with singers Beyonc\u00e9, Pink, and Enrique Iglesias. On June 19, 2002, she released her first multi-platform video game, \"Britney's Dance Beat\", which received positive reviews.\nIn March 2009, Spears was announced as the new face of clothing brand Candie's. Dari Marder, chief marketing officer for the brand, said: \"Everybody loves a comeback and nobody's doing it better than Britney. She's just poised for even greater success.\" In 2010, Spears designed a limited edition line for the brand, which was released in stores in July 2010. In 2011, she teamed up with Sony, Make Up For Ever, and Plenty of Fish to release her music video for \"Hold It Against Me\", earning her $500,000 for the product placement.\nSpears also teamed up with Hasbro in 2012 to release an exclusive version of \"Twister Dance\", which includes a remix of \"Till the World Ends\". She was also featured on a commercial, which was directed by Ray Kay, to promote the game. Spears was also featured on the commercial of \"Twister Dance Rave\", and the game included a Twister remix of \"Circus\". In March 2018, it was revealed that Spears would be the face of Kenzo, a contemporary French luxury clothing house.\nSpears' range of commercial deals and products also includes beauty care products and perfumes. She released her first perfume with Elizabeth Arden, Curious in 2004, which broke the company's first-week gross for a perfume. By 2009, she had released seven more perfumes including Fantasy. In 2010, Spears released her eighth fragrance, Radiance.\nIn 2011, Radiance was reissued as a new perfume titled Cosmic Radiance. Worldwide, Spears sold over one million bottles in the first five years, with gross receipts of $1.5 billion. In 2016, Spears contacted Glu Mobile to create her own role-playing game, \"\". The app officially launched in May 2016 and is compatible with iOS and Android. On June 17, 2016, Spears announced the release of her twentieth fragrance, Private Show. As of January\u00a02018[ [update]], Spears has released 24 fragrances through Elizabeth Arden.\nPhilanthropy.\nSpears founded The Britney Spears Foundation, a charitable entity set up to help children in need. The philosophy behind the Foundation was that music and entertainment has a healing quality that can benefit children. The Foundation also supported the annual Britney Spears Camp for the Performing Arts, where campers had the opportunity to explore and develop their talents. In April 2002, through the efforts of Spears and The Britney Spears Foundation, a grant of $1 million was made to the Twin Towers Fund to support the children of uniformed service heroes affected by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, including New York City Fire Department and its Emergency Medical Services Command, the New York City Police Department, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the New York State Office of court Administration and other government offices. However, it was reported in 2008 that the Foundation had a deficit of $200,000. After Spears went through conservatorship, her father and lawyer Andrew Wallet zeroed out the effort, leading to its closure in 2011.\nOn October 30, 2001, Spears, alongside Bono and other popular recording artists under the name \"Artists Against AIDS Worldwide\", released an album consisting of multiple versions of Marvin Gaye's \"What's Going On\", intending to benefit AIDS programs in Africa and other impoverished regions. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Spears donated $350,000 to Music Rising. Spears has also helped several charities during her career, including Madonna's Kabbalah-based Spirituality for Kids, cancer charity Gilda's Club Worldwide, Promises Foundation, and United Way, with the latter two focused on giving families from various disadvantaged situations new hope and stable foundations for the future.\nOn October 24, 2015, Spears donated $120,000 to the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation. In addition, $1 of each ticket sale for her Las Vegas residency, Britney: Piece of Me, was donated to the nonprofit organization. Spears also fundraised for the charity through social media, in addition to selling limited edition merchandise, with all proceeds going to the NCCF. On October 27, 2016, Spears partnered with Zappos and XCYCLE to host the \"Britney Spears Piece of Me Charity Ride\" in Boca Park, Las Vegas to raise additional money toward her goal of $1 million for the NCCF, with $450,000 having already been raised from Spears' ticket sales and merchandise. Participants were entered for a chance to win a spin class with Spears herself. The event ultimately went on to raise $553,130. The fundraising ultimately led to the development of the NCCF Britney Spears Campus in Las Vegas, which saw its grand opening on November 4, 2017. Spears also regularly participates in Spirit Day to combat bullying of LGBTQ youth and bullying.\nIn March 2020, Spears was participating in the #DoYourPartChallenge, which entails helping people with anything they might need during the COVID-19 pandemic. She told fans to send her messages on Instagram if they need supportive words during the coronavirus pandemic, with Spears picking three fans. In February 2024, Spears partnered with New York City dessert shop Glace, to create the \"Britney Br\u00fbl\u00e9e\" dessert, with a portion of the proceeds from its sales being donated to The Trevor Project.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBook sources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["31164641", "3382"], "permutation_1": ["31164641", "3382"], "permutation_2": ["31164641", "3382"], "permutation_3": ["31164641", "3382"]}
{"id": "2hop__714651_21587", "docs_added": {"2067": "Ann Arbor, Michigan\nCity in Michigan, United States\nAnn Arbor is a city in Washtenaw County, Michigan, United States, and its county seat. The 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851, making it the fifth-most populous city in Michigan. Located on the Huron River, Ann Arbor is the principal city of its metropolitan area, which encompasses all of Washtenaw County and had 372,258 residents in 2020. Ann Arbor is included in the Detroit\u2013Warren\u2013Ann Arbor combined statistical area and the Great Lakes megalopolis.\nAnn Arbor was founded in 1824 by John Allen and Elisha Rumsey. It was named after the wives of the village's founders, both named Ann, and the stands of bur oak trees they found at the site of the town. The University of Michigan was established in Ann Arbor in 1837, and the city's population grew at a rapid rate in the early to mid-20th century.\nA college town, Ann Arbor is currently home to the University of Michigan, which significantly shapes the city's economy, employing about 30,000 workers which includes about 12,000 in its medical center. The city's economy is also centered on high technology, with several companies drawn to the area by the university's research and development infrastructure. The city has been a center for progressive politics as well as several social and religious movements.\nHistory.\nBefore founding as Ann Arbor.\nThe region was once inhabited by several Native American tribes, the most prominent being the Anishinaabe people of the Three Fires: the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi. The Potawatomi founded two villages in the area of what is now Ann Arbor in about 1774. Other tribes that inhabited the area included the Fox, Wyandots, and Sauk. These peoples established several trails that converged on present-day Ann Arbor. The land that included Washtenaw County was ceded to the U.S. by the Odawa, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Wyandot in the Treaty of Detroit of 1807.\n19th century.\nAnn Arbor was founded in 1824 by land speculators John Allen and Elisha Walker Rumsey. On May 25, 1824, the town plat was registered with Wayne County as the Village of Annarbour, the earliest known use of the town's name. Allen and Rumsey decided to name it for their wives, both named Ann, and for the stands of bur oak in the of land they purchased for $800 () from the federal government at $1.25 per acre. The local Ojibwa named the settlement , after the sound of Allen's sawmill.\nAnn Arbor became the seat of Washtenaw County in 1827 and was incorporated as a village in 1833. The Ann Arbor Land Company, a group of speculators, set aside of undeveloped land and offered it to the state of Michigan as the site of the state capitol, but lost the bid to Lansing. In 1837, the property was accepted instead as the site of the University of Michigan.\nSince the university's establishment in the city in 1837, the histories of the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor have been closely linked. The town became a regional transportation hub in 1839 with the arrival of the Michigan Central Railroad, and a north\u2013south railway connecting Ann Arbor to Toledo and other markets to the south was established in 1878. Throughout the 1840s and the 1850s settlers continued to come to Ann Arbor. While the earlier settlers were primarily of British ancestry, the newer settlers also consisted of Germans, Irish, and Black people. In 1851, Ann Arbor was chartered as a city, though the city showed a drop in population during the Depression of 1873. It was not until the early 1880s that Ann Arbor again saw robust growth, with new immigrants from Greece, Italy, Russia, and Poland.\n20th century.\nAnn Arbor saw increased growth in manufacturing, particularly in milling. Ann Arbor's Jewish community also grew after the turn of the 20th century, and its first and oldest synagogue, Beth Israel Congregation, was established in 1916.\nFollowing a 1956 vote, the city of East Ann Arbor merged with Ann Arbor to encompass the eastern sections of the city.\nIn 1960, Ann Arbor voters approved a $2.3\u00a0million bond issue (equivalent to $\u00a0million in 2023) to build the current city hall, which was designed by architect Alden B. Dow. The City Hall opened in 1963. In 1995, the building was renamed the Guy C. Larcom Jr. Municipal Building in honor of the longtime city administrator who championed the building's construction.\nDuring the 1960s and 1970s, the city gained a reputation as an important center for liberal politics. Ann Arbor also became a locus for left-wing activism and anti-Vietnam War movement, as well as the student movement. The first major meetings of the national left-wing campus group Students for a Democratic Society took place in Ann Arbor in 1960; in 1965, the city was home to the first U.S. teach-in against the Vietnam War. During the ensuing 15 years, many countercultural and New Left enterprises sprang up and developed large constituencies within the city. These influences washed into municipal politics during the early and mid-1970s when three members of the Human Rights Party (HRP) won city council seats on the strength of the student vote. During their time on the council, HRP representatives fought for measures including pioneering antidiscrimination ordinances, measures decriminalizing marijuana possession, and a rent-control ordinance.\nTwo religious-conservative institutions were created in Ann Arbor; the Word of God (established in 1967), a charismatic inter-denominational movement; and the Thomas More Law Center (established in 1999). Since 1998, Ann Arbor is also the home office of the Anthroposophical Society in the United States, an organization dedicated to supporting the community of those interested in the inner path of schooling known as anthroposophy, developed by Rudolf Steiner.\n21st century.\nIn the past several decades, Ann Arbor has grappled with the effects of sharply rising land values, gentrification, and urban sprawl stretching into outlying countryside. On November 4, 2003, voters approved a greenbelt plan under which the city government bought development rights on agricultural parcels of land adjacent to Ann Arbor to preserve them from sprawling development. Since then, a vociferous local debate has hinged on how and whether to accommodate and guide development within city limits. Ann Arbor consistently ranks in the \"top places to live\" lists published by various mainstream media outlets every year.\nIn 2016, the city changed mayoral terms from two years to four. Until 2017, City Council held annual elections in which half of the seats (one from each ward) were elected to 2-year terms. These elections were staggered, with each ward having one of its seats up for election in odd years and its other seat up for election in even years. Beginning in 2018 the city council has had staggered elections to 4-year terms in even years. This means that half of the members (one from each ward) are elected in presidential election years, while the other half are elected in mid-term election years. To facilitate this change in scheduling, the 2017 election elected members to terms that lasted 3-years.\nIn 2020, partly as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the city government opened several downtown streets to pedestrians, limiting their use by motor vehicles to emergency vehicles during summertime weekends. In addition to providing a large pedestrian mall, these changes allow restaurants to use more of the sidewalks and part of the street for outdoor seating. These changes were popular enough that in 2021 the city council extended the dates from March to November, continuing the schedule of cordoning off cars from Thursday evening until Monday morning.\nGeography.\nAnn Arbor is located along the Huron River, which flows southeast through the city on its way to Lake Erie. It is the central core of the Ann Arbor, MI Metropolitan Statistical Area, which consists of the whole of Washtenaw County, but is also a part of the Metro Detroit Combined Statistical Area designated by the U.S. Census Bureau. While it borders only Townships, the built-up nature of the sections of Pittsfield and Ypsilanti townships between Ann Arbor and the city of Ypsilanti make the two effectively a single urban area.\nLandscape.\nThe landscape of Ann Arbor consists of hills and valleys, with the terrain becoming steeper near the Huron River. The elevation ranges from about along the Huron River to on the city's west side, near the intersection of Maple Road and Pauline Blvd. Ann Arbor Municipal Airport, which is south of the city at , has an elevation of . Ann Arbor is nicknamed \"Tree Town\", both due to its name and to the dense forestation of its parks and residential areas. The city contains more than 50,000 trees along its streets and an equal number in parks. Into the early 2000s, the emerald ash borer has destroyed many of the city's approximately 10,500 ash trees.\nThe city contains over 160 municipal parks ranging from small neighborhood green spots to large recreation areas such as Buhr Park. Several large city parks and a university park border sections of the Huron River. Fuller Recreation Area, near the University Hospital complex, contains sports fields, pedestrian and bike paths, and swimming pools. Opened in the summer of 2014, the city-funded Ann Arbor Skatepark is a skatepark located within Veterans Memorial Park. The city is also home to the Washtenaw County-owned County Farm Park. The Nichols Arboretum, owned by the University of Michigan, is a arboretum that contains hundreds of plant and tree species. It is on the city's east side, near the university's Central Campus. Located across the Huron River just beyond the university's North Campus is the university's Matthaei Botanical Gardens, which contains 300\u00a0acres of gardens and a large tropical conservatory. Several other green spaces around Ann Arbor are privately owned or owned by government agencies such as Ann Arbor Public Schools.\nCityscape.\nThe cityscape of Ann Arbor is heavily influenced by the University of Michigan, with 22% of downtown and 9.4% of the total land owned by the university. The downtown Central Campus contains some of the oldest extant structures in the city\u2014including the President's House, built in 1840\u2014and separates the South University District from the other three downtown commercial districts. These other three districts, Kerrytown, State Street, and Main Street are contiguous near the northwestern corner of the university.\nMajor landmarks in downtown Ann Arbor include the Michigan Theater, The Diag, and Tower Plaza, a 26-story condominium building that is the city's tallest building. Downtown is also home to several Fairy Doors and other public art installations.\nThree commercial areas south of downtown include the areas near I-94 and Ann Arbor-Saline Road, Briarwood Mall, and the South Industrial area. Other commercial areas include the Arborland/Washtenaw Avenue and Packard Road merchants on the east side, the Plymouth Road area in the northeast, and the Westgate/West Stadium areas on the west side. Downtown contains a mix of 19th- and early-20th-century structures and modern-style buildings, as well as a farmers' market in the Kerrytown district. The city's commercial districts are composed mostly of two- to four-story structures, although downtown and the area near Briarwood Mall contain a small number of high-rise buildings.\nAnn Arbor's residential neighborhoods contain architectural styles ranging from classic 19th- and early 20th-century designs to ranch-style houses. Among these homes are a number of kit houses built in the early 20th century. Contemporary-style houses are farther from the downtown district. Surrounding the University of Michigan campus are houses and apartment complexes occupied primarily by student renters. The 19th-century buildings and streetscape of the Old West Side neighborhood have been preserved virtually intact; in 1972, the district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), and it is further protected by city ordinances and a nonprofit preservation group.\nClimate.\nAnn Arbor has a typically Midwestern humid continental climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Dfa\"), which is influenced by the Great Lakes. There are four distinct seasons: winters are cold and snowy, with average highs around . Summers are warm to hot and humid, with average highs around and with slightly more precipitation. Spring and autumn are transitional between the two. The area experiences lake effect weather, primarily in the form of increased cloudiness during late fall and early winter. The monthly daily average temperature in July is , while the same figure for January is . Temperatures reach or exceed on 10 days, and drop to or below on 4.6 nights. Precipitation tends to be the heaviest during the summer months, but most frequent during winter. Snowfall, which normally occurs from November to April but occasionally starts in October, averages per season. The lowest recorded temperature was on February 11, 1885, and the highest recorded temperature was on July 24, 1934.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nAnn Arbor has seen consistent growth in population between all decennial censuses since 1860 with the exception of the 2010 census which reported almost no growth from the previous census. As of the 2020 U.S. census, there were 123,851 people and 49,337 households residing in the city, with a population density of . The racial makeup of the city including Hispanics in the racial categories was 67.6% White, 6.8% Black, 0.2% Native American, 15.7% Asian, 0.1% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 1.8% from other races, and 7.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race made up 5.5% of the population. Ann Arbor has a small population of Arab Americans, including students as well as local Lebanese and Palestinians, and a large community of Japanese nationals.\nAccording to the 2022 American Community Survey estimates, out of 49,337 households, 33.8% were married-couple households, 9.8% were cohabiting couple households, 26.1% had a male householder with no spouse present, and 30.4% had a female householder with no spouse present. 18.4% of the households had individuals under the age of 18 living in them, and 20.1% had individuals over age 65 living in them. The average household size was 2.22 people and the average family size was 2.78 people. The median age was 25.9; 12.2% of the population was under age 18, and 12.3% was age 65 or older. The percentage of city residents age 25 years or older with at least a high school degree was 97.8% while 77.5% had a bachelor's degree or higher, which is higher than the U.S. national percentage of 89.1% for persons age 25 years or older with at least a high school degree and 34.3% with a bachelor's degree or higher.\nThe median household income in 2022 was $78,740 (versus the U.S. national figure of $75,149), with family households having a median income of $126,292. The per capita income for the city was $52,276, which is higher than the U.S. national per capita income of $41,261. Males working full-time jobs had median earnings of $86,970 compared to $61,543 for females. Out of the 109,973 people with a determined poverty status, 23.1% were below the poverty line compared to the U.S. national poverty rate of 11.1%; the age group with the highest percentage below the poverty level was persons between 18 and 34 years at 43.0% while other age groups have percentages between 2.7% and 7.7%. Further, 3.5% of minors and 7.7% of seniors were below the poverty line.\nCrime.\nAccording to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program in 2022, Ann Arbor had 371 reported violent crimes (which include homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) and 2069 reported property crimes (which include arson, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft). With a violent crime rate of 309.5 per 100,000 people, the city's violent crime rate is lower than Michigan's rate of 461 per 100,000 people and the U.S. national rate of 380.7 per 100,000 people. However, Ann Arbor's property crime rate, at 1726.0 per 100,000 people, is higher than Michigan's property crime rate of 1536.8 per 100,000 people and lower than the U.S. national property crime rate of 1954.4 per 100,000 people.\nEconomy.\nThe University of Michigan shapes Ann Arbor's economy significantly. It employs about 30,000 workers which includes about 12,000 in the medical center. Other employers are drawn to the area by the university's research and development money, and by its graduates. High tech, health services and biotechnology are other major components of the city's economy; numerous medical offices, laboratories, and associated companies are located in the city. Automobile manufacturers, such as General Motors and Visteon, also employ residents.\nHigh tech companies have located in the area since the 1930s, when International Radio Corporation introduced the first mass-produced AC/DC radio (the Kadette, in 1931) as well as the first pocket radio (the Kadette Jr., in 1933). Current firms include Arbor Networks (provider of Internet traffic engineering and security systems), Arbortext (provider of XML-based publishing software), JSTOR (the digital scholarly journal archive), Truven Health Analytics, and ProQuest, which includes UMI. Duo Security, a cloud-based access security provider of two-factor authentication, is headquartered in Ann Arbor. It was formerly a unicorn and continues to be headquartered in Ann Arbor after its acquisition by Cisco Systems. In November 2021, semiconductor test equipment company KLA Corporation opened a new North American headquarters in Ann Arbor.\nAnn Arbor is the home to Internet2 and the Merit Network, a not-for-profit research and education computer network. Both are located in the South State Commons 2 building on South State Street. The city is also home to a secondary office of Google's AdWords program\u2014the company's primary revenue stream. As of 2022,[ [update]] Ann Arbor is home to more than twenty video game and XR studios of varying sizes. The city plays host to a regional chapter of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) which hosts monthly meetups, presentations, and educational events.\nThe city is the home of many research and engineering centers, including the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory that is operated by NOAA and the Michigan Tech Research Institute. Other research centers sited in the city are the United States Environmental Protection Agency's National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory and the Toyota Technical Center. The city is also home to National Sanitation Foundation International (NSF International), the nonprofit non-governmental organization that develops generally accepted standards for a variety of public health related industries and subject areas.\nNon-high tech companies in Ann Arbor include Domino's Pizza, headquartered on Domino's Farms, a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired complex just northeast of the city. Another Ann Arbor-based company is Zingerman's Delicatessen, which serves sandwiches and has developed businesses under a variety of brand names. Avfuel, a global supplier of aviation fuels and services, is headquartered in Ann Arbor as is Pinkerton, a detective and private security firm. Many cooperative enterprises were founded in the city; among those that remain are the People's Food Co-op and the Inter-Cooperative Council at the University of Michigan, a student housing cooperative founded in 1937. There are also three cohousing communities\u2014Sunward, Great Oak, and Touchstone\u2014located immediately to the west of the city limits.\nCulture.\nSeveral performing arts groups and facilities are on the University of Michigan's campus, as are museums dedicated to art, archaeology, and natural history and sciences. Founded in 1879, the University Musical Society is an independent performing arts organization that presents over 60 events each year, bringing international artists in music, dance, and theater. Since 2001 Shakespeare in the Arb has presented one play by Shakespeare each June, in a large park near downtown. Regional and local performing arts groups not associated with the university include the Ann Arbor Civic Theatre, the Arbor Opera Theater, the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, The Ark, and Performance Network Theatre. State Theatre and the adjacent Michigan Theater are a movie palace and a performing arts center, respectively. Another unique piece of artistic expression in Ann Arbor is the fairy doors. These small portals are examples of installation art and can be found throughout the downtown area.\nThe Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum, an interactive science center, is located in a renovated and expanded historic downtown fire station. The Ann Arbor Art Center is a nonprofit that organizes art activities and exhibitions. Aside from the Ann Arbor District Library, which maintains four branch outlets in addition to its main downtown building, and being the home to the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, Ann Arbor ranks first among U.S. cities in the number of booksellers and books sold per capita.\nSeveral annual events\u2014many of them centered on performing and visual arts\u2014draw visitors to Ann Arbor. One such event is the Ann Arbor Art Fairs, a set of four concurrent juried fairs held on downtown streets. Scheduled on Thursday through Sunday of the third week of July, the fairs draw upward of half a million visitors. Another is the Ann Arbor Film Festival, held during the third week of March, which receives more than 2,500 submissions annually from more than 40 countries and serves as one of a handful of Academy Award\u2013qualifying festivals in the United States.\nAnn Arbor has a long history of openness to marijuana, given Ann Arbor's decriminalization of cannabis, the large number of medical marijuana dispensaries in the city (one dispensary, called People's Co-op, was directly across the street from Michigan Stadium until zoning forced it to move one mile to the west), the large number of pro-marijuana residents, and the annual Hash Bash: an event that is held on the first Saturday of April. Until (at least) the successful passage of Michigan's medical marijuana law, the event had arguably strayed from its initial intent, although for years, a number of attendees have received serious legal responses due to marijuana use on University of Michigan property, which does not fall under the city's progressive and compassionate ticketing program.\nA person from Ann Arbor is called an \"Ann Arborite\", and many long-time residents call themselves \"townies\". The city itself is often called \"A\u00b2\" (\"A-squared\") or \"A2\" (\"A two\") or \"AA\", \"The Deuce\" (mainly by Chicagoans), and \"Tree Town\". With tongue-in-cheek reference to the city's liberal political leanings, some occasionally refer to Ann Arbor as \"The People's Republic of Ann Arbor\" or \"25 square miles surrounded by reality.\" In \"A Prairie Home Companion\" broadcast from Ann Arbor, Garrison Keillor described Ann Arbor as \"a city where people discuss socialism, but only in the fanciest restaurants.\" Ann Arbor sometimes appears on citation indexes as an author, instead of a location, often with the academic degree \"MI\", a misunderstanding of the abbreviation for Michigan.\nSports.\nAnn Arbor is a major center for college sports, most notably at the University of Michigan. Several well-known college sports facilities exist in the city, including Michigan Stadium, the largest American football stadium and the third-largest stadium of any kind in the world with a capacity of 107,601. The stadium is colloquially known as \"The Big House\" due to its status as the largest American football stadium. Crisler Center and Yost Ice Arena play host to the school's basketball (both men's and women's) and ice hockey teams, respectively. Concordia University, a member of the NAIA, also fields sports teams.\nIn semi-professional sports Ann Arbor is represented in the NPSL by AFC Ann Arbor, a soccer club founded in 2014 who call themselves The Mighty Oak.\nGovernment.\nAs the county seat of Washtenaw County, the Washtenaw County Trial Court (22nd Circuit Court) is located in Ann Arbor at the Washtenaw County Courthouse on Main Street. Seven judges serve on the court. The 15th Michigan district court, which serves only the city itself, is located within the Ann Arbor Justice Center, immediately next to city hall. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan and Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit are also located in downtown Ann Arbor, at the federal building on Liberty Street.\nIn the Michigan Legislature, the city is split between Districts 23, 33, 47, and 48 in the Michigan House of Representatives. In the Michigan Senate, Ann Arbor is covered by Districts 14 and 15. Ann Arbor is within the 6th congressional district, currently represented by Debbie Dingell.\nAnn Arbor has a council\u2013manager form of government, with 11 voting members: the mayor and 10 city council members. Each of the city's five wards are represented by two council members, with the mayor elected at-large during midterm years. Half of the council members are elected in midterm years, with the other in general election years. The mayor is the presiding officer of the city council and has the power to appoint all council committee members as well as board and commission members, with the approval of the city council. The current mayor of Ann Arbor is Christopher Taylor, a Democrat who was elected as mayor in 2014. Day-to-day city operations are managed by a city administrator chosen by the city council. While Democrats, as of 2024,[ [update]] hold the mayorship and all ten council seats, Ann Arbor has two major political factions. A major source of this local divide is differences in views on the city's growth.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nPublic schools are part of the Ann Arbor Public Schools (AAPS) district. AAPS has one of the country's leading music programs. For the 2021\u20132022 school year, 17,070 students were enrolled in the Ann Arbor Public Schools. Notable schools include Pioneer, Huron, Skyline, Community high schools, Pathways to Success Academic Campus, and Ann Arbor Open School. The district has a preschool center with both free and tuition-based programs for preschoolers in the district. The University High School, a \"demonstration school\" with teachers drawn from the University of Michigan's education program, was part of the school system from 1924 to 1968.\nAnn Arbor is home to several private schools, including Clonlara School, Michigan Islamic Academy, and Greenhills School, a prep school. The city is also home to several charter schools such as Central Academy (Michigan) (PreK\u201312) of the Global Educational Excellence (GEE) charter school company.\nHigher education.\nThe University of Michigan dominates the city of Ann Arbor, providing the city with its distinctive college-town character. University buildings are located in the center of the city and the campus is directly adjacent to the State Street and South University downtown areas.\nOther local colleges and universities include Concordia University Ann Arbor, a Lutheran liberal-arts institution. Washtenaw Community College is located in neighboring Ann Arbor Township. In 2000, the Ave Maria School of Law, a Roman Catholic law school established by Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan, opened in northeastern Ann Arbor, but the school moved to Ave Maria, Florida in 2009, and the Thomas M. Cooley Law School acquired the former Ave Maria buildings for use as a branch campus.\nMedia.\n\"The Ann Arbor News\", owned by the Michigan-based Booth Newspapers chain, was the major newspaper serving Ann Arbor and the rest of Washtenaw County. The newspaper ended its 174-year daily print run in 2009 due to economic difficulties, and began producing two printed editions a week under the name AnnArbor.com. Ann Arbor has been said to be the first significant city to lose its only daily paper. The publication resumed using its former name in 2013, and also produces a daily digital edition named MLive.com. Another Ann Arbor-based publication that has ceased production was the \"Ann Arbor Paper\", a free monthly. The \"Ann Arbor Chronicle\", an online newspaper, covered local news, including meetings of the library board, county commission, and DDA until September 3, 2014.\nCurrent publications in the city include the \"Ann Arbor Journal\" (\"A2 Journal\"), a weekly community newspaper; the \"Ann Arbor Observer\", a free monthly local magazine; and \"Current\", a free entertainment-focused alt-weekly. The \"Ann Arbor Business Review\" covers local business in the area. \"Car and Driver\" magazine and \"Automobile Magazine\" are also based in Ann Arbor. The University of Michigan is served by many student publications, including the independent \"Michigan Daily\" student newspaper, which reports on local, state, and regional issues in addition to campus news.\nFour major AM radio stations based in or near Ann Arbor are WAAM 1600, a conservative news and talk station; WLBY 1290, a business news and talk station; WDEO 990, Catholic radio; and WTKA 1050, which is primarily a sports station. The city's FM stations include NPR affiliate WUOM 91.7; country station WWWW 102.9; and adult-alternative station WQKL 107.1. Freeform station WCBN-FM 88.3 is a local community radio/college radio station operated by the students of the University of Michigan featuring noncommercial, eclectic music and public-affairs programming. The city is also served by public and commercial radio broadcasters in Ypsilanti, the Lansing/Jackson area, Detroit, Windsor, and Toledo.\nAnn Arbor is part of the Detroit television market. WPXD channel 31, the owned-and-operated Detroit outlet of the ION Television network, is licensed to the city. Until its sign-off on August 31, 2017, WHTV channel 18, a MyNetworkTV-affiliated station for the Lansing market, was broadcast from a transmitter in Lyndon Township, west of Ann Arbor. Community Television Network (CTN) is a city-provided cable television channel with production facilities open to city residents and nonprofit organizations. Detroit and Toledo-area radio and television stations also serve Ann Arbor, and stations from Lansing and Windsor, Ontario, can be seen in parts of the area.\nInfrastructure.\nHealthcare.\nThe University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) includes University Hospital, C.S. Mott Children's Hospital and Women's Hospital in its core complex. UMHS also operates out-patient clinics and facilities throughout the city. The area's other major medical centers include a large facility operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs in Ann Arbor, and Saint Joseph Mercy Hospital in nearby Superior Township.\nUtilities.\nThe city provides sewage disposal and water supply services, with water coming from the Huron River and groundwater sources. There are two water-treatment plants, one main and three outlying reservoirs, four pump stations, and two water towers. These facilities serve the city, which is divided into five water districts. The city's water department also operates four dams along the Huron River\u2014Argo, Barton, Geddes, and Superior\u2014of which Barton and Superior provide hydroelectric power.\nThe city also offers waste management services, with Recycle Ann Arbor handling recycling service. Other utilities are provided by private entities. Electrical power and gas are provided by DTE Energy. AT&T Inc. is the primary wired telephone service provider for the area. Cable TV service is primarily provided by Comcast.\nA plume of the industrial solvent dioxane is migrating under the city from the contaminated Gelman Sciences, Inc. property on the westside of Ann Arbor. As of 2021,[ [update]] the average measured concentration was found to be 201.19 ppb, with the maximum being 6.000 ppm. While the United States Environmental Protection Agency does not impose a federal limit on the level of the contaminant allowed in drinking water, the World Health Organization suggests a limit of 35 ppb. The Gelman plume is a potential threat to one of the City of Ann Arbor's drinking water sources, the Huron River, which flows through downtown Ann Arbor.\nTransportation.\nThe streets in downtown Ann Arbor conform to a grid pattern, though this pattern is less common in the surrounding areas. Major roads branch out from the downtown district to the highways surrounding the city. The city is belted by three freeways: Interstate\u00a094 (I-94), which runs along the southern and western portion of the city; U.S. Highway\u00a023 (US\u00a023), which primarily runs along the eastern edge of Ann Arbor; and M-14, which runs along the northern edge of the city. Other nearby highways include US\u00a012 (Michigan Avenue), M-17 (Washtenaw Avenue), and M-153 (Ford Road). Several of the major surface arteries lead to the I-94/M-14 interchange in the west, US\u00a023 in the east, and the city's southern areas. The Washtenaw County Border-to-Border Trail connects Ann Arbor to Ypsilanti, mostly along the Huron River, for pedestrians, bicycles and other non-motorized transportation.\nThe Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority (AAATA), which brands itself as \"TheRide\", operates public bus services throughout the city and nearby Ypsilanti. The AAATA operates the Blake Transit Center on Fourth Ave. in downtown Ann Arbor, and the Ypsilanti Transit Center. A separate zero-fare bus service operates within and between the University of Michigan campuses. In 2019, 36% of trips in Ann Arbor were taken by walking, biking or transit.\nSince April 2012, the \"AirRide\" connects to Detroit Metro Airport a dozen times a day. The Michigan Flyer, a service operated by Indian Trails, cooperates with AAATA for their AirRide and additionally offers bus service to East Lansing. Greyhound Lines provides intercity bus service. Megabus has direct service to Chicago, Illinois, while a bus service is provided by Amtrak Thruway for rail passengers making connections to services in East Lansing and Toledo, Ohio.\nAmtrak, which provides service to the city at the Ann Arbor Train Station, operates the \"Wolverine\" train between Chicago and Pontiac via Detroit. The present-day train station neighbors the city's old Michigan Central Depot, which was renovated as a restaurant in 1970. Ann Arbor Municipal Airport is a small, city-run general aviation airport located south of I-94.\nSister cities.\nAnn Arbor has eight sister cities:\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "5419520": "Andy Michner\nAmerican racing driver\nAndy Michner (born October 27, 1968, Ann Arbor, Michigan), is a former driver in the Indy Racing League IndyCar Series, NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and NASCAR Busch Series. He is the current record holder of the world's fastest Sprint Car race at a United States Auto Club event in Phoenix, Arizona at 136.034\u00a0mph 1996. Michner finished twice a runner-up to NASCAR'S Tony Stewart in United States Auto Club competition and has 19 USAC Wins. He passed his Indy 500 Rookie Orientation Program but elected to not qualify for the race 1996 Indianapolis 500. In 1996 & 1997, Michner ran a partial season in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series as Chevrolet's Development Driver. He then returned to the Indy Car series in 1998 with Konica/Syan Racing and captured his career best finish of eighth place in his first race, the 1998 Indianapolis 500. Michner then signed with Factory Riley&Scott Reebok Indycar Team where Michner led in the closing laps of the 1998 Texas Longhorn 500 but failed to finish due to an engine failure. At Michigan International Speedway in August 1998, it was announced, Michner signed a 3-year contract to drive the Bayer Aleve, Coca-Cola Chevrolet in NASCAR's Busch Series for BACE Motorsports. Michner suffered ultimately career ending injuries in October 1998 while testing at Homestead-Miami Speedway in a NASCAR Busch Series test. He attempted to qualify for the 1999 Indianapolis 500 for Byrd Racing but failed to make the field due to rain. He was named to a Logan Racing entry to two races in 2000 but the car did not appear at either race.\n \"1 The 1999 VisionAire 500K at Charlotte was cancelled after 79 laps due to spectator fatalities.\"\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["5419520", "2067"], "permutation_1": ["2067", "5419520"], "permutation_2": ["5419520", "2067"], "permutation_3": ["5419520", "2067"]}
{"id": "2hop__408076_99606", "docs_added": {"30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "11977664": "Fualopa\nFualopa is an islet of Funafuti, Tuvalu. It is part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, established in 1996 with the aim of preserving the natural fauna and flora of the area. Fualopa hosts a breeding colony of black noddy (\"Anous minutus\" or white-capped noddy).\nTe Ava Kum Kum is the passage through the Funafuti atoll of the western rim, south of Te Ava Tepuka Vili, between the islets of Tepuka Vili Vili to the north and Fualopa immediately south.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11977664", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["30227", "11977664"], "permutation_2": ["30227", "11977664"], "permutation_3": ["11977664", "30227"]}
{"id": "2hop__613542_11125", "docs_added": {"51585": "New Delhi\nCapital city of India\nNew Delhi (; , ) is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the Government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Sansad Bhavan, and the Supreme Court. New Delhi is a municipality within the NCT, administered by the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), which covers mostly Lutyens' Delhi and a few adjacent areas. The municipal area is part of a larger administrative district, the New Delhi district.\nAlthough colloquially \"Delhi\" and \"New Delhi\" are used interchangeably to refer to the National Capital Territory of Delhi, both are distinct entities, with the municipality and the New Delhi district forming a relatively small part within the megacity of Delhi. The National Capital Region is an even larger entity, comprising the entire NCT along with adjoining districts in the two neighbouring states forming a continuously built-up area with it, including Ghaziabad, Noida, Greater Noida, Meerut, YEIDA City, Gurgaon, and Faridabad.\nThe foundation stone of New Delhi, south of central Delhi, was laid by George V during the Delhi Durbar of 1911. It was designed by British architects Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker. The new capital was inaugurated on 13 February 1931, by Viceroy and Governor-General Irwin.\nHistory.\nEstablishment.\nUntil December 1911, Calcutta was the capital of India during the British Rule. However, it had become the centre of the nationalist movements since the late nineteenth century, which led to the Partition of Bengal by Viceroy Curzon. This created massive political and religious upsurge including political assassinations of British officials in Calcutta. The anti-colonial sentiments among the public led to a complete boycott of British goods, which forced the colonial government to reunite Bengal and immediately shift the capital to New Delhi.\nOld Delhi had served as the political and financial centre of several empires of medieval India and the Delhi Sultanate, most notably of the Mughal Empire from 1649 to 1857. During the early 1900s, a proposal was made to the British administration to shift the capital of the British Indian Empire, as India was officially named, from Calcutta on the east coast, to Delhi. The Government of British India felt that it would be logistically easier to administer India from Delhi, which is in the centre of northern India. The land for building the new city of Delhi was acquired under the Land Acquisition Act 1894.\nDuring the Delhi Durbar on 12 December 1911, George V while laying the foundation stone for the viceroy's residence in the Coronation Park, Kingsway Camp, declared that the capital of the Raj would be shifted from Calcutta to Delhi. Three days later, George V and his consort, Mary, laid the foundation stone of New Delhi at Kingsway Camp. Large parts of New Delhi were planned by Edwin Lutyens, who first visited Delhi in 1912, and Herbert Baker, both leading 20th-century British architects. The contract was given to Sobha Singh. The original plan called for its construction in Tughlaqabad, inside the Tughlaqabad Fort, but this was given up because of the Delhi-Calcutta trunk line that passed through the fort. Construction really began after World War I and was completed by 1931. The gardening and planning of plantations was led by A.E.P. Griessen, and later William Mustoe. The city that was later dubbed \"Lutyens' Delhi\" was inaugurated in ceremonies beginning on 10 February 1931 by Viceroy Irwin. Lutyens designed the central administrative area of the city as a testament to Britain's imperial aspirations.\nSoon Lutyens started considering other places. Indeed, the Delhi Town Planning Committee, set up to plan the new imperial capital, with George Swinton as chairman, and John A. Brodie and Lutyens as members, submitted reports for both north and south sites. However, it was rejected by the Viceroy when the cost of acquiring the necessary properties was found to be too high. The central axis of New Delhi, which today faces east at India Gate, was previously meant to be a north\u2013south axis linking the Viceroy's House at one end with Paharganj at the other. Eventually, owing to space constraints and the presence of a large number of heritage sites on the north side, the committee settled on the south site. A site atop the Raisina Hill, formerly Raisina Village, a Meo village, was chosen for the Rashtrapati Bhawan, then known as the Viceroy's House. The reason for this choice was that the hill lay directly opposite the Dinapanah citadel, which was also considered the site of Indraprastha, the ancient region of Delhi. Subsequently, the foundation stone was shifted from the site of Delhi Durbar of 1911\u20131912, where the Coronation Pillar stood, and embedded in the walls of the forecourt of the Secretariat. The Rajpath, also known as King's Way, stretched from the India Gate to the Rashtrapati Bhawan. The Secretariat building, the two blocks of which flank the Rashtrapati Bhawan and houses ministries of the government of India, and the Parliament House, both designed by Baker, are located at the Sansad Marg and run parallel to the Rajpath.\nIn the south, land up to Safdarjung's Tomb was acquired to create what is today known as Lutyens' Bungalow Zone. Before construction could begin on the rocky ridge of Raisina Hill, a circular railway line around the Council House (now Parliament House), called the \"Imperial Delhi Railway\", was built to transport construction material and workers for the next twenty years. The last stumbling block was the Agra-Delhi railway line that cut right through the site earmarked for the hexagonal All-India War Memorial (India Gate) and Kingsway (Rajpath), which was a problem because the Old Delhi Railway Station served the entire city at that time. The line was shifted to run along the Yamuna River, and it began operating in 1924. The New Delhi Railway Station opened in 1926, with a single platform at Ajmeri Gate near Paharganj, and was completed in time for the city's inauguration in 1931. As construction of the Viceroy's House (the present Rashtrapati Bhavan), Central Secretariat, Parliament House, and All-India War Memorial (India Gate) was winding down, the building of a shopping district and a new plaza, Connaught Place, began in 1929, and was completed by 1933. Named after Prince Arthur, 1st Duke of Connaught (1850\u20131942), it was designed by Robert Tor Russell, chief architect to the Public Works Department (PWD).\nAfter the capital of India moved to Delhi, a temporary secretariat building was constructed in a few months in 1912 in North Delhi. Most of the government offices of the new capital moved here from the 'Old secretariat' in Old Delhi (the building now houses the Delhi Legislative Assembly), a decade before the new capital was inaugurated in 1931. Many employees were brought into the new capital from distant parts of India, including the Bengal Presidency and Madras Presidency. Subsequently, housing for them has developed around Gole Market area in the 1920s. Built in the 1940s, to house government employees, with bungalows for senior officials in the nearby Lodi Estate area, Lodi Colony near historic Lodi Gardens, was the last residential areas built by the British Raj.\nPost-independence.\nAfter India gained independence in 1947, limited autonomy was conferred to New Delhi and was administered by a Chief Commissioner appointed by the Government of India. In 1966, Delhi was converted into a union territory and eventually the Chief Commissioner was replaced by a Lieutenant Governor. The Constitution (Sixty-ninth Amendment) Act, 1991 declared the Union Territory of Delhi to be formally known as the National Capital Territory of Delhi. A system was introduced under which the elected government was given wide powers, excluding law and order which remained with the Central Government. The actual enforcement of the legislation came in 1993.\nThe first major extension of New Delhi outside of Lutyens' Delhi came in the 1950s when the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) developed a large area of land southwest of Lutyens' Delhi to create the diplomatic enclave of Chanakyapuri, where land was allotted for embassies, chanceries, high commissions and residences of ambassadors, around a wide central vista, \"Shanti Path\".\nGeography.\nWith a total area of , the municipality of New Delhi forms a small part of the Delhi metropolitan area. Since the city is located on the Indo-Gangetic Plain, there is little difference in elevation across the city. New Delhi and surrounding areas were once a part of the Aravali Range; all that is left of those mountains is the Delhi Ridge, which is also called the Lungs of Delhi. While New Delhi lies on the floodplains of the Yamuna River, it is essentially a landlocked city. East of the river is the urban area of Shahdara.\nSeismology.\nNew Delhi falls under the seismic zone-IV, making it vulnerable to earthquakes. It lies on several fault lines and thus experiences frequent earthquakes, most of them of mild intensity. There was a spike in the number of earthquakes between 2011 and 2015, most notable being a 5.4 magnitude earthquake in 2015 with its epicentre in Nepal, a 4.7-magnitude earthquake on 25 November 2007, a 4.2-magnitude earthquake on 7 September 2011, a 5.2-magnitude earthquake on 5 March 2012, and a swarm of twelve earthquakes, including four of magnitudes 2.5, 2.8, 3.1, and 3.3, on 12 November 2013.\nClimate.\nThe climate of New Delhi is a dry-winter humid subtropical climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Cwa\") bordering on a hot semi-arid climate (K\u00f6ppen \"BSh\") with high variation between summer and winter in terms of both temperature and rainfall. The temperature varies from in summers to around in winters. The area's version of a humid subtropical climate is noticeably different from many other cities with this climate classification in that it features long and extremely hot summers with dust storms, relatively dry and mild winters with wildfire haze, and a monsoonal period. Summers are long, extending from early April to October, with the monsoon season occurring in the middle of the summer. Winter starts in November and peaks in January. Winters are very mild. The annual mean temperature is around ; monthly daily mean temperatures range from approximately . New Delhi's highest temperature ever recorded is on 28 May 2024 at Met Delhi Mungeshpur while the lowest temperature ever recorded is on 11 January 1967 at Indira Gandhi International Airport (formerly known as Palam Airport). The average annual rainfall is and monsoon rainfall from June to September is about , most of which is during the monsoons in July and August.\nAir quality.\nIn Mercer's 2015 annual quality-of-living survey, New Delhi ranks at number 154 out of 230 cities due to bad air quality and pollution. The World Health Organization ranked New Delhi as the world's worst polluted city in 2014 among about 1,600 cities the organisation tracked around the world. In 2016, United States Environmental Protection Agency listed New Delhi as the most polluted city on Earth and IQAir listed New Delhi as the world's most polluted capital city for the second straight year in year 2019.\nIn an attempt to lessen air pollution in New Delhi, which gets worse during the winter, a temporary alternate-day travel scheme for cars using the odd- and even-numbered licence plates system was announced by Delhi government in December 2015. In addition, trucks were to be allowed to enter India's capital only after 11\u00a0pm, two hours later than the existing restriction. The driving restriction scheme was planned to be implemented as a trial from 1 January 2016 for an initial period of 15 days. The restriction was in force between 8\u00a0am and 8\u00a0pm, and traffic was not restricted on Sundays. Public transportation service was increased during the restriction period.\nOn 16 December 2015, the Supreme Court of India mandated several restrictions on Delhi's transportation system to curb pollution. Among the measures, the court ordered to stop registrations of diesel cars and sport utility vehicles with an engine capacity of 2,000 cc and over until 31 March 2016. The court also ordered all taxis in the Delhi region to switch to compressed natural gas by 1 March 2016. Transportation vehicles that are more than 10 years old were banned from entering the capital.\nAnalysing real-time vehicle speed data from Uber Delhi revealed that during the odd-even program, average speeds went up by a statistically significant 5.4 per cent (2.8 standard deviations from normal). This means vehicles have less idling time in traffic and vehicle engines would run closer to minimum fuel consumption. In bordering areas, PM 2.5 levels were recorded more than 400 (ug/m3) while in inner areas in Delhi, they were recorded between 150 and 210 on an average. However, the sub-city of Dwarka, located in the southwest district, has a substantially low level of air pollution. At the NSIT University campus, located in sector 3 Dwarka, pollution levels were as low as 93 PPM.\nOn 7 November 2017, the Indian Medical Association declared a public health emergency due to high pollution levels. The highest being in the Punjabi Bagh district with an air quality index of 999 and in the RK Puram district with an index of 852. The lowest index recorded was in the Anand Vihar district with an index of 319. Levels of PM2.5 were recorded at 710\u00a0\u03bcg/m3, more than 11 times the World Health Organization's safe limit.\nIn a 2018 study, New Delhi was found to be the most polluted capital out of 61 capital cities around the world. In December 2019, IIT Bombay, in partnership with the McKelvey School of Engineering of Washington University in St. Louis, launched the Aerosol and Air Quality Research Facility to study air pollution in New Delhi, among other Indian cities. During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in India, the water quality of the Yamuna and Ganges river basins have improved as industries are closed due to the lockdown. The air quality has also significantly improved during the lockdown. On 5 November 2020, New Delhi recorded its most toxic day in a year, as the concentration of poisonous PM2.5 particles was recorded at 14 times the WHO's safe limit.\nDemographics.\nAs of 2011, the New Delhi Municipal Council area has a population of 249,998. Hindi is the most widely spoken language in New Delhi and the lingua franca of the city. English is primarily used as the formal language by business and government institutes. New Delhi has a literacy rate of 89.38% according to 2011 census, which is the highest in Delhi.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nReligion.\nAccording to 2011 census, Hinduism is the religion of 89.8% of New Delhi's population. There are also communities of Muslims (4.5%), Christians (2.9%), Sikhs (2.0%), Jains (0.4%). Other religious groups include Parsis, Buddhists, and Jews.\nGovernment.\nThe national capital of India, New Delhi is jointly administered by both the Central Government of India and the local Government of Delhi, it is also the capital of the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi.\nNew Delhi is administered through a municipal government, known as the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC). The other urban areas of the metropolis of Delhi are administered by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and Delhi Cantonment Board. As of 2015[ [update]], the government structure of the New Delhi Municipal Council includes a chairperson, three members of New Delhi's Legislative Assembly, two members nominated by the Chief Minister of the NCT of Delhi and five members nominated by the central government.\nThe districts of the NCT were redrawn in 2012 and include a district called New Delhi, albeit with different borders than the municipality. The New Delhi district includes not only the area of the municipality of the same name but also encompasses the Delhi Cantonment and parts of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi area.\nEconomy.\nNew Delhi is the largest commercial city in northern India. It has an estimated net State Domestic Product (FY 2010) of () in nominal terms and ~ () in PPP terms. As of 2013[ [update]], the per capita income of Delhi was Rs. 230000, second highest in India after Goa. GSDP in Delhi at the prices for 2012\u201313 is estimated at Rs 3.88\u00a0trillion (short scale) against Rs 3.11\u00a0trillion (short scale) in 2011\u201312.\nConnaught Place, one of North India's largest commercial and financial centres, is located in the northern part of New Delhi. Adjoining areas such as Barakhamba Road, ITO are also major commercial centres. The government and quasi-government sector was the primary employer in New Delhi. The city's service sector has expanded due in part to the large skilled English-speaking workforce that has attracted many multinational companies. Key service industries include information technology, telecommunications, hotels, banking, media, and tourism.\nThe 2011 World Wealth Report ranks economic activity in New Delhi at 39, but overall the capital is ranked at 37, above cities like Jakarta and Johannesburg. New Delhi, with Beijing, shares the top position as the most targeted emerging markets retail destination among Asia-Pacific markets.\nThe government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi does not release any economic figures specifically for New Delhi but publishes an official economic report on the whole of Delhi annually. According to the \"Economic Survey of Delhi\", the metropolis has a net State Domestic Product (SDP) of Rs. 830.85\u00a0billion (for the year 2004\u201305) and a per capita income of Rs. 53,976 ($1,200). In the year 2008\u201309 New Delhi had a per capita Income of Rs. ($2,595). It grew by 16.2% to reach Rs. ($3,018) in 2009\u201310 fiscal. New Delhi's per capita GDP (at PPP) was at $6,860 during 2009\u201310 fiscal, making it one of the richest cities in India. The tertiary sector contributes 78.4% of Delhi's gross SDP followed by secondary and primary sectors with 20.2% and 1.4% contribution respectively.\nThe gross state domestic product (GSDP) of Delhi at prices for the year 2011\u201312 has been estimated at Rs 3.13\u00a0trillion (short scale), which is an increase of 18.7 per cent over the previous fiscal.\nCulture.\nNew Delhi is a cosmopolitan city due to the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural presence of the vast Indian bureaucracy and political system. The city's capital status has amplified the importance of national events and holidays. National events such as Republic Day, Independence Day and \"Gandhi Jayanti\" (Gandhi's birthday) are celebrated with great enthusiasm in New Delhi and the rest of India. On India's Independence Day (15 August), the prime minister of India addresses the nation from the Red Fort. Most Delhiites celebrate the day by flying kites, which are considered a symbol of freedom. The Republic Day Parade is a large cultural and military parade showcasing India's cultural diversity and military might.\nReligious festivals include Diwali (the festival of light), Maha Shivaratri, Teej, Durga Puja, Chhath Puja, Mahavir Jayanti, Guru Nanak Jayanti, Holi, Lohri, Eid ul-Fitr, Eid ul-Adha, Easter, Raksha Bandhan, and Christmas. The Qutub Festival is a cultural event during which performances of musicians and dancers from all over India are showcased at night, with the Qutub Minar as the chosen backdrop of the event. Other events such as Kite Flying Festival, International Mango Festival and \"Vasant Panchami\" (the Spring Festival) are held every year in Delhi.\nIn 2007, the Japanese Buddhist organisation Nipponzan Myohoji decided to build a Peace Pagoda in the city containing Buddha relics. It was inaugurated by the Dalai Lama.\nHistoric sites, museums and gardens.\nNew Delhi is home to several historic sites and museums. The National Museum, which began with an exhibition of Indian art and artefacts at the Royal Academy in London in the winter of 1947\u201348, was later at the end was shown at the Rashtrapati Bhawan in 1949. Later it was to form a permanent National Museum. On 15 August 1949, the National Museum was formally inaugurated and has 200,000 works of art, both of Indian and foreign origin, covering over 5,000 years.\nThe India Gate, which was built in 1931, was inspired by the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. It is the national monument of India commemorating the 90,000 soldiers of the Indian Army who died while fighting for the British Raj in World War I and the Third Anglo-Afghan War. The monument is barricaded now with entry to the inside arch restricted.\nThe Rajpath, which was built similar to the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es in Paris, is the ceremonial boulevard for the Republic of India, located in New Delhi. The annual Republic Day parade takes place here on 26 January. The Beating retreat takes place here two days later.\nGandhi Smriti in New Delhi is the location where Mahatma Gandhi spent the last 144 days of his life and was assassinated on 30 January 1948. Rajghat is the place where Gandhi was cremated on 31 January 1948 after his assassination and his ashes were buried and make it a final resting place beside the sanctity of the Yamuna River. The Raj Ghat in the shape of the large square platform with black marble was designed by architect Vanu Bhuta.\nJantar Mantar located in Connaught Place was built by Maharaja Jai Singh II of Jaipur. It consists of 13 architectural astronomy instruments. The primary purpose of the observatory was to compile astronomical tables, and to predict the times and movements of the sun, moon and planets.\nNew Delhi is home to Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum, National Gallery of Modern Art, National Museum of Natural History, National Rail Museum, National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum, National Philatelic Museum, Nehru Planetarium, Shankar's International Dolls Museum. and Supreme Court of India Museum,\nIn the coming years, a new National War Memorial and Museum will be constructed in New Delhi for million ().\nNew Delhi is particularly renowned for its beautifully landscaped gardens that can look quite stunning in spring. The largest of these include Buddha Jayanti Park and the historic Lodi Gardens. In addition, there are the gardens in the Presidential Estate, the gardens along the Rajpath and India Gate, the gardens along Shanti Path, the Rose Garden, Nehru Park and the Railway Garden in Chanakya Puri. Also of note is the garden adjacent to the Jangpura Metro Station near the Defence Colony Flyover, as are the roundabout and neighbourhood gardens throughout the city.\nThe New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) area was declared the cleanest in North India, based on solid waste management, access to sanitation and other parameters of cleanliness, under the zone-wise Swachh Survekshan 2017.\nCityscape.\nMuch of New Delhi, planned by the leading 20th-century British architect Edwin Lutyens, was laid out to be the central administrative area of the city as a testament to Britain's imperial ambitions. New Delhi is structured around two central promenades called the Rajpath and the Janpath. The Rajpath, or King's Way, stretches from the Rashtrapati Bhavan to the India Gate. The Janpath (), formerly Queen's Way, begins at Connaught Circus and cuts the Rajpath at right angles. Nineteen foreign embassies are located on the nearby Shantipath (), making it the largest diplomatic enclave in India.\nAt the heart of the city is the magnificent Rashtrapati Bhavan (formerly known as Viceroy's House) which sits atop Raisina Hill. The Secretariat, which houses ministries of the government of India, flanks out of the Rashtrapati Bhavan. The Parliament House, designed by Herbert Baker, is located at the Sansad Marg, which runs parallel to the Rajpath. Connaught Place is a large, circular commercial area in New Delhi, modelled after the Royal Crescent in England. Twelve separate roads lead out of the outer ring of Connaught Place, one of them being the Janpath.\nArchitecture.\nThe New Delhi town plan, like its architecture, was chosen with one single chief consideration: to be a symbol of British power and supremacy. All other decisions were subordinate to this, and it was this framework that dictated the choice and application of symbology and influences from both Hindu and Islamic architecture.\nIt took about 20 years to build the city from 1911. Many elements of New Delhi architecture borrow from indigenous sources; however, they fit into a British Classical/Palladian tradition. The fact that there were any indigenous features in the design was due to the persistence and urging of both the Viceroy Hardinge and historians like E.B. Havell.\nIn the year 2019, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and Government of India introduced the Central Vista redevelopment project proposing the redevelopment of over , costing \u20b9 crore ().\nTransport.\nAir.\nIndira Gandhi International Airport, situated to the southwest of Delhi, is the main gateway for the city's domestic and international civilian air traffic. In 2012\u201313, the airport was used by more than 35\u00a0million passengers, making it one of the busiest airports in South Asia. Terminal 3, which cost () to construct between 2007 and 2010, handles an additional 37\u00a0million passengers annually.\nThe Delhi Flying Club, established in 1928 with two de Havilland Moth aircraft named \"Delhi\" and \"Roshanara\", was based at \"Safdarjung Airport\" which started operations in 1929, when it was the Delhi's only airport and the second in India. The airport functioned until 2001; however, in January 2002 the government closed the airport for flying activities because of security concerns following the New York attacks in September 2001. Since then, the club only carries out aircraft maintenance courses, and is used for helicopter rides to Indira Gandhi International Airport for VIP including the president and the prime minister.\nIn 2010, Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) was conferred the fourth best airport award in the world in the 15\u201325\u00a0million category, and \"Best Improved Airport\" in the Asia-Pacific Region by Airports Council International. The airport was rated as the \"Best airport in the world\" in the 25\u201340\u00a0million passengers category in 2015, by Airports Council International. Delhi Airport also bags two awards for \"The Best Airport in Central Asia/India\" and \"Best Airport Staff in Central Asia/India\" at the Skytrax World Airport Awards 2015.\nA second airport, Noida International Airport, is currently being built in Jewar.\nRoad.\nNew Delhi has one of India's largest bus transport systems. Buses are operated by the state-owned Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC), which owns the largest fleet of compressed natural gas (CNG)-fueled buses in the world and Delhi Transit. Personal vehicles especially cars also form a major chunk of vehicles plying on New Delhi roads. New Delhi has the highest number of registered cars compared to any other metropolitan city in India. Taxis and Auto Rickshaws also ply on New Delhi roads in large numbers. New Delhi has one of the highest road density in India and average vehicle speed is around in peak hours in the city.\nSome roads and expressways serve as important pillars of New Delhi's road infrastructure:\nNational Highways.\nNew Delhi is connected by road to the rest of India through National highways:\nRailway.\nNew Delhi is a major junction in the Indian railway network and is the headquarters of the Northern Railway. The five main railway stations are New Delhi railway station, Delhi Junction, Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station, Anand Vihar Terminal and Sarai Rohilla. The Delhi Ring Railway, a circular railway network in Delhi that runs parallel to the Ring Road, is a part of Delhi's suburban railway services.\nMetro.\nThe Delhi Metro is a rapid transit system serving Delhi, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon and Noida in the National Capital Region of India. Delhi Metro is the world's 12th largest metro system in terms of length. Delhi Metro was India's first modern public transportation system, which had revolutionised travel by providing a fast, reliable, safe, and comfortable means of transport. Presently, the network consists of 10 colour-coded lines serving 255 stations with a total length of . The network has now crossed the boundaries of Delhi to reach Ghaziabad and Noida in Uttar Pradesh, and Faridabad and Gurgaon in Haryana. All stations have escalators, elevators, and tactile tiles to guide the visually impaired from station entrances to trains. It has a combination of elevated, at-grade, and underground lines, and uses both broad gauge and standard gauge rolling stock. Four types of rolling stock are used: Mitsubishi-ROTEM Broad gauge, Bombardier MOVIA, Mitsubishi-ROTEM Standard gauge, and CAF Beasain Standard gauge. According to a study, Delhi Metro has helped in removing about 390,000 vehicles from the streets of Delhi.\nDelhi Metro is being built and operated by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Limited (DMRC), a state-owned company with equal equity participation from the Government of India and the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi. However, the organisation is under administrative control of the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India. Besides the construction and operation of the Delhi metro, DMRC is also involved in the planning and implementation of metro rail, monorail and high-speed rail projects in India and providing consultancy services to other metro projects in the country as well as abroad. The Delhi Metro project was spearheaded by E. Sreedharan, the managing director of DMRC and popularly known as the \"Metro Man\" of India. He famously resigned from DMRC, taking moral responsibility for a metro bridge collapse which took five lives. Sreedharan was awarded with the Legion of Honour by the French government for his contribution to Delhi Metro.\nSports.\nThe city hosted the 2010 Commonwealth Games and annually hosts Delhi Half Marathon foot-race. The city has previously hosted the 1951 Asian Games and the 1982 Asian Games. New Delhi was interested in bidding for the 2019 Asian Games but was turned down by the government on 2 August 2010 amid allegations of corruption in 2010 Commonwealth Games. The city also had a bid to host the 1992 Summer Olympics, but withdrew in March 1986, seven months before the host selection.\nMajor sporting venues in New Delhi include the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Ambedkar Stadium, Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium, Arun Jaitley Stadium, R.K. Khanna Tennis Complex, Dhyan Chand National Stadium and Siri Fort Sports Complex. \nInternational relations and organisations.\nThe city is home to numerous international organisations. The Asian and Pacific Centre for Transfer of Technology of the UNESCAP servicing the Asia-Pacific region is headquartered in New Delhi. New Delhi is home to most UN regional offices in India namely the UNDP, UNODC, UNESCO, UNICEF, WFP, UNV, UNCTAD, FAO, UNFPA, WHO, World Bank, ILO, IMF, UNIFEM, IFC and UNAIDS. UNHCR Representation in India is also located in the city.\nNew Delhi hosts 145 foreign embassies and high commissions.\nSummits, conferences and conventions.\nUnited Nations Conference on Trade and Development hosted its second meeting conference in the year 1968 at New Delhi.\nNew Delhi hosted the 7th NAM Summit in 1983, 4th BRICS Summit in 2012, IBSA Summit in 2015, and 5th Global Conference on CyberSpace in 2017. India has also host the G20 summit in 2023 in New Delhi.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "24328828": "Unitech Group\nReal estate investment company\nUnitech Limited is an Indian real estate investment company headquartered in New Delhi, and once claimed to be the largest real estate builder in the country.\nThe company is based in New Delhi and ranks 1484, in Forbes Global 2000 listing of the top 2000 public companies in the world by Forbes magazine, 32nd in India. Its construction business includes highways, roads, powerhouses, transmission lines, and it has residential projects called Unitech Cities/Uni World, in cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mohali, Bangalore, Kochi, Noida, Greater Noida, Agra, Lucknow, Varanasi, Gurgaon, and Ghaziabad.\nHistory.\nFounded by 5 partners, Ramesh Chandra, Dr. S. P. Shrivastava, Dr. P K Mohanti, Dr. Ramesh Kapur and Dr. Bahri originally formed as United Technical Consultant Private Ltd in 1972 as a soil investigation company. They later moved into civil engineering contracts in 1974. The company began to enter into real estate in 1986, and started to increase focus on real estate in 2000. Few year back, it was India's second-largest listed real estate firm.\nUnitech had formed a large joint venture with Norway-based Telenor Group to create Unitech Wireless Ltd., in August 2009, it secured a 50 billion rupee ($1 billion) loan from State Bank of India (SBI.BO) to fund its mobile phone network rollout.\nProsecutions.\nIn 2011, due to the 2G-spectrum controversy (explained below), the company got involved in a public spat due to which its Chairman Sanjay Chandra al while on bail over Telenor's pressure to do so, followed by news of Unitech's settlement of issues by agreeing to sell its entire stake in the Unitech Wireless to shift the business to a new entity owned by the former almost 1 year later and then Telenor shifted the erstwhile United Wireless' entire assets into a newly formed holding company as its majority-owned subsidiary Telewings Communications Services Pvt. Ltd., another joint-venture which 26% stake was owned by an investment firm named Lakshdeep Investments & Finance Pvt. Ltd. and rest of the 74% owned by Telenor directly, thus sealing the end of Unitech's presence into telecommunications so far, only after 15 days since last development.\nIn 2021, the Enforcement Directorate filed a criminal case against Unitech Limited under suspicion that the organization had illegally diverted Rs 2,000 crore to tax havens. Another 2023 criminal fraud case was filed by the ED against the organization and its directors.\n2G spectrum case.\nUnitech Wireless is one of the accused in the 2G spectrum case. It is alleged that they were able to attain 2G licenses by bribing officials in the Indian Government even though they didn't have any previous telecom experience. As a fallout of this they had a total of 22 licenses cancelled by virtue of a court order, and their Managing Director Sanjay Chandra sent to jail.\nIn March 2017, Sanjay Chandra, who had been out on bail in the 2G case, and brother Ajay were arrested by the Economic Offences Wing of the Delhi Police for allegedly duping home-buyers in a Gurugram project. Till date both are in jail. On 21 October 2019, the Noida Authority has cancelled the allotment of a group housing property to crisis-hit realtor Unitech over non-payment of dues worth Rs 1,203 crore. In December 2019, the apex court has asked the central government to take over the management of the company, Keeping in mind the interests of about 30 thousand home buyers. The court has also directed the government to investigate the matter from various agencies including the Enforcement Directorate (ED) after Unitech and its directors revealed that thousands of crores of flat buyers had been diverted by the forensic report. The court has also flatly refused to grant bail to Unitech directors Chandra brothers, the apex court has asked the government to appoint the current directors of Unitech as independent directors.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["24328828", "51585"], "permutation_1": ["24328828", "51585"], "permutation_2": ["51585", "24328828"], "permutation_3": ["24328828", "51585"]}
{"id": "2hop__412924_125776", "docs_added": {"33163": "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart\nComposer (1756\u20131791)\nWolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 \u2013 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age resulted in more than 800 works representing virtually every Western classical genre of his time. Many of these compositions are acknowledged as pinnacles of the symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral repertoires. Mozart is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music, with his music admired for its \"melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture\".\nBorn in Salzburg, Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. At age five, he was already competent on keyboard and violin, had begun to compose, and performed before European royalty. His father took him on a grand tour of Europe and then three trips to Italy. At 17, he was a musician at the Salzburg court but grew restless and travelled in search of a better position. Mozart's search for employment led to positions in Paris, Mannheim, Munich, and again in Salzburg, during which he wrote his five violin concertos, Sinfonia Concertante, and Concerto for Flute and Harp, as well as sacred pieces and masses, the motet\u00a0\"Exsultate Jubilate\", and the opera \"Idomeneo,\" among other works.\nWhile visiting Vienna in 1781, Mozart was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He stayed in Vienna, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During Mozart's early years in Vienna, he produced several notable works, such as the opera \"Die Entf\u00fchrung aus dem Serail\", the \"Great Mass in C minor\", the \"Haydn\" Quartets and a number of symphonies. Throughout his Vienna years, Mozart composed over a dozen piano concertos, many considered some of his greatest achievements. In the final years of his life, Mozart wrote many of his best-known works, including his last three symphonies, culminating in the \"Jupiter\" Symphony, the serenade \"Eine kleine Nachtmusik\", his Clarinet Concerto, the operas \"The Marriage of Figaro\", \"Don Giovanni\", \"Cos\u00ec fan tutte\" and \"The Magic Flute\" and his Requiem. The Requiem was largely unfinished at the time of his death at age 35, the circumstances of which are uncertain and much mythologised.\nLife and career.\nEarly life.\nFamily and childhood.\nWolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on 27 January 1756 to Leopold Mozart and Anna Maria, n\u00e9e Pertl, at Getreidegasse 9 in Salzburg. Salzburg was the capital of the Archbishopric of Salzburg, an ecclesiastic principality in the Holy Roman Empire (today in Austria). He was the youngest of seven children, five of whom died in infancy. His elder sister was Maria Anna Mozart, nicknamed \"Nannerl\". Mozart was baptised the day after his birth, at St. Rupert's Cathedral in Salzburg. The baptismal record gives his name in Latinised form, as \"Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart\". He generally called himself \"Wolfgang Amad\u00e8 Mozart\" as an adult, but his name had many variants.\nLeopold Mozart, a native of Augsburg, then an Imperial Free City in the Holy Roman Empire, was a minor composer and an experienced teacher. In 1743, he was appointed as the fourth violinist in the musical establishment of Count Leopold Anton von Firmian, the ruling Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. Four years later, he married Anna Maria in Salzburg. Leopold became the orchestra's deputy Kapellmeister in 1763. During the year of his son's birth, Leopold published a violin textbook, \"Versuch einer gr\u00fcndlichen Violinschule\", which achieved success.\nWhen Nannerl was seven, she began keyboard lessons with her father, while her three-year-old brother looked on. Years later, after her brother's death, she reminisced:\nHe often spent much time at the clavier, picking out thirds, which he was ever striking, and his pleasure showed that it sounded good... In the fourth year of his age his father, for a game as it were, began to teach him a few minuets and pieces at the clavier... He could play it faultlessly and with the greatest delicacy, and keeping exactly in time... At the age of five, he was already composing little pieces, which he played to his father who wrote them down.\nThese early pieces, K. 1\u20135, were recorded in the \"Nannerl Notenbuch\". There is some scholarly debate about whether Mozart was four or five years old when he created his first musical compositions, though there is little doubt that Mozart composed his first three pieces of music within a few weeks of each other: K. 1a, 1b, and 1c.\nIn his early years, Wolfgang's father was his only teacher. Along with music, he taught his children languages and academic subjects. Biographer Solomon notes that, while Leopold was a devoted teacher to his children, there is evidence that Mozart was keen to progress beyond what he was taught. His first ink-spattered composition and his precocious efforts with the violin were of his initiative and came as a surprise to Leopold, who eventually gave up composing when his son's musical talents became evident.\n1762\u201373: Travel.\nWhile Wolfgang was young, his family made several European journeys in which he and Nannerl performed as child prodigies. These began with an exhibition in 1762 at the court of Prince-elector Maximilian III of Bavaria in Munich, and at the Imperial Courts in Vienna and Prague. A long concert tour followed, spanning three and a half years, taking the family to the courts of Munich, Mannheim, Paris, London, Dover, The Hague, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Mechelen and again to Paris, and back home via Z\u00fcrich, Donaueschingen, and Munich. During this trip, Wolfgang met many musicians and acquainted himself with the works of other composers. A particularly significant influence was Johann Christian Bach, whom he visited in London in 1764 and 1765. When he was eight years old, Mozart wrote his first symphony, most of which was probably transcribed by his father.\nThe family trips were often challenging, and travel conditions were primitive. They had to wait for invitations and reimbursement from the nobility, and they endured long, near-fatal illnesses far from home: first Leopold (London, summer 1764), then both children (The Hague, autumn 1765). The family again went to Vienna in late 1767 and remained there until December 1768.\nAfter one year in Salzburg, Leopold and Wolfgang set off for Italy, leaving Anna Maria and Nannerl at home. This tour lasted from December 1769 to March 1771. As with earlier journeys, Leopold wanted to display his son's abilities as a performer and a rapidly maturing composer. Wolfgang met Josef Myslive\u010dek and Giovanni Battista Martini in Bologna and was accepted as a member of the famous Accademia Filarmonica. There exists a myth, according to which, while in Rome, he heard Gregorio Allegri's \"Miserere\" twice in performance in the Sistine Chapel. Allegedly, he subsequently wrote it out from memory, thus producing the \"first unauthorised copy of this closely guarded property of the Vatican\". However, both the origin and plausibility of this account are disputed.\nIn Milan, Mozart wrote the opera \"Mitridate, re di Ponto\" (1770), which was performed with success. This led to further opera commissions. He returned with his father twice to Milan (August\u2013December 1771; October 1772\u00a0\u2013 March 1773) for the composition and premieres of \"Ascanio in Alba\" (1771) and \"Lucio Silla\" (1772). Leopold hoped these visits would result in a professional appointment for his son, and indeed ruling Archduke Ferdinand contemplated hiring Mozart, but owing to his mother Empress Maria Theresa's reluctance to employ \"useless people\", the matter was dropped and Leopold's hopes were never realised. Toward the end of the journey, Mozart wrote the solo motet \"Exsultate, jubilate\", K.165.\n1773\u201377: Employment at the Salzburg court.\nAfter finally returning with his father from Italy on 13 March 1773, Mozart was employed as a court musician by the ruler of Salzburg, Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. The composer had many friends and admirers in Salzburg and had the opportunity to work in many genres, including symphonies, sonatas, string quartets, masses, serenades, and a few minor operas. Between April and December 1775, Mozart developed an enthusiasm for violin concertos, producing a series of five (the only ones he ever wrote), which steadily increased in their musical sophistication. The last three\u2014K.\u00a0216, K.\u00a0218, K.\u00a0219\u2014are now staples of the repertoire. In 1776, he turned his efforts to piano concertos, culminating in the E\u266d concerto K.\u00a0271 of early 1777, considered by critics to be a breakthrough work.\nDespite these artistic successes, Mozart grew increasingly discontented with Salzburg and redoubled his efforts to find a position elsewhere. One reason was his low salary, 150 florins a year; Mozart longed to compose operas, and Salzburg provided only rare occasions for these. The situation worsened in 1775 when the court theatre was closed, especially since the other theatre in Salzburg was primarily reserved for visiting troupes.\nTwo long expeditions in search of work interrupted this long Salzburg stay. Mozart and his father visited Vienna from 14 July to 26 September 1773, and Munich from 6December 1774 to March 1775. Neither visit was successful, though the Munich journey resulted in a popular success with the premiere of Mozart's opera \"La finta giardiniera\".\n1777\u201378: Journey to Paris.\nIn August 1777, Mozart resigned his position at Salzburg and on 23 September ventured out once more in search of employment, with visits to Augsburg, Mannheim, Paris, and Munich.\nMozart became acquainted with members of the famous orchestra in Mannheim, the best in Europe at the time. He also fell in love with Aloysia Weber, one of four daughters of a musical family. There were prospects of employment in Mannheim, but they came to nothing, and Mozart left for Paris on 14 March 1778 to continue his search. One of his letters from Paris hints at a possible post as an organist at Versailles, but Mozart was not interested in such an appointment. He fell into debt and took to pawning valuables. The nadir of the visit occurred when Mozart's mother was taken ill and died on 3July 1778. There had been delays in calling a doctor\u2014probably, according to Halliwell, because of a lack of funds. Mozart stayed with Melchior Grimm at Marquise d'\u00c9pinay's residence, 5 rue de la Chauss\u00e9e-d'Antin.\nWhile Mozart was in Paris, his father was pursuing opportunities of employment for him in Salzburg. With the support of the local nobility, Mozart was offered a post as court organist and concertmaster. The annual salary was 450 florins, but he was reluctant to accept. By that time, relations between Grimm and Mozart had cooled, and Mozart moved out. After leaving Paris in September 1778 for Strasbourg, he lingered in Mannheim and Munich, still hoping to obtain an appointment outside Salzburg. In Munich, he again encountered Aloysia, now a very successful singer, but she was no longer interested in him. Mozart finally returned to Salzburg on 15 January 1779 and took up his new appointment, but his discontent with Salzburg remained undiminished.\nAmong the better-known works which Mozart wrote on the Paris journey are the A minor piano sonata, K.\u00a0310/300d, the \"Paris\" Symphony (No.\u00a031), which were performed in Paris on 12 and 18 June 1778; and the Concerto for Flute and Harp in C major, K. 299/297c.\nVienna.\n1781: Departure.\nIn January 1781, Mozart's opera \"Idomeneo\" premiered with \"considerable success\" in Munich. The following March, Mozart was summoned to Vienna, where his employer, Archbishop Colloredo, was attending the celebrations for the accession of Joseph II to the Austrian throne. For Colloredo, this was simply a matter of wanting his musical servant to be at hand (Mozart indeed was required to dine in Colloredo's establishment with the valets and cooks). He planned a bigger career as he continued in the archbishop's service; for example, he wrote to his father:\nMy main goal right now is to meet the emperor in some agreeable fashion, I am absolutely determined he should get to know me. I would be so happy if I could whip through my opera for him and then play a fugue or two, for that's what he likes.\nMozart did indeed soon meet the Emperor, who eventually was to support his career substantially with commissions and a part-time position.\nIn the same letter to his father just quoted, Mozart outlined his plans to participate as a soloist in the concerts of the \"Tonk\u00fcnstler-Societ\u00e4t\", a prominent benefit concert series; this plan as well came to pass after the local nobility prevailed on Colloredo to drop his opposition.\nColloredo's wish to prevent Mozart from performing outside his establishment was in other cases carried through, raising the composer's anger; one example was a chance to perform before the Emperor at Countess Thun's for a fee equal to half of his yearly Salzburg salary.\nThe quarrel with the archbishop came to a head in May: Mozart attempted to resign and was refused. The following month, permission was granted, but in a grossly insulting way: the composer was dismissed literally \"with a kick in the arse\", administered by the archbishop's steward, Count Arco. Mozart decided to settle in Vienna as a freelance performer and composer.\nThe quarrel with Colloredo was more difficult for Mozart because his father sided against him. Hoping fervently that he would obediently follow Colloredo back to Salzburg, Mozart's father exchanged intense letters with his son, urging him to be reconciled with their employer. Mozart passionately defended his intention to pursue an independent career in Vienna. The debate ended when Mozart was dismissed by the archbishop, freeing himself both of his employer and of his father's demands to return. Solomon characterizes Mozart's resignation as a \"revolutionary step\" that significantly altered the course of his life.\nEarly years.\nMozart's new career in Vienna began well. He often performed as a pianist, notably in a competition before the Emperor with Muzio Clementi on 24 December 1781, and he soon \"had established himself as the finest keyboard player in Vienna\". He also prospered as a composer, and in 1782 completed the opera \"Die Entf\u00fchrung aus dem Serail\" (\"The Abduction from the Seraglio\"), which premiered on 16 July 1782 and achieved considerable success. The work was soon being performed \"throughout German-speaking Europe\", and thoroughly established Mozart's reputation as a composer.\nNear the height of his quarrels with Colloredo, Mozart moved in with the Weber family, who had moved to Vienna from Mannheim. The family's father, Fridolin, had died, and the Webers were now taking in lodgers to make ends meet.\nMarriage and children.\nAfter failing to win the hand of Aloysia Weber, who was now married to the actor and artist Joseph Lange, Mozart's interest shifted to the third daughter of the family, Constanze.\nThe courtship did not go entirely smoothly; surviving correspondence indicates that Mozart and Constanze briefly broke up in April 1782, over an episode involving jealousy (Constanze had permitted another young man to measure her calves in a parlour game). Mozart also faced a very difficult task getting permission for the marriage from his father, Leopold.\nThe marriage took place in an atmosphere of crisis. Daniel Heartz suggests that eventually, Constanze moved in with Mozart, which would have placed her in disgrace by the mores of the time. Mozart wrote to Leopold on 31 July 1782, \"All the good and well-intentioned advice you have sent fails to address the case of a man who has already gone so far with a maiden. Further postponement is out of the question.\" Heartz relates, \"Constanze's sister Sophie had tearfully declared that her mother would send the police after Constanze if she did not return home [presumably from Mozart's apartment].\" On 4 August, Mozart wrote to Baroness von Waldst\u00e4tten, asking: \"Can the police here enter anyone's house in this way? Perhaps it is only a ruse of Madame Weber to get her daughter back. If not, I know no better remedy than to marry Constanze tomorrow morning or if possible today.\"\nThe couple were finally married on 4August 1782 in St. Stephen's Cathedral, the day before his father's consenting letter arrived in the mail. In the marriage contract, Constanze \"assigns to her bridegroom five hundred gulden which ... the latter has promised to augment with one thousand gulden\", with the total \"to pass to the survivor\". Further, all joint acquisitions during the marriage were to remain the common property of both. \nThe couple had six children, of whom only two survived infancy:\n1782\u201387.\nIn 1782 and 1783, Mozart became intimately acquainted with the work of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel as a result of the influence of Gottfried van Swieten, who owned many manuscripts of the Baroque masters. Mozart's study of these scores inspired compositions in the Baroque style and later influenced his musical language, for example in fugal passages in \"Die Zauberfl\u00f6te\" (\"The Magic Flute\") and the finale of Symphony No.\u00a041.\nIn 1783, Mozart and his wife visited his family in Salzburg. His father and sister were cordially polite to Constanze, but the visit prompted the composition of one of Mozart's great liturgical pieces, the Mass in C minor. Though not completed, it was premiered in Salzburg, with Constanze singing a solo part.\nMozart met Joseph Haydn in Vienna around 1784, and the two composers became friends. When Haydn visited Vienna, they sometimes played together in an impromptu string quartet. Mozart's six quartets dedicated to Haydn (K.\u00a0387, K.\u00a0421, K.\u00a0428, K.\u00a0458, K.\u00a0464, and K.\u00a0465) date from the period 1782 to 1785, and are judged to be a response to Haydn's Opus 33 set from 1781. Haydn wrote, \"posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years\" and in 1785 told Mozart's father: \"I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition.\"\nFrom 1782 to 1785 Mozart mounted concerts with himself as a soloist, presenting three or four new piano concertos in each season. Since space in the theatres was scarce, he booked unconventional venues: a large room in the Trattnerhof apartment building, and the ballroom of the Mehlgrube restaurant. The concerts were very popular, and his concertos premiered there are still firm fixtures in the repertoire. Solomon writes that during this period, Mozart created \"a harmonious connection between an eager composer-performer and a delighted audience, which was given the opportunity of witnessing the transformation and perfection of a major musical genre\".\nWith substantial returns from his concerts and elsewhere, Mozart and his wife adopted a more luxurious lifestyle. They moved to an expensive apartment, with a yearly rent of 460 florins. Mozart bought a fine fortepiano from Anton Walter for about 900 florins, and a billiard table for about 300. The Mozarts sent their son Karl Thomas to an expensive boarding school and kept servants. During this period Mozart saved little of his income.\nOn 14 December 1784, Mozart became a Freemason, admitted to the lodge Zur Wohlt\u00e4tigkeit (\"Beneficence\"). Freemasonry played an essential role in the remainder of Mozart's life: he attended meetings, a number of his friends were Masons, and on various occasions, he composed Masonic music, e.g. the Maurerische Trauermusik.\n1786\u201387: Return to opera.\nDespite the great success of \"Die Entf\u00fchrung aus dem Serail\", Mozart did little operatic writing for the next four years, producing only two unfinished works and the one-act \"Der Schauspieldirektor\". He focused instead on his career as a piano soloist and writer of concertos. Around the end of 1785, Mozart moved away from keyboard writing and began his famous operatic collaboration with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. The year 1786 saw the successful premiere of \"Le nozze di Figaro\" in Vienna. Its reception in Prague later in the year was even warmer, and this led to a second collaboration with Da Ponte: the opera \"Don Giovanni\", which premiered in October 1787 to acclaim in Prague, but less success in Vienna during 1788. The two are among Mozart's most famous works and are mainstays of operatic repertoire today, though at their premieres their musical complexity caused difficulty both for listeners and for performers. These developments were not witnessed by Mozart's father, who had died on 28 May 1787.\nIn December 1787, Mozart finally obtained a steady post under aristocratic patronage. Emperor Joseph II appointed him as his \"chamber composer\", a post that had fallen vacant the previous month on the death of Gluck. It was a part-time appointment, paying just 800 florins per year, and required Mozart only to compose dances for the annual balls in the Redoutensaal (see \"Mozart and dance\"). This modest income became important to Mozart when hard times arrived. Court records show that Joseph aimed to keep the esteemed composer from leaving Vienna in pursuit of better prospects.\nIn 1787, the young Ludwig van Beethoven spent several weeks in Vienna, hoping to study with Mozart. No reliable records survive to indicate whether the two composers ever met.\nLater years.\n1788\u201390.\nToward the end of the decade, Mozart's circumstances worsened. Around 1786, he ceased to appear frequently in public concerts, and his income shrank. This was a difficult time for musicians in Vienna because of the Austro-Turkish War: both the general level of prosperity and the ability of the aristocracy to support music had declined. According to Solomon, in 1788, Mozart saw a 66% decline in his income compared to his best years in 1781.\nBy mid-1788, Mozart and his family had moved from central Vienna to the suburb of Alsergrund. Although it has been suggested that Mozart aimed to reduce his rental expenses by moving to a suburb, as he wrote in his letter to Michael von Puchberg, Mozart had not reduced his expenses but merely increased the housing space at his disposal. Mozart began to borrow money, most often from his friend and fellow mason Puchberg; \"a pitiful sequence of letters pleading for loans\" survives. Maynard Solomon and others have suggested that Mozart was suffering from depression, and it seems his musical output slowed. Major works of the period include the last three symphonies (Nos.\u00a039, 40, and 41, all from 1788), and the last of the three Da Ponte operas, \"Cos\u00ec fan tutte\", premiered in 1790.\nAround this time, Mozart made some long journeys hoping to improve his fortunes, visiting Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin in the spring of 1789, and Frankfurt, Mannheim, and other German cities in 1790.\n1791.\nMozart's last year was, until his final illness struck, a time of high productivity\u2014and by some accounts, one of personal recovery. He composed a great deal, including some of his most admired works: the opera \"The Magic Flute\"; the final piano concerto (K.\u00a0595 in B\u266d); the Clarinet Concerto K.\u00a0622; the last in his series of string quintets (K.\u00a0614 in E\u266d); the motet Ave verum corpus K.\u00a0618; and the unfinished Requiem K.\u00a0626.\nMozart's financial situation, a source of anxiety in 1790, finally began to improve. Although the evidence is inconclusive, it appears that wealthy patrons in Hungary and Amsterdam pledged annuities to Mozart in return for the occasional composition. He is thought to have benefited from the sale of dance music written in his role as Imperial chamber composer. Mozart no longer borrowed large sums from Puchberg and began to pay off his debts.\nHe experienced great satisfaction in the public success of some of his works, notably \"The Magic Flute\" (which was performed several times in the short period between its premiere and Mozart's death) and the Little Masonic Cantata K.\u00a0623, premiered on 17 November 1791.\nFinal illness and death.\nMozart fell ill while in Prague for the premiere, on 6September 1791, of his opera \"La clemenza di Tito\", which was written in that same year on commission for Emperor Leopold II's coronation festivities. He continued his professional functions for some time and conducted the premiere of \"The Magic Flute\" on 30 September. His health deteriorated on 20 November, at which point he became bedridden, suffering from swelling, pain, and vomiting.\nMozart was nursed in his final days by his wife and her youngest sister and was attended by the family doctor, Thomas Franz Closset. He was mentally occupied with the task of finishing his Requiem, but the evidence that he dictated passages to his student Franz Xaver S\u00fcssmayr is minimal.\nMozart died in his home on at 12:55 am. The \"New Grove\" describes his funeral:\nMozart was interred in a common grave, in accordance with contemporary Viennese custom, at the St. Marx Cemetery outside the city on 7December. If, as later reports say, no mourners attended, that too is consistent with Viennese burial customs at the time; later Otto Jahn (1856) wrote that Salieri, S\u00fcssmayr, van Swieten and two other musicians were present. The tale of a storm and snow is false; the day was calm and mild.\nThe expression \"common grave\" refers to neither a communal grave nor a pauper's grave, but an individual grave for a member of the common people (i.e., not the aristocracy). Common graves were subject to excavation after ten years; the graves of aristocrats were not.\nThe cause of Mozart's death is not known with certainty. The official record of \"hitziges Frieselfieber\" (\"severe miliary fever\", referring to a rash that looks like millet seeds) is more a symptomatic description than a diagnosis. Researchers have suggested more than a hundred causes of death, including acute rheumatic fever, streptococcal infection, trichinosis, influenza, mercury poisoning, and a rare kidney ailment.\nMozart's modest funeral did not reflect his standing with the public as a composer; memorial services and concerts in Vienna and Prague were well attended. Indeed, in the period immediately after his death, his reputation rose substantially. Solomon describes an \"unprecedented wave of enthusiasm\" for his work; biographies were written first by Schlichtegroll, Niemetschek, and Nissen, and publishers vied to produce complete editions of his works.\nAppearance and character.\nMozart's physical appearance was described by tenor Michael Kelly in his \"Reminiscences\": \"a remarkably small man, very thin and pale, with a profusion of fine, fair hair of which he was rather vain\". His early biographer Niemetschek wrote, \"there was nothing special about [his] physique... He was small and his countenance, except for his large intense eyes, gave no signs of his genius.\" His facial complexion was pitted, a reminder of his childhood case of smallpox. Of his voice, his wife later wrote that it \"was a tenor, rather soft in speaking and delicate in singing, but when anything excited him, or it became necessary to exert it, it was both powerful and energetic.\"\nHe loved elegant clothing. Kelly remembered him at a rehearsal: \"[He] was on the stage with his crimson pelisse and gold-laced cocked hat, giving the time of the music to the orchestra.\" Based on paintings that researchers were able to find of Mozart, he seemed to wear a white wig for most of his formal occasions\u2014researchers of the Salzburg Mozarteum declared that only one of his fourteen portraits they had found showed him without his wig.\nMozart usually worked long and hard, finishing compositions at a tremendous pace as deadlines approached. He often made sketches and drafts; unlike Beethoven's, these are mostly not preserved, as his wife sought to destroy them after his death.\nMozart lived at the centre of the Viennese musical world and knew a significant number and variety of people: fellow musicians, theatrical performers, fellow Salzburgers, and aristocrats, including some acquaintance with Emperor Joseph II. Solomon considers his three closest friends to have been Gottfried von Jacquin, Count August Hatzfeld, and Sigmund Barisani; others included his elder colleague Joseph Haydn, singers Franz Xaver Gerl and Benedikt Schack, and the horn player Joseph Leutgeb. Leutgeb and Mozart carried on a kind of friendly mockery, often with Leutgeb as the butt of Mozart's practical jokes.\nHe enjoyed billiards, dancing, and kept pets, including a canary, a starling, a dog, and a horse for recreational riding. He had a startling fondness for scatological humour, which is preserved in his surviving letters, notably those written to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart around 1777\u20131778, and in his correspondence with his sister and parents. Mozart also wrote scatological music, a series of canons that he sang with his friends. He had an ear for languages, and having travelled all over Europe as a boy, was fluent in Latin, Italian, and French in addition to his native Salzburg dialect of German. He possibly also understood and spoke some English, having jokingly written \"You are an ass\" after his 19-year-old student Thomas Attwood made a thoughtless mistake on his exercise papers.\nMozart was raised a Catholic and remained a devout member of the Church throughout his life. He embraced the teachings of Freemasonry in 1784.\nWorks, musical style, and innovations.\nStyle.\nMozart's music, like Haydn's, stands as an archetype of the Classical style. At the time he began composing, European music was dominated by the \"style galant\", a reaction against the highly evolved intricacy of the Baroque. Progressively, and in large part at the hands of Mozart himself, the contrapuntal complexities of the late Baroque emerged once more, moderated and disciplined by new forms, and adapted to a new aesthetic and social milieu. Mozart was a versatile composer, and wrote in every major genre, including symphony, opera, the solo concerto, chamber music including string quartet and string quintet, and the piano sonata. These forms were not new, but Mozart advanced their technical sophistication and emotional reach. He almost single-handedly developed and popularised the Classical piano concerto. He wrote a great deal of religious music, including large-scale masses, as well as dances, divertimenti, serenades, and other forms of light entertainment.\nThe central traits of the Classical style are all present in Mozart's music. Clarity, balance, and transparency are the hallmarks of his work, but simplistic notions of its delicacy mask the exceptional power of his finest masterpieces, such as the Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K.\u00a0491; the Symphony No.\u00a040 in G minor, K.\u00a0550; and the opera \"Don Giovanni\". Charles Rosen makes the point forcefully:\nIt is only through recognising the violence and sensuality at the centre of Mozart's work that we can make a start towards a comprehension of his structures and an insight into his magnificence. In a paradoxical way, Schumann's superficial characterisation of the G minor Symphony can help us to see Mozart's daemon more steadily. In all of Mozart's supreme expressions of suffering and terror, there is something shockingly voluptuous.\nDuring his last decade, Mozart frequently exploited chromatic harmony. A notable instance is his \"String Quartet in C major\", K.\u00a0465 (1785), whose introduction abounds in chromatic suspensions, giving rise to the work's nickname, the \"Dissonance\" quartet.\nMozart had a gift for absorbing and adapting the valuable features of others' music. His travels helped in the forging of a unique compositional language. In London as a child, he met J.\u00a0C. Bach and heard his music. In Paris, Mannheim, and Vienna he met with other compositional influences, as well as the avant-garde capabilities of the Mannheim orchestra. In Italy, he encountered the Italian overture and opera buffa, both of which deeply affected the evolution of his practice. In London and Italy, the galant style was in the ascendent: simple, light music with a mania for cadencing; an emphasis on tonic, dominant, and subdominant to the exclusion of other harmonies; symmetrical phrases; and clearly articulated partitions in the overall form of movements. Some of Mozart's early symphonies are Italian overtures, with three movements running into each other; many are homotonal (all three movements having the same key signature, with the slow middle movement being in the relative minor). Others mimic the works of J.\u00a0C. Bach, and others show the simple rounded binary forms turned out by Viennese composers.\nAs Mozart matured, he progressively incorporated more features adapted from the Baroque. For example, the Symphony No.\u00a029 in A major K.\u00a0201 has a contrapuntal main theme in its first movement, and experimentation with irregular phrase lengths. Some of his quartets from 1773 have fugal finales, probably influenced by Haydn, who had included three such finales in his recently published Opus\u00a020 set. The influence of the \"Sturm und Drang\" (\"Storm and Stress\") period in music, with its brief foreshadowing of the Romantic era, is evident in the music of both composers at that time. Mozart's Symphony No.\u00a025 in G minor K.\u00a0183 is another excellent example.\nMozart would sometimes switch his focus between operas and instrumental music. He produced operas in each of the prevailing styles: opera buffa, such as \"Le nozze di Figaro\", \"Don Giovanni\", and \"Cos\u00ec fan tutte\"; opera seria, such as \"Idomeneo\"; and Singspiel, of which \"Die Zauberfl\u00f6te\" is the most famous example by any composer. In his later operas, he employed subtle changes in instrumentation, orchestral texture, and tone colour, for emotional depth and to mark dramatic shifts. Here, his advances in opera and instrumental composing interacted: his increasingly sophisticated use of the orchestra in the symphonies and concertos influenced his operatic orchestration, and his developing subtlety in using the orchestra to psychological effect in his operas was in turn reflected in his later non-operatic compositions.\nK\u00f6chel catalogue.\nFor unambiguous identification of works by Mozart, a \"K\u00f6chel catalogue number\" is used. This is a unique number assigned, in regular chronological order, to every one of his known works. A work is referenced by the abbreviation \"K.\" or \"KV\" followed by this number. The first edition of the catalogue was completed in 1862 by Ludwig von K\u00f6chel. It has since been repeatedly updated, as scholarly research improves knowledge of the dates and authenticity of individual works.\nInstruments.\nAlthough some of Mozart's early pieces were written for harpsichord, he also became acquainted in his early years with fortepianos made by Regensburg builder Franz Jakob Sp\u00e4th. Later when Mozart was visiting Augsburg, he was impressed by Stein fortepianos and shared this in a letter to his father. On 22 October 1777, Mozart had premiered his triple-piano concerto, K. 242, on instruments provided by Stein. The Augsburg Cathedral organist Demmler was playing the first, Mozart the second and Stein the third part. In 1783, when living in Vienna he purchased an instrument by Walter. Leopold Mozart confirmed the attachment which Mozart had with his Walter fortepiano: \"It is impossible to describe the hustle and bustle. Your brother's pianoforte has been moved at least twelve times from his house to the theatre or to someone else's house.\"\nInfluence.\nHis most famous pupil was Johann Nepomuk Hummel, a transitional figure between the Classical and Romantic eras whom the Mozarts took into their Vienna home for two years as a child. More important is the influence Mozart had on composers of later generations. Ever since the surge in his reputation after his death, studying his scores has been a standard part of a classical musician's training.\nLudwig van Beethoven, Mozart's junior by fifteen years, was deeply influenced by his work, with which he was acquainted as a teenager. He is thought to have performed Mozart's operas while playing in the court orchestra at Bonn and travelled to Vienna in 1787 hoping to study with the older composer. Some of have direct models in comparable works by Mozart, and he wrote cadenzas (WoO\u00a058) to Mozart's D minor piano concerto K.\u00a0466.\nComposers have paid homage to Mozart by writing sets of variations on his themes. Beethoven wrote four such sets (Op.\u00a066, WoO\u00a028, WoO\u00a040, WoO\u00a046). Others include Fernando Sor's Introduction and Variations on a Theme by Mozart (1821), Mikhail Glinka's Variations on a Theme from Mozart's Opera \"The Magic Flute\" (1822), Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin's Variations on \"L\u00e0 ci darem la mano\" from \"Don Giovanni\" (1827), and Max Reger's Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart (1914), based on the variation theme in the piano sonata K.\u00a0331. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who revered Mozart, wrote his Orchestral Suite No.\u00a04 in G, \"Mozartiana\" (1887), as a tribute to him.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nFurther reading.\n\"See for an extensive bibliography\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nExternal links.\nDigitized documents\nSheet music", "16983711": "String Quartet No. 15 (Mozart)\n1783 composition by W. A. Mozart\nWolfgang Amadeus Mozart's String Quartet No. 15 in D minor, K. 421/417b is the second of his quartets dedicated to Haydn and the only one of the set in a minor key. Though undated in the autograph, it is believed to have been completed in 1783, while his wife Constanze Mozart was in labour with her first child Raimund. Constanze stated that the rising string figures in the second movement corresponded to her cries from the other room.\nStructure.\nPerformances of the whole string quartet vary in length from 23 to 33 minutes. It is in four movements:\nThe first movement is characterized by a sharp contrast between the aperiodicity of the first subject group, characterized by Arnold Schoenberg as \"prose-like\", and the \"wholly periodic\" second subject group. In the Andante and the Menuetto, \"normal expectations of phraseology are confounded.\" The main part of the Menuetto is in minuet and trio sonata form, while \"the contrasting major-mode Trio ... is ... almost embarrassingly lightweight on its own ... [but] makes a wonderful foil to the darker character of the Minuet.\" The last movement is a set of variations. The movement ends in a Picardy third.\nArrangements.\nAn arrangement of the Menuetto and Trio for violin and piano is in Suzuki Violin Volume 7.\nNotes and references.\nNotes\nReferences\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["16983711", "33163"], "permutation_1": ["33163", "16983711"], "permutation_2": ["33163", "16983711"], "permutation_3": ["16983711", "33163"]}
{"id": "2hop__437995_10038", "docs_added": {"96602": "Zhejiang\nProvince of China\nZhejiang is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Hangzhou, and other notable cities include Ningbo and Wenzhou. Zhejiang is bordered by Jiangsu and Shanghai to the north, Anhui to the northwest, Jiangxi to the west and Fujian to the south. To the east is the East China Sea, beyond which lies the Ryukyu Islands. The population of Zhejiang stands at 64.6 million, the 8th largest in China. It has been called \"the backbone of China\" because it is a major driving force in the Chinese economy and being the birthplace of several notable people, including the Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and entrepreneur Jack Ma. Zhejiang consists of 90 counties (incl. county-level cities and districts).\nThe area of Zhejiang was controlled by the Kingdom of Yue during the Spring and Autumn period. The Qin Empire later annexed it in 222 BC. Under the late Ming dynasty and the Qing dynasty that followed it, Zhejiang's ports became important centers of international trade. It was occupied by the Empire of Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese war and placed under the control of the Japanese puppet state known as the Reorganized National Government of China. After the establishment of the PRC, Zhejiang's economy became stagnant under Mao Zedong's policies. Nevertheless, after China's economic reform, Zhejiang has grown to be considered one of China's wealthiest provinces, ranking fourth in GDP nationally and sixth by GDP per capita, with a nominal GDP of US$1.14 trillion as of 2022.\nZhejiang consists mostly of hills, which account for about 70% of its total area, with higher altitudes towards the south and the west. Zhejiang also has a longer coastline than any other mainland province of China. The Qiantang River runs through the province, from which it derives its name. Included in the province are three thousand islands, the most in China. The capital Hangzhou marks the end of the Grand Canal and lies on Hangzhou Bay on the north of Zhejiang, which separates Shanghai and Ningbo. The bay contains many small islands collectively called the Zhoushan Islands.\nHangzhou is a historically important city of China and is considered a World City with a \"Beta+\" classification according to GaWC. It includes the notable West Lake. Various varieties of Chinese are spoken in Zhejiang, the most prominent being Wu Chinese. Zhejiang is also one of China's leading provinces in research and education. As of 2024[ [update]], two major cities in Zhejiang ranked in the world's top 200 cities (Hangzhou 13th and Ningbo 123rd) by scientific research output, as tracked by Nature Index.\nEtymology.\nThe province's name originates from the Zhe River (), the former name of the Qiantang River which flows past Hangzhou and whose mouth forms Hangzhou Bay. It is usually understood as meaning \"Crooked\" or \"Bent River\", from the meaning of Chinese , but is more likely a phono-semantic compound formed from adding (the \"water\" radical used for river names) to phonetic (Pinyin \"zh\u00e9\" but reconstructed Old Chinese *\"tet\"), preserving a proto-Wu name of the local Yue, similar to Yuhang, Kuaiji and Jiang.\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nKuahuqiao culture was an early Neolithic culture that flourished in the Hangzhou area in 6,000-5,000 BC.\nZhejiang was the site of the Neolithic cultures of the Hemudu (starting in 5500 BC) and Liangzhu (starting in 3400 BC).\nAncient history.\nThe area of modern Zhejiang was outside the major sphere of influence of Shang civilization during the second millennium BC. Instead, this area was populated by peoples collectively known as Dongyue.\nThe kingdom of Yue began to appear in the chronicles and records written during the Spring and Autumn period. According to the chronicles, the kingdom of Yue was in Northern Zhejiang. Shiji claims that its leaders were descended from the Xia founder Yu the Great. The \"Song of the Yue Boatman\" () was transliterated into Chinese and recorded by authors in North China or inland China of Hebei and Henan around 528 BC. The song shows that the Yue people spoke a language that was mutually unintelligible with the dialects spoken in north and inland China. The Sword of Goujian bears bird-worm seal script. Yuen\u00fc () was a swordswoman from the state of Yue. To check the growth of the kingdom of Wu, Chu pursued a policy of strengthening Yue.\nUnder King Goujian, Yue recovered from its early reverses and fully annexed the lands of its rival in 473 BC. The Yue kings then moved their capital center from their original home around Mount Kuaiji in present-day Shaoxing to the former Wu capital at present-day Suzhou. With no southern power to turn against Yue, Chu opposed it directly and, in 333\u00a0BC, succeeded in destroying it. Yue's former lands were annexed by the Qin Empire in 222\u00a0BC and organized into a commandery named for Kuaiji in Zhejiang but initially headquartered in Wu in Jiangsu.\nHan and the Three Kingdoms.\nKuaiji Commandery was the initial power base for Xiang Liang and Xiang Yu's rebellion against the Qin Empire which initially succeeded in restoring the kingdom of Chu but eventually fell to the Han. Under the Later Han, control of the area returned to the settlement below Mount Kuaiji but authority over the Minyue hinterland was nominal at best and its Yue inhabitants largely retained their own political and social structures.\nAt the beginning of the Three Kingdoms era (AD 220\u2013280), Zhejiang was home to the warlords Yan Baihu and Wang Lang prior to their defeat by Sun Ce and Sun Quan, who eventually established the Kingdom of Wu. Despite the removal of their court from Kuaiji to Jianye (present-day Nanjing) and they continued development of the region and benefitted from influxes of refugees fleeing the turmoil in northern China. Industrial kilns were established and trade reached as far as Manchuria and Funan (southern Mainland Southeast Asia).\nZhejiang was part of the Wu during the Three Kingdoms. Wu (229\u2013280), commonly known as Eastern Wu or Sun Wu, had been the economically most developed state among the Three Kingdoms (220\u2013280). The historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms records that Zhejiang had the best-equipped naval force. The story depicts how the states of Wei () and Shu (), lack of material resources, avoided direct confrontation with the Wu. In armed military conflicts with Wu, the two states relied intensively on tactics of camouflage and deception to steal Wu's military resources including arrows and bows.\nSix Dynasties.\nDespite the continuing prominence of Nanjing (then known as Jiankang), the settlement of Qiantang, the former name of Hangzhou, remained one of the three major metropolitan centers in the south to provide major tax revenue to the imperial centers in the north China. The other two centers in the south were Jiankang and Chengdu. In 589, Qiantang was raised in status and renamed Hangzhou.\nFollowing the fall of Wu and the turmoil of the Wu Hu uprising against the Jin dynasty (266\u2013420), most of elite Chinese families had collaborated with the non-Chinese rulers and military conquerors in the north. Some may have lost social privilege and took refuge in areas south of the Yangtze River. Some of the Chinese refugees from North China might have resided in areas near Hangzhou. For example, the clan of Zhuge Liang (181\u2013234), a chancellor of the state of Shu Han from Central Plain in north China during the Three Kingdoms period, gathered together at the suburb of Hangzhou, forming an exclusive, closed village Zhuge Village (Zhege Cun), consisting of villagers all with family name \"Zhuge.\" The village has intentionally isolated itself from the surrounding communities for centuries to this day and only recently came to be known in public. It suggests that a small number of powerful, elite Chinese refugees from the Central Plain might have taken refuge south of the Yangtze River. However, considering the mountainous geography and relative lack of agrarian lands in Zhejiang, most of these refugees might have resided in some areas in South China beyond Zhejiang, where fertile agrarian lands and metropolitan resources were available, mainly Southern Jiangsu, Eastern Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Anhui and provinces where less cohesive, organized regional governments had been in place. Metropolitan areas of Sichuan was another hub for refugees, given that the state of Shu had long been founded and ruled by political and military elites from the Central Plain and North China. Some refugees from North China might have found residence in South China depending on their social status and military power in the north. The rump Jin state or the Southern dynasties vied against some elite Chinese from the Central Plain and south of the Yangtze River.\nSui and Tang eras.\nZhejiang, as the heartland of the Jiangnan (Yangtze River Delta), remained the wealthiest area during the Six Dynasties (220 or 222\u2013589), Sui and Tang. After being incorporated into the Sui dynasty, its economic richness was used for the Sui dynasty's ambitions to expand north and south, particularly into Korea and Vietnam. The plan led the Sui dynasty to restore and expand the network which became the Grand Canal of China. The Canal regularly transported grains and resources from Zhejiang, through its metropolitan center Hangzhou (and its hinterland along both the Zhe River and the shores of Hangzhou Bay) and from Suzhou and thence to the North China Plain. The d\u00e9b\u00e2cle of the Korean war led to Sui's overthrow by the Tang, who then presided over a centuries-long golden age for the country. Zhejiang was an important economic center of the empire's Jiangnan East Circuit and was considered particularly prosperous. Throughout the Tang dynasty, The Grand Canal had remained effective, transporting grains and material resources to North China plain and metropolitan centers of the empire. As the Tang dynasty disintegrated, Zhejiang constituted most of the territory of the regional kingdom of Wuyue.\nWuyue era.\nAfter the collapse of the Tang dynasty in 907, the entire area of what is now Zhejiang fell under the control of the kingdom Wuyue established by King Qian Liu, who selected Hangzhou (a city in the modern day area of Zhejiang) as his kingdom's capital. Despite being under Wuyue rule for a relatively short period of time, Zhejiang underwent a long period of financial and cultural prosperity which continued even after the kingdom fell.\nAfter Wuyue was conquered during the reunification of China, many shrines were erected across the former territories of Wuyue, mainly in Zhejiang, where the kings of Wuyue were memorialised, and sometimes, worshipped as being able to dictate weather and agriculture. Many of these shrines, known as \"Shrine of the Qian King\" or \"Temple to the Qian King\", still remain today, with the most popularly visited example being that near West Lake in Hangzhou.\nChina's province of Zhejiang during the 940s was also the place of origin of the H\u00fa family (H\u1ed3 in Vietnamese) from which the founder of the H\u1ed3 dynasty who ruled Vietnam, Emperor H\u1ed3 Qu\u00fd Ly, came from.\nSong era.\nThe Song dynasty re-established unity around 960. Under the Song, the prosperity of South China began to overtake that of North China. After the north was lost to the Jurchen Jin dynasty in 1127 following the Jingkang Incident, Hangzhou became the capital of the Song dynasty under the name Lin'an, which was renowned for its prosperity and beauty, it was suspected to have been the largest city in the world at the time.\nFrom then on, northern Zhejiang and neighboring southern Jiangsu have been synonymous with luxury and opulence in Chinese culture. The Mongol conquest and the establishment of the Yuan dynasty in 1279 ended Hangzhou's political clout, but its economy continued to prosper. The famous traveler Marco Polo visited the city, which he called \"Kinsay\" (after the Chinese \"Jingshi\", meaning \"Capital City\") claiming it was \"the finest and noblest city in the world.\"\nGreenware ceramics made from celadon had been made in the area since the 3rd-century Jin dynasty, but it returned to prominence\u2014particularly in Longquan\u2014during the Southern Song and Yuan. Longquan greenware is characterized by a thick unctuous glaze of a particular bluish-green tint over an otherwise undecorated light-grey porcellaneous body that is delicately potted. Yuan Longquan celadons feature a thinner, greener glaze on larger vessels with decoration and shapes derived from Middle Eastern ceramic and metalwares. These were produced in large quantities for the Chinese export trade to Southeast Asia, the Middle East and (during the Ming) Europe. By the Ming, however, production was notably deficient in quality. It is in this period that the Longquan kilns declined, to be eventually replaced in popularity and ceramic production by the kilns of Jingdezhen in Jiangxi.\nYuan and Ming eras.\nZhejiang was finally conquered by the Mongols in the late 13th century who later established the short lived Yuan dynasty. Zhejiang became part of the much larger Jiangzhe Province.\nThe Ming dynasty, which drove out the Mongols in 1368, finally established the present day province of Zhejiang with its borders having little changes since this establishment.\nAs in other coastal provinces, number of fortresses were constructed along the Zhejiang coast during the early Ming to defend the land against pirate incursions. Some of them have been preserved or restored, such as Pucheng in the south of the province (Cangnan County).\nQing era.\nUnder the late Ming dynasty and the Qing dynasty that followed it, Zhejiang's ports were important centers of international trade.\n\"In 1727 the to-min or 'idle people' of Cheh Kiang province (a Ningpo name still existing), the yoh-hu or 'music people' of Shanxi province, the si-min or 'small people' of Kiang Su (Jiangsu) province and the Tanka people or 'egg-people' of Canton (to this day the boat population there), were all freed from their social disabilities and allowed to count as free men.\" \"Cheh Kiang\" is another romanization for Zhejiang. The Duomin () are a caste of outcasts in this province.\nDuring the First Opium War, the British navy defeated Eight Banners forces at Ningbo and Dinghai. Under the terms of the Treaty of Nanking, signed in 1843, Ningbo became one of the five Chinese treaty ports opened to virtually unrestricted foreign trade. Much of Zhejiang came under the control of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom during the Taiping Rebellion, which resulted in a considerable loss of life in the north-western and central parts of the province, sparing the rest of Zhejiang from the disastrous depopulation that occurred. In 1876, Wenzhou became Zhejiang's second treaty port. Jianghuai Mandarin speakers later came to settle in these depopulated regions of northern Zhejiang.\nRepublican era.\nDuring the Second Sino-Japanese War, which led into World War II, much of Zhejiang was occupied by Japan and placed under the control of the Japanese puppet state known as the Reorganized National Government of China. Following the Doolittle Raid, most of the B-25 American crews that came down in China eventually made it to safety with the help of Chinese civilians and soldiers. The Chinese people who helped them, however, paid dearly for sheltering the Americans. The Imperial Japanese Army began the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign to intimidate the Chinese out of helping downed American airmen. Imperial Japanese forces killed an estimated 250,000 Chinese civilians from the area of Hangzhou to Nanchang and also Zhuzhou while searching for Doolittle's men.\nPeople's Republic era.\nAfter the People's Republic of China took control of Mainland China in 1949, the Republic of China government based in Taiwan continued to control the Dachen Islands off the coast of Zhejiang until 1955, even establishing a rival Zhejiang provincial government there. During the Cultural Revolution (1966\u201376), Zhejiang was in chaos and disunity and its economy was stagnant, especially during the high tide (1966\u201369) of the revolution. The agricultural policy favoring grain production at the expense of industrial and cash crops intensified economic hardships in the province. Mao's self-reliance policy and the reduction in maritime trade cut off the lifelines of the port cities of Ningbo and Wenzhou. While Mao invested heavily in railroads in interior China, no major railroads were built in South Zhejiang, where transportation remained poor.\nZhejiang benefited less from central government investment than some other provinces due to its lack of natural resources, a location vulnerable to potential flooding from the sea and an economic base at the national average. Zhejiang, however, has been an epicenter of capitalist development in China and has led the nation in the development of a market economy and private enterprises. Northeast Zhejiang, as part of the Yangtze Delta, is flat, more developed and industrial.\nGeography.\nZhejiang consists mostly of hills, which account for about 70% of its total area. Altitudes tend to be the highest to the south and west and the highest peak of the province, Huangmaojian Peak (), is located there. Other prominent mountains include Mounts Yandang, Tianmu, Tiantai and Mogan, which reach altitudes of .\nValleys and plains are found along the coastline and rivers. The north of the province lies just south of the Yangtze Delta and consists of plains around the cities of Hangzhou, Jiaxing and Huzhou, where the Grand Canal of China enters from the northern border to end at Hangzhou. Another relatively flat area is found along the Qu River around the cities of Quzhou and Jinhua. Major rivers include the Qiangtang and Ou Rivers. Most rivers carve out valleys in the highlands, with plenty of rapids and other features associated with such topography. Well-known lakes include the West Lake of Hangzhou and the South Lake of Jiaxing.\nThere are over three thousand islands along the rugged coastline of Zhejiang. The largest, Zhoushan Island, is mainland China's third largest island, after Hainan and Chongming. There are also many bays, of which Hangzhou Bay is the largest. Zhejiang has a humid subtropical climate with four distinct seasons. Spring starts in March and is rainy with changeable weather. Summer, from June to September is long, hot, rainy and humid. Fall is generally dry, warm and sunny. Winters are short but cold except in the far south. Average annual temperature is around , average January temperature is around and average July temperature is around . Annual precipitation is about . There is plenty of rainfall in early summer and by late summer Zhejiang is directly threatened by typhoons forming in the Pacific.\nAdministrative divisions.\nZhejiang is divided into eleven prefecture-level divisions: all prefecture-level cities (including two sub-provincial cities):\nThe eleven prefecture-level divisions of Zhejiang are subdivided into 90 county-level divisions (37 districts, 20 county-level cities, 32 counties, and one autonomous county). Those are in turn divided into 1,364 township-level divisions (618 towns, 488 townships, and 258 subdistricts). Hengdian belongs to Jinhua, which is the largest base of shooting films and TV dramas in China. Hengdian World Studios is called \"China's Hollywood.\" At the year end of 2021, the total population was 65.40 million.\nUrban areas.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nPolitics.\nThe politics of Zhejiang is structured in a dual party-government system like all other governing institutions in mainland China. The Governor of Zhejiang is the highest-ranking official in the People's Government of Zhejiang. However, in the province's dual party-government governing system, the Governor is subordinate to the secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.\nSeveral political figures who served as Zhejiang's top political office of Party Secretary have played key roles in various events in PRC history. Tan Zhenlin (term 1949\u20131952), the inaugural Party Secretary, was one of the leading voices against Mao's Cultural Revolution during the so-called February Countercurrent of 1967. Jiang Hua (term 1956\u20131968), was the \"chief justice\" on the Special Court in the case against the Gang of Four in 1980. Three provincial Party Secretaries since the 1990s have gone onto prominence at the national level. They include CPC General Secretary and President Xi Jinping (term 2002\u20132007), National People's Congress Chairman and former Vice-Premier Zhang Dejiang (term 1998\u20132002), and Zhao Hongzhu (term 2007\u20132012), the Deputy Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, China's top anti-corruption body. Of Zhejiang's fourteen Party Secretaries since 1949, none were native to the province.\nZhejiang was home to Chiang Kai-shek and many high-ranking officials in the Kuomintang, who fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Civil War.\nEconomy.\nZhejiang is one of the richest and most developed provinces in China. As of 2022[ [update]], its nominal GDP was US$1.15 trillion (CN\u00a5 7.77 trilion), about 6.42% of the country's GDP and ranked 4th among province-level administrative units; the province's primary, secondary and tertiary industries were worth CN\u00a5232.48 billion (US$34.56 billion), CN\u00a53.3205 trillion (US$493.67 billion) and CN\u00a54.2185 trillion (US$627.18 billion) respectively. Its nominal GDP per capita was US$17,617 (CN\u00a5118,496) and ranked the 6th in the country. The private sector in the province has been playing an increasingly important role in boosting the regional economy since Economic Reform in 1978. Zhejiang is generally regarded as having one of the strongest private sectors among Chinese provinces and its local governments typically adopt permissive business policies.186\nZhejiang's main manufacturing sectors are electromechanical industries, textiles, chemical industries, food and construction materials. In recent years Zhejiang has followed its own development model, dubbed the \"Zhejiang model\", which is based on prioritizing and encouraging entrepreneurship, an emphasis on small businesses responsive to the whims of the market, large public investments into infrastructure, and the production of low-cost goods in bulk for both domestic consumption and export. As a result, Zhejiang has made itself one of the richest provinces and the \"Zhejiang spirit\" has become something of a legend within China. However, some economists now worry that this model is not sustainable, in that it is inefficient and places unreasonable demands on raw materials and public utilities, and also a dead end, in that the myriad small businesses in Zhejiang producing cheap goods in bulk are unable to move to more sophisticated or technologically more advanced industries. The economic heart of Zhejiang is moving from North Zhejiang, centered on Hangzhou, southeastward to the region centered on Wenzhou and Taizhou. The per capita disposable income of urbanites in Zhejiang reached 55,574 yuan (US$8,398) in 2018, an annual real growth of 8.4%. The per capita disposable income of rural residents stood at 27,302 yuan (US$4,126), a real growth of 9.4%.\nZhejiang was the first province to pilot a common prosperity pilot program.166\nTraditionally, the province is known as the \"Land of Fish and Rice.\" True to its name, rice is the main crop, followed by wheat; north Zhejiang is also a center of aquaculture in China, and the Zhoushan fishery is the largest fishery in the country. The main cash crops include jute and cotton and the province also leads the provinces of China in tea production. (The renowned Longjing tea is a product of Hangzhou.) Zhejiang's towns have been known for handicraft production of goods such as silk, for which it is ranked second among the provinces. Its many market towns connect the cities with the countryside.\nIn 1832, the province was exporting silk, paper, fans, pencils, wine, dates, tea and \"golden-flowered\" hams.\nZhejiang has been leading the digital economy development in China, in recent years, the provincial economy has been boosted by the economic surge brought by internet corporations such as Alibaba and NetEase.\nNingbo, Wenzhou, Taizhou and Zhoushan are important commercial ports. The Hangzhou Bay Bridge between Haiyan County and Cixi, is the longest bridge over a continuous body of sea water in the world.\nEconomic and technological development concerns.\nWaste disposal.\nOn Thursday, September 15, 2011, more than 500 people from Hongxiao Village protested over the large-scale death of fish in a nearby river. Angry protesters stormed the Zhejiang Jinko Solar Company factory compound, overturned eight company vehicles, and destroyed the offices before police came to disperse the crowd. Protests continued on the two following nights with reports of scuffles, officials said. Chen Hongming, a deputy head of Haining's environmental protection bureau, said the factory's waste disposal had failed pollution tests since April. The environmental watchdog had warned the factory, but it had not effectively controlled the pollution, Chen added.\nDemographics.\nHan Chinese make up the vast majority of the population and the largest Han subgroup are the speakers of Wu varieties of Chinese. There are also 400,000 members of ethnic minorities, including approximately 200,000 She people and approximately 20,000 Hui Chinese. Jingning She Autonomous County in Lishui is the only She autonomous county in China.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nThe predominant religions in Zhejiang are Chinese folk religions, Taoist traditions and Chinese Buddhism. According to surveys conducted in 2007 and 2009, 23.02% of the population believes and is involved in ancestor veneration, while 2.62% of the population identifies as Christian, decreasing from 3.92% in 2004. The reports did not give figures for other types of religion; 74.36% of the population may be either irreligious or involved in worship of nature deities, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, folk religious sects. As of the mid-2010s, Zhejiang has 34,880 registered folk religious temples greater than 20 sqm and 10,000 registered places of worship of the five doctrines (Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam).\nIn mid-2015 the government of Zhejiang recognised folk religion as \"civil religion\" beginning the formal registration of the province's folk religious temples under the aegis of the provincial Bureau of Folk Faith. Buddhism has an important presence since its arrival in Zhejiang 1,800 years ago.\nCatholicism arrived 400 years ago in the province and Protestantism 150 years ago. Zhejiang is one of the provinces of China with the largest concentrations of Protestants, especially notable in the city of Wenzhou. In 1999, Zhejiang's Protestant population comprised 2.8% of the provincial population, a small percentage but higher than the national average.\nThe rapid development of religions in Zhejiang has driven the local committee of ethnic and religious affairs to enact policies to rationalise them in 2014, variously named \"Three Remodelings and One Demolition\" operations or \"Special Treatment Work on Illegally Constructed Sites of Religious and Folk Religion Activities\" according to the locality. These regulations have led to cases of demolition of churches and folk religion temples or the removal of crosses from churches' roofs and spires. An exemplary case was that of the Sanjiang Church. Despite English-language media focused on Christian churches, only 2.3% of the buildings affected by the regulations were Christian churches; most of them were folk religious temples.\nIslam arrived 1,400 years ago in Zhejiang. Today Islam is practiced by a small number of people including virtually all the Hui Chinese living in Zhejiang. In 2020, there are 117,000 Muslims in Zhejiang. Another religion present in the province is She shamanism (practiced by She ethnic minority).\nMedia.\nThe Zhejiang Radio & Television Group, Hangzhou Radio & Television Group, Ningbo Radio & Television Group are the local broadcasters in Zhejiang Province.\nCulture.\nLanguages.\nZhejiang is mountainous and has therefore fostered the development of many distinct local cultures. Linguistically speaking, Zhejiang is extremely diverse. Most inhabitants of Zhejiang speak varieties of Wu, but those Wu dialects are very diverse, especially in the south, where one valley may speak a dialect completely unintelligible to the next valley a few kilometers away. Other varieties of Chinese are spoken as well, mostly along the borders; Mandarin and Huizhou dialects are spoken on the border with Anhui, while Min dialects are spoken on the border with Fujian. (See Hangzhou dialect, Shaoxing dialect, Ningbo dialect, Wenzhou dialect, Taizhou dialect, Jinhua dialect and Quzhou dialect for more information)\nThroughout history there have been a series of \"lingua francas\" in the area to allow for better communication. The dialects spoken in Hangzhou, Shaoxing and Ningbo have taken on this role historically. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Mandarin, which is not mutually intelligible with any of the Wu dialects, has been promoted as the standard language of communication throughout China. As a result, most of the population now can, to some degree, speak and comprehend Mandarin and can code-switch when necessary. A majority of the population educated since 1978 can speak some Mandarin. Urban residents tend to be more fluent in Mandarin than rural people. Nevertheless, a Zhejiang accent is detectable in almost everyone from the area communicating in Mandarin and the home dialect remains an important part of the everyday lives and cultural identities of most Zhejiang residents.\nMusic.\nZhejiang is the home of Yue opera, one of the most prominent forms of Chinese opera. \"Yueju\" originated in Shengzhou and is traditionally performed by actresses only, in both male and female roles. Other important opera traditions include Yongju (of Ningbo), Shao opera (of Shaoxing), Ouju (of Wenzhou), Wuju (of Jinhua), Taizhou Luantan (of Taizhou) and Zhuji Luantan (of Zhuji).\nCuisine.\nLongjing tea (also called dragon well tea), originating in Hangzhou, is one of the most prestigious, if not \"the\" most prestigious Chinese tea. Hangzhou is also renowned for its silk umbrellas and hand fans. Zhejiang cuisine (itself subdivided into many traditions, including Hangzhou cuisine) is one of the eight great traditions of Chinese cuisine.\nPlace names.\nSince ancient times, north Zhejiang and neighboring south Jiangsu have been famed for their prosperity and opulence and simply inserting north Zhejiang place names (Hangzhou, Jiaxing, etc.) into poetry gave an effect of dreaminess, a practice followed by many noted poets. In particular, the fame of Hangzhou (as well as Suzhou in neighboring Jiangsu province) has led to the popular saying: \"Above there is heaven; below there is Suzhou and Hangzhou\" (), a saying that continues to be a source of pride for the people of these two still prosperous cities.\nTourism.\nTourist destinations in Zhejiang include:\nSports.\nProfessional sports teams based in Zhejiang include:\nEducation and research.\nZhejiang is one of China's leading provinces in research and education. As of 2024[ [update]], two major cities in Zhejiang ranked in the world's top 200 cities (Hangzhou 13th and Ningbo 123rd) by scientific research output, as tracked by Nature Index.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "2288858": "Wu Man\nChinese pipa player and composer (born 1963)\nWu Man (; born January 2, 1963) is a Chinese pipa player and composer. Trained in Pudong-style pipa performance at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, she is known for playing in a broad range of musical styles and introducing the pipa and its Chinese heritage into Western genres. She has performed and recorded extensively with the Kronos Quartet and Silk Road Ensemble and has premiered works by Philip Glass, Lou Harrison, Terry Riley, Bright Sheng, Tan Dun, Zhao Jiping, and Zhou Long, among many others. She has recorded and appeared on over 40 albums, five of which have been nominated for Grammy Awards. In 2013, she was named Instrumentalist of the Year by \"Musical America\", becoming the first performer of a non-Western instrument to receive this award. She additionally received The United States Artists Award in 2008.\nBiography.\nBorn in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, Wu Man began taking pipa lessons at age 9. When universities opened their doors to new students in 1977 after the Cultural Revolution had ended, Wu Man traveled to Beijing to audition for the Central Conservatory of Music. At 13, she became the youngest student at the school, and her final audition was covered in national newspapers. While at the Conservatory, she studied Pudong-style pipa performance under Lin Shicheng, Kuang Yuzhong, Chen Zemin, and Liu Dehai. She was first exposed to non-Chinese music in 1979 when Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra performed in Beijing, and again in 1980 when she attended Isaac Stern\u2019s master classes at the Conservatory. She received her Master's Degree (the first such degree conferred on a pipa player) in 1987.\nWu Man first performed in the United States as a member of the China Youth Arts Troupe in 1985. She then moved to the U.S. five years later to pursue a career in pipa performance that would allow her repertoire to extend beyond traditional Chinese music. Upon arriving in Connecticut with her husband (who had begun working on his Ph.D. in chemistry at Yale University), she began working with ensembles such as the Kronos Quartet (see below), and premiered works by Chinese and Chinese-American composers. In 1997, she gave the premiere of Lou Harrison's Concerto for Pipa and String Orchestra with Dennis Russell Davies conducting the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Written specifically for Wu Man, the work has been recorded twice, the latter of which (with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Miguel Harth-Bedoya) was nominated for a Grammy for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra. In 1998, Wu Man was awarded a fellowship to study at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College. That same year, she became a founding member of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project (see below).\nIn 2003, Wu Man began working with Philip Glass, performing in the premiere of his opera \"The Sound of a Voice\" at the American Repertory Theater. She is featured in the recording of a suite from this work, which was released in 2007 on Glass's private label, Orange Mountain Music. In 2004, Wu Man was approached by Glass once again to collaborate on a commission from the Cultural Olympiad on the occasion of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. Taking Orion as its title and inspiration (the constellation can be seen from both hemispheres throughout the year), the piece contains movements representing various countries around the world. The third movement, \"China\", was co-written by Glass and Wu Man, and features Wu Man on pipa. Additional collaborators include Ravi Shankar, Mark Atkins, Foday Musa Suso, Ashley MacIsaac, and Uakti. The work was premiered prior to the Games, and recorded and released on Orange Mountain Music in 2005.\nIn 2009, Wu Man curated a pair of concerts at Carnegie Hall as part of the \"Ancient Paths, Modern Voices\" Festival. The concerts focused on music from remote areas of China, including traditions of the Dong and Tujia peoples, as well as Taoist ritual. The process of finding these musicians was documented in the 2012 film \"Discovering a Musical Heartland: Wu Man's Return to China\".\nWu Man's achievements in bringing the pipa to new audiences were recognized at the end of 2012 when \"Musical America\" selected her as the 2013 Instrumentalist of the Year. She is the first performer of a non-Western instrument to receive this award. Later that season, Wu Man premiered her composition \"Blue and Green\" with New York\u2013based chamber orchestra The Knights. Arranged for pipa and string orchestra by Lev Zhurbin and The Knights' Colin Jacobsen, the work is influenced by folk melodies that Wu Man heard travelling through China. That same season, Wu Man premiered Zhao Jiping\u2019s Pipa Concerto No. 2 at the Sydney Opera House with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, who commissioned the work along with a consortium of North American orchestras.\nIn 2014, Wu Man was named the first Musician-in-Residence at the Huntington Library. The residency included educational outreach programs, as well as a commission for a new composition. The piece, \"Three Sharing\", was written by Wu Man for pipa, janggo, and shakuhachi, and was premiered on June 17, 2014 at the Huntington's Chinese Garden.\nCollaborations.\nKronos Quartet.\nWu Man first performed with the Kronos Quartet in the premiere of Zhou Long's \"Soul\" for pipa and string quartet at the Pittsburgh New Music Festival in 1992. The Quartet's founding violinist, David Harrington, says he \"heard all sorts of possibilities in Wu Man's vivid pipa sound,\" and the Quartet subsequently commissioned Tan Dun to write a piece for the same instrumentation. The resulting \"Ghost Opera\", a semi-staged work with minimal sets and lighting, received its premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1995. The work was later and released on Nonesuch in 1997. On the occasion of Terry Riley's 70th birthday in 2005, the Quartet commissioned a new work from him that would include pipa. After working with Wu Man for over a year to learn the intricacies of the instrument, Riley composed \"The Cusp of Magic\", a work in six movements that included Wu Man on pipa and vocals. All five musicians also play a variety of percussion instruments and toys. The premiere was presented by Cal Performances at Hertz Hall on the University of California, Berkeley campus, and was recorded and released on Nonesuch in 2008. Wu Man's most recent project with the Quartet is a multimedia work entitled \"A Chinese Home\", co-conceived by Wu Man, Harrington, and Chinese theater director Chen Shi-Zheng. The work, which received its premiere at Carnegie's Zankel Hall in 2009, depicts a broad stretch of Chinese history, from the Qing dynasty through the Chinese Communist Revolution to present day.\nWu Man continues to perform regularly with Kronos and was a featured guest artist in the Quartet's 40th Anniversary concerts in the 2013-14 season at the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, Cal Performances, Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, and Carnegie Hall. She appears on five albums with the Quartet, including \"Early Music\", in which she plays John Dowland's \"Lachrym\u00e6 Antiqu\u00e6\" on the ruan; \"You've Stolen My Heart\", a collection of Bollywood songs by Rahul Dev Burman; and \"A Thousand Thoughts\", the Quartet's 40th anniversary compilation album.\nYo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Project.\nWu Man is a founding member of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project, a non-profit organization established in 1998 to foster cross-cultural communication through musical performance and education. Two years after its inception, the Project hosted a workshop at the Tanglewood Music Center that evolved into the Silk Road Ensemble, an eclectic group of musicians representing countries along the Silk Road. Wu Man has performed regularly with the Ensemble since its inception in 2000, recording five albums and touring internationally.\nIn the 2006-07 season, the Silk Road Project partnered with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for a yearlong celebration called Silk Road Chicago, culminating in the 2008 album release \"Traditions and Transformations: Sounds of Silk Road Chicago\". Wu Man appears on this album as a soloist, performing Lou Harrison's Pipa Concerto with the CSO and conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya.\nWu Man has also performed multiple times with Yo-Yo Ma outside of the Silk Road Ensemble. In 1999, Wu Man and Ma performed at the White House, premiering Bright Sheng's Three Songs for Pipa and Violoncello. That same year, Ma was awarded the Glenn Gould Prize and selected Wu Man as the Glenn Gould Prot\u00e9g\u00e9. They performed together again in 2003, premiering Sheng\u2019s \"The Song and Dance of Tears\" alongside pianist Emanuel Ax, with David Zinman conducting the New York Philharmonic.\nMiscellaneous cross-cultural collaborations.\nIn 2005, Wu Man and composer Chen Yi co-wrote a multimedia work titled \"Ancient Dances\", commissioned by the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Taking its inspiration from the poetry of Li Bai, the multimedia work features video art by Kathleen Owen that incorporates Chinese calligraphy and paintings by Wu Man's father. In performances of the work, Wu Man and percussionist Robert Schulz played in front of two vertical screens that displayed Owen's art. The project forms the first installment in what Wu Man refers to as her larger \"Return to the East\" project, which includes many of the projects discussed below, as well as her documentary \"Discovering a Musical Heartland\". Later in 2005, she recorded the album \"Wu Man and Friends\" with Lee Knight (banjo, Appalachian dulcimer, mouth bow, vocals), Julian Kytasty (bandura, sopilka, vocals), and James Makubuya (endongo, adungu, vocals), which was released on the Traditional Crossroads label in 2006. The album contains the music of Chinese, Appalachian, Ukrainian, and Ugandan folk traditions, arranged to combine these plucked instruments from around the world. Since the album release, Wu Man, Knight, Kytasty, and Makubuya have performed their arrangements in concerts around the U.S., including Carnegie's Zankel Hall in 2006 and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival in 2010.\nIn 2010, Wu Man traveled to Taiwan to study the music of Taiwanese aborigines, leading to a series of concerts in 2012 titled \"Wu Man and Aboriginal Friends from Taiwan (\u5433\u883b\u8207\u539f\u4f4f\u6c11\u670b\u53cb)\". In these concerts, Wu Man was joined onstage by musicians of the Paiwan, Atayal, and Bunun tribes, performing arrangements of traditional and ritual songs with pipa accompaniment. Performances took place at the Taiwan International Festival of Arts at the National Theater and Concert Hall, Taipei, and at the New Vision Arts Festival in Hong Kong.\nWith funds from the Aga Khan Music Initiative in Central Asia, Wu Man collaborated with Central Asian musicians to produce the CD/DVD \"Borderlands: Wu Man and Master Musicians from the Silk Route\", released on Smithsonian Folkways in 2012. The album/documentary forms the tenth and final installment in the record label's Music of Central Asia series. The music focuses heavily on the Uyghur muqam tradition, a system of 12 modes that draws loosely from Arabic maqam. She is joined on the album by Abduvali Abdurashidov on sato; Sirojiddin Juraev on dutar; Hua'er vocalist Ma Ersa; Abdulla Majnun on diltar (his own invention, combining the plucked tanbur and bowed satar into a single double-necked instrument), dutar, tanbur, and vocals; Hesenjan Tursun on satar and vocals; Sanubar Tursun on dutar and vocals; and Yasin Yaqup on dap.\nIn 2013, Wu Man received an Individual Artist Fellowship from San Diego Foundation's Creative Catalyst Fund to pursue a project titled \"When China Meets Latin America\", collaborating with son jarocho quartet Son de San Diego. In their initial rehearsals, Wu Man and Son de San Diego explored the commonalities in Chinese and Latin American folk traditions, both of which, Son de San Diego's Eduardo Garcia Acosta notes, have \"love songs, silvery dawns, birdsongs, broken hearts, tales of sailing, and the sheer joy of dancing.\" Following these rehearsals, the \"ad hoc\" quintet has performed arrangements of Chinese and Latin American folk music in workshops and concerts presented by the Carlsbad Music Festival.\nWu Man performed in several concerts at the 2023 Ojai Music Festival, including two performances of \"Ghost Opera\".\nPersonal life.\nWu Man lives with her husband, Peng Wang, in Carlsbad, California, where they moved in 2004 after her husband accepted a job there. She and her husband became naturalized U.S. citizens in 2000, two years after the birth of their son.\nDiscography.\nSolo or as leader\nOrchestral\nwith Kronos Quartet\nwith Aga Khan Master Musicians\nwith Silk Road Ensemble\nwith Philip Glass\nwith Bang on a Can\nwith Liu Sola\nwith Henry Threadgill\nFilm soundtracks\nMisc. duo\nMisc. ensemble\nAppearances on anthologies & compilations\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["2288858", "96602"], "permutation_1": ["96602", "2288858"], "permutation_2": ["96602", "2288858"], "permutation_3": ["96602", "2288858"]}
{"id": "2hop__128892_11426", "docs_added": {"8697725": "WPGG\nWPGG (1450 AM; \"WPG Talk Radio 95.5\") is a commercial radio station licensed to Atlantic City, New Jersey. The station is owned by Townsquare Media and broadcasts a talk radio format. WPGG's studios and offices are on Tilton Road in Northfield, New Jersey.\nWPGG is powered at 1,000 watts, using a non-directional antenna, and can be heard throughout New Jersey's Ocean, Atlantic, and Cape May counties. Its transmitter is on Riverside Street near Absecon Boulevard (U.S. Route 30) in Atlantic City.\nHistory.\nThe 1450 frequency in Atlantic City first hit the airwaves in 1940 with its call letters of WFPG, which stood for \"World's Famous Play Ground\". For several decades, WFPG aired a full service format, which included a mixture of adult standards, big band, and easy listening music, from studios on the world-famous Steel Pier on the Atlantic City boardwalk.\nTowards the late 1970s, when casino gambling arrived in Atlantic City, WFPG became \"Win 1450\" and changed its call letters to WIIN, continuing its full-service format, albeit with an adult contemporary flavor. Later, the station used the taped, syndicated \"Entertainers\" MOR format, using live announcers in some dayparts.\nIn 1985, Roger Tees took over as news director and hired anchors, Jeff Scott, Greg Gaston, Carla Contento Kenny, and Vince Scanlon, along with sports director Jim Wise and sports anchor Greg Toland. When the all-news/talk anchors departed for other positions in larger markets, ratings plummeted.\nOn January 18, 1988, the WFPG call letters, which had remained in use on a co-owned FM station, returned to the AM facility.\nFor much of the 1990s, syndicated talk programs such as Bob Grant, Mike Gallagher, and Art Bell were mainstays of the station's line-up.\nIn 1999, WFPG became one of the first affiliates of the Comedy World Radio Network. A year later, Comedy World went out of business and the station resorted to simulcasting WFPG-FM during most hours.\nShortly after entering the new century, WFPG and its sister stations were purchased by Millennium Radio Group, which also owned New Jersey 101.5 in Trenton. In March 2002, New Jersey 101.5 began using 1450 as its South Jersey shore simulcast facility, with a call letter change from WFPG to WKXW.\nIn 2003, the New Jersey 101.5 simulcast moved to WXKW at 97.3 and ESPN Radio sports programming took its place. In June 2006, 1450 AM changed its call letters to WENJ to reflect its ESPN Radio branding.\nIn June 2009, the ESPN format was moved to 97.3 WENJ-FM and WENJ began to carry ESPN Deportes Radio. This lasted until January 2011, when ESPN Deportes was dropped for a simulcast of WENJ-FM.\nOn October 22, 2012, WENJ dropped the sports simulcast for talk, branded as \"WPG Talk Radio 1450\" with new call sign WPGG, paying tribute to the original WPG, a radio station owned by the city of Atlantic City from 1925 to 1938.\nIn November 2015, WPGG began simulcasting its programming on WSJO 104.9-HD2. In April 2016, translator W281BH began simulcasting WSJO 104.9-HD2, which brings WPGG's programming to 104.1 FM in the greater Atlantic City area. In May 2016, WPGG renamed itself to \"WPG Talk Radio 104.1.\"\nOn August 2, 2017, Townsquare Media filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission requesting consent to construct and broadcast WPGG from a new translator station broadcasting on 95.5 FM and licensed to Atlantic City, New Jersey. On May 9, 2019, the station announced it was moving from 104.1 FM to 95.5 FM, effective immediately.\nIn July 2020, WPGG became the Atlantic City-Cape May radio market's top-rated news/talk station in both share and cume, per Nielsen's spring 2020 radio ratings survey results.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "106211": "Atlantic City, New Jersey\nCity in Atlantic County, New Jersey, US\nAtlantic City, sometimes referred to by its initials A.C., is a Jersey Shore seaside resort city in Atlantic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.\nAtlantic City comprises the second half of the Atlantic City-Hammonton metropolitan statistical area, which encompasses those cities and all of Atlantic County for statistical purposes. Both Atlantic City and Hammonton, as well as the surrounding Atlantic County, are culturally tied to Philadelphia and constitute part of the larger Philadelphia metropolitan area or Delaware Valley, the nation's seventh-largest metropolitan area as of 2020.\nLocated in South Jersey on Absecon Island and known for its taxis, casinos, nightlife, boardwalk, and Atlantic Ocean beaches and coastline, the city is prominently known as the \"Las Vegas of the East Coast\" and inspired the U.S. version of the board game \"Monopoly\", which uses various Atlantic City street names and destinations in the game. New Jersey voters legalized casino gambling in Atlantic City in 1976, and the first casino opened two years later. From 1921 to 2004, Atlantic City hosted the Miss America pageant, which later returned to the city from 2013 to 2018.\nAs of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 38,497, a decline of 1,061 (\u22122.7%) from the 2010 census count of 39,558, which in turn reflected a decrease of 959 (\u22122.4%) from the 40,517 counted in the 2000 census.\nThe city was incorporated on May 1, 1854, from portions of Egg Harbor Township and Galloway Township. It is located on Absecon Island and borders Absecon, Brigantine, Egg Harbor Township, Galloway Township, Pleasantville, Ventnor City, and the Atlantic Ocean.\nHistory.\nPrior to Atlantic City's founding, the region served as a summer home for the Lenape, a Native American tribe. While the precise date of European settlement in present-day Atlantic City is not precisely determined, it is commonly thought that it was in 1783, when Jeremiah Leeds built and occupied a year-round home there.\n19th century.\nIn 1850, present-day Atlantic City was developed into a resort town. Three years later, in early 1853, it was named Atlantic City.\nBecause of its location in South Jersey, which hugs the Atlantic Ocean between marshlands and islands, Atlantic City was then viewed by developers as prime real estate and a potential resort town. In 1853, the city's first commercial hotel, the Belloe House, was built at the intersection of Massachusetts and Atlantic Avenues.\nThe following year, in 1854, the city was incorporated. The same year, train service began on the Camden and Atlantic Railroad. Built on the edge of the bay, this served as the direct link of this remote parcel of land with Philadelphia, the second-most populous city in the United States at the time and the largest city in Pennsylvania. The same year, construction of the Absecon Lighthouse, designed by George Meade of the Corps of Topographical Engineers, was approved, with work initiated the next year.\nBy 1874, almost 500,000 passengers a year were coming to Atlantic City by rail. In \"Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City\", \"Atlantic City's Godfather\" Jonathan Pitney, known as the \"Father of Atlantic City\", initially sought to develop Atlantic City as a health resort. Pitney persuaded municipal authorities that a railroad to the beach in Atlantic City would be beneficial. His successful business relationship with Samuel Richards, an entrepreneur and member of what was then the most influential family in South Jersey, was designed to construct the railroad with the first 600 riders, who \"were chosen carefully by Samuel Richards and Jonathan Pitney\":\nAfter arriving in Atlantic City, a second train brought the visitors to the door of the resort's first public lodging, the United States Hotel. The hotel was owned by the railroad. It was a sprawling, four-story structure built to house 2,000 guests. It opened while it was still under construction, with only one wing standing, and even that wasn't completed. By year's end, when it was fully constructed, the United States Hotel was not only the first hotel in Atlantic City but also the largest in the nation. Its rooms totaled more than 600, and its grounds covered some 14 acres.\nThe first boardwalk was built in 1870 along a portion of the beach in an effort to help hotel owners keep sand out of their lobbies. Businesses were restricted and the boardwalk was removed each year at the end of the peak season. Because of its effectiveness and popularity, the boardwalk was expanded in length and width, and modified several times in subsequent years.\nPrior to the destructive 1944 Great Atlantic Hurricane, the historic length of the boardwalk was about and it extended from Atlantic City to Longport, through Ventnor and Margate.\nThe first road connecting the city to the mainland at Pleasantville was completed in 1870 and charged a 30-cent toll. Albany Avenue was the first road to the mainland available without a toll.\nBy 1878, because of the growing popularity of the city, one railroad line could no longer keep up with demand. Soon, the Philadelphia and Atlantic City Railway was also constructed to transport tourists to Atlantic City. At this point massive hotels like the United States Hotel and Surf House, as well as smaller rooming houses, had sprung up all over town. The United States Hotel took up a full city block between Atlantic, Pacific, Delaware, and Maryland Avenues. These hotels were not only impressive in size, but featured the most up-to-date amenities, and were considered quite luxurious for their time.\nIn 1883, salt water taffy was conceived in Atlantic City by David Bradley. The traditional story is that Bradley's shop close to the beach was flooded with ocean water after a storm, soaking his taffy. He sold the \"salt water taffy\" to a girl, who walked down to the beach to show her friends. Bradley's mother was in the back of the store when the sale was made, and loved the name, giving the candy its name.\n20th century.\nIn the early 20th century, Atlantic City experienced a radical building boom. Many of the modest boarding houses that dotted the boardwalk were replaced with large hotels. Two of the city's most distinctive hotels were the Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel and the Traymore Hotel.\nIn 1902, Josiah White III bought a parcel of land near Ohio Avenue and the boardwalk, where he started construction and built the Queen Anne style Marlborough House. The hotel was a success. In 1905, he chose to expand the hotel and bought another parcel of land adjacent to his Marlborough House. In an effort to make his new hotel a source of conversation, White hired the architectural firm of Price and McLanahan. The firm made use of reinforced concrete, a new building material invented by Jean-Louis Lambot in 1848, and Joseph Monier received the patent in 1867. The hotel's Spanish and Moorish themes, capped off with its signature dome and chimneys, represented a step forward from other hotels that had a classically designed influence. White named the new hotel the Blenheim and merged the two hotels into the Marlborough-Blenheim. Bally's Atlantic City was later constructed at this location.\nThe Traymore Hotel was located at the corner of Illinois Avenue and the boardwalk. Constructed in 1879 as a small boarding house, the hotel grew through a series of uncoordinated expansions. By 1914, the hotel's owner, Daniel White, Josiah White's half-brother, taking a hint from the Marlborough-Blenheim, commissioned the firm of Price and McLanahan to build an even bigger hotel. Rising 16 stories, the tan brick and gold-capped hotel would become one of the city's best-known landmarks. The hotel made use of ocean-facing hotel rooms by jutting its wings farther from the main portion of the hotel along Pacific Avenue.\nOne by one, additional large hotels were constructed along the boardwalk, including the Brighton, Chelsea, Shelburne, Ambassador, Ritz Carlton, Mayflower, Madison House, and the Breakers. The Quaker-owned Chalfonte House, opened in 1868, and Haddon House, opened in 1869, flanked North Carolina Avenue at the beach end. Over the years, their original wood-frame structures would be enlarged, and even moved closer to the beach. The modern Chalfonte Hotel, eight stories tall, opened in 1904. The modern Haddon Hall was built in stages and was completed in 1929, at eleven stories. By this time, they were under the same ownership and merged into the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall Hotel, becoming the city's largest hotel with nearly 1,000 rooms. By 1930, the Claridge, the city's last large hotel before the casinos, opened its doors.\nThe 400-room Claridge was built by a partnership that included renowned Philadelphia contractor John McShain. At 24 stories, it would become known as the \"Skyscraper by the Sea\".\nWith tourism peaking in the 1920s, the period is often considered by historians to be Atlantic City's golden age. During Prohibition, which was enacted nationally in 1919 and lasted until 1933, much liquor was consumed and gambling regularly took place in the back rooms of nightclubs and restaurants. During Prohibition, racketeer and political boss Enoch L. \"Nucky\" Johnson rose to power. Prohibition was largely unenforced in Atlantic City. Because alcohol that had been smuggled into the city with the implicit approval of local officials, it was easily obtained at restaurants and other establishments, and the resort's popularity grew further. The city then dubbed itself as \"The World's Playground\". Nucky Johnson's income, which reached as much as $500,000 annually, came from the kickbacks he took on illegal liquor, gambling and prostitution operating in the city, as well as from kickbacks on construction projects.\nDuring this time, Atlantic City was led by mayor Edward L. Bader, known for his contributions to the construction, athletics and aviation of Atlantic City. Despite opposition, he had Atlantic City purchase the land that became the city's municipal airport and high school football stadium, both of which were later named Bader Field in his honor. He led the initiative, in 1923, to construct the Atlantic City High School at Albany and Atlantic Avenues. Bader, in November 1923, initiated a public referendum, during the general election, at which time residents approved the construction of a Convention Center. The city passed an ordinance approving a bond issue for $1.5\u00a0million to be used for the purchase of land for Convention Hall, now known as the Boardwalk Hall, finalized on September 30, 1924. Bader was also a driving force behind the creation of the Miss America competition.\nIn May 1929, Johnson hosted a conference for organized crime figures from all across America that created a National Crime Syndicate. The men who called this meeting were Masseria family lieutenant Charles \"Lucky\" Luciano and former Chicago South Side Gang boss Johnny \"the Fox\" Torrio, with heads of the Bugs and Meyer Mob, Meyer Lansky and Benjamin Siegel, being used as muscle for the meeting.\nGangster and businessman Al Capone attended the conference and was photographed walking along the Atlantic City boardwalk with Johnson.\nThe 1930s through the 1960s were a heyday for nightclub entertainment. Popular venues on the white-populated south side included the 500 Club, the Clicquot Club, and the Jockey Club. In the Northside neighborhood, home to African Americans in the racially segregated city, a black entertainment district reigned on Kentucky Avenue.\nFour major nightclubs, Club Harlem, the Paradise Club, Grace's Little Belmont, and Wonder Gardens, drew both black and white patrons. During the summer tourist season, jazz and R&B music could be heard into the wee hours of the morning. Soul food restaurants and ribs joints also lined Kentucky Avenue, including Wash's Restaurant, Jerry's and Sap's.\nLike many older East Coast cities after World War II, Atlantic City became plagued with poverty, crime, corruption, and general economic decline in the mid-to-late 20th century. The neighborhood known as the \"Inlet\" became particularly impoverished. The reasons for the resort's decline were multi-layered. First, the automobile became more readily available to many Americans after the war. Atlantic City had initially relied upon visitors coming by train and staying for a couple of weeks. The car allowed them to come and go as they pleased, and many people would spend only a few days, rather than weeks. The advent of suburbia also played a significant role. With many families moving to their own private houses, luxuries such as home air conditioning and swimming pools diminished their interest in flocking to the luxury beach resorts during the hot summer. Finally, the rise of relatively cheap jet airline service allowed visitors to travel to year-round resort places such as Miami Beach and the Bahamas.\nThe city hosted the 1964 Democratic National Convention which nominated Lyndon Johnson for president and Hubert Humphrey as vice president. The convention and the press coverage it generated, however, cast a harsh light on Atlantic City, which by then was in the midst of a long period of economic decline. Many felt that the friendship between Johnson and Governor of New Jersey Richard J. Hughes led Atlantic City to host the Democratic Convention.\nBy the late 1960s, many of the resort's once great hotels were suffering from high vacancy rates. Most of them were either shut down, converted to cheap apartments, or converted to nursing home facilities by the end of the decade. Prior to and during the advent of legalized gambling, many of these hotels were demolished. The Breakers, The Chelsea, the Brighton, the Shelburne, the Mayflower, the Traymore and the Marlborough-Blenheim were demolished in the 1970s and 1980s. Of the many pre-casino resorts that bordered the boardwalk, only the Claridge, the Dennis, the Ritz-Carlton, and the Haddon Hall survive to this day as parts of Bally's Atlantic City, a condo complex, and Resorts Atlantic City. The old Ambassador Hotel was purchased by Ramada in 1978 and was gutted to become the Tropicana Casino and Resort Atlantic City, only reusing the steelwork of the original building. Smaller hotels off the boardwalk, such as the Madison also survived.\nLegalized gambling.\nIn an effort at revitalizing the city, New Jersey voters in 1976 passed a referendum, approving casino gambling for Atlantic City; this came after a 1974 referendum on legalized gambling failed to pass. Immediately after the legislation passed, the owners of the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall Hotel began converting it into the Resorts International. It was the first legal casino in the eastern United States when it opened on May 26, 1978.\nOther casinos were soon constructed along the Boardwalk and, later, in the marina district for a total of nine today. The introduction of gambling did not, however, quickly eliminate many of the urban problems that plagued Atlantic City. Many people have suggested that it only served to exacerbate those problems, as attested to by the stark contrast between tourism intensive areas and the adjacent impoverished working-class neighborhoods.\nWhile Atlantic City has been less popular than Las Vegas as a gambling city in the United States, Donald Trump helped bring big name boxing bouts to the city to attract customers to his casinos. Mike Tyson fought most of his fights in Atlantic City in the 1980s, which helped Atlantic City achieve national attention as a gambling resort and vacation destination.\nSeveral highrise condominiums were built for use as permanent residences or second homes. By end of the decade, it was one of the most popular tourist destinations in the United States.\n21st century.\nLegalized sports betting.\nOn June 27, 2017, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear \"Christie v. National Collegiate Athletic Association\" and heard oral arguments in December 2017. Then, on May 14, 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) was unconstitutional. The act was overturned, allowing New Jersey to move ahead with plans to implement legalized sports betting.\nDespite being the state to initiate the landmark ruling, New Jersey was actually the third state to legalize sports betting after Nevada and Delaware. In June 2018, New Jersey governor Phil Murphy signed the legislation into law, and several New Jersey\u2013based casino brands subsequently opened sportsbooks, especially in Atlantic City.\nWith the redevelopment of the Las Vegas Strip and the opening of Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun in Connecticut in the early 1990s, along with newly built casinos in the nearby Philadelphia metro area in the 2000s, Atlantic City's tourism began to decline due to its failure to diversify away from gambling. In 1999 the Atlantic City Redevelopment Authority partnered with Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn to develop a new roadway to a barren section of the city near the Marina. Nicknamed \"The Tunnel Project\", Steve Wynn planned the proposed 'Mirage Atlantic City' around the idea that he would connect the $330\u00a0million tunnel stretching from the Atlantic City Expressway to his new resort. The roadway was later officially named the Atlantic City-Brigantine Connector, and funnels incoming traffic off of the expressway into the city's marina district and the city of Brigantine.\nAlthough Wynn's plans for development in the city were scrapped in 2002, the tunnel opened in 2001. The new roadway prompted Boyd Gaming in partnership with MGM/Mirage to build Atlantic City's newest casino. Borgata opened in July 2003, and its success brought an influx of developers to Atlantic City with plans for building grand, Las Vegas-style mega casinos to revitalize the aging city.\nOwing to economic conditions and the late 2000s recession, many of the proposed mega casinos never advanced further than the initial planning stage. One of these developers was Pinnacle Entertainment, which purchased the Sands Atlantic City for $250\u2013$270 million and closed it on November 11, 2006 with plans to replace it with a larger casino. The following year, the resort was demolished in an implosion, the first of its kind in Atlantic City. While Pinnacle Entertainment intended to replace it with a $1.5-$2-billion casino resort, the company canceled its construction plans and sold the land for $29.5 million. MGM Resorts International announced in October 2007 that it would pull out of all development for Atlantic City, effectively ending its plans for the MGM Grand Atlantic City.\nIn 2006, Morgan Stanley purchased directly north of the Showboat Atlantic City for a new $2-billion-plus casino resort. Revel Entertainment Group was named as the project's developer for the Revel Casino. Revel was hindered with many problems, the biggest setback occurring in April 2010 when Morgan Stanley, the owner of 90% of Revel Entertainment Group, decided to discontinue funding for continued construction and put its stake in Revel up for sale. Early in 2010, the New Jersey state legislature passed a bill offering tax incentives to attract new investors and complete the job, but a poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind released in March 2010 showed that 60% of voters opposed the legislation, and two of three of those who opposed it \"strongly\" opposed it. Ultimately, Governor Chris Christie offered Revel $261\u00a0million in state tax credits to assist the casino once it opened.\nRevel completed all of the exterior work and had continued work on the interior after finally receiving the funding necessary to complete construction, and had a soft opening in April 2012 before being fully open the next month. Ten months later, in February 2013, after serious losses and a write-down in the value of the resort from $2.4\u00a0billion to $450\u00a0million, Revel filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It was restructured but still could not carry on and re-entered bankruptcy on June 19, 2014. It was put up for sale, however as no suitable bids were received the resort closed its doors in September 2014. The property was bought by AC Ocean Walk, LLC for $200\u00a0million in 2017, and reopened in 2018 as Ocean Casino Resort.\nIn the wake of the closures and declining revenue from casinos, Governor Christie said in September 2014 that the state would consider a 2015 referendum to end the 40-year-old monopoly that Atlantic City holds on casino gambling and allowing gambling in other municipalities. With casino revenue declining from $5.2\u00a0billion in 2006 to $2.9\u00a0billion in 2013, the state saw a drop in money from its 8% tax on those earnings, which is used to fund programs for senior citizens and the disabled.\nOn October 29, 2012, \"Superstorm Sandy\" struck Atlantic City and caused flooding and power-outages but left minimal damage to any of the tourist areas. The storm produced an all-time record low barometric pressure reading of 943 mb (27.85\") for not only Atlantic City, but the state of New Jersey.\nIn 2019, the Atlantic City area had the highest rates of foreclosures in the nation. This has disproportionately affected Black residents in neighborhoods segregated by redlining, a legacy that is mirrored by the values of properties on the Monopoly game board.\nAfter several casino closures and the COVID-19 pandemic, strikes and pickets were being threatened in June 2022 by casino employees which were short-staffed and wanted pay raises.\nFood desert.\nAtlantic City is widely known as a food desert, with the nearest fully-functioning supermarket being located in neighboring Ventnor City, which is away from the majority of Atlantic City's population. As a result, proposals for a supermarket were floated beginning in May 2021, and Atlantic City's City Council gave permission to the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority to look for a contender to build a supermarket.\nAs of December 2023, there was only one functioning supermarket in Atlantic City, the Save-A-Lot food store located in Renaissance Plaza, an area of the city known for its significant homeless population and drug use. The Casino Reinvestment Development Authority has proposed a new supermarket that would be located on an empty parking lot behind the Tanger Outlets and near the Atlantic City Expressway.\nGroundbreaking for a ShopRite supermarket had taken place in October 2021, after Village Super Market received $18.7 million from the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority to construct the store. The supermarket was expected to be completed by December 2022, although no construction or building had happened on the site, which drew attention from residents. After the time for the contract expired, the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA) announced that the deal with Village Super Market (VSM) was dead and that they were looking for new contenders. VSM created a new plan for CRDA and the city's Council to review and by July 2023, it and a Chinese conglomerate headquartered in Hong Kong emerged as the two candidates to build the supermarket. However, as of November 2023, no further progress had been made on the construction plans and the two proposals were still \"being reviewed.\"\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, Atlantic City had a total area of 17.21 square miles (44.59\u00a0km2), including 10.76 square miles (27.87\u00a0km2) of land and 6.45 square miles (16.72\u00a0km2) of water (37.50%).\nThe city is located on Absecon Island, along with Ventnor City, Margate City and Longport to the southwest.\nAtlantic City borders the Atlantic County municipalities of Absecon, Brigantine, Egg Harbor Township, Galloway Township, Pleasantville, and Ventnor City.\nThe city is located southeast of Philadelphia and south of New York City.\nUnincorporated communities, localities and place names located partially or completely within the city include Chelsea, City Island, Great Island and Venice Park.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen climate classification system, Atlantic City has a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\") with warm, moderately humid summers, cool winters and year-around precipitation. Cfa climates are characterized by all months having an average mean temperature above , at least four months with an average mean temperature at or above , at least one month with an average mean temperature at or above and no significant precipitation difference between seasons. During the summer months in Atlantic City, a cooling afternoon sea breeze is present on most days, but episodes of extreme heat and humidity can occur with heat index values at or above . During the winter months, episodes of extreme cold and wind can occur with wind chill values below . The plant hardiness zone at Atlantic City Beach is 7b with an average annual extreme minimum air temperature of . The average seasonal (November\u2013April) snowfall total is , and the average snowiest month is February which corresponds with the annual peak in nor'easter activity.\nEcology.\nAccording to the A. W. Kuchler U.S. potential natural vegetation types, Atlantic City would have a dominant vegetation type of Northern Cordgrass (\"73\") with a dominant vegetation form of Coastal Prairie (\"20\").\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nThe 2010 United States census counted 39,558 people, 15,504 households, and 8,558 families in the city. The population density was . There were 20,013 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup was 26.65% (10,543) White, 38.29% (15,148) Black or African American, 0.61% (242) Native American, 15.55% (6,153) Asian, 0.05% (18) Pacific Islander, 14.03% (5,549) from other races, and 4.82% (1,905) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 30.45% (12,044) of the population.\nOf the 15,504 households, 27.3% had children under the age of 18; 25.9% were married couples living together; 22.2% had a female householder with no husband present and 44.8% were non-families. Of all households, 37.5% were made up of individuals and 14.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.50 and the average family size was 3.34.\nPeople under the age of 18 account for 24.6%, 10.2% from 18 to 24, 26.8% from 25 to 44, 25.8% from 45 to 64, and 12.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36.3 years. For every 100 females, the population had 96.2 males. For every 100 females ages 18 and older there were 94.4 males.\nThe Census Bureau's 2006\u20132010 American Community Survey showed that (in 2010 inflation-adjusted dollars) median household income was $30,237 (with a margin of error of +/\u2212 $2,354) and the median family income was $35,488 (+/\u2212 $2,607). Males had a median income of $32,207 (+/\u2212 $1,641) versus $29,298 (+/\u2212 $1,380) for females. The per capita income for the city was $20,069 (+/\u2212 $2,532). About 23.1% of families and 25.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 36.6% of those under age 18 and 16.8% of those age 65 or over.\n2000 census.\nAs of the 2000 United States census, there were 40,517 people, 15,848 households, and 8,700 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 20,219 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 44.16% black or African American, 26.68% White, 0.48% Native American, 10.40% Asian, 0.06% Pacific Islander, 13.76% other races, and 4.47% from two or more races. 24.95% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. 19.44% of the population was non-Hispanic whites.\nThere were 15,848 households, out of which 27.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 24.8% were married couples living together, 23.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 37.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 15.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.46 and the average family size was 3.26.\nIn the city the age distribution of the population shows 25.7% under the age of 18, 8.9% from 18 to 24, 31.0% from 25 to 44, 20.2% from 45 to 64, and 14.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females, there were 96.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.2 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $26,969, and the median income for a family was $31,997. Males had a median income of $25,471 versus $23,863 for females. The per capita income for the city was $15,402. About 19.1% of families and 23.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 29.1% of those under age 18 and 18.9% of those age 65 or over.\nEconomy.\nIn September 2014, the greater Atlantic City area had one of the highest unemployment rates in the country at 13.8%, out of a labor force of around 141,000.\nTourism district.\nIn July 2010, Governor Chris Christie announced that a state takeover of the city and local government \"was imminent\". Comparing regulations in Atlantic City to an \"antique car\", Atlantic City regulatory reform was a key piece of Governor Chris Christie's plan to reinvigorate an industry mired in a four-year slump in revenue and hammered by fresh competition from casinos in the surrounding states of Delaware, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and more recently, Maryland. In January 2011, Chris Christie announced the creation of the Atlantic City Tourism District, a state-run district encompassing the boardwalk casinos, the marina casinos, the Atlantic City Outlets, and Bader Field. Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind poll surveyed New Jersey voters' attitudes on the takeover. A February 2011 survey showed that 43% opposed the measure while 29% favored direct state oversight. The poll also found that even South Jersey voters expressed opposition to the plan; 40% reported they opposed the measure and 37% reported they were in favor of it.\nOn April 29, 2011, the boundaries for the state-run tourism district were set. The district would include heavier police presence, as well as beautification projects and infrastructure improvements. The CRDA would oversee all functions of the district and make changes to attract new businesses and attractions. New construction has already resulted in cases of eminent domain being used to seize properties for development.\nThe tourism district would comprise several key areas in the city: the Marina District, Ducktown, Chelsea, South Inlet, Bader Field, and Gardner's Basin. Also included are 10 roadways that lead into the district, including several in the city's northern end, or North Beach. Gardner's Basin, which is home to the Atlantic City Aquarium, was initially left out of the tourism district, while a residential neighborhood in the Chelsea section was removed from the final boundaries, owing to complaints from the city. Also, the inclusion of Bader Field in the district was controversial and received much scrutiny from mayor Lorenzo Langford, who cast the lone \"no\" vote on the creation of the district citing its inclusion.\nCasinos and gambling.\nThe history of gambling in Atlantic City traces back to Prohibition and the 1920s, with racketeer Louis Kuehnle running an underground hotel and casino. Enoch \"Nucky\" Johnson followed and furthered Atlantic City's rise through the Roaring Twenties as a destination for drinking, gambling, and nightlife. In 1974, New Jersey voters voted 60%\u201340% against legalizing casino gambling at four sites statewide, but two years later approved by 56%\u201344% a new referendum which legalized casinos, but restricted them to Atlantic City. Resorts Atlantic City was the first casino to open, in May 1978, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony featuring Governor of New Jersey Brendan Byrne. Atlantic City is considered the \"Gambling Capital of the East Coast\", and currently has nine large casinos. In 2011, New Jersey's then 12 casinos employed approximately 33,000 employees, had 28.5\u00a0million visitors, made $3.3\u00a0billion in gaming revenue, and paid $278\u00a0million in taxes. They are regulated by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission and the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement.\nIn the wake of the economic downturn following the Great Recession and the legalization of gambling in adjacent and nearby states (including Delaware, Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania), four casino closures took place in 2014: the Atlantic Club on January 13; the Showboat on August 31; the Revel, which was Atlantic City's second-newest casino, on September 2; and Trump Plaza, which originally opened in 1984, and was the poorest performing casino in the city, on September 16.\nExecutives at Trump Entertainment Resorts, whose sole remaining property at the time was the Trump Taj Mahal, said in 2013 that they were considering the option of selling the Taj and winding down and exiting the gaming and hotel business. Trump Taj Mahal closed October 10, 2016, after failing to come to terms with union workers.\nCaesars Entertainment executives have been reconsidering the future of their three remaining Atlantic City properties (Bally's, Caesars and Harrah's), in the wake of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by the company's casino operating unit in January 2015. In 2020, Bally's Atlantic City was acquired by Bally's Corporation. Gross gaming revenue of the city's nine operating casinos in 2022 totaled $2.79 billion, a 9% increase from the $2.55 billion earned the previous year.\na The Wild Wild West Casino, which opened on July 2, 1997, and has an American Old West theme, was part of Bally's Atlantic City until 2020, when it became part of Caesars.\nBoardwalk.\nThe Atlantic City Boardwalk opened on June 26, 1870, a temporary structure erected for the summer season that was the first boardwalk in the world. At long, the Atlantic City Boardwalk is also the world's longest and busiest boardwalk.\nThe Boardwalk starts at Absecon Inlet in the north and runs along the beach south-west to the city limit away then continues into Ventnor City. Casino/hotels front the boardwalk, as well as retail stores, restaurants, and amusements. Notable attractions include the Boardwalk Hall, House of Blues, and the Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum.\nIn October 2012, Hurricane Sandy destroyed the northern part of the boardwalk fronting Absecon Inlet, in the residential section called South Inlet. The oceanfront boardwalk in front of the Atlantic City casinos survived the storm with minimal damage.\nThe first pier along the boardwalk, Applegate's Pier, opened in 1884. It was acquired by John L. Young in 1891, who expanded and operated it as Young's Ocean Pier, but it was mostly destroyed in a 1912 fire. The remaining part of the pier was rebuilt in 1922 as the Central Pier, which is still in operation.\nA Heinz-owned pier named Heinz Pier was destroyed in the 1944 Great Atlantic hurricane.\nThe most famous Atlantic City pier was Steel Pier, which opened in 1898, and which once billed itself as \"The Showplace of the Nation\". It closed in 1978, and was mostly destroyed in a 1982 fire. It was rebuilt in the late 1980s and is now operated as an amusement pier across from the Hard Rock.\nSteeplechase Pier opened in 1899 and operated until 1986. It suffered significant damage in a 1988 fire, and the remnants of the pier were removed in 1996. The \"Steeplechase Pier Heliport\" on Steel Pier is named in its honor.\nCaptain John L. Young opened \"Young's Million Dollar Pier\" in 1906, and on the seaward side \"erected a marble mansion\", fronted by a formal garden, with lighting and landscaping designed by Young's longtime friend Thomas Alva Edison. Million Dollar Pier once rivaled Steel Pier as Atlantic City's leading pier, but after suffering decades of decline, was rebuilt into a shopping mall in the 1980s, known as \"Shops on Ocean One\". In 2006, the Ocean One mall was bought, renovated and re-branded as \"The Pier Shops at Caesars\" and in 2015, it was renamed \"Playground Pier\". In September 2023, it was renamed \"ACX1 Studios\" for the film and entertainment production studios that took over the building, with a planned grand reopening containing a mixture of retail, restaurants, creative space, and production studios in summer of 2024.\nGarden Pier, located opposite Ocean Casino Resort, once housed a movie theater, and is now home to the Atlantic City Historical Museum.\nShopping.\nAtlantic City has many different shopping districts and malls, many of which are located inside or adjacent to the casino resorts. Several smaller themed retail and dining areas in casino hotels include the Borgata Shops and The Shoppes at Water Club inside Borgata, the Waterfront Shops inside of Harrah's, Spice Road inside the Trump Taj Mahal, while Resorts Casino Hotel has a small collection of stores and restaurants. Major shopping malls are also located in and around Atlantic City.\nAtlantic City shops include:\nExhibition.\nBoardwalk Hall, formally known as the \"Historic Atlantic City Convention Hall\", is an arena in Atlantic City along the boardwalk. Boardwalk Hall was Atlantic City's primary convention center until the opening of the Atlantic City Convention Center in 1997. The Atlantic City Convention Center includes of showroom space, 5 exhibit halls, 45 meeting rooms with of space, a garage with 1,400 parking spaces, and an adjacent Sheraton hotel. Both the Boardwalk Hall and Convention Center are operated by the Atlantic City Convention & Visitors Authority.\nArts and culture.\n\"Monopoly\".\nAtlantic City (sometimes referred to as \"Monopoly City\") has become well-known over the years for its portrayal in the U.S. version of the popular board game \"Monopoly\", in which properties on the board are named after locations in and near Atlantic City. While the original incarnation of the game did not feature Atlantic City, it was in Indianapolis that Ruth Hoskins learned the game, and took it back to Atlantic City. After she arrived, Hoskins made a new board with Atlantic City street names, and taught it to a group of friends, who ultimately passed in on to Charles Darrow, who made some modifications to the game and claimed it as his own invention. The relative prices of the places on the board reflect to some extent the social status of neighborhoods at the time, with wealthy white streets being worth more, and streets where Black and Asian residents lived being cheaper.\nMarvin Gardens, the leading yellow property on the board, is actually a misspelling of the original location name, \"Marven Gardens\". The misspelling was said to have been introduced by Charles Todd and passed on when his home-made \"Monopoly\" board was copied by Charles Darrow and thence Parker Brothers. It was not until 1995 that Parker Brothers acknowledged this mistake and formally apologized to the residents of Marven Gardens for the misspelling, although the spelling error was not corrected.\nSome of the actual locations that correspond to board elements have changed since the game's release. Illinois Avenue was renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in the 1980s. St. Charles Place no longer exists, as the Showboat Casino Hotel was developed where it once ran.\nThe \"Short Line\" is believed to refer to the Shore Fast Line, a streetcar line that served Atlantic City, or a bus route. The B&O Railroad did not serve Atlantic City. A booklet included with the reprinted 1935 edition states that the four railroads that served Atlantic City in the mid-1930s were the Jersey Central, the Seashore Lines, the Reading Railroad, and the Pennsylvania Railroad.\nThe actual \"Electric Company\" and \"Water Works\" serving the city are the Atlantic City Electric Company and the Atlantic City Municipal Utilities Authority, respectively.\nAttractions.\nEver since Atlantic City's growth as a resort town, numerous attractions and tourist traps have originated in the city. A popular fixture in the early 20th century at the Steel Pier was horse diving, which was introduced by William \"Doc\" Carver. The Steel Pier featured several other novelty attractions, including the Diving Bell, human high-divers and a water circus. Advertisements for the Steel Pier in its heyday featured plaster sculptures set upon wooden bases along roads leading up to Atlantic City. By the end of World War II, many animal demonstrations declined in popularity after criticisms of animal abuse and neglect.\nRolling chairs, which were introduced in 1876 and in continuous use since 1887, have been a boardwalk fixture to this day. While powered carts appeared in the 1960s, the original and most common were made of wicker. The wicker canopied chairs-on-wheels are manually pushed the length of the boardwalk by attendants, much like a rickshaw. A tram service was introduced in 2015, initially using the warning announcements that had been used on Wildwood's tram cars until it was changed after complaints from Wildwood.\nThe Absecon Lighthouse is a coastal lighthouse located in the South Inlet section of Atlantic City overlooking Absecon Inlet. It is the tallest lighthouse in the state of New Jersey and is the third tallest masonry lighthouse in the United States. Construction began in 1854, with the light first lit on January 15, 1857. The lighthouse was deactivated in 1933 and although the light still shines every night, it is no longer an active navigational aid. Gardner's Basin, which is home to the Atlantic City Aquarium as well as small shops and restaurants, is located a short distance north of Absecon Light.\nWhile located south of Atlantic City in Margate City, Lucy the Elephant has become almost an icon for the Atlantic City area. Lucy is a six-story elephant-shaped example of novelty architecture, constructed of wood and tin sheeting in 1882 by James V. Lafferty in an effort to sell real estate and attract tourism. Over the years, Lucy had served as a restaurant, business office, cottage, and tavern (the last closed by Prohibition). Lucy had fallen into disrepair by the 1960s and was scheduled for demolition. The structure was moved and refurbished as a result of a \"Save Lucy\" campaign in 1970 and received designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1976, and is open as a museum.\nMiss America pageant.\nAtlantic City was the home of the Miss America competition, hosting the event from its inception until 2004, and again from 2013 to 2018. The Miss America competition originated on September 7, 1921, as a two-day beauty contest, and it included state contestants as well as women from various cities around the country. The event that year was called the \"Atlantic City Pageant\", and the winner of the grand prize, Margaret Gorman, took home the 3-foot Golden Mermaid trophy. Gorman was not called \"Miss America\" until 1922, when she re-entered the pageant and lost to Mary Campbell. The pageant was initiated to extend the tourist season after the Labor Day weekend. The pageant has been nationally televised since 1954. It peaked in the early 1960s, when it was repeatedly the highest-rated program on American television. It was seen as a symbol of the United States, with Miss America often being referred to as the female equivalent of the President. The pageant's longtime emcee, Bert Parks, hosted the event from 1955 to 1979. At the Atlantic City Convention Center, there is a interactive statue of Parks holding a crown. When a visitor puts their head inside the crown, sensors activate a recorded playback of his \"There She Is...\" line through speakers hidden behind nearby bushes.\n\"Boardwalk Empire\".\nThe television show \"Boardwalk Empire\", an American series from cable network HBO set in Atlantic City during the Prohibition era, raised interest in the Roaring Twenties-era city. Starring Steve Buscemi, the show was adapted from a chapter about historical criminal kingpin Enoch \"Nucky\" Johnson (who is renamed \"Enoch Thompson\" in the show) in Nelson Johnson's book, \"Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City\".\nThe Orange Loop.\nThe Orange Loop is a neighborhood near the beach in Atlantic City with a focus on live music establishments like Anchor Rock Club and Tennessee Beer Hall.\nIt runs perpendicular from the boardwalk inland roughly to St. Nicholas of Tolentine Church.\nIt is bounded by Tennessee Avenue, St. James Place, Pacific Avenue and the boardwalk, and derives its name from the orange color of those streets on a traditional Monopoly gameboard. The Orange Loop Amphitheater hosted the Frantic City indie rock music festival on the loop in 2022.\nSports.\nThe Atlantic City Race Course in Hamilton Township was a horse racing track that operated from 1946 to 2015.\nThe ShopRite LPGA Classic is an LPGA Tour women's golf tournament held near Atlantic City since it started in 1986.\nProfessional boxing.\nSince February 2, 1887, the city of Atlantic City has seen 2,538 (as of September 2018) professional boxing fight programs, the first one being one with a main event fight between Willie Clark, 3-0-3, and debuting Horace Leeds, won by Clark on points over four rounds. During the 1980s, professional boxing activity boomed in Atlantic City, at times rivaling Las Vegas, Nevada, in staging major boxing fights. Fighters who fought in Atlantic City at that era include Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns, Wilfredo G\u00f3mez, Jeff Chandler, Larry Holmes, George Foreman, Mike Tyson and others. Fights included The Brawl For it All, Tyson versus Holmes, Tyson versus Michael Spinks, and Roberto Dur\u00e1n versus Iran Barkley. Many boxing matches were held at Donald Trump's Trump Plaza, promoted either by Bob Arum or Don King.\nParks and recreation.\nAtlantic City is one of five municipalities in the state\u2014and the only one outside of Cape May County\u2014that offer free public access to oceanfront beaches monitored by lifeguards, joining Wildwood, North Wildwood, Wildwood Crest and Upper Township's Strathmere section.\nGovernment.\nLocal government.\nAtlantic City is governed within the Faulkner Act (formally known as the Optional Municipal Charter Law) under the Mayor-Council system of municipal government (Plan D), implemented by direct petition effective as of July 1, 1982. The city is one of 71 municipalities (of the 564) statewide governed under this form. The governing body of Atlantic City comprises the Mayor and the City Council, all elected on a partisan basis to serve four-year terms of office as part of the November general election. The council includes nine members, who are elected on a staggered basis, with one member from each of six wards and three serving at-large. The six ward seats are up for election together and the mayoral seat and the council at-large seats are up for vote together two years later. The City Council exercises the legislative power of the municipality for the purpose of holding Council meetings to introduce ordinances and resolutions to regulate City government. In addition, Council members review budgets submitted by the Mayor; provide for an annual audit of the city's accounts and financial transactions; organize standing committees and hold public hearings to address important issues which impact Atlantic City. Former Mayor Bob Levy created the Atlantic City Ethics Board in 2007, but the Board was dissolved two years later by vote of the Atlantic City Council.\nAs of 2024[ [update]], the Mayor is Democrat Marty Small Sr., whose term of office ends December 31, 2025. Small succeeded Frank M. Gilliam Jr. following his resignation on October 3, 2019. Small initially served as mayor on an interim basis for an unexpired term ending on December 31, 2021. Members of the City Council are Council President Council President Aaron \"Sporty\" Randolph (D, 2027; 1st Ward), Council Vice President Kaleem Shabazz (D, 2027; 3rd Ward), George \"Animal\" Crouch (D, 2027; 4th Ward), LaToya Dunston (D, 2027; Second Ward \u2013 elected to serve an unexpired term), Jesse O. Kurtz (R, 2027; 6th Ward), Stephanie Marshall (D, 2025; At-Large), George Tibbitt (D, 2025; At-Large), Bruce Weekes (D, 2025; At-Large) and Maria Lacca (R, 2027; 5th Ward).\nIn 2024, Democrat Muhammed \"Anjum\" Zia, who served as a councilman for the 5th ward, was removed from office after it was found the he did not reside in Atlantic City, but instead with his family in Egg Harbor Township. He was ousted from the city council, and in a court-ordered special election that November, Republican Maria Lacca, who brought about the investigation against Zia, flipped the seat, becoming the first Republican to win it since 1988. She became one out of two Republicans now currently on Atlantic City's council, with the other being councilman Jesse O. Kurtz of the 6th ward.\nIn May 2020, voters rejected by a 3\u20131 margin a referendum that would have changed the city to a council-manager form of government which would have reduced the size of the city council and shifted responsibility for day-to-day operation from an elected mayor to an appointed city manager.\nIn December 2019, LaToya Dunston was selected from a list of three candidates nominated by the Democratic municipal committee to serve the remainder of the term of the Second Ward seat that had been held by Marty Small until he stepped down when he was appointed as mayor. In January 2020, Dunston was appointed to fill the Second Ward seat expiring in December 2023 that Small had won in November 2019 but declined to fill; Dunston will serve on an interim basis until the November 2020 general election, when voters will select a candidate to serve the balance of the term of office.\nMayoral disappearance and resignation.\nFollowing questions about false claims he had made about his military record, Mayor Bob Levy left City Hall in September 2007 in a city-owned vehicle for an unknown destination. After a 13-day absence, his lawyer revealed that Levy was in Carrier Clinic, a rehabilitation hospital. Levy resigned in October 2007 and then-Council President William Marsh assumed the office of Mayor and served six weeks until an interim mayor was named.\nFederal, state and county representation.\nAtlantic City is located in the 2nd Congressional district and is part of New Jersey's 2nd state legislative district.\nFor the 119th United States Congress, New Jersey congressional district is represented by Jeff Van Drew (R, Dennis Township). New Jersey is represented in the United States Senate by Democrats Cory Booker (Newark, term ends 2027) and Andy Kim (Moorestown, term ends 2031).\nFor the 2024-2025 session, the 2nd legislative district of the New Jersey Legislature is represented in the New Jersey Senate by Vincent J. Polistina (R, Egg Harbor Township) and in the General Assembly by Don Guardian (R, Atlantic City) and Claire Swift (R, Margate City).\nAtlantic County is governed by a directly elected county executive and a nine-member Board of County Commissioners, responsible for legislation. The executive serves a four-year term and the commissioners are elected to staggered three-year terms, of which four are elected from the county on an at-large basis and five of the commissioners represent equally populated districts. As of 2025[ [update]], Atlantic County's Executive is Dennis Levinson (R, Northfield), whose term of office ends December 31, 2027. Members of the Board of County Commissioners are:\nErnest D. Coursey (D, District 1-- Atlantic City, Egg Harbor Township (part), Longport, Margate City, and Ventnor City; 2025, Atlantic City), Chair Maureen Kern (R, District 2-- Egg Harbor Township (part), Linwood, Northfield, Somers Point and Pleasantville; 2027, Somers Point), Andrew Parker III (R, District 3-- Egg Harbor Township (part) and Hamilton Township (part); 2026, Egg Harbor Township), Richard R. Dase (R, District 4, including Brigantine, Galloway Township, Egg Harbor Township (part), and Port Republic; 2025, Galloway Township), Vice Chair James A. Bertino (R, District 5-- Buena, Buena Vista Township, Corbin City, Egg Harbor City, Estell Manor, Folsom, Hamilton Township (part), Hammonton, Mullica Township and Weymouth Township; 2027, Hammonton), June Byrnes (R, At-Large; 2026, Linwood), Michael Ruffu (R, At-Large; Margate, 2027) Amy L. Gatto (R, At-large; 2025, Hamilton Township) and John W. Risley (R, At-Large; 2026, Egg Harbor Township)\nAtlantic County's constitutional officers are: \nClerk Joesph J. Giralo (R, 2026, Hammonton), \nSheriff Joe O'Donoghue (R, 2026, Egg Harbor Township) and \nSurrogate James Curcio (R, 2025, Hammonton).\nPolitics.\nAs of March 23, 2011, there were a total of 20,001 registered voters in Atlantic City, of which 12,063 (60.3% vs. 30.5% countywide) were registered as Democrats, 1,542 (7.7% vs. 25.2%) were registered as Republicans and 6,392 (32.0% vs. 44.3%) were registered as Unaffiliated. There were 4 voters registered to other parties. Among the city's 2010 Census population, 50.6% (vs. 58.8% in Atlantic County) were registered to vote, including 67.0% of those ages 18 and over (vs. 76.6% countywide).\nIn the 2012 presidential election, Democrat Barack Obama received 9,948 votes (86.6% vs. 57.9% countywide), ahead of Republican Mitt Romney with 1,548 votes (13.5% vs. 41.1%) and other candidates with 49 votes (0.4% vs. 0.9%), among the 11,489 ballots cast by the city's 21,477 registered voters, for a turnout of 53.5% (vs. 65.8% in Atlantic County). In the 2008 presidential election, Democrat Barack Obama received 10,975 votes (82.1% vs. 56.5% countywide), ahead of Republican John McCain with 2,175 votes (16.3% vs. 41.6%) and other candidates with 82 votes (0.6% vs. 1.1%), among the 13,370 ballots cast by the city's 26,030 registered voters, for a turnout of 51.4% (vs. 68.1% in Atlantic County). In the 2004 presidential election, Democrat John Kerry received 8,487 votes (74.5% vs. 52.0% countywide), ahead of Republican George W. Bush with 2,687 votes (23.6% vs. 46.2%) and other candidates with 96 votes (0.8% vs. 0.8%), among the 11,389 ballots cast by the city's 23,310 registered voters, for a turnout of 48.9% (vs. 69.8% in the whole county).\nIn the 2013 gubernatorial election, Democrat Barbara Buono received 4,293 ballots cast (52.6% vs. 34.9% countywide), ahead of Republican Chris Christie with 2,897 votes (35.5% vs. 60.0%) and other candidates with 63 votes (0.8% vs. 1.3%), among the 8,155 ballots cast by the city's 23,049 registered voters, yielding a 35.4% turnout (vs. 41.5% in the county). In the 2009 gubernatorial election, Democrat Jon Corzine received 4,988 ballots cast (69.9% vs. 44.5% countywide), ahead of Republican Chris Christie with 1,578 votes (22.1% vs. 47.7%), Independent Chris Daggett with 157 votes (2.2% vs. 4.8%) and other candidates with 99 votes (1.4% vs. 1.2%), among the 7,141 ballots cast by the city's 22,585 registered voters, yielding a 31.6% turnout (vs. 44.9% in the county).\nCity and state agencies.\nNew Jersey Casino Control Commission.\nThe New Jersey Casino Control Commission is a New Jersey state governmental agency that was founded in 1977 as the state's Gaming Control Board, responsible for administering the Casino Control Act and its regulations to assure public trust and confidence in the credibility and integrity of the casino industry and casino operations in Atlantic City. Casinos operate under licenses granted by the commission. The commission is headquartered in the Arcade Building at Tennessee Avenue and Boardwalk in Atlantic City.\nNew Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement.\nThe New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement is a division of the New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety and is responsible for certifying casino gaming revenue, registering casino employees and non-gaming vendors, licensing gaming vendors, and handling all casino patron complaints.\nCasino Reinvestment Development Authority.\nThe CRDA was founded in 1984 and is responsible for directing the spending of casino reinvestment funds in public and private projects to benefit Atlantic City and other areas of the state. From 1985 through April 2008, CRDA spent US$1.5\u00a0billion on projects in Atlantic City and US$300\u00a0million throughout New Jersey.\nAtlantic City Convention and Visitors Authority.\nThe Convention & Visitors Authority (ACCVA) was in charge of advertising and marketing for the city as well as promoting economic growth through convention and leisure tourism development. The ACCVA managed the Boardwalk Hall and Atlantic City Convention Center, as well as the Boardwalk Welcome Center inside Boardwalk Hall and a welcome center on the Atlantic City Expressway. In 2011, the ACCVA was absorbed into the CRDA as part of the state takeover that created the tourism district.\nAtlantic City Special Improvement District.\nThe Atlantic City Special Improvement District (SID) was a nonprofit organization created in 1992, funded by a special assessment tax on businesses within the improvement district. It carried out various activities to improve the city's business community, including street cleaning and promotional efforts. In 2011, the SID was absorbed by the CRDA; the former SID boundaries would be expanded to the include all areas in the newly formed tourism district. Under the new structure, established by state legislation, the CRDA assumed responsibility for the staff, equipment and programs of the SID. The new SID division includes a SID committee made up of CRDA board members and an advisory council consisting of the current trustees and others.\nFire department.\nThe Atlantic City Fire Department (ACFD) provides fire protection and first responder emergency medical services to the city. The ACFD operates out of six fire stations, located throughout the city in one battalion, under the command of a battalion chief, who in-turn reports to an on-duty Deputy Chief, or Tour Commander each shift.\nPolice department.\nThe city is protected by the Atlantic City Police Department, which handles 150,000 calls per year. The Chief of Police is James A. Sarkos.\nEducation.\nThe Atlantic City School District serves students in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grades. As of the 2020\u201321 school year, the district, consisting of 11 schools, had an enrollment of 6,553 students and 617.3 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student\u2013teacher ratio of 10.6:1. Schools in the district (with 2020\u201321 enrollment data from the National Center for Education Statistics) are \nVenice Park School (36 students in PreK), \nBrighton Avenue School (315 students; in grades PreK-5), \nChelsea Heights School (332; PreK-8), \nDr. Martin Luther King Jr. School Complex (543; PreK-8), \nNew York Avenue School (548; PreK-8), \nPennsylvania Avenue School (549; PreK-8), \nRichmond Avenue School (615; PreK-8), \nSovereign Avenue School (696; PreK-8),\nTexas Avenue School (499; K-8), \nUptown School Complex (536; PreK-8) and \nAtlantic City High School (1,771; 9\u201312). Pennsylvania Avenue School opened for the 2012\u201313 school year, with most students shifting from New Jersey Avenue School, which had been one of the district's oldest and most rundown schools.\nStudents from Brigantine, Longport, Margate City and Ventnor City attend Atlantic City High School as part of sending/receiving relationships with the respective school districts.\nCity public school students are also eligible to attend the Atlantic County Institute of Technology in the Mays Landing section of Hamilton Township or the Charter-Tech High School for the Performing Arts, located in Somers Point.\nOceanside Charter School, which offered pre-Kindergarten through eighth grade, was founded in 1999 and closed in June 2013 when its charter was not renewed by the New Jersey Department of Education.\nFounded in 1908, Our Lady Star of the Sea Regional School is a Catholic elementary school, operates under the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Camden.\nNearby college campuses include those of Atlantic Cape Community College and Stockton University, the latter of which offers classes and resources in the city such as the Carnegie Library Center, which was turned back to the control of the city in April 2022.\nMedia outlets.\nNewspapers and magazines.\n\"Former publications\":\nTelevision stations.\nAtlantic City is part of the Philadelphia television market. There are six stations licensed in the area.\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nRoads and highways.\nAs of \u00a02010[ [update]], the city had a total of of roadways, of which were maintained by the municipality, by Atlantic County, by the New Jersey Department of Transportation and by the South Jersey Transportation Authority.\nThe three roadways that enter Atlantic City are: Black Horse Pike/Harding Highway (US 322/40 via the Albany Avenue drawbridge), White Horse Pike (US 30), and the Atlantic City Expressway through the Brigantine Connector. Atlantic City is roughly south of New York City via the Garden State Parkway and southeast of Philadelphia.\nPublic transportation.\nAtlantic City is connected to other cities in several ways. NJ Transit's Atlantic City Rail Terminal at the Atlantic City Convention Center provides service from 30th Street Station in Philadelphia through several smaller South Jersey communities via the Atlantic City Line.\nOn June 20, 2006, the board of NJ Transit approved a three-year trial of express train service between New York Penn Station and the Atlantic City Rail Terminal. The line, known as ACES (Atlantic City Express Service), ran from February 2009 to March 2012. The approximate travel time was <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />2+1\u20442 hours, with a stop at Newark's Penn Station, and was part of the casinos' multimillion-dollar investments in Atlantic City. Most of the funding for the transit line was provided by Harrah's Entertainment (owners of both Harrah's Atlantic City and Caesars Atlantic City) and the Borgata.\nThe Atlantic City Bus Terminal is the home to local, intrastate and interstate bus companies including NJ Transit, OurBus and Greyhound bus lines. The Greyhound Lucky Streak Express offers service to Atlantic City from New York City, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. In addition to stopping at the Atlantic City Bus Terminal, Greyhound buses stop at various casinos in Atlantic City. Martz Trailways provides bus service to various casinos in Atlantic City from Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, and White Haven in Pennsylvania. Klein Transportation provides bus service to various casinos in Atlantic City from Shillington, Douglassville, Royersford, and Audubon in Pennsylvania.\nWithin the city, public transportation is provided by NJ Transit along 13 routes, including service between the city and the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown Manhattan on the 319 route, and service to and from Atlantic City on routes 501 (to Brigantine Beach), 502 (to Atlantic Cape Community College), 504 (to Ventnor Plaza), 505 (to Longport), 507 (to Ocean City), 508 (to the Hamilton Mall), 509 (to Ocean City), 551 (to Philadelphia), 552 (to Cape May), 553 (to Upper Deerfield Township), 554 (to the Lindenwold PATCO station) and 559 (to Lakewood Township).\nThe Atlantic City Jitney Association (ACJA) offers service on four fixed-route lines and on shuttles to and from the rail terminal.\nAirline service.\nCommercial airlines serving Atlantic City include Atlantic City International Airport, located northwest of the city in Egg Harbor Township. Many travelers also fly into Philadelphia International Airport, Trenton-Mercer Airport, or Newark Liberty International Airport, where there are wider selections of carriers from which to choose. The historic downtown Bader Field airport is now permanently closed and plans are in the works to redevelop the land.\nAtlantic City International Airport, which is served by various scheduled chartered flight company, is a focus city for Spirit Airlines\nHealthcare.\nThe AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center is a health system based in Atlantic City. Founded in 1898, it includes two hospitals; the Atlantic City Campus and the Mainland Campus in Pomona, New Jersey. It has Atlantic City's only cancer institute, heart institute, and neonatal intensive care unit.\nUtilities.\nSouth Jersey Industries provides natural gas to the city under the South Jersey Gas division. Marina Energy and its subsidiary, Energenic, a joint business venture with a long-time business partner, operate two thermal power stations in the city. The Marina Thermal Plant serves the Borgata while a second plant serves the Resorts Hotel and Casino. Another thermal plant is the Midtown Thermal Control Center on Atlantic and Ohio Avenues built by Conectiv, which opened in 1997 and provides chilled water for hotels and other facilities along the Boardwalk.\nElectrical power in Atlantic City and its immediate surrounding area is provided primarily served Atlantic City Electric, which was incorporated in 1924 and provides power from the Beesley's Point Generating Station in Upper Township and other locations.\nThe Jersey-Atlantic Wind Farm, opened in 2005, is the first onshore coastal wind farm in the United States. In October 2010, North American Offshore Wind Conference was held in the city and included tours of the facility and potential sites for further development. In February 2011, the state passed legislation permitting the construction of windmills for electricity along pre-existing piers, such as the Steel Pier. The first phase of the Atlantic Wind Connection, a planned electrical transmission backbone along the Jersey Shore was planned to be operational in 2013.\nIn popular culture.\nAtlantic City is featured prominently in films, television, and music, including:\nNotable people.\nPeople who were born in, residents of, or otherwise closely associated with Atlantic City include:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["8697725", "106211"], "permutation_1": ["8697725", "106211"], "permutation_2": ["8697725", "106211"], "permutation_3": ["106211", "8697725"]}
{"id": "2hop__132812_120632", "docs_added": {"160678": "White Motor Company\nAmerican automobile, truck, bus and agricultural tractor manufacturer from 1900 until 1980.\nThe White Motor Company (commonly known as White) was an American car, truck, bus and agricultural tractor manufacturer from 1900 until 1980. The company also produced bicycles, roller skates, automatic lathes, and sewing machines. Before World War II, the company was based in Cleveland, Ohio. White Diesel Engine Division in Springfield, Ohio, manufactured diesel engine generators, which powered U.S. military equipment and infrastructure, namely Army Nike and Air Force Bomarc launch complexes, and other guided missile installations and proving grounds, sections of SAGE and DEW Line stations, radars, Combat Direction Centers and other ground facilities of the U.S. aerospace defense ring, such as the Texas Towers.\nDuring the Vietnam Era, the company retained its position within the Top 100 Defense Contractors list (it ranked 87th in the Fiscal Year 1965, 77th in 1967, 73rd in 1968, 89th in 1969). Its production facilities, such as the Lansing Truck Plant in Lansing, Michigan, and the main plant in Cleveland were engaged in production, inspection, engineering services and maintenance of thousands of military/utility cargo trucks M39, M44, M600, and M602 series trucks, as well as spare parts, such as cylinder heads, diesel and gasoline engines with accessories.\nHistory.\nAround 1898, Thomas H. White purchased a Locomobile steam car and found its boiler unreliable. His son, Rollin, set out to improve its design. Rollin White developed a form of water tube steam generator which consisted of a series of stacked coils with two novel features: the first was the coils were all joined at the top of the unit, which allowed water to flow only when pumped, allowing control of the steam generation; the second was pulling steam from the lowest coil, closest to the fire, which allowed control of steam temperature. This second point was critical because the White steamer operated with superheated steam to take advantage of steam's properties at higher temperatures. Rollin White patented his steam generator, US patent 659,837 of 1900.\nWhite Steamer.\nRollin H. White patented his new design and offered it to, among others, Locomobile. Finally, he persuaded his father, founder of the White Sewing Machine Company, to allow the use of a corner in one of his buildings to build an automobile.\nWhite's brother, Windsor, who was a management talent, joined the business venture, followed by their brother, Walter, who became instrumental in the sales, promotion and distribution of the product. The first group of fifty cars were completed in October 1900, but none were offered to the public until April 1901 so the design could be thoroughly tested. Since the cars were being offered by the automobile department of the sewing machine company, White could not afford to diminish the reputation of the parent company by the introduction of an untested product.\nIn 1905, it became necessary to separate the automobile department from its parent company to accommodate the growth of the business and to physically separate them, as a fire in one could ruin both operations. On 4 July 1905, a racing steam car named \"Whistling Billy\" and driven by Webb Jay set a record of on the Morris Park Racecourse.\nA 1907 White Steamer was one of the early vehicles in the White House when Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, allowed the Secret Service to use the car behind his horse-drawn carriage. In 1909, president William Howard Taft converted the White House stables into a garage and purchased four automobiles: two Pierce-Arrows, a Baker Electric, and a 1911 White. This $4,000 car was one of the last steam cars produced and proved a favorite of the President who used bursts of steam against \"pesky\" press photographers. The White Model M 7-seat tourer generated favorable press for the newly formed White Motor Company. Taft's White Model M is currently housed in the collection at the Heritage Museums and Gardens in Sandwich, Massachusetts.\nThe last steam car was built in January 1911 as the company made a transition to gasoline-powered vehicles. The company continued to show them in their catalogues as late as 1912. 9122 White steam-powered cars were built, more than the better known Stanley.\nIn 2019 Mitch Gross and Chris Rolph drove a 1910 model MM 40\u00a0hp White steam car from Beijing to Paris, likely the only time such a feat has been done by a steam car. The journey of over 8000 miles crossed 12 countries, 7 time zones and included the first crossing of a major desert (the Gobi) by a steam car. \nThe White steam car reentered popular culture in 2023 when comedian and classic car collector Jay Leno, while repairing his 1907 White steam car in his garage in Burbank, suffered third-degree burns on his face and hands when a fuel line sprayed him at the same time a spark ignited.\nGasoline Models.\nWhite companies' manufacturing facility expanded. The White steamer used unique technology, and it was vulnerable in a market that was accepting the internal combustion engine as the standard. White canvassed existing gas manufacturers and licensed the rights to the Delahaye design for the \"gas car\", showing a chassis at an English auto show in December 1908.\nWhite Tractors.\nRollin became more interested in agricultural tractors, and developed designs for tractors derived from standard White truck parts. When the White Company was not interested in producing tractors, Rollin set out to develop his own designs and, with brother Clarence, eventually founded Cleveland Motor Plow, which later became Cletrac tractor. Cletrac was later purchased by Oliver Tractor Co, which in of itself was bought by White in 1960. the early 1920s, Rollin briefly produced the Rollin car to diversify the tractor company, but found it could not compete in cost versus price against much larger manufacturers.\nWhite was successful with their heavy machines, which saw service around the world during World War I. White remained in the truck industry for decades.\nTruck Manufacturing.\nWhite Motor Company ended car production after World War I to focus exclusively on trucks. The company soon sold 10 percent of all trucks made in the US. Although White produced all sizes of trucks from light delivery to semi, the decision was made after WWII to produce only large trucks. White acquired several truck manufacturing companies during this time: Sterling (in 1951), Autocar (in 1953),\nREO (in 1957) and Diamond T (in 1958). White also agreed to sell Consolidated Freightways, Freightliner Trucks through its own dealers. White produced trucks under the Autocar nameplate following its acquisition. Diamond T and REO Motor Car Company became the Diamond REO division, which was discontinued in the 1970s.\nA White Semi performed a role in the 1949 James Cagney film \"White Heat\". This era was probably the peak of White Motor market penetration, with the substantial gasoline engined tractors moving a large part of the tractor trailer fleet.\nWhite designed and (with other companies) produced the M3 Scout Car, the standard United States Army reconnaissance vehicle at the start of World War II. White also built the later M2, M3, M13 and M16 half-tracks.\nIn 1967, White started the Western Star division to sell trucks on the west coast.\nWhite Buses.\nThe White \"Model 706\" chassis emerged as the winner of a four-way competition with Ford, REO and GMC, held by the National Park Service in 1935 at Yosemite National Park. Starting in 1936, White produced 500 of the Model 706, specifically designed to carry passengers through seven of the major National Parks of the western US; bus tours were offered as most tourists arrived from trains before World War II. The distinctive vehicles, with roll-back canvas convertible tops, were the product of noted industrial designer Alexis de Sakhnoffsky and used bodies from the Bender Body Company of Cleveland. They originally operated in seven National Parks: Glacier, Grand Canyon, Mount Rainier, Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Zion. After being retired from service in the 1960s, many buses were sold to private collectors and tour operators. The Skagway Street Car Company assembled a fleet of eight buses starting in 1987, naming each bus for the location from which they were acquired.\nToday, Glacier National Park operates 33 of its original 35 buses, where they are referred to as \"Red Jammers\", and eight (of an original 98) have been restored for renewed service in Yellowstone National Park. Glacier's 33 buses were refurbished by Ford and TransGlobal in 2000\u20132002, while Yellowstone's eight buses were refurbished by TransGlobal in 2007. Glacier has kept one bus in original condition. Yellowstone has five White buses in original condition, two model 706s and three older units as well. In addition, a private operator uses two of the White 706 buses originally built for Yellowstone for Gettysburg National Battlefield tours. One ex-Mount Rainier White 706 is on display at the Longmire Historic District.\nThe bus driven by Egg Shen in the film \"Big Trouble in Little China\" into Chinatown, San Francisco is a White 706 which was later purchased by the Skagway Street Car Company. It was one of the eight sold to Xanterra in 2001; they were subsequently restored by TransGlobal for tours in Yellowstone. The character \"Ol Jammer\" from the Disney animated film \"\" is based on the White 706.\nIn addition to the National Parks touring buses, White built similar buses with fixed roofs for intercity service. White entered the transit bus market in 1937 with the 700 series, available in lengths. The longer model was produced through 1953, with an update in 1948 as the 1100 series.\nCompany Culture.\nDuring the time brothers Walter and Windsor White ran the company, it offered a library branch, a store which sold necessities at low cost, sports teams, and concerts by orchestras and jazz bands, as well as musical performances by the workers, many of whom were immigrants from Slovenia and Poland. The company also had picnics at Euclid Beach Park.\nAfter Walter White was fatally injured in a traffic accident, management changed and so did the firm's culture. Employees started one of the country's first automobile unions. The Great Depression caused a drop in sales, forcing White to merge with Studebaker. However, White soon became independent again.\nIn 1935, Robert Fager Black became president, but workers were still unhappy, and they went on strike. Black negotiated with the workers who were striking, and he even got baseball equipment for them and let them play while on strike, so they would have something to do. Black learned people's names, visited the plant frequently, and asked customers if they were happy with what they purchased. Anyone could visit his office.\nBlack brought the company back to where it had once been by World War II, during which the company supplied the military with much of its equipment. White ranked 54th among US corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts. When husbands went to serve, wives took their jobs, and the work force totaled over 4000. Black provided the services the company had at one time, and helped employees get to work with carpools.\nBlack retired in 1956, still beloved by employees.\nDemise.\nIn 1953, White purchased Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Autocar Company. From 1951 until 1977, White Motors also distributed Freightliner Trucks. This took place under an agreement with Freightliner's parent, Consolidated Freightways. White manufactured trucks under its own brands\u2014White, Autocar, and Western Star\u2014as well, leading to the company becoming known as the \"Big Four\" through to the mid-1970s. The Sterling nameplate, unused by White as long as the company owned it, went to Freightliner after the companies' split. It was then used by Daimler Trucks, who manufactured the former Ford heavy truck line under the Sterling name, from 1997 to 2008.\nSales dropped during the 1960s, and White tried merging with White Consolidated Industries, the original company that once made sewing machines, however the federal government blocked this deal. The company opened plants in Virginia and Utah, since they did not have unions, but this did not help. Semon Knudsen, former president of Ford, made the company successful for a time, but the decline continued. Later, the federal government approved a merger with White Consolidated, which feared being hurt by White Motor's troubles. Mergers with Daimler and Renault were also considered. Production was somewhat limited as White did not have a lighter range (13,330 units built in 1978), leading to several attempts at linking up with various European manufacturers.\nBy 1980, White was insolvent, filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy case 80-13361 in the Northern District of Ohio on September 4 of that year. Volvo acquired most of the US assets of the company in 1981, while two energy-related companies based in Calgary, Alberta, Bow Valley Resource Services, and NovaCorp, an Alberta corporation, purchased the Canadian assets, including the Kelowna, British Columbia plant, and the Western Star nameplate and product range.\nProducts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "14465435": "White armored car\nAmerican armored vehicle\nThe White armored car was a series of armored cars developed by the White Motor Company in Cleveland, Ohio from 1915.\nModels.\nThe White Motor Company continued after the First World War to develop armored cars including the M1 Scout Car, M3 Scout Car, M2 Half Track Car, M3 Half-track, M13 Multiple Gun Motor Carriage, and M16 Multiple Gun Motor Carriage.", "30959527": "Fiat-Omsky armoured car\nRussian army wheeled light armored car (1918\u20131921)\nThe Fiat-Omsky () was a Russian light armored car used by the White Army in the Russian Civil War. It was the only serially produced armoured car built by the White Army, and were used exclusively by the Siberian Army on the Eastern Front in the Siberia and Russian Far East regions.\nHistory.\nThe Fiat-Omsky vehicles were commissioned by Admiral Alexander Kolchak, the leading White commander on the Eastern Front, following his return from the United States. At the time, both the White Army and the Red Army were using handmade armoured cars in limited numbers. The Fiat-Omsky was constructed using Fiat Tipo 5 chassis supplied from the United States, with different variations equipped with light armour plating and one or two PM M1910 machine guns attached to wheelhouses on sponsons. There are discrepancies in the construction of the Fiat-Omsky, as there are no known records of the designers, as well as the time and location of their manufacture. Reportedly, a series of about 15 vehicles was built from 1918 to 1919 in Omsk, hence the name \"Fiat-Omsky\", while other sources state they were built from 1919 to 1920 in Vladivostok, the port where the Fiat frames were delivered. Despite being successful in battle, the Fiat-Omsky vehicles were captured by Red forces during the gradual defeat of the White Army on the Eastern Front, and many of the vehicles were scrapped. Two of the cars entered active service in the People's Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic until 1921, when they were decommissioned. Many of the Fiat-Omsky cars survived, and at least one was known to come into possession of the Japanese by World War II, however the fate of these cars is unknown.", "169486": "Bristol Cars\nManufacturer of hand-built luxury cars\nBristol Cars was a British manufacturer of hand-built luxury cars headquartered in Bristol, England. It was formed from the car division of the Bristol Aeroplane Company after the Second World War and later became independent as Bristol Cars Limited. After being placed in receivership and being taken over in 2011, it entered liquidation in February 2020.\nBristol was always a low-volume manufacturer; the most recent published official production figures were for 1982, which stated that 104 cars were produced in that year. The company also had only one sales showroom, on the corner of Kensington High Street and Holland Road in London.\nThe company suspended manufacturing in March 2011, when administrators were appointed, 22 staff were made redundant at the factory in Filton, Bristol and subsequently the company was dissolved. In April 2011, a new company was formed by the administrator to sell the original assets to Kamkorp. The new company was liquidated in 2020 in order to pay creditors.\nHistory.\nThe British aircraft industry suffered a dramatic loss of orders and great financial difficulties following the Armistice of 1918. To provide immediate employment for its considerable workforce, the Bristol Aeroplane Company undertook the manufacture of a light car (the single-seat Bristol Monocar, powered by a motorcycle engine) and the construction of car bodies for Armstrong Siddeley, alongside bus bodies for their sister company, Bristol Tramways.\nOn the outbreak of World War II, Sir Stanley White, managing director of the Bristol Aeroplane Company from 1911 to 1954, was determined not to suffer the same difficulties a second time. The company now employed 70,000 and he knew he must plan for the time when the wartime demand for Bristol aircraft and aircraft engines would suddenly end. The company began working with AFN Ltd, manufacturers of Frazer Nash cars and British importer of BMWs before the war, on plans for a joint venture in automotive manufacture.\nAs early as 1941, a number of papers were written or commissioned by Sir George White, Sir Stanley's son, proposing a post-war car manufacturing division. It was decided to purchase an existing manufacturer for this purpose. Alvis, Aston Martin, Lagonda, ERA and Lea-Francis were considered.\nBeginning.\nIn May 1945, a chance discussion took place between D. A. Aldington, a director of Frazer Nash then serving as an inspector for the wartime Ministry of Aircraft Production (MAP), and Eric Storey, an assistant of George White at the Bristol Aeroplane Company. It led to the immediate take-over of Frazer Nash by the aeroplane company.\nAldington and his two brothers had marketed the Frazer Nash BMW before the war, and proposed to build an updated version after demobilisation. This seemed the perfect match for the aeroplane company's own ambitions to manufacture a high quality sports car. With the support of the War Reparations Board, H. J. Aldington travelled to Munich and purchased the rights to manufacture three BMW models and the 328 engine.\nBy July 1945, BAC had created a car division and bought a controlling stake in AFN. A factory was established at Filton Aerodrome, near Bristol. \nGeorge White and Reginald Verdon-Smith of the aeroplane company joined the new Frazer Nash Board, but in January 1947, soon after the first cars had been produced, differences between the Aldingtons and Bristol led to the resale of Frazer Nash. The Bristol car division became an independent entity.\nIndependence.\nBristol Cars was sold after its parent joined with other British aircraft companies in 1960 to create the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC), which later became part of British Aerospace.\nThe car division originally merged with Bristol Siddeley Engines, and was marked for closure, but was bought in September 1960 by George White, the chairman and effective founder. White retained the direction of the company, but sold a forty per cent shareholding to Tony Crook, a leading Bristol agent. Crook then became sole distributor.\nNew ownership.\nIn September 1969, only a month before the unveiling of the new Bristol 411 at the Earl's Court Motor Show, Sir George White (as he had become) suffered a serious accident in his Bristol 410. The car was only superficially damaged, but he suffered severe trauma.\nAs time passed it became clear that he would never regain his health sufficiently to return to full-time work. To safeguard the future of his workforce, he decided in 1973 to sell his majority shareholding to Crook. As the ties with the White family were severed, British Aerospace requested the company to move its factory from Filton Aerodrome and it found new premises in nearby Patchway. The showroom on Kensington High Street became the head office, with Crook shuttling between the two in Bristol's light aircraft.\nUnder Crook's direction the company produced at least six types, the names of which were largely borrowed from Bristol's aeronautical past: the Beaufighter, Blenheim, Britannia and Brigand.\nEnd of the second era.\nIn February 1997, Crook, then aged 77, sold a fifty per cent holding in Bristol Cars to Toby Silverton, with an option to take full control within four years. Silverton, then son-in-law of Joe Lewis of the Tavistock Group and son of Arthur Silverton of Overfinch, joined the board with his father.\nCrook and Toby Silverton produced the Speedster, Bullet, Blenheim and 411 Series 6, though 2002 saw the transfer of Bristol Cars fully into the ownership of Silverton and the Tavistock Group, with Silverton in the chair and Crook remaining as managing director. Together they developed a V10 engined two-seater named after the first Sir George White's First World War two-seater aircraft, the Bristol Fighter. Crook finally relinquished his connection with Bristol Cars in August 2007.\nKamkorp era (2011\u20132020).\nOn 3 March 2011 it was announced that Bristol Cars had gone into administration, with the loss of 22 jobs when the factory at Filton, Bristol was shut down. On 21 April 2011 another new company was formed to sell the assets of the former dissolved company; that company was purchased by Kamkorp, which also owned Frazer-Nash Research, a technology manufacturer of electric power systems. During this era, the company focused on restoring and selling all models of the marque while a new model was being developed.\nIn 2015 Bristol Cars announced the development of a new model codenamed \"Project Pinnacle\". Initial reports indicated it would be a petrol-electric hybrid with a petrol engine from BMW. However a later media report and a May 2015 press release, indicated that the car would have non-hybrid V8 power. The car, a two-seater roadster, made its first public appearance, slightly camouflaged, at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in June 2016. In July, the car was shown undisguised, technical details were announced, and its name given as the Bristol Bullet. However, subsequently there was no further news about the car's homologation, and many members of the sales and marketing team soon left the company. The Bullet was said to be powered by a normally aspirated 4.8-litre BMW N62 V8 engine (sharing the same drivetrain and chassis as the most recent Morgan Aero 8) driving the rear wheels, had a body of carbon fibre, weighed 1130\u00a0kg, and would cost \u00a395,000. The planned production run was said to be limited to 70 cars to commemorate the marque's 70th anniversary.\nOn 5 March 2020 it was reported that Bristol cars had been officially wound up in order to pay creditors, with court-ordered liquidation under way. The Bristol Owners Club working together with the Bristol Owners and Drivers Association and the Bristol Owners Heritage Trust is reported to be actively engaged in order to preserve the heritage and associated spares for the marque.\nPost liquidation (since 2021).\nIn 2021, intellectual property rights to Bristol Cars were registered by Bristol Fighter Limited, a subsidiary of Bristol Manufacturing Limited, owned by Essex based investor and property developer Jason Wharton, with revocation of 297 defunct trademarks. Wharton plans to transform the company into a \"leading British electric vehicle company\" by 2026, the brand's 80th anniversary. The new Bristol Cars would firstly launch \"remastered\" versions of historic cars with modernised mechanicals on a built to order basis. It was also reported that the new company will subsequently revive the Buccaneer nameplate for an all new electric vehicle. Shortly after this announcement, however, controversy erupted between Wharton and Bristol's insolvency practitioner Frost Group. The practitioner stated that Wharton had in fact not purchased any intellectual property rights, but had merely purchased certain tooling and spares at the auction of the company's assets. Despite this controversy, plans to revive the brand continued and Wharton announced in 2024 that Bristol would be revived as a contemporary coachbuilder by 2026.\nPre-war BMW designs, Aldington brothers and early cars.\nHJ Aldington, a director of the Bristol Aeroplane Company affiliated AFN (BMW's pre-war concessionaire in the UK), used his British Army connections to visit the bombed BMW factory in Munich several times post-war. In 1945 he took plans for BMW cars back to Britain, and BMW chief engineer, Dr. Fritz Fiedler was also employed. Its first car was the Bristol 400, prototyped in 1946 and introduced at the 1947 Geneva Motor Show. Derived from immediately pre-WW2 BMW products (thanks to a connection to BMW through Frazer Nash), the chassis was based on the BMW 326, the engine on the 328, and the body on the 327. Even a variation on the famous double-kidney BMW grille was retained. Bristol, however, did a thorough examination of the car's handling and ended up with performance \"only matched by outright purpose-built competition cars\". Seven hundred of the Bristol 400 were built, 17 of which received \"handsome\" drophead bodywork from Pininfarina.\nIn 1949, the 400 was joined by the five-place 401. Bodied by Touring, it was aerodynamically sleeker, accelerated better, and had higher top speed. It was joined by the drophead 402, of which just 24 examples were built.\nThe 403 followed in 1953, which featured improved brakes, gearbox, dampers, heater, and engine (a detuned racing motor, in fact). Bristol would use this same engine in the 450, entered at Le Mans in 1953; it broke its experimental crankshaft, but despite being less than aerodynamically ideal proved fully five seconds a lap quicker than the competition. Bristol withdrew from racing two years later.\nAlong with the 403 was the 404, on a shorter wheelbase, with a more powerful engine and styling reminiscent of the 450. The 404 introduced a concealed front wing-mounted spare wheel and battery. It was built to extremely exacting standards, and the price reflected it; this, plus newly introduced \"punitive taxation\", meant only 40 were produced.\nThe 405, which entered production in 1954, was much more successful, not least for being Bristol's only four-door. It remained in production until 1958, with 297 saloons and 43 drophead coup\u00e9s produced in all.\nBristol debuted the 406 in 1958, and it remained in production until 1961.\nV8 cars.\nThe 406's replacement, the 407, was powered by a 5.2-litre V8 provided by Chrysler of Canada.\nIt was followed in 1963 by the 408, with drastic restyling as well as improved suspension. This was succeeded by the 409. Many buyers preferred the crisp steering and gearbox of the earlier six-cylinder cars.\nThe 410, introduced in 1966, was a return to the high-performance touring tradition, offering the same top speed as the 409, and superior acceleration, with the same powerplant. It also saw Bristol become a private company and marked a return to quality to the exclusion of output: no more than three cars a week were to be made.\nIn 1969, the Bristol 411 appeared, with a new 6.2-litre Chrysler V8 (still rebuilt and modified by Bristol, as before) delivering higher top speed and even better acceleration.\nEngines.\nUntil 1961 all Bristol cars used Bristol-built derivatives of the BMW M328 2-litre six-cylinder engine. These engines also powered a number of sports and racing cars, including all post-war Frazer Nashes (apart from a few prototypes), some ACs, some Lotus and Cooper racing cars, and several others.\nIn 1961, with the launch of the Bristol 407, the company switched to larger Chrysler V8 engines, which were more powerful than Bristol's own, BMW derived 2.25-litre 6 cylinder engine. The Chrysler V8s could be bought off the shelf from Canadian Chrysler without the startup costs of Bristol's own 3.65-litre all alloy 6 then in development. All post-1961 Bristols, including the later Blenheim and Fighter models, used Chrysler engines.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nOther sources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "922533": "Armoured train\nMilitary railway train\nAn armoured train (Commonwealth English) or armored train (American English) is a railway train protected with heavy metal plating and which often includes railway wagons armed with artillery, machine guns, and autocannons. Some have also had ports used to fire small arms from the inside of the train, especially in earlier armoured trains. For the most part, they were used during the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, when they offered an innovative way to quickly move large amounts of firepower into a new location.\nMost countries have discontinued their use since road vehicles became much more powerful and offered more flexibility, train tracks proved too vulnerable to sabotage and attacks from the air, and air transportation was an even more flexible way to relocate firepower to a new location. However, there have been occasional uses in the late 20th century and early 21st century. Russia has used improvised armoured trains during the Second Chechen War (1999\u20132009) and in its invasion of Ukraine (2022\u2013present).\nArmoured trains were historically fighting systems, equipped with heavy weapons such as artillery. An exception was the US \"White Train\", the Department of Energy Nuclear Weapons Transport Train, armoured and escorted by personnel armed with personal weapons.\nDefinition.\nAn armoured train is characterized by the armour from which it takes its name.\nIt is not to be confused with railway artillery, which includes a large-caliber gun and its crew, but without special protection from them. Trains simply equipped with light weapons without elaborate protective devices, e. g. a simple wagon with a few machine guns sheltered behind sandbags, are also not considered to be armoured trains.\nDesign and equipment.\nThe rail cars on an armoured train were designed for many tasks. Typical roles included:\nDifferent types of armour were used to protect from attack by tanks. In addition to various metal plates, concrete and sandbags were used in some cases for improvised armoured trains.\nArmoured trains were sometimes escorted by a kind of rail-tank called a draisine. One such example was the 'Littorina' armoured trolley which had a cab in the front and rear, each with a control set so it could be driven down the tracks in either direction. Littorina mounted two dual 7.92\u00a0mm MG13 machine gun turrets from Panzer I light tanks.\nHistory.\nOrigins.\nArmoured and armed trains saw use during the 19th century in the American Civil War (1861\u20131865), the Franco-Prussian War (1870\u20131871), the First and Second Boer Wars (1880\u20131881 and 1899\u20131902). During the Second Boer War Winston Churchill, then a war correspondent, was travelling on an armoured train which was ambushed by a Boer commando led by General Louis Botha on 15 November 1899; the Boers captured Churchill and many of the train's contingent.\nEarly in the 20th century, Russia used armoured trains during the Russo-Japanese War. Armoured trains were also used during the Mexican Revolution (1910\u20131920) and World War I (1914\u20131918). The most intensive use of armoured trains was during the Russian Civil War (1918\u20131920). During the Chinese Civil War, White Russian emigrants in the service of Marshal Zhang Zuchang built 14 armored trains in 1924\u20131928. Some of them, for example \"Peking\" (\"Beijing\") were built on the model of the First World War of the type \"Zaamurets\" (later the Czech \"Orlik\"). The Spanish Civil War saw a little use of armoured trains, though World War II (1939\u20131945) saw more. The French used them during the First Indochina War (1946\u20131954), a number of countries had armoured trains during the Cold War, and they were used during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.\nAmerican Civil War.\nThe most successful armed train was a single armoured wagon built to defend the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad. The railroad had been attacked by southern forces to prevent transport of Union soldiers to the front, and snipers were discouraging men attempting to repair the damage. Baldwin Locomotive Works modified a baggage wagon in late April 1861. A 24-pounder howitzer was placed on a swivel mount at the opposite end of the wagon from the pushing locomotive. The sides of the wagon were sheathed with oak planks covered with boiler plate. The end of the wagon around the howitzer was fitted with hinged panels which could be temporarily lifted to aim and fire the howitzer and then lowered to protect the crew of six men loading the howitzer with canister shot or grapeshot. The remainder of the wagon contained fifty ports for riflemen. The wagon was effective for its original purpose, but vulnerability to artillery rendered such wagons of comparatively little use during later stages of the war. In August 1864, a Confederate raiding party disabled a Baltimore and Ohio Railroad locomotive pushing an armoured wagon, and then piled ties around the armoured wagon and set them afire.\nVolunteers.\nIn 1884 Charles Gervaise Boxall (1852\u20131914), a Brighton-born solicitor and officer in the 1st Sussex Artillery Volunteers, published \"The Armoured Train for Coast Defence in Great Britain\", outlining a new way to employ heavy artillery. In 1894, when he had become commanding officer of the 1st Sussex AV, railway workers among the volunteers of No 6 Garrison Company manned an armoured train constructed in the workshops of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (of which the unit's Honorary Colonel, Sir Julian Goldsmid, was a director).\nSecond Boer War.\nThe British Army employed armoured trains during the Second Boer War, most famously a train that was extemporised in the railway workshops at Ladysmith just before the siege was closed round the town. On 15 November 1899 it left the town on reconnaissance manned by a company of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers under the command of Captain Aylmer Haldane, a company of volunteers of the Durban Light Infantry, and a 7-pounder mountain gun manned by sailors from HMS \"Tartar\". Winston Churchill accompanied the mission as a war correspondent. The train was ambushed and part-derailed, and H"}, "descending_order": ["14465435", "160678", "30959527", "169486", "922533"], "permutation_1": ["160678", "14465435", "169486", "30959527", "922533"], "permutation_2": ["922533", "169486", "160678", "30959527", "14465435"], "permutation_3": ["30959527", "169486", "14465435", "922533", "160678"]}
{"id": "2hop__768704_145386", "docs_added": {"782487": "Nat Adderley\nAmerican jazz cornet & trumpet player (1931\u20132000)\nNathaniel Carlyle Adderley (November 25, 1931 \u2013 January 2, 2000) was an American jazz trumpeter. He was the younger brother of saxophonist Julian \"Cannonball\" Adderley, with whom he played for many years.\nAdderley's composition \"Work Song\" (1960) is a jazz standard, and also became a success on the pop charts after singer Oscar Brown Jr. wrote lyrics for it.\nEarly life.\nNat Adderley was born in Tampa, Florida, but moved to Tallahassee when his parents were hired to teach at Florida A&M University. His father played trumpet professionally in his younger years, and he passed down his trumpet to Cannonball. When Cannonball picked up the alto saxophone, he passed the trumpet to Nat, who began playing in 1946. He and Cannonball played with Ray Charles in the early 1940s in Tallahassee and in amateur gigs around the area.\nAdderley attended Florida A&M University, majoring in sociology with a minor in music. He switched to cornet in 1950. From 1951 to 1953, he served in the army and played in the army band under his brother, taking at least one tour of Korea before returning to a station in the United States. After returning home, he attended Florida A&M intending to become a teacher.\nShortly before Adderley was expected to begin student teaching, Lionel Hampton played a concert at Florida A&M. Confident in his abilities, he played for Hampton, and Hampton invited him to join the band. Putting school on hold, he played under Hampton from 1954 to 1955 and visited Europe on tour. After returning, he intended to go back to school to become a teacher.\nCareer.\n1950s.\nThe turning point in the Adderley brothers' careers occurred on a trip to New York in 1955. The brothers stopped by the Caf\u00e9 Bohemia in Greenwich Village when bassist Oscar Pettiford was playing. Both of them showed up ready to play. Cannonball was asked to sit in because the regular saxophonist, Jerome Richardson was out, and he overwhelmed the musicians. Then Nat was pulled on stage, and everyone was equally impressed. This appearance was enough to renew their careers. Job offers began pouring in, and Nat recorded for the first time that year.\nThe brothers moved to New York City, founding the bop group Cannonball Adderley Quintet in 1956. Due to a lack of popular interest, they disbanded the group in 1957. Nat played for trombonist J. J. Johnson for a couple of years and ended up in the Woody Herman sextet. Cannonball gained a higher profile and joined the Miles Davis sextet alongside John Coltrane in time to record the album \"Kind of Blue\".\nIn 1959, the Cannonball Adderley Quintet reunited. This time around the group was more successful and had its first hit, \"This Here\", written by pianist Bobby Timmons. The group sound became known as soul jazz, starting the genre. The quintet also played hard bop, as everyone in the group had been influenced by bebop and wanted to continue a virtuosic tradition. Soul jazz kept the group popular, while hard bop gave the musicians a chance to challenge themselves and demonstrate their abilities.\n1960s.\nDuring the 1960s, Adderley acted as cornetist, composer, and manager for the quintet. While he kept the band in order, he also composed some of the group's most successful songs. His most successful song was \"Work Song\" (January 1960), a hard bop tune. Adderley called it his \"Social Security song\" due to the steady flow of income over the years from royalty payments when others recorded the song. \"Work Song\" is now considered a jazz standard. His other popular songs include \"Jive Samba\", \"Hummin'\", \"Sermonette\", and \"The Old Country\".\nWhile he was an integral part of the Cannonball Adderley Quintet, this was not the only project occupying his time in his career as a professional jazz musician. Since moving to New York, he had been recording outside the Adderley group. He worked with Kenny Clarke, Wes Montgomery, and Walter Booker.\nOther projects included the film \"A Man Called Adam\" (1966). In the film, Sammy Davis Jr.'s character plays the trumpet. Since Davis could not himself play the trumpet, Adderley was hired to ghost everything that the character played. His other significant project during this time was a musical. He and his brother wrote \"Shout Up a Morning\" based on the folk hero John Henry. While this project started as a collaboration, work was interrupted when Cannonball died from a stroke.\n1970s.\nAfter Cannonball's death in 1975, the quintet broke up. Nat Adderley toured Europe as a headliner. He toured Japan, then returned to the U.S. and taught courses at Harvard while performing and recording with his quintet, which included Walter Booker, Jimmy Cobb, and Vincent Herring. Adderley established himself in his own right. He also worked with Ron Carter, Sonny Fortune, Johnny Griffin, and Antonio Hart.\n1980s and later years.\nAdderley created the Adderley Brotherhood, a sextet which included several members of the Cannonball Adderley Quintet. This group toured Europe in 1980. \"Shout Up a Morning\", after having a concert performance in Carnegie Hall shortly after Cannonball's death, was staged in several locations around the United States in 1986. Adderley became involved in several other ensembles over the next decade, including the Paris Reunion Band and a group called the Riverside Reunion Band (after the Riverside label), a bop group that formed at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1993 and then toured Europe in 1994.\nAdderley spent half the year touring and the other half at home in Lakeland, Florida, writing and recording. He thought many of his greatest fans were in Japan, but Europeans were also enthusiastic about the music.\nIn 1997, he joined the faculty of Florida Southern College as an artist-in-residence. He also helped in the founding and development of the annual Child of the Sun Jazz Festival held annually at the university which he headlined for over a decade. During the same year, he was inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame in Kansas City.\nHe lived on 112th Street in Harlem in the 1960s and in Teaneck, New Jersey, in the 1970s, before moving to Lakeland. He also lived near his brother in Corona, Queens.\nDeath and legacy.\nNat Adderley died as a result of complications from diabetes at the age of 68 in Lakeland, Florida. He was interred near his brother in the Southside Cemetery in Tallahassee, Florida. He was survived by his wife, Ann; a son, Nat Adderley Jr. of West Orange, N.J.; a daughter, Alison Adderley-Pittman of Palm Bay, Florida; and five grandchildren.\nHe was an innovator in the popularization of soul jazz and was one of the most prolific jazz artists of his time, recording nearly 100 albums. He proved that cornet could be a modern jazz instrument.\nStyle.\nAlthough Adderley started playing trumpet, he switched to the less common cornet. He preferred the darker tone of the conical cornet to the brighter sound of the cylindrical trumpet. He could produce a rich, earthy tone that became his signature sound, one that could only come from the cornet. He also enjoyed the cornet's historic quality, reinvigorating the instrument played by early jazz musicians.\nAdderley is widely attributed with the development and establishment of the 1960s style of soul jazz along with the rest of the members Cannonball Adderley Quintet. This style is characterized by simple harmonies, a heavy blues feel, catchy riffs, and a presence of the church. The point of soul jazz was to bring back a simpler type of jazz that had direct influence from blues and church music.\nHowever, this is not the only style that Adderley wrote and played. The quintet was also widely known for their hard bop, which comprised roughly half of their recorded work. This is a rougher, edgier style descended from bebop, and virtuosic abilities are required to be able to play it.\nAs a soloist and composer, Adderley had a wide range of abilities. He could improvise simpler, more soulful solos for soul jazz numbers, but he could experiment and show off all of his abilities for hard bop. Especially in playing hard bop, he was not afraid to use the range of the instrument, often playing below the typical cornet range for short bursts before returning to the normal range. Although his range was starting to fade by the late 1960s, this did not keep him from continuing to play for the rest of his life.\nDiscography.\nAs leader.\nCompilation:\nAs sideman.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "26204433": "That's Nat\nThat's Nat is an album by jazz cornetist Nat Adderley first released on the Savoy label featuring performances by Adderley with Jerome Richardson, Hank Jones, Wendell Marshall, and Kenny Clarke.\nReception.\n\"The Penguin Guide to Jazz\" states \"Jones comping is inch-perfect throughout and Clarke is right on the case, often following Adderley outside the basic count for a phrase or two\". The Allmusic review stated \"His pithy, pungent trumpet and cornet work is effective in a hard bop context, although his own work outside his brother's group has never seemed quite as effective\".\nTrack listing.\nAll compositions by Nat Adderley & Julian \"Cannonball\" Adderley except where noted\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21053366": "Nat &amp; Alex Wolff\nAmerican rock duo\nNat & Alex Wolff are an American pop rock duo from New York City, consisting of actor and musician siblings, Nat and Alex Wolff. The siblings' musical efforts were initially discovered during their work on the Nickelodeon television series \"The Naked Brothers Band\", which was created and produced by their mother, actress Polly Draper. It was adapted from the mockumentary film that Draper wrote and directed. The duo's initial teen pop boy band called \"The Naked Brothers Band\" was depicted as part of its participation in their Nickelodeon series that aired from 2007 to 2009.\nHistory.\n2001\u20132004: Early years and the \"Silver Boulders\".\nWhile Nat was in preschool, he formed a band called the Silver Boulders with his friends, which included David, Thomas, Josh, Walker (son of news journalist Ann Curry), and Cal (son of actress Julianne Moore). Nat wrote his first song titled \"Mama Don't Let Me Cry\" at the age of five. At the time, Alex was not allowed to be part of the band, as Nat felt it would be unfashionable to have a brother in the same ensemble.\nWhen Nat, who lives in Lower Manhattan of New York City, was four years old, his father, jazz pianist Michael Wolff (bandleader on \"The Arsenio Hall Show\") played Nat music, primarily jazz. One day, Michael overheard Nat teaching himself how to play major chords on the piano; Nat told his father that they were his \"proud chords\". After hearing the music of The Beatles, Nat became inspired and watched all the group's films including \"Help!.\" On the other hand. Alex discovered how to play the saxophone at the age of two and a half. As recalled by the boys' mother, actress Polly Draper (star on ABC's \"Thirtysomething\"), Nat and Alex were infants when they arose from a bath proclaiming, \"We're the naked brothers band!\"\nAfter the September 11 attacks, six-year-old Nat composed the song \"Firefighters\" for a benefit he performed with his band, staged behind his Lower Manhattan apartment. Alex desired to be part of the concert, and so Nat created \"a fake plastic saxophone\" for him to play. The charity ended up raising over $45,000 and was donated to the children of the firefighters who were killed during the terrorist attacks. After the band's charity concert, the band performed shows at Christmas parties and wedding ceremonies.\nAfter being inspired by Ringo Starr from the Beatles, Alex chose the drums as an alternative instrument to play. Alex learned how to play, as he viewed tapes of Starr playing, which resulted in him becoming a proficient drummer. This persuaded Nat to allow Alex to join his band. At the age of 6, Nat composed a melody without lyrics. He later desired to compose a song that sounded like The Beach Boys' music. Subsequently, Nat wrote the song \"Crazy Car\".\nIn 2003, Nat was featured in his mother's play \"Getting Into Heaven\" at The Flea Theater. Nat also performed in \"The Heart of Baghdad\" at the same theater.\n2004\u20132009: \"The Naked Brothers Band\".\nNat begged his mom to be a child actor by putting signs on his door that said: \"I want to be a child actor!\" At first, she refused by explaining that it would be too difficult, so she made a compromise with Nat; in 2003, she let him film his own sitcom titled \"Don't Eat Off My Plate\". After that, Nat begged his dad to record a tape in the studio with Alex and him, so Michael arranged a recording session for the three of them in the studio. While Draper saw them recording in the studio, she came up with the idea to make a \"mock documentary\" about the band as if they were huge like The Beatles. During summer 2004, the film took production at the family's real-life apartment and throughout New York City, at which time Nat was 9 and Alex was 6-and-a-half. Draper wrote and directed \"\", which was designed as an independent family project with a budget under $1,000,000. The film consisted of celebrities who were friends with Draper and Wolff, including Cyndi Lauper, Julianne Moore, Ann Curry, Uma Thurman, Tony Shalhoub, Ricki Lake, Arsenio Hall, and the complete cast of \"Thirtysomething.\" Nat Wolff wrote and performed all the songs, except for \"That's How It Is\", which was written and performed by Alex Wolff. \nOn October 23, 2005, Draper and Wolff entered the film at the Hamptons International Film Festival, where it won the audience award for family feature film. Meanwhile, Albie Hecht, a former Nickelodeon executive and founder of Spike TV, was in the audience that day. He ended up bringing the film to Nickelodeon, suggesting they develop it into a television series. Tom Asheim, the vice president and general manager of Nickelodeon said:\n \"At first, we were intrigued by the idea, but we weren't sure kids would get the vague-tongue-and-check-of-it. Then a bunch of us took it home to our own children and they loved it.\"\nEventually, the staff at Nickelodeon persuaded Draper to put together a television series after comprising with short, 13 episode seasons over the summer and early autumn, so the boys were able to attend private school throughout most of the school year. Draper recalled, \"When Nickelodeon first asked us about doing a series, we said, 'How about a cartoon, so the kids could stay normal?' They said, 'No, we love your kids.'\" In the summer through the early fall of 2006, the first season of the self-titled series took production. On January 27, 2007, \"The Naked Brothers Band: The Movie\" aired on Nickelodeon, and the self-titled series aired February 3. Polly Draper was the creator, head writer, executive producer, and frequent director of the series.\nNat and Alex never really realized how big they were until October 8, 2007. Band members Nat, Alex, Thomas, David, Allie DiMeco (who stars as Rosalina and Nat's crush on the film and TV series), and Qaasim Middleton (who replaced former band-member Josh on the series) had an autograph-signing at Times Square Virgin Megastore for the band's release of their self-titled debut album \"The Naked Brothers Band\". There were 1,500 fans that waited outside of Virgin Megastore for hours; some camped out overnight. They also had a live performance on ABC's \"Good Morning America\" with the band's song \"I'm Out\".\nNat stated that for the series, he would write 14-15 songs for each episode. On April 15, 2008, the brothers released their second album, \"I Don't Want To Go To School\". The album had a total of 12 tracks, along with two bonus tracks, and a poster. As part of a Wal-Mart special sale, it included a DVD featuring a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the Draper-Wolff family and the siblings' bandmates.\nThe brothers then started their first national-tour, called Nat & Alex Wolff: Fully Clothed & On Tour, which started on November 1, 2008. Nat and Alex, along with professionally trained musicians that include Jacob Hertzog (music director, guitar and backup vocals), Misty Boyce (keyboards and backup vocals), Chris Muir (musician)|Chris Muir (bass and backup vocals), and Boris Pelekh (guitar, drums and backup vocals)\", performed songs from and even some from the upcoming episodes.\" Some concerts they performed at include the Capital One Bank Theater in New York City, the Theater of the Living Arts in Philadelphia, the Berkeley Performance Center in Boston, The Roxy in Los Angeles, and the House of Blues in Chicago, New Orleans, Florida and California. The tour ended shortly after on December 14, 2008.\n2009\u20132010: Duo career and touring.\nAfter \"The Naked Brothers Band\" television show ended in 2009, the brothers continued to pursue music but emerged as a duo group, as the duo's old band name was owned by Viacom, a trademark of Nickelodeon. The initial band ended, partially due to the conclusion of the television series, which was abruptly cancelled at the request of Draper, who claimed the production schedule was too much for the brothers, on top of their education.\nFrequent touring band members \u2014 Jake Hertzog, Boris Pelekh, Chris Muir and Misty Boyce \u2014 provided back-up instrumentation for the brothers as they toured in 2008. Following the 2008 tour, the brothers confirmed their first full-length summer tour, titled \"Nat & Alex Wolff: Summer Road Trip Tour\". It began in June 2009 and ended in early October 2009.\nThe brothers performed at Pop-Con 2010, alongside Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, and many other teen performers. Thereafter, the duo performed at the Earth Day 2010 concert in New York and played many new songs there, such as \"Fire and Kerosene\", \"18\", \"Disappointed\" and others. It was during these performances that the brothers realised crowds had begun to shrink, something that come as a surprise to them.\nAfter the brothers completed their tour in 2009, they revealed that they were working on a new studio album, post their Nickelodeon TV series. Two demo tracks \u2014 a cover of Bruce Springsteen's song \"Dancing In The Dark\" and of The Beatles' song, \"A Hard Day's Night\" \u2014 were leaked onto the siblings' official website.\n2010\u20132012: \"Black Sheep\".\nThe brothers began recording their first non-Nickelodeon studio album in early 2010. Of the writing process, Nat said, \"The material is a bit more mature, as I have matured as a [song]writer.\" Leading up to the album's release, the brothers starred in their own web series on YouTube, which was written and directed by their mother, Polly Draper. New episodes were uploaded weekly in the lead up to the release of the album; most of which featured snippets of tracks that appeared on the album. \nThe album, \"Black Sheep\", was released in the fall of 2011. The album was produced by their father and Daniel Wise, a client at The Soundmine Recording Studio.\n2013\u20132020: Smaller Releases and \"Public Places\".\nFollowing a brief period of touring, in October 2013, Nat & Alex Wolff released an album of previously unreleased songs, entitled \"Throwbacks\". The album primarily consisted of songs the musicians wrote during their time on their Nickelodeon show, \"The Naked Brothers Band\". The songs were initially to be released in 2009, however, due to contracts with the brothers, the rights to the music were occupied by Nickelodeon.\nIn 2014, the brothers continued to release music, in the form of several double-singles. In late 2014, they released a double-single, \"Cities/It's Just Love\". Three months later, they released \"\"Last Station/Rules\",\" and, on October 7, an additional double-single, consisting of \"\"Where I'm Goin'\"\" by Alex, and \"Rock Star\" by Nat, described as 'melodic folk tunes, perfect for a chilly fall day'. An alternate version of \"Rock Star\" was also featured in the 2013 teen romance film \"Palo Alto\" which included Nat in a starring role.\nIn 2015, Nat penned and performed the single, \"Look Outside\", which featured in the feature film, \"Paper Towns\", also starring Nat.\nThe brothers released their first extended play in November 2016, titled \"Public Places\". \nIn late 2019, the duo released the double-single, \"Cool Kids/Note\". Whilst the duo did not release any major efforts over the next couple of years, they continued performing live for fans on their social media accounts, and even reunited with former \"Naked Brothers Band\" cast-mates for a live sing-along reunion on Instagram in 2020, during the COVID lockdown. In late 2020, they released the track, \"Glue\", which was inspired by Fleetwood Mac, the Replacements and the National.\n2021-2024: \"Table For Two\" and Subsequent Touring.\nAs COVID lockdown forced the brothers to share a living space once again, the two started to collaborate on new music, experimenting with different genres and sounds. In September 2022, the brothers released \"All Over You\", a Prince-inspired genre bending tune, described by Nat as, \u201cthe tune you put on the night before you leave town when you\u2019ve just fallen in love.\" The duo finally released their second studio album, \"Table For Two\", on June 15, 2023. According to Paste Magazine, the Matt Wallace and Tone Def-produced album was 'unrushed, initially meant to come out in 2021, but Alex and Nat chose to push it back while focusing on their ever-more-complex medley of side hustles and big-name gigs.'\nFollowing the album's release, the brothers began touring in January 2024, noting it was the first 'fun' tour they had embarked on in years, and that it was 'just the beginning' of their musical journey.\n2024-Present: Third Studio Album.\nIn an Instagram post on March 8, 2024, the brothers revealed they had finished their third studio album.\nOn September 9, 2024, the two were announced to open at shows for Billie Eilish's \nMusical style and influences.\nOriginally, the band was a bubblegum pop-style group, over time however, the band evolved to have a more rock-based sound. The brothers were inspired by their favorite rock band: the Beatles. Alex learned to play the drums by watching Ringo Starr on the \"Anthology\" tapes. Nat has stated that the two of them were very inspired by Nirvana, the Killers, the Doors, and Coldplay. \nBand members.\nCurrent members\nFormer touring members\nDiscography.\nAlbums.\nAs The Naked Brothers Band\nAs Nat & Alex Wolff\nSingles.\n\"The Naked Brothers Band\"\n\"Nat & Alex Wolff\"\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "13619028": "Nat Wolff\nAmerican actor, musician, and singer-songwriter\nNathaniel Marvin Wolff (born December 17, 1994), known by his nickname and professionally as Nat Wolff, is an American actor, musician, and singer-songwriter. He initially gained recognition for composing the music for \"The Naked Brothers Band\" (2007\u20132009), a Nickelodeon television series he starred in with his younger brother, Alex, that was created by their actress mother, Polly Draper. Wolff's jazz musician father, Michael Wolff, co-produced the series' soundtrack albums \"The Naked Brothers Band\" (2007) and \"I Don't Want to Go to School\" (2008), both of which placed the 23rd spot on the \"Billboard 200\" charts.\nAfter the Nickelodeon series concluded, Wolff and his brother formed the music duo Nat & Alex Wolff and they released the albums \"Black Sheep\" (2011), \"Public Places\" (2016), and \"Table for Two\" (2023). He later became known for his lead role in the film \"Paper Towns\" (2015) and starring in other movies, such as \"Admission\" (2013), \"Behaving Badly\" (2013), \"Palo Alto\" (2013), \"The Fault in Our Stars\" (2014), \"Ashby\" (2015), \"Home Again\" (2017), the Netflix adaptation of \"Death Note\" (2017), \"Stella's Last Weekend\" (2018), \"Rosy\" (2018), and \"Mortal\" (2020).\nEarly and personal life.\nWolff was born on December 17, 1994, in Los Angeles, California, to jazz musician Michael Wolff and actress Polly Draper. He is the older brother of actor and musician Alex Wolff. His uncle is venture capitalist Tim Draper, and he is a cousin to TV personality and venture capitalist Jesse Draper. He is also a maternal grandson of venture capitalist and civic leader William Henry Draper III, and a great-grandson to banker and diplomat William Henry Draper, Jr. His father is Jewish, while his mother is from a Christian background.\nWolff has Tourette's syndrome that he inherited from his father.\nWhen Nat and his younger brother, Alex, were toddlers, they climbed out of the bathtub and referred to themselves as \"the naked brothers band\", which inspired the name of the Nickelodeon TV series.\nNat taught himself to play major and minor chords on the piano at the age of 4. As his father recalls, \"I asked him, 'How did you learn them?' He said, 'Dad, they're right here.' I said, 'What are those chords?' He said, 'These are my proud chords.'\" Around this age, Wolff's passion for The Beatles emboldened him to start writing his own songs. Throughout the years he attended preschool, he, alongside his best friends, constructed a band called The Silver Boulders.\nIn the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Nat held his seventh birthday party outside his apartment, which is where he and his band performed a song he composed called \"Firefighters\". The benefit concert was a success; it garnered over $46,000 and was donated to the families of New York City Fire Department's Squad 18.\nAt 8 years old, Wolff placed a sign on his bedroom door stating: \"I want to be a child actor!\" As a result, his mother appeased Nat by allowing him to film his own sitcom titled \"Don't Eat Off My Plate\", which served as the basis for \"\".\nDespite the success of the subsequent Nickelodeon series over the course of three seasons, the network proposed to shoot a 30 TV movie fourth season during the school year, leading his parents to cancel the series in 2009. From the beginning, they were hesitant to expose Nat and Alex to stardom at a young age and later agreed to the series spin-off on the provision that filming would take place only during the summer and early fall, which allowed him and his brother to proceed with their enrollment at private school in New York City.\nIn 2008, Wolff, then aged 13, wrote a song called \"Yes We Can\" that was featured in the Nickelodeon TV series, as a tribute to Barack Obama's presidential campaign. The song was overheard by Obama and his two daughters, who endorsed it and called him to express their gratitude.\nCareer.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"Having our life turned into a mockumentary wasn't as big a deal as some would think. We took all the friendships, Alex's one liners, and my music and put it into a storyline; it was a heightened reality... The show created a great audience for us...\"\nDuring his childhood, Wolff began his acting career off-Broadway with a minor role in his mother's play \"Getting into Heaven\" (2003) and in \"Heartbeat to Baghdad\" (2004), both staged at The Flea Theater in Manhattan, New York. At this time, he frequently performed at the Improv Comedy Club, also located in Manhattan.\nHe later gained recognition, at the age of 9, for starring in and contributing lead vocals, lyrics, and instrumentation for the film \"\" that was written and directed by his mother and screened at the Hamptons International Film Festival in 2005. \nHowever, Wolff did not first rise to prominence until he was 12 years old after the film was bought by a former Nickelodeon executive at the festival as the pilot for the Nickelodeon television series of the same name (2007\u201309). The series was also created, showrun, written, and directed by his mother, while his brother was featured in the ensemble cast and played the drums. His father co-starred, as well as produced and supervised the music. It released two soundtrack albums that were charted on the \"Billboard 200\", with the single \"Crazy Car\" ranking #83 on the \"Billboard Hot 100\". Wolff, who was 9 when he recorded the song under the guidance of his father in the studio, is believed to be the youngest person to compose a song featured on the \"Billboard\" charts.\nWolff's TV movie credits include a cameo in \"Mr. Troop Mom\" (2009), as well as starring alongside his brother in \"Stella's Last Weekend\" (2018), which was written and directed by his mother, who also co-starred. He appeared in the Netflix film based on the manga of the same name \"Death Note\" (2017), and was cast in several theatrical movies, such as \"New Year's Eve\" (2011), \"Peace, Love & Misunderstanding\" (2011), \"Admission\" (2013), \"Palo Alto\" (2013), \"Behaving Badly\" (2014), \"The Fault in Our Stars\" (2015), \"Paper Towns\" (2015), \"Home Again\" (2017), \"Rosy\" (2018), \"Good Posture\" (2019), and \"Mortal\" (2020).\nHis other off-Broadway performances comprise roles in his brother's play \"What Would Woody Do?\" (2010) at The Flea Theater, and in the revival of Sam Shepard's play \"Buried Child\" (2016).\nAs of 2024, Wolff and his brother have been touring with Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter and musician Billie Eilish as the opening act for her concerts across the United States.\nAlbums.\nSoundtrack albums as part of the TV series \"The Naked Brothers Band\"\nStudio albums as duo Nat & Alex Wolff\nSingles\nAwards and nominations.\n\"The Naked Brothers Band\" film and TV series earned Wolff two awards and many other nominations. In 2005, \"The Naked Brothers Band: The Movie\" obtained him an Audience Award for a Family Feature Film. He received a Broadcast Music, Inc. Cable Award for composing the series' music in 2007. In 2008, Wolff was given a Young Artist Award nomination for Best Young Ensemble Performance in a TV Series. Wolff took another Young Artist Award nomination for Best Performance in a TV Series (Comedy or Drama) - Leading Young Actor and one Kids' Choice Award nomination for Best TV Actor in 2009. In 2010, he was also given a Young Artist Award nomination for Best Performance in a TV Series (Comedy or Drama) \u2013 Leading Young Actor. \nIn 2014, Wolff won two Teen Choice Awards in the categories of Choice Movie: Scene Stealer and Choice Movie: Chemistry for \"The Fault in Our Stars\". That following year in 2015, he was honored with a CinemaCon Award for a Rising Star.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "61483230": "Lil Nat\nAmerican radio personality (born 1975)\nNatalie \"Lil Nat\" Barrington (born February 8, 1975) is an American radio personality. Lil Nat is the former host of New York Citys Hot 97 and 98.7 Kiss FM overnights. Currently, she hosts the primetime radio show Digital Empire Nation on and One West Radio (107FM).\nLil Nat was born in Brooklyn New York to Jamaican parents. She then pursued a career in dance. Due to injury she then switched majors to Film, Arts, television, and radio at NYU. While receiving her degree she had her own R&B Radio Show on and interviewed celebrity artists such as Erykah Badu.\nCareer.\nNat received an internship at Emmis communications, within a year she was promoted to assistant producer of The Isaac Hayes Morning show. During that time she also was responsible for station commercials, where she met Dj Funkmaster Flex who gave her the name Lil Nat. Eventually, she was given the job on Hot 97 FM as the overnight host where she was crowned. While Nat did her show, she was also responsible for the backstage interviews at key events like, Summer Jam and several other Hot 97 events. Emmis soon decided to switch things up and moved Nat's overnight show from Hot 97 to 98.7 Kiss FM. Lil Nat stayed on overnights till 98.7 became Espn radio in 2012.\nIn 2011 she started NB productions in which she developed LilNat.com and began production on her cooking show. By 2013 Lil Nat decided to get back on the radio but with her own rules and she created Digital Empire Nation. The show aired on Gidradio.com for 6 months until she moved to. Since inception Digital Empire Nation has become syndicated in LA on 107FM and Power 104.9FM in Kokomo Indiana.\nActing.\nNat has done some acting during her career in the movie Still a teen movie in 2009 which she played a radio personality. In 2018 web series a role in the web series Bum rush. Lil Nat has also been a guest host on Video Music Box with Ralph McDaniels and she has appeared on Tha L Spot show on Bric Media.\nPersonal life.\nNat has a son named Terrell Rockwell with Mr Walt of Da Beatminerz.\nLil Nat is also an avid supporter of the Strides against Breast Cancer Awareness.\nOther endeavors.\nLil Nat is also a published writer, she has an article entitled Vibin with Nat published in DJ Kay Slay's Straight Stuntin Magazine.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "28142444": "Nat (caste)\nHindu Social group in India\nThe Nat are a caste found in northern India. Their traditional occupation has been that of entertainers and dancers.\nHistory and origin.\nThose of Bihar claim a Rajput origin, and have traditions similar to the Bazigar caste. The word \"nat\" in Sanskrit means a dancer"}, "descending_order": ["21053366", "13619028", "61483230", "28142444", "26204433", "782487"], "permutation_1": ["28142444", "13619028", "21053366", "61483230", "782487", "26204433"], "permutation_2": ["782487", "13619028", "21053366", "26204433", "61483230", "28142444"], "permutation_3": ["782487", "28142444", "61483230", "26204433", "13619028", "21053366"]}
{"id": "2hop__343473_51888", "docs_added": {"5986242": "Pedra Branca (Tasmania)\nIsland in Australia\nPedra Branca is a rock islet in the Southern Ocean, off the southern coast of Tasmania, Australia. The island is situated approximately south southeast of South East Cape and is contained within the Southwest National Park, part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Site. An erosional remnant of the Tasmanian mainland, the island is approximately long, wide, with an elevation of above sea level. The island is estimated to have separated from the Tasmanian mainland at least 15,000 years ago.\nFeatures and location.\nPedra Branca experiences wet and windy weather, and large waves. With an area of , the island is small enough to provide an example of an outcrop that lies on the border between being a rock or islet and an island. The geology features three breccia cones of dolerite and sandstone.\nFlora and fauna.\nThe only plant species found on the island is the succulent \"Sarcocornia quinqueflora\". Recorded breeding seabird species include fairy prion, Pacific gull, silver gull, kelp gull, black-faced cormorant, Australasian gannet, and shy albatross. Australian fur seals use the island as a regular haul-out site while New Zealand fur seals visit occasionally.\nThe island is the only known habitat of a species of lizard, the Pedra Branca skink. An estimated 400 individuals survive, but the species is listed as vulnerable.\nImportant Bird Area.\nTogether with the nearby Eddystone and Sidmouth Rock the island constitutes the Pedra Branca Important Bird Area (IBA), identified as such by BirdLife International because it supports over 1% of the world populations of shy albatrosses and Australasian gannets.\nHistory.\nAbel Tasman led the first known European expedition to sight Tasmania. His journal entry for 29 November 1642 records that he observed a rock which was similar to a rock named Pedra Branca off China, presumably referring to the Pedra Branca in the South China Sea. The journal places Pedra Branca \"about four [Dutch] miles\" from the mainland of Tasmania; a Dutch mile from this period was about , thus 4 such Dutch miles would be , which is close to the actual distance of Pedra Branca from South East Cape.\nPedra Branca means \"white rock\" in Portuguese.\nShipwreck.\nOn 7 February 1973 \"Nisshin Maru No. 8\", a Japanese steel fishing vessel of led by Captain Nakayama, on its way to Hobart for a mechanical inspection, hit Pedra Branca and within a few minutes sank in deep water. In the ensuing confusion only one of the crew of 22, engineer Yoshiichi Meguro, managed to clamber onto the rocks and escape drowning. The fishing vessel \"Walrus\" rescued the survivor.\nThe \"Nisshin Maru No. 8\" disaster led to considerable improvements in communications between the various authorities that should have been able to mount a rescue operation many hours before this one was commenced. These included direct links between Japanese fishing boats and Australian shore stations, and correcting the inability of fishing vessels to directly contact warships and military aircraft, as they were unable to contact the Hobart emergency radio station which did not operate at night.\nWeather.\nWeather conditions in the area can be extreme, and Pedra Branca is occasionally swept by freak waves. On 15 April 2003, oceanographer Hamish Saunders drowned after being washed off Pedra Branca. The Tasmanian coroner's report includes testimony from three witnesses who described how Saunders was swept away when a \"wave hit the island resulting in heavy spray coming up to and over the level\". Waves were measured that day at up to by the Cape Sorell Waverider Buoy, some away.\nEtymology.\nPedra Branca is Portuguese for \"white rock\". According to historian Kenneth McIntyre, Pedra Branca is one of only two Australian places with a name of Portuguese origin, the other being the Houtman Abrolhos islands in Western Australia.\nSurfing.\nPedra Branca is home to a big wave surf break at a reef approximately offshore. Marti Paradisis was the first person to surf it. Later, in 2008, Ross Clarke-Jones and Tom Carroll joined local surfer Marti Paradisis and brothers James and Tyler Hollmer-Cross to shoot a story about it which was featured on 60 Minutes.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Stack/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "20611428": "Southern Ocean\nOcean around Antarctica\nThe Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, comprises the southernmost waters of the world ocean, generally taken to be south of 60\u00b0\u00a0S latitude and encircling Antarctica. With a size of , it is the second-smallest of the five principal oceanic divisions, smaller than the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans, and larger than the Arctic Ocean. \nThe maximum depth of the Southern Ocean, using the definition that it lies south of 60th parallel, was surveyed by the Five Deeps Expedition in early February 2019. The expedition's multibeam sonar team identified the deepest point at 60\u00b0 28' 46\"S, 025\u00b0 32' 32\"W, with a depth of . The expedition leader and chief submersible pilot Victor Vescovo, has proposed naming this deepest point the \"Factorian Deep\", based on the name of the crewed submersible \"DSV Limiting Factor\", in which he successfully visited the bottom for the first time on February 3, 2019.\nBy way of his voyages in the 1770s, James Cook proved that waters encompassed the southern latitudes of the globe. Yet, geographers have often disagreed on whether the Southern Ocean should be defined as a body of water bound by the seasonally fluctuating Antarctic Convergence \u2014 an oceanic zone where cold, northward flowing waters from the Antarctic mix with warmer Subantarctic waters \u2014 or not defined at all, with its waters instead treated as the southern limits of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) finally settled the debate after the full importance of Southern Ocean overturning circulation had been ascertained, and the term \"Southern Ocean\" now defines the body of water which lies south of the northern limit of that circulation. \nThe Southern Ocean overturning circulation is important because it makes up the second half of the global thermohaline circulation, after the better known Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). Much like AMOC, it has also been substantially affected by climate change, in ways that have increased ocean stratification, and which may also result in the circulation substantially slowing or even passing a tipping point and collapsing outright. The latter would have adverse impacts on global weather and the function of marine ecosystems here, unfolding over centuries. The ongoing warming is already changing marine ecosystems here.\nDefinition and term use.\nBorders and names for oceans and seas were internationally agreed when the International Hydrographic Bureau, the precursor to the IHO, convened the First International Conference on 24 July 1919. The IHO then published these in its \"Limits of Oceans and Seas\", the first edition being 1928. Since the first edition, the limits of the Southern Ocean have moved progressively southward; since 1953, it has been omitted from the official publication and left to local hydrographic offices to determine their own limits.\nThe IHO included the ocean and its definition as the waters south of the 60th parallel south in its 2000 revisions, but this has not been formally adopted, due to continuing impasses about some of the content, such as the naming dispute over the Sea of Japan. The 2000 IHO definition was circulated as a draft edition in 2002, and is used by some within the IHO and other organizations, such as the \"CIA World Factbook\" and Merriam-Webster.\nThe Australian Government regards the Southern Ocean as lying immediately south of Australia (see <templatestyles src=\"Crossreference/styles.css\" />).\nThe National Geographic Society recognized the ocean officially in June 2021. Prior to this, it depicted it in a typeface different from the other world oceans; instead, it showed the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans extending to Antarctica on both its print and online maps. Map publishers using the term Southern Ocean on their maps include Hema Maps and GeoNova.\nPre-20th century.\n\"Southern Ocean\" is an obsolete name for the Pacific Ocean or South Pacific, coined by the Spanish explorer Vasco N\u00fa\u00f1ez de Balboa, the first European to discover the Pacific, who approached it from the north in Panama. The \"South Seas\" is a less archaic synonym. A 1745 British Act of Parliament established a prize for discovering a Northwest Passage to \"the Western and Southern Ocean of \"America\"\".\nAuthors using \"Southern Ocean\" to name the waters encircling the unknown southern polar regions used varying limits. James Cook's account of his second voyage implies New Caledonia borders it. Peacock's 1795 \"Geographical Dictionary\" said it lay \"to the southward of America and Africa\"; John Payne in 1796 used 40 degrees as the northern limit; the 1827 \"Edinburgh Gazetteer\" used 50 degrees. The \"Family Magazine\" in 1835 divided the \"Great Southern Ocean\" into the \"Southern Ocean\" and the \"Antarctick [\"sic\"] Ocean\" along the Antarctic Circle, with the northern limit of the Southern Ocean being lines joining Cape Horn, the Cape of Good Hope, Van Diemen's Land and the south of New Zealand.\nThe United Kingdom's \"South Australia Act 1834\" described the waters forming the southern limit of the new province of South Australia as \"the Southern Ocean\". The Colony of Victoria's \"Legislative Council Act 1881\" delimited part of the division of Bairnsdale as \"along the New South Wales boundary to the Southern ocean\".\n1928 delineation.\nIn the 1928 first edition of \"Limits of Oceans and Seas\", the Southern Ocean was delineated by land-based limits: Antarctica to the south, and South America, Africa, Australia, and Broughton Island, New Zealand to the north.\nThe detailed land-limits used were from Cape Horn in Chile eastward to Cape Agulhas in Africa, then further eastward to the southern coast of mainland Australia to Cape Leeuwin, Western Australia. From Cape Leeuwin, the limit then followed eastward along the coast of mainland Australia to Cape Otway, Victoria, then southward across Bass Strait to Cape Wickham, King Island, along the west coast of King Island, then the remainder of the way south across Bass Strait to Cape Grim, Tasmania.\nThe limit then followed the west coast of Tasmania southward to the South East Cape and then went eastward to Broughton Island, New Zealand, before returning to Cape Horn.\n1937 delineation.\nThe northern limits of the Southern Ocean were moved southward in the IHO's 1937 second edition of the \"Limits of Oceans and Seas\". From this edition, much of the ocean's northern limit ceased to abut land masses.\nIn the second edition, the Southern Ocean then extended from Antarctica northward to latitude 40\u00b0S between Cape Agulhas in Africa (long. 20\u00b0E) and Cape Leeuwin in Western Australia (long. 115\u00b0E), and extended to latitude 55\u00b0S between Auckland Island of New Zealand (165 or 166\u00b0E east) and Cape Horn in South America (67\u00b0W).\nAs is discussed in more detail below, prior to the 2002 edition the limits of oceans explicitly excluded the seas lying within each of them. The Great Australian Bight was unnamed in the 1928 edition, and delineated as shown in the figure above in the 1937 edition. It therefore encompassed former Southern Ocean waters\u2014as designated in 1928\u2014but was technically not inside any of the three adjacent oceans by 1937.\nIn the 2002 draft edition, the IHO have designated \"seas\" as subdivisions within \"oceans\", so the Bight would have still been within the Southern Ocean in 1937 if the 2002 convention were in place then. To perform direct comparisons of current and former limits of oceans it is necessary to consider, or at least be aware of, how the 2002 change in IHO terminology for \"seas\" can affect the comparison.\n1953 delineation.\nThe Southern Ocean did not appear in the 1953 third edition of \"Limits of Oceans and Seas\", a note in the publication read:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nInstead, in the IHO 1953 publication, the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans were extended southward, the Indian and Pacific Oceans (which had not previously touched pre 1953, as per the first and second editions) now abutted at the meridian of South East Cape, and the southern limits of the Great Australian Bight and the Tasman Sea were moved northward.\n2002 draft delineation.\nThe IHO readdressed the question of the Southern Ocean in a survey in 2000. Of its 68 member nations, 28 responded, and all responding members except Argentina agreed to redefine the ocean, reflecting the importance placed by oceanographers on ocean currents. The proposal for the name \"Southern Ocean\" won 18 votes, beating the alternative \"Antarctic Ocean\". Half of the votes supported a definition of the ocean's northern limit at the 60th parallel south\u2014with no land interruptions at this latitude\u2014with the other 14\u00a0votes cast for other definitions, mostly the 50th parallel south, but a few for as far north as the 35th parallel south. Notably, the Southern Ocean Observing System collates data from latitudes higher than 40 degrees south.\nA draft fourth edition of \"Limits of Oceans and Seas\" was circulated to IHO member states in August 2002 (sometimes referred to as the \"2000 edition\" as it summarized the progress to 2000). It has yet to be published due to 'areas of concern' by several countries relating to various naming issues around the world \u2013 primarily the Sea of Japan naming dispute \u2013 and there have been various changes: 60 seas were given new names, and even the name of the publication was changed. A reservation had also been lodged by Australia regarding the Southern Ocean limits. Effectively, the third edition\u2014which did not delineate the Southern Ocean leaving delineation to local hydrographic offices\u2014has yet to be superseded.\nDespite this, the fourth edition definition has partial \"de facto\" usage by many nations, scientists, and organisations such as the U.S. (the \"CIA World Factbook\" uses \"Southern Ocean\", but none of the other new sea names within the \"Southern Ocean\", such as the \"Cosmonauts Sea\") and Merriam-Webster, scientists and nations\u00a0\u2013 and even by some within the IHO. Some nations' hydrographic offices have defined their own boundaries; the United Kingdom used the 55th parallel south for example. Other organisations favour more northerly limits for the Southern Ocean. For example, \"Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica\" describes the Southern Ocean as extending as far north as South America, and confers great significance on the Antarctic Convergence, yet its description of the Indian Ocean contradicts this, describing the Indian Ocean as extending south to Antarctica.\nOther sources, such as the National Geographic Society, show the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans as extending to Antarctica on its maps, although articles on the National Geographic web site have begun to reference the Southern Ocean.\nA radical shift from past IHO practices (1928\u20131953) was also seen in the 2002 draft edition when the IHO delineated \"seas\" as subdivisions within the boundaries of \"oceans\". While the IHO are often considered the authority for such conventions, the shift brought them into line with the practices of other publications (e.g. the CIA \"World Fact Book\") which already adopted the principle that seas are contained within oceans. This difference in practice is markedly seen for the Pacific Ocean in the adjacent figure. Thus, for example, previously the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand was not regarded by the IHO as part of the Pacific, but as of the 2002 draft edition it is.\nThe new delineation of seas as subdivisions of oceans has avoided the need to interrupt the northern boundary of the Southern Ocean where intersected by Drake Passage which includes all of the waters from South America to the Antarctic coast, nor interrupt it for the Scotia Sea, which also extends below the 60th parallel south. The new delineation of seas has also meant that the long-time named seas around Antarctica, excluded from the 1953 edition (the 1953 map did not even extend that far south), are automatically part of the Southern Ocean.\nAustralian standpoint.\nIn Australia, cartographical authorities define the Southern Ocean as including the entire body of water between Antarctica and the south coasts of Australia and New Zealand, and up to 60\u00b0S elsewhere. Coastal maps of Tasmania and South Australia label the sea areas as \"Southern Ocean\" and Cape Leeuwin in Western Australia is described as the point where the Indian and Southern Oceans meet.\nHistory of exploration.\nUnknown southern land.\nExploration of the Southern Ocean was inspired by a belief in the existence of a \"Terra Australis\" \u2013 a vast continent in the far south of the globe to \"balance\" the northern lands of Eurasia and North Africa \u2013 which had existed since the times of Ptolemy. The rounding of the Cape of Good Hope in 1487 by Bartolomeu Dias first brought explorers within touch of the Antarctic cold, and proved that there was an ocean separating Africa from any Antarctic land that might exist. Ferdinand Magellan, who passed through the Strait of Magellan in 1520, assumed that the islands of Tierra del Fuego to the south were an extension of this unknown southern land. In 1564, Abraham Ortelius published his first map, \"Typus Orbis Terrarum\", an eight-leaved wall map of the world, on which he identified the \"Regio Patalis\" with \"Locach\" as a northward extension of the \"Terra Australis\", reaching as far as New Guinea.\nEuropean geographers continued to connect the coast of Tierra del Fuego with the coast of New Guinea on their globes, and allowing their imaginations to run riot in the vast unknown spaces of the south Atlantic, south Indian and Pacific oceans they sketched the outlines of the \"Terra Australis Incognita\" (\"Unknown Southern Land\"), a vast continent stretching in parts into the tropics. The search for this great south land was a leading motive of explorers in the 16th and the early part of the 17th centuries.\nThe Spaniard Gabriel de Castilla, who claimed having sighted \"snow-covered mountains\" beyond the 64\u00b0 S in 1603, is recognized as the first explorer that discovered the continent of Antarctica, although he was ignored in his time.\nIn 1606, Pedro Fern\u00e1ndez de Quir\u00f3s took possession for the king of Spain all of the lands he had discovered in Australia del Espiritu Santo (the New Hebrides) and those he would discover \"even to the Pole\".\nFrancis Drake, like Spanish explorers before him, had speculated that there might be an open channel south of Tierra del Fuego. When Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire discovered the southern extremity of Tierra del Fuego and named it Cape Horn in 1615, they proved that the Tierra del Fuego archipelago was of small extent and not connected to the southern land, as previously thought. Subsequently, in 1642, Abel Tasman showed that even New Holland (Australia) was separated by sea from any continuous southern continent.\nSouth of the Antarctic Convergence.\nThe visit to South Georgia by Anthony de la Roch\u00e9 in 1675 was the first-ever discovery of land south of the Antarctic Convergence, i.e. in the Southern Ocean/Antarctic. Soon after the voyage cartographers started to depict \"Roch\u00e9 Island\", honouring the discoverer. James Cook was aware of la Roch\u00e9's discovery when surveying and mapping the island in 1775.\nEdmond Halley's voyage in for magnetic investigations in the South Atlantic met the pack ice in 52\u00b0\u00a0S in January 1700, but that latitude (he reached off the north coast of South Georgia) was his farthest south. A determined effort on the part of the French naval officer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier to discover the \"South Land\" \u2013 described by a half legendary \"sieur de Gonneyville\" \u2013 resulted in the discovery of Bouvet Island in 54\u00b010\u2032\u00a0S, and in the navigation of 48\u00b0 of longitude of ice-cumbered sea nearly in 55\u00b0\u00a0S in 1730.\nIn 1771, Yves Joseph Kerguelen sailed from France with instructions to proceed south from Mauritius in search of \"a very large continent\". He lighted upon a land in 50\u00b0\u00a0S which he called South France, and believed to be the central mass of the southern continent. He was sent out again to complete the exploration of the new land, and found it to be only an inhospitable island which he renamed the Isle of Desolation, but which was ultimately named after him.\nSouth of the Antarctic Circle.\nThe obsession of the undiscovered continent culminated in the brain of Alexander Dalrymple, the brilliant and erratic hydrographer who was nominated by the Royal Society to command the Transit of Venus expedition to Tahiti in 1769. The command of the expedition was given by the admiralty to Captain James Cook. Sailing in 1772 with \"Resolution\", a vessel of 462 tons under his own command and \"Adventure\" of 336 tons under Captain Tobias Furneaux, Cook first searched in vain for Bouvet Island, then sailed for 20 degrees of longitude to the westward in latitude 58\u00b0\u00a0S, and then 30\u00b0 eastward for the most part south of 60\u00b0\u00a0S, a lower southern latitude than had ever been voluntarily entered before by any vessel. On 17 January 1773 the Antarctic Circle was crossed for the first time in history and the two ships reached 67\u00b0 15' S by 39\u00b0 35' E, where their course was stopped by ice.\nCook then turned northward to look for French Southern and Antarctic Lands, of the discovery of which he had received news at Cape Town, but from the rough determination of his longitude by Kerguelen, Cook reached the assigned latitude 10\u00b0 too far east and did not see it. He turned south again and was stopped by ice in 61\u00b0 52\u2032 S by 95\u00b0\u00a0E and continued eastward nearly on the parallel of 60\u00b0\u00a0S to 147\u00b0\u00a0E. On 16 March, the approaching winter drove him northward for rest to New Zealand and the tropical islands of the Pacific. In November 1773, Cook left New Zealand, having parted company with the \"Adventure\", and reached 60\u00b0\u00a0S by 177\u00b0\u00a0W, whence he sailed eastward keeping as far south as the floating ice allowed. The Antarctic Circle was crossed on 20 December and Cook remained south of it for three days, compelled after reaching 67\u00b0 31\u2032 S to stand north again in 135\u00b0\u00a0W.\nA long detour to 47\u00b0 50\u2032 S served to show that there was no land connection between New Zealand and Tierra del Fuego. Turning south again, Cook crossed the Antarctic Circle for the third time at 109\u00b0 30\u2032 W before his progress was once again blocked by ice four days later at 71\u00b0 10\u2032 S by 106\u00b0 54\u2032 W. This point, reached on 30 January 1774, was the farthest south attained in the 18th century. With a great detour to the east, almost to the coast of South America, the expedition regained Tahiti for refreshment. In November 1774, Cook started from New Zealand and crossed the South Pacific without sighting land between 53\u00b0 and 57\u00b0\u00a0S to Tierra del Fuego; then, passing Cape Horn on 29 December, he rediscovered Roch\u00e9 Island renaming it Isle of Georgia, and discovered the South Sandwich Islands (named \"Sandwich Land\" by him), the only ice-clad land he had seen, before crossing the South Atlantic to the Cape of Good Hope between 55\u00b0 and 60\u00b0. He thereby laid open the way for future Antarctic exploration by exploding the myth of a habitable southern continent. Cook's most southerly discovery of land lay on the temperate side of the 60th parallel, and he convinced himself that if land lay farther south it was practically inaccessible and without economic value.\nVoyagers rounding Cape Horn frequently met with contrary winds and were driven southward into snowy skies and ice-encumbered seas; but so far as can be ascertained none of them before 1770 reached the Antarctic Circle, or knew it, if they did.\nIn a voyage from 1822 to 1824, James Weddell commanded the 160-ton brig \"Jane\", accompanied by his second ship \"Beaufoy\" captained by Matthew Brisbane. Together they sailed to the South Orkneys where sealing proved disappointing. They turned south in the hope of finding a better sealing ground. The season was unusually mild and tranquil, and on 20 February 1823 the two ships reached latitude 74\u00b015'\u00a0S and longitude 34\u00b016'45\u2033\u00a0W the southernmost position any ship had ever reached up to that time. A few icebergs were sighted but there was still no sight of land, leading Weddell to theorize that the sea continued as far as the South Pole. Another two days' sailing would have brought him to Coat's Land (to the east of the Weddell Sea) but Weddell decided to turn back.\nFirst sighting of land.\nThe first land south of the parallel 60\u00b0 south latitude was discovered by the Englishman William Smith, who sighted Livingston Island on 19 February 1819. A few months later Smith returned to explore the other islands of the South Shetlands archipelago, landed on King George Island, and claimed the new territories for Britain.\nIn the meantime, the Spanish Navy ship \"San Telmo\" sank in September 1819 when trying to cross Cape Horn. Parts of her wreckage were found months later by sealers on the north coast of Livingston Island (South Shetlands). It is unknown if some survivor managed to be the first to set foot on these Antarctic islands.\nThe first confirmed sighting of mainland Antarctica cannot be accurately attributed to one single person. It can be narrowed down to three individuals. According to various sources, three men all sighted the ice shelf or the continent within days or months of each other: Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, a captain in the Russian Imperial Navy; Edward Bransfield, a captain in the Royal Navy; and Nathaniel Palmer, an American sailor out of Stonington, Connecticut. It is certain that the expedition, led by von Bellingshausen and Lazarev on the ships \"Vostok\" and \"Mirny\", reached a point within from Princess Martha Coast and recorded the sight of an ice shelf at that became known as the Fimbul Ice Shelf. On 30\u00a0January 1820, Bransfield sighted Trinity Peninsula, the northernmost point of the Antarctic mainland, while Palmer sighted the mainland in the area south of Trinity Peninsula in November 1820. Von Bellingshausen's expedition also discovered Peter I Island and Alexander I Island, the first islands to be discovered south of the circle.\nAntarctic expeditions.\nIn December 1839, as part of the United States Exploring Expedition of 1838\u201342 conducted by the United States Navy (sometimes called \"the Wilkes Expedition\"), an expedition sailed from Sydney, Australia, on the sloops-of-war and , the brig , the full-rigged ship , and two schooners and . They sailed into the Antarctic Ocean, as it was then known, and reported the discovery \"of an Antarctic continent west of the Balleny Islands\" on 25 January 1840. That part of Antarctica was later named \"Wilkes Land\", a name it maintains to this day.\nExplorer James Clark Ross passed through what is now known as the Ross Sea and discovered Ross Island (both of which were named for him) in 1841. He sailed along a huge wall of ice that was later named the Ross Ice Shelf. Mount Erebus and Mount Terror are named after two ships from his expedition: and .\nThe Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914, led by Ernest Shackleton, set out to cross the continent via the pole, but their ship, , was trapped and crushed by pack ice before they even landed. The expedition members survived after an epic journey on sledges over pack ice to Elephant Island. Then Shackleton and five others crossed the Southern Ocean, in an open boat called \"James Caird\", and then trekked over South Georgia to raise the alarm at the whaling station Grytviken.\nIn 1946, US Navy Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd and more than 4,700 military personnel visited the Antarctic in an expedition called Operation Highjump. Reported to the public as a scientific mission, the details were kept secret and it may have actually been a training or testing mission for the military. The expedition was, in both military or scientific planning terms, put together very quickly. The group contained an unusually high amount of military equipment, including an aircraft carrier, submarines, military support ships, assault troops and military vehicles. The expedition was planned to last for eight months but was unexpectedly terminated after only two months. With the exception of some eccentric entries in Admiral Byrd's diaries, no real explanation for the early termination has ever been officially given.\nCaptain Finn Ronne, Byrd's executive officer, returned to Antarctica with his own expedition in 1947\u20131948, with Navy support, three planes, and dogs. He disproved the notion that the continent was divided in two and established that East and West Antarctica was one single continent, i.e. that the Weddell Sea and the Ross Sea are not connected. The expedition explored and mapped large parts of Palmer Land and the Weddell Sea coastline, and identified the Ronne Ice Shelf, named by him for his wife Jackie Ronne. He covered by ski and dog sled \u2013 more than any other explorer in history. The Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition discovered and mapped the last unknown coastline in the world and was the first Antarctic expedition to ever include women.\nPost-Atlantic Treaty.\nThe Antarctic Treaty was signed on 1 December 1959 and came into force on 23 June 1961. Among other provisions, this treaty limits military activity in the Antarctic to the support of scientific research.\nThe first person to sail single-handed to Antarctica was the New Zealander David Henry Lewis, in 1972, in a steel sloop \"Ice Bird\".\nA baby, named Emilio Marcos de Palma, was born near Hope Bay on 7 January 1978, becoming the first baby born on the continent. He also was born further south than anyone in history.\nThe was a cruise ship operated by the Swedish explorer Lars-Eric Lindblad. Observers point to \"Explorer\"'s 1969 expeditionary cruise to Antarctica as the frontrunner for today's sea-based tourism in that region. \"Explorer\" was the first cruise ship used specifically to sail the icy waters of the Antarctic Ocean and the first to sink there when she struck an unidentified submerged object on 23 November 2007, reported to be ice, which caused a gash in the hull. \"Explorer\" was abandoned in the early hours of 23 November 2007 after taking on water near the South Shetland Islands in the Southern Ocean, an area which is usually stormy but was calm at the time. \"Explorer\" was confirmed by the Chilean Navy to have sunk at approximately position: 62\u00b0 24\u2032 South, 57\u00b0 16\u2032 West, in roughly 600\u00a0m of water.\nBritish engineer Richard Jenkins designed an unmanned saildrone that completed the first autonomous circumnavigation of the Southern Ocean on 3 August 2019 after 196 days at sea.\nThe first completely human-powered expedition on the Southern Ocean was accomplished on 25 December 2019 by a team of rowers comprising captain Fiann Paul (Iceland), first mate Colin O'Brady (US), Andrew Towne (US), Cameron Bellamy (South Africa), Jamie Douglas-Hamilton (UK) and John Petersen (US).\nGeography.\nThe Southern Ocean, geologically the youngest of the oceans, was formed when Antarctica and South America moved apart, opening the Drake Passage, roughly 30 million years ago. The separation of the continents allowed the formation of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.\nWith a northern limit at 60\u00b0S, the Southern Ocean differs from the other oceans in that its largest boundary, the northern boundary, does not abut a landmass (as it did with the first edition of \"Limits of Oceans and Seas\"). Instead, the northern limit is with the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans.\nOne reason for considering it as a separate ocean stems from the fact that much of the water of the Southern Ocean differs from the water in the other oceans. Water gets transported around the Southern Ocean fairly rapidly because of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current which circulates around Antarctica. Water in the Southern Ocean south of, for example, New Zealand, resembles the water in the Southern Ocean south of South America more closely than it resembles the water in the Pacific Ocean.\nThe Southern Ocean has typical depths of between over most of its extent with only limited areas of shallow water. The Southern Ocean's greatest depth of occurs at the southern end of the South Sandwich Trench, at 60\u00b000'S, 024\u00b0W. The Antarctic continental shelf appears generally narrow and unusually deep, its edge lying at depths up to , compared to a global mean of .\nEquinox to equinox in line with the sun's seasonal influence, the Antarctic ice pack fluctuates from an average minimum of in March to about in September, more than a sevenfold increase in area.\nSubdivisions.\nSubdivisions of oceans are geographical features such as \"seas\", \"straits\", \"bays\", \"channels\", and \"gulfs\". There are many sudivisions of the Southern Ocean defined in the never-approved 2002 draft fourth edition of the IHO publication \"Limits of Oceans and Seas\". In clockwise order these include (with sector):\nA number of these such as the 2002 Russian-proposed \"Cosmonauts Sea\", \"Cooperation Sea\", and \"Somov (mid-1950s Russian polar explorer) Sea\" are not included in the 1953 IHO document which remains currently in force, because they received their names largely originated from 1962 onward. Leading geographic authorities and atlases do not use these latter three names, including the 2014 10th edition World Atlas from the United States' National Geographic Society and the 2014 12th edition of the British Times Atlas of the World, but Soviet and Russian-issued maps do.\nBiggest seas.\nTop large seas:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNatural resources.\nThe Southern Ocean probably contains large, and possibly giant, oil and gas fields on the continental margin. Placer deposits, accumulation of valuable minerals such as gold, formed by gravity separation during sedimentary processes are also expected to exist in the Southern Ocean.\nManganese nodules are expected to exist in the Southern Ocean. Manganese nodules are rock concretions on the sea bottom formed of concentric layers of iron and manganese hydroxides around a core. The core may be microscopically small and is sometimes completely transformed into manganese minerals by crystallization. Interest in the potential exploitation of polymetallic nodules generated a great deal of activity among prospective mining consortia in the 1960s and 1970s.\nThe icebergs that form each year around in the Southern Ocean hold enough fresh water to meet the needs of every person on Earth for several months. For several decades there have been proposals, none yet to be feasible or successful, to tow Southern Ocean icebergs to more arid northern regions (such as Australia) where they can be harvested.\nNatural hazards.\nIcebergs can occur at any time of year throughout the ocean. Some may have drafts up to several hundred meters; smaller icebergs, iceberg fragments and sea-ice (generally 0.5 to 1\u00a0m thick) also pose problems for ships. The deep continental shelf has a floor of glacial deposits varying widely over short distances.\nSailors know latitudes from 40 to 70 degrees south as the \"Roaring Forties\", \"Furious Fifties\" and \"Shrieking Sixties\" due to high winds and large waves that form as winds blow around the entire globe unimpeded by any land-mass. Icebergs, especially in May to October, make the area even more dangerous. The remoteness of the region makes sources of search and rescue scarce.\nPhysical oceanography.\nAntarctic Circumpolar Current and Antarctic Convergence.\nWhile the Southern is the second smallest ocean it contains the unique and highly energetic Antarctic Circumpolar Current which moves perpetually eastward \u2013 chasing and joining itself, and at in length \u2013 it comprises the world's longest ocean current, transporting of water \u2013 100 times the flow of all the world's rivers.\nSeveral processes operate along the coast of Antarctica to produce, in the Southern Ocean, types of water masses not produced elsewhere in the oceans of the Southern Hemisphere. One of these is the Antarctic Bottom Water, a very cold, highly saline, dense water that forms under sea ice. Another is Circumpolar Deep Water, a mixture of Antarctic Bottom Water and North Atlantic Deep Water.\nAssociated with the Circumpolar Current is the Antarctic Convergence encircling Antarctica, where cold northward-flowing Antarctic waters meet the relatively warmer waters of the subantarctic, Antarctic waters predominantly sink beneath subantarctic waters, while associated zones of mixing and upwelling create a zone very high in nutrients. These nurture high levels of phytoplankton with associated copepods and Antarctic krill, and resultant foodchains supporting fish, whales, seals, penguins, albatrosses and a wealth of other species.\nThe Antarctic Convergence is considered to be the best natural definition of the northern extent of the Southern Ocean.\nUpwelling.\nLarge-scale upwelling is found in the Southern Ocean. Strong westerly (eastward) winds blow around Antarctica, driving a significant flow of water northward. This is actually a type of coastal upwelling. Since there are no continents in a band of open latitudes between South America and the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, some of this water is drawn up from great depths. In many numerical models and observational syntheses, the Southern Ocean upwelling represents the primary means by which deep dense water is brought to the surface. Shallower, wind-driven upwelling is also found off the west coasts of North and South America, northwest and southwest Africa, and southwest and southeast Australia, all associated with oceanic subtropical high pressure circulations.\nRoss and Weddell gyres.\nThe Ross Gyre and Weddell Gyre are two gyres that exist within the Southern Ocean. The gyres are located in the Ross Sea and Weddell Sea respectively, and both rotate clockwise. The gyres are formed by interactions between the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and the Antarctic Continental Shelf.\nSea ice has been noted to persist in the central area of the Ross Gyre. There is some evidence that global warming has resulted in some decrease of the salinity of the waters of the Ross Gyre since the 1950s.\nDue to the Coriolis effect acting to the left in the Southern Hemisphere and the resulting Ekman transport away from the centres of the Weddell Gyre, these regions are very productive due to upwelling of cold, nutrient rich water.\nObservation.\nObservation of the Southern Ocean is coordinated through the Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS). This provides access to meta data for a significant proportion of the data collected in the regions over the past decades including hydrographic measurements and ocean currents. The data provision is set up to emphasize records that are related to Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs) for the ocean region south of 40\u00b0S.\nClimate.\nSea temperatures vary from about \u22122 to 10\u00a0\u00b0C (28 to 50\u00a0\u00b0F). Cyclonic storms travel eastward around the continent and frequently become intense because of the temperature contrast between ice and open ocean. The ocean from about latitude 40 south to the Antarctic Circle has the strongest average winds found anywhere on Earth. In winter the ocean freezes outward to 65 degrees south latitude in the Pacific sector and 55 degrees south latitude in the Atlantic sector, lowering surface temperatures well below 0 degrees Celsius. At some coastal points, persistent intense drainage winds from the interior keep the shoreline ice-free throughout the winter.\nBiodiversity.\nAnimals.\nA variety of marine animals exist and rely, directly or indirectly, on the phytoplankton in the Southern Ocean. Antarctic sea life includes penguins, blue whales, orcas, colossal squids and fur seals. The emperor penguin is the only penguin that breeds during the winter in Antarctica, while the Ad\u00e9lie penguin breeds farther south than any other penguin. The rockhopper penguin has distinctive feathers around the eyes, giving the appearance of elaborate eyelashes. King penguins, chinstrap penguins, and gentoo penguins also breed in the Antarctic.\nThe Antarctic fur seal was very heavily hunted in the 18th and 19th centuries for its pelt by sealers from the United States and the United Kingdom. The Weddell seal, a \"true seal\", is named after Sir James Weddell, commander of British sealing expeditions in the Weddell Sea. Antarctic krill, which congregates in large schools, is the keystone species of the ecosystem of the Southern Ocean, and is an important food organism for whales, seals, leopard seals, fur seals, squid, icefish, penguins, albatrosses and many other birds.\nThe benthic communities of the seafloor are diverse and dense, with up to 155,000 animals found in . As the seafloor environment is very similar all around the Antarctic, hundreds of species can be found all the way around the mainland, which is a uniquely wide distribution for such a large community. Deep-sea gigantism is common among these animals.\nA census of sea life carried out during the International Polar Year and which involved some 500 researchers was released in 2010. The research is part of the global Census of Marine Life (CoML) and has disclosed some remarkable findings. More than 235 marine organisms live in both polar regions, having bridged the gap of . Large animals such as some cetaceans and birds make the round trip annually. More surprising are small forms of life such as mudworms, sea cucumbers and free-swimming snails found in both polar oceans. Various factors may aid in their distribution \u2013 fairly uniform temperatures of the deep ocean at the poles and the equator which differ by no more than , and the major current systems or marine conveyor belt which transport egg and larva stages. Among smaller marine animals generally assumed to be the same in the Antarctica and the Arctic, more detailed studies of each population have often\u2014but not always\u2014revealed differences, showing that they are closely related cryptic species rather than a single bipolar species.\nBirds.\nThe rocky shores of mainland Antarctica and its offshore islands provide nesting space for over 100 million birds every spring. These nesters include species of albatrosses, petrels, skuas, gulls and terns. The insectivorous South Georgia pipit is endemic to South Georgia and some smaller surrounding islands. Freshwater ducks inhabit South Georgia and the Kerguelen Islands.\nThe flightless penguins are all located in the Southern Hemisphere, with the greatest concentration located on and around Antarctica. Four of the 18 penguin species live and breed on the mainland and its close offshore islands. Another four species live on the subantarctic islands. Emperor penguins have four overlapping layers of feathers, keeping them warm. They are the only Antarctic animal to breed during the winter.\nFish.\nThere are relatively few fish species in few families in the Southern Ocean. The most species-rich family are the snailfish (Liparidae), followed by the cod icefish (Nototheniidae) and eelpout (Zoarcidae). Together the snailfish, eelpouts and notothenioids (which includes cod icefish and several other families) account for almost <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />9\u204410 of the more than 320 described fish species of the Southern Ocean (tens of undescribed species also occur in the region, especially among the snailfish). Southern Ocean snailfish are generally found in deep waters, while the icefish also occur in shallower waters.\nIcefish.\nCod icefish (Nototheniidae), as well as several other families, are part of the Notothenioidei suborder, collectively sometimes referred to as icefish. The suborder contains many species with antifreeze proteins in their blood and tissue, allowing them to live in water that is around or slightly below . Antifreeze proteins are also known from Southern Ocean snailfish.\nThe crocodile icefish (family Channichthyidae), also known as white-blooded fish, are only found in the Southern Ocean. They lack hemoglobin in their blood, resulting in their blood being colourless. One Channichthyidae species, the mackerel icefish (\"Champsocephalus gunnari\"), was once the most common fish in coastal waters less than deep, but was overfished in the 1970s and 1980s. Schools of icefish spend the day at the seafloor and the night higher in the water column eating plankton and smaller fish.\nThere are two species from the genus \"Dissostichus\", the Antarctic toothfish (\"Dissostichus mawsoni\") and the Patagonian toothfish (\"Dissostichus eleginoides\"). These two species live on the seafloor deep, and can grow to around long weighing up to , living up to 45 years. The Antarctic toothfish lives close to the Antarctic mainland, whereas the Patagonian toothfish lives in the relatively warmer subantarctic waters. Toothfish are commercially fished, and overfishing has reduced toothfish populations.\nAnother abundant fish group is the genus \"Notothenia\", which like the Antarctic toothfish have antifreeze in their bodies.\nAn unusual species of icefish is the Antarctic silverfish (\"Pleuragramma antarcticum\"), which is the only truly pelagic fish in the waters near Antarctica.\nMammals.\nSeven pinniped species inhabit Antarctica. The largest, the elephant seal (\"Mirounga leonina\"), can reach up to , while females of the smallest, the Antarctic fur seal (\"Arctophoca gazella\"), reach only . These two species live north of the sea ice, and breed in harems on beaches. The other four species can live on the sea ice. Crabeater seals (\"Lobodon carcinophagus\") and Weddell seals (\"Leptonychotes weddellii\") form breeding colonies, whereas leopard seals (\"Hydrurga leptonyx\") and Ross seals (\"Ommatophoca rossii\") live solitary lives. Although these species hunt underwater, they breed on land or ice and spend a great deal of time there, as they have no terrestrial predators.\nThe four species that inhabit sea ice are thought to make up 50% of the total biomass of the world's seals. Crabeater seals have a population of around 15 million, making them one of the most numerous large animals on the planet. The New Zealand sea lion (\"Phocarctos hookeri\"), one of the rarest and most localised pinnipeds, breeds almost exclusively on the subantarctic Auckland Islands, although historically it had a wider range. Out of all permanent mammalian residents, the Weddell seals live the furthest south.\nThere are 10 cetacean species found in the Southern Ocean: six baleen whales, and four toothed whales. The largest of these, the blue whale (\"Balaenoptera musculus\"), grows to long weighing 84 tonnes. Many of these species are migratory, and travel to tropical waters during the Antarctic winter.\nInvertebrates.\nArthropods.\nFive species of krill, small free-swimming crustaceans, have been found in the Southern Ocean. The Antarctic krill (\"Euphausia superba\") is one of the most abundant animal species on earth, with a biomass of around 500 million tonnes. Each individual is long and weighs over . The swarms that form can stretch for kilometres, with up to 30,000 individuals per , turning the water red. Swarms usually remain in deep water during the day, ascending during the night to feed on plankton. Many larger animals depend on krill for their own survival. During the winter when food is scarce, adult Antarctic krill can revert to a smaller juvenile stage, using their own body as nutrition.\nMany benthic crustaceans have a non-seasonal breeding cycle, and some raise their young in a brood pouch. \"Glyptonotus antarcticus\" is an unusually large benthic isopod, reaching in length weighing . Amphipods are abundant in soft sediments, eating a range of items, from algae to other animals. The amphipods are highly diverse with more than 600 recognized species found south of the Antarctic Convergence and there are indications that many undescribed species remain. Among these are several \"giants\", such as the iconic epimeriids that are up to long.\nSlow moving sea spiders are common, sometimes growing as large as a human hand. They feed on the corals, sponges, and bryozoans that litter the seabed.\nMolluscs, urchins, squid and sponges.\nMany aquatic molluscs are present in Antarctica. Bivalves such as \"Adamussium colbecki\" move around on the seafloor, while others such as \"Laternula elliptica\" live in burrows filtering the water above.\nThere are around 70 cephalopod species in the Southern Ocean, the largest of which is the colossal squid (\"Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni\"), which at up to is among the largest invertebrate in the world. Squid makes up most of the diet of some animals, such as grey-headed albatrosses and sperm whales, and the warty squid (\"Moroteuthis ingens\") is one of the subantarctic's most preyed upon species by vertebrates.\nThe sea urchin genus \"Abatus\" burrow through the sediment eating the nutrients they find in it. Two species of salps are common in Antarctic waters: \"Salpa thompsoni\" and \"Ihlea racovitzai\". \"Salpa thompsoni\" is found in ice-free areas, whereas \"Ihlea racovitzai\" is found in the high-latitude areas near ice. Due to their low nutritional value, they are normally only eaten by fish, with larger animals such as birds and marine mammals only eating them when other food is scarce.\nAntarctic sponges are long-lived and sensitive to environmental changes due to the specificity of the symbiotic microbial communities within them. As a result, they function as indicators of environmental health.\nEnvironment.\nIncreased solar ultraviolet radiation resulting from the Antarctic ozone hole has reduced marine primary productivity (phytoplankton) by as much as 15% and has started damaging the DNA of some fish. Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, especially the landing of an estimated five to six times more Patagonian toothfish than the regulated fishery, likely affects the sustainability of the stock. Long-line fishing for toothfish causes a high incidence of seabird mortality.\nInternational agreements.\nAll international agreements regarding the world's oceans apply to the Southern Ocean. It is also subject to several regional agreements:\nThe Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) prohibits commercial whaling south of 40 degrees south (south of 60 degrees south between 50 degrees and 130 degrees west). Japan regularly does not recognize this provision, because the sanctuary violates IWC charter. Since the scope of the sanctuary is limited to commercial whaling, in regard to its whaling permit and whaling for scientific research, a Japanese fleet carried out an annual whale-hunt in the region. On 31 March 2014, the International Court of Justice ruled that Japan's whaling program, which Japan has long claimed is for scientific purposes, was a cloak for commercial whaling, and no further permits would be granted.\nThe \"Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals\" is part of the \"Antarctic Treaty System\". It was signed at the conclusion of a multilateral conference in London on 11 February 1972.\nThe \"Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources\" is part of the \"Antarctic Treaty System\". It entered into force on 7 April 1982 with a goal to preserve marine life and environmental integrity in and near Antarctica. It was established largely due to concerns that an increase in krill catches in the Southern Ocean could seriously impact populations of other marine life which are dependent upon krill for food.\nMany nations prohibit the exploration for and the exploitation of mineral resources south of the fluctuating Antarctic Convergence, which lies in the middle of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and serves as the dividing line between the very cold polar surface waters to the south and the warmer waters to the north. The Antarctic Treaty covers the portion of the globe south of 60 degrees south; it prohibits new claims to Antarctica.\nThe \"Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources\" applies to the area south of 60\u00b0 South latitude as well as the areas further north up to the limit of the Antarctic Convergence.\nEconomy.\nBetween 1 July 1998 and 30 June 1999, fisheries landed , of which 85% consisted of krill and 14% of Patagonian toothfish. International agreements came into force in late 1999 to reduce illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, which in the 1998\u201399 season landed five to six times more Patagonian toothfish than the regulated fishery.\nPorts and harbors.\nMajor operational ports include: Rothera Station, Palmer Station, Villa Las Estrellas, Esperanza Base, Mawson Station, McMurdo Station, and offshore anchorages in Antarctica.\nFew ports or harbors exist on the southern (Antarctic) coast of the Southern Ocean, since ice conditions limit use of most shores to short periods in midsummer; even then some require icebreaker escort for access. Most Antarctic ports are operated by government research stations and, except in an emergency, remain closed to commercial or private vessels; vessels in any port south of 60 degrees south are subject to inspection by Antarctic Treaty observers.\nThe Southern Ocean's southernmost port operates at McMurdo Station at . Winter Quarters Bay forms a small harbor, on the southern tip of Ross Island where a floating ice pier makes port operations possible in summer. Operation Deep Freeze personnel constructed the first ice pier at McMurdo in 1973.\nBased on the original 1928 IHO delineation of the Southern Ocean (and the 1937 delineation if the Great Australian Bight is considered integral), Australian ports and harbors between Cape Leeuwin and Cape Otway on the Australian mainland and along the west coast of Tasmania would also be identified as ports and harbors existing in the Southern Ocean. These would include the larger ports and harbors of Albany, Thevenard, Port Lincoln, Whyalla, Port Augusta, Port Adelaide, Portland, Warrnambool, and Macquarie Harbour.\nEven though organizers of several yacht races define their routes as involving the Southern Ocean, the actual routes don't enter the actual geographical boundaries of the Southern Ocean. The routes involve instead South Atlantic, South Pacific and Indian Ocean.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["5986242", "20611428"], "permutation_1": ["5986242", "20611428"], "permutation_2": ["20611428", "5986242"], "permutation_3": ["5986242", "20611428"]}
{"id": "2hop__145288_502838", "docs_added": {"43172526": "Roger Franklin\nAmerican former basketball player\nRoger Franklin (born September 7, 1990) is an American former basketball player. Born in Duncanville, Texas, he played two years professionally in the Netherlands and Luxembourg.\nProfessional career.\nOn August 16, 2013, it was announced Franklin would start playing in the Netherlands for Matrixx Magixx.\nIn June 2014, Franklin signed with Black Star Mersch in Luxembourg.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "135748": "Duncanville, Texas\nDuncanville is a city in southwestern Dallas County, Texas, United States. Duncanville's population was 40,706 at the 2020 census. The city is part of the Best Southwest area, which includes Duncanville, Cedar Hill, DeSoto, and Lancaster.\nHistory.\nSettlement of the area began in 1845, when Illinois resident Crawford Trees purchased several thousand acres south of Camp Dallas. In 1880, the Chicago, Texas, and Mexican Central Railway reached the area and built Duncan Switch, named for a line foreman. Charles P. Nance, the community's first postmaster, renamed the settlement Duncanville in 1882. By the late 19th century, Duncanville was home to a dry-goods stores, a pharmacy, a domino parlor, and a school. Between 1904 and 1933, the population of Duncanville increased from 113 to more than 300.\nDuring World War II, the Army Air Corps established a landing field for flight training on property near the present-day intersection of Main St and Wheatland Road.\nDuncanville residents incorporated the city on August 2, 1947. During the postwar years, the military developed the Army's old landing field into the Duncanville Air Force Station, which was the headquarters for the four Nike-Hercules missile launch sites guarding Dallas/Fort Worth from Soviet bomber attack. It also housed the Air Force tracking radars for the region.\nWhen the town's population reached 5,000 in 1962, citizens adopted a home-rule charter with council-manager city government. Sometimes regarded as a \"white flight\" suburb in the 1960s and 1970s, the city is now known for its racial diversity. Its population increased from about 13,000 in 1970 to more than 31,000 in 1988.\nHistoric preservation.\nThe Texas Historical Commission has designated the City of Duncanville as an official Main Street City.\nDuncanville recognizes the importance of the former Duncanville Air Force Station, which closed on July 1, 1964, but the Army continued to operate the Nike Missile air defense operations until 1969, when the facility was turned over to the city. The WWII-era barracks and some other structures were initially repurposed for civic and community use. Over time, the buildings were systematically demolished, removing all signs of the historic base, but the history of the facility lives on in a monument that stands outside the library and community center.\nThe \"stone igloo\", a spring house originally located near the intersection of Center Street and Cedar Ridge Road, was preserved in a unique way. In the late 1960s or early 1970s, it was demolished, thereby producing a supply of rocks used to build a replica of the structure at a nearby park and paving the way for the construction of a neighborhood retail center.\nVarious pieces of the city's history are preserved at the Duncanville Historical Park, which is located on Wheatland Road in Armstrong Park on land that was once a part of the Duncanville Air Force Station. Historic buildings include the city's first Music Room.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , all land.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nAs of the 2020 United States census, there were 40,706 people, 13,573 households, and 10,000 families residing in the city.\nGovernment.\nDuncanville City Hall is located at 203 E. Wheatland Road. Most city services are located in this facility, which also includes the Duncanville Recreation Center featuring meeting rooms, a double gymnasium, and an indoor walking track. Armstrong Park is also located next to City Hall. Duncanville has three walking trails, 17 city parks, and many other recreation spaces for team sports.\nU.S. Route 67 runs through the eastern portion of Duncanville. Interstate 20 passes through its northern portion.\nThe United States Postal Service operates the Duncanville Post Office.\nThe Duncanville Public Library is located at 201 James Collins Boulevard.\nThe city of Duncanville is a voluntary member of the North Central Texas Council of Governments association, the purpose of which is to coordinate individual and collective local governments and facilitate regional solutions, eliminate unnecessary duplication, and enable joint decisions.\nEducation.\nDuncanville is served by the Duncanville Independent School District.\nThe Duncanville ISD portion is zoned to Duncanville High School, which enrolls about 3,750 students annually, with over 4,000 students during the 2010\u20132011 school year. At about , the DHS campus is the largest in Texas, the largest in the nation, and the largest in the world in terms of physical size. In total, 13 of the 17 schools in the district are rated exemplary or recognized by the Texas Education Agency, and the district's ratings continue to outperform those of the surrounding districts (Cedar Hill, DeSoto, Lancaster, Dallas, Grand Prairie). They also outperform many of the school districts throughout the Dallas\u2013Fort Worth area.\nDuncanville is also home to the administrative offices of Advantage Academy.\nDallas County residents are zoned to Dallas College (formerly Dallas County Community College or DCCCD).\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "310561": "State of Franklin\nFormer unrecognized proposed US state\nThe State of Franklin (also the Free Republic of Franklin, Lost State of Franklin, or the State of Frankland) was an unrecognized proposed state located in present-day East Tennessee, in the United States. Franklin was created in 1784 from part of the territory west of the Appalachian Mountains that had been offered by North Carolina as a cession to Congress to help pay off debts related to the American War for Independence. It was founded with the intent of becoming the 14th state of the new United States.\nFranklin's first capital was Jonesborough. After the summer of 1787, the government of Franklin (which was by then based in Greeneville), ruled as a \"parallel government\" running alongside (but not harmoniously with) a re-established North Carolina bureaucracy. Franklin was never admitted into the union. The \"extra-legal\" state existed for only about four and a half years, ostensibly as a republic, after which North Carolina reassumed full control of the area.\nThe creation of Franklin is novel, in that it resulted from both a cession (an offering from North Carolina to Congress) and a secession (seceding from North Carolina, when its offer to Congress was not acted upon and the original cession was rescinded).\nIf Franklin had become a state, its boundaries would have included the 12 modern Tennessee counties of Johnson, Carter, Sullivan, Washington, Greene, Hawkins, Unicoi, Cocke, Hamblen, Jefferson, Sevier, and Blount. With an approximate total area of 6,400 square miles, Franklin would rank as the 4th smallest state by area in the Union, ahead of Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island. Its population, estimated at 930,000 based on the current populations of these counties, would place it as the 6th smallest state by population, ahead of South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming.\nConcept.\nThe concept of a new western state came from Arthur Campbell of Washington County, Virginia, and John Sevier. They believed the Overmountain towns should be admitted to the United States as a separate state. They differed, however, on the details of such a state, although John Sevier (in a letter written in 1782) acknowledged Campbell's leadership on the issue. Campbell's proposed state would have included southwestern Virginia, eastern Tennessee, and parts of Kentucky, Georgia, and Alabama. Sevier favored a more limited state, that being the eastern section of the old Washington District, which was then part of North Carolina.\nAlthough many of the frontiersmen supported the idea, Campbell's calls for the creation of an independent state carved out of parts of Virginia territory caused Virginia governor and Kentucky land speculator Patrick Henry\u2014who opposed a loss of territory for the state\u2014to pass a law that forbade anyone to attempt to create a new state from Virginia by the cession of state territory. After Virginia Gov. Henry stopped Campbell, Sevier and his followers renamed their proposed state Franklin and sought support for their cause from Benjamin Franklin. The Frankland movement had little success on the Kentucky frontier, as settlers there wanted their own state (which they achieved in 1792).\nCession and rescission.\nFranklin's support.\nThe United States Congress was heavily in debt at the close of the American War for Independence. In April 1784, the state of North Carolina voted \"to give Congress the lying between the Allegheny Mountains\" (as the entire Appalachian range was then called) \"and the Mississippi River\" to help offset its war debts. This area was a large part of what had been the Washington District (usually referred to simply as the \"Western Counties\"). These western counties had originally been acquired by lease from the Overhill Cherokee, out of which the Watauga Republic had arisen.\nThe North Carolina cession to the federal government had a stipulation that Congress would have to accept responsibility for the area within two years, which, for various reasons, it was reluctant to do. The cession effectively left the western settlements of North Carolina alone in dealing with the Cherokee of the area, many of whom had not yet made peace with the new nation. These developments were not welcomed by the frontiersmen, who had pushed even further westward, gaining a foothold on the western Cumberland River at Fort Nashborough (now Nashville), or the Overmountain Men, many of whom had settled in the area during the days of the old Watauga Republic. Inhabitants of the region feared that the cash-starved federal Congress might even be desperate enough to sell the frontier territory to a competing foreign power (such as France or Spain).\nNorth Carolina's reluctance.\nA few months later, a newly elected North Carolina Legislature re-evaluated the situation. Realizing the land could not at that time be used for its intended purpose of paying the debts of Congress and weighing the perceived economic loss of potential real estate opportunities, it rescinded the offer of cession and reasserted its claim to the remote western district. The North Carolina lawmakers ordered judges to hold court in the western counties and arranged to enroll a brigade of soldiers for defense, appointing John Sevier to form it.\nSecessionist movement.\nRapidly increasing dissatisfaction with North Carolina's governance led to the frontiersmen's calls to establish a separate, secure, and independent state. On August 23, 1784, delegates from the North Carolina counties of Washington (which at the time included present-day Carter County), Sullivan, Spencer (now Hawkins County) and Greene\u2014all of which are in present-day Tennessee\u2014convened in the town of Jonesborough. There, they declared the lands to be independent of the State of North Carolina.\nLeaders were duly elected. John Sevier reluctantly became governor; Landon Carter, speaker of the Senate; William Cage, first speaker of the House of Representatives; and David Campbell, judge of the Superior Court. Thomas Talbot served as Senate clerk, while Thomas Chapman served as clerk of the House. The delegates were called to a constitutional convention held at Jonesborough in December of that year. There, they drafted a constitution that excluded lawyers, doctors, and preachers as candidates for election to the legislature. The constitution was defeated in referendum. Afterward, the area continued to operate under tenets of the North Carolina state constitution.\nAttempt at statehood.\nOn May 16, 1785, a delegation submitted a petition for statehood to Congress. Eventually, seven states voted to admit what would have been the 14th federal state under the proposed name of \"Frankland\". This was, however, less than the two-thirds majority required under the Articles of Confederation to add additional states to the confederation. The following month, the Franklin government convened to address their options and to replace the vacancy at speaker of the House, to which position they elected Joseph Hardin. In an attempt to curry favor for their cause, delegation leaders changed the \"official\" name of the area to \"Franklin\" (ostensibly after Benjamin Franklin). Sevier even tried to persuade Franklin to support their cause by letter, but he declined, writing:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />... I am sensible of the honor which your Excellency and your council thereby do me. But being in Europe when your State was formed, I am too little acquainted with the circumstances to be able to offer you anything just now that may be of importance since everything material that regards your welfare will doubtless have occurred to yourselves. ... I will endeavor to inform myself more perfectly of your affairs by inquiry and searching the records of Congress and if anything should occur to me that I think may be useful to you, you shall hear from me thereupon.\nIndependent republic.\nFranklin, still at odds with North Carolina over taxation, protection, and other issues, began operating as a \"de facto\" independent republic after the failed statehood attempt. Greeneville was declared the new capital. The government had previously been assembling at Jonesborough, only blocks away from the North Carolina-backed rival seat of government. The first legislature met in Greeneville in December 1785. The delegates adopted a permanent constitution, known as the Holston Constitution, which was modeled closely upon that of North Carolina. John Sevier also proposed to commission a Franklin state flag, but it was never designed.\nFranklin opened courts, incorporated and annexed five new counties (see map below), and fixed taxes and officers' salaries. Barter became the economic system \"de jure\", with anything in common use among the people allowed in payment to settle debts, including corn, cotton, tobacco, apple brandy, and skins. (Sevier was often paid in deer hides.) Federal or foreign currencies were accepted. All citizens were granted a two-year reprieve on paying taxes, but the lack of hard currency and economic infrastructure slowed development and often created confusion.\nRelations with Native Americans.\nThe new legislature made peace treaties with the Native American tribes in the area (with few exceptions, the most notable being the Chickamauga Cherokee). The Cherokee claim to sovereignty over much of the area of southern Franklin, though already occupied by Whites, was maintained at the 1785 Treaty of Hopewell with the federal government. In 1786, Samuel Wear helped negotiate the competing Treaty of Coyatee on behalf of the State of Franklin. Coyatee re-affirmed the 1785 Treaty of Dumplin Creek, which the republic had secured from the Cherokee, and which Dragging Canoe's Chickamauga faction had refused to recognize. The new treaty extended the area for White settlement as far south as the Little Tennessee River, along which the main Overhill Cherokee towns were located. The Cherokee did not formally relinquish their claim to this territory to the U.S. until the July 1791 Treaty of Holston and even then, hostilities continued in the area for years afterward.\nDrawn-out end.\nThe small state began its demise in 1786, with several key residents and supporters of Franklin withdrawing their support in favor of a newly reinterested North Carolina. Until this point, Franklin had not had the benefit of either the federal army or the North Carolina militia. In late 1786, North Carolina offered to waive all back taxes if Franklin would reunite with its government. When this offer was popularly rejected in 1787, North Carolina moved in with troops under the leadership of Col. John Tipton and re-established its own courts, jails, and government at Jonesborough. The two rival administrations now competed side-by-side.\nBattle of Franklin.\nIn 1787, the \"Franklinites\" continued to expand their territory westward toward the Cumberland Mountains by forcibly stealing land from the Native American populations. The frontier shifted back and forth often throughout the Cherokee\u2013American wars. The September 1787 meeting of the Franklin legislature, however, was its last.\nAt the end of 1787, loyalties were divided among the area's residents and came to a head in early February 1788. Jonathan Pugh, the North Carolina sheriff of Washington County, was ordered by the county court to seize any property of Sevier's to settle tax debts North Carolina contended were owed to them. The property seized included several slaves, who were brought to Tipton's home and secured in his underground kitchen. On February 27, Governor Sevier arrived at the Tipton house leading a force numbering more than 100 men. During a heavy snowstorm in the early morning of February 29, Colonel George Maxwell arrived with a force equivalent to Sevier's to reinforce Tipton. After 10 minutes of skirmishing, Sevier and his force withdrew to Jonesborough. A number of men were captured or wounded on both sides, and three men were killed.\nFrontier intrigues.\nIn late March 1788, the Chickamauga, Chickasaw, and other tribes collectively began to attack American frontier settlements in Franklin. A desperate Sevier sought a loan from the Spanish government. With help from James White (who was later found to be a paid agent of Spain), he attempted to place Franklin under Spanish rule. Opposed to any foreign nation gaining a foothold in Franklin, North Carolina officials arrested Sevier in August 1788. Sevier's supporters quickly freed him from the local jail and retreated to \"Lesser Franklin\". In February 1789, Sevier and the last holdouts of the \"Lost State\" swore oaths of allegiance to North Carolina after turning themselves in. North Carolina sent their militia to aid in driving out the Cherokee and Chickasaw.\nLesser Franklin.\nAfter the dissolution of the State of Franklin in February 1789, continued support of the separate state movement was confined largely to Sevier County, specifically in the country south of the French Broad River. The people there realized that the only entity recognizing title to their land holdings had been Franklin. Both North Carolina and the federal (Confederation) government supported the Cherokee claims as set forth in the Treaty of Hopewell, and considered settlers in the area \"squatters\". This led to the formation of a \"Lesser Franklin\" government, with Articles of Association similar to the earlier Watauga Constitution. In 1789, these articles were adopted at Newell's Station, which served as the seat of government for the wider area of Lesser Franklin, including all the settled country south of the French Broad.\nThe Lesser Franklin government finally ended in 1791, when Governor William Blount, of the newly formed Southwest Territory, met the Cherokee chieftains on the site of the future Knoxville, and they made the Treaty of Holston. The Overhill Cherokee now acknowledged the authority of the United States government, and ceded to the federal government all of their lands south of the French Broad, almost as far as the Little Tennessee River.\nSubsequent status.\nBy early 1789, the government of the State of Franklin outside of Lesser Franklin had collapsed entirely and the territory was firmly back under the control of North Carolina. Soon thereafter, North Carolina once again ceded the area to the federal government to form the Southwest Territory, the precursor to the State of Tennessee. Sevier was elected in 1790 to the US Congress to represent the territory, and became Tennessee's first governor, in 1796. Col. John Tipton signed the Tennessee Constitution as the representative from Washington County.\nLegacy.\nThe Washington County farm of Col. John Tipton, where the 1788 Battle of Franklin was fought, has been preserved by the State of Tennessee as the Tipton-Haynes State Historic Site in southeastern Johnson City, Tennessee.\nSamuel Tipton, a son of Col. John Tipton, donated land for a town to be located along the east side of the Doe River near its confluence with the Watauga River in what was then known as Wayne County, and the town was named in his honor as Tiptonville (not to be confused with present-day Tiptonville, in West Tennessee). The losers of the Battle of Franklin (1788) later regained political power and renamed Wayne County as Carter County (after the former State of Franklin Senate Speaker Landon Carter), and also renamed Tiptonville as Elizabethton (after the wife of Landon Carter, Elizabeth Carter) when Tennessee was first admitted to the Union in 1796 and John Sevier became the first governor of Tennessee.\nThe Franklin area also played a role in the Southern Unionist East Tennessee Convention. Throughout the first half of the 19th century, East Tennessee was frequently at odds with Tennessee's two other grand divisions, Middle Tennessee and West Tennessee. Many East Tennesseans felt the state legislature showed persistent favoritism toward the other two divisions, especially over funding for internal improvements. In the early 1840s, several East Tennessee leaders, among them Congressman (and future President) Andrew Johnson, led a movement to form a separate state in East Tennessee known as \"Frankland\". Though this movement was unsuccessful, the idea that East Tennessee should be a separate state periodically resurfaced over the subsequent two decades.\nMany businesses in the State of Franklin use that name to keep the legacy alive, such as the \"State of Franklin Bank\", based in Johnson City, Tennessee.\nOne of the main thoroughfares in Johnson City is named \"State of Franklin Road\" and passes by East Tennessee State University.\nIn law-school examinations in the U.S., a fictional \"State of Franklin\" is used as a placeholder name for a generic state, often the one in which the property of Blackacre is located. This way, variations in existing state law do not complicate the theoretical legal issues arising from the property disputes. By convention, Blackacre is located in Acre County, Franklin.\nThe combined present-day (as of 2015 census) population of the counties that would have made up the State of Franklin is 540,000, which would have made the state have about 40,000 people fewer than Wyoming, the current least-populous state.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "71179541": "Buck Colbert Franklin\nAfrican American lawyer (1879\u20131960)\nBuck Colbert Franklin (May 6, 1879\u00a0\u2013 September 24, 1960) was an African American lawyer best known for defending survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre.\nEarly life and education.\nBuck Colbert Franklin was born on May 6, 1879, near Homer, in would later become Pontotoc County, Oklahoma. His father, David Franklin, was a Black man who had escaped from slavery and fought for the Union Army in 1864. His mother, Millie Colbert Franklin, was one-fourth Choctaw and had been raised in that nation's traditional culture. Millie and David were married in 1856 and moved from Mississippi to a 300-acre farm near Homer in the Indian Territory, on communal land of the Chickasaw Nation. Buck was the seventh of the couple's ten children, and was named for his grandfather, who had purchased his own freedom. Millie died in 1886 after a trip to Tuskahoma to prove her Choctaw citizenship. David was a successful rancher who used his wealth to build up his community.\nFranklin's childhood was shaped by his chores on the ranch, and by age eleven he could ride horses, hunt deer, and cook for the family. In 1890 his father brought him along on a business trip to Guthrie, where they met territorial governor George Washington Steele and young Franklin saw prominent African American lawyers and businessmen at work. He was a successful athlete and student at Dawes Academy boarding school near Springer, Oklahoma; after graduating from Dawes, he was accepted at Roger Williams University in Nashville.\nShortly after his father's death in 1900, Franklin followed his Dawes Academy teacher and mentor, John Hope, to attend the more prestigious Atlanta Baptist College (later Morehouse College). Franklin met his classmate Mollie Lee Parker, and they married in 1903. Mollie and Buck both pursued their studies while managing a large homestead, but when an illness killed the ranch's hogs, they lost nearly all their wealth and got jobs as teachers.\nEarly career.\nThe young couple settled on a smaller homestead in Ardmore, Oklahoma. While working as a teacher, Franklin apprenticed with Black lawyers in Ardmore and studied to become a lawyer through a correspondence course from the Sprague School of Law in Detroit. He was admitted to the Oklahoma Bar in December 1907. He practiced law in Ardmore, then in 1912 moved the family to the African American town Rentiesville, Oklahoma. Franklin established a newspaper, the \"Rentiesville News\", and served as postmaster general for the town. Much of his legal work involved defending the land and mineral rights of the Native American and freedmen communities.\nWork and life in Tulsa.\nIn 1921.\nFranklin moved to Tulsa in early 1921, leaving his wife and youngest children behind in Rentiesville until he could save a nest egg of money. He established a law practice with I.H. Spears and T.O. Chappelle at 107 1/2 North Greenwood Avenue, in the prosperous Greenwood District referred to as \"Black Wall Street.\" He survived three days of violence led by white mobs now known as the Tulsa race massacre, although he was marched at gunpoint to the Tulsa Convention Hall and imprisoned for several days, and his office was one of the many buildings destroyed. He would later write about what he saw during those days, including families fleeing burning buildings and three men shot and killed.\nIn the weeks after the Greenwood District was destroyed, the mayor and city commission worked to plan new commercial development in the area which would move Black residents and their businesses out of the downtown area. The new plan would require new construction in the Greenwood area be constructed from fireproof materials such as brick, which the struggling residents could not afford. Franklin, Spears, and Chappelle set up a makeshift tent as their office to provide legal support to the victims of the violence. The team filed Tulsa County Case No. 15730, \"Joe Lockard v. T.D. Evans, et al.\", against Mayor T. D. Evans, the city commission, and others in the city government, arguing that the city did not have the right to prohibit the Black property owners from rebuilding on their own land. An appeal by the city was rejected in September 1921 by a three-judge panel of Tulsa County judges who found that the city sought to deny the property rights of Greenwood's residents without due process. The Greenwood community would go on to rebuild. Franklin and Spears also worked to process insurance claims for Greenwood residents, but these were unsuccessful.\nAfter 1921.\nFranklin's wife Mollie and their two younger children joined him in Tulsa in 1925; she started the first daycare for children of working mothers in North Tulsa. Franklin continued to practice law; one of his cases reached the Oklahoma Supreme Court, a defamation lawsuit against World Publishing Co., the publisher of the newspaper \"Tulsa World\". In another notable case, he successfully argued that an all-white jury was discriminatory in a criminal case with a Black defendant. He became a Senior Member of the Oklahoma Bar Association in 1959.\nAfter he suffered a stroke in 1956 which paralyzed the right side of his body, he endeavored to finish his autobiography with the help of his son John Hope. He died in Tulsa on September 24, 1960.\nLegacy.\nThe Franklins had four children together: Mozella Denslow, Buck Colbert Jr., Anne Harriet, and John Hope. John Hope Franklin would go on to become a prominent historian and intellectual.\nIn 2021, the University of Tulsa College of Law established the new Buck Colbert Franklin Legal Clinic, offering free legal services to residents of the Greenwood neighborhood. The law school also hosts The Buck Colbert Franklin Memorial Civil Rights Lecture every year.\n\"My Life and An Era: The Autobiography of Buck Colbert Franklin\" was edited by his son John and grandson John Whittington Franklin and published in 1997. The book includes details about Franklin's childhood in the Indian Territory, recollections of events such as the Tulsa race massacre, and reflections on race and the law.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "135233": "Rogersville, Tennessee\nTown in the United States\nRogersville is a town in and the county seat of Hawkins County, Tennessee, United States. It was settled in 1775 by the grandparents of Davy Crockett. It is named for its founder, Joseph Rogers. Tennessee's second oldest courthouse, the Hawkins County Courthouse, first newspaper \"The Knoxville Gazette\", and first post office are all located in Rogersville. The Rogersville Historic District is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nRogersville is part of the Kingsport-Bristol-Bristol, TN-VA Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is a component of the Tri-Cities region.\nThe population of Rogersville as of the 2010 census was 4,671.\nHistory.\nSettlement background.\nIn 1775, the grandparents of Davy Crockett, a future member of the United States Congress from Tennessee and hero of the Alamo, settled in the Watauga colony in the area in what is today Rogersville near the spring that today bears their name. After an American Indian attack and massacre, the remaining Crocketts sold the property to a Huguenot named Colonel Thomas Amis.\nIn 1780, Colonel Amis built a fort at Big Creek, on the outskirts of the present-day town, with the assistance of fellow Scots-Irish settler John Carter. That same year, about above downtown Rogersville, Amis erected a fortress-like stone house, around which he built a palisade for protection against Native American attack. The next year, Amis opened a store, erected a blacksmith shop, and built a distillery. He also eventually established a sawmill and a gristmill. From the first he kept a house of entertainment.\nFounding of the town.\nIn 1785, the State of Franklin organized Spencer County (which includes the area of present-day Hawkins County, Tennessee) and declared the seat of county government to be located at what is today Rogersville. Thomas Henderson was chosen county court clerk and colonel of the militia. William Cocke and Thomas King were elected representatives to the Franklin General Assembly. The remaining county officers are unknown.\nIn November 1786, North Carolina began once more to contend with the Franklin government for control over the area, and that state's General Assembly passed an act creating Hawkins County. It included within its limits all the territory between Bays Mountain and the Holston and Tennessee rivers on the east to the Cumberland Mountains on the west. The county court was organized at the house of Thomas Gibbons. As had the state of Franklin, North Carolina set the new county seat about the property of Joseph Rogers.\nJoseph Rogers.\nJoseph Rogers (August 21, 1764 \u2013 November 6, 1833) was born near Cook's Town, Ireland, the son of James Rogers and his wife, Elizabeth Brown. He traveled to the area, by then known as the State of Franklin (which had been carved out of far west North Carolina), by 1785. During a stay at a tavern adjacent to Colonel Thomas Amis' home, Rogers met the colonel's daughter, Mary Amis, whom he wed, on October 24, 1786. Her father ceded the lands near Crockett Spring to his son-in-law\u2014 the same land that Colonel Amis had purchased from the heirs of David Crockett.\nWhen North Carolina considered where to establish the county seat for its new Hawkins County, Rogers successfully lobbied to have the government located near his home. He volunteered his tavern, which had been established about 1784\u201385, as the first county courthouse, where it was finally established in 1787. With the help of other local settlers, Rogers laid out a plan for the town, and the town of Rogersville was chartered by the North Carolina General Assembly in 1789. The plan included a public square, deeded to the town government, which would host the town's public well and a county courthouse.\nIn November 1792, Rogers was appointed the first postmaster at Rogersville. The town's second post office, built by Rogers c. 1815, still stands at the corner of east Main Street and south Hasson Street.\nRogers was the father of fourteen children with Mary. He died on November 6, 1833, at Rogersville, and is buried in Rogers Cemetery. His wife, Mary, died a month later.\nA town divided.\nIn November 1863, during the Civil War, Rogersville was the site of a battle between occupying Federal forces and invading Confederate troops. Union forces had encamped just outside the town. The Confederates, led by Brigadier General William E. Jones, were able to surprise the Union forces and pursue them across the Holston River and into Greene County. The Confederates held the town for the remainder of the war.\nSentiment in Rogersville was divided. Many supported the efforts of twenty-six East Tennessee counties seceding from the state (much as the State of Scott had done) and re-joining the Union. Others saw President Lincoln's invasion of Tennessee as an unprecedented invasion of their homes and an incursion by Federal power; these people became strong Confederates. Rogersville was spared destruction during the war. In fact, structures such as the Hale Springs Inn were used by the different occupying armies.\nCradle of Tennessee journalism.\nGeorge Roulstone was Tennessee's first printer. He was encouraged to settle in Rogersville by William Blount, the new governor of the Southwest Territory. Roulston printed Tennessee's first newspaper on November 5, 1791. Because Knoxville, the intended seat of the new territorial government, had not yet been established, Roulstone published the first year of his paper near the Rogers tavern. Roulstone called the newspaper \"The Knoxville Gazette\" and in October 1792, he moved his press to Knoxville, where he continued to publish the \"Gazette\" as well as other papers until his death in 1804. After the \"Gazette\" was moved, there was no newspaper in the area until 1813, when John B. Hood began publishing \"The East Tennessee Gazette\" at Rogersville. Other papers shortly followed, including \"The Western Pilot\", c. 1815, and \"The Rogersville Gazette\" from the same era.\nSpecialty publications emerged during these early days, including \"The Rail-Road Advocate\", \"The Calvinistic Magazine\", and \"The Holston Watchman\". Numerous other newspapers have been published in Rogersville over the years, most surviving only a short time and having modest circulation. Among them were \"The Independent\", \"The Rogersville Spectator\", \"The Weekly Reporter\", \"The Rogersville Gazette\", \"Rogersville Press and Times\", \"Holston Journal\", \"Hawkins County Republican\", \"Hawkins County Telephone\", and \"The Rogersville Herald.\"\nRogersville's longest-lasting newspaper is \"The Rogersville Review\", which began publication as \"The Holston Review\" in 1885 by William T. Robertson. A year later, Robertson changed the name to the present banner. The \"Review\"'s closest competitor in lifespan was \"The Rogersville Herald\", which was published from 1886 to 1932.\nThe town's printing heritage is chronicled by the Tennessee Newspaper and Printing Museum, located in the town's historic Southern Railway train depot, c. 1890.\nModern day.\nIn 2020, the Rogersville Town Council acquired a three-acre site of a vacant shopping center with plans to turn the site into a civic service campus, consisting of a new community center, town hall, and a concessions area for users of Rogersville town park, which borders the complex site.\nGeography.\nRogersville is located slightly southwest of the center of Hawkins County. According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , all land. The town is in the valley of Crockett Creek, a southwest-flowing tributary of the Holston River. The elevation of Rogersville is . Via U.S. Route 11W (see below), it is southwest of Kings"}, "descending_order": ["310561", "43172526", "71179541", "135233", "135748"], "permutation_1": ["43172526", "135748", "135233", "71179541", "310561"], "permutation_2": ["310561", "43172526", "135748", "71179541", "135233"], "permutation_3": ["310561", "43172526", "71179541", "135233", "135748"]}
{"id": "2hop__60492_336593", "docs_added": {"109131": "Marco Island, Florida\nMarco Island is a city and barrier island in Collier County, Florida, south of Naples on the Gulf Coast of the United States. It is the largest barrier island in Southwest Florida's Ten Thousand Islands area, which extends southerly to Cape Sable. Marco Island is home to an affluent beach community with resort amenities.\nMarco Island is a principal city of the Naples\u2013Marco Island Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 15,760 at the 2020 census, down from 16,413 at the 2010 census. The population more than doubles during the winter.\nParts of the island have scenic, high elevations relative to the generally flat south Florida landscape. The island has a tropical climate; specifically, a tropical wet and dry or savanna type (\"Aw\" under the K\u00f6ppen system). It is known for its distinct wet and dry seasons, with most of the rainfall between June and October.\nHistory.\nMarco Island's history can be traced to 500 CE, when the Calusa people inhabited the island as well as the rest of southwest Florida. A number of Calusa artifacts were discovered on Key Marco (an island then adjacent, and since attached, to Marco Island) in 1896 by anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing as part of the Pepper-Hearst Expedition. The most notable artifact discovered was the carved wooden \"Key Marco Cat\", now on display at the Marco Island Historical Museum under a loan from the Smithsonian Institution. The artifact is featured on a 1989 postage stamp.\nWhen Spanish explorers came to the island in the mid-1500s, they gave the island the name \"La Isla de San Marcos\" after St. Mark, traditionally considered the author of the Gospel of Mark. Early development of the island began in the late 1800s after the arrival of William Thomas Collier and his family. Collier founded the village of Marco on the island in 1870, and in 1896 his son, William D. \"Capt. Bill\" Collier, opened a hotel on the island, known today as the Olde Marco Inn. Clam digging became a major industry on Marco Island and throughout the Ten Thousand Islands in the early 1900s. The Burnham Clam Cannery began operation near Caxambas Pass in 1903 and operated until 1929. The Doxsee Clam Cannery also operated from 1911 to 1947. In 1912, ferry service began between Marco Island and the Isles of Capri. A road on the mainland linked the ferry landing with East Naples (just west of State Road 951). A small piece of this road remains and is known as Barefoot Williams Road.\nBarron G. Collier (whom Collier County is named after, and no relation to William T. Collier) purchased a large amount of land on Marco Island in 1922, and in 1927 the island incorporated as Collier City. Collier City was abolished in 1957. James Harvey Doxsee Sr. served as Collier City's only mayor. Also in 1927, the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad began service to the island after extending its route from Fort Myers and Naples. The railroad ran to the island along the present route of State Road 951. Rail service was discontinued in 1944. The first vehicle bridge to the island was a small wooden swing bridge built in 1938 near Goodland on the island's east side. Remnants of this bridge can be seen next to the current bridge at the site, the Stan Gober Memorial Bridge (built in 1975). The island's ferry service was discontinued after the original Goodland Bridge opened.\nSignificant development of Marco Island took place in the 1960s that made it into the retirement and tourist destination it is today. The Mackle brothers of the Deltona Corporation led development of the island after purchasing large amounts of land there for $7 million. As a result of development, the S.S. Jolley Bridge opened for traffic in 1969. Marco Island reincorporated as a city on August 28, 1997. As in many coastal communities, residents battle short-term rentals and traffic congestion. On September 28, 2022, Hurricane Ian devastated the island with an 8' storm surge.\nGeography.\nMarco Island is in southwestern Collier County, along the Gulf of Mexico. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of , of which is land and (46.73%) is water.\nClimate.\nMarco Island has a tropical climate that borders on a humid subtropical climate since the mean temperature in the coldest month, January, is which is barely over the threshold for a tropical climate.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nAs of the 2020 United States census, there were 15,760 people, 9,056 households, and 6,109 families residing in the city.\nAs of the 2010 United States census, there were 16,413 people, 7,517 households, and 5,393 families residing in the city. There were 7,517 households, out of which 9.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 46.7% were 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.21. The median income for a household in the city was $73,373, and the per capita income was $52,089. 2.1% of the population were below the poverty level.\nGovernment.\nPolitical affiliation.\nMarco Island generally supports the Republican Party, as the city is represented in the House by Republican Byron Donalds and voted in favor of Republican incumbent Donald Trump during the 2020 election at margins varying from 62% to 73% over Democratic nominee Joe Biden. The region, however, voted more Democratic than it did during the 2016 election.\nEducation.\nThe District School Board of Collier County operates the following schools serving Marco Island:\nPrivate schools:\nTransportation.\nTwo bridges provide road access to the island via Collier Boulevard and San Marco Road (CR 92). There are two public access locations with parking and amenities (Tigertail and South Beach), a private beach complex for residents (Residents' Beach), a private parking area for residents (Sarazen Park at South Beach), and two other public access points (with no amenities). Offshore island beaches, such as Keewaydin, are accessible by boat or tour.\nMarco Island Executive Airport (MKY) provides general aviation service to the area. It is northeast of the island's central business district. The closest regularly scheduled commercial flights to the area arrive at Southwest Florida International Airport.\nMarco Island is served by Collier Area Transit's Route #21 and Route #121 (Express: Immokalee to Marco Island).\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "6275931": "East Naples, Florida\nEast Naples is an unincorporated community and the county seat of Collier County, Florida, United States. East Naples has been the county seat since 1962, when the Collier County Courthouse was moved from Everglades (see Old Collier County Courthouse).\nEast Naples is part of the Naples\u2013Marco Island Metropolitan Statistical Area.\nNotable people.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "8187704": "Marco Island Airport\nAirport in Florida, U.S.\nMarco Island Executive Airport (), also known as Marco Island Airport, is a public airport located in Naples, Collier County, Florida, northeast of the central business district of Marco Island. This airport is publicly owned by Collier County.\nThe Marco Island Executive Airport is conveniently located to Naples, Marco Island, Goodland and Isles of Capri.\nThe airport was initially designed to complement plans to create a resort area south of Naples. Immediately following completion in 1976, the airport was primarily used as a marketing tool to help sell Marco Island lots. Developers would fly prospective Marco Island homeowners and investors over from Miami. Eventually the developers turned the airport over to the state of Florida, and in the 1980s the state, in turn, leased it directly to the county. Recognizing that the airport represents a community asset, the county had the foresight to maintain the airport, and in 1993, the Collier County Airport Authority was created to develop and manage the Marco Island Executive Airport. Today, the airport represents a community asset, with travelers from all over the world making their way to this general aviation airport just north of Marco Island.\nAlthough most U.S. airports use the same three-letter location identifier for the FAA and IATA, Marco Island Airport is assigned MKY by the FAA and MRK by the IATA (which assigned MKY to Mackay Airport in Mackay, Queensland, Australia). The airport's ICAO identifier is KMKY.\nThe airport served as a secondary hub for Marco Island Airways until that airline ceased operations in June 1986. Currently, the airport is home to several local flight schools, public air charters, aircraft maintenance providers and the Marco Island Squadron of the United States Civil Air Patrol.\nHistory.\nPrior to where the Marco Island Executive Airport is now, the airport was originally located on the island itself. The airport in 1965 was originally a temporary airstrip serving a way for the Deltona Corporation to bring potential home buyers to the island.\nIn 1968 there would be a newer airport built on the island located near what is now San Marco Road. Naples Airlines would be the only airline to service Marco until 1972 when the Deltona Corporation created their own airline. Marco Island Airways would be Marco's exclusive airline from 1972 until 1986 when they ceased operations. In 1973 a new terminal building would be built, replacing the old one. During the early 70s the airport was seeing 52-54 thousand passengers yearly. The airport would continue to operate until 1975 when the airport would be decommissioned and moved to where it is now.\nIn September 1976 the new terminal building would open after its construction started in 1972. This new airport included a 5000 ft runway and ramp space that could accommodate new private jets and Marco Island Airway's Martin 4040s. During the early 80s the Deltona Corporation was facing many lawsuits and gave the deed to the airport to the state, which would later lease the airport to Collier County.\n The airport would loose commercial service in 1987 when Provincetown-Boston Airlines left.\nThe airport would get a new taxiway (Taxiway A) connecting the end of runway 35 to the ramp. This allowed for there to be a way to travel from one end to the other without needing to backtrack on the runway. Started construction in 2010 and ended with a ribbon cutting ceremony in 2012.\nFacilities and aircraft.\nMarco Island Airport covers an area of and contains one asphalt runway (17/35): .\nThe Airport underwent a $15 million terminal redevelopment initiative to construct a new, two-story terminal building as the old terminal was located within an unsafe distance from Runway 17/35. The project's construction commenced in April 2018 and was completed in 2020.\nFor 12-month period ending December 31, 2022 the airport had 55,374 aircraft operations, an average of 151 per day: 33% local general aviation, 67% transient general aviation, and <1% military. There are 37 aircraft based at this airport year-round: 82% single engine (30), 14% multi engine (5), 2% jet aircraft (1) and 2% helicopters (1), although this figure can triple during the busy winter seasonal months that runs from November through May.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "75116": "Wakulla County, Florida\nCounty in Florida, United States\nWakulla County is a county located in the Big Bend region in the northern portion of the U.S. state of Florida. As of the 2020 census, the population was 33,764. Its county seat is Crawfordville. Wakulla County is part of the Tallahassee, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area. Wakulla County has a near-absence of any municipal population, with two small municipalities holding about 3% of the population. The county seat, Crawfordville, is one of only two unincorporated county seats among Florida's 67 counties.\nHistory.\nFirst Spanish period.\nIn 1528, P\u00e1nfilo de Narv\u00e1ez found his way to what would be Wakulla County from the future Pinellas County, Florida, camping at the confluence of the Wakulla and St. Marks rivers. Narv\u00e1ez determined this was a very suitable spot for a fort. In 1539, Hernando de Soto's expedition passed through \"La Florida\" with a similar route.\nThe Fort San Marcos de Apalache began with a wooden fort in the late 1600s. The vicinity around the fort was not settled until 1733. Spanish colonial officials began constructing a stone fort, which was unfinished in the mid-1760s when Great Britain took over.\nBritish period.\nThe British divided Florida into East Florida, which included present-day Wakulla County, and West Florida. The boundary was the Apalachicola River; at that time, West Florida extended all the way to the Mississippi River. Twenty years later when the Spanish returned, they kept the East and West divisions, with the administrative capitals remaining at St. Augustine and Pensacola, respectively.\nSecond Spanish period.\nThe area to become Wakulla County was an active place in the early 19th century. A former British officer named William Augustus Bowles attempted to unify and lead 400 Creek Indians against the Spanish outpost of San Marcos, capturing it. This provoked Spain, and a Spanish flotilla arrived some five weeks later to restore control.\nIn 1818, General Andrew Jackson invaded the area, capturing Fort San Marcos. Two captive British citizens, Robert Ambrister and Alexander Arbuthnot, were tried, found guilty of inciting Indian raids, and executed under Jackson's authority \u2013 causing a diplomatic nightmare between the U.S. and Britain. The U.S. Army garrison of 200 infantry and artillery men occupied the fort for the better part of a year (1818\u20131819).\nIn 1821, Florida was ceded to the United States and Fort St. Marks, as the Americans called it, was again garrisoned by U.S. troops.\nFlorida's territorial period.\nIn 1824, the fort was abandoned and turned over to the Territory of Florida.\nBy 1839, the fort was returned to the Federal government and a merchant marine hospital was built. The hospital provided care for seamen and area yellow fever victims.\nAntebellum Wakulla.\nWakulla County was created from Leon County in 1843. It may (although this is disputed) be named for the Timucuan Indian word for \"spring of water\" or \"mysterious water\". This is in reference to Wakulla County's greatest natural attraction, Wakulla Springs, which is one of the world's largest freshwater springs, both in terms of depth and water flow. In 1974, the water flow was measured at per day\u2014the greatest recorded flow ever for a single spring.\nIn an 1856 book, adventurer Charles Lanman wrote of the springs:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />An adequate idea of this mammoth spring could never be given by pen or pencil; but when once seen, on a bright calm day, it must ever after be a thing to dream about and love. It is the fountain-head of a river... and is of sufficient volume to float a steamboat, if such an affair had yet dared to penetrate this solemn wilderness... It wells up in the very heart of a dense cypress swamp, is nearly round in shape, measures some four hundred feet in diameter, and is in depth about one hundred and fifty feet, having at its bottom an immense horizontal chasm, with a dark portal, from one side of which looms up a limestone cliff, the summit of which is itself nearly fifty feet beneath the spectator, who gazes upon it from the sides of a tiny boat. The water is so astonishlingly clear that even a pin can be seen on the bottom in the deepest places, and of course every animate and inanimate object which it contains is fully exposed to view. The apparent color of the water from the shore is greenish, but as you look perpendicularly into it, it is colorless as air, and the sensation of floating upon it is that of being suspended in a balloon; and the water is so refractive, that when the sun shines brilliantly every object you see is enveloped in the most fascinating prismatic hues.\nAnother possible origin for the name Wakulla, not as widely accepted, is that it means \"mist\" or \"misting\", perhaps in reference to the Wakulla Volcano, a 19th-century phenomenon in which a column of smoke could be seen emerging from the swamp for miles.\nThe town of Port Leon was once a thriving cotton-shipping hub, with a railroad from Tallahassee that carried over 50,000 tons of cotton a year to be put on ships, usually for shipment direct to Europe. Port Leon was the sixth-largest town in Florida, with 1,500 residents. However, a hurricane and the accompanying storm surge wiped out the entire town. New Port (today known as Newport, Florida) was built two miles (3\u00a0km) upstream but never quite achieved the prosperity of Port Leon.\nCivil War.\nDuring the Civil War, Wakulla County was blockaded from 1861 to 1865 by a Union Navy squadron at the mouth of the St. Marks River. Confederates took the old Spanish fort known as San Marcos de Apalache, or Fort St. Marks, and renamed it Fort Ward.\nThe Battle of Natural Bridge eventually stopped the Union force that intended to take Fort Ward and nearby Tallahassee, the only Confederate state capital other than Austin Texas which had not been captured. The Union was not able to land all of its forces, but they still outnumbered the Confederates, who chose to make their stand at a place where the St. Marks River goes underground: the \"Natural Bridge\" referred to. However, the Confederate Army had over a day to prepare its defenses, and the Union Army retreated. Most of the dead were African-American Union soldiers.\n20th century and beyond.\nIn Gloria Jahoda's book \"The Other Florida\", she writes movingly of the extreme poverty of Wakulla County from the early 1900s to 1966 when Wakulla still had no doctor and no dentist, few stores, and a county newspaper produced just once a month on a mimeograph machine.\nToday, Wakulla has several doctors and dentists, several supermarkets and big-box retailers, a golf resort, and a thriving seafood business.\nEtymology.\nThe name Wakulla is corrupted from Guacara. Guacara is a Spanish phonetic spelling of an original Indian name, and Wakulla is a Muskhogean pronunciation of Guacara. The Spanish \"Gua\" is the equivalent of the Creek \"wa\", and as the Creek alphabet does not exhibit an \"R\" sound, the second element \"cara\" would have been pronounced \"kala\" by the Creeks. The Creek voiceless \"L\" is always substituted for the Spanish \"R\". Thus the word Guacara was pronounced Wakala by the Seminoles who are Muskhogean in their origin and language.\nBecause Wakulla was probably a Timucuan word, it is unlikely that its meaning will ever be known. It may contain the word kala, which signified a \"spring of water\" in some Indian dialects.. It may refer to the Whip-poor-will, known as waxkula in Creek.\nGeography.\nAccording to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and (17.6%) is water. \nWakulla County was added to the Tallahassee, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) in 1973. The county was removed from the Tallahassee MSA in 1983. It was re-added to the MSA (for the second time) in 2003.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2020 census.\nAs of the 2020 United States census, there were 33,764 people, 11,382 households, and 8,362 families residing in the county.\n2000 census.\nAs of the census of 2000, there were 22,863 people, 8,450 households, and 6,236 families residing in the county. The population density was . There were 9,820 housing units at an average density of 16 per square\u00a0mile (6/km2). The racial makeup of the county was 86.10% White, 11.51% Black or African American, 0.59% Native American, 0.25% Asian, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 0.29% from other races, and 1.23% from two or more races. 1.94% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.\nThere were 8,450 households, out of which 35.60% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 57.10% were married couples living together, 12.40% had a female householder with no husband present, and 26.20% were non-families. 22.00% of all households were made up of individuals, and 7.00% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.57 and the average family size was 2.99. In the county, the population was spread out, with 25.60% under the age of 18, 7.60% from 18 to 24, 31.70% from 25 to 44, 24.70% from 45 to 64, and 10.30% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 37 years. For every 100 females, there were 107.30 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 106.80 males.\nThe median income for a household in the county was $37,149, and the median income for a family was $42,222. Males had a median income of $29,845 versus $24,330 for females. The per capita income for the county was $17,678. About 9.30% of families and 11.30% of the population were below the poverty line, including 15.40% of those under age 18 and 15.10% of those age 65 or over.\nTransportation.\nRoads.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nRailroads.\nNo railroads currently operate within Wakulla County, but it was formerly served by two different railroads.\nThe Georgia, Florida and Alabama Railroad, completed in 1893, passed through Sopchoppy on its route between Tallahassee and Carrabelle until its abandonment in 1948. South of Sopchoppy, the line followed H.T. Smith Road. The railroad bridge crossing the Ochlocknee River at MacIntyre still exists as pilings blocking all but a portion of the river on the south side. \nThe Tallahassee Railroad, the first railroad in Florida, was completed in 1836 and was abandoned by its successor, the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad, in 1983. of that right-of-way became the Tallahassee-St. Marks Historic Railroad State Trail in 1988.\nAirports.\nThe Wakulla County Airport (2J0), located south of Panacea, is a small public-use airport with a single , north\u2013south turf runway. This airfield was originally constructed during World War II, as an emergency landing strip for Army Air Corps aircraft which trained and patrolled along the Gulf Coast, most of which belonged to the 3rd Army Air Corps out of Dale Mabry Field Army Air Base in Tallahassee. After the war, the air strip was turned over to the county for civilian uses.\nSeaports.\nSt. Marks is a small commercial seaport. Panacea and Ochlockonee Bay also support small fishing fleets.\nEducation.\nWakulla County is served by the Wakulla school district with the following schools:\nThe former Sopchoppy Elementary School now serves as the Sopchoppy Education Center, a Pre-K, adult, and second chance school.\nThe former Shadeville High School served African-American students from 1931 to 1967.\nLibrary.\nThe Wakulla County Public Library is the main library of Wakulla County and is a part of the Wilderness Coast Public Libraries.\nCommunities.\nOther unincorporated communities.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "67461312": "Marco Shores-Hammock Bay, Florida\nMarco Shores-Hammock Bay is a census-designated place (CDP) in western Collier County, Florida, United States. It is southeast of Naples and north of Marco Island, and contains the Hammock Bay Golf and Country Club and the Marco Island Executive Airport. It is bordered to the west by Florida State Road 951 (Collier Boulevard) and to the south by McIlvane Bay.\nThe location was first listed as a CDP prior to the 2020 census. The population was 957 at the 2020 census. It is a part of the Naples-Marco Island, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "42623455": "Marco Island Historical Museum\nMarco Island Historical Museum is a history museum on Marco Island, Florida, Collier County, Florida. It is operated by the Marco Island Historical Society and is part of the Collier County Museum System. Its exhibitions include information on the Calusa Indians and the history of development on Marco Island.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "72360": "Flagler County, Florida\nCounty in Florida, United States\nFlagler County is a county located in the northeastern portion of the U.S. state of Florida. As of the 2020 census, the population was 115,378. Its county seat is Bunnell, and the largest city is Palm Coast. Created in 1917 from portions of Saint Johns and Volusia Counties, it was named for Henry Flagler, who built the Florida East Coast Railway. Flagler County is included in the Deltona\u2013Daytona Beach\u2013Ormond Beach, FL metropolitan statistical area, and is also included in the Orlando\u2013Deltona\u2013Daytona Beach, FL Combined Statistical Area.\nHistory.\nIn 1974, Marco Polo Park, a theme park off Interstate 95 opened. It was never profitable and closed soon after.\nIn 1998, when two brush fires threatened to become one huge brush fire in Flagler County, a mandatory evacuation was ordered for the entire county. This was the first and so far the only time a whole county was evacuated in Florida for a wildfire.\nGeography.\nAccording to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and (15.0%) is water.\nParks and gardens.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2020 census.\nThe 2020 United States census counted 115,378 people, 48,450 households, and 34,022 families in Flagler County, Florida. The population density was 237.3 per square mile (91.6/km2). There were 55,565 housing units at an average density of 114.3 per square mile (44.1/km2). The racial makeup was 75.98% (87,661) white or European American (73.06% non-Hispanic white), 9.48% (10,935) black or African-American, 0.33% (385) Native American or Alaska Native, 2.18% (2,512) Asian, 0.06% (65) Pacific Islander or Native Hawaiian, 2.98% (3,436) from other races, and 9.0% (10,384) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race was 10.66% (12,299) of the population.\nOf the 48,450 households, 21.8% had children under the age of 18; 54.8% were married couples living together; 24.7% had a female householder with no spouse or partner present. 24.0% of households consisted of individuals and 14.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.5 and the average family size was 2.9. The percent of those with a bachelor\u2019s degree or higher was estimated to be 19.7% of the population.\n16.5% of the population was under the age of 18, 6.0% from 18 to 24, 17.4% from 25 to 44, 28.0% from 45 to 64, and 32.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 54.0 years. For every 100 females, there were 108.5 males. For every 100 females ages 18 and older, there were 111.6 males.\nThe 2016-2020 5-year American Community Survey estimates show that the median household income was $57,536 (with a margin of error of +/- $2,337). The median family income was $66,778 (+/- $2,998). Males had a median income of $34,295 (+/- $3,092) versus $26,810 (+/- $1,300) for females. The median income for those above 16 years old was $30,465 (+/- $1,204). Approximately, 7.8% of families and 11.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 16.4% of those under the age of 18 and 6.9% of those ages 65 or over.\n2010 census.\nAs of the census of 2010, there were 95,696 people, 39,186 households, and 27,843 families residing in the county. The population density was 197.1 people per square mile. There were 48,595 housing units. The racial makeup of the county was 82.3% White, 11.4% Black or African American. 8.6% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.\nIn the county, the population was spread out, with 19.9% under the age of 18, and 24.5% who were 65 years of age or older.\nThe median income for a household in the county was $51,049, and the median income for a family was $58,327.\nFlagler county was ranked the fastest-growing county in the nation by the US Census Bureau from 2000 to 2005, boasting a 53.3% change, with a July 1, 2005, population estimate at 76,410. As of 2016 the largest ancestry group in the county was English-American at 18.1% of the county, followed by German-American at 12.7% and Irish-American also at 12.7%.\nPolitics.\nLocal elected leadership.\nFlagler County's foremost elected body is the Board of County Commissioners, a five-seat board elected in partisan races with four-year terms. The County Commission has the following members:\nCommissioners O'Brien and Sullivan are set to leave office following the 2024 general election, having both opted not to seek another term. Pennington and Hansen are in office until 2026, having each been elected in 2022. Dance's term expires in 2028, having been re-elected in the 2024 primary election.\nThe county is also served by the Flagler School Board, who are elected in non-partisan races to four-year terms in office. The seat has only had four of five seats occupied since member Sally Hunt resigned in September 2024. The members are as follows:\nFurry and Chong are in office until 2026, having both been elected in 2022. Conklin and Massaro are leaving office in 2024, having both opted not to seek additional terms. The county elected Janie Ruddy to the District 3 seat and Lauren Ramirez to the District 5 seat, respectively. The District 1 seat will remain vacant until an appointment is made by the Governor of Florida.\nThe county is also served by five elected constitutional officers: Sheriff Rick Staly, Property Appraiser Jay Gardner, Clerk of Courts Tom Bexley, Tax Collector Suzanne Johnston, and Elections Supervisor Kaiti Lenhart.\nVoter registration.\nAccording to the Secretary of State's office, Republicans are a plurality of registered voters in Flagler County.\nEducation.\nFlagler County Public Schools enroll approximately 13,000 students. The system includes two public high schools, Flagler Palm Coast and Matanzas High School. The county also has five elementary schools and two middle schools. All elementary schools will be Pre-K to 5th grade and middle schools 6th and 8th. \nFlagler County schools are:\nIn addition, Daytona State College maintains a branch campus in Palm Coast.\nRoman Catholic Diocese of Orlando operates area Catholic schools. Father Lopez Catholic High School, a private high school, is in nearby Daytona Beach.\nLibraries.\nFlagler County Library System consists of two branches with over 57,000 borrowers. The Main Branch is located at 2500 Palm Coast Pkwy NW, Palm Coast and the Bunnell Branch is located at 103 E Moody Blvd, Bunnell. The Flagler County Library system currently employees eighteen staff, with fourteen full-time employees and four part-time employees with an annual operating budget of $1 million.\nThe Flagler County Public Library was created by the County Commission in 1987, but as early as 1937, a room of the County Courthouse in Bunnell was set aside for a small library, which was sponsored by the Colony Club. The current library director is Holly Albanese.\nThe Flagler County Library System offers a wide variety of services beyond traditional library services. They have an e-book collection through Overdrive and Axis360. The library system will assist patrons in filing taxes, and applying for some government programs, as well as with passport applications. Both libraries offer fax services, and the Main Branch also offers scanning services.\nIn 2001, the Flagler County Library System began a local oral history project called the \"Flagler County Memories Project\". This project is currently being recorded and then preserved on compact discs. The project mission states, \"This collection of oral life histories seeks to sample"}, "descending_order": ["8187704", "75116", "109131", "67461312", "42623455", "72360", "6275931"], "permutation_1": ["109131", "42623455", "6275931", "67461312", "75116", "72360", "8187704"], "permutation_2": ["6275931", "72360", "109131", "67461312", "8187704", "75116", "42623455"], "permutation_3": ["6275931", "109131", "42623455", "75116", "8187704", "67461312", "72360"]}
{"id": "2hop__557013_99808", "docs_added": {"30158": "Tonga\nCountry in the South Pacific\nTonga ( , ; ), officially the Kingdom of Tonga (), is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania. The country has 171 islands - of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in the southern Pacific Ocean. As of 2021,[ [update]] according to Johnson's Tribune, Tonga has a population of 104,494, 70% of whom reside on the main island, Tongatapu. The country stretches approximately north-south. It is surrounded by Fiji and Wallis and Futuna (France) to the northwest, Samoa to the northeast, New Caledonia (France) and Vanuatu to the west, Niue (the nearest foreign territory) to the east and Kermadec (New Zealand) to the southwest. Tonga is about from New Zealand's North Island.\nTonga was first inhabited roughly 2,500 years ago by the Lapita civilization, Polynesian settlers who gradually evolved a distinct and strong ethnic identity, language, and culture as the Tongan people. They quickly established a powerful footing across the South Pacific, and this period of Tongan expansionism and colonization is known as the Tu\u02bbi Tonga Empire. From the rule of the first Tongan king, \u02bbAho\u02bbeitu, Tonga grew into a regional power. It was a thalassocracy that conquered and controlled unprecedented swathes of the Pacific, from parts of the Solomon Islands and the whole of New Caledonia and Fiji in the west to Samoa and Niue and even as far as parts of modern-day French Polynesia in the east. Tu\u02bbi Tonga became renowned for its economic, ethnic, and cultural influence over the Pacific, which remained strong even after the Samoan revolution of the 13th century and Europeans' discovery of the islands in 1616.\nFrom 1900 to 1970, Tonga had British protected-state status. The United Kingdom looked after Tonga's foreign affairs under a Treaty of Friendship, but Tonga never relinquished its sovereignty to any foreign power. In 2010, Tonga took a decisive step away from its traditional absolute monarchy and became a semi-constitutional monarchy, after legislative reforms paved the way for its first partial representative elections.\nTonga is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the United Nations, the Pacific Islands Forum, and the Alliance of Small Island States.\nEtymology.\nIn many Polynesian languages, including Tongan, the word (), comes from , which means 'southwards', and the archipelago is so named because it is the southernmost group among the island groups of western Polynesia. The word is cognate to the Hawaiian word meaning 'leeward', which is the origin of the name for the Kona District in Hawai\u02bbi.\nTonga became known in the West as the \"Friendly Islands\" because of the congenial reception accorded to Captain James Cook on his first visit in 1773. He arrived at the time of the annual festival, which centres on the donation of the First Fruits to the Tu\u02bbi Tonga (the islands' monarch), so he received an invitation to the festivities. Ironically, according to the writer William Mariner, the political leaders actually wanted to kill Cook during the gathering, but did not go through with it because they could not agree on a plan of action for accomplishing it.\nHistory.\nAccording to Tongan mythology, the demigod Maui drew up a group of islands from the ocean, first appearing Tongatapu, the Ha'apai Islands and Vava'u, integrating into what became modern-day Tonga.\nAn Austronesian-speaking group linked to what archaeologists call the Lapita culture covered from Island Melanesia to Samoa, and then on to inhabit Tonga sometime between 1500 and 1000\u00a0BC. Scholars still debate exactly when Tonga was first settled, but thorium dating confirms that settlers had arrived in the earliest known inhabited town, Nukuleka, by 888 BC, \u00b1 8 years. Tonga's precontact history was shared via oral history, which was passed down from generation to generation.\nBy the 12th century, Tongans and the Tongan monarch, the Tu\u02bbi Tonga, had acquired a reputation across the central Pacific\u00a0\u2013 from Niue, Samoa, Rotuma, Wallis and Futuna, New Caledonia to Tikopia, leading some historians to speak of a Tu\u02bbi Tonga Empire having existed during that period. Civil wars are known to have occurred in Tonga in the 15th and 17th centuries.\nThe Tongan people first encountered Europeans in 1616, when the Dutch vessel \"Eendracht\", captained by Willem Schouten, made a short visit to the islands for the purpose of engaging in trade. Later, other Dutch explorers arrived, including Jacob Le Maire (who visited the northern island of Niuatoputapu); and Abel Tasman (who visited Tongatapu and Ha\u02bbapai) in 1643. Later noteworthy European visitors included James Cook, of the British Royal Navy, in 1773, 1774, and 1777; Spanish Navy explorers Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa in 1781; Alessandro Malaspina in 1793; the first London missionaries in 1797; and a Wesleyan Methodist minister, Reverend Walter Lawry, in 1822.\nWhaling vessels were among the earliest regular Western visitors. The first of these on record is the \"Ann and Hope\", which was reported to have been seen among the islands of Tonga in June 1799. The last known whaling visitor was the \"Albatross\" in 1899. That ship arrived in Tonga seeking a resupply of water, food, and wood. The islands most regularly visited by Westerners were Ata, 'Eua, Ha'apai, Tongatapu, and Vava'u. Sometimes, Tongan men were recruited to serve as crewmen on these vessels.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition visited Tonga in 1840.\nIn 1845, an ambitious young Tongan warrior, strategist, and orator named T\u0101ufa\u02bb\u0101hau united Tonga into a kingdom. He held the chiefly title of Tu\u02bbi Kanokupolu, but had been baptised by Methodist missionaries with the name \"Siaosi\" (\"George\") in 1831. In 1875, with the help of missionary Shirley Waldemar Baker, he declared Tonga a constitutional monarchy, formally adopted the Western royal style, emancipated the \"serfs\", enshrined a code of law, land tenure, and freedom of the press, and limited the power of the chiefs.\nTonga became a protected state under a Treaty of Friendship with Britain on 18 May 1900, when European settlers and rival Tongan chiefs unsuccessfully tried to oust the man who had succeeded T\u0101ufa\u02bb\u0101hau as king. The treaty posted no higher permanent representative on Tonga than a British consul (1901\u20131970). Under the protection of Britain, Tonga maintained its sovereignty and remained the only Pacific nation to retain its monarchical government. The Tongan monarchy follows an uninterrupted succession of hereditary rulers from one family.\nThe 1918 flu pandemic, brought to Tonga by a ship from New Zealand, killed 1,800 Tongans, a mortality rate of about 8%.\nThe Treaty of Friendship and Tonga's protection status ended in 1970 under arrangements that had been established by Tonga's Queen Salote Tupou III before her death in 1965. Owing to its British ties, Tonga joined the Commonwealth in 1970 (atypically as a country that had its own monarch, rather than having the United Kingdom's monarch, along with Malaysia, Brunei, Lesotho, and Eswatini). Tonga became a member of the United Nations in September 1999. While exposed to colonial pressures, Tonga has always governed itself, which makes it unique in the Pacific.\nIn January 2022, the Hunga Tonga\u2013Hunga Ha\u02bbapai volcano, north of the main island of Tongatapu, erupted, causing a tsunami which inundated parts of the archipelago, including the capital Nuku\u02bbalofa. The eruption affected the kingdom heavily, cutting off most communications and killing four people in Tonga. In Peru, two women drowned due to abnormal tsunami waves. It took around five weeks to repair a submarine fiber optic cable used in the Tonga Cable System for internet and telephone connectivity.\nPolitics.\nTonga is a constitutional monarchy. It is the only extant indigenous monarchy in the Pacific islands (see also Hawai\u02bbi). Reverence for the monarch replaces that held in earlier centuries for the sacred paramount chief, the Tu\u02bbi Tonga. Criticism of the monarch is held to be contrary to Tongan culture and etiquette. Tonga provides for its citizens a free and mandatory education for all, secondary education with only nominal fees, and foreign-funded scholarships for postsecondary education.\nThe pro-democracy movement in Tonga promotes reforms, including better representation in the Parliament for the majority of commoners, and better accountability in matters of state. An overthrow of the monarchy is not part of the movement, and the institution of monarchy continues to hold popular support, even while reforms are advocated. Until recently, the governance issue was generally ignored by the leaders of other countries, but major aid donors and neighbours New Zealand and Australia are now expressing concerns about some Tongan government actions.\nFollowing the precedents of Queen S\u0101lote and the counsel of numerous international advisors, the government of Tonga under King T\u0101ufa\u02bb\u0101hau Tupou IV (reigned 1965\u20132006) monetised the economy, internationalised the medical and education systems, and enabled access by commoners to increasing forms of material wealth (houses, cars, and other commodities), education, and overseas travel.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tonga, with a maximum penalty of 10 years' imprisonment, but the law is not enforced. Tongans have universal access to a national health care system. The Constitution of Tonga protects land ownership; land cannot be sold to foreigners (although it may be leased).\nPolitical culture.\nKing T\u0101ufa\u02bb\u0101hau Tupou IV and his government made some problematic economic decisions and were accused by democracy activists, including former prime minister \u02bbAkilisi P\u014dhiva, of wasting millions of dollars on unwise investments. The problems have mostly been driven by attempts to increase national revenue through a variety of schemes \u2013 considering making Tonga a nuclear waste disposal site (an idea floated in the mid 1990s by the current crown prince), and selling Tongan Protected Persons Passports (which eventually forced Tonga to naturalise the purchasers, sparking ethnicity-based concerns within Tonga).\nSchemes also included the registering of foreign ships (which proved to be engaged in illegal activities, including shipments for al-Qaeda), claiming geo-orbital satellite slots (the revenue from which seems to belong to the Princess Royal, not the state), holding a long-term charter on an unusable Boeing 757 that was sidelined in Auckland Airport, leading to the collapse of Royal Tongan Airlines, and approving a factory for exporting cigarettes to China (against the advice of Tongan medical officials and decades of health-promotion messaging).\nThe king proved vulnerable to speculators with big promises and lost reportedly US$26\u00a0million to Jesse Bogdonoff, a financial adviser who called himself the king's court jester. The police imprisoned pro-democracy leaders, and the government repeatedly confiscated the newspaper \"The Tongan Times\" (printed in New Zealand and sold in Tonga) because the editor had been vocally critical of the king's mistakes. Notably, the \"Kele\u02bba\", produced specifically to critique the government and printed in Tonga by pro-democracy leader \u02bbAkilisi P\u014dhiva, was not banned during that time. P\u014dhiva, however, had been subjected to harassment in the form of barratry (frequent lawsuits).\nIn mid-2003, the government passed a radical constitutional amendment to \"Tonganize\" the press, by licensing and limiting freedom of the press, so as to protect the image of the monarchy. The amendment was defended by the government and by royalists on the basis of traditional cultural values. Licensure criteria include 80% ownership by Tongans living in the country. As of \u00a02004[ [update]], those papers denied licenses under the new act included the \"Taimi \u02bbo Tonga\" (\"Tongan Times\"), the \"Kele\u02bba,\" and the \"Matangi Tonga\"\u00a0\u2013 while those permitted licenses were uniformly church-based or pro-government.\nThe bill was opposed in a several-thousand-strong protest march in the capital, a call by the Tu\u02bbi Pelehake (a prince, nephew of the king and elected member of parliament) for Australia and other nations to pressure the Tongan government to democratise the electoral system, and a legal writ calling for a judicial investigation of the bill. The latter was supported by some 160 signatures, including seven of the nine elected \"People's Representatives\".\nThe then-Crown Prince Tupouto\u02bba and Pilolevu, the Princess Royal, remained generally silent on the issue. In total, the changes threatened to destabilise the polity, fragment support for the status quo, and place further pressure on the monarchy.\nIn 2005, the government spent several weeks negotiating with striking civil-service workers before reaching a settlement. The civil unrest that ensued was not limited to Tonga; protests outside the King's New Zealand residence made headlines.\nPrime Minister Prince \u02bbAho\u02bbeitu \u02bbUnuaki\u02bbotonga Tuku\u02bbaho (Lavaka Ata \u02bbUluk\u0101lala) (now King Tupou VI) resigned suddenly on 11 February 2006 and also gave up his other cabinet portfolios. The elected minister of labour, Feleti Sevele, replaced him in the interim.\nOn 5 July 2006, a driver in Menlo Park, California, caused the deaths of Prince Tu\u02bbipelehake \u02bbUluvalu, his wife, and their driver. Tu\u02bbipelehake, 55, was the cochairman of the constitutional reform commission and a nephew of the king.\nThe public expected some changes when George Tupou V succeeded his father in September 2006. On 16 November 2006, rioting broke out in the capital city of Nuku\u02bbalofa when it seemed that the parliament would adjourn for the year without having made any advances in increasing democracy in government. Pro-democracy activists burned and looted shops, offices, and government buildings. As a result, more than 60% of the downtown area was destroyed and as many as six\u00a0people died. The disturbances were ended by action from Tongan Security Forces and troops from New Zealand-led Joint Task Force.\nOn 29 July 2008, the Palace announced that King George Tupou V would relinquish much of his power and would surrender his role in day-to-day governmental affairs to the Prime Minister. The royal chamberlain said that this was being done to prepare the monarchy for 2010, when most of the first parliament would be elected, and added: \"The Sovereign of the only Polynesian kingdom ... is voluntarily surrendering his powers to meet the democratic aspirations of many of his people.\" The previous week, the government said the king had sold state assets that had contributed to much of the royal family's wealth.\nOn 15 March 2012, King George Tupou V contracted pneumonia and was brought to Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong. He was later diagnosed with leukaemia. His health deteriorated significantly shortly thereafter, and he died at 3:15\u00a0pm on 18 March 2012. He was succeeded by his brother Tupou VI, who was crowned on 4 July 2015.\nForeign relations.\nTonga's foreign policy as of January 2009[ [update]] was described by Matangi Tonga as \"Look East\"\u00a0\u2013 specifically, as establishing closer diplomatic and economic relations with Asia (which actually lies to the north-west of the Pacific kingdom). As of 2021, China has attained great influence in Tonga, financing infrastructure projects, including a new royal palace and holding two thirds of the country's foreign debt.\nTonga retains cordial relations with the United States. Although it remains on good terms with the United Kingdom, the two countries do not maintain particularly close relations. The United Kingdom closed its High Commission in Tonga in 2006, although it was re-established in January 2020 after a 14-year absence. Tonga's relations with Oceania's regional powers, Australia and New Zealand, are good.\nTonga maintains strong regional ties in the Pacific. It is a full member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission, the South Pacific Tourism Organisation, the Pacific Regional Environment Programme, and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community.\nIn 2023, the governments of Tonga and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the \"rapid and just transition\" to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law, including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nMilitary.\nThe Tongan government supported the American \"coalition of the willing\" action in Iraq and deployed more than 40 soldiers (as part of an American force) in late 2004. The contingent returned home on 17 December 2004. In 2007, a second contingent went to Iraq, and two more were sent during 2008 as part of continued support for the coalition. Tongan involvement concluded at the end of 2008 with no reported loss of life.\nIn 2010, Brigadier General Tau\u02bbaika \u02bbUta\u02bbatu, commander of the Tonga Defence Services, signed an agreement in London committing a minimum of 200 troops to co-operate with Britain's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. The task was completed in April 2014, and the UK presented Operational Service Medals to each of the soldiers involved during a parade held in Tonga.\nTonga has contributed troops and police to the Bougainville conflict in Papua-New Guinea and to the Australian-led RAMSI force in the Solomon Islands.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTonga is subdivided into five administrative divisions: \u02bbEua, Ha\u02bbapai, Niuas, Tongatapu, and Vava\u02bbu.\nGeography.\nLocated in Oceania, Tonga is an archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean, directly south of Samoa and about two-thirds of the way from Hawai'i to New Zealand. Its 171 islands, 45 of them inhabited, are divided into three main groups \u2013 Vava'u, Ha'apai, and Tongatapu \u2013 and cover an -long north\u2013south line.\nThe largest island, Tongatapu, on which the capital city of Nuku\u02bbalofa is located, covers . Geologically, the Tongan islands are of two types: most have a limestone base formed from uplifted coral formations; others consist of limestone overlaying a volcanic base.\nClimate.\nTonga has a tropical rainforest climate (\"Af\") with a distinct warm period (December\u2013April), during which the temperatures rise above , and a cooler period (May\u2013November), with temperatures rarely rising above . The temperature and rainfall range from and on Tongatapu in the south to and on the more northerly islands closer to the Equator.\nThe average wettest period is around March, with on average . The average daily humidity is 80%. The highest temperature recorded in Tonga was on 11 February 1979 in Vava'u. The coldest temperature recorded in Tonga was on 8 September 1994 in Fua'amotu. Temperatures of or lower are usually measured in the dry season and are more frequent in southern Tonga than in the northern islands. The tropical cyclone season currently runs from 1 November to 30 April, though tropical cyclones can form and affect Tonga outside of the season. According to the WorldRiskReport 2021, Tonga ranks third among the countries with the highest disaster risk worldwide \u2013 mainly due to the country's exposure to multiple natural hazards.\nEcology.\nTonga contains the Tongan tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nIn Tonga, dating back to Tongan legend, flying bats are considered sacred and are the property of the monarchy. Thus, they are protected and cannot be harmed or hunted. As a result, flying fox bats have thrived in many of the islands of Tonga.\nThe bird life of Tonga includes a total of 73 species, of which two are endemic, the Tongan whistler and the Tongan megapode. Five species have been introduced by humans, and eight are rare or accidental. Seven species are globally threatened.\nEconomy.\nTonga's economy is characterised by a large nonmonetary sector and a heavy dependence on remittances from the half of the country's population who live abroad (chiefly in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States). The royal family and the nobles dominate and largely own the monetary sector of the economy \u2013 particularly the telecommunications and satellite services. Tonga was named the sixth-most corrupt country in the world by \"Forbes\" magazine in 2008.\nTonga was ranked the 165th-safest investment destination in the world in the March 2011 \"Euromoney\" Country Risk rankings.\nThe manufacturing sector consists of handicrafts and a few other very small-scale industries, which contribute only about 5% of GDP. Commercial business activities also are inconspicuous, and to a large extent, are dominated by the same large trading companies found throughout the South Pacific. In September 1974, the country's first commercial trading bank, the Bank of Tonga, opened.\nTonga's development plans emphasise a growing private sector, upgrading agricultural productivity, revitalising the squash and vanilla-bean industries, developing tourism, and improving communications and transport. Substantial progress has been made, but much work remains to be done. A small, growing construction sector is developing in response to the inflow of aid money and remittances from Tongans abroad. In recognition of such a crucial contribution, the government has created a new department in the Prime Minister's Office with the purpose of catering for the needs of Tongans living abroad. In 2007, the Tongan Parliament amended citizenship laws to allow Tongans to hold dual citizenship.\nThe tourist industry is relatively undeveloped. The government recognises that tourism can play a major role in economic development, and efforts are being made to increase this source of revenue. Cruise ships often stop in Vava\u02bbu, with a reputation for its whale watching, game fishing, surfing, beaches, and is increasingly becoming a major player in the South Pacific tourism market.\nTonga's postage stamps, featuring colourful and often unusual designs (including heart-shaped and banana-shaped stamps), are popular with philatelists.\nIn 2005, the country became eligible to become a member of the World Trade Organization. After an initial voluntary delay, Tonga became a full member of the WTO on 27 July 2007.\nThe Tonga Chamber of Commerce and Industry, incorporated in 1996, endeavours to represent the interests of its members, private sector businesses, and to promote economic growth in the Kingdom.\nTonga is home to some 106,000 people. More than double that number live overseas, mainly in the US, New Zealand, and Australia. Remittances from the overseas population have been declining since the onset of the 2008 global economic crisis. The tourism industry is improving, but remains modest at under 90,000 tourists per year.\nAgriculture.\nIn Tonga, agriculture and forestry (together with fisheries) provide the majority of employment, foreign exchange earnings, and food. Rural Tongans rely on both plantation and subsistence agriculture. Plants grown for both market cash crops and home use include bananas, coconuts, coffee beans, vanilla beans, and root crops such as cassava, sweet potato, and taro. As of 2001[ [update]], two-thirds of agricultural land was in root crops.\nThe processing of coconuts into copra and desiccated (dried) coconut was once the only significant industry, and only commercial export. Deteriorating prices on the world market and lack of replanting brought this once vibrant industry, as in most island nations of the South Pacific, to a complete standstill.\nSwine and poultry are the major types of livestock. Horses are kept for draft purposes, primarily by farmers working their\" \u02bbapi \u02bbuta\" (a plot of bushland). More cattle are being raised, and beef imports are declining.\nThe traditional feudal land ownership system meant that farmers had no incentive to invest in planting long-term tree crops on land they did not own. In the late 20th century, kava and vanilla from larger plantations became the main agricultural exports, together with squash. The export of squash to Japan, beginning in 1987, once brought relief to Tonga's struggling economy, but local farmers became increasingly wary of the Japanese market due to price fluctuations, and the huge financial risks involved.\nEnergy.\nEnergy in Tonga mostly comes from imported diesel. Energy consumption in Tonga is projected to reach around 66 gigawatt hours by 2020. The country aimed to reach 50% of renewable energy by 2020. In 2019, Tonga announced the construction of a 6-megawatt solar farm on Tongatapu. The plant will be the second-largest solar plant in the Pacific upon completion.\nIn view of the decreasing reliability of fossil-fuel electricity generation, its increasing costs, and negative environmental side effects, renewable energy solutions have attracted the government's attention. Together with IRENA, Tonga has planned a renewable energy based strategy to power the main and outer islands. The strategy focuses on solar home systems that turn individual households into small power plants. It calls for the involvement of local operators, finance institutions, and technicians to provide sustainable business models and strategies to ensure the effective operation, management, and maintenance once the systems are installed.\nThe Pacific Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency was established in Tonga in 2016 to advise the private sector on related policy matters, provide capacity development and promote business investment. The centre facilitates a financial mechanism offering competitive grants for start-ups to spur the adoption of renewable energy by the business sector. The centre is part of the Global Network of Regional Sustainable Energy Centres and SIDS DOCK framework designed to attract international investment in the renewable energy sector.\nWith the assistance of IRENA, Tonga has developed the 2010\u20132020 Tonga Energy Road Map, which aims for a 50% reduction of diesel importation. This was to be accomplished through a range of appropriate renewable technologies, including wind and solar, as well as innovative efficiencies. As of 2018, Tonga was generating 10% of its electricity from renewable sources.\nDemographics.\nOver 70% of the inhabitants live on its main island, Tongatapu. Although an increasing number of Tongans have moved into the only urban and commercial centre, Nuku\u02bbalofa, where European and indigenous cultural and living patterns have blended, village life and kinship ties remain influential throughout the country. Despite emigration, Tonga grew in population from about 32,000 in the 1930s to more than 90,000 by 1976.\nEthnic groups.\nAccording to the government portal, Tongans, Polynesian by ethnicity with a mixture of Melanesian, represent more than 98% of the inhabitants. About 1.5% are mixed Tongans and the rest are European (the majority are British), mixed European, and other Pacific Islanders. In 2001, about 3,000 to 4,000 Chinese lived there, comprising 3 to 4% of the total Tongan population. The 2006 Nuku\u02bbalofa riots mainly targeted Chinese-owned businesses, leading to the emigration of several hundred Chinese so that only about 300 remain.\nLanguages.\nTongan is the official language, along with English. Tongan is a Polynesian language of the Tongic branch so is closely related to other languages of the Tongic branch, those being: Niuean and Niuafo\u02bbouan. Tongan is more distantly related to other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, Samoan, M\u0101ori, and Tahitian, among others.\nReligion.\nTonga does not have an official state religion. The Constitution of Tonga (Revised 1998) provides for freedom of religion.\nIn 1928, Queen Salote Tupou III, who was a member of the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga, established the Free Wesleyan Church as the state religion of Tonga. The chief pastor of the Free Wesleyan Church serves as the representative of the people of Tonga and of the church at the coronation of a king or queen of Tonga, where he anoints and crowns the monarch. In opposition to the establishment of the Free Wesleyan Church as a state religion, the Church of Tonga separated from the Free Wesleyan Church in 1928.\nIslam in Tonga is a small minority religion in the country. Muslims in Tonga belong to Sunni denomination. Al-Khadeejah Mosque is a prominent mosque in Tonga.\nEveryday life is heavily influenced by Polynesian traditions and by the Christian faith; for example, all commerce and entertainment activities cease on Sunday, from the beginning of the day at midnight, to the end of the day at midnight. The constitution declares the Sabbath sacred forever. The official figures from the latest government census as of 2011[ [update]] show that 90% of the population are affiliated with a Christian church or sect, with the four major church affiliations in the kingdom:\nThe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent missionaries in 1891 to visit King Siaosi (George) Tupo, where they obtained permission to preach.\nHealth.\nBy some published surveys, Tonga has one of the highest obesity rates in the world. World Health Organization data published in 2014 indicate that Tonga stands fourth overall in terms of countries listed by mean body mass index data. In 2011, 90% of the adult population were considered overweight using NIH interpretation of body mass index (BMI) data, with more than 60% of those obese. 70% of Tongan females aged 15\u201385 are obese. Tonga and Nauru have the world's highest overweight and obese populations.\nIn late October 2021, Tonga reported its first case of COVID-19 based on a New Zealand air passenger's positive test.\nEducation.\nPrimary education between ages 6 and 14 is compulsory and free in state schools. Mission schools provide about 8% of the primary and 90% of the secondary level of education. State schools make up for the rest. Higher education includes teacher training, nursing, and medical training, a small private university, a woman's business college, and a number of private agricultural schools. Most levels of higher education are pursued overseas.\nTongans enjoy a relatively high level of education, with a 98.9% literacy rate, and higher education up to and including medical and graduate degrees (pursued mostly overseas). They hold the body of academic knowledge created by their scholars in high esteem and the Kuk\u016b Kaunaka Collection, which comprises every doctoral and master's dissertation written by any Tongan in any country is archived by Seu'ula Johansson-Fua at the Institute for Education in Tonga.\nEmigration.\nContemporary Tongans often have strong ties to overseas lands. Many Tongans have emigrated to Australia, New Zealand, or the United States to seek employment and a higher standard of living.\nIn 2018, 82,389 Tongans lived in New Zealand. As of 2000, 36,840 Tongans were living in the US. More than 8,000 Tongans live in Australia. The Tongan diaspora retains close ties to relatives at home, and a significant portion of Tonga's income derives from remittances to family members (often aged) who prefer to remain in Tonga.\nCulture.\nHumans have lived in Tonga for nearly 3,000 years since settlement in late Lapita times. Before the arrival of European explorers in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Tongans had frequent contacts with their nearest Oceanic neighbours, Fiji and Niue. In the 19th century, with the arrival of Western traders and missionaries, Tongan culture changed, especially in religion. As of 2013[ [update]], almost 98% of residents profess Christianity. The people discarded some old beliefs and habits and adopted others.\nFahu.\nFahu is a form of social organization practiced by the people of Tonga, built upon a relationship between a person and their father\u2019s sister and paternal cousins. There are a few key superiorities in the social structure of fahu:\nPrior to Western contact, the inner dynamics between the chiefly kinship groups were governed by this social convention. Although fahu rights do not hold the same political strength and implications they historically did, they remain, to a notable degree, a part of the contemporary social practices in Tonga.\nSocio-environmental impact of fahu.\nSimilar social structures to fahu have been cited as significantly beneficial for human adaptation to environmental threats, especially those situated in hurricane-prone regions such as Tonga. The benefit stems from the fahu's ability to provide a network and capacity to allow for relocation or people and resources during environmental events, such as hurricanes or droughts.\nHowever, there have been environmental consequences of note due to the fahu structure, or rather, a disturbance of the structure. In the 1980s, Tonga saw a severe depletion of its sandalwood tree due a disruption of the fahu social hierarchy, which was incited by market demand for the resource. This led to heightened local competition and eventually an overharvest of the tree. Nearly all of the sandalwood resources were depleted over the span of two years.\nSport.\nRugby union.\nRugby union is the national sport, and the national team (\u02bbIkale Tahi, or Sea Eagles) has performed quite well on the international stage. Tonga has competed in six Rugby World Cups since 1987. The 2007 and 2011 Rugby World Cups were Tonga's most successful to date, both winning two out of four matches and in a running chance for the quarterfinals. In the 2007 Rugby World Cup, Tonga won its first two matches, against the USA 25\u201315, and Samoa 19\u201315. They came very close to upsetting the eventual winners of the 2007 tournament, the South African Springboks, losing 30\u201325. A defeat by England, 36\u201320 in their last pool game ended their hopes of making the knockout stages. Nevertheless, by picking up third place in their pool games behind South Africa and England, Tonga earned automatic qualification for the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. In Pool A of the 2011 Rugby World Cup, Tonga beat both Japan 31\u201318 and 5th ranked eventual finalist France 19\u201314 in the latter pool stages. However, a previous heavy defeat by the All Blacks at the tournament's opener (41\u201310) and a subsequent tight defeat by Canada (25\u201320) meant that Tonga lost out to France (who also lost to NZ) for the quarter finals due to 2 bonus points and a points difference of 46.\nTonga's best result before 2007 came in 1995, when they beat C\u00f4te d'Ivoire 29\u201311, and 1999 when they beat Italy 28\u201325 (although with only 14 men they lost heavily to England, 101\u201310). Tonga perform the Ikale Tahi war dance or Sipi Tau (a form of Kailao) before all their matches. Tonga used to compete in the Pacific Tri-Nations against Samoa and Fiji, which has now been replaced by the World Rugby Pacific Nations Cup, which now involves Japan, Canada, and the United States. At club level, there are the Datec Cup Provincial Championship and the Pacific Rugby Cup. Rugby union is governed by the Tonga Rugby Football Union, which was a member of the Pacific Islands Rugby Alliance and contributed to the Pacific Islanders rugby union team, before they were disbanded in 2009.\nMany players of Tongan descent \u2013 e.g., Jonah Lomu, Israel Folau, Viliami \"William\" \u02bbOfahengaue, Malakai Fekitoa, Ben Afeaki, Charles Piutau, Frank Halai, Sekope Kepu, George Smith, Wycliff Palu, Sitaleki Timani, Salesi Ma'afu, Anthony and Saia Fainga'a, Mark Gerrard, Cooper Vuna, Doug Howlett, Toutai Kefu and Tatafu Polota-Nau \u2013 have played for either the All Blacks or the Wallabies. British and Irish Lion and Welsh international player Taulupe \"Toby\" Faletau is Tongan born and the son of Tongan international Kuli Faletau. Taulupe's cousins and England international players Billy and Mako Vunipola (who is also a British and Irish Lion), are sons of former Tonga rugby captain Fe'ao Vunipola. Rugby is popular among the nation's schools, and students from schools such as Tonga College and Tupou College are regularly offered scholarships in New Zealand, Australia and Japan.\nRugby league.\nRugby league has gained some success. Tonga made their first appearance at a Rugby League World Cup in the 1995 edition where they went out in the first stage but narrowly lost to New Zealand. They have since appeared in each subsequent Rugby League World Cup tournament. In the 2008 Rugby League World Cup Tonga recorded wins against Ireland and Scotland. Just before the 2017 World Cup, various high-profile players, led by Jason Taumalolo and Andrew Fifita, defected from their tier one nations to represent their nation of heritage. This led to them defeating New Zealand in Hamilton at Waikato Stadium on 11 November at that tournament. The national team has since also recorded victories against Great Britain and the world number one Australia. In addition to the success of the national team, many players of Tongan descent make it big in the Australian National Rugby League competition. These include Jason Taumalolo, Israel Folau, Tyson Frizell, Tevita Pangai Junior, Konrad Hurrell, David Fusitua, Tuimoala Lolohea, Sio Siua Taukeiaho, Jorge Taufua, William Hopoate, Andrew Fifita, Ben Murdoch-Masila, Felise Kaufusi, Willie Mason, Manu Vatuvei, Brent Kite, Fuifui Moimoi, Willie Tonga, Anthony Tupou, Antonio Kaufusi, Michael Jennings, Tony Williams, Feleti Mateo. Subsequently, some Tongan rugby league players have established successful careers in the Super League such as Antonio Kaufusi.\nOlympics.\nAside from rugby, Tonga has also produced athletes who have competed at both the Summer and Winter Olympics. Tonga's only Olympic medal came from the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, where Paea Wolfgramm won silver in super heavyweight boxing. One athlete, Pita Taufatofua, attended the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.\nAmerican football.\nSeveral Tongans have been football players in the National Football League, including Tuineau Alipate, Sione Takitaki, Spencer Folau, Lakei Heimuli, Steve Kaufusi, Ma'ake Kemoeatu, Deuce Lutui, Siupeli Malamala, Tim Manoa, Stan Mataele, Vili Maumau, Alfred Pupunu, Vai Sikahema, Star Lotulelei, Vita Vea, Talanoa Hufanga, Peter Tuipulotu, Marlon Tuipulotu, and Tuli Tuipulotu.\nContemporary Tongan art.\nThere has been a huge surge of contemporary Tongan artists in the past decade, the majority based in New Zealand. Tanya Edwards works with ngatu (bark cloths), Benjamin Work, Telly Tuita, and Sione Mon\u016b are widely exhibited internationally, S\u0113misi Fetokai Potauaine built a five-storey Tongan sculpture in central Christchurch. In 2023, Bergman Gallery hosted \"Tukufakaholo, Tongan Contemporary\" in Auckland, New Zealand, featuring eight Tongan artists.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "8785058": "Metis Shoal\nIsland in Tonga\nMetis Shoal, also known as Lateiki Island, is a volcanic island at the top of a submarine volcano in Tonga, located between the islands of Kao and Late. The current island formed in October 2019, when a smaller island disappeared after 24 years.\nHistory.\nThe shoal was named by the captain of HMS \"Metis\" in 1875, who found a small volcanic island protruding from the ocean. The island was reported as being 200m long and 37m high by HMS \"Sappho\" in 1878, and as 480m high in 1890, but had eroded away completely by 1898, leaving a shoal covered by 4m of water. Eruptions and short-lived islands have been reported as far back as 1781, according to the Global Volcanism Program. In December 1967 an eruption produced another short-lived island, which disappeared by the end of 1968. An eruption in 1979 discharged large amounts of pumice, and formed an island 16km in diameter. The new island was named \"Lateiki\" (\"lies besides Late\") and claimed by Tonga in a flag-raising ceremony, but soon eroded beneath the sea surface.\n1995\u20132019 island.\nDuring an eruption in 1995, a new island (latitude: 19.18\u00b0S, longitude: 174.8\u00b0W) appeared which had a diameter of 280 metre and a height of 43 metre following the growth of a lava dome above the surface. On 7 December 2006 the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) flew over Metis Shoal and Home Reef at the request of volcanologists from the Institute of Geological & Nuclear Sciences (IGNS) to take photos of Metis Shoal.\nAnother eruption commenced in October 2019. This eruption was first reported by Tongan vessel MV Ngutulei on the morning of 14 October 2019 and continued for more than two weeks. Photos were later taken by aircraft from Real Tonga and Air New Zealand, which showed that Metis Shoal had completely sunk.\nNew island.\nThe Tonga Geological Service announced on 6 November 2019 that the eruption in October produced a new and bigger island, about 120 metres west of the island which disappeared. The new island was estimated to be 100 metres wide and 400 metres long, which is three times bigger than the previous one.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["8785058", "30158"], "permutation_1": ["8785058", "30158"], "permutation_2": ["8785058", "30158"], "permutation_3": ["30158", "8785058"]}
{"id": "2hop__281486_42292", "docs_added": {"32908": "Warsaw\nCapital and largest city of Poland\nWarsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at 1.86\u00a0million residents within a greater metropolitan area of 3.27\u00a0million residents, which makes Warsaw the 6th most-populous city in the European Union. The city area measures and comprises 18 districts, while the metropolitan area covers . Warsaw is classified as an alpha global city, a major political, economic and cultural hub, and the country's seat of government. It is also the capital of the Masovian Voivodeship.\nWarsaw traces its origins to a small fishing town in Masovia. The city rose to prominence in the late 16th century, when Sigismund III decided to move the Polish capital and his royal court from Krak\u00f3w. Warsaw surpassed Gda\u0144sk as Poland's most populous city by the 18th century. It served as the de facto capital of the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1795, and subsequently as the seat of Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. The 19th century and its Industrial Revolution brought a demographic boom, which made it one of the largest and most densely populated cities in Europe. Known then for its elegant architecture and boulevards, Warsaw was bombed and besieged at the start of World War II in 1939. Much of the historic city was destroyed and its diverse population decimated by the Ghetto Uprising in 1943, the general Warsaw Uprising in 1944, and systematic razing.\nWarsaw is served by three international airports, the busiest being Warsaw Chopin, as well as Warsaw Modlin and Warsaw Radom Airport. Major public transport services operating in the city include the Warsaw Metro, buses, commuter rail service and an extensive tram network. The city is a significant economic centre for the region, with the Warsaw Stock Exchange being the largest in Central and Eastern Europe. It is the base for Frontex, the European Union agency for external border security, and ODIHR, one of the principal institutions of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Warsaw has one of Europe's highest concentrations of skyscrapers, and the Varso Tower is the tallest building in the European Union.\nThe city's primary educational and cultural institutions comprise the University of Warsaw, the Warsaw University of Technology, the SGH Warsaw School of Economics, the Chopin University of Music, the Polish Academy of Sciences, the National Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Museum, and the Warsaw Grand Theatre, the largest of its kind in the world. The reconstructed Old Town, which represents a variety of European architectural styles, was listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1980. Other landmarks include the Royal Castle, Sigismund's Column, the Wilan\u00f3w Palace, the Palace on the Isle, St. John's Archcathedral, Main Market Square, and numerous churches and mansions along the Royal Route. Warsaw is a green capital, with around a quarter of the city's area occupied by parks. In sports, the city is home to Legia Warsaw football club and hosts the annual Warsaw Marathon.\nToponymy and names.\nWarsaw's name in the Polish language is . Other previous spellings of the name may have included: , , or . The exact origin and meaning of the name is uncertain and has not been fully determined. Originally, Warszawa was the name of a small fishing settlement on the banks of the Vistula river. One hypothesis states that means \"belonging to Warsz\", being a shortened form of the masculine Old Polish name Warcis\u0142aw, which etymologically is linked with Wroc\u0142aw. However the ending -awa is unusual for a large city; the names of Polish cities derived from personal names usually end in -\u00f3w/owo/ew/ewo (e.g. Piotrk\u00f3w, Adam\u00f3w).\nFolk etymology attributes the city name to Wars and Sawa. There are several versions of the legend with their appearance. According to one version, Sawa was a mermaid living in the Vistula with whom fisherman Wars fell in love. The official city name in full is (\"The Capital City of Warsaw\").\nA native or resident of Warsaw is known as a \"Varsovian\" \u2013 in Polish , (male); (female); , and (plural). \nHistory.\n1300\u20131800.\nThe first fortified settlements on the site of today's Warsaw were located in Br\u00f3dno (9th/10th century) and Jazd\u00f3w (12th/13th century). After Jazd\u00f3w was raided by nearby clans and dukes, a new fortified settlement was established on the site of a small fishing village called \"Warszowa\". The Prince of P\u0142ock, Boles\u0142aw II of Masovia, established the modern-day city in about 1300 and the first historical document attesting to the existence of a castellany dates to 1313. With the completion of St John's Cathedral in 1390, Warsaw became one of the seats of the Dukes of Masovia and was officially made capital of the Masovian Duchy in 1413. The economy then predominantly rested on craftsmanship or trade, and the town housed approximately 4,500 people at the time.\nDuring the 15th century, the population migrated and spread beyond the northern city wall into a newly formed self-governing precinct called New Town. The existing older settlement became eventually known as the Old Town. Both possessed their own town charter and independent councils. The aim of establishing a separate district was to accommodate new incomers or \"undesirables\" who were not permitted to settle in Old Town, particularly Jews. Social and financial disparities between the classes in the two precincts led to a minor revolt in 1525. Following the sudden death of Janusz III and the extinction of the local ducal line, Masovia was incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland in 1526. Bona Sforza, wife of Sigismund I of Poland, was widely accused of poisoning the duke to uphold Polish rule over Warsaw.\nIn 1529, Warsaw for the first time became the seat of a General Sejm and held that privilege permanently from 1569. The city's rising importance encouraged the construction of a new set of defenses, including the landmark Barbican. Renowned Italian architects were brought to Warsaw to reshape the Royal Castle, the streets and the marketplace, resulting in the Old Town's early Italianate appearance. In 1573, the city gave its name to the Warsaw Confederation which formally established religious freedom in the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth. Due to its central location between the capitals of the Commonwealth's two component parts, Poland and Lithuania, which were Krak\u00f3w and Vilnius respectively, Warsaw became the capital of the Commonwealth and the Polish Crown when Sigismund III Vasa transferred his royal court in 1596. In the subsequent years the town significantly expanded to the south and westwards. Several private independent districts (\"jurydyka\") were the property of aristocrats and the gentry, which they ruled by their own laws. Between 1655 and 1658 the city was besieged and pillaged by the Swedish, Brandenburgian and Transylvanian forces. The conduct of the Great Northern War (1700\u20131721) also forced Warsaw to pay heavy tributes to the invading armies.\nThe reign of Augustus II and Augustus III was a time of great development for Warsaw, which turned into an early-capitalist city. The Saxon monarchs employed many German architects, sculptors and engineers, who rebuilt the city in a style similar to Dresden. The year 1727 marked the opening of the Saxon Garden in Warsaw, the first publicly accessible park. The Za\u0142uski Library, the first Polish public library and the largest at the time, was founded in 1747. Stanis\u0142aw II Augustus, who remodelled the interior of the Royal Castle, also made Warsaw a centre of culture and the arts. He extended the Royal Baths Park and ordered the construction or refurbishment of numerous palaces, mansions and richly-decorated tenements. This earned Warsaw the nickname \"Paris of the North\".\nWarsaw remained the capital of the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1795 when it was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia in the third and final partition of Poland; it subsequently became the capital of the province of South Prussia. During this time, Louis XVIII of France spent his exile in Warsaw under the pseudonym \"Comte de Lille\".\n1800\u20131939.\nWarsaw was made the capital of a newly created French client state, known as the Duchy of Warsaw, after a portion of Poland's territory was liberated from Prussia, Russia and Austria by Napoleon in 1806. Following Napoleon's defeat and exile, the 1815 Congress of Vienna assigned Warsaw to Congress Poland, a constitutional monarchy within the easternmost sector (or partition) under a personal union with Imperial Russia. The Royal University of Warsaw was established in 1816.\nWith the violation of the Polish constitution, the 1830 November Uprising broke out against foreign influence. The Polish-Russian war of 1831 ended in the uprising's defeat and in the curtailment of Congress Poland's autonomy. On 27 February 1861, a Warsaw crowd protesting against Russian control over Congress Poland was fired upon by Russian troops. Five people were killed. The Underground Polish National Government resided in Warsaw during the January Uprising in 1863\u201364.\nWarsaw flourished throughout the 19th century under Mayor Sokrates Starynkiewicz (1875\u201392), who was appointed by Alexander III. Under Starynkiewicz Warsaw saw its first water and sewer systems designed and built by the English engineer William Lindley and his son, William Heerlein Lindley, as well as the expansion and modernisation of trams, street lighting, and gas infrastructure. Between 1850 and 1882, the population grew by 134% to 383,000 as a result of rapid urbanisation and industrialisation. Many migrated from surrounding rural Masovian towns and villages to the city for employment opportunities. The western borough of Wola was transformed from an agricultural periphery occupied mostly by small farms and windmills (mills being the namesake of Wola's central neighbourhood M\u0142yn\u00f3w) to an industrial and manufacturing centre. Metallurgical, textile and glassware factories were commonplace, with chimneys dominating the westernmost skyline.\nLike London, Warsaw's population was subjected to income segmentation. Gentrification of inner suburbs forced poorer residents to move across the river into Praga or Powi\u015ble and Solec districts, similar to the East End of London and London Docklands. Poorer religious and ethnic minorities, such as the Jews, settled in the crowded parts of northern Warsaw, in Muran\u00f3w. The Imperial Census of 1897 recorded 626,000 people living in Warsaw, making it the third-largest city of the Empire after St. Petersburg and Moscow as well as the largest city in the region. Grand architectural complexes and structures were also erected in the city centre, including the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Church of the Holiest Saviour and tenements along Marsza\u0142kowska Street.\nDuring World War I, Warsaw was occupied by Germany from 4 August 1915 until November 1918. The Armistice of 11 November 1918 concluded that defeated Germany is to withdraw from all foreign areas, which included Warsaw. Germany did so, and underground leader J\u00f3zef Pi\u0142sudski returned to Warsaw on the same day which marked the beginning of the Second Polish Republic, the first truly sovereign Polish state after 1795. In the course of the Polish\u2013Soviet War (1919\u20131921), the 1920 Battle of Warsaw was fought on the eastern outskirts of the city. Poland successfully defended the capital, stopped the brunt of the Bolshevik Red Army and temporarily halted the \"export of the communist revolution\" to other parts of Europe.\nThe interwar period (1918\u20131939) was a time of major development in the city's infrastructure. New modernist housing estates were built in Mokot\u00f3w to de-clutter the densely populated inner suburbs. In 1921, Warsaw's total area was estimated at only 124.7\u00a0km2 with 1 million inhabitants\u2013over 8,000 people/km2 made Warsaw more densely populated than contemporary London. The \u015arednicowy Bridge was constructed for railway (1921\u20131931), connecting both parts of the city across the Vistula. Warszawa G\u0142\u00f3wna railway station (1932\u20131939) was not completed due to the outbreak of the Second World War.\nStefan Starzy\u0144ski was the Mayor of Warsaw between 1934 and 1939.\nSecond World War.\nAfter the German Invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 started the Second World War, Warsaw was defended until 27 September. Central Poland, including Warsaw, came under the rule of the General Government, a German Nazi colonial administration. All higher education institutions were immediately closed and Warsaw's entire Jewish population \u2013 several hundred thousand, some 30% of the city\u00a0\u2013 were herded into the Warsaw Ghetto. In July 1942, the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto began to be deported en masse to the Aktion Reinhard extermination camps, particularly Treblinka. The city would become the centre of urban resistance to Nazi rule in occupied Europe. When the order came to annihilate the ghetto as part of Hitler's \"Final Solution\" on 19 April 1943, Jewish fighters launched the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Despite being heavily outgunned and outnumbered, the ghetto held out for almost a month. When the fighting ended, almost all survivors were massacred, with only a few managing to escape or hide.\nBy July 1944, the Red Army was deep into Polish territory and pursuing the Nazis toward Warsaw. The Polish government-in-exile in London gave orders to the underground Home Army (AK) to try to seize control of Warsaw before the Red Army arrived. Thus, on 1 August 1944, as the Red Army was nearing the city, the Warsaw uprising began. The armed struggle, planned to last 48 hours, was partially successful, however, it went on for 63 days. Eventually, the Home Army fighters and civilians assisting them were forced to capitulate. They were transported to PoW camps in Germany, while the entire civilian population was expelled. Polish civilian deaths are estimated at between 150,000 and 200,000.\nHitler, ignoring the agreed terms of the capitulation, ordered the entire city to be razed to the ground and the library and museum collections taken to Germany or burned. Monuments and government buildings were blown up by special German troops known as \"Verbrennungs- und Vernichtungskommando\" (\"Burning and Destruction Detachments\"). About 85% of the city was destroyed, including the historic Old Town and the Royal Castle.\nOn 17 January 1945\u00a0\u2013 after the beginning of the Vistula\u2013Oder Offensive of the Red Army\u00a0\u2013 Soviet troops and Polish troops of the First Polish Army entered the ruins of Warsaw, and liberated Warsaw's suburbs from German occupation. The city was swiftly freed by the Soviet Army, which rapidly advanced towards \u0141\u00f3d\u017a, as German forces regrouped at a more westward position.\n1945\u20131989.\nIn 1945, after the bombings, revolts, fighting, and demolition had ended, most of Warsaw lay in ruins. The area of the former ghetto was razed to the ground, with only a sea of rubble remaining. The immense destruction prompted a temporary transfer of the new government and its officials to \u0141\u00f3d\u017a, which became the transitional seat of power. Nevertheless, Warsaw officially resumed its role as the capital of Poland and the country's centre of political and economic life.\nAfter World War II, the \"Bricks for Warsaw\" campaign was initiated and large prefabricated housing projects were erected in Warsaw to address the major housing shortage. Plattenbau-styled apartment buildings were seen as a solution to avoid Warsaw's former density problem and to create more green spaces. Some of the buildings from the 19th century that had survived in a reasonably reconstructible form were nonetheless demolished in the 1950s and 1960s, like the Kronenberg Palace. The \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie (central) region's urban system was completely reshaped; former cobblestone streets were asphalted and significantly widened for traffic use. Many notable streets such as G\u0119sia, Nalewki and Wielka disappeared as a result of these changes and some were split in half due to the construction of Plac Defilad (Parade Square), one of the largest of its kind in Europe.\nMuch of the central district was also designated for future skyscrapers. The 237-metre Palace of Culture and Science resembling New York's Empire State Building was built as a gift from the Soviet Union. Warsaw's urban landscape is one of modern and contemporary architecture. Despite wartime destruction and post-war remodelling, many of the historic streets, buildings, and churches were restored to their original form.\nJohn Paul II's visits to his native country in 1979 and 1983 brought support to the budding \"Solidarity\" movement and encouraged the growing anti-communist fervor there. In 1979, less than a year after becoming pope, John Paul celebrated Mass in Victory Square in Warsaw and ended his sermon with a call to \"renew the face\" of Poland. These words were meaningful for Varsovians and Poles who understood them as the incentive for liberal-democratic reforms.\n1989\u2013present.\nIn 1995, the Warsaw Metro opened with a single line. A second line was opened in March 2015. On 28 September 2022, three new Warsaw metro stations were opened, increasing the number of Warsaw Metro stations to 36 and its length to 38.3 kilometers. In February 2023, Warsaw's mayor, Rafa\u0142 Trzaskowski, announced plans to more than double the size of the city's metro system by 2050.\nWith the entry of Poland into the European Union in 2004,[ [update]] Warsaw is experiencing a large economic boom. The opening fixture of UEFA Euro 2012 took place in Warsaw and the city also hosted the 2013 United Nations Climate Change Conference and the 2016 NATO Summit. As of August 2022, Warsaw had received around 180,000 refugees from Ukraine, because of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The amount means a tenth of the Polish capital's population of 1.8 million \u2014 the second-largest single group of Ukrainian refugees.\nGeography.\nLocation and topography.\nWarsaw lies in east-central Poland about from the Carpathian Mountains and about from the Baltic Sea, east of Berlin, Germany. The city straddles the Vistula River. It is located in the heartland of the Masovian Plain, and its average elevation is above sea level. The highest point on the West side of the city lies at a height of (\"Redutowa\" bus depot, district of Wola), on the East side\u00a0\u2013 (\"Grosz\u00f3wka\" estate, district of Weso\u0142a, by the eastern border). The lowest point lies at a height (at the right bank of the Vistula, by the eastern border of Warsaw). There are some hills (mostly artificial) located within the confines of the city\u00a0\u2013 e.g. Warsaw Uprising Hill () and Szcz\u0119\u015bliwice hill (\u00a0\u2013 the highest point of Warsaw in general).\nWarsaw is located on two main geomorphologic formations: the plain moraine plateau and the Vistula Valley with its asymmetrical pattern of different terraces. The Vistula River is the specific axis of Warsaw, which divides the city into two parts, left and right. The left one is situated both on the moraine plateau ( above Vistula level) and on the Vistula terraces (max. above Vistula level). The significant element of the relief, in this part of Warsaw, is the edge of moraine plateau called Warsaw Escarpment. It is high in the Old Town and Central district and about in the north and south of Warsaw. It goes through the city and plays an important role as a landmark.\nThe plain moraine plateau has only a few natural and artificial ponds and also groups of clay pits. The pattern of the Vistula terraces is asymmetrical. The left side consists mainly of two levels: the highest one contains former flooded terraces and the lowest one is the floodplain terrace. The contemporary flooded terrace still has visible valleys and ground depressions with water systems coming from the old Vistula\u00a0\u2013 riverbed. They consist of still quite natural streams and lakes as well as the pattern of drainage ditches. The right side of Warsaw has a different pattern of geomorphological forms. There are several levels of the Vistula plain terraces (flooded as well as formerly flooded), and only a small part is a not-so-visible moraine escarpment. Aeolian sand with a number of dunes parted by peat swamps or small ponds cover the highest terrace. These are mainly forested areas (pine forest).\nClimate.\nWarsaw experiences an oceanic (K\u00f6ppen: \"Cfb)\" or humid continental (K\u00f6ppen: \"Dfb)\" climate, depending on the isotherm used; although the city used to be humid continental regardless of isotherm prior to the recent effect of climate change and the city's urban heat island. Meanwhile, by the genetic climate classification of Wincenty Oko\u0142owicz, it has a temperate \"fusion\" climate, with both oceanic and continental features.\nThe city has cold, sometimes snowy, cloudy winters, and warm, relatively sunny but frequently stormy summers. Spring and autumn can be unpredictable, highly prone to sudden weather changes; however, temperatures are usually mild, especially around May and September. The daily average temperature ranges between in January and in July and the mean year temperature is . Temperatures may reach in the summer, although the effects of hot weather are usually offset by relatively low dew points and large diurnal temperature differences. Warsaw is Europe's sixth driest major city (driest in Central Europe), with yearly rainfall averaging , the wettest month being July.\nCityscape.\nUrbanism and architecture.\nWarsaw's long and eclectic history left a noticeable mark on its architecture and urban form. Unlike most Polish cities, Warsaw's cityscape is mostly contemporary \u2013 modern glass buildings are towering above older historical edifices which is a common feature of North American metropolises. Warsaw is among the European cities with the highest number of skyscrapers and is home to European Union's tallest building. Skyscrapers are mostly centered around the \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie district, with many located in the commercial district of Wola. A concentric zone pattern emerged within the last decades; the majority of Warsaw's residents live outside the commercial city centre and commute by metro, bus or tram. Tenements and apartments in the central neighbourhoods are often reserved for commercial activity or temporary (tourist, student) accommodation. The nearest residential zones are predominantly located on the outskirts of the inner borough, in Ochota, Mokot\u00f3w and \u017boliborz or along the Vistula in Powi\u015ble.\nA seat of Polish monarchs since the end of the 16th century, Warsaw remained a small city with only privately owned palaces, mansions, villas and several streets of townhouses. These displayed a richness of color and architectonic details. The finest German, Italian and Dutch architects were employed, among them Tylman van Gameren, Andreas Schl\u00fcter, Jakub Fontana, and Enrico Marconi. The buildings situated in the vicinity of the Warsaw Old Town represent nearly every European architectural style and historical period. Warsaw has excellent examples of architecture from the Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassical periods, all of which are located within walking distance of the centre. This architectural richness has led to Warsaw being described by some commentators as a \"Paris of the East\".\nGothic architecture is represented in the majestic churches but also at the burgher houses and fortifications. The most significant buildings are St John's Cathedral (1390), a typical example of the so-called Masovian Brick Gothic style; St Mary's Church (1411); the Burbach townhouse (14th century); Gunpowder Tower (after 1379); and Royal Castle's \"Curia Maior\" (1407\u20131410). The most notable examples of Renaissance architecture in the city are the house of the Baryczko merchant family (1562), a building called \"The Negro\" (early 17th century), and Salwator tenement (1632), all situated on the Old Market Place. The most interesting examples of Mannerist architecture are the Royal Castle (1596\u20131619) and the Jesuit Church (1609\u20131626).\nBaroque architecture arrived in Warsaw at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries with the artists from the court circle of King Sigismund III Vasa (the early Warsaw Baroque is referred to as Vasa Baroque). Among the first structures of the early Baroque, the most important are St. Hyacinth's Church and Sigismund's Column, the first secular monument in the form of a column in modern history. At that time, part of the Royal Castle was rebuilt in this style, the Ujazd\u00f3w Castle and numerous Baroque palaces on the Vistula escarpment were constructed. In the architecture of Catholic churches, the Counter-Reformation type became a novelty, exemplified by the Church of St. Anthony of Padua, the Carmelite Church and the Holy Cross Church.\nWarsaw Baroque from the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries was characterized by building facades with a predominance of vertical elements close to the wall and numerous ornaments. The most important architect working in Warsaw at that time was Tylman van Gameren. His projects include the Krasi\u0144ski Palace, Palace of the Four Winds, Ostrogski Palace, Czapski Palace, Br\u00fchl Palace, and St. Kazimierz Church. The most significant Baroque building of this period is the Wilan\u00f3w Palace, built on the order of King John III Sobieski.\nThe late Baroque era was the epoch of the Saxon Kings (1697\u20131763). During this time, three major spatial projects were realized: the 880-meter Piaseczy\u0144ski Canal on the axis of Ujazd\u00f3w Castle, the Ujazd\u00f3w Calvary and the Saxon Axis. The Visitationist Church also dates from this period.\nThe neoclassical architecture began to be the main style in the capital's architecture in Warsaw in the second half of the 18th century thanks to King Stanis\u0142aw August Poniatowski. It can be described by the simplicity of the geometrical forms teamed with a great inspiration from the Roman period. The best-known architect who worked in Warsaw at the time was Domenico Merlini, who designed the Palace on the Isle. Other significant buildings from this period include Kr\u00f3likarnia, Holy Trinity Church, St. Anne's Church, Warsaw.\nAlso in the first half of the 19th century, neoclassicism dominated the architecture of Warsaw. Old buildings were rebuilt and new ones were built in this style. The neoclassical revival affected all aspects of architecture; the most notable examples are the Great Theater, buildings located at Bank Square, headquarters of the Warsaw Society of Friends of Sciences (Staszic Palace), St. Alexander's Church, the Belweder. Many classicist tenement houses were built on Senatorska Street and along Nowy \u015awiat Street. After the outbreak of the November Uprising, the Warsaw Citadel was constructed in the north of the city, and the Saxon Palace underwent a complete reconstruction, where the central body of the building was demolished and replaced by a monumental 11-bay colonnade.\nIn the mid-19th century, the industrial revolution reached Warsaw, leading to the mass use of iron as a building material. In 1845, the Warsaw-Vienna Railway Station was opened. Another important aspect of the developing city was ensuring access to water and sewage disposal. The first modern Warsaw water supply system was launched in 1855, designed by one of the most outstanding architects of that period \u2013 Enrico Marconi, who designed also All Saints Church. The dynamic development of the railway became a factor that enabled equally dynamic development of Warsaw's industry. Among the establishments built at that time were the Wedel factory and the extensive Municipal Gasworks complex.\nIn the architecture of the 1920s, national historicism and other historical forms were dominant. Art Deco forms also appeared, and towards the end of the decade, avant-garde functionalism emerged. The creation of urban plans for the capital of Poland can be traced back to 1916, when, after the retreat of the Russians from Warsaw and the beginnings of the German occupation, the territories of the surrounding municipalities were annexed to the city. Even before Poland regained its independence, parallel to the creation of the administration of the future state, the first urban visions were emerging. These included, among others, the construction of a representative government district in the southern part of \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie. However, major changes in urban planning and the architectural landscape of the city only began in the mid-1920s. The forming state structures needed headquarters, leading to the construction of many monumental public buildings, including the buildings of the Sejm and the Senate, the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Public Education, the Ministry of Public Works, the National Museum, the State Geological Institute, the State Agricultural Bank, the Domestic Economy Bank, the directorate of the Polish State Railways, the Supreme Audit Office, and the campus of the Warsaw School of Economics. New districts were also established in \u017boliborz, Ochota, and Mokot\u00f3w, often designed around a central square with radiating streets (Narutowicz Square, Wilson Square). Examples of new large urban projects are the Staszic and Lubecki colonies in Ochota.\nExceptional examples of the bourgeois architecture of the later periods were not restored by the communist authorities after the war or were remodelled into a socialist realist style (like Warsaw Philharmonic edifice originally inspired by Palais Garnier in Paris). Despite that, the Warsaw University of Technology (Polytechnic) building. is the most interesting of the late 19th-century architecture. Some 19th-century industrial and brick workhouse buildings in the Praga district were restored, though many have been poorly maintained or demolished. Notable examples of post-war architecture include the Palace of Culture and Science, a soc-realist and art deco skyscraper based on the Empire State Building in New York. The Constitution Square with its monumental socialist realism architecture (MDM estate) was modelled on the grand squares of Paris, London, Moscow and Rome. Italianate tuscan-styled colonnades based on those at Piazza della Repubblica in Rome were also erected on Saviour Square.\nContemporary architecture in Warsaw is represented by the Metropolitan Office Building at Pilsudski Square and Varso tower, both by Norman Foster, Warsaw University Library (BUW) by Marek Budzy\u0144ski and Zbigniew Badowski, featuring a garden on its roof and view of the Vistula River, Rondo 1 office building by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Z\u0142ota 44 residential skyscraper by Daniel Libeskind, Museum of the History of Polish Jews by Rainer Mahlam\u00e4ki and Golden Terraces, consisting of seven overlapping domes retail and business centre. Jointly with Moscow, Istanbul, Frankfurt, London, Paris and Rotterdam, Warsaw is one of the cities with the highest number of skyscrapers in Europe.\nLandmarks.\nAlthough contemporary Warsaw is a fairly young city compared to other European capitals, it has numerous tourist attractions and architectural monuments dating back centuries. Apart from the Warsaw Old Town area, reconstructed after World War II, each borough has something to offer. Among the most notable landmarks of the Old Town are the Royal Castle, Sigismund's Column, Market Square, and the Barbican.\nFurther south is the so-called Royal Route, with many historical churches, Baroque and Classicist palaces, most notably the Presidential Palace, and the University of Warsaw campus. The former royal residence of King John III Sobieski at Wilan\u00f3w is notable for its Baroque architecture and eloquent palatial garden.\nIn many places in the city the Jewish culture and history resonates down through time. Among them the most notable are the Jewish theater, the No\u017cyk Synagogue, Janusz Korczak's Orphanage and the picturesque Pr\u00f3\u017cna Street. The tragic pages of Warsaw's history are commemorated in places such as the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, the Umschlagplatz, fragments of the ghetto wall on Sienna Street and a mound in memory of the Jewish Combat Organization.\nMany places commemorate the heroic history of Warsaw such as Pawiak, a German Gestapo prison now occupied by a Mausoleum of Memory of Martyrdom and a museum. The Warsaw Citadel, a 19th-century fortification built after the defeat of the November Uprising, was a place of martyrdom for the Poles. Another important monument, the statue of Little Insurrectionist located at the ramparts of the Old Town, commemorates the children who served as messengers and frontline troops in the Warsaw Uprising, while the Warsaw Uprising Monument by Wincenty Ku\u0107ma was erected in memory of the largest insurrection of World War II.\nIn Warsaw there are many places connected with the life and work of Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin who was born near the city in \u017belazowa Wola. The heart of the Polish composer is sealed inside Warsaw's Holy Cross Church. During the summer time the Chopin Statue in \u0141azienki Park is a place where pianists give concerts to the park audience.\nAlso many references to Marie Curie, her work and her family can be found in Warsaw; Curie's birthplace at the Warsaw New Town, the working places where she did her first scientific works and the Radium Institute at Wawelska Street for the research and the treatment of which she founded in 1925.\nCemeteries.\nThe oldest necropolis in Warsaw is Stare Pow\u0105zki, established in 1790. It is one of Poland's national necropolises.\nThe cemetery covers an area of 43 ha. On the day of consecration of the Pow\u0105zki Cemetery, the foundation stone was laid for the construction of the church of Saint Charles Borromeo, designed by the royal architect Domenico Merlini. Catacombs were intended to be a prestigious resting place intended mainly for the nobles, such as Micha\u0142 Poniatowski, Hugo Ko\u0142\u0142\u0105taj, Micha\u0142 Kazimierz Ogi\u0144ski. Over a million people are buried at Stare Pow\u0105zki. In the Avenue of Merit there are the graves of insurgents and soldiers, independence activists, writers, poets, scientists, artists and thinkers. The nearby Pow\u0105zki Military Cemetery was established in 1912 for soldiers stationed in Warsaw. After World War II, the cemetery became a burial place for people associated with the Polish People's Republic - politicians, officials and military personnel.\nThe complex of non-Roman Catholic cemeteries consists of Evangelical\u2013Augsburg Cemetery, Evangelical Reformed Cemetery, Jewish Cemetery, Orthodox Cemetery and Muslim Tatar Cemetery. Other significant Warsaw necropolises are: Br\u00f3dno Cemetery Warsaw Insurgents Cemetery, S\u0142u\u017cew Old Cemetery, S\u0142u\u017cew New Cemetery. There are two large municipal cemeteries in the city \u2013 Northern Communal Cemetery and Southern Communal Cemetery.\nMemorials.\nThe city's symbol is the mermaid placed in the capital's coat of arms. There are three mermaid monuments in Warsaw: one on the banks of the Vistula, the second on the Old Town Square, and the third in Praga-Po\u0142udnie. The oldest monument in Warsaw is the Sigismund's Column. It was built in 1644 according to the design of the Italians: Augustine Locci and Constantin Tencall. The King of Poland Sigismund III Vasa stands on a 22-meter high tower, holding a cross and a sword in his hand. The monument was destroyed and rebuilt many times.\nMany monuments commemorate heroic and tragic moments in the history of Poland and Warsaw. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier located in Pi\u0142sudski Square was built on the initiative of General W\u0142adys\u0142aw Sikorski in the arcades of the Saxon Palace. In 1925, the ashes of the unknown soldier who died during the defense of Lviv were placed under the colonnade, then urns with soil from 24 battlefields were buried here. Among the monuments related to the World War II are Nike Monument that commemorates the heroes of Warsaw from 1939 to 1945, Monument to the Polish Underground State and Home Army, Monument to the Little Insurrectionist and Warsaw Uprising Monument in front of the Supreme Court building at Krasi\u0144ski Square. Monument to the Ghetto Heroes commemorates the\u00a0Warsaw Ghetto Uprising\u00a0of 1943.\nIn 1929, a monument to Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin was constructed in the Royal \u0141azienki Park. Every summer at its foot classical music concerts featuring world-famous pianists take place. Other important monuments are: Adam Mickiewicz Monument, Tadeusz Ko\u015bciuszko Monument, Marie Curie Monument, Prince J\u00f3zef Poniatowski Monument, Nicolaus Copernicus Monument, Stefan Starzy\u0144ski Monument, J\u00f3zef Pi\u0142sudski Monument, Janusz Korczak Monument.\nFlora and fauna.\nGreen space covers almost a quarter of Warsaw's total area. These range from small neighborhood parks and green spaces along streets or in courtyards, to tree-lined avenues, large historic parks, nature conservation areas and urban forests at the fringe of the city. There are as many as 82 parks in the city; the oldest ones were once part of representative palaces and include the Saxon and Krasi\u0144ski Gardens, \u0141azienki Park (Royal Baths Park) and Wilan\u00f3w Palace Parkland.\nThe Saxon Garden, covering an area of 15.5 ha, formally served as a royal garden to the now nonexistent Saxon Palace. In 1727, it was made into one of the world's first public parks and later remodelled in the forest-like English style. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is situated at the east end of the park near the central fountain, on Pi\u0142sudski Square. With its benches, flower carpets and a central pond, the Krasi\u0144ski Palace Garden was once a notable strolling destination for most Varsovians. The \u0141azienki Park covers an area of 76 ha and its unique character and history is reflected in the landscape architecture (pavilions, sculptures, bridges, water cascades) and vegetation (domestic and foreign species of trees and shrubs). The presence of peacocks, pheasants and squirrels at \u0141azienki attracts tourists and locals. The Wilan\u00f3w Palace Parkland on the outskirts of Warsaw traces it history to the second half of the 17th century and covers an area of 43 ha. Its French-styled alleys corresponds to the ancient, Baroque forms of the palace.\nThe Botanical Garden and the University Library rooftop garden host an extensive collection of rare domestic and foreign plants, while a palm house in the New Orangery displays plants of subtropics from all over the world. Mokot\u00f3w Field (once a racetrack), Ujazd\u00f3w Park and Skaryszewski Park are also located within the city borders. The oldest park in the Praga borough was established between 1865 and 1871.\nThe flora of Warsaw may be considered very rich in species on city standards. This is mainly due to the location of Warsaw within the border region of several big floral regions comprising substantial proportions of close-to-wilderness areas (natural forests, wetlands along the Vistula) as well as arable land, meadows and forests. The nearby Kampinos Nature Reserve is the last remaining part of the Masovian Primeval Forest and is protected by law. The Kabaty Woods are by the southern city border and are visited by the residents of southern boroughs such as Ursyn\u00f3w. There are 13 natural reserves in the vicinity and just from Warsaw, the environment features a perfectly preserved ecosystem with a habitat of animals like the otter, beavers and hundreds of bird species. There are also several lakes in Warsaw\u00a0\u2013 mainly the oxbow lakes at Czerniak\u00f3w and Kamionek.\nThe Warsaw Zoo covers an area of . There are about 5,000 animals representing nearly 500 species. Although officially created in 1928, it traces back its roots to 17th century private menageries, often open to the public.\nDemographics.\nDemographically, Warsaw was the most diverse city in Poland, with significant numbers of foreign-born residents. In addition to the Polish majority, there was a large and thriving Jewish minority. According to the Imperial Census of 1897, out of the total population of 638,000, Jews constituted 219,000 (equivalent to 34%). Prior to the Second World War, Warsaw hosted the world's second largest Jewish population after New York \u2013 approximately 30 percent of the city's total population in the late 1930s. In 1933, 833,500 out of 1,178,914 people declared Polish as their mother tongue. There was also a notable German community. The ethnic composition of contemporary Warsaw is incomparable to the diversity that existed for nearly 300 years. Most of the modern-day population growth is based on internal migration and urbanisation. In the 2021 census, 98.78% of Warsaw residents identified themselves as Polish, 0.46% as Ukrainian, 0.31% as Belarusian and 0.21% as Jewish.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nIn 1939, approximately 1,300,000 people resided in Warsaw; by 1945 the population had dropped to 420,000. During the first years after the war, the population growth rate was high and the city soon began to suffer from the lack of flats and dwellings to house new incomers. The first remedial measure was the enlargement of Warsaw's total area (1951)\u00a0\u2013 however the city authorities were still forced to introduce limitations; only the spouses and children of permanent residents as well as some persons of public importance (renowned specialists, artists, engineers) were permitted to stay. This negatively affected the image of an average Warsaw citizen, who was perceived as more privileged than those migrating from rural areas, towns or other cities. While all restrictions on residency registration were scrapped in 1990, the negative opinion of Varsovians in some form continues to this day.\nWarsaw metropolitan area is an example of the development of a strongly polarized region. The capital, along with its immediate surroundings, concentrates over half of the demographic potential of the Masovian Voivodeship, 2/3 of residents with higher education, and 3/4 of larger economic entities employing more than 50 workers.\nCurrent demographic development trends are as follows:\nIn the coming years, an increase in the city's population is predicted, with migration being the main factor determining the state and structure of Warsaw's population, including mainly internal (national) and external (foreign) influx. Changes in the population are not uniform for the entire Warsaw and in the division into districts, the predicted demographic changes will have a varied course. A decrease in population is forecasted in some central districts (Praga-P\u00f3\u0142noc, \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie) and an increase in other districts.\nImmigrant population.\nIn 2019, it was estimated that 40,000 people living in Warsaw were foreign-born. Of those, Ukrainians, Vietnamese, Belarusians, and Russians were the most prominent groups. After Russia's aggression against Ukraine, over 1.1 million refugees from Ukraine passed through Warsaw, and at the beginning of March 2022, approximately 40,000 people applied for help every day. According to official data, over 104,000 of Ukrainian citizens who arrived in the first days after the outbreak of the war still reside in the city, including 17,000 young people and children attending urban educational institutions. Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the immigrant population has increased significantly to about 340,000.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nThroughout its existence, Warsaw had been a multi-cultural and multi-religious city. According to the 1901 census, out of 711,988 inhabitants 56.2% were Catholics, 35.7% Jews, 5% Greek Orthodox Christians and 2.8% Protestants. Eight years later, in 1909, there were 281,754 Jews (36.9%), 18,189 Protestants (2.4%) and 2,818 Mariavites (0.4%). This led to construction of hundreds of places of religious worship in all parts of the town. Most of them were destroyed in the aftermath of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. After the war, the new communist authorities of Poland discouraged church construction and only a small number were rebuilt.\nThe archdiocese of Warsaw and the Diocese of Warsaw-Praga are the two ecclesiastical districts active in the city which serve the large Roman Catholic population of 1.4 million. The Lutheran Diocese of Warsaw is one of six in Poland; its main house of worship is the Holy Trinity Church from 1782, one of Warsaw's most important and historic landmarks. The Evangelical Reformed Parish (Calvinist) is leading the Polish Reformed Church. The main tserkva of the Orthodox Christians is Praga's Cathedral of St. Mary Magdalene from 1869. The Jewish Commune of Warsaw (\"Gmina Wyznaniowa \u017bydowska\") is one of eight in the country; Chief Rabbi of Poland Michael Schudrich resides in the city. There are also 3 active synagogues, one of which is the pre-war No\u017cyk Synagogue designated for Orthodox Jews. An Islamic Cultural Centre in Ochota and a small mosque in Wilan\u00f3w serve the Muslims.\nThere are several Marian shrines in the city, including: sanctuary of the Gracious Mother of God with her image crowned in 1651 in the presence of King John Casimir. Another patron of the city is Blessed W\u0142adys\u0142aw of Gielni\u00f3w, bernardine from the St. Anne's Church. The greatest cult is that of St. Andrew Bobola, patron of the metropolis of Warsaw, whose relics are in the sanctuary of St. Andrew Bobola in Mokot\u00f3w.\nGovernment and politics.\nAs the capital of Poland, Warsaw is the political centre of the country. Almost all central government institutions are located there, including the Chancellery of the President, both houses of the Polish Parliament (the lower house called Sejm and the upper house called Senate), the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, the Constitutional Tribunal, the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Administrative Court. Warsaw is also host to many major international organizations, including Frontex and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (the oldest and principal institution of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe).\nThe city is represented in the parliament by 20 members of Sejm (out of 460) and 4 senators (out of 100). In addition, Warsaw together with its metropolitan area elects 6 MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) out of 705.\nMunicipal government.\nThe first city mayor of Warsaw was Jan Andrzej Menich (1695\u20131696). The municipal self-government existed in Warsaw until World War II and was restored in 1990 (during the communist times, the National City Council\u00a0\u2013 \"Miejska Rada Narodowa\"\u00a0\u2013 governed in Warsaw). Since 1990, the structure of city government has been modified several times. Between 1975 and 1990 the Warsaw city mayors simultaneously led the Warsaw Voivodeship. In the years 1990\u20131994, the city mayor of Warsaw was elected by the city council. \nA controversial reform was introduced in 1994, which transformed the city into a loose municipal union of several gminas, dominated by one of them, the gmina Centrum encompassing the entire inner city. During this period, the mayor of gmina Centrum who was elected by its council was automatically designated as the city mayor of Warsaw, in spite of representing only a fraction of the population of the city. The city was becoming increasingly unmanageable, especially after the administrative reform of Poland in 1999 which further complicated the local government structure of Warsaw. In 2002, the new \"Warsaw Act\" of the Polish parliament restored Warsaw as a single urban gmina with the status of a city with powiat rights, led by a unified local government. At the same time, a significant reform was implemented in all Polish municipal governments, introducing direct elections of the w\u00f3jt/town mayor/city mayor in all Polish gminas. The first city mayor of Warsaw elected according to these rules was Lech Kaczy\u0144ski, who however resigned ahead of term when he was elected President of Polish Republic in 2005.\nWarsaw has thereafter remained an urban gmina with the status of a city with powiat rights. Legislative power in Warsaw is vested in a unicameral Warsaw City Council (\"Rada Miasta\"), which comprises 60 members. Council members are elected directly every five years (since 2018 election). Like most legislative bodies, the city council divides itself into committees which have the oversight of various functions of the city government. The city mayor exercises the executive power in the city, being the superior of all unelected municipal- or county-level officials and other employees and supervising all subsidiary entities of the city. The incumbent city mayor of Warsaw is Rafa\u0142 Trzaskowski.\nThe \"Warsaw Act\" imposes a mandatory division into 18 auxiliary units called \"dzielnica\" (district) on the city. In spite of remaining an integral part of the city as an entity, the districts have a degree of autonomy legally guaranteed through a form of an own local self-government exercising some powers devolved by law from the city. They have the duty to assist the city mayor and the City Council in their tasks, such as supervising some municipal companies, city-owned property or schools. Each of the 18 city districts has an own council (\"rada dzielnicy\") which elects an executive board (\"zarz\u0105d dzielnicy\") headed by a district mayor (\"burmistrz dzielnicy\"), the latter elected by the council among several candidates nominated by the city mayor of Warsaw among the council's members.\nDistricts.\nBia\u0142o\u0142\u0119ka\nBielany\nBemowo\n\u017boliborz\nPraga-P\u00f3\u0142noc\nTarg\u00f3wek\n\u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie\nWola\nOchota\nW\u0142ochy\nUrsus\nMokot\u00f3w\nWawer\nPraga-Po\u0142udnie\nRembert\u00f3w\nWeso\u0142a\nUrsyn\u00f3w\nWilan\u00f3w\nAs a result, Warsaw has thereafter continued as an urban gmina holding status of a city with powiat rights, divided into 18 districts (\"dzielnica\"), auxiliary municipal units established within the city as an entity as its integral parts, though with some limited powers devolved from the city to their own local self-governments. Each of the districts is customarily subdivided into several neighbourhoods lacking any meaningful legal or administrative powers. The central district of \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie includes the two founding neighbourhoods of the city, called the Old Town (\"Stare Miasto\") and the New Town (\"Nowe Miasto\").\nEconomy.\nWarsaw is the leading economic and financial hub of the Visegr\u00e1d Group and the Three Seas Initiative. In 2021, the city's gross metropolitan product (GDP) was estimated at \u20ac100 billion, which places Warsaw 20th among the metropolitan areas in the European Union with largest GDP. Warsaw generates almost 1/5 of the Polish GDP and the country's national income. In 2020, Warsaw was classified as a global city, because Warsaw is a major global city that links economic regions into the world economy.\nWarsaw's city centre (\u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie) and commercial Wola district are home not only to many national institutions and government agencies, but also to many domestic and international companies. Warsaw's ever-growing business community has been noticed globally, regionally, and nationally. In 2019 Warsaw was one of the top destinations for foreign investors in Europe.\nThe average monthly gross salary in the enterprise sector in the last quarter of 2022 amounted to 8,104 PLN and was 404 PLN higher than the average in the Masovian Voivodeship and as much as 1,450 PLN higher than in Poland. The highest gross salary was received by employees working in the information and communication section (11,701.47 PLN). There are 525,475 registered business entities in Warsaw, most of them in the districts of \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie, Mokot\u00f3w, Wola and Praga-Po\u0142udnie, 1.1 million people work in the enterprise sector. Warsaw has a well-developed office base, the office space is 6.27 million m2. The largest office buildings are Varso (63,800 m2), Warsaw Spire (60 000 m2), Forest Tower (51,500 m2) and P180 (32,000 m2), the largest projects under construction are The Bridge (47,000 m2) and Skyliner II (38,000 m2). The space resources of shopping centers in the Warsaw agglomeration in amount to over 1.7 million m2.\nIn October 2019 Warsaw's unemployment rate was 1.3%, the lowest in the country. Shopping and consumerism is an important component of Warsaw's economy. The retail streets in Warsaw are New World Street (\"Nowy \u015awiat\") along with Krakowskie Przedmie\u015bcie. These streets and their neighboring areas host many luxury stores and popular restaurants. However, most retailers choose to operate in the central shopping centres and malls such as Z\u0142ote Tarasy-Golden Terraces, Galeria Mokot\u00f3w and Westfield Arkadia. Luxury goods as well as designer labels can be found in the Vitkac Department Store and around Frascati.\nWarsaw Stock Exchange.\nWarsaw's first stock exchange was established in 1817 and continued trading until World War II. It was re-established in April 1991, following the end of a communist planned economy and the reintroduction of a free-market economy. Today, the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) is, according to many indicators, the largest market in the region, with 433 companies listed and total capitalisation of 1 trillion PLN as of 26 November 2020. From 1991 until 2000, the stock exchange was, ironically, located in the building previously used as the headquarters of the communist Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR).\nIndustry.\nThe most prominent industries and industrial sectors include high-tech, electrotechnical, chemical, cosmetic, construction, food processing, printing, metallurgy, machinery and clothing. The majority of production plants and facilities are concentrated within the WOP Warsaw Industrial Precinct (\"Warszawski Okr\u0119g Przemys\u0142owy\") which is situated around the city's peripheral localities such as Praga, Pruszk\u00f3w, Sochaczew, Piaseczno, Marki and \u017byrard\u00f3w. Warsaw has developed a particularly strong retail market/sector, representing around 13% of the total retail stock in the country.\nFollowing World War II, the authorities decided that the city will be transformed into a major centre for heavy industry and manufacturing. As a result, numerous large factories and production facilities were built in and around the city. Among the largest were \"Huta Warszawa\" steel works, now arcelor), the Ursus SA, and the Fabryka Samochod\u00f3w Osobowych (FSO) car factory. The now-defunct FSO, established in 1951, was once Warsaw's most successful corporation. Notable vehicles assembled there over the decades include the FSO Warszawa, FSO Syrena, Polski Fiat 125p and the FSO Polonez. In 1995, the factory was purchased by the South Korean car manufacturer Daewoo, which assembled its models in Warsaw for the European market.\nTourism.\nThe estimated number of tourist arrivals to Warsaw in 2022 was over 9 million. Most tourists came from the United Kingdom (347,000), Germany (321,000), the United States (206,000) and France (145,000). Additionally, Warsaw was visited by 5.8 million one-day tourists, giving a total of over 14.8 million tourists in 2022. The above data does not include Ukrainian citizens who came to Warsaw in connection with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The accommodation base consists of 1,010 hotels offering over 56,000 beds. The estimated contribution of the tourism economy to Warsaw's GDP is 12.9 billion PLN, and the tourism industry employs 87,703 people.\n144,220 people used Warsaw Tourist Lines in 2022 - almost 14,000 more than previous year. In the summer, Warsaw residents and tourists could use ferries across the Vistula, a ship to Serock, bus and tram lines operated with historic rolling stock, and a narrow-gauge railway. The most popular attraction among tourists was the Royal \u0141azienki Museum, which was visited by 5,265,110 tourists.\nWarsaw is an important center for conferences and congresses. The Warsaw Convention Bureau collected information on 9,000 events in 2022, which gathered a total of 1,240,467 participants in Warsaw.\nMedia and film.\nWarsaw is the media centre of Poland, and the location of the main headquarters of TVP and other numerous local and national TV and radio stations, such as Polskie Radio (Polish Radio), TVN, Polsat, TV4, TV Puls, Canal+ Poland, Cyfra+ and MTV Poland. Warsaw also has a sizable movie and television industry. The city houses several movie companies and studios.\nSince May 1661 the first Polish newspaper, the \"Polish Ordinary Mercury\", was printed in Warsaw. The city is also the printing capital of Poland with a wide variety of domestic and foreign periodicals expressing diverse views, and domestic newspapers are extremely competitive. \"Rzeczpospolita\", and \"Dziennik Polska-Europa-\u015awiat\", Poland's large nationwide daily newspapers, have their headquarters in Warsaw.\nSince World War II, Warsaw has been the most important centre of film production in Poland. Among the movie companies are TOR, Czo\u0142\u00f3wka, Zebra and Kadr which is behind several international movie productions. The city itself has featured in numerous movies, both Polish and foreign, for example: \"Kana\u0142\" and \"Korczak\" by Andrzej Wajda and \"The Decalogue\" by Krzysztof Kie\u015blowski, also including Oscar winner \"The Pianist\" by Roman Pola\u0144ski. It is also home to the National Film Archive, which, since 1955, has been collecting and preserving Polish film culture.\nEducation.\nWarsaw holds some of the finest institutions of higher education in Poland. It is home to four major universities and over 62 smaller schools of higher education. The overall number of students of all grades of education in Warsaw is almost 500,000 (29.2% of the city population; 2002). The number of university students is over 280,000. Most of the reputable universities are public, but in recent years there has also been an upsurge in the number of private universities.\nThe University of Warsaw was established in 1816, when the partitions of Poland separated Warsaw from the oldest and most influential Polish academic center, in Krak\u00f3w. The university is the largest in the country, and often regarded as one of the most prestigious, with international recognition in mathematics and science. Warsaw University of Technology is the second academic school of technology in the country, and one of the largest in East-Central Europe. Other institutions for higher education include the Medical University of Warsaw, the largest medical school in Poland and one of the most prestigious; the National Defence University, the highest military academic institution in Poland; the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music, the oldest and largest music school in Poland and one of the largest in Europe; the Warsaw School of Economics, the oldest and most renowned economic university in the country; the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, the largest agricultural university, founded in 1818; and the SWPS University, the first private secular university in the country.\nWarsaw has numerous libraries, many of which contain vast collections of historic documents. The most important library in terms of historic document collections is the National Library of Poland. The library holds 8.2\u00a0million volumes in its collection. Formed in 1928, it sees itself as a successor to the Za\u0142uski Library, the biggest in Poland and one of the first and biggest libraries in the world.\nAnother important library \u2013 the University Library, founded in 1816, is home to over two million items. The building was designed by architects Marek Budzy\u0144ski and Zbigniew Badowski and opened on 15 December 1999. It is surrounded by green. The University Library garden, designed by Irena Bajerska, was opened on 12 June 2002. It is one of the largest roof gardens in Europe with an area of more than , and plants covering . As the university garden it is open to the public every day.\nTransport.\nWarsaw is a considerable transport hub linking Western, Central and Eastern Europe. The city has a good network of buses and a continuously expanding perpendicular metro running north to south and east to west. The tram system is one of the biggest in Europe, with a total length of . As a result of increased foreign investment, economic growth and EU funding, the city has undertaken the construction of new roads, flyovers and bridges. The supervising body is the City Roads Authority (ZDM \u2013 \"Zarz\u0105d Dr\u00f3g Miejskich\").\nPublic transport.\nThe first section of the Warsaw Metro was opened in 1995 initially with a total of 11 stations. As of 2024, it has 39 stations running a distance of approximately .\nPublic transport also extends to light rail Warszawska Kolej Dojazdowa line, urban railway Szybka Kolej Miejska, regional rail Koleje Mazowieckie (Mazovian Railways), and bicycle sharing systems (Veturilo). The buses, trams, urban railway and Metro are managed by the Public Transport Authority and are collectively known as Warsaw Public Transport.\nThe table presents statistics on public transport in Warsaw.\nRoads.\nWarsaw lacks a complete ring road system and most traffic goes directly through the city centre, leading to the eleventh highest level of congestion in Europe. The Warsaw ring road has been planned to consist of four express roads: S2 (south), S8 (north-west) and S17 (east). S8, S2 and a small 3\u00a0km section of S17 are open. Additionally, the S2 and S8 have a concurrency with the S7 and the S2 has a short concurrency with the S8. A second ring road consisting of the A50 motorway (south) and S50 expressway (north) is also planned but it is unknown when construction will start.\nThe A2 motorway opened in June 2012, stretches west from Warsaw and is a direct motorway connection with \u0141\u00f3d\u017a, Pozna\u0144 and ultimately with Berlin.\nAviation.\nThe city has three international airports: Warsaw Chopin Airport, located just from the city centre, Warsaw-Radom Airport, located just south of Warsaw, which serves mainly low-cost and charter operations and finally Warsaw-Modlin Airport, located to the north, opened in July 2012. With around 100 international and domestic flights a day and with 7,440,056 passengers served in 2021, and it has also been called \"the most important and largest airport in Central Europe\".\nWarsaw Chopin Airport is the busiest airport in Poland a with 21.3 million passengers in 2024 handling approximately 40% of the country's total air passenger traffic. The airport is a central hub for LOT Polish Airlines as well as a base for Enter Air and Wizz Air. There are 50 air operations performed at the airport per hour. London, Frankfurt, Paris, and Amsterdam are the busiest international connections, while Krak\u00f3w, Wroc\u0142aw, and Gda\u0144sk are the most popular domestic ones. The complex contains 45 passenger gates, 27 of which are equipped with jetways. A rail link has been added to connect the city with the airport in 2012.\nRail.\nLong distance and intercity trains are operated by Polish State Railways (PKP). There are also some suburban bus lines run by private operators. Bus service covers the entire city, with approximately 256 routes totalling above , and with some 1,700 vehicles.\nThe main railway station is Warszawa Centralna serving both domestic traffic to almost every major city in Poland, and international connections. There are also five other major railway stations and a number of smaller suburban stations.\nCulture.\nMusic and theatre.\nThanks to numerous musical venues, including the \"Teatr Wielki\", the Polish National Opera, the Chamber Opera, the National Philharmonic Hall and the National Theatre, as well as the Roma and Buffo music theatres and the Congress Hall in the Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw hosts many events and festivals. Among the events worth particular attention are: the International Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin Piano Competition, the International Contemporary Music Festival Warsaw Autumn, the Jazz Jamboree, Warsaw Summer Jazz Days, the International Stanis\u0142aw Moniuszko Vocal Competition, the Mozart Festival, and the Festival of Old Music.\nWarsaw is also considered one of the European hubs of underground electronic music with a very attractive house and techno music scene.\nWarsaw is home to over 30 major theatres spread throughout the city, including the National Theatre (founded in 1765) and the Grand Theatre (established 1778).\nWarsaw also attracts many young and off-stream directors and performers who add to the city's theatrical culture. Their productions may be viewed mostly in smaller theatres and \"Houses of Culture\" (\"Domy Kultury\"), mostly outside \"\u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie\" (Central Warsaw). Warsaw hosts the International Theatrical Meetings.\nFrom 1833 to the outbreak of World War II, Plac Teatralny \"(Theatre Square)\" was the country's cultural hub and home to the various theatres. Plac Teatralny and its environs was the venue for numerous parades, celebrations of state holidays, carnival balls and concerts.\nThe main building housed the Great Theatre from 1833 to 1834, the Rozmaito\u015bci Theatre from 1836 to 1924 and then the National Theatre, the Reduta Theatre from 1919 to 1924, and from 1928 to 1939\u00a0\u2013 the Nowy Theatre, which staged productions of contemporary poetical drama, including those directed by Leon Schiller.\nNearby, in Ogr\u00f3d Saski (the Saxon Garden), the Summer Theatre was in operation from 1870 to 1939, and in the inter-war period, the theatre complex also included Momus, Warsaw's first literary cabaret, and Leon Schiller's musical theatre Melodram. The Wojciech Bogus\u0142awski Theatre (1922\u201326) was the best example of \"Polish monumental theatre\". From the mid-1930s, the Great Theatre building housed the Upati Institute of Dramatic Arts\u00a0\u2013 the first state-run academy of dramatic art, with an acting department and a stage directing department.\nMuseums and art galleries.\nThere are over 60 museums and galleries in Warsaw which are accessible to the public. Among the positions are the world's first Museum of Posters boasting one of the largest collections of art posters in the world, and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Among the most prestigious ones are the National Museum with a collection of works whose origin ranges in time from antiquity until the present epoch as well as one of the best collections of paintings in the country including some paintings from Adolf Hitler's private collection, and the Museum of the Polish Army whose set portrays the history of arms.\nThe collections of \u0141azienki and Wilan\u00f3w palaces focus on the paintings of the \"old masters\", as do those of the Royal Castle which displays the Lanckoro\u0144ski Collection including two paintings by Rembrandt. The Palace in Natolin, a former rural residence of Duke Czartoryski, is another venue with its interiors and park accessible to tourists.\nThe famous Copernicus Science Centre is an interactive science museum containing over 450 exhibits, enabling visitors to carry out experiments and discover the laws of science for themselves. Warsaw does not have a natural history museum. Yet, it hosts small museums of Evolution and the Earth, which play a similar role.\nHolding Poland's largest private collection of art, the Carroll Porczy\u0144ski Collection Museum displays works from such varied artists as Paris Bordone, Cornelis van Haarlem, Jos\u00e9 de Ribera, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Vincent van Gogh along with some copies of masterpieces of European painting.\nA fine tribute to the fall of Warsaw and history of Poland can be found in the Warsaw Uprising Museum and in the Katy\u0144 Museum which preserves the memory of that crime. The Warsaw Uprising Museum also operates a rare preserved and operating historic stereoscopic theatre, the Warsaw Fotoplastikon. The Museum of Independence preserves patriotic and political objects connected with Poland's struggles for independence. Dating back to 1936 the Warsaw Historical Museum contains 60 rooms which host a permanent exhibition of the history of Warsaw from its origins until today.\nThe 17th century Royal Ujazd\u00f3w Castle houses the Centre for Contemporary Art, with some permanent and temporary exhibitions, concerts, shows and creative workshops. The Centre realizes about 500 projects a year. The Zach\u0119ta National Gallery of Art, the oldest exhibition site in Warsaw, with a tradition stretching back to the mid-19th century organises exhibitions of modern art by Polish and International Artists and promotes art in many other ways. Since 2011, Warsaw Gallery Weekend is held on the last weekend of September.\n28 September 2023 the opening of the new building of the Museum of Polish History located at the Warsaw Citadel took place.\nThe city also possesses some oddities such as the Neon Museum, the Museum of Caricature, the Museum of John Paul II and Primate Wyszy\u0144ski, the Legia Warsaw Museum, and a Motorisation Museum in Otr\u0119busy.\nCuisine and food.\nWarsaw's culinary tradition was shaped by its once multicultural population; its cuisine is distinct from that of other cities and towns in Poland. Strong Jewish and French influences were cultivated over the years, in particular herring, consomm\u00e9, bagels, aspic and French meringue-based pastries or cakes. Traditional Varsovian food is hearty and includes a tripe soup for entr\u00e9e, a pyza dumpling for main and the iconic wuzetka (voo-zetka) chocolate cream pie for dessert. Crayfish and fish in gelatin were the classical dishes in Warsaw's restaurants throughout the 1920s and the 1930s.\nMuch like Paris or Vienna, Warsaw once possessed a prominent caf\u00e9 culture which dated back to the early 18th century, and the city's cafeterias were a place for socializing. The historic Wedel Chocolate Lounge on Szpitalna Street remains one of the most renowned spots for social gatherings. Cafeterias, confectioneries and patisseries such as Caff\u00e8 Nero, Costa Coffee and Starbucks are predominantly found along the Royal Route on New World Street. Thousands of Warsaw's residents also flock annually to the pastry workshops (\"p\u0105czkarnia\") to buy p\u0105czki doughnuts on Fat Thursday.\nRestaurants offering authentic Polish cuisine are concentrated around the Old Town district. Various spit cakes of Czech or Hungarian origin (k\u00fcrt\u0151skal\u00e1cs and trdeln\u00edk) are also sold primarily in the Old Town. Hala Koszyki is a popular meeting place in Warsaw noted for its food hall.\nIn the 20th century, Warsaw was famed for its state-owned milk bars (\"bar mleczny\") which offered cheap fast food in the form of home dinners. Examples of dishes popularized by these canteens include tomato soup, schnitzels, frikadeller, mizeria salad and many others. Contemporary fast food giants like McDonald's, KFC, Subway and Burger King are the successors to milk bars, though some reemerged in recent years due to widespread nostalgia.\nGourmet and haute cuisine establishments are situated in the vicinity of the downtown area or in the Frascati neighbourhood. Thirteen Varsovian restaurants were appreciated by the Michelin Guide, with two receiving a michelin star in 2019.\nIn 2021, National Geographic named Warsaw one of the top cities for vegans in Europe. \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie Po\u0142udniowe (Southern Downtown) and its \"hipster food culture\" was singled out as the epicenter.\nEvents.\nSeveral commemorative events take place every year, notably the Orange Warsaw Festival featuring music concerts. One of the more popular events is the procession of the Three Wise Men (in Polish known as the Three Kings) on Epiphany, shortly after the New Year. Paper crowns are usually worn by spectators throughout the day. The event, which runs along the Royal Route, is attended by Warsaw's highest officials and by the Polish president who resides nearby.\nGatherings of thousands of people on the banks of the Vistula on Midsummer's Night for a festival called Wianki (Polish for \"Wreaths\") have also become a tradition and a yearly event in the programme of cultural events in Warsaw. The festival traces its roots to a peaceful pagan ritual where maidens would float their wreaths of herbs on the water to predict when they would be married, and to whom. By the 19th century this tradition had become a festive event, and it continues today. The city council organize concerts and other events. Each Midsummer's Eve, apart from the official floating of wreaths, jumping over fires, and looking for the fern flower, there are musical performances, dignitaries' speeches, fairs and fireworks by the river bank.\nWarsaw Multimedia Fountain Park is located in an enchanting place, near the Old Town and the Vistula. The 'Water \u2013 Light \u2013 Sound' multimedia shows take place each Friday and Saturday from May until September at 9.30\u00a0pm (May and \u2013 9 October pm). On other weekdays, the shows do not include lasers and sound.\nThe Warsaw Film festival, an annual festival that takes place every October. Films are usually screened in their original language with Polish subtitles and participating cinemas include Kinoteka (Palace of Science and Culture), Multikino at Golden Terraces and Kultura. Over 100 films are shown throughout the festival, and awards are given to the best and most popular films.\nWarsaw Mermaid.\nThe mermaid (\"syrenka\") is Warsaw's symbol and can be found on statues throughout the city and on the city's coat of arms. This imagery has been in use since at least the mid-14th century. The oldest existing armed seal of Warsaw is from the year 1390, consisting of a round seal bordered with the Latin inscription \"Sigilium Civitatis Varsoviensis\" (Seal of the city of Warsaw). City records as far back as 1609 document the use of a crude form of a sea monster with a female upper body and holding a sword in its claws. In 1653 the poet Zygmunt Laukowski asks the question:\n<templatestyles src=\"Rquote/styles.css\"/>{ class=\"rquote pullquote floatcenter\" role=\"presentation\" style=\"display:table; border-collapse:collapse; border-style:none; float:center; margin:0.5em 0.75em; width:33%; \"\nThe Mermaid Statue stands in the very centre of Old Town Square, surrounded by a fountain. Due to vandalism, the original statue had been moved to the grounds of the Museum of Warsaw \u2013 the statue in the square is a copy.\nThis is not the only mermaid in Warsaw. Another is located on the bank of the Vistula River near \u015awi\u0119tokrzyski Bridge and another on Karowa Street.\nThe origin of the legendary figure is not fully known. The best-known legend, by Artur Oppman, is that long ago two of Triton's daughters set out on a journey through the depths of the oceans and seas. One of them decided to stay on the coast of Denmark and can be seen sitting at the entrance to the port of Copenhagen. The second mermaid reached the mouth of the Vistula River and plunged into its waters. She stopped to rest on a sandy beach by the village of Warszowa, where fishermen came to admire her beauty and listen to her beautiful voice. A greedy merchant also heard her songs; he followed the fishermen and captured the mermaid.\nAnother legend says that a mermaid once swam to Warsaw from the Baltic Sea for the love of the Griffin, the ancient defender of the city, who was killed in a struggle against the Swedish invasions of the 17th century. The mermaid, wishing to avenge his death, took the position of defender of Warsaw, becoming the symbol of the city.\nEvery member of the Queen's Royal Hussars of the UK's light cavalry wears the \"Maid of Warsaw\", the crest of the City of Warsaw, on the left sleeve of his No. 2 (Service) Dress. Members of 651 Squadron Army Air Corps of the United Kingdom also wear the \"Maid of Warsaw\" on the left sleeve of their No. 2 (Service) Dress.\nSports.\nOn 9 April 2008, the Mayor of Warsaw, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, obtained from the mayor of Stuttgart Wolfgang Schuster a challenge award\u00a0\u2013 a commemorative plaque awarded to Warsaw as the European capital of Sport in 2008.\nThe Kazimierz G\u00f3rski National Stadium, a 58,580-seat-capacity football (soccer) stadium, replaced Warsaw's recently demolished 10th-Anniversary Stadium. The National Stadium hosted the opening match, two group matches, a quarter-final, and a semi-final of UEFA Euro 2012.\nThere are many sports centres in the city as well. Most of these facilities are swimming pools and sports halls, many of them built by the municipality in the past several years. The main indoor venue is Hala Torwar, used for a variety of indoor sports (it was a venue for the 2009 EuroBasket but it is also used as an indoor skating rink). There is also an open-air skating rink (Stegny) and a horse racetrack (S\u0142u\u017cewiec).\nThe best of the city's swimming centres is at Wodny Park Warszawianka, south of the centre at Merliniego Street, where there's an Olympic-sized pool as well as water slides and children's areas.\nAmong the Varsovian football teams, the most recognisable is Legia Warsaw\u00a0\u2013 the army club with a nationwide following play at the Polish Army Stadium, just southeast of the centre at \u0141azienkowska Street. Established in 1916, they have won the country's championship fifteen times (most recently in 2021) and won the Polish Cup nineteen times. In the 1995\u201396 UEFA Champions League season, they reached the quarter-finals, where they lost to Greek club Panathinaikos.\nTheir local rivals, Polonia Warsaw, have significantly fewer supporters, yet they managed to win the country's championship two times (in 1946 and 2000) and won the cup twice as well. Polonia's home venue is located at Konwiktorska Street, a ten-minute walk north from the Old Town. Polonia was relegated from the country's top flight in 2013 because of their disastrous financial situation. They are now playing in the first league (2nd tier in Poland).\nLegia Warsaw's basketball team was one of the country's best teams in 50s and 60s. They are now participating in PLK, the highest-tier level of the Polish basketball.\nFamous people.\nOne of the most famous people born in Warsaw was Maria Sk\u0142odowska-Curie, who achieved international recognition for her research on radioactivity and was the first female recipient of the Nobel Prize. Famous musicians include W\u0142adys\u0142aw Szpilman, Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin and Witold Lutos\u0142awski. Though Chopin was born in the village of \u017belazowa Wola, about from Warsaw, he moved to the city with his family when he was seven months old. Casimir Pulaski, a Polish general and hero of the American Revolutionary War, was born here in 1745. Other important people, who lived in Warsaw (although were not born here) are also Rosa Luxemburg and L. L. Zamenhof.\nTamara de Lempicka was a famous artist born in Warsaw. She was born Maria G\u00f3rska in Warsaw to wealthy parents and in 1916 married a Polish lawyer Tadeusz \u0141empicki. Better than anyone else she represented the art deco style in painting and art. Another notable artist born in the city was Wojciech Fangor. He was associated with Op art and Color field movements and recognized as a key figure in the history of Polish postwar abstract art. Nathan Alterman, the Israeli poet, was born in Warsaw, as was Moshe Vilenski, the Israeli composer, lyricist, and pianist, who studied music at the Warsaw Conservatory.\nOther notable individuals from Warsaw include Samuel Goldwyn, the founder of Goldwyn Pictures, mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, physicist Joseph Rotblat, biochemist Casimir Funk, Moshe Prywes, an Israeli physician who was the first President of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and I. L. Peretz, one of the three founding fathers of modern Yiddish literature. Warsaw was the beloved city of Isaac Bashevis Singer, which he described in many of his novels: \"Warsaw has just now been destroyed. No one will ever see the Warsaw I knew. Let me just write about it. Let this Warsaw not disappear forever\", he wrote. Notable sportspeople born in Warsaw include footballers Robert Lewandowski and Wojciech Szcz\u0119sny as well as tennis player Iga \u015awi\u0105tek.\nInternational relations.\nTwin towns and sister cities.\nWarsaw is twinned with:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nFormer twin towns:\nPartnership and friendship.\nWarsaw also cooperates with:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nFormer partner cities:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "3066279": "Stefan Meller\nPolish diplomat and academician\nStefan Meller (4 July 1942 in Lyon, France \u2013 4 February 2008 in Warsaw, Poland) was a Polish diplomat and academician. He served as foreign minister of Poland from 31 October 2005, to 9 May 2006, in the cabinet of Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz.\nHe was born to a Jewish family. Meller was a graduate from the faculty of history of the University of Warsaw. He was a Humanities professor until he was employed by the Polish Institute of International Affairs. He was also an editor-in-chief of a Polish monthly magazine \"M\u00f3wi\u0105 Wieki\". From 1974 to 1992 he worked at the University of Warsaw and State Higher School of Drama and School of Social Sciences in Warsaw. He was previously the ambassador to France and Russia.\nHe resigned from the position of a minister after Law and Justice made coalition with Samoobrona, and Samoobrona's leader, Andrzej Lepper. Meller said \"I am not going to be the clown at Andrzej I's court\". One of his sons \u2013 Marcin Meller was the editor-in-chief of the Polish edition of \"Playboy\" magazine.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["3066279", "32908"], "permutation_1": ["32908", "3066279"], "permutation_2": ["32908", "3066279"], "permutation_3": ["32908", "3066279"]}
{"id": "2hop__446324_620302", "docs_added": {"1650522": "Matt Cohen (writer)\nCanadian writer\nMatthew Cohen (30 December 1942 \u2013 2 December 1999) was a Canadian writer who published both mainstream literature under his own name and children's literature under the pseudonym Teddy Jam.\nHistory.\nMatt Cohen was born in Montreal, son of Morris Cohen and Beatrice Sohn, and was raised in Kingston and Ottawa. He studied political economy at the University of Toronto and taught political philosophy and religion at McMaster University in the late 1960s before publishing his first novel \"Korsoniloff\" in 1969.\nHis fiction was translated into German, Dutch, French, Greek, Spanish and Portuguese. \"The Spanish Doctor\", his biggest international success, continues to sell well in the French and Spanish markets.\nHis greatest critical success as a writer was his final novel \"Elizabeth and After\" which won the 1999 Governor General's Award for English-language Fiction only a few weeks before his death. He had been nominated twice previously, but had not won, in 1979 for \"The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone\" and in 1997 for \"Last Seen\".\nA founding member of the Writers' Union of Canada, he served on the executive board for many years and as president in 1986. During his presidency, the Writer's Union was finally able to persuade the government of Canada to form a commission and establish a Public Lending Right program. He also served on the Toronto Arts Council as chair of the Literary Division and was able to obtain increased funding for writers. In recognition of this work, he was awarded a Toronto Arts Award and the Harbourfront Prize.\nHe also published a number of children's books under the pseudonym Teddy Jam. Cohen's authorship of the Teddy Jam books was not revealed until after his death. \"Dr. Kiss\", illustrated by Joanne Fitzgerald won the Governor General's Award in 1991 and \"Fishing Summer\" was also nominated for a Governor General's Award for children's literature in 1997, making Cohen one of the few writers ever to be nominated for Governor General's Awards in two different categories in the same year.\nHe was married three times; first to Arden Ford, next to Susan Bricker and then to Patsy Aldana.\nCohen died at home in Toronto after a battle with lung cancer. His final book of short stories, \"Getting Lucky\", and his final Teddy Jam title, \"The Kid's Line\", were posthumously published in 2001. A Canadian literary award, the Matt Cohen Award, is presented in Cohen's memory by the Writers' Trust of Canada.\nA film adaptation of his 1990 novel \"Emotional Arithmetic\" has been produced by Triptych films starring Max von Sydow, Christopher Plummer, Gabriel Byrne and Susan Sarandon. It was the closing gala at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival.\nBibliography.\nYears link to corresponding \"year in literature\" or, for poetry, to \"year in poetry\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "9242716": "Elizabeth and After\n1999 novel by Matt Cohen\nElizabeth and After is a novel by Matt Cohen, first published in 1999 by Knopf Canada. His final novel, it won the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction just a few weeks before Cohen's death.\nPlot summary.\nThe story is about the lives of a few people living in a small town north of Kingston, Ontario. Carl McKelvey, a \"white trash male\" as he describes himself, returns to the town after a three-year absence in the hope that he can live with his daughter again, and maybe even renew his relationship with his ex-wife, Chrissy. He carries deep in his heart his guilt of having driven his car into a tree, killing his mother, Elizabeth, many years earlier.\nElizabeth's sudden death ended not only an unhappy marriage she had with William McKelvey, a failed farmer, but also a secret relationship she had with Adam Goldsmith, Carl's real father. Elizabeth might have felt that the uncultured McKelvey ruined her life, or she might be too frightened to ruin her life herself by leaving him. In either case, her life has affected McKelvey, Adam and Carl so deeply that her influence is still felt eleven years later.\nWhen Carl is attacked by Fred (Chrissy's boyfriend), Adam, even though reserved and gentle-natured, decides to do something for his son. Adam takes Fred in his car and drives him into the same tree that Elizabeth's car crashed into eleven years earlier. Both Adam and Fred are killed instantly. Carl learns about his relationship with Adam in a letter Adam left for him.\nReception.\n\"Elizabeth and After\" received positive reviews. Kirkus Reviews described the novel as \"An extremely satisfying work, finding new depth in old themes, and offering a fitting memorial to a talented, deeply humane writer.\" Publishers Weekly wrote that Cohen's \"empathy and compassion, and his delicate depiction of loss and longing in a closely knit community, haunt his narrative.\"\n\"Booklist\" also reviewed the novel.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n ", "1795942": "Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward\nAmerican novelist\nElizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward (August 31, 1844\u00a0\u2013 January 28, 1911) was an early feminist American author and intellectual who challenged traditional Christian beliefs of the afterlife, challenged women's traditional roles in marriage and family, and advocated clothing reform for women.\nIn 1868, three years after the Civil War ended, she published \"The Gates Ajar\", which depicted the afterlife as a place replete with the comforts of domestic life and where families would be reunited\u2014along with family pets\u2014through eternity.\nIn her 40s, Phelps broke convention again when she married a man 17 years her junior. Later in life she urged women to burn their corsets. Her later writing focused on feminine ideals and women's financial dependence on men in marriage. She was the first woman to present a lecture series at Boston University. During her lifetime she was the author of 57 volumes of fiction, poetry and essays. In all of these works, she challenged the prevailing view that woman's place and fulfilment resided in the home. Instead, Phelps' work depicted women as succeeding in nontraditional careers as physicians, ministers, and artists.\nNear the end of her life, Phelps became very active in the animal rights movement. Her novel, \"Trixy\", published in 1904, was constructed around the topic of vivisection and the effect this kind of training had on doctors. The book became a standard polemic against experimentation on animals.\nEarly life.\nElizabeth (August 31, 1844\u00a0\u2013 January 28, 1911) was born in Boston, Massachusetts to American Congregational minister Austin Phelps and Elizabeth Wooster Stuart Phelps (1815\u20131852). Her baptismal name was Mary Gray Phelps, after a close friend of her mother's. Her mother wrote the Kitty Brown series of books for girls under the pen name H. Trusta. Her brother, Moses Stuart Phelps, was born in 1849. Her mother was the eldest daughter of Moses Stuart, the well-known professor of Sacred Literature at Andover Theological Seminary. Her mother was intermittently ill for most of her adult life and died of brain fever shortly after the birth of their third child, Amos, on November 20, 1852, Then eight years old, Mary Gray asked to be renamed in honor of her mother.\nHer father Austin Phelps was a widely respected Congregational minister and educator. He was pastor of the Pine Street Congregational Church until 1848, when he accepted a position as the Chair of Rhetoric at Andover Theological Seminary. He met Elizabeth Phelps that same year and they were married in the fall. The family moved to Boston and in 1869 he became President of the Andover Theological Seminary, where he served in that role for 10 years. His writings became standard textbooks for Christian theological education and remain in print today.\nTwo years after her mother' death, Elizabeth's father married her mother's sister, Mary Stuart. She was also a writer but died of tuberculosis only 18 months later. Less than six months later her father married Mary Ann Johnson, the sister to a minister, and they had two sons, Francis Johnson (1860) and Edward Johnson (1863).\nPhelps received an upper class education, attending the Abbot Academy and Mrs. Edwards' School for Young Ladies. She had a gift for telling stories as a child. One source noted, \"She spun amazing yarns for the children she played with... and her schoolmates of the time a little farther on talk with vivid interest of the stories she used to improvise for their entertainment. At thirteen, she had a story published in \"Youth's Companion\" and other stories appeared in Sunday School publications.\nWriting.\nIn most of her writings she used her mother's name \"Elizabeth Stuart Phelps\" as a pseudonym, both before and after her marriage in 1888 to Herbert Dickinson Ward, a journalist seventeen years younger. She also used the pseudonym Mary Adams. She gained recognition early in life from prominent literary figures including Thomas Wentworth Higginson and John Greenleaf Whittier.\nAt age 19 she sent a Civil War story titled \"A Sacrifice Consumed\" to \"Harper's Magazine\". The magazine editor warmly received her contribution and sent her a generous payment along with a note asking her to write for them again. In 1864 \"Harpers\" published her first adult fiction. She then began writing her first books for children which became known as the \"Tiny series\". She followed these with the four-volume \"Gypsy Breynton\" series, which was later recognized as her best-known juvenile writing. She also published two books that depicted the realistic adventures of a four-year-old boy named Trotty, \"The Trotty Book\" (1870) and \"Trotty's Wedding Tour, and Story-book\" (1873). Her story \"The Tenth of January\" appeared in \"The Atlantic Monthly\" in March 1868. It was about the death of scores of girls in the Pemberton Mill collapse and fire in Lawrence, Massachusetts on January 10, 1860.\nSpiritualist novels.\nWard wrote three Spiritualist novels. The first, \"The Gates Ajar\", became her most famous. It took her two years to write. She wrote later that after she spent more than two years revising it, \"I could have said it by heart.\" The book was finally published after the end of the Civil War. In it, she writes about a girl named Mary Cabot, whose brother was killed during the Civil War. The grief-stricken girl becomes convinced that she and her brother will be reunited in an afterlife in which people retain their physical shapes and personalities.\nThe book became very popular, in part from its positive portrayal of death shortly after the Civil War, during which more than 400,000 individuals lost their lives. It also received a great deal of criticism for the way Phelps depicted heaven as less a place to greet God than to be reunited with loved ones. It rejected the traditional Calvinist view of Heaven. The controversy only stimulated sales, and within a few weeks after its release, her publisher sent her a payment for $600 (about $ in today's dollars) and a note, \u201cYour book is moving grandly. It has already reached a sale of 4,000 copies.\u201d\nOver 100,000 copies were sold in the United States and England and it was translated and reprinted in at least four other languages.\nShe received thousands of letters in response to the first book. She wrote two more books on the same topic, \"Between the Gates\" and \"Beyond the Gates\". She then wrote a novella about animal rights titled \"Loveliness\". Phelps said she wrote \"The Gates Ajar\" to comfort a generation of women who were devastated by the losses of their loved ones following the Civil War and who found no comfort in traditional religion. Phelps' vision of heaven made the book a run-away best seller. She later built on the success of the first Gates book with a series of other books that featured the word \"Gates\" in their titles and which continued to reinforce her views of the afterlife as a place with gardens, comfortable front porches, and finely built houses.\n\"The Gates Ajar\" inspired works by other authors in the following decades, such as Mark Twain's parody \"Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven\" (1909) and Louis B. Pendleton's \"Wedding Garment: A Tale of the Afterlife\" (1894). The final novel in the \"Gates\" series was also adapted into a stage play in 1901 titled \"Within the Gates\".\nAdvocate for social reform.\nWhile writing these and other popular stories, she became an advocate through her lectures and other work for social reform, temperance, and women's emancipation. She was also involved in clothing reform for women, and in 1874 urged them to burn their corsets.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Burn up the corsets! ... No, nor do you save the whalebones, you will never need whalebones again. Make a bonfire of the cruel steels that have lorded it over your thorax and abdomens for so many years and heave a sigh of relief, for your emancipation I assure you, from this moment has begun.\nA key influence on her writings on women's rights, especially her beliefs regarding marriage, were the works of John Stuart Mill, such as Mill's 1869 essay The Subjection of Women. Though Phelps was an avid writer on reform issues, she was not actively involved with women's rights organizations or other reform groups of the time. The progressive deterioration of her health from the 1870s onward kept her contributions mostly literary in nature rather than public.\nIn 1877 she published a novel, \"The Story of Avis\", that was ahead of its time. The work focuses on many of the early feminist issues of her era. In it she portrayed a woman's struggle to balance her married life and associated domestic responsibilities with her passion to become a painter. The protagonist is an independent, extraordinary woman in her time who initially decides her goals will not be constrained by marriage and financial dependence on a husband, although she eventually ends up marrying anyhow. She may have been reflecting her mother's life when she described the impossibility of pursuing both her artistic ambitions and adhering to her domestic responsibilities. Elizabeth's novel was largely influenced by Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh. Phelps's unfavorable depiction of men's and women's roles in marriage was controversial.\nIn 1876 Phelps became the first woman to present a lecture series at Boston University. Her presentations were titled \"Representative Modern Fiction\" and they analyzed the works of George Eliot.\nSocial advocacy was also incorporated in Phelp's various children's literature publications as she did not attempt to conceal the inequities of the era's class structure. In stories such as \"Bobbit's Hotel\", \"One Way to Get An Education\", and \"Mary Elizabeth\", Phelps directly illustrates the impact of poverty on children. In \"Bobbit's Hotel\", the title character dies in an effort to shelter two young orphans. \"Mary Elizabeth\" depicts a young homeless girl's choices between theft and begging as a means of survival. \"One Way to Get An Education\" depicts a child laborer's desire for a better life than mill work and subsequent decision to self-injure in order to attain an education.\nLater work.\nElizabeth Stuart Phelps and her husband co-authored two Biblical romances in 1890 and 1891. Her autobiography, \"Chapters from a Life\", was published in 1896 after being serialized in McClure's. She also wrote a large number of essays for Harper's Magazine.\nPhelps continued to write short stories and novels into the twentieth century. Her novel \"Trixy\" (1904) focused on antivivisection, a cause she supported later in life. Writer, feminist, and animal rights advocate Carol J. Adams describes the novel as \"important and timely.\" Her last work, \"Comrades\" (1911) was published posthumously. Phelps died January 28, 1911, in Newton Center, Massachusetts.\nSelected works.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\n\u00a0 incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain:\u00a0", "56216978": "Elizabeth Kane\nAmerican physician, writer and philanthropist\nElizabeth Dennistoun Wood Kane (May 12, 1836 \u2013 May 25, 1909) was an American physician, writer, philanthropist, and women's rights activist. She was one of the first students to attend the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania. Her writing supported the part her husband, Thomas Kane, played in the lobbying efforts that attempted to prevent the Poland Bill from persecuting members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who then practiced plural marriage.\nShe wrote two travel accounts, \"Twelve Mormon Homes Visited in Succession on a Journey through Utah to Arizona\" and \"A Gentile Account of Life in Utah's Dixie\", published from her letters to home and her personal diaries that recounted the time that she spent in Utah with Thomas Kane associating with the Mormons. While the books may have influenced congressional debate about the Poland Bill, they more importantly represent a close first-person account of Mormons in the mid-late 1880s and reveal their lifestyles and opinions about polygamous practices.\nEarly life.\nElizabeth Dennistoun Wood was born on May 12, 1836, in Liverpool, England, in a suburb called Bootle. She was the third of six children of William Wood and Harriet Amelia Kane (first cousin of Thomas Kane's father). William was Scottish and Harriet was American; the two met in New York City, and married in September 1830. William Wood worked in the family mercantile business Dennistoun & Company. He attended University of St Andrews and University of Glasgow and had a wide variety of intellectual interests. Elizabeth grew up in a loving home, where her secular and spiritual education were cultivated by her parents. She met Thomas Leiper Kane, her second cousin and future husband, when he visited her family in 1842. Her family relocated to New York City in 1844.\nElizabeth's mother died after giving birth to her seventh child when Elizabeth was ten years old. Her father's lack of skill in raising and nurturing children created an unhappy home life for Elizabeth. He married his cousin's widow, Margaret Lawrence, but Elizabeth never bonded with her stepmother. Her teenage years were full of emotional insecurity, influencing her desire to marry at an early age. She married Thomas Kane in 1853 in New York City, when she was sixteen. The couple lived in Philadelphia where Thomas's father, John K. Kane, worked as a United States District Court judge.\nMid life.\nElizabeth and Thomas Kane envisioned working together to close the gender equality gap through women's education and they also sought to reform the institution of marriage. She enrolled in the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania (now Drexel University Medical School) in 1854 as one of its first students. She studied on and off for 29 years, finally earning her M.D. in 1883. She and her husband founded a school for underprivileged children in Philadelphia, based on French preschools. She was a local leader in the House of Refugee movement, which served to help reform juvenile delinquents. She was also an amateur photographer.\nKane did not share her husband's interest in the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; she resented them because of their influence on him and their practice of polygamy. While her husband was away working, her father-in-law suggested that she study mathematics to keep herself busy. With this newfound knowledge, she helped manage his business affairs with a practical hand. Her husband encouraged her to cultivate her writing skills, hoping she would become a political and activist writer. Although she did not become a public activist at the time, she did write privately. She also did some historical writing about local families and communities. Her most acclaimed work, however, was two travel accounts she wrote while accompanying her husband on a trip to visit the Mormons in Utah.\nWhen Kane's husband went on extended trips to help his Mormon compatriots, he would abandon his job, leaving her in financial distress. Accustomed to an upper-middle-class lifestyle, she expected her husband to be the sole provider for the family. Her anxiety about their finances, however, made her consider finding employment on multiple occasions. She had to rely on her father-in-law for financial security during her husband's extended trips. In 1858, they moved to McKean and shortly after moved to Elk, where they would spend most of the year, returning to Philadelphia in the winter. When her husband enlisted in the Civil War, Kane and her children lived with her aunt, Ann Gray Thomas. Kane received special permission to pass through enemy lines to doctor her husband when he was wounded in battle. After returning home, the small settlement they started became Kane, Pennsylvania.\nLater life and death.\nShortly after Kane graduated from medical school in 1883, her husband died of pneumonia. She continued to write, completing the final chapter of her father's autobiography after he died, as well as a biography of her ancestor John Kane. She taught in the Presbyterian Sunday School and was elected president of a local chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, attending both state and national conventions.\nShe never independently practiced medicine, but her children often consulted with her about their patients. She traveled to Mexico with her son to a conference for the Pan-American Medical Congress. Her travel account in Mexico was published by Kane's newspaper. She remained politically active throughout her life. She continued to develop her skills and talents, botanical drawing, wood carving, microscopic picturing, and photography. She spoke fluent French, had fair skills in Swedish and Italian, and had learned German earlier in her life. She never lost her passion for learning; she was studying Spanish before she died on May 25, 1909, at the age of 73.\nIn an obituary, she was called the \"Mother of Kane\". The businesses in town closed in honor of her funeral, despite it being private.\nCareer.\n\"Twelve Mormon Homes Visited in Succession on a Journey through Utah to Arizona\".\nIn the winter of 1872, Kane accompanied her husband on a twelve-day trip from Salt Lake City to St. George, Utah, with her two younger sons Evan O'Neil and William Wood, as guests of Brigham Young in view of Thomas Kane's work in defending the Latter-day Saints in Utah. She was initially uninterested in going but changed her mind when she thought the change in weather could improve her husband's poor health.\nKane hoped that issues with polygamy would be solved if Congress legitimized current polygamous marriages, but prohibited subsequent marriages. She used her time in Utah to converse with Mormon women and understand their opinions on polygamy. She was shocked to discover that they staunchly defended polygamy and appeared to be content in their plural marriages.\nKane's book \"Twelve Mormon Homes Visited in Succession on a Journey through Utah to Arizona\", consisted of her letters home and her personal travel journal. This specific travel account described her time traveling through Salt Lake City to St. George. Each of the twelve homes she visited was a stop for food and lodging on the way. In writing, her objective was to inform rather than to persuade. This was neither an unusual approach nor a new topic, as at the time many writers wrote Mormon travel accounts similar to hers. According to Eric A. Eliason, the travel accounts had become their own style of literature, due to the interest and recording of the point of view of the subject matter. Kane followed this approach in writing her travel account, interviewing the Mormons and recording their opinions, while attempting to remain detached from the subject matter. In contrast to most of the Mormon travel accounts written at the time, her writing focused on rural Utah rather than urban locales, covering more than one visited settlement. She also added accounts of Mormon pioneering and their relationships with the Native Americans.\nDuring her time in Utah, Kane had the opportunity to attend some Mormon church meetings. While many other travelers were not impressed with Mormon meetings, she admitted to liking their informality and simplicity. She was particularly impressed by a sermon given by William C. Staines, recording her children's fondness, but regretted not taking notes from it. Having spent a good deal of time with the Mormons in Salt Lake City, she befriended Mormon women, better understanding the issues of polygamy, women's rights, and the general hardships that Mormon people faced. She appreciated the goodness of the people, despite not sharing their beliefs.\nHer husband encouraged her to publish her personal journals and letters to family in order to help lobby against the Poland Act. Kane used fictitious names to protect the Saints' anonymity. \"Twelve Mormon Homes Visited in Succession on a Journey through Utah to Arizona\", was published in New York by her father in 1874. Experiencing growing sympathy for the Mormons, particularly the women, Kane hoped the book would lessen the persecution of the Latter-day Saints. While her book failed to attain mainstream success, it was received well by many and mentioned in some newspaper articles.\n\"A Gentile Account of Life in Utah's Dixie\".\nKane's time in the Southern Utah desert in St. George was the turning point of her feelings towards Mormons. Although she enjoyed her time in Salt Lake City, she still harbored some negative feelings towards them. After associating with more women, she began to see polygamy in a light different than that portrayed by other writers. She observed the women's increased independence in comparison to Eastern ideas of harems, as Mormon women often contributed to running finances, businesses, and households while their husbands were away. She observed the relationships between members of a polygamous family, observing that the marriage worked quite well; some women were in love with their husbands and some women were not. Even though it was difficult sometimes, they believed there was a greater reward in heaven awaiting those who made sacrifices on the earth.\nKane revealed that she admired the Saints in St. George more than those in Salt Lake City, because she respected their economic sacrifices. At the end of the trip in Utah, her family was invited by Brigham Young to stay with his family at the Lion House. She wrote that her opinion had changed of the Mormons and that she was willing to stay and \"eat salt with them\". By the end of her book, Kane revealed she had become a friend of the Mormons, just like her husband, and she also involved herself in lobbying efforts to defend the Mormons. She wrote to Senator Simon Cameron, urging Congress to end persecution of the Saints, since it only fueled the fire of their faith, as they were willing to die for what they believed in. The Poland Act did pass, but it was a milder bill than initially proposed, perhaps due, in part, to the contributions of Elizabeth and Thomas Kane.\"A Gentile Account of Life in Utah's Dixie\", was not published until 1995.\nSocial and philosophical beliefs.\nReligious beliefs.\nKane's deeply religious upbringing influenced the faith she maintained throughout her life. She attended church regularly, read the Bible, prayed frequently, and even wrote prayers in her journals. She tried to live her life by \"God's will\" and stated that her religion brought her peace and happiness. She was confirmed in the Presbyterian church when she was fifteen. After her first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage she began to fear for her own mortality. She also had deep-rooted fears because her own mother died in childbirth and she cited God as the source of her comfort. Evident of her religious beliefs, she believed that the miscarriage was a punishment from God for secretly not wanting the child and being ungrateful for the pregnancy. \nHer husband's lack of interest in organized religion caused heartache for Elizabeth, feeling that she had to live her religion alone. Conflict arose when Thomas did not want their firstborn to be baptized. He pleased her for a time by announcing to her that he was a Christian before leaving on an extended trip to Utah in 1858. It gave her comfort while he was away, but she was devastated when he returned a few months later. His change of heart towards the Mormons strengthened her disdain for them. By the end of her trip to Utah, she reconciled with herself, realizing that although her husband did not espouse Christianity, he was a Christian by his works. Her encounters with the Mormons made her question and consider her own faith and made her wonder if her practice of religion was adequate compared to the Saints'.\nViews on women.\nKane was interested in the role that women played in society. As one of the first women to attend medical school at the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, she proved to be a pioneer in the cause of higher education for women. She was said to have associated with prominent women's rights advocate Lucretia Mott, to whom her husband introduced her. When she was newly married, she criticized society for reprimanding women for holding \"respectable\" jobs and, as a result, driving them to less respectable positions. She foresaw a time when women would have a more equal role to play in society. She and her husband were both very interested in the cause of women's rights, and he encouraged her to become a political activist for women. Her father, William Wood, also contributed to her early interest in higher education. He was a member of the New York City Board of Education and worked to open the Normal School for Females in 1870. Thomas Kane was supportive in promoting her education and often argued that those pursuits were more important than her responsibilities at home.\nDeveloping her writing skills, she wrote a \"Theory\" on women in her personal diary in which she saw polygamy as a sexual double standard that held women to a higher level of chastity than men. In general, she criticized the sexualization of women in society. Drawing on her medical background, she claimed that sex leads to pregnancy, which leads to many health complications and often death for a woman after repeated childbirths and pregnancies. She argued that it was morally wrong for men to expect an excessive amount of childbearing from their wives, and she compared those wives to saintly martyrs. She was a supporter of \"voluntary motherhood\" but did not necessarily agree with the use of contraception. In her opinion, women should have the right to refuse sexual advances from their husbands to control their own bodies and pregnancies.\nShe advocated for more female doctors who would better be able to care for the female body, as well as sex education for young women before marriage. She maintained friendships with prominent woman doctors, including Ida Heiberger. She created specific guidelines by which sexually transmitted infections could be dramatically reduced. That included castrating infected males, exiling prostitutes, and granting divorces for males and females but forbidding remarriage.\nShe believed more emphasis should be put on women's education rather than marriage, which should be achieved when one is grown and mature. Kane also believed in educating boys and girls together rather than separately and thought that both should be allowed to pursue outside occupations. She strongly supported women's suffrage.\nViews on Mormons.\nThroughout her life, Kane's views on Mormons constantly shifted and were at many times ambivalent. In her book \"Twelve Mormon Homes Visited in Succession on a Journey through Utah to Arizona\", the title on the second page was \"Pandemonium or Arcadia: Which?\" Kane metaphorically compared the Mormon community to Pandemonium, the city of Lucifer, and Arcadia, the rural Greek paradise. She revealed that the Mormon state was neither Pandemonium nor Arcadia but rather a mixture of both.\nKane was content with Presbyterianism and disliked several Latter-day Saint doctrines. She was offended by the Mormon claim to religious authority. She objected to polygamy because she believed that it subjugated women. Another reason that she claimed to have disliked the Mormons was that she felt that they drained her husband of his time and resources and prevented him from being interested in her own religion. In many respects, she tolerated the Mormons merely because she loved her husband and wanted to support him even if she failed to share his interest. Unsurprisingly, she did not believe that Mormons were Christian, which was a popular opinion at the time. Evident in her travel account \"Twelve Mormons\", Kane was impressed by the high morals of the Mormon people and cited their humility, cleanliness, and hospitality.\nLater, her views towards Mormons softened as she realized that they held her husband in as high esteem as she. She particularly grew to like William C Staines. Even though he treated her kindly, she still harbored significant animosity towards Brigham Young because he was the leader of the Mormons and an advocate for polygamy. She liked Mormon prayers and hymns, felt that Mormon prayers were more specific than Protestant ones, and welcomed how the whole congregation sang hymns in earnest. She was also impressed by the tolerance that Latter-day Saints had for Native Americans.\nShe witnessed Utah achieve statehood and the Manifesto end plural marriage. However, her condemnations of Mormons became their most severe upon hearing that a writer was going to publish a book that claimed that Thomas Kane was secretly a Mormon. She defended her husband by claiming that he was too intelligent to have believed stories in the \"Book of Mormon\" and the \"Doctrine and Covenants\". She attributed his interest in Mormons solely to pity and gratitude. She always admired the faith of the Saints, but after the death of her husband, she largely ended associations with her former Mormon friends, which proved that was her husband's project, not her own. Kane respected the Saints and admired their faith and some of their religious practices, but she never really was a \"friend of the Mormons\" in the way that her husband had been.\nPersonal life.\nMarriage.\nElizabeth Wood first met Thomas Kane, her future husband, in 1840 when she was four years old and he was eighteen. He was on a trip to England at the time. He quickly built a relationship with her father, William Wood, which only improved after the death of her mother Harriet. Elizabeth's first memorable encounter with Thomas was at six years old when he was twenty. According to a family story, he gave her a French doll while visiting her family, which sparked her lifelong admiration. Having lost her mother at a young age, she found comfort in her studies and the occasional visit from her cousin Thomas, who, at the age of twelve, she decided she would marry.\nElizabeth was the victim of a difficult family situation, as her father was always working and she disliked her stepmother. As a result, she grew into a quiet, awkward teenager. This was in stark contrast to her love interest, Thomas, who grew up in the loud and outspoken Kane family. During one visit to the Kane family in Pennsylvania, she pretended to fall asleep, while Thomas played piano and sang in the next room, citing that she knew she had fallen in love with him after that moment. Having taken a liking to Elizabeth, he began visiting the Wood's residence frequently. After admitting their mutual attraction, they were engaged on January 25, 1852. As she was so young, her father was hesitant in granting permission, but he eventually agreed, on the condition that they wait until after her seventeenth birthday. They were married on April 21, 1853, three weeks before she turned seventeen, a fact that Thomas never explained.\nElizabeth was lovingly called \"Bessie\" by her husband, whom she called \"Tom\". They were both intelligent and idealistic, and they were united by their love for each other and their charity for the less fortunate. Nevertheless, they had vastly different personal philosophies and temperaments. Thomas was a compulsive decision-maker, known for taking risks, and he was suspicious of religious and social constructs. He sought to improve the world through dramatic action by heroically supporting the underdog. Elizabeth, on the other hand, was religious with a love of home and family, desiring physical and emotional security. She was also interested in social reform, but she felt that change was best accomplished through quiet, humble Christian service.\nHer early marriage could be best understood by comparing Elizabeth to an \"infatuated schoolgirl\" and Thomas to her \"mentor\" or father figure. She was very young and Thomas intended to mold her into the wife and woman she had the potential to be. She idolized Thomas and was overly concerned with what her husband was thinking and feeling about her. Her feelings were hurt easily and her reactions often dramatic, largely due to the significant age and maturity gap between them. Elizabeth was also concerned with the amount of money Thomas was spending on his charities rather than starting his family. His willingness to leave his family and responsibilities to help the Mormons caused much tension in their marriage. He made great sacrifices, which forced her to make sacrifices as well for a cause she did not understand. These conflicts between Thomas and Elizabeth allowed her to become more independent and outspoken than she was at the beginning of their marriage.\nShe began to feel more comfortable and secure in marriage after the birth of the first two of her four children, Harriet Amelia and Elisha Kent. Although Thomas strove for gender equality in society, ironically he tended to dominate Elizabeth in the interests of his work. For example, he pressured her to apply for the medical school for which he served as a \"corporator\" (trustee) to promote the higher education of women. Even though they considered themselves"}, "descending_order": ["1795942", "56216978", "9242716", "1650522"], "permutation_1": ["1795942", "9242716", "56216978", "1650522"], "permutation_2": ["56216978", "1795942", "9242716", "1650522"], "permutation_3": ["56216978", "1795942", "9242716", "1650522"]}
{"id": "2hop__301011_820181", "docs_added": {"1458510": "Keith Sebelius\nAmerican politician (1916\u20131982)\nKeith George Sebelius (September 10, 1916 \u2013 August 5, 1982) was an American politician who served in the United States House of Representatives as a Republican.\nHe became active in politics following World War II and was later appointed to the Kansas Senate after narrowly losing two Republican primaries for the House of Representatives. He later entered the House of Representatives where he served for a decade before his death from prostate cancer in 1982.\nEarly life.\nKeith George Sebelius was born on September 10, 1916, in Norton, Kansas to Carl Sebelius, who died when he was seven, and Minnie Sebelius. He grew up in Almena, Kansas and graduated from Almena High School. He attended Fort Hays State University, graduated in 1939, earned a law degree from George Washington University in 1942, and returned to Norton to practice law.\nDuring World War II he served in the United States Army and worked for intelligence agencies to detect German U-boats in the Caribbean.\nCareer.\nEarly politics.\nFollowing the end of World War II, Sebelius served as a councilor on the Almena city council, and became mayor of the city.\nIn 1947, Sebelius was elected secretary of the Kansas Young Republicans Club and ran for president of the organization, but was defeated by Paul Lackie. On April 26, 1953, he was selected as the Junior American Legion Commander for the 6th district in Kansas and later became the senior commander in 1954. On September 5, 1955, Sebelius was elected Commander of the Kansas legion by a vote of 494 to 422, with his opponent being John K. Wells. In 1957, he was elected as president of Norton's Chamber of Commerce.\nKansas State Senate.\nOn December 10, 1962, Sebelius was selected to replace state Senator William B. Ryan, who stepped down to become a district judge, and was appointed by Governor John Anderson Jr. In 1963, he introduced a bill that would put the entirety of Kansas in the Central Time Zone, but it failed.\nDuring the 1964 elections he served as a delegate to the Republican district convention and he announced that he would seek reelection on April 1, 1964. After facing no opposition in the Republican primary Sebelius defeated Democratic nominee Vance Templeton in the general election.\nHouse of Representatives.\nElections.\nSebelius twice ran unsuccessfully for the United States House of Representatives, losing both races by narrow margins. On January 8, 1958, he announced that he would run for the Republican nomination in Kansas's 6th Congressional District, but was narrowly defeated by incumbent Representative Wint Smith by 51 votes. He ran again in 1960, but was defeated by county attorney Bob Dole by 982 votes.\nDuring the 1976 presidential election, Senator Bob Dole was selected as Ford's vice presidential running mate; had they won, it would have resulted in Dole's resignation from the Senate and a special election. It was speculated that Sebelius would be appointed to replace Dole. However, Governor Jimmy Carter won the presidential election causing Dole to remain in the Senate.\nTenure.\nIn 1968, Dole left office to run for Senate and was succeeded by Sebelius, who served until 1981. In June 1969, he served in place of House Minority Whip Leslie C. Arends due to his absence and assisted Minority Leader Gerald Ford for one week. In May 1973, the National Federation of Independent Business named him Man of the Year for Kansas.\nOn November 15, 1973, he stated that \"I frankly believe the man is telling the truth\" after hearing Richard Nixon speak about Watergate for over an hour. On December 4, 1973, he voted in favor of House Minority Leader Gerald Ford's appointment as vice president after Spiro Agnew's resignation. After the transcript of the Nixon White House tapes were released he stated that they \"are depressing to read and give an unfavorable view of the President\". When asked what he thought of the possibility of Nixon refusing to comply with the Supreme Court's ruling in \"United States v. Nixon\" he stated that \"it would be damn close to an impeachable offense\". He voted in favor of a resolution allowing for live radio and television coverage of the impeachment inquiry by the House Judiciary committee. Following Nixon's resignation and Ford's accession to the presidency, Sebelius voted in favor of Nelson Rockefeller's appointment as vice president.\nOn April 25, 1980, Sebelius announced that he would not seek reelection to the House of Representatives and was succeeded by Pat Roberts, his administration aide.\nLater life.\nOn January 11, 1981, a banquet was held in his honor and received telegrams from former President Gerald Ford and President-elect Ronald Reagan. On this occasion the Norton reservoir was renamed to Keith Sebelius Lake in his honor and on January 16, he was named as a Distinguished Kansan of the Year. In 1979, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and on August 5, 1982, he died in Norton County Hospital from it. He was buried in Norton, Kansas.\nFamily.\nSebelius married Elizabeth Adeline Roberts and had two children with her, R. Douglas Sebelius and K. Gary Sebelius, before his death in 1982. In 1974, K. Gary Sebelius married Kathleen Sebelius, the daughter of former Ohio Governor John J. Gilligan. She would later serve as the governor of Kansas from 2003 to 2009, and as United States Secretary of Health and Human Services.\nPolitical positions.\nDomestic.\nSebelius introduced a constitutional amendment to legalize voluntary prayer in public buildings in 1971, but no action was taken on it. In April 1971, Kansas held a voter referendum to lower the voting age, which he supported; he later voted in favor of the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. He criticized Nixon's decision to sell 10 million tons of United States grain to the Soviet Union at subsidized prices and later called for the resignation of Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz.\nWhen the House of Representatives voted on recognizing a holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., Sebelius was one of the forty-eight representatives who abstained from the vote.\nForeign.\nIn October 1969, he asked for his name to be removed from a letter created by Representative Sam Steiger to President Richard Nixon asking Nixon to point out to the North Vietnamese that the United States would not rule out any military option in gaining peace with honor, as the wording of the letter promoted an escalation of the war.\nOn July 18, 1973, he voted against the War Powers Resolution; after Nixon vetoed the bill Sebelius voted against the overriding of it on November 7, but the House and Senate voted to override Nixon's veto. On July 31, 1973, Sebelius voted in favor of a bill that would decrease the United States' military presence overseas by 100,000 and create a cap of 400,000 troops, but it was defeated by a vote of 243 to 163.\nElectoral history.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Hidden begin/styles.css\"/>Keith Sebelius electoral history", "114795": "Norton, Kansas\nCity in Norton County, Kansas\nNorton is a city in and the county seat of Norton County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 2,747.\nHistory.\nNorton was founded in 1872. Like the county, it was named for Capt. Orloff Norton.\nThe first hotel was a log house, built in 1873.\nOne of the first recorded tornado pictures was taken in Norton, in 1909, by photographer Will Keller.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , all land. The city is situated on the north side of Prairie Dog Creek in Norton County. Before the Bureau of Reclamation constructed Keith Sebelius Lake in 1963, Norton was prone to frequent flooding. The construction of the Dam has since resolved the problem and created the current reservoir that sits southwest of Norton. The Nebraska border is located north of the city.\nClimate.\nNorton is on the boundary of two climate zones, humid continental and semiarid. Temperatures can fluctuate drastically between the winter and summer seasons. Because of its location on the High Plains, snowfall totals can sometimes approach the yearly average after a single snowfall.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2020 census.\nThe 2020 United States census counted 2,747 people, 1,213 households, and 692 families in Norton. The population density was 1,439.7 per square mile (555.9/km2). There were 1,457 housing units at an average density of 763.6 per square mile (294.8/km2). The racial makeup was 90.21% (2,478) white or European American (88.24% non-Hispanic white), 0.84% (23) black or African-American, 0.55% (15) Native American or Alaska Native, 0.73% (20) Asian, 0.0% (0) Pacific Islander or Native Hawaiian, 1.09% (30) from other races, and 6.59% (181) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race was 5.28% (145) of the population.\nOf the 1,213 households, 26.0% had children under the age of 18; 42.6% were married couples living together; 28.9% had a female householder with no spouse or partner present. 37.5% of households consisted of individuals and 16.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.7 and the average family size was 3.5. The percent of those with a bachelor\u2019s degree or higher was estimated to be 15.4% of the population.\n24.5% of the population was under the age of 18, 6.7% from 18 to 24, 22.4% from 25 to 44, 24.9% from 45 to 64, and 21.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 42.0 years. For every 100 females, there were 104.8 males. For every 100 females ages 18 and older, there were 104.2 males.\nThe 2016-2020 5-year American Community Survey estimates show that the median household income was $49,069 (with a margin of error of +/- $7,615) and the median family income was $59,648 (+/- $18,177). Males had a median income of $32,346 (+/- $3,580) versus $29,167 (+/- $11,470) for females. The median income for those above 16 years old was $31,683 (+/- $3,071). Approximately, 0.9% of families and 6.4% of the population were below the poverty line, including 4.7% of those under the age of 18 and 13.0% of those ages 65 or over.\n2010 census.\nAs of the census of 2010, there were 2,928 people, 1,290 households, and 763 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 1,465 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 96.8% White, 0.2% African American, 0.1% Native American, 0.4% Asian, 0.5% from other races, and 1.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 3.3% of the population.\nThere were 1,290 households, of which 26.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 46.5% were married couples living together, 9.3% had a female householder with no husband present, 3.3% had a male householder with no wife present, and 40.9% were non-families. 36.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 18.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.20 and the average family size was 2.86.\nThe median age in the city was 44.8 years. 23.2% of residents were under the age of 18; 6.4% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 20.6% were from 25 to 44; 27.8% were from 45 to 64; and 22% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 46.6% male and 53.4% female.\n2000 census.\nAs of the census of 2000, there were 3,012 people, 1,331 households, and 814 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 1,517 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 97.91% White, 0.40% Native American, 0.33% Asian, 0.03% African American, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 0.63% from other races, and 0.66% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.03% of the population.\nThere were 1,331 households, out of which 27.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 50.5% were married couples living together, 8.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 38.8% were non-families. 36.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 20.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.19 and the average family size was 2.86.\nIn the city, the population was spread out, with 24.5% under the age of 18, 5.3% from 18 to 24, 23.5% from 25 to 44, 22.1% from 45 to 64, and 24.6% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 43 years. For every 100 females, there were 91.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 82.9 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $30,339, and the median income for a family was $36,179. Males had a median income of $25,943 versus $20,559 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,438. About 5.5% of families and 9.5% of the population were below the poverty line, including 10.4% of those under age 18 and 6.5% of those age 65 or over.\nEducation.\nThe community is served by Norton USD 211 public school district.\n\"Eisenhower Elementary School\" Constructed in 1954 and added on to in 1966 and 1990, Eisenhower Elementary serves students in USD 211 in grades ECD through sixth grade. Full day, every day kindergarten is offered as is a full range of special education services. Grades ECD through four are taught in self-contained classrooms. Grades 5 & 6 are departmentalized for instruction in math, reading, science, language arts and computer technology. Each teacher also teaches social studies and spelling to their homeroom students.\n\"Norton Junior High School\" Constructed in 1937 and extensively remodeled in 1984, Norton Junior High School serves the 120+ students in grades 7 & 8. In addition to required classes of math, language arts, physical education/ health, science and social studies each junior high student receives 3 semesters of instruction in computer technology and digital media production and one semester of technology exploration (robotics, pneumatics, electronics, etc.). Elective classes are offered in vocal music, instrumental music, art, wood working, and family and consumer sciences.\n\"Norton Community High School\" Constructed in 1975 & 1977, NCHS is a 3A high school with an enrollment of 200+. A comprehensive high school, NCHS is able to offer instruction in the areas of calculus, physics, human anatomy, chemistry II and foreign language. In addition to the regular academic curriculum, NCHS offers fine arts and vocational training.\nThe \"Norton Community High School Bluejays\" have won 17 Kansas State High School Activities Association state championships in wrestling, including six consecutive Class 3-2-1A state championships from 2012\u201317, and three consecutive Class 3-2-1A championships in 2004-06. Norton's football team won back-to-back Class 4A state championships in 1985 and 1986, and finished as state runners-up in 1989. The girls basketball and boys basketball teams won state championships in 1983 and 2003, respectively, and have made numerous state tournament appearances. NCHS also boasts programs in girls tennis, girls volleyball, boys golf, cross country, and track and field.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "25108125": "K. Gary Sebelius\nAmerican judge\nKeith Gary Sebelius (born November 8, 1949), known professionally as K. Gary Sebelius or Gary Sebelius, is a former magistrate judge and a former federal judicial nominee to the United States District Court for the District of Kansas. He is the husband of former United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and also served as the First Gentleman of Kansas from 2003 to 2009, while his wife was governor.\nEarly life and education.\nSebelius was born in Norton, Kansas, the son of Elizabeth Adeline (n\u00e9e Roberts) and Keith George Sebelius, a United States congressman from Kansas. Sebelius earned a bachelor's degree magna cum laude from Kansas State University in 1971 and a J.D. degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1974.\nProfessional career.\nBefore becoming a judge, Sebelius had a long career as a lawyer in Topeka, Kansas. He worked as an associate at the law firm of Eidson, Lewis, Porter & Haynes from 1974 until 1979, and then served as a partner at the firm from 1979 until 1989. From 1989 until 1993, Sebelius was a partner at the firm of Davis, Wright, Unrein, Hummer & McCallister. Sebelius then worked as a partner at the Topeka law firm Wright, Henson, Somers, Sebelius, Clark & Baker from 1993 until 2003. During his time in private practice, Sebelius became best known for defending the Topeka Board of Education in the reopened \"Brown v. Board of Education\" case in federal court.\nFailed nomination to district court.\nOn June 6, 2000, President Bill Clinton nominated Sebelius to be a judge on the United States District Court for the District of Kansas to fill the vacancy created by the decision by Judge George Thomas Van Bebber to take senior status. However, with the United States Senate controlled by Republicans, many of Clinton's judicial nominations languished. In particular, Sebelius' nomination was reported to have been held up by Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback. President George W. Bush later successfully appointed Julie A. Robinson to the seat to which Sebelius had been nominated.\nWork as a U.S. magistrate judge.\nOn August 16, 2002, the judges on the United States District Court for the District of Kansas appointed Sebelius to an eight-year term as a United States magistrate judge. Sebelius began hearing cases in February 2003 and was formally sworn in on June 11, 2003. He retired from the bench on February 20, 2019.\nPersonal.\nSebelius married his wife, Kathleen Sebelius on New Year's Eve 1974. They have two sons.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "434025": "Kathleen Sebelius\nAmerican politician (born 1948)\nKathleen Sebelius (; n\u00e9e Gilligan, born May 15, 1948) is an American politician who served as the 21st United States secretary of health and human services from 2009 until 2014. As Secretary of Health and Human Services, Sebelius was instrumental in overseeing the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Before becoming secretary, she served as the 44th governor of Kansas from 2003 to 2009, the second woman to hold that office. She is a member of the Democratic Party. Sebelius was the Democratic respondent to the 2008 State of the Union address and is chair-emerita of the Democratic Governors Association (she was its first female chair). She is CEO of Sebelius Resources LLC.\nEarly life and education.\nSebelius was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, the daughter of Mary Kathryn (n\u00e9e Dixon) and John J. Gilligan. Sebelius was the second oldest of four children in her family. Her family ran funeral homes and her father was a city councilor in Cincinnati. Jack Gilligan ran for Congress near the end of Sebelius's time in high school and served one term in Congress. Her father was elected governor of Ohio when Sebelius was 21 years old. Sebelius worked in her father's campaign traveling around the state. Her family was Catholic and has Irish ancestry.\nShe attended the Summit Country Day School in Cincinnati and graduated from Trinity Washington University in Washington, D.C., with a Bachelor of Arts in political science. She later earned a Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Kansas. She moved to Kansas in 1974.\nEarly career.\nSebelius served as executive director and chief lobbyist for the Kansas Trial Lawyers Association from 1977 to 1986.\nKansas House of Representatives (1987\u20131995).\nSebelius was first elected to the Kansas House of Representatives in 1986. She won re-election in 1988, 1990, and 1992. She represented Topeka, Kansas.\nTenure.\nIn the 1988 presidential election, she endorsed Gary Hart.\nIn 1991, she ran to become House Majority Leader but lost to State Representative Tom Sawyer of Wichita.\nShe is strongly pro-choice.\nKansas Insurance Commissioner (1995\u20132003).\nIn 1994, Sebelius left the state House of Representatives to run for state Insurance Commissioner and stunned political forecasters by winning\u00a0\u2013 the first time a Democrat had won the position in over a century.\nShe refused to take campaign contributions from the insurance industry and blocked the proposed merger of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas, the state's largest health insurer, with an Indiana-based company. Sebelius's decision marked the first time the corporation had been rebuffed in its acquisition attempts.\nWhen Sebelius became commissioner in 1995, the Insurance Department had an annual budget of $11.7 million. By 2002, the budget had been cut to $10 million. Among the cuts was spending on contracted services after Sebelius fired two contracted lawyers after an audit discovered they had overbilled the state.\nIn 2001 Sebelius was named as one of \"Governing Magazine\"'s Public Officials of the Year while she was serving as Kansas Insurance Commissioner.\nGovernor of Kansas (2003\u20132009).\n2002 election.\nIn the general election, Sebelius's platform included promises to protect school budgets from budget cuts, not to raise taxes, and to completely review and overhaul the state government. Sebelius raised $4 million for the campaign, a Kansas state fundraising record. Sebelius defeated Republican Kansas State Treasurer Tim Shallenburger 53%\u201345%. Sebelius's election made her and her father the first father/daughter governor duo in the United States.\nFirst term.\nThroughout her first term, Sebelius built upon her popularity and in January 2006 was tied for 20th most popular governor in the country.\nDuring the 2004 election, CNN speculated Sebelius could be a potential running mate for John Kerry.\nIn November 2005, \"Time\" named Sebelius as one of the five best governors in America, praising her for eliminating a $1.1 billion debt she inherited, ferreting out waste in state government, and strongly supporting public education\u00a0\u2013 all without raising taxes, although she proposed raising sales, property, and income taxes. The article also praised her bipartisan approach to governing, a useful trait in a state where Republicans have usually controlled the Legislature.\nIn February 2006, the White House Project named Sebelius one of its \"8 in '08\", a group of eight female politicians who could possibly run and be elected president in 2008. She was also cited by \"The New York Times\" to be among the women most likely to become the first female President of the United States.\nIn October 2006, the Cato Institute gave Sebelius the grade of \"D\" on their biennial fiscal policy report card, which measures the fiscal performance of U.S. governors based on spending and taxes. Her grade was influenced by the combination of proposed tax increases and expanded spending growth beyond population plus inflation.\n2006 re-election.\nOn May 26, 2006, Sebelius formally announced her candidacy for re-election. Four days later, Mark Parkinson, former chair of the Kansas Republican Party, switched his party affiliation to Democrat; the following day Sebelius announced that Parkinson would be her running mate for lieutenant governor. Parkinson had previously served in the state House during 1991 and 1992 and the Senate from 1993 to 1997. Parkinson was viewed as a pro-business moderate who strongly supported public education. This was somewhat reminiscent of the fact that John Moore had also been a Republican, before switching just days before joining Sebelius as her running mate.\nShe was challenged by Republican Kansas State Senator Jim Barnett. A September 1 Rasmussen poll showed Sebelius with an 11% lead over Barnett. Other polls gave Sebelius as much as a 20% lead. As of 2004[ [update]], 50% of Kansas voters were registered Republicans, compared to 27% as registered Democrats. Sebelius nevertheless won re-election, defeating Barnett 57%\u201341%. Because of Kansas's term limits law, her second term as Governor was her last.\nSecond term.\nIn February 2008, during Sebelius's second term in office, there was a report in the \"Wichita Eagle\" that the State of Kansas was suspending tax refunds and that, because of a lack of tax revenue, might not be able to meet payroll for state employees. Sebelius called for issuing certificates of indebtedness, moving funds from various state agency accounts into the general fund to alleviate the crisis. However, Republican leaders in the legislature did not agree with her certificate of indebtedness plan, saying the state would be unable to repay the certificates unless Sebelius issued allotments or signed a budget rescission bill that had been passed by the legislature but had not yet been delivered to her desk. The standoff ended when the budget arrived, and Sebelius agreed to sign it, although she line-item vetoed several cuts she felt were too large. The rescission bill reduced the budget by about $300 million. $7 million of the cuts came in the form of reduced educational funding.\nAfter Barack Obama's clinching of the Democratic nomination for President in June 2008, speculation that Sebelius would be a contender for the vice presidential slot on the Democratic ticket continued. The \"Washington Post\" listed her as the top prospect for the 2008 nomination. James Carville and Bob Novak also mentioned Sebelius's name, and Wesley Clark, also considered a potential running mate, publicly endorsed Sebelius, referring to her as \"the next vice-president of the United States\". Speculation that the vice presidential nomination lay in her future was heightened by the fact that she was chosen by the Democratic Party's congressional leaders to give their party's official response to Republican president George W. Bush's 2008 State of the Union Address. The next day, she endorsed Obama's campaign, one week before the Kansas caucus on Super Tuesday. Obama won the caucus easily, with 74% support.\nSpeculation on her vice presidential selection intensified when a report from political ad agency insider, Tribble Ad Agency, reported on its website that the Obama Campaign owned the domain name \"ObamaSebelius.com\" through the GoDaddy.com registration service. However, just after midnight on August 23, it was reported by the Associated Press that Obama ultimately selected Joe Biden, the senior senator from Delaware, as his running mate.\nSebelius is a former chair of the Democratic Governors Association. She was the first female chair of the association (elected as such in 2006).\nU.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (2009\u20132014).\nNomination.\nSebelius was an early supporter of Barack Obama's presidential campaign, endorsing him in January 2008. After he was elected the President of the United States, Sebelius' early support for Obama and her ability to govern as a Democrat in a heavily Republican state made Sebelius look like a likely nominee for Obama's Cabinet. Sebelius asked to be removed from consideration on December 6, 2008. Following Bill Richardson's withdrawal as Obama's nomination for Secretary of Commerce, there was media speculation that Sebelius would be chosen as the new nominee. Through a spokesperson, Sebelius reiterated her earlier statement that she would not consider accepting a nomination to the Cabinet position.\nOn February 28, 2009, it was reported that Sebelius had accepted Obama's nomination for the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services. On March 2, 2009, Obama officially announced Governor Sebelius as his nominee. At Obama's announcement, Sebelius was accompanied by two Kansas Republicans, former U.S. Senators Bob Dole and Pat Roberts.\nSebelius was Obama's second choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services. Obama's first pick, former Senator Tom Daschle, withdrew from consideration on February 3 after it was revealed he had over $140,000 in tax errors. In a March 2009 letter to the Senate Finance Committee, Sebelius admitted to \"unintentional errors\" in tax returns and paid nearly $8,000 in back taxes to rectify the errors. A letter to Sebelius from Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and ranking member Chuck Grassley acknowledged their review of Sebelius found no other items needing to be addressed and Baucus, a Democrat, publicly expressed his continued support for Sebelius' nomination.\nAnti-abortion activists and senators were the primary opponents of Sebelius's nomination. In answer to questions from the Senate Finance Committee during her April 2009 confirmation hearing, Sebelius stated she received $12,450 between 1994 and 2001 from physician George Tiller, one of only three late term abortion providers nationwide, who was later assassinated. The Associated Press, however, reported that from 2000 to 2002 Tiller gave at least $23,000 more to a political action committee Sebelius established to raise money for Democrats while she was serving as state insurance commissioner.\nThe Senate Finance Committee approved Sebelius' nomination with a vote of 15 to 8. The full United States Senate voted to confirm Sebelius by a vote of 65 to 31. She was sworn in on April 28, 2009, amidst an outbreak of swine flu in the United States. Lieutenant Governor Parkinson was sworn in as Governor of Kansas and served the remainder of Sebelius's term. As Secretary of Health and Human Services, Sebelius led an agency with 6,500 employees and a $700 billion annual budget.\nAffordable Care Act.\nSebelius is a staunch advocate for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare. In response to glitches and failures during the launch of the ACA website, HealthCare.gov, she said in October 2013, \"You deserve better. I apologize. I'm accountable to you for fixing these problems and I'm committed to earning your confidence back by fixing the site.\" Republicans called for her resignation in response to the website problems. Fifty-five members of the House of Representatives called for her resignation, while U.S. Senators Ted Cruz, Lamar Alexander and Pat Roberts all called for her resignation. In response to the calls to resign, Sebelius said: \"The majority of people calling for me to resign I would say are people who I don't work for, and who do not want this program to work in the first place.\"\nIn 2009, 2010, and 2011, \"Forbes\" named Sebelius the 57th, 23rd, and 13th most powerful woman in the world, respectively.\nHatch Act concern.\nOn September 13, 2012, the Office of Special Counsel charged Sebelius with violating the Hatch Act by making a political remark during an official government event. Sebelius's office reclassified the event from official to political and reimbursed the government's expenses.\nResignation.\nOn April 11, 2014, Sebelius announced her resignation from her position as Secretary of Health and Human Services. That same day, President Obama nominated Sylvia Mathews Burwell as Sebelius' successor. Burwell was sworn in on June 9, 2014.\nPolitical positions.\nAbortion.\nSebelius is \"staunchly pro-choice\". Her office stated that abortions declined 8.5% during her tenure as governor. According to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment statistics, the number of induced abortions in Kansas declined by 1,568, or 12.6%, from 2001 to 2007, the year of the most recently available statistics. Her administration attributes the decline to health care reforms that Sebelius initiated, including \"adoption incentives, extended health services for pregnant women..., sex education and ... a variety of support services for families\". Nationally, the number of abortions declined approximately 7.6% from 2000 to 2005, the year of the most recently available and reliable U.S. statistics.\nSebelius has been endorsed by Planned Parenthood, which has raised funds on her behalf. In 2003, 2005, "}, "descending_order": ["1458510", "25108125", "434025", "114795"], "permutation_1": ["1458510", "25108125", "434025", "114795"], "permutation_2": ["114795", "25108125", "1458510", "434025"], "permutation_3": ["1458510", "434025", "114795", "25108125"]}
{"id": "2hop__274688_23198", "docs_added": {"24854035": "Nkwerre\nNkwerre is one of the Local Government Areas in Imo State, South-East, Nigeria. It is situated in Nkwerre town where the name of the local government area was derived. Its population was placed at 80,270 from the 2006 population census with an area of 38.447\u00a0km. It is known for its thick vegetation which is supposed to prevent soil erosion however, it is erosion prone area.\nThe postal code of the local government area is 471. In 2015, Hezekiah University was built in Nkwerre, Ishiala umudi. Nkwerre community that gave the local government area its name was known for its indigenous technology of blacksmithing ingenuity. This endeared the community the name, \"Nkwerre Opia Egbe\" meaning \"Nkwerre, the manufacturer of gun.\"\nClimate.\nThe temperature in the region fluctuates year-round, ranging from 66\u00b0F to 86\u00b0F, with occasional dips below 58\u00b0F or above 89\u00b0F.\nThe warming stripes shows the average annual temperature over the greater Nkwerre region as a result of climate change.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\n[Hezekiah University]", "21383": "Nigeria\nCountry in West Africa\nNigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With a population of more than 230 million, it is the most populous country in Africa, and the world's sixth-most populous country. Nigeria borders Niger in the north, Chad in the northeast, Cameroon in the east, and Benin in the west. Nigeria is a federal republic comprising 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, where its capital, Abuja, is located. The largest city in Nigeria by population is Lagos, one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world and the largest in Africa.\nNigeria has been home to several indigenous material cultures, pre-colonial states and kingdoms since the second millennium BC. The Nok culture, c.\u20091500 BC, marks one of the earliest known civilizations in the region. The Hausa Kingdoms inhabited the north, with the Edo Kingdom of Benin in the south and Igbo Kingdom of Nri in the southeast. In the southwest, the Yoruba Ife Empire was succeeded by the Oyo Empire. The present day territory of Nigeria was home to a vast array of city-states.136 In the early 19th century the Fula jihads culminated in the Sokoto Caliphate. The modern state originated with British colonialization in the 19th century, taking its present territorial shape with the merging of the Southern Nigeria Protectorate and the Northern Nigeria Protectorate in 1914. The British set up administrative and legal structures and incorporated traditional monarchs as a form of indirect rule. Nigeria became a formally independent federation on 1 October 1960. It experienced a civil war from 1967 to 1970, followed by a succession of military dictatorships and democratically elected civilian governments until achieving a stable government in the 1999 Nigerian presidential election.\nNigeria is a multinational state inhabited by more than 250 ethnic groups speaking 500 distinct languages, all identifying with a wide variety of cultures. The three largest ethnic groups are the Hausa in the north, Yoruba in the west, and Igbo in the east, together constituting over 60% of the total population. The official language is English, chosen to facilitate linguistic unity at the national level. Nigeria's constitution ensures \"de jure\" freedom of religion, and it is home to some of the world's largest Muslim and Christian populations. Nigeria is divided roughly in half between Muslims, who live mostly in the north part of the country, and Christians, who live mostly in the south; indigenous religions, such as those native to the Igbo and Yoruba ethnicities, are in the minority.\nNigeria is a regional power in Africa and a middle power in international affairs. Nigeria's economy is the fourth-largest in Africa, the 53rd-largest in the world by nominal GDP, and 27th-largest by PPP. Nigeria is often referred to as the Giant of Africa by its citizens due to its large population and economy, and is considered to be an emerging market by the World Bank. Nigeria is a founding member of the African Union and a member of many international organizations, including the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations, NAM, the Economic Community of West African States, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and OPEC. It is also a member of the informal MINT group of countries and is one of the Next Eleven economies.\nEtymology.\nThe name \"\" derives from the Niger River running through the country. This name was coined on 8 January 1897, by the British journalist Flora Shaw. The neighboring Republic of Niger takes its name from the same river. The origin of the name \"Niger\", which originally applied to only the middle reaches of the Niger River, is uncertain. The word is likely an alteration of the Tuareg name \"egerew n-igerewen\" used by inhabitants along the middle reaches of the river around Timbuktu before 19th-century European colonialism. Before Flora Shaw suggested the name \"Nigeria\", other proposed names included \"Royal Niger Company Territories\", \"Central Sudan\", \"Niger Empire\", \"Niger Sudan\", and \"Hausa Territories\".\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nKainji Dam excavations showed ironworking by the 2nd century BC. The transition from Neolithic times to the Iron Age was accomplished without intermediate bronze production. Some have suggested the technology moved west from the Nile Valley. But the Iron Age in the Niger River valley and the forest region appears to predate the introduction of metallurgy in the upper savanna by more than 800 years, as well as predating it in the Nile Valley. More recent research suggests that iron metallurgy was developed independently in Africa.\nThe Nok civilization thrived between 1,500 BC and AD 200. It produced life-sized terracotta figures that are some of the earliest known sculptures in Africa and smelted iron by about 550 BC and possibly a few centuries earlier. Evidence of iron smelting has also been excavated at sites in the Nsukka region of southeast Nigeria: dating to 2000 BC at the site of Lejja and to 750 BC at the site of Opi.\nEarly history.\nThe \"Kano Chronicle\" highlights an ancient history dating to around 999 AD of the Hausa Sahelian city-state of Kano, with other major Hausa cities (or Hausa Bakwai) of Daura, Hadeija, Kano, Katsina, Zazzau, Rano, and Gobir all having recorded histories dating back to the 10th century. With the spread of Islam from the 7th century AD, the area became known as \"Sudan\" or as \"Bilad Al Sudan\" (English: Land of the Blacks). Since the populations were partially affiliated with the Arab Muslim culture of North Africa, they began trans-Saharan trade and were referred to by the Arabic speakers as \"Al-Sudan\" (meaning \"The Blacks\") as they were considered an extended part of the Muslim world. There are early historical references by medieval Arab and Muslim historians and geographers which refer to the Kanem\u2013Bornu Empire as the region's major centre for Islamic civilization.\nThe Kingdom of Nri of the Igbo people consolidated in the 10th century and continued until it lost its sovereignty to the British in 1911. Nri was ruled by the Eze Nri, and the city of Nri is considered to be the foundation of Igbo culture. Nri and Aguleri, where the Igbo creation myth originates, are in the territory of the Umeuri clan. Members of the clan trace their lineages back to the patriarchal king-figure Eri. In West Africa, the oldest bronzes made using the lost wax process were from Igbo-Ukwu, a city under Nri influence.\nThe Yoruba kingdoms of Ife and Oyo in southwestern Nigeria became prominent in the 12th and 14th centuries, respectively. The oldest signs of human settlement at Ife's current site date back to the 9th century, and its material culture includes terracotta and bronze figures.\nPre-colonial era.\nIn the 16th century, Portuguese explorers were the first Europeans to begin important, direct trade with the peoples of southern Nigeria, at the port they named Lagos (formerly Eko) and in Calabar along the region Slave Coast. Europeans traded goods with peoples at the coast; coastal trade with Europeans also marked the beginnings of the Atlantic slave trade. The port of Calabar on the historical Bight of Biafra (now commonly referred to as the Bight of Bonny) became one of the largest slave-trading posts in West Africa in this era. Other major slaving ports were located in Badagry, Lagos on the Bight of Benin, and Bonny Island on the Bight of Biafra. The majority of those taken to these ports were captured in raids and wars. Usually, the captives were taken back to the conquerors' territory as forced labour; they were sometimes gradually acculturated and absorbed into the conquerors' society. Slave routes were established throughout Nigeria linking the hinterland areas with the major coastal ports. Some of the more prolific slave-trading kingdoms who participated in the Atlantic slave trade were linked with the Edo's Benin Empire in the south, Oyo Empire in the southwest, and the Aro Confederacy in the southeast. Benin's power lasted between the 15th and 19th centuries. Oyo, at its territorial zenith in the late 17th to early 18th centuries, extended its influence from western Nigeria to modern-day Togo.\nIn the north, the incessant fighting amongst the Hausa city-states and the decline of the Bornu Empire allowed the Fulani people to gain headway into the region. Until this point, the Fulani, a nomadic ethnic group, primarily traversed the semi-desert Sahelian region north of Sudan with cattle and avoided trade and intermingling with the Sudanic peoples. At the beginning of the 19th century, Usman dan Fodio led a successful jihad against the Hausa Kingdoms, founding the centralised Sokoto Caliphate. This empire, with Arabic as its official language, grew rapidly under his rule and that of his descendants, who sent out invading armies in every direction. The vast landlocked empire connected the east with the western Sudan region and made inroads down south conquering parts of the Oyo Empire (modern-day Kwara), and advanced towards the Yoruba heartland of Ibadan, to reach the Atlantic Ocean. The territory controlled by the empire included much of modern-day northern and central Nigeria. The sultan sent out emirs to establish suzerainty over the conquered territories and promote Islamic civilization; the emirs in turn became increasingly rich and powerful through trade and slavery. By the 1890s, the largest slave population in the world, about two million, was concentrated in the territories of the Sokoto Caliphate. The use of slave labour was extensive, especially in agriculture. By the time of its break-up in 1903 into various European colonies, the Sokoto Caliphate was one of the largest pre-colonial African states.\nA changing legal imperative (the outlawing of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807) and economic imperative (a desire for political and social stability) led most European powers to support the widespread cultivation of agricultural products, such as the palm, for use in European industry. The slave trade continued after the ban, as illegal smugglers purchased slaves along the coast from native slavers. Britain's West Africa Squadron sought to intercept the smugglers at sea. The rescued slaves were taken to Freetown, a colony in West Africa originally established by Lieutenant John Clarkson for the resettlement of slaves freed by Britain in North America after the American Revolutionary War.\nBritish colonization.\nBritain intervened in the Lagos kingship power struggle by bombarding Lagos in 1851, deposing the slave-trade-friendly Oba Kosoko, helping to install the amenable Oba Akitoye and signing the Treaty between Great Britain and Lagos on 1January 1852. Britain annexed Lagos as a crown colony in August 1861 with the Lagos Treaty of Cession. British missionaries expanded their operations and travelled further inland. In 1864, Samuel Ajayi Crowther became the first African bishop of the Anglican Church.\nIn 1885, British claims to a West African sphere of influence received recognition from other European nations at the Berlin Conference. The following year, it chartered the Royal Niger Company under the leadership of Sir George Taubman Goldie. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the company had vastly succeeded in subjugating the independent southern kingdoms along the Niger River, the British conquered Benin in 1897, and, in the Anglo-Aro War (1901\u20131902), defeated other opponents. The defeat of these states opened up the Niger area to British rule. In 1900, the company's territory came under the direct control of the British government and established the Southern Nigeria Protectorate as a British protectorate and part of the British Empire.\nBy 1902, the British had begun plans to move north into the Sokoto Caliphate. British General Lord Frederick Lugard was tasked by the Colonial Office to implement the agenda. Lugard used rivalries between many of the emirs in the southern reach of the caliphate and the central Sokoto administration to prevent any defence as he worked towards the capital. As the British approached the city of Sokoto, Sultan Muhammadu Attahiru I organized a quick defence of the city and fought the advancing British-led forces. The British force quickly won, sending Attahiru I and thousands of followers on a Mahdist \"hijra\". In the northeast, the decline of the Bornu Empire gave rise to the British-controlled Borno Emirate which established Abubakar Garbai of Borno as ruler.\nIn 1903, the British victory in the Battle of Kano gave them a logistical edge in pacifying the heartland of the Sokoto Caliphate and parts of the former Bornu Empire. On 13 March 1903, at the grand market square of Sokoto, the last vizier of the caliphate officially conceded to British rule. The British appointed Muhammadu Attahiru II as the new caliph. Lugard abolished the caliphate but retained the title \"sultan\" as a symbolic position in the newly organized Northern Nigeria Protectorate. This remnant became known as \"Sokoto Sultanate Council\". In June 1903, the British defeated the remaining northern forces of Attahiru. By 1906, all resistance to British rule had ended.\nOn 1 January 1914, the British formally united the Southern Nigeria Protectorate and the Northern Nigeria Protectorate into the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria. Administratively, Nigeria remained divided into the Northern and Southern Protectorates and Lagos Colony. Inhabitants of the southern region sustained more interaction, economic and cultural, with the British and other Europeans owing to the coastal economy. Christian missions established Western educational institutions in the protectorates. Under Britain's policy of indirect rule and validation of Islamic legitimist tradition, the Crown did not encourage the operation of Christian missions in the northern, Islamic part of the country.\nBy the mid-20th century following World War II, a wave for independence was sweeping across Africa, in response to the growth of Nigerian nationalism and demands for independence, successive constitutions legislated by the British government moved Nigeria toward self-government on a representative and increasingly federal basis. By the eve of independence in 1960, regional differences in modern educational access were marked. The legacy, though less pronounced, continues to the present day. The balance between north and south was also expressed in Nigeria's political life. For instance, northern Nigeria did not outlaw slavery until 1936 whilst in other parts of Nigeria, slavery was abolished soon after colonialism.\nIndependence and the Federal Republic.\nNigeria gained a degree of self-rule in 1954, and full independence from the United Kingdom on 1 October 1960, as the Federation of Nigeria with Abubakar Tafawa Balewa as its Prime Minister, while retaining the British monarch, Elizabeth II, as nominal head of state and Queen of Nigeria. Nnamdi Azikiwe replaced the colonial governor-general in November 1960. At independence, the cultural and political differences were sharp among Nigeria's dominant ethnic groups: the Hausa in the north, Igbo in the east, and Yoruba in the west. The Westminster system of government was retained, and thus the President's powers were generally ceremonial. The parliamentary system of government had Abubakar Tafawa Balewa as Prime Minister and Nnamdi Azikiwe as the ceremonial president. The founding government was a coalition of conservative parties: the Northern People's Congress led by Sir Ahmadu Bello, a party dominated by Muslim northerners, and the Igbo and Christian-dominated National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons led by Nnamdi Azikiwe. The opposition consisted of the comparatively liberal Action Group, which was largely dominated by the Yoruba and led by Obafemi Awolowo. An imbalance was created in the polity as a result of the 1961 plebiscite. Southern Cameroons opted to join the Republic of Cameroon while Northern Cameroons chose to join Nigeria. The northern part of the country became larger than the southern part.\nFall of the First Republic and Civil War.\nThe disequilibrium and perceived corruption of the electoral and political process led to two military coups in 1966. The first coup was in January 1966 and was led mostly by soldiers under Majors Emmanuel Ifeajuna (of the Igbo tribe), Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu (Northerner of Eastern extraction) and Adewale Ademoyega (a Yoruba from the West). The coup plotters succeeded in assassinating Sir Ahmadu Bello and Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa alongside prominent leaders of the Northern Region and Premier Samuel Akintola of the Western Region, but the plotters struggled to form a central government. Senate President Nwafor Orizu handed over government control to the Army, under the command of another Igbo officer, Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi. Later, the counter-coup of 1966, supported primarily by Northern military officers, facilitated the rise of Yakubu Gowon as military head of state. Tension rose between north and south; Igbos in northern cities suffered persecution and many fled to the Eastern Region.\nIn May 1967, Governor of the Eastern Region Lt. Colonel Emeka Ojukwu declared the region independent from the federation as a state called the Republic of Biafra, as a result of the continuous and systematically planned attacks against Igbos and those of Eastern extraction popularly known as 1966 pogroms. This declaration precipitated the Nigerian Civil War, which began as the official Nigerian government side attacked Biafra on 6 July 1967, at Garkem. The 30-month war, with a long blockade of Biafra and its isolation from trade and international relief, ended in January 1970. Estimates of the number of dead in the former Eastern Region during the 30-month civil war range from one to three million. Britain and the Soviet Union were the main military backers of the Nigerian government, with Nigeria utilizing air support from Egyptian pilots provided by Gamal Abdel Nasser, while France and Israel aided the Biafrans. The Congolese government, under President Joseph-D\u00e9sir\u00e9 Mobutu, took an early stand on the Biafran secession, voicing strong support for the Nigerian federal government and deploying thousands of troops to fight against the secessionists.\nFollowing the war, Nigeria enjoyed an oil boom in the 1970s, during which the country joined OPEC and received huge oil revenues. Despite these revenues, the military government did little to improve the standard of living, help small and medium businesses, or invest in infrastructure. As oil revenues fueled the rise of federal subsidies to states, the federal government became the centre of political struggle and the threshold of power in the country. As oil production and revenue rose, the Nigerian government became increasingly dependent on oil revenues and international commodity markets for budgetary and economic concerns.\nThe coup in July 1975, led by Generals Shehu Musa Yar'Adua and Joseph Garba, ousted Gowon, who fled to Britain. The coup plotters wanted to replace Gowon's autocratic rule with a triumvirate of three brigadier generals whose decisions could be vetoed by a Supreme Military Council. For this triumvirate, they convinced General Murtala Muhammed to become military head of state, with General Olusegun Obasanjo as his second-in-command, and General Theophilus Danjuma as the third. Together, the triumvirate introduced austerity measures to stem inflation, established a Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau, replaced all military governors with new officers, and launched \"Operation Deadwood\" through which they fired 11,000 officials from the civil service.\nColonel Buka Suka Dimka launched a February 1976 coup attempt, during which General Murtala Muhammed was assassinated. Dimka lacked widespread support among the military, and his coup failed, forcing him to flee. After the coup attempt, General Olusegun Obasanjo was appointed military head of state. Obasanjo vowed to continue Murtala's policies. Aware of the danger of alienating northern Nigerians, Obasanjo brought General Shehu Yar'Adua as his replacement and second-in-command as Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters completing the military triumvirate, with Obasanjo as head of state and General Theophilus Danjuma as Chief of Army Staff, the three went on to re-establish control over the military regime and organized the military's transfer of power programme: states creation and national delimitation, local government reforms and the constitutional drafting committee for a new republic.\nMilitary dictatorship and Second Republic.\nThe military carefully planned the return to civilian rule putting in place measures to ensure that political parties had broader support than witnessed during the first republic. In 1979, five political parties competed in a series of elections in which Alhaji Shehu Shagari of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) was elected president. All five parties won representation in the National Assembly. On 1 October 1979, Shehu Shagari was sworn in as the first President and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Obasanjo peacefully transferred power to Shagari, becoming the first head of state in Nigerian history to willingly step down.The Shagari government became viewed as corrupt by virtually all sectors of Nigerian society. In 1983, the inspectors of the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation began to notice \"the slow poisoning of the waters of this country\". In August 1983, Shagari and the NPN were returned to power in a landslide victory, with a majority of seats in the National Assembly and control of 12 state governments. But the elections were marred by violence, and allegations of widespread vote-rigging and electoral malfeasance led to legal battles over the results. There were also uncertainties, such as in the first republic, that political leaders may be unable to govern properly.\nThe 1983 military coup d'\u00e9tat was coordinated by key officers of the Nigerian military and led to the overthrow of the government and the installation of Major General Muhammadu Buhari as head of state. The military coup of Muhammadu Buhari shortly after the regime's re-election in 1984 was generally viewed as a positive development. In 1985, Ibrahim Babangida overthrew Buhari in a coup d'\u00e9tat. In 1986, Babangida established the Nigerian Political Bureau which made recommendations for the transition to the Third Nigerian Republic. In 1989, Babangida started making plans for the transition to the Third Nigerian Republic. Babangida survived the 1990 Nigerian coup d'\u00e9tat attempt, then postponed a promised return to democracy to 1992.\n12 June and the crisis of the Third Republic.\nBabangida legalized the formation of political parties and formed the two-party system with the Social Democratic Party and National Republican Convention ahead of the 1992 general elections. He urged all Nigerians to join either of the parties, which Chief Bola Ige referred to as \"two leper hands\". The 1993 presidential election held on 12 June was the first since the military coup of 1983. The results, though not officially declared by the National Electoral Commission, showed the duo of Moshood Abiola and Baba Gana Kingibe of the Social Democratic Party defeated Bashir Tofa and Sylvester Ugoh of the National Republican Convention by over 2.3\u00a0million votes. However, Babangida annulled the elections, leading to massive civilian protests that effectively shut down the country for weeks. In August 1993, Babangida finally kept his promise to relinquish power to a civilian government but not before appointing Ernest Shonekan head of an interim national government. Babangida's regime has been considered the most corrupt and responsible for creating a culture of corruption in Nigeria.\nShonekan's interim government, the shortest in the political history of the country, was overthrown in a coup d'\u00e9tat of 1993 led by General Sani Abacha, who used military force on a wide scale to suppress the continuing civilian unrest. In 1995, the government hanged environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa on trumped-up charges in the deaths of four Ogoni elders, which caused Nigerian's suspension from the Commonwealth. Lawsuits under the American Alien Tort Statute against Royal Dutch Shell and Brian Anderson, the head of Shell's Nigerian operation, settled out of court with Shell continuing to deny liability. Several hundred million dollars in accounts traced to Abacha were discovered in 1999. The regime came to an end in 1998 when the dictator died in the villa. He looted money to offshore accounts in Western European banks and defeated coup plots by arresting and bribing generals and politicians. His successor, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, adopted a new constitution on 5 May 1999, which provided for multiparty elections.\nReturn to democracy (1999\u2013present).\nOn 29 May 1999, Abubakar handed over power to the winner of the 1999 presidential election, former military ruler General Olusegun Obasanjo, as President of Nigeria. Obasanjo had been in prison under the dictatorship of Abacha. Obasanjo's inauguration heralded the beginning of the Fourth Nigerian Republic, ending a 39-year period of short-lived democracies, civil war and military dictatorship. Although the elections that brought Obasanjo to power and allowed him to run for a second term in the 2003 presidential elections were condemned as unfree and unfair, Nigeria made significant progress in democratization under Obasanjo.\nIn the 2007 general elections, Umaru Yar'Adua of the People's Democratic Party came to power. The international community, which had observed the Nigerian elections to promote a free and fair process, condemned these elections as seriously flawed. Yar'Adua died on 5 May 2010, and Vice President Goodluck Jonathan had been sworn in by the Senate three months earlier as acting president to succeed Yar'Adua. Jonathan won the 2011 presidential election; the polls went smoothly and with relatively little violence or electoral fraud. Jonathan's tenure saw an economic recovery that made Nigeria the leading economic power in Africa. The Jonathan administration also saw an increase in unparalleled corruption, with as many as 20 billion US dollars said to have been lost to the Nigerian state through the national oil company. Above all, however, Jonathan's tenure saw the emergence of a wave of terror by the Boko Haram insurgency, such as the Gwoza massacre and Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping in 2014.\nAhead of the general election of 2015, a merger of the biggest opposition parties in Nigeria \u2013 the Action Congress of Nigeria, the Congress for Progressive Change, the All Nigeria Peoples Party, a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance and the new PDP (a faction of serving governors of the ruling People's Democratic Party) \u2013 formed the All Progressives Congress led by current president Bola Ahmed Tinubu. At the time, it was the most expensive election ever to be held on the African continent (being surpassed only by the elections of 2019 and 2023). The new mega-opposition party chose as their candidate for the election former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari. Buhari's campaign in 2015 was popular and built around his image as a staunch anti-corruption fighter\u2014he won the election by over two million votes. Observers generally praised the election as being fair. The election marked the first time an incumbent president had lost re-election in Nigeria. In the 2019 presidential election, Buhari was re-elected.\nFour major candidates, amongst other less popular candidates, vied for the presidency in the 2023 presidential election. For the first time since the return of democracy, no former military ruler ran for president, marking a strengthening of democracy and faith in the multiparty constitution. The election also saw the rise of metonymic supporters of the new candidates, the Obidient movement of Peter Obi, previously governor of Anambra State, widely appealed to young, urban voters and has his core base in the Southeast; and the Kwankwassiya of Rabiu Kwankwaso, former governor of Kano State in the Northwest. Bola Tinubu, of the ruling party, won the disputed election with 36.61% of the vote, but both runners-up claimed victory and litigation is ongoing in an election tribunal. Bola Tinubu's inauguration was held on 29 May 2023. Problems with widespread kidnapping in Nigeria continued. On 29 May 2024, Tinubu signed into law an act readopting \"Nigeria, We Hail Thee\", which was the country's national anthem from 1960 to 1978, as its national anthem, replacing \"Arise, O Compatriots\".\nGeography.\nNigeria is located in western Africa on the Gulf of Guinea and has a total area of , making it the world's 32nd-largest country. Its borders span , and it shares borders with Benin (), Niger (), Chad (), and Cameroon (including the separatist Ambazonia) . Its coastline is at least . Nigeria lies between latitudes 4\u00b0 and 14\u00b0N, and longitudes 2\u00b0 and 15\u00b0E. The highest point in Nigeria is Chappal Waddi at . The main rivers are the Niger and the Benue, which converge and empty into the Niger Delta. This is one of the world's largest river deltas and the location of a large area of Central African mangroves.\nNigeria's most expansive topographical region is that of the valleys of the Niger and Benue river valleys (which merge and form a Y-shape). To the southwest of the Niger is a \"rugged\" highland. To the southeast of the Benue are hills and mountains, which form the Mambilla Plateau, the highest plateau in Nigeria. This plateau extends through the border with Cameroon, where the montane land is part of the Bamenda Highlands of Cameroon.\nThe far south is defined by its tropical rainforest climate, where annual rainfall is per year. In the southeast stands the Obudu Plateau. Coastal plains are found in both the southwest and the southeast. Mangrove swamps are found along the coast.\nThe area near the border with Cameroon close to the coast is rich rainforest and part of the Cross-Sanaga-Bioko coastal forests ecoregion, an important centre for biodiversity. It is a habitat for the drill primate, which is found in the wild only in this area and across the border in Cameroon. The areas surrounding Calabar, Cross River State, also in this forest, are believed to contain the world's largest diversity of butterflies. The area of southern Nigeria between the Niger and the Cross Rivers has lost most of its forest because of development and harvesting by increased population and has been replaced by grassland.\nEverything in between the far south and the far north is savannah (insignificant tree cover, with grasses and flowers located between trees). Rainfall is more limited to between per year. The savannah zone's three categories are Guinean forest-savanna mosaic, Sudan savannah, and Sahel savannah. Guinean forest-savanna mosaic is plains of tall grass interrupted by trees. Sudan savannah is similar but with shorter grasses and shorter trees. Sahel savannah consists of patches of grass and sand, found in the northeast.\nHydrology.\nNigeria is divided into two main catchment areas \u2013 that of Lake Chad and that of the Niger. The Niger catchment area covers about 63% of the country. The main tributary of the Niger is the Benue, whose tributaries extend beyond Cameroon into Cameroon into Chad and the Sharie catchment area. In the Sahel region, rain is less than per year, and the Sahara Desert is encroaching. In the dry northeast corner of the country lies Lake Chad, on a shared water boundary delimitation with Niger, Chad and Cameroon.\nThe Chad Basin is fed from the north-eastern quarter of Nigeria. The Bauchi Plateau forms the watershed between the Niger/Benue and Komadugu Yobe river systems. The flat plains of north-eastern Nigeria are geographically part of the Chad Basin, where the course of the El Beid River forms the border with Cameroon, from the Mandara Mountains to Lake Chad. The Komadugu Yobe river system gives rise to the internationally important Hadejia-Nguru wetlands and Ox-bow lakes around Lake Nguru in the rainy season. Other rivers of the northeast include the Ngadda and the Yedseram, both of which flow through the Sambisa swamps, thus forming a river system. The river system of the northeast is also a major river system. In addition, Nigeria has numerous coastal rivers.\nOver the last million years, Lake Chad in the far north-east of Nigeria has dried up several times for a few thousand years and just as often growing to many times its current size. In recent decades its surface area has been reduced considerably, which may also be due to humans taking water from the inlets to irrigate agricultural land.\nVegetation.\nNigeria is covered by three types of vegetation: forests (where there is significant tree cover), savannahs (insignificant tree cover, with grasses and flowers located between trees), and montane land (least common and mainly found in the mountains near the Cameroon border). Both the forest zone and the savannah zone are divided into three parts.\nSome of the forest zone's most southerly portion, especially around the Niger River and Cross River deltas, is mangrove swamp. North of this is a freshwater swamp, containing different vegetation from the saltwater mangrove swamps, and north of that is a rainforest.\nThe savannah zone's three categories are divided into Guinean forest-savanna mosaic, made up of plains of tall grass which are interrupted by trees, the most common across the country; Sudan savannah, with short grasses and short trees; and Sahel savannah patches of grass and sand, found in the northeast.\nEnvironmental issues.\nWaste management including sewage treatment, the linked processes of deforestation and soil degradation, and climate change are the major environmental problems in Nigeria. \nClimate change\nDeforestation\nIn 2005, Nigeria had the highest rate of deforestation in the world, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. That year, 12.2%, the equivalent of 11,089,000 hectares, had been forested in the country. Between 1990 and 2000, Nigeria lost an average of 409,700 hectares of forest every year equal to an average annual deforestation rate of 2.4%. Between 1990 and 2005, in total Nigeria lost 35.7% of its forest cover or around 6,145,000 hectares. Nigeria had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 6.2/10, ranking it 82nd globally out of 172 countries.\nPollution\nWaste management presents problems in a megacity like Lagos and other major Nigerian cities which are linked with economic development, population growth and the inability of municipal councils to manage the resulting rise in industrial and domestic waste. This waste management problem is also attributable to unsustainable environmental management lifestyles of Kubwa community in the Federal Capital Territory, where there are habits of indiscriminate disposal of waste, dumping of waste along or into the canals, sewerage systems that are channels for water flows, and the like. Haphazard industrial planning, increased urbanisation, poverty and lack of competence of the municipal government are seen as the major reasons for high levels of waste pollution in major cities of the country. Some of the solutions have been disastrous to the environment, resulting in untreated waste being dumped in places where it can pollute waterways and groundwater.\nNigeria's Delta region is one of the most polluted regions in the world due to serious oil spills and other environmental problems caused by its oil industry. The heavy contamination of the air, ground and water with toxic pollutants is often used as an example of ecocide. In additional to the environmental damage it has caused conflict in the Delta region.\nIllegal oil refineries, in which local operators convert stolen crude oil into petrol and diesel, are considered particularly \"dirty, dangerous and lucrative\". Safety and environmental aspects are usually ignored. Refining petroleum also inevitably produces heavy oil, which is \"cracked\" into lighter fuel components in regular plants at great technical expense. Illegal refineries do not have these technical possibilities and \"dispose\" of the heavy oil where it accumulates. The lighter components of crude oil (methane to butane, isobutane) create a certain risk of explosion, which often leads to disasters at illegal plants. In 2022, Nigeria suffered 125 deaths from explosions at local, illegal refineries.\nIn 2010, thousands of people were inadvertently exposed to lead-containing soil from informal gold mining within the northern state of Zamfara. While estimates vary, it is thought that upwards of 400 children died of acute lead poisoning, making this perhaps the largest lead poisoning fatality outbreak ever encountered.\nPolitics.\nGovernment.\nNigeria is a federal republic modelled after the United States, with 36 states and capital Abuja as an independent unit. The executive power is exercised by the President. The president is both head of state and head of the federal government; the president is elected by popular vote to a maximum of two four-year terms. State governors, like the president, are elected for four years and may serve a maximum of two terms. The president's power is checked by a Senate and a House of Representatives, which are combined in a bicameral body called the National Assembly. The Senate is a 109-seat body with three members from each state and one from the capital region of Abuja; members are elected by popular vote to four-year terms. The House contains 360 seats, with the number of seats per state determined by population.\nThe Nigerian president is elected in a modified two-round system. To be elected in the first round, a candidate must receive a relative majority of the votes and more than 25% of the votes in at least 24 of the 36 states. If no candidate reaches this hurdle, a second round of voting takes place between the leading candidate and the next candidate who received the majority of votes in the highest number of states. By convention, presidential candidates take a running mate (candidate for the vice presidency) who is both ethnically and religiously the opposite of themselves. There is no law prescribing this, yet all presidential candidates since the existence of the Fourth Republic until 2023 adhered to this rule.\nHowever, this principle of religious and ethnic diversity in leadership was ignored in the 2023 General Elections, where the candidate for the All Progressives Congress, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a Muslim, selected another Muslim, Senator Kashim Shettima, as running mate.\nAdministrative divisions.\nNigeria is divided into thirty-six states and one Federal Capital Territory, which are further sub-divided into 774 local government areas. In some contexts, the states are aggregated into six geopolitical zones: North West, North East, North Central, South West, South East, and South South.\nNigeria has five cities with a population of over a million (from largest to smallest): Lagos, Kano, Ibadan, Benin City and Port Harcourt. Lagos is the largest city in Africa, with a population of over 12 million in its urban area.\nThe south of the country in particular is characterised by very strong urbanisation and a relatively large number of cities. According to an estimate from 2015, there are 20 cities in Nigeria with more than 500,000 inhabitants, including ten cities with a population of one million.\nLaw.\nThe Constitution of Nigeria is the supreme law of the country. There are four distinct legal systems in Nigeria, which include English law, common law, customary law, and Sharia law:\nThe country has a judicial branch, the highest court of which is the Supreme Court of Nigeria.\nForeign relations.\nUpon gaining independence in 1960, Nigeria made African unity the centrepiece of its foreign policy. One exception to the African focus was Nigeria's close relationship with Israel throughout the 1960s. Israel sponsored and oversaw the construction of Nigeria's parliament buildings.\nNigeria's foreign policy was put to the test in the 1970s after the country emerged united from its civil war. It supported movements against white minority governments in Southern Africa. Nigeria backed the African National Congress by taking a committed tough line about the South African government. Nigeria was a founding member of the Organisation for African Unity (now the African Union) and had tremendous influence in West Africa and Africa on the whole. Nigeria founded regional cooperative efforts in West Africa, functioning as the standard-bearer for the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and ECOMOG (especially during the Liberia and Sierra Leone civil wars).\nWith this Africa-centred stance, Nigeria readily sent troops to the Congo at the behest of the United Nations shortly after independence (and has maintained membership since that time). Nigeria also supported several Pan-African and pro-self-government causes in the 1970s, including garnering support for Angola's MPLA, SWAPO in Namibia, and aiding opposition to the minority governments of Portuguese Mozambique, and Rhodesia. Nigeria retains membership in the Non-Aligned Movement. In late November 2006, it organized an Africa-South America Summit in Abuja to promote what some attendees termed \"South-South\" linkages on a variety of fronts. Nigeria is also a member of the International Criminal Court and the Commonwealth of Nations. It was temporarily expelled from the latter in 1995 when ruled by the Abacha regime.\nNigeria has remained a key player in the international oil industry since the 1970s and maintains membership in OPEC, which it joined in July 1971. Its status as a major petroleum producer figures prominently in its sometimes volatile international relations with developed countries, notably the United States, and with developing countries.\nSince 2000, Chinese\u2013Nigerian trade relations have risen exponentially. There has been an increase in total trade of over 10.3 billion dollars between the two nations from 2000 to 2016. However, the structure of the Chinese\u2013Nigerian trade relationship has become a major political issue for the Nigerian state. Chinese exports account for around 80 per cent of total bilateral trade volumes. This has resulted in a serious trade imbalance, with Nigeria importing ten times more than it exports to China. Subsequently, Nigeria's economy is becoming over-reliant on cheap imports to sustain itself, resulting in a clear decline in Nigerian industry under such arrangements.\nContinuing its Africa-centred foreign policy, Nigeria introduced the idea of a single currency for West Africa known as the Eco under the presumption that it would be led by the naira. But on 21 December 2019, Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara, Emmanuel Macron, and multiple other UEMOA states announced that they would merely rename the CFA franc instead of replacing the currency as originally intended. As of 2021, the Eco currency has been delayed to 2027.\nMilitary.\nThe Nigerian Armed Forces are the combined military forces of Nigeria. It consists of three uniformed service branches: the Nigerian Army, Nigerian Navy, and Nigerian Air Force. The President of Nigeria functions as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, exercising his constitutional authority through the Ministry of Defence, which is responsible for the management of the military and its personnel. The operational head of the AFN is the Chief of the Defence Staff, who is subordinate to the Nigerian Defence Minister. With a force of more than 223,000 active personnel, the Nigerian military is one of the largest uniformed combat services in Africa.\nNigeria has 143,000 troops in the armed forces (army 100,000, navy 25,000, air force 18,000) and another 80,000 personnel for \"gendarmerie & paramilitary\" in 2020, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Nigeria spent just under 0.4 per cent of its economic output, or US$1.6 billion, on its armed forces in 2017. For 2022, US$2.26 billion has been budgeted for the Nigerian armed forces, which is just over a third of Belgium's defence budget (US$5.99 billion).\nCommunal conflicts.\nBoko Haram and the bandit conflict have been responsible for numerous serious attacks with thousands of casualties since mid-2010. Since then, according to the Council on Foreign Relations' Nigeria Security Tracker, over 41,600 lives have been lost to this conflict (as of October 2022). The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR counts about 1.8 million internally displaced persons and about 200,000 Nigerian refugees in neighbouring countries.\nThe Boko Haram-affected states agreed in February 2015 to establish an 8,700-strong Multinational Joint Task Force to jointly fight Boko Haram. By October 2015, Boko Haram had been driven out of all the cities it controlled and almost all the counties in northeastern Nigeria. In 2016, Boko Haram split and in 2022, 40,000 fighters surrendered. The splinter group ISWAP (Islamic State in West Africa) remains active.\nThe fight against Boko Haram, other sectarians and criminals has been accompanied by increasing police attacks. The Council on Foreign Relations' Nigeria Security Tracker counted 1,086 deaths from Boko Haram attacks and 290 deaths from police violence in the first 12 months of its establishment in May 2011. In the 12 months after October 2021, 2,193 people died from police violence and 498 from Boko Haram and ISWAP, according to the NST. The Nigerian police are notorious for vigilante justice.\nThe Niger Delta saw intense attacks on oil infrastructure in 2016 by militant groups such as the \"Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta\" (MEND), the \"Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force\" (NDPVF), the \"Ijaw National Congress\" (INC) and the \"Pan Niger Delta Forum\" (PANDEF). In response, the new Buhari government pursued a dual strategy of repression and negotiation.\nIn late 2016, the Nigerian federal government resorted to the gambit of offering the militant groups a 4.5 billion naira (US$144 million) contract to \"guard\" oil infrastructure. Most accepted. The contract was renewed in August 2022, but led to fierce disputes among the above-mentioned groups over the distribution of the funds. Representatives speak of \"war\" \u2013 against each other. The high propensity for violence and the pettiness of the leaders, as well as the complete absence of social and environmental arguments in this dispute give rise to fears that the militant groups, despite their lofty names, have discarded responsibility for their region and ethnic groups and have moved into the realm of protection rackets and self-enrichment. In any case, the pipelines in the Niger Delta are not very effectively \"guarded\" \u2013 the pollution of the Niger Delta with stolen crude oil and illegally produced heavy fuel oil continued unhindered after 2016.\nIn central Nigeria, conflicts between Muslim Hausa-Fulani herders and indigenous Christian farmers flared up again, especially in Kaduna, Plateau, Taraba and Benue states. In individual cases, these clashes have claimed several hundred lives. Conflict over land and resources is increasing due to the ongoing desertification in northern Nigeria, population growth and the generally tense economic situation.\nIn June 2022, a massacre took place in the St. Francis Xavier Church, in Owo. The Government blamed ISWAP for the murder of over 50 parishioners, but locals suspect Fulani herdsmen's involvement.\nEconomy.\nNigeria's economy is the fourth largest in Africa, the 31st-largest in the world by nominal GDP, and 30th-largest by PPP. In 2022, its GDP (PPP) per capita was US$9,148, which is less than South Africa, Egypt and Morocco, but slightly higher than Ghana and Ivory Coast. As of 2023, Nigeria's economy is classified as lower-middle-income.\nBefore 1999, economic development was hindered by years of military rule, corruption, and mismanagement. In the decades thereafter, the restoration of democracy and subsequent economic reforms led to rapid growth. In 2011, Citigroup projected that Nigeria would have the highest average GDP growth in the world between 2010 and 2050.\nNigeria is an economic leader in Africa in several industries, including energy, financial markets, pharmaceuticals, and entertainment. Its financial services sector is well-developed, with a mix of local and international banks, asset management companies, brokerage houses, insurance companies and brokers, private equity funds, and investment banks. After petroleum, the largest source of foreign exchange earnings for Nigeria are remittances sent home by Nigerians living abroad.\nNigeria also has an abundant supply of under-exploited natural resources, including coal, bauxite, tantalite, gold, tin, iron ore, limestone, niobium, lead and zinc. The country's gold production in 2015 was 8 metric tons. Despite huge deposits of these natural resources, the mining industry in Nigeria is still in its infancy.\nAgriculture.\nIn 2021, about 23.4% of Nigeria's GDP is contributed by agriculture, forestry and fishing combined. Nigeria is the world's largest producer of cassava. Further major crops include maize, rice, millet, yam beans, and guinea corn (sorghum). Cocoa is the principal agricultural export, and one of the country's most significant non-petroleum products. Nigeria is also one of the world's top twenty exporters of natural rubber, generating $20.9 million in 2019.\nBefore the Nigerian Civil War and the oil boom, Nigeria was self-sufficient in food. Agriculture used to be the principal foreign exchange earner of Nigeria. Agriculture has failed to keep pace with Nigeria's rapid population growth, and Nigeria now relies upon food imports to sustain itself. It spends US$6.7 billion yearly for food imports, four times more than revenues from food export. The Nigerian government promoted the use of inorganic fertilizers in the 1970s.\nNigeria's rice production increased by 10% from 2017/18 to 2021/22 to 5 million tonnes a year, but could hardly keep up with the increased demand. Rice imports therefore remained constant at 2 million tonnes per year. In August 2019, Nigeria closed its border with Benin and other neighbouring countries to stop rice smuggling into the country as part of efforts to boost local production.\nUntil now, Nigeria exported unhusked rice but had to import husked rice, the country's staple food. \u2013 The rice mill in Imota, near Lagos, is intended to handle the corresponding processing at home, improve the balance of trade and the labour market, and save unnecessary costs for transport and middlemen. When fully operational at the end of 2022, the plant, the largest south of the Sahara, is expected to employ 250,000 people and produce 2.5 million 50-kg bags of rice annually.\nOil and natural gas.\nNigeria is the 15th largest producer of petroleum in the world, the 6th largest exporter, and has the 9th largest proven reserves. Petroleum plays a large role in the Nigerian economy and politics, accounting for about 80% of government earnings. Nigeria also has the 9th largest proven natural gas reserves estimated by OPEC; the government's value of its about 206.53 trillion cubic feet has been valued at $803.4 trillion. Natural gas is seen as having the potential to unlock an economic miracle on the Niger River. Nigeria each year loses to gas flaring an estimate of US$2.5 billion, and over 120,000 barrels of oil per day to crude theft in the Niger Delta, its main oil-producing region. This has led to piracy and conflict for control in the region and has led to disruptions in production preventing the country from meeting its OPEC quota and exporting petroleum at full capability.\nNigeria has a total of 159 oil fields and 1,481 wells in operation according to the Department of Petroleum Resources. The most productive region of the nation is the coastal Niger Delta Basin in the Niger Delta or \"south-south\" region which encompasses 78 of the 159 oil fields. Most of Nigeria's oil fields are small and scattered, and as of 1990, these small fields accounted for 62.1% of all Nigerian production. This contrasts with the sixteen largest fields which produced 37.9% of Nigeria's petroleum at that time. Petrol was Nigeria's main import commodity until 2021, accounting for 24% of import volume.\nThe Niger Delta Nembe Creek oil field was discovered in 1973 and produces from the middle Miocene deltaic sandstone-shale in an anticline structural trap at a depth of . In June 2013, Shell announced a strategic review of its operations in Nigeria, hinting that assets could be divested. While many international oil companies have operated there for decades, by 2014 most were making moves to divest their interests, citing a range of issues including oil theft. In August 2014, Shell said it was finalising its interests in four Nigerian oil fields.\nThe supply of natural gas to Europe, threatened by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is pushing projects to transport Nigerian natural gas via pipelines to Morocco or Algeria. As of May 2022, however, there are no results on this yet.\nEnergy.\nNigeria's energy consumption is much more than its generation capacity. Most of the energy comes from traditional fossil fuels, which account for 73% of total primary production. The rest is from hydropower (27%). Since independence, Nigeria has tried to develop a domestic nuclear industry for energy. Nigeria opened 2004 a Chinese-origin research reactor at Ahmadu Bello University and has sought the support of the International Atomic Energy Agency to develop plans for up to 4,000 MWe of nuclear capacity by 2027 according to the National Program for the Deployment of Nuclear Power for Generation of Electricity. In 2007, President Umaru Yar'Adua urged the country to embrace nuclear power to meet its growing energy needs. In 2017, Nigeria signed the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. In April 2015, Nigeria began talks with Russia's state-owned Rosatom to collaborate on the design, construction and operation of four nuclear power plants by 2035, the first of which will be in operation by 2025. In June 2015, Nigeria selected two sites for the planned construction of the nuclear plants. Neither the Nigerian government nor Rosatom would disclose the specific locations of the sites, but it is believed that the nuclear plants will be sited in Akwa Ibom State and Kogi State. The sites are planned to house two plants each. In 2017 agreements were signed for the construction of the Itu nuclear power plant.\nElectricity.\nAccording to the survey, 94% of Nigerians are connected to the national grid, but only 57% have their electricity consumption recorded by an electricity meter. Only 1% of Nigerians surveyed reported having electricity 24 hours a day. 68% have electricity 1 to 9 hours a day, according to the NIO. Two-thirds of Nigerians, or 66%, pay up to 10,000 Naira (US$13) a month for electricity, which is almost 3% of the average income in Nigeria. Over two-thirds of respondents, or 67%, were willing to pay more for uninterrupted electricity supply. Power generators are owned by 21% of Nigerians, while 14% use solar energy.\nManufacturing and technology.\nNigeria has a manufacturing industry that includes leather and textiles (centred in Kano, Abeokuta, Onitsha, and Lagos), plastics and processed food. Ogun is considered to be Nigeria's current industrial hub, as most factories are located in Ogun and more companies are moving there, followed by Lagos. The city of Aba in the south-eastern part of the country is well known for handicrafts and shoes, known as \"Aba made\". Nigeria has a market of 720,000 cars per year, but less than 20% of these are produced domestically.\nIn 2016, Nigeria was the leading cement producer south of the Sahara, ahead of South Africa. Aliko Dangote, Nigeria's richest inhabitant, based his wealth on cement production, as well as agricultural commodities. According to its own information, the Ajaokuta Steel Company Limited produces 1.3 million tonnes of steel per year. However, steel plants in Katsina, Jos and Osogbo no longer appear to be active.\nIn June 2019, Nigeria EduSat-1 was deployed from the International Space Station. It is the first satellite that was built in Nigeria, which followed many other Nigerian satellites that were built by other countries. In 2021, Nigeria hosts about 60 percent of the pharmaceutical production capacity in Africa, the larger pharmaceutical companies are located in Lagos. The pharmaceutical producer with the most employees in Nigeria is Emzor Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. Nigeria has a few electronic manufacturers like Zinox, the first branded Nigerian computer, and manufacturers of electronic gadgets such as tablet PCs. As of January 2022, Nigeria is the host to 5 out of the 7 unicorn companies in Africa.\nInternet and telecommunications.\n The Nigerian telecommunications market is one of the fastest-growing in the world, with major emerging market operators (like MTN, 9mobile, Airtel and Globacom) basing their largest and most profitable centres in the country. Nigeria's ICT sector has experienced much growth, representing 10% of the nation's GDP in 2018 as compared to just 1% in 2001. Lagos is regarded as one of the largest technology hubs in Africa with its thriving tech ecosystem. According to a survey by the GSM Association, 92% of adult Nigerian men and 88% of women owned a mobile phone. Using various measures including but not limited to illegal arrest, taking down of websites, passport seizures, and restricted access to bank accounts, the Nigerian government is punishing citizens for expressing themselves on the internet and working to stifle internet freedom.\nTourism.\nTourism in Nigeria centres largely on events, because of the country's ample amount of ethnic groups, but also includes rain forests, savannahs, waterfalls, and other natural attractions.\nAbuja is home to several parks and green areas. The largest, Millennium Park, was designed by architect Manfredi Nicoletti and officially opened in December 2003. After the re-modernization project achieved by the administration of Governor Raji Babatunde Fashola, Lagos is gradually becoming a major tourist destination. Lagos is currently taking steps to become a global city. The 2009 Eyo carnival (a yearly festival originating from Iperu Remo, Ogun State) was a step toward world city status. Currently, Lagos is primarily known as a business-oriented and fast-paced community. Lagos has become an important location for African and black cultural identity.\nLagos has sandy beaches by the Atlantic Ocean, including Elegushi Beach and Alpha Beach. Lagos also has many private beach resorts including Inagbe Grand Beach Resort and several others in the outskirts. Lagos has a variety of hotels ranging from three-star to five-star hotels, with a mixture of local hotels such as Eko Hotels and Suites, Federal Palace Hotel and franchises of multinational chains such as Intercontinental Hotel, Sheraton, and Four Points by Sheraton. Other places of interest include the Tafawa Balewa Square, Festac town, The Nike Art Gallery, Freedom Park, and the Cathedral Church of Christ.\nTransport.\nDue to Nigeria's location in the center of West Africa, transport plays a major role in the national service sector. Government investments have seen an increase in extensive road repairs and new construction has been carried out gradually as states in particular spend their share of increased government allocations. Representative of these improvements is the Second Niger Bridge near Onitsha, which was largely completed in 2022. A 2017 World Bank report on logistics hubs in Africa placed the country in fourth place, behind C\u00f4te d'Ivoire, Senegal, and Sao Tome, but in 2021, Nigeria joined the World Logistics Passport, a private sector group working to increase the effiency of global trade.\nRoads.\nFour trans-African automobile routes pass through Nigeria:\nNigeria has the largest road network in West Africa. It covers about 200,000\u00a0km, of which 60,000\u00a0km are asphalted. Nigeria's roads and highways handle 90% of all passenger and freight traffic. It contributes N2.4trn ($6.4bn) to GDP in 2020. The federal government is responsible for 35,000\u00a0km of the road network. The motorway links of important economic centers such as Lagos-Ibadan, Lagos-Badagry and Enugu-Onitsha have been renovated.\nThe rest of the road network is a state matter and therefore in very different shape, depending on which state you are in. Economically strong states such as Lagos, Anambra and Rivers receive particularly poor evaluations. Most roads were built in the 1980s and early 1990s. Poor maintenance and inferior materials have worsened the condition of the roads. Travelling is very difficult. Especially during the rainy season, the use of secondary roads is sometimes almost impossible due to potholes. Road bandits often take advantage of this situation for their criminal purposes.\nRail transport.\nRailways have undergone a massive revamping with projects such as the Lagos-Kano Standard Gauge Railway being completed connecting northern cities of Kano, Kaduna, Abuja, Ibadan and Lagos.\nAir transport.\nThe Nigerian aviation industry generated 198.62 billion naira (\u20ac400 million) in 2019, representing a contribution of 0.14% to GDP. It was the fastest-growing sector of the Nigerian economy in 2019. Passenger traffic increased from 9,358,166 in 2020 to 15,886,955 in 2021, a significant increase of over 69%. Aircraft movements increased by more than 46% from 2020 to 2021. Total freight volumes were 191 tonnes in 2020 but increased to 391 tonnes in 2021. In December 2021, the Anambra International Cargo Airport started its operation. In April 2022, the second terminal of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport has been inaugurated. It will increase the capacity of the airport to 14 million passengers per year.\nThere are 54 airports in Nigeria, The principal airports are:\nNigeria had in the past operated a state-owned airline Nigeria Airways which was over-indebted in 2003 and was bought by the British Virgin Group; since 28 June 2005, it has flown under the name Virgin Nigeria Airways. At the end of 2008, the Virgin Group announced its withdrawal from the airline; since September 2009 the airline has been operating as Nigerian Eagle Airlines. The largest airline in Nigeria is privately owned Air Peace, founded in 2012.\nDemographics.\nThe United Nations estimates that the population of Nigeria in was at , distributed as 51.7% rural and 48.3% urban, and with a population density of 167.5 people per square kilometre. Around 42.5% of the population were 14 years or younger, 19.6% were aged 15\u201324, 30.7% were aged 25\u201354, 4.0% were aged 55\u201364, and 3.1% were aged 65 years or older. The median age in 2017 was 18.4 years. Nigeria is the world's sixth-most populous country. The birth rate is 35.2-births/1,000 population and the death rate is 9.6 deaths/1,000 population as of 2017, while the total fertility rate is 5.07 children born/woman. Nigeria's population increased by 57\u00a0million from 1990 to 2008, a 60% growth rate in less than two decades. Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa and accounts for about 17% of the continent's total population as of 2017; however, exactly how populous is a subject of speculation.\nMillions of Nigerians have emigrated during times of economic hardship, primarily to Europe, North America and Australia. It is estimated that over a million Nigerians have emigrated to the United States and constitute the Nigerian American populace. Individuals in many such Diasporic communities have joined the \"Egbe Omo Yoruba\" society, a national association of Yoruba descendants in North America. Nigeria's largest city is Lagos. Lagos has grown from about 300,000 in 1950 to an estimated 13.4\u00a0million in 2017.\nNigeria has more than 250 ethnic groups, with varying languages and customs, creating a country of rich ethnic diversity. The three largest ethnic groups are the Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo, together accounting for more than 60% of the population, while the Edo, Ijaw, Ful\u0253e, Kanuri, Urhobo-Isoko, Ibibio, Ebira, Nupe, Gbagyi, Jukun, Igala, Idoma, Ogoni and Tiv account for between 35 and 40%; other minorities make up the remaining 5%. The Middle Belt of Nigeria is known for its diversity of ethnic groups, including the Atyap, Berom, Goemai, Igala, Kofyar, Pyem, and Tiv. There are small minorities of British, American, Indian, Chinese (est. 50,000), white Zimbabwean, Japanese, Greek, Syrian and Lebanese immigrants. Immigrants also include those from other West African or East African nations.\nLanguages.\nFive hundred and twenty-five languages have been spoken in Nigeria; out of these 525 languages, eight are now extinct. In some areas of Nigeria, ethnic groups speak more than one language. The official language of Nigeria, English, was chosen to facilitate the cultural and linguistic unity of the country, owing to the influence of British colonisation which ended in 1960. Nigerian Pidgin English, first used by British and African slavers to facilitate the Atlantic slave trade in the late 17th century, has replaced the native language for many Nigerians. Many French speakers from surrounding countries have influenced the English spoken in the border regions of Nigeria and some Nigerian citizens have become fluent enough in French to work in the surrounding countries. The French spoken in Nigeria may be mixed with some native languages and English.\nThe major languages spoken in Nigeria represent three major families of languages of Africa: the majority are Niger-Congo languages, such as Igbo, Yoruba, Ibibio, Ijaw, Fulfulde, Ogoni, and Edo. Kanuri, spoken in the northeast, primarily in Borno and Yobe State, is part of the Nilo-Saharan family, and Hausa is an Afroasiatic language. Even though most ethnic groups prefer to communicate in their languages, English as the official language is widely used for education, business transactions and official purposes. English as a first language is used by only a small minority of the country's urban elite, and it is not spoken at all in some rural areas. Hausa is the most widely spoken of the three main languages spoken in Nigeria.\nWith the majority of Nigeria's populace in rural areas, the major languages of communication in the country remain indigenous languages. Some of the largest of these, notably Yoruba and Igbo, have derived standardised languages from several different dialects and are widely spoken by those ethnic groups. Nigerian Pidgin English, often known simply as \"Pidgin\" or \"Broken\" (Broken English), is also a popular lingua franca, though with varying regional influences on dialect and slang. The pidgin English or Nigerian English is widely spoken within the Niger Delta Region.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nNigeria is a religiously diverse society, with Nigerians nearly equally divided into Muslims and Christians, with a tiny minority of adherents of traditional African religions and other religions. The Christian share of Nigeria's population is in decline because of the lower fertility rate compared to Muslims in the country. As in other parts of Africa where Islam and Christianity are dominant, religious syncretism with the traditional African religions is common.\nA 2012 report on religion and public life by the Pew Research Center stated that in 2010, 49.3% of Nigeria's population was Christian, 48.8% was Muslim, and 1.9% were followers of indigenous and other religions (such as the Bori in the North) or unaffiliated. However, in a report released by Pew Research Center in 2015, the Muslim population was estimated to be 50%, and by 2060, according to the report, Muslims will account for about 60% of the country. The 2010 census of Association of Religion Data Archives has also reported that 48.8% of the total population was Christian, slightly larger than the Muslim population of 43.4%, while 7.5% were members of other religions. However, these estimates should be taken with caution because sample data is mostly collected from major urban areas in the south, which are predominantly Christian. According to a 2018 estimate in The World Factbook by the CIA, the population is estimated to be 53.5% Muslim, 45.9% Christian (10.6% Roman Catholic and 35.3% Protestant and other Christian), and 0.6% as other.\nIslam dominates northwestern Nigeria and northeastern Nigeria (Kanuri, Fulani and other groups). In the west, the Yoruba people are predominantly Christian with a significant Muslim minority in addition to a few adherents of traditional religions. Protestant and locally cultivated Christianity are widely practised in Western areas, while Roman Catholicism is a more prominent Christian feature of southeastern Nigeria. Both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are observed in the Ibibio, Efik, Ijo and Ogoni lands of the south. The Igbos (predominant in the east) and the Ibibio (south) are 98% Christian, with 2% practising traditional religions. The middle belt of Nigeria contains the largest number of minority ethnic groups in Nigeria, who were found to be majority Christians and members of traditional religions, with a significant Muslim minority.\nHealth.\nHealth care delivery in Nigeria is a concurrent responsibility of the three tiers of government in the country, and the private sector. Nigeria has been reorganising its health system since the Bamako Initiative of 1987, which formally promoted community-based methods of increasing accessibility of drugs and health care services to the population, in part by implementing user fees. The new strategy dramatically increased accessibility through community-based health care reform, resulting in more efficient and equitable provision of services. A comprehensive approach strategy was extended to all areas of health care, with subsequent improvement in the health care indicators and improvement in health care efficiency and cost.\nAlmost half of Nigerians, or 48%, report that they or a household member has fallen ill in the last three months. Malaria had been diagnosed in 88% of the cases and typhoid fever in 32%. High blood pressure was in third place with 8%. For symptoms of malaria, 41% of Nigerians turn to a hospital, 22% to a chemist's shop, 21% to a pharmacy and 11% seek cure through herbs.\nThe HIV/AIDS rate in Nigeria is much lower than in other African nations such as Botswana or South Africa whose prevalence (percentage) rates are in the double digits. As of 2019[ [update]], the HIV prevalence rate among adults of ages 15\u201349 was 1.5 per cent. Life expectancy in Nigeria is 54.7 years on average, and 71% and 39% of the population have access to improved water sources and improved sanitation, respectively. As of 2019[ [update]], the infant mortality is 74.2 deaths per 1,000 live births.\nIn 2012, a new bone marrow donor program was launched by the University of Nigeria to help people with leukaemia, lymphoma, or sickle cell disease to find a compatible donor for a life-saving bone marrow transplant, which cures them of their conditions. Nigeria became the second African country to have successfully carried out this surgery. In the 2014 Ebola outbreak, Nigeria was the first country to effectively contain and eliminate the Ebola threat that was ravaging three other countries in the West African region; the unique method of contact tracing employed by Nigeria became an effective method later used by countries such as the United States when Ebola threats were discovered.\nThe Nigerian health care system is continuously faced with a shortage of doctors known as \"brain drain\", because of emigration by skilled Nigerian doctors to North America and Europe. In 1995, an estimated 21,000 Nigerian doctors were practising in the United States alone, which is about the same as the number of doctors working in the Nigerian public service. Retaining these expensively trained professionals has been identified as one of the goals of the government.\nEducation.\nEducation in Nigeria is overseen by the Ministry of Education. Local authorities take responsibility for implementing policy for state-controlled public education and state schools at a regional level. The education system is divided into kindergarten, primary education, secondary education and tertiary education. After the 1970s oil boom, tertiary education was improved so it would reach every subregion of Nigeria. 68% of the Nigerian population is literate, and the rate for men (75.7%) is higher than that for women (60.6%).\nNigeria provides free, government-supported education, but attendance is not compulsory at any level, and certain groups, such as nomads and the handicapped, are under-served. Nearly 10.5 million Nigerian children aged 5\u201314 years are not in school. Only 61% of 6\u201311 year-olds regularly attend primary school. The education system consists of six years of primary school, three years of junior secondary school, three years of senior secondary school, and four, five or six years of university education leading to a bachelor's degree. The government has majority control of university education. Tertiary education in Nigeria consists of universities (public and private), polytechnics, monotechnics, and colleges of education. The country has a total of 138 universities, with 40 federally owned, 39 state-owned, and 59 privately owned. Nigeria was ranked 113th in the Global Innovation Index in 2024.\nCrime.\nThe security situation in Nigeria is considered inadequate despite political stability. 68% of Nigerians feel \"not safe\" in their country. 77% do not know of an alarm number (\"helpline\") for emergencies.\nNigerians, according to the above survey, fear being robbed (24%) or kidnapped (also 24%), being victims of armed bandits or of petty theft (both 8%), or being harmed in the herdsmen-farmers conflict (also 8%). This is followed by \"ritual killings\" (4%) and \"Boko Haram\" (3.5%). Respondents see \"more security personnel and better training\" (37%), \"reduction of unemployment\" (13%) and \"prayers / divine intervention\" (8%) as promising countermeasures.\nThe number of homicides in Nigeria varies greatly depending on the state. Metropoles such as Lagos, Kano and Ibadan seem much safer than rural areas. Kano has better statistics than the UK, with one and one-half homicides per year and one million inhabitants \u2013 which can be explained by the fact that the region's religious and morality police not only monitor the morality of the inhabitants and crack down on drug users, but also have a curbing effect on murder and manslaughter. This contrasts with other cities that are also Islamic, such as Maiduguri and Kaduna, which have worrying statistics on homicides.\nThere is some piracy in the Gulf of Guinea, with attacks directed at all types of vessels. However, security measures on board of mentioned vessels have recently meant that pirates are now more likely to attack fishing villages.\nInternationally, Nigeria is infamous for a type of advance-fee scam along with a form of confidence trick. The victim is talked into sending money or bank account information to the scammer on the premise that a larger amount of money will be transferred to them. In reality, the scammer collects money from the victim with no payout occurring. In 2003, the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission was created to combat this and other forms of organised financial crime. The EFCC is quite active.\nPoverty.\nAccording to the International Monetary Fund, 32% of Nigeria's population lives in extreme poverty (as of 2017), living on less than US$2.15 a day. The World Bank stated in March 2022 that the number of poor Nigerians had increased by 5 million to 95.1 million during the Covid period. Accordingly, 40% of Nigerians live below the poverty line of US$1.90 as handled by the World Bank.\nThe threshold amounts used internationally by the IMF and the World Bank do not take into account the local purchasing power of a US dollar. The methodology is therefore not without controversy. Despite the undoubted existence of slums in Nigeria, for example, the fact that 92% of men and 88% of women in Nigeria own a mobile phone is difficult to reconcile with the poverty percentages published by the IMF and the World Bank.\nHuman rights.\nNigeria's human rights record remains poor. According to the U.S. Department of State, the most significant human rights problems are the use of excessive force by security forces, impunity for abuses by security forces, arbitrary arrests, prolonged pretrial detention, judicial corruption and executive influence on the judiciary, rape, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners, detainees and suspects; harsh and life\u2011threatening prison and detention centre conditions; human trafficking for prostitution and forced labour, societal violence and vigilante killings, child labour, child abuse and child sexual exploitation, domestic violence, discrimination based on ethnicity, region and religion.\nNigeria is a state party of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women It also has signed the Maputo Protocol, an international treaty on women's rights, and the African Union Women's Rights Framework. Discrimination based on sex is a significant human rights issue. Forced marriages are common. Child marriage remains common in Northern Nigeria; 39% of girls are married before age 15, although the Marriage Rights Act banning marriage of girls under 18 was introduced on a federal level in 2008. There is rampant polygamy in Northern Nigeria. Domestic violence is common. Women have fewer land rights. Maternal mortality was at 814 per 100,000 live births in 2015. Female genital mutilation is common, although a ban was implemented in 2015. At least half a million suffer from vaginal fistula, largely as a result of lack of medical care.\nWomen face a large amount of inequality Politically in Nigeria, being subjugated to a bias that is sexist and reinforced by socio-cultural, economic and oppressive ways. Women throughout the country were only politically emancipated in 1979. Yet husbands continue to dictate the votes for many women, which upholds the patriarchal system. Most workers in the informal sector are women. Women's representation in government since independence from Britain is very poor. Women have been reduced to sideline roles in appointive posts throughout all levels of government and still make up a tiny minority of elected officials. But nowadays with more education available to the public, Nigerian women are taking steps to have more active roles in the public, and with the help of different initiatives, more businesses are being started by women.\nUnder the Shari'a penal code that applies to Muslims in twelve northern states, offences such as alcohol consumption, homosexuality, infidelity and theft carry harsh sentences, including amputation, lashing, stoning and long prison terms. Nigeria is considered to be one of the most homophobic countries in the world. \nCulture.\nLiterature.\nMost Nigerian literature is written in English, partly because this language is understood by most Nigerians. Literature in the Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo languages (the three most populous language groups in Nigeria) does exist, however, and in the case of the Hausa, for example, can look back on a centuries-old tradition. With Wole Soyinka, Nigeria can present a Nobel Prize winner for literature. Ben Okri won the prestigious Booker Prize in 1991; Chinua Achebe did the same in 2007. Achebe also won the Peace Award of the German Book Trade in 2002. Lola Shoneyin has won several awards for her book The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives.\nMusic.\nThe earliest known form of popular music in Nigeria was the palm-wine music which dominated the music landscape in the 1920s. Tunde King was a prominent name in the genre.\nThe 1930s saw the emergence of Onitsha Native Orchestra. They explored various social themes and trends in their native singing style.\nIn the 1950s and 1960s, Highlife music became a popular staple in the country with regional genres such as the Igbo Highlife. A notable exponent of the genre were the genre's first Nigerian boy band Oriental Brothers International, Bobby Benson, Osita Osadebe, Victor Olaiya, Rex Lawson, Dr Sir Warrior and Oliver De Coque.\nThe 1970s was the era of Fela Kuti, the pioneer of Afrobeat genre \u2013 fused from Highlife, Jazz and Yoruba Music. Fela later evolved into social activism and black consciousness.\nIn the 1980s, King Sunny Ade achieved success with Juju Music. Prominent singer of the era is William Onyeabor who is known for his fusion of Funk Music and Disco.\nBy the 1990s, reggae music transitioned into the music scene. Prominent reggae artiste of the era was Majek Fashek. By the mid-1990s, Hip hop Music began to gain popularity, led by acts such as Remedies, Trybes Men, JJC, etc. Throughout the years, highlife music retained its popularity in the country.\nAt the turn of the century, famous 2000s acts like P-Square, 2face, and Dbanj were credited to have made tremendous impact in the evolution of Afrobeats and its popularization on the international stage.\nIn November 2008, Nigeria's music scene (and that of Africa) received international attention when MTV hosted the continent's first African music awards show in Abuja. Over a decade later, the Afrobeat genre has widely taken over, with artist like Davido, Wizkid and Burna Boy.\nCinema.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n Top five highest grossing Nigerian films as at 2024:\nThe Nigerian film industry is known as Nollywood (a blend of \"Nigeria\" and \"Hollywood\") and is now the second-largest producer of movies in the world, having surpassed Hollywood. Only India's Bollywood is larger. Nigerian film studios are based in Lagos, Kano, and Enugu, and form a major portion of the local economy of these cities. Nigerian cinema is Africa's largest movie industry in terms of both value and the number of movies produced per year. Although Nigerian films have been produced since the 1960s, the country's film industry has been aided by the rise of affordable digital filming and editing technologies.\nThe 2009 thriller film \"The Figurine\" heightened the media attention towards the New Nigerian Cinema revolution. The film was a critical and commercial success in Nigeria, and it was also screened in international film festivals. The 2010 film \"Ij\u00e9\" by Chineze Anyaene, overtook \"The Figurine\" to become the highest-grossing Nigerian film; a record it held for four years until it was overtaken in 2014 by \"Half of a Yellow Sun\" (2013). By 2016, this record was held by \"The Wedding Party\" by Kemi Adetiba.\nBy the end of 2013, the film industry reportedly hit a record-breaking revenue of \u20a61.72\u00a0trillion (US$4.1\u00a0billion). As of 2014, the industry was worth \u20a6853.9\u00a0billion (US$5.1\u00a0billion), making it the third most valuable film industry in the world behind the United States and India. It contributed about 1.4% to Nigeria's economy; this was attributed to the increase in the number of quality films produced and more formal distribution methods.\nT.B. Joshua's Emmanuel TV, originating from Nigeria, is one of the most viewed television stations across Africa.\nFestival.\nThere are many festivals in Nigeria, some of which date to the period before the arrival of the major religions in this ethnically and culturally diverse society. The main Muslim and Christian festivals are often celebrated in ways that are unique to Nigeria or unique to the people of a locality. The Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation has been working with the states to upgrade the traditional festivals, which may become important sources of tourism revenue.\nCuisine.\nNigerian cuisine, like West African cuisine in general, is known for its richness and variety. Many different spices, herbs, and flavourings are used in conjunction with palm oil or groundnut oil to create deeply flavoured sauces and soups often made very hot with chilli peppers. Nigerian feasts are colourful and lavish, while aromatic market and roadside snacks cooked on barbecues or fried in oil are plentiful and varied. Suya is usually sold in urban areas especially during night-time.\nFashion.\nThe fashion industry in Nigeria contributes significantly to the country's economics. Casual attire is commonly worn but formal and traditional styles are also worn depending on the occasion. Nigeria is known not only for its fashionable textiles and garments, but also for its fashion designers who have increasingly gained international recognition. Euromonitor estimates the Sub-Saharan fashion market to be worth $31 billion, with Nigeria accounting for 15% of these $31 billion. Nigeria is not only known for their many fashion textiles and garment pieces that are secret to their culture. They also outputted many fashion designers who have developed many techniques and businesses along the way.\nSports.\nFootball is largely considered Nigeria's national sport, and the country has its own professional football league. Nigeria's national football team, known as the \"Super Eagles\", has played in the FIFA World Cup on six occasions (1994, 1998, 2002, 2010, 2014, and 2018). In April 1994, the Super Eagles ranked fifth in the FIFA World Rankings, the highest ranking achieved by an African team. They won the Africa Cup of Nations in 1980, 1994, and 2013, and have also hosted both the U17 and U20 FIFA World Cup. They won the gold medal for football in the 1996 Summer Olympics (in which they beat Argentina) becoming the first African football team to win gold in Olympic football.\nNigeria is also involved in other sports such as basketball, cricket and track and field. Nigeria's national basketball team made the headlines internationally when it became the first African team to beat the United States men's national team. In earlier years, Nigeria qualified for the 2012 Summer Olympics as it beat heavily favoured world elite teams such as Greece and Lithuania. Nigeria has been home to numerous internationally recognised basketball players in the world's top leagues in America, Europe and Asia. These players include Basketball Hall of Famer Hakeem Olajuwon, and later players in the NBA. The Nigerian Premier League has become one of the biggest and most-watched basketball competitions in Africa. The games have aired on \"Kwese TV\" and have averaged a viewership of over a million people.\nNigeria made history by qualifying the first bobsled team for the Winter Olympics from Africa when their women's two-person team qualified for the bobsled competition at the XXIII Olympic Winter Games. In the early 1990s, Scrabble was made an official sport in Nigeria; by the end of 2017, there were around 4,000 players in more than 100 clubs in the country. In 2018, the Nigerian Curling Federation was established to introduce a new sport to the country in order to make the game part of the curriculum at the elementary, high school, and university levels. At the 2019 World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship in Norway, Nigeria won their first international match beating France 8\u20135.\nNigeria's women's and men's national teams in beach volleyball competed at the 2018\u20132020 CAVB Beach Volleyball Continental Cup. The country's U21 national teams qualified for the 2019 FIVB Beach Volleyball U21 World Championships.\nNigeria is the birthplace of the sport loofball.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["24854035", "21383"], "permutation_1": ["21383", "24854035"], "permutation_2": ["24854035", "21383"], "permutation_3": ["21383", "24854035"]}
{"id": "2hop__628752_538661", "docs_added": {"36694508": "In the Shadow of Greatness\n2012 book\nIn the Shadow of Greatness is a book written by 33 members of the United States Naval Academy Class of 2002 and published by the United States Naval Institute in 2012. \nThe authors describe how their lives were shaped by their experiences at the Academy, the September 11 attacks, and the events following graduation. The stories describe subjects such as relief assignments to Haiti, diplomatic missions, cross-service training and deployments, losing infantrymen in combat, and the stress of pilots on missions. There are homages to the fallen, including Navy Lieutenant Richard F. Andersen, Marine Corps Capt. Matthew C. Freeman, Navy Lieutenant John J. Houston, Marine Corps Lt. Col. Kevin Shea, and Marine Corps 2nd Lieutenant Andrew Torres. Gary C. Ross discusses his same-sex marriage following the repeal of DADT; others tell of rescues at sea and in the crater of Mount St. Helens. Other topics include two-career couples and the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.\nThe foreword was written by David Gergen and the epilogue by Admiral Mike Mullen. General John Allen\u2014Commandant of Midshipmen in 2002\u2014wrote for the book, as did his predecessor, Admiral Sam Locklear.\nThe authors' proceeds go to veterans' organizations, including Luke's Wings, the Semper Fi Fund, The Mission Continues, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, The Travis Manion Foundation, and the Matthew Freeman Project.\nReleased in August 2012, \"In the Shadow of Greatness\" achieved Los Angeles Times Bestseller status that October. John Nagl reviewed the book in the September 2012 issue of the Naval Institute's Proceedings Magazine, writing: \"All of these stories give voice to courage, sacrifice, and the nobility of living in the service of others.\" Tom Brokaw provided this blurb: \"This is a must read for all Americans - an up close and personal account of duty and sacrifice by graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy in Iraq and Afghanistan.\"\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1203265": "United States Naval Institute\nAmerican private non-profit naval military association\nThe United States Naval Institute (USNI) is a private non-profit military association that offers independent, nonpartisan forums for debate of national security issues. In addition to publishing magazines and books, the Naval Institute holds several annual conferences. The Naval Institute is based in Annapolis, Maryland.\nEstablished in 1873, the Naval Institute claimed \"almost 50,000 members\" in 2020, mostly active and retired personnel of the United States Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. The organization also has members in over 90 countries.\nThe organization has no official or funding ties to the United States Naval Academy or the United States Navy, though it is based on the grounds of the Naval Academy through permission granted by a 1936 Act of Congress.\nHistory.\nThe United States Naval Institute was formed on October 9, 1873, by 15 naval officers gathered at the Naval Academy's Department of Physics and Chemistry building in Annapolis to discuss, among other topics, the implications of a smaller, post-Civil War Navy. Rear Admiral John L. Worden, former commander of the USS \"Monitor\", served as the first president.\nIn 1874, the Naval Institute began to accept papers and publish the proceedings of its discussions, which were distributed to the organization's members. In 1898, the Naval Institute Press was created to publish basic naval guides. The most popular of these, \"The Bluejacket's Manual\", is on its 26th edition, and is still issued to all enlistees of the United States Navy. The press eventually expanded to publish more general-interest titles in history, biography, and current affairs.\nIn 1992, the Naval Institute Foundation, Inc., was established to stabilize the organization's funding.\nIn 1999, the Naval Institute transferred its former headquarters, Preble Hall, to the Naval Academy, and renovated a derelict Navy hospital to serve as its new headquarters. The new building was named Beach Hall after Captain Edward L. Beach Jr., author and Navy Cross recipient; and his father, Captain Edward L. Beach Sr., who had served as the institute's secretary-treasurer.\nOn 30 September 2021, the Naval Institute opened a conference center with a 406-seat auditorium, reception spaces, an indoor/outdoor rooftop terrace, five meeting rooms, and a broadcast studio. It is named for Jack C. Taylor, a decorated World War II Navy fighter pilot who founded Enterprise Rent-A-Car.\nPublications and products.\n\"Proceedings\".\n\"Proceedings\" is the Naval Institute's monthly magazine. Published since 1874, it is one of the oldest continuously published magazines in the United States. Issues include articles from military professionals and civilian experts, historical essays, book reviews, full-color photography, and reader commentary. Roughly a third are written by active duty and active reserve personnel, a third by retired military, and a third by civilians. \"Proceedings\" also frequently carries feature articles by Secretaries of Defense, Secretaries of the Navy, Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and top leaders of the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. The magazine has published controversial articles on contentious issues; moreover, military officials have been known to block certain articles from being submitted to the journal. For example, in 1962, the Department of Defense blocked a Marine Corps lieutenant colonel from submitting an article to \"Proceedings\" about a 1949 proposal to merge the Marines' aviation units into the Air Force.\n\"Naval History\".\n\"Naval History\" is the Naval Institute's bimonthly magazine. First published in 1987, its articles detail the role of sea power in American history. The magazine's contributors have included historians David McCullough and James M. McPherson; former sailors, Marines and Coast Guardsmen such as Ernest Borgnine, Gene Hackman, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.; and journalists, such as Walter Cronkite and Tom Brokaw.\nNaval Institute Press.\nThe Naval Institute Press was founded in 1898 and publishes about 80 books a year. Its twice-yearly catalog includes works on history, biography, professional military education, and occasional works of popular fiction, such as Tom Clancy's first novel, \"The Hunt for Red October\" and Stephen Coonts' \"Flight of the Intruder\". Its professional titles include \"The Bluejacket's Manual\", \"Naval Shiphandling\", \"The Naval Officer's Guide\", \"The Marine Officer\u2019s Guide\", and \"The Coast Guardsman\u2019s Manual\". \"The Naval Institute Guide to Combat Fleets of the World\" and \"The Naval Institute Guide to Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet\" are popular reference books with the military, the media, and maritime enthusiasts.\nUSNI News.\nUSNI News is the Naval Institute's news service. Founded in 2012, USNI News operates from Monday to Friday and primarily focuses on defense-related topics. USNI News heavily covered the Fat Leonard scandal as it developed.\n\"Americans at War\".\nIn 2007, USNI produced \"Americans At War\", a series of video interviews with American combat veterans of conflicts dating to World War I. Former President George H. W. Bush, Senators Bob Dole, Daniel Inouye, Bob Kerrey, and others described how combat changed their lives. The series was broadcast on PBS television stations nationwide.\nArchives.\nPhotographs.\nThe Naval Institute holds more than 450,000 images of people, ships and aircraft from all branches of the armed forces. The photographs date from the American Civil War to the present.\nOral histories.\nThe Naval Institute's oral history program preserves the reminiscences of numerous American military figures, including General Jimmy Doolittle, Admirals Arleigh Burke and Chester W. Nimitz. The Naval Institute records a series of interviews covering the life story of each participant. The interviews are then transcribed, annotated, indexed, and bound. Since the inception of the program in 1969, more than 230 bound volumes have been completed, and interviews have been recorded to produce dozens more.\nNotable members.\nThe institute's notable current and former members include:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "113352": "The Shadow\nFictional character\nThe Shadow is a fictional character created by American magazine publishers Street & Smith and writer Walter B. Gibson. Originally created to be a mysterious radio show narrator, and developed into a distinct literary character in 1931 by Gibson, The Shadow has been adapted into other forms of media, including American comic books, comic strips, serials, video games, and at least five feature films. The radio drama included episodes voiced by Orson Welles.\nThe Shadow debuted on July 31, 1930, as the mysterious narrator of the radio program \"Detective Story Hour\", which was developed to boost sales of Street & Smith's monthly pulp \"Detective Story Magazine\". When listeners of the program began asking at newsstands for copies of \"that Shadow detective magazine\", Street & Smith launched a magazine based on the character, and hired Gibson to create a concept to fit the name and voice and to write a story featuring him. The first issue of the pulp series \"The Shadow Magazine\" went on sale April 1, 1931.\nOn September 26, 1937, \"The Shadow\", a new radio drama based on the character as created by Gibson for the pulp magazine, premiered with the story \"The Death House Rescue\", in which The Shadow was characterized as having \"the hypnotic power to cloud men's minds so they cannot see him\". In the magazine stories, The Shadow did not become literally invisible.\nThe introductory line from the radio adaptation of The Shadow \u2013 \"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!\" \u2013 spoken by actor Frank Readick, has earned a place in the American idiom. These words were accompanied by an ominous laugh and a musical theme, Camille Saint-Sa\u00ebns' \"Le Rouet d'Omphale\" (\"Omphale's Spinning Wheel\" composed in 1872).\nThe Shadow, at the end of each episode, reminded listeners, \"The weed of crime bears bitter fruit! Crime does not pay...The Shadow knows!\"\nSome early episodes used the alternate statement, \"As you sow evil, so shall you reap evil! Crime does not pay...The Shadow knows!\"\nPublication history.\nOrigin of the character's name.\nTo boost the sales of its \"Detective Story Magazine,\" Street & Smith Publications hired David Chrisman, of the Ruthrauff & Ryan advertising agency, and writer-director William Sweets to adapt the magazine's stories into a radio series. Chrisman and Sweets thought the upcoming series should be narrated by a mysterious storyteller with a sinister voice and began searching for a suitable name. One of their scriptwriters, Harry Engman Charlot, suggested various possibilities, such as \"The Inspector\" or \"The Sleuth\". Charlot then proposed the ideal name for the phantom announcer: \"The Shadow\".\nThus, beginning on July 31, 1930, \"The Shadow\" was the name given to the mysterious narrator of the \"Detective Story Hour\" radio program. The narrator was initially voiced by James LaCurto, who was replaced after four months by prolific character actor Frank Readick Jr. The episodes were drawn from the \"Detective Story Magazine\" issued by Street & Smith, the nation's oldest and largest publisher of pulp magazines at the time. Although the latter company had hoped the radio broadcasts would boost the declining sales of \"Detective Story Magazine\", the result was quite different. Listeners found the sinister announcer much more compelling than the unrelated stories. They soon began asking newsdealers for copies of \"that \"Shadow\" detective magazine\", even though it did not exist.\nCreation as a distinctive literary character.\nRecognizing the demand and responding promptly, circulation manager Henry William Ralston of Street & Smith commissioned Walter B. Gibson to begin writing stories about \"The Shadow\" Using the pen name of Maxwell Grant and claiming the stories were \"from The Shadow's private annals\" as told to him, Gibson wrote 282 out of 325 tales over the next 20 years: a novel-length story twice a month (1st and 15th). The first story produced was \"The Living Shadow\" published April 1, 1931.\nGibson's characterization of The Shadow laid the foundations for the archetype of the superhero, including stylized imagery and title, sidekicks, supervillains, and a secret identity. Clad in black, The Shadow operated mainly after dark as a vigilante in the name of justice, terrifying criminals into vulnerability. Gibson himself claimed the literary inspirations upon which he had drawn were Bram Stoker's \"Dracula\" and Edward Bulwer-Lytton's \"The House and the Brain\". Another possible inspiration for The Shadow is the French character Judex; the first episode of the original \"Judex\" film serial was released in the United States as \"The Mysterious Shadow\", and Judex's costume is similar to The Shadow's. French comics historian Xavier Fournier notes other similarities with another silent serial, \"The Shielding Shadow\", whose protagonist had a power of invisibility, and considers The Shadow to be a mix between the two characters. In the 1940s, some \"Shadow\" comic strips were translated in France as adventures of Judex.\nBecause of the great effort involved in writing two full-length novels every month, several guest writers were hired to write occasional installments in order to lighten Gibson's workload. Those guest writers included Lester Dent, who also wrote the Doc Savage stories, and Theodore Tinsley. In the late 1940s, mystery novelist Bruce Elliott (also a magician) temporarily replaced Gibson as the primary author of the pulp series (he wrote #'s 306 through 320). Richard Wormser, a reader for Street & Smith, wrote two Shadow stories. For a complete list of Street and Smith's Shadow novels (and a list of the reprint editions), see the List of The Shadow stories article.\nA new beginning at Belmont Books.\n\"The Shadow Magazine\" ceased publication with the Summer 1949 issue, but Walter B. Gibson wrote three new \"official\" stories between 1963 and 1980. The first began a new series of nine Shadow mass market paperback novels from Belmont Books. In this series, The Shadow is given psychic powers, including the radio character's ability \"to cloud men's minds\", so that he effectively became invisible. \"Return of The Shadow\" was published under his own name. The remaining eight novels in this series, \"The Shadow Strikes\", \"Shadow Beware\", \"Cry Shadow\", \"The Shadow's Revenge\", \"Mark of The Shadow\", \"Shadow Go Mad\", \"Night of The Shadow\", and \"The Shadow, Destination: Moon\", were written by Dennis Lynds, not Gibson, under the Maxwell Grant pseudonym.\nThe other two Gibson works were the novelettes \"The Riddle of the Rangoon Ruby\", published June 1, 1979 in \"The Shadow Scrapbook\". and \"Blackmail Bay\", published February 1, 1980 in \"The Duende History of The Shadow Magazine\".\nLiterary sequels and reboots.\nThe Shadow returned in 2015 in the authorized novel \"The Sinister Shadow\", an entry in the \"Wild Adventures of Doc Savage\" series from Altus Press. The novel, written by Will Murray, used unpublished material originally written in 1932 by Doc Savage originator Lester Dent and published under the pen name Kenneth Robeson. Set in 1933, the story details the conflict between the two pulp magazine icons during a crime wave caused by a murderous kidnapping-extortion ring led by the mysterious criminal mastermind known as the Funeral Director.\nA sequel, \"Empire of Doom\", was published in 2016 and takes place seven years later in 1940. The Shadow's old enemy, Shiwan Khan, attacks his hated adversary. Doc Savage joins forces with The Shadow to vanquish Khan in a Doc Savage novel written by Murray, from a concept by Dent.\nIn 2020, James Patterson Entertainment and Cond\u00e9 Nast Entertainment announced a new series written by James Patterson and Brian Sitts. The arrangement also includes potential screen adaptations of these novels. The first novel, \"The Shadow\", released in 2021, serves as a sequel-update with some science-fiction elements, bringing Lamont Cranston from 1937 into 2087 to battle Shiwan Khan in a futuristic New York. The second Patterson-Sitts Shadow novel, \"Circle of Death\", was published in 2023.\nCharacter development.\nThe character and look of The Shadow gradually evolved over his lengthy fictional existence:\nAs depicted in the pulps, The Shadow wore a wide-brimmed black hat and a black, crimson-lined cloak with an upturned collar over a standard black business suit. In the 1940s comic books, the later comic book series, and the 1994 film starring Alec Baldwin, he wore either the black hat or a wide-brimmed, black fedora and a crimson scarf just below his nose and across his mouth and chin. Both the cloak and scarf covered either a black double-breasted trench coat or a regular black suit. As seen in some of the later comics series, The Shadow also would wear his hat and scarf with either a black Inverness coat or Inverness cape.\nIn the radio drama that debuted in 1937, The Shadow does not wear a costume because he is invisible when he operates as a vigilante, a feature born out of necessity. Time constraints of 1930s radio made it difficult to explain to listeners where The Shadow was hiding and how he remained concealed from criminals until he was ready to strike, so the character was given invisibility, meaning the criminals (like the radio audience) only knew him by his haunting voice. The actors used their normal voice when the hero was in his civilian identity of Lamont Cranston and effects were added when he became invisible and acted as The Shadow, his voice now having a sinister and seemingly omnipresent quality. To explain this power, radio episodes regularly said that while a young man, The Shadow traveled around the world and then through the Orient, where he learned how to read thoughts and became a master of hypnotism, granting him \"the mysterious power to cloud men's minds, so they could not see him\". In the episode \"The Temple Bells of Neban\" (1937), The Shadow said he developed these abilities in India specifically, under the guidance of a \"Yogi priest\" who was \"Keeper of the Temple of Cobras\" in Delhi. He does not wear a mask or any disguise while invisible, and so in episodes such as \"The Temple Bells of Neban\" he is cautious when he meets an enemy who could potentially disrupt his hypnotic abilities, exposing his true face and instantly making him a visible target for attack.\nBackground.\nIn the print adventures, The Shadow is Kent Allard, although his real name is not revealed until \"The Shadow Unmasks\" (1937). Early stories explain he was once a famed aviator who fought for the French during World War I, known by the alias the \"Black Eagle\" according to one character in \"The Shadow's Shadow\" (1933). Later stories revised this alias as the \"Dark Eagle\", beginning with \"The Shadow Unmasks\". After the war's conclusion, Allard finds a new challenge in waging war on criminals. Allard falsifies his death by crash landing his plane in Guatemala, encountering the indigenous \"Xinca tribe\" as a result, who see him as a supernatural being and provide him with two loyal aides. Allard returns to the United States and takes residence in New York City, adopting numerous identities to acquire valuable information and conceal his true nature, and recruiting a variety of agents to aid his war on crime, only a few of whom are aware of his other identities.\nAs the vigilante called The Shadow, Allard hunts down and often violently confronts criminals, armed with Colt .45 pistols and sometimes using magician tricks to convince his prey that he's supernatural. One such trick is \u201cThe Devil's Whisper\u201d, a chemical compound on the thumb and forefinger, causing a flash of bright flame and sharp explosion when he snaps his fingers. The Shadow is also known for wearing a girasol ring with a purple stone (sometimes depicted as a red stone in cover artwork), given to Allard by the Czar of Russia (\"The Romanoff Jewels\", 1932) during World War I. The ring is later said to be one of two rings made with gemstones taken from the eyes of an idol made by the Xinca tribe (\"The Shadow Unmasks,\" 1937).\nThe Shadow's best known alter ego is Lamont Cranston, a \"wealthy young man-about-town\". In the pulps, Cranston is a separate character, a rich playboy who travels the world while The Shadow uses his identity and resources in New York (\"The Shadow Laughs\", 1931). The Shadow's disguise as Cranston works well because the two men resemble each other (\"Dictator of Crime\", 1941). In their first meeting, The Shadow threatens Cranston, saying that unless the playboy agrees to allow the aviator to use his identity when he is abroad, then Allard will simply take over the man's identity entirely, having already made arrangements to begin the process, including switching signatures on various documents. Although alarmed at first, the real Lamont Cranston agrees, deciding that sharing his resources and identity is better than losing both entirely. The two men sometimes meet afterward in order to impersonate each other (\"Crime over Miami\", 1940). As Cranston, The Shadow often attends the Cobalt Club, an exclusive restaurant and lounge catering to the wealthy, and associates with New York City Police Commissioner Ralph Weston.\nThe Shadow's other disguises include: businessman Henry Arnaud, who like Cranston is a real person whose identity Allard simply assumes at times, as revealed in Arnaud's first appearance \"The Black Master\" (March 1, 1932); elderly Isaac Twambley, who first appears in \"No Time for Murder\" (December 1944); and Fritz, an old, seemingly slow-witted, uncommunicative janitor who works at police headquarters, listening in on conversations and examining recovered evidence, first appearing in \"The Living Shadow\" (April 1931).\nIn \"Teeth of the Dragon\" and later stories including \"The Golden Pagoda\", The Shadow is known in Chinatown as Ying Ko, often fighting the criminal Tong.\nIn the 2015 Altus Press novel \"The Sinister Shadow\" by Will Murray, The Shadow masquerades as celebrated criminologist George Clarendon of Chicago, a past member of the Cobalt Club and long-time friend of Commissioner Weston.\nFor the first half of The Shadow's tenure in the pulps, his past and true identity (outside of his Cranston disguise) are ambiguous. In \"The Living Shadow\", a thug claiming to have seen the Shadow's face recalls seeing \"a piece of white that looked like a bandage\". In \"The Black Master\" and \"The Shadow's Shadow\", the villains of both stories see The Shadow's true face and remark the vigilante is a man of many faces with no face of his own. It was not until the August 1937 issue, \"The Shadow Unmasks\", that The Shadow's real name was revealed.\nIn the radio drama series that premiered in 1937, the Allard secret identity and backstory were dropped for simplicity's sake. The radio incarnation of The Shadow is really and only Lamont Cranston with no other regular cover identities, though he does adopt disguises and short-term aliases during some adventures. The radio version of Cranston travels the world to \"learn the old mysteries that modern science has not yet rediscovered\" (\"Death House Rescue\" in 1937). Along with learning skills and knowledge in Europe, Africa, and Asia, he spends time training with a Yogi priest, \"Keeper of the Temple of Cobras\", in Delhi and learns how to read thoughts and hypnotize people enough to \"cloud\" their minds, making himself invisible to them (as revealed in the episode \"The Temple Bells of Neban\" in 1937). He explicitly states in several episodes that his talents are not magic but based on science. Returning to New York, he decides he can best aid the police and his city by operating outside the law as an invisible vigilante. He is somewhat less ruthless and more compassionate than the pulp incarnation, and without the vast network of agents and operatives. Only cab driver/chauffeur Shrevvy makes regular appearances on the radio series, but the character is different from his print counterpart. Commissioner Weston and a few other supporting characters from the print stories also are adapted to radio.\nSupporting characters.\nThe Shadow has a network of agents who assist him in his war on crime. These include:\nThough initially wanted by the police, The Shadow also works with and through them, notably gleaning information from his many chats (as Cranston) at the Cobalt Club with NYPD Commissioner Ralph Weston and later Commissioner Wainwright Barth, who is also Cranston's uncle (portrayed by Jonathan Winters in the 1994 film). Weston believes Cranston is merely a rich playboy who dabbles in detective work out of curiosity. Another police contact is Detective (later Inspector) Joseph Cardona, a key character in many Shadow novels.\nIn contrast to the pulps, \"The Shadow\" radio drama limited the cast of major characters to The Shadow, Commissioner Weston, and Margo Lane, the last of whom was created for the radio series. Along with giving The Shadow a love interest, Margo was created because it was believed that including Harry Vincent as a regular would mean an overabundance of male characters (considering the criminals in the stories were usually male, too) and could possibly make it difficult for the audience to distinguish between the voices of so many male actors. The radio script for \"The Death House Rescue\" (reprinted in \"The Shadow Scrapbook\") features Harry Vincent, but he did not appear in the actual radio broadcast or any episode of the radio drama series. Clyde Burke made occasional appearances, but not as an agent of The Shadow. Lieutenant Cardona was a minor character in several episodes. Moe Shrevnitz (identified only as \"Shrevvy\") made several appearances as a simple-minded acquaintance of Cranston and Lane who sometimes acted as their chauffeur, unaware Cranston was actually The Shadow.\nEnemies.\nThe Shadow also faces a wide variety of enemies, ranging from kingpins and mad scientists to international spies.\nAmong his recurring foes are:\nThe only recurring criminal organization he fought was the Hand (\"The Hand\", \"Murder for Sale\", \"Chicago Crime\", \"Crime Rides the Sea\" and \"Realm of Doom\"), where he defeated one Finger of the organization in each book.\nIn addition, the villain King Kauger from the Shadow story \"Wizard of Crime\" is the unseen mastermind behind the events of \"Intimidation, Inc.\", and the organization known as \"The Silent Seven\" was referenced in the previous title \"The Death Tower\".\nVillains Diamond Bert Farwell, Isaac Coffran, Steve Cronin, Spotter, and Birdie Crull all originated in the first two pulps and returned at least once.\nThe series featured a myriad of one-shot villains including: The Golden Vulture, Malmordo, The Red Blot, The Black Falcon, The Cobra, Five-Face, Li Hoang, Velma Thane, Quetzal, Judge Lawless, The Gray Ghost, The Silver Skull, Gaspard Zemba, Thade the Death Giver, Kwa the Living Joss, Mox, and The Green Terror.\nIn addition to The Hand and The Silent Seven, The Shadow also battled other one-shot collectives of criminals, including The Hydra, The Green Hoods, The White Skulls, The Five Chameleons, and The Salamanders.\nRadio program.\nIn early 1930, Street & Smith hired David Chrisman and Bill Sweets to adapt the \"Detective Story Magazine\" to radio format. Chrisman and Sweets thought the program should be introduced by a mysterious storyteller. A young scriptwriter, Harry Charlot, suggested the name of \"The Shadow\". Thus, \"The Shadow\" premiered over CBS airwaves on July 31, 1930, as the host of the \"Detective Story Hour\", narrating \"tales of mystery and suspense from the pages of the premier detective fiction magazine\". The bulk of the radio show was written primarily by Sidney Slon. The narrator was first voiced by James La Curto, but became a national sensation when radio veteran Frank Readick, Jr. assumed the role and gave it \"a hauntingly sibilant quality that thrilled radio listeners\".\nEarly years.\nFollowing a brief tenure as narrator of Street & Smith's \"Detective Story Hour\", \"The Shadow\" character was used to host segments of \"The Blue Coal Radio Revue\", airing on Sundays at 5:30\u00a0p.m. Eastern Standard Time. This marked the beginning of a long association between the radio persona and sponsor Blue Coal.\nWhile functioning as a narrator of \"The Blue Coal Radio Revue\", the character was recycled by Street & Smith in October 1931, for its newly created \"Love Story Hour\". Contrary to dozens of encyclopedias, published reference guides, and even Walter Gibson himself, The Shadow never served as narrator of \"Love Story Hour\". He appeared only in advertisements for \"The Shadow Magazine\" at the end of each episode.\nIn October 1932, the radio persona temporarily moved to NBC. Frank Readick Jr. again played the role of the sinister-voiced host on Mondays and Wednesdays, both at 6:30\u00a0p.m., with La Curto taking occasional turns as the title character.\nReadick returned as The Shadow to host a final CBS mystery anthology that fall. The series disappeared from CBS airwaves on March 27, 1935, due to Street & Smith's insistence that the radio storyteller be completely replaced by the master crime-fighter described in Walter B. Gibson's ongoing pulps.\nRadio drama.\nStreet & Smith entered into a new broadcasting agreement with Blue Coal in 1937, and that summer Gibson teamed with scriptwriter Edward Hale Bierstadt to develop the new series. \"The Shadow\" returned to network airwaves with the episode \"The Death House Rescue\" on September 26, 1937, over the Mutual Broadcasting System. Thus began the \"official\" radio drama, with 22-year-old Orson Welles starring as Lamont Cranston, a \"wealthy young man about town.\" Once \"The Shadow\" joined Mutual as a half-hour series on Sunday evenings, the program was broadcast by Mutual until December 26, 1954.\nWelles did not speak the signature line, \"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?\" Instead, Readick did, using a water glass next to his mouth for the echo effect. The famous catchphrase was accompanied by the strains of an excerpt from Opus 31 of the Camille Saint-Sa\u00ebns classical composition, \"Le Rouet d'Omphale.\"\nIn the debut episode \"The Death House Rescue,\" Cranston explains he spent years studying in London, Paris, Vienna, Egypt, China, and India, learning different fields of science as well as \"the old mysteries that modern science has not yet rediscovered, the natural magic that modern psychology is beginning to understand.\" He states his hypnotic and seemingly telepathic abilities are not magic but based on scientific secrets most of the world has forgotten or does not yet understand. In \"The Temple Bells of Neban\" in 1937, he specifies that a Yogi priest, \"Keeper of the Temple of Cobras\" in Delhi, taught him how to be invisible by \"clouding\" peoples' minds. He indicates in \"The Death House Rescue\" that he always intended to use his acquired knowledge to secretly fight evil forces that evaded conventional authorities. In the same episode, when his companion Margo Lane suggests he work openly with the police, Cranston implies the police and general public would not understand or approve of his strange methods and abilities, concluding he is only effective by working outside of the law. The radio version of The Shadow is less ruthless than his pulp counterpart, preferring to capture his foes more often than gun them down. He sometimes openly shows compassion for his enemies, even at time criticizing society for creating circumstances that lead to certain crimes and cause some people to lose hope and support.\nAfter Welles departed the show in 1938, Bill Johnstone was chosen to replace him and voiced the character for five seasons. Following Johnstone's departure, The Shadow was portrayed by such actors as Bret Morrison (the longest tenure, with 10 years total in two separate runs), John Archer, and Steven Courtleigh (the actors were rarely credited).\n\"The Shadow\" also inspired another radio hit, \"The Whistler\", with a similarly mysterious narrator.\nIn \"The Talking Magpies\" (1946), the cartoon film debut of the precursors who would become Heckle and Jeckle, The Shadow radio program is referenced in a scene.\nMargo Lane.\nThe radio drama also introduced Margo Lane (played by Agnes Moorehead, among others) as Cranston's love interest, crime-solving partner, and the only person who knows his identity as The Shadow. Described as Cranston's \"friend and companion\" in many episodes, the exact nature of their relationship was not explicitly stated, but Margo mentions in the first episode that she loves him and hopes he will retire The Shadow identity and operate without secrecy if the police really need his help. Four years after the radio show began, the character was introduced into the pulp novels as one of The Shadow's agents. Her sudden, unexplained appearance in the pulps annoyed readers and generated a flurry of hate mail printed on \"The Shadow Magazine's\" letters page.\nIn early scripts of the radio drama, the character's name was spelled \"Margot.\" The name itself was originally inspired by Margot Stevenson, the Broadway ing\u00e9nue who would later be chosen to voice Lane opposite Welles's The Shadow during \"the 1938 Goodrich summer season of the radio drama.\" In the 1994 film in which Penelope Ann Miller played the character, Margo is portrayed as telepathic, making her aware of and able to counter The Shadow's mental abilities.\nRadio drama LPs and CDs.\nIn 1968, Metro Record's \"Leo the Lion\" label released an LP titled \"The Official Adventures of The Shadow\" (CH-1048) with two original 15-minute radio-style productions written by John Fleming: \"The Computer Calculates, but The Shadow Knows\" and \"Air Freight Fracas.\" Bret Morrison, Grace Matthews, and Santos Ortega reprised their roles as Cranston/The Shadow, Margo Lane, and Commissioner Weston. Ken Roberts also returned as the announcer. \nThroughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, dozens of LPs appeared in print from other record labels featuring recordings taken from the original broadcast Shadow radio show dramas. With the advent of the compact disc, more of the radio shows were commercially released.\nComic strip.\n\"The Shadow\" has been adapted for comics a number of times during his long history; his first was on June 17, 1940, as a syndicated daily newspaper comic strip offered through the Ledger Syndicate. The strip's story continuity was written by Walter B. Gibson, with plot lines adapted from the Shadow pulps, and the strip was illustrated by Vernon Greene.\nThe comic strip, which ran until June 20, 1942, comprised 14 stories, the last of which was left uncompleted when the strip was canceled:\n\"The Shadow\" daily strip was collected decades later in two comic book series from two different publishers (see below), first in 1988 and then again in 1999.\nComic books.\nHistory.\n1940s-1960s.\nTo both cross-promote \"The Shadow\" and attract a younger audience to its other pulp magazines, Street & Smith published 101 issues of the comic book \"Shadow Comics\" from Vol. 1, #1 \u2013 Vol. 9, #5 (March 1940 \u2013 Sept. 1949). A Shadow story led off each issue, with the remainder of the stories being strips based on other Street & Smith pulp heroes.\nIn \"Mad\" #4 (April\u2013May 1953), \"The Shadow\" was spoofed by Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder with a character called \"The Shadow'\" (with an apostrophe), which is short for \"Lamont Shadowskeedeeboomboom\". This story was reprinted in \"The Brothers Mad\" (ibooks, New York, 2002, ). The charcer returned in \"Mad\" #14 (August 1954) to guest-star in \"Manduck the Magician\", a spoof by Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder of the \"Mandrake the Magician\" comic strip. This story was reprinted"}, "descending_order": ["113352", "36694508", "1203265"], "permutation_1": ["113352", "36694508", "1203265"], "permutation_2": ["113352", "36694508", "1203265"], "permutation_3": ["1203265", "36694508", "113352"]}
{"id": "2hop__408076_36180", "docs_added": {"30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "11977664": "Fualopa\nFualopa is an islet of Funafuti, Tuvalu. It is part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, established in 1996 with the aim of preserving the natural fauna and flora of the area. Fualopa hosts a breeding colony of black noddy (\"Anous minutus\" or white-capped noddy).\nTe Ava Kum Kum is the passage through the Funafuti atoll of the western rim, south of Te Ava Tepuka Vili, between the islets of Tepuka Vili Vili to the north and Fualopa immediately south.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11977664", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["11977664", "30227"], "permutation_2": ["30227", "11977664"], "permutation_3": ["30227", "11977664"]}
{"id": "2hop__160164_90450", "docs_added": {"26810748": "Iowa\nU.S. State\nIowa ( ) is a state in the upper Midwestern region of the United States. It borders the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west; Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to the east and southeast, Missouri to the south, Nebraska to the west, South Dakota to the northwest, and Minnesota to the north.\nIowa is the 26th largest in total area and the 31st most populous of the 50 U.S. states, with a population of 3.19 million. The state's capital, most populous city, and largest metropolitan area fully located within the state is Des Moines. A portion of the larger Omaha, Nebraska, metropolitan area extends into three counties of southwest Iowa. Other metropolitan statistical areas in Iowa include Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, Waterloo-Cedar Falls, Ames, Dubuque, Sioux City, and the Iowa portion of the Quad Cities. Iowa is home to 940 small towns, though its population is increasingly urbanized as small communities and rural areas decline in population.\nDuring the 18th and early 19th centuries, Iowa was a part of French Louisiana and Spanish Louisiana; its state flag is patterned after the flag of France. After the Louisiana Purchase, pioneers laid the foundation for an agriculture-based economy in the heart of the Corn Belt. In the latter half of the 20th century, Iowa's agricultural economy began to transition to a diversified economy of advanced manufacturing, processing, financial services, information technology, biotechnology, and green energy production. \nPolitically, Iowa is notable for the Iowa Caucuses, an influential event in national politics, as well as its high levels of voter turnout and foundational leadership in civil rights including early adoption or support of black suffrage, women's rights, and same-sex marriage. Iowa's standard of living is ranked among the best states and it performs highly on metrics such as governance, education, infrastructure, and safety.\nEtymology.\nLike many other states, Iowa takes its name from its predecessor, Iowa Territory, whose name in turn is derived from the Iowa River, and ultimately from the ethnonym of the indigenous Ioway people.\nThe Ioway are a Chiwere-speaking Siouan Nation, who were once part of the Ho-Chunk Confederation that inhabited the area now corresponding to several Midwest states. The Ioway were one of the many Native American nations whose territory comprised the future state of Iowa before the time of European colonization.\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nWhen Indigenous peoples of the Americas first arrived in what is now Iowa more than 13,000 years ago, they were hunters and gatherers living in a Pleistocene glacial landscape. By the time European explorers and traders visited Iowa, Native Americans were largely settled farmers with complex economic, social, and political systems. This transformation happened gradually. During the Archaic period (10,500 to 2,800 years ago), Native Americans adapted to local environments and ecosystems, slowly becoming more sedentary as populations increased.\nMore than 3,000 years ago, during the Late Archaic period, Native Americans in Iowa began utilizing domesticated plants. The subsequent Woodland period saw an increased reliance on agriculture and social complexity, with increased use of mounds, ceramics, and specialized subsistence. During the Late Prehistoric period (beginning about AD 900) increased use of maize and social changes led to social flourishing and nucleated settlements.\nThe arrival of European trade goods and diseases in the Protohistoric period led to dramatic population shifts and economic and social upheaval, with the arrival of new tribes and early European explorers and traders. There were numerous native American tribes living in Iowa at the time of early European exploration. Tribes which were probably descendants of the prehistoric Oneota include the Dakota, Ho-Chunk, Ioway, and Otoe. Tribes which arrived in Iowa in the late prehistoric or protohistoric periods include the Illiniwek, Meskwaki, Omaha, and Sauk.\nEarly colonization and trade, 1673\u20131808.\nThe first known European explorers to document Iowa were Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet who traveled the Mississippi River in 1673 documenting several Indigenous villages on the Iowa side. The area of Iowa was claimed for France and remained a French territory until 1763. The French, before their impending defeat in the French and Indian War, transferred ownership to their ally, Spain. Spain practiced very loose control over the Iowa region, granting trading licenses to French and British traders, who established trading posts along the Mississippi and Des Moines Rivers.\nIowa was part of a territory known as \"La Louisiane\" or Louisiana, and European traders were interested in lead and furs obtained by Indigenous people. The Sauk and Meskwaki effectively controlled trade on the Mississippi in the late 18th century and early 19th century. Among the early traders on the Mississippi were Julien Dubuque, Robert de la Salle, and Paul Marin. Along the Missouri River at least five French and English trading houses were built before 1808. In 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte took control of Louisiana from Spain in a treaty.\nAfter the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, Congress divided the Louisiana Purchase into two parts\u2014the Territory of Orleans and the District of Louisiana, with present-day Iowa falling in the latter. The Indiana Territory, created in 1800, exercised jurisdiction over this portion of the District; William Henry Harrison was its first governor. Much of Iowa was mapped by Zebulon Pike in 1805, but it was not until the construction of Fort Madison in 1808 that the U.S. established tenuous military control over the region.\nWar of 1812 and unstable U.S. control.\nFort Madison was built to control trade and establish U.S. dominance over the Upper Mississippi, but it was poorly designed and disliked by the Sauk and Meskwaki, many of whom allied with the British, who had not abandoned claims to the territory. Fort Madison was defeated by British-supported Indigenous people in 1813 during the War of 1812, and Fort Shelby in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, also fell to the British. Black Hawk took part in the siege of Fort Madison. Another small military outpost was established along the Mississippi River in present-day Bellevue. This poorly situated stockade was similarly attacked by hundreds of Indigenous people in 1813, but was successfully defended and later abandoned until settlers returned to the area in the mid-1830s.\nAfter the war, the U.S. re-established control of the region through the construction of Fort Armstrong, Fort Snelling in Minnesota, and Fort Atkinson in Nebraska.\nIndian removal, 1814\u20131832.\nThe United States encouraged settlement of the east side of the Mississippi and removal of Indians to the west. A disputed 1804 treaty between Quashquame and William Henry Harrison (then governor of the Indiana Territory) that surrendered much of Illinois to the U.S. enraged many Sauk and led to the 1832 Black Hawk War.\nThe Sauk and Meskwaki were forced to sell some of their land in the Mississippi Valley to the U.S. in 1832 in the Black Hawk Purchase Treaty and sold their remaining land in Iowa in 1842, most of them moving to a reservation in Kansas. In 1837, some the Potawatomi from Illinois were resettled in Iowa, while many Meskwaki later returned to Iowa and settled near Tama, Iowa; the Meskwaki Settlement remains to this day. In 1856 the Iowa Legislature passed an unprecedented act allowing the Meskwaki to purchase the land. However, in contrast to the unprecedented act of the Iowa Legislature, the United States Federal Government, through the use of Treaties, forced the Ho-Chunk from Iowa in 1848, and forced the Dakota from Iowa by 1858. Western Iowa around modern Council Bluffs was used as an Indian Reservation for members of the Council of Three Fires.\nU.S. settlement and statehood, 1832\u20131860.\nThe first American settlers officially moved to Iowa in June 1833. Primarily, they were families from Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana, Kentucky, and Virginia who settled along the western banks of the Mississippi River, founding the modern day cities of Dubuque and Bellevue near the site of Julien Dubuque's 1785\u20131810 lead mining operation. On July 4, 1838, the U.S. Congress established the Territory of Iowa. President Martin Van Buren appointed Robert Lucas governor of the territory, which at the time had 22 counties and a population of 23,242.\nAlmost immediately after achieving territorial status, a clamor arose for statehood. On December 28, 1846, Iowa became the 29th state in the Union when President James K. Polk signed Iowa's admission bill into law. Once admitted to the Union, the state's boundary issues resolved, and most of its land purchased from Natives, Iowa set its direction to development and organized campaigns for settlers and investors, boasting the young frontier state's rich farmlands, fine citizens, free and open society, and good government.\nIowa has a long tradition of state and county fairs. The first and second Iowa State Fairs were held in the more developed eastern part of the state at Fairfield. The first fair was held October 25\u201327, 1854, at a cost of around $323. Thereafter, the fair moved to locations closer to the center of the state and in 1886 found a permanent home in Des Moines. The State Fair has been held annually since then, except for a few exceptions: 1898 due to the Spanish\u2013American War and the World's Fair being held in nearby Omaha, Nebraska; from 1942 to 1945, due to World War II, as the fairgrounds were being used as an army supply depot; and in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.\nCivil War, 1861\u20131865.\nIowa supported the Union during the Civil War, voting heavily for Abraham Lincoln, though there was an antiwar \"Copperhead\" movement in the state, caused partially by a drop in crop prices caused by the war. There were no battles in the state, although the Battle of Athens, Missouri, 1861, was fought just across the Des Moines River from Croton, Iowa, and shots from the battle landed in Iowa. Iowa sent large supplies of food to the armies and the eastern cities.\nMuch of Iowa's support for the Union can be attributed to Samuel J. Kirkwood, its first wartime governor. Of a total population of 675,000, about 116,000 men were subjected to military duty. Iowa contributed proportionately more soldiers to Civil War military service than did any other state, north or south, sending more than 75,000 volunteers to the armed forces, over one-sixth of whom were killed before the Confederates surrendered at Appomattox.\nMost fought in the great campaigns in the Mississippi Valley and in the South. Iowa troops fought at Wilson's Creek in Missouri, Pea Ridge in Arkansas, Forts Henry and Donelson, Shiloh, Chattanooga, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, and Rossville Gap as well as Vicksburg, Iuka, and Corinth. They served with the Army of the Potomac in Virginia and fought under Union General Philip Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley. Many died and were buried at Andersonville. They marched on General Nathaniel Banks' ill-starred expedition to the Red River. Twenty-seven Iowans have been awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest military decoration awarded by the United States government, which was first awarded in the Civil War.\nIowa had several brigadier generals and four major generals\u2014Grenville Mellen Dodge, Samuel R. Curtis, Francis J. Herron, and Frederick Steele\u2014and saw many of its generals go on to state and national prominence following the war.\nAgricultural expansion, 1865\u20131930.\nFollowing the Civil War, Iowa's population continued to grow dramatically, from 674,913 people in 1860 to 1,624,615 in 1880. The American Civil War briefly brought higher profits.\nIn 1917, the United States entered World War I and farmers as well as all Iowans experienced a wartime economy. For farmers, the change was significant. Since the beginning of the war in 1914, Iowa farmers had experienced economic prosperity, which lasted until the end of the war. In the economic sector, Iowa also has undergone considerable change. Beginning with the first industries developed in the 1830s, which were mainly for processing materials grown in the area, Iowa has experienced a gradual increase in the number of business and manufacturing operations.\nDepression, World War II and manufacturing, 1930\u20131985.\nThe transition from an agricultural economy to a mixed economy happened slowly. The Great Depression and World War II accelerated the shift away from smallholder farming to larger farms, and began a trend of urbanization. The period after World War II witnessed a particular increase in manufacturing operations.\nIn 1975, Governor Robert D. Ray petitioned President Ford to allow Iowa to accept and resettle Tai Dam refugees fleeing the Indochina War. An exception was required for this resettlement as State Dept policy at the time forbid resettlement of large groups of refugees in concentrated communities; an exception was ultimately granted and 1200 Tai Dam were resettled in Iowa. Since then Iowa has accepted thousands of refugees from Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Bhutan, and Burma.\nThe farm crisis of the 1980s caused a major recession in Iowa, causing poverty not seen since the Depression. The crisis spurred a major, decade-long population decline.\nReemergence as a mixed economy, 1985\u2013present.\nAfter bottoming out in the 1980s, Iowa's economy began to reduce its dependence on agriculture. By the early 21st century, it was characterized by a mix of manufacturing, biotechnology, finance and insurance services, and government services. The population of Iowa has increased at a slower rate than the U.S. as a whole since at least the 1900 census, though Iowa now has a predominantly urban population. The Iowa Economic Development Authority, created in 2011 has replaced the Iowa Department of Economic Development and its annual reports are a source of economic information.\nGeography.\nBoundaries.\nIowa is bordered by the Mississippi River on the east along with the Missouri River and the Big Sioux River on the west. The northern boundary is a line along 43 degrees, 30 minutes north latitude. The southern border is the Des Moines River and a not-quite-straight line along approximately 40 degrees 35 minutes north, as decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in \"Missouri v. Iowa\" (1849) after a standoff between Missouri and Iowa known as the Honey War.\nIowa is the only state whose east and west borders are formed almost entirely by rivers. Carter Lake, Iowa, is the only city in the state located west of the Missouri River.\nIowa has 99 counties, but 100 county seats because Lee County has two. The state capital, Des Moines, is in Polk County.\nGeology and terrain.\nIowa's bedrock geology generally decreases in age from east to west. In northwest Iowa, Cretaceous bedrock can be 74\u00a0million years old; in eastern Iowa Cambrian bedrock dates to c. 500\u00a0million years ago. The oldest radiometrically dated bedrock in the state is the 2.9 billion year old Otter Creek Layered Mafic Complex. Precambrian rock is exposed only in the northwest of the state.\nIowa can be divided into eight landforms based on glaciation, soils, topography, and river drainage. Loess hills lie along the western border of the state, some of which are several hundred feet thick. Northeast Iowa along the Upper Mississippi River is part of the Driftless Area, consisting of steep hills and valleys which appear as mountainous.\nSeveral natural lakes exist, most notably Spirit Lake, West Okoboji Lake, and East Okoboji Lake in northwest Iowa (\"see Iowa Great Lakes\"). To the east lies Clear Lake. Man-made lakes include Lake Odessa, Saylorville Lake, Lake Red Rock, Coralville Lake, Lake MacBride, and Rathbun Lake. Before European settlement, 4 to 6\u00a0million acres of the state was covered with wetlands, about 95% of these wetlands have been drained.\nEcology and environment.\nIowa's natural vegetation is tallgrass prairie and savanna in upland areas, with dense forest and wetlands in flood plains and protected river valleys, and pothole wetlands in northern prairie areas. Most of Iowa is used for agriculture; crops cover 60% of the state, grasslands (mostly pasture and hay with some prairie and wetland) cover 30%, and forests cover 7%; urban areas and water cover another 1% each.\nThe southern part of Iowa is categorized as the Central forest-grasslands transition ecoregion. The Northern, drier part of Iowa is categorized as part of the Central tall grasslands.\nThere is a dearth of natural areas in Iowa; less than 1% of the tallgrass prairie that once covered most of Iowa remains intact; only about 5% of the state's prairie pothole wetlands remain, and most of the original forest has been lost. As of 2005[ [update]] Iowa ranked 49th of U.S. states in public land holdings. Threatened or endangered animals in Iowa include the interior least tern, piping plover, Indiana bat, pallid sturgeon, the Iowa Pleistocene land snail, Higgins' eye pearly mussel, and the Topeka shiner. Endangered or threatened plants include western prairie fringed orchid, eastern prairie fringed orchid, Mead's milkweed, prairie bush clover, and northern wild monkshood.\nThe explosion in the number of high-density livestock facilities in Iowa has led to increased rural water contamination and a decline in air quality.\nOther factors negatively affecting Iowa's environment include the extensive use of older coal-fired power plants, fertilizer and pesticide runoff from crop production, and diminishment of the Jordan Aquifer.\nThe 2020\u20132023 North American drought has affected Iowa particularly: As of January 2024, Iowa was in its 187th consecutive week of at least moderate drought, the longest stretch since the 1950s. 96% of areas are affected by drought.\nClimate.\nIowa has a humid continental climate throughout the state (K\u00f6ppen climate classification \"Dfa\") with extremes of both heat and cold. The average annual temperature at Des Moines is ; for some locations in the north, such as Mason City, the figure is about , while Keokuk, on the Mississippi River, averages . Snowfall is common, with Des Moines getting about 26 days of snowfall a year, and other places, such as Shenandoah getting about 11 days of snowfall in a year.\nSpring ushers in the beginning of the severe weather season. As of 2008, Iowa averaged about 50 days of thunderstorm activity per year. As of 2015, the 30-year annual average of tornadoes in Iowa was 47. In 2008, twelve people were killed by tornadoes in Iowa, making it the deadliest year since 1968 and also the second most tornadoes in a year with 105, matching the total from 2001.\nIowa summers are known for heat and humidity, with daytime temperatures sometimes near and occasionally exceeding . Average winters in the state have been known to drop well below freezing, even dropping below . As of 2018, Iowa's all-time hottest temperature of was recorded at Keokuk on July 20, 1934, during a nationwide heat wave; as of 2014, the all-time lowest temperature of was recorded in Washta on January 12, 1912.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Sort under/styles.css\" />\nPrecipitation.\nIowa has had a relatively smooth gradient of varying precipitation across the state; from 1961 to 1990, areas in the southeast of the state received an average of over of rain annually, and the northwest of the state receiving less than . The pattern of precipitation across Iowa is seasonal with more rain falling in the summer months. Virtually statewide, the driest month is January or February, and the wettest month is June owing to frequent showers and thunderstorms some of which produce hail, damaging winds or tornadoes. In Des Moines, roughly in the center of the state, over two-thirds of the of rain falls from April through September, and about half the average annual precipitation falls from May through August peaking in June.\nSettlements.\nIowa's population is more urban than rural, with 61 percent living in urban areas in 2000, a trend that began in the early 20th century. Urban counties in Iowa grew 8.5% from 2000 to 2008, while rural counties declined by 4.2%. The shift from rural to urban has caused population increases in more urbanized counties such as Dallas, Johnson, Linn, Polk, and Scott, at the expense of more rural counties.\nIowa, in common with other Midwestern states (especially Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota), is feeling the brunt of rural flight, although Iowa has been gaining population since approximately 1990. Some smaller communities, such as Denison and Storm Lake, have mitigated this population loss through gains in immigrant laborers.\nAnother demographic problem for Iowa is the brain drain, in which educated young adults leave the state in search of better prospects in higher education or employment. During the 1990s, Iowa had the second highest exodus rate for single, educated young adults, second only to North Dakota.\nDemographics.\nPopulation.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nThe United States Census Bureau determined the population of Iowa was 3,190,369 on April 1, 2020, a 4.73% increase since the 2010 United States census.\nOf the residents of Iowa, 70.8% were born in Iowa, 23.6% were born in a different U.S. state, 0.6% were born in Puerto Rico, U.S. Island areas, or born abroad to American parent(s), and 5% were foreign born.\nImmigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 29,386 people, while migration within the country produced a net loss of 41,140 people. 6.5% of Iowa's population were reported as under the age of five, 22.6% under 18, and 14.7% were 65 or older. Males made up approximately 49.6% of the population. The population density of the state is 52.7 people per square mile. As of the 2010 census, the center of population of Iowa is in Marshall County, near Melbourne. The top countries of origin for Iowa's immigrants in 2018 were Mexico, India, Vietnam, China and Thailand.\nGermans are the largest ethnic group in Iowa. Other major ethnic groups in Iowa include Irish and English. There are also Dutch communities in state. The Dutch can be found in Pella, in the centre of the state, and in Orange City, in the northwest. There is a Norwegian community in Decorah in northeast Iowa; and there is Czech and Slovak communities in both Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. Smaller numbers of Greeks and Italians are scattered in Iowa's metropolitan areas. The majority of Hispanics in Iowa are Mexican. African Americans, who constitute around 2% of Iowa's population, didn't live in the state in any appreciable numbers until the early 20th century. Many blacks worked in the coal-mining industry of southern Iowa. Others blacks migrated to Waterloo, Davenport, and Des Moines, where the black population remained substantial in the early 21st century. The African-American population in Des Moines experienced a significant increase with the establishment of the Colored Officers Training Camp at Fort Des Moines in 1917. Following the conclusion of World War I in 1918, numerous African-American families made the decision to remain in Des Moines. This marked the inception of a thriving community that eventually became a residence for numerous African-American leaders. There is one federally recognized tribe in Iowa, the Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa, and in 2020, 14,486 identified as being Native American alone, and 41,472 did in combination with one or more other races.\nAs of the 2010 census, the population of Iowa was 3,046,355. The gender makeup of the state was 49.5% male and 50.5% female. 23.9% of the population were under the age of 18; 61.2% were between the ages of 18 and 64; and 14.9% were 65 years of age or older.\nAccording to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 2,419 homeless people in Iowa.\nAccording to the 2016 American Community Survey, 5.6% of Iowa's population were of Hispanic or Latino origin (of any race): Mexican (4.3%), Puerto Rican (0.2%), Cuban (0.1%), and other Hispanic or Latino origin (1.0%). The five largest ancestry groups were: German (35.1%), Irish (13.5%), English (8.2%), American (5.8%), and Norwegian (5.0%).\nBirth data.\n\"Note: Births in table don't add up, because Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race, giving a higher overall number.\"\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nA 2014 survey by Pew Research Center found 60% of Iowans are Protestant, while 18% are Catholic, and 1% are of non-Christian religions. 21% responded with non-religious, and 1% did not answer. A survey from the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) in 2010 found that the largest Protestant denominations were the United Methodist Church with 235,190 adherents and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America with 229,557. The largest non-Protestant religion was Catholicism with 503,080 adherents. The state has a great number of Calvinist denominations. The Presbyterian Church (USA) had almost 290 congregations and 51,380 members followed by the Reformed Church in America with 80 churches and 40,000 members, and the United Church of Christ had 180 churches and 39,000 members. According to the 2020 Public Religion Research Institute's study, 26% of the population were irreligious.\nThe study \"Religious Congregations & Membership: 2000\" found in the southernmost two tiers of Iowa counties and in other counties in the center of the state, the largest religious group was the United Methodist Church; in the northeast part of the state, including Dubuque and Linn counties (where Cedar Rapids is located), the Catholic Church was the largest; and in ten counties, including three in the northern tier, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America was the largest. The study also found rapid growth in Evangelical Christian denominations. Dubuque is home to the Archdiocese of Dubuque, which serves as the ecclesiastical province for all three other dioceses in the state and for all the Catholics in the entire state of Iowa.\nHistorically, religious sects and orders who desired to live apart from the rest of society established themselves in Iowa, such as the Amish and Mennonite near Kalona and in other parts of eastern Iowa such as Davis County and Buchanan County. Other religious sects and orders living apart include Quakers around West Branch and Le Grand, German Pietists who founded the Amana Colonies, followers of Transcendental Meditation who founded Maharishi Vedic City, and Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance monks and nuns at the New Melleray and Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbeys near Dubuque.\nBy 1878, approximately 1000 Jewish people lived in Iowa, many of whom were immigrants from Poland and Germany. As of 2016[ [update]] about 6,000 Jews live in Iowa, with about 3,000 of them in Des Moines.\nLanguage.\nEnglish is the most common language in Iowa, being the sole language spoken by 91.1% of the population. Less common languages include sign language and indigenous languages. About 2.5% of the general population use sign language as of 2017, while indigenous languages are spoken by about 0.5% of the population. William Labov and colleagues, in the monumental \"Atlas of North American English\" found the English spoken in Iowa divides into multiple linguistic regions. Natives of northern Iowa\u2014including Sioux City, Fort Dodge, and the Waterloo region\u2014tend to speak the dialect linguists call North Central American English, which is also found in North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Natives of central and southern Iowa\u2014including such cities as Council Bluffs, Davenport, Des Moines, and Iowa City\u2014tend to speak the North Midland dialect also found in eastern Nebraska, central Illinois, and central Indiana. Natives of East-Central Iowa\u2014including cities such as Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, and Clinton tend to speak with the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, a dialect that extends from this area and east across the Great Lakes Region.\nAfter English, Spanish is the second-most-common language spoken in Iowa, with 120,000 people in Iowa of Hispanic or Latino origin and 47,000 people born in Latin America. The third-most-common language is German, spoken by 17,000 people in Iowa; two notable German dialects used in Iowa include Amana German spoken around the Amana Colonies, and Pennsylvania German, spoken among the Amish in Iowa. The Babel Proclamation of 1918 banned the speaking of German in public. Around Pella, residents of Dutch descent once spoke the Pella Dutch dialect.\nCulture.\nAttractions.\nIowa hosts RAGBRAI, the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, which is a bike across the state river-to-river that attracts thousands of bicyclists and support personnel. It has crossed the state on various routes each year since 1973. Iowa is home to more than 70 wineries, and hosts five regional wine tasting trails. Many Iowa communities hold farmers' markets during warmer months; these are typically weekly events, but larger cities can host multiple markets.\nCentral Iowa.\nDes Moines is the largest city and metropolitan area in Iowa and the state's political and economic center. It is home to the Iowa State Capitol, the State Historical Society of Iowa Museum, Drake University, Des Moines Art Center, Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden, Principal Riverwalk, the Iowa State Fair, Terrace Hill, and the World Food Prize. Nearby attractions include Adventureland and Prairie Meadows Racetrack Casino in Altoona, Living History Farms in Urbandale, Trainland USA in Colfax, and the Iowa Speedway and Valle Drive-In in Newton.\nAmes is the home of Iowa State University, the Iowa State Center, and Reiman Gardens.\nBoone hosts the biennial Farm Progress Show and is home to the Mamie Doud Eisenhower museum, the Boone and Scenic Valley Railroad, and Ledges State Park.\nThe Meskwaki Settlement west of Tama is the only Native American settlement in Iowa and is host to a large annual Pow-wow.\nMadison County is known for its covered bridges. Also in Madison County is the John Wayne Birthplace Museum is in Winterset.\nOther communities with vibrant historic downtown areas include Newton, Indianola, Pella, Knoxville, Marshalltown, Perry, and Story City.\nEastern Iowa.\nIowa City is home to the University of Iowa, which includes the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the Old Capitol building. Because of the extraordinary history in the teaching and sponsoring of creative writing that emanated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and related programs, Iowa City was the first American city designated by the United Nations as a \"City of Literature\" in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.\nThe Herbert Hoover National Historic Site and Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum are in West Branch.\nThe Amana Colonies are a group of settlements of German Pietists comprising seven villages listed as National Historic Landmarks.\nThe Cedar Rapids Museum of Art has collections of paintings by Grant Wood and Marvin Cone. Cedar Rapids is also home to the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library and Iowa's only National Trust for Historic Preservation Site, Brucemore mansion.\nDavenport boasts the Figge Art Museum, River Music Experience, Putnam Museum, Davenport Skybridge, Quad City Symphony Orchestra, Ballet Quad Cities, and plays host to the annual Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival, and the Quad City Air Show, which is the largest airshow in the state.\nOther communities with vibrant historic downtown areas include West Liberty, Fairfield, Burlington, Mount Pleasant, Fort Madison, LeClaire, Mount Vernon, Ottumwa, Washington, and Wilton.\nAlong Interstate 80 near Walcott lies the world's largest truck stop, Iowa 80.\nWestern Iowa.\nSome of the most dramatic scenery in Iowa is found in the unique Loess Hills which are found along Iowa's western border.\nSioux City is the largest city in western Iowa and is found on the convergence of the Missouri, Floyd, and Big Sioux Rivers. The Sioux City Metropolitan Area encompasses areas in three states: Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota. Sioux City boasts a revitalized downtown and includes attractions such as the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, Sergeant Floyd Monument, Sergeant Floyd River Museum, the Tyson Events Center, Southern Hills Mall, the Orpheum Theater, and more. The historic downtown area is also filled with multiple restaurants, bars, and other entertainment venues. Sioux City is home to two higher education institutions, Morningside College and Briar Cliff University. Le Mars is in the northeastern part of the Sioux City Metropolitan Area and is the self-proclaimed \"Ice Cream Capital of the World\". Le Mars is home to Wells Enterprises, one of the largest ice cream manufacturers in the world. Attractions in Le Mars include the Wells Visitor Center and Ice Cream Parlor, Archie's Wayside (steak house), Bob's Drive Inn, Tonsfeldt Round Barn, Plymouth County Fairgrounds, Plymouth County Museum, and Plymouth County Courthouse. Le Mars hosts multiple ice cream-themed community events each year.\nCouncil Bluffs, part of the Omaha, Nebraska Metropolitan Area and a hub of southwest Iowa sits at the base of the Loess Hills National Scenic Byway. With three casino resorts, the city also includes such cultural attractions as the Western Hills Trails Center, Union Pacific Railroad Museum, the Grenville M. Dodge House, the Ruth Anne Dodge Memorial, and the Lewis and Clark Monument, with clear views of the Downtown Omaha skyline found throughout the city. The Sanford Museum and Planetarium in Cherokee, the Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend, the Museum of Danish America in Elk Horn, and the Fort Museum and Frontier Village in Fort Dodge are other regional destinations.\nThe Iowa Great Lakes is made up of multiple small towns, such as Spirit Lake, Arnolds Park, Milford, and Okoboji. Multiple resorts and other tourist attractions are found in and around these towns surrounding the popular lakes. Arnolds Park, one of the oldest amusement parks in the country, is located on Lake Okoboji in Arnolds Park.\nEvery year in early May, the city of Orange City holds the annual Tulip Festival, a celebration of the strong Dutch heritage in the region.\nNorthwest Iowa is home to some of the largest concentrations of wind turbine farms in the world. Other western communities with vibrant historic downtown areas include Storm Lake, Spencer, Glenwood, Carroll, Harlan, Atlantic, Red Oak, Denison, Creston, Mount Ayr, Sac City, and Walnut.\nNortheast and Northern Iowa.\nThe Driftless Area of northeast Iowa has many steep hills and deep valleys, checkered with forest and terraced fields. Effigy Mounds National Monument in Allamakee and Clayton Counties has the largest assemblage of animal-shaped prehistoric mounds in the world.\nWaterloo is home of the Grout Museum and Lost Island Theme Park and is headquarters of the Silos & Smokestacks National Heritage Area. Cedar Falls is home of the University of Northern Iowa.\nDubuque is a regional tourist destination with attractions such as the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium and the Port of Dubuque.\nDyersville is home to the famed \"Field of Dreams\" baseball diamond. Maquoketa Caves State Park, near Maquoketa, contains more caves than any other state park.\nFort Atkinson State Preserve in Fort Atkinson has the remains of an original 1840s Dragoon fortification.\nFort Dodge is home of The Fort historical museum and the Blanden Art Museum, and host Frontiers Days which celebrate the town history.\nOther communities with vibrant historic downtown areas include Decorah, McGregor, Mason City, Elkader, Bellevue, Guttenberg, Algona, Spillville, Charles City, and Independence.\nArts.\nThe Clint Eastwood movie \"The Bridges of Madison County\", based on the popular novel of the same name, took place and was filmed in Madison County. \"What's Eating Gilbert Grape\", based on the Peter Hedges novel of the same name, is set in the fictional Iowa town of Endora. Hedges was born in West Des Moines.\nDes Moines is home to members of the heavy metal band Slipknot. The state is mentioned in the band's songs, and the album \"Iowa\" is named after the state.\nSports.\nThe state has four major college teams playing in NCAA Division I for all sports. In football, Iowa State University and the University of Iowa compete in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), whereas the University of Northern Iowa and Drake University compete in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). Although Iowa has no professional major league sports teams, Iowa has minor league sports teams in baseball, basketball, hockey, and other sports. This variety helped bolster the Iowa sports betting industry, which has recorded over $10 billion in sports wagers, generating over $50 million for the state as of November 2024.\nThe following table shows the Iowa sports teams with average attendance over 8,000. All the following teams are NCAA Division I football, basketball, or wrestling teams:\nCollege sports.\nThe state has four NCAA Division I college teams. Two have football teams that play in the top level of college football, the Football Bowl Subdivision: the University of Iowa Hawkeyes play in the Big Ten Conference and the Iowa State University Cyclones compete in the Big 12 Conference. The two intrastate rivals compete annually for the Cy-Hawk Trophy as part of the Iowa Corn Cy-Hawk Series.\nIn wrestling, the Iowa Hawkeyes and Iowa State Cyclones have won a combined total of over 30 team NCAA Division I titles. The Northern Iowa and Cornell College wrestling teams have also each won one NCAA Division I wrestling team title.\nTwo other Division I schools play football in the second level of college football, the Football Championship Subdivision. The University of Northern Iowa Panthers play at the Missouri Valley Conference and Missouri Valley Football Conference (despite the similar names, the conferences are administratively separate), whereas the Drake University Bulldogs play in the Missouri Valley Conference in most sports and Pioneer League for football.\nBaseball.\nDes Moines is home to the Iowa Cubs, a Triple-A Minor League Baseball team of the International League and affiliate of the Chicago Cubs. Iowa has two High-A minor league teams in the Midwest League: the Cedar Rapids Kernels (Minnesota Twins) and the Quad Cities River Bandits (Kansas City Royals). The Sioux City Explorers are part of the American Association of Professional Baseball.\nIce hockey.\nDes Moines is home to the Iowa Wild, who are affiliated with the Minnesota Wild and are members of the American Hockey League. Coralville has an ECHL team called the Iowa Heartlanders that started playing in the 2021\u201322 season. The Heartlanders are also an affiliate of the Minnesota Wild.\nThe United States Hockey League has five teams in Iowa: the Cedar Rapids RoughRiders, Sioux City Musketeers, Waterloo Black Hawks, Des Moines Buccaneers, and the Dubuque Fighting Saints. The North Iowa Bulls of the North American Hockey League (NAHL) and the Mason City Toros of the North American 3 Hockey League (NA3HL) both play in Mason City.\nOther sports.\nIowa has two professional basketball teams. The Iowa Wolves, an NBA G League team that plays in Des Moines, is owned and affiliated with the Minnesota Timberwolves of the NBA. The Sioux City Hornets play in the American Basketball Association.\nIowa has three professional football teams. The Sioux City Bandits play in the Champions Indoor Football league. The Iowa Barnstormers play in the Indoor Football League at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines. The Cedar Rapids Titans play in the Indoor Football League at the U.S. Cellular Center.\nThe Iowa Speedway oval track in Newton has hosted auto racing championships such as the IndyCar Series, NASCAR Xfinity Series and NASCAR Truck Series since 2006. Also, the Knoxville Raceway dirt track hosts the Knoxville Nationals, one of the classic sprint car racing events.\nThe John Deere Classic is a PGA Tour golf event held in the Quad Cities since 1971. The Principal Charity Classic is a Champions Tour event since 2001. The Des Moines Golf and Country Club hosted the 1999 U.S. Senior Open and the 2017 Solheim Cup.\nEconomy.\nCNBC's list of \"Top States for Business in 2010\" has recognized Iowa as the sixth best state in the nation. Scored in 10 individual categories, Iowa was ranked first when it came to the \"Cost of Doing Business\"; this includes all taxes, utility costs, and other costs associated with doing business. Iowa was also ranked 10th in \"Economy\", 12th in \"Business Friendliness\", 16th in \"Education\", 17th in both \"Cost of Living\" and \"Quality of Life\", 20th in \"Workforce\", 29th in \"Technology and Innovation\", 32nd in \"Transportation\" and the lowest ranking was 36th in \"Access to Capital\".\nWhile Iowa is often viewed as a farming state, agriculture is a relatively small portion of the state's diversified economy, with manufacturing, biotechnology, finance and insurance services, and government services contributing substantially to Iowa's economy. This economic diversity has helped Iowa weather the late 2000s recession better than most states, with unemployment substantially lower than the rest of the nation.\nIf the economy is measured by gross domestic product, in 2005 Iowa's GDP was about $124\u00a0billion. If measured by gross state product, for 2005 it was $113.5\u00a0billion. Its per capita income for 2006 was $23,340. On July 2, 2009, Standard & Poor's rated Iowa's credit as AAA (the highest of its credit ratings, held by only 11 U.S. state governments).\nAs of September 2021, the state's unemployment rate is 4.0%.\nManufacturing.\nManufacturing is the largest sector of Iowa's economy, with $20.8\u00a0billion (21%) of Iowa's 2003 gross state product. Major manufacturing sectors include food processing, heavy machinery, and agricultural chemicals. Sixteen percent of Iowa's workforce is dedicated to manufacturing. Food processing is the largest component of manufacturing. Besides processed food, industrial outputs include machinery, electric equipment, chemical products, publishing, and primary metals. Companies with direct or indirect processing facilities in Iowa include ConAgra Foods, Wells Blue Bunny, Barilla, Heinz, Tone's Spices, General Mills, and Quaker Oats. Meatpacker Tyson Foods has 11 locations, second only to its headquarter state Arkansas.\nMajor non-food manufacturing firms with production facilities in Iowa include 3M, Arconic, Amana Corporation, Emerson Electric, The HON Company, SSAB, John Deere, Lennox Manufacturing, Pella Corporation, Procter & Gamble, Vermeer Company, and Winnebago Industries.\nAgriculture.\nIndustrial-scale, commodity agriculture predominates in much of the state. Iowa's main conventional agricultural commodities are hogs, with about 22.6 million hogs in 8,000 facilities large enough to require manure management plans in March 2018, outnumbering Iowans by more than 7 to 1, corn, soybeans, oats, cattle, eggs, and dairy products. Iowa is the nation's largest producer of ethanol and corn and some years is the largest grower of soybeans. In 2008, the 92,600 farms in Iowa produced 19% of the nation's corn, 17% of the soybeans, 30% of the hogs, and 14% of the eggs.\nAs of 2009[ [update]] major Iowa agricultural product processors included Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Inc., Diamond V Mills, and Quaker Oats.\nDuring the 21st century Iowa has seen growth in the organic farming sector. Iowa ranks fifth in the nation in total number of organic farms. In 2016, there were about 732 organic farms in the state, an increase of about 5% from the previous year, and 103,136 organic acres, an increase of 9,429 from the previous year. Iowa has also seen an increase in demand for local, sustainably-grown food. Northeast Iowa, part of the Driftless Area, has led the state in development of its regional food system and grows and consumes more local food than any other region in Iowa.\nIowa's Driftless Region is also home to the nationally recognized Seed Savers Exchange, a non-profit seed bank housed at an 890-acre heritage farm near Decorah, in the northeast corner of the state. The largest nongovernmental seed bank of its kind in the United States, Seed Savers Exchange safeguards more than 20,000 varieties of rare, heirloom seeds.\nAs of 2007, the direct production and sale of conventional agricultural commodities contributed only about 3.5% of Iowa's gross state product. In 2002 the impact of the indirect role of agriculture in Iowa's economy, including agriculture-affiliated business, was calculated at 16.4% in terms of value added and 24.3% in terms of total output. This was lower than the economic impact of non-farm manufacturing, which accounted for 22.4% of total value added and 26.5% of total output.\nHealth insurance.\nAs of 2014, there were 16 organizations offering health insurance products in Iowa, per the State of Iowa Insurance Division.\nIowa was fourth out of ten states with the biggest drop in competition levels of health insurance between 2010 and 2011, per the 2013 annual report on the level of competition in the health insurance industry by the American Medical Association using 2011 data from HealthLeaders-Interstudy, the most comprehensive source of data on enrollment in health maintenance organization (HMO), preferred provider organization (PPO), point-of-service (POS) and consumer-driven health care plans.\nAccording to the AMA annual report from 2007 Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield had provided 71% of the state's health insurance.\nThe Iowa Insurance Division \"Annual report to the Iowa Governor and the Iowa Legislature\" from November 2014 looked at the 95% of health insurers by premium, which are 10 companies. It found Wellmark Inc. to dominate the three health insurance markets it examined (individual, small group and large group) at 52\u201367%. Wellmark HealthPlan of Iowa and Wellmark Inc had the highest risk-based capital percentages of all 10 providers at 1158% and 1132%, respectively. Rising RBC is an indication of profits.\nOther sectors.\nIowa has a strong financial and insurance sector, with approximately 6,100 firms, including AEGON, Nationwide Group, Aviva USA, Farm Bureau Financial Services, GreatAmerica Financial Services, Voya Financial, Marsh Affinity Group, MetLife, Principal Financial Group, Principal Capital Management, Wells Fargo, and Greenstate Credit Union (formerly University of Iowa Community Credit Union).\nIowa is host to at least two business incubators, Iowa State University Research Park and the BioVentures Center at the University of Iowa. The Research Park hosts about 50 companies, among them NewLink Genetics, which develops cancer immunotherapeutics, and the U.S. animal health division of Boehringer Ingelheim, Vetmedica.\nEthanol production consumes about a third of Iowa's corn production, and renewable fuels account for eight percent of the state's gross domestic product. A total of 39 ethanol plants produced of fuel in 2009.\nRenewable energy has become a major economic force in northern and western Iowa, with wind turbine electrical generation increasing exponentially since 1990. In 2019, wind power in Iowa accounted for 42% of electrical energy produced, and 10,201 megawatts of generating capacity had been installed at the end of the year. Iowa ranked first of U.S. states in percentage of total power generated by wind and second in wind generating capacity behind Texas. Major producers of turbines and components in Iowa include Acciona Energy of West Branch, TPI Composites of Newton, and Siemens Energy of Fort Madison.\nIn 2016, Iowa was the headquarters for three of the top 2,000 companies for revenue. They include Principal Financial, Rockwell Collins, and American Equity Investment. Iowa is also headquarters to other companies including Hy-Vee, Pella Corporation, Workiva, Vermeer Company, Kum & Go gas stations, Von Maur, Pioneer Hi-Bred, and Fareway.\nGambling in the state is a major section of the Iowa tourism industry.\nTaxation.\nTax is collected by the Iowa Department of Revenue.\nIowa imposes taxes on net state income of individuals, estates, and trusts. There are nine income tax brackets, ranging from 0.36% to 8.98%, as well as four corporate income tax brackets ranging from 6%to 12%, giving Iowa the country's highest marginal corporate tax rate. The state sales tax rate is 6%, with non-prepared food having no tax. Iowa has one local option sales tax that may be imposed by counties after an election. Property tax is levied on the taxable value of real property. Iowa has more than 2,000 taxing authorities. Most property is taxed by more than one taxing authority. The tax rate differs in each locality and is a composite of county, city or rural township, school district and special levies. Iowa allows its residents to deduct their federal income taxes from their state income taxes.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nIowa was one of the leading states in the high school movement, and continues to be among the top educational performers today.\nThe four-year graduation rate for high schoolers was 91.3% in 2017. Iowa's schools are credited with the highest graduation rate in the nation as of 2019. Iowa has 333 school districts, 1,329 school buildings and has the 14th lowest student-to-teacher ratio of 14.2. Teacher pay is ranked 22nd, with the average salary being $55,647.\nAs of 2015[ [update]] transportation spending is a significant part of the budgets of rural school districts as many are geographically large and must transport students across vast distances. This reduces the amount of money spent on other aspects of the districts.\nThe state's oldest functioning school building is located in Bellevue in the historic Jackson County Courthouse which has been in continuous use as a school since 1848.\nColleges and universities.\nThe Iowa Board of Regents is composed of nine citizen volunteers appointed by the governor to provide policymaking, coordination, and oversight of the state's three public universities, two special K\u201312 schools, and affiliated centers.\nThe special K\u201312 schools include the Iowa School for the Deaf in Council Bluffs and the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School in Vinton. Both Iowa State University and The University of Iowa are research universities with The University of Iowa also being a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. In addition to the three state universities, Iowa has multiple private colleges and universities.\nTransportation.\nInterstate highways.\nIowa has four primary interstate highways. Interstate\u00a029 (I-29) travels along the state's western edge through Council Bluffs and Sioux City. I-35 travels from the Missouri state line to the Minnesota state line through the state's center, including Des Moines. I-74 begins at I-80 just northeast of Davenport. I-80 travels from the Nebraska state line to the Illinois state line through the center of the state, including Council Bluffs, Des Moines, Iowa City, and the Quad Cities. I-380 is an auxiliary Interstate Highway, which travels from I-80 near Iowa City through Cedar Rapids ending in Waterloo and is part of the Avenue of the Saints highway. Iowa is among the few jurisdictions where municipalities install speed cameras on interstate highways providing a substantial revenue source from out of state drivers.\nAirports with scheduled flights.\nIowa is served by several regional airports including the Des Moines International Airport, the Eastern Iowa Airport, in Cedar Rapids, Quad City International Airport, in Moline, Illinois, and Eppley Airfield, in Omaha, Nebraska. Smaller airports in the state include the Council Bluffs Municipal Airport, Davenport Municipal Airport (Iowa), Dubuque Regional Airport, Fort Dodge Regional Airport, Mason City Municipal Airport, Sioux Gateway Airport, Southeast Iowa Regional Airport, and Waterloo Regional Airport.\nRailroads.\nAmtrak's \"California Zephyr\" serves southern Iowa with stops in Burlington, Mount Pleasant, Ottumwa, Osceola, and Creston along its route between Chicago and Emeryville, California. Fort Madison is served by Amtrak's \"Southwest Chief\", running between Chicago and Los Angeles. Both provide daily service through the state.\nPublic Transit.\nIowa is served by a number of local transit providers including Bettendorf Transit, Cambus, Cedar Rapids Transit, Clinton Municipal Transit Administration, Coralville Transit, Cyride, Davenport Citibus, Des Moines Area Regional Transit, Iowa City Transit, The Jule, Mason City Transit, MET Transit, Omaha Metro Transit, Ottumwa Transit Authority, Quad Cities MetroLINK and Sioux City Transit.\nIntercity bus service in the state is provided by Burlington Trailways, Greyhound Lines, and Jefferson Lines.\nLaw and government.\nState.\nAs of 2022[ [update]], the 43rd and current governor of Iowa is Kim Reynolds (R). Other statewide elected officials are:\nThe Code of Iowa contains Iowa's statutory laws. It is periodically updated by the Iowa Legislative Service Bureau, with a new edition published in odd-numbered years and a supplement published in even-numbered years.\nIowa is an alcohol monopoly or alcoholic beverage control state.\nNational.\nThe two U.S. senators:\nThe four U.S. representatives:\nAfter the 2010 United States census and the resulting redistricting, Iowa lost one seat in Congress, falling to four seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Incumbent U.S. representatives Leonard Boswell (D) and Tom Latham (R) ran against each other in 2012 in the third congressional district which had new boundaries; Latham won and retired after the 2014 elections. King represented the old fifth congressional district.\nPolitical parties.\nIn Iowa, the term \"political party\" refers to political organizations which have received two percent or more of the votes cast for president or governor in the \"last preceding general election\". Iowa recognizes three political parties\u2014the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, and the Libertarian Party. The Libertarian Party obtained official political party status in 2017 as a result of presidential candidate Gary Johnson receiving 3.8% of the Iowa vote in the 2016 general election. Third parties, officially termed \"nonparty political organizations\", can appear on the ballot as well. Four of these have had candidates on the ballot in Iowa since 2004 for various positions: the Constitution Party, the Green Party, the Pirate Party, and the Socialist Workers Party.\nVoter trends.\nAs a result of the 2010 elections, each party controlled one house of the Iowa General Assembly: the House had a Republican majority, while the Senate had a Democratic majority. As a result of the 2016 elections, Republicans gained control of the Senate. Incumbent Democratic governor Chet Culver was defeated in 2010 by Republican Terry Branstad, who had served as governor from 1983 to 1999. On December 14, 2015, Branstad became the longest serving governor in U.S. history, serving (at that time) 20 years, 11 months, and 3days; eclipsing George Clinton, who served 21 years until 1804. Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds succeeded him on May 24, 2017, following Branstad's appointment as U.S. Ambassador to China.\nIn previous eras, Democratic and Republican parties had a balance in state politics and federal representation. By 2024, the two became dominated by the Republican Party. Factors include younger people leaving for more urbanized, more Democratic-leaning states, as well as homogenization of rural voters in the Midwest and in other regions.\nPresidential caucus.\nThe state gets considerable attention every four years because the Iowa caucus, gatherings of voters to select delegates to the state conventions, is the first presidential caucus in the country. The caucuses, held in January or February of the election year, involve people gathering in homes or public places and choosing their candidates, rather than casting secret ballots as is done in a presidential primary election.\nAlong with the New Hampshire primary the following week, Iowa's caucuses have become the starting points for choosing the two major-party candidates for president. The national and international media give Iowa and New Hampshire extensive attention, which gives Iowa voters leverage. In 2007 presidential campaign spending was the seventh highest in the country.\nCivil rights.\nIn a 2020 study, Iowa was ranked as the 24th easiest state for citizens to vote in.\nRacial equality.\nIn the 19th century Iowa was among the earliest states to enact prohibitions against race discrimination, especially in education, but was slow to achieve full integration in the 20th century. In the first decision of the Iowa Supreme Court\u2014\"In Re the Matter of Ralph\", decided July 1839\u2014the Court rejected slavery in a decision that found a slave named Ralph became free when he stepped on Iowa soil, 26 years before the end of the Civil War. The state did away with racial barriers to marriage in 1851, more than 100 years before the U.S. Supreme Court would ban miscegenation statutes nationwide.\nThe Iowa Supreme Court decided \"Clark v. The board of directors\" in 1868, ruling that racially segregated \"separate but equal\" schools had no place in Iowa, 85 years before \"Brown v. Board of Education\". By 1875, a number of additional court rulings effectively ended segregation in Iowa schools. Social and housing discrimination continued against Blacks at state universities until the 1950s. The Court heard \"Coger v. The North Western Union Packet Co.\" in 1873, ruling against racial discrimination in public accommodations 91 years before the U.S. Supreme Court reached the same decision.\nIn 1884, the Iowa Civil Rights Act apparently outlawed discrimination by businesses, reading: \"All persons within this state shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, restaurants, chophouses, eating houses, lunch counters, and all other places where refreshments are served, public conveyances, barber shops, bathhouses, theaters, and all other places of amusement.\" However, the courts chose to narrowly apply this act, allowing de facto discrimination to continue. Racial discrimination at public businesses was not deemed illegal until 1949, when the court ruled in \"State of Iowa v. Katz\" that businesses had to serve customers regardless of race; the case began when Edna Griffin was denied service at a Des Moines drugstore. Full racial civil rights were codified under the Iowa Civil Rights Act of 1965.\nWomen's rights.\nAs with racial equality, Iowa was a vanguard in women's rights in the mid-19th century, but did not allow women the right to vote until the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified in 1920, Iowa legislature being one of the ratifying votes. In 1847, the University of Iowa became the first public university in the U.S. to admit men and women on an equal basis. In 1869, Iowa became the first state in the union to admit women to the practice of law, with the Court ruling women may not be denied the right to practice law in Iowa and admitting Arabella A. Mansfield to the practice of law. Several attempts to grant full voting rights to Iowa women were defeated between 1870 and 1919. In 1894 women were given \"partial suffrage\", which allowed them to vote on issues, but not for candidates. It was not until the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment that women had full suffrage in Iowa. Although Iowa supported the Federal Equal Rights Amendment, in 1980 and 1992 Iowa voters rejected an Equal Rights Amendment to the state constitution. Iowa added the word \"women\" to the Iowa Constitution in 1998. After the amendment, it reads: \"All men and women are, by nature, free and equal, and have certain inalienable rights\u2014among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety and happiness.\"\nIn May 2018 Iowa signed into law one of the country's most restrictive abortion bans: the requirement that a doctor cannot perform an abortion if they can detect a fetal heartbeat, which in many cases would restrict abortions pregnancies less than six weeks old. It was struck down in January 2019, when an Iowa state judge ruled that the \"fetal heartbeat\" law was unconstitutional.\nLGBT rights.\nThe state's law criminalizing same-sex sexual activity was repealed in June 1976, 27 years before \"Lawrence v. Texas\". In 2007, the Iowa Legislature added \"sexual orientation\" and \"gender identity\" to the protected classes listed in the Iowa Civil Rights Act.\nOn April 3, 2009, the Iowa Supreme Court decided \"Varnum v. Brien\", holding in a unanimous decision, the state's law forbidding same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. This made Iowa the third state in the U.S. and first in the Midwest to permit same-sex marriage.\nSister jurisdictions.\nIowa has ten official partner jurisdictions:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "19571": "Missouri\nU.S. state\nMissouri (\"see pronunciation\") is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it borders Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas to the south and Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska to the west. In the south are the Ozarks, a forested highland, providing timber, minerals, and recreation. At 1.5 billion years old, the St. Francois Mountains are among the oldest in the world. The Missouri River, after which the state is named, flows through the center and into the Mississippi River, which makes up the eastern border. With over six million residents, it is the 19th-most populous state of the country. The largest urban areas are St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, and Columbia. The capital is Jefferson City.\nHumans have inhabited present-day Missouri for at least 12,000 years. The Mississippian culture, which emerged in the ninth century, built cities with pyramidal and other ceremonial mounds before declining in the 14th century. The Indigenous Osage and Missouria nations inhabited the area when European people arrived in the 17th century. The French incorporated the territory into Louisiana, founding Ste. Genevieve in 1735 and St. Louis in 1764. After a brief period of Spanish rule, the United States acquired Missouri as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Americans from the Upland South rushed into the new Missouri Territory, taking advantage of its productive agricultural plains; Missouri played a central role in the westward expansion of the United States. Missouri was admitted as a slave state as part of the Missouri Compromise of 1820. As a border state, Missouri's role in the American Civil War was complex, and it was subject to rival governments, raids, and guerilla warfare. After the war, both Greater St. Louis and the Kansas City metropolitan area became large centers of industrialization and business. \nToday the state is divided into 114 counties and the independent city of St. Louis. Missouri has been called the \"Mother of the West\", the \"Cave State\", and the \"Show Me State\". Its culture blends elements of the Midwestern and Southern United States. It is the birthplace of the musical genres ragtime, Kansas City jazz and St. Louis blues. The well-known Kansas City-style barbecue, and the lesser-known St. Louis-style barbecue, can be found across the state and beyond.\nMissouri is a major center of beer brewing and has some of the most permissive alcohol laws in the U.S. It is home to Anheuser-Busch, the world's largest beer producer, and produces Missouri wine, especially in the Missouri Rhineland. Outside the state's major cities, popular tourist destinations include the Lake of the Ozarks, Table Rock Lake and Branson. Some of the largest companies based in the state include Cerner, Express Scripts, Monsanto, Emerson Electric, Edward Jones, H&R Block, Wells Fargo Advisors, Centene Corporation, and O'Reilly Auto Parts. Well-known universities in Missouri include the University of Missouri, Saint Louis University, and Washington University in St. Louis.\nEtymology and pronunciation.\nThe state is named for the Missouri River, which was named after the indigenous Missouria, a Siouan-language tribe. French colonists adapted a form of the Illinois language-name for the people: \"Wimihsoorita\". Their name means \"One who has dugout canoes\".\nThe name \"Missouri\" has several different pronunciations even among its present-day inhabitants, the two most common being and . Further pronunciations also exist in Missouri or elsewhere in the United States, involving the realization of the medial consonant as either or ; the vowel in the second syllable as either or ; and the third syllable as or . Any combination of these phonetic realizations may be observed coming from speakers of American English. In British Received Pronunciation, the preferred variant is , with being a possible alternative.\nDonald M. Lance, a professor of English at the University of Missouri, stated that no pronunciation could be declared correct, nor could any be clearly defined as native or outsider, rural or urban, southern or northern, educated or otherwise. Politicians often employ multiple pronunciations, even during a single speech, to appeal to a greater number of listeners. In informal contexts respellings of the state's name, such as \"Missour-\"ee\"\" or \"Missour-\"uh\"\", are occasionally used to distinguish pronunciations phonetically.\nNicknames.\nThere is no official state nickname. However, Missouri's unofficial nickname is the \"Show Me State\", which appears on its license plates. This phrase has several origins. One is popularly ascribed to a speech by Congressman Willard Vandiver in 1899, who declared that \"I come from a state that raises corn and cotton, cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I'm from Missouri, and you have got to show me.\" This is in keeping with the saying \"I'm from Missouri\", which means \"I'm skeptical of the matter and not easily convinced.\" However, according to researchers, the phrase \"show me\" was already in use before the 1890s. Another one states that it is a reference to Missouri miners who were taken to Leadville, Colorado, to replace striking workers. Since the new miners were unfamiliar with the mining methods, they required frequent instruction. Pit bosses began saying, \"That man is from Missouri. You'll have to show him.\".\nOther nicknames for Missouri include \"The Lead State\", \"The Bullion State\", \"The Ozark State\", \"The Mother of the West\", \"The Iron Mountain State\", and \"Pennsylvania of the West\". It is also known as the \"Cave State\" because there are more than 7,300 recorded caves in the state (second to Tennessee). Perry County is the county with the most caves and the single longest cave.\nThe official state motto is \"Salus Populi Suprema Lex Esto\", Latin for \"Let the welfare of the people be the supreme law.\"\nHistory.\nEarly history.\nArchaeological excavations along river valleys have shown continuous habitation since about 9000 BCE. Beginning before 1000 CE, the people of the Mississippian culture created regional political centers at present-day St. Louis and across the Mississippi River at Cahokia, near present-day Collinsville, Illinois. Their large cities included thousands of individual residences. Still, they are known for their surviving massive earthwork mounds, built for religious, political and social reasons, in platform, ridgetop and conical shapes. Cahokia was the center of a regional trading network that reached from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. The civilization declined by 1400 CE, and most descendants left the area long before the arrival of Europeans. St. Louis was at one time known as Mound City by the European Americans because of the numerous surviving prehistoric mounds since lost to urban development. The Mississippian culture left mounds throughout the middle Mississippi and Ohio river valleys, extending into the southeast and the upper river.\nThe land that became the state of Missouri was part of numerous different territories, possessed changing and often indeterminate borders, and had many different Native American and European names between the 1600s and statehood. For much of the first half of the 1700s, the west bank of the Mississippi River that would become Missouri was mostly uninhabited, something of a no man's land that kept peace between the Illinois on the east bank of the Mississippi River and to the North, and the Osage and Missouri Indians of the lower Missouri Valley. In the early 1700s, French traders and missionaries explored the whole of the Mississippi Valley, and named the region \"Louisiana\". Around the same time, a different group of French Canadians established five villages on the east bank of the Mississippi River and identified their settlements as being in le pays des Illinois, \"the country of the Illinois\". When settlers of French Canadian descent began crossing the Mississippi River to establish settlements such as Ste. Genevieve, they continued to identify their settlements as being in the Illinois Country. At the same time, the French settlements on both sides of the Mississippi River were part of the French province of Louisiana. To distinguish the settlements in the Middle Mississippi Valley from French settlements in the lower Mississippi Valley around New Orleans, French officials and inhabitants referred to the Middle Mississippi Valley as La Haute Louisiane, \"The High Louisiana\", or \"Upper Louisiana\".\nThe first European settlers were mostly ethnic French Canadians, who created their first settlement in Missouri at present-day Ste. Genevieve, about south of St. Louis. They had migrated in about 1750 from the Illinois Country. They came from colonial villages on the east side of the Mississippi River, where soils were becoming exhausted and there was insufficient river bottom land for the growing population. The early Missouri settlements included many enslaved Africans and Native Americans, and slave labor was central to both commercial agriculture and the fur trade. Sainte-Genevi\u00e8ve became a thriving agricultural center, producing enough surplus wheat, corn and tobacco to ship tons of grain annually downriver to Lower Louisiana for trade. Grain production in the Illinois Country was critical to the survival of Lower Louisiana and especially the city of New Orleans.\nSt. Louis was founded on February 14, 1764, by French fur traders Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent, Pierre Lacl\u00e8de, and Auguste Chouteau. From 1764 to 1803, European control of the area west of the Mississippi to the northernmost part of the Missouri River basin, called Louisiana, was assumed by the Spanish as part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, due to Treaty of Fontainebleau (in order to have Spain join with France in the war against England). The arrival of the Spanish in St. Louis was in September 1767.\nSt. Louis became the center of a regional fur trade with Native American tribes that extended up the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, dominating the regional economy for decades. Trading partners of major firms shipped their furs from St. Louis by river down to New Orleans for export to Europe. They provided a variety of goods to traders for sale and trade with their Native American clients. The fur trade and associated businesses made St. Louis an early financial center and provided the wealth for some to build fine houses and import luxury items. Its location near the confluence of the Illinois River meant it also handled produce from the agricultural areas. River traffic and trade along the Mississippi were integral to the state's economy. As the area's first major city, St. Louis expanded greatly after the invention of the steamboat and the increased river trade.\n19th century.\nNapoleon Bonaparte had gained Louisiana for French ownership from Spain in 1800 under the Treaty of San Ildefonso after it had been a Spanish colony since 1762, but the treaty was kept secret. Louisiana remained nominally under Spanish control until a transfer of power to France on November 30, 1803, just three weeks before the cession to the United States.\nPart of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase by the United States, Missouri earned the nickname \"Gateway to the West\" because it served as a significant departure point for expeditions and settlers heading to the West during the 19th century. St. Charles, just west of St. Louis, was the starting point and the return destination of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which ascended the Missouri River in 1804, to explore the western lands to the Pacific Ocean. For decades, St. Louis was a major supply point for parties of settlers heading west.\nAs many of the early settlers in western Missouri migrated from the Upper South, they brought enslaved African Americans as agricultural laborers, and they desired to continue their culture and the institution of slavery. They settled predominantly in 17 counties along the Missouri River, in an area of flatlands that enabled plantation agriculture and became known as \"Little Dixie\".\nThe state was rocked by the 1811\u201312 New Madrid earthquakes. Casualties were few due to the sparse population.\nAdmission as a state in 1821.\nIn 1821, the former Missouri Territory was admitted as a slave state, under the Missouri Compromise, and with a temporary state capital in St. Charles. In 1826, the capital was shifted to its permanent location of Jefferson City, also on the Missouri River.\nOriginally the state's western border was a straight line, defined as the meridian passing through the Kawsmouth, the point where the Kansas River enters the Missouri River. The river has moved since this designation. This line is known as the Osage Boundary. In 1836 the Platte Purchase was added to the northwest corner of the state after purchase of the land from the native tribes, making the Missouri River the border north of the Kansas River. This addition increased the land area of what was already the largest state in the Union at the time (about to Virginia's 65,000 square miles, which then included West Virginia).\nIn the early 1830s, Mormon migrants from northern states and Canada began settling near Independence and areas just north of there. Conflicts over religion and slavery arose between the 'old settlers' (mainly from the South) and the Mormons (mainly from the North). The Mormon War erupted in 1838. By 1839, with the help of an \"Extermination Order\" by Governor Lilburn Boggs, the old settlers forcibly expelled the Mormons from Missouri and confiscated their lands.\nConflicts over slavery exacerbated border tensions among the states and territories. From 1838 to 1839, a border dispute with Iowa over the so-called Honey Lands resulted in both states' calling-up of militias along the border.\nWith increasing migration, from the 1830s to the 1860s, Missouri's population almost doubled with every decade. Most newcomers were American-born, but many Irish and German immigrants arrived in the late 1840s and 1850s. As a majority were Catholic, they set up their own religious institutions in the state, which had been mostly Protestant. Many settled in cities, creating a regional and then state network of Catholic churches and schools. 19th-century German immigrants created the wine industry along the Missouri River and the beer industry in St. Louis.\nWhile many German immigrants were strongly anti-slavery, many Irish immigrants living in cities were pro-slavery, fearing that liberating African-American slaves would create a glut of unskilled labor, driving wages down.\nMost Missouri farmers practiced subsistence farming before the American Civil War. The majority of those who held slaves had fewer than five each. Planters, defined by some historians as those holding 20 slaves or more, were concentrated in the counties known as \"Little Dixie\", in the central part of the state along the Missouri River. The tensions over slavery chiefly had to do with the future of the state and nation. In 1860, enslaved African Americans made up less than 10% of the state's population of 1,182,012. In order to control the flooding of farmland and low-lying villages along the Mississippi, the state had completed construction of of levees along the river by 1860.\nAmerican Civil War.\nAfter the secession of Southern states began in 1861, the Missouri legislature called for the election of a special convention on secession. This convention voted against secession, but also qualified their support of the Union. In the aftermath of Battle of Fort Sumter Pro-Southern Governor Claiborne F. Jackson ordered the mobilization of several hundred members of the state militia who had gathered in a camp in St. Louis for training. In secret, he also requested Confederate arms and artillery to help take the St. Louis Arsenal. Alarmed at this action, and discovering the Confederate aid, General Nathaniel Lyon struck first, encircling the camp and forcing the state troops to surrender. Lyon directed his soldiers, largely non-English-speaking German immigrants, to march the prisoners through the streets, and this led to riot by pro-secession citizens. While it is disputed how it started, this riot led to violence and Union soldiers killed by St. Louis civilians. The event as a whole, is called the Camp Jackson Affair.\nThese events sharpened the divisions within the state. Governor Jackson appointed Sterling Price, president of the convention on secession, as head of the new Missouri State Guard. In the face of Union General Lyon's rapid advance through the state, Jackson and Price were forced to flee the capital of Jefferson City on June 14, 1861. In Neosho, Missouri, Jackson called the state legislature into session to call for secession. However, the elected legislative body was split between pro-Union and pro-Confederate. As such, few of the pro-unionist attended the session called in Neosho, and the ordinance of secession was quickly adopted. The Confederacy recognized Missouri secession on October 30, 1861.\nWith the elected governor absent from the capital and the legislators largely dispersed, the state convention was reassembled with most of its members present, save twenty who fled south with Jackson's forces. The convention declared all offices vacant and installed Hamilton Gamble as the new governor of Missouri. President Lincoln's administration immediately recognized Gamble's government as the legal Missouri government. The federal government's decision enabled raising pro-Union militia forces for service within the state and volunteer regiments for the Union Army.\nFighting ensued between Union forces and a combined army of General Price's Missouri State Guard and Confederate troops from Arkansas and Texas under General Ben McCulloch. After winning victories at the battle of Wilson's Creek and the siege of Lexington, Missouri and suffering losses elsewhere, the Confederate forces retreated to Arkansas and later Marshall, Texas, in the face of a largely reinforced Union Army.\nThough regular Confederate troops staged some large-scale raids into Missouri, the fighting in the state for the next three years consisted chiefly of guerrilla warfare. \"Citizen soldiers\" or insurgents such as Captain William Quantrill, Frank and Jesse James, the Younger brothers, and William T. Anderson made use of quick, small-unit tactics. Pioneered by the Missouri Partisan Rangers, such insurgencies also arose in portions of the Confederacy occupied by the Union during the Civil War. Historians have portrayed stories of the James brothers' outlaw years as an American \"Robin Hood\" myth. The vigilante activities of the Bald Knobbers of the Ozarks in the 1880s were an unofficial continuation of insurgent mentality long after the official end of the war, and they are a favorite theme in Branson's self-image.\nReconstruction period and later 19th century.\nMissouri remained electorally competitive during the Jim Crow era, and did not disenfranchise African Americans, who comprised less than 10% of the state's population from 1870 to 1960. In particular, Missouri never implemented a poll tax as a requirement to vote.\nHowever, Missouri did enact racial segregation. Democratic President Harry S. Truman grew up in Missouri, where segregation was practiced and largely accepted. Truman would later issue Executive Order 9981 in July 1948, prohibiting racial segregation in the armed forces.\n20th century.\nThe Progressive Era (1890s to 1920s) saw numerous prominent leaders from Missouri trying to end corruption and modernize politics, government, and society. Joseph \"Holy Joe\" Folk was a key leader who made a strong appeal to the middle class and rural evangelical Protestants. Folk was elected governor as a progressive reformer and Democrat in the 1904 election. He promoted what he called \"the Missouri Idea\", the concept of Missouri as a leader in public morality through popular control of law and strict enforcement. He successfully conducted antitrust prosecutions, ended free railroad passes for state officials, extended bribery statutes, improved election laws, required formal registration for lobbyists, made racetrack gambling illegal and enforced the Sunday-closing law. He helped enact Progressive legislation, including an initiative and referendum provision, regulation of elections, education, employment and child labor, railroads, food, business, and public utilities. Several efficiency-oriented examiner boards and commissions were established during Folk's administration, including many agricultural boards and the Missouri library commission.\nBetween the Civil War and the end of World War II, Missouri transitioned from a rural economy to a hybrid industrial-service-agricultural economy as the Midwest rapidly industrialized. The expansion of railroads to the West transformed Kansas City into a major transportation hub within the nation. The growth of the Texas cattle industry along with this increased rail infrastructure and the invention of the refrigerated boxcar also made Kansas City a major meatpacking center, as large cattle drives from Texas brought herds of cattle to Dodge City and other Kansas towns. There, the cattle were loaded onto trains destined for Kansas City, where they were butchered and distributed to the eastern markets. The first half of the 20th century was the height of Kansas City's prominence, and its downtown became a showcase for stylish Art Deco skyscrapers as construction boomed.\nIn 1930, there was a diphtheria epidemic in the area around Springfield, which killed approximately 100 people. Serum was rushed to the area, and medical personnel stopped the epidemic.\nDuring the mid-1950s and 1960s, St. Louis and Kansas City suffered deindustrialization and loss of jobs in railroads and manufacturing, as did other Midwestern industrial cities. St. Charles claims to be the site of the first interstate highway project in 1956. Such highway construction made it easy for middle-class residents to leave the city for newer housing developed in the suburbs, often former farmland where land was available at lower prices. These major cities have gone through decades of readjustment to develop different economies and adjust to demographic changes. Suburban areas have developed separate job markets, both in knowledge industries and services, such as major retail malls.\n21st century.\nIn 2014, Missouri received national attention for the protests and riots that followed the shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer of Ferguson, which led Governor Jay Nixon to call out the Missouri National Guard. A grand jury declined to indict the officer, and the U.S. Department of Justice concluded, after careful investigation, that the police officer legitimately feared for his safety. However, in a separate investigation, the Department of Justice also found that the Ferguson Police Department and the City of Ferguson relied on unconstitutional practices in order to balance the city's budget through racially motivated excessive fines and punishments, that the Ferguson police \"had used excessive and dangerous force and had disproportionately targeted blacks,\" and that the municipal court \"emphasized revenue over public safety, leading to routine breaches of citizens' constitutional guarantees of due process and equal protection under the law.\"\nA series of student protests at the University of Missouri against what the protesters viewed as poor response by the administration to racist incidents on campus began in September 2015.\nOn June 7, 2017, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People issued a warning to prospective African-American travelers to Missouri. This is the first NAACP warning ever covering an entire state. According to a 2018 report by the Missouri Attorney General's office, for the past 18 years, \"African Americans, Hispanics and other people of color are disproportionately affected by stops, searches and arrests.\" The same report found that the biggest discrepancy was in 2017, when \"black motorists were 85% more likely to be pulled over in traffic stops\".\nIn 2018, the USDA announced its plans to relocate Economic Research Service (ERS) and National Institute of Food & Agriculture (NIFA) to Kansas City. They have since decided on a specific location in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. With the addition of the KC Streetcar project and construction of the Sprint Center Arena, the downtown area in KC has attracted investment in new offices, hotels, and residential complexes. Both Kansas City and St. Louis are undergoing a rebirth in their downtown areas with the addition of the new Power & Light (KC) and Ballpark Village (STL) districts and the renovation of existing historical buildings in each downtown area. The 2019 announcement of an MLS expansion team in St. Louis is driving even more development in the downtown west area of St. Louis. Kansas City has experienced a boom in population, with new developments such as Three Light apartments being centered in Downtown Kansas City, as well as suburban development in the Northland.\nGeography.\nMissouri borders eight different states, a figure equaled only by its neighbor, Tennessee. Missouri is bounded by Iowa on the north; by Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee across the Mississippi River on the east; on the south by Arkansas; and by Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska (the last across the Missouri River) on the west. Whereas the northern and southern boundaries are straight lines, the Missouri Bootheel extends south between the St. Francis and the Mississippi rivers. The two largest rivers are the Mississippi (which defines the eastern boundary of the state) and the Missouri River (which flows from west to east through the state), essentially connecting the two largest metros of Kansas City and St. Louis.\nAlthough today it is usually considered part of the Midwest, Missouri was historically seen by many as a border state, chiefly because of the settlement of migrants from the South and its status as a slave state before the Civil War, balanced by the influence of St. Louis. The counties that made up \"Little Dixie\" were those along the Missouri River in the center of the state, settled by Southern migrants who held the greatest concentration of slaves.\nIn 2005, Missouri received 16,695,000 visitors to its national parks and other recreational areas totaling , giving it $7.41\u00a0million in annual revenues, 26.6% of its operating expenditures.\nTopography.\nNorth of, and in some cases just south of, the Missouri River lie the Northern Plains that stretch into Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. Here, rolling hills remain from the glaciation that once extended from the Canadian Shield to the Missouri River. Missouri has many large river bluffs along the Mississippi, Missouri, and Meramec Rivers. Southern Missouri rises to the Ozark Mountains, a dissected plateau surrounding the Precambrian igneous St. Francois Mountains. This region also hosts karst topography characterized by high limestone content with the formation of sinkholes and caves.\nThe southeastern part of the state is known as the Missouri Bootheel region, which is part of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain or Mississippi embayment. This region is the lowest, flattest, warmest, and wettest part of the state. It is also among the poorest, as the economy there is mostly agricultural. It is also the most fertile, with cotton and rice crops predominant. The Bootheel was the epicenter of the four New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811 and 1812.\nClimate.\nMissouri generally has a humid continental climate with cool, sometimes cold, winters and hot, humid, and wet summers. In the southern part of the state, particularly in the Bootheel, the climate becomes humid subtropical. Located in the interior United States, Missouri often experiences extreme temperatures. Without high mountains or oceans nearby to moderate temperature, its climate is alternately influenced by air from the cold Arctic and the hot and humid Gulf of Mexico. Missouri's highest recorded temperature is at Warsaw and Union on July 14, 1954, while the lowest recorded temperature is also at Warsaw on February 13, 1905.\nLocated in Tornado Alley, Missouri also receives extreme weather in the form of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. On May 22, 2011, a massive EF-5 tornado killed 158 people and destroyed roughly one-third of the city of Joplin. The tornado caused an estimated $1\u20133\u00a0billion in damages, killed 159 people and injured more than a thousand. It was the first EF5 to hit the state since 1957 and the deadliest in the U.S. since 1947, making it the seventh deadliest tornado in American history and 27th deadliest in the world. St. Louis and its suburbs also have a history of experiencing particularly severe tornadoes, the most recent one of note being an EF4 that damaged Lambert-St. Louis International Airport on April 22, 2011. One of the worst tornadoes in American history struck St. Louis on May 27, 1896, killing at least 255 people and causing $10\u00a0million in damage (equivalent to $3.9\u00a0billion in 2009 or $ in today's dollars).\nWildlife.\nMissouri is home to diverse flora and fauna, including several endemic species. There is a large amount of fresh water present due to the Mississippi River, Missouri River, Table Rock Lake and Lake of the Ozarks, with numerous smaller tributary rivers, streams, and lakes. North of the Missouri River, the state is primarily rolling hills of the Great Plains, whereas south of the Missouri River, the state is dominated by the Oak-Hickory Central U.S. hardwood forest.\nForests.\nRecreational and commercial uses of public forests, including grazing, logging, and mining, increased after World WarII. Fishermen, hikers, campers, and others started lobbying to protect forest areas with a \"wilderness character\". During the 1930s and 1940s, Aldo Leopold, Arthur Carhart and Bob Marshall developed a \"wilderness\" policy for the Forest Service. Their efforts bore fruit with the Wilderness Act of 1964, which designated wilderness areas \"where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by men, where man himself is a visitor and does not remain.\" This included second growth public forests like the Mark Twain National Forest.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nThe United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Missouri was 6,137,428 on July 1, 2019, a 2.48% increase since the 2010 United States census.\nMissouri had a population of 5,988,927, according to the 2010 census; an increase of 137,525 (2.3 percent) since the year 2010. From 2010 to 2018, this includes a natural increase of 137,564 people since the last census (480,763 births less 343,199 deaths) and an increase of 88,088 people due to net migration into the state. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 50,450 people, and migration within the country produced a net increase of 37,638 people. More than half of Missourians (3,294,936 people, or 55.0%) live within the state's two largest metropolitan areas\u2014St. Louis and Kansas City. The state's population density of 86.9 people per square mile in 2009, was also closer to the national average (86.8 in 2009) than any other state. The top countries of origin for Missouri's immigrants in 2018 were Mexico, China, India, Vietnam and Bosnia and Herzegovina.\nAccording to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 5,992 homeless people in Missouri.\nThe U.S. census of 2010 found that the population center of the United States is in Texas County, while the 2000 census found the mean population center to be in Phelps County. The center of population of Missouri is in Osage County, in the city of Westphalia.\nIn 2004, the population included 194,000 foreign-born people (3.4 percent of the state population).\nThe five largest ancestry groups in Missouri are: German (27.4 percent), Irish (14.8 percent), English (10.2 percent), American (8.5 percent) and French (3.7 percent).\nGerman Americans are an ancestry group present throughout Missouri. African Americans are a substantial part of the population in St. Louis (56.6% of African Americans in the state lived in St. Louis or St. Louis County as of the 2010 census), Kansas City, Boone County and in the southeastern Bootheel and some parts of the Missouri River Valley, where plantation agriculture was once important. Missouri Creoles of French ancestry are concentrated in the Mississippi River Valley south of St. Louis (see Missouri French). Kansas City is home to large and growing immigrant communities from Latin America esp. Mexico and Colombia, Africa (i.e. Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria), and Southeast Asia including China and the Philippines; and Europe like the former Yugoslavia (see Bosnian American). A notable Cherokee Indian population exists in Missouri, and 30,518 identified as being Native American alone in 2020, while 152,917 did in combination with one or more other races.\nIn 2004, 6.6 percent of the state's population was reported as younger than5, 25.5 percent younger than 18, and 13.5 percent 65 or older. Females were approximately 51.4 percent of the population. 81.3 percent of Missouri residents were high school graduates (more than the national average), and 21.6 percent had a bachelor's degree or higher. 3.4 percent of Missourians were foreign-born, and 5.1 percent reported speaking a language other than English at home.\nIn 2010, there were 2,349,955 households in Missouri, with 2.45 people per household. The homeownership rate was 70.0 percent, and the median value of an owner-occupied housing unit was $137,700. The median household income for 2010 was $46,262, or $24,724 per capita. There was 14.0 percent (1,018,118) of Missourians living below the poverty line in 2010.\nThe mean commute time to work was 23.8 minutes.\nBirth data.\nIn 2011, 28.1% of Missouri's population younger than age1 were minorities.\n\"Note: Births in table do not add up, because Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race, giving a higher overall number.\"\nLanguage.\nThe vast majority of people in Missouri speak English. Approximately 5.1% of the population reported speaking a language other than English at home. The Spanish language is spoken in small Latino communities in the St. Louis and Kansas City Metro areas.\nMissouri is home to an endangered dialect of the French language known as Missouri French. Speakers of the dialect, who call themselves \"Cr\u00e9oles\", are descendants of the French pioneers who settled the area then known as the Illinois Country beginning in the late 17th century. It developed in isolation from French speakers in Canada and Louisiana, becoming quite distinct from the varieties of Canadian French and Louisiana French. Once widely spoken throughout the area, Missouri French is now nearly extinct, with only a few elderly speakers able to use it.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nAccording to a Pew Research study conducted in 2014, 80% of Missourians identify with a religion. 77% affiliate with Christianity and its various denominations and the other 3% are adherents of non-Christian religions. The remaining 20% have no religion, with 2% specifically identifying as atheists and 3% identifying as agnostics (the other 15% do not identify as \"anything in particular\").\nThe religious demographics of Missouri are as follows:\nThe largest denominations by number of adherents in 2010 were the Southern Baptist Convention with 749,685; the Roman Catholic Church with 724,315; and the United Methodist Church with 226,409.\nAmong the other denominations there are approximately 93,000 Mormons in 253 congregations, 25,000 Jewish adherents in 21 synagogues, 12,000 Muslims in 39 masjids, 7,000 Buddhists in 34 temples, 20,000 Hindus in 17 temples, 2,500 Unitarians in nine congregations, 2,000 of the Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith in 17 temples, five Sikh temples, a Zoroastrian temple, a Jain temple and an uncounted number of neopagans.\nSeveral religious organizations have headquarters in Missouri, including the Lutheran Church\u2013Missouri Synod, which has its headquarters in Kirkwood, as well as the United Pentecostal Church International in Hazelwood, both outside St. Louis.\nIndependence, near Kansas City, is the headquarters for the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), the Church of Christ (Temple Lot) and the group Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This area and other parts of Missouri are also of significant religious and historical importance to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which maintains several sites and visitor centers.\nSpringfield is the headquarters of the Assemblies of God USA and the Baptist Bible Fellowship International. The General Association of General Baptists has its headquarters in Poplar Bluff. The Unity Church is headquartered in Unity Village. Springfield is particularly known as a Christian center in the state and is considered by some to be a \"buckle\" of the Bible Belt.\nThe Hindu Temple of St. Louis is the largest Hindu Temple in Missouri, serving more than 14,000 Hindus.\nEconomy.\nThe U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis estimated Missouri's gross state product was $422\u00a0billion in 2023. Per capita personal income in 2023 was $61,302, ranking 34th in the nation. Major industries include agriculture, aerospace, transportation equipment, food processing, chemicals, printing/publishing, electrical equipment, light manufacturing, and financial services.\nThe agriculture products of the state are beef, soybeans, pork, dairy products, hay, corn, poultry, sorghum, cotton, rice, and eggs. Missouri is ranked 6th in the nation for the production of hogs and 7th for cattle. Missouri is ranked in the top five states in the nation for production of soy beans, and it is ranked fourth in the nation for the production of rice. In 2001, there were 108,000 farms, the second-largest number in any state after Texas. Missouri actively promotes its rapidly growing wine industry. According to the Missouri Partnership, Missouri's agriculture industry contributes $33\u00a0billion in GDP to Missouri's economy, and generates $88\u00a0billion in sales and more than 378,000 jobs.\nMissouri has vast quantities of limestone. Other resources mined are lead, coal, and crushed stone. Missouri produces the most lead of all the states. Most of the lead mines are in the central eastern portion of the state. Missouri also ranks first or near first in the production of lime, a key ingredient in Portland cement.\nMissouri also has a growing science, agricultural technology, and biotechnology field. Monsanto, formerly one of the largest biotech companies in America, was based in St. Louis until it was acquired by Bayer AG in 2018. It is now part of the Crop Science Division of Bayer Corporation, Bayer's U.S. subsidiary.\nTourism, services, and wholesale/retail trade follow manufacturing in importance\u2014tourism benefits from the many rivers, lakes, caves, parks, etc., throughout the state. In addition to a network of state parks, Missouri is home to Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis and the Ozark National Scenic Riverways. A much-visited show cave is Meramec Caverns in Stanton.\nMissouri is the only state in the Union to have two Federal Reserve Banks: one in Kansas City (serving western Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado, northern New Mexico, and Wyoming) and one in St. Louis (serving eastern Missouri, southern Illinois, southern Indiana, western Kentucky, western Tennessee, northern Mississippi, and all of Arkansas).\nThe state's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in April 2017 was 3.9 percent. In 2017, Missouri became a right-to-work state, but in August 2018, Missouri voters rejected a right-to-work law with 67% to 33%.\nTaxation.\nPersonal income is taxed in ten different earning brackets, ranging from 1.5% to 6.0%. Missouri's sales tax rate for most items is 4.225%, with some additional local levies. More than 2,500 Missouri local governments rely on property taxes levied on real property (real estate) and personal property.\nMost personal property is exempt, except for motorized vehicles. Exempt real estate includes property owned by governments and property used as nonprofit cemeteries, exclusively for religious worship, for schools and colleges, and purely charitable purposes. There is no inheritance tax and limited Missouri estate tax related to federal estate tax collection.\nIn 2017, the Tax Foundation rated Missouri as having the 5th-best corporate tax index, and the 15th-best overall tax climate. Missouri's corporate income tax rate is 6.25%; however, 50% of federal income tax payments may be deducted before computing taxable income, leading to an effective rate of 5.2%.\nEnergy.\nIn 2012, Missouri had roughly 22,000 MW of installed electricity generation capacity. In 2011, 82% of Missouri's electricity was generated by coal. Ten percent was generated from the state's only nuclear power plant, the Callaway Plant in Callaway County, northeast of Jefferson City. Five percent was generated by natural gas. One percent was generated by hydroelectric sources, such as the dams for Truman Lake and Lake of the Ozarks. Missouri has a small but growing amount of wind and solar power\u2014wind capacity increased from 309 MW in 2009 to 459 MW in 2011, while photovoltaics have increased from 0.2 MW to 1.3 MW over the same period. As of 2016, Missouri's solar installations had reached 141 MW.\nOil wells in Missouri produced 120,000 barrels of crude oil in fiscal 2012. There are no oil refineries in Missouri.\nTransportation.\nAirports.\nMissouri has two major airport hubs: St. Louis Lambert International Airport and Kansas City International Airport. Southern Missouri has the Springfield\u2013Branson National Airport (SGF) with multiple non-stop destinations. Residents of Mid-Missouri use Columbia Regional Airport (COU) to fly to Chicago (ORD), Dallas (DFW) or Denver (DEN).\nRail.\n<templatestyles src=\"Routemap/styles.css\"/>\nTwo of the nation's three busiest rail centers are in Missouri. Kansas City is a major railroad hub for BNSF Railway, Norfolk Southern Railway, Kansas City Southern Railway, and Union Pacific Railroad, and every class1 railroad serves Missouri. Kansas City is the second-largest freight rail center in the U.S. (but is first in the amount of tonnage handled). Like Kansas City, St. Louis is a major destination for train freight. Springfield remains an operational hub for BNSF Railway.\nAmtrak passenger trains serve Kansas City, La Plata, Jefferson City, St. Louis, Lee's Summit, Independence, Warrensburg, Hermann, Washington, Kirkwood, Sedalia, and Poplar Bluff. A proposed high-speed rail route in Missouri as part of the Chicago Hub Network has received $31\u00a0million in funding.\nThe only urban light rail/subway system operating in Missouri is MetroLink, which connects the city of St. Louis with suburbs in Illinois and St. Louis County. It is one of the largest systems (by track mileage) in the United States. The KC Streetcar in downtown Kansas City opened in May 2016.\nThe Gateway Multimodal Transportation Center in St. Louis is the largest active multi-use transportation center in the state. It is in downtown St. Louis, next to the historic Union Station complex. It serves as a hub center/station for MetroLink, the MetroBus regional bus system, Greyhound, Amtrak, and taxi services.\nIn 2018, a Missouri Hyperloop was proposed to connect St. Louis, Kansas City, and Columbia, reducing travel time across the entire state to around a half hour. The project stalled in December, 2023, with the shutdown of the corporate partner Hyperloop One.\nBus.\nMany cities have regular fixed-route systems, and many rural counties have rural public transit services. Greyhound and Trailways provide inter-city bus service in Missouri. Megabus serves St. Louis, but discontinued service to Columbia and Kansas City in 2015.\nRivers.\nThe Mississippi River and Missouri River are commercially navigable over their entire lengths in Missouri. The Missouri was channelized through dredging and jetties, and the Mississippi was given a series of locks and dams to avoid rocks and deepen the river. St. Louis is a major destination for barge traffic on the Mississippi.\nRoads.\nFollowing the passage of Amendment 3 in late 2004, the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) began its Smoother, Safer, Sooner road-building program with a goal of bringing of highways up to good condition by December 2007. From 2006 to 2011 traffic deaths have decreased annually from 1,257 in 2005, to 1,096 in 2006, to 992 in 2007, to 960 in 2008, to 878 in 2009, to 821 in 2010, to 786 in 2011.\nGovernment and politics.\nThe Constitution of Missouri, the fourth constitution for the state, was adopted in 1945. It provides for three branches of government: the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. The legislative branch consists of two bodies: the House of Representatives and the Senate. These bodies comprise the Missouri General Assembly.\nThe House of Representatives has 163 members apportioned based on the last decennial census. The Senate consists of 34 members from districts of approximately equal populations. The judicial department comprises the Supreme Court of Missouri, which has seven judges, the Missouri Court of Appeals (an intermediate appellate court divided into three districts), sitting in Kansas City, St. Louis, and Springfield, and 45 Circuit Courts which function as local trial courts. The executive branch is headed by the Governor of Missouri and includes five other statewide elected offices. Following the departure from office of State Auditor Nicole Galloway on January 9, 2023, there are no Democrats holding statewide elected positions in Missouri.\nHarry S Truman (1884\u20131972), the 33rd President of the United States (Democrat, 1945\u20131953), was born in Lamar. He was a judge in Jackson County and then represented the state in the United States Senate for ten years, before being elected vice-president in 1944. He lived in Independence after retiring as president in 1953.\nIn a 2020 study, Missouri was ranked as 48th on the Cost of Voting Index with only Texas and Georgia ranking higher.\nMissouri retains the death penalty. Authorized methods of execution include the gas chamber. Abortion in Missouri is legal as a result of 2024 Missouri Amendment 3.\nFormer status as a political bellwether.\nPrior to 2008, Missouri had been widely regarded as a bellwether in American politics, often making it a swing state. The state had a longer stretch of supporting the winning presidential candidate than any other state, having voted for the winning candidate in every election from 1904 to 2004 with a single exception: 1956 when Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson of neighboring Illinois lost the election despite carrying Missouri. However, since 2000, Missouri has always voted for the Republican Presidential candidate, with the last Democrat winning the state being Bill Clinton in 1996. Missouri voted for John McCain and Mitt Romney over Democrat Barack Obama of neighboring Illinois, despite Obama being elected to the Presidency in both 2008 and 2012. Missouri voted for Mitt Romney by nearly 10% in 2012 and voted for Donald Trump by over 18% in 2016 and 2024, and 15% in 2020.\nOn October 24, 2012, there were 4,190,936 registered voters. At the state level, both Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill and Democratic Governor Jay Nixon were re-elected.\nOn November 3, 2020, there were 4,318,758 registered voters, with 3,026,028 voting (70.1%). By this time, the state had favored more Republican candidates for federal offices. The offices held by Democratic party officials a decade before were subsequently held by Republican Senator Josh Hawley and Republican Governor Mike Parson.\nMissouri's accuracy rate for the last 29 presidential elections is now 89.66%. This percentage is on par with that of Ohio, which has voted for the winner of every presidential election since 1896, except in 1944, 1960 and 2020. \nLaissez-faire alcohol and tobacco laws.\nMissouri has been known for its population's generally \"stalwart, conservative, noncredulous\" attitude toward regulatory regimes, which is one of the origins of the state's unofficial nickname, the \"Show-Me State\". As a result, and combined with the fact that Missouri is one of America's leading alcohol states, regulation of alcohol and tobacco in Missouri is among the most laissez-faire in America. For 2013, the annual \"Freedom in the 50 States\" study prepared by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University ranked Missouri as #3 in America for alcohol freedom and #1 for tobacco freedom (#7 for freedom overall). The study notes that Missouri's \"alcohol regime is one of the least restrictive in the United States, with no blue laws and taxes well below average\", and that \"Missouri ranks best in the nation on tobacco freedom\".\nMissouri law makes it \"an improper employment practice\" for an employer to refuse to hire, to fire, or otherwise to disadvantage any person because that person lawfully uses alcohol or tobacco products outside of work.\nWith a large German immigrant population and the development of a brewing industry, Missouri always has had among the most permissive alcohol laws in the United States. It has never enacted statewide prohibition. Missouri voters rejected prohibition in three separate referendums in 1910, 1912, and 1918. Alcohol regulation did not begin in Missouri until 1934.\nToday, alcohol laws are controlled by the state government, and local jurisdictions are prohibited from going beyond those state laws. Missouri has no statewide open container law or prohibition on drinking in public, no alcohol-related blue laws, no local option, no precise locations for selling liquor by the package (allowing even drug stores and filling stations to sell any kind of liquor), and no differentiation of laws based on alcohol percentage. State law protects persons from arrest or criminal penalty for public intoxication.\nMissouri law expressly prohibits any jurisdiction from going dry. Missouri law also expressly allows parents and guardians to serve alcohol to their children. The Power & Light District in Kansas City is one of the few places in the United States where a state law explicitly allows persons over 21 to possess and consume open containers of alcohol in the street (as long as the beverage is in a plastic cup).\nAs for tobacco (as of July 2016), Missouri has the lowest cigarette excise taxes in the United States, at 17 cents per pack, and the state electorate voted in 2002, 2006, 2012, and twice in 2016 to keep it that way. In 2007, \"Forbes\" named Missouri's largest metropolitan area, St. Louis, America's \"best city for smokers\".\nAccording to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2008 Missouri had the fourth highest percentage of adult smokers among U.S. states, at 24.5%. Although federal law prohibits the sale of tobacco to persons under 21, tobacco products can be distributed to persons under 21 by family members on private property.\nNo statewide smoking ban ever has been seriously entertained before the Missouri General Assembly, and in October 2008, a statewide survey by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services found that only 27.5% of Missourians support a statewide ban on smoking in all bars and restaurants. Missouri state law permits restaurants seating less than 50 people, bars, bowling alleys, and billiard parlors to decide their own smoking policies, without limitation.\nCannabis laws.\nIn 2014, a Republican-led legislature and Democratic governor Jay Nixon enacted a series of laws to partially decriminalize possession of cannabis by making first-time possession of up to 10 grams no longer punishable with jail time and legalizing CBD oil. In November 2018, 66% of voters approved a constitutional amendment that established a right to medical marijuana and a system for licensing, regulating, and taxing medical marijuana.\nCounties.\nMissouri has 114 counties and one independent city, St. Louis, which is Missouri's most densely populated\u20145,140 people per square mile.\nThe largest counties by population are St. Louis (996,726), Jackson (698,895), and St. Charles (395,504). Worth County is the smallest (2,057).\nThe largest counties by size are Texas (1,179 square miles) and Shannon (1,004). Worth County is the smallest (266).\nCities and towns.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nJefferson City is the capital city of Missouri, while the state's five largest cities are Kansas City, St. Louis, Springfield, Columbia, and Independence.\nSt. Louis is the principal city of the largest metropolitan area in Missouri, composed of 17 counties and the independent city of St. Louis; eight of its counties are in Illinois. As of 2022, St. Louis was the 21st-largest metropolitan area in the nation with 2.80\u00a0million people. If ranked using Combined Statistical Area, it is also the 21st-largest with 2.91 million people in 2022. Some of the major cities making up the St. Louis metro area in Missouri are O'Fallon, St. Charles, St. Peters, Florissant, Chesterfield, Wentzville, Wildwood, University City, Ballwin, and Kirkwood.\nKansas City is Missouri's largest city and the principal city of the fourteen-county Kansas City Metropolitan Statistical Area, including five counties in the state of Kansas. As of 2022, it was the 31st-largest metropolitan area in the U.S., with 2.21\u00a0million people. In the Combined Statistical Area in 2022, it ranked 29th with 2.55\u00a0million. Some of the other major cities comprising the Kansas City metro area in Missouri include Independence, Lee's Summit, Blue Springs, Liberty, Raytown, Gladstone, Grandview, and Belton.\nSpringfield is Missouri's third-largest city and the principal city of the Springfield-Branson Metropolitan Area, which has a population of 549,423 and includes seven counties in southwestern Missouri. Branson is a major tourist attraction in the Ozarks in southwest Missouri. Some of the other major cities comprising the Springfield-Branson metro area include Nixa, Ozark, and Republic.\nEducation.\nMissouri State Board of Education.\nThe Missouri State Board of Education has general authority over all public education in the state of Missouri. It is made up of eight citizens appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Missouri Senate.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nEducation is compulsory from ages seven to seventeen. It is required that any parent, guardian, or another person with custody of a child between the ages of seven and seventeen, the compulsory attendance age for the district, must ensure the child is enrolled in and regularly attends public, private, parochial school, home school or a combination of schools for the full term of the school year. Compulsory attendance also ends when children complete sixteen credits in high school.\nChildren in Missouri between the ages of five and seven are not required to be enrolled in school. However, if they are enrolled in a public school, their parent, guardian, or custodian must ensure they regularly attend.\nMissouri schools are commonly but not exclusively divided into three tiers of primary and secondary education: elementary school, middle school or junior high school and high school. The public school system includes kindergarten to 12th grade. District territories are often complex in structure. In some cases, elementary, middle, and junior high schools of a single district feed into high schools in another district. As another example, special education and related services for students in the twenty-two school districts of St. Louis County are provided by staff employed by a special school district, a local education agency that serves students county-wide. High school athletics and competitions are governed by the Missouri State High School Activities Association (MSHSAA).\nHomeschooling is legal in Missouri and is an option to meet the compulsory education requirement. It is neither monitored nor regulated by the state's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.\nAnother gifted school is the Missouri Academy of Science, Mathematics and Computing, which is at the Northwest Missouri State University.\nColleges and universities.\nThe University of Missouri System is Missouri's statewide public university system. The flagship institution and largest university in the state is the University of Missouri in Columbia. The others in the system are University of Missouri\u2013Kansas City, University of Missouri\u2013St. Louis, and Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla.\nDuring the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the state established a series of normal schools in each region of the state, originally named after the geographic districts: Northeast Missouri State University (now Truman State University) (1867), Central Missouri State University (now the University of Central Missouri) (1871), Southeast Missouri State University (1873), Southwest Missouri State University (now Missouri State University) (1905), Northwest Missouri State University (1905), Missouri Western State University (1915), Maryville University (1872) and Missouri Southern State University (1937). Lincoln University and Harris\u2013Stowe State University were established in the mid-nineteenth century and are historically black colleges and universities.\nAmong private institutions Washington University in St. Louis and Saint Louis University are two top ranked schools in the US. There are numerous junior colleges, trade schools, church universities and other private universities in the state. A.T. Still University was the first osteopathic medical school in the world. Hannibal\u2013LaGrange University in Hannibal, Missouri, was one of the first colleges west of the Mississippi (founded 1858 in LaGrange, Missouri, and moved to Hannibal in 1928).\nThe state funds a $3000, renewable merit-based scholarship, Bright Flight, given to the top three percent of Missouri high school graduates who attend a university in-state.\nThe 19th-century border wars between Missouri and Kansas have continued as a sports rivalry between the University of Missouri and University of Kansas. The rivalry was chiefly expressed through football and basketball games between the two universities, but since Missouri left the Big 12 Conference in 2012, the teams no longer regularly play one another. It was the oldest college rivalry west of the Mississippi River and the second-oldest in the nation. Each year when the universities met to play, the game was coined the \"Border War\". Following the game, an exchange occurred where the winner took a historic Indian War Drum, which had been passed back and forth for decades. Though Missouri and Kansas no longer have an annual game after the University of Missouri moved to the Southeastern Conference, rivalry still exists between them.\nCulture.\nMusic.\nMany well-known musicians were born or have lived in Missouri. These include guitarist and rock pioneer Chuck Berry, singer and actress Josephine Baker, \"Queen of Rock\" Tina Turner, pop singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow, Michael McDonald of the Doobie Brothers, rap producer Metro Boomin, and rappers Nelly, Chingy, and Akon, all of whom are either current or former residents of St. Louis.\nCountry singers from Missouri include Perryville native Chris Janson, New Franklin native Sara Evans, Cantwell native Ferlin Husky, West Plains native Porter Wagoner, Tyler Farr of Garden City, and Mora native Leroy Van Dyke, along with bluegrass musician Rhonda Vincent, a native of Greentop. Rapper Eminem was born in St. Joseph and also lived in Savannah and Kansas City. Ragtime composer Scott Joplin lived in St. Louis and Sedalia. Jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker lived in Kansas City. Rock and Roll singer Steve Walsh of the group Kansas was born in St. Louis and grew up in St. Joseph.\nThe Kansas City Symphony and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra are the state's major orchestras. The latter is the nation's second-oldest symphony orchestra and achieved prominence in recent years under conductor Leonard Slatkin. Branson is well known for its music theaters, most of which bear the name of a star performer or musical group.\nLiterature.\nMissouri is the native state of Mark Twain. His novels \"The Adventures of Tom Sawyer\" and \"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn\" are set in his boyhood hometown of Hannibal. Authors Kate Chopin, T. S. Eliot and Tennessee Williams were from St. Louis. Kansas City-born writer William Least Heat-Moon resides in Rocheport. He is best known for \"Blue Highways\", a chronicle of his travels to small towns across America, which was on The New York Times Bestseller list for 42 weeks in 1982\u20131983. Novelist Daniel Woodrell, known for depicting life in the Missouri Ozarks, was born in Springfield and lives in West Plains.\nSports.\nMissouri hosted the 1904 Summer Olympics at St. Louis, the first time the games were hosted in the United States.\nProfessional major league teams:\nFormer professional major league teams:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["19571", "26810748"], "permutation_1": ["19571", "26810748"], "permutation_2": ["26810748", "19571"], "permutation_3": ["26810748", "19571"]}
{"id": "2hop__96945_155490", "docs_added": {"23600338": "Elliott Cresson Medal\nThe Elliott Cresson Medal, also known as the Elliott Cresson Gold Medal, was the highest award given by the Franklin Institute. The award was established by Elliott Cresson, life member of the Franklin Institute, with $1,000 granted in 1848. The endowed award was to be \"for some discovery in the Arts and Sciences, or for the invention or improvement of some useful machine, or for some new process or combination of materials in manufactures, or for ingenuity skill or perfection in workmanship.\" The medal was first awarded in 1875, 21 years after Cresson's death.\nThe Franklin Institute continued awarding the medal on an occasional basis until 1998 when they reorganized their endowed awards under one umbrella, The Benjamin Franklin Awards.\nList of recipients.\nA total of 268 Elliott Cresson Medals were given out during the award's lifetime.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "226577": "Franklin Institute\nScience museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania\nThe Franklin Institute is a science museum and a center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named after the American scientist and statesman Benjamin Franklin. It houses the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial. Founded in 1824, the Franklin Institute is one of the oldest centers of science education and development in the United States. Its chief astronomer is Derrick Pitts.\nHistory.\n19th century.\nOn February 5, 1824, Samuel Vaughan Merrick and William H. Keating founded the Franklin Institute of the State of Pennsylvania for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts. The opening was chronicled by \"The Literary Chronicle for the Year 1824\":\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />With a view further to develop the resources of the union, increase the national independence, call forth the ingenuity and industry of the people, and thereby increase the comforts of the community at large.\nBegun in 1825, the institute was an important force in the professionalization of American science and technology through the nineteenth century, beginning with early investigations into steam engines and water power. In addition to conducting scientific inquiry, it fostered research and education by running schools, publishing the influential \"Journal of The Franklin Institute\", sponsoring exhibitions, and recognizing scientific advancement and invention with medals and awards.\n20th century.\nIn the late 20th century, the institute's research roles gave way to educating the general public through its museum. The Bartol Research Foundation of the Franklin Institute, founded in 1924 to conduct research in the physical sciences, now is part of the University of Delaware and named Bartol Research Institute. The Franklin Institute Laboratories for Research and Development operated from the Second World War into the 1980s.\nMany scientists have demonstrated groundbreaking new technology at the Franklin Institute. From September 2 to October 11, 1884, it hosted the International Electrical Exhibition of 1884, the first great electrical exposition in the United States. The world's first public demonstration of an all-electronic television system was later given by Philo Taylor Farnsworth on August 25, 1934.\nThe first female member, Elizabeth Skinner, was elected to membership in 1833. The Franklin Institute was integrated in 1870, when Philadelphia teacher and activist Octavius Catto was admitted as a member.\nThe institute's original building at 15 South 7th Street, later the home of the (now-defunct) Atwater Kent Museum, eventually proved too small for the institute's research, educational programs, and library. The Institute moved into its current home on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, near the intersection with 20th Street, in 1934. The new facility was intended from the start to educate visitors through hand-on interactions with exhibits: \"Visitors to this museum would be encouraged to touch, handle, and operate the exhibits in order to learn how things work.\" Funds to build the new Institute and Franklin Memorial came from the Poor Richard Club, the City Board of Trust, the Benjamin Franklin Memorial, Inc., and the Franklin Institute. John T. Windrim's original design was a completely square building surrounding the Benjamin Franklin Statue, which had yet to be built. Despite the effects of the Great Depression, the Benjamin Franklin Memorial, Inc. raised $5 million between December 1929 and June 1930. Only two of the four wings envisioned by Windrim were built; these face the Parkway and share design elements with other cultural and civic structures around Logan Circle.\nOn March 31, 1940, press agent William Castellini issued a press release stating that the world would end the next day. The story was picked up by KYW, which reported, \"Your worst fears that the world will end are confirmed by astronomers of Franklin Institute, Philadelphia. Scientists predict that the world will end at 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time tomorrow. This is no April Fool joke. Confirmation can be obtained from Wagner Schlesinger, director of the Fels Planetarium of this city.\" This caused a panic in the city which only subsided when the Franklin Institute assured people it had made no such prediction. Castellini was dismissed shortly thereafter.\n21st century.\nOn December 21, 2017, during a party hosted by the museum, a partygoer with his companions slipped into a closed-off exhibit of ten Terracotta Army warriors on loan from China. After his companions left, the partygoer broke off and stole a thumb from one of the warriors. Law enforcement agents later recovered the stolen thumb. The vandalized cavalryman is valued at US$4.5 million, and is considered a \"priceless part of China's cultural heritage\". The vandalism stoked outrage in Chinese media, such as Xinhua. The Franklin Institute blamed its external security contractor, and stated it had reviewed its security measures and procedures to prevent such situations from recurring. The defendant was charged both with theft, and with concealment of an item of cultural heritage.\nThe defense argued that the defendant was being \"overcharged\" under statutes applicable to professional art thieves. An April 2019 trial ended in a hung jury with seven of the 12 jurors in favor of acquittal. A February 2020 retrial was postponed due to travel restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nIn 2021, the institute housed the work of Dyymond Whipper-Young as she broke the Guinness world record for the \"world's largest drawing by an individual\".\nCapital campaign.\nIn 2006, the Franklin Institute began fundraising activities for the Inspire Science! capital campaign, a $64.7 million campaign intended to fund the construction of a building addition, new exhibits, and upgrades and renovations to the existing Institute building and exhibits.\nIn 2011, the Franklin Institute received a $10 million gift from Athena and Nicholas Karabots towards the Inspire Science! capital campaign. This gift is the largest gift in the institute's history, and put the Franklin Institute within $6 million of the $64.7 million capital campaign goal. The Nicholas and Athena Karabots Pavilion will house not only a $10 million multiroom exhibit on neuroscience, but also a conference center, classroom space, and additional room for traveling exhibitions.\nThe Science Center.\nThe most recognizable part of the Franklin Institute's Science Center is the Franklin Institute Science Museum. In the spirit of inquiry and discovery embodied by Benjamin Franklin, the mission of the Franklin Institute Science Museum serves to inspire an understanding of and passion for science and technology learning. Among other exhibits, the Science Museum holds the largest collection of artifacts from the Wright brothers' workshop.\nOther attractions.\nThe Science Center includes many pertinent attractions that are not museum exhibits. The Budd BB-1 \"Pioneer\" flying boat, in front of the museum, was the world's first stainless steel airplane, built by Philadelphia-based Edward F. Budd Manufacturing Corporation, and has been on display since 1935.\nA mock-up which would eventually become the Lunar Module in the Apollo space program, first shown on display in the 1966\u201367 World's Fair, held in the New York Hall of Science, is also located on the grounds. (See .)\nTheaters.\nIn 1933, Samuel Simeon Fels contributed funds to build The Fels Planetarium, only the second built in the United States after Chicago's Adler Planetarium. Fully reconstructed in 2002, the Planetarium's new design includes replacement of the original 40,000-pound stainless steel dome, originally built in 1933. The new premium dome is lighter and is in diameter. It is the first of its kind in the United States. The planetarium is also outfitted for visitors who are hearing impaired.\nThe Tuttleman IMAX Theater is an IMAX dome theater that is 180\u00b0 encompassing and tilted at 30 degrees. The seating places the audience up in the dome which is over across and 4.5 stories tall. In addition, the theater has 20,000 watts of amplifier power and over 50 speakers. The theater was closed in 2020 due to COVID-19, and did not reopen with the rest of the museum. In November 2023, the Franklin Institute confirmed that the theater would remain closed permanently, citing that it was financially unviable and had outdated equipment, and that the museum would be investing in other new exhibits instead.\nEarly in 2008, extensive renovation of the museum's auditorium was completed. Previously a lecture hall, the space was renamed Franklin Theater, and features 3-D and hi-def Blu-ray digital projection capabilities. The Franklin Theater shows educational films during daytime hours while also including mass release feature-length films.\nTraveling exhibits.\nIn the past, the Science Center has hosted many traveling exhibits including \"Storms\", \"Titanic\", \"Grossology\", \"Body Worlds\", \"Darwin\", and \"Robots\". In the summer of 2007, the Franklin Institute hosted \"Tutankhamun and The Golden Age of The Pharaohs,\" in the Mandell Center of the Franklin Institute Science Museum. The exhibit began its United States Tour in Los Angeles, and went to Fort Lauderdale, and Chicago, before coming to Philadelphia for its final American appearance. When the exhibit left Philadelphia on September 30, 2007, it traveled to London.\nThis exhibit was nearly twice the size of the original Tutankhamun exhibit of the 1970s, and contained 50 objects directly from Tut's tomb, as well as nearly 70 object from the tombs of his ancestors in The Valley of the Kings. The show also featured a CAT Scan that revealed what the Boy King may have looked like.\nThe Franklin Institute is a member of the Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC) and the American Alliance of Museums (AAM).\nThe Franklin Institute is also a member of the Science Museum Exhibit Collaborative with the Fort Worth Museum of Science & History; the Museum of Science, Boston; COSI Columbus, formerly known as the \"Center of Science and Industry\" in Columbus, Ohio; OMSI in Portland, Oregon; the Science Museum of Minnesota in Saint Paul, Minnesota; and the California Science Center, formerly the California Museum of Science & Industry, in Los Angeles.\nBenjamin Franklin National Memorial.\nThe Benjamin Franklin National Memorial features a high marble statue, sculpted by James Earle Fraser. Originally opened in 1938, the Memorial was designed by architect John T. Windrim and modeled after the Pantheon in Rome. The Hall is in length, width, and height. The domed ceiling is self-supporting and weighs 1600 tons. The floors, walls, columns, pilasters, and cornices are made of marbles imported from Portugal, Italy, and France.\nThe United States Congress designated the Hall and statue as the official Benjamin Franklin National Memorial on October 25, 1972 (Pub. L.\u00a0). The Memorial was dedicated by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller in 1976.\nOn December 30, 2005, Congress authorized the institute to receive up to $10 million in matching grants for the rehabilitation of the memorial and for the development of related exhibits.\nIn the fall of 2008, the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial was re-opened after a summer-long restoration that included multimedia enhancements. Philadelphia's most famous citizen is featured in \"Benjamin Franklin Forever\", an hourly 3.5-minute multimedia presentation utilizing the entire rotunda.\nAlso noteworthy is the Franklin Institute's Frankliniana Collection, some of which is on rotating display in the Pendulum Staircase. Highlights include Franklin's 1777 Nini Medallion, the scale model of the bust from the statue in the Memorial, the figurehead of Franklin's bust from the frigate , his ceremonial sword used in the court of King Louis XVI, and the odometer that Franklin used to measure the postal routes in Philadelphia. Additionally, the institute's \"Electricity\" exhibition highlights one of Franklin's lightning rods, his electricity tube, a Franklin Electrostatic Generator, the 1751 publication of Franklin's \"Experiments and Observations on Electricity\", and Thornton Oakley's two 1940 historical murals of Franklin and the \"Kite and Key\" experiment.\n\"The Journal of The Franklin Institute\".\nIn 1826, \"The Journal of The Franklin Institute\" was established to publish US Patent information and to document scientific and technological achievements throughout the nation. It is the second oldest continuously published scientific journal in the country, and is now primarily devoted to engineering and applied mathematics.\nAwards.\nSince 1824, the Franklin Institute has maintained the longest continuously awarded science and technology awards program in the United States, and one of the oldest in the world. The first issue of the \"Journal of The Franklin Institute\", dated January 1826, makes the first written reference to these awards. Before 1998 several medals were awarded by the Franklin Institute, such as (year indicates when the award was first presented): the Elliott Cresson Medal (1875), the Edward Longstreth Medal (1890), the Howard N. Potts Medal (1911), the Franklin Medal (1915), the George R. Henderson Medal (1924), the Louis E. Levy Medal (1924), the John Price Wetherill Medal (1926), The Frank P. Brown Medal (first awarded in 1941), Stuart Ballantine Medal (1947), and the Albert A. Michelson Medal (1968). Past winners include Henry Ford, Frank Lloyd Wright, Marie Curie, and Thomas Edison.\nIn 1998 all of the endowed medals were reorganized as the Benjamin Franklin Medals. Multiple medals are given every year, for different fields of science and engineering. The fields awarded today are \"Chemistry\", \"Computer and Cognitive Science\", \"Earth and Environmental Science\", \"Electrical Engineering\", \"Life Science\", \"Mechanical Engineering\" and \"Physics\". In the past also the fields \"Earth Science\", \"Engineering\" and \"Materials Science\" were rewarded.\nAdditionally since 1990, the Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science (Bower Science Award) and the Bower Award for Business Leadership have been awarded annually. They are funded by a $7.5 million bequest in 1988 from Henry Bower, a chemical manufacturer in Philadelphia. The Bower Science Award contains $250,000 of cash, one of the largest amounts for a science award in the US.\nThe institute's Committee on Science and the Arts determines the winners of these awards. Recipients and related information can be found in the laureates database.\nInformal science learning research.\nThe Franklin Institute also undertakes research in informal science education. Areas of special strength are educational technology, school partnerships, and youth leadership. In addition, the center has built a substantial portfolio of unique online resources of the history of science, including online exhibits on Ben Franklin and the Heart, as well as resources on the Wright Aeronautical Engineering Collection.\nThe Franklin Institute is a member of the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network (NISE Net).\nPrograms.\nScience Leadership Academy.\nOpening in September 2006, The \"Science Leadership Academy\" is a partnership between the Franklin Institute and the School District of Philadelphia.\nTeacher professional development.\nThe Franklin Institute offers summer institutes and school year mini-courses for K-8 teachers, in collaboration with the School District of Philadelphia and Curriculum & Instruction Office.\nPartnerships for Achieving Careers in Technology and Science.\n\"Partnerships for Achieving Careers in Technology and Science\", or PACTS, is a year-round program of science enrichment, career development, and leadership opportunities for diverse middle- and high-school students in the Philadelphia Region. PACTS students use hands-on science workshops, field based research, field trips, and laboratory experiments to learn how science affects their everyday lives.\nGirls at the Center.\n\"Girls at the Center\" is a partnership between the Franklin Institute and the Girl Scouts of the USA provided girls and their families a chance to learn about science together. Over 100 sites participated in the program, with over 70 of the sites still active today. Girls at the Center provided activities for the girls to do with their families at home, as well as projects to be completed on site, all culminating in a year-end party.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "23597573": "Elliott Cresson\nAmerican philanthropist (1796\u20131854)\nElliott Cresson (March 2, 1796 \u2013 February 20, 1854) was an American philanthropist who gave money to a number of causes after a brief career in the mercantile business. He established the Elliott Cresson Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1848, and helped found and manage the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, today's Moore College of Art and Design. Cresson was a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and a strong supporter of the Philadelphia branch of the American Colonization Society, a group fighting slavery that relocated former slaves and free African Americans to colonies in Liberia. Cresson was called \"the most belligerent Friend the Society ever had.\"\nEarly career.\nCresson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on March 2, 1796, the first child of John Elliott Cresson and Mary Warder Cresson. The infant Cresson represented the seventh generation of Cressons born in the United States. John Elliott Cresson died in 1814, and Elliott Cresson continued to reside, unmarried, at 730 Sansom Street with his widowed mother until his death.\nIn 1818, Cresson's uncle Caleb Cresson, Jr. gave him control of the very prosperous mercantile business he had built up. In 1824, Cresson left the business to pursue philanthropic goals.\nLiberia.\nCresson was interested in the idea of moving freed slaves and African-American citizens to Africa, an idea shared for a few years in the late 1820s by Boston abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Cresson felt that ex-slaves, surrounded as they were by white people of greater means, found it too difficult to lift themselves up. His belief was that new circumstances among a primarily black culture would effect a beneficial change in character for the former slaves. Cresson joined the Philadelphia organization known as the Young Men's Colonization Society, a branch of the American Colonization Society, and soon became its strongest, most active member. Beginning in 1830, Cresson saw in the national organization's finances a lack of accountability and rising debts, and he warned them against such fiscal folly.\nIn 1832\u20131833, Cresson traveled to England to promote the cause. He joined in an effort by the Philadelphia and the New York City auxiliaries to act more independently. The Philadelphia group founded Port Cresson (today Buchanan, Liberia) with the intent that the newly established black settlers would control the Saint John River and thereby stop the flow of some 1200 slaves per month. Cresson traveled to Liberia in early 1833 to help establish the colony, sent on his way by a poem from Lydia Sigourney which finished with: \n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Sad Afric's hand hath bound thee,\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Among her jewels rare;\u2014\nHer talisman is round thee,\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Her tearful, grateful prayer.\nGo forth\u2014God's peace possessing!\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0To all mankind a friend;\u2014\nFull be thy cup of blessing,\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Where'er thy wanderings tend!\u00a0\u00a0\nBy 1833, Garrison was decrying the efforts of the American Colonization Society, saying it was just a perpetuation of slavery. Cresson worked to stop the damage caused by Garrison's reversal, and wrote Garrison directly on two occasions. In spite of his efforts, Cresson was partly blamed for the withdrawal of some Southern state auxiliaries from the national organization.\nThe Port Cresson colony was attacked in 1835 by Bassa tribesmen who were incited by Spanish slave traders. All the buildings were destroyed, 20 of 126 colonists were killed, and the rest escaped to the nearby colony of Edina. A month later, a new colony was established at Bassa Cove.\nBy the efforts of Cresson and his New York counterpart, the American Colonization Society went through a reorganization, with fiscal responsibility first on the list of changes. Cresson traveled the South in the late 1830s to promote colonization of Liberia, and wrote in 1840 that the whole region, particularly Kentucky, seemed ready to send its slaves to Liberia. Emancipation of slaves was seen to be wholly contingent upon their removal from the United States. Slaveholders expected compensation for losing workers.\nFranklin Institute.\nIn late 1824, Cresson was nominated and elected to the Franklin Institute, becoming a life member. In 1846, he announced his intention to create a Medal fund. In 1848, Cresson gave $1,000 to establish the Elliott Cresson Medal, a gold medal awarded \"for some discovery in the Arts and Sciences, or for the invention or improvement of some useful machine, or for some new process or combination of materials in manufactures, or for ingenuity skill or perfection in workmanship.\" The medal was first awarded in 1875, to six firms or persons.\nSilver medals were proposed by Cresson in 1850, to be awarded in 1851 to the largest producers in the Pennsylvania colonies of Liberia of coffee, sugar, palm oil, and cotton. The Franklin Institute adopted the award, but no such medals were ever given out.\nWomen's college.\nIn 1850, Sarah Worthington King Peter wrote to the Franklin Institute about her drawing class of some 20 young women becoming a \"co-operative, but separate branch\" of the Institute. The Franklin Institute established and supervised the Philadelphia School of Design for Women from 1850 to 1853. A group of 17 men were designated the incorporators of the school in 1853. Cresson was among these 17 directors and was elected president at the first meeting. Cresson's enthusiastic work on behalf of the school was cut short by his death. The school flourished and was renamed Moore College of Art and Design in 1989.\nOther interests.\nCresson wrote to James Madison in 1829 to ask a favor. The ex-president, 79 years old and the last of the Founding Fathers, wrote back to comply with the request for a \"sample of my handwriting\" and to supply Cresson an autograph each of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.\nCresson subscribed to the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, a special library collection. He bought stock in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Cresson bequeathed to the city of Philadelphia a trust fund designated for planting and renewing shade trees, \"excluding such foreign trash as the Lombardy Poplar, Ailanthus, paper Mulberry & similar Exotics.\"\nLegacy.\nCresson died at age 58 in Philadelphia on February 20, 1854, of gangrene. He was buried at The Woodlands Cemetery in Philadelphia. The town Cresson, Pennsylvania was named in his honor.\nCresson gave artist Thomas Sully $500 in his will; Sully had painted two portraits of Cresson, one in 1824 and another in 1849. Sully painted a copy of the 1849 portrait one year after Cresson's death. Another beneficiary in Cresson's will was William Bacon Stevens, the rector of St. Andrew's Church in Philadelphia, and the former state historian of Georgia. Others in the will included three sons of Cresson's sister Sara and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia.\nThe Franklin Institute continued awarding the Elliott Cresson Medal, also known as the Elliott Cresson Gold Medal, for distinguished work in science until 1998 when they reorganized their endowed awards under one umbrella, The Benjamin Franklin Medals. A total of 268 people or groups were given the award during its lifetime.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "131660": "Cresson, Pennsylvania\nBorough in Pennsylvania, US\nCresson is a borough in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, United States. Cresson is east of Pittsburgh. It is above in elevation. Lumber, coal, and coke yards were industries that had supported the population, which numbered 1,470 in 1910. The borough is part of the Johnstown Metropolitan Statistical Area, although state and local sources list it as part of the Altoona area due to being much closer to that city. The population of Cresson at the 2010 census was 1,711.\nThe location was named in 1854 as a memorial to philanthropist Elliott Cresson. Railroads, beginning with the Allegheny Portage Railroad, fueled the growth of the area. Many famous Pittsburgh businessmen, including Charles M. Schwab, Andrew Carnegie, and Henry Clay Frick, maintained summer residences in the area.\nThe borough was incorporated in 1906, along with neighboring Sankertown.\nGeography.\nCresson is located in eastern Cambria County at (40.462631, -78.586319), atop the Eastern Continental Divide, the height of land between the Eastern Seaboard of the United States and the Ohio River valley. The Little Conemaugh River rises in Cresson, flowing southwest to form the Conemaugh River, which in turn flows to the Kiskiminetas River, then the Allegheny River, the Ohio River, and finally the Mississippi. The north side of Cresson, meanwhile, drains north to Clearfield Creek, a tributary of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River, leading to Chesapeake Bay. Blair Gap, at the eastern edge of the Allegheny Plateau and east of town, is the location of the Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site, where the first railroad (a portage railway) crossed the Allegheny Mountains.\nCresson is bypassed to the south and east by U.S. Route 22, a four-lane expressway, with access from two exits: Pennsylvania Route 53 (Second Street) on the south, and the Admiral Peary Highway (former US 22) on the east. Altoona is to the northeast via US 22 and Interstate 99, while Ebensburg, the Cambria County seat, is to the west.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the borough has a total area of , all land.\nHistory.\nMountainhouse era.\nOne of the first buildings in the area which would become Cresson was the Mountainhouse Hotel. The Queen Anne style structure was opened by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1881, sold to the Cresson Springs Co., and demolished in 1916. It was hoped to attract visitors from Pittsburgh and Johnstown looking for clean air and \"therapeutic\" mineral springs. Although itself unsuccessful, it led to the development of several other hotels, companies, and the town itself.\nThe area is currently known as the \"Mountainhouse Grounds\" to local residents and is in the midst of development. Several of the original cottages still stand, including those of Andrew Carnegie and Benjamin Jones.\nStereographs of R.A. Bonine.\nPhotographer R.A. Bonine of Altoona took several stereographs of the Cresson area, including the Mountainhouse during the 1870-1880s. The following were included in his series \"Views Among the Alleghenies\".\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nAs of the census of 2000, there were 1,631 people, 726 households, and 426 families residing in the borough. The population density was . There were 786 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the borough was 98.90% White, 0.12% African American, 0.37% Asian, 0.25% from other races, and 0.37% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.74% of the population.\nThere were 726 households, out of which 26.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 41.9% were married couples living together, 13.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 41.3% were non-families. 36.8% of all households were made up of individuals, and 16.9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.23 and the average family size was 2.94.\nIn the borough, the population was spread out, with 21.0% under the age of 18, 10.3% from 18 to 24, 27.5% from 25 to 44, 22.2% from 45 to 64, and 19.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females, there were 85.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 81.8 males.\nThe median income for a household in the borough was $26,293, and the median income for a family was $34,900. Males had a median income of $30,972 versus $21,853 for females. The per capita income for the borough was $15,562. About 13.7% of families and 16.8% of the population were below the poverty line, including 16.4% of those under age 18 and 6.4% of those age 65 or over.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "39095600": "Cresson Traveling Scholarship\nThe Cresson Traveling Scholarship, also known as the William Emlen Cresson Memorial Traveling Scholarship, is a two-year scholarship for foreign travel and/or study awarded annually to art students at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.\nAwarded for excellence, the prize was funded by Emlen and Priscilla Cresson in memory of their son William Emlen Cresson, an Academy alumnus who died in 1868 at the age of 23. He had been a child prodigy painter who began exhibiting at the Academy at the age of 11.\nThe first Cresson Traveling Scholarships were awarded in 1902. Initially, they were $1,000 one-year scholarships, renewable for a second year, and sometimes beyond. Multiple awards were given in painting, along with one in sculpture and one in architecture. Awards in illustration were added later.\nCresson European Scholarships of $5000 for summer travel, were also awarded annually. These were not as prestigious as the two-year scholarships, with which they are often confused. \nLaura Wheeler Waring, the first African-American woman to win a Cresson Traveling Scholarship, was studying in Paris in 1914 when World War I broke out. Subsequent winners were allowed to postpone their travel until the conflict was over.\nScholarship winners.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "31697310": "State Correctional Institution \u2013 Cresson\nCorrectional facility in Pennsylvania, US\nState Correctional Institution \u2013 Cresson was a medium-security, all male correctional facility, located off U.S. Route 22, about 10 miles west of Altoona along Old Route 22 in the Western part of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.\nOn January 8, 2013, state officials announced the prison would be closed. The prison closed June 30, 2013, and the land was put up for sale by the state.\nCreation of SCI-Cresson.\nUnder Executive Order of then-Governor Dick Thornburgh in January 1983, This facility, formerly the Lawrence Frick State Hospital for the mentally ill, was to be transferred to the Bureau of Corrections for its use. The construction/renovation process at Cresson was allocated at $20.6 Million. Construction/renovation began in 1984, and the design of the new housing units for inmates was prototyped in future institutions across the Commonwealth. The activation team was created in the fall of 1986. SCI-Cresson opened in 1987, becoming a medium-security correctional facility for men.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "22283780": "Samuel M. Vauclain\nSamuel Matthews Vauclain (May 18, 1856 \u2013 February 4, 1940) was an American engineer, inventor of the Vauclain compound locomotive, and president of the Baldwin Locomotive Works. He was awarded the John Scott Award and the Elliott Cresson Medal by The Franklin Institute in 1891. He was also awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for arming the United States Army during World War I. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1899.\nRailroads.\nVauclain served an apprenticeship in the machine shops of the Pennsylvania Railroad. When he was 24, he was sent to inspect locomotives at the Baldwin Locomotive Works. In those days, machining was a manual job with the machining done by hammers, files and chisels with the men's own hands. Vauclain's hands were left in a permanent clutching position from endless hours of chipping and filing metal. He became general foreman of Baldwin's 17th Street Shops in 1883, and quickly moved up through the company, as plant superintendent in 1886, then general superintendent. He joined the board of directors in 1896, became vice-president in 1911, senior vice-president in 1917, president from 1919 to 1929, and chairman of the board from then until his death. He was awarded the Elliott Cresson Medal by The Franklin Institute in 1891. At the same time, the Franklin Institute selected Vauclain for the John Scott Award funded by the City of Philadelphia.\nDuring World War I, Vauclain helped organize the Munitions Standards Board. He then served as chairman of the special advisory subcommittee on plants and munitions for the War Industries Board. In 1919, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by the War Department.\nHe helped professor Thomas Garrigue Masaryk legions especially in Russia in 1918.\nPersonal life.\nSamuel Vauclain was born in Port Richmond, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Andrew Constant Vauclain and Mary Ann Campbell Vauclain. In 1879, he married Annie Kearney; they had six children.\nVauclain was a Republican, and served as a delegate from Pennsylvania's 7th District to the 1920 Republican National Convention, which nominated Warren G. Harding for president.\nIn 1923, he and several Baldwin officials took a trip around the Middle West in which he gave eight speeches in eight different cities.\nVauclain died following a heart attack, in Broadlawn, his home at Rosemont, Pennsylvania.\nReferences"}, "descending_order": ["23600338", "23597573", "131660", "39095600", "226577", "31697310", "22283780"], "permutation_1": ["131660", "23597573", "39095600", "23600338", "226577", "22283780", "31697310"], "permutation_2": ["39095600", "131660", "23600338", "31697310", "226577", "22283780", "23597573"], "permutation_3": ["22283780", "39095600", "23600338", "131660", "31697310", "23597573", "226577"]}
{"id": "2hop__195917_575657", "docs_added": {"126972": "Holley, New York\nHolley is a village in the town of Murray in Orleans County, New York, United States. The population was 1,811 at the 2010 census. According to the 2020 census, the population decreased to 1,754. It is part of the Rochester Metropolitan Statistical Area.\nHistory.\nThe village of Holley was incorporated in 1850. Originally named Saltport, the name was changed to honor Myron Holley, a commissioner of the Erie Canal.\nIn 2002, A major chemical spill known as the Diaz pipeline incident occurred at the Diaz chemical production plant after a pipeline from a reactor vessel bursted, contaminating 31,000 tons of concrete and scrap metal as well as multiple houses, temporarily rendering Holley a ghost town.\nThe village of Holley hosted an annual \"Hazzard County Squirrel Slam,\" from 2006 until the last event in 2016, a squirrel hunt that raises funds for the village's fire department. The event went off without incident for six consecutive years until the 2013 edition drew the sudden ire of a coalition of wildlife rehabilitators, animal rights activists and gun control advocates. Approximately 30 people stood outside of the Holley Fire Department to protest the event. Protests also occurred in 2014, 2015, and 2016. Several lawsuits to stop the event took place, none of which were successful. Due to the controversy, the \"Squirrel Slam\" hasn't taken place since 2016.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of , all land.\nHolley is located on the Erie Canal.\nThe village is located at the junction of east-west highway New York State Route 31 (West Albion Street and State Street) and north-south highway New York State Route 237 (North and South Main Street).\nIt is located approximately 21 miles from Rochester NY.\nEconomy.\nHolley's main economy is farming based, due to the lack of trade in the area, as well as the growing townships nearby, such as Brockport and Albion. The town has small shops and businesses, including a dance studio, Kyokushin Karate dojo, a pizzeria, a diner and gas station.\nEducation.\nThere are two public schools in Holley: Holley Elementary School and Holley Junior/Senior High School. These two schools are located in close proximity to each other in the northeastern portion of the village.\nResidents of the Holley School district currently pay the highest rate of school taxes in the county. The older high school, located in the center of town, was closed in 1976 due to a growing population that needed a larger facility and one closer to athletic fields. This building is now considered a historical landmark.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nAs of the census of 2000, there were 1,802 people, 788 households, and 464 families residing in the village. The population density was . There were 846 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the village was 96.95% White, 1.22% African American, 0.11% Native American, 0.11% Asian, 0.72% from other races, and 0.89% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.61% of the population.\nThere were 788 households, out of which 32.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 42.0% were married couples living together, 12.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 41.0% were non-families. 33.9% of all households were made up of individuals, and 13.5% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.29 and the average family size was 2.95.\nIn the village, the population was spread out, with 26.5% under the age of 18, 8.5% from 18 to 24, 31.4% from 25 to 44, 21.4% from 45 to 64, and 12.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females, there were 96.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.1 males.\nThe median income for a household in the village was $36,367, and the median income for a family was $49,200. Males had a median income of $31,019 versus $23,077 for females. The per capita income for the village was $17,388. About 7.6% of families and 10.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 15.5% of those under age 18 and 11.5% of those age 65 or over.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "13542614": "William W. Blair\nAmerican RLDS Church leader (1828\u20131896)\nWilliam Wallace Blair (October 11, 1828 \u2013 April 18, 1896) was an apostle and a member of the First Presidency of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS Church).\nBlair was born in Holley, New York. In 1839, his family moved to LaSalle County, Illinois. In 1851, Blair encountered missionaries from the Latter Day Saint movement. On October 8, 1851, Blair was baptized by William Smith, the younger brother of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement.\nIn 1852, Blair became somewhat disenchanted with William Smith and some of his associates when he \"learned that some of the leading elders were walking in unrighteousness\". Blair investigated and temporarily aligned himself with Charles B. Thompson's Baneemyites, but ultimately decided that it \"was not the work of God.\"\nIn 1855, Blair aligned himself with John E. Page and Hazen Aldrich, who were claiming to have reorganized the true Church of Christ. However, in late 1856, Blair aligned himself with Latter Day Saints, including William Marks, Jason W. Briggs, and Zenas H. Gurley, who were teaching that a \"reorganization\" of Joseph Smith's church needed to be effected under Smith's son Joseph Smith III. On April 7, 1857, Blair was re-baptized into this \"reorganization\" by Gurley. The following day, he was ordained as a high priest and on October 7, 1858, at a church conference in Zarahemla, Wisconsin, Blair was ordained an apostle of the reorganization and he became a member of the Council of Twelve Apostles.\nOn October 8, 1860, shortly after the RLDS Church was formally organized, Blair was assigned as a missionary to Nauvoo, Illinois, Far West, Missouri, and Council Bluffs, Iowa. Blair was a successful missionary and baptized many individuals into the RLDS Church.\nOn April 10, 1873, Blair was chosen by prophet\u2013president Joseph Smith III to be his first counselor in the First Presidency. He served in this capacity until his sudden death while traveling home to Lamoni, Iowa from a church conference in Kirtland, Ohio.\nBlair was married to Elizabeth J. Doty and was the father of seven children.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "44798569": "W. Robert Blair\nAmerican politician\nWilliam Robert Blair II (October 22, 1930 \u2013 January 18, 2014) was an American politician, lawyer, and businessman.\nEarly life.\nWilliam Robert Blair II was born in Clarksburg, West Virginia, on October 22, 1930. He was graduated from West Virginia University in 1954, with A.B. and LL.B. degrees. He then served in the United States Air Force Judge Advocate General's Corps for two years at Chanute Air Force Base. He moved to Park Forest, Illinois in 1957. He became active in local Will County politics as a member of the Will County Public Building Commission and a precinct committeeman the Will County Republican Central Committee. During his early legal career, he served as house counsel for Swift & Company and as a partner of Wood & Blair, while also serving as President of Fairfax Realty Company.\nIllinois House of Representatives.\nThe 1960 reapportionment process was stalled by partisan gridlock. Subsequently, the Illinois Supreme Court ordered an at large election for all 177 members of the Illinois House in 1964. Voters were given ballots three feet long. Blair was one of fifty-nine Republicans elected to 177 seats. Blair was a and served in the Illinois House of Representatives from 1965 to 1975.\nAfter a 1965 Illinois Supreme Court Case to resolve the redistricting issue, Blair's home was drawn into the 41st district which consisted of Wheatland, DuPage, Plainfield, Lockport, Homer, Troy, Joliet, New Lenox, Frankfort, Manhattan, Green Garden, Monee, Crete, Wilton, Peotone, Will, Washington, townships in Will County. Blair was elected as one of the district's three representatives alongside William G. Barr and John J. Houlihan.\nHe served as speaker during the 77th and 78th Illinois General Assemblies. He was not reelected in the 1974 general election. After his time in the legislature, he served as a public member of the Illinois Transportation Study Commission.\nPost-legislative career.\nIn 1978, he was a candidate for the Republican nomination for Illinois Comptroller. Blair ran against John W. Castle, director of the Department of Local Government Affairs for Governor James R. Thompson. Thompson, who had convinced Castle to run for Comptroller instead of Treasurer, endorsed Castle leading Blair to criticize Castle for an inability to do the job independently. With more than 52% of the vote, Castle defeated Blair in the Republican primary. In 1982, he ran for the Republican nomination for Illinois Treasurer. He lost the primary to Peoria businessman John Dailey.\nBlair died January 18, 2014.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "42019163": "Blairsville, Indiana\nBlairsville is an unincorporated area in Robinson Township, Posey County, in the U.S. state of Indiana.\n the U.S. Census Bureau had established a census-designated place for this settlement.\nHistory.\nBlairsville was laid out in 1837 by Stephen Blair, and named for him. A post office was established at Blairsville in 1838, and remained in operation until 1902. With the construction of the railroad in 1880, business activity shifted to nearby Wadesville, and the town declined.\nBlairsville contains the historic Blairsville Cemetery. A number of the interments are Civil War veterans.\nThe town of Blairsville is located on Big creek in Robinson township. It was named in honor of Stephen Blair who, in company with Ebenezer Phillips, laid out the town on the Fourth of July, 1837. It soon grew into prominence as a half way place on the Evansville and New Harmony stage road, besides it was fairly well located for the convenience of settlers in all directions from the town as a trading point.\nPolitical speakings were held here quite often in the old days of the Whig and the Democrat. A joint discussion was held here during the campaign of 1842 between Robert Dale Owen, the Democratic candidate for Congress, and John W. Payne, the Whig candidate. Among the first residents of Blairsville were Stephen Blair, after whom the town was named, Ebenezer Phillips, who surveyed the town, Charles Kimball, a Robert Owen and later a Dr. Mitchell, Henry Theuerkauf and Henry Weber, shoemakers. Henry Newman was one of the first blacksmiths. Charles Kimball ran a horse feed mill. Dr. Owen refers to the areas surrounding Blairsville as \"the mecca of geologists\" due to the preservation of fossilized palm trees and Lepidodendron. John B. Gardner and John Becker were among the early successful merchants and business men. The extension of the Evansville & Terre Haute railroad through Wadesville in 1880 was a severe blow to Blairsville from which the town never recovered. For several years the population has been composed largely, if not entirely, of Germans. The importance of the town in 1842 may be judged by the fact that the following petitioned the \"honorable board\" for tavern licenses (which meant to sell whiskey also): J. H. Owens, Daniel Cox, William Watson, David R. Downen, M. Duty, Robert Stevens, William Dodge, Nelson Doty, Daniel Elkins, Benjamin Garris, Soren Sorenson, M. Watson, H. W. Young, William F. Phillips and Richard Ramsey.\nDemographics.\nThe United States Census Bureau delineated Blairsville as a census designated place in the 2022 American Community Survey.'\nEducation.\nRobinson Township is in Metropolitan School District of North Posey County.\nSouth Terrace Elementary School is in Blairsville. The district was scheduled to begin building this school in fall 1957. 10 classrooms were planned to be built.\nNorth Posey High School is the district's comprehensive high school.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "7920514": "William M. Blair\nWilliam McCormick Blair (May 2, 1884 \u2013 March 29, 1982), was an American financier.\nEarly life.\nWilliam McCormick Blair was born May 2, 1884, in Chicago.\nHis father, Edward Tyler Blair, was the son of William Blair, who founded the first wholesale hardware house in Chicago. Edward was a Yale graduate in 1879, who wrote several books including a history of the Chicago Club, and spent his life working in his father's firm. He was very wealthy, and employed four Swedish servants to manage the house while his children were growing up.\nWilliam McCormick Blair's mother, Anna Reubenia \"Ruby\" McCormick (1860\u20131917), was a daughter of the agricultural machinery manufacturer William Sanderson McCormick (1815\u20131865) and a member of the illustrious McCormick family. Her grandfather was Robert McCormick (1780\u20131846), who invented a mechanical reaper.\nEducation.\nWilliam graduated from Groton School in 1903, and received a BA from Yale University in 1907. At Yale, he was on the rowing crew and a member of the Skull and Bones society.\nHe later received honorary degrees from Northwestern University in 1964 and Lake Forest College.\nCareer.\nUpon graduation he entered the Northern Trust Company of Chicago. Shortly after, he entered the bond brokerage firm, David Reid & Company. In 1909 he moved to Lee, Higginson and rose through the ranks, becoming managing partner of its Chicago office.\nWhen it looked as if America would enter World War I in 1917, Blair was involved with the Four-Minute Men of Chicago, giving speeches during film intermissions. He was also active in the sale of War Bonds. When the Four-Minute Men were absorbed by the Committee on Public Information, he went to Washington, D.C., to be its director. Woodrow Wilson sent him a letter of thanks.\nAs the war came to a close he enlisted in the Army and trained in a New York base.\nAfter the war, he continued with Lee, Higginson, but due to the underwriting of Swedish magnate Ivar Kreuger the firm went bankrupt.\nIn 1934, he was associated with Francis A. Bonner, who was also at Lee, Higginson. Together the two were organising a financial company of their own. Blair was left with no money after the collapse of Lee, Higginson, but he managed to obtain $50,000 from Joseph and Edward Ryerson of the Ryerson (company), John and Douglas Stuart of Quaker Oats and Roger Shepherd.\nTheir firm was opened on January 8, 1935, as Blair, Bonner & Company with an office in the Marshall Field Building at 135 South LaSalle Street in Chicago.\nThe firm specialized in financing homes in the midwestern United States. In its early days, it assisted the growth of the Household Finance Corporation, Continental Casualty and Continental Assurance.\nIn 1941, Bonner left the company, and it was renamed William Blair & Company. The firm was managed by five partners: William Blair, Wallace Flower, Donald Miehls, Lee Ostrander and Daniel Ritter.\nPersonal life.\nBlair married Helen Hadduck Bowen (1890\u20131972), daughter of banker Joseph Tilton Bowen and Louise DeKoven Bowen (1859\u20131953). In 1912 her mother endowed the summer camp for poor children of Hull House known as the Bowen Country Club.\nIn 1946, Blair's sons, William McCormick Blair Jr., Edward McCormick Blair (born 1915) and Bowen Blair (born 1918) joined the firm. Blair Sr. stepped down as managing partner in 1961, and handed the reins over to son Edward. Bowen Blair died on September 11, 2009.\nEdward retired in 1977 and died December 22, 2010.\nThe Blairs also had one daughter, Miss Helen Bowen Blair, who died on July 8, 1930, at the age of 17. She was thrown from her horse at Onwentsia Club in Lake Forest, Illinois and suffered injuries from the runaway horse that caused her death.\nBlair was a director of the Continental Casualty Co., the Continental Assurance Co. and the Peoples Gas Light and Coke Co. He was a Life Trustee of the Art Institute of Chicago, a University of Chicago Life Trustee, Trustee of the Field Museum of Natural History, Trustee of Groton School, and Trustee of the Yale Alumni Board. Blair was also on the board of trustees at The Scripps Research Institute.\nHe remained a senior partner of William Blair & Company until his death. The firm stayed relatively small, and still had offices in the same building on LaSalle street.\nHe died March 29, 1982, at his home in Chicago.\nLegacy.\nIn 1980, Blair guided the founding of the David Adler Music and Arts Center (formerly known as the David Adler Cultural Center) in Libertyville, Illinois. The center is located on the property that once was the home of the architect David Adler, who bequeathed it to the city. Blair had been the client, neighbor, and friend of Adler, and had recruited Adler to become a trustee of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1925.\nAdler designed a house for Blair on an estate they purchased in 1926 when the Crab Tree Farm of Henry Williams Blodgett in Lake Bluff, Illinois, was broken up by Scott Sloan Durand (1869\u20131949). Their garden was designed by Ellen Biddle Shipman. His son Edward also built a house on an adjacent parcel, designed by George Fred Keck. The family bought the rest of Crab Tree Farm in the 1950s.\nThe estate was added to the National Register of Historic Places listings in Lake County, Illinois, on January 31, 2008.\nIt was later owned by John H. Bryan.\nIt is located at 982 Sheridan Road, .\nHe was decorated as a chevalier in the L\u00e9gion d'honneur and as a commander in the Royal Order of Vasa.\nThe Pritzker Military Museum & Library holds the William McCormick Blair Collection, which consists of letters, news bulletins, pamphlets, publications, newspaper clippings and photographs related to Blair's service as the National Director of the Four Minute Men, a division of the Committee on Public Information during World War I.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "5206753": "Henry W. Blair\nAmerican military officer and politician\nHenry William Blair (December 6, 1834\u00a0\u2013 March 14, 1920) was a United States representative and Senator from New Hampshire. During the American Civil War, he was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Union Army.\nA Radical Republican in his earlier political career, Blair later became associated with the moderate \"Half-Breeds\" who as a bloc pushed for civil service reform at the expense of racial and social equality efforts. In contrast to other Half-Breeds who exhibited coldness towards the plight of Southern African-Americans, Blair himself consistently fought to end racial disparities, and his efforts were considered decades ahead of his time.\nEarly life.\nBorn in Campton, New Hampshire, Blair lost his father at two and his mother at twelve. Raised by neighbors on a farm, he attended school when breaks from farm work permitted. Though he never went to college, in 1856, he began reading law with William Leverett at Plymouth, and was admitted to the bar in 1859 and became Leverett's partner.\nCareer.\nBlair was appointed prosecuting attorney for Grafton County in 1860.\nDuring the Civil War Blair was rejected by the fifth and twelfth regiments as physically unfit. In 1862, when the fifteenth regiment was formed, he raised a company, enlisted as a Private and was elected Captain. He was appointed Major by the Governor and his Council. After about a year at the front, he held the rank of lieutenant colonel of the Fifteenth Regiment, New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry. During his first battle service, the Siege of Port Hudson, he was wounded twice. After the discharge of his regiment in 1863, he was appointed deputy provost marshal and spent most of the remainder of the war at home as an invalid due to wounds and diseases contracted during the war.\nBlair was a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives in 1866 and a member of the New Hampshire Senate from 1867 to 1868.\nElected as a Republican to the Forty-fourth and Forty-fifth Congresses, Blair served as United States Representative for the state of New Hampshire from (March 4, 1875 \u2013 March 3, 1879). In 1876, he introduced the first prohibition amendment to be offered in Congress. He was not a candidate for renomination in 1878 but was elected by the New Hampshire legislature to the U.S. Senate on June 17, 1879, for the vacancy in the term ending March 3, 1885, and served from June 20, 1879, to March 3, 1885. The State legislature not being in session, he was re-appointed on March 5, 1885, and elected on June 17, 1885, to fill the vacancy in the term beginning March 4, 1885, and served from March 10, 1885, to March 3, 1891. He was an unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1891. While in the Senate.\nAccording to \"The New York Times\":\nSimilar to many Republicans at the time, Blair favored higher protective tariffs, the gold standard, and generous pensions for Union veterans of the Civil War.\nDuring late 1882 and early January 1883, Blair attached an amendment to the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act that prohibited hiring habitual drunkards to federal government positions, reflecting his effort to combat alcohol abuse. However, he did not vote on the final passage of the Pendleton Act.\nHe was chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor during the Forty-seventh through the Fifty-first Congresses. He proposed legislation to move control of education from the local level to the federal level during the 1880s. His proposed \"Blair Education Bill\" advocated federal aid for education and passed the Senate on three occasions, was endorsed by presidents, but never passed the House. Blair wrote to African-American leader Frederick Douglass:\nBlair declined an appointment by President Benjamin Harrison as judge of the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire in 1891, but accepted an appointment as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to China on March 6, 1891. The Chinese Government objected to Blair because of his role in and abusive remarks pertaining to the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act and declared him \"persona non grata\". He subsequently tendered his resignation from the diplomatic post, which was accepted October 6, 1891.\nAgain elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1892, Blair served from March 4, 1893, to March 3, 1895, and was not a candidate for reelection in 1894. He engaged in the practice of law in Washington, D.C., until his death.\nPersonal life.\nBlair was the son of William Henry Blair and Lois (Baker) Blair. He married Eliza Nelson on December 20, 1859, and they had one son, Henry Patterson Blair.\nBlair died in Washington, D.C., on March 14, 1920 (age 85 years, 99 days). He is interred at Campton Cemetery, Campton, New Hampshire.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "53395281": "John Blair (pastor)\nIrish American minister (1720-1771)\nJohn Blair (1720 \u2013 December 8, 1771) was a Presbyterian minister, a Trustee, Professor, and Acting President of Princeton University. His brother Samuel Blair was a leader of the Presbyterian New Light religious movement. His nephew, Samuel Blair was the second Chaplain of the United States House of Representatives.\nLife.\nBlair was born in Ireland in 1720 to William Blair. He immigrated to the colonies in his youth. He was educated in under the Reverend William Tennent at the Log College, the first theological seminary serving Presbyterians in North America located in what is now Warminster, Pennsylvania (then known as Neshaminy). He later received a M.A. from the College of New Jersey in 1760.\nHe was licensed to preach by the New Side Presbytery of Newcastle. He was ordained December 27, 1742 as pastor of the Hopewell Church at Big Spring in Newville, the Rocky Spring Presbyterian Church in Letterkenny, and at Middle Spring Presbyterian Church in Southampton Township, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania until December 1748. The towns and churches were abandoned due to Indian conflict during the Indian Wars.\nHe then moved to Londonderry Township where his brother, Samuel Blair had founded the Faggs Manor Presbyterian church and associated classical school. He remained there after his brother's 1751 death and became pastor, and head of the school, until 1767.\nHe then moved to Princeton, New Jersey where the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) was located to accept a position of Professor of Theology that was funded by a bequeath of Rev Samuel Finley who died in 1767. He was also appointed Trustee, Vice-President, and acting president until appointed President John Witherspoon was able to arrive.\nAs the funds to support the Professorship were insufficient, and Witherspoon was able to teach and lead the college, it was agreed that Blair would resign as Professor. He then agreed to be pastor at the Good Will Church in Wallkill, New York where he remained until his death in 1771. He was buried at the cemetery of the church.\nPersonal.\nBlair was married to Elizabeth (Susan) Durburrow, a daughter of Philadelphia merchant John Durburrow. They had sons John Durburrow Blair (1759\u20131823) a 1775 Princeton graduate and theologian, and William Lawrence, a Princeton graduate and Kentucky lawyer, and daughter Rebecca who married William Linn.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "51733512": "Blairs Creek\nStream in the American state of Missouri\nBlairs Creek is a stream in Crawford County in the U.S. state of Missouri. It is a tributary of Meramec River.\nBlairs Creek has the name of a local family. The Blair Family was a late 19th and 1st half of the 20th century family of farmers and millers. The patriarch, William Samuel Blair, was a prominent Crawford citizen and his son, Charles Melvin Blair, purchased the farm on which Blairs Creek is located and empties into the Meramec river. He and his wife, Jennie, Mallow Blair, raised their family there in a house he built with his own hand. The Farm is often still referred to as \"The Old Blair Homeplace\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "53386240": "John Blair Sr.\nAmerican politician (1687\u20131771)\nJohn Blair (c.\u20091687 \u2013 November 5, 1771) was a merchant and politician of the colony of Virginia. He served in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly. As a member of the House of Burgesses, he initially represented Jamestown then Williamsburg (the successive seats of the colony's government), before being appointed to the Governor's Council. There he served for more than 25 years, including four times becoming acting governor during changes of the royal governors and while governor Francis Fauquier was in the New York and Georgia colonies. Nonetheless, this John Blair, the earliest of the four men of the name serving in the Virginia General Assembly, may be best known either as the nephew and heir of Rev. James Blair (who founded the College of William and Mary, where many descendants would be educated) or father of John Blair, Jr. (a lawyer who served in many governmental posts, including as a burgess, delegate to the Constitutional Convention, Virginia judge and finally as associate justice of the United States Supreme Court).\nEarly life.\nBlair was born in Scotland around 1687, the only known son of Archibald Blair. His Scottish grandfather, Rev. Peter Blair, was minister at St. Cuthbert's parish in Edinburgh, married Mary Hamilton in 1654 and in his final years served as the rector of Jedburgh parish in Roxburghshire, Scotland. Archibald Blair was the youngest of the couple's three sons, had graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1685 (having studied medicine) and probably married this man's mother shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, his eldest brother Rev. James Blair had previously graduated from that university and been ordained a minister, but emigrated to Virginia around 1685 because he refused to sign a loyalty oath required by the Scots parliament. In Virginia Rev. James Blair would become the leading representative of the Church of England for five decades, as well as the minister in the colony's capital, and helped re-found the College of William and Mary. Rev. James Blair soon married a daughter of a leading family, but had no children, so after his brother Archibald and this boy emigrated to the colony, and the son was educated and married, he and his family ultimately became that cleric's principal heirs. Only one of Archibald and James's sisters (Christian Blair (1665\u20131725)) also emigrated to Virginia (after marrying Rev. John Munroe, who accepted a post at St. John's Parish in King William County). Ultimately, this man would marry his cousin Mary, daughter of that Rev. John Monroe. The middle brother, John Blair (c. 1662 \u2013 after 1689) remained in Scotland, where he became an apothecary in Edinburgh and a burgess of that city in 1683 and Scotland's postmaster general in 1689. Some of his children also became merchants, including grandsons (by sons Peter the skinner and another Archibald) John Blair (died 1757) and another James Blair. Those men worked for years in Virginia as employees and at least the former became trading partner of this man.\nDr. Archibald Blair immigrated with this son to the Virginia colony in the 1690s, possibly following his wife's death, since no re record exists of her emigration. Due to unhealthy circumstances at Jamestown, particularly during summers, Williamsburg (at first called \"Middle Plantation\") was established as a trading center, and the colony's government offices relocated there around 1699. Dr. Archibald Blair remarried twice, first when this man was still a boy to Sarah Archer Fowler, a widow who probably helped raise this boy as well as bore four daughters who reached adulthood, married and became Archibald Blair's heirs. They included Sarah Blair who married Wilson Cary, Ann Blair who married Peter Whiting, Elizabeth Blair who married John Bolling and later Richard Bland, and Harrison Blair who became the third wife of Dr. George Gilmer. After Sarah's death Archibald remarried, to the twice widowed Mary Wilson Roscoe Cary, the daughter of burgess William Wilson and who had outlived burgesses William Roscoe as well as Miles Cary II (who died in 1709). as well as practiced as a doctor and operated an in Williamsburg. Archibald also joined with his brother James Blair and Philip Ludwell, who jointly owned a retail store in Williamsburg, which is discussed below, since upon coming of age, this man would succeed his father as its manager. This John Blair graduated from the College of William and Mary around 1707 and remained in Williamsburg his whole life.\nBusinessman and planter.\nUntil his death in 1733, Blair's father, Archibald, in addition to his medical practice and apothecary shop was the largest shareholder of Dr. Blair's Store, a mercantile house. This man managed the store for many years, probably succeeding his Edinburgh-born cousin of the same name. Blair was also a partner with John Blair Jr. (the son of a cousin) in another store from 1740 to 1759. Blair owned two of the largest taverns in the colony, the Raleigh Tavern (named after Sir Walter Raleigh) and the Chowning Tavern, renting them to tavern keepers. He owned Chowning from 1726 to around 1738, and sold Raleigh in 1742. In 1745, Blair and 16 other investors obtained a land grant on the Potomac and Youghiogheny rivers.\nUpon receiving his inheritance from Rev. James Blair in 1743, this John Blair bought a plantation south of Taskinas Creek on the York River about ten miles downstream of its confluence with the Mattaponi River, which he operated using enslaved labor.\nPublic career.\nBlair's public career may have begun in 1715, when he (or a cousin with the same name) was appointed keeper of the Royal Storehouse in Williamsburg. Blair took the oaths of office as a justice of the peace for York County on August 17, 1724 (serving until he was sworn in as a member of the Virginia Governor's Council in 1745) and in 1727 as a James River upper district naval officer (serving until he became deputy Auditor General of Virginia on August 15, 1728). He served as deputy Auditor General until his death in 1771, while simultaneously holding various other positions.\nBlair was elected to the House of Burgesses from Jamestown for the 1734 session, succeeding his father, whose term had begun in 1728 and who died in 1733. In the next session, which began in 1736, the citizens of Williamsburg elected Blair as their representative, though he was replaced by John Harmer for the 1742 session, possibly"}, "descending_order": ["44798569", "13542614", "42019163", "7920514", "5206753", "53395281", "51733512", "53386240", "126972"], "permutation_1": ["7920514", "53395281", "44798569", "51733512", "53386240", "126972", "13542614", "42019163", "5206753"], "permutation_2": ["53395281", "7920514", "53386240", "51733512", "5206753", "13542614", "126972", "44798569", "42019163"], "permutation_3": ["51733512", "126972", "42019163", "53386240", "7920514", "53395281", "13542614", "44798569", "5206753"]}
{"id": "2hop__503085_110222", "docs_added": {"16305358": "Femme nue couch\u00e9e\nPainting by Gustave Courbet\nFemme nue couch\u00e9e () is an 1862 painting by French Realist painter Gustave Courbet (1819\u20131877). It depicts a young dark-haired woman reclining on a couch, wearing only a pair of shoes and stockings. Behind her, partly drawn red curtains reveal an overcast sky seen through a closed window. The work is likely influenced by Goya's \"La maja desnuda\".\nThe painting was initially owned by Alexandre Berthier and later by Marcell Nemes. In 1913, it was bought by the Hungarian collector Ferenc Hatvany. At one time, he painted a copy of the painting and, as a practical joke, sent it to be exhibited as the original at a Belgrade exhibition of French painting in 1939. Together with the rest of Hatvany's collection, the painting was looted from a Budapest bank vault during the 1945 Soviet conquest of the city in World War II. After it was briefly seen attached to the tarpaulin of a Soviet military vehicle on Buda Castle Hill, the painting appeared to have vanished without a trace.\nIt surfaced again in 2000 and 2003, when it was offered for sale first to the Museum of Fine Arts and then to the Commission for Art Recovery (CAR) by a Slovak man claiming to be an antiques dealer, but who appeared to his interlocutors to be involved with the Slovak organised crime scene. The dealer produced an affidavit, judged reliable by the CAR, stating that the painting was given by Soviet soldiers to a doctor from a village near Bratislava in return for his medical treatment of a wounded soldier. An inspection of the picture's craquelure determined that the painting was indeed the original and not Hatvany's copy.\nAfter five years of negotiations, Interpol involvement and diplomatic wrangling between the US and Slovakian government, the CAR managed to acquire the painting for Hatvany's heirs in exchange for a US$300,000 reward. It was shown to the public for the first time since the 1930s in a 2007 Courbet exposition at the Grand Palais in Paris. The painting was sold at auction on 9 November 2015 for 15.3 million U.S. dollars, four times the previous auction record for a Courbet painting.\nFootnotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "209274": "Gustave Courbet\nFrench realist painter (1819\u20131877)\nJean D\u00e9sir\u00e9 Gustave Courbet ( ; ; ; 10 June 1819 \u2013 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and the Romanticism of the previous generation of visual artists. His independence set an example that was important to later artists, such as the Impressionists and the Cubists. Courbet occupies an important place in 19th-century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social statements through his work.\nCourbet's paintings of the late 1840s and early 1850s brought him his first recognition. They challenged convention by depicting unidealized peasants and workers, often on a grand scale traditionally reserved for paintings of religious or historical subjects. Courbet's subsequent paintings were mostly of a less overtly political character: landscapes, seascapes, hunting scenes, nudes, and still lifes. Courbet was imprisoned for six months in 1871 for his involvement with the Paris Commune and lived in exile in Switzerland from 1873 until his death four years later.\nBiography.\nGustave Courbet was born in 1819 to R\u00e9gis and Sylvie Oudot Courbet in Ornans (department of Doubs). Anti-monarchical feelings prevailed in the household. (His maternal grandfather fought in the French Revolution.) Courbet's sisters, Zo\u00e9, Z\u00e9lie, and Juliette were his first models for drawing and painting. After moving to Paris he often returned home to Ornans to hunt, fish, and find inspiration.\nCourbet went to Paris in 1839 and worked at the studio of Steuben and Hesse. An independent spirit, he soon left, preferring to develop his own style by studying the paintings of Spanish, Flemish and French masters in the Louvre, and painting copies of their work.\nCourbet's first works were an \"Odalisque\" inspired by the writing of Victor Hugo and a \"L\u00e9lia\" illustrating George Sand, but he soon abandoned literary influences, choosing instead to base his paintings on observed reality. Among his paintings of the early 1840s are several self-portraits, Romantic in conception, in which the artist portrayed himself in various roles. These include \"Self-Portrait with Black Dog\" (c.\u20091842\u201344, accepted for exhibition at the 1844 Paris Salon), the theatrical \"Self-Portrait\" which is also known as \"Desperate Man\" (c.\u20091843\u201345), \"Lovers in the Countryside\" (1844, Mus\u00e9e des Beaux-Arts, Lyon), \"The Sculptor\" (1845), \"The Wounded Man\" (1844\u201354, Mus\u00e9e d'Orsay, Paris), \"The Cellist, Self-Portrait\" (1847, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, shown at the 1848 Salon), and \"Man with a Pipe\" (1848\u201349, Mus\u00e9e Fabre, Montpellier).\nTrips to the Netherlands and Belgium in 1846\u201347 strengthened Courbet's belief that painters should portray the life around them, as Rembrandt, Hals and other Dutch masters had. By 1848, he had gained supporters among the younger critics, the Neo-romantics and Realists, notably Champfleury.\nCourbet achieved his first Salon success in 1849 with his painting \"After Dinner at Ornans\". The work, reminiscent of Chardin and Le Nain, earned Courbet a gold medal and was purchased by the state. The gold medal meant that his works would no longer require jury approval for exhibition at the Salon\u2014an exemption Courbet enjoyed until 1857 (when the rule changed).\nIn 1849\u201350, Courbet painted \"The Stone Breakers\" (destroyed in the Allied Bombing of Dresden in 1945), which Proudhon admired as an icon of peasant life; it has been called \"the first of his great works\". The painting was inspired by a scene Courbet witnessed on the roadside. He later explained to Champfleury and the writer Francis Wey: \"It is not often that one encounters so complete an expression of poverty and so, right then and there I got the idea for a painting. I told them to come to my studio the next morning.\"\nRealism.\nCourbet's work belonged neither to the predominant Romantic nor Neoclassical schools. History painting, which the Paris Salon esteemed as a painter's highest calling, did not interest him, for he believed that \"the artists of one century [are] basically incapable of reproducing the aspect of a past or future century ...\" Instead, he maintained that the only possible source for living art is the artist's own experience. He and Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Millet would find inspiration painting the life of peasants and workers.\nCourbet painted figurative compositions, landscapes, seascapes, and still lifes. He courted controversy by addressing social issues in his work, and by painting subjects that were considered vulgar, such as the rural bourgeoisie, peasants, and working conditions of the poor. His work, along with that of Honor\u00e9 Daumier and Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Millet, became known as \"Realism\". For Courbet realism dealt not with the perfection of line and form, but entailed spontaneous and rough handling of paint, suggesting direct observation by the artist while portraying the irregularities in nature. He depicted the harshness of life, and in doing so challenged contemporary academic ideas of art. One of the distinctive features of Courbet's Realism was his lifelong attachment to his native province, the Franche-Comt\u00e9, and of his birthplace, Ornans.\n\"The Stone Breakers\".\nConsidered to be the first of Courbet's great works, \"The Stone Breakers\" of 1849 is an example of social realism that caused a sensation when it was first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1850. The work was based on two men, one young and one old, whom Courbet discovered engaged in backbreaking labor on the side of the road when he returned to Ornans for an eight-month visit in October 1848. On his inspiration, Courbet told his friends and art critics Francis Wey and Jules Champfleury, \"It is not often that one encounters so complete an expression of poverty and so, right then and there I got the idea for a painting.\"\nWhile other artists had depicted the plight of the rural poor, Courbet's peasants are not idealized like those in works such as Breton's 1854 painting, \"The Gleaners\".\nDuring World War II, from 13 to 15 February 1945, the Allies continuously bombed the city of Dresden, Germany. German troops hastily loaded artworks from Dresden's galleries and museums onto trucks. \"The Stone Breakers\" was destroyed, along with 153 other paintings, when a transport vehicle moving the pictures to the K\u00f6nigstein Fortress, near Dresden, was bombed by Allied forces.\n\"A Burial at Ornans\".\nThe Salon of 1850\u20131851 found him triumphant with \"The Stone Breakers\", the \"Peasants of Flagey\" and \"A Burial at Ornans\". The \"Burial\", one of Courbet's most important works, records the funeral of his grand uncle which he attended in September 1848. People who attended the funeral were the models for the painting. Previously, models had been used as actors in historical narratives, but in \"Burial\" Courbet said he \"painted the very people who had been present at the interment, all the townspeople\". The result is a realistic presentation of them and life in Ornans.\nThe vast painting, measuring , drew both praise and fierce denunciations from critics and the public, in part because it upset convention by depicting a prosaic ritual on a scale which would previously have been reserved for a religious or royal subject.\nAccording to art historian Sarah Faunce, \"In Paris, the \"Burial\" was judged as a work that had thrust itself into the grand tradition of history painting, like an upstart in dirty boots crashing a genteel party, and in terms of that tradition it was, of course, found wanting.\" The painting lacks the sentimental rhetoric that was expected in a genre work: Courbet's mourners make no theatrical gestures of grief, and their faces seemed more caricatured than ennobled. The critics accused Courbet of a deliberate pursuit of ugliness.\nEventually, the public grew more interested in the new Realist approach, and the lavish, decadent fantasy of Romanticism lost popularity. Courbet well understood the importance of the painting, and said of it, \"\"Burial at Ornans\" was in reality the burial of romanticism.\"\nCourbet became a celebrity and was spoken of as a genius, a \"terrible socialist\" and a \"savage\". He actively encouraged the public's perception of him as an unschooled peasant, while his ambition, his bold pronouncements to journalists, and his insistence on depicting his own life in his art gave him a reputation for unbridled vanity.\nCourbet associated his ideas of realism in art with political anarchism, and, having gained an audience, he promoted political ideas by writing politically motivated essays and dissertations. His familiar visage was the object of frequent caricature in the popular French press.\nIn 1850, Courbet wrote to a friend:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nDuring the 1850s, Courbet painted numerous figurative works using common folk and friends as his subjects, such as \"Village Damsels\" (1852), \"The Wrestlers\" (1853), \"The Bathers\" (1853), \"The Sleeping Spinner\" (1853), and \"The Wheat Sifters\" (1854).\n\"The Artist's Studio\".\nIn 1855, Courbet submitted fourteen paintings for exhibition at the \"Exposition Universelle\". Three were rejected for lack of space, including \"A Burial at Ornans\" and his other monumental canvas \"The Artist's Studio\". Refusing to be denied, Courbet took matters into his own hands. He displayed forty of his paintings, including \"The Artist's Studio\", in his gallery called \"The Pavilion of Realism\" (Pavillon du R\u00e9alisme) which was a temporary structure that he erected next door to the official Salon-like \"Exposition Universelle\".\nThe work is an allegory of Courbet's life as a painter, seen as a heroic venture, in which he is flanked by friends and admirers on the right, and challenges and opposition to the left. Friends on the right include the art critics Champfleury, and Charles Baudelaire, and art collector Alfred Bruyas. On the left are figures (priest, prostitute, grave digger, merchant, and others) who represent what Courbet described in a letter to Champfleury as \"the other world of trivial life, the people, misery, poverty, wealth, the exploited and the exploiters, the people who live off death.\"\nIn the foreground of the left-hand side is a man with dogs, who was not mentioned in Courbet's letter to Champfleury. X-rays show he was painted later, but his role in the painting is important: he is an allegory of the then-current French Emperor, Napoleon III, identified by his famous hunting dogs and iconic twirled mustache. By placing him on the left, Courbet publicly shows his disdain for the emperor and depicts him as a criminal, suggesting that his \"ownership\" of France is an illegal one.\nAlthough artists like Eug\u00e8ne Delacroix were ardent champions of his effort, the public went to the show mostly out of curiosity and to deride him. Attendance and sales were disappointing, but Courbet's status as a hero to the French avant-garde became assured. He was admired by the American James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and he became an inspiration to the younger generation of French artists including \u00c9douard Manet and the Impressionist painters. \"The Artist's Studio\" was recognized as a masterpiece by Delacroix, Baudelaire, and Champfleury, if not by the public.\nSeascapes.\nWhile Courbet's seascapes, painted during his many visits to the northern coast of France in the late 1860s, were decidedly less controversial than his salon submissions, they furthered his contributions (willing or otherwise) to realism with their emphasis on both the beauty and danger of the natural world. There is a distinct range in the tones of this period with \"The Calm Sea\" (1869) depicting the serenity of the receded tide, and \"The Sailboat\" (c. 1869) showing a sailboat wrestling with violent tides.\nRealist manifesto.\nCourbet wrote a Realist manifesto for the introduction to the catalogue of this independent, personal exhibition, echoing the tone of the period's political manifestos. In it, he asserts his goal as an artist is \"to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my epoch according to my own estimation.\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The title of Realist was thrust upon me just as the title of Romantic was imposed upon the men of 1830. Titles have never given a true idea of things: if it were otherwise, the works would be unnecessary.\nWithout expanding on the greater or lesser accuracy of a name that nobody, I should hope, can really be expected to understand, I will limit myself to a few words of elucidation in order to cut short the misunderstandings.\nI have studied the art of the ancients and the art of the moderns, avoiding any preconceived system and without prejudice. I no longer wanted to imitate the one than to copy the other; nor, furthermore, was it my intention to attain the trivial goal of \"art for art's sake\". No! I simply wanted to draw forth, from a complete acquaintance with tradition, the reasoned and independent consciousness of my own individuality.\nTo know in order to do, that was my idea. To be in a position to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my time, according to my own estimation; to be not only a painter but a man as well; in short, to create living art \u2013 this is my goal. (Gustave Courbet, 1855)\nNotoriety.\nIn the Salon of 1857, Courbet showed six paintings. These included \"Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine (Summer)\", depicting two prostitutes under a tree, as well as the first of many hunting scenes Courbet was to paint during the remainder of his life: \"Hind at Bay in the Snow\" and \"The Quarry\".\n\"Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine\", painted in 1856, provoked a scandal. Art critics accustomed to conventional, \"timeless\" nude women in landscapes were shocked by Courbet's depiction of modern women casually displaying their undergarments.\nBy exhibiting sensational works alongside hunting scenes, of the sort that had brought popular success to the English painter Edwin Landseer, Courbet guaranteed himself \"both notoriety and sales\". \nDuring the 1860s, Courbet painted a series of increasingly erotic works such as \"Femme nue couch\u00e9e\", culminating in \"The Origin of the World (L'Origine du monde)\" (1866), which depicts female genitalia and was not publicly exhibited until 1988, and \"Sleep\" (1866), featuring two women in bed. The latter painting became the subject of a police report when it was exhibited by a picture dealer in 1872.\nUntil about 1861, Napol\u00e9on's regime had exhibited authoritarian characteristics, using press censorship to prevent the spread of opposition, manipulating elections, and depriving Parliament of the right to free debate or any real power. In the 1860s, however, Napol\u00e9on III made more concessions to placate his liberal opponents. This change began by allowing free debates in Parliament and public reports of parliamentary debates. Press censorship, too, was relaxed and culminated in the appointment of the Liberal \u00c9mile Ollivier, previously a leader of the opposition to Napol\u00e9on's regime, as the \"de facto\" Prime Minister in 1870. As a sign of appeasement to the Liberals who admired Courbet, Napoleon III nominated him to the Legion of Honour in 1870. His refusal of the cross of the Legion of Honour angered those in power but made him immensely popular with those who opposed the prevailing regime.\nCourbet and the Paris Commune.\nOn 4 September 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, Courbet made a proposal that later came back to haunt him. He wrote a letter to the Government of National Defense, proposing that the column in the Place Vend\u00f4me, erected by Napoleon I to honour the victories of the French Army, be taken down. He wrote:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />In as much as the Vend\u00f4me Column is a monument devoid of all artistic value, tending to perpetuate by its expression the ideas of war and conquest of the past imperial dynasty, which are reproved by a republican nation's sentiment, citizen Courbet expresses the wish that the National Defense government will authorize him to disassemble this column.\" Courbet proposed that the Column be moved to a more appropriate place, such as the Hotel des Invalides, a military hospital. He also wrote an open letter addressed to the German Army and to German artists, proposing that German and French cannons should be melted down and crowned with a liberty cap, and made into a new monument on Place Vend\u00f4me, dedicated to the federation of the German and French people. The Government of National Defense did nothing about his suggestion to tear down the column, but it was not forgotten.\nOn 18 March, in the aftermath of the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, a revolutionary government called the Paris Commune briefly took power in the city. Courbet played an active part and organized a Federation of Artists, which held its first meeting on 5 April in the Grand Amphitheater of the School of Medicine. Some three hundred to four hundred painters, sculptors, architects, and decorators attended. There were some famous names on the list of members, including Andr\u00e9 Gill, Honor\u00e9 Daumier, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Eug\u00e8ne Pottier, Jules Dalou, and \u00c9douard Manet. Manet was not in Paris during the Commune and did not attend, and Corot, who was seventy-five years old, stayed in a country house and his studio during the Commune, not taking part in the political events.\nCourbet chaired the meeting and proposed that the Louvre and the Mus\u00e9e du Luxembourg, the two major art museums of Paris, closed during the uprising, be reopened as soon as possible and that the traditional annual exhibit called the Salon be held as in years past, but with radical differences. He proposed that the Salon should be free of any government interference or rewards to preferred artists; no medals or government commissions would be given. Furthermore, he called for the abolition of the most famous state institutions of French art; the \u00c9cole des Beaux-Arts, the French Academy in Rome, the French School at Athens, and the Fine Arts section of the Institute of France.\nOn 12 April, the Executive Committee of the Commune gave Courbet, though he was not yet officially a member of the Commune, the assignment of opening the museums and organizing the Salon. They issued the following decree at the same meeting: \"The Column of the Place Vend\u00f4me will be demolished.\" On 16 April, special elections were held to replace more moderate members of the Commune who had resigned their seats, and Courbet was elected as a delegate for the 6th arrondissement of Paris. He was given the title of Delegate of Fine Arts, and on 21 April he was also made a member of the Commission on Education. At the meeting of the Commission on 27 April, the minutes reported that Courbet requested the demolition of the Vend\u00f4me column be carried out and that the column would be replaced by an allegorical figure representing the taking of power of the Commune on 18 March.\nNonetheless, Courbet was a dissident by nature, and he was soon in opposition with the majority of the Commune members on some of its measures. He was one of a minority of Commune Members who opposed the creation of a Committee on Public Safety, modeled on the committee of the same name which carried out the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.\nCourbet opposed the Commune on another more serious matter: the arrest of his friend Gustave Chaudey, a prominent socialist, magistrate, and journalist, whose portrait Courbet had painted. The popular Commune newspaper, \"Le P\u00e8re Duchesne\", accused Chaudey, when he was briefly deputy mayor of the 9th arrondissement before the Commune was formed, of ordering soldiers to fire on a crowd that had surrounded the H\u00f4tel de Ville. Courbet's opposition was of no use; on 23 May 1871, in the final days of the Commune, Chaudey was shot by a Commune firing squad. According to some sources Courbet resigned from the Commune in protest.\nOn 13 May, on the proposal of Courbet, the Paris house of Adolphe Thiers, the chief executive of the French government, was demolished, and his art collection confiscated. Courbet proposed that the confiscated art be given to the Louvre and other museums, but the director of the Louvre refused to accept it. On 16 May, just nine days before the fall of the Commune, in a large ceremony with military bands and photographers, the Vend\u00f4me column was pulled down and broke into pieces. Some witnesses said Courbet was there, others denied it. The following day, the Federation of Artists debated dismissing directors of the Louvre and of the Luxembourg museums, suspected by some in the Commune of having secret contacts with the French government, and appointed new heads of the museums.\nAccording to one legend, Courbet defended the Louvre and other museums against \"looting mobs\", but there are no records of any such attacks on the museums. The only real threat to the Louvre came during \"Bloody Week\", 21\u201328 May 1871, when a unit of Communards, led by a Commune general, Jules Bergeret, set fire to the Tuileries Palace, next to the Louvre. The fire spread to the library of the Louvre, which was destroyed, but the efforts of museum curators and firemen saved the art gallery.\nAfter the final suppression of the Commune by the French army on 28 May, Courbet went into hiding in the apartments of different friends. He was arrested on 7 June. At his trial before a military tribunal on 14 August, Courbet argued that he had only joined the Commune to pacify it and that he had wanted to move the Vend\u00f4me Column, not destroy it. He said he had only belonged to the Commune for a short period, and rarely attended its meetings. He was convicted, but given a lighter sentence than other Commune leaders: six months in prison and a fine of five hundred francs. Serving part of his sentence in the Sainte-P\u00e9lagie Prison in Paris, he was allowed an easel and paints, but he could not have models pose for him. He did a famous series of still-life paintings of flowers and fruit during his confinement.\nExile and death.\nCourbet completed his prison sentence on 2 March 1872, but his problems caused by the destruction of the Vend\u00f4me Column were still not over. In 1873, the newly elected president of the Republic, Patrice de MacMahon, announced plans to rebuild the column, with the cost to be paid by Courbet. Unable to pay, Courbet went into a self-imposed exile in Switzerland to avoid bankruptcy. In the following years, he participated in Swiss regional and national exhibitions. Surveilled by the Swiss intelligence service, he enjoyed in the small Swiss art world the reputation as head of the \"realist school\" and inspired younger artists such as Auguste Baud-Bovy and Ferdinand Hodler.\nImportant works from this period include several paintings of trout, \"hooked and bleeding from the gills\", that have been interpreted as allegorical self-portraits of the exiled artist. In his final years, Courbet painted landscapes, including several scenes of water mysteriously emerging from the depths of the earth in the Jura Mountains of the France\u2013Switzerland border. Courbet also worked on sculpture during his exile. Previously, in the early 1860s, he had produced a few sculptures, one of which \u2013 the \"Fisherman of Chavots\" (1862) \u2013 he donated to Ornans for a public fountain, but it was removed after Courbet's arrest.\nIn May 1877, the state set the final cost of reconstructing the Vend\u00f4me Column at 323,000 francs for Courbet to repay in annual installments of 10,000 francs for the next 33 years. On 31 December 1877, a day before the first installment was due, Courbet died, aged 58, in La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland, of a liver disease aggravated by heavy drinking.\nLegacy.\nCourbet was admired by many younger artists. Claude Monet included a portrait of Courbet in his own version of \"Le D\u00e9jeuner sur l'herbe\" from 1865\u20131866 (Mus\u00e9e d'Orsay, Paris). Courbet's particular kind of realism influenced many artists to follow, notably among them the German painters of the Leibl circle, James McNeill Whistler, and Paul C\u00e9zanne. Courbet's influence can also be seen in the work of Edward Hopper, whose \"Bridge in Paris\" (1906) and \"Approaching a City\" (1946) have been described as Freudian echoes of Courbet's \"The Source of the Loue\" and \"The Origin of the World\". His pupils included Henri Fantin-Latour, Hector Hanoteau and Olaf Isaachsen.\nCourbet once wrote this in a letter:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I have always lived in freedom; let me end my life free; when I am dead let this be said of me: 'He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any r\u00e9gime except the r\u00e9gime of liberty.'\nCourbet and Cubism.\nTwo 19th-century artists prepared the way for the emergence of Cubism in the 20th century: Courbet and C\u00e9zanne. C\u00e9zanne's contributions are well-known. Courbet's importance was announced by Guillaume Apollinaire, poet-spokesperson for the Cubists. Writing in \"Les Peintres Cubistes, M\u00e9ditations Esth\u00e9tiques\" (1913) he declared, \"Courbet is the father of the new painters.\" Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes often portrayed Courbet as the father of all modern art.\nBoth artists sought to transcend the conventional methods of rendering nature; C\u00e9zanne through a dialectical method revealing the process of seeing, Courbet by his materialism. The Cubists would combine these two approaches in developing a revolution in art.\nOn a formal level, Courbet wished to convey the physical characteristics of what he was painting: its density, weight, and texture. Art critic John Berger said: \"No painter before Courbet was ever able to emphasize so uncompromisingly the density and weight of what he was painting.\" This emphasis on material reality endowed his subjects with dignity. Berger observed that the Cubist painters \"were at great pains to establish the physical presence of what they were representing. And in this, they are the heirs of Courbet.\"\nNazi-looted art.\nDuring the Third Reich (1933\u20131945) Jewish art collectors throughout Europe had their property seized as part of the Holocaust. Many artworks created by Courbet were looted by Nazis and their agents during this period and have only recently been reclaimed by the families of the previous owners.\nCourbet's \"La Falaise d'Etretat\" was owned by the Jewish collector Marc Wolfson and his wife Erna, who both were murdered in Auschwitz. After disappearing during the Nazi occupation of France, it reappeared years later at the mus\u00e9e d'Orsay.\nThe great Hungarian Jewish collector Baron Mor Lipot Herzog owned several Courbet artworks, including \"Le Chateau de Blonay (Neige)\" (c.\u20091875, \"The Chateau of Blonay (Snow)\", now at the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts), and Courbet's most infamous work \u2014 (\"The Origin of the World\"). His was looted by Nazis and many are still missing.\nGustav Courbet's paintings \"Village Girl With Goat\", \"The Father\", and \"Landscape With Rocks\" were discovered in the Gurlitt Trove of art stashed in Munich. It is not known to whom they belonged.\nJosephine Weinmann and her family, who were German Jews, had owned \"Le Grand Pont\" before they were forced to flee. The Nazi militant Herbert Schaefer acquired it and loaned it to the Yale University Art Gallery, against whom the Weinmanns filed a claim.\nThe French \"Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume (Cultural Plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg)\" has 41 entries for Courbet.\nIn March 2023, a museum at the University of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom, returned a painting \"La Ronde Enfantine\" by Gustave Courbet, which was stolen in 1941 by the Nazis in Paris. The canvas belonged to a Jewish member of the Resistance. The Spoliation Advisory Panel, a body created in 2000 by the British government, concluded on 28 March \"that the painting was stolen by the Nazi occupation forces because Robert Bing was Jewish\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\nMonographs on the art and life of Courbet have been written by Estignard (Paris, 1874), D'Ideville (Paris, 1878), Silvestre in \"Les artistes fran\u00e7ais\" (Paris, 1878), Isham in Van Dyke's \"Modern French Masters\" (New York, 1896), Meier-Graefe, \"Corot and Courbet\" (Leipzig, 1905), Cazier (Paris, 1906), Riat (Paris, 1906), Muther (Berlin, 1906), Robin (Paris, 1909), Benedite (Paris, 1911) and Laz\u00e1r B\u00e9la (Paris, 1911). Consult also Muther, \"History of Modern Painting\", volume ii (London, 1896, 1907); Patoux, \"Courbet\" in \"Les artistes c\u00e9l\u00e8bres\" and \"La v\u00e9rit\u00e9 sur Courbet\" (Paris, 1879); Le Men, \"Courbet\" (New York, 2008).", "64670150": "Naked Woman Sleeping by the Water\nPainting by F\u00e9lix Vallotton\nNaked Woman Sleeping by the Water (French: \"Femme nue dormant au bord de l'eau\") is an oil on canvas painting by the Swiss and French artist F\u00e9lix Vallotton, from 1926. It was given to the Strasbourg museum by Vallotton's widow in 1926 and is now in the Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. Its inventory number is 55.974.0.879.\nThe woman's body, with its greenish shadows and uncomfortable posture, is deliberately depicted in an anti-naturalistic manner. The three rowing men on the right edge of the painting are supposed to be the products of the woman's dream. In any case, their movement and activity contrast with the sleeper's indolence and inertia.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "76493869": "The Nude Woman (1949 film)\n1949 film\nThe Nude Woman (French: La femme nue) is a 1949 French drama film directed by Andr\u00e9 Berthomieu and starring Yves Vincent, Gis\u00e8le Pascal and Jean Tissier. It is based on the 1909 play of the same title by Henry Bataille. The film's sets were designed by the art director Raymond N\u00e8gre.\nSynopsis.\nThe artist Pierre Bernier has earned fame for his painting \"The Nude Woman\" the model for which Loulou he has subsequently married. Now however Pierre is in love with a high society lady. In his her desperation to keep him Loulou attempts suicide.", "50839998": "The Nude Woman (1932 film)\n1932 film\nThe Nude Woman (French: La Femme nue) is a 1932 French drama film directed by Jean-Paul Paulin and starring Florelle, Raymond Rouleau and Constant R\u00e9my. The film is based on a play by Henry Bataille which has been adapted on several occasions. The fim is Paulin's directorial debut and a remake of the film by L\u00e9once Perret, released in 1926 (\"The Nude Woman).\"\nThe film's sets were designed by Lazare Meerson.\nReferences.\nNotes\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography", "70932246": "Woman on a Black Divan\nPainting by Jean-Jacques Henner\nWoman on a Black Divan (French: La femme au divan noir), also known simply as Recumbent Woman (Femme couch\u00e9e) is a 1869 painting by the French artist Jean-Jacques Henner. It is one of the 44\u00a0Henner paintings of the Mus\u00e9e des Beaux-Arts of Mulhouse. Its inventory number is D.58.1.22.\nThe painting was shown at the Paris Salon of 1869, and bought for the collection of the \"Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 industrielle de Mulhouse\" (from which the Mus\u00e9e des Beaux-Arts originated) by the widow of Daniel Dollfus the same year. A much smaller version of the painting is kept in the Mus\u00e9e national Jean-Jacques Henner, in Paris,"}, "descending_order": ["16305358", "64670150", "76493869", "50839998", "70932246", "209274"], "permutation_1": ["64670150", "16305358", "70932246", "76493869", "209274", "50839998"], "permutation_2": ["209274", "16305358", "76493869", "64670150", "70932246", "50839998"], "permutation_3": ["50839998", "16305358", "64670150", "76493869", "70932246", "209274"]}
{"id": "2hop__659397_126539", "docs_added": {"43360336": "Violeta de Outono\nBrazilian progressive rock band\nVioleta de Outono (Portuguese for Autumn Violet) is a Brazilian psychedelic/progressive rock band from S\u00e3o Paulo. Heavily influenced by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Gong, they were originally a post-punk band with some psychedelic elements intertwined, but would gradually drop their post-punk influences and add more prog elements to their sonority as time went by.\nThe band underwent numerous changes in its line-up since its inception; the only founding member remaining today is vocalist/guitarist Fabio Golfetti.\nHistory.\nFabio Golfetti founded Violeta de Outono in 1985 alongside Cl\u00e1udio Souza; both had just parted ways with pioneering New Romantic band Zero. They would later be joined by Angelo Pastorello, and with this line-up they released a demo tape, \"Memories\", in the same year. The tape got the attention of independent record label Wop-Bop Records, that released their first recording, the extended play \"Reflexos da Noite\", in 1986.\nIn 1987, Violeta de Outono's eponymous debut was released through RCA Records. It was very well-received; particular praise went to their cover of The Beatles' song \"Tomorrow Never Knows\".\nIn 1988 they released a four-track EP called \"The Early Years\", containing cover versions of The Rolling Stones' \"Citadel\", Pink Floyd's \"Interstellar Overdrive\", The Beatles' \"Within You Without You\" and Gong's \"Blues for Findlay\". Those recordings trace to as far as 1985\u20131986. In the next year, their second studio album, \"Em Toda Parte\", was released by Ariola Records. Beginning with this album, Violeta de Outono would drop their previous post-punk instrumentation, heading towards a more progressive and experimental vein.\nIn 1990, Cl\u00e1udio Souza left the band, and was replaced by Cl\u00e1udio Fontes (Souza would return to the band in 1993 though). From 1993 to 1995, Violeta de Outono entered a short hiatus period; they returned to active with a live album, \"Eclipse\", and their third full-length, \"Mulher na Montanha\", that began to be recorded in 1995 but would be released only in 1999. In 2000, they would release their second live album, \"Live at Rio ArtRock Festival '97\", a recording of their performance at the in Rio de Janeiro in 1997. (A DVD containing the footage of their performance at the festival would be released 15 years later.) During Violeta de Outono's hiatus, Golfetti released three albums with The Invisible Opera Company of Tibet (Tropical Version Brazil), a side project he formed in 1988; however, the project was not as successful and memorable as Violeta de Outono itself and would come to an end in 1995, only to return in 2010.\nAlso in 2000, Violeta de Outono changed its line-up almost completely, with Gregor Izidro replacing Cl\u00e1udio Souza and Sandro Garcia replacing Pastorello. However, they would return for the recording of the band's fourth studio album in 2003, \"Ilhas\", that was released in 2005.\n\"Violeta de Outono & Orquestra\", their first video release, came out in 2006, recorded during a performance in S\u00e3o Paulo two years prior, with the special participation of the USP Symphonic Orchestra. In the same year, Pastorello left the band and was replaced by Gabriel Costa, while new member Fernando Cardoso assumed the position of keyboardist. With this line-up they released their fifth full-length album (and seventh studio release overall), \"Volume 7\", in 2007.\nIn 2009, Cl\u00e1udio Souza left Violeta de Outono for the third time, but beforehand they recorded another video release, \"\", in which they covered songs by Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett live, and also played their first studio album in its entirety in a show which took place in the Theatro Municipal in S\u00e3o Paulo. Souza was replaced by Fred Barley \u2013 however, Barley left the band in 2011 in order to join O Ter\u00e7o, and was replaced by Jos\u00e9 Luiz Dinola (former A Chave do Sol member); Violeta de Outono's line-up remains unchanged ever since.\nTheir sixth full-length album, \"Espectro\", was released in 2012.\nOn September 19, 2016, the band announced that they began work on their seventh studio album, \"Spaces\", which was eventually released on October 14, 2016.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "43952473": "Eclipse (Violeta de Outono album)\nEclipse is a live album by Brazilian psychedelic rock band Violeta de Outono, released in 1995 by Argentine independent label Record Runner. It was recorded during the band's performance at the SESC Pompeia in S\u00e3o Paulo, in 1986.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "30946115": "Eclipse (Journey album)\nEclipse (stylized as ECL1P53) is the fourteenth studio album by American rock band Journey and the second with lead singer Arnel Pineda. Penned by Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain with contributions from Pineda, the album was released in the United States and Canada on May 24, 2011, on May 27, 2011, in Japan, in the United Kingdom on May 30, 2011, and internationally on June 3, 2011. It is the last album to feature bassist Ross Valory, who was dismissed from the group in 2020.\nProduction.\n\"Eclipse\" was recorded in Berkeley, CA. As the album was near completion, producer Kevin Shirley ran out of time. In an effort for the band to release the album in time for the tour, Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain produced the remaining tracks in Nashville. The album was a departure, focusing on a harder rock sound rather than the formulaic pop hits and ballads. Schon, feeling the pop formula became repetitive, wanted to experiment on \"Eclipse\" and make it more guitar-oriented and less radio-friendly. Shirley had trepidation about the direction of the album, clashing with Schon creatively. Many of the tracks were re-recorded in Nashville under Schon and Cain's production. Cain supported \"Eclipse\", saying \"we\u2019d had this concept in mind from the get go. We\u2019ve got the ballads we can play all day long. If people want to hear ballads, they can certainly find them on other records.\"\nDespite this intentional change in sound, it does feature at least one ballad, \"Anything Is Possible\", which hit number twenty-one on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart.\nRelease and reception.\n\"Eclipse\" was released on May 24, 2011. In North America it was exclusively sold at Wal-Mart. \"Eclipse\" sold 21,400 copies in the United States in its debut week, reaching No. 13 on the US \"Billboard\" 200 chart. \"Eclipse\" marks Journey's second straight Top 20 album with current lead singer, Arnel Pineda. Internationally, \"Eclipse\" entered the Top 40 album charts in five different countries.\nDespite high chart positions it descended from the charts within weeks. \"Eclipse\" was unable to match the success of \"Revelation\", barely selling 100,000 copies\u2014an 1/8th of the previous album's sales.\n\"Eclipse\" received mixed to negative reviews. \"Rolling Stone\" reviewer Caryn Ganz rated the album at two stars, saying \"Journey's second disc with Filipino YouTube discovery Arnel Pineda on vocals is both grand and distractingly proggy.\" Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic also rated \"Eclipse\" at two stars, praising Journey's ability to fuse their prog-rock abilities with their arena rock sound; however, he goes on to say the album \"pulsates with a certain insular chill that isn't especially welcoming; this is music made for the musicians, and if anybody else happens to like it, that's just a minor bonus.\"\nAftermath.\nThough Journey enjoyed the process of recording \"Eclipse\", they considered its lack of success a career setback. They became skeptical of recording a new album, focusing primarily on live performances. Jonathan Cain said \"we have a great catalogue here, right now to play. We got a lot of songs that we're not even playing. So, we're like, 'What's the point of makin' a new CD right now?'\". Cain did not rule out the possibility of another album, which he says \"I think we need to stay sort of closer to who we are, to who we've been -- great songs, great melodies, harmonies -- and not worry about if it's heavy or not. Our fans are getting older, man; they're not headbangers anymore. So if we do anything, I think we need to go back to the center.\"\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21657824": "History of Eclipse Aviation\nAmerican aircraft manufacturer history\nThe history of Eclipse Aviation is the story of the largest financial failure in the history of general aviation, one that experts have predicted will leave a lasting impact on the aerospace industry.\nIt runs from the company's startup in 1998 to the design and testing of the Eclipse 500 very light jet (VLJ) through 2006, to the production of 260 examples from 2006\u20132008, development of the Eclipse 400 single-engined jet from 2007\u20132008, the most deliveries of a VLJ in a single year to date with over 150 Eclipse 500s sold in the first three quarters of 2008, and ultimately to the company's downfall in the latter part of 2008 and dissolution in bankruptcy in 2009, referred to by many in the media at the time as the \"billion-dollar debacle\". The story also involves shorter-lived ventures following its 2009 bankruptcy, as well as the introduction of the Eclipse 550 VLJ in 2014. \nSignificance.\nAviation analysts are still tallying the impact that the company will have on 21st Century aviation.\nJ. Mac McClellan, Editor in Chief of Flying Magazine, in February 2009 summarized the significance of Eclipse:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nRichard Aboulafia, Vice President, Analysis, Teal Group in his consultant's report on Eclipse of October 2008 said:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The Eclipse program was designed from the outset to be revolutionary and unique. In Teal Group's estimation, the people behind Eclipse have attained this objective. This program is the single worst aviation program Teal Group has ever covered.\nIt isn't the aircraft itself. Rather, it was a business plan that makes no sense, except to attract investors who don't know much about the aviation business. The plan called for 1,000 deliveries per year. As a reference point, in 2007 the world's manufacturers delivered a total of about 4,000 turbine-powered aircraft of all types and models. This one company, an unknown start-up, proposed to grow that global figure by 25%, admitting that it couldn't survive if it merely built 450 planes per year (100 aircraft more than any other turbine-powered aircraft model).\nThe formula was remarkably simple. A completely unrealistic production rate was predicated on an unrealistically low price (less than $800,000, at first). That impossibly low price was predicated on the unrealistically high production numbers. This formula (promoted as a revolutionary paradigm) worked, as long as people gave Eclipse money. As soon as they stopped (which has been happening for the past 12 months), reality caught up to Eclipse\u00a0...\nAVweb Editor-in-Chief Russ Niles stated:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nThe failure of Eclipse has even changed the language of aviation. By late 2009 the term \"Very Light Jet\" had become so tainted by Eclipse's \"billion-dollar debacle\" who trumpeted that term widely, that most manufacturers were avoiding use of the term to describe their products. The NBAA's Brian Foley explained \"The term VLJ was at times tainted by\u00a0... unrealistic expectations and even failure. The industry would do well to drop hyped words in order to improve credibility with users.\" Cessna never used the term to describe its Mustang, Embraer labels its Phenom 100 an \"entry-level jet\" and Stratos has described its jet as \"not a VLJ\u00a0... but a very light personal jet.\" In December 2010 AVweb's Paul Bertorelli added, \"personal jet is the description du jour. You don't hear the term VLJ\u2014very light jet--much anymore and some people in the industry tell me they think it's because that term was too tightly coupled to Eclipse, a failure that the remaining players want to, understandably, distance themselves from.\"\nTimeline.\nEclipse Aviation Corporation was founded in 1998 by Microsoft employee #18 Vern Raburn. Due to Raburn's relationship with Microsoft, Bill Gates became a major stakeholder early in the Eclipse project. Raburn and his team initially based the company in Scottsdale, Arizona, formed a board of directors in 1999 and started design work on the first aircraft. Due to investments made by the State of New Mexico and incentives and concessions from the City of Albuquerque, the company decided to set up its production facilities in Albuquerque, and also moved its headquarters there in 2000.\nIn addition to its factory in Albuquerque, Eclipse established three service centers, at Albuquerque, at Gainesville Regional Airport in Florida, and at Albany International Airport in New York.\nPreliminary design work on the Eclipse 500 was completed in 2000. The design was finalized in 2001 and construction of the first prototype commenced that year. The prototype first flew on 26 August 2002, powered by two Williams International EJ22 turbofans.\nThe Eclipse 500 had been designed around the Williams International EJ22 turbofan engine and the aircraft's selling price and operating economics hinged on the use of that engine. The prototype Eclipse 500 only flew once with the EJ22s installed. Eclipse CEO Vern Raburn said that the engines never delivered the rated thrust and that the problems were not just developmental in nature. Williams International responded by stating that the engines met all the contractual obligations and that Eclipse simply demanded more thrust than the engine was capable of providing.\nAs a replacement powerplant Eclipse selected the Pratt & Whitney Canada PW610F-A turbofan. This change required significant airframe redesign and introduced integration challenges. The prototype equipped with the PW610F engines first flew on 31 December 2004. The engine change caused a thirty-month delay in the Eclipse program and the forecast first customer deliveries.\nIn February 2006 the National Aeronautic Association named Eclipse Aviation as the winner of the prestigious Collier Trophy for 2005. Specifically the award was for:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />... applying innovations created in the technology industry to drive down cost, increase performance, improve safety, and spur a new type of air travel -- the air taxi.\n... the selection committee's criteria included recognition of the rich heritage of the Collier Trophy, and 'the spirit of entrepreneurship, technical innovation, and the impact on American aviation,' exemplified by the Eclipse 500.\nThe award was controversial, as the NAA states that the prize is awarded \"for the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America, with respect to improving the performance, efficiency, and safety of air or space vehicles, the value of which has been thoroughly demonstrated by actual use during the preceding year.\" At the time of the award, prototype EA500s were flying but certification by the FAA was still 9 months away. The aircraft was not fully certified until 30 September 2006 and the first customer aircraft was not delivered until 2007. Critics indicated that the EA500 did not meet the stated criteria, although Eclipse Aircraft defended the award as justified. Richard Aboulafia termed it \"a highly suspect award decision that managed to demean all the other worthy recipients and the Collier itself.\"\nThe Eclipse 500 was FAA certified on 30 September 2006 under the official designation \"Eclipse Aviation EA500\".\nThe first customer EA500 was delivered in early January 2007.\nOn 23 July 2007 at AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin Eclipse unveiled the already flying prototype of a second company design initially called the \"Eclipse Concept Jet\". The four-seat aircraft was powered by a single Pratt & Whitney Canada PW610F turbofan and was built in secrecy at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia by Swift Engineering and Basis.\nThe ECJ had first flown on 2 July 2007. At the time of its announcement the aircraft was expected to have a cruise speed of at with an IFR range of . The aircraft was intended to have a gross weight, empty weight, useful load and a fuel capacity of .\nAt the time of its announcement the company said that it did not intend to produce the aircraft. Eclipse CEO Vern Raburn said \"The Eclipse Jet will allow us to obtain real, quantifiable data that looks at this developing category. While today we have no production plans for the ECJ, we are constantly evaluating markets for future Eclipse products\u00a0... we are anxious to reveal the potential of this emerging category, and our opportunity to add real value to it.\"\nIn October 2007 the company furloughed some 100-150 contract workers and employees, about 10% of its workforce.\nIn November 2007 Eclipse subcontractor Hampson Aerospace, which built the tail assembly, including the fin, horizontal stabilizers, rudder and elevators for the Eclipse 500, filed suit against Eclipse alleging that Eclipse had not paid for parts which had been delivered to Eclipse.\nAt the time Eclipse CEO Vern Raburn said of the issue:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />You may have heard that a supplier of ours, Hampson Aerospace, has filed a lawsuit against Eclipse Aviation. Hampson manufactures the Eclipse 500's tail section, including the vertical and horizontal, rudder and elevators. I want to assure you that aircraft production has not stopped, and Hampson remains a supplier. Our number one priority continues to be delivering outstanding aircraft to you. While I cannot go into too much detail on pending litigation, I will say that as in most production situations, occasionally we get into a dispute with a vendor. However, we almost always work the differences out and very few disagreements end up in the public domain as legal action. Prior to Hampson's filing, we sent them a notice outlining a number of recurring quality issues. These concerns have led to a discrepancy on what parts should be paid for, and which should not. Contrary to wishful speculation by our competitors and critics, this issue has absolutely nothing to do with the financial health of Eclipse Aviation. In short, it is about our refusal to accept and pay for sub-standard material. I am very hopeful that we will be able to work through our differences, and that our partnership with Hampson will continue.\nThe suit was resolved in February 2008 in a confidential agreement.\nDuring 2007 Eclipse produced 104 aircraft and proclaimed a record for building its \"first 100 airplanes faster than any GA jet aircraft manufacturer in history.\" CEO Vern Raburn described the accomplishment as \"audacious\" and added \"We're transforming how jets are built, and how people travel. It's an audacious goal, and one that stretches us every day to go beyond what seems possible. Day-to-day setbacks are inevitable, but the reality is that we have created a new aircraft category and are bringing a new breed of jet to market at a rate never before seen in general aviation.\"\nIn February 2008 the company purchased a 2005 model Cirrus SR20 light single-engined piston aircraft to be used as a company employee flying club aircraft.\nIn April 2008 Eclipse obtained a court order in California ordering Google to provide the IP addresses of 29 anonymous contributors to the Eclipse Aviation Critic NG blog, which is hosted on Google's Blogger service. The blog, run by Shane Price of Dublin, Ireland is a forum for those who are critical of the company and its treatment of employees, customers and suppliers. Eclipse CEO Vern Raburn said that the pursuit of blog contributors was not to suppress criticism, stating: \"We're not trying to suppress dissension or criticism. We're just trying to find out where it's coming from.\" Raburn stated that since Eclipse employees and suppliers are bound by non-disclosure agreements he wanted to ensure that these are not being broken.\nPrice indicated that some of the identities named in the court subpoena had not posted on the blog and that these names may have come from a previous blog that was critical of Eclipse and was no longer active. The subpoena was opposed by several people in court on the basis that, since they have no connection to the company, the disclosure of their identities would violate their First Amendment rights.\nOne contributor to the blog, Rich Lucibella, told CharterX Industry Headline News that he found Eclipse's actions \"outrageous.\" Lucibella said: \"What Eclipse is attempting to do is just wrong, they want to take advantage of people's rights; I can't stand by and let them do that\u00a0... Eclipse doesn't have the right to access other people's private information. For example, if three bloggers are or were employed by Eclipse but others aren't, then the rest of the people's privacy rights are violated under the First Amendment. Eclipse hasn't appeared to invoke the rule of reason.\"\nLucibella retained attorney Norman Malinski and filed a motion in the Superior Court of California to prevent Google from releasing contributors' private information.\nDespite earlier claims that the company would not produce the aircraft, on 30 May 2008 Eclipse Aviation began taking orders for a production version of the Eclipse Concept Jet, now designated the Eclipse 400. The 400 was at that time priced at $1.35 million and deliveries were expected to begin by the fourth quarter of 2011.\nFounding President and CEO Vern Raburn resigned as a condition of a financing package by European Technology and Investment Research Center (ETIRC) Aviation, the company that had invested more than US$100 million in Eclipse in 2008. Raburn announced his resignation in an unexpected public event at AirVenture on Monday 28 July 2008. In departing Raburn stated that he believed Eclipse fundamentally changed aviation but he did acknowledge that events did not occur as quickly or as smoothly as he had planned.\nRaburn was replaced as CEO by Roel Pieper, the chairman of the board of directors and president of ETIRC. Raburn was initially offered an executive position at ETIRC; he turned it down, thus ending his relationship with Eclipse.\nAt the time of Raburn's departure, Pieper paid tribute to Raburn saying:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />He has built up the company. Now you have to move to a different stage in the business where it's about operations, it's about quality, it's about efficiency. The board, the investors, the note holders, everybody has agreed that this is the moment to do that.\nPieper also said of the company in July 2008:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The entire layout of the factory was built to get to 2.0 [aircraft per day production] without problems. I think the whole goal of getting to 1.7, 1.8 is a reasonable goal. It doesn't say 2 and a half. I don't want to overstress it, but that will give us an opportunity to get to profitability in Q1, March of next year.\nOn August 3, 2008, after Vern Raburn's removal from the company, the new management at Eclipse dropped the non-disclosure legal actions against Google and the bloggers, under terms set by defending attorney Malinski. \"If Eclipse ever goes after these 29 bloggers again, Eclipse could face financial penalties in advance of proceedings,\" Malinski said. He also stated: \"Freedom of speech rights includes being able to keep your identity anonymous, to be able to express freedom of speech, to have the freedom to disagree with someone else's opinion without being harassed.\"\nIn response to frequent rumors in the summer of the 2008 that the company would close its Albuquerque plant and relocate the operation, Eclipse issued the following statement on 14 August 2008:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nOn 19 August 2008 Albany International, an Eclipse supplier, announced that production of the Eclipse would soon be dropping significantly.\nOn Wednesday 20 August 2008 Hampson Aerospace closed its Grand Prairie production plant, leaving Eclipse without a supplier of tail sections. In late September Hampson revised its webpage to remove details of its relationship with Eclipse.\nOn 22 August 2008, Eclipse announced that it would be laying off 650 of its workforce of 1800 people (38% of its work force).\nCompany President and CEO, Roel Pieper, said: \"Financial stability is critical for this company and unfortunately, a reduction in workforce was necessary to achieve it. I am confident this action will set the company on the path to profitability so that we can continue to lead the very light jet category.\"\nAlbuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez reacted to the layoff notice saying: \"This is quite serious news from Eclipse that 600 jobs will be lost. The city of Albuquerque and the state of New Mexico intend to work together to try and place those impacted by those decisions. It is our hope that in the near future, Eclipse becomes a community leader once again in Albuquerque.\" Chavez expressed confidence in the new company management and that the company will be turned around by the end of 2008. Chavez stated: \"In the end, if everything goes right, it will lead to even more jobs in Albuquerque. We'll see how it works out.\" The city previously provided a number of incentives to convince Eclipse to locate in Albuquerque, including $45 million in industrial revenue bonds issued in 2004 and $770,000 in property tax abatements. The city's Economic Development Department said that Eclipse, and not the city, was responsible for the industrial revenue bonds.\nNew Mexico had invested US$19 million in Eclipse as part of a package to get the company to locate in the state. Governor Bill Richardson indicated on 22 August 2008 that he didn't believe the situation was hopeless, stating: \"I've been assured by the president of Eclipse that these jobs will eventually come back\u00a0... But I am concerned about the viability, in the future, of Eclipse\u00a0... I will try to help them seek additional funding and investors, but I like their long-term game plan and their short-term game plan.\"\nIn late August the company held a meeting for 90 of its suppliers. The meeting was intended to gather support for the company following the removal of Raburn and the layoff of the 650 employees. However by this time the majority of suppliers had already put the company on credit watch for non-payment of invoices and required cash-in-advance payments for all parts to be delivered. Ironically at his departure Raburn had laid the blame for much of the company's failures on its suppliers.\nOn 29 August 2008 Pratt & Whitney Canada repossessed 24 engines sold to Eclipse, valued at $5,165,744.\nIn August 2008, in a communication to position holders, the company indicated that development of the Eclipse 400 was on hold.\nIn August 2008 Eclipse was sued for failing to provide a refund on a cancelled order by its due date of 1 August 2008. Ice Blue Air, of London, had ordered an Eclipse 500 in 2006 and indicated that, due to the price increases, they were entitled to a refund as stipulated in the purchase agreement. The purchase agreement permitted cancellation and a full refund if the aircraft's price was raised. Eclipse disagreed and responded that no refunds would be possible until further financing was in place, anticipated at that time for the end of 2008. Eclipse was the subject of several similar delivery-related lawsuits and as many as 300 customer orders were cancelled and awaiting refunds.\nOn 25 September 2008 Robert Bigler of Cupertino, California filed suit against Eclipse for not returning his deposit of US$182,000. Eclipse filed a motion in response indicating that the \"Plaintiff did not comply with the contract requirements for obtaining a refund, and therefore has not yet given the required 'effective notice' under the contract at issue. Plaintiff's claims therefore are premature.\"\nIn September and again in October 2008, Eclipse indicated that unless it received \"funding in October or November,\" it would not have the ability to refund customer deposits.\nOn 19 September 2008, during the 2007\u20132008 financial crisis, Eclipse's largest customer, DayJet, representing 1430 orders for the Eclipse 500, ceased flying operations for financial reasons and indicated that a return to flying was \"unlikely\". The company's operations also suffered as a result of Eclipse Aviation's alleged failure to install missing equipment or functionality or repair agreed technical discrepancies in accordance with the terms of DayJet's aircraft purchase contract.\nIn October 2008, Airport Journals reported more detail on the DayJet order for 1400 aircraft:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />On May 2, 2007, for the first time, Traver-Gruen-Kennedy, vice president of strategic operations at DayJet, confirmed to this journalist that in 2002, under the name of Jetson Systems, not DayJet, 1,400 EA-500 orders were placed. During that time, Gruen-Kennedy said that although the colossal order was placed, the company would first operate 300 VLJs within a two-year period. But because the 1,400 orders existed, at least on paper, they were used during a 2005 New Mexico State Investment Council meeting, which prompted the state's private equity program to purchase more than $3 million of Eclipse Series F preferred stock. Since that funding, the state invested much more into Eclipse.\nFor years, aviation analysts have said they doubted there was any substance behind the 1,400 orders. To this day, Eclipse has refused to make its order book available, for verification of orders and cancellations. With the Eclipse 500's price now reaching $2.5 million, and with the 1,400 orders gone, aerospace analysts are skeptical about the company's likelihood of survival. Eclipse's marketing plan was based on mass production with a VLJ in the $1 million range.\nEclipse Aviation announced in October 2008 that it was acting as \"the exclusive broker\" and was advertising the entire DayJet fleet of 28 aircraft for sale.\nCanadian light aircraft fractional aircraft company OurPlane bid on the entire DayJet fleet of aircraft, offering more than \"$500,000 each but less than $1.5 million\" each. OurPlane operates a fleet of Cirrus SR22 aircraft and one current Eclipse 500. OurPlane planned to offer its customers one-quarter shares in the Eclipse 500s for less than US$449,000. The sale was never completed and OurPlane went into Chapter 7 liquidation in October 2010 after selling all its customer's \"fractional ownership\" aircraft.\nEclipse Aviation announced on 23 September 2008 that it planned to establish a factory in Ulyanovsk, Russia to assemble the Eclipse 500. The Russian State Bank Vnesheconombank agreed to finance 100% of the project, providing US$205 million and would be a part-owner of the operation. The Russian State Bank supervisory board is chaired by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The Russian-based operation was intended to be jointly operated by the European Technology and Investment Research Center (ETIRC) Aviation, the Russian Federation, the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Republic of Turkey.\nOn 8 October 2008, the Belgian company Royal Properties filed a lawsuit, alleging that Eclipse Aviation failed to return \"the deposit it paid despite the occurrence of a Refund Event and Royal Properties' effective notice of demand for a refund.\"\nIn October 2008 when asked \"if the Eclipse 400 project was a go or not, Eclipse said it has not begun the certification process. The company also said it has not spent any of the deposit money for the four-place, single-engine VLJ.\"\nEclipse halted production of the EA500 in October 2008 at serial number 267, although serial number 266 was completed much earlier in the year. The company indicated that it lacked the funds to continue production or to refund customer deposits for the EA500 and 400 that were owed and were the subject of outstanding lawsuits.\nIn October 2008 a number of industry analyses and media reports were released all predicting that Eclipse would soon enter bankruptcy, production of the Eclipse 500 would end and development of the Eclipse 400 would cease.\nIn an analysis of the company and its situation in October 2008 Richard Aboulafia, Vice President, Analysis, Teal Group in his consultant's report on Eclipse said: \"With numerous lawsuits from suppliers and customers, Eclipse faces the prospect of involuntary or voluntary bankruptcy\u00a0... we doubt that Eclipse can survive as an ongoing business. There is a chance that additional cash injections would keep it alive for another year or two. But for now, our forecast calls for production to end in 2009.\"\nOn 28 October 2008 Forecast International released a report on Eclipse projecting \"that production of the Eclipse 500 will soon end\". They also stated: \"Eclipse continues to produce aircraft at a low rate as it seeks to preserve cash. We have forecast production of 162 Eclipse 500s during 2008. We believe that the company will be able to push production out into early 2009 but will be forced to cease production within the first quarter of 2009\u00a0... even this forecast may prove too optimistic\u00a0... To restructure its operations and reach profitability, Eclipse Aviation has said publicly that it needs $200\u2013$300 million in new equity investment. With credit markets in the midst of a major crisis, Eclipse Aviation is seeking funding at a time when bankers and investors are reluctant to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into a company facing an uncertain future.\" Forecast International predicted that Eclipse would not be successful in attracting the new investment it needed to continue production past March 2009.\nResponding to the Teal Group and Forecast International outlooks for Eclipse, Serge Le Guellec, president and CEO of Mecaer America, a Montreal-based subcontractor who built the landing gear for the Eclipse 500, on 4 November 2008 said: \"We are following the situation very closely. We understand that for Eclipse there are difficulties securing financing. I think we must be prudent, but I also think it is a bit premature to predict its (Eclipse's) demise by the end of the first quarter of 2009.\"\nComposite manufacturer and Eclipse subcontractor Albany International indicated in its fourth quarter report, issued on 4 November 2008, that it expected Eclipse's prospects to improve in 2009: \"... in August [2008] we announced that at Eclipse Aviation, AEC's largest customer, was substantially cutting back production. For AEC, this meant a complete stoppage of production of parts for Eclipse. We also stated in August that we expected Eclipse to ramp back up in 2009. Indications from Eclipse are that they are on track for a 2009 recovery, which would mean that AEC Production of Eclipse components would return to at least Q2 2008 rates by Q3 of 2009.\"\nIn early November 2008 a group of Eclipse 500 deposit"}, "descending_order": ["30946115", "21657824", "43952473", "43360336"], "permutation_1": ["43360336", "43952473", "21657824", "30946115"], "permutation_2": ["21657824", "30946115", "43952473", "43360336"], "permutation_3": ["30946115", "21657824", "43952473", "43360336"]}
{"id": "2hop__389498_7672", "docs_added": {"163327": "University of Kansas\nPublic university in Lawrence, Kansas, US\nThe University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States. Two branch campuses are in the Kansas City metropolitan area on the Kansas side: the university's medical school and hospital in Kansas City, Kansas, the Edwards Campus in Overland Park. There are also educational and research sites in Garden City, Hays, Leavenworth, Parsons, and Topeka, an agricultural education center in rural north Douglas County, and branches of the medical school in Salina and Wichita. The university is a member of the Association of American Universities and is classified among \"R1: Doctoral Universities \u2013 Very high research activity\".\nFounded March 21, 1865, the university was opened in 1866 under a charter granted by the Kansas State Legislature in 1864 and legislation passed in 1863 under the state constitution, which was adopted two years after the 1861 admission of the former Kansas Territory as the 34th state into the Union.\nAs of fall 2022[ [update]], 23,872 students were enrolled at the Lawrence and Edwards campuses with an additional 2,836 students enrolled at the University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC) for a total enrollment of 26,708 students across the three campuses. Overall, the university (including KUMC) employed 3,196 faculty members (faculty, faculty administrators, librarians, and unclassified academic staff) in fall 2022[ [update]].\nKansas's athletic teams compete in NCAA Division I sports as the Jayhawks, as members of the Big 12 Conference. They field 16 varsity sports, as well as club-level sports for ice hockey, rugby, men's volleyball, soccer, basketball, rock climbing, triathlon, cross country, track, swim, pickleball, table tennis, and water skiing.\nHistory.\nOn February 20, 1863, Kansas Governor Thomas Carney signed into law a bill creating the state university in Lawrence. The law was conditioned upon a gift from Lawrence of a $15,000 endowment fund and a site for the university, in or near the town, of not less than of land. If Lawrence failed to meet these conditions, Emporia instead of Lawrence would get the university.\nThe site selected for the university was a hill known as Hogback Ridge (later known as Mount Oread), which was privately donated by Charles L. Robinson, the Republican governor of the state of Kansas from 1861 to 1863, and one of the original settlers of Lawrence, Kansas. Robinson and his wife Sara bestowed the site to the State of Kansas in exchange for land elsewhere. The philanthropist Amos Adams Lawrence donated $10,000 of the necessary endowment fund, and the citizens of Lawrence raised the remaining money themselves via private donations. On November 2, 1863, Governor Carney announced Lawrence had met the conditions to get into the state university, and the following year the university was officially organized.\nThe school's Board of Regents held its first meeting in March 1865, which is the event that KU dates its founding from. Work on the first college building began later that year. The school opened for classes on September 12, 1866, and the first class graduated in 1873. According to William L. Burdick, the first degree awarded by the university was a Doctor of Divinity, bestowed upon noted abolitionist preacher Richard Cordley.\nDuring the early development of the University of Kansas, Chancellors Joshua Lippincott, Francis H. Snow, and Frank Strong, along with the Kansas Board of Regents, worked to establish the university as not only a center for higher education but also a representative agency of the state. Snow, who served from 1890 to 1901, emphasized scientific research and public engagement, while Strong, beginning in 1902, advanced the university\u2019s role in public service. This vision aligned with the sentiments expressed by Professor M. S. Ward, who stated in 1891 that \"Students should find in the University preparation for all the various pursuits and callings of society. The ultimate aim of our own State University ought to be [promoting] the highest Christian culture, an ample professional training, [which] will make our civilization the highest possible on earth.\"\nIn an effort to appeal to the predominantly Christian population of Kansas, many of who in the early history of the university were critical of state money being used to fund a secular institution, Chancellor Lippincott sought to reassure the public that the University of Kansas maintained strong Christian values. In response to a concerned parent questioning the university\u2019s mission, Lippincott wrote, \"The University is a Christian institution founded by a Christian state. We have daily prayers conducted for the most part by members of the Faculty of whom nearly all are Christian and several ministers of the Gospel.\"\nAlthough the university was a secular institution, religion remained a central cultural force among students. In an 1880 community letter, an anonymous student reflected on the broader moral and spiritual purpose of education at KU, writing, \"We are all seeking the truth, we are all earnest in our effort to correctly solve the great problem of a worthy and useful existence\u2014we all recognize the wonderful features of a Christian age and a Christian country and we all hope to be true men and women [of the country] and almost all acknowledge that in accomplishing this we need an inspiration which is not of this earth nor fashioned after this world.\"\nChancellor Lippincott emphasized the importance of individual development in higher education, distinguishing universities from more rigid collegiate institutions in other parts of the country. In a lecture to students, James Marvin, the third Chancellor of the University stated, \"Higher education should aid students to realize all their potentialities, but only in a university are all individualities respected. Colleges that require all students [to] follow the same course have a factory air about them. Students go through the same milling process and come out machines, but God did not intend man to be a machine, and the University of Kansas should be about His work.\"\nBeginning in 1880, the University began to field intercollegiate athletics programs, starting with baseball. The University would introduce football in 1890, men's basketball in 1898, a women's club basketball team in 1902, and various other varsity athletics programs throughout the 20th century.\nDuring World War I, the University of Kansas became a key training ground for military personnel, and courses were added for male students to reflect this. Military drills and coursework in military science were made mandatory for male students, and in 1918, KU established a unit of the Students' Army Training Corps (SATC) to provide academic and military instruction. Faculty contributed to war-related research, while female students supported Red Cross efforts. Chancellor Frank Strong emphasized KU\u2019s role in preparing students for both military service and national responsibility. Strong was a vocal opponent of the United States entering a foreign war, and helped found the Kansas Branch of the League to Enforce Peace in 1915, which was a collection of activists who were opposed to American involvement in foreign conflicts. Strong advocated for patriotism during his later years as Chancellor, stating at the University Assembly in 1915 that \"it is America's destiny to preserve Western Civilization, which seems to be destroying itself abroad. While the youth of Europe are on its battlefields, the youth of America must seek higher education to enable them to carry on the material for the leadership of the world. America and its universities, with the University of Kansas having a big place among them, must become the center of the greatest intellectual life that the next generation should know.\" In April 1917, after Congress declared a state of war, Strong sent a letter to Congress stating that the University \"has always been loyal to country and to the flag, and always will be.\"\nDuring World War II, Kansas was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program, which offered students a path to a Navy commission.\nLandmarks and structures.\nKU is home to the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics, the Beach Center on Disability, Lied Center of Kansas and radio stations KJHK, 90.7 FM, and KANU, 91.5 FM. The university is also host to several significant museums. These include the University of Kansas Natural History Museum, founded in 1927, which contains important collections in mammalogy, ornithology, vertebrate paleontology, and entomology; and the Spencer Museum of Art, founded in 1928, home to a wide variety of cultural materials from all around the world, with a particular emphasis on American Indian materials. The libraries of the university include Watson Library, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, the Murphy Art and Architecture Library, Thomas Gorton Music & Dance Library, and Anschutz Library. Of athletic note, the university is home to Allen Fieldhouse, which is heralded as one of the greatest basketball arenas in the world, and David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium, which is the eighth oldest college football stadium in the country.\nAcademics.\nThe University of Kansas is a large, state-sponsored university with five campuses. KU is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU) and is classified among \"R1: Doctoral Universities \u2013 Very high research activity\". KU features the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, which includes the School of the Arts and the School of Public Affairs & Administration; and the schools of Architecture, Design & Planning; Business; Education; Engineering; Health Professions; Journalism & Mass Communications; Law; Medicine; Music; Nursing; Pharmacy; and Social Welfare. The university offers more than 345 degree programs. In 2017 Johnson County accounted for most of instate enrollment.\nAccording to the National Science Foundation, KU spent $339 million on research and development in 2018, ranking it 74th in the nation.\nSchool of Architecture and Design.\nThe University of Kansas School of Architecture and Design (ArcD), with its main building being Marvin Hall, traces its architectural roots to the creation of the architectural engineering degree program in KU's School of Engineering in 1912. The Bachelor of Architecture degree was added in 1920. In 1969, the School of Architecture and Urban Design (SAUD) was formed. In 2001, architectural engineering merged with civil and environmental engineering. The design programs from the discontinued School of Fine Arts were merged into the school in 2009, forming the School of Architecture and Design.\nThe Department of Design began in 1921. The Bachelor of Fine Arts degree program began eight years later. Industrial Design was added in 1941, interior design in 1946, jewelry and silversmithing, art history, and the Masters of Fine Arts program in 1948.\nIn 2009, the university reorganized the School of Fine Arts. The professional design practice programs became the Department of Design, administratively located in the School of Architecture and Design.\nSchool of Business.\nThe University of Kansas School of Business is a public business school on the main campus of the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. The KU School of Business was founded in 1924 and has more than 80 faculty members and approximately 1500 students.\nNamed one of the best business schools in the Midwest by Princeton Review, the KU School of Business has been continually accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) for its undergraduate and graduate programs in business and accounting.\nFor 2021, \"U.S. News & World Report\" ranked KU's business school 68th out of 477 evaluated.\nIn 2016, The University of Kansas completed construction on a new home for the business school, named Capitol Federal Hall. It is located at 1654 Naismith Drive, near KU's Rec Center and across the street from Allen Fieldhouse. Capitol Federal Hall is a 166,500 square-foot building complete with state-of-the-art technology and several research labs.\nSchool of Law.\nThe University of Kansas School of Law, founded in 1878, was the top law school in the state of Kansas, and tied for 70th out of 198 nationally, according to the 2021 \"U.S. News & World Report\" rankings. Classes are held in Green Hall at W 15th St and Burdick Dr, which is named after former dean James Green.\nSchool of Engineering.\nThe KU School of Engineering is a public engineering school located on the main campus. The School of Engineering was founded officially in 1891, although engineering degrees were awarded as early as 1873.\nIn the \"U.S. News & World Report\"'s \"America's Best Colleges\" 2021 issue, KU's School of Engineering was ranked tied for 102nd among 218 engineering schools whose highest degree is a doctorate.\nNotable alumni include Charles E. Spahr (1934), the former CEO of Standard Oil of Ohio.\nSchool of Journalism and Mass Communications.\nIn addition to its academic programs, the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications sponsors publications including \"The University Daily Kansan\", \"Jayplay\" magazine, and KUJH TV.\nMedical Center.\nThe University of Kansas Medical Center features three schools: the School of Medicine, School of Nursing, and School of Health Professions that each has its own programs of graduate study. As of the Fall 2013 semester, there were 3,349 students enrolled at KU Med. The Medical Center also offers four-year instruction at the Wichita campus, and features a medical school campus in Salina, Kansas devoted to rural health care.\nThe University of Kansas Health System is co-located at the University of Kansas Medical Center.\nEdwards Campus, Overland Park.\nKU's Edwards Campus is in Overland Park, Kansas. Established in 1993, its goal is to provide adults with the opportunity to complete undergraduate, graduate, and certificate programs. About 2,000 students attend the Edwards Campus, with an average age of 31.\nUniversity of Kansas Leavenworth.\nNear the beginning of the 2018\u20132019 school year, KU launched classes in Leavenworth, Kansas, offering classes to \"both civilian and military\" students, emphasizing a \"high priority in supporting military-affiliated students\". The Leavenworth classes offer both undergraduate and graduate courses.\nComputing innovations.\nKU's School of Business launched interdisciplinary management science graduate studies in operations research during Fall Semester 1965. The program provided the foundation for decision science applications supporting NASA Project Apollo Command Capsule Recovery Operations.\nKU's academic computing department was an active participant in setting up the Internet and is the developer of the early Lynx text-based web browser. Lynx provided hypertext browsing and navigation prior to Tim Berners Lee's invention of HTTP and HTML.\nStudent activities.\nAthletics.\nThe University of Kansas has had teams representing them athletically since at least 1867, a year after classes officially started. Starting in 1866, a baseball team made up of KU students represented the University of Kansas in games played at the Kansas State Fair against local teams from around the state of Kansas. \nThe school's sports teams, wearing crimson and blue, are called the Kansas Jayhawks. They participate in the NCAA's Division I and in the Big 12 Conference. The University of Kansas has won thirteen National Championships all-time: six in men's basketball (two Helms Foundation championships and four NCAA championships, most recently in 2022), three in men's indoor track and field, three in men's outdoor track and field, one in men's cross country and one in women's outdoor track and field. The home course for KU Cross Country is Rim Rock Farm. Their most recent championship came in 2022, the men's basketball team won the 2022 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament.\nKansas football dates from 1890 and is one of the oldest continuous programs in the nation. They have played in the Orange Bowl three times: 1948, 1969, and 2008, as well as nine other bowl games. They are currently coached by Lance Leipold, who was hired in May 2021. From its inception in 1890 to 1929, the program saw consistent success, winning several conference titles in 4 different conferences. After joining the Big 6 Conference (which would eventually become the Big 8) in 1929, Kansas began to struggle in the win-loss column. With the formation of the Big 8 conference in 1960, Kansas became a consistent winner again and fielded legendary coaches like Pepper Rodgers, Don Fambrough, Bud Moore, and Glen Mason. In 2008, under the leadership of Mark Mangino, the #7 Jayhawks emerged victorious in their first BCS bowl game, the FedEx Orange Bowl, with a 24\u201321 victory over the #3 Virginia Tech Hokies. This capstone victory marked the end of the most successful season in school history, in which the Jayhawks went 12\u20131 (.923). The team plays at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium, which recently underwent an $85 million renovation to add an indoor practice facility with a 120-yard field, an outdoor practice facility with 2 full fields and three partial fields, new locker rooms, a new weight training facility, new residencies for players, new offices, new turf, new seats, and a state-of-the-art video board.\nThe KU men's basketball team has fielded a team every year since 1898. The Jayhawks are a perennial national contender, coached by Hall of Fame coach Bill Self. The team has won six national titles, including four NCAA tournament championships in 1952, 1988, 2008, and 2022. The basketball program is currently the winningest program in college basketball history with an overall record of 2,355\u2013877 up to their Final Four appearance in the 2021\u201322 season. The team plays at Allen Fieldhouse. Perhaps its best-recognized player was Wilt Chamberlain, who played in the 1950s, later becoming an NBA star and Harlem Globetrotter.\nKansas has counted among its coaches James Naismith (the inventor of basketball), Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Phog Allen (\"the Father of basketball coaching\" and a Kansas alumnus himself), Dick Harp, Ted Owens, Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Roy Williams, and Basketball Hall of Fame inductee and former NBA Champion Detroit Pistons coach Larry Brown. Currently, Kansas is coached by Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Bill Self. In addition, legendary University of Kentucky coach and Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Adolph Rupp played for KU's 1922 and 1923 Helms National Championship teams, and NCAA Hall of Fame inductee and University of North Carolina Coach Dean Smith played for KU's 1952 NCAA Championship team. Both Rupp and Smith played under Phog Allen. Allen also coached Hall of Fame coaches Dutch Lonborg and Ralph Miller. Allen founded the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC), which started what is now the NCAA Tournament. The Tournament began in 1939 under the NABC and the next year was handed off to the newly formed NCAA.\nKansas fielded its first women's soccer team in 1995. The women's soccer team launched in 1980 as a club sport, but was promoted to varsity play in the NCAA in 1995 when Lori Walker was hired as the head coach. Since 1995 they've appeared in the NCAA tournament ten times, and have won the Big 12 championship three times. They compete at Rock Chalk Park, a 2,500 seat stadium built in 2014. In cooperation with Kansas Athletics, FIFA is using Rock Chalk Park as a training facility and team base camp for the 2026 World Cup, with one of the host sites being nearby Kansas City. \nNotable non-varsity sports include rugby, men's hockey, and men's soccer. The rugby team owns its private facility and tours internationally every two years. The men's hockey team plays at AdventHealth Sports Park in Overland Park, Kansas. They also practice in Topeka and Lawrence. They compete in the American Collegiate Hockey Association. Men's soccer competes in the South Conference of the Upper Midwest Collegiate Soccer League. They play on an artificial turf field next to student dorms next to Allen Fieldhouse.\nDebate teams.\nThe University of Kansas has had more teams (70) compete in the National Debate Tournament than any other university. Kansas has won the tournament 6 times (1954, 1970, 1976, 1983, 2009, and 2018) and had 15 teams make it to the final four. Kansas trails only Northwestern (15) and Harvard (7) for most tournaments won and is tied with Dartmouth (6). Kansas also won the Copeland Award in 1981\u201382 and 2017\u201318.\nMedia.\nThe university's newspaper is \"University Daily Kansan\", which placed first in the Intercollegiate Writing Competition of the prestigious William Randolph Hearst Writing Foundation competition. In the winter of 2008, a group of students created KUpedia, a wiki about all things KU. They received student funding for operations in 2008\u201309. The KU Department of English publishes the \"Coal City Review\", an annual literary journal of prose, poetry, reviews, and illustrations. The \"Review\" typically features the work of many writers, but periodically spotlights one author, as in the case of 2006 Nelson Poetry Book Award-winner \"Voyeur Poems\" by Matthew Porubsky.\nThe \"University Daily Kansan\" operates outside of the university's William Allen White School of Journalism and reaches at least 30,000 daily readers through its print and online publications.\nThe university houses the following public broadcasting stations: KJHK, a student-run campus radio station, KUJH-LP, an independent station that primarily broadcasts public affairs programs, and KANU, the NPR-affiliated radio station. Kansas Public Radio station KANU was one of the nation's first public radio stations. KJHK, the campus radio has roots back to 1952 and is completely run by students.\nCenter for Community Health and Development.\nThe university's Center for Community Health and Development (formerly KU Work Group) was designated as a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Community Health and Development in 2004. It is affiliated with the Department of Applied Behavioral Science and the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies at the university, and supports community health and development through a variety of means, including its free online resource, the Community Tool Box.\nFoundations.\nUniversity of Kansas Memorial Corporation.\nThe first union was built on campus in 1926 as a campus community center. The unions are still the \"living rooms\" of campus and include three locations \u2013 the Kansas Union and Burge Union at the Lawrence Campus and Jayhawk Central at the Edwards Campus. The KU Memorial Unions Corporation manages the KU Bookstore (with seven locations). The KU Bookstore is the official bookstore of KU. The corporation also includes KU Dining Services, with more than 20 campus locations, including The Market (inside the Kansas Union) and The Underground (located in Wescoe Hall). The KU Bookstore and KU Dining Services are not-for-profit, with proceeds supporting student programs, such as Student Union Activities.\nKU Endowment.\nKU Endowment was established in 1891 as the university's primary institutional foundation to manage and build the university's endowment.\nNotable alumni and faculty.\nAffiliated with the university as students, researchers, or faculty members have been 325 Fulbright Scholars, 27 Rhodes Scholars, 10 Marshall Scholars, 2 Mitchell Scholars, 12 MacArthur Fellows, 7 Pulitzer Prize winners, 5 NASA astronauts, 3 Nobel Prize laureates, 2 Fields Medal winners, 3 Hugo Award or Nebula Award winners and 1 Academy Award winner.\nAdditionally, two people associated with the school have been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Dean Smith, who played basketball at Kansas from 1949 to 1953 and was a Hall of Fame men's basketball coach at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was given the award by Barack Obama in 2013. Politician Bob Dole, who played football and basketball at the school but did not graduate, was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom award by Bill Clinton in 1997.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21409566": "Peter Herlihy\nPeter Herlihy, University of Kansas geographer, the Associate Director and Graduate Advisor, Latin American Studies, University of Kansas and field director of the controversial U.S. DOD funded M\u00e9xico Ind\u00edgena project known as the Bowman Expeditions, an initiative of the American Geographical Society to organize international teams of geographers to research potentially \"important\" place-based issues and restore the role of geographers as advisers to U.S. government foreign policy makers. The stated objective of the M\u00e9xico Ind\u00edgena project is to produce maps of the \u201cdigital human terrain,\u201d of the region's indigenous peoples.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "31952113": "Saint Peter's Peacocks men's basketball\nAmerican college basketball team\nCollege basketball team\nThe Saint Peter's Peacocks men's basketball team is the NCAA Division I intercollegiate men's basketball program that represents Saint Peter's University in Jersey City, New Jersey. The school's team competes in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) and plays their home games in Run Baby Run Arena. They are currently led by third-year head coach Bashir Mason, who was hired on April 12, 2022. The Peacocks have appeared in the NCAA tournament five times, including a historic run to the Elite Eight as a 15-seed in 2022 where they finished the season ranked No. 24 in the nation by the \"USA Today\" Coaches Poll with the best NCAA post-season run and the most wins by a MAAC program in a single NCAA Tournament.\nIn 2004 and 2005, Keydren Clark led the nation in points scored per game, becoming just the eighth player to repeat as NCAA Division I scoring champion. In 2006, Clark became only the seventh NCAA player to score more than 3,000 points in a career. He finished his career as the sixth all-time NCAA leading scorer, the record holder for the most three-point shots made in NCAA history with 435 and was named MAAC Player of the Year. Clark led the MAAC in scoring in all four seasons (2002\u20132006) at Saint Peter's and is the all-time leading scorer in university history with 3,058 points.\nHistory.\nSaint Peter's University is one of the founding members of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC), which began play in men's basketball with the 1981\u201382 season. Since then, the Peacocks have compiled the second most wins of any MAAC team and have won the MAAC Championship five times (1991, 1995, 2011, 2022, 2024), tied for the second most all-time. Saint Peter's previously competed in the Metropolitan Collegiate Conference (MCC) from 1965 to 1969. Basketball has long been the most popular sport at the university.\nSaint Peter's first season of basketball was 1930\u201331 which was the also the same year the college re-opened following its twelve-year closure from the impacts of World War I. To celebrate the school's rebirth, the dean named the Peacock as its official mascot.\nThe Peacocks recorded their first consecutive winning seasons under head coach George Babich in 1947\u201348 (16\u20135) and 1948\u201349 (18\u20135).\nIn the 1950s, Saint Peter's found sustained success with the hiring of head coach Don Kennedy ahead of the 1950\u201351 season as the fifth head coach in program history. The Peacocks would make back-to-back NAIA Tournament appearances in 1953 and 1954. Saint Peter's would make a run to the NAIA Quarterfinals in 1954 where they would lose to Arkansas Tech 77\u201381. They would then go on to make back-to-back appearances in the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) in 1957 and 1958.\nThe Peacocks first gained national recognition on March 18, 1968, with a stunning upset. Led by head coach Don Kennedy, Saint Peter's defeated the nationally ranked No. 10 Duke Blue Devils 100\u201371 in the 1968 NIT Quarterfinals in front of a sold-out crowd of 19,500 at Madison Square Garden. This was the first sell-out for a college basketball game at the current Madison Square Garden. The Peacocks advanced to the sold-out semifinal game against the Kansas Jayhawks led by future Hall of Famer Jo Jo White. Demand to attend the game was so high that Saint Peter's arranged for the game to be shown on a CCTV feed in the Stanley Theater at Journal Square to a capacity crowd. The Peacocks NIT run ended in a 46\u201358 defeat and a fourth-place finish. This was the second of three consecutive NIT appearances for Saint Peter's. During the 1967\u201368 season, the Peacocks went 24\u20134, 8\u20130 in conference play and averaged 94 points per game. The team was later nicknamed the \"Run, Baby Run\" Team after that phrase was found written on a blackboard by Peacocks reserve center Tom Schwester inside the door to the Peacock locker room after their win over Duke.\nIn 1972, Don Kennedy ended his twenty-two year career as the winningest head coach in program history with a 323\u2013195 (.624) record from 1950 to 1972. Under Kennedy, the Peacocks became known for their fast-pace offensive tactics even with the addition of the shot clock in 1954. During his tenure, the Peacocks registered a winning season in 19 of 22 seasons, three 20-win seasons, including the program's first 20-win campaign in 1957\u201358, a program-record 24 victories in 1967\u201368 and appearances in five NIT Tournaments and two NAIA Tournaments.\nOn November 29, 1975, the Victor R. Yanitelli, S.J. Recreational Life Center (Yanitelli Center) opened on campus as the new home court of the Peacocks with an inaugural game against the Dartmouth Big Green. Prior to its opening, Saint Peter's hosted its home games at the nearby Jersey City Armory and still occasionally use the venue for high-profile games.\nFrom 1975 to 1989, the Peacocks made seven appearances in the NIT (1975, 1976, 1980, 1982, 1984, 1987, 1989). Saint Peter's would make its deepest run during that span in the 1980 NIT. Led by head coach Bob Dukiet, the Peacocks defeated the UConn Huskies (71\u201356) and the Duqesnse Dukes (34\u201333) en route to a tough Quarterfinal matchup against the Sidney Green led UNLV Runnin' Rebels where they would lose 63\u201367.\nDuring this period, prior to joining the MAAC in 1981, the Peacocks participated in the ECAC men's basketball tournaments (regional end-of-season tournaments played by Division I schools that were independent, with Saint Peter's being in the Metro region) in 1975, 1976, 1980, 1981. The Peacocks defeated the Fordham Rams 65\u201347 in the semifinals to make it to the 1980 ECAC Metro Championship game where they were defeated by their future MAAC rival, the Iona Gaels, 64\u201346.\nIn the early 1990s, Saint Peter's began to find success in the MAAC Tournament under head coach Ted Fiore. In 1991, the Peacocks won their first MAAC Championship over the Iona Gaels 64\u201358 to send them to their first ever NCAA Tournament. The No. 5 Texas Longhorns would defeat them 65\u201373 in the First Round of the Midwest Region. In 1995, the Peacocks were again MAAC Champions after upsetting the No. 1 Manhattan Jaspers 80\u201378 in overtime. They would be matched up against the Marcus Camby led No. 2 Umass Minutemen in the NCAA Tournament where the Minutemen would be victorious over the Peacocks 68\u201351 in the First Round of the East Region.\nOn June 17, 2002, Saint Peter's was one of sixteen schools selected to participate in the NIT Season Tip-Off Tournament. On November 18, 2002, the Peacocks played fellow Jesuit university program the Xavier Musketeers with the Peacocks falling in the opening round 48\u201387.\nFrom 2002 to 2006, the Peacocks were led by starting point guard Keydren \"Kee-Kee' Clark who was one of the most prolific scorers in NCAA Division I history. During his college career at Saint Peter's, Clark amassed 3,058 points and averaged 29.5 points a game. In 2003, he was named MAAC Rookie of the Year. In 2004 and 2005, he led the nation in points scored per game, becoming just the eighth player to repeat as NCAA Division I scoring champion. On March 4, 2006, Clark became only the seventh NCAA player to score more than 3,000 points in his career; on the next day, he passed Hersey Hawkins to become the sixth-leading scorer of all time. The milestone happened in a game where the Peacocks upset the No. 1 Manhattan Jaspers 84\u201374 in the MAAC Tournament semi-finals. He was later named 2006 MAAC Player of the Year. Clark finished his college career as the sixth all-time NCAA leading scorer and as the NCAA record holder for the most three-pointers made with 435. He was later passed by JJ Redick who finished his college career with 457. Clark led the MAAC in scoring in all four seasons at Saint Peter's and is the all-time leading scorer in Saint Peter's University and New Jersey collegiate history with 3,058 points. He also holds the Yanitelli Center scoring record for most points in a game with 44. Clark returned to the Peacocks ahead of the 2022\u201323 season and is currently Director of Player Development and an assistant coach.\nOn December 27 and 28, 2005, Saint Peter's played in the \"Panasonic Holiday Festival\" at Madison Square Garden. They took on the UMass Minutemen in the opening round where the Minutemen defeated the Peacocks 66\u201349. They were then matched up against the Columbia Lions where the Peacocks won 63\u201354 to finish third in the regular season tournament.\nOn November 17, 2009, Saint Peter's garnered national exposure by hosting the Monmouth Hawks as part of the second annual ESPN's 24\u2013Hour College Hoops Tip-Off Marathon. The marathon of live games across ESPN's networks marked the first day of the college basketball season. Ahead of the game, the university hosted an 11-hour \"all-nighter\" of campus activities with free breakfast and a pre-game pep rally. The game tipped-off at 6:05\u00a0a.m. and ended with the Peacocks defeating the Hawks, "}, "descending_order": ["31952113", "163327", "21409566"], "permutation_1": ["163327", "21409566", "31952113"], "permutation_2": ["21409566", "31952113", "163327"], "permutation_3": ["163327", "21409566", "31952113"]}
{"id": "2hop__488396_127008", "docs_added": {"417693": "Come Undone (Duran Duran song)\n1993 single by Duran Duran\n\"Come Undone\" is a song by English rock band Duran Duran, released in March 1993 by Parlophone as the second single from their seventh studio album, \"Duran Duran\" (1993). With their commercial and critical success reestablished by the previous single \"Ordinary World\", \"Come Undone\" continued to showcase more of the band's entry into the adult contemporary radio format.\nThe single became the group's second consecutive US top-10 hit from the \"Wedding Album\", peaking at number seven on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and becoming their last top-40 hit on that chart. It was also popular in the United Kingdom and other international markets, reaching number two in Canada, number eight in Italy, number nine in Ireland, and number 13 in the UK. As of October 2021, \"Come Undone\" is the eighth-most streamed Duran Duran song in the UK. The accompanying music video was directed by Julien Temple.\nBackground.\n\"Come Undone\" stands out as the sole track on the album to which John Taylor didn't contribute. Despite being the second single released from \"Duran Duran\", the song was actually the final one recorded after the album was already completed in early 1992. At that stage, Taylor had completed his parts for all the other songs and had left for Los Angeles to spend time with his wife. In an interview with BBC, Taylor remarked, \"Maybe I wished I'd played on 'Come Undone'. I'd gone back to Los Angeles. We'd put that album to bed. I'm not coming back for one more song. Maybe it would have been a different song if I'd been there, maybe it wouldn't have been such a great song. But I'm not one for regrets.\" Subsequently, co-producer John Jones stepped in to handle the bass for the song. Due to the timing of events, \"Come Undone\" almost didn't make it onto the album. Warren Cuccurullo revealed to author Steve Malins that he and Nick Rhodes had originally planned on using the song for a project outside of Duran Duran with Gavin Rossdale, but had changed plans when singer Simon Le Bon took a liking to the music and began to come up with lyrics on the spot.\nRecording history.\n\"Come Undone\" was initially built off of a single guitar hook, which the group's guitarist at the time, Warren Cuccurullo, developed in Privacy Studios while trying to do a re-interpretation of the song \"First Impression\" from their 1990 album \"Liberty\". John Jones and Cuccurullo expanded on this idea, incorporating a drum loop and bass from Jones' track \"Face to Face\". Although the drum loop was often mistaken for a sample of Ashley's Roachclip, it was an original creation according to the American music journalist Annie Zaleski. Their unfinished demo caught the attention of Nick Rhodes and Simon Le Bon, which they played to them through a phone call. This led to Rhodes joining them in the studio to finalize the music that afternoon. Le Bon swiftly penned lyrics for the song and added vocals the following day. The next day they brought in the English singer Tessa Niles for backing vocals and added additional overdubs. Niles told \"Rolling Stone\" that Rhodes and Cuccurullo were \"asking me to jump through various vocal hoops and try different things on the chorus and try it in different ways. My initial idea for the female vocal was quite soft and breathy and sexy. I think at one point, Nick said, 'Listen, unleash the diva. Just go for it. Bring her out and let's see what you got.'\" The song was then mixed the next day, completing the creative process.\nMusic video.\nThe music video for \"Come Undone\" was directed by British film, documentary and music video director Julien Temple and shot the music video inside of an aquarium. It features multiple, unrelated clips of people in different areas. These include a little girl seeing her parents together, an older couple who have survived a flood, a little girl hiding under the bed while placing her head on top of her white teddy bear, an alcoholic, and a man who is revealed to be a cross-dresser. Also seen in the video is the backing singer Tessa Niles, struggling underwater to break free of the chains that bind her, where she sings her backup line in the song. A portion of the music video can be seen in the \"No Laughing\" episode of the MTV show \"Beavis and Butt-Head\", which was aired in July 1993.\nB-sides, bonus tracks and remixes.\nThe single was released in the United Kingdom on 29 March 1993, with an acoustic version of \"Ordinary World\" as the B-side. This was the single's official B-side in the UK, along with two official remixes of \"Come Undone\". In the US however, three new, original compositions written during the album's production were featured as B-sides \u2013 \"Time for Temptation\", \"Stop Dead\" and \"Falling Angel\". For collectors, the US releases also contained an alternate mix of \"To the Shore\" and the first appearance on CD of \"The Chauffeur (Blue Silver)\".\nTrack listings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nPersonnel.\nDuran Duran\nAdditional musicians\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCover versions.\nCanadian rock band, My Darkest Days, released their version of Come Undone on their debut album \"My Darkest Days\", featuring country vocalist Jessie James Decker on backing vocals. American rock band Bad Omens released a version of Come Undone on the deluxe version of their second album, \"Finding God Before God Finds Me\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "148703": "Duran Duran\nEnglish pop rock band\nDuran Duran () are an English pop rock band formed in Birmingham in 1978 by singer Stephen Duffy, keyboardist Nick Rhodes and guitarist/bassist John Taylor. After several early changes, the band's line-up settled in May 1980 as Rhodes, Taylor, singer Simon Le Bon, guitarist Andy Taylor and drummer Roger Taylor. \nEmerging as members of the New Romantic scene, Duran Duran were innovators of the music video and a leading band in the MTV-driven Second British Invasion of the US in the 1980s. By 1984, the band had achieved levels of fame similar to Beatlemania. The band's first major hit was \"Girls on Film\" (1981), from their self-titled debut album, the popularity of which was enhanced by a controversial music video. The band's breakthrough second album was \"Rio\" (1982), a worldwide hit. The songs \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Rio\" featured cinematic music videos directed by Australian film maker Russell Mulcahy and became two of their biggest hits. Their third album, \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\", became their only UK number one album and featured the US and UK number one single \"The Reflex\". In 1985, the band topped the US charts with the single \"A View to a Kill\" from the soundtrack of the James Bond film of the same title.\nAndy Taylor and Roger Taylor both left the band before the recording of their fourth album, \"Notorious\" (1986), which yielded the top ten title track. Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor initially continued as a core trio, before adding drummer Sterling Campbell and former Frank Zappa and Missing Persons guitarist Warren Cuccurullo as full-time members in 1989, though Campbell departed in 1991. The band spent the late 1980s and early 1990s releasing albums and singles to only moderate success. Their comeback album, 1993's \"Duran Duran\" (commonly called \"The Wedding Album\"), featured two top ten worldwide hits \"Ordinary World\" and \"Come Undone\". John Taylor left the band in 1997, though four years later, in 2001, a full reunion of the classic 1980\u20131985 line-up of Le Bon, Rhodes and all three Taylors took place, which led to a number of highly successful concert tours and the 2004 album \"Astronaut\", which reached number three in the UK and top 40 in numerous other countries. The album's lead single \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\" was an international dance hit, and reached number five in the UK. Andy Taylor left again in 2006, and the band have released five additional albums, with the most recent being \"Danse Macabre\" in 2023.\nAccording to \"Billboard\", Duran Duran have sold over 100 million records. They achieved 30 top 40 singles in the UK Singles Chart (14 of them top 10) and 21 top 40 singles in the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100. The band have won numerous awards throughout their career: two Brit Awards including the 2004 award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, two Grammy Awards, an MTV Video Music Award for Lifetime Achievement and a Video Visionary Award from the MTV Europe Music Awards. They were also awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The band were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.\nHistory.\n1978\u20131980: Formation and early years.\nJohn Taylor and Nick Rhodes formed Duran Duran in 1978 in Birmingham, England, with Taylor's art school friend Stephen Duffy, naming their band after \"Dr. Durand Durand\", Milo O'Shea's character from the science fiction film \"Barbarella\" (1968), the day after the film was broadcast on BBC on 20 October 1978. The three of them (Taylor on guitar and vocals, Rhodes on synthesizer and tapes, Duffy on vocals and bass) played their first gig on 5 April 1979 at the Birmingham Polytechnic. Soon after, they were joined by Simon Colley on clarinet and bass. John (then going by his first name Nigel) was the guitarist at this point. After a few gigs, including a performance at Barbarella's in Birmingham opening for the band Fashion, Duffy and Colley left the band in June 1979.\nTaylor and Rhodes then recruited lead vocalist Andy Wickett (formerly frontman of \"TV Eye\") and decided that they needed a live drummer. They hired Roger Taylor, a former member of various local bands (most recently \"The Scent Organs\" who also played at Barbarella's), while John Taylor switched to bass guitar. In September 1979, this incarnation of the band recorded a four-track demo including an early version of \"Girls on Film\" co-written by Andy Wickett. Soon afterwards Alan Curtis was recruited as lead guitarist. After a few gigs with this line-up Wickett left the band in late 1979.\nWickett was replaced by Roger Taylor's friend and former singer of \"The Scent Organs\" Jeff Thomas. In early 1980, they became the resident band at the city's Rum Runner nightclub. They were doing jobs at the club and began rehearsing and regularly playing at the venue. Curtis was unhappy with the Rum Runner club scene and left the band to form Dif Juz with his brother. Thomas was fired shortly after following disagreements and repeated arguments. The three remaining members started to look for a new lead vocalist and guitarist. The owners of the club, brothers Paul and Michael Berrow, became the band's management, paying them to work as doormen, disc jockeys (DJs) and barmen when they were not rehearsing, and also formed the Tritec Music company.\nIn April 1980, guitarist Andy Taylor came from Newcastle upon Tyne to audition after responding to an advertisement in \"Melody Maker\". Andy already had a lot of experience from playing with cover bands for years and although he came from a totally different rock music background his versatile playing style was seen as a perfect complement to the band. In May 1980, London vocalist and drama student Simon Le Bon was recommended to the band by an ex-girlfriend who worked at the Rum Runner. The band were immediately impressed by Le Bon and soon completed their first composition with the new line-up, \"Sound of Thunder\", featuring lyrics by Le Bon. Duran Duran's first performance with the lineup of Le Bon, Rhodes and the three Taylors was on 16\u00a0July 1980 at the Rum Runner.\nDuran Duran spent the next months writing, developing and demoing their songs and performed in clubs around Birmingham and London. In September 1980 they had written all of what would become their debut album. Touring as an opening act for Hazel O'Connor, the band attracted critical attention, resulting in a bidding war between the record companies EMI and Phonogram. \"A certain patriotism\" toward the label of the Beatles led them to sign with EMI in December. A week later, the first article about Duran Duran in a national magazine appeared in \"Sounds\". The members of Duran Duran had noticed that Betty Page (pen name for Beverley Glick) was writing about a new movement called New Romantic that would fit the band perfectly and invited her to meet them at the Rum Runner.\nShortly after signing the recording contract with EMI, Duran Duran went to London to record their debut album with producer Colin Thurston, and initial plans for an independent release of the songs \"Planet Earth\" and \"Is There Anyone Out There?\" on the Tritec Music label were scrapped.\n1981\u20131982: Self-titled debut, \"Rio\" and Second British Invasion.\nThe band's debut album, \"Duran Duran\", was released on the EMI label in June 1981. The first single, \"Planet Earth\", had reached the United Kingdom's top 20 at number 12 in February. A follow-up, \"Careless Memories\", released in April, stalled at number 37. The third single, \"Girls on Film\", was released in July and went to number 5 in the UK. The video, featuring topless women mud wrestling, pillow fighting and stylised depictions of other sexual fetishes, was made with directing duo Godley & Creme in August. The video was filmed just two weeks after MTV was launched in the United States. The band expected the \"Girls on Film\" video to be played in the newer nightclubs that had video screens or on pay TV channels like the Playboy Channel. Kevin Godley explained the thinking behind it:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />We were very explicitly told by Duran Duran's management to make a very sensational and erotic piece that would be for clubs, where it would get shown uncensored just to make people take notice and talk about it.\nThe video was heavily edited for MTV. The album peaked in the UK top twenty at number three. Later in 1981 the band embarked on their first United States club tour followed by more dates in Germany and the UK. This second tour of Britain coincided with a wave of riots sparked by unemployment and racial tension, including those of Moss Side and Toxteth. The band played Birmingham the day after the Handsworth riots. The band also began writing and demoing songs for a new album. In November 1981, they released a new single, the disco-influenced \"My Own Way\", that reached number 14 in the UK, followed in early 1982 by the recording of their second album at AIR Studios in London.\nIn May 1982, Duran Duran released their second album, \"Rio\", which entered the UK Albums Chart at number four and peaked at number two the following week. The band scored three UK top 10 hits on the singles chart from the album with \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" at number five in June, \"Save a Prayer\" at number two in September and the title song \"Rio\" at number nine in December, while the earlier top 20 hit \"My Own Way\" was included in a re-recorded version on the album.\nWith the album Duran Duran also began to achieve worldwide recognition. A headlining tour of Australia, Japan and the US was followed by a stint supporting Blondie during that band's final American tour. Diana, Princess of Wales declared Duran Duran her favourite band, and the band were dubbed \"the Fab Five\" by the British press, comparing them to the Beatles whose nickname was the Fab Four.\nAt first, the \"Rio\" album did not do well in the United States. EMI in the UK had promoted Duran Duran as a New Romantic band, but the New Romantic movement was barely known in the US, and EMI's American subsidiary Capitol Records was at a loss about how to sell them. After \"Carnival\" (an EP of \"Rio\"'s dance remixes) became popular with DJs in the fall, the band arranged to have most of the album remixed by David Kershenbaum. In June 1982, Duran Duran appeared for the first time on American television, performing \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Rio\" on \"Dancin' on Air\", the forerunner to the national hit show \"Dance Party USA\".\nNow promoted as a dance album, \"Rio\" was re-released in the US in November and began to climb the American charts six months after its European success. MTV placed \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and several other Duran Duran videos into heavy rotation, pushing the single and album into the US top twenty in early 1983. The ballad \"Save a Prayer\" also did well. \"The band was a natural for music television,\" noted \"Rolling Stone\". \"They may be the first rock group to ride in on a video wave.\" The album ultimately peaked at number six in the US and remained on the charts there for 129 weeks. In 2003, \"Rio\" was listed at number 65 in the \"NME\"'s list of the 100 Greatest Albums of All Time.\nDuran Duran were among the earliest bands to work on their own remixes. Before the days of digital synthesizer and easy audio sampling, they created multi-layered arrangements of their singles, sometimes recording entirely different extended performances of the songs in the studio. These \"night versions\" were generally available only on vinyl as b-sides to 45 rpm singles or on 12-inch club singles until the release of the compilation \"\" in 1998.\n1983\u20131985: The \"Fab Five\", Side projects and Live Aid.\nThe band began 1983 at the Palladium in New York playing the MTV New Year's Eve Rock n' Roll Ball with \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" still climbing the charts in the US, and the American reissue of the \"Rio\" single to follow in March. To satisfy America's appetite for their music, the band re-released their eponymous first album in the US in the middle of the year with the addition of the new single \"Is There Something I Should Know?\". Upon its release, this song entered the chart at number one in the UK (a rarity then and their first chart-topper in their home country) and reached number five on the American charts. During the promotion of this album, Rhodes and Le Bon were MTV guest VJs for a show, during which artist and admirer Andy Warhol dropped by to greet them. \"Our first gigs in the United States were crazy and culty\", Rhodes said later, \"But when we came back after 'Hungry' was a hit, it was mayhem. It was Beatlemania. We were doing a signing of the 'Girls on Film' video at a store in Times Square. We couldn't get out of the store. The cops sealed off the streets.\" Also in 1983, Rhodes produced the UK number one and US number five hit \"Too Shy\" for English band Kajagoogoo and Andy Taylor became the first member of Duran Duran to get married.\nThe band spent the next year as tax exiles, writing songs at a ch\u00e2teau in France where \"The Tube\" with Jools Holland filmed a documentary with the band in May 1983 before they flew to Montserrat and then Sydney to record and mix their third album. During the summer, they returned to the UK to perform two concerts, the first on 20 July in front of the Prince and Princess of Wales at the Dominion Theatre, and the second, a charity concert at Aston Villa's home ground. The band were under pressure to follow up the success of \"Rio\", and the recording process took over six months as different band members went through bouts of perfectionism and insecurity. A newly decadent lifestyle and substance abuse issues for some members added complications. In the documentary film \"Extraordinary World\", filmed a decade later, Rhodes described the effect on their sound as \"barely controlled hysteria, scratching beneath the surface\".\nThe new album, \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" (1983), included the late 1983 hit \"Union of the Snake\" (with the soprano saxophone solo by Andy Hamilton). With \"Hungry Like the Wolf\", \"Rio\", \"Save a Prayer\" and \"Is There Something I Should Know?\", Duran Duran now had five US Top Twenty hits from three different albums in a single year. The band made music headlines by deciding to release the \"Union of the Snake\" video to MTV a full week before the single was released to radio. They followed up with \"New Moon on Monday\", which reached number nine in the UK. Their next single \"The Reflex\", taken from \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" and given a significant remix overhaul by Nile Rodgers of Chic fame, became their first number one hit in the United States. \"The Reflex\" was also their second and final UK number one and was successful in numerous other countries around the world.\nThe band embarked on a global tour that continued throughout the first four months of 1984 including their first major stadium dates in America. A film crew led by director Russell Mulcahy followed the band closely, leading to the documentary film \"Sing Blue Silver\" and the accompanying concert film \"Arena\". The live album \"Arena\" was also recorded during the tour and was released with the new single \"The Wild Boys\", which went to number two on both sides of the Atlantic. In February 1984, the band appeared on the cover of \"Rolling Stone\" magazine and won two Grammy Awards in the brand-new Long Form and Short Form music video categories. Meanwhile, \"Save a Prayer\" gained momentum in North America, and a special US remix of the song became a single in January 1985. It peaked at number 16 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 in March. A live version of the song was used for the single's B-side, taken from the concert video footage for \"Arena\" / \"As the Lights Go Down\".\nDuring this period, all of the band members became heartthrobs for many of their young teenage fans. After the tour, Roger Taylor was married in Naples, Italy, and Rhodes wed in London, wearing a pink velvet tuxedo and top hat. At the end of 1984, the group featured on the Band Aid benefit single \"Do They Know It's Christmas?\" along with other popular British and Irish musical acts. Le Bon sang fourth on the song, after Paul Young, Boy George and George Michael sing their lines.\nEven with Duran Duran on hold, band members were soon anxious to record new music, leading to a supposedly temporary split into two side projects. John Taylor and Andy Taylor wanted to break away from the Duran Duran sound and pursue hard rock material; they collaborated with lead vocalist Robert Palmer and Chic's drummer Tony Thompson to form the rock/funk supergroup the Power Station, releasing two top 10 singles. Le Bon and Rhodes wanted to further explore Duran Duran's atmospheric aspect and formed Arcadia, releasing one album (\"So Red the Rose\") and an accompanying single (\"Election Day\"). Contributors to that album included guitarist Masami Tsuchiya, bassist Mark Egan, percussionist David Van Tieghem, drummer Steve Jordan, Sting, Herbie Hancock and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. Roger Taylor was a drummer for Arcadia as well as contributing percussion to the Power Station album. According to Rhodes, the two side projects \"were commercial suicide... But we've always been good at that.\" The band regrouped to contribute \"A View to a Kill\" to the 1985 James Bond film of the same name. This single was the first Bond theme to go to number one on the US charts, and was at the time the joint highest-placed Bond theme on the UK chart where it reached number two. It was the last single the band recorded as the original five-piece for close to twenty years.\nAs a follow-up to the Christmas 1984 Band Aid single, Duran Duran performed in front of 90,000 people (and an estimated 1.5\u00a0billion TV viewers) at the Live Aid charity concert at John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 13 July 1985 while their Bond song held the top spot on the American charts. It was not intended to be a farewell performance\u2014the band planned only to take a break after four years of non-stop touring and public appearances\u2014but the original five did not play live together again until July 2003. During their Live Aid set, Le Bon inadvertently hit an off-key falsetto note in the chorus of \"A View to a Kill\", an error that was trumpeted by numerous media outlets as \"The Bum Note Heard Round the World\" (in contrast to Freddie Mercury's \"Note Heard Round the World\" at the Wembley Stadium Live Aid show). Le Bon later described the moment as the most embarrassing of his career.\n1986\u20131989: Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor trio.\nAfter releasing three studio albums and one live album in five years, each accompanied by heavy media promotion and lengthy concert tours, the band lost two of its core members to fatigue and tension in 1986. After Live Aid and Arcadia, Roger Taylor left the band and retired to the English countryside, suffering from exhaustion.\nAndy Taylor led the remaining members to believe he would return to work on a new Duran Duran album, even as he was signing a solo recording contract in Los Angeles with MCA Records, eventually releasing a solo album in 1986 called \"Thunder\". The band resorted to legal measures to get him into the studio but after numerous delays they let him go at last. He played on only a few songs on the next album, including \"A Matter of Feeling\", whilst the disagreements were being settled.\nWithout a guitarist or a drummer, Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor had producer (and former Chic guitarist) Nile Rodgers play a few tracks on guitar, and hired Steve Ferrone to play drums while they searched for replacements. In September 1986, Warren Cuccurullo (formerly of Missing Persons and Frank Zappa's band) was hired as a session guitarist. With Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor, he recorded the rest of the \"Notorious\" album, which was released in October 1986. The black-and-white documentary film \"Three to Get Ready\" chronicled the recording of the album, legal tensions, and preparations for the tour.\nAlthough the song \"Notorious\" was a US and UK top ten hit, the album was a relative failure globally, reaching number 16 in the UK and spending one week in the top 50 album chart. The band found they had lost much of the momentum and hysteria they had left behind in 1985. In the three years between the release of \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" and \"Notorious\", many of their teenage fans had grown up and the music was funkier, more mature, and less \"pop\", given the added experience of their work on Arcadia and Power Station and with other musicians. \"Skin Trade\" and \"Meet El Presidente\", the two subsequent singles, made the charts but fared poorly compared to the band's earlier successes. Finally in late 1987, Sterling Campbell was hired as a session drummer.\nSubsequently, Duran Duran struggled to escape the teen idol image and gain respect among critics with more complex music. The new serious image was not accepted at first and their popularity began to wane. \"Rolling Stone\" said, \"In their search for musical maturity, the surviving Durans have lost a good deal of their identity.\" In contrast the \"New York Times\" said, \"Duran Duran's newfound disillusionment may mark a step toward maturity...they managed to catch a trend on the upswing, perhaps \"Notorious\" suggests that for late 1980s grit and pessimism is coming into style.\" Another factor was the band's dismissal of early managers, the Berrow brothers. There was no announcement of the reasons for the decision, but disagreements over money, and the brothers' involvement in Le Bon's yachting adventures (they were co-owners of \"Drum\") were thought to have played a part. Whatever the reason, Duran Duran switched managers frequently and undertook periods of self-management in the later stages of their career. In addition, EMI fired its president and went through a major corporate restructuring that summer and seemed to have lost interest in promoting the band. According to Rhodes the band needed to break up in order to come back together stronger.\nThe next album \"Big Thing\" (1988) yielded the singles \"I Don't Want Your Love\" (number four in the US), and \"All She Wants Is\" (the last top ten hit in the UK until 1993). The record was experimental, mixing influences from house music and raves with Duran's atmospheric synth-pop and the creative guitar work of Cuccurullo (now a full band member), as well as more mature lyrics.\n1989\u20131991: Five again, \"Decade\" and \"Liberty\".\nBy the end of 1989 and at the start of the 1990s, the popularity of synth-pop was fading and losing fans to other momentum-gaining music genres at the time, such as hip hop, techno and alternative rock. After touring for the album finished, the band regained a five-man membership as Cuccurullo and Campbell were made full members of Duran Duran.\nThe compilation album \"Decade\" was released late in 1989, along with the megamix single \"Burning the Ground\", which consisted of woven snippets of the band's hits from the previous ten years, created and produced with John Jones, who began working with the band after the release of \"Big Thing\". The single came and went with little fanfare, but the album became another major seller for the band. The 1990 release \"Liberty\" (a retreat from the experimentation of \"Big Thing\") failed to capitalise on any regained momentum. The album entered the UK album chart in the top ten, but faded away quickly. The singles \"Violence of Summer (Love's Taking Over)\" and \"Serious\" were only mildly successful. For the first time, Duran Duran did not tour in support of an album, performing on only a handful of club dates and TV shows. Campbell left the band early in 1991, going on to work with Soul Asylum and David Bowie. The quartet of Le Bon, Rhodes, John Taylor and Cuccurullo would remain intact for six more years.\n1992\u20131996: Quartet line-up and a brief comeback.\nIn 1993, the band released a second self-titled album: this \"Duran Duran\" album is known as \"The Wedding Album\" (for Nick Egan's cover art featuring the wedding photos of the band members' parents) to distinguish it from the 1981 release, and was produced and recorded with John Jones. The release of this first \"comeback\" album was delayed, with then manager at Left Bank, Tommy Manzi, later telling HitQuarters that this was due to industry resistance to the revival of the band, who he said would rather focus on \"the next hip band\". Listener demand for leaked single \"Ordinary World\" forced it onto radio playlists months earlier than planned; it reached number three on the US chart and number six in the UK and won a prestigious Ivor Novello Award for song writing.\n\"Come Undone\", primarily written by Cuccurullo, with lyrics by Le Bon, made number seven in the US and number 13 in the UK. Both the band and the record label seemed to be caught by surprise by the album's critical and commercial success (number four in the UK, number seven in the US). John Taylor had been considering leaving the band but changed his mind. The band's largest tour ever, which included stops in the Middle East, the then recently de-embargoed South Africa, and South America, was halted after seven months when Le Bon suffered from strained vocal cords. After six weeks' recuperation, the band performed intermittently for another five months, including appearances in Israel, Thailand, and Indonesia.\nIn 1995, the band released the cover album \"Thank You\". Songs from \"Thank You\" included covers of Lou Reed's \"Perfect Day\" and Melle Mel's \"White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)\" (with backing vocals from the original artists). The album also marked the temporary return of former drummer Roger Taylor, who joined the band in studio to play drums on \"Watching the Detectives\" and \"Perfect Day\" (as well as a cover of \"Jeepster\" by T. Rex that did not appear on the album). In a video interview provided with the album's electronic press kit, Reed said he considered Duran Duran's version the best cover ever done of one of his songs, and they received praise from Robert Plant and Jimmy Page for their cover of Led Zeppelin's \"Thank You\".\n1997\u20132000: John Taylor's departure and second trio.\nAfter the promo tour for \"Thank You\" was completed, John Taylor co-founded the B5 Records label, recorded a solo album, founded and toured with the supergroup Neurotic Outsiders, and reunited the Power Station, though the project proceeded without him when he had to withdraw to deal with his divorce. Finally, after struggling for months to record the next album, \"Medazzaland\", in January 1997, John Taylor announced at the DuranCon fan convention that he was leaving the band \"for good\". His departure reduced the band to two long time members (Le Bon and Rhodes) and Cuccurullo, who decided to continue recording under the name Duran Duran.\nFreed from some internal writing conflicts, the band returned to the studio to rewrite and re-record many of the songs on \"Medazzaland\" (John Taylor's work remains on only four tracks). The album marked a return to the layered experimentation of \"Big Thing\", with intricate guitar textures and processed vocals. The track \"Out of My Mind\" was used as the theme song for the film \"The Saint\" (1997), but the only true single to be released in the United States was the quirky \"Electric Barbarella\", which is one of the first singles ever to be sold online. The music video for this single, featuring a sexy robot purchased and played with by band members, had to be censored before airing on MTV, but there was little of the controversy that had surrounded \"Girls on Film\". \"Electric Barbarella\" peaked at number 52 in the US in October 1997. Although \"Medazzaland\" was released in the US in October 1997, the album was never released in the UK. \"Electric Barbarella\" was later released in the UK as a single from the 1998 \"Greatest\" compilation album and peaked at number 23 on the UK chart in January 1999. The group played a set at the Princess Diana Tribute Concert on 27 June 1998 by special request of her family.\nDuran Duran parted ways with Capitol/EMI in 1999, although the label has since used Duran Duran's back catalogue to release several compilations of remixes and rare vinyl-only B-sides. The band then signed what was intended to be a three-album contract with Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records, but it lasted only through the poorly received 2000 album \"Pop Trash\". This slow-paced and heavy album seemed out-of-keeping with earlier band material. Rhodes' intricate production and Cuccurullo's songwriting and experimentation with guitar sounds and time signatures were not enough to hook the public, and the album did not perform well. The dreamy single \"Someone Else Not Me\" lasted barely two weeks on the radio, although its video was noted as the first to be produced entirely with Flash animation. While supporting \"Medazzaland\" and \"Pop Trash\", Duran Duran toured with bassist Wes Wehmiller and drummer Joe Travers.\n2001\u20132005: Reunion.\nIn 2000, Le Bon approached John Taylor with a proposal to reform Duran Duran's classic line-up. They agreed to part company with Cuccurullo after completing the \"Pop Trash\" tour. Cuccurullo then announced on his website that he was leaving Duran Duran to resume work with his 1980s band Missing Persons. This announcement was confirmed the next day by Duran Duran's website, followed a day later by the news that John, Roger and Andy had rejoined. To fulfill contractual obligations, Cuccurullo played three Duran Duran concerts in Japan in June 2001, ending his tenure in the band.\nThroughout 2001, 2002 and 2003, the band worked on writing new material, initially renting a house in Saint-Tropez where audio engineer Mark Tinley built a recording studio for their first serious writing session. They then returned to London to do some self-financed work with various producers (including old friend Nile Rodgers) and search for a new record deal. It proved difficult to find a record label willing to gamble on the band's comeback, so Duran Duran went on tour to prove the drawing power of the reunited band. The response of the fans and the media exceeded expectations. The band played a handful of 25th-anniversary dates across 2003, starting with two arena dates in Tokyo filled to capacity. Tickets sold out for each show within minutes, and celebrities turned out \"en masse\" for reunion dates. Amongst these were a number of shows at smaller venues that the band had played on both sides of the pond when they first got together in the early 1980s. In August, the band were booked as presenters at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, only to be surprised with a Lifetime Achievement Award. They also received a Lifetime Achievement award from \"Q\" magazine in October, and the equivalent Outstanding Contribution award at the BRIT Awards in February 2004.\nThe pace picked up with a sold-out tour of America, Australia and New Zealand. The band played a full concert at a private tailgate party at Super Bowl XXXVIII, their performance of \"The Wild Boys\" broadcast to millions during the pre-game show. A remix of the new track \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\" was released on many TV shows in February while magazines hailed (the modern \"Fab Five\") Duran Duran as one of the greatest bands of all time. Duran Duran then celebrated their homecoming to the UK with fourteen stadium dates in April 2004, including five sold-out nights at Wembley Arena. The British press, traditionally hostile to the band, accorded the shows some very warm reviews. Duran Duran brought along band Goldfrapp and the Scissor Sisters as alternating opening acts for this tour. The last two shows were filmed, resulting in the concert DVD \"Duran Duran: Live from London\" which was released in November.\nFinally, with more than thirty-five songs completed, the band signed a two-album contract with Epic Records in June, and completed the new album, now titled \"Astronaut\". The album was released in October 2004 and entered the UK charts at number three and the US charts at number 17. The first single was \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\", which reached number one on the \"Billboard\" US Dance chart in November and peaked at number five on the UK Singles Chart, Duran Duran's highest chart position since \"A View to a Kill\" in 1985. A second single, \"What Happens Tomorrow\", debuted at No.\u00a011 on the UK chart in February. A 5.1 mix of \"Astronaut\" was created by Jeremy Wheatley for the dual-disc release of \"Astronaut\". The CD side contains the album as-is and the DVD side contains the 5.1 mix of the album in DVD Audio format along with some DVD footage and videos.\nAfter a world tour in early 2005, Duran Duran were presented with the PRS Outstanding Contribution to British Music at the 2005 Ivor Novello Awards. Later that summer, the band headlined the massive Live 8 concert, Rome on 2 July 2005 in the Circus Maximus.\n2006\u20132008: \"Red Carpet Massacre\" and Andy Taylor's second departure.\nIn early 2006, Duran Duran covered John Lennon's song \"Instant Karma!\" for the \"Make Some Noise\" campaign sponsored by Amnesty International. Their version later appeared on \"\" as an iTunes exclusive bonus track. They also performed at two high-profile events\u00a0\u2013 the Nobel Prize Awards and the 2006 Winter Olympics. After a couple of weeks of songwriting in Northern California, the band began working with producer Michael Patterson in London, and continued intermittently for the next several months. At one point, they reported having had fifteen tracks nearly complete for an album tentatively titled \"Reportage\", but no further news emerged from the band for months afterward. In September, the band held meetings in New York City with Justin Timberlake and producer Timbaland with an eye to a potential collaboration and were soon reported to have completed three songs with the producer, including a song with Justin Timberlake.\nOn 25 October 2006, Duran Duran parted company with Andy Taylor once again. In an official announcement on their website, the band stated that an \"unworkable gulf\" had developed between them and Taylor and that \"we can no longer effectively function together\". It was noted by Andy Taylor in his book \"Wild Boy\" that tensions had arisen between the group's management and himself, and he was also diagnosed with clinical depression connected with the death of his father. Dom Brown, who had previously toured with the band, again took over guitar duties and has been performing with them since. After Taylor's departure, the band scrapped the \"Reportage\" album. They wrote and recorded a new album titled \"Red Carpet Massacre\" (2007), which included the Timbaland tracks. Dom Brown is the featured guitarist on the album.\nIn July 2007, the band performed twice at Wembley Stadium. Their first appearance at the stadium was the Concert for Diana which celebrated the life of Princess Diana almost 10 years after her death. The band performed \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\", \"The Wild Boys\" and \"Rio\". Their second appearance was at Live Earth concert, London. On 25 September, the Timberlake collaboration \"Falling Down\" was released as a download single on iTunes, and the band announced that they would play nine shows at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway to launch the \"Red Carpet Massacre\" album. The album launch was later extended to incorporate a show in London on 3 December 2007 and one in Dublin on 5 December 2007.\nIn May 2008, they toured the US leg of their 2008 world tour and were supported by the British band Your Vegas. In June 2008, they played the Louvre in Paris in a fundraising effort that contributed to the restoration of a Louis XV drawing room. Guests dined, privately viewed some of the museum's artworks, then attended a performance by the band in the I.M. Pei-designed Pyramid du Louvre. The group's performance marked a first for the 18th-century museum which had never before allowed a rock concert to occur anywhere within the grounds or buildings and another groundbreaker for Duran Duran.\nOn 2 July 2008, in Paris, Mark Ronson performed a unique live set with Duran Duran for an exclusive, invitation-only performance. Together, they showcased specially re-worked versions of some of Duran Duran's classic hits re-created by Ronson, along with tracks from \"Red Carpet Massacre\". Le Bon also performed songs from Ronson's latest album, \"Version\" (2007), as one of Ronson's featured guest vocalists. Unlike the band's previous album \"Astronaut\" (2004), \"Red Carpet Massacre\" sold poorly and received mixed responses from the music press. In 2008, \"Rio\" was included in the \"Classic Albums\" series.\n2009\u20132012: \"All You Need Is Now\".\nThe band departed from Epic Records in 2009, after releasing just two albums. In early 2010, it was revealed that the band would be contributing a cover of \"Boys Keep Swinging\" to a tribute/charity record for David Bowie called \"\" from which all profits go to War Child. Other contributing artists included Carla Bruni, Devendra Banhart, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, and Warpaint. The album was released on 14 September 2010 on Manimal Vinyl Records. A limited edition split 7-inch single with Duran Duran and Carla Bruni was also released on Manimal Vinyl in December 2010.\nOn 21 December 2010, Duran Duran's thirteenth album, titled \"All You Need Is Now\", produced by the Grammy Award-winning Mark Ronson and mixed by Spike Stent, was released exclusively on iTunes and hit the number one spot on download charts in 15 countries (including the UK). The first single from the record, title track \"All You Need Is Now\", was free to download worldwide on 8 December 2010 exclusively in iTunes. Guitarist and songwriter Dom Brown co-wrote all but two songs on the album.\nOn 25 February 2011, while in Milan, Duran Duran received a Style Icons of the 20th Century Award and a key to the city, presented by the city's mayor Letizia Moratti.\nIn March 2011 the band embarked on a world tour in support of the album. After a warm-up show in London, the tour officially began 16 March 2011 in Austin, Texas. On 23 March, the band performed live at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles as the start of the second season of \"\". The concert was directed by David Lynch and live-streamed on YouTube. The band was joined onstage by Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, Beth Ditto of Gossip, and Kelis. On 17 April 2011, Duran Duran performed at the Coachella Music Festival located at Empire Polo Grounds, in Indio, California. In May 2011, Le Bon contracted laryngitis leading to either cancellation or rescheduling of most of the European dates for the \"All You Need Is Now\" World Tour.\nOn 27 July 2012, Duran Duran headlined the London Summer Olympics 2012 Opening Ceremony celebration in Hyde Park. They represented England, along with Snow Patrol for Northern Ireland, Stereophonics for Wales, and Paolo Nutini for Scotland. At the end of August 2012, with one week left of their 18-month world tour, the band were forced to cancel the rest of the North American leg of the tour as Nick Rhodes had become ill with a viral infection.\n2013\u20132018: \"Paper Gods\".\nOn 4 March 2013, the band returned to the studio to work on their fourteenth album, and continued during the week beginning 23 September. They reconvened 13 to 18 December. On 31 December 2013, the band posted a mixtape curated by John Taylor as a New Year's \"thank you\" to their fans. On 10 February 2014, John Taylor and Roger Taylor worked with the Voce Chamber Choir and London Youth Chamber Choir on vocals for use on some Duran Duran tracks. Then former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante worked with the band on the new album.\nOn 11 September 2015, the album \"Paper Gods\" was released. The single \"Pressure Off\" was also released the same week, first via Microsoft's Xbox Music. The song subsequently appeared on Google Play Music. The album debuted at number 10 on the \"Billboard\" 200, the band's highest debut in 22 years. The album also reached number two in Italy, number four in the Netherlands, and number five in the UK. In 2016, the artist MNDR stood in for Rhodes during part of the third leg of the Paper Gods tour in the United States, while he returned to the UK in order to attend to an urgent family matter. Rhodes was quoted as saying, \"I will be back as soon as I can but know, in the meantime, that I am leaving both the band and fans in great hands, with the fabulous MNDR.\" Also, several remixes of their song \"Last Night in the City\" were released in digital form in that year.\nIn December 2016, the original five-piece lineup lost a case in the British High Court after they attempted to reclaim the U.S. copyright on their first three albums from Gloucester Place Music, part of EMI Music Publishing. Rhodes commented, \"We signed a publishing agreement as unsuspecting teenagers, over three decades ago, when just starting out and when we knew no better... if left untested, this judgment sets a very bad precedent for all songwriters of our era.\" In March 2020, Duran Duran signed with the Warner/Chappell Music publisher, covering their post-1986 catalogue. The band spent 2017 touring the American continent and playing a handful of festival dates in Europe and Asia.\n2019\u20132022: \"Future Past\" and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction.\nIn 2019, Duran Duran were working on a new album with Ronson, Erol Alkan and Giorgio Moroder handling production duties, and Graham Coxon and Lykke Li being confirmed as collaborators. Rhodes described the content and sound of a possible first single to be \"very different for us.\" Initially planned for release in 2020, the recording of the album was put on hold in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On 8 January 2021, a cover of \"Five Years\" by David Bowie was released for the fifth anniversary of his death. On 13 January 2021, \"Rolling Stone\" included the album at number 50 on their \"54 Most Anticipated Albums of 2021\" list. Le Bon said that the album is \"quite naked, raw. The grass is slightly sharp and twinkly rather than smooth,\" and is \"groovy (and) modern and very honest. The lyrics are quite something.\u201d On 18 May, the album title was announced as \"Future Past\".\nOn 19 May, the first single from the album \"Invisible\" was released along with a music video, and features Coxon as a guitarist and co-writer. On 9 July, the band premiered a second song from the album titled \"Give It All Up\" on NBC's \"Today\" show. On 5 August, Duran Duran released the album's second single \"More Joy!\", featuring further collaboration with Coxon, Erol Alkan and also Japanese rock band Chai. On 12 August, the band appeared on \"The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon\" performing \"Invisible\". On 31 August, Duran Duran released the album's third single \"Anniversary\", followed by the fourth single, \"Tonight United\", on 24 September. On 14 and 15 September, the band played two sold-out gigs at Birmingham's O2 Institute. That was the first time they played live since their last live gig in 2019. Along with their hit songs, they performed three tracks from \"Future Past\"\u2014\"Invisible\", \"Anniversary\" and \"Tonight United\". The band headlined the Isle of Wight festival on 19 September.\nOn 22 October 2021, \"Future Past\" was released. The album entered the UK Album Chart at number three, the band's highest peak since 2004's \"Astronaut\". This also earned the band the distinction of having UK Top 5 albums in each of the five decades they had been releasing music (1980s\u20132020s). On 22 January 2022, Duran Duran played on \"Austin City Limits\". In June 2022, Duran Duran performed at the Platinum Party at the Palace. In July 2022, the band returned to the city of their origin, Birmingham to headline the opening ceremony of Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games playing to a capacity Alexander Stadium.\nIn 2022, the band topped the fan vote (over 1 million preferences) for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the class of 2022, and in May of that year were announced as one of the seven inductees in the \"Performer\" category. \nOn 11 July 2022, Duran Duran headlined a concert in Hyde Park, London, to more than 80,000 adoring fans, as part of the 2022 BST concert series.\nThe ceremony at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was held on 5 November 2022, where Robert Downey Jr. inducted the band. John Taylor, Roger Taylor, Rhodes and Le Bon each attended the induction ceremony and performed \"Girls on Film\", \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Ordinary World\" along with longtime touring guitarist Dom Brown. During the acceptance speech, Simon Le Bon read from a letter written by Andy Taylor, who was absent from the ceremony, that revealed he has been privately fighting stage IV metastatic prostate cancer for the past four years and was \"massively disappointed\" he couldn't attend.\n2023\u2013present: \"Danse Macabre\".\nOn 20 March 2023, Duran Duran took to their Instagram to announce they are working on a new musical project, set for release in late 2023. The work will feature a collaboration with former band members Andy Taylor and Warren Cuccurullo. The project, \"Danse Macabre\", was released on 27 October. A Halloween-themed album, it features new songs, reworkings of older material and several covers.\nThe first single \u2013 the title track \"Danse Macabre\" \u2013 was released on 30 August 2023. The second single, \"Black Moonlight\", followed on 21 September.\nOn 13 September 2024, the band released a new reworking of their 1983 single \"New Moon on Monday\" titled \"New Moon (Dark Phase)\", ahead of a planned deluxe reissue of \"Danse Macabre\". The single features contributions from Andy Taylor.\nIn 2025, Carlo Conti announced that Duran Duran would be special guests of Sanremo Music Festival in the third night. They perform with Victoria De Angelis.\nInfluences.\nAlthough they began their career as \"a group of art school, experimental, post punk rockers,\" the band's quick rise to stardom, polished good looks and embrace of the teen press almost guaranteed disfavour from music critics. During the 1980s, Duran Duran were considered the quintessential manufactured, throw-away pop group. However, according to the \"Sunday Herald\", \"To describe them, as some have, as the first boy band, misrepresents their appeal. Their weapons were never just their looks, but self-penned songs.\" Moby said of the band in his blog in 2003: \"...\u00a0they were cursed by what we can call the 'Bee Gees' curse, which is: 'write amazing songs, sell tons of records, and consequently incur the wrath or disinterest of the rock obsessed critical establishment.'\"\nInfluences on Duran Duran included David Bowie, Roxy Music, the Beatles and the Doors; the electronic music of John Foxx's Ultravox, Kraftwerk, the Yellow Magic Orchestra and Giorgio Moroder; glam rock and American rock such as T. Rex, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and Sparks; British punk and post-punk bands such as the Clash, Sex Pistols and Siouxsie and the Banshees; and the disco/funk band Chic. Duran Duran were also influenced by contemporary synth-pop groups, with records by Japan, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and the Human League becoming fixtures in Rhodes's 1980 DJ sets at the Rum Runner club. Andy Taylor was a fan of the rock band AC/DC, \"...all these different influences were coming into the studio. Somehow, it had its own life. It became very unique in itself. It was influenced by a lot of different people\", Roger Taylor said in a 2012 interview.\nSeveral of the band's contemporaries including the Bangles, Elton John, Kylie Minogue, Paul Young and even the Monkees, have named themselves fans of the band's music. Le Bon described the group as \"the band to dance to when the bomb drops\". Successors like Barenaked Ladies, Beck, Jonathan Davis of Korn, the Bravery, Gwen Stefani and Pink have all cited Duran Duran as a key band in their formative years. Justin Timberlake is a fan of the band and presented them with the Outstanding Contribution award at the 2004 Brit Awards. The most recent crop of performers to name Duran Duran as an influence include Dido, Franz Ferdinand, Panic! at the Disco, Goldfrapp and Brandon Flowers of the Killers, who said, \"Nick Rhodes is an absolute hero of mine\u2014their records still sound fresh, which is no mean feat as far as synths are concerned.\"\nRhodes has directly lent his production techniques to Kajagoogoo's debut album \"White Feathers\" (1983) and its number one single \"Too Shy\", and to the Dandy Warhols' fourth album \"Welcome to the Monkey House\" (2003). The band's music has been used by several hip hop artists, most notably the Notorious B.I.G., who sampled Duran Duran's 1986 single \"Notorious\". Numerous bands have covered their music on record and in concert.\nVideos.\nThe MTV cable channel and the band were launched at about the same time, and each had a hand in propelling the other to greater heights. MTV needed showcase videos with charismatic performers. Les Garland, senior executive vice-president at MTV, said \"I remember our director of talent and artist relations came running in and said, \"You have got to see this video that's come in\". Duran Duran were getting zero radio airplay at the time, and MTV wanted to try to break new music. \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" was the greatest video I'd ever seen\". The band's video work was influential in several ways. First, Duran Duran filmed in exotic locales like Sri Lanka and Antigua, creating memorable images that were radically different from the then-common low budget \"band-playing-on-a-stage\" videos. Second, rather than simply playing their instruments, the band participated in mini-storylines (often taking inspiration from contemporary movies: \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" riffs on 1981's \"Raiders of the Lost Ark\", \"The Wild Boys\" on 1981's \"Mad Max 2\"), etc. While videos were already headed in this direction, Duran Duran led the trend with a style, featuring quick editing, arresting graphic design, and surreal-to-nonsensical image inserts, that drew attention from commentators and spawned a wealth of imitators.\nDuran Duran were among the first bands to have their videos shot with a professional movie camera on 35mm film, rather than on videotape, making them look superior to many of the quickly shot videos which had been MTV staples until then. MTV provided Duran Duran with access to American radio markets that were unfriendly to British music, new wave music, or \"anything with synthesisers\". Because MTV was not available everywhere in the United States at first, it was easy to see a pattern: where MTV went, listener demand for Duran Duran, Tears for Fears, Def Leppard and other European bands with interesting videos went through the roof. The band's sun-drenched videos for \"Rio\", \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Save a Prayer\", and the surreal \"Is There Something I Should Know?\" were filmed by future movie director Russell Mulcahy, who made eleven videos for the band. Duran Duran have always sought out innovative directors and techniques, even in their later years when MTV gave them little airplay. In addition to Mulcahy, they have had videos filmed by influential photographers Dean Chamberlain and Ellen von Unwerth, Chinese director Chen Kaige, documentary filmmaker Julien Temple, and the Polish Brothers, among others. According to Rhodes, \"Video is to us like stereo was to Pink Floyd.\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"The British won out here, hands down. Next to the prosaic, foursquare appearance of the American bands, such acts as Duran Duran seemed like caviar. MTV opened up a whole new world that could not be fully apprehended over the radio. The visual angle played to the arty conceits of Britain's young style barons, suggesting something more exotic than the viewer was likely to find in the old hometown. The big Duran Duran hits, \"Girls on Film\" and \"Hungry Like the Wolf\", were MTV favorites three months before radio began to pick up on them. And via MTV, Duran Duran and their like have engendered an outpouring of good old-fashioned hysteria among teenage girls.\"\nIn 1984, Duran Duran introduced video technology into their live stadium shows by being among the first acts to provide video screens above the stage. They have recorded concerts using IMAX and 360-degree panoramic \"immersive video\" cameras, with 10.2 channel audio. In 2000, they experimented with augmented reality technology, which allowed three-dimensional computer-generated images to appear on stage with the band. They appeared on several century-end video countdowns: The MTV \"100 Greatest Videos Ever Made\" featured \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" at No.\u00a011 and \"Girls on Film\" at No.\u00a068, and the \"VH1: 100 Greatest Videos\" listed \"Hungry\" at No.\u00a031 and \"Rio\" at No.\u00a060. MTV named \"Hungry\" the 15th of their most played videos of all time.\nThe band has released several video compilations, starting with the self-titled \"video album\" \"Duran Duran\" (1983), for which they won a Grammy Award, up to the 2004 two-disc DVD release \"Greatest\", which included alternative versions of several popular videos as Easter eggs. In addition to \"Greatest\", the documentary \"Sing Blue Silver\", and the concert film \"Arena\" (both from 1984) were released on DVD in 2004. \"Live from London\", a concert video from one of their sold-out 2004 reunion shows at Wembley Arena, was released in the fall of 2005.\nOther video collections, concert films, and documentaries remain available only on videotape, and Duran Duran have not yet released a collection which includes all their videos. The band has said that a huge amount of unreleased concert and documentary footage has been filmed over the years, which they hope can be edited and released in some form in the near future. The video for \"Falling Down\" was released in October 2007. The Nick Egan-directed video for the lead single and title track from \"All You Need Is Now\" was premiered via Yahoo Music on 20 December 2010. The second video from \"All You Need Is Now\", \"Girl Panic\", was released on 8 November 2011. It features some of the world's most famous supermodels, such as Yasmin Le Bon, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Eva Herzigov\u00e1 and Helena Christensen, playing the band. The video was directed by Jonas Akerlund, and during the filming, an editorial was made for \"Harper's Bazaar\" magazine.\nVisual style.\nFrom the beginning of their career, all the members had a keen sense of visual style. They worked with stylist Perry Haines and fashion designers such as Kahn & Bell and Antony Price to build a sharp and elegant image, soon outgrowing the ruffles and sashes of the pirate-flavoured early New Romantic look that had been popularised by Adam Ant during 1980\u201381. They have continued to present fashion as part of their package throughout their career. In the 1990s they worked with Vivienne Westwood and in the 2000s with Giorgio Armani. The band retained creative control of their visual presentation having worked closely with graphic designer Malcolm Garrett and many others over the years to create album covers, tour programs and other materials.\nTeen and music magazines in the UK latched onto their good looks quickly, and the USA soon followed. It was a rare month in the early 1980s when there was not at least one picture of the band members in teen magazines such as \"Smash Hits\" or \"Tiger Beat\". John Taylor once remarked that the band was \"like a box of Quality Street [chocolates]; everyone is someone's favourite\" Duran Duran later came to regret this early pin-up exposure, but at the time it helped attract national attention. In an interview with \"Rock Fever Superstars\" magazine in early 1988, John Taylor stated:\nWe used to be a very chi-chi name to drop in '79, but then the Fab Five hype started and something went wrong. Something went really wrong. That wasn't what I wanted. [...] Not that I didn't like being screamed at. At one point I really did\".\nDiscography.\nStudio albums\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nTours.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nExplanatory notes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["417693", "148703"], "permutation_1": ["417693", "148703"], "permutation_2": ["417693", "148703"], "permutation_3": ["417693", "148703"]}
{"id": "2hop__33494_78772", "docs_added": {"37534": "Hyderabad\nCapital of Telangana, India\nHyderabad ( , ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River, in the northern part of Southern India. With an average altitude of , much of Hyderabad is situated on hilly terrain around artificial lakes, including the Hussain Sagar lake, predating the city's founding, in the north of the city centre. According to the 2011 census of India, Hyderabad is the fourth-most populous city in India with a population of 6.9 million residents within the city limits, and has a population of 9.7 million residents in the metropolitan region, making it the sixth-most populous metropolitan area in India. With an output of US$\u00a095 billion, Hyderabad has the sixth-largest urban economy in India.\nThe Qutb Shahi dynasty's Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah established Hyderabad in 1591 to extend the capital beyond the fortified Golconda. In 1687, the city was annexed by the Mughals. In 1724, Asaf Jah I, the Mughal viceroy, declared his sovereignty and founded the Asaf Jahi dynasty, also known as the Nizams. Hyderabad served as the imperial capital of the Asaf Jahis from 1769 to 1948. As the capital of the princely state of Hyderabad, the city housed the British Residency and cantonment until Indian independence in 1947. Hyderabad was annexed by the Indian Union in 1948 and continued as a capital of Hyderabad State from 1948 to 1956. After the introduction of the States Reorganisation Act of 1956, Hyderabad was made the capital of the newly formed Andhra Pradesh. In 2014, Andhra Pradesh was split to form the state of Telangana, and Hyderabad became the joint capital of the two states until 2024. Since 1956, the city has housed the Rashtrapati Nilayam, the winter office of the president of India.\nRelics of the Qutb Shahi and Nizam eras remain visible today; the Charminar has come to symbolise the city. By the end of the early modern era, the Mughal Empire had declined in the Deccan, and the Nizam's patronage attracted men of letters from various parts of the world. A distinctive culture arose from the amalgamation of local and migrated artisans, with painting, handicraft, jewellery, literature, dialect and clothing prominent even today. For its cuisine, the city is listed as a creative city of gastronomy by UNESCO. The Telugu film industry based in the city is the highest-grossing film industry in India as of 2021[ [update]].\nUntil the 19th century, Hyderabad was known for its pearl industry and was nicknamed the \"City of Pearls\", and was the only trading centre for Golconda diamonds in the world. Many of the city's historical and traditional bazaars remain open. Hyderabad's central location between the Deccan Plateau and the Western Ghats, and industrialisation throughout the 20th century attracted major Indian research, manufacturing, educational and financial institutions. Since the 1990s, the city has emerged as an Indian hub of pharmaceuticals and biotechnology and information technology. The formation of the special economic zones of Hardware Park and HITEC City, dedicated to information technology, has encouraged leading multinationals to set up operations in Hyderabad.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nToponymy.\nThe name \"Hyderabad\" means \"Haydar's City\" or \"Lion City\", from \"haydar\" 'lion' and \"\u0101b\u0101d\" 'city', after Caliph Ali Ibn Abi Talib, also known as Haydar because of his lion-like valour in battle. The city was originally called \"Baghnagar\" (\"city of gardens\"). The European travellers von Poser and Th\u00e9venot found both names in use in the 17th century. A popular legend suggests that the founder of the city, Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, named it \"Bhagya-nagar\" (\"fortunate city\") after Bhagmati, a local \"nautch\" (dancing girl) whom he married. She converted to Islam and adopted the title \"Hyder Mahal\", the city being subsequently named \"Hyderabad\" in her honour.\nIn the year 1597, Hyderabad gained the epithet \"Farkhunda Bunyad\" (lit.\u2009'Of Auspicious Foundation'). Following the Mughal conquest of Hyderabad, emperor Aurangzeb changed the epithet to \"Dar-ul-Jihad\" (lit.\u2009'Abode of Holy War'), a title which appears on coins minted in the city during the reigns of Aurangzeb and Kam Bakhsh. The later Mughal emperor Shah Alam returned the city to its older epithet of \"Farkhunda Bunyad\", and consequently Mughal coins of Shah Alam and Muhammad Shah feature this title as the city's mint-name.\nEarly and medieval history.\nThe discovery of Megalithic burial sites and cairn circles in the suburbs of Hyderabad, in 1851 by Philip Meadows Taylor, a polymath in the service of the Nizam, had provided evidence that the region in which the city stands has been inhabited since the Stone Age. In 2008, Archaeologists excavating near the city have unearthed Iron Age sites that may date from 500\u00a0BCE. The region comprising modern Hyderabad and its surroundings was ruled by the Chalukya dynasty from 624\u00a0CE to 1075\u00a0CE. Following the dissolution of the Chalukya empire into four parts in the 11th century, Golconda\u2014now part of Hyderabad\u2014came under the control of the Kakatiya dynasty from 1158, whose seat of power was at Warangal\u2014 northeast of modern Hyderabad. The Kakatiya ruler Ganapatideva (1199\u20131262) built a hilltop outpost\u2014later known as Golconda Fort\u2014to defend their western region.\nThe Kakatiya dynasty was reduced to a vassal of the Khalji dynasty in 1310 after its defeat by Sultan Alauddin Khalji of the Delhi Sultanate. This lasted until 1321 when the Kakatiya dynasty was annexed by Malik Kafur, Khalji's general. During this period, Khalji took the \"Koh-i-Noor\" diamond, which is said to have been mined from the Kollur Mines of Golconda, to Delhi. Muhammad bin Tughluq succeeded to the Delhi sultanate in 1325, bringing Warangal under the rule of the Tughlaq dynasty; Malik Maqbul Tilangani was appointed its governor. In 1336 the regional chieftains Musunuri Nayakas\u2014who revolted against the Delhi sultanate in 1333\u2014took Warangal under their direct control and declared it as their capital. In 1347 when Ala-ud-Din Bahman Shah, a governor under bin Tughluq, rebelled against Delhi and established the Bahmani Sultanate in the Deccan Plateau, with Gulbarga\u2014 west of Hyderabad\u2014as its capital, both the neighbouring rulers Musunuri Nayakas of Warangal and Bahmani Sultans of Gulbarga engaged in many wars until 1364\u201365 when a peace treaty was signed and the Musunuri Nayakas ceded Golconda Fort to the Bahmani Sultan. The Bahmani Sultans ruled the region until 1518 and were the first independent Muslim rulers of the Deccan.\nIn 1496 Sultan Quli was appointed as a Bahmani governor of Telangana. He rebuilt, expanded and fortified the old mud fort of Golconda and named the city \"Muhammad Nagar\". In 1518, he revolted against the Bahmani Sultanate and established the Qutb Shahi dynasty. The fifth Qutb Shahi sultan, Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, established Hyderabad on the banks of the Musi River in 1591, to avoid water shortages experienced at Golconda. During his rule, he had the Charminar and Mecca Masjid built in the city. On 21 September 1687, the Golconda Sultanate came under the rule of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb after a year-long siege of the Golconda Fort. The annexed city \"Hyderabad\" was renamed \"Darul Jihad\" (House of War), whereas the main territories of the Golconda Sultanate were incorporated into the Mughal empire as the province Hyderabad Subah. Mughal rule in Hyderabad was administered by three main governors: Jan Sipar Khan (1688\u20131700), his son Rustam Dil Khan (1700\u201313) and Mubariz Khan (1713\u201324).\nModern history.\nIn 1713, Mughal emperor Farrukhsiyar appointed Mubariz Khan as Governor of Hyderabad. During his tenure, he fortified the city and controlled the internal and neighbouring threats. In 1714 Farrukhsiyar appointed Asaf Jah I as Viceroy of the Deccan\u2014(administrator of six Mughal governorates) with the title \"Nizam-ul-Mulk\" (Administrator of the Realm). In 1721, he was appointed as Prime Minister of the Mughal Empire. His differences with the court nobles led him to resign from all the imperial responsibilities in 1723 and leave for Deccan. Under the influence of Asaf Jah I's opponents, Mughal Emperor Muhammad Shah issued a decree to Mubariz Khan, to stop Asaf Jah I which resulted in the Battle of Shakar Kheda. In 1724, Asaf Jah I defeated Mubariz Khan to establish autonomy over the \"Deccan\", named the region \"Hyderabad Deccan\", and started what came to be known as the Asaf Jahi dynasty. Subsequent rulers retained the title \"Nizam ul-Mulk\" and were referred to as Asaf Jahi Nizams, or Nizams of Hyderabad. The death of Asaf Jah I in 1748 resulted in a period of political unrest as his sons and grandson\u2014Nasir Jung (1748\u20131750), Muzaffar Jang (1750\u20131751) and Salabat Jung (1751\u20131762)\u2014contended for the throne backed by opportunistic neighbouring states and colonial foreign forces. The accession of Asaf Jah II, who reigned from 1762 to 1803, ended the instability. In 1768 he signed the Treaty of Masulipatam\u2014by which the East India Company in return for a fixed annual rent, got the right to control and collect the taxes at Coromandel Coast.\nIn 1769 Hyderabad city became the formal capital of the Asaf Jahi Nizams. In response to regular threats from Hyder Ali (Dalwai of Mysore), Baji Rao I (Peshwa of the Maratha Empire), and Basalath Jung (Asaf Jah II's elder brother, who was supported by French General the Marquis de Bussy-Castelnau), the Nizam signed a subsidiary alliance with the East India Company in 1798, allowing the British Indian Army to be stationed at Bolarum (modern Secunderabad) to protect the state's capital, for which the Nizams paid an annual maintenance to the British.\nUntil 1874 there were no modern industries in Hyderabad. With the introduction of railways in the 1880s, four factories were built to the south and east of Hussain Sagar lake, and during the early 20th century, Hyderabad was transformed into a modern city with the establishment of transport services, underground drainage, running water, electricity, telecommunications, universities, industries, and Begumpet Airport. The Nizams ruled the princely state of Hyderabad during the British Raj.\nPost-Independence.\nAfter India gained independence, the Nizam declared his intention to remain independent rather than become part of the Indian Union or newly formed Dominion of Pakistan. The Hyderabad State Congress, with the support of the Indian National Congress and the Communist Party of India, began agitating against Nizam VII in 1948. On 17 September that year, the Indian Army took control of Hyderabad State after an invasion codenamed Operation Polo. With the defeat of his forces, Nizam VII capitulated to the Indian Union by signing an Instrument of Accession, which made him the \"Rajpramukh\" (Princely Governor) of the state until it was abolished on 31 October 1956.\nBetween 1946 and 1951, the Communist Party of India fomented the Telangana uprising against the feudal lords of the Telangana region. The Constitution of India, which became effective on 26 January 1950, made Hyderabad State one of the part B states of India, with Hyderabad city continuing to be the capital. In his 1955 report \"Thoughts on Linguistic States\", B. R. Ambedkar, then chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Indian Constitution, proposed designating the city of Hyderabad as the second capital of India because of its amenities and strategic central location.\nOn 1 November 1956 the states of India were reorganised by language. Hyderabad state was split into three parts, which were merged with neighbouring states to form Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. The nine Telugu- and Urdu-speaking districts of Hyderabad State in the Telangana region were merged with the Telugu-speaking Andhra State to create Andhra Pradesh, with Hyderabad as its capital. Several protests, known collectively as the Telangana movement, attempted to invalidate the merger and demanded the creation of a new Telangana state. Major actions took place in 1969 and 1972, and a third began in 2010. On 30 July 2013 the government of India declared that part of Andhra Pradesh would be split off to form a new Telangana state and that Hyderabad city would be the capital city and part of Telangana, while the city would also remain the capital of Andhra Pradesh for no more than ten years. On 3 October 2013 the Union Cabinet approved the proposal, and in February 2014 both houses of Parliament passed the Telangana Bill. With the final assent of the President of India, Telangana state was formed on 2 June 2014.\nGeography.\nHyderabad is south of Delhi, southeast of Mumbai, and north of Bangalore by road. It is situated in the southern part of Telangana in southeastern India, along the banks of the Musi River, a tributary of Krishna River located on the Deccan Plateau in the northern part of South India. Greater Hyderabad covers , making it one of the largest metropolitan areas in India. With an average altitude of , Hyderabad lies on predominantly sloping terrain of grey and pink granite, dotted with small hills, the highest being Banjara Hills at . The city has numerous lakes sometime referred to as \"sagar\", meaning \"sea\". Examples include artificial lakes created by dams on the Musi, such as Hussain Sagar (built-in 1562 near the city centre), Osman Sagar and Himayat Sagar. As of 1996[ [update]], the city had 140 lakes and 834 water tanks (ponds).\nClimate.\nHyderabad has a tropical wet and dry climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Aw\") bordering on a hot semi-arid climate (K\u00f6ppen \"BSh\"). The annual mean temperature is ; monthly mean temperatures are . Summers (March\u2013June) are hot and dry, with average highs in the mid-to-high 30s Celsius; maximum temperatures often exceed between April and June. The coolest temperatures occur in December and January when the lowest temperature occasionally dips to . May is the hottest month when daily temperatures range from ; December, the coldest, has temperatures varying from .\nHeavy rain from the south-west summer monsoon falls between June and October, supplying Hyderabad with most of its mean annual rainfall. Since records began in November 1891, the heaviest rainfall recorded in a 24-hour period was on 24 August 2000. The highest temperature ever recorded was on 2 June 1966, and the lowest was on 8 January 1946. The city receives 2,731\u00a0hours of sunshine per year; maximum daily sunlight exposure occurs in February.\nHyderabad has been ranked 21st best \"National Clean Air City\" (under Category 1 >10L Population cities) in India according to 'Swachh Vayu Survekshan 2024 Results'\nConservation.\nHyderabad's lakes and the sloping terrain of its low-lying hills provide habitat for an assortment of flora and fauna. As of 2016[ [update]], the tree cover is 1.7% of the total city area, a decrease from 2.7% in 1996. The forest region in and around the city encompasses areas of ecological and biological importance, which are preserved in the form of national parks, zoos, mini-zoos and a wildlife sanctuary. Nehru Zoological Park, the city's largest zoo, is the first in India to have a lion and tiger safari park. Hyderabad has three national parks (Mrugavani National Park, Mahavir Harina Vanasthali National Park and Kasu Brahmananda Reddy National Park), and the Manjira Wildlife Sanctuary is about from the city.\nThe other environmental reserves of Hyderabad are Kotla Vijayabhaskara Reddy Botanical Gardens, Ameenpur Lake, Shamirpet Lake, Hussain Sagar, Fox Sagar Lake, Mir Alam Tank and Patancheru Lake, which is home to regional birds and attracts seasonal migratory birds from different parts of the world. Organisations engaged in environmental and wildlife preservation include the Telangana Forest Department, Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), the Animal Welfare Board of India, the Blue Cross of Hyderabad and the University of Hyderabad.\nAdministration.\nCommon capital status.\nAccording to the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014 part 2 Section 5: \"(1) On and from the appointed day, Hyderabad in the existing State of Andhra Pradesh, shall be the common capital of the State of Telangana and the State of Andhra Pradesh for such period not exceeding ten years. (2) After the expiry of the period referred to in subsection (1), Hyderabad shall be the capital of the State of Telangana and there shall be a new capital for the State of Andhra Pradesh.\"\nThe same sections also define that the common capital includes the existing area designated as the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation under the Hyderabad Municipal Corporation Act, 1955. As stipulated in sections 3 and 18(1) of the Reorganisation Act, city MLAs are members of the Telangana state assembly.\nLocal government.\nThe Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) oversees the civic infrastructure of the city, there are six administrative zones of GHMC: South Zone\u2013(Charminar), East Zone\u2013(L. B. Nagar), West Zone\u2013(Serilingampally), North Zone\u2013(Kukatpally), Northeast Zone\u2013(Secunderabad) and Central Zone\u2013(Khairatabad); these zones consist of 30 \"circles\", which together encompass 150 municipal wards. Each ward is represented by a corporator, elected by popular vote, as of 2020[ [update]] the city has 7,400,000 voters of which 3,850,000 are male and 3,500,000 are female. The corporators elect the Mayor, who is the titular head of GHMC; executive powers rest with the Municipal Commissioner, appointed by the state government. The GHMC carries out the city's infrastructural work such as building and maintenance of roads and drains, town planning including construction regulation, maintenance of municipal markets and parks, solid waste management, the issuing of birth and death certificates, the issuing of trade licences, collection of property tax, and community welfare services such as mother and child healthcare, and pre-school and non-formal education. The GHMC was formed in April 2007 by merging the Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad (MCH) with 12 municipalities of the Hyderabad, Ranga Reddy and Medak districts covering a total area of . The Secunderabad Cantonment Board is a civic administration agency overseeing an area of , where there are several military camps. The Osmania University campus is administered independently by the university authority. Appointed in February 2021, Gadwal Vijayalakshmi of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) is serving as the mayor of GHMC.\nIn Hyderabad police jurisdiction is divided into three commissionerates: Hyderabad (established in 1847 AD, the oldest police commissionerate in India), Cyberabad, and Rachakonda, each headed by a commissioner of police, who are Indian Police Service (IPS) officers. The Hyderabad police is a division of the Telangana Police, under the state Home Ministry.\nThe jurisdictions of the city's administrative agencies are, in ascending order of size: the Hyderabad Police area, Hyderabad district, the GHMC area (\"Hyderabad city\"), and the area under the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA). The HMDA is an apolitical urban planning agency that covers the GHMC and its suburbs, extending to 54 \"mandals\" in five districts encircling the city. It coordinates the development activities of GHMC and suburban municipalities and manages the administration of bodies such as the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWSSB).\nHyderabad is the seat of the Government of Telangana, Government of Andhra Pradesh and the President of India's winter retreat Rashtrapati Nilayam, as well as the Telangana High Court and various local government agencies. The Lower City Civil Court and the Metropolitan Criminal Court are under the jurisdiction of the High Court. The GHMC area contains 24 State Legislative Assembly constituencies, which form five constituencies of the Lok Sabha (the lower house of the Parliament of India).\nUtility services.\nThe HMWSSB (Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply & Sewage Board) regulates rainwater harvesting, sewerage services, and water supply. In 2005, the HMWSSB started operating a water supply pipeline from Nagarjuna Sagar Dam to meet increasing demand. The Telangana Southern Power Distribution Company Limited (TSPDCL) manages electricity supply. As of 2014[ [update]], there were 15 fire stations in the city, operated by the Telangana State Disaster and Fire Response Department. The government-owned India Post has five head post offices and many sub-post offices in Hyderabad, which are complemented by private courier services.\nPollution control.\nHyderabad produces around 4,500\u00a0tonnes of solid waste daily, which is transported from collection units in Imlibun, Yousufguda and Lower Tank Bund to the dumpsite in Jawaharnagar. Disposal is managed by the Integrated Solid Waste Management project which was started by the GHMC in 2010. Rapid urbanisation and increased economic activity has led to increased industrial waste, air, noise and water pollution, which is regulated by the Telangana Pollution Control Board (TPCB). The contribution of different sources to air pollution in 2006 was: 20\u201350% from vehicles, 40\u201370% from a combination of vehicle discharge and road dust, 10\u201330% from industrial discharges and 3\u201310% from the burning of household rubbish. Deaths resulting from atmospheric particulate matter are estimated at 1,700\u20133,000 each year. The city's \"VIP areas\", the Assembly building, Secretariat, and Telangana chief minister's office, have particularly low air quality index ratings, suffering from high levels of PM2.5's. Ground water around Hyderabad, which has a hardness of up to 1000 ppm, around three times higher than is desirable, is the main source of drinking water but the increasing population and consequent increase in demand has led to a decline in not only ground water but also river and lake levels. This shortage is further exacerbated by inadequately treated effluent discharged from industrial treatment plants polluting the water sources of the city.\nHealthcare.\nThe Commissionerate of Health and Family Welfare is responsible for planning, implementation and monitoring of all facilities related to health and preventive services. As of 2010[ [update]]\u201311, the city had 50 government hospitals, 300 private and charity hospitals and 194 nursing homes providing around 12,000 hospital beds, fewer than half the required 25,000. For every 10,000 people in the city, there are 17.6 hospital beds, 9 specialist doctors, 14 nurses and 6 physicians. The city has about 4,000 individual clinics. Private clinics are preferred by many residents because of the distance to, poor quality of care at and long waiting times in government facilities, despite the high proportion of the city's residents being covered by government health insurance: 24% according to a National Family Health Survey in 2005. As of 2012[ [update]], many new private hospitals of various sizes were opened or being built. Hyderabad has outpatient and inpatient facilities that use Unani, homoeopathic and Ayurvedic treatments.\nIn the 2005 National Family Health Survey, it was reported that the city's total fertility rate is 1.8, which is below the replacement rate. Only 61% of children had been provided with all basic vaccines (BCG, measles and full courses of polio and DPT), fewer than in all other surveyed cities except Meerut. The infant mortality rate was 35 per 1,000 live births, and the mortality rate for children under five was 41 per 1,000 live births. The survey also reported that a third of women and a quarter of men are overweight or obese, 49% of children below 5 years are anaemic, and up to 20% of children are underweight, while more than 2% of women and 3% of men suffer from diabetes.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nWhen the GHMC was created in 2007, the area occupied by the municipality increased from to . Consequently, the population increased by 87%, from 3,637,483 as of 2001[ [update]] census to 6,809,970 as of 2011[ [update]] census, 24% of which are migrants from elsewhere in India, making Hyderabad the nation's fourth most populous city. As of 2011[ [update]], the population density is and the Hyderabad urban agglomeration had a population of 7,749,334 making it the sixth most populous urban agglomeration in the country. as of 2011[ [update]] census, there are 3,500,802 male and 3,309,168 female citizens\u2014a sex ratio of 945 females per 1000 males, higher than the national average of 926 per 1000. Among children aged 0\u20136 years, 373,794 are boys and 352,022 are girls\u2014a ratio of 942 per 1000. Literacy stands at 83% (male 86%; female 80%), higher than the national average of 74.04%. The socio-economic strata consist of 20% upper class, 50% middle class and 30% working class.\nEthnicity.\nReferred to as \"Hyderabadi\", the residents of Hyderabad are predominantly Telugu and Urdu speaking people, with minority Arab, Marathi, Marwari, and Pathan communities.\nHyderabadi Muslims are a unique community who owe much of their history, language, cuisine, and culture to Hyderabad, and the various dynasties who previously ruled. Hadhrami Arabs, African Arabs, Armenians, Abyssinians, Iranians, Pathans and Turkish people were present before 1948; these communities, of which the Hadhrami Arabs are the largest, declined after Hyderabad State became part of the Indian Union, as they lost the patronage of the Asaf Jahi Nizams.\nReligion.\nHindus are in the majority. Muslims form a very large minority and are present throughout the city and predominate in and around the Old City of Hyderabad. There are also Christian, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist and Parsi communities and iconic churches, mosques and temples. According to the 2011[ [update]] census, the religious make-up of Greater Hyderabad was: Hindus (64.9%), Muslims (30.1%), Christians (2.8%), Jains (0.3%), Sikhs (0.3%) and Buddhists (0.1%); 1.5% did not state any religion.\nLanguages.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nTelugu and Urdu are both official languages of the city, and most Hyderabadis are bilingual. The Telugu dialect spoken in Hyderabad is called Telangana Mandalika, and the Urdu spoken is called Deccani. English is a \"Secondary official language\" is pervasive in business and administration, and it is an important medium of instruction in education and publications. A significant minority speak other languages, including Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Marwari, Odia, Punjabi and Tamil.\nSlums.\nAs of 2012, in the greater metropolitan area, 13% of the population live below the poverty line. According to a 2012 report submitted by GHMC to the World Bank, Hyderabad has 1,476 slums with a total population of 1.7\u00a0million, of whom 66% live in 985 slums in the \"core\" of the city (the part that formed Hyderabad before the April 2007 expansion) and the remaining 34% live in 491 suburban tenements. About 22% of the slum-dwelling households had migrated from different parts of India in the last decade of the 20th century, and 63% claimed to have lived in the slums for more than 10 years. Overall literacy in the slums is 60\u201380% and female literacy is 52\u201373%. A third of the slums have basic service connections, and the remainder depend on general public services provided by the government. There are 405 government schools, 267 government-aided schools, 175 private schools, and 528 community halls in the slum areas. According to a 2008 survey by the Centre for Good Governance, 87.6% of the slum-dwelling households are nuclear families, 18% are very poor, with an income up to per annum, 73% live below the poverty line (a standard poverty line recognised by the Andhra Pradesh Government is per annum), 27% of the chief wage earners (CWE) are casual labour and 38% of the CWE are illiterate. About 3.7% of the slum children aged 5\u201314 do not go to school and 3.2% work as child labour, of whom 64% are boys and 36% are girls. The largest employers of child labour are street shops and construction sites. Among the working children, 35% are engaged in hazardous jobs.\nCityscape.\nNeighbourhoods.\nThe historic city established by Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah on the southern side of the Musi River forms the heritage region of Hyderabad called the \"Purana Shahar\" (Old City), while the \"New City\" encompasses the urbanised area on the northern banks. The two are connected by many bridges across the river, the oldest of which is Purana Pul\u2014(\"old bridge\") built in 1578 AD. Hyderabad is twinned with neighbouring Secunderabad, to which it is connected by Hussain Sagar.\nMany historic and heritage sites lie in south central Hyderabad, such as the Charminar, Mecca Masjid, Salar Jung Museum, Nizam Museum, Telangana High Court, Falaknuma Palace, Chowmahalla Palace and the traditional retail corridor comprising the Pearl Market, Laad Bazaar and Madina Circle. North of the river are hospitals, colleges, major railway stations and business areas such as Begum Bazaar, Koti, Abids, Sultan Bazar and Moazzam Jahi Market, along with administrative and recreational establishments such as the Reserve Bank of India, the Telangana Secretariat, the India Government Mint, the Telangana Legislature, the Public Gardens, Shahi Masjid, the Nizam Club, the Ravindra Bharathi, the State Museum, the Birla Temple and the Birla Planetarium.\nNorth of central Hyderabad lies Hussain Sagar, Tank Bund Road, Rani Gunj and the Secunderabad railway station. Most of the city's parks and recreational centres, such as Sanjeevaiah Park, Indira Park, Lumbini Park, NTR Gardens, the Buddha statue and Tankbund Park are located here. In the northwest part of the city there are upscale residential and commercial areas such as Banjara Hills, Jubilee Hills, Begumpet, Khairtabad, Tolichowki, Jagannath Temple and Miyapur. The northern end contains industrial areas such as Kukatpally, Sanathnagar, Moosapet, Balanagar, Patancheru and Chanda Nagar. The northeast end is dotted with residential areas such as Malkajgiri, Neredmet, A. S. Rao Nagar and Uppal. In the eastern part of the city lie many defence research centres and Ramoji Film City. The \"Cyberabad\" area in the southwest and west of the city, consisting of Madhapur and Gachibowli has grown rapidly since the 1990s. It is home to information technology and bio-pharmaceutical companies and to landmarks such as Hyderabad Airport, Osman Sagar, Himayath Sagar and Kasu Brahmananda Reddy National Park.\nLandmarks.\nHeritage buildings constructed during the Qutb Shahi and Nizam eras showcase Indo-Islamic architecture influenced by Medieval, Mughal and European styles. After the 1908 flooding of the Musi River, the city was expanded and civic monuments constructed, particularly during the rule of Mir Osman Ali Khan (the VIIth Nizam), whose patronage of architecture led to him being referred to as the maker of modern Hyderabad. In 2012, the government of India declared Hyderabad the first \"Best heritage city of India\".\nQutb Shahi architecture of the 16th and early 17th centuries followed classical Persian architecture featuring domes and colossal arches. The oldest surviving Qutb Shahi structure in Hyderabad is the ruins of the Golconda Fort built in the 16th century. Most of the historical bazaars that still exist were constructed on the street north of Charminar towards the fort. The Charminar has become an icon of the city; located in the centre of old Hyderabad, it is a square structure with sides long and four grand arches each facing a road. At each corner stands a -high minaret. The Charminar, Golconda Fort and the Qutb Shahi tombs are considered to be monuments of national importance in India; in 2010 the Indian government proposed that the sites be listed for UNESCO World Heritage status.\nAmong the oldest surviving examples of Nizam architecture in Hyderabad is the Chowmahalla Palace, which was the seat of royal power. It showcases a diverse array of architectural styles, from the Baroque Harem to its Neoclassical royal court. The other palaces include Falaknuma Palace (inspired by the style of Andrea Palladio), Purani Haveli, King Kothi Palace and Bella Vista Palace all of which were built at the peak of Nizam rule in the 19th century. During Mir Osman Ali Khan's rule, European styles, along with Indo-Islamic, became prominent. These styles are reflected in the Indo-Saracenic style of architecture seen in many civic monuments such as the Hyderabad High Court, Osmania Hospital, City College and the Kacheguda railway station, all designed by Vincent Esch. Other landmark structures of the city constructed during his regin are the State Central Library, the Telangana Legislature, the State Archaeology Museum, Jubilee Hall, and Hyderabad railway station. Other landmarks of note are Paigah Palace, Asman Garh Palace, Basheer Bagh Palace, Errum Manzil and the Spanish Mosque, all constructed by the Paigah family.\nEconomy.\nRecent estimates of the economy of Hyderabad's metropolitan area have ranged from US$40-US$74\u00a0billion (PPP GDP), and have ranked it either fifth- or sixth- most productive metro area of India. Hyderabad is the largest contributor to the gross domestic product (GDP), tax and other revenues, of Telangana, and the sixth largest deposit centre and fourth largest credit centre nationwide, as ranked by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in June 2012. Its per capita annual income in 2011 was . As of 2006[ [update]], the largest employers in the city were the state government (113,098 employees) and central government (85,155). According to a 2005 survey, 77% of males and 19% of females in the city were employed. The service industry remains dominant in the city, and 90% of the employed workforce is engaged in this sector.\nHyderabad's role in the pearl trade has given it the name \"City of Pearls\" and up until the 18th century, the city was the only global trading centre for diamonds known as Golconda diamonds. Industrialisation began under the Nizams in the late 19th century, helped by railway expansion that connected the city with major ports. From the 1950s to the 1970s, Indian enterprises, such as Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), Nuclear Fuel Complex (NFC), National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC), Bharat Electronics (BEL), Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD), State Bank of Hyderabad (SBH) and Andhra Bank (AB) were established in the city. The city is home to Hyderabad Securities formerly known as Hyderabad Stock Exchange (HSE), and houses the regional office of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). In 2013, the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) facility in Hyderabad was forecast to provide operations and transactions services to BSE-Mumbai by the end of 2014. The growth of the financial services sector has helped Hyderabad evolve from a traditional manufacturing city to a cosmopolitan industrial service centre. Since the 1990s, the growth of information technology (IT), IT-enabled services (ITES), insurance and financial institutions has expanded the service sector, and these primary economic activities have boosted the ancillary sectors of trade and commerce, transport, storage, communication, real estate and retail. As of 2021[ [update]], the IT exports from Hyderabad were \u20b9 1,45,522\u00a0crore (US$19.66\u00a0billion), the city houses 1500 IT and TES companies that provide 628,615 jobs.\nHyderabad's commercial markets are divided into four sectors: central business districts, sub-central business centres, neighbourhood business centres and local business centres. Many traditional and historic bazaars are located throughout the city, Laad Bazaar being the prominent among all is popular for selling a variety of traditional and cultural antique wares, along with gems and pearls.\nThe establishment of Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Limited (IDPL), a public sector undertaking, in 1961 was followed over the decades by many national and global companies opening manufacturing and research facilities in the city. As of 2010[ [update]], the city manufactured one third of India's bulk drugs and 16% of biotechnology products, contributing to its reputation as \"India's pharmaceutical capital\" and the \"Genome Valley of India\". Hyderabad is a global centre of information technology, for which it is known as \"Cyberabad\" (Cyber City). As of 2013[ [update]], it contributed 15% of India's and 98% of Andhra Pradesh's exports in IT and ITES sectors and 22% of NASSCOM's total membership is from the city. The development of HITEC City, a township with extensive technological infrastructure, prompted multinational companies to establish facilities in Hyderabad. The city is home to more than 1300 IT and ITES firms that provide employment for 407,000 individuals; the global conglomerates include Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, IBM, Yahoo!, Oracle Corporation, Dell, Facebook, CISCO, and major Indian firms including Tech Mahindra, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Polaris, Cyient and Wipro. In 2009 the World Bank Group ranked the city as the second best Indian city for doing business. The city and its suburbs contain the highest number of special economic zones of any Indian city.\nThe Automotive industry in Hyderabad is also emerging and making it an automobile hub. Automobile companies including as Hyundai, Hyderabad Allwyn, Praga Tools, HMT Bearings, Ordnance Factory Medak, Deccan Auto and Mahindra & Mahindra have units in the Hyderabad economic zone. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Maruti Suzuki and Triton Energy will invest in Hyderabad.\nLike the rest of India, Hyderabad has a large informal economy that employs 30% of the labour force. According to a survey published in 2007, it had 40\u201350,000 street vendors, and their numbers were increasing. Among the street vendors, 84% are male and 16% female, and four fifths are \"stationary vendors\" operating from a fixed pitch, often with their own stall. Most are financed through personal savings; only 8% borrow from moneylenders. Vendor earnings vary from to per day. Other unorganised economic sectors include dairy, poultry farming, brick manufacturing, casual labour and domestic help. Those involved in the informal economy constitute a major portion of the urban poor.\nIn 2024, the World Economic Forum established a Centre for Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR), in the city. Which it describes as a hub to leverage the latest technology in advancing the life sciences and health sectors.\nCulture.\nHyderabad emerged as the foremost centre of culture in India with the decline of the Mughal Empire. After the fall of Delhi in 1857, the migration of performing artists to the city particularly from the north and west of the Indian subcontinent, under the patronage of the Nizam, enriched the cultural milieu. This migration resulted in a mingling of North and South Indian languages, cultures and religions, which has since led to a co-existence of Hindu and Muslim traditions, for which the city has become noted. A further consequence of this north\u2013south mix is that both Telugu and Urdu are official languages of Telangana. The mixing of religions has resulted in many festivals being celebrated in Hyderabad such as Ganesh Chaturthi, Diwali and Bonalu of Hindu tradition and Eid ul-Fitr and Eid al-Adha by Muslims.\nTraditional Hyderabadi garb reveals a mix of Muslim and Hindu influences with men wearing \"sherwani\" and \"kurta\u2013paijama\" and women wearing \"khara dupatta\" and \"salwar kameez\". Most Muslim women wear \"burqa\" and \"hijab\" outdoors. In addition to the traditional Hindu and Muslim garments, increasing exposure to western cultures has led to a rise in the wearing of western style clothing among youths.\nLiterature.\nIn the past, Qutb Shahi rulers and Asaf Jahi Nizams attracted artists, architects, and men of letters from different parts of the world through patronage. The resulting ethnic mix popularised cultural events such as \"mushairas\" (poetic symposia), \"Qawwali\" (devotional songs) and \"Dholak ke Geet\" (traditional folk songs). The Qutb Shahi dynasty particularly encouraged the growth of Deccani literature leading to works such as the \"Deccani Masnavi\" and \"Diwan poetry\", which are among the earliest available manuscripts in Urdu. \"Lazzat Un Nisa\", a book compiled in the 15th century at Qutb Shahi courts, contains erotic paintings with diagrams for secret medicines and stimulants in the eastern form of ancient sexual arts. The reign of the Asaf Jahi Nizams saw many literary reforms and the introduction of Urdu as a language of court, administration and education. In 1824, a collection of Urdu \"Ghazal\" poetry, named \"Gulzar-e-Mahlaqa\", authored by Mah Laqa Bai\u2014the first female Urdu poet to produce a Diwan\u2014was published in Hyderabad. Hyderabad has continued with these traditions in its annual Hyderabad Literary Festival, held since 2010, showcasing the city's literary and cultural creativity. Organisations engaged in the advancement of literature include the Sahitya Akademi, the Urdu Academy, the Telugu Academy, the National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language, the Comparative Literature Association of India, and the Andhra Saraswata Parishad. Literary development is further aided by state institutions such as the State Central Library, the largest public library in the state which was established in 1891, and other major libraries including the Sri Krishna Devaraya Andhra Bhasha Nilayam, the British Library and the Sundarayya Vignana Kendram.\nMusic and films.\nSouth Indian music and dances such as the Kuchipudi and Bharatanatyam styles are popular in the Deccan region. As a result of their cultural policies, North Indian music and dance gained popularity during the rule of the Mughals and Nizams, and it was also during their reign that it became a tradition among the nobility to associate themselves with tawaif (courtesans). These courtesans were revered as the epitome of etiquette and culture and were appointed to teach singing, poetry, and classical dance to many children of the aristocracy. This gave rise to certain styles of court music, dance and poetry. Besides western and Indian popular music genres such as filmi music, the residents of Hyderabad play city-based \"marfa music\", \"Dholak ke Geet\" (household songs based on local folklore), and qawwali, especially at weddings, festivals and other celebratory events. The state government organises the Golconda Music and Dance Festival, the Taramati Music Festival and the Premavathi Dance Festival to further encourage the development of music.\nAlthough the city is not particularly noted for theatre and drama, the state government promotes theatre with multiple programmes and festivals in such venues as the Ravindra Bharathi, Shilpakala Vedika, Lalithakala Thoranam and Lamakaan. Although not a purely music-oriented event, Numaish, a popular annual exhibition of local and national consumer products, does feature some musical performances.\nThe city is home to the Telugu film industry, popularly known as Tollywood\u2014as of 2021[ [update]] it is the highest-grossing Indian film industry. In the 1970s, Deccani language realist films by globally acclaimed Shyam Benegal started a movement of coming of age art films in India, which came to be known as parallel cinema. The Deccani film industry (\"Dollywood\") produces films in the local Hyderabadi dialect, which have gained regional popularity since 2005. The city has hosted international film festivals such as the International Children's Film Festival and the Hyderabad International Film Festival. In 2005, \"Guinness World Records\" declared Ramoji Film City to be the world's largest film studio.\nArt and handicrafts.\nThe region is well known for its Golconda and Hyderabad painting styles which are branches of Deccan painting. Developed during the 16th century, the Golconda style is a native style blending foreign techniques and bears some similarity to the Vijayanagara paintings of neighbouring Mysore. A significant use of luminous gold and white colours is generally found in the Golconda style. The Hyderabad style originated in the 17th century under the Nizams. Highly influenced by Mughal painting, this style makes use of bright colours and mostly depicts regional landscape, culture, costumes, and jewellery.\nAlthough not a centre for handicrafts itself, the patronage of the arts by the Mughals and Nizams attracted artisans from the region to Hyderabad. Such crafts include: Wootz steel, Filigree work, Bidriware, a metalwork handicraft from neighbouring Karnataka, which was popularised during the 18th century and has since been granted a Geographical Indication (GI) tag under the auspices of the WTO act; and Zari and Zardozi, embroidery works on textile that involve making elaborate designs using gold, silver and other metal threads. Chintz\u2014a glazed calico textiles was originated in Golconda in 16th century. and another example of a handicraft drawn to Hyderabad is Kalamkari, a hand-painted or block-printed cotton textile that comes from cities in Andhra Pradesh. This craft is distinguished in having both a Hindu style, known as Srikalahasti and entirely done by hand, and an Islamic style, known as Machilipatnam which uses both hand and block techniques. Examples of Hyderabad's arts and crafts are housed in various museums including the Salar Jung Museum (housing \"one of the largest one-man-collections in the world\"), the Telangana State Archaeology Museum, the Nizam Museum, the City Museum and the Birla Science Museum.\nCuisine.\nHyderabadi cuisine comprises a broad repertoire of rice, wheat and meat dishes and the skilled use of various spices. Hyderabad is listed by UNESCO as a creative city of gastronomy. Hyderabadi \"biryani\" and Hyderabadi \"haleem\", with their blend of Mughlai and Arab cuisines, carry the national Geographical Indications tag. Hyderabadi cuisine is influenced to some extent by French, but more by Arabic, Turkish, Iranian and native Telugu and Marathwada cuisines. Popular native dishes include \"nihari\", \"chakna\", \"baghara baingan\" and the desserts \"qubani ka meetha\", \"double ka meetha\" and \"kaddu ki kheer\" (a sweet porridge made with sweet gourd).\nMedia.\nOne of Hyderabad's earliest newspapers, \"The Deccan Times\", was established in the 1780s. Major Telugu dailies published in Hyderabad are \"Eenadu\", \"Sakshi\" and \"Namasthe Telangana\", while major English papers are \"The Times of India\", \"The Hindu\" and \"Deccan Chronicle\". The major Urdu papers include \"The Siasat Daily\", \"The Munsif Daily\" and \"Etemaad\". The Secunderabad Cantonment Board established the first radio station in Hyderabad State around 1919. Deccan Radio was the first radio public broadcast station in the city starting on 3 February 1935, with FM broadcasting beginning in 2000. The available channels in Hyderabad include All India Radio, Radio Mirchi, Radio City, Red FM, Big FM and Fever FM.\nTelevision broadcasting in Hyderabad began in 1974 with the launch of \"Doordarshan\", the government of India's public service broadcaster, which transmits two free-to-air terrestrial television channels and one satellite channel. Private satellite channels started in July 1992 with the launch of Star TV. Satellite TV channels are accessible via cable subscription, direct-broadcast satellite services or internet-based television. Hyderabad's first dial-up internet access became available in the early 1990s and was limited to software development companies. The first public internet access service began in 1995, with the first private sector internet service provider (ISP) starting operations in 1998. In 2015, high-speed public WiFi was introduced in parts of the city.\nEducation.\nPublic and private schools in Hyderabad are governed by the Board of Secondary Education, Telangana or Central Board of Secondary Education, depending on the affiliation and follow a \"10+2+3\" plan. About two-thirds of pupils attend privately run institutions. Languages of instruction include English, Hindi, Telugu and Urdu. Depending on the institution, students are required to sit the Secondary School Certificate or the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education. After completing secondary education, students enrol in schools or junior colleges with higher secondary facilities. Admission to professional graduation colleges in Hyderabad, many of which are affiliated with either Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Hyderabad (JNTUH) or Osmania University (OU), is through the Engineering Agricultural and Medical Common Entrance Test (EAM-CET).\nThere are 13 universities in Hyderabad: six private universities, two deemed universities, six state universities, and three central universities. The central universities are the University of Hyderabad (Hyderabad Central University, HCU), Maulana Azad National Urdu University and the English and Foreign Languages University. Osmania University, established in 1918, was the first university in Hyderabad and as of 2012[ [update]] is India's second most popular institution for international students. The Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Open University, established in 1982, is the first distance-learning open university in India.\nHyderabad is home to a number of centres specialising in particular fields such as biomedical sciences, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, such as the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) and National Institute of Nutrition (NIN). Hyderabad has five major medical schools\u2014Osmania Medical College, Gandhi Medical College, Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences, Deccan College of Medical Sciences and Shadan Institute of Medical Sciences\u2014and many affiliated teaching hospitals. An All India Institute of Medical Sciences has been sanctioned in the outskirts of Hyderabad. The Government Nizamia Tibbi College is a college of Unani medicine. Hyderabad is also the headquarters of the Indian Heart Association, a non-profit foundation for cardiovascular education.\nNotable central institutions in Hyderabad include the NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad (NLU), Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT), National Geophysical Research Institute, National Institute of Rural Development, Indian Air Force Academy, National Industrial Security Academy, Central Institute of Tool Design, Institute of Public Enterprise, Administrative Staff College of India and the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy. Technical and research institutions include the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIITH), Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani \u2013 Hyderabad (BITS Pilani), Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Hyderabad (TIFR-H) and Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad (IIT-H) as well as agricultural engineering institutes such as the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and the Acharya N. G. Ranga Agricultural University.Hyderabad also has schools of fashion design including NIFT Hyderabad, management schools including the Indian School of Business, ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education, and the National Academy of Agricultural Research Management (NAARM) offering undergraduate and postgraduate courses.\nSports.\nAt the professional level, the city has hosted national and international sports events such as the 2002 National Games of India, the 2003 Afro-Asian Games, the 2004 AP Tourism Hyderabad Open women's tennis tournament, the 2007 Military World Games, the 2009 World Badminton Championships and the 2009 IBSF World Snooker Championship. The city hosts several venues suitable for professional competition such as the Swarnandhra Pradesh Sports Complex for field hockey, the G. M. C. Balayogi Stadium in Gachibowli for athletics and football, and for cricket, the Lal Bahadur Shastri Stadium and Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium, home ground of the Hyderabad Cricket Association. Hyderabad has hosted many international cricket matches, including matches in the 1987 and the 1996 ICC Cricket World Cups. The Hyderabad cricket team competes in the first-class cricket tournament Ranji Trophy, List A Vijay Hazare Trophy and Twenty20 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. Hyderabad is home to the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Sunrisers Hyderabad, champion of 2016 Indian Premier League. Previous franchise Deccan Chargers was the champion of 2009 Indian Premier League. The professional football club of the city Hyderabad FC competes in Indian Super League (ISL) and was the champions of 2021\u201322 Indian Super League.\nDuring British rule, Secunderabad became a well-known sporting centre and many race courses, parade grounds and polo fields were built. Many elite clubs formed by the Nizams and the British such as the Secunderabad Club, the Nizam Club and the Hyderabad Race Club, which is known for its horse racing especially the annual Deccan derby, still exist. In more recent times, motorsports has become popular with the Andhra Pradesh Motor Sports Club organising popular events such as the Deccan <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1\u20444 Mile Drag, TSD Rallies and 4x4 off-road rallying. The 2023 Hyderabad ePrix, at the Hyderabad Street Circuit, was the first FIA Formula E World Championship race in India.\nTransport.\nAs of 2018[ [update]], the most commonly used forms of medium-distance transport in Hyderabad include government-owned services such as light railways and buses, as well as privately operated taxis and auto rickshaws. These altogether serve 3.5\u00a0million passengers daily. Bus services operate from the Mahatma Gandhi Bus Station in the city centre with a fleet of 3800 buses serving 3.3\u00a0million passengers.\nHyderabad Metro, a light-rail rapid transit system, was inaugurated in November 2017. As of 2020[ [update]] it is a 3-track network spread upon with 57 stations and is the third-largest metro rail network in India after Delhi Metro and Namma Metro. Hyderabad's Multi-Modal Transport System (MMTS), is a three-line suburban rail service with 121 services carrying 180,000 passengers daily. Complementing these government services are minibus routes operated by Setwin (Society for Employment Promotion & Training in Twin Cities). Intercity rail services operate from Hyderabad; the main, and largest, station is Secunderabad railway station, which serves as Indian Railways' South Central Railway zone headquarters and a hub for both buses and MMTS light rail services connecting Secunderabad and Hyderabad. Other major railway stations in Hyderabad are Hyderabad Deccan, Kacheguda, Begumpet, Malkajgiri and Lingampalli.\nAs of 2018[ [update]], there are over 5.3\u00a0million vehicles operating in the city, of which 4.3\u00a0million are two-wheelers and 1.04\u00a0million four-wheelers. The large number of vehicles coupled with relatively low road coverage\u2014roads occupy only 9.5% of the total city area\u2014has led to widespread traffic congestion especially since 80% of passengers and 60% of freight are transported by road. The Inner Ring Road, the Outer Ring Road, the Hyderabad Elevated Expressway, the longest flyover in India, and various interchanges, overpasses and underpasses were built to ease congestion. Maximum speed limits within the city are for two-wheelers and cars, for auto rickshaws and for light commercial vehicles and buses.\nHyderabad sits at the junction of three National Highways linking it to six other states: NH-44 runs from Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, in the north to Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu, in the south; NH-65, runs east-west between Machilipatnam, Andhra Pradesh connects Hyderabad and Suryapet with Pune, Maharashtra; NH-163 links Hyderabad and Bhopalpatnam, Chhattisgarh; NH-765 links Hyderabad to Srisailam, Andhra Pradesh. Five state highways, SH-1 links Hyderabad, to Ramagundam, SH-2, SH-4, and SH-6, either start from, or pass through, Hyderabad.\nAir traffic was previously handled via Begumpet Airport established in 1930, but this was replaced by Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) () in 2008, capable of handling 25\u00a0million passengers and 150,000\u00a0metric-tonnes of cargo per annum. In 2020, Airports Council International, an autonomous body representing the world's airports, judged RGIA the Best Airport in Environment and Ambience and the Best Airport by Size and Region in the 15-25 million passenger category.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nGeneral and cited references.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "43281": "East India Company\nBritish trading company (1600\u20131874)\nThe East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South Asia and Southeast Asia), and later with East Asia. The company gained control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent and Hong Kong. At its peak, the company was the largest corporation in the world by various measures and had its own armed forces in the form of the company's three presidency armies, totalling about 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of the British Army at certain times.\nOriginally chartered as the \"Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies,\" the company rose to account for half of the world's trade during the mid-1700s and early 1800s, particularly in basic commodities including cotton, silk, indigo dye, sugar, salt, spices, saltpetre, tea, and later, opium. The company also initiated the beginnings of the British Raj in the Indian subcontinent.\nThe company eventually came to rule large areas of the Indian subcontinent, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions. Company-ruled areas in the region gradually expanded after the Battle of Plassey in 1757 and by 1858 most of modern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh was either ruled by the company or princely states closely tied to it by treaty. Following the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857, the Government of India Act 1858 led to the British Crown assuming direct control of present-day Bangladesh, Pakistan and India in the form of the new British Indian Empire.\nThe company subsequently experienced recurring problems with its finances, despite frequent government intervention. The company was dissolved in 1874 under the terms of the East India Stock Dividend Redemption Act enacted one year earlier, as the Government of India Act had by then rendered it vestigial, powerless, and obsolete. The official government machinery of the British Empire had assumed its governmental functions and absorbed its armies.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nOrigins.\nIn 1577, Francis Drake set out on an expedition from England to plunder Spanish settlements in South America in search of gold and silver. Sailing in the \"Golden Hind\" he achieved this, and then sailed across the Pacific Ocean in 1579, known then only to the Spanish and Portuguese. Drake eventually sailed into the East Indies and came across the Moluccas, also known as the Spice Islands, and met Sultan Babullah. In exchange for linen, gold, and silver, the English obtained a large haul of exotic spices, including cloves and nutmeg. Drake returned to England in 1580 and became a hero; his circumnavigation raised an enormous amount of money for England's coffers, and investors received a return of some 5,000 percent. Thus started an important element in the eastern design during the late sixteenth century.\nSoon after the Spanish Armada's defeat in 1588, the captured Spanish and Portuguese ships and cargoes enabled English voyagers to travel the globe in search of riches. London merchants presented a petition to Elizabeth I for permission to sail to the Indian Ocean. The aim was to deliver a decisive blow to the Spanish and Portuguese monopoly of far-eastern trade. Elizabeth granted her permission and in 1591, James Lancaster in the with two other ships, financed by the Levant Company, sailed from England around the Cape of Good Hope to the Arabian Sea, becoming the first English expedition to reach India that way. Having sailed around Cape Comorin to the Malay Peninsula, they preyed on Spanish and Portuguese ships there before returning to England in 1594.\nThe biggest prize that galvanised English trade was the seizure of a large Portuguese carrack, the \"Madre de Deus\", by Walter Raleigh and the Earl of Cumberland at the Battle of Flores on 13 August 1592. When she was brought in to Dartmouth she was the largest vessel ever seen in England and she carried chests of jewels, pearls, gold, silver coins, ambergris, cloth, tapestries, pepper, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, benjamin (a highly aromatic balsamic resin used for perfumes and medicines), red dye, cochineal and ebony. Equally valuable was the ship's rutter (mariner's handbook) containing vital information on the China, India, and Japan trade routes.\nIn 1596, three more English ships sailed east but all were lost at sea. A year later however saw the arrival of Ralph Fitch, an adventurer merchant who, with his companions, had made a remarkable nine year overland journey to Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, India and Southeast Asia. Fitch was consulted on Indian affairs and gave even more valuable information to Lancaster.\nHistory.\nFormation.\nIn 1599, a group of prominent merchants and explorers met to discuss a potential East Indies venture under a royal charter. Besides Fitch and Lancaster, the group included Stephen Soame, then Lord Mayor of London; Thomas Smythe, a powerful London politician and administrator who had established the Levant Company; Richard Hakluyt, writer and proponent of British colonisation of the Americas; and several other sea-farers who had served with Drake and Raleigh.\nOn 22 September, the group stated their intention \"to venture in the pretended voyage to the East Indies (the which it may please the Lord to prosper)\" and to themselves invest \u00a330,133 (over \u00a34,000,000 in today's money). Two days later, the \"Adventurers\" reconvened and resolved to apply to the Queen for support of the project. Although their first attempt had not been completely successful, they sought the Queen's unofficial approval to continue. They bought ships for the venture and increased their investment to \u00a368,373.\nThey convened again a year later, on 31 December 1600, and this time they succeeded; the Queen responded favourably to a petition by George, Earl of Cumberland and 218 others, including James Lancaster, Sir John Harte, Sir John Spencer (both of whom had been Lord Mayor of London), the adventurer Edward Michelborne, the nobleman William Cavendish and other aldermen and citizens. She granted her charter to their corporation named Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies. For a period of fifteen years, the charter awarded the company a monopoly on English trade with all countries east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan. Any traders there without a licence from the company were liable to forfeiture of their ships and cargo (half of which would go to the Crown and half to the company), as well as imprisonment at the \"royal pleasure\".\nThe charter named Thomas Smythe as the first governor of the company, and 24 directors (including James Lancaster) or \"committees\", who made up a Court of Directors. They, in turn, reported to a Court of Proprietors, who appointed them. Ten committees reported to the Court of Directors. By tradition, business was initially transacted at the Nags Head Inn, opposite St Botolph's church in Bishopsgate, before moving to East India House on Leadenhall Street.\nEarly voyages to the East Indies.\nSir James Lancaster commanded the first East India Company voyage in 1601 aboard . The following year, whilst sailing in the Malacca Straits, Lancaster took the rich 1,200 ton Portuguese carrack \"Sao Thome\" carrying pepper and spices. The booty enabled the voyagers to set up two \"factories\" (trading posts) \u2013 one at Bantam on Java and another in the Moluccas (Spice Islands) before leaving. On return to England in 1603, they learned of Elizabeth's death, but Lancaster was knighted by the new king, James I, on account of the voyage's success. By this time, the war with Spain had ended but the company had profitably breached the Spanish-Portuguese duopoly; new horizons opened for the English.\nIn March 1604, Sir Henry Middleton commanded the company's second voyage. General William Keeling, a captain during the second voyage, led the third voyage aboard \"Red Dragon\" from 1607 to 1610 along with \"Hector\" under Captain William Hawkins and \"Consent\" under Captain David Middleton.\nEarly in 1608, Alexander Sharpeigh was made captain of the company's \"Ascension\", and general or commander of the fourth voyage. Thereafter two ships, \"Ascension\" and \"Union\" (captained by Richard Rowles), sailed from Woolwich on 14 March 1608. This expedition was lost.\nInitially, the company struggled in the spice trade because of competition from the Dutch East India Company. This rivalry led to military skirmishes, with each company establishing fortified trading posts, fleets, and alliances with local rulers. The Dutch, better financed and supported by their government, gained the upper hand by establishing a stronghold in the spice islands (now Indonesia), enforcing a near-monopoly through aggressive policies that eventually drove the EIC to seek trade opportunities in India instead. The English company opened a factory (trading post) in Bantam on Java on its first voyage, and imports of pepper from Java remained an important part of the company's trade for twenty years.\nEnglish traders frequently fought their Dutch and Portuguese counterparts in the Indian Ocean. The company achieved a major victory over the Portuguese in the Battle of Swally in 1612, at Suvali in Surat. The company decided to explore the feasibility of a foothold in mainland India, with official sanction from both Britain and the Mughal Empire, and requested that the Crown launch a diplomatic mission.\nFoothold in India.\nCompany ships docked at Surat in Gujarat in 1608. The company's first Indian factory was established in 1611 at Masulipatnam on the Andhra Coast of the Bay of Bengal, and its second in 1615 at Surat. The high profits reported by the company after landing in India initially prompted James I to grant subsidiary licences to other trading companies in England. However, in 1609, he renewed the East India Company's charter for an indefinite period, with the proviso that its privileges would be annulled if trade was unprofitable for three consecutive years.\nIn 1615, James I instructed Sir Thomas Roe to visit the Mughal Emperor Nur-ud-din Salim Jahangir (r.\u00a01605\u20131627) to arrange for a commercial treaty that would give the company exclusive rights to reside and establish factories in Surat and other areas. In return, the company offered to provide the Emperor with goods and rarities from the European market. This mission was highly successful, and Jahangir sent a letter to James through Sir Thomas Roe:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Upon which assurance of your royal love I have given my general command to all the kingdoms and ports of my dominions to receive all the merchants of the English nation as the subjects of my friend; that in what place soever they choose to live, they may have free liberty without any restraint; and at what port soever they shall arrive, that neither Portugal nor any other shall dare to molest their quiet; and in what city soever they shall have residence, I have commanded all my governors and captains to give them freedom answerable to their own desires; to sell, buy, and to transport into their country at their pleasure.\nFor confirmation of our love and friendship, I desire your Majesty to command your merchants to bring in their ships of all sorts of rarities and rich goods fit for my palace; and that you be pleased to send me your royal letters by every opportunity, that I may rejoice in your health and prosperous affairs; that our friendship may be interchanged and eternal.\nExpansion in present day South Asia.\nThe company, which benefited from the imperial patronage, soon expanded its commercial trading operations. It eclipsed the Portuguese Estado da \u00cdndia, which had established bases in Goa, Chittagong, and Bombay; Portugal later ceded Bombay to England as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza on her marriage to King Charles II. The East India Company also launched a joint attack with the Dutch United East India Company (VOC) on Portuguese and Spanish ships off the coast of China that helped secure EIC ports in China, independently attacking the Portuguese in the Persian Gulf Residencies primarily for political reasons. The company established trading posts in Surat (1619) and Madras (1639). By 1647, the company had 23 factories and settlements in India, and 90 employees. Many of the major factories became some of the most populated and commercially influential cities in Bengal, including the walled forts of Fort William in Bengal, Fort St George in Madras, and Bombay Castle.\nThe first century of the Company, despite its original profits coming primarily from piracy in the Spice Islands between competing European powers and their companies, saw the East India Company change focus after suffering a major setback in 1623 when their factory in Amboyna in the Moluccas was attacked by the Dutch. This compelled the company to formally abandon their efforts in the Spice Islands, and turn their attention to Bengal where, by this time, they were making steady, if less exciting, profits. After gaining the indifferent patronage of the Mughal Empire, whose cities were 'the megacities of their time' and whose wealth was unrivaled outside of Asia in the 17th century, the Company's first century in the Mughal-ruled areas was spent cultivating their relationship with the Mughal Dynasty, and conducting peaceful trade at great profit. At first it should be said the EIC was drawn into the Mughal system, acting as a kind of vassal to Mughal authority in present-day Bangladesh: it was from this position that the Company would ultimately outplay and outmanoeuvre all competing powers in the region, to eventually use that very system to hold power itself. What started as trading posts on undesirable land were developed into sprawling factory complexes with hundreds of workers sending exotic goods to England and managing protected points to export English finished goods to local merchants. The Company's initial rise in Bengal and successes generally came at the expense of competing European powers through the art of currying favours and well-placed bribes, as the Company was matched at every step with French expansion in the region (whose equivalent company carried substantial royal support). Throughout the entire century the company only resorted to force against the Mughals once, with terrible consequences. The Anglo-Mughal war (1686\u20131690) was a complete defeat, ending when the EIC effectively swore fealty to the Mughals to get their factories back.\nThe East India Company's fortunes changed for the better in 1707 when Bengal and other regions under Mughal rule fell into anarchy after the death of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb. A series of large-scale rebellions, and the collapse of the Mughal taxation system led to the effective independence of virtually all of the pre-1707 Mughal fiefs and holdings, with their capital Delhi routinely under the control of Maratha, Afghan, or usurper generals' armies. The EIC was able to take advantage of this chaos, slowly assuming direct control of the province of Bengal, and fighting numerous wars against the French for control of the east coast of the subcontinent. The Company's position in the Mughal court as it fell apart made it possible to sponsor various powerful people on the subcontinent as they individually contended with others, steadily amassing more land and power in India to themselves.\nIn the 18th Century, the primary source of the Company's profits in Bengal became taxation in conquered and controlled provinces, as the factories became fortresses and administrative hubs for networks of tax collectors that expanded into enormous cities. The Mughal Empire was the richest in the world in 1700, and the East India Company tried to strip it bare for a century thereafter. Dalrymple calls it \"the single largest transfer of wealth until the Nazis.\" What was in the 17th century the production capital of the world for textiles was forced to become a market for British-made textiles. Statues, jewels, and various other valuables were moved from the palaces of Bengal to the townhouses of the English countryside. Bengal in particular suffered the worst of Company tax farming, highlighted by the Great Bengal famine of 1770.\nThe primary tool of expansion for the company was the Sepoy. The Sepoys were locally raised with European training and equipment, who changed warfare in present-day South Asia. Mounted forces and their superior mobility had been king on the region's battlefields for a thousand years, with cannon so well integrated that the Mughals fought with cannon mounted on elephants; all were no match to line infantry with decent discipline supported with field cannon. Repeatedly, a few thousand company sepoys fought vastly larger Mughal forces numerically and came out victorious. Afghan, Mughal and Maratha factions started creating their own European-style forces, often with French equipment, as the chaos intensified and the stakes were raised. Ultimately, the company won out, generally through as much diplomacy and state-craft as through fraud and deception. The gradual rise of the East India Company within the Mughal network culminated in the Second Anglo-Maratha War, in which the Company successfully ousted the Maratha, the Empire's official protectors, at the high water point in their rise to power, and installed a young Mughal Prince as Emperor, with the Company as the de jure protectors of the Empire from their position of direct control in Bengal. This relationship was repeatedly strained as the Company continued its expansion and exploitation, however it lasted in some form until 1858, when the last Mughal Emperor was exiled as the Company was disbanded and its assets were taken over by the British Crown.\nIn 1634, the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan extended his hospitality to English traders to Bengal, the richest region of the empire, and in 1717 customs duties were completely waived for the English in Bengal. By then, the Company's mainstay businesses were in cotton, silk, opium, indigo dye, saltpetre and tea. Meanwhile, the Dutch, the Company's most aggressive competitors, had expanded their monopoly of the spice trade in the Straits of Malacca by ousting the Portuguese in 1640\u20131641. With reduced Portuguese and Spanish influence in the region, the EIC and VOC entered a period of intense competition, resulting in the Anglo-Dutch wars of the 17th and 18th centuries. The British were also interested in trans-Himalayan trade routes, as they would create access to untapped markets for British manufactured goods in Tibet and China. This economic interest was showcased by the Anglo-Nepalese war (1814\u20131816).\nExpansion throughout Asia.\nWithin the first two decades of the 17th century, the Dutch East India Company or \"Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie\", (VOC) was the wealthiest commercial operation in the world with 50,000\u00a0employees worldwide and a private fleet of 200\u00a0ships. It specialised in the spice trade and gave its shareholders 40% annual dividend.\nThe British East India Company was fiercely competitive with the Dutch and French throughout the 17th and 18th centuries over spices from the Spice Islands. Some spices, at the time, could only be found on these islands, such as nutmeg and cloves; and they could bring profits as high as 400 per cent from one voyage.\nThe tension was so high between the Dutch and the British East Indies Trading Companies that it escalated into at least four Anglo-Dutch wars: 1652\u20131654, 1665\u20131667, 1672\u20131674 and 1780\u20131784.\nCompetition arose in 1635 when Charles I granted a trading licence to Sir William Courteen, which permitted the rival Courteen association to trade with the east at any location in which the EIC had no presence.\nIn an act aimed at strengthening the power of the EIC, King Charles II granted the EIC (in a series of five acts around 1670) the rights to autonomous territorial acquisitions, to mint money, to command fortresses and troops and form alliances, to make war and peace, and to exercise both civil and criminal jurisdiction over the acquired areas.\nIn 1689, a Mughal fleet commanded by Sidi Yaqub attacked Bombay. After a year of resistance the EIC surrendered in 1690, and the company sent envoys to Aurangzeb's camp to plead for a pardon. The company's envoys had to prostrate themselves before the emperor, pay a large indemnity, and promise better behaviour in the future. The emperor withdrew his troops, and the company subsequently re-established itself in Bombay and set up a new base in Calcutta.\nSlavery 1621\u20131834.\nThe East India Company's archives suggest its involvement in the slave trade began in 1684, when a Captain Robert Knox was ordered to buy and transport 250 slaves from Madagascar to St. Helena. The East India Company began using and transporting slaves in Asia and the Atlantic in the early 1620s, according to the Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica,<ref name=\"topic/East\"></ref> or in 1621, according to Richard Allen. Eventually, the company ended the trade in 1834 after numerous legal threats from the British state and the Royal Navy in the form of the West Africa Squadron, which discovered various ships had contained evidence of the illegal trade.\nJapan.\nIn 1613, during the rule of Tokugawa Hidetada of the Tokugawa shogunate, the British ship , under the command of Captain John Saris, was the first English ship to call on Japan. Saris was the chief factor of the EIC's trading post in Java, and with the assistance of William Adams, an English sailor who had arrived in Japan in 1600, he was able to gain permission from the ruler to establish a commercial house in Hirado on the Japanese island of Kyushu:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />We give free license to the subjects of the King of Great Britaine, Sir Thomas Smythe, Governor and Company of the East Indian Merchants and Adventurers forever safely come into any of our ports of our Empire of Japan with their shippes and merchandise, without any hindrance to them or their goods, and to abide, buy, sell and barter according to their own manner with all nations, to tarry here as long as they think good, and to depart at their pleasure.\nUnable to obtain Japanese raw silk for export to China, and with their trading area reduced to Hirado and Nagasaki from 1616 onwards, the company closed its factory in 1623.\nAnglo-Mughal war.\nThe first of the Anglo-Indian wars occurred in 1686 when the company conducted naval operations against Shaista Khan, the governor of Mughal Bengal. This led to the siege of Bombay and the subsequent intervention of the Mughal Emperor, Aurangzeb. Subsequently, the English company was defeated and fined.\nMughal convoy piracy incident of 1695\nIn September 1695, Captain Henry Every, an English pirate on board the , reached the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, where he teamed up with five other pirate captains to make an attack on the Indian fleet returning from the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. The Mughal convoy included the treasure-laden \"Ganj-i-Sawai\", reported to be the greatest in the Mughal fleet and the largest ship operational in the Indian Ocean, and its escort, the \"Fateh Muhammed\". They were spotted passing the straits en route to Surat. The pirates gave chase and caught up with the \"Fateh Muhammed\" some days later, and meeting little resistance, took some \u00a340,000 of silver.\nEvery continued in pursuit and managed to overhaul \"Ganj-i-Sawai\", which resisted strongly before eventually striking. \"Ganj-i-Sawai\" carried enormous wealth and, according to contemporary East India Company sources, was carrying a relative of the Grand Mughal, though there is no evidence to suggest that it was his daughter and her retinue. The loot from the \"Ganj-i-Sawai\" had a total value between \u00a3325,000 and \u00a3600,000, including 500,000 gold and silver pieces, and has become known as the richest ship ever taken by pirates.\nWhen the news arrived in England it caused an outcry. To appease Aurangzeb, the East India Company promised to pay all financial reparations, while Parliament declared the pirates \"hostis humani generis\" (\"the enemy of humanity\"). In mid-1696 the government issued a \u00a3500 bounty on Every's head and offered a free pardon to any informer who disclosed his whereabouts. The first worldwide manhunt in recorded history was underway.\nThe plunder of Aurangzeb's treasure ship had serious consequences for the English East India Company. The furious Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb ordered Sidi Yaqub and Nawab Daud Khan to attack and close four of the company's factories in India and imprison their officers, who were almost lynched by a mob of angry Mughals, blaming them for their countryman's depredations, and threatened to put an end to all English trading in India. To appease Emperor Aurangzeb and particularly his Grand Vizier Asad Khan, Parliament exempted Every from all of the Acts of Grace (pardons) and amnesties it would subsequently issue to other pirates.\nChina.\nThe British began trading with China in 1699. This fact is recorded from the Chinese side in \"The Draft History of the Qing\" under the year Kangxi 37 (1698). The apparent discrepancy between the British and Chinese sources can be explained by the fact that Chinese New Year of 1699 did not fall until January 31, so that any treaties entered into in January would have been logged under Kangxi 37 rather than Kangxi 38. In 1715 the Company established a permanent \"factory\" in Guangzhou (Canton).\nThe company started selling opium to Chinese merchants in the 1770s in exchange for goods like porcelain and tea, causing a series of opioid addiction outbreaks across China in 1820. The ruling Qing dynasty outlawed the opium trade in 1796 and 1800, but British merchants continued illegally nonetheless. The Qing took measures to prevent the East India Company from selling opium, and destroyed tens of thousands of chests of opium already in the country. This series of events led to the First Opium War in 1839, which involved a succession of British naval attacks along the Chinese coast over the course of several months. As part of the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842, the Qing were forced to give British merchants special treatment and the right to sell opium. The Chinese also ceded territory to the British, including the island of Hong Kong.\nForming a complete monopoly.\nTrade monopoly.\nThe prosperity that the officers of the company enjoyed allowed them to return to Britain and establish sprawling estates and businesses, and to obtain political power, such as seats in the House of Commons. Ship captains sold their appointments to successors for up to \u00a3500. As recruits aimed to return to Britain wealthy by securing Indian money, their loyalties to their homeland increased.\nThe company developed a lobby in the English parliament. Pressure from ambitious tradesmen and former company associates (pejoratively termed \"Interlopers\" by the company), who wanted to establish private trading firms in India, led to the passing of the deregulating act in 1694.\nUnited Kingdom legislation\nThis act allowed any English firm to trade with India, unless specifically prohibited by act of parliament, thereby annulling the charter that had been in force for almost 100 years. When the East India Company Act 1697 (9 Will. 3. c. 44) was passed in 1697, a new \"parallel\" East India Company (officially titled the \"English Company Trading to the East Indies\") was floated under a state-backed indemnity of \u00a32\u00a0million. The powerful stockholders of the old company quickly subscribed a sum of \u00a3315,000 in the new concern, and dominated the new body. The two companies wrestled with each other for some time, both in England and in India, for a dominant share of the trade.\nIt quickly became evident that, in practice, the original company faced scarcely any measurable competition. The companies merged in 1708, by a tripartite indenture involving both companies and the state, with the charter and agreement for the new \"United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies\" being awarded by Sidney Godolphin, 1st Earl of Godolphin. Under this arrangement, the merged company lent a sum of \u00a33,200,000 to the Treasury, in return for exclusive privileges for the next three years, after which the situation was to be reviewed. The amalgamated company became the \"United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies\".\nUnited Kingdom legislation\nA constant battle between the company lobby and Parliament followed for decades. The company sought a permanent establishment, while Parliament would not willingly allow it greater autonomy and so relinquish the opportunity to exploit the company's profits. In 1712, another act renewed the status of the company, though the debts were repaid. By 1720, 15% of British imports were from India, almost all passing through the company, which reasserted the influence of the company lobby. The licence was prolonged until 1766 by yet another act in 1730.\nAt this time, Britain and France became bitter rivals. Frequent skirmishes between them took place for control of colonial possessions. In 1742, fearing the monetary consequences of a war, the British government agreed to extend the deadline for the licensed exclusive trade by the company in India until 1783, in return for a further loan of \u00a31\u00a0million. Between 1756 and 1763, the Seven Years' War diverted the state's attention towards consolidation and defence of its territorial possessions in Europe and its colonies in North America.\nThe war partly took place in the Indian theatre, between the company troops and the French forces. In 1757, the Law Officers of the Crown delivered the Pratt\u2013Yorke opinion distinguishing overseas territories acquired by right of conquest from those acquired by private treaty. The opinion asserted that, while the Crown of Great Britain enjoyed sovereignty over both, only the property of the former was vested in the Crown.\nWith the advent of the Industrial Revolution, Britain surged ahead of its European rivals. Demand for Indian commodities was boosted by the need to sustain troops and the economy during the war, and by the increased availability of raw materials and efficient methods of production. As home to the revolution, Britain experienced higher standards of living. Its ever-growing cycle of prosperity, demand and production had a profound influence on overseas trade. The company became the single largest player in the British global market. In 1801 Henry Dundas reported to the House of Commons that\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />... on the\u00a01st March, 1801, the debts of the East India Company amounted to 5,393,989\"l.\" their effects to 15,404,736\"l.\" and that their sales had increased since February 1793, from 4,988,300\"l.\" to 7,602,041\"l.\"\nSaltpetre trade.\nSir John Banks, a businessman from Kent who negotiated an agreement between the king and the company, began his career in a syndicate arranging contracts for victualling the navy, an interest he kept up for most of his life. He knew that Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn had amassed a substantial fortune from the Levant and Indian trades.\nHe became a director and later, as governor of the East India Company in 1672, he arranged a contract which included a loan of \u00a320,000 and \u00a330,000 worth of saltpetre\u2014also known as potassium nitrate, a primary ingredient in gunpowder\u2014for the King \"at the price it shall sell by the candle\"\u2014that is by auction\u2014where bidding could continue as long as an inch-long candle remained alight.\nOutstanding debts were also agreed and the company permitted to export 250 tons of saltpetre. Again in 1673, Banks successfully negotiated another contract for 700 tons of saltpetre at \u00a337,000 between the king and the company. So high was the demand from armed forces that the authorities sometimes turned a blind eye on the untaxed sales. One governor of the company was even reported as saying in 1864 that he would rather have the saltpetre made than the tax on salt.\nBasis for the monopoly.\nColonial monopoly.\nThe Seven Years' War (1756\u20131763) resulted in the defeat of the French forces, limited French imperial ambitions, and stunted the influence of the Industrial Revolution in French territories. Robert Clive, the Governor-General, led the company to a victory against Joseph Fran\u00e7ois Dupleix, the commander of the French forces in India, and recaptured Fort St George from the French. The company took this respite to seize Manila in 1762.\nBy the Treaty of Paris, France regained the five establishments captured by the British during the war (Pondich\u00e9ry, Mahe, Karaikal, Yanam and Chandernagar) but was prevented from erecting fortifications and keeping troops in Bengal (art. XI). Elsewhere in India, the French were to remain a military threat, particularly during the War of American Independence, and up to the capture of Pondich\u00e9ry in 1793 at the outset of the French Revolutionary Wars without any military presence. Although these small outposts remained French possessions for the next two hundred years, French ambitions on Indian territories were effectively laid to rest, thus eliminating a major source of economic competition for the company.\nIn May 1772 the EIC stock price rose significantly. In June Alexander Fordyce lost \u00a3300,000 shorting EIC stock, leaving his partners liable for an estimated \u00a3243,000 in debts. As this information became public, 20\u201330 banks across Europe collapsed during the British credit crisis of 1772-1773. In India alone, the company had bill debts of \u00a31.2 million. It seems that EIC directors James Cockburn and George Colebrooke were \"bulling\" the Amsterdam market during 1772. The root of this crisis in relation to the East India Company came from the prediction by Isaac de Pinto that 'peace conditions plus an abundance of money would push East Indian shares to 'exorbitant heights.'\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />In September the company took out a loan from the Bank of England, to be repaid from the sale of goods later that month. But with buyers scarce,\nmost of the sale had to be postponed, and when the loan fell due, the company's coffers were empty. On October 29 the bank refused to renew the loan. That decision set in motion a chain of events that made the American Revolution inevitable. The East India Company had eighteen million pounds of tea sitting in British warehouses. A huge amount of tea as assets which were lying unsold. Selling it in a hurry would do wonders for its finances.\nOn 14 January 1773 the directors of the EIC asked for a government loan and unlimited access to the tea market in the American colonies, both of which were granted. In August 1773 the Bank of England assisted the EIC with a loan.\nThe East India Company had also been granted competitive advantages over colonial American tea importers to sell tea from its colonies in Asia in American colonies. This led to the Boston Tea Party of 1773 in which protesters boarded British ships and threw the tea overboard. When protesters successfully prevented the unloading of tea in three other colonies and in Boston, Governor Thomas Hutchinson of the Province of Massachusetts Bay refused to allow the tea to be returned to Britain. This was one of the incidents which led to the American Revolution and independence of the American colonies.\nThe company's trade monopoly with India was abolished in the Charter Act 1813. The monopoly with China was ended in 1833, ending the trading activities of the company and rendering its activities purely administrative.\nDisestablishment.\nIn the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and under the provisions of the Government of India Act 1858, the British Government nationalised the company. The British government took over its Indian possessions, its administrative powers and machinery, and its armed forces.\nThe company had already divested itself of its commercial trading assets in India in favour of the UK government in 1833, with the latter assuming the debts and obligations of the company, which were to be serviced and paid from tax revenue raised in India. In return, the shareholders voted to accept an annual dividend of 10.5%, guaranteed for forty years, likewise to be funded from India, with a final pay-off to redeem outstanding shares. The debt obligations continued beyond dissolution and were only extinguished by the UK government during the Second World War.\nThe company remained in existence in vestigial form, continuing to manage the tea trade on behalf of the British Government (and the supply of Saint Helena) until the East India Stock Dividend Redemption Act 1873 came into effect, on 1 January 1874. This act provided for the formal dissolution of the company on 1 June 1874, after a final dividend payment and the commutation or redemption of its stock. \"The Times\" commented on 8 April 1873:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />It accomplished a work such as in the whole history of the human race no other trading Company ever attempted, and such as none, surely, is likely to attempt in the years to come.\nEstablishments in Britain.\nThe company's headquarters in London, from which much of India was governed, was East India House in Leadenhall Street. After occupying premises in Philpot Lane from 1600 to 1621; in Crosby House, Bishopsgate from 1621 to 1638; and in Leadenhall Street from 1638 to 1648, the company moved into Craven House, an Elizabethan mansion in Leadenhall Street. The building had become known as East India House by 1661. It was completely rebuilt and enlarged in 1726\u20131729 and further significantly remodelled and expanded in 1796\u20131800. It was finally vacated in 1860 and demolished in 1861\u20131862. The site is now occupied by the Lloyd's building.\nIn 1607, the company decided to build its own ships and leased a yard on the River Thames at Deptford. By 1614, the yard having become too small, an alternative site was acquired at Blackwall: the new yard was fully operational by 1617. It was sold in 1656, although for some years East India Company ships continued to be built and repaired there under the new owners.\nIn 1803 an act of Parliament, promoted by the East India Company, established the East India Dock Company, with the aim of establishing a new set of docks (the East India Docks) primarily for the use of ships trading with India. The existing Brunswick Dock, part of the Blackwall Yard site, became the Export Dock; while a new Import Dock was built to the north. In 1838 the East India Dock Company merged with the West India Dock Company. The docks were taken over by the Port of London Authority in 1909 and closed in 1967.\nThe East India College was founded in 1806 as a training establishment for \"writers\" (i.e. clerks) in the company's service. It was initially located in Hertford Castle, but moved in 1809 to purpose-built premises at Hertford Heath, Hertfordshire. In 1858 the college closed; but in 1862 the buildings reopened as a public school, now Haileybury and Imperial Service College.\nThe East India Company Military Seminary was founded in 1809 at Addiscombe, near Croydon, Surrey, to train young officers for service in the company's armies in India. It was based in Addiscombe Place, an early 18th-century mansion. The government took it over in 1858 and renamed it the Royal Indian Military College. In 1861 it was closed, and the site was subsequently redeveloped.\nIn 1818, the company entered into an agreement by which those of its servants who were certified insane in India might be cared for at Pembroke House, Hackney, London, a private lunatic asylum run by Dr George Rees until 1838, and thereafter by Dr William Williams. The arrangement outlasted the company itself, continuing until 1870, when the India Office opened its own asylum, the Royal India Asylum, at Hanwell, Middlesex.\nThe East India Club in London was formed in 1849 for officers of the company. The Club still exists today as a private gentlemen's club with its club house situated at 16 St James's Square, London.\nSymbols.\nFlags.\nThe English East India Company flag changed over time, with a canton based on the flag of the contemporary Kingdom, and a field of 9-to-13\u00a0alternating red and white stripes.\nFrom 1600, the canton consisted of a St George's Cross representing the Kingdom of England. With the Acts of Union 1707, the canton was changed to the new Union Flag\u2014consisting of an English St George's Cross combined with a Scottish St Andrew's cross\u2014representing the Kingdom of Great Britain. After the Acts of Union 1800 that joined Ireland with Great Britain to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the canton of the East India Company flag was altered accordingly to include a Saint Patrick's Saltire.\nThere has been much debate about the number and order of stripes in the field of the flag. Historical documents and paintings show variations from 9-to-13\u00a0stripes, with some images showing the top stripe red and others showing it white.\nAt the time of the American Revolution the East India Company flag was nearly identical to the Grand Union Flag. Historian Charles Fawcett argued that the East India Company Flag inspired the Stars and Stripes of America.\nCoat of arms.\nThe East India Company's original coat of arms was granted in 1600. The blazon of the arms is as follows: \"Azure, three ships with three masts, rigged and under full sail, the sails, pennants and ensigns Argent, each charged with a cross Gules; on a chief of the second a pale quarterly Azure and Gules, on the 1st and 4th a fleur-de-lis or, on the 2nd and 3rd a leopard or, between two roses Gules seeded Or barbed Vert.\" The shield had as a crest: \"A sphere without a frame, bounded with the Zodiac in bend Or, between two pennants flottant Argent, each charged with a cross Gules, over the sphere the words \"\" (Latin: God Indicates). The supporters were two sea lions (lions with fishes' tails) and the motto was (Latin: Where God Leads, Nothing Harms).\nThe East India Company's later arms, granted in 1698, were: \"Argent a cross Gules; in the dexter chief quarter an escutcheon of the arms of France and England quarterly, the shield ornamentally and regally crowned Or.\" The crest was: \"A lion rampant guardant Or holding between the forepaws a regal crown proper.\" The supporters were: \"Two lions rampant guardant Or, each supporting a banner erect Argent, charged with a cross Gules.\" The motto was (Latin: Under the auspices of the King and the Parliament of England).\nMerchant mark.\nWhen the East India Company was chartered in 1600, it was still customary for individual merchants or members of companies such as the Company of Merchant Adventurers to have a distinguishing merchant's mark which often included the mystical \"Sign of Four\" and served as a trademark. The East India Company's merchant mark consisted of a \"Sign of Four\" atop a heart within which was a saltire between the lower arms of which were the initials \"EIC\". This mark was a central motif of the East India Company's coinage and forms the central emblem displayed on the Scinde Dawk postage stamps.\nShips.\nShips of the East India Company were called East Indiamen or simply \"Indiamen\". Their names were sometimes prefixed with the initials \"HCS\", standing for \"Honourable Company's Service\" or \"Honourable Company's Ship\", such as and .\nDuring the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the East India Company arranged for letters of marque for its vessels such as \"Lord Nelson\". This was not so that they could carry cannon to fend off warships, privateers, and pirates on their voyages to India and China (that they could do without permission) but so that, should they have the opportunity to take a prize, they could do so without being guilty of piracy. Similarly, \"Earl of Mornington\", an East India Company packet ship of only six guns, also sailed under a letter of marque.\nIn addition, the company had its own navy, the Bombay Marine, equipped with warships such as . These vessels often accompanied vessels of the Royal Navy on expeditions, such as the Invasion of Java.\nAt the Battle of Pulo Aura, which was probably the company's most notable naval victory, Nathaniel Dance, Commodore of a convoy of Indiamen and sailing aboard the , led several Indiamen in a skirmish with a French squadron, driving them off. Some six years earlier, on 28 January 1797, five Indiamen, \"Woodford\", under Captain Charles Lennox, \"Taunton-Castle\", Captain Edward Studd, \"Canton\", Captain Abel Vyvyan, \"Boddam\", Captain George Palmer, and , Captain John Christian Lochner, had encountered Admiral de Sercey and his squadron of frigates. On this occasion the Indiamen succeeded in bluffing their way to safety, and without any shots even being fired. Lastly, on 15 June 1795, \"General Goddard\" played a large role in the capture of seven Dutch East Indiamen off St Helena.\nEast Indiamen were large and strongly built, and when the Royal Navy was desperate for vessels to escort merchant convoys, it bought several of them to convert to warships. \"Earl of Mornington\" became HMS \"Drake\". Other examples include:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nTheir design as merchant vessels meant that their performance in the warship role was underwhelming and the Navy converted them to transports.\nRecords.\nUnlike all other British Government records, the records from the East India Company (and its successor the India Office) are not in The National Archives at Kew, London, but are held by the British Library in London as part of the Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections. The catalogue is searchable online in the \"Access to Archives\" catalogues. Many of the East India Company records are freely available online under an agreement that the Families in British India Society has with the British Library. Published catalogues exist of East India Company ships' journals and logs, 1600\u20131834; accompanying catalogues also cover the company's daughter institutions, including the East India Company College, Haileybury, and Addiscombe Military Seminary.\n\"The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India and its Dependencies\", first issued in 1816, was sponsored by the East India Company, and includes much information relating to its work.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["43281", "37534"], "permutation_1": ["43281", "37534"], "permutation_2": ["43281", "37534"], "permutation_3": ["43281", "37534"]}
{"id": "2hop__128598_11438", "docs_added": {"13982431": "WNJN-FM\nPublic radio station in New Jersey\nWNJN-FM (89.7 FM) is a radio station licensed to Atlantic City, New Jersey. The station is owned by WHYY, Inc., and simulcasts the public radio news and talk programming of WHYY-FM in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.\nHistory.\nThe station was formerly owned and operated by the New Jersey Network. NJN's radio network began operation May 20, 1991, when WNJT-FM in Trenton signed on. Eight other stations would be established over the following seventeen years.\nOn June 6, 2011, the New Jersey Public Broadcasting Authority agreed to sell five FM stations in southern New Jersey to WHYY. The transaction was announced by Governor Chris Christie, as part of his long-term goal to end State-subsidized public broadcasting. The five stations previously belonged to New Jersey Network's statewide radio service. WHYY assumed control of the stations through a management agreement on July 1, 2011, pending Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval for the acquisition; at that point, the stations began to carry the WHYY-FM schedule.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "106211": "Atlantic City, New Jersey\nCity in Atlantic County, New Jersey, US\nAtlantic City, sometimes referred to by its initials A.C., is a Jersey Shore seaside resort city in Atlantic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.\nAtlantic City comprises the second half of the Atlantic City-Hammonton metropolitan statistical area, which encompasses those cities and all of Atlantic County for statistical purposes. Both Atlantic City and Hammonton, as well as the surrounding Atlantic County, are culturally tied to Philadelphia and constitute part of the larger Philadelphia metropolitan area or Delaware Valley, the nation's seventh-largest metropolitan area as of 2020.\nLocated in South Jersey on Absecon Island and known for its taxis, casinos, nightlife, boardwalk, and Atlantic Ocean beaches and coastline, the city is prominently known as the \"Las Vegas of the East Coast\" and inspired the U.S. version of the board game \"Monopoly\", which uses various Atlantic City street names and destinations in the game. New Jersey voters legalized casino gambling in Atlantic City in 1976, and the first casino opened two years later. From 1921 to 2004, Atlantic City hosted the Miss America pageant, which later returned to the city from 2013 to 2018.\nAs of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 38,497, a decline of 1,061 (\u22122.7%) from the 2010 census count of 39,558, which in turn reflected a decrease of 959 (\u22122.4%) from the 40,517 counted in the 2000 census.\nThe city was incorporated on May 1, 1854, from portions of Egg Harbor Township and Galloway Township. It is located on Absecon Island and borders Absecon, Brigantine, Egg Harbor Township, Galloway Township, Pleasantville, Ventnor City, and the Atlantic Ocean.\nHistory.\nPrior to Atlantic City's founding, the region served as a summer home for the Lenape, a Native American tribe. While the precise date of European settlement in present-day Atlantic City is not precisely determined, it is commonly thought that it was in 1783, when Jeremiah Leeds built and occupied a year-round home there.\n19th century.\nIn 1850, present-day Atlantic City was developed into a resort town. Three years later, in early 1853, it was named Atlantic City.\nBecause of its location in South Jersey, which hugs the Atlantic Ocean between marshlands and islands, Atlantic City was then viewed by developers as prime real estate and a potential resort town. In 1853, the city's first commercial hotel, the Belloe House, was built at the intersection of Massachusetts and Atlantic Avenues.\nThe following year, in 1854, the city was incorporated. The same year, train service began on the Camden and Atlantic Railroad. Built on the edge of the bay, this served as the direct link of this remote parcel of land with Philadelphia, the second-most populous city in the United States at the time and the largest city in Pennsylvania. The same year, construction of the Absecon Lighthouse, designed by George Meade of the Corps of Topographical Engineers, was approved, with work initiated the next year.\nBy 1874, almost 500,000 passengers a year were coming to Atlantic City by rail. In \"Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City\", \"Atlantic City's Godfather\" Jonathan Pitney, known as the \"Father of Atlantic City\", initially sought to develop Atlantic City as a health resort. Pitney persuaded municipal authorities that a railroad to the beach in Atlantic City would be beneficial. His successful business relationship with Samuel Richards, an entrepreneur and member of what was then the most influential family in South Jersey, was designed to construct the railroad with the first 600 riders, who \"were chosen carefully by Samuel Richards and Jonathan Pitney\":\nAfter arriving in Atlantic City, a second train brought the visitors to the door of the resort's first public lodging, the United States Hotel. The hotel was owned by the railroad. It was a sprawling, four-story structure built to house 2,000 guests. It opened while it was still under construction, with only one wing standing, and even that wasn't completed. By year's end, when it was fully constructed, the United States Hotel was not only the first hotel in Atlantic City but also the largest in the nation. Its rooms totaled more than 600, and its grounds covered some 14 acres.\nThe first boardwalk was built in 1870 along a portion of the beach in an effort to help hotel owners keep sand out of their lobbies. Businesses were restricted and the boardwalk was removed each year at the end of the peak season. Because of its effectiveness and popularity, the boardwalk was expanded in length and width, and modified several times in subsequent years.\nPrior to the destructive 1944 Great Atlantic Hurricane, the historic length of the boardwalk was about and it extended from Atlantic City to Longport, through Ventnor and Margate.\nThe first road connecting the city to the mainland at Pleasantville was completed in 1870 and charged a 30-cent toll. Albany Avenue was the first road to the mainland available without a toll.\nBy 1878, because of the growing popularity of the city, one railroad line could no longer keep up with demand. Soon, the Philadelphia and Atlantic City Railway was also constructed to transport tourists to Atlantic City. At this point massive hotels like the United States Hotel and Surf House, as well as smaller rooming houses, had sprung up all over town. The United States Hotel took up a full city block between Atlantic, Pacific, Delaware, and Maryland Avenues. These hotels were not only impressive in size, but featured the most up-to-date amenities, and were considered quite luxurious for their time.\nIn 1883, salt water taffy was conceived in Atlantic City by David Bradley. The traditional story is that Bradley's shop close to the beach was flooded with ocean water after a storm, soaking his taffy. He sold the \"salt water taffy\" to a girl, who walked down to the beach to show her friends. Bradley's mother was in the back of the store when the sale was made, and loved the name, giving the candy its name.\n20th century.\nIn the early 20th century, Atlantic City experienced a radical building boom. Many of the modest boarding houses that dotted the boardwalk were replaced with large hotels. Two of the city's most distinctive hotels were the Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel and the Traymore Hotel.\nIn 1902, Josiah White III bought a parcel of land near Ohio Avenue and the boardwalk, where he started construction and built the Queen Anne style Marlborough House. The hotel was a success. In 1905, he chose to expand the hotel and bought another parcel of land adjacent to his Marlborough House. In an effort to make his new hotel a source of conversation, White hired the architectural firm of Price and McLanahan. The firm made use of reinforced concrete, a new building material invented by Jean-Louis Lambot in 1848, and Joseph Monier received the patent in 1867. The hotel's Spanish and Moorish themes, capped off with its signature dome and chimneys, represented a step forward from other hotels that had a classically designed influence. White named the new hotel the Blenheim and merged the two hotels into the Marlborough-Blenheim. Bally's Atlantic City was later constructed at this location.\nThe Traymore Hotel was located at the corner of Illinois Avenue and the boardwalk. Constructed in 1879 as a small boarding house, the hotel grew through a series of uncoordinated expansions. By 1914, the hotel's owner, Daniel White, Josiah White's half-brother, taking a hint from the Marlborough-Blenheim, commissioned the firm of Price and McLanahan to build an even bigger hotel. Rising 16 stories, the tan brick and gold-capped hotel would become one of the city's best-known landmarks. The hotel made use of ocean-facing hotel rooms by jutting its wings farther from the main portion of the hotel along Pacific Avenue.\nOne by one, additional large hotels were constructed along the boardwalk, including the Brighton, Chelsea, Shelburne, Ambassador, Ritz Carlton, Mayflower, Madison House, and the Breakers. The Quaker-owned Chalfonte House, opened in 1868, and Haddon House, opened in 1869, flanked North Carolina Avenue at the beach end. Over the years, their original wood-frame structures would be enlarged, and even moved closer to the beach. The modern Chalfonte Hotel, eight stories tall, opened in 1904. The modern Haddon Hall was built in stages and was completed in 1929, at eleven stories. By this time, they were under the same ownership and merged into the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall Hotel, becoming the city's largest hotel with nearly 1,000 rooms. By 1930, the Claridge, the city's last large hotel before the casinos, opened its doors.\nThe 400-room Claridge was built by a partnership that included renowned Philadelphia contractor John McShain. At 24 stories, it would become known as the \"Skyscraper by the Sea\".\nWith tourism peaking in the 1920s, the period is often considered by historians to be Atlantic City's golden age. During Prohibition, which was enacted nationally in 1919 and lasted until 1933, much liquor was consumed and gambling regularly took place in the back rooms of nightclubs and restaurants. During Prohibition, racketeer and political boss Enoch L. \"Nucky\" Johnson rose to power. Prohibition was largely unenforced in Atlantic City. Because alcohol that had been smuggled into the city with the implicit approval of local officials, it was easily obtained at restaurants and other establishments, and the resort's popularity grew further. The city then dubbed itself as \"The World's Playground\". Nucky Johnson's income, which reached as much as $500,000 annually, came from the kickbacks he took on illegal liquor, gambling and prostitution operating in the city, as well as from kickbacks on construction projects.\nDuring this time, Atlantic City was led by mayor Edward L. Bader, known for his contributions to the construction, athletics and aviation of Atlantic City. Despite opposition, he had Atlantic City purchase the land that became the city's municipal airport and high school football stadium, both of which were later named Bader Field in his honor. He led the initiative, in 1923, to construct the Atlantic City High School at Albany and Atlantic Avenues. Bader, in November 1923, initiated a public referendum, during the general election, at which time residents approved the construction of a Convention Center. The city passed an ordinance approving a bond issue for $1.5\u00a0million to be used for the purchase of land for Convention Hall, now known as the Boardwalk Hall, finalized on September 30, 1924. Bader was also a driving force behind the creation of the Miss America competition.\nIn May 1929, Johnson hosted a conference for organized crime figures from all across America that created a National Crime Syndicate. The men who called this meeting were Masseria family lieutenant Charles \"Lucky\" Luciano and former Chicago South Side Gang boss Johnny \"the Fox\" Torrio, with heads of the Bugs and Meyer Mob, Meyer Lansky and Benjamin Siegel, being used as muscle for the meeting.\nGangster and businessman Al Capone attended the conference and was photographed walking along the Atlantic City boardwalk with Johnson.\nThe 1930s through the 1960s were a heyday for nightclub entertainment. Popular venues on the white-populated south side included the 500 Club, the Clicquot Club, and the Jockey Club. In the Northside neighborhood, home to African Americans in the racially segregated city, a black entertainment district reigned on Kentucky Avenue.\nFour major nightclubs, Club Harlem, the Paradise Club, Grace's Little Belmont, and Wonder Gardens, drew both black and white patrons. During the summer tourist season, jazz and R&B music could be heard into the wee hours of the morning. Soul food restaurants and ribs joints also lined Kentucky Avenue, including Wash's Restaurant, Jerry's and Sap's.\nLike many older East Coast cities after World War II, Atlantic City became plagued with poverty, crime, corruption, and general economic decline in the mid-to-late 20th century. The neighborhood known as the \"Inlet\" became particularly impoverished. The reasons for the resort's decline were multi-layered. First, the automobile became more readily available to many Americans after the war. Atlantic City had initially relied upon visitors coming by train and staying for a couple of weeks. The car allowed them to come and go as they pleased, and many people would spend only a few days, rather than weeks. The advent of suburbia also played a significant role. With many families moving to their own private houses, luxuries such as home air conditioning and swimming pools diminished their interest in flocking to the luxury beach resorts during the hot summer. Finally, the rise of relatively cheap jet airline service allowed visitors to travel to year-round resort places such as Miami Beach and the Bahamas.\nThe city hosted the 1964 Democratic National Convention which nominated Lyndon Johnson for president and Hubert Humphrey as vice president. The convention and the press coverage it generated, however, cast a harsh light on Atlantic City, which by then was in the midst of a long period of economic decline. Many felt that the friendship between Johnson and Governor of New Jersey Richard J. Hughes led Atlantic City to host the Democratic Convention.\nBy the late 1960s, many of the resort's once great hotels were suffering from high vacancy rates. Most of them were either shut down, converted to cheap apartments, or converted to nursing home facilities by the end of the decade. Prior to and during the advent of legalized gambling, many of these hotels were demolished. The Breakers, The Chelsea, the Brighton, the Shelburne, the Mayflower, the Traymore and the Marlborough-Blenheim were demolished in the 1970s and 1980s. Of the many pre-casino resorts that bordered the boardwalk, only the Claridge, the Dennis, the Ritz-Carlton, and the Haddon Hall survive to this day as parts of Bally's Atlantic City, a condo complex, and Resorts Atlantic City. The old Ambassador Hotel was purchased by Ramada in 1978 and was gutted to become the Tropicana Casino and Resort Atlantic City, only reusing the steelwork of the original building. Smaller hotels off the boardwalk, such as the Madison also survived.\nLegalized gambling.\nIn an effort at revitalizing the city, New Jersey voters in 1976 passed a referendum, approving casino gambling for Atlantic City; this came after a 1974 referendum on legalized gambling failed to pass. Immediately after the legislation passed, the owners of the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall Hotel began converting it into the Resorts International. It was the first legal casino in the eastern United States when it opened on May 26, 1978.\nOther casinos were soon constructed along the Boardwalk and, later, in the marina district for a total of nine today. The introduction of gambling did not, however, quickly eliminate many of the urban problems that plagued Atlantic City. Many people have suggested that it only served to exacerbate those problems, as attested to by the stark contrast between tourism intensive areas and the adjacent impoverished working-class neighborhoods.\nWhile Atlantic City has been less popular than Las Vegas as a gambling city in the United States, Donald Trump helped bring big name boxing bouts to the city to attract customers to his casinos. Mike Tyson fought most of his fights in Atlantic City in the 1980s, which helped Atlantic City achieve national attention as a gambling resort and vacation destination.\nSeveral highrise condominiums were built for use as permanent residences or second homes. By end of the decade, it was one of the most popular tourist destinations in the United States.\n21st century.\nLegalized sports betting.\nOn June 27, 2017, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear \"Christie v. National Collegiate Athletic Association\" and heard oral arguments in December 2017. Then, on May 14, 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) was unconstitutional. The act was overturned, allowing New Jersey to move ahead with plans to implement legalized sports betting.\nDespite being the state to initiate the landmark ruling, New Jersey was actually the third state to legalize sports betting after Nevada and Delaware. In June 2018, New Jersey governor Phil Murphy signed the legislation into law, and several New Jersey\u2013based casino brands subsequently opened sportsbooks, especially in Atlantic City.\nWith the redevelopment of the Las Vegas Strip and the opening of Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun in Connecticut in the early 1990s, along with newly built casinos in the nearby Philadelphia metro area in the 2000s, Atlantic City's tourism began to decline due to its failure to diversify away from gambling. In 1999 the Atlantic City Redevelopment Authority partnered with Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn to develop a new roadway to a barren section of the city near the Marina. Nicknamed \"The Tunnel Project\", Steve Wynn planned the proposed 'Mirage Atlantic City' around the idea that he would connect the $330\u00a0million tunnel stretching from the Atlantic City Expressway to his new resort. The roadway was later officially named the Atlantic City-Brigantine Connector, and funnels incoming traffic off of the expressway into the city's marina district and the city of Brigantine.\nAlthough Wynn's plans for development in the city were scrapped in 2002, the tunnel opened in 2001. The new roadway prompted Boyd Gaming in partnership with MGM/Mirage to build Atlantic City's newest casino. Borgata opened in July 2003, and its success brought an influx of developers to Atlantic City with plans for building grand, Las Vegas-style mega casinos to revitalize the aging city.\nOwing to economic conditions and the late 2000s recession, many of the proposed mega casinos never advanced further than the initial planning stage. One of these developers was Pinnacle Entertainment, which purchased the Sands Atlantic City for $250\u2013$270 million and closed it on November 11, 2006 with plans to replace it with a larger casino. The following year, the resort was demolished in an implosion, the first of its kind in Atlantic City. While Pinnacle Entertainment intended to replace it with a $1.5-$2-billion casino resort, the company canceled its construction plans and sold the land for $29.5 million. MGM Resorts International announced in October 2007 that it would pull out of all development for Atlantic City, effectively ending its plans for the MGM Grand Atlantic City.\nIn 2006, Morgan Stanley purchased directly north of the Showboat Atlantic City for a new $2-billion-plus casino resort. Revel Entertainment Group was named as the project's developer for the Revel Casino. Revel was hindered with many problems, the biggest setback occurring in April 2010 when Morgan Stanley, the owner of 90% of Revel Entertainment Group, decided to discontinue funding for continued construction and put its stake in Revel up for sale. Early in 2010, the New Jersey state legislature passed a bill offering tax incentives to attract new investors and complete the job, but a poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind released in March 2010 showed that 60% of voters opposed the legislation, and two of three of those who opposed it \"strongly\" opposed it. Ultimately, Governor Chris Christie offered Revel $261\u00a0million in state tax credits to assist the casino once it opened.\nRevel completed all of the exterior work and had continued work on the interior after finally receiving the funding necessary to complete construction, and had a soft opening in April 2012 before being fully open the next month. Ten months later, in February 2013, after serious losses and a write-down in the value of the resort from $2.4\u00a0billion to $450\u00a0million, Revel filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It was restructured but still could not carry on and re-entered bankruptcy on June 19, 2014. It was put up for sale, however as no suitable bids were received the resort closed its doors in September 2014. The property was bought by AC Ocean Walk, LLC for $200\u00a0million in 2017, and reopened in 2018 as Ocean Casino Resort.\nIn the wake of the closures and declining revenue from casinos, Governor Christie said in September 2014 that the state would consider a 2015 referendum to end the 40-year-old monopoly that Atlantic City holds on casino gambling and allowing gambling in other municipalities. With casino revenue declining from $5.2\u00a0billion in 2006 to $2.9\u00a0billion in 2013, the state saw a drop in money from its 8% tax on those earnings, which is used to fund programs for senior citizens and the disabled.\nOn October 29, 2012, \"Superstorm Sandy\" struck Atlantic City and caused flooding and power-outages but left minimal damage to any of the tourist areas. The storm produced an all-time record low barometric pressure reading of 943 mb (27.85\") for not only Atlantic City, but the state of New Jersey.\nIn 2019, the Atlantic City area had the highest rates of foreclosures in the nation. This has disproportionately affected Black residents in neighborhoods segregated by redlining, a legacy that is mirrored by the values of properties on the Monopoly game board.\nAfter several casino closures and the COVID-19 pandemic, strikes and pickets were being threatened in June 2022 by casino employees which were short-staffed and wanted pay raises.\nFood desert.\nAtlantic City is widely known as a food desert, with the nearest fully-functioning supermarket being located in neighboring Ventnor City, which is away from the majority of Atlantic City's population. As a result, proposals for a supermarket were floated beginning in May 2021, and Atlantic City's City Council gave permission to the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority to look for a contender to build a supermarket.\nAs of December 2023, there was only one functioning supermarket in Atlantic City, the Save-A-Lot food store located in Renaissance Plaza, an area of the city known for its significant homeless population and drug use. The Casino Reinvestment Development Authority has proposed a new supermarket that would be located on an empty parking lot behind the Tanger Outlets and near the Atlantic City Expressway.\nGroundbreaking for a ShopRite supermarket had taken place in October 2021, after Village Super Market received $18.7 million from the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority to construct the store. The supermarket was expected to be completed by December 2022, although no construction or building had happened on the site, which drew attention from residents. After the time for the contract expired, the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA) announced that the deal with Village Super Market (VSM) was dead and that they were looking for new contenders. VSM created a new plan for CRDA and the city's Council to review and by July 2023, it and a Chinese conglomerate headquartered in Hong Kong emerged as the two candidates to build the supermarket. However, as of November 2023, no further progress had been made on the construction plans and the two proposals were still \"being reviewed.\"\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, Atlantic City had a total area of 17.21 square miles (44.59\u00a0km2), including 10.76 square miles (27.87\u00a0km2) of land and 6.45 square miles (16.72\u00a0km2) of water (37.50%).\nThe city is located on Absecon Island, along with Ventnor City, Margate City and Longport to the southwest.\nAtlantic City borders the Atlantic County municipalities of Absecon, Brigantine, Egg Harbor Township, Galloway Township, Pleasantville, and Ventnor City.\nThe city is located southeast of Philadelphia and south of New York City.\nUnincorporated communities, localities and place names located partially or completely within the city include Chelsea, City Island, Great Island and Venice Park.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen climate classification system, Atlantic City has a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\") with warm, moderately humid summers, cool winters and year-around precipitation. Cfa climates are characterized by all months having an average mean temperature above , at least four months with an average mean temperature at or above , at least one month with an average mean temperature at or above and no significant precipitation difference between seasons. During the summer months in Atlantic City, a cooling afternoon sea breeze is present on most days, but episodes of extreme heat and humidity can occur with heat index values at or above . During the winter months, episodes of extreme cold and wind can occur with wind chill values below . The plant hardiness zone at Atlantic City Beach is 7b with an average annual extreme minimum air temperature of . The average seasonal (November\u2013April) snowfall total is , and the average snowiest month is February which corresponds with the annual peak in nor'easter activity.\nEcology.\nAccording to the A. W. Kuchler U.S. potential natural vegetation types, Atlantic City would have a dominant vegetation type of Northern Cordgrass (\"73\") with a dominant vegetation form of Coastal Prairie (\"20\").\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nThe 2010 United States census counted 39,558 people, 15,504 households, and 8,558 families in the city. The population density was . There were 20,013 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup was 26.65% (10,543) White, 38.29% (15,148) Black or African American, 0.61% (242) Native American, 15.55% (6,153) Asian, 0.05% (18) Pacific Islander, 14.03% (5,549) from other races, and 4.82% (1,905) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 30.45% (12,044) of the population.\nOf the 15,504 households, 27.3% had children under the age of 18; 25.9% were married couples living together; 22.2% had a female householder with no husband present and 44.8% were non-families. Of all households, 37.5% were made up of individuals and 14.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.50 and the average family size was 3.34.\nPeople under the age of 18 account for 24.6%, 10.2% from 18 to 24, 26.8% from 25 to 44, 25.8% from 45 to 64, and 12.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36.3 years. For every 100 females, the population had 96.2 males. For every 100 females ages 18 and older there were 94.4 males.\nThe Census Bureau's 2006\u20132010 American Community Survey showed that (in 2010 inflation-adjusted dollars) median household income was $30,237 (with a margin of error of +/\u2212 $2,354) and the median family income was $35,488 (+/\u2212 $2,607). Males had a median income of $32,207 (+/\u2212 $1,641) versus $29,298 (+/\u2212 $1,380) for females. The per capita income for the city was $20,069 (+/\u2212 $2,532). About 23.1% of families and 25.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 36.6% of those under age 18 and 16.8% of those age 65 or over.\n2000 census.\nAs of the 2000 United States census, there were 40,517 people, 15,848 households, and 8,700 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 20,219 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 44.16% black or African American, 26.68% White, 0.48% Native American, 10.40% Asian, 0.06% Pacific Islander, 13.76% other races, and 4.47% from two or more races. 24.95% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. 19.44% of the population was non-Hispanic whites.\nThere were 15,848 households, out of which 27.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 24.8% were married couples living together, 23.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 37.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 15.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.46 and the average family size was 3.26.\nIn the city the age distribution of the population shows 25.7% under the age of 18, 8.9% from 18 to 24, 31.0% from 25 to 44, 20.2% from 45 to 64, and 14.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females, there were 96.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.2 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $26,969, and the median income for a family was $31,997. Males had a median income of $25,471 versus $23,863 for females. The per capita income for the city was $15,402. About 19.1% of families and 23.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 29.1% of those under age 18 and 18.9% of those age 65 or over.\nEconomy.\nIn September 2014, the greater Atlantic City area had one of the highest unemployment rates in the country at 13.8%, out of a labor force of around 141,000.\nTourism district.\nIn July 2010, Governor Chris Christie announced that a state takeover of the city and local government \"was imminent\". Comparing regulations in Atlantic City to an \"antique car\", Atlantic City regulatory reform was a key piece of Governor Chris Christie's plan to reinvigorate an industry mired in a four-year slump in revenue and hammered by fresh competition from casinos in the surrounding states of Delaware, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and more recently, Maryland. In January 2011, Chris Christie announced the creation of the Atlantic City Tourism District, a state-run district encompassing the boardwalk casinos, the marina casinos, the Atlantic City Outlets, and Bader Field. Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind poll surveyed New Jersey voters' attitudes on the takeover. A February 2011 survey showed that 43% opposed the measure while 29% favored direct state oversight. The poll also found that even South Jersey voters expressed opposition to the plan; 40% reported they opposed the measure and 37% reported they were in favor of it.\nOn April 29, 2011, the boundaries for the state-run tourism district were set. The district would include heavier police presence, as well as beautification projects and infrastructure improvements. The CRDA would oversee all functions of the district and make changes to attract new businesses and attractions. New construction has already resulted in cases of eminent domain being used to seize properties for development.\nThe tourism district would comprise several key areas in the city: the Marina District, Ducktown, Chelsea, South Inlet, Bader Field, and Gardner's Basin. Also included are 10 roadways that lead into the district, including several in the city's northern end, or North Beach. Gardner's Basin, which is home to the Atlantic City Aquarium, was initially left out of the tourism district, while a residential neighborhood in the Chelsea section was removed from the final boundaries, owing to complaints from the city. Also, the inclusion of Bader Field in the district was controversial and received much scrutiny from mayor Lorenzo Langford, who cast the lone \"no\" vote on the creation of the district citing its inclusion.\nCasinos and gambling.\nThe history of gambling in Atlantic City traces back to Prohibition and the 1920s, with racketeer Louis Kuehnle running an underground hotel and casino. Enoch \"Nucky\" Johnson followed and furthered Atlantic City's rise through the Roaring Twenties as a destination for drinking, gambling, and nightlife. In 1974, New Jersey voters voted 60%\u201340% against legalizing casino gambling at four sites statewide, but two years later approved by 56%\u201344% a new referendum which legalized casinos, but restricted them to Atlantic City. Resorts Atlantic City was the first casino to open, in May 1978, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony featuring Governor of New Jersey Brendan Byrne. Atlantic City is considered the \"Gambling Capital of the East Coast\", and currently has nine large casinos. In 2011, New Jersey's then 12 casinos employed approximately 33,000 employees, had 28.5\u00a0million visitors, made $3.3\u00a0billion in gaming revenue, and paid $278\u00a0million in taxes. They are regulated by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission and the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement.\nIn the wake of the economic downturn following the Great Recession and the legalization of gambling in adjacent and nearby states (including Delaware, Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania), four casino closures took place in 2014: the Atlantic Club on January 13; the Showboat on August 31; the Revel, which was Atlantic City's second-newest casino, on September 2; and Trump Plaza, which originally opened in 1984, and was the poorest performing casino in the city, on September 16.\nExecutives at Trump Entertainment Resorts, whose sole remaining property at the time was the Trump Taj Mahal, said in 2013 that they were considering the option of selling the Taj and winding down and exiting the gaming and hotel business. Trump Taj Mahal closed October 10, 2016, after failing to come to terms with union workers.\nCaesars Entertainment executives have been reconsidering the future of their three remaining Atlantic City properties (Bally's, Caesars and Harrah's), in the wake of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by the company's casino operating unit in January 2015. In 2020, Bally's Atlantic City was acquired by Bally's Corporation. Gross gaming revenue of the city's nine operating casinos in 2022 totaled $2.79 billion, a 9% increase from the $2.55 billion earned the previous year.\na The Wild Wild West Casino, which opened on July 2, 1997, and has an American Old West theme, was part of Bally's Atlantic City until 2020, when it became part of Caesars.\nBoardwalk.\nThe Atlantic City Boardwalk opened on June 26, 1870, a temporary structure erected for the summer season that was the first boardwalk in the world. At long, the Atlantic City Boardwalk is also the world's longest and busiest boardwalk.\nThe Boardwalk starts at Absecon Inlet in the north and runs along the beach south-west to the city limit away then continues into Ventnor City. Casino/hotels front the boardwalk, as well as retail stores, restaurants, and amusements. Notable attractions include the Boardwalk Hall, House of Blues, and the Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum.\nIn October 2012, Hurricane Sandy destroyed the northern part of the boardwalk fronting Absecon Inlet, in the residential section called South Inlet. The oceanfront boardwalk in front of the Atlantic City casinos survived the storm with minimal damage.\nThe first pier along the boardwalk, Applegate's Pier, opened in 1884. It was acquired by John L. Young in 1891, who expanded and operated it as Young's Ocean Pier, but it was mostly destroyed in a 1912 fire. The remaining part of the pier was rebuilt in 1922 as the Central Pier, which is still in operation.\nA Heinz-owned pier named Heinz Pier was destroyed in the 1944 Great Atlantic hurricane.\nThe most famous Atlantic City pier was Steel Pier, which opened in 1898, and which once billed itself as \"The Showplace of the Nation\". It closed in 1978, and was mostly destroyed in a 1982 fire. It was rebuilt in the late 1980s and is now operated as an amusement pier across from the Hard Rock.\nSteeplechase Pier opened in 1899 and operated until 1986. It suffered significant damage in a 1988 fire, and the remnants of the pier were removed in 1996. The \"Steeplechase Pier Heliport\" on Steel Pier is named in its honor.\nCaptain John L. Young opened \"Young's Million Dollar Pier\" in 1906, and on the seaward side \"erected a marble mansion\", fronted by a formal garden, with lighting and landscaping designed by Young's longtime friend Thomas Alva Edison. Million Dollar Pier once rivaled Steel Pier as Atlantic City's leading pier, but after suffering decades of decline, was rebuilt into a shopping mall in the 1980s, known as \"Shops on Ocean One\". In 2006, the Ocean One mall was bought, renovated and re-branded as \"The Pier Shops at Caesars\" and in 2015, it was renamed \"Playground Pier\". In September 2023, it was renamed \"ACX1 Studios\" for the film and entertainment production studios that took over the building, with a planned grand reopening containing a mixture of retail, restaurants, creative space, and production studios in summer of 2024.\nGarden Pier, located opposite Ocean Casino Resort, once housed a movie theater, and is now home to the Atlantic City Historical Museum.\nShopping.\nAtlantic City has many different shopping districts and malls, many of which are located inside or adjacent to the casino resorts. Several smaller themed retail and dining areas in casino hotels include the Borgata Shops and The Shoppes at Water Club inside Borgata, the Waterfront Shops inside of Harrah's, Spice Road inside the Trump Taj Mahal, while Resorts Casino Hotel has a small collection of stores and restaurants. Major shopping malls are also located in and around Atlantic City.\nAtlantic City shops include:\nExhibition.\nBoardwalk Hall, formally known as the \"Historic Atlantic City Convention Hall\", is an arena in Atlantic City along the boardwalk. Boardwalk Hall was Atlantic City's primary convention center until the opening of the Atlantic City Convention Center in 1997. The Atlantic City Convention Center includes of showroom space, 5 exhibit halls, 45 meeting rooms with of space, a garage with 1,400 parking spaces, and an adjacent Sheraton hotel. Both the Boardwalk Hall and Convention Center are operated by the Atlantic City Convention & Visitors Authority.\nArts and culture.\n\"Monopoly\".\nAtlantic City (sometimes referred to as \"Monopoly City\") has become well-known over the years for its portrayal in the U.S. version of the popular board game \"Monopoly\", in which properties on the board are named after locations in and near Atlantic City. While the original incarnation of the game did not feature Atlantic City, it was in Indianapolis that Ruth Hoskins learned the game, and took it back to Atlantic City. After she arrived, Hoskins made a new board with Atlantic City street names, and taught it to a group of friends, who ultimately passed in on to Charles Darrow, who made some modifications to the game and claimed it as his own invention. The relative prices of the places on the board reflect to some extent the social status of neighborhoods at the time, with wealthy white streets being worth more, and streets where Black and Asian residents lived being cheaper.\nMarvin Gardens, the leading yellow property on the board, is actually a misspelling of the original location name, \"Marven Gardens\". The misspelling was said to have been introduced by Charles Todd and passed on when his home-made \"Monopoly\" board was copied by Charles Darrow and thence Parker Brothers. It was not until 1995 that Parker Brothers acknowledged this mistake and formally apologized to the residents of Marven Gardens for the misspelling, although the spelling error was not corrected.\nSome of the actual locations that correspond to board elements have changed since the game's release. Illinois Avenue was renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in the 1980s. St. Charles Place no longer exists, as the Showboat Casino Hotel was developed where it once ran.\nThe \"Short Line\" is believed to refer to the Shore Fast Line, a streetcar line that served Atlantic City, or a bus route. The B&O Railroad did not serve Atlantic City. A booklet included with the reprinted 1935 edition states that the four railroads that served Atlantic City in the mid-1930s were the Jersey Central, the Seashore Lines, the Reading Railroad, and the Pennsylvania Railroad.\nThe actual \"Electric Company\" and \"Water Works\" serving the city are the Atlantic City Electric Company and the Atlantic City Municipal Utilities Authority, respectively.\nAttractions.\nEver since Atlantic City's growth as a resort town, numerous attractions and tourist traps have originated in the city. A popular fixture in the early 20th century at the Steel Pier was horse diving, which was introduced by William \"Doc\" Carver. The Steel Pier featured several other novelty attractions, including the Diving Bell, human high-divers and a water circus. Advertisements for the Steel Pier in its heyday featured plaster sculptures set upon wooden bases along roads leading up to Atlantic City. By the end of World War II, many animal demonstrations declined in popularity after criticisms of animal abuse and neglect.\nRolling chairs, which were introduced in 1876 and in continuous use since 1887, have been a boardwalk fixture to this day. While powered carts appeared in the 1960s, the original and most common were made of wicker. The wicker canopied chairs-on-wheels are manually pushed the length of the boardwalk by attendants, much like a rickshaw. A tram service was introduced in 2015, initially using the warning announcements that had been used on Wildwood's tram cars until it was changed after complaints from Wildwood.\nThe Absecon Lighthouse is a coastal lighthouse located in the South Inlet section of Atlantic City overlooking Absecon Inlet. It is the tallest lighthouse in the state of New Jersey and is the third tallest masonry lighthouse in the United States. Construction began in 1854, with the light first lit on January 15, 1857. The lighthouse was deactivated in 1933 and although the light still shines every night, it is no longer an active navigational aid. Gardner's Basin, which is home to the Atlantic City Aquarium as well as small shops and restaurants, is located a short distance north of Absecon Light.\nWhile located south of Atlantic City in Margate City, Lucy the Elephant has become almost an icon for the Atlantic City area. Lucy is a six-story elephant-shaped example of novelty architecture, constructed of wood and tin sheeting in 1882 by James V. Lafferty in an effort to sell real estate and attract tourism. Over the years, Lucy had served as a restaurant, business office, cottage, and tavern (the last closed by Prohibition). Lucy had fallen into disrepair by the 1960s and was scheduled for demolition. The structure was moved and refurbished as a result of a \"Save Lucy\" campaign in 1970 and received designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1976, and is open as a museum.\nMiss America pageant.\nAtlantic City was the home of the Miss America competition, hosting the event from its inception until 2004, and again from 2013 to 2018. The Miss America competition originated on September 7, 1921, as a two-day beauty contest, and it included state contestants as well as women from various cities around the country. The event that year was called the \"Atlantic City Pageant\", and the winner of the grand prize, Margaret Gorman, took home the 3-foot Golden Mermaid trophy. Gorman was not called \"Miss America\" until 1922, when she re-entered the pageant and lost to Mary Campbell. The pageant was initiated to extend the tourist season after the Labor Day weekend. The pageant has been nationally televised since 1954. It peaked in the early 1960s, when it was repeatedly the highest-rated program on American television. It was seen as a symbol of the United States, with Miss America often being referred to as the female equivalent of the President. The pageant's longtime emcee, Bert Parks, hosted the event from 1955 to 1979. At the Atlantic City Convention Center, there is a interactive statue of Parks holding a crown. When a visitor puts their head inside the crown, sensors activate a recorded playback of his \"There She Is...\" line through speakers hidden behind nearby bushes.\n\"Boardwalk Empire\".\nThe television show \"Boardwalk Empire\", an American series from cable network HBO set in Atlantic City during the Prohibition era, raised interest in the Roaring Twenties-era city. Starring Steve Buscemi, the show was adapted from a chapter about historical criminal kingpin Enoch \"Nucky\" Johnson (who is renamed \"Enoch Thompson\" in the show) in Nelson Johnson's book, \"Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City\".\nThe Orange Loop.\nThe Orange Loop is a neighborhood near the beach in Atlantic City with a focus on live music establishments like Anchor Rock Club and Tennessee Beer Hall.\nIt runs perpendicular from the boardwalk inland roughly to St. Nicholas of Tolentine Church.\nIt is bounded by Tennessee Avenue, St. James Place, Pacific Avenue and the boardwalk, and derives its name from the orange color of those streets on a traditional Monopoly gameboard. The Orange Loop Amphitheater hosted the Frantic City indie rock music festival on the loop in 2022.\nSports.\nThe Atlantic City Race Course in Hamilton Township was a horse racing track that operated from 1946 to 2015.\nThe ShopRite LPGA Classic is an LPGA Tour women's golf tournament held near Atlantic City since it started in 1986.\nProfessional boxing.\nSince February 2, 1887, the city of Atlantic City has seen 2,538 (as of September 2018) professional boxing fight programs, the first one being one with a main event fight between Willie Clark, 3-0-3, and debuting Horace Leeds, won by Clark on points over four rounds. During the 1980s, professional boxing activity boomed in Atlantic City, at times rivaling Las Vegas, Nevada, in staging major boxing fights. Fighters who fought in Atlantic City at that era include Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns, Wilfredo G\u00f3mez, Jeff Chandler, Larry Holmes, George Foreman, Mike Tyson and others. Fights included The Brawl For it All, Tyson versus Holmes, Tyson versus Michael Spinks, and Roberto Dur\u00e1n versus Iran Barkley. Many boxing matches were held at Donald Trump's Trump Plaza, promoted either by Bob Arum or Don King.\nParks and recreation.\nAtlantic City is one of five municipalities in the state\u2014and the only one outside of Cape May County\u2014that offer free public access to oceanfront beaches monitored by lifeguards, joining Wildwood, North Wildwood, Wildwood Crest and Upper Township's Strathmere section.\nGovernment.\nLocal government.\nAtlantic City is governed within the Faulkner Act (formally known as the Optional Municipal Charter Law) under the Mayor-Council system of municipal government (Plan D), implemented by direct petition effective as of July 1, 1982. The city is one of 71 municipalities (of the 564) statewide governed under this form. The governing body of Atlantic City comprises the Mayor and the City Council, all elected on a partisan basis to serve four-year terms of office as part of the November general election. The council includes nine members, who are elected on a staggered basis, with one member from each of six wards and three serving at-large. The six ward seats are up for election together and the mayoral seat and the council at-large seats are up for vote together two years later. The City Council exercises the legislative power of the municipality for the purpose of holding Council meetings to introduce ordinances and resolutions to regulate City government. In addition, Council members review budgets submitted by the Mayor; provide for an annual audit of the city's accounts and financial transactions; organize standing committees and hold public hearings to address important issues which impact Atlantic City. Former Mayor Bob Levy created the Atlantic City Ethics Board in 2007, but the Board was dissolved two years later by vote of the Atlantic City Council.\nAs of 2024[ [update]], the Mayor is Democrat Marty Small Sr., whose term of office ends December 31, 2025. Small succeeded Frank M. Gilliam Jr. following his resignation on October 3, 2019. Small initially served as mayor on an interim basis for an unexpired term ending on December 31, 2021. Members of the City Council are Council President Council President Aaron \"Sporty\" Randolph (D, 2027; 1st Ward), Council Vice President Kaleem Shabazz (D, 2027; 3rd Ward), George \"Animal\" Crouch (D, 2027; 4th Ward), LaToya Dunston (D, 2027; Second Ward \u2013 elected to serve an unexpired term), Jesse O. Kurtz (R, 2027; 6th Ward), Stephanie Marshall (D, 2025; At-Large), George Tibbitt (D, 2025; At-Large), Bruce Weekes (D, 2025; At-Large) and Maria Lacca (R, 2027; 5th Ward).\nIn 2024, Democrat Muhammed \"Anjum\" Zia, who served as a councilman for the 5th ward, was removed from office after it was found the he did not reside in Atlantic City, but instead with his family in Egg Harbor Township. He was ousted from the city council, and in a court-ordered special election that November, Republican Maria Lacca, who brought about the investigation against Zia, flipped the seat, becoming the first Republican to win it since 1988. She became one out of two Republicans now currently on Atlantic City's council, with the other being councilman Jesse O. Kurtz of the 6th ward.\nIn May 2020, voters rejected by a 3\u20131 margin a referendum that would have changed the city to a council-manager form of government which would have reduced the size of the city council and shifted responsibility for day-to-day operation from an elected mayor to an appointed city manager.\nIn December 2019, LaToya Dunston was selected from a list of three candidates nominated by the Democratic municipal committee to serve the remainder of the term of the Second Ward seat that had been held by Marty Small until he stepped down when he was appointed as mayor. In January 2020, Dunston was appointed to fill the Second Ward seat expiring in December 2023 that Small had won in November 2019 but declined to fill; Dunston will serve on an interim basis until the November 2020 general election, when voters will select a candidate to serve the balance of the term of office.\nMayoral disappearance and resignation.\nFollowing questions about false claims he had made about his military record, Mayor Bob Levy left City Hall in September 2007 in a city-owned vehicle for an unknown destination. After a 13-day absence, his lawyer revealed that Levy was in Carrier Clinic, a rehabilitation hospital. Levy resigned in October 2007 and then-Council President William Marsh assumed the office of Mayor and served six weeks until an interim mayor was named.\nFederal, state and county representation.\nAtlantic City is located in the 2nd Congressional district and is part of New Jersey's 2nd state legislative district.\nFor the 119th United States Congress, New Jersey congressional district is represented by Jeff Van Drew (R, Dennis Township). New Jersey is represented in the United States Senate by Democrats Cory Booker (Newark, term ends 2027) and Andy Kim (Moorestown, term ends 2031).\nFor the 2024-2025 session, the 2nd legislative district of the New Jersey Legislature is represented in the New Jersey Senate by Vincent J. Polistina (R, Egg Harbor Township) and in the General Assembly by Don Guardian (R, Atlantic City) and Claire Swift (R, Margate City).\nAtlantic County is governed by a directly elected county executive and a nine-member Board of County Commissioners, responsible for legislation. The executive serves a four-year term and the commissioners are elected to staggered three-year terms, of which four are elected from the county on an at-large basis and five of the commissioners represent equally populated districts. As of 2025[ [update]], Atlantic County's Executive is Dennis Levinson (R, Northfield), whose term of office ends December 31, 2027. Members of the Board of County Commissioners are:\nErnest D. Coursey (D, District 1-- Atlantic City, Egg Harbor Township (part), Longport, Margate City, and Ventnor City; 2025, Atlantic City), Chair Maureen Kern (R, District 2-- Egg Harbor Township (part), Linwood, Northfield, Somers Point and Pleasantville; 2027, Somers Point), Andrew Parker III (R, District 3-- Egg Harbor Township (part) and Hamilton Township (part); 2026, Egg Harbor Township), Richard R. Dase (R, District 4, including Brigantine, Galloway Township, Egg Harbor Township (part), and Port Republic; 2025, Galloway Township), Vice Chair James A. Bertino (R, District 5-- Buena, Buena Vista Township, Corbin City, Egg Harbor City, Estell Manor, Folsom, Hamilton Township (part), Hammonton, Mullica Township and Weymouth Township; 2027, Hammonton), June Byrnes (R, At-Large; 2026, Linwood), Michael Ruffu (R, At-Large; Margate, 2027) Amy L. Gatto (R, At-large; 2025, Hamilton Township) and John W. Risley (R, At-Large; 2026, Egg Harbor Township)\nAtlantic County's constitutional officers are: \nClerk Joesph J. Giralo (R, 2026, Hammonton), \nSheriff Joe O'Donoghue (R, 2026, Egg Harbor Township) and \nSurrogate James Curcio (R, 2025, Hammonton).\nPolitics.\nAs of March 23, 2011, there were a total of 20,001 registered voters in Atlantic City, of which 12,063 (60.3% vs. 30.5% countywide) were registered as Democrats, 1,542 (7.7% vs. 25.2%) were registered as Republicans and 6,392 (32.0% vs. 44.3%) were registered as Unaffiliated. There were 4 voters registered to other parties. Among the city's 2010 Census population, 50.6% (vs. 58.8% in Atlantic County) were registered to vote, including 67.0% of those ages 18 and over (vs. 76.6% countywide).\nIn the 2012 presidential election, Democrat Barack Obama received 9,948 votes (86.6% vs. 57.9% countywide), ahead of Republican Mitt Romney with 1,548 votes (13.5% vs. 41.1%) and other candidates with 49 votes (0.4% vs. 0.9%), among the 11,489 ballots cast by the city's 21,477 registered voters, for a turnout of 53.5% (vs. 65.8% in Atlantic County). In the 2008 presidential election, Democrat Barack Obama received 10,975 votes (82.1% vs. 56.5% countywide), ahead of Republican John McCain with 2,175 votes (16.3% vs. 41.6%) and other candidates with 82 votes (0.6% vs. 1.1%), among the 13,370 ballots cast by the city's 26,030 registered voters, for a turnout of 51.4% (vs. 68.1% in Atlantic County). In the 2004 presidential election, Democrat John Kerry received 8,487 votes (74.5% vs. 52.0% countywide), ahead of Republican George W. Bush with 2,687 votes (23.6% vs. 46.2%) and other candidates with 96 votes (0.8% vs. 0.8%), among the 11,389 ballots cast by the city's 23,310 registered voters, for a turnout of 48.9% (vs. 69.8% in the whole county).\nIn the 2013 gubernatorial election, Democrat Barbara Buono received 4,293 ballots cast (52.6% vs. 34.9% countywide), ahead of Republican Chris Christie with 2,897 votes (35.5% vs. 60.0%) and other candidates with 63 votes (0.8% vs. 1.3%), among the 8,155 ballots cast by the city's 23,049 registered voters, yielding a 35.4% turnout (vs. 41.5% in the county). In the 2009 gubernatorial election, Democrat Jon Corzine received 4,988 ballots cast (69.9% vs. 44.5% countywide), ahead of Republican Chris Christie with 1,578 votes (22.1% vs. 47.7%), Independent Chris Daggett with 157 votes (2.2% vs. 4.8%) and other candidates with 99 votes (1.4% vs. 1.2%), among the 7,141 ballots cast by the city's 22,585 registered voters, yielding a 31.6% turnout (vs. 44.9% in the county).\nCity and state agencies.\nNew Jersey Casino Control Commission.\nThe New Jersey Casino Control Commission is a New Jersey state governmental agency that was founded in 1977 as the state's Gaming Control Board, responsible for administering the Casino Control Act and its regulations to assure public trust and confidence in the credibility and integrity of the casino industry and casino operations in Atlantic City. Casinos operate under licenses granted by the commission. The commission is headquartered in the Arcade Building at Tennessee Avenue and Boardwalk in Atlantic City.\nNew Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement.\nThe New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement is a division of the New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety and is responsible for certifying casino gaming revenue, registering casino employees and non-gaming vendors, licensing gaming vendors, and handling all casino patron complaints.\nCasino Reinvestment Development Authority.\nThe CRDA was founded in 1984 and is responsible for directing the spending of casino reinvestment funds in public and private projects to benefit Atlantic City and other areas of the state. From 1985 through April 2008, CRDA spent US$1.5\u00a0billion on projects in Atlantic City and US$300\u00a0million throughout New Jersey.\nAtlantic City Convention and Visitors Authority.\nThe Convention & Visitors Authority (ACCVA) was in charge of advertising and marketing for the city as well as promoting economic growth through convention and leisure tourism development. The ACCVA managed the Boardwalk Hall and Atlantic City Convention Center, as well as the Boardwalk Welcome Center inside Boardwalk Hall and a welcome center on the Atlantic City Expressway. In 2011, the ACCVA was absorbed into the CRDA as part of the state takeover that created the tourism district.\nAtlantic City Special Improvement District.\nThe Atlantic City Special Improvement District (SID) was a nonprofit organization created in 1992, funded by a special assessment tax on businesses within the improvement district. It carried out various activities to improve the city's business community, including street cleaning and promotional efforts. In 2011, the SID was absorbed by the CRDA; the former SID boundaries would be expanded to the include all areas in the newly formed tourism district. Under the new structure, established by state legislation, the CRDA assumed responsibility for the staff, equipment and programs of the SID. The new SID division includes a SID committee made up of CRDA board members and an advisory council consisting of the current trustees and others.\nFire department.\nThe Atlantic City Fire Department (ACFD) provides fire protection and first responder emergency medical services to the city. The ACFD operates out of six fire stations, located throughout the city in one battalion, under the command of a battalion chief, who in-turn reports to an on-duty Deputy Chief, or Tour Commander each shift.\nPolice department.\nThe city is protected by the Atlantic City Police Department, which handles 150,000 calls per year. The Chief of Police is James A. Sarkos.\nEducation.\nThe Atlantic City School District serves students in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grades. As of the 2020\u201321 school year, the district, consisting of 11 schools, had an enrollment of 6,553 students and 617.3 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student\u2013teacher ratio of 10.6:1. Schools in the district (with 2020\u201321 enrollment data from the National Center for Education Statistics) are \nVenice Park School (36 students in PreK), \nBrighton Avenue School (315 students; in grades PreK-5), \nChelsea Heights School (332; PreK-8), \nDr. Martin Luther King Jr. School Complex (543; PreK-8), \nNew York Avenue School (548; PreK-8), \nPennsylvania Avenue School (549; PreK-8), \nRichmond Avenue School (615; PreK-8), \nSovereign Avenue School (696; PreK-8),\nTexas Avenue School (499; K-8), \nUptown School Complex (536; PreK-8) and \nAtlantic City High School (1,771; 9\u201312). Pennsylvania Avenue School opened for the 2012\u201313 school year, with most students shifting from New Jersey Avenue School, which had been one of the district's oldest and most rundown schools.\nStudents from Brigantine, Longport, Margate City and Ventnor City attend Atlantic City High School as part of sending/receiving relationships with the respective school districts.\nCity public school students are also eligible to attend the Atlantic County Institute of Technology in the Mays Landing section of Hamilton Township or the Charter-Tech High School for the Performing Arts, located in Somers Point.\nOceanside Charter School, which offered pre-Kindergarten through eighth grade, was founded in 1999 and closed in June 2013 when its charter was not renewed by the New Jersey Department of Education.\nFounded in 1908, Our Lady Star of the Sea Regional School is a Catholic elementary school, operates under the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Camden.\nNearby college campuses include those of Atlantic Cape Community College and Stockton University, the latter of which offers classes and resources in the city such as the Carnegie Library Center, which was turned back to the control of the city in April 2022.\nMedia outlets.\nNewspapers and magazines.\n\"Former publications\":\nTelevision stations.\nAtlantic City is part of the Philadelphia television market. There are six stations licensed in the area.\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nRoads and highways.\nAs of \u00a02010[ [update]], the city had a total of of roadways, of which were maintained by the municipality, by Atlantic County, by the New Jersey Department of Transportation and by the South Jersey Transportation Authority.\nThe three roadways that enter Atlantic City are: Black Horse Pike/Harding Highway (US 322/40 via the Albany Avenue drawbridge), White Horse Pike (US 30), and the Atlantic City Expressway through the Brigantine Connector. Atlantic City is roughly south of New York City via the Garden State Parkway and southeast of Philadelphia.\nPublic transportation.\nAtlantic City is connected to other cities in several ways. NJ Transit's Atlantic City Rail Terminal at the Atlantic City Convention Center provides service from 30th Street Station in Philadelphia through several smaller South Jersey communities via the Atlantic City Line.\nOn June 20, 2006, the board of NJ Transit approved a three-year trial of express train service between New York Penn Station and the Atlantic City Rail Terminal. The line, known as ACES (Atlantic City Express Service), ran from February 2009 to March 2012. The approximate travel time was <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />2+1\u20442 hours, with a stop at Newark's Penn Station, and was part of the casinos' multimillion-dollar investments in Atlantic City. Most of the funding for the transit line was provided by Harrah's Entertainment (owners of both Harrah's Atlantic City and Caesars Atlantic City) and the Borgata.\nThe Atlantic City Bus Terminal is the home to local, intrastate and interstate bus companies including NJ Transit, OurBus and Greyhound bus lines. The Greyhound Lucky Streak Express offers service to Atlantic City from New York City, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. In addition to stopping at the Atlantic City Bus Terminal, Greyhound buses stop at various casinos in Atlantic City. Martz Trailways provides bus service to various casinos in Atlantic City from Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, and White Haven in Pennsylvania. Klein Transportation provides bus service to various casinos in Atlantic City from Shillington, Douglassville, Royersford, and Audubon in Pennsylvania.\nWithin the city, public transportation is provided by NJ Transit along 13 routes, including service between the city and the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown Manhattan on the 319 route, and service to and from Atlantic City on routes 501 (to Brigantine Beach), 502 (to Atlantic Cape Community College), 504 (to Ventnor Plaza), 505 (to Longport), 507 (to Ocean City), 508 (to the Hamilton Mall), 509 (to Ocean City), 551 (to Philadelphia), 552 (to Cape May), 553 (to Upper Deerfield Township), 554 (to the Lindenwold PATCO station) and 559 (to Lakewood Township).\nThe Atlantic City Jitney Association (ACJA) offers service on four fixed-route lines and on shuttles to and from the rail terminal.\nAirline service.\nCommercial airlines serving Atlantic City include Atlantic City International Airport, located northwest of the city in Egg Harbor Township. Many travelers also fly into Philadelphia International Airport, Trenton-Mercer Airport, or Newark Liberty International Airport, where there are wider selections of carriers from which to choose. The historic downtown Bader Field airport is now permanently closed and plans are in the works to redevelop the land.\nAtlantic City International Airport, which is served by various scheduled chartered flight company, is a focus city for Spirit Airlines\nHealthcare.\nThe AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center is a health system based in Atlantic City. Founded in 1898, it includes two hospitals; the Atlantic City Campus and the Mainland Campus in Pomona, New Jersey. It has Atlantic City's only cancer institute, heart institute, and neonatal intensive care unit.\nUtilities.\nSouth Jersey Industries provides natural gas to the city under the South Jersey Gas division. Marina Energy and its subsidiary, Energenic, a joint business venture with a long-time business partner, operate two thermal power stations in the city. The Marina Thermal Plant serves the Borgata while a second plant serves the Resorts Hotel and Casino. Another thermal plant is the Midtown Thermal Control Center on Atlantic and Ohio Avenues built by Conectiv, which opened in 1997 and provides chilled water for hotels and other facilities along the Boardwalk.\nElectrical power in Atlantic City and its immediate surrounding area is provided primarily served Atlantic City Electric, which was incorporated in 1924 and provides power from the Beesley's Point Generating Station in Upper Township and other locations.\nThe Jersey-Atlantic Wind Farm, opened in 2005, is the first onshore coastal wind farm in the United States. In October 2010, North American Offshore Wind Conference was held in the city and included tours of the facility and potential sites for further development. In February 2011, the state passed legislation permitting the construction of windmills for electricity along pre-existing piers, such as the Steel Pier. The first phase of the Atlantic Wind Connection, a planned electrical transmission backbone along the Jersey Shore was planned to be operational in 2013.\nIn popular culture.\nAtlantic City is featured prominently in films, television, and music, including:\nNotable people.\nPeople who were born in, residents of, or otherwise closely associated with Atlantic City include:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["13982431", "106211"], "permutation_1": ["106211", "13982431"], "permutation_2": ["106211", "13982431"], "permutation_3": ["106211", "13982431"]}
{"id": "2hop__759398_53752", "docs_added": {"21272800": "Steppin' Stone (album)\nSteppin' Stone is a studio album by American singer Marie Osmond. It was released in September 1989 by the Capitol and Curb record labels. It was Osmond's eighth studio album in her solo recording career. \"Steppin' Stone\" was a collection of ten tracks that were described as having a traditional country sound compared to her previous albums. Three singles were issued from \"Steppin' Stone\" that reached positions outside the US and Canadian country top 40: the title track, \"Slowly But Surely\" and \"Let Me Be the First\". The album was given positive reviews from critics.\nBackground and recording.\nA part of her family's entertainment family, Marie Osmond formed her own career as a country music artist. As a teenager, her debut single \"Paper Roses\" was a chart-topping country single and a top five pop single. As she matured, she transitioned towards a film and television career but returned to the country recording industry in adulthood. In the middle 1980s (on Capitol Records), she had number one country singles with \"Meet Me in Montana\", \"There's No Stopping Your Heart\" and \"You're Still New to Me\". Osmond continued having charting singles through the end of the decade despite being less successful. Her next Capitol studio album was 1989's \"Steppin' Stone\". The project was recorded in May 1989 at three separate studios in the Nashville, Tennessee area: Castle Recording Studios, Music Mill Recording Studios and Omnisound Recording Studio. It was produced by Jerry Crutchfield. It was her first album project with Crutchfield serving as producer. \nContent.\n\"Steppin' Stone\" consisted of ten tracks. The album's traditional country sound was considered a departure from Osmond's previous releases. Charlotte Dillon of AllMusic described the album's material as being \"about love lost, love found, love gone wrong, and the hope and wishes of love to be.\" \"What Would You About You (If You Were Me)\" and \"What's in It for Me\" were both co-written by Bucky Jones and Tom Shapiro. \"If You Think About It, Call Me\", was a track also written by Shapiro and was a second cut written by Michael Garvin. \"What's a Little Love Between Friends\" was co-written with Smokey Robinson. The final track \"Let Me Be the First\" was first cut by Deborah Allen for her 1984 album of the same name.\nRelease and critical reception.\n\"Steppin' Stone\" was released in conjunction with Capitol Records and Curb Records in September 1989. It was distributed in three formats: a vinyl LP, a cassette and a compact disc. It was Osmond's eighth studio album as a solo artist and her fourth with the Capitol/Curb labels. It was later released decades later to digital retailers including Apple Music. The album was given positive reviews by critics and publications following its release. \"Cashbox\" magazine called the album \"expertly produced\" that allows Osmond's \"true colors\" to show through. \"Billboard\" found that Jerry Crutchfield provided Osmond with a different vocal delivery: \"Under Crutchfield's guidance, Osmond sings with more than usual force and conviction.\" \n\"Radio & Records\" did not highlight any specific songs or production techniques, but mentioned the album and wrote, \"Today she is an in-demand live performer and continues to record stellar country albums.\" AllMusic's Charlotte Dillon gave \"Steppin' Stone\" four out of five stars and wrote, \"Marie Osmond steps a little away from the pop-heavy country she normally leans toward, for a little more straight country sound.\"\nChart performance and singles.\n\"Steppin' Stone\" debuted on the US \"Billboard\" Top Country Albums chart on November 18, 1989. It spent a total of six weeks there, reaching the number 68 position by December 2. It was Osmond's lowest-peaking album on the country chart. A total of three singles were spawned from \"Steppin' Stone\". Its first was the title track in August 1989. It later reached number 70 on the US Hot Country Songs chart and number 60 on the Canadian Country Tracks chart. In November 1989, \"Slowly But Surely\" was issued as the album's second single. It reached the number 75 position on the US country chart and number 52 on the Canadian country chart. \"Let Me Be the First\" was the final single released from the album and was issued by Capitol Records in circa early 1990. It failed to chart on the US country chart but reached number 75 on the Canadian country chart.\nPersonnel.\nAll credits are adapted from the liner notes of \"Steppin' Stone\".\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "20970642": "Meet Me in Montana\n\"Meet Me in Montana\" is a song recorded by American country music artists Dan Seals and Marie Osmond. It was released in July 1985 as the lead-off single from Seals' album \"Won't Be Blue Anymore\", and the second single from Osmond's 1985 album \"There's No Stopping Your Heart\". The song was written by Paul Davis, who would later have a duet success of his own with Osmond, \"You're Still New to Me.\"\n\"Meet Me in Montana\" reached No. 1 on the \"Billboard magazine\" Hot Country Singles chart for one week in October 1985. The single was the first chart-topping hit for Seals, and Osmond's second No. 1 hit, her first to peak at the top of the chart since 1973's \"Paper Roses\".\nWhen performed live in concert since Seals's death in 2009, Osmond's brother Merrill Osmond usually serves as the duet partner.\nContent.\nThe song refers to two lovers who go their separate ways to pursue dreams; him, to be a country music star, and her to be a Hollywood actress. When both of them experience misery and failure, they decide that the best hope for their future is with each other, in Montana.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "55287046": "Tim Montana\nSinger songwriter\nTim Montana (born January 5, 1985) is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist signed to Music Knox Records/BBR Music Group part of BMG Rights Management.\nEarly life.\nTim Montana was born on January 5, 1985, in Kalispell, Montana and raised in Butte, Montana. Tim was given his first guitar at the age of six. Since his family's trailer had no electricity, Tim taught himself to play by candlelight. He later performed in school talent shows. After graduating from Butte High School in 2003, he moved to Los Angeles to study music.\nMusical career.\nIt was while living in Los Angeles where Tim met guitarist and producer Johnny Hiland and with Hiland's encouragement moved to Nashville and began playing country and southern rock. His debut album, \"Iron Horse,\" was produced by Hiland (who also played guitar and sang backup) and released on the CD Baby label on August 21, 2007.\nEarlier that same year, late-night talk show host David Letterman met Montana prior to Montana's Independence Day concert in Choteau, Montana. Months later, Letterman personally invited Montana to appear on \"The Late Show with David Letterman.\" Montana performed his song \"Butte, America\" on the October 17, 2008, program broadcast.\nIn 2013, Montana recruited guitarist Kyle Rife, drummer Brian Wolff, and bassist Bryce Paul to perform as Tim Montana and the Shrednecks. During a studio session on September 11, 2013, Montana was introduced to ZZ Top founder Billy Gibbons. Their meeting resulted in an impromptu songwriting collaboration, during which the two co-wrote and recorded the single \"This Beard Came Here to Party.\" The Boston Red Sox (known at the time for beards they'd grown during the playoffs) adopted the song as their anthem during the lead-up to the 2013 World Series. The Shrednecks and Gibbons recorded a custom version for the post-season (with lyrics referencing Red Sox highlights and Boston landmarks). Montana and the band later returned to sing The Star-Spangled Banner at Fenway Park at a May 28, 2013, ceremony honoring the winning 2004 World Series Red Sox team.\nMontana and Gibbons would go on to share credits on three other songs: \"Fifty Fifty,\" \"Weed and Whiskey,\" and \"Rust and Red.\" The last of these received its broadcast debut during the Fox News show The Five during an interview with Navy SEAL Team 6 member Robert J. O'Neill, subject of the Fox News documentary \"The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden.\" O\u2019Neill, a fellow native of Butte, had previously become acquainted with Montana through O\u2019Neill's brother Tom, a radio DJ and early supporter of Montana's music. Robert J. O'Neill later featured prominently in the 2017 music video for Montana's single \"Hillbilly Rich\".\nFollowing the release of \"This Beard Came Here to Party,\" Gibbons invited Tim Montana to open for ZZ Top on tour. Tim Montana and the Shrednecks have continued to appear with ZZ Top and opened for Kid Rock on various tour dates during the summer of 2016.\nOn February 24, 2016, Tim Montana released the album \"Tim Montana and the Shrednecks,\" featuring Gibbons on four tracks.\nTim Montana released the single \"Hillbilly Rich\" on September 8, 2017. He released a video for the song on September 19 which features friend Robert J. O'Neill and \"Streetbike\" Tommy Passemante from MTV's Nitro Circus. In their review of the video, \"Rolling Stone\" wrote that its \"aspirational swagger is perfectly on message for Montana's eclectic musical influences\".[15] Actor Charlie Sheen took an interest in the video stating on Twitter \"this is a stone-cold masterpiece! my man is flat out Killin the Game\" to his millions of followers.[16] Shortly after Tim met Charlie in person, Charlie went on to write and direct Tim's music video \"Mostly Stoned\" which created a press storm that ultimately led to Tim signing with Music Knox Records/BBR Music Group which is part of the BMG Rights Management family.\nAs a songwriter Montana co-wrote \"Tennessee Mountain Top\" and \"Greatest Show on Earth\" for Kid Rock's 2017 \"Sweet Southern Sugar\" album. \u00a0Both of which went on to chart in the top 40. \u00a0He also co-wrote Travis Tritt's \"Smoke in a Bar\", Billy F Gibbons \"I was a Highway\" and Michael Ray's \"Higher Education\" which featured Montana, Billy F Gibbons, Lee Brice and Kid Rock.\nPersonal life.\nMontana is a vocal supporter of U.S. military veterans. After watching the film \"American Sniper\" (which tells the story of the late U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle), Montana became involved in the welfare of veterans suffering from Posttraumatic stress disorder. He approached Gibson guitars to create a custom Chris Kyle guitar, decorated with Kyle's skull-and-crosshairs logo. The guitar was auctioned off, raising $117,500 for the Guardians of Heroes Foundation, helping wounded U.S. soldiers.\nMontana and his wife Danielle are the parents of four children and currently reside in Nashville, Tennessee.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "12225056": "Country Dick Montana\nAmerican musician (1955\u20131995)\nDaniel Monte McLain (May 11, 1955 \u2013 November 8, 1995), known by the stage name Country Dick Montana, was an American musician best known as a member of The Beat Farmers. He was born in Carmel, California. In 1995, It was reported that Montana suffered a heart attack and died while playing \"The Girl I Almost Married\" during a Beat Farmers show at the Longhorn Saloon in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada. The cause of death has been otherwise reported by the \"San Diego Reader\" (a publication local to the home of the Beat Farmers) as having been ruled as an aneurysm. The band disbanded shortly thereafter.\nBackground.\nIn the 1970s, Montana owned a record store called Monty Rockers and was a member of two seminal San Diego bands. He drummed for both punk rock pioneers The Penetrators and roots rock band The Crawdaddys.\nFrom 1983 to 1995, Montana played drums, percussion, guitar and accordion for The Beat Farmers with founding member Buddy Blue Siegal. Montana also performed lead vocals on at least one song on every Beat Farmers album, singing humorous songs frequently related to drinking. The song \"Happy Boy\" was popular on The Dr. Demento Radio Show and featured in several feature films. Montana was also famous for his onstage antics, frequently related to drinking. During this time, he was also in the short-lived trio the Pleasure Barons with Mojo Nixon and Dave Alvin, The Incredible Hayseeds, Country Dick's Petting Zoo, and Country Dick's Garage.\nPrior to co-founding the Beat Farmers, Montana put together a band called Country Dick & the Snuggle Bunnies, which included an array of San Diego talent, most of whom would play major roles in the Beat Farmers legacy. The band included: Montana, drums/vocals; Richard Banke (aka Skid Roper), mandolin/washboard/vocals; Robin Jackson, guitar/vocals; Paul Kamanski, guitar/vocals; Joey Harris, guitar/vocals; and Nino Del Pesco, bass/vocals.\nLegacy.\n\"The Ballad of Country Dick\" by Mojo Nixon was written after his death.\nThe song \"Happy Boy\" was written by Dane Conover, formerly of the Puppies\u2014the band in which Del Pesco played bass prior to joining Country Dick & the Snuggle Bunnies. Conover would later go on to form Trees.\nIn 1996, the posthumous solo album \"The Devil Lied to Me\" was released.\nA reference to Montana can be found in the 1997 first-person shooter video game \"Redneck Rampage\". In the game, his \"tombstone\" appears in a graveyard on the 12th level, complete with the words \"the devil lied to me\" as his epitaph, which refers to his 1996 posthumous album.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "10347210": "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone\nSong written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart\n\"(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone\" is a rock song written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. It was first recorded by the English band the Liverpool Five in early 1966 but remained unreleased before summer of that same year. In the meantime, the American band Paul Revere & the Raiders recorded the song which appeared on their album \"Midnight Ride\", released in May 1966.\nThe song is simple musically, with a repeating verse chord progression of E major, G major, A major, and C major, and a repeating bridge in cut time of E major, G major, A major, and G major.\nMonkees version.\n\"(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone\" is best known as a hit for the Monkees. Released in November 1966, the song became the first Monkees B-side to chart, reaching #20 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. Musicians featured on the recording are Micky Dolenz (lead vocal), Tommy Boyce (backing vocal), Wayne Erwin and Gerry McGee (rhythm guitar), Louis Shelton (lead guitar), Bobby Hart (Vox Continental organ), Larry Taylor (bass), Billy Lewis (drums) and Henry Lewy (percussion).\nThe single, stereo album, and mono album versions contain several differences. In the stereo version, the track's title is sung just before the second verse, whereas on the single and mono album versions, this segment is left instrumental. The stereo version has an edit in the fadeout, but the mono album version does not have this edit and therefore has a longer coda. The single also does not have the edit, but it fades out earlier than does the mono album. All Monkees hits compilations through the mid-1980s used the stereo version, and afterward typically used the single version.\nThe Monkees' version is featured in the \"romp\" segments of several episodes of the group's television series. It has also been heard in episodes of shows such as \"The Queen's Gambit\" and \"Zoo\".\nOther versions.\nThe song has been covered by many artists. Among the more notable is Modern Rocketry's version in 1983, which reached number 7 on the U.S. Hot Dance/Disco chart, and PJ & Duncan's version in 1996, which reached number 11 on the UK Singles Chart. A baggy version by The Farm was popular in clubs in 1990 and eventually reached number 58 in the UK. The punk bands the Sex Pistols, State of Alert, the Queers, and Minor Threat have also recorded versions of the song. It was also covered by Fereydoon Foroughi with Persian lyrics in a song titled \"Hoqqe\" (\u062d\u0642\u0647), also known as \"Mashti Mashalla\" or \"Mashdi Mashalla\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "14259871": "Steppin' Out (instrumental)\nInstrumental first recorded by Memphis Slim in 1959\n\"Steppin' Out\" (or sometimes \"Stepping Out\") is a blues-instrumental composition recorded by American blues musician Memphis Slim in 1959. It was released by Vee-Jay Records as a single and on Slim's \"At the Gate of the Horn\" album. Although both releases list L. C. Frazier (another of Memphis Slim/Peter Chatman's pseudonyms) as the writer, Vee-Jay owner James Bracken is often credited on versions by other performers. \nMemphis Slim's piano provides the opening harmony part, followed by a tenor sax solo and guitar solo by long-time Slim guitarist Matt Murphy. AllMusic critic Bill Dahl calls Murphy's album contribution as \"nothing short of spectacular throughout\". A live version recorded in 1986 appears on the \"Steppin' Out: Live At Ronnie Scott's, London\" album and video.\nEric Clapton renditions.\nEric Clapton recorded several versions of \"Steppin' Out\" during his early career. In 1966, he recorded the song with three different bands: with Eric Clapton and the Powerhouse, recorded in March for the Elektra Records compilation \"What's Shakin'\"; with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers in April for the album \"Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton\"; and with Cream in a live performance for broadcast on BBC Radio in November, eventually released on the \"BBC Sessions\" compilation in 2003. Cream recorded a second live performance of the song for BBC Radio in January 1968, which was also included on \"BBC Sessions\" though it was first released on Clapton's \"Crossroads\" box set in 1988.\nClapton's early versions were relatively brief \u2013 ranging from under two minutes to little over three \u2013 but in live performances with Cream, \"Steppin\" Out\" became an extended improvisational piece often lasting thirteen minutes or more. On occasion, the group's bassist Jack Bruce would drop out of the song after several minutes, leaving Clapton and drummer Ginger Baker to take the song in entirely new, less blues-oriented directions. An example of such can be heard on a live recording from the San Francisco Winterland Ballroom in March 1968, first released on the album \"Live Cream Volume II\" in 1972 and later on the Cream box set \"Those Were the Days\" in 1997. This version was used in the film Mean Streets (1973). Source IMDB\nJesse Gress, writing for \"Guitar Player\" magazine, noted that Ritchie Blackmore's \"bluesy head to 'Lazy' (from Deep Purple's \"Machine Head\") fondly paraphrases Slowhand\u2019s [Clapton's] Bluesbreaker-era showcase 'Steppin\u2019 Out,' right down to the same style of third-position swing-sixteenth G blues riffing\".\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "12337623": "Steppin' Out (Joe Jackson song)\n\"Steppin' Out\" is a song by English musician Joe Jackson, originally included on his 1982 album \"Night and Day\". The song, inspired by Jackson's time in New York City, was his highest-charting single in the United States, where it peaked at number 6 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. It reached the same position in Jackson's native UK.\nBackground.\nThe song is about the anticipation and excitement of a drive out around the town. Released as a single in early August 1982, it became Jackson's biggest hit in the United States, peaking at No. 5 in \"Cashbox\" magazine and No. 6 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 for four consecutive weeks from December 11, 1982 to January 1, 1983.\nIt also reached No. 4 on \"Billboard\"'s Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart and No. 7 on \"Billboard\"'s Album Rock Tracks. The infectious tune was Jackson's second biggest hit on the UK Singles Chart, where it reached No. 6 in December 1982. Only \"It's Different for Girls\", which reached No. 5 in the UK in 1980, did better.\nDuring his 2019 tour for the album \"Fool\", Jackson stated he played all the instruments on \"Steppin' Out\" \u2013 with the exception of session drummer \nLarry Tolfree, who added a real snare drum and cymbal hits. The rest of the song's drum beat was programmed into a 1979 Korg KR-55 drum machine, the original of which Jackson used on the 2019 tour to play the song.\nMusic video.\nThe music video for the song, directed by Steve Barron, featured a blonde, attractive hotel maid fantasising that she is a Cinderella figure. It was filmed over one night in the St. Regis Hotel in New York City during the summer of 1982. The video used the shorter single version instead of the full album version. According to an interview with \"Time Out\", Jackson made the music video against his wishes. \"Rock 'n' roll is degenerating into a big circus, and videos and MTV are very much part of that,\" he said.\nAccolades.\n\"Steppin' Out\" earned two Grammy nominations in 1983, for Record of the Year and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. The song lost to Toto's \"Rosanna\" and Lionel Richie's \"Truly\", respectively.\nReception.\nAllMusic journalist Chris True praised the song as a \"m\u00e9lange of simple piano hooks, rudimentary electronic treatment and classic vocal pop, with a rhythm track that is quaint in its simplicity and driving enough to invoke images of the big city at night.\"\nIn 2015, \"Pitchfork Media\" placed \"Steppin' Out\" at 153 on its list of \"The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1980s.\" In 2022, \"Rolling Stone\" ranked it 93 on their list \"100 Best Songs of 1982\". \"Glide Magazine\" ranked it as Jackson's second best song.\nChart history.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "46286292": "Get to Steppin\n\"Get to Steppin\" is a 2013 song by Fast Eddie featuring singer CeCe Peniston, released as a digital single on S & S Records in the U.S. on August 26, 2013.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "36964290": "Back to the Night\nBack to the Night is the second studio album by the British singer-songwriter Joan Armatrading. The album was released in April 1975 by A&M Records (AMLH 68305).\nMusical background.\nMusically, the album shows a development of the mood of Armatrading's first album \"Whatever's for Us\", and explores different aspects of her talent and musical leanings, as it encompasses elements of folk, jazz, calypso and up-tempo songs. Because of this a number of musicians were hired, so they could reflect the variety of styles Armatrading was coming up with.\nThe album features some experienced musicians, notably Jean Roussel, Colin Pincott, and Andy Summers. The album was promoted on tour with a six-piece jazz-pop group called The Movies.\nGeneral background.\nFollowing the release of her debut album, \"Whatever's for Us\", a collaboration with lyricist Pam Nestor, Armatrading ended her contract with Cube Records and signed instead with A&M. \"Back to the Night\" was recorded in 1974 at Basing Street Studios, London; Morgan Studios, London; and Rockfield Studios, Monmouthshire. It was mixed at Basing Street Studios, London, and mastered at Sterling Sound, New York.\nWhile making \"Back to the Night\", Armatrading realised she could make a career out of music, and her experiences during the recording of the album convinced her to apply herself to the task of doing so. Before this album, Armatrading had simply wanted to be a songwriter. She was a reluctant singer and performer and did not want to sing on \"Back to the Night\" telling producer Pete Gage: \"The problem is, I don't want to be a singer ... I want to be a songwriter, I just want to write songs, but I want other people to sing the songs.\"\nThe making of the album was a difficult experience for Gage. He had been hired by Mike Stone, an American promoter, who was then acting as Armatrading's manager. Stone described Armatrading as being \"very difficult\" following the departure of Pam Nestor, but nevertheless having \"immense talent\". Gage himself was struck by Armatrading's musical ability, describing her as \"having a huge amount of natural talent\". Armatrading found it difficult to make the album, partly because of her reluctance to perform and partly because she was unhappy during this time, later saying that she had \"been going through a bad period\". Gage went out of his way to recruit musicians for the album who would be \"sympathetic\" and \"patient\".\nIn the studios, Armatrading was frequently absent-minded and would sometimes walk out, forget where she was supposed to be, and wander off. Because of this, Gage eventually lost his patience with her and while driving Armatrading to Paddington Station so that she could catch the train to visit a friend in Reading, he gave her a dressing down, telling her she should think herself lucky to have musicians and studios at her disposal and that many artists would give a great deal to be in her position. Gage's remarks helped Armatrading to \"grow up\" and made her realise that she could in fact be a performer and make a living from music, something she had previously not considered.\nArmatrading herself did not like the album at the time, and \"practically disowned it\", dismissing it as \"a load of rubbish\" and \"a waste of time\", saying that she hadn't done some things very well because of her state of mind and unhappiness at the time of the album's making.\nThe photographs that appear on the album cover are in silhouette at the insistence of Armatrading. At the time she would not agree to be photographed, saying: \"I don't want my picture on the cover of the album, it'll have to be something else.\" The only way the photographer, Clive Arrowsmith, could persuade her was to agree to take profile shots and shade the images so her face couldn't be seen.\nSongs.\nMany of the songs arose from Armatrading's experience of touring in the US following the release of \"Whatever's for Us\". Sean Mayes notes in his biography of Armatrading that while Joan was playing in the Bronx, New York, she stayed in a hotel in Times Square and would often walk the streets around the hotel late at night, after a performance. It was through this that she acquired her love of \"night people\", encountering \"beggars, buskers \u2026 and Vietnam veterans with bits of their arms and legs missing\". It was the people she met that provided the background for the songs on \"Back to the Night\", for example, the song \"No Love For Free\" being about the prostitutes Armatrading encountered on her wanderings around the Bronx. \"Cool Blue Stole My Heart\" recalls a holiday Armatrading had in Amsterdam. Armatrading mentions during a live concert released as the \"Steppin' Out\" DVD that she began writing the song in Amsterdam and finished it in London three months later.\nThe majority of the songs on the album were written by Joan Armatrading, though two (the tracks \"Dry Land\" and \"Come When You Need Me\") were a carry over from her collaboration with lyricist Pam Nestor, which had begun with Armatrading's debut album \"Whatever's for Us\".\nSeveral tracks from \"Back to the Night\" subsequently appeared on many compilation albums: \"Steppin' Out\", \"Dry Land\", \"Cool Blue Stole My Heart\", and \"Come When You Need Me\". Two songs from the album, \"Cool Blue Stole My Heart\" and \"Steppin' Out\", were included in the set list for Armatrading's seminal concert at Studio L in Cologne, known as the Rockpalast, in February 1979, and were also included in the live album \"Steppin' Out\" released in that year.\nThe song \"Dry Land\" was said to be the favourite track of the album's producer, Pete Gage, who described it as \"a very sensitive number\", saying: \"I loved that song\". \"Dry Land\" was released as a single (AMS 7205) in 1976.\nThe song \"Back to the Night\" was later re-released as a re-mix version in November 1983 as the b-side of the single \"Heaven\" (AM 162) from the compilation album \"Track Record\".\nReception.\nThe album was a critical rather than a commercial success and did not sell in large numbers.\nA review in \"Record Mirror\" referred to the album's \"indefinable magic\" and music that's \"a lot funkier\" than her debut album and stated, \"Joan Armatrading is quietly destroying musical barriers, providing something fresh and invigorating that's flavoured by lingering touches of Soul, Blues, Folk and the sounds of Joan's Caribbean birth-place; the result is one of the most compelling artists working in Britain today.\"\nIn a retrospective review for AllMusic, Dave Connolly commented: \"While it's not a markedly better record than \"Whatever's for Us\", [...] it's on this record that glimpses of the greatness to come appear: the upbeat island feel of \"Travel So Far,\" the powerfully intimate \"Dry Land,\" and the inventive melodies of the title track.\"\nSteve York, who played bass guitar on the album, commented that \"it was not a commercial success but it is a highly original and interesting album. Joan is a unique writer with a distinctive voice.\"\nWilfrid Mellers, writing in \"Angels of the Night\", stated that \"the tone is bold, the rhythms sprightly and the phrasing clipped\" and singled out the songs \"Travel So Far\" and \"Steppin' Out\" as \"reggae-style peans to freedom\".\nAccording to the A&M website, \"Back to the Night\" was voted one of the top ten albums of 1975 by English music critics.\nTrack listing.\nAll songs written by Joan Armatrading, except where indicated.\nProduction personnel.\nRecorded at Basing Street Studios, London, Morgan Studios, London and Rockfield Studios, Monmouthshire\nMixed at Basing Street Studios, London; mastered at Sterling Sound, New York City\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1968928": "Octave (album)\nOctave is the ninth album by the Moody Blues (the eighth by this particular line-up), released in 1978, and their first release after a substantial hiatus following the success of the best-selling \"Seventh Sojourn\" in 1972. Released after a considerable break, which saw The Moody Blues returning in an era of punk music and disco, \"Octave\" produced a reduced commercial outcome for the band, but reached No. 6 in the United Kingdom and went platinum in the United States, where the album reached No. 13. The album produced the hit single \"Steppin' in a Slide Zone\", which hit No. 39 in the US, in addition to \"Driftwood\". The album's title is a musical pun: it references both the notion of an octave; and as a word derived from the Latin \"octavus\" it refers to this being the eighth album by this line-up of the Moody Blues (following on from the previous album title \"Seventh Sojourn\"). \nBackground.\n\"Octave\" was considered a departure from previous Moody Blues albums, mainly because of the group's use of lounge-style organs and synthesizers in place of a Mellotron or Chamberlin (Mike Pinder's song \"One Step Into the Light\" references the Mellotron). Real strings were used on three songs: \"Under Moonshine\" and \"I'm Your Man\" (both written by Ray Thomas), as well as \"Survival\" (written by John Lodge). The album was something of a comeback for the group, who had not released an album as a full group in six years. Justin Hayward remembers, \"We were apart for three years, and we knew we were going to record another album together, but, in interviews, none of us were going to say it until we actually did it. We never thought we would be able to come back in the same way. We thought we had been away too long, so we were really making a record for ourselves. But then it just took off again--it's like what people couldn't have, they wanted even more.\"\nThe album proved to be the last for the group with keyboardist Mike Pinder, who left during the album's sessions and declined an offer to tour with the group. He had just started a new family in California, and found that he was not getting along with his bandmates as he previously had. Hayward remembers, \"He left the band halfway through the album, and then when we wanted to go out on tour, he decided he didn't want to tour anymore, either. And, apart from a few letters of business, we haven't had much contact. I just think his priorities became different, whereas mine--and everyone else's--were always music, No. 1. And I still really miss him, because, when I first came into the band, it was our singing and writing that really got us going; we kind of started together.\" Hayward reflects further on Pinder's creative role in the band, and how his and Clarke's departure resulted in a stylistic change for the group: \"A number of things changed. Two of the mystics left - Mike Pinder and Tony Clarke. They were the strange ones - the rest of us were quite normal! Mike leaving meant a change in emphasis of lyric, because I always had to play things to Mike, and I always wanted Mike's approval. He was a hero of mine, there's no getting away from it, and he was the most important figure in the band for a long while. And he knew that I was the one that was going to make it happen, but he was the one who was behind me making it happen.\"\nPinder would be replaced by former Yes keyboardist Patrick Moraz in time for their 1978-1979 tour, beginning a new era in the band's history.\nWriting.\nThe lead single and opening track, \"Steppin' in a Slide Zone\" was influenced by a mudslide that occurred during the recording sessions. Lodge recalls, \"Mike built a studio up in Malibu called Indigo Ranch, we went up"}, "descending_order": ["21272800", "55287046", "20970642", "12225056", "10347210", "14259871", "12337623", "46286292", "36964290", "1968928"], "permutation_1": ["14259871", "21272800", "55287046", "10347210", "1968928", "20970642", "36964290", "12225056", "46286292", "12337623"], "permutation_2": ["21272800", "12225056", "10347210", "55287046", "36964290", "20970642", "46286292", "1968928", "12337623", "14259871"], "permutation_3": ["46286292", "14259871", "10347210", "20970642", "12337623", "12225056", "21272800", "36964290", "1968928", "55287046"]}
{"id": "2hop__160922_19309", "docs_added": {"18987": "Mexico City\nCapital and most populous city of Mexico\nMexico City is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and is also North America's most populous city. It is one of the most important cultural and financial centers in the world. Mexico City is located in the Valley of Mexico within the high Mexican central plateau, at an altitude of . The city has 16 boroughs or , which are in turn divided into neighborhoods or . \nThe 2020 population for the city proper was 9,209,944, with a land area of . According to the most recent definition agreed upon by the federal and state governments, the population of Greater Mexico City is 21,804,515, which makes it the sixth-largest metropolitan area in the world, the second-largest urban agglomeration in the Western Hemisphere (behind S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil), and the largest Spanish-speaking city (city proper) in the world. Greater Mexico City has a GDP of $411 billion in 2011, which makes it one of the most productive urban areas in the world. The city was responsible for generating 15.8% of Mexico's GDP, and the metropolitan area accounted for about 22% of the country's GDP. If it were an independent country in 2013, Mexico City would be the fifth-largest economy in Latin America.\nMexico City is the oldest capital city in the Americas and one of two founded by Indigenous people. The city was originally built on a group of islands in Lake Texcoco by the Mexica around 1325, under the name Tenochtitlan. It was almost completely destroyed in the 1521 siege of Tenochtitlan and subsequently redesigned and rebuilt in accordance with the Spanish urban standards. In 1524, the municipality of Mexico City was established, known as , and as of 1585, it was officially known as (Mexico City). Mexico City played a major role in the Spanish colonial empire as a political, administrative, and financial center. Following independence from Spain, the federal district was established in 1824.\nAfter years of demanding greater political autonomy, residents were finally given the right to elect both a head of government and the representatives of the unicameral Legislative Assembly by election in 1997. Ever since, left-wing parties (first the Party of the Democratic Revolution and later the National Regeneration Movement) have controlled both of them. The city has several progressive policies, such as elective abortions, a limited form of euthanasia, no-fault divorce, same-sex marriage, and legal gender change. On 29 January 2016, it ceased to be the \"Federal District\" ( or ) and is now officially known as (or ), with a greater degree of autonomy. A clause in the Constitution of Mexico, however, prevents it from becoming a state within the Mexican federation, as long it remains the capital of the country.\nNicknames and mottos.\nMexico City was traditionally known as \"La Ciudad de los Palacios\" (\"the City of the Palaces\"), a nickname attributed to Baron Alexander von Humboldt when visiting the city in the 19th century, who, sending a letter back to Germany, said Mexico City could rival any major city in Europe. But it was English politician Charles Latrobe who really penned the following: \"... look at their works: the moles, aqueducts, churches, roads\u2014and the luxurious \"City of Palaces\" which has risen from the clay-built ruins of Tenochtitlan...\", on page 84 of the Letter V of \"The Rambler in Mexico\".\nDuring the colonial period, the city's motto was \"Muy Noble e Insigne, Muy Leal e Imperial\" (Very Noble and Distinguished, Very Loyal and Imperial). During Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador's administration a political slogan was introduced: \"la Ciudad de la Esperanza\" (lit.\u2009'The City of Hope'). This motto was quickly adopted as a city nickname but has faded since the new motto, \"Capital en Movimiento\" (\"Capital in Movement\"), was adopted by the administration headed by Marcelo Ebrard, though the latter is not treated as often as a nickname in media. \nUp until 2013, it was common to refer to the city by the initialism \n\"DF\" from \"Distrito Federal de M\u00e9xico\". Since 2013, the abbreviation \"CDMX\" (Ciudad de M\u00e9xico) has been more common, particularly in relation to government campaigns.\nThe city is colloquially known as \"Chilangolandia\" after the locals' nickname \"chilangos\". Chilango is used pejoratively by people living outside Mexico City to \"connote a loud, arrogant, ill-mannered, loutish person\". For their part those living in Mexico City designate insultingly those who live elsewhere as living in \"la provincia\" ('the provinces', 'the periphery') and many proudly embrace the term chilango. Residents of Mexico City are more recently called \"defe\u00f1os\" (deriving from the postal abbreviation of the Federal District in Spanish: D.F., which is read \"De-Efe\"). They are formally called \"capitalinos\" (in reference to the city being the capital of the country), but \"[p]erhaps because capitalino is the more polite, specific, and correct word, it is almost never utilized\".\nHistory.\nThe oldest signs of human occupation in the area of Mexico City are those of the \"Pe\u00f1\u00f3n woman\" and others found in San Bartolo Atepehuacan (Gustavo A. Madero). They were believed to correspond to the lower Cenolithic period (9500\u20137000 BC). However, a 2003 study placed the age of the Pe\u00f1on woman at 12,700 years old (calendar age), one of the oldest human remains discovered in the Americas. Studies of her mitochondrial DNA suggest she was either of Asian or European or Aboriginal Australian origin.\nThe area was the destination of the migrations of the Teochichimecas during the 8th and 13th centuries, people that would give rise to the Toltec, and Mexica (Aztecs) cultures. The latter arrived around the 14th century to settle first on the shores of the lake.\nAztec period.\nThe city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan was founded by the Mexica people in 1325 or 1327. The old Mexica city that is now referred to as Tenochtitlan was built on an island in the center of the inland lake system of the Valley of Mexico, which is shared with a smaller city-state called Tlatelolco. According to legend, the Mexicas' principal god, Huitzilopochtli, indicated the site where they were to build their home by presenting a golden eagle perched on a prickly pear devouring a rattlesnake.\nBetween 1325 and 1521, Tenochtitlan grew in size and strength, eventually dominating the other city-states around Lake Texcoco and in the Valley of Mexico. When the Spaniards arrived, the Aztec Empire had reached much of Mesoamerica, touching both the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean.\nSpanish conquest.\nAfter landing in Veracruz, Spanish explorer Hern\u00e1n Cort\u00e9s advanced upon Tenochtitlan with the aid of many of the other native peoples,\narriving there on 8 November 1519. Cort\u00e9s and his men marched along the causeway leading into the city from Iztapalapa (Ixtapalapa), and the city's ruler, Moctezuma II, greeted the Spaniards; they exchanged gifts, but the camaraderie did not last long. Cort\u00e9s put Moctezuma under house arrest, hoping to rule through him.\nTensions increased until, on the night of 30 June 1520 \u2013 during a struggle known as \"La Noche Triste\" \u2013 the Aztecs rose up against the Spanish intrusion and managed to capture or drive out the Europeans and their Tlaxcalan allies. Cort\u00e9s regrouped at Tlaxcala. The Aztecs thought the Spaniards were permanently gone, and they elected a new king, Cuitl\u00e1huac, but he soon died; the next king was Cuauht\u00e9moc. Cort\u00e9s began a siege of Tenochtitlan in May 1521. For three months, the city suffered from the lack of food and water as well as the spread of smallpox brought by the Europeans. Cort\u00e9s and his allies landed their forces in the south of the island and slowly fought their way through the city. Cuauht\u00e9moc surrendered in August 1521. The Spaniards practically razed Tenochtitlan during the final siege of the conquest.\nCort\u00e9s first settled in Coyoac\u00e1n, but decided to rebuild the Aztec site to erase all traces of the old order. He did not establish a territory under his own personal rule, but remained loyal to the Spanish crown. The first Spanish viceroy arrived in Mexico City fourteen years later. By that time, the city had again become a city-state, having power that extended far beyond its borders. Although the Spanish preserved Tenochtitlan's basic layout, they built Catholic churches over the old Aztec temples and claimed the imperial palaces for themselves. Tenochtitlan was renamed \"Mexico\" because the Spanish found the word easier to pronounce.\nGrowth of colonial Mexico City.\nThe city had been the capital of the Aztec Empire and in the colonial era, Mexico City became the capital of New Spain. The viceroy of Mexico or vice-king lived in the viceregal palace on the main square or Z\u00f3calo. The Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral, the seat of the Archbishopric of New Spain, was constructed on another side of the Z\u00f3calo, as was the archbishop's palace, and across from it the building housing the city council or \"ayuntamiento\" of the city. A late seventeenth-century painting of the Z\u00f3calo by Crist\u00f3bal de Villalpando depicts the main square, which had been the old Aztec ceremonial center. The existing central plaza of the Aztecs was effectively and permanently transformed to the ceremonial center and seat of power during the colonial period, and remains to this day in modern Mexico, the central plaza of the nation. The rebuilding of the city after the siege of Tenochtitlan was accomplished by the abundant indigenous labor in the surrounding area. Franciscan friar Toribio de Benavente Motolinia, one of the Twelve Apostles of Mexico who arrived in New Spain in 1524, described the rebuilding of the city as one of the afflictions or plagues of the early period:\nThe seventh plague was the construction of the great City of Mexico, which, during the early years used more people than in the construction of Jerusalem. The crowds of laborers were so numerous that one could hardly move in the streets and causeways, although they are very wide. Many died from being crushed by beams, or falling from high places, or in tearing down old buildings for new ones. \nPreconquest Tenochtitlan was built in the center of the inland lake system, with the city reachable by canoe and by wide causeways to the mainland. The causeways were rebuilt under Spanish rule with indigenous labor. Colonial Spanish cities were constructed on a grid pattern, if no geographical obstacle prevented it. In Mexico City, the Z\u00f3calo (main square) was the central place from which the grid was then built outward. The Spanish lived in the area closest to the main square in what was known as the \"traza\", in orderly, well laid-out streets. Indigenous residences were outside that exclusive zone and houses were haphazardly located. Spaniards sought to keep indigenous people separate but since the Z\u00f3calo was a center of commerce for Amerindians, they were a constant presence in the central area, so strict segregation was never enforced. At intervals Z\u00f3calo was where major celebrations took place as well as executions. It was also the site of two major riots in the seventeenth century, one in 1624, the other in 1692.\nThe city grew as the population did, coming up against the lake's waters. As the depth of the lake water fluctuated, Mexico City was subject to periodic flooding. A major labor draft, the desag\u00fce, compelled thousands of indigenous over the colonial period to work on infrastructure to prevent flooding. Floods were not only an inconvenience but also a health hazard, since during flood periods human waste polluted the city's streets. By draining the area, the mosquito population dropped as did the frequency of the diseases they spread. However, draining the wetlands also changed the habitat for fish and birds and the areas accessible for indigenous cultivation close to the capital. The 16th century saw a proliferation of churches, many of which can still be seen today in the historic center.\nEconomically, Mexico City prospered as a result of trade. Unlike Brazil or Peru, Mexico had easy contact with both the Atlantic and Pacific worlds. Although the Spanish crown tried to completely regulate all commerce in the city, it had only partial success.\nThe concept of nobility flourished in New Spain in a way not seen in other parts of the Americas. Spaniards encountered a society in which the concept of nobility mirrored that of their own. Spaniards respected the indigenous order of nobility and added to it. In the ensuing centuries, possession of a noble title in Mexico did not mean one exercised great political power, for one's power was limited even if the accumulation of wealth was not. The concept of nobility in Mexico was not political but rather a very conservative Spanish social one, based on proving the worthiness of the family. Most of these families proved their worth by making fortunes in New Spain outside of the city itself, then spending the revenues in the capital, building churches, supporting charities and building extravagant palatial homes. The craze to build the most opulent residence possible reached its height in the last half of the 18th century. Many of these palaces can still be seen today, leading to Mexico City's nickname of \"The city of palaces\" given by Alexander Von Humboldt.\nThe Grito de Dolores (\"Cry of Dolores\"), also known as El Grito de la Independencia (\"Cry of Independence\"), marked the beginning of the Mexican War of Independence. The Battle of Guanajuato, the first major engagement of the insurgency, occurred four days later. After a decade of war, Mexico's independence from Spain was effectively declared in the Declaration of Independence of the Mexican Empire on 27 September 1821. Agust\u00edn de Iturbide is proclaimed Emperor of the First Mexican Empire by Congress, crowned in the Cathedral of Mexico. \nThe Mexican Federal District was established by the new government and by the signing of their new constitution, where the concept of a federal district was adapted from the United States Constitution. Before this designation, Mexico City had served as the seat of government for both the State of Mexico and the nation as a whole. Texcoco de Mora and then Toluca became the capital of the State of Mexico.\nBattle of Mexico City in the U.S.\u2013Mexican War of 1847.\nDuring the 19th century, Mexico City was the center stage of all the political disputes of the country. It was the imperial capital on two occasions (1821\u20131823 and 1864\u20131867), and of two federalist states and two centralist states that followed innumerable coups d'\u00e9tats in the space of half a century before the triumph of the Liberals after the Reform War. It was also the objective of one of the two French invasions to Mexico (1861\u20131867), and occupied for a year by American troops in the framework of the Mexican\u2013American War (1847\u20131848).\nThe Battle for Mexico City was the series of engagements from 8 to 15 September 1847, in the general vicinity of Mexico City during the U.S. Mexican War. Included are major actions at the battles of Molino del Rey and Chapultepec, culminating with the fall of Mexico City. The U.S. Army under Winfield Scott scored a major success that ended the war. The American invasion into the Federal District was first resisted during the Battle of Churubusco on 8 August, where the Saint Patrick's Battalion, which was composed primarily of Catholic Irish and German immigrants but also Canadians, English, French, Italians, Poles, Scots, Spaniards, Swiss, and Mexicans, fought for the Mexican cause, repelling the American attacks. After defeating the Saint Patrick's Battalion, the Mexican\u2013American War came to a close after the United States deployed combat units deep into Mexico resulting in the capture of Mexico City and Veracruz by the U.S. Army's 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Divisions. The invasion culminated with the storming of Chapultepec Castle in the city itself.\nDuring this battle, on 13 September, the 4th Division, under John A. Quitman, spearheaded the attack against Chapultepec and carried the castle. Future Confederate generals George E. Pickett and James Longstreet participated in the attack. Serving in the Mexican defense were the cadets later immortalized as \"Los Ni\u00f1os H\u00e9roes\" (the \"Boy Heroes\"). The Mexican forces fell back from Chapultepec and retreated within the city. Attacks on the Bel\u00e9n and San Cosme Gates came afterwards. The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in what is now the far north of the city.\nMexican Revolution (1910\u20131920).\nThe capital escaped the worst of the violence of the ten-year conflict of the Mexican Revolution. The most significant episode of this period for the city was the Decena Tr\u00e1gica (\"Ten Tragic Days\") of February 1913, when forces counter to the elected government of Francisco I. Madero staged a successful coup. The center of the city was subjected to artillery attacks from the army stronghold of the \"ciudadela\" or citadel, with significant civilian casualties and the undermining of confidence in the Madero government. Victoriano Huerta, chief general of the Federal Army, saw a chance to take power, forcing Madero and Pino Suarez to sign resignations. The two were murdered later while on their way to Lecumberri prison. Huerta's ouster in July 1914 saw the entry of the armies of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, but the city did not experience violence. Huerta had abandoned the capital and the conquering armies marched in. Venustiano Carranza's Constitutionalist faction ultimately prevailed in the revolutionary civil war and Carranza took up residence in the presidential palace.\n20th century to present.\nIn the 20th century the phenomenal growth of the city and its environmental and political consequences dominate. In 1900, the population of Mexico City was about 500,000. The city began to grow rapidly westward in the early part of the 20th century and then began to grow upwards in the 1950s, with the Torre Latinoamericana becoming the city's first skyscraper.\nThe rapid development of Mexico City as a center for modernist architecture was most fully manifested in the mid-1950s construction of the Ciudad Universitaria, Mexico City, the main campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Designed by the most prestigious architects of the era, including Mario Pani, Eugenio Peschard, and Enrique del Moral, the buildings feature murals by artists Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Jos\u00e9 Ch\u00e1vez Morado. It has since been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.\nThe 1968 Olympic Games brought about the construction of large sporting facilities. In 1969, the Mexico City Metro was inaugurated. Explosive growth in the population of the city started in the 1960s, with the population overflowing the boundaries of the Federal District into the neighboring State of Mexico, especially to the north, northwest, and northeast. Between 1960 and 1980 the city's population more than doubled to nearly 9\u00a0million.\nIn 1980, half of all the industrial jobs in Mexico were located in Mexico City. Under relentless growth, the Mexico City government could barely keep up with services. Villagers from the countryside who continued to pour into the city to escape poverty only compounded the city's problems. With no housing available, they took over lands surrounding the city, creating huge shanty towns.\nThe inhabitants of Mexico City faced serious air pollution and water pollution problems, as well as groundwater-related subsidence. Air and water pollution has been contained and improved in several areas due to government programs, the renovation of vehicles and the modernization of public transportation.\nThe autocratic government that ruled Mexico City since the Revolution was tolerated, mostly because of the continued economic expansion since World War II. This was the case even though this government could not handle the population and pollution problems adequately. Nevertheless, discontent and protests began in the 1960s leading to the massacre of an unknown number of protesting students in Tlatelolco.\nThree years later, a demonstration in the Maestros avenue, organized by former members of the 1968 student movement, was violently repressed by a paramilitary group called \"Los Halcones\", composed of gang members and teenagers from many sports clubs who received training in the US.\nOn 19 September 1985, at 7:19am CST, the area was struck by the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. The earthquake proved to be a disaster politically for the one-party state government. The Mexican government was paralyzed by its own bureaucracy and corruption, forcing ordinary citizens to create and direct their own rescue efforts and to reconstruct much of the housing that was lost as well.\nIn 1987, the Historic center of Mexico City, a central neighborhood of Mexico City was enlisted as UNESCO World Heritage Site for its large collection of ancient Aztec and colonial architecture.\nHowever, the last straw may have been the controversial elections of 1988. That year, the presidency was set between the P.R.I.'s candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, and a coalition of left-wing parties led by Cuauht\u00e9moc C\u00e1rdenas, son of the former president L\u00e1zaro C\u00e1rdenas. The counting system \"fell\" because coincidentally the power went out and suddenly, when it returned, the winning candidate was Salinas, even though C\u00e1rdenas had the upper hand.\nAs a result of the fraudulent election, C\u00e1rdenas became a member of the Party of the Democratic Revolution. Discontent over the election eventually led Cuauht\u00e9moc C\u00e1rdenas to become the first elected mayor of Mexico City in 1997. C\u00e1rdenas promised a more democratic government, and his party claimed some victories against crime, pollution, and other major problems. He resigned in 1999 to run for the presidency.\nGeography.\nMexico City is located in the Valley of Mexico, sometimes called the Basin of Mexico. This valley is located in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt in the high plateaus of south-central Mexico.\nIt has a minimum altitude of above sea level and is surrounded by mountains and volcanoes that reach elevations of over . This valley has no natural drainage outlet for the waters that flow from the mountainsides, making the city vulnerable to flooding. Drainage was engineered through the use of canals and tunnels starting in the 17th century.\nMexico City primarily rests on what was Lake Texcoco. Seismic activity is frequent there. Lake Texcoco was drained starting from the 17th century. Although none of the lake waters remain, the city rests on the lake bed's heavily saturated clay. This soft base is collapsing due to the over-extraction of groundwater, called \"groundwater-related subsidence\".\nSince the beginning of the 20th century the city has sunk as much as in some areas. On average Mexico City sinks every year. This sinking is causing problems with runoff and wastewater management, leading to flooding problems, especially during the summer. The entire lake bed is now paved over and most of the city's remaining forested areas lie in the southern boroughs of Milpa Alta, Tlalpan and Xochimilco.\nEnvironment.\nOriginally much of the valley lay beneath the waters of Lake Texcoco, a system of interconnected salt and freshwater lakes. The Aztecs built dikes to separate the fresh water used to raise crops in \"chinampas\" and to prevent recurrent floods. These dikes were destroyed during the siege of Tenochtitlan, and during colonial times the Spanish regularly drained the lake to prevent floods. Only a small section of the original lake remains, located outside Mexico City, in the municipality of Atenco, State of Mexico.\nArchitects Teodoro Gonz\u00e1lez de Le\u00f3n and Alberto Kalach along with a group of Mexican urbanists, engineers and biologists have developed the project plan for \"Recovering the City of Lakes\". If approved by the government the project will contribute to the supply of water from natural sources to the Valley of Mexico, the creation of new natural spaces, a great improvement in air quality, and greater population establishment planning.\nPollution.\nBy the 1990s Mexico City had become infamous as one of the world's most polluted cities; however, the city has since become a model for drastically lowering pollution levels. By 2014 carbon monoxide pollution had dropped drastically, while sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide were at levels about a third of those in 1992. The levels of signature pollutants in Mexico City are similar to those of Los Angeles. Despite the cleanup, the metropolitan area is still the most ozone-polluted part of the country, with ozone levels 2.5 times beyond WHO-defined safe limits.\nTo clean up pollution, the federal and local governments implemented numerous plans including the constant monitoring and reporting of environmental conditions, such as ozone and nitrogen oxides. When the levels of these two pollutants reached critical levels, contingency actions were implemented which included closing factories, changing school hours, and extending the \"A day without a car\" program to two days of the week. The government also instituted industrial technology improvements, a strict biannual vehicle emission inspection and the reformulation of gasoline and diesel fuels. The introduction of Metrob\u00fas bus rapid transit and the Ecobici bike-sharing were among efforts to encourage alternate, greener forms of transportation.\nParks and recreation.\nChapultepec, the city's most iconic public park, has history back to the Aztec emperors who used the area as a retreat. It is south of Polanco district, and houses the Chapultepec Zoo the main city's zoo, several ponds and seven museums, including the National Museum of Anthropology. Other iconic city parks include the Alameda Central, it is recognized as the oldest public park in the Americas. Parque M\u00e9xico and Parque Espa\u00f1a in the hip Condesa district; Parque Hundido and \"Parque de los Venados\" in Colonia del Valle, and Parque Lincoln in Polanco. There are many smaller parks throughout the city. Most are small \"squares\" occupying two or three square blocks amid residential or commercial districts. Several other larger parks such as the Bosque de Tlalpan and Viveros de Coyoac\u00e1n, and in the east Alameda Oriente, offer many recreational activities. Northwest of the city is a large ecological reserve, the Bosque de Arag\u00f3n. In the southeast is the Xochimilco Ecological Park and Plant Market, a World Heritage Site. West of Santa Fe district are the pine forests of the Desierto de los Leones National Park. Amusement parks include Six Flags M\u00e9xico, in Ajusco neighborhood which is the largest in Latin America. There are numerous seasonal fairs present in the city.\nMexico City has three zoos. Chapultepec Zoo, the San Juan de Aragon Zoo and Los Coyotes Zoo. Chapultepec Zoo is located in the first section of Chapultepec Park in the Miguel Hidalgo. It was opened in 1924. Visitors can see about 243 specimens of different species including kangaroos, giant panda, gorillas, caracal, hyena, hippos, jaguar, giraffe, lemur, lion, among others. Zoo San Juan de Aragon is near the San Juan de Aragon Park in the Gustavo A. Madero. In this zoo, opened in 1964, there are species that are in danger of extinction such as the jaguar and the Mexican wolf. Other guests are the golden eagle, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, caracara, zebras, African elephant, macaw, hippo, among others. Zoo Los Coyotes is a 27.68-acre (11.2 ha) zoo located south of Mexico City in the Coyoacan. It was inaugurated on 2 February 1999. It has more than 301 specimens of 51 species of wild native or endemic fauna from the area, featuring eagles, ajolotes, coyotes, macaws, bobcats, Mexican wolves, raccoons, mountain lions, teporingos, foxes, white-tailed deer.\nClimate.\nMexico City has a subtropical highland climate (K\u00f6ppen climate classification \"Cwb\"), due to its tropical location but high elevation. The lower region of the valley receives less rainfall than the upper regions of the south; the lower boroughs of Iztapalapa, Iztacalco, Venustiano Carranza and the east portion of Gustavo A. Madero are usually drier and warmer than the upper southern boroughs of Tlalpan and Milpa Alta, a mountainous region of pine and oak trees known as the range of Ajusco. The average annual temperature varies from , depending on the altitude of the borough. The temperature is rarely below or above . At the Tacubaya observatory, the lowest temperature ever registered was on 13 February 1960, and the highest temperature on record was on 25 May 2024. Overall precipitation is heavily concentrated in the summer months, and includes dense hail.\nSnow falls in the city scarcely, although somewhat more often on nearby mountaintops. Throughout its history, the Central Valley of Mexico was accustomed to having several snowfalls per decade (including a period between 1878 and 1895 in which every single year\u2014except 1880\u2014recorded snowfalls), mostly lake-effect snow. The effects of the draining of Lake Texcoco and global warming have greatly reduced snowfalls after the snow flurries of 12 February 1907. Since 1908, snow has only fallen thrice: snow on 14 February 1920; snow flurries on 14 March 1940; and on 12 January 1967, when of snow fell on the city, the most on record. The 1967 snowstorm coincided with the operation of \"Deep Drainage System\" that resulted in the total draining of what was left of Lake Texcoco. After the disappearance of Lake Texcoco, snow has never fallen again over Mexico City. The region of the Valley of Mexico receives anti-cyclonic systems. The weak winds of these systems do not allow for the dispersion, outside the basin, of the air pollutants which are produced by the 50,000 industries and 4\u00a0million vehicles operating in and around the metropolitan area.\nThe area receives about of annual rainfall, which is concentrated from May through October with little or no precipitation for the remainder of the year. The area has two main seasons. The wet humid summer runs from May to October when winds bring in tropical moisture from the sea, the wettest month being July. The cool sunny winter runs from November to April, when the air is relatively drier, the driest month being December. This season is subdivided into a cold winter period and a warm spring period. The cold period spans from November to February, when polar air masses push down from the north and keep the air fairly dry. The warm period extends from March to May when subtropical winds again dominate but do not yet carry enough moisture for rain to form.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nHistorically, and since Pre-Columbian times, the Valley of Anahuac has been one of the most densely populated areas in Mexico. When the Federal District was created in 1824, the urban area of Mexico City extended approximately to the area of today's Cuauht\u00e9moc borough. At the beginning of the 20th century, began migrating to the south and west and soon the small towns of Mixcoac and San \u00c1ngel were incorporated by the growing conurbation. According to the 1921 census, 54.78% of the city's population was considered Mestizo (Indigenous mixed with European), 22.79% considered European, and 18.74% considered Indigenous.\nUp to the 1990s, the Federal District was the most populous federal entity in Mexico, but since then, its population has remained stable at around 8.7\u00a0million. The growth of the city has extended beyond the limits of the city proper to 59 municipalities of the State of Mexico and 1 in the state of Hidalgo. With a population of approximately 19.8\u00a0million inhabitants (2008), it is one of the most populous conurbations in the world. Nonetheless, the annual rate of growth of the Metropolitan Area of Mexico City is much lower than that of other large urban agglomerations in Mexico, a phenomenon most likely attributable to the environmental policy of decentralization. The net migration rate of Mexico City from 1995 to 2000 was negative.\nMetropolitan area.\nThe metropolitan area, Greater Mexico City ('Zona Metropolitana del Valle de M\u00e9xico' or 'ZMVM' in Spanish) consists of Mexico City itself plus 60 municipalities in the State of Mexico and one in Hidalgo state. With a population of 21,804,515 (2020 census), Greater Mexico City is both the biggest and the densest metropolitan area in the country. Of the ca. 21.8 million, 9.2 million live in Mexico City proper and 12.4 million in the State of Mexico (ca. 75% of the state's population), including the municipalities of:\nMegalopolis.\nGreater Mexico City, in turn, forms part of an even larger megalopolis officially known as the \"Corona regional del centro de M\u00e9xico\" (Mexico City megalopolis), with a population of 33.4 million, more than one quarter of the country's population according to the 2020 census. The megalopolis as defined by the Environmental Commission of the Megalopolis (\"CAMe\") covers Mexico City and the states of Mexico, Hidalgo, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Morelos, and since 2019, Quer\u00e9taro, thus encompassing the metropolitan areas of Mexico City, Puebla, Quer\u00e9taro, Toluca, Cuernavaca, Pachuca, and others.\nGrowth.\nGreater Mexico City was the fastest growing metropolitan area in the country until the late 1980s. Since then, government policies have supported decentralization with the aim of reducing pollution in Greater Mexico City. While still growing, the annual rate of growth has decreased and is lower than that of Greater Guadalajara and Greater Monterrey.\nThe net migration rate of Mexico City proper from 1995 to 2000 was negative, which implies that residents are moving to the suburbs of the metropolitan area, or to other states of Mexico. In addition, some inner suburbs are losing population to outer suburbs, indicating the continuing expansion of Greater Mexico City.\nReligion.\nThe majority (82%) of the residents in Mexico City are Catholic, slightly lower than the 2010 census national percentage of 87%, making it the largest Christian denomination, though it has been decreasing over the last decades. Many other religions and philosophies are also practiced in the city: many different types of Protestant groups, different types of Jewish communities, Buddhist, Islamic and other spiritual and philosophical groups. There are also growing numbers of irreligious people, whether agnostic or atheist.\nThe patron saint of Mexico City is Saint Philip of Jesus, a Mexican Catholic missionary who became one of the Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan.\nThe Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico is the largest archdiocese in the world. There are two Catholic cathedrals in the city, the Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral and the Iztapalapa Cathedral, and three former Catholic churches who are now the cathedrals of other rites, the San Jos\u00e9 de Gracia Cathedral (Anglican church), the Porta Coeli Cathedral (Melkite Greek Catholic church) and the Valvanera Cathedral (Maronite church).\nEthnic groups.\nRepresenting around 18.74% of the city's population, indigenous peoples from different areas of Mexico have migrated to the capital in search of better economic opportunities. Nahuatl, Otomi, Mixtec, Zapotec and Mazahua are the indigenous languages with the greatest number of speakers in Mexico City. According to the 2020 Census, 2.03% of Mexico City's population identified as Black, Afro-Mexican, or of African descent.\nAdditionally, Mexico City is home to large communities of expatriates and immigrants from the rest of North America (U.S. and Canada), from South America (mainly from Argentina and Colombia, but also from Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Venezuela), from Central America and the Caribbean (mainly from Cuba, Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti and Honduras); from Europe (mainly from Spain, Germany and Switzerland, but also from Czech Republic, Hungary, France, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland and Romania), and from the Arab world (mostly from Lebanon, and other countries like Syria and Egypt).\nMexico City is home to the largest population of Americans living outside the United States. Estimates are as high as 700,000 Americans living in Mexico City, while in 1999 the U.S. Bureau of Consular Affairs estimated over 440,000 Americans lived in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area.\nHealth.\nMexico City is home to some of the best private hospitals in the country, including Hospital \u00c1ngeles, Hospital ABC and M\u00e9dica Sur. The national public healthcare institution for private-sector employees, IMSS, has its largest facilities in Mexico City\u2014including the National Medical Center and the La Raza Medical Center\u2014and has an annual budget of over 6\u00a0billion pesos. The IMSS and other public health institutions, including the ISSSTE (Public Sector Employees' Social Security Institute) and the National Health Ministry (SSA) maintain large specialty facilities in the city. These include the National Institutes of Cardiology, Nutrition, Psychiatry, Oncology, Pediatrics, Rehabilitation, among others.\nEducation.\nAmong its many public and private schools (K\u201313), the city offers multi-cultural, multi-lingual and international schools attended by Mexican and foreign students. Best known are the Colegio Alem\u00e1n (German school with three main campuses), the Liceo Mexicano Japon\u00e9s (Japanese), the Centro Cultural Coreano en M\u00e9xico (Korean), the Lyc\u00e9e Franco-Mexicain (French), the American School, The Westhill Institute (American School), the Edron Academy and the Greengates School (British). Mexico City joined the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities in 2015.\nIn the Plaza de las Tres Culturas is the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco that is recognized for being the first and oldest European school of higher learning in the Americas and the first major school of interpreters and translators in the New World. Other, the now-defunct Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico is considered the father of the UNAM, and it was located in the city and was the third oldest university in the Americas.\nThe National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), located in Mexico City, is the largest university on the continent, with more than 300,000 students from all backgrounds. Three Nobel laureates, several Mexican entrepreneurs and most of Mexico's modern-day presidents are among its former students. UNAM conducts 50% of Mexico's scientific research and has presence all across the country with satellite campuses, observatories and research centers. UNAM ranked 74th in the Top 200 World University Ranking published by Times Higher Education (then called Times Higher Education Supplement) in 2006, making it the highest ranked Spanish-speaking university in the world. The sprawling main campus of the university, known as Ciudad Universitaria, was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2007.\nThe second largest higher-education institution is the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), which includes among many other relevant centers the Centro de Investigaci\u00f3n y de Estudios Avanzados (Cinvestav), where varied high-level scientific and technological research is done. Other major higher-education institutions in the city include the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM), the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH), the Instituto Tecnol\u00f3gico Aut\u00f3nomo de M\u00e9xico (ITAM), the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (3 campuses), the Universidad Panamericana (UP), the Universidad La Salle, the Universidad Intercontinental (UIC), the Universidad del Valle de M\u00e9xico (UVM), the Universidad An\u00e1huac, Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar University (USB), the Universidad Intercontinental (UIC), the Alliant International University, the Universidad Iberoamericana, El Colegio de M\u00e9xico (Colmex), Escuela Libre de Derecho and the Centro de Investigaci\u00f3n y Docencia Econ\u00f3mica, (CIDE).\nIn addition, the prestigious University of California maintains a campus known as \"Casa de California\" in the city. The Universidad Tecnol\u00f3gica de M\u00e9xico is also in Mexico City.\nPolitics.\nPolitical structure.\nThe Acta Constitutiva de la Federaci\u00f3n of 31 January 1824, and the Federal Constitution of 4 October 1824, fixed the political and administrative organization of the United Mexican States after the Mexican War of Independence. In addition, Section XXVIII of Article 50 gave the new Congress the right to choose where the federal government would be located. This location would then be appropriated as federal land, with the federal government acting as the local authority. The two main candidates to become the capital were Mexico City and Quer\u00e9taro.\nDue in large part to the persuasion of representative Servando Teresa de Mier, Mexico City was chosen because it was the center of the country's population and history, even though Queretaro was closer to the center geographically. The choice was official on 18 November 1824, and Congress delineated a surface area of two leagues square (8,800 acres) centered on the Zocalo. This area was then separated from the State of Mexico, forcing that state's government to move from the Palace of the Inquisition (now Museum of Mexican Medicine) in the city to Texcoco. This area did not include the population centers of the towns of Coyoac\u00e1n, Xochimilco, Mexicaltzingo and Tlalpan, all of which remained as part of the State of Mexico.\nIn 1854 president Antonio L\u00f3pez de Santa Anna enlarged the area of Mexico City almost eightfold from the original , annexing the rural and mountainous areas to secure the strategic mountain passes to the south and southwest to protect the city in event of a foreign invasion. (The Mexican\u2013American War had just been fought.) The last changes to the limits of Mexico City were made between 1898 and 1902, reducing the area to the current by adjusting the southern border with the state of Morelos. By that time, the total number of municipalities within Mexico City was twenty-two. In 1941, the General Anaya borough was merged with the Central Department, which was then renamed \"Mexico City\" (thus reviving the name but not the autonomous municipality). From 1941 to 1970, the Federal District comprised twelve \"delegaciones\" and Mexico City. In 1970, Mexico City was split into four different \"delegaciones\": Cuauht\u00e9moc, Miguel Hidalgo, Venustiano Carranza and Benito Ju\u00e1rez, increasing the number of \"delegaciones\" to 16. Since then, the whole Federal District, whose \"delegaciones\" had by then almost formed a single urban area, began to be considered \"de facto\" a synonym of Mexico City.\nThe lack of a \"de jure\" stipulation left a legal vacuum that led to a number of sterile discussions about whether one concept had engulfed the other or if the latter had ceased to exist altogether. In 1993, the situation was solved by an amendment to the 44th article of the Constitution of Mexico; Mexico City and the Federal District were stated to be the same entity. The amendment was later introduced into the second article of the Statute of Government of the Federal District.\nOn 29 January 2016, Mexico City ceased to be the \"Federal District\" (Spanish: \"Distrito Federal\" or D.F.), and was officially renamed \"Ciudad de M\u00e9xico\" (or \"CDMX\"). On that date, Mexico City began a transition to becoming the country's 32nd federal entity, giving it a level of autonomy comparable to that of a state. It will have its own constitution and its legislature, and its \"delegaciones\" will now be headed by mayors. Because of a clause in the Mexican Constitution, however, as it is the seat of the powers of the federation, it can never become a state, or the capital of the country has to be relocated elsewhere.\nIn response to the demands, Mexico City received a greater degree of autonomy, with the 1987 elaboration the first Statute of Government (\"Estatuto de Gobierno\") and the creation of an assembly of representatives. The city has a Statute of Government, and as of its ratification on 31 January 2017, a , similar to the states of the Union. As part of the recent changes in autonomy, the budget is administered locally; it is proposed by the head of government and approved by the Legislative Assembly. Nonetheless, it is the Congress of the Union that sets the ceiling to internal and external public debt issued by the city government.\nThe politics pursued by the administrations of heads of government in Mexico City at the end of the 20th century have usually been more liberal than those of the rest of the country, whether with the support of the federal government, as was the case with the approval of several comprehensive environmental laws in the 1980s, or by laws that were since approved by the Legislative Assembly. The Legislative Assembly expanded provisions on abortions, becoming the first federal entity to expand abortion in Mexico beyond cases of rape and economic reasons, to permit it at the choice of the mother before the 12th week of pregnancy. In December 2009, the then Federal District became the first city in Latin America and one of very few in the world to legalize same-sex marriage.\nBoroughs and neighborhoods.\nAfter the political reforms in 2016, the city is divided for administrative purposes into 16 boroughs (, colloquially \"alcald\u00edas\"), formerly called \"delegaciones\". While they are not fully equivalent to municipalities, the boroughs have gained significant autonomy. Formerly appointed by the Federal District's head of government, local authorities were first elected directly by plurality in 2000. From 2016, each borough is headed by a mayor, expanding their local government powers.\nThe boroughs of Mexico City with their 2020 populations are:\nThe Human Development Index report of 2005 shows that there were three boroughs with a very high Human Development Index, 12 with a high HDI value (9 above .85), and one with a medium HDI value (almost high). Benito Ju\u00e1rez borough had the highest HDI of the country (0.9510) followed by Miguel Hidalgo, which came up fourth nationally with an HDI of (0.9189), and Coyoac\u00e1n was fifth nationally, with an HDI of (0.9169). Cuajimalpa (15th), Cuauht\u00e9moc (23rd), and Azcapotzalco (25th) also had very high values of 0.8994, 0.8922, and 0.8915, respectively.\nIn contrast, the boroughs of Xochimilco (172nd), Tl\u00e1huac (177th), and Iztapalapa (183rd) presented the lowest HDI values of Mexico City, with values of 0.8481, 0.8473, and 0.8464, respectively, which are still in the global high-HDI range. The only borough that did not have a high HDI was that of rural Milpa Alta, which had a \"medium\" HDI of 0.7984, far below those of all the other boroughs (627th nationally, the rest being in the top 200). Mexico City's HDI for the 2005 report was 0.9012 (very high), and its 2010 value of 0.9225 (very high), or (by newer methodology) 0.8307, was Mexico's highest.\nLaw enforcement.\nThe Secretariat of Public Security of Mexico City (Secretar\u00eda de Seguridad P\u00fablica de la Ciudad de M\u00e9xico \u2013 SSP) manages a combined force of over 90,000 officers in Mexico City. The SSP is charged with maintaining public order and safety in the heart of Mexico City. The historic district is also roamed by tourist police, aiming to orient and serve tourists. These horse-mounted agents dress in traditional uniforms. The investigative Judicial Police of Mexico City (Polic\u00eda Judicial de la Ciudad de M\u00e9xico \u2013 PJCDMX) is organized under the Office of the Attorney General of Mexico City (the Procuradur\u00eda General de Justicia de la Ciudad de M\u00e9xico). The PGJCDMX maintains 16 precincts (delegaciones) with an estimated 3,500 judicial police, 1,100 investigating agents for prosecuting attorneys (agentes del ministerio p\u00fablico), and nearly 1,000 criminology experts or specialists (peritos).\nBetween 2000 and 2004 an average of 478 crimes were reported each day in Mexico City; however, the actual crime rate is thought to be much higher \"since most people are reluctant to report crime\". Under policies enacted by Mayor Marcelo Ebrard between 2009 and 2011, Mexico City underwent a major security upgrade with violent and petty crime rates both falling significantly despite the rise in violent crime in other parts of the country. Some of the policies enacted included the installation of 11,000 security cameras around the city and a very large expansion of the police force. Mexico City has one of the world's highest police officer-to-resident ratios, with one uniformed officer per 100 citizens. Since 1997 the prison population has increased by more than 500%. Political scientist Markus-Michael M\u00fcller argues that mostly informal street vendors are hit by these measures. He sees punishment \"related to the growing politicization of security and crime issues and the resulting criminalization of the people living at the margins of urban society, in particular those who work in the city's informal economy\".\nIn 2016, the incidence of femicides was 3.2 per 100 000 inhabitants, the national average being 4.2. A 2015 city government report found that two of three women over the age of 15 in the capital suffered some form of violence. In addition to street harassment, one of the places where women in Mexico City are subjected to violence is on and around public transport. Annually the Metro of Mexico City receives 300 complaints of sexual harassment.\nInternational relations.\nMexico City is twinned with:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nEconomy.\nMexico City is one of the most important economic hubs in Latin America. The city proper produces 15.8% of the country's gross domestic product. In 2002, Mexico City had a Human Development Index score of 0.915, identical to that of South Korea. In 2007, residents in the top twelve percent of GDP per capita holders in the city had a mean disposable income of US$. The high spending power of Mexico City inhabitants makes the city attractive for companies offering prestige and luxury goods. According to a 2009 study conducted by PwC, Mexico City had a GDP of $390 billion, ranking it as the eighth richest city in the world and the richest in Latin America. In 2009, Mexico City alone would rank as the 30th largest economy in the world.\nMexico City is the greatest contributor to the country's industrial GDP (15.8%) and also the greatest contributor to the country's GDP in the service sector (25.3%). Due to the limited non-urbanized space at the south\u2014most of which is protected through environmental laws\u2014the contribution of Mexico City in agriculture is the smallest of all federal entities in the country. The economic reforms of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari had a tremendous effect on the city, as a number of businesses, including banks and airlines, were privatized. He also signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This led to decentralization and a shift in Mexico City's economic base, from manufacturing to services, as most factories moved away to either the State of Mexico, or more commonly to the northern border. By contrast, corporate office buildings set their base in the city.\nMexico City offers an immense and varied consumer retail market, ranging from basic foods to ultra high-end luxury goods. Consumers may buy in fixed indoor markets, in mobile markets (\"tianguis\"), from street vendors, from downtown shops in a street dedicated to a certain type of good, in convenience stores and traditional neighborhood stores, in modern supermarkets, in warehouse and membership stores and the shopping centers that they anchor, in department stores, in big-box stores, and in modern shopping malls. In addition, \"tianguis\" or mobile markets set up shop on streets in many neighborhoods, depending on day of week. Sundays see the largest number of these markets.\nThe city's main source of fresh produce is the Central de Abasto. This in itself is a self-contained mini-city in Iztapalapa borough covering an area equivalent to several dozen city blocks. The wholesale market supplies most of the city's \"mercados\", supermarkets and restaurants, as well as people who come to buy the produce for themselves. Tons of fresh produce are trucked in from all over Mexico every day. The principal fish market is known as La Nueva Viga, in the same complex as the Central de Abastos. The world-renowned market of Tepito occupies 25 blocks, and sells a variety of products. A staple for consumers in the city is the omnipresent \"mercado\". Every major neighborhood in the city has its own borough-regulated market, often more than one. These are large well-established facilities offering most basic products, such as fresh produce and meat/poultry, dry goods, tortiller\u00edas, and many other services such as locksmiths, herbal medicine, hardware goods, sewing implements; and a multitude of stands offering freshly made, home-style cooking and drinks in the tradition of aguas frescas and atole.\nStreet vendors ply their trade from stalls in the \"tianguis\" as well as at non-officially controlled concentrations around metro stations and hospitals; at \"plazas comerciales\", where vendors of a certain \"theme\" (e.g. stationery) are housed; originally these were organized to accommodate vendors formerly selling on the street; or simply from improvised stalls on a city sidewalk. In addition, food and goods are sold from people walking with baskets, pushing carts, from bicycles or the backs of trucks, or simply from a tarp or cloth laid on the ground. In the center of the city informal street vendors are increasingly targeted by laws and prosecution. The weekly San Felipe de Jes\u00fas Tianguis is reported to be the largest in Latin America.\nThe Historic Center of Mexico City is widely known for specialized, often low-cost retailers. Certain blocks or streets are dedicated to shops selling a certain type of merchandise, with areas dedicated to over 40 categories such as home appliances, lamps and electricals, closets and bathrooms, housewares, wedding dresses, jukeboxes, printing, office furniture and safes, books, photography, jewelry, and opticians.\nTourism.\nMexico City is a destination for many foreign tourists. The Historic center of Mexico City (\"Centro Hist\u00f3rico\") and the \"floating gardens\" of Xochimilco in the southern borough have been declared World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. Landmarks in the Historic Center include the Plaza de la Constituci\u00f3n (Z\u00f3calo), the main central square with its epoch-contrasting Spanish-era Metropolitan Cathedral and National Palace, ancient Aztec temple ruins Templo Mayor (\"Major Temple\") and modern structures, all within a few steps of one another. (The Templo Mayor was discovered in 1978 while workers were digging to place underground electric cables).\nThe most recognizable icon of Mexico City is the golden Angel of Independence on the wide, elegant avenue Paseo de la Reforma, modeled by the order of the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico after the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es in Paris. This avenue was designed over the Americas' oldest known major roadway in the 19th century to connect the National Palace (seat of government) with the Castle of Chapultepec, the imperial residence. Today, this avenue is an important financial district in which the Mexican Stock Exchange and several corporate headquarters are located. Another important avenue is the Avenida de los Insurgentes, which extends and is one of the longest single avenues in the world.\nChapultepec Park houses the Chapultepec Castle, now a museum on a hill that overlooks the park and its numerous museums, monuments and the national zoo and the National Museum of Anthropology (which houses the Aztec Calendar Stone). \nAnother piece of architecture is the Palacio de Bellas Artes, a white marble theater/museum whose weight is such that it has gradually been sinking into the soft ground below. Its construction began during the presidency of Porfirio D\u00edaz and ended in 1934, after being interrupted by the Mexican Revolution in the 1920s.\nThe Plaza de las Tres Culturas, in this square are located the College of Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, that is the first and oldest European school of higher learning in the Americas, and the archeological site of the city-state of Tlatelolco, and the shrine and Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe are also important sites. There is a double-decker bus, known as the \"Turibus\", that circles most of these sites, and has timed audio describing the sites in multiple languages as they are passed.\nIn addition, according to the Secretariat of Tourism, the city has about 170 museums\u2014is among the top ten of cities in the world with highest number of museums\u2014over 100 art galleries, and some 30 concert halls, all of which maintain a constant cultural activity during the whole year. Many areas (e.g. Palacio Nacional and the National Institute of Cardiology) have murals painted by Diego Rivera. He and his wife Frida Kahlo lived in Coyoac\u00e1n, where several of their homes, studios, and art collections are open to the public. The house where Leon Trotsky was initially granted asylum and finally murdered in 1940 is also in Coyoac\u00e1n. In addition, there are several \"haciendas\" that are now restaurants, such as the San \u00c1ngel Inn, the Hacienda de Tlalpan, Hacienda de Cort\u00e9s and the Hacienda de los Morales.\nTransportation.\nAirports.\nMexico City International Airport is Mexico City's primary airport (IATA Airport Code: MEX), and serves as the hub of Aerom\u00e9xico (Skyteam). Felipe \u00c1ngeles International Airport (IATA Airport Code: NLU) is Mexico City's secondary airport, and was opened in 2022, rebuilt from the former Santa Luc\u00eda Air Force Base. It is located in Zumpango, State of Mexico, north-northeast of the historic center of Mexico City by car.\nSistema de Movilidad Integrada.\nIn 2019, the graphic designer Lance Wyman was engaged to create an integrated map of the multimodal public transportation system; he presented a new logo for the Sistema de Movilidad Integrada, describing eight distinct modes of transportation. The head of the government, Claudia Sheinbaum, said the branding would be used for a new single payment card to streamline public transportation fare collection.\nMetro.\nMexico City is served by the Mexico City Metro, a metro system, which is the largest in Latin America. The first portions were opened in 1969 and it has expanded to 12 lines with 195 stations, transporting 4.4\u00a0million people every day.\nTren Suburbano.\nA suburban rail system, the Tren Suburbano serves the metropolitan area, beyond the reach of the metro, with one line serving to municipalities such as Tlalnepantla and Cuautitl\u00e1n Izcalli, but with future lines planned to serve e.g. Chalco and La Paz.\nElectric transport other than the metro also exists, in the form of several Mexico City trolleybus routes and the Xochimilco Light Rail line, both of which are operated by Servicio de Transportes El\u00e9ctricos. The central area's last streetcar line (tramway, or \"\") closed in 1979.\nBus.\nMexico City has an extensive bus network, consisting of public buses, bus rapid transit, and trolleybuses.\nRoads.\nMexico City has a large road network, and relatively high private car usage, estimated at more than 4.5 million in 2016. There is an environmental program, called Hoy No Circula (\"Today Does Not Run\", or \"One Day without a Car\"), whereby vehicles that have not passed emissions testing are restricted from circulating on certain days according to the ending digit of their license plates, in an attempt to cut down on pollution and traffic congestion.\nCycling.\nThe Mexico City local government oversees the administration of Ecobici, North America's second-largest bicycle sharing system. Established to promote sustainable urban transportation, Ecobici facilitates convenient access to bicycles for residents and visitors alike. As of September 2013, the system comprised 276 stations strategically positioned across an expansive area extending from the Historic center to Polanco, a prominent district in the city. Within this network, approximately 4,000 bicycles are available for public use, enabling individuals to navigate the metropolitan landscape efficiently and reduce reliance on traditional motorized modes of transportation. Ecobici serves as a model for environmentally conscious urban mobility initiatives, reflecting Mexico City's commitment to fostering sustainable development and enhancing the quality of life for its populace.\nCulture.\nArt.\nSecular works of art of this period include the equestrian sculpture of Charles IV of Spain, locally known as \"El Caballito\" (\"The little horse\"). This piece, in bronze, was the work of Manuel Tols\u00e1 and it has been placed at the Plaza Tols\u00e1, in front of the Palacio de Mineria (Mining Palace). Directly in front of this building is the Museo Nacional de Arte (Munal) (the National Museum of Art).\nDuring the 19th century, an important producer of art was the Academia de San Carlos (San Carlos Art Academy), founded during colonial times, and which later became the Escuela Nacional de Artes Pl\u00e1sticas (the National School of Arts) including painting, sculpture and graphic design, one of UNAM's art schools. Many of the works produced by the students and faculty of that time are now displayed in the Museo Nacional de San Carlos (National Museum of San Carlos). One of the students, Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Velasco, is considered one of the greatest Mexican landscape painters of the 19th century. Porfirio D\u00edaz's regime sponsored arts, especially those that followed the French school. Popular arts in the form of cartoons and illustrations flourished, e.g. those of Jos\u00e9 Guadalupe Posada and Manuel Manilla. The permanent collection of the San Carlos Museum also includes paintings by European masters such as Rembrandt, Vel\u00e1zquez, Murillo, and Rubens.\nAfter the Mexican Revolution, an avant-garde artistic movement originated in Mexico City: muralism. Many of the works of muralists Jos\u00e9 Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera are displayed in numerous buildings in the city, most notably at the National Palace and the Palacio de Bellas Artes. Frida Kahlo, wife of Rivera, with a strong nationalist expression, was also one of the most renowned of Mexican painters. Her house has become a museum that displays many of her works.\nThe former home of Rivera muse Dolores Olmedo houses the namesake museum. The facility is in Xochimilco borough in southern Mexico City and includes several buildings surrounded by sprawling manicured lawns. It houses a large collection of Rivera and Kahlo paintings and drawings, as well as living \"Xoloizcuintles\" (Mexican Hairless Dog). It also regularly hosts small but important temporary exhibits of classical and modern art (e.g. Venetian Masters and Contemporary New York artists).\nDuring the 20th century, many artists immigrated to Mexico City from different regions of Mexico, such as Leopoldo M\u00e9ndez, an engraver from Veracruz, who supported the creation of the socialist Taller de la Gr\u00e1fica Popular (Popular Graphics Workshop), designed to help blue-collar workers find a venue to express their art. Other painters came from abroad, such as Catalan painter Remedios Varo and other Spanish and Jewish exiles. It was in the second half of the 20th century that the artistic movement began to drift apart from the Revolutionary theme. Jos\u00e9 Luis Cuevas opted for a modernist style in contrast to the muralist movement associated with social politics.\nMuseums.\nMexico City has numerous museums dedicated to art, including Mexican colonial, modern and contemporary art, and international art. The Museo Tamayo was opened in the mid-1980s to house the collection of international contemporary art donated by Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo. The collection includes pieces by Picasso, Klee, Kandinsky, Warhol and many others, though most of the collection is stored while visiting exhibits are shown. The Museo de Arte Moderno is a repository of Mexican artists from the 20th century, including Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros, Kahlo, Gerzso, Carrington, Tamayo, and also regularly hosts temporary exhibits of international modern art. In southern Mexico City, the Carrillo Gil Museum showcases avant-garde artists, as does the Museo Universitario Arte Contempor\u00e1neo, designed by Mexican architect Teodoro Gonz\u00e1lez de Le\u00f3n, inaugurated in late 2008.\nThe Museo Soumaya, named after the wife of Mexican magnate Carlos Slim, has the largest private collection of original Rodin sculptures outside of France. It also has a large collection of Dal\u00ed sculptures, and recently began showing pieces in its masters collection including El Greco, Vel\u00e1zquez, Picasso and Canaletto. The museum inaugurated a new futuristic-design facility in 2011 just north of Polanco, while maintaining a smaller facility in Plaza Loreto in southern Mexico City. The Colecci\u00f3n J\u00famex is a contemporary art museum located on the sprawling grounds of the Jumex juice company in the northern industrial suburb of Ecatepec. It has the largest private contemporary art collection in Latin America and hosts pieces from its permanent collection as well as traveling exhibits. The Museo de San Ildefonso, housed in the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso in Mexico City's historic downtown district is a 17th-century colonnaded palace housing an art museum that regularly hosts world-class exhibits of Mexican and international art. The Museo Nacional de Arte is also located in a former palace in the historic center. It houses a large collection of pieces by all major Mexican artists of the last 400 years and also hosts visiting exhibits.\nJack Kerouac, the noted American author, spent extended periods of time in the city, and wrote his 1959 masterpiece volume of poetry \"Mexico City Blues\" here. Another American author, William S. Burroughs, also lived in Colonia Roma where he accidentally shot his wife. Most of Mexico City's museums can be visited from Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 5pm, although some of them have extended schedules, such as the Museum of Anthropology and History, which is open to 7pm. In addition to this, entrance to most museums are free on Sunday. In some cases a modest fee may be charged.\nThe Memory and Tolerance Museum, inaugurated in 2011, showcases historical events of discrimination and genocide. Permanent exhibits include those on the Holocaust and other large-scale atrocities. It also houses temporary exhibits; one on Tibet was inaugurated by the Dalai Lama in September 2011.\nMusic, theater and entertainment.\nMexico City is home to a number of orchestras offering season programs. These include the Mexico City Philharmonic, which performs at the Sala Ollin Yoliztli; the National Symphony Orchestra, whose home base is the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of the Fine Arts), a masterpiece of art nouveau and art dec\u00f3 styles; the Philharmonic Orchestra of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (OFUNAM), and the Miner\u00eda Symphony Orchestra, both of which perform at the Sala Nezahualc\u00f3yotl, which was the first wrap-around concert hall in the Western Hemisphere when inaugurated in 1976. There are also many smaller ensembles that enrich the city's musical scene, including the Carlos Ch\u00e1vez Youth Symphony, the Cuarteto Latinoamericano, the New World Orchestra (Orquesta del Nuevo Mundo), the National Polytechnical Symphony and the Bellas Artes Chamber Orchestra (Orquesta de C\u00e1mara de Bellas Artes).\nThe city is also a leading center of popular culture and music. There are a multitude of venues hosting Spanish and foreign-language performers. These include the 10,000-seat National Auditorium that regularly schedules the Spanish and English-language pop and rock artists, as well as many of the world's leading performing arts ensembles, the auditorium also broadcasts grand opera performances from New York's Metropolitan Opera on giant, high definition screens. In 2007 National Auditorium was selected world's best venue by multiple genre media. Other sites for pop-artist performances include the 3,000-seat Teatro Metropolitan, the 15,000-seat Palacio de los Deportes, and the larger 50,000-seat Foro Sol Stadium, where popular international artists perform on a regular basis. The Cirque du Soleil has held several seasons at the Carpa Santa Fe, in the Santa Fe district in the western part of the city. There are numerous venues for smaller musical ensembles and solo performers. These include the Hard Rock Live, Batacl\u00e1n, Foro Scotiabank, Lunario, Circo Volador and Voil\u00e1 Acoustique. Recent additions include the 20,000-seat Arena Ciudad de M\u00e9xico, the 3,000-seat Pepsi Center World Trade Center, and the 2,500-seat Auditorio Blackberry.\nThe Centro Nacional de las Artes (National Center for the Arts) has several venues for music, theater, dance. UNAM's main campus, also in the southern part of the city, is home to the Centro Cultural Universitario (the University Culture Center) (CCU). The CCU also houses the National Library, the interactive Universum, Museo de las Ciencias, the Sala Nezahualc\u00f3yotl concert hall, several theaters and cinemas, and the new University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC). A branch of the National University's CCU cultural center was inaugurated in 2007 in the facilities of the former Ministry of Foreign Affairs, known as Tlatelolco, in north-central Mexico City.\nThe Jos\u00e9 Vasconcelos Library, a national library, is located on the grounds of the former Buenavista railroad station in the northern part of the city. The Papalote Museo del Ni\u00f1o (Kite Children's Museum), which houses the world's largest dome screen, is located in the wooded park of Chapultepec, near the Museo Tecnol\u00f3gico, and Aztl\u00e1n Parque Urbano, an amusement park. The theme park Six Flags M\u00e9xico (the largest amusement park in Latin America) is located in the Ajusco neighborhood, in Tlalpan borough, southern Mexico City. During the winter, the main square of the Z\u00f3calo is transformed into a gigantic ice skating rink, which is said to be the largest in the world behind that of Moscow's Red Square.\nThe Cineteca Nacional (Mexican Film Library), near the Coyoac\u00e1n suburb, shows a variety of films, and stages many film festivals, including the annual International Showcase, and many smaller ones ranging from Scandinavian and Uruguayan cinema, to Jewish and LGBT-themed films. Cin\u00e9polis and Cinemex, the two biggest film business chains, also have several film festivals throughout the year, with both national and international movies. Mexico City has a number of IMAX theaters, providing residents and visitors access to films ranging from documentaries to blockbusters on these large screens.\nCuisine.\nOnce considered plebeian fare, by the 19th century tacos had become a standard of Mexico City's cuisine. Furthermore, as authorities struggled to tax local taquerias, imposing licensing requirements and penalties, they recorded some details of the types of foods being served by these establishments. The most frequent reference was for \"tacos de barbacoa\". Also mentioned are enchiladas, \"tacos de minero\" and \"gorditas\", along with oyster shops and fried fish stands. There is evidence of some regional specialties being made available for recent migrants; at least two shops were known to serve \"pozole\", a type of stew similar to hominy that is a staple of Guadalajara, Jalisco. Mexico City is known for having some of the freshest fish and seafood in Mexico's interior. La Nueva Viga Market is the second largest seafood market in the world after the Tsukiji fish market in Japan.\nMexico City offers a variety of cuisines: restaurants specializing in the regional cuisines of Mexico's 31 states are available in the city, and the city also has several branches of internationally recognized restaurants. These include Paris' Au Pied de Cochon and Brasserie Lipp, Philippe (by Philippe Chow); Nobu, Quintonil, Morimoto; P\u00e1mpano, owned by Mexican-raised opera singer Pl\u00e1cido Domingo. There are branches of Japanese restaurant Suntory, Italian restaurant Alfredo, as well as New York steakhouses Morton's and The Palm, and Monte Carlo's BeefBar. Three of Lima's Haute restaurants, serving Peruvian cuisine, have locations in Mexico City: La Mar, Segundo Muelle and Astrid y Gast\u00f3n.\nFor the 2023 list of World's 50 Best Restaurants as named by the British magazine \"Restaurant\", Mexico City ranked 13th best with the Mexican avant-garde restaurant Pujol (owned by Mexican chef Enrique Olvera). Also notable is the Basque-Mexican fusion restaurant Biko (run and co-owned by Bruno Oteiza and Mikel Alonso), which placed outside the list at 59th, but in previous years has ranked within the top 50. Other that has been placed on the list in 2019 is the restaurant Sud 777 at 58th place. In 2024, seven restaurants in the city received Michelin stars. At the other end of the scale are working class pulque bars known as \"pulquer\u00edas\", a challenge for tourists to locate and experience.\nMedia.\nMexico City is Mexico's most important hub for the printed media and book publishing industries. Dozens of daily newspapers are published, including \"El Universal\", \"Exc\u00e9lsior\", \"Reforma\" and \"La Jornada\". Other major papers include \"Milenio\", \"Cr\u00f3nica\", \"El Economista\" and . Leading magazines include , \"Proceso\", \"Poder\", as well as dozens of entertainment publications such as \"Vanidades\", \"Qui\u00e9n\", \"Chilango\", \"TV Notas\", and local editions of \"Vogue\", \"GQ\", and \"Architectural Digest\".\nIt is also a leading center of the advertising industry. Most international ad firms have offices in the city, including Grey, JWT, Leo Burnett, Euro RSCG, BBDO, Ogilvy, Saatchi & Saatchi, and McCann Erickson. Many local firms also compete in the sector, including Alazraki, Olabuenaga/Chemistri, Ter\u00e1n, Augusto El\u00edas, and Clemente C\u00e1mara, among others. There are 60 radio stations operating in the city and many local community radio transmission networks.\nThe two largest media companies in the Spanish-speaking world, Televisa and TV Azteca, are headquartered in Mexico City. Televisa often presents itself as the largest producer of Spanish-language content. Other local television channels include:\nXHDF 1 (Azteca Uno),\nXEW 2 (Televisa W),\nXHCTMX 3,\nXHTV 4,\nXHGC 5,\nXHTDMX 6,\nXHIMT 7,\nXEQ 9,\nXEIPN 11,\nXHUNAM 20,\nXHCDM 21,\nXEIMT 22,\nXHTRES 28,\nXHTVM 40 and\nXHHCU 45.\nSports.\nAssociation football is the country's most popular and most televised franchised sport. Its important venues in Mexico City include the Azteca Stadium, home to the Mexico national football team and giants Am\u00e9rica and Cruz Azul, which can seat 91,653 fans, making it the biggest stadium in Latin America. The Olympic Stadium in Ciudad Universitaria is home to the football club giants Universidad Nacional, with a seating capacity of over 52,000. The Sports City Stadium, which seats 33,042 fans, is near the World Trade Center Mexico City in the Nochebuena neighborhood, and is home to the historical Atlante. Am\u00e9rica, Cruz Azul and Universidad Nacional are based in Mexico City and play in the First Division; they are also part, with Guadalajara-based giants Club Deportivo Guadalajara, of Mexico's traditional \"Big Four\". The city's three derbies are the \"Cl\u00e1sico Joven\", played between Am\u00e9rica and Cruz Azul, the capital's two most popular and successful teams; the \"Cl\u00e1sico Capitalino\", between Am\u00e9rica and Universidad Nacional, and the \"Cl\u00e1sico Metropolitano\", between Cruz Azul and Universidad Nacional.\nThe country hosted the FIFA World Cup in 1970 and 1986, and Azteca Stadium is the first stadium in World Cup history to host the final twice. The city will be one of the host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Mexico City is the first Latin American city to host the Olympic Games, having held the Summer Olympics in 1968, winning bids against Buenos Aires, Lyon and Detroit. The city hosted the 1955 and 1975 Pan American Games, the latter after Santiago and S\u00e3o Paulo withdrew. The ICF Flatwater Racing World Championships were hosted here in 1974 and 1994. Lucha libre is a Mexican style of wrestling, and is one of the more popular sports throughout the country. The main venues in the city are Arena M\u00e9xico and Arena Coliseo.\nThe Aut\u00f3dromo Hermanos Rodr\u00edguez is the main venue for motorsport, and hosts the Formula 1 Mexican Grand Prix since its return to the sport in 2015, the event being held in the past from 1962 to 1970, and again from 1986 to 1992. Since 2016, it also hosts the Formula E Mexico City ePrix. From 1980 to 1981 and again from 2002 to 2007, the circuit hosted the Champ Car World Series Gran Premio de M\u00e9xico. Beginning in 2005, the NASCAR Nationwide Series ran the Telcel-Motorola M\u00e9xico 200. 2005 also marked the first running of the Mexico City 250 by the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series. Both races were removed from their series' schedules for 2009.\nBaseball is another sport played professionally in the city. Mexico City is home of the Mexico City Red Devils of the Mexican League, which is considered a Triple-A league by Major League Baseball. The Devils play their home games at Estadio Alfredo Harp Hel\u00fa designed by international Mexican-American architect FGP Atelier Founder Francisco Gonzalez Pulido in collaboration with local architect Taller ADG. Mexico City has some 10 Little Leagues for young baseball players. In 2005, Mexico City became the first city to host an NFL regular season game outside of the United States, at the Azteca Stadium. The crowd of 103,467 people attending this game was the largest ever for a regular season game in NFL history until 2009.\nThe city has also hosted several NBA pre-season games and has hosted international basketball's FIBA Americas Championship, along with north-of-the-border Major League Baseball exhibition games at Foro Sol. In 2017, NBA commissioner Adam Silver expressed interest in placing an NBA G League expansion team in Mexico City as early as 2018. This came to fruition on 12 December 2019 when commissioner Silver announced at a press conference in Mexico City Arena that LNBP team, Capitanes de Ciudad de M\u00e9xico will be joining the G League in the 2020\u201321 season on a five-year agreement.\nOther sports facilities in Mexico City are the Palacio de los Deportes indoor arena, Francisco M\u00e1rquez Olympic Swimming Pool, the Hip\u00f3dromo de Las Am\u00e9ricas, the Agustin Melgar Olympic Velodrome, and venues for equestrianism and horse racing, ice hockey, rugby, American-style football, baseball, and basketball. Prior to the 2025 ban on traditional bullfights enacted by Mexico City's Congress, bullfighting was held every Sunday during the season at the 50,000-seat Plaza M\u00e9xico, the world's largest bullring. Mexico City's golf courses have hosted Women's LPGA action, and two Men's Golf World Cups. Courses throughout the city are available as private as well as public venues.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "24356889": "President of Mexico\nHead of state and government of Mexico\nThe president of Mexico (), officially the president of the United Mexican States (), is the head of state and head of government of Mexico. Under the Constitution of Mexico, the president heads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander in chief of the Mexican Armed Forces. The office, which was first established by the federal Constitution of 1824, is currently held by Claudia Sheinbaum, who was sworn in on October 1, 2024. The office of the president is considered to be revolutionary, in the sense that the powers of office are derived from the Revolutionary Constitution of 1917. Another legacy of the Mexican Revolution is the Constitution's ban on re-election. Mexican presidents are limited to a single six-year term, called a \"sexenio.\" No one who has held the post, even on a caretaker basis, is allowed to run or serve again. The constitution and the office of the president closely follow the presidential system of government.\nRequirements to hold office.\nChapter III of Title III of the Constitution deals with the executive branch of government and sets forth the powers of the president, as well as the qualifications for the office. The president is vested with the \"Supreme Executive Power of the Union\".\nTo be eligible to serve as president, Article 82 of the Constitution specifies that the following requirements must be met:\nThe ban on any sort of presidential re-election dates back to the aftermath of the Porfiriato and the Mexican Revolution, which erupted after Porfirio D\u00edaz's fraudulent victory on his seventh re-election in a row. It is so entrenched in Mexican politics that it has remained in place even as it was relaxed for other offices. In 2014, the constitution was amended to allow city mayors, congresspeople and senators to run for a second consecutive term. Previously, Deputies and Senators were barred from successive re-election. The president remains barred from even non-consecutive reelection.\nThe Constitution does not establish formal academic qualifications to serve as president. Most presidents during the 19th and early 20th centuries had careers in one of two fields: the armed forces (typically the army) or the law. President Manuel \u00c1vila Camacho (1940\u20131946) was the last president to have been a career military officer. Most of his successors have been lawyers; in fact, all the presidents between 1958 and 1988 graduated from law school. Presidents Salinas (1988\u20131994) and Zedillo (1994\u20132000) were both trained as economists. Since the democratic transition, presidents have a wider academic background. Although Presidents Calder\u00f3n (2006\u20132012) and Pe\u00f1a Nieto (2012\u20132018) were both lawyers, President Fox (2000\u20132006) studied business administration, Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador, (2018-2024) studied political sciences and current President Claudia Sheinbaum studied physics.\nElections.\nThe presidential term was set at four years from 1821 to 1904, when President Porfirio D\u00edaz extended it to six years for the first time in Mexico's history, and then again from 1917 to 1928 after a new constitution reversed the change made by D\u00edaz in 1904.\nFinally, the presidential term was set at six years in 1928 and has remained unchanged since then. The president is elected by direct, popular, universal suffrage. Whoever wins a simple plurality of the national vote is elected; there is no runoff election.\nThe former president, Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador, was elected in 2018 with a modern-era record of 53% of the popular vote in 2018. The previous president, Enrique Pe\u00f1a Nieto won 38% of the popular vote in 2012. Former President Felipe Calder\u00f3n won with 36.38% of the votes in the 2006 general election, finishing only 0.56% above his nearest rival, Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador (who contested the official results). In 2000, former President Vicente Fox was elected with a plurality of 43% of the popular vote, Ernesto Zedillo won 48.7% of the vote in 1994, and his predecessor Carlos Salinas won with a majority of 50.4% in the 1988 election.\nAfter the fall of dictator Porfirio D\u00edaz in 1910 following the Mexican Revolution, the government was unstable until 1929, when all the revolutionary leaders united in one political party: the National Revolutionary Party, which later changed its name to the Party of the Mexican Revolution and is now the Institutional Revolutionary Party. From then, the PRI ruled Mexico as a virtual one-party state until 1989, when Ernesto Ruffo Appel was elected the first state governor from an opposition party.\nToward the end of their term, the incumbent president, in consultation with party leaders, selected the PRI's candidate in the next election in a procedure known as (transl.\u2009appointed by the finger). Until 1988, the PRI's candidate was virtually assured of election, winning by margins well over 70 percent of the vote.\nIn 1988, the PRI ruptured and the dissidents formed the National Democratic Front with rival center-left parties (now the PRD). Discontent with the PRI, and the popularity of the Front's candidate Cuauht\u00e9moc C\u00e1rdenas led to worries that PRI candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari would not come close to a majority, and might actually be defeated. While the votes were being counted, the tabulation system mysteriously shut down. The government declared Salinas the winner, leading to allegations of electoral fraud.\nThe 1997 federal congressional election saw the first opposition Chamber of Deputies ever, and the 2000 elections saw Vicente Fox of a PAN/PVEM alliance become the first opposition candidate to win an election since 1911. This historical defeat was accepted on election night by the PRI in the voice of President Zedillo; while this calmed fears of violence, it also fueled questions about the role of the president in the electoral process and to whom the responsibility of conceding defeat should fall in a democratic election.\nPresident-elect.\nAfter a presidential election, political parties may issue challenges to the election. These challenges are heard by the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judicial Power; after it has heard and ruled on them, the Tribunal must either declare the election invalid or certify the results of the elections in accordance to their rulings. Once the Tribunal declares the election valid, it issues a () to the candidate who obtained a plurality. That candidate then becomes President-elect. The final decision is made in September, two months after the election.\nPowers.\nThe 1917 Constitution borrowed heavily from the Constitution of the United States, providing for a clear separation of powers while giving the president wider powers than their American counterpart.\nFor the first 71 years after the enactment of the 1917 Constitution, the president exercised nearly absolute control over the country. Much of this power came from the \"de facto\" monopoly status of the PRI. As mentioned above, they effectively chose their successor as president by personally nominating the PRI's candidate in the next election. In addition, the unwritten rules of the PRI allowed them to designate party officials and candidates all the way down to the local level. They thus had an important (but not exclusive) influence over the political life of the country (part of their power had to be shared with unions and other groups, but as an individual, they had no peers). This and their constitutional powers made some political commentators describe the president as a six-year dictator, and to call this system an \"imperial presidency\". The situation remained largely unchanged until the early 1980s when a grave economic crisis created discomfort both in the population and inside the party, and the president's power was no longer absolute but still impressive.\nAn important characteristic of this system is that the new president was effectively chosen by the old one (since the PRI candidate was assured of election) but once they assumed power, the old one lost all power and influence (\"no reelection\" is a cornerstone of Mexican politics). In fact, tradition called for the incumbent president to fade into the background during the campaign to elect their successor. This renewed command helped maintain party discipline and avoided the stagnation associated with a single person holding power for decades, prompting Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa to call Mexico's political system \"the perfect dictatorship\" since the president's powers were cloaked by democratic practice.\nWith the democratic reforms of recent years and fairer elections, the president's powers have been limited in fact as well as in name. Vargas Llosa, during the Fox administration, called this new system \"The Imperfect Democracy\". The current rights and powers of the president of Mexico are established, limited and enumerated by Article 89 of the Constitution which include the following:\nA decree is a legislative instrument that has an expiration date and that is issued by one of the three branches of government. Congress may issue decrees, and the President may issue decrees as well. They have all the power of laws but cannot be changed by a power that did not issue them. They are very limited in their extent. One such decree is the federal budget, which is issued by Congress. The president's office may suggest a budget, but at the end of the day, it is Congress that decrees how to collect taxes and how to spend them. A Supreme Court ruling on Vicente Fox's veto of the 2004 budget suggests that the president may have the right to veto decrees from Congress.\nSince 1997, the Congress has been plural, usually with opposition parties having a majority. Major reforms (tax, energy) have to pass by Congress, and the ruling President usually found their efforts blocked: the PRI's Zedillo by opposing PAN/PRD congressmen, and later the PAN's Fox by the PRI and PRD. The PAN would push the reforms it denied to the PRI and vice versa. This situation, novel in a country where Congress was +90% dominated by the president's party for most of the century, has led to a legal analysis of the president's power. Formerly almost a dictator (because of PRI's party discipline), the current times show the president's power as somewhat limited. In 2004, President Fox threatened to veto the budget approved by Congress, claiming the budget overstepped his authority to lead the country, only to learn no branch of government had the power to veto a decree issued by another branch of government (although a different, non jurisprudence-setting ruling stated he could return the budget with observations).\nOath of office.\nUpon taking office, the President raises their right arm to shoulder-level and takes the following oath:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />.\nTranslation:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I affirm that I will follow and uphold the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States and the laws that emanate from it, and to perform loyally and patriotically the office of President of the Republic which the people have conferred upon me, always procuring the good and prosperity of the Union; and if I fail to do so, may the Nation demand it of me.\nNote that Article 83 of the mexican constitution states that the president begins his term at 00:00 () on October 1st, so the president assumes the powers of the office at that time, regardless of when the oath is taken.\nSash and flag.\nThe Mexican Presidential sash has the colors of the Mexican flag in three bands of equal width, with green on top, white in the center, and red on the bottom, worn from right shoulder to left waist; it also includes the National Seal, in gold thread, to be worn chest-high. In November 2018, a reform was made on Article 34 reordering the colors of the sash. A new sash was made putting the colors of the sash back to the previous order that was used from 1924 through 2009. In swearing-in ceremonies, the outgoing president turns in the sash to the current president of the Chamber of Deputies, who in turn gives it to the new president after the latter has sworn the oath of office. The sash is the symbol of the Executive Federal Power, and may only be worn by the current president.\nAccording to Article 35 of the Law on the National Arms, Flag, and Anthem, the president must wear the sash at the swearing-in ceremony, when they make their annual State of the Union report to Congress, during the commemoration of the Grito de Dolores on 15 September of each year, and when they receive the diplomatic credentials of accredited foreign ambassadors and ministers. They are also expected to wear it \"in those official ceremonies of greatest solemnity\". The sash is worn from right shoulder to left hip, and should be worn underneath the coat. The only exception is during the swearing-in ceremony, when it is worn over the coat so that the out-going president may easily take the sash off and drape it over the incoming president (Article 36).\nIn addition to the Presidential Sash, each president receives a Presidential Flag; the flag has imprinted the words Estados Unidos Mexicanos in golden letters and the national coat of arms also in gold.\nResidence.\nThe official residence and workplace of the president is the National Palace, a building facing the () in Mexico City. The site has been a seat of power since the Aztec Empire, with the materials of the current building taken from the palace of the Aztec emperor Moctezuma II. The President also has the use of Chapultepec Castle, formerly the imperial palace of the Second Mexican Empire, then the official residence of Mexican presidents until 1934, when L\u00e1zaro C\u00e1rdenas established the presidential residence at Los Pinos. Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador moved the presidential residence back to the National Palace upon the start of his term in 2018.\nSuccession.\nArticles 84 and 85 of the Mexican Constitution state that \"in case of absolute absence of a President\" the following should happen:\nArticle 85 additionally states that if the president requests a temporary absence \u2013 once authorized by the Congress \u2013 executive powers devolve provisionally upon the Secretary of the Interior for a period of up to sixty days until the President reassumes executive powers.\nAs per Article 83, no person who has already served as president, whether elected, provisional, interim, or substitute, can be designated as provisional, interim, or substitute president.\nThe designation of the Secretary of the Interior as the immediate successor dates to August 2012, when the changes to the Constitution were published in the Official Journal of the Federation.\nThe succession provisions have come into play only twice since the current constitution was enacted. In 1928, after the assassination of president-elect \u00c1lvaro Obreg\u00f3n, Congress appointed Emilio Portes Gil as Interim President; Portes Gil served in the position for 14 months while new elections were called. Pascual Ortiz Rubio was elected president in the special elections that followed in 1930, but he resigned in 1932. Abelardo L. Rodr\u00edguez was then appointed Interim President to fill out the remainder of Ortiz Rubio's term (under current law Rodr\u00edguez would be Substitute President, but at the time there was no distinction between Interim, Substitute, and Provisional presidents).\nPost-presidency.\nFormer presidents of Mexico continue to carry the title \"president\" until death but are rarely referred by it; they are commonly called ex-presidents. They were also given protection by the former \"Estado Mayor Presidencial\". Prior to 2018, former presidents also received a lifetime pension, though they could refuse it, as Ernesto Zedillo did. The system was abolished in 2018.\nUnlike in some other republics, former presidents of Mexico do not continue to be important national figures once out of office, and usually lead a discreet life. This is partly because they do not want to interfere with the government of the new president and partly because they may not have a good public image. This tradition can be traced back to the presidency of L\u00e1zaro C\u00e1rdenas. Former president Plutarco El\u00edas Calles had personally selected C\u00e1rdenas as his successor, and had hoped to control things from behind the scenes as he had for the previous five years. When C\u00e1rdenas showed he would rule in name and fact, Calles publicly criticized him, prompting C\u00e1rdenas to have Calles escorted out of the country by military police. C\u00e1rdenas himself remained silent on the policies of his successor Manuel \u00c1vila Camacho, establishing a tradition that former presidents do not interfere with their successors.\nFor example, Ernesto Zedillo holds important offices in the United Nations and in the private sector, but outside of Mexico. It is speculated he lives in a self-imposed exile to avoid the hatred of some of his fellow members of the PRI for having acknowledged the PRI's defeat in the 2000 presidential election. Carlos Salinas de Gortari also lived in a self-imposed exile in Ireland, but returned to Mexico. He campaigned intensely to have his brother, Ra\u00fal Salinas, freed after he was jailed in the early days of Zedillo's term, accused of drug trafficking and planning the assassination of Jos\u00e9 Francisco Ruiz Massieu. Carlos Salinas also wrote a book on neo-liberal Mexico, secured a position with the Dow Jones Company in the United States, and worked as a professor at several universities in that country. Ernesto Zedillo and Felipe Calder\u00f3n two surviving former presidents lived in the United States and taught at the universities where they formerly studied: Zedillo at Yale University and Calder\u00f3n at Harvard Kennedy School.\nTwo former presidents, Vicente Fox and Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador, live in Mexico. As of September 2024, Carlos Salinas de Gortari lived in the United Kingdom and both Felipe Calder\u00f3n and Enrique Pe\u00f1a Nieto lived in Spain.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["18987", "24356889"], "permutation_1": ["18987", "24356889"], "permutation_2": ["24356889", "18987"], "permutation_3": ["18987", "24356889"]}
{"id": "2hop__128849_406512", "docs_added": {"21566705": "Brandon, Mississippi\nBrandon is a city in and the county seat of Rankin County, Mississippi, United States. It was incorporated on December 19, 1831. The population was 25,138 as of the 2020 census. A suburb of Jackson, Brandon is part of the Jackson Metropolitan Area, and is located east of the state capital.\nHistory.\nThe city is named for Gerard Brandon, Governor of Mississippi during the early 1800s. A newspaper, \"The News\", was established in 1892. The Brandon Bank was established in 1900, and The Rankin County Bank was established in 1906. In 1900, Brandon had a school, a telephone and telegraph office, a saw mill, two livery stables, two cotton gins, two hotels, six churches, and fifteen or twenty stores. The population was 775.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 21.3\u00a0square miles (55.3\u00a0km2), of which 21.3\u00a0square miles (55.1\u00a0km2) is land and 0.1\u00a0square mile (0.2\u00a0km2) (0.37%) is water.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2020 census.\nAs of the 2020 United States census, there were 25,138 people, 8,780 households, and 6,593 families residing in the city.\n2000 census.\nAs of the census of 2000, there were 16,436 people, 6,295 households, and 4,595 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 6,540 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 86.61% White, 11.89% Black, 0.10% Native American, 0.58% Asian, 0.06% Pacific Islander, 0.30% from other races, and 0.47% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino people of any race were 1.30% of the population.\nThere were 6,295 households, out of which 36.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 59.0% were married couples living together, 11.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 27.0% were non-families. 23.4% of all households were made up of individuals, and 7.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.53 and the average family size was 3.00.\nIn the city, the population was spread out, with 25.2% under the age of 18, 8.3% from 18 to 24, 30.4% from 25 to 44, 24.5% from 45 to 64, and 11.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females, there were 90.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 86.0 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $53,246, and the median income for a family was $63,098. Males had a median income of $42,414 versus $28,128 for females. The per capita income for the city was $24,020. About 4.1% of families and 6.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 7.7% of those under age 18 and 10.7% of those age 65 or over.\nEconomy.\nThe Mississippi Department of Corrections operates the Brandon Probation & Parole Office in Brandon. The Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, located in unincorporated Rankin County, is in proximity to Brandon.\nArts and culture.\nThe Downtown Brandon Historic District is located within the city. Brandon is the location of the Black Rose Theatre Company.\nBuildings on the National Register of Historic Places, including:\nGovernment.\nThe City of Brandon has a city mayor as the chief executive officer and a board of aldermen, with six elected from single-member districts and one elected at-large. The current city officials are Mayor Butch Lee; Alderman, At-Large member Sharon Womack; Alderman, Ward 1 Jarrad Craine; Alderman, Ward 2 Cris Vinson; Alderman, Ward 3 Harry Williams; Alderman, Ward 4 Lu Coker; Alderman, Ward 5 Dwight Middleton; and Alderman, Ward 6 David Farris. The city's attorney is Mark C. Baker.\nEducation.\nThe City of Brandon is served by the Rankin County School District.\nInfrastructure.\nThe city of Brandon is served by five fire stations and one administrative central station under the direction of Fire Chief Terry Wages. In 2015, the city established an independent EMS district that provides ambulance services through a private provider, Pafford EMS. The city has one police station under the direction of Police Chief Wayne Dearman.\nIn popular culture.\nThe town was mentioned in the 1986 film Platoon by Chris Taylor, a character played by Charlie Sheen.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "15699504": "WFQY\nWFQY is an urban gospel radio station, licensed to Brandon, Mississippi and serving the Jackson, Mississippi area.\nFrom July 2019 to June 2020, WFQY has been simulcasting WJMF-LP (87-7 The Bridge), one of many Franken FMs the FCC had ordered to cease broadcasting by July 2021.\nThe station began as WRKN in the late 1960s as a country station. Longtime owners were Roy and June Harris. For a short time the station had a 1950s-based oldies format and also had a country gospel format for while. In later years it simulcast its sister station WRJH 97.7 FM with a Southern Gospel format. After WRJH was sold, WRKN AM continued to operate with a Southern Gospel format. After the retirement of the owner the station emerged as an affiliate of the \"Real Country\" network with classic country with callsign WZQK.\nOn May 19, 2008, WZQK (Real Country 970) switched from classic country to all-sports. The station's callsign became WJFN.\nWJFN also operates a 99-watt translator on 99.1 FM (W256BL) located in Jackson, but is licensed to Ridgeland, Mississippi.\nOn April 5, 2012, WJFN changed its callsign to WFQY and on April 20, 2012, WFQY changed its format to classic hip hop, branded as \"BDay 99-1\".\nIn July 2019 (after brief period of silence), WFQY resumed broadcasting, but was actually simulcasting WJMF-LP.\nIn June 2020, classic hip-hop returned to WFQY.\nIn August 2023, WFQY dropped classic hip-hop to simulcast WZQK. The classic hip-hop format (still branded \"BDay 99-1\") has since moved online.\nOn April 19, 2024, WFQY ended its simulcast with WZQK and relaunched with urban gospel.", "61263856": "WSCQ-LP\nWSCQ-LP (96.3 FM) is a radio station licensed to serve the community of Sun City Center, Florida. The station is owned by Sun City Center Radio, Inc. It airs a community radio format.\nThe station was assigned the call sign WYYE-LP by the Federal Communications Commission on April 8, 2014. A week later, on April 15, the station changed its call sign to WSCQ-LP\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "16854073": "Alcohol laws of New York\nLaws concerning alcohol in the State of New York\nAlcohol laws of New York (or commonly Alcohol Beverage Control Law) are a set of laws specific to manufacturing, purchasing, serving, selling, and consuming alcohol in the state of New York. Combined with federal and local laws, as well as vendor policies, alcohol laws of New York determine the state's legal drinking age, the driving under the influence limit, liquor license requirements, server training, and more.\nState Liquor Authority.\nThe New York State Liquor Authority (NYSLA) and its agency arm, the Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control (DABC), were established under New York State Law in 1934 to \"regulate and control the manufacture and distribution within the state of alcoholic beverages for the purpose of fostering and promoting temperance in their consumption and respect for and obedience to law.\" The SLA is also authorized by statute to \"determine whether public convenience and advantage will be promoted by the issuance of licenses to traffic in alcoholic beverages \u2026 and to carry out the increase or decrease in the number thereof and the location of premises licensed \u2026 in the public interest.\"\nThe DABC is a division of the New York State Executive Department.\nFor consumption on-premises.\nIn New York, for purposes of state law, there are only four hours Monday through Saturday in which alcohol may not be served: 4:00\u00a0a.m. to 8:00\u00a0a.m. On Sundays the limitation is six hours: 4:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. This was designed to accommodate both New York City nightlife and late-night workers statewide. Some upstate areas such as Buffalo, Albany, and Saratoga Springs retain the 4:00 a.m closing time, although individual counties are free to set an earlier \"last call\". In Binghamton, this is at 3:00\u00a0a.m.; in Syracuse, Plattsburgh, Oneonta, Rochester and Watertown, bars close at 2:00\u00a0a.m.; and Elmira, Geneva, and Ithaca, have some of the earliest closing times in the state at 1 a.m. For a complete list of closing hours by county, see. \nB.Y.O. Policy.\nThe SLA does not permit establishments to allow patrons to \"B.Y.O.B.\" if the establishment does not have a license or permit to sell alcoholic beverages. The only exception to this rule is that establishments with fewer than 20 seats can permit B.Y.O.B. Nonetheless, the SLA does not have authority to take any direct action against an establishment that is not licensed with the SLA unless the establishment is currently applying, or will apply in the future, for a liquor license.\nResearch.\nResearch has been conducted into the association between closing times and crime in New York. Counties with later closing times tend to have greater rates of violent crime (except gun violence), but not non-violent crime. This was true even after adjusting for socio-demographic factors.\nFor consumption off-premises.\nOnly liquor stores may obtain a license to sell liquor for off-premises consumption. Grocery and drug stores may obtain a license to sell beer alone or beer and \"wine products\", such as wine coolers (but not wine). Minors visiting a liquor store must be accompanied by an adult at all times; a violation can lead to the owner or manager being charged with second-degree unlawfully dealing with a minor, a Class B misdemeanor.\nUntil the mid-2000s, sales of beer before noon on Sundays for off-premises consumption were prohibited statewide, a remnant of a royal decree during the Colonial era, and between 3\u20136 a.m. any other day. Changes to the law made in the last years of Governor George Pataki's administration loosened those restrictions, and now beer sales are only prohibited from 3\u20138 a.m. Sundays. Counties are free to adjust those hours in either direction, all the way to midnight and noon, and allow 24-hour beer sales on other days of the week.\nThe law also changed for liquor stores. They may now open on Sundays (although not before noon) and in a 2022 change they may now open on Christmas should they choose to do so.\nA few years after the Pataki administration changes, Governor David Paterson sought to allow supermarkets to sell wine. He argued that the increase in excise taxes collected would help the state close its budget deficit. The proposed law garnered so much opposition from liquor store owners that it was never voted on by either chamber of the New York State Legislature.\nOwnership restrictions.\nNew York law requires that every license to sell wine or spirits at retail for off-premises consumption be held by a single individual who lives within a few miles of the store and who holds no other such licenses in the state. It was intended to prevent any chain liquor stores from doing business in the state. Some proprietors open additional stores in the names of their family members while maintaining complete control over all the stores. Collaboration is not only limited to families; for example, Premier Group or Global Group in western New York has three locations, with each individually owned and operated.\nDry communities.\nState law prohibits dry counties. Individual cities and towns may choose to be dry. In the case of towns, the decision would also be binding on any villages within them. Cities and towns may become totally dry, forbidding any on- or off-premises alcohol sales, or partially dry by forbidding one or the other or applying those prohibitions only to beer or to wine and spirits.\nAs of 2024, there are six dry towns in the state, all in lightly populated rural areas upstate:\nTen towns forbid on-premises consumption but allow off-premises purchases; four allow both only at a hotel open year round. Seventeen disallow only special on-premises consumption. The town of Spencer in Tioga County allows only off-premises and special on-premises consumption. Williamson, in Wayne County, bans on-premises sale of beer at race tracks, outdoor athletic fields, and sports stadia where admission is charged. In all, there are thirty-nine partially dry towns.\nIn 2019, the Town of Argyle in Washington County voted to repeal the town's dry status. Argyle had made 11 attempts prior to do so. As a result, there are now only six remaining dry towns in New York State.\nDrinking age.\nIn response to the National Minimum Drinking Age Act in 1984, which reduced by up to 10% the federal highway funding of any state that did not have a minimum purchasing age of 21, the New York Legislature raised the drinking age from 19 to 21, effective December 1, 1985. (The drinking age had been 18 since 1933, before the first increase of the drinking age to 19 on December 4, 1982.) Persons under 21 are prohibited from purchasing alcohol or possessing alcohol with the intent to consume, unless the alcohol was given to that person by their parent or legal guardian. There is no law prohibiting persons under the age of 21 consuming alcohol that was given to them by their parent or legal guardian. Persons under 21 are prohibited from having a blood alcohol level of 0.02% or higher while driving.\nDrunken driving.\nLike every other state in the United States, driving under the influence is a crime in New York and is subject to a great number of regulations outside of the state's alcohol laws. New York's maximum blood alcohol level for driving is 0.08% for persons over the age of 16 and there is a \"zero tolerance\" policy for persons under 16. Minors caught with any alcohol in the blood (defined legally as 0.02% or more) are subject to license revocation for six months or more. Other penalties for drunken driving include fines, license suspension/revocation, possible imprisonment, and in some cases the implementation of an ignition interlock device. A lesser charge, driving with ability impaired (DWAI), may apply when a driver's BAC exceeds 0.05%.\nResearch.\nResearch suggests that misdemeanor drunk driving offenses, but not felony drunk driving offenses, are related to county-based closing times for on-premises licensed venues.\nPublic intoxication.\nNew York State has no law against being intoxicated from alcohol in public, but there is a law prohibiting other substances. Any person found under the influence of a substance other than alcohol in public who is endangering themselves and others is guilty under the New York State Penal Code. This also applies to those found under the influence and bothering others or damaging public or private property. \nDrinking in public was outlawed in New York City by Ed Koch in 1979. The law was originally pitched as targeting antisocial derelicts congregating in parks and on sidewalks, with Frederick E. Samuel, one of the measure's proponents in the New York City Council, stating \"We do not recklessly expect the police to give a summons to a Con Ed worker having a beer with his lunch\". By the end of the year similar laws had spread to municipalities in Westchester County. On March 7, 2016, drinking in public in Manhattan was decriminalized, but NYPD officers may still arrest an intoxicated individual on other charges.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "260090": "Riverhead (CDP), New York\nRiverhead is a census-designated place (CDP) roughly corresponding to the hamlet by the same name located in the Town of Riverhead in Suffolk County, on Long Island, in New York, United States. The CDP's population was 13,299 at the 2010 census.\nSituated at the mouth of the Peconic River, which empties into Peconic Bay where the North and South Forks of Long Island split, the town of Riverhead (of which the CDP is a part) is the official county seat of Suffolk County. In the 1960s, most of the county offices moved to the CDP of Hauppauge in the towns of Islip and Smithtown in the more populous western half of the county\u2014a move which still spurs attempts for the town of Riverhead to lead the way for the secession of eastern Long Island towns to form Peconic County.\nHistory.\nThe hamlet began with the Suffolk County Court House, a 1727 structure built to serve both the North and South Forks. Since that year, Riverhead has served as the seat of Suffolk County, and still contains the primary courts of the region.\nRiverhead's downtown area formed as an active commercial hub during the 19th century. In the beginning of the 20th century, the community saw an influx of Polish immigrants, as did the rest of the town. This led to the creation of Polish Town, where the popular Polish Town Fair is held annually. The downtown experienced urban blight during the mid-20th century, but recovered as of the beginning of the 21st century.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of , of which is land and , or 2.33%, is water.\nThe hamlet contains the principal downtown area in the Town of Riverhead and one of the largest in Suffolk County. Outside of this downtown area are rural sections which contain both active farms and residential developments.\nThe portion of the CDP facing Long Island Sound has a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\") while the southern portion has a hot-summer humid continental climate (\"Dfa\"). The hardiness zones are 7a and 7b. \nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nAs of the census of 2010, there were 13,299 people. The racial makeup of the CDP was 74.6% White, (55.9% Not Hispanic or Latino), 18.5% African American/Black, 23.5% Hispanic or Latino (of any race), 1.4% Asian American, and 1.2% Two or More Races.\nAs of the census of 2000, there were 10,513 people, 3,878 households, and 2,547 families residing in the CDP. The population density was . There were 4,167 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the CDP was 89.98% white, 2.82% black or African American, 0.55% Native American, 1.13% Asian, 0.08% Pacific Islander, 2.15% from other races, and 2.29% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.03% of the population.\nThere were 3,878 households, out of which 29.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 44.0% were married couples living together, 16.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 34.3% were non-families. 27.5% of all households were made up of individuals, and 15.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.57 and the average family size was 3.09.\nIn the CDP, the population was spread out, with 24.1% under the age of 18, 7.6% from 18 to 24, 27.9% from 25 to 44, 21.1% from 45 to 64, and 19.3% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females, there were 90.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.2 males.\nThe median income for a household in the CDP was $35,330, and the median income for a family was $39,672. Males had a median income of $35,707 versus $28,021 for females. The per capita income for the CDP was $17,746. About 9.2% of families and 13.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 16.7% of those under age 18 and 9.2% of those age 65 or over.\nMedia.\nThe Riverhead newspaper \"Riverhead News-Review\", dates back to 1950, when the Harry Lee Publishing Co. Inc, publishers of \"The County Review\" (1903\u20131950), purchased \"The Riverhead News\" (1868\u20131950) and consolidated the two newspapers as \"The News-Review\". Times/Review Newspapers Corp. purchased \"The News-Review\" and \"The Suffolk Times\", based in Greenport, in 1977.\nThe news website RiverheadLOCAL began publication in 2010. It is owned by East End Local Media Corp., an independent company based in Riverhead.\nRadio stations WBZO, WRCN-FM, WRIV and W215BT are licensed to Riverhead. Independent television station WLNY-TV (channel 55) is also licensed to Riverhead and owned by CBS News and Stations, with operations being run from the CBS Broadcast Center in Manhattan with WCBS-TV. WCBS-TV (DRT channel 22), a broadcast relay station, is also licensed to Riverhead.\nTransportation.\nThe Long Island Rail Road's Main Line (or Greenport Branch) provides limited service at the Riverhead station, offering service from the hamlet to Ronkonkoma to the west and Greenport to the east. At Ronkonkoma, passengers can connect to New York City-bound electric trains.\nThe hamlet is also served by Hampton Jitney's North Fork route.\nIn addition, Riverhead is served by the following Suffolk County Transit routes:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n Media related to at Wikimedia Commons", "9597339": "WFQX (FM)\nWFQX (99.3 MHz) is a classic rock formatted broadcast radio station licensed to Front Royal, Virginia, serving the Northern Shenandoah Valley. WFQX is owned and operated by iHeartMedia.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "14123329": "KXBJ\nKXBJ (96.9 FM) is a radio station licensed to El Campo, Texas, United States, serving the Texas Gulf coast area. The station is currently owned by Hope Media Group (formerly KSBJ Educational Foundation).\nThe station simulcasts Christian adult contemporary music from KSBJ whose studios are in Humble, Texas. It is part of a pentacast with 4 other full power FM stations, all of which are owned by the Foundation. The studio is located in Humble, and the transmitter is located west of Blessing.\nHistory.\nKXBJ was granted its License to Cover on November 22, 1968, as KULP-FM, having originally been proposed by local El Campo businessman Louis \"Culp\" Krueger and his partners, under the name Wharton County Broadcasting, who also owned 1390 KULP. 96.9 was the original FM sister to 1390 and the first FM station licensed in Wharton County. KULP-FM was licensed with an ERP of 26.8 kilowatts, with a transmit site located one mile north of Downtown El Campo. The original studio location was at 515 East Jackson Street, which still serves as the studio location for the KULP (AM) facility to this day.\nThe construction permit for KULP-FM remained under the ownership of Wharton County Broadcasting until 1967 when the FCC granted an application to reassign the FM facility permit and the licensed AM facility to Bar-B Broadcasting, which was led by Fred Barbee, who was also the owner of the El Campo Leader-News newspaper. For many years, KULP, KULP-FM, & the Leader-News were cross-owned by Barbee and superserved El Campo and the surrounding Wharton County rural areas with local news, weather, farm reports, high school sports, and country music on the radio dial.\nThe station was assigned the callsign KIOX-FM on November 15, 1990 before quickly switching to KXGC-FM two weeks later on December 1, 1990. The change to KXGC-FM would prove to be short-lived as the station reverted to KIOX-FM on February 4, 1991. The facility would then carry on the calls originally assigned to 1270 AM in 1957, which itself was lost for the neighboring town of Bay City in an illegal relocation of the facility to Sugarland, Texas by then owner Chameleon Radio Corporation, in an attempt to serve the Houston area with leased brokered programming on 1270 as KFCC in 2002, leaving KULP as the lone AM facility licensed to the town.\nWith the switch to KIOX-FM, it remained a country station, locally operated in El Campo, and now using the branding of \"X 97\". The station would continue to hold the heritage call letters even after the sale to Liberman Broadcasting, resulting in the station changing to a Spanish-language format. KIOX-FM was finally retired on December 13, 2007, becoming KNTE-FM in order to match the calls with the \"El Norte\" format that Liberman had implemented on 96.9. The heritage KIOX call set was quickly resurrected by LaGrange Broadcasting Corporation on January 4, 2008, for their own Country station licensed to Edna, which also serves El Campo and Wharton County. KIOX-FM continues to reside at 96.1 FM, currently owned by Mark Porter of Globecom Media.\nOn January 18, 2012 the sale of the station from Liberman Broadcasting to the KSBJ Educational Foundation was announced, and the FCC approved the sale on February 28, 2012. The sale closed on April 13, 2012, with the station becoming the sister to KSBJ in Humble. KSBJ Educational Foundation requested the current call set, and it was granted by the FCC 4 days later on April 17.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "36813249": "WFLQ\nWFLQ 100.1 FM is a radio station broadcasting a country music format. Licensed to French Lick, Indiana, the station is owned by Willtronics Broadcasting.\nWFLQ-FM, Q-100, signed on at 12:55pm on April 12, 1983, with Satellite Music Network's Country Coast-To-Coast. Q-100 broadcasts on 100.1Mhz with 6,000 watts of modern country, hourly national news and local news six times a day. As of 2015 Q-100 broadcasts Westwood One's Country Format with Westwood One news on the hour. Also broadcast is Springs Valley High School Football, Basketball, Baseball and Volleyball games. Three times a week \"Tradio\" is heard on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays with host Tradio Joe. On Sunday mornings, the popular broadcast \"Sunday Morning Gospel Show\" with Randall Hamm is heard from 8am \u2013 noon. The program is one of the first programs that began on Q-100, that is still heard today. The host Randall Hamm has DJ'd the program since 1995 and was nominated as a Top 10 Small Market DJ, 2012-2015, by the Singing News, the nations leading Gospel Christian Magazine. WFLQ has won Station of the year, in 2020 and 2021, in the Gospel Fan Awards, presented by Christian Voice Magazine, also Randall has also won DJ Of The Year Fan Award, in 2020, as well as part of the Fan Awards. WFLQ is also home to IU Football and Basketball broadcasts in season\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "25518797": "The Kenwood Collection\nShopping center in Kenwood, Ohio, USA\nThe Kenwood Collection, formerly Kenwood Town Place, is a shopping center in Kenwood, Ohio, United States, between Interstate 71 and Kenwood Towne Centre.\nHistory.\nKenwood Towne Place was a $175 million development project funded by Bear Creek Capital, Neyer Holding Corporation and Dov Limited. Groundbreaking for Kenwood Towne Place happened on April 4, 2007. Kenwood Towne Place also includes a $33 million public parking garage funded by bonds underwritten by the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority.\nThe original anchor tenants were supposed to be The Container Store, Crate & Barrel, Ethan Allen, Kroger, and LA Fitness. In March 2008, it was announced that Borders Books was set to occupy a space, in order to open \"one of their new prototype stores\" with a \"higher-end bookstore experience.\"\nIn March 2008, UBS Financial Services Inc. signed a deal to lease of the office space on the top floor.\nKroger opened a Fresh Fare store in 2008; The Container Store and Crate & Barrel both opened later that year. In 2009, Mitchell's Salon & Day Spa opened.\nBank of America bought the Kenwood Town Place property at a Hamilton County Sheriff's auction in July 2012 for $27.5 million; they then sold it to the developer Phillips Edison. In 2013, Phillips Edison changed the name of the property to the \"Kenwood Collection\".\nFinancial trouble.\nAt the end of December 2008 and the start of January 2009, several contractors filed almost $5 million in liens against Bear Creek Capital's Kenwood Towne Place.\nIn late January 2009, problems with the development project began to surface, as more than two dozen liens were filed that had a combined total value of $17 million over a two-week period. While the liens were being placed, the complex was partially under construction and partially occupied by several stores, leaving them in a state of limbo.\nThe lenders stopped making disbursements on all parts of the project until all of the liens had been cleared up; in February 2009, there were over 80 outstanding liens. \nOn February 13, 2009, the first subcontractor filed a lawsuit for $373,000 against Kenwood Towne Place LLC and Bear Creek Construction LLC. The lawsuit includes claims for breach of contract and unjust enrichment.\nCincinnati Councilman Chris Bortz proposed and supported a bailout of $1.8 million to assist some of the small businesses that are stuck in the current financial problems of the developer.\nBank of America filed a foreclosure lawsuit in the Hamilton County Common Pleas Court against Bear Creek Capital and the developers of Kenwood Towne Place in May 2009. Bank of America was seeking repayment of $81.3 million in loans and a sheriff's sale of the location. LA Fitness became the first tenant to sue the developers for $600,000 in unpaid construction costs.\nKenwood Towne Place was placed into receivership on June 9, 2009. The receiver was a developer out of Cleveland\nCriminal investigation.\nOne of the subcontractors of the development project, Kraft Electrical Contracting, reported that he had spoken with both the FBI and Hamilton County Sheriff.\nThe FBI has taken over the Criminal Investigation was first opened by the Hamilton County Sheriff Department. The FBI has started to question people who worked on the project.\nOn Nov. 16, 2012 Matt Daniels was indicted on 25 conspiracy and fraud counts. It was alleged that he used the money for personal gain.\nFormer Bear Creek CFO's Tina Schmidt pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud in connection to the Kenwood Towne Place development. In her plea agreement she claimed she \"knowingly and intentionally worked with other people \u2013 including individuals identified herein by the initials M.D. and A.T. \u2013 to executive a scheme to defraud federally-insured financial institutions \u2013 namely Bank of America and its predecessor entity, LaSalle Bank.\"\nOn December 20, 2013, former Kenwood Towne Place developer Matt Daniels was found not guilty on all charges. Daniels had faced 23 counts of fraud in relation to the failed project. The two other charges he faced, from the 25 counts he was indicted on, were dismissed.\nCivil litigation.\nThe judge in the foreclosure action recused himself after speaking with Ohio Supreme Court; he had found that he held stock in one of the creditors, Fifth Third Bank. Judge Steven Martin was replaced by Judge Beth Myers.\nThe case, which has become one of the largest cases in Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas, got even more complicated. On October 2, 2009, motions were filed which alleged \"large-scale fraud\" by Bear Creek Capital. The same motion also alleged that Bear Creek Capital and Bank of America had engaged in improper relationships. Judge Beth Myers denied a motion of receiver Hank Menniinger requesting to resign after he had been unable to secure loans to address health and safety issues. Judge Myers ordered that Bank of America fund $263,000 in repairs. However, another hearing was held on December 21, 2009. Judge Myers allowed Attorney Hank Menninger to step down as receiver for the project, and appointed Frank Hertge, who was nominated by Bank of America. Bank of America has dropped its challenge of the receivership of Kenwood Towne Center attorney Hank Menninger. Hamilton County Judge Beth Myers ordered that the receiver be paid 80% of money due for the daily management of operating the buildings.\nGregory Scheper, Bear Creek's director of acquisition, filed a lawsuit against Bear Creek for $1.8 million. The cause for actions in the suit are racketeering, conspiracy, and fraud.\nNews was broken that the mediation that was underway in October 201"}, "descending_order": ["15699504", "61263856", "16854073", "260090", "9597339", "14123329", "36813249", "25518797", "21566705"], "permutation_1": ["9597339", "61263856", "260090", "16854073", "15699504", "21566705", "25518797", "36813249", "14123329"], "permutation_2": ["15699504", "260090", "16854073", "21566705", "25518797", "36813249", "9597339", "61263856", "14123329"], "permutation_3": ["14123329", "21566705", "25518797", "15699504", "36813249", "9597339", "16854073", "61263856", "260090"]}
{"id": "2hop__109153_159045", "docs_added": {"28958759": "Crouching Boy\nSculpture by Michelangelo\nCrouching Boy is a sculpture of the Renaissance Italian painter and sculptor Michelangelo, preserved today at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. It is the only work by Michelangelo in the Hermitage. Sculpted between 1530 and 1533, it was originally intended for the tomb of the Medici family in Florence. Consistent with Michelangelo's use of the human figure in his memorials, scholars have speculated that the crouched boy might have served as an allegory of mourning or eternal youth.\nDescription.\nThe \"Crouching Boy\" is a 54\u00a0cm marble sculpture and shows a boy, naked and turned in on himself, perhaps pulling a thorn from his foot. Even though the statue is not well finished, facial features, hair and body shapes are easily recognizable.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21019": "Michelangelo\nItalian artist and architect (1475\u20131564)\nMichelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6March 1475\u00a0\u2013 18February 1564), known mononymously as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspired by models from classical antiquity and had a lasting influence on Western art. Michelangelo's creative abilities and mastery in a range of artistic arenas define him as an archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci. Given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences, Michelangelo is one of the best-documented artists of the 16th century. He was lauded by contemporary biographers as the most accomplished artist of his era.\nMichelangelo achieved fame early. Two of his best-known works, the \"Piet\u00e0\" and \"David\", were sculpted before the age of 30. Although he did not consider himself a painter, Michelangelo created two of the most influential frescoes in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and \"The Last Judgment\" on its altar wall. His design of the Laurentian Library pioneered Mannerist architecture. At the age of 71, he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peter's Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan so that the Western end was finished to his design, as was the dome, with some modification, after his death.\nMichelangelo was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive. Three biographies were published during his lifetime. One of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that Michelangelo's work transcended that of any artist living or dead, and was \"supreme in not one art alone but in all three\".\nIn his lifetime, Michelangelo was often called (\"the divine one\"). His contemporaries admired his \"terribilit\u00e0\"\u2014his ability to instill a sense of awe in viewers of his art. Attempts by subsequent artists to imitate the expressive physicality of Michelangelo's style contributed to the rise of Mannerism, a short-lived movement in Western art between the High Renaissance and the Baroque.\nLife.\nEarly life, 1475\u20131488.\nMichelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was born on 6 March 1475 in Caprese, known today as Caprese Michelangelo, a small town situated in Valtiberina, near Arezzo, Tuscany. For several generations, his family had been small-scale bankers in Florence; but the bank failed, and his father Ludovico briefly took a government post in Caprese. At the time of Michelangelo's birth, his father was the town's judicial administrator and \"podest\u00e0\" (local administrator) of Chiusi della Verna. Michelangelo's mother was Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena. The Buonarrotis claimed to descend from the Countess Matilde di Canossa\u2014a claim that remains unproven, but which Michelangelo believed.\nSeveral months after Michelangelo's birth, the family returned to Florence, where he was raised. During his mother's later prolonged illness, and after her death in 1481 (when he was six years old), Michelangelo lived with a nanny and her husband, a stonecutter, in the town of Settignano, where his father owned a marble quarry and a small farm. There the young boy gained his love for marble. As his biographer Giorgio Vasari quotes him:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nApprenticeships, 1488\u20131492.\nAs a young boy, Michelangelo was sent to the city of Florence to study grammar under the Humanist Francesco da Urbino. Michelangelo showed no interest in his schooling, preferring to copy paintings from churches and seek the company of other painters. Florence was at that time Italy's greatest centre of the arts and learning. Art was sponsored by the (the town council), the merchant guilds, and wealthy patrons such as the Medici and their banking associates. The Renaissance, a renewal of Classical scholarship and the arts, had its first flowering in Florence. In the early 15th century, the architect Filippo Brunelleschi, having studied the remains of Classical buildings in Rome, had created two churches, San Lorenzo's and Santo Spirito, which embodied the Classical precepts. The sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti had laboured for 50 years to create the north and east bronze doors of the Baptistry, which Michelangelo was to describe as \"The Gates of Paradise\". The exterior niches of the Church of Orsanmichele contained a gallery of works by the most acclaimed sculptors of Florence: Donatello, Ghiberti, Andrea del Verrocchio, and Nanni di Banco. The interiors of the older churches were covered with frescos (mostly in Late Medieval, but also in the Early Renaissance style), begun by Giotto and continued by Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel, both of whose works Michelangelo studied and copied in drawings.\nDuring Michelangelo's childhood, a team of painters had been called from Florence to the Vatican to decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel. Among them was Domenico Ghirlandaio, a master in fresco painting, perspective, figure drawing and portraiture who had the largest workshop in Florence. In 1488, at the age of 13, Michelangelo was apprenticed to Ghirlandaio. The next year, his father persuaded Ghirlandaio to pay Michelangelo as an artist, which was rare for someone that young. When in 1489, Lorenzo de' Medici, \"de facto\" ruler of Florence, asked Ghirlandaio for his two best pupils, Ghirlandaio sent Michelangelo and Francesco Granacci.\nFrom 1490 to 1492, Michelangelo attended the Platonic Academy, a Humanist academy founded by the Medicis. There, his work and outlook were influenced by many of the most prominent philosophers and writers of the day, including Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Poliziano. At this time, Michelangelo sculpted the reliefs \"Madonna of the Stairs\" and \"Battle of the Centaurs\", the latter based on a theme suggested by Poliziano and commissioned by Lorenzo de' Medici. Michelangelo worked for a time with the sculptor Bertoldo di Giovanni. When he was 17, another pupil, Pietro Torrigiano, struck him on the nose, causing the disfigurement that is conspicuous in the portraits of Michelangelo.\nBologna, Florence, and Rome, 1492\u20131499.\nLorenzo de' Medici's death on 8 April 1492 changed Michelangelo's circumstances. He left the security of the Medici court and returned to his father's house. In the following months he carved a polychrome wooden \"Crucifix\" (1493), as a gift to the prior of the Florentine church of Santo Spirito, which had allowed him to do some anatomical studies of the corpses from the church's hospital. This was the first of several instances during his career that Michelangelo studied anatomy by dissecting cadavers.\nBetween 1493 and 1494, Michelangelo bought a block of marble, and carved a larger-than-life statue of Hercules. On 20 January 1494, after heavy snowfalls, Lorenzo's heir, Piero de Medici, commissioned a statue made of snow, and Michelangelo again entered the court of the Medici. In the same year, the Medici were expelled from Florence as the result of the rise of Savonarola. Michelangelo left the city before the end of the political upheaval, moving to Venice and then to Bologna. In Bologna, he was commissioned to carve several of the last small figures for the completion of the Shrine of St. Dominic, in the church dedicated to that saint. At this time Michelangelo studied the robust reliefs carved by Jacopo della Quercia around the main portal of the Basilica of St Petronius, including the panel of \"The Creation of Eve\", the composition of which was to reappear on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Towards the end of 1495, the political situation in Florence was calmer; the city, previously under threat from the French, was no longer in danger as Charles VIII had suffered defeats. Michelangelo returned to Florence but received no commissions from the new city government under Savonarola. He returned to the employment of the Medici. During the half-year he spent in Florence, he worked on two small statues, a child \"St. John the Baptist\" and a sleeping \"Cupid\". According to Condivi, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, for whom Michelangelo had sculpted \"St. John the Baptist\", asked that Michelangelo \"fix it so that it looked as if it had been buried\" so he could \"send it to Rome\u00a0... pass [it off as] an ancient work and\u00a0... sell it much better.\" Both Lorenzo and Michelangelo were unwittingly cheated out of the real value of the piece by a middleman. Cardinal Raffaele Riario, to whom Lorenzo had sold it, discovered that it was a fraud, but was so impressed by the quality of the sculpture that he invited the artist to Rome. This apparent success in selling his sculpture abroad as well as the conservative Florentine situation may have encouraged Michelangelo to accept the prelate's invitation.\nMichelangelo arrived in Rome on 25 June 1496 at the age of 21. On 4 July of the same year, he began work on a commission for Cardinal Riario, an over-life-size statue of the Roman wine god \"Bacchus\". Upon completion, the work was rejected by the cardinal, and subsequently entered the collection of the banker Jacopo Galli, for his garden. In November 1497, the French ambassador to the Holy See, Cardinal Jean de Bilh\u00e8res-Lagraulas, commissioned him to carve a \"Piet\u00e0\", a sculpture showing the Virgin Mary grieving over the body of Jesus. The subject, which is not part of the Biblical narrative of the Crucifixion, was common in religious sculpture of medieval northern Europe and would have been very familiar to the Cardinal. The contract was agreed upon in August of the following year. Michelangelo was 24 at the time of its completion. It was soon to be regarded as one of the world's great masterpieces of sculpture, \"a revelation of all the potentialities and force of the art of sculpture\". Contemporary opinion was summarised by Vasari: \"It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh.\" Michelangelo's only work known to have been signed, his name on Mary's sash, it is now located in St Peter's Basilica.\nFlorence, 1499\u20131505.\nMichelangelo returned to Florence in 1499. The Republic was changing after the fall of its leader, anti-Renaissance priest Girolamo Savonarola, who was executed in 1498, and the rise of the \"gonfaloniere\" Piero Soderini. Michelangelo was asked by the consuls of the Guild of Wool to complete an unfinished project begun 40 years earlier by Agostino di Duccio: a colossal statue of Carrara marble portraying David as a symbol of Florentine freedom to be placed on the gable of Florence Cathedral. Michelangelo responded by completing his most famous work, the statue of \"David\", in 1504. The masterwork definitively established his prominence as a sculptor of extraordinary technical skill and strength of symbolic imagination. A team of consultants, including Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Filippino Lippi, Pietro Perugino, Lorenzo di Credi, Antonio and Giuliano da Sangallo, Andrea della Robbia, Cosimo Rosselli, Davide Ghirlandaio, Piero di Cosimo, Andrea Sansovino and Michelangelo's dear friend Granacci, was called together to decide upon its placement, ultimately the Piazza della Signoria, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. It now stands in the Academia while a replica occupies its place in the square. In the same period of placing the \"David\", Michelangelo may have been involved in creating the sculptural profile on Palazzo Vecchio's fa\u00e7ade known as the Importuno di Michelangelo. The hypothesis of Michelangelo's possible involvement in the creation of the profile is based on the strong resemblance of the latter to a profile drawn by the artist, datable to the beginning of the 16th century, now preserved in the Louvre.\nWith the completion of the \"David\" came another commission. In early 1504 Leonardo da Vinci had been commissioned to paint \"The Battle of Anghiari\" in the council chamber of the Palazzo Vecchio, depicting the battle between Florence and Milan in 1440. Michelangelo was then commissioned to paint the \"Battle of Cascina\". The two paintings are very different: Leonardo depicts soldiers fighting on horseback, while Michelangelo has soldiers being ambushed as they bathe in the river. Neither work was completed and both were lost forever when the chamber was refurbished. Both works were much admired, and copies remain of them, Leonardo's work having been copied by Rubens and Michelangelo's by Bastiano da Sangallo.\nAlso during this period, Michelangelo was commissioned by Angelo Doni to paint a \"Holy Family\" as a present for his wife, Maddalena Strozzi. It is known as the \"Doni Tondo\" and hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in its original magnificent frame, which Michelangelo may have designed. He also may have painted the Madonna and Child with John the Baptist, known as the \"Manchester Madonna\" and now in the National Gallery, London.\nTomb of Julius II, 1505\u20131545.\nIn 1505 Michelangelo was invited back to Rome by the newly elected Pope Julius II and commissioned to build the Pope's tomb, which was to include forty statues and be finished in five years. Under the patronage of the pope, Michelangelo experienced constant interruptions to his work on the tomb in order to accomplish numerous other tasks.\nThe commission for the tomb forced the artist to leave Florence with his planned \"Battle of Cascina\" painting unfinished. By this time, Michelangelo was established as an artist; both he and Julius II had hot tempers and soon argued. On 17 April 1506, Michelangelo left Rome in secret for Florence, remaining there until the Florentine government pressed him to return to the pope.\nAlthough Michelangelo worked on the tomb for 40 years, it was never finished to his satisfaction. It is located in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome and is most famous for the central figure of Moses, completed in 1516. Of the other statues intended for the tomb, two, known as the \"Rebellious Slave\" and the \"Dying Slave\", are now in the Louvre.\nSistine Chapel ceiling, 1508 \u20131512.\nDuring the same period, Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which took approximately four years to complete (1508\u20131512). According to Condivi's account, Bramante, who was working on the building of St. Peter's Basilica, resented Michelangelo's commission for the pope's tomb and convinced the pope to commission him in a medium with which he was unfamiliar, in order that he might fail at the task. Michelangelo was originally commissioned to paint the Twelve Apostles on the triangular pendentives that supported the ceiling, and to cover the central part of the ceiling with ornament. Michelangelo persuaded Pope Julius II to give him a free hand and proposed a different and more complex scheme, representing the Creation, the Fall of Man, the Promise of Salvation through the prophets, and the genealogy of Christ. The work is part of a larger scheme of decoration within the chapel that represents much of the doctrine of the Catholic Church.\nThe composition stretches over 500 square metres of ceiling and contains over 300 figures. At its centre are nine episodes from the Book of Genesis, divided into three groups: God's creation of the earth; God's creation of humankind and their fall from God's grace; and lastly, the state of humanity as represented by Noah and his family. On the pendentives supporting the ceiling are painted twelve men and women who prophesied the coming of Jesus, seven prophets of Israel, and five Sibyls, prophetic women of the Classical world. Among the most famous paintings on the ceiling are The Creation of Adam, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the Deluge, the Prophet Jeremiah, and the Cumaean Sibyl.\nFlorence under Medici popes, 1513 \u2013 early 1534.\nIn 1513, Pope Julius II died and was succeeded by Pope Leo X, the second son of Lorenzo de' Medici. From 1513 to 1516, Pope Leo was on good terms with Pope Julius's surviving relatives, so encouraged Michelangelo to continue work on Julius's tomb, but the families became enemies again in 1516 when Pope Leo tried to seize the Duchy of Urbino from Julius's nephew Francesco Maria I della Rovere. Pope Leo then had Michelangelo stop working on the tomb, and commissioned him to reconstruct the fa\u00e7ade of the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence and to adorn it with sculptures. He spent three years creating drawings and models for the fa\u00e7ade, as well as attempting to open a new marble quarry at Pietrasanta specifically for the project. In 1520, the work was abruptly cancelled by his financially strapped patrons before any real progress had been made. The basilica lacks a fa\u00e7ade to this day.\nIn 1520, the Medici came back to Michelangelo with another grand proposal, this time for a family funerary chapel in the Basilica of San Lorenzo. For posterity, this project, occupying the artist for much of the 1520s and 1530s, was more fully realised. Michelangelo used his own discretion to create the composition of the Medici Chapel, which houses the large tombs of two of the younger members of the Medici family, Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, and Lorenzo, his nephew. It also serves to commemorate their more famous predecessors, Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano, who are buried nearby. The tombs display statues of the two Medici and allegorical figures representing \"Night\" and \"Day\", and \"Dusk\" and \"Dawn\". The chapel also contains Michelangelo's \"Medici Madonna\". In 1976, a concealed corridor was discovered with drawings on the walls that related to the chapel itself.\nPope Leo X died in 1521 and was succeeded briefly by the austere Adrian VI, and then by his cousin Giulio Medici as Pope Clement VII. In 1524, Michelangelo received an architectural commission from the Medici pope for the Laurentian Library at San Lorenzo's Church. He designed both the interior of the library itself and its vestibule, a building utilising architectural forms with such dynamic effect that it is seen as the forerunner of Baroque architecture. It was left to assistants to interpret his plans and carry out construction. The library was not opened until 1571, and the vestibule remained incomplete until 1904.\nIn 1527, Florentine citizens, encouraged by the sack of Rome, threw out the Medici and restored the republic. A siege of the city ensued, and Michelangelo went to the aid of his beloved Florence by working on the city's fortifications from 1528 to 1529. The city fell in 1530, and the Medici were restored to power, with the young Alessandro Medici as the first Duke of Florence. Pope Clement, a Medici, sentenced Michelangelo to death. It is thought that Michelangelo hid for two months in a small chamber under the Medici chapels in the Basilica of San Lorenzo with light from just a tiny window, making many charcoal and chalk drawings which remained hidden until the room was rediscovered in 1975, and opened to small numbers of visitors in 2023. Michelangelo was eventually pardoned by the Medicis and the death sentence lifted, so that he could complete work on the Sistine Chapel and the Medici family tomb. He left Florence for Rome in 1534. Despite Michelangelo's support of the republic and resistance to the Medici rule, Pope Clement reinstated an allowance that he had previously granted the artist and made a new contract with him over the tomb of Pope Julius.\nRome, 1534\u20131546.\nIn Rome, Michelangelo lived near the church of Santa Maria di Loreto. It was at this time that he met the poet Vittoria Colonna, marchioness of Pescara, who was to become one of his closest friends until her death in 1547.\nShortly before his death in 1534, Pope Clement VII commissioned Michelangelo to paint a fresco of \"The Last Judgment\" on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. His successor, Pope Paul III, was instrumental in seeing that Michelangelo began and completed the project, which he laboured on from 1534 to October 1541. The fresco depicts the Second Coming of Christ and his Judgement of the souls. Michelangelo ignored the usual artistic conventions in portraying Jesus, showing him as a massive, muscular figure, youthful, beardless and naked. He is surrounded by saints, among whom Saint Bartholomew holds a drooping flayed skin, bearing the likeness of Michelangelo. The dead rise from their graves, to be consigned either to Heaven or to Hell.\nOnce completed, the depiction of Christ and the Virgin Mary naked was considered sacrilegious, and Cardinal Carafa and Monsignor Sernini (Mantua's ambassador) campaigned to have the fresco removed or censored, but the Pope resisted. At the Council of Trent, shortly before Michelangelo's death in 1564, it was decided to obscure the genitals and Daniele da Volterra, an apprentice of Michelangelo, was commissioned to make the alterations. An uncensored copy of the original, by Marcello Venusti, is in the Capodimonte Museum of Naples.\nMichelangelo worked on a number of architectural projects at this time. They included a design for the Capitoline Hill with its trapezoid piazza displaying the ancient bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius. He designed the upper floor of the Palazzo Farnese and the interior of the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, in which he transformed the vaulted interior of an Ancient Roman bathhouse. Other architectural works include San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, the Sforza Chapel (Capella Sforza) in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore and the Porta Pia.\nSt Peter's Basilica, 1546\u20131564.\nWhile still working on the \"Last Judgment\", Michelangelo received yet another commission for the Vatican. This was for the painting of two large frescos in the Cappella Paolina depicting significant events in the lives of the two most important saints of Rome, the \"Conversion of Saint Paul\" and the \"Crucifixion of Saint Peter\". Like the \"Last Judgment\", these two works are complex compositions containing a great number of figures. They were completed in 1550. In the same year, Giorgio Vasari published his \"Vita\", including a biography of Michelangelo.\nIn 1546, Michelangelo was appointed architect of St. Peter's Basilica, Rome. The process of replacing the Constantinian basilica of the 4th century had been underway for fifty years and in 1506 foundations had been laid to the plans of Bramante. Successive architects had worked on it, but little progress had been made. Michelangelo was persuaded to take over the project. He returned to the concepts of Bramante, and developed his ideas for a centrally planned church, strengthening the structure both physically and visually. The dome, not completed until after his death, has been called by Banister Fletcher, \"the greatest creation of the Renaissance\".\nAs construction was progressing on St Peter's, there was concern that Michelangelo would die before the dome was finished. However, once building commenced on the lower part of the dome, the supporting ring, the completion of the design was inevitable.\nPersonal life.\nFaith.\nMichelangelo was a devout Catholic whose faith deepened at the end of his life. Along with Raphael, he was enrolled in the Secular Franciscan Order.\nHis poetry includes the following closing lines from what is known as poem 285 (written in 1554): \"Neither painting nor sculpture will be able any longer to calm my soul, now turned toward that divine love that opened his arms on the cross to take us in.\"\nPersonal habits.\nMichelangelo was moderate in his personal life, and once told his apprentice, Ascanio Condivi: \"However rich I may have been, I have always lived like a poor man.\" Michelangelo's bank accounts and numerous deeds of purchase show that his net worth was about 50,000 gold ducats, more than many princes and dukes of his time. Condivi said he was indifferent to food and drink, eating \"more out of necessity than of pleasure\" and that he \"often slept in his clothes and\u00a0... boots.\" His biographer Paolo Giovio says, \"His nature was so rough and uncouth that his domestic habits were incredibly squalid, and deprived posterity of any pupils who might have followed him.\" This, however, may not have affected him, as he was by nature a solitary and melancholy person, , a man who \"withdrew himself from the company of men.\"\nRelationships and poetry.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nIt is impossible to know whether Michelangelo had any physical relationships. Understanding about his sexuality is rooted in his art, especially his poetry. He wrote more than three hundred sonnets and madrigals. About sixty are addressed to men \u2013 \"the first significant modern corpus of love poetry from one man to another\".\nThe longest sequence, displaying deep loving feeling, was written to the young Roman patrician Tommaso dei Cavalieri (c.\u20091509\u20131587), who was 23 years old when Michelangelo first met him in 1532, at the age of 57. In his \"Lives of the Artists\", Vasari observed: \"But infinitely more than any of the others he loved M. Tommaso de' Cavalieri, a Roman gentleman, for whom, being a young man and much inclined to these arts, [Michelangelo] made, to the end that he might learn to draw, many most superb drawings of divinely beautiful heads, designed in black and red chalk; and then he drew for him a Ganymede rapt to Heaven by Jove's Eagle, a Tityus with the Vulture devouring his heart, the Chariot of the Sun falling with Pha\u00ebthon into the Po, and a Bacchanal of children, which are all in themselves most rare things, and drawings the like of which have never been seen.\" Some scholars downplay the relationship between Michelangelo and Cavalieri as one of platonic friendship. The poems to Cavalieri make up the first large sequence of poems in any modern tongue addressed by one man to another; they predate by 50 years Shakespeare's sonnets to the fair youth:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nCavalieri replied: \"I swear to return your love. Never have I loved a man more than I love you, never have I wished for a friendship more than I wish for yours.\" Cavalieri remained devoted to Michelangelo until his death.\nIn 1542, Michelangelo met Cecchino dei Bracci who died only a year later, inspiring Michelangelo to write 48 funeral epigrams. Some of the objects of Michelangelo's affections, and subjects of his poetry, took advantage of him: the model Febo di Poggio asked for money in response to a love-poem, and a second model, Gherardo Perini, shamelessly stole from him.\nThe nature of the poetry has been a source of discomfort to later generations. Michelangelo's grandnephew, Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger, published the poems in 1623 with the gender of pronouns changed; he also removed words or in other instances insisted that Michelangelo's poems be read allegorically and philosophically, a judgment some modern scholars still repeat today. It was not until John Addington Symonds translated the poems into English in 1893 that the original genders were restored. Since then it has become more accepted that his poems should be understood at face value, that is, as indicating his personal feelings and a preference by him for young men over women. The Elizabeth Jennings translation, \"The Sonnets of Michelangelo\", is considered the standard version. \nLate in life, Michelangelo nurtured a friendship with the poet and noble widow Vittoria Colonna, whom he met in Rome in 1536 or 1538 and who was in her late forties at the time. They wrote sonnets for each other and were in regular contact until she died. These sonnets mostly deal with the spiritual issues that occupied them. Condivi, who in his biography was preoccupied with downplaying Michelangelo's attraction to men, alleged Michelangelo said his sole regret in life was that he did not kiss the widow's face in the same manner that he had her hand.\nFeuds with other artists.\nIn a letter from late 1542, Michelangelo blamed the tensions between Julius\u00a0II and him on the envy of Bramante and Raphael, saying of the latter, \"all he had in art, he got from me\". According to Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Michelangelo and Raphael met once: the former was alone, while the latter was accompanied by several others. Michelangelo commented that he thought he had encountered the chief of police with such an assemblage, and Raphael replied that he thought he had met an executioner, as they are wont to walk alone.\nWorks.\nMadonna and Child.\nThe \"Madonna of the Stairs\" is Michelangelo's earliest known work in marble. It is carved in shallow relief, a technique often employed by the master-sculptor of the early 15th century, Donatello, and others such as Desiderio da Settignano. While the Madonna is in profile, the easiest aspect for a shallow relief, the child displays a twisting motion that was to become characteristic of Michelangelo's work. The \"Taddei Tondo\" of 1502 shows the Christ Child frightened by a Bullfinch, a symbol of the Crucifixion. The lively form of the child was later adapted by Raphael in the \"Bridgewater Madonna\". The \"Madonna of Bruges\" was, at the time of its creation, unlike other such statues depicting the Virgin proudly presenting her son. Here, the Christ Child, restrained by his mother's clasping hand, is about to step off into the world. The \"Doni Tondo\", depicting the Holy Family, has elements of all three previous works: the frieze of figures in the background has the appearance of a low-relief, while the circular shape and dynamic forms echo the Taddeo Tondo. The twisting motion present in the \"Madonna of Bruges\" is accentuated in the painting. The painting heralds the forms, movement and colour that Michelangelo was to employ on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.\nMale figure.\nThe kneeling \"Angel\" is an early work, one of several that Michelangelo created as part of a large decorative scheme for the Arca di San Domenico in the church dedicated to that saint in Bologna. Several other artists had worked on the scheme, beginning with Nicola Pisano in the 13th century. In the late 15th century, the project was managed by Niccol\u00f2 dell'Arca. An angel holding a candlestick, by Niccol\u00f2, was already in place. Although the two angels form a pair, there is a great contrast between the two works, the one depicting a delicate child with flowing hair clothed in Gothic robes with deep folds, and Michelangelo's depicting a robust and muscular youth with eagle's wings, clad in a garment of Classical style. Everything about Michelangelo's \"Angel\" is dynamic. Michelangelo's \"Bacchus\" was a commission with a specified subject, the youthful God of Wine. The sculpture has all the traditional attributes, a vine wreath, a cup of wine and a fawn, but Michelangelo ingested an air of reality into the subject, depicting him with bleary eyes, a swollen bladder and a stance that suggests he is unsteady on his feet. While the work is plainly inspired by Classical sculpture, it is innovative for its rotating movement and strongly three-dimensional quality, which encourages the viewer to look at it from every angle.\nIn the so-called \"Dying Slave\", Michelangelo again utilised the figure with marked contrapposto to suggest a particular human state, in this case waking from sleep. With the \"Rebellious Slave\", it is one of two such earlier figures for the Tomb of Pope Julius II, now in the Louvre, that the sculptor brought to an almost finished state. These two works were to have a profound influence on later sculpture, through Rodin who studied them at the Louvre. The \"Atlas Slave\" is one of the later figures for Pope Julius' tomb. The works, known collectively as \"The Captives\", each show the figure struggling to free itself, as if from the bonds of the rock in which it is lodged. The works give a unique insight into the sculptural methods that Michelangelo employed and his way of revealing what he perceived within the rock.\nSistine Chapel ceiling.\nThe Sistine Chapel ceiling was painted between 1508 and 1512. The ceiling is a flattened barrel vault supported on twelve triangular pendentives that rise from between the windows of the chapel. The commission, as envisaged by Julius II, was to adorn the pendentives with figures of the twelve apostles. Michelangelo, who was reluctant to take the job, persuaded the Pope to give him a free hand in the composition. The resultant scheme of decoration awed his contemporaries and has inspired other artists ever since. The scheme is of nine panels illustrating episodes from the Book of Genesis, set in an architectonic frame. On the pendentives, Michelangelo replaced the proposed Apostles with Prophets and Sibyls who heralded the coming of the Messiah.\nMichelangelo began painting with the later episodes in the narrative, the pictures including locational details and groups of figures, the \"Drunkenness of Noah\" being the first of this group. In the later compositions, painted after the initial scaffolding had been removed, Michelangelo made the figures larger. One of the central images, \"The Creation of Adam\" is one of the best known and most reproduced works in the history of art. The final panel, showing the \"Separation of Light from Darkness\" is the broadest in style and was painted in a single day. As the model for the Creator, Michelangelo has depicted himself in the action of painting the ceiling.\nAs supporters to the smaller scenes, Michelangelo painted twenty youths who have variously been interpreted as angels, as muses, or simply as decoration. Michelangelo referred to them as \"ignudi\". The figure reproduced may be seen in context in the above image of the \"Separation of Light from Darkness\".\nIn the process of painting the ceiling, Michelangelo made studies for different figures, of which some, such as that for \"The Libyan Sibyl\" have survived, demonstrating the care taken by Michelangelo in details such as the hands and feet. The prophet Jeremiah, contemplating the downfall of Jerusalem, is a self-portrait.\nFigure compositions.\nMichelangelo's relief of the \"Battle of the Centaurs\", created while he was still a youth associated with the Medici Academy, is an unusually complex relief in that it shows a great number of figures involved in a vigorous struggle. Such a complex disarray of figures was rare in Florentine art, where it would usually only be found in images showing either the Massacre of the Innocents or the Torments of Hell. The relief treatment, in which some of the figures are boldly projecting, may indicate Michelangelo's familiarity with Roman sarcophagus reliefs from the collection of Lorenzo Medici, and similar marble panels created by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, and with the figurative compositions on Ghiberti's Baptistry Doors.\nThe composition of the \"Battle of Cascina\" is known in its entirety only from copies, as the original cartoon, according to Vasari, was so admired that it deteriorated and was eventually in pieces. It reflects the earlier relief in the energy and diversity of the figures, with many different postures, and many being viewed from the back, as they turn towards the approaching enemy and prepare for battle.\nIn \"The Last Judgment\" it is said that Michelangelo drew inspiration from a fresco by Melozzo da Forl\u00ec in Rome's Santi Apostoli. Melozzo had depicted figures from different angles, as if they were floating in the Heaven and seen from below. Melozzo's majestic figure of Christ, with windblown cloak, demonstrates a degree of foreshortening of the figure that had also been employed by Andrea Mantegna, but was not usual in the frescos of Florentine painters. In \"The Last Judgment\" Michelangelo had the opportunity to depict, on an unprecedented scale, figures in the action of either rising heavenward or falling and being dragged down.\nIn the two frescos of the Pauline Chapel, \"The Crucifixion of St. Peter\" and \"The Conversion of Saul\", Michelangelo has used the various groups of figures to convey a complex narrative. In the \"Crucifixion of Peter\" soldiers busy themselves about their assigned duty of digging a post hole and raising the cross while various people look on and discuss the events. A group of horrified women cluster in the foreground, while another group of Christians is led by a tall man to witness the events. In the right foreground, Michelangelo walks out of the painting with an expression of disillusionment.\nArchitecture.\nMichelangelo's architectural commissions included a number that were not realised, notably the fa\u00e7ade for Brunelleschi's Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, for which Michelangelo had a wooden model constructed, but which remains to this day unfinished rough brick. At the same church, Giulio de' Medici (later Pope Clement VII) commissioned him to design the Medici Chapel and the tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo Medici. Pope Clement also commissioned the Laurentian Library, for which Michelangelo also designed the extraordinary vestibule with columns recessed into niches, and a staircase that appears to spill out of the library like a flow of lava, according to Nikolaus Pevsner, \"...\u00a0revealing Mannerism in its most sublime architectural form\".\nIn 1546 Michelangelo produced the highly complex ovoid design for the pavement of the Campidoglio and began designing an upper storey for the Farnese Palace. In 1547 he took on the job of completing St Peter's Basilica, begun to a design by Bramante, and with several intermediate designs by several architects. Michelangelo returned to Bramante's design, retaining the basic form and concepts by simplifying and strengthening the design to create a more dynamic and unified whole. Although the late 16th-century engraving depicts the dome as having a hemispherical profile, the dome of Michelangelo's model is somewhat ovoid and the final product, as completed by Giacomo della Porta, is more so.\nFinal years.\nIn his old age, Michelangelo created a number of \"Piet\u00e0s\" in which he apparently reflects upon mortality. They are heralded by the \"Victory\", perhaps created for the tomb of Pope Julius II but left unfinished. In this group, the youthful victor overcomes an older hooded figure, with the features of Michelangelo. The \"Piet\u00e0 of Vittoria Colonna\" is a chalk drawing of a type described as \"presentation drawings\", as they might be given as a gift by an artist, and were not necessarily studies towards a painted work. In this image, Mary's upraised arms and hands are indicative of her prophetic role. The frontal aspect is reminiscent of Masaccio's fresco of the Holy Trinity in the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, Florence. In the \"Florentine Piet\u00e0\", Michelangelo again depicts himself, this time as the aged Nicodemus lowering the body of Jesus from the cross into the arms of Mary his mother and Mary Magdalene. Michelangelo smashed the left arm and leg of the figure of Jesus. His pupil Tiberio Calcagni repaired the arm and drilled a hole in which to fix a replacement leg which was not subsequently attached. He also worked on the figure of Mary Magdalene.\nThe last sculpture that Michelangelo worked on (six days before his death), the \"Rondanini Piet\u00e0,\" could never be completed because Michelangelo carved it away until there was insufficient stone. The legs and a detached arm remain from a previous stage of the work. As it remains, the sculpture has an abstract quality, in keeping with 20th-century concepts of sculpture.\nMichelangelo died in Rome on 18 February 1564, at the age of 88. His body was taken from Rome for interment at the Basilica of Santa Croce, fulfilling the maestro's last request to be buried in his beloved Florence. His heir Lionardo Buonarroti commissioned Vasari to design and build the \"Tomb of Michelangelo\", a monumental project that cost 770 scudi, and took over 14 years to complete. Marble for the tomb was supplied by Cosimo I de' Medici, Duke of Tuscany, who had also organized a state funeral to honour Michelangelo in Florence.\nLegacy.\nMichelangelo, with Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, is one of the three giants of the Florentine High Renaissance. Although their names are often cited together, Michelangelo was younger than Leonardo by 23 years, and eight years older than Raphael. Because of his reclusive nature, he had little to do with either artist and outlived both of them by more than 40 years. Michelangelo took few sculpture students. He employed Granacci, who was his fellow pupil at the Medici Academy, and became one of several assistants on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Michelangelo appears to have used assistants mainly for the more manual tasks of preparing surfaces and grinding colours. Despite this, his works were to have a great influence on painters, sculptors and architects for many generations to come.\nWhile Michelangelo's \"David\" is the most famous male nude of all time, some of his other works have had perhaps even greater impact on the course of art. The twisting forms and tensions of the \"Victory\", the \"Bruges Madonna\" and the \"Medici Madonna\" make them the heralds of the Mannerist art. The unfinished giants for the tomb of Pope Julius II had profound effect on sculptors such as Rodin and Henry Moore.\nMichelangelo's vestibule of the Laurentian Library was one of the earliest buildings to use classical forms in a plastic and expressive manner. This dynamic quality was later to find its major expression in his centrally planned St. Peter's, with its giant order, its rippling cornice and its upward-launching pointed dome. The dome of St. Peter's was to influence the building of churches for many centuries, including Sant'Andrea della Valle in Rome and St Paul's Cathedral, London, as well as the civic domes of public buildings and state capitals across the United States.\nArtists who were directly influenced by Michelangelo include Raphael, whose monumental treatment of the figure in the \"School of Athens\" and \"The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple\" owes much to Michelangelo, and whose fresco of \"Isaiah\" in Sant'Agostino closely imitates the older master's prophets. Other artists, such as Pontormo, drew on the writhing forms of the \"Last Judgment\" and the frescoes of the Cappella Paolina.\nThe Sistine Chapel ceiling was a work of unprecedented grandeur, both for its architectonic forms, to be imitated by many Baroque ceiling painters, and also for the wealth of its inventiveness in the study of figures. Vasari wrote:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["28958759", "21019"], "permutation_1": ["28958759", "21019"], "permutation_2": ["21019", "28958759"], "permutation_3": ["28958759", "21019"]}
{"id": "2hop__195829_159106", "docs_added": {"6041971": "Bikam\nBikam is a small estate town in Hilir Perak District, Perak, Malaysia. It is situated beside the main road (Federal Road 58) connecting Teluk Intan and Bidor. Kuala Bikam is famous for its fruits as there are many fruit farms around the town.", "3607937": "Malaysia\nCountry in Southeast Asia\nMalaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. A federal constitutional monarchy, it consists of 13 states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions: Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo's East Malaysia. Peninsular Malaysia shares a land and maritime border with Thailand and maritime borders with Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia. East Malaysia shares land borders with Brunei and Indonesia, as well as a maritime border with the Philippines and Vietnam. Kuala Lumpur is the national capital, the country's largest city, and the seat of the legislative branch of the federal government.\nPutrajaya is the federal administrative capital, which represents the seat of both the executive branch (the Cabinet, federal ministries, and federal agencies) and the judicial branch of the federal government. With a population of over 34 million, the country is the world's 42nd-most populous country. Malaysia is tropical and is one of 17 megadiverse countries; it is home to numerous endemic species. Tanjung Piai in the Malaysian state of Johor is the southernmost point of continental Eurasia.\nThe country has its origins in the Malay kingdoms, which, from the 18th century on, became subject to the British Empire, along with the British Straits Settlements protectorate. During World War II, British Malaya, along with other nearby British and American colonies, was occupied by the Empire of Japan. Following three years of occupation, Peninsular Malaysia was briefly unified as the Malayan Union in 1946 until 1948 when it was restructured as the Federation of Malaya. The country achieved independence on 31 August 1957. On 16 September 1963, independent Malaya united with the then British crown colonies of North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore to become Malaysia. In August 1965, Singapore was expelled from the federation and became a separate, independent country.\nThe country is multiethnic and multicultural, which has a significant effect on its politics. About half the population is ethnically Malay, with minorities of Chinese, Indians, and indigenous peoples. The official language is Malaysian Malay, a standard form of the Malay language. English remains an active second language. It is also home to 111 living indigenous languages. While recognising Islam as the official religion, the constitution grants freedom of religion to non-Muslims. The government is modelled on the Westminster parliamentary system, and the legal system is based on common law. The head of state is an elected monarch, chosen from among the nine state sultans every five years. The head of government is the prime minister.\nThe country's economy has traditionally been driven by its natural resources but is expanding into commerce, tourism, and medical tourism. The country has a newly industrialised market economy, which is relatively open and state-oriented. The country is a founding member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the East Asia Summit (EAS), and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and a member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the Commonwealth, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).\nEtymology.\nThe name \"Malaysia\" is a combination of the word \"Malays\" and the Latin-Greek suffix \"-ia\"/-\u03af\u03b1 which can be translated as 'land of the Malays'. Similar-sounding variants have also appeared in accounts older than the 11th century, as toponyms for areas in Sumatra or referring to a larger region around the Strait of Malacca. The Sanskrit text \"Vayu Purana\", thought to have been in existence since the first millennium CE, mentioned a land named 'Malayadvipa' which was identified by certain scholars as the modern Malay Peninsula. Other notable accounts are by Ptolemy's 2nd-century \"Geographia\" that used the name \"Malayu Kulon\" for the west coast of Golden Chersonese, and the 7th-century Yijing's account of \"Malayu\".\nAt some point, the Melayu Kingdom took its name from the \"Sungai Melayu\". \"Melayu\" then became associated with Srivijaya, and remained associated with various parts of Sumatra, especially Palembang, where the founder of the Malacca Sultanate is thought to have come from. It is only thought to have developed into an ethnonym as Malacca became a regional power in the 15th century. Islamisation established an ethnoreligious identity in Malacca, with the term \"Melayu\" beginning to appear as interchangeable with \"Melakans\". It may have specifically referred to local Malay speakers who were loyal to the Malaccan Sultan. The initial Portuguese use of reflected this, referring only to the ruling people of Malacca. The prominence of traders from Malacca led \"Melayu\" to be associated with Muslim traders, and from there became associated with the wider cultural and linguistic group. Malacca and later Johor claimed they were the centre of Malay culture, a position supported by the British which led to the term \"Malay\" becoming more usually linked to the Malay peninsula rather than Sumatra.\nBefore the onset of European colonisation, the Malay Peninsula was known natively as \"Tanah Melayu\" ('Malay Land'). Under a racial classification created by a German scholar Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, the natives of maritime Southeast Asia were grouped into a single category, the Malay race. Following the expedition of French navigator Jules Dumont d'Urville to Oceania in 1826, he later proposed the terms of \"Malaysia\", \"Micronesia\" and \"Melanesia\" to the \"Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 de G\u00e9ographie\" in 1831, distinguishing these Pacific cultures and island groups from the existing term \"Polynesia\". Dumont d'Urville described Malaysia as \"an area commonly known as the East Indies\". In 1850, the English ethnologist George Samuel Windsor Earl, writing in the \"Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia\", proposed naming the islands of Southeast Asia as \"Melayunesia\" or \"Indunesia\", favouring the former. The name Malaysia gained some use to label what is now the Malay Archipelago. In modern terminology, \"Malay\" remains the name of an ethnoreligious group of Austronesian people predominantly inhabiting the Malay Peninsula and portions of the adjacent islands of Southeast Asia, including the east coast of Sumatra, the coast of Borneo, and smaller islands that lie between these areas.\nThe state that gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1957 took the name \"the Federation of Malaya\", chosen in preference to other potential names such as \"Malaysia\" and \"Langkasuka\", after the historic kingdom located at the upper section of the Malay Peninsula in the first millennium CE. Nonetheless, the name \"Malaysia\" was adopted in 1963 when the existing states of the Federation of Malaya, plus Singapore, North Borneo and Sarawak formed a new federation. One theory posits the name was chosen so that \"si\" represented the inclusion of Singapore, North Borneo, and Sarawak to Malaya in 1963. Politicians in the Philippines contemplated renaming their state Malaysia before the modern country took the name.\nHistory.\nEvidence of modern human habitation in Malaysia dates back 40,000\u00a0years. In the Malay Peninsula, the first inhabitants are thought to be Negritos. Areas of Malaysia participated in the Maritime Jade Road between 2000 BC to 1000 AD. Traders and settlers from India and China arrived as early as the first century AD, establishing trading ports and coastal towns in the second and third centuries. Their presence resulted in strong Indian and Chinese influences on the local cultures, and the people of the Malay Peninsula adopted the religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. Sanskrit inscriptions appear as early as the fourth or fifth century. The Kingdom of Langkasuka arose around the second century in the northern area of the Malay Peninsula, lasting until about the 15th century. Between the 7th and 13th centuries, much of the southern Malay Peninsula was part of the maritime Srivijayan empire. By the 13th and the 14th century, the Majapahit empire had successfully wrested control over most of the peninsula and the Malay Archipelago from Srivijaya. In the early 15th century, Parameswara, a runaway king of the former Kingdom of Singapura linked to the old Srivijayan court, founded the Malacca Sultanate. The spread of Islam increased following Parameswara's conversion to that religion. Malacca was an important commercial centre during this time, attracting trade from around the region.\nIn 1511, Malacca was conquered by Portugal, after which it was taken by the Dutch in 1641. In 1786, the British Empire established a presence in Malaya, when the Sultan of Kedah leased Penang Island to the British East India Company. The British obtained the town of Singapore in 1819, and in 1824 took control of Malacca following the Anglo-Dutch Treaty. By 1826, the British directly controlled Penang, Malacca, Singapore, and the island of Labuan, which they established as the crown colony of the Straits Settlements. By the 20th century, the states of Pahang, Selangor, Perak, and Negeri Sembilan, known together as the Federated Malay States, had British residents appointed to advise the Malay rulers, to whom the rulers were bound to defer by treaty. The remaining five states on the peninsula, known as the Unfederated Malay States, while not directly under British rule, also accepted British advisers around the turn of the 20th century. Development on the peninsula and Borneo were generally separate until the 19th century. Under British rule the immigration of Chinese and Indians to serve as labourers was encouraged. The area that is now Sabah came under British control as North Borneo when both the Sultan of Brunei and the Sultan of Sulu transferred their respective territorial rights of ownership, between 1877 and 1878. In 1842, Sarawak was ceded by the Sultan of Brunei to James Brooke, whose successors ruled as the White Rajahs over an independent kingdom until 1946, when it became a crown colony.\nIn the Second World War, the Japanese Army invaded and occupied Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore for over three years. During this time, ethnic tensions were raised and nationalism grew. Popular support for independence increased after Malaya was reconquered by Allied forces. Post-war British plans to unite the administration of Malaya under a single crown colony called the Malayan Union met with strong opposition from the Malays, who opposed the weakening of the Malay rulers and the granting of citizenship to the ethnic Chinese. The Malayan Union, established in 1946, and consisting of all the British possessions in the Malay Peninsula except for Singapore, was quickly dissolved and replaced on 1 February 1948 by the Federation of Malaya, which restored the autonomy of the rulers of the Malay states under British protection.\nDuring this time, the mostly ethnically Chinese rebels under the leadership of the Malayan Communist Party launched guerrilla operations designed to force the British out of Malaya. The Malayan Emergency (1948\u20131960) involved a long anti-insurgency campaign by Commonwealth troops in Malaya. On 31 August 1957, Malaya became an independent member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Subsequently, a comprehensive plan was devised to unite Malaya with the crown colonies of North Borneo (known as Sabah upon joining), Sarawak, and Singapore. The envisioned federation was originally intended to take place on 31 August 1963, to coincide with the commemoration of Malayan independence. However, due to the necessity of conducting a survey on the level of support for the federation in Sabah and Sarawak by the United Nations, as requested by opponents of the federation such as Indonesia's Sukarno and the Sarawak United Peoples' Party, the date of the federation was postponed until 16 September 1963.\nThe federation brought heightened tensions including a conflict with Indonesia as well as continual conflicts against the Communists in Borneo and the Malay Peninsula, which escalated to the Sarawak Communist Insurgency and Second Malayan Emergency together with several other issues such as the cross-border attacks into Sabah by Moro pirates from the southern islands of the Philippines, Singapore being expelled from the Federation in 1965, and racial strife. This strife culminated in the 13 May race riots in 1969. After the riots, the controversial New Economic Policy was launched by Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak, trying to increase the share of the economy held by the \"bumiputera\". Under Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad there was a period of rapid economic growth and urbanization beginning in the 1980s. The economy shifted from being agriculturally based to one based on manufacturing and industry. Numerous mega-projects were completed, such as the Petronas Towers, the North\u2013South Expressway, the Multimedia Super Corridor, and the new federal administrative capital of Putrajaya.\nIn the late 1990s, the Asian financial crisis impacted the country, nearly causing their currency, stock, and property markets to crash; however, they later recovered. The 1MDB scandal was a major global corruption scandal that implicated then-Prime Minister Najib Razak in 2015. The scandal contributed to the first change in the ruling political party since independence in the 2018 general election. In the 2020s, the country was gripped by a political crisis that coincided with health and economic crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This was then followed by an earlier general election in November 2022, which resulted in the first hung parliament in the nation's history. On 24 November 2022, Anwar Ibrahim was sworn in as the 10th Prime Minister of Malaysia, leading a grand coalition government.\nGovernment and politics.\nMalaysia is a federal constitutional elective monarchy and the only federal country in Southeast Asia. The system of government is closely modelled on the Westminster parliamentary system, a legacy of British rule. The head of state is the King, whose official title is the Yang\u00a0di-Pertuan\u00a0Agong. The King is elected to a five-year term by and from among the nine hereditary rulers of the Malay states. The other four states, which have titular Governors, do not participate in the selection. By informal agreement the position is rotated among the nine, and has been held by Ibrahim Iskandar of Johor since 31 January 2024. The King's role has been largely ceremonial since changes to the constitution in 1994, picking ministers and members of the upper house.\nLegislative power is divided between federal and state legislatures. The bicameral federal parliament consists of the lower house, the House of Representatives and the upper house, the Senate. The 222-member House of Representatives is elected for a maximum term of five years from single-member constituencies. All 70 senators sit for three-year terms; 26 are elected by the 13 state assemblies, and the remaining 44 are appointed by the King upon the Prime Minister's recommendation. The parliament follows a multi-party system and the government is elected through a first-past-the-post system. Parliamentary elections are held at least once every five years. Before 2018, only registered voters aged 21 and above could vote for the members of the House of Representatives and, in most of the states, for the state legislative chamber. Voting is not mandatory. In July 2019, a bill to lower the voting age to 18 years old was officially passed.\nExecutive power is vested in the Cabinet, led by the Prime Minister. The prime minister must be a member of the House of Representatives, who in the opinion of His Majesty the King, commands the support of a majority of members. The Cabinet is chosen from members of both houses of Parliament. The Prime Minister is both the head of cabinet and the head of government. As a result of the 2018 general election Malaysia was governed by the Pakatan Harapan (PH) political alliance, although Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad resigned amid a political crisis in 2020. In March 2020, the Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition formed under Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, before Muhyiddin lost majority support and was replaced by deputy Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob, a veteran politician from the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), in August 2021. As a result of the 2022 Malaysian general election, a hung parliament was elected. Anwar Ibrahim of the PH coalition was appointed as the new Prime Minister to lead the coalition government of PH, Barisan Nasional, Gabungan Parti Sarawak, Gabungan Rakyat Sabah and several other political parties and independents. Meanwhile, PN, the only political coalition not in the coalition government became the Opposition.\nMalaysia's legal system is based on common law. Although the judiciary is theoretically independent, its independence has been called into question and the appointment of judges lacks accountability and transparency. The highest court in the judicial system is the Federal Court, followed by the Court of Appeal and two high courts, one for Peninsular Malaysia and one for East Malaysia. Malaysia also has a special court to hear cases brought by or against royalty.\nRace is a significant force in politics. Affirmative actions such as the New Economic Policy and the National Development Policy which superseded it, were implemented to advance the standing of the \"bumiputera\", consisting of Malays and the indigenous tribes who are considered the original inhabitants of Malaysia, over non-\"bumiputera\" such as Malaysian Chinese and Malaysian Indians. These policies provide preferential treatment to \"bumiputera\" in employment, education, scholarships, business, and access to cheaper housing and assisted savings. However, it has generated greater interethnic resentment. There is ongoing debate over whether the laws and society of Malaysia should reflect Islamism or secularism. Islamic criminal laws passed by the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party with the support of UMNO state assemblymen in the state legislative assembly of Kelantan have been unenforced by the federal government on the basis that criminal laws are the responsibility of the federal government.\nAfter UMNO lost power at the 2018 Malaysian general election, Malaysia's ranking increased by 9 places in the 2019 Democracy Index to 43rd compared to the previous year and is classified as a 'flawed democracy'. Malaysia's ranking in the 2020 Press Freedom Index increased by 22 places to 101st compared to the previous year, making it one of two countries in Southeast Asia without a 'Difficult situation' or 'Very Serious situation' with regards to press freedom. However, it fell 18 places the following year due to the policies of the PN government.\nMalaysia is marked at 48th and 62nd place according to the 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index, indicating above-average levels of corruption. Freedom House noted Malaysia as \"partly free\" in its 2018 survey. A lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice alleged that at least $3.5 billion involving former prime minister Najib Razak had been stolen from Malaysia's 1MDB state-owned fund, known as the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal.\nAdministrative divisions.\nMalaysia is a federation of 13 states and three federal territories. Out of these, eleven states and two federal territories are in Peninsular Malaysia, whereas the other two states and one federal territory comprise East Malaysia.\nThe country has three tiers of government \u2013 federal, state and local. Governance of the states is divided between the federal and the state governments, with different powers reserved for each, and the federal government has direct administration of the federal territories. Each state has a unicameral State Legislative Assembly whose members are elected from single-member constituencies. State governments are led by Chief Ministers, who are state assembly members from the majority party in the assembly. In each of the states with a hereditary ruler, the Chief Minister is normally required to be a Malay, appointed by the ruler upon the recommendation of the Prime Minister. Until 2018, state elections were held concurrently with the general election by convention, except for those in Sarawak. Following the 2020\u20132022 political crisis, only Pahang, Perak and Perlis opted to conduct their state elections simultaneously with the general elections.\nPositioned below the federal and state governments, local governments represent the lowest tier of governance in Malaysia. As of 2024[ [update]], Malaysia is divided between 19 cities, 40 municipalities, 91 district-level councils, and four statutory agencies. While the federal constitution assigns local authorities to the exclusive jurisdiction of state governments, in practice, the federal Ministry of Housing and Local Government oversees the regulation of local laws and policies. Mayors (or presidents for municipal and district councils) and councillors are appointed by the respective state governments, or in the case of the federal territories, by the federal government.\nFederal laws assign land matters, including the delineation of districts, to the purview of state governments. Except Perlis and the federal territories, each state is divided into districts, which are further subdivided into mukims. In Sabah and Sarawak, districts are grouped into divisions. In contrast to local governments that manage municipal administration and infrastructure development, districts are solely utilised for land taxation.\nThe 13 states are based on historical Malay kingdoms, and 9 of the 11 Peninsular states, known as the Malay states, retain their royal families. The King is elected by and from the nine rulers to serve a five-year term. This King appoints governors serving a four-year term for the states without monarchies, after consultations with the chief minister of that state. Each state has its written constitution. Sabah and Sarawak have considerably more autonomy than the other states, most notably having separate immigration policies and controls, and unique residency status. Federal intervention in state affairs, lack of development, and disputes over oil royalties have occasionally led to statements about secession from leaders in several states such as Penang, Johor, Kelantan, Sabah and Sarawak, although these have not been followed up and no serious independence movements exist.\nA list of thirteen states and each state capital (in parentheses):\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nForeign relations and military.\nA founding member of ASEAN and OIC, the country participates in many international organisations such as the United Nations (U.N.), APEC, the D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation, and NAM. It has chaired ASEAN, OIC, and NAM in the past. A former British colony, it is also a member of the Commonwealth. Kuala Lumpur was the site of the first EAS in 2005.\nMalaysia's foreign policy is officially based on the principle of neutrality and maintaining peaceful relations with all countries, regardless of their political system. The government attaches a high priority to the security and stability of Southeast Asia, and seeks to further develop relations with other countries in the region. Historically the government has tried to portray Malaysia as a progressive Islamic nation while strengthening relations with other Islamic states. A strong tenet of Malaysia's policy is national sovereignty and right of a country to control its domestic affairs. Malaysia signed the U.N. treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.\nThe Spratly Islands are disputed by many states in the area, and a large portion of the South China Sea is claimed by China. Unlike its neighbours of Vietnam and the Philippines, Malaysia historically avoided conflicts with China. However, after the encroachment of Chinese ships in Malaysian territorial waters, and breach of airspace by their military aircraft, Malaysia has become active in condemning China. Brunei and Malaysia in 2009 announced an end to claims of each other's land, and committed to resolve issues related to their maritime borders. The Philippines has a dormant claim to the eastern part of Sabah. Singapore's land reclamation has caused tensions, and minor maritime and land border disputes exist with Indonesia.\nThe Malaysian Armed Forces has three branches: the Malaysian Army, Royal Malaysian Navy and the Royal Malaysian Air Force. There is no conscription, and the required age for voluntary military service is 18. The military uses 1.5% of the country's GDP, and employs 1.23% of Malaysia's manpower. Malaysian peacekeeping forces of MALBATT have contributed to many U.N. peacekeeping missions, such as in Congo, Iran\u2013Iraq, Namibia, Cambodia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Somalia, Kosovo, East Timor, and Lebanon.\nThe Five Power Defence Arrangements is a regional security initiative that has been in place for almost 40 years. It involves joint military exercises held among Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Joint exercises and war games have also been held with Brunei, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States. Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam have agreed to host joint security force exercises to secure their maritime border and tackle issues such as illegal immigration, piracy, and smuggling. Previously there were fears that extremist militant activities in the Muslim areas of the southern Philippines and southern Thailand would spill over into Malaysia. Because of this, Malaysia began to increase its border security.\nHuman rights.\nHomosexuality is illegal in Malaysia, and authorities have imposed punishments such as caning and imprisonment. Human trafficking and sex trafficking in Malaysia are significant problems. There have also been cases of vigilante executions and beatings against LGBT individuals in Malaysia. The illegality of homosexuality in Malaysia has also been the forefront of Anwar Ibrahim's sodomy trials, which Anwar has called politically motivated, a characterization supported by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, along with Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch.\nThe death penalty is in use for serious crimes such as murder, terrorism, drug trafficking, and kidnapping, but in June 2022, Malaysian law minister Wan Junaidi pledged to abolish capital punishment and replace it with other punishments at the discretion of the court.\nGeography.\nMalaysia is the 66th largest country by total land area, with a total area of . It has land borders with Thailand in West Malaysia, and Indonesia and Brunei in East Malaysia. It is linked to Singapore by a narrow causeway and a bridge. The country also has maritime boundaries with Vietnam and the Philippines. The land borders are defined in large part by geological features such as the Perlis River, the Golok River and the Pagalayan Canal, whilst some of the maritime boundaries are the subject of ongoing contention. Brunei forms what is almost an enclave in Malaysia, with the state of Sarawak dividing it into two parts. Malaysia is the only country with territory on both the Asian mainland and the Malay archipelago. The Strait of Malacca, lying between Sumatra and Peninsular Malaysia, is one of the most important thoroughfares in global commerce, carrying 40 percent of the world's trade.\nThe two parts of Malaysia, separated from each other by the South China Sea, share a largely similar landscape in that both Peninsular and East Malaysia feature coastal plains rising to hills and mountains. Peninsular Malaysia, containing 40 per cent of Malaysia's land area, extends from north to south, and its maximum width is . It is divided between its east and west coasts by the Titiwangsa Mountains, rising to a peak elevation of at Mount Korbu, part of a series of mountain ranges running down the centre of the peninsula. These mountains are heavily forested, and mainly composed of granite and other igneous rocks. Much of it has been eroded, creating a karst landscape. The range is the origin of some of Peninsular Malaysia's river systems. The coastal plains surrounding the peninsula reach a maximum width of , and the peninsula's coastline is nearly long, although harbours are only available on the western side.\nEast Malaysia, on the island of Borneo, has a coastline of . It is divided between coastal regions, hills and valleys, and a mountainous interior. The Crocker Range extends northwards from Sarawak, dividing the state of Sabah. It is the location of the high Mount Kinabalu, the tallest mountain in Malaysia. Mount Kinabalu is located in the Kinabalu National Park, which is protected as one of the four UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Malaysia. The highest mountain ranges form the border between Malaysia and Indonesia. Sarawak contains the Mulu Caves, the largest cave system in the world, in the Gunung Mulu National Park which is also a World Heritage Site. The largest river in Malaysia is the Rajang.\nAround these two halves of Malaysia are numerous islands, the largest of which is Banggi. The local climate is equatorial and characterised by the annual southwest (April to October) and northeast (October to February) monsoons. The temperature is moderated by the presence of the surrounding oceans. Humidity is usually high, and the average annual rainfall is . The climates of the Peninsula and the East differ, as the climate on the peninsula is directly affected by wind from the mainland, as opposed to the more maritime weather of the East. Local climates can be divided into three regions, highland, lowland, and coastal. Climate change will cause sea level rise and increased rainfall, increasing flood risks and leading to droughts.\nBiodiversity and conservation.\nMalaysia signed the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity on 12 June 1993, and became a party to the convention on 24 June 1994. It has subsequently produced a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, which was received by the convention on 16 April 1998. The country is megadiverse with a high number of species and high levels of endemism. It is estimated to contain 20\u00a0per\u00a0cent of the world's animal species. High levels of endemism are found on the diverse forests of Borneo's mountains, as species are isolated from each other by lowland forest.\nThere are about 210 mammal species in the country. Over 620 species of birds have been recorded in Peninsular Malaysia, with many endemic to the mountains there. A high number of endemic bird species are also found in Malaysian Borneo. 250 reptile species have been recorded in the country, with about 150 species of snakes and 80 species of lizards. There are about 150 species of frogs, and thousands of insect species. The Exclusive economic zone of Malaysia is and 1.5 times larger than its land area. It is mainly in the South China Sea. Some of its waters are in the Coral Triangle, a biodiversity hotspot. The waters around Sipadan island are the most biodiverse in the world. Bordering East Malaysia, the Sulu Sea is a biodiversity hotspot, with around 600 coral species and 1200 fish species. The unique biodiversity of Malaysian Caves always attracts lovers of ecotourism from all over the world.\nNearly 4,000 species of fungi, including lichen-forming species have been recorded from Malaysia. Of the two fungal groups with the largest number of species in Malaysia, the Ascomycota and their asexual states have been surveyed in some habitats (decaying wood, marine, and freshwater ecosystems, as parasites of some plants, and as agents of biodegradation), but have not been or have been only poorly surveyed in other habitats (as endobionts, in soils, on dung, as human and animal pathogens); the Basidiomycota are only partly surveyed: bracket fungi, and mushrooms and toadstools have been studied, but Malaysian rust and smut fungi remain very poorly known. Without a doubt, many more fungal species in Malaysia are yet to be recorded, and it is likely that many of those, when found, will be new to science.\nAbout two\u00a0thirds of Malaysia was covered in forest as of 2007, with some forests believed to be 130\u00a0million years old. The forests are dominated by dipterocarps. Lowland forest covers areas below , and formerly East Malaysia was covered in such rainforest, which is supported by its hot wet climate. There are around 14,500 species of flowering plants and trees. Besides rainforests, there are over of mangroves in Malaysia, and a large amount of peat forest. At higher altitudes, oaks, chestnuts, and rhododendrons replace dipterocarps. There are an estimated 8,500 species of vascular plants in Peninsular Malaysia, with another 15,000 in the East. The forests of East Malaysia are estimated to be the habitat of around 2,000 tree species, and are one of the most biodiverse areas in the world, with 240 different species of trees every hectare. These forests host many members of the Rafflesia genus, the largest flowers in the world, with a maximum diameter of .\nLogging, along with cultivation practices, has devastated tree cover, causing severe environmental degradation in the country. Over 80\u00a0per\u00a0cent of Sarawak's rainforest has been logged. Floods in East Malaysia have been worsened by the loss of trees, and over 60\u00a0per\u00a0cent of the peninsula's forests have been cleared. With current rates of deforestation, mainly for the palm oil industry, the forests are predicted to be extinct by 2020. Deforestation is a major problem for animals, fungi and plants, having caused species such as \"Begonia eiromischa\" to go extinct. Most remaining forest is found inside reserves and national parks. Habitat destruction has proved a threat for marine life. Illegal fishing is another major threat, with fishing methods such as dynamite fishing and poisoning depleting marine ecosystems. Leatherback turtle numbers have dropped 98\u00a0per\u00a0cent since the 1950s. Hunting has also been an issue for some animals, with overconsumption and the use of animal parts for profit endangering many animals, from marine life to tigers. Marine life is also detrimentally affected by uncontrolled tourism.\nThe Malaysian government aims to balance economic growth with environmental protection, but has been accused of favouring big business over the environment. Some state governments are now trying to counter the environmental impact and pollution created by deforestation; and the federal government is trying to cut logging by 10\u00a0per\u00a0cent each year. A total of 28 national parks have been established, 23 in East Malaysia and five in the peninsula. Tourism has been limited in biodiverse areas such as Sipadan island. Wildlife trafficking is a large issue, and the Malaysian government has held talks with the governments of Brunei and Indonesia to standardise anti-trafficking laws.\nEconomy.\nMalaysia is a relatively open state-oriented and newly industrialised market economy. It has the world's 36th-largest economy by nominal GDP and the 31st-largest by PPP. In 2017, the large service sector contributed to 53.6% of total GDP, the industrial sector 37.6%, and the small agricultural sector roughly 8.8%. Malaysia has a low official unemployment rate of 3.4% as of 2024. Its foreign exchange reserves are the world's 24th-largest. It has a labour force of about 15 million, which is the world's 34th-largest. Malaysia's large automotive industry ranks as the world's 22nd-largest by production.\nMalaysia is the world's 23rd-largest exporter and 25th-largest importer. However, economic inequalities exist between different ethnic groups. The Chinese make up about one-quarter of the population, but account for 70 per cent of the country's market capitalisation. Chinese businesses in Malaysia are part of the larger bamboo network, a network of overseas Chinese businesses in the Southeast Asian market sharing common family and cultural ties.\nInternational trade, facilitated by the shipping route in adjacent Strait of Malacca, and manufacturing are the key sectors. Malaysia is an exporter of natural and agricultural resources, and petroleum is a major export. Malaysia has once been the largest producer of tin, rubber and palm oil in the world. Manufacturing has a large influence in the country's economy, although Malaysia's economic structure has been moving away from it. Malaysia remains one of the world's largest producers of palm oil.\nTourism is the third-largest contributor to Malaysia's GDP, after the manufacturing and commodities sectors. In 2019, the sector contributed about 15.9 percent to the total GDP. According to the World Tourism Organization, Malaysia was the fourteenth-most visited country in the world, and the fourth-most visited country in Asia in 2019, with over 26.1 million visits. Malaysia was ranked 38th in the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report 2019. Its international tourism receipts in 2019 amounted to $19.8 billion.\nThe country has developed into a centre of Islamic banking and has the highest number of female workers in that industry. Knowledge-based services are also expanding. In 2020, Malaysia exported high-tech products worth $92.1 billion, the second-highest in ASEAN, after Singapore. Malaysia was ranked 33rd in the Global Innovation Index in 2024, and 32nd in the Global Competitiveness Report in 2022.\nInfrastructure.\nRailway transport in Malaysia is state-run, and spans some . As of 2016[ [update]], Malaysia has the world's 26th-largest road network, with some of roads. Malaysia's inland waterways are the world's 22nd-longest, and total . Among Malaysia's 114 airports, among which the busiest is Kuala Lumpur International Airport located south of Kuala Lumpur in Sepang District, which is also the twelfth-busiest airport in Asia. Among the 7 federal ports, the major one is Port Klang, which is the thirteenth-busiest container port. Malaysia's flag carrier is Malaysia Airlines, providing international and domestic air services.\nMalaysia's telecommunications network is second only to Singapore's in Southeast Asia, with 4.7\u00a0million fixed-line subscribers and more than 30\u00a0million cellular subscribers. There are 200 industrial parks along with specialised parks such as Technology Park Malaysia and Kulim Hi-Tech Park. Fresh water is available to over 95% of the population, with ground water accounting for 90% of the freshwater resources. Although rural areas have been the focus of great development, they still lag behind areas such as the West Coast of Peninsular Malaysia. The telecommunication network, although strong in urban areas, is less available to the rural population.\nMalaysia's energy infrastructure sector is largely dominated by Tenaga Nasional, the largest electric utility company in Southeast Asia. Customers in Peninsular Malaysia are connected to electricity through the National Grid. The other two electric utility companies in the country are Sarawak Energy and Sabah Electricity. In 2013, Malaysia's total power generation capacity was over 29,728 megawatts. Total electricity generation was 140,985.01 GWh and total electricity consumption was 116,087.51 GWh. Energy production in Malaysia is largely based on oil and natural gas, owing to Malaysia's oil and natural gas reserves, which are the fourth largest in the Asia-Pacific region.\nDemographics.\nAccording to the Malaysian Department of Statistics, the country's population was 32,447,385 in 2020, making it the 42nd most populated country. According to a 2012 estimate, the population is increasing by 1.54 percent per year. Malaysia has an average population density of 96 people per km2, ranking it 116th in the world for population density. People within the 15\u201364 age group constitute 69.5 percent of the total population; the 0\u201314 age group corresponds to 24.5 percent; while senior citizens aged 65 years or older make up 6.0 percent. In 1960, when the first official census was recorded in Malaysia, the population was 8.11\u00a0million. 91.8 percent of the population are Malaysian citizens.\nMalaysian citizens are divided along local ethnic lines, with 69.7 percent considered \"bumiputera\". The largest group of bumiputera are Malays, who are defined in the constitution as Muslims who practise Malay customs and culture. They play a dominant role politically. Bumiputera status is also accorded to the non-Malay indigenous groups of Sabah and Sarawak: which includes Dayaks (Iban, Bidayuh, Orang Ulu), Kadazan-Dusun, Melanau, Bajau and others. Non-Malay bumiputeras make up more than half of Sarawak's population and over two-thirds of Sabah's population. There are also indigenous or aboriginal groups in much smaller numbers on the peninsular, where they are collectively known as the Orang Asli. Laws over who gets bumiputera status vary between states.\nThere are also two other non-Bumiputera local ethnic groups. 22.8 percent of the population are Malaysian Chinese, while 6.8 percent are Malaysian Indian. The local Chinese have historically been more dominant in the business community. Local Indians are mostly of Tamil descent. Malaysian citizenship is not automatically granted to those born in Malaysia, but is granted to a child born of two Malaysian parents outside Malaysia. Dual citizenship is not permitted. Citizenship in the states of Sabah and Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo are distinct from citizenship in Peninsular Malaysia for immigration purposes. Every citizen is issued a biometric smart chip identity card known as \"MyKad\" at the age of 12 and must carry the card at all times.\nThe population is concentrated on Peninsular Malaysia, where 20\u00a0million out of approximately 28\u00a0million Malaysians live. 70 per cent of the population is urban. Due to the rise in labour-intensive industries, the country is estimated to have over 3\u00a0million migrant workers; about 10 per cent of the population. Sabah-based NGOs estimate that out of the 3\u00a0million that make up the population of Sabah, 2\u00a0million are illegal immigrants. Malaysia hosts a population of refugees and asylum seekers numbering approximately 171,500. Of this population, approximately 79,000 are from Burma, 72,400 from the Philippines, and 17,700 from Indonesia. Malaysian officials are reported to have turned deportees directly over to human smugglers in 2007, and Malaysia employs RELA, a volunteer militia with a history of controversies, to enforce its immigration law.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nReligion.\nThe constitution grants freedom of religion, while establishing Islam as the \"religion of the Federation\". According to the Population and Housing Census 2020 figures, ethnicity and religious beliefs correlate highly. Approximately 63.5% of the population practise Islam, 18.7% practise Buddhism, 9.1% Christianity, 6.1% Hinduism and 1.3% practise Confucianism, Taoism and other traditional Chinese religions. 2.7% declared no religion or practised other religions or did not provide any information. The states of Sarawak, Penang and the federal territory of Kuala Lumpur have non-Muslim majorities.\nSunni Islam of the Shafi'i school of jurisprudence is the dominant branch of Islam in Malaysia, while 18% are nondenominational Muslims. The Malaysian constitution strictly defines what makes a \"Malay\", defining Malays as those who are Muslim, speak Malay regularly, practise Malay customs, and lived in or have ancestors from Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore. Statistics from the 2010 Census indicate that 83.6% of the Chinese population identify as Buddhist, with significant numbers of adherents following Taoism (3.4%) and Christianity (11.1%), along with small Muslim populations in areas like Penang. The majority of the Indian population follows Hinduism (86.2%), with a significant minority identifying as Christians (6.0%) or Muslims (4.1%). Christianity is the predominant religion of the non-Malay \"bumiputera\" community (46.5%), while 40.4% identify as Muslims.\nMuslims are obliged to follow the decisions of Syariah Courts (i.e. Shariah courts) in matters concerning their religion. The Islamic judges are expected to follow the Shafi'i legal school of Islam, which is the main \"madh'hab\" of Malaysia. The jurisdiction of Syariah courts is limited to Muslims in matters such as marriage, inheritance, divorce, apostasy, religious conversion, custody and limited Islamic criminal law. No other criminal or civil offences are under the jurisdiction of the Syariah courts, which have a similar hierarchy to the civil courts. The civil courts do not hear matters related to Islamic practices.\nLanguages.\nThe official and national language of Malaysia is Malaysian Malay, a standardised form of the Malay language. The previous official terminology was (lit.\u2009'Malaysian language') but now government policy uses (Malay language) to refer to the official language and both terms remain in use. The National Language Act 1967 specifies the Latin (Rumi) script as the official script of the national language, but does not prohibit the use of the traditional Jawi script.\nEnglish remains an active second language, with its use allowed for some official purposes under the National Language Act of 1967. In Sarawak, English is an official state language alongside Malay. Historically, English was the de facto administrative language; Malay became predominant after the 1969 race riots (13 May incident). Malaysian English, also known as Malaysian Standard English, is a form of English derived from British English. Malaysian English is widely used in business, along with Manglish, which is a colloquial form of English with heavy Malay, Chinese, and Tamil influences. The government discourages the use of non-standard Malay but has no power to issue compounds or fines to those who use what is perceived as improper Malay on their advertisements.\nMany other languages are used in Malaysia, which contains speakers of 137 living languages. Peninsular Malaysia contains speakers of 41 of these languages. The native tribes of East Malaysia have their own languages which are related to, but easily distinguishable from, Malay. Iban is the main tribal language in Sarawak while Dusunic and Kadazan languages are spoken by the natives in Sabah. Chinese Malaysians predominantly speak Chinese dialects from the southern part of China. The more common Chinese varieties in the country are Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, and so on. The Tamil language is used predominantly by the majority of Malaysian Indians. A small number of Malaysians have European ancestry and speak creole languages, such as the Portuguese-based Malaccan Creoles, and the Spanish-based Chavacano language.\nHealth.\nMalaysia operates an efficient and widespread two-tier healthcare system, consisting of a universal healthcare system and a co-existing private healthcare system; provided by highly subsidized healthcare through its extensive network of public hospitals and clinics. The Ministry of Health is the main provider of healthcare services to the country's population. Malaysia's healthcare system is considered to be among the most developed in Asia, which contributes to its thriving medical tourism industry.\nMalaysia spent 3.83% of its GDP on healthcare in 2019. In 2020, the overall life expectancy in Malaysia at birth was 76 years (74 years for males and 78 years for females), and it had an infant mortality rate of 7 deaths per 1000 births. Malaysia had a total fertility rate of 2.0 in 2020, which is just below the replacement level of 2.1. In 2020, the country's crude birth rate was 16 per 1000 people, and the crude death rate was 5 per 1000 people.\nIn 2021, the principal cause of death among Malaysian adults was coronary artery disease, representing 17% of the medically certified deaths in 2020\u2014being followed by pneumonia; which accounted for 11% of the deaths. Transport accidents are considered a major health hazard, as Malaysia, relative to its population, has one of the highest traffic fatality rates in the world. Smoking is also considered a major health issue across the country.\nEducation.\nThe education system of Malaysia features a non-compulsory kindergarten education followed by six years of compulsory primary education and five years of optional secondary education. Schools in the primary education system are divided into two categories: national primary schools, which teach in Malay (i.e.:Sekolah Kebangsaan Sungai Binjai, SK Bukit Tiu), and vernacular schools, which teach in Chinese or Tamil (i.e.:SJK(C) Pin Hwa 2, SJK(T) Bandar Mentakab). Secondary education (i.e.:SMK Sura, Kajang High School) is conducted for five years. In the final year of secondary education, students sit for the Malaysian Certificate of Education examination. Since the introduction of the matriculation programme in 1999, students who completed the 12-month programme in matriculation colleges can enroll in local universities. However, in the matriculation system, only 10 percent of places are open to non-\"bumiputera\" students.\nCulture.\nMalaysia has a multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multilingual society. Substantial influence exists from Chinese and Indian culture, dating back to when foreign trade began. Other cultural influences include the Persian, Arabic, and British cultures. Due to the structure of the government, coupled with the social contract theory, there has been minimal cultural assimilation of ethnic minorities. Some cultural disputes exist between Malaysia and neighbouring countries, notably Indonesia.\nIn 1971, the government created a \"National Cultural Policy\", defining Malaysian culture. It stated that Malaysian culture must be based on the culture of the indigenous peoples of Malaysia, that it may incorporate suitable elements from other cultures, and that Islam must play a part in it. It also promoted the Malay language above others. This government intervention into culture has caused resentment among non-Malays who feel their cultural freedom was lessened. Both Chinese and Indian associations have submitted memorandums to the government, accusing it of formulating an undemocratic culture policy.\nFine arts.\nTraditional Malaysian art was mainly centred on the areas of carving, weaving, and silversmithing. Traditional art ranges from handwoven baskets from rural areas to the silverwork of the Malay courts. Common artworks included ornamental kris, beetle nut sets, and woven batik and songket fabrics. Indigenous East Malaysians are known for their wooden masks. Each ethnic group have distinct performing arts, with little overlap between them. However, Malay art does show some North Indian influence due to the historical influence of India.\nTraditional Malay music and performing arts appear to have originated in the Kelantan-Pattani region with influences from India, China, Thailand, and Indonesia. The music is based around percussion instruments, the most important of which is the gendang (drum). There are at least 14 types of traditional drums. Drums and other traditional percussion instruments and are often made from natural materials. Music is traditionally used for storytelling, celebrating life-cycle events, and occasions such as a harvest. It was once used as a form of long-distance communication. In East Malaysia, gong-based musical ensembles such as agung and kulintang are commonly used in ceremonies such as funerals and weddings. These ensembles are also common in neighbouring regions such as in Mindanao in the Philippines, Kalimantan in Indonesia and Brunei.\nMalaysia has a strong oral tradition that has existed since before the arrival of writing and continues today. Each of the Malay Sultanates created their own literary tradition, influenced by pre-existing oral stories and by the stories that came with Islam. The first Malay literature was in the Arabic script. The earliest known Malay writing is on the Terengganu stone, made in 1303. Chinese and Indian literature became common as the number of speakers increased in Malaysia, and locally produced works based on languages from those areas began to be produced in the 19th century. English has also become a common literary language. In 1971, the government took the step of defining the literature of different languages. Literature written in Malay was called \"the national literature of Malaysia\", literature in other \"bumiputera\" languages was called \"regional literature\", while literature in other languages was called \"sectional literature\". Malay poetry is highly developed, and uses many forms. The \"Hikayat\" form is popular, and the \"pantun\" has spread from Malay to other languages.\nCuisine.\nMalaysia's cuisine reflects the multi-ethnic makeup of its population. Many cultures from within the country and from surrounding regions have greatly influenced the cuisine. Much of the influence comes from the Malay, Chinese, Indian, Thai, Javanese, and Sumatran cultures, largely due to the country being part of the ancient spice route. The cuisine is very similar to that of Singapore and Brunei, and also bears resemblance to Filipino cuisine. The different states have varied dishes, and often the food in Malaysia is different from the original dishes.\nSometimes food not found in its original culture is assimilated into another; for example, Chinese restaurants in Malaysia often serve Malay dishes. Food from one culture is sometimes also cooked using styles taken from another culture, For example, \"sambal belacan\" (shrimp paste) are commonly used as ingredients by Chinese restaurants to create the stir fried water spinach (\"kangkung belacan\"). This means that although much of Malaysian food can be traced back to a certain culture, they have their own identity. Rice is a staple food and an important constituent of the country's culture. Chili is commonly found in local cuisine, although this does not necessarily make them spicy.\nMedia.\nMalaysia's main newspapers are owned by the government and political parties in the ruling coalition, although some major opposition parties also have their own, which are openly sold alongside regular newspapers. A divide exists between the media in the two halves of the country. Peninsular-based media gives a low priority to news from the East and often treats the eastern states as colonies of the peninsula. As a result of this, the East Malaysia region of Sarawak launched TV Sarawak as internet streaming beginning in 2014, and as TV station on 10 October 2020 to overcome the low priority and coverage of Peninsular-based media and to solidify the representation of East Malaysia. The media have been blamed for increasing tension between Indonesia and Malaysia, and giving Malaysians a bad image of Indonesians. The country has Malay, English, Chinese, and Tamil daily newspapers. Kadazandusun and Bajau news are available only via TV broadcast Berita RTM. Written Kadazan news was once included in publications such as The Borneo Post, the Borneo Mail, the Daily Express, and the New Sabah Times, but publication has ceased with the newspaper or as a section.\nFreedom of the press is limited, with numerous restrictions on publishing rights and information dissemination. The government has previously tried to crack down on opposition papers before elections. In 2007, a government agency issued a directive to all private television and radio stations to refrain from broadcasting speeches made by opposition leaders, a move condemned by politicians from the opposition Democratic Action Party. Sabah, where all tabloids but one are independent of government control, has the freest press in Malaysia. Laws such as the Printing Presses and Publications Act have also been cited as curtailing freedom of expression.\nHolidays and festivals.\nMalaysians observe several holidays and festivities throughout the year. Some are federally gazetted public holidays and some are observed by individual states. Other festivals are observed by particular ethnic or religious groups, and the main holiday of each major group has been declared a public holiday. The most observed national holiday is \"Hari Merdeka\" (Independence Day) on 31 August, commemorating the independence of the Federation of Malaya in 1957. Malaysia Day on 16 September commemorates federation in 1963. Other notable national holidays are Labour Day (1 May) and the King's birthday (first week of June).\nMuslim holidays are prominent as Islam is the state religion; \"Hari Raya Puasa\" (also called \"Hari Raya Aidilfitri\", Malay for Eid al-Fitr), \"Hari Raya Haji\" (also called \"Hari Raya Aidiladha\", Malay for Eid al-Adha), \"Maulidur Rasul\" (birthday of the Prophet), and others being observed. Malaysian Chinese celebrate festivals such as Chinese New Year and others relating to traditional Chinese beliefs. Wesak Day is observed and celebrated by Buddhists. Hindus in Malaysia celebrate \"Deepavali\", the festival of lights, while \"Thaipusam\" is a religious rite which sees pilgrims from all over the country converge at the Batu Caves. Malaysia's Christian community celebrates most of the holidays observed by Christians elsewhere, most notably Christmas and Easter. In addition to this, the Dayak community in Sarawak celebrate a harvest festival known as \"Gawai\", and the Kadazandusun community celebrate \"Kaamatan\". Despite most festivals being identified with a particular ethnic or religious group, celebrations are universal. In a custom known as \"open house\" Malaysians participate in the celebrations of others, often visiting the houses of those who identify with the festival.\nSports.\nPopular sports in Malaysia include association football, badminton, field hockey, bowls, tennis, squash, martial arts, horse riding, sailing, and skate boarding. Football is the most popular sport in Malaysia. Badminton matches also attract thousands of spectators, and since 1948 Malaysia has been one of four countries to hold the Thomas Cup, the world team championship trophy of men's badminton. The Malaysian Lawn Bowls Federation was registered in 1997. Squash was brought to the country by members of the British army, with the first competition being held in 1939. The Squash Racquets Association of Malaysia was created on 25 June 1972. The men's national field hockey team ranked 10th in the world as of June\u00a02022[ [update]]. The 3rd Hockey World Cup was hosted at Merdeka Stadium in Kuala Lumpur, as well as the 10th cup. The country also has its own Formula One track \u2013 the Sepang International Circuit, with the first Malaysian Grand Prix held in 1999. Traditional sports include Silat Melayu, the most common style of martial arts practised by ethnic Malays.\nThe Federation of Malaya Olympic Council was formed in 1953, and received recognition by the IOC in 1954. It first participated in the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games. The council was renamed the Olympic Council of Malaysia in 1964, and has participated in all but one Olympic games since its inception. The largest number of athletes ever sent to the Olympics was 57 to the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Besides the Olympic Games, Malaysia also participates in the Paralympic Games. Malaysia has competed at the Commonwealth Games since 1950 as Malaya, and 1966 as Malaysia, and the games were hosted in Kuala Lumpur in 1998.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["6041971", "3607937"], "permutation_1": ["3607937", "6041971"], "permutation_2": ["3607937", "6041971"], "permutation_3": ["6041971", "3607937"]}
{"id": "2hop__206815_131909", "docs_added": {"42108": "Kassel\nKassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, in central Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name, and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020. The former capital of the state of Hesse-Kassel, it has many palaces and parks, including the Bergpark Wilhelmsh\u00f6he, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Kassel is also known for the \"documenta\" exhibitions of contemporary art. Kassel has a public university with 25,000 students (2018) and a multicultural population (39% of the citizens in 2017 had a migration background).\nHistory.\nKassel was first mentioned in 913 AD, as the place where two deeds were signed by King Conrad I. The place was called \"Chasella\" or \"Chassalla\" and was a fortification at a bridge crossing the Fulda river. There are several yet unproven assumptions about the origin of the name. It could be derived from the ancient \"Castellum Cattorum\", a castle of the Chatti, a German tribe that had lived in the area since Roman times. Another assumption is a portmanteau from Frankonian \"cas\", meaning \u2018valley\u2019 or \u2018recess\u2019, and \"sali\" meaning \u2018hall\u2019 or \u2018service building\u2019, which can be interpreted as \u2018(town) hall in a valley\u2019.\nA deed from 1189 certifies that Cassel had city rights, but the date when they were granted is not known.\nThe first castle in Kassel was constructed in 1277, later replaced by a Renaissance castle, the Kassel City Palace, which burned down in 1811.\nIn 1567 the Landgraviate of Hesse, until then centered in Marburg, was divided among four sons, with Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel) becoming one of its successor states. Kassel was its capital and became a centre of Calvinist Protestantism in Germany. Strong fortifications were built to protect the Protestant stronghold against Catholic enemies. Secret societies, such as Rosicrucianism, came to the rise, with Christian Rosenkreutz's work \"Fama Fraternitatis\" first published in 1617. In 1685 Kassel became a refuge for 1,700 Huguenots, who found shelter in the newly established borough of Oberneustadt. Landgrave Charles, who was responsible for this humanitarian act, also ordered the construction of the \"Oktogon\" (Hercules monument) and of the \"Orangerie\". In the late 18th century, Hesse-Kassel became infamous for selling mercenaries (Hessians) to the British crown to help suppress the American Revolution and to finance the construction of palaces and the Landgrave's opulent lifestyle.\nThe Brothers Grimm lived in Kassel in the early 19th century, where they collected and wrote most of their fairy tales. At that time, around 1803, the Landgraviate was elevated to a Principality and its ruler to \"Prince-elector\". Shortly after, it was annexed by Napoleon and became the capital of the short-lived Kingdom of Westphalia under Napoleon's brother J\u00e9r\u00f4mein 1807. The Electorate was restored in 1813.\nHaving sided with Austria in the Austro-Prussian War to gain supremacy in Germany, the principality was annexed by Prussia in 1866. The Prussian administration united Nassau, Frankfurt and Hesse-Kassel into the new Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau. Kassel ceased to be a princely residence but soon developed into a major industrial centre as well as a major railway junction. Henschel & Son, the largest railway locomotive manufacturer in Germany at the end of the nineteenth century, was based in Kassel.\nIn 1870, after the Battle of Sedan, Napoleon III was sent as a prisoner to the Wilhelmsh\u00f6he Palace above the city. During World War I, the German military headquarters were located in the Wilhelmsh\u00f6he Palace. In the late 1930s, Nazis destroyed Heinrich H\u00fcbsch's Kassel Synagogue.\nDuring World War II, Kassel was the headquarters for Germany's Wehrkreis IX, and a local subcamp of Dachau concentration camp provided forced labour for the Henschel facilities, which included tank production plants. There was also a camp for Sinti and Romani people (see \"Romani Holocaust\"). Allied prisoners of war from the Stalag IX-A POW camp were deployed to forced labour in the local arms industry in violation of the Geneva Conventions. The most severe bombing of Kassel in World War II destroyed 90% of the downtown area, and some 10,000 people were killed and 150,000 were made homeless. Most of the casualties were civilians or wounded soldiers recuperating in local hospitals, whereas factories survived the attack generally undamaged. Karl Gerland replaced the regional Gauleiter, Karl Weinrich, soon after the raid.\nThe Allied ground advance into Germany reached Kassel at the beginning of April 1945. The US 80th Infantry Division captured Kassel in house-to-house fighting during 1\u20134 April 1945, which included numerous German panzer-grenadier counterattacks, and resulted in further damage to bombed and unbombed structures alike.\nPost-war, most of the ancient buildings in the city centre were not restored, and large parts of the inner city area were completely rebuilt in the style of the 1950s. A few historic buildings, however, such as the Museum Fridericianum, were restored. \nIn 1949, the interim parliament (\"Parlamentarischer Rat\") eliminated Kassel in the first round as a city to become the provisional capital of the Federal Republic of Germany, which the western city of Bonn won.\nIn 1964, the town hosted the fourth \"Hessentag\" state festival. \nIn 1970, the Chancellor of West Germany Willy Brandt and the prime minister of the German Democratic Republic Willy Stoph met in Wilhelmsh\u00f6he Palace for negotiations between the two German states. In 1991, the central rail station moved from \"Hauptbahnhof\" (\"main station\") to \"Kassel-Wilhelmsh\u00f6he\", the former now being used exclusively for regional trains. The city had a dynamic economic and social development in the recent years, reducing the unemployment rate by half and attracting new citizens.\nEconomy.\nSeveral international operating companies have factories or headquarters in the city (Volkswagen, Mercedes Benz, SMA, Wintershall, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, Rheinmetall, Bombardier). The city is home to several hospitals; the public Klinikum Kassel is one of the largest hospitals in the federal state.\nGeography.\nKassel is the largest city in the north of the federated state of Hesse in the south-western part of Germany, about 70 kilometers northwest of the geographic center of Germany.\nIt is located on both sides of the river Fulda. Kassel's deepest point is in the north-eastern Fulda valley at 132.9 m above sea level.\nThe urban area of Kassel is divided into 23 local districts, each of which has a local council with a local mayor as chairman. The local councils are elected every five years by the population of the local districts. The local advisory board can be heard on all important issues affecting the local district. However, the final decision on a measure rests with the Kassel city council.\nNeighboring communities.\nAround Kassel is the administrative district (\"Landkreis\") of Landkreis Kassel. The following cities and municipalities border the city of Kassel (starting clockwise in the north): Ahnatal, Vellmar, Fuldatal, Staufenberg, Niestetal, Kaufungen, Lohfelden, Fuldabr\u00fcck, Baunatal, Schauenburg, Habichtswald. Of these, Vellmar and Fuldatal in the north, Kaufungen in the east, Lohfelden in the southeast and Baunatal in the south are growing closer to the urban area.\nCulture.\nThe first German observatory was built in Kassel in 1558, and a later version from 1714 survives as the Bellevue Palace. The \"Ottoneum\", the first permanent German theatre building, was built in 1606. The old building is today the Natural History Museum, and the now-called Staatstheater Kassel is located in a nearby building that was constructed in the 1950s. \nSince 1927, Kassel has been home to B\u00e4renreiter, a music publishing house distributing compositions of several critically acclaimed classical musicians.\nSince 1955 the \"documenta\", an international exhibition of modern and contemporary art, has been held regularly in Kassel. The \"documenta\" now takes place every five years. As a result of the \"documenta 6\" in 1977, Kassel became the first city in the world to be illuminated by laser beams at night (Laserscape, by artist Horst H. Baumann). This laser installation is nowadays still visible at weekends. Artworks from former editions of the \"documenta\" (mainly sculptures) can be found in multiple places in Kassel; among those are the \"7000 Oaks\", a work of land art by the German artist Joseph Beuys. The latest/current edition of the \"documenta\", known as \"documenta 15\", ran from 18 June until 25 September 2022.\nClimate.\nKassel experiences an oceanic climate (K\u00f6ppen: \"Cfb\") close to marine climates, with a more notable continental influence than Berlin. Using the 1961\u20131990 normal and 0\u00a0\u00b0C isotherm, the city already had a humid continental climate (\"Dfb\").\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nKassel has a population of about 200,000, and is the 3rd largest city in Hesse state and the only large city in the North Hesse region. \nKassel is often called the city that located on the center of Germany due to its position. \nKassel first reached its first population peak of over 100,000 in 1899, and its second in 1943 with about 225,000. Kassel was destroyed during World War II and became an industrial city in 1950s. Today, Kassel is home to multiple companies and universities.\nSights.\nThe bombing raids of 1943 destroyed 90% of the city center. The city center was almost completely rebuilt during the 1950s and is a combination of renovated or reconstructed old buildings and architecture of the 1950s. Outside the city center, the suburbs are dominated by 19th-century architecture. Timber-framed old towns are situated in suburbs like Harleshausen and Bad Wilhelmsh\u00f6he. The oldest monument is the Druselturm; the Br\u00fcderkirche and the Martinskirche are also, in part, of medieval origin. The towers of the Martinskirche are from the 1950s.\nChurches.\nSt. Martin, Kassel.\nThe main Protestant church of Kassel, it was begun in 1364 and finished in 1462. Severely damaged by British bombing in 1943, it was later reconstructed in a more modern style between 1954 and 1958.\nSt. Bonifatius, Kassel.\nSt. Bonifatius was designed and built in 1956 by Josef Bieling.\nBergpark Wilhelmsh\u00f6he.\nThe complex includes Wilhelmsh\u00f6he Palace (with the Antiquities Collection and Old Masters), the Hercules monument, and the Lions Castle.\nWilhelmsh\u00f6he Palace above the city was built in 1786, by landgrave Wilhelm IX of Hesse-Kassel. The palace is now a museum and houses an important collection of Graeco-Roman antiques and a fine gallery of paintings comprising the second largest collection of Rembrandts in Germany. It is surrounded by the beautiful Bergpark Wilhelmsh\u00f6he with many appealing sights. The complex was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013.\nThe Hercules monument is a huge octagonal stone structure carrying a giant replica of Hercules \"Farnese\" (now at Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples, Italy). From its base down to Wilhelmsh\u00f6he Palace runs a long set of artificial cascades. Every Sunday and Wednesday afternoon at 14:30 (from May until October), the famous water features take place, which start at the Oktagon, and during a one-hour walk through the park visitors can follow the water's way until they reach the lake of the Wilhelmsh\u00f6he Palace, where a fountain of about marks the end of the features.\nThe \"L\u00f6wenburg\" (\"Lions Castle\") is a replica of a medieval castle, also built during the reign of Wilhelm IX. After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870\u201371, Napol\u00e9on III was imprisoned in Wilhelmsh\u00f6he. In 1918, Wilhelmsh\u00f6he became the seat of the German Army High Command (OHL); it was there that the military commanders Hindenburg and Ludendorff prepared the German capitulation.\nStaatspark Karlsaue (Karlsaue Park).\nThe Karlsaue is a large park along the Fulda River that is part of the European Garden Heritage Network. Established in the 16th century, it is known for the Orangerie, a palace built in 1710 as a summer residence for the landgraves. Today, the Orangerie contains the Museum of Astronomy and Technology, with a scale model of the Solar System spanning the entire park and beyond. \nIn addition, the Park Sch\u00f6nfeld contains a small, municipal botanical garden, the Botanischer Garten Kassel.\nArt museums.\nEurope's first public museum, the Museum Fridericianum, was founded in 1779. By the end of the 19th century, the museum held one of the largest collections of watches and clocks in the world.\nOther art museums in Kassel include: \nSports.\nHessen Kassel is the football club in the city, who plays in the Hessenliga after being relegated from the Regionalliga S\u00fcdwest in the 2017/2018 season. The city's own football stadium, the Auestadion was built in 1953 and is able to hold 18,737 people. It is located in the south of Kassel at the quarter S\u00fcdstadt, next to the Karlsaue.\nKassel has a long ice hockey tradition, but it was not until 1977 that the Kassel ice rink (Eissporthalle) opened on a private initiative. The Kassel Huskies were founding members of the DEL in 1994, belonging to the league from 1994 to 2006 and again from 2008 to 2010. In 1997, they were runners-up in the championship playoffs, losing to Adler Mannheim, and reached the semi-finals on three more occasions. The Huskies ran into financial difficulties and dissolved in 2010. The \"Young Huskies\", which is a junior and youth hockey club, decided to enter a men's team in the Hessenliga. This is the fifth division and the lowest men's competition in the state of Hesse. The new club was expecting no more than 3,000 supporters for the first home game in the Hessenliga. However, they had over 5,000 supporters come to watch.\nTransport.\nKassel has seven tram lines (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8), with trams arriving usually every 15 minutes. The city also operates a light rail Stadtbahn network called \"RegioTram\" using Regio Citadis low-floor trams which run on both tram and main line railway tracks with three lines (RT1, RT4, RT5). Moreover, a number of low-floor buses complete the Kassel public transport system. The introduction of low-floor buses led to the development of the Kassel kerb which improves the accessibility at bus stops.\nThe city is connected to the national rail network at two stations, Kassel Central, and Kassel-Wilhelmsh\u00f6he. The traditional central station (Hauptbahnhof) has been reduced to the status of a regional station since the opening of the Hanover-W\u00fcrzburg high-speed rail line in 1991 and its station (Kassel-Wilhelmsh\u00f6he) on the high-speed line at which the InterCityExpress (ICE) and InterCity services call as well as Nightjet and Flixtrain.\nKassel is connected to the motorways A 7, A 49 and A 44.\nThe city is served by Kassel Calden Airport.\nPolitics.\nMayor.\nThe current mayor of Kassel is Sven Schoeller of Alliance 90/The Greens, who was elected in March 2023. He succeeded Christian Geselle (SPD), who had been in office since 2017.\nCity council.\nThe Kassel city council (\"Stadtverordnetenversammlung\") governs the city alongside the Mayor. The most recent city council election was held on 14 March 2021, and the results were as follows:\nEducation and research.\nUniversity of Kassel.\nThe University of Kassel is a public higher education institution and was founded in 1971 as a so-called reform university. It is the newest university in the state of Hessen and has an urban inner-city campus between the city center and the Northern city district. There were around 25,000 students enrolled at the university in 2018, 3,359 of them non-Germans. Two hundred and twenty-four students obtained their doctorate from the university in 2017.\nThe university offers a range of study programs, and several English master's programs as well as two short-term international programs, the Summer University and the Winter University. The Kunsthochschule Kassel (University of Fine Arts) is also part of the university with a satellite campus directly at the Karlsaue park in the Southern city district.\nCourts.\nSeveral courts are located in Kassel, including:\nTwin towns \u2013 sister cities.\nKassel is twinned with:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n Media related to at Wikimedia Commons\n travel guide from Wikivoyage", "11205104": "John Dury\nScottish Calvinist minister and intellectual\nJohn Dury (1596 in Edinburgh \u2013 1680 in Kassel) was a Scottish Calvinist minister and an intellectual of the English Civil War period. He made efforts to re-unite the Calvinist and Lutheran wings of Protestantism, hoping to succeed when he moved to Kassel in 1661, but he did not accomplish this. He was also a preacher, pamphleteer, and writer.\nEarly life.\nHe was the fourth son of the exiled Scottish presbyterian minister Robert Durie; John was brought up in the Netherlands, at Leiden, attending the university there. He was in Cologne, at the Walloon Church, 1624-6, and subsequently at Elbl\u0105g (Elbing). He was a close associate of Samuel Hartlib, a native of Elbl\u0105g, whom he met there, and shared his interest in education. According to Richard Popkin, another key influence was Joseph Mede, from whom Dury took a method of scriptural interpretation; this interpretation has been challenged by recent research claiming that Dury developed his \"Scriptural Analysis\" before meeting with the works of Mede. While at Elbing he translated an anti-trinitarian work of Samuel Przypkowski into English.\nFrom 1628 Dury petitioned Gustavus Adolphus for help in the cause of Protestant unity. He spent much time from 1630 to 1661 wandering through Europe, working for ecclesiastical peace between Calvinists and Lutherans. Through an introduction from Hartlib, he also met Comenius, who spent some years in Elbing as well.\nUp to 1633, Dury had Anglican support from George Abbot. In that year, Abbot died and was replaced by William Laud, with whom Dury had a much more difficult relationship; Christopher Hill states \"Laud had no use for the efforts of Comenius, Dury and Hartlib to reunite Protestants\". Dury was ordained in 1634, and went to Sweden, supported by 38 English Puritans. The networking of Dury and Hartlib in the 1630s brought them close to Oliver Cromwell, through Oliver St John (a relation by marriage, and friend) and the Godmanchester preacher Walter Welles, a neighbour.\nDury then travelled widely in northern Europe, and was tutor to Mary, Princess of Orange in the Hague. He had a long though unproductive meeting with Ren\u00e9 Descartes in 1635; also in the Netherlands he was an associate of Adam Boreel and Petrus Serrarius, and an influential figure.\nIn Civil War and Commonwealth England.\nAt a key moment in English and European politics, Dury in August 1641 published \"Concerning the Work of Peace Ecclesiastical\", urging Protestants to unite across national boundaries. This work was dedicated to his patron Sir Thomas Rowe, and had been written in 1638. In 1639 Viscount Mandeville was writing to Dury, in the context that the situation in particular of German Protestants was being mooted and linked to the possibility of the English and Scottish churches could organise or broker such a union.\nIn 1641, Dury and Comenius came to England; an invitation had been mooted in a sermon by John Gauden in 1641, at the start of the Long Parliament. The backers of the scheme to bring Comenius then included John Pym and Lord Brooke as well as Mandeville.\nDury gave a well-known sermon to the Parliament on 26 November 1645, \"Israels Call to March out of Babylon into Jerusalem\". He was given an official appointment, as tutor to the younger children of Charles I; from 1646 these had been in the care of Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland.\nAfter the war in England had ended, he argued both for religious toleration, and for acceptance of the Parliamentarian regime. He incurred the displeasure of the Westminster Assembly, to which he belonged, for his part in the 1648 publication (with Hartlib and John Goodwin) in the translation of part the theological work \"Satanae Strategemata\" of Jacob Acontius on toleration. He called on the Ranter Abiezer Coppe to repent, and helped in drafting his recantation. He provided arguments in pamphlets of March and October 1649 for supporting the Rump Parliament. Hill places Dury with Anthony Ascham and Marchamont Nedham as propounding the theory that Parliament had legitimacy conferred by God because it held power \"de facto\". Barbara Lewalski calls Dury's arguments 'Hobbesian'. Hill considers that the failure of Cromwell's plan to create a unified Protestant church in England of the 1650s put paid to Dury's ecumenical ideas.\nIn 1652 he translated John Milton's \"Eikonoklastes\" into French as \"Eikonoklast\u0113s, ou, R\u00e9ponse au livre intitul\u00e9 Eikon basilik\u0113\". In 1655 Milton quoted from letters of Dury in his \"Pro se defensio contra Alexandrum Morum\".\nIn 1654 he was sent as a diplomat by Oliver Cromwell to Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. In 1652/3 he had travelled with Bulstrode Whitelocke to Sweden.\nHe also worked with Whitelocke as a deputy librarian, from 1649, of the collection going back to Jane Lumley. His book of 1650 on librarianship, sometimes said to be the first such work, came out of his experience in this post.\nJews and Hebraists.\nDury met Manasseh ben Israel in 1644, and heard from him an account of Antonio de Montesinos's alleged discovery of the Ten Tribes in America. Dury wrote in favour of a Hartlib Circle project, for a College of Jewish Studies. Parliament was lobbied for funds. The proposed faculty were Johann Stephanus Rittangel, Christian Ravius and Menasseh ben Israel.\nIn 1649 Dury addressed a further inquiry to Manasseh on the subject of the Ten Tribes, which resulted in the publication of \"The Hope of Israel\". In 1650 appeared Thomas Thorowgood's \"Jewes in America\"; Dury read it in manuscript, and contributed to later editions. He included information on the Karaites, in whom he had a particular interest, from Rittangel.\nDury is considered to have been one of those around Cromwell influencing the decision to allow Jews to enter England officially (they were expelled by Edward I). He was the cautious author of a pamphlet of 1656, \"A Case of Conscience: Whether It Be Lawful to Admit Jews into a Christian Commonwealth\", in it he laid down certain conditions that Jews must fulfil in order to be admitted (no blasphemy or proselytism etc). To a question put to him by Hartlib, as to the general lawfulness of their admission, Dury replied in the affirmative; but from the point of view of expediency, he considered that circumstances as to a particular time and place might render their admission unwise.\nIrenicism and millenarianism.\nDury's long ecumenical efforts have earned him a name as an irenicist. This territory he shared, to an extent, with his contemporary Hugo Grotius. Dury made contact with Grotius through his follower Samson Johnson (1603\u20131661). That relationship soured, since Dury had a hand in Johnson's dismissal as chaplain to Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, suspected of Socinianism. According to historian Hugh Trevor-Roper,\n\"Dury, like Grotius, was an idealist, but their ideals were not quite the same. He wished to achieve not reunion for the peace of the Church but union of all Protestants for the holy war: in particular union of Lutherans and Calvinists\".\nDury\u2019s irenicism and philosemitism can be understood as interrelated aspects of an expansionist Protestant cause focussed on Britain, Ireland, continental Europe, and the Atlantic world. In this understanding, the Portuguese Jews (and American Indians) appear as victims of Spanish Catholicism in desperate need of Protestant help.\nRichard Popkin and Jefferey Jue have argued that Dury was a millenarian. His millenarian views are said to have pointed to 1655 as apocalyptic. Against that view it has been argued that Dury warned readers about attempts to predict the onset of the Millennium. In his preface to the millenarian tract \"Clavis Apocalyptica\" Dury seems to come out against the idea of a political millenarianism and to defend a more \"moral\" interpretation of millenarianism.\nPansophism and alchemy.\nAlchemy was within the interests of the Hartlibian group, and both Dury and his wife were involved. In 1649 they were quizzing Worsley on distillation. In the first half of 1651 Dury was a witness to George Starkey, in an apparent transmutation, and then recommended Starkey to Moriaen.\nFamily.\nIn 1645 he married Dorothy Moore (n\u00e9e King), an Irish Puritan widow. Dorothy Durie (sic), daughter of Sir John King and Catherine Drury, was a noted writer on education and the role of women in the church. The match was arranged by Dorothy's niece, Katherine Jones, Viscountess Ranelagh (1615\u20131691), daughter of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork, and wife of Arthur Jones, 2nd Viscount Ranelagh. To be precise on the somewhat tenuous relationship, Arthur Moore, Dorothy's first husband, and Frances Jones n\u00e9e Moore, mother of Arthur Jones, were brother and sister, both children of Garret Moore, 1st Viscount Moore. By this marriage Dury was connected to Robert Boyle, brother of Lady Ranelagh.\nTheir daughter Dora Katherina Dury (1654\u201377) was Henry Oldenburg's second wife. Dorothy also had two sons by her first husband. \nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "43492": "Ian Dury\nBritish new wave singer (1942\u20132000)\nIan Robins Dury (12 May 1942\u00a0\u2013 27 March 2000) was an English singer, songwriter and actor who rose to fame in the late 1970s, during the punk and new wave era of rock music. He was the lead singer and lyricist of Kilburn and the High Roads, the Kilburns, Ian Dury and the Blockheads and Ian Dury and the Music Students.\nEarly life and education.\nIan Dury was born at 43 Weald Rise in Harrow, at that time in Middlesex. His early years were spent in Harrow Weald (although it's often misreported that he was born in Upminster, Essex, an impression he often encouraged) and in Mevagissey, Cornwall, during the Blitz. His father, William George Dury (born 23 September 1905 in Southborough, Kent, died 25 February 1968 in Victoria, London), was a former boxer, coach and bus driver, and chauffeur for Rolls-Royce. His mother, Margaret \"Peggy\" Cuthbertson Walker (born 17 April 1910, Rochdale, Lancashire, died 20 December 1994 in Hampstead, London), was a health visitor, a doctor's daughter and the granddaughter of an East Donegal Ulster Protestant landowner. Bill and Peggy married in 1939 and set up home in Belsize Park, London.\nBill Dury was absent for work for long periods, so Peggy often took Ian to stay with her parents in Mevagissey. After the Second World War, the family moved briefly to Switzerland, where Ian's father was chauffeuring for a millionaire and the Western European Union. In 1946, Peggy brought Ian back to England and they relocated to Cranham, near Upminster in Essex, to live with Peggy's sisters. Although he saw his father on visits, they were never to live together again.\nAt age seven, Dury contracted polio, most likely, he believed, at Westcliff Swimming Pool in Southend-on-Sea during the 1949 polio epidemic. After six weeks of isolation in the Royal Cornwall Infirmary, Truro, Ian was moved by ambulance back to Essex, to Black Notley Hospital in Braintree, where he spent eighteen months regaining his strength and mobility. Polio caused paralysis on the left-hand side of his body which led to a permanent disability.\nIan attended Chailey Heritage Craft School, East Sussex, from 1951 till 1954. Chailey was a hospital school for disabled children that had an ethos of toughening up its students, often by leaving the less physically able to find their own way up off the floor. Arguably, this harsh approach contributed to the tough and determined person Dury became. Chailey taught trades such as cobbling and printing, but Dury's mother wanted him to focus on academic studies, so Aunt Moll (Mary Walker), a Buckinghamshire Education Officer, arranged for him to attend the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe. Ian found this school a challenge and recounted being punished for misdemeanours by being forced by prefects to learn long tracts of poetry until a housemaster found him sobbing and put a stop to it:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I had to go into a box room where the suitcases were stored and learn 80 lines of \"Ode to Autumn\" by yer man Keats. If I got a word wrong I had to go back, they added that to the end of the sentence and after five nights of this my head had definitely gone. He left school at 16, having achieved GCE 'O' levels in English Language, English Literature and Art to study art and design at Walthamstow College of Art, where he met lifelong friend, pop artist and teacher Peter Blake. In 1963 Ian began an MA in painting at the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1966.\nArt career.\nIn 1967 Dury took part in a group exhibition, \"Fantasy and Figuration\", alongside Elizabeth Rathmell, Pat Douthwaite, Herbert Kitchen and Stass Paraskos at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.\nBetween 1966 and 1973 he was an art teacher at Luton College of Technology and at Canterbury College of Art. He also painted commercial illustrations for \"The Sunday Times\" in the early 1970s.\nMusic career.\nKilburn and the High Roads (1971\u20131975).\nDury formed Kilburn and the High Roads (a reference to the road in North West London) in 1971, and they played their first gig at Croydon School of Art on 5 December 1971. Dury was vocalist and lyricist, co-writing with pianist Russell Hardy and later enrolling into the group a number of the students he was teaching at Canterbury College of Art (now the University for the Creative Arts), including bassist Humphrey Ocean.\nManaged first by Charlie Gillett and Gordon Nelki and latterly by fashion entrepreneur Tommy Roberts, the Kilburns were popular on London's pub rock circuit and signed to Dawn Records in 1974 but, despite favourable press coverage and a tour opening for English rock band The Who, the group failed to rise above cult status and disbanded in 1975.\nKilburn and the High Roads recorded two albums, \"Handsome\" and \"Wotabunch!\".\nGoing solo (August \u2013 September 1977).\nThe single \"Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll\", released 26 August 1977, marked Dury's Stiff Records debut. Although it was banned by the BBC, it was named Single of the Week by \"NME\" on its release. The single issue was soon followed, at the end of September, by the album \"New Boots and Panties!!\" which achieved platinum status. \"Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll\" was not listed on the album's track list, yet it was nonetheless present as track 1 on side 2 of some later 1977 pressings).\nThe Blockheads (October 1977 \u2013 present).\nUnder the management of Andrew King and Peter Jenner, the original managers of Pink Floyd, Ian Dury and the Blockheads quickly gained a reputation as one of the top live acts of new wave music.\nThe Blockheads' sound drew from its members' diverse musical influences, which included jazz, rock and roll, funk, and reggae, and Dury's love of music hall. The band was formed after Dury began writing songs with pianist and guitarist Chaz Jankel (the brother of music video, TV, commercial and film director Annabel Jankel). Jankel took Dury's lyrics, fashioned a number of songs, and they began recording with members of Radio Caroline's Loving Awareness Band\u00a0\u2013 drummer Charley Charles (born Hugh Glenn Mortimer Charles, Guyana 1945), bassist Norman Watt-Roy, keyboard player Mick Gallagher, guitarist John Turnbull and former Kilburns saxophonist Davey Payne.\nIn October 1977 Dury and his band started performing as Ian Dury and the Blockheads, when the band signed on for the Stiff \"Live Stiffs Tour\" alongside Elvis Costello & the Attractions, Nick Lowe, Wreckless Eric, and Larry Wallis. The tour was a success, and Stiff launched a concerted Ian Dury marketing campaign, resulting in the Top Ten hit \"What a Waste\" and the hit single \""}, "descending_order": ["43492", "11205104", "42108"], "permutation_1": ["43492", "11205104", "42108"], "permutation_2": ["43492", "42108", "11205104"], "permutation_3": ["11205104", "42108", "43492"]}
{"id": "2hop__772171_27057", "docs_added": {"130444": "Arcadia, Oklahoma\nTown in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma\nArcadia is a town in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, United States, and a part of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. The population was 169 at the 2020 United States census, a 31% decrease from 247 at the 2010 census.\nHistory.\nArcadia was established soon after the Land Rush of 1889 and drew both white and African American cotton farmers, who named the land after the Greek town of Arcadia. A post office was established in 1890. The Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad constructed a line in 1902-3 from Bartlesville to Oklahoma City, passing immediately south of Arcadia.\nThe town thrived as an agricultural community in the early 20th century. Located near the Deep Fork River, the soil was well suited to producing cotton. The local newspaper, the \"Arcadia Star\", claimed Arcadia had a population of 800 in 1904. However, the U.S. census of 1900 counted only 706 in Deep Fork Township, which included Arcadia. The census at statehood in 1907 registered 994 persons in Arcadia.\nIn June 1924, fire destroyed most of the business district. One building, Tulon's Drugstore, survived and is now listed in the National Register of Historic Places.\nVoters resisted incorporation attempts in the 1930s and again in 1980. Sentiment changed after Edmond, Oklahoma attempted to annex the community in 1984-85, and Arcadia finally incorporated in 1987.\nGeography.\nArcadia is located approximately northeast of Oklahoma City.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , all land.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2000 census.\nAs of the census of 2010, there were 247 people living in the town. The population density was . There were 113 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the town was 57.89% African American, 23.89% White, 7.29% Native American, 0.81% from other races, and 10.12% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.43% of the population.\nThere were 108 households, out of which 23.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 51.7% were married couples living together, 18.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 35.2% were non-families. 30.6% of all households were made up of individuals, and 13.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.31 and the average family size was 2.90.\nIn the town, the population was spread out, with 28.3% under the age of 18, 6.5% from 18 to 24, 20.4% from 25 to 44, 28.3% from 45 to 64, and 16.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 42 years. For every 100 females, there were 111.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 98.0 males.\nThe median income for a household in the town was $24,359, and the median income for a family was $27,083. Males had a median income of $22,500 versus $25,625 for females. The per capita income for the town was $15,722. About 10.9% of families and 29.8% of the population were below the poverty line, including 26.8% of those under the age of eighteen and 20.5% of those 65 or over.\nEconomy.\nResidents who are still employed generally commute to other communities for work, primarily in Oklahoma City.\nEducation.\nMost of Arcadia is in Edmond Public Schools, while a portion is in Luther Public Schools.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "22489": "Oklahoma\nU.S. state\nOklahoma ( ; Choctaw: , ) is a landlocked state in the South Central region of the United States. It borders Texas to the south and west, Kansas to the north, Missouri to the northeast, Arkansas to the east, New Mexico to the west, and Colorado to the northwest. Partially in the western extreme of the Upland South, it is the 20th-most extensive and the 28th-most populous of the 50 United States. Its residents are known as Oklahomans and its capital and largest city is Oklahoma City.\nThe state's name is derived from the Choctaw words , 'people' and , which translates as 'red'. Oklahoma is also known informally by its nickname, \"The Sooner State\", in reference to the Sooners, American settlers who staked their claims in formerly American Indian-owned lands until the Indian Appropriations Act of 1889 authorized the Land Rush of 1889 opening the land to settlement.\nWith ancient mountain ranges, prairie, mesas, and eastern forests, most of Oklahoma lies in the Great Plains, Cross Timbers, and the U.S. Interior Highlands, all regions prone to severe weather. Oklahoma is at a confluence of three major American cultural regions. Historically, it served as a government-sanctioned territory for American Indians moved from east of the Mississippi River, a route for cattle drives from Texas and related regions, and a destination for Southern settlers. There are currently 25 . According to the 2020 U.S. census, 14.2 percent of Oklahomans identify as American Indians, the highest indigenous population by percentage in any state.\nA major producer of natural gas, oil, and agricultural products, Oklahoma relies on an economic base of aviation, energy, telecommunications, and biotechnology. Oklahoma City and Tulsa serve as Oklahoma's primary economic anchors, with nearly two-thirds of Oklahomans living within their metropolitan statistical areas.\nEtymology.\nThe name \"Oklahoma\" comes from the Choctaw language phrase , 'people', and , translated as 'red'. Choctaw Nation Chief Allen Wright suggested the name in 1865 during treaty negotiations with the federal US government on the use of Indian Territory. He envisioned an all exclusive American Indian state controlled by the United States bureau of Indian Affairs. A painting of the 1865 Council now hangs in the Oklahoma Senate. \"Oklahoma\" later became the de facto name for Oklahoma Territory, and it was officially approved in 1890, two years after that area was opened to American settlers.\nHistory.\nPre-Columbian.\nIndigenous peoples were present in what is now Oklahoma by the last ice age. Ancestors of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes (including Teyas and Escanjaques and Tawakoni), Tonkawa, and Caddo (including Kichai) lived in what is now Oklahoma. Southern Plains villagers lived in the central and west of the state, with a subgroup, the Panhandle culture people, living in the panhandle region. Caddoan Mississippian culture peoples lived in the eastern part of the state. Spiro Mounds, in what is now Spiro, Oklahoma, was a major Mississippian mound complex that flourished between AD 850 and 1450. Plains Apache people settled in the Southern Plains and in Oklahoma between 1300 and 1500.\nEuropean exploration and colonization.\nThe expedition of Spaniard Francisco V\u00e1zquez de Coronado traveled through the area in 1541, but French explorers claimed the area in the early 18th century. By the 18th century, Comanche and Kiowa entered the region from the west and Quapaw and Osage peoples moved into what is now eastern Oklahoma. French colonists claimed the region until 1803, when all the French territory west of the Mississippi River was acquired by the United States in the Louisiana Purchase. The territory was a part of the Arkansas Territory from 1819 until 1828.\n19th century.\nDuring the 19th century, the U.S. federal government forcibly removed tens of thousands of American Indians from their ancestral homelands from across North America and transported them to the area including and surrounding present-day Oklahoma. The Choctaw was the first of the Five Civilized Tribes to be removed from the Southeastern United States. The phrase \"Trail of Tears\" originated from a description of the removal of the Choctaw Nation in 1831, although the term is usually used for the Cherokee removal.\nSeventeen thousand Cherokees and 2,000 of their black slaves were deported. The area, already occupied by Osage and Quapaw tribes, was called for the Choctaw Nation until revised Native American and then later American policy redefined the boundaries to include other Native Americans. By 1890, more than 30 Native American nations and tribes had been concentrated on land within Indian Territory or \"Indian Country\".\nAll Five Civilized Tribes signed treaties with the Confederate military during the American Civil War. The Cherokee Nation had an internal civil war. Slavery in Indian Territory was not abolished until 1866.\nIn the period between 1866 and 1899, cattle ranches in Texas strove to meet the demands for food in eastern cities and railroads in Kansas promised to deliver in a timely manner. Cattle trails and cattle ranches developed as cowboys either drove their product north or settled illegally in Indian Territory. In 1881, four of five major cattle trails on the western frontier traveled through Indian Territory.\nIncreased presence of white settlers in Indian Territory and their demand for land owned and guaranteed to Indian tribes by treaties with the U.S. government prompted the United States to enact the Dawes Act in 1887 and the Curtis Act of 1898. The acts abolished tribal governments, eliminated tribal ownership of land, and allotted of land to each head of an Indian family. An objective of the acts was the forced assimilation of Indians into white society. Land not allotted to individual Indians was owned by the U.S. government and sold or distributed to settlers and railroads. The proceeds of the land sales were used to educate Indian children and advance the policy of assimilation. As a result of the two acts about one-half of land previously owned by Indian tribes was owned by whites by 1900. Moreover, much of the land allotted to individual Indian heads of families became white-owned. Allottees often sold or were fraudulently deprived of their land.\nThe acquisition of tribal lands by the U.S. government led to land runs, also called \"land rushes,\" from 1887 and 1895. Major land runs, including the Land Rush of 1889, opened up millions of acres of formerly tribal lands to white settlement. The \"rushes\" began at a precise times as each prospective settler literally raced with other prospective settlers to claim ownership of of land under the Homestead Act of 1862. Usually land was claimed by settlers on a first come, first served basis. Those who broke the rules by crossing the border into the territory before the official opening time were said to have been crossing the border \"sooner\", leading to the term \"sooners\", which eventually became the state's official nickname. George Washington Steele was appointed the first governor of the territory of Oklahoma in 1890.\n20th century.\nAttempts to create an all-Indian state named \"Oklahoma\" and a later attempt to create an all-Indian state named \"Sequoyah\" failed but the Sequoyah Statehood Convention of 1905 eventually laid the groundwork for the Oklahoma Statehood Convention, which took place two years later. On June 16, 1906, Congress enacted a statute authorizing the people of the Oklahoma and Indian Territories (as well what would become the states of Arizona and New Mexico) to form a constitution and state government in order to be admitted as a state. On November 16, 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt issued Presidential Proclamation no. , establishing Oklahoma as the 46th state in the Union.\nThe new state became a focal point for the emerging oil industry, as discoveries of oil pools prompted towns to grow rapidly in population and wealth. Tulsa eventually became known as the \"Oil Capital of the World\" for most of the 20th century and oil investments fueled much of the state's early economy. In 1927, Oklahoman businessman Cyrus Avery, known as the \"Father of Route 66\", began the campaign to create U.S. Route 66. Using a stretch of highway from Amarillo, Texas to Tulsa, Oklahoma to form the original portion of Highway 66, Avery spearheaded the creation of the U.S. Highway 66 Association to oversee the planning of Route 66, based in his hometown of Tulsa.\nIn late September 1918, the first cases of the Spanish flu appeared in Oklahoma. Though public health authorities statewide had some indication that the pandemic was westward, the turmoil caused by the rapid advancement of the disease quickly overwhelmed both health workers and local governing bodies. In Oklahoma City, shortages of both supplies and personnel were mitigated, in part, by the mobilization of the American Red Cross. Rough estimates based on contemporary reports indicate that approximately 100,000 people fell ill with the disease before the pandemic ebbed in 1919. Of those 100,000 cases, it is assumed that around 7,500 proved fatal, placing total mortality rates for the state in the area of 7.5%.\nOklahoma also has a rich African-American history. Many Black towns, founded by the Freedmen of the Five Tribes during Reconstruction, thrived in the early 20th century with the arrival of Black Exodusters who migrated from neighboring states, especially Kansas. The politician Edward P. McCabe encouraged Black settlers to come to what was then Indian Territory. McCabe discussed with President Theodore Roosevelt the possibility of making Oklahoma a majority-Black state.\nBy the early 20th century, the Greenwood district of Tulsa was one of the most prosperous African-American communities in the United States. Jim Crow laws had established racial segregation since before the start of the 20th century, but Tulsa's Black residents had created a thriving area.\nSocial tensions were exacerbated by the revival of the Ku Klux Klan after 1915. The Tulsa race massacre broke out in 1921, with White mobs attacking Black people and carrying out a pogrom in Greenwood. In one of the costliest episodes of racist violence in American history, sixteen hours of rioting resulted in the destruction of 35 city blocks, $1.8 million in property damage, and an estimated death toll of between 75 and 300 people. By the late 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan had declined to negligible influence within the state.\nDuring the 1930s, parts of the state began to suffer from the consequences of poor farming practices. This period was known as the Dust Bowl, throughout which areas of Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, and northwestern Oklahoma were hampered by long periods of little rainfall, strong winds, abnormally high temperatures, and most notably, severe dust storms sending thousands of farmers into poverty and forcing them to relocate to more fertile areas of the western United States. Over a twenty-year period ending in 1950, the state saw its only historical decline in population, dropping 6.9 percent as impoverished families migrated out of the state after the Dust Bowl.\nSoil and water conservation projects markedly changed practices in the state, leading to the construction of massive flood control systems and dams to supply water for domestic needs and agricultural irrigation. As of 2024, Oklahoma had more than 4,700 dams, about 20% of all dams in the U.S.\nIn 1995, Oklahoma City was the site of the most destructive act of domestic terrorism in American history. The Oklahoma City bombing of April 19, 1995, in which Timothy McVeigh detonated a large, crude explosive device outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killed 168 people, including 19 children. For his crime, McVeigh was executed by the federal government on June 11, 2001. His accomplice, Terry Nichols, is serving life in prison without parole for helping plan the attack and prepare the explosive.\n21st century.\nOn May 31, 2016, several cities experienced record setting flooding.\nOn July 9, 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States determined in \"McGirt v. Oklahoma\" that the reservations of the Five Tribes, comprising much of Eastern Oklahoma, were never disestablished by Congress and thus are still \"Indian Country\" for the purposes of criminal law.\nLater decisions by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals also found the Quapaw Nation, Ottawa Tribe, Peoria Tribe, and Miami Tribe also had existing reservations. The Osage Nation is awaiting for a possible appellate decision after a district judge had ruled that the Osage reservation was disestablished.\nGeography.\nOklahoma is the 20th-largest state in the United States, covering an area of , with of land and of water. It lies partly in the Great Plains near the geographical center of the 48 contiguous states. It is bordered on the east by Arkansas and Missouri, on the north by Kansas, on the northwest by Colorado, on the far west by New Mexico, and on the south and near-west by Texas.\nBorders.\nOklahoma's border with Kansas was defined as the 37th Parallel in the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act. This was disputed with the Cherokee and Osage Nations, which claimed their border extended North of this line and could not be part of the Kansas Territory. This was resolved in 1870 with the Drum Creek Treaty, which reestablished Kansas's southern border as the 37th parallel. This also applied to the then No-Man's Land that became the Oklahoma Panhandle.\nThe Oklahoma-Texas border consists of the Red River of the South in the south and the 100th meridian west as the western border between Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. These were first established in the 1819 Adams\u2013On\u00eds Treaty between the United States and Spain.\nThe Oklahoma panhandle was originally part of the Panhandle of the Republic of Texas, but when Texas joined the Union as a slave state, it could not retain any lands north of 36 degrees 30 minutes, as specified in the Missouri Compromise. The Panhandle existed as a no-man's land until 1907 when Oklahoma acquired the territory upon gaining statehood.\nOklahoma's Eastern border is divided between Missouri and Arkansas. The Missouri-Oklahoma border is defined as the Meridian passing through the Kawsmouth, where the Kansas River meets the Missouri River. This is the same Meridian as the Kansas-Missouri border.\nThe Oklahoma-Arkansas border was originally defined by two lines: the borders between Arkansas and the Cherokee and Choctaw Reservations. This formed two diagonal lines meeting at the western edge of Fort Smith Arkansas, with one line running northeast from the Red River and the other running southeast from the Oklahoma-Arkansas-Missouri border. The Choctaw-Arkansas border was established in the 1820 Treaty of Doak's Sand, and later refined in the 1830 Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. These treaties left a 57-acre exclave of the Choctaw reservation bounded by Arkansas, the Arkansas River and the Poteau River. This became the site of a smuggling camp called \"Coke Hill\", noted mostly for its importance in cocaine smuggling.\nAfter Petitioning congress to hand over jurisdiction, the 57 acres was given to Arkansas in 1905. The 1985 US Supreme Court Case Oklahoma v. Arkansas decided the land would remain Arkansas, even though the Choctaw had not been notified or asked about the territory being handed over. Therefore, the Poteau River serves as the Oklahoma-Arkansas boundary for approximately 1 mile, reducing the Choctaw Reservation and later Oklahoma by 57 acres as established in the treaties of the early 1800s.\nTopography.\nOklahoma is between the Great Plains and the Ozark Plateau in the Gulf of Mexico watershed, generally sloping from the high plains of its western boundary to the low wetlands of its southeastern boundary. Its highest and lowest points follow this trend, with its highest peak, Black Mesa, at above sea level, situated near its far northwest corner in the Oklahoma Panhandle. The state's lowest point is on the Little River near its far southeastern boundary near the town of Idabel, which dips to above sea level.\nAmong the most geographically diverse states, Oklahoma is one of four to harbor more than 10 distinct ecological regions, with 11 in its borders\u2014more per square mile than in any other state. Its western and eastern halves, however, are marked by extreme differences in geographical diversity: Eastern Oklahoma touches eight ecological regions and its western half contains three. Although having fewer ecological regions Western Oklahoma contains many rare, relic species.\nOklahoma has four primary mountain ranges: the Ouachita Mountains, the Arbuckle Mountains, the Wichita Mountains, and the Ozark Mountains. Contained within the U.S. Interior Highlands region, the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains are the only major mountainous region between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians. A portion of the Flint Hills stretches into north-central Oklahoma, and near the state's eastern border, The Oklahoma Tourism & Recreation Department regards Cavanal Hill as the world's tallest hill; at , it fails their definition of a mountain by one foot.\nThe semi-arid high plains in the state's northwestern corner harbor few natural forests; the region has a rolling to flat landscape with intermittent canyons and mesa ranges like the Glass Mountains. Partial plains interrupted by small, sky island mountain ranges like the Antelope Hills and the Wichita Mountains dot southwestern Oklahoma; transitional prairie and oak savannas cover the central portion of the state. The Ozark and Ouachita Mountains rise from west to east over the state's eastern third, gradually increasing in elevation in an eastward direction.\nMore than 500 named creeks and rivers make up Oklahoma's waterways, and with 200 lakes created by dams, it holds the nation's highest number of artificial reservoirs. Most of the state lies in two primary drainage basins belonging to the Red and Arkansas Rivers, though the Lee and Little Rivers also contain significant drainage basins.\nFlora and fauna.\nDue to Oklahoma's location at the confluence of many geographic regions, the state's climatic regions have a high rate of biodiversity. Forests cover 24 percent of Oklahoma and prairie grasslands composed of shortgrass, mixed-grass, and tallgrass prairie, harbor expansive ecosystems in the state's central and western portions, although cropland has largely replaced native grasses. Where rainfall is sparse in the state's western regions, shortgrass prairie and shrublands are the most prominent ecosystems, though pinyon pines, red cedar (junipers), and ponderosa pines grow near rivers and creek beds in the panhandle's far western reaches. Southwestern Oklahoma contains many rare, disjunct species, including sugar maple, bigtooth maple, nolina, and Texas live oak.\nMarshlands, cypress forests, and mixtures of shortleaf pine, loblolly pine, blue palmetto, and deciduous forests dominate the state's southeastern quarter, while mixtures of largely post oak, elm, red cedar (\"Juniperus virginiana\"), and pine forests cover northeastern Oklahoma.\nThe state holds populations of white-tailed deer, mule deer, antelope, coyotes, mountain lions, bobcats, elk, and birds such as quail, doves, cardinals, bald eagles, red-tailed hawks, and pheasants. In prairie ecosystems, American bison, greater prairie chickens, badgers, and armadillo are common, and some of the nation's largest prairie dog towns inhabit shortgrass prairie in the state's panhandle. The Cross Timbers, a region transitioning from prairie to woodlands in Central Oklahoma, harbors 351 vertebrate species. The Ouachita Mountains are home to black bear, red fox, gray fox, and river otter populations, which coexist with 328 vertebrate species in southeastern Oklahoma. Also in southeastern Oklahoma lives the American alligator.\nProtected lands.\nOklahoma has fifty-one state parks, six national parks or protected regions, two national protected forests or grasslands, and a network of wildlife preserves and conservation areas. Six percent of the state's of forest is public land, including the western portions of the Ouachita National Forest, the largest and oldest national forest in the Southern United States.\nWith , the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in north-central Oklahoma is the largest protected area of tallgrass prairie in the world and is part of an ecosystem that encompasses only ten percent of its former land area, once covering fourteen states. In addition, the Black Kettle National Grassland covers of prairie in southwestern Oklahoma. The Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge is the oldest and largest of nine National Wildlife Refuges in the state and was founded in 1901, encompassing .\nOf Oklahoma's federally protected parks or recreational sites, the Chickasaw National Recreation Area is the largest, with . Other sites include the Santa Fe and Trail of Tears national historic trails, the Fort Smith and Washita Battlefield national historic sites, and the Oklahoma City National Memorial.\nClimate.\nOklahoma is in a humid subtropical region that lies in a transition zone between semiarid further to the west, humid continental to the north, and humid subtropical to the east and southeast. Most of the state lies in an area known as Tornado Alley characterized by frequent interaction between cold, dry air from Canada, warm to hot, dry air from Mexico and the Southwestern U.S., and warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico. The interactions between these three contrasting air currents produces severe weather (severe thunderstorms, damaging thunderstorm winds, large hail and tornadoes) with a frequency virtually unseen anywhere else on planet Earth. An average 62 tornadoes strike the state per year\u2014one of the highest rates in the world.\nBecause of Oklahoma's position between zones of differing prevailing temperature and winds, weather patterns within the state can vary widely over relatively short distances, and they can change drastically in a short time. On November 11, 1911, the temperature at Oklahoma City reached (the record high for that date), then a cold front of unprecedented intensity slammed across the state, causing the temperature to reach (the record low for that date) by midnight. This type of phenomenon is also responsible for many of the tornadoes in the area, such as the 1912 Oklahoma tornado outbreak when a warm front traveled along a stalled cold front, resulting in an average of about one tornado per hour.\nThe humid subtropical climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Cfa\") of central, southern, and eastern Oklahoma is influenced heavily by southerly winds bringing moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. Traveling westward, the climate transitions progressively toward a semiarid zone (K\u00f6ppen \"BSk\") in the high plains of the Panhandle and other western areas from about Lawton westward, less frequently touched by southern moisture. Precipitation and temperatures decline from east to west accordingly, with areas in the southeast averaging an annual temperature of and an annual rainfall of generally over and up to , while areas of the (higher-elevation) panhandle average , with annual rainfall under .\nOver almost all of Oklahoma, winter is the driest season. Average monthly precipitation increases dramatically in the spring to a peak in May, the wettest month over most of the state, with its frequent and not uncommonly severe thunderstorm activity. Early June can still be wet, but most years see a marked decrease in rainfall during June and early July. Mid-summer (July and August) represents a secondary dry season over much of Oklahoma, with long stretches of hot weather with only sporadic thunderstorm activity not uncommon many years. Severe drought is common in the hottest summers, such as those of 1934, 1954, 1980 and 2011, all of which featured weeks on end of virtual rainlessness and highs well over . Average precipitation rises again from September to mid-October, representing a secondary wetter season, then declines from late October through December.\nThe entire state frequently experiences temperatures above or below , though below-zero temperatures are rare in south-central and southeastern Oklahoma. Snowfall ranges from an average of less than in the south to just over on the border of Colorado in the panhandle. The state is home to the Storm Prediction Center, the National Severe Storms Laboratory, the Warning Decision Training Division, and the Radar Operations Center, all part of the National Weather Service and in Norman.\nCities and towns.\nOklahoma had 598 incorporated places in 2010, including four cities over 100,000 in population and 43 over 10,000. Two of the fifty largest cities in the United States are in Oklahoma, Oklahoma City and Tulsa, and sixty-five percent of Oklahomans live within their metropolitan areas, or spheres of economic and social influence defined by the United States Census Bureau as a metropolitan statistical area. Oklahoma City, the state's capital and largest city, had the largest metropolitan area in the state in 2020, with 1,425,695 people, and the metropolitan area of Tulsa had 1,015,331 residents. Between 2000 and 2010, the leading cities in population growth were Blanchard (172.4%), Elgin (78.2%), Jenks (77.0%), Piedmont (56.7%), Bixby (56.6%), and Owasso (56.3%).\nIn descending order of population, Oklahoma's largest cities in 2010 were: Oklahoma City (579,999, +14.6%), Tulsa (391,906, \u22120.3%), Norman (110,925, +15.9%), Broken Arrow (98,850, +32.0%), Lawton (96,867, +4.4%), Edmond (81,405, +19.2%), Moore (55,081, +33.9%), Midwest City (54,371, +0.5%), Enid (49,379, +5.0%), and Stillwater (45,688, +17.0%). Of the state's ten largest cities, three are outside the metropolitan areas of Oklahoma City and Tulsa, and only Lawton has a metropolitan statistical area of its own as designated by the United States Census Bureau, though the metropolitan statistical area of Fort Smith, Arkansas extends into the state.\nUnder Oklahoma law, municipalities are divided into two categories: cities, defined as having more than 1,000 residents, and towns, with under 1,000 residents. Both have legislative, judicial, and public power within their boundaries, but cities can choose between a mayor\u2013council, council\u2013manager, or strong mayor form of government, while towns operate through an elected officer system.<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nFrom a 1920 U.S. census population of 2,028,283, Oklahoma's population has continued to increase. At the 2010 census, its population was 3,751,675. The 2020 census revealed its population to be was 3,959,353, an 5.5% increase since 2010. A 2022 American Community Survey estimate found that the population had surpassed 4 million residents for the first time. Among the states of the South Central region, Oklahoma had the second-largest population increase from 2010 to 2020, behind Texas.\nOf the state's total resident population, approximately 236,882 were immigrants according to a study in 2018, making up 6% of the state's population at the time. Most of its immigrant population came from Mexico (45%), Vietnam (5%), India (5%), Germany (3%), and Guatemala (3%). In the state, 246,550 residents were native-born Americans who had at least one immigrant parent. An estimated 85,000 immigrants were undocumented with 125,989 Oklahomans having lived with at least one undocumented family member between 2010 and 2014. Immigrants to Oklahoma have contributed more than a billion U.S. dollars in taxes in 2018. In 2011, the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey data from 2005 to 2009 indicated about 5% of Oklahoma's residents were born outside the United States. This was lower than the national figure (about 12.5% of U.S. residents were foreign-born).\nIn 2010, the center of population of Oklahoma was in Lincoln County near the town of Sparks.\nAccording to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 3,754 homeless people in Oklahoma.\nRace and ethnicity.\nAs with majority of the U.S., Oklahoma has experienced diversification since the beginning of the 21st century; in 1940, 90.1% of the state's population was non-Hispanic White; in 2020, 75.5% of the population was White, down from 1990's 81% yet up from 2010's 72.2%. Among its population at the 2020 census, the remainder of its increasingly diverse population was 11.9% Hispanic or Latino of any race, 16% American Indian and Alaska Native, 9.7% Black or African American, 3.1% Asian, 0.4% Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, and 9% some other race. According to the 2010 census, 8.6% were American Indian and Alaska Native, 7.4% Black or African American, 1.7% Asian, 0.1% Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, 4.1% from some other race and 5.9% of two or more races; 8.9% of Oklahoma's population were of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin (they may be of any race).\nIn 2005, Oklahoma's estimated ancestral makeup was 14.5% German, 13.1% American, 11.8% Irish, 9.6% English, 8.1% African American, and 11.4% Native American (including 7.9% Cherokee), though the percentage of people claiming American Indian as their only race was 8.1%. Most people from Oklahoma who self-identify as having American ancestry are of overwhelmingly English and Scots-Irish ancestry with significant amounts of Scottish, Welsh and Irish ancestry as well. The majority of Hispanics in Oklahoma are of Mexican origin. There are 38 federally recognized Native American tribes in the state.\nIn 2011, 47.3% of Oklahoma's population younger than age1 were minorities, meaning they had at least one parent who was not non-Hispanic white.\nLanguage.\nEnglish.\nThe English language has been official in the state of Oklahoma since 2010. The variety of North American English spoken is called Oklahoma English, which is \"quite diverse with its uneven blending of features of North Midland, South Midland, and Southern dialects\". In 2000, 2,977,187 Oklahomans\u201492.6% of the resident population, five years or older\u2014spoke only English at home, a decrease from 95% in 1990. 238,732 Oklahoma residents reported speaking a language other than English at home in the 2000 census, about 7.4% of the state's population.\nNative American languages.\nThe two most commonly spoken native North American languages are Cherokee and Choctaw, with 10,000 Cherokee speakers living within the Cherokee Nation tribal jurisdiction area of eastern Oklahoma and another 10,000 Choctaw speakers living in the Choctaw Nation directly south of the Cherokees. Cherokee is an official language in the Cherokee Nation tribal jurisdiction area and in the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians.\nTwenty-five Native American languages are spoken in Oklahoma, second only to California. However, only Cherokee, if any, exhibits some language vitality at present. \"Ethnologue\" sees Cherokee as moribund because the only remaining active users of the language are members of the grandparent generation and older.\nOther languages.\nSpanish is the second-most commonly spoken language in the state, with 141,060 speakers counted in 2000. German has 13,444 speakers representing about 0.4% of the state's population, and Vietnamese is spoken by 11,330 people, or about 0.4% of the population, many of whom live in the Asia District of Oklahoma City. Other languages include French with 8,258 speakers (0.3%), Chinese with 6,413 (0.2%), Korean with 3,948 (0.1%), Arabic with 3,265 (0.1%), other Asian languages with 3,134 (0.1%), Tagalog with 2,888 (0.1%), Japanese with 2,546 (0.1%), and African languages with 2,546 (0.1%).\nReligion.\nOklahoma is part of a geographical region characterized by conservative and Evangelical Protestant Christianity known as the \"Bible Belt\". Spanning the southern and eastern parts of the United States, the area is known for politically and socially conservative views, with the Republican Party having the greater number of voters registered between the two major parties. Tulsa, the state's second-largest city, home to Oral Roberts University, is sometimes called the \"buckle of the Bible Belt\".\nIn 2000, there were about 5,000 Jews and 6,000 Muslims, with ten congregations to each group.\nAccording to the Pew Research Center in 2008, the majority of Oklahoma's religious adherents were Christian, accounting for about 80% of the population. The percentage of Catholics was half the national average, while the percentage of Evangelical Protestants was more than twice the national average (tied with Arkansas for the largest percentage of any state).\nIn 2010, the state's largest church memberships were in the Southern Baptist Convention (886,394 members), the United Methodist Church (282,347), the Roman Catholic Church (178,430), and the Assemblies of God (85,926) and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) (47,349). Other religions represented in the state include Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam.\nAccording to the Pew Research Center in 2014, the majority of Oklahoma's religious adherents remained Christian accounting for 79% of the population, 9 percent higher than the national average. The percentage of Evangelical Protestants declined since the last study, but they remain the largest religious group in the state at 47% over 20 percent higher than the national average. The largest growth over the six years between Pew's 2008 and 2014 survey was in the number of people who identify as unaffiliated in the state with an increase of 6% of the total population.\nBy the 2020 Public Religion Research Institute's survey, 73% of the population were Christian. Evangelicalism made up 29% of the state population, followed by Mainline Protestantism at 19%. Historically and predominantly African-American and Latino churches collectively made up 8% of the religious demographic. An estimated 13% of the state's religious population were Roman Catholic. About 22% of the population had no religious affiliation.\nIncarceration.\nOklahoma has been described as \"the world's prison capital\", with 1,079 of every 100,000 residents imprisoned in 2018, the fourth-highest incarceration rate of any American state, and by comparison, higher than the incarceration rates of any country in the world.\nGender issues.\nIn an April 2023 report, The Sentencing Project highlighted Oklahoma's Failure to Protect law, which has \"been used primarily against women\" and has \"sometimes resulted in survivors of abuse facing longer sentences for allegedly failing to protect their children from harm than the person who committed the abuse.\" The report states that \"since the law went into effect in 2009, 139 women in Oklahoma have been imprisoned solely for failure-to-protect charges.\" The Human Rights Campaign has also pointed out cases of the Oklahoma legislature's actions against the LGBTQ population and censuring of a nonbinary lawmaker.\nEconomy.\nOklahoma is host to a diverse range of sectors including aviation, energy, transportation equipment, food processing, electronics, and telecommunications. Oklahoma is an important producer of natural gas, aircraft, and food. The state ranks third in the nation for production of natural gas, is the 27th-most agriculturally productive state, and also ranks 5th in production of wheat. Four Fortune 500 companies and six Fortune 1000 companies are headquartered in Oklahoma, and it has been rated one of the most business-friendly states in the nation, with the 7th-lowest tax burden in 2007.\nIn 2010, Oklahoma City-based Love's Travel Stops & Country Stores ranked 18th on the Forbes list of largest private companies, Tulsa-based QuikTrip ranked 37th, and Oklahoma City-based Hobby Lobby ranked 198th in 2010 report.\nOklahoma's gross domestic product was $254.13 billion in 2023. The state had a per capita income of $58,499 in 2023, which ranked 43rd in the U.S., and its median household income ranked 46th at $59,673. Additionally, Oklahoma ranks consistently among the lowest states in cost of living index.\nThough oil has historically dominated the state's economy, a collapse in the energy industry during the 1980s led to the loss of nearly 90,000 energy-related jobs between 1980 and 2000, severely damaging the local economy. Oil accounted for 35 billion dollars in Oklahoma's economy in 2007, and employment in the state's oil industry was outpaced by five other industries in 2007. As of September 2020[ [update]], the state's unemployment rate was 5.3%.\nIndustry.\nIn mid-2011, Oklahoma had a civilian labor force of 1.7 million and non-farm employment fluctuated around 1.5 million. The government sector provides the most jobs, with 339,300 in 2011, followed by the transportation and utilities sector, providing 279,500 jobs, and the sectors of education, business, and manufacturing, providing 207,800, 177,400, and 132,700 jobs, respectively. Among the state's largest industries, the aerospace sector generates $11 billion annually.\nTulsa is home to the largest airline maintenance base in the world, which serves as the global maintenance and engineering headquarters for American Airlines. In total, aerospace accounts for more than 10 percent of Oklahoma's industrial output, and it is one of the top 10 states in aerospace engine manufacturing. Because of its position in the center of the United States, Oklahoma is also among the top states for logistic centers, and a major contributor to weather-related research.\nThe state is the top manufacturer of tires in North America and contains one of the fastest-growing biotechnology industries in the nation. In 2005, international exports from Oklahoma's manufacturing industry totaled $4.3 billion, accounting for 3.6 percent of its economic impact. Tire manufacturing, meat processing, oil and gas equipment manufacturing, and air conditioner manufacturing are the state's largest manufacturing industries.\nEnergy.\nOklahoma is the nation's third-largest producer of natural gas, and its fifth-largest producer of crude oil. The state also has the second-greatest number of active drilling rigs, and it is even ranked fifth in crude oil reserves. While the state was ranked eighth for installed wind energy capacity in 2011, it still was at the bottom of states in usage of renewable energy in 2009, with 94% of its electricity being generated by non-renewable sources in 2009, including 25% from coal and 46% from natural gas.\nTen years later in 2019, 53.5% of electricity was produced from natural gas and 34.6% from wind power.\nRanking 13th for total energy consumption per capita in 2009, the state's energy costs were eighth-lowest in the nation.\nOil, gas, and coal.\nAs a whole, the oil energy industry contributes $35 billion to Oklahoma's gross domestic product (GDP), and employees of the state's oil-related companies earn an average of twice the state's typical yearly income. In 2009, the state had 83,700 commercial oil wells churning of crude oil. A tabulated 8.5% of the nation's natural gas supply is held in Oklahoma, with being produced in 2009.\nThe Oklahoma Stack Play is a geographic referenced area in the Anadarko Basin. The oil field \"Sooner Trend\", Anadarko basin and the counties of Kingfisher and Canadian make up the basis for the \"Oklahoma STACK\". Other Plays such as the Eagle Ford are geological rather than geographical.\nAll of the Fortune 500 companies based in Oklahoma are energy-related, including some of the largest companies in the petroleum industry in the U.S. Tulsa's ONEOK and Williams Companies are the state's largest and second-largest companies respectively, also ranking as the nation's second- and third-largest companies in the field of energy, according to \"Fortune\" magazine.\nOklahoma Gas & Electric, commonly referred to as OG&E (NYSE: OGE) operates four base electric power plants in Oklahoma. Two of them are coal-fired power plants: one in Muskogee, and the other in Red Rock. Two are gas-fired power plants: one in Harrah and the other in Konawa. OG&E was the first electric company in Oklahoma to generate electricity from wind farms in 2003.\nNuclear power.\nOklahoma had no operational nuclear power plants as of March 2021.\nIn 1973, the Public Service Company of Oklahoma proposed the Black Fox Nuclear Power Plant near Inola, Oklahoma. Protestors disrupted project construction in 1979, several months after the Three Mile Island accident, and the project was cancelled in 1982 after nine years of legal challenges.\nAgriculture.\nThe 27th-most agriculturally productive state, Oklahoma is fifth in cattle production and fifth in production of wheat. Approximately 5.5 percent of American beef comes from Oklahoma, while the state produces 6.1 percent of American wheat, 4.2 percent of American pig products, and 2.2 percent of dairy products.\nThe state had 85,500 farms in 2012, collectively producing $4.3 billion in animal products and fewer than one billion dollars in crop output with more than $6.1 billion added to the state's gross domestic product. Poultry and swine are its second- and third-largest agricultural industries.\nEducation.\nWith an educational system made up of public school districts and independent private institutions, Oklahoma had 638,817 students enrolled in 1,845 public primary, secondary, and vocational schools in 533 school districts as of 2008[ [update]]. Oklahoma has the highest enrollment of Native American students in the nation with 126,078 students in the 2009\u201310 school year. Oklahoma spent $7,755 for each student in 2008, and was 47th in the nation in expenditures per student, though its growth of total education expenditures between 1992 and 2002 ranked 22nd.\nThe state is among the best in pre-kindergarten education, and the National Institute for Early Education Research rated it first in the United States with regard to standards, quality, and access to pre-kindergarten education in 2004, calling it \"a model for early childhood schooling\". High school dropout rate decreased from 3.1 to 2.5 percent between 2007 and 2008 with Oklahoma ranked among 18 other states with 3 percent or less dropout rate. In 2004, the state ranked 36th in the nation for the relative number of adults with high school diplomas, though at 85.2 percent, it had the highest rate among Southern states. According to a study conducted by the Pell Institute, Oklahoma ranks 48th in college-participation for low-income students.\nThe University of Oklahoma, The University of Tulsa, Oklahoma State University, the University of Central Oklahoma, and Northeastern State University are the largest institutions of higher education in Oklahoma, each operating through one primary campus and satellite campuses throughout the state. The two state universities, along with Oklahoma City University and the University of Tulsa, rank among the country's best universities.\nOklahoma City University School of Law, University of Oklahoma College of Law, and University of Tulsa College of Law are the state's only ABA-accredited institutions. Both University of Oklahoma and University of Tulsa are Tier2 institutions, with the University of Oklahoma ranked 55th and the University of Tulsa ranked 120th in the nation.\nOklahoma holds eleven public regional universities, including Northeastern State University, the second-oldest institution of higher education west of the Mississippi River, also containing the only College of Optometry in Oklahoma and the largest enrollment of Native American students in the nation by percentage and amount. Langston University is Oklahoma's only historically black college. Six of the state's universities were placed in the Princeton Review's list of best 122 regional colleges in 2007, and three made the list of top colleges for best value. The state has 55 post-secondary technical institutions operated by Oklahoma's CareerTech program for training in specific fields of industry or trade.\nIn the 2007\u20132008 school year, there were 181,973 undergraduate students, 20,014 graduate students, and 4,395 first-professional degree students enrolled in Oklahoma colleges. Of these students, 18,892 received a bachelor's degree, 5,386 received a master's degree, and 462 received a first professional degree. This means the state of Oklahoma produces an average of 38,278-degree-holders per completions component (i.e. July 1, 2007\u00a0\u2013 June 30, 2008). National average is 68,322 total degrees awarded per completions component.\nBeginning on April 2, 2018, tens of thousands of K\u201312 public school teachers went on strike due to lack of funding. According to the National Education Association, teachers in Oklahoma had ranked 49th out of the 50 states in terms of teacher pay in 2016. The Oklahoma Legislature had passed a measure a week earlier to raise teacher salaries by $6,100, but it fell short of the $10,000 raise for teachers, $5,000 raise for other school employees, and $200 million increase in extra education funding many had sought. A survey in 2019 found that the pay raise obtained by the strike lifted the State's teacher pay ranking to 34th in the nation.\nNon-English education.\nThe Cherokee Nation instigated a ten-year plan in 2005 that involved growing new speakers of the Cherokee language from childhood as well as speaking it exclusively at home. The plan was part of an ambitious goal that in fifty years would have at least 80% of their people fluent. The Cherokee Preservation Foundation has invested $3 million into opening schools, training teachers, and developing curricula for language education, as well as initiating community gatherings where the language can be actively used.\nA Cherokee language immersion school in Tahlequah, Oklahoma educates students from pre-school through eighth grade.\nCulture.\nOklahoma is placed in the South by the United States Census Bureau, but other definitions place the state at least partly in the Southwest, Midwest, Upland South, and Great Plains. Oklahomans have a high rate of English, Scotch-Irish, German, and Native American ancestry, with 25 different Indigenous languages spoken in the state.\nBecause many American Indians were forced to move to Indian territory (modern day Oklahoma) when American settlement within North America had increased, Oklahoma has much linguistic diversity. Mary Linn, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma and the associate curator of Native American languages at the Sam Noble Museum, notes Oklahoma also has high levels of language endangerment.\nSixty-seven Native American tribes and bands are represented in Oklahoma, including 38 federally recognized tribes, who are headquartered and have tribal jurisdictional areas or Indian reservations in the state. Native American tribes, Western ranchers, Southern settlers, and Eastern oil barons have shaped the state's cultural predisposition, and its largest cities have been named among the most underrated cultural destinations in the United States.\nResidents of Oklahoma are associated with traits of Southern hospitality\u2014the 2006 Catalogue for Philanthropy (with data from 2004) ranks Oklahomans 7th in the nation for overall generosity. The state has also been associated with a negative cultural stereotype first popularized by John Steinbeck's 1939 novel \"The Grapes of Wrath\", which described the plight of uneducated, poverty-stricken Dust Bowl-era farmers deemed \"Okies\". While the term is often used in a positive manner by Oklahomans, it is still considered a derogatory term by many.\nArts.\nIn the state's largest urban areas, pockets of jazz culture flourish, and African American, Mexican American, and Asian American communities produce music and art of their respective cultures. The Oklahoma Mozart Festival in Bartlesville is one of the largest classical music festivals on the Southern Plains, and Oklahoma City's Festival of the Arts has been named one of the top fine arts festivals in the nation.\nThe state has a rich history in ballet with five Native American ballerinas attaining worldwide fame. These were Yvonne Chouteau, sisters Marjorie and Maria Tallchief, Rosella Hightower and Moscelyne Larkin, known collectively as the Five Moons. \"The New York Times\" rates the Tulsa Ballet as one of the top ballet companies in the United States. The Oklahoma City Ballet and University of Oklahoma's dance program were formed by ballerina Yvonne Chouteau and husband Miguel Terekhov. The university program was founded in 1962 and was the first fully accredited program of its kind in the United States.\nIn Sand Springs, an outdoor amphitheater called \"Discoveryland!\" (since closed) is the official performance headquarters for the musical \"Oklahoma!\" Ridge Bond, native of McAlester, Oklahoma, starred in the Broadway and International touring productions of \"Oklahoma!\", playing the role of \"Curly McClain\" in more than 2,600 performances. In 1953 he was featured along with the \"Oklahoma!\" cast on a CBS Omnibus television broadcast. Bond was instrumental in the Oklahoma! title song becoming the Oklahoma state song and is also featured on the U.S. postage stamp commemorating the musical's 50th anniversary. Historically, the state has produced musical styles such as The Tulsa Sound and western swing, which was popularized at Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa. The building, known as the \"Carnegie Hall of Western Swing\", served as the performance headquarters of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys during the 1930s. Stillwater is known as the epicenter of Red Dirt music, the best-known proponent of which is the late Bob Childers.\nProminent theatre companies in Oklahoma include, in the capital city, Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City Theatre Company, Carpenter Square Theatre, Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park, and CityRep. CityRep is a professional company affording equity points to those performers and technical theatre professionals. In Tulsa, Oklahoma's oldest resident professional company is American Theatre Company, and Theatre Tulsa is the oldest community theatre company west of the Mississippi. Other companies in Tulsa include Heller Theatre and Tulsa Spotlight Theater. The cities of Norman, Lawton, and Stillwater, among others, also host well-reviewed community theatre companies.\nOklahoma is in the nation's middle percentile in per capita spending on the arts, ranking 17th, and contains more than 300 museums. The Philbrook Museum of Tulsa is considered one of the top 50 fine art museums in the United States, and the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in Norman, one of the largest university-based art and history museums in the country, documents the natural history of the region. The collections of Thomas Gilcrease are housed in the Gilcrease Museum of Tulsa, which also holds the world's largest, most comprehensive collection of art and artifacts of the American West.\nThe Egyptian art collection at the Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art in Shawnee is considered to be the finest Egyptian collection between Chicago and Los Angeles. The Oklahoma City Museum of Art contains the most comprehensive collection of glass sculptures by artist Dale Chihuly in the world, and Oklahoma City's National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum documents the heritage of the American Western frontier. With remnants of the Holocaust and artifacts relevant to Judaism, the Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art of Tulsa preserves the largest collection of Jewish art in the Southwest United States.\nFestivals and events.\nOklahoma's centennial celebration was named the top event in the United States for 2007 by the American Bus Association, and consisted of multiple celebrations saving with the 100th anniversary of statehood on November 16, 2007. Annual ethnic festivals and events take place throughout the state such as ceremonial events, include festivals (as examples) in Scottish, Irish, German, Italian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Czech, Jewish, Arab, Mexican and African-American communities depicting cultural heritage or traditions.\nOklahoma City is home to a few reoccurring events and festivals. During a ten-day run in Oklahoma City, the State Fair of Oklahoma attracts roughly one million people along with the annual Festival of the Arts. Such as various Latin American and Asian heritage festivals, and cultural festivals such as the Juneteenth celebrations are held in Oklahoma City each year. The Oklahoma City Pride Parade has been held annually in late June since 1987 in the gay district of Oklahoma City on 39th and Penn. The First Friday Art Walk in the Paseo Arts District is an art appreciation festival held the first Friday of every month. Additionally, an annual art festival is held in the Paseo on Memorial Day Weekend.\nThe Tulsa State Fair attracts more than a million people each year during its ten-day run, and the city's Mayfest festival entertained more than 375,000 in four days during 2007. In 2006, Tulsa's Oktoberfest was named one of the top 10 in the world by \"USA Today\".\nNorman plays host to the Norman Music Festival, a festival that highlights native Oklahoma bands and musicians. Norman is also host to the Medieval Fair of Norman, which has been held annually since 1976 and was Oklahoma's first medieval fair. The Fair was held first on the south oval of the University of Oklahoma campus and in the third year moved to the Duck Pond in Norman until the Fair became too big and moved to Reaves Park in 2003. The Medieval Fair of Norman is Oklahoma's \"largest weekend event and the third-largest event in Oklahoma, and was selected by Events Media Network as one of the top 100 events in the nation\".\nSports.\nThe Oklahoma City Thunder of the National Basketball Association (NBA) is the state's only major league sports franchise. The state had a team in the Women's National Basketball Association, the Tulsa Shock, from 2010 through 2015, but the team relocated to Dallas\u2013Fort Worth after that season and became the Dallas Wings.\nOklahoma has teams in several minor leagues, including Minor League Baseball at the Triple-A and Double-A levels (the Oklahoma City Comets and Tulsa Drillers, respectively), hockey's ECHL with the Tulsa Oilers, and a number of indoor football leagues. In the last-named sport, the state's most notable team was the Tulsa Talons, which played in the Arena Football League until 2012, when the team was moved to San Antonio, Texas. The Oklahoma Defenders replaced the Talons as Tulsa's only professional arena football team, playing the CPIFL. The Oklahoma City Blue, of the NBA G League, relocated to Oklahoma City from Tulsa in 2014, where they were formerly known as the Tulsa 66ers. Tulsa is the base for the Tulsa Revolution, which plays in the American Indoor Soccer League. Enid and Lawton host professional basketball teams in the USBL and the CBA.\nCollegiate athletics are a popular draw in the state. The state has four schools that compete at the highest level of college sports, NCAA Division I. The Oklahoma Sooners participate in the Southeastern Conference, and the Oklahoma State Cowboys and Cowgirls participate in the Big 12 Conference. The Big 12 and SEC are two of the so-called Power Four conferences of the top tier of college football, Division I FBS. The Sooners and Cowboys average well over 50,000 fans attending their football games, and Oklahoma's football program ranked 12th in attendance among American colleges in 2010, with an average of 84,738 people attending its home games. The two universities meet several times each year in rivalry matches known as the Bedlam Series, which are some of the greatest sporting draws to the state. \"Sports Illustrated\" magazine rates Oklahoma and Oklahoma State among the top colleges for athletics in the nation.\nTwo private institutions in Tulsa, the University of Tulsa and Oral Roberts University; are also Division I members. Tulsa competes in FBS football and other sports in the American Athletic Conference, while Oral Roberts, which does not sponsor football, is a member of the Summit League. In addition, 12 of the state's smaller colleges and universities compete in NCAA Division II as members of three different conferences, and eight other Oklahoma institutions participate in the NAIA, mostly within the Sooner Athletic Conference.\nRegular LPGA tournaments are held at Cedar Ridge Country Club in Tulsa, and major championships for the PGA or LPGA have been played at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oak Tree Country Club in Oklahoma City, and Cedar Ridge Country Club in Tulsa. Rated one of the top golf courses in the nation, Southern Hills has hosted five PGA Championships, including one in 2022, and three U.S. Opens, the most recent in 2001. Rodeos are popular throughout the state, and Guymon, in the state's panhandle, hosts one of the largest in the nation.\nESPN called Oklahoma City \"the center of the softball universe\", specifically referring to the fast-pitch version, in a 2020 story. Oklahoma City is home to the governing body of the sport in the United States, USA Softball, which has its headquarters in a complex that also includes Devon Park. It annually hosts the Women's College World Series, the eight-team final round of the NCAA Division I softball tournament. Devon Park will host softball at the 2028 Summer Olympics, and the Riversport OKC complex will host canoe slalom at the Games.\nCollege wrestling has strong tradition in Oklahoma. Oklahoma State has the most NCAA national championships of any collegiate team with 34, with the Oklahoma Sooners having 7 NCAA wrestling titles. The National Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum is headquartered in Stillwater.\nA teqball competition was held in Tulsa June 14\u201316, 2024.\nHealth.\nOklahoma was the 21st-largest recipient of medical funding from the federal government in 2005, with health-related federal expenditures in the state totaling $75,801,364; immunizations, bioterrorism preparedness, and health education were the top three most funded medical items. Instances of major diseases are near the national average in Oklahoma, and the state ranks at or slightly above the rest of the country in percentage of people with asthma, diabetes, cancer, and hypertension.\nIn 2000, Oklahoma ranked 45th in physicians per capita and slightly below the national average in nurses per capita, but was slightly above the national average in hospital beds per 100,000 people and above the national average in net growth of health services over a twelve-year period. One of the worst states for percentage of insured people, nearly 25 percent of Oklahomans between the age of 18 and 64 did not have health insurance in 2005, the fifth-highest rate in the nation.\nOklahomans are in the upper half of Americans in terms of obesity prevalence, and the state is the 5th most obese in the nation, with 30.3 percent of its population at or near obesity. Oklahoma ranked last among the 50 states in a 2007 study by the Commonwealth Fund on health care performance.\nThe OU Medical Center, Oklahoma's largest collection of hospitals, is the only hospital in the state designated a LevelI trauma center by the American College of Surgeons. OU Medical Center is on the grounds of the Oklahoma Health Center in Oklahoma City, the state's largest concentration of medical research facilities.\nThe Cancer Treatment Centers of America at Southwestern Regional Medical Center in Tulsa is one of four such regional facilities nationwide, offering cancer treatment to the entire southwestern United States, and is one of the largest cancer treatment hospitals in the country. The largest osteopathic teaching facility in the nation, Oklahoma State University Medical Center at Tulsa, also rates as one of the largest facilities in the field of neuroscience.\nOn June 26, 2018, Oklahoma made marijuana legal for medical purposes, making it one of the most conservative states to approve medical marijuana.\nLife expectancy.\nThe residents of Oklahoma have a lower life expectancy than the U.S. national average. In 2014, males in Oklahoma lived an average of 73.7 years compared to a male national average of 76.7 years and females lived an average of 78.5 years compared to a female national average of 81.5 years. Moreover, increases in life expectancy have been below the national average. Male life expectancy in Oklahoma between 1980 and 2014, increased by an average of 4.0 years, compared to a male national average of a 6.7 year increase. Life expectancy for females in Oklahoma between 1980 and 2014, increased by 1.0 years, compared to a female national average of a 4.0 year increase.\nUsing 2016\u20132018 data, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation calculated that life expectancy (all sexes) for Oklahoma counties ranged from 71.2 years for Okfuskee County to 79.7 years for Cimarron and Logan counties. Life expectancy for the state as a whole was 76.0 years.\nImpact of Covid.\nAs of December 22, 2022, Oklahoma has been impacted more by the Covid pandemic (2020\u20132023) than the average U.S. state. Statistics for the U.S. as a whole are 331 deaths per 100,000 population with 68 percent of the population fully vaccinated. The comparable statistics for Oklahoma are 405 deaths per 100,000 population with 59 percent of the population fully vaccinated; 16,041 deaths from Covid have been recorded in Oklahoma. A wide variation in deaths from Covid exists among Oklahoma counties. Greer County recorded the highest death rate of .00753 (753 deaths per 100,000 residents). Payne County recorded the lowest death rate of .00231 (231 deaths per 100,000 residents).\nMedia.\nOklahoma City and Tulsa are the 45th- and 61st-largest media markets in the United States as ranked by Nielsen Media Research. The state's third-largest media market, Lawton-Wichita Falls, Texas, is ranked 149th nationally by the agency. Broadcast television in Oklahoma began in 1949 when KFOR-TV (then WKY-TV) in Oklahoma City and KOTV-TV in Tulsa began broadcasting a few months apart. Currently, all major American broadcast networks have affiliated television stations in the state.\nThe state has two primary newspapers. \"The Oklahoman\", based in Oklahoma City, is the largest newspaper in the state and 54th-largest in the nation by circulation, with a weekday readership of 138,493 and a Sunday readership of 202,690. The \"Tulsa World\", the second-most widely circulated newspaper in Oklahoma and 79th in the nation, holds a Sunday circulation of 132,969 and a weekday readership of 93,558. Oklahoma's first newspaper was established in 1844, called the \"Cherokee Advocate\", and was written in both Cherokee and English. In 2006, there were more than 220 newspapers in the state, including 177 with weekly publications and 48 with daily publications.\nThe state's first radio station, WKY in Oklahoma City, began broadcasting in 1920. In 2006, there were more than 500 radio stations in Oklahoma broadcasting with various local or nationally owned networks. Five universities in Oklahoma operate non-commercial, public radio stations/networks.\nOklahoma has a few ethnic-oriented TV stations broadcasting in Spanish and Asian languages, and there is some Native American programming. TBN, a Christian religious television network, has a studio in Tulsa, and built its first entirely TBN-owned affiliate in Oklahoma City in 1980.\nTransportation.\nTransportation in Oklahoma is generated by an anchor system of Interstate Highways, inter-city rail lines, airports, inland ports, and mass transit networks. Situated along an integral point in the United States Interstate network, Oklahoma contains three primary Interstate highways and four auxiliary Interstate Highways. In Oklahoma City, Interstate 35 intersects with Interstate 44 and Interstate 40, forming one of the most important intersections along the United States highway system.\nMore than of roads make up the state's major highway skeleton, including state-operated highways, ten turnpikes or major toll roads, and the longest drivable stretch of Route 66 in the nation. In 2008, Interstate 44 in Oklahoma City was Oklahoma's busiest highway, with a daily traffic volume of 123,300 cars. In 2010, the state had the nation's third-highest number of bridges classified as structurally deficient, with nearly 5,212 bridges in disrepair, including 235 National Highway System Bridges.\nOklahoma's largest commercial airport is Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City, averaging a yearly passenger count of more than 3.5 million (1.7 million boardings) in 2010. Tulsa International Airport, the state's second-largest commercial airport, served more than 1.3 million boardings in 2010. Between the two, six airlines operate in Oklahoma. In terms of traffic, R. L. Jones Jr. (Riverside) Airport in Tulsa is the state's busiest airport, with 335,826 takeoffs and landings in 2008. Oklahoma has more than 150 public-use airports.\nOklahoma is connected to the nation's rail network via Amtrak's \"Heartland Flyer\", its only regional passenger rail line. It currently stretches from Oklahoma City to Fort Worth, Texas. Lawmakers began seeking funding in early 2007 to connect the \"Heartland Flyer\" to Tulsa, but nothing came of this. In June 2023, following studies and negotiations, Oklahoma and Kansas state officials began seeking federal approval and funding to extend the \"Heartland Flyer\" from Oklahoma City to Newton, Kansas. The two locations are currently connected by an Amtrak Thruway Bus route that includes a stop in Wichita, Kansas. In November 2023, KDOT said the service would start in 2029 if approved, but could begin sooner were the project to be fast tracked.\nTwo inland ports on rivers serve Oklahoma: the Port of Muskogee and the Tulsa Port of Catoosa. The Tulsa Port of Catoosa is one of the United States' most inland international ports, at head of navigation of the McClellan\u2013Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, which connects barge traffic from Tulsa and Muskogee to the Mississippi River. The port ships over two million tons of goods annually and is a designated foreign trade zone.\nLaw and government.\nOklahoma is a constitutional republic with a government modeled after the federal government of the United States, with executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The state has 77 counties with jurisdiction over most local government functions within each respective domain, five congressional districts, and a voting base with a majority in the Republican Party. State officials are elected by plurality voting in the state of Oklahoma.\nOklahoma has capital punishment as a legal sentence, and the state has had (between 1976 through mid-2011) the highest per capita execution rate in the nation. Authorized methods of execution include the electric chair, the gas chamber and the firing squad.\nIn a 2020 study, Oklahoma was ranked as the 14th most difficult state for citizens to vote in. In May 2020, it became the first state to enact an anti-red flag law, prohibiting the acceptance of any grants or funding to enact red flag laws. Abortion in Oklahoma is illegal in nearly all circumstances.\nState government.\nThe Legislature of Oklahoma consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives. As the lawmaking branch of the state government, it is responsible for raising and distributing the money necessary to run the government. The Senate has 48 members serving four-year terms, while the House has 101 members with two-year terms. The state has a term limit for its legislature that restricts any one person to twelve cumulative years service between both legislative branches.\nOklahoma's judicial branch consists of the Oklahoma Supreme Court, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, and 77 District Courts that each serve one county. The Oklahoma judiciary also contains two independent courts: a Court of Impeachment (for impeachment trials) and the Oklahoma Court on the Judiciary. Oklahoma has two courts of last resort: the state Supreme Court hears civil cases, and the state Court of Criminal Appeals hears criminal cases (this split system exists only in Oklahoma and neighboring Texas). Judges of those two courts, as well as the Court of Civil Appeals are appointed by the governor upon the recommendation of the state Judicial Nominating Commission, and are subject to a non-partisan retention vote on a six-year rotating schedule.\nThe executive branch consists of the governor, their staff, and other elected officials. The principal head of government, the governor is the chief executive of the Oklahoma executive branch, serving as the ex officio Commander-in-chief of the Oklahoma National Guard when not called into Federal use and reserving the power to veto bills passed through the legislature. The responsibilities of the Executive branch include submitting the budget, ensuring state laws are enforced, and ensuring peace within the state is preserved.\nLocal government.\nThe state is divided into 77 counties that govern locally, each headed by a three-member council of elected commissioners, a tax assessor, clerk, court clerk, treasurer, and sheriff. While each municipality operates as a separate and independent local government with executive, legislative and judicial power, county governments maintain jurisdiction over both incorporated cities and non-incorporated areas within their boundaries, and have executive power but no legislative or judicial power. Both county and municipal governments collect taxes, employ a separate police force, hold elections, and operate emergency response services within their jurisdiction. Other local government units include school districts, technology center districts, community college districts, rural fire departments, rural water districts, and other special use districts.\nThirty-nine Native American tribal governments are based in Oklahoma, each holding limited powers within designated areas. While Indian reservations are typical in most of the United States, they are not present in Oklahoma, tribal governments hold land granted during the Indian Territory era, but with limited jurisdiction and no control over state governing bodies such as municipalities and counties. Tribal governments are recognized by the United States as quasi-sovereign entities with executive, judicial, and legislative powers over tribal members and functions, but are subject to the authority of the United States Congress to revoke or withhold certain powers. The tribal governments are required to submit a constitution and any subsequent amendments to the United States Congress for approval.\nOklahoma has 11 substate districts including the two large Councils of Governments, INCOG in Tulsa (Indian Nations Council of Governments) and ACOG (Association of Central Oklahoma Governments).\nNational politics.\nDuring the first half-century of statehood, Oklahoma was considered a Democratic stronghold, being carried by the Republican Party in only two presidential elections (1920 and 1928). After the 1948 election, the state turned firmly Republican. Although registered Republicans were a minority in the state until 2015, Oklahoma has been carried by Republican presidential candidates in all but one election since 1952: Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 landslide victory. Every single county in the state has been won by the Republican candidate in each election since 2004. In fact, it was the only state where Barack Obama failed to carry any counties in 2008. Oklahoma City was the largest city in the United States carried by Republican Donald Trump in both the 2016 and 2020 elections.\nDemocrats are strongest in urban areas, such as the inner parts of Oklahoma City and Tulsa, as well as the college towns of Norman and Stillwater, and areas which are most heavily African American. The party once held dominance in the eastern part of the state and Little Dixie before the area gradually shifted Republican in the late 2000s. As of the 2020 election, Native American voters, 16% of the state's population, are split, with urban populations supporting the Democrats and rural reservation populaces favoring the Republicans.\nFollowing the 2000 census, the Oklahoma delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives was reduced from six to five representatives, each serving one congressional district. Oklahoma has had an all-Republican congressional delegation since 2021 and previously from 2013 to 2019.\nState symbols.\nState law codifies Oklahoma's state emblems and honorary positions; the Oklahoma Senate or House of Representatives may adopt resolutions designating others for special events and to benefit organizations. In 2012 the House passed HCR 1024, which would change the state motto from \"Labor Omnia Vincit\" to \"Oklahoma\u2014In God We Trust!\" The author of the resolution stated a constituent researched the Oklahoma Constitution and found no \"official\" vote regarding \"Labor Omnia Vincit\", therefore opening the door for an entirely new motto.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["130444", "22489"], "permutation_1": ["22489", "130444"], "permutation_2": ["130444", "22489"], "permutation_3": ["22489", "130444"]}
{"id": "2hop__180177_7666", "docs_added": {"814701": "Bob Allison\nAmerican baseball player (1934\u20131995)\nWilliam Robert Allison (July 11, 1934 \u2013 April 9, 1995) was an American professional baseball outfielder who played 13 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), with the Washington Senators / Minnesota Twins.\nAllison attended the University of Kansas for two years and was a star outfielder on the baseball team and fullback on the football team. In his Major League career, he hit 30 or more home runs three times and 20 or more in eight different seasons. Although he struck out often like many sluggers, reaching the century mark in strikeouts in five seasons, he received more than his share of walks and despite a mediocre career .255 batting average, Allison finished with a lifetime on-base percentage (OBP) of .358 and he finished in the top 10 in OBP in four seasons. Allison wasn't an especially fast player, but he was among the most feared base-runners of his time in hustling out numerous doubles and triples \u2013 leading the league in triples in 1959 (with 9) and finishing in the top 10 twice in doubles (1960 & 1964) and four times in triples (1959, 1962, 1967, and 1968).\nAt the three outfield positions he showed good range, finishing in the top five in range factor per nine innings five times, and his strong arm was rated as one of the best in the league. He also played a solid first base late at his career and his competitive attitude was highly praised by teammates and opponents. Despite his skill in the field, which saw him finish in the top 5 in the American League in outfield assists three times (1961, 1962, and 1965) and outfield putouts twice (1959 and 1963), he also produced many errors and Allison led the league with 11 errors in 1960, finished second twice (1959 and 1963), and finished fourth in errors by a first baseman in 1964.\nEarly life.\nAllison was born on July 11, 1934 in Raytown, Missouri to Robert and Frances (Witte) Allison, the oldest of three children. His father was a former semi-pro baseball catcher. He attended Raytown High School where he starred in football at quarterback and fullback, as well as in basketball and track. The school did not have a baseball team, and he played baseball in the Ban Johnson League, in the Kansas City, Missouri area.\nAfter graduating in 1952, he entered the University of Kansas on a football scholarship, and played baseball as well under coach Floyd Temple. He continued to play baseball in the Ban Johnson League in the summers of 1952-1954. He was scouted by a number of major league baseball teams, and in the fall of 1954 when he lost his eligibility to play sports because of his grades, decided to leave Kansas for professional baseball.\nBaseball career.\nAfter leaving the University of Kansas at the age of 20, Allison was signed by the Senators as an amateur free agent before the start of the 1955 season. After signing, he was assigned to the Hagerstown Packets of the B-level Piedmont League where he hit only .256 in 122 games. The following year, he was promoted to the Charlotte Hornets in the single-A South Atlantic League. His roommate was Harmon Killebrew, future Senators and Twins teammate and a lifelong friend. Although he improved his power numbers, hitting 12 home runs and 6 triples, his batting average dipped to .233. Allison then spent 1957 and 1958 playing for the Chattanooga Lookouts of the Double-A Southern League and he raised batting average and slugging percentage to .307 and .446 respectively in 1958 (both highs in his minor league career). On September 16, 1958, Allison made his major league debut, batting lead-off, and got a single in four at-bats in a 5\u20131 loss to the Cleveland Indians.\nIn 1959, Allison went north with the Senators and he batted .261 with 30 home runs and 85 runs batted in; leading the league in triples (9), while fifth in stolen bases (13). He was named to the All-Star team, received a smattering of MVP votes, and was honored by being voted Rookie of the Year. Allison experienced a \"sophomore slump\" in 1960 with an across-the-board drop in his offensive statistics. However, he came back strong in 1961, hitting 29 home runs \u2013 including three grand slams \u2013 with 105 RBI, although his batting average dropped for the second year in a row, to .245. The Senators moved to Minnesota in 1961. Allison hit the first home run in Twins history off future hall of fame Yankees pitcher Whitey Ford. On April 16, 1961 in Baltimore, he hit the first grand slam home run in Twins history, as well as a three-run home run in the same game. \nAllison became a local favorite and along with teammate Harmon Killebrew made one of the most dangerous one-two punches in baseball. In 1961, they combined for 75 home runs, 80 in 1963, and 81 in 1964. In a July 18, 1962 game against the Cleveland Indians, they each hit a grand slam home run in the first inning. They were known as \"Mr. Upstairs\" (Killebrew) and \"Mr. Downstairs\" (Allison). \nIn 1963, Allison had 25 doubles, 35 home runs, 91 RBI, led the league in runs scored (99) and in OPS (.911), and earned his second All-Star berth. In addition, he became the first of four Twins to lead the league in WAR, a stat that measures a player's overall production both in the field and at the plate. Other Twins leading the league in WAR include Zoilo Versalles, Rod Carew, and Joe Mauer, all of whom were named MVP in the seasons they did so. Only Allison did not win the MVP in the same season (finishing a distant 15th behind winner Elston Howard and behind teammates Camilo Pascual, Earl Battey, and Killebrew on the 1963 ballot). \nHe followed this up in 1964 with a 32-home run 86 RBI performance that got him named to his third and final All-Star team, this time at first base. The next year, Allison suffered a broken left hand when he was hit by a pitch. Records reflect that he played in 135 games in 1965, in a 162 game season, playing 68 games after returning from the injury. In 1966, he was again hit by a pitch that broke his wrist, and played in only 70 games, but returned at the end of the season to knock a pinch-hit three-run homer against the New York Yankees on September 18, 1966. \nDuring the Twins' 1965 World Series season, Allison had a down year, after suffering a fractured wrist on July 6th, hitting only .233 in 135 games. Before the injury he was hitting .267 with 12 home runs and 34 RBI, and after returning he hit .199 with 11 home runs and 44 RBI. He continued his poor production versus the Los Angeles Dodgers, reaching base only 4 times (two walks, a double, and a home run in a game 6 win) and striking out 9 times in 16 at-bats, the last of which was against Sandy Koufax for the final out in Game 7 of the 1965 World Series. However, he had a memorable Game 2 of the Series. His bases-loaded double against Koufax and a great backhand diving catch of a Jim Lefebvre fly ball were the main contributors to the Twins victory. This catch has been called the best catch in Twins history and one of the most spectacular catches seen in World Series history. \nAllison's slide at the plate continued into the 1966 season. His wrist was again fractured when he was hit by a pitch from Jim Lonborg. He played in only 70 games and hit .233. However, he returned in a big way in 1967, hitting .258 with 24 home runs with 75 RBI in a year which the league batting average was only .236.\nIn 13 seasons, Allison finished in the top ten in home runs eight times (1959, 1961\u201365, 1967\u201368). Particularly memorable home run feats included combining with Harmon Killebrew to become the first pair to hit grand slams in the same inning on July 18, 1962, hitting home runs in three consecutive at-bats on May 17, 1963, and teaming with Killebrew, Tony Oliva, and Jimmie Hall to hit four consecutive home runs on May 2, 1964.\nRetirement.\nDuring his baseball career, he worked during the off season in sales for Coca-Cola Bottling Midwest Co. in suburban Minneapolis. After retirement, he continued with that business, becoming a plant manager and a sales manager for Coca-Cola's Twin Cities Marketing Division. Thirteen years after his retirement, Allison began noticing problems with his coordination during a 1987 old-timers game at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. Running and even catching the ball became difficult. Following two years of doctor visits to learn what was wrong, the diagnosis was finally made \u2014 Allison was suffering from a progressive sporadic ataxia known as Olivo-Ponto cerebellar atrophy. \nIn 1990, Allison helped found the Bob Allison Ataxia Research Center at the University of Minnesota along with his wife Betty, sons Mark, Kirk, and Kyle, and former Twins' teammates Jim Kaat and Frank Quilici. He continued to battle this rare degenerative neurological disease for eight years, eventually losing his ability to walk, talk, write, and feed himself. Allison died of complications from ataxia on April 9, 1995, at the age of 60 in his Rio Verde, Arizona, home.\nFollowing his death, the Minnesota Twins created the Bob Allison Award for the Twins player who exemplifies determination, hustle, tenacity, competitive spirit and leadership both on and off the field.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "163327": "University of Kansas\nPublic university in Lawrence, Kansas, US\nThe University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States. Two branch campuses are in the Kansas City metropolitan area on the Kansas side: the university's medical school and hospital in Kansas City, Kansas, the Edwards Campus in Overland Park. There are also educational and research sites in Garden City, Hays, Leavenworth, Parsons, and Topeka, an agricultural education center in rural north Douglas County, and branches of the medical school in Salina and Wichita. The university is a member of the Association of American Universities and is classified among \"R1: Doctoral Universities \u2013 Very high research activity\".\nFounded March 21, 1865, the university was opened in 1866 under a charter granted by the Kansas State Legislature in 1864 and legislation passed in 1863 under the state constitution, which was adopted two years after the 1861 admission of the former Kansas Territory as the 34th state into the Union.\nAs of fall 2022[ [update]], 23,872 students were enrolled at the Lawrence and Edwards campuses with an additional 2,836 students enrolled at the University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC) for a total enrollment of 26,708 students across the three campuses. Overall, the university (including KUMC) employed 3,196 faculty members (faculty, faculty administrators, librarians, and unclassified academic staff) in fall 2022[ [update]].\nKansas's athletic teams compete in NCAA Division I sports as the Jayhawks, as members of the Big 12 Conference. They field 16 varsity sports, as well as club-level sports for ice hockey, rugby, men's volleyball, soccer, basketball, rock climbing, triathlon, cross country, track, swim, pickleball, table tennis, and water skiing.\nHistory.\nOn February 20, 1863, Kansas Governor Thomas Carney signed into law a bill creating the state university in Lawrence. The law was conditioned upon a gift from Lawrence of a $15,000 endowment fund and a site for the university, in or near the town, of not less than of land. If Lawrence failed to meet these conditions, Emporia instead of Lawrence would get the university.\nThe site selected for the university was a hill known as Hogback Ridge (later known as Mount Oread), which was privately donated by Charles L. Robinson, the Republican governor of the state of Kansas from 1861 to 1863, and one of the original settlers of Lawrence, Kansas. Robinson and his wife Sara bestowed the site to the State of Kansas in exchange for land elsewhere. The philanthropist Amos Adams Lawrence donated $10,000 of the necessary endowment fund, and the citizens of Lawrence raised the remaining money themselves via private donations. On November 2, 1863, Governor Carney announced Lawrence had met the conditions to get into the state university, and the following year the university was officially organized.\nThe school's Board of Regents held its first meeting in March 1865, which is the event that KU dates its founding from. Work on the first college building began later that year. The school opened for classes on September 12, 1866, and the first class graduated in 1873. According to William L. Burdick, the first degree awarded by the university was a Doctor of Divinity, bestowed upon noted abolitionist preacher Richard Cordley.\nDuring the early development of the University of Kansas, Chancellors Joshua Lippincott, Francis H. Snow, and Frank Strong, along with the Kansas Board of Regents, worked to establish the university as not only a center for higher education but also a representative agency of the state. Snow, who served from 1890 to 1901, emphasized scientific research and public engagement, while Strong, beginning in 1902, advanced the university\u2019s role in public service. This vision aligned with the sentiments expressed by Professor M. S. Ward, who stated in 1891 that \"Students should find in the University preparation for all the various pursuits and callings of society. The ultimate aim of our own State University ought to be [promoting] the highest Christian culture, an ample professional training, [which] will make our civilization the highest possible on earth.\"\nIn an effort to appeal to the predominantly Christian population of Kansas, many of who in the early history of the university were critical of state money being used to fund a secular institution, Chancellor Lippincott sought to reassure the public that the University of Kansas maintained strong Christian values. In response to a concerned parent questioning the university\u2019s mission, Lippincott wrote, \"The University is a Christian institution founded by a Christian state. We have daily prayers conducted for the most part by members of the Faculty of whom nearly all are Christian and several ministers of the Gospel.\"\nAlthough the university was a secular institution, religion remained a central cultural force among students. In an 1880 community letter, an anonymous student reflected on the broader moral and spiritual purpose of education at KU, writing, \"We are all seeking the truth, we are all earnest in our effort to correctly solve the great problem of a worthy and useful existence\u2014we all recognize the wonderful features of a Christian age and a Christian country and we all hope to be true men and women [of the country] and almost all acknowledge that in accomplishing this we need an inspiration which is not of this earth nor fashioned after this world.\"\nChancellor Lippincott emphasized the importance of individual development in higher education, distinguishing universities from more rigid collegiate institutions in other parts of the country. In a lecture to students, James Marvin, the third Chancellor of the University stated, \"Higher education should aid students to realize all their potentialities, but only in a university are all individualities respected. Colleges that require all students [to] follow the same course have a factory air about them. Students go through the same milling process and come out machines, but God did not intend man to be a machine, and the University of Kansas should be about His work.\"\nBeginning in 1880, the University began to field intercollegiate athletics programs, starting with baseball. The University would introduce football in 1890, men's basketball in 1898, a women's club basketball team in 1902, and various other varsity athletics programs throughout the 20th century.\nDuring World War I, the University of Kansas became a key training ground for military personnel, and courses were added for male students to reflect this. Military drills and coursework in military science were made mandatory for male students, and in 1918, KU established a unit of the Students' Army Training Corps (SATC) to provide academic and military instruction. Faculty contributed to war-related research, while female students supported Red Cross efforts. Chancellor Frank Strong emphasized KU\u2019s role in preparing students for both military service and national responsibility. Strong was a vocal opponent of the United States entering a foreign war, and helped found the Kansas Branch of the League to Enforce Peace in 1915, which was a collection of activists who were opposed to American involvement in foreign conflicts. Strong advocated for patriotism during his later years as Chancellor, stating at the University Assembly in 1915 that \"it is America's destiny to preserve Western Civilization, which seems to be destroying itself abroad. While the youth of Europe are on its battlefields, the youth of America must seek higher education to enable them to carry on the material for the leadership of the world. America and its universities, with the University of Kansas having a big place among them, must become the center of the greatest intellectual life that the next generation should know.\" In April 1917, after Congress declared a state of war, Strong sent a letter to Congress stating that the University \"has always been loyal to country and to the flag, and always will be.\"\nDuring World War II, Kansas was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program, which offered students a path to a Navy commission.\nLandmarks and structures.\nKU is home to the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics, the Beach Center on Disability, Lied Center of Kansas and radio stations KJHK, 90.7 FM, and KANU, 91.5 FM. The university is also host to several significant museums. These include the University of Kansas Natural History Museum, founded in 1927, which contains important collections in mammalogy, ornithology, vertebrate paleontology, and entomology; and the Spencer Museum of Art, founded in 1928, home to a wide variety of cultural materials from all around the world, with a particular emphasis on American Indian materials. The libraries of the university include Watson Library, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, the Murphy Art and Architecture Library, Thomas Gorton Music & Dance Library, and Anschutz Library. Of athletic note, the university is home to Allen Fieldhouse, which is heralded as one of the greatest basketball arenas in the world, and David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium, which is the eighth oldest college football stadium in the country.\nAcademics.\nThe University of Kansas is a large, state-sponsored university with five campuses. KU is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU) and is classified among \"R1: Doctoral Universities \u2013 Very high research activity\". KU features the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, which includes the School of the Arts and the School of Public Affairs & Administration; and the schools of Architecture, Design & Planning; Business; Education; Engineering; Health Professions; Journalism & Mass Communications; Law; Medicine; Music; Nursing; Pharmacy; and Social Welfare. The university offers more than 345 degree programs. In 2017 Johnson County accounted for most of instate enrollment.\nAccording to the National Science Foundation, KU spent $339 million on research and development in 2018, ranking it 74th in the nation.\nSchool of Architecture and Design.\nThe University of Kansas School of Architecture and Design (ArcD), with its main building being Marvin Hall, traces its architectural roots to the creation of the architectural engineering degree program in KU's School of Engineering in 1912. The Bachelor of Architecture degree was added in 1920. In 1969, the School of Architecture and Urban Design (SAUD) was formed. In 2001, architectural engineering merged with civil and environmental engineering. The design programs from the discontinued School of Fine Arts were merged into the school in 2009, forming the School of Architecture and Design.\nThe Department of Design began in 1921. The Bachelor of Fine Arts degree program began eight years later. Industrial Design was added in 1941, interior design in 1946, jewelry and silversmithing, art history, and the Masters of Fine Arts program in 1948.\nIn 2009, the university reorganized the School of Fine Arts. The professional design practice programs became the Department of Design, administratively located in the School of Architecture and Design.\nSchool of Business.\nThe University of Kansas School of Business is a public business school on the main campus of the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. The KU School of Business was founded in 1924 and has more than 80 faculty members and approximately 1500 students.\nNamed one of the best business schools in the Midwest by Princeton Review, the KU School of Business has been continually accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) for its undergraduate and graduate programs in business and accounting.\nFor 2021, \"U.S. News & World Report\" ranked KU's business school 68th out of 477 evaluated.\nIn 2016, The University of Kansas completed construction on a new home for the business school, named Capitol Federal Hall. It is located at 1654 Naismith Drive, near KU's Rec Center and across the street from Allen Fieldhouse. Capitol Federal Hall is a 166,500 square-foot building complete with state-of-the-art technology and several research labs.\nSchool of Law.\nThe University of Kansas School of Law, founded in 1878, was the top law school in the state of Kansas, and tied for 70th out of 198 nationally, according to the 2021 \"U.S. News & World Report\" rankings. Classes are held in Green Hall at W 15th St and Burdick Dr, which is named after former dean James Green.\nSchool of Engineering.\nThe KU School of Engineering is a public engineering school located on the main campus. The School of Engineering was founded officially in 1891, although engineering degrees were awarded as early as 1873.\nIn the \"U.S. News & World Report\"'s \"America's Best Colleges\" 2021 issue, KU's School of Engineering was ranked tied for 102nd among 218 engineering schools whose highest degree is a doctorate.\nNotable alumni include Charles E. Spahr (1934), the former CEO of Standard Oil of Ohio.\nSchool of Journalism and Mass Communications.\nIn addition to its academic programs, the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications sponsors publications including \"The University Daily Kansan\", \"Jayplay\" magazine, and KUJH TV.\nMedical Center.\nThe University of Kansas Medical Center features three schools: the School of Medicine, School of Nursing, and School of Health Professions that each has its own programs of graduate study. As of the Fall 2013 semester, there were 3,349 students enrolled at KU Med. The Medical Center also offers four-year instruction at the Wichita campus, and features a medical school campus in Salina, Kansas devoted to rural health care.\nThe University of Kansas Health System is co-located at the University of Kansas Medical Center.\nEdwards Campus, Overland Park.\nKU's Edwards Campus is in Overland Park, Kansas. Established in 1993, its goal is to provide adults with the opportunity to complete undergraduate, graduate, and certificate programs. About 2,000 students attend the Edwards Campus, with an average age of 31.\nUniversity of Kansas Leavenworth.\nNear the beginning of the 2018\u20132019 school year, KU launched classes in Leavenworth, Kansas, offering classes to \"both civilian and military\" students, emphasizing a \"high priority in supporting military-affiliated students\". The Leavenworth classes offer both undergraduate and graduate courses.\nComputing innovations.\nKU's School of Business launched interdisciplinary management science graduate studies in operations research during Fall Semester 1965. The program provided the foundation for decision science applications supporting NASA Project Apollo Command Capsule Recovery Operations.\nKU's academic computing department was an active participant in setting up the Internet and is the developer of the early Lynx text-based web browser. Lynx provided hypertext browsing and navigation prior to Tim Berners Lee's invention of HTTP and HTML.\nStudent activities.\nAthletics.\nThe University of Kansas has had teams representing them athletically since at least 1867, a year after classes officially started. Starting in 1866, a baseball team made up of KU students represented the University of Kansas in games played at the Kansas State Fair against local teams from around the state of Kansas. \nThe school's sports teams, wearing crimson and blue, are called the Kansas Jayhawks. They participate in the NCAA's Division I and in the Big 12 Conference. The University of Kansas has won thirteen National Championships all-time: six in men's basketball (two Helms Foundation championships and four NCAA championships, most recently in 2022), three in men's indoor track and field, three in men's outdoor track and field, one in men's cross country and one in women's outdoor track and field. The home course for KU Cross Country is Rim Rock Farm. Their most recent championship came in 2022, the men's basketball team won the 2022 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament.\nKansas football dates from 1890 and is one of the oldest continuous programs in the nation. They have played in the Orange Bowl three times: 1948, 1969, and 2008, as well as nine other bowl games. They are currently coached by Lance Leipold, who was hired in May 2021. From its inception in 1890 to 1929, the program saw consistent success, winning several conference titles in 4 different conferences. After joining the Big 6 Conference (which would eventually become the Big 8) in 1929, Kansas began to struggle in the win-loss column. With the formation of the Big 8 conference in 1960, Kansas became a consistent winner again and fielded legendary coaches like Pepper Rodgers, Don Fambrough, Bud Moore, and Glen Mason. In 2008, under the leadership of Mark Mangino, the #7 Jayhawks emerged victorious in their first BCS bowl game, the FedEx Orange Bowl, with a 24\u201321 victory over the #3 Virginia Tech Hokies. This capstone victory marked the end of the most successful season in school history, in which the Jayhawks went 12\u20131 (.923). The team plays at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium, which recently underwent an $85 million renovation to add an indoor practice facility with a 120-yard field, an outdoor practice facility with 2 full fields and three partial fields, new locker rooms, a new weight training facility, new residencies for players, new offices, new turf, new seats, and a state-of-the-art video board.\nThe KU men's basketball team has fielded a team every year since 1898. The Jayhawks are a perennial national contender, coached by Hall of Fame coach Bill Self. The team has won six national titles, including four NCAA tournament championships in 1952, 1988, 2008, and 2022. The basketball program is currently the winningest program in college basketball history with an overall record of 2,355\u2013877 up to their Final Four appearance in the 2021\u201322 season. The team plays at Allen Fieldhouse. Perhaps its best-recognized player was Wilt Chamberlain, who played in the 1950s, later becoming an NBA star and Harlem Globetrotter.\nKansas has counted among its coaches James Naismith (the inventor of basketball), Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Phog Allen (\"the Father of basketball coaching\" and a Kansas alumnus himself), Dick Harp, Ted Owens, Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Roy Williams, and Basketball Hall of Fame inductee and former NBA Champion Detroit Pistons coach Larry Brown. Currently, Kansas is coached by Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Bill Self. In addition, legendary University of Kentucky coach and Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Adolph Rupp played for KU's 1922 and 1923 Helms National Championship teams, and NCAA Hall of Fame inductee and University of North Carolina Coach Dean Smith played for KU's 1952 NCAA Championship team. Both Rupp and Smith played under Phog Allen. Allen also coached Hall of Fame coaches Dutch Lonborg and Ralph Miller. Allen founded the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC), which started what is now the NCAA Tournament. The Tournament began in 1939 under the NABC and the next year was handed off to the newly formed NCAA.\nKansas fielded its first women's soccer team in 1995. The women's soccer team launched in 1980 as a club sport, but was promoted to varsity play in the NCAA in 1995 when Lori Walker was hired as the head coach. Since 1995 they've appeared in the NCAA tournament ten times, and have won the Big 12 championship three times. They compete at Rock Chalk Park, a 2,500 seat stadium built in 2014. In cooperation with Kansas Athletics, FIFA is using Rock Chalk Park as a training facility and team base camp for the 2026 World Cup, with one of the host sites being nearby Kansas City. \nNotable non-varsity sports include rugby, men's hockey, and men's soccer. The rugby team owns its private facility and tours internationally every two years. The men's hockey team plays at AdventHealth Sports Park in Overland Park, Kansas. They also practice in Topeka and Lawrence. They compete in the American Collegiate Hockey Association. Men's soccer competes in the South Conference of the Upper Midwest Collegiate Soccer League. They play on an artificial turf field next to student dorms next to Allen Fieldhouse.\nDebate teams.\nThe University of Kansas has had more teams (70) compete in the National Debate Tournament than any other university. Kansas has won the tournament 6 times (1954, 1970, 1976, 1983, 2009, and 2018) and had 15 teams make it to the final four. Kansas trails only Northwestern (15) and Harvard (7) for most tournaments won and is tied with Dartmouth (6). Kansas also won the Copeland Award in 1981\u201382 and 2017\u201318.\nMedia.\nThe university's newspaper is \"University Daily Kansan\", which placed first in the Intercollegiate Writing Competition of the prestigious William Randolph Hearst Writing Foundation competition. In the winter of 2008, a group of students created KUpedia, a wiki about all things KU. They received student funding for operations in 2008\u201309. The KU Department of English publishes the \"Coal City Review\", an annual literary journal of prose, poetry, reviews, and illustrations. The \"Review\" typically features the work of many writers, but periodically spotlights one author, as in the case of 2006 Nelson Poetry Book Award-winner \"Voyeur Poems\" by Matthew Porubsky.\nThe \"University Daily Kansan\" operates outside of the university's William Allen White School of Journalism and reaches at least 30,000 daily readers through its print and online publications.\nThe university houses the following public broadcasting stations: KJHK, a student-run campus radio station, KUJH-LP, an independent station that primarily broadcasts public affairs programs, and KANU, the NPR-affiliated radio station. Kansas Public Radio station KANU was one of the nation's first public radio stations. KJHK, the campus radio has roots back to 1952 and is completely run by students.\nCenter for Community Health and Development.\nThe university's Center for Community Health and Development (formerly KU Work Group) was designated as a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Community Health and Development in 2004. It is affiliated with the Department of Applied Behavioral Science and the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies at the university, and supports community health and development through a variety of means, including its free online resource, the Community Tool Box.\nFoundations.\nUniversity of Kansas Memorial Corporation.\nThe first union was built on campus in 1926 as a campus community center. The unions are still the \"living rooms\" of campus and include three locations \u2013 the Kansas Union and Burge Union at the Lawrence Campus and Jayhawk Central at the Edwards Campus. The KU Memorial Unions Corporation manages the KU Bookstore (with seven locations). The KU Bookstore is the official bookstore of KU. The corporation also includes KU Dining Services, with more than 20 campus locations, including The Market (inside the Kansas Union) and The Underground (located in Wescoe Hall). The KU Bookstore and KU Dining Services are not-for-profit, with proceeds supporting student programs, such as Student Union Activities.\nKU Endowment.\nKU Endowment was established in 1891 as the university's primary institutional foundation to manage and build the university's endowment.\nNotable alumni and faculty.\nAffiliated with the university as students, researchers, or faculty members have been 325 Fulbright Scholars, 27 Rhodes Scholars, 10 Marshall Scholars, 2 Mitchell Scholars, 12 MacArthur Fellows, 7 Pulitzer Prize winners, 5 NASA astronauts, 3 Nobel Prize laureates, 2 Fields Medal winners, 3 Hugo Award or Nebula Award winners and 1 Academy Award winner.\nAdditionally, two people associated with the school have been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Dean Smith, who played basketball at Kansas from 1949 to 1953 and was a Hall of Fame men's basketball coach at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was given the award by Barack Obama in 2013. Politician Bob Dole, who played football and basketball at the school but did not graduate, was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom award by Bill Clinton in 1997.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "57531977": "Allie Ostrander\nAmerican long-distance runner (born 1996)\nAllison \"Allie\" Ostrander (born December 24, 1996) is an American long-distance runner. She was the NCAA Division I steeplechase champion in 2017, 2018 and 2019, competing for the Boise State University Broncos. In July 2019, Ostrander announced her plans to forgo her final season of NCAA eligibility and begin running professionally.\nEarly life and education.\nOstrander was born in Kenai, Alaska in 1996, the daughter of Teri and Paul Ostrander. Ostrander graduated from Kenai Central High School in 2015 and matriculated to Boise State University.\nRunning career.\nIn high school, Ostrander competed on the basketball team along with running, where she was"}, "descending_order": ["57531977", "814701", "163327"], "permutation_1": ["814701", "163327", "57531977"], "permutation_2": ["814701", "163327", "57531977"], "permutation_3": ["57531977", "163327", "814701"]}
{"id": "2hop__129499_85379", "docs_added": {"28832734": "Poachie Range\nLandform in La Paz, Mohave, and Yavapai Counties, Arizona\nThe Poachie Range is a moderate length mountain range and massif in southeast Mohave County, Arizona, and the extreme southwest corner of Yavapai County; the range also abuts the northeast corner of La Paz County. The Poachie Range massif is bordered by the south-flowing Big Sandy River on its west, and the west-flowing Santa Maria River on its south; both rivers converge at the Poachie Range's southwest at Alamo Lake in Alamo Lake State Park.\nFrom Alamo Lake, the (short) Bill Williams River flows due west for 35\u00a0mi to meet the Colorado River. The Bill Williams River is the de facto border between the Mojave Desert north and northwest; the Sonoran Desert is south and southeast. Across the south-flowing Colorado River to the west, is the massif of the Whipple Mountains at the northeast of the Sonoran Desert subsection named the Colorado Desert of southern California and bordered by the Colorado River.\nThe entire region south of the Poachie Range, and its two mountain ranges bordered westwards, the Rawhide and Bill Williams Mountain, and bordered on the Bill Williams River northern bank \u2014 is the Maria fold and thrust belt. The thrust belt is a geographic and geologic region at the convergence of these neighboring mountain ranges, rivers, the Alamo Lake, as well as other plains and valleys.\nRange description.\nThe Poachie Range is approximately 30\u00a0mi long slightly trending northwest by southeast, with no central ridgeline. Instead the range is made up of a central canyon draining southwest. The west-northwest contains a small canyon, and various peaks, three peaks west of the south-flowing Big Sandy River. Signal, Arizona with only unimproved road access is at the northwest foothills, about 10\u00a0mi from U.S. Route 93.\nThe east and southeast of the range contains People's Canyon, about 5\u00a0mi long, and the west-flowing Santa Maria River; to the southeast the river borders the northwest of the smaller range, the Black Mountains.\nThe highpoint of the range is Arrastra Mountain, , located at . Arrastra Mountain is at the range center, 3\u00a0mi northeast of the 'range ridgeline' and 4\u00a0mi southwest of U.S. Route 93 in Arizona (the Joshua Tree Highway).\nArrastra Mountain Wilderness.\nThe Arrastra Mountain Wilderness comprises almost 100% of the Poachie Range. Both the Big Sandy and Santa Maria Rivers are mostly contained in the wilderness, as well as People's Canyon in the east.\nAccess.\nThe entire northeast of the range is accessed from U.S. Route 93, from Wikieup, Arizona and Nothing, Arizona.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nArrastra Mountain\nPoachie Range", "21883824": "Arizona\nU.S. state\nArizona is a state in the Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the northwest and California to the west, and shares an international border with the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California to the south and southwest. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix, which is the most populous state capital and fifth most populous city in the United States. Arizona is divided into 15 counties.\nArizona is the 6th-largest state by area and the 14th-most-populous of the 50 states. It is the 48th state and last of the contiguous states to be admitted to the Union, achieving statehood on February 14, 1912. Historically part of the territory of Alta California and Nuevo M\u00e9xico in New Spain, it became part of independent Mexico in 1821. After being defeated in the Mexican\u2013American War, Mexico ceded much of this territory to the United States in 1848, where the area became part of the New Mexico Territory. The southernmost portion of the state was acquired in 1853 through the Gadsden Purchase.\nSouthern Arizona is known for its desert climate, with extremely hot summers and mild winters. Northern Arizona features forests of pine, Douglas fir, and spruce trees; the Colorado Plateau; mountain ranges (such as the San Francisco Mountains); as well as large, deep canyons, with much more moderate summer temperatures and significant winter snowfalls. There are ski resorts in the areas of Flagstaff, Sunrise, and Tucson. In addition to the internationally known Grand Canyon National Park, which is one of the world's seven natural wonders, there are several national forests, national parks, and national monuments.\nArizona is home to a diverse population. About one-quarter of the state is made up of Indian reservations that serve as the home of 27 federally recognized Native American tribes, including the Navajo Nation, the largest in the state and the country, with more than 300,000 citizens. Since the 1980s, the proportion of Hispanics has grown significantly owing to migration from Mexico and Central America. A substantial portion of the population are followers of the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Arizona's population and economy have grown dramatically since the 1950s because of inward migration, and the state is now a major hub of the Sun Belt. Cities such as Phoenix and Tucson have developed large, sprawling suburban areas. Many large companies, such as PetSmart and Circle K, have headquarters in the state, and Arizona is home to major universities, including the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, and Northern Arizona University. The state is known for a history of conservative politicians such as Barry Goldwater and John McCain, though it has become a swing state in recent years.\nEtymology.\nThe state's name appears to originate from an earlier Spanish name, , derived from the O'odham name , meaning 'small spring'. Initially this term was applied by Spanish colonists only to an area near the silver mining camp of Planchas de Plata, Sonora. To the European settlers, the O'odham pronunciation sounded like \"Arissona\". The area is still known as in the O'odham language.\nAnother possible origin is the Basque phrase 'the good oak', as there were numerous Basque sheepherders in the area. A native-born Mexican of Basque ancestry established the (small rural settlement) of Arizona between 1734 and 1736 in the current Mexican state of Sonora. It became notable after a significant discovery of silver there around 1737.\nThe misconception that the state's name purportedly originated from the Spanish term 'Arid Zone' is considered a case of folk etymology.\nHistory.\nFor thousands of years before the modern era, Arizona was home to many ancient Native American civilizations. Hohokam, Mogollon, and Ancestral Puebloan cultures were among those that flourished throughout the state. Many of their pueblos, cliffside dwellings, rock paintings and other prehistoric treasures have survived and attract thousands of tourists each year. \nIn 1539, Marcos de Niza, a Spanish Franciscan, became the first European to contact Native Americans. He explored parts of the present state and made contact with native inhabitants, probably the Sobaipuri. The expedition of Spanish explorer Coronado entered the area in 1540\u20131542 during its search for C\u00edbola. Few Spanish settlers migrated to Arizona. One of the first settlers in Arizona was Jos\u00e9 Romo de Vivar.\nFather Kino was the next European in the region. A member of the Society of Jesus (\"Jesuits\"), he led the development of a chain of missions in the region. He converted many of the Indians to Christianity in the Pimer\u00eda Alta (now southern Arizona and northern Sonora) in the 1690s and early 18th century. Spain founded \"presidios\" (\"fortified towns\") at Tubac in 1752 and Tucson in 1775.\nWhen Mexico achieved its independence from the Kingdom of Spain and its Spanish Empire in 1821, what is now Arizona became part of its Territory of \"Nueva California\", (\"New California\"), also known as \"Alta California\" (\"Upper California\"). Descendants of ethnic Spanish and mestizo settlers from the colonial years still lived in the area at the time of the arrival of later European-American migrants from the United States. \nDuring the Mexican\u2013American War (1847\u20131848), the U.S. Army occupied the national capital of Mexico City and pursued its claim to much of northern Mexico, including what later became Arizona Territory in 1863 and later the State of Arizona in 1912. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) specified that, in addition to language and cultural rights of the existing inhabitants of former Mexican citizens being considered as inviolable, the sum of $15million in compensation () be paid to the Republic of Mexico. In 1853, the U.S. acquired the land south below the Gila River from Mexico in the Gadsden Purchase along the southern border area as encompassing the best future southern route for a transcontinental railway.\nWhat is now the state of Arizona was administered by the United States government as part of the Territory of New Mexico from 1850 until the southern part of that region seceded from the Union to form the Territory of Arizona. This newly established territory was formally organized by the federal government of the Confederate States on Saturday, January 18, 1862, when President Jefferson Davis approved and signed \"An Act to Organize the Territory of Arizona\", marking the first official use of the name \"Territory of Arizona\". The Southern territory supplied the Confederate government with men, horses, and equipment. Formed in 1862, Arizona scout companies served with the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. Arizona has the westernmost military engagement on record during the Civil War with the Battle of Picacho Pass (1862).\nThe Federal government declared a new U.S. Arizona Territory, consisting of the western half of earlier New Mexico Territory, in Washington, D.C., on February 24, 1863. These new boundaries would later form the basis of the state. The first territorial capital, Prescott, was founded in 1864 following a gold rush to central Arizona. The capital was later moved to Tucson, back to Prescott, and then to its final location in Phoenix in a series of controversial moves as different regions of the territory gained and lost political influence with the growth and development of the territory.\nAlthough names including \"Gadsonia\", \"Pimeria\", \"Montezuma\" and \"Arizuma\" had been considered for the territory, when 16th President Abraham Lincoln signed the final bill, it read \"Arizona\", and that name was adopted. (Montezuma was not derived from the Aztec emperor, but was the sacred name of a divine hero to the Pima people of the Gila River Valley. It was probably considered\u00a0\u2013 and rejected\u00a0\u2013 for its sentimental value before Congress settled on the name \"Arizona\".) \nBrigham Young, leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City in Utah, sent Mormons to Arizona in the mid- to late 19th century. They founded Mesa, Snowflake, Heber, Safford, and other towns. They also settled in the Phoenix Valley (or \"Valley of the Sun\"), Tempe, Prescott, and other areas. The Mormons settled what became northern Arizona and northern New Mexico. At the time these areas were in a part of the former New Mexico Territory.\nDuring the nineteenth century, a series of gold and silver rushes occurred in the territory, the best known being the 1870s stampede to the silver bonanzas of Tombstone, Arizona, in southeast Arizona, also known for its legendary outlaws and lawmen. By the late 1880s, copper production eclipsed the precious metals with the rise of copper camps like Bisbee, Arizona, and Jerome, Arizona. The boom and bust economy of mining also left hundreds of ghost towns across the territory, but copper mining continued to prosper with the territory producing more copper than any other state by 1907, which earned Arizona the nickname \"the Copper State\" at the time of statehood. During the first years of statehood the industry experienced growing pains and labor disputes with the Bisbee Deportation of 1917 the result of a copper miners' strike.\n20th century to present.\nDuring the Mexican Revolution from 1910 to 1920, several battles were fought in the Mexican towns just across the border from Arizona settlements. Throughout the revolution, many Arizonans enlisted in one of the several armies fighting in Mexico. Only two significant engagements took place on U.S. soil between U.S. and Mexican forces: Pancho Villa's 1916 Columbus Raid in New Mexico and the Battle of Ambos Nogales in 1918 in Arizona.\nAfter Mexican federal troops fired on U.S. soldiers, the American garrison launched an assault into Nogales, Mexico. The Mexicans eventually surrendered after both sides sustained heavy casualties. A few months earlier, just west of Nogales, an Indian War battle had occurred, considered the last engagement in the American Indian Wars, which lasted from 1775 to 1918. U.S. soldiers stationed on the border confronted Yaqui Indians who were using Arizona as a base to raid the nearby Mexican settlements, as part of their wars against Mexico. \nArizona became a U.S. state on February 14, 1912, coinciding with Valentine's Day. Arizona was the 48th state admitted to the U.S. and the last of the contiguous states to be admitted.\nCotton farming and copper mining, two of Arizona's most important statewide industries, suffered heavily during the Great Depression. But during the 1920s and even the 1930s, tourism began to develop as the important Arizonan industry it is today. Dude ranches, such as the K L Bar and Remuda in Wickenburg, along with the Flying V and Tanque Verde in Tucson, gave tourists the chance to take part in the flavor and activities of the \"Old West\". Several upscale hotels and resorts opened during this period, some of which are still top tourist draws. They include the Arizona Biltmore Hotel in central Phoenix (opened 1929) and the Wigwam Resort on the west side of the Phoenix area (opened 1936).\nArizona was the site of German prisoner of war camps during World WarII and Japanese American internment camps. Because of wartime fears of a Japanese invasion of the U.S. West Coast (which in fact materialized in the Aleutian Islands Campaign in June 1942), from 1942 to 1945, persons of Japanese descent were forced to reside in internment camps built in the interior of the country. Many lost their homes and businesses. The camps were abolished after World WarII.\nThe Phoenix-area POW camp site for Germans was purchased after the war by the Maytag family (of major home appliance fame). It was developed as the site of the Phoenix Zoo. A Japanese-American internment camp was on Mount Lemmon, just outside the state's southeastern city of Tucson. Another POW camp was near the Gila River in eastern Yuma County. Arizona was also home to the Phoenix Indian School, one of several federal Indian boarding schools designed to assimilate Native American children into mainstream European-American culture. Children were often enrolled in these schools against the wishes of their parents and families. Attempts to suppress native identities included forcing the children to cut their hair, to take and use English names, to speak only English, and to practice Christianity rather than their native religions.\nNumerous Native Americans from Arizona fought for the United States during World WarII. Their experiences resulted in a rising activism in the postwar years to achieve better treatment and civil rights after their return to the state. After Maricopa County did not allow them to register to vote, in 1948 veteran Frank Harrison and Harry Austin, of the Mojave-Apache Tribe at Fort McDowell Indian Reservation, brought a legal suit, \"Harrison and Austin v. Laveen\", to challenge this exclusion. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled in their favor.\nArizona's population grew tremendously with residential and business development after World WarII, aided by the widespread use of air conditioning, which made the intensely hot summers more comfortable. According to the \"Arizona Blue Book\" (published by the Arizona Secretary of State's office each year), the state population in 1910 was 294,353. By 1970, it was 1,752,122. The percentage growth each decade averaged about 20% in the earlier decades, and about 60% each decade thereafter. \nIn the 1960s, retirement communities were developed. These age-restricted subdivisions catered exclusively to the needs of senior citizens and attracted many retirees who wanted to escape the harsh winters of the Midwest and the Northeast. Sun City, established by developer Del Webb and opened in 1960, was one of the first such communities. Green Valley, south of Tucson, was another such community, designed as a retirement subdivision for Arizona's teachers. Many senior citizens from across the United States and Canada come to Arizona each winter and stay only during the winter months; they are referred to as snowbirds. \nIn March 2000, Arizona was the site of the first legally binding election ever held over the internet to nominate a candidate for public office. In the 2000 Arizona Democratic Primary, under worldwide attention, Al Gore defeated Bill Bradley. Voter turnout in this state primary increased more than 500% over the 1996 primary.\nIn the 21st century, Arizona has frequently garnered national attention for its efforts to quell illegal immigration into the state. In 2004, voters passed Proposition 200, requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. The Supreme Court of the United States struck this restriction down in 2013. In 2010, Arizona enacted SB 1070 which required all immigrants to carry immigration papers at all times, but the Supreme Court also invalidated parts of this law in \"Arizona v. United States\" in 2012.\nOn January 8, 2011, a gunman shot congresswoman Gabby Giffords and 18 others at a gathering in Tucson. Giffords was critically wounded. The incident sparked national attention regarding incendiary political rhetoric.\nThree ships named USS \"Arizona\" have been christened in honor of the state, although only USS \"Arizona\" (BB-39) was so named after statehood was achieved.\nGeography.\nArizona is in the Southwestern United States as one of the Four Corners states. Arizona is the sixth largest state by area, ranked after New Mexico and before Nevada. Of the state's , approximately 15% is privately owned. The remaining area is public forest and parkland, state trust land and Native American reservations. There are 24 National Park Service maintained sites in Arizona, including the three national parks of Grand Canyon National Park, Saguaro National Park, and the Petrified Forest National Park.\nArizona is well known for its desert Basin and Range region in the state's southern portions, which is rich in a landscape of xerophyte plants such as the cactus. This region's topography was shaped by prehistoric volcanism, followed by the cooling-off and related subsidence. Its climate has exceptionally hot summers and mild winters. The state is less well known for its pine-covered north-central portion of the high country of the Colorado Plateau (see Arizona Mountains forests).\nLike other states of the Southwest United States, Arizona is marked by high mountains, the Colorado plateau, and mesas. Despite the state's aridity, 27% of Arizona is forest, a percentage comparable to modern-day Romania or Greece. The world's largest stand of ponderosa pine trees is in Arizona.\nThe Mogollon Rim (), a escarpment, cuts across the state's central section and marks the southwestern edge of the Colorado Plateau. In 2002, this was an area of the Rodeo\u2013Chediski Fire, the worst fire in state history until 2011.\nLocated in northern Arizona, the Grand Canyon is a colorful, deep, steep-sided gorge, carved by the Colorado River. The canyon is one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World and is largely contained in the Grand Canyon National Park\u00a0\u2013 one of the first national parks in the United States. President Theodore Roosevelt was a major proponent of designating the Grand Canyon area as a National Park, often visiting to hunt mountain lion and enjoy the scenery. The canyon was created by the Colorado River cutting a channel over millions of years, and is about long, ranges in width from and attains a depth of more than . Nearly twobillion years of the Earth's history have been exposed as the Colorado River and its tributaries cut through layer after layer of sediment as the Colorado Plateau uplifted.\nArizona is home to one of the most well-preserved meteorite impact sites in the world. Created around 50,000 years ago, the Barringer Meteorite Crater (better known simply as \"Meteor Crater\") is a gigantic hole in the middle of the high plains of the Colorado Plateau, about west of Winslow. A rim of smashed and jumbled boulders, some of them the size of small houses, rises above the level of the surrounding plain. The crater itself is nearly a mile (1.6 kilometers) wide and deep.\nArizona is one of two U.S. states, along with Hawaii, that does not observe Daylight Saving Time, though the large Navajo Nation in the state's northeastern region does.\nClimate.\nDue to its large area and variations in elevation, the state has a wide variety of localized climate conditions. In the lower elevations the climate is primarily desert, with mild winters and extremely hot summers. Typically, from late fall to early spring, the weather is mild, averaging a minimum of . November through February are the coldest months, with temperatures typically ranging from , with occasional frosts.\nAbout midway through February, the temperatures start to rise, with warm days, and cool, breezy nights. The summer months of June through September bring a dry heat from , with occasional high temperatures exceeding having been observed in the desert area. Arizona's all-time record high is recorded at Lake Havasu City on June 29, 1994, and July 5, 2007; the all-time record low of was recorded at Hawley Lake on January 7, 1971.\nDue to the primarily dry climate, large diurnal temperature variations occur in less-developed areas of the desert above . The swings can be as large as 83\u00b0F (46\u00b0C) in the summer months. In the state's urban centers, the effects of local warming result in much higher measured night-time lows than in the recent past.\nArizona has an average annual rainfall of , which comes during two rainy seasons, with cold fronts coming from the Pacific Ocean during the winter and a monsoon in the summer. The monsoon season occurs toward the end of summer. In July or August, the dewpoint rises dramatically for a brief period. During this time, the air contains large amounts of water vapor. Dewpoints as high as 81\u00b0F (27\u00b0C) have been recorded during the Phoenix monsoon season. This hot moisture brings lightning, thunderstorms, wind, and torrential, if usually brief, downpours. These downpours often cause flash floods, which can turn deadly. In an attempt to deter drivers from crossing flooding streams, the Arizona Legislature enacted the Stupid Motorist Law. It is rare for tornadoes or hurricanes to occur in Arizona.\nArizona's northern third is a plateau at significantly higher altitudes than the lower desert, and has an appreciably cooler climate, with cold winters and mild summers, though the climate remains semiarid to arid. Extremely low temperatures are not unknown; cold air systems from the northern states and Canada occasionally push into the state, bringing temperatures below to the state's northern parts.\nIndicative of the variation in climate, Arizona is the state which has both the metropolitan area with the most days over (Phoenix), and the metropolitan area in the lower 48 states with the most days with a low temperature below freezing (Flagstaff).\nArizona is considered as relatively vulnerable to climate change, which can make six of Arizona`s 15 counties uninhabitable for humans by the years 2040\u20132060. This was the cautionary warning made by a December 2020 study released by ProPublica and Rhodium Group.\nCities and towns.\nPhoenix, in Maricopa County, is Arizona's capital and largest city. Other prominent cities in the Phoenix metro area include Mesa (Arizona's third largest city), Chandler (Arizona's fourth largest city), Glendale, Peoria, Buckeye, Sun City, Sun City West, Fountain Hills, Surprise, Gilbert, El Mirage, Avondale, Tempe, Tolleson and Scottsdale, with a total metropolitan population of just over 4.7million. The average high temperature in July, , is one of the highest of any metropolitan area in the United States, offset by an average January high temperature of , the basis of its winter appeal.\nTucson, with a metro population of just over onemillion, is the state's second-largest city. Located in Pima County, approximately southeast of Phoenix, it was incorporated in 1877, making it the oldest incorporated city in Arizona. It is home to the University of Arizona. Major incorporated suburbs of Tucson include Oro Valley and Marana northwest of the city, Sahuarita south of the city, and South Tucson in an enclave south of downtown. It has an average July temperature of 100\u00b0F (38\u00b0C) and winter temperatures averaging 65\u00b0F (18\u00b0C). Saguaro National Park, just west of the city in the Tucson Mountains, is the site of the world's largest collection of Saguaro cacti.\nThe Prescott metropolitan area includes the cities of Prescott, Cottonwood, Camp Verde and many other towns in the of Yavapai County area. With 212,635 residents, this cluster of towns is the state's third largest metropolitan area. The city of Prescott (population 41,528) lies approximately northwest of the Phoenix metropolitan area. Situated in pine tree forests at an elevation of about , Prescott enjoys a much cooler climate than Phoenix, with average summer highs around and winter temperatures averaging .\nYuma is the center of the fourth-largest metropolitan area in Arizona. Located in Yuma County, it is near the borders of California and Mexico. It is one of the hottest cities in the United States, with an average July high of . For comparison, the same month's average in Death Valley is . The city features sunny days about 90% of the year. The Yuma Metropolitan Statistical Area has a population of 160,000. Yuma attracts many winter visitors from all over the United States.\nFlagstaff, in Coconino County, is the largest city in northern Arizona, and is at an elevation of nearly . With its large Ponderosa pine forests, snowy winter weather and picturesque mountains, it is a stark contrast to the desert regions typically associated with Arizona. It is sited at the base of the San Francisco Peaks, the highest mountain range in the state of Arizona, which contains Humphreys Peak, the highest point in Arizona at . Flagstaff has a strong tourism sector, due to its proximity to numerous tourist attractions including: Grand Canyon National Park, Sedona, and Oak Creek Canyon. Historic U.S. Route 66 is the main east\u2013west street in the town. The Flagstaff metropolitan area is home to 134,421 residents and the main campus of Northern Arizona University.\nLake Havasu City, in Mohave County, known as \"Arizona's playground\", was developed on the Colorado River and is named after Lake Havasu. Lake Havasu City has a population of about 57,000 people. It is famous for huge spring break parties, sunsets and the London Bridge, relocated from London, England. Lake Havasu City was founded by real estate developer Robert P. McCulloch in 1963. It has two colleges, Mohave Community College and ASU Colleges in Lake Havasu City.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nThe United States Census Bureau records Arizona's population as 7,151,502 in the 2020 census, a 12% increase since the 2010 United States census.\nArizona remained sparsely settled for most of the 19th century. The 1860 census reported the population of \"Arizona County\" to be 6,482, of whom 4,040 were listed as \"Indians\", 21 as \"free colored\", and 2,421 as \"white\". Arizona's continued population growth has put an enormous stress on the state's water supply. As of 2011[ [update]], 61% of Arizona's children under age one belonged to racial groups of color.\nThe population of metropolitan Phoenix increased by 45% from 1991 through 2001, helping to make Arizona the second fastest-growing state in the U.S. in the 1990s (the fastest was Nevada).\nAccording to the 2010 United States census, Arizona had a population of 6,392,017. In 2010, illegal immigrants constituted an estimated 8% of the population. This was the second highest percentage of any state in the U.S.\nMetropolitan Phoenix (4.7million) and Tucson (1.0million) are home to about five-sixths of Arizona's people (as of the 2010 census). Metro Phoenix alone accounts for two-thirds of the state's population.\nAccording to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 13,553 homeless people living in Arizona.\nAs of 2018, the top countries of origin for Arizona's immigrant population were Mexico, Canada, India, the Philippines and China.\nRace and ethnicity.\nArizona's largest ancestry groups, as of 2022[ [update]], were:\nLanguages.\nAs of 2010[ [update]], 73% (4,215,749) of Arizona residents age five and older spoke only English at home, while 21% (1,202,638) spoke Spanish, 2% (85,602) Navajo, <1% (22,592) German, <1% (22,426) Chinese (which includes Mandarin), <1% (19,015) Tagalog, <1% (17,603) Vietnamese, <1% (15,707) Other North American Indigenous Languages (especially indigenous languages of Arizona), and French was spoken as a main language by <1% (15,062) of the population over the age of five. In total, 27% (1,567,548) of Arizona's population age five and older spoke a mother language other than English.\nArizona is home to the largest number of speakers of Native American languages in the 48 contiguous states, as more than 85,000 individuals reported speaking Navajo, and 10,403 people reported Apache, as a language spoken at home in 2005. Arizona's Apache County has the highest concentration of speakers of Native American Indian languages in the United States.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nThe 2010 U.S. Religion Census: Religious Congregations & Membership Study by ARDA reported that the three largest denominational groups in Arizona were the Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and non-denominational Evangelical Protestants. The Catholic Church had the highest number of adherents in Arizona (at 930,001), followed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with 392,918 members reported and then non-denominational Evangelical Protestant churches, reporting 281,105 adherents. The religious body with the largest number of congregations is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (with 811 congregations) followed by the Southern Baptist Convention (with 323 congregations). This census accounted for about 2.4 million of Arizona's 6.4 million residents in 2010.\nAccording to the study, the fifteen largest denominations by number of adherents in 2010 and 2000 were:\nHinduism became the largest non-Christian religion (when combining all denominations) in 2010 with more than 32,000 adherents, followed by Judaism with more than 20,000 and Buddhism with more than 19,000.\nBy the publication of the Public Religion Research Institute's 2020 study, 68% of the population identified as Christian. At the Pew Research Center's 2014 study, 67% of Arizona was Christian. Among the irreligious population from 2014 to 2020 per both studies, they have decreased from 27% of the population to 24% of self-identified irreligious or agnostic Arizonans. Additionally, a third separate study by the Association of Religion Data Archives in 2020 determined Christianity as the dominant religion in the state, with Catholics numbering 1,522,410 adherents and non-denominational Christians increasing to 402,842 Arizonan Christians.\nNative American tribes.\nAt the onset of European colonization what is now Arizona was inhabited by many Native American tribes, they included mainly the Navajo, the Apache, the Akimel O'odham, the Cocopah, the Halchidhoma, the Havasupai, Yavapai, and Hualapai, the Hopi, the Jocome and Jano, the Maricopa, the Mohave, the southern Paiute, the Tohono O'odham, the Yaqui, the Yuma and the Zuni Pueblo. Some of them still live in the state today.\nThe largest Native American tribes in Arizona according to the 2010 census are listed in the table below:\nEconomy.\nArizona's total gross state product in 2023 was $508billion. The composition of the state's economy is moderately diverse, although health care, transportation and the government remain the largest sectors.\nArizona's per capita income was $61,652 in 2023, ranking 33rd in the U.S. The state's 2023 median household income was $74,568, ranking 19th in the country and just below the U.S. national mean.\nEarly in its history, Arizona's economy relied on the \"five C's\": copper (see \"Copper mining in Arizona\"), cotton, cattle, citrus, and climate (tourism). Copper is still extensively mined from many expansive open-pit and underground mines, accounting for two-thirds of the nation's output.\nEmployment.\nThe state government is Arizona's largest employer, while Banner Health is the state's largest private employer, with more than 39,000 employees (2016). As of August 2020[ [update]], the state's unemployment rate was 5.9%.\nThe largest employment sectors in Arizona are (August 2020, Nonfarm Employment):\nLargest employers.\nAccording to \"The Arizona Republic\", the largest private employers in the state as of 2019[ [update]] were:\nAgriculture.\nMultiple crops are grown in Arizona, including lettuce, spinach, cantaloupe, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and watermelon.\nFederal crop insurance is available for <templatestyles src=\"Template:Visible anchor/styles.css\" />grape (\"Vitis vinifera\" and other \"Vitis\" spp.) here. Together with California's crop it falls under special provisions of the relevant crop insurance statutes. Insect pests and diseases are covered, excluding Phylloxera (\"Daktulosphaira vitifoliae\") or failure to correctly apply insect control or apply disease control.\nThe whitefly \"Bemisia tabaci\" B was introduced through the poinsettia trade in the 1980s, displacing the previous A biotype. In 2004 the Q biotype (from the Mediterranean) was first found here, also on poinsettia.\nThe <templatestyles src=\"Template:Visible anchor/styles.css\" />Colorado Potato Beetle (\"Leptinotarsa decemlineata\") is either native or an early introduction here. Unusually, the population here commonly feeds on <templatestyles src=\"Template:Visible anchor/styles.css\" />Silverleaf Nightshade (\"Solanum elaeagnifolium\"), which is usually a less attractive host for this beetle. The CPB is an occasional pest of tomato.\nTransportation.\nHighways.\nU.S. routes.\nMain Interstate routes include I-17, and I-19 traveling north\u2013south, I-8, I-10, and I-40, traveling east\u2013west, and a short stretch of I-15 traveling northeast\u2013southwest through the extreme northwestern corner of the state. In addition, the various urban areas are served by complex networks of state routes and highways, such as the Loop 101, which is part of Phoenix's vast freeway system.\nPublic transportation, Amtrak, and intercity bus.\nThe Phoenix and Tucson metropolitan areas are served by public bus transit systems. Yuma and Flagstaff also have public bus systems. Greyhound Lines serves Phoenix, Tucson, Flagstaff, Yuma, and several smaller communities statewide.\nA light rail system, called Valley Metro Rail, was completed in December 2008; it connects Central Phoenix with the nearby cities of Mesa and Tempe.\nIn Tucson, the Sun Link streetcar system travels through the downtown area, connecting the main University of Arizona campus with Mercado San Agustin on the western edge of downtown Tucson. Sun Link, loosely based on the Portland Streetcar, launched in July 2014.\nAmtrak \"Southwest Chief\" route serves the northern part of the state, stopping at Winslow, Flagstaff, Williams and Kingman. The \"Texas Eagle\" and \"Sunset Limited\" routes serve South-Central Arizona, stopping at Tucson, Maricopa, Yuma and Benson. Phoenix lost Amtrak service in 1996 with the rerouting of the \"Sunset Limited\", and now an Amtrak bus runs between Phoenix and the station in Maricopa. As of 2021, Amtrak has proposed to restore rail service between Phoenix and Tucson.\nLaw and government.\nCapitol complex.\nThe capital of Arizona is Phoenix. The original Capitol building, with its distinctive copper dome, was dedicated in 1901 (construction was completed for $136,000 in 1900) when the area was a territory. Phoenix became the official state capital with Arizona's admission to the union in 1912.\nThe House of Representatives and Senate buildings were dedicated in 1960, and an Executive Office Building was dedicated in 1974 (the ninth floor of this building is where the Office of the Governor is located). The original Capitol building was converted into a museum.\nThe Capitol complex is fronted and highlighted by the richly landscaped Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza, named after Wesley Bolin, a governor who died in office in the 1970s. The site also includes many monuments and memorials, including the anchor and signal mast from the USS \"Arizona\" (one of the U.S. Navy ships sunk in Pearl Harbor) and a granite version of the Ten Commandments.\nState legislative branch.\nThe Arizona Legislature is bicameral and consists of a thirty-member Senate and a 60-member House of Representatives. Each of the thirty legislative districts has one senator and two representatives. Legislators are elected for two-year terms.\nEach Legislature covers a two-year period. The first session following the general election is known as the first regular session, and the session convening in the second year is known as the second regular session. Each regular session begins on the second Monday in January and adjourns \"sine die\" (terminates for the year) no later than Saturday of the week in which the 100th day from the beginning of the regular session falls. The President of the Senate and Speaker of the House, by rule, may extend the session up to seven additional days. Thereafter, the session can be extended only by a majority vote of members present of each house.\nThe majority party is the Republican Party, which has held power in both houses since 1993. The Democratic Party picked up several legislative seats in recent elections, bringing both chambers one seat away from being equally divided as of 2021.\nArizona state senators and representatives are elected for two-year terms and are limited to four consecutive terms in a chamber, though there is no limit on the total number of terms. When a lawmaker is term-limited from office, it is common for him or her to run for election in the other chamber.\nState executive branch.\nArizona's executive branch is headed by a governor, who is elected to a four-year term. The governor may serve any number of terms, though no more than two in a row. Arizona is one of the few states that has no governor's mansion. During their term, the governors reside within their private residence, with executive offices housed in the executive tower at the state capitol. The governor of Arizona is Katie Hobbs (D).\nGovernor Jan Brewer assumed office in 2009 after Janet Napolitano had her nomination by Barack Obama for Secretary of Homeland Security confirmed by the Senate. Arizona has had four female governors and a fifth currently serving, more than any other state.\nOther elected executive officials include the Secretary of State, State Treasurer, State Attorney General, Superintendent of Public Instruction, State Mine Inspector, and a five-member Corporation Commission. All elected officials hold a term of four years, and are limited to two consecutive terms (except the office of the State Mine Inspector, which is limited to four terms).\nArizona is one of five states that do not have a lieutenant governor. The elected secretary of state is first in line to succeed the governor in the event of death, disability, resignation, or removal from office. If appointed, the Secretary of State is not eligible and the next governor is selected from the next eligible official in the line of succession, including the attorney general, state treasurer, and superintendent of public instruction. Since 1977, four secretaries of state and one attorney general have succeeded to the state's governorship.\nOn November 8, 2022, Arizona voters approved a state constitutional amendment (Proposition 131) that created the position and office of the lieutenant governor beginning with the 2026 elections. The position will be elected on a joint ticket with the governor. The lieutenant governor ascends to the governorship if the incumbent governor dies, resigns, or is removed (via impeachment conviction) from office. The proposition, through a law pre-passed by the state legislature, also tasks the governor with assigning a job to her or his running mate, such as chief of staff, the director of the state Department of Administration, or \"any position\" to which the governor can appoint someone by law.\nState judicial branch.\nThe Arizona Supreme Court is the highest court in Arizona, consisting of a chief justice, a vice chief justice, and five associate justices. Justices are appointed by the governor from a list recommended by a bipartisan commission and must be sustained in office by election after the first two years following their appointment. Subsequent sustaining elections occur every six years. The supreme court has appellate jurisdiction in death penalty cases, but nearly all other appellate cases go through the Arizona Court of Appeals first. The court has original jurisdiction in a few other circumstances, as outlined in the state constitution. The court meets in the Arizona Supreme Court Building at the capitol complex (at the southern end of Wesley Bolin Plaza).\nThe Arizona Court of Appeals, subdivided into two divisions, is the intermediate court in the state. Division One is based in Phoenix, consists of nineteen judges, and has jurisdiction in the Western and Northern regions of the state, along with the greater Phoenix area. Division Two is based in Tucson, consists of nine judges, and has jurisdiction over the Southern regions of the state, including the Tucson area. Judges are selected in a method similar to the one used for state supreme court justices.\nEach county of Arizona has a superior court, the size and organization of which are varied and generally depend on the size of the particular county.\nCounties.\nArizona is divided into 15 counties, ranging in size from to .\nFederal representation.\nArizona's two United States senators are and Mark Kelly (D) and Ruben Gallego (D).\nArizona's United States representatives are David Schweikert (R-1), Eli Crane (R-2), Yassamin Ansari (D-3), Greg Stanton (D-4), Andy Biggs (R-5), Juan Ciscomani (R-6), Raul Grijalva (D-7), Abraham Hamadeh (R-8), and Paul Gosar (R-9). Arizona gained a ninth seat in the House of Representatives due to redistricting based on the 2010 United States census.\nPolitical culture.\nFrom statehood through the late 1940s, Arizona was primarily dominated by the Democratic Party. During this time, the Democratic candidate for the presidency carried the state each election, the only exceptions being the elections of 1920, 1924 and 1928\u00a0\u2013 all three were national Republican landslides.\nIn 1924, Congress had passed a law granting citizenship and suffrage to all Native Americans, some of whom had previously been excluded as members of tribes on reservations. Legal interpretations of Arizona's constitution prohibited Native Americans living on reservations from voting, classifying them as being under \"guardianship\". This interpretation was overturned as being incorrect and unconstitutional in 1948 by the Arizona Supreme Court, following a lawsuit by World WarII Indian veterans Frank Harrison and Harry Austin, both of the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation. The landmark case is \"Harrison and Austin v. Laveen\". After the men were refused the opportunity to register in Maricopa County, they filed lawsuit against the registrar. The National Congress of American Indians, the Department of Justice, the Department of the Interior, and the American Civil Liberties Union all filed \"amicus curiae\" (friends of the court) briefs in the case. The State Supreme Court established the rights of Native Americans to vote in the state; at the time, they comprised about 11% of the population. That year, a similar provision was overturned in New Mexico when challenged by another Indian veteran in court. These were the only two states that had continued to prohibit Native Americans from voting.\nArizona voted Republican in every presidential election from 1952 to 1992, with Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan winning the state by particularly large margins. During this forty-year span, it was the only state not to be carried by a Democrat at least once.\nDemocrat Lyndon Johnson, in 1964, lost the state by fewer than 5,000 votes to Arizona Senator and native Barry Goldwater. (This was the most closely contested state in what was otherwise a landslide victory for Johnson that year.) Democrat Bill Clinton ended this streak in 1996, when he won Arizona by a little over two percentage points (Clinton had previously come within less than two percent of winning Arizona's electoral votes in 1992). From 2000 until 2016, the majority of the state continued to support Republican presidential candidates by solid margins. In the 2020 United States presidential election, Joe Biden again broke the streak by becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Arizona since 1996.\nSince the mid 20th century, the Republican Party has also dominated Arizona politics in general. The fast-growing Phoenix and Tucson suburbs became reliably Republican areas from the 1950s onward. During this time, many \"Pinto Democrats\", or conservative Democrats from rural areas, became increasingly willing to support Republicans at the state and national level. While the state normally supports Republicans at the federal level, Democrats are often competitive in statewide elections. Two of the last six governors have been Democrats.\nOn March 4, 2008, Senator John McCain effectively clinched the Republican nomination for 2008, becoming the first major party presidential nominee from the state since Barry Goldwater in 1964.\nArizona politics is dominated by a longstanding rivalry between its two largest counties, Maricopa and Pima\u00a0\u2013 home to Phoenix and Tucson, respectively. The two counties have almost 75 percent of the state's population and cast almost 80 percent of the state's vote. They also elect a substantial majority of the state legislature.\nMaricopa County is home to almost 60 percent of the state's population, and most of the state's elected officials live there. Before Joe Biden won Maricopa County in 2020, it had voted Republican in every presidential election since 1952. This includes the 1964 run of native son Barry Goldwater; he would not have carried his home state without his 20,000-vote margin in Maricopa County. Similarly, McCain won Arizona by eight percentage points in 2008, aided by his 130,000-vote margin in Maricopa County.\nIn contrast, Pima County, home to Tucson, and most of southern Arizona have historically voted more Democratic. While Tucson's suburbs lean Republican, they hold to a somewhat more moderate brand of Republicanism than is common in the Phoenix area.\nArizona rejected a same-sex marriage ban in a referendum as part of the 2006 elections. Arizona was the first state in the nation to do so. Same-sex marriage was not recognized in Arizona, but this amendment would have denied any legal or financial benefits to unmarried homosexual or heterosexual couples. In 2008, Arizona voters passed Proposition 102, an amendment to the state constitution to define marriage as a union of one man and one woman. It passed by a more narrow majority than similar votes in a number of other states. In 2024, Arizona voters passed a constitutional amendment recognising abortion access within the Arizona state constitution, becoming the southernmost continental state to codify abortion rights.\nIn 2010, Arizona adopted SB 1070, called the \"toughest immigration law\" in the United States. A fierce debate erupted between supporters and detractors of SB 1070. The United States Supreme Court struck down portions of the Arizona law, which required all immigrants to carry immigration papers at all times, in \"Arizona v. United States\".\nThe West Virginia teachers' strike in 2018 inspired teachers in other states, including Arizona, to take similar action.\nArizona retains the death penalty. There is currently a gubernatorial hold on executions. Authorized methods of execution include the gas chamber.\nSame-sex marriage and civil unions.\nIn 2006, Arizona became the first state in the United States to reject a proposition, Prop 107, that would have banned same-sex marriage and civil unions. However, in 2008, Arizona voters approved of Prop 102, a constitutional amendment that prohibited same-sex marriage but not other unions. Prior to same-sex marriage being legal, the City of Bisbee became the first jurisdiction in Arizona to approve of civil unions. The state's Attorney General at the time, Tom Horne, threatened to sue, but rescinded the threat once Bisbee amended the ordinance; Bisbee approved of civil unions in 2013. The municipalities of Clarkdale, Cottonwood, Jerome, Sedona, and Tucson also passed civil unions.\nA November 2011 Public Policy Polling survey found 44% of Arizona voters supported the legalization of same-sex marriage, while 45% opposed it and 12% were not sure. A separate question on the same survey found 72% of respondents supported legal recognition of same-sex couples, with 40% supporting same-sex marriage, 32% supporting civil unions, 27% opposing all legal recognition and 1% not sure. Arizona Proposition 102, known by its supporters as the Marriage Protection Amendment, appeared as a legislatively referred constitutional amendment on the November 4, 2008 ballot in Arizona, where it was approved: 56\u201343%. It amended the Arizona Constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman.\nOn October 17, 2014, Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne announced his office would no longer object to same-sex marriage, in response to a U.S. District Court Ruling on Arizona Proposition 102. On that day, each county's Clerk of the Superior Court began to issue same-sex marriage licenses, and Arizona became the 31st state to legalize same-sex marriage.\nThe 2023 \"American Values Atlas\" by Public Religion Research Institute found that an overwhelming majority of residents support same-sex marriage.\nEducation.\nElementary and secondary education.\nPublic schools in Arizona are separated into about 220 local school districts which operate independently, but are governed in most cases by elected county school superintendents; these are in turn overseen by the Arizona State Board of Education and the Arizona Department of Education. A state Superintendent of Public Instruction (elected in partisan elections every even-numbered year when there is not a presidential election, for a four-year term). In 2005, a School District Redistricting Commission was established with the goal of combining and consolidating many of these districts.\nHigher education.\nArizona is served by three public universities: The University of Arizona, Arizona State University, and Northern Arizona University. These schools are governed by the Arizona Board of Regents.\nPrivate higher education in Arizona is dominated by a large number of for-profit and \"chain\" (multi-site) universities.\nEmbry\u2013Riddle Aeronautical University, Prescott and Prescott College are Arizona's only non-profit four-year private colleges.\nArizona has a wide network of two-year vocational schools and community colleges. These colleges were governed historically by a separate statewide board of directors but, in 2002, the state legislature transferred almost all oversight authority to individual community college districts. The Maricopa County Community College District includes 11 community colleges throughout Maricopa County and is one of the largest in the nation.\nPrivate colleges and universities in Arizona.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCommunity colleges.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCulture.\nVisual arts and museums.\nPhoenix Art Museum, on the historic Central Avenue Corridor in Phoenix, is the Southwest's largest collection of visual art from across the world. The museum displays international exhibitions alongside the museum's collection of more than 18,000 works of American, Asian, European, Latin American, Western American, modern and contemporary art, and fashion design. With a community education mandate since 1951, Phoenix Art Museum holds a year-round program of festivals, live performances, independent art films and educational programs. The museum also has PhxArtKids, an interactive space for children; photography exhibitions through the museum's partnership with the Center for Creative Photography; the landscaped Sculpture Garden and dining at Arcadia Farms.\nArizona is a recognized center of Native American art, with a number of galleries showcasing historical and contemporary works. The Heard Museum, also in Phoenix, is a major repository of Native American art. Some of the signature exhibits include a full Navajo hogan, the Mareen Allen Nichols Collection containing 260 pieces of contemporary jewelry, the Barry Goldwater Collection of 437 historic Hopi kachina dolls, and an exhibit on the 19th-century boarding school experiences of Native Americans. The Heard Museum has about 250,000 visitors a year.\nSedona, Jerome, and Tubac are known as budding artist colonies, and small arts scenes exist in the larger cities and near the state universities.\nFilm.\nSeveral major Hollywood films, such as \"Billy Jack\", \"U Turn\", \"Waiting to Exhale\", \"Just One of the Guys\", \"Can't Buy Me Love\", \"Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure\", \"The Scorpion King\", \"The Banger Sisters\", \"Used Cars\", and \"Raising Arizona\" have been made there (as have many Westerns). The 1993 science fiction movie \"Fire in the Sky\", based on a reported alien abduction in the town of Snowflake, was set in Snowflake. It was filmed in the Oregon towns of Oakland, Roseburg, and Sutherlin.\nThe 1974 film \"Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore\", for which Ellen Burstyn won the Academy Award for Best Actress, and also starring Kris Kristofferson, was set in Tucson. The climax of the 1977 Clint Eastwood film \"The Gauntlet\" takes place in downtown Phoenix. The final segments of the 1984 film \"Starman\" take place at Meteor Crater outside Winslow. The Jeff Foxworthy comedy documentary movie \"\" was filmed almost entirely at the Dodge Theatre. Some of Alfred Hitchcock's classic film \"Psycho\" was shot in Phoenix, the ostensible home town of the main character.\nSome of the television shows filmed or set in Arizona include \"The New Dick Van Dyke Show\", \"Medium\", \"Alice\", \"The First 48\", \"Insomniac with Dave Attell\", \"Cops\", and \"America's Most Wanted\". The TV sitcom \"Alice\", which was based on the movie was set in Phoenix. \"Twilight\" had passages set in Phoenix at the beginning and the end of the film.\nMusic.\nArizona is prominently featured in the lyrics of many Country and Western songs, such as Jamie O'Neal's hit ballad \"There Is No Arizona\". George Strait's \"Oceanfront Property\" uses \"ocean front property in Arizona\" as a metaphor for a sucker proposition. The line \"see you down in Arizona Bay\" is used in a Tool song in reference to the possibility (expressed as a \"hope\" by comedian Bill Hicks) that Southern California will one day fall into the ocean. Glen Campbell, a notable resident, popularized the song \"By The Time I Get To Phoenix\".\n\"Arizona\" was the title of a popular song recorded by Mark Lindsay. Arizona is mentioned by the hit song \"Take It Easy\", written by Jackson Browne and Glenn Frey and performed by the Eagles. Arizona is also mentioned in the Beatles' song \"Get Back\", credited to John Lennon and Paul McCartney; McCartney sings: \"JoJo left his home in Tucson, Arizona, for some California grass.\" \"Carefree Highway\", released in 1974 by Gordon Lightfoot, takes its name from Arizona State Route 74 north of Phoenix.\nArizona's budding music scene is helped by emerging bands, as well as some well-known artists. The Gin Blossoms, Chronic Future, Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, Jimmy Eat World, Caroline's Spine, and others began their careers in Arizona. Also, a number of punk and rock bands got their start in Arizona, including JFA, The Feederz, Sun City Girls, The Meat Puppets, The Maine, The Summer Set, and more recently Authority Zero and Digital Summer.\nArizona also has many singers and other musicians. Singer, songwriter and guitarist Michelle Branch is from Sedona. Chester Bennington, the former lead vocalist of Linkin Park, and mash-up artist DJ Z-Trip are both from Phoenix. One of Arizona's better known musicians is shock rocker Alice Cooper, who helped define the genre. Maynard James Keenan, the lead singer of the bands Tool, A Perfect Circle, and Puscifer, calls the town of Cornville home.\nOther notable singers include country singers Dierks Bentley and Marty Robbins, folk singer Katie Lee, Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks, CeCe Peniston, Rex Allen, 2007 \"American Idol\" winner Jordin Sparks, and Linda Ronstadt.\nArizona is also known for its heavy metal scene, which is centered in and around Phoenix. In the early to mid-1990s, it included bands such as Job for a Cowboy, Knights of the Abyss, Greeley Estates, Eyes Set To Kill, blessthefall, The Word Alive, The Dead Rabbitts, and Abigail Williams. The band Soulfly calls Phoenix home and Megadeth lived in Phoenix for about a decade. Beginning in and around 2009, Phoenix began to host a burgeoning desert rock and sludge metal underground, (ala' Kyuss in 1990s California) led by bands like Wolves of Winter, Asimov, and Dead Canyon.\nAmerican composer Elliott Carter composed his first String Quartet (1950\u201351) while on sabbatical (from New York) in Arizona. The quartet won a Pulitzer Prize and other awards and is now a staple of the string quartet repertoire.\nSports.\nFour Super Bowls have been held in Arizona, including Super Bowl\u00a0LVII which was held at State Farm Stadium on February 12, 2023.\nDue to its numerous golf courses, Arizona is home to several stops on the PGA Tour, most notably the Phoenix Open, held at the TPC of Scottsdale, and the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Marana.\nAuto racing is another sport known in the state. Phoenix Raceway in Avondale is home to NASCAR race weekends twice a year. Firebird International Raceway near Chandler is home to drag racing and other motorsport events.\nCollege sports.\nCollege sports are also prevalent in Arizona. The Arizona State Sun Devils and the Arizona Wildcats belong to the Big-12 Conference while the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks compete in the Big Sky Conference and the Grand Canyon Antelopes compete in the Western Athletic Conference. The rivalry between Arizona State Sun Devils and the Arizona Wildcats predates Arizona's statehood, and is the oldest rivalry in the NCAA. The Territorial Cup, first awarded in 1889 and certified as the oldest trophy in college football, is awarded to the winner of the annual football game between the two schools.\nArizona also hosts several college football bowl games. The Fiesta Bowl, originally held at Sun Devil Stadium, is now held at State Farm Stadium in Glendale. The Fiesta Bowl is part of the new College Football Playoff (CFP). University of Phoenix Stadium was also home to the 2007 and 2011 BCS National Championship Games.\nState Farm Stadium hosted the Final Four of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament in 2017 and is scheduled to host it again in 2024.\nBaseball.\nArizona is a popular location for Major League Baseball spring training, as it is the site of the Cactus League. Spring training was first started in Arizona in 1947, when Brewers owner Veeck sold them in 1945 but went on to purchase the Cleveland Indians in 1946. He decided to train the Cleveland Indians in Tucson and convinced the New York Giants to give Phoenix a try. Thus, the Cactus League was born.\nOn March 9, 1995, Arizona was awarded a franchise to begin to play for the 1998 season. A $130million franchise fee was paid to Major League Baseball and on January 16, 1997, the Diamondbacks were officially voted into the National League.\nSince their debut, the Diamondbacks have won five National League West titles, two National League Championship pennants, and the 2001 World Series.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["28832734", "21883824"], "permutation_1": ["28832734", "21883824"], "permutation_2": ["28832734", "21883824"], "permutation_3": ["21883824", "28832734"]}
{"id": "2hop__434277_127375", "docs_added": {"567703": "Grinspoon\nAustralian rock band\nGrinspoon are an Australian rock band from Lismore, New South Wales, which formed in 1995 by Pat Davern on guitar, Joe Hansen on bass guitar, Kristian Hopes on drums and frontman Phil Jamieson on vocals and guitar. Also in that year, Grinspoon won the national youth radio, Triple J\u2013sponsored Unearthed competition for Lismore, with their post-grunge song \"Sickfest\". The band's name references Lester Grinspoon, an associate professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who supported marijuana for medical use.\nAll eight of Grinspoon's studio albums have reached the ARIA albums chart top\u00a010. Their sound changed to mainstream rock with the release of their third studio album, \"New Detention\" (2002), which peaked at No.\u00a02; likewise, their fifth studio album \"Alibis & Other Lies\" (2007) also reached No.\u00a02. The 2004 fourth album, \"Thrills, Kills & Sunday Pills\", peaked at No.\u00a04. At the ARIA Music Awards of 2005 it won the Best Rock Album Award.\nThe band were signed to Universal Records in the United States by late 1998, and were promoted with the songs \"Champion\", which featured in \"Gran Turismo 3\"; \"Post Enebriated Anxiety\", which was on the international version of \"Guide to Better Living\" (1999); \"Chemical Heart\", via the internet; and a cover of the Prong song \"Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck\", from Grinspoon's \"Pushing Buttons\" (1998) EP, which was also included on \"\" (1998). On 4 December 2013, the band members announced an indefinite hiatus to pursue individual projects, although they made a return in earnest in 2017. Their eighth studio album, \"Whatever, Whatever\" (2024) reached No.\u00a03.\nHistory.\n1995-2000: Early years.\nIn July 1995, Pat Davern (guitar), Joe Hansen (bass guitar), Kristian Hopes (drums) and Phil Jamieson (vocals, guitar) met at a Lismore hotel, The Gollan, for a jam night. They decided to form a band and three\u00a0weeks later they recorded a two-track demo, which they entered for the national youth radio station Triple J's Unearthed competition. Their name was taken from Lester Grinspoon, an associate professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who supported marijuana for medical use. They won the competition with their post-grunge, alternative rock song \"Sickfest\" \u2013 their first track ever written together by Davern and Jamieson.\nGrinspoon gained airplay on Triple J and independent radio stations. They developed a strong following among the Australian \"alternative\" and \"mosh pit crowd.\" Their debut extended Play (EP) was the six-track, \"Grinspoon\" (a.k.a. \"Green Album\"), was released in 1995 through the independent Oracle Records. It contained the songs \"Sickfest\" and \"More Than You Are\" that became popular with fans and were rerecorded on later releases.\nGrinspoon's second EP, \"Licker Bottle Cozy\", recorded in June 1996 and produced by Phil McKellar, was released by Grudge Records in December. It had a slightly heavier sound than their earlier EP with five tracks including the songs \"Champion\" and \"Pig Pen\". In September 1997 they released their first full-length album, \"Guide to Better Living\", co-produced by McKellar and well-known Swiss-American heavy metal producer Ulrich Wild. The album peaked at No.\u00a011 on the ARIA Albums Charts and went platinum with sales of over 70,000 in Australia. It represents the Helmet-influenced alternative metal sound of their early career with heavier songs like \"Pressure Tested 1984\". The Australian version of the album features five live songs\u2014illustrating the band's sense of humour and ability to play live\u2014and a hidden track, the acoustic \"Protest\". US branch of Universal Records signed the band by late 1998 and released an altered version of \"Guide to Better Living\" in March 1999.\nWhilst in US touring for ten months as support act for Creed, Lit, Godsmack and Anthrax, Grinspoon released a six track EP, \"Pushing Buttons\", for their Australian market in September 1998. It featured the popular heavy song \"Black Friday\" and the lighter songs \"Busy\" and \"Explain\". After the intense US touring, Grinspoon released their second album, \"Easy\" in September 1999, which peaked at No.\u00a04 and went platinum in Australia. It contained the singles \"Ready 1\" and \"Rock Show\".\n2001-2007: Changing direction.\nAfter a break to reconsider their direction and sound Grinspoon started recording their next album, \"New Detention\", in Sydney's Festival Studios in September 2001 but prior to finishing the studios were shut down and so vocals and guitars were recorded in smaller studios. Further delays occurred after Hopes injured his hand on a studio window. \"New Detention\" was released in June 2002 and was more commercial\u2014it peaked at No.\u00a02 on the ARIA Albums Charts and went platinum. The first single from the album, \"Chemical Heart\", released in February had created a stir with long term fans and the media because it was different from their previous grunge sound. The band insisted the change was a natural one and was an improvement. Nevertheless, the band still performs older tracks in their live shows. They released a four track EP in March 2003, \"Panic Attack\"\u2014containing a cover of INXS's \"Don't Change\"\u2014which reached No.\u00a013 on the ARIA Singles Chart.\nIn August 2004, they released a new single, \"Hard Act To Follow\", which reached the Top 30. It was from the September album \"Thrills, Kills & Sunday Pills\", which peaked at No.\u00a04 and went platinum. Grinspoon also performed at the 2004 NRL grand final before a second single, \"Better Off Alone\", issued in November, also reached the Top 30. The third single was \"Hold on Me\" released in February 2005. For \"Thrills, Kills & Sunday Pills\", the band agreed that they were deliberately seeking a new audience, claiming they wrote a number of songs for the release and rejected any that sounded like earlier work. It won the 2005 'Best Rock Album Award' at the ARIA Music Awards. They had previously been nominated 9 times.\nGrinspoon had built a strong local following after their rise, they were regulars at Australian music festivals. On 26 March 2006, Grinspoon performed \"Hard Act To Follow\" and \"Better Off Alone\" at the 2006 Commonwealth Games Closing Ceremony in Melbourne. They headlined the inaugural \"Thank God It's Over\" in Melbourne, at \"BOBFest '06\" in South Australia in October and at Odyssey 2006 at Dreamworld for New Year's Eve.\nIn February 2007, Jamieson admitted himself to rehab due to addiction to crystal methamphetamine. On Andrew Denton's \"Enough Rope\" in July, Jamieson discussed his drug addictions, an extramarital affair, stealing money from bandmates, detox and rehab experiences.\nThe band completed, \"Alibis & Other Lies\" in July 2007, as their final album for Universal. It was co-produced by the band and Ramesh Sathiah, who had worked with them on their earliest recordings. Earlier albums before this were pop-oriented rock, while \"Easy\" and \"Alibis & Other Lies\" were more heavy rock. The first single from the album, \"Black Tattoo\", was released as a digital download on 23 June and physically a week later. The album peaked at No.\u00a02, their equal highest album chart position (with \"New Detention\" in 2002). Grinspoon released a 2-disc compilation entitled \"Best in Show\". The first disc featured their hits and several older songs, like \"Champion\", which landed the song on \"Gran Turismo 3\". The second disc includes a collection of covers recorded over the years. In the US, all Grinspoon albums had been released on iTunes and other online music stores. The first four were \"Guide To Better Living\", \"Best In Show\", \"Thrills, Kills, and Sunday Pills\", and \"New Detention\". \"Easy\" and \"Alibis & Other Lies\" followed on 31 October 2007.\n2008-2009: Hiatus.\nOn 5 February 2008, Jamieson announced, via the band's official website, that Grinspoon were on hiatus following their appearance at Big Day Out in late January. Grinspoon headlined the Newton's Playground festival, held atop Bathurst's famous Mount Panorama in March, with their song \"Lost Control\" played in advertisements for the festival. On 1 May, Grinspoon announced they would complete more shows before writing a new album.\nGrinspoon recorded The Easybeats' track \"St. Louis\" for a tribute album, \"Easy Fever: A Tribute to The Easybeats and Stevie Wright\"\u2014released in October 2008\u2014while Jamieson's duet with The Wrights on \"Evie part 3: I'm Losing You\" from 2005 was included. The band contributed the track \"Blind Lead Blind\", their B side of 2007's \"Minute By Minute\", to a compilation CD for The Buttery Drug and Alcohol Rehab Centre titled \"Caution: Life Ahead\", which included contributions from other Australian acts such as Powderfinger, Midnight Oil and The Living End, and was released in November.\nGrinspoon performed on 26 July 2009 at the annual Splendour in the Grass Festival in Byron Bay. Jamieson then toured with a supergroup composed of The Living End's Chris Cheney, You Am I's Tim Rogers, and Josh Pyke with a 17-piece band in August 2009. The group performed a tribute to The Beatles' White Album for its 40th anniversary.\n2010: \"Six to Midnight\".\nGrinspoon's next album, titled \"Six to Midnight\", was released on 11 September 2009 on the band's imprint Chk Chk Boom Records, distributed by Universal Records, which peaked at No.\u00a06. Two tracks, \"Dogs\" and the first single, \"Comeback\", were released to radio earlier. For promotion of the album, the band toured in a more intimate setting than most of their previous concerts. On 6 November, Grinspoon played live on Triple J radio and confirmed that \"Summer\" was the second single from the album. In 2010 Premonitions was released as the third single from the album. The band toured for the album including two acoustic shows in London in early 2012 featuring Phil and Pat.\n2011\u20132019: \"Black Rabbits\" and hiatus.\nIn September 2011 Grinspoon announced on their website that they are writing and recording their seventh studio album.\nIn May 2012 the band announced that they were heading to the United States for a month to record the album. The band also hinted that the title of the album would be \"Black Rabbits\". The album was later slated to feature guest musicians including Chris Cheney of The Living End, Tim Rogers of You Am I and Scott Russo of Unwritten Law.\nOn 23 July 2012, Grinspoon released the artwork of the album on their official Facebook page, confirming the name of the release \"Black Rabbits\".\nThe album was released on 28 September, debuting at number 8 on the ARIA charts.\nOn 5 December 2013 a statement on the official Grinspoon website announced that the band would be going on hiatus. A section of the statement reads: \"Thanks to all our families, friends, and especially our fans for the support over the last 18 years \u2013 it's been a wild ride to say the least. We are still a band of brothers but it's time for us to take a break and recharge the batteries. We're excited to see what our future holds\u2026adios amigos, it's been a blast!\"\nIn August 2015, it was announced that the band would be reforming exclusively to play a run of dates opening for Cold Chisel.\nIn 2017, the band announced they would be re-releasing a special 20th Anniversary edition of Guide To Better Living and announced an Australia wide tour. The tour was sold out.\nIn 2019, the group released the compilation, \"Chemical Hearts\".\n2020\u2013present: \"Whatever, Whatever\".\nIn May 2024, the group released the single \"Unknown Pretenders\", which was written in February 2020. At the same time, they announced the release of their eighth studio album \"Whatever, Whatever\".\nAwards and nominations.\nAPRA Awards.\nThe APRA Awards are presented annually from 1982 by the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), \"honouring composers and songwriters\". They commenced in 1982.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Awards table/styles.css\" />\n! scope=\"col\" | Year\n! scope=\"col\" | Nominee / work\n! scope=\"col\" | Award\n! scope=\"col\" | Result\n! Ref.\nARIA Awards.\nThe ARIA Music Awards are a set of annual ceremonies presented by Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), which recognise excellence, innovation, and achievement across all genres of the music of Australia. They commenced in 1987. Grinspoon has won 2 awards from 14 nominations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Awards table/styles.css\" />\n! scope=\"col\" | Year\n! scope=\"col\" | Nominee / work\n! scope=\"col\" | Award\n! scope=\"col\" | Result\nJ Awards.\nThe J Awards are an annual series of Australian music awards that were established by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's youth-focused radio station Triple J. They commenced in 2005.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Awards table/styles.css\" />\n! scope=\"col\" | Year\n! scope=\"col\" | Nominee / work\n! scope=\"col\" | Award\n! scope=\"col\" | Result\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "13046249": "What You Got (Grinspoon song)\n\"What You Got\" is the second single by Australian rock band Grinspoon from their fifth studio album \"Alibis & Other Lies\". The song was co-written by Phil Jamieson and Matthew Strong (Custard), who is the bass player in Jamieson\u2019s side project, Lost Gospel. The single was only released in a digital format on iTunes.\nReception.\nAustralian music website, The Dwarf, describes \"What You Got\" as being musically closer to \"Hard Act to Follow\" stating \"It's short, sharp and 100% killer. Just how it should be.\"\nMichael Olivotto of FasterLouder believes that the song \"instantly wreaks of The Lost Gospel\" and that whilst the song is good in its own right, it \"stick(s) out from the rest of the album and would have been better left as B-side(s)s or for some other project.\"\nSameSame's Nate C felt that \"\"What You Got\" also sound(s) like the \u2018debauched rock and roll\u2019 of vintage Grinners and is sure to appeal to the band\u2019s devoted and faithful..\"\nVideo.\nThe video was filmed in the school gymnasium of Viewbank College. It features the band playing in a gymnasium while the screen flashes to people in still life. The video was produced by Lacey Fitzgerald and directed by James Teh (Peace Charger Productions).\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "34628311": "What You Got (John Lennon song)\n\"What You Got\" is a song written by John Lennon that was first released on his 1974 album \"Walls and Bridges\". It was later released as the B-side to his top 10 \"#9 Dream\" single.\nLyrics and music.\nThe lyrics of \"What You Got\" reflect Lennon being upset at being separated from wife Yoko Ono at the time, during his \"lost weekend.\" This is particularly the case of the refrain of \"You don't know what you got until you lose it.\" Lennon acknowledged that this is the case, stating that \"Well, that's talkin\u2019 about Yoko. You really don't know what you got till you lose it.\" The lyrics are peppered with other cliches, including more reassuring ones such as \"You gotta hang on in,\" and the refrain ends with the phrase \"give me one more chance.\" One line, \"Well it's Saturday night and I just gotta rip it up\" recalls Little Richard's song \"Rip It Up\" but unlike Little Richard, Lennon is not looking to celebrate Saturday night but rather expressing his anxiety about his personal situation and lamenting the time he has wasted getting drunk to try to forget about it. \nMusic lecturers Ben Urish and Ken Bielen describe \"What You Got\" as a \"blues-tinged rocker with more than a little Latin funk thrown in.\" The music to \"What You Got\" was influenced by dance music. It recalls the O'Jays' song \"For the Love of Money.\" Music critic Johnny Rogan sees it as a mixture between Sly Stone, The Isley Brothers and Tamla Motown. Beatle historians Chip Madinger and Mark Easter feel that it sounds like a Commodores song. The song is taken at a fast pace. Beatle historian Bruce Spizer likens the pace to that of the Beatles' \"Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey.\" Beatle biographer John Blaney states that while the music sounds \"up-beat\" it is \"honest and self-explanatory\" below the surface. Urish and Bielen interpret that \"the taut rush of the song implies that the singer is trying to run away from himself,\" an interpretation that is supported by the line \"I've just got to run away / It's such a drag to face another day.\"\nReception.\nBlaney states that \"What You Got\" \"may not have much to say lyrically, but it said it musically in the most fashionable way possible.\" Du Noyer similarly states that it is \"short on poetry, but it's satisfyingly stuffed with drama.\" Rogan states that \"although the party atmosphere suggests one long drinking binge, neither the musicianship not the arrangement is noticeably slack,\" going on to say that this song sounds better than most of the songs on Lennon's previous album \"Mind Games\". Communications professor Michael Frontani calls it one of Lennon's best vocal performances. \nOn the other hand, \"New Musical Express\" critics Roy Carr and Tony Tyler state that the song \"begins as a promising rocker, but by middle-eight time a routine quality has begun to set in and the overall arthritic effect is overpowering, despite the anticipatory oomph of the first eight bars.\" Madinger and Easter similarly state that the song \"doesn't seem to go anywhere after the first verse and chorus,\" but they do praise the \"rhythm backing.\" Allmusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine considers it a \"middling rocker\" that replicates the \"bright, sunny surface\" of the big hit from \"Walls and Bridges\", \"Whatever Gets You thru the Night.\"\n\"Far Out\" critic Tim Coffman rated it as Lennon's 8th greatest deep cut, calling it \"a portrait of a man lost without the love of his life\" and saying \"Set to an early rock and roll shuffle, Lennon turns in a performance which feels like the hardcore equivalent of an early 1960s pop rock song, howling in frustration as the gentle staccato guitars follow his every word.\"\nPersonnel.\nThe performers on \"What You Got\" were:\nAlternate version.\nA 1:15 long edit of a demo of the song was issued on \"John Lennon Anthology.\" Lennon plays this version on an unplugged electric guitar.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "978860": "You Really Got Me\n1964 single by the Kinks\n\"You Really Got Me\" is a song by the English rock band the Kinks, written by frontman Ray Davies and released as their third single in 1964. The song, originally performed in a more blues-oriented style, was inspired by artists such as Lead Belly and Big Bill Broonzy. Two versions were recorded, with the second performance used for the final single. Lead guitarist Dave Davies performs the song's famous guitar solo. Although it was long rumoured that future Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page had performed the song's guitar solo, this has been debunked by Page himself.\n\"You Really Got Me\" is built around power chords (perfect fifths and octaves) and it heavily influenced later rock musicians, particularly in the heavy metal and punk rock genres. Built around a guitar riff played by Dave Davies, its lyrics were described by Dave as \"a love song for street kids\".\nThe song was released in the UK on 4 August 1964 by Pye Records as the group's third single, and reached number one on the \"Record Retailer\" chart the following month, remaining there for two weeks. It was released in the US on 2 September by Reprise Records. The song became the group's breakthrough hit. It established them as one of the top British Invasion acts in the United States, reaching number seven later in the year. \"You Really Got Me\" was later included on the Kinks' debut album, \"Kinks\". American rock band Van Halen covered the song in their 1978 eponymous debut album; it was released as their first single and peaked at No. 36 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. The song was also covered by American rock band Oingo Boingo in their 1981 album \"Only a Lad\".\nBackground.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n[The original demo version of 'You Really Got Me'] had very way-out words and a funny sort of ending that didn't. We did it differently on the record because [this original version] was really rather uncommercial.\n\u2013 Ray Davies\n\"You Really Got Me\" was written by Ray Davies, the Kinks' vocalist and main songwriter, sometime between 9 and 12 March 1964. Created on the piano in the front room of the Davies' home, the song was stylistically very different from the finished product, being much lighter and somewhat jazz-oriented. Ray said of the song's writing, \"When I came up with ['You Really Got Me'] I hadn't been writing songs very long at all. It was one of the first five I ever came up with.\"\nDavies said that he had been inspired to write the song one night during his college days playing with the Dave Hunt Band, when he saw an attractive girl on the dance floor. He said: \"When we finished, I went off to find her, but she was gone and never returned to the club. She really got me going.\"\nDuring the spring of 1964, Ray Davies played an early version of \"You Really Got Me\" on the piano to rock photographer Allan Ballard during a photo shoot. Ballard later remembered, \"It was quite a small, pokey, Victorian Terrace, a bit scruffy, and in the hallway they had an upright piano. Ray sat down and plonked out, 'Der-der, der, Der-der!' He said, 'What do you reckon to this?' It meant nothing to me at the time, but it ended up as 'You Really Got Me'.\"\nRay, initially planning for the song to be a \"more laid-back number\", later played the chords of the song to brother Dave Davies, the Kinks' lead guitarist. However, upon hearing the track, Dave decided that the riff would be much more powerful on a guitar. Ray said of the track's change to a guitar-centred track, \"I wanted it to be a jazz-type tune, because that's what I liked at the time. It's written originally around a sax line\u00a0... Dave ended up playing the sax line in fuzz guitar and it took the song a step further.\" The band began performing the new track in some of their live shows, where it was well received.\nIn 1998, Ray said, \"I'd written 'You Really Got Me' as tribute to all those great blues people I love: Lead Belly and Big Bill Broonzy.\" Dave cited Gerry Mulligan as an inspiration, saying, \"Ray was a great fan of Gerry Mulligan, who was in [the \"Jazz on a Summer's Day\" movie], and as he sat at the piano at home, he sort of messed around in a vein similar to Mulligan and came up with this figure based on a 12-bar blues\". Dave has also said that song had been inspired by Jimmy Giuffre's song \"The Train and the River\". According to the band's manager, Larry Page, the song's characteristic riff came about while working out the chords of the Kingsmen's \"Louie Louie\". Lyrically, the song was said to be influenced by an encounter with one of the band's \"first serious female fans\".\nRecording.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nWhen I first heard [\"You Really Got Me\"], I said, \"Shit, it doesn't matter what you do with this, it's a number one song\". It could have been done in waltz time and it would have been a hit.\n \u2013 Shel Talmy, producer of \"You Really Got Me\"\nThe Kinks recorded \"You Really Got Me\" at least twice in mid-1964, likely around June 14 and July 12. The band's demo was in a \"bluesy\" style, while a full studio version recorded in June was slower and less emphatic than the final single. Shel Talmy had, according to Davies, covered the track in reverb, all but burying the lead guitar. The band wanted to rerecord the song, but their record company Pye refused to fund another session on the grounds that the band's first two singles had failed to chart. Ray Davies, however, threatened that he would refuse to perform or promote the single unless it was re-recorded. Manager Larry Page also refused to publish the original recording. When Pye stood its ground, the band's own management broke the stalemate by funding the session themselves. Ray Davies' adamant attitude on behalf of the career-making song effectively established him as the leader and chief songwriter of the Kinks. Davies later said, \"I was floundering around trying to find an identity. It was in 1964 that I managed to do that, to be able to justify myself and say, 'I exist, I'm here.' I was literally born when that song hit.\"\nThe influential distortion sound of the guitar track was created after guitarist Dave Davies sliced the speaker cone of his guitar amplifier with a razor blade and poked it with a pin. The amplifier was affectionately called \"little green\", after the name of the amplifier made by the Elpico company, and purchased in Davies' neighbourhood music shop, linked to a Vox AC-30. In 2014, Dave Davies accused brother Ray of lying about participating in Dave's guitar distortion sound. Dave wrote on his Facebook page, \"My brother is lying. I don't know why he does this but it was my Elpico amp that I bought and out of frustration I cut the speaker cone up with a razor blade and I was so shocked and surprised and excited that it worked that I demonstrated the sound to Ray and [Kinks bassist] Pete [Quaife]... Ray liked the sound and he had written a riff on the piano which formed the basis of the song 'You Really Got Me' and I played the riff on my guitar with my new sound. I alone created this sound.\"\nAccording to recent Kinks' releases that give full official performance credits of the track, group members Ray Davies (vocals and rhythm guitar), Dave Davies (lead guitar), Pete Quaife (bass) are joined by session men Bobby Graham (drums), and Arthur Greenslade (piano). Regular Kinks drummer Mick Avory plays the tambourine.\nGuitar solo.\nThe guitar solo on the recording has been the subject of the persistent myth that it was not played by the Kinks' lead guitarist Dave Davies, but by then-session player Jimmy Page, who later joined the Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin. Among those claiming Page played lead guitar was Jon Lord of Deep Purple, who also claimed to play piano on the track. Page has always denied playing the song's guitar solo, going so far as to say in a 1970s interview cited in \"Sound on Sound\" magazine, \"I didn't play on 'You Really Got Me' and that's what pisses him [Ray Davies] off.\" Rock historian and author Doug Hinman makes a case that the rumour was begun and fostered by the established British rhythm and blues community, many of whose members were resentful that an upstart band of teenagers such as the Kinks could produce such a powerful and influential blues-based recording seemingly out of nowhere.\nShel Talmy, the producer on the track, put the controversy to rest in an interview with \"The Guardian\", saying, \"contrary to myth, Jimmy didn't play on 'You Really Got Me'.\" In a 7 November 2014 interview with SiriusXM's \"Town Hall\" series, Page confirmed again that he did not play on the song, saying \"Oh, Crikey! I wasn't on 'You Really Got Me,' but I did play on the Kinks' records. That's all I'm going to say about it. But every time I do an interview, people ask me about 'You Really Got Me.' So maybe somebody can correct Wikipedia so people won't keep asking me.\" Drummer Mick Avory also confirmed that the guitar solo was played by Dave Davies and not Jimmy Page in an interview with AllMusic in 2023.\nIn his 1998 autobiographical release \"The Storyteller\", Ray Davies discusses the guitar solo. He confirms that his brother Dave played the solo and it was preceded by some bantering between the two:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Halfway through the song it was time for Dave's guitar solo. This moment had to be right. So I shouted across the studio to Dave, give him encouragement. But I seemed to spoil his concentration. He looked at me with a dazed expression. 'Fuck off.' If you doubt me, if you doubt what I'm saying, I challenge you to listen to the original Kinks recording of 'You Really Got Me'. Halfway through the song, after the second chorus, before the guitar solo, there's a drum break. Boo ka, boo boo ka, boo ka, boo boo. And in the background you can hear 'fuck off'. You can, you can. When I did the vocal I tried to cover it up by going 'Oh no', but in the background you still hear it 'fuck off'. And it's even clearer on CD, it's really embarrassing.\nMusic and lyrics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nEvery aspect of the song's construction is governed by the riff, a rapid alteration of bass notes a whole tone apart... this element probably accounts almost single-handedly for the song's popularity.\nMatthew Gelbart, musicologist\nCommentators have described \"You Really Got Me\" as garage rock, hard rock, rock and roll, and proto-punk. While Ray Davies had been instructed at the time to write \"Beatle-type\" material for commercial reasons, \"You Really Got Me\" was written as a more R&B-based composition. The song is centred on a guitar riff that has been called \"instantly identifiable\". American musicologist Robert Walser described \"You Really Got Me\" as \"the first hit song built around power chords.\"\nThe song has been labeled an early influence of the heavy metal genre, with critic Denise Sullivan of AllMusic writing, \"'You Really Got Me' remains a blueprint song in the hard rock and heavy metal arsenal.\" Dave Davies has rejected the idea that the song is heavy metal, saying: \"I've never really like that term, heavy metal. I think, in all humility, it was the first heavy guitar riff rock record. Just because of the sound\u2014if you played it on a ukulele, it might not have been so powerful.\"\nThe lyrics of the song are about lust and sex. Dave Davies said of the song's lyrics, \"'You Really Got Me' [is] such a pure record, really. It's a love song for street kids. They're not going to wine and dine you, even if they knew how to chat you up. [They say] 'I want you\u2014come here.'\"\nRelease and reception.\n\"You Really Got Me\" was released as the band's third single on 4 August 1964, backed with \"It's All Right\" (also spelled \"It's Alright\"). Within three days of the single's release, \"You Really Got Me\" began to appear on local charts. Eventually, the song climbed to the top of the British charts, the band's first single to do so. Ray Davies later claimed that, due to the single's high demand, Pye Records put all their other records on hold to solely produce copies of \"You Really Got Me\". Due to the high level of success the single achieved in the UK, a rush-release of \"You Really Got Me\" was put out in the US on 2 September 1964, despite being delayed from its initial release date of 26 August. Although it did not enter the charts until 26 September, the record rose to number seven on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100.\nThe song later appeared on the band's debut album, \"Kinks\", with the title of the American release of the album changed to \"You Really Got Me\". Plans for Ray to sing versions of the song in French, German, Spanish, and Japanese for their respective markets were proposed by Shel Talmy but never materialised. The single B-side, \"It's All Right\", was included on the UK EP \"Kinksize Hits\" (1964). It was first issued on an album in the US, where it was included on the Kinks' third album \"Kinkdom\" (1965). Music writers have called the song \"shockingly different\" from the Kinks' recorded work up to this point, and a \"frenetic lost gem\". The song is included on a 1998 CD reissue of the group's debut album.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nWe were really surprised when 'You Really Got Me' was a hit. Why wasn't our last disc, 'You Still Want Me'? Because it wasn't any good. We didn't like it much\u00a0... We write for ourselves now.\n\u2013 Ray Davies\nUpon release, the single received a positive review from \"Record Mirror\", which said, \"Highly promising group with strong guitar sound and a compact sort of vocal performance. Mid-tempo but bustling song should sell well.\" In \"Melody Maker\", singer Dave Berry was featured in a blindfold test of the song, with Berry at first guessing the song was by the Kingsmen. He said, \"It's fabulous, this one. I like these records that sound as if they've gone into a recording studio and done what they wanted to on the spot. It's a good chance of being a big hit.\" The \"Melody Maker\" review had a lasting impact on Ray Davies, who said that Berry \"had a few hits\u2014so he mattered\" and that Berry's belief that the band had \"done what they wanted\" had \"said it all\" for him. In the U.S., \"Cash Box\" called the single \"a pulsating, blues-flavored rock-a-rhythmic...that builds along the way.\"\nThe Kinks' use of distorted guitar riffs continued with songs like \"All Day and All of the Night\", \"Tired of Waiting for You\", and \"Set Me Free\", among others. Pete Townshend of the Who, a band also produced by Talmy at that time, has stated that their first single, \"I Can't Explain\", was influenced by the Kinks' work at the time. Other artists influenced by \"You Really Got Me\" include Tom Petty, John Lydon, Joe Jackson, Chris Bell of Big Star, and Jimi Hendrix, who, according to Dave Davies, described the song as \"a landmark record\".\nIn 1999, \"You Really Got Me\" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. \"Rolling Stone\" magazine placed the song at number 82 on their list of the 500 greatest songs of all time"}, "descending_order": ["34628311", "978860", "13046249", "567703"], "permutation_1": ["34628311", "567703", "978860", "13046249"], "permutation_2": ["978860", "13046249", "567703", "34628311"], "permutation_3": ["567703", "34628311", "13046249", "978860"]}
{"id": "2hop__22516_68918", "docs_added": {"21650": "North Carolina\nU.S. state\nNorth Carolina ( ) is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia to the southwest, and Tennessee to the west. The state is the 28th-largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. Along with South Carolina, it makes up the Carolinas region of the East Coast. At the 2020 census, the state had a population of 10,439,388. Raleigh is the state's capital and Charlotte is its most populous city. The Charlotte metropolitan area, with an estimated population of 2,805,115 in 2023, is the most populous metropolitan area in North Carolina, the 22nd-most populous in the United States, and the largest banking center in the nation after New York City. The Research Triangle, with an estimated population of 2,368,947 in 2023, is the second-most populous combined metropolitan area in the state, 31st-most populous in the United States, and is home to the largest research park in the United States, Research Triangle Park.\nThe earliest evidence of human occupation in North Carolina dates back 10,000 years, found at the Hardaway Site. North Carolina was inhabited by Carolina Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Siouan speaking tribes of Native Americans prior to the arrival of Europeans. King Charles II granted eight lord proprietors a colony they named Carolina after the king and which was established in 1670 with the first permanent settlement at Charles Town (Charleston). Because of the difficulty of governing the entire colony from Charles Town, the colony was eventually divided and North Carolina was established as a royal colony in 1729 and was one of the Thirteen Colonies. The Halifax Resolves resolution adopted by North Carolina on April 12, 1776, was the first formal call for independence from Great Britain among the American Colonies during the American Revolution.\nOn November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the United States Constitution. In the run-up to the American Civil War, North Carolina reluctantly declared its secession from the Union on May 20, 1861, becoming the tenth of eleven states to join the Confederate States of America. Following the Civil War, the state was restored to the Union on July 4, 1868. On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully piloted the world's first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina's Outer Banks. North Carolina often uses the slogan \"First in Flight\" on state license plates to commemorate this achievement, alongside a newer alternative design bearing the slogan \"First in Freedom\" in reference to the Mecklenburg Declaration and Halifax Resolves.\nNorth Carolina is defined by a wide range of elevations and landscapes. From west to east, North Carolina's elevation descends from the Appalachian Mountains to the Piedmont and Atlantic coastal plain. North Carolina's Mount Mitchell at is the highest point in North America east of the Mississippi River. Most of the state falls in the humid subtropical climate zone; however, the western, mountainous part of the state has a subtropical highland climate.\nHistory.\nNative Americans, lost colony, and permanent settlement.\nNorth Carolina was inhabited for at least 10,000 years by succeeding prehistoric Indigenous cultures. The Hardaway Site saw major periods of occupation dating to 10,000 years BCE. Before 200 AD, people were building earthwork platform mounds for ceremonial and religious purposes. Succeeding peoples, including those of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture, established by 1000 AD in the Piedmont and mountain region, continued to build this style of mounds. In contrast to some of the larger centers of the classic Mississippian culture in the area that became known as the western Carolinas, northeastern Georgia, and southeastern Tennessee, most of the larger towns had only one central platform mound. Smaller settlements had none, but were close to more prominent towns. This area became known as the homelands of the historic Cherokee people, who are believed to have migrated over time from the Great Lakes area.\nIn the 500\u2013700 years preceding European contact, the Mississippian culture built elaborate cities and maintained far-flung regional trading networks. Its largest city was Cahokia, which had numerous mounds for different purposes, a highly stratified society, and was located in present-day southwestern Illinois near the Mississippi River. Starting in 1540, the Native polities of the Mississippian culture fell apart and reformed as new groups, such as the Catawba, due to a series of destabilizing events known as the \"Mississippian shatter zone\". Introduction of colonial trading arrangements and hostile native groups from the north such as the Westo Indians hastened changes in an already tenuous regional hierarchy. As described by anthropologist Robbie Ethridge, the Mississippian shatter zone was a time of great instability in what is now the American South, caused by the instability of Mississippian chiefdoms, high mortality from new Eurasian diseases, conversion to an agricultural society and the accompanying population increase, and the emergence of Native \"militaristic slaving societies\".\nHistorically documented tribes in the North Carolina region include the Carolina Algonquian-speaking tribes of the coastal areas, such as the Chowanoc, Roanoke, Pamlico, Machapunga, and Coree, who were the first encountered by the English; the Iroquoian-speaking Meherrin, Cherokee, and Tuscarora of the interior; and Southeastern Siouan-speaking tribes, such as the Cheraw, Waxhaw, Saponi, Waccamaw, Cape Fear Indians, and Catawba of the Piedmont.\nIn the late 16th century, the first Spanish explorers traveling inland recorded meeting Mississippian culture people at Joara, a regional chiefdom near what later developed as Morganton. Records of Hernando de Soto attested to his meeting with them in 1540. In 1567, Captain Juan Pardo led an expedition to claim the area for the Spanish colony and to establish another route to reach silver mines in Mexico. Pardo made a winter base at Joara, which he renamed \"Cuenca\". His expedition built Fort San Juan and left a contingent of 30 Spaniards there, while Pardo traveled further. His forces built and garrisoned five other forts. He returned by a different route to Santa Elena on Parris Island, South Carolina, then a center of Spanish Florida. In the spring of 1568, natives killed all but seventy four of the Spaniards and burned the six forts in the interior, including Fort San Juan. Although the Spanish never returned to the interior, this effort marked the first European attempt at colonization of the interior of what became the United States. A 16th-century journal by Pardo's scribe Bandera, and archaeological findings since 1986 at Joara, have confirmed the settlement.\nAnglo-European settlement.\nIn 1584, Elizabeth I granted a charter to Sir Walter Raleigh, for whom the state capital is named, for land in present-day North Carolina (then part of the territory of Virginia). It was the second American territory that the English attempted to colonize. Raleigh established two colonies on the coast in the late 1580s, but both failed. The colony established in 1587 saw 118 colonists 'disappear' when John White was unable to return from a supply run during battles with the Spanish Armada. The fate of the \"Lost Colony\" of Roanoke Island remains one of the most widely debated mysteries of American history. Two native Chieftains, Manteo and Wanchese, of which the former helped the colonists and the latter was distrustful, had involvement in the colony and even accompanied Raleigh to England on a previous voyage in 1585. Manteo was also the first Indigenous North American to be baptized by English settlers. Upon White's return in 1590, neither native nor Englishman were to be found. Popular theory holds that the colonists either traveled away with or assimilated into local native culture. Virginia Dare, the first English person to be born in North America, was born on Roanoke Island on August 18, 1587; the surrounding Dare County is named for her.\nAs early as 1650, settlers from the Virginia colony had moved into the Albemarle Sound region. By 1663, King Charles\u00a0II of England granted a charter to start a new colony on the North American continent; this would generally establish North Carolina's borders. He named it \"Carolina\" in honor of his father, CharlesI. By 1665, a second charter was issued to attempt to resolve territorial questions. This charter rewarded the Lords Proprietors, eight Englishmen to whom King Charles II granted joint ownership of a tract of land in the state. All of these men either had remained loyal to the Crown or aided Charles's restoration to the English throne after Cromwell. In 1712, owing to disputes over governance, the Carolina colony split into North Carolina and South Carolina. North Carolina became a crown colony in 1729.\nMost of the English colonists had arrived as indentured servants, hiring themselves out as laborers for a fixed period to pay for their passage. In the early years the line between indentured servants and African slaves or laborers was fluid. Some Africans were allowed to earn their freedom before slavery became a lifelong status. Most of the free colored families formed in North Carolina before the Revolution were descended from unions or marriages between free whites and enslaved or free Africans or African-Americans. If the mothers were free, their children were born free. Many had migrated or were descendants of migrants from colonial Virginia. As the flow of indentured laborers to the colony decreased with improving economic conditions in Great Britain, planters imported more slaves, and the state's legal delineations between free and slave status tightened, effectively hardening the latter into a racial caste. Conditions for both slaves and workers worsened as the ranks of the former eclipsed the latter and expansion of farming operations into former Indigenous territories lowered prices. Unable to establish deep water ports such as at Charles Town and Norfolk, the economy's growth and prosperity was thus based on cheap labor and slave plantation systems, devoted primarily to the production of tobacco, then later cotton and textiles.\nIn 1738\u20131739, smallpox caused high fatalities among the Native Americans, who had no immunity to the new disease (it had become endemic over centuries in Europe). According to the historian Russell Thornton, \"The 1738 epidemic was said to have killed one-half of the Cherokee, with other tribes of the area suffering equally.\"\nColonial period.\nAfter the Spanish in the 16th century, the first permanent European settlers of North Carolina were English colonists who migrated south from Virginia. Virginia had grown rapidly and land was less available. Nathaniel Batts was documented as one of the first of these Virginian migrants. He settled south of the Chowan River and east of the Great Dismal Swamp in 1655. By 1663, this northeastern area of the Province of Carolina, known as the Albemarle Settlements, was undergoing full-scale English settlement. During the same period, the English monarch CharlesII gave provincial land grants to the Lords Proprietors, the group of noblemen who had helped restore him to the throne in 1660. These grants were predicated on an agreement that the Lords would use their influence to bring in colonists and establish ports of trade. This new Province of Carolina was named in honor and memory of his father, CharlesI (Latin: \"Carolus\").\nLacking a viable coastal port city due to geography, towns grew at a slower pace and remained small. By the late 17th century, Carolina was essentially two colonies, one centered in the Albemarle region in the north and the other located in the south around Charleston. In 1705 South Carolinian John Lawson purchased land on the Pamlico River and laid out Bath, North Carolina's first town. After returning to England, he published the book A New Voyage to Carolina, which became a travelogue and a marketing piece to encourage new colonists to Carolina. Lawson encouraged Baron Christoph Von Graffenried, the leader of a group of Swiss and German Protestants, to immigrate to Carolina. Von Graffenried purchased land between the Neuse and the Trent Rivers and established the town of New Bern. After an attack on New Bern in which hundreds were killed or injured, Lawson was caught then executed by Tuscarora Indians. A large revolt happened in the state in 1711, known as Cary's Rebellion. In 1712, North Carolina became a separate colony, and in 1729 it became a royal colony, with the exception of the Earl Granville holdings.\nIn June 1718, \"Queen Anne's Revenge\", the flagship of pirate Blackbeard, ran aground at Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina, in present-day Carteret County. After the grounding, her crew and supplies were transferred to smaller ships. In November 1718, after appealing to the governor of North Carolina, who promised safe-haven and a pardon, Blackbeard was killed in an ambush by troops from Virginia. In 1996, Intersal, Inc., a private maritime research firm, discovered the remains of a vessel likely to be the \"Queen Anne's Revenge\", which was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.\nNorth Carolina became one of the Thirteen Colonies and with the territory of South Carolina was originally known as the Province of North Carolina. The northern and southern parts of the original province separated in 1712, with North Carolina becoming a royal colony in 1729. Originally settled by small farmers, sometimes having a few slaves, who were oriented toward subsistence agriculture, the colony lacked large cities or towns. Pirates menaced the coastal settlements, but by 1718 piracy in the Carolinas was on the decline. Growth was strong in the middle of the 18th century, as the economy attracted Scots-Irish, Quaker, English and German immigrants. A majority of the North Carolina colonists generally supported the American Revolution, although there were some Loyalists. Loyalists in North Carolina were fewer in number than in some other colonies such as Georgia, South Carolina, Delaware, and New York.\nDuring colonial times, Edenton served as the state capital beginning in 1722, followed by New Bern becoming the capital in 1766. Construction of Tryon Palace, which served as the residence and offices of the provincial governor William Tryon, began in 1767 and was completed in 1771. In 1788, Raleigh was chosen as the site of the new capital, as its central location protected it from coastal attacks. Officially established in 1792 as both county seat and state capital, the city was named after Sir Walter Raleigh, sponsor of Roanoke, the \"lost colony\" on Roanoke Island. The population of the colony more than quadrupled from 52,000 in 1740 to 270,000 in 1780 from high immigration from Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, plus immigrants from abroad.\nNorth Carolina did not have any printer or print shops until 1749, when the North Carolina Assembly commissioned James Davis from Williamsburg Virginia to act as their official printer. Before this time the laws and legal journals of North Carolina were handwritten and were kept in a largely disorganized manner, prompting the hiring of Davis. Davis settled in New Bern, married, and in 1755 was appointed by Benjamin Franklin as North Carolina's first postmaster. In October of that year the North Carolina Assembly awarded Davis a contract to carry mail between Wilmington, North Carolina and Suffolk, Virginia. He was also active in North Carolina politics as a member of the Assembly and later as the Sheriff. Davis also founded and printed the \"North-Carolina Gazette\", North Carolina's first newspaper, printed in his printing house in New Bern.\nDifferences in the settlement patterns of eastern and western North Carolina, or the Atlantic coastal plain and uplands, affected the political, economic, and social life of the state from the 18th until the 20th century. Eastern North Carolina was settled chiefly by immigrants from rural England and Gaelic speakers from the Scottish Highlands. The Piedmont upcountry and western mountain region of North Carolina was settled chiefly by Scots-Irish, English, and German Protestants, the so-called \"cohee\". Arriving during the mid-to-late 18th century, the Scots-Irish, people of Scottish descent who migrated to and then emigrated from what is today Northern Ireland, were the largest non-English immigrant group before the Revolution; English indentured servants were overwhelmingly the largest immigrant group before the Revolution.\nRevolutionary War.\nDuring the American Revolutionary War, the English and Gaelic speaking Highland Scots of eastern North Carolina tended to remain loyal to the British Crown, because of longstanding business and personal connections with Great Britain. The English, Welsh, Scots-Irish, and German settlers of western North Carolina tended to favor American independence from Britain. British loyalists dubbed the Mecklenburg County area to be 'a hornet's nest' of radicals, birthing the name of the future Charlotte NBA team. On April 12, 1776, the colony became the first to instruct its delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence from the British Crown, through the Halifax Resolves passed by the North Carolina Provincial Congress. The date of this event is memorialized on the state flag and state seal. Throughout the Revolutionary War, fierce guerrilla warfare erupted between bands of pro-independence and pro-British colonists. In some cases the war was also an excuse to settle private grudges and rivalries.\nNorth Carolina had around 7,800 Patriots join the Continental Army under General George Washington; and an additional 10,000 served in local militia units under such leaders as General Nathanael Greene. There was some military action, especially in 1780\u201381. Many Carolinian frontiersmen had moved west over the mountains, into the Washington District (later known as Tennessee), but in 1789, following the Revolution, the state was persuaded to relinquish its claim to the western lands. It ceded them to the national government so the Northwest Territory could be organized and managed nationally.\nA major American victory in the war took place at King's Mountain along the North Carolina\u2013South Carolina border; on October 7, 1780, a force of 1,000 Patriots from western North Carolina (including what is today the state of Tennessee) and southwest Virginia overwhelmed a force of some 1,000 British troops led by Major Patrick Ferguson. Most of the soldiers fighting for the British side in this battle were Carolinians who had remained loyal to the Crown (they were called \"Tories\" or Loyalists). The American victory at King's Mountain gave the advantage to colonists who favored American independence, and it prevented the British Army from recruiting new soldiers from the Tories.\nThe road to Yorktown and America's independence from Great Britain led through North Carolina. As the British Army moved north from victories in Charleston and Camden, South Carolina, the Southern Division of the Continental Army and local militia prepared to meet them. Following General Daniel Morgan's victory over the British Cavalry Commander Banastre Tarleton at the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781, southern commander Nathanael Greene led British Lord Charles Cornwallis across the heartland of North Carolina, and away from the latter's base of supply in Charleston, South Carolina. This campaign is known as \"The Race to the Dan\" or \"The Race for the River\".\nIn the Battle of Cowan's Ford, Cornwallis met resistance along the banks of the Catawba River at Cowan's Ford on February 1, 1781, in an attempt to engage General Morgan's forces during a tactical withdrawal. Morgan had moved to the northern part of the state to combine with General Greene's newly recruited forces. Generals Greene and Cornwallis finally met at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in present-day Greensboro on March 15, 1781. Although the British troops held the field at the end of the battle, their casualties at the hands of the numerically superior Continental Army were crippling. Following this \"Pyrrhic victory\", Cornwallis chose to move to the Virginia coastline to get reinforcements, and to allow the Royal Navy to protect his battered army. This decision would result in Cornwallis' eventual defeat at Yorktown, Virginia, later in 1781. The Patriots' victory there guaranteed American independence. On November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the twelfth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.\nAntebellum period.\nAfter 1800, cotton and tobacco became important export crops. The eastern half of the state, especially the Coastal Plain region, developed a slave society based on a plantation system and slave labor. Planters owning large estates wielded significant political and socio-economic power in antebellum North Carolina. They placed their interests above those of the generally non-slave-holding yeoman farmers of North Carolina. While slaveholding was slightly less concentrated compared to some other Southern states, according to the 1860 census, more than 330,000 people, or 33% of the population out of 992,622 people in total, were enslaved African Americans. They lived and worked chiefly on plantations in the Piedmont and Coastal Plain regions of the state. In addition, 30,463 free people of color lived in the state. They were also mainly concentrated in the eastern coastal plain, especially at port cities such as Wilmington and New Bern, where a variety of jobs were available. Most were descendants from free African Americans who had migrated along with neighbors from Virginia during the 18th century. The majority were the descendants of unions in the working classes between white women, indentured servants or free, and African men, indentured, slave or free.\nAfter the American Revolution, Quakers and Mennonites worked to persuade slaveholders to free their slaves. Some were inspired by their efforts and the language of the Revolution to arrange for manumission of their slaves. The number of free people of color rose markedly in the first couple of decades after the Revolution. Many free people of color migrated to the frontier, along with their European-American neighbors, where the social system was looser. By 1810, nearly three percent of the free population consisted of free people of color, who numbered slightly more than 10,000. The western areas of North Carolina were mainly white families of European descent, especially Scotch-Irish, who operated small subsistence farms. In the early national period, the state became a center of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy, with a strong Whig presence, especially in the western part of the state. After Nat Turner's slave uprising in 1831, North Carolina and other southern states reduced the rights of free blacks. In 1835, the legislature withdrew their right to vote.\nIn mid-century, the state's rural and commercial areas were connected by the construction of a wooden plank road, known as a \"farmer's railroad\", from Fayetteville in the east to Bethania (northwest of Winston-Salem). On October 25, 1836, construction began on the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad to connect the port city of Wilmington with the state capital of Raleigh. In 1840, the state capitol building in Raleigh was completed, and still stands today.\nIn 1849, the North Carolina Railroad was created by act of the legislature to extend that railroad west to Greensboro, High Point, and Charlotte. During the Civil War, the Wilmington-to-Raleigh stretch of the railroad was vital to the Confederate war effort; supplies shipped into Wilmington were moved by rail through Raleigh to the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.\nAmerican Civil War.\nIn 1860, North Carolina was a slave state, in which one-third of the state's total population were African-American slaves. The state did not vote to join the Confederacy until President Abraham Lincoln called on it to invade its sister state, South Carolina, becoming the last or penultimate state to officially join the Confederacy. The title of \"last to join the Confederacy\" has been disputed; although Tennessee's informal secession on May 7, 1861, preceded North Carolina's official secession on May 20, the Tennessee legislature did not formally vote to secede until June 8, 1861.\nAround 125,000 troops from North Carolina served in the Confederate Army, and about 15,000 North Carolina troops (both black and white) served in Union Army regiments, including those who left the state to join Union regiments elsewhere. Over 30,000 North Carolina troops died from combat or disease during the war. Elected in 1862, Governor Zebulon Baird Vance tried to maintain state autonomy against Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Richmond. The state government was reluctant to support the demands of the national government in Richmond, and the state was the scene of only small battles. In 1865, Durham County saw the largest single surrender of Confederate soldiers at Bennett Place, when Joseph E. Johnston surrendered the Army of Tennessee and all remaining Confederate forces still active in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, totalling 89,270 soldiers.\nConfederate troops from all parts of North Carolina served in virtually all the major battles of the Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederacy's most famous army. The largest battle fought in North Carolina was at Bentonville, which was a futile attempt by Confederate General Joseph Johnston to slow Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's advance through the Carolinas in the spring of 1865. In April 1865, after losing the Battle of Morrisville, Johnston surrendered to Sherman at Bennett Place, in what is today Durham. North Carolina's port city of Wilmington, was the last Confederate port to fall to the Union, in February 1865, after the Union won the nearby Second Battle of Fort Fisher, its major defense downriver.\nThe first Confederate soldier to be killed in the Civil War was Private Henry Wyatt from North Carolina, in the Battle of Big Bethel in June 1861. At the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, the 26th North Carolina Regiment participated in Pickett/Pettigrew's Charge and advanced the farthest into Union lines of any Confederate regiment. During the Battle of Chickamauga, the 58th North Carolina Regiment advanced farther than any other regiment on Snodgrass Hill to push back the remaining Union forces from the battlefield. At Appomattox Court House in Virginia in April 1865, the 75th North Carolina Regiment, a cavalry unit, fired the last shots of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the Civil War. The phrase \"First at Bethel, Farthest at Gettysburg and Chickamauga, and Last at Appomattox\", later became used through much of the early 20th century.\nAfter secession, some North Carolinians refused to support the Confederacy. Some of the yeoman farmers chiefly in the state's mountains and western Piedmont region remained neutral during the Civil War, with others covertly supporting the Union cause during the conflict. Approximately 15,000 North Carolinians (both black and white) from across the state enlisted in the Union Army. Numerous slaves also escaped to Union lines, where they became essentially free.\nReconstruction era through late 19th century.\nFollowing the collapse of the Confederacy in 1865, North Carolina, along with other former Confederate States (except Tennessee), was put under direct control by the U.S. military and was relieved of its constitutional government and representation within the United States Congress in what is now referred to as the Reconstruction era. To earn back its rights, the state had to make concessions to Washington, one of which was ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment. Congressional Republicans during Reconstruction, commonly referred to as \"radical Republicans\", constantly pushed for new constitutions for each of the Southern states that emphasized equal rights for African-Americans. In 1868, a constitutional convention restored the state government of North Carolina. Though the Fifteenth Amendment was also adopted that same year, it remained in most cases ineffective for almost a century, not to mention paramilitary groups and their lynching with impunity.\nThe elections in April 1868 following the constitutional convention led to a narrow victory for a Republican-dominated government, with 19 African-Americans holding positions in the North Carolina State Legislature. In attempt to put the reforms into effect, the new Republican Governor William W. Holden declared martial law on any county allegedly not complying with law and order using the passage of the Shoffner Act.\nA Republican Party coalition of black freedmen, northern carpetbaggers and local scalawags controlled state government for three years. The white conservative Democrats regained control of the state legislature in 1870, in part by Ku Klux Klan violence and terrorism at the polls, to suppress black voting. Republicans were elected to the governorship until 1876, when the Red Shirts, a paramilitary organization that arose in 1874 and was allied with the Democratic Party, helped suppress black voting. More than 150 black Americans were murdered in electoral violence in 1876.\nPost\u2013Civil War-debt cycles pushed people to switch from subsistence agriculture to commodity agriculture. Among this time the notorious Crop-Lien system developed and was financially difficult on landless whites and blacks, due to high amounts of usury. Also due to the push for commodity agriculture, the free range was ended. Prior to this time people fenced in their crops and had their livestock feeding on the free range areas. After the ending of the free range people now fenced their animals and had their crops in the open.\nDemocrats were elected to the legislature and governor's office, but the Populists attracted voters displeased with them. In 1896 a biracial, Populist-Republican Fusionist coalition gained the governor's office and passed laws that would extend the voting franchise to blacks and poor whites. The Democrats regained control of the legislature in 1896 and passed laws to impose Jim Crow and racial segregation of public facilities. Voters of North Carolina's 2nd congressional district elected a total of four African-American congressmen through these years of the late 19th century.\nPolitical tensions ran so high a small group of white Democrats in 1898 planned to take over the Wilmington government if their candidates were not elected. In the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, white Democrats led around 2,000 of their supporters that attacked the black newspaper and neighborhood, killed an estimated 60 to 300 people, and ran off the white Republican mayor and aldermen. They installed their own people and elected Alfred M. Waddell as mayor, in the only successful coup d'\u00e9tat in United States history.\nIn 1899, the state legislature passed a new constitution, with requirements for poll taxes and literacy tests for voter registration which disenfranchised most black Americans in the state. Exclusion from voting had wide effects: it meant black Americans could not serve on juries or in any local office. After a decade of white supremacy, many people forgot North Carolina had ever had thriving middle-class black Americans. Black citizens had no political voice in the state until after the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed to enforce their constitutional rights. It was not until 1992 that another African American was elected as a U.S. Representative from North Carolina.\nEarly through mid-20th century.\nAfter the reconstruction era, North Carolina had become a one-party state, dominated by the Democratic Party. The state mainly continued with an economy based on tobacco, cotton textiles and commodity agriculture. Large towns and cities remained in few numbers. However, a major industrial base emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century, in the counties of the Piedmont Triad, based on cotton mills established at the fall line. Railroads were built to connect the new industrializing cities.\nThe state was the site of the first successful controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air flight, by the Wright brothers, near Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903.\nIn the first half of the 20th century, many African Americans left the state to go North for better opportunities, in the Great Migration. Their departure changed the demographic characteristics of many areas.\nNorth Carolina was hard hit by the Great Depression, but the New Deal programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt for cotton and tobacco significantly helped the farmers. After World War\u00a0II, the state's economy grew rapidly, highlighted by the growth of such cities as Charlotte, Raleigh, and Durham in the Piedmont region.\nResearch Triangle Park, established in 1959, serves as the largest research park in the United States. Formed near Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, the Research Triangle metro is a major area of universities and advanced scientific and technical research.\nThe Greensboro sit-ins in 1960 played a crucial role in the Civil Rights Movement to bring full equality to American blacks. By the late 1960s, spurred in part by the increasingly leftward tilt of national Democrats, conservative whites began to vote for Republican national candidates and gradually for more Republicans locally.\nLate 20th century to present.\nSince the 1970s, North Carolina has seen steady increases in population growth. This growth has largely occurred in metropolitan areas located within the Piedmont Crescent, in places such as Charlotte, Concord, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Durham and Raleigh. The Charlotte metropolitan area has experienced large growth mainly due to its finance, banking, and tech industries.\nBy the 1990s, Charlotte had become a major regional and national banking center. Towards Raleigh, North Carolina State, Duke University, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, have helped the Research Triangle area attract an educated workforce and develop more jobs.\nIn 1988, North Carolina gained its first professional sports franchise, the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The hornets team name stems from the American Revolutionary War, when British General Cornwallis described Charlotte as a \"hornet's nest of rebellion\". The Carolina Panthers of the National Football League (NFL) became based in Charlotte as well, with their first season being in 1995. The Carolina Hurricanes of the National Hockey League (NHL) moved to Raleigh in 1997, with their colors being the same as the NC State Wolfpack, who are also located in Raleigh.\nBy the late 20th century and into the early 21st century, economic industries such as technology, pharmaceuticals, banking, food processing, vehicle parts, and tourism started to emerge as North Carolina's main economic drivers. This marked a shift from the state's former main industries of tobacco, textiles, and furniture. Factors that played a role in this shift were globalization, the state's higher education system, national banking, the transformation of agriculture, and new companies moving to the state.\nGeography.\nNorth Carolina is bordered by South Carolina on the south, Georgia on the southwest, Tennessee on the west, Virginia on the north, and the Atlantic Ocean on the east. The United States Census Bureau places North Carolina in the South Atlantic division of the southern region. It has a total area of , of which is land and (9.66%) is water.\nNorth Carolina consists of three main geographic regions: the Atlantic coastal plain, occupying the eastern portion of the state; the central Piedmont region, and the mountain region in the west, which is part of the Appalachian Mountains. The coastal plain consists of more specifically defined areas known as the Outer Banks, a string of sandy, narrow barrier islands separated from the mainland by sounds or inlets, including Albemarle Sound and Pamlico Sound, the native home of the venus flytrap, and the inner coastal plain, where longleaf pine trees are native.\nSo many ships have been lost off Cape Hatteras that the area is known as the \"Graveyard of the Atlantic\"; more than a thousand ships have sunk in these waters since records began in 1526. The most famous of these is the \"Queen Anne's Revenge\" (flagship of the pirate Blackbeard), which went aground in Beaufort Inlet in 1718.\nThe coastal plain transitions to the Piedmont region along the Atlantic Seaboard fall line, the elevation at which waterfalls first appear on streams and rivers. The Piedmont region of central North Carolina is the state's most populous region, containing the six largest cities in the state by population. It consists of gently rolling countryside frequently broken by hills or low mountain ridges. Small, isolated, and deeply eroded mountain ranges and peaks are located in the Piedmont, including the Sauratown Mountains, Pilot Mountain, the Uwharrie Mountains, Crowder's Mountain, King's Pinnacle, the Brushy Mountains, and the South Mountains. The Piedmont ranges from about in elevation in the east to about in the west.\nThe western section of the state is part of the Blue Ridge Mountains of the larger Appalachian Mountain range. Among the subranges of the Blue Ridge Mountains located in the state are the Great Smoky Mountains and the Black Mountains. The Black Mountains are the highest in the eastern United States, and culminate in Mount Mitchell at , the highest point east of the Mississippi River.\nNorth Carolina has 17 major river basins. The five basins west of the Blue Ridge Mountains flow to the Gulf of Mexico, while the remainder flow to the Atlantic Ocean. Of the 17 basins, 11 originate within the state of North Carolina, but only four are contained entirely within the state's border\u2014the Cape Fear, the Neuse, the White Oak, and the Tar\u2013Pamlico basin.\nClimate.\nElevation above sea level is most responsible for temperature change across the state, with the mountainous regions being coolest year-round. The climate is also influenced by the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf Stream, especially in the coastal plain. These influences tend to cause warmer winter temperatures along the coast, where temperatures only occasionally drop below the freezing point at night. The coastal plain averages around of snow or ice annually, and in many years, there may be no snow or ice at all.\nThe Atlantic Ocean exerts less influence on the climate of the Piedmont region, which has hotter summers and colder winters than along the coast, though winters are still mild.\nNorth Carolina experiences severe weather both in summer and in winter, with summer bringing threat of hurricanes, tropical storms, heavy rain, and flooding. Destructive hurricanes that have hit North Carolina include Hurricane Fran, Hurricane Florence, Hurricane Floyd, Hurricane Hugo, and Hurricane Hazel, the latter being the strongest storm ever to make landfall in the state, as a Category4 in 1954. Hurricane Isabel ranks as the most destructive of the 21st century.\nNorth Carolina averages fewer than 20 tornadoes per year, many of them produced by hurricanes or tropical storms along the coastal plain. Tornadoes from thunderstorms are a risk, especially in the eastern part of the state. The western Piedmont is often protected by the mountains, which tend to break up storms as they cross over; the storms will often re-form farther east. A phenomenon known as \"cold-air damming\" often occurs in the northwestern part of the state, which can weaken storms but can also lead to major ice events in winter.\nIn April 2011, the worst tornado outbreak in North Carolina's history occurred. Thirty confirmed tornadoes touched down, mainly in the Eastern Piedmont and Sandhills, killing at least 24 people. In September 2019 Hurricane Dorian hit the area.\nParks and recreation.\nNorth Carolina provides a large range of recreational activities, from swimming at the beach to skiing in the mountains. North Carolina offers fall colors, freshwater and saltwater fishing, hunting, birdwatching, agritourism, ATV trails, ballooning, rock climbing, biking, hiking, skiing, boating and sailing, camping, canoeing, caving (spelunking), gardens, and arboretums. North Carolina has theme parks, aquariums, museums, historic sites, lighthouses, elegant theaters, concert halls, and fine dining.\nNorth Carolinians enjoy outdoor recreation using numerous local bike paths, 34 state parks, and 14 national parks. National Park Service units include the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, the Blue Ridge Parkway, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Cape Lookout National Seashore, Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site at Flat Rock, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site at Manteo, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Great Smoky Mountains Railroad, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park in Greensboro, Moores Creek National Battlefield near Currie in Pender County, the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, Old Salem National Historic Site in Winston-Salem, the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, and Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills.\nNational Forests include Uwharrie National Forest in central North Carolina, Croatan National Forest in Eastern North Carolina, Pisgah National Forest in the western mountains, and Nantahala National Forest in the southwestern part of the state.\nMajor cities.\nIn 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau released the 2023 population estimates for municipalities in North Carolina. Charlotte has the largest population, while Raleigh has the second-largest population in North Carolina.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nMost populous counties.\nAfter the 2020 census, Wake County\u2014with a population of 1,129,410\u2014became the most populous county in the state, overtaking Mecklenburg County\u2014with a population of 1,115,482\u2014by a margin of about 14,000. Both counties are still the only to have populations over one million in North Carolina and the Carolinas region.\nStatistical areas.\nNorth Carolina has four major combined statistical areas (CSA) with a population over 1\u00a0million (as of 2023):\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nThe United States Census Bureau determined the population of North Carolina was 10,439,388 at the 2020 census. Based on numbers in 2012 of the people residing in North Carolina 58.5% were born there; 33.1% were born in another state; 1.0% were born in Puerto Rico, U.S. island areas, or born abroad to American parent(s); and 7.4% were foreign-born.\nAccording to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 9,382 homeless people in North Carolina.\nThe top countries of origin for North Carolina's immigrants were Mexico, India, Honduras, China and El Salvador, as of 2018[ [update]].\nRace and ethnicity.\nAt the 2010 census, the racial composition of North Carolina was: White: 68.5% (65.3% non-Hispanic white, 3.2% White Hispanic), Black or African American: 21.5%, Latin and Hispanic American of any race: 8.4%, some other race: 4.3%, Multiracial American: 2.2%, Asian American: 2.2%, and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander: 1%. In 2020, North Carolina like much of the U.S. experienced a decline in its non-Hispanic white population; at the 2020 census, non-Hispanic whites were 62.2%, Blacks or African Americans 20.5%, American Indian and Alaska Natives 1.2%, Asians 3.3%, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders 0.1%, people from other race 5.9%, and multiracial Americans 6.8%.\nThe majority of the Black American population is concentrated in the urban areas and northeastern part of the state.\nNorth Carolina's Hispanic population has grown rapidly. The Hispanic population more than doubled in size between 1990 and 2000. Many of North Carolina's Hispanic residents are of Mexican descent. Many of North Carolina's newer Latino residents came from Mexico largely to work in agriculture, manufacturing, or on one of North Carolina's military installations.\nThe most common ancestries in North Carolina are African-American, American, German, English, and Irish.\nNorth Carolina has the eighth-largest Native American population in the country. The state is home to eight Native American tribes and four urban Native American organizations.\nLanguages.\nNorth Carolina is home to a spectrum of different dialects of Southern American English and Appalachian English.\nIn 2010, 89.66% (7,750,904) of North Carolina residents age five and older spoke English at home as a primary language, while 6.93% (598,756) spoke Spanish, 0.32% (27,310) French, 0.27% (23,204) German, and Chinese (which includes Mandarin) was spoken as a main language by 0.27% (23,072) of the population five and older. In total, 10.34% (893,735) of North Carolina's population age five and older spoke a mother language other than English. In 2019, 87.7% of the population aged 5 and older spoke English and 12.3% spoke another language. The most common non-English language was Spanish at the 2019 American Community Survey.\nReligion.\nNorth Carolina residents since the colonial era have historically been overwhelmingly Protestant\u2014first Anglican, then Baptist and Methodist. In 2010, the Southern Baptist Convention was the single largest Christian denomination, with 4,241 churches and 1,513,000 members. The second largest in 2024 was the Roman Catholic Church which is organised into two dioceses. In the west is the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte which includes Charlotte and has 530,000 members in 196 parishes. In the east is the Diocese of Raleigh with a total of 80 parishes and nearly 500,000 Catholics. The third largest was the United Methodist Church, with 660,000 members and 1,923 churches. The fourth largest was the Presbyterian Church (USA), with 186,000 members and 710 congregations; this denomination was brought by Scots-Irish immigrants who settled the backcountry in the colonial era. In 2020, the Southern Baptists remained the largest with 1,324,747 adherents, though Methodists and others were collectively overtaken by non/interdenominational Protestants numbering 1,053,564.\nIn 1845, the Baptists split into regional associations of the Northern United States and Southern U.S., over the issue of slavery. These new associations were the Northern Baptist Convention (today the American Baptist Churches USA) and Southern Baptist Convention. By the late 19th century, the largest Protestant denomination in North Carolina were Baptists. After emancipation, black Baptists quickly set up their own independent congregations in North Carolina and other states of the South, as they wanted to be free of white supervision. Black Baptists developed their own state and national associations, such as the National Baptist Convention. Other primarily African American Baptist conventions which grew in the state since the 20th century were the Progressive National Baptist Convention and Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship.\nMethodists (the second largest group among North Carolinian Protestants) were divided along racial lines in the United Methodist Church and African Methodist Episcopal Church. The Methodist tradition tends to be strong in the northern Piedmont, especially in populous Guilford County. Other prominent Protestant groups in North Carolina as of the Pew Research Center's 2014 study were non/interdenominational Protestants and Pentecostalism. The Assemblies of God and Church of God in Christ are the largest Pentecostal denominations operating in the state, while notable minorities include Oneness Pentecostals primarily affiliated with the United Pentecostal Church International.\nThe state also has a special history with the Moravian Church, as settlers of this faith (largely of German origin) settled in the Winston-Salem area in the 18th and 19th centuries. Historically Scots-Irish have had a strong presence in Charlotte and in Scotland County.\nA wide variety of non-Christian faiths are practiced by other residents in the state, including: Judaism, Islam, Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed, Buddhism, and Hinduism. The rapid influx of Northerners and immigrants from Latin America is steadily increasing ethnic and religious diversity within the state. The number of Roman Catholics and Jews in the state has increased, along with general religious diversity as a whole. There are also a substantial number of Quakers in Guilford County and northeastern North Carolina. Many universities and colleges in the state have been founded on religious traditions, and some currently maintain that affiliation, including:\nThe state also has several major seminaries, including the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, and the Hood Theological Seminary (AME Zion) in Salisbury.\nEconomy.\nNorth Carolina's 2018 total gross state product was $496 billion. Based on American Community Survey 2010\u20132014 data, North Carolina's median household income was $46,693. It ranked forty-first out of fifty states plus the District of Columbia for median household income. North Carolina had the fourteenth highest poverty rate in the nation at 17.6%, with 13% of families that were below the poverty line.\nThe state has a very diverse economy because of its great availability of hydroelectric power, its pleasant climate, and its wide variety of soils. The state ranks third among the South Atlantic states in population, but leads the region in industry and agriculture. North Carolina leads the nation in the production of tobacco.\nCharlotte, the state's largest city, is a major textile and trade center. According to a Forbes article written in 2013, employment in the \"Old North State\" has gained many different industry sectors. Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) industries in the area surrounding North Carolina's capital have grown 17.9 percent since 2001. Raleigh ranked the third best city for technology in 2020 due to the state's growing technology sector. In 2010, North Carolina's total gross state product was $424.9 billion, while the state debt in November 2012, according to one source, totaled $2.4 billion, while according to another, was in 2012 $57.8 billion. In 2011, the civilian labor force was at around 4.5 million with employment near 4.1 million.\nNorth Carolina is the leading U.S. state in production of flue-cured tobacco and sweet potatoes, and comes second in the farming of pigs and hogs, trout, and turkeys. In the three most recent USDA surveys (2002, 2007, 2012), North Carolina also ranked second in the production of Christmas trees.\nNorth Carolina has 15 metropolitan areas, and in 2010 was chosen as the third-best state for business by Forbes Magazine, and the second-best state by chief executive officer Magazine. Since 2000, there has been a clear division in the economic growth of North Carolina's urban and rural areas. While North Carolina's urban areas have enjoyed a prosperous economy with steady job growth, low unemployment, and rising wages, many of the state's rural counties have suffered from job loss, rising levels of poverty, and population loss as their manufacturing base has declined. According to one estimate, one-half of North Carolina's 100 counties have lost population since 2010, primarily due to the poor economy in many of North Carolina's rural areas. However, the population of the state's urban areas is steadily increasing.\nArts and culture.\nNorth Carolina has traditions in art, music, and cuisine. The nonprofit arts and culture industry generates $1.2billion in direct economic activity in North Carolina, supporting more than 43,600 full-time equivalent jobs and generating $119million in revenue for local governments and the state of North Carolina. North Carolina established the North Carolina Museum of Art as the first major museum collection in the country to be formed by state legislation and funding and continues to bring millions into the NC economy.\nOne of the more famous arts communities in the state is Seagrove, the handmade-pottery capital of the U.S., where artisans create handcrafted pottery inspired by the same traditions that began in this community more than two hundred years ago.\nMusic.\nNorth Carolina boasts a large number of noteworthy jazz musicians, some among the most important in the history of the genre. These include: John Coltrane, (Hamlet, High Point); Thelonious Monk (Rocky Mount); Billy Taylor (Greenville); Woody Shaw (Laurinburg); Lou Donaldson (Durham); Max Roach (Newland); Tal Farlow (Greensboro); Albert, Jimmy and Percy Heath (Wilmington); Nina Simone (Tryon); and Billy Strayhorn (Hillsborough).\nNorth Carolina is also famous for its tradition of old-time music, and many recordings were made in the early 20th century by folk-song collector Bascom Lamar Lunsford. Musicians such as the North Carolina Ramblers helped solidify the sound of country music in the late 1920s, while the influential bluegrass musician Doc Watson also hailed from North Carolina. Both North and South Carolina are hotbeds for traditional rural blues, especially the style known as the Piedmont blues.\nBen Folds Five originated in Winston-Salem, and Ben Folds still records and resides in Chapel Hill.\nThe British band Pink Floyd is named, in part, after Chapel Hill bluesman Floyd Council.\nThe Research Triangle area has long been a well-known center for folk, rock, metal, jazz and punk. James Taylor grew up around Chapel Hill, and his 1968 song \"Carolina in My Mind\" has been called an unofficial anthem for the state. Other famous musicians from North Carolina include J. Cole, DaBaby, 9th Wonder, Shirley Caesar, Roberta Flack, Clyde McPhatter, Nnenna Freelon, Link Wray, Warren Haynes, Jimmy Herring, Michael Houser, Eric Church, Future Islands, Randy Travis, Ryan Adams, Ronnie Milsap, Anthony Hamilton, The Avett Brothers, Charlie Daniels, and Luke Combs.\nMetal and punk acts such as Corrosion of Conformity, Between the Buried and Me, and Nightmare Sonata are native to North Carolina.\nEDM producer Porter Robinson hails from Chapel Hill.\nNorth Carolina is the home of more \"American Idol\" finalists than any other state: Clay Aiken (season two), Fantasia Barrino (season three), Chris Daughtry (season five), Kellie Pickler (season five), Bucky Covington (season five), Anoop Desai (season eight), Scotty McCreery (season ten), and Caleb Johnson (season thirteen). North Carolina also has the most \"American Idol\" winners with Barrino, McCreery, and Johnson.\nIn the mountains, the Brevard Music Center hosts choral, operatic, orchestral, and solo performances during its annual summer schedule.\nNorth Carolina has five professional opera companies: Opera Carolina in Charlotte, NC Opera in Raleigh, Greensboro Opera in Greensboro, Piedmont Opera in Winston-Salem, and Asheville Lyric Opera in Asheville. Academic conservatories and universities also produce fully staged operas, such as the A. J. Fletcher Opera Institute of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, the Department of Music of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and UNC Greensboro.\nAmong others, there are three high-level symphonic orchestras: NC Symphony in Raleigh, Charlotte Symphony, and Winston-Salem Symphony. The NC Symphony holds the North Carolina Master Chorale. The Carolina Ballet is headquartered in Raleigh, and there is also the Charlotte Ballet.\nThe state boasts three performing arts centers: DPAC in Durham, Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts in Raleigh, and the Blumenthal Performing Art Centers in Charlotte. They feature concerts, operas, recitals, and traveling Broadway musicals.\nShopping.\nNorth Carolina has a variety of shopping choices. SouthPark Mall in Charlotte is the largest and most upscale mall in the Carolinas, featuring multiple luxury tenants with their sole location in the state. Other major malls in Charlotte include Northlake Mall and Carolina Place Mall in nearby suburb Pineville. Other major malls throughout the state include Hanes Mall in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, The Thruway Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Crabtree Valley Mall, North Hills Mall, and Triangle Town Center in Raleigh; Friendly Center and Four Seasons Town Centre in Greensboro; Oak Hollow Mall in High Point; Concord Mills in Concord; Valley Hills Mall in Hickory; Cross Creek Mall in Fayetteville; and The Streets at Southpoint in Durham and Independence Mall in Wilmington, North Carolina, and Tanger Outlets in Charlotte, Nags Head, Blowing Rock, and Mebane, North Carolina.\nCuisine and agriculture.\nA culinary staple of North Carolina is pork barbecue. There are strong regional differences and rivalries over the sauces and methods used in making the barbecue. The common trend across Western North Carolina is the use of premium grade Boston butt. Western North Carolina pork barbecue uses a tomato-based sauce, and only the pork shoulder (dark meat) is used. Western North Carolina barbecue is commonly referred to as Lexington barbecue after the Piedmont Triad town of Lexington, home of the Lexington Barbecue Festival, which attracts more than 100,000 visitors each October. Eastern North Carolina pork barbecue uses a vinegar-and-red-pepper-based sauce and the \"whole hog\" is cooked, thus integrating both white and dark meat.\nKrispy Kreme, an international chain of doughnut stores, was started in North Carolina; the company's headquarters are in Winston-Salem. Pepsi-Cola was first produced in 1898 in New Bern. A regional soft drink, Cheerwine, was created and is still based in the city of Salisbury. Despite its name, the hot sauce Texas Pete was created in North Carolina; its headquarters are also in Winston-Salem. The Hardee's fast-food chain was started in Rocky Mount. Another fast-food chain, Bojangles', was started in Charlotte, and has its corporate headquarters there. A popular North Carolina restaurant chain is Golden Corral. Started in 1973, the chain was founded in Fayetteville, with headquarters located in Raleigh. Popular pickle brand Mount Olive Pickle Company was founded in Mount Olive in 1926. Fast casual burger chain Hwy 55 Burgers, Shakes & Fries also makes its home in Mount Olive. Cook Out, a popular fast-food chain featuring burgers, hot dogs, and milkshakes in a wide variety of flavors, was founded in Greensboro in 1989 and has begun expanding outside North Carolina. In 2013 \"Southern Living\" named Durham\u2013Chapel Hill the South's \"Tastiest City\".\nOver the last decade, North Carolina has become a cultural epicenter and haven for internationally prize-winning wine (Noni Bacca Winery), internationally prized cheeses (Ashe County), \"L'institut International aux Arts Gastronomiques: Conquerront Les Yanks les Truffes, January 15, 2010\" international hub for truffles (Garland Truffles), and beer making, as tobacco land has been converted to grape orchards while state laws regulating alcohol by volume (ABV) in beer allowed a jump from six to fifteen percent. The Yadkin Valley in particular has become a strengthening market for grape production, while Asheville recently won the recognition of being named \"Beer City USA\". Asheville boasts the largest number of breweries per capita of any city in the United States. Recognized and marketed brands of beer in North Carolina include Highland Brewing, Duck Rabbit Brewery, Mother Earth Brewery, Weeping Radish Brewery, Big Boss Brewing, Foothills Brewing, Carolina Brewing Company, Lonerider Brewing, and White Rabbit Brewing Company.\nNorth Carolina has large grazing areas for beef and dairy cattle. Truck farms can be found in North Carolina. A truck farm is a small farm where fruits and vegetables are grown to be sold at local markets. The state's shipping, commercial fishing, and lumber industries are important to its economy. Service industries, including education, health care, private research, and retail trade, are also important. Research Triangle Park, a large industrial complex located in the Raleigh-Durham area, is one of the major centers in the country for electronics and medical research.\nTobacco was one of the first major industries to develop after the Civil War. Many farmers grew some tobacco, and the invention of the cigarette made the product especially popular. Winston-Salem is the birthplace of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR), founded by R. J. Reynolds in 1874 as one of sixteen tobacco companies in the town. By 1914 it was selling 425 million packs of Camels a year. Today it is the second-largest tobacco company in the U.S. (behind Altria Group). RJR is an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Reynolds American Inc., which in turn is 42% owned by British American Tobacco.\nShips named for the state.\nSeveral ships have been named after the state, most famously in the Pacific Ocean theater of World War\u00a0II. Now decommissioned, she is part of the USS \"North Carolina\" Battleship Memorial in Wilmington. Another , a nuclear attack submarine, was commissioned in Wilmington on May 3, 2008.\nState parks.\nThe state maintains a group of protected areas known as the North Carolina State Park System, which is managed by the North Carolina Division of Parks & Recreation (NCDPR), an agency of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (NCDNCR).\nArmed forces installations.\nFort Bragg, near Fayetteville and Southern Pines, is a large and comprehensive military base and is the headquarters of the XVIII Airborne Corps, 82nd Airborne Division, and the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. Serving as the air wing for Fort Bragg is Pope Field, also located near Fayetteville.\nLocated in Jacksonville, Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, combined with nearby bases Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Cherry Point, MCAS New River, Camp Geiger, Camp Johnson, Stone Bay and Courthouse Bay, makes up the largest concentration of Marines and sailors in the world. MCAS Cherry Point is home of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing. Located in Goldsboro, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base is home of the 4th Fighter Wing and 916th Air Refueling Wing. One of the busiest air stations in the United States Coast Guard is located at the Coast Guard Air Station in Elizabeth City. Also stationed in North Carolina is the Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point in Southport.\nOn January 24, 1961, a B-52G broke up in midair and crashed after suffering a severe fuel loss, near Goldsboro, dropping two nuclear bombs in the process without detonation. In 2013, it was revealed that three safety mechanisms on one bomb had failed, leaving just one low-voltage switch preventing detonation.\nTourism.\nCharlotte is the most-visited city in the state, attracting 28.3million visitors in 2018. Area attractions include Carolina Panthers NFL football team and Charlotte Hornets basketball team, Carowinds amusement park, Catawba Two Kings Casino (in nearby Kings Mountain), Charlotte Motor Speedway, U.S. National Whitewater Center, Discovery Place, Great Wolf Lodge, Sea Life Aquarium, Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, Billy Graham Library, Carolinas Aviation Museum, Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, Levine Museum of the New South, McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Mint Museum, and the NASCAR Hall of Fame.\nEvery year the Appalachian Mountains attract several million tourists to the western part of the state, including the historic Biltmore Estate. The scenic Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smoky Mountains National Park are the two most visited national park and unit in the United States with more than 25million visitors in 2013. The City of Asheville is consistently voted as one of the top places to visit and live in the United States, known for its rich art deco architecture, mountain scenery and outdoor activities.\nIn Raleigh, many tourists visit the capital, African American Cultural Complex, Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh, Gregg Museum of Art & Design at NCSU, Haywood Hall House & Gardens, Marbles Kids Museum, North Carolina Museum of Art, North Carolina Museum of History, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, Raleigh City Museum, J. C. Raulston Arboretum, Joel Lane House, Mordecai House, Montfort Hall, and the Pope House Museum. The Carolina Hurricanes NHL hockey team is also located in the city.\nIn the Conover\u2013Hickory area, attractions include Hickory Motor Speedway, RockBarn Golf and Spa, home of the Greater Hickory Classic at Rock Barn; Catawba County Firefighters Museum, the SALT Block, and Valley Hills Mall.\nThe Piedmont Triad, or center of the state, is home to Krispy Kreme, Mayberry, Texas Pete, the Lexington Barbecue Festival, and Moravian cookies. The internationally acclaimed North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro attracts visitors to its animals, plants, and a 57-piece art collection along of shaded pathways in the world's largest-land-area natural-habitat park. Seagrove, in the central portion of the state, attracts many tourists along Pottery Highway (NC Hwy 705). MerleFest in Wilkesboro attracts more than 80,000 people to its four-day music festival; and Wet 'n Wild Emerald Pointe water park in Greensboro is another attraction.\nThe Outer Banks and surrounding beaches attract millions of people to the Atlantic beaches every year.\nThe mainland northeastern part of the state, having recently adopted the name the Inner Banks, is also known as the Albemarle Region, for the Albemarle Settlements, some of the first settlements on North Carolina's portion of the Atlantic Coastal Plain. The region's historic sites are connected by the Historic Albemarle Tour.\nTransportation.\nTransportation systems in North Carolina consist of air, water, road, rail, and public transportation including intercity rail via Amtrak and light rail in Charlotte. North Carolina has the second-largest state highway system in the country as well as the largest ferry system on the East Coast.\nNorth Carolina's airports serve destinations throughout the United States and international destinations in Canada, Europe, Central America, and the Caribbean. In July 2022, Charlotte Douglas International Airport, which serves as the second busiest hub for American Airlines, ranked as the 11th busiest airport in the United States with Raleigh-Durham International Airport, a focus-city for Delta Air Lines and formerly a hub for American Airlines and Midway Airlines, ranked as the 37th busiest airport in the United States.\nNorth Carolina has a growing passenger rail system with Amtrak serving most major cities. Charlotte is also home to North Carolina's only light rail system known as LYNX.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nElementary and secondary public schools are overseen by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. The North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction is the secretary of the North Carolina State Board of Education, but the board, rather than the superintendent, holds most of the legal authority for making public education policy. In 2009, the board's chairman also became the \"chief executive officer\" for the state's school system. North Carolina has 115 public school systems, each of which is overseen by a local school board. A county may have one or more systems within it. The largest school systems in North Carolina are the Wake County Public School System, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Guilford County Schools, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, and Cumberland County Schools. In total there are 2,425 public schools in the state, including over 200 charter schools. North Carolina Schools were segregated until the \"Brown v. Board of Education\" trial and the release of the Pearsall Plan.\nPreviously the SAT was the dominant university entrance examination students took. In 2004 76% of NC high school students took the SAT. In 2012 state law changed which required 11th grade students to take the ACT. The SAT testing rate fell to 46% in 2019. Because students now can take that test for free, the ACT became the dominant university entrance examination. This also caused SAT average scores to rise, as in 1996 North Carolina was 48th nationally in SAT scores, but the profile of students taking the SAT has gotten smaller.\nColleges and universities.\nIn 1795, North Carolina opened the first public university in the United States\u2014the University of North Carolina (now named the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). More than 200 years later, the University of North Carolina System encompasses 16 public universities, which are Appalachian State University, East Carolina University, Elizabeth City State University, Fayetteville State University, North Carolina A&T State University, North Carolina Central University, North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Asheville, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Western Carolina University, and Winston-Salem State University, and one public, boarding high school, the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. Along with its public universities, North Carolina has 58 public community colleges in its community college system. The largest university in North Carolina is currently North Carolina State University, with more than 34,000 students.\nNorth Carolina is also home to many well-known private colleges and universities, including Barton College, Belmont Abbey College (the only Catholic college in the Carolinas), Campbell University, Davidson College, Duke University, Elon University, Guilford College, High Point University, Laurel University, Lees-McRae College, Lenoir-Rhyne University (the only Lutheran university in North Carolina), Livingstone College, Meredith College, Methodist University, Montreat College, North Carolina Wesleyan University, Pfeiffer University, Salem College, Shaw University (the first historically black college or university in the South), University of Mount Olive, Wake Forest University, William Peace University, and Wingate University.\nNorth Carolina is also home to the oldest and largest folk school in the United States, the John C. Campbell Folk School.\nHealth.\nThe residents of North Carolina have a lower life expectancy than the U.S. national average of life expectancy. According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, in 2014, males in North Carolina lived an average of 75.4 years compared to the national average of 76.7 years. Females in North Carolina lived an average of 80.2 years compared to the national average of 81.5 years. Male life expectancy in North Carolina between 1980 and 2014 increased by an average of 6.9 years, slightly higher than the male national average of a 6.7-year increase. Life expectancy for females in North Carolina between 1980 and 2014 increased by 3.2 years, lower than the female national average of a 3.9-year increase.\nUsing 2017\u20132019 data, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation calculated that life expectancy for North Carolina counties ranged from 71.4 years for Swain County to 82.3 years for Orange County. Life expectancy for the state was 78.1 years. The Foundation estimated that life expectancy for the United States as a whole in 2021 was 79.2 years.\nMedia.\nEarly newspapers were established in the eastern part of North Carolina in the mid-18th century. The Fayetteville Observer, established in 1816, is the oldest newspaper still in publication in North Carolina. The Wilmington Star-News, established 1867, is the oldest continuously running newspaper. As of January 1, 2020, there were approximately 240 North Carolina newspapers in publication in the state of North Carolina.\nThe News and Observer was founded in 1871 and is the largest in circulation in the state. In 2006, The Charlotte Observer was acquired by the company, it is the second largest circulating news paper in the state.\nGovernment and politics.\nThe government of North Carolina is divided into three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. These consist of the Council of State (led by the Governor), the bicameral legislature (called the General Assembly), and the state court system (headed by the North Carolina Supreme Court). The state constitution delineates the structure and function of the state government. Most municipalities in North Carolina operate under council\u2013manager governments.\nNorth Carolina's party loyalties have undergone a series of important shifts in the last few years: While the 2010 midterms saw Tarheel voters elect a bicameral Republican majority legislature for the first time in more than a century, North Carolina has also become a Southern swing state in presidential races. Since Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter's comfortable victory in the state in 1976, the state had consistently leaned Republican in presidential elections until Democrat Barack Obama narrowly won the state in 2008. In the 1990s, Democrat Bill Clinton came within a point of winning the state in 1992 and also only narrowly lost the state in 1996. In 2000, Republican George W. Bush easily won the state by more than 13 points.\nBy 2008, demographic shifts, population growth, and increased liberalization in densely populated areas such as the Research Triangle, Charlotte, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Fayetteville, and Asheville, propelled Barack Obama to victory in North Carolina, the first Democrat to win the state since 1976. In 2012, North Carolina was again considered a competitive swing state, with the Democrats even holding their 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. However, Republican Mitt Romney ultimately eked out a two-point win in North Carolina, the only 2012 swing state Obama lost, and one of only two states (along with Indiana) to flip from Obama in 2008 to the GOP in 2012. Furthermore, Republican Donald Trump carried the state in 2016, 2020, and 2024.\nIn 2012, the state elected a Republican governor (Pat McCrory) and lieutenant governor (Dan Forest) for the first time in more than two decades, while also giving the Republicans veto-proof majorities in both the State House of Representatives and the State Senate. Several U.S. House of Representatives seats flipped control in 2012, with the Republicans holding nine seats to the Democrats' four. In the 2014 midterm elections, Republican David Rouzer won the state's 7th congressional district seat, increasing the congressional delegation party split to 10\u20133 in favor of the GOP, a split they retained in subsequent elections until 2020, when it narrowed to 8\u20135 in favor of the GOP. In 2016, despite Donald Trump winning the state, North Carolina voters elected Democrat Roy Cooper as governor, in part due to an unpopular law passed by former governor Pat McCrory known as HB2. Cooper went on to win re-election in 2020, despite Donald Trump narrowly winning the state again against Joe Biden.\nAs a result of the 2020 census, North Carolina gained another seat in the 118th United States Congress, for a total of 14. After the 2024 elections, the state was represented by 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats.\nIn a 2020 study, North Carolina was ranked as the 23rd easiest state for citizens to vote in.\nGerrymandering.\nThe state has been sued for racially gerrymandering the districts, which resulted in minority voting power being diluted in some areas, resulting in skewed representation. In 2000, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina ruled that the 12th congressional district was an illegal racial gerrymander. This was again appealed, now as \"Easley v. Cromartie\". The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Eastern District of North Carolina in 2001 and ruled that the 12th district boundaries were not racially based but was a partisan gerrymander. They said this was a political question that the courts should not rule upon.\nIn 2015, federal courts again ordered redistricting. Two lawsuits challenging the state congressional district map were led by \"two dozen voters, the state Democratic Party, the state chapter of the League of Women Voters, and the interest group Common Cause\". They contend that the redistricting resulted in deliberate under-representation of a substantial portion of voters. This case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in March 2019, which also heard a related partisan gerrymandering case from Maryland.\nOn February 4, 2022, the North Carolina Supreme Court struck down the congressional and state legislative district maps drawn by the GOP-controlled General Assembly on terms of partisan gerrymandering in a 4\u20133 ruling. Later that month, a panel of three former judges chosen by the Wake County Superior Court drew and approved a remedial congressional map after the new map proposed by the General Assembly was struck down by the North Carolina Supreme Court. Though, the state legislative maps proposed by the General Assembly were allowed to be used. The General Assembly would then redraw all three maps for the 2024 elections in the state.\nOn April 28, 2023, the North Carolina Supreme Court\u2014after Republicans gained a majority in the court following the 2022 judicial elections\u2014overturned the same ruling in a 5\u20132 decision, which cleared the way for gerrymandering in the next redistricting cycle. New maps were approved by the General Assembly on October 25, 2023. All three new maps heavily favor the GOP, with allegations of racial bias made against the maps as well.\nIn November 2023, a lawsuit was filed against the North Carolina Senate district map\u2014specifically the 1st and 2nd Senate districts\u2014in the Eastern District of North Carolina, arguing the map violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In December 2023, two lawsuits were filed in the Middle District of North Carolina, with the first challenging the 1st, 6th, 12th, and 14th congressional districts in the map, and the second, challenging multiple specific districts in all three maps, as racial gerrymanders. Both lawsuits were consolidated together in March 2024.\nOn January 26, 2024\u2014regarding the lawsuit currently in the Eastern District of North Carolina\u2014a preliminary injunction to block the current North Carolina Senate district map was denied, citing the \"Purcell\" principle. The ruling was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which upheld the lower court's decision on March 28, 2024. The lawsuit will continue in the district court, but no ruling will be made until after the 2024 elections.\nSports.\nNorth Carolina is home to four major league sports franchises: the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League, the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association, and Charlotte FC of Major League Soccer are based in Charlotte, while the Raleigh-based Carolina Hurricanes play in the National Hockey League. The Panthers and Hurricanes are the only two major professional sports teams that have the same geographical designation while playing in different metropolitan areas. The Hurricanes are the only major professional team from North Carolina to have won a league championship, having captured the Stanley Cup in 2006. North Carolina is also home to two other top-level professional teams \u2014 the Charlotte Hounds of Major League Lacrosse and the North Carolina Courage of the National Women's Soccer League.\nWhile North Carolina has no Major League Baseball team, it does have numerous Minor League Baseball teams, with the highest level of play coming from the Triple-A Charlotte Knights and Durham Bulls. Additionally, North Carolina has minor league teams in other team sports including soccer and ice hockey, most notably North Carolina FC and the Charlotte Checkers, both of which play in the second tier of their respective sports.\nIn addition to professional team sports, North Carolina has a strong affiliation with NASCAR and stock-car racing, with Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord hosting two Cup Series races every year. Charlotte also hosts the NASCAR Hall of Fame, while Concord is the home of several top-flight racing teams, including Hendrick Motorsports, Roush Fenway Racing, GMS Racing, Stewart-Haas Racing, and Chip Ganassi Racing. Numerous other tracks around North Carolina host races from low-tier NASCAR circuits as well.\nGolf is a popular summertime leisure activity, and North Carolina has hosted several important professional golf tournaments. Pinehurst Resort in Pinehurst has hosted a PGA Championship, Ryder Cup, two U.S. Opens, and one U.S. Women's Open. The Wells Fargo Championship is a regular stop on the PGA Tour and is held at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, and Quail Hollow has also played host to the PGA Championship. The Wyndham Championship is played annually in Greensboro at Sedgefield Country Club.\nCollege sports are also popular in North Carolina, with 18 schools competing at the Division I level. The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is headquartered in Greensboro, and both the ACC Football Championship Game (Charlotte) and the ACC men's basketball tournament (Greensboro) were most recently held in North Carolina. Additionally, the city of Charlotte is home to the National Junior College Athletics Association's (NJCAA) headquarters. College basketball is very popular in North Carolina, buoyed by the Tobacco Road rivalries between ACC members North Carolina, Duke, North Carolina State, and Wake Forest. The ACC Championship Game and the Duke's Mayo Bowl are held annually in Charlotte's Bank of America Stadium, featuring teams from the ACC and the Southeastern Conference. Additionally, the state has hosted the NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four on two occasions, in Greensboro in 1974 and in Charlotte in 1994.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "57845": "Raleigh, North Carolina\nCapital city of North Carolina, US\nRaleigh ( ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of North Carolina and the county seat of Wake County. It is the second-most populous city in North Carolina, after Charlotte. Raleigh is the tenth-most populous city in the Southeast, the 40th-most populous city in the U.S., and the largest city of the Research Triangle metro area. Raleigh is known as the \"City of Oaks\" for its many oak trees, which line the streets in the heart of the city. The city covers a land area of . The U.S. Census Bureau counted the city's population as 467,665 at the 2020 census. It is one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States. It is ranked as a sufficiency-level world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. The city of Raleigh is named after Sir Walter Raleigh, who established the now-lost Roanoke Colony in present-day Dare County.\nRaleigh is home to North Carolina State University (NC State or NCSU) and is part of the Research Triangle together with Durham (home of Duke University and North Carolina Central University) and Chapel Hill (home of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). The name of the Research Triangle (often shortened to \"The Triangle\") originated after the 1959 creation of Research Triangle Park (RTP), located in Durham and Wake counties, among the three cities and universities. The Triangle encompasses the Raleigh-Durham-Cary, NC Combined Statistical Area, which had an estimated population of 2,368,947 in 2023. The Raleigh-Cary, NC Metropolitan Statistical Area had an estimated population of 1,509,231 in 2023.\nMost of Raleigh is located within Wake County, with a small portion extending into Durham County. The towns of Apex, Cary, Clayton, Fuquay-Varina, Garner, Holly Springs, Knightdale, Morrisville, Rolesville, Wake Forest, Wendell, and Zebulon are some of Raleigh's primary nearby suburbs and satellite towns.\nRaleigh is an early example in the United States of a planned city. Following the American Revolutionary War when the U.S. gained independence, the area was chosen as the site of the state capital in 1788 and incorporated in 1792 as such. The city was originally laid out in a grid pattern with the North Carolina State Capitol at the center, in Union Square. During the American Civil War, the city was spared from any significant battle. It fell to the Union in the closing days of the war and struggled with the economic hardships in the postwar period, related to the reconstitution of labor markets, over-reliance on agriculture, and the social unrest of the Reconstruction Era. The establishment of the Research Triangle Park (RTP) in 1959 helped create tens of thousands of jobs in the fields of science and technology. By the early 21st century, Raleigh had become one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States.\nHistory.\nEarlier capitals.\nBath, the oldest town in North Carolina, was the first nominal capital of the colony from 1705 until 1722, when Edenton took over the role. The colony had no permanent institutions of government until the new capital, New Bern, was established in 1743.\n18th century.\nIn December 1770, Joel Lane successfully petitioned the North Carolina General Assembly to create a new county. On January 5, 1771, the bill creating Wake County was passed in the General Assembly. The county was formed from portions of Cumberland, Orange, and Johnston counties, and was named for Margaret Wake Tryon, the wife of Governor William Tryon. The first county seat was Bloomsbury.\nNew Bern, a port town on the Neuse River from the Atlantic Ocean, was the largest city and the capital of North Carolina during the American Revolution. When the British Army laid siege to the city, that site could no longer be used as the capital. From 1789 to 1794, when Raleigh was being built, the state capital was Fayetteville.\nRaleigh was chosen as the site of the new capital in 1788, as its central location protected it from attacks from the coast. It was officially established in 1792 as both county seat and state capital. The city was incorporated on December 31, 1792, and a charter granted January 21, 1795. The city was named for Sir Walter Raleigh, sponsor of Roanoke, the \"lost colony\" on Roanoke Island.\nNo known city or town existed previously on the chosen city site. Raleigh is one of the few cities in the United States that was planned and built specifically to serve as a state capital. Its original boundaries were formed by the downtown streets of North, East, West and South. The plan, a grid with two main axes meeting at a central square and an additional square in each corner, was based on Thomas Holme's 1682 plan for Philadelphia. The city was developed on the land of various plantations including Crabtree, Mordecai, Oak View, Pine Hall, Pullen, Spring Hill, and Wakefield.\nThe North Carolina General Assembly first met in Raleigh in December 1794, and granted the city a charter, with a board of seven appointed commissioners and an \"Intendant of Police\" (which developed as the office of Mayor) to govern it. After 1803, city commissioners were elected. In 1799, the \"N.C. Minerva and Raleigh Advertiser\" was the first newspaper published in Raleigh. John Haywood was the first Intendant of Police.\n19th century.\nIn 1808, Andrew Johnson, the United States' future 17th President, was born at Casso's Inn in Raleigh. The city's first water supply network was completed in 1818, although due to system failures, the project was abandoned. In 1819 Raleigh's first volunteer fire company was founded, followed in 1821 by a full-time fire company.\nIn 1817, the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina was established and headquartered in Raleigh.\nIn 1831, a fire destroyed the North Carolina State House. Two years later, reconstruction began with quarried gneiss being delivered by the first railroad in the state. Raleigh celebrated the completion of the new State Capitol and new Raleigh & Gaston Railroad Company in 1840.\nIn 1853, the first State Fair was held near Raleigh. The first institution of higher learning in Raleigh, Peace College, was established in 1857. Raleigh's Historic Oakwood contains many houses from the 19th century that are still in good condition.\nNorth Carolina seceded from the Union during the American Civil War on May 20, 1861. After the war began, Governor Zebulon Baird Vance ordered the construction of breastworks around the city as protection from Union troops. Near the end of the Civil War, Governor Vance arranged his evacuation to avoid capture as Union General William Sherman's forces approached the city. Before leaving, Vance met with former governors Graham and Swain to draft a letter of surrender for Raleigh. Their intention was to protect Raleigh from the destruction inflicted on other cities by Union troops. Graham and Swain departed to meet the advancing Federal forces on the morning of April 12, 1865, and were to return by that evening. The evening struck, but Graham and Swain had not returned due to train delays and their temporary capture by Sherman. Governor Vance left the evening after Graham and Sherman failed to return, leaving behind a letter giving Mayor William H. Harrison the authority to surrender. On the morning of April 13, Mayor Harrison among others went to the southern Wake County area to meet General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick and propose surrender. Kenneth Rayner, a long-time resident of Raleigh, delivered the proposal including a promise of no resistance. Kilpatrick agreed to accept the surrender and protect Raleigh from destruction. Kilpatrick's cavalry occupied Raleigh and removed the flagpole from the state capitol, replacing it with a United States Flag above the dome. Sherman arrived shortly after and established his headquarters in the governor's mansion. The city was spared significant destruction during the war. As Confederate cavalry retreated west, Union soldiers followed, leading to the Battle of Morrisville nearby.\nDue to the economic and social problems of the postwar period and Reconstruction, with a state economy still heavily dependent on agriculture, the city grew little over the next several decades.\nShaw University, the South's first African American college, began classes in 1865 and was chartered in 1875. Its Estey Hall was the first building constructed for the higher education of Black women, and Leonard Medical Center was the first four-year medical school in the country for African Americans.\nIn 1867, Episcopal clergy founded St. Augustine's College for the education of freedmen. The biracial Reconstruction legislature created new welfare institutions: in 1869, it approved the United States' first school for blind and deaf Black people, to be located in Raleigh. In 1874, the federal government constructed the Federal Building in Raleigh, the first federal government project in the Southern U.S. following the Civil War.\nIn 1880, the newspapers \"News\" and \"Observer\" combined to form \"The News & Observer\". It continues to be Raleigh's primary daily newspaper. The North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, now known as North Carolina State University, was founded as a land-grant college in 1887. The city's Rex Hospital opened in 1889 and included the state's first nursing school. The Baptist Women's College, now known as Meredith College, opened in 1891, and in 1898, The Academy of Music, a private music conservatory, was established.\nIn the late nineteenth century, two Black Congressmen were elected from North Carolina's 2nd district, the last in 1898. George Henry White sought to promote civil rights for Black citizens and to challenge efforts by White Democrats to reduce Black voting by new discriminatory laws. He and his allies were unsuccessful. Based on a White supremacy campaign that returned Democrats to dominance, in 1900 the state legislature passed a new constitution, with a suffrage amendment that raised barriers to voter registration, resulting in the disenfranchisement of most Black citizens and many poor White citizens. Loss of the ability to vote also disqualified Black men (and later women) from sitting on juries and serving in any office\u2014local, state or federal. The rising Black middle-class in Raleigh and other areas was politically silenced and shut out of local governance, and the Republican Party was no longer competitive in the state.\nIt was not until after federal civil rights legislation was passed in the mid-1960s that the majority of Black citizens in North Carolina would again be able to vote, sit on juries and serve in local offices. By that time many African Americans had left the state in the Great Migration to northern industrial cities for more opportunities. No African American was elected to Congress from North Carolina until 1992.\n20th century.\nIn 1912, Bloomsbury Park opened, featuring a popular carousel ride. Relocated to Pullen Park, the Pullen Park Carousel is still operating.\nFrom 1914 to 1917, an influenza epidemic killed 288 Raleighites.\nIn 1922, WLAC signed on as the city's first radio station, but lasted only two years. WFBQ signed on in 1924 and became WPTF in 1927. It is now Raleigh's oldest continuous radio broadcaster.\nIn 1923, the Raleigh Fall Festival was formed. The Festival was reorganized as the North Carolina Debutante Ball in 1927.\nFollowing immigration by Catholics, on December 12, 1924, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Raleigh was officially established by Pope Pius XI. The Sacred Heart Cathedral became the official seat of the diocese with William Joseph Hafey as its bishop.\nThe city's first airport, Curtiss-Wright Flying Field, opened in 1929. That same year, the stock market crash resulted in six Raleigh banks closing.\nDuring the difficult 1930s of the Great Depression, government at all levels was integral to creating jobs. The city provided recreational and educational programs, and hired people for public works projects. In 1932, Raleigh Memorial Auditorium was dedicated. The North Carolina Symphony, founded the same year, performed in its new home. From 1934 to 1937, the federal Civilian Conservation Corps constructed the area now known as William B. Umstead State Park. In 1939, the State General Assembly chartered the Raleigh-Durham Aeronautical Authority to build a larger airport between Raleigh and Durham, with the first flight occurring in 1943.\nIn 1947, Raleigh citizens adopted a council\u2013manager form of government, which is still the city's current form of government. Council members are elected from single-member districts. They hire a city manager.\nThe Dorton Arena, a 7,610-seat multi-purpose arena designed by Matthew Nowicki, was opened in 1952 on the grounds of the North Carolina State Fair. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.\nRaleigh experienced significant damage from Hurricane Hazel in 1954.\nIn 1953, WNAO-TV, channel 28, became the city's first television station, though it folded in 1957.\nWith the opening of the Research Triangle Park in 1959, Raleigh began to experience a population increase, resulting in a total city population of 100,000 by 1960. In 1960, the Census Bureau reported Raleigh's population as 76.4% White and 23.4% Black.\nFollowing the passage of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the main achievements of the Civil Rights Movement and the Lyndon B. Johnson presidency, political participation and voting by African Americans in Raleigh increased rapidly.\nFrom the early-to-mid 20th century East Hargett Street was known as Raleigh's \"Black Main Street\" and hosted numerous Black-owned businesses. The area declined after the city desegregated its establishments. Another of Raleigh's oldest Black neighborhoods, Fourth Ward, was demolished starting in 1971, with about 600 homes and 60 businesses south of downtown gone as a result of urban renewal, and 1,600 people forced to move. It was claimed housing was substandard and the area had a lot of crime.\nBy the early 1970s people in Raleigh were growing increasingly concerned about growth and urban sprawl. Community organizations felt that municipal offices were being too heavily influenced by business interests when the city's population was rapidly growing and various development projects were being proposed. At their behest, the municipal elections were altered so that the mayor was to be directly elected, instead of being selected by the city council. Most city council seats were then made responsible to districts, instead of being held at-large. The 1973 elections were the first contests affected by the reforms. City Councilman Clarence Lightner defeated Raleigh Merchants bureau Executive Director G. Wesley Williams to become Raleigh's first Black mayor, and thus the first Black mayor in a major White-majority city in the South.\nIn 1976, the Raleigh City and Wake County schools merged to become the Wake County Public School System, now the largest school system in the state and 19th largest in the country.\nDuring the 1970s and 1980s, the I-440 beltline was constructed, in an attempt to ease traffic congestion and providing access to most major city roads.\nThe first Raleigh Convention Center (replaced in 2008) and Fayetteville Street Mall were both opened in 1977. Fayetteville Street was turned into a pedestrian-only street in an effort to help the then-ailing downtown area, but the plan was flawed and business declined for years to come. Fayetteville Street was reopened in 2007 as the main thoroughfare of Raleigh's downtown.\nDuring the 1988 Raleigh tornado outbreak of November 28, 1988, the city was affected by the most destructive of the seven tornadoes reported in Northeastern North Carolina and southeastern Virginia between 1:00\u00a0am and 5:45\u00a0am. The Raleigh tornado produced over $77\u00a0million in damage, along with four fatalities (two in the city of Raleigh, and two in Nash County) and 154 injuries. The damage path from the storm was measured at long, and wide at times. The tornado was rated F4.\nIn 1991, two large skyscrapers in Raleigh were completed, First Union Capitol Center and Two Hannover Square, along with the popular Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek in Southeast Raleigh.\nIn 1996, the Olympic Flame passed through Raleigh while on its way to the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Also in 1996, Hurricane Fran struck the area, causing massive flooding and extensive structural damage. In addition, WRAL-TV became the first High-Definition broadcast station in the world.\nIn 1997, the National Hockey League's Hartford Whalers announced their intention to move to Raleigh as the Carolina Hurricanes, becoming the city's first major league professional sports franchise.\nIn 1999, the Raleigh Entertainment and Sports Arena (later renamed the RBC Center and now called Lenovo Center), opened to provide a home for the Hurricanes and the NC State Wolfpack men's basketball team, as well as an up-to-date major concert venue.\n21st century.\nIn the first decade of the 21st century, Raleigh was featured prominently in a number of \"Top 10 Lists\", including those by \"Forbes\", MSNBC and \"Money\" magazine, due to its quality of life and favorable business climate.\nIn 2001, the Raleigh Memorial Auditorium complex was expanded with the addition of the Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Meymandi Concert Hall, Fletcher Opera Theater, Kennedy Theatre, Betty Ray McCain Gallery and Lichtin Plaza.\nFayetteville Street reopened to vehicular traffic in 2006. A variety of downtown building projects began around this time including the 34-story RBC Bank Tower, multiple condominium projects and several new restaurants. Additional skyscrapers are in the proposal/planning phase.\nIn 2006, the city's NHL franchise, the Carolina Hurricanes, won the Stanley Cup, North Carolina's first professional sports championship. The NC Courage would go on to win the National Women\u2019s Soccer League (NWSL) in 2018 and 2019.\nWith the opening of parts of I-540 from 2005 to 2007, a new loop around Wake County, traffic congestion eased somewhat in the North Raleigh area. Completion of the entire loop is expected to take another 15 years.\nIn 2008, the city's Fayetteville Street Historic District joined the National Register of Historic Places.\nIn September 2010, Raleigh hosted the inaugural Hopscotch Music Festival.\nIn January 2011, Raleigh hosted the National Hockey League All-Star Game.\nIn April 2011, a devastating EF-3 tornado hit Raleigh, and many other tornadoes touched down in the state (ultimately the largest, but not the strongest outbreak to ever hit the state), killing 24 people. The tornado tracked northeast through parts of downtown, East Central Raleigh and Northeast Raleigh and produced $115 million in damages in Wake County. There were 4 fatalities in the city.\nIn September 2015, Holy Trinity Anglican Church was opened; the first church to be built in downtown Raleigh since 1958.\nOn July 26, 2017, the Catholic Diocese of Raleigh dedicated its new cathedral, Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral, the fifth-largest in the United States.\nOn October 13, 2022, a spree shooting occurred in Raleigh's Hedingham neighborhood. Five people were killed, and two others were injured. The suspect, a 15-year-old boy, was detained after being critically wounded and later remanded into the custody of the medical unit of a juvenile correctional facility.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and (0.72%) is water. The Neuse River flows through the northeastern corner of the city.\nRaleigh is located in the northeast central region of North Carolina, where the Piedmont and Atlantic coastal plain regions meet. This area is known as the \"fall line\" because it marks the elevation inland at which waterfalls begin to appear in creeks and rivers. As a result, most of Raleigh features gently rolling hills that slope eastward toward the state's flat coastal plain.\nThe city of Raleigh is located southeast of Durham; northeast of Fayetteville; northwest of Wilmington; and southwest of Richmond, Virginia; and northeast of Charlotte. A small portion of Raleigh is located in Durham County, North Carolina.\nCityscape.\nRaleigh is divided into several major geographic areas, each of which use a Raleigh address and a ZIP code that begins with the digits 276. PNC Plaza, formerly known as RBC Plaza, is the largest and tallest skyscraper in the city of Raleigh. The tower rises to a height of , with a floor count of 34.\nInside the Beltline.\nOne common division of Raleigh is to differentiate the central part of the city, which lies inside of the circumferential highway known as the Raleigh Beltline (I-440 and I-40) from areas outside of the Beltline. The area inside of the beltline includes the entirety of the central business district known as Downtown Raleigh, as well as several more residential areas surrounding it.\nThe downtown area is home to historic buildings such as the Sir Walter Raleigh Hotel built in the early 20th century, the restored City Market, the Fayetteville Street downtown business district (which includes the PNC Plaza and Wells Fargo Capitol Center buildings), as well as the North Carolina Museum of History, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, North Carolina State Capitol, William Peace University, the City of Raleigh Museum, Raleigh Convention Center, Shaw University, Campbell University School of Law, and St. Augustine's College. In the 2000s, an effort by the Downtown Raleigh Alliance was made to separate this area of the city into five smaller districts: Fayetteville Street, Moore Square, Glenwood South, Warehouse, and Capital District. The nearby North Blount Street Historic District includes many of the city's historic Victorian, Queen Anne, and Second Empire mansions, including Norris-Heartt House, Andrews-Duncan House, Heck-Andrews House, Capehart House, and the Garland Scott and Toler Moore Tucker House (the latter was later moved from its original location to Oakwood).\nSome of the names have become commonplace among locals, such as the Warehouse District, Fayetteville Street, and Glenwood South. Other neighborhoods lying inside the Beltline include Forest Park, Boylan Heights, Country Club Hills, Coley Forest, Five Points, Budleigh, Glenwood-Brooklyn, Hayes Barton Historic District, Moore Square, Mordecai (home to the historic Mordecai House), Rochester Heights, South Park, Rosengarten Park, Belvidere Park, Woodcrest, Oberlin Village, and Historic Oakwood. These neighborhoods were typically built before World War II, and roughly correspond to the extent of the city of Raleigh before the population boom of the latter half of the 20th century led to growth of the city limits beyond the historic urban core.\nMidtown Raleigh.\nMidtown Raleigh is a relatively new term used to describe the residential and commercial area lying on the northside of the I-440 Beltline and is part of North Raleigh. It is roughly framed by Glenwood/Six Forks Road to the West, Wake Forest Road to the East, and Millbrook Road to the North. It includes shopping centers such as North Hills and Crabtree Valley Mall. It also includes North Hills Park and part of the Raleigh Greenway System. The term was coined by the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, developer John Kane and planning director Mitchell Silver. \"The\" \"News & Observer\" newspaper started using the term for marketing purposes only. The Midtown Raleigh Alliance was founded on July 25, 2011, as a way for community leaders to promote the area. The center of the area, especially around the North Hills development at the junction of Six Forks Road and the Beltline, is experiencing rapid urbanization as several high-rise buildings have been built since 2010.\nEast Raleigh.\nEast Raleigh is situated roughly from Capital Boulevard and the eastern side of I-440 beltline to the Neuse River, and extending as far south as Poole Road. Most of East Raleigh's development is along primary corridors such as U.S. 1 (Capital Boulevard), New Bern Avenue, Poole Road, Buffaloe Road, and New Hope Road. Neighborhoods in East Raleigh include Hedingham, Longview, Lockwood, Madonna Acres, New Hope, Thompson-Hunter and Wilder's Grove. The area is bordered to the east by the town of Knightdale.\nWest Raleigh.\nWest Raleigh lies along Hillsborough Street and Western Boulevard. The area is bordered to the west and south by Cary. It is home to North Carolina State University, Meredith College, Pullen Park, Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, the Islamic Association of Raleigh, Village District, Lake Johnson, the North Carolina Museum of Art and historic Saint Mary's School. Primary thoroughfares serving West Raleigh, in addition to Hillsborough Street, are Avent Ferry Road, Blue Ridge Road, and Western Boulevard. The Lenovo Center is also located here adjacent to the North Carolina State Fairgrounds. These are located approximately 2 miles from Rex Hospital.\nNorth Raleigh.\nNorth Raleigh is an expansive, diverse, and fast-growing suburban area of the city that is home to established neighborhoods to the south along with many newly built subdivisions and along its northern fringes. The area generally falls North of Millbrook Road. It is primarily suburban with large shopping areas. Primary neighborhoods and subdivisions in North Raleigh include Bartons Creek Bluffs, Bedford, Bent Tree, Black Horse Run, Brier Creek, Brookhaven, Coachman's Trail, Crossgate, Crosswinds, Dominion Park, Durant Trails, Ethan's Glenn, Falls River, Greystone Village, Harrington Grove, Hidden Valley, Lake Park, Long Lake, North Haven, North Ridge, Oakcroft, Shannon Woods, Six Forks Station, Springdale Estates, Stonebridge, Stone Creek, Stonehenge, Summerfield, The Sanctuary, Valley Estates, Wakefield, Weathersfield, Windsor Forest, and Wood Valley. The area is served by a number of primary transportation corridors including Glenwood Avenue U.S. Route 70, Interstate 540, Wake Forest Road, Millbrook Road, Lynn Road, Six Forks Road, Spring Forest Road, Creedmoor Road, Leesville Road, Norwood Road, Strickland Road, and North Hills Drive.\nSouth Raleigh.\nSouth Raleigh is located along U.S. 401 south toward Fuquay-Varina and along US 70 into suburban Garner. This area is the least developed and least dense area of Raleigh (much of the area lies within the Swift Creek watershed district, where development regulations limit housing densities and construction). The area is bordered to the west by Cary, to the east by Garner, to the southwest by Holly Springs and the southeast by Fuquay-Varina. Neighborhoods in South Raleigh include Eagle Creek, Renaissance Park, Lake Wheeler, Swift Creek, Carolina Pines, Rhamkatte, Riverbrooke and Enchanted Oaks.\nSoutheast Raleigh.\nSoutheast Raleigh is bounded by downtown on the west, Garner on the southwest, and rural Wake County to the southeast. The area includes areas along Rock Quarry Road, Poole Road, and New Bern Avenue. Primary neighborhoods include Abbington Ridge, Pearl Ridge, Chastain, Chavis Heights, Raleigh Country Club, Southgate, Kingwood Forest, Rochester Heights, Emerald Village, Worthdale and Biltmore Hills. Coastal Credit Union Music Park (formerly Time Warner Cable Music Pavilion, Alltel Pavilion and Walnut Creek Amphitheatre) is one of the region's major outdoor concert venues and is located on Rock Quarry Road. Shaw University is located in this part of the city. Starting in 2020, large tracts of formerly unoccupied land along Rock Quarry Road between New Hope Road and Barwell Road, and between Barwell Road and Battle Bridge Road, have been cleared for new developments.\nClimate.\nLike much of the Southeastern United States, Raleigh has a four-season humid subtropical climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Cfa\"). Winters are generally cool, with a normal January daily mean temperature of . On average, there are 69\u00a0nights per year that drop to or below freezing, and only 2.7\u00a0days that fail to rise above freezing. Raleigh receives an average annual rainfall of . Annual and monthly temperature and precipitation data are in chart below, based on 1991\u20132020 climate data. February is the driest month, with an average of of precipitation. Precipitation is well distributed around the year, with a slight maximum between July and September, owing to generally frequent, sometimes heavy, showers and thunderstorms, and the threat of tropical weather systems (primarily from August to early October) bringing heavy rainfall. Summers are hot and humid, with a normal July daily mean temperature of . There are 48\u00a0days per year with highs at or above . Autumn is similar to spring overall but has fewer days of rainfall, but greater potential for extremely heavy rainfall in a one/two-day period, owing to occasional threat from tropical weather systems (hurricanes and tropical storms) packing torrential rainfall. In September 1999, Raleigh recorded its wettest month ever, with over 21 inches of rain, due to torrential rainfall from tropical weather systems, most notably Hurricane Floyd on September 15\u201316. Raleigh's all-time record high temperature is on July 5, 2024, while the all-time record low is on January 21, 1985. Raleigh falls in USDA hardiness zones 7b (5\u00a0\u00b0F to 10\u00a0\u00b0F) and 8a (10\u00a0\u00b0F to 15\u00a0\u00b0F).\nRaleigh receives an average of of snow in winter. Freezing rain and sleet also occur most winters, and occasionally the area experiences a major damaging ice storm. On January 24\u201325, 2000, Raleigh received its greatest snowfall from a single storm\u00a0\u2013 \u00a0\u2013 the Winter Storm of January 2000. Storms of this magnitude are generally the result of cold air damming that affects the city due to its proximity to the Appalachian Mountains. Winter storms have caused traffic problems in the past as well.\nThe region also experiences occasional periods of drought, during which the city sometimes has restricted water use by residents. During the late summer and early fall, Raleigh can experience hurricanes. In 1996, Hurricane Fran caused severe damage in the Raleigh area, mostly from falling trees. Hurricanes Dennis and Floyd in September 1999 were primary contributors to that month's extreme rainfall of over 21 inches. The most recent hurricane to have a considerable effect on the area was Hurricane Florence in 2018. Tornadoes also have on occasion affected the city of Raleigh, most notably the November 28, 1988, tornado which occurred in the early morning hours and rated F4 on the Fujita scale and affected northwestern portions of the city. There also was the April 16, 2011, EF3 tornado, which affected portions of downtown and northeast Raleigh and the suburb of Holly Springs.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nAs of the 2020 census, there were 467,665 people, 188,412 households, and 104,848 families residing in the city. In the American Community Survey of 2019, the city of Raleigh's population was estimated at 474,708; an earlier estimate determined the population at 474,069. At the 2000 census, there were 276,093 persons (July 2008 estimate was 380,173) and 61,371 families residing in Raleigh. The population density was . There were 120,699 housing units at an average density of .\nThere were 112,608 households in the city in 2000, of which 26.5% included children below the age of 18, 39.5% were composed of married couples living together, 11.4% reported a female householder with no husband present, and 45.5% classified themselves as nonfamily. Unmarried partners were present in 2.2% of households. In addition, 33.1% of all households were composed of individuals living alone, of which 6.2% was someone 65 years of age or older. The average household size in Raleigh was 2.30 persons, and the average family size was 2.97 persons. Raleigh's population in 2000 was evenly distributed with 20.9% below the age of 18, 15.9% aged 18 to 24, 36.6% from 25 to 44, and 18.4% from 45 to 64. An estimated 8.3% of the population was 65 years of age or older, and the median age was 31 years. For every 100 females, there were 98.0 males; for every 100 females aged 18 or older, there were 96.6 males aged 18 or older.\nThe median household income in the city was $46,612 in 2000, and the median family income was $60,003. Males earned a median income of $39,248, versus $30,656 for females. The median per capita income for the city was $25,113, and an estimated 11.5% of the population and 7.1% of families were living below the poverty line. Of the total population, 18.8% of those below the age of 18, and 9.3% of those 65 and older, were living below the poverty line. In 2019, an estimated 10.9% of the local population were at or below the poverty line. The median household income from 2014 to 2018 was $63,891 and the per capita income was $36,875. There were 180,046 households with an average of 2.43 persons per household. The median value of an owner-occupied housing unit was $236,700 in 2018 and the monthly cost with a mortgage was $1,480. The cost without a mortgage was $526. Raleigh had a median gross rent of $1,074.\nRace and ethnicity.\nThe racial makeup of Raleigh in 2023 was 52.5% non-Hispanic White, 28.1% Black or African American, 0.3% American Indian or Alaska Native, 4.5% Asian American, 0.1% from some other race, 6.9% two or more races, 11.6% Hispanic or Latin American of any race. According to the 2010 United States census, the racial composition of the city was: 57.5% White (53.3% non-Hispanic White), 29.3% Black or African American, 4.3% Asian American (1.2% Indian, 0.8% Chinese, 0.7% Vietnamese, 0.5% Korean, 0.4% Filipino, 0.1% Japanese), 2.6% two or more races, 1.4% some other race, 0.5% Native American, and <0.1% Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander In addition, 11.4% of city residents were Hispanic or Latino Americans, of any race (5.9% Mexican, 1.1% Puerto Rican, 0.9% Salvadoran, 0.6% Dominican, 0.6% Honduran, 0.3% Colombian, 0.3% Cuban, 0.2% Guatemalan, 0.2% Spanish, 0.2% Peruvian, 0.1% Venezuelan, 0.1% Ecuadorian, 0.1% Argentine, and 0.1% Panamanian). In 2000, the racial composition of the city was: 63.31% White, 27.80% Black or African American, 7.01% Hispanic or Latino American, 3.38% Asian American, 0.36% Native American, 0.04% Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, 3.24% some other race, and 1.88% two or more races.\nReligion.\nRaleigh is home to a wide variety of religious practitioners. The predominant religion in Raleigh is Christianity, with the largest numbers of adherents being Baptist (14.1%), Methodist (5.6%), and Roman Catholic (4.2%). Others include Presbyterianism (2.8%), Pentecostalism (1.7%), Anglicanism/Episcopalianism (1.2%), Lutheranism (0.6%), the Latter-Day Saints (0.7%), and other Christian denominations (10.2%) including the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Jehovah's Witness, Christian Science, Christian Unitarianism, other Mainline Protestant groups, and non-denominational Christians. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Raleigh, the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina, the North Carolina Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, and the New Hope Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church (USA) are all headquartered in Raleigh.\nOther religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed, Druze, Taoism, and Shintoism make up 1.31% of religious practitioners. Judaism (0.9%) and Islam (0.8%) are also practiced.\nIn Wake County, 29% of the population are affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, 22% are affiliated with the Catholic Church, 17% are affiliated with the United Methodist Church, 6% are affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA), and 27% are religiously affiliated with other denominations, religions, or are not religiously affiliated.\nCrime.\nAccording to the City of Raleigh Crime Statistical Overview, in 2022, the Raleigh Police Department and other agencies in the city reported 1,797 incidents of violent crime and 11,537 incidents of property crime \u2013 making property crime about 24% higher than the national average and violent crime about 2% higher than the national average. Of the violent crimes reported, 43 were murders, 178 were rape/sexual assaults 458 were robberies, and 1,118 were aggravated assaults. Property crimes included burglaries which accounted for 1,191, larcenies for 9,018, and Motor vehicle theft accounted for 1,283 incidents out of the total.\nEconomy.\nRaleigh's industrial base includes financial services, electrical, medical, electronic and telecommunications equipment, clothing and apparel, food processing, paper products, and pharmaceuticals. Raleigh is part of North Carolina's Research Triangle, one of the country's largest and most successful research parks, and a major center in the United States for high-tech and biotech research, as well as advanced textile development. The city is a major retail shipping point for eastern North Carolina and a wholesale distributing point for the grocery industry.\nThe healthcare and pharmaceutical industry has experienced major growth in recent years with many companies based in Raleigh including PRA Health Sciences, Chiesi USA (subsidiary of Chiesi Farmaceutici), formerly Mallinckrodt prior to tax inversion to Ireland, MAKO Surgical Corp., Metabolon, Inc., TearScience, and American Board of Anesthesiology.\nRaleigh was number one on the 2015 Forbes list of the best place for businesses and careers. Companies based in Raleigh include Advance Auto Parts, Bandwidth, Building Materials Holding Corporation, Capitol Broadcasting Company, First Citizens BancShares, Golden Corral, Japan Tobacco International, Martin Marietta Materials, PRA Health Sciences, Red Hat, Vontier, Waste Industries, and Lulu.\nSocial Blade, a website that tracks social media statistics and analytics, and Temple Run developer Imangi Studios are based in Raleigh.\nThe North Carolina Air National Guard, a unit of the Air National Guard, is also headquartered in Raleigh.\nIn April 2014 Steven P. Rosenthal of Northland Investment Corp. referred to Raleigh as \"a real concentration of brain power. You have a lot of smart people living in the same place. That will drive the economy.\"\nTop employers.\nAccording to Raleigh's 2022 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, the top employers in the city are:\nArts and culture.\nPerforming arts.\nThe Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek hosts major international touring acts. In 2011, the Downtown Raleigh Amphitheater opened (now sponsored as the Red Hat Amphitheater), which hosts numerous concerts primarily in the summer months. An additional amphitheater sits on the grounds of the North Carolina Museum of Art, which hosts a summer concert series and outdoor movies. Nearby Cary is home to the Koka Booth Amphitheatre which hosts additional summer concerts and outdoor movies, and serves as the venue for regularly scheduled outdoor concerts by the North Carolina Symphony based in Raleigh. During the North Carolina State Fair, Dorton Arena hosts headline acts. The private Lincoln Theatre is one of several clubs in downtown Raleigh that schedules many concerts throughout the year in multiple formats (rock, pop, country).\nThe Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts complex houses the Raleigh Memorial Auditorium, the Fletcher Opera Theater, the Kennedy Theatre, and the Meymandi Concert Hall. In 2008, a new theatre space, the Meymandi Theatre at the Murphey School, was opened in the restored auditorium of the historic Murphey School. Theater performances are also offered at the Raleigh Little Theatre, Long View Center, Ira David Wood III Pullen Park Theatre, and Stewart and Thompson Theaters at North Carolina State University.\nRaleigh is home to several professional arts organizations, including the North Carolina Symphony, the Opera Company of North Carolina, Theatre in the Park, Burning Coal Theatre Company, the North Carolina Theatre, Broadway Series South and the Carolina Ballet. The numerous local colleges and universities significantly add to the options available for viewing live performances.\nVisual arts.\nNorth Carolina Museum of Art, occupying a large suburban campus on Blue Ridge Road near the North Carolina State Fairgrounds, maintains one of the premier public art collections located between Washington, D.C., and Atlanta. In addition to its extensive collections of American Art, European Art and ancient art, the museum recently has hosted major exhibitions featuring Auguste Rodin (in 2000) and Claude Monet (in 2006\u201307), each attracting more than 200,000 visitors. Unlike most prominent public museums, the North Carolina Museum of Art acquired a large number of the works in its permanent collection through purchases with public funds. The museum's outdoor park is one of the largest such art parks in the country. The museum facility underwent a major expansion which greatly expanded the exhibit space that was completed in 2010. The 127,000 sf new expansion is designed by NYC architect Thomas Phifer and Partners.\nRaleigh's downtown is also home to many local art galleries such as Art Space in City Market, Visual Art Exchange, and 311 Gallery, on Martin Street, and Bee Hive Studios on Hargett Street. CAM Raleigh is a downtown contemporary art museum, also on Martin Street, that serves to promote new artists and does not house a permanent collection. CAM Raleigh was designed by the award-winning architectural firm Brooks+Scarpa of Los Angeles.\nSports.\nProfessional.\nThe National Hockey League's Carolina Hurricanes franchise moved to Raleigh in 1997 from Hartford, Connecticut (where it was known as the Hartford Whalers). The team played its first two seasons more than 60 miles away at Greensboro Coliseum while its home arena, Raleigh Entertainment and Sports Arena (later RBC Center and now Lenovo Center), was under construction. The Hurricanes are the only major league (NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB) professional sports team in North Carolina to have won a championship, winning the Stanley Cup in 2006, over the Edmonton Oilers. The city played host to the 2011 NHL All-Star Game.\nIn addition to the Hurricanes, the North Carolina FC of the United Soccer League Championship and North Carolina Courage of the National Women\u2019s Soccer League play in suburban Cary to the west; the Carolina Mudcats, a Single-A minor-league baseball team, play in the city's eastern suburbs; the newly formed Single-A minor-league baseball Fayetteville Woodpeckers, who formerly played in Buies Creek, began play in the nearby out-of-county southern suburb of Fayetteville when their new ballpark opened in 2019; the Carolina Flyers of the American Ultimate Disc League play primarily at Cardinal Gibbons High School near the Lenovo Center; and the Durham Bulls, the AAA minor-league baseball team made internationally famous by the movie \"Bull Durham\", play in the neighboring city of Durham. The Raleigh Firebirds of The Basketball League play at St. Augustine's University.\nSeveral other professional sports leagues have had former franchises (now defunct) in Raleigh, including the Raleigh IceCaps of the ECHL (1991\u20131998); Carolina Cobras of the Arena Football League (2000\u20132004); the Raleigh\u2013Durham Skyhawks of the World League of American Football (1991); the Raleigh Bullfrogs of the Global Basketball Association (1991\u20131992); the Raleigh Cougars of the United States Basketball League (1997\u20131999); and most recently, the Carolina Courage of the Women's United Soccer Association (2000\u20132001 in Chapel Hill, 2001\u20132003 in suburban Cary), which won that league's championship Founders Cup in 2002.\nThe Raleigh area has hosted the Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) Nationwide Tour Rex Hospital Open since 1994, with the current location of play at Raleigh's Country Club at Wakefield Plantation. Nearby Prestonwood Country Club hosts the PGA SAS Championship every fall.\nCollegiate.\nNorth Carolina State University is located in southwest Raleigh where the Wolfpack competes nationally in 24 intercollegiate varsity sports as a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference. The university's football team plays in Carter\u2013Finley Stadium, the second largest football stadium in North Carolina, while the men's basketball team shares the Lenovo Center with the Carolina Hurricanes hockey club. The Wolfpack women's basketball, volleyball, and gymnastics as well as men's wrestling events are held on campus at Reynolds Coliseum. The men's baseball team plays at Doak Field.\nAmateur.\nThe North Carolina Tigers compete as an Australian rules football club in the United States Australian Football League, in the Eastern Australian Football League.\nThe Raleigh C\u00fa Chulainn Gaelic Athletic Association competes in men's and women's Gaelic Football, Hurling, and Camogie. It is a member in the Southeast Division of the United States Gaelic Athletic Association and the Gaelic Athletic Association based in Ireland. The Raleigh GAA won the Junior B Men's Football national championship in 2014. The Raleigh GAA and the North Carolina Tigers Australian rules football clubs compete in the annual Oak City Cup where both clubs compete under the compromise football rules adapted by Ireland and Australia for international competition.\nRaleigh is also home to one of the Cheer Extreme All Stars gyms. In 2009 and again in 2010, Cheer Extreme Raleigh's Small Senior Level 5 Team were silver medalists at the Cheerleading Worlds Competition in Orlando, Florida, and in 2012 they received the bronze medal. Raleigh is also home to one of the Southeast's premier Hardcourt Bike Polo clubs.\nBecause of the area's many billiards rooms, Raleigh is home to one of the largest amateur league franchises for playing pool, the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill American Poolplayers Association. There are leagues available in formats for players of any skill level.\nParks and recreation.\nRaleigh is the home of Raleigh Kubb, both a competitive and non-competitive kubb club. Raleigh Kubb hosts kubb tournaments benefitting various charities in the Raleigh area.\nThe Raleigh Parks and Recreation Department offers a wide variety of leisure opportunities at more than 200 sites throughout the city, which include: of park land, of greenway, 22 community centers, a BMX championship-caliber race track, 112 tennis courts among 25 locations, 5 public lakes, and 8 public aquatic facilities. The park system includes the historic Pullen Park, the oldest public park in North Carolina. The J. C. Raulston Arboretum, an arboretum and botanical garden in west Raleigh administered by North Carolina State University, maintains a year-round collection that is open daily to the public without charge.\nGovernment.\nHistorically, Raleigh voters have tended to elect conservative Democrats in local, state, and national elections, a holdover from their one-party system of the late 19th century.\nCity Council.\nRaleigh operates under a council-manager government. Raleigh City Council consists of eight members; all seats, including the Mayor's, are open for election every two years. Five of the council seats are district representatives and two seats are citywide representatives elected at-large.\nEducation.\nAs of 2011, \"Time\" ranked Raleigh as the third most educated city in the US based on the percentage of residents who held college degrees. This statistic can most likely be credited to the presence of universities in and around Raleigh, as well as the presence of Research Triangle Park (RTP) to the Northwest.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nPublic schools.\nPublic schools in Raleigh are operated by the Wake County Public School System, the largest public school system of the Carolinas. Observers have praised the Wake County Public School System for its innovative efforts to maintain a socially, economically and racial balanced system by using income as a prime factor in assigning students to schools. Raleigh is home to several magnet high schools and several schools offering the International Baccalaureate program. There are four early college high schools in Raleigh. Raleigh also has two alternative high schools.\nWake County Public high schools in Raleigh include:\nCharter schools.\nThe State of North Carolina provides for a legislated number of charter schools. These schools are administered independently of the Wake County Public School System. Raleigh is currently home to 11 such charter schools:\nPrivate and religion-based schools.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nMedia.\nPrint publications.\nThere are several newspapers and periodicals serving Raleigh:\nTelevision.\nBroadcast.\nRaleigh is part of the Raleigh-Durham-Fayetteville Designated Market Area, the 24th largest broadcast television market in the United States. The following stations are licensed to Raleigh and/or have significant operations and viewers in the city:\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nAir.\nRaleigh-Durham International Airport.\nRaleigh-Durham International Airport (), the region's primary airport and the second largest in North Carolina, located northwest of downtown Raleigh via Interstate-40 between Raleigh and Durham, serves the city and greater Research Triangle metropolitan region, as well as much of eastern North Carolina. The airport offers service to nearly 75 domestic and international destinations and serves approximately 15 million passengers a year. RDU is served by 16 air carriers, flying to a multitude of nonstop destinations on 350+ flights daily. The airport also offers facilities for cargo and general aviation. The airport authority tripled the size of its Terminal 2 (formerly Terminal C) in January 2011. \nPrivate general aviation airports in Raleigh include Triple W Airport ().\nIntercity rail.\nRaleigh Union Station is one of Amtrak's busiest stops in the Southern U.S. The station is served by five passenger trains daily: the \"Silver Star\", four daily \"Piedmont\" service, and the \"Carolinian.\" Daily service is offered between Raleigh and:\nPublic transit.\nPublic transportation in and around Raleigh is provided by GoRaleigh (formerly Capital Area Transit), which operates 33 fixed bus routes, including the R-Line and the Wake-Forest Loop. Although there are 33 routes, some routes are designed to cover multiple other routes at times when they are not served. Depending on the time of the day, and the day of the week, the number of routes operating is between 5 and 29.\nRaleigh is also served by GoTriangle (formerly Triangle Transit Authority). GoTriangle offers scheduled, fixed-route regional and commuter bus service between Raleigh and the region's other principal cities of Durham, Cary and Chapel Hill, as well as to and from the Raleigh-Durham International Airport, Research Triangle Park and several of the region's larger suburban communities. Triangle Transit also coordinates an extensive vanpool and rideshare program that serves the region's larger employers and commute destinations.\nNorth Carolina State University also maintains its own transit system, the Wolfline, that provides zero-fare bus service to the general public along multiple routes serving the university's campuses in southwest Raleigh.\nGovernment agencies throughout the Raleigh-Durham metropolitan area have struggled with determining the best means of providing fixed-rail transit service for the region.\nFrom 1995 the cornerstone of Triangle Transit's long-term plan was a 28-mile rail corridor from northeast Raleigh, through downtown Raleigh, Cary, and Research Triangle Park, to Durham using DMU technology. There were proposals to extend this corridor 7 miles to Chapel Hill with light rail technology. However, in 2006 Triangle Transit deferred implementation indefinitely when the Federal Transit Administration declined to fund the program due to low ridership projections.\nThe region's two metropolitan planning organizations appointed a group of local citizens in 2007 to reexamine options for future transit development in light of Triangle Transit's problems. The Special Transit Advisory Commission (STAC) retained many of the provisions of Triangle Transit's original plan but recommended adding new bus services and raising additional revenues by adding a new local half-cent sales tax to fund the project.\nGreyhound Lines provides an inter-city bus service to Durham, Charlotte, Richmond, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, and other cities.\nPublic safety.\nThe Raleigh Fire Department provides fire protection throughout the city. The North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women, the state's primary correctional facility housing female inmates, is based in Raleigh.\nSister cities.\nRaleigh has several sister cities:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["57845", "21650"], "permutation_1": ["21650", "57845"], "permutation_2": ["57845", "21650"], "permutation_3": ["57845", "21650"]}
{"id": "2hop__437881_136211", "docs_added": {"27208": "Saint Lucia\nCountry in the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean Sea\nSaint Lucia is an island country of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean. Part of the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, it is located north/northeast of the island of Saint Vincent, northwest of Barbados and south of Martinique. It covers a land area of with an estimated population of over 180,000 people as of 2018. The nation's capital and largest city is Castries.\nThe first proven inhabitants of the island, the Arawaks, are believed to have been the first to settle on the island in 200\u2013400 AD. In 800 AD, the island was taken over by the Kalinago. The French were the first European colonists to settle on the island, and they signed a treaty with the native Caribs in 1660. The English took control of the island in 1663. In ensuing years, England and France fought 14 times for control of the island; consequently control over this immensely valuable geopolitical position changed frequently. Eventually, the British took complete control in 1814, shortly after the victory over French Emperor Napoleon I. Because the island switched so often between British and French control, Saint Lucia was also known as the \"Helen of the West\" after the Greek mythological character, Helen of Troy.\nRepresentative government was introduced in 1924 with universal suffrage being established in 1951. From 1958 to 1962, the island was a member of the West Indies Federation. On 22 February 1979, Saint Lucia became an independent state, while remaining as a Commonwealth realm.\nSaint Lucia is a member of the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the World Trade Organization, CARICOM and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). It is also a member of .\nEtymology.\nSaint Lucia is named after Saint Lucy of Syracuse (AD 283 \u2013 304). Saint Lucia is one of two sovereign states in the world named after a female and is the only one named after a woman (Ireland is named after a goddess). Legend states that French sailors were shipwrecked on the island on 13 December, the feast day of St. Lucy, and therefore named the island in her honour. \nA globe in the Vatican from 1520 shows the island as Sancta Lucia, indicating that the island was instead named by early Spanish explorers. Saint Lucia was first known as \"Louanalao\" by the Arawak Indians in 200 AD, meaning \"Island of the Iguanas,\" and then as \"Hewanorra\", in 800 AD, meaning \"there where iguanas are found,\" when the Carib Indians arrived and assimilated their culture into Saint Lucia.\nHistory.\nPre-Columbian.\nThe first proven inhabitants of Saint Lucia were the Arawaks, though there may have been other native peoples prior to them. The Arawaks are believed to have come from northern South America, sometime around AD 200\u2013400, as there are numerous archaeological sites on the island where specimens of their pottery have been found.\nThe Kalinago (Island Caribs) arrived around AD 800, and seized control from the Arawaks by killing their men and assimilating the women into their own society. \nEarly European exploration and colonization.\nIt is possible that Christopher Columbus may have sighted the island during his fourth voyage in 1502, but he does not mention the island in his log. Juan de la Cosa noted the island on his map of 1500, calling it \"El Falcon\", and another island to the south \"Las Agujas\". A Spanish c\u00e9dula from 1511 mentions the island within the Spanish domain, and a globe in the Vatican made in 1520, shows the island as Sancta Lucia.\nIn the late 1550s, the French pirate Fran\u00e7ois le Clerc (known as \"Jambe de Bois\", due to his wooden leg) set up a camp on Pigeon Island, from where he attacked passing Spanish ships. In 1605, an English vessel called the \"Oliphe Blossome\" was blown off-course on its way to Guyana, and the 67 colonists started a settlement on Saint Lucia, after initially being welcomed by the Carib chief Anthonie. By 26 September 1605, only 19 survived following continued attacks by the Carib chief Augraumart, so the settlers fled the island. The English tried to settle the island again in 1638, but the Caribs continued to be hostile. Eventually, the French successfully claimed the island in 1650 and they signed a treaty with the Caribs in 1660. In 1664, Thomas Warner (son of Sir Thomas Warner, the governor of St Kitts) claimed Saint Lucia for England but the English fled again in 1666, with the French gaining full control of the island after the signing of the Treaty of Breda. Saint Lucia was made an official French crown colony in 1674, as a dependency of Martinique.\n18th and 19th centuries.\nAfter the slave-based sugar industry developed, both the British and the French found the island attractive. During the 18th century, the island changed ownership, or was declared neutral territory, a dozen times, although the French settlements remained and the island was a de facto French colony well into the eighteenth century.\nIn 1722, George I of Great Britain granted both Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent to the 2nd Duke of Montagu. Montague appointed Nathaniel Uring, a merchant sea captain and adventurer, as deputy-governor. Uring went to the islands with a group of seven ships, and established settlement at Petit Carenage. Unable to get enough support from British warships, he and the new colonists were quickly run off by the French.\nDuring the Seven Years' War, Britain occupied Saint Lucia for a year, but handed the island back to the French in 1763, under the Treaty of Paris. Like the English and Dutch on other islands, in 1765, the French began to develop the land for the cultivation of sugar cane as a commodity crop on large plantations. The British occupied the island again in 1778.\nFrom 1782 to 1803, control of the island switched multiple times. In January 1791, during the French Revolution, the National Assembly sent four \"commissaires\" to St Lucia to spread the revolutionary philosophy. By August 1791, slaves began to abandon their estates and Governor Jean-Joseph Sourbader de Gimat fled. In December 1792, Lt. Jean-Baptiste Raymond de Lacrosse arrived with revolutionary pamphlets, and the impoverished whites and free people of colour began to arm themselves as \"patriots\". On 1 February 1793, France declared war on England and Holland, and General Nicolas Xavier de Ricard took over as Governor. The National Convention abolished enslavement on 4 February 1794. On 1 April 1794, St. Lucia was captured by a British expeditionary force led by Vice Admiral John Jervis. Morne Fortune was renamed \"Fort Charlotte\". Soon, a combined force of French Revolutionary Army soldiers and maroons, \"L'Armee Fran\u00e7aise dans les Bois\", began to fight back, starting the First Brigand War.\nA short time later, the British invaded the island as a part of the war with France that had recently broken out. On 21 February 1795, French forces under the nominal control of Victor Hugues, defeated a battalion of British troops at Vieux Fort and Rabot. In 1796, Castries was burned as part of the conflict. Leading the 27th (Inniskilling) Regiment, General John Moore retook Fort Charlotte in 1796, after two days of bitter fighting. As an honour, the Fusiliers' regimental colour was displayed on the flagstaff of the captured fortress at Morne Fortune for an hour before being replaced by the Union Jack. Upon the capture of the fort, Moore's superior, Ralph Abercromby, departed the island and placed Moore in charge of the British garrison. Moore remained at this post until falling ill with yellow fever, leading to his return to Britain before 1798.\nIn 1803, the British regained control of the island. Many members of the \"L'Armee Fran\u00e7aise dans les Bois\" escaped into the thick rainforest where they evaded capture and established maroon communities.\nSlavery on the island continued for a short time, but anti-slavery sentiment was rising in Britain. The British stopped the import of slaves by anyone, white or coloured, when they abolished the slave trade in 1807.\nFrance and Great Britain continued to contest Saint Lucia until the British secured it in 1814, as part of the Treaty of Paris, ending the Napoleonic Wars. Thereafter, Saint Lucia was considered one of the British Windward Islands colonies.\nThe institution of slavery was abolished on the island in 1834, as it was throughout the British Empire. After abolition, all former slaves had to serve a four-year \"apprenticeship\", to accustom them to the idea of freedom. During that period, they worked for their former masters for at least three-quarters of the work week. Full freedom was duly granted by the British in 1838. By that time, people of African ethnicity greatly outnumbered those of ethnic European background. People of Carib descent also comprised a minority on the island.\n20th century.\nSaint Lucia's first representative government was introduced in 1924, with the first election taking place in 1925. Many Saint Lucians served during the Second World War, and the conflict visited the island directly during the Battle of the Caribbean, when a German U-boat attacked and sank two British ships in Castries harbour on 9 March 1942. The United States used the island as a military hub during the war, including setting up a secondary naval base in Gros Islet and using what is now the island's international airport as an air force base.\nUniversal suffrage was introduced in 1951 and elections were held the same year. In 1958, Saint Lucia joined the West Indies Federation, although the federation was dissolved just a few years later in 1962. In 1967, Saint Lucia became one of the six members of the West Indies Associated States, with internal self-government. Independence was peacefully gained in 1979 under Sir John Compton of United Workers Party, with the island remaining within the British Commonwealth, keeping then-Queen Elizabeth II as Monarch, represented locally by a Governor-General.\nPost-independence era.\nDespite leading the country to independence, Compton's initial term as prime minister lasted only a few months, being defeated by the Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) under Allan Louisy in the 1979 Saint Lucian general election. In 1980, Hurricane Allen struck the island, destroying much of its infrastructure and reducing economic growth. Compton returned to power after the 1982 Saint Lucian general election after much instability during the labour government's term. During Compton's second term as the island's leader, banana exports significantly increased and became the nation's main source of revenue. There were improvements to infrastructure, and education was expanded to rural areas. Saint Lucia was key to the US invasion of Grenada. During the 1990s and 2000s, the nation's economy began shifting from agriculture to tourism under the leadership of Kenny Anthony. The 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001 killed two Saint Lucians, and caused an economic slowdown, although moderate growth continued until the Great Recession. The recession, as well as the landfall of Hurricane Tomas in 2010, led to slow economic growth during the early 2010s, although the economy picked up during the later part of the decade and avoided contraction until 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic caused major economic issues globally.\nIn June 2016, the United Workers Party (UWP), led by Allen Michael Chastanet, won 11 of the 17 seats in the general election, ousting the St Lucia Labour Party (SLP) of the incumbent Prime Minister Kenny Anthony. However, Saint Lucia Labour Party won the next election in July 2021, meaning its leader Philip J Pierre became the ninth Prime Minister of Saint Lucia since independence.\nGeography.\nSaint Lucia has a total area of 617 square kilometers (238 sq mi). As a volcanic island, Saint Lucia is very mountainous, with its highest point being Mount Gimie, at above sea level. The Pitons, two mountainous volcanic plugs, form the island's most famous landmark. Saint Lucia is also home to the world's only drive-in volcano, the Sulphur Springs. There are a number of small islands off the coast, the largest of which are the Maria Islands, located in the south-east of the island.\nSaint Lucia lies at latitude 14\u00b0 N and longitude 61\u00b0 W. The population tends to be concentrated around the coast, with the interior more sparsely populated, due to the presence of dense forests. \nFlora and fauna.\nMany species are endemic to the island, including \"Anolis luciae\", a species of lizard, and \"Boa orophias\", a species of boid snake.\nEcoregions.\nSaint Lucia has five terrestrial ecoregions: Windward Islands moist forests, Leeward Islands dry forests, Windward Islands dry forests, Windward Islands xeric scrub, and Lesser Antilles mangroves. The country had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 6.17/10, ranking it 84th globally out of 172 countries.\nClimate.\nSaint Lucia has a tropical climate, specifically a tropical rainforest climate (Af), moderated by northeast trade winds, with a dry season from 1 December to 31 May, and a wet/rainy season from 1 June to 30 November.\nAverage daytime and nighttime temperatures are around , and respectively. Being fairly close to the equator, the island's temperature does not fluctuate much between winter and summer.\nGeology.\nThe geology of St. Lucia can be described as composing three main areas. The oldest, 16\u201318 Ma, volcanic rocks are exposed from Castries northward and consist of eroded basalt and andesite centres. The middle, central highlands, portion of the island consists of dissected andesite centres, 10.4 to 1 Mya, while the lower southwest portion of the island contains recent activity from the Soufriere Volcanic Centre (SVC). This SVC, centred about the Qualibou depression, contains pyroclastic flow deposits, lava flows, domes, block and ash flow deposits, and explosion craters. This depression's perimeter includes the town of Soufriere, Mount Tabac, Mt. Gimie, Morne Bonin, and Gros Piton. At in diameter, though the western portion is open towards the Grenada basin, the depression formed as recently as 100 kya. The depression is noted for its geothermal activity, especially at Sulphur Springs and Soufri\u00e8re Estates, a phreatic eruption in 1776, and recent seismic activity (2000\u20132001).\nEroded andesitic stratovolcanoes to the north east of the depression include Mt. Gimie, Piton St Esprit, and Mt. Grand Magazin, all greater than 1 Ma in age. Andesitic and dacite pyroclastic flows from these volcanoes are found at Morne Tabac dome (532 ka), Morne Bonin dome (273 kya), and Bellevue (264 kya). Avalanche deposits from the formation of the Qualibou depression are found offshore, and in the massive blocks of Rabot, Pleisance, and Coubaril. The dacitic domes of Petit Piton (109 kya) and Gros Piton (71 kya) were then extruded onto the depression floor accompanied by the Anse John (104 kya) and La Pointe (59.8 kya) pyroclastic flows. Later, pyroclastic flows include pumice-rich Belfond and Anse Noir (20 kya). Finally, the dacitic domes of Terre Blanche (15.3 kya) and Belfond (13.6 kya) formed within the depression.\nGovernment.\nLike most Caribbean countries, Saint Lucia is a unitary state with a parliamentary system. It is a Commonwealth realm and a constitutional monarchy, with the current monarch being Charles III, who is represented on the island by a governor-general, currently Errol Charles. The prime minister (currently Philip J. Pierre) is the head of government, the head of the cabinet, and is normally the leader of the largest party in the House of Assembly. The house has 17 seats, with each member being elected via a plurality of votes in their constituency. The upper chamber of Parliament is the Senate which has 11 appointed members, the majority of which are appointed by the prime minister.\nAdministrative divisions.\nSaint Lucia is made up of 10 districts. The districts were created and named by French colonials, and the British chose to keep the names in an anglicised form. The largest district in both size and population is Castries, where the nation's capital of the same name is located. The following are the 10 districts placed in alphabetical order:\nLaw and crime.\nSaint Lucia is a mixed jurisdiction, meaning that it has a legal system based in part on both the civil law and English common law. The Civil Code of St. Lucia of 1867 was based on the Quebec Civil Code of 1866, as supplemented by English common law-style legislation. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was Saint Lucia's final court of appeal until 2023, when a constitutional amendment transferred this to the Caribbean Court of Justice.\nSaint Lucia's homicide rate has hit record highs in recent years. There were 75 homicides in 2021, a 34.5% increase compared with 55 homicides in 2020. 2021 saw the island record the most homicides in its history, and also its highest murder rate in its history, at 40 murders per 100,000 people.\nForeign relations.\nSaint Lucia is a member of the Caribbean Community, OECS, the Organization of American States and La Francophonie. As a Commonwealth Realm, Saint Lucia has relatively friendly relations with United Kingdom and Canada. France is also a major ally, in part due to Saint Lucia's border with Martinique. The United States is the island's largest trading partner, and Saint Lucia was key to the US invasion of Grenada in 1983, and voted against condemning the invasion. Saint Lucia became the 152nd member of the United Nations on 18 September 1979.\nSaint Lucia does not have a military although the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force has a Special Service Unit (SSU) and a Coast Guard. The island signed the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2018.\nEconomy.\nSaint Lucia is a Small Island Developing State, a designation similar to a developing country with a few substantial differences due to Saint Lucia's island nature. The service sector is the largest sector of the economy, accounting for 86.9% of GDP in 2020, followed by industrial and agricultural sectors at 10.9% and 2.2%, respectively.\nSaint Lucia has been able to attract foreign business and investment due to its educated workforce and improvements in roads, communications, water supply, sewerage, and port facilities. Like most small islands, Tourism and offshore banking are Saint Lucia's main sources of revenue. Agriculture, specifically the banana industry, was previously the largest sector of the economy, although its importance has declined significantly. The island's manufacturing sector has been called the most diverse in the Eastern Caribbean, with goods such as plastic being produced on a large scale.\nSaint Lucia's currency is the Eastern Caribbean Dollar (EC$), a regional currency shared among members of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECU). The country's main trade partners are the US, UK, EU and other CARICOM countries.\nTourism.\nTourism is the largest contributor to Saint Lucia's economy. Tourist numbers tend to be more substantial during the dry season (January to April), often referred to as the tourist season. Saint Lucia's tropical weather, scenery, beaches and resorts have made it a popular tourist destination, with 1.29\u00a0million visitors arriving in 2019.\nSome of Saint Lucia's tourist attractions include the Sulphur Springs, the Botanical Gardens, Pigeon Island and The Pitons.\nAgriculture.\nThe agricultural sector was once the main contributor to Saint Lucia's economy. This was especially thanks to the exporting of bananas. However, its importance to the economy has declined significantly, in part due to increased competition from South American countries in the banana industry. Nevertheless, agriculture is still an important part of the country's economy, providing 7.9% of jobs and contributing to 2.2% of the GDP in 2021.\nAbout 18% of land is used for agricultural practices. Bananas remain the main agricultural product grown in Saint Lucia, as well as coconuts, cocoa beans, mangoes, avocados, vegetables, citrus fruits, and root crops such as yams and sweet potatoes.\nSaint Lucia also has a small livestock sector, which is dominated by poultry. The island is self-sufficient in egg production and production of poultry and pork has increased in recent years. Fishing has also been of considerable importance to the nation's economy.\nInfrastructure.\nSaint Lucia has a wide-ranging public bus network which covers most of the island. Busses are owned by private individuals, whilst the government is responsible for setting up routes and hubs. The road network covers most of the island, although some rural areas still lack access to proper roads.\nThe island has two airports, including one International airport. Cruising and yachting are very important to the country's economy, with the main sea port being located in Castries, while the main marina is located in Rodney Bay which is also home to the St. Lucia Yacht Club. Meanwhile, the nation's main oil refinery is located in Bexon.\nThe main source of electricity in Saint Lucia is oil through its sole power station, the Cul De Sac Power Station, although solar energy is also a major source. There have also been attempts to introduce geothermal and wind energy to the island.\nDemographics.\nA census is normally held in Saint Lucia every 10 years. In the 2010 census, Saint Lucia reported a population of 165,595 in 58,920 households. This was a 5.1% increase from the 157,490 recorded at the previous census in 2001. Ages 0\u201314 made up 24.1% of the population whilst those 65 and over made up 8.6%. Nearly 40% of the island's population lived in the District of Castries, where the nation's capital of the same name is located.\nSaint Lucia had a fertility rate of 1.4 children per woman in 2021, the lowest in the Americas. This is much lower than in 1990, when the birth rate was 3.4 children per woman, and significantly lower than in 1959, when the birth rate peaked at 6.98 children per woman. Most emigration from Saint Lucia is primarily to Anglophone countries, with the United Kingdom having almost 10,000 Saint Lucian-born citizens, and over 30,000 of Saint Lucian heritage. The United States is home to many Saint Lucians, especially areas such as Miami and New York City. Canada is also home to many Saint Lucians, and especially in the French-speaking province of Quebec in the city of Montr\u00e9al. The median age of Saint Lucians was 33.1 years in 2021.\nEthnic groups.\nSaint Lucia was originally populated by Amerindian peoples. However, European colonisation led to a significant drop in the indigenous populations. Most residents of the island were white planters, but African slaves and indentured servants brought by the Europeans eventually came to outnumber them. Because of this, Saint Lucia's population is predominantly of African and mixed descent. As of 2010, 85.3% of the population are black and 10.9% are of multiracial descent. Other groups include Indo-Caribbean persons (2.2%), whites (0.6%), and Indigenous Persons (0.6%). A small number of Kalinago live in the Choiseul region and in other towns on the western coast. There is also a small population of Lebanese and Syrians.\nLanguages.\nThe official language of Saint Lucia is English, though Saint Lucian French Creole (Kw\u00e9y\u00f2l) is widely spoken. Referred to colloquially as \"Patois\" (\"Patwa\"), it is spoken by a majority of the population. It is a dialect of Antillean Creole and is also related to Haitian Creole, though it nonetheless has a number of distinctive features from the latter. The Creole language developed during the early period of French colonisation and is derived chiefly from French and West African languages. There have been some attempts to make the language official, but they have not yet been successful.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nIn the 2010 census, a majority of Saint Lucians identified as Christians. This can be traced back to the nation's colonization by French and British settlers. Due to heavy French influence, most Christians on the island are Catholics, with 62.5% of the island's residents identifying as such. 24.5% of the island's residents identify as Protestants. In addition, 1.9% of the population identified as members of the Rastafari movement and 1.4% of the population practice Hinduism. The number of residents claiming no religion stood at 5.9% in 2010.\nThere is no state religion in Saint Lucia. The nation's constitution guarantees freedom of religion and prohibits forcing persons to take oath to any religion in which they do not follow. Religious groups are also guaranteed the freedom to establish places of education.\nEducation.\nMost primary and secondary schools in Saint Lucia are operated by the government. Education is free and compulsory for children aged five to fifteen. This includes seven years of primary school and three to five years of secondary school. In the last two years of secondary school, students are allowed to choose the subjects that they would like to do, in preparation for regional CSEC examinations. In 2020, public spending on education was at 3.6%.\nTertiary educational facilities on the island are normally private institutions. These include Monroe College and International American University. However, there are still a few public institutions, including the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College and the University of the West Indies.\nHealthcare.\nHealth services in Saint Lucia are split between the government and private institutions. The island is served by 2 public hospitals and multiple health centers, although most dental and vision services are private. Public expenditure on healthcare stood at 2.1% in 2019.\nIn 2021, life expectancy was at 71.1 years (67.8 for men and 74.7 for women). This was compared to 73.4 years in 2019. The drop in life expectancy was largely attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nCulture.\nThe culture of Saint Lucia has been influenced by African, East Indian, French, and English heritage. The main secondary language of the island is Saint Lucian Creole (Kw\u00e9y\u00f2l), a French-based creole spoken by most of the population. The island boasts the highest ratio of Nobel laureates produced with respect to the total population of any sovereign country in the world. Two winners have come from Saint Lucia: Sir Arthur Lewis, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1979, and the poet Derek Walcott, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.\nSaint Lucia has two flower festivals, the La Rose festival, celebrated on 30 August, and the La Marguerite festival, celebrated on 17 October. Every summer, the island hosts a carnival as a way to present the country's culture and music. Annually, there are normally many festivals, most of them being music related.\nMusic.\nSaint Lucian music is heavily influenced by elements of African music, especially rhythmically. The most popular music genres in Saint Lucia are calypso, soca, dancehall, reggae, zouk, and folk music. Dennery Segment, a genre influenced by Angolan Kuduro, Saint Lucian Solo music and Dancehall was developed on the island. The internationally renowned Saint Lucia Jazz Festival is held annually, and the festival is a major source of revenue for the country's economy.\nFood.\nSaint Lucian cuisine is a mix of African, European, Indian and Caribbean dishes. Some common dishes include macaroni pie, stewed chicken, rice and peas, roti (Indian flatbreads) and soups packed full with fresh locally produced vegetables. All mainstream meat and poultry are eaten in St. Lucia; meat and seafood are normally stewed and browned to create a rich gravy sometimes served over \"ground provisions\" (vegetables) or rice. Johnny Cakes (known as bakes) are also common, and are served with different sides, such as saltfish. The national dish of Saint Lucia is green figs and saltfish.\nSports.\nAs with most Caribbean islands, cricket is the most popular sport in Saint Lucia. The Windward Islands cricket team includes players from Saint Lucia and plays in the West Indies regional tournament. Daren Sammy became the first Saint Lucian to represent the West Indies on his debut in 2007, and was made captain in 2010. The Saint Lucia Kings is a T20 franchise playing in the Caribbean Premier League based in this said island nation. Sailing is also a major sport in Saint Lucia, with the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) race beginning in the Canary Islands and ending on the island. Other sports that are popular on the island include football, basketball, tennis, golf and volleyball. Karate and boxing have also seen increased popularity in recent years. \nJulien Alfred won the nation's first-ever Olympic medal, when she won the women's 100 meters event in 10.72 seconds at the 2024 Summer Olympics held in Paris, France.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "8965443": "Vieux Fort River\nRiver of Saint Lucia\nThe Vieux Fort River is a river in Saint Lucia. It flows south-southeast, reaching the coast close to the country's southernmost point at the town of Vieux Fort. It is named after a fort that used to watch out towards Saint Vincent towards the south. \nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "23531651": "Little Vieux Fort River\nRiver of Saint Lucia\nThe Little Vieux Fort River is a river in Vieux Fort Quarter of the island country of Saint Lucia. It is a tributary of the Vieux Fort River.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "898382": "Vieux Fort District\nDistrict of Saint Lucia\nVieux Fort is one of 10 districts of the Caribbean island country of Saint Lucia. Vieux Fort is also the name of the main town in the district. It is the home of the second-largest town in Saint Lucia and is the home of Saint Lucia's international airport, Hewanorra International Airport (Hewanorra is the island's old Amerindian name). \nGeography.\nIt has several small communities which include Augier, Pierrot, Belle Vue, Black Bay, Grace, La Resource, Pierrot, St. Urban, La Tourney, Vige, and Zaboo.\nEconomy.\nEvery Friday and Saturday is market day where you can buy local goods such as spices, ground provisions and fruits. It also houses St. Lucia's biggest fish market, and you can go to the mall every day which sells fashion products.\nHistory.\nDutch sailors built a fort here, though the first fort in St. Lucia was built by the \"Oliphe Blossome\" settlers in 1605.\nIn the second half of the 18th century, Vieux Fort was the center of Saint Lucia's sugar industry; today it is more industrial.\nPart of Vieux Fort is called Black Bay. It got its name because legend has it that the infamous pirate Blackbeard used this part of the country to stash his ill-gotten gains.\nDuring the Second World War, Vieux Fort became a base for American troops. Some of the evidence can still be seen around town, such as the tunnel that runs from Clark Street all the way to St. Judes Hospital in Augier. This tunnel was used for storage of supplies and also a quick route to the hospital. Many people who reside in Vieux-Fort today have no idea about such a tunnel.\nIn recent years a new modern part of Vieux Fort has been erected to reflect the modern world, yet if you walk along Clark Street and its surrounding roads, you will still see what is known as The Old Town. Here you will see historic colonial houses that give Vieux Fort a touch of Old England and France (albeit they do need a bit of renovation now). In recent times Black Bay has become a haven for expatriates.\nGovernment.\nThe Vieux Fort district is divided into two electoral constituencies represented in the House of Assembly. The electoral constituencies has been represented since July 2021 by Moses Jean Baptiste (Vieux Fort North) and Kenny Anthony (Vieux Fort South) as Parliamentary Representatives. The district elected their representatives during the countries recent general election.\nTourism.\nWhilst the majority of tourist activity in Saint Lucia is based on the west coast, some hotels are located in Vieux Fort District. A notable tourist attraction is the Maria Islands Nature Reserve, managed by the Saint Lucia National Trust, which is a nesting ground for leatherback turtles and is home to a species of iguana indigenous to St. Lucia.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "27022462": "Vieux Fort, Saint Lucia\nVieux Fort is a town located near the southernmost point of Saint Lucia, a Caribbean island nation. It is named after a fort that used to watch out towards Saint Vincent towards the south. The population of the town was 4,574 in 2000\nwhile the surrounding district of Vieux Fort has a total population of about 15,132 in 2010.\nHistory.\nIn the 18th and 19th centuries it was an important centre of the sugar industry in Saint Lucia, before that industry declined.\nDuring World War II, the Americans constructed an airfield called Beane Army Airfield. After the war it was subsequently expanded to form Hewanorra International Airport.\nToday, Vieux Fort is the main point of entry for Saint Lucia and also hosts a port just to the south of the town. It is also a major industrial area and also hosts other places such as St Jude's Hospital and the George Odlum Stadium.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "30653219": "Fort Vieux Logis\nBritish fort in present-day Canada\nFort Vieux Logis (later named Fort Montague) was a small British frontier fort built at present-day Hortonville, Nova Scotia, Canada (formerly part of Grand Pre) in 1749, during Father Le Loutre's War (1749). Ranger John Gorham moved a blockhouse he erected in Annapolis Royal in 1744 to the site of Vieux Logis. The fort was in use until 1754. The British rebuilt the fort again during the French and Indian War and named it Fort Montague (1760).\nThe site of the fort is near the field where the Acadian Cross and the New England Planter's monument are located. Despite archeological efforts to locate it, the exact site of the fort is unknown.\nDespite the British Conquest of Acadia in 1710, Nova Scotia remained primarily populated by Catholic Acadians and Mi'kmaq. During King George's War, the British tried to occupy further up the Bay of Fundy, starting with Grand Pre. They built a palisade which was involved with in the Siege of Grand Pre.\nFather Le Loutre\u2019s War.\nFather Le Loutre's War began when Edward Cornwallis arrived to establish Halifax with 1"}, "descending_order": ["8965443", "23531651", "898382", "27022462", "30653219", "27208"], "permutation_1": ["8965443", "23531651", "898382", "30653219", "27022462", "27208"], "permutation_2": ["27208", "8965443", "30653219", "23531651", "898382", "27022462"], "permutation_3": ["30653219", "27208", "23531651", "8965443", "27022462", "898382"]}
{"id": "2hop__805141_127375", "docs_added": {"567703": "Grinspoon\nAustralian rock band\nGrinspoon are an Australian rock band from Lismore, New South Wales, which formed in 1995 by Pat Davern on guitar, Joe Hansen on bass guitar, Kristian Hopes on drums and frontman Phil Jamieson on vocals and guitar. Also in that year, Grinspoon won the national youth radio, Triple J\u2013sponsored Unearthed competition for Lismore, with their post-grunge song \"Sickfest\". The band's name references Lester Grinspoon, an associate professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who supported marijuana for medical use.\nAll eight of Grinspoon's studio albums have reached the ARIA albums chart top\u00a010. Their sound changed to mainstream rock with the release of their third studio album, \"New Detention\" (2002), which peaked at No.\u00a02; likewise, their fifth studio album \"Alibis & Other Lies\" (2007) also reached No.\u00a02. The 2004 fourth album, \"Thrills, Kills & Sunday Pills\", peaked at No.\u00a04. At the ARIA Music Awards of 2005 it won the Best Rock Album Award.\nThe band were signed to Universal Records in the United States by late 1998, and were promoted with the songs \"Champion\", which featured in \"Gran Turismo 3\"; \"Post Enebriated Anxiety\", which was on the international version of \"Guide to Better Living\" (1999); \"Chemical Heart\", via the internet; and a cover of the Prong song \"Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck\", from Grinspoon's \"Pushing Buttons\" (1998) EP, which was also included on \"\" (1998). On 4 December 2013, the band members announced an indefinite hiatus to pursue individual projects, although they made a return in earnest in 2017. Their eighth studio album, \"Whatever, Whatever\" (2024) reached No.\u00a03.\nHistory.\n1995-2000: Early years.\nIn July 1995, Pat Davern (guitar), Joe Hansen (bass guitar), Kristian Hopes (drums) and Phil Jamieson (vocals, guitar) met at a Lismore hotel, The Gollan, for a jam night. They decided to form a band and three\u00a0weeks later they recorded a two-track demo, which they entered for the national youth radio station Triple J's Unearthed competition. Their name was taken from Lester Grinspoon, an associate professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who supported marijuana for medical use. They won the competition with their post-grunge, alternative rock song \"Sickfest\" \u2013 their first track ever written together by Davern and Jamieson.\nGrinspoon gained airplay on Triple J and independent radio stations. They developed a strong following among the Australian \"alternative\" and \"mosh pit crowd.\" Their debut extended Play (EP) was the six-track, \"Grinspoon\" (a.k.a. \"Green Album\"), was released in 1995 through the independent Oracle Records. It contained the songs \"Sickfest\" and \"More Than You Are\" that became popular with fans and were rerecorded on later releases.\nGrinspoon's second EP, \"Licker Bottle Cozy\", recorded in June 1996 and produced by Phil McKellar, was released by Grudge Records in December. It had a slightly heavier sound than their earlier EP with five tracks including the songs \"Champion\" and \"Pig Pen\". In September 1997 they released their first full-length album, \"Guide to Better Living\", co-produced by McKellar and well-known Swiss-American heavy metal producer Ulrich Wild. The album peaked at No.\u00a011 on the ARIA Albums Charts and went platinum with sales of over 70,000 in Australia. It represents the Helmet-influenced alternative metal sound of their early career with heavier songs like \"Pressure Tested 1984\". The Australian version of the album features five live songs\u2014illustrating the band's sense of humour and ability to play live\u2014and a hidden track, the acoustic \"Protest\". US branch of Universal Records signed the band by late 1998 and released an altered version of \"Guide to Better Living\" in March 1999.\nWhilst in US touring for ten months as support act for Creed, Lit, Godsmack and Anthrax, Grinspoon released a six track EP, \"Pushing Buttons\", for their Australian market in September 1998. It featured the popular heavy song \"Black Friday\" and the lighter songs \"Busy\" and \"Explain\". After the intense US touring, Grinspoon released their second album, \"Easy\" in September 1999, which peaked at No.\u00a04 and went platinum in Australia. It contained the singles \"Ready 1\" and \"Rock Show\".\n2001-2007: Changing direction.\nAfter a break to reconsider their direction and sound Grinspoon started recording their next album, \"New Detention\", in Sydney's Festival Studios in September 2001 but prior to finishing the studios were shut down and so vocals and guitars were recorded in smaller studios. Further delays occurred after Hopes injured his hand on a studio window. \"New Detention\" was released in June 2002 and was more commercial\u2014it peaked at No.\u00a02 on the ARIA Albums Charts and went platinum. The first single from the album, \"Chemical Heart\", released in February had created a stir with long term fans and the media because it was different from their previous grunge sound. The band insisted the change was a natural one and was an improvement. Nevertheless, the band still performs older tracks in their live shows. They released a four track EP in March 2003, \"Panic Attack\"\u2014containing a cover of INXS's \"Don't Change\"\u2014which reached No.\u00a013 on the ARIA Singles Chart.\nIn August 2004, they released a new single, \"Hard Act To Follow\", which reached the Top 30. It was from the September album \"Thrills, Kills & Sunday Pills\", which peaked at No.\u00a04 and went platinum. Grinspoon also performed at the 2004 NRL grand final before a second single, \"Better Off Alone\", issued in November, also reached the Top 30. The third single was \"Hold on Me\" released in February 2005. For \"Thrills, Kills & Sunday Pills\", the band agreed that they were deliberately seeking a new audience, claiming they wrote a number of songs for the release and rejected any that sounded like earlier work. It won the 2005 'Best Rock Album Award' at the ARIA Music Awards. They had previously been nominated 9 times.\nGrinspoon had built a strong local following after their rise, they were regulars at Australian music festivals. On 26 March 2006, Grinspoon performed \"Hard Act To Follow\" and \"Better Off Alone\" at the 2006 Commonwealth Games Closing Ceremony in Melbourne. They headlined the inaugural \"Thank God It's Over\" in Melbourne, at \"BOBFest '06\" in South Australia in October and at Odyssey 2006 at Dreamworld for New Year's Eve.\nIn February 2007, Jamieson admitted himself to rehab due to addiction to crystal methamphetamine. On Andrew Denton's \"Enough Rope\" in July, Jamieson discussed his drug addictions, an extramarital affair, stealing money from bandmates, detox and rehab experiences.\nThe band completed, \"Alibis & Other Lies\" in July 2007, as their final album for Universal. It was co-produced by the band and Ramesh Sathiah, who had worked with them on their earliest recordings. Earlier albums before this were pop-oriented rock, while \"Easy\" and \"Alibis & Other Lies\" were more heavy rock. The first single from the album, \"Black Tattoo\", was released as a digital download on 23 June and physically a week later. The album peaked at No.\u00a02, their equal highest album chart position (with \"New Detention\" in 2002). Grinspoon released a 2-disc compilation entitled \"Best in Show\". The first disc featured their hits and several older songs, like \"Champion\", which landed the song on \"Gran Turismo 3\". The second disc includes a collection of covers recorded over the years. In the US, all Grinspoon albums had been released on iTunes and other online music stores. The first four were \"Guide To Better Living\", \"Best In Show\", \"Thrills, Kills, and Sunday Pills\", and \"New Detention\". \"Easy\" and \"Alibis & Other Lies\" followed on 31 October 2007.\n2008-2009: Hiatus.\nOn 5 February 2008, Jamieson announced, via the band's official website, that Grinspoon were on hiatus following their appearance at Big Day Out in late January. Grinspoon headlined the Newton's Playground festival, held atop Bathurst's famous Mount Panorama in March, with their song \"Lost Control\" played in advertisements for the festival. On 1 May, Grinspoon announced they would complete more shows before writing a new album.\nGrinspoon recorded The Easybeats' track \"St. Louis\" for a tribute album, \"Easy Fever: A Tribute to The Easybeats and Stevie Wright\"\u2014released in October 2008\u2014while Jamieson's duet with The Wrights on \"Evie part 3: I'm Losing You\" from 2005 was included. The band contributed the track \"Blind Lead Blind\", their B side of 2007's \"Minute By Minute\", to a compilation CD for The Buttery Drug and Alcohol Rehab Centre titled \"Caution: Life Ahead\", which included contributions from other Australian acts such as Powderfinger, Midnight Oil and The Living End, and was released in November.\nGrinspoon performed on 26 July 2009 at the annual Splendour in the Grass Festival in Byron Bay. Jamieson then toured with a supergroup composed of The Living End's Chris Cheney, You Am I's Tim Rogers, and Josh Pyke with a 17-piece band in August 2009. The group performed a tribute to The Beatles' White Album for its 40th anniversary.\n2010: \"Six to Midnight\".\nGrinspoon's next album, titled \"Six to Midnight\", was released on 11 September 2009 on the band's imprint Chk Chk Boom Records, distributed by Universal Records, which peaked at No.\u00a06. Two tracks, \"Dogs\" and the first single, \"Comeback\", were released to radio earlier. For promotion of the album, the band toured in a more intimate setting than most of their previous concerts. On 6 November, Grinspoon played live on Triple J radio and confirmed that \"Summer\" was the second single from the album. In 2010 Premonitions was released as the third single from the album. The band toured for the album including two acoustic shows in London in early 2012 featuring Phil and Pat.\n2011\u20132019: \"Black Rabbits\" and hiatus.\nIn September 2011 Grinspoon announced on their website that they are writing and recording their seventh studio album.\nIn May 2012 the band announced that they were heading to the United States for a month to record the album. The band also hinted that the title of the album would be \"Black Rabbits\". The album was later slated to feature guest musicians including Chris Cheney of The Living End, Tim Rogers of You Am I and Scott Russo of Unwritten Law.\nOn 23 July 2012, Grinspoon released the artwork of the album on their official Facebook page, confirming the name of the release \"Black Rabbits\".\nThe album was released on 28 September, debuting at number 8 on the ARIA charts.\nOn 5 December 2013 a statement on the official Grinspoon website announced that the band would be going on hiatus. A section of the statement reads: \"Thanks to all our families, friends, and especially our fans for the support over the last 18 years \u2013 it's been a wild ride to say the least. We are still a band of brothers but it's time for us to take a break and recharge the batteries. We're excited to see what our future holds\u2026adios amigos, it's been a blast!\"\nIn August 2015, it was announced that the band would be reforming exclusively to play a run of dates opening for Cold Chisel.\nIn 2017, the band announced they would be re-releasing a special 20th Anniversary edition of Guide To Better Living and announced an Australia wide tour. The tour was sold out.\nIn 2019, the group released the compilation, \"Chemical Hearts\".\n2020\u2013present: \"Whatever, Whatever\".\nIn May 2024, the group released the single \"Unknown Pretenders\", which was written in February 2020. At the same time, they announced the release of their eighth studio album \"Whatever, Whatever\".\nAwards and nominations.\nAPRA Awards.\nThe APRA Awards are presented annually from 1982 by the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), \"honouring composers and songwriters\". They commenced in 1982.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Awards table/styles.css\" />\n! scope=\"col\" | Year\n! scope=\"col\" | Nominee / work\n! scope=\"col\" | Award\n! scope=\"col\" | Result\n! Ref.\nARIA Awards.\nThe ARIA Music Awards are a set of annual ceremonies presented by Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), which recognise excellence, innovation, and achievement across all genres of the music of Australia. They commenced in 1987. Grinspoon has won 2 awards from 14 nominations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Awards table/styles.css\" />\n! scope=\"col\" | Year\n! scope=\"col\" | Nominee / work\n! scope=\"col\" | Award\n! scope=\"col\" | Result\nJ Awards.\nThe J Awards are an annual series of Australian music awards that were established by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's youth-focused radio station Triple J. They commenced in 2005.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Awards table/styles.css\" />\n! scope=\"col\" | Year\n! scope=\"col\" | Nominee / work\n! scope=\"col\" | Award\n! scope=\"col\" | Result\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "12275154": "Secrets (Grinspoon song)\n\"Secrets\" was the second single by Grinspoon which was released from their second studio album \"Easy\". It was released in January 2000 on the Grudge label (the Australian imprint of Universal Records), reaching No.\u00a083 on the Australian Singles Chart and polling at No.\u00a073 on Triple J's Hottest 100 for 2000.\nThe song is played in dropped B tuning and is counted by fans as their best song from the \"Easy\" album. The video shows Phil Jamieson, who suffered a breakup, planning to rob a pawn shop. Two versions were made for the video, with one showing the band members shooting guns in the beginning.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "27390158": "Secret (South Korean group)\nSouth Korean girl group\nSecret (Korean:\u00a0) was a South Korean K-pop girl group formed by TS Entertainment in 2009. The group originally debuted with four members: Jun Hyo-seong, Jung Ha-na, Song Ji-eun and Han Sun-hwa. They released their debut single \"I Want You Back\" October 2009. Secret's debut single did not meet great success and it was not until the following year that the group saw a rise in popularity. In 2010, Secret released two singles \"Magic\" and \"Madonna\" which earned much attention with both singles peaking at No. 2 and No. 1 respectively on the Gaon Digital Chart. With the success of \"Magic\" and \"Madonna\", the group received the \"Newcomer Award\" at the 25th Golden Disk Awards.\nIn 2011, Secret adopted a girl-next-door image through songs like \"Shy Boy\" and \"Starlight Moonlight\" which led the group to major success. With the hit single \"Shy Boy\" Secret won their first music show award on \"M Countdown\"; they also managed to stay at number one on \"Music Bank\" for three consecutive weeks, earning them a triple crown. \"Shy Boy\" and \"Starlight Moonlight\" won Secret multiple awards including two Song of the Year awards at the 1st Gaon Chart Awards for the months of January and June. Secret released their first full-length album \"Moving in Secret\" in October 2011, featuring the lead single \"Love is Move\" which showcased Secret's sexy and confident side again. With the group's success in South Korea throughout 2011, Secret sold over seven million in digital download sales.\nIn August of the same year, Secret made their Japanese debut releasing their first single, \"Madonna\", a remake of their Korean hit single, which debuted at number nine on the Oricon charts. In November 2011, \"Shy Boy\" was remade to serve as the lead single on their first Japanese mini album \"Shy Boy\" which also featured a Christmas remake of \"Starlight Moonlight\" titled \"Christmas Magic\". Throughout 2012, Secret heavily promoted in Japan releasing two Japanese singles, \"So Much For Goodbye\" and \"Twinkle Twinkle\", prior to releasing their first full-length Japanese album, \"Welcome to Secret Time\". \"Twinkle Twinkle\" was used as the ending theme song of the Naruto spin-off, \"\"Naruto SD: Rock Lee and his Ninja Pals\"\" which aired on TV Tokyo.\nAfter almost a year of absence from the South Korean music industry Secret released their third extended play \"Poison\" in September 2012 followed by the digital single \"Talk That\" in December. The following year Secret released their fourth extended play \"Letter from Secret\" in April 2013 and their third single album, \"Gift From Secret\" in December 2013. In August 2014, Secret released their fifth extended play \"Secret Summer\".\nCareer.\n2009\u20132010: Debut with \"I Want You Back\", \"Secret Time\", and \"Madonna\".\nThe documentary \"Secret Story\" which aired on Mnet introduced Secret to the public. The show chronicled the debut process of the members and aired their invitation-only debut showcase, which took place on September 29, 2009. On October 13, 2009, Secret officially debuted with the release of the music video of \"I Want You Back\", their first single. Two days later, on October 15, 2009, they had their first live stage on \"M! Countdown\". Secret participated in the \"Master of Study\" OST with the song \"Friends\" which was released in January 2010.\nOn March 31, 2010, Secret revealed the music video for \"Magic\", the title track of their debut mini album \"Secret Time\". Secret had their comeback performance for \"Magic\" on \"M! Countdown\" on April 8, 2010. The song peaked at number five on the \"Music Bank\" K-Chart. The music video quickly reached one million views on video sharing sites such as YouTube and Cyworld, and the \"Suspender Dance\" which appeared in the video, gained popularity amongst netizens.\nSecret released their second mini album titled \"Madonna\" on August 12, 2010. The music video for the title track of the same name was released on August 11, 2010. Kang Ji-won and Kim Ki-bum, the composers who wrote \"Madonna\", highlighted that the inspiration behind the song was about living with confidence by becoming an icon in this generation, like the American singer Madonna. Like their previous single \"Magic\", the music video for \"Madonna\" reached one million views on video sharing sites such as YouTube and Cyworld. \"Madonna\" was better received than \"Magic\", topping every major online music chart within two weeks and peaking at number one on the Gaon Chart. The song also won the \"Bonsang Award (Main Prize)\" at the 20th Seoul Music Awards. On December 9, 2010, Secret attended the 25th Golden Disk Awards, and won the \"Newcomer Award\".\n2011\u20132012: Rising popularity, Japanese debut, \"Poison\", and \"Talk That\".\nSecret released the single \"Shy Boy\" in January 2011. On January 13, Secret won their very first music show award on \"M! Countdown\". Secret also managed to stay at number one on Music Bank for three consecutive weeks. During that timespan, Secret also won a mutizen award on \"Inkigayo\". They released their second single album, \"Starlight Moonlight\" on June 1, 2011. The song won Secret their second \"Mutizen\" on \"Inkigayo\" with the song. On August 3, 2011, the group released their first single in Japan, \"Madonna\", which debuted at number nine on the Oricon charts.\nOn October 18, 2011, Secret released their first studio album, \"Moving in Secret\". \"Shy Boy\" was remade to serve as the title track on their first mini album in Japan. On November 16, 2011, Secret released their first Japanese mini album, \"Shy Boy\". They have attended the KBEE (Korea Brand & Entertainment Expo) in Paris, France, on December 1 to 3, 2011.\nIn February 2012, Secret released their second Japanese single entitled \"So Much For Goodbye\". On February 22, they won two \"Singers of the Year\" awards at the Gaon Chart Awards, for \"Shy Boy\" and \"Starlight Moonlight\". In March, the group held their first head-lining tour in Japan named \"Secret 1st Japan Tour\". It took place in Osaka on March 5, Nagoya on March 7 and Tokyo on March 8. Secret released their third Japanese single \"Twinkle Twinkle\" on June 13. Twinkle Twinkle was used as the ending theme song of the \"Naruto\" spin-off, \"Naruto SD: Rock Lee and his Ninja Pals\". The group released their first Japanese studio album named \"Welcome to Secret Time\" on August 22. The Japanese version of \"Love is Move\" served as the lead single. The album also included Japanese remakes of their Korean hit singles \"Madonna\" and \"Shy Boy\", and \"Starlight Moonlight\", along with the two original Japanese singles \"So Much for Goodbye\" and \"Twinkle Twinkle\".In September, Secret released the EP \"Poison\" in South Korea. The lead of the same name was an \"upbeat dance track\", written and produced by Kang Ji-won and Kim Ki-bum whom they previously worked with their previous hit singles. According to TS Entertainment, \"Poison\" had \"unique characteristics and colors of Secret but will have a change in concept from the cute and friendly image [shown in the past] to a sexy and feminine concept.\"\nThe single \"Talk That\", was released on December 4. It was produced by Shinsadong Tiger, whom has previously worked with their hit track \"Magic\". The music video for \"Talk That\" was directed by Zanybros' Hong Won-ki. \"Talk That\" received generally positive reviews from critics, most of whom had praised the song for its mature musical style and concept as opposed to their previous singles.\nOn the night of December 11, 2012, Secret was involved in a car accident. Hyoseong, Jieun and Sunhwa received only a few scratches and knee pain, but Hana suffered broken ribs and a bruised lung and therefore halted from Secret's activities in order to recover. On December 27, Sunhwa and labelmate B.A.P's Youngjae teamed up to release a digital single titled \"Everything is Pretty\" as a present for Secret and B.A.P fans.\n2013\u20132014: \"Letter from Secret\", \"Gift From Secret\" and \"Secret Summer\".\nIn January 2013, Secret continued to perform \"Talk That\" on various music and award shows without Hana. Hana ended her hiatus and officially rejoined Secret when she performed at the 22nd Seoul Music Awards and won a bonsang award. On March 29, Secret held their solo concert in Singapore, performing in front of 5,000 fans at the Marina Bay Sands Convention Hall. Secret's fourth mini album, titled \"Letter from SECRET\", with \"YooHoo\" as the album's lead single, was released on April 30. YooHoo managed to top real time charts such as Mnet, Bugs Olleh, and Sorribada. Secret became one of the most searched terms on South Korean portal sites in the midst of their return. In June 2013, Secret signed with Kiss Entertainment for future Japan activities. They also moved from Sony Music to Universal Music Group Japan (Universal D's Sub-Label). On December 9, the group's third single album, \"Gift From Secret\", featuring lead single \"I Do I Do\" was released. As the album was released during winter TS Entertainment stated that the lead single, \"I Do I Do is a lively and warm song and is also reminiscent of carols, which will match well with the coming winter season.\" I Do I Do was produced by Kang Ji-won and Kim Ki-bum.\nOn February 5, 2014, Secret released the Japanese version of their Korean single \"I Do I Do\" along with a music video, which marks their first Japanese release with Kiss Entertainment. On May 29, Tower Records Japan revealed that Secret would release a single album in Japan. Before the release of their fifth Japanese single, Secret held their third Japan tour titled \"2014 Secret's Summer Live ~YooHoo~\". On July 23 Secret released a Japanese version of their Korean single \"YooHoo\". On August 11, Secret released their fifth mini album \"Secret Summer\" with \"I'm In Love\" as its lead single. I'm In Love was produced by hitmaker Duble Sidekick. Sonamoo member New Sun also took part in composing the track Look At Me which is featured on the album.\n2015\u20132018: Members departure, legal disputes with TS and presumed disbandment.\nOn September 26, 2016, it was announced that Sunhwa would be leaving the group after deciding not to renew her contract with TS Entertainment in order to pursue a career in acting. Sunhwa's contract with TS Entertainment was terminated on October 13. The group would continue with the remaining three members.\nOn February 28, 2018 it was reported that Hyoseong and Jieun were in legal disputes with TS Entertainment. Hyoseong's legal disputes with TS is due to issues such as not receiving payments. It was also reported that in August 2017, Jieun submitted a request to the Korean Commercial Arbitration Board to verify that her contract is no longer valid due to TS Entertainment not following the terms of the contract.\nJieun later announced via Instagram that she was no longer a member of Secret as her contract was violated and no longer exists.\nOn March 5, Hyoseong's lawyer revealed that she had filed a civil lawsuit against TS Entertainment in September 2017 to confirm that her contract with the agency is no longer valid. Hyoseong's lawyer stated \u201cFirst, there are payments that Jun Hyo-seong has not received. TS Entertainment also transferred the management rights conferred by its exclusive contract with the singer to another party without the consent of Jun Hyoseong herself. Not only is this a clear violation of her contract, but it is also a source of instability in her promotions as a singer.\u201d He also stated that it would be unlikely of Hyoseong to remain a member of Secret while under TS Entertainment given the situation and the lack of trust and communication between the agency and Hyoseong, effectively ending the group.\nArtistry.\nMusical styles and theme.\nRetro is the main musical style of the majority of Secret's singles, although the group has channeled other genres such as pop, dance, R&B, and hip-hop. Secret were originally formed with an intention to be an RnB and Hip-Hop group as seen in their debut single, \"I Want You Back\". As \"Seoulbeats\" wrote, \"Originally debuting with an urban RnB concept, the girls of Secret have transformed themselves into the queens of retro ever since their breakthrough hits with \u201cMagic\u201d and \u201cMadonna\u201d. Furthermore, with Wonder Girls recently vacating their long-held affair with retro in favor of a more fresh and futuristic(?) approach, Secret lays claim as the next best group to have established a retro identity.\" Catherine Deen of Yahoo! Philippines said that the group is known \"for its unique ability to take retro music and make it their own.\" While reviewing \"Love is Move\", Park Hyunmin of \"enewsWorld\" commented that Secret is \"known for its pop-heavy beats and easy-to-follow dance moves\". Hyunmin further added that \"Secret's main appeal is its retro beat and sexy choreography\".\nSecret's output, particularly with their work with Kang Ji-won and Kim Ki-bum, makes use of live instruments such as brass, saxophones and drums with the incorporation of synthesizers and electric guitars. While reviewing \"Poison\", \"Seoulbeats\" commented that \"the composition [of \"Poison\"] contains a very fitting saxophone hook along with recognizable brass and drum instrumentals that have become the trademark of Secret and their in-house composers, Kang Ji-won and Kim Ki-bum, who have produced all of Secret's retro hits. Secret's secret formula for success lies not only in their determined execution of one particular style, but their consistent development of a concept that suits them very well.\" \"Seoulbeats\" concludes that \"Secret has carved out its conceptual niche in the K-pop market by developing a distinct and consistent style, and thus they are now in a position to elevate their success and recognition in the industry. While most other groups undergo drastic changes over time to keep current fans interested and to attract new fans, Secret clearly benefits from the advantages of continuity. What other groups or idols have carved out a stylistic niche over the years?\"\nImage.\nSecret is also known for their transitions to cute and the girl-next-door image through songs like \"Shy Boy\" and \"Starlight Moonlight\" from the sexy and powerful image through \"Magic\", \"Madonna\" and \"Poison\" while still retaining retro as the main theme for their sound. Although a commercial success with \"Magic\" and \"Madonna\" peaking at number two and number one respectively on the Gaon Charts, Secret failed to win a first place award on any televised South Korean weekly music shows such as \"M! Countdown\", \"Music Bank\" and \"Inkigayo\" until \"Shy Boy\". \"Seoulbeats\" wrote, \"Secret embarked on an aegyo phase in their following release of \u201cShy Boy\" although with much voiced displeasure from the members. Despite the radical change in their personalities, their style remained consistent in staying with and expanding upon their retro identity. The song became a major success as Secret traded in their sex appeal for a heavy dose of aegyo, resulting in much hardware for their chart-topping song.\" Secret kept its cute imagery with their following single \"Starlight Moonlight\" until the release of \"Love is Move\" and \"Poison\". During their promotions with \"Poison\", Jun Hyoseong commented \"Secret has always been known as a cute group that appeals to the general public. This time, however, we\u2032ve escaped that and showed off our unique charms. Our visuals have also changed for the sexy.\" Jun added, \"We\u2032re actually closer to Shy Boy in real life.\"\nEndorsements and other activities.\nThe group's popularity and success in Korea has led to endorsement deals such as Gueoseu Chicken, Googims mall, Grand Mer(Online Fishing Game), Nike, Nene Chicken, Good Day Soju and Parkga among others. Sunhwa became more active in acting, modelling and frequently participating in variety shows. In 2009, she became a fixed cast on a popular variety show called \"Invincible Youth\".\nIn December 2010, Secret and the Korean Non-Life Insurance Association (KNIA) teamed up to film a Commercial Film in a Gangnam studio to share their message of concern against drunk driving. With Secret, they were also appointed as ambassadors in campaigns and events such as \"The Seoul Competition Movie Content 'Streamed Seoul 2009' Goodwill Ambassador(2009)\", \"The 18th National Women's Soccer Tournament ambassador(2010)\", \"The Eco-Project environmental campaign 'URBAN FARM'(2010)\", \"The 8th International Paralympic Skills Competition(2010)\" and others. On December 28, 2011, Secret were appointed as PR ambassadors for the \u2018Korea Consumers Forum\u2019. After the group filmed the music video of \"YooHoo\" in Saipan during the month of April in 2013, the tourism board of Northern Mariana Islands named Secret as their newest tourism ambassador for 2013. Secret joined fellow South Korean artist Psy as their new tourism ambassador who joined in 2012.\nOn January 10, 2013, KBS revealed that Han Sunhwa would make her acting debut on prime-time television with \"Advertisement Genius, Lee Tae Baek\" as Lee So Ran, an aspiring actress and the younger sister of Lee Tae Baek played by actor Jin Goo.\nAwards.\nIn 2010, Secret released their hit single \"Magic\" which was nominated at the 12th Mnet Asian Music Awards for \"Best Dance Performance by a Female Group\". The same year, the group released their number one hit single \"Madonna\" which won them a \"Bonsang\" award at the 20th Seoul Music Awards. With the success of \"Magic\" and \"Madonna\", the group received the \"Newcomer award\" at the 25th Golden Disk Awards.\n\"Shy Boy\" earned the group's first win in Mnet's M! Countdown and SBS's Inkigayo. The song was their first \"Triple Crown\" in KBS's Music Bank and garnered them multiple awards and nominations. The song was nominated for \"Song of the Year\" and \"Best Dance Performance by a Female Group\" at the 13th Mnet Asian Music Awards. The song won a \"Bonsang\" award at the 21st Seoul Music Awards and at the 3rd Melon Music Awards. The song also won the \"Songs of the Year Award\" at the 1st Gaon Chart Awards for the month of January. Following the success of \"Shy Boy\", Secret released Starlight Moonlight in June 2011. The song earned them their second win in Inkigayo and won them a \"Digital Bonsang\" award at the 26th Golden Disk Award. In 2012, \"Starlight Moonlight\" won the \"Songs of the Year Award\" in the 1st Gaon Chart Awards for the month of June.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "187426": "Secret Affair\nBritish musical group\nSecret Affair are a mod revival band, formed in 1978 and disbanded in 1982 during which period their work is predominantly best-known. They reformed in 2002 and have since then produced an album in 2012.\nCareer.\nFormed after the demise of the CBS Records signed power pop band New Hearts, singer Ian Page and guitarist David Cairns spent the second half of 1978 writing songs that would form the basis of the first two Secret Affair albums.\nAfter spending January 1979 demoing songs, Page and Cairns enlisted the services of bassist Dennis Smith from the power pop band Advertising and Young Bucks drummer Seb Shelton. Saxophone player Dave Winthrop, originally playing with the group in his capacity as a session musician, would join as a full-time member of the band later in the year.\nAfter the demise of the group in 1982, Cairns went on to form a band called"}, "descending_order": ["27390158", "187426", "12275154", "567703"], "permutation_1": ["187426", "567703", "27390158", "12275154"], "permutation_2": ["187426", "27390158", "12275154", "567703"], "permutation_3": ["12275154", "187426", "567703", "27390158"]}
{"id": "2hop__427142_99606", "docs_added": {"30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "11977826": "Tengako\nTengako is a peninsula at the north end of Fongafale islet of Funafuti, Tuvalu. At the end of the peninsula is Amatuku islet on which the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute is located. Further past that is Mulitefala.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11977826", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["30227", "11977826"], "permutation_2": ["30227", "11977826"], "permutation_3": ["11977826", "30227"]}
{"id": "2hop__96812_130869", "docs_added": {"22763422": "Small Cowper Madonna\nPainting by Raphael\nThe Small Cowper Madonna is a painting by the Italian High Renaissance artist Raphael, depicting Mary and Child, in a typical Italian countryside. It has been dated to around 1504\u20131505, the middle of the High Renaissance.\nHistory.\nIt is not known exactly why the \"Small Cowper Madonna\" was painted. It was probably either a private commission or for the general art market; images of the Madonna and Child were often given as wedding presents. It is widely thought that the church on the right hand side of the painting is the church of San Bernardino, where the Dukes of Urbino (where Raphael was born) were buried, and it has been suggested that the presence of the church means the painting may have been \"commissioned by the family for devotional purposes.\" \nAround 1780, the painting was sold to the prominent art collector George Clavering-Cowper, 3rd Earl Cowper, whose surname would lend the painting its name. The painting was passed down through six generations of Cowpers before it was sold to Duveen Brothers, Inc. in 1913. In 1914, it was sold to American magnate Peter A.B. Widener, who displayed the painting at Lynnewood Hall. Peter A.B. Widener's son, Joseph E. Widener, donated the \"Small Cowper Madonna\" to the National Gallery of Art in 1942, along with the rest of Lynnewood Hall's extensive art collection.\nIn 2015 the National Gallery of Art loaned the \"Small Cowper Madonna\" to the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts (U.S.) to be exhibited alongside \"The Virgin and Child (The Northbrook Madonna)\". The Northbrook Madonna is in the Worcester Art Museum's permanent collection and was once attributed to Raphael. One hope of the exhibition was to identify the artist who painted the Northbrook Madonna. The painter of the Northbrook Madonna was later identified by the museum as perhaps being Domenico Alfani, a close friend of Raphael's whose works have often been misattributed to the better-known artist.\nDescription.\nSitting in the center of the work in a bright red dress is the Madonna. She is fair skinned with blonde hair. She sits comfortably on a wooden bench. Across her lap is a dark drapery upon which her right hand delicately sits. There appears to be a sheer translucent ribbon elegantly flowing across the top of her dress and behind her head. The faintest golden halo miraculously surrounds her head. In her left hand she holds the baby Christ, who embraces her with one arm around her back, the other around her neck. He looks back over his shoulder with a coy smile. Behind them, a beautifully clear and bright day unfolds. Off in the distance two figures appear to be ambling toward a reflective pond, enjoying the green scenery around them. A large structure stands at the end of a long path, thought to be the Church of San Bernardino in Urbino.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "357005": "National Gallery of Art\nArt museum in Washington, D.C.\nThe National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in 1937 for the American people by a joint resolution of the United States Congress. Andrew W. Mellon donated a substantial art collection and funds for construction. The core collection includes major works of art donated by Paul Mellon, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Samuel Henry Kress, Rush Harrison Kress, Peter Arrell Browne Widener, Joseph E. Widener, and Chester Dale. The Gallery's collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western art from the Middle Ages to the present, including the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas and the largest mobile created by Alexander Calder.\nThe Gallery's campus includes the original neoclassical West Building designed by John Russell Pope, which is linked underground to the modernist East Building, designed by I. M. Pei, and is next to the Sculpture Garden. The Gallery often presents temporary special exhibitions spanning the world and the history of art. It is one of the largest museums in North America. \nAttendance rose to nearly 3.3 million visitors in 2022, making it third on the list of most-visited museums in the United States. Of the top three art museums in the United States by annual visitors, it is the only one that has no admission fee.\nHistory.\nOrigins.\nAndrew W. Mellon, Pittsburgh banker and Treasury Secretary from 1921 until 1932, began gathering a private collection of old master paintings and sculptures during World War I. During the late 1920s, Mellon decided to direct his collecting efforts towards the establishment of a new national gallery for the United States.\nIn 1930, partly for tax reasons, Mellon formed the A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, which was to be the legal owner of works intended for the gallery. In 1930\u20131931, the Trust made its first major acquisition, 21 paintings from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg as part of the Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings, including such masterpieces as Raphael's \"Alba Madonna,\" Titian's \"Venus with a Mirror\", and Jan van Eyck's \"Annunciation\".\nIn 1929 Mellon had initiated contact with the recently appointed Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Charles Greeley Abbot. Mellon was appointed in 1931 as a Commissioner of the Institution's National Gallery of Art. When the director of the Gallery retired, Mellon asked Abbot not to appoint a successor, as he proposed to endow a new building with funds for expansion of the collections.\nHowever, Mellon's trial for tax evasion, centering on the Trust and the Hermitage paintings, caused the plan to be modified. In 1935, Mellon announced in \"The Washington Star\" his intention to establish a new gallery for old masters, separate from the Smithsonian. When asked by Abbot, he explained that the project was in the hands of the Trust and that its decisions were partly dependent on \"the attitude of the Government towards the gift\".\nIn January 1937, Mellon formally offered to create the new Gallery. On his birthday, 24 March 1937, an Act of Congress accepted the collection and building funds (provided through the Trust), and approved the construction of a museum on the National Mall.\nThe new gallery was to be effectively self-governing, not controlled by the Smithsonian, but took the old name \"National Gallery of Art\" while the Smithsonian's gallery would be renamed the \"National Collection of Fine Arts\" (now the Smithsonian American Art Museum).\nConstruction and later history.\nThe museum stands on the former site of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station, where in 1881 a disgruntled office seeker, Charles Guiteau, shot President James Garfield (see James A. Garfield assassination). The station was demolished in 1908 because it did not conform to the McMillan Plan for the Mall. In 1918, temporary war buildings were constructed on the site; these were demolished by 1921 to construct the foundation of the George Washington Memorial Building, which was never completed. The site was then reassigned to the new National Gallery of Art.\nDesigned by architect John Russell Pope, the new structure was completed and accepted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on behalf of the American people on March 17, 1941. At the time of its inception it was the largest marble structure in the world. Neither Mellon nor Pope lived to see the museum completed; both died in late August 1937, only two months after excavation had begun.\nAs anticipated by Mellon, the creation of the National Gallery encouraged the donation of other substantial art collections by a number of private donors. Founding benefactors included such individuals as Paul Mellon, Samuel H. Kress, Rush H. Kress, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Chester Dale, Joseph Widener, Lessing J. Rosenwald and Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch.\nThe Gallery's East Building was constructed in the 1970s on much of the remaining land left over from the original congressional action. Andrew Mellon's children, Paul Mellon and Ailsa Mellon Bruce, funded the building. Designed by architect I. M. Pei, the contemporary structure was completed in 1978 and was opened on June 1 of that year by President Jimmy Carter. The new building was built to house the Museum's collection of modern paintings, drawings, sculptures, and prints, as well as study and research centers and offices. The design received a National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects in 1981.\nThe final addition to the complex is the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden. Completed and opened to the public on May 23, 1999, the location provides an outdoor setting for exhibiting a number of large pieces from the Museum's contemporary sculpture collection.\nIn 2011, an extensive refurbishment and renovation of the French galleries were undertaken. As part of the celebration of the reopening of this wing, organist Alexander Frey performed 4 sold-out recitals of music of France in one weekend in the French Gallery.\nOperations.\nThe National Gallery of Art is supported through a private-public partnership. The United States federal government provides funds, through annual appropriations, to support the museum's operations and maintenance. All artwork, as well as special programs, are provided through private donations and funds. The museum is not part of the Smithsonian Institution.\nNoted directors of the National Gallery have included David E. Finley, Jr. (1938\u20131956), John Walker (1956\u20131968), and J. Carter Brown (1968\u20131993). Earl A. \"Rusty\" Powell III was named director in 1993. In March 2019 he was succeeded by Kaywin Feldman, past director and president of the Minneapolis Institute of Art. The museum hired Evelyn Carmen Ramos, the first woman and the first person of color to be the chief curatorial and conservation officer, in 2021.\nThe president of the museum is billionaire businessman Mitchell Rales and its chairperson is Sharon Rockefeller.\nEntry to both buildings of the National Gallery of Art is free of charge. The museum is open daily from 10 a.m. \u2013 5 p.m. It is closed on December 25 and January 1.\nDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Gallery was largely closed to the public. However, visitors were able to schedule appointments to access the west building in small numbers.\nCenter for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts.\nThe Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA), the National Gallery of Art's research institute, was founded in 1979. The Center offers visiting professorships, a fellowship program, and undergraduate internship opportunities, as well as a publication program.\nThe first dean of CASVA, architectural historian Henry A. Millon, was appointed in 1980 . He was succeeded by Elizabeth Cropper in 2000. Steven Nelson became the third dean of CASVA in 2020.\nArchitecture.\nThe museum comprises two buildings: the West Building (1941) and the East Building (1978), linked by an underground passage. The West Building, composed of pink Tennessee marble, was designed in 1937 by architect John Russell Pope in a neoclassical style (as is Pope's other notable building in Washington, D.C., the Jefferson Memorial). Designed in the form of an elongated H, the building is centered on a domed rotunda modeled on the interior of the Pantheon in Rome. Extending east and west from the rotunda, a pair of skylit sculpture halls provide its main circulation spine. Bright garden courts provide a counterpoint to the long main axis of the building.\nThe West Building has an extensive collection of paintings and sculptures by European masters from the medieval period through the late 19th century, as well as pre-20th century works by American artists. Highlights of the collection include paintings by Jan Vermeer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, and Leonardo da Vinci.\nIn contrast, the design of the East Building, by architect I. M. Pei, is geometrical, dividing the trapezoidal shape of the site into two triangles: one contains public galleries, and the other houses a library, offices, and a study center. The triangles establish a motif that is echoed throughout the building, realized in every dimension.\nThe East Building's central feature is a high atrium designed as an open interior court that is enclosed by a sculptural space spanning . The atrium is centered on the same axis that forms the circulation spine for the West Building and is constructed in the same Tennessee marble.\nHowever, in 2005 the joints attaching the marble panels to the walls began to show signs of strain, creating a risk that panels might fall onto visitors below. In 2008, NGA officials decided that it had become necessary to remove and reinstall all of the panels. The renovation was completed in 2016.\nThe East Building focuses on modern and contemporary art, with a collection including works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Alexander Calder, a 1977 mural by Robert Motherwell and works by many other artists. The East Building also contains the main offices of the NGA and a large research facility, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA). Among the highlights of the East Building in 2012 was an exhibition of Barnett Newman's \"The Stations of the Cross\" series of 14 black and white paintings (1958\u201366). Newman painted them after he had recovered from a heart attack; they are usually regarded as the peak of his achievement. The series has also been seen as a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.\nThe two buildings are connected by a walkway beneath 4th street, called \"the Concourse\" on the museum's map. In 2008, the National Gallery of Art commissioned American artist Leo Villareal to transform the Concourse into an artistic installation. \"Multiverse\" is one of Villareal's largest and most complex light sculpture by light count, featuring approximately 41,000 computer-programmed LED nodes that run through channels along the entire -long space. The concourse also includes the food court and a gift shop.\nThe final element of the National Gallery of Art complex, the Sculpture Garden was completed in 1999 after more than 30 years of planning. To the west of the West Building, on the opposite side of Seventh Street, the Sculpture Garden was designed by landscape architect Laurie Olin as an outdoor gallery for monumental modern sculpture.\nThe Sculpture Garden contains plantings of Native American species of canopy and flowering trees, shrubs, ground covers, and perennials. A circular reflecting pool and fountain form the center of its design, which arching pathways of granite and crushed stone complement. (The pool becomes an ice-skating rink during the winter.) The sculptures exhibited in the surrounding landscaped area include pieces by Marc Chagall, David Smith, Mark Di Suvero, Roy Lichtenstein, Sol LeWitt, Tony Smith, Roxy Paine, Joan Mir\u00f3, Louise Bourgeois, and Hector Guimard.\nRenovations.\nThe NGA's West Building was renovated from 2007 to 2009. Although some galleries closed for periods of time, others remained open.\nAfter congressional testimony that the East Building suffered from \"systematic structural failures\", NGA adopted a Master Renovations Plan in 1999. This plan established the timeline for closing the building, and planned for the renovation of the electronic security systems, elevators, and HVAC. Space between the ceilings of existing galleries and the building's skylights (which was never completed when the building was constructed in 1978) would be renovated into two, high, hexagonal Tower Galleries. The galleries would have a combined of space and will be lit by skylights. A rooftop sculpture garden would also be added. NGA officials said that the Tower Galleries would probably house modern art, and the creation of a distinct \"Rothko Room\" was possible.\nBeginning in 2011, NGA undertook an $85\u00a0million restoration of the East Building's fa\u00e7ade. The East Building is clad in thick pink marble panels. The panels are held about away from the wall by stainless steel anchors. Gravity holds the panel in the bottom anchors (which are placed at each corner), while \"button head\" anchors (stainless steel posts with large, flat heads) at the top corners keep the panel upright. Mortar was used on the gravity anchors to level the stones. Joints of flexible colored neoprene were placed between the panels. This system was designed to allow each panel to hang independent of its neighbors, and NGA officials say they are not aware of any other panel system like it.\nHowever, many panels were accidentally mortared together. Seasonal heating and cooling of the fa\u00e7ade, infiltration of moisture, and shrinkage of the building's structural concrete by over time caused extensive damage to the fa\u00e7ade. In 2005, regular maintenance showed that some panels were cracked or significantly damaged, while others leaned by more than out from the building (threatening to fall).\nThe NGA hired the structural engineering firm Robert Silman Associates to determine the cause of the problem. Although the Gallery began raising private funds to fix the issue, eventually federal funding was used to repair the building. In 2012, the NGA chose a joint venture, Balfour Beatty/Smoot, to complete the repairs. Anodized aluminum anchors replaced the stainless steel ones, and the top corner anchors were moved to the center of the top edge of each stone. The neoprene joints were removed and new colored silicone gaskets installed, and leveling screws rather than mortar used to keep the panels square. Work began in November 2011, and originally was scheduled to end in 2014. By February 2012, however, the contractor said work on the fa\u00e7ade would end in late 2013, and site restoration would take place in 2014. The East Building remained open throughout the project.\nIn March 2013, the National Gallery of Art announced a $68.4\u00a0million renovation to the East Building. This included $38.4\u00a0million to refurbish the interior mechanical plant of the structure, and $30\u00a0million to create new exhibition space. Because the angular interior space of the East Building made it impossible to close off galleries, the renovation required all but the atrium and offices to close by December 2013. The structure remained closed for three years. The architectural firm of Hartman-Cox oversaw both aspects of the renovation.\nA group of benefactors \u2014 which included Victoria and Roger Sant, Mitchell and Emily Rales, and David Rubenstein \u2014 privately financed the renovation. The \"Washington Post\" reported that the donation was one of the largest the NGA had received in a decade. NGA staff said that they would use the closure to conserve artwork, plan purchases, and develop exhibitions. Plans for renovating conservation, construction, exhibition prep, groundskeeping, office, storage, and other internal facilities were also ready, but would not be implemented for many years.\nCollection.\nThe NGA's collection galleries and Sculpture Garden display European and American paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, and decorative arts. Paintings in the permanent collection date from the Middle Ages to the present. The Italian Renaissance collection includes two panels from Duccio's \"Maesta\", the tondo of the \"Adoration of the Magi\" by Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi, a Botticelli work on the same subject, Giorgione's \"Allendale Nativity\", Giovanni Bellini's \"The Feast of the Gods\", \"Ginevra de' Benci\" (the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas) and groups of works by Titian and Raphael.\nThe collections include paintings by many European masters, including a version of \"Saint Martin and the Beggar,\" by El Greco, and works by Matthias Gr\u00fcnewald, Cranach the Elder, Rogier van der Weyden, Albrecht D\u00fcrer, Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer, Francisco Goya, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, and Eug\u00e8ne Delacroix, among others. The collection of sculpture and decorative arts includes such works as the \"Chalice\" of Abbot Suger of St-Denis and a collection of work by Auguste Rodin and Edgar Degas. Other highlights of the permanent collection include the second of the two original sets of Thomas Cole's series of paintings titled \"The Voyage of Life\", (the first set is at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York) and the original version of \"Watson and the Shark\" by John Singleton Copley (two other versions are in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Detroit Institute of Arts).\nThe National Gallery's print collection comprises 75,000 prints, in addition to rare illustrated books. It includes collections of works by Albrecht D\u00fcrer, Rembrandt, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, William Blake, Mary Cassatt, Edvard Munch, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg. The collection began with 400 prints donated by five collectors in 1941. In 1942, Joseph E. Widener donated his entire collection of nearly 2,000 works. In 1943, Lessing Rosenwald donated his collection of 8,000 old master and modern prints; between 1943 and 1979, he donated almost 14,000 more works. In 2008, Dave and Reba White Williams donated their collection of more than 5,200 American prints.\nIn 2013, the NGA purchased from a private French collection Gerard van Honthorst's 1623 painting, \"The Concert\", which had not been publicly viewed since 1795. After initially displaying the \"The Concert\" in a special installation in the West Building, the NGA moved the painting to a permanent display in the museum's Dutch and Flemish galleries. Art experts estimated the sale price of \"The Concert\" at $20\u00a0million, though the NGA did not reveal the amount that it had paid.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "22763390": "Niccolini-Cowper Madonna\nPainting by Raphael\nThe Niccolini-Cowper Madonna, also known as the Large Cowper Madonna, is a painting by the Italian High Renaissance artist Raphael, depicting Mary and Jesus Christ as the Christ Child, against a blue sky.\nThe painting.\nThe painting may have been the last of Raphael's Florentine paintings before he left for Rome. It is more complex than a similar painting the \"Small Cowper Madonna\" of a few years earlier. The Virgin and Child fill the canvas, creating an imposing effect. The two are more closely related, both by the positioning of their bodies and their intimacy. Raphael may have derived the talent for creating a natural intimacy through Leonardo da Vinci. The portrayal of the infant's energy is reminiscent of the works of Michelangelo. The compelling, playful Child reaches for the Madonna's top as if wanting to nurse. Both paintings bear the name of their former owners.\nAn inscription on the painting, center right on the border of Madonna's bodice: MDVIII.R.V.PIN tells that it was painted in 1508 by Raphael of Urbino.\nStory.\nCowper's art collection absorbed a great deal of his time and money. His most notable possessions are probably the two Cowper Madonna paintings Raphael: \"Small Cowper Madonna\" and this painting, the \"Niccolini-Cowper Madonna\". \"Tribuna of the Uffizi\" shows Cowper looking at the \"Niccolini-Cowper Madonna\" painting as it is offered by Johann Zoffany. Zoffany had purchased the painting from the Niccolini family in 1782 and sold it to Cowper in 1785.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "10537881": "Stalingrad Madonna\nDrawing of the Virgin Mary\nThe Stalingrad Madonna () is an image of the Virgin Mary drawn by a German soldier, Kurt Reuber (1906\u20131944), in 1942 during the Battle of Stalingrad. The original is displayed in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Berlin, while copies now hang in the cathedrals of Berlin, Coventry, and Kazan Cathedral, Volgograd, as a sign of the reconciliation between Germany and its enemies the United Kingdom and Russia during the Second World War.\nDesign.\nThe piece is a simple charcoal sketch, measuring three feet by four feet (900 mm \u00d7 1200 mm). Mary is depicted wrapped in a large shawl, holding the infant Jesus close to her cheek. On the right border are the words \"Licht, Leben, Liebe\" (\"Light, Life, Love\"), from the Gospel of John. On the left, Reuber wrote \"Weihnachten im Kessel 1942\" (\"Christmas in the Kettle 1942\") and at the bottom \"Festung Stalingrad\" (\"Fortress Stalingrad\"). \"Kessel\" (\"kettle\") is the German term for an encircled military area, and Fortress Stalingrad was the label for the encircled army promoted in the Nazi press.\nHistory.\nThe picture was drawn by Lieutenant Kurt Reuber, a German staff physician and Protestant pastor, in December 1942 during the Battle of Stalingrad. Reuber wrote: I wondered for a long while what I should paint, and in the end I decided on a Madonna, or mother and child. I have turned my hole in the frozen mud into a studio. The space is too small for me to be able to see the picture properly, so I climb on to a stool and look down at it from above, to get the perspective right. Everything is repeatedly knocked over, and my pencils vanish into the mud. There is nothing to lean my big picture of the Madonna against, except a sloping, home-made table past which I can just manage to squeeze. There are no proper materials and I have used a Russian map for paper. But I wish I could tell you how absorbed I have been painting my Madonna, and how much it means to me.<br>The picture looks like this: the mother's head and the child's lean toward each other, and a large cloak enfolds them both. It is intended to symbolize \"security\" and \"mother love\". I remembered the words of St.John: light, life, and love. What more can I add? I wanted to suggest these three things in the homely and common vision of a mother with her child and the security that they represent. He added that he:went to all the bunkers, brought my drawing to the men, and chatted with them. How they sat there! Like being in their dear homes with mother for the holiday. Later, Reuber hung the drawing in his bunker for his unit celebration, which he described as a moment of Christian devotion shared by all the soldiers in his command. When according to ancient custom I opened the Christmas door, the slatted door of our bunker, and the comrades went in, they stood as if entranced, devout and too moved to speak in front of the picture on the clay wall. ...The entire celebration took place under the influence of the picture, and they thoughtfully read the words: light, life, love. ...Whether commander or simple soldier, the Madonna was always an object of outward and inward contemplation.\nThe \"Madonna\" was flown out of Stalingrad by Dr Wilhelm Grosse, his battalion commander of the 16th Panzer Division on the last transport plane to leave the encircled German 6th Army. Reuber was taken captive after the surrender of the 6th Army, and died in a Soviet prisoner of war camp in 1944. The \"Madonna\" and a number of letters from Reuber were delivered to his family. There they remained, until German Federal President Karl Carstens encouraged Reuber's surviving children to donate the work to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin. Springer, Reuber's three children, and Prince Louis Ferdinand (in his role as chair of the Memorial Church board of trustees) attended the dedication ceremony in August 1983.\nInfluence.\nThe drawing and Reuber's letters were published shortly after the war, and Navy chaplain Arno P\u00f6tzsch wrote an apologetic book of poetry entitled \"The Madonna of Stalingrad\" in 1946. The work became a powerful symbol of peace in the Cold War era, as well as part of the mythologising of Stalingrad and the events of the Second World War in German society. Copies were presented, and are displayed, in the cathedrals of Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad), Berlin, and Coventry as a symbol of reconciliation. Similarly a Cross of Nails from Coventry is displayed with the \"Madonna\" in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.\n\"The Prisoners' Madonna\".\nReuber painted a second similar picture in captivity around Christmas 1943. He was by this time in a prisoner of war camp in Yelabuga, some 1,000 kilometres north-east of Stalingrad, and the painting was made for the prisoners' newspaper. He titled it \"The Prisoners' Madonna\". Reuber did not live to see another Christmas, dying of illness a few weeks later on 20 January 1944.\nReferences.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "47097166": "Northbrook Madonna\nPainting attributed to Domenico Alfani\nThe Virgin and Child, commonly known as The Northbrook Madonna after the Northbrook Collection in England, is a painting from the early 16th century (around 1505) by an unknown artist possibly identified as Domenico Alfani. It is in the permanent collection of the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States. It was formerly attributed to Raphael, but scholars have since concluded otherwise.\nDescription.\nThe Madonna is wearing a red blouse and a dark blue skirt. She and the infant are both fair skinned with light red-orange hair. Behind them is a green landscape receding to blue mountains under a blue sky. A brown structure is on the right side of the landscape.\nHistory.\nThe painting takes its name from having been in the Northbrook Collection in England. The painting was donated to the Worcester Art Museum in 1940. At the time it was attributed to Raphael, but scholars have since discarded that idea. There is no clear consensus on its authorship. It is said to possibly have been the work of a student of Raphael, and that he \"may have designed it or supervised its execution\", or that it \"may have been the result of a collaboration, a practice that Raphael was known for throughout his career.\"\nIn 2015 the painting was exhibited alongside the \"Small Cowper Madonna\" by Raphael, on loan from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The exhibition's intent was to attempt to identify the artist who painted the Northbrook Madonna, as well as to \"explore Raphael's masterful interpretation and the spread of his early style among followers in Central Italy\".\nIn October 2019, another previously unknown painting that particularly closely resembles the Northbrook Madonna was offered for auction by Dorotheum and was expected to sell for \u20ac300,000\u2013400,000 ($US \u2013), ultimately selling instead for $US 2,000,000 (\u20ac1,657,190).\nAs of 2021, the museum says the painter of the Northbrook Madonna was possibly Domenico Alfani of Umbria, a region of central Italy. Alfani and Raphael were close friends, they had studied together at the school of Pietro Perugino, and there have also been other instances in which Alfani's work has been incorrectly attributed to Raphael.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21478148": "Madonna del Prato (Raphael)\nPainting by Raphael\nThe Madonna del Prato (\"Madonna of the Meadow\"), formally Madonna with the Christ Child and Saint John the Baptist, is an oil on board painting by Raphael, created in 1506, now held in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It is also known as the Madonna del Belvedere after its long residence in the imperial collection in the Vienna Belvedere.\nSubject.\nThe painting was executed by twenty-three-year-old Raphael within months of his 1504\u20131505 arrival in Florence. The scene represents the figures of the Virgin Mary, the infant Jesus, and an infant John the Baptist shown in a calm grassy meadow, in a pyramidal arrangement linked by their gazes. Mary is wearing a gold-bordered blue mantle set against a red dress, extending her right leg along a diagonal. The blue symbolizes the church and the red Christ's death, with the Madonna touching hands with Jesus the uniting of Mother Church with Christ's sacrifice. Her eyes fixed on John, her head turned to the left and slightly inclined, and her hands steady him as he leans forward unsteadily to touch the miniature cross held by John. The poppy refers to Christ's passion, death and resurrection. The painting depicts a peaceful, tender and idyllic moment, disturbed only by child Jesus's grabbing at the cross held by John the Baptist, which hints to the forthcoming Passion of Jesus. This kind of serene and harmonious composition was held in very high regard by Renaissance patrons and earned Raphael a commission to paint a fresco for the Pope at the Vatican \"stanze\" in Rome.\nTechnique.\nFor this painting, as well as in others such as the \"Madonna of the Goldfinch\", Raphael followed the techniques of Leonardo da Vinci (who was also in Florence at the time) in blocking its subjects in pyramidal form; this can be observed in such works as Leonardo's \"Virgin of the Rocks\". A red-chalk composition study, one of many preparatory drawings for the painting made by Raphael, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.\nIn 1983, the Chief Conservator for Paintings at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna removed the retouchings and varnish that deformed the \"Madonna of the Meadow\". Restoration revealed that this painting's structure is similar to that of the \"Small Cowper Madonna,\" and consists of translucent oil glazes, opaque underpaint and gesso ground. Furthermore, the observed damages were caused by the same factors, namely Raphael's painting technique in the robe and mantle. In the \"Madonna of the Meadow,\" the blue robe is disfigured by a wide craquelure provoked by the uneven drying of the oil layers. Additionally, the painting is characterized by a great depth of shadows and a subtle interplay of the cool and warm tones that model the flesh. A bluish undertone, visible in the shadows and edges of the panel, underlies the creamy white and pink of the flesh. Moreover, close examination of the work suggests that the sky was painted after the figures were executed, since the blue brush strokes appear to follow the contours of the figures and are perceptible not only on the surface but also in x-radiographs. When examined using infra-red techniques, the \"Madonna of the Meadow\" also betrays an underdrawing, completed when the design was transferred onto the panel; the marks left by this transfer are clear, and the lines that connect them are precise, illuminating the artist's process.\nReferences.\nFootnotes\nCitations\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "142062": "Madonna (art)\nArtistic representation of Mary, either alone or with her child Jesus\nIn Christian art, a Madonna () is a religious depiction of the Blessed Virgin Mary in a singular form or sometimes accompanied by the Child Jesus. These images are central icons for both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. The word is from it \" ma donna\"\u00a0'my lady' (archaic). The Madonna and Child type is very prevalent in Christian iconography, divided into many traditional subtypes especially in Eastern Orthodox iconography, often known after the location of a notable icon of the type, such as the \"Theotokos of Vladimir\", \"Agiosoritissa\", \"Blachernitissa\", etc., or descriptive of the depicted posture, as in \"Hodegetria\", \"Eleusa\", etc.\nThe term \"Madonna\" in the sense of \"picture or statue of the Virgin Mary\" enters English usage in the 17th century, primarily in reference to works of the Italian Renaissance. In an Eastern Orthodox context, such images are typically known as \"Theotokos\". \"Madonna\" may be generally used of representations of Mary,"}, "descending_order": ["22763422", "22763390", "10537881", "47097166", "21478148", "142062", "357005"], "permutation_1": ["47097166", "142062", "22763390", "21478148", "22763422", "357005", "10537881"], "permutation_2": ["22763422", "21478148", "10537881", "142062", "47097166", "357005", "22763390"], "permutation_3": ["10537881", "22763390", "21478148", "142062", "357005", "47097166", "22763422"]}
{"id": "2hop__385813_36090", "docs_added": {"30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "3151860": "Tepuka\nIsland in Funafuti atoll, Tuvalu\nTepuka is an island eighteen kilometers west of Fongafale, in the northwest of Funafuti, the main atoll of the Oceanian nation of Tuvalu. Te puka, or Pouka, is the name of a tree - \"Hernandia peltata\".There is a well-preserved underground bunker on the island, which was an American communications outpost built during the Pacific War, which was connected to the military airfield on Fongafale.\nThe island lies between the smaller islet of Tepuka Vili Vili in the southwest, the smaller islet of Te Afualiku in the northeast, the Pacific Ocean on the west and the Funafuti lagoon called Te Namo on the east. In recent years the island has been majorly eroded. Te Ava Tepuka and Te Avua Sari are two neighbouring passages through Funafuti atoll in the northeast, between the islets of Te Afualiku to the northeast and Tepuka to the southwest.\nTepuka is to the north of the Funafuti Conservation Area, which encompasses 33 square kilometers (12.74 square miles) of reef, lagoon and six \"motu\" (islets) to the south of Tepuku: Tepuka Vili Vili, (also called Tepuka Savilivili); Fualopa; Fuafatu; Vasafua; Fuagea (also called Fuakea) and Tefala.\nLepidodactylus tepukapili is a species of gecko, which has been located on Tepuka and on Fuagea (also called Fuakea).\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["3151860", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["30227", "3151860"], "permutation_2": ["3151860", "30227"], "permutation_3": ["3151860", "30227"]}
{"id": "2hop__804237_136211", "docs_added": {"27208": "Saint Lucia\nCountry in the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean Sea\nSaint Lucia is an island country of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean. Part of the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, it is located north/northeast of the island of Saint Vincent, northwest of Barbados and south of Martinique. It covers a land area of with an estimated population of over 180,000 people as of 2018. The nation's capital and largest city is Castries.\nThe first proven inhabitants of the island, the Arawaks, are believed to have been the first to settle on the island in 200\u2013400 AD. In 800 AD, the island was taken over by the Kalinago. The French were the first European colonists to settle on the island, and they signed a treaty with the native Caribs in 1660. The English took control of the island in 1663. In ensuing years, England and France fought 14 times for control of the island; consequently control over this immensely valuable geopolitical position changed frequently. Eventually, the British took complete control in 1814, shortly after the victory over French Emperor Napoleon I. Because the island switched so often between British and French control, Saint Lucia was also known as the \"Helen of the West\" after the Greek mythological character, Helen of Troy.\nRepresentative government was introduced in 1924 with universal suffrage being established in 1951. From 1958 to 1962, the island was a member of the West Indies Federation. On 22 February 1979, Saint Lucia became an independent state, while remaining as a Commonwealth realm.\nSaint Lucia is a member of the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the World Trade Organization, CARICOM and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). It is also a member of .\nEtymology.\nSaint Lucia is named after Saint Lucy of Syracuse (AD 283 \u2013 304). Saint Lucia is one of two sovereign states in the world named after a female and is the only one named after a woman (Ireland is named after a goddess). Legend states that French sailors were shipwrecked on the island on 13 December, the feast day of St. Lucy, and therefore named the island in her honour. \nA globe in the Vatican from 1520 shows the island as Sancta Lucia, indicating that the island was instead named by early Spanish explorers. Saint Lucia was first known as \"Louanalao\" by the Arawak Indians in 200 AD, meaning \"Island of the Iguanas,\" and then as \"Hewanorra\", in 800 AD, meaning \"there where iguanas are found,\" when the Carib Indians arrived and assimilated their culture into Saint Lucia.\nHistory.\nPre-Columbian.\nThe first proven inhabitants of Saint Lucia were the Arawaks, though there may have been other native peoples prior to them. The Arawaks are believed to have come from northern South America, sometime around AD 200\u2013400, as there are numerous archaeological sites on the island where specimens of their pottery have been found.\nThe Kalinago (Island Caribs) arrived around AD 800, and seized control from the Arawaks by killing their men and assimilating the women into their own society. \nEarly European exploration and colonization.\nIt is possible that Christopher Columbus may have sighted the island during his fourth voyage in 1502, but he does not mention the island in his log. Juan de la Cosa noted the island on his map of 1500, calling it \"El Falcon\", and another island to the south \"Las Agujas\". A Spanish c\u00e9dula from 1511 mentions the island within the Spanish domain, and a globe in the Vatican made in 1520, shows the island as Sancta Lucia.\nIn the late 1550s, the French pirate Fran\u00e7ois le Clerc (known as \"Jambe de Bois\", due to his wooden leg) set up a camp on Pigeon Island, from where he attacked passing Spanish ships. In 1605, an English vessel called the \"Oliphe Blossome\" was blown off-course on its way to Guyana, and the 67 colonists started a settlement on Saint Lucia, after initially being welcomed by the Carib chief Anthonie. By 26 September 1605, only 19 survived following continued attacks by the Carib chief Augraumart, so the settlers fled the island. The English tried to settle the island again in 1638, but the Caribs continued to be hostile. Eventually, the French successfully claimed the island in 1650 and they signed a treaty with the Caribs in 1660. In 1664, Thomas Warner (son of Sir Thomas Warner, the governor of St Kitts) claimed Saint Lucia for England but the English fled again in 1666, with the French gaining full control of the island after the signing of the Treaty of Breda. Saint Lucia was made an official French crown colony in 1674, as a dependency of Martinique.\n18th and 19th centuries.\nAfter the slave-based sugar industry developed, both the British and the French found the island attractive. During the 18th century, the island changed ownership, or was declared neutral territory, a dozen times, although the French settlements remained and the island was a de facto French colony well into the eighteenth century.\nIn 1722, George I of Great Britain granted both Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent to the 2nd Duke of Montagu. Montague appointed Nathaniel Uring, a merchant sea captain and adventurer, as deputy-governor. Uring went to the islands with a group of seven ships, and established settlement at Petit Carenage. Unable to get enough support from British warships, he and the new colonists were quickly run off by the French.\nDuring the Seven Years' War, Britain occupied Saint Lucia for a year, but handed the island back to the French in 1763, under the Treaty of Paris. Like the English and Dutch on other islands, in 1765, the French began to develop the land for the cultivation of sugar cane as a commodity crop on large plantations. The British occupied the island again in 1778.\nFrom 1782 to 1803, control of the island switched multiple times. In January 1791, during the French Revolution, the National Assembly sent four \"commissaires\" to St Lucia to spread the revolutionary philosophy. By August 1791, slaves began to abandon their estates and Governor Jean-Joseph Sourbader de Gimat fled. In December 1792, Lt. Jean-Baptiste Raymond de Lacrosse arrived with revolutionary pamphlets, and the impoverished whites and free people of colour began to arm themselves as \"patriots\". On 1 February 1793, France declared war on England and Holland, and General Nicolas Xavier de Ricard took over as Governor. The National Convention abolished enslavement on 4 February 1794. On 1 April 1794, St. Lucia was captured by a British expeditionary force led by Vice Admiral John Jervis. Morne Fortune was renamed \"Fort Charlotte\". Soon, a combined force of French Revolutionary Army soldiers and maroons, \"L'Armee Fran\u00e7aise dans les Bois\", began to fight back, starting the First Brigand War.\nA short time later, the British invaded the island as a part of the war with France that had recently broken out. On 21 February 1795, French forces under the nominal control of Victor Hugues, defeated a battalion of British troops at Vieux Fort and Rabot. In 1796, Castries was burned as part of the conflict. Leading the 27th (Inniskilling) Regiment, General John Moore retook Fort Charlotte in 1796, after two days of bitter fighting. As an honour, the Fusiliers' regimental colour was displayed on the flagstaff of the captured fortress at Morne Fortune for an hour before being replaced by the Union Jack. Upon the capture of the fort, Moore's superior, Ralph Abercromby, departed the island and placed Moore in charge of the British garrison. Moore remained at this post until falling ill with yellow fever, leading to his return to Britain before 1798.\nIn 1803, the British regained control of the island. Many members of the \"L'Armee Fran\u00e7aise dans les Bois\" escaped into the thick rainforest where they evaded capture and established maroon communities.\nSlavery on the island continued for a short time, but anti-slavery sentiment was rising in Britain. The British stopped the import of slaves by anyone, white or coloured, when they abolished the slave trade in 1807.\nFrance and Great Britain continued to contest Saint Lucia until the British secured it in 1814, as part of the Treaty of Paris, ending the Napoleonic Wars. Thereafter, Saint Lucia was considered one of the British Windward Islands colonies.\nThe institution of slavery was abolished on the island in 1834, as it was throughout the British Empire. After abolition, all former slaves had to serve a four-year \"apprenticeship\", to accustom them to the idea of freedom. During that period, they worked for their former masters for at least three-quarters of the work week. Full freedom was duly granted by the British in 1838. By that time, people of African ethnicity greatly outnumbered those of ethnic European background. People of Carib descent also comprised a minority on the island.\n20th century.\nSaint Lucia's first representative government was introduced in 1924, with the first election taking place in 1925. Many Saint Lucians served during the Second World War, and the conflict visited the island directly during the Battle of the Caribbean, when a German U-boat attacked and sank two British ships in Castries harbour on 9 March 1942. The United States used the island as a military hub during the war, including setting up a secondary naval base in Gros Islet and using what is now the island's international airport as an air force base.\nUniversal suffrage was introduced in 1951 and elections were held the same year. In 1958, Saint Lucia joined the West Indies Federation, although the federation was dissolved just a few years later in 1962. In 1967, Saint Lucia became one of the six members of the West Indies Associated States, with internal self-government. Independence was peacefully gained in 1979 under Sir John Compton of United Workers Party, with the island remaining within the British Commonwealth, keeping then-Queen Elizabeth II as Monarch, represented locally by a Governor-General.\nPost-independence era.\nDespite leading the country to independence, Compton's initial term as prime minister lasted only a few months, being defeated by the Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) under Allan Louisy in the 1979 Saint Lucian general election. In 1980, Hurricane Allen struck the island, destroying much of its infrastructure and reducing economic growth. Compton returned to power after the 1982 Saint Lucian general election after much instability during the labour government's term. During Compton's second term as the island's leader, banana exports significantly increased and became the nation's main source of revenue. There were improvements to infrastructure, and education was expanded to rural areas. Saint Lucia was key to the US invasion of Grenada. During the 1990s and 2000s, the nation's economy began shifting from agriculture to tourism under the leadership of Kenny Anthony. The 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001 killed two Saint Lucians, and caused an economic slowdown, although moderate growth continued until the Great Recession. The recession, as well as the landfall of Hurricane Tomas in 2010, led to slow economic growth during the early 2010s, although the economy picked up during the later part of the decade and avoided contraction until 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic caused major economic issues globally.\nIn June 2016, the United Workers Party (UWP), led by Allen Michael Chastanet, won 11 of the 17 seats in the general election, ousting the St Lucia Labour Party (SLP) of the incumbent Prime Minister Kenny Anthony. However, Saint Lucia Labour Party won the next election in July 2021, meaning its leader Philip J Pierre became the ninth Prime Minister of Saint Lucia since independence.\nGeography.\nSaint Lucia has a total area of 617 square kilometers (238 sq mi). As a volcanic island, Saint Lucia is very mountainous, with its highest point being Mount Gimie, at above sea level. The Pitons, two mountainous volcanic plugs, form the island's most famous landmark. Saint Lucia is also home to the world's only drive-in volcano, the Sulphur Springs. There are a number of small islands off the coast, the largest of which are the Maria Islands, located in the south-east of the island.\nSaint Lucia lies at latitude 14\u00b0 N and longitude 61\u00b0 W. The population tends to be concentrated around the coast, with the interior more sparsely populated, due to the presence of dense forests. \nFlora and fauna.\nMany species are endemic to the island, including \"Anolis luciae\", a species of lizard, and \"Boa orophias\", a species of boid snake.\nEcoregions.\nSaint Lucia has five terrestrial ecoregions: Windward Islands moist forests, Leeward Islands dry forests, Windward Islands dry forests, Windward Islands xeric scrub, and Lesser Antilles mangroves. The country had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 6.17/10, ranking it 84th globally out of 172 countries.\nClimate.\nSaint Lucia has a tropical climate, specifically a tropical rainforest climate (Af), moderated by northeast trade winds, with a dry season from 1 December to 31 May, and a wet/rainy season from 1 June to 30 November.\nAverage daytime and nighttime temperatures are around , and respectively. Being fairly close to the equator, the island's temperature does not fluctuate much between winter and summer.\nGeology.\nThe geology of St. Lucia can be described as composing three main areas. The oldest, 16\u201318 Ma, volcanic rocks are exposed from Castries northward and consist of eroded basalt and andesite centres. The middle, central highlands, portion of the island consists of dissected andesite centres, 10.4 to 1 Mya, while the lower southwest portion of the island contains recent activity from the Soufriere Volcanic Centre (SVC). This SVC, centred about the Qualibou depression, contains pyroclastic flow deposits, lava flows, domes, block and ash flow deposits, and explosion craters. This depression's perimeter includes the town of Soufriere, Mount Tabac, Mt. Gimie, Morne Bonin, and Gros Piton. At in diameter, though the western portion is open towards the Grenada basin, the depression formed as recently as 100 kya. The depression is noted for its geothermal activity, especially at Sulphur Springs and Soufri\u00e8re Estates, a phreatic eruption in 1776, and recent seismic activity (2000\u20132001).\nEroded andesitic stratovolcanoes to the north east of the depression include Mt. Gimie, Piton St Esprit, and Mt. Grand Magazin, all greater than 1 Ma in age. Andesitic and dacite pyroclastic flows from these volcanoes are found at Morne Tabac dome (532 ka), Morne Bonin dome (273 kya), and Bellevue (264 kya). Avalanche deposits from the formation of the Qualibou depression are found offshore, and in the massive blocks of Rabot, Pleisance, and Coubaril. The dacitic domes of Petit Piton (109 kya) and Gros Piton (71 kya) were then extruded onto the depression floor accompanied by the Anse John (104 kya) and La Pointe (59.8 kya) pyroclastic flows. Later, pyroclastic flows include pumice-rich Belfond and Anse Noir (20 kya). Finally, the dacitic domes of Terre Blanche (15.3 kya) and Belfond (13.6 kya) formed within the depression.\nGovernment.\nLike most Caribbean countries, Saint Lucia is a unitary state with a parliamentary system. It is a Commonwealth realm and a constitutional monarchy, with the current monarch being Charles III, who is represented on the island by a governor-general, currently Errol Charles. The prime minister (currently Philip J. Pierre) is the head of government, the head of the cabinet, and is normally the leader of the largest party in the House of Assembly. The house has 17 seats, with each member being elected via a plurality of votes in their constituency. The upper chamber of Parliament is the Senate which has 11 appointed members, the majority of which are appointed by the prime minister.\nAdministrative divisions.\nSaint Lucia is made up of 10 districts. The districts were created and named by French colonials, and the British chose to keep the names in an anglicised form. The largest district in both size and population is Castries, where the nation's capital of the same name is located. The following are the 10 districts placed in alphabetical order:\nLaw and crime.\nSaint Lucia is a mixed jurisdiction, meaning that it has a legal system based in part on both the civil law and English common law. The Civil Code of St. Lucia of 1867 was based on the Quebec Civil Code of 1866, as supplemented by English common law-style legislation. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was Saint Lucia's final court of appeal until 2023, when a constitutional amendment transferred this to the Caribbean Court of Justice.\nSaint Lucia's homicide rate has hit record highs in recent years. There were 75 homicides in 2021, a 34.5% increase compared with 55 homicides in 2020. 2021 saw the island record the most homicides in its history, and also its highest murder rate in its history, at 40 murders per 100,000 people.\nForeign relations.\nSaint Lucia is a member of the Caribbean Community, OECS, the Organization of American States and La Francophonie. As a Commonwealth Realm, Saint Lucia has relatively friendly relations with United Kingdom and Canada. France is also a major ally, in part due to Saint Lucia's border with Martinique. The United States is the island's largest trading partner, and Saint Lucia was key to the US invasion of Grenada in 1983, and voted against condemning the invasion. Saint Lucia became the 152nd member of the United Nations on 18 September 1979.\nSaint Lucia does not have a military although the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force has a Special Service Unit (SSU) and a Coast Guard. The island signed the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2018.\nEconomy.\nSaint Lucia is a Small Island Developing State, a designation similar to a developing country with a few substantial differences due to Saint Lucia's island nature. The service sector is the largest sector of the economy, accounting for 86.9% of GDP in 2020, followed by industrial and agricultural sectors at 10.9% and 2.2%, respectively.\nSaint Lucia has been able to attract foreign business and investment due to its educated workforce and improvements in roads, communications, water supply, sewerage, and port facilities. Like most small islands, Tourism and offshore banking are Saint Lucia's main sources of revenue. Agriculture, specifically the banana industry, was previously the largest sector of the economy, although its importance has declined significantly. The island's manufacturing sector has been called the most diverse in the Eastern Caribbean, with goods such as plastic being produced on a large scale.\nSaint Lucia's currency is the Eastern Caribbean Dollar (EC$), a regional currency shared among members of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECU). The country's main trade partners are the US, UK, EU and other CARICOM countries.\nTourism.\nTourism is the largest contributor to Saint Lucia's economy. Tourist numbers tend to be more substantial during the dry season (January to April), often referred to as the tourist season. Saint Lucia's tropical weather, scenery, beaches and resorts have made it a popular tourist destination, with 1.29\u00a0million visitors arriving in 2019.\nSome of Saint Lucia's tourist attractions include the Sulphur Springs, the Botanical Gardens, Pigeon Island and The Pitons.\nAgriculture.\nThe agricultural sector was once the main contributor to Saint Lucia's economy. This was especially thanks to the exporting of bananas. However, its importance to the economy has declined significantly, in part due to increased competition from South American countries in the banana industry. Nevertheless, agriculture is still an important part of the country's economy, providing 7.9% of jobs and contributing to 2.2% of the GDP in 2021.\nAbout 18% of land is used for agricultural practices. Bananas remain the main agricultural product grown in Saint Lucia, as well as coconuts, cocoa beans, mangoes, avocados, vegetables, citrus fruits, and root crops such as yams and sweet potatoes.\nSaint Lucia also has a small livestock sector, which is dominated by poultry. The island is self-sufficient in egg production and production of poultry and pork has increased in recent years. Fishing has also been of considerable importance to the nation's economy.\nInfrastructure.\nSaint Lucia has a wide-ranging public bus network which covers most of the island. Busses are owned by private individuals, whilst the government is responsible for setting up routes and hubs. The road network covers most of the island, although some rural areas still lack access to proper roads.\nThe island has two airports, including one International airport. Cruising and yachting are very important to the country's economy, with the main sea port being located in Castries, while the main marina is located in Rodney Bay which is also home to the St. Lucia Yacht Club. Meanwhile, the nation's main oil refinery is located in Bexon.\nThe main source of electricity in Saint Lucia is oil through its sole power station, the Cul De Sac Power Station, although solar energy is also a major source. There have also been attempts to introduce geothermal and wind energy to the island.\nDemographics.\nA census is normally held in Saint Lucia every 10 years. In the 2010 census, Saint Lucia reported a population of 165,595 in 58,920 households. This was a 5.1% increase from the 157,490 recorded at the previous census in 2001. Ages 0\u201314 made up 24.1% of the population whilst those 65 and over made up 8.6%. Nearly 40% of the island's population lived in the District of Castries, where the nation's capital of the same name is located.\nSaint Lucia had a fertility rate of 1.4 children per woman in 2021, the lowest in the Americas. This is much lower than in 1990, when the birth rate was 3.4 children per woman, and significantly lower than in 1959, when the birth rate peaked at 6.98 children per woman. Most emigration from Saint Lucia is primarily to Anglophone countries, with the United Kingdom having almost 10,000 Saint Lucian-born citizens, and over 30,000 of Saint Lucian heritage. The United States is home to many Saint Lucians, especially areas such as Miami and New York City. Canada is also home to many Saint Lucians, and especially in the French-speaking province of Quebec in the city of Montr\u00e9al. The median age of Saint Lucians was 33.1 years in 2021.\nEthnic groups.\nSaint Lucia was originally populated by Amerindian peoples. However, European colonisation led to a significant drop in the indigenous populations. Most residents of the island were white planters, but African slaves and indentured servants brought by the Europeans eventually came to outnumber them. Because of this, Saint Lucia's population is predominantly of African and mixed descent. As of 2010, 85.3% of the population are black and 10.9% are of multiracial descent. Other groups include Indo-Caribbean persons (2.2%), whites (0.6%), and Indigenous Persons (0.6%). A small number of Kalinago live in the Choiseul region and in other towns on the western coast. There is also a small population of Lebanese and Syrians.\nLanguages.\nThe official language of Saint Lucia is English, though Saint Lucian French Creole (Kw\u00e9y\u00f2l) is widely spoken. Referred to colloquially as \"Patois\" (\"Patwa\"), it is spoken by a majority of the population. It is a dialect of Antillean Creole and is also related to Haitian Creole, though it nonetheless has a number of distinctive features from the latter. The Creole language developed during the early period of French colonisation and is derived chiefly from French and West African languages. There have been some attempts to make the language official, but they have not yet been successful.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nIn the 2010 census, a majority of Saint Lucians identified as Christians. This can be traced back to the nation's colonization by French and British settlers. Due to heavy French influence, most Christians on the island are Catholics, with 62.5% of the island's residents identifying as such. 24.5% of the island's residents identify as Protestants. In addition, 1.9% of the population identified as members of the Rastafari movement and 1.4% of the population practice Hinduism. The number of residents claiming no religion stood at 5.9% in 2010.\nThere is no state religion in Saint Lucia. The nation's constitution guarantees freedom of religion and prohibits forcing persons to take oath to any religion in which they do not follow. Religious groups are also guaranteed the freedom to establish places of education.\nEducation.\nMost primary and secondary schools in Saint Lucia are operated by the government. Education is free and compulsory for children aged five to fifteen. This includes seven years of primary school and three to five years of secondary school. In the last two years of secondary school, students are allowed to choose the subjects that they would like to do, in preparation for regional CSEC examinations. In 2020, public spending on education was at 3.6%.\nTertiary educational facilities on the island are normally private institutions. These include Monroe College and International American University. However, there are still a few public institutions, including the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College and the University of the West Indies.\nHealthcare.\nHealth services in Saint Lucia are split between the government and private institutions. The island is served by 2 public hospitals and multiple health centers, although most dental and vision services are private. Public expenditure on healthcare stood at 2.1% in 2019.\nIn 2021, life expectancy was at 71.1 years (67.8 for men and 74.7 for women). This was compared to 73.4 years in 2019. The drop in life expectancy was largely attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nCulture.\nThe culture of Saint Lucia has been influenced by African, East Indian, French, and English heritage. The main secondary language of the island is Saint Lucian Creole (Kw\u00e9y\u00f2l), a French-based creole spoken by most of the population. The island boasts the highest ratio of Nobel laureates produced with respect to the total population of any sovereign country in the world. Two winners have come from Saint Lucia: Sir Arthur Lewis, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1979, and the poet Derek Walcott, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.\nSaint Lucia has two flower festivals, the La Rose festival, celebrated on 30 August, and the La Marguerite festival, celebrated on 17 October. Every summer, the island hosts a carnival as a way to present the country's culture and music. Annually, there are normally many festivals, most of them being music related.\nMusic.\nSaint Lucian music is heavily influenced by elements of African music, especially rhythmically. The most popular music genres in Saint Lucia are calypso, soca, dancehall, reggae, zouk, and folk music. Dennery Segment, a genre influenced by Angolan Kuduro, Saint Lucian Solo music and Dancehall was developed on the island. The internationally renowned Saint Lucia Jazz Festival is held annually, and the festival is a major source of revenue for the country's economy.\nFood.\nSaint Lucian cuisine is a mix of African, European, Indian and Caribbean dishes. Some common dishes include macaroni pie, stewed chicken, rice and peas, roti (Indian flatbreads) and soups packed full with fresh locally produced vegetables. All mainstream meat and poultry are eaten in St. Lucia; meat and seafood are normally stewed and browned to create a rich gravy sometimes served over \"ground provisions\" (vegetables) or rice. Johnny Cakes (known as bakes) are also common, and are served with different sides, such as saltfish. The national dish of Saint Lucia is green figs and saltfish.\nSports.\nAs with most Caribbean islands, cricket is the most popular sport in Saint Lucia. The Windward Islands cricket team includes players from Saint Lucia and plays in the West Indies regional tournament. Daren Sammy became the first Saint Lucian to represent the West Indies on his debut in 2007, and was made captain in 2010. The Saint Lucia Kings is a T20 franchise playing in the Caribbean Premier League based in this said island nation. Sailing is also a major sport in Saint Lucia, with the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) race beginning in the Canary Islands and ending on the island. Other sports that are popular on the island include football, basketball, tennis, golf and volleyball. Karate and boxing have also seen increased popularity in recent years. \nJulien Alfred won the nation's first-ever Olympic medal, when she won the women's 100 meters event in 10.72 seconds at the 2024 Summer Olympics held in Paris, France.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "5264391": "Marigot Bay\nBody of water in Saint Lucia\nMarigot Bay is located on the western coast of the Caribbean island country of Saint Lucia, 3.75 miles southwest from Castries and a short distance from the Saint Lucian National Marine Reserve. It is surrounded on three sides by steep, forested hills.\nHistory.\nThe inland portion of the bay forms a hurricane hole, used to shelter boats from hurricanes.\nMarigot Bay is a historic landmark, having been used by the French and British navies before and after a number of nearby battles. It is widely claimed that a British fleet under Admiral Barrington hid from French pursuers within the bay, in some retellings attaching palm fronds to their masts in order to disguise themselves amongst the trees however this story is likely to be apocryphal, with no primary source evidence to support this.\nThe bay was used as the setting for the 1967 film adaptation of Hugh Lofting's Doctor Dolittle books. Scenes of the shipwreck, Great Pink Sea Snail, and the construction of the harness for the Giant Lunar Moth were filmed in the bay.\nThe American novelist James A. Michener, in his 1978 novel \"Chesapeake\", famously described the bay as \"The most beautiful bay in the Caribbean\".\nThe all-girl trio Arabesque featured a song \"Marigot Bay\" appearing on the album of the same name in 1980.\nRegion.\nThe second-order administrative region of Castries District is called Marigot and has a population of 769. The populated towns within this region are Marigot () and Marigot Bay (). The water body is referred to as Marigot Harbor (). There is also a Marigot Point ().\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "9043149": "Marigot, Saint Martin\nLargest city in the Collectivity of Saint Martin\nMarigot () is the main town and capital in the French Collectivity of Saint Martin.\nHistory and features.\nOriginally a fishing village on a swamp for which it was named, Marigot was made capital during the reign of King Louis XVI of France, who built Fort St. Louis on a hill near Marigot Bay. Today, that building is the most important in Marigot.\nMarigot is typical of Caribbean towns, with gingerbread houses and sidewalk bistros. Market days are every Wednesday and Saturday morning.\nThe crew of the 1997 motion picture \"Speed 2\" shot the final scene here where the \"Seabourn Legend\" hits the island.\nThe St. Martin of Tours' Church on rue du Fort Louis was built in 1941.\nGeography.\nMarigot is located on the west coast of the island of St. Martin. It extends from the coast to the west, along the Bay of Marigot and the hills of the interior of the island to the east. On the south-west it is bounded by the Simpson Bay.\nClimate.\nMarigot has a tropical savanna climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Aw\"), with very warm to hot and humid weather throughout the year. Rainfall \u2013 which is reduced by the rain shadow of the mountains to the east \u2013 is not as extreme as in most climates of this type, with the peak occurring from August to November due to hurricanes.\nTransport.\nThe city is served by Princess Juliana International Airport as well as L'Esp\u00e9rance Airport. There is a ferry to Blowing Point, Anguilla.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "34095780": "Marigot, Terre-de-Haut\nMarigot is a \"quartier\" of Terre-de-Haut Island, located in \u00celes des Saintes archipelago in the Caribbean. It is located in the northeastern part of the island. It is a residential area. The stadium, the middle school, and the Gendarmerie Nationale office are located on this place. In the past it was a big salt pond. The Bay of Marigot is one of the famous beach of the island. ", "61151260": "Marigot Bay (song)\n\"Marigot Bay\" is a song recorded in 1980 by the German disco group Arabesque. It is the title track from the band's studio album of the same name. It was released as a single in late 1980. It is most notable for being the group's first and only song to reach the Top 10 in their native country. It peaked at number 8 in West Germany, where it remained on the charts for 22 weeks, and at number 17 in Austria.\nSandra Ann Lauer sings the lead vocal in this pop song about lost love in the Caribbean beaches of Marigot Bay.\nA German Cover Version exists by Gaby Baginsky.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "6086302": "Marigot\nThe French name Marigot is given to several places in the Caribbean:\n<templatestyles src=\"Dmbox/styles.css\" />\n Topics referred to by the same termThis page lists articles about distinct geographical locations with the same name. ", "30427469": "Marigot, Saint Barth\u00e9lemy\nMarigot () is a \"quartier\" of Saint Barth\u00e9lemy in the Caribbean. It is located in the northeastern part of the island.", "6829520": "Marigot, Dominica\nMarigot is the largest settlement of Saint Andrew Parish in northeastern Dominica. The village has a population of 2,676 people, and is home to a Fisheries Complex as well as the island's main airport.\nIt is the birthplace of Wills Stratmore Stevens, a local Educationist and B.O Robinson, a former education officer. Along with Doctor Watts and local politician Edison James, (former Prime Minister) and cricket umpire Billy Doctrove. Marigot served as the leading community in Dominica at one point, with its people serving in all"}, "descending_order": ["5264391", "9043149", "34095780", "61151260", "6086302", "30427469", "6829520", "27208"], "permutation_1": ["6086302", "9043149", "5264391", "34095780", "61151260", "27208", "30427469", "6829520"], "permutation_2": ["27208", "30427469", "6829520", "61151260", "6086302", "9043149", "34095780", "5264391"], "permutation_3": ["30427469", "6086302", "34095780", "6829520", "27208", "5264391", "61151260", "9043149"]}
{"id": "2hop__857136_78066", "docs_added": {"105908": "Ford Mustang\nAmerican car manufactured by Ford\nThe Ford Mustang is a series of American automobiles manufactured by Ford. In continuous production since 1964, the Mustang is currently the longest-produced Ford car nameplate. Currently in its seventh generation, it is the fifth-best selling Ford car nameplate. The namesake of the \"pony car\" automobile segment, the Mustang was developed as a highly styled line of sporty coupes and convertibles derived from existing model lines, initially distinguished by \"long hood, short deck\" proportions.\nOriginally predicted to sell 100,000 vehicles yearly, the 1965 Mustang became the most successful vehicle launch since the 1927 Model A. Introduced on April 17, 1964 (16 days after the Plymouth Barracuda), over 400,000 units were sold in its first year; the one-millionth Mustang was sold within two years of its launch. In August 2018, Ford produced the 10-millionth Mustang; matching the first 1965 Mustang, the vehicle was a 2019 Wimbledon White convertible with a V8 engine.\nThe success of the Mustang launch led to multiple competitors from other American manufacturers, including the Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird (1967), AMC Javelin (1968), and Dodge Challenger (1970). It also competed with the Plymouth Barracuda, which was launched around the same time. The Mustang also had an effect on designs of coupes worldwide, leading to the marketing of the Toyota Celica and Ford Capri in the United States (the latter, by Lincoln-Mercury). The Mercury Cougar was launched in 1967 as a unique-bodied higher-trim alternative to the Mustang; during the 1970s, it included more features and was marketed as a personal luxury car.\nFrom 1965 until 2004, the Mustang shared chassis commonality with other Ford model lines, staying rear-wheel-drive throughout its production. From 1965 to 1973, the Mustang was derived from the 1960 Ford Falcon compact. From 1974 until 1978, the Mustang (denoted Mustang II) was a longer-wheelbase version of the Ford Pinto. From 1979 until 2004, the Mustang shared its Fox platform chassis with 14 other Ford vehicles (becoming the final one to use the Fox architecture). Since 2005, Ford has produced two generations of the Mustang, each using a distinct platform unique to the model line.\nThrough its production, multiple nameplates have been associated with the Ford Mustang series, including GT, Mach 1, Boss 302/429, Cobra (separate from Shelby Cobra), and Bullitt, along with \"5.0\" fender badging (denoting 4.9\u00a0L OHV or 5.0\u00a0L DOHC V8 engines).\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nName.\nExecutive stylist John Najjar, who was a fan of the World War II P-51 Mustang fighter plane, is credited by Ford with suggesting the name. Najjar co-designed the first prototype of the Ford Mustang known as the \"Ford Mustang I\" in 1961, working jointly with fellow Ford stylist Philip T. Clark. The Mustang I made its formal debut at the United States Grand Prix in Watkins Glen, New York, on October 7, 1962, where test driver and contemporary Formula One race driver Dan Gurney lapped the track in a demonstration using the second \"race\" prototype.\nAn alternative view was that Robert J. Eggert, Ford Division market research manager, first suggested the Mustang name. Eggert, a breeder of quarterhorses, received a birthday present from his wife of the book, \"The Mustangs\" by J. Frank Dobie in 1960. Later, the book's title gave him the idea of adding the \"Mustang\" name for Ford's new concept car. The designer preferred Cougar (early styling bucks can be seen wearing a Cougar grille emblem) or Torino (an advertising campaign using the Torino name was actually prepared), while Henry Ford II wanted T-bird II. As the person responsible for Ford's research on potential names, Eggert added \"Mustang\" to the list to be tested by focus groups; \"Mustang\", by a wide margin, came out on top under the heading: \"Suitability as Name for the Special Car\". The name could not be used in Germany, however, because it was owned by Krupp, which had manufactured trucks between 1951 and 1964 with the name \"Mustang\". Ford refused to buy the name for about US$ from Krupp at the time. Kreidler, a manufacturer of mopeds, also used the name, so Mustangs were sold in Germany as \"T-5s\" until December 1978.\nFirst generation (1965).\nLee Iacocca's assistant general manager and chief engineer, Donald N. Frey was the head engineer for the T-5 project\u2014supervising the overall development of the car in a record 18 months\u2014while Iacocca himself championed the project as Ford Division general manager. The T-5 prototype was a two-seat, mid-mounted engine roadster. This vehicle employed the German Ford Taunus V4 engine.\nThe original 1962 Ford Mustang I two-seater concept car had evolved into the 1963 Mustang II four-seater concept car which Ford used to pretest how the public would take interest in the first production Mustang. The 1963 Mustang II concept car was designed with a variation of the production model's front and rear ends with a roof that was lower. It was originally based on the platform of the second-generation North American Ford Falcon, a compact car. Gale Halderman's side view design is the basis for the first clay model.\nNon-traditional (1964\u00bd) introduction.\nThe Ford Mustang began production five months before the normal start of the 1965 production year. The early production versions are often referred to as \"1964\u00bd models\", but all Mustangs were advertised, VIN coded and titled by Ford as 1965 models, though minor design updates in August 1964 at the formal start of the 1965 production year contribute to tracking 1964<templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1\u20442 production data separately from 1965 data (see data below). With production beginning in Dearborn, Michigan, on March 9, 1964; the new car was, on 14 April 1964, first sold to the public, at a Ford dealership in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada before it was even introduced on April 17, 1964, at the New York World's Fair. Body styles available included a two-door hardtop and convertible, with a \"2+2\" fastback added to the line in September 1964. A Wimbledon White (paint code P) convertible with red interior was used as product placement when the \"James Bond\" movie \"Goldfinger\" was released September 17, 1964, at its London premiere, where Bond girl Tilly Masterson was in a spirited chase with James driving an Aston Martin DB5 in the Swiss Alps. A Tropical Turquoise (paint code O) coupe was again used in the next film \"Thunderball\" at its Tokyo premiere 9 December 1965 with Bond girl Fiona Volpe as she drives James to meet the villain Emilio Largo at his compound at a very high speed across The Bahamas.\nFavorable publicity articles appeared in 2,600 newspapers the next morning, the day the car was \"officially\" revealed. A four-seat car with full space for the front bucket seats and a rear bench seat was standard. A \"fastback 2+2\", first manufactured on August 17, 1964, enclosed the trunk space under a sweeping exterior line similar to the second series Corvette Sting Ray and European sports cars such as the Jaguar E-Type coupe.\nPrice and record-breaking sales.\nTo achieve an advertised list price of US$, the Mustang was based heavily on familiar yet simple components, many of which were already in production for other Ford models. Many (if not most) of the interior, chassis, suspension, and drivetrain components were derived from those used on Ford's Falcon and Fairlane. This use of common components also shortened the learning curve for assembly and repair workers, while at the same time allowing dealers to pick up the Mustang without also having to invest in additional spare parts inventory to support the new car line. Original sales forecasts projected less than 100,000 units for the first year. This mark was surpassed in three months from rollout. Another 318,000 would be sold during the model year (a record), and in its first eighteen months, more than one million Mustangs were built.\nUpgrades.\nSeveral changes were made at the traditional opening of the new model year (beginning August 1964), including the addition of back-up lights on some models, the introduction of alternators to replace generators, an upgrade of the six-cylinder engine from with an increase from , and an upgrade of the V8 engine from with an increase from . The rush into production included some unusual quirks, such as the horn ring bearing the 'Ford Falcon' logo covered by a trim ring with a 'Ford Mustang' logo. These characteristics made enough difference to warrant designation of the 121,538 early versions as \"1964\u00bd\" Mustangs, a distinction that has endured with purists.\nFord's designers began drawing up larger versions even as the original was achieving sales success, and while \"Iacocca later complained about the Mustang's growth, he did oversee the 1967 redesign.\" From 1967 until 1973, the Mustang got bigger but not necessarily more powerful. The Mustang was facelifted, giving the Mustang a more massive look overall and allowing a big block engine to be offered for the first time. Front and rear end styling was more pronounced, and the \"twin cove\" instrument panel offered a thicker crash pad and larger gauges. Hardtop, fastback, and convertible body styles continued as before. Around this time, the Mustang was paired with a Mercury variant, called the Cougar, which used its own styling cues, such as a \"prowling cat\" logo and hidden quad headlamps. New safety regulations by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for 1967 included an energy-absorbing steering column and wheel, 4-way emergency flashers, and a dual-circuit hydraulic braking system, and softer interior knobs. The 1968 models received revised side scoops, steering wheel, and gasoline caps. Side marker lights were also added that year, and cars built after January 1, 1968, included shoulder belts for both front seats on coupes. The 1968 models also introduced a new V8 engine, designed with Federal emissions regulations in mind.\nThe 1969 restyle \"added more heft to the body as width and length again increased. Weight went up markedly too.\" Due to the larger body and revised front end styling, the 1969 models (but less so in 1970) had a notable aggressive stance. The 1969 models featured \"quad headlamps\" which disappeared to make way for a wider grille and a return to standard headlamps in the 1970 models. This switch back to standard headlamps was an attempt to tame the aggressive styling of the 1969 model, which some felt was too extreme and hurt sales, but 1969 production exceeded the 1970 total.\nModels.\nStarting in 1969, to aid sales and continue the winning formula of the Mustang, a variety of new performance and decorative options became available, including functional (and non-functional) air scoops, cable and pin hood tie-downs, and both wing and chin spoilers. Additionally, a variety of performance packages were introduced that included the Mach 1, the Boss 302, and Boss 429. The two Boss models were to homologate the engines for racing. The 1969 Mustang was the last year for the GT option (although it did return on the third-generation Mustang for the 1982 model year). A fourth model available only as a hardtop, the Grand\u00e9, saw success starting in 1969 with its soft ride, \"luxurious\" trim, of extra sound deadening, and simulated wood trim.\nSales fluctuation.\nDeveloped under the watch of S. \"Bunkie\" Knudsen, Mustang evolved \"from speed and power\" to the growing consumer demand for bigger and heavier \"luxury\" type designs. \"The result was the styling misadventures of 1971\u201373 ...the Mustang grew fat and lazy,\" \"Ford was out of the go-fast business almost entirely by 1971.\" \"This was the last major restyling of the first-generation Mustang.\" \"The cars grew in every dimension except height, and they gained about .\" \"The restyling also sought to create the illusion that the cars were even larger.\" The 1971 Mustang was nearly wider than the 1970, its front and rear track was also widened by , and its size was most evident in the SportsRoof models with its nearly flat rear roofline and cramped interior with poor visibility for the driver. Performance decreased with sales continuing to decrease as consumers switched to the smaller Pintos and Mavericks. A displeased Iacocca summed up later: \"The Mustang market never left us, we left it.\"\nSecond generation (1974).\nIacocca, who had been one of the forces behind the original Mustang, became president of Ford Motor Company in 1970, and ordered a smaller, more fuel-efficient Mustang for 1974. Initially, it was to be based on the Ford Maverick, but ultimately was based on the Ford Pinto subcompact.\nThe new model, called the \"Mustang II\", was introduced on September 21, 1973, two months before the first 1973 oil crisis, and its reduced size allowed it to compete against successful imported sports coupes such as the Japanese Datsun 240Z, Toyota Celica and the European Ford Capri (then Ford-built in Germany and Britain, sold in U.S. by Mercury as a captive import car). The Mustang II also later competed against the Chevrolet Monza, Pontiac Sunbird, Oldsmobile Starfire and Buick Skyhawk. First-year sales were 385,993 cars, compared with the original Mustang's twelve-month sales record of 418,812. Ultimately, the Mustang II was an early example of downsizing that would take place among Detroit's Big Three during the \"malaise era\".\nIacocca wanted the new car, which returned the Mustang to its 1965 model year predecessor in size, shape, and overall styling, to be finished to a high standard, saying it should be \"a little jewel\". Not only was it smaller than the original car, but it was also heavier, owing to the addition of equipment needed to meet new U.S. emission and safety regulations. Performance was reduced, and despite the car's new handling and engineering features the galloping mustang emblem \"became a less muscular steed that seemed to be cantering\".\nEngines for the 1974 models included the venerable 2.3\u00a0L I4 from the Pinto and the 2.8\u00a0L Cologne V6 from the Mercury Capri. The 1975 model year reintroduced the Windsor V8 that was only available with the C-4 automatic transmission, power brakes, and power steering. This continued through production's end in 1978. Other transmissions were the RAD four-speed with unique gearing for all three engines, and the C-3 automatic behind the 2.3\u00a0L and 2.8\u00a0L. The \"5.0\u00a0L\" marketing designation was not applied until the 1978 King Cobra model. All -equipped Mustang IIs, except the King Cobras, received updated versions of the classic Ford \"V8\" emblem on each front fender.\nThe car was available in coupe and hatchback versions, including a \"luxury\" Ghia model designed by Ford's recently acquired Ghia of Italy. The coupe was marketed as a \"hardtop\" but actually had a thin \"B\" pillar and rear quarter windows that did not roll down. All Mustangs in this generation did feature frameless door glass, however. The \"Ghia\" featured a thickly padded vinyl roof and starting with 1975 models smaller rear quarter windows, giving a more formal look. 1974 models were: hardtop, hatchback, Mach 1, and Ghia. Changes introduced for 1975 included the availability of an \"MPG\" model which had a different rear axle ratio for better fuel economy. 1976 added the \"Stallion\" trim package. The Mach 1 remained through the life cycle 1974\u20131978. Other changes in appearance and performance came with a \"Cobra II\" version in 1976\u20131978 and a \"King Cobra\" in 1978 of which around 4,972 were built. The 1977\u20131978 hatchback models in all trim levels were now available with the T-top roof option, which included a leatherette storage bag that clipped to the top of the spare tire hump.\nThird generation (1979).\nThe 1979 Mustang was based on the larger Fox platform, initially developed for the 1978 Ford Fairmont and Mercury Zephyr. The larger four passenger body used a larger wheelbase which yielded increased room in the passenger cabin, trunk and engine bay.\nBody styles included a coupe (or notchback), hatchback, and convertible, the latter added for model year 1983. Available trim levels included an unnamed base model (1979\u20131981), Ghia (1979\u20131981), Cobra (1979\u20131981, 1993), L (1982\u20131984), GL (1982\u20131983), GLX (1982\u20131983), GT (1982\u20131993), Turbo GT (1983\u20131984), LX (1984\u20131993), GT-350 20th anniversary edition (1984), SVO (1984\u20131986) and Cobra R (1993).\nEngines and drivetrains carried over from the Mustang II including the 2.3\u00a0L I4, 2.8\u00a0L V6, and 4.9\u00a0L V8 engines. A troublesome 2.3\u00a0L turbocharged I4 was available during initial production startup and then reappeared after undergoing improvements for the mid-year introduction of the 1983 turbo GT. The 2.8\u00a0L V6, in short supply, was replaced with a 3.3\u00a0L I6 engine during the 1979 model year. That engine was ultimately replaced with a new 3.8\u00a0L V6 for 1983. The V8 was suspended after 1979 and replaced with a smaller, 4.2\u00a0L V8 which was dropped in favor of the high output V8 for 1982.\nFrom 1979 to 1986, the Capri was domestically produced as a badge engineered variant of the Mustang, using a few of its own styling cues.\nThe third-generation Mustang had two different front-end styles. From 1979 to 1986, the front end was angled back using four rectangular headlights. The front end was restyled for 1987 to 1993 model years providing a rounded-off \"aero\" style with flush-composite headlamps and a smooth grille-less nose.\nWhen the Mustang was selected as the 1979 Official Indianapolis 500 Pace Car, Ford also marketed replica models, and its special body-appearance parts were adapted by the Cobra package for 1980\u201381.\n1982 marked the return of the Mustang GT (replacing the Cobra) which used a specially-modified high-output engine.\nIn 1983, Ford again offered a convertible Mustang, after a nine-year absence. The front fascias of all Mustangs were restyled, featuring new grilles, sporting \"blue oval\" Ford emblems for the first time.\n1984 introduced the high-performance Mustang SVO, which featured a 2.3\u00a0L turbocharged and intercooled four-cylinder engine and unique bodywork.\nThe Mustang celebrated its 20th anniversary with a special GT350 model in white with red interior and red lower-bodyside rocker stripes. 1985 Mustangs received another front-fascia restyle.\nIn response to poor sales and escalating fuel prices during the early 1980s, a new Mustang was in development. It was to be a variant of the Mazda MX-6 assembled at AutoAlliance International in Flat Rock, Michigan. Enthusiasts wrote to Ford objecting to the proposed change to a front-wheel drive, Japanese-designed Mustang without a V8 option. The result was the continuation of the existing Mustang while the Mazda MX-6 variant had a last-minute name change from Mustang to Probe and was released as a 1989 model.\nThe Mustang received a major restyling for 1987, including the interior, which carried it through the end of the 1993 model year.\nUnder the newly established Ford SVT division, the 1993 Ford Mustang SVT Cobra and Cobra R were added as special, high-performance models.\nFourth generation (SN95; 1994).\nIn November 1993, the Mustang debuted its first major redesign in fifteen years. Code-named \"SN95\" by the automaker, it was based on an updated version of the rear-wheel drive Fox platform called \"Fox-4.\" The new styling by Patrick Schiavone incorporated several styling cues from earlier Mustangs. For the first time since its introduction 1964, a notchback coupe model was not available. The door windows on the coupe were once again frameless; however, the car had a fixed \"B\" pillar and rear windows.\nThe base model came with a 3.8 OHV V6 engine rated at in 1994 and 1995, or (1996\u20131998), and was mated to a standard 5-speed manual transmission or optional 4-speed automatic. Though initially used in the 1994 and 1995 Mustang GTS, GT and Cobra, Ford retired the 302\u00a0cid pushrod small-block V8 after nearly 30 years of use, replacing it with the newer Modular SOHC V8 in the 1996 Mustang GT. The 4.6\u00a0L V8 was initially rated at , 1996\u20131997, but was later increased to in 1998.\nFor 1999, the Mustang was reskinned with Ford's New Edge styling theme with sharper contours, larger wheel arches, and creases in its bodywork, but its basic proportions, interior design, and chassis remained the same as the previous model. The Mustang's powertrains were carried over for 1999, but benefited from new improvements. The standard 3.8\u00a0L V6 had a new split-port induction system, and was rated at 1999\u20132000, while the Mustang GT's 4.6\u00a0L V8 saw an increase in output to (1999\u20132004), due to a new head design and other enhancements. In 2001, the 3.8\u00a0L was increased to 193\u00a0bhp. In 2004, a 3.9\u00a0L variant of the Essex engine replaced the standard 3.8\u00a0L mid year with an increase of of torque as well as NVH improvements. There were also three alternate models offered in this generation: the 2001 Bullitt, the 2003 and 2004 Mach 1, as well as the 1999 and 2001, and 2003 and 2004 Cobra.\nThis generation was sold in Australia between 2001 and 2002, to compete against the Holden Monaro (which eventually became the basis for the reborn Pontiac GTO). Due to the fact that the Mustang was never designed for right-hand-drive, Ford Australia contracted Tickford Vehicle Engineering to convert 250 Mustangs and modify them to meet Australian Design Rules per year. The development cost for redesigning the components and setting up the production process was . Sales did not meet expectations, due in part to a high selling price. In total, just 377 Mustangs were sold in Australia between 2001 and 2003. For promotional purposes, Ford Racing Australia also built a Mustang V10 convertible, which was powered by a Ford Modular 6.8\u00a0L V10 engine from the American F truck series but fitted with an Australian-made Sprintex supercharger.\nFifth generation (S197; 2005).\nFord introduced a re-designed 2005 model year Mustang at the 2004 North American International Auto Show, codenamed \"S197\", that was based on the new D2C platform. Developed under the direction of chief engineer Hau Thai-Tang, a veteran engineer for Ford's IndyCar program under Mario Andretti, and exterior styling designer Sid Ramnarace, the fifth-generation Mustang's styling echoes the fastback Mustang models of the late-1960s. Ford's senior vice president of design, J Mays, called it \"retro-futurism\". The fifth-generation Mustang was manufactured at the Flat Rock Assembly Plant in Flat Rock, Michigan.\nFor the 2005 to 2010 production years, the base model was powered by a cast-iron block 4.0\u00a0L SOHC V6, while the GT used an aluminum block 4.6\u00a0L SOHC three-valve Modular V8 with variable camshaft timing (VCT) that produced . Base models had Tremec T5 five-speed manual transmissions with Ford's 5R55S five-speed automatic being optional. Automatic GTs also featured this, but manual GTs had the Tremec TR-3650 five-speeds.\nFor 2007, Ford's SVT launched the Shelby GT500, a successor to the 2003/2004 Mustang SVT Cobra. The supercharged and intercooled Ford Modular DOHC 4 valves per cylinder V8 engine with an iron block and aluminum heads was rated at at 6,000\u00a0rpm and of torque at 4,500\u00a0rpm.\nThe 2010 model year Mustang was released in the spring of 2009 with a redesigned exterior \u2014 which included sequential LED taillights \u2014 and a reduced drag coefficient of 4% on base models and 7% on GT models. The engine for base Mustangs remained unchanged, while the GT's 4.6\u00a0L V8 was revised resulting in at 6,000\u00a0rpm and of torque at 4,255\u00a0rpm. Other mechanical features included new spring rates and dampers, traction and stability control system standard on all models, and new wheel sizes.\nEngines were revised for 2011, and transmission options included the Getrag-Ford MT82 six-speed manual or the 6R80 six-speed automatic based on the ZF 6HP26 transmission, licensed for production by Ford. Electric power steering replaced the conventional hydraulic version. A new aluminum block V6 engine weighed less than the previous version. With 24 valves and twin independent variable cam timing (TiVCT), it produced and of torque. The 3.7\u00a0L engine came with a new dual exhaust. GT models included 32-valve 5.0\u00a0L engine () (also referred to as the \"Coyote\") producing 412\u00a0hp and 390\u00a0ft-lbs of torque. Brembo brakes were optional along with 19-inch wheels and performance tires.\nFor 2012, a new Mustang Boss 302 version was introduced. The engine had and of torque. A \"Laguna Seca\" edition was also available, which offered additional body bracing, the replacement of the rear seat with a steel \"X-brace\" for stiffening, and other powertrain and handling enhancements.\nIn the second quarter of 2012, Ford launched an update to the Mustang line as an early 2013 model. The Shelby GT500 had a new 5.8\u00a0L supercharged V8 producing . The Shelby and Boss engines came with a six-speed manual transmission. The GT and V6 models revised styling incorporated the grille and air intakes from the 2010\u20132012 GT500s. The decklid received a black cosmetic panel on all trim levels. The GT's 5.0 liter V8 gained eight horsepower from to .\nSixth generation (S550; 2015).\nThe sixth generation Mustang was unveiled on December 5, 2013, in Dearborn, Michigan; New York, New York; Los Angeles, California; Barcelona, Spain; Shanghai, China; and Sydney, Australia. The internal project code name is S550.\nChanges include a body widened by 1.5 inches and lowered 1.4 inches, a trapezoidal grille, and a 2.75-inch lower decklid, as well as new colors. The passenger volume is increased to 84.5 cubic feet, the wheelbase is still 8\u00a0ft. 11.1 in. (107.1 in.), and three engine options are available: a newly developed 2.3\u00a0L EcoBoost 310\u00a0hp four-cylinder introduced to reach high tariff global markets like China, 3.7\u00a0L 300\u00a0hp V6, or 5.0\u00a0L Coyote 435\u00a0hp V8, with either a Getrag six-speed manual or six-speed automatic transmission with paddle shifters.\nA new independent rear suspension (IRS) system was developed specifically for the new model. It also became the first version factory designed as a right hand drive export model to be sold overseas through Ford new car dealerships in right hand drive markets. \nIn February 2015, the Mustang earned a five-star rating from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for front, side, and rollover crash protection.\nIn May 2015, Ford issued a recall involving 19,486 of the 2015 Ford Mustang with the 2.3\u00a0L EcoBoost turbocharged four-cylinder engine with a production date between February 14, 2014, and February 10, 2015, that were built at the Flat Rock Assembly Plant. As of June 2015, 1 million Mustangs (between 2005 and 2011) and GTs (between 2005 and 2006) were affected by a recall of airbags made by Takata Corporation. This was after Takata announced that it was recalling 33.8 million vehicles in the U.S. for airbags that could explode and send metal pieces flying at drivers and passengers.\nEuro NCAP crash-tested the left hand drive (LHD) European version of the 2017 Mustang which received only two stars due to the lack of auto safety features such as lane assist and auto braking. Euro NCAP also pointed to insufficient pressure of the Airbag resulting in the driver's head hitting the steering wheel. In the full-width test, the rear passenger slipped under the seatbelt.\nThe 2018 model year Mustang was released in the third quarter of 2017 in North America and by 2018 globally. It featured a minor redesign to the exterior. The 2018 Mustang engine line up was revised. The 3.7\u00a0L V6 was dropped and the 2.3\u00a0L I4 Ecoboost (direct-injection turbocharged) engine now serves as the base power plant for the Mustang, producing and of torque when using 93-octane fuel. The 5.0\u00a0L V8 gets a power increase to and of torque. The automatic transmission in both engines is now a ten-speed Ford 10R80. In January 2018, Ford displayed a prototype of the special edition 2018 Bullitt model, to be released in the summer; this vehicle commemorated the 50th anniversary of the movie \"Bullitt\" that helped attract interest in the marque.\nFor the 2019 model year, Ford revised many components on the 2019 Shelby GT350 including stickier Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires along with steering and suspension components.\nThe 2020 model year saw the re-introduction of the GT500. The 2020 GT500 includes a hand-built 5.2-liter \"Predator\" aluminum-alloy V8 engine with a 2.65-liter roots-type supercharger. The Shelby GT500 produces and of torque. The GT350 was discontinued at the end of the 2020 model year.\nFor the 2021 model year, Ford re-introduced the Mach 1 after a 17-year hiatus. The 2021 Mach 1 utilizes the current Coyote 5.0\u00a0L engine with GT350 parts, including the intake manifold, increasing performance to at 7,000\u00a0rpm and at 4,600\u00a0rpm in addition to utilizing the GT350's lightweight Tremec six-speed manual transmission, oil-filter adapter, engine oil cooler, and front and rear subframe. The Mach 1 also utilizes parts from the GT500, including the rear axle cooling system, rear toe link, and rear diffuser.\nSeventh generation (S650; 2024).\nFord previewed the seventh-generation Mustang at the 2022 Detroit Auto Show on September 14, in a special event called \"The Stampede\". As part of its introduction, multiple track-only models were showcased, such as a NASCAR Cup Series body, a V8 Supercar version, and multiple GT racing versions, among others. Also announced was the addition of the \u201cDark Horse\u201d series. Bridging the gap between the Mach 1 and now-discontinued GT350, the Dark Horse performs much the same role as the 2012\u20132013 Boss 302 Mustangs \u2014 a street legal car with enhanced performance on road courses. The seventh generation Mustang is assembled at Ford's Flat Rock Assembly Plant and began production on May 1, 2023, initially available with either the redesigned 2.3\u00a0L EcoBoost turbocharged 4-cylinder with , or the revised, 4th generation Coyote V8 with in the GT and in the Dark Horse. At launch, three transmissions were offered: a Getrag 6-speed manual (GT only), a Tremec 6-speed manual transmission (Dark Horse only), or a 10-speed automatic transmission (available on all trims).\nMustang Mach-E.\nOn November 17, 2019, Ford announced the Ford Mustang Mach-E. Unrelated to any of the pony car Mustang versions, it is an electric crossover with rear-wheel or all-wheel drive, depending on trim level. It has of range and an updated Ford Sync system with a 15.5 inch display. The Mustang Mach-E comes in several different trims including First Edition, Select, Premium, California Route 1, and GT. The Mach-E also offers two battery options, and Ford is expected to introduce a third option in the future. Although it shares the Mustang name and badge, this vehicle is not counted among the Mustang's seven generations, as it is a separate model produced alongside the existing two-door Mustang rather than being a chronological successor to it, and is designed around a separate vehicle platform.\nRacing.\nThe Mustang made its first public appearance on a racetrack as pace car for the 1964 Indianapolis 500.\nThe same year, Mustangs won first and second in class at the Tour de France international rally.\nIn 1969, modified versions of the 428 Mach 1, Boss 429 and Boss 302 took 295 United States Auto Club-certified records at Bonneville Salt Flats. The outing included a 24-hour run on a course at an average speed of . Drivers were Mickey Thompson, Danny Ongais, Ray Brock, and Bob Ottum.\nDrag racing.\nThe car's American competition debut, also in 1964, was in drag racing, where private individuals and dealer-sponsored teams campaigned Mustangs powered by V8s.\nIn late 1964, Ford contracted Holman & Moody to prepare ten 427-powered Mustangs to contest the National Hot Rod Association's (NHRA) A/Factory Experimental class in the 1965 drag racing season. Five of these special Mustangs made their competition debut at the 1965 NHRA Winternationals, where they qualified in the factory stock eliminator class. The car driven by Bill Lawton won the class.\nA decade later Bob Glidden won the Mustang's first NHRA pro stock title.\nRickie Smith's Motorcraft Mustang won the International Hot Rod Association pro stock world championship.\nIn 2002 John Force broke his own NHRA drag racing record by winning his 12th national championship in his Ford Mustang funny car; Force beat that record again in 2006, becoming the first-ever 14-time champion, driving a Mustang.\nCircuit racing.\nEarly Mustangs also proved successful in road racing. The GT 350 R, the race version of the Shelby GT 350, won five of the Sports Car Club of America's (SCCA) six divisions in 1965. Drivers were Jerry Titus, Bob Johnson and Mark Donohue, and Titus won the (SCCA) B-Production national championship. The GT 350s won the B-Production title again in 1966 and 1967. They also won the 1966 manufacturers' championship in the inaugural SCCA Trans-Am series, and repeated the win the following year.\nIn 1970, Mustang won the SCCA series manufacturers' championship again, with Parnelli Jones and George Follmer driving for car owner/builder Bud Moore and crew chief Lanky Foushee. Jones won the \"unofficial\" drivers' title.\nIn 1975 Ron Smaldone's Mustang became the first-ever American car to win the Showroom Stock national championship in SCCA road racing.\nMustangs competed in the IMSA GTO class, with wins in 1984 and 1985. In 1985 John Jones won the 1985 GTO drivers' championship; Wally Dallenbach Jr., John Jones and Doc Bundy won the GTO class at the Daytona 24 Hours; and Ford won its first manufacturers' championship in road racing since 1970. Three class wins went to Lynn St. James, the first woman to win in the series.\n1986 brought eight more GTO wins and another manufacturers' title. Scott Pruett won the drivers' championship. The GT Endurance Championship also went to Ford.\nIn 1987 Saleen Autosport Mustangs driven by Steve Saleen and Rick Titus won the SCCA Escort Endurance SSGT championship, and in International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) racing a Mustang again won the GTO class in the Daytona 24 Hours. In 1989, the Mustang won Ford its first Trans-Am manufacturers' title since 1970, with Dorsey Schroeder winning the drivers' championship.\nIn 1997, Tommy Kendall's Roush-prepared Mustang won a record 11 consecutive races in Trans-Am to secure his third straight driver's championship.\nMustangs compete in the SCCA World Challenge, with Brandon Davis winning the 2009 GT driver's championship. Mustangs competed in the now-defunct Grand-Am Road Racing Ford Racing Mustang Challenge for the Miller Cup series.\nFord won championships in the Grand-Am Road Racing Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge for the 2005, 2008, and 2009 seasons with the Mustang FR500C and GT models. In 2004, Ford Racing retained Multimatic Motorsports to design, engineer, build and race the Mustang FR500C turn-key race car. In 2005, Scott Maxwell and David Empringham took the driver's title. In 2010, the next-generation Mustang race car was known as the Boss 302R. It took its maiden victory at Barber Motorsports Park in early 2011, with drivers Scott Maxwell and Joe Foster.\nIn 2012, Jack Roush Jr and Billy Johnson won the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge race at the Daytona International Speedway opening race of the 50th Anniversary Rolex 24 At Daytona weekend in a Mustang Boss 302R.\nIn 2016, Multimatic Motorsports won the IMSA CTSCC drivers' and manufacturers' titles with the S550-based Shelby GT350R-C, driven by Scott Maxwell and Billy Johnson.\nOn July 27, 2023, Ford announced that the 7th Generation Mustang would have its own spec-racing series called Mustang Challenge, sanctioned by the IMSA.\nStock car racing.\nDick Trickle won 67 short-track oval feature races in 1972, a US national record for wins in a single season.\nIn 2010 the Ford Mustang became Ford's Car of Tomorrow for the NASCAR Nationwide Series with full-time racing of the Mustang beginning in 2011. This opened a new chapter in both the Mustang's history and Ford's history. NASCAR insiders expected to see Mustang racing in NASCAR Sprint Cup by 2014 (the model's 50th anniversary). The NASCAR vehicles are not based on production models but are a silhouette racing car with decals that give them a superficial resemblance to road cars. Carl Edwards won the first-ever race with a NASCAR-prepped Mustang on April 8, 2011, at the Texas Motor Speedway.\nFord Mustangs have also raced in the NASCAR Xfinity Series since 2010.\nFord Mustangs are driven in the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series also.\nFord Mustangs have been track-raced in the NASCAR Cup Series since 2019, replacing the discontinued Ford Fusion.\nDrifting.\nMustangs have competed at the Formula Drift and D1 Grand Prix series, most notably by American driver Vaughn Gittin Jr.\nBrazilian Driver Diego Higa won the Netflix Hyperdrive Series in 2019 in a 2006 Ford Mustang V8.\nEurope.\nFord Mustangs compete in the FIA GT3 European Championship, and compete in the GT4 European Cup and other sports car races such as the 24 Hours of Spa. The Marc VDS Racing Team was developing the GT3 spec Mustang since 2010.\nAustralia.\nThe Ford Mustang was announced as the replacement for the Ford Falcon FG X in the 2019 Supercars Championship, which is being contested in Australia and New Zealand. The Mustang placed first in the first race of the year with Scott McLaughlin winning for DJR Team Penske.\nAwards.\n2005 Canadian Car of the Year\nThe 1965 Mustang won the Tiffany Gold Medal for excellence in American design, the first automobile ever to do so.\nThe Mustang was on the Car and Driver Ten Best list in 1983, 1987, 1988, 2005, 2006, 2011, and 2016. It won the Motor Trend Car of the Year award in 1974 and 1994.\nMustang Owner's Museum.\nIn May 2016, the Mustang Owner's Museum was announced, with an official opening in Concord, North Carolina on April 17, 2019; the fifty-fifth anniversary. The decision to locate somewhere in Concord was a result of the success of the 2014 Mustang 50th-anniversary celebration at Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, with over 4,000 Mustangs registered and an estimated economic impact of .\nIn popular culture.\nThe Ford Mustang has been featured in numerous media. Effective product placement allowed the car to reach \"celebrity status in the 1960s\". In particular, \"movie glamour\" assisted in establishing a positive association with the Mustang. The following are a few notable cases where embedded marketing influenced the sales or other tangible aspect of the vehicle:\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4535902": "Boss 302 Mustang\nThe Mustang Boss 302 is a high-performance H.O. V8-powered variant of the Ford Mustang originally produced by Ford in 1969 and 1970. Developed to meet homologation requirements to compete in Trans Am racing, it was Ford's response to the success of the Chevrolet Camaro Z/28 (302 cu in) in the and under SCCA series since 1967. While substantial modifications were required to the stock Boss 302 to be competitive on the track, many thousands were sold to the public in a street-legal form that included a refined high-performance motor and upgrades to the suspension and brakes over base Mustangs. \nFord revived the Boss 302 name for another two year production run in 2012 and 2013.\nFirst generation (1969\u20131970).\nThe Camaro/Mustang rivalry had begun in 1967 with the introduction of the Chevrolet Camaro by General Motors. The Camaro was the largest threat to the lead Ford had in the \"pony car\" field, a market segment largely created by Ford with the introduction of the Mustang in mid-year 1964. The performance of the Mustang with Ford's stock 289 cu in small block and 390 cu in big block V8s was not up to the Camaro's with equivalent Chevy engines. In an effort to improve the Mustang's image, Ford developed the Boss 302 engine and offered it in a complete performance package in 1968 mid-year and 1969 models as the Boss 302 Mustang, and the 429 cu in 385 series engine in the Boss 429 Mustang as a similar big block-powered alternative. The 428 Cobra Jet was also offered as a high-performance stand-alone option on regular Mustangs.\nThe specific impetus for the 1969\u201370 Boss 302 engine in 1968 was meeting the SCCA's homologation requirements for qualifying to race in the 1969 305 C.I.D. (5.0L) and under Trans-Am road racing series, with the 7 liter big block Boss 429 developed likewise for the higher limit of the NASCAR circuit at that time.\nAvailable only in the Boss 302 Mustangs of 1969\u201370, the engine differed substantially from stock Ford 302s, being based on a unique thin-wall, high nickel content small block casting. Other performance upgrades included solid lifters, much stronger 4-bolt rather than 2-bolt main crankshaft bearings, threaded rather than simple compression freeze plugs, and heads using a canted valve design allowing for larger valves being developed for the planned 351 Cleveland (which debuted the following year). Though the two engines shared a common cylinder head bolt pattern, coolant passages were slightly modified in the heads on the Boss 302.\nThe engine was only available in a complete Boss 302 package, which included a four speed manual transmission and handling and aerodynamic aids necessary to compete on a race track. In addition to a lower ride height, standard equipment included front disc brakes, larger sway bars, heavier duty spindles, reinforced shock towers. This \"G Code\" engine was rated at .\nThe Boss 302 Mustang was styled by Larry Shinoda, a former GM employee, who deleted the fake air scoops in the rear quarter panel fenders of the regular production 1969 Mustangs, added a front spoiler, and a rear deck wing, making the Boss 302 one of the first production cars to feature both. Black horizontal rear window shade and a blackout hood were both options. The name \"Boss\", popular 1960s slang for \"excellent\" or \"very cool\", got attached to the car when Shinoda was asked what he was working on, answering \"the boss's car\", referring to new Ford president Semon \"Bunkie\" Knudson, who had brought Shinoda over from GM's Chevrolet Division.\nChanges for the 1970 model year included side \"hockey stick\" stripes, and a front end which replaced the outer pair of headlights with vents and moved the headlights inside the grille opening. The dual exhaust system and suspension were designed, and a Hurst shifter became standard. The intake valves were slightly smaller, and cast aluminum valve covers replaced the chrome. With a suggested price of $3,720, a total of 7,013 were sold.\nThe 1970 model could accelerate from 0 to in 6.9 seconds, and cover the quarter mile (~400 m) in 14.6 seconds at a top speed of .\nFord also had an option for Boss 302's and 429's for deluxe interior rather than standard interior \nTrans-Am racing.\nThe SCCA Trans-Am series was popular in the late 1960s, especially after the birth of the \"pony car\". A type of \"stock-car\" racing usually held on road courses, the series limited maximum engine displacement to . In an effort to be competitive, various Detroit car manufacturers produced some a number of variants of their usual \"pony car\" lineups in both road and track trim (for homologation purposes), equipped with high-performing variants of their small block 300-inch class V8 engines. The Boss 302 program was part of an effort by Ford to win the coveted SCCA Trans-Am Championship in 1969-1970. Penske Camaros had triumphed in 1968 and 1969, but team Penske switched to American Motors' Javelin the following year, so in 1970 the Boss 302's direct competition were the AAR Cudas, the Pontiac Firebird, the Team Chaparral Camaros, and the Penske AMC Javelins.\nThe Ford entry for 1969 and 1970 was the Boss 302 Mustang, which was dogged by non-mechanical problems in '69 but won in '70. In 1969, tire trouble and slow pit stops were major factors limiting the Ford team's success. With Roger Penske as Chevrolet's racing team manager, pit stops were choreographed to maximize efficiency, far outperforming the Mustang team's efforts. Ford's Firestone brand tires also proved inadequate. In 1970 the factory effort was headed up by Bud Moore, who fielded two cars in the 1970 season running on Goodyears and edged out Team Penske's Javelins, with lead Penske driver Mark Donohue losing out to Bud Moore driver Parnelli Jones. \nFord dropped the Boss 302 after 1970. In 1971 AMC came out with a redesigned Javelin and returned to the track with Donohue and ex-Mustang driver George Follmer. Donohue dominated the circuit in 1971, and again Follmer in 1972, leading to back-to-back AMC victories.\nAustralian touring cars.\nThe Boss Mustang platform experienced racing success in Australia, with Canadian-born driver Allan Moffat, driving his Coca-Cola-sponsored Mustang to a recorded 101 wins from 151 starts. Moffat's car was a gift from Ford's American in-house race car fabrication and engineering facility, Kar Kraft, and finished off by Bud Moore Engineering. Moffat raced the Mustang in the Australian Touring Car Championship (ATCC) from 1969 to 1972. Although he failed to place in the top 10 in 1969, he finished 6th in 1970, 2nd in 1971 and 3rd in 1972. As of December 2012, this car has been fully restored to original, and is owned by Queensland based collector David Bowden who regularly shows the car at historic events throughout Australia.\nSince its restoration, the only person Bowden has allowed to drive the car (other than his son Dan) is its former owner Allan Moffat. Moffat has said that the car is his favourite car of his 30 years in racing, and that the gift of the car from Ford in 1969 was a pivotal moment in his career.\nLegacy.\nThe Boss 302 is reproduced as a model and toy, with diecast models including Hot Wheels, Matchbox, and Ertl's \"American Muscle\", and many others. It is recognizable by the \"hockey stick\" side stripe, rear louvers and chin spoiler (although those features can also signify a Boss 429 Mustang). The 1970 is available, but there are also some 4-headlight 1969 models as well.\nMany \"Boss 302\" replicas been created out of regular fastback Mustangs, with varying degrees of accuracy, including efforts to dishonestly clones vehicles to capitalize on the relative rarity and expense of existing examples of the original automobiles, especially race-prepped models.\nIn 2007 a pair of restored 1969 Boss Mustangs sold for $530,000.\nAlso in 2007 Saleen and American racing legend Parnelli Jones created a limited-edition S302PJ version of the Mustang designed to pay homage to the legendary 1970 Boss 302 that Jones had raced in the Trans Am series.\nSecond generation (2012\u20132013).\nBoss 302.\nFord revived the Boss 302 nameplate for 2012. The standard 2011 Ford Mustang GT's 5.0-liter Coyote V8 engine was enhanced with a forged crankshaft, CNC ported heads, revised camshafts, and a high flow \"runners in the box\" intake taken from the 302R racecar. It produced at 7400 rpm and at 4500 rpm, 32 more hp and 10 less lb-ft than the standard GT. It came with a 6-speed MT-82 manual transmission and a solid rear axle with a 3.73:1 carbon fiber plate limited-slip differential; a Torsen differential was available as an option. The quad exhaust system was made up of two standard Mustang GT outlets and two side pipes that exited on either side of the rear crossover. The side pipes sent the exhaust through removable metal \"attenuation\" discs to reinforce the exhaust sound. \nThe Boss 302 suspension supplemented the Mustang GT's with higher-rate coil springs, stiffer bushings, and a larger diameter rear stabilizer bar, and was dropped by a bit less than 1/2\" in the front to evoke the stance of the original. An intermediate sport mode was added to the standard Mustang traction control system and electronic stability control programs to allow for more flexibility on the track.\nThe aero package (i.e. spoilers, splitters, etc.) was almost entirely copied from the Boss 302R race car. The 19-inch black-alloy racing wheels were 9-inches wide in the and 9.5-inches in rear, and came with 255/40-19 / 285/35-19 Pirelli P-Zero tires.\nFord produced just over 3250 Boss 302 base models in both 2012 and 2013.\nLaguna Seca edition.\nThe Boss 302 Laguna Seca edition is an upgraded version of the standard Boss 302 named after the famed northern California race track. Designed to bridge the gap between the base Boss 302 and the track-only Boss 302R and 302S. it came with Recaro sport seats, a Torsen limited-slip rear differential, revised suspension tuning, and a larger rear stabilizer. Ford Racing ducts were fitted to the front brakes. Rear seats were replaced by an X-brace to increase lateral structural rigidity approximately 10%. Light-weight alloy wheels are 19x9-inch in front and 19x10 inch rear, fitted with R-compound ultra high-performance 255/40-19 / 285/35-19 tires. \nThe 2012 Laguna Seca Boss 302 came in black or Ingot Silver, with a red roof and red accents. In 2013 School Bus Yellow replaced silver, with both black and yellow cars getting reflective matte silver stripes. A more aggressive front splitter and a larger rear spoiler increased downforce. \nA total of 750 Laguna Seca versions were manufactured.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["4535902", "105908"], "permutation_1": ["105908", "4535902"], "permutation_2": ["4535902", "105908"], "permutation_3": ["4535902", "105908"]}
{"id": "2hop__86793_84145", "docs_added": {"4373640": "Roman Reigns\nAmerican professional wrestler (born 1985)\nLeati Joseph Anoa\u02bbi ( ; born May 25, 1985), better known by his ring name Roman Reigns, is an American professional wrestler and former football player. He is signed to WWE, where he performs on the SmackDown brand. Regarded as one of the best professional wrestlers in the world, Reigns' 1,316-day reign with the WWE Universal Championship is the fourth longest world title reign in WWE history and the longest championship reign since 1988. \nAfter playing U.S. college football for Georgia Tech, Anoa\u02bbi started a professional football career with brief off-season stints with the Minnesota Vikings and Jacksonville Jaguars of the National Football League (NFL) in 2007. He played a full season for the Canadian Football League's (CFL) Edmonton Eskimos in 2008 before his release and retirement from football. A member of the Anoa\u02bbi wrestling family, Anoa\u02bbi was signed by WWE in 2010 and made his main roster debut under the ring name Roman Reigns in 2012 as a member of The Shield alongside Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins: with Rollins, Reigns has held the WWE Tag Team Championship once. The trio teamed together until disbanding in 2014, after which Reigns entered singles competition.\nFrom 2014 to 2020, WWE positioned Reigns as a heroic character and attempted to establish him as their next \"face of the company\", which was met with intense disapproval by audiences and critics. During this period, Reigns won the WWE Championship three times, the WWE Universal Championship once, the WWE United States Championship and WWE Intercontinental Championship once each, was named Superstar of the Year at the 2014 Slammy Awards and won the Royal Rumble match in 2015. After a hiatus, Reigns was repackaged as a villainous character between 2020 and 2024, which was generally met with acclaim by audiences and critics. Reigns then held the WWE Championship and Universal Championship simultaneously, being recognized as Undisputed WWE Universal Championship.\nReigns has headlined numerous pay-per-view events, including WWE's flagship event, WrestleMania, a record ten times. Reigns holds the joint-record for most eliminations in a Survivor Series match (4) and held the previous record for most eliminations in a Royal Rumble match (12). He is also WWE's 28th Triple Crown Champion and 17th Grand Slam Champion and was ranked at No. 1 in \"Pro Wrestling Illustrated\"'s annual \"PWI 500\" list of the top 500 singles wrestlers in 2016 and 2022.\nEarly life.\nLeati Joseph Anoa\u02bbi was born on May 25, 1985, in Pensacola, Florida, to Sika Anoa\u02bbi and Patricia Hooker. His father was of Samoan descent and his mother is of Sicilian ancestry. Both his father and his brother Rosey were professional wrestlers. As a member of the Anoa\u02bbi wrestling family, his cousins include The Tonga Kid, Rikishi, Umaga, and Yokozuna, while his first cousins once removed include The Usos and Solo Sikoa. Anoa\u02bbi attended Pensacola Catholic High School before transferring to Escambia High School. He majored in management at the Georgia Institute of Technology. \nFootball career.\nAnoa\u02bbi played football for three years at Pensacola Catholic High School and one year at Escambia High School; in his senior year, he was named Defensive Player of the Year by the \"Pensacola News Journal\". While at the Georgia Institute of Technology, he was a member of the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets football team along with Calvin Johnson, who later became a wide receiver in the National Football League (NFL) and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Anoa\u02bbi was a three-year starter beginning in his sophomore year and was also one of the team captains as a senior. He earned first-team All-Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) honors in 2006 after recording 40 tackles, two recovered fumbles and 4.5 sacks.\nAfter going undrafted in the 2007 NFL draft, Anoa\u02bbi was signed by the Minnesota Vikings in May 2007. He was diagnosed with leukemia after his team physical and was released later that month. The Jacksonville Jaguars signed him in August 2007, only to release Anoa\u02bbi less than a week later before the start of the 2007 NFL season. In 2008, he was signed by the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League (CFL). Wearing the number 99, Anoa\u02bbi played for one season with the Eskimos, featuring in five games, of which he started three. Anoa\u02bbi's most notable game came against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in September, where he tied for the team lead with five tackles and had a forced fumble. Anoa\u02bbi was released by the Eskimos on November 10, and proceeded to retire from professional football.\nProfessional wrestling career.\nWorld Wrestling Entertainment/WWE.\nDevelopmental territories (2010\u20132012).\nAnoa\u02bbi signed a contract with WWE in 2010 and was later assigned to their developmental territory Florida Championship Wrestling (FCW). He made his televised debut on August 19, 2010, using the ring name Roman Leakee, in a 15-man battle royal, which was won by Alex Riley. On the January 16, 2011, episode of \"FCW\", Leakee was a competitor in a 30-man Grand Royal, but was eliminated. Later that year, Leakee formed a tag team with Donny Marlow and the pair unsuccessfully challenged Calvin Raines and Big E Langston for the FCW Florida Tag Team Championship on July 8.\nIn January 2012, Leakee pinned FCW Florida Heavyweight Champion Leo Kruger in a non-title match. On the February 5 episode of \"FCW\", he defeated Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins in a triple threat match to become the number one contender to the FCW Florida Heavyweight Championship, but failed to win the championship from Kruger the following week. In June, Leakee won the FCW Florida Tag Team Championship with Mike Dalton and would drop the titles to CJ Parker and Jason Jordan the following month.\nAfter WWE rebranded FCW to NXT in August 2012, Anoa\u02bbi, with the new ring name Roman Reigns and a villainous character, made his debut on the October 31 episode of \"NXT\" by defeating CJ Parker.\nThe Shield (2012\u20132014).\nReigns made his main roster debut on November 18, 2012, at the Survivor Series pay-per-view alongside Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins, attacking Ryback during the triple threat main event for the WWE Championship, allowing CM Punk to pin John Cena and retain the title. The trio declared themselves The Shield, vowed to rally against \"injustice\" and denied working for Punk, but routinely emerged from the crowd to attack Punk's adversaries. This led to a six-man tag team Tables, Ladders, and Chairs match at on December 16, where The Shield defeated Team Hell No (Daniel Bryan and Kane) and Ryback in their debut match. They continued to aid Punk after TLC, both on \"Raw\" and at the Royal Rumble on January 27, 2013 It was revealed on the January 28 episode of \"Raw\" that Punk and his manager Paul Heyman had been paying The Shield and Brad Maddox to work for them.The Shield then quietly ended their association with Punk while beginning a feud with Cena, Ryback and Sheamus, who they defeated on February 17 at Elimination Chamber. On April 7, they defeated Sheamus, Randy Orton and Big Show at WrestleMania 29. The following night on \"Raw\", The Shield attempted to attack The Undertaker, but they were stopped by Team Hell No. This set up a six-man tag team match on the April 22 episode of \"Raw\", which The Shield won. On the May 13 episode of \"Raw\", The Shield's undefeated streak in televised six-man tag team matches ended in a disqualification loss in a six-man elimination tag team match against Cena, Kane and Bryan.\nOn May 19 at Extreme Rules, Reigns and Rollins defeated Team Hell No in a tornado tag team match to win the WWE Tag Team Championship. On the June 14 episode of \"SmackDown\", The Shield suffered their first decisive loss in televised six-man tag team matches against Team Hell No and Randy Orton when Bryan made Rollins submit. Reigns and Rollins defeated Bryan and Orton at Payback on June 16 to retain the WWE Tag Team Championship. In August, The Shield began working for chief operating officer Triple H and The Authority. They retained their titles against The Usos at Money in the Bank on July 14 and The Prime Time Players (Darren Young and Titus O'Neil) at Night of Champions on September 15. At Battleground on October 6, the recently (kayfabe) fired Cody Rhodes and Goldust reclaimed their jobs by defeating Rollins and Reigns in a non-title match. Reigns and Rollins lost the titles to Rhodes and Goldust in a no disqualification match on the October 14 episode of \"Raw\", after interference from Big Show and failed to regain them in a triple threat tag team match at Hell in a Cell on October 27. \nAt Survivor Series on November 24, The Shield teamed with Antonio Cesaro and Jack Swagger to face Rey Mysterio, The Usos, Rhodes and Goldust in a traditional Survivor Series match; Reigns won the match for his team. At on December 15, The Shield lost to CM Punk in a 3-on-1 handicap match after Reigns accidentally speared Ambrose. At the Royal Rumble on January 26, 2014, Reigns entered the Royal Rumble match at number 15 and eliminated 12 competitors (a record that was later broken by Braun Strowman in 2018), ultimately finishing as the runner-up after being lastly eliminated by Batista. The next night on \"Raw\", The Shield competed in a six-man tag team match against Daniel Bryan, Sheamus and John Cena, with all three members of the winning team qualifying for the Elimination Chamber match for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, which The Shield lost via disqualification after The Wyatt Family interfered and attacked Cena, Bryan and Sheamus. The Shield lost to the Wyatt Family on February 24 at Elimination Chamber after Ambrose abandoned the match mid-way through.\nIn March, The Shield began a feud with Kane, turning face in the process. At WrestleMania XXX on April 6, The Shield defeated Kane and The New Age Outlaws (Billy Gunn and Road Dogg). The feud with Kane also prompted The Shield to sever ties with Triple H, who reformed Evolution to counteract them. The Shield defeated Evolution at both Extreme Rules on May 4 and Payback on June 1 in a No Holds Barred elimination match, in which no members of The Shield were eliminated. The following night on \"Raw\", Rollins turned on The Shield and aligned himself with Triple H and The Authority.\nControversial rise to main event status (2014\u20132015).\nReigns then embarked in singles competition and was quickly placed into world title contention. After winning a battle royal, Reigns was inserted into a ladder match for the vacant WWE World Heavyweight Championship at Money in the Bank on June 29, which was won by John Cena. At Battleground on July 20, Reigns again challenged for the title in a fatal four-way match involving Cena, Kane, and Randy Orton, which Cena again won. Following the event, Reigns began a feud with Orton and defeated him at SummerSlam on August 17 in his singles debut match on pay-per-view.\nThe next month, a match was set up between Reigns and Rollins for Night of Champions on September 21, but Reigns developed a legitimate incarcerated hernia which required surgery prior to the event. As a result of Reigns being unable to compete, Rollins was declared the winner via forfeit. Reigns returned on the December 8 episode of \"Raw\", accepting a Slammy Award for \"Superstar of the Year\". At on December 14, Reigns interfered during Rollins's match with John Cena, attacking Rollins and Big Show. This started a feud between Reigns and Big Show, in which Reigns defeated him multiple times by countout and disqualification.\nOn January 25, Reigns won the 2015 Royal Rumble match after lastly eliminating Rusev, therefore granting him a WWE World Heavyweight Championship match at WrestleMania 31. After his victory, Reigns was booed heavily by the crowd, despite portraying a heroic character. On the February 2 episode of \"Raw\", Reigns suffered his first pinfall loss in singles competition on the main roster when Big Show defeated him after interference from Rollins. Reigns successfully defended his WrestleMania title shot against Daniel Bryan at Fastlane on February 22. At WrestleMania 31 on March 29, Seth Rollins cashed in his Money in the Bank contract while Reigns's main event match with Brock Lesnar was in progress, turning it into a triple threat match, which Reigns lost when he was pinned by Rollins. After defeating Big Show in a Last Man Standing match on April 26 at Extreme Rules, Reigns failed to win the title from Rollins in a fatal four-way match also involving Orton and Ambrose on May 17 at Payback.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"Reigns was a greener-than-grass wrestler who WWE identified as the Face of the Performance Center Machine \u2013 taking raw talent without the \"bad habits\" from the independents and trying to manufacture a WrestleMania Main-Eventer\".\nAt Money in the Bank on June 14, Reigns competed in his first Money in the Bank ladder match, but lost after Bray Wyatt interfered and attacked him. Reigns lost to Wyatt on July 17 at Battleground after interference from Luke Harper. He enlisted the help of Ambrose in order to take on the reformed Wyatt Family, defeating Wyatt and Harper at SummerSlam on August 23. The following night on \"Raw\", Reigns and Ambrose were attacked by Wyatt's new ally, the debuting Braun Strowman. On September 20, at Night of Champions, Reigns, Ambrose and Chris Jericho were defeated by Wyatt, Harper and Strowman. The feud between Reigns and Wyatt ended in a Hell in a Cell match at the titular event on October 25, which Reigns won.\nWWE Champion (2015\u20132016).\nOn the October 26 episode of \"Raw\", Reigns defeated Alberto Del Rio, Dolph Ziggler, and Kevin Owens in a fatal four-way match to become the number one contender for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. However, champion Seth Rollins legitimately injured his knee on November 4 and vacated the title the following day, which led to a tournament to crown a new champion. Reigns defeated Big Show in the first round, Cesaro in the quarterfinals, Del Rio in the semifinals, and Dean Ambrose in the finals at Survivor Series on November 22 to win the WWE World Heavyweight Championship for the first time. Immediately afterwards, Sheamus cashed in his Money in the Bank contract and defeated Reigns, thus ending Reigns' reign after only five minutes. On December 13, Reigns failed to regain the title from Sheamus in a Tables, Ladders and Chairs match at following interference by The League of Nations (Del Rio and Rusev), attacking Triple H in anger after the match. The next night on \"Raw\", Vince McMahon granted Reigns a title rematch against Sheamus, under the stipulation that if Reigns lost, he would be forced to retire. Reigns defeated Sheamus to regain the WWE World Heavyweight Championship despite interferences from McMahon, Del Rio and Rusev.\nReigns successfully defended his championship against Sheamus on the January 4 episode of \"Raw\", after which he was forced by McMahon to defend it in the 2016 Royal Rumble match on January 24, 2016. In the match, Reigns lost the championship after being eliminated by eventual winner Triple H. At Fastlane on February 22, Reigns defeated Brock Lesnar and Ambrose in a triple threat match to receive a WWE World Heavyweight Championship match against Triple H at WrestleMania 32 on April 3, where he defeated Triple H in the main event to become the WWE World Heavyweight Champion for a third time. Reigns defeated AJ Styles to retain the championship at Payback on May 1 and at Extreme Rules in an Extreme Rules match on May 22, after which he was attacked by a returning Seth Rollins.\nThe following night on \"Raw\", Shane McMahon scheduled a match between Reigns and Rollins for the title at Money in the Bank. At the event on June 19, Reigns lost to Rollins, marking his first clean loss on the main roster and ending his reign at 77 days. On June 21, Anoa\u02bbi was legitimately suspended by WWE for 30 days due to violating the WWE Wellness Program, WWE's internal drug testing program. \"Pro Wrestling Torch\" and \"TheWrap\" reported that WWE knew of Anoa\u02bbi's violation before the event, leading to Reigns being scripted to lose his world title at the event.\nOn July 19 at the 2016 WWE draft, Reigns was drafted to the Raw brand. Despite Reigns's suspension, WWE continued to advertise Reigns as part of the Battleground main event and acknowledged Reigns's suspension on television. At Battleground on July 24, Reigns made his televised return, facing Rollins and Dean Ambrose for the now-renamed WWE Championship, which Ambrose won. The following night on \"Raw\", Reigns lost to the debuting Finn B\u00e1lor in a qualifying match for the newly announced WWE Universal Championship against Rollins at SummerSlam.\nGrand Slam Champion (2016\u20132018).\nIn August, Reigns began a feud with United States Champion Rusev, provoking a title match between the two at SummerSlam on August 21, where they brawled before the match began, leading to the match being declared a no contest. In a rematch at Clash of Champions on September 25, Reigns defeated Rusev to win the United States Championship, and retained the title against Rusev in a Hell in a Cell match at the titular event on October 30 to end their feud. At Survivor Series on November 20, Reigns made up part of Team Raw alongside Braun Strowman, Chris Jericho, Kevin Owens and Rollins in a losing effort to Team SmackDown. At on December 18, Reigns faced Owens for the Universal Championship, but lost via disqualification when Jericho attacked Owens to prevent Reigns from winning the match and the title. On the January 9, 2017 episode of \"Raw\", Reigns lost the United States Championship to Jericho and Owens in a handicap match, ending his reign at 106 days. At Royal Rumble on January 29, Reigns lost to Owens in a no disqualification rematch with Jericho being suspended above the ring in a shark cage after interference from Strowman.\nLater in the event, Reigns entered the Royal Rumble match at number 30, eliminating Bray Wyatt, Jericho, and The Undertaker before lastly being eliminated by Randy Orton. At Fastlane on March 5, Reigns defeated Strowman, giving Strowman his first pinfall loss on the main roster. The following night on \"Raw\", Reigns was chokeslammed by The Undertaker after they joined forces to attack Strowman. This led to a No Holds Barred match between the two at WrestleMania 33 on April 2, which Reigns won in his third consecutive WrestleMania main event. The next night on \"Raw\", Reigns opened the show to ten minutes of severe boos and chants from the crowd, attempting to stop him from speaking, before simply stating \"This is my yard now\" and leaving the ring. Reigns resumed his feud with Strowman, after Strowman kayfabe injured Reigns's shoulder. At Payback on April 30, Reigns lost to Strowman. The feud between the two was put on hold after Strowman legitimately injured his elbow. At Extreme Rules on June 4, Reigns competed in a fatal five-way Extreme Rules match against Wyatt, Finn B\u00e1lor, Samoa Joe and Rollins to determine the number one contender to the WWE Universal Championship, which was won by Joe. \nOn the June 19 episode of \"Raw\", Reigns was attacked by a returning Strowman, who then defeated Reigns in an ambulance match at Great Balls of Fire on July 9. At SummerSlam on August 20, Reigns was pinned by Brock Lesnar in a Universal Championship match also involving Strowman and Joe. At No Mercy on September 24, Reigns defeated John Cena, which he described the next night on \"Raw\" as the biggest win in his career. In October, due to mutual issues with The Miz, The Miztourage (Bo Dallas and Curtis Axel) and Cesaro and Sheamus, Reigns, Ambrose and Rollins decided to reform The Shield in order to combat the aforementioned alliance. Reigns was due to team with Rollins and Ambrose at on October 22, but he was removed from the match due to an illness concern. He was replaced by Kurt Angle and The Shield went on to win the match.\nReigns returned on the November 13 episode of \"Raw\" and challenged The New Day (Big E, Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods) to a six-man tag team match at Survivor Series on November 19, which The Shield won. The following night on \"Raw\", Reigns defeated The Miz for the Intercontinental Championship, thus becoming the twenty-eighth Triple Crown and seventeenth Grand Slam champion, the second member of The Shield after Ambrose to achieve the Grand Slam. Reigns would successfully defend the title against Elias, Jason Jordan, Cesaro, and Samoa Joe before losing it back to The Miz on the 25th Anniversary of \"Raw\" on January 22, 2018, ending his reign at 63 days.\nReigns competed in the 2018 Royal Rumble match on January 28, but was the last man eliminated by eventual winner Shinsuke Nakamura. On February 25, at Elimination Chamber, Reigns won the inaugural seven-man Elimination Chamber match to face Brock Lesnar for the Universal Championship at WrestleMania 34 on April 8, where he was unsuccessful. He narrowly lost a rematch for the title in a steel cage match at the Greatest Royal Rumble on April 27, after spearing Lesnar through the cage wall. After defeating Samoa Joe at Backlash on May 6 and Jinder Mahal at Money in the Bank on June 17, Reigns entered a feud with Bobby Lashley, where both men believed that they were the rightful challenger to Lesnar's championship. At Extreme Rules on July 15, Reigns lost to Lashley. The following night on \"Raw\", two triple threat matches were set to determine Lesnar's challenger for SummerSlam. Reigns and Lashley won their respective matches, setting up a number one contender's match between the two the following week, which Reigns won. At SummerSlam on August 19, Reigns defeated Lesnar and won the Universal Championship for the first time in his career. \nReigns then reignited his feud with Money in the Bank holder Braun Strowman, who allied himself with Dolph Ziggler and Drew McIntyre to challenge The Shield. Reigns defended his title against Strowman at Hell in a Cell on September 16 in a Hell in a Cell match, which ended in a no contest after Lesnar returned and attacked both men. On October 6, at Super Show-Down, The Shield defeated Strowman, Ziggler and McIntyre before losing to them in a rematch on \"Raw\" two nights later. A triple threat match between Reigns, Strowman and Lesnar for the Universal Championship was scheduled for Crown Jewel, however, on October 22, Reigns relinquished the title and announced his hiatus on \"Raw\", revealing that his leukemia had returned after 11 years of privately battling it and being in remission. Following this announcement, Reigns would go on an indefinite hiatus to receive treatment. \nReturn from leukemia (2019\u20132020).\nOn February 25, 2019, Reigns made his return to \"Raw\", revealing that his leukemia was once again in remission to a huge ovation from the crowd. Later in the night, Reigns and Rollins would appear to assist Ambrose from an attack by McIntyre, Bobby Lashley, Elias, and Baron Corbin. The following week on \"Raw\", Ambrose assisted Reigns and Rollins from another attack by the four, before the trio performed their signature pose, officially reuniting the group for the third time. The Shield defeated McIntyre, Lashley, and Corbin at Fastlane on March 10. At WrestleMania 35 on April 7, Reigns defeated McIntyre.\nDuring the 2019 WWE Superstar Shake-up, Reigns was drafted to the SmackDown brand on the April 16 episode of \"SmackDown\", with WWE's announcers describing Reigns as \"SmackDown's greatest ever acquisition\", as well as the future of SmackDown and WWE. During the episode, Reigns attacked Elias and Vince McMahon. At Money in the Bank on May 19, Reigns defeated Elias. The next night on \"Raw\", Reigns, who appeared via the wild card rule, was interrupted by Shane McMahon, who was bothered by Reigns' earlier attack on his father. Reigns then challenged Shane to a match at Super ShowDown, which the latter accepted. At Super ShowDown on June 7, Reigns lost to McMahon after interference from McIntyre. Reigns defeated McIntyre in a rematch at Stomping Grounds on June 23, despite interference from McMahon. At Extreme Rules on July 14, Reigns and The Undertaker defeated McMahon and McIntyre in a No Holds Barred tag team match to end their feud.\nOn the July 30 episode of \"SmackDown\", an unidentified person pushed lighting equipment on Reigns. The following week, Reigns was again targeted by the attacker as he was a victim of a hit and run. After ruling out Samoa Joe and Buddy Murphy as suspects, Reigns next investigated Daniel Bryan and Erick Rowan due to testimony from Murphy and seemingly incriminating video footage. However, Bryan revealed the attacker as a man who merely resembled Rowan. Nonetheless, Reigns found additional footage that showed Rowan pushing over the equipment. Rowan then admitted that it was him and said he was responsible for the hit and run as well, causing him and Bryan to split due to him lying. At Clash of Champions on September 15, Reigns lost to Rowan in a no disqualification match after interference from a returning Luke Harper. Reigns defeated Rowan in a lumberjack match on the 20th Anniversary of \"SmackDown\" and teamed with Bryan to defeat Rowan and Harper at Hell in a Cell on October 6 in a tornado tag team match to end the feud. At Crown Jewel on October 31, Reigns was part of Team Hogan, defeating Team Flair.\nIn November, Reigns began a feud with King Corbin and his allies Dolph Ziggler and Robert Roode. Reigns was named team captain for SmackDown at Survivor Series on November 24, where he and his four teammates defeated Team Raw and Team NXT in a five-on-five-on-five tag team elimination match; Reigns would eliminate Corbin in the match. At on December 15, Reigns lost to Corbin in a tables, ladders, and chairs match after interference from Ziggler and The Revival (Dash Wilder and Scott Dawson). At Royal Rumble on January 26, 2020, Reigns defeated Corbin in a falls count anywhere match after receiving assistance from The Usos. Later that night, he entered the Royal Rumble match at number 26, but was the last competitor eliminated by the eventual winner Drew McIntyre. At Super ShowDown on February 27, Reigns defeated Corbin in a steel cage match to end their feud.\nThe following night on \"SmackDown\", Reigns challenged Goldberg for the Universal Championship, leading to a match between the two being set up for WrestleMania 36. However, in late March, Reigns pulled out of the event amid concerns surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and being immunocompromised from his leukemia, and he was replaced by Braun Strowman. Following WrestleMania, Reigns continued to remain absent from WWE programming in the midst of the pandemic, telling \"Hindustan Times\": \"For me, I just had to make a choice for my family. The company (WWE) has done everything that they can to make it the safest work environment possible. It is not the workplace that I was necessarily concerned about. The decision was taken mainly because each performer travels so much, and we are all such a diverse group and from all over the place. I'm not convinced, and I can't trust the fact that everybody is taking it as seriously and locking themselves down at home like I am. I trust my life with my co-workers every time I step foot in the ring, but I just can't put the same trust when it has my children, my wife, and my family involved.\" \nThe Tribal Chief (2020\u20132024).\nAfter a five-month hiatus, Reigns returned at SummerSlam on August 23, attacking new Universal Champion \"The Fiend\" Bray Wyatt and Strowman after their title match. On the following \"SmackDown\", Reigns aligned himself with his new manager, Paul Heyman, turning heel for the first time since 2014. At Payback on August 30, Reigns defeated defending champion The Fiend and Strowman in a No Holds Barred triple threat match to win the Universal Championship for the second time.\nAt Clash of Champions on September 27, Reigns made his first successful title defense against his cousin Jey Uso by technical knockout, after Reigns viciously beat down Jey and Jimmy Uso threw in the towel. On the October 16 episode of \"SmackDown\", Reigns retained the title against Strowman. At Hell in a Cell on October 25, Reigns again retained the title against Jey in an \"I Quit\" Hell in a Cell match by making him quit after attacking the injured Jimmy. Due to the loss, Jey was ordered to follow Reigns' commands and address him as \"The Tribal Chief\", turning him heel. At Survivor Series on November 22, Reigns defeated WWE Champion Drew McIntyre in an interbrand champion vs. champion match. \nAfterwards, Reigns reignited his feud with Kevin Owens after believing Owens disrespected his family, culminating in successful defenses against Owens in a TLC match at on December 20, in a steel cage match on the December 25 episode of \"SmackDown\", and in a Last Man Standing match at Royal Rumble on January 31, 2021. Reigns began feuding with Royal Rumble match winner Edge and retained his title against Daniel Bryan at Elimination Chamber on February 21 and Fastlane on March 21. In the main event of Night 2 of WrestleMania 37 on April 11, Reigns defeated Bryan and Edge in a triple threat match to retain the title with assistance from Jey. On the April 30 episode of \"SmackDown\", Reigns defeated Bryan in a championship vs. career match, which resulted in Bryan being forced to leave SmackDown. Reigns defeated Cesaro to retain the title at WrestleMania Backlash on May 16. \nReigns then feuded with Rey Mysterio after brutalizing Mysterio's son Dominik. On the June 18 episode of \"SmackDown\", Reigns successfully defended the title against Mysterio in a Hell in a Cell match. The following week, Reigns was attacked by the returning Edge, leading to a match between the two at Money in the Bank on July 18, where Reigns retained the title after interference from Seth Rollins. After the match, Reigns was confronted by a returning John Cena. Over the following weeks, Cena challenged Reigns for a title match at SummerSlam, which he initially rejected before Cena hijacked a contract signing between Reigns and Finn B\u00e1lor to make the match official. At the event on August 21, Reigns defeated Cena to retain the title; he was confronted by a returning Brock Lesnar after the match. Reigns successfully defended the title against B\u00e1lor on the September 3 episode of \"SmackDown\" and in an Extreme Rules match at Extreme Rules on September 26 with B\u00e1lor in his Demon persona. On October 21, at Crown Jewel, Reigns retained the title against Lesnar with help from the Usos. At Survivor Series on November 21, Reigns defeated WWE Champion Big E in a champion vs. champion match. \nOn the December 3 episode of \"SmackDown\", Reigns defeated Sami Zayn in 15 seconds to retain the title after Lesnar attacked Zayn before the match began. A match for the Universal Championship between Reigns and Lesnar was then set for Day 1. On the December 17 episode of \"SmackDown\", Reigns fired Heyman as his manager due to Heyman's past association with Lesnar. On January 1, 2022, the day of the event, the match between Reigns and Lesnar was cancelled as a result of Reigns testing positive for COVID-19. On January 16, Reigns surpassed Lesnar's 503-day reign to become the longest reigning Universal Champion, in turn having the sixth longest world championship reign in the company's history. At Royal Rumble on January 29, Reigns defended the championship against Seth \"Freakin\" Rollins, losing the match by disqualification; since championships cannot change hands by disqualification, Reigns retained the title. Later that night, he interfered in the WWE Championship match between Lesnar and Bobby Lashley, reuniting with Heyman to cause the upset victory for Lashley to regain the championship. Also that night, Lesnar won the Royal Rumble match, and on the following episode of \"Raw\", he challenged Reigns to a match in the main event of WrestleMania 38, marking the third time Reigns would face Lesnar in the main event of WrestleMania. On the February 4 episode of \"SmackDown\", Goldberg returned and challenged Reigns for the title at Elimination Chamber on February 19, where Reigns defeated Goldberg via technical submission to retain the title. Later in the event, Lesnar won the WWE Championship in an Elimination Chamber match, turning their match at WrestleMania into a Winner Takes All match. \nOn Night 2 of WrestleMania 38 on April 3, Reigns defeated Lesnar to win the WWE Championship for a fourth time and became the first wrestler to hold both the WWE Championship and WWE Universal Championship simultaneously and be recognized as the Undisputed WWE Universal Champion. At WrestleMania Backlash on May 8, Reigns and The Usos defeated RK-Bro (Randy Orton and Riddle) and Drew McIntyre. On the June 17 episode of \"SmackDown\", Reigns successfully defended the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship against Riddle, but after the match, he was attacked by a returning Lesnar to renew their rivalry and set up a Last Man Standing match at SummerSlam on July 30, which Reigns won to end their seven-year feud. At Clash at the Castle on September 3, Reigns successfully defended the titles against McIntyre after interference from the debuting Solo Sikoa. At Crown Jewel on November 5, Reigns retained the titles against Logan Paul. Three weeks later at on November 26, Reigns, along with The Bloodline, defeated McIntyre, Kevin Owens and The Brawling Brutes (Sheamus, Ridge Holland and Butch) in a WarGames match.\nOn January 18, 2023, his Universal Championship reign reached 871 days, breaking Gunther's NXT UK Championship reign of 870 days, giving him the longest reign of any WWE championship since 1988. At Royal Rumble on January 28, Reigns successfully defended the titles against Owens for the fourth time. Following the match, Sami Zayn would turn on The Bloodline, smashing Reigns with a chair. He then began feuding with Cody Rhodes, who won the Royal Rumble match and earned a match against Reigns in the main event of WrestleMania 39. At Elimination Chamber on February 18, Reigns retained the titles against Zayn. At Night 2 of WrestleMania 39 on April 2, Reigns successfully defended the titles against Rhodes after interference from Sikoa. \nAt Night of Champions on May 27, Reigns and Sikoa unsuccessfully challenged Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn for the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championship. During the match, The Usos interfered and accidentally attacked Sikoa while aiming for Zayn. The subsequent sequence of events culminated in Jimmy Uso attacking Reigns, and The Usos walking away from The Bloodline. It was on this day as well, that Reigns hit 1,000 days as Universal Champion, the first to do so in over thirty-five years, and only the fifth wrestler ever to accomplish the feat with a world championship in the history of WWE. On June 24, Reigns reached 1,028 days as Universal Champion, passing Pedro Morales' reign of 1,027 days with the WWE Championship (at the time known as the WWWF Heavyweight Championship), giving Reigns the fifth longest world championship reign in company history. At Money in the Bank on July 1, Reigns and Sikoa lost to The Usos in a \"Bloodline Civil War\" tag team match after Reigns was pinned by Jey, marking his first pinfall loss since . On August 5, at SummerSlam, Reigns defeated Jey in Tribal Combat to retain the titles and his status as Tribal Chief, after Jimmy betrayed Jey. At Crown Jewel on November 4, Reigns successfully defended the titles against LA Knight. At Royal Rumble on January 27, 2024, Reigns defeated Knight, Randy Orton and AJ Styles, who Reigns pinned, to retain the titles in a fatal four-way match.\nOn the February 2 episode of \"SmackDown\", Rhodes, who again won the Royal Rumble match, said that he would not challenge Reigns for the titles at WrestleMania XL, after which The Rock confronted Reigns, implying he would be Reigns' opponent instead. After this development drew backlash for disrupting their long-term storyline, during the \"WrestleMania XL Kickoff\" media event on February 8, Rhodes announced that he would face Reigns. On Night 1 of WrestleMania XL on April 7, Reigns and The Rock defeated Rhodes and Seth Rollins to enforce Bloodline Rules for their title match. The next night, Reigns lost the titles to Rhodes, ending his second record-setting Universal Championship reign at 1,316 days and ending his fourth WWE Championship reign at 735 days.\nThe O.T.C. (2024\u2013present).\nAfter losing the titles, Reigns took time off from television and Sikoa was appointed himself as the \"de facto\" leader of The Bloodline. The formation changed when Jimmy was kicked out of the group and The Tongans (Tama Tonga and Tonga Loa), the sons of Haku, as well as Jacob Fatu, the son of the Tonga Kid, were included into the stable. On the April 26 episode of \"SmackDown\", Paul Heyman announced that Reigns voluntarily withdrew from the 2024 WWE Draft. After weeks of bypassing Reigns' orders in storyline and ousting Heyman from the group, Sikoa removed Reigns from the leadership of The Bloodline and the group altogether, declaring himself as the new \"Tribal Chief\".\nFollowing a four-month hiatus, on August 3, Reigns made his return at SummerSlam under the new moniker \"The O.T.C\" (\"The Only Tribal Chief\" or \"The Original Tribal Chief\"), attacking Sikoa and helping Rhodes retain his title in a Bloodline Rules match, turning face for the first time since 2020. At Bad Blood on October 5, Reigns and Rhodes defeated Sikoa and Fatu after interference from the returning Jimmy Uso. On the October 25 episode of \"SmackDown\", Reigns and the reunited Usos cost The Tongans the WWE Tag Team Championships, setting up a six-man tag team match against Sikoa, Tonga and Fatu at Crown Jewel on November 2, which they lost. At on November 30, Reigns, the Usos, Sami Zayn and CM Punk defeated The Bloodline and Bronson Reed in a WarGames match, with Reigns pinning Sikoa. Reigns then challenged Sikoa for the Ula Fala and Tribal Chief title in Tribal Combat at the \"Raw\" premiere on Netflix on January 6, 2025, where Reigns defeated Sikoa to reclaim his Ula Fala and Tribal Chief title, with The Rock presenting Reigns with the Ula Fala after the match. \nAt Royal Rumble on February 1, Reigns entered the Royal Rumble match at number 16, scoring four eliminations. As he and Rollins attempted to eliminate each other, both were eliminated from behind by Punk. Rollins then delivered multiple Curb Stomps to Reigns before storming off. He returned on the March 10 episode of \"Raw\" to attack both Rollins and Punk during their steel cage match. On the March 21 episode of \"SmackDown\", a brawl ensued between all three men, with Reigns, Rollins, and Punk pointing at the WrestleMania sign, leading to a triple threat match between the three being made official as the Night 1 main event of WrestleMania 41.\nPersonal life.\nIn early 2005, while studying at Georgia Institute of Technology, Anoa\u02bbi met and began dating Galina Becker. They were married in December 2014, and reside in Tampa, Florida. Their first child, a daughter, was born in December 2007 and appeared with Anoa\u02bbi in a PSA in June 2014. They had twin sons in November 2016, followed by another set of twin sons in March 2020.\nIn 2018, Anoa\u02bbi shared that he had been living with chronic myeloid leukemia, an incurable but treatable form of blood cancer. He was diagnosed in 2007 during his American Football career and continues lifelong oral chemotherapy to manage the condition.\nOther media.\nAnoa\u02bbi appeared as Roman Reigns in \"WWE 2K14\", \"WWE 2K15\", \"WWE 2K16\", \"WWE 2K17\", \"WWE 2K18\", \"WWE 2K19\", \"WWE 2K20\" (of which he was the cover star), \"WWE 2K Battlegrounds\", \"WWE 2K22\", \"WWE 2K23\", \"WWE 2K24\", \"WWE 2K25\" (of which he was the cover star again) and \"Madden NFL 24\" (as part of the \"Reel Deals\" promotion in the game's Madden Ultimate Team mode).\nReigns also makes regular appearances on fellow wrestler Xavier Woods' comedic YouTube channel UpUpDownDown under the nickname \"The Merchandise\".\nOn December 31, 2019, Reigns appeared on \"Fox's New Year's Eve with Steve Harvey\", where he defeated Dolph Ziggler in a pre-taped match.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "40486196": "Royal Rumble (2015)\nWWE pay-per-view and livestreaming event\nThe 2015 Royal Rumble was a professional wrestling event produced by WWE. It was the 28th annual Royal Rumble and took place on January 25, 2015, at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, marking the second Royal Rumble held at this venue after the 2004 event, when it was formerly known as Wachovia Center; the arena changed its name to Wells Fargo Center in 2010. The event aired via pay-per-view (PPV) and livestreaming, which made it the first Royal Rumble to livestream on the WWE Network, which launched in February 2014. As has been customary since 1993, the Royal Rumble match winner received a world championship match at that year's WrestleMania. For the 2015 event, the winner received a match for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania 31.\nSix matches were contested at the event, including one on the Kickoff pre-show. In the main event, Roman Reigns won the 2015 Royal Rumble match by last eliminating Rusev. Also on the event's card, The Usos (Jey Uso and Jimmy Uso) defeated The Miz and Damien Mizdow to retain the WWE Tag Team Championship, while WWE World Heavyweight Champion Brock Lesnar successfully defended his title against Seth Rollins and John Cena in a triple threat match in the penultimate match.\nLike the previous year's event, the 2015 Royal Rumble was marred by a strongly negative audience reaction to the Royal Rumble match, which was won by Roman Reigns. However, the WWE World Heavyweight Championship triple threat match received high praise from critics and fans. The event received 145,000 buys (excluding WWE Network views), down from the previous year's 467,000 buys.\nProduction.\nBackground.\nThe Royal Rumble is an annual professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) produced every January by WWE since 1988. It is one of the promotion's original four pay-per-views, along with WrestleMania, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series, dubbed the \"Big Four\". It is named after the Royal Rumble match, a modified battle royal in which the participants enter at timed intervals instead of all beginning in the ring at the same time. The match generally features 30 wrestlers and the winner traditionally earns a world championship match at that year's WrestleMania. For 2015, the winner received a match for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania 31. Announced on October 7, 2014, the 2015 event was the 28th Royal Rumble and was scheduled to be held on January 25, 2015, at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was the second Royal Rumble held at this venue after the 2004 event, when it was formerly known as Wachovia Center; the arena changed its name to Wells Fargo Center in 2010. In addition to airing on traditional pay-per-view, the event was available through WWE's livestreaming service, the WWE Network, which launched in February 2014, which made it the first Royal Rumble to air on the WWE Network.\nStorylines.\nThe event comprised six matches, including one on the Kickoff pre-show, that resulted from scripted storylines. Results were predetermined by WWE's writers, while storylines were produced on WWE's weekly television shows, \"Raw\" and \"SmackDown\".\nAt SummerSlam, Brock Lesnar defeated John Cena and won the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. Cena would receive his rematch the following month at Night of Champions which he would win by disqualification after Seth Rollins interfered and attempted to cash-in his Money in the Bank contract. At the next event, Hell in a Cell, Cena defeated Authority member Randy Orton in a Hell in a Cell match to earn a future title shot at Lesnar. The Authority was then removed from power after losing the 5-on-5 Survivor Series elimination match at Survivor Series with Cena being the only one who could bring them back if he chose to. At , Cena faced Rollins in a tables match which he won to retain his number one contender status. Later in the event, it was announced that Cena would face Lesnar for the title at the Royal Rumble. On the final \"Raw\" of 2014, Rollins attacked special guest host Edge and threatened to perform a Curb Stomp on him if Cena did not reinstate The Authority. Cena came down to save Edge but reluctantly brought The Authority back after Rollins held Edge hostage. On the January 5, 2015, episode of \"Raw\", Rollins was added to the Lesnar-Cena title match by Triple H as a reward for bringing back The Authority, turning the singles match into a triple threat. That same episode, the members of Team Cena from Survivor Series (Dolph Ziggler, Ryback, and Erick Rowan) were fired by The Authority for helping Cena to remove them from power. The following week, Lesnar returned for the contract signing with Cena and Rollins. A brawl broke out between all three men and ended when Rollins performed a Curb Stomp each on Cena and Lesnar. On the final \"Raw\" before the Royal Rumble, Triple H forced Cena to compete in a 3-on-1 Handicap match against Rollins, Big Show and Kane to not only secure his spot in the triple threat match, but also win Ziggler, Ryback and Rowan their jobs back. During the match, Sting, who previously assisted Team Cena at Survivor Series, caused a distraction which allowed Cena to roll-up Rollins for the win to keep his spot in the match and reinstate Ziggler, Ryback and Rowan. Lesnar then came down to the ring and attacked Rollins before executing an F-5 each on Kane and Big Show. Rollins then retreated to avoid further punishment.\nOn the December 29 episode of \"Raw\", The Usos (Jey Uso and Jimmy Uso) defeated The Miz and Damien Mizdow to win the WWE Tag Team Championship. On the January 15 episode of \"SmackDown\", it was announced that The Usos would defend the titles against Miz and Mizdow at the event.\nOn the January 5 episode of \"Raw\", Paige came out and helped Natalya to defeat Nikki Bella. On the January 6 episode of \"Main Event\", Natalya came out and helped Paige to defeat Nikki Bella. On the January 12 episode of \"Raw\", Brie Bella defeated Paige due to distraction by Tyson Kidd. On the January 15 episode of \"SmackDown\", Natalya defeated Nikki via submission. On the January 19 episode of \"Raw\", after Paige and Natalya defeated Summer Rae and Alicia Fox, it was announced that The Bella Twins (Brie and Nikki) would face Paige and Natalya in a tag team match at the event.\nOn the January 5 episode of \"Raw\", Cesaro and Tyson Kidd attacked Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods, which let Adam Rose to defeat Big E. On the January 19 episode, Big E and Kofi defeated Cesaro and Kidd. Later in the night, it was announced that The New Day would face Cesaro, Kidd and Rose in a six-man tag team elimination match on the Royal Rumble Kickoff Show. On January 25, it was changed to a tag team match with Cesaro and Kidd (accompanied by Rose) vs. Big E and Kingston (accompanied by Woods) due to Woods being unable to compete.\nOn the December 29 episode of \"Raw\", The Ascension (Konnor and Viktor) made their WWE debut. Over the next few weeks, the duo would easily defeat local preliminary wrestlers and compare themselves to famous tag teams, like The Road Warriors. On the January 19 episode of \"Raw\", the Ascension were confronted and attacked by the New World Order(nWo), the APA and New Age Outlaws (Billy Gunn and Road Dogg) after the Ascension interfered in the nWo reunion segment. Later in the night, it was announced that the Ascension would face the New Age Outlaws at the event.\nEvent.\nPre-show.\nDuring the Royal Rumble Kickoff pre-show, Cesaro and Tyson Kidd (accompanied by Adam Rose and Natalya) faced The New Day (Big E and Kofi Kingston, accompanied by Xavier Woods). Kingston and Big E were in control for most of the match until Cesaro executed a European uppercut on Kingston (from the outside) and Kidd executed a fisherman's neckbreaker on Kingston to secure a decisive victory.\nPreliminary matches.\nThe actual pay-per-view opened with The Ascension (Konnor and Viktor) facing The New Age Outlaws (Road Dogg and Billy Gunn). The Ascension had control for the majority of the match, however, Gunn came back with a tilt-a-whirl slam and positioned Viktor for the \"Famouser\". Viktor made a blind tag to Konnor and executed the \"Fall of Man\" on Gunn for the win.\nNext was the WWE Tag Team Championship match between The Miz and Damien Mizdow and The Usos (Jey Uso and Jimmy Uso). During the match, The Miz refused to tag Mizdow into the match, but Mizdow made a few saves. Miz executed a \"Skull Crushing Finale\" on Jey for a near-fall. Mizdow did the same to Jey but earned a near-fall again. The Usos won the match with a \"Samoan Splash\" on Miz.\nAfter that, The Bella Twins (Brie Bella and Divas Champion Nikki Bella) faced Paige and Natalya. Nikki executed a forearm smash on Natalya for the victory.\nIn the fourth match, Brock Lesnar (accompanied by Paul Heyman) defended the WWE World Heavyweight Championship against John Cena and Seth Rollins in a triple threat match. Lesnar dominated the match early with multiple Suplexes on both Cena and Rollins, at one point even executing a double German suplex on Rollins' associates J&J Security, briefly taking them out of the match. Lesnar then applied the Kimura Lock on Cena, but Rollins broke it up. Cena executed an Attitude Adjustment on Lesnar, but Rollins threw Cena out of the ring to steal a pin attempt, but Lesnar kicked out at one. Lesnar caught Rollins and executed an F-5 on him, but Cena broke up the pin. Cena executed three more Attitude Adjustments on Lesnar, but Rollins broke up the pin. Rollins then executed a Curb Stomp on Lesnar, but Cena broke up the pin. Cena tackled Lesnar through the barricade in the timekeeper's area, threw him to the steel steps, hit him with the same steel steps putting him on an announce table and Rollins finished the combo with a Diving Elbow Drop on him through it. Doctors came from backstage to check on and eventually attempt to stretcher out Lesnar. Cena eventually locked in the STF on Rollins, but J&J Security (Jamie Noble and Joey Mercury) interfered once more, resulting in Cena executing a Double Attitude Adjustment on Mercury and Noble, finally ending their involvement in the match. Cena then executed an Attitude Adjustment on Rollins and Rollins would execute a Curb Stomp on Cena in turn with both resulting in near-falls. Eventually, Rollins repositioned Cena and performed a Phoenix Splash on him, and was about to cover Cena. But; an angry Lesnar quickly recovered from the broken announcers table and rushed past the EMTs sent to check on him, returned to the ring, took down both men with German suplexes and one of those threw Cena out of the ring. Rollins tried to take advantage after landing on his feet after an attempted German from Lesnar failed; hit Lesnar twice with his Money in the Bank briefcase, and positioned the briefcase under Lesnar's head. As Rollins attempted a second Curb Stomp to Lesnar (with the briefcase still underneath his head), Lesnar countered with a second F-5 on Rollins to retain the title by pinfall.\nMain event.\nThe main event was the traditional 30-man Royal Rumble match, where the winner would receive a WWE World Heavyweight Championship match at WrestleMania 31. The Miz and R-Truth started the match at #1 and #2 respectively. Bubba Ray Dudley made his return to WWE at #3 eliminating Miz and Truth. Bray Wyatt at #5 would soon begin a string of eliminations one by one (including Bubba and The Boogeyman, who was another surprise entrant at #7). The string ended once Daniel Bryan entered at #10. During the string, Curtis Axel, who was supposed to enter at #6, was attacked by Erick Rowan and was unable to compete in the match.\nDiamond Dallas Page was the third surprise entrant at #14 and executed the Diamond Cutter on various wrestlers, before being eliminated by #15 entrant Rusev. Like in 2014, the namesake match's reception flipped again to a turning point for worse as Wyatt eliminated fan-favorite Bryan, disappointing the audience potentially more than the previous year when he was absent. Towards the end of the match, Kane (entering at #24) and Big Show (entering at #29) from The Authority teamed up to go on a string of eliminations - including Wyatt and other popular stars like Ryback at #23, final entrant at #30 Dolph Ziggler, and Dean Ambrose at #25 (who had teamed up with Roman Reigns as The Shield went against the duo).\nThe final four consisted of Rusev (who was outside the ring at the time having gone under the bottom rope), Reigns, Kane, and Big Show. Reigns (who during the match suffered a cut from Big Show on one cheek, after being thrown to a padded turnbuckle and another one from Kane on the lips, after a Big Boot) sent out the duo at the same time. However, they both re-entered the ring and began a double team assault on Reigns. The Rock emerged and executed a Spinebuster-People's Elbow combo on Kane. Big Show attempted to Chokeslam Rock but Rock hit a low-blow in return, setting up a Rock Bottom after a Superman Punch from Reigns. Rusev re-entered the ring, but was speared by Reigns, who proceeded to throw him out to win the match. As WWE World Heavyweight Champion Brock Lesnar with Paul Heyman saw this on a television in their locker room, Triple H and Stephanie McMahon showed up at the end of the show unhappy with the result watching The Rock congratulate Reigns. Reigns was booed as the winner in a similar fashion as Batista the previous year, whereas at the same event Reigns was cheered.\nReception.\nThe very negative reaction of the fans attending the event in Philadelphia towards the Royal Rumble match and its winner was described as being even worse than the 2014 event. When Daniel Bryan was eliminated in the first half of the match, the crowd repeatedly chanted his name for the second half of the match while booing other wrestlers making their entrance to the match, including eventual winner Roman Reigns. The crowd grew even more unhappy when fan favorites Dolph Ziggler and Dean Ambrose were eliminated, and chanted for the anti-American villain Rusev when the main event came down to Rusev and Reigns, as well as chants of \"bullshit\" and \"CM Punk\". Reigns was booed after winning the main event, even after he received The Rock's endorsement, and The Rock was heckled for helping Reigns. Many fans took to social media to display their displeasure at Bryan's elimination.\nDave Scherer of \"PWInsider\" wrote that the event \"is definitely worth watching for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship triple threat match and how the Rumble went bad\". He added that \"bringing Bryan back for this match was a huge mistake, at least tonight\", as \"the fans wanted Bryan and they took him away\", with the result that it \"totally killed Roman in the eyes of those fans\", resulting in a \"really bad\" ending.\nJames Caldwell of \"Pro Wrestling Torch\" rated the Royal Rumble main event as 3.5 stars out of 5, commenting that it was a \"pretty good Rumble\" until \"the crowd turned on the match when they saw the writing on the wall for how it would end\". Caldwell praised Bray Wyatt's involvement in the match and noted that Bubba Ray Dudley was a \"good surprise return\", but added that any good moments during the match were \"overshadowed by the ending\". Caldwell rated the WWE World Heavyweight Championship match as 4.0 out of 5 stars which was his highest rated match from the event, praising the \"very strong story-telling\" and describing the action as \"top-notch\" but adding that the match was \"too dependent on the finisher kick-outs\". He rated the Tag Team Championship match at 2.5 stars, describing it as a \"solid tag match\", while the Divas match and the opening bout between The Ascension and The New Age Outlaws were both rated at 1.5 stars out of 5.\nKenny Herzog of \"Rolling Stone\" questioned the possibility of the Royal Rumble match being the worst in history, arguing that several factors such as the poor treatment of former Intercontinental champions, Daniel Bryan's unexpected early elimination and Kane and Big Show's dominance over younger talent all detracted from the match. Herzog concluded, \"That was less a Rumble match \u2013 i.e. the kind replete with feats of endurance and athleticism, free-for-all chaos and dozens of developing stories \u2013 than random gauntlet of triple-threat and four-way slugfests with no pacing or point. Unless, that is, you still think serving some idea of the Authority's omnipresence is really what's best for business.\" Despite this, Herzog praised the lively Philadelphia crowd, the return of Bubba Ray Dudley and Rollins' performance in the WWE World Heavyweight Championship match as positives.\nLuke Winkie of \"Sports Illustrated\" was less critical of the Royal Rumble match, attributing Bryan's elimination to good storytelling and an instance where \"you're supposed to hate the product\". Winkie suggested that the \"tepid reaction to [Reigns'] win has much more to do with Daniel Bryan\u2019s early departure than it does with [Reigns'] actual reputation\". Winkie singled out Ziggler's late entrance and elimination as \"the most heartbreaking\". He also praised the WWE World Heavyweight Championship match as being an early \"Match of the Year\" candidate, while questioning whether anyone cared about the Ascension.\nWWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley, who had been critical of the previous year's show, wrote that he was saddened by the prospect of the Royal Rumble losing its luster and relevance as an annual event, and that he now considers it to be \"a roadblock to the good will and excitement needed for a truly memorable WrestleMania atmosphere.\" Foley took aim at WWE for the supposedly unimaginative and unflattering use of fan favorites in the main Royal Rumble match, and, based on his observations of fans as they exited the arena, said \"there was no joy in Philadelphia\".\nObserving the ensuing debates among wrestling enthusiasts, communications psychologist Carrrielynn Reinhard commented the online discourse highlighted fans' emotional attachment to wrestlers' fictional personas, similar to that of \"shippers\" in other fandoms.\nIn 2024, Roman Reigns spoke about his victory. He pointed that, after the bad reception by the public, he tries to forget about the Royal Rumble.\nAftermath.\nShortly after the event, #CancelWWENetwork became the top Twitter trend worldwide, while \"PWInsider\" reported that the WWE Network online cancellation page had crashed and that some subscribers who had called WWE to cancel their subscription were told to call back the next day as there were too many people attempting to manually cancel their subscription. The day after the Royal Rumble, Dave Meltzer reported on Wrestling Observer Radio that Vince McMahon and WWE had expected that Reigns's victory would receive some backlash, but not to the level they had experienced, and that despite this, WWE would not add Daniel Bryan to the main event at WrestleMania 31, since Vince felt that \"it would be a repeat and gone to the well one time too often\". Two days after the Royal Rumble event, WWE announced that the WWE Network surpassed 1 million subscribers worldwide, but the \"Pro Wrestling Torch\" newsletter reported that the recent \"upset subscribers canceling\" had yet to be factored into the subscriber count. Four days after the Royal Rumble, WWE announced a new promotion for the WWE Network where new subscribers could watch for free for the month of February. In February 2015, WWE held a poll on WWE.com asking if fans thought Bryan or Reigns was more deserving of headlining WrestleMania 31; following more than 33,000 votes, 86% of votes went to Bryan. Also in that month, WWE Chairman Vince McMahon responded to #CancelWWENetwork in a conference call, saying that the controversy was good for WWE. McMahon labelled it as a vocal minority upset that \"the babyface did not win\" and \"Santa Claus didn't come on that PPV\", but he expected those who complained to continue watching WWE anyway.\nWWE had to postpone the post-Rumble \"Raw\" from Hartford, Connecticut due to the January 2015 nor'easter, marking the first time WWE had to cancel a scheduled \"Raw\" taping since the Chris Benoit double-murder and suicide and the first time \"Raw\" had to be moved to another city since 2009. WWE also canceled its scheduled \"SmackDown\" taping from Boston the following night. WWE decided to have \"Raw\" come from WWE headquarters in nearby Stamford, Connecticut instead, announcing it would hold a live \"SmackDown\" on Thursday from Hartford, honoring tickets that would be used for \"Raw\", while allowing fans in Boston to either exchange their tickets for an upcoming house show on June 27 or obtaining a full refund. The post-Rumble \"Raw\" showed the WWE World Heavyweight Championship match and the main event of the Royal Rumble, albeit with commercial breaks. Seth Rollins, Brock Lesnar, Paul Heyman, Roman Reigns, and Daniel Bryan did in-studio interviews with several WWE announcers, such as Michael Cole, Renee Young and Byron Saxton, while Dean Ambrose \"walked\" to WWE headquarters from Hartford due to the statewide 9 PM travel ban.\nAlthough Curtis Axel being unable to participate in the Rumble match was not unprecedented, the fact that Axel was not eliminated (having never officially entered the match) ended up trended on Twitter following the event, and also received supportive tweets from former WWE wrestlers Lance Storm and Tommy Dreamer, and then later from current WWE wrestlers Xavier Woods, Zack Ryder, and David Otunga, the latter offering his legal services. This led to an angle where he began referring to himself as \"the true winner\" of the Royal Rumble, claiming that he still had not been eliminated from the match and that he thus deserved a match with Lesnar at WrestleMania 31 for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. This also led to Axel starting his own hashtag (#AxelMania). Instead of facing Brock Lesnar, Axel participated in the second annual Andr\u00e9 the Giant Memorial Battle Royal at WrestleMania 31, but was the first wrestler eliminated after the majority of the field threw him out of the ring.\nResults.\nRoyal Rumble entrances and eliminations.\nA new entrant came out approximately every 90 seconds.\n<templatestyles src=\"Legend/styles.css\" />\u00a0 \u2013 Winner\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["40486196", "4373640"], "permutation_1": ["40486196", "4373640"], "permutation_2": ["4373640", "40486196"], "permutation_3": ["40486196", "4373640"]}
{"id": "2hop__278158_99606", "docs_added": {"30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "11977639": "Funafala\nFunafala is an islet of Funafuti, Tuvalu that is inhabited by five families, with a church also located on the islet. Funafala means 'the pandanus of Funa', the name of a chief, after whom also the group has been named Funafuti.\nCyclones of 1883 & 1972.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone, that struck Funafuti in 1883. At the time the cyclone struck, he was the sole inhabitant of Fongafale; Tema, the Samoan missionary, had taken everyone else to Funafala to work on erecting a church. The buildings on Fongafale were destroyed, including the church and the trade stores of George Westbrook and Alfred Restieaux. Little damage had occurred at Funafala, and the people returned to rebuild at Fongafale.\nIn 1972, Funafuti was in the path of Cyclone Bebe. Tropical Cyclone Bebe was a pre-season tropical cyclone that impacted the Gilbert, Ellice Islands, and Fiji island groups. First spotted on October 20, the system intensified and grew in size through October 22. Cyclone Bebe continued through Sunday 22 October. Cyclone Bebe knocked down 90% of the houses and trees on the island, and the storm surge created a wall of coral rubble along the ocean side of Fongafale and Funafala that was about long, and about to thick at the bottom. As a result of the system's storm surge and flooding, drinking water sources across the island were contaminated.\nWorld War II.\nDuring the Pacific War,the majority of Tuvaluans living on Fongafale atoll moved to Funafala, as Fongafale became a base for the American forces who occupied much of Fongafale islet. The hospital was also shifted to Funafala islet for the duration of the war.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11977639", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["30227", "11977639"], "permutation_2": ["30227", "11977639"], "permutation_3": ["30227", "11977639"]}
{"id": "2hop__763840_144857", "docs_added": {"194037": "Raymond Carver\nAmerican story writer and poet (1938\u20131988)\nRaymond Clevie Carver Jr. (May 25, 1938 \u2013 August 2, 1988) was an American short story writer and poet. He published his first collection of stories, \"Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?\", in 1976. His breakout collection, \"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love\" (1981), received immediate acclaim and established Carver as an important figure in the literary world. It was followed by \"Cathedral\" (1983), which Carver considered his watershed and is widely regarded as his masterpiece. The definitive collection of his stories, \"\", was published shortly before his death in 1988. In their 1989 nomination of Carver for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the jury concluded, \"The revival in recent years of the short story is attributable in great measure to Carver's mastery of the form.\"\nEarly life.\nCarver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, a mill town on the Columbia River, and grew up in Yakima, Washington, the son of Ella Beatrice Carter (n\u00e9e Casey) and Clevie Raymond Carver. His father, a sawmill worker from Arkansas, was a fisherman and a heavy drinker. Carver's mother worked on and off as a waitress and a retail clerk. His brother, James Franklin Carver, was born in 1943.\nCarver was educated at local schools in Yakima. In his spare time, he read mostly novels by Mickey Spillane or publications such as \"Sports Afield\" and \"Outdoor Life\", and hunted and fished with friends and family.\nAfter graduating from Yakima High School in 1956, Carver worked with his father at a sawmill in California. In June 1957, at age 19, he married 16-year-old Maryann Burk, who had just graduated from a private Episcopal school for girls. Their daughter, Christine La Rae, was born in December 1957. Their second child, a boy named Vance Lindsay, was born a year later. Carver worked as a delivery man, janitor, library assistant, and sawmill laborer, while Maryann worked as an administrative assistant, high school English teacher, salesperson, and waitress.\nWriting career.\nCarver moved to Paradise, California, with his family in 1958 to be close to his mother-in-law. He became interested in writing while attending Chico State College and enrolled in a creative writing course taught by the novelist John Gardner, then a recent doctoral graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, who became a mentor and had a major influence on Carver's life and career. In 1961, Carver's first published story, \"The Furious Seasons\", appeared. More florid than his later work, the story strongly bore the influence of William Faulkner. \"Furious Seasons\" was later used as a title for a collection of stories published by Capra Press, and is part of the collection, \"No Heroics, Please\" and \"Call If You Need Me\".\nCarver continued his studies under the short story writer Richard Cortez Day (alumnus of the Iowa program) beginning in autumn 1960 at Humboldt State College in Arcata. He chose not to take the foreign language courses required by the English program and received a B.A. in general studies in 1963. During this period he was first published and served as editor for \"Toyon,\" the college's literary magazine, in which he published several of his own pieces under his own name as well as the pseudonym John Vale.\nWith his B-minus average, exacerbated by his penchant to forsake coursework for literary endeavors, ballasted by a sterling recommendation from Day, Carver was accepted into the Iowa Writers' Workshop on a $1,000 fellowship for the 1963\u20131964 academic year. Homesick for California and unable to fully adjust to the program's upper middle class milieu, he only completed 12 credits out of the 30 required for a M.A. degree or 60 for the M.F.A. degree. Although program director Paul Engle awarded him a fellowship for a second year of study after Maryann Carver personally interceded and compared her husband's plight to Tennessee Williams' deleterious experience in the program three decades earlier, Carver decided to leave the University of Iowa at the end of the semester. According to biographer Carol Sklenicka, Carver falsely claimed to have received an M.F.A. from Iowa in 1966 on later curricula vitae. Maryann, who postponed completing her education to support her husband's educational and literary endeavors, eventually graduated from San Jose State College in 1970 and taught English at Los Altos High School until 1977. After completing graduate work at Stanford, she briefly enrolled in the University of California, Santa Barbara's English doctoral program when Carver taught at the institution as a visiting lecturer in 1974.\nIn the mid-1960s, Carver and his family resided in Sacramento, where he briefly worked at a bookstore before taking a position as a night custodian at Mercy Hospital. He did all of the janitorial work in the first hour and then wrote through the rest of his shift. He audited classes at what was then Sacramento State College, including workshops with poet Dennis Schmitz. Carver and Schmitz soon became friends, and Carver wrote and published his first book of poems, \"Near Klamath\", under Schmitz's guidance.\n1967 was a landmark year for Carver with the appearance of \"Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?\" in Martha Foley's annual \"Best American Short Stories\" anthology and the impending publication of \"Near Klamath\" by the English Club of Sacramento State College. He briefly enrolled in the library science graduate program at the University of Iowa that summer but returned to California following the death of his father. Shortly thereafter, the Carvers relocated to Palo Alto, California, so he could take his first white-collar job, at Science Research Associates, a subsidiary of IBM in nearby Menlo Park, California, where he worked intermittently as a textbook editor and public relations director through 1970.\nFollowing a 1968 sojourn to Israel, the Carvers relocated to San Jose, California; as Maryann finished her undergraduate degree, he continued his graduate studies in library science at San Jose State through the end of 1969 before failing once again to take a degree. During this period, he established vital literary connections with Gordon Lish, who worked across the street from Carver as director of linguistic research at Behavioral Research Laboratories, and the poet/publisher George Hitchcock.\nAfter the publication of \"Neighbors\" in the June 1971 issue of \"Esquire\" at the instigation of Lish (by now ensconced as the magazine's fiction editor), Carver began to teach at the University of California, Santa Cruz at the behest of provost James B. Hall, an Iowa alumnus and early mentor to Ken Kesey at the University of Oregon, commuting from his new home in Sunnyvale, California.\nHaving endured a succession of failed applications to the Stegner Fellowship, Carver was admitted to the prestigious non-degree Stanford University graduate creative writing program for the 1972\u20131973 term, where he cultivated friendships with Kesey-era luminaries Ed McClanahan and Gurney Norman in addition to contemporaneous fellows Chuck Kinder, Max Crawford, and William Kittredge. The $4,000 stipend enabled the Carvers to buy a house in Cupertino, California. He also took on another teaching job at the University of California, Berkeley that year and briefly rented a pied-\u00e0-terre in the city; this development was precipitated by his initiation of an extramarital affair with Diane Cecily, a University of Montana administrator and mutual friend of Kittredge who would subsequently marry Kinder.\nDuring his years of working at miscellaneous jobs, rearing children, and trying to write, Carver started abusing alcohol. By his own admission, he gave up writing and took to full-time drinking. In the fall semester of 1973, Carver was a visiting lecturer in the Iowa Writers' Workshop with John Cheever, but Carver stated that they did less teaching than drinking and almost no writing. With the assistance of Kinder and Kittredge, he attempted to simultaneously commute to Berkeley and maintain his lectureship at Santa Cruz; after missing all but a handful of classes due to the inherent logistical hurdles of this arrangement and various alcohol-related illnesses, Hall gently enjoined Carver to resign his position. The next year, after leaving Iowa City, Carver went to a treatment center to attempt to overcome his alcoholism, but continued drinking for another three years.\nHis first short story collection, \"Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?\", was published in 1976. The collection itself was shortlisted for the National Book Award, though it sold fewer than 5,000 copies that year.\nPersonal life and death.\nDecline of first marriage.\nThe following excerpt from Scott Driscoll's review of Maryann Burk Carver's 2006 memoir describes the decline of her and Raymond's marriage.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The fall began with Ray's trip to Missoula, Mont., in '72 to fish with friend and literary helpmate Bill Kittredge. That summer Ray fell in love with Diane Cecily, an editor at the University of Montana, whom he met at Kittredge's birthday party. \"That's when the serious drinking began. It broke my heart and hurt the children. It changed everything.\"\n\"By fall of '74\", writes Carver, \"he was more dead than alive. I had to drop out of the PhD program so I could get him cleaned up and drive him to his classes\". Over the next several years, Maryann's husband physically abused her. Friends urged her to leave Raymond.\n\"But I couldn't. I really wanted to hang in there for the long haul. I thought I could outlast the drinking. I'd do anything it took. I loved Ray, first, last and always.\"\nCarver describes, without a trace of rancor, what finally put her over the edge. In the fall of '78, with a new teaching position at the University of Texas at El Paso, Ray started seeing Tess Gallagher, a writer from Port Angeles, who would become his muse and wife near the end of his life. \"It was like a contretemps. He tried to call me to talk about where we were. I missed the calls. He knew he was about to invite Tess to Thanksgiving.\" So he wrote a letter instead.\n\"I thought, I've gone through all those years fighting to keep it all balanced. Here it was, coming at me again, the same thing. I had to get on with my own life. But I never fell out of love with him.\"\nAfter being hospitalized three times between June 1976 and February or March 1977, Carver began his \"second life\" and stopped drinking on June 2, 1977, with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous. While he continued to regularly smoke cannabis and later experimented with cocaine at the behest of Jay McInerney during a 1980 visit to New York City, Carver believed he would have died of alcoholism at the age of 40 had he not overcome his drinking.\nSecond marriage.\nIn November 1977, Carver met the poet Tess Gallagher at a writers' conference in Dallas, Texas. Gallagher later remembered feeling \"as if my life until then had simply been a rehearsal for meeting him.\" Beginning in January 1979, Carver and Gallagher lived together in El Paso, Texas, in a borrowed cabin near Port Angeles, Washington, and in Tucson, Arizona.\nIn 1980, the two moved to Syracuse, New York, where Gallagher had been appointed the coordinator of the creative writing program at Syracuse University; Carver taught as a professor in the English department. He and Gallagher jointly purchased a house in Syracuse, at 832 Maryland Avenue. In ensuing years, the house became so popular that the couple had to hang a sign outside that read \"Writers At Work\" in order to be left alone. \nIn 1982, he and his first wife, Maryann, were divorced.\nOn June 17, 1988, six weeks prior to his death, Carver and Gallagher married in Reno, Nevada.\nDeath.\nOn August 2, 1988, Carver died in Port Angeles from lung cancer at the age of 50. In the same year, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is buried at Ocean View Cemetery in Port Angeles, Washington. The inscription on his tombstone reads:\n<poem>\nLATE FRAGMENT\nAnd did you get what\nyou wanted from this life, even so?\nI did.\nAnd what did you want?\nTo call myself beloved, to feel myself\nbeloved on the earth.\n</poem>\nHis poem \"Gravy\" is also inscribed.\nAs Carver's will directed, Tess Gallagher assumed the management of his literary estate.\nAwards and memorials.\nCarver was nominated for the National Book Award for his first major-press collection, \"Will You Please Be Quiet, Please\" in 1977 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his third major-press collection, \"Cathedral\" (1983), the volume generally perceived as his best. Included in the latter collection are the award-winning stories \"A Small, Good Thing\", and \"Where I'm Calling From\". John Updike selected the latter for inclusion in \"The Best American Short Stories of the Century.\" For his part, Carver perceived \"Cathedral\" as a watershed in his career for its shift toward a more optimistic and confidently poetic style amid the diminution of Lish's literary influence.\nCarver won five O. Henry Awards with \"Are These Actual Miles\" (originally titled \"What Is It?\") (1972), \"Put Yourself in My Shoes\" (1974), \"Are You A Doctor?\" (1975), \"A Small, Good Thing\" (1983), and \"Errand\" (1988).\nIn Carver's birth town of Clatskanie, Oregon, a memorial park and statue are at the corner of Lillich and Nehalem streets, across from the library. A block away is the building where Carver was born.\nLegacy and posthumous publications.\nIn December 2006, Gallagher published an essay in \"The Sun magazine\", titled \"Instead of Dying\", about alcoholism and Carver's having maintained his sobriety. The essay is an adaptation of a talk she initially delivered at the Welsh Academy's Academi Intoxication Conference in 2006. The first lines read: \"Instead of dying from alcohol, Raymond Carver chose to live. I would meet him five months after this choice, so I never knew the Ray who drank, except by report and through the characters and actions of his stories and poems.\"\nChuck Kinder's \"Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale\" (2001) is a roman \u00e0 clef about his friendship with Carver in the 1970s. Carver's high school sweetheart and first wife, Maryann Burk Carver, wrote a memoir of her years with Carver, \"What it Used to be Like: A Portrait of My Marriage to Raymond Carver\" (2006).\nIn 2009, \"The New York Times Book Review\" and \"San Francisco Chronicle\" named Carol Sklenicka's unauthorized biography, \"Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life\" (2009), published by Scribner, one of the Best Ten Books of that year; and the \"San Francisco Chronicle\" deemed it: \"exhaustively researched and definitive biography\". Carver's widow, Tess Gallagher, refused to engage with Sklenicka.\nHis final (incomplete) collection of seven stories, titled \"Elephant and Other Stories\" in Britain (included in \"\") was composed in the five years before his death. The nature of these stories, especially \"Errand\", have led to some speculation that Carver was preparing to write a novel. Only one piece of this work has survived \u2013 the fragment \"The Augustine Notebooks\", first printed in \"No Heroics, Please\".\nTess Gallagher fought with Knopf for permission to republish the stories in \"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love\" as they were originally written by Carver, as opposed to the heavily edited and altered versions that appeared in 1981 under the editorship of Gordon Lish. On October 1, 2009, the book, entitled \"Beginners\", was released in hardback in Great Britain, followed by its publication in the Library of America edition which collected all of Carver's short fiction in a single volume.\nThe Raymond Carver Reading Series at Syracuse University is a reading series program which annually brings 12 to 14 prominent writers to the campus. It is presented by the \"Creative Writing Program\" in SU's College of Arts and Sciences.\nLiterary characteristics.\nCarver's career emphasized short stories and poetry. He described himself as \"inclined toward brevity and intensity\" and \"hooked on writing short stories\" (in the foreword of \"\", a collection published in 1988 and a recipient of an honorable mention in the 2006 \"New York Times\" article citing the best works of fiction of the previous 25 years). Another stated reason for his brevity was \"that the story [or poem] can be written and read in one sitting.\" This was not simply a preference but, particularly at the beginning of his career, a practical consideration as he juggled writing with work. His subject matter was often focused on blue-collar experience, and was clearly reflective of his own life.\nCharacteristics of minimalism are generally seen as one of the hallmarks of Carver's work, although, as reviewer David Wiegand notes:\nCarver never thought of himself as a minimalist or in any category, for that matter.\n\"He rejected categories generally,\" Sklenicka says. \"I don't think he had an abstract mind at all. He just wasn't built that way, which is why he's so good at picking the right details that will stand for many things.\"\nCarver's editor at \"Esquire\", Gordon Lish, was instrumental in shaping his prose in this direction \u2013 where his earlier tutor John Gardner had advised Carver to use fifteen words instead of twenty-five, Lish instructed Carver to use five in place of fifteen. Objecting to the \"surgical amputation and transplantation\" of Lish's heavy editing, Carver eventually broke with him. During this time, Carver also submitted poetry to James Dickey, then poetry editor of \"Esquire\".\nCarver's style has also been described as dirty realism, which connected him with a group of writers in the 1970s and 1980s that included Richard Ford and Tobias Wolff with both of whom Carver was closely acquainted, as well as others such as Ann Beattie, Frederick Barthelme, and Jayne Anne Phillips. With the exception of Beattie, who wrote about upper-middle-class people, these were writers who focused on sadness and loss in the everyday lives of ordinary people\u2014often lower-middle class or isolated and marginalized people.\nIn his essay \"On Influence\", Carver states that, while he was an admirer of Ernest Hemingway's fiction, he never saw him as an influence, citing instead the work of Lawrence Durrell.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "10876119": "Neighbors (short story)\n1971 short story by Raymond Carver\n\"Neighbors\" is a short story written by Raymond Carver in 1971. It first appeared in \"Esquire\" magazine in June 1971. It was published in the collection \"Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?\" in 1976, in the compilation \"Where I'm Calling From\" in 1989, and again in \"Short Cuts\" in 1993.\nPlot.\nThe short story \"Neighbors\" by Raymond Carver has a plot that follows the exploits of Bill and Arlene Miller who are left to take care of the Stone's apartment. The plot is chronological and despite a few memories of the characters, the action begins when the Stones leave for their trip and ends after the Millers have gone through their apartment. It is clear that there is a close friendship between the two couples and it is also apparent that Bill and Arlene find their lives less exciting than that of their neighbors. When the Stone's leave for their vacation, Bill goes over to the apartment to water the plants and feed the cat.\nAs time progresses in \"Neighbors\", Bill becomes increasingly interested in his neighbor's possessions, almost as though he is living through them simply by eating their food, drinking their drinks, and trying on their clothes. He even takes time off of work to spend time in their apartment, almost as if it has a magical quality that makes time fly by. Bill appears to be stimulated sexually by his visits the neighbor's apartment, as does Arlene. Like her husband, Arlene too spends a great deal of time at the Stone's apartment, rifling through their possessions. In the end, they accidentally leave the key to the Stone's apartment inside, hence locking themselves out. They both worry that the Stones will find out what they have been doing in their apartment.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "60177575": "The Neighbor (2017 film)\n2018 thriller film directed by Aaron Harvey\nThe Neighbor (also known as Last Days of Summer) is a 2018 American psychological thriller film co-written, produced and directed by Aaron Harvey. The film stars William Fichtner as Mike, a technical writer who sees his life shaken by the arrival of new, younger neighbors.\n\"The Neighbor\" premiered at the 2016 Rhode Island International Film Festival where it won the festival's top prize for \"Best Narrative Feature\". It was released theatrically in the United States on January 26, 2018 by Vertical Entertainment.\nSummary.\nMike Prentis (William Fichtner) is a middle-aged man in a routine marriage, who works from home as a technical writer. When a new couple moves in next door, Mike quickly befriends the young Jenna (Jessica McNamee) and her car-dealer husband, Scott (Michael Rosenbaum). Working from home, Mike has plenty of time to pay attention to Jenna who slowly begins to reveal the details of her life with Scott, and the fact that all isn't as carefree as Scott would like it to appear. While Mike watches as the young couple's relationship begins to unravel, his own marriage starts coming apart at the seams. Mike's wife Lisa (Jean Louisa Kelly) sees Mike's attraction to Jenna forming and pulls further away from him \u2013 pushing their own relationship to the breaking point. Compounding the fact is Mike's son Alex (Colin Woodell), who returns from college and forms an unwitting friendship with Jenna, much to the disdain of his father.\nAs Mike witnesses the perceived abuse of Jenna at the hands of Scott increasing, he makes one last dramatic and misguided effort to intervene.\nRelease.\nReception.\nThe film premiered at the 2016 Rhode Island International Film Festival where it won the \"Grand Prize, Best Narrative Feature\" award\". It went on to play multiple other festivals, including the Quebec City Film Festival, the Newport Beach Film Festival and the Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival where it won both \"Best Director\" and \"Best Actor\" awards.\nMichael Rechtshaffen from the Los Angeles Times gave the film a good review writing: \"Aaron Harvey's \"The Neighbor\" finds a sturdy constant in its thoughtfully delineated performances and handsome production values. Harvey's contained direction and John W. Rutland's impressive cinematography provide a sharply observed continuity that's as admirably contained as the Prentices' impeccably appointed, if spiritually anemic, home.\" J.R. Southall gave the film 6 out of 10 and said: \"\"The Neighbour\"... is just about absorbing enough to hold your attention until its powerful but bleak finale. But only just.\" Niall Browne from \"Movies In Focus\" gave \"The Neighbour\" three stars out of five and stated: \"A slow-burning domestic thriller, Aaron Harvey's \"The Neighbour\" is a tense little movie with a captivating central performance from William Fichtner.\"\nAuthor Stephen King tweeted of the film; \"\"The Neighbor\", now streaming: Low-key, but what a bravura performance from William Fichtner, one of America's great unsung actors.\"\nAccolades.\n\"The Neighbor\" received several awards and nominations.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "15465384": "Robert Neighbors\nTexas politician and Indian agent (1815-1859)\nRobert Simpson Neighbors (November 3, 1815 \u2013 September 14, 1859) was an Indian agent and Texas state legislator. Known as a fair and determined protector of Indian interests as guaranteed by treaty, he was murdered by a white man named Cornet, whose brother-in-law had been defamed by Neighbors, accusing the brother-in-law (one Patrick Murphy of Belknap, sheriff, saloon owner and businessman) a common horse thief, responsible for stealing horses from the reservation Indians. When Neighbors refused to recant the accusation in front of the two men, Cornet shot Neighbors with a shotgun. Cornet was murdered and Murphy acquitted as he did not pull the trigger. Cornet went on the run and was killed during his arrest.\nEarly life.\nRobert Simpson Neighbors was born in Charlotte County, Virginia, on November 3, 1815. He was the sole son of William and Elizabeth (Elam) Neighbours. In later life he chose to drop the u from his last name. He was orphaned at a mere four months old, when both parents died of pneumonia. He was later educated by private tutors, who were retained by his guardian, Samuel Hamner, a Virginia planter.\nImmigration to Texas and army service.\nNeighbors left Virginia at the age of nineteen, and while he stayed briefly in New Orleans, his intention was always to immigrate to Texas, which he did in the early spring of 1836. He joined the Army of the Republic of Texas on 30 January 1839 as a first lieutenant, commanding Fort Travis on Galveston Island before becoming quartermaster on 5 September, and promoted to captain on 15 July 1840 and served until the end of 1841.\nCapture by General Adrian Woll.\nOn September 15, 1842, as a member of Captain John C. Hays's company of volunteers, Neighbors was in San Antonio attending Judge Anderson Hutchinson's court, when General Adrian Woll made his invasion of Texas and captured the city. Along with approximately fifty-two other individuals, including the officers of the court, he was forcibly marched to Mexico, where he was subsequently imprisoned in San Carlos Fortress.\nIndian Agent and the field system.\nNeighbors was released on March 24, 1844, and returned to Texas. He briefly operated the Mansion House hotel in Houston before becoming Indian Agent for the Republic of Texas on 12 February 1845. Thomas G. Western, Texas Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and Neighbors as Indian Agent for the Lipan Apaches and Tonkawas, initiated a new policy, the field system; instead of remaining at the agency headquarters and waiting for the Indians to pay him a visit, as was the common practice, Neighbors dealt with them directly in their homelands.\nAfter the annexation of the Republic of Texas by the United States, Neighbors was a party to Treaty 246 between the US, represented by Indian commissioners Pierce M. Butler and M.G. Lewis, and the chiefs of the Comanches, Ionies, Anadarkos, Caddos, Lipans, Tonkawas, Keechies, Tawacanos, Wichitas and Wacos, signed near Waco on 15 May 1846. Neighbors then accompanied the Penateka Comanche chiefs Old Owl and Santa Anna, plus the Anadarko chief Jose Maria, on their visit to Washington, D.C.\nHe received a federal appointment as special Indian agent, on March 20, 1847, and took part in the treaty between the Comanche and the German colonists on the San Saba River in March 1847, which resulted in the so-called Meusebach-Comanche Treaty.\nAs a Federal Indian Agent for the Comanches, he continued what was then a most unusual practice, that of actually visiting the Indians in their homes, and learning their language and culture. Called the \"field system\" it was unique for its time. The ultimate result was that he spent much time far beyond the then frontier and in the opinion of historians exercised greater influence over the Indians in Texas than any other white man of his generation. Indeed, other than Sam Houston he probably was one of the few white men to bother to learn their language and culture, let alone travel to the heart of the Comancheria.\nAdoption by the Comanche.\nIn 1845 as an Indian Agent for the Republic of Texas, Robert Neighbors recorded one of the best known meetings with the Penateka Comanche head Chief Old Owl, while visiting a Tonkawa camp. Chief Old Owl arrived with 40 warriors, and in a manner the Major called \"most insolent and domineering\" demanded that the Tonkawa feed the war party and their horses, and provide for them entertainment. The Tonkawas \"obeyed with alacrity\", providing \"forty of the best looking Tonkawa maidens\". Neighbors, known as a fearless man, took this opportunity to be introduced to the Comanches. Old Owl, introduced to Neighbors, first complimented him on his fine blue coat. Neighbors, understanding the meaning of this compliment, presented the Chief with the coat immediately. Other warriors admired his pants, boots, and other clothing, and soon Neighbors was standing only in a nightshirt. \nOld Owl however, took a liking to the fearless Neighbors. He told him though most whites irritated him, he liked Neighbors, and invited him to accompany the war party, and he proposed instead of Neighbors making a civilized man of him, that he would make a fine horse thief out of Neighbors, and adopt him into the tribe. Neighbors, feeling this was an opportunity few men would ever receive, accepted at once. The war party went to Mexico, where Neighbors attempted to buy beef at a rancho. When the Mexicans declined to sell beef to a Republic of Texas official on credit, Old Owl told them two beeves were to be forthcoming immediately, or the rancho would be burned down and all the beeves taken. This proved highly effective, and the food was immediately forthcoming.\nNeighbors, having left an indelible impression on Old Owl as the first (and only) Republic of Texas official to ever ride with a Comanche War Party, took his leave of them with thanks, and went home. \nNeighbors Expedition.\nEarly in the spring of 1849, Major General William J. Worth, of the United States Army, who was in command of the Eighth Military Department, which included the former Republic of Texas, was ordered by Secretary of War William L. Marcy to explore a wagon route between San Antonio and El Paso. The General, headquartered in San Antonio, selected Neighbors to lead the expedition to establish the so-called \"upper route\" to El Paso. His reasoning was that Neighbors was perhaps the only man in Texas who could safely ride into the Comancheria.\nNeighbors led a combined military-Ranger force that included his personal friend \"Rip\" Ford and did in fact map a route that not only became the route used by the Overland Stage Company, but is the same route taken by the highway today. Indeed, Neighbors reported 598 miles between Austin (as the state capital) and El Paso \u2013 exactly the same mileage listed today between the two cities. In addition to Ford on the expedition, Neighbors was able to convince Buffalo Hump to lead it; Penateka war chiefs Yellow Wolf (Buffalo Hump's cousin) and Santa Anna joined them along the trail. Though the chief later left the party, it remained under his protection, and Nokoni Comanche head Chief Tall Tree, or Guadalupe, led the party the remainder of the distance from the Colorado River to El Paso. Neighbors' ability to communicate with the Comanche, and his relationship with them, made the expedition possible.\nBrazos Indian Reservation.\nIn those days, appointments for such posts as federal Indian Agent were determined in great part by the political party in power, and the political affiliation of the agent. Neighbors was a Democrat, so his services as Indian agent were terminated by the elections and subsequent national Whig administration in September 1849. Neighbors stayed in public life however. Appointed as a Texas commissioner, he was sent by Texas Governor Peter Hansborough Bell to organize El Paso County in February and March 1850. He then attempted, without success, to organize counties in New Mexico as a part of Texas, being opposed by Judge Joab Houghton.\nHe was a member of the Fourth Texas Legislature, representing the Bexar and Medina District from 1851 to 1853. In 1852, he and state senator \"Rip\" Ford sponsored a resolution calling for Texas to negotiate with the federal government to settle the Indians in northern Texas. After urging from Secretary of War Jefferson Davis to Governor Bell, the Texas legislature passed a law in 1854 granting twelve leagues of land for establishing Indian reservations.\nNeighbors became a presidential elector in 1852, and following the election of Franklin Pierce in 1853, was appointed supervising agent of the Indian service in Texas. In 1854, Neighbors and Capt. Randolph B. Marcy, with an escort of forty soldiers, left Fort Belknap in search of recommended sites for two Indian reservations to be established in 1855. Sites for the Caddo, Shawnee, Anadarko, Waco, Tawacano, and Tonkawa, were located along the north side of the Salt Fork Brazos River, south of what is now Graham in Young County. This area became the Brazos Indian Reservation. The reservation's log buildings included the agent's house, an office, a commissary store, a laborer's house, a school, a blacksmith, an interpreter's house, a privy, and a spring house; there were also several dome-shaped thatched native houses.\nCamp Cooper and the Comanche Indian Reservation.\nThe Penateka Comanches were located on the Comanche Indian Reservation located on the Clear Fork Brazos River, about ten miles southwest of what is now Throckmorton in Throckmorton County. The reservation log cabin buildings included the agent's house, commissary store, laborer's house, a school and Chief Ketumse's house plus the tribal member's tents.\nProviding defense for the reservation was Camp Cooper, founded on January 3, 1856 by Major William J. Hardee and named in honor of Samuel Cooper. The camp was commanded by Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee of the Second Cavalry from 1856 to 1857. In a letter dated Camp Cooper, 12 April 1856, he wrote:\nWe are in the Comanche Reserve with the Indian camps below us on the river, belonging to Catumseh's band, whom the Government is trying to humanize. It will be up hill work I fear. Catumseh has been to see me and we have had a talk, very tedious on his part and very sententious on mine. I hailed him as a friend, as long as his conduct and that of his tribe deserved it, but would meet him as an enemy the first moment he failed to keep his word.\nOfficers serving under Lee's command at the camp included Captain Earl Van Dorn, Captain George Stoneman, and Captain Theodore O'Hara. Major George H. Thomas succeeded Lee as commander and was wounded while pursuing Comanche warriors. The camp of 250 men under the command of Capt. S.D. Carpenter was abandoned to Col. W.C. Dalrymple, Texas Troops on 21 February 1861, after General David E. Twiggs agreed to surrender all federal military posts.\nDeath.\nIt was during this period, when settlers began to attack the Indians, that Neighbors became hated among white Texans. Neighbors reported that the United States Army officers located at the posts of Fort Belknap and Camp Cooper, near the reservations, failed to give adequate support to him and his resident agents, and adequate protection to the Indians and settlers alike.\nThe military's attitude was shared by the settlers, who believed the reservation Indians were committing continuing raids on white settlements. In spite of continuous threats against his life, Neighbors never faltered in his determination to protect the Indians.\n\"The main source of opposition to Major Neighbors and the reservation policy was John R. Baylor"}, "descending_order": ["60177575", "15465384", "10876119", "194037"], "permutation_1": ["60177575", "10876119", "194037", "15465384"], "permutation_2": ["194037", "10876119", "60177575", "15465384"], "permutation_3": ["10876119", "60177575", "194037", "15465384"]}
{"id": "2hop__344419_21587", "docs_added": {"2067": "Ann Arbor, Michigan\nCity in Michigan, United States\nAnn Arbor is a city in Washtenaw County, Michigan, United States, and its county seat. The 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851, making it the fifth-most populous city in Michigan. Located on the Huron River, Ann Arbor is the principal city of its metropolitan area, which encompasses all of Washtenaw County and had 372,258 residents in 2020. Ann Arbor is included in the Detroit\u2013Warren\u2013Ann Arbor combined statistical area and the Great Lakes megalopolis.\nAnn Arbor was founded in 1824 by John Allen and Elisha Rumsey. It was named after the wives of the village's founders, both named Ann, and the stands of bur oak trees they found at the site of the town. The University of Michigan was established in Ann Arbor in 1837, and the city's population grew at a rapid rate in the early to mid-20th century.\nA college town, Ann Arbor is currently home to the University of Michigan, which significantly shapes the city's economy, employing about 30,000 workers which includes about 12,000 in its medical center. The city's economy is also centered on high technology, with several companies drawn to the area by the university's research and development infrastructure. The city has been a center for progressive politics as well as several social and religious movements.\nHistory.\nBefore founding as Ann Arbor.\nThe region was once inhabited by several Native American tribes, the most prominent being the Anishinaabe people of the Three Fires: the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi. The Potawatomi founded two villages in the area of what is now Ann Arbor in about 1774. Other tribes that inhabited the area included the Fox, Wyandots, and Sauk. These peoples established several trails that converged on present-day Ann Arbor. The land that included Washtenaw County was ceded to the U.S. by the Odawa, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Wyandot in the Treaty of Detroit of 1807.\n19th century.\nAnn Arbor was founded in 1824 by land speculators John Allen and Elisha Walker Rumsey. On May 25, 1824, the town plat was registered with Wayne County as the Village of Annarbour, the earliest known use of the town's name. Allen and Rumsey decided to name it for their wives, both named Ann, and for the stands of bur oak in the of land they purchased for $800 () from the federal government at $1.25 per acre. The local Ojibwa named the settlement , after the sound of Allen's sawmill.\nAnn Arbor became the seat of Washtenaw County in 1827 and was incorporated as a village in 1833. The Ann Arbor Land Company, a group of speculators, set aside of undeveloped land and offered it to the state of Michigan as the site of the state capitol, but lost the bid to Lansing. In 1837, the property was accepted instead as the site of the University of Michigan.\nSince the university's establishment in the city in 1837, the histories of the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor have been closely linked. The town became a regional transportation hub in 1839 with the arrival of the Michigan Central Railroad, and a north\u2013south railway connecting Ann Arbor to Toledo and other markets to the south was established in 1878. Throughout the 1840s and the 1850s settlers continued to come to Ann Arbor. While the earlier settlers were primarily of British ancestry, the newer settlers also consisted of Germans, Irish, and Black people. In 1851, Ann Arbor was chartered as a city, though the city showed a drop in population during the Depression of 1873. It was not until the early 1880s that Ann Arbor again saw robust growth, with new immigrants from Greece, Italy, Russia, and Poland.\n20th century.\nAnn Arbor saw increased growth in manufacturing, particularly in milling. Ann Arbor's Jewish community also grew after the turn of the 20th century, and its first and oldest synagogue, Beth Israel Congregation, was established in 1916.\nFollowing a 1956 vote, the city of East Ann Arbor merged with Ann Arbor to encompass the eastern sections of the city.\nIn 1960, Ann Arbor voters approved a $2.3\u00a0million bond issue (equivalent to $\u00a0million in 2023) to build the current city hall, which was designed by architect Alden B. Dow. The City Hall opened in 1963. In 1995, the building was renamed the Guy C. Larcom Jr. Municipal Building in honor of the longtime city administrator who championed the building's construction.\nDuring the 1960s and 1970s, the city gained a reputation as an important center for liberal politics. Ann Arbor also became a locus for left-wing activism and anti-Vietnam War movement, as well as the student movement. The first major meetings of the national left-wing campus group Students for a Democratic Society took place in Ann Arbor in 1960; in 1965, the city was home to the first U.S. teach-in against the Vietnam War. During the ensuing 15 years, many countercultural and New Left enterprises sprang up and developed large constituencies within the city. These influences washed into municipal politics during the early and mid-1970s when three members of the Human Rights Party (HRP) won city council seats on the strength of the student vote. During their time on the council, HRP representatives fought for measures including pioneering antidiscrimination ordinances, measures decriminalizing marijuana possession, and a rent-control ordinance.\nTwo religious-conservative institutions were created in Ann Arbor; the Word of God (established in 1967), a charismatic inter-denominational movement; and the Thomas More Law Center (established in 1999). Since 1998, Ann Arbor is also the home office of the Anthroposophical Society in the United States, an organization dedicated to supporting the community of those interested in the inner path of schooling known as anthroposophy, developed by Rudolf Steiner.\n21st century.\nIn the past several decades, Ann Arbor has grappled with the effects of sharply rising land values, gentrification, and urban sprawl stretching into outlying countryside. On November 4, 2003, voters approved a greenbelt plan under which the city government bought development rights on agricultural parcels of land adjacent to Ann Arbor to preserve them from sprawling development. Since then, a vociferous local debate has hinged on how and whether to accommodate and guide development within city limits. Ann Arbor consistently ranks in the \"top places to live\" lists published by various mainstream media outlets every year.\nIn 2016, the city changed mayoral terms from two years to four. Until 2017, City Council held annual elections in which half of the seats (one from each ward) were elected to 2-year terms. These elections were staggered, with each ward having one of its seats up for election in odd years and its other seat up for election in even years. Beginning in 2018 the city council has had staggered elections to 4-year terms in even years. This means that half of the members (one from each ward) are elected in presidential election years, while the other half are elected in mid-term election years. To facilitate this change in scheduling, the 2017 election elected members to terms that lasted 3-years.\nIn 2020, partly as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the city government opened several downtown streets to pedestrians, limiting their use by motor vehicles to emergency vehicles during summertime weekends. In addition to providing a large pedestrian mall, these changes allow restaurants to use more of the sidewalks and part of the street for outdoor seating. These changes were popular enough that in 2021 the city council extended the dates from March to November, continuing the schedule of cordoning off cars from Thursday evening until Monday morning.\nGeography.\nAnn Arbor is located along the Huron River, which flows southeast through the city on its way to Lake Erie. It is the central core of the Ann Arbor, MI Metropolitan Statistical Area, which consists of the whole of Washtenaw County, but is also a part of the Metro Detroit Combined Statistical Area designated by the U.S. Census Bureau. While it borders only Townships, the built-up nature of the sections of Pittsfield and Ypsilanti townships between Ann Arbor and the city of Ypsilanti make the two effectively a single urban area.\nLandscape.\nThe landscape of Ann Arbor consists of hills and valleys, with the terrain becoming steeper near the Huron River. The elevation ranges from about along the Huron River to on the city's west side, near the intersection of Maple Road and Pauline Blvd. Ann Arbor Municipal Airport, which is south of the city at , has an elevation of . Ann Arbor is nicknamed \"Tree Town\", both due to its name and to the dense forestation of its parks and residential areas. The city contains more than 50,000 trees along its streets and an equal number in parks. Into the early 2000s, the emerald ash borer has destroyed many of the city's approximately 10,500 ash trees.\nThe city contains over 160 municipal parks ranging from small neighborhood green spots to large recreation areas such as Buhr Park. Several large city parks and a university park border sections of the Huron River. Fuller Recreation Area, near the University Hospital complex, contains sports fields, pedestrian and bike paths, and swimming pools. Opened in the summer of 2014, the city-funded Ann Arbor Skatepark is a skatepark located within Veterans Memorial Park. The city is also home to the Washtenaw County-owned County Farm Park. The Nichols Arboretum, owned by the University of Michigan, is a arboretum that contains hundreds of plant and tree species. It is on the city's east side, near the university's Central Campus. Located across the Huron River just beyond the university's North Campus is the university's Matthaei Botanical Gardens, which contains 300\u00a0acres of gardens and a large tropical conservatory. Several other green spaces around Ann Arbor are privately owned or owned by government agencies such as Ann Arbor Public Schools.\nCityscape.\nThe cityscape of Ann Arbor is heavily influenced by the University of Michigan, with 22% of downtown and 9.4% of the total land owned by the university. The downtown Central Campus contains some of the oldest extant structures in the city\u2014including the President's House, built in 1840\u2014and separates the South University District from the other three downtown commercial districts. These other three districts, Kerrytown, State Street, and Main Street are contiguous near the northwestern corner of the university.\nMajor landmarks in downtown Ann Arbor include the Michigan Theater, The Diag, and Tower Plaza, a 26-story condominium building that is the city's tallest building. Downtown is also home to several Fairy Doors and other public art installations.\nThree commercial areas south of downtown include the areas near I-94 and Ann Arbor-Saline Road, Briarwood Mall, and the South Industrial area. Other commercial areas include the Arborland/Washtenaw Avenue and Packard Road merchants on the east side, the Plymouth Road area in the northeast, and the Westgate/West Stadium areas on the west side. Downtown contains a mix of 19th- and early-20th-century structures and modern-style buildings, as well as a farmers' market in the Kerrytown district. The city's commercial districts are composed mostly of two- to four-story structures, although downtown and the area near Briarwood Mall contain a small number of high-rise buildings.\nAnn Arbor's residential neighborhoods contain architectural styles ranging from classic 19th- and early 20th-century designs to ranch-style houses. Among these homes are a number of kit houses built in the early 20th century. Contemporary-style houses are farther from the downtown district. Surrounding the University of Michigan campus are houses and apartment complexes occupied primarily by student renters. The 19th-century buildings and streetscape of the Old West Side neighborhood have been preserved virtually intact; in 1972, the district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), and it is further protected by city ordinances and a nonprofit preservation group.\nClimate.\nAnn Arbor has a typically Midwestern humid continental climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Dfa\"), which is influenced by the Great Lakes. There are four distinct seasons: winters are cold and snowy, with average highs around . Summers are warm to hot and humid, with average highs around and with slightly more precipitation. Spring and autumn are transitional between the two. The area experiences lake effect weather, primarily in the form of increased cloudiness during late fall and early winter. The monthly daily average temperature in July is , while the same figure for January is . Temperatures reach or exceed on 10 days, and drop to or below on 4.6 nights. Precipitation tends to be the heaviest during the summer months, but most frequent during winter. Snowfall, which normally occurs from November to April but occasionally starts in October, averages per season. The lowest recorded temperature was on February 11, 1885, and the highest recorded temperature was on July 24, 1934.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nAnn Arbor has seen consistent growth in population between all decennial censuses since 1860 with the exception of the 2010 census which reported almost no growth from the previous census. As of the 2020 U.S. census, there were 123,851 people and 49,337 households residing in the city, with a population density of . The racial makeup of the city including Hispanics in the racial categories was 67.6% White, 6.8% Black, 0.2% Native American, 15.7% Asian, 0.1% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 1.8% from other races, and 7.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race made up 5.5% of the population. Ann Arbor has a small population of Arab Americans, including students as well as local Lebanese and Palestinians, and a large community of Japanese nationals.\nAccording to the 2022 American Community Survey estimates, out of 49,337 households, 33.8% were married-couple households, 9.8% were cohabiting couple households, 26.1% had a male householder with no spouse present, and 30.4% had a female householder with no spouse present. 18.4% of the households had individuals under the age of 18 living in them, and 20.1% had individuals over age 65 living in them. The average household size was 2.22 people and the average family size was 2.78 people. The median age was 25.9; 12.2% of the population was under age 18, and 12.3% was age 65 or older. The percentage of city residents age 25 years or older with at least a high school degree was 97.8% while 77.5% had a bachelor's degree or higher, which is higher than the U.S. national percentage of 89.1% for persons age 25 years or older with at least a high school degree and 34.3% with a bachelor's degree or higher.\nThe median household income in 2022 was $78,740 (versus the U.S. national figure of $75,149), with family households having a median income of $126,292. The per capita income for the city was $52,276, which is higher than the U.S. national per capita income of $41,261. Males working full-time jobs had median earnings of $86,970 compared to $61,543 for females. Out of the 109,973 people with a determined poverty status, 23.1% were below the poverty line compared to the U.S. national poverty rate of 11.1%; the age group with the highest percentage below the poverty level was persons between 18 and 34 years at 43.0% while other age groups have percentages between 2.7% and 7.7%. Further, 3.5% of minors and 7.7% of seniors were below the poverty line.\nCrime.\nAccording to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program in 2022, Ann Arbor had 371 reported violent crimes (which include homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) and 2069 reported property crimes (which include arson, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft). With a violent crime rate of 309.5 per 100,000 people, the city's violent crime rate is lower than Michigan's rate of 461 per 100,000 people and the U.S. national rate of 380.7 per 100,000 people. However, Ann Arbor's property crime rate, at 1726.0 per 100,000 people, is higher than Michigan's property crime rate of 1536.8 per 100,000 people and lower than the U.S. national property crime rate of 1954.4 per 100,000 people.\nEconomy.\nThe University of Michigan shapes Ann Arbor's economy significantly. It employs about 30,000 workers which includes about 12,000 in the medical center. Other employers are drawn to the area by the university's research and development money, and by its graduates. High tech, health services and biotechnology are other major components of the city's economy; numerous medical offices, laboratories, and associated companies are located in the city. Automobile manufacturers, such as General Motors and Visteon, also employ residents.\nHigh tech companies have located in the area since the 1930s, when International Radio Corporation introduced the first mass-produced AC/DC radio (the Kadette, in 1931) as well as the first pocket radio (the Kadette Jr., in 1933). Current firms include Arbor Networks (provider of Internet traffic engineering and security systems), Arbortext (provider of XML-based publishing software), JSTOR (the digital scholarly journal archive), Truven Health Analytics, and ProQuest, which includes UMI. Duo Security, a cloud-based access security provider of two-factor authentication, is headquartered in Ann Arbor. It was formerly a unicorn and continues to be headquartered in Ann Arbor after its acquisition by Cisco Systems. In November 2021, semiconductor test equipment company KLA Corporation opened a new North American headquarters in Ann Arbor.\nAnn Arbor is the home to Internet2 and the Merit Network, a not-for-profit research and education computer network. Both are located in the South State Commons 2 building on South State Street. The city is also home to a secondary office of Google's AdWords program\u2014the company's primary revenue stream. As of 2022,[ [update]] Ann Arbor is home to more than twenty video game and XR studios of varying sizes. The city plays host to a regional chapter of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) which hosts monthly meetups, presentations, and educational events.\nThe city is the home of many research and engineering centers, including the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory that is operated by NOAA and the Michigan Tech Research Institute. Other research centers sited in the city are the United States Environmental Protection Agency's National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory and the Toyota Technical Center. The city is also home to National Sanitation Foundation International (NSF International), the nonprofit non-governmental organization that develops generally accepted standards for a variety of public health related industries and subject areas.\nNon-high tech companies in Ann Arbor include Domino's Pizza, headquartered on Domino's Farms, a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired complex just northeast of the city. Another Ann Arbor-based company is Zingerman's Delicatessen, which serves sandwiches and has developed businesses under a variety of brand names. Avfuel, a global supplier of aviation fuels and services, is headquartered in Ann Arbor as is Pinkerton, a detective and private security firm. Many cooperative enterprises were founded in the city; among those that remain are the People's Food Co-op and the Inter-Cooperative Council at the University of Michigan, a student housing cooperative founded in 1937. There are also three cohousing communities\u2014Sunward, Great Oak, and Touchstone\u2014located immediately to the west of the city limits.\nCulture.\nSeveral performing arts groups and facilities are on the University of Michigan's campus, as are museums dedicated to art, archaeology, and natural history and sciences. Founded in 1879, the University Musical Society is an independent performing arts organization that presents over 60 events each year, bringing international artists in music, dance, and theater. Since 2001 Shakespeare in the Arb has presented one play by Shakespeare each June, in a large park near downtown. Regional and local performing arts groups not associated with the university include the Ann Arbor Civic Theatre, the Arbor Opera Theater, the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, The Ark, and Performance Network Theatre. State Theatre and the adjacent Michigan Theater are a movie palace and a performing arts center, respectively. Another unique piece of artistic expression in Ann Arbor is the fairy doors. These small portals are examples of installation art and can be found throughout the downtown area.\nThe Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum, an interactive science center, is located in a renovated and expanded historic downtown fire station. The Ann Arbor Art Center is a nonprofit that organizes art activities and exhibitions. Aside from the Ann Arbor District Library, which maintains four branch outlets in addition to its main downtown building, and being the home to the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, Ann Arbor ranks first among U.S. cities in the number of booksellers and books sold per capita.\nSeveral annual events\u2014many of them centered on performing and visual arts\u2014draw visitors to Ann Arbor. One such event is the Ann Arbor Art Fairs, a set of four concurrent juried fairs held on downtown streets. Scheduled on Thursday through Sunday of the third week of July, the fairs draw upward of half a million visitors. Another is the Ann Arbor Film Festival, held during the third week of March, which receives more than 2,500 submissions annually from more than 40 countries and serves as one of a handful of Academy Award\u2013qualifying festivals in the United States.\nAnn Arbor has a long history of openness to marijuana, given Ann Arbor's decriminalization of cannabis, the large number of medical marijuana dispensaries in the city (one dispensary, called People's Co-op, was directly across the street from Michigan Stadium until zoning forced it to move one mile to the west), the large number of pro-marijuana residents, and the annual Hash Bash: an event that is held on the first Saturday of April. Until (at least) the successful passage of Michigan's medical marijuana law, the event had arguably strayed from its initial intent, although for years, a number of attendees have received serious legal responses due to marijuana use on University of Michigan property, which does not fall under the city's progressive and compassionate ticketing program.\nA person from Ann Arbor is called an \"Ann Arborite\", and many long-time residents call themselves \"townies\". The city itself is often called \"A\u00b2\" (\"A-squared\") or \"A2\" (\"A two\") or \"AA\", \"The Deuce\" (mainly by Chicagoans), and \"Tree Town\". With tongue-in-cheek reference to the city's liberal political leanings, some occasionally refer to Ann Arbor as \"The People's Republic of Ann Arbor\" or \"25 square miles surrounded by reality.\" In \"A Prairie Home Companion\" broadcast from Ann Arbor, Garrison Keillor described Ann Arbor as \"a city where people discuss socialism, but only in the fanciest restaurants.\" Ann Arbor sometimes appears on citation indexes as an author, instead of a location, often with the academic degree \"MI\", a misunderstanding of the abbreviation for Michigan.\nSports.\nAnn Arbor is a major center for college sports, most notably at the University of Michigan. Several well-known college sports facilities exist in the city, including Michigan Stadium, the largest American football stadium and the third-largest stadium of any kind in the world with a capacity of 107,601. The stadium is colloquially known as \"The Big House\" due to its status as the largest American football stadium. Crisler Center and Yost Ice Arena play host to the school's basketball (both men's and women's) and ice hockey teams, respectively. Concordia University, a member of the NAIA, also fields sports teams.\nIn semi-professional sports Ann Arbor is represented in the NPSL by AFC Ann Arbor, a soccer club founded in 2014 who call themselves The Mighty Oak.\nGovernment.\nAs the county seat of Washtenaw County, the Washtenaw County Trial Court (22nd Circuit Court) is located in Ann Arbor at the Washtenaw County Courthouse on Main Street. Seven judges serve on the court. The 15th Michigan district court, which serves only the city itself, is located within the Ann Arbor Justice Center, immediately next to city hall. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan and Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit are also located in downtown Ann Arbor, at the federal building on Liberty Street.\nIn the Michigan Legislature, the city is split between Districts 23, 33, 47, and 48 in the Michigan House of Representatives. In the Michigan Senate, Ann Arbor is covered by Districts 14 and 15. Ann Arbor is within the 6th congressional district, currently represented by Debbie Dingell.\nAnn Arbor has a council\u2013manager form of government, with 11 voting members: the mayor and 10 city council members. Each of the city's five wards are represented by two council members, with the mayor elected at-large during midterm years. Half of the council members are elected in midterm years, with the other in general election years. The mayor is the presiding officer of the city council and has the power to appoint all council committee members as well as board and commission members, with the approval of the city council. The current mayor of Ann Arbor is Christopher Taylor, a Democrat who was elected as mayor in 2014. Day-to-day city operations are managed by a city administrator chosen by the city council. While Democrats, as of 2024,[ [update]] hold the mayorship and all ten council seats, Ann Arbor has two major political factions. A major source of this local divide is differences in views on the city's growth.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nPublic schools are part of the Ann Arbor Public Schools (AAPS) district. AAPS has one of the country's leading music programs. For the 2021\u20132022 school year, 17,070 students were enrolled in the Ann Arbor Public Schools. Notable schools include Pioneer, Huron, Skyline, Community high schools, Pathways to Success Academic Campus, and Ann Arbor Open School. The district has a preschool center with both free and tuition-based programs for preschoolers in the district. The University High School, a \"demonstration school\" with teachers drawn from the University of Michigan's education program, was part of the school system from 1924 to 1968.\nAnn Arbor is home to several private schools, including Clonlara School, Michigan Islamic Academy, and Greenhills School, a prep school. The city is also home to several charter schools such as Central Academy (Michigan) (PreK\u201312) of the Global Educational Excellence (GEE) charter school company.\nHigher education.\nThe University of Michigan dominates the city of Ann Arbor, providing the city with its distinctive college-town character. University buildings are located in the center of the city and the campus is directly adjacent to the State Street and South University downtown areas.\nOther local colleges and universities include Concordia University Ann Arbor, a Lutheran liberal-arts institution. Washtenaw Community College is located in neighboring Ann Arbor Township. In 2000, the Ave Maria School of Law, a Roman Catholic law school established by Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan, opened in northeastern Ann Arbor, but the school moved to Ave Maria, Florida in 2009, and the Thomas M. Cooley Law School acquired the former Ave Maria buildings for use as a branch campus.\nMedia.\n\"The Ann Arbor News\", owned by the Michigan-based Booth Newspapers chain, was the major newspaper serving Ann Arbor and the rest of Washtenaw County. The newspaper ended its 174-year daily print run in 2009 due to economic difficulties, and began producing two printed editions a week under the name AnnArbor.com. Ann Arbor has been said to be the first significant city to lose its only daily paper. The publication resumed using its former name in 2013, and also produces a daily digital edition named MLive.com. Another Ann Arbor-based publication that has ceased production was the \"Ann Arbor Paper\", a free monthly. The \"Ann Arbor Chronicle\", an online newspaper, covered local news, including meetings of the library board, county commission, and DDA until September 3, 2014.\nCurrent publications in the city include the \"Ann Arbor Journal\" (\"A2 Journal\"), a weekly community newspaper; the \"Ann Arbor Observer\", a free monthly local magazine; and \"Current\", a free entertainment-focused alt-weekly. The \"Ann Arbor Business Review\" covers local business in the area. \"Car and Driver\" magazine and \"Automobile Magazine\" are also based in Ann Arbor. The University of Michigan is served by many student publications, including the independent \"Michigan Daily\" student newspaper, which reports on local, state, and regional issues in addition to campus news.\nFour major AM radio stations based in or near Ann Arbor are WAAM 1600, a conservative news and talk station; WLBY 1290, a business news and talk station; WDEO 990, Catholic radio; and WTKA 1050, which is primarily a sports station. The city's FM stations include NPR affiliate WUOM 91.7; country station WWWW 102.9; and adult-alternative station WQKL 107.1. Freeform station WCBN-FM 88.3 is a local community radio/college radio station operated by the students of the University of Michigan featuring noncommercial, eclectic music and public-affairs programming. The city is also served by public and commercial radio broadcasters in Ypsilanti, the Lansing/Jackson area, Detroit, Windsor, and Toledo.\nAnn Arbor is part of the Detroit television market. WPXD channel 31, the owned-and-operated Detroit outlet of the ION Television network, is licensed to the city. Until its sign-off on August 31, 2017, WHTV channel 18, a MyNetworkTV-affiliated station for the Lansing market, was broadcast from a transmitter in Lyndon Township, west of Ann Arbor. Community Television Network (CTN) is a city-provided cable television channel with production facilities open to city residents and nonprofit organizations. Detroit and Toledo-area radio and television stations also serve Ann Arbor, and stations from Lansing and Windsor, Ontario, can be seen in parts of the area.\nInfrastructure.\nHealthcare.\nThe University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) includes University Hospital, C.S. Mott Children's Hospital and Women's Hospital in its core complex. UMHS also operates out-patient clinics and facilities throughout the city. The area's other major medical centers include a large facility operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs in Ann Arbor, and Saint Joseph Mercy Hospital in nearby Superior Township.\nUtilities.\nThe city provides sewage disposal and water supply services, with water coming from the Huron River and groundwater sources. There are two water-treatment plants, one main and three outlying reservoirs, four pump stations, and two water towers. These facilities serve the city, which is divided into five water districts. The city's water department also operates four dams along the Huron River\u2014Argo, Barton, Geddes, and Superior\u2014of which Barton and Superior provide hydroelectric power.\nThe city also offers waste management services, with Recycle Ann Arbor handling recycling service. Other utilities are provided by private entities. Electrical power and gas are provided by DTE Energy. AT&T Inc. is the primary wired telephone service provider for the area. Cable TV service is primarily provided by Comcast.\nA plume of the industrial solvent dioxane is migrating under the city from the contaminated Gelman Sciences, Inc. property on the westside of Ann Arbor. As of 2021,[ [update]] the average measured concentration was found to be 201.19 ppb, with the maximum being 6.000 ppm. While the United States Environmental Protection Agency does not impose a federal limit on the level of the contaminant allowed in drinking water, the World Health Organization suggests a limit of 35 ppb. The Gelman plume is a potential threat to one of the City of Ann Arbor's drinking water sources, the Huron River, which flows through downtown Ann Arbor.\nTransportation.\nThe streets in downtown Ann Arbor conform to a grid pattern, though this pattern is less common in the surrounding areas. Major roads branch out from the downtown district to the highways surrounding the city. The city is belted by three freeways: Interstate\u00a094 (I-94), which runs along the southern and western portion of the city; U.S. Highway\u00a023 (US\u00a023), which primarily runs along the eastern edge of Ann Arbor; and M-14, which runs along the northern edge of the city. Other nearby highways include US\u00a012 (Michigan Avenue), M-17 (Washtenaw Avenue), and M-153 (Ford Road). Several of the major surface arteries lead to the I-94/M-14 interchange in the west, US\u00a023 in the east, and the city's southern areas. The Washtenaw County Border-to-Border Trail connects Ann Arbor to Ypsilanti, mostly along the Huron River, for pedestrians, bicycles and other non-motorized transportation.\nThe Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority (AAATA), which brands itself as \"TheRide\", operates public bus services throughout the city and nearby Ypsilanti. The AAATA operates the Blake Transit Center on Fourth Ave. in downtown Ann Arbor, and the Ypsilanti Transit Center. A separate zero-fare bus service operates within and between the University of Michigan campuses. In 2019, 36% of trips in Ann Arbor were taken by walking, biking or transit.\nSince April 2012, the \"AirRide\" connects to Detroit Metro Airport a dozen times a day. The Michigan Flyer, a service operated by Indian Trails, cooperates with AAATA for their AirRide and additionally offers bus service to East Lansing. Greyhound Lines provides intercity bus service. Megabus has direct service to Chicago, Illinois, while a bus service is provided by Amtrak Thruway for rail passengers making connections to services in East Lansing and Toledo, Ohio.\nAmtrak, which provides service to the city at the Ann Arbor Train Station, operates the \"Wolverine\" train between Chicago and Pontiac via Detroit. The present-day train station neighbors the city's old Michigan Central Depot, which was renovated as a restaurant in 1970. Ann Arbor Municipal Airport is a small, city-run general aviation airport located south of I-94.\nSister cities.\nAnn Arbor has eight sister cities:\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2246960": "Jim Buckmaster\nAmerican businessman\nJim Buckmaster (born August 14, 1962) is an American computer programmer who has been the CEO of Craigslist since 2000.\nEarly life.\nBuckmaster was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He graduated with a bachelor's from Virginia Tech and attended medical school at the University of Michigan. However, he dropped out in 1986, citing a lack of interest. He remained a student for the next ten years by taking at least one class for credit, therefore maintaining certain student privileges like gym access. During this time, he audited classics courses, did data entry, and eventually taught himself how to code.\nIn the early 1990s, he worked as a programmer for the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, where he designed the organization's web interface. Buckmaster later got a job in San Jose, California and moved to San Francisco, where he commuted 5 hours roundtrip to work. During the dot-com bubble, he worked as a webmaster for a short lived tech company, Creditland, in San Francisco.\nCraigslist.\nIn late 1999, Buckmaster posted his resume onto Craigslist, where he was recruited by Craig Newmark, the founder of the website. As lead programmer, he contributed to the site's multi-city architecture, search engine, discussion forums, flagging system, self-posting process, homepage design, personals categories, and best-of-craigslist. In November 2000, he was promoted to the post of CEO.\nBuckmaster wrote a series of haiku that appear in lieu of error messages on craigslist:\n\"\"The little poems \u2014he has written appear on the screen at times when users might expect a helpful message from the staff. They function as a gnomic clue that what you are seeing is intentional, while discouraging further conversation or inquiry. For instance, start too many conversations in the forums and your new threads may fail to show up. Instead, you will see this:\"\n'Frogs croak and gulls cry<br>\nsilently a river floods<br>\na red leaf floats by.'\"\nReferring to the purple peace sign he created that serves as craigslist's symbol and favicon:\n\"\"The only topic he can remember their disagreeing about is the peace sign that adorns the craigslist Web address. \"Craig thought it was associated with the hippies and that hippies were discredited,\" Buckmaster says. \"Whereas I think peace is among the most desirable things you can have.\"\"\nOn the topic of craigslist's company culture:\n\"\"The long-running tech-industry war between engineers and marketers has been ended at craigslist by the simple expedient of having no marketers. Only programmers, customer service reps, and accounting staff work at craigslist. There is no business development, no human resources, no sales. As a result, there are no meetings. The staff communicates by email and IM. This is a nice environment for employees of a certain temperament. \"Not that we're a Shangri-La or anything,\" Buckmaster says, \"but no technical people have ever left the company of their own accord.\"\"\nBuckmaster also manages the Craigslist Charitable Fund and serves as executive producer for craigslist TV.\nPersonal life.\nA fan of Noam Chomsky, Buckmaster has been accused of being \"anti-capitalistic\", which Buckmaster claims is an inaccurate characterization:\n\"We are not so much anti-capitalist (...) We're fortunate enough to have built a very healthy business, even though we haven't attempted to. All we have done is stop short of trying to become insanely wealthy. We have met billionaires and it sounds funny but it's not necessarily a bed of roses to have that kind of money. (...) Their life becomes about figuring out how to employ all that money either by philanthropy or other means. So we don't consider it that revolutionary to have stopped short of that.\"\n\"Companies looking to maximize revenue need to throw as many revenue-generating opportunities at users as they will tolerate,\" Buckmaster says. \"We have absolutely no interest in doing that, which I think has been instrumental to the success of craigslist.\"\nBuckmaster was once denounced on Fox News by Reverend Jerry Falwell.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["2246960", "2067"], "permutation_1": ["2067", "2246960"], "permutation_2": ["2067", "2246960"], "permutation_3": ["2067", "2246960"]}
{"id": "2hop__124807_135019", "docs_added": {"20665": "Minos\nMythological king of Crete\nIn Greek mythology, Minos (; , ]) was a king of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa. Every nine years, he made King Aegeus pick seven young boys and seven young girls to be sent to Daedalus's creation, the labyrinth, to be eaten by the Minotaur. After his death, King Minos became a judge of the dead in the underworld alongside Rhadamanthus and Aeacus.\nArcheologist Sir Arthur Evans used King Minos as the namesake for the Minoan civilization of Crete. The Minoan palace at Knossos is sometimes referred to as the \"Palace of Minos\" though there is no evidence that Minos was a real person.\nLiterary Minos.\nMinos appears in Greek literature as the king of Knossos as early as Homer's \"Iliad\" and \"Odyssey\". Thucydides tells us Minos was the most ancient man known to build a navy. He reigned over Crete and the islands of the Aegean Sea three generations before the Trojan War. He lived at Knossos for nine years, where he received instruction from Zeus in the legislation he gave to the island. He was the author of the Cretan constitution and the founder of its naval supremacy.\nOn the Athenian stage, Minos was one who had strong character, but was also a cruel tyrant. When Asterius died, Minos was boasting to himself that he deserved the rule while shunning the gods. According to Homer, Minos conversed with Zeus every nine years, for educational purposes. Being the only one who received lessons from Zeus made Minos receive great praise. However, he was the heartless exactor of the tribute of Athenian youths to feed to the Minotaur, in revenge for the death of his son Androgeus during a riot (see Theseus). While Minos had stern character and was the law of the land, he was also cruel; this made Minos one who was respected but also greatly feared.\nLater rationalization.\nTo reconcile the contradictory aspects of his character, as well as to explain how Minos governed Crete over a period spanning so many generations, two kings by the name of Minos were assumed by later poets and rationalizing mythologists, such as Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch - \"putting aside the mythological element\", as he claims - in his life of Theseus.\nAccording to this view, the first King Minos was the son of Zeus and Europa and the brother of Rhadamanthys and Sarpedon. This was the 'good' king Minos, and he was held in such esteem by the Olympian gods that, after he died, he was made one of the three \"Judges of the Dead\", alongside his brother Rhadamanthys and half-brother Aeacus. The wife of this \"Minos I\" was said to be Itone (daughter of Lyktos) or Crete (a nymph or daughter of his stepfather Asterion), and he had a single son named Lycastus, his successor as King of Crete.\nLycastus had a son named Minos, after his grandfather, born by Lycastus' wife, Ida, daughter of Corybas. \"Minos II\"\u2014the \"bad\" king Minos\u2014is the son of this Lycastus, and was a far more colorful character than his father and grandfather. This is the Minos in the myths of Theseus, Pasipha\u00eb, the Minotaur, Daedalus, Glaucus, and Nisus. Unlike Minos I, Minos II fathered numerous children, including Androgeus, Catreus, Deucalion, Ariadne, Phaedra, and Glaucus\u2014all born to him by his wife, Pasipha\u00eb. Through Deucalion, he was the grandfather of King Idomeneus, who led the Cretans to the Trojan War.\nFamily.\nBy his wife, Pasipha\u00eb (or some say Crete), the daughter of the Sun (Helios), and mother of the Minotaur, he fathered Ariadne, Androgeus, Deucalion, Phaedra, Glaucus, Catreus, Acacallis, and Xenodice. By a nymph, Pareia, he had four sons, Eurymedon, Nephalion, Chryses, and Philolaus, whom Heracles killed in revenge for the murder of the latter's two companions. By Dexithea, one of the Telchines, he had a son called Euxanthius. By Androgeneia of Phaistos, he had Asterion, who commanded the Cretan contingent in the war between Dionysus and the Indians. Also given as his children are Euryale, possibly the mother of Orion with Poseidon, and Pholegander, eponym of the island Pholegandros. Minos, along with his brothers, Rhadamanthys and Sarpedon, was raised by King Asterion (or Asterius) of Crete. When Asterion died, his throne was claimed by Minos, who, according to some sources, banished his brothers.\nMythological Minos.\nAsterion, king of Crete, adopted the three sons of Zeus and Europa: Minos, Sarpedon, and Rhadamanthus. According to the \"Odyssey\" (Book XIX l. 203, as interpreted by Plato in \"Laws\" 624), Minos consulted with Zeus every nine years. He got his laws straight from Zeus himself. When Minos' son Androgeos won the Panathenaic Games, the king, Aegeus, sent him to Marathon to fight a bull, resulting in the death of Androgeos. Outraged, Minos went to Athens to avenge his son, and on the way, he camped at Megara, where Nisos lived. Learning that Nisos' strength came from his hair, Minos gained the love of Scylla and her aid in cutting off her father's hair so that he could conquer the city. After his triumph, he punished Scylla for her treachery against her father by tying her to a boat and dragging her until she drowned. On arriving in Attica, he asked Zeus to punish the city, and the god struck it with plague and hunger. An oracle told the Athenians to meet any of Minos' demands if they wanted to escape the punishment. Minos then asked Athens to send seven boys and seven girls to Crete every nine years to be sacrificed to the Minotaur (the offspring from the zoophilic encounter of Minos' wife Pasipha\u00eb with the Cretan Bull that the king refused to surrender to Poseidon) which he had placed within a labyrinth he commanded his architect Daedalus to build. The Minotaur was defeated by the hero Theseus with the help of Minos' daughter Ariadne.\nGlaucus.\nGlaucus was playing with a ball or mouse and suddenly disappeared one day. The Curetes told the Cretans, \"A marvelous creature has been born amongst you: whoever finds the true likeness of this creature will also find the child.\"\nThree times a day, the calf changed color from white to red to black. Polyidus of Argos observed the similarity to the ripening of the fruit of the mulberry plant, and Minos sent him to find Glaucus.\nSearching for the boy, Polyidus saw an owl driving bees away from a wine cellar in Minos' palace. Inside the wine cellar was a cask of honey, with Glaucus dead inside. Minos demanded Glaucus be brought back to life, though Polyidus objected. Minos ordered Polyidus to be entombed with the body. When a snake appeared nearby, Polyidus killed it immediately. Another snake came for the first, and after seeing its mate dead, the second serpent left and brought back an herb, bringing the first snake back to life. Following this example, Polyidus used the same herb to resurrect Glaucus.\nMinos refused to let Polyidus leave Crete until he taught Glaucus the art of divination. Polyidus did so, but then, at the last moment before leaving, he asked Glaucus to spit in his mouth. Glaucus did so and forgot everything he had been taught.\nPoseidon, Daedalus and Pasipha\u00eb.\nMinos justified his accession as king and prayed to Poseidon for a sign. Poseidon sent a giant white bull out of the sea. Minos was committed to sacrificing the bull to Poseidon but then decided to substitute a different bull. Poseidon cursed Pasipha\u00eb, Minos' wife, in rage, with a mad passion for the bull. Daedalus built her a wooden cow, which she hid inside. The bull mated with the wooden cow, and Pasipha\u00eb was impregnated by the bull, giving birth to a horrible monster, again named Asterius, the Minotaur, half-man half bull. Daedalus then built a complicated \"chamber that with its tangled windings perplexed the outward way\" called the Labyrinth, and Minos put the Minotaur in it. To make sure no one would ever know the secret of who the Minotaur was and how to get out of the Labyrinth (Daedalus knew both of these things), Minos imprisoned Daedalus and his son, Icarus, along with the monster. Daedalus and Icarus flew away on wings Daedalus invented, but Icarus' wings melted because he flew too close to the sun. Icarus fell into the sea and drowned.\nTheseus.\nMinos' son Androgeus won every game in a contest hosted by Aegeas of Athens. Alternatively, the other contestants were jealous of Androgeus and killed him. Minos was angry and declared war on Athens. He offered the Athenians peace if they sent Minos seven young men and seven virgin maidens to feed the Minotaur yearly (which corresponded directly to the Minoans' meticulous records of lunar alignments \u2013 a full moon falls on the equinoxes once every eight years). This continued until Theseus killed the Minotaur with the help of Ariadne, Minos' lovestruck daughter.\nNisus.\nMinos was also part of the King Nisus story. Nisus was King of Megara and was invincible as long as a lock of crimson hair still existed, hidden in his white hair. Minos attacked Megara, but Nisus knew he could not be beaten because he still had his lock of crimson hair. His daughter, Scylla, fell in love with Minos and proved it by cutting the crimson hair off her father's head. Nisus died, and Megara fell to Crete. Minos spurned Scylla for disobeying her father. She was changed into a shearer bird, relentlessly pursued by her father, who was a falcon.\nDeath.\nMinos searched for Daedalus by traveling from city to city, asking a riddle; he presented a spiral seashell and asked for it to be strung all the way through. When he reached Camicus, Sicily, King Cocalus, knowing Daedalus would be able to solve the riddle, fetched the old man. He tied the string to an ant, which walked through the seashell, stringing it all the way through. Minos then knew Daedalus was in the court of King Cocalus and demanded he be handed over. Cocalus managed to convince him to take a bath first; then Cocalus' daughters and Daedalus, with Minos trapped in the tub, scalded him to death with boiling water.\nAfter his death, Minos became a judge of the dead in Hades together with his half-brother Aeacus and his full-brother Rhadamanthus. Rhadamanthus judged the souls of Asians, Aeacus judged Europeans, and Minos had the deciding vote.\nMinos in art.\nOn Cretan coins, Minos is represented as bearded, wearing a diadem, curly-haired, haughty, and dignified, like the traditional portraits of his reputed father, Zeus. He frequently occurs on painted vases and sarcophagus bas-reliefs, with Aeacus and Rhadamanthus as underworld judges and in connection with the Minotaur and Theseus.\nIn Michelangelo's famous fresco, \"The Last Judgment\" (located in the Sistine Chapel), Minos appears as a judge of the underworld, surrounded by a crowd of devils. With his tail coiled around him and two donkey ears (symbol of stupidity), Minos judges the damned as they are brought down to hell (see \"Inferno\", Second Circle).\nIn poetry.\nIn the \"Aeneid\" of Virgil, Minos was the judge of those who had been given the death penalty on a false charge - Minos sits with a huge urn and decides whether a soul should go to Elysium or Tartarus with the help of a silent jury. Radamanthus, his brother, is a judge at Tartarus who decides upon suitable punishments for sinners there.\nIn Dante Alighieri's \"Divine Comedy\" story \"Inferno\", Minos is depicted as having a snake-like tail. He sits at the entrance to the second circle in the \"Inferno\", which is the beginning of Hell proper. There, he judges the sins of each soul and assigns it to its appropriate punishment by indicating the circle to which it must descend. He does this by circling his tail around his body the appropriate number of times. He can also speak to clarify the soul's location within the circle indicated by the wrapping of his tail.\nAstronomy.\nMinor planet 6239 Minos is named after Minos. Its orbit being relatively close to Earth's, it is deemed as a potentially hazardous asteroid.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "5813349": "Nephalion\nIn Greek mythology, Nephalion (Ancient Greek: \u039d\u03b7\u03c6\u03b1\u03bb\u03af\u03c9\u03bd\u03b1) was one of the four sons of Minos, who lived on the Greek island of Paros. Nephalion and his brothers Eurymedon, Khryses, and Philolaus rebelled against Herakles and murdered two sailors from one of his vessels that had washed up ashore on the rocks of Paros.\nReferences.\nSources\nCitations\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4050623": "Fire from Heaven\n1969 historical novel by Mary Renault\nFire from Heaven is a 1969 historical novel by Mary Renault about the childhood and youth of Alexander the Great. It reportedly was a major inspiration for the Oliver Stone film \"Alexander\". The book was nominated for the \"Lost Man Booker Prize\" of 1970, \"a contest delayed by 40 years because a reshuffling of the fledgeling competition's rules\", but lost out to \"Troubles\" by J. G. Farrell.\nPlot summary.\nConcise Summary.\n\"Fire from Heaven\" begins with Alexander as a young child in the court of his father, Philip of Macedon, and closes with the immediate aftermath of his father's assassination at Aegae, the event which led Alexander to assume power. The novel deals with the relationship between Philip and Queen Olympias and Alexander's changing loyalties to them, Alexander's tuition under Aristotle, Alexander's sexuality and relationship with his friend and future General Hephaistion, and Alexander's growing prowess as a soldier during his father's conquest of the Greek states. As a novel concerned with Alexander's youth, it does not deal with his conquest of the Persian Empire beyond foreshadowing.\nMain locations.\nPella \u2013 the opening scene of the novel, capital city of Macedon. Pella is presented as a place of constant political struggles. It is where Alexander's childhood is spent and where most of the central relationships are formed.\nAigi \u2013 the closing scene of the novel, the old capital of Macedon, located higher in the mountains. It features a fortress near a waterfall, and is presented as the site of many important character shifts, such as loss of virginity, murder, and transformative religious experiences.\nMieza \u2013 site of a school for Alexander and the other sons of important Macedonian military leaders. Mieza is presented as a sort of Arcadian place of refuge from the wider politics of Macedon, a place of comradeship, learning, and love.\nThrace \u2013 Macedon's neighbor to the northeast. Thrace is presented as a wild, remote region which Philip's soldiers have occupied. Even more so than Macedon, Thrace remains a rough land of feuding warlords. It is noted for the blue tattoos of its inhabitants. Thrace is where Alexander first exhibits his military bravery and leadership, and where he and Hephaestion are hardened to the gruesome realities of war.\nAthens \u2013 Macedon's antagonistic neighbor to the south. Athens is represented in the novel as past its glory days and ruled by petty, squabbling demagogues. It still, however, retains an aura of great respect for both Alexander and Philip as the birthplace of Greece's high culture.\nChaeronea \u2013 site of a massive battle which decides whether Philip's military hegemony will be able to spread into the more culturally advanced states of southern Greece.\nPerinthos \u2013 a former Macedonian ally to the east which wavers in its support and is invaded by Philip. It is here that Alexander and Philip bond over a shared love of military tactics and Alexander saves Philip's life during an attempted insurrection.\nEpiros \u2013 Macedon's neighbour to the west. Epiros is presented as a well-run, prosperous region in alliance with Macedon. It is the homeland of Olympias, who is daughter and sister of two of its successive kings. The marriage of Olympias to Philip as his chief wife ensures that Epiros remains friendly to Macedon, so that Philip can concentrate his army on northern, southern, and eastern expansion.\nPersian Empire \u2013 though it is never visited in the novel, Persia is a looming presence affecting everything that happens in Macedon and its neighbors. It is the eventual goal of both Alexander and Philip to conquer Persia and its Great King. Persia is the old enemy invader of Greece and a land of fabled, opulent wealth.\nPhocis \u2013 though it is never visited in the novel, Phocis serves as the pretext for Philip to become involved in the military disputes of southern Greece. Phocis' sacrilegious cultivation of fields meant to be reserved as holy land (and the resulting wealth which threatens their neighbours) is the impetus for the Third Sacred War.\nMain characters.\nAlexander \u2013 The central character of the novel, followed from the age of 4 until his taking power over Macedon.\nPhilip \u2013 King of Macedon and Alexander's legal father. Alexander and Philip have an intense love-hate relationship. A central theme of the novel is whether Philip, who is often portrayed as arrogant, brutish, and crass, deserves the loyalty and love of Alexander. This is often tied to whether or not Philip is also Alexander's biological father.\nOlympias \u2013 Alexander mother and Philip's chief wife. She is portrayed as a strong-willed survivor who uses emotional blackmail and a system of spies to protect her interests against her all-powerful husband. Through the novel, Alexander's relationship towards his mother changes from unswerving devotion to a more restrained loyalty.\nHephaestion \u2013 Teenaged friend of Alexander who becomes his unswervingly loyal life partner.\nPausanias \u2013 Bodyguard and lover of Philip, later elevated to captain of the bodyguards as compensation for a humiliating attack by a rival.\nDemosthenes \u2013 Athenian political orator, diplomat, and soldier, portrayed as arrogant, selfish, and venal (The strongly negative portrayal of Demosthenes in the novel has been one of the main criticisms leveled against it). Demosthenes is the most visible antagonist against Philip's drive for empire.\nPhoinix \u2013 Alexander's pedagogue, who provides him emotional solace and imaginative inspiration.\nLeonidas \u2013 Olympias' uncle and Alexander's great-uncle. Leonidas serves as regent of Macedon during one of Philip's absences and seeks to toughen Alexander into an obedient, hard soldier.\nAttalos \u2013 One of Phliip's generals. Early in the novel he attacks Pausanias as part of a romantic quarrel of honor. Later in the novel, he makes a bid for power by trying to replace Olympias with his own niece as mother of the next king.\nAntipatros \u2013 Loyal regent during one of Philip's absences, Antipatros helps train Alexander in the civic demands of state administration. He is also the father of Kassandros, who is a minor villain in the story.\nChapter One.\nThe novel begins with the memorable opening line, \"The child was wakened by the knotting of the snake's coils about his waist.\" Alexander is four years old and his younger sister Kleopatra is still in a cradle. The snake which encircles him is a semi-tame house snake who has escaped from the room of Alexander's mother, Olympias. Alexander sneaks past his nanny, Hellanike, and into his mother's room to return it. The relationship between Alexander and Olympias is portrayed as affectionate and intimate, but he is already aware at a young age that she lies to her husband, Alexander's purported father, Philip, the king of Macedon.\nPhilip, who had been heard earlier singing and yelling drunkenly in the main hall, bursts into the cozy scene & embarrasses Alexander with his nakedness and verbal abuse of Olympias. Olympias responds with mockery of Philip's other lovers, his period as a hostage in Thebes, and the insinuation that Alexander is in fact not Philip's biological son. Phililp throws Alexander from the room, where he is comforted by a guard. Alexander claims he will murder his father when he's old enough, but the guard warns that it would be a sin, and tells Alexander that being abused will toughen him up for the aristocratic male rites of passage of murdering a wild boar and murdering a man. The guard also tells Alexander the tale of Heracles killing snakes as a baby, starting a lifelong fascination with Heracles in Alexander.\nAlexander's family is further revealed when, three years later, he goes on a horse ride with a soldier he admires, Ptolemy. Alexander has heard around the barracks that Ptolemy is also the son of Philip, but Ptolemy explains to Alexander why this should not be repeated, as Ptolemy's mother is married to someone other than Philip. To overcome Alexander's great disappointment, Ptolemy becomes a blood brother with him.\nReturning to the stables, Alexander sees horses dressed in the dazzling wealth of Persia. He learns that two Persian satraps who rebelled against the Great King have been given pardons and will be returning from exile in Macedon. Alexander entertains and questions the envoys who have come to bring them back, gaining useful military information because the amused envoys tell a child more than they would an adult. Alexander also flirts with the handsome youth who attends the envoys, and later dreams of riding off with him to see Persepolis after murdering a group of impudent Persian envoys.\nThe final sequence of Chapter One ends with Alexander allowed to join his mother in a women's rite dedicated to the god Dionysus because Alexander has not yet reached puberty.\nChapter Two.\nWhen Philip goes to war against Chalkidike, he puts Olympias' cold uncle, Leonidas of Epirus in charge as regent, and entrusts him with finding tutors for Alexander, who is now seven years old and considered ready to begin training for manhood. Leonidas forces Alexander into a Spartan lifestyle and the tutors try to tame Alexander's imagination into rote learning. Conditions are somewhat alleviated by an old family friend, Lysimachus of Acarnania, who encourages Alexander's dreams by referring to Alexander as the mythical hero Achilles and himself as Phoinix. In his mind, Alexander equates his father with Achilles' military colleague but personal enemy, Agamemnon.\nAlexander has his first meeting with Hephaestion, although it is brief and they argue.\nPhilip returns from war, bringing crowds of slaves with him. He also marries a woman from Thrace to seal an alliance, causing mad jealousy in Olympias. In retaliation, Olympias appears on stage in a celebratory play, something which is allowed her as a priestess of Dionysos, god of theatre, but is still considered wildly shocking since only men are supposed to appear on stage. In the gossiping crowd afterward, Alexander slashes the leg of a man who he hears insulting his mother. To atone for attacking someone without warning, Alexander sacrifices to Zeus, and believes that the god speaks directly to him during the rite.\nChapter Three.\nAlexander is ten years old. Going to meet with his father, he notes that his father's newest guard, Pausanias of Orestis, has the kind of looks which Philip appreciates in lovers. Philip is preparing to hear envoys from Athens, who are coming to convince him against joining a war against Phocis, because they are afraid of his increasing power spreading into southern Greece. Chief among them is Demosthenes, who attempts to molest Alexander, mistaking him for a slave. Alexander is revenged when he reveals himself as Philip's heir just as Demosthenes is about to speak. Demosthenes is also humiliated because his speech is plagiarized by another envoy, Aeschines.\nAlexander befriends a young Thracian, Lambaros, living at the court as a hostage, despite the snobbery which the other Macedonians display toward him.\nChapter Four.\nAlexander learns eagerly from his tutors, and bemoans the fact that he must sleep when there is so much he wants to do. His music teacher, Epikrates, encourages him to perform due to his great skill on the cithara, but Philip publicly humiliates Alexander for being too good a musician. Epikrates resigns, and Alexander runs away from home. He joins a soldier on leave in a tribal feud in the uplands of Macedon, making his first murder in battle and carrying the head of the victim back to prove his manhood to his father. Alexander refuses to claim the head of a second kill because the face reminds him of his father.\nReturned to the palace, Alexander is given his own retinue of young men-at-arms. At a yearly horse fair, when Alexander is away from them looking at horses, the group gossips that King Philip had taken the guard Pausanias of Orestis as a lover, but then had moved on to someone else. Pausanias had insulted the new lover in jealousy, leading the new lover to be foolishly brave in battle to try to prove himself, and resulting in his death. To get back at Pausanias, the general Attalos, a friend of the dead man, had got Pausanias drunk and let the stable grooms gang rape him. Philip had promoted Pausanias to captain of the royal bodyguard to try to make it up to him, but had not punished Attalos, who was good general.\nAlexander shows amazing courage and skill in taming the horse Bucephalus in front of the assembled chiefs at the horse fair. He re-meets Hephaestion (who he had first met six years previous) and is smitten. Alexander realizes that while talking with Hephaestion, he had forgotten all about running to tell the news of the new horse to his mother, the first time this has happened when he had big news to tell. Alexander burns a great deal of Persian incense to Heracles at a rite and is told by his great-uncle Leonidas not to be so wasteful of Persian riches until he is master of the lands where they grow, a sentiment which Alexander takes to heart.\nChapter Five.\nAlexander is nearly 15 and is studying the military histories of Xenophon. When they are hiding out together on a rooftop, Alexander convinces Hephaestion to climb to a dangerously high pinnacle. Hephaestion, who has become completely infatuated, likens Alexander to Zeus, and himself to Semele, realizing that a relationship with Alexander will always involve danger.\nPhilip leaves to install Alexandros, Olympias' brother, as the new king of Epirus, placing the loyal Antipatros as regent of Macedon. Alexander receives his new tutor, Aristotle, who sets up a school for Alexander and the sons of Philip's generals at Mieza. Among the comrades are Hephaestion, who is now accepted as Alexander's \"shadow\" by everyone, Ptolemy, Harpalos, Philotas, and Kassandros, whom Alexander does not like, but he must be included because he is the heir of the loyal regent Antipatros. At one point, they watch a play about Achilles and Patroclus, which further inspires the bond between Alexander and Hephaestion.\nAfter some time at the school at Mieza, Alexander and his closest comrades are called to join Philip in besieging a fort. A military escort is led by Kleitos, brother of Alexander's former nanny, Hellanike. Alexander fights with great bravery, and interacts personally with the soldiers, earning their admiration. After the fall of the fort, he rescues a woman whose baby has been murdered, and whom Kassandros was attempting to rape. In an ensuing fight, the woman nearly kills Kassandros, and he is packed off home in disgrace. Alexander visits his boyhood friend, the former Thracian hostage Lambaros, on the return trip.\nBack at school, the young men are shocked to hear of the torture and death of Hermias of Atarneus, a friend of Aristotle and loyal ally of Macedon, under arrest in Persia. Aristotle refers to all Persians as barbarians in anger, an insult which Alexander refuses to believe. Meanwhile, Philip deposes Kersobelptes of Thrace.\nAlexander's family is reunited at the springtime Dionysia, held at the old capital at Aigai. His mother is jealous that Alexander and Philip have now bonded through their common passion for war. Caught up in the heterosexual furor surrounding the Dionysia, Alexander flirts with a serving woman, Gorgo, but later comes upon his father having sex with her. On the day of the festival, he watches the secret rites of the women on the mountaintop, although it is forbidden, and sees his mother murder Gorgo in her role as priestess of Dionysos. Sick with shame for having watched something forbidden, Alexander reasons that his mother has the right to wage war in the way of women just as his father does in the way of men, and that Olympias has actually killed far fewer people than Philip. Hephaestion comforts Alexander after the shock, and is relieved that Alexander did not have sex with any of the women returning from the mountain rites, as many of their friends did.\nChapter Six.\nThe next spring, Alexander and Hephaestion finally have sex. It is something which Hephaestion has been longing for, but it leaves Alexander distant because, like sleep, it reminds him that he is mortal. When they return to the capital from school, the circle of men around Alexander are noticed to have taken up the southern Greek fashion of shaving, something which Philip views with distaste. Nonetheless, he leaves Alexander as regent when he goes off to war against Perinthos and Byzantion.\nAs regent, Alexander practices military skills himself and studiously trains the soldiers left to him, making them ready when he puts down a rebellion in Thrace. He is aided by his childhood friend, Lambaros, who knows the local terrain. Upon driving off the rebels, Alexander founds the city of Alexandropolis Maedica and then joins his father against Perinthos. There, he saves his father's life but Philip, ashamed, pretends to have been unconscious and to not remember it, losing some of the loyalty he had earned from Alexander in their shared battle plans.\nOn his return to the capital, Alexander is pressured by his mother, who is jealous of Hephaestion's influence, to engage in heterosexuality. He is kind to a hetaira at a party, but goes no further than kissing her gently. His mother then has a young woman smuggled into his room at night. Realising that the woman will be punished if she does not prove she has lost her virginity, and wanting his mother off his back, Alexander has sex with her. The next morning he sends the woman back to his mother with an expensive pin which Olympias had told Alexander to save for his bride someday, and the message that from now on he will choose his own lovers.\nChapter Seven.\nPhilip decides that southern Greece must be invaded. Alexander is put in charge of a feint against Illyria to make the southern Greeks unprepared. Back at Pella, he questions his mother as to who is his biological father, but the novel leaves the answer a secret. Athens and Thebes ally against Philip. Sparta remains uninvolved. The Athenian army and the Sacred Band of Thebes are destroyed, with Alexander's courage and tactical skill making him a hero to the army. Philip's hegemony is recognised. Alexander represents Philip in Athens, where he is insulted when someone tries to offer him service from an enslaved sex worker. His blood brother and friend Ptolemy, however, takes up with the Athenian hetaira Tha\u00efs.\nOn the way back to Pella, Philip's entourage stays at the castle of Attalos, the general who had years before planned the gang rape of Pausanias of Orestis, the chief of Philip's bodyguard. Alexander is shocked that his father is insulting Pausanias by making him stay the night at the home of his former rapist, but Ptolemy points out that the king has much else to think about and has probably put the event long out of mind. Pausanias does not eat or drink the entire time they are lodged at the home of Attalos.\nAttalos gains another enemy in Olympias when it is announced that Philip will be marrying Attalos' niece. The marriage threatens Olympias even more than Philip's previous marriages because a son born to this wife would be completely Macedonian, and might be considered a better heir than Olympias' own son, Alexander. Alexander goes along with the wedding until Attalos prays that his niece will produce a \"lawful, true-born heir\" which Alexander takes as an insult and threat. He hurls a cup at Attalos' head, a huge offence against a host, then goes with his mother into exile in her native Epirus. Along the route of their flight, they take refuge at the house of Pausanias' wife. In Epirus, Alexander consults the oracle of Dodona, under the auspices of three priestesses reminiscent of the Moirai, and is given the answer of \"yes\" to two questions which the novel leaves a secret.\nChapter Eight.\nThrough the mediation of Demaratos, Alexander and Olympias return to Macedon, but there is now a clear faction which supports them, and a second faction which supports Attalos. Philotas, one of the young men in Alexander's circle, is recruited by his father, the general Parmenion, to spy on Alexander for Philip. Olympias' own spies learn that Philip plans to marry Arridaios, the developmentally disabled son of a minor wife, off to the daughter of a ruler on the edge of the Persian Empire. Convinced that the prestigious marriage is meant as a slight to him, Alexander proposes himself to the foreign ruler as an alternate bridegroom through the secret negotiations of Thettalos, an admiring actor.\nWhen he learns that Alexander has gone behind his back, Philip exiles several of the men who helped in the plot, including Ptolemy, whom Philip acknowledges to be his biological son. Hephaestion is not exiled, but is threatened with death if Alexander ever again commits an act seen as treasonous. Thettalos is brought before Philip in chains, and Alexander is forced to plead for his life.\nFed up with Olympias, Philip makes plans to marry her daughter, Kleopatra, off to Olympias' brother, the current king of Epirus. This will allow Philip to divorce Olympias while still retaining a marriage bond to the king of Epirus. About the same time, captain of the bodyguard Pausanias learns that Philip has brought up mention of his former rape again, although he had promised never to do so. The internal divisions of the family begin to spread out into the network of diplomats and spies working against Philip in occupied lands. Olympias hints at a new intrigue she has developed to bolster her position, but, fearful of Philip's retribution, Alexander refuses to hear it.\nAlexander and Hephaestion both look ahead to the planned invasion of Asia, reasoning that if Alexander fights well for Philip, he will get back in his good graces. And if Philip dies in battle, then the best center of power will be with the mass of the army. Alexander plans to murder Attalos in Asia. Foreign agents convince Pausanias that Alexander agrees to a plot involving the captain of the guard by making a copy of one of Alexander's rings and using it as a token of agreement.\nMeanwhile, Philip invites dignitaries from all over Greece for the lavish wedding of his daughter Kleopatra to Alexandros of Epirus. He sends for an oracle from Delphi concerning his invasion of Asia and"}, "descending_order": ["5813349", "4050623", "20665"], "permutation_1": ["20665", "4050623", "5813349"], "permutation_2": ["5813349", "20665", "4050623"], "permutation_3": ["5813349", "4050623", "20665"]}
{"id": "2hop__147140_21587", "docs_added": {"924585": "Dean Benjamin McLaughlin\nAmerican astronomer\nDean Benjamin McLaughlin (born October 25, 1901, Brooklyn, New York City; died December 8, 1965, Ann Arbor, Michigan, US) was an American astronomer. He was a professor of astronomy at the University of Michigan. He was the father of the science fiction author Dean B. McLaughlin, Jr. He received his B.S. (1923), his M.S. (1924) and his Ph.D. (1927) all from Michigan. McLaughlin married fellow astronomer Laura Elizabeth Hill in 1927. \nIn 1954, he proposed the theory that there are volcanoes on Mars and that their eruptions change the albedo features called \"mare\" (The Martian equivalent of Lunar mare). His proposal was partially confirmed in 1971 with the arrival of Mariner 9, which showed that strong winds could move dust around the planet, creating the changes of appearance formerly attributed to some kind of vegetation.\nA crater on Mars was named in his honor, as is the crater McLaughlin on the far side of the Moon and the asteroid 2024 McLaughlin. In 2014 NASA scientists announced they had discovered evidence of water in Mars' McLaughlin Crater.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2067": "Ann Arbor, Michigan\nCity in Michigan, United States\nAnn Arbor is a city in Washtenaw County, Michigan, United States, and its county seat. The 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851, making it the fifth-most populous city in Michigan. Located on the Huron River, Ann Arbor is the principal city of its metropolitan area, which encompasses all of Washtenaw County and had 372,258 residents in 2020. Ann Arbor is included in the Detroit\u2013Warren\u2013Ann Arbor combined statistical area and the Great Lakes megalopolis.\nAnn Arbor was founded in 1824 by John Allen and Elisha Rumsey. It was named after the wives of the village's founders, both named Ann, and the stands of bur oak trees they found at the site of the town. The University of Michigan was established in Ann Arbor in 1837, and the city's population grew at a rapid rate in the early to mid-20th century.\nA college town, Ann Arbor is currently home to the University of Michigan, which significantly shapes the city's economy, employing about 30,000 workers which includes about 12,000 in its medical center. The city's economy is also centered on high technology, with several companies drawn to the area by the university's research and development infrastructure. The city has been a center for progressive politics as well as several social and religious movements.\nHistory.\nBefore founding as Ann Arbor.\nThe region was once inhabited by several Native American tribes, the most prominent being the Anishinaabe people of the Three Fires: the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi. The Potawatomi founded two villages in the area of what is now Ann Arbor in about 1774. Other tribes that inhabited the area included the Fox, Wyandots, and Sauk. These peoples established several trails that converged on present-day Ann Arbor. The land that included Washtenaw County was ceded to the U.S. by the Odawa, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Wyandot in the Treaty of Detroit of 1807.\n19th century.\nAnn Arbor was founded in 1824 by land speculators John Allen and Elisha Walker Rumsey. On May 25, 1824, the town plat was registered with Wayne County as the Village of Annarbour, the earliest known use of the town's name. Allen and Rumsey decided to name it for their wives, both named Ann, and for the stands of bur oak in the of land they purchased for $800 () from the federal government at $1.25 per acre. The local Ojibwa named the settlement , after the sound of Allen's sawmill.\nAnn Arbor became the seat of Washtenaw County in 1827 and was incorporated as a village in 1833. The Ann Arbor Land Company, a group of speculators, set aside of undeveloped land and offered it to the state of Michigan as the site of the state capitol, but lost the bid to Lansing. In 1837, the property was accepted instead as the site of the University of Michigan.\nSince the university's establishment in the city in 1837, the histories of the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor have been closely linked. The town became a regional transportation hub in 1839 with the arrival of the Michigan Central Railroad, and a north\u2013south railway connecting Ann Arbor to Toledo and other markets to the south was established in 1878. Throughout the 1840s and the 1850s settlers continued to come to Ann Arbor. While the earlier settlers were primarily of British ancestry, the newer settlers also consisted of Germans, Irish, and Black people. In 1851, Ann Arbor was chartered as a city, though the city showed a drop in population during the Depression of 1873. It was not until the early 1880s that Ann Arbor again saw robust growth, with new immigrants from Greece, Italy, Russia, and Poland.\n20th century.\nAnn Arbor saw increased growth in manufacturing, particularly in milling. Ann Arbor's Jewish community also grew after the turn of the 20th century, and its first and oldest synagogue, Beth Israel Congregation, was established in 1916.\nFollowing a 1956 vote, the city of East Ann Arbor merged with Ann Arbor to encompass the eastern sections of the city.\nIn 1960, Ann Arbor voters approved a $2.3\u00a0million bond issue (equivalent to $\u00a0million in 2023) to build the current city hall, which was designed by architect Alden B. Dow. The City Hall opened in 1963. In 1995, the building was renamed the Guy C. Larcom Jr. Municipal Building in honor of the longtime city administrator who championed the building's construction.\nDuring the 1960s and 1970s, the city gained a reputation as an important center for liberal politics. Ann Arbor also became a locus for left-wing activism and anti-Vietnam War movement, as well as the student movement. The first major meetings of the national left-wing campus group Students for a Democratic Society took place in Ann Arbor in 1960; in 1965, the city was home to the first U.S. teach-in against the Vietnam War. During the ensuing 15 years, many countercultural and New Left enterprises sprang up and developed large constituencies within the city. These influences washed into municipal politics during the early and mid-1970s when three members of the Human Rights Party (HRP) won city council seats on the strength of the student vote. During their time on the council, HRP representatives fought for measures including pioneering antidiscrimination ordinances, measures decriminalizing marijuana possession, and a rent-control ordinance.\nTwo religious-conservative institutions were created in Ann Arbor; the Word of God (established in 1967), a charismatic inter-denominational movement; and the Thomas More Law Center (established in 1999). Since 1998, Ann Arbor is also the home office of the Anthroposophical Society in the United States, an organization dedicated to supporting the community of those interested in the inner path of schooling known as anthroposophy, developed by Rudolf Steiner.\n21st century.\nIn the past several decades, Ann Arbor has grappled with the effects of sharply rising land values, gentrification, and urban sprawl stretching into outlying countryside. On November 4, 2003, voters approved a greenbelt plan under which the city government bought development rights on agricultural parcels of land adjacent to Ann Arbor to preserve them from sprawling development. Since then, a vociferous local debate has hinged on how and whether to accommodate and guide development within city limits. Ann Arbor consistently ranks in the \"top places to live\" lists published by various mainstream media outlets every year.\nIn 2016, the city changed mayoral terms from two years to four. Until 2017, City Council held annual elections in which half of the seats (one from each ward) were elected to 2-year terms. These elections were staggered, with each ward having one of its seats up for election in odd years and its other seat up for election in even years. Beginning in 2018 the city council has had staggered elections to 4-year terms in even years. This means that half of the members (one from each ward) are elected in presidential election years, while the other half are elected in mid-term election years. To facilitate this change in scheduling, the 2017 election elected members to terms that lasted 3-years.\nIn 2020, partly as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the city government opened several downtown streets to pedestrians, limiting their use by motor vehicles to emergency vehicles during summertime weekends. In addition to providing a large pedestrian mall, these changes allow restaurants to use more of the sidewalks and part of the street for outdoor seating. These changes were popular enough that in 2021 the city council extended the dates from March to November, continuing the schedule of cordoning off cars from Thursday evening until Monday morning.\nGeography.\nAnn Arbor is located along the Huron River, which flows southeast through the city on its way to Lake Erie. It is the central core of the Ann Arbor, MI Metropolitan Statistical Area, which consists of the whole of Washtenaw County, but is also a part of the Metro Detroit Combined Statistical Area designated by the U.S. Census Bureau. While it borders only Townships, the built-up nature of the sections of Pittsfield and Ypsilanti townships between Ann Arbor and the city of Ypsilanti make the two effectively a single urban area.\nLandscape.\nThe landscape of Ann Arbor consists of hills and valleys, with the terrain becoming steeper near the Huron River. The elevation ranges from about along the Huron River to on the city's west side, near the intersection of Maple Road and Pauline Blvd. Ann Arbor Municipal Airport, which is south of the city at , has an elevation of . Ann Arbor is nicknamed \"Tree Town\", both due to its name and to the dense forestation of its parks and residential areas. The city contains more than 50,000 trees along its streets and an equal number in parks. Into the early 2000s, the emerald ash borer has destroyed many of the city's approximately 10,500 ash trees.\nThe city contains over 160 municipal parks ranging from small neighborhood green spots to large recreation areas such as Buhr Park. Several large city parks and a university park border sections of the Huron River. Fuller Recreation Area, near the University Hospital complex, contains sports fields, pedestrian and bike paths, and swimming pools. Opened in the summer of 2014, the city-funded Ann Arbor Skatepark is a skatepark located within Veterans Memorial Park. The city is also home to the Washtenaw County-owned County Farm Park. The Nichols Arboretum, owned by the University of Michigan, is a arboretum that contains hundreds of plant and tree species. It is on the city's east side, near the university's Central Campus. Located across the Huron River just beyond the university's North Campus is the university's Matthaei Botanical Gardens, which contains 300\u00a0acres of gardens and a large tropical conservatory. Several other green spaces around Ann Arbor are privately owned or owned by government agencies such as Ann Arbor Public Schools.\nCityscape.\nThe cityscape of Ann Arbor is heavily influenced by the University of Michigan, with 22% of downtown and 9.4% of the total land owned by the university. The downtown Central Campus contains some of the oldest extant structures in the city\u2014including the President's House, built in 1840\u2014and separates the South University District from the other three downtown commercial districts. These other three districts, Kerrytown, State Street, and Main Street are contiguous near the northwestern corner of the university.\nMajor landmarks in downtown Ann Arbor include the Michigan Theater, The Diag, and Tower Plaza, a 26-story condominium building that is the city's tallest building. Downtown is also home to several Fairy Doors and other public art installations.\nThree commercial areas south of downtown include the areas near I-94 and Ann Arbor-Saline Road, Briarwood Mall, and the South Industrial area. Other commercial areas include the Arborland/Washtenaw Avenue and Packard Road merchants on the east side, the Plymouth Road area in the northeast, and the Westgate/West Stadium areas on the west side. Downtown contains a mix of 19th- and early-20th-century structures and modern-style buildings, as well as a farmers' market in the Kerrytown district. The city's commercial districts are composed mostly of two- to four-story structures, although downtown and the area near Briarwood Mall contain a small number of high-rise buildings.\nAnn Arbor's residential neighborhoods contain architectural styles ranging from classic 19th- and early 20th-century designs to ranch-style houses. Among these homes are a number of kit houses built in the early 20th century. Contemporary-style houses are farther from the downtown district. Surrounding the University of Michigan campus are houses and apartment complexes occupied primarily by student renters. The 19th-century buildings and streetscape of the Old West Side neighborhood have been preserved virtually intact; in 1972, the district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), and it is further protected by city ordinances and a nonprofit preservation group.\nClimate.\nAnn Arbor has a typically Midwestern humid continental climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Dfa\"), which is influenced by the Great Lakes. There are four distinct seasons: winters are cold and snowy, with average highs around . Summers are warm to hot and humid, with average highs around and with slightly more precipitation. Spring and autumn are transitional between the two. The area experiences lake effect weather, primarily in the form of increased cloudiness during late fall and early winter. The monthly daily average temperature in July is , while the same figure for January is . Temperatures reach or exceed on 10 days, and drop to or below on 4.6 nights. Precipitation tends to be the heaviest during the summer months, but most frequent during winter. Snowfall, which normally occurs from November to April but occasionally starts in October, averages per season. The lowest recorded temperature was on February 11, 1885, and the highest recorded temperature was on July 24, 1934.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nAnn Arbor has seen consistent growth in population between all decennial censuses since 1860 with the exception of the 2010 census which reported almost no growth from the previous census. As of the 2020 U.S. census, there were 123,851 people and 49,337 households residing in the city, with a population density of . The racial makeup of the city including Hispanics in the racial categories was 67.6% White, 6.8% Black, 0.2% Native American, 15.7% Asian, 0.1% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 1.8% from other races, and 7.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race made up 5.5% of the population. Ann Arbor has a small population of Arab Americans, including students as well as local Lebanese and Palestinians, and a large community of Japanese nationals.\nAccording to the 2022 American Community Survey estimates, out of 49,337 households, 33.8% were married-couple households, 9.8% were cohabiting couple households, 26.1% had a male householder with no spouse present, and 30.4% had a female householder with no spouse present. 18.4% of the households had individuals under the age of 18 living in them, and 20.1% had individuals over age 65 living in them. The average household size was 2.22 people and the average family size was 2.78 people. The median age was 25.9; 12.2% of the population was under age 18, and 12.3% was age 65 or older. The percentage of city residents age 25 years or older with at least a high school degree was 97.8% while 77.5% had a bachelor's degree or higher, which is higher than the U.S. national percentage of 89.1% for persons age 25 years or older with at least a high school degree and 34.3% with a bachelor's degree or higher.\nThe median household income in 2022 was $78,740 (versus the U.S. national figure of $75,149), with family households having a median income of $126,292. The per capita income for the city was $52,276, which is higher than the U.S. national per capita income of $41,261. Males working full-time jobs had median earnings of $86,970 compared to $61,543 for females. Out of the 109,973 people with a determined poverty status, 23.1% were below the poverty line compared to the U.S. national poverty rate of 11.1%; the age group with the highest percentage below the poverty level was persons between 18 and 34 years at 43.0% while other age groups have percentages between 2.7% and 7.7%. Further, 3.5% of minors and 7.7% of seniors were below the poverty line.\nCrime.\nAccording to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program in 2022, Ann Arbor had 371 reported violent crimes (which include homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) and 2069 reported property crimes (which include arson, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft). With a violent crime rate of 309.5 per 100,000 people, the city's violent crime rate is lower than Michigan's rate of 461 per 100,000 people and the U.S. national rate of 380.7 per 100,000 people. However, Ann Arbor's property crime rate, at 1726.0 per 100,000 people, is higher than Michigan's property crime rate of 1536.8 per 100,000 people and lower than the U.S. national property crime rate of 1954.4 per 100,000 people.\nEconomy.\nThe University of Michigan shapes Ann Arbor's economy significantly. It employs about 30,000 workers which includes about 12,000 in the medical center. Other employers are drawn to the area by the university's research and development money, and by its graduates. High tech, health services and biotechnology are other major components of the city's economy; numerous medical offices, laboratories, and associated companies are located in the city. Automobile manufacturers, such as General Motors and Visteon, also employ residents.\nHigh tech companies have located in the area since the 1930s, when International Radio Corporation introduced the first mass-produced AC/DC radio (the Kadette, in 1931) as well as the first pocket radio (the Kadette Jr., in 1933). Current firms include Arbor Networks (provider of Internet traffic engineering and security systems), Arbortext (provider of XML-based publishing software), JSTOR (the digital scholarly journal archive), Truven Health Analytics, and ProQuest, which includes UMI. Duo Security, a cloud-based access security provider of two-factor authentication, is headquartered in Ann Arbor. It was formerly a unicorn and continues to be headquartered in Ann Arbor after its acquisition by Cisco Systems. In November 2021, semiconductor test equipment company KLA Corporation opened a new North American headquarters in Ann Arbor.\nAnn Arbor is the home to Internet2 and the Merit Network, a not-for-profit research and education computer network. Both are located in the South State Commons 2 building on South State Street. The city is also home to a secondary office of Google's AdWords program\u2014the company's primary revenue stream. As of 2022,[ [update]] Ann Arbor is home to more than twenty video game and XR studios of varying sizes. The city plays host to a regional chapter of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) which hosts monthly meetups, presentations, and educational events.\nThe city is the home of many research and engineering centers, including the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory that is operated by NOAA and the Michigan Tech Research Institute. Other research centers sited in the city are the United States Environmental Protection Agency's National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory and the Toyota Technical Center. The city is also home to National Sanitation Foundation International (NSF International), the nonprofit non-governmental organization that develops generally accepted standards for a variety of public health related industries and subject areas.\nNon-high tech companies in Ann Arbor include Domino's Pizza, headquartered on Domino's Farms, a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired complex just northeast of the city. Another Ann Arbor-based company is Zingerman's Delicatessen, which serves sandwiches and has developed businesses under a variety of brand names. Avfuel, a global supplier of aviation fuels and services, is headquartered in Ann Arbor as is Pinkerton, a detective and private security firm. Many cooperative enterprises were founded in the city; among those that remain are the People's Food Co-op and the Inter-Cooperative Council at the University of Michigan, a student housing cooperative founded in 1937. There are also three cohousing communities\u2014Sunward, Great Oak, and Touchstone\u2014located immediately to the west of the city limits.\nCulture.\nSeveral performing arts groups and facilities are on the University of Michigan's campus, as are museums dedicated to art, archaeology, and natural history and sciences. Founded in 1879, the University Musical Society is an independent performing arts organization that presents over 60 events each year, bringing international artists in music, dance, and theater. Since 2001 Shakespeare in the Arb has presented one play by Shakespeare each June, in a large park near downtown. Regional and local performing arts groups not associated with the university include the Ann Arbor Civic Theatre, the Arbor Opera Theater, the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, The Ark, and Performance Network Theatre. State Theatre and the adjacent Michigan Theater are a movie palace and a performing arts center, respectively. Another unique piece of artistic expression in Ann Arbor is the fairy doors. These small portals are examples of installation art and can be found throughout the downtown area.\nThe Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum, an interactive science center, is located in a renovated and expanded historic downtown fire station. The Ann Arbor Art Center is a nonprofit that organizes art activities and exhibitions. Aside from the Ann Arbor District Library, which maintains four branch outlets in addition to its main downtown building, and being the home to the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, Ann Arbor ranks first among U.S. cities in the number of booksellers and books sold per capita.\nSeveral annual events\u2014many of them centered on performing and visual arts\u2014draw visitors to Ann Arbor. One such event is the Ann Arbor Art Fairs, a set of four concurrent juried fairs held on downtown streets. Scheduled on Thursday through Sunday of the third week of July, the fairs draw upward of half a million visitors. Another is the Ann Arbor Film Festival, held during the third week of March, which receives more than 2,500 submissions annually from more than 40 countries and serves as one of a handful of Academy Award\u2013qualifying festivals in the United States.\nAnn Arbor has a long history of openness to marijuana, given Ann Arbor's decriminalization of cannabis, the large number of medical marijuana dispensaries in the city (one dispensary, called People's Co-op, was directly across the street from Michigan Stadium until zoning forced it to move one mile to the west), the large number of pro-marijuana residents, and the annual Hash Bash: an event that is held on the first Saturday of April. Until (at least) the successful passage of Michigan's medical marijuana law, the event had arguably strayed from its initial intent, although for years, a number of attendees have received serious legal responses due to marijuana use on University of Michigan property, which does not fall under the city's progressive and compassionate ticketing program.\nA person from Ann Arbor is called an \"Ann Arborite\", and many long-time residents call themselves \"townies\". The city itself is often called \"A\u00b2\" (\"A-squared\") or \"A2\" (\"A two\") or \"AA\", \"The Deuce\" (mainly by Chicagoans), and \"Tree Town\". With tongue-in-cheek reference to the city's liberal political leanings, some occasionally refer to Ann Arbor as \"The People's Republic of Ann Arbor\" or \"25 square miles surrounded by reality.\" In \"A Prairie Home Companion\" broadcast from Ann Arbor, Garrison Keillor described Ann Arbor as \"a city where people discuss socialism, but only in the fanciest restaurants.\" Ann Arbor sometimes appears on citation indexes as an author, instead of a location, often with the academic degree \"MI\", a misunderstanding of the abbreviation for Michigan.\nSports.\nAnn Arbor is a major center for college sports, most notably at the University of Michigan. Several well-known college sports facilities exist in the city, including Michigan Stadium, the largest American football stadium and the third-largest stadium of any kind in the world with a capacity of 107,601. The stadium is colloquially known as \"The Big House\" due to its status as the largest American football stadium. Crisler Center and Yost Ice Arena play host to the school's basketball (both men's and women's) and ice hockey teams, respectively. Concordia University, a member of the NAIA, also fields sports teams.\nIn semi-professional sports Ann Arbor is represented in the NPSL by AFC Ann Arbor, a soccer club founded in 2014 who call themselves The Mighty Oak.\nGovernment.\nAs the county seat of Washtenaw County, the Washtenaw County Trial Court (22nd Circuit Court) is located in Ann Arbor at the Washtenaw County Courthouse on Main Street. Seven judges serve on the court. The 15th Michigan district court, which serves only the city itself, is located within the Ann Arbor Justice Center, immediately next to city hall. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan and Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit are also located in downtown Ann Arbor, at the federal building on Liberty Street.\nIn the Michigan Legislature, the city is split between Districts 23, 33, 47, and 48 in the Michigan House of Representatives. In the Michigan Senate, Ann Arbor is covered by Districts 14 and 15. Ann Arbor is within the 6th congressional district, currently represented by Debbie Dingell.\nAnn Arbor has a council\u2013manager form of government, with 11 voting members: the mayor and 10 city council members. Each of the city's five wards are represented by two council members, with the mayor elected at-large during midterm years. Half of the council members are elected in midterm years, with the other in general election years. The mayor is the presiding officer of the city council and has the power to appoint all council committee members as well as board and commission members, with the approval of the city council. The current mayor of Ann Arbor is Christopher Taylor, a Democrat who was elected as mayor in 2014. Day-to-day city operations are managed by a city administrator chosen by the city council. While Democrats, as of 2024,[ [update]] hold the mayorship and all ten council seats, Ann Arbor has two major political factions. A major source of this local divide is differences in views on the city's growth.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nPublic schools are part of the Ann Arbor Public Schools (AAPS) district. AAPS has one of the country's leading music programs. For the 2021\u20132022 school year, 17,070 students were enrolled in the Ann Arbor Public Schools. Notable schools include Pioneer, Huron, Skyline, Community high schools, Pathways to Success Academic Campus, and Ann Arbor Open School. The district has a preschool center with both free and tuition-based programs for preschoolers in the district. The University High School, a \"demonstration school\" with teachers drawn from the University of Michigan's education program, was part of the school system from 1924 to 1968.\nAnn Arbor is home to several private schools, including Clonlara School, Michigan Islamic Academy, and Greenhills School, a prep school. The city is also home to several charter schools such as Central Academy (Michigan) (PreK\u201312) of the Global Educational Excellence (GEE) charter school company.\nHigher education.\nThe University of Michigan dominates the city of Ann Arbor, providing the city with its distinctive college-town character. University buildings are located in the center of the city and the campus is directly adjacent to the State Street and South University downtown areas.\nOther local colleges and universities include Concordia University Ann Arbor, a Lutheran liberal-arts institution. Washtenaw Community College is located in neighboring Ann Arbor Township. In 2000, the Ave Maria School of Law, a Roman Catholic law school established by Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan, opened in northeastern Ann Arbor, but the school moved to Ave Maria, Florida in 2009, and the Thomas M. Cooley Law School acquired the former Ave Maria buildings for use as a branch campus.\nMedia.\n\"The Ann Arbor News\", owned by the Michigan-based Booth Newspapers chain, was the major newspaper serving Ann Arbor and the rest of Washtenaw County. The newspaper ended its 174-year daily print run in 2009 due to economic difficulties, and began producing two printed editions a week under the name AnnArbor.com. Ann Arbor has been said to be the first significant city to lose its only daily paper. The publication resumed using its former name in 2013, and also produces a daily digital edition named MLive.com. Another Ann Arbor-based publication that has ceased production was the \"Ann Arbor Paper\", a free monthly. The \"Ann Arbor Chronicle\", an online newspaper, covered local news, including meetings of the library board, county commission, and DDA until September 3, 2014.\nCurrent publications in the city include the \"Ann Arbor Journal\" (\"A2 Journal\"), a weekly community newspaper; the \"Ann Arbor Observer\", a free monthly local magazine; and \"Current\", a free entertainment-focused alt-weekly. The \"Ann Arbor Business Review\" covers local business in the area. \"Car and Driver\" magazine and \"Automobile Magazine\" are also based in Ann Arbor. The University of Michigan is served by many student publications, including the independent \"Michigan Daily\" student newspaper, which reports on local, state, and regional issues in addition to campus news.\nFour major AM radio stations based in or near Ann Arbor are WAAM 1600, a conservative news and talk station; WLBY 1290, a business news and talk station; WDEO 990, Catholic radio; and WTKA 1050, which is primarily a sports station. The city's FM stations include NPR affiliate WUOM 91.7; country station WWWW 102.9; and adult-alternative station WQKL 107.1. Freeform station WCBN-FM 88.3 is a local community radio/college radio station operated by the students of the University of Michigan featuring noncommercial, eclectic music and public-affairs programming. The city is also served by public and commercial radio broadcasters in Ypsilanti, the Lansing/Jackson area, Detroit, Windsor, and Toledo.\nAnn Arbor is part of the Detroit television market. WPXD channel 31, the owned-and-operated Detroit outlet of the ION Television network, is licensed to the city. Until its sign-off on August 31, 2017, WHTV channel 18, a MyNetworkTV-affiliated station for the Lansing market, was broadcast from a transmitter in Lyndon Township, west of Ann Arbor. Community Television Network (CTN) is a city-provided cable television channel with production facilities open to city residents and nonprofit organizations. Detroit and Toledo-area radio and television stations also serve Ann Arbor, and stations from Lansing and Windsor, Ontario, can be seen in parts of the area.\nInfrastructure.\nHealthcare.\nThe University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) includes University Hospital, C.S. Mott Children's Hospital and Women's Hospital in its core complex. UMHS also operates out-patient clinics and facilities throughout the city. The area's other major medical centers include a large facility operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs in Ann Arbor, and Saint Joseph Mercy Hospital in nearby Superior Township.\nUtilities.\nThe city provides sewage disposal and water supply services, with water coming from the Huron River and groundwater sources. There are two water-treatment plants, one main and three outlying reservoirs, four pump stations, and two water towers. These facilities serve the city, which is divided into five water districts. The city's water department also operates four dams along the Huron River\u2014Argo, Barton, Geddes, and Superior\u2014of which Barton and Superior provide hydroelectric power.\nThe city also offers waste management services, with Recycle Ann Arbor handling recycling service. Other utilities are provided by private entities. Electrical power and gas are provided by DTE Energy. AT&T Inc. is the primary wired telephone service provider for the area. Cable TV service is primarily provided by Comcast.\nA plume of the industrial solvent dioxane is migrating under the city from the contaminated Gelman Sciences, Inc. property on the westside of Ann Arbor. As of 2021,[ [update]] the average measured concentration was found to be 201.19 ppb, with the maximum being 6.000 ppm. While the United States Environmental Protection Agency does not impose a federal limit on the level of the contaminant allowed in drinking water, the World Health Organization suggests a limit of 35 ppb. The Gelman plume is a potential threat to one of the City of Ann Arbor's drinking water sources, the Huron River, which flows through downtown Ann Arbor.\nTransportation.\nThe streets in downtown Ann Arbor conform to a grid pattern, though this pattern is less common in the surrounding areas. Major roads branch out from the downtown district to the highways surrounding the city. The city is belted by three freeways: Interstate\u00a094 (I-94), which runs along the southern and western portion of the city; U.S. Highway\u00a023 (US\u00a023), which primarily runs along the eastern edge of Ann Arbor; and M-14, which runs along the northern edge of the city. Other nearby highways include US\u00a012 (Michigan Avenue), M-17 (Washtenaw Avenue), and M-153 (Ford Road). Several of the major surface arteries lead to the I-94/M-14 interchange in the west, US\u00a023 in the east, and the city's southern areas. The Washtenaw County Border-to-Border Trail connects Ann Arbor to Ypsilanti, mostly along the Huron River, for pedestrians, bicycles and other non-motorized transportation.\nThe Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority (AAATA), which brands itself as \"TheRide\", operates public bus services throughout the city and nearby Ypsilanti. The AAATA operates the Blake Transit Center on Fourth Ave. in downtown Ann Arbor, and the Ypsilanti Transit Center. A separate zero-fare bus service operates within and between the University of Michigan campuses. In 2019, 36% of trips in Ann Arbor were taken by walking, biking or transit.\nSince April 2012, the \"AirRide\" connects to Detroit Metro Airport a dozen times a day. The Michigan Flyer, a service operated by Indian Trails, cooperates with AAATA for their AirRide and additionally offers bus service to East Lansing. Greyhound Lines provides intercity bus service. Megabus has direct service to Chicago, Illinois, while a bus service is provided by Amtrak Thruway for rail passengers making connections to services in East Lansing and Toledo, Ohio.\nAmtrak, which provides service to the city at the Ann Arbor Train Station, operates the \"Wolverine\" train between Chicago and Pontiac via Detroit. The present-day train station neighbors the city's old Michigan Central Depot, which was renovated as a restaurant in 1970. Ann Arbor Municipal Airport is a small, city-run general aviation airport located south of I-94.\nSister cities.\nAnn Arbor has eight sister cities:\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["924585", "2067"], "permutation_1": ["924585", "2067"], "permutation_2": ["2067", "924585"], "permutation_3": ["924585", "2067"]}
{"id": "2hop__732790_135045", "docs_added": {"473752": "Sophie Ellis-Bextor\nBritish singer (born 1979)\nSophie Michelle Ellis-Bextor (born 10 April 1979) is an English singer and songwriter. She first came to prominence in the late 1990s as the lead vocalist of the indie rock band Theaudience. After the group disbanded, Ellis-Bextor went solo and achieved success beginning in the early 2000s. Her music is mainstream pop and dance with influences of disco, nu-disco, and 1980s electronic music.\nIn 2000, Ellis-Bextor collaborated with Italian DJ Spiller on \"Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)\", which reached number one in the United Kingdom and in 2015 became the UK's biggest-selling vinyl single of the millennium so far. Her debut solo studio album, \"Read My Lips\", was released in 2001 and peaked at number two on the UK Albums Chart. It was certified double platinum by the BPI, and sold 1.5 million copies worldwide. Three of its four singles\u2014the Cher cover \"Take Me Home\", \"Murder on the Dancefloor\", and double A-side \"Get Over You\" / \"Move This Mountain\"\u2014reached top three in the UK. Its follow-up \"Shoot from the Hip\" (2003) reached number 19 in the UK and spawned two top ten singles, \"Mixed Up World\" and \"I Won't Change You\".\nEllis-Bextor's third studio album, \"Trip the Light Fantastic\" (2007), peaked at number seven in the UK and its lead single \"Catch You\" reached the top ten. Her fourth studio album, \"Make a Scene\" (2011), and its third single \"Bittersweet\" achieved top 40 positions in the UK. Her fifth studio album, \"Wanderlust\" (2014), peaked at number four. In 2016, she released a Latin-inspired sixth studio album, \"Familia\", to critical acclaim.\nEarly life.\nSophie Michelle Ellis-Bextor was born on 10 April 1979 in Hounslow, London to Janet Ellis, who was a presenter on BBC's children's television programmes \"Blue Peter\" and \"Jigsaw\", and Robin Bextor, a film producer and director. They separated when she was four. As a child, Ellis-Bextor occasionally appeared on \"Blue Peter\" alongside her mother, who co-presented the programme.\nShe attended St Stephen's School, Twickenham and later the independent Godolphin and Latymer School in Hammersmith. Among her earliest public performances were some with the W11 Opera children's opera beginning at age 13, and she is now a patron of the organisation.\nEllis-Bextor has said, \"I didn't see myself as a good-looking girl and that was good, because I didn't rely on it.(...) I've now found lots of like-minded weirdos, so it's OK.\"\nCareer.\n1996\u20131999: Theaudience.\nEllis-Bextor began her professional musical career in 1996 while singing lead vocals in indie band Theaudience. The band released four singles, including the UK Top 40 hits \"I Know Enough (I Don't Get Enough)\" and \"A Pessimist Is Never Disappointed\", and one self-titled album (\"theaudience\" (1998)). Videos for the band's singles were directed by her father, Robin Bextor. While in Theaudience, readers of \"Melody Maker\" voted Ellis-Bextor number five in a poll of 'most sexy people in rock'.\nThe band split in 1999 after demos for a planned second album were rejected by their label Mercury Records, who then dropped the band. Ellis-Bextor recorded a duet with Manic Street Preachers \u2014 \"Black Holes for the Young\" \u2014 as a B-side for their 1998 single \"The Everlasting\", and in 1999, made an appearance on the Departure Lounge album \"Out of Here\".\n2000\u20132006: \"Read My Lips\" and \"Shoot from the Hip\".\nAfter Theaudience split, Ellis-Bextor collaborated with Italian DJ Spiller, in 2000, adding vocals to his track \"Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)\". It entered the UK charts at number one, just beating former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham on her first solo track. \"Groovejet\" won several awards: No.\u00a01, Pop Top\u00a020; No.\u00a01, ILR; No.\u00a01, Radio\u00a01; No.\u00a08, top dance track of 2000 and single of the year in \"Melody Maker\". In the \"Metro\" newspaper, it received ninth place in the contest for the Greatest No.\u00a01 of all time. In 2000, it was a finalist in \"The Record of the Year\". In that same year, it won the awards for Best Single and Best Ibiza Tune at the Ericsson Muzik Awards.\nIn 2001, Ellis-Bextor released her d\u00e9but album, \"Read My Lips\". It reached number two on the UK charts and spawned four top-twenty hit singles. Her rework of Cher's \"Take Me Home\" reached number two, as did \"Murder on the Dancefloor\", which became Ellis-Bextor's biggest single and was on charts for twenty-three weeks. \"Murder on the Dancefloor\" became Europe's most played song of 2002. In 2002, \"Read My Lips\" was re-released with two new songs (and a live version of \"Groovejet\") and Ellis-Bextor won the Recording Artist Award at that year's Showbusiness Awards. Her third single, \"Get Over You / Move This Mountain\", was released in June 2002 and reached number three. The fourth single, \"Music Gets the Best of Me\", rose to number fourteen in December. At the beginning of 2002, Ellis-Bextor was nominated for the \"British Female Solo Artist\" BRIT Award, going on to be nominated for a further two consecutive years.\nHer second album, \"Shoot from the Hip\", was released in October 2003 and yielded two further top-ten singles, \"Mixed Up World\" and \"I Won't Change You\". The album reached number 19 on the UK charts and was certified silver by the BPI for shipments of 60,000. Ellis-Bextor described the album as \"more emotionally direct\" and \"a little more left-of-centre at times\" than \"Read My Lips\"\u2014\"It has more of a live feel [...] It's still a pop album\u2014with elements of disco, indie and rock.\" She opted to step back from promotion of the album after becoming pregnant.\nIn 2005, Ellis-Bextor was featured on the Busface single \"Circles (Just My Good Time)\" under the alias Mademoiselle E.B.\n2007\u20132011: \"Trip the Light Fantastic\" and \"Make a Scene\".\n\"Trip the Light Fantastic\", Ellis-Bextor's third album, was released in May 2007 and reached number seven in the UK. The album produced three singles: \"Catch You\" (number 8 in the UK), \"Me and My Imagination\" (number 23), and \"Today the Sun's on Us\" (number 64). The song \"If I Can't Dance\" was announced as a single but later retracted.\nEllis-Bextor supported George Michael on his UK tour leg in June 2007. Her own UK tour, the Trip the Light Fantastic Tour, was due to start in August 2007, but it was postponed after Ellis-Bextor was invited to be the \"special guest\" on Take That's Beautiful World Tour, which commenced in October 2007. She stated that her tour would be rescheduled for March 2008, with all tickets purchased being valid for the rescheduled concerts. The tour was never rescheduled and Ellis-Bextor has refused to discuss the issue in interviews. In October 2008, she sang at the Keep the Promise Rally in Trafalgar Square to end Child Poverty.\nIn June 2009, Ellis-Bextor was featured on the Freemasons single \"Heartbreak (Make Me a Dancer)\", which reached number 13 in the UK. In July, she performed alongside girl groups the Saturdays and Girls Can't Catch at the iTunes Festival, held at the Roundhouse in London. A recording of her performance was released, \"\", which was the singer's first extended play. \"Bittersweet\" (co-written by Freemasons and Hannah Robinson), the first single from Ellis-Bextor's fourth album, was released in May 2010 and reached 25 on the UK Singles Chart. Ellis-Bextor's collaboration with DJ Armin van Buuren, \"Not Giving Up on Love\", was released as a single in August 2010 in Europe. Also in 2010, she was featured on the Junior Caldera single \"Can't Fight This Feeling\".\nThe singer's fourth album, \"Make a Scene\", was released in June 2011 following a year-long delay during which she left her label Universal Music Group to establish her own label, EBGBs. She said that her decision to leave Universal was spurred on by the departure of the head of Fascination Records, the sub-label to which she was signed following the release of \"Bittersweet\". She described \"Make a Scene\" as \"very much [a dance album]\u2014more so than any of my other albums.\" She said she was planning an \"album that's really different [...] but I think this album [\"Make a Scene\"] is a good way to bow out of the dance sound for now. I think it's finishing on a high.\" She supported Pet Shop Boys on the UK leg of their Pandemonium Tour in July 2010. She worked with Calvin Harris, Richard X, Dimitri Tikovoi, Hannah Robinson, Metronomy, and Liam Howe from the Sneaker Pimps. \"Off & On\" preceded the release of the album in continental Europe and Russia, where the album was released by Universal Music Russia. The single \"Starlight\" was released in the UK ahead of the album in May 2011.\nEllis-Bextor supported synth-pop band Erasure on their Total Pop! Forest tour of woodland locations in the UK in June 2011. She resumed touring internationally in 2011, playing venues such as Jakarta's SoulNation festival, as well as returning to Australia by performing in Sydney and Melbourne. She collaborated with French DJ Bob Sinclar on a track titled \"F__ with You\" (released in November 2011); it was included on his album \"Disco Crash\" and was a huge club hit in Continental Europe. Ellis-Bextor's collaboration with French DJ Mathieu Bouthier, \"Beautiful\", was released in July 2012 in France.\n2012\u20132014: \"Wanderlust\" and collaborations.\nIn May 2011, she revealed that she had begun work on her fifth album. Beginning in 2012, Ellis-Bextor worked with British singer and producer Ed Harcourt on a \"more concept driven record\", and possibly having as few as eight tracks. Her performance at a London charity gala in November 2012 including a new song, \"Young Blood\"; a demo of the song was released in March 2013 as a complimentary digital download from her website, as a thank you gift to her fans. Also in 2013, she performed outdoors at Old Republic Square in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Ellis-Bextor confirmed completion of the album in May and revealed its title, \"Wanderlust\", and cover art in October.\n\"Young Blood\" was released as the lead single from \"Wanderlust\" in November 2013, peaking at number three on the UK Indie Chart and at number 34 on the UK Singles Chart. The album was released in January 2014 and peaked at number four on the UK Albums Chart and at number one on the UK Independent Albums Chart. \"Wanderlust\" also debuted inside the Scottish Top 10 Albums Chart. Ellis-Bextor performed a headline sold-out show to support \"Wanderlust\"'s release in January 2014 at Bush Hall, London, and also performed at Union Chapel, London in April. Ellis-Bextor then announced a 10-date UK tour, which finished in Glasgow in April 2014.\nEllis-Bextor collaborated with Gu\u00e9na LG and Amir Afargan on the track \"Back 2 Paradise\", which was released in June 2014. The single was the number-one \"breakout\" in October 2014 on the US \"Billboard\" Dance/Club Chart, later reaching number 25 on the Dance/Club Chart. Ellis-Bextor then featured on the song \"Only Child\", produced by electronic music project DedRekoning, which was released in September 2014. The track was remixed by Paul Oakenfold, Roddy Reynaert and Pearson and Hirst.\n2015\u20132019: \"Familia\" and \"The Song Diaries\".\nIn January 2015, Ellis-Bextor said that she had begun working on her sixth studio album, once again with Ed Harcourt. In January 2016, Ellis-Bextor posted an image on Instagram captioned \"Last song written. Next stop \u2013 rehearsals! \"#album6 #whatthehellshouldicallit\".\" She also posted a YouTube video of the making of the album.\nAccording to Ellis-Bextor, the album, titled \"Familia\", was inspired by a recent visit to North America, particularly Mexico. \"Familia\" is the Spanish word for \"family\" (a tattoo Ellis-Bextor wears in her arm since her first child's birth) and Ellis-Bextor described the album's sound as closer to that of her earlier albums. She explained that she \"wanted something with a Spanish or Italian feel\" and that it continued some stories from \"Wanderlust\". \"Familia\" was released in September 2016 and reached number 12 on the UK Albums Chart. It spawned four singles, but none of them made it into any major chart. After taking time off for the birth of her child in late 2015, she resumed touring in 2017, mostly at small venues in the UK.\nIn November 2017, she announced via Facebook a selection of her greatest hits reworked with an orchestra. In February 2018, she announced the album's title, \"The Song Diaries\", and pointed out that it would consist of re-recorded tracks spanning her career from theaudience to \"Familia\"'s \"Wild Forever\", plus a new track. The album's artwork was drawn by David Downtown. \"The Song Diaries\" first single \"Love Is You\", a disco track originally performed by Carol Williams, which is sampled on her early hit \"Groovejet\", was released in August 2018. \"The Song Diaries\" was released in March 2019 and peaked at number 14 in the UK.\n2020\u20132023: \"Songs from the Kitchen Disco\".\nIn 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in the UK, Ellis-Bextor performed live weekly \"Kitchen Disco\" concerts featuring herself and her family, streamed live from their kitchen on Instagram. Beginning 24 June 2020, Ellis-Bextor started a weekly podcast titled \"Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor\" on which she interviews working mothers. Guests have included Fearne Cotton, Caitlin Moran, Myleene Klass, R\u00f3isin Murphy, and her own mother Janet Ellis.\nOn 16 July 2020, Ellis-Bextor announced the greatest hits album \"Songs from the Kitchen Disco\". The album was preceded by the release of a single, \"Crying at the Discoteque\", a cover version of the Alcazar song, which she had performed during her lockdown concerts in September 2020. She performed the single on \"The Graham Norton Show\" on New Year's Eve. In March 2022, she embarked on her \"Songs from the Kitchen Disco\" tour of the U.K. In July 2022, the singer revealed a new single, \"Hypnotized\", a collaboration with electronic artist Wuh Oh. \nA live album was released in November 2022 entitled \"Kitchen Disco \u2013 Live at the London Palladium\".\n2023\u2013present: \"Hana\", resurgence, and eighth album.\nIn January 2023, Ellis-Bextor collaborated with Japanese/Australian duo Rhyme So on a cover of the Malcolm McLaren track \"Deep in Vogue\". On 8 February 2023, Ellis-Bextor revealed a new track, \"Breaking the Circle\", the lead single from her seventh studio album, \"Hana\", which was released on 2 June 2023. The title of the album was taken from the Japanese word for \"blossom\" or \"flower\". Ellis-Bextor said the album was inspired by a trip to Japan, taken before the COVID-19 pandemic began. Ellis-Bextor said of the album: \"Because I hadn't been before, I had lots of ideas about what [Japan] might be like. The [album's] soundscape is like someone's idea of what a place might be like before they get there. That trip also became significant in a wider sense because it was the last bit of travel I did before everything shut down.\" \"Hana\" marks the third collaboration with producer/musician Ed Harcourt. Ellis-Bextor said \"There are themes of optimism, new starts, adventures and reflections...This is our third record together after Wanderlust and Familia. The first songs written were really inspired by the upcoming trip to Japan. In the end, the album ended up being inspired by that trip and so much more.\"\nIn June 2023, Ellis-Bextor appeared on \"Grilled!\", a podcast by the Staff Canteen, where she was interviewed by Aaron Middleton and the Staff Canteen's Cara Houchen. During the podcast, Ellis-Bextor discussed her book, her favourite London restaurants, and the similarities between music and food. In July 2023, it was announced that Ellis-Bextor will collaborate with film composer David Arnold and lyricist Don Black for the track to Channel 4 and Universal Pictures film, \"Mog's Christmas\", based upon the children's book series by Judith Kerr. The track, titled \"As Long As I Belong\", is about \"the importance of belonging\". Ellis-Bextor also collaborated with Robbie Williams and his electronic music project 'Lufthaus' on the track \"Immortal\", which is taken off of the group's debut album, \"\"Visions, Volume 1\".\" The album was released on 6 October 2023.\nEllis-Bextor's \"Murder on the Dancefloor\" was featured in the last scene of the 2023 film \"Saltburn\". As a result, the song re-entered the UK singles chart, peaking at number two and garnered its most-ever global streams on Spotify, receiving more than 1.4 million streams on New Year's Eve. It also gave Ellis-Bextor her first ever US singles chart entry, reaching #51. As well as this, 2024 became Ellis-Bextor's most successful year in terms of performances, playing more shows than she had ever before \u2013 a total of 110 in the calendar year.\nOn 1 February 2024, it was revealed that Ellis-Bextor will be performing at \"Valley Fest 2024\" in Chew Magna in August 2024. The same month, Ellis-Bextor announced her first-ever North American headlining tour, scheduled for May and June 2024. The initial seven-date tour included stops in San Francisco, San Diego, Washington D.C., Boston, Philadelphia, New York City, and Toronto. In June 2024, she announced a second North American tour leg for September given the first leg's success, adding shows in Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver.\nFollowing the resurgence of \"Murder on the Dancefloor\", Ellis-Bextor reportedly signed with Universal Music Group and began working on her eighth studio album. Her first major-label single in 14 years, \"Freedom of the Night\", was released under Decca Records on October 18, 2024. On 25 October 2024, it was announced that Ellis-Bextor's forthcoming eighth studio album would be released in the summer of 2025. She released the single \"Relentless Love\u201d on 28 March 2025.\nOther projects.\nIn 2001 Ellis-Bextor auditioned for the 2001 film \"Moulin Rouge!\" for the character Satine. In 2007, she appeared at Christmas in the \"Robbie the Reindeer\" episode \"Close Encounters of the Herd Kind\". She was depicted as a female alien at the closure of the story singing the song \"Supersonic\", the last track on her third solo studio album \"Trip the Light Fantastic\". In November of the same year, she also launched the npower Greener Schools Programme, which aims to give schools in the UK a \"green makeover\" by providing free energy audits, implementing tailor-made energy efficiency measures to reduce their carbon footprint, and educating children on how to be greener. She launched Capital Radio's Capital 95.8 \"Lights Out London\" campaign, which asks Londoners to switch off their lights for one hour in a bid to save 750 MWh and send a message to the world on the importance of climate change.\nIn 2008 she featured in the short musical film \"The Town that Boars Me\" by photographer Ben Charles Edwards. The film also features Jodie Harsh, Kelly Osbourne and Zandra Rhodes. The film was produced by Glass Loves and Shoot to Kill Productions and was set to d\u00e9but at the Portobello Film Festival. The same year she fronted a campaign for The Children's Society encouraging people to log onto the \"Hundreds and Thousands of Childhood Memories\" website to donate their favourite childhood memory. In May 2008 she was hired by cosmetics brand Rimmel to be one of their new faces. A song of hers, \"Sophia Loren\", was featured in one of the Rimmel London television adverts for the line \"Sexy Curves\". She appeared as an advocate for Verdi on BBC World News classical music programme \"Visionaries\". She was a contestant in the eleventh series of the televised dance competition \"Strictly Come Dancing\" in late 2013. She was partnered with Brendan Cole and reached the final, placing fourth.\nIn September 2014 the Pretty Polly hosiery company announced that Ellis-Bextor was their latest \"face and legs\", and would be designing and modelling for them. In March 2019 Ellis-Bextor appeared as an extra in \"Game of Thrones\", Season 8, Episode 3 \"The Long Night\". In July 2020 she started a podcast called \"Spinning Plates\" which focuses on mothers and their careers. In the same year she competed in the second series of \"The Masked Singer\" as Alien. She was the first celebrity to be unmasked.\nIn 2021, Ellis-Bextor wrote the memoir \"Music, Men, Motherhood and Me\".\nIt was announced in October 2021 that she would make an appearance in the Australian soap opera \"Neighbours\" in 2022, during a storyline set in London. On the morning of 16 November 2021 Ellis-Bextor embarked upon a 24-hour \"Kitchen Disco Danceathon\", in aid of Children in Need. She raised over \u00a31,000,000 for the cause. In December 2022, Ellis-Bextor partnered with Vodafone to unveil its Pro II Broadband during a special Christmas concert in London.\nIn October 2023 Ellis-Bextor was a guest celebrity judge in the episode \"Club Bangers\" of the British reality television series \"RuPaul's Drag Race UK\" broadcast on BBC Three.\nOn 3 August 2024, Ellis-Bextor opened the set for Brighton Pride's Fabuloso concert in Preston Park. She played a number of her hits including \"Take Me Home\", \"Murder on the Dancefloor\" and \"Get Over You\".\nPersonal life.\nEllis-Bextor met her future husband, the Feeling bassist Richard Jones, when he auditioned for her tour band in 2002. Jones has said, \"Something kind of smacked us in the face. The chemistry was incredible\u2014it was like nothing I've ever experienced.\" Their first child was born two months early, only eight months after the start of their relationship. Fourteen months later, in 2005, the couple married. They have five children, all sons.\nEllis-Bextor suffered from pre-eclampsia (the onset of high blood pressure) during her first two pregnancies, resulting in both deliveries being premature. She is an ambassador for Borne, a medical research charity looking into the causes of premature birth. She is also an ambassador for the children's charity Lumos which promotes an end to the institutionalisation of children worldwide.\nIn the 2019 European Parliament election, Ellis-Bextor endorsed Change UK. Her father, Robin Bextor, was a candidate for the South East Region. \nDiscography.\nStudio albums\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "560097": "Read My Lips (Sophie Ellis-Bextor album)\n2001 studio album by Sophie Ellis-Bextor\nRead My Lips is the debut studio album by English singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor, released on 3 September 2001 by Polydor Records. After the disbandment of the Britpop group Theaudience, for which Ellis-Bextor served as lead vocalist, she was signed to Polydor. Prior to the LP's completion, the singer collaborated with several musicians, including band Blur's bassist Alex James, Moby and New Radicals frontman Gregg Alexander. The record was described as a collection of 1980s electronica and 1970s disco music.\nCritical response to \"Read My Lips\" was polarised, with music critics denouncing its content that was, according to one magazine, Q, of lesser quality than \"Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)\"\u2014the singer's collaboration with Italian DJ Spiller and according to others, inherently malign simply on account of being chart pop. The album reached number two on the UK Albums Chart, and has since been certified double platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). It spawned four singles: \"Take Me Home\", \"Murder on the Dancefloor\", double A-side single \"Get Over You\"/\"Move This Mountain\" and \"Music Gets the Best of Me\".\nBackground.\nFollowing the disbandment of Britpop group Theaudience, Ellis-Bextor provided vocals for the song \"Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)\" by Italian DJ Spiller. The song was a commercial success, and Ellis-Bextor signed to Polydor. She was contacted by director Baz Luhrmann, who offered her a role in the 2001 film \"Moulin Rouge!\", but the singer refused in order to focus on her career as a recording artist. The success of \"Groovejet\" also prompted American musician Moby to notice Ellis-Bextor, and revealed interest in working with her due to her \"amazing\" voice, as he described it. He instructed his record company to \"track\" Ellis-Bextor \"down\" so they could start working as soon as Moby finished his tour. The two ultimately wrote five songs in New York City, which did not make the final cut of \"Read My Lips\". Furthermore, she also recorded with Blur bassist Alex James, as well as former frontman of the New Radicals, Gregg Alexander, while Damian LeGassick was recruited for his programming and keyboard work.\nThe album's title was chosen due to the strong lipstick Ellis-Bextor used for the album artwork, the \"Take Me Home\" music video and \"Read My Lips\" is sung in the opening verse of the album track \"The Universe Is You\". The album photography was shot by Mert Ala\u015f and Marcus Piggot.\nComposition.\nAn \"eclectic\" album, \"Read My Lips\", is a collection of 1980s electronica and 1970s disco. The album opener and first single is a cover version of Cher's 1979 song \"Take Me Home\", described as a \"disco groove\". Betty Clarke from \"The Guardian\" observed that her voice in the song is reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn's Eliza Doolittle (in the film \"My Fair Lady\"). \"Move This Mountain\", co-written by Alex James, is a \"vibrant\" ballad with a trip hop-influenced sound. Following track and second single, \"Murder on the Dancefloor\", is a dance-pop and disco record, that utilises bass guitar and piano in its instrumental. \"Sparkle\" has \"speeding beats and equally speeding keyboards\", while \"Final Move\" contains \"tinny beats\" and \"electro swirls\". The latter was deemed a \"subdued version\" of \"Murder on the Dancefloor\" with \"similar kaleidoscope synth\". \"I Believe\" was described as \"funky\" and \"live-sounding\", while \"Leave the Others Alone\" involves \"cold beats\" and \"big, full-throttle keyboards\". \"By Chance\" was particularly noted for showcasing Ellis-Bextor's accent. Re-release new song \"Get Over You\" is a \"polite\" Euro disco take on \"I Will Survive\".\nSingles and promotion.\nPromotion for \"Read My Lips\" launched with the release of \"Take Me Home\", a cover of the song by singer Cher, which was released on 13 August 2001. Although its production and Ellis-Bextor's vocal performance in the song were heavily criticised, the single reached number two on the UK Singles Chart. After the release of the album, \"Murder on the Dancefloor\" was serviced as its second single on 3 December 2001. It peaked in the top 10 of the charts in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. A double A-side single including new re-release song \"Get Over You\" and original album track \"Move This Mountain\" was released on 10 June 2002, in a set of two CD singles.\nEllis-Bextor, who had previously felt uncomfortable with the idea of touring, confirmed a UK-only tour in January 2002, which took place from April to May. Later, in July 2002, other dates of the tour were revealed for 2003.\nCritical reception.\nToby Manning from \"Q\" cited \"Take Me Home\" and \"Move This Mountain\" as the album's highlights, but, overall, he thought that the record failed to live up to the standard set by the previous collaboration with Spiller. He also found that the album's music and the distinctive pronunciation of Ellis-Bextor's vocal delivery did not work to complimentary effect. Betty Clarke from \"The Guardian\" described the album as a \"sophisticated package\" but said \"there's little to love and even less fun to be had\". Kelvin Hayes from AllMusic dubbed it \"a disappointing debut from Ellis-Bextor, fusing Human League synth with beats and cinematic strings\", but described \"Murder on the Dancefloor\" as the \"shimmering highlight\" from the album. A critic from entertainment.ie said \"the material on her debut solo album only rarely does justice to her distinctive upper-crust voice\", and said that \"most of the songs sound laboured and plod where they should swing\".\nIn contrast to the previous reviews, Andrew Arora from Blue Coupe had a more positive response to the record. Arora said \"it lands somewhere between Pet Shop Boys' synth-pop faculty and Blondie's \"Parallel Lines\" album\", although he claimed that fans of \"Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)\" \"should not expect much from this album, but it does deliver a dynamic electro disco sound that is sometimes analogous to her breakthrough-hit single\".\nCommercial performance.\n\"Read My Lips\" debuted at number four on the UK Albums Chart, selling 23,023 copies in its first week. Although the original ten-track edition dropped down and out of the charts over the next few weeks, a twelve-track UK edition, released in December 2001, peaked at number three in January 2002 following the chart success of \"Murder on the Dancefloor\". Finally, a fifteen-track edition with a considerably revised running order was released in summer 2002 and peaked at number two\u201441 weeks after the original edition first charted. The album was certified double platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) on 21 June 2002. As of December 2020, it had sold 842,000 copies in the United Kingdom.\nTrack listing.\nNotes\nPersonnel.\nCredits adapted from the liner notes of the 2002 UK reissue of \"Read My Lips\".\nMusicians.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nTechnical.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nTour.\nThe Read My Lips Tour was the debut concert tour by Sophie Ellis-Bextor, in support of her debut studio album. Beginning January 2003, the tour visited the European continent. As of 2013, it is the biggest tour Ellis-Bextor has ever headlined.\nBackground.\nThe Read My Lips Tour is the biggest tour Ellis-Bextor has ever gone on, having 38 dates and two legs. The Shepherd's Bush Empire gig was recorded, later being released in Ellis-Bextor's first video album, \"Watch My Lips\".\nSetlist.\nThis setlist was obtained from the concert held 3 May 2002 at the Shepherd's Bush Empire in London, England. It does not represent all concerts for the duration of the tour. \nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "40967768": "Read My Lips (Ciara song)\n\"Read My Lips\" is a song recorded by American singer-songwriter Ciara for her fifth studio album, \"Ciara\" (2013). It was written by Ciara, Livvi Franc, and co-written and produced by Rodney \"Darkchild\" Jerkins. The song was set to be released as the third single from the album, but was cancelled. To promote the album, Ciara recorded \"video shorts\" for some songs, including one for \"Read My Lips\", which lasts for 1:30.\nMusically, \"Read My Lips\" is an electropop song, with sunshine-y chords and bouncy, half-organic drums. Lyrically, the song features a lot of innuendos about cunnilingus, where Ciara uses a sweet vocal to talk about it. \"Read My Lips\" received favorable reviews from music critics who praised the song for being both ridiculously lubricious and kind of sweet. The song has charted at number 5 on the South Korea charts, selling over 890,000 copies.\nBackground and release.\nIn March 2013, \"Body Party\" was released as \"Ciara\"'s lead single. After \"Body Party\" success, the song \"I'm Out\" was released to radio stations, becoming a moderate success. In August 2013, Ciara announced in an interview with \"Hollywood Life\" that \"Where You Go\", featuring her boyfriend Future, will serve as the third official single from the album in the United States, while \"Overdose\" will serve as the next international single. However, in September 2013, Ciara confirmed in an interview and on her Twitter that \"Read My Lips\" was set to be the album's new single, but in the same month, the cover of \"Overdose\" was released and it was announced that the song would set to hit radio on October 14, 2013. As of November, \"Read My Lips\" has not been released as a single however, the song is available on iTunes.\nComposition and lyrics.\n\"Read My Lips\" was written by Ciara, Livvi Franc, while Rodney \"Darkchild\" Jerkins co-wrote and produced it. \"Darkchild\" is responsible for producing several of Ciara's past songs, including the 2007 single \"Can't Leave 'Em Alone\" and \"Make It"}, "descending_order": ["40967768", "560097", "473752"], "permutation_1": ["473752", "560097", "40967768"], "permutation_2": ["40967768", "473752", "560097"], "permutation_3": ["473752", "40967768", "560097"]}
{"id": "2hop__408076_36134", "docs_added": {"11977664": "Fualopa\nFualopa is an islet of Funafuti, Tuvalu. It is part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, established in 1996 with the aim of preserving the natural fauna and flora of the area. Fualopa hosts a breeding colony of black noddy (\"Anous minutus\" or white-capped noddy).\nTe Ava Kum Kum is the passage through the Funafuti atoll of the western rim, south of Te Ava Tepuka Vili, between the islets of Tepuka Vili Vili to the north and Fualopa immediately south.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11977664", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["11977664", "30227"], "permutation_2": ["30227", "11977664"], "permutation_3": ["11977664", "30227"]}
{"id": "2hop__75203_20093", "docs_added": {"2030073": "Don't Stop Me Now\nSong by British rock band Queen\n\"Don't Stop Me Now\" is a song by the British rock band Queen, featured on their 1978 album \"Jazz\" and released as a single on 26 January 1979. Written by lead singer Freddie Mercury, it was recorded in August 1978 at Super Bear Studios in Berre-les-Alpes (Alpes-Maritimes), France, and is the twelfth track on the album.\nThe song also appeared on the band's 1981 compilation album \"Greatest Hits\". In June 2011, as part of Queen's 40th anniversary celebrations, an old take of the song containing more guitar parts was included on the bonus EP of the re-released and remastered \"Jazz\" album. Featuring in films, commercials, and television shows, the song has grown in popularity in the decades since its release. Bobby Olivier of \"Billboard\" attributes its initial rebirth to its appearance in the 2004 cult classic zombie apocalypse film \"Shaun of the Dead\". In 2014, \"Rolling Stone\" readers voted it their third-favourite song by Queen.\nBackground.\nThe song was written by Freddie Mercury during the sessions for \"Jazz\". The band felt they were \"getting better at having a good time\" and the lyrics reflect this. Musically, the song builds on Mercury's piano playing, with John Deacon and Roger Taylor providing a bass guitar and drums backing track. The song also provides an example of Queen's trademark style of multitrack harmony vocals for the chorus lines.\nAn alternative version of the song, with a harder, guitar-driven arrangement, appeared on \"\" issued in 2018, billed as \"Don't Stop Me Now... Revisited\".\nReception.\nThe single reached number 9 in the UK charts but only number 86 in the US; as the album was a top-10 hit, the song got some airplay on U.S. album-oriented rock stations despite its low chart ranking as a single. Despite this, the song has grown in stature with time and has been popularised not only by consistent airplay, but by its use in advertisements, television programmes and films, and through cover versions. It has subsequently become one of Queen's most popular songs. The song was voted as the third-best Queen song by readers of \"Rolling Stone\", who noted that \"time has also been very kind to it and it's widely seen now as one of the group's best works.\" The single also has reached platinum status in the United Kingdom. In a March 2019 \"Billboard\" article titled, \"The Evolution of Queen's 'Don't Stop Me Now': How a Minor Hit Became One of the Band's Most Beloved (And Inescapable) Songs\", Bobby Olivier wrote,\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"You might have noticed a new commercial promoting the new season of \"American Idol\". It was a 90-second music video featuring a dozen or so bright-eyed contestants, all of whom gleefully belted lines from a beloved song that has felt particularly ubiquitous as of late. No, it wasn't \"Shallow,\" or \"Thank U, Next\"\u2014it was Queen's \"Don't Stop Me Now,\" a classic-rock energizer that has, in the last six months alone, also been featured in commercials for Toyota, Silk almond milk, Amazon and L'Oreal. In the latter spot, Camila Cabello lip-syncs to the 41-year-old song as she dances and applies her lipstick. \"Don't Stop Me Now\" is not only one of the band's most treasured cuts, but one of the most popular songs of its entire era. On Sunday, March 3 [2019], it eclipsed 500 million plays on Spotify\u2014nearly double that of any Rolling Stones, U2 or Led Zeppelin song on the service.\"\nAlexis Petridis of \"The Guardian\" wrote that the \"astonishing\" song \"may be Queen's greatest song of all\". He felt it was \"a direct product of [Mercury's] hedonism and promiscuity: an unrepentant, joyous, utterly irresistible paean to gay pleasure-seeking. You find yourself wondering if its title might not have been aimed at his censorious bandmates.\" Mike Orme of \"Stylus Magazine\" ranked it the 7th-greatest penultimate track on an album, calling it Queen's \"most flamboyant and energetic single\" and commenting: \"Essentially three and a half minutes of Freddie Mercury jacking the mike from the rest of the world, the song offers him a chance to let us know just how much fun he's having in the spotlight.\" \"Billboard\" praised Brian May's guitar solo and also stated that the song was \"less gimmick laden\" than Queen's previous single from \"Jazz\", \"Bicycle Race\"/\"Fat Bottomed Girls\", \"while still retaining the brazen braggadocio of Freddie Mercury's lead vocals.\" \"Cash Box\" said it has \"vocal dramatics and varied arrangements by Mercury\" and \"beautifully layered vocals and regal guitar work from May\". \"Record World\" called it a \"fast paced tune with that easily identifiable Freddie Mercury lead vocal and Brian May guitar.\" The television show \"Top Gear\" voted it the Greatest Driving Song Ever.\nCriticism.\nDespite its popularity, Brian May was not originally a fan of the song as he felt it was celebrating the hedonistic and risky lifestyle of Mercury, which he considered threatening. He added that he struggled with the lyrics at the time, because it was about a difficult period in Freddie's life when the singer was \"taking lots of drugs and having sex with lots of men\". However, after hearing the song being played at weddings, parties and funerals, he has come to appreciate it as representing \"great joy\".\nMusic video.\nThe video for the song was directed by J. Kliebenstein and filmed at the Forest National, Brussels, Belgium on 26 January 1979. The video was uploaded to Queen's official YouTube channel on 1 August 2008.\nLive performances.\nViewed at the time of release as one of the lesser songs in the Queen canon, it was only performed live during 1979, with the last performance in the Crazy Tour. On the studio version, Brian May's only guitar playing is in his guitar solo, but on live versions performed on the band's 1979 Jazz and Crazy tours, May would also play rhythm guitar throughout the rest of the song to give more of a rock feel. A live version of the song features in the band's 1979 album \"Live Killers\".\nQueen reintroduced the track to their set in the 2010s with Adam Lambert and it is now a popular live favourite.\nPersonnel.\nQueen:\nMcFly version.\nIn 2006, English band McFly covered \"Don't Stop Me Now\" and released it as a double A-side single with original track \"Please, Please\". The release, titled \"Don't Stop Me Now\" / \"Please, Please\", was the first single from their third album, \"Motion in the Ocean\". It premiered on BBC Radio 1 on 7 June 2006. The double A-side entered the UK Singles Chart at number one on 23 July 2006, knocking \"Smile\" by Lily Allen off the top spot. It also reached number 15 in Ireland.\nCharity.\nSome of the money from any version of the single went to \"Sport Relief\" and as a result their version of \"Don't Stop Me Now\" was played across the BBC's sport programmes, including highlights from the 2006 FIFA World Cup. It also was the theme for the \"Sport Relief Mile\", which McFly also took part in. Judd also travelled to India for \"Sport Relief\" with a collection of other British celebrities including presenter and comedian Nick Hancock and radio DJ and presenter Chris Evans. Whilst out in India, Harry took part in a cricket tournament, travelling across India's poorest areas and playing with everyone from the kids to the professionals, all in aid of \"Sport Relief\".\nTrack listings.\nUK CD1\nUK CD2\nUK DVD single\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nOther versions.\nCover versions include:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "42010": "Queen (band)\nBritish rock band\nQueen are a British rock band formed in London in 1970 by Freddie Mercury (lead vocals, piano), Brian May (guitar, vocals), and Roger Taylor (drums, vocals), later joined by John Deacon (bass). Their earliest works were influenced by progressive rock, hard rock and heavy metal, but the band gradually ventured into more conventional and radio-friendly works by incorporating further styles, such as arena rock and pop rock.\nBefore forming Queen, May and Taylor had played together in the band Smile. Mercury was a fan of Smile and encouraged them to experiment with more elaborate stage and recording techniques. He joined in 1970 and suggested the name \"Queen\". Deacon was recruited in February 1971, before the band released their self-titled debut album in 1973. Queen first charted in the UK with their second album, \"Queen II\", in 1974. \"Sheer Heart Attack\" later that year and \"A Night at the Opera\" in 1975 brought them international success. The latter featured \"Bohemian Rhapsody\", which topped the UK singles chart for nine weeks and helped popularise the music video format. The band's 1977 album \"News of the World\" contained \"We Will Rock You\" and \"We Are the Champions\", which have become anthems at sporting events. By the early 1980s, Queen were one of the biggest stadium rock bands in the world. \"Another One Bites the Dust\" from \"The Game\" (1980) became their best-selling single, and their 1981 compilation album \"Greatest Hits\" is the best-selling album in the UK and is certified 9x Platinum in the US by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Their performance at the 1985 Live Aid concert is ranked among the greatest in rock history by various publications. In August 1986, Mercury gave his last performance with Queen at Knebworth, England.\nMercury was diagnosed with AIDS in 1987. The band released two more albums, \"The Miracle\" in 1989 and \"Innuendo\" in 1991. On 23 November 1991, Mercury publicly revealed his AIDS diagnosis, and the next day died of bronchopneumonia, a complication of AIDS. One more album was released featuring Mercury's vocals, 1995's \"Made in Heaven\". Deacon retired in 1997, while May and Taylor continued to make sporadic appearances together. Since 2004, they have toured as \"Queen +\", with vocalists Paul Rodgers and Adam Lambert.\nQueen have been a global presence in popular culture for more than half a century. Estimates of their record sales range from 250\u00a0million to 300\u00a0million, making them one of the world's best-selling music artists. In 1990, Queen received the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, and with each member having composed hit singles, all four were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003. In 2005, they received the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Song Collection from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors. In 2018, they were presented the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and they were awarded the Polar Music Prize in 2025.\nHistory.\n1968\u20131971: Foundations.\nThe founding members of Queen met in west London during the late 1960s. Guitarist Brian May had built his own guitar with his father in 1963, and formed the group 1984 (named after Orwell's novel) the following year with singer Tim Staffell. May left the group in early 1968 to focus on his degree in Physics and Infrared Astronomy at Imperial College and find a group that could write original material. He formed the group Smile with Staffell (now playing bass) and keyboardist Chris Smith. To complete the line-up, May placed an advertisement on a college notice board for a \"Mitch Mitchell/Ginger Baker type\" drummer; Roger Taylor, a young dental student, auditioned and got the job. Smith left the group in early 1969, immediately before a gig at the Royal Albert Hall with Free and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.\nWhile attending Ealing Art College in west London, Staffell became friends with fellow student Farrokh \"Freddie\" Bulsara, who was from Zanzibar and of Indian Parsi descent. Bulsara had studied fashion design for a year before switching to graphic art and design, and soon became a keen fan of Smile. He asked if he could join the group as lead singer, but May felt Staffell would not give up that role. He also ran a stall in Kensington Market with Taylor.\nIn 1970, Staffell quit Smile, feeling his interests in soul and R&B clashed with the group's hard rock sound and being fed up with the lack of success. He formed the group Humpy Bong with former Bee Gees drummer Colin Petersen. The remaining members accepted Bulsara as lead singer, and recruited Taylor's friend Mike Grose as bassist. The four played their first gig at a fundraising event in Truro on 27 June 1970. Bulsara suggested the group should be renamed to \"Queen\". The others were uncertain at first, but he said, \"it's wonderful, dear, people will love it\". At the same time, he decided to change his surname to Mercury, inspired by the line \"Mother Mercury, look what they've done to me\" in the song \"My Fairy King\". The group played their first London gig on 18 July. The early set consisted of material that later appeared on the first two albums, along with various rock and roll covers, such as Cliff Richard and the Shadows' \"Please Don't Tease\". They attracted the attention of producer John Anthony, who was interested in the group's sound but thought they had the wrong bass player. After three live gigs, Mike Grose decided not to continue with the band and was replaced by Barry Mitchell (ex Crushed Butler). Mitchell played thirteen gigs with Queen between August 1970 and January 1971. In turn, Mitchell left in January 1971 and was replaced by Doug Bogie for two live gigs.\n1971\u20131974: \"Queen\" and \"Queen II\".\nIn February 1971, John Deacon joined Queen. In addition to being an experienced bassist, his quiet demeanour complemented the band, and he was skilled in electronics. On 2 July, Queen played their first show with the classic line-up of Mercury, May, Taylor and Deacon at a Surrey college outside London. May called Terry Yeadon, an engineer at Pye Studios where Smile had recorded, to see if he knew anywhere where Queen could go. Yeadon had since moved to De Lane Lea Studios' new premises in Wembley, and they needed a group to test out the equipment and recording rooms. He tried asking the Kinks but couldn't get hold of them. Therefore, he told Queen they could record some demos in exchange for the studio's acoustic tests. They recorded five of their own songs, \"Liar\", \"Keep Yourself Alive\", \"Great King Rat\", \"The Night Comes Down\" and \"Jesus\". During the recording, producers John Anthony and Roy Thomas Baker visited the band. The two were taken with \"Keep Yourself Alive\" and began promoting the band to several record companies.\nPromoter Ken Testi managed to attract the interest of Charisma Records, who offered Queen an advance of around \u00a325,000, but the group turned them down as they realised the label would promote Genesis as a priority. Testi then entered discussions with Trident Studios' Norman Sheffield, who offered the band a management deal under Neptune Productions, a subsidiary of Trident, to manage the band and enable them to use their facilities, while the management searched for a deal. This suited both parties, as Trident were expanding into management, and under the deal, Queen were able to make use of the hi-tech recording facilities used by signed musicians. Taylor later described these early off-peak studio hours as \"gold dust\".\nQueen began 1972 with a gig at Bedford College, London where only six people turned up. After a few more shows, they stopped live performances for eight months to work on the album with Anthony and Baker. During the sessions at Trident, they saw David Bowie with the Spiders from Mars live and realised they needed to make an impact with the album, otherwise they would be left behind. Co-producers Anthony and Baker initially clashed with the band (May in particular) on the direction of the album, bringing the band's inexperience in the studio to bear. The band's fighting centered around their efforts to integrate technical perfection with the reality of live performances, leading to what Baker referred to as \"kitchen sink overproduction\". The resulting album was a mix of heavy metal and progressive rock. The group were unhappy with the re-recording of \"The Night Comes Down\", so the finished album uses the De Lane Lea demo. Another track, \"Mad the Swine\" was dropped from the running order after the band and Baker could not agree on a mix. Mike Stone created the final mix for \"Keep Yourself Alive\", and he went on to work on several other Queen albums. By January 1972, the band finished recording their debut album, but had yet to secure a record contract. In order to attract record company interest, Trident booked a \"showcase\" gig on 6 November at The Pheasantry, followed by a show at the Marquee Club on 20 December.\nQueen promoted the unreleased album in February 1973 on BBC Radio 1, still unsigned. The following month, Trident managed to strike a deal with EMI Records. \"Keep Yourself Alive\" was released as a single on 6 July, with the album \"Queen\" appearing a week later. The front cover showed a shot of Mercury live on stage taken by Taylor's friend Douglass Puddifoot. Deacon was credited as \"Deacon John\" while Taylor used his full name, Roger Meddows-Taylor. The album was received well by critics; Gordon Fletcher of \"Rolling Stone\" called it \"superb\", and Chicago's \"Daily Herald\" called it an \"above-average debut\". However, it drew little mainstream attention, and \"Keep Yourself Alive\" sold poorly. Retrospectively, it is cited as the album's highlight, and in 2008 \"Rolling Stone\" ranked it 31st in the \"100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time\", describing it as \"an entire album's worth of riffs crammed into a single song\". The album was certified gold in the UK and the US.\nThe group began to record their second album, \"Queen II\" in August 1973. Now able to use regular studio time, they decided to make full use of the facilities available. May created a multi-layer guitar introduction \"Procession\", while Mercury wrote \"The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke\" based on the painting of the same name by Richard Dadd. The group spent the remainder of the year touring the UK, supporting Mott the Hoople, and began to attract an audience. The tour ended with two shows at the Hammersmith Odeon on 14 December, playing to 7,000 people.\nIn January 1974, Queen played the Sunbury Pop Festival in Australia. They arrived late, and were jeered and taunted by the audience who expected to see home grown acts. Before leaving, Mercury announced, \"when we come back to Australia, Queen will be the biggest band in the world!\" \"Queen II\" was released in March, and features Mick Rock's iconic Dietrich-inspired image of the band on the cover. This image would later be used as the basis for \"Bohemian Rhapsody\" music video production. The album reached number five on the British album chart and became the first Queen album to chart in the UK. The Mercury-written lead single \"Seven Seas of Rhye\" reached number 10 in the UK, giving the band their first hit. The album featured a 'layered' sound which would become their signature, and features long complex instrumental passages, fantasy-themed lyrics, and instrumental virtuosity. Aside from its only single, the album also included the song \"The March of the Black Queen\", a six-minute epic which lacks a chorus. Critical reaction was mixed; the \"Winnipeg Free Press\", while praising the band's debut album, described \"Queen II\" as an \"over-produced monstrosity\". AllMusic has described the album as a favourite among the band's hardcore fans, and it is the first of three Queen albums to feature in the book \"1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die\". The group ended their early 1974 UK tour with a show at the Rainbow Theatre on 31 March. Mercury chose to a wear a Zandra Rhodes-designed tunic for the gig, changing into a slashed black top midway through the show.\n1974\u20131976: \"Sheer Heart Attack\" to \"A Night at the Opera\".\nIn May 1974, a month into the band's first US tour opening for Mott the Hoople, May collapsed and was diagnosed with hepatitis, forcing the cancellation of their remaining dates. May was still absent when the band started work on their third album, but he returned midway through the recording process. Released in 1974, \"Sheer Heart Attack\" reached number two in the UK, sold well throughout Europe, and went gold in the US. It gave the band their first real experience of international success, and was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic. The album experimented with a variety of musical genres, including British music hall, heavy metal, ballads, ragtime, and Caribbean. May's \"Now I'm Here\" documented the group's curtailed American tour, and \"Brighton Rock\" served as a vehicle for his regular on-stage solo guitar spot. Deacon wrote his first song for the group, \"Misfire\", while the live favourite \"Stone Cold Crazy\" was credited to the whole band. Mercury wrote the closing number, \"In the Lap of the Gods\", with the intention that the audience could sing along to the chorus when played live. This would be repeated later on, more successfully, in songs such as \"We Are the Champions.\nThe single \"Killer Queen\" was written by Mercury about a high-class prostitute. It reached number two on the British charts, and became their first US hit, reaching number 12 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. The song was partly recorded at Rockfield Studios in Wales. With Mercury playing the grand piano, it combines camp, vaudeville, and British music hall with May's guitar. \"Now I'm Here\" was released as the second single, reached number eleven. In 2006, \"Classic Rock\" ranked \"Sheer Heart Attack\" number 28 in \"The 100 Greatest British Rock Albums Ever\", and in 2007, \"Mojo\" ranked it No.88 in \"The 100 Records That Changed the World\". It is also the second of three Queen albums to feature in the book \"1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die\".\nIn January 1975, Queen left for a world tour with an upgraded light show. They toured the US as headliners, and played in Canada for the first time. Several dates were cancelled after Mercury contracted laryngitis. The band then toured Japan from mid-April to the beginning of May. They were greeted by thousands of screaming fans, and played eight times in seven cities. Despite the success, Queen were still tied to the original Trident deal and wages. They were all living in relative poverty in bedsits, and Deacon was refused money for a deposit on a house. EMI contacted lawyer Jim Beach, who tried to find a way of extracting them from their contract. Trident complained that they had invested \u00a3200,000 in Queen and wanted their money back first. In August, after an acrimonious split with Trident, the band negotiated themselves out of their contract and searched for new management. One of the options they considered was an offer from Led Zeppelin's manager, Peter Grant, who wanted them to sign with Led Zeppelin's own production company, Swan Song Records. The band were concerned about being a lower priority than Zeppelin and Bad Company (also signed to Swan Song) and instead contacted Elton John's manager, John Reid, who accepted the position. Reid's first instruction to the band was \"I'll take care of the business; you make the best record you can\".\nQueen started work on their fourth album \"A Night at the Opera\", taking its name from the popular Marx Brothers movie. At the time, it was the most expensive album ever produced, costing \u00a340,000 and using three different studios. Like its predecessor, the album features diverse musical styles and experimentation with stereo sound. Mercury wrote the opening song \"Death on Two Legs\", a savage dig at perceived wrongdoers (and later dedicated to Trident in concert) and the camp vaudeville \"Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon\" and \"Seaside Rendezvous\". May's \"The Prophet's Song\" was an eight-minute epic; the middle section is a canon, with simple phrases layered to create a full-choral sound. The Mercury penned ballad, \"Love of My Life\", featured a harp and overdubbed vocal harmonies.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nHe knew exactly what he was doing. It was Freddie's baby. We just helped him bring it to life. We realized we'd look odd trying to mime such a hugely complex thing on TV. It had to be presented in some other way.\n \u2014Brian May on Mercury writing \"Bohemian Rhapsody\" and the groundbreaking music video.\nThe best-known song on the album, \"Bohemian Rhapsody\", originated from pieces of music that Mercury had written at Ealing College. Mercury played a run-through of the track on piano in his flat to Baker, stopping suddenly to announce, \"This is where the opera section comes in\". When the rest of the band started recording the song they were unsure as to how it would be pieced together. After recording the backing track, Baker left a 30-second section of tape to add the operatic vocals. Reportedly, 180 overdubs were used, to the extent that the original tape wore thin. EMI initially refused to release the single, thinking it too long, and demanded a radio edit which Queen refused. Mercury's close friend and advisor, Capital London radio DJ Kenny Everett, played a pivotal role in giving the single exposure. He was given a promotional copy on the condition he didn't play it, but ended up doing so fourteen times over a single weekend. Capital's switchboard was overwhelmed with callers inquiring when the song would be released. With EMI forced to release \"Bohemian Rhapsody\" due to public demand, the single reached number one in the UK for nine weeks. It is the third-best-selling single of all time in the UK, surpassed only by Band Aid's \"Do They Know It's Christmas?\" and Elton John's \"Candle in the Wind 1997\", and is the best-selling commercial single (i.e. \"not\" for charity) in the UK. It also reached number nine in the US (a 1992 re-release reached number two on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 for five weeks). It is the only single ever to sell a million copies on two separate occasions, and became the Christmas number one twice in the UK, the only single ever to do so. It has also been voted the greatest song of all time in three different polls.\n\"Bohemian Rhapsody\" was promoted with a music video directed by Bruce Gowers, who had already shot several of Queen's live concerts. The group wanted a video so they could avoid appearing on the BBC's \"Top of the Pops\", which would clash with tour dates, and it would have looked strange miming to such a complex song. Filmed at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, the video cost \u00a33,500, five times the typical promotional budget, and was shot in three hours. The operatic section featured a reprise of the \"Queen II\" cover, with the band member's heads animated. On the impact of the \"Bohemian Rhapsody\" promotional video, \"Rolling Stone\" states: \"Its influence cannot be overstated, practically inventing the music video seven years before MTV went on the air.\" Ranking it number 31 on their list of the 50 key events in rock music history, \"The Guardian\" stated it \"ensured videos would henceforth be a mandatory tool in the marketing of music\". Radio broadcaster Tommy Vance states, \"It became the first record to be pushed into the forefront by virtue of a video. Queen were certainly the first band to create a 'concept' video. The video captured the musical imagery perfectly. You cannot hear that music without seeing the visuals in your mind's eye.\"\n\"A Night at the Opera\" was very successful in the UK, and went triple platinum in the United States. The British public voted it the 13th-greatest album of all time in a 2004 Channel 4 poll. It has also ranked highly in international polls; in a worldwide Guinness poll, it was voted the 19th-greatest of all time, and an ABC poll saw the Australian public vote it the 28th-greatest of all time. \"A Night at the Opera\" has frequently appeared in \"greatest albums\" lists reflecting the opinions of critics. Among other accolades, it was ranked number 16 in \"Q\" magazine's \"The 50 Best British Albums Ever\" in 2004, a poll done in collaboration with British music and entertainment retailer HMV. It was also placed at number 230 on \"Rolling Stone\" magazine's list of \"The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time\" in 2003. \"A Night at the Opera\" is the third and final Queen album to be featured in the book \"1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die\". The second single from the album was Deacon's \"You're My Best Friend\", which peaked at number sixteen on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100, and went on to become a worldwide top-ten hit. The band's A Night at the Opera Tour began in November 1975, and covered Europe, the US, Japan, and Australia. On 24 December, Queen played a special concert at the Hammersmith Odeon which was broadcast live on the BBC show \"The Old Grey Whistle Test\", with the audio being later broadcast on BBC Radio 1. It became one of the band's most popular bootleg recordings for decades before being officially released in 2015.\n1976\u20131979: \"A Day at the Races\" to \"Live Killers\".\nBy 1976, Queen were back in the studio recording \"A Day at the Races\", which is often regarded as a sequel album to \"A Night at the Opera\". It again borrowed the name of a Marx Brothers movie, and its cover was similar to that of \"A Night at the Opera\", a variation on the same Queen logo. The most recognisable of the Marx Brothers, Groucho Marx, invited Queen to visit him in his Los Angeles home in March 1977; there the band thanked him in person, and performed \"'39\" \"a cappella\". Baker did not return to produce the album; instead the band self-produced with assistance from Mike Stone, who performed several of the backing vocals. The major hit on the album was \"Somebody to Love\", a gospel-inspired song in which Mercury, May, and Taylor multi-tracked their voices to create a gospel choir. The song went to number two in the UK, and number thirteen in the US. The album also featured one of the band's heaviest songs, May's \"Tie Your Mother Down\", which became a staple of their live shows. Musically, \"A Day at the Races\" was by both fans' and critics' standards a strong effort, reaching number one in the UK and Japan, and number five in the US.\nQueen played a landmark gig on 18 September 1976, a free concert in Hyde Park, London, organised by the entrepreneur Richard Branson. It set an attendance record at the park, with 150,000 people confirmed in the audience. Queen were late arriving onstage and ran out of time to play an encore; the police informed Mercury that he would be arrested if he attempted to go on stage again. May enjoyed the gig particularly, as he had been to see previous concerts at the park, such as the first one organised by Blackhill Enterprises in 1968, featuring Pink Floyd.\nOn 1 December 1976, Queen were the intended guests on London's early evening \"Today\" programme, but they pulled out at the last-minute, which saw their late replacement on the show, EMI labelmate the Sex Pistols, give their infamous expletive-strewn interview with Bill Grundy. During the A Day at the Races Tour in 1977, Queen performed sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden, New York, in February, supported by Thin Lizzy, and Mercury and Taylor socialised with that group's leader Phil Lynott. They ended the tour with two concerts at Earls Court, London, in June, which commemorated the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, and at the cost of \u00a350,000 the band used a lighting rig in the shape of a crown for the first time.\nThe band's sixth studio album \"News of the World\" was released in 1977, which has gone four times platinum in the US, and twice in the UK. The album contained many songs tailor-made for live performance, including two of rock's most recognisable anthems, \"We Will Rock You\" and the rock ballad \"We Are the Champions\", both of which became enduring international sports anthems, and the latter reached number four in the US. Queen commenced the News of the World Tour in November 1977, and Robert Hilburn of the \"Los Angeles Times\" called this concert tour the band's \"most spectacularly staged and finely honed show\". During the tour they sold out another two shows at MSG, and in 1978 they received the Madison Square Garden Gold Ticket Award for passing more than 100,000 unit ticket sales at the venue.\n In 1978, Queen released \"Jazz\", which reached number two in the UK and number six on the \"Billboard\" 200 in the US. The album included the hit singles \"Fat Bottomed Girls\" and \"Bicycle Race\" on a double-sided record. Critical reviews of the album in the years since its release have been more favourable than initial reviews. Another notable track from \"Jazz\", \"Don't Stop Me Now\", provides another example of the band's exuberant vocal harmonies.\nIn 1978, Queen toured the US and Canada, and spent much of 1979 touring in Europe and Japan. They released their first live album, \"Live Killers\", in 1979; it went platinum twice in the US. Queen also released the very successful single \"Crazy Little Thing Called Love\", a rockabilly inspired song done in the style of Elvis Presley. The song made the top 10 in many countries, topped the Australian ARIA Charts for seven consecutive weeks, and was the band's first number one single in the US where it topped the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 for four weeks. Having written the song on guitar and played rhythm on the record, Mercury played rhythm guitar when performing the song live, the first time he ever played guitar in concert. On 26 December 1979, Queen played the opening night at the Concert for the People of Kampuchea in London, having accepted a request by the event's organiser, Paul McCartney. The concert was the last date of their Crazy Tour of London.\n1980\u20131982: \"The Game\", \"Hot Space\" and stadium tours.\nQueen began their 1980s career with \"The Game\". It featured the singles \"Crazy Little Thing Called Love\" and \"Another One Bites the Dust\", both of which reached number one in the US. After attending a Queen concert in Los Angeles, Michael Jackson suggested to Mercury backstage that \"Another One Bites the Dust\" be released as a single, and in October 1980 it spent three weeks at number one. The album topped the \"Billboard\" 200 for five weeks, and sold over four million copies in the US. It was also the first appearance of a synthesiser on a Queen album. Heretofore, their albums featured a distinctive \"No Synthesisers!\" sleeve note. The note is widely assumed to reflect an anti-synth, pro-\"hard\"-rock stance by the band, but was later revealed by producer Roy Thomas Baker to be an attempt to clarify that those albums' multi-layered solos were created with guitars, not synths, as record company executives kept assuming at the time. In September 1980, Queen performed three sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden. In 1980, Queen also released the soundtrack they had recorded for \"Flash Gordon\". At the 1981 American Music Awards in January, \"Another One Bites the Dust\" won the award for Favorite Pop/Rock Single, and Queen were nominated for Favorite Pop/Rock Band, Duo, or Group.\nIn February 1981, Queen travelled to South America as part of The Game Tour, and became the first rock band to play stadiums in Latin America. On playing the concerts, \"Classic Rock\" magazine states, \"They were under the spotlight from all quarters, as the entire music industry waited to see if their ambitious plans would bear fruit\". Tom Pinnock in the March 1981 issue of \"Melody Maker\" wrote, <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nThe tour included five shows in Argentina, one of which drew the largest single concert crowd in Argentine history with an audience of 300,000 in Buenos Aires and two concerts at the Morumbi Stadium in S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil, where they played to more than 131,000 people in the first night (then the largest paying audience for a single band anywhere in the world) and more than 120,000 people the following night. A region then largely ruled by military dictatorships, the band were greeted with scenes of fan-fever, and the promoter of their first shows at the V\u00e9lez Sarsfield Stadium in Buenos Aires was moved to say: \"For music in Argentina, this has been a case of before the war and after the war. Queen have liberated this country, musically speaking.\" The group's second show at V\u00e9lez Sarsfield was broadcast on national television and watched by over 30 million. Backstage, they were introduced to footballer Diego Maradona.\nTopping the charts in Brazil and Argentina, the ballad \"Love of My Life\" stole the show in South American concerts. Mercury would stop singing and would then conduct the audience as they took over, with Lesley-Ann Jones writing \"the fans knew the song by heart. Their English was word-perfect.\" Later that year Queen performed for more than 150,000 on 9 October at Monterrey (Estadio Universitario) and 17 and 18 at Puebla (Estadio Zaragoza), Mexico. Though the gigs were successful, they were marred by a lack of planning and suitable facilities, with audiences throwing projectiles on stage. Mercury finished the final gig saying, \"Adios, amigos, you motherfuckers!\" On 24 and 25 November, Queen played two nights at the Montreal Forum, Quebec, Canada. One of Mercury's most notable performances of \"The Game\"'s final track, \"Save Me\", took place in Montreal, and the concert is recorded in the live album, \"Queen Rock Montreal\".\nQueen worked with David Bowie on the 1981 single \"Under Pressure\". The first-time collaboration with another artist was spontaneous, as Bowie happened to drop by the studio while Queen were recording. Mercury and Bowie recorded their vocals on the track separately to each other, each coming up with individual ideas. The song topped the UK charts. In October, Queen released their first compilation album, titled \"Greatest Hits\", which showcased the group's highlights from 1974 to 1981. The best-selling album in UK chart history, it is the only album to sell over seven million copies in the UK. As of July 2022, it has spent over 1000 weeks in the UK Album Chart. According to \"The Telegraph\", approximately one in three families in the UK own a copy. The album is certified nine times platinum in the US. As of August 2024, it has spent over 600 weeks on the US \"Billboard\" 200. \"Greatest Hits\" has sold over 25\u00a0million copies worldwide.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nWe moved out to Munich to isolate ourselves from normal life so we could focus on the music. We all ended up in a place that was rather unhealthy. A difficult period. We weren't getting along together. We all had different agendas. It was a difficult time for me, personally \u2013 some dark moments.\n\u2014 May on the recording of \"Hot Space\" during a difficult period for the band.\nIn 1982, the band released the album \"Hot Space\", a departure from their trademark seventies sound, this time being a mixture of pop rock, dance, disco, funk, and R&B. Most of the album was recorded in Munich during the most turbulent period in the band's history. Mercury and Deacon enjoyed the new soul and funk influences, but Taylor and May were less favourable, and were critical of the influence Mercury's personal manager Paul Prenter had on him. According to Mack, Queen's producer, Prenter loathed rock music and was in Mercury's ear throughout the \"Hot Space\" sessions. May was also scathing of Prenter\u2014Mercury's manager from 1977 to 1984\u2014for being dismissive of the importance of radio stations and their vital connection between the artist and the community, and for denying them access to Mercury. May states, \"this guy, in the course of one tour, told every record station to fuck off\". Queen roadie Peter Hince wrote \"None of the band cared for him [Prenter], apart from Freddie\", with Hince regarding Mercury's favouring of Prenter as an act of \"misguided loyalty\". During the Munich sessions, Mercury spent time with Mack and his family, becoming godfather to Mack's first child. \"Q\" magazine would list \"Hot Space\" as one of the top fifteen albums where great rock acts lost the plot. Though the album confused some fans with the change of musical direction, it still reached number 4 in the UK.\nQueen toured to promote \"Hot Space\", but found some audience unreceptive to the new material. At a gig in Frankfurt, Mercury told some people heckling the new material, \"If you don't want to listen to it, go home!\" Former Mott the Hoople keyboardist Morgan Fisher joined as an additional touring member. Shows were planned at Arsenal Stadium and Old Trafford, but these were cancelled as Pope John Paul II was touring Britain, leading to a lack of available outdoor facilities such as toilets. The gigs were moved to the Milton Keynes Bowl and Elland Road, Leeds instead. The Milton Keynes concert was filmed by Tyne Tees Television and later released on DVD. On 14 and 15 September 1982, the band performed their last two gigs in the US with Mercury on lead vocals, playing at The Forum in Inglewood, California. Fisher was replaced as touring keyboardist by Fred Mandel for the North American shows. The band stopped touring North America after their Hot Space Tour, as their success there had waned, although they performed on American television for the only time during the eighth-season premiere of \"Saturday Night Live\" on 25 September of the same year; it became the final public performance of the band in North America before the death of their frontman. Their fall in popularity in the US has been partially attributed to homophobia: Mikal Gilmore for \"Rolling Stone\" writes, \"At some shows on the band's 1980 American tour, fans tossed disposable razor blades onstage: They didn't like this identity of Mercury\u2014what they perceived as a brazenly gay rock & roll hero\u2014and they wanted him to shed it.\" The group finished the year with a Japanese tour.\n1983\u20131984: \"The Works\".\nAfter the Hot Space Tour concluded with a concert at Seibu Lions Stadium in Tokorozawa, Japan in November 1982, Queen decided they would take a significant amount of time off. May later said at that point, \"we hated each other for a while\". The band reconvened nine months later to begin recording a new album at the Record Plant Studios, Los Angeles and Musicland Studios, Munich. Several members of the band also explored side projects and solo work. Taylor released his second solo album, \"Strange Frontier\". May released the mini-album \"Star Fleet Project\", collaborating with Eddie Van Halen. Queen left Elektra Records, their label in the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, and signed onto EMI/Capitol Records.\nIn February 1984, Queen released their eleventh studio album, \"The Works\". Hit singles included \"Radio Ga Ga\", which makes a nostalgic defence of the radio format, \"Hammer to Fall\" and \"I Want to Break Free\". \"Rolling Stone\" hailed the album as \"the \"Led Zeppelin II\" of the eighties.\" In the UK \"The Works\" went triple platinum and remained in the albums chart for two years. The album failed to do well in the US, where, in addition to issues with their new record label Capitol Records (who had recently severed ties with their independent promotions teams due to a government report on payola), the cross-dressing video for \"I Want to Break Free\", a spoof of the British soap opera \"Coronation Street\", proved controversial and was banned by MTV. The concept of the video came from Roger Taylor via a suggestion from his girlfriend. He told \"Q\" magazine: \"We had done some really serious, epic videos in the past, and we just thought we'd have some fun. We wanted people to know that we didn't take ourselves too seriously, that we could still laugh at ourselves.\" Director of the video David Mallet said Mercury was reluctant to do it, commenting \"it was a hell of a job to get him out of the dressing room\".\nThat year, Queen began The Works Tour, the first tour to feature keyboardist Spike Edney as an extra live musician. The tour featured nine sold-out dates in October in Bophuthatswana, South Africa, at the arena in Sun City. Upon returning to England, they were the subject of outrage, having played in South Africa during the height of apartheid and in violation of worldwide divestment efforts and a United Nations cultural boycott. The band responded to the critics by stating that they were playing music for fans in South Africa, and they also stressed that the concerts were played before integrated audiences. Queen donated to a school for the deaf and blind as a philanthropic gesture but were fined by the British Musicians' Union and placed on the United Nations' blacklisted artists. In 2021, Taylor voiced his regret for the decision to perform at Sun City, saying that \"we went with the best intentions, but I still think it was kind of a mistake.\"\n1985\u20131986: Live Aid, \"A Kind of Magic\" and tours.\nIn January 1985, Queen headlined two nights of the first Rock in Rio festival at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and played in front of over 300,000 people each night. \"The Boston Globe\" described it as a \"mesmerising performance\". Highlights from both nights were released on VHS as \"Queen: Live in Rio\", which was broadcast on MTV in the US. In April and May 1985, Queen completed the Works Tour with sold-out shows in Australia and Japan.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nQueen were absolutely the best band of the day ... they just went and smashed one hit after another ... it was the perfect stage for Freddie: the whole world.\n \u2014Bob Geldof, on Queen's performance at Live Aid.\nAt Live Aid, held at Wembley on 13 July 1985, in front of the biggest-ever TV audience of an estimated 400 million, Queen performed some of their greatest hits. Many of the sold-out stadium audience of 72,000 people clapped, sang, and swayed in unison. The show's organisers, Bob Geldof and Midge Ure; other musicians such as Elton John and Cliff Richard; and journalists writing for the BBC, CNN, \"Rolling Stone\", MTV, \"The Guardian\" and \"The Daily Telegraph\", among others, described Queen as the highlight. Interviewed backstage, Roger Waters stated: \"Everybody's been buzzing about Queen that I've run into. They had everybody completely spellbound.\" An industry poll in 2005 ranked it the greatest rock performance of all time. Mercury's powerful, sustained note\u2014\"Aaaaaay-o\"\u2014during the call-and-response \"a cappella\" segment came to be known as \"The Note Heard Round the World\". The band were revitalised by the response to Live Aid\u2014a \"shot in the arm\" Roger Taylor called it\u2014and the ensuing increase in record sales. In 1986 Mercury commented: \"From our perspective, the fact that Live Aid happened when it did was really lucky. It came out of nowhere to save us. For sure that was a turning point. Maybe you could say that in the history of Queen, it was a really special moment.\"\nQueen ended 1985 by releasing the single \"One Vision\" and a limited-edition boxed set of Queen albums, \"The Complete Works\". The package included the 1984 Christmas single \"Thank God It's Christmas\" and previously unreleased material. In early 1986, Queen recorded the album \"A Kind of Magic\", containing several reworkings of songs written for the fantasy action film \"Highlander\". The album was successful in the UK, West Germany and several other countries, producing a string of hits including \"A Kind of Magic\", \"Friends Will Be Friends\", \"Princes of the Universe\" and \"Who Wants to Live Forever\"; the latter featuring an orchestra conducted by Michael Kamen. The album was less successful in North America, reaching 46 in the US, and was described by biographer Mark Blake as \"a so-so album\" and \"a somewhat uneven listening experience\". In 2007, \"Classic Rock\" ranked it the 28th greatest soundtrack album of all time.\nIn mid-1986, Queen went on the Magic Tour, their final tour with Mercury. They once again hired Spike Edney. Queen began the tour at the R\u00e5sunda Stadium in Stockholm, Sweden, and later performed a concert at Slane Castle, Ireland, in front of an audience of 95,000, which broke the venue's attendance record. The band also played behind the Iron Curtain when they performed to a crowd of 80,000 at the N\u00e9pstadion in Budapest (released in the concert film \"\"), in what was one of the biggest rock concerts ever held in Eastern Europe. More than one million people saw Queen on the tour\u2014400,000 in the UK alone, a record at the time.\nThe Magic Tour's highlight was at Wembley Stadium and resulted in the live double album \"Queen at Wembley\", released on CD and as a live concert VHS/DVD, which has gone five times platinum in the US and four times platinum in the UK. The demand for tickets saw extra dates added to the tour, with concert promoter Harvey Goldsmith stating \"they seem to have an endless market.\" Queen could not book Wembley for a third night, but played at Knebworth Park in Hertfordshire on 9 August. The show sold out within two hours and over 120,000 fans packed the park for what was Queen's final performance with Mercury. At the end of the concert the band appeared on stage for the final time to an encore of \"God Save the Queen\", with Mercury, in his crown and gown, bidding the crowd \"goodnight and sweet dreams\". Roadie Peter Hince states, \"At Knebworth, I somehow felt it was going to be the last for all of us\"; Brian May recalled Mercury saying \"I'm not going to be doing this forever. This is probably the last time.\"\n1988\u20131992: \"The Miracle\", \"Innuendo\" and Mercury's final years.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nThere was all that time when we knew Freddie was on the way out, we kept our heads down.\n\u2014Brian May\nIn October 1986, two months after his final concert, Mercury, on his return to London from holiday, was confronted by a tabloid frenzy at Heathrow Airport with the British newspapers the \"News of the World\" and \"The Sun\" reporting he had his blood tested for HIV/AIDS at a Harley Street clinic, but Mercury was quoted as saying he was \"perfectly fit and healthy\". Fans noticed his increasingly gaunt appearance in 1988, with Mercury insisting he was merely \"exhausted\" and too busy to provide interviews; he was now 42 years old and had been involved in music for nearly two decades. He had in fact been diagnosed as HIV positive in 1987, but did not make his illness public, with only his inner circle of colleagues and friends aware of his condition.\nAfter working on various solo projects during 1988 (including Mercury's collaboration with Montserrat Caball\u00e9, \"Barcelona\"), the band released \"The Miracle\" in 1989. The album continued the direction of \"A Kind of Magic\", using a pop-rock sound mixed with a few heavy numbers. It spawned the hit singles \"I Want It All\"\u2014which became an anti-apartheid anthem in South Africa\u2014\"Scandal\", and \"The Miracle\". \"The Miracle\" also began a change in direction of Queen's songwriting philosophy. Beforehand, nearly all songs had been written by and credited to a single member. With \"The Miracle\", their songwriting became more collaborative, and they vowed to credit the final product only to Queen as a group.\nIn 1990, Queen ended their contract with Capitol and signed with Hollywood Records; through the deal, Disney acquired the North American distribution rights to Queen's catalogue for $10\u00a0million, and remains the group's music catalogue owner and distributor in the US and Canada; the band retained ownership of the global rights through the UK-based Queen Productions Ltd. In February that year, Mercury made what would prove to be his final public appearance when he joined the rest of Queen onstage at the Dominion Theatre in London to collect the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music.\nTheir fourteenth studio album, \"Innuendo\", was released in early 1991 with \"Innuendo\" and other charting singles released later in the year. The music video for \"The Show Must Go On\" featured archive footage of Queen's performances between 1981 and 1989, and along with the manner of the song's lyrics, fuelled reports that Mercury was dying. Mercury was increasingly ill and could barely walk when the band recorded \"The Show Must Go On\" in 1990. Because of this, May had concerns about whether he was physically capable of singing it, but May recalled that he \"completely killed it\". The rest of the band were ready to record when Mercury felt able to come into the studio, for an hour or two at a time. May says of Mercury: \"He just kept saying. 'Write me more. Write me stuff. I want to just sing this and do it and when I am gone you can finish it off.' He had no fear, really.\" The band's second-greatest hits compilation, \"Greatest Hits II\", followed in October 1991; it is the tenth best-selling album in the UK, the seventh best-selling album in Germany, is certified Diamond in France where it is one of the best-selling albums, and has sold 16\u00a0million copies worldwide.\nOn 23 November 1991, in a prepared statement made on his deathbed, Mercury confirmed that he had AIDS. Within 24 hours of the statement, he died of bronchial pneumonia, which was brought on as a complication of the disease. His funeral service on 27 November in Kensal Green, West London was private, and held in accordance with the Zoroastrian religious faith of his family.\n\"Bohemian Rhapsody\" was re-released as a single shortly after Mercury's death, with \"These Are the Days of Our Lives\" as the double A-side. The music video for the latter contains Mercury's final scenes in front of the camera. Ron Hart of \"Rolling Stone\" wrote, \"the conga-driven synth ballad \"These Are the Days of Our Lives\" is \"Innuendo\"'s most significant single, given that its video marked the last time his fans were able to see the singer alive.\" The video was recorded on 30 May 1991 (which proved to be Mercury's final work with Queen). The single went to number one in the UK, remaining there for five weeks\u2014the only recording to top the Christmas chart twice and the only one to be number one in four different years (1975, 1976, 1991, and 1992). Initial proceeds from the single\u2014approximately \u00a31,000,000\u2014were donated to the Terrence Higgins Trust, an AIDS charity.\nQueen's popularity was stimulated in North America when \"Bohemian Rhapsody\" was featured in the 1992 comedy film \"Wayne's World\". Its inclusion helped the song reach number two on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 for five weeks in 1992 (including its 1976 chart run, it remained in the Hot 100 for a combined 41 weeks), and won the band an MTV Award at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards. The compilation album \"Classic Queen\" also reached number four on the \"Billboard\" 200, and is certified three times platinum in the US. \"Wayne's World\" footage was used to make a new music video for \"Bohemian Rhapsody\", with which the band and management were delighted.\nOn 20 April 1992, The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert was held at London's Wembley Stadium to a crowd of 72,000. Performers, including Def Leppard, Robert Plant, Tony Iommi, Roger Daltrey, Guns N' Roses, Elton John, David Bowie, George Michael, Annie Lennox, Seal, Extreme, and Metallica performed various Queen songs along with the three remaining Queen members (and Spike Edney.) The concert is listed in the \"Guinness Book of Records\" as \"The largest rock star benefit concert\", as it was televised to over 1.2\u00a0billion viewers worldwide, and raised over \u00a320,000,000 for AIDS charities.\n1995\u20132003: \"Made in Heaven\" to 46664 Concert.\nQueen's last album with Mercury, titled \"Made in Heaven\", was released in 1995, four years after his death. Featuring tracks such as \"Too Much Love Will Kill You\" and \"Heaven for Everyone\", it was constructed from Mercury's final recordings in 1991, material left over from their previous studio albums and re-worked material from May, Taylor, and Mercury's solo albums. The album also featured the song \"Mother Love\", the last vocal recording Mercury made, which he completed using a drum machine, over which May, Taylor and Deacon later added the instrumental track. After completing the penultimate verse, Mercury had told the band he \"wasn't feeling that great\" and stated, \"I will finish it when I come back, next time\". Mercury never returned to the studio afterwards, leaving May to record the final verse of the song. Both stages of recording, before and after Mercury's death, were completed at the band's studio in Montreux, Switzerland. The album reached number one in the UK following its release, their ninth number one album, and sold 20\u00a0million copies worldwide. On 25 November 1996, a statue of Mercury was unveiled in Montreux overlooking Lake Geneva, almost five years to the day since his death.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nYou guys should go out and play again. It must be like having a Ferrari in the garage waiting for a driver.\n \u2014Elton John, on Queen being without a lead singer since the death of Freddie Mercury.\nIn 1997, Queen returned to the studio to record \"No-One but You (Only the Good Die Young)\", a song dedicated to Mercury and all those who die too soon. It was released as a bonus track on the \"Queen Rocks\" compilation album later that year, and features in \"Greatest Hits III\". In January 1997, Queen performed \"The Show Must Go On\" live with Elton John and the B\u00e9jart Ballet in Paris on a night Mercury was remembered, and it marked the last performance and public appearance of John Deacon, who chose to retire. The Paris concert was only the second time Queen had played live since Mercury's death, prompting Elton John to urge them to perform again. Brian May and Roger Taylor performed together at several award ceremonies and charity concerts, sharing vocals with various guest singers. During this time, they were billed as \"Queen +\" followed by the guest singer's name. In 1998, the duo appeared at Luciano Pavarotti's benefit concert with May performing \"Too Much Love Will Kill You\" with Pavarotti, later playing \"Radio Ga Ga\", \"We Will Rock You\", and \"We Are the Champions\" with Zucchero. They again attended and performed at Pavarotti's benefit concert in Modena, Italy in May 2003. Several of the guest singers recorded new versions of Queen's hits under the \"Queen +\" name, such as Robbie Williams providing vocals for \"We Are the Champions\" for the soundtrack of \"A Knight's Tale\" (2001).\nIn November 1999, \"Greatest Hits III\" was released. This featured, among others, \"Queen + Wyclef Jean\" on a rap version of \"Another One Bites the Dust\". A live version of \"Somebody to Love\" by George Michael and a live version of \"The Show Must Go On\" with Elton John were also featured in the album. By this point, Queen's vast amount of record sales made them the second-bestselling artist in the UK of all time, behind the Beatles. In November 2000, the band released the box set, \"The Platinum Collection\". It is certified seven times platinum in the UK and five times platinum in the US. On 18 October 2002, Queen were awarded the 2,207th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for their work in the music industry, which is located at 6358 Hollywood Blvd. On 29 November 2003, May and Taylor performed at the 46664 Concert hosted by Nelson Mandela at Green Point Stadium, Cape Town, to raise awareness of the spread of HIV/AIDS in South Africa. A new song, \"Invincible Hope\", featuring Mandela's speech and credited to Queen + Nelson Mandela, was performed during the concert and later released on the \"46664: One Year On\" EP. During that period May and Taylor spent time at Mandela's home, discussing how Africa's problems might be approached, and two years later the band were made ambassadors for the 46664 cause.\n2004\u20132009: Queen + Paul Rodgers.\nAt the end of 2004, May and Taylor announced that they would reunite and return to touring in 2005 with Paul Rodgers (founder and former lead singer of Free and Bad Company). Brian May's website also stated that Rodgers would be \"featured with\" Queen as \"Queen + Paul Rodgers\", not replacing Mercury. In November 2004, Queen were among the inaugural inductees into the UK Music Hall of Fame, and the award ceremony was the first event at which Rodgers joined May and Taylor as vocalist.\nBetween 2005 and 2006, Queen + Paul Rodgers embarked on a world tour, which was the first time Queen toured since their last tour with Freddie Mercury in 1986. Taylor said: \"We never thought we would tour again, Paul came along by chance and we seemed to have a chemistry. Paul is just such a great singer. He's not trying to be Freddie.\" The first leg was in Europe, the second in Japan, and the third in the US in 2006. Queen received the inaugural VH1 Rock Honors at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, on 25 May 2006. Foo Fighters performed \"Tie Your Mother Down\" to open the ceremony before being joined on stage by May, Taylor, and Rodgers, who played a selection of Queen hits.\nQueen + Paul Rodgers performed at the Nelson Mandela 90th Birthday Tribute held in Hyde Park, London on 27 June 2008, to commemorate Mandela's ninetieth birthday, and again promote awareness of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The first Queen + Paul Rodgers album, titled \"The Cosmos Rocks\", was released in Europe on 12 September 2008 and in the US on 28 October 2008. The band again toured Europe, opening on Kharkiv's Freedom Square in front of 350,000 Ukrainian fans; the concert was released on DVD. The tour then moved to Russia, and the band performed two sold-out shows at the Moscow Arena. Having completed the first leg of the European tour, which saw the band play 15 sold-out dates across nine countries, the UK leg of the tour sold out within 90 minutes of going on sale and included three London dates, the first of which was the O2 Arena on 13 October. The last leg of the tour was in South America, and included a sold-out concert at Jos\u00e9 Amalfitani Stadium, Buenos Aires.\nQueen and Paul Rodgers split up on 12 May 2009. Rodgers stated: \"My arrangement with [Queen] was similar to my arrangement with Jimmy [Page] in The Firm in that it was never meant to be a permanent arrangement\". Rodgers did not rule out the possibility of working with Queen again.\n2009\u20132011: Departure from EMI, 40th anniversary.\nOn 20 May 2009, May and Taylor performed \"We Are the Champions\" live on the season finale of \"American Idol\" with winner Kris Allen and runner-up Adam Lambert providing a vocal duet. A new greatest hits compilation \"Absolute Greatest\" was released on 16 November and peaked at number 3 in the UK. It contains 20 of Queen's hits spanning their career and was released in four different formats: single disc, double disc (with commentary), double disc with feature book, and a vinyl record. Before its release, Queen ran an online competition to guess the track listing as a promotion for the album. On 15 November 2009, May and Taylor performed \"Bohemian Rhapsody\" live on the British TV show \"The X Factor\" alongside the finalists.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nMany of you will have read bits and pieces on the internet about Queen changing record companies and so I wanted to confirm to you that the band have signed a new contract with Universal Music ... we would like to thank the EMI team for all their hard work over the years, the many successes and the fond memories, and of course we look forward to continuing to work with EMI Music Publishing who take care of our songwriting affairs. Next year we start working with our new record company to celebrate Queen's 40th anniversary and we will be announcing full details of the plans over the next 3 months. As Brian has already said Queen's next moves will involve 'studio work, computers and live work.\n \u2014Jim Beach, Queen's Manager, on the change of record label.\nOn 20 August 2010, Queen's manager Jim Beach announced that the band had signed a new contract with Universal Music after almost 40 years with EMI. On 22 September, May confirmed that the band's new deal was with Island Records, a subsidiary of Universal Music Group. Hollywood Records remained as the group's label in the US and Canada. For the first time since the late 1980s, Queen's catalogue now has the same distributor worldwide, as Universal distributes for both the Island and Hollywood labels (for a time in the late 1980s, Queen was on EMI-owned Capitol Records in the US).\nOn 14 March 2011, the band's 40th anniversary, Queen's first five albums were re-released in the UK and some other territories as remastered deluxe editions; the US versions were released on 17 May. The second five albums of Queen's back catalogue were released worldwide on 27 June, and on 27 September in the US and Canada. The final five were released in the UK on 5 September.\nIn May 2011, Jane's Addiction vocalist Perry Farrell said that Queen were scouting their live bassist Chris Chaney to join the band. In the same month, Paul Rodgers stated he might tour with Queen again in the future. At the 2011 Broadcast Music, Incorporated (BMI) Awards held in London on 4 October, Queen received the BMI Icon Award for their airplay success in the US. At the 2011 MTV Europe Music Awards on 6 November, Queen received the Global Icon Award, which Katy Perry presented to Brian May. Queen closed the awards ceremony, with Lambert singing \"The Show Must Go On\", \"We Will Rock You\" and \"We Are the Champions\". The collaboration received a positive response from fans and critics, resulting in speculation about future projects together.\n2011\u2013present: Queen + Adam Lambert, \"Queen Forever\".\nOn 25 and 26 April, May and Taylor appeared on the eleventh series of \"American Idol\" at the Nokia Theatre, Los Angeles, performing a Queen medley with the six finalists on the first show, and the following day performed \"Somebody to Love\" with the 'Queen Extravaganza' band. Queen were scheduled to headline Sonisphere at Knebworth on 7 July 2012 with Adam Lambert before the festival was cancelled. Queen said that they were looking to find another venue. Queen + Adam Lambert played two shows at the Hammersmith Apollo, London on 11 and 12 July 2012. Both shows sold out within 24 hours of tickets going on sale. A third London date was scheduled for 14 July. On 30 June, Queen + Lambert performed in Kyiv, Ukraine at a joint concert with Elton John for the Elena Pinchuk ANTIAIDS Foundation. Queen also performed with Lambert on 3 July 2012 at Moscow's Olympic Stadium, and on 7 July 2012 at the Municipal Stadium in Wroclaw, Poland.\nOn 12 August 2012, Queen performed at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. The performance at London's Olympic Stadium opened with a remastered video clip of Mercury on stage performing his call and response routine during their 1986 concert at Wembley Stadium. Following this, May performed part of the \"Brighton Rock\" solo before being joined by Taylor and solo artist Jessie J for a performance of \"We Will Rock You\".\nOn 20 September 2013, Queen + Adam Lambert performed at the iHeartRadio Music Festival at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Queen + Adam Lambert toured North America in 2014 and Australia and New Zealand in August and September 2014. In an interview with \"Rolling Stone\", May and Taylor said that although the tour with Lambert is a limited thing, they are open to him becoming an official member, and cutting new material with him. In November 2014 Queen released a new album \"Queen Forever\". The album is largely a compilation of previously released material but features three new tracks featuring vocals from Mercury with backing added by the surviving members of Queen. One new track, \"There Must Be More to Life Than This\", is a duet between Mercury and Michael Jackson. Queen + Adam Lambert performed in Central Hall, Westminster, at the Big Ben New Year concert on New Year's Eve 2014 and New Year's Day 2015.\nIn 2016, the group embarked across Europe and Asia on the Queen + Adam Lambert 2016 Summer Festival Tour. This included closing the Isle of Wight Festival in England on 12 June where they performed \"Who Wants to Live Forever\" as a tribute to the victims of the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida earlier that day. On 12 September they performed at the Yarkon Park in Tel Aviv, Israel for the first time in front of 58,000 people. As part of the Queen + Adam Lambert Tour 2017\u20132018, the band toured North America in mid-2017, Europe in late 2017, then played Australia and New Zealand in February and March 2018. On 24 February 2019, Queen + Adam Lambert opened the 91st Academy Awards ceremony held at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles. In July 2019 they embarked on the North American leg of The Rhapsody Tour, with the dates sold out in April. They toured Japan and South Korea in January 2020 followed by Australia and New Zealand the following month. On 16 February the band reprised their Live Aid set for the first time in 35 years at the \"Fire Fight Australia\" concert at ANZ Stadium in Sydney to raise money for the 2019\u201320 Australian bushfire crisis.\nBecause Queen were not able to tour due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they released a live album with Adam Lambert on 2 October 2020. The song collection, titled \"Live Around the World\", contains highlights selected by the band members from over 200 shows throughout their history. It marked their first live album with Lambert who, as of 2020, has played 218 shows with the band. On 31 December 2020, Queen performed on the Japanese New Year's Eve television special \"K\u014dhaku\" with composer Yoshiki and vocalist Sarah Brightman. In 2021, Queen received the Japan Gold Disc Award for the fourth time (having previously won it in 2005, 2019 and 2020) as the most popular Western act in Japan.\nOn 4 June 2022, Queen + Adam Lambert opened the Platinum Party at the Palace outside Buckingham Palace to mark the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. Performing a three-song set, they opened with \"We Will Rock You\" which had been introduced in a comedy segment where Queen Elizabeth II and Paddington Bear tapped their tea cups to the beat of the song. A previously unheard Queen song with Mercury's vocals, \"Face It Alone\", recorded over thirty years previously and originally thought \"unsalvageable\" by May and Taylor, was released on 13 October 2022; five more songs \u2014 \"You Know You Belong to Me\", \"When Love Breaks Up\", \"Dog With a Bone\", \"Water\", and \"I Guess We're Falling Out\" \u2014 were released on 18 November 2022 as part of \"The Miracle Collector's Edition\" box set.\nMusic style and influences.\nQueen drew artistic influence from British rock acts of the 1960s and early 1970s, such as the Beatles, the Kinks, Cream, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the Who, Black Sabbath, Slade, Deep Purple, David Bowie, Genesis, and Yes, with Mercury also inspired by the rock and roll singers Little Richard, Elvis Presley and the gospel singer Aretha Franklin. On the Beatles, Brian May stated they \"built our bible as far as musical composition, arrangement and production went. \"The White Album\" is a complete catalogue of how you should use a studio to build songs.\" Mercury said, \"John Lennon was larger than life, and an absolute genius. Even at a very early stage when they were the Beatles, I always preferred John Lennon's things. I don't know why. He just had that magic.\" May and Mercury were influenced by Jimi Hendrix, with Mercury saying \"he really had everything any rock 'n' roll star should have\", and May saying \"Jimi is, of course, my number one. And I've always said that [...] I never stop learning from Jimi.\" Mercury's thesis for his Ealing College diploma was on Hendrix, and Mercury and Taylor closed their Kensington Market stall on 18 September 1970 to commemorate his death.\nAt their outset in the early 1970s, Queen's music has been characterised as \"Led Zeppelin meets Yes\" due to its combination of \"acoustic/electric guitar extremes and fantasy-inspired multi-part song epics\". Although Mercury stated Robert Plant as his favourite singer and Led Zeppelin as \"the greatest\" rock band, he also said Queen \"have more in common with Liza Minnelli than Led Zeppelin. We're more in the showbiz tradition than the rock'n'roll tradition\". In his book on \"Essential Hard Rock and Heavy Metal\", Eddie Trunk described Queen as \"a hard rock band at the core but one with a high level of majesty and theatricality that delivered a little something for everyone\", as well as observing that the band \"sounded British\". Rob Halford of Judas Priest commented, \"It's rare that you struggle to label a band. If you're a heavy metal band you're meant to look and sound like a heavy metal band but you can't really call Queen anything. They could be a pop band one day or the band that wrote 'Bicycle Race' the next and a full-blown metal band the next. In terms of the depth of the musical landscape that they covered, it was very similar to some extent to the Beatles.\" While stating they were influenced by various artists and genres, Joe Bosso of \"Guitar World\" magazine writes, \"Queen seemed to occupy their own lane.\"\nQueen composed music that drew inspiration from many different genres of music, often with a tongue-in-cheek attitude. The music styles and genres they have been associated with include progressive rock (also known as symphonic rock), art rock, glam rock, arena rock, heavy metal, operatic pop, pop rock, psychedelic rock, baroque pop, and rockabilly. Queen also wrote songs that were inspired by musical styles not typically associated with rock groups, such as opera, music hall, folk music, gospel, ragtime, and dance/disco. Their 1980 single \"Another One Bites the Dust\" became a major hit single in the funk rock genre. Known for their anthemic songs which are a staple of sports arenas and stadiums the world over, several Queen songs were written with audience participation in mind, such as \"We Will Rock You\" and \"We Are the Champions\". Similarly, \"Radio Ga Ga\" became a live favourite for the band because it would have \"crowds clapping like they were at a Nuremberg rally\".\nIn 1963, the teenage Brian May and his father custom-built his signature guitar Red Special, which was purposely designed to feedback. May has used Vox AC30 amplifiers almost exclusively since a meeting with Rory Gallagher at a gig in London during the late 1960s or early 1970s. He also uses a sixpence as a plectrum. Sonic experimentation figured heavily in Queen's songs. A distinctive characteristic of Queen's music are the vocal harmonies which are usually composed of the voices of May, Mercury, and Taylor best heard on the studio albums \"A Night at the Opera\" and \"A Day at the Races\". Some of the development of this sound is attributed to the producer Roy Thomas Baker and engineer Mike Stone. Queen were also known for multi-tracking voices to imitate the sound of a large choir through overdubs. For instance, according to Brian May, there are over 180 vocal overdubs in \"Bohemian Rhapsody\". The band's vocal structures have been compared with the Beach Boys.\nMedia.\nLogo.\nHaving studied graphic design in art college, Mercury also designed Queen's logo, called the Queen crest, shortly before the release of the band's first album. The logo combines the zodiac signs of all four members: two lions for Leo (Deacon and Taylor), a crab for Cancer (May), and two fairies for Virgo (Mercury). The lions embrace a stylised letter Q, the crab rests atop the letter with flames rising directly above it, and the fairies are each sheltering below a lion. There is also a crown inside the Q and the whole logo is over-shadowed by an enormous phoenix. The whole symbol bears a passing resemblance to the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom, particularly with the lion supporters. The original logo, as found on the reverse side of the cover of the band's first album, was a simple line drawing. Later sleeves bore more intricately coloured versions of the logo.\nMusic videos.\nDirected by Bruce Gowers, the groundbreaking \"Bohemian Rhapsody\" promotional video sees the band adopt a \"decadent 'glam' sensibility\". Replicating Mick Rock's photograph of the band from the cover of \"Queen II\"\u2014which itself was inspired by a photo of actress Marlene Dietrich from \"Shanghai Express\" (1932)\u2014the video opens with \"Queen standing in diamond formation, heads tilted back like Easter Island statues\" in near darkness as they sing the \"a cappella\" part.\nOne of the industry's leading music video directors, David Mallet, directed some of their subsequent videos. Some of their later videos use footage from classic films: \"Under Pressure\" incorporates 1920s silent films, Sergei Eisenstein's \"Battleship Potemkin\" and F. W. Murnau's \"Nosferatu\"; the 1984 video for \"Radio Ga Ga\" includes footage from Fritz Lang's \"Metropolis\" (1927); \"Calling All Girls\" was a homage to George Lucas's \"THX 1138\"; and the 1995 video \"Heaven for Everyone\" shows footage from Georges M\u00e9li\u00e8s' \"A Trip to the Moon\" (1902) and \"The Impossible Voyage\" (1904). The first part of Mallet's music video for \"I Want to Break Free\" spoofed the popular long-running British soap opera \"Coronation Street\".\nThe music video for \"Innuendo\" combines stop motion animation with rotoscoping and band members appear as illustrations and images taken from earlier Queen music videos on a cinema screen akin to the dystopian film \"Nineteen Eighty-Four\" (1984). The music videos for \"Flash\" (from \"Flash Gordon\") and \"Princes of the Universe\" (from \"Highlander\") are themed on the films the band recorded soundtracks for, with the latter featuring Mercury briefly re-enact the sword-fighting scene with the titular character. Queen also appeared in conventional music videos. \"We Will Rock You\" was filmed outdoors in Roger Taylor's back garden during a cold day in early January 1977. Filmed at the New London Theatre later that year, the music video for \"We Are the Champions\" features the band\u2014with Mercury in a trademark Harlequin outfit\u2014performing in front of an enthusiastic crowd who wave Queen scarves in a manner similar to English football fans. The last music video of the group while Mercury was alive, \"These Are the Days of Our Lives\", was filmed in black and white to hide the full extent of his illness.\nMusical theatre.\nIn May 2002, a musical or \"rock theatrical\" based on the songs of Queen, titled \"We Will Rock You\", opened at the Dominion Theatre in London's West End. The musical was written by British comedian and author Ben Elton in collaboration with Brian May and Roger Taylor, and produced by Robert De Niro. It has since been staged in many cities around the world. The launch of the musical coincided with Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee. As part of the Jubilee celebrations, Brian May performed a guitar solo of \"God Save the Queen\", as featured on Queen's \"A Night at the Opera\", from the roof of Buckingham Palace. The recording of this performance was used as video for the song on the 30th Anniversary DVD edition of \"A Night at the Opera\". Following the Las Vegas premiere on 8 September 2004, Queen were inducted into the Hollywood RockWalk in Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles.\nThe original London production was scheduled to close on Saturday, 7 October 2006, at the Dominion Theatre, but due to public demand, the show ran until May 2014. \"We Will Rock You\" has become the longest-running musical ever to run at this prime London theatre, overtaking the previous record holder, the musical \"Grease\". Brian May stated in 2008 that they were considering writing a sequel to \"We Will Rock You\". The musical toured around the UK in 2009, playing at Manchester Palace Theatre, Sunderland Empire, Birmingham Hippodrome, Bristol Hippodrome, and Edinburgh Playhouse. By December 2022 the musical had been seen by 20 million people across 28 countries. In the summer of 2023 it returned to London with a 12-week run at the London Coliseum.\nSean Bovim created \"Queen at the Ballet\", a tribute to Mercury, which uses Queen's music as a soundtrack for the show's dancers, who interpret the stories behind tracks such as \"Bohemian Rhapsody\", \"Radio Ga Ga\", and \"Killer Queen\". Queen's music also appears in the Off-Broadway production \"Power Balladz\", most notably the song \"We Are the Champions\", with the show's two performers believing the song was \"the apex of artistic achievement in its day\".\nSoftware and digital releases.\nIn conjunction with Electronic Arts, Queen released the computer game \"\" in 1998. The game received mixed reviews. Several reviewers described the fight sequences as frustrating, due to unresponsive controls and confusing camera angles. \"PC Zone\" found the game's graphics unimpressive, although \"PC PowerPlay\" considered them \"absolutely stunning\". The extremely long development time resulted in graphic elements that already seemed outdated by the time of release.\nUnder the supervision of May and Taylor, numerous restoration projects have been under way involving Queen's lengthy audio and video catalogue. DVD releases of their 1986 Wembley concert (titled \"Live at Wembley Stadium\"), 1982 Milton Keynes concert (\"Queen on Fire \u2013 Live at the Bowl\"), and two Greatest Video Hits (Volumes 1 and 2, spanning the 1970s and 1980s) have seen the band's music remixed into 5.1 and DTS surround sound. So far, only two of the band's albums, \"A Night at the Opera\" and \"The Game\", have been fully remixed into high-resolution multichannel surround on DVD-Audio. \"A Night at the Opera\" was re-released with some revised 5.1 mixes and accompanying videos in 2005 for the 30th anniversary of the album's original release (CD+DVD-Video set). In 2007, a Blu-ray edition of Queen's previously released concerts, \"Queen Rock Montreal\" & Live Aid, was released, marking their first project in 1080p HD.\nQueen have been featured multiple times in the \"Guitar Hero\" franchise: a cover of \"Killer Queen\" in the original \"Guitar Hero\", \"We Are The Champions\", \"Fat Bottomed Girls\", and the Paul Rodgers collaboration \"C-lebrity\" in a track pack for \"Guitar Hero World Tour\", \"Under Pressure\" with David Bowie in \"Guitar Hero 5\", \"I Want It All\" in ', \"Stone Cold Crazy\" in ', and \"Bohemian Rhapsody\" in \"\". On 13 October 2009, Brian May revealed there was \"talk\" going on \"behind the scenes\" about a dedicated Queen \"Rock Band\" game.\nQueen have also been featured multiple times in the \"Rock Band\" franchise: a track pack of 10 songs which are compatible with \"Rock Band\", \"Rock Band 2\", and \"Rock Band 3\" (three of those are also compatible with \"Lego Rock Band\"). Their hit \"Bohemian Rhapsody\" was featured in \"Rock Band 3\" with full harmony and keys support.\nThe band also appeared in the video game \"Lego Rock Band\" as playable Lego avatars. In March 2009, Sony Computer Entertainment released a Queen branded version of the company's karaoke franchise, \"SingStar\". The game, which is available on PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3, is titled \"SingStar Queen\" and has 25 songs on the PS3 and 20 on the PS2. \"We Will Rock You\" and other songs by Queen also appear in \"DJ Hero\".\n\"Bohemian Rhapsody\".\nIn a September 2010 BBC interview, Brian May announced that Sacha Baron Cohen was to play Mercury in a biographical film about the band. \"Time\" commented with approval on his singing ability and visual similarity to Mercury. However, in July 2013, Baron Cohen dropped out of the role due to \"creative differences\" between him and the surviving band members. In December 2013, it was announced that Ben Whishaw, known for playing Q in the James Bond film \"Skyfall\", was a possible replacement for Baron Cohen in the role of Mercury, but Whishaw pulled out a few months later amidst uncertainty about how the film was progressing.\nThe project regained momentum in 2016. It was announced on 4 November that the film had secured the backing of 20th Century Fox, New Regency and GK Films. By this time, the film's working title was \"Bohemian Rhapsody\", after the band's song of the same name. Freddie Mercury was to be played by Rami Malek, and shooting was scheduled to begin in early 2017. The motion picture was written by Anthony McCarten, with a story by McCarten and Peter Morgan, who received Oscar nominations for his screenplays \"The Queen\" and \"Frost/Nixon\".\nReleased in October 2018, \"Bohemian Rhapsody\" focuses on Queen's formative years and the period leading up to the celebrated performance at the 1985 Live Aid concert. The film has grossed over $900\u00a0million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing musical biographical film of all time. Despite receiving mixed reviews, it won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture\u00a0\u2013 Drama. Malek received wide acclaim and numerous accolades for his portrayal of Mercury, including the Academy Award for Best Actor. The Live Aid segment was praised, but there was criticism from not exploring more complex themes involving Mercury, with the \"New York Posts Johnny Oleksinski stating, \"What we ultimately wanted from Bohemian Rhapsody was not carbon-copied concerts, but behind-closed-doors insight into a deeply private, complicated, internationally beloved superstar.\" After the release of the film, \"Bohemian Rhapsody\" re-entered the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100 for the third time (having previously charted in 1976 and 1992), charting at number 33 on 12 November 2018. ' received an American Music Award for Top Soundtrack.\nOther films.\nThe soundtrack for the film \"Flash Gordon\" (1980) was by Queen. The band also contributed music to \"Highlander\" (the original 1986 film), with \"A Kind of Magic\", \"One Year of Love\", \"Who Wants to Live Forever\", \"Hammer to Fall\", and the theme \"Princes of the Universe\", which was also used as the theme of the (1992\u20131998). In choosing music for \"Highlander\", director Russell Mulcahy stated, \"I thought about one band \u2013 Queen. They write strong, anthemic songs and this movie needs their energy\". In the US, \"Bohemian Rhapsody\" was re-released as a single in 1992 after appearing in the comedy film \"Wayne's World\". The single subsequently reached number two on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 (with \"The Show Must Go On\" as the first track on the single) and helped rekindle the band's popularity in North America.\nSeveral films have featured their songs performed by other artists. A version of \"Somebody to Love\" by Anne Hathaway was in the 2004 film \"Ella Enchanted\". In 2006, Brittany Murphy also recorded a cover of the same song for the 2006 film \"Happy Feet\". In 2001, a version of \"The Show Must Go On\" was performed by Jim Broadbent and Nicole Kidman in the film musical \"Moulin Rouge!\". The 2001 film \"A Knight's Tale\" has a version of \"We Are the Champions\" performed by Robbie Williams and Queen; the film also features \"We Will Rock You\" played by the medieval audience.\nTelevision.\n\"I Was Born to Love You\" was used as the theme song of the Japanese television drama \"Pride\" on Fuji Television in 2004, starring Takuya Kimura and Y\u016bko Takeuchi. The show's soundtrack also contained other songs by Queen. A song that has grown in popularity four decades since its release, the initial rebirth of \"Don't Stop Me Now\" has been attributed to its appearance in the 2004 cult classic zombie apocalypse film \"Shaun of the Dead\". The song has featured in the BBC television show \"Top Gear\", and in 2005 it was voted as \"The Greatest Driving Song Ever\" by the series' viewers. In the Channel 4 sitcom \"Father Ted\", Graham Norton as Father Noel Furlong performs \"Bohemian Rhapsody\" in the episode \"The Mainland\".\nKeeping in a tradition of naming each season's episodes after songs by 1970s rock bands, the eighth and final season of \"That '70s Show\" had episodes named after Queen songs. \"Bohemian Rhapsody\" served as the season premiere. With an entry for the year 1977, Queen featured in the VH1 series \"I Love the '70s\", broadcast in the US. \"The Simpsons\" has made storylines which have featured Queen songs such as \"We Will Rock You\", \"We Are the Champions\" (both sung by Homer), and \"You're My Best Friend\". The latter also appears in \"Family Guy\", as does \"Another One Bites the Dust\", and an episode of the show, \"Killer Queen\", is named after (and features) the song. Queen were profiled in season 1, episode 16 of \"VH1's Legends\", broadcast in 1998.\nOn 11 April 2006, Brian May and Roger Taylor appeared on the American singing contest television show \"American Idol\". Each contestant was required to sing a Queen song during that week of the competition. Songs which appeared on the show included \"Bohemian Rhapsody\", \"Fat Bottomed Girls\", \"The Show Must Go On\", \"Who Wants to Live Forever\", and \"Innuendo\". Brian May later criticised the show for editing specific scenes, one of which made the group's time with contestant Ace Young look negative, despite it being the opposite. Taylor and May again appeared on the \"American Idol\" season 8 finale in May 2009, performing \"We Are the Champions\" with finalists Adam Lambert and Kris Allen. On 15 November 2009, Brian May and Roger Taylor appeared on the singing contest television show \"The X Factor\" in the UK.\nIn 2007, Queen featured as one of the main artists in the fifth episode of the BBC/VH1 series \"Seven Ages of Rock\"\u2014focusing on stadium rock, the episode itself was named \"We Are the Champions\". In the autumn of 2009, \"Glee\" featured the fictional high school's show choir singing \"Somebody to Love\" as their second act performance in the episode \"The Rhodes Not Taken\". The performance was included on the show's ' soundtrack CD. In June 2010, the choir performed \"Another One Bites the Dust\" in the episode \"Funk\". The following week's episode, \"Journey to Regionals\", features a rival choir performing \"Bohemian Rhapsody\" in its entirety. The song was featured on the . In May 2012, the choir performed \"We Are the Champions\" in the episode \"Nationals\", and the song features in '. In November 2014, \"The Nation's Favourite Queen Song\", a 90-minute television special counting down Britain's 20 favourite Queen songs, aired on ITV in the UK. In November 2021, \"The Queen Family Singalong\", featuring performances of songs by Queen accompanied with on-screen karaoke lyrics encouraging viewers to sing along, aired on ABC in the US.\nLegacy.\nUpon being awarded the Polar Music Prize in 2025, Queen were described as being \"a band synonymous with the very fabric of pop culture\" who \"have made an impact on music that spans decades, generations and genres\", and they are \"beloved the world over\".\nIn 2002, \"Bohemian Rhapsody\" was voted \"the UK's favourite hit of all time\" in a poll conducted by the \"Guinness World Records British Hit Singles Book\". In 2004, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Many scholars consider the \"Bohemian Rhapsody\" music video groundbreaking, crediting it with popularising the medium. Rock historian Paul Fowles stated that the song is \"widely credited as the first global hit single for which an accompanying video was central to the marketing strategy\". It has been hailed as paving the way for the MTV Generation. In December 2018, \"Bohemian Rhapsody\" became the most-streamed song from the 20th century, and the most-streamed classic rock song of all time. The song and original video were downloaded more than 1.6\u00a0billion times. In March 2021 it was certified Diamond in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units. Acclaimed for their stadium rock, in 2005 an industry poll ranked Queen's performance at Live Aid in 1985 as the best live act in history. In 2007, they were also voted the greatest British band in history by BBC Radio 2 listeners.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nIf you have to go back and watch one performance it has to be Queen. That was not just a career-defining moment ... rock 'n' roll might have peaked right there. Freddie Mercury on stage at Live Aid is the summit of rock 'n' roll. For a band some people said was washed up, that was just the most stunning, breathtaking, flawless, powerful, jubilant performance. It was everything you want in rock 'n' roll.\n \u20141980s MTV VJ Martha Quinn speaking in July 2015 on the 30th anniversary of Live Aid.\nAs of 2005, according to the \"Guinness Book of World Records\", Queen albums have spent a total of 1,322 weeks (twenty-six years) on the UK Album Charts, more time than any other act. Also in 2005, with the release of their live album with Paul Rodgers, Queen moved into third place on the list of acts with the most aggregate time spent on the British record charts. In 2022, \"Greatest Hits\" was the best-selling album in UK chart history, and the only album to sell over seven million copies in the UK. As of August 2024, the album has spent over 600 weeks on the US \"Billboard\" 200. Their \"Greatest Hits II\" album is the UK's tenth best seller, with sales of 3,746,404 copies. Based on record sales, \"Billboard\" charts performance, online views and popularity on Spotify, in 2018 \"Business Insider\" in the US ranked Queen the third most popular rock band of all time, after the Beatles and Led Zeppelin.\nThe band have released a total of 18 number-one albums, 18 number-one singles, and 10 number-one DVDs worldwide, making them one of the world's best-selling music artists. Estimates of their record sales range from 250\u00a0million to 300\u00a0million worldwide. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, the band is the only group in which every member has composed more than one chart-topping single, and all four members were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003. In 2009, \"We Will Rock You\" and \"We Are the Champions\" were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and the latter was voted the world's favourite song in a 2005 Sony Ericsson global music poll. The band received Ivor Novello Awards for Outstanding Contribution to British Music, in 1987, and Outstanding Song Collection, in 2005, from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors. In recognition of the vocal harmonies of Mercury, May and Taylor, in 2006 Queen were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame. In 2018 they were presented the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In their list for the Global Recording Artist of the Year, the IFPI named Queen the sixth best-selling artist worldwide in 2018, and the fifth best-selling artist in 2019, in both cases the most popular act of their contemporaries. In January 2020, Queen became the first band to join Elizabeth II on a British coin, with the commemorative \u00a35 coin, issued by the Royal Mint, featuring the instruments of all four bandmembers. In July 2020, Queen became the third band (after the Beatles and Pink Floyd) to feature on a series of UK postage stamps issued by the Royal Mail.\nQueen are one of the most bootlegged bands ever, according to Nick Weymouth, who manages the band's official website. A 2001 survey discovered the existence of 12,225 websites dedicated to Queen bootlegs, the highest number for any band. Bootleg recordings have contributed to the band's popularity in certain countries where Western music is censored, such as Iran. In a project called \"Queen: The Top 100 Bootlegs\", many of these have been made officially available to download for a nominal fee from Queen's website, with profits going to the Mercury Phoenix Trust. In 2004, Queen became the first Western rock act to be officially accepted in Iran following the release of their \"Greatest Hits\" album. \"Rolling Stone\" ranked Queen at number 52 on its list of the \"100 Greatest Artists of All Time\", while ranking Mercury the 18th-greatest singer, and May the twenty-sixth-greatest guitarist. \"Rolling Stone\" readers voted Mercury the second-greatest frontman. Queen were named 13th on VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock list, and in 2010 were ranked 17th on VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of All Time list. In 2012, \"Gigwise\" readers named Queen the best band of the past 60 years. Eddie Trunk argued that Queen's importance, in common with Thin Lizzy and Deep Purple, was \"not as fully recognized\" in the US because elsewhere they \"often played to much bigger crowds in stadium venues\". Queen had stopped touring the US in 1982 as their success there had started to wane, but they remained a touring \"juggernaut\", filling stadiums and arenas internationally in the 1980s until their final tour (with Mercury) in 1986.\nInfluence.\nQueen have been credited with making a significant contribution to genres such as hard rock and heavy metal. The band have been cited as an influence by many other musicians. Moreover, like their music, the bands and artists that have claimed to be influenced by Queen or have expressed admiration for them are diverse, spanning different generations, countries, and genres, including heavy metal: Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Dream Theater, Trivium, Megadeth, Anthrax, Melvins, Slipknot, Rob Zombie, and Rage Against the Machine; hard rock: Guns N' Roses, Def Leppard, M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce, Steve Vai, the Cult, the Darkness, and Foo Fighters; alternative rock: Nirvana, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Muse, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane's Addiction, the Flaming Lips, Kid Rock, and Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins; shock rock: Marilyn Manson; pop rock: the Killers, My Chemical Romance, and Panic! at the Disco; country: Faith Hill, and Carrie Underwood; pop: George Michael, Robbie Williams, Adele, Lady Gaga, and Katy Perry; and K-pop: Psy, and BTS.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Musicians have been saying for decades Queen are in the pantheon of all-time greats. In the countless interviews I have done over the years they have been name checked by numerous superstars. What is most impressive though is the diversity of artists they've influenced. Why Queen were able to cut across such an incredibly wide range of musicians is easy to see \u2013 they are one of the most versatile bands that rock has ever had.\nIn the early 1970s, Queen helped spur the heavy metal genre's evolution by discarding much of its blues influence. Queen's 1974 song \"Stone Cold Crazy\" has been cited as a precursor of speed metal. Metallica recorded a cover version of \"Stone Cold Crazy\", which first appeared on the \"\" album in 1990, and they still performed it live in the 2000s. Swedish guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen, a pioneer of \"neo-classical metal\", listened to Queen as a kid, and spoke of Brian May being \"very inventive when it comes to tones and having all those pickup configurations. Brian tends not to stick to just pentatonics, either; he mixes it all up, which is how I like to think, too.\" Thom Yorke of Radiohead received his first guitar at 7 years old, encouraged after seeing May in a broadcast of a Queen concert. At 10 years old, Yorke made his own homemade guitar, trying to imitate what May had done with his Red Special, but he was not satisfied with the result. Subsequently, Queen was one of the first influences of his band.\nDiscography.\nStudio albums\nConcert tours.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["2030073", "42010"], "permutation_1": ["2030073", "42010"], "permutation_2": ["2030073", "42010"], "permutation_3": ["42010", "2030073"]}
{"id": "2hop__746732_25018", "docs_added": {"27515510": "Road to Emmaus appearance\nEvent from the Gospel of Luke\nAccording to the Gospel of Luke, the road to Emmaus appearance is one of the early post-resurrection appearances of Jesus after his crucifixion and the discovery of the empty tomb. Both the meeting on the road to Emmaus and the subsequent supper at Emmaus, depicting the meal that Jesus had with two disciples after the encounter on the road, have been popular subjects in art.\nBiblical accounts.\nN. T. Wright considers the detailed narration of the Emmaus journey in Luke 24:13\u201335 as one of the best sketches of a biblical scene in the Gospel of Luke. Jan Lambrecht, citing D. P. Moessner, writes: \"the Emmaus story is one of Luke's 'most exquisite literary achievements'.\" It describes the encounter on the road to Emmaus and the supper at Emmaus, and states that a disciple named Cleopas was walking towards Emmaus with another disciple when they met Jesus. They did not recognize him, and discussed their sadness at recent events with him. They persuaded him to come and eat with them, and at the meal they recognized him.\nTheme.\nAlthough it may be said that its main subject is proving the resurrection by the appearance of Jesus, this narrative seems not to say anything about proving the event. R. W. L. Moberly suggests that \"the story is best understood as an exposition of the hermeneutical issue of discernment, focusing specifically on the question, 'How does one discern the risen Christ?'\" Alfred McBride says that the Emmaus narrative concerns \"the evolution of the awareness of the two disciples, from despair over Christ's death to faith in his resurrection\". Used to perceive Christian spiritual growth, this narrative is considered as a model for a Christians' own journey to a deeper faith and as an instrument to help others do the same journey.\nParallels.\nThe Gospel of Mark has a similar account that describes the appearance of Jesus to two disciples while they were walking in the country, at about the same time in the Gospel narrative, although it does not name the disciples or the destination as Emmaus:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Afterward Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking in the country. These returned and reported it to the rest; but they did not believe them either.\nIt has also been suggested that the Ethiopian eunuch story (Acts 8:26\u201340) is a \"much discussed parallel\" to the Emmaus narrative, since there are some recognizable similarities between the two. Lambrecht says, \"Each event culminates with a ritual, the breaking and distributing of bread at Emmaus and the baptism of the Ethiopian along the road. [...] What remains as a common theme in both stories is the necessary hermeneutical connection between the Scriptures and the Jesus event. The Scriptures are to be interpreted in the light of 'the good news of Jesus' (Acts 8) and the Jesus events can only be understood in light of the Scriptures (Lk 24).\"\nUnnamed disciple.\nMany names have been proposed for the disciple who accompanied Cleopas. Among those who have been suggested: Simon/Symeon, according to several documents and manuscripts; Ammaon/Amaon, which may be a spelling error for \"Symeon\", according to Saint Ambrose; Nathanael, according to Saint Epiphanius's \"Panarion\"; Nicodemus, according to the Arabic Apocryphal Gospel of John; Luke the Evangelist, according to the Book of the Bee; Philip the Deacon; James, brother of Jesus; and Mary, the wife (or possibly daughter) of Clopas, who is considered the same person as Cleopas.\nJohn Gillman, in a to Jan Lambrecht, writes that \"Luke's failure to identify Cleophas' companion by either name or gender may well be a strategy of inviting the reader to identify implicitly with that person, and thus to make the journey as Cleophas' companion.\"\nThe journey to Emmaus.\nThe two followers were walking along the road, heading to Emmaus, deep in solemn and serious discussion, when Jesus met them. They could not recognize Jesus and saw him as a stranger. In \"Homilies on the Gospels\" (Hom. 23), Gregory the Great says:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />They did not, in fact, have faith in him, yet they were talking about him. The Lord, therefore, appeared to them but did not show them a face they could recognize. In this way, the Lord enacted outwardly, before their physical eyes, what was going on in them inwardly, before the eyes of their hearts. For inwardly they simultaneously loved him and doubted him; therefore the Lord was outwardly present to them, and at the same time did not reveal his identity. Since they were speaking about him, he showed them his presence, but since they doubted him, he hid from them the appearance by which they could have recognized him.\nJesus let them tell about their anxieties and pains; he let them grieve and mourn by expressing the root causes. Jesus empathically listened to them, who poured out their crises and doubts, and used scriptures so that they could better understand \"suffering and glory\". During the journey to Emmaus, according to Alfred McBride, Jesus patiently guided the two disciples \"from hopelessness to celebration\" and also intended to nourish the two disciples' faith to such an extent that they can see \"his real presence in the breaking of the bread\".\nFrom a pastoral perspective, John Mossi writes that meditating upon the \"Emmaus Pilgrimage\" may help one when experiencing one's own \"dark nights\". During such course of action, according to Mossi, one should realize that Jesus compassionately walks as a friend on one's own journey, empathetically listens one's sorrows and hesitations, and spends quality time accompanying one goes through the process of inner healing.\n\"Stay with us\".\nLuke 24:28\u201329 states that Jesus stayed and had supper with the two disciples after the encounter on the road:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus acted as if he were going farther. But they urged him strongly, \"Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.\" So he went in to stay with them.\nThe two disciples showed their openness and caring to the unknown stranger, who is Jesus, by inviting him to stay with them, to join in meal and companionship. Lambrecht argues that such attitudes made Jesus able to change them deeply: \"By the offer of hospitality the Emmaus companions were able to transcend their self-concern, sadness, foolishness and slowness of heart, thus preparing them for the revelatory experience around the table where they were nourished.\"\nSupper at Emmaus.\nAt first, Jesus appears to Cleopas and one other disciple, but \"their eyes were holden\" so that they could not recognize him. Later, \"in the breaking of bread\" (Luke 24:30), \"their eyes were opened\" and they recognized him (Luke 24:31). B. P. Robinson argues that this means that the recognition occurred in the course of the meal, while Raymond Blacketer notes that \"many, perhaps even most, commentators, ancient and modern and in-between, have seen the revelation of Jesus' identity in the breaking of bread as having some kind of eucharistic referent or implication.\"\nIn his apostolic letter , John Paul II says that when the two disciples urged Jesus to stay with them, Jesus afterwards responded by giving them a way to stay in him, by entering into \"a profound communion with Jesus\" through the \"Sacrament of the Eucharist\" (cf. John 15:4). Soon after Jesus agreed to their request to stay, according to the Pope, \"Jesus' face would disappear, yet the Master would 'stay' with them, hidden in the 'breaking of the bread' which had opened their eyes to recognize him. [...] When minds are enlightened and hearts are enkindled, signs begin to 'speak'.\"\nReturn to Jerusalem.\nLuke 24:32 states that the two disciples' hearts were \"burning\" during their conversation with Jesus along the way to Emmaus, especially when he explained the Scriptures. They have gone through \"a journey symbolizing their change of hearts from 'sad' to 'burning'\", and they immediately returned to Jerusalem to share their experience with other fellows (Luke 24:33).\nAlfred McBride says that \"enthusiasm flooded their whole being\" when the two disciples have \"encounter[ed] the Risen Christ\" in the supper at Emmaus. They sensed a must to share their happiness and the good news with another so that they were willing to go through a long walk back to Jerusalem. John Paul II argues that the two disciples realized \"the duty to be a missionary\" after \"entering into communion with Christ\" at the meal event, relates it with the dismissal at the end of the Eucharistic Celebration.\nIn art.\nBoth the encounter on the road and the ensuing supper have been depicted in art, but the supper has received more attention. Medieval art tends to show a moment before Jesus is recognized; Christ wears a large floppy hat to help explain the initial lack of recognition by the disciples. This is often a large pilgrim's hat with badges or, rarely, a Jewish hat. However, the depiction of the supper has been a more popular theme, at least since the Renaissance, showing Jesus eating with the disciples. Often the moment of recognition is shown.\nRembrandt's 1648 depiction of the supper builds on the etching that he did six years earlier, in which the disciple on the left had risen, hands clasped in prayer. In both depictions, the disciples are startled and in awe but not in fear. The servant is oblivious to the theophanic moment taking place during the supper.\nCaravaggio's painting in London and his painting in Milan were six years apart, and both imitate natural color very well, but both were criticized for lack of decorum. Caravaggio depicted Jesus without a beard, and the London painting shows fruits on the table that are out of season. Moreover, the inn keeper is shown serving with a hat.\nSome other artists who have portrayed the supper are Jacopo Bassano, Pontormo, Vittore Carpaccio, Philippe de Champaigne, Albrecht D\u00fcrer, Benedetto Gennari, Jacob Jordaens, Marco Marziale, Pedro Orrente, Tintoretto, Titian, Vel\u00e1zquez, and Paolo Veronese. The supper was also the subject of one of Han van Meegeren's most successful Vermeer forgeries.\nIn literary art, the Emmaus theme is treated as early as the 12th century by Durham poet Laurentius in a semidramatic Latin poem.\nIn music.\nThe gospel was the prescribed reading for Easter Monday in Lutheran Leipzig at Bach's time. He composed several church cantatas for the occasion, including the chorale cantata \"Bleib bei uns, denn es will Abend werden\", BWV 6, in 1725.\nJosef Rheinberger composed in 1855 a motet \"Abendlied\" on a verse from the gospel narration, \"Bleib bei uns\" (Bide with us).\nThe American southern gospel music group The Emmaus Road Quartet takes their name from the Biblical account. They also recorded a song entitled \"On The Road to Emmaus\" in 2019, in which the lyrics espouse a desire to walk with a risen Jesus Christ and be taught the scriptures by him.\nJungian perspective.\nCarl Jung regarded the road to Emmaus appearance as a mythological example of the common dream theme of the \"magical traveling companion.\"\nContemporary use.\nEmmaus, Pennsylvania, a borough in the Lehigh Valley region of the United States, draws its name from the Biblical references to Emmaus.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "22852566": "Crucifixion of Jesus\nJesus's death as described in the gospels\nThe crucifixion of Jesus was the death of Jesus by being nailed to a cross. It occurred in 1st-century Judaea, most likely in AD 30 or AD 33. It is described in the four canonical gospels, referred to in the New Testament epistles, and later attested to by other ancient sources. Scholars nearly universally accept the historicity of Jesus's crucifixion, although there is no consensus on the details. According to the canonical gospels, Jesus was arrested and tried by the Sanhedrin, and then sentenced by Pontius Pilate to be scourged, and finally crucified by the Romans. The Gospel of John portrays his death as a sacrifice for sin.\nJesus was stripped of his clothing and offered vinegar mixed with myrrh or gall (likely posca) to drink. At Golgotha, he was then hung between two convicted thieves and, according to the Gospel of Mark, was crucified at the third hour (9\u00a0a.m.), and died by the ninth hour of the day (at around 3:00\u00a0p.m.). During this time, the soldiers affixed a sign to the top of the cross stating \"Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews\" which, according to the Gospel of John, was written in three languages (Hebrew, Latin, and Greek). They then divided his garments among themselves and cast lots for his seamless robe, according to the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John also states that, after Jesus's death, one soldier (named in extra-Biblical tradition as Longinus) pierced his side with a spear to be certain that he had died, then blood and water gushed from the wound. The Bible describes seven statements that Jesus made while he was on the cross, as well as several supernatural events that occurred.\nCollectively referred to as the Passion, Jesus's suffering and redemptive death by crucifixion are the central aspects of Christian theology concerning the doctrines of salvation and atonement.\nNew Testament narratives.\nPaul is the earliest surviving source (outside of the gospels) to document Jesus's crucifixion. Scholars have used Paul's chronology as evidence for the date of the crucifixion. However, the earliest detailed accounts of the death of Jesus are contained in the four canonical gospels. In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus predicts his death in three separate places. All four gospel accounts conclude with an extended narrative of Jesus's arrest, initial trial at the Sanhedrin and final trial at Pilate's court, where Jesus is flogged, condemned to death, is led to the place of crucifixion initially carrying his cross before Roman soldiers induce Simon of Cyrene to carry it, and then Jesus is crucified, entombed, and resurrected from the dead. In each gospel account these five events in the life of Jesus are treated with more intense detail than any other portion of that Gospel's narrative. Scholars note that the reader receives an almost hour-by-hour account of what is happening.\nAfter arriving at Golgotha, Jesus was offered wine mixed with myrrh or gall to drink. Both the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Matthew record that he refused this. He was then crucified and hanged between two convicts. According to some translations of the original Greek, the convicts may have been bandits or Jewish rebels. According to the Gospel of Mark, he endured the torment of crucifixion from the third hour (between approximately 9 a.m. and noon), until his death at the ninth hour, corresponding to about 3 p.m. The soldiers affixed a sign above his head stating \"Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews\" which, according to the Gospel of John, was in three languages (Hebrew, Latin, and Greek), and then divided his garments and cast lots for his seamless robe. According to the Gospel of John, the Roman soldiers did not break Jesus's legs, as they did to the two crucified convicts (breaking the legs hastened the onset of death), as Jesus was dead already. Each gospel has its own account of Jesus's last words, seven statements altogether.\nAll four gospel accounts state that, following Jesus's death, Joseph of Arimathea requested Jesus's body and buried it in a rock-cut tomb. The Gospel of Matthew alone suggests that Joseph provided his own tomb for this purpose.\nThe three Synoptic Gospels describe Simon of Cyrene bearing the cross, a crowd of people mocking Jesus along with the other two crucified men, darkness from the sixth to the ninth hour, and the temple veil being torn from top to bottom. The Synoptic Gospels also mention several witnesses, including a centurion, and several women who watched from a distance, two of whom were present during the burial.\nThe Gospel of Luke is the only gospel to omit the detail of the sour wine mix that was offered to Jesus on a reed, while only Mark and John describe Joseph actually taking the body down off the cross.\nThere are several details that are only mentioned in a single gospel account. For instance, only Matthew mentions an earthquake, who went to the city, and that Roman soldiers were assigned to guard the tomb, while Mark is the only one to state the time of the crucifixion (the third hour, or 9\u00a0a.m. \u2013 although it was probably as late as noon) and the centurion's report of Jesus's death. Luke's unique contributions to the narrative include Jesus's words to the women who were mourning, one criminal's rebuke of the other, the reaction of the multitudes who left \"beating their breasts\", and the women preparing spices and ointments before resting on the Sabbath. John is also the only one to refer to the request that the legs be broken and the soldier's subsequent piercing of Jesus's side (as fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy), as well as that Nicodemus assisted Joseph with burial.\nAccording to the First Epistle to the Corinthians, Jesus was raised from the dead (\"on the third day\" counting the day of crucifixion as the first) and, according to the canonical gospels, appeared to his disciples on different occasions before ascending to heaven. The account given in Acts of the Apostles says that Jesus remained with the apostles for 40 days, whereas the account in the Gospel of Luke makes no clear distinction between the events of Easter Sunday and the Ascension. Most biblical scholars agree that the author of Luke also wrote the Acts of the Apostles as a follow-up volume to the Gospel of Luke account, and the two works must be considered as a whole.\nIn Mark, Jesus is crucified along with two rebels, and the sun goes dark or is obscured for three hours. Jesus calls out to God, then gives a shout and dies. The curtain of the Temple is torn in two. Matthew follows Mark, but mentions an earthquake and the resurrection of saints. Luke also follows Mark, although he describes the rebels as common criminals, one of whom defends Jesus, who in turn promises that he (Jesus) and the criminal will be together in paradise. Luke portrays Jesus as impassive in the face of his crucifixion. John includes several of the same elements as those found in Mark, though they are treated differently.\nTextual comparison.\nThe comparison below is based on the \"New International Version\".\nOther accounts and references.\nMara Bar-Serapion.\nAn early non-Christian reference to the crucifixion of Jesus is likely to be Mara Bar-Serapion's letter to his son, written some time after AD 73 but before the 3rd century AD. The letter includes no Christian themes and the author is presumed to be neither Jewish nor Christian. The letter refers to the retributions that followed the unjust treatment of three wise men: Socrates, Pythagoras, and \"the wise king\" of the Jews. Some scholars see little doubt that the reference to the execution of the \"king of the Jews\" is about the crucifixion of Jesus, while others place less value in the letter, given the ambiguity in the reference.\nJosephus.\nIn the \"Antiquities of the Jews\" (written about AD 93) Jewish historian Josephus stated () that Jesus was crucified by Pilate, writing that:\nNow there was about this time Jesus, a wise man,\u00a0... He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles\u00a0... And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross\u00a0...\nMost modern scholars agree that while this Josephus passage (called the \"Testimonium Flavianum\") includes some later interpolations, it originally consisted of an authentic nucleus with a reference to the execution of Jesus by Pilate. James Dunn states that there is \"broad consensus\" among scholars regarding the nature of an authentic reference to the crucifixion of Jesus in the \"Testimonium\".\nTacitus.\nEarly in the 2nd century another reference to the crucifixion of Jesus was made by Tacitus, generally considered one of the greatest Roman historians. Writing in \"The Annals\" (c. AD 116), Tacitus described the persecution of Christians by Nero and stated () that Pilate ordered the execution of Jesus:\nNero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.\nScholars generally consider the Tacitus reference to the execution of Jesus by Pilate to be genuine, and of historical value as an independent Roman source. Eddy and Boyd state that it is now \"firmly established\" that Tacitus provides a non-Christian confirmation of the crucifixion of Jesus.\nTalmud.\nAnother possible reference to the crucifixion (\"hanging\", cf. ; ) is found in the Babylonian Talmud:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />On the eve of the Passover Yeshu was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, \"He is going forth to be stoned because he has practised sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy. Anyone who can say anything in his favour, let him come forward and plead on his behalf.\" But since nothing was brought forward in his favour he was hanged on the eve of the Passover.\nAlthough the question of the equivalence of the identities of Yeshu and Jesus has at times been debated, many historians agree that the above 2nd-century passage is likely to be about Jesus, Peter Sch\u00e4fer stating that there can be no doubt that this narrative of the execution in the Talmud refers to Jesus of Nazareth. Robert Van Voorst states that the Sanhedrin 43a reference to Jesus can be confirmed not only from the reference itself, but from the context that surrounds it. Sanhedrin 43a relates that Yeshu had been condemned to death by the royal government of Judaea \u2013 this lineage was stripped of all legal authority upon Herod the Great's ascension to the throne in 37 BC, meaning the execution had to have taken place close to 40 years before Jesus was even born.\nIslam.\nMuslims maintain that Jesus was not crucified and that those who thought they had killed him had mistakenly killed someone else in his place, whether Judas Iscariot, Simon of Cyrene, or someone else. They hold this belief based on various interpretations of Quran\u00a04:157\u2013158, which states: \"they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them [or, it appeared so unto them],\u00a0... Nay, Allah raised him up unto Himself\".\nGnosticism.\nSome early Christian Gnostic sects, believing Jesus did not have a physical substance, denied that he was crucified. In response, Ignatius of Antioch insisted that Jesus was truly born and was truly crucified and wrote that those who held that Jesus only seemed to suffer only seemed to be Christians.\nHistoricity.\nIn scholarship on the historical Jesus, the baptism of Jesus and his crucifixion are considered to be the two most certain historical facts about Jesus. Various criteria are used to determine the historicity of the elements of the New Testamentical narratives, and help to establish the crucifixion of Jesus as a historical event. The criterion of embarrassment argues that Christians would not have invented the painful death of their leader. The criterion of multiple attestation is the confirmation by more than one source, including multiple non-Christian sources, and the criterion of coherence argues that it fits with other historical elements.\nAlthough scholars agree on the historicity of the crucifixion, they differ on the reason and context for it. For example, both E. P. Sanders and Paula Fredriksen support the historicity of the crucifixion, but contend that Jesus did not foretell his own crucifixion and that his prediction of the crucifixion is a \"church creation\". On the other hand, Michael Patrick Barber argues that the Historical Jesus predicted his violent death. Tucker Ferda argues that the Historical Jesus did believe he might die. Geza Vermes also views the crucifixion as a historical event, but provides his own explanation and background for it. Bart Ehrman states that Jesus portrayed himself as the header of the future Kingdom and that a number of criteria- the criterion of multiple attestation and criterion of dissimilarity - establishes the crucifixion of Jesus as an enemy of state.\nAlthough almost all ancient sources relating to crucifixion are literary, in 1968, an archeological discovery just northeast of Jerusalem uncovered the body of a crucified man dated to the 1st century, which provided good confirmatory evidence that crucifixions occurred during the Roman period roughly according to the manner in which the crucifixion of Jesus is described in the gospels. The crucified man was identified as Yehohanan ben Hagkol and probably died about AD 70, around the time of the Jewish revolt against Rome. The analyses at the Hadassah Medical School estimated that he died in his late 20s. Another relevant archaeological find, which also dates to the 1st century AD, is an unidentified heel bone with a spike discovered in a Jerusalem gravesite, now held by the Israel Antiquities Authority and displayed in the Israel Museum.\nDetails.\nChronology.\nThere is no consensus regarding the exact date of the crucifixion of Jesus, although it is generally agreed by biblical scholars that it was on a Friday on or near Passover (Nisan 14), during the governorship of Pontius Pilate (who ruled AD 26\u201336). Various approaches have been used to estimate the year of the crucifixion, including the canonical Gospels, the chronology of the life of Paul, as well as different astronomical models. Scholars have provided estimates in the range AD 30\u201333, with Rainer Riesner stating that \"the fourteenth of Nisan (7 April) of the year 30 AD is, apparently in the opinion of the majority of contemporary scholars as well, far and away the most likely date of the crucifixion of Jesus.\" Another preferred date among scholars is Friday, 3 April, AD\u00a033. \nThe consensus of scholarship is that the New Testament accounts represent a crucifixion occurring on a Friday, but a Thursday or Wednesday crucifixion have also been proposed. Some scholars explain a Thursday crucifixion based on a \"double sabbath\" caused by an extra Passover sabbath falling on Thursday dusk to Friday afternoon, ahead of the normal weekly Sabbath. Some have argued that Jesus was crucified on Wednesday, not Friday, on the grounds of the mention of \"three days and three nights\" in before his resurrection, celebrated on Sunday. Others have countered by saying that this ignores the Jewish idiom by which a \"day and night\" may refer to any part of a 24-hour period, that the expression in Matthew is idiomatic, not a statement that Jesus was 72 hours in the tomb, and that the many references to a resurrection on the third day do not require three literal nights.\nIn crucifixion takes place at the third hour (9 a.m.) and Jesus's death at the ninth hour (3 p.m.). In Jesus is still before Pilate at the sixth hour. Scholars have presented a number of arguments to deal with the issue, some suggesting a reconciliation, e.g., based on the use of Roman timekeeping in John, since Roman timekeeping began at midnight and this would mean being before Pilate at the sixth hour was 6 a.m., yet others have rejected the arguments. Several scholars have argued that the modern precision of marking the time of day should not be read back into the gospel accounts, written at a time when no standardization of timepieces, or exact recording of hours and minutes was available, and time was often approximated to the closest three-hour period.\nPath.\nThe three Synoptic Gospels refer to a man called Simon of Cyrene whom the Roman soldiers order to carry the cross after Jesus initially carries it but then collapses, while the Gospel of John just says that Jesus \"bears\" his own cross. \nLuke's gospel also describes an interaction between Jesus and the women among the crowd of mourners following him, quoting Jesus as saying \"Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, 'Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!' Then they will begin to say to the mountains, 'Fall on us,' and to the hills, 'Cover us.' For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?\"\nThe Gospel of Luke has Jesus address these women as \"daughters of Jerusalem\", thus distinguishing them from the women whom the same gospel describes as \"the women who had followed him from Galilee\" and who were present at his crucifixion.\nTraditionally, the path that Jesus took is called Via Dolorosa (Latin for \"Way of Grief\" or \"Way of Suffering\") and is a street in the Old City of Jerusalem. It is marked by nine of the fourteen Stations of the Cross. It passes the Ecce Homo Church and the last five stations are inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.\nThere is no reference to a woman named Veronica in the Gospels, but sources such as \"Acta Sanctorum\" describe her as a pious woman of Jerusalem who, moved with pity as Jesus carried his cross to Golgotha, gave him her veil that he might wipe his forehead.\nLocation.\nThe precise location of the crucifixion remains a matter of conjecture, but the biblical accounts indicate that it was outside the city walls of Jerusalem, accessible to passers-by and observable from some distance away. Eusebius identified its location only as being north of Mount Zion, which is consistent with the two most popularly suggested sites of modern times.\nCalvary as an English name for the place is derived from the Latin word for skull (), which is used in the Vulgate translation of \"place of a skull\", the explanation given in all four Gospels of the Aramaic word \"G\u00fblgalt\u00e2\" (transliterated into the Greek as (Golgotha)), which was the name of the place where Jesus was crucified. The text does not indicate why it was so designated, but several theories have been put forward. One is that as a place of public execution, Calvary may have been strewn with the skulls of abandoned victims (which would be contrary to Jewish burial traditions, but not Roman). Another is that Calvary is named after a nearby cemetery (which is consistent with both of the proposed modern sites). A third is that the name was derived from the physical contour, which would be more consistent with the singular use of the word, i.e., the place of \"a skull\". While often referred to as \"Mount Calvary\", it was more likely a small hill or rocky knoll.\nThe traditional site, inside what is now occupied by the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Christian Quarter of the Old City, has been attested since the 4th century. A second site (commonly referred to as Gordon's Calvary), located further north of the Old City near a place popularly called the Garden Tomb, has been promoted since the 19th century.\nPeople present.\nThe Gospels describe various women at the crucifixion, some of whom are named. According to Mark, many women were present, among them Mary Magdalene, Mary, mother of James and Mary of Clopas, commonly known as \"the Three Marys\". The Gospel of Matthew also mentions several women being present, among them Mary Magdalene, Mary, mother of James and the mother of Zebedee's children. Although a group of women is mentioned in Luke, neither is named. The Gospel of John speaks of women present, among them the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Mary of Clopas.\nAside from these women, the three Synoptic Gospels speak of the presence of others: \"the chief priests, with the scribes and elders\", two crucified criminals, to Jesus's right and left, \"the soldiers\", \"the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus\", passers-by, \"bystanders\", \"the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle\", and \"his acquaintances\". The two criminals are described as \"\u03bb\u1fc3\u03c3\u03c4\u03b1\u03af\" (variously translated as robbers, rebels or thieves) and further discussed in the Gospel of Luke as the penitent thief and the impenitent thief.\nThe Gospel of John mentions the soldiers and \"the disciple whom Jesus loved\", who is with the women.\nThe Gospels also tell of the arrival, after the death of Jesus, of Joseph of Arimathea (in the four Gospels) and of Nicodemus (only in John).\nMethod and manner.\nMost Christians believe the gibbet on which Jesus was executed was the traditional two-beamed cross, whereas the Jehovah's Witnesses hold the view that a single upright stake was used. The Greek and Latin words used in the earliest Christian writings are ambiguous. The Koine Greek terms used in the New Testament are () and (). The latter means wood (a live tree, timber or an object constructed of wood); in earlier forms of Greek, the former term meant an upright stake or pole, but in Koine Greek it was used also to mean a cross. The Latin word was also applied to objects other than a cross.\nEarly Christian writers who speak of the shape of the particular gibbet on which Jesus died invariably describe it as having a cross-beam. For instance, the Epistle of Barnabas, which was certainly earlier than 135, and may have been of the 1st century AD, the time when the gospel accounts of the death of Jesus were written, likened it to the letter T (the Greek letter tau, which had the numeric value of 300), and to the position assumed by Moses in . Justin Martyr (100\u2013165) explicitly says the cross of Christ was of two-beam shape: \"That lamb which was commanded to be wholly roasted was a symbol of the suffering of the cross which Christ would undergo. For the lamb, which is roasted, is roasted and dressed up in the form of the cross. For one spit is transfixed right through from the lower parts up to the head, and one across the back, to which are attached the legs of the lamb.\" Irenaeus, who died around the end of the 2nd century, speaks of the cross as having \"five extremities, two in length, two in breadth, and one in the middle, on which [last] the person rests who is fixed by the nails.\"\nThe assumption of the use of a two-beamed cross does not determine the number of nails used in the crucifixion and some theories suggest three nails while others suggest four nails. Throughout history, larger numbers of nails have been hypothesized, at times as high as 14 nails. These variations are also present in the artistic depictions of the crucifixion. In Western Christianity, before the Renaissance usually four nails would be depicted, with the feet side by side. After the Renaissance most depictions use three nails, with one foot placed on the other. Nails are almost always depicted in art, although Romans sometimes just tied the victims to the cross. The tradition also carries to Christian emblems, e.g. the Jesuits use three nails under the IHS monogram and a cross to symbolize the crucifixion.\nThe placing of the nails in the hands, or the wrists is also uncertain. Some theories suggest that the Greek word () for hand includes the wrist and that the Romans were generally trained to place nails through Destot's space (between the capitate and lunate bones) without fracturing any bones. Another theory suggests that the Greek word for hand also includes the forearm and that the nails were placed near the radius and ulna of the forearm. Ropes may have also been used to fasten the hands in addition to the use of nails.\nAnother issue of debate has been the use of a hypopodium as a standing platform to support the feet, given that the hands may not have been able to support the weight. In the 17th century Rasmus Bartholin considered a number of analytical scenarios of that topic. In the 20th century, forensic pathologist Frederick Zugibe performed a number of crucifixion experiments by using ropes to hang human subjects at various angles and hand positions. His experiments support an angled suspension, and a two-beamed cross, and perhaps some form of foot support, given that in an form of suspension from a straight stake (as used by the Nazis in the Dachau concentration camp during World War II), death comes rather quickly.\nWords of Jesus spoken from the cross.\nThe Gospels describe various last words that Jesus said while on the cross, as follows:\nMark / Matthew.\nThe only words of Jesus on the cross mentioned in the Mark and Matthew accounts, this is a quotation of Psalm 22. Since other verses of the same Psalm are cited in the crucifixion accounts, some commentators consider it a literary and theological creation. Geza Vermes noted the verse is cited in Aramaic rather than the usual Hebrew, and that by the time of Jesus, this phrase had become a proverbial saying in common usage. Compared to the accounts in the other Gospels, which he describes as \"theologically correct and reassuring\", he considers this phrase \"unexpected, disquieting and in consequence more probable\". He describes it as bearing \"all the appearances of a genuine cry\". Raymond Brown likewise comments that he finds \"no persuasive argument against attributing to the Jesus of Mark/Matt the literal sentiment of feeling forsaken expressed in the Psalm quote\".\nLuke.\nThe Gospel of Luke does not include the aforementioned exclamation of Jesus mentioned in the Matthew and Mark accounts.\nJohn.\nThe words of Jesus on the cross, especially his last words, have been the subject of a wide range of Christian teachings and sermons, and a number of authors have written books specifically devoted to the last sayings of Christ.\nReported extraordinary occurrences.\nThe synoptics report various miraculous events during the crucifixion. Mark mentions a period of darkness in the daytime during Jesus's crucifixion, and the Temple veil being torn in two when Jesus dies. Luke follows Mark; as does Matthew, additionally mentioning an earthquake and the . No mention of any of these appears in John.\nDarkness.\nIn the synoptic narrative, while Jesus is hanging on the cross, the sky over Judaea (or the whole world) is \"darkened for three hours,\" from the sixth to the ninth hour (noon to mid-afternoon). There is no reference to darkness in the Gospel of John account, in which the crucifixion does not take place until after noon.\nSome ancient Christian writers considered the possibility that pagan commentators may have mentioned this event and mistook it for a solar eclipse, pointing out that an eclipse could not occur during the Passover, which takes place during the full moon when the moon is opposite the sun rather than in front of it. Christian traveler and historian Sextus Julius Africanus and Christian theologian Origen refer to Greek historian Phlegon, who lived in the 2nd century AD, as having written \"with regard to the eclipse in the time of Tiberius Caesar, in whose reign Jesus appears to have been crucified, and the great earthquakes which then took place\".\nSextus Julius Africanus further refers to the writings of historian Thallus: \"This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his History, calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun. For the Hebrews celebrate the Passover on the 14th day according to the moon, and the passion of our Saviour falls on the day before the Passover; but an eclipse of the sun takes place only when the moon comes under the sun.\" Christian apologist Tertullian believed the event was documented in the Roman archives.\nColin Humphreys and Graeme Waddington of Oxford University considered the possibility that a lunar, rather than solar, eclipse might have taken place. They concluded that such an eclipse was visible in Jerusalem on the date of April 3, AD 33, that its peak was at 5:15\u00a0pm Jerusalem time, but that it was visible after sundown (the beginning of the Sabbath and of Passover) for half an hour. Some of the oldest manuscripts of Luke say \"the sun was eclipsed\" (23:45) at the time of the crucifixion. The authors suggest that this may be due to a scribe changing the word \"moon\" to \"sun\" to explain the darkness, or else that the word \"eclipsed\" just meant darkened or hidden, as in a passage of the Sibylline Oracles. Historian David Henige dismisses this explanation as \"indefensible\". More objectively, astronomer Bradley Schaefer later found that the lunar eclipse would not have been visible at moonrise due to the brightness of the sky, and the umbra (the part that would be red) would not have been visible before it disappeared a few minutes later.\nIn an edition of the BBC Radio 4 programmed In Our Time entitled Eclipses, Frank Close, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, stated that certain historical sources say that on the night of the Crucifixion \"the moon had risen blood red,\" which indicates a lunar eclipse. He went on to confirm that as Passover takes place on the full moon calculating back shows that a lunar eclipse did in fact take place on the night of Passover on Friday, 3 April 33 AD which would have been visible in the area of modern Israel, ancient Judaea, just after sunset.\nModern biblical scholarship treats the account in the synoptic gospels as a literary creation by the author of the Mark Gospel, amended in the Luke and Matthew accounts, intended to heighten the importance of what they saw as a theologically significant event, and not intended to be taken literally. This image of darkness over the land would have been understood by ancient readers, a typical element in the description of the death of kings and other major figures by writers such as Philo, Dio Cassius, Virgil, Plutarch and Josephus. G\u00e9za Vermes describes the darkness account as typical of \"Jewish eschatological imagery of the day of the Lord\", and says that those interpreting it as a datable eclipse are \"barking up the wrong tree\".\nTemple veil, earthquake and resurrection of dead saints.\nThe synoptic gospels state that the veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom.\nThe Gospel of Matthew mentions an account of earthquakes, rocks splitting, and the opening of the graves of dead saints, and describes how these resurrected saints went into the holy city and appeared to many people.\nIn the Mark and Matthew accounts, the centurion in charge comments on the events: \"Truly this man was the Son of God!\" or \"Truly this was the Son of God!\". The Gospel of Luke quotes him as saying, \"Certainly this man was innocent!\"\nThe historian Sextus Julius Africanus in the early-3rd century wrote, describing the day of the crucifixion, \"A most terrible darkness fell over all the world, the rocks were torn apart by an earthquake, and many places both in Judaea and the rest of the world were thrown down. In the third book of his Histories, Thallos dismisses this darkness as a solar eclipse. ...\"\nA widespread earthquake of magnitude at least 5.5 has been confirmed to have taken place in the region between AD 26 and 36. This earthquake was dated by counting varves (annual layers of sediment) between the disruptions in a core of sediment from En Gedi caused by it and by an earlier known quake in 31\u00a0BC. The authors concluded that either this was the earthquake in Matthew and it occurred more or less as reported, or else Matthew \"borrowed\" this earthquake which actually occurred at another time or simply inserted an \"allegorical fiction\".\nMedical aspects.\nA number of theories to explain the circumstances of the death of Jesus on the cross have been proposed by physicians and Biblical scholars. In 2006, Matthew W. Maslen and Piers D. Mitchell reviewed over 40 publications on the subject with theories ranging from cardiac rupture to pulmonary embolism.\nIn 1847, based on the reference in the Gospel of John () to blood and water coming out when Jesus's side was pierced with a spear, physician William Stroud proposed the ruptured heart theory of the cause of Christ's death which influenced a number of other people.\nThe cardiovascular collapse theory is a prevalent modern explanation and suggests that Jesus died of profound shock. According to this theory, the scourging, the beatings, and the fixing to the cross left Jesus dehydrated, weak, and critically ill and this led to cardiovascular collapse.\nWriting in the \"Journal of the American Medical Association\", physician William Edwards and his colleagues supported the combined cardiovascular collapse (via hypovolemic shock) and exhaustion asphyxia theories, assuming that the flow of water from the side of Jesus described in the Gospel of John was pericardial fluid.\nIn his book \"The Crucifixion of Jesus\", physician and forensic pathologist Frederick Zugibe studied the likely circumstances of the death of Jesus in great detail. Zugibe carried out a number of experiments over several years to test his theories while he was a medical examiner. These studies included experiments in which volunteers with specific weights were hanging at specific angles and the amount of pull on each hand was measured, in cases where the feet were also secured or not. In these cases the amount of pull and the corresponding pain was found to be significant.\nPierre Barbet, a French physician, and the chief surgeon at Saint Joseph's Hospital in Paris, hypothesized that Jesus relaxed his muscles to obtain enough air to utter his last words, in the face of exhaustion asphyxia. Some of Barbet's theories, such as the location of nails, are disputed by Zugibe.\nOrthopedic surgeon Keith Maxwell not only analyzed the medical aspects of the crucifixion, but also looked back at how Jesus could have carried the cross all the way along Via Dolorosa.\nIn 2003, historians F. P. Retief and L. Cilliers reviewed the history and pathology of crucifixion as performed by the Romans and suggested that the cause of death was often a combination of factors. They also state that Roman guards were prohibited from leaving the scene until death had occurred.\nTheological significance.\nChristians believe that Jesus's death was instrumental in restoring humankind to relationship with God. Christians believe that through Jesus's death and resurrection people are reunited with God and receive new joy and power in this life as well as eternal life. Thus the crucifixion of Jesus along with his resurrection restores access to a vibrant experience of God's presence, love and grace as well as the confidence of eternal life.\nChristology.\nThe accounts of the crucifixion and subsequent resurrection of Jesus provide a rich background for Christological analysis, from the canonical Gospels to the Pauline epistles. Christians believe Jesus's suffering was foretold in the Old Testament, such as in Psalm 22, and Isaiah 53 prophecy of the suffering servant.\nIn Johannine \"agent Christology\" the submission of Jesus to crucifixion is a sacrifice made as an agent of God or servant of God, for the sake of eventual victory. This builds on the salvific theme of the Gospel of John which begins in with John the Baptist's proclamation: \"The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world\".\nA central element in the Christology presented in the Acts of the Apostles is the affirmation of the belief that the death of Jesus by crucifixion happened \"with the foreknowledge of God, according to a definite plan\". In this view, as in , the cross is not viewed as a scandal, for the crucifixion of Jesus \"at the hands of the lawless\" is viewed as the fulfillment of the plan of God.\nPaul's Christology has a specific focus on the death and resurrection of Jesus. For Paul, the crucifixion of Jesus is directly related to his resurrection and the term \"the cross of Christ\" used in may be viewed as his abbreviation of the message of the gospels. For Paul, the crucifixion of Jesus was not an isolated event in history, but a cosmic event with significant eschatological consequences, as in . In the Pauline view, Jesus, obedient to the point of death () died \"at the right time\" () based on the plan of God. For Paul the \"power of the cross\" is not separable from the resurrection of Jesus. Furthermore, Paul highlighted the idea that Jesus on the cross defeated the spiritual forces of evil \"Kosmokrator\", literally 'the rulers of this world' (used in plural in ), thus highlighting the idea of victory of light over darkness, or good over evil, through Christ.\nBelief in the redemptive nature of Jesus's death predates the Pauline letters, to the earliest days of Christianity and the Church of Jerusalem. The Nicene Creed's statement that \"for our sake he was crucified\" is a reflection of this core belief's formalization in the fourth century.\nJohn Calvin supported the \"agent of God\" Christology and argued that in his trial in Pilate's Court Jesus could have successfully argued for his innocence, but instead submitted to crucifixion in obedience to the Father. This Christological theme continued into the 20th century, both in the Eastern and Western Christianity. In Eastern Christianity, Sergei Bulgakov argued, the crucifixion of Jesus was \"pre-eternally\" determined by the Father before the creation of the world, to redeem humanity from the disgrace caused by the fall of Adam. In Western Christianity, Karl Rahner elaborated on the analogy that the blood of the Lamb of God (and the water from the side of Jesus) shed at the crucifixion had a cleansing nature, similar to baptismal water.\nAtonement.\nJesus's death and resurrection underpin a variety of theological interpretations as to how salvation is granted to humanity. These interpretations vary widely in how much emphasis they place on the death and resurrection as compared to Jesus's words. According to the substitutionary atonement view, Jesus's death is of central importance, and Jesus willingly sacrificed himself after his resurrection as an act of perfect obedience as a sacrifice of love which pleased God. By contrast, the moral influence theory of atonement focuses much more on the moral content of Jesus's teaching, and sees Jesus's death as a martyrdom. Since the Middle Ages there has been conflict between these two views within Western Christianity. Evangelical Protestants typically hold a substitutionary view and in particular hold to the theory of penal substitution. Liberal Protestants typically reject substitutionary atonement and hold to the moral influence theory of atonement. Both views are popular within the Roman Catholic Church, with the satisfaction doctrine incorporated into the idea of penance.\nIn the Roman Catholic tradition this view of atonement is balanced by the duty of Roman Catholics to perform the Acts of Reparation to Jesus Christ which in the encyclical \"Miserentissimus Redemptor\" of Pope Pius XI were defined as \"some sort of compensation to be rendered for the injury\" with respect to the sufferings of Jesus. Pope John Paul II referred to these acts of reparation as the \"unceasing effort to stand beside the endless crosses on which the Son of God continues to be crucified.\"\nAmong Eastern Orthodox Christians, another common view is Christus Victor. This holds that Jesus was sent by God to defeat death and Satan. Because of his perfection, voluntary death, and resurrection, Jesus defeated Satan and death, and arose victorious. Therefore, humanity was no longer bound in sin, but was free to rejoin God through the repentance of sin and faith in Jesus.\nThe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that the crucifixion of Jesus was part of the atonement and a \"redeeming ransom\" both for the effect of the fall of Adam upon all humankind and \"for the personal sins of all who repent, from Adam to the end of the world.\"\nDeicide.\nThe Catholic Church denounces the idea of Jewish deicide, believing that all sinners are the authors and ministers of Jesus's crucifixion, and admonishes Christians that their own guilt is greater when they sin with knowledge of Jesus, than when others sin without it.\nDenial.\nDocetism.\nIn Christianity, Docetism is the doctrine that the phenomenon of Jesus, his historical and bodily existence, and above all the human form of Jesus, was mere semblance without any true reality. Docetists denied that Jesus could have truly suffered and died, as his physical body was illusory, and instead saw the crucifixion as something that only appeared to happen.\nNag Hammadi manuscripts.\nAccording to the First Revelation of James in the Nag Hammadi library, Jesus appeared to James after apparently being crucified and stated that another person had been inflicted in his place:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"The master appeared to him. He stopped praying, embraced him, and kissed him, saying, \u201cRabbi, I\u2019ve found you. I heard of the sufferings you endured, and I was greatly troubled. You know my compassion. Because of this I wished, as I reflected upon it, that I would never see these people again. They must be judged for what they have done, for what they have done is not right.\u201d\nThe master said, \u201cJames, do not be concerned for me or these people. I am the one who was within me. Never did I suffer at all, and I was not distressed. These people did not harm me. Rather, all this was inflicted upon a figure of the rulers, and it was fitting that this figure should be [destroyed] by them.\"\nIslam.\nMost Islamic traditions categorically deny that Jesus physically died, either on a cross or another manner. This denial is asserted in the Quran, which states:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />And [for] their saying, \"Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah.\" And they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but rather, it was made to appear to them so. And indeed, those who differ over it are in doubt about it. They have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption. And they did not kill him, for certain. (157) Rather, Allah raised him to Himself. And ever is Allah Exalted in Might and Wise. (158)\nIslamic traditions teach that Jesus ascended to Heaven without being put on the cross, but that God transformed another person to appear exactly like him and to be then crucified instead of him. An ancient antecedent of this view is attested in an account by Irenaeus of the doctrine of the 2nd-century Alexandrian Gnostic Basilides, in which Irenaeus refutes what he believes to be a heresy denying the death.\nGnosticism.\nSome scriptures identified as Gnostic reject the atonement of Jesus's death by distinguishing the earthly body of Jesus and his divine and immaterial essence. According to the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, Yaldabaoth (the Creator of the material universe) and his Archons tried to kill Jesus by crucifixion, but only killed \"their own man\" (that is the body). While Jesus ascended from his body, Yaldabaoth and his followers thought Jesus to be dead. In Apocalypse of Peter, Peter talks with the savior whom the \"priests and people\" believed to have killed.\nManichaeism, which was influenced by Gnostic ideas, adhered to the idea that not Jesus, but somebody else was crucified instead. Jesus suffering on the cross is depicted as the state of \"light particles\" (spirit) within matter instead.\nAccording to Bogomilism, the crucifixion was an attempt by Lucifer to destroy Jesus, while the earthly Jesus was regarded as a prophet, Jesus himself was an immaterial being that can not be killed. Accordingly, Lucifer failed and Jesus's sufferings on the cross were only an illusion.\nOthers.\nAccording to some Christian sects in Japan, Jesus Christ did not die on the cross at Golgotha. Instead his younger brother, Isukiri, took his place on the cross, while Jesus fled across Siberia to Mutsu Province, in northern Japan. Once in Japan, he became a rice farmer, married, and raised a family with three daughters near what is now Shing\u014d. While in Japan, it is asserted that he traveled, learned, and eventually died at the age of 106. His body was exposed on a hilltop for four years. According to the customs of the time, Jesus's bones were collected, bundled, and buried in a mound. There is also a museum in Japan which claims to have evidence of these claims.\nIn Yazidism, Jesus is thought of as a \"figure of light\" who could not be crucified. This interpretation could be either taken from the Quran or Gnostics.\nIn art, symbolism and devotions.\nSince the crucifixion of Jesus, the cross has become a key element of Christian symbolism, and the crucifixion scene has been a key element of Christian art, giving rise to specific artistic themes such as Christ Carrying the Cross, raising of the Cross, Stabat Mater, Descent from the Cross and Lamentation of Christ.\nThe symbolism of the cross which is today one of the most widely recognized Christian symbols was used from the earliest Christian times. Justin Martyr, who died in 165, describes it in a way that already implies its use as a symbol, although the crucifix appeared later.\nDevotions based on the process of crucifixion, and the sufferings of Jesus are followed by various Christians. The Stations of the Cross follows a number of stages based on the stages involved in the crucifixion of Jesus, while the Rosary of the Holy Wounds is used to meditate on the wounds of Jesus as part of the crucifixion.\nMasters such as Giotto, Fra Angelico, Masaccio, Raphael, Botticelli, van Dyck, Titian, Caravaggio, El Greco, Zurbar\u00e1n, Vel\u00e1zquez, Rubens and Rembrandt have all depicted the in their works. The \"Crucifixion, seen from the Cross\" by Tissot presented a novel approach at the end of the 19th century, in which the crucifixion scene was portrayed from the perspective of Jesus.\nThe presence of the Virgin Mary under the cross, mentioned in the Gospel of John, has in itself been the subject of Marian art, and well known Catholic symbolism such as the Miraculous Medal and Pope John Paul II's Coat of Arms bearing a Marian Cross. And a number of Marian devotions also involve the presence of the Virgin Mary in Calvary, e.g., Pope John Paul II stated that \"Mary was united to Jesus on the Cross\". Well known works of Christian art by masters such as Raphael (the \"Mond Crucifixion\"), and Caravaggio (\"The Entombment of Christ\") depict the Virgin Mary as part of the crucifixion scene.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["27515510", "22852566"], "permutation_1": ["22852566", "27515510"], "permutation_2": ["27515510", "22852566"], "permutation_3": ["27515510", "22852566"]}
{"id": "2hop__681463_402641", "docs_added": {"2792730": "Chiang Hsiao-wu\nTaiwanese diplomat (1945\u20131991)\nChiang Hsiao-wu (; also known as Alex Chiang; April 25, 1945 \u2013 July 1, 1991) was the second son of Chiang Ching-kuo, the President of the Republic of China in Taiwan from 1978 to 1988. His mother is Faina Ipatyevna Vakhreva, also known as Chiang Fang-liang. He had one older brother, Hsiao-wen, one older sister, Hsiao-chang, and one younger brother, Hsiao-yung. He also had two half-brothers, Winston Chang and John Chiang, with whom he shared the same father.\nHe was president of the state-run Broadcasting Corporation of China from 1980 to 1986, and later headed the Republic of China mission to Singapore for two years, starting in April 1986 as the deputy trade representative before being transferred to the mission to Japan in 1990. In a December 1985 speech, Hsiao-wu's father Chiang Ching-kuo declared \"If someone asks me whether anyone in my family would run for the next presidential term, my reply is, 'It can't be and it won't be.'\" Prior to the speech, Chiang Hsiao-wu was the only one of Chiang Ching-kuo's sons mentioned as a potential successor.\nHe died at the age of 46, on July 1, 1991, at the Taipei Veterans General Hospital in Taiwan as a result of congestive heart failure brought on by chronic inflammation of the pancreas. He was survived by his wife and two children.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2792045": "Chiang Hsiao-wen\nEldest son of Chiang Ching-Kuo (1935\u20131989)\nChiang Hsiao-wen (; also known as Alan Chiang; 14 December 1935 \u2013 14 April 1989) was the eldest son of Chiang Ching-kuo, the President of the Republic of China in Taiwan from 1978 to 1988. His mother is Faina Ipatyevna Vakhreva, also known as Chiang Fang-liang. He had one younger sister, Hsiao-chang, and two younger brothers, Hsiao-wu and Hsiao-yung. He had two half-brothers, Winston Chang and John Chiang, with whom he shared the same father.\nHe married Xu Nai Jin (Nancy) () in 1960 and had a daughter, Yomei, in 1961. He suffered brain damage in 1970 while being treated for diabetes. He died of throat cancer on April 14, 1989.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2792186": "Chiang Hsiao-chang\nDaughter of Chiang Ching-kuo\nChiang Hsiao-chang (; born 1938) is the only daughter of Chiang Ching-kuo, the President of the Republic of China in Taiwan from 1978 to 1988. Her mother was Chiang Fang-liang. She had one older brother, Hsiao-wen, and two younger brothers, Hsiao-wu and Hsiao-yung. She is the only living member of Chiang Ching-kuo's legitimate children, and was the only one among the siblings who could converse in Russian with their mother.\nShe also has twin half-brothers, Winston Chang and John Chiang, with whom she shares the same father. She attended Mills College and was featured in LIFE during her college years. She was married to Yu Yang-ho () until his death in 2010; he was the son of former Taiwan defense minister Yu Ta-wei (). She and Yu have one son, Theodore Yu Tsu-sheng ().\nPersonal life.\nChiang Hsiao-chang's husband, Yu Yang-ho, is the eldest son of Yu Ta-wei, the Minister of National Defense of the Republic of China, and his German-Italian wife. Chiang and Yu met and married while studying in the United States. In the spring of 1961, they had a son. The newborn's maternal grandfather, Chiang Ching-kuo, named his first grandson Yu Tsu-sheng using the ancient poem \"\u514b\u7d39\u7956\u88d8\uff0c\u8072\u671b\u9060\u64ad\" (\"Inherit the ancestors' robes, and let their fame be widely spread\").\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2792481": "Chiang Hsiao-yung\nTaiwanese politician (1948\u20131996)\nChiang Hsiao-yung (; also known as Eddie Chiang; October, 1948 \u2013 December 22, 1996) was a politician of the Republic of China.\nBiography.\nChiang was born in Shanghai, Republic of China in 1948. He was the third son of Chiang Ching-kuo, the President of the Republic of China in Taiwan from 1978 to 1988. His mother was Faina Ipatyevna Vakhreva, also known as Chiang Fang-liang. He had two older brothers, Hsiao-wen and Hsiao-wu, and one older sister, Hsiao-chang. He also had two half-brothers, Winston Chang and John Chiang, with whom he shared the same father.\nAfter a brief political career in the Kuomintang in 1988, he emigrated to Canada with his family. In 1996, he died in Taiwan at the Taipei Veterans General Hospital as a result of esophageal cancer, aged 48. He was survived by his wife Chiang Fang Chi-yi and three sons.\nAs of \u00a02013[ [update]], Chiang Fang Chi-yi is a member of the Kuomintang Central Committee while his eldest son Demos Chiang is a successful designer and businessman. Andrew Chiang, his youngest son, was charged with making threatening comments against the faculty of the Taipei American School through email and Facebook in 2013. He was convicted in 2015, and fined NT$183,000.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "32064901": "Chiang family\nRepublic of China political family\nThe Chiang family () is a political family of the Republic of China with Wu Chinese background from Zhejiang province. Members of a prosperous family of salt merchants, the Chiang family held senior positions in Chinese politics first on the Chinese mainland and then in Taiwan after 1949.\nMembers include Chinese Nationalist politician, revolutionary and military leader Chiang Kai-shek, who served as the leader of the Republic of China from 1928 to 1975. Chiang Ching-kuo, President of the Republic of China (1978\u20131988), Chiang Hsiao-yen, Vice Chairman of the Kuomintang (2009\u20132014), and more.\nChiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo, who have been presidents of the Republic of China, are often called collectively as \u201cTwo Chiangs\u201d ().\nOrigin.\nThe Chiang family ancestral home is in Heqiao (), a town in Yixing, Jiangsu, about southwest of central Wuxi and from the shores of Lake Tai. Eventually the clan settled in Xikou, a town in Fenghua, Zhejiang, about west of central Ningbo, where Chiang Kai-shek was born.\nOffices held.\nChiang Kai-shek (1887\u20131975)\nChiang Ching-kuo (1910\u20131988)\nChiang Hsiao-yen (1942\u2013)\nChiang Hsiao-wu (1945\u20131991)\nChiang Wan-an (1978\u2013)\nDemos Chiang \u8523\u53cb\u67cf (1976\u2013)", "412959": "Chiang Wei-kuo\nAdopted son of Chiang Kai-shek (1916\u20131997)\nChiang Wei-kuo (; 6 October 1916 \u2013 22 September 1997), also known as Wego Chiang, was the adopted son of Republic of China President Chiang Kai-shek, the adoptive brother of President Chiang Ching-kuo, a retired Army general, and an important figure in the Kuomintang. His courtesy names were Jian'gao () and Niantang (). Chiang served in the Wehrmacht before fighting in the Second Sino-Japanese War and Chinese Civil War.\nEarly life.\nAs one of two sons of Chiang Kai-shek, Chiang Wei-kuo's name has a particular meaning as intended by his father. \"Wei\" literally means \"parallel (of latitude)\" while \"kuo\" means \"nation\"; in his brother's name, \"Ching\" literally means \"longitude\". The names are inspired by the references in Chinese classics such as the \"Guoyu\", in which \"to draw the longitudes and latitudes of the world\" is used as a metaphor for a person with great abilities, especially in managing a country.\nBorn in Tokyo when Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT were exiled to Japan by the Beiyang Government, Chiang Wei-kuo was the biological son of Tai Chi-tao and a Japanese woman, . Chiang Wei-kuo previously discredited any such claims and insisted he was a biological son of Chiang Kai-shek until his later years (1988), when he admitted that he was adopted.\nAccording to reliable rumors, Tai believed knowledge of his Japanese tryst would destroy his marriage and his career, so he entrusted Wei-kuo to Chiang Kai-shek, after brought the infant to Shanghai. Yao Yecheng, a concubine of Chiang Kai-shek at the time, raised Wei-kuo as his foster mother. The boy called Tai his \"Dear Uncle\" ().\nChiang moved to the Chiang ancestral home in Xikou Town of Fenghua in 1920. Wei-kuo later studied physics at Soochow University.\nIn the Wehrmacht.\nHis sibling, Chiang Ching-kuo, a student-turned-political-prisoner in Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, served as the impetus behind Chiang's sending Wei-kuo to Nazi Germany for a military education at the Kriegsschule in Munich.\nAt the Kriegsschule, he studied the German army's advanced methods, structure, and weaponry. He was specifically drawn by the then-theoretical machine gun company, which would use the \"Maschinengewehr\" (i.e., a medium machine gun) as the main weapon. The Maschinengewehr was the MG 34 then: a fast and reliable gun. The machine gun company would cooperate with air and armored units to assist the infantry's attack. This would be called the \"Bewegungskrieg\" (\"War of Movement\"), and it would be very effective in the future World War II. After completing this training, Wei-kuo completed specialized training in Alpine warfare, thus earning him the coveted Gebirgsj\u00e4ger Edelweiss sleeve insignia. Wei-kuo was promoted to Fahnenjunker (\"Officer Candidate\"), and received a Sch\u00fctzenschnur lanyard.\nWei-kuo commanded a Panzer unit during the 1938 Austrian Anschluss as a F\u00e4hnrich, or \"sergeant officer-candidate\", leading a tank into that country. Subsequently, he was promoted to Lieutenant of a Panzer unit and awaited the Invasion of Poland. Before he was given the mobilization order, he was recalled to China to assist the war effort against the invading Japanese forces.\nService during the Second Sino-Japanese War.\nUpon being recalled from Germany, Chiang Wei-kuo visited the United States as a distinguished guest of the US Army on behalf of his father and the Kuomintang. While in the United States, he gave lectures detailing on German army organizations and tactics. During the war, Chiang Wei-kuo became acquainted with generals in Northwestern China and organized an armour mechanized battalion to formally take part in the National Revolutionary Army. Chiang Wei-kuo was stationed at a garrison in Xi'an in 1941. In addition, he spent some time at Fort Knox, Kentucky, studying tanks at the U.S. Army Armored School in 1940. Wei-kuo would become a Major at 28, a Lieutenant Colonel at 29, a Colonel at 32 whilst in charge of a tank battalion, and later in Taiwan, a Major General.\nService during the Chinese Civil War.\nDuring the Chinese Civil War, Chiang Wei-kuo employed tactics he had learned whilst studying in the German Wehrmacht. He was in charge of a tank battalion of the 1st Tank Regiment (equipped with Soviet T-26 light tanks and Italian CV-33/35 tankettes) during the Huaihai Campaign against Mao Zedong's troops, scoring some early victories. While it was not enough to win the campaign, he was able to pull back without significant problems. Like many troops and refugees of the Kuomintang, he retreated from Shanghai to Taiwan and moved his tank regiment to Taiwan, becoming a divisional strength regiment commander of the armoured corps stationed outside of Taipei.\nTaiwan.\nChiang Wei-kuo continued to hold senior positions in the Republic of China Armed Forces following the ROC retreat to Taiwan. In 1964, following the Hukou Incident and his subordinate Chao Chih-hwa's attempted coup d'\u00e9tat, Chiang Wei-kuo was in the penalty box and never held any authority in the military.\nFrom 1964 onwards, Chiang Wei-kuo made preparations in establishing a school dedicated to teaching warfare strategy; such a school was established in 1969. In 1975, Chiang Wei-kuo was further promoted to the position of general, and served as president of the Armed Forces University. In 1980, Chiang served as joint logistics commander in chief; then in 1986, he retired from the army and became National Security Council Secretary-General.\nAfter Chiang Ching-kuo's death, Chiang Wei-kuo was a political rival of native Taiwanese Lee Teng-hui, and he strongly opposed Lee's Taiwan localization movement. Chiang ran as vice-president with Taiwan Governor Lin Yang-kang in the 1990 ROC indirect presidential election. Lee ran as the KMT presidential candidate and defeated the Lin-Chiang ticket.\nPersonal life.\nIn 1944, he married Shih Chin-i (), the daughter of Shih Feng-hsiang (), a textile tycoon from North West China. Shih died in 1953 during childbirth. Wei-kuo later established the Chingshin Elementary School () in Taipei to commemorate his late wife.\nIn 1957, Chiang remarried, to Ellen Chiu Ju-hs\u00fceh (), also known as Chiu Ai-lun (), a daughter of Chinese and German parents. Chiu gave birth to Chiang's only son, Chiang Hsiao-kang, () in 1962. Chiang Hsiao-kang is the youngest of the Hsiao generation of the Chiang family.\nChiang Wei-kuo was also quite active in civil society, where he was the founder of the Chinese Institute of Strategy and Sino-German Cultural and Economic Association, as well as the Chairman of the Republic of China Football Association. He was the first chairman of Chingshin Primary School () and served as the president of the United States Students Association of China.\nChiang was a Freemason, and was the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of China from 1968 to 1969.\nFinal years.\nIn the early 1990s, Chiang Wei-kuo established an unofficial Spirit Relocation Committee (\u5949\u5b89\u79fb\u9748\u5c0f\u7d44) to petition the Communist government to allow his adopted father Chiang Kai-shek and brother Chiang Ching-kuo to be interred in mainland China. His request was largely ignored by both the Nationalist and Communist governments, and he was persuaded to abandon the petition by his father's widow Soong Mei-ling in November 1996.\nIn 1991, Chiang's housemaid, Li Hung-mei (, or ) was found dead in Chiang's estate in Taipei City. The following police investigation discovered a stockpile of sixty guns on Chiang's estate. Chiang himself admitted the possibility of a link between the guns and his maid's death, which was later ruled a suicide by the police. The incident permanently tarnished Chiang Wei-kuo's name, at a time when the Chiang family was increasingly unpopular on Taiwan and even within the Nationalist Party.\nIn 1993, Chiang Wei-kuo was employed as a senior advisor to President Lee Teng-hui despite their previous political rivalry.\nIn 1994, a hospital was supposed to be named after him () in Sanchih, Taipei County (now New Taipei City), after an unnamed politician donated to Ruentex Financial Group (\u6f64\u6cf0\u4f01\u696d\u96c6\u5718), whose founder was from Sanchih. Politicians questioned the motivation.\nIn 1996, the Chiang home on military land was finally demolished by the order of the Taipei municipal government under Chen Shui-bian. The estate had been constructed in 1971. After Chiang moved elsewhere in 1981, he deeded it to his son. The justification was that his son was not in military service and thus was not entitled to live there.\nChiang Wei-kuo died at the age of 80, on 22 September 1997, from kidney failure. He had been experiencing falling blood pressure complicated by diabetes after a 10-month stay at Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei. He had wished to be buried in Suzhou on the mainland but was instead buried at Wuchih Mountain Military Cemetery.\nPolitical and military career.\nHis positions in the Republic of China government included:\nFull list of military, and civil government positions held:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Hidden begin/styles.css\"/>Military, civil and government positions held\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "61157": "Chiang Ching-kuo\nPresident of Taiwan from 1978 to 1988\nChiang Ching-kuo (, 27 April 1910 \u2013 13 January 1988) was a politician of the Republic of China. The eldest and only biological son of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, he held numerous posts in the government of the Republic of China and ended martial law in 1987. He served as the third premier of the Republic of China between 1972 and 1978 and was the third president of the Republic of China from 1978 until his death in 1988.\nBorn in Zhejiang, Ching-kuo was sent as a teenager to study in the Soviet Union during the First United Front in 1925, when his father's Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party were in alliance. Before his education in the USSR, he attended school in Shanghai and Beijing, where he became interested in socialism and communism. He attended university in the USSR and spoke Russian fluently, but when the Chinese Nationalists violently broke with the Communists, Joseph Stalin sent him to work in a steel factory in the Ural Mountains. There, Chiang met and married Faina Vakhreva. With war between China and Japan imminent in 1937, Stalin sent the couple to China. During the war, Ching-kuo's father gradually came to trust him, and gave him more and more responsibilities, including administration.\nAfter the Japanese surrender, Ching-kuo was tasked with and effectively reduced corruption in Shanghai. The victory of the Communists in 1949 drove the Chiang family and their ROC government to retreat to Taiwan. Ching-kuo was first given control of the secret police, a position he retained until 1965 and in which he used arbitrary arrests and torture to ensure tight control as part of the White Terror. He then became Minister of Defense (1965\u20131969), Vice-Premier (1969\u20131972) and Premier (1972\u20131978). After his father's death in 1975, he took leadership of the Kuomintang (KMT) as chairman, and was elected president in 1978 and again in 1984.\nUnder his tenure as president, the government of the Republic of China in Taiwan, while remaining authoritarian, became more open and tolerant of political dissent. Chiang courted Taiwanese voters, and reduced the preference for those who came from the mainland after the WWII. Toward the end of his life, Chiang decided to relax government controls on the media and speech, and allowed Han born in Taiwan into positions of power, including his eventual successor Lee Teng-hui. He was the last president of the Republic of China to be born during the rule of the Qing dynasty. Ching-kuo was credited for his Soviet-inspired city planning policies, economic development with Ten Major Construction Projects in Taiwan, efforts to clamp down on corruption, as well as the democratic transition of Taiwan and gradually shifting away from the authoritarian dictatorial rule of his own father Chiang Kai-shek.\nBiography.\nEarly life.\nThe son of Chiang Kai-shek and his first wife, Mao Fumei, Chiang Ching-kuo was born in Fenghua, Zhejiang, with the courtesy name of Ji\u00e0nf\u0113ng (). He had an adopted brother, Chiang Wei-kuo. \"Ching\" literally means \"longitude\", while \"kuo\" means \"nation\"; in his brother's name, \"wei\" literally means \"parallel (of latitude)\". The names are inspired by the references in Chinese classics such as the \"Guoyu\", in which \"to draw the longitudes and latitudes of the world\" is used as a metaphor for a person with great abilities, especially in managing a country.\nWhile the young Chiang Ching-kuo had a good relationship with his mother and grandmother (who were deeply rooted to their Buddhist faith), his relationship with his father was strict, utilitarian and often rocky. Chiang Kai-shek appeared to his son as an authoritarian figure, sometimes indifferent to his problems. Even in personal letters between the two, Chiang Kai-shek would sternly order his son to improve his Chinese calligraphy. From 1916 until 1919 Chiang Ching-kuo attended the \"Grammar School\" in \"Wushan Temple\" an important temple in Xikou Town. Then, in 1920, his father hired tutors to teach him the Four Books, the central texts of Confucianism. On 4 June 1921, Ching-kuo's grandmother died. What might have been an immense emotional loss was compensated for when Chiang Kai-shek moved the family to Shanghai. Chiang Ching-kuo's stepmother, historically known as the Chiang family's \"Shanghai Mother\", went with them. During this period Chiang Kai-shek concluded that Chiang Ching-kuo was a son to be taught, while Chiang Wei-kuo was a son to be loved.\nDuring his time in Shanghai, Chiang Ching-kuo was supervised by his father and made to write a weekly letter of 200\u2013300 Chinese characters. Chiang Kai-shek also underlined the importance of classical books and of learning English, two areas he was hardly proficient in himself. On 20 March 1924, Chiang Ching-kuo was able to present to his now-nationally famous father a proposal concerning the grass-roots organization of the rural population in Xikou. Chiang Ching-kuo planned to provide free education to allow people to read and to write at least 1000 characters. In his own words:\nI have a suggestion to make about the Wushan School, although I do not know if you can agree to it. My suggestion is that the school establish a night school for common people who cannot afford to go to the regular school. My school established a night school with great success. I can tell you something about the night school:\nName: Wuschua School for the Common People\nTuition fee: Free of charge with stationery supplied\nClass hours: 7\u00a0pm to 9\u00a0pm\nAge limit: 14 or older\nSchooling protocol: 16 or 20 weeks.\nAt the time of the graduation, the trainees will be able to write simple letters and keep simple accounts. They will be issued a diploma if they pass the examinations. The textbooks they used were published by the Commercial Press and were entitled \"One thousand characters for the common people.\" I do not know whether you will accept my suggestion. If a night school is established at Wushan, it will greatly benefit the local people.\nIn early 1925, Chiang entered Shanghai's Pudong College, but Chiang Kai-shek decided to send him on to Beijing because of warlord action and spontaneous student protests in Shanghai. In Beijing, he attended the school organized by a friend of his father, Wu Zhihui, a renowned scholar and linguist. The school combined classical and modern approaches to education. While there, Ching-kuo started to identify himself as a \"progressive revolutionary\" and participated in the flourishing social scene inside the young Communist community. The idea of studying in Moscow now seized his imagination. Within the help program provided by the Soviet Union to the countries of East Asia there was a training school that later became the Moscow Sun Yat-sen University. The participants to the university were selected by the CPSU and KMT members, with a participation of CPC Central Committee.\nChiang Ching-kuo asked Wu Zhihui to name him as a KMT candidate. Wu did not try to dissuade him, even though Wu was a key figure of the right-leaning and anti-Communist \"Western Hills Group\" of the KMT. In the summer of 1925, Chiang Ching-kuo traveled south to Whampoa Military Academy to discuss his plans for study in Moscow with his father. Chiang Kai-shek was not keen, but after a discussion with Chen Guofu he finally agreed. In a 1996 interview, Ch'en's brother, Chen Li-fu, recalled that Chiang Kai-shek accepted the plan because of the need to have Soviet support at a time when his hold over the KMT was tenuous.\nMoscow.\nWith or without his father's enthusiastic approval, Chiang Ching-kuo went on to Moscow in late 1925. He stayed in the Soviet Union for nearly twelve years. While there, Chiang was given the Russian name Nikolai Vladimirovich Elizarov (\u041d\u0438\u043a\u043e\u043b\u0430\u0439 \u0412\u043b\u0430\u0434\u0438\u043c\u0438\u0440\u043e\u0432\u0438\u0447 \u0415\u043b\u0438\u0437\u0430\u0440\u043e\u0432) and put under the tutelage of Karl Radek at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East. Noted for having an exceptional grasp of international politics, his classmates included other children of influential Chinese families, most notably the future Chinese Communist party leader, Deng Xiaoping. Chiang Ching-kuo joined the Communist Youth League under Deng. Soon Ching-kuo was an enthusiastic student of Communist ideology, particularly Trotskyism; though following the Great Purge, Joseph Stalin privately met with him and ordered him to publicly denounce Trotskyism. Chiang even applied to be a member of the All-Union Communist Party, although his request was denied.\nIn April 1927, however, Chiang Kai-shek purged KMT leftists, had Communists arrested or killed, and expelled his Soviet advisers. Chiang Ching-kuo responded from Moscow with an editorial that harshly criticized his father's actions but was nonetheless detained as a \"guest\" of the Soviet Union, a practical hostage. The historiographic debate still continues as to whether he was forced to write the editorial, but he had seen Trotskyist friends arrested and killed by the Soviet secret police. The Soviet government sent him to work in the Ural Heavy Machinery Plant, a steel factory in the Urals, Yekaterinburg (then Sverdlovsk), where he met Faina Ipat'evna Vakhreva, a native Belarusian. They married on 15 March 1935, and she would later take the Chinese name Chiang Fang-liang. In December of that year, their son, Hsiao-wen was born.\nChiang Kai-shek refused to negotiate a prisoner swap for his son in exchange for a Chinese Communist Party leader. He wrote in his diary, \"It is not worth it to sacrifice the interest of the country for the sake of my son.\" In 1937, he maintained that \"I would rather have no offspring than sacrifice our nation's interests\", since he had no intention of stopping the war against the Communists.\nReturn to China and WWII.\nStalin allowed Chiang Ching-kuo to return to China with his Belarusian wife and son in April 1937 after living in the USSR for 12 years.\nBy then, the NRA under Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists under Mao Zedong had signed a ceasefire to create the Second United Front and fight the Japanese invasion of China, which began in July 1937. Stalin hoped the Chinese would keep Japan from invading the Soviet Pacific coast, and he hoped to form an anti-Japanese alliance with the senior Chiang.\nOn Ching-kuo's return, his father assigned a tutor, Hsu Dau-lin, to assist with his readjustment to China. Chiang Ching-kuo was appointed as a specialist in remote districts of Jiangxi where he was credited with training of cadres and fighting corruption, opium consumption, and illiteracy. Chiang Ching-kuo was appointed as commissioner of Gannan Prefecture () between 1939 and 1945; there he banned smoking, gambling and prostitution, studied governmental management, allowed for economic expansion and a change in social outlook. His efforts were hailed as a miracle in the political war in China, then coined as the \"Gannan New Deal\" (). During his time in Gannan, from 1940 he implemented a \"public information desk\" where ordinary people could visit him if they had problems, and according to records, Chiang Ching-kuo received a total of 1,023 people during such sessions in 1942.\nIn regard to the ban on prostitution and closing of brothels, Chiang implemented a policy where former prostitutes became employed in factories. Due to the large number of refugees in Ganzhou as a result from the ongoing war, thousands of orphans lived on the street; in June 1942, Chiang Ching-kuo formally established the Chinese Children's Village () in the outskirts of Ganzhou, with facilities such as a nursery, kindergarten, primary school, hospital and gymnasium. During the last years of the 1930s, he met Wang Sheng, with whom he would remain close for the next 50 years.\nThe paramilitary \"Sanmin Zhuyi Youth Corps\" was under Chiang's control. Chiang used the term \"big bourgeoisie\", in a disparaging manner to call H.H. Kung and T. V. Soong.\nWhile in mainland China, Chiang and his wife had a daughter, Hsiao-chang, born in Nanchang (1938), and two more sons, Hsiao-wu, born in Chongqing (1945), and Hsiao-yung, born in Shanghai (1948).\nRelationship with Chang Ya-juo and her death.\nChiang met Chang Ya-juo when she was working at a training camp for enlistees and he was serving as the head of Gannan Prefecture during the war. The two had a relationship that brought twin sons: Chang Hsiao-tz'u and Chang Hsiao-yen, born in 1942. In August 1942, Chang felt sick at a dinner party, and died the next day in a Guilin hospital. The circumstances of her death raised speculation that it was murder. Over the years, many of her relatives, including her sons and highly ranked ex-security personnel, insisted that KMT's security apparatus orchestrated her murder to keep a lid on CCK's marital affair, and to protect CCK's political career.\nHostage claim.\nJung Chang and Jon Halliday claim Chiang Kai-shek allowed the Communists to escape on the 1934\u20131935 Long March because he wanted Stalin to return Chiang Ching-kuo. This is contradicted by Chiang Kai-shek's diary, \"It is not worth it to sacrifice the interest of the country for the sake of my son.\" He refused to negotiate for a prisoner swap of his son in exchange for the Chinese Communist Party leader (Zhou Enlai). Again in 1937 he stated about his son: \"I would rather have no offspring than sacrifice our nation's interests.\" Chiang had absolutely no intention of stopping the war against the Communists. \nChang and Halliday likewise claim that Chiang Ching-kuo was \"kidnapped\" in spite of the evidence that he went to study in the Soviet Union with his father's own approval.\nEconomic policies in Shanghai.\nAfter the Second Sino-Japanese War and during the Chinese Civil War, Chiang Ching-kuo briefly served as a liaison administrator in Shanghai, trying to eradicate the corruption and hyperinflation that plagued the city. He was determined to do this because of the fears arising from the Nationalists' increasing lack of popularity during the Civil War. Given the task of arresting dishonest businessmen who hoarded supplies for profit during the inflationary spiral, he attempted to assuage the business community by explaining that his team would only go after big war profiteers.\nChiang Ching-kuo copied Soviet methods, which he learned during his stay in the Soviet Union, to start a social revolution by attacking middle class merchants. He also enforced low prices on all goods to raise support from the Proletariat.\nChiang Ching-kuo used his own agents to make arrests in Shanghai, rather than the Shanghai city police.178 Chiang Ching-kuo relied on two relatively new organizations which answered directly to him.178 He used the Sixth Battalion of the Bandit-Suppression National-Reconstruction Corps to search warehouses for hoarded goods and to place secret report boxes in the city where people could anonymously report violators. He also used the Shanghai Youth Service Corps for enforcement.179\nAs riots broke out and savings were ruined, bankrupting shopowners, Chiang Ching-kuo began to attack the wealthy, seizing assets and placing them under arrest. The son of the gangster Du Yuesheng was arrested by him.\nChing-kuo ordered KMT agents to raid the Yangtze Development Corporation's warehouses, which was privately owned by H.H. Kung and his family, as the company was accused of hoarding supplies. H.H. Kung's wife was Soong Ai-ling, the sister of Soong Mei-ling who was Chiang Ching-kuo's stepmother.\nChiang Ching-kuo had H.H. Kung's son son David Kung and several employees of the Yangtze Development Corporation arrested on allegations of holding foreign exchange.181 Soong Mei-ling called Chiang Kai-shek to complain and also called Chiang Ching-Kuo directly. David Kung was eventually freed after negotiations, and Chiang Ching-kuo resigned, ending the terror on the Shanghainese merchants.\nThe major impact of Chiang Ching-kuo's campaign was to cause the flight of prominent capitalists from Shanghai to Hong Kong and elsewhere.183 The failure of the campaign also affected Ching-kuo's political influence and reputation temporarily.\nPolitical career in Taiwan.\nAfter the Nationalists lost control of mainland China to the Communists in the Chinese Civil War, Chiang Ching-kuo followed his father and the retreating Nationalist forces to Taiwan. On 8 December 1949, the Nationalist capital was moved from Chengdu to Taipei, and early on 10 December 1949, Communist troops laid siege to Chengdu, the last KMT-controlled city on mainland China. 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{"id": "2hop__370935_58115", "docs_added": {"18833134": "Let It Go (Tim McGraw song)\n\"Let It Go\" is a song written by Aimee Mayo, Bill Luther and Tom Douglas, and recorded by American country music singer Tim McGraw. It was released in July 2008 as the sixth single and title track from his album \"Let It Go\". It was his forty-second Top 40 hit on the \"Billboard\" country charts.\nContent.\nThe song is a mid-tempo which describes a man's observation on his life and the \"demons\" that have been causing him personal discomfort. Ultimately, he convinces himself to \"let it go\" and improve his outlook on life.\nCritical reception.\nThe song received a \"thumbs down\" review from the country music site Engine 145. Reviewer Brady Vercher said, \"The song avoids becoming a motivational sermon by having the narrator focus inward, upon himself, but all we learn is that he's trying to put the skeletons in his closet behind him and move on. Ultimately, without any sort of supporting story, the lyric is[\u2026]generic enough to be applicable to nearly any situation.\" He also said that McGraw gave an \"uninspired\" vocal performance. Allmusic critic Thom Jurek described the song favorably in his review of the album, calling it \"the real shock\" of the album and saying that it \"offer[s] a message of threadbare hope in the face of adversity. In the grain of his voice, you can hear the determination to talk and walk from the place of redemption rather than the terrain of suffering. He's singing to convince himself as much as he is the listener.\"\nChart positions.\nBefore the release of \"Let It Go\", McGraw had reportedly announced in concert that he was planning to release a new album late in 2008. However, Curb Records decided to delay the album's release, and instead released \"Let It Go\" as the sixth single from \"Let It Go\". The song debuted at number 59 on the Hot Country Songs charts dated for August 2, 2008, reaching a peak of number 2 on the chart week of December 6 and holding that position for two weeks.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "525336": "Tim McGraw\nAmerican country singer and actor (born 1967)\nSamuel Timothy McGraw (born May 1, 1967) is an American country singer and actor. He has released 16 studio albums (11 for Curb Records, five for Big Machine Records and one for Arista Nashville). 10 of those albums have reached number one on the Top Country Albums charts, with his 1994 breakthrough album \"Not a Moment Too Soon\" being the top country album of 1994. In total, McGraw's albums have produced 65 singles, 25 of which have reached number one on the Hot Country Songs or Country Airplay charts.\nThree of these singles \u2013 \"It's Your Love\", \"Just to See You Smile\", and \"Live Like You Were Dying\" \u2013 were respectively the top country songs of 1997, 1998, and 2004 according to \"Billboard\" Year-End. He has also won three Grammy Awards, 14 Academy of Country Music awards, 11 Country Music Association (CMA) awards, 10 American Music Awards, and three People's Choice Awards. His Soul2Soul II Tour, which was done in partnership with his wife, Faith Hill, is one of the highest-grossing tours in country music history, and one of the top five among all genres of music. He has sold more than 80 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time.\nMcGraw has ventured into acting, with supporting roles in \"The Blind Side\", \"Friday Night Lights\", \"The Kingdom\", \"Tomorrowland\", \"Four Christmases\", flashback scenes in 2 episodes of \"Yellowstone\", and \"The Shack\" as well as lead roles in \"Flicka\" (2006), \"Country Strong\" (2010), and \"1883\" (2021). He was a minority owner of the Arena Football League's Nashville Kats. McGraw has been married to singer Faith Hill since 1996 and is the eldest son of former MLB pitcher Tug McGraw.\nEarly life and education.\nSamuel Timothy McGraw was born in Delhi, Louisiana, the only child of Elizabeth \"Betty\" Ann D'Agostino, a waitress from Jacksonville, Florida, and Frank Edwin \"Tug\" McGraw Jr., a pitcher for the minor league Jacksonville Suns and future star pitcher for the New York Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies. In 1966, D'Agostino was a student at Terry Parker High School. She lived in the same apartment building as Tug McGraw, who was playing baseball for Jacksonville. When she became pregnant with McGraw as a teen, D'Agostino's parents sent her to Louisiana to live with relatives. Through his father, McGraw has two half-brothers, Mark and Matthew, and a half-sister named Cari. He also has two younger half-sisters, Tracey and Sandra, through his mother's marriage to Horace Smith.\nMcGraw grew up believing Smith was his father, and used this stepfather's surname until meeting Tug. At age 11, McGraw discovered his birth certificate while searching in his mother's closet to look for a picture for a school project. Following the discovery, he learned from her who his biological father was and she took him to meet the elder McGraw for the first time. Tug McGraw denied the parentage for seven years until Tim was 18 years old. After that time, the two formed a relationship and remained close until the former baseball star died in 2004.\nAs a child, McGraw played competitive sports, including baseball, even before the knowledge of who his father was and his professional baseball career. McGraw was also a member of the FFA in high school. Following high school graduation, he attended Northeast Louisiana University on a baseball scholarship, where he was a pre-law major and pledged as a member of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. A knee injury sustained while playing baseball for the college prevented him from pursuing a professional career in sports.\nWhile in college, McGraw learned to play guitar and would frequently perform and sing for money. He has claimed his roommates often hid the guitar because he was so bad. McGraw followed his mother when she returned to Jacksonville, Florida, in 1987. After the move, he attended Florida Community College at Jacksonville for one term, and occasionally sat in with local bands. In 1989, on the day his hero Keith Whitley died, McGraw dropped out of college to head to Nashville and pursue a musical career.\nMusic career.\n1990s.\n\"Tim McGraw\".\nMcGraw came to the attention of Curb Records in 1990. After cutting a demo single, McGraw gave a copy to his father. A man who was friends with Curb Records executives heard the demo while driving with Tug one day and recommended that Curb contact the young singer. Several weeks later, he was able to play his tape for Curb executives, after which they signed him to a recording contract. McGraw made his debut with the single \"What Room Was the Holiday In\", which was released on March 29, 1991, and did not enter the \"Billboard\" Hot Country Songs chart upon its release. In a 2001 retrospective on McGraw's career in \"Billboard\", a former program director for Nashville station WSM-FM said that he added the song to the station's playlist because it showed \"undeniable promise\", while another former program director at WXTU in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, recalled that McGraw's debut single was \"terrible\" but that he booked the singer to make an appearance at the station due to his father's fame.\nTwo years later in April 1993, McGraw released his debut album \"Tim McGraw\", which was commercially unsuccessful and did not sell well. This is his only studio album not to achieve a music recording sales certification or to enter the Top Country Albums charts. Three more singles were released from \"Tim McGraw\": \"Welcome to the Club\", \"Memory Lane\", and \"Two Steppin' Mind\". None made country Top 40 and the album itself did not chart. Both \"Memory Lane\" and \"Tears in the Rain\", another cut from the album, were co-written by Joe Diffie. \"Memory Lane\" had originally appeared on Keith Palmer's self-titled 1991 debut album.\n\"Not a Moment Too Soon\".\nMcGraw's second album, entitled \"Not a Moment Too Soon\", was much more successful than his self-titled debut, and it was the best-selling country album of 1994. Its first single, \"Indian Outlaw\", sparked controversy, as critics argued that it presented Native Americans in a patronizing way. Some radio stations even chose not to play it. However, the controversy helped spur sales, and the song became McGraw's first Top 10 entry on the U.S. country charts after getting as high as number 8. The song also peaked at number 15 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100.\nThe album's second single, \"Don't Take the Girl\", became McGraw's first number one on the U.S. country charts, in addition to peaking at number 17 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. The song also \"helped cement his image as a ruggedly good-looking guy with a sensitive side.\" By year's end, the third single from the album, \"Down on the Farm\" peaked at number 2; after that, the album's fourth single, also its title track, became the singer's second number one song in early 1995. The fifth and final single \"Refried Dreams\" reached number 5. The album sold over 6 million copies, topping the \"Billboard\" 200 and Top Country Album charts. On the strength of this success, McGraw won Academy of Country Music awards for Album of the Year and Top New Male Vocalist in 1994. \"Billboard\" named \"Not a Moment Too Soon\" as the top country album of 1994 on Billboard Year-End.\n\"All I Want\".\nMcGraw's third studio album, \"All I Want\", was released in 1995. Just like its predecessor, this album debuted at No.\u00a01 on the country charts. The album even sold over 2 million copies in the United States and reached the Top 5 on the \"Billboard\" 200. The album's first single, \"I Like It, I Love It\", became McGraw's third number one on the American country charts and it also peaked at number 25 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. This song also eventually became the goal song for the Nashville Predators once they began their inaugural season and since then has been left unchanged. The album's next two singles, \"Can't Be Really Gone\" and \"All I Want Is a Life\" (its partial title track) both made the top 5 at numbers 2 and 5, respectively. The fourth single, \"She Never Lets It Go to Her Heart\", gave McGraw his fourth number one on the U.S. country charts in 1996. Finishing off the singles was \"Maybe We Should Just Sleep on It\", which peaked at number 4.\nIn 1996, McGraw headlined the most successful country tour of the year, The Spontaneous Combustion Tour, with Faith Hill as his supporting act. Hill broke off her engagement to her former producer Scott Hendricks so that she and McGraw could start dating each other; they then married on October 6, 1996.\n\"Everywhere\".\nThe singer's fourth album, \"Everywhere\" was released in 1997. It topped the country charts as well and reached No.\u00a02 on the \"Billboard\" 200, selling 4 million copies. The album spawned six singles. Four of those singles - \"It's Your Love\" (a duet with Faith Hill), the title track, \"Where the Green Grass Grows\", and \"Just to See You Smile\" - reached number one on the country charts. The Country Music Association awarded \"Everywhere\" its Album of the Year award for 1997. At the 40th Grammy Awards, \"It's Your Love\" received two Grammy Award nominations for Best Country Collaboration With Vocals and Best Country Song. Both \"It's Your Love\" and \"Just to See You Smile\" were the number one country songs of 1997 and 1998 according to \"Billboard\" Year-End charts; \"Just to See You Smile\" also set a record for the longest run on the country charts at the time, at 42 weeks. The album's other two singles, \"One of These Days\" and \"For a Little While\" both peaked at number 2.\n\"A Place in the Sun\".\nMcGraw's fifth album, \"A Place in the Sun\", continued his streak in 1999, debuting atop both the US country and pop album charts and selling 3 million copies. Over 251,000 of those copies were sold during its first week, making this the singer's first number 1 opener on the \"Billboard\" 200. It produced another four number one hits on the U.S. country charts with \"Please Remember Me\", \"Something Like That\", \"My Best Friend\", and \"My Next Thirty Years\". \"Some Things Never Change\" peaked at number 7 on the charts. McGraw also contributed a song for the Grammy-winning tribute album to Bob Wills entitled \"Ride With Bob\". A cover of \"Milk Cow Blues\", this song was recorded as a duet with Asleep at the Wheel, whom he had met while performing together at the George Strait Country Music Festival.\nMcGraw recorded two more duets with his wife in the late-1990s, both of which appeared on her albums. \"Just to Hear You Say That You Love Me\", from her multi-platinum-certified 1998 album \"Faith\", reached the Top 5 of the US country charts. Her follow-up album, 1999's \"Breathe\", featured \"Let's Make Love\", which won a Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Collaboration in 2000.\n2000s.\n\"Greatest Hits\".\nIn 2000, McGraw released his first \"Greatest Hits\" album, which topped the country albums charts for nine weeks and sold nearly 6 million copies, making this one of the biggest-selling albums in the modern country market. In the latter half of the year, he and Hill went out on the Soul2Soul Tour, playing to sellout crowds in 64 venues, including Madison Square Garden. The tour was one of the top tours of any genre in the U.S. It was also the leading country tour of 2000. While in Buffalo, New York, McGraw and Kenny Chesney became involved in a scuffle with police officers after Chesney attempted to ride a police horse. McGraw came to Chesney's aid after police officers nearby believed the horse was being stolen and tried to arrest him. The two were arrested and charged with assault but were later cleared. During a concert with the George Strait Country Music Festival several weeks later, Hill, dressed as a police officer, made an unscheduled appearance at the end of McGraw's set and led him off the stage.\n\"Set This Circus Down\".\nMcGraw's sixth studio album, \"Set This Circus Down\", was released in April 2001. It even spawned four number one hits on the country charts as well, this time with \"Grown Men Don't Cry\", \"Angry All the Time\" (with Faith Hill), \"The Cowboy in Me\", and \"Unbroken\". The singer provided harmony vocals for Jo Dee Messina's song \"Bring On the Rain\", which he also produced. That song topped the country charts. Hungry for more of his music, fans downloaded a version of his performance of the song \"Things Change\" from his appearance at the Country Music Association Awards Show. The song was played extensively on radio, becoming the first country song to appear on the charts from a fully downloaded version.\n\"Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors\".\nIn 2002, McGraw bucked country music traditions by recording his seventh studio album \"Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors\" with his tour band The Dancehall Doctors. Unlike rock music\u2014where it is commonplace for touring bands to provide the music on albums recorded by the artist they support, country albums are typically recorded with session musicians. McGraw chose to use his own touring band, in order to recognize their part in \nhis success, and to capture some of the feel of a real band.\nAll of the Dancehall Doctors have worked with McGraw since at least 1996. Their lineup includes:\nThe album debuted at No.\u00a02 on the country albums charts, Its fourth and fifth singles \"Real Good Man\" and \"Watch the Wind Blow By\" both climbed to number one on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot Country Songs chart. \"She's My Kind of Rain\" peaked at No.\u00a02 in 2003, and \"Red Rag Top\" reached number 5. The album also features a cover of Elton John's early-1970s classic \"Tiny Dancer,\" as well as duets with Kim Carnes on \"Comfort Me\" (a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks) and Don Henley and Timothy B. Schmit of the Eagles on \"Illegal.\" \"She's My Kind of Rain\" also received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Country Vocal Performance-Male at the 46th Grammy Awards.\n\"Live Like You Were Dying\".\nHis eighth album, 2004's \"Live Like You Were Dying\", continued the singer's record of commercial success. The album's first single and its title track was dedicated to his father Tug McGraw, who died of a brain tumor earlier in the year, was an ode to living life fully and in the moment. The second single \"Back When\" was a paean to an easy nostalgia. In December 2019, McGraw spoke on stage at the annual End Well Symposium about why he wrote \"Live Like You Were Dying\" and his struggles with caregiving for his dying father. \"Live Like You Were Dying\" spent seven non-consecutive weeks at No.\u00a01 on \"Billboard\" and went on to become the top country song of 2004 on the \"Billboard\" Year-End charts. It also became one of the most awarded records by winning ACM Single and Song of the Year, CMA Single and Song of the Year, and a Grammy. \"Back When\" went to number one on the country charts as well. The album produced three more singles with \"Drugs or Jesus\", \"Do You Want Fries with That\", and \"My Old Friend\". \"Drugs or Jesus\" became McGraw's first single since 1993 to not ever reach within the Top 10 on the U.S. country charts, while \"Do You Want Fries with That\" and \"My Old Friend\" peaked at numbers 5 and 6, respectively.\nIn late 2004, his unlikely duet with hip hop artist Nelly on \"Over and Over\" became a crossover hit, spending 10 weeks atop the top 40 chart. \"Over and Over\" brought McGraw a success he had never previously experienced on contemporary hit radio or R&B radio, and brought both artists success neither had previously experienced in the hot adult contemporary market. The song also spent a week at the top of the charts in the United Kingdom, becoming McGraw's first hit single in Britain and Nelly's third number one hit in the country after \"Dilemma\" and \"My Place\". \"Over and Over\" also reached the top of the charts in Australia, New Zealand, and the Republic of Ireland, and the top 10 in Austria, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Romania, and Switzerland.\nThroughout the 2005 NFL season, McGraw sang an alternate version of \"I Like It, I Love It\" every week during the season. The alternate lyrics, which changed each week, would make reference to plays during Sunday's games, and the song would be played alongside video highlights during halftime on \"Monday Night Football\". Later in the year, McGraw became a minority owner of the Arena Football League's Nashville Kats when majority owner Bud Adams (owner of the NFL's Tennessee Titans) was awarded the expansion franchise.\n\"Let It Go\".\nIn April 2006, McGraw and Hill began their 73-concert 55-city Soul2Soul II Tour, again to strong commercial acceptance. The tour grossed roughly $89 million and sold approximately 1.1 million tickets, making it the top-grossing tour in the history of country music. It was also named \"Major Tour of the Year\" by \"Pollstar\", beating out such heavyweights as Madonna and the Rolling Stones. In a special gesture, the couple donated all of the profits from their performance in New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina relief. McGraw, along with Kenny Chesney, contributed to a version of Tracy Lawrence's song \"Find Out Who Your Friends Are\", which can be found on Lawrence's album \"For the Love\". Although the official single version features only Lawrence's vocals, many stations have opted to play the version with McGraw and Chesney instead.\nMcGraw released his eleventh studio album, \"Let It Go\", on March 27, 2007. The album's first single, \"Last Dollar (Fly Away)\", peaked at number one on the Hot Country Songs chart. This marked McGraw's first No.\u00a01 single since \"Back When\" in late 2004. The album debuted at No.\u00a01 on both the \"Billboard\" 200 and Top Country Album charts, marking his fourth No.\u00a01 album on the 200 charts and his ninth overall. His daughters can be heard singing the chorus during the last few seconds of the song on the video. During the Academy of Country Music awards show on May 15, 2007, McGraw performed a song titled \"If You're Reading This\", which he co-wrote with The Warren Brothers. Several radio stations began to play the live recording of the song; as a result, it entered the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot Country Songs chart at No.\u00a035. McGraw also produced the debut album of country music duo Halfway to Hazard. The duo's first single, \"Daisy\", peaked at No.\u00a039 on the country charts in the summer of 2007. In the summer of 2007, McGraw and Hill toured together once again in the Soul2Soul 2007 tour.\nIn the edition of January 18, 2008 of the \"USA Today\" newspaper, McGraw was stated to be featured on the Def Leppard album \"Songs from the Sparkle Lounge\", having also co-written the first single, \"Nine Lives\", with Def Leppard band members Joe Elliott, Phil Collen, and Rick Savage. The unusual pairing goes back to 2006 when McGraw joined Def Leppard onstage for the song \"Pour Some Sugar On Me\", and then collaborated on the song \"Nine Lives\" afterward. The album was released on April 25, 2008. At the 2007 50th Annual Grammy Awards, McGraw received 5 nominations including Best Country Album (for \"Let It Go\"), Best Country Song (both for \"If You're Reading This\" and \"I Need You\"), Best Country Collaboration with Vocals (with \"I Need You\"), and Best Male Country Vocal Performance (with \"If You're Reading This\"). In May 2008, he hit the road with the Live Your Voice tour. The mainly-outdoor arena concert tour was his first solo outing in nearly three years. Also in May 2008, he debuted a new song in his follow-up to \"Let It Go\" at the Stagecoach Music Festival in Indio, California. In July 2008, the album's sixth single and its title track, \"Let It Go\", was released to country radio. Following that, a seventh single, \"Nothin' to Die For\", entered the Country charts at No.\u00a057 in late December. McGraw released his third greatest-hits package, \"Greatest Hits 3\" on October 7, 2008. The album features 12 tracks. McGraw was set to debut a new song at the 2009 ACM Awards, but then canceled his performance; he was replaced by Blake Shelton, who sang \"She Wouldn't Be Gone\".\n\"Southern Voice\".\nMcGraw's twelfth studio album, \"Southern Voice\", was released October 20, 2009, and led by the single \"It's A Business Doing Pleasure With You\", which was shipped to radio outlets in late June 2009.\n\"Southern Voice\" was argued to be McGraw's last album for Curb Records, following the dispute over releasing his third Greatest Hits collection back in October 2008 without his permission. McGraw did not approve of the release. On November 30, 2010, Curb Records released his fourth greatest hits compilation, \"Number One Hits\".\n2010s.\n\"Emotional Traffic\" and Curb Records lawsuit.\nOn January 2, 2011, McGraw announced plans for his Emotional Traffic Tour featuring opening acts Luke Bryan and The Band Perry.\nSirius XM announced on March 30, 2011, that they would be launching Tim McGraw radio, a commercial-free music channel devoted to McGraw's music, and featuring an in-depth interview with McGraw as well. As of fall 2010, McGraw had finished work on the album \"Emotional Traffic\", his last album with Curb Records. On May 13, 2011, Curb Records filed a breach-of-contract suit against McGraw. The label alleged that McGraw recorded tracks for his \"Emotional Traffic\" album too early prior to its delivery to the label. Several days later, McGraw filed a counter suit against the label seeking advance payment and recording-fund reimbursement, unspecified damages, and a jury trial. A trial was scheduled to begin in July 2012. In November 2011, a judge granted McGraw permission to record music for another label, ending his relationship with Curb Records that began in 1990. A few hours after the ruling, Curb released \"Better Than I Used to Be\", the first single from \"Emotional Traffic\". The album was released on January 24, 2012.\n\"Two Lanes of Freedom\".\nIn December 2011, McGraw released his first Christmas single, \"Christmas All Over the World\", on his own label StyleSonic Records. On May 21, 2012, however, he signed with Big Machine Records.\nMcGraw's debut album for Big Machine, entitled \"Two Lanes of Freedom\", was released on February 5, 2013. It debuted at number 2 on the charts by selling 108,000 copies. The album includes the singles \"Truck Yeah\", \"One of Those Nights\", \"Highway Don't Care\" (a duet with Taylor Swift which also features Keith Urban on lead guitar), and \"Southern Girl\". McGraw performed at the festival in London on March 16, 2013.\n\"Love Story\" and \"Sundown Heaven Town\".\nMcGraw released a single titled \"Lookin' for That Girl\" in January 2014 as the lead-off single to his second album for Big Machine. It was followed immediately by the announcement of the Sundown Heaven Town Tour. The album, titled \"Sundown Heaven Town\", was released on September 16, 2014. Four months into its run, \"Lookin' for That Girl\" was withdrawn as a single and replaced with \"Meanwhile, Back at Mama's\", which features backing vocals from Hill. \"Shotgun Rider\" became the album's third single and a number 1 Country Airplay hit by the end of 2014. Following it was \"Diamond Rings and Old Barstools\", a duet with Catherine Dunn. McGraw's eighth greatest hits album, \"Love Story\", is a compilation of his twelve biggest love songs and two previously unreleased recordings. It was released exclusively through Walmart on February 4, 2014, by Curb Records.\n\"Damn Country Music\".\nOn August 10, 2015, McGraw released a new single to digital retailers, titled \"Top of the World\", which was later released to radio on August 17, 2015, as the lead single to his third studio album for Big Machine Records. On September 17, McGraw announced that the album was titled \"Damn Country Music\", with a release date scheduled for November 6. The album's second single, \"Humble and Kind\", released to country radio on February 1, 2016, and went on to reach number 1 on the Billboard Hot Country charts. McGraw was selected as one of 30 artists to perform on \"Forever Country\", a mash-up track of Take Me Home, Country Roads, On the Road Again and I Will Always Love You which celebrates 50 years of the CMA Awards. The album's third single, \"How I'll Always Be\" released to country radio on July 11, 2016. It reached number 3 on the Country Airplay in January 2017.\n\"The Rest of Our Life\".\nOn October 4, 2016, during a show at the Ryman Auditorium, McGraw and Hill announced that they would be going back on the road together again on the . The tour began on April 7, 2017, in New Orleans and will continue into 2018, incorporating the festival held in the UK and Ireland throughout March 2018.\nBefore the commencement of the tour, it was reported that McGraw, alongside Hill, had signed a new deal with Sony Music Nashville. The signing also indicated the release of a duet album between the couple, and that multiple solo recordings would be produced. The new record label signing also preceded the release of \"Speak to a Girl\", the lead single from the duet album, \"The Rest of Our Life\", which was released on November 17, 2017. The release of the album coincided with the opening of an exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum titled \"Mississippi Woman, Louisiana Man\", which celebrates the careers of both McGraw and Hill.\nMcGraw released two major best-selling books in 2019, with the first co-written with \"Pulitzer Prize\" winner Jon Meacham which reached No. 2 on the New York Times Bestsellers list. Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music That Made a Nation. New York: Random House. 2019. . His second book, \"Grit and Grace\", also reached No. 2 on the New York Times Bestsellers list.\n2020s.\n\"Here on Earth\".\nIn February 2020, McGraw rejoined Big Machine Records, which he was previously signed to from 2011 to 2017. He released a new album, \"Here on Earth\", on August 21, 2020. The \"Here on Earth Tour\" was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In January 2021, McGraw released the single \"Undivided\" with Tyler Hubbard of Florida Georgia Line, which was included on a deluxe edition of \"Here on Earth\" released later that year. On October 9, 2021, McGraw confronted a heckler at a performance at the Nugget Events Center in Sparks, Nevada, after he forgot the words to his song \"Just to See You Smile.\" After removing the heckler, he explained that he had been filming a movie and had a lot on his mind, and asked for the audience's help in remembering the words.\n\"Standing Room Only\" and \"Poet's Resum\u00e9\".\nOn August 25, 2023, McGraw released his sixteenth studio album, \"Standing Room Only\". The title track was released as the album's lead single on March 10, 2023. It reached number 2 on the U.S. Country Airplay chart. Three months after releasing \"Standing Room Only\", McGraw surprise-released a six-track EP, \"Poet's Resum\u00e9\" on November 21, 2023.\nProduction career.\nMcGraw has occasionally served as a record producer in collaboration with Byron Gallimore, who has co-produced all of his albums. The two co-produced Jo Dee Messina's self-titled debut, as well as her next two albums, \"I'm Alright\" and \"Burn\". McGraw and Gallimore also produced the only album released by The Clark Family Experience in 2000, and Halfway to Hazard's 2007 self-titled debut album.\nActing career.\nMcGraw's first acting appearance came in a 1997 episode of \"The Jeff Foxworthy Show\", where he played Foxworthy's rival. In 2004, McGraw played a sheriff in Rick Schroder's independent release \"Black Cloud\". Later in the same year, McGraw received critical acclaim as the overbearing father of running back \"Donald Billingsley\" in the major studio Texas high school football drama \"Friday Night Lights\". The \"Dallas Observer\" said the role was \"played with unexpected ferocity by country singer Tim McGraw\". The movie went on to gross over $60 million worldwide at the box office, and sold millions in the DVD market. Most recently, it was named one of the Top 50 High School Movies of All Time (No.\u00a037) by \"Entertainment Weekly\".\nMcGraw's first lead role was in the 2006 film \"Flicka\", which was released in theaters October 20, 2006. In the remake of the classic book \"My Friend Flicka\", McGraw played the father, Rob, costarring with Alison Lohman and Maria Bello. The family-friendly movie debuted in the top 10 list and has grossed over $25 million at the box office. McGraw again achieved critical acclaim for his acting. Shortly before \"Flicka\" opened, McGraw received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His star is located at 6901 Hollywood Boulevard near stars honoring Julie Andrews, William Shatner, and the late Greta Garbo. One of his \"Flicka\" co-stars, Alison Lohman, attended the ceremony that included comments from Billy Bob Thornton, McGraw's co-star in the film \"Friday Night Lights\". In addition to acting in \"Flicka\", McGraw served as executive producer of the soundtrack album, which was released by his record label, StyleSonic Records, in association with Curb Records and Fox 2000 films. It featured the closing credit song \"My Little Girl\", one of the first two songs that McGraw recorded that he also co-wrote (the other being \"I've Got Friends That Do\", both of which were included on \"Greatest Hits Vol. 2\"). The song was nominated by the Broadcast Film Critics for \"Best Song\" in a film, and the movie was nominated in the category \"Best Family Film (Live Action)\". The movie proved to be another success in the DVD market, and has sold over a million copies, debuting at No.\u00a03 on the DVD sales chart.\nMcGraw also had a small part in the Michael Mann\u2013produced 2007 film \"The Kingdom\", reuniting him with \"Friday Night Lights\" director Peter Berg. McGraw played a bitter, angered widower whose wife was killed in the terrorist attack that is the centerpiece of the movie. On November 22, 2008, McGraw made his first appearance on \"Saturday Night Live\". He also played \"Dallas McVie\" in \"Four Christmases\". McGraw appeared in the 2009 film \"The Blind Side\" as Sean Tuohy, husband of Sandra Bullock's character, Leigh Anne Tuohy. \"The Blind Side\" is based on the true story of Michael Oher, a homeless African-American youngster from a broken home, taken in and adopted by the Tuohys, a well-to-do white family who help him fulfill his potential. He is among the stars of \"Dirty Girl\", a film that premiered on September 12, 2010, at the Toronto Film Festival, along with Juno Temple, Milla Jovovich, William H. Macy and Dwight Yoakam. Also in 2010, McGraw starred in \"Country Strong\" as James Canter, the husband and manager of the fictional country singer Kelly Canter (portrayed by Gwyneth Paltrow). In addition to his appearance in the film, McGraw's song \"Me and Tennessee\", a duet with Paltrow, was played during the closing credits and appears on the film's soundtrack. In 2015, McGraw appeared in Brad Bird's \"Tomorrowland\" as Eddie Newton, a NASA engineer, and Casey Newton's (played by Britt Robertson) father.\n\"1883\", a spinoff prequel to Taylor Sheridan's Yellowstone television series was released in late 2021 and stars McGraw, Faith Hill, and Sam Elliott.\nCharitable efforts.\nIn 1994, when McGraw first reached fame, he established the annual Swampstock event. It began as a charity softball game to raise money for hometown little league programs; the event now includes a celebrity softball game and a multi-artist concert that attracts over 11,000 fans per year. The combined events have funded new Little League parks and equipment, and have established college scholarship funds for students in the northeast Louisiana area.\nFrom 1996 to 1999, McGraw hosted an annual New Year's Eve concert in Nashville with special guests including Jeff Foxworthy, the Dixie Chicks, and Martina McBride. The 1997 show raised over $100,000 for the Country Music Foundation Hall of Fame and Museum. Beginning in 1999, McGraw would pick select cities on each tour, and the night before he was scheduled to perform, would choose a local club and host a quickly-organized show. This tour-within-a-tour became known as \"The Bread and Water Tour\", and all proceeds from the show would go to a charity from that community.\nMcGraw designed a charity T-shirt sold through Angelwear to benefit MusiCares. MusiCares supports musicians in times of need. His charity focuses particularly on health issues. The Tim McGraw Foundation raises funds to enhance the quality of life of children and adults with brain tumors. He supports the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center, the David Foster Foundation, which helps families of children in need of organ transplants, and Musicians on Call, which brings music to hospital patients' bedsides. He also performs during dinners and auctions to benefit children with disabilities. Hill and McGraw gave the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society $375,000 (the entire gate receipts from one of their concerts) to assist the families of 17 sailors following the terrorist attack on , the guided-missile destroyer that suffered significant damage in the Gulf of Aden, Yemen on October 12, 2000.\nIn the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina, McGraw who was raised in Mississippi, joined groups taking supplies to Gulfport, Mississippi. The two also hosted several charity concerts to benefit those who were displaced by the storm. Later in the year, the couple established the Neighbor's Keeper Foundation, which provides funding for community charities to assist with basic humanitarian services, in the event of a natural disaster, or for desperate personal circumstances.\nMcGraw is also a member of the American Red Cross National Celebrity Cabinet, to which various celebrities donate their time, skills, and fame, to help the Red Cross highlight important initiatives and response efforts.\nMcGraw has helped out with charity events held by Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre. The Brett Favre Fourward Foundation has featured McGraw performing concerts during dinners and auctions that benefit children with disabilities in Wisconsin and Mississippi. One instance is recorded on Favre's official website.\nOn July 12, 2007, it was made public that McGraw while in Grand Rapids, Michigan for a performance, donated $5,000 to Kailey Kozminski, the 3-year-old daughter of Officer Robert Kozminski, a Grand Rapids police officer who was killed on July 8, 2007, while responding to a domestic disturbance.\nIn April 2023, McGraw surprised rising country star Brandon Davis, whom he previously brought on tour with him in 2022, with a new guitar after all of his gear was stolen earlier in the month.\nPersonal politics.\nIn a 2006 interview with \"Esquire\" magazine, McGraw stated he would like to run for public office as a Democratic Party candidate, possibly for United States Senate or Governor of Tennessee\u2014his home state. In the same interview, he praised Bill Clinton.\nIn a 2008 interview with \"People\" magazine, McGraw referred to himself as a \"Blue Dog Democrat\" and stated that he and his family support Barack Obama.\nIn January 2021, McGraw performed on the \"Celebrating America\" inaugural special, a primetime virtual concert celebrating the inauguration of Joe Biden.\nPersonal life.\nMcGraw married fellow country singer Faith Hill in 1996, and they have three daughters. He and Hill own Goat Cay, which they unofficially named L'\u00eele d'Anges, a private island in the Bahamas.\nIn 2000, Kenny Chesney and McGraw became involved in a scuffle with police officers in Buffalo, New York, after Chesney was riding a State Police horse and refused to get off the horse. McGraw came to Chesney's aid after police officers nearby believed the horse was being stolen. The two were arrested and charged, Chesney for disorderly conduct and McGraw for assault, but were acquitted in 2001.\nMcGraw holds a private pilot license and owns a single-engine Cirrus SR22.\nIn 2015, \"Forbes\" estimated McGraw's annual income at $38 million.\nMcGraw is the godfather to the son of Garrett Hedlund and Emma Roberts. He and Hedlund became friends after co-starring in \"Friday Night Lights\" and \"Country Strong\".\nIn acknowledgment of his grandfather's Italian heritage, McGraw was honored by the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) in 2004, receiving the NIAF Special Achievement Award in Music during the Foundation's 29th Anniversary Gala.\nMcGraw's Bracco Italiano named Lepshi won Best of Breed at the 2023 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. The McGraw-Hill family also has two other Bracco Italianos, Caesar and Stromboli.\nTours.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["18833134", "525336"], "permutation_1": ["525336", "18833134"], "permutation_2": ["525336", "18833134"], "permutation_3": ["525336", "18833134"]}
{"id": "2hop__46766_79233", "docs_added": {"49728": "San Francisco\nConsolidated city-county in California, United States\nSan Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, financial, and cultural center within Northern California, United States. With a population of 827,526 residents as of 2024, San Francisco is the fourth-most populous city in California and the 17th-most populous in the U.S.; with a land area of at the upper end of the San Francisco Peninsula, it is the fifth-most densely populated U.S. county. Among U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco is ranked first by per capita income and sixth by aggregate income as of 2023. San Francisco anchors the 13th-most populous metropolitan statistical area in the U.S., with almost 4.6 million residents in 2023. The larger San Jose\u2013San Francisco\u2013Oakland combined statistical area, the fifth-largest urban region in the U.S., had a 2023 estimated population of over nine million.\nPrior to European settlement, the modern city proper was inhabited by the Yelamu. On June 29, 1776, settlers from New Spain established the Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate, and the Mission San Francisco de As\u00eds a few miles away, both named for Francis of Assisi. The California gold rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. In 1856, San Francisco became a consolidated city-county. After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, it was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama\u2013Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, it was a major port of embarkation for naval service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, significant immigration, liberalizing attitudes, the rise of the beatnik and hippie countercultures, the sexual revolution, opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, and other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a center of liberal activism.\nSan Francisco and the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area are a global center of economic activity and the arts and sciences, spurred by leading universities, high-tech, healthcare, finance, insurance, real estate, and professional services sectors. As of 2020[ [update]], the metropolitan area, with 4.5 million residents, ranked 5th by GDP ($874 billion) and 2nd by GDP per capita ($131,082) across the OECD countries. In 2023, San Francisco proper had a GDP of $263.1 billion and a GDP per capita of $325,000. Despite an accelerating exodus of businesses from the downtown area of San Francisco, the city is still home to numerous companies inside and outside of technology, including Salesforce, Uber, Airbnb, OpenAI, Levi's, Gap, Dropbox, and Lyft.\nIn 2022, San Francisco had more than 1.7 million international visitors and approximately 20 million domestic ones. It is known for its steep rolling hills and eclectic mix of architecture across varied neighborhoods; its Chinatown and Mission districts; mild climate; and landmarks including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, and Alcatraz. The city is home to educational and cultural institutions such as the University of California, San Francisco, the University of San Francisco, San Francisco State University, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Legion of Honor (museum), the de Young Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Symphony, the San Francisco Ballet, the San Francisco Opera, the SFJAZZ Center, and the California Academy of Sciences. Two major league sports teams, the San Francisco Giants and the Golden State Warriors, play their home games within San Francisco proper. San Francisco International Airport (SFO) offers flights to over 125 destinations, while a light rail and bus network, in tandem with the BART and Caltrain systems, connects nearly every part of San Francisco with the wider region.\nEtymology.\nSan Francisco, which is Spanish for \"Saint Francis\", takes its name from Mission San Francisco de As\u00eds, which in turn was named after Saint Francis of Assisi. The mission received its name in 1776, when it was founded by the Spanish under the leadership of Padre Francisco Pal\u00f3u. The city has officially been known as San Francisco since 1847, when Washington Allon Bartlett, then serving as the city's alcalde, renamed it from Yerba Buena (Spanish for \"Good Herb\"), which had been the name of the first civilian in San Francisco. Earlier in San Francisco's history, the uninhabited area on the northeastern side of San Francisco was called , after the herb that was growing abundantly there. The name Yerba Buena continues to be used in locations in the city, such as on Yerba Buena Island.\nWhile people residing outside the San Francisco Bay Area use nicknames including \"Frisco\" and \"San Fran\", local residents generally refer to San Francisco as \"the City\" or \"SF\". The choice of nickname a person uses is a common way for locals to distinguish long-time residents from tourists and recent arrivals. The nicknames \"San Fran\" and \"Frisco\" are somewhat controversial among San Francisco residents.\nThe California Cantonese who came for the California Gold Rush named California and specifically San Francisco , , \"Gold Mountain\".\nWhen gold was discovered in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia, it was named \"New Gold Mountain\" (, ) and California and San Francisco as \"Old Gold Mountain\" (, ).\nHistory.\nIndigenous history.\nThe earliest archeological evidence of human habitation of the territory of San Francisco dates to 3000\u00a0BCE. The Yelamu group of the Ramaytush people resided in a few small villages when an overland Spanish exploration party arrived on November 2, 1769, the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay. The Ohlone name for San Francisco was \"Ahwaste\", meaning \"place at the bay\". The arrival of Spanish colonists, and the implementation of their Mission system, marked the beginning of the assimilation of the Ramaytush people, and the decline of their language and culture.\nSpanish era.\nThe Spanish Empire claimed San Francisco as part of Las Californias, a province of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The Spanish first arrived in what is now San Francisco on November 2, 1769, when the Portol\u00e1 expedition led by Don Gaspar de Portol\u00e1 and Juan Cresp\u00ed arrived at San Francisco Bay. Having noted the strategic benefits of the area due to its large natural harbor, the Spanish dispatched Pedro Fages in 1770 to find a more direct route to the San Francisco Peninsula from Monterey, which would become part of the El Camino Real route. By 1774, Juan Bautista de Anza had arrived to the area to select the sites for a mission and presidio. The first European maritime presence in San Francisco Bay occurred on August 5, 1775, when the Spanish ship \"San Carlos\", commanded by Juan Manuel de Ayala, became the first ship to anchor in the bay.\nSoon after, on March 28, 1776, Anza established the Presidio of San Francisco. On October 9, Mission San Francisco de As\u00eds, also known as Mission Dolores, was founded by Padre Francisco Pal\u00f3u. In 1794, the Presidio established the Castillo de San Joaqu\u00edn, a fortification on the southern side of the Golden Gate, which later came to be known as Fort Point.\nIn 1804, the province of Alta California was created, which included San Francisco. At its peak in 1810\u20131820, the average population at the Mission Dolores settlement was about 1,100 people.\nMexican era.\nIn 1821, the Californias were ceded to Mexico by Spain. The extensive California mission system gradually lost its influence during the period of Mexican rule, although it was not until 1833 that the missions would be secularized. Agricultural land became largely privatized as ranchos, as was occurring in other parts of California. Coastal trade increased, including a half-dozen barques from various Atlantic ports which regularly sailed in California waters.\nWith the enactment of the Mexican Secularization Act of 1833, the missions were made to divest themselves of their extensive landholdings and emancipate the indigenous people under their control. As part of the process of secularization, Governor Jos\u00e9 Figueroa opened up San Francisco to civilian settlement. Prior to secularization, the only settlements in San Francisco had been the military settlement at the Presidio and the religious settlement at Mission Dolores. In 1835, the Presidio garrison, commanded by Mariano Vallejo, relocated to the Presidio of Sonoma, which was regarded as needing a greater military presence due the proximity of the Russian settlement at Fort Ross. Only a small detachment remained at the Presidio of San Francisco. Mission Dolores sold most of its property in 1836, retaining only the church and related structures. \nIn 1833, Juana Briones de Miranda was granted a small rancho at El Pol\u00edn Spring, near the Presidio, founding the first non-indigenous civilian household in San Francisco. In 1834, the \"pueblo\" of Yerba Buena was founded. Yerba Buena Cove (named after a native herb) was already a favored anchorage spot and the new settlement and trading post was founded by its shores. Yerba Buena was located in what is now the city's Chinatown and Financial District and was centered on a plaza that is now Portsmouth Square. A land survey of Yerba Buena was made by the Swiss immigrant Jean Jacques Vioget as prelude to the city plan. \nFrancisco de Haro became the first alcalde of Yerba Buena. In 1835, the second alcalde, Jos\u00e9 Joaqu\u00edn Estudillo, approved the first land grant in Yerba Buena: to William Richardson. Yerba Buena began to attract American and European settlers; an 1842 census listed 21 residents (11%) born in the United States or Europe, as well as one Filipino merchant. \nFollowing the Bear Flag Revolt in Sonoma and the beginning of the U.S. Conquest of California, American forces from the \"USS Portsmouth\" under the command of John B. Montgomery captured Yerba Buena on July 9, 1846, with little resistance from the local Californio population, raising the American flag over Yerba Buena plaza (later renamed Portsmouth Square in commemoration of this event). \nFollowing the capture, U.S. forces appointed both Jos\u00e9 de Jes\u00fas No\u00e9 and Washington Allon Bartlett to serve as co-alcaldes (mayors), while the conquest continued on in the rest of California. On January 30, 1847, Mayor Bartlett ordained that the city should officially change its name from \"Yerba Buena\" to \"San Francisco\", as the former name was only locally recognized and the latter name was in use on international maps. There was also concern that a new town being planned by General Vallejo on the Carquinez Strait was to be called \"Francisca\", after the first name of his wife. After the name change to \"San Francisco\", the name of Vallejo's town was changed to Benicia, after his wife's middle name. Following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, Alta California was ceded from Mexico to the United States.\nPost-Conquest era.\nDespite its attractive location as a port and naval base, post-Conquest San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. Situated at the tip of a windswept peninsula without water or firewood, San Francisco lacked most of the basic facilities for a 19th-century settlement. Its 1847 population was said to be 459.\nThe California gold rush brought a flood of treasure seekers. Prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849. The promise of wealth was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons, and hotels; many were left to rot, and some were sunk to establish title to the underwater lot. By 1851, the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870, Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land. Buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings.\nCalifornia was quickly granted statehood in 1850, and the U.S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate and a fort on Alcatraz Island to secure San Francisco Bay. San Francisco County was one of the state's 18 original counties established at California statehood in 1850. Until 1856, San Francisco's city limits extended west to Divisadero Street and Castro Street, and south to 20th Street. In 1856, the California state government divided the county. A straight line was then drawn across the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula just north of San Bruno Mountain. Everything south of the line became the new San Mateo County while everything north of the line became the new consolidated City and County of San Francisco.\nThe California gold rush triggered a wave of entrepreneurial activity as individuals sought to capitalize on the newfound wealth. The discovery of silver deposits, notably the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further fueled rapid population growth and economic expansion.\nSan Francisco, as the gateway to the goldfields, experienced a surge in population and commercial activity. However, the influx of fortune seekers also brought challenges. Lawlessness was rampant, and the Barbary Coast district became synonymous with vice, attracting criminals, prostitutes, and illicit activities, including but not limited to prostitution, bootlegging, and gambling. The rapidly growing population, with its lawlessness, gambling and other vices, and the fact that there were no churches to be found, prompted missionaries like William Taylor to come to San Francisco where he began preaching in the streets, using an upright barrel as his pulpit. Taylor garnered enough generous donations from successful gold miners to build a church.\nOne of the most influential figures of this era was William Chapman Ralston. A shrewd banker and investor, Ralston amassed considerable wealth and influence in San Francisco. He gained control over a significant portion of the Comstock Lode's gold and silver mines, establishing a virtual monopoly. Using his incredible clout, Ralston was able to generate millions of dollars for San Francisco during its heady boom years. He founded the Bank of California, the first bank in the Western United States, and built the opulent Palace Hotel, a symbol of San Francisco's newfound prosperity and the largest hotel in the country at the time. His financial empire, however, collapsed in 1875 as a result of the Panic of 1873, triggering a major economic crisis in San Francisco.\nDevelopment of the Port of San Francisco and the establishment in 1869 of overland access to the eastern U.S. rail system via the newly completed Pacific Railroad (the construction of which the city only reluctantly helped support) helped make the Bay Area a center for trade. Catering to the needs and tastes of the growing population, Levi Strauss opened a dry goods business and Domingo Ghirardelli began manufacturing chocolate. Chinese immigrants made the city a polyglot culture, drawn to \"Old Gold Mountain\", creating the city's Chinatown quarter. By 1880, Chinese made up 9.3% of the population. \nThe first cable cars carried San Franciscans up Clay Street in 1873. The city's sea of Victorian houses began to take shape, and civic leaders campaigned for a spacious public park, resulting in plans for Golden Gate Park. San Franciscans built schools, churches, theaters, and all the hallmarks of civic life. The Presidio developed into the most important American military installation on the Pacific coast. By 1890, San Francisco's population approached 300,000, making it the eighth-largest city in the United States at the time. Around 1901, San Francisco was a major city known for its flamboyant style, stately hotels, ostentatious mansions on Nob Hill, and a thriving arts scene. The first North American plague epidemic was the San Francisco plague of 1900\u20131904.\n1906 earthquake and interwar era.\nAt 5:12\u00a0am on April 18, 1906, a major earthquake struck San Francisco and northern California. As buildings collapsed from the shaking, ruptured gas lines ignited fires that spread across the city and burned out of control for several days. With water mains out of service, the Presidio Artillery Corps attempted to contain the inferno by dynamiting blocks of buildings to create firebreaks. More than three-quarters of the city lay in ruins, including almost all of the downtown core. Contemporary accounts reported that 498 people died, though modern estimates put the number in the several thousands. More than half of the city's population of 400,000 was left homeless. Refugees settled temporarily in makeshift tent villages in Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, on the beaches, and elsewhere. Many fled permanently to the East Bay. Jack London is remembered for having famously eulogized the earthquake: \"Not in history has a modern imperial city been so completely destroyed. San Francisco is gone.\"\nRebuilding was rapid and performed on a grand scale. Rejecting calls to completely remake the street grid, San Franciscans opted for speed. Amadeo Giannini's Bank of Italy, later to become Bank of America, provided loans for many of those whose livelihoods had been devastated. The influential San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association or SPUR was founded in 1910 to address the quality of housing after the earthquake. The earthquake hastened development of western neighborhoods that survived the fire, including Pacific Heights, where many of the city's wealthy rebuilt their homes. In turn, the destroyed mansions of Nob Hill became grand hotels. City Hall rose again in the Beaux Arts style, and the city celebrated its rebirth at the Panama\u2013Pacific International Exposition in 1915.\nDuring this period, San Francisco built some of its most important infrastructure. Civil Engineer Michael O'Shaughnessy was hired by San Francisco Mayor James Rolph as chief engineer for the city in September 1912 to supervise the construction of the Twin Peaks Reservoir, the Stockton Street Tunnel, the Twin Peaks Tunnel, the San Francisco Municipal Railway, the Auxiliary Water Supply System, and new sewers. San Francisco's streetcar system was pushed to completion by O'Shaughnessy between 1915 and 1927. It was the O'Shaughnessy Dam, Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, and Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct that would have the largest effect on San Francisco. An abundant water supply enabled San Francisco to develop into the city it has become today.\nIn ensuing years, the city solidified its standing as a financial capital; in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, not a single San Francisco-based bank failed. Indeed, it was at the height of the Great Depression that San Francisco undertook two great civil engineering projects, simultaneously constructing the San Francisco\u2013Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, completing them in 1936 and 1937, respectively. It was in this period that the island of Alcatraz, a former military stockade, began its service as a federal maximum security prison, housing notorious inmates such as Al Capone, and Robert Franklin Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz. San Francisco later celebrated its regained grandeur with a World's fair, the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939\u201340, creating Treasure Island in the middle of the bay to house it.\nContemporary era.\nDuring World War II, the city-owned Sharp Park in Pacifica was used as an internment camp to detain Japanese Americans. Hunters Point Naval Shipyard became a hub of activity, and Fort Mason became the primary port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater of Operations. The explosion of jobs drew many people, especially African Americans from the South, to the area. After the end of the war, many military personnel returning from service abroad and civilians who had originally come to work decided to stay. The United Nations Charter creating the United Nations was drafted and signed in San Francisco in 1945 and, in 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco re-established peaceful relations between Japan and the Allied Powers.\nUrban planning projects in the 1950s and 1960s involved widespread destruction and redevelopment of west-side neighborhoods and the construction of new freeways, of which only a series of short segments were built before being halted by citizen-led opposition. The onset of containerization made San Francisco's small piers obsolete, and cargo activity moved to the larger Port of Oakland. The city began to lose industrial jobs and turned to tourism as the most important segment of its economy. The suburbs experienced rapid growth, and San Francisco underwent significant demographic change, as large segments of the white population left the city, supplanted by an increasing wave of immigration from Asia and Latin America. From 1950 to 1980, the city lost over 10 percent of its population.\nOver this period, San Francisco became a magnet for America's counterculture movement. Beat Generation writers fueled the San Francisco Renaissance and centered on the North Beach neighborhood in the 1950s. Hippies flocked to Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, reaching a peak with the 1967 Summer of Love. In 1974, the Zebra murders left at least 16 people dead. In the 1970s, the city became a center of the gay rights movement, with the emergence of The Castro as an urban gay village, the election of Harvey Milk to the Board of Supervisors, and his assassination, along with that of Mayor George Moscone, in 1978.\nBank of America, now based in Charlotte, North Carolina, was founded in San Francisco; the bank completed 555 California Street in 1969. The Transamerica Pyramid was completed in 1972, igniting a wave of \"Manhattanization\" that lasted until the late 1980s, a period of extensive high-rise development downtown. The 1980s also saw a dramatic increase in the number of homeless people in the city, an issue that remains today, despite many attempts to address it. \nThe 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused destruction and loss of life throughout the Bay Area. In San Francisco, the quake severely damaged structures in the Marina and South of Market districts and precipitated the demolition of the damaged Embarcadero Freeway and much of the damaged Central Freeway, allowing the city to reclaim The Embarcadero as its historic downtown waterfront and revitalizing the Hayes Valley neighborhood.\nThe three recent decades have seen booms driven by the internet industry. During the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, startup companies invigorated the San Francisco economy. Large numbers of entrepreneurs and computer application developers moved into the city, followed by marketing, design, and sales professionals, changing the social landscape as once poorer neighborhoods became increasingly gentrified. Demand for new housing and office space ignited a second wave of high-rise development, this time in the South of Market district. By 2000, the city's population reached new highs, surpassing the previous record set in 1950. When the bubble burst in 2001, many of these companies folded and their employees were laid off. Yet high technology and entrepreneurship remain mainstays of the San Francisco economy. By the mid-2000s (decade), the social media boom had begun, with San Francisco becoming a popular location for tech offices and a common place to live for people employed in Silicon Valley companies such as Apple and Google.\nThe early 2020s saw a reduction of tech companies' presence in Downtown San Francisco in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, increased popularity of working at home, and struggles with homelessness. Although some observers have raised the possibility that office vacancies and declining tax revenues could cause San Francisco to enter an economic doom loop, other sources have refuted this broad-based characterization of the city as a whole, asserting that the issues of concern are restricted primarily to the urban core of San Francisco. As of March 2024, Union Square was in \"sorry shape\" and had lost its traditional position as the Bay Area's regional shopping hub to Westfield Valley Fair in San Jose.\nThe Ferry Station Post Office Building, Armour & Co. Building, Atherton House, and YMCA Hotel are historic buildings among dozens of historical landmarks in the city, according to the National Register of Historic Places listings in San Francisco.\nGeography.\nSan Francisco is located on the West Coast of the United States, at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula and includes significant stretches of the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay within its boundaries. Several picturesque islands\u2014Alcatraz, Treasure Island and the adjacent Yerba Buena Island, and small portions of Alameda Island, Red Rock Island, and Angel Island\u2014are part of the city. Also included are the uninhabited Farallon Islands, offshore in the Pacific Ocean. The mainland within the city limits roughly forms a \"seven-by-seven-mile square\", a common local colloquialism referring to the city's shape, though its total area, including water, is nearly .\nThere are more than 50 hills within the city limits. Some neighborhoods are named after the hill on which they are situated, including Nob Hill, Potrero Hill, and Russian Hill. Near the geographic center of the city, southwest of the downtown area, are a series of less densely populated hills. Twin Peaks, a pair of hills forming one of the city's highest points, forms an overlook spot. San Francisco's tallest hill, Mount Davidson, is high and is capped with a tall cross built in 1934. Dominating this area is Sutro Tower, a large red and white radio and television transmission tower reaching 1,811\u00a0ft (552 m) above sea level.\nThe nearby San Andreas and Hayward Faults are responsible for much earthquake activity, although neither physically passes through the city itself. The San Andreas Fault caused the earthquakes in 1906 and 1989. Minor earthquakes occur on a regular basis. The threat of major earthquakes plays a large role in the city's infrastructure development. The city constructed an auxiliary water supply system and has repeatedly upgraded its building codes, requiring retrofits for older buildings and higher engineering standards for new construction. However, there are still thousands of smaller buildings that remain vulnerable to quake damage. USGS has released the California earthquake forecast which models earthquake occurrence in California.\nSan Francisco's shoreline has grown beyond its natural limits. Entire neighborhoods such as the Marina, Mission Bay, and Hunters Point, as well as large sections of the Embarcadero, sit on areas of landfill. Treasure Island was constructed from material dredged from the bay as well as material resulting from the excavation of the Yerba Buena Tunnel through Yerba Buena Island during the construction of the Bay Bridge. Such land tends to be unstable during earthquakes. The resulting soil liquefaction causes extensive damage to property built upon it, as was evidenced in the Marina district during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. A few natural lakes and creeks (Lake Merced, Mountain Lake, Pine Lake, Lobos Creek, El Polin Spring) are within parks and remain protected in what is essentially their original form, but most of the city's natural watercourses, such as Islais Creek and Mission Creek, have been partially or completely culverted and built over. Since the 1990s, however, the Public Utilities Commission has been studying proposals to daylight or restore some creeks.\nNeighborhoods.\nAn \"Historical Center of San Francisco\" monument,<ref name=\"sfG/rs/unP\"></ref> where the 1899\u20131906 City Hall was once located,<ref name=\"a&A/Csf\"></ref> is in United Nations Plaza, at \nThe earliest center of San Francisco is Portsmouth Square, in the northeast quadrant of the city anchored by Market Street and the waterfront. Here in the northeast quadrant, the Financial District is centered, with Union Square, the principal shopping and hotel district, and the Tenderloin nearby. Cable cars carry riders up steep inclines to the summit of Nob Hill, once the home of the city's business tycoons, and down to the waterfront tourist attractions of Fisherman's Wharf, and Pier 39, where many restaurants feature Dungeness crab from a still-active fishing industry. Also in this quadrant are Russian Hill, a residential neighborhood with the famously crooked Lombard Street; North Beach, the city's Little Italy and the former center of the Beat Generation; and Telegraph Hill, which features Coit Tower. Abutting Russian Hill and North Beach is San Francisco's Chinatown, the oldest Chinatown in North America. The South of Market, which was once San Francisco's industrial core, has seen significant redevelopment following the construction of Oracle Park and an infusion of startup companies. New skyscrapers, live-work lofts, and condominiums dot the area. Further development is taking place just to the south in Mission Bay area, a former railroad yard, which now has a second campus of the University of California, San Francisco and Chase Center, which opened in 2019 as the new home of the Golden State Warriors.\nWest of downtown, across Van Ness Avenue, lies the large Western Addition neighborhood, which became established with a large African American population after World War II. The Western Addition is usually divided into smaller neighborhoods including Hayes Valley, the Fillmore, and Japantown, which was once the largest Japantown in North America but suffered when its Japanese American residents were forcibly removed and interned during World War II. The Western Addition survived the 1906 earthquake with its Victorians largely intact, including the famous \"Painted Ladies\", standing alongside Alamo Square. To the south, near the geographic center of the city is Haight-Ashbury, famously associated with 1960s hippie culture.\nNorth of the Western Addition is Pacific Heights, an affluent neighborhood that features the homes built by wealthy San Franciscans in the wake of the 1906 earthquake. Directly north of Pacific Heights facing the waterfront is the Marina, a neighborhood popular with young professionals that was largely built on reclaimed land from the Bay.\nIn the southeast quadrant of the city is the Mission District\u2014populated in the 19th century by Californios and working-class immigrants from Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Scandinavia. In the 1910s, a wave of Central American immigrants settled in the Mission and, in the 1950s, immigrants from Mexico began to predominate. In recent years, gentrification has changed the demographics of parts of the Mission from Latino, to twenty-something professionals. Noe Valley to the southwest and Bernal Heights to the south are both increasingly popular among young families with children. East of the Mission is the Potrero Hill neighborhood, a mostly residential neighborhood that features sweeping views of downtown San Francisco. West of the Mission, the area historically known as Eureka Valley, now popularly called the Castro, was once a working-class Scandinavian and Irish area. It has become North America's first gay village, and is now the center of gay life in the city. Located near the city's southern border, the Excelsior District is one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in San Francisco. The Bayview-Hunters Point in the far southeast corner of the city is one of the poorest neighborhoods, though the area has been the focus of several revitalizing and urban renewal projects.\nThe West Side of the city remained largely undeveloped until the early 20th century, due to the region being isolated from downtown because of the rugged terrain of Twin Peaks, Mount Sutro and Mount Davidson. Vast sand dunes made up the costal plain with the uninhibited area being dubbed the Outside Lands. The creation of Golden Gate Park in 1870\u20131900 contributed to the area being developed. The construction of the Twin Peaks Tunnel in 1918 connected southwest neighborhoods to downtown via streetcar, hastening the development of West Portal, and nearby affluent Forest Hill and St. Francis Wood. Further west, stretching all the way to the Pacific Ocean and north to Golden Gate Park lies the vast Sunset District, a large middle-class area with a predominantly Asian population.\nThe northwestern quadrant of the city contains the Richmond, a mostly middle-class neighborhood north of Golden Gate Park, home to immigrants from other parts of Asia as well as many Russian and Ukrainian immigrants. Together, these areas are known as The Avenues.\nMany piers remained derelict for years until the demolition of the Embarcadero Freeway reopened the downtown waterfront, allowing for redevelopment. The centerpiece of the port, the Ferry Building, while still receiving commuter ferry traffic, has been restored and redeveloped as a gourmet marketplace.\nClimate.\nSan Francisco has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate (K\u00f6ppen: \"Csb\", Trewartha: Csll), characteristic of California's coast, with moist winters and dry summers. San Francisco's weather is strongly influenced by the cool currents of the Pacific Ocean on the west side of the city, and the water of San Francisco Bay to the north and east. This moderates temperature swings and produces a remarkably mild year-round climate with little seasonal temperature variation.\nAmong major U.S. cities, San Francisco has the coolest daily mean, maximum, and minimum temperatures for June, July, and August. During the summer, rising hot air in California's interior valleys creates a low-pressure area that draws winds from the North Pacific High through the Golden Gate, which creates the city's characteristic cool winds and fog. The fog is less pronounced in eastern neighborhoods and during the late summer and early fall. The year's warmest month, on average, is September, and on average, October is warmer than July, especially in daytime.\nTemperatures reach or exceed on an average of only 21 and 23\u00a0days a year at downtown and San Francisco International Airport (SFO), respectively. The dry period of May to October is mild to warm, with the normal monthly mean temperature peaking in September at . The rainy period of November to April is slightly cooler, with the normal monthly mean temperature reaching its lowest in January at . On average, there are 73 rainy days a year, and annual precipitation averages . Variation in precipitation from year to year is high. Above-average rain years are often associated with warm El Ni\u00f1o conditions in the Pacific while dry years often occur in cold water La Ni\u00f1a periods. In 2013 (a \"La Ni\u00f1a\" year), a record low of rainfall was recorded at downtown San Francisco, where records have been kept since 1849. Snowfall in the city is very rare, with only 10 measurable accumulations recorded since 1852, most recently in 1976 when up to fell on Twin Peaks.\nThe highest recorded temperature at the official National Weather Service downtown observation station was on September 1, 2017. During that hot spell, the warmest ever night of was also recorded. The lowest recorded temperature was on December 11, 1932.\nDuring an average year between 1991 and 2020, San Francisco recorded a warmest night at and a coldest day at . The coldest daytime high since the station's opening in 1945 was recorded in December 1972 at .\nAs a coastal city, San Francisco will be heavily affected by climate change. As of 2021[ [update]], sea levels are projected to rise by as much as , resulting in periodic flooding, rising groundwater levels, and lowland floods from more severe storms.\nSan Francisco falls under the USDA 10b Plant hardiness zone, though some areas, particularly downtown, border zone 11a.\nEcology.\nHistorically, tule elk were present in San Francisco County, based on archeological evidence of elk remains in at least five different Native American shellmounds: at Hunter's Point, Fort Mason, Stevenson Street, Market Street, and Yerba Buena. Perhaps the first historical observer record was from the De Anza Expedition on March 23, 1776. Herbert Eugene Bolton wrote about the expedition camp at Mountain Lake, near the southern end of today's Presidio: \"Round about were grazing deer, and scattered here and there were the antlers of large elk.\"\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nThe 2020 United States census showed San Francisco's population to be 873,965, an increase of 8.5% from the 2010 census. With roughly one-quarter the population density of Manhattan, San Francisco is the second-most densely populated large American city, behind only New York City among cities greater than 200,000 population, and the fifth-most densely populated U.S. county, following only four of the five New York City boroughs.\nSan Francisco is part of the five-county San Francisco\u2013Oakland\u2013Hayward, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area, a region of 4.7\u00a0million people (13th most populous in the U.S.), and has served as its traditional demographic focal point. It is also part of the greater 14-county San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area, whose population is over 9.6\u00a0million, making it the fifth-largest in the United States as of 2018[ [update]].\nRace, ethnicity, religion, and languages.\nAs of the 2020[ [update]] census, the racial makeup and population of San Francisco included: 361,382 Whites (41.3%), 296,505 Asians (33.9%), 46,725 African Americans (5.3%), 86,233 Multiracial Americans (9.9%), 6,475 Native Americans and Alaska Natives (0.7%), 3,476 Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders (0.4%) and 73,169 persons of other races (8.4%). There were 136,761 Hispanic or Latino residents of any race (15.6%).\nSan Francisco is a majority minority city, as non-Hispanic White residents comprise less than half of the population; in 1940 they formed 92.5% of the population.\nIn 2010, residents of Chinese ethnicity constituted the largest single ethnic minority group in San Francisco at 21% of the population; other large Asian groups include Filipinos (5%) and Vietnamese (2%), with Japanese, Koreans and many other Asian and Pacific Islander groups represented in the city. The population of Chinese ancestry is most heavily concentrated in Chinatown and the Sunset and Richmond Districts. Filipinos are most concentrated in SoMa and the Crocker-Amazon; the latter neighborhood shares a border with Daly City, which has one of the highest concentrations of Filipinos in North America. The Tenderloin District is home to a large portion of the city's Vietnamese population as well as businesses and restaurants, which is known as the city's Little Saigon.\nThe principal Hispanic groups in the city were those of Mexican (7%) and Salvadoran (2%) ancestry. The Hispanic population is most heavily concentrated in the Mission District, Tenderloin District, and Excelsior District. The city's percentage of Hispanic residents is less than half of that of the state.\nAfrican Americans constituted about 5% of San Francisco's population in 2020; their share of the city's population has been decreasing since the 1970s. The majority of the city's Black residents live in the neighborhoods of Bayview-Hunters Point, Visitacion Valley, and the Fillmore District. There are smaller Black communities in Diamond Heights, Glen Park, and Mission District.\nUnlike many other Western cities, San Francisco has a significant Irish American population. Drawn by the California Gold Rush, the Irish were one of the first major White immigrant groups to arrive in California, settling in the city of San Francisco. The Irish historically settled in Irish Hill, which was razed following World War II. Despite this, San Francisco is still one of only three counties in the entire Western United States whose White population is plurality (20.6%) Irish.\nThe city has long been home to a significant Jewish community; in 2018 Jewish Americans made up an estimated 10% (80,000) of the city's population. It the third-largest Jewish community in proportional terms in the United States, behind only those of New York City, and Los Angeles, respectively, and it is also relatively young compared to other major U.S. cities. The Jewish community resides throughout the city, but the Richmond District is home to an ethnic enclave of mostly Russian Jews. The Fillmore District was formerly a mostly Jewish neighborhood from the 1920s until the 1970s, when many of its Jewish residents moved to other neighborhoods of the city as well as the suburbs of nearby Marin County.\nAccording to a 2018 study by the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, Jews make up 10% (80,000) of the city's population, making Judaism the second-largest religion in San Francisco after Christianity. A prior 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, the largest religious groupings in San Francisco's metropolitan area are Christians (48%), followed by those of no religion (35%), Hindus (5%), Jews (3%), Buddhists (2%), Muslims (1%) and a variety of other religions have smaller followings. According to the same study by the Pew Research Center, about 20% of residents in the area are Protestant, and 25% professing Roman Catholic beliefs. Meanwhile, 10% of the residents in metropolitan San Francisco identify as agnostics, while 5% identify as atheists.\nAs of 2010[ [update]], 55% (411,728) of San Francisco residents spoke only English at home, while 19% (140,302) spoke a variety of Chinese (mostly Taishanese and Cantonese), 12% (88,147) Spanish, 3% (25,767) Tagalog, and 2% (14,017) Russian. In total, 45% (342,693) of San Francisco's population spoke a language at home other than English.\nEthnic clustering.\nSan Francisco has several prominent Chinese, Mexican, and Filipino neighborhoods including Chinatown and the Mission District. Research collected on the immigrant clusters in the city show that more than half of the Asian population in San Francisco is either Chinese-born (40.3%) or Philippine-born (13.1%), and of the Mexican population 21% were Mexican-born, meaning these are people who recently immigrated to the United States. Between the years of 1990 and 2000, the number of foreign-born residents increased from 33% to nearly 40%. During this same time period, the San Francisco metropolitan area received 850,000 immigrants, ranking third in the United States after Los Angeles and New York.\nEducation, households, and income.\nOf all major cities in the United States, San Francisco has the second-highest percentage of residents with a college degree, second only to Seattle. Over 44% of adults have a bachelor's or higher degree. San Francisco had the highest rate at 7,031 per square mile, or over 344,000 total graduates in the city's .\nSan Francisco has the highest estimated percentage of gay and lesbian individuals of any of the 50 largest U.S. cities, at 15%. San Francisco also has the highest percentage of same-sex households of any American county, with the Bay Area having a higher concentration than any other metropolitan area.\nSan Francisco ranks third of American cities in median household income with a 2007 value of $65,519. Median family income is $81,136. An emigration of middle-class families has left the city with a lower proportion of children than any other large American city, with the dog population cited as exceeding the child population of 115,000, in 2018. The city's poverty rate is 12%, lower than the national average.\nHomelessness has been a chronic problem for San Francisco since the early 1970s.\nThe city is believed to have the highest number of homeless inhabitants per capita of any major U.S. city.\nThere are 345,811 households in the city, out of which: 133,366 households (39%) were individuals, 109,437 (32%) were opposite-sex married couples, 63,577 (18%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 21,677 (6%) were unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 10,384 (3%) were same-sex married couples or partnerships. The average household size was 2.26; the average family size was 3.11. 452,986 people (56%) lived in rental housing units, and 327,985 people (41%) lived in owner-occupied housing units.\nThe median age of the city population is 38 years.\nSan Francisco declared itself a sanctuary city in 1989, and city officials strengthened the stance in 2013 with its 'Due Process for All' ordinance. The law declared local authorities could not hold immigrants for immigration offenses if they had no violent felonies on their records and did not currently face charges. The city issues a Resident ID Card regardless of the applicant's immigration status.\nHomelessness.\nHomelessness in San Francisco emerged as a major issue in the late 20th century and remains a growing problem in modern times.\n8,035 homeless people were counted in San Francisco's 2019 point-in-time street and shelter count. This was an increase of more than 17% over the 2017 count of 6,858 people. 5,180 of the people were living unsheltered on the streets and in parks. 26% of respondents in the 2019 count identified job loss as the primary cause of their homelessness, 18% cited alcohol or drug use, and 13% cited being evicted from their residence. \nThe city of San Francisco has been dramatically increasing its spending to service the growing population homelessness crisis: spending jumped by $241 million in 2016\u201317 to total $275 million, compared to a budget of just $34 million the previous year. In 2017\u201318 the budget for combatting homelessness stood at $305 million. In the 2019\u20132020 budget year, the city budgeted $368 million for homelessness services. In the proposed 2020\u20132021 budget the city budgeted $850 million for homelessness services.\nIn January 2018 a United Nations special rapporteur on homelessness, Leilani Farha, stated that she was \"completely shocked\" by San Francisco's homelessness crisis during a visit to the city. She compared the \"deplorable conditions\" of the homeless camps she witnessed on San Francisco's streets to those she had seen in Mumbai. In May 2020, San Francisco officially sanctioned homeless encampments.\nAccording to San Francisco's Point-in-Time (PIT) count, the homeless population in 2024 was approximately 8,323 individuals. Additionally, over 20,000 people in the city were seeking homeless services.\nCrime.\nSan Francisco's violent crime rate is low compared to other major cities, though many residents are still concerned about it.\nIn 2011, 50 murders were reported, which is 6.1 per 100,000 people. There were about 134 rapes, 3,142 robberies, and about 2,139 assaults. There were about 4,469 burglaries, 25,100 thefts, and 4,210 motor vehicle thefts. The Tenderloin area has the highest crime rate in San Francisco: 70% of the city's violent crimes, and around one-fourth of the city's murders, occur in this neighborhood. The Tenderloin also sees high rates of drug abuse, gang violence, and prostitution. Another area with high crime rates is the Bayview-Hunters Point area. In the first six months of 2015 there were 25 murders compared to 14 in the first six months of 2014. However, the murder rate is still much lower than in past decades. That rate, though, did rise again by the close of 2016. According to the San Francisco Police Department, there were 59 murders in the city in 2016, an annual total that marked a 13.5% increase in the number of homicides (52) from 2015. The city has also gained a reputation for car break-ins, with over 19,000 car break-ins occurring in 2021.\nDuring the first half of 2018, human feces on San Francisco sidewalks were the second-most-frequent complaint of city residents, with about 65 calls per day. The city has formed a \"poop patrol\" to attempt to combat the problem.\nSeveral street gangs have operated in the city over the decades, including MS-13, the Sure\u00f1os and Norte\u00f1os in the Mission District.\nAfrican-American street gangs familiar in other cities, including the Bloods, Crips, and their sets, have struggled to establish footholds in San Francisco, while police and prosecutors have been accused of liberally labeling young African-American males as gang members.\nCriminal gangs with shot callers in China, including Triad groups such as the Wo Hop To, were active in San Francisco in the 20th century. According to statistics released by SFPD in April 2024, the crime figures were down in the first 100 days of the year, namely in terms of robberies, burglaries and larceny. In the first half of 2024, San Francisco experienced a 32% decrease in overall crime compared to the previous year. Personal property theft saw a 41% reduction, and violent crimes, including gun-related incidents, decreased by 30%.\nEconomy.\nThe city has a diversified service economy, with employment spread across a wide range of professional services, including tourism, financial services, and high technology. In 2016, approximately 27% of workers were employed in professional business services; 14% in leisure and hospitality; 13% in government services; 12% in education and health care; 11% in trade, transportation, and utilities; and 8% in financial activities. In 2023, GDP in the five-county San Francisco metropolitan area grew 3.4% in real terms to $779\u00a0billion. Additionally, in 2023 the 14-county San Jose\u2013San Francisco\u2013Oakland combined statistical area had a GDP of $1.397\u00a0trillion, ranking 3rd among CSAs, and ahead of all but 15 countries. As of 2023[ [update]], San Francisco County ranked 11th by income per capita among U.S. counties, with a per capita personal income of $164,807. Marin County, directly to the north over the Golden Gate Bridge, and San Mateo County, directly to the south on the Peninsula, were the 7th and 9th highest-income counties respectively.\nThe legacy of the California gold rush turned San Francisco into the principal banking and finance center of the West Coast in the early twentieth century. Montgomery Street in the Financial District became known as the \"Wall Street of the West\", home to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and the site of the now-defunct Pacific Coast Stock Exchange. Bank of America, a pioneer in making banking services accessible to the middle class, was founded in San Francisco and in the 1960s, built the landmark modern skyscraper at 555 California Street for its corporate headquarters, since relocated to Charlotte, North Carolina. Many large financial institutions, multinational banks, and venture capital firms are based in or have regional headquarters in the city. With over 30 international financial institutions, six Fortune 500 companies, and a large supporting infrastructure of professional services\u2014including law, public relations, architecture and design\u2014San Francisco is designated as an Alpha(-) World City. The 2024 Global Financial Centres Index ranked San Francisco as the fifth-most competitive financial center in the world.\nBeginning in the 1990s, San Francisco's economy diversified away from finance and tourism towards the growing fields of high tech, biotechnology, and medical research. Technology jobs accounted for just 1 percent of San Francisco's economy in 1990, growing to 4 percent in 2010 and an estimated 8 percent by the end of 2013. San Francisco became a center of Internet start-up companies during the dot-com bubble of the 1990s and the subsequent social media boom of the late 2000s (decade). Since 2010, San Francisco proper has attracted an increasing share of venture capital investments as compared to nearby Silicon Valley, attracting 423 financings worth US$4.58\u00a0billion in 2013. In 2004, the city approved a payroll tax exemption for biotechnology companies to foster growth in the Mission Bay neighborhood, site of a second campus and hospital of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Mission Bay hosts the UCSF Medical Center, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, and Gladstone Institutes, as well as more than 40 private-sector life sciences companies.\nAccording to academic Rob Wilson, San Francisco is a global city, a status that pre-dated the city's popularity during the California gold rush. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to high office vacancy rates and the accelerating evacuation of many retail and tech businesses out of the downtown core of San Francisco. Attributed causes include a shift to remote work in the technology and professional services sectors, as well as high levels of homelessness, drug use, and crime in areas around downtown San Francisco, such as the Tenderloin and Mid-Market neighborhoods.\nThe top employer in San Francisco is the city government itself, employing 5.6% (35,000+ people) of the city's workforce, followed by UCSF with over 29,000 employees. The largest private-sector employer is Salesforce, with 11,953 employees, as of 2024[ [update]]. Small businesses with fewer than 10 employees and self-employed firms made up 85% of city establishments in 2006, and the number of San Franciscans employed by firms of more than 1,000 employees has fallen by half since 1977. The growth of national big box and formula retail chains into the city has been made intentionally difficult by political and civic consensus. In an effort to buoy small privately owned businesses in San Francisco and preserve the unique retail personality of the city, the Small Business Commission started a publicity campaign in 2004 to keep a larger share of retail dollars in the local economy, and the Board of Supervisors has used the planning code to limit the neighborhoods where formula retail establishments can set up shop, an effort affirmed by San Francisco voters. However, by 2016, San Francisco was rated low by small businesses in a Business Friendliness Survey.\nLike many U.S. cities, San Francisco once had a significant manufacturing sector employing nearly 60,000 workers in 1969, but nearly all production left for cheaper locations by the 1980s. As of 2014[ [update]], San Francisco has seen a small resurgence in manufacturing, with more than 4,000 manufacturing jobs across 500 companies, doubling since 2011. The city's largest manufacturing employer is Anchor Brewing Company, and the largest by revenue is Timbuk2.\nAs of the first quarter of 2022[ [update]], the median value of homes in San Francisco County was $1,297,030. It ranked third in the U.S. for counties with highest median home value, behind Nantucket, Massachusetts and San Mateo County, California.\nTechnology.\nSan Francisco became a hub for technology-driven economic growth during the internet boom of the 1990s, and still holds an important position in the world city network today. Intense redevelopment towards the \"new economy\" makes business more technologically minded. Between the years of 1999 and 2000, the job growth rate was 4.9%, creating over 50,000 jobs in technology firms and internet content production. However, the technology industry has become geographically dispersed.\nIn the second technological boom driven by social media in the mid-2000s, San Francisco became a location for companies such as Apple, Google, Ubisoft, Facebook, and Twitter (now known as X) to base their tech offices and for their employees to live.\nThe final wave of technology materialized as AI companies have either been founded in the city or moved there attracted to a large talent pool, proximity to venture capital, and serendipitous connections.\nThe Sunset Reservoir Solar Project, completed in 2010, installed 24,000 solar panels on the roof of the reservoir. The 5-megawatt plant more than tripled the city's 2-megawatt solar generation capacity when it opened in December 2010.\nTourism and conventions.\nTourism is one of San Francisco's most important private-sector industries, accounting for more than one out of seven jobs in the city. The city's frequent portrayal in music, film, and popular culture has made the city and its landmarks recognizable worldwide. In 2016, it attracted the fifth-highest number of foreign tourists of any city in the United States. More than 25\u00a0million visitors arrived in San Francisco in 2016, adding US$9.96\u00a0billion to the economy.\nWith a large hotel infrastructure and a major convention facility in the Moscone Center, San Francisco is a popular destination for annual conventions and conferences.\nSome of the most popular tourist attractions in San Francisco, as noted by the Travel Channel, include the Golden Gate Bridge and Alamo Square Park, home to the famous \"Painted Ladies\". Both of these locations were often used as landscape shots for the hit American television sitcom \"Full House\". There is also Lombard Street, known for its \"crookedness\" and extensive views. Tourists also visit Pier 39, which offers dining, shopping, entertainment, and views of the bay, sunbathing California sea lions, the Aquarium of the Bay, and the famous Alcatraz Island.\nSan Francisco also offers tourists varied nightlife in its neighborhoods.\nThe new Terminal Project at Pier 27 opened September 25, 2014, as a replacement for the old Pier 35.\nA heightened interest in conventioneering in San Francisco, marked by the establishment of convention centers such as Yerba Buena, acted as a feeder into the local tourist economy and resulted in an increase in the hotel industry: \"In 1959, the city had fewer than thirty-three hundred first-class hotel rooms; by 1970, the number was nine thousand; and by 1999, there were more than thirty thousand.\" The commodification of the Castro District has contributed to San Francisco's tourist economy.\nArts and culture.\n \nAlthough the Financial District, Union Square, and Fisherman's Wharf are well known around the world, San Francisco is also characterized by its numerous culturally rich streetscapes featuring mixed-use neighborhoods anchored around central commercial corridors to which residents and visitors alike can walk. Because of these characteristics, San Francisco is ranked the \"most walkable\" city in the United States by Walk Score. Many neighborhoods feature a mix of businesses, restaurants and venues that cater to the daily needs of local residents while also serving many visitors and tourists. Some neighborhoods are dotted with boutiques, caf\u00e9s and nightlife such as Union Street in Cow Hollow, 24th Street in Noe Valley, Valencia Street in the Mission, Grant Avenue in North Beach, and Irving Street in the Inner Sunset. This approach especially has influenced the continuing South of Market neighborhood redevelopment with businesses and neighborhood services rising alongside high-rise residences.\nSince the 1990s, the demand for skilled information technology workers from local startups and nearby Silicon Valley has attracted white-collar workers from all over the world and created a high standard of living in San Francisco. Many neighborhoods that were once blue-collar, middle, and lower class have been gentrifying, as many of the city's traditional business and industrial districts have experienced a renaissance driven by the redevelopment of the Embarcadero, including the neighborhoods South Beach and Mission Bay. The city's property values and household income have risen to among the highest in the nation, creating a large and upscale restaurant, retail, and entertainment scene. According to a 2014 quality of life survey of global cities, San Francisco has the highest quality of living of any U.S. city. However, due to the exceptionally high cost of living, many of the city's middle and lower-class families have been leaving the city for the outer suburbs of the Bay Area, or for California's Central Valley. By June 2, 2015, the median rent was reported to be as high as $4,225. The high cost of living is due in part to restrictive planning laws which limit new residential construction.\nThe international character that San Francisco has enjoyed since its founding is continued today by large numbers of immigrants from Asia and Latin America. With 39% of its residents born overseas, San Francisco has numerous neighborhoods filled with businesses and civic institutions catering to new arrivals. In particular, the arrival of many ethnic Chinese, which began to accelerate in the 1970s, has complemented the long-established community historically based in Chinatown throughout the city and has transformed the annual Chinese New Year Parade into the largest event of its kind on the West Coast.\nWith the arrival of the \"beat\" writers and artists of the 1950s and societal changes culminating in the Summer of Love in the Haight-Ashbury district during the 1960s, San Francisco became a center of liberal activism and of the counterculture that arose at that time. The Democrats and to a lesser extent the Green Party have dominated city politics since the late 1970s, after the last serious Republican challenger for city office lost the 1975 mayoral election by a narrow margin. San Francisco has not voted more than 20% for a Republican presidential or senatorial candidate since 1988. In 2007, the city expanded its Medicaid and other indigent medical programs into the Healthy San Francisco program, which subsidizes certain medical services for eligible residents.\nSince 1993, the San Francisco Department of Public Health has distributed 400,000 free syringes every month aimed at reducing HIV and other health risks for drug users, as well as providing disposal sites and services.\nSan Francisco also has had a very active environmental community. Starting with the founding of the Sierra Club in 1892 to the establishment of the non-profit Friends of the Urban Forest in 1981, San Francisco has been at the forefront of many global discussions regarding the environment. The 1980 San Francisco Recycling Program was one of the earliest curbside recycling programs. The city's GoSolarSF incentive promotes solar installations and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is rolling out the CleanPowerSF program to sell electricity from local renewable sources. SF Greasecycle is a program to recycle used cooking oil for conversion to biodiesel.\nLGBT.\nSan Francisco has long had an LGBT-friendly history. It was home to the first lesbian-rights organization in the United States, Daughters of Bilitis; the first openly gay person to run for public office in the United States, Jos\u00e9 Sarria; the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, Harvey Milk; the first openly lesbian judge appointed in the U.S., Mary C. Morgan; and the first transgender police commissioner, Theresa Sparks. The city's large gay population has created and sustained a politically and culturally active community over many decades, developing a powerful presence in San Francisco's civic life. Survey data released in 2015 by Gallup places the proportion of LGBT adults in the San Francisco metro area at 6.2%, which is the highest proportion of the 50 most populous metropolitan areas as measured by the polling organization.\nOne of the most popular destinations for gay tourists internationally, the city hosts San Francisco Pride, one of the largest and oldest pride parades. San Francisco Pride events have been held continuously since 1972. The events are themed and a new theme is created each year. In 2013, over 1.5\u00a0million people attended, around 500,000 more than the previous year. Pink Saturday is an annual street party held the Saturday before the pride parade, which coincides with the Dyke march.\nThe Folsom Street Fair (FSF) is an annual BDSM and leather subculture street fair that is held in September, endcapping San Francisco's \"Leather Pride Week\". It started in 1984 and is California's third-largest single-day, outdoor spectator event and the world's largest leather event and showcase for BDSM products and culture.\nPerforming arts.\nSan Francisco's War Memorial and Performing Arts Center hosts some of the most enduring performing arts companies in the country. The War Memorial Opera House houses the San Francisco Opera, the second-largest opera company in North America as well as the San Francisco Ballet, while the San Francisco Symphony plays in Davies Symphony Hall. Opened in 2013, the SFJAZZ Center hosts jazz performances year round.\nThe Fillmore is a music venue located in the Western Addition. It is the second incarnation of the historic venue that gained fame in the 1960s, housing the stage where now-famous musicians such as the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, and Jefferson Airplane first performed, fostering the San Francisco Sound. It closed its doors in 1971 with a final performance by Santana and reopened in 1994 with a show by the Smashing Pumpkins.\nSan Francisco has a large number of theaters and live performance venues. Local theater companies have been noted for risk taking and innovation. The Tony Award-winning non-profit American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) is a member of the national League of Resident Theatres. Other local winners of the Regional Theatre Tony Award include the San Francisco Mime Troupe.\nSan Francisco theaters frequently host pre-Broadway engagements and tryout runs, and some original San Francisco productions have later moved to Broadway.\nMuseums.\nThe San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) houses 20th century and contemporary works of art. It moved to its current building in the South of Market neighborhood in 1995 and attracted more than 600,000 visitors annually. SFMOMA closed for renovation and expansion in 2013. The museum reopened on May 14, 2016, with an addition, designed by Sn\u00f8hetta, that has doubled the museum's size.\nThe Palace of the Legion of Honor holds primarily European antiquities and works of art at its Lincoln Park building modeled after its Parisian namesake. The de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park features American decorative pieces and anthropological holdings from Africa, Oceania and the Americas, while Asian art is housed in the Asian Art Museum. Opposite the de Young stands the California Academy of Sciences, a natural history museum that also hosts the Morrison Planetarium and Steinhart Aquarium. Located on Pier 15 on the Embarcadero, the Exploratorium is an interactive science museum. The Contemporary Jewish Museum is a non-collecting institution that hosts a broad array of temporary exhibitions. On Nob Hill, the Cable Car Museum is a working museum featuring the cable car powerhouse, which drives the cables. Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts was founded in 1998 and is part of the California College of the Arts.\nSports.\nMajor League Baseball's San Francisco Giants have played in San Francisco since moving from New York in 1958. The Giants play at Oracle Park, which opened in 2000. The Giants won World Series titles in 2010, 2012, and in 2014. The Giants have boasted stars such as Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, and Barry Bonds (MLB's career home run leader). In 2012, San Francisco was ranked No. 1 in a study that examined which U.S. metro areas have produced the most Major Leaguers since 1920.\nThe San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League (NFL) began playing in 1946 as an All-America Football Conference (AAFC) league charter member, moved to the NFL in 1950 and into Candlestick Park in 1971. The team left San Francisco in 2014, moving approximately 50 miles south to Santa Clara, and began playing its home games at Levi's Stadium, Despite this, the 49ers are still branded as a San Francisco team, and when the team hosted Super Bowl 50 events were hosted in San Francisco such as the annual NFL Experience which was held at the Moscone Center and \"Super Bowl City\" which opened on January 30 at Justin Herman Plaza on The Embarcadero. The 49ers have won five Super Bowl titles between 1982 and 1995.\nThe NBA's Golden State Warriors have played in the San Francisco Bay Area since moving from Philadelphia in 1962. The Warriors played as the San Francisco Warriors, from 1962 to 1971, before being renamed the Golden State Warriors prior to the 1971\u20131972 season in an attempt to present the team as a representation of the whole state of California, which had already adopted \"The Golden State\" nickname. The Warriors' arena, Chase Center, is located in San Francisco. After winning two championships in Philadelphia, they have won five championships since moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, and made five consecutive NBA Finals from 2015 to 2019, winning three of them. They won again in 2022, the franchise's first championship while residing in San Francisco proper.\nAt the collegiate level, the San Francisco Dons compete in NCAA Division I. Bill Russell led the Dons basketball team to NCAA championships in 1955 and 1956. There is also the San Francisco State Gators, who compete in NCAA Division II. Oracle Park hosted the annual Fight Hunger Bowl college football game from 2002 through 2013 before it moved to Santa Clara.\nThere are a handful of lower-league soccer clubs in San Francisco playing mostly from April \u2013 June.\nThe Bay to Breakers footrace, held annually since 1912, is best known for colorful costumes and a celebratory community spirit. The San Francisco Marathon attracts more than 21,000 participants. The Escape from Alcatraz triathlon has, since 1980, attracted 2,000 top professional and amateur triathletes for its annual race. The Olympic Club, founded in 1860, is the oldest athletic club in the United States. Its private golf course has hosted the U.S. Open on five occasions. San Francisco hosted the 2013 America's Cup yacht racing competition.\nWith an ideal climate for outdoor activities, San Francisco has ample resources and opportunities for amateur and participatory sports and recreation. There are more than of bicycle paths, lanes and bike routes in the city.\nSan Francisco residents have often ranked among the fittest in the country. Golden Gate Park has miles of paved and unpaved running trails as well as a golf course and disc golf course.\nBoating, sailing, windsurfing and kitesurfing are among the popular activities on San Francisco Bay, and the city maintains a yacht harbor in the Marina District.\nSan Francisco also has had Esports teams, such as the Overwatch League's San Francisco Shock. Established in 2017, they won two back-to-back championship titles in 2019 and 2020.\nParks and recreation.\nSeveral of San Francisco's parks and nearly all of its beaches form part of the regional Golden Gate National Recreation Area, one of the most visited units of the National Park system in the United States with over 13\u00a0million visitors a year. Among the GGNRA's attractions within the city are Ocean Beach, which runs along the Pacific Ocean shoreline and is frequented by a surfing community, and Baker Beach, which is located in a cove west of the Golden Gate Bridge, as well as the California Academy of Sciences, a research institute and natural history museum.\nThe Presidio of San Francisco is the former 18th century Spanish military base, which today is one of the city's largest parks and home to numerous museums and institutions. Also within the Presidio is Crissy Field, a former airfield that was restored to its natural salt marsh ecosystem. The GGNRA also administers Fort Funston, Lands End, Fort Mason, and Alcatraz. The National Park Service separately administers the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park \u2013 a fleet of historic ships and waterfront property around Aquatic Park.\nThere are more than 220 parks maintained by the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department. The largest and best-known city park is Golden Gate Park, which stretches from the center of the city west to the Pacific Ocean. Once covered in native grasses and sand dunes, the park was conceived in the 1860s and was created by the extensive planting of thousands of non-native trees and plants. The large park is rich with cultural and natural attractions such as the Conservatory of Flowers, Japanese Tea Garden and San Francisco Botanical Garden. The Dahlia is the official flower of San Francisco. \nLake Merced is a fresh-water lake surrounded by parkland and near the San Francisco Zoo, a city-owned park that houses more than 250 animal species, many of which are endangered. The only park managed by the California State Park system located principally in San Francisco, Candlestick Point was the state's first urban recreation area.\nMost of San Francisco's islands are protected as parkland or nature reserves. Alcatraz Island, operated by the National Park Service, is open to the public. The Farallon Islands are protected wildlife refuges. The Seal Rocks are protected as part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Red Rock Island is the only privately owned island in San Francisco Bay, but is uninhabited. Yerba Buena Island is largely utilized by the military.\nSan Francisco is the first city in the U.S. to have a park within a 10-Minute Walk of every resident. It also ranks fifth in the U.S. for park access and quality in the 2018 ParkScore ranking of the top 100 park systems across the United States, according to the nonprofit Trust for Public Land.\nGovernment.\nThe mayor is also the county executive, and the county Board of Supervisors acts as the city council. The government of San Francisco is a charter city and is constituted of two co-equal branches: the executive branch is headed by the mayor and includes other citywide elected and appointed officials as well as the civil service; the 11-member Board of Supervisors, the legislative branch, is headed by a president and is responsible for passing laws and budgets, though San Franciscans also make use of direct ballot initiatives to pass legislation.\nBecause of its unique city-county status, the local government is able to exercise jurisdiction over certain property outside city limits. San Francisco International Airport, though located in San Mateo County, is owned and operated by the City and County of San Francisco. San Francisco's largest jail complex (County Jail No. 5) is located in San Mateo County, in an unincorporated area adjacent to San Bruno. San Francisco was also granted a perpetual leasehold over the Hetch Hetchy Valley and watershed in Yosemite National Park by the Raker Act in 1913.\nThe members of the Board of Supervisors are elected as representatives of specific districts within the city. Upon the death or resignation of the mayor, the President of the Board of Supervisors becomes acting mayor until the full Board elects an interim replacement for the remainder of the term. In 2011, Ed Lee was selected by the board to finish the term of Gavin Newsom, who resigned to take office as Lieutenant Governor of California. Lee (who won two elections to remain mayor) was temporarily replaced by San Francisco Board of Supervisors President London Breed after he died on December 12, 2017. Supervisor Mark Farrell was appointed by the Board of Supervisors to finish Lee's term on January 23, 2018.\nMost local offices in San Francisco are elected using ranked choice voting.\nSan Francisco serves as the regional hub for many arms of the federal bureaucracy, including the U.S. Court of Appeals, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the U.S. Mint. Until decommissioning in the early 1990s, the city had major military installations at the Presidio, Treasure Island, and Hunters Point\u2014a legacy still reflected in the annual celebration of Fleet Week. The State of California uses San Francisco as the home of the state supreme court and other state agencies. Foreign governments maintain more than seventy consulates in San Francisco.\nThe municipal budget for fiscal year 2015\u201316 was $8.99\u00a0billion, and is one of the largest city budgets in the United States. The City of San Francisco spends more per resident than any city other than Washington, D.C., over $10,000 in FY 2015\u20132016. The city employs around 27,000 workers.\nIn the California State Senate, San Francisco is in the Senate District, represented by Democrat Scott Wiener. In the California State Assembly, it is split between the Assembly District, represented by Democrat Matt Haney, and the Assembly District, represented by Democrat Catherine Stefani.\nIn the United States House of Representatives, San Francisco is split between two congressional districts. Most of the city is in the 11th District, represented by Nancy Pelosi (D\u2013San Francisco). A sliver in the southwest is part of the 15th District represented by Kevin Mullin (D\u2013South San Francisco).\nOne of San Francisco's most notable achievements is its ambitious zero-waste goal, which aims to divert 100% of waste from landfills by 2025. The city has already made significant strides, with widespread recycling and composting programs that encourage residents to minimize waste. San Francisco was one of the first U.S. cities to ban plastic bags and continues to lead in banning single-use plastics, setting a standard for cities across the country.\nEducation.\nColleges and universities.\nThe University of California, San Francisco is the sole campus of the University of California system entirely dedicated to graduate education in health and biomedical sciences. It is ranked among the top five medical schools in the United States and operates the UCSF Medical Center, which ranks as the number one hospital in California and the number 5 in the country. UCSF is a major local employer, second in size only to the city and county government. A Mission Bay campus was opened in 2003, complementing its original facility in Parnassus Heights. It contains research space and facilities to foster biotechnology and life sciences entrepreneurship and will double the size of UCSF's research enterprise. All in all, UCSF operates more than 20 facilities across San Francisco.\nThe University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, founded in Civic Center in 1878, is the oldest law school in California and claims more judges on the state bench than any other institution.\nSan Francisco's two University of California institutions have recently formed an official affiliation in the UCSF/UC Law SF Consortium on Law, Science & Health Policy.\nSan Francisco State University is part of the California State University system and is located near Lake Merced. The school has approximately 30,000 students and awards undergraduate, master's and doctoral degrees in more than 100 disciplines. The City College of San Francisco, with its main facility in the Ingleside district, is one of the largest two-year community colleges in the country. It has an enrollment of about 100,000 students and offers an extensive continuing education program.\nFounded in 1855, the University of San Francisco, a private Jesuit university located on Lone Mountain, is the oldest institution of higher education in San Francisco and one of the oldest universities established west of the Mississippi River. Golden Gate University is a private, nonsectarian university formed in 1901 and located in the Financial District.\nCalifornia Institute of Integral Studies, founded in 1968, offers graduate programs in its Schools of Professional Psychology & Health, and Consciousness and Transformation.\nWith an enrollment of 13,000 students, the Academy of Art University is the largest institute of art and design in the nation. The California College of the Arts, located north of Potrero Hill, has programs in architecture, fine arts, design, and writing. The San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the only independent music school on the West Coast, grants degrees in orchestral instruments, chamber music, composition, and conducting. The San Francisco Art Institute, founded in 1871 and the oldest art school west of the Mississippi, closed in 2022.\nThe California Culinary Academy had programs in the culinary arts, baking and pastry arts, and hospitality and restaurant management, and is now closed.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nPublic schools are run by the San Francisco Unified School District, which covers the entire city and county, as well as the California State Board of Education for some charter schools. Lowell High School, the oldest public high school in the U.S. west of the Mississippi, and the smaller School of the Arts High School are two of San Francisco's magnet schools at the secondary level. Public school students attend schools based on an assignment system rather than neighborhood proximity.\nJust under 30% of the city's school-age population attends one of San Francisco's more than 100 private or parochial schools, compared to a 10% rate nationwide. Nearly 40 of those schools are Catholic schools managed by the Archdiocese of San Francisco.\nSan Francisco has nearly 300 preschool programs primarily operated by Head Start, San Francisco Unified School District, private for-profit, private non-profit and family child care providers. All four-year-old children living in San Francisco are offered universal access to preschool.\nMedia.\nThe major daily newspaper in San Francisco is the \"San Francisco Chronicle\", which is currently Northern California's most widely circulated newspaper. The Chronicle is most famous for a former columnist, the late Herb Caen, whose daily musings attracted critical acclaim and represented the \"voice of San Francisco\". \"The San Francisco Examiner\", once the cornerstone of William Randolph Hearst's media empire and the home of Ambrose Bierce, declined in circulation over the years and now takes the form of a free daily tabloid, under new ownership.\n\"Sing Tao Daily\" claims to be the largest of several Chinese language dailies that serve the Bay Area. \"SF\u00a0Weekly\" is the city's alternative weekly newspaper. \"San Francisco\" and \"7x7\" are major glossy magazines about San Francisco. The national newsmagazine \"Mother Jones\" is also based in San Francisco. San Francisco is home to online-only media publications such as SFist, and \"AsianWeek\".\nThe San Francisco Bay Area is the sixth-largest television\u00a0market in the U.S. It is the fourth-largest radio market after that of New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.\nAll major U.S. television networks have affiliates serving the region, with most of them based in the city. CNN, MSNBC, BBC, Russia Today, and CCTV America also have regional news bureaus in San Francisco. Bloomberg West was launched in 2011 from a studio on the Embarcadero and CNBC broadcasts from One Market Plaza since 2015. ESPN uses the local ABC studio for their broadcasting. The regional sports network, Comcast SportsNet Bay Area and its sister station Comcast SportsNet California, are both located in San Francisco. The Pac-12 Network is also based in San Francisco.\nPublic broadcasting outlets include both a television station and a radio station, both broadcasting under the call letters KQED from a facility near the Potrero Hill neighborhood. KQED-FM is the most-listened-to National Public Radio affiliate in the country.\nKUSF is a student-run radio station by college students from the University of San Francisco. Another local broadcaster, KPOO, is an independent, African-American owned and operated noncommercial radio station established in 1971. CNET, founded 1994, and Salon.com, 1995, are based in San Francisco. Sutro Tower is an important broadcast tower located between Mount Sutro and the Twin Peaks, built in 1973 for KTVU, KRON, and KPIX.\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nPublic transportation.\nTransit is the most used form of transportation every day in San Francisco. Every weekday, more than 560,000 people travel on Muni's 69 bus routes and more than 140,000 customers ride the Muni Metro light rail system. 32% of San Francisco residents use public transportation for their daily commute to work, ranking it fourth in the United States and first on the West Coast. The San Francisco Municipal Railway, primarily known as Muni, is the primary public transit system of San Francisco. As of 2023, Muni is the eighth-largest transit system in the United States. The system operates a combined light rail and subway system, the Muni Metro, as well as large bus and trolley coach networks. Additionally, it runs a historic streetcar line, which runs on Market Street from Castro Street to Fisherman's Wharf. It also operates the famous cable cars, which have been designated as a National Historic Landmark and are a major tourist attraction.\nBay Area Rapid Transit (BART), a regional Rapid Transit system, connects San Francisco with the East Bay and San Jose through the underwater Transbay Tube. The line, which contains all except the Orange Line, runs under Market Street to Civic Center where it turns south to the Mission District, the southern part of the city, and through northern San Mateo County, to the San Francisco International Airport, and Millbrae. BART also shares stations with SFMTA Muni Metro under Market Street.\nAnother commuter rail system, Caltrain, runs from San Francisco along the San Francisco Peninsula to San Jose. Historically, trains operated by Southern Pacific Lines ran from San Francisco to Los Angeles, via Palo Alto and San Jose.\nAmtrak Thruway runs a shuttle bus from three locations in San Francisco to its station across the bay in Emeryville. Additionally, BART offers connections to San Francisco from Amtrak's stations in Emeryville, Oakland and Richmond, and Caltrain offers connections in San Jose and Santa Clara. Thruway service also runs south to San Luis Obispo with connection to the Pacific Surfliner.\nSan Francisco was an early adopter of carsharing in America. The non-profit City CarShare opened in 2001 and Zipcar closely followed.\nSan Francisco Bay Ferry operates from the Ferry Building and Pier 39 to points in Oakland, Alameda, Bay Farm Island, South San Francisco, Richmond, and north to Vallejo in Solano County. The Golden Gate Ferry is the other ferry operator with service between San Francisco and Marin County. SolTrans runs supplemental bus service between the Ferry Building and Vallejo.\nTo accommodate the large amount of San Francisco citizens who commute to the Silicon Valley daily, employers like Genentech, Google, and Apple have begun to provide private bus transportation for their employees, from San Francisco locations. These buses have quickly become a heated topic of debate within the city, as protesters claim they block bus lanes and delay public buses.\nFreeways and roads.\nIn 2014, only 41.3% of residents commuted by driving alone or carpooling in private vehicles in San Francisco, a decline from 48.6% in 2000. There are 1,088 miles of streets in San Francisco with 946 miles of these streets being surface streets, and 59 miles of freeways. Due to its unique geography, and the freeway revolts of the late 1950s,\nInterstate 80 begins at the approach to the Bay Bridge and is the only direct automobile link to the East Bay. U.S. Route 101 connects to the western terminus of Interstate 80 and provides access to the south of the city along San Francisco Bay toward Silicon Valley. Northward, the routing for U.S. 101 uses arterial streets to connect to the Golden Gate Bridge, the only direct automobile link to Marin County and the North Bay.\nAs part of the retrofitting of the Golden Gate Bridge and installation of a suicide barrier, starting in 2019 the railings on the west side of the pedestrian walkway were replaced with thinner, more flexible slats in order to improve the bridge's aerodynamic tolerance of high wind to . Starting in June 2020, reports were received of a loud hum produced by the new railing slats, heard across the city when a strong west wind was blowing.\nState Route 1 also enters San Francisco from the north via the Golden Gate Bridge and bisects the city as the 19th Avenue arterial thoroughfare, joining with Interstate 280 at the city's southern border. Interstate 280 continues south from San Francisco, and also turns to the east along the southern edge of the city, terminating just south of the Bay Bridge in the South of Market neighborhood. After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, city leaders demolished the Embarcadero Freeway and a portion of the Central Freeway, converting them into street-level boulevards.\nState Route 35 enters the city from the south as Skyline Boulevard and terminates at its intersection with Highway 1. State Route 82 enters San Francisco from the south as Mission Street, and terminates shortly thereafter at its junction with 280. The western terminus of the historic transcontinental Lincoln Highway, the first road across America, is in San Francisco's Lincoln Park.\nVision Zero.\nIn 2014, San Francisco committed to Vision Zero, with the goal of ending all traffic fatalities caused by motor vehicles within the city by 2024. San Francisco's Vision Zero plan calls for investing in engineering, enforcement, and education, and focusing on dangerous intersections. In 2013, 25 people were killed by car and truck drivers while walking and biking in the city and 9 car drivers and passengers were killed in collisions. In 2019, 42 people were killed in traffic collisions in San Francisco.\nAirports.\nThough located south of downtown in unincorporated San Mateo County, San Francisco International Airport (SFO) is under the jurisdiction of the City and County of San Francisco. SFO is a hub for United Airlines and Alaska Airlines. SFO is a major international gateway to Asia and Europe, with the largest international terminal in North America. In 2011, SFO was the eighth-busiest airport in the U.S. and the 22nd-busiest in the world, handling over 40.9\u00a0million passengers.\nLocated in the South Bay, the San Jose International Airport (SJC) is the second-busiest airport in the Bay Area, followed by Oakland International Airport, which is a popular, low-cost alternative to SFO.\nCycling and walking.\nCycling is a popular mode of transportation in San Francisco, with 75,000 residents commuting by bicycle each day. In recent years, the city has installed better cycling infrastructure such as protected bike lanes and parking racks. Bay Wheels, previously named Bay Area Bike Share at inception, launched in August 2013 with 700 bikes in downtown San Francisco, selected cities in the East Bay, and San Jose. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and Bay Area Air Quality Management District are responsible for the operation with management provided by Motivate. A major expansion started in 2017, along with a rebranding as Ford GoBike; the company received its current name in 2019.\nPedestrian traffic is also widespread. In 2015, Walk Score ranked San Francisco the second-most walkable city in the United States.\nSan Francisco has significantly higher rates of pedestrian and bicyclist traffic deaths than the United States on average. In 2013, 21 pedestrians were killed in vehicle collisions, the highest since 2001, which is 2.5 deaths per 100,000 population \u2013 70% higher than the national average of 1.5.\nCycling is becoming increasingly popular in the city. The 2010 Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) annual bicycle count showed the number of cyclists at 33 locations had increased 58% from the 2006 baseline counts. In 2008, the MTA estimated that about 128,000 trips were made by bicycle each day in the city, or 6% of total trips. As of 2019[ [update]], 2.6% of the city's streets have protected bike lanes, with 28 miles of protected bike lanes in the city. Since 2006, San Francisco has received a Bicycle Friendly Community status of \"Gold\" from the League of American Bicyclists. In 2022 a measure on the ballot passed to protect JFK drive in Golden Gate Park as a pedestrian and biking space with 59% of voters in favor.\nPublic safety.\nThe San Francisco Police Department was founded in 1849. The portions of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area located within the city, including the Presidio and Ocean Beach, are patrolled by the United States Park Police.\nThe San Francisco Fire Department provides both fire suppression and emergency medical services to the city.\nSister cities.\nSan Francisco participates in the Sister Cities program. A total of 41 consulates general and 23 honorary consulates have offices in the San Francisco Bay Area.\nIn January 1980, Mayor Dianne Feinstein signed a sister cities agreement with Shanghai during a visit to China.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "155921": "Time After Time (1979 film)\n1979 film by Nicholas Meyer\nTime After Time is a 1979 American science fiction film written and directed by Nicholas Meyer and starring Malcolm McDowell, David Warner, and Mary Steenburgen. Filmed in Panavision, it was the directing debut of Meyer, whose screenplay is based on the premise from Karl Alexander's novel \"Time After Time\" (which was unfinished at the time) and a story by Alexander and Steve Hayes. The film presents a story in which British author H. G. Wells uses his time machine to pursue Jack the Ripper into the 20th century.\nPlot.\nIn 1893 London, popular writer H. G. Wells displays a time machine to his skeptical dinner guests and explains how it works, including having a \"non-return key\" that keeps the machine at the traveler's destination and a \"vaporizing equalizer\" that keeps the traveler and machine on equal terms. Police constables suddenly arrive, searching for Jack the Ripper. A bag with blood-stained gloves belonging to Wells's friend John Leslie Stevenson, a surgeon, leads them to conclude that Stevenson may be the killer. Wells races to his laboratory, but the time machine is gone.\nStevenson escapes to the future, though without the \"non-return\" key, causing the machine to automatically reappear in 1893. Wells then pursues Stevenson to November 5, 1979, where the machine is now on display at a museum in San Francisco. Wells finds the future deeply shocking, having expected an enlightened socialist utopia. Instead, he sees chaos in the form of airplanes, automobiles and a history of global war, crime and bloodshed.\nAt a bank, Wells exchanges some British bank notes for present-day American currency. Hungry, he enters a McDonald's and is alternately puzzled and pleased with modern dining options. Reasoning that Stevenson also needs to exchange British money, Wells visits various banks searching for him. At the Chartered Bank of London, he meets employee Amy Robbins, who directed Stevenson to the Hyatt Regency hotel. Smitten with Wells, she gives him her card, saying he should \u201cgive her a ring\u201d.\nUpon being confronted by Wells, Stevenson confesses that he finds modern society pleasingly violent, stating: \"Ninety years ago, I was a freak. Today, I'm an amateur.\" Wells demands he return to 1893 to face justice, but Stevenson instead attempts to wrestle the non-return key from him. Their struggle is interrupted by a maid and Stevenson flees, getting hit by a car during the frantic chase. Wells follows him to the hospital emergency room and is told that Stevenson is dead but is not allowed to view the body.\nWells meets up with Amy again and she initiates a romance. Stevenson returns to the bank to exchange more money. Suspecting that Amy led Wells to him, he frightens her into giving Wells a message and later discovers where she lives. To convince a highly skeptical Amy that he is telling the truth, Wells takes her three days into the future. She is aghast to see a newspaper headline revealing her own murder as the \"San Francisco Ripper's\" fifth victim.\nWells persuades her that they must go back to prevent the fourth victim's murder, then prevent Amy's. Upon returning, they are delayed and can do no more than phone the police. Stevenson kills again, and Wells is arrested due to his knowledge about the killing. Amy is left alone, totally defenseless against Stevenson.\nWhile Wells unsuccessfully tries to convince the police of Amy's peril, she attempts to hide from Stevenson. When the police finally investigate her apartment, they find a woman's dismembered body. Believing him innocent, the police release a now-heartbroken Wells. Stevenson actually killed Amy's co-worker, who was the dead body in Amy's apartment. He contacts Wells to state that he has taken Amy hostage and demands the non-return key.\nStevenson flees with the key \u2013 and Amy as insurance \u2013 intending a permanent escape in the time machine. Wells erratically drives Amy's car and follows them to the museum. While Wells bargains for Amy's life, she escapes. As Stevenson starts up the time machine, Wells removes the \"vaporizing equalizer\", causing Stevenson to vanish while the machine remains in the present. Stevenson has been sent traveling endlessly through time.\nWells proclaims he must return to his own time and destroy a machine that is too dangerous for primitive mankind. Amy pleads with him to take her along, saying she has no remaining ties in the 20th century. The film finishes with the caption: \"H.G. Wells married Amy Catherine Robbins, who died in 1927. As a writer, he anticipated socialism, global war, space travel and women's liberation. He died in 1946.\"\nProduction.\nAccording to Meyer from the commentary track for the DVD and Blu-ray release of the film, the author of the novel presented Meyer with 55 pages of his unpublished novel and asked Meyer to critique his work. Meyer liked the premise and immediately optioned the story so he could write a screenplay based on the material and develop the story his own way.\nMcDowell was attracted to the material because he was looking for something different from the sex and violence in \"Caligula\", in which he played the title character.\nWhile preparing to portray Wells, McDowell obtained a copy of a 78 rpm recording of Wells speaking. McDowell was \"absolutely horrified\" to hear that Wells spoke in a high-pitched, squeaky voice with a pronounced Southeast London accent, which McDowell felt would have resulted in unintentional humor if he tried to mimic it for the film. McDowell abandoned any attempt to recreate Wells's authentic speaking style and preferred a more \"dignified\" style.\nAccording to David Warner, the studio wanted Mick Jagger for the role of John Leslie Stevenson but director Nicholas Meyer and producer Herb Jaffe fought for Warner to get the role.\nIt was one of the last films scored by veteran composer Mikl\u00f3s R\u00f3zsa, who received the 1979 Saturn Award for Best Music.\n\"Time After Time\" was filmed throughout San Francisco, including Cow Hollow, North Beach, the Hyatt Regency hotel, Westin Bonaventure Hotel, California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, the Marina District, Ghirardelli Square, Fisherman's Wharf, the Richmond District, the Golden Gate Bridge, Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill, the Embarcadero Center, Chinatown, the Marina Green, the Palace of Fine Arts, Potrero Hill, John McLaren Park, and the Civic Center.\nRelease.\nThe film premiered with a gala presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7, 1979.\nReception.\nCritical response.\n\"Time After Time\" received a positive response from critics. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 88% based on 32 reviews. The site's consensus reads, \"With the three principal actors clearly having fun with their roles, \"Time After Time\" becomes an amusing, light-hearted fantasy lark.\"\n\"Variety\" described the film as \"a delightful, entertaining trifle of a film that shows both the possibilities and limitations of taking liberties with literature and history. Nicholas Meyer has deftly juxtaposed Victorian England and contemporary America in a clever story, irresistible due to the competence of its cast\". Janet Maslin of \"The New York Times\" similarly lauded, \"\"Time After Time\" is every bit as magical as the trick around which it revolves\". She continued:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Mr. Meyer isn't a particularly skilled director; this is his first attempt, and on occasion it's very clumsy. But as a whizkid he's gone straight to the head of the class, with a movie that's as sweet as it is clever, and never so clever that it forgets to be entertaining. The satisfactions \"Time After Time\" offers are perhaps no more sophisticated than the fun one might have with an intricate set of electric trains. Still, fun of this sort isn't always easy to come by, not after one's age has climbed up into two digits. There's a lot to be said for an adult's movie with the shimmer of a child's new toy.\nThe interior scenes set in London borrow heavily from the 1960 film \"The Time Machine\", which was based on the 1895 H.G. Wells novella of the same name. Commentators also noticed parallels between \"Time After Time\" and \"Back to the Future Part III\" in which Mary Steenburgen appeared. She said:\nActually, I've played the same scene in that film (\"Time After Time\") and in (\"BTTF\") \"Part III\"... I've had a man from a different time period tell me that he's in love with me, but he has to go back to his own time. My response in both cases is, of course, disbelief, and I order them out of my life. Afterwards, I find out I was wrong and that, in fact, the man is indeed from another time, and I go after him (them) to profess my love. It's a pretty strange feeling to find yourself doing the same scene, so many years apart, for the second time in your career.\nThe casting of Steenburgen for \"Back to the Future Part III\" appears to be deliberately intended to mirror the earlier role. In \"Time After Time\", the woman lives in the 20th century and the time traveler is from the 19th. In \"Back to the Future Part III\", the woman inhabits the 19th century and the time traveler is from the 20th. In both films, the woman eventually goes back with the time traveler to live in his own time period.\nSome similar time travel incongruities as well as the modern San Francisco urban setting also appeared in 1986's \"\", for which Nicholas Meyer shared writing credit. The details of time travelers from distant eras obtaining and exchanging present day American currency were similar in both films. In \"Star Trek IV\", a featured female character, Dr. Gillian Taylor, ends up joining her paramour, Captain James T. Kirk, living in the future, similar to the conclusion of \"Time After Time\".\nAccolades.\nNicholas Meyer won the Saturn Award for Best Writing, Mary Steenburgen won the Saturn Award for Best Actress, and Mikl\u00f3s R\u00f3zsa won the Saturn Award for Best Music. Saturn Award nominations went to Meyer for Best Director, Malcolm McDowell for Best Actor, David Warner for Supporting Actor, and Sal Anthony and Yvonne Kubis for Best Costumes, and the film was nominated for Best Science Fiction Film.\nNicholas Meyer won the Antenne II Award and the Grand Prize at the Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival and he was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay and the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.\nIn other media.\nTelevision.\nOn May 12, 2016, the ABC television network announced that it had picked up a \"Time After Time\" television series to air in the 2016\u20132017 television season. The series, executive produced and written by Kevin Williamson, was cancelled after only five episodes.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["155921", "49728"], "permutation_1": ["49728", "155921"], "permutation_2": ["155921", "49728"], "permutation_3": ["155921", "49728"]}
{"id": "2hop__343854_127375", "docs_added": {"3157544": "Chemical Heart\n2002 single by Grinspoon\n\"Chemical Heart\" is the first single from Grinspoon's third studio album, \"New Detention\". The song was written as a tribute to Jessica Michalik, who was crushed to death at the Sydney Big Day Out in 2001 during the Limp Bizkit set. It reached No. 25 on the Australian Singles Chart on 31 March 2002. The song was used in the Network Ten series premiere promos for \"\".\nTrack listing.\nAustralian CD single\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "567703": "Grinspoon\nAustralian rock band\nGrinspoon are an Australian rock band from Lismore, New South Wales, which formed in 1995 by Pat Davern on guitar, Joe Hansen on bass guitar, Kristian Hopes on drums and frontman Phil Jamieson on vocals and guitar. Also in that year, Grinspoon won the national youth radio, Triple J\u2013sponsored Unearthed competition for Lismore, with their post-grunge song \"Sickfest\". The band's name references Lester Grinspoon, an associate professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who supported marijuana for medical use.\nAll eight of Grinspoon's studio albums have reached the ARIA albums chart top\u00a010. Their sound changed to mainstream rock with the release of their third studio album, \"New Detention\" (2002), which peaked at No.\u00a02; likewise, their fifth studio album \"Alibis & Other Lies\" (2007) also reached No.\u00a02. The 2004 fourth album, \"Thrills, Kills & Sunday Pills\", peaked at No.\u00a04. At the ARIA Music Awards of 2005 it won the Best Rock Album Award.\nThe band were signed to Universal Records in the United States by late 1998, and were promoted with the songs \"Champion\", which featured in \"Gran Turismo 3\"; \"Post Enebriated Anxiety\", which was on the international version of \"Guide to Better Living\" (1999); \"Chemical Heart\", via the internet; and a cover of the Prong song \"Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck\", from Grinspoon's \"Pushing Buttons\" (1998) EP, which was also included on \"\" (1998). On 4 December 2013, the band members announced an indefinite hiatus to pursue individual projects, although they made a return in earnest in 2017. Their eighth studio album, \"Whatever, Whatever\" (2024) reached No.\u00a03.\nHistory.\n1995-2000: Early years.\nIn July 1995, Pat Davern (guitar), Joe Hansen (bass guitar), Kristian Hopes (drums) and Phil Jamieson (vocals, guitar) met at a Lismore hotel, The Gollan, for a jam night. They decided to form a band and three\u00a0weeks later they recorded a two-track demo, which they entered for the national youth radio station Triple J's Unearthed competition. Their name was taken from Lester Grinspoon, an associate professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who supported marijuana for medical use. They won the competition with their post-grunge, alternative rock song \"Sickfest\" \u2013 their first track ever written together by Davern and Jamieson.\nGrinspoon gained airplay on Triple J and independent radio stations. They developed a strong following among the Australian \"alternative\" and \"mosh pit crowd.\" Their debut extended Play (EP) was the six-track, \"Grinspoon\" (a.k.a. \"Green Album\"), was released in 1995 through the independent Oracle Records. It contained the songs \"Sickfest\" and \"More Than You Are\" that became popular with fans and were rerecorded on later releases.\nGrinspoon's second EP, \"Licker Bottle Cozy\", recorded in June 1996 and produced by Phil McKellar, was released by Grudge Records in December. It had a slightly heavier sound than their earlier EP with five tracks including the songs \"Champion\" and \"Pig Pen\". In September 1997 they released their first full-length album, \"Guide to Better Living\", co-produced by McKellar and well-known Swiss-American heavy metal producer Ulrich Wild. The album peaked at No.\u00a011 on the ARIA Albums Charts and went platinum with sales of over 70,000 in Australia. It represents the Helmet-influenced alternative metal sound of their early career with heavier songs like \"Pressure Tested 1984\". The Australian version of the album features five live songs\u2014illustrating the band's sense of humour and ability to play live\u2014and a hidden track, the acoustic \"Protest\". US branch of Universal Records signed the band by late 1998 and released an altered version of \"Guide to Better Living\" in March 1999.\nWhilst in US touring for ten months as support act for Creed, Lit, Godsmack and Anthrax, Grinspoon released a six track EP, \"Pushing Buttons\", for their Australian market in September 1998. It featured the popular heavy song \"Black Friday\" and the lighter songs \"Busy\" and \"Explain\". After the intense US touring, Grinspoon released their second album, \"Easy\" in September 1999, which peaked at No.\u00a04 and went platinum in Australia. It contained the singles \"Ready 1\" and \"Rock Show\".\n2001-2007: Changing direction.\nAfter a break to reconsider their direction and sound Grinspoon started recording their next album, \"New Detention\", in Sydney's Festival Studios in September 2001 but prior to finishing the studios were shut down and so vocals and guitars were recorded in smaller studios. Further delays occurred after Hopes injured his hand on a studio window. \"New Detention\" was released in June 2002 and was more commercial\u2014it peaked at No.\u00a02 on the ARIA Albums Charts and went platinum. The first single from the album, \"Chemical Heart\", released in February had created a stir with long term fans and the media because it was different from their previous grunge sound. The band insisted the change was a natural one and was an improvement. Nevertheless, the band still performs older tracks in their live shows. They released a four track EP in March 2003, \"Panic Attack\"\u2014containing a cover of INXS's \"Don't Change\"\u2014which reached No.\u00a013 on the ARIA Singles Chart.\nIn August 2004, they released a new single, \"Hard Act To Follow\", which reached the Top 30. It was from the September album \"Thrills, Kills & Sunday Pills\", which peaked at No.\u00a04 and went platinum. Grinspoon also performed at the 2004 NRL grand final before a second single, \"Better Off Alone\", issued in November, also reached the Top 30. The third single was \"Hold on Me\" released in February 2005. For \"Thrills, Kills & Sunday Pills\", the band agreed that they were deliberately seeking a new audience, claiming they wrote a number of songs for the release and rejected any that sounded like earlier work. It won the 2005 'Best Rock Album Award' at the ARIA Music Awards. They had previously been nominated 9 times.\nGrinspoon had built a strong local following after their rise, they were regulars at Australian music festivals. On 26 March 2006, Grinspoon performed \"Hard Act To Follow\" and \"Better Off Alone\" at the 2006 Commonwealth Games Closing Ceremony in Melbourne. They headlined the inaugural \"Thank God It's Over\" in Melbourne, at \"BOBFest '06\" in South Australia in October and at Odyssey 2006 at Dreamworld for New Year's Eve.\nIn February 2007, Jamieson admitted himself to rehab due to addiction to crystal methamphetamine. On Andrew Denton's \"Enough Rope\" in July, Jamieson discussed his drug addictions, an extramarital affair, stealing money from bandmates, detox and rehab experiences.\nThe band completed, \"Alibis & Other Lies\" in July 2007, as their final album for Universal. It was co-produced by the band and Ramesh Sathiah, who had worked with them on their earliest recordings. Earlier albums before this were pop-oriented rock, while \"Easy\" and \"Alibis & Other Lies\" were more heavy rock. The first single from the album, \"Black Tattoo\", was released as a digital download on 23 June and physically a week later. The album peaked at No.\u00a02, their equal highest album chart position (with \"New Detention\" in 2002). Grinspoon released a 2-disc compilation entitled \"Best in Show\". The first disc featured their hits and several older songs, like \"Champion\", which landed the song on \"Gran Turismo 3\". The second disc includes a collection of covers recorded over the years. In the US, all Grinspoon albums had been released on iTunes and other online music stores. The first four were \"Guide To Better Living\", \"Best In Show\", \"Thrills, Kills, and Sunday Pills\", and \"New Detention\". \"Easy\" and \"Alibis & Other Lies\" followed on 31 October 2007.\n2008-2009: Hiatus.\nOn 5 February 2008, Jamieson announced, via the band's official website, that Grinspoon were on hiatus following their appearance at Big Day Out in late January. Grinspoon headlined the Newton's Playground festival, held atop Bathurst's famous Mount Panorama in March, with their song \"Lost Control\" played in advertisements for the festival. On 1 May, Grinspoon announced they would complete more shows before writing a new album.\nGrinspoon recorded The Easybeats' track \"St. Louis\" for a tribute album, \"Easy Fever: A Tribute to The Easybeats and Stevie Wright\"\u2014released in October 2008\u2014while Jamieson's duet with The Wrights on \"Evie part 3: I'm Losing You\" from 2005 was included. The band contributed the track \"Blind Lead Blind\", their B side of 2007's \"Minute By Minute\", to a compilation CD for The Buttery Drug and Alcohol Rehab Centre titled \"Caution: Life Ahead\", which included contributions from other Australian acts such as Powderfinger, Midnight Oil and The Living End, and was released in November.\nGrinspoon performed on 26 July 2009 at the annual Splendour in the Grass Festival in Byron Bay. Jamieson then toured with a supergroup composed of The Living End's Chris Cheney, You Am I's Tim Rogers, and Josh Pyke with a 17-piece band in August 2009. The group performed a tribute to The Beatles' White Album for its 40th anniversary.\n2010: \"Six to Midnight\".\nGrinspoon's next album, titled \"Six to Midnight\", was released on 11 September 2009 on the band's imprint Chk Chk Boom Records, distributed by Universal Records, which peaked at No.\u00a06. Two tracks, \"Dogs\" and the first single, \"Comeback\", were released to radio earlier. For promotion of the album, the band toured in a more intimate setting than most of their previous concerts. On 6 November, Grinspoon played live on Triple J radio and confirmed that \"Summer\" was the second single from the album. In 2010 Premonitions was released as the third single from the album. The band toured for the album including two acoustic shows in London in early 2012 featuring Phil and Pat.\n2011\u20132019: \"Black Rabbits\" and hiatus.\nIn September 2011 Grinspoon announced on their website that they are writing and recording their seventh studio album.\nIn May 2012 the band announced that they were heading to the United States for a month to record the album. The band also hinted that the title of the album would be \"Black Rabbits\". The album was later slated to feature guest musicians including Chris Cheney of The Living End, Tim Rogers of You Am I and Scott Russo of Unwritten Law.\nOn 23 July 2012, Grinspoon released the artwork of the album on their official Facebook page, confirming the name of the release \"Black Rabbits\".\nThe album was released on 28 September, debuting at number 8 on the ARIA charts.\nOn 5 December 2013 a statement on the official Grinspoon website announced that the band would be going on hiatus. A section of the statement reads: \"Thanks to all our families, friends, and especially our fans for the support over the last 18 years \u2013 it's been a wild ride to say the least. We are still a band of brothers but it's time for us to take a break and recharge the batteries. We're excited to see what our future holds\u2026adios amigos, it's been a blast!\"\nIn August 2015, it was announced that the band would be reforming exclusively to play a run of dates opening for Cold Chisel.\nIn 2017, the band announced they would be re-releasing a special 20th Anniversary edition of Guide To Better Living and announced an Australia wide tour. The tour was sold out.\nIn 2019, the group released the compilation, \"Chemical Hearts\".\n2020\u2013present: \"Whatever, Whatever\".\nIn May 2024, the group released the single \"Unknown Pretenders\", which was written in February 2020. At the same time, they announced the release of their eighth studio album \"Whatever, Whatever\".\nAwards and nominations.\nAPRA Awards.\nThe APRA Awards are presented annually from 1982 by the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), \"honouring composers and songwriters\". They commenced in 1982.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Awards table/styles.css\" />\n! scope=\"col\" | Year\n! scope=\"col\" | Nominee / work\n! scope=\"col\" | Award\n! scope=\"col\" | Result\n! Ref.\nARIA Awards.\nThe ARIA Music Awards are a set of annual ceremonies presented by Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), which recognise excellence, innovation, and achievement across all genres of the music of Australia. They commenced in 1987. Grinspoon has won 2 awards from 14 nominations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Awards table/styles.css\" />\n! scope=\"col\" | Year\n! scope=\"col\" | Nominee / work\n! scope=\"col\" | Award\n! scope=\"col\" | Result\nJ Awards.\nThe J Awards are an annual series of Australian music awards that were established by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's youth-focused radio station Triple J. They commenced in 2005.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Awards table/styles.css\" />\n! scope=\"col\" | Year\n! scope=\"col\" | Nominee / work\n! scope=\"col\" | Award\n! scope=\"col\" | Result\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "288138": "Heart (band)\nAmerican rock band\nHeart is an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1973. The band evolved from previous projects led by founding members Roger Fisher (guitar) and Steve Fossen (bass guitar), including The Army (1967\u20131969), Hocus Pocus (1969\u20131970), and White Heart (1970\u20131973). By 1975, original members Fisher, Fossen, and Ann Wilson (lead vocals and flute), along with Nancy Wilson (rhythm guitar, vocals), Michael Derosier (drums), and Howard Leese (guitar, keyboards and backing vocals) formed the lineup for the band's initial mid- to late-1970s success period. These core members were included in the band's 2013 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.\nHeart rose to fame with music influenced by hard rock and heavy metal as well as folk music. The band underwent a major lineup change between the late 1970s and the early 1980s; by 1982 Fisher, Fossen, and Derosier had all left and were replaced by Mark Andes (bass) and Denny Carmassi (drums). Though the band's popularity fell off during the initial years with the new lineup, they staged a comeback in the mid-1980s, buoyed by major radio hits that continued into the 1990s. Heart disbanded in 1998, though they have resumed touring and recording multiple times since then, with the Wilson sisters being the only consistent members. Heart's US Top 40 singles include \"Magic Man\" (1975), \"Crazy on You\" (1976), \"Barracuda\" (1977), \"What About Love\" (1985), \"Never\" (1985), and \"All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You\" (1990), along with no. 1 hits \"These Dreams\" (1986) and \"Alone\" (1987).\nHeart has been nominated for four Grammy Awards, and has sold over 50million records worldwide, including approximately 22.5million albums in the United States. They have placed top-ten albums on the \"Billboard\" 200 in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2010s. Heart was ranked number 57 on VH1's \"100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock\" and ranked number 49 on Ultimate Classic Rock's Top 100 Classic Rock Artists.\nHistory.\n1967\u20131972: Early bands and formation.\nIn 1965, bassist Steve Fossen formed The Army, along with Roger Fisher on guitar, Don Wilhelm on guitar, keyboards and lead vocals, and Ray Schaefer on drums. They played for several years in and around the Bothell, Washington, area, northeast of Seattle. They frequently played Bothell High School, Inglemoor High School, and Shorecrest High School, as well as many taverns and club venues. In 1969, the band went through lineup changes (Gary Ziegelman\u2014former lead singer of Buffalo Clancy\u2014on lead vocals, Fisher on guitar, Fossen on bass, James Cirrello on guitar, Ron Rudge on drums, and Ken Hansen on percussion) and took on a new name, Hocus Pocus. \nThe name White Heart came from a discussion Roger Fisher's brother Mike Fisher had with Michael Munro, who had come up with the name White Hart (without the \"e\" \u2013 a reference to Arthur C. Clarke's \"Tales from the White Hart\") for a band with Toby Cyr on lead guitar. Fisher asked and received permission to use the name for the Army, added the \"e\", and the Army became White Heart. For a brief time in 1970, this lineup shortened its name to Heart. The band subsequently went through more personnel changes. In 1971, White Heart consisted of Steve Fossen, Roger Fisher, David Belzer (keys), and Jeff Johnson (drums). The band eventually stuck to the name Heart, which has been their name since 1973.\nMike Fisher, Roger's brother, was set to be drafted into the army. Nancy Wilson has stated that when he did not report for duty, his home was raided, he slipped out a rear window, escaped to Canada, and became a Vietnam War \"draft dodger\". One day in 1971 or 1972, Mike crossed the border to visit family, and by chance met Ann at a Hocus Pocus (or White Heart) show. According to Nancy, that meeting was \"when she and Michael fell in love\" and Ann decided to follow Mike back to Canada. Steve Fossen finished his college education before he also decided to move to Canada in late 1972, and Roger followed in late 1972 or early 1973. Along with Ann, Brian Johnstone (drums), and John Hannah (keyboards), the band Heart was officially formed. Ann's sister Nancy Wilson joined in 1974, and soon after became romantically involved with Roger.\n1975\u20131976: Commercial breakthrough.\nThe group played numerous shows around their new home in Vancouver, and they recorded a demo tape with the assistance of producer Mike Flicker and session-guitarist and keyboard player, Howard Leese. Hannah and Johnstone had left by this time, and soon after Leese became a full-time member. Flicker produced the band's first five albums. This team recorded the debut album, \"Dreamboat Annie\", at Can-Base Studios in Vancouver, later known as Mushroom Studios. Mike Derosier eventually joined Heart as full-time drummer. Some of the same Canadian investors who had backed the studio also backed a separate company called Mushroom Records, which was managed by Shelly Siegel.\nThe album was picked up by Siegel and sold 30,000 copies in Canada within the first few months of its release in September 1975. Sales were assisted by the band opening a Rod Stewart concert at the Montreal Forum in October, a gig they were offered a day before the concert when the previously-scheduled opening act canceled. The radio success of \"Magic Man\" led concert organizers to offer the spot to Heart. The band flew from the West Coast of Canada to Montreal overnight for the performance. Siegel soon released the album in the US. Helped by two hit singles in 1976 (\"Crazy on You\" and \"Magic Man\", which reached numbers 35 and nine, respectively, on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100), it reached number seven in the \"Billboard\" 200. It eventually sold over one million copies.\n1977\u20131979: Mainstream success and band split.\nIn 1977, Mushroom Records ran a full-page advertisement showing the bare-shouldered Wilson sisters (as on the \"Dreamboat Annie\" album cover) with the suggestive caption, \"It was only our first time!\" In a July 1977 \"Rolling Stone\" cover story, the sisters cited this advertisement as a key reason for their decision to leave Mushroom Records. Heart broke its contract with Mushroom and signed a contract with CBS subsidiary Portrait Records, resulting in a prolonged legal battle with Siegel. Mushroom released the partly completed \"Magazine\" in early 1977, just before Portrait released \"Little Queen\". Each company attempted to prevent the other from releasing any Heart music. A Seattle court forced Mushroom Records to recall the album so that Heart could remix tracks and add new vocals, and the album was re-released in 1978. It peaked at number 17 in the US, generating the single \"Heartless\", which reached number 24 in the charts. The album eventually achieved platinum status.\n\"Little Queen\" became Heart's second million-seller and featured the hit \"Barracuda\" (number 11). The song's lyrics were written by an infuriated Ann Wilson in her hotel room after a reporter had suggested that the sisters were lesbian lovers.\nIn late 1978, the double-platinum \"Dog & Butterfly\" peaked at 17 on the \"Billboard\" 200 and produced hits with its title song (number 34) and \"Straight On\" (number 15). In 1979, the Wilson-Fisher liaisons ended\u2014Roger Fisher was voted out of the band by the other members, and his brother Mike left the group\u2019s orbit within a month.\n1980\u20131984: Commercial decline.\nHeart released \"Bebe le Strange\" in 1980. It became the band's third top-10 album, peaking at number five, and yielded the top-40 hit \"Even It Up\". The band embarked on a 77-city tour to promote the album. By the end of the year, the band scored its highest-charted single at the time, a version of the ballad \"Tell It Like It Is\", which peaked at number eight. In November 1980, the double album \"Greatest Hits/Live\" was released and reached number twelve on the US chart, eventually achieving double-platinum status. The two-disc set featured studio versions of most of Heart's singles to date, plus a few new studio tracks and six live tracks, among which were versions of \"Unchained Melody\", Led Zeppelin's \"Rock and Roll\" and the Beatles' \"I'm Down\".\nHeart was the first band of the day to appear at the sold-out concert headlined by Queen at Elland Road on May 29, 1982. Their next album, \"Private Audition\" (1982), provided the minor hit \"This Man Is Mine\" (number 33) and was the first not produced by Mike Flicker. Initially, the band turned to Jimmy Iovine, one of the leading producers of the time, who suggested that the material lacked potential hits, and eventually, the Wilson sisters produced the album themselves. The track \"Perfect Stranger\" foreshadowed the power ballads that would dominate the band's mid-1980s sound.\nAt the end of recording, Derosier and Fossen were fired from the band. They were replaced by Denny Carmassi on drums and Mark Andes on bass for \"Passionworks\" (1983), while at the record company's insistence, the band turned to established producer Keith Olsen. Both \"Private Audition\" and \"Passionworks\" had relatively poor sales, failing to reach gold status. Despite the albums' sales, the single \"How Can I Refuse\" was a success, reaching number one on the \"Billboard\" Mainstream Rock Chart.\n1985\u20131990: Comeback.\nThe band moved to Capitol Records, and their first album for the label was simply titled \"Heart\" (1985). The move to Capitol coincided with a glam metal makeover that included minimizing the acoustic and folk sounds characteristic of their early work. The album reached number one, sold five million copies, and launched four top-10 hits: \"What About Love\" (number 10, 1985), \"Never\" (number four, 1985), the chart-topping \"These Dreams\" (1986) and \"Nothin' at All\" (number 10, 1986). A fifth single, \"If Looks Could Kill\", also charted, giving the band five hit singles from the same album for the first time.\nHeart's next album, \"Bad Animals\" (1987), continued the move away from the band's folk and acoustic leanings towards a glossier arena rock sound. The lead single, the power ballad \"Alone\", became Heart's most successful song, spending three weeks at number 1 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, while also hitting number 2 on the \"Billboard\" Adult Contemporary chart and number 3 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. \"Alone\" placed as the number 2 song for the year on the Hot 100. It also peaked at number 1 in Canada and number 3 in the UK, made the top 10 in Australia and several countries in northern Europe, and the top 20 in Germany. It is often considered to be Heart's greatest pop song. \nThe other two singles were the up-tempo rocker \"Who Will You Run To\", which reached number 7 on the Hot 100 and number 2 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, and \"There's the Girl\", with Nancy singing lead, which reached number 12 and 16 on the same charts respectively. They were not as successful in other markets aside from \"Who Will You Run To\" making the top 20 in Canada and \"There's the Girl\" peaking in the top 15 in Poland. \"Bad Animals\" was a top 3 hit in the US and Canada, being certified 3x and 4x platinum in those countries, respectively. The album also became Heart's first top 10 album on the UK Albums Chart.\nThe success of UK top-40 singles \"Alone\" (number 3), \"Who Will You Run To\" (number 30), \"There's the Girl\" (number 34) and the \"Bad Animals\" album (number 7) sparked renewed UK interest in the 1985 self-titled album, resulting in the re-release of several singles. When originally released in 1985, the singles \"What About Love\" and \"Never\" did not chart, while \"These Dreams\" and \"Nothin' at All\" only charted at 68 and 76 respectively. However, in 1988 after the success of \"Bad Animals\" a re-released double A-side single of \"Never\"/\"These Dreams\" hit number 8, \"What About Love\" hit number 14, and the re-release of \"Nothin' at All\" cracked the UK top 40 at number 38. This success in the UK would continue with future albums and help Heart become a major concert attraction in the United Kingdom.\nIn 1990, \"Brigade\" became the band's sixth multi-platinum LP and added three more top-25 \"Billboard\" Hot 100 hits. \"Stranded\" reached number 13 and \"I Didn't Want to Need You\" peaked at number 23. The lead single, \"All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You\", reached number two, and created controversy over whether the song encouraged women to endanger themselves by picking up hitchhikers. Two other album cuts, \"Wild Child\" (number 3) and \"Tall, Dark Handsome Stranger\" (number 24), were \"Billboard\" Mainstream Rock chart hits. \"Brigade\" was the band's highest-charting album in the UK, reaching number three.\n1991\u20132001: The Lovemongers, \"Desire Walks On\", and Nancy Wilson hiatus.\nHeart released its first complete live album in the autumn of 1991. \"Rock the House Live!\" largely featured tracks from \"Brigade\" rather than more familiar hits in an effort to capture the harder rock side of the band. The album's single, a version of John Farnham's \"You're the Voice\", received moderate airplay on rock stations and hit number 20 on the Mainstream Rock chart.\nThe Wilson sisters then put together an informal acoustic group called Lovemongers with longtime Heart songwriting collaborator Sue Ennis and Frank Cox.\nHeart returned in 1993 with \"Desire Walks On\", on which bass player Andes was replaced with Fernando Saunders. The album peaked at number 48 on the \"Billboard\" 200, eventually being certified gold. The lead track, \"Black on Black II\", was an AOR hit peaking at number four on\" Billboard's\" Mainstream Rock chart, while the single \"Will You Be There (In the Morning)\" was a moderate pop hit, reaching number 39 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. A third single, \"The Woman In Me\", hit number 24 on the Adult Contemporary chart, but missed the Hot 100.\n\"Desire Walks On\" marked the first time that Heart's singles fared better in other countries than the US. Aside from the metallic hard rock radio cut \"Black on Black II\" which reached the Top 10 on US Rock / Hard Rock charts, \"Will You Be There (In the Morning)\" hit number 19 in the UK and number 8 in Canada. (vs. Number 39 in the US) and \"The Woman in Me\" reached number 13 in Canada after just missing the US Billboard Hot 100.\nAn interactive CD-ROM, \"Heart: 20 Years of Rock & Roll\", with five hours of audio footage, was released in 1994. The next album, \"The Road Home\" (1995), offered live acoustic versions of the group's best-known songs and was produced by Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones.\nIn 1995, Nancy Wilson decided to take a break from music to concentrate on raising a family.\nIn 1998, the band maintained its profile by being the subject of an episode of VH1's \"Behind the Music\". The band released a \"Greatest Hits\" boxed set covering their early work. A second volume focusing on the later part of their career followed in 2000.\nLovemongers released a live EP of cover songs titled \"Battle of Evermore\" in 1992, a full-length album titled \"Whirlygig\" in 1997, and a collection of mostly self-penned Christmas songs titled \"Here is Christmas\" in 1998. In 2001, \"Here Is Christmas\" was re-released presented by Heart as \"Heart Presents a Lovemongers' Christmas\".\n2002\u20132006: Resumption.\nIn 2002, Ann and Nancy returned to the road with a brand-new Heart lineup that included Scott Olson, Ben Smith, Alice in Chains bassist Mike Inez, and keyboardist Tom Kellock. In 2003, Heart released a DVD of the band's last stop in the tour as \"Alive in Seattle\". Also in 2003, Gilby Clarke (ex-Guns N' Roses) and Darian Sahanaja replaced Olson and Kellock for an American tour.\nIn 2004, with Clarke having been replaced by Craig Bartok, Heart released \"Jupiters Darling\", the first studio album since 1993. It featured a variety of songs that included a return to Heart's original hard-rock sound, as well as a blend of vintage pop and new textures.\nIn 2005, the Wilsons appeared on the CMT Music Awards as a special guest of country singer Gretchen Wilson (no relation) and performed the Heart classic \"Crazy on You\" with her. Heart also performed with Gretchen Wilson on VH-1's March 10, 2006, tribute to the band, \"Decades Rock Live!\". The special also featured Alice in Chains, Phil Anselmo, Dave Navarro, Rufus Wainwright, and Carrie Underwood. The concert was released on LP, CD, DVD, and Blu-ray on January 25, 2019, with the title \"Live in Atlantic City\". Later in the year, bass player Inez left Heart to rejoin the reformed Alice in Chains.\n2007\u20132009: VH1 Rock Honors to touring with Journey.\nHeart was honored at the second annual VH1 Rock Honors (May 24, 2007) and also performed along with Ozzy Osbourne, Genesis, and ZZ Top. Gretchen Wilson and Alice in Chains honored the group by performing \"Barracuda\". In September 2007, Ann Wilson released her first solo album, \"Hope & Glory\", which featured sister Nancy, Elton John, Alison Krauss, k.d. lang, Wynonna Judd, Gretchen Wilson, Rufus Wainwright, Shawn Colvin, and Deana Carter.\nOn April 9, 2008, the band appeared on \"Idol Gives Back\" with Stacy \"Fergie\" Ferguson, who sang \"Barracuda\" in harmony with Ann. In mid-2008, Heart undertook a US tour with Journey and Cheap Trick. It was named the \"Human 2008\" tour. Also in 2008, the band performed in a benefit for music education in public schools, appearing live with Jackson Browne on \"Something Fine,\" with Venice on \"Crazy on You,\" and with over 70 members of the Santa Monica High School orchestra and girls' choir on \"Bohemian Rhapsody.\" In 2009, the band was featured on an updated and remastered episode of VH1's \"Behind the Music.\"\n2010\u20132012: \"Red Velvet Car\" to Kennedy Center Honors.\nA new studio album, \"Red Velvet Car\", was released in 2010. It marked a stylistic return to Heart's melodic hard rock and folk sound of their early albums. The album peaked at"}, "descending_order": ["288138", "567703", "3157544"], "permutation_1": ["567703", "288138", "3157544"], "permutation_2": ["288138", "3157544", "567703"], "permutation_3": ["288138", "3157544", "567703"]}
{"id": "2hop__708311_62776", "docs_added": {"3382": "Britney Spears\nAmerican singer (born 1981)\nBritney Jean Spears (born December 2, 1981) is an American singer. Often referred to as the \"Princess of Pop\", she has sold over 150 million records worldwide, making her one of the world's best-selling music artists. An influential figure in popular music, Spears became the best-selling teenage artist of all time, credited with the revival of teen pop during the late 1990s and early 2000s.\nSpears was born in McComb, Mississippi. After appearing in the television shows \"Star Search\" and \"The Mickey Mouse Club\", Spears signed with Jive Records in 1997 at age 15. Her first two studio albums, \"...Baby One More Time\" (1999) and \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" (2000), are among the best-selling albums of all time. She adopted a more mature and provocative style for her albums \"Britney\" (2001) and \"In the Zone\" (2003). Spears was the executive producer of her fifth studio album, \"Blackout\" (2007), often referred to as her best work. She returned to the top of the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200 chart with the albums \"Circus\" (2008) and \"Femme Fatale\" (2011), and embarked on a four-year concert residency, (2013\u20132017), to promote her next two albums, \"Britney Jean\" (2013) and \"Glory\" (2016). Spears' catalog of high-charting singles includes \"...Baby One More Time\", \"Oops!... I Did It Again\", \"I'm a Slave 4 U\", \"Toxic\", \"Gimme More\", \"Womanizer\", \"3\", \"Hold It Against Me\", and \"Scream & Shout\".\nSpears' life, including her high-profile relationships and personal struggles during the 2000s, received widespread media coverage. In 2008, she was involuntarily placed in a conservatorship following a highly publicized breakdown. In 2019, her legal battle over her conservatorship led to the establishment of the #FreeBritney movement and a release of the documentary \"Framing Britney Spears\" (2021). The conservatorship was terminated in 2021, following her public testimony in which she accused her management team and family of abuse. Spears' 2023 memoir, \"The Woman in Me\", reached number one on \"The New York Times\" Best Seller list in its first week of release. Her other ventures include starring in the film \"Crossroads\" (2002) and launching numerous products, with her 2005 fragrance Fantasy with Elizabeth Arden, Inc. generating over $1.5 billion in sales.\nIn the United States, Spears is the fourth best-selling female album artist of the Nielsen SoundScan era, as well as the best-selling female album artist of the 2000s. Her accolades include a Grammy Award, 15 Guinness World Records, six MTV Video Music Awards, seven \"Billboard\" Music Awards (including the Millennium Award), the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. \"Billboard\" ranked her sixth on their list of the Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century. \"...Baby One More Time\" was named the greatest debut single of all time by \"Rolling Stone\" in 2020. \"Forbes\" listed Spears as the world's highest-paid female musician in 2001 and 2012. By 2012, she had topped Yahoo!'s list of most searched celebrities seven times in twelve years. \"Time\" named Spears one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2021, placing first in the reader poll.\nLife and career.\n1981\u20131997: Early life, family, and career beginnings.\nBritney Jean Spears was born on December 2, 1981, in McComb, Mississippi, the second child of James \"Jamie\" Parnell Spears and Lynne Irene Bridges. Her maternal grandmother, Lillian Portell, was English and born in London, and one of Spears' maternal great-grandfathers was Maltese. Her siblings are Bryan James Spears and Jamie Lynn Spears.\nBorn in the Bible Belt, where socially conservative evangelical Protestantism is a particularly strong religious influence, she was baptized as a Southern Baptist and sang in a church choir as a child. As an adult, she has studied Kabbalist teachings. On August 5, 2021, Spears announced that she had converted to Catholicism. Her mother, sister, and nieces Maddie Aldridge and Ivey Joan Watson, are also Catholic. However, on September 5, 2022, after Spears' ex-husband, Kevin Federline, and youngest son did an interview defending her father's actions during her conservatorship, she stated: \"I don't believe in God anymore because of the way my children and my family have treated me. There is nothing to believe in anymore. I'm an atheist y'all\".\nAt age three, Spears began attending dance lessons in her hometown of Kentwood, Louisiana, and was selected to perform as a solo artist at the annual recital. Aged five she made her local stage debut, singing \"What Child Is This?\" at her kindergarten graduation. During her childhood, she also had gymnastics and voice lessons and won many state-level competitions and children's talent shows. In gymnastics, Spears attended B\u00e9la K\u00e1rolyi's training camp. She said of her ambition as a child, \"I was in my own world,\u00a0... I found out what I'm supposed to do at an early age\".\nWhen Spears was eight, she and her mother Lynne traveled to Atlanta, Georgia, to audition for the 1990s revival of \"The Mickey Mouse Club\". Casting director Matt Casella rejected her as too young, but introduced her to Nancy Carson, a New York City talent agent. Carson was impressed with Spears' singing and suggested enrolling her at the Professional Performing Arts School.\nSpears was hired for her first professional role as the understudy for the lead role of Tina Denmark in the off-Broadway musical \"Ruthless!\" She also appeared as a contestant on the popular television show \"Star Search\" and was cast in a number of commercials. In December 1992, she was cast in \"The All-New Mickey Mouse Club\". Other fellow cast members included Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, Ryan Gosling, Keri Russell, and JC Chasez. After the show was canceled in 1994, she returned to Mississippi and enrolled at McComb's Parklane Academy. Although she made friends with most of her classmates, she compared the school to \"the opening scene in \"Clueless\" with all the cliques.\u00a0... I was so bored. I was the point guard on the basketball team. I had my boyfriend, and I went to homecoming and Christmas formal. But I wanted more.\"\nIn June 1997, Spears was in talks with manager Lou Pearlman to join the female pop group Innosense. Lynne asked family friend and entertainment lawyer Larry Rudolph for his opinion and submitted a tape of Spears singing over a Whitney Houston karaoke song along with some pictures. Rudolph decided that he wanted to pitch her to record labels, for which she needed a professional demo made. He sent Spears an unused song of Toni Braxton; she rehearsed for a week and recorded her vocals in a studio. Spears traveled to New York with the demo and met with executives from four labels, returning to Kentwood the same day. Three of the labels rejected her, saying that audiences wanted pop bands such as the Backstreet Boys and the Spice Girls, and \"there wasn't going to be another Madonna, another Debbie Gibson, or another Tiffany.\"\nTwo weeks later, executives from Jive Records returned calls to Rudolph. Senior vice president of A&R Jeff Fenster said about Spears' audition that \"it's very rare to hear someone that age who can deliver emotional content and commercial appeal\u00a0... For any artist, the motivation\u2014the 'eye of the tiger'\u2014is extremely important. And Britney had that.\" Spears sang Houston's \"I Have Nothing\" (1992) for the executives, and was subsequently signed to the label. They assigned her to work with producer Eric Foster White for a month; he reportedly shaped her voice from \"lower and less poppy\" delivery to \"distinctively, unmistakably Britney\". After hearing the recorded material, president Clive Calder ordered a full album. Spears had originally envisioned \"Sheryl Crow music, but younger; more adult contemporary\". She felt secure with her label's appointment of producers, since \"It made more sense to go pop, because I can dance to it\u2014it's more me.\" She flew to Cheiron Studios in Stockholm, Sweden, where half of the album was recorded from March to April 1998, with producers Max Martin, Denniz Pop, and Rami Yacoub, among others.\n1998\u20132000: \"...Baby One More Time\" and \"Oops!... I Did It Again\".\nAfter Spears returned to the United States, she embarked on a shopping mall promotional tour, titled L'Oreal Hair Zone Mall Tour, to promote her upcoming debut album. Her show was a four-song set and she was accompanied by two back-up dancers. Her first concert tour followed, as an opening act for NSYNC. Her debut studio album, \"...Baby One More Time\", was released on January 12, 1999. It debuted at number one on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200 and was certified two-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America after a month. Worldwide, the album topped the charts in fifteen countries and sold over 10 million copies in a year. It became the biggest-selling album ever by a teenage artist.\n\"...Baby One More Time\" was released as the lead single from the album on September 29, 1998. Originally, Jive Records wanted the associated music video to be animated; however, Spears rejected this idea, and suggested the final concept of a Catholic schoolgirl. The single peaked at number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, topping the chart for two consecutive weeks in January\u2013February 1999. It sold more than 10 million copies, making it one of the best-selling singles of all time. \"...Baby One More Time\" later received a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. The title track also topped the singles chart for two weeks in the United Kingdom, and became the fastest-selling single ever by a female artist, shipping over 460,000 copies. It would later become the 25th-most successful song of all time in British chart history. Spears is the youngest female artist to have a million seller in the UK. The album's third single, \"(You Drive Me) Crazy\", became a top-ten hit worldwide and further propelled the success of the \"...Baby One More Time\" album. The album has sold 30 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. It is the best-selling debut album by any artist.\nOn June 28, 1999, Spears began her first headlining ...Baby One More Time Tour in North America, which was positively received by critics. It also generated some controversy due to her racy outfits. An extension of the tour, titled (You Drive Me) Crazy Tour, followed in March 2000. Spears premiered songs from her upcoming second album during the show.\n\"Oops!... I Did It Again\", Spears' second studio album, was released in May 2000. It debuted at number one in the US, selling 1.3 million copies, breaking the Nielsen SoundScan record for the highest debut sales by any solo artist. It has sold over 20 million copies worldwide to date, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. Rob Sheffield of \"Rolling Stone\" said that \"the great thing about \"Oops!\"\u00a0\u2013 under the cheese surface, Britney's demand for satisfaction is complex, fierce and downright scary, making her a true child of rock & roll tradition.\" The album's lead single, \"Oops!... I Did It Again\", peaked at the top of the charts in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and many other European nations, while the second single, \"Lucky\", peaked at number one in Austria, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland. The album as well as the title track received Grammy nominations for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, respectively.\nThe same year, Spears embarked on the Oops!... I Did It Again Tour, which grossed $40.5 million; she also released her first book, \"Britney Spears' Heart to Heart\", co-written with her mother. On September 7, 2000, Spears performed at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards. Halfway through the performance, she ripped off her black suit to reveal a sequined flesh-colored bodysuit, followed by heavy dance routine. It is noted by critics as the moment that Spears showed signs of becoming a more provocative performer. Amidst media speculation, Spears confirmed she was dating NSYNC member Justin Timberlake. Spears and Timberlake both graduated from high school via distance learning from the University of Nebraska High School. She also bought a home in Destin, Florida. In her 2023 memoir, Spears revealed that she had an abortion in late 2000 while dating Timberlake after he said they were not prepared for parenthood. Spears called the abortion \"one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.\"\n2001\u20132002: \"Britney\" and \"Crossroads\".\nIn January 2001, Spears hosted the 28th Annual American Music Awards, starred at Rock in Rio alongside NSYNC, and performed as a special guest in the Super Bowl XXXV halftime show headlined by Aerosmith and NSYNC. In February 2001, she signed a $7\u20138 million promotional deal with Pepsi, and released another book co-written with her mother, \"A Mother's Gift\". Her third studio album, \"Britney\", was released in November 2001, with a funkier sound inspired by hip hop artists such as Jay-Z and the Neptunes. \"Britney\" debuted at number one in the \"Billboard\" 200 and reached top five positions in Australia, the United Kingdom, and mainland Europe, and has sold 10 million copies worldwide.\nStephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic called \"Britney\" \"the record where she strives to deepen her persona, making it more adult while still recognizably Britney.\u00a0... It does sound like the work of a star who has now found and refined her voice, resulting in her best record yet.\" It was nominated for the Grammy awards for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for \"Overprotected\", and in 2007 it was named one of the best albums of the preceding 25 years by \"Entertainment Weekly\". The lead single, \"I'm a Slave 4 U\", became a top-ten hit in several countries.\nSpears' performance of the single at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards featured a caged tiger (wrangled by Bhagavan Antle) and a large albino python draped over her shoulders. It was harshly received by animal rights organization PETA, who claimed the animals were mistreated and scrapped plans for an anti-fur billboard that was to feature Spears. Jocelyn Vena of MTV News summarized Spears' performance at the ceremony, saying, \"draping herself in a white python and slithering around a steamy garden setting \u2013 surrounded by dancers in zebra and tiger outfits \u2013 Spears created one of the most striking visuals in the 27-year history of the show.\"\nTo support the album, Spears embarked on the Dream Within a Dream Tour. The show was critically praised for its technical innovations, the \"pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance\" being a water screen that pumped two tons of water into the stage. The tour grossed $53.3 million, becoming the second highest-grossing tour of 2002 by a female artist, behind Cher's . Her career success was highlighted by \"Forbes\" in 2002, as Spears was ranked the world's most powerful celebrity. Spears also landed her first starring role in \"Crossroads\", released in February 2002. Although the film was largely panned, critics praised Spears' acting. The film was a box office success, grossing over $61.1 million worldwide on a $12 million budget.\nIn June 2002, Spears opened her first restaurant, Nyla, in New York City, but terminated her relationship in November due to mismanagement and \"management's failure to keep her fully apprised\". In July 2002, Spears announced she would take a six-month break from her career; however, she went back into the studio in November to record her new album. Spears' relationship with Justin Timberlake ended after three years. In November 2002, Timberlake released the song \"Cry Me a River\" as the second single from his solo debut album. The music video featured a Spears look-alike and fueled the rumors that she had been engaging in an affair, fueled by further rumors of possible relationships involving Timberlake's choreographer Wade Robson and Limp Bizkit's frontman Fred Durst. Spears had initially denied the allegations of a possible affair involving Durst, despite the two being spotted together on multiple occasions; even claiming the two had a friendly connection. In 2023, she admitted to engaging in an affair with Robson. As a response, Spears wrote the ballad \"Everytime\" with her backing vocalist and friend Annet Artani.\n2003\u20132005: \"In the Zone\" and first two marriages.\nIn August 2003, Spears opened the MTV Video Music Awards with Christina Aguilera, performing \"Like a Virgin\". Halfway through they were joined by Madonna, whom they both kissed. The incident was highly publicized. In 2008, MTV listed the performance as the number-one opening moment in the history of MTV Video Music Awards, while \"Blender\" cited it as one of the 25 sexiest music moments on television history.\nSpears released her fourth studio album, \"In the Zone\", in November 2003. She assumed more creative control by writing and co-producing most of the material. \"Vibe\" called it \"a supremely confident dance record that also illustrates Spears' development as a songwriter\". NPR named it one of the most important recordings of the decade, writing that \"the decade's history of impeccably crafted pop is written on her body of work\". \"In the Zone\" sold over 609,000 copies during its first week of availability in the United States, debuting at the top of the charts, making Spears the first female artist in the SoundScan era to have her first four studio albums to debut at number one. It also debuted at the top of the charts in France and the top ten in Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands. The album produced four singles: \"Me Against the Music\", a collaboration with Madonna; \"Toxic\"\u2014which won Spears her first Grammy for Best Dance Recording; \"Everytime\", and \"Outrageous\".\nIn January 2004, Spears married her childhood friend <templatestyles src=\"Template:Visible anchor/styles.css\" />Jason Allen Alexander at A Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada. The marriage was annulled 55 hours later, following a petition to the court that stated that Spears \"lacked understanding of her actions\".\nIn March 2004, Spears embarked on the Onyx Hotel Tour in support of \"In the Zone\". The tour was canceled in June 2004, when she fell and injured her left knee during the music video shoot for \"Outrageous\". She underwent arthroscopic surgery and wore a thigh brace for six weeks, followed by eight to twelve weeks of rehabilitation. That year, Spears became involved in the Kabbalah Centre through her friendship with Madonna.\nIn July 2004, Spears became engaged to dancer Kevin Federline, whom she had met three months earlier. The romance was the subject of intense media attention, since Federline had recently broken up with actress Shar Jackson, who was still pregnant with their second child at the time. The stages of their relationship were chronicled in Spears' first reality show \"\", which premiered on May 17, 2005, on UPN. Spears later referred to the show in a 2013 interview as \"probably the worst thing I've done in my career\". They held a wedding ceremony on September 18, 2004, but were not legally married until three weeks later on October 6 due to a delay finalizing the couple's prenuptial agreement.\nShortly after, she released her first perfume, Curious, with Elizabeth Arden, which broke the company's first-week gross for a perfume. In October 2004, Spears took a career break to start a family. ', her first greatest hits compilation album, was released in November 2004. Spears' cover version of Bobby Brown's \"My Prerogative\" was released as the lead single from the album, reaching the top of the charts in Finland, Ireland, Italy, and Norway. The second single, \"Do Somethin'\", was a top ten hit in Australia, the United Kingdom, and other countries of mainland Europe. In August 2005, Spears released \"Someday (I Will Understand)\", which was dedicated to her first child, a son named Sean Preston, who was born the following month. In November 2005, she released her first remix compilation, ', which consists of 11 remixes.\n2006\u20132007: Personal struggles and \"Blackout\".\nIn February 2006, pictures surfaced of Spears driving with her son, Sean, on her lap instead of in a car seat. Child advocates were horrified by the photos of her holding the wheel with one hand and Sean with the other. Spears claimed that the situation happened because of a frightening encounter with paparazzi, and that it was a mistake on her part. The following month, she guest-starred on the \"Will & Grace\" episode \"Buy, Buy Baby\" as closeted lesbian Amber-Louise. She announced she no longer studied Kabbalah in May 2006, explaining, \"my baby is my religion\". Spears posed nude for the August 2006 cover of \"Harper's Bazaar\"; the photograph was compared to Demi Moore's August 1991 \"Vanity Fair\" cover. In September 2006, she gave birth to her second son, Jayden James. In November 2006, Spears filed for divorce from Federline, citing irreconcilable differences. Their divorce was finalized in July 2007, when the two reached a global settlement and agreed to share joint custody of their sons.\nSpears' maternal aunt Sandra Bridges Covington, with whom she had been very close, died of ovarian cancer in January 2007. In February, Spears stayed in a drug rehabilitation facility in Antigua for less than a day. The following night, she shaved her head with electric clippers at a hair salon in Tarzana, Los Angeles. She admitted herself to other treatment facilities during the following weeks. In May 2007, she produced a series of promotional concerts at House of Blues venues, titled The M+M's Tour. In October 2007, Spears lost physical custody of her sons to Federline. The reasons of the court ruling were not revealed to the public. Spears was also sued by Louis Vuitton over her 2005 music video \"Do Somethin'\" for upholstering her Hummer interior in counterfeit Louis Vuitton cherry blossom fabric, which resulted in the video being banned on European TV stations.\nIn October 2007, Spears released her fifth studio album, \"Blackout\". The album debuted atop the charts in Canada and Ireland, at number two in the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200, France, Japan, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, and the top ten in Australia, South Korea, New Zealand, and many European nations. In the United States, it was Spears' first album not to debut at number one, although, she did become the only female artist to have her first five studio albums debut at the two top slots of the chart. The album received positive reviews from critics and had sold 3.1 million copies worldwide by the end of 2008. \"Blackout\" won Album of the Year at the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards and was listed as the fifth Best Pop Album of the Decade by \"The Times\".\nSpears performed the lead single, \"Gimme More\", at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards. The performance was widely panned by critics. Despite the criticism, the single enjoyed worldwide success, peaking at number one in Canada and within the top ten in almost every country it charted. The second single, \"Piece of Me\", reached the top of the charts in Ireland and reached the top five in Australia, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The third single, \"Break the Ice\", was released the following year, and respectively reached numbers seven and nine in Ireland and Canada. In December 2007, Spears began a relationship with paparazzo Adnan Ghalib.\n2008\u20132010: Conservatorship and \"Circus\".\nIn January 2008, Spears refused to relinquish custody of her sons to Federline's representatives. She was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after police that had arrived at her house noted she appeared to be under the influence of an unidentified substance. The following day, Spears' visitation rights were suspended at an emergency court hearing, and Federline was given sole physical and legal custody of their sons. She was committed to the psychiatric ward of Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and put on 5150 involuntary psychiatric hold under California state law. The court placed her under a conservatorship led by her father, Jamie Spears, and attorney Andrew Wallet, giving them complete control of her assets. She was released five days later.\nThe following month, Spears guest-starred on the \"How I Met Your Mother\" episode \"Ten Sessions\" as receptionist Abby. She received positive reviews for her performance, as well as bringing the series its highest ratings ever. In July 2008, Spears regained some visitation rights after coming to an agreement with Federline and his counsel. In September 2008, Spears opened the MTV Video Music Awards with a pre-taped comedy sketch with Jonah Hill and an introduction speech. She won Best Female Video, Best Pop Video, and Video of the Year for \"Piece of Me\". A 60-minute introspective documentary, \"\", was produced to chronicle Spears' return to the recording industry. Directed by Phil Griffin, \"For the Record\" was shot in Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and New York City during the third quarter of 2008. The documentary was broadcast on MTV to 5.6 million viewers for the two airings on the premiere night. It was the highest rating in its Sunday night timeslot and in the network's history. \nIn December 2008, Spears' sixth studio album, \"Circus\", was released. It received positive reviews from critics and debuted at number one in Canada, Czech Republic, and the United States, and within the top ten in many European nations. In the United States, Spears became the youngest female artist to have five albums debut at number one, earning a place in \"Guinness World Records\". She also became the only act in the SoundScan era to have four albums debut with 500,000 or more copies sold. The album was one of the fastest-selling albums of the year, and has sold 4 million copies worldwide. Its lead single, \"Womanizer\", became Spears' first chart-topper on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 since \"...Baby One More Time\". The single also topped the charts in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Norway, and Sweden. It was also nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording.\nIn January 2009, Spears and her father obtained a restraining order against her former manager Sam Lutfi, ex-boyfriend Adnan Ghalib, and attorney Jon Eardley, all of whom had been accused of conspiring to gain control of Spears' affairs. Spears embarked on The Circus Starring Britney Spears tour in March 2009. With a gross of U.S. $131.8 million, it became the fifth highest-grossing tour of the year. In November 2009, Spears released her second greatest hits album, \"The Singles Collection\". The album's lead and only single, \"3\", became her third number-one single in the U.S.\nIn May 2010, Spears' representatives confirmed she was dating her agent, Jason Trawick, and that they had decided to end their professional relationship to focus on their personal relationship. Spears designed a limited edition clothing line for Candie's, which was released in stores in July 2010. In September 2010, she made a cameo appearance on a Spears-themed tribute episode of the television series \"Glee\", titled \"Britney/Brittany\"; the episode drew the highest Nielsen rating\u00a0\u2013 up to that point in the series's run\u00a0\u2013 in the 18\u201349 demographic.\n2011\u20132012: \"Femme Fatale\" and \"The X Factor\".\nIn March 2011, Spears released her seventh studio album, \"Femme Fatale\". The album peaked at number one in the United States, Canada, and Australia, and within the top ten on nearly every other chart. Its peak in the United States tied Spears with Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson for the third-most number ones among women. \"Femme Fatale\" has been certified platinum by the RIAA and as of February 2014, it had sold 2.4 million copies worldwide.\nThe album's lead single, \"Hold It Against Me\", debuted atop the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, becoming Spears' fourth number-one single on the chart and making her the second artist in history to have two consecutive singles debut at number one, after Mariah Carey. The second single, \"Till the World Ends\", peaked at number three on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 in May, while the third single, \"I Wanna Go\", reached number seven in August. \"Femme Fatale\" became Spears' first album in which three of its songs reached the top ten of the chart. The fourth and final single \"Criminal\" was released in September 2011. The music video sparked controversy when British politicians criticized Spears for using replica guns while filming the video in a London area that had been badly affected by the 2011 England riots. Spears' management briefly responded, stating, \"The video is a fantasy story featuring Britney's boyfriend, Jason Trawick, which literally plays out the lyrics of a song written three years before the riots ever happened.\" In April 2011, Spears appeared in a remix of Rihanna's song \"S&M\". It reached number one in the US later that month, giving Spears her fifth number one on the chart. On \"Billboard\"'s 2011 Year-End list, Spears was ranked number fourteen on the Artists of the Year, thirty-two on \"Billboard\" 200 artists, and ten on \"Billboard\" Hot 100 artists. Spears co-wrote \"Whiplash\", a song from the album \"When the Sun Goes Down\" (2011) by Selena Gomez & the Scene.\nIn June 2011, Spears embarked on her Femme Fatale Tour. The first ten dates of the tour grossed $6.2 million, landing the fifty-fifth spot on \"Pollstar\"'s Top 100 North American Tours list for the half-way point of the year. The tour ended on December 10, 2011, in Puerto Rico, after 79 performances. A DVD of the tour was released in November 2011. In August 2011, Spears received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards. The next month, she released her second remix album, \"\". In December 2011, Spears became engaged to her long-time boyfriend Jason Trawick, who had formerly been her agent. Trawick was legally granted a role as co-conservator, alongside her father, in April 2012.\nIn May 2012, Spears was hired to replace Paula Abdul as a judge for the second season of the USA show of \"The X Factor\", joining Simon Cowell, L.A. Reid, and fellow new judge Demi Lovato, who replaced Nicole Scherzinger. With a reported salary of $15 million, she became the highest-paid judge on a singing competition series in television history. However, Katy Perry broke her record in 2018 after Perry was signed for a $25-million salary to serve as a judge on ABC's revival of \"American Idol\". Spears mentored the Teens category; her final act, Carly Rose Sonenclar, was named the runner-up of the season. Spears did not return for the show's third season and was replaced by Paulina Rubio.\nSpears appeared on the song \"Scream & Shout\" with will.i.am, which was released as the third single from his fourth studio album, \"#willpower\" (2013). The song later became Spears' sixth number-one single on the UK Singles Chart and peaked at number three on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. \"Scream & Shout\" was among the best-selling songs of 2012 and 2013 with denoting sales of over 8.1 million worldwide, the accompanying music video was the third most-viewed video in 2013 on Vevo despite the video being released in 2012. In December 2012, \"Forbes\" named her music's top-earning woman of 2012, with estimated earnings of $58 million.\n2013\u20132015: \"Britney Jean\" and Britney: Piece of Me.\nSpears began work on her eighth studio album, \"Britney Jean\", in December 2012, and enlisted will.i.am as its executive producer in May 2013. In January 2013, Spears and Jason Trawick ended their engagement. Trawick was also removed as Spears' co-conservator, restoring her father as the sole conservator. Following the breakup, she began dating David Lucado in March; the couple split in August 2014. During the production of \"Britney Jean\", Spears recorded the song \"Ooh La La\" for the soundtrack of \"The Smurfs 2\", which was released in June 2013.\nOn September 17, 2013, she appeared on \"Good Morning America\" to announce her two-year concert residency at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, titled . It began on December 27, 2013, and included a total of 100 shows throughout 2014 and 2015. During the same appearance, Spears announced that \"Britney Jean\" would be released on December 3, 2013, in the United States. It was released through RCA Records due to the disbandment of Jive Records in 2011, which had formed the joint RCA/Jive Label Group (initially known as BMG Label Group) between 2007 and 2011.\n\"Britney Jean\" became Spears' final project under her original recording contract with Jive, which had guaranteed the release of eight studio albums. The record received a low amount of promotion and had little commercial impact, reportedly due to time conflicts involving preparations for Britney: Piece of Me. Upon its release, the record debuted at number four on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200 with first-week sales of 107,000 copies, becoming her lowest-peaking and lowest-selling album in the United States. \"Britney Jean\" debuted at number 34 on the UK Albums Chart, selling 12,959 copies in its first week. In doing so, it became Spears' lowest-charting and lowest-selling album in the country.\n\"Work Bitch\" was released as the lead single from \"Britney Jean\" in September 2013. It debuted and peaked at number 12 on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100 marking Spears' 31st entry on the chart and the fifth highest debut of her career on the chart, and her seventh in the top 20. It also marked Spears' 19th top 20 entry and overall her 23rd top 40 single. The song marked Spears' highest sales debut since her 2011 number-one single \"Hold It Against Me\". \"Work Bitch\" debuted and peaked at number seven on the UK Singles Chart. The song also peaked within the top ten of the charts in Brazil, Canada, France, Italy, Mexico, and Spain.\nThe second single, \"Perfume\", premiered in November 2013. It debuted and peaked at number 76 on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100. In October 2013, she was featured as a guest vocalist on the song \"SMS (Bangerz)\" by Miley Cyrus, from the latter's fourth studio album, \"Bangerz\" (2013). On January 8, 2014, Spears won Favorite Pop Artist at the 40th People's Choice Awards at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. In August 2014, Spears confirmed she had renewed her contract with RCA and that she was writing and recording new music for her next album.\nSpears announced via Twitter in August 2014 that she would be releasing an intimate apparel line called \"The Intimate Britney Spears\". It was available to be purchased beginning on September 9, 2014, in the United States and Canada through Spears' Intimate Collection website. It was later available on September 25 for purchase in Europe. The company now ships to over 200 countries including Australia and New Zealand. On September 25, 2014, Spears confirmed on \"Good Morning Britain\" that she extended her contract to perform her Britney: Piece of Me concert residency at Planet Hollywood Las Vegas for two additional years. Spears began dating television producer Charlie Ebersol in October 2014. The pair were split in June 2015.\nOn May 14, 2015, Spears released a single, \"Pretty Girls\", with Iggy Azalea. It reached number 29 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and charted moderately in international territories. Spears and Azalea performed the track live at the 2015 \"Billboard\" Music Awards from The AXIS, the home of Spears' residency, to positive critical response. \"Entertainment Weekly\" praised the performance, noting \"Spears gave one of her most energetic televised performances in years.\"\nOn June 16, 2015, Giorgio Moroder released the album \"D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu\", which featured Spears on \"Tom's Diner\". The song was released as the fourth single from the album on October 9, 2015. In an interview, Moroder praised Spears' vocals and said she \"sounds so good that you would hardly recognize her\". At the 2015 Teen Choice Awards, Spears received the Candie's Style Icon Award, her ninth Teen Choice Award. In November 2015, Spears guest-starred as a fictionalized version of herself on the CW series \"Jane the Virgin\". On the show, she danced to \"Toxic\" with Gina Rodriguez's character.\n2016\u20132018: \"Glory\", continued residency, and the Piece of Me Tour.\nIn November 2015, Spears confirmed via social media that she had begun recording her ninth studio album. On March 1, 2016, \"V\" announced that Spears would appear on the cover of its 100th issue, dated March 8, 2016, in addition to revealing three different covers shot by photographer Mario Testino for the milestone publication. The \"V\" editor-in-chief, Stephen Gan, said Spears was selected because of her status as an icon in the industry, and asked: \"Who in our world did not grow up listening to her music?\" In May 2016, Spears launched a casual role-play gaming application, \"\". The app, created by Glu Mobile, was made available through both iOS and Google Play.\nOn May 22, 2016, Spears performed a medley of her past singles at the 2016 \"Billboard\" Music Awards. In addition to opening the show, Spears was honored with the \"Billboard\" Millennium Award. On July 15, 2016, Spears released the lead single, \"Make Me\", from her ninth studio album, featuring guest vocals from American rapper G-Eazy. The album, \"Glory\", was formally released on August 26, 2016. On August 16, 2016, MTV and Spears announced that she would perform at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards. The performance marked Spears' first time returning to the VMA stage after her widely panned performance of \"Gimme More\" at the 2007 show nine years earlier. Along with \"Make Me\", Spears and G-Eazy also performed the latter's hit song \"Me, Myself & I\".\nSpears appeared on the cover of \"Marie Claire\" UK for the October 2016 issue. In the publication, Spears revealed that she had suffered from crippling anxiety in the past, and that motherhood played a major role in helping her overcome it. \"My boys don't care if everything isn't perfect. They don't judge me\", Spears said in the issue. In November 2016, during an interview with Las Vegas Blog, Spears confirmed she had already begun work on her next album, stating: \"I'm not sure what I want the next album to sound like.\u00a0... I just know that I'm excited to get into the studio again and actually have already been back recording.\" In the same month, she released a remix version of \"Slumber Party\" as the second single from \"Glory\", featuring Tinashe.\nShe began dating \"Slumber Party\"'s music video co-star Sam Asghari after the two met on set. In January 2017, Spears received four wins out of four nominations at the 43rd People's Choice Awards, including Favorite Pop Artist, Female Artist, Social Media Celebrity, as well as Comedic Collaboration for a skit with Ellen DeGeneres for \"The Ellen DeGeneres Show\". In March 2017, Spears announced that her residency concert would be performed abroad as a world tour, , with dates in select Asian cities. In April 2017, the Israeli Labor Party announced that it would reschedule its July primary election to avoid conflict with Spears' sold-out Tel Aviv concert, citing traffic, and security concerns.\nSpears' manager Larry Rudolph also announced the residency would not be extended following her contract expiration with Caesars Entertainment at the end of 2017. On April 29, 2017, Spears became the first recipient of the Icon Award at the 2017 Radio Disney Music Awards. On November 4, 2017, Spears attended the grand opening of the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation Britney Spears Campus in Las Vegas. Later that month, \"Forbes\" announced that Spears was the 8th highest earning female musician, earning $34 million in 2017. On December 31, 2017, Spears performed the final show of Britney: Piece of Me. The final performance reportedly brought in $1.172 million, setting a new box office record for a single show in Las Vegas, and breaking the record previously held by Jennifer Lopez. Performances of \"Toxic\" and \"Work Bitch\" were recorded on earlier dates and aired on ABC's \"Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve\" to a record audience of 25.6 million.\nIn January 2018, Spears released her 24th perfume with Elizabeth Arden, Sunset Fantasy, and announced the Piece of Me Tour which took place in July 2018 in North America and Europe. Tickets were sold out within minutes for major cities, and additional dates were added to meet the demand. Pitbull was the supporting act for the European leg. The tour ranked at 86 and 30 on \"Pollstar\"'s 2018 Year-End Top 100 Tours chart both in North America and worldwide, respectively. In total, the tour grossed $54.3 million with 260,531 tickets sold and was the sixth highest-grossing female tour of 2018, and was the United Kingdom's second best-selling female tour of 2018.\nOn March 20, 2018, Spears was announced as part of a campaign for French luxury fashion house Kenzo. The company said it aimed to shake up the 'jungle' world of fashion with Spears' 'La Collection Memento No. 2' campaign. On April 12, 2018, Spears was honored with the 2018 GLAAD Vanguard Award at the GLAAD Media Awards for her role in \"accelerating acceptance for the LGBTQ community\". On April 27, 2018, Epic Rights announced a new partnership with Spears to debut her own fashion line in 2019, which would include clothing, fitness apparel, accessories, and electronics.\nIn July 2018, Spears released her first unisex fragrance, Prerogative. On October 18, 2018, Spears announced her second Las Vegas residency show, Britney: Domination, which was set to launch at Park MGM's Park Theatre on February 13, 2019. Spears was slated to make $507,000 per show, which would have made her the highest paid act on the Las Vegas Strip. On October 21, 2018, Spears performed at the Formula One Grand Prix in Austin, the final performance of her Piece of Me Tour.\n2019\u20132021: Conservatorship dispute, #FreeBritney, and abuse allegations.\nOn January 4, 2019, Spears announced an indefinite hiatus and the cancellation of her Las Vegas residency after her father, Jamie, suffered a near-fatal colon rupture. In March 2019, Andrew Wallet resigned as co-conservator of her estate after 11 years. Spears entered a psychiatric facility amidst stress from her father's illness that same month. The following month, a fan podcast, \"Britney's Gram\", released a voicemail message from a source who claimed to be a former member of Spears' legal team. They alleged that Jamie had canceled the residency due to Spears' refusal to take her medication, that he had been holding her in the facility against her will since January 2019 after she violated a no-driving rule, and that her conservatorship was supposed to have ended in 2009. The allegations gave rise to a movement to terminate the conservatorship, #FreeBritney, which received support from celebrities including singers Cher, Paris Hilton, and Miley Cyrus, and the nonprofit organization American Civil Liberties Union. On April 22, 2019, fans protested outside the West Hollywood City Hall and demanded Spears' release. Spears said \"all [was] well\" two days later and left the facility later that month.\nIn a May 2019 hearing, Judge Brenda Penny ordered a professional evaluation of the conservatorship. In September, Spears' ex-husband Federline obtained a restraining order against Britney's father, Jamie, following an alleged physical altercation between Jamie and one of her sons. Spears' longtime care manager, Jodi Montgomery, temporarily replaced Jamie as her conservator that same month, which also saw a hearing where no decisions about the arrangement were reached. An interactive pop-up museum dedicated to Spears, dubbed \"The Zone\", opened in Los Angeles in February 2020, though it was later suspended in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. She released \"Glory\"'s Japanese-exclusive bonus track, \"Mood Ring\" as a single, and debuted a new cover of the album to streaming and digital platforms worldwide in May 2020. In August, Jamie called the #FreeBritney movement \"a joke\" and its organizers \"conspiracy theorists\".\nOn August 17, 2020, Spears' court-appointed lawyer, Samuel D. Ingham III, submitted a court filing that documented Spears' desire to have her conservatorship altered to reflect her wishes as well as lifestyle, to instate Montgomery as her permanent conservator, and to replace Jamie with a fiduciary as conservator of her estate. Four days later, Penny extended the established arrangement until February 2021. In November 2020, Penny approved Bessemer Trust as co-conservator of Spears' estate alongside Jamie. The following month, Spears released a new deluxe edition of \"Glory\", which includes \"Mood Ring\" and new songs \"Swimming in the Stars\" and \"Matches\".\nA documentary about Spears' career and conservatorship, \"Framing Britney Spears\", premiered on FX in February 2021. Spears later revealed that she had seen parts of the documentary, stating that she felt humiliated by the perception of her that was presented and that she \"cried for two weeks\" following the initial broadcast. The following month, Ingham filed a petition to permanently replace Jamie with Montgomery as the conservator of Spears' person, citing a 2014 order that determined that Spears did not have the capacity to consent to medical treatment of any form.\nOn June 22, 2021, shortly before Spears was set to speak to the court, \"The New York Times\" obtained confidential court documents stating that Spears had pushed for years to end her conservatorship. Spears spoke to the court on June 23, calling the conservatorship \"abusive\". She said she had lied by \"telling the whole world I'm OK and I'm happy\", and that she was traumatized and angry. The court statement received widespread media coverage and generated over 1 million shares on Twitter, over 500,000 messages using the tag #FreeBritney, and more than 150,000 messages with a new hashtag referencing the court appearance, #BritneySpeaks.\nOn July 1, Bessemer Trust asked the judge to allow them to withdraw from the conservatorship, saying that they had been misled and had entered into the arrangement on the understanding that the conservatorship was voluntary. The same day, senators Elizabeth Warren and Bob Casey Jr. called on federal agencies to increase oversight of the country's conservatorship systems. Spears' manager of 25 years, Larry Rudolph, resigned on July 6 due to her \"intention to officially retire\" and on that same day, it was reported that Ingham planned to file documents to the court asking to be dismissed. In a July 14 hearing, Judge Penny approved the resignations of Bessemer Trust and Ingham. The court also approved of Spears' request to hire attorney Mathew S. Rosengart to represent her. Rosengart informed the court that he would be working to terminate the conservatorship. Later that day, Spears publicly endorsed the #FreeBritney movement for the first time, using the hashtag in a caption on an Instagram post. She mentioned feeling \"blessed\" after earning \"real representation\", referring to Judge Penny's decision to allow her to choose her own counsel.\nOn July 26, Rosengart filed a petition seeking to remove Jamie as conservator of Spears' estate and to replace him with Jason Rubin, a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) at Certified Strategies Inc. in Woodland Hills, California. On August 12, Jamie agreed to step down as conservator at some future date, with his lawyers stating that he wanted \"an orderly transition to a new conservator\". On September 7, Jamie filed a petition to end the conservatorship. Five days later, Spears announced her engagement to her longtime boyfriend, Sam Asghari, through an Instagram post. On September 29, Judge Penny suspended Jamie as conservator of Spears' estate, with accountant John Zabel replacing him on a temporary basis. On November 12, Judge Penny terminated the conservatorship.\n2022\u2013present: Third marriage, \"The Woman in Me\", and retirement from singing.\nIn April 2022, she announced her pregnancy with Asghari's child, which ended in a miscarriage the following month. The couple married on June 9 at her home in Thousand Oaks, Los Angeles. None of Spears' immediate family (including her parents, sister, and brother) were invited; her two sons did not attend. Spears' first husband, Jason Alexander, attempted to crash the wedding by breaking into her home, armed with a knife, but was arrested. Spears had a three-year restraining order against him. On August 26, Spears and English musician Elton John released the duet \"Hold Me Closer\", a remake of John's 1972 single \"Tiny Dancer\". It was Spears' first musical release since the termination of her conservatorship. \"Hold Me Closer\" debuted at number six on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100, becoming her 14th top-ten single and her highest-charting song in the chart since \"Scream & Shout\" (2012). It debuted at number three on the UK Singles Chart, earning Spears her 24th top-ten.\nSince the termination of her conservatorship, Spears' personal life, social media presence, and overall well-being have been subject to renewed media interest and fan speculation, giving rise to conspiracy theories. On January 24, 2023, deputies from the Ventura County Sheriff's Office performed a welfare check at Spears' residence after receiving several calls from fans who were concerned after she deleted her Instagram account. A spokesperson for the Sheriff's Department stated that Spears \"was safe and in no danger\". Spears addressed the incident on her Twitter account, asking fans to respect her privacy. Spears and the rapper will.i.am released their single, \"Mind Your Business\", on July 21, 2023. On August 16, it was announced Spears and Asghari separated after 14 months of marriage. On May 1, 2024, they reached a divorce settlement. The following day, the judge signed off on the settlement and the couple were divorced on December 2, 2024. In September 2023, an additional welfare check was initiated when Spears posted an Instagram video of herself dancing with knives. Her security team assured the attending officer that there was no immediate threat to her safety, and the officer departed. Spears also clarified that the knives were not real.\nIn February 2022, Spears signed a $15 million book deal for a memoir in one of the biggest book deals of all time. The memoir, \"The Woman in Me,\" was released on October 24, 2023. It details her rise to fame, public media events, her conservatorship, and her newfound freedom. In the United States, it sold 1.1 million copies, while worldwide it sold 2.4 million copies in print sales during its first week of release.\nIn January 2024, reports circulated that Charli XCX and Julia Michaels had been asked to write songs for Spears, and \"Rolling Stone\" reported that \"management and A&R are trying to get her excited for the music\". Spears denied the reports, saying she would never return to the music industry. However, she also said that she had written more than 20 songs for other artists in the previous two years. In May 2024, Charli XCX confirmed in an interview that she was indeed asked to write for Spears, for which she traveled to Malibu, but that she did not know if Spears was a part of the process explaining that \"the team were present... But she didn't record it. She obviously didn't.\"\nArtistry.\nInfluences.\nSpears has cited Madonna, Janet Jackson, and Whitney Houston as major influences, her \"three favorite artists\" as a child, whom she would \"sing along to\u00a0... day and night in [her] living room\"; Houston's \"I Have Nothing\" was the song she auditioned to that landed her record deal with Jive Records. Spears also named Mariah Carey as \"one of the main reasons I started singing\". Throughout her career, Spears has drawn frequent comparisons to Madonna and Jackson in particular, in terms of vocals, choreography, and stage presence. According to Spears: \"I know when I was younger, I looked up to people\u00a0... like, you know, Janet Jackson and Madonna. And they were major inspirations for me. But I also had my own identity and I knew who I was.\"\nIn the 2002 book \"Madonnastyle\" by Carol Clerk, she is quoted saying: \"I have been a huge fan of Madonna since I was a little girl. She's the person that I've really looked up to. I would really, really like to be a legend like Madonna.\" Spears cited \"That's the Way Love Goes\" as the inspiration for her song \"Touch of My Hand\" from her album \"In the Zone\", saying \"I like to compare it to 'That's the Way Love Goes,' kind of a Janet Jackson thing.\" She also said her song \"Just Luv Me\" from her \"Glory\" album also reminded her of \"That's the Way Love Goes\".\nAfter meeting Spears face to face, Janet Jackson stated: \"she said to me, 'I'm such a big fan; I really admire you.' That's so flattering. Everyone gets inspiration from some place. And it's awesome to see someone else coming up who's dancing and singing, and seeing how all these kids relate to her. A lot of people put it down, but what she does is a positive thing.\" Madonna said of Spears in the documentary \"\": \"I admire her talent as an artist\u00a0... There are aspects about her that I recognize in myself when I first started out in my career\". Spears has also named Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Sheryl Crow, Otis Redding, Shania Twain, Brandy, Beyonc\u00e9, Natalie Imbruglia, Cher, and Prince as inspirations, and younger artists such as Selena Gomez and Ariana Grande.\nMusical style.\nSpears is described as a pop artist and generally explores the genre in the form of Following her debut, she was credited with influencing the revival of teen pop in the late 1990s. Rob Sheffield of \"Rolling Stone\" wrote: \"Spears carries on the classic archetype of the rock & roll teen queen, the dungaree doll, the angel baby who just has to make a scene.\" In a review of \"...Baby One More Time\", Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic described her music as a \"blend of infectious, rap-inflected dance-pop and smooth balladry\". \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" saw Spears working with several R&B producers to create \"a combination of bubblegum, urban soul, and raga\". Her third studio album, \"Britney\", derived from the teen pop niche \"[r]hythmically and melodically\", but was described as \"sharper, tougher than what came before\", incorporating genres such as R&B, disco, and funk.\nSpears has explored and heavily incorporated the genres of electropop and dance music in her records, as well as influences of urban and hip hop, which are most present on \"In the Zone\" and \"Blackout\". \"In the Zone\" also experiments with Euro trance, reggae, and Middle Eastern music. \"Femme Fatale\" and \"Britney Jean\" were also heavily influenced by electronic music genres. Spears' ninth studio album, \"Glory\", is more eclectic and experimental than her previous released work. She commented that it \"took a lot of time\u00a0... it's really different\u00a0... there are like two or three songs that go in the direction of more urban that I've wanted to do for a long time now, and I just haven't really done that.\"\n\"...Baby One More Time\" and \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" address themes such as love and relationships from a teenager's point of view. Following the massive commercial success of her first two studio albums, Spears' team and producers wanted to maintain the formula that took her to the top of the charts. Spears, however, was no longer satisfied with the sound and themes covered on her records. She co-wrote five songs and choose each track's producer on her third studio album, \"Britney\", which lyrics address the subjects of reaching adulthood, sexuality, and self-discovery. Sex, dancing, freedom, and love continued to be Spears' music main subjects on her subsequent albums. Her fifth studio effort, \"Blackout\", also addresses issues such as fame and media scrutiny, including on the song \"Piece of Me\".\nSpears' music has also been noted for some catchphrases. The opening in her debut single \"...Baby One More Time\", \"Oh, baby baby\" is considered to be one of her signature lines and has been parodied in the media by various artists such as Nicole Scherzinger and Ariana Grande. It has been used in variating forms throughout her music, such as simply, \"baby\" and \"oh baby\", as well as the \"Blackout\" track, \"Ooh Ooh Baby\". On the initial development of \"...Baby One More Time\", Barry Weiss noted Spears' inception of the catchphrase from her strange ad-libbing during the recording of the song. He commented further, \"We thought it was really weird at first. It was strange. It was not the way Max wrote it. But it worked! We thought it could be a really good opening salvo for her.\" The opening line in \"Gimme More\", \"It's Britney, bitch\" has become another signature phrase. An early review of \"Blackout\" suggested the phrase was \"simply laughable\". Amy Roberts of \"Bustle\" called it \"an indelible cultural turning point, transforming a frenetic, floundering moment in the superstar's career to one of strength and empowerment\".\nVoice.\nSpears is a soprano. Other sources state that she possesses a contralto vocal range. Prior to her breakthrough success, she is described as having sung \"much deeper than her highly recognizable trademark voice of today\", with Eric Foster White, who worked with Spears on her debut album, \"...Baby One More Time\", being cited as \"[shaping] her voice over the course of a month\" upon being signed to Jive Records \"to where it is today\u2014distinctively, unmistakably Britney\". Rami Yacoub, who co-produced Spears' debut album with lyricist Max Martin, commented, \"I know from Denniz Pop and Max's previous productions, when we do songs, there's kind of a nasal thing. With N' Sync and the Backstreet Boys, we had to push for that mid-nasal voice. When Britney did that, she got this kind of raspy, sexy voice.\"\nGuy Blackman of \"The Age\" wrote that \"[t]he thing about Spears, though, is that her biggest songs, no matter how committee-created or impossibly polished, have always been convincing because of her delivery, her commitment and her presence.\u00a0... Spears expresses perfectly the conflicting urges of adolescence, the tension between chastity and sexual experience, between hedonism and responsibility, between confidence and vulnerability.\" Producer William Orbit, who worked with Spears on her album \"Britney Jean\", stated regarding her vocals: \"[Britney] didn't get so big just because [she] put on great shows; [she] got to be that way because [her voice is] unique: you hear two words and you know who is singing\".\nSpears has also been criticized for her reliance on Auto-Tune and her vocals being \"over-processed\" on records. Erlewine criticized Spears' singing abilities in a review of her \"Blackout\" album, stating: \"Never the greatest vocalist, her thin squawk could be dismissed early in her career as an adolescent learning the ropes, but nearly a decade later her singing hasn't gotten any better, even if the studio tools to masquerade her weaknesses have.\" Joan Anderman of \"The Boston Globe\" remarked that \"Spears sounds robotic, nearly inhuman, on her records, so processed is her voice by digital pitch-shifters and synthesizers.\"\nKayla Upadhyaya of \"The Michigan Daily\" has provided a different point of view, stating: \"Auto-tuned and over-processed vocals define [Spears]'s voice as an artist, and in her music, auto-tune isn't so much a gimmick as it is an instrument used to highlight, contort and make a statement.\" Adam Markovitz of \"Entertainment Weekly\" opines that \"Spears is no technical singer, that's for sure. But backed by Martin and Dr. Luke's wall of sound, her vocals melt into a mix of babytalk coo and coital panting that is, in its own overprocessed way, just as iconic and propulsive as Michael Jackson's yips or Eminem's snarls.\"\nStage performances and videos.\nSpears is known for her stage performances, particularly the elaborate dance routines which incorporate \"belly-dancing and tempered erotic moves\" that are credited with influencing \"dance-heavy acts\" such as Danity Kane and the Pussycat Dolls. \"Rolling Stone\" readers voted Spears their second-favorite dancing musician. Spears is described as being much more shy than her stage persona suggests. She said that performing is \"a boost to [her] confidence. It's like an alter-ego type thing. Something clicks and I go and turn into this different person. I think it's kind of a gift to be able to do that.\" Her 2000, 2001, and 2003 MTV Video Music Awards performances were lauded, while her 2007 presentation was widely panned by critics, as she \"teetered through her dance steps and mouthed only occasional words\". \"Billboard\" called her 2016 \"comeback\" performance at the show \"an effective, but not entirely glorious, bid to regain pop superstardom\".\nAfter her knee injuries and personal problems, Spears' \"showmanship\" and dance abilities came under criticism. Serge F. Kovaleski of \"The New York Times\" watched her in 2016 and stated: \"Once a fluid, natural dancer, Ms. Spears can appear stiff, even robotic, today, relying on flailing arms and flashy sets.\" \"Las Vegas Sun\"'s Robin Leach seemed more impressed over Spears' efforts on the concert by saying that she delivered a \"flawless performance\" on the residency's opening night.\nIt has been widely reported that Spears lip-syncs during live performances, which often prompts criticism from music critics and concert goers. Some, however, claimed that, although she \"got plenty of digital support\", she \"doesn't merely lip-sync\" during her live shows. In 2016, Sabrina Weiss of Refinery29 referred to her lip-syncing as a \"well-known fact that's not even taboo anymore.\" Noting on the prevalence of lip-syncing, the \"Los Angeles Daily News\" opined: \"In the context of a Britney Spears concert, does it really matter?\u00a0... you [just] go for the somewhat-ridiculous spectacle of it all\". Spears herself has commented on the topic, arguing: \"Because I'm dancing so much, I do have a little bit of playback, but there's a mixture of my voice and the playback.\u00a0... It really pisses me off because I'm busting my ass out there and singing at the same time and nobody ever gives me credit for it\".\nIn 2012, VH1 ranked Spears as the fourth Greatest Woman of the Video Era, while \"Billboard\" ranked her as the eight Greatest Music Video Artist of All Time in 2020, explaining: \"The storylines, the dancing, the \"outfits\". Right from the start, the pop princess established the lengths of her creativity with some of the most memorable videos of the last three decades.\" She has been retroactively noted as the pioneer for her early career videography. She conceptualized the \"iconic Catholic schoolgirl and cheerleader motif\" in the \"...Baby One More Time\" video, rejecting the animation video idea. She also made the \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" video \"dance-centric rather than space-centric as her producers suggested\". She also used her dancer's intuition to help select the beats for each track.\nPublic image.\nUpon launching her music career with \"...Baby One More Time\", Spears was labeled a teen idol, and \"Rolling Stone\" described her as \"the latest model of a classic product: the unneurotic pop star who performs her duties with vaudevillian pluck and spokesmodel charm.\" The April 1999 cover of \"Rolling Stone\" pictured a 17-year-old Spears reclining on a bed, wearing an exposed bra and hot pants while cradling a Teletubby in one arm. The American Family Association (AFA) decried the image as \"a disturbing mix of childhood innocence and adult sexuality\" and called on \"God-loving Americans to boycott stores selling Britney's albums\". Spears addressed the outcry, commenting: \"What's the big deal? I have strong morals.\u00a0... I'd do it again. I thought the pictures were fine. And I was tired of being compared to Debbie Gibson and all of this bubblegum pop all the time.\" Shortly before this, Spears had announced publicly she would remain abstinent until marriage.\nAn early criticism of Spears dismissed her as \"the product of a Swedish songwriting factory that had no real hand in either her music or her persona\". \"Vox\" editor Constance Grady wrote this was perpetuated from the fact that Spears debuted in the late 1990s, when music was dominated by rockism, that prizes \"so-called authenticity and grittiness of rock above all else\". Spears' \"slick, breezy pop was an affront to rockist sensibilities, and claiming that Spears was fake was an easy way to dismiss her.\" Ron Levy for \"Rolling Stone\" noted that \"I have to tell you, if the record company could have created more than one Britney Spears, they would have done it, and they tried!\"\n\"Billboard\" opined that, by the time Spears released her second album, \"Oops!... I Did It Again\", \"There was a shift occurring in both the music and her public image: She was sharper, sexier and singing about more grown-up fare, setting the stage for 2001's \"Britney\", which shed her innocent skin and ushered her into adulthood.\" \"Britney\"'s lead single, \"I'm a Slave 4 U\", and its music video were also credited for distancing her from her previous \"wholesome bubblegum star\" image. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic remarked, \"If 2001's \"Britney\" was a transitional album, capturing Spears at the point when she wasn't a girl and not yet a woman, its 2003 follow-up, \"In the Zone\", is where she has finally completed that journey and turned into Britney, the Adult Woman.\" Erlewine likened Spears to fellow singer Christina Aguilera, explaining that both equated \"maturity with transparent sexuality and the pounding sounds of nightclubs\". Brittany Spanos of \"LA Weekly\" stated that Spears \"set the bar for the 'adulthood' transition teen pop stars often struggle with\".\nSpears' erratic behavior and personal problems during 2006\u20132008 were highly publicized and affected both her career and public image. Erlewine writes that \"each new disaster [was] stripping away any residual sexiness in her public image\". In a 2008 article, \"Rolling Stone\"'s Vanessa Grigoriadis described her much-publicized personal issues as \"the most public downfall of any star in history\". Spears later received favorable media attention; \"Billboard\" wrote that her appearance at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards \"was a picture of professionalism and poise\" after her \"disastrous\" performance the previous year, while \"Business Insider\" ran an article on how she had \"lost control of her life\u00a0... and then made an incredible career comeback\". In 2017, Spears said: \"I think I had to give myself more breaks through my career and take responsibility for my mental health.\u00a0... I wrote back then, that I was lost and didn't know what to do with myself. I was trying to please everyone around me because that's who I am deep inside. There are moments where I look back and think: 'What the hell was I thinking?'\"\nIn September 2002, Spears was placed at number eight on VH1's 100 Sexiest Artists list. She was placed at number one on \"FHM\"'s 100 Sexiest Women in the World list in 2004, and, in December 2012, \"Complex\" ranked her 12th on its 100 Hottest Female Singers of All Time list. Remarking upon her perceived image as a sex symbol, Spears stated: \"When I'm on stage, that's my time to do my thing and go there and be that \u2014 and it's fun. It's exhilarating just to be something that you're not. And people tend to believe it.\" In 2003, \"People\" cited her as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People.\nSpears is recognized as a gay icon and received the 2018 GLAAD Vanguard Award at the GLAAD Media Awards for her role in \"accelerating acceptance for the LGBTQ community\". She addressed the \"unwavering loyalty\" and \"lack of judgment\" of her LGBTQ fans in \"Billboard\"'s Love Letters to the LGBTQ Community. She said: \"Your stories are what inspire me, bring me joy, and make me and my sons strive to be better people.\" Manuel Betancourt of \"Vice\" wrote about the \"queer adoration\", especially of gay men, on Spears, and said that \"Where other gay icons exude self-possession, Spears' fragile resilience has made her an even more fascinating role model, closer to Judy Garland than to Lady Gaga\u00a0... she's a glittering mirror ball, a fractured reflection of those men on the dance floor back onto themselves.\" \"HuffPost\"'s Ben Appel attributed Spears' status as a gay icon to her \"oh-so-innocent/not that innocent\" Monroe-like sensuality, her sweet, almost saccharine nature, her beyond basic but addictive pop songs, her dance moves, her phoenix-out-of-the-fire comeback from a series of mental health crises, and her unmistakable tenderness. \"Britney is camp. She is a fashion plate. A doll. Britney is a drag queen.\"\nSince her early years in the public eye, Spears has been a tabloid fixture and a paparazzi target. According to \"Vanity Fair\", photos of Spears sold for a combined value of $100 million in 2007. Harvey Levin, the founder of \"TMZ\", said in an interview, \"Britney is gold. She is crack to our readers. Her life is a complete train-wreck, and I thank God for her every day.\" Steve Huey of AllMusic remarked that \"among female singers of [Spears'] era\u00a0... her celebrity star power was rivaled only by Jennifer Lopez.\" 'Britney Spears' was Yahoo!'s most popular search term between 2005 and 2008, and has been in a total of seven different years. Spears was named as Most Searched Person in the \"Guinness World Records\" book edition 2007 and 2009. She was later named as the most searched person of the decade 2000\u20132009.\nAs a public figure, Spears \"has never been known to her fans as a politically active, committed\u2014or even aware\u2014entertainer.\" In a 2003 interview with Tucker Carlson, she commented on President George W. Bush and the Iraq War, saying that \"we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes\u00a0... and be faithful in what happens\". Michael Moore included the footage of Spears' answer in his \"anti-Bush\" documentary \"Fahrenheit 9/11\", which, according to \"The Washington Times\"'s James Frazier, presented her \"as an example of a naive American blindly trusting a dishonest commander in chief\" and fueled the \"urban legend\" of a \"conservative\" Spears. Frazier also said that \"the few positions she has taken can hardly be considered conservative\", such as supporting same-sex marriage. In 2016, Spears posted pictures of a meeting with Hillary Clinton on social media. She described Clinton as \"an inspiration and [a] beautiful voice for women around the world\".\nIn December 2017, Spears publicly showed support for the DREAM Act in the wake of the announcement that Donald Trump would end the DACA policy, which previously granted undocumented immigrants who came to the country as minors a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation. She posted a photo of herself on social media wearing a black T-shirt that reads \"We Are All Dreamers\" in white letters. The caption read, \"Tell Congress to pass the #DreamAct\".\nOn September 15, 2021, Spears was named one of the 100 most influential people of 2021 by \"Time.\" A few days before the editors's list was released, Spears was put at the top of the readers voting list of which personalities should be included on the annual \"Time\" 100 list. Deemed an icon of 2021, editors highlighted the impact of her fight against her conservatorship as well as of the #FreeBritney movement. In October 2021, Spears thanked her fans and the #FreeBritney movement for \"freeing me from my conservatorship\". Britney Spears was also named most famous celebrity from Louisiana according to a study done by Baton Rouge.\nLegacy.\nReferred to as the \"Princess of Pop\", Spears was credited as one of the \"driving force[s] behind the return of teen pop in the late 1990s\". \"Rolling Stone\"'s Stacy Lambe explained that she \"help[ed] to usher in a new era for the genre that had gone dormant in the decade that followed New Kids on the Block.\u00a0... Spears would lead an army of pop stars\u00a0... built on slick Max Martin productions, plenty of sexual innuendo and dance-heavy performances. [She became] one of the most successful artists of all time\u2014and a cautionary tale for a generation, whether they paid attention or not.\" In a 2021 article for \"Time\", Maura Johnston opined that \"Spears' legacy as a pop artist is complex, made up of dazzling musical heights and music-business-borne lows\". Johnston also commented: \"While Spears' catalog is part of the canon that defines the first 20 years of this millennium, one hopes that her public struggles, and the strength she's shown while enduring them, will lead to her cementing her true legacy: Reshaping the machine that turns those songs into cultural touchstones.\"\n\"Glamour\" contributor Christopher Rosa described her as \"one of pop music's defining voices.\u00a0... When she emerged onto the scene in 1998 with \"...Baby One More Time\", the world hadn't seen a performer like her. Not since Madonna had a female artist affected the genre so profoundly.\" \"Billboard\"'s Robert Kelly observed that Spears' \"sexy and coy\" vocals on her debut single \"...Baby One More Time\" \"kicked off a new era of pop vocal stylings that would influence countless artists to come\". In 2020, \"Rolling Stone\" ranked the song at number one on a list of the 100 Greatest Debut Singles of All Time and Rob Sheffield described it as \"One of those pop manifestos that announces a new sound, a new era, a new century. But most of all, a new star\u00a0... With \"...Baby One More Time\", [Spears] changed the sound of pop forever: It's Britney, bitch. Nothing was ever the same.\"\nSpears was at the forefront of the female teen pop explosion starting in 1999 and extending through the 2000s, leading the pack of Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, and Mandy Moore. All of these performers had been developing material in 1998, but the market changed dramatically in December 1998 when Spears' single and video were charting highly. RCA Records quickly signed Aguilera and released her debut single to capitalize on Spears' success, producing her debut hit single \"Genie in a Bottle\". Simpson consciously modeled her persona as more mature than Spears; her \"I Wanna Love You Forever\" charted in September 1999, and her album \"Sweet Kisses\" followed shortly after. Moore's first single, \"Candy\", hit the airwaves a month before Simpson's single, but it did not perform as well on the charts; Moore was often seen as less accomplished than Spears and the others, coming in fourth of the \"pop princesses\". Fueling media stories about their competition for first place, Spears and Aguilera traded barbs but also compliments through the 2000s.\nAlim Kheraj of \"Dazed\" called Spears \"one of pop's most important pioneers\". After eighteen years as a performer, \"Billboard\" described her as having \"earned her title as one of pop's reigning queens. Since her early days as a Mouseketeer, [Spears] has pushed the boundaries of 21st century sounds, paving the way for a generation of artists to shamelessly embrace glossy pop and redefine how one can accrue consistent success in the music industry.\" \"Entertainment Weekly\"'s Adam Markovitz described Spears as \"an American institution, as deeply sacred and messed up as pro wrestling or the filibuster.\" In 2012, she was ranked as the fourth VH1's 50 Greatest Women of the Video Era show list. VH1 also cited her among its choices on the 100 Greatest Women in Music in 2012 and the 200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons in 2003. In 2020, \"Billboard\" ranked her eight on its 100 Greatest Music Video Artists of all-time list. In October 2024, \"Billboard\" placed Spears at number six on their Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century list.\nSpears and her work have influenced various artists including Katy Perry, Meghan Trainor, Demi Lovato, Kelly Key, Kristinia DeBarge, Little Boots, Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, Marina Diamandis, the Weeknd, Tegan and Sara, Pixie Lott, Grimes, Selena Gomez, Hailee Steinfeld, Pabllo Vittar, Tinashe, Victoria Justice, Cassie, Leah Wellbaum of Slothrust, the Saturdays, Normani, Miley Cyrus, Cheryl, Lana Del Rey, Ava Max, Sam Smith, and Rina Sawayama. During the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, Lady Gaga said that Spears \"taught us all how to be fearless, and the industry wouldn't be the same without her.\" Gaga has also cited Spears as an influence, calling her \"the most provocative performer of my time\".\nBefore Spears joined \"The X Factor\", Simon Cowell explained that he is \"fascinated by [Britney]. The fact that she's one of the most talked about \u2013 not just pop stars \u2013 but people in the world today, means that you've got this star power.\u00a0... She's still hot, she's still having hit records and she's still controversial, there's a reason for that.\" Marina Diamandis named Spears as the main influence behind her album \"Electra Heart\". Lana Del Rey said that the music video for \"Toxic\" inspires her. Porcelain Black describes her music as a \"love child\" of Spears and Marilyn Manson. Rita Ora's 2019 music video for \"Only Want You\" was inspired by Spears' \"Everytime\" music video, and said in a stories from Instagram, \"Hey @britneyspears this was for you because I love you so. Pay homage to the ones who inspire! #icon.\"\nSpears has been credited with redefining Las Vegas residencies as a retirement place for musicians. Her debut concert residency was described as \"the natural evolution of Celine Dion's powerhourse Vegas residency, a still-charting star of another generation redefining the role of Strip headliner.\" \"Forbes\" named Spears the sixth-highest-earning female musician of 2015.\" She is credited with influencing and paving the way for other artists's residencies such as Jennifer Lopez's , Bruno Mars's Bruno Mars at Park MGM, and Backstreet Boys' . The arrival of Spears \"saw the pop promoters finally tap into the younger crowd arriving in town for a good time\".\nSpears' much-publicized personal problems and her subsequent career comeback have inspired some artists. Gwyneth Paltrow's character in the 2010 film \"Country Strong\" was inspired by Spears' treatment by the media. According to film director Shana Fest, \"that's where this movie came from. I mean, I was seeing what was happening in the media to Britney Spears. I think it's tragic how we treat people who give us so much, and we love to see them knocked down to build them back up again, to knock them down again.\" Nicki Minaj has cited Spears' comeback after her much-publicized personal issues as an inspiration. Spears' hounding by paparazzi and personal problems also inspired Barry Manilow's album \"15 Minutes\". Manilow said: \"She couldn't have a life without them pulling up next to her car and following her and driving her crazy to the point where, that was around the time she shaved off her hair.\u00a0... We all looked at it in horror\u00a0... So it seemed like a thing to be writing an album about.\" Bebo Norman wrote a song about Spears, called \"Britney\", which was inspired by \"culture's make-or-break treatment of celebrities\".\nIn 2008, \"Salon\" published an article titled \"The Britney Economy\" describing how Spears is a driving force in music and fashion, stimulating consumer purchases and media coverage. Magazines, paparazzi, and record labels make millions of dollars, and Spears profits to a lesser degree. Along with Alicia Silverstone, Christy Turlington, and Naomi Campbell, Spears has been credited with introducing the navel piercing to mainstream culture.\nAchievements.\nSpears' awards and accolades include a Grammy Award; 15 Guinness World Records; six MTV Video Music Awards, including the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award; seven \"Billboard\" Music Awards, including the Millennium Award; the inaugural Radio Disney Icon Award; the GLAAD Media Award's Vanguard Award; and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.\nSpears is listed by the \"Guinness World Records\" as having the \"Best-selling album by a teenage solo artist\" for her debut studio album, \"...Baby One More Time\", which sold over 13 million copies in the United States. Melissa Ruggieri of the \"Richmond Times-Dispatch\" reported: \"She's also marked for being the best-selling teenage artist. Before she turned 20 in 2001, Spears had sold over 37 million albums worldwide\".\nAs of 2023[ [update]], according to the \"Evening Standard\", Spears has sold over 150 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time. She also sold more than 70 million records in United States, including 36.9 million digital singles and 33.6 million digital albums. Spears is further recognized as the best-selling female albums artist of the 2000s in the United States, as well as the fifth overall. In December 2009, \"Billboard\" ranked Spears the 8th Artist of the 2000s decade in the United States. She is one of the few artists in history to have had a number-one single and a number-one studio album in the US during each of the three decades of her career. With \"3\" in 2009 and \"Hold It Against Me\" in 2011, she became the second artist after Mariah Carey in the Hot 100's history to debut at number one with two or more songs. In 2016, Spears ranked at number twenty on \"Billboard\"'s Greatest Of All Time Top Dance Club Artists list.\nOther ventures.\nProduct and endorsements.\nIn 2000, Spears released a limited edition of sunglasses titled Shades of Britney. In 2001, she signed a deal with shoe company Skechers, and a $7\u20138 million promotional deal with Pepsi, their biggest entertainment deal at the time. Aside from numerous commercials with the latter during that year, she also appeared in a 2004 Pepsi television commercial in the theme of \"Gladiators\" with singers Beyonc\u00e9, Pink, and Enrique Iglesias. On June 19, 2002, she released her first multi-platform video game, \"Britney's Dance Beat\", which received positive reviews.\nIn March 2009, Spears was announced as the new face of clothing brand Candie's. Dari Marder, chief marketing officer for the brand, said: \"Everybody loves a comeback and nobody's doing it better than Britney. She's just poised for even greater success.\" In 2010, Spears designed a limited edition line for the brand, which was released in stores in July 2010. In 2011, she teamed up with Sony, Make Up For Ever, and Plenty of Fish to release her music video for \"Hold It Against Me\", earning her $500,000 for the product placement.\nSpears also teamed up with Hasbro in 2012 to release an exclusive version of \"Twister Dance\", which includes a remix of \"Till the World Ends\". She was also featured on a commercial, which was directed by Ray Kay, to promote the game. Spears was also featured on the commercial of \"Twister Dance Rave\", and the game included a Twister remix of \"Circus\". In March 2018, it was revealed that Spears would be the face of Kenzo, a contemporary French luxury clothing house.\nSpears' range of commercial deals and products also includes beauty care products and perfumes. She released her first perfume with Elizabeth Arden, Curious in 2004, which broke the company's first-week gross for a perfume. By 2009, she had released seven more perfumes including Fantasy. In 2010, Spears released her eighth fragrance, Radiance.\nIn 2011, Radiance was reissued as a new perfume titled Cosmic Radiance. Worldwide, Spears sold over one million bottles in the first five years, with gross receipts of $1.5 billion. In 2016, Spears contacted Glu Mobile to create her own role-playing game, \"\". The app officially launched in May 2016 and is compatible with iOS and Android. On June 17, 2016, Spears announced the release of her twentieth fragrance, Private Show. As of January\u00a02018[ [update]], Spears has released 24 fragrances through Elizabeth Arden.\nPhilanthropy.\nSpears founded The Britney Spears Foundation, a charitable entity set up to help children in need. The philosophy behind the Foundation was that music and entertainment has a healing quality that can benefit children. The Foundation also supported the annual Britney Spears Camp for the Performing Arts, where campers had the opportunity to explore and develop their talents. In April 2002, through the efforts of Spears and The Britney Spears Foundation, a grant of $1 million was made to the Twin Towers Fund to support the children of uniformed service heroes affected by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, including New York City Fire Department and its Emergency Medical Services Command, the New York City Police Department, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the New York State Office of court Administration and other government offices. However, it was reported in 2008 that the Foundation had a deficit of $200,000. After Spears went through conservatorship, her father and lawyer Andrew Wallet zeroed out the effort, leading to its closure in 2011.\nOn October 30, 2001, Spears, alongside Bono and other popular recording artists under the name \"Artists Against AIDS Worldwide\", released an album consisting of multiple versions of Marvin Gaye's \"What's Going On\", intending to benefit AIDS programs in Africa and other impoverished regions. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Spears donated $350,000 to Music Rising. Spears has also helped several charities during her career, including Madonna's Kabbalah-based Spirituality for Kids, cancer charity Gilda's Club Worldwide, Promises Foundation, and United Way, with the latter two focused on giving families from various disadvantaged situations new hope and stable foundations for the future.\nOn October 24, 2015, Spears donated $120,000 to the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation. In addition, $1 of each ticket sale for her Las Vegas residency, Britney: Piece of Me, was donated to the nonprofit organization. Spears also fundraised for the charity through social media, in addition to selling limited edition merchandise, with all proceeds going to the NCCF. On October 27, 2016, Spears partnered with Zappos and XCYCLE to host the \"Britney Spears Piece of Me Charity Ride\" in Boca Park, Las Vegas to raise additional money toward her goal of $1 million for the NCCF, with $450,000 having already been raised from Spears' ticket sales and merchandise. Participants were entered for a chance to win a spin class with Spears herself. The event ultimately went on to raise $553,130. The fundraising ultimately led to the development of the NCCF Britney Spears Campus in Las Vegas, which saw its grand opening on November 4, 2017. Spears also regularly participates in Spirit Day to combat bullying of LGBTQ youth and bullying.\nIn March 2020, Spears was participating in the #DoYourPartChallenge, which entails helping people with anything they might need during the COVID-19 pandemic. She told fans to send her messages on Instagram if they need supportive words during the coronavirus pandemic, with Spears picking three fans. In February 2024, Spears partnered with New York City dessert shop Glace, to create the \"Britney Br\u00fbl\u00e9e\" dessert, with a portion of the proceeds from its sales being donated to The Trevor Project.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBook sources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "41111017": "Alien (Britney Spears song)\n2013 song by Britney Spears\n\"Alien\" is a song recorded by American singer Britney Spears for her eighth studio album, \"Britney Jean\" (2013). It was written by Spears, William Orbit, Dan Traynor, Ana Diaz, and Anthony Preston, and produced by Orbit and HyGrade. \"Alien\" is a mid-tempo dance-pop song, which lyrically discusses Spears's feelings of loneliness.\n\"Alien\" received acclaim from music critics, who appreciated its production and recognized it as being among the more personal offerings from the record. The track peaked at number eight on the US Bubbling Under Hot 100 and debuted at 147 on the French Singles Chart despite not being a single from \"Britney Jean\". The track has been performed during Spears's residency concert, (2014).\nBackground.\nAfter serving as a judge on the second season of the American version of \"The X Factor\", Spears began work on her eighth studio album in December 2012. In May 2013, record producer William Orbit was announced to be working on the project. Upon the announcement of her record in September 2013, titled \"Britney Jean\", Spears described her collaboration with Orbit, titled \"Alien\", as \"really cool\" and \"really great\". Early reports speculated that the song would feature American recording artist Lady Gaga, as suggested by a tweet posted to Twitter by executive producer will.i.am, although such a collaboration never came to fruition.\nOn November 18, 2013, preceding the release date of \"Britney Jean\" on December 3, a demo version of the track was leaked online; Orbit commented that it was the \"right song [with the] wrong chorus notes\", which had been corrected on the final production. On December 22, 2013, Spears announced through her E! documentary special \"I Am Britney Jean\" that \"Alien\" would likely be released as a single from \"Britney Jean\", although it never came to fruition.\nIn July 2014, an audio leaked of Spears singing the song without pitch correction. James Lachno of \"The Daily Telegraph\" noted that Spears struggles to project her voice and reach the song's high notes. Critics described Spears' vocal performance in the leaked track as \"flat at best and, at worst, like a strangled cat\", \"noticeably off-key\", \"unpolished [and] unflattering\", \"a style that might kindly be described as tentative\", and \"toxic to the ears\". CNN defended the track, saying that its quality is irrelevant as Spears is not known for her vocal ability. Orbit claimed that the audio was a vocal warm up, not expected to be a take, and not intended to be heard by the public, adding, \"Whomever put this on the internet must have done so in a spirit of unkindness, but it can in no way detract from the fact that Britney is and always will be beyond stellar! She is magnificent! And that\u2019s that.\"\nComposition.\n\"Alien\" is a midtempo dance-pop song; it was written by Spears, William Orbit, Dan Traynor, Ana Diaz, and Anthony Preston. Its production is handled by Orbit and HyGrade. Genevieve Koski from \"The A.V. Club\" felt that its musical style \"[picked] up where \"Femme Fatale\"'s folk-laced closer \"Criminal\" left off [by opening] \"Britney Jean\" with an intriguing folktronica departure\". Greg Kot from the \"Chicago Tribune\" described the production as a \"light, airy slice of melancholic dance-pop, reminiscent of Madonna's Orbit-produced \"Ray of Light\" album.\" Nick Catucci from \"Entertainment Weekly\" stated that \"Alien\" is a \"gently pulsing track in which an actual extraterrestrial finally realizes she's 'not alone,' and repeats the phrase until it is pitchshifted up like a departing space ship.\"\nTwo minutes and fourteen seconds into the song, a vocal glitch is present as Spears sings the lyrics \"and the light in your eyes\", over which Orbit revealed that \"there is actually a long story behind all of this which [he] would love to tell\", and noted that \"what has been called the 'demo' is not in fact the actual original demo.\" Orbit joked about the matter, saying that the true cause of the glitch is that they \"were kidnapped by Aliens and actually spent a year on their ship making friends, doing shows, creating Alien music [...] Then we travelled back to 2:14 in the track, with just that glitch to show for it.\" On January 25, 2014, Orbit hinted on Twitter that the glitch might be a fail of production held by the album's executive producer, will.i.am: \"Remember 'Glitchgate'? I assure you all that there will.be.no\"[sic]\" more glitches\".\nCritical reception.\n\"Alien\" received general acclaim from music critics, who appreciated its production and recognized it as being among the more personal offerings from the record. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic noted that Orbit was the only producer associated with the project that appropriately handled \"[Spears'] sad, existential loneliness [by] placing it firmly in the center\" of the track. Genevieve Koski from \"The A.V. Club\" complimented Spears for recording a midtempo track, which she felt showcased her vocal abilities better than the \"robo-coo\" that Spears is commonly associated with. Writing for \"Chicago Tribune\", Greg Kot opined that \"Alien\" was the only song from \"Britney Jean\" that felt \"vulnerable [and] personal\".\nNick Catucci of \"Entertainment Weekly\" shared a similar sentiment, expressing enjoyment of the \"weird and wonderful intimacy\" of the track, while Michael Gragg of \"The Guardian\" appreciated the experimental nature of its production. Kevin Harley from \"The Independent\" made favorable comparisons to \"Ray of Light\" by Madonna, and felt that \"Alien\" was one of Spears' stronger \"multi-producer alliances\" from the record. Writing for \"Slant Magazine\", Sal Cinquemani saw \"Alien\" as an opportunity in which Spears successfully \"[pushed her] sound forward\", though Barry Walters from \"Spin\" felt that her vocal performance failed to match the more solemn production of the song.\nIn light of the leaked audio, Lucas Villa of \"AXS\" listed \"Alien\" as the fifth best song of 2014, calling it a \"gorgeous folktronica tune\" that \"hit home for the oft-guarded singer.\" He added that \"[h]opefully all the fuss led people to the original version, one of Spears' best recent works.\"\nLive performances.\nSpears performed \"Alien\" during her residency concert , held by Planet Hollywood Las Vegas in Las Vegas. During a notable performance of the track on February 19, 2014, Spears was revealed to have been lip synching when the backing track continued playing and she missed her cue while interacting with the audience. When the April 2014 leg of Britney: Piece of Me began, \"Alien\" was cut in favor of \"Do Somethin'\". Following her breakup with her boyfriend David Lucado in August 2014, Spears removed \"Perfume\" from the set list for few shows in favor of \"Alien\". Spears performed \"Alien\" ten times throughout February and August 2014.\nCredits and personnel.\nCredits adapted from the liner notes of \"Britney Jean\".\nRecording\nPersonnel\nCharts.\n\"Alien\" debuted at number 147 on the French Singles Chart, published by the Syndicat National de l'\u00c9dition Phonographique. For the week of July 26, 2014, \"Alien\" debuted at number eight on the US \"Billboard\" Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["41111017", "3382"], "permutation_1": ["41111017", "3382"], "permutation_2": ["41111017", "3382"], "permutation_3": ["3382", "41111017"]}
{"id": "2hop__195466_36134", "docs_added": {"11978507": "Sakalua\nSakalua is an islet of Nukufetau, Tuvalu. In the 19th century whalers established a shore camp on Sakalua where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber. The islet has been known as 'Coal Island'.\nThe island has a large colony of terns.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11978507", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["11978507", "30227"], "permutation_2": ["30227", "11978507"], "permutation_3": ["11978507", "30227"]}
{"id": "2hop__352332_112595", "docs_added": {"37946126": "Lady Ma (Qian Yuanguan's wife)\nLady Ma (\u99ac\u592b\u4eba, personal name unknown) (890 \u2013 November 28, 939), formally the Lady Gongmu of Wuyue (\u5433\u8d8a\u570b\u606d\u7a46\u592b\u4eba), was a wife of Qian Yuanguan (King Wenmu) (n\u00e9 Qian Chuanguan, name changed to Qian Yuanguan upon his succession to the throne), the second king of the Chinese state Wuyue of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period.\nBackground.\nLady Ma was born in 890, during the reign of Emperor Zhaozong of Tang. Her father Ma Chuo was an officer serving under Qian Liu, a warlord who then controlled the region around Hang Prefecture (\u676d\u5dde, in modern Hangzhou, Zhejiang), who would eventually found Wuyue as King Wusu. (She was said to be from Anguo County (\u5b89\u570b), which might have been referring to Qian Liu's hometown Yijin Base (\u8863\u9326\u8ecd, in modern Hangzhou), as it was also known as Anguo Yijin Base.) Ma Chuo was, either by familial relations or by personal relations, was very close to Qian, as, because of those relations, he married one of Qian's younger sisters. At some point, Qian also took Lady Ma to be the wife of his son Qian Chuanguan. (Qian Chuanguan had been forced to marry the daughter of another late-Tang warlord, Tian Jun the military governor of Ningguo Circuit (\u5be7\u570b, headquartered in modern Xuancheng, Anhui) as a political marriage and was taken to Ningguo, in 902, and was not able to return to Qian Liu's domain until Tian's downfall in 903, so his marriage to Lady Ma would have come after.)\nMarriage to Qian Yuanguan.\nAs Qian Chuanguan's wife, Lady Ma was said to be intelligent, wise, and diligent. During Qian Liu's reign, he banned officials from having concubines. As Qian Chuanguan and Lady Ma did not have any sons even past the age of 30, Lady Ma became concerned. She went to her father-in-law Qian Liu to ask for an exemption on Qian Chuanguan's behalf. Qian Liu responded to her happily, \"My family's future bloodline is in your hands.\" He thus allowed Qian Chuanguan to have concubines, and they bore him a large number of sons, whom Lady Ma treated as her own sons. She had a silver deer made and placed before her seat, and was accustomed to happily watch the children play on and around it.\nOver the years, apparently after Qian Chuanguan succeeded Qian Liu upon Qian Liu's death in 932 (at which time he changed his name to Qian Yuanguan), Lady Ma received titles from the emperors of Later Tang and the subsequent Later Jin, whom Qian Yuanguan was formally a vassal to. She was initially created the Lady of Yue, and later Lady Zhuangmu of Wuyue. She died in 939, while Qian Yuanguan was still king, and was posthumously honored by Emperor Gaozu of Later Jin as Lady Gongmu (\"respectful and solemn\").", "37915910": "Qian Yuanguan\nQian Yuanguan () (30 November 887 \u2013 17 September 941), born Qian Chuanguan (\u9322\u50b3\u74d8), also known by his temple name as the King Shizong of Wuyue (\u5433\u8d8a\u4e16\u5b97), courtesy name Mingbao (\u660e\u5bf6), was the second king of Wuyue during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period of China. He ascended to the throne in 932, when his father Qian Liu (King Taizu) left the state in his hands, to 941. He was the father to all three of Wuyue's subsequent kings.\nEarly life.\nQian Chuanguan was born in 887, during the reign of Emperor Xizong of Tang, at a time when his father Qian Liu was serving as the prefect of Hang Prefecture (\u676d\u5dde, in modern Hangzhou, Zhejiang), loosely as a vassal of the warlord Dong Chang the military governor (\"Jiedushi\") of Weisheng Circuit (\u5a01\u52dd, headquartered in modern Shaoxing, Zhejiang). He was Qian Liu's seventh son, and his mother was Qian Liu's concubine Lady Chen.\nThe first significant reference to Qian Chuanguan, historically, was in 902, when his father Qian Liu, then the military governor of both Zhendong (\u93ae\u6771, i.e., Weisheng, now named Zhendong) and Zhenhai (\u93ae\u6d77, headquartered at Hang Prefecture) Circuits, was facing a major threat to his control of the region in the forms of a mutiny led by the officers Xu Wan (\u5f90\u7db0) and Xu Zaisi (\u8a31\u518d\u601d), who were able to obtain the aid of Tian Jun the military governor of Ningguo Circuit (\u5be7\u570b, headquartered in modern Xuancheng, Anhui), a vassal of the major warlord Yang Xingmi the military governor of Huainan Circuit (\u6dee\u5357, headquartered in modern Yangzhou, Jiangsu). Qian Liu was able to get Yang to exert pressure on Tian to withdraw by sending the officer Gu Quanwu (\u9867\u5168\u6b66) and Qian Chuanguan's older brother Qian Chuanliao (\u9322\u50b3\u7499) to Yang to persuade Yang that if Tian became any stronger, he would pose a future threat to Yang, and for Qian Chuanliao to subsequently remain at Huainan to serve as a hostage. (Yang subsequently gave a daughter to Qian Chuanliao in marriage.) Yang therefore warned Tian that if he did not withdraw, he would send another officer to take over the command of Ningguo from him. Tian was forced to withdraw, but extracted from Qian Liu the promise of a monetary tribute, as well as a son to serve as hostage (with Tian offering to give the son a daughter in marriage). When Qian Liu gathered his sons and asked them, \"Who is willing to be a son-in-law for the Tians?\" none responded initially. Qian Liu considered sending Qian Chuanguan's younger brother Qian Chuanqiu (\u9322\u50b3\u7403), but Qian Chuanqiu refused, drawing Qian Liu's great anger such that Qian Liu almost killed him \u2014 at which point Qian Chuanguan volunteered to go. Qian Liu's wife Lady Wu, who considered Qian Chuanguan like her own son as well, wept bitterly, not wanting to send him, but Qian Chuanguan responded, \"In order to save the state from disaster, how can I spare my own body?\" He thus left with Tian's army as Tian withdrew, and apparently married Tian's daughter.\nIn 904, Tian, unhappy that Yang was continuously curbing his desire to expand, rebelled against Yang along with An Renyi (\u5b89\u4ec1\u7fa9) the military prefect (\u5718\u7df4\u4f7f, \"Tuanlianshi\") of Run Prefecture (\u6f64\u5dde, in modern Zhenjiang, Jiangsu). Initially they caused much apprehension within Yang's realm, but Tian shortly after began to suffer repeated defeats at the hands of Yang's generals Li Shenfu and Tai Meng (\u81fa\u6fdb). As Tian's situation became more and more desperate, and perhaps because Qian Liu sided with Yang in this war, each time he suffered a defeat, he considered killing Qian Chuanguan, but Qian Chuanguan escaped death as he was protected by Tian's mother Lady Yin and Tian's brother-in-law Guo Shicong (\u90ed\u5e2b\u5f9e). After Tian was finally defeated and killed in battle by Tai, Qian Chuanguan was able to return to Hang Prefecture with Guo, and Guo thereafter became an officer under Qian Liu.\nDuring Qian Liu's reign.\nDuring Later Liang.\nIn 907, the major warlord Zhu Quanzhong the military governor of Xuanwu Circuit (\u5ba3\u6b66, headquartered in modern Kaifeng, Henan), who had had Emperor Xizong's brother and successor Emperor Zhaozong, and then Emperor Zhaozong's son and successor Emperor Ai, under his physical control for a number of years, had Emperor Ai yield the throne to him, ending Tang and starting a new Later Liang as its Emperor Taizu. While some independent warlords refused to recognize the new emperor, Qian Liu did so, and thereafter was created by the Later Liang emperor as the Prince of Wuyue; his state thereafter became known as Wuyue.\nShortly before taking the title of Prince of Wuyue, Qian Liu sent Qian Chuanliao and Qian Chuanguan to attack Lu Ji (\u76e7\u4f76), who controlled Wen Prefecture (\u6eab\u5dde, in modern Wenzhou, Zhejiang) and whose brother Lu Yue (\u76e7\u7d04) controlled Chu Prefecture (\u8655\u5dde, in modern Lishui, Zhejiang). Anticipating Qian Chuanliao and Qian Chuanguan to attack by water, Lu Ji placed his fleet at Qing'ao (\u9752\u6fb3, in modern Taizhou, Zhejiang) to defend against their attack. Believing that the better strategy was to bypass Lu Ji's fleet, Qian Chuanguan advocated, and thereafter his army did so, advancing to Angu (\u5b89\u56fa, in modern Wenzhou), landing there, and directly attack Wen Prefecture. They were able to quickly capture Wen Prefecture and capture and kill Lu Ji. Qian Liu subsequently ordered them to advance on Chu Prefecture. Subsequently, Lu Yue surrendered Chu Prefecture to Wuyue.\nIn 913, Li Tao (\u674e\u6fe4), a general of Wuyue's northern neighbor Wu (i.e., formerly Yang Xingmi's domain, now under the rule of Yang's son Yang Longyan) attacked Wuyue, going over Qianqiu Heights (\u5343\u79cb\u5dba, in modern Xuancheng) heading toward Qian Liu's hometown Yijin Base (\u8863\u9326\u8ecd, in modern Hangzhou). Qian Liu had Qian Chuanguan, who was then the prefect of Hu Prefecture (\u6e56\u5dde, in modern Huzhou, Zhejiang) command the defense against the attack while sending Qian Chuanliao to attack Wu's Dongzhou (\u6771\u6d32, in modern Changzhou, Jiangsu) to try to divert Wu's forces. Qian Chuanguan cut off trees on Qianqiu Heights to cut off the path of the Wu army and then attacked it, taking Li and 3,000 Wu soldiers captive. Later in the year, the Wu officers Hua Qian (\u82b1\u8654) and Wo Xin (\u6e26\u4fe1) rendezvoused at Guangde (\u5ee3\u5fb7, in modern Xuancheng) to plan another attack on Yijin. Qian Chuanguan took the initiative and attacked Guangde himself, capturing Hua and Wo. However, when Qian Chuanguan, Qian Chuanliao, and another brother, Qian Chuanying (\u9322\u50b3\u745b), then attacked Wu's Chang Prefecture (\u5e38\u5dde, in modern Changzhou) together, the Wu regent Xu Wen and the Wu general Chen You (\u9673\u7950) defeated them, killing many Wuyue soldiers. Later in 913, then-reigning Later Liang emperor Zhu Zhen created Qian Chuanguan the Baron of Dapeng (\u5927\u5f6d\u7e23\u958b\u570b\u7537), and in 914 upgraded the title to marquess.\nIn 919, at Zhu Zhen's order, Qian Liu sent Qian Chuanguan, who was then serving as his deputy military governor, to attack Wu's Dongzhou with 500 ships. The Wu general Peng Yanzhang (\u5f6d\u5f65\u7ae0) defended against the attack. In anticipation for the battle, Qian Chuanguan loaded his ships with ashes, sand, and beans. Furthermore, this battle also witnessed the world's first proper 'flamethrower' that used gunpowder after its recent invention in 850. Having been installed in Qian Chuanguan's dragon ship and decorated with silver, his weapon was readied in a way that would conceal it and hide it from the enemy in the event of his capture. When the fleets encountered each other at the Battle of Langshan Jiang, Qian Chuanguan maneuvered his fleet into an upwind position and then scattered ashes at the Wu fleet, making the Wu soldiers unable to see his ships, and then spread the decks of his own ships with sand while throwing beans at the Wu ships, causing the Wu ships' decks to be covered with beans and the Wu soldiers to thereafter slip and unable to act quickly. He then threw torches at the Wu ships, setting them afire and causing a general rout. Qian Chuanguan's makeshift double pump flamethrower also aided in tearing through the Wu's forces, delivering destruction they have never withstood before. When Peng's deputy Chen Fen (\u9673\u6c7e) did not come to Peng's aid, Peng committed suicide. Qian Liu then ordered Qian Chuanguan to attack Chang Prefecture, and Xu personally defended against the attack. At that time, the weather was dry, and the Wu soldiers were able to set fires against the Wuyue army, causing Wuyue soldiers to panic. The Wuyue generals He Feng (\u4f55\u9022) and Wu Jian (\u5433\u5efa) were killed, and Qian Chuanguan was forced to flee. Xu took the opportunity to negotiate peace between the two states by returning the captives that he took, and it was said that for the next 20 years, there were no major confrontations between the two states.\nIn 920, Zhu Zhen bestowed on Qian Chuanguan the honorary titles of military governor of Qinghai Circuit (\u6e05\u6d77, headquartered in modern Guangzhou, Guangdong, then under the rule of Southern Han) and chancellor (\u540c\u4e2d\u66f8\u9580\u4e0b\u5e73\u7ae0\u4e8b, \"Tong Zhongshu Menxia Pingzhangshi\"). In 923, when Zhu Zhen created Qian Liu the King of Wuyue (\u570b\u738b, \"Guo Wang\") and Qian Liu thereafter acted as full sovereign of the state, he commissioned Qian Chuanguan as the acting military governor of Zhenhai and Zhendong and put Qian Chuanguan in charge of the military affairs.\nMeanwhile, by the time that Qian Chuanguan was in his 30s, he still had not had a son with his then-wife Lady Ma. At that time, there was an order by Qian Liu in effect in the Wuyue realm that officials were not allowed to have concubines, but Lady Ma went to see Qian Liu to ask for an exemption on Qian Chuanguan's behalf. Qian Liu responded to her happily, \"My family's future bloodline is in your hands.\" He thus allowed Qian Chuanguan to have concubines, and they bore him a large number of sons, whom Lady Ma treated as her own sons.\nDuring Later Tang.\nLater in 923, Later Liang was conquered by its rival Later Tang. In 924, Qian Liu established tributary relations with Later Tang, formally submitting to Emperor Zhuangzong of Later Tang as a vassal. Emperor Zhuangzong confirmed all of the titles that Later Liang had bestowed on him. He also confirmed Qian Chuanguan's titles of military governor of Qinghai, as well as acting military governor of Zhenhai and Zhendong, and also bestowed the greater honorary chancellor title of \"Zhongshu Ling\" (\u4e2d\u66f8\u4ee4, \"Zhongshu Ling\"), acting \"Taishi\" (\u592a\u5e2b), and \"Kaifu Yitong Sansi\" (\u958b\u5e9c\u5100\u540c\u4e09\u53f8).\nIn 926, Qian Liu fell ill briefly, and went to Yijin to recuperate, leaving the affairs of the state to Qian Chuanguan, until Qian Liu completed his recovery and returned to Hang Prefecture.\nIn 928, Qian Liu wanted to formally designate Qian Chuanguan his heir, but to make sure that the other sons agreed (particularly because Qian Chuanguan was not the oldest), he gathered them and stated to them, \"Describe your accomplishments. I will make the one with the most accomplishments my heir.\" Qian Chuanguan's older brothers Qian Chuanchou (\u9322\u50b3\u5114) and Qian Chuanliao, as well as younger brother Qian Chaunjing (\u9322\u50b3\u749f), all praised Qian Chuanliao's accomplishments. Qian Liu thus submitted a petition to then-reigning Emperor Mingzong of Later Tang (Emperor Zhuangzong's adoptive brother and successor) to pass the two circuits to Qian Chuanguan. Emperor Mingzong agreed and issued an edict making Qian Chuanguan the military governor of Zhenhai and Zhendong.\nHowever, by 929, the relationship between Qian Liu and the Later Tang imperial government had been damaged because Emperor Mingzong's chief advisor An Chonghui considered Qian Liu to be arrogant and rude in his letters to An. At An's request (after An accused Qian Liu of spying on the matters of the Later Tang imperial court), Emperor Mingzong issued an edict ordering Qian Liu to retire with the title of \"Taishi\" and stripping him of all his other titles (including, presumably, King of Wuyue), and further put all Wuyue emissaries to the Later Tang court under arrest. Qian Liu had Qian Chuanguan submit a petition on his behalf claiming innocence, but An (and Emperor Mingzong) ignored Qian Chuanguan's petition. (The Wuyue emissaries were released in 930 after Qian Liu submitted another petition through Pei Yu (\u88f4\u7fbd), the Later Tang emissary to Wuyue's southern neighbor Min and this time apologized for his own faults, but the full relations were not reestablished until 931 after Emperor Mingzong forced An into retirement (and, after blaming An for the Later Tang imperial government's confrontations with Qian Liu, Meng Zhixiang the military governor of Xichuan Circuit (\u897f\u5ddd, headquartered in modern Chengdu, Sichuan), and Dong Zhang the military governor of Dongchuan Circuit (\u6771\u5ddd, headquartered in modern Mianyang, Sichuan), killing An), at which time Emperor Mingzong restored all of Qian Liu's titles.\nIn May 932, Qian Liu fell deathly ill, and he, to see whether his subordinates were in fact faithful, asked whom they would support as their new leader \u2014 at which time the generals and officials all endorsed Qian Chuanguan. Qian Liu thus entrusted the seals and the keys to the treasuries to Qian Chuanguan, left directions that he should serve whichever dynasty controlled the Central Plains with care even if the dynasty changed, and then died.\nReign.\nAs military governor of Zhenhai and Zhendong.\nAfter Qian Liu's death, Qian Chuanguan and his brothers initially spent the mourning period in the same tent, but at the urging of the royal guard commander Lu Renzhang (\u9678\u4ec1\u7ae0), who pointed out that then there would be no distinction between him and the brothers, he spent the mourning period in a separate tent from them. For reasons unclear, he changed his name to Qian Yuanguan at this point and also changed his brothers' names accordingly (changing the \"Chuan\" character in their names to \"Yuan\" as well). He no longer took on the trappings of king or prince in his dealings with the Later Tang imperial court, instead only using the titles due a military governor. He entrusted the governance to the official Cao Zhongda and the selection of officials to the general Shen Song. Meanwhile, the officers had long been resentful of the power that Lu and fellow royal guard commander LIu Renqi (\u5289\u4ec1\u675e) had, and one day they gathered around Qian Yuanguan's headquarters, demanding that Lu and Liu be put to death. In response, Qian Yuanguan sent his nephew Qian Renjun (\u9322\u4ec1\u4fca) out to the officers to state to them:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />These two generals had long served the deceased King. I was about to reward them for their service, but instead you want to, because of your private resentment, kill them; can this be done? As I am your king, you should follow my orders. Otherwise, I will return to Lin'an [(\u81e8\u5b89, i.e., Yijin)] and yield the path to whoever is talented enough to advance.\nIn fear, the officers left. Qian Yuanguan subsequently sent Lu and Liu out of the headquarters to serve as prefectural prefects. It was also said that he helped to foster peacefulness among the officials by refusing to listen to people who submit reports against each other, and therefore the realm became calm. In 933, Emperor Mingzong created him the Prince of Wu.\nIt was said that Qian Yuanguan treated his brothers well. When Qian Yuanliao (i.e., Qian Chuanliao), then serving as the military governor of Zhongwu Circuit (\u4e2d\u5433, headquartered in modern Suzhou, Jiangsu) went to Hang Prefecture to pay homage to him, Qian Yuanguan bowed to him as a younger brother, and stated to him, \"This seat was yours, older brother. This young son sits here because of your blessings.\" Qian Yuanliao responded, \"The deceased King selected the wisest to be the heir. Now the relationship between lord and subject is set, and all I know is being submissive and faithful.\" The brothers were touched by each other and wept. Still, when needed, he was willing to take actions against brothers. For example, by 933, his younger brother Qian Yuanxiang (\u9322\u5143\u73e6), who was serving as the military governor of Shunhua Circuit (\u9806\u5316, headquartered in modern Ningbo, Zhejiang), had become arrogant and spoiled, such that whenever there were requests he made to Qian Yuanguan that were rejected, he would submit further letters to show his anger and displeasure. Qian Yuanguan sent his officer Yang Renquan to Shunhua's capital Ming Prefecture to summon him, knowing that he was fearful of Yang. Yang was able to seize him and bring him back to Hang Prefecture, where Qian Yuanguan put him under house arrest.\nIn 934, Emperor Mingzong's son and successor Emperor Min of Later Tang created Qian Yuanguan the Prince of Wuyue. His mother Lady Chen died around this time, and was posthumously honored as a lady dowager by Emperor Min's adoptive brother and successor Li Congke (who overthrew Emperor Min in 934). It was said that because of Qian Yuanguan's love for his mother, he treated his mother's family well, but did not give them political offices.\nIn 936, Li Congke's brother-in-law (Emperor Mingzong's son-in-law) Shi Jingtang the military governor of Hedong Circuit (\u6cb3\u6771, headquartered in modern Taiyuan, Shanxi) rebelled against Li Congke with Khitan aid, declaring himself the emperor of a new Later Jin (as its Emperor Gaozu). The joint Later Jin/Khitan forces defeated Later Tang forces quickly, and Li Congke committed suicide, ending Later Tang. Qian Yuanguan apparently submitted to Later Jin quickly as a vassal, for later that year Emperor Gaozu bestowed on him the title of deputy generalissimo of the entire realm (\u5929\u4e0b\u5175\u99ac\u526f\u5143\u5e25, \"Tianxia Bingma Fu Yuanshuai\").\nIn 937, apparently after Qian Yuanxiang offended him more, Qian Yuanguan stripped Qian Yuanxiang of his titles of military governor of Shunhua and honorary chancellor, and demoted him to commoner rank. Later in the year, Qian Yuanguan further became suspicious of another younger brother, Qian Yuanxu (\u9322\u5143\u3eb7), who was gathering arms and trying to associate with many officials, particularly after Qian Yuanxu refused to abandon those arms and accept a commission as the prefect of Wen Prefecture. Qian Yuanguan took an opportunity, when Qian Yuanxu was in the palace for a feast, to kill both him and Qian Yuanxiang. However, when he then further considered punishing officials who were close associates of Qian Yuanxu and Qian Yuanxiang, Qian Renjun urged him to be lenient, and he agreed.\nAs King of Wuyue.\nIn November 937, Emperor Gaozu created Qian Yuanguan the King of Wuyue. Qian Yuanguan thereafter took on the same royal trappings that his father did as King of Wuyue. He created his son Qian Hongzun as his heir, and made Cao Zhongda, Shen Song, and Pi Guangye his chancellors.\nIn November 939, Qian Yuanguan's wife Lady Ma died.\nIn 940, Wang Xi the Prince of Min was having a major dispute with his younger brother Wang Yanzheng the prefect of Jian Prefecture (\u5efa\u5dde, in modern Nanping, Fujian) that developed into a military conflict. Wang Xi sent an army to put Jian Prefecture under siege, and Wang Yanzheng sought aid from Wuyue. Despite the advice of the chancellor Lin Ding against such intervention on Wang Yanzheng's behalf, Qian Yuanguan nevertheless sent a 40,000-men army under Yang Renquan and Xue Wanzhong (\u859b\u842c\u5fe0) to aid Wang Yanzheng. By the time that they reached Jian Prefecture, Wang Yanzheng had already repelled Wang Xi's attack, and he sent the Wuyue army gifts, requesting that they withdraw. Yang and Xue refused and instead pitched camp near the city. In fear, Wang Yanzheng turned around and sought aid from Wang Xi. Wang Xi sent his nephew Wang Jiye (\u738b\u7e7c\u696d) to aid Wang Yanzheng and had his army cut off the food supply path of the Wuyue army. Wang Yanzheng then attacked the Wuyue army, defeating them, forcing Yang and Xue to flee. Later in the year, Emperor Gaozu gave Qian Yuanguan the greater titles of generalissimo of all armies (\u5929\u4e0b\u5175\u99ac\u90fd\u5143\u5e25, \"Tianxia Bingma Du Yuanshuai\") as well as \"Shangshu Ling\" (\u5c1a\u66f8\u4ee4).\nIn August 941, a major fire burned down much of the Wuyue palace and treasury. As a result of trauma from the fire, it was said that Qian Yuanguan lost his mental wellness. The officials of Wuyue's northern neighbor Southern Tang \u2014 i.e., the former Wu, which had been taken over by its regent Xu Zhigao, who took the throne as Southern Tang's Emperor Liezu \u2014 all encouraged the Southern Tang emperor to attack and conquer Wuyue. The Southern Tang emperor, however, did not want to take advantage of Wuyue and instead sent emissaries to wish Qian Yuanguan recovery and also to give gifts.\nApparently, in addition to his mental wellness, Qian Yuanguan's physical wellness also took an immediate downturn. He entrusted his son Qian Hongzuo (Qian Hongzun having died in 940) to his official Zhang De'an (\u7ae0\u5fb7\u5b89), and then died. Qian Hongzuo thereafter took the throne and was created the King of Wuyue by Emperor Gaozu.", "41600718": "Lady Yang (Ma Xisheng's wife)\nLady Yang (\u694a\u592b\u4eba, personal name unknown) (disappeared 950) was the wife of Ma Xisheng, the second ruler of the Chinese Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms state Chu.\nBackground.\nLady Yang was from Chu's capital Changsha, but it is not known when she was born. During the reign of Ma Xisheng's father, Chu's founding ruler Ma Yin, her father Yang Shi () served as the commander of the army of Chu's main circuit, Wu'an Circuit (\u6b66\u5b89, headquartered at Changsha). She was Yang Shi's middle daughter.\nIt is not known when Lady Yang married Ma Xisheng; however, it would have been, at the latest, 929, late in Ma Yin's reign, for that year, it was said that it was her family member Yang Zhaosui (), who was then serving as the commander of the Wu'an army (the title that her father Yang Shi had previously held) and who wanted to displace the position of Chu's chief strategist Gao Yu, who repeatedly made accusations against Gao to Ma Xisheng, to whom Ma Yin had transferred the reins of state by that point. This led to Ma Xisheng's persuading Ma Yin to relieve Gao of his military command, and subsequently Ma Xisheng's killing of Gao.\nDuring and after Ma Xisheng's reign.\nMa Yin died in 930, and Ma Xisheng succeeded him as Chu's ruler. It is not clear what kind of title Lady Yang might have carried during Ma Xisheng's rule, for he himself, at the directions left by his father, did not claim any princely titles. However, it was known that because of her, her brother Yang Zhaohui () was made the prefect of Heng Prefecture (\u8861\u5dde, in modern Hengyang, Hunan). He gathered much wealth, built a large mansion, and had two of his sons made officers of the headquarters guard corps. It was said that because he became rich and powerful in his youth, he was arrogant and found ways to use his power to bully people, leading to the intelligentsia of the state all despising him.\nMa Xisheng died in 932 and was succeeded by his brother Ma Xifan. It appeared (based the later description of her family's fate) that Lady Yang returned to her family.\nBy 950, Chu was embroiled in a civil war, between then-ruler Ma Xiguang and Ma Xi'e the military governor of Wuping Circuit (\u6b66\u5e73, headquartered in modern Changde, Hunan) \u2014 both of them Ma Yin's sons and Ma Xisheng's younger brothers. In 950, after Ma Xi'e was able to persuade Ma Xiguang's general Xu Keqiong into defecting and surrendering Changsha to him, Changsha fell, leading to a general pillaging of the capital city. The officer Lu Mengjun (), who had long despised the Yangs, used this opportunity to attack the Yangs' mansion and slaughter them. However, it was said that Lady Yang's fate, after the slaughter, was unknown.", "2750110": "Empress Ma (Han dynasty)\nEmpress Ma (\u99ac\u7687\u540e, personal name unknown; late 30s \u2013 August 16, 79), formally Empress Mingde (\u660e\u5fb7\u7687\u540e, literally, \"the understanding and virtuous empress\"), was an empress during the Eastern Han dynasty from 8 April 60 until 75, then empress dowager from that year till her death. Her husband was Emperor Ming of Han.\nFamily background and marriage to Crown Prince Zhuang.\nThe eventual Empress Ma was born to Emperor Guangwu's General Ma Yuan, known for his expeditions against Vietnamese rebellions and his exhortations on personal living, and his wife Lady Lin (\u85fa\u592b\u4eba). Ma was a marquess, and Lady Ma was therefore born into comfort and wealth, as a member of a noble family.\nIn 49, however, things would change. Ma, while on expedition against the Wulin tribes (in modern eastern Guizhou and northwestern Hunan), died during the campaign from a plague, which also killed a large number of his soldiers. After his death, Ma's deputy Geng Shu (\u803f\u8212), who had disagreed with Ma's strategy, and Emperor Guangwu's son-in-law Liang Song (\u6881\u677e), who had prior grudges against Ma, falsely accused Ma of many crimes\u2014most of which is unknown to us. Two specific accusations that are known are that Ma, by the route he took against the Wulin tribes, was responsible for the plague, and that he had, while on campaigns, embezzled pearls and rhinoceros horns. (The later accusation was a misunderstanding in that one of Ma's favorite foods\u2014which he considered capable of warding off plagues\u2014was Job's tears (Chinese pearl barley), which was produced in southern China and northern Vietnam, which Ma had transported in large quantities back to the capital Luoyang.) Guangwu believed these false accusations and posthumously stripped Ma of his marquess title and fief, thus depriving the Ma family of its major source of income.\nThe other noble families began to look down on the Ma family. Lady Ma had been previously engaged to marry a son of another noble family, the Dous. The Dous began to have second thoughts of the marriage, believing that Lady Ma was no longer worthy to marry their son. Ma's cousin Ma Yan (\u99ac\u56b4) and mother Lady Lin were angered by the Dous' attitude, and resolved to dissolve the engagement and offer Lady Ma to Crown Prince Liu Zhuang as a consort instead.\nAs consort to the crown prince.\nAs a consort to the crown prince, Consort Ma was described to be excellent at serving her mother-in-law, Empress Yin Lihua, and she quickly became Empress Yin's favorite. She was also cordial and warm to her fellow consorts. As a result, she also became a favorite of Crown Prince Zhuang. One of her virtues was said to be her willingness, or indeed, eagerness, to find appropriate beautiful ladies in waiting for Crown Prince Zhuang to have sexual relations with, because at that point Crown Prince Zhuang had not had many sons.\nConsort Ma herself was childless. Her older sister's daughter, Consort Jia, was also a consort to the crown prince, and Consort Jia bore a son named Liu Da (\u5289\u709f). Crown Prince Zhuang instructed Consort Ma to adopt Prince Da as her son, and she did so. She raised him so carefully and lovingly that he never regarded anyone but her as his mother.\nAs empress consort.\nIn 57, Emperor Guangwu died, and Crown Prince Zhuang ascended the throne as Emperor Ming. Consort Ma became an imperial consort. In 60, he created her empress and created Prince Da crown prince.\nAs empress, Empress Ma was described as humble and solemn, and she loved reading. She often wore the less expensive white silk without elaborate designs. The imperial consorts and princesses were all surprised by how thrifty she was and yet impressed by her. Emperor Ming often consulted her on important matters of state when he could not make a decision quickly. She would analyze the issues carefully and come up with good suggestions. When Emperor Ming resolved dilemmas with her help, he tried to consult her even more on other important matters of governance, but she refused to more speak and make suggestions and supported Emperor Ming's own opinions. One thing she was described of having never done was to request favors for her brothers and cousins. Because of this, Emperor Ming continued to respect and trust and love her.\nIn 71, as mass tortures and executions were being carried out as a result of a conspiracy engaged in by Emperor Ming's brother Liu Ying, the Prince of Chu, Empress Ma interceded on the accused people's behalf, and as a result, Emperor Ming tapered off on his efforts to eliminate anyone who might be even remotely connected with the conspiracy.\nIn 72, when Emperor Ming created his sons princes, he gave them relatively small principalities. Empress Ma objected\u2014she did not understand why these principalities were only half as large as the ones for Emperor Guangwu's sons. Emperor Ming responded that of course his sons could not be compared with his father's sons\u2014a response that she would remember and agree with.\nOn 5 September 75, Emperor Ming died, and Crown Prince Da ascended the throne as Emperor Zhang. Empress Ma became empress dowager on the same day.\nAs empress dowager.\nEmpress Dowager Ma continued to be known for her humility and good judgment as empress dowager. Emperor Zhang, like his father, turned to her when he was in a dilemma about important government issues, to decide the issue with her advice or her approval in the decision he wanted to make. Emperor Zhang, who was close to his uncles\u2014Empress Dowager Ma's brothers Ma Liao (\u99ac\u5ed6), Ma Fang (\u99ac\u9632), and Ma Guang (\u99ac\u5149)\u2014wanted to promote them quickly, but Empress Dowager Ma did not urge it. They did all become important court officials, however. In 77, when Emperor Zhang wanted to further create his uncles marquesses, Empress Ma refused, and issued an edict stating that\u2014just as how Emperor Ming had told her that his sons could not be compared with his father's sons\u2014the Mas could not be compared with the Yins and the Guos (the family of Emperor Guangwu's first empress Guo"}, "descending_order": ["41600718", "2750110", "37946126", "37915910"], "permutation_1": ["37915910", "2750110", "37946126", "41600718"], "permutation_2": ["37915910", "41600718", "2750110", "37946126"], "permutation_3": ["2750110", "37915910", "41600718", "37946126"]}
{"id": "2hop__143243_774871", "docs_added": {"159172": "Iron Maiden\nEnglish heavy metal band\nIron Maiden are an English heavy metal band formed in Leyton, East London, in 1975 by bassist and primary songwriter Steve Harris. Although fluid in the early years of the band, the line-up for most of the band's history has consisted of Harris, lead vocalist Bruce Dickinson, drummer Nicko McBrain, and guitarists Dave Murray, Adrian Smith and Janick Gers. As pioneers of the new wave of British heavy metal movement, Iron Maiden released a series of UK and US Platinum and Gold albums, including 1980's debut album, 1981's \"Killers\", and 1982's \"The Number of the Beast\" \u2013 its first album with Dickinson, who in 1981 replaced Paul Di'Anno as lead singer. The addition of Dickinson was a turning point in their career, establishing them as one of heavy metal's most important bands. \"The Number of the Beast\" is among the most popular heavy metal albums of all time, having sold almost 20 million copies worldwide.\nAfter some turbulence in the 1990s, the return of lead vocalist Bruce Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith in 1999 saw the band undergo a resurgence in popularity, with a series of new albums and highly successful tours. Their three most recent albums \u2014 \"The Final Frontier\" (2010), \"The Book of Souls\" (2015), and \"Senjutsu\" (2021) \u2014 have all reached number\u00a01 in more than 25 countries. Iron Maiden have sold over 130\u00a0million copies of their albums worldwide and have obtained over\u00a0600 certifications. The band is considered to be one of the most influential and revered heavy metal bands of all time. They have received multiple industry awards, including the Grammy and Brit Awards.\nThe band have released 41 albums, including 17 studio albums, 13 live albums, four EPs and seven compilations. They have also released 47 singles and 20 video albums, and two video games. Iron Maiden's lyrics cover such topics as history, literature, war, mythology, dark fantasy, science fiction, society and religion. As of October\u00a02019[ [update]], the band have played 2,500 live shows. For over 40\u00a0years the band have featured their signature mascot, \"Eddie\", on the covers of almost all of their releases.\nHistory.\nEarly years (1975\u20131978).\nIron Maiden were formed on Christmas Day, 25 December 1975, by bassist Steve Harris shortly after he left his previous group, Smiler. Harris attributed the band's name to a film adaptation of \"The Man in the Iron Mask\" from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, as the title reminded him of the iron maiden torture device. They originally used the name Ash Mountain, but most of the band members preferred the name Iron Maiden. After months of rehearsal, Iron Maiden made their debut at St. Nicks Hall in Poplar on 1 May 1976, before taking up a semi-residency at the Cart and Horses Pub in Maryland, Stratford. The original line-up was short-lived, with vocalist Paul Mario Day being the first to go as, according to Harris, he lacked \"energy or charisma on stage\". He was replaced by Dennis Wilcock, a Kiss fan who used makeup and fake blood during live performances and had earlier played with Harris and Doug Sampson in the band Smiler. Wilcock's friend, guitarist Dave Murray, was invited to join, much to the dismay of the band's guitarists Dave Sullivan and Terry Rance. Their frustration led Harris to temporarily disband Iron Maiden in 1976, though the group reformed soon after with Murray as the sole guitarist. Harris and Murray remain the band's longest-serving members and have performed on all of their releases.\nIron Maiden recruited another guitarist in 1977, Bob Sawyer, who was sacked for embarrassing the band on stage by pretending to play guitar with his teeth. Tension ensued again, causing a rift between Murray and Wilcock, who convinced Harris to fire Murray, as well as original drummer Ron Matthews. A new line-up was put together, including future Cutting Crew member Tony Moore on keyboards, Terry Wapram on guitar and drummer Barry Purkis (better known today as Thunderstick). After a single gig with the band in January 1978, Moore was asked to leave as Harris decided keyboards did not suit the band's sound. Dave Murray rejoined in late March 1978, and when Terry Wapram disapproved he was sacked. A few weeks later, Dennis Wilcock decided to leave Iron Maiden to form his own band, V1, with Wapram, and drummer Barry Purkis also left. Former Smiler drummer Doug Sampson was at Dennis' and Thunderstick's last gig, and joined the band afterwards.\nHarris, Murray and Sampson spent the summer and autumn of 1978 rehearsing while they searched for a singer to complete the band's new line-up. A chance meeting at the Red Lion, a pub in Leytonstone, in November 1978 evolved into a successful audition for vocalist Paul Di'Anno. Steve Harris said, \"There's sort of a quality in Paul's voice, a raspiness in his voice, or whatever you want to call it, that just gave it this great edge\". At this time, Murray would typically act as their sole guitarist, with Harris commenting, \"Davey was so good he could do a lot of it on his own. The plan was always to get a second guitarist in, but finding one that could match Davey was really difficult\".\nRecord contract and early releases (1978\u20131981).\nOn New Year's Eve, 1978, Iron Maiden recorded a four-song demo at Spaceward Studios in Cambridge. Hoping the recording would help them secure more gigs, the band gave a copy to Neal Kay, who, at the time, was managing a heavy metal club called \"Bandwagon Heavy Metal Soundhouse\". After hearing the tape, Kay began playing the demo regularly at the Bandwagon, and one of the songs, \"Prowler\", eventually went to number\u00a01 in the Soundhouse charts, which were published weekly in \"Sounds\" magazine. A copy was also acquired by Rod Smallwood, who soon became the band's manager. As Iron Maiden's popularity increased, they released the demo on their own record label as \"The Soundhouse Tapes\", named after the club. Featuring only three tracks (one song, \"Strange World\", was excluded as the band were unsatisfied with its production), all 5,000 copies sold out within weeks.\nIn December 1979, the band secured a major record deal with EMI and asked Dave Murray's childhood friend, Adrian Smith of Urchin, to join the group as their second guitarist. Busy with his own band, Smith declined and Dennis Stratton was hired instead. Shortly after, Doug Sampson left due to health issues and was replaced by ex-Samson drummer Clive Burr at Stratton's suggestion on 26 December 1979. Iron Maiden's first appearance on an EMI album was on the \"Metal for Muthas\" compilation (released on 15 February 1980) with two early versions of \"Sanctuary\" and \"Wrathchild\". The release led to a tour including several other bands linked with the new wave of British heavy metal movement.\nIron Maiden released their self-titled album in 1980, which debuted at number\u00a04 in the UK Albums Chart. In addition to the title track, the album included other early favourites such as \"Running Free\", \"Transylvania\", \"Phantom of the Opera\" and \"Sanctuary\" \u2013 which was not on the original UK release, but appeared on the US version and subsequent remasters. The band embarked on a headline tour of the UK, before opening for Kiss on their 1980 Unmasked Tour's European leg as well as supporting Judas Priest on select dates. After the Kiss tour, Dennis Stratton was dismissed from the band as a result of creative and personal differences, and was replaced by Smith in October 1980. In December, the band played at the Rainbow Theatre in London, where their first live video was filmed. \"Live at the Rainbow\" was released in May 1981, and \"Iron Maiden\" and \"Wrathchild\" from this video received heavy rotation on MTV during its first hours on the air as the first metal videos ever.\nIn 1981, Iron Maiden released their second studio album, \"Killers\". Although many tracks were written prior to their debut release, it had two new songs: \"Prodigal Son\" and \"Murders in the Rue Morgue\" (the latter's title was taken from the short story by Edgar Allan Poe). Unsatisfied with the production on their debut album, the band hired veteran producer Martin Birch, who would continue to work with Iron Maiden until his retirement in 1992. The record was followed by the band's first world tour with their debut performance in the United States opening for Judas Priest at The Aladdin Casino in Las Vegas. \"Killers\" marked the band's USA album charts debut, reaching number\u00a078 on the \"Billboard\" 200, and they booked 132 shows to promote the album, including their first concert in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. During the summer, Iron Maiden played several festivals in Europe, including at the Golden Summernights 1981 festivals at Zeppelinfeld in Nuremberg in front of 100,000 people.\nSuccess (1981\u20131985).\nBy 1981, Paul Di'Anno was demonstrating increasingly erratic behaviour, particularly due to his drug usage, about which Di'Anno comments, \"It wasn't just that I was snorting a bit of coke, though; I was just going for it non-stop, 24 hours a day, every day\u00a0... the band had commitments piling up that went on for months, years, and I just couldn't see my way to the end of it. I knew I'd never last the whole tour. It was too much\". Di'Anno was dismissed following the Killer World Tour with the band already having selected his replacement. After a meeting with Rod Smallwood at the Reading Festival, Bruce Dickinson, formerly of Samson, auditioned for Iron Maiden in September 1981 and was immediately hired. The following month, Dickinson went out on the road with the band on a small headlining tour in Italy and a one-off show at the Rainbow Theatre in the UK. For the last show, and in anticipation of their forthcoming album, the band played \"Children of the Damned\" and \"22 Acacia Avenue\", introducing fans to their new material.\nIn 1982, Iron Maiden released their third studio album, \"The Number of the Beast\", which became the band's first number\u00a01 record on the UK Albums Chart, was a Top 10 hit in many other countries, and reached number\u00a033 on the \"Billboard\" 200. At the time, Dickinson was in the midst of legal difficulties with Samson's management and was not permitted to add his name to any of the songwriting credits, although he still made what he described as a \"moral contribution\" to \"Children of the Damned\", \"The Prisoner\", and \"Run to the Hills\". The band embarked on a world tour, dubbed The Beast on the Road, with shows in North America, Japan, Australia and Europe, including a headline appearance for 40,000 people at the Reading Festival. Iron Maiden played 188 shows in 10 months. The Beast on the Road's US leg proved controversial when an American conservative political lobbying group claimed Iron Maiden were Satanic because of the new album's title track and \"demonic\" cover art, and a group of Christian activists destroyed Iron Maiden records in protest. Dickinson later said the band treated this as \"silliness\" and the demonstrations in fact gave them \"loads of publicity\". \"The Number of the Beast\" sold 2.5 million copies in its first year, 14 million by 2010, and 20 million by 2022.\nIn December 1982, drummer Clive Burr was fired from the band and replaced by Nicko McBrain, who previously played for Trust. Although Harris said the dismissal took place because his live performances were affected by offstage activities, Burr later claimed he was unfairly ousted from the band. The band then recorded the first of three consecutive albums at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas. In 1983, they released their fourth studio album, \"Piece of Mind\", which reached the number\u00a03 spot in the UK and number\u00a014 on the \"Billboard\" 200. \"Piece of Mind\" features the singles \"The Trooper\" and \"Flight of Icarus\", the latter being one of the band's few songs to gain substantial airplay in the US. Iron Maiden played 147 concerts in Europe and North America as a part of the World Piece Tour. This was also their first major North American tour as headliners, selling out Madison Square Garden with a crowd of 20,000.\nAfter the success of \"Piece of Mind\" and its supporting tour, the band released their fifth studio album, \"Powerslave\", on 9 September 1984. The album features the singles \"2 Minutes to Midnight\" and \"Aces High\", the title track, and \"Rime of the Ancient Mariner\" (based on Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem \"Rime of the Ancient Mariner\"). \"Powerslave\" was another chart success, reaching number\u00a012 on the \"Billboard\" 200 and eventually number\u00a01 in the UK. The band's fifth studio album sold over 4 million copies in its first year after the premiere. The tour following the album, called World Slavery Tour, was the band's largest to date with 193 shows in 28 countries over 13 months, playing to an estimated 3,500,000 people. Many shows were played back to back in the same city, such as in Long Beach, California, where the band played four consecutive concerts at Long Beach Arena for a combined audience of 54,000 fans. Iron Maiden also made their debut appearance in South America, where they co-headlined the Rock in Rio festival with Queen for an audience estimated at 350,000\u2013500,000 people. The tour started in August 1984 with five shows in Poland. Iron Maiden were the first Western artists to bring full-scale production behind the Iron Curtain. The band's third official video, entitled \"Behind the Iron Curtain\", was released in October 1984. The World Slavery Tour documentary brought footage of the band touring Eastern Europe in 1984, performing shows in the countries visited, \"Behind the Iron Curtain\" was the first documentary ever published by a Western artist that showed them touring the countries of Eastern Bloc. The documentary movie was broadcast by MTV and local TV stations around the world.\nThe tour was physically gruelling for the band, who demanded six months off when it ended (although this was later reduced to four months). This was the first substantial touring break in the group's history, including the cancellation of a proposed supporting tour for the new live album, with Bruce Dickinson threatening to quit unless the tour ended. In October 1985, Iron Maiden released the double live album and home video, \"Live After Death\". A critical and commercial success, it peaked at number\u00a019 on the \"Billboard 200\" and number\u00a02 in the UK. The album was recorded at Long Beach Arena and also features additional tracks from four nights at London's Hammersmith Apollo. In November 1985, Iron Maiden were named the best rock and metal band in the world and awarded at Public Choice International.\nExperimentation (1986\u20131989).\nReturning from their time off, the band added different musical elements to their 1986 studio album, \"Somewhere in Time.\" These focused on synthesised bass and guitars to add textures and layers to the sound. The release performed well across the world, particularly the single \"Wasted Years\", but included no writing credits from Dickinson, whose material was rejected by the rest of the band. The album was the band's biggest American chart success to date, reaching number\u00a011 on the \"Billboard 200\" and number\u00a02 in the UK charts. The Somewhere on Tour was also a success. The band played 157 shows for over two and a half million fans, including eighty-one shows in North America. Once again, Iron Maiden visited Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia to play for tens of thousands of fans in each country. The experimentation evident on \"Somewhere in Time\" continued on their next album, \"Seventh Son of a Seventh Son\", which was released in 1988. A concept album recorded at Musicland Studios in Munich and based on the 1987 novel \"Seventh Son\" by Orson Scott Card, it was the band's first record to include keyboards, which were performed by Harris and Smith. Dickinson's enthusiasm was also renewed as his ideas were accepted for this album. Another popular release, it became Iron Maiden's third album to hit number\u00a01 in the UK charts and reached number\u00a012 on the \"Billboard 200.\"\nDuring the following tour, the band headlined the Monsters of Rock festival at Donington Park on 20 August 1988, playing to the largest crowd in the festival's history (107,000). The tour concluded with several headline shows in the UK in November and December 1988, with the concerts at the NEC Arena, Birmingham, recorded for a live video, entitled \"Maiden England\". The video debuted at top spots of worldwide music videos charts. In May, the group set out on a supporting tour, which saw them perform 103 shows to well over two million people worldwide over seven months. To recreate the album's keyboards onstage throughout the tour, the group recruited Michael Kenney, Steve Harris' bass technician; Kenney has served as the band's live keyboard player ever since, also performing on the band's four following albums.\nUpheaval (1989\u20131994).\nDuring a break in 1989, guitarist Adrian Smith released a solo album with his band ASAP, entitled \"Silver and Gold.\" Vocalist Bruce Dickinson also began work on a solo album with former Gillan guitarist Janick Gers, releasing \"Tattooed Millionaire\" in 1990, followed by a tour. At the same time, to mark the band's 10-year recording anniversary, Iron Maiden released a compilation collection, \"The First Ten Years\", a series of 10 CDs and double 12-inch singles. Between 24 February and 28 April 1990, the individual parts were released one by one, each containing two of Iron Maiden's singles, including the original B-sides.\nIron Maiden then began work on a new studio record. During the pre-production stages, Adrian Smith left the band due to differences with Steve Harris regarding the direction the band should be taking. Smith disagreed with the \"stripped down\" style they were leaning towards. Janick Gers, having worked on Dickinson's solo project, was chosen to replace Smith and became the band's first new member in seven years. The album \"No Prayer for the Dying\" was released in October 1990. It contained the hit singles \"Holy Smoke\" and \"Bring Your Daughter... to the Slaughter\", the band's first \u2013 and, to date, only \u2013 UK Singles Chart number\u00a01, originally recorded by Dickinson's solo project for the soundtrack of \"\". Iron Maiden's eighth studio album debuted at number\u00a02 on the UK albums chart and number\u00a017 on the \"Billboard 200\". \"No Prayer for the Dying\" was a return to their musical roots, especially in the simplicity of composition. The No Prayer on the Road tour was booked for 120 shows in Europe, North America, and Japan. Thirty-three shows in continental Europe were sold out with a reported 530,000 fans attending. In total, Iron Maiden played for some two million fans.\nAfter another break, the band recorded their next studio album, \"Fear of the Dark\", which was released in 1992. The title track became a regular part of the band's concert setlists. Achieving their fourth number\u00a01 on the UK albums chart and number\u00a012 on the \"Billboard 200\", the release also included the number\u00a02 single \"Be Quick or Be Dead\", the number\u00a021 single \"From Here to Eternity\", and the softer \"Wasting Love\". The album featured the first songwriting by Gers, and no collaboration between Harris and Dickinson on songs. The extensive worldwide tour that followed included their first-ever Latin American leg, although Christian organisations prevented Iron Maiden from performing in Chile and accused them of being \"emissaries of satanic propaganda\", and headlining the Monsters of Rock festivals in seven European countries. Iron Maiden's second performance at Donington Park, for a sold-out audience of 75,000, was filmed for the audio and video release \"Live at Donington\" and featured a guest appearance by Adrian Smith, who joined the band to perform \"Running Free\". The tour also saw conflicts between Bruce Dickinson and rest of the band.\nIn 1993, Dickinson left the band to pursue his solo career, but agreed to remain for a farewell tour and two live albums (later re-released in one package). The first, \"A Real Live One\", was released in March 1993 and featured songs from 1986 to 1992, and the second, \"A Real Dead One\", was released after Dickinson left the band and featured songs from 1980 to 1984. The tour did not go well, with Steve Harris claiming Dickinson would only perform properly for high-profile shows, and that at several concerts, he would only mumble into the microphone. Dickinson denied he was under-performing, saying it was impossible to \"make like Mr. Happy Face if the vibe wasn't right\", and that news of his exit from the band had prevented any chance of a good atmosphere during the tour. Dickinson played his farewell show with Iron Maiden on 28 August 1993. The show was filmed, broadcast by the BBC, MTV and released on video under the name \"Raising Hell\".\nDifficulties (1994\u20131999).\nIn 1994, the title track from the \"Fear of the Dark\" album received a Grammy Awards nomination for \"Best Metal Performance\", a first for Iron Maiden. The band listened to the thousands of tapes sent in by vocalists before convincing Blaze Bayley, formerly of the band Wolfsbane, who had supported Iron Maiden in 1990, to audition for them. Harris' preferred choice from the outset, Bayley had a different vocal style from his predecessor and ultimately received a mixed reception among fans.\nAfter a three-year hiatus \u2013 a record for the band at the time \u2013 Iron Maiden released their next studio album, \"The X Factor\". The band had their lowest chart position since 1981 for an album in the UK, debuting at number\u00a08; however, the album went on to win \"Album of the Year\" awards in France, Spain and Germany. The record included the 11-minute epic \"Sign of the Cross\", the band's longest song since \"Rime of the Ancient Mariner\", as well as the singles \"Man on the Edge\" (based on the film \"Falling Down\") and \"Lord of the Flies\", based on the novel \"Lord of the Flies\". The release is notable for its \"dark\" tone, inspired by Steve Harris' divorce. The band toured for the rest of 1995 and 1996, playing their first shows in Israel and South Africa as well as Malta, Bulgaria and Romania in Europe, before concluding in the Americas. The biggest show of the whole tour was a headline appearance for 60,000 people at the Monsters of Rock festival in S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil.\"The X Factor\" sold 1.3 million copies, the lowest sales result since 1981. After the tour, Iron Maiden released a compilation album, \"Best of the Beast\". The band's first compilation, it included a new single, \"Virus\", in which the lyrics attack critics who had recently written off the band.\nIn 1998, Iron Maiden released \"Virtual XI\", whose chart scores were the band's lowest to date. The album peaked at number\u00a016 in the UK, the band's lowest for a new studio record. At the same time, Steve Harris assisted in remastering the band's entire discography, up to and including \"Live at Donington\". Bayley's tenure in Iron Maiden ended in January 1999 when he was asked to leave during a band meeting. The dismissal took place due to issues Bayley had experienced with his voice during the Virtual XI World Tour, although Janick Gers said this was partly the band's fault for forcing him to perform songs pitched outside the natural range of his voice.\nReunion and renewed success (1999\u20132005).\nThe band entered into talks with Dickinson, who agreed to rejoin during a meeting in Brighton in January 1999, along with guitarist Adrian Smith, who was telephoned a few hours later. With Gers remaining, Iron Maiden now had a three-guitar line-up (nicknamed \"The Three Amigos\"), and embarked on a hugely successful reunion tour. Dubbed The Ed Hunter Tour, it tied in with the band's newly released greatest hits collection, \"Ed Hunter\", whose track listing was decided by a poll on the group's website, and also contained a computer game starring Eddie, the band's mascot.\nNot satisfied with the results from Harris' Barnyard Studios, located on his property in Essex, which had been used for the last four Iron Maiden studio albums, the band recorded the new release, \"Brave New World\", at Guillaume Tell Studios in Paris, France in November 1999 with producer Kevin Shirley. Iron Maiden continued to find inspiration in movies and books, as shown in songs like \"The Wicker Man\" \u2013 based on the 1973 British cult film \"The Wicker Man\" \u2013 and \"Brave New World\" \u2013 a title taken from the Aldous Huxley novel \"Brave New World\". The album revisited the more progressive and melodic sound featured in some earlier recordings, along with elaborate song structures and keyboard orchestration. The album was a commercial and artistic success.\nThe reunion world tour that followed had over 100\u00a0dates (including 31 shows of the 1999 tour), and culminated on 19 January 2001 in a show at the Rock in Rio festival in Brazil, where Iron Maiden played to an audience of over 250,000. While the performance was being produced for a CD and DVD release in March 2002, under the name \"Rock in Rio\", the band took a year off from touring, although they played three consecutive shows at Brixton Academy to raise funds for former drummer Clive Burr, who had recently announced that he had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The band performed two further concerts for Burr's MS Trust Fund charity in 2005, and 2007, before his death in 2013. During the 2000\u20132002 tour, Iron Maiden played 91 shows for over two million people in 33 countries. In addition to their touring success, the band was nominated twice for the annual Grammy Awards and received the International Achievement Award at the 2001 Ivor Novello Awards. In November 2001, a documentary movie about the making of \"The Number of the Beast\" album was produced by BBC as a part of the \"Classic Album series\".\nFollowing their summer 2003 Give Me Ed... 'Til I'm Dead Tour, with 57 shows in Europe and North America and headlining large festivals such as Roskilde, Heineken Jammin' Festival, Rock am Ring and Rock im Park (combined attendance of 130,000) and the first Download Festival held at Donington Park; a successor to Monsters of Rock, Iron Maiden released \"Dance of Death\", their thirteenth studio album. It met with worldwide critical and commercial success, reaching number\u00a02 on the UK Albums Chart and number\u00a018 on the \"Billboard 200\". Produced by Kevin Shirley, now the band's regular producer, many critics felt this release reached the standard of their earlier efforts. Historical and literary references were present, with \"Monts\u00e9gur\" focussing on the Cathar stronghold conquered in 1244, and \"Paschendale\" relating to the First World War battle.\nDuring the Dance of Death Tour 2003\u201304, which began in September 2003, Iron Maiden played 53 shows across Europe, North America, Latin America and Japan. The band's performance at Westfalenhalle, in Dortmund, Germany, was recorded and released in August 2005 as a live album and DVD entitled \"Death on the Road\". In 2005, the band announced the Eddie Rips Up the World Tour, which, tying in with their 2004 DVD entitled \"\", only featured material from their first four albums. As part of this celebration of their earlier years, \"The Number of the Beast\" single was re-released and went straight to number\u00a03 on the UK Chart. The tour featured many headlining stadium and festival dates, including a performance at Ullevi Stadium in Sweden to an audience of almost 60,000. This concert was also broadcast live on satellite television across Europe to approximately 60 million viewers. The band completed the tour by headlining the Reading and Leeds Festivals on 26\u201328 August, and the RDS Stadium in Ireland on 31 August.\nContinued success and expanded tours (2005\u20132014).\nAt the end of 2005, Iron Maiden began work on \"A Matter of Life and Death\", their fourteenth studio album, which was released in autumn 2006. War and religion are recurring themes in the lyrics and the cover artwork. The release was a critical and commercial success, marking the band's first top ten on the \"Billboard\" 200 and debuting at number one in the album charts of 13 countries. The supporting tour saw mixed critical reception, but included the band's first performance in Dubai at the Dubai Desert Rock Festival for 25,000 people, followed by a concert in Bangalore Palace Grounds, the first of any heavy metal band in India. The band then played a string of European dates, including an appearance at Download Festival, their fourth headline performance at Donington Park, to approximately 80,000 people.\nOn 5 September 2007, the band announced their Somewhere Back in Time World Tour, tying in with the DVD release of their \"Live After Death\" album. The setlist for the tour consisted of songs from the 1980s. They played their first concerts in Costa Rica and Colombia and their first shows in Australia and Puerto Rico since 1992. The tour led to the release of a new compilation album, entitled \"Somewhere Back in Time\", which included a selection of tracks from their 1980 eponymous debut to 1988's \"Seventh Son of a Seventh Son\", as well as several live versions from \"Live After Death\". In 2008\u201309 in Latin America the band played 27 concerts for about a million people in total, a record for a heavy rock performer. The tour continued with two legs in the US and Europe in the summer of 2008. The sole UK concert took place at Twickenham Stadium, marking the first time the band would headline a stadium in their own country. The 2008 tour was the second highest-grossing tour of the year for a British artist. The final leg included the band's first appearances in Peru and Ecuador, as well as their return to Venezuela and New Zealand after 17 years. The band also played another show in India at the Rock in India festival to a crowd of 20,000. At their concert in S\u00e3o Paulo on 15 March, Dickinson announced on stage that it was the largest non-festival show of their career, with an overall attendance of 100,000\u00a0people. The final leg ended in Florida on 2 April after which the band took a break. Overall, the tour reportedly had an attendance of over two and a half million people worldwide over both years. At the 2009 Brit Awards, Iron Maiden won the award for best British live act.\nOn 20 January 2009, the band announced they were planning to release a full-length documentary film in select cinemas on 21 April 2009. Entitled \"\", it documented the first part of the Somewhere Back in Time World Tour (between February and March 2008). \"Flight 666\" was co-produced by Banger Productions and was distributed in cinemas by Arts Alliance Media and EMI, with D&E Entertainment sub-distributing in the US. The film went on to have a Blu-ray, DVD, and CD release in May and June, topping the music DVD charts in 25 countries. In most of them the release went Gold, Platinum or Multi-Platinum.\nThe band had begun composing new material and booked studio time in early 2010 with Kevin Shirley producing, and \"The Final Frontier\" was announced on 4 March and featured three singles \"The Final Frontier\", \"El Dorado\" and \"Coming Home\", as well as epic, progressive opuses \"Isle of Avalon\", \"The Talisman\" and \"When The Wild Wind Blows\". The album, the band's fifteenth, was released on 16 August to critical acclaim. It was also the band's greatest commercial success to that point, reaching number\u00a01 in twenty-eight countries worldwide, including a debut at number\u00a04 on \"Billboard 200\".\nThe album's supporting tour saw the band perform 101 shows across the globe to an estimated audience of over two and a half million, including their first visits to Singapore, Indonesia, and South Korea. \"El Dorado\" won the Best Metal Performance award at the 2011 Grammy Awards, the band's first win after two previous nominations. On 15 March, a new compilation to accompany 2009's \"Somewhere Back in Time\" was announced. The double disc set covers the period 1990\u20132010 (the band's most recent eight studio albums). In 2012, the band announced a new live album and DVD release entitled \"En Vivo!\", based on footage from the Chile concert. The DVD topped the music video charts around the world. In addition to the concert footage, the video release includes an 88-minute tour documentary, entitled Behind The Beast, containing interviews with the band and their crew. In December 2012, one song from the release (\"Blood Brothers\") was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance at the 2013 Grammy Awards.\nOn 15 February, the band announced their third retrospective Maiden England World Tour 2012\u201314, which was based around the video \"Maiden England\". The tour commenced in North America in the summer of 2012 and was followed by further dates in 2013 and 2014, and included the band's fifth headline performance at Donington Park with 100,000 fans in attendance. Iron Maiden closed the tour in July 2014 at Sonisphere Festival, Knebworth, having undertaken 100 shows in 32 countries before an estimated audience of more than 2.7 million people.\nLatest albums and tours (2015\u2013present).\nThe band's 2015 album, \"The Book of Souls\", was released on 4 September. The band's first original studio album not to be issued by EMI outside North America, following Parlophone's acquisition by Warner Music Group in 2013, it was a critical and commercial success, becoming the band's fifth UK number\u00a01 album and hit number\u00a04 on \"Billboard 200\" in the US. The new release reached the number one position in the album charts of 43 countries. The new record was recorded at Guillaume Tell Studios in late summer 2014; its closing song, \"Empire of the Clouds\", penned by Dickinson, surpassed \"Rime of the Ancient Mariner\" (from 1984's \"Powerslave\") as Iron Maiden's longest song, at 18 minutes in length.\nIn February 2016, the band embarked on The Book of Souls World Tour, with shows in 35 countries across six continents, including their first performances in China, El Salvador, and Lithuania. It was the band's biggest album tour since 1996. In total, Iron Maiden played 117 shows on six continents for well over two and a half million people. The band then launched the Legacy of the Beast World Tour in Europe in 2018, with North and South American shows following in 2019. The tour was inspired by the band's new mobile game and comic series released in 2017, entitled \"Legacy of the Beast\". The tour was received very positively by fans and critics, spanning up to three years with 140 shows, performing to over 3.5 million fans.\nThe COVID-19 pandemic forced the rescheduling of nearly one million tickets from 2020, first to 2021, and then to 2022. In October 2020, the band announced they would release a live album from the Legacy of the Beast World Tour called \"Nights of the Dead, Legacy of the Beast: Live in Mexico City\". The double concert album was recorded during three sold-out concerts in Mexico City's Palacio de los Deportes for a combined audience of over 70,000 people.\nOn 15 July 2021, Iron Maiden released a video for their first song in six years, \"The Writing on the Wall\", which was directed by Nicos Livesey. Four days later, the band announced their seventeenth studio album, \"Senjutsu\", would be released on 3 September 2021. \"Senjutsu\" eventually reached the top of the best-seller lists in 27 countries, but it was the band's first album in fifteen years not to reach number one on the UK charts, although it did top the UK Rock & Metal Singles and Albums Charts. In total, \"Senjutsu\" reached the top three in 55 countries and the top five in 63 countries.\nOn 1 February 2023, the band received their second nomination for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The band started their 25th global tour, The Future Past World Tour, with a concert in Ljubljana in May 2023. On 6 October, the band performed at the Power Trip festival which drew nearly 100,000 people. Throughout the 2023\u201324 world tour, Iron Maiden performed 81 shows for almost two million fans. Following the conclusion of the tour in S\u00e3o Paulo in December 2024, McBrain retired from touring, but would still remain a member of Iron Maiden and be involved with various upcoming band-related projects in the studio. The following day, it was announced that British Lion drummer Simon Dawson would be his touring replacement for any further tours.\nOn 19 September 2024, the band announced their 26th global tour, Run For Your Lives World Tour, which is set to start in May 2025, to celebrate the band's 50th anniversary and is set to be focused on the band's first nine studio albums.\nImage and legacy.\nIron Maiden have received numerous nominations, honours and awards including Grammy Awards and equivalents awards in many countries, Brit Awards, Ivor Novello Awards, and Juno Awards. They have ranked highly in many polls of the greatest metal artists of all time. In 2012 \"The Number of the Beast\" was voted as Best British Album Ever by the British public as part of Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Iron Maiden have an exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Rock in Rio Wall of Fame.\nIron Maiden were inducted into Hollywood RockWalk, BPI Hall of Fame and Kerrang! Hall of Fame. Band's mascot Eddie the Head is a part of the British Music Experience permanent exhibition. In April 2021, the band's former members (Paul Di'Anno, Blaze Bayley, and illustrator Derek Riggs) were inducted into the Metal Hall of Fame. They have twice been nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In January 2023 Iron Maiden were honoured by Royal Mail UK with dedicated postal stamps and cards.\nIron Maiden have sold over 130\u00a0million copies of their albums worldwide, despite little radio or television support. According to many sources all audio-visual catalogue of the band have sold in over 200\u00a0million copies worldwide, including regular albums, singles, compilations, and videos. Their third studio album, \"The Number of the Beast,\" is among the most popular heavy metal albums of all time and the most commercially successful release of the band, having sold almost 20 million copies worldwide. As of 2022 their releases have been certified silver, gold and platinum around 600 times worldwide.\nIn 1979\u20131980, visual artist Derek Riggs created the macabre mascot named Eddie The Head. Since then, Eddie has been an integral part of the stage and media image of the group. Originally a papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 mask which would squirt fake blood during their live shows, the character featured on the band's debut album cover, also done by Derek Riggs. Eddie was painted exclusively by Riggs until 1992, at which point the band began using artwork from other artists, including Melvyn Grant.\nA large puppet version of Eddie has appeared many times during carnival celebrations in Rio de Janeiro and other South American cities. During the Cavalcade of Magi 2021 in the Spanish city of Cadiz, next to dolls representing characters known from the world of pop culture, there was a huge, inflatable mummy inspired by the image of the Iron Maiden mascot from 1985.\nIron Maiden's distinct logo has adorned all of the band's releases since their debut, 1979's \"The Soundhouse Tapes\" EP. The typeface originates with Vic Fair's poster design for the 1976 science fiction film, \"The Man Who Fell to Earth\", also used by Gordon Giltrap, although Steve Harris claims he designed it himself, using his training as an architectural draughtsman.\nInfluence on other artists and the genre.\nIron Maiden have influenced numerous artists and bands representing different genres of rock and metal music. Kiss co-founder Paul Stanley said Iron Maiden \"have helped spawn an entire genre of music\" and influenced literally thousands of other artists. According to \"Guitar World\", Iron Maiden's music has \"influenced generations of newer metal acts, from legends like Metallica to current stars like Avenged Sevenfold.\" Metallica members Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, and Jason Newsted have cited Iron Maiden as a major influence on their work. Other bands and artists directly influenced by Iron Maiden include Ghost, Avenged Sevenfold, In Flames, Anthrax, Exodus, and Alice in Chains.\nJournalist Geoff Barton says the band's music constituted an important passage between the classic heavy rock school during the 1960s and 1970s, based on rhythm and blues, and contemporary heavy metal, characterised by sub-genre diversification and stylistic eclecticism. Music journalist G\u00f6tz K\u00fchnemund said \"Iron Maiden were (and still are) the inspiration for all the heavy metal bands we know today because they're an intrinsically heavy metal group. They're equally important for those who play power metal, speed, thrash, death, black, nu metal, metal core and hard rock \u2013 almost every genre.\" The journalist stated the band introduced a DIY approach to all rock music. According to Rock 'n Roll Fantasy Camp the style and attitude of Iron Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain has inspired generations of heavy-metal drummers that followed. Music writer, heavy metal expert and radio broadcaster Scott Penfold stated band's \"influence on the genre is immeasurable, as they not only inspired subsequent generations of metal bands but also revolutionized live shows with their elaborate stage productions, further cementing their status as pioneers of heavy metal.\"\nMusic journalist and the writer Neil Daniels said Iron Maiden \"redefined the whole genre blending classic heavy rock influence with punky vibe, twin guitars attack and progressive approach which finally have created the new quality. [The] Band's influence on generations of rock and metal bands cannot be overstated. They elevated metal to an art form, proving that academic and musical inspirations can coexist.\" The band's profile by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame says \"in the 1980s, Iron Maiden released seven high-octane albums that cemented them as one of the greatest rock bands \u2013 creating a blueprint for how heavy metal bands should look, sound and tour.\" According to \"Metal Hammer\" Iron Maiden is the second band to Black Sabbath, which has had the most significant impact on metal and heavy rock music.\nAppearance in media.\nThe first heavy metal videos broadcast by MTV were the live versions of \"Iron Maiden\" and \"Wrathchild\" taken from the official VHS \"Live at the Rainbow (Iron Maiden)\". In 1989, Iron Maiden took part in the Rock Aid Armenia project (also known as Live Aid Armenia) - a humanitarian project by the British music industry. The project aimed to raise funds to help people affected by the earthquake in Armenia in 1988.\nThe number of releases in tribute to the British band can be estimated in the hundreds, with an extremely wide range of stylistic variants. In 2008, \"Kerrang!\" released \"\", an album composed of Iron Maiden cover songs performed by Metallica, Machine Head, Dream Theater, Trivium, Coheed and Cambria, Avenged Sevenfold, and other groups influenced by the band. In 2010, Maiden uniteD, an acoustic tribute band consisting of members of Ayreon, Threshold and Within Temptation, released \"Mind the Acoustic Pieces\", a re-interpretation of the entire \"Piece of Mind\" album. As of 2021 nearly 200 Iron Maiden cover audio-visual releases exist (each featuring various artists), including piano, electro, string quartet and hip-hop tributes.\nIn March 2025, Netflix will release \"Run to the Hills\", a documentary celebrating Iron Maiden's 50th anniversary. Directed by David Morgan, it will explore the band's rise from their early days in London to global heavy metal icons. The exact release date is yet to be confirmed.\nClaims of Satanic references.\nThe 1982 release of \"The Number of the Beast\" created some controversy for the band. The artwork and title track led to Christian groups in the United States branding the band as Satanists, encouraging people to destroy copies of the release. The band's manager, Rod Smallwood, later said the groups initially burnt the records, but later decided to destroy them with hammers due to fear of breathing in the melting vinyl's fumes. The protests were not restricted to the US, with Christian organisations preventing Iron Maiden from performing in Chile in 1992.\nThe band have always denied the notion they are Satanists, with lead vocalist, Bruce Dickinson, doing so on-stage in the \"Live After Death\" concert video. Steve Harris has since commented that, \"It was mad. They completely got the wrong end of the stick. They obviously hadn't read the lyrics. They just wanted to believe all that rubbish about us being Satanists.\" Harris has also said that \"The Number of the Beast\" song was inspired by a nightmare he had after watching \"\", and also influenced by Robert Burns' \"Tam o' Shanter\". The band's drummer, Nicko McBrain, has been a born-again Christian since 1999.\nEd Force One.\nFor their Somewhere Back in Time World Tour in 2008 and 2009, Iron Maiden commissioned an Astraeus Airlines Boeing 757 as transport. The aeroplane was converted into a combi configuration, which enabled it to carry the band, their crew and stage production, allowing the group to perform in countries which were previously deemed unreachable logistically. It was also repainted with a special Iron Maiden livery, which the airline decided to retain after receiving positive feedback from customers.\nThe aircraft, named \"Ed Force One\" after a competition on the band's website, was flown by Dickinson until 2022, as he was also a commercial airline pilot for Astraeus; the plane also appears in the documentary \"\". For The Book of Souls World Tour in 2016, the band upgraded to an ex-Air France Boeing 747-400 jumbo jet which allows for more space without the aircraft having to undergo a significant conversion to carry their equipment.\nIn 2025, the band announced that the 747-400 they used during 2016's The Book of Souls World Tour would be scrapped, and keychains constructed from the plane's parts could be collected by fans. \"She's been scrapped but bits of her will live on,\" Dickinson said. The keychains were sold for \u20ac66.66, which is a reference to the band's album The \"Number of the Beast\".\nMusical style and influences.\nSteve Harris, Iron Maiden's bassist and primary songwriter, has said his influences include Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes, Jethro Tull, Thin Lizzy, UFO, Queen, and Wishbone Ash. In 2010 Harris said, \"I think if anyone wants to understand Maiden's early thing, in particular the harmony guitars, all they have to do is listen to Wishbone Ash's \"Argus\" album. Thin Lizzy too, but not as much. And then we wanted to have a bit of a prog thing thrown in as well, because I was really into bands like Genesis and Jethro Tull. So you combine all that with the heavy riffs and the speed, and you've got it.\" In 2004, Harris explained the band's \"heaviness\" was inspired by \"Black Sabbath and Deep Purple with a bit of Zeppelin thrown in.\" Harris also developed his own playing style, which guitarist Janick Gers describes as \"more like a rhythm guitar.\" Harris's bass technique is responsible for the band's galloping style, heard in such songs as \"The Trooper\" and \"Run to the Hills\".\nThe band's guitarists, Dave Murray, Adrian Smith, and Janick Gers, each have their own individual influences and playing styles. Dave Murray is known for his legato technique which, he says, \"evolved naturally. I'd heard Jimi Hendrix using legato when I was growing up, and I liked that style of playing.\" Stating that he \"was inspired by blues rock rather than metal,\" Adrian Smith was influenced by Johnny Winter and Pat Travers, leading to him becoming a \"melodic player.\" Janick Gers prefers a more improvised style, largely inspired by Ritchie Blackmore, which he says is in contrast to Smith's \"rhythmic\" sound.\nSinger Bruce Dickinson, who typically works in collaboration with guitarist Adrian Smith, has an operatic vocal style, inspired by Arthur Brown, Peter Hammill, Ian Anderson and Ian Gillan, and is often considered to be one of the best heavy metal vocalists of all time. Although Nicko McBrain has only received one writing credit, on the \"Dance of Death\" album, Harris often relies on him while developing songs. Adrian Smith commented, \"Steve loves playing with him. [They] used to work for hours going over these bass and drum patterns.\"\nThroughout their career, the band's style has remained largely unchanged, although the addition of guitar synthesisers on 1986's \"Somewhere in Time\", keyboards on 1988's \"Seventh Son of a Seventh Son\", and an attempt to return to the \"stripped down\" production of their earlier material on 1990's \"No Prayer for the Dying\" marked some experimentation. In recent years, however, the band have begun using more progressive elements in their songs, which Steve Harris describes as not progressive \"in the modern sense, but like Dream Theater, more in a 70s way\". Greg Prato of Ultimate-Guitar wrote, \"By and large, Iron Maiden's long and lengthy career can be categorized into two separate eras: \"punk Maiden\" and \"prog Maiden\". According to Harris, \"Seventh Son of a Seventh Son\" was the band's first album which was \"more progressive\", and they would return to this style in 1995's \"The X Factor\", which he states is \"like an extension of \"Seventh Son\"..., in the sense of the progressive element to it\". The development contrasts with the band's raw-sounding earlier material, which AllMusic states was \"clearly drawing from elements of punk rock\", although Harris firmly denies this.\nBand members.\nCurrent lineup\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "2580138": "Ed Hunter\nEd Hunter is a greatest hits album and video game released in 1999 by English heavy metal band Iron Maiden and Synthetic Dimensions. The game objective consists of following Iron Maiden's mascot, Eddie, through various levels depicting the band's past album covers. The accompanying CDs have the group's most popular songs, as selected by fans on the band's official website.\nThe album was released alongside a tour of the same name, in which the band only played songs which were featured in the compilation. The tour itself was also notable for marking the return of former guitarist Adrian Smith and vocalist Bruce Dickinson, who had left the band in 1990 and 1993, respectively.\nOverview.\nThe band's intention to release their own video game was announced in a sticker which appeared on the case of their 1996 compilation album, \"Best of the Beast\", which stated, \"Available soon... \"Melt\", Eddie's own state-of-the-art 3D game.\" In September 1997, the band announced that the \"Melt\" project had been cancelled, with then vocalist Blaze Bayley commenting, \"It was crap. Maiden want to give their fans something to blow them away. The new one will.\" The band also revealed that a different game would be released in its place, with Bayley commenting, \"This game is nearly there. You've got to get to Eddie through time and space, heaven and hell... the works ! It's a shoot 'em up which we promise will out-shoot`em all.\" Prior to its release, bassist Steve Harris commented that \"it's the most amazing thing I've ever seen. I don't get shocked very often, but \"Ed Hunter\" was so good. It's like walking into a 3D version of the \"Somewhere in Time\" album cover, like going into the bar at the Ruskin Arms, only full of aliens and stuff. You go in and we'll be, like, holograms playing in the corner, or sitting at a table gambling. And then you've actually got the game itself, which is, like, this big shoot-'em-up chase through space and time to catch Eddie. It's brilliant.\" Originally slated for release in the Spring of 1998, the game was then pushed back to Christmas 1998 and eventually July 1999 to tie in with The Ed Hunter Tour.\nThe package includes three CDs. The first CD contains 14 songs, the second CD contains six songs and the installation program for the game, and the third CD contains the game data. The soundtrack consists of the top 20 songs voted for by Iron Maiden fans on the band's official website. The US version also contained a hidden bonus track of a new vocal version of \"Wrathchild\" with Bruce Dickinson.\nThe game passes through various levels, starting in London's East End before progressing to a psychiatric hospital, hell, and other various locations, all of which are lifted from the covers of past Iron Maiden albums. While the gameplay itself consists of shooting the appearing enemies with the mouse cursor, it acts as a rail shooter, meaning that the player has no control over movement apart from occasionally choosing the route he will take through the levels. In spite of this, the user can select which tracks play in the background, although only one song can be chosen for each level, which led to critics complaining about the soundtrack's repetitiveness.\nThe Ed Hunter Tour was the tour supporting the album and was the first tour with Bruce Dickinson on vocal duties since 1993, and with Adrian Smith on guitar since 1988.\nPersonnel.\nProduction credits are adapted from the album liner notes.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["2580138", "159172"], "permutation_1": ["2580138", "159172"], "permutation_2": ["2580138", "159172"], "permutation_3": ["2580138", "159172"]}
{"id": "2hop__7734_74402", "docs_added": {"21791": "Nanjing\nCapital of Jiangsu, China\nNanjing is the capital of Jiangsu, a province in East China. The city, which is located in the southwestern corner of the province, has 11 districts, an administrative area of , and as of 2021[ [update]] a population of 9,423,400.\nSituated in the Yangtze River Delta, Nanjing has a prominent place in Chinese history and culture, having served as the capital of various Chinese dynasties, kingdoms and republican governments dating from the 3rd century to 1949, and has thus long been a major center of culture, education, research, politics, economy, transport networks and tourism, being the home to one of the world's largest inland ports. The city is also one of the fifteen sub-provincial cities in the People's Republic of China's administrative structure, enjoying jurisdictional and economic autonomy only slightly less than that of a province. It has also been awarded the title of 2008 Habitat Scroll of Honor of China, Special UN Habitat Scroll of Honor Award and National Civilized City. Nanjing is also considered a Beta (global second-tier) city classification, together with Chongqing, Hangzhou and Tianjin by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, and ranked as one of the world's top 100 cities in the Global Financial Centres Index.\nAs of 2021, Nanjing has 68 institutions of higher learning, including 13 double-first-class universities, ten 111-plan universities, eight 211 universities, and 97 academies. Nanjing University, which has a long history, is among the world's top 20 universities ranked by the Nature Index. The ratio of college students to the total population ranks No.1 among large cities nationwide. Nanjing has the fifth-largest scientific research output of any city in the world. As of 2024, it has been ranked as the world's second most prolific scientific research center in earth and environmental sciences and the world's third most prolific scientific research center in chemistry and physical sciences, according to the Nature Index.\nNanjing, one of the nation's most important cities for over a thousand years, is recognized as one of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China. It has been one of the world's largest cities, enjoying peace and prosperity despite various wars and disasters. Nanjing served as the capital of Eastern Wu (229\u2013280), one of the three major states in the Three Kingdoms period; the Eastern Jin and each of the Southern dynasties (Liu Song, Southern Qi, Liang and Chen), which successively ruled southern China from 317 to 589; the Southern Tang (937\u201375), one of the Ten Kingdoms; the Ming dynasty when, for the first time, all of China was ruled from the city (1368\u20131421); and the Republic of China under the nationalist Kuomintang (1927\u201337, 1946\u201349) before its flight to Taiwan by Chiang Kai-Shek during the Chinese Civil War. The city also served as the seat of the rebel Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (1853\u201364) and the Japanese puppet regime of Wang Jingwei (1940\u201345) during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It suffered many notable devastating atrocities in both conflicts, most notably the Nanjing Massacre from late 1937 to early 1938.\nNanjing became the capital city of Jiangsu province in 1952, after serving as a Direct-administered Municipality from 1949 to 1952 following the establishment of the People's Republic of China. It has many important heritage sites, including the Presidential Palace, Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum and Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum. Nanjing is famous for human historical landscapes, mountains and waters such as Fuzimiao, Ming Palace, Chaotian Palace, Porcelain Tower, Drum Tower, Stone City, City Wall, Qinhuai River, Xuanwu Lake and Purple Mountain. Key cultural facilities include Nanjing Library, Nanjing Museum and Jiangsu Art Museum.\nNames.\nThe city has a number of other names, and some historical names are now used as names of districts of the city.\nThe city was known as Yuecheng and Jinling or \"Ginling\" () from the Warring States Era. Jianye (), which means 'build an empire', was officially designated for the city during the Eastern Wu dynasty. The city first became a Chinese national capital as early as the Jin dynasty and was renamed Jiankang. Nanjing is also called Jincheng (, Golden City), derived from Jinling City.\nThe name Nanjing, which means \"southern capital\", was officially designated for the city during the Ming dynasty, about six hundred years later. In English, the spelling Nanking was traditional until pinyin, developed in the 1950s and internationally adopted in the 1980s, standardized the spelling as \"Nanjing\".\nDuring the Qing dynasty, the city was called Jiangning (), whose first character jiang (, i.e. the Yangtze) is the former part of the name Jiangsu and second character ning (, simplified form ) is the shortened name of Nanjing. When it was the capital of the Republic of China (1912\u201349), jing () was adopted as the abbreviation of Nanjing.\nHistory.\nEarly history.\nArchaeological discovery shows that the so-called \"Nanjing Man\" lived more than 500,000 years ago. \"Zun\", a kind of wine vessel, were found to exist in Beiyinyangying culture of Nanjing about 5000 years ago. About 7000 years ago, there was an agricultural civilization in the area that is now Qixia. In the Jiangning district, ruins of primitive villages from the Neolithic Age were discovered.\nAbout 4000 years ago, dense Bronze Age primitive settlements appeared in the Qinhuai River Basin, labeled as the Hushu culture. The earliest cities in Nanjing were formed around these settlements. Due to the volume of archeological finds in the area related to the Taowu and Hushu cultures, many historians, anthropologists, and archeologists frequent the Nanjing area.\nHushu culture developed into Wu culture under the influence of the Shang and Zhou, who encroached from Central Plains. From the traditions, Taibo of Zhou came to Jiangnan and established the state of Wu during the 12th century BC.\nIn 571 BC, the State of Chu established Tangyi in Liuhe. This is the oldest extant administrative establishment in Nanjing; as of 2025 it has a history 2596 years long. In 541, Wu built Laizhu Town in Gaochun\u2014because of its strong city, it was also called Gucheng. Fuchai, King of the State of Wu, founded a fort named Yecheng in today's Nanjing area in 495BC.\nWu was conquered by the State of Yue in 473 BC, and the city was rebuilt at the mouth of the Qinhuai River in the following year. Later it was called Yuecheng () on the outskirts of the present-day Zhonghua Gate, which was the beginning of the construction of the main city of Nanjing. In 333 BC, Chu defeated Yue and built Jinling Yi () on in the western part of Nanjing. It was the earliest administrative construction in the main city of Nanjing. The name of Jinling comes from this.\nIn 210 BC, the First Emperor of Qin visited the east and changed Jinling City to Moling (). The area was successively part of Kuaiji, Zhang and Danyang prefectures in Qin and Han dynasty, and part of Yangzhou region which was established as the nation's 13 supervisory and administrative regions in the 5th year of Yuanfeng in Han dynasty (106BC). Nanjing was later the capital city of Danyang Prefecture, and had been the capital city of Yangzhou for about 400 years from late Han to early Tang.\nCapital of the Six Dynasties.\nSix Dynasties is a collective term for six Chinese dynasties mentioned above which all maintained national capitals at Jiankang. The six dynasties were: Eastern Wu (222\u2013280), Eastern Jin dynasty (317\u2013420) and four southern dynasties (420\u2013589).\nAt the end of the Eastern Han dynasty, the warlord Sun Quan, who ruled Jiangdong, moved his ruling office to Moling in 211 AD. The following year, he built the Stone City at the site of Jinling Yi, and renamed Moling to Jianye. Jianye later became the capital of the Eastern Wu dynasty during the Three Kingdoms period, after Sun Quan proclaimed himself emperor in 229, opening Nanjing's history as a state capital. By the time Wu was conquered by the Western Jin dynasty in 280, Jianye and its neighboring areas had been well cultivated, developing into one of the commercial, cultural and political centers of China.\nNot long after the unification of China, the Western Jin collapsed under the weight of civil wars by eight princes and rebellions from the so-called \"Five Barbarians\" in the north. Jianye, renamed to Jiankang in 313 to avoid Emperor Min of Jin's taboo name, was safely isolated from the chaos and became a popular refuge for the northern nobles and wealthy families. In 318, the ruling prince in Jiankang, Sima Rui proclaimed himself the new emperor and reestablished the dynasty as the Eastern Jin dynasty. This marked the first time a Chinese dynastic capital was moved from the north to southern China, as the north came under the rule of the Sixteen Kingdoms.\nJiankang was the centre of administration in the south for more than two and a half centuries, even as China entered the Northern and Southern dynasties period. After the Eastern Jin fell in 420, it continued to serve as the capital for the Southern dynasties of Liu Song, Southern Qi, Liang and Chen. During this time, Jiankang was the international hub of East Asia. Based on historical documents, the city had 280,000 registered households. Assuming an average Nanjing household consisted of about 5.1 people, the city had more than 1.4\u00a0million residents.\nA number of sculptural ensembles of that era, erected at the tombs of royals and other dignitaries, have survived (in various degrees of preservation) in Nanjing's northeastern and eastern suburbs, primarily in Qixia and Jiangning District. Possibly the best preserved of them is the ensemble of the Tomb of Xiao Xiu (475\u2013518), a brother of Emperor Wu of Liang.\nDestruction and revival.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n The phoenix birds once frolicked on Phoenix Terrace, The birds are gone, the Terrace empty, and the river flows on. Flourishing flowers of Wu Palace are buried beneath dark trails; Caps and gowns of Jin times all lie in ancient mounds. The Three-peaked Mountain lies half visible under the blue sky, The two-forked stream is separated by the White-Egret Isle in the middle. Clouds always block the sun, Chang'an cannot be seen and I grieve.\n \u2014 About the former opulent capital Jinling (present-day Nanjing) in the poem \"Climbing Phoenix Terrace at Jinling\" by Li Bai of the Tang dynasty\nThe period of division ended when the Sui dynasty reunified China and almost destroyed the entire city, turning it into a small town. The city was razed after the Sui took it over. It was renamed Shengzhou () in the Tang dynasty and resuscitated during the late Tang.\nIt was chosen as the capital and called Jinling () during the Southern Tang (937\u2013976), which succeeded the state of Yang Wu. It was renamed Jiangning (, \"Pacified Area of the Yangtze\") in the Northern Song and renamed Jiankang in the Southern Song. Jiankang's textile industry burgeoned and thrived during the Song despite the constant threat of foreign invasions from the north by the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty. The court of Da Chu, a short-lived puppet state established by the Jurchens, and the court of Song were once in the city.\nThe Southern Song were eventually destroyed by the Mongols; during their rule as the Yuan dynasty, the city's status as a hub of the textile industry was further consolidated. According to Odoric of Pordenone, Chilenfu (Nanjing) had 360 stone bridges, which were finer than anywhere else in the world. It was well populated and had a large craft industry.\nSouthern capital of the Ming dynasty.\nAfter Zhu Yuanzhang (known from his era as the Hongwu Emperor) overthrew the Yuan and established the Ming dynasty, he renamed the city Yingtian (), rebuilt it, and made it the dynastic capital in 1368, overseeing the surrounding areas under a special administration. The Hongwu Emperor constructed a long city wall around Yingtian, as well as a new Ming Palace complex, and government halls. It took 200,000 laborers 21\u00a0years to finish the wall, which was intended to defend the city and its surrounding region from coastal pirates. The present-day City Wall of Nanjing was mainly built during that time and today it remains in good condition and has been well preserved. It is among the longest surviving city walls in China. The Jianwen Emperor ruled from Yingtian from 1398 to 1402. It is believed that Nanjing was the largest city in the world from 1358 to 1425 with a population of 487,000 in 1400.\nHaving usurped power from his nephew and uncertain of the loyalty of the region's officials, the Yongle Emperor relocated the capital in 1421 to Beijing, where he had long served as the regional governor as the Prince of Yan. Because the new status of Yingtian was included in the Hongwu Emperor's \"ancestral injunctions\" for his dynasty, however, the Yongle Emperor was obliged to preserve its special status, at least in name. The \"northern capital\" came to be known as Beijing and the 'southern capital' as Nanjing (). Both controlled territories \"directly administered\" by the emperor and his staff, Beizhili in the north and Nanzhili in the south.\nThe Hongxi Emperor wanted to restore Nanjing as the sole imperial capital and undertook preparations to do so. On February 24, 1425, he appointed Admiral Zheng He as the defender of Nanjing and ordered him to continue his command over the Ming treasure fleet for the city's defense. Zheng He governed the city with three eunuchs for internal matters and two military noblemen for external matters, awaiting the Hongxi Emperor's return along with the military establishment from the north. The emperor died on May 29, 1425, before this could have taken place.\nThe succeeding Xuande Emperor preferred to remain in Beijing, leaving it the primary and \"de facto\" capital and Nanjing as permanent secondary or reserve capital. Owing to the continuing importance of the ancestral injunctions, however, Nanjing was designated in official documents as the actual capital and Beijing as a temporary capital from 1425 to 1441. In 1441, the Yingzong Emperor ordered the \"provisional\" () prefix removed from Beijing's government seals and further ordered that the southern imperial administration would henceforth be required to prefix \"Nanjing\" to their own seals to distinguish them.\nBesides the city wall, other Ming-era structures in the city included the famous Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum and Porcelain Tower, although the latter was destroyed by the Taipings in the 19th century either to prevent a hostile faction from using it to observe and shell the city or from superstitious fear of its geomantic properties.\nA monument to the huge human cost of some of the gigantic construction projects of the early Ming dynasty is the Yangshan Quarry (located some east of the walled city and Ming Xiaoling mausoleum), where a gigantic stele, cut on the orders of the Yongle Emperor, lies abandoned.\nAs the center of the empire, early-Ming Nanjing had worldwide connections. It was home of the admiral Zheng He, who went to sail the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and it was visited by foreign dignitaries, such as a king from Borneo (), who died during his visit to China in 1408. The Tomb of the King of Boni, with a spirit way and a tortoise stele, was discovered in Yuhuatai District (south of the walled city) in 1958, and has been restored.\nCapital of the Southern Ming.\nOver two centuries after the removal of the capital to Beijing, Nanjing was destined to become the capital of a Ming emperor one more time. After the fall of Beijing to Li Zicheng's rebel forces and then to the Manchu-led Qing dynasty in the spring of 1644, the Ming prince Zhu Yousong was enthroned in Nanjing in June 1644 as the Hongguang Emperor. His short reign was described by later historians as the first reign of the so-called Southern Ming dynasty.\nZhu Yousong, however, fared a lot worse than his ancestor Zhu Yuanzhang three centuries earlier. Beset by factional conflicts, his regime could not offer effective resistance to Qing forces, when the Qing army, led by the Manchu prince Dodo approached Jiangnan the next spring. Days after Yangzhou fell to the Manchus in late May 1645, the Hongguang Emperor fled Nanjing, and the imperial Ming Palace was looted by local residents. On June 6, Dodo's troops approached Nanjing, and the commander of the city's garrison, Zhao the Earl of Xincheng, promptly surrendered the city to them. The Manchus soon ordered all male residents of the city to shave their heads in the Manchu queue way. They requisitioned a large section of the city for the bannermen's cantonment, and occupied the former imperial Ming Palace, but otherwise the city was spared the mass murders and destruction that befell Yangzhou.\nDespite capturing many counties in his initial attack due to surprise and having the initiative, Koxinga announced the final battle in Nanjing in 1659 ahead of time giving plenty of time for the Qing to prepare because he wanted a decisive, single grand showdown as his father successfully did against the Dutch at the Battle of Liaoluo Bay, throwing away the surprise and initiative which led to its failure. Koxinga's attack on Qing held Nanjing which would interrupt the supply route of the Grand Canal leading to possible starvation in Beijing caused such fear that the Manchus (Tartares) considered returning to Manchuria (Tartary) and abandoning China according to a 1671 account by a French missionary. The commoners and officials in Beijing and Nanjing were waiting to support whichever side won. An official from Qing Beijing sent letters to family and another official in Nanjing, telling them all communication and news from Nanjing to Beijing had been cut off, that the Qing were considering abandoning Beijing and moving their capital far away to a remote location for safety since Koxinga's iron troops were rumored to be invincible. Koxinga's forces intercepted these letters and after reading them Koxinga may have started to regret his deliberate delays allowing the Qing to prepare for a final massive battle instead of swiftly attacking Nanjing. Koxinga's Ming loyalists fought against a majority Han Chinese Bannermen Qing army when attacking Nanjing. The siege lasted almost three weeks. Koxinga's forces were unable to maintain a complete encirclement, which enabled the city to obtain supplies and even reinforcements\u2014though cavalry attacks by the city's forces were successful even before reinforcements arrived. Koxinga's forces were defeated and \"slipped back\" to the ships which had brought them.\nQing dynasty and Taiping Rebellion.\nUnder the Qing dynasty from 1645 to 1911, Nanjing returned to its previous name Jiangning. At first, it continued to administer the territory of Nanzhili under the name Jiangnan (\"Area South of the Yangtze\") but this administration was soon broken up into \"Right\" and \"Left\" governments based in Suzhou and Jiangning respectively. After a series of reorganizations, at some point under the Qianlong Emperor, Jiangnan was fully divided into the present provinces of Anhui and Jiangsu. Separately, however, these provinces were reunited under the supervision of a new Viceroy of Liangjiang after 1723, whose seat was based in Jiangning. It was the site of a Qing Army garrison. It had been visited by the Kangxi and Qianlong emperors a number of times on their tours of the southern provinces. The 1842 Treaty of Nanking, which put an end to the First Opium War, was signed in the city harbor on Royal Navy warships.\nAs the capital of the brief-lived rebel Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the mid-19th century, Nanjing was known as Tianjing (). The rebellion destroyed most of the former Ming imperial buildings in the city, including the Porcelain Tower, considered up to that time as one of the wonders of the world. Both the Qing viceroy and the Taiping king resided in buildings that would later be known as the Presidential Palace. When Qing forces led by Zeng Guofan retook the city in 1864, a massive slaughter occurred in the city with over 100,000 estimated to have committed suicide or fought to the death. Since the Taiping Rebellion began, Qing forces allowed no rebels speaking its dialect to surrender. This was one of two historically significant instances of systematic civilian massacres in Nanjing, the other one was the Houjing Disturbance of the 6th century.\nThe New York Methodist Mission Society's superintendent Virgil Hart arrived in Nanjing in 1881. After some time, he succeeded in buying land near the city's Southern Gate and Confucian Temple to build the city's first Methodist church, Western hospital and boys' school. The hospital would later be unified with the Drum Tower Hospital and the boys' school would be expanded by later missionaries to become the University of Nanking and Medical School. The old mission property became the No. 13 Middle School, the oldest continually-used school grounds in the city.\nCapital of the Republic and Nanjing Massacre.\nThe Xinhai Revolution led to the founding of the Republic of China in January 1912 with Sun Yat-sen as the first provisional president and Nanjing was selected as its new capital. However, the Qing Empire controlled large regions to the north, so the revolutionaries asked Yuan Shikai to replace Sun as president in exchange for the abdication of Puyi, the last emperor. Yuan demanded the capital be moved to Beijing (closer to his power base).\nIn 1927, the Kuomintang (KMT; Nationalist Party) under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek again established Nanjing as the capital of the Republic of China, and this became internationally recognized once KMT forces took Beijing in 1928. The following decade is known as the Nanjing decade. During this decade, Nanjing was of symbolic and strategic importance. The Ming dynasty had made Nanjing a capital, the republic had been established there in 1912, and Sun Yat-sen's provisional government had been there. Sun's body was brought and placed in a grand mausoleum to cement Chiang's legitimacy. Chiang was born in the neighboring province of Zhejiang and the general area had strong popular support for him.\nIn 1927, the Nationalist government proposed a comprehensive planning proposal, the Capital Plan (), to reconstruct the war-torn city of Nanjing into a modern capital. It was a decade of extraordinary growth with an enormous amount of construction. A lot of government buildings, residential houses, and modern public infrastructures were built. During this boom, Nanjing reputedly became one of the most modern cities in China.\nIn 1937, the Empire of Japan started a full-scale invasion of China after invading Manchuria in 1931, beginning the Second Sino-Japanese War (often considered a theater of World War II). Their troops occupied Nanjing in December and carried out the systematic and brutal Nanjing Massacre (the \"Rape of Nanjing\"). The total death toll, including estimates made by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal after the atomic bombings, was between 300,000 and 350,000. The city itself was also severely damaged during the massacre. The Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall was built in 1985 to commemorate this event.\nA few days before the fall of the city, the National Government of China was relocated to the southwestern city Chongqing and resumed Chinese resistance. In 1940, a Japanese-collaborationist government known as the \"Nanjing Regime\" or \"Reorganized National Government of China\" led by Wang Jingwei was established in Nanjing as a rival to Chiang Kai-shek's government in Chongqing. In 1946, after the Surrender of Japan, the KMT relocated its central government back to Nanjing.\nChinese Civil War and People's Republic.\nIn April 1949, Communist forces crossed the Yangtze River and the Communist People's Liberation Army (PLA) captured Nanjing. The KMT government retreated to Canton (Guangzhou) until October 15, Chongqing until November 25, and then Chengdu before retreating to the island of Taiwan on December 10 where Taipei was proclaimed the temporary capital of the Republic of China. By late 1949, the PLA was pursuing remnants of KMT forces southwards in southern China, and only Tibet and Hainan Island were left.\nAfter the establishment of the People's Republic of China in October 1949, Nanjing was initially a province-level municipality, but it was soon merged into Jiangsu and again became the provincial capital by replacing Zhenjiang which was transferred in 1928, and retains that status to this day.\nGeography.\nNanjing, with a total land area of , is situated in the heartland of the drainage area of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and in the Yangtze River Delta, one of the largest economic zones of China. The Yangtze River flows past the west side and then the north side of Nanjing City, while the Ningzheng Ridge surrounds the north, east and south sides of the city. The city is southeast of Luoyang, south-southeast of Beijing, west-northwest of Shanghai, and east-northeast of Chongqing. The Yangtze flows downstream from Jiujiang, Jiangxi, through Anhui and Jiangsu to the East China Sea. The northern part of the lower Yangtze drainage basin is the Huai River basin and the southern part is the Zhe River basin; they are connected by the Grand Canal east of Nanjing. The area around Nanjing is called Xiajiang (, Downstream River) region, with Jianghuai dominant in the northern part and Jiangzhe dominant in the southern part. The region is also well known as Dongnan (, South East, the Southeast) and Jiangnan (, and River South, South of Yangtze).\nNanjing borders Yangzhou to the northeast; Zhenjiang to the east; and Changzhou to the southeast. On its western boundary is Anhui, where Nanjing borders five prefecture-level cities: Chuzhou to the northwest, Wuhu, Chaohu and Ma'anshan to the west and Xuancheng to the southwest.\nClimate and environment.\nNanjing has a humid subtropical climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Cfa\") and is influenced by the East Asian monsoon. The four seasons are distinct, with damp conditions seen throughout the year, very hot and muggy summers, cold, damp winters, and in between, spring and autumn are of reasonable length. Along with Chongqing and Wuhan, Nanjing is traditionally referred to as one of the \"Three Furnaces\" along the Yangtze River for the perennially high temperatures in the summertime. However, the time from mid-June to the end of July is the plum blossom blooming season in which the \"meiyu\" (rainy season of East Asia; literally \"plum rain\") occurs, during which the city experiences a period of mild rain as well as dampness. The northeast wind prevails in winter. \nDespite being called one of the \"Three Furnances\", Nanjing has a cold climate for its latitude. Nanjing's winter temperatures are similar or lower that those of London, and Nanjing's January is 2\u00b0C colder to London's January, despite the fact that Nanjing is on 32\u00b0N and London is on 51\u00b0N. Comparing to the East coast of USA which has the same humid subtropical climate, Nanjing's winter is 6\u00b0C colder than the winter of Savannah, Georgia. The average temperatures of Nanjing are also 3\u00b0C lower than those of Savannah (notice that Savannah is in the same 32\u00b0N latitude as Nanjing).\nThe average temperature in January is , and the extreme daily minimum temperature is , which occurred on January 6, 1955. The southeast wind prevails in summer, with an average temperature of in July and an extreme daily maximum temperature of , which occurred on July 13, 1934. The number of precipitation days greater than 0.1\u00a0mm was 113 days, and the extreme maximum annual precipitation days were 160 days in 1957. The average annual precipitation is .\nTyphoons are uncommon but possible in the late stages of summer and early part of autumn. The annual mean temperature is around , with the monthly 24-hour average temperature ranging from in January to in July. Extremes since 1951 have ranged from on January 6, 1955, to on August 22, 1959. On average precipitation falls 113\u00a0days out of the year, and the average annual rainfall is . With monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 37\u00a0percent in June to 48\u00a0percent in August and October, the city receives 1,932 hours of bright sunshine annually.\nNanjing is endowed with rich natural resources, which include more than 40 kinds of minerals. Among them, iron and sulfur reserves make up 40\u00a0percent of those of Jiangsu province. Its reserves of strontium rank first in East Asia and the Southeast Asia region. Nanjing also possesses abundant water resources, both from the Yangtze River and groundwater. In addition, it has several natural hot springs such as Tangshan Hot Spring in Jiangning and Tangquan Hot Spring in Pukou.\nXuanwu Lake and Mochou Lake are located in the center of the city and are easily accessible to the public, while Purple Mountain is covered with deciduous and coniferous forests preserving various historical and cultural sites. Meanwhile, a Yangtze River deep-water channel is under construction to enable Nanjing to handle the navigation of 50,000 DWT vessels from the East China Sea.\nEnvironmental issues.\nA dense wave of smog began in the central and east parts of China on December 2, 2013, across a distance of around , including Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu, Anhui, Shanghai and Zhejiang. A lack of cold air flow, combined with slow-moving air masses carrying industrial emissions, collected airborne pollutants to form a thick layer of smog over the region. The heavy smog heavily polluted central and southern Jiangsu Province, especially in and around Nanjing, with its AQI pollution Index at \"severely polluted\" for five straight days and \"heavily polluted\" for nine. Officials blamed the dense pollution on lack of wind, automobile exhaust emissions under low air pressure, and coal-powered district heating system in north China. Prevailing winds blew low-hanging air masses of factory emissions (mostly SO2) towards China's east coast.\nSoil.\nThere are mainly two types of soil in Nanjing: zonal soil and cultivated soil. The zonal soil is yellow-brown soil in the northern and central areas of Nanjing, and red soil in the southern part of the border with Anhui. The cultivated soil formed by human-made farming is mainly paddy soil, and there are some yellow Gang soil and vegetable garden soil. The distribution of soil presents a certain law with the undulation of topography and hydrological conditions, which can be divided into three categories: low mountain and hilly area, hilly area and plain area. According to the second national soil survey from 1980 to 1987, the soil in Nanjing is divided into 7 soil types, 13 subtypes, 30 soil genera and 66 soil species, with a total area of 416,300 hectares.\nWater.\nNanjing is located at the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. The Yangtze River runs diagonally across the city from southwest to northeast. It is about 93 kilometers long and more than 300 kilometers away from the sea entrance. The Qinhuai River rushes from south to north, passes through the main urban area, and joins the Yangtze River. It is known as the mother river of Nanjing. Xuanwu Lake and Mochou Lake are like two pearls embedded in the main city. The water area of the city now accounts for about 11%. The river and lake water system mainly belongs to the Yangtze River system, and only the rivers that flow into Gaoyou Lake and Baoying Lake in the northern part of Liuhe District belong to the Huai River system. The Yangtze River system includes the Qinhuai River system in the south of the Yangtze River, the Chuhe River system in the north of the Yangtze River, the riverside system formed by small rivers that flow into the river on both sides of the river, the two lakes system composed of Shijiu Lake and Gucheng Lake, and the West Taihu Lake system in the east of Gaochun. The groundwater resources are abundant and the water quality is excellent, and the Pukou Pearl Spring is particularly famous. Jiangning Tangshan and Pukou Tangquan are hot spring areas with a long history.\nThe Port of Nanjing is the largest inland port in China, with annual cargo tonnage reached 191,970,000\u00a0t in 2012. The port area is in length and has 64 berths including 16 berths for ships with a tonnage of more than 10,000. Nanjing is also the biggest container port along the Yangtze River; in March 2004, the one million container-capacity base, Longtan Containers Port Area opened, further consolidating Nanjing as the leading port in the region. As of 2010[ [update]], it operated six public ports and three industrial ports. The Yangtze River's 12.5-meter-deep waterway enables 50,000-ton-class ocean ships directly arrive at the Nanjing Port, and the ocean ships with the capacities of 100,000 tons or above can also reach the port after load reduction in the Yangtze River's high-tide period. CSC Jinling has a large shipyard.\nAnimal and plant resources.\nNanjing is one of the regions with abundant plant resources and a wide variety of plants in China. The vegetation types are complex, including 7 types of natural vegetation including coniferous forest, deciduous broad-leaved forest, mixed deciduous and evergreen broad-leaved forest, bamboo forest, shrub, grass and aquatic vegetation. Cultivated vegetation includes field crops, vegetable crops, and economic forests, orchards and green belts. Plant species, there are 1061 species of vascular plants, accounting for 64.7% of the total in Jiangsu Province. Seven species such as Sphaerocarpus sinensis, Chinese Allium chinense, Ming Codonopsis, and Pterocarpus sinensis are national key protected rare and endangered plants. The city's forest coverage rate is 27.1%. Among wild animals, there are 795 species of insects belonging to 125 families of 11 orders. There are 99 species of fish belonging to 22 families and 12 orders. There are 327 species of terrestrial wild vertebrates, belonging to 29 orders and 90 families. 243 species of birds belong to 56 families of 17 orders. 47 species of mammals belong to 8 orders and 22 families. Among all animal species, 9 species of wild animals under national first-level protection, such as the Oriental White Crane and White Shoulder Eagle, 65 species of wild animals under the second-level protection, such as the little swan, Chinese tiger and swallowtail, and finless porpoise, and 125 key protected animals in Jiangsu Province Species, 35 species of endangered animals.\nYangtze River crossings.\nIn the 1960s, the first Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge was completed, and served as the only bridge crossing over the Lower Yangtze in eastern China at that time. The bridge was a source of pride and an important symbol of modern China, having been built and designed by the Chinese themselves following failed surveys by other nations and the reliance on and then rejection of Soviet expertise. Begun in 1960 and opened to traffic in 1968, the bridge is a two-tiered road and rail design spanning on the upper deck, with approximately spanning the river itself. Since then four more bridges and four tunnels have been built. Going in the downstream direction, the Yangtze crossings in Nanjing are: Dashengguan Bridge, Third Bridge, Fifth Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, Nanjing Yangtze River Tunnel (), Line 10 Metro Tunnel, Nanjing Yangtze Tunnel (), First Bridge, Yanziji Yangtze River Tunnel, Nanjing Baguazhou Yangtze River Bridge and Nanjing Qixiashan Yangtze River Bridge.\nMineral resources.\nNanjing is rich in mineral resources. The discovered minerals mainly include 41 types of iron, copper, lead, zinc, strontium, ferrosulfide, dolomite, limestone, gypsum, and clay, among which 23 are of proven reserves and 20 are of industrial mining value. There are more than 10 kinds being mined. The quality and reserves of strontium ore (celestite) rank first in the country. The reserves of copper and lead-zinc ore account for more than 90% of the province, iron ore accounts for 89% of the province, and limestone, dolomite, and attapulgite clay mines are in the whole province. Province occupies an important position. Nanjing's minerals are mainly concentrated in 4 metallogenic belts, namely Jiangpu-Liuhe iron and copper metallogenic belt, Ningzhen iron, copper, and sulfur polymetallic metallogenic belt, Ningwu iron, copper.\nGovernment.\nAt present, the full name of the government of Nanjing is \"People's Government of Nanjing City\" and the city is under the one-party rule of the CPC, with the CPC Nanjing Committee Secretary as the \"de facto\" governor of the city and the mayor as the executive head of the government working under the secretary.\nAdministrative divisions.\nThe sub-provincial city of Nanjing is divided into 11 districts.\nDemographics.\nAt the time of the 2010 census, the total population of the City of Nanjing was 8.005\u00a0million. The OECD estimated the encompassing metropolitan area at the time as 11.7\u00a0million. Official statistics in 2011 estimated the city's population to be 8.11\u00a0million. The birth rate was 8.86\u00a0percent and the death rate was 6.88\u00a0percent. The urban area had a population of 6.47\u00a0million people. The sex ratio of the city population was 107.31 males to 100 females.\nAs in most of eastern China, the official ethnic makeup of Nanjing is predominantly Han nationality (98.56\u00a0percent), with 50 other official ethnic groups. In 1999, 77,394 residents belonged to officially defined minorities, among which the vast majority (64,832) were Hui, contributing 83.76\u00a0percent to the minority population. The second and third largest minority groups were Manchu (2,311) and Zhuang (533). Most of the minority nationalities resided in Jianye District, comprising 9.13\u00a0percent of the district's population.\nLanguages.\nNanjing Mandarin is spoken in most parts of Nanjing, while Wu Chinese is spoken in most of the Gaochun District and the southern part of Lishui District. Nanjing dialect has been the official language of China for a long time in history. Jinling Yayan was established as the standard pronunciation of Chinese as an orthodox traditional Chinese dialect in the ancient Central Plains.\nIn July 2017, the Ministry of Education and the National Language Commission held a press conference, and the penetration rate of Mandarin has reached 73%.\nReligion.\nNanjing has four major religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, and Islam. Nanjing is one of the earliest areas in China to spread Buddhist culture. The \"480 Temples in the Southern Dynasties\" has become the center of Chinese Buddhist culture and the ancestral home of the Sanlunzong, Niutouzong, Fayanzong, and other Buddhist sects. Nanjing is also the place for the revival of modern Chinese Buddhist culture. The Jinling Carved Scriptures integrates Buddhist publishing, dissemination, and research. It is still the world's unparalleled Chinese Buddhist scripture publishing and circulation center. The engraving and printing skills are included in the world's intangible cultural heritage of humanity. Ancient famous temples such as Jianchu Temple, Qixia Temple, Waguan Temple, Qingliang Temple, Jiming Temple, Dabaoen Temple, etc. were revived. Nanjing Taoism has a long history and occupies an important position in the history of Chinese Taoism.\nThe spread of Catholicism in Nanjing began more than 400 years ago and was started by the scientist and missionary Matteo Ricci. The Shigu Road Catholic Church is the cathedral of the Catholic Diocese of Nanjing. The Nanjing Diocese with Nanjing as its center covers a vast area. As one of the national centers of Christianity in China, Nanjing has two seminaries, Jinling Theological Seminary and Jiangsu Theological Seminary. The Christian social service organization, Amity Foundation and the world's largest Bible printing company, Amity Printing Company are both in Nanjing.\nNanjing is the birthplace of the Islamic \"Renaissance\" and has an important influence on the development of Chinese Islamic culture.\nEconomy.\nThe current economy of the city, is dominated by the service industries, accounting for about 60 percent of the GDP of the city, and financial industry, culture industry and tourism industry are the top three. Industries of information technology, energy saving and environmental protection, new energy, smart power grid and intelligent equipment manufacturing have become the pillar of the industries. Big civilian-run enterprise include Suning Commerce, Yurun, Sanpower, Fuzhong, Hiteker, 5stars, Jinpu, Tiandi, CTTQ Pharmaceutical, Nanjing Iron and Steel Company and Simcere Pharmaceutical. Big state-owned firms include Panda Electronics, Yangzi Petrochemical, Jinling Petrochemical, Nanjing Chemical, Jincheng Motors, Jinling Pharmaceutical, Chenguang and NARI. The city has also attracted foreign investments. Multinational firms such as Siemens, Ericsson, Volkswagen, Iveco, A.O. Smith, and Sharp have established their offices, and a number of multinationals such as Ford, IBM, Lucent, Samsung and SAP have established research center here. Many China-based leading firms such as Huawei, ZTE and Lenovo have key R&D institutes in the city. Nanjing is an industrial technology research and development hub, hosting many R&D centers and institutions, especially in areas of electronics technology, information technology, computer software, biotechnology and pharmaceutical technology and new material technology.\nIn recent years, Nanjing has been developing its economy, commerce, industry, as well as city construction. \nIn 2013 the city's GDP was RMB 801\u00a0billion (3rd in Jiangsu), and GDP per capita (current price) was RMB 98,174(US$16041), an 11\u00a0percent increase from 2012. The average urban resident's disposable income was RMB 36,200, while the average rural resident's net income was RMB 14,513. The registered urban unemployment rate was 3.02\u00a0percent, lower than the national average (4.3\u00a0percent). Nanjing's Gross Domestic Product ranked 12th in 2013 in China, and its overall competence ranked 6th in mainland and 8th including Taiwan and Hong Kong in 2009.\nIn 2004, Nanjing ranked sixth in China's Economic Center Positioning Index, after Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Tianjin. In 2008, the Headquarters Economy Development Capacity ranked the city fifth in China, behind Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. In 2014 China's regional central cities (excluding Beijing and Shanghai) competitiveness evaluation, Nanjing was second only to Shenzhen and Guangzhou. In 2015, Nanjing ranked fifth in China's investment attractive cities, closely following Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. In August 2020, Nanjing ranked among China's top ten GDP in the first half of the year.\nIn 2019, Nanjing's GDP was 1403,015 billion yuan, ranking 11th in the country, an increase of 7.8% over the previous year. The per capita GDP is 152,886 yuan, ranking second in China's municipalities, sub-provincial cities and provincial capitals, second only to Shenzhen, and the provincial capital ranking first. In 2021, Nanjing's GDP reached 1,6355.32 billion yuan.\nPrimary industry.\nNanjing is one of China's important agricultural and commercial grain bases. The main cash crops are rice, cotton, silkworm cocoons, hemp, tea, bamboo, fruits, medicinal materials, etc. Due to the fertile water quality on both sides of the Yangtze River, it is also one of China's important freshwater fishery bases.\nIn 2019, the total output value of Nanjing's agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishery was 47.250 billion yuan, an increase of 4.8% over the previous year. Among them, the agricultural output value was 24.077 billion yuan, the forestry output value was 2.017 billion yuan, the animal husbandry output value was 2.435 billion yuan, the fishery output value was 15.389 billion yuan, and the agricultural, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery service industry output value was 3.333 billion yuan.\nSecondary industry.\nIn 2019, Nanjing's total industrial added value was 421.577 billion yuan, an increase of 6.9%. The added value of industrial enterprises above the designated size was 309.226 billion yuan, an increase of 7.0%. Among the industries above designated size, the added value of state-owned and state-holding enterprises fell by 0.2%, private enterprises increased by 20.3%, and foreign companies, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan enterprises increased by 7.0%. Large and medium-sized enterprises increased by 3.9%, and small and micro enterprises increased by 18.2%. Among the 37 major industries in the system, 22 industries have achieved growth in added value. Among the top ten industries ranked by cumulative value-added, six industries including electronics, electrical machinery, steel, medicine, general equipment, and non-metal products increased by 20.2%,\nTertiary industry.\nNanjing is an important regional financial and business center positioned by the National Development and Reform Commission. The financial industry is an important strategic pillar industry in Nanjing. The total financial volume and financial resources account for 25% of Jiangsu Province, and in the Financial Center index, the city ranks sixth in the country. In the 2018 China Financial Center Index evaluation, Nanjing's financial industry performance ranked fourth in China, after Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. In 2018, Nanjing's financial industry achieved an added value of 147.332 billion yuan, and the balance of domestic and foreign currency deposits in financial institutions was 3452.486 billion yuan.\nNanjing is China's service outsourcing base and national software export innovation base. It is China's only pilot city for comprehensive reform of the national science and technology system. The software industry is the number one leading industry and pillar industry that Nanjing strives to cultivate. At the end of 2019, Nanjing achieved a total execution value of 17.33 billion US dollars in service outsourcing, ranking first among Chinese cities. In 2018, the software and information service industry had a revenue of 450 billion yuan, ranking fourth in China and first in Jiangsu after Beijing, Shenzhen, and Shanghai, accounting for 7.1% of the country's total and 50.8% of Jiangsu's. There are 12 unicorn companies in Nanjing in 2019, ranking seventh in global cities and fifth in China.\nThe convention and exhibition industry is an important industry in Nanjing. In the \"World 2013 City Conference Industry Development Ranking\" issued by the International Conference and Convention Association (ICCA), Nanjing has become the city with the most international conferences in China after Beijing and Shanghai. In 2019, Beichen Convention and Exhibition Research Institute released the \"China Exhibition Index Report 2019\", and Nanjing ranked seventh in China in the comprehensive index of domestic urban exhibition industry development. According to the \"2017 China Exhibition Statistics Report\" released in 2018, Nanjing ranked third in the number of exhibitions held in all cities in China, and ranked fifth in the exhibition area in all cities in China.\nTransport.\nNanjing is the transport hub in eastern China and the downstream Yangtze River area. Different means of transport constitute a three-dimensional transport system that includes land, water and air. As in most other Chinese cities, public transport is the dominant mode of travel for the majority of citizens. As of October 2014, Nanjing had four bridges and two tunnels over the Yangtze River, linking districts north of the river with the city center on the south bank.\nRail.\nNanjing is an important railway hub in eastern China. It serves as rail junction for the Beijing-Shanghai (Jinghu) (which is itself composed of the old Jinpu and Huning Railways), Nanjing\u2013Tongling Railway (Ningtong), Nanjing\u2013Qidong (Ningqi), and the Nanjing-Xi'an (Ningxi) which encompasses the Hefei\u2013Nanjing Railway.\nNanjing is connected to the national high-speed railway network by Beijing\u2013Shanghai High-Speed Railway and Shanghai\u2013Wuhan\u2013Chengdu Passenger Dedicated Line, with several more high-speed rail lines under construction. The main stations in Nanjing are Nanjing Station, Nanjing South Station, Jiangning Station, Lishui Station, Xianlin Station, Jiangning West Station, Nanjing East Station, Nanjing Passenger and Technical Station, as well as the new Nanjing North Station and Lukou Air-Rail Intermodal Transport Hub Station planning in. Among them, Nanjing Railway Station is the national railway hub station and China's top ten railway hubs, Nanjing South Railway Station is the national railway hub station and Asia's largest high-speed railway station, and Nanjing East Railway Station is the largest marshalling station in East China and the country's 15th largest railway network marshalling station. Nanjing Passenger Technology Station is a train technology station\nAmong all 17 railway stations in Nanjing, passenger rail service is mainly provided by Nanjing Railway Station and Nanjing South Railway Station, while other stations like Nanjing West Railway Station, Zhonghuamen Railway Station and Xianlin Railway Station serve minor roles. Nanjing Railway Station was first built in 1968. On November 12, 1999, the station was burnt in a serious fire. Reconstruction of the station was finished on September 1, 2005. Nanjing South Railway Station, which is one of the five hub stations on Beijing\u2013Shanghai High-Speed Railway, has officially been claimed as the largest railway station in Asia and the second largest in the world in terms of GFA (Gross Floor Area). Construction of Nanjing South Station began on January 10, 2008. The station was opened for public service in 2011.\nAviation.\nNanjing's airport, Lukou International Airport (NKG), serves both national and international destinations. In 2013, Nanjing airport handled 15,011,792 passengers and 255,788.6 tonnes of freight. The airport currently has 85 routes to national and international destinations, which include Japan, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, United States and Germany. The airport is connected by a highway directly to the city center, and is also linked to various intercity highways, making it accessible to the passengers from the surrounding cities. A railway Ninggao Intercity Line has been built to link the airport with Nanjing South Railway Station. Lukou Airport was opened on June 28, 1997, replacing Nanjing Dajiaochang Airport as the main airport serving Nanjing. Dajiaochang Airport is still used as a military air base. Nanjing has another airport \u2013 Nanjing Ma'an International Airport which temporarily serves as a dual-use military and civil airport.\nShipping.\nContemporary Nanjing Port is an important hub port in China and a first-class port open to the outside world. It is a multifunctional river-sea port in East China and the Yangtze River Basin for reloading, land and water transfer, cargo distribution and opening to the outside world. It is the only container railway and waterway in the Yangtze River Delta. A seamless port. The completion of the 12.5-meter deep-water channel project on the Yangtze River in Nanjing has made Nanjing Port the deepest inland international deep-water seaport, and it is also a comprehensive hub for China's global river-to-sea transshipment.\nRoad.\nAs an important regional hub in the Yangtze River Delta, Nanjing is well-connected by over 60 state and provincial highways to all parts of China.\nHighways such as Hu\u2013Ning, Ning\u2013He, Ning\u2013Hang enable commuters to travel to Shanghai, Hefei, Hangzhou, and other important cities quickly and conveniently. Inside the city of Nanjing, there are of highways, with a highway coverage density of 3.38\u00a0kilometers per hundred square\u00a0kilometers (5.44\u00a0mi/100\u00a0sq\u00a0mi). The total road coverage density of the city is 112.56\u00a0kilometers per hundred square\u00a0kilometers (181.15\u00a0mi/100\u00a0sq\u00a0mi). The two artery roads in Nanjing are Zhongshan Road and Hanzhong Road are also the two main roads which cross each other in the city center, Xinjiekou.\nExpressways {G+XXxx (National Express, ), S+XX ()}:\nNational Highway\nNanjing is a national comprehensive transportation hub, and its highway network density ranks among the top central cities in the country. As of 2019, the total mileage of Nanjing highways opened to traffic has reached 630 kilometers, and the highway network density has reached 9.56 kilometers per 100 square kilometers, ranking first in the country. With Nanjing as the center, Ninghu, Ninggao, Ningzhen, Ningyang, Ningchu, Ninglian, Ningtong, Ningchao, Ninghe, Ningluo, Ningma, Ningxuan, Ningyan, Ninghuai, Ningmu, Ningchang, Ninghang and other high-grade highways lead to Jiang surrounding provinces and cities in a radial pattern.\nMain long-distance bus terminals: Nanjing Bus Station, Nanjing South Bus Station, Nanjing North Bus Station, Nanjing East Bus Station, Jiangning Bus Station, Lishui Bus Station, Gaochun Bus Station, Nanjing Getang Bus Station.\nPublic transport.\nThe city has an efficient public transport network, which mainly consists of bus, taxi and metro systems. The bus network, which is currently run by three companies since 2011, provides more than 370 routes covering all parts of the city and suburban areas. At present, the Nanjing Metro system has a grand total of of route and 208 stations across 12 lines. They are Line 1, Line 2, Line 3, Line 4, Line 7, Line 10, Line S1, Line S3, Line S6, Line S7, Line S8 and Line S9. The city is planning to complete a 17-line Metro and light-rail system by 2030. The expansion of the Metro network will greatly facilitate intracity transport and reduce the currently heavy traffic congestion.\nNanjing's first subway officially opened on September 3, 2005. It is the sixth city in mainland China to open a subway. As of 2019, Nanjing subway has 12 lines and 208 stations, with a total length of 449 kilometers and an average daily passenger flow. With more than 3.4 million passengers, the length of subway lines ranks seventh in China and eighth in the world.\nAs of the end of 2018, Nanjing had 6,909 buses, operating 468 bus lines, with a total length of , an average daily mileage of , and an average daily passenger volume of 2,182 million. At present, Nanjing has eliminated buses below the National III standard and non-air-conditioned buses, and the number of pure electric buses ranks second in the world.\nAs of the end of 2019, there were more than 12,000 real-name certified taxis in Nanjing. The appearance of the taxis was mostly uniform yellow and black, and the royal blue luxury taxis were a minority.\nAs of July 2019, there are six online ride-hailing platforms in Nanjing, namely Meituan Taxi, Didi Chuxing, First Taxi-hailing, Cao Cao Special Car, Shenzhou Special Car, T3 Travel, and the current car qualification rate of each platform is 70% the above. At present, there are about 13,000 online car-hailing vehicles legally applying for \"car permits\" in Nanjing.\nAs of 2019, there are two lines of Nanjing trams. Nanjing Hexi Tram was officially put into operation on August 1, 2014. It is the world's first inter-area contactless tram, and China's first tram to be charged at a station. The line is about 7.76 kilometers long and has 13 stations., Including 4 subway transfer stations. The Nanjing Kylin Tram was officially put into operation on October 31, 2017. The line is about 8.95 kilometers long and has 15 stations, including 1 subway transfer station.\nCulture and art.\nBeing one of the four ancient capitals of China, Nanjing has always been a cultural center attracting intellectuals from all over the country. In the Tang and Song dynasties, Nanjing was a place where poets gathered and composed poems reminiscent of its luxurious past; during the Ming and Qing dynasties, the city was the official imperial examination center (Jiangnan Examination Hall) for the Jiangnan region, again acting as a hub where different thoughts and opinions converged and thrived.\nToday, with a long cultural tradition and strong support from local educational institutions, Nanjing is commonly viewed as a \"city of culture\" and one of the more pleasant cities to live in China.\nArt.\nSome of the leading art groups of China are based in Nanjing; they include the Qianxian Dance Company, Nanjing Dance Company, Nanjing Little Red Flower Art Troupe, Jiangsu Peking Opera Institute and Nanjing Xiaohonghua Art Company among others.\nJiangsu Art Gallery is the largest gallery in Jiangsu Province, presenting some of the best traditional and contemporary art pieces of China like the historical Master Ho-Kan; many other smaller-scale galleries, such as Red Chamber Art Garden and Jinling Stone Gallery, also have their own special exhibitions. As of 2019, Nanjing has 14 cultural centers, 100 cultural stations, 15 public libraries (excluding libraries for education systems and enterprises and institutions), 132 movie theaters, and 2 large-scale convention and exhibition centers. They are Nanjing International Exhibition Center and Nanjing International Expo Center, 87 various museums, including 77 state-owned museums and 10 non-state-owned museums. As of the end of August 2020, there are 137 calligraphy and painting academies, art museums, and art galleries in Nanjing.\nNanjing is an important town of Chinese painting and calligraphy. In the Six Dynasties, there were painting and calligraphy masters such as Wang Xizhi, Wang Xianzhi, Zhang Sengyou, Lu Tanwei, and Gu Kaizhi. The earliest extant painting theory work \"Paintings\" has a profound impact on later generations. The Nantang Art Academy brought together outstanding calligraphy and painting masters at a time. Dongyuan and Juran pioneered the Southern School of Landscape and became a generation of masters. Xu Xi's flower and bird paintings, Zhou Wenju, and Gu Hongzhong's figure paintings continue to pass. \"Han Xizai's Night Banquet\" is a masterpiece of ancient Chinese meticulous brushwork. The system of Nantang Painting Academy was also inherited by later generations. The Painting Book of Ten Bamboo Studios in the Ming dynasty reproduced the paintings with the pinnacle of three-dimensional color printing techniques. The Painting Book of Mustard Seed Garden in the early Qing dynasty was regarded as a must-read for learning Chinese painting. The \"Eight Masters of Nanjing\" headed by Gong Xian were active in Nanjing in the early Qing dynasty and created the Jinling School of Painting. In the 1930s, celebrities in painting circles such as Lv Fengzi, Xu Beihong, Zhang Daqian, Yan Wenliang, Lu Sibai, Chen Zhifo, Gao Jianfu, Pan Yuliang, and Pang Xunqin gathered in Nanjing. Among them, Xu Beihong, Zhang Shuqi, and Liu Zigu were hailed as the \"Three Masters of Jinling\". Contemporary \"New Jinling Painting School\" represented by Fu Baoshi, Qian Songyan, Song Wenzhi, Wei Zixi, Yaming,\nFestivals.\nMany traditional festivals and customs were observed in the old times, which included climbing the City Wall on January 16, bathing in Qing Xi on March 3, hill hiking on September 9 and others (the dates are in Chinese lunar calendar). Almost none of them, however, are still celebrated by modern Nanjingese.\nInstead, Nanjing, as a tourist destination, hosts a series of government-organized events throughout the year. The annual International Plum Blossom Festival held in Plum Blossom Hill, the largest plum collection in China, attracts thousands of tourists both domestically and internationally. Other events include Nanjing Baima Peach Blossom and Kite Festival, Jiangxin Zhou Fruit Festival and Linggu Temple Sweet Osmanthus Festival.\nLibraries.\nNanjing Library, founded in 1907, houses more than 10 million volumes of printed materials and is the third largest library in China, after the National Library in Beijing and Shanghai Library. Other libraries, such as city-owned Jinling Library and various district libraries, also provide considerable amount of information to citizens. Nanjing University Library is the second largest university libraries in China after Peking University Library, and the fifth largest nationwide, especially in the number of precious collections.\nMuseums.\nNanjing has some of the oldest and finest museums in China. Nanjing Museum, formerly known as National Central Museum during ROC period, is the first modern museum and remains as one of the leading museums in China having 400,000 items in its permanent collection. The museum is notable for enormous collections of Ming and Qing imperial porcelain, which is among the largest in the world.\nOther museums include the City Museum of Nanjing in the Chaotian Palace, the Oriental Metropolitan Museum, the China Modern History Museum in the Presidential Palace, the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall, the Taiping Kingdom History Museum, Jiangning Imperial Silk Manufacturing Museum, Nanjing Yunjin Museum, Nanjing City Wall Cultural Museum, Nanjing Customs Museum in Ganxi House, Nanjing Astronomical History Museum, Nanjing Paleontological Museum, Nanjing Geological Museum, Nanjing Riverstones Museum, and other museums and memorials such Zheng He Memorial Jinling Four Modern Calligraphers Memorial.\nTheater.\nJiangsu Province Kun Opera is one of the best theaters for Kunqu, China's oldest stage art.\nIt is considered a conservative and traditional troupe. Nanjing also has professional opera troupes for the Yang, Yue (shaoxing), Xi and Jing (Chinese opera varieties) as well as Suzhou pingtan, spoken theater and puppet theater.\nMost of Nanjing's major theaters are multi-purpose, used as convention halls, cinemas, musical halls and theaters on different occasions. The major theaters include the People's Convention Hall and the Nanjing Arts and Culture Center. The Capital Theater well known in the past is now a museum in theater/film.\nXiqu is a traditional Chinese drama. After a long period of development and evolution, it has gradually formed the Chinese Opera Garden with the five major Chinese opera types of \"Peking Opera, Yue Opera, Huangmei Opera, Ping Opera, and Henan Opera\" as the core. Peking opera has a long history in Nanjing: the famous Peking opera master Mei Baojiu has a deep connection with Nanjing. As the honorary president of the \"Nanjing Meilanfang Jingkun Art Research Association\", Master Mei Jiubao made a special trip to Nanjing as the \"Research Association\" \"Unveiled, and led his disciples to perform the Meipai famous play\" The Return of the Phoenix \" Zheng Ziru, the famous Peking opera artist, performed \"The Flower Spear\" in Nanjing.\nKunqu Opera is one of the oldest operas in traditional Chinese opera, and it is also a treasure of traditional Chinese culture and art, especially opera art. It is called an \"orchid\" in the Hundred Gardens. In Nanjing, famous professional Kunban classes such as \"Xinghua Ministry\", \"Hualin Ministry\", \"Li Yujia Ban\", and \"Cao Yinjia Ban\" appeared in Nanjing, and the style of singing songs by the voiceless section and literati also continued.\nDrama is a form of Western drama introduced in the 20th century. In recent years, Nanjing's annual drama box office has continued to rise. The drama \"Mrs of the Sea\" staged in Nanjing in 2017, \"Broken Gold\", \"Treasure Island Village\" in 2018, and \"Hamlet\" in 2019 have the highest box office in the country. All fell in Nanjing. Not only that, the box office and attendance rate of some plays such as \"White Deer Plain\" in Nanjing are also far ahead in the Yangtze River Delta region.\nQuyi is the collective name of the various \"rap art\" of the Chinese nation. It is a unique art form formed by the long-term development and evolution of folk oral literature and singing art. The local folk arts in Nanjing include Southern Crosstalk, Nanjing Baiju, Nanjing Vernacular, Nanjing Pinghua, Gaochun Yangqiang Mulian Opera, Liuhe Hongshan Opera, etc.\nNight life.\nTraditionally Nanjing's nightlife was mostly centered around Nanjing Fuzimiao (Confucius Temple) area along the Qinhuai River, where night markets, restaurants and pubs thrived. Boating at night in the river was a main attraction of the city. Thus, one can see the statues of the famous teachers and educators of the past not too far from those of the courtesans who educated the young men in the other arts.\nIn the past 20\u00a0years, several commercial streets have been developed, hence the nightlife has become more diverse: there are shopping malls opening late in the Xinjiekou CBD, as well as in and around major residential areas throughout the city. The well-established \"Nanjing 1912\" district hosts a wide variety of recreational facilities ranging from traditional restaurants and western pubs to dance clubs, in both its downtown location and beside Baijia Lake in Jiangning District. In recent years, many night-life options have opened up in Catherine Park as well as in shopping malls such as IST in Xinjiekou and Kingmo near Baijai Lake metro station. Other, more student-oriented places are to be found near to Nanjing University and Nanjing Normal University.\nFood.\nThe local cuisine in Nanjing is called Jinling cuisine (). It is one important part of Jiangsu cuisine (\u6c5f\u82cf\u83dc). Jinling cuisine is famous for its meticulous process, emphasizing no added preservatives and its seasonality. Its duck and goose dishes are well known among Chinese for centuries. It also employs many different style of cooking methods, such as slow cooking, Chinese oven cooking, etc. Its dishes tend to be light and fresh, suitable for all.\nMany of the city's local favorite dishes are based on ducks, including Nanjing salted duck, duck blood and vermicelli soup, and duck oil pancake. The flavor snacks of Jinling Tea House have become an integral part of Qinhuai culture. In addition, Jiangning, Liuhe and Gaochun each have their own local flavors. \"Suiyuan Food List\", \"Baimen Recipe\", \"Yecheng Vegetable Book\" are the crystallization of Nanjing food culture.\nThe radish is considered typically representative of the people of Nanjing, an association commonly known throughout China. Nanjing people like to eat wild vegetables during the Qingming Festival, and they named the eight most eaten spring vegetables and wild vegetables as the \"Eight Dry Seasons\". The phrase \"eight fresh sweet-scented osmanthus fragrance\" refers to eight kinds of aquatic fruits and vegetables associated with the Mid-Autumn Festival.\nSports.\nNanjing is the birthplace of modern Chinese sports. In 1910, the first National Games in Chinese history was held. In 1924, the predecessor of the Chinese Olympic Committee (All-China Sports Association) was established in Nanjing. China's first Olympic delegation trained, assembled, and set off in Nanjing. Nanjing is the birthplace of China's Olympic dream and one of the cities that contributed the most to China's participation in the Olympics. Nanjing has an irreplaceable position in the history of the Chinese Olympics.\nNanjing's planned 20,000 seat Youth Olympic Sports Park Gymnasium will be one of the venues for the 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup.\nAs a major Chinese city, Nanjing is home to many professional sports teams. 2020 Chinese Super League champions Jiangsu Football Club, owned by Suning Appliance Group, was a tenant of Nanjing Olympic Sports Center from 2007 until the club's dissolution in 2021. Jiangsu Nangang Basketball Club is a competitive team which has long been one of the major clubs fighting for the title in China top-level league, CBA. Jiangsu Volleyball men and women teams are also traditionally considered as at top level in China volleyball league.\nThere are two major sports centers in Nanjing, Wutaishan Sports Center and Nanjing Olympic Sports Center. Both of these two are comprehensive sports centers, including stadium, gymnasium, natatorium, tennis court, etc. Wutaishan Sports Center was established in 1952 and it was one of the oldest and most advanced stadiums in early time of People's Republic of China.\nNanjing hosted the 10th National Games of PRC in 2005 and hosted the 2nd summer Youth Olympic Games in 2014.\nIn 2005, to host The 10th National Game of People's Republic of China, there was a new stadium, Nanjing Olympic Sports Center, constructed in Nanjing. Compared to Wutaishan Sports Center, which the major stadium's capacity is 18,500, Nanjing Olympic Sports Center has a more advanced stadium which is big enough to seat 60,000 spectators. Its gymnasium has capacity of 13,000, and natatorium of capacity 3,000.\nOn February 10, 2010, the 122nd IOC session at Vancouver announced Nanjing as the host city for the 2nd Summer Youth Olympic Games. The Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games featured all 28 sports on the Olympic program and were held from August 16 to 28. It is the first time that China has hosted the Youth Olympic Games and the second time that China has hosted an Olympic event.\nMain venues: Nanjing Olympic Sports Center, Wutaishan Sports Center, Youth Olympic Sports Park, Nanjing Institute of Physical Education (Central Stadium), Nanjing Longjiang Stadium, Nanjing National Fitness Center, Jiangning Sports Center, Lishui Sports Center, Gaochun Sports Center, etc.\nMain teams: Jiangsu Football Club (dissolved), Nanjing Monkey Kings, Jiangsu Dragons (a.k.a. Jiangsu Nangang), etc.\nArchitecture.\nThe city is renowned for its wide variety of architectures which mainly contain buildings from multiple dynasties, the Republic of China, and the present.\nSymbols.\nCity Tree: Cedar\nCity Flower: Prunus mume\nTourist city symbol: Long Pan Tiger Standing\nFolklore.\nThe main folklore activities in Nanjing include Chinese New Year greetings for the Spring Festival, hanging Spring Festival couplets at the city gate, eating rice cakes, welcoming the God of Wealth on the fifth day of the first lunar month, climbing the city on the 16th day of the first lunar month, sweeping the tomb on Qingming Festival, dragon boat races on the Dragon Boat Festival, eating rice dumplings, and begging for gifts on Qixi Festival, Liqiu gnawing autumn, Mid-Autumn reunion, eating moon cakes, enjoy the moon and go to the melon rack in the field and pick melon beans under the bean shed, Chongyang ascends, Chongyang cake inserted Chongyang flag, Laba food porridge, sent stove on the 24th lunar month, New Year's Eve reunion and ancestor worship.\nLiterature.\nThe first \"Literature Museum\" in Chinese history, the first literary theory and criticism monograph \"Wen Xin Diao Long\", the earliest existing collection of poetry and essays \"Selected Works of Zhaoming\", China's first poetic theory and criticism monograph \"Shi Pin\" \", the first collection of zhiren novel,\" Shi Shuo Xin Yu, \"and the first children's enlightenment book \"Thousand Characters \"were all born in Nanjing. Masterpieces such as \"A Dream of Red Mansions\" and \"The Scholars\" are inseparable from Nanjing.\nModern literary giants such as Lu Xun, Ba Jin, Zhu Ziqing, Yu Pingbo, Zhang Henshui, Zhang Ailing have inextricably linked with Nanjing, and the masterpiece \"The Earth\" by the American writer Pearl Buck who won the Nobel Prize for Literature was created in Nanjing. Famous contemporary literary writers in Nanjing include Su Tong, Bi Feiyu and Ye Zhaoyan.\nFilm and television.\nIn 1950, 1,800 projectionists from around the country traveled to Nanjing for a training program.71 These projectionists replicated the training program in their own home provinces to develop more projectionists.71 Nanjing was later termed a \"Cradle of People's Cinema.\"71\nNanjing, as the ancient capital of the Six Dynasties and a famous scenic spot, has become the \"best location\" favored by directors. Among them, the 93 edition of \"Legend of the New White Lady\" was shot at Jiming Temple in Nanjing; \"Deep Love and Rain\" shot at Nanjing Pukou Railway Station; \"The Founding of the People's Republic\" shot at Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum, Meiling Palace, Southeast University Auditorium, etc. .; and more movies and TV series \"Jinling Thirteen Hairpins\", \"To Our Dying Youth\", \"Tuina\", etc. were all shot in Nanjing.\nMusic and dance.\nJinling Qin School is an important genre of Chinese Guqin art that originated in Nanjing. It has a great influence on many later generations of Qin Schools. It originated from the Royal Music Officials of the Ming dynasty and has been listed as a World Intangible Cultural Heritage Project. The folk song \"Jasmine Flower\" originated from the \"Flower Tune\" sung by Liuhe folks for a century, and is world-famous. Xishanqiao folk song performances have repeatedly appeared on CCTV. In addition, there are Gaochun folk songs \"Caihongling\", \"Planting Seedlings in May\", Liuhe folk songs \"Flower Tune\", \"Liuzuo Blow Music\" etc.\nIn 2016, the Nanjing Forest Music Carnival, sponsored by the Propaganda Department of the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee and the Nanjing Municipal People's Government, has been held 5 times. Since 2014, Jiangsu Music Broadcasting will hold the Midou Music Festival in Nanjing every year. The 7th Midou Music Festival; and the popular Nanjing University Student Music Festival in recent years.\nTraditional folk dances in Nanjing include Luoshan Dragon, Dongba Dama Lantern, Sparrow Jump, Jiangpu Hand Lion, Gaochun Dance Wuban, Wanbei Xiaoma Lantern Dance, Qixia Dragon Dance, Changlu Carrying Dragon, Tongshan Gaotai Lion Dance, Dongba Peiqiao stilts, Longyin Che, Zhetang Shahuo, Dangdang, Luohan, Zhuzhen stilts are all intangible cultural heritages.\nCreated by the Nanjing Dancers Association, the original local drama \"The Place Closest to Dream\", with students from the Department of Music of the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics as the performance team, shows youthful demeanor with the theme of youth entrepreneurship; performed by Nanjing folk performing artists \"Drum and Dragon Celebrating the New Year\" is a classic of Nanjing folk dance in recent years; the \"Nanjing City Intangible Cultural Heritage Scene Demonstration\" Jinling Season \"hosted by Nanjing Cultural Bureau and undertaken by Nanjing Art Museum is a work of high artistic level.\nIn Nanjing, we have the first professional children's art school in the country that integrates cultural education, art education and stage performances, Nanjing Art Primary School, referred to as Nanjing Xiaohonghua Art Troupe. The school implements small-class education in an all-round way, and promotes both culture and art. It has been rated as a meritorious unit in Nanjing many times, and twice was awarded the honorary title of \"National Children's Cultural Work Advanced Group\" by the Central Ministry of Culture.\nPhotography.\nNanjing has many excellent photography works, as well as large-scale photography exhibitions, photography conferences, etc. Zhao Ran's \"Quadette of Enchanting Hair\", Ben Daochun's \"Tianjiang Cruise\", Tian Ming's \"Shanghai White-collar Early Class Subway Life\", Yu Xianyun's \"In the Name of the Country\" won 21st, 22nd, 23rd, The 25th National Photographic Art Exhibition Gold Award; Liu Jun's \"Fisher Songs and Moon\" won the 21st Austria Trembler Super Photo Tour Competition Gold Award; Sun Chonglin's \"Little Wangmu\" Gold Award in the second PSAChina International Photography Competition.\nThe Nanjing Photographic Association successfully held the third city photography conference in Nanjing; held photography exhibitions such as \"World Historical and Cultural Cities\", \"Hong Kong in the Eyes of Nanjing People\", \"Nanjing in the Eyes of College Students\"; in Italy, Japan, Singapore, and other countries held \"Splendid Nanjing\" and \"Ancient Capital Nanjing\" photography exhibitions in Italy, Japan, Singapore, and other countries; held \"Harmonious Nanjing\", \"I Love Nanjing\", \"Nanjing City Walls\", \"Four Seasons Jinling\" and other photography competitions; edited and published \"Nanjing New Look\", \"Nanjing\", \"Splendid Nanjing\", \"Brilliant Nanjing\", \"Nanjing City Wall\" and other large-scale picture albums.\nIn 2022, the photography competition, \"A Decade of Nanjing\", organised by Nanjing People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (NPAFFC), sought to chart the changes in Nanjing through the eyes of foreigners living in the city. Almost half a million online votes were cast to decide the final winners.\nFolk crafts.\nThere are many kinds of folk crafts in Nanjing, including brocade, paper-cutting, lantern color, gold leaf, folding fan, velvet flower, carved velvet, wood carving, bamboo carving, etc.\nAs of 2019, Nanjing has 4 world human intangible cultural heritage projects (guqin art, Nanjing cloud brocade weaving, Chinese engraving, and printing techniques, Chinese paper-cutting), 11 national intangible cultural heritage projects, 64 Jiangsu Province and 70 Nanjing City intangible cultural heritage project.\nEducation.\nBy 2021, Nanjing has 68 institutions of higher learning, including ten 111-plan universities, eight 211 universities, and 97 academicians. As the educational center of southern China for more than 1,700 years, Nanjing has many highly ranked educational institutions, with the number of universities (13) listed in 147 Double First-Class Universities ranking third (after Beijing and Shanghai). The ratio of college students to the total population ranks No.1 among large cities nationwide. Nanjing has the fifth-largest scientific research output of any city in the world. As of 2023, it has been ranked as the world's top second scientific research center in earth & environmental sciences after Beijing and the world's top third scientific research center in chemistry after Beijing and Shanghai, according to the Nature Index. Nanjing was ranked 80th globally by the QS Best Student City in 2017.\nNanjing University is considered one of the top national universities nationwide, and it is ranked among the world's top 20 universities by Nature Index. According to the World Reputation Rankings by the Times Higher Educations, Nanjing University is ranked among the top 100 universities with its best reputation in 2021. Southeast University is also among the most famous universities in China and is considered one of the best universities for Architecture and Engineering in China. Many universities in Nanjing have satellite campuses or have moved their main campus to Xianlin University City in the eastern suburb. Some of the other most prominent national universities in Nanjing are:\nSome of the other most prominent national universities in Nanjing are:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nPrivate universities and colleges, such as Communication University of China, Nanjing and Hopkins-Nanjing Center are also located in the city.\nSome notable high schools in Nanjing are: Jiangpu Senior High School, Jinling High School, Liuhe First School, Nanjing Foreign Language School, The Second Yuying Foreign Languages School of Nanjing, High School Affiliated to Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing No.1 High School, Nanjing Zhonghua High School, Caulfield Grammar School (Nanjing Campus), Nanjing No.29 High School, Yuhuatai Senior High School.\nSister cities and twin towns.\nNanjing is twinned with:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNanjing's sister-city relationship with Nagoya, Japan, was suspended on February 21, 2012, following public comments by Nagoya mayor Takashi Kawamura denying the Nanjing Massacre. Non-governmental relations have been subsequently restored.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "6934277": "History of Beijing\nThe city of Beijing has a long and rich history that dates back over 3,000 years.\nPrior to the unification of China by the First Emperor in 221 BC, Beijing had been for centuries the capital of the ancient states of Ji and Yan. It was a provincial center in the earliest unified empires of China, Qin and Han. The northern border of ancient China ran close to the present city of Beijing, and northern nomadic tribes frequently broke in from across the border. Thus, the area that was to become Beijing emerged as an important strategic and a local political centre. During the first millennia of imperial rule, Beijing was a provincial city in northern China. Its stature grew in the 10th to the 13th centuries when the nomadic Khitan and forest-dwelling Jurchen peoples from beyond the Great Wall expanded southward and made the city a capital of their dynasties, the Liao and Jin. When Kublai Khan made Dadu the capital of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty (1279\u20131368), all of China was ruled from Beijing for the first time. From 1279 onward, with the exception of two interludes from 1368 to 1420 and 1928 to 1949, Beijing would remain as China's capital, serving as the seat of power for the Ming dynasty (1421\u20131644), the Manchu-led Qing dynasty (1644\u20131912), the early Republic of China (1912\u20131928) and now the People's Republic of China (1949\u2013present).\nPrehistory.\nThe earliest remains of hominid habitation in Beijing Municipality were found in the caves of Dragon Bone Hill near the village of Zhoukoudian in Fangshan District, where the \"Homo erectus\" Peking Man (previously classified as the now-invalid species \"Sinanthropus pekinensis\") lived from 770,000 to 230,000 years ago. Paleolithic \"homo sapiens\" also lived in the caves from about 27,000 to 10,000 years ago.\nIn 1996, over 2,000 Stone Age tools and bone fragments were discovered at a construction site at Wangfujing in the heart of downtown Beijing in Dongcheng District. The artifacts date to 24,000 to 25,000 years ago and are preserved in the Wangfujing Paleolithic Museum in the lower level of the New Oriental Plaza mall.\nArchaeologists have discovered over 40 neolithic settlements and burial sites throughout the municipality. The most notable include Zhuannian of Huairou District; Donghulin of Mentougou District; Shangzhai and Beiniantou of Pinggu District; Zhenjiangying of Fangshan; and Xueshan of Changping District. These sites indicate that farming was widespread in the area 6,000 to 7,000 years ago. Painted pottery and carved jade of the Shangzhai and Xueshan Cultures resemble those of the Hongshan Culture further to the north.\nPre-imperial history.\nThe earliest events of Beijing's history are shrouded in legend and myth. The epic Battle of Banquan, which according to Sima Qian's \"Records of the Grand Historian\", occurred in the 26th century BC, may have taken place near the Upper and Lower Banquan Villages of Yanqing County on the northwestern edge of Beijing Municipality. The triumph of the Yellow Emperor over the Yan Emperor at Banquan united the two Emperors' tribes and gave rise to the \"Huaxia\" or Chinese nation, which then defeated Chiyou and the Nine Li tribes in the Battle of Zhuolu, possibly at Zhuolu, west of Yanqing in Hebei Province. This victory opened North China to settlement by the descendants of the Yan and Yellow Emperors.\nThe Yellow Emperor is said to have founded the settlement of Youling () in or near Zhuolu. The sage-king Yao founded a town called Youdu () in the Hebei-Beijing region about 4,000 years ago. You () or Youzhou () later became one of the historical names for Beijing. Yuzishan, in Shandongzhuang Village of Pinggu County, in the northeastern fringe of Beijing Municipality, is one of several places in China claiming to host the Yellow Emperor's Tomb. Yuzishan's association with Yellow Emperor dates back at least 1,300 years when Tang poets Chen Zi'ang and Li Bai mentioned the tomb in their poems about Youzhou.\nThe first event in Beijing's history with archaeological support dates to the 11th century BC when the Zhou dynasty absorbed the Shang dynasty. According to Sima Qian, King Wu of Zhou, in the 11th year of his reign, deposed the last Shang king and conferred titles to nobles within his domain including the rulers of the city states Ji () and Yan (). According to Confucius, King Wu of Zhou was so eager to establish his legitimacy that before dismounting his chariot, he named the descendants of the Yellow Emperor as the rulers of Ji. He then named his kinsman, Shi, the Duke of Shao, as the vassal of Yan. Shi was preoccupied with other matters and dispatched his eldest son to take the position. This son, Ke, is considered the founder of the state of Yan. Bronzeware inscriptions have confirmed these events described in Sima Qian's history. Although the dates in Sima Qian's history before 841 BC have not yet been definitely matched to the Gregorian Calendar, the Beijing Government uses 1045BC as the official estimate of the date of this occasion.\nIt is believed that the seat of Ji, called the City of Ji or Jicheng (), was located in the southwestern part of present-day urban Beijing, just south of Guang'anmen in Xicheng and Fengtai Districts. Several historical accounts mention a \"Hill of Ji\" northwest of the city, which would correspond to the large mound at the White Cloud Abbey outside Xibianmen, about north of Guang'anmen. South and west of Guang'anmen, roof tiles used for palace construction and dense concentrations of wells lined with ceramic ring tiles have been discovered.\nThe capital of Yan was located about to the south of Ji, in the village of Dongjialin in Liulihe Township of Fangshan District, where a large walled settlement and over 200 tombs of nobility have been unearthed. Among the most significant artifacts from the Liulihe Site is the three-legged bronze \" Jin Ding\" whose inscriptions recount the journey of Jin, who was sent by Ji Ke to deliver a batch of food and drink to his father, Ji Shi, in the Zhou capital. The father was thrilled and awarded Jin cowry shells to pay for the creation of an honorific \"ding\" to remember the event. The inscription thus confirms the appointment of King Zhou's kin to Yan and the location of Yan's capital.\nBoth Yan and Ji were situated along an important north\u2013south trade route along the eastern flank of the Taihang Mountains from the Central Plain to the northern steppes. Ji, located just north of the Yongding River, was a convenient rest stop for trade caravans. Here, the route to the northwest through the mountain passes diverged from the road to the Northeast. Ji also had a steady water supply from the nearby Lotus Pool, which still exists south of the Beijing West railway station. The Liulihe settlement relied on the more seasonal flow of the Liuli River. Some time during the Western Zhou or early Eastern Zhou dynasty, Yan conquered Ji and moved its capital to Ji, which continued to be called Jicheng or the City of Ji until the 2nd century AD. Due to its historical association with the State of Yan, the city of Beijing is also known as Yanjing () or the \"Yan Capital.\"\nThe State of Yan continued to expand until it became one of the seven major powers during the Warring States period (473\u2013221 BC). It stretched from the Yellow River to the Yalu. Like subsequent rulers of Beijing, the Yan also faced the threat of invasions by the Shanrong steppe nomads, and built walled fortifications across its northern frontier. Remnants of the Yan walls in Changping County date to 283 BC. They predate Beijing's better known Ming Great Wall by more than 1,500 years.\nIn 226 BC, the City of Ji fell to the invading State of Qin and the State of Yan was forced to move its capital to Liaodong. The Qin eventually ended Yan in 222 BC. The following year, the ruler of Qin, having conquered all the other states, declared himself to be the First Emperor.\nEarly imperial history.\nDuring the first one thousand years of Chinese imperial history, Beijing was a provincial city on the northern periphery of China proper. Dynasties with capitals in the Central and Guanzhong Plains used the city to manage trade and military relations with nomadic peoples of the north and northeast.\nThe Qin dynasty built a highly centralized state and divided the country into 48 commanderies (\"jun\"), two of which are located in present-day Beijing. The City of Ji became the seat of Guangyang Commandery (\u5e7f\u9633\u90e1/\u5ee3\u967d\u90e1). To the north, in present-day Miyun County, was Yuyang Commandery. The Qin removed defensive barriers dividing the Warring States, including the southern wall of the Yan, which separated the Beijing Plain from the Central Plain, and built a national roadway network. Ji served as the junction for the roads connecting the Central Plain with Mongolia and Manchuria. The First Emperor visited Ji in 215 BC and, to protect the frontier from the Xiongnu, had the Great Wall built in Yuyang Commandery and fortified Juyong Pass.\nThe Han dynasty, which followed the short-lived Qin in 206 BC, initially restored some local autonomy. Liu Bang, the founding emperor of the Han dynasty, recognized a number of regional kingdoms including Yan, ruled by Zang Tu, who had joined the revolt that overthrew the Qin, seized the City of Ji and sided with Liu Bang in the war with Xiang Yu for supremacy. But Zang rebelled and was executed, and Liu granted the kingdom to his childhood friend Lu Wan. Later, Liu became mistrustful of Lu, and the latter fled the City of Ji to join the Xiongnu tribes of the steppes. Liu Bang's eighth son took control of Yan, which was subsequently ruled by lineal princes of the imperial family, from the City of Ji, then known as Yan Commandery (\u71d5\u90e1), and the Principality of Guangyang (\u5e7f\u9633\u56fd/\u5ee3\u967d\u570b). In the early Western Han, the four counties of Guangyang Principality had 20,740 households and an estimated population of 70,685.\nIn 106 BC, under Emperor Wu, the country was organized into 13 prefectural-provinces, or \"zhou\" (), and the City of Ji served as the provincial capital for Youzhou (), the territories of which extended from what is now central Hebei Province to the Korean Peninsula. The tomb of Liu Jian, the Prince of Guangyang who ruled Youzhou from 73 to 45 BC was discovered in Fengtai District in 1974 and has been preserved in the Dabaotai Western Han Dynasty Mausoleum. In 1999, another royal tomb was found in Laoshan in Shijingshan District but the prince formerly buried there has not been identified.\nDuring the early Eastern Han dynasty in 57 AD, the five counties of Guangyang Commandery had 44,550 households and an estimated 280,600 residents. By population density, Guangyang ranked in the top 20 among the 105 commanderies nationally. In the late Eastern Han, the Yellow Turban Rebellion erupted in Hebei in 184 AD and briefly seized Youzhou. The court relied on regional militaries to put down the rebellion and Youzhou was controlled successively by warlords Liu Yu, Gongsun Zan, Yuan Shao and Cao Cao. In 194 AD, Yuan Shao captured Ji from Gongsun Zan with the help of Wuhuan and Xianbei allies from the steppes. Cao Cao defeated Yuan Shao in 200 AD and the Wuhuan in 207 AD to pacify the north.\nDuring the Three Kingdoms period, the Kingdom of Wei founded by Cao Cao's son, Cao Pi, controlled ten of the Han dynasty's prefectures including Youzhou and its capital Ji. The Wei court instituted offices in Youzhou to manage relations with the Wuhuan and Xianbei. To help sustain the troops garrisoned in Youzhou, the governor in 250 AD built the Lilingyan, an irrigation system that greatly improved agricultural output in the plains around Ji.\nJi was demoted to a mere county seat in the Western Jin dynasty, which made neighboring Zhuo County, in present-day Hebei Province, the prefectural capital of Youzhou. In the early 4th century, the Western Jin dynasty was overthrown by steppe peoples who had settled in northern China and established a series of mostly short-lived kingdoms. During the so-called Sixteen Kingdoms period, Beijing, still known as Ji, was controlled successively by the Di-led Former Qin, the Jie-led Later Zhao, and the Xianbei-led Former Yan and Later Yan. In 352, Prince Murong Jun, moved the capital of the Former Yan Kingdom from Manchuria to Ji, making the city a sovereign capital for the first time in over 500 years. Five years later, the Former Yan's capital was moved further south to Ye in southern Hebei. In 397 AD, the Northern Wei, another Xianbei regime, united northern China and restored Ji as the capital of Youzhou. While this designation continued through the remainder of the Northern Dynasties, the Eastern Wei, Northern Qi and Northern Zhou, the size of its jurisdiction shrank drastically, as the number of \"zhou\" in China was massively increased in this period, from 21 in the early 4th century to more than 200 in the late 6th century.\nIn 446, the Northern Wei built a Great Wall from Juyong Pass west to Shanxi to protect its capital, Datong, from the Rouran. In 553\u201356, the Northern Qi extended this Great Wall eastward to the Bohai Sea to defend against the G\u00f6kt\u00fcrks, who raided Youzhou in 564 and 578. Centuries of warfare severely depopulated northern China. During the Eastern Wei (534\u2013550), Youzhou, Anzhou (modern Miyun) and East Yanzhou (modern Changping) had a combined 4,600 households and about 170,000 residents.\nAfter the Sui dynasty reunited China in 589 AD, Youzhou was renamed Zhuojun or the Zhuo Commandery (), which was administered from Ji. In 609, Zhuo Commandery and neighboring Anle Commandery (modern Miyun) had a combined 91,658 households and an estimated population of 458,000. Emperor Yang of Sui built a network of canals from the Central Plain to Zhuojun to carry troops and food for the massive military campaigns against Goguryeo (Korea). Though the campaigns proved to be ruinous, they were continued by the Tang dynasty. In 645 AD, the Emperor Taizong of the Tang dynasty founded the Minzhong Temple (now Fayuan Temple) in the southeast of Ji to remember the war dead from the Korean Campaigns. The Fayuan Temple, now within Xicheng District, is one of the oldest temples in urban Beijing.\nThe Tang dynasty reduced the size of a prefecture, as a unit of administration administrative division, from a province to a commandery and renamed Zhuojun back to Youzhou, which was one of over 300 Tang Prefectures. With the creation of a separate prefecture called Jizhou () in present-day Tianjin in 730, the name Ji was transplanted from Beijing to Tianjin, where a Ji County () still exists today. In Beijing, the City of Ji gradually became known as Youzhou. During the prosperous early Tang, Youzhou's ten counties tripled in size from 21,098 households and about 102,079 residents to 67,242 households and 371,312 residents in 742. In 742, Youzhou was renamed Fanyang Commandery (), but reverted to Youzhou in 762.\nTo guard against barbarian invasions, the imperial court created six frontier military commands in 711 AD, and Youzhou became the headquarters of the Youzhou \"Jiedushi\", who was tasked to monitor the Khitan and Xi nomads just north of present-day Hebei Province. In 755, the \"Jiedushi\" An Lushan launched a rebellion from Youzhou, and declared himself the emperor of the Great Yan dynasty. He went on to conquer Luoyang and Xi'an with a multi-ethnic army of Han, Tongluo, Xi, Khitan and Shiwei troops. After An's death, Shi Siming continued the rebellion from Youzhou. Shi Siming's tomb was discovered in Wangzuo Village in Fengtai District in 1966 and excavated in 1981. The An\u2013Shi Rebellion lasted eight years and severely weakened the Tang dynasty. For the next 150 years, military governors ruled Youzhou autonomously. \nWhen the Tang dynasty was overthrown in 907 by the Later Liang dynasty, Youzhou remained independent and its military governor Liu Shouguang declared himself emperor of the short-lived Jie Yan dynasty in 911. This regime was ended in 913 by the ethnic Shatuo general Li Cunxu who went on to found the Later Tang dynasty in 923. The disintegration of the Tang dynasty into the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms paved the way for Khitan expansion into northern China, which prompted the rise of Beijing in Chinese history.\nThe nomadic Khitan people were united under Yel\u00fc Abaoji, who founded the Liao dynasty in 916 and, from 917 to 928, tried seven times to take Youzhou. In 936, a rift in the Later Tang court allowed Yel\u00fc Abaoji to help another ethnic Shatuo general Shi Jingtang found the third of the Five Dynasties, the Later Jin. Shi Jingtang then ceded sixteen prefectures across the northern frontier including Youzhou, Shunzhou (modern Shunyi), Tanzhou (modern Changping) and Ruzhou (modern Yanqing) to the Liao dynasty.\nLiao, Song and Jin dynasties.\nThough Beijing was but a peripheral city to Chinese dynasties centered in Luoyang and Xi'an, it was an important entryway into China for tribal peoples to the north. The city's stature grew from the 10th century with successive invasions of China proper by the Khitans, Jurchens, and Mongols, who respectively founded the Liao dynasty, Jin dynasty and Yuan dynasty.\nLiao Nanjing.\nIn 938, the Liao dynasty renamed Youzhou, Nanjing (\u5357\u4eac) or the \"Southern Capital\" and made the city one of four secondary capitals to the primary seat of power at Shangjing (in modern-day Baarin Left Banner, Inner Mongolia). The Liao retained the Tang configuration of the city, which had eight gates in its outer wall, two in each cardinal direction, an inner walled city, which was converted into palace complex, and 26 residential neighborhoods.\nThus, the City of Ji, ceded to the Liao as Youzhou, continued as Nanjing in what is today the southwest part of urban Beijing. Some of the oldest landmarks in southern Xicheng (formerly Xuanwu) and Fengtai Districts date to the Liao era. They include Sanmiao Road, one of the oldest streets in Beijing and the Niujie Mosque, founded in 996, and the Tianning Temple, built from 1100 to 1119. Under Liao rule, the population inside the walled city grew from 22,000 in 938 to 150,000 in 1113 (and the population of the surrounding region grew from 100,000 to 583,000) as large numbers of Khitan, Xi, Shiwei and Balhae from the north and Han from the south migrated to the city.\nThe Song dynasty, after unifying the rest of China in 960, sought to recapture the lost northern territories. In 979, Emperor Taizong personally led a military expedition that reached and laid siege to Nanjing (Youzhou) but was defeated in the decisive Battle of Gaoliang River, just northwest of present-day Xizhimen.\nIn 1120, the Song entered the Alliance on the Sea with the Jurchens, a semi-agricultural, forest-dwelling people living northeast of the Liao in modern-day Manchuria. The two nations agreed to jointly invade the Liao and split captured territories, with most of the Sixteen Prefectures going to the Song. Under the leadership of Wanyan Aguda, who founded the Jin dynasty (1115\u20131234), the Jurchens captured in rapid succession the Liao's Upper, Central and Eastern Capitals.\nIn the spring of 1122, the Liao court rallied around Prince Yel\u00fc Chun in Nanjing, and defeated two Song army advances. After Yel\u00fc Chun died of illness in the early summer, Guo Yaoshi, an ethnic Han commander in the Liao Army, defected to the Song and led the vanguard of the Song Army in a raid on Nanjing. The raiders entered the city, but the Liao Empress Xiao continued to resist from the walled palace complex. After three days of street fighting, Liao reinforcements reached the city ahead of the main Song Army, and managed to expel Guo Yaoshi's forces. In the winter of 1122, the Jin Army drove through the Juyong Pass and marched on Nanjing from the north. This time, Empress Xiao fled to the steppes and the remaining Liao officials capitulated. Wanyan Aguda allowed the surrendering officials to retain their positions and encouraged refugees to return to the city, which was renamed Yanjing.\nSong Yanshan.\nIn the spring of 1123, Wanyan Aguda agreed, as per treaty terms, to hand Yanjing and four other prefectures to the Song in exchange for tribute. The handover occurred after the Jurchens had looted the city's wealth and forced all officials and craftsman to move to the Jin capital at Shangjing (near present-day Harbin). Thus, the Song, having failed to take the city militarily from the Khitans, managed to purchase Yanjing from the Jurchens. Song rule of the city, renamed Yanshan (\u71d5\u5c71), was short-lived.\nAs the convoy of relocated Nanjing residents passed Pingzhou (near Qinhuangdao) on their way to the Northeast, they persuaded the governor Zhang Jue to restore them to their home city. Zhang Jue, a former Liao official who had surrendered to the Jin dynasty, then switched his allegiance to the Song. Emperor Huizong welcomed his defection, ignoring warnings from his diplomats that the Jurchens would regard the acceptance of defectors as a breach of the treaty. The Jurchens defeated Zhang Jue who took refuge with Guo Yaoshi at Yanshan. The Song court had Zhang Jue executed to satisfy Jin demands, much to the alarm of Guo Yaoshi and other former Liao officials serving the Song.\nThe Jurchens, sensing Song weakness, used the Zhang Jue incident as a pretext to invade. In 1125, Jin forces defeated Guo Yaoshi at the Battle of the Bai River, on the upper reaches of the Chaobai River in modern Miyun County. Guo Yaoshi then surrendered Yanshan and then guided the Jin's rapid advance on the Song capital, Kaifeng, where the Song emperors Huizong and Qinzong were captured in 1127, ending the Northern Song dynasty. Yanshan was renamed Yanjing.\nJin Zhongdu.\nIn 1153 the Jin emperor Wanyan Liang moved his capital from Shangjing to Yanjing and the city was renamed Zhongdu (\u4e2d\u90fd) or the \"Central Capital\". For the first time in its history, the city of Beijing became a political capital of a major dynasty.\nThe Jin expanded the city to the west, east, and south, doubling its size. On today's map of urban Beijing, Zhongdu would extend from Xuanwumen in the northeast to the Beijing West railway station to the west, and south to beyond the southern 2nd Ring Road. The walled city had 13 gates, four in the north and three openings in each of the other sides. Remnants of Zhongdu city walls are preserved in Fengtai District. The Jin emphasized the centrality of the regime by placing the walled palace complex near the center of Zhongdu. The palace was situated south of present-day Guang'anmen and north of the Grand View Garden. In 1179, Emperor Zhangzong had a country retreat built northeast of Zhongdu. Taiye Lake was excavated along the Jinshui River and Daning Palace (/) was erected on Qionghua Island in the lake. The grounds of this palace is now Beihai Park.\nPaper money was first issued in Beijing during the Jin. The Lugou Bridge, over the Yongding River southwest of the city, was built in 1189. Seventeen Jin emperors are buried in Fangshan District, including those whose tombs were originally built in Shangjing and moved to Zhongdu. The city's population grew from 82,000 in 1125 to 400,000 in 1207 (and from 340,000 in the surrounding region to 1.6 million).\nZhongdu served as the Jin capital for more than 60 years, until the onslaught of the Mongols in 1214. The Mongols, a tribal nomadic people from the Mongolian Plateau and southern Siberia, had assisted the Jurchen in the war against the Khitans, but were not given the promised compensation. In 1211, the Mongols led by Genghis Khan took revenge against the Jin by invading northern China. By 1213, he had controlled most of Jin territory north of the Yellow River with the exception of the capital Zhongdu. In March 1214, he set up headquarters in Zhongdu's northern suburbs and with brother Hasar and three eldest sons, Jochi, Chagatai and \u00d6gedei, began to besiege the city. Though the Jin court was weakened by a palace coup, the city was protected by three layers of moats and 900 towers. When disease broke out within the Mongol ranks, Genghis Khan sent Muslim envoy Ja'far into the city to negotiate, and the Jin court agreed to a peace treaty by ceding territory and accepting vassal status. Among Genghis Khan's demands was marriage to a Jurchen princess. The Qicheng Princess, daughter of Wanyan Yongji, was designated for the Mongol chieftain. She along with 100 guards, 500 boys and girl servants, 3,000 bolts of cloth, and 3,000 horses were sent to the Mongol camp. The Qicheng Princess became one of the four main wives of Genghis Khan, who lifted the siege and withdrew north of the Juyong Pass.\nEmperor Xuanzong, after considerable debate, decided to move the capital from Zhongdu to Kaifeng further to the south. In June 1214, as the Jin imperial procession departed the city, a detachment of Khitan guards rebelled at the Lugou Bridge and defected to the Mongols. Genghis Khan believed the Jin was trying to rebuild military strength further south in breach of the terms of peace and decided to reinvade the Jin. By winter, Mongol troops were again besieging Zhongdu.\nIn 1215, after a bitter siege in which many of the city's inhabitants starved, Zhongdu's 100,000 defenders and 108,000 households surrendered. The city was still looted and burned by the invaders. Zhongdu was renamed Yanjing and its population shrank to 91,000 in 1216 (with 285,000 in the surrounding region). Among the captives taken from the city was a Khitan named Yel\u00fc Chucai, who persuaded Genghis Khan that while China could be conquered from the saddle, it could not be ruled from the saddle. Rather than converting northern China into pastures, it would be more beneficial for Mongols to tax the agrarian population. Genghis Khan heeded the advice and the Mongol pillaging eased. The Mongols continued to the war against the Jurchens until the capture of Kaifeng in 1234 ended the Jin dynasty. Yel\u00fc Chucai was buried on the east bank of Kunming Lake in what is now the Summer Palace.\nIn 1219, Genghis Khan invited the Daoist sage Qiu Chuji for advice on \"keeping the empire in good order.\" The 76-year old Qiu had previously declined invitations from the emperors of the Jin and Southern Song, but agreed to travel from Shandong to Yanjing and then to Central Asia, where, at the Mongol encampment in the Hindu Kush, he taught the Genghis Khan about the \"Dao\", telling the great khan medicine for immortality did not exist and urged him to preserve lives. The Mongol leader called Qiu an immortal sage, made him the head Daoist priest of the empire and exempted Daoism from taxation. Qiu returned to Yanjing in 1224 and expanded what would become the White Cloud Temple, where he is buried and which is today the seat of the Chinese Daoist Association.\nYuan dynasty.\nWhen Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan, visited Yanjing in 1261, much of the city lay in ruin, so he stayed in the Daning Palace on Qionghua Island. Unlike other Mongol leaders who wanted to retain the traditional tribal confederation based in Karakorum in Outer Mongolia, Kublai Khan was eager to become the emperor of a cosmopolitan empire. He spent the next four years waging and winning a civil war against rival Mongol chieftains and in 1264 ordered advisor Liu Bingzhong to build his new capital at Yanjing. In 1260, he had already begun construction of his capital at Xanadu, some due north of Beijing on the Luan River in present-day Inner Mongolia, but he preferred the location of Beijing. With the North China Plain opening to the south and the steppes just beyond the mountain passes to the north, Beijing was an ideal midway point for Kublai Khan's new seat of power.\nIn 1271, he declared the creation of the Yuan dynasty and named his capital Dadu (, Chinese for \"Grand Capital\", or \"Daidu\" to the Mongols). It is also known by the Mongol name Khanbaliq (), spelled \"Cambuluc\" in Marco Polo's account. Construction of Dadu began in 1267 and the first palace was finished the next year. The entire palace complex was completed in 1274 and the rest of the city by 1285. In 1279, when Mongol armies finished off the last of the Song dynasty in southern China, Beijing became for the first time, the capital of the whole of China. After the construction of Dadu, Xanadu, also known as Shangdu, became Kublai Khan's summer capital.\nRather than continuing on the foundation of Zhongdu, the new capital Dadu was shifted to the northeast and built around the old Daning Palace on Qionghua Island in the middle of the Taiye Lake. This move set in place Beijing's current north\u2013south central axis. Dadu was nearly twice the size of Zhongdu. It stretched from present-day Chang'an Avenue in the south to the earthen Dadu city walls that still stand in northern and northeastern Beijing, between the northern 3rd and 4th Ring Roads. The city had earthen walls 24 m thick and 11 city gates, two in the north and three each in the other cardinal directions. Later, the Ming dynasty lined portions of Dadu's eastern and western walls with brick and retained four of the gates. Thus, Dadu had the same width as the Beijing of the Ming and Qing dynasties. The geographic center of the Dadu was marked with a pavilion, which is now the Drum Tower.\nThe most striking physical feature of Dadu was the string of lakes in the heart of the city. These lakes were created from the Jinshui River inside the city. They are now known as the six seas (\"hai\") of central Beijing: Houhai, Qianhai, and Xihai (the Rear, Front, and Western Seas) which are collectively known as Shichahai; Beihai (the North Sea); and Zhonghai and Nanhai which are collectively known as Zhongnanhai. Qionghua Island is now the island in Beihai Park on which the White Dagoba stands. Like today's Chinese leaders, the Yuan imperial family lived west of the lakes in the Xingsheng (\u5174\u5723\u5bab) and Longfu (\u9686\u798f\u5bab) Palaces. A third palace east of the lakes, called the Danei (\u5927\u5185), at the site of the later Forbidden City, housed the imperial offices. The city's construction drew builders from all over the Mongols' Asian empire, including local Chinese as well as those from places such as Nepal and Central Asia. Liu Bingzhong was appointed as the supervisor of the construction of the imperial city and a chief architect was Yeheidie'erding. The pavilions of the palaces took on various architectural styles from across the empire. The entire palace complex occupied the south central portion of Dadu. Following Chinese tradition, the temples for ancestral rites and harvest rites were built, respectively, to west and east of the palace.\nThe inclusion of the Jinshui and Gaoliang rivers gave Dadu a larger supply of water than the Lotus Pool which had nourished Ji, Youzhou, and Nanjing for the previous 2,000 years. To boost water supply even more, Yuan hydrologist Guo Shoujing built channels to draw additional spring water from Yuquan Mountain in the northwest through what is today the Kunming Lake of the Summer Palace through the Purple Bamboo Park to Jishuitan, which was a large reservoir inside Dadu. The expansion and extension of the Grand Canal from Dadu to Hangzhou enabled the city to import greater volumes of grain to sustain a larger population. The completion of the Tonghui Canal in 1293 allowed barges from Tongzhou to sail through the city right to the gates of the imperial palace at Shichahai. In 1270, Dadu had a population of 418,000 and another 635,000 in the surrounding region. By 1327, the city had 952,000 residents with another 2.08 million in the surrounding region.\nThe city's residential districts were laid out in a checkerboard pattern divided by avenues 25 m in width and narrow alleyways, called \"hutongs\", 6\u20137 m wide. One of the best surviving examples of such a district is Dongsi Subdistrict, which has 14 parallel hutongs, called the 14 \"tiao\" of Dongsi. The name \"hutong\" is unique to the Yuan-era city; in older neighborhoods that date to the Liao and Jin eras, narrow lanes are called \"jie\" or streets. Each of the large avenues had underground sewers which carried rain and refuse to the south of the city. The main markets were located in Dongsi, Xisi and along the north shore of Jishuitan.\nAs Kublai Khan had intended, the city was a showcase of the cosmopolitan Yuan Empire. A number of foreign travelers including Giovanni di Monte Corvino, Odoric of Pordenone, Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta left written accounts of visits to the city. Some of the most famous writers of the Yuan era including Ma Zhiyuan, Guan Hanqing and Wang Shifu, lived in Dadu. The Mongols commissioned the building of an Islamic observatory and Islamic academy. The White Stupa Temple near Fuchengmen was commissioned by Kublai Khan in 1271. Its famous white stupa was designed by Nepali architect Araniko, and remains one of the biggest stupas in China. The Confucius Temple and Guozijian (Imperial Academy) were founded during the reign of Tem\u00fcr Khan, Emperor Chengzong, Kublai's successor.\nYuan rule was severely weakened by a succession struggle in 1328 known as the War of the Two Capitals in which the Dadu-based claimant to the throne prevailed over his Shangdu-based rival, but not after heavy fighting around Dadu and across the country among Mongol princes.\nMing dynasty.\nIn 1368, Zhu Yuanzhang founded the Ming dynasty in the Nanjing on the Yangtze River and his general Xu Da drove north and captured Dadu. The last Yuan emperor fled to the steppes. Dadu's imperial palace was razed and the city was renamed Beiping (\u5317\u5e73 or \"Northern Peace\"). Nanjing, also known as \"Yingtian Fu\" became the \"Jingshi\" or the capital of the new dynasty. Two years later, Zhu Yuanzhang conferred Beiping to his fourth son, Zhu Di, who at the age of ten became the Prince of Yan. Zhu Di did not move to Beiping until 1380 but quickly built up his military power in defense of the northern frontier. His three older brothers all predeceased his father who died in 1398. The throne was passed on to Zhu Yunwen, the son of Zhu Di's oldest brother. The new emperor sought to curtail his uncle's power in Beiping, and a bitter power struggle ensued. In 1402, after a four-year civil war, Zhu Di seized Nanjing and declared himself the Yongle Emperor. As the third emperor of the Ming dynasty, he was not content to stay in Nanjing. He executed hundreds in Nanjing for remaining loyal to his predecessor, who was reportedly killed in a palace fire but was rumored to have escaped. The Yongle Emperor sent his eunuch Zheng He on the famed voyages overseas in part to investigate the rumors of the Jianwen Emperor abroad.\nIn 1403, the Yongle Emperor renamed his home base Beijing (\u5317\u4eac, the \"Northern Capital\"), and elevated the city to the status of capital, on par with Nanjing. For the first time, Beijing took on its modern name, while the prefecture around the city gained the new name Shuntian Fu (\u987a\u5929\u5e9c). From 1403 to 1420, Yongle prepared his new capital with a massive reconstruction program. Some of Beijing's most iconic historical buildings, including the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven, were built for Yongle's capital. The Temples of the Sun, Earth and Moon were later added by the Daoist Jiajing Emperor in 1530.\nIn 1421, Yongle moved the \"Jingshi\" of the Ming to Beijing, which made Beijing the main capital of the Ming dynasty. From Beijing, Yongle launched multiple campaigns against the Mongols. After he died in 1424, his son, the Hongxi Emperor, ordered the capital be moved back to Nanjing, but died of illness in 1425. The Hongxi Emperor sent his son, the future Xuande Emperor, to Nanjing to prepare for the move, but the latter chose to keep the capital in Beijing after his accession to the throne. Like his grandfather, the Xuande Emperor was interested in monitoring affairs on the northern frontier. Most of the Great Wall in northern Beijing Municipality were built during the Ming dynasty.\nIn the early Ming dynasty, the northern part of old Dadu was depopulated and abandoned. In 1369, the city's population had been reduced to 95,000, with only 113,000 in the surrounding region. A new northern wall was built to the south of the old wall, leaving the Jishuitan reservoir outside the city as part of the northern moat. A new southern wall for the city was built half a kilometer south of the southern Dadu wall. These changes completed the Inner City wall of Beijing, which had nine gates (three in the south and two each to the north, east and west).\nThe Inner City walls withstood a major test following the Tumu Crisis of 1449 when the Zhengtong Emperor was captured by Oirat Mongols during a military campaign near Huailai. The Oirat chieftain, Esen Tayisi, then drove through the Great Wall and marched on the Ming capital with the captive emperor in hand. Defense Minister Yu Qian rejected Esen's demands for ransom despite the Zhengtong Emperor's pleadings. Yu said the responsibility to protect the country took precedence over the Emperor's life. He rejected calls by other officials to move the capital to the South and instead elevated the Zhengtong Emperor's younger half-brother to the throne and assembled 220,000 troops to defend the city. Ming forces with firearms and cannons ambushed the Mongol cavalry outside Deshengmen, killing Esen's brother in the barrage, and repelled another attack on Xizhimen. Esen retreated to Mongolia and three years later, returned the captive Zhengtong Emperor with no ransom paid. In 1457, the Zhengtong Emperor reclaimed the throne and had Yu Qian executed for treason. Yu Qian's home near Dongdan was later made into a temple in his honor.\nBack in power, the Zhengtong Emperor, now ruling under the new era name of Tianshun, first promoted and then became distrustful of officials who had aided his restoration. One of them, the grand eunuch Cao Jixiang, decided to strike at the throne. In August 1461, Cao's adopted son, Cao Qin, launched a mutiny among ethnic Mongol troops stationed inside Beijing. The plot was betrayed and the Tianshun Emperor ordered the gates of the Forbidden City and the Inner City closed, trapping the mutineers, who were unable to break into the palace complex and were killed.\nIn 1550, Altan Khan led a Khalkha Mongol raid on Beijing that pillaged the northern suburbs but did not attempt to take the city. To protect the city's southern suburbs, including neighborhoods from the Liao and Jin-eras and the Temple of Heaven, the Outer City wall was built in 1553. The Outer City wall had seven gates, three to the south, two each to the east and west. The Inner and Outer Ming city walls stood until in the 1960s when all but a couple small sections were pulled down to build the Beijing Subway and the 2nd Ring Road. The largest and best-preserved section of the wall is located in the Ming City Wall Relics Park near the southeast corner of the inner city.\nJesuit missions reached Beijing at the turn of the 16th century. In 1601, Matteo Ricci became an advisor to the imperial court of the Wanli Emperor and became the first Westerner to have access to the Forbidden City. He established the Nantang Cathedral in 1605, the oldest surviving Catholic church in the city. Other Jesuits later became directors of Beijing's Imperial Observatory.\nOn the eve of the Tumu Crisis in 1448, the city had 960,000 residents with another 2.19 million living in the surrounding region. Beijing was the largest city in the world from 1425 to 1635 and from 1710 to 1825. To feed the growing population, Ming authorities built and administered granaries, including the Imperial Granary and Jingtong storehouses near the terminus of the Grand Canal, which fed a growing population and sustained the military. The granaries helped control prices and prevent inflation, but price controls became less effective as the population grew and demand for food exceeded supply.\nUntil the mid-15th century, Beijing residents relied on wood for heating and cooking. The growing population led to massive logging of the forests around the city. By the mid-15th century, the forests had largely disappeared. As a substitute, residents turned to coal, which was first mined in the Western Hills during the Yuan dynasty and expanded in the Ming. The use of coal caused many environmental problems and changed the ecological system around the city.\nDuring the Ming dynasty, 15 epidemic outbreaks occurred in the city of Beijing including smallpox, \"pimple plague\" and \"vomit blood plague\" - the latter two were possibly bubonic plague and pneumonic plague. In most cases, the public health system functioned well in gaining control of the outbreaks, except in 1643. That year, epidemics claimed 200,000 lives in Beijing, thus compromising the defense of the city from the attacks of the peasant rebels and contributing to the downfall of the dynasty.\nDuring the 15th and 16th centuries, banditry was common near Beijing despite the presence of imperial government. Due to inadequate supervision and economic privation, imperial troops in the capital region to protect the throne would often turn to brigandage. Officials responsible for eradicating banditry often had ties to brigands and other marginal elements of Ming society.\nDuring the late Ming dynasty, Beijing faced threats from both within and beyond the Great Wall. In 1629, the Manchus, who were descendants of the Jurchens, raided Beijing from the Manchuria, but were defeated outside the outer city walls at Guangqumen and Zuoanmen by Ming commander Yuan Chonghuan. After retreating north, Manchu leader, Hong Taiji, through treachery, deceived the Ming dynasty's Chongzhen Emperor into believing that Yuan Chonghuan had actually betrayed the Ming. In 1630, the Chongzhen Emperor had Yuan executed in public at Caishikou through death by a thousand cuts. Yuan was rehabilitated 150 years later by the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing dynasty and his tomb near Guangqumen is now a shrine.\nAlso in 1629, Li Zicheng launched a peasant rebellion in northwest China and, after 15 years of conquest, captured Beijing in March 1644. The Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide by hanging himself from a tree in Jingshan. Li proclaimed himself emperor of the Shun dynasty, but he was defeated at Shanhaiguan by Ming general Wu Sangui and the Manchu Prince Dorgon. Wu had defected to the Manchus and allowed them inside the Great Wall. They drove Li Zicheng from Beijing in late April.\nQing dynasty.\nOn May 3, 1644, the Manchus seized Beijing in the name of freeing the city from the rebel forces of Li Zicheng. Dorgon held a state funeral for the Chongzhen Emperor of the Ming dynasty and reappointed many Ming officials. In October, he moved the child Shunzhi Emperor from the old capital Shenyang into the Forbidden City and made Beijing the new seat of the Qing dynasty. In the following decades, the Manchus would conquer the rest of the country and ruled China for nearly three centuries from the city. During this era, Beijing was also known as Jingshi which corresponds with the Manchu name Gemun Hecen. The city's population, which had fallen to 144,000 in 1644, rebounded to 539,000 in 1647 (the population of the surrounding area rose from 554,000 to 1.3 million).\nThe Qing largely retained the physical configuration of Beijing inside the city walls. Each of the Eight Banners, including the Manchu, Mongol, and Han Banners were assigned to guard and live near the eight gates of the Inner City. Outside the city, the Qing court seized large tracts of land for Manchu noble estates. Northwest of the city, Qing emperors built several large palatial gardens. In 1684, the Kangxi Emperor built the Changchun Garden on the site of the Ming dynasty's Qinghua (or Tsinghua) Garden (outside today's west gate of Peking University). In the early 18th century, he began building the Yuanmingyuan, also known as the \"Old Summer Palace\", which the Qianlong Emperor expanded with European Baroque-style garden pavilions. In 1750, the Qianlong Emperor built the Yiheyuan, commonly referred to as the \"Summer Palace\". The two summer palaces represent both the culmination of Qing imperial splendor and its decline. Both were ransacked and razed by invading Western powers in the late Qing dynasty.\nThe Beijing dialect eventually became the official national language for the country. In the early Qing dynasty, Han officials serving in the imperial court were required to learn the Manchu language, but most Manchus eventually learned to speak Chinese. The Manchus adopted Beijing Mandarin as their spoken language and this was a feature of Manchu Banner garrisons in areas of southern China. In 1728, the Yongzheng Emperor, who could not understand officials from southern China, decreed that all takers of the civil service examination must be able to speak Beijing Mandarin. Though the decree was eventually lifted under the Jiaqing Emperor, the Beijing dialect spread first among officials and then among commoners under subsequent regimes. Shortly after the founding of the Republic of China, the Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation made the Beijing dialect the national standard for spoken Chinese in 1913. After the capital was moved to Nanjing, National Languages Committee reaffirmed the Beijing dialect as the standard in 1932. The People's Republic of China followed suit in 1955.\nThe Qing dynasty maintained a relatively stable supply of food for the population of the capital during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The government's grain tribute system brought food from the provinces and kept grain prices stable. Soup kitchens provided relief to the needy. The secure food supply helped the Qing court maintain a degree of political stability. Temple fairs such as the Huguo Fair, which are like monthly bazaars held around temples, added to the commercial vibrance of the city. At the height of the Qianlong Emperor's reign in 1781, the city had a population of 776,242 (and another 2.18 million in the surrounding region). Thereafter, Qing authorities began to restrict inward migration to the city. A century later, the census of 1881\u201382 showed similar figures of 776,111 and 2.45 million.\nIn 1790, the Qing court's Nanfu office, which was in charge of organizing entertainment for the emperor, invited the dramatic opera troupes from Anhui to perform for the Qianlong Emperor. Under the Qianlong Emperor, the Nanfu had up to a thousand employees, including actors, musicians, and court eunuchs. In 1827, the Daoguang Emperor, the Qianlong Emperor's grandson, changed the name from Nanfu to Shengpingshu, and reduced the number of performances. Nevertheless, the court invited opera troupes from Hubei came to perform. The Anhui and Hubei operatic styles eventually blended together in the mid-19th century to form Peking Opera.\nMost of Beijing's oldest business establishments date to the Qing era. Tongrentang, opened in 1669 by a royal physician, became the sole supplier of herbal medicine to the Qing court in 1723. Baikui Laohao, the Hui Muslim restaurant serving traditional Beijing cuisine, opened its first store next to the Longfu Temple in 1780. Roast duck was part of the imperial menu dating back to the Yuan dynasty and restaurants serving \"Anas peking\" to the public opened in the 15th century, but it was Quanjude, which opened in 1864 and introduced the \"hung oven\", that made Peking Duck world-famous.\nIn 1813, some 200 adherents of the White Lotus sect launched a surprise siege on the Forbidden City but were repelled. In response, authorities imposed the baojia system of social surveillance and control.\nThe British diplomat Lord Macartney's mission to China arrived in Beijing in 1792, but failed to persuade the Qianlong Emperor to ease trade restrictions or to permit a permanent British Embassy in the city. Nevertheless, Macartney observed weaknesses within the Qing regime, which would influence future Sino-British conflicts.\nIn 1860, during the Second Opium War, Anglo-French expeditionary forces defeated a Qing army at Baliqiao east of Beijing. They captured the city and sacked the Summer Palace and Old Summer Palace. Lord Elgin, the commander of the expedition, ordered the burning of the Old Summer Palace in retaliation of Qing mistreatment of Western prisoners. He spared the Forbidden City, saving it as a venue for the treaty-signing ceremony. Under the Convention of Peking that ended the war, the Qing government was forced to allow Western powers to establish permanent diplomatic presence in the city. The foreign embassies were based southeast of the Forbidden City in the Beijing Legation Quarter.\nIn 1886, Empress Dowager Cixi had the Summer Palace rebuilt using funds originally designated for the imperial navy, the Beiyang Fleet. After the Qing government was defeated by Japan in the First Sino-Japanese War and forced to sign the humiliating Treaty of Shimonoseki, Kang Youwei assembled 1,300 scholars outside Xuanwumen to protest the treaty and drafted a 10,000-character appeal to the Guangxu Emperor. In June 1898, the Guangxu Emperor adopted the proposals of Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao and other scholars and launched the Hundred Days' Reform. The reforms alarmed Empress Dowager Cixi, who, with the help of Ronglu and Beiyang military commander Yuan Shikai, launched a coup. The Guangxu Emperor was imprisoned, Kang and Liang fled abroad, and Tan Sitong and five other scholar reformers were publicly beheaded at Caishikou outside Xuanwumen. One legacy of the short-lived reform era was the founding of Peking University in 1898. The university would have a profound impact on the intellectual and political history of the city.\nIn 1898, a millenarian group called the Righteous Harmony Society Movement formed in Shandong Province, calling for the expulsion of all foreign influence in China. They attacked Westerners especially missionaries and converted Chinese, and were called the \"Boxers\" by Westerners. The Qing court initially suppressed the Boxers but the Empress Dowager attempted to use them to curtail foreign influence and permitted them to gather in Beijing, then expelled the Boxers from the city after ransacking occurred and ordered the foreigners in the legations to leave to Tianjin, which they refused to do. In June 1900, the Qing forces including Manchu Bannerman and Muslim fighters from Gansu and the Boxers besieged the Legation Quarter, which sheltered several hundred foreign civilians and soldiers and about 3,200 Chinese Christians. The first attempt by the foreign Eight-Nation Alliance in the Seymour Expedition was defeated and forces to turn back. On the second attempt, eventually they defeated the Boxers and Qing troops and lifted the siege. The foreign armies looted the city and occupied Beijing and the surrounding area in Zhili. Empress Dowager Cixi fled to Xi'an and did not return until after the Qing government had signed the Boxer Protocol which compelled it to pay reparations of 450 million taels of silver with interest at four percent. The Boxer indemnities stripped the Qing government of much of its tax revenues and further weakened the state.\nThe United States used its portion of the proceeds to fund scholarships for Chinese students studying in America. In 1911, the Boxer Indemnity Scholar Program established the American Indemnity College in the Qinghua Gardens northwest of Beijing as a preparatory school for students planning to study abroad. In 1912, the school was renamed Tsinghua University, and remains to this day, one of the finest institutions of higher learning in China.\nAfter the Boxer Rebellion, the struggling Qing dynasty accelerated the pace of reform and became more receptive to foreign influence. The centuries-old imperial civil service examination was abolished in 1905, and replaced with a Western-style curriculum and degree system. Public education for women received greater emphasis and even drew support from reactionaries like the Empress Dowager. Beijing's school for girls in the late Qing period made unbound feet an entrance requirement. The Beijing Police Academy, founded in 1901 as China's first modern institution for police training, used Japanese instructors and became a model for police academies in other cities. The Peking Union Medical College, founded by missionaries in 1906 and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation from 1915, set the standard for the training of nurses. The Metropolitan University Library in Beijing, founded in 1898, was China's first modern academic library devoted to serving public higher education.\nAlso in 1905, the Board of Revenue and private investors founded the Hubu Bank, China's first central bank and largest modern bank. This bank was renamed the Bank of China after the Xinhai Revolution and began Beijing's tradition as the center of state banks in China. Large foreign banks including the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp. (HSBC), National City Bank (Citibank), Deutsch-Asiatische Bank and Yokohama Specie Bank opened branches in the Legation Quarter. The building of railroads was capital intensive and required large-scale financing and foreign expertise. Beijing's earliest railroads were designed, financed and built under the supervision of foreign concerns.\nThe first railway in China was built in Beijing in 1864 by a British merchant to demonstrate the technology to the imperial court. About 600 meters of tracks were laid outside Xuanwumen. The steam locomotive shook the neighborhood and alarmed the capital guards. The Qing court looked on the strange contraption with disfavor and had the railway dismantled. To secure the support of Empress Dowager Cixi for railway construction, Viceroy Li Hongzhang imported a small train set from Germany and in 1888 built a 2-km narrow gauge railway from her residence in Zhongnanhai to her dining hall in Beihai. The Empress, concerned that the locomotive's noise would disturb the geomancy or \"fengshui\" of the imperial city, required the train be pulled by eunuchs instead of steam engine.\nThe city's first commercial railway, Tianjin-Lugouqiao Railway, was built from 1895 to 1897 with British financing. It ran from the Marco Polo Bridge to Tianjin. The rail terminus was extended closer to the city to Fengtai and then to Majiapu, just outside Yongdingmen, a gate of the Outer City wall. The Qing court resisted the extension of railways inside city walls. Foreign powers who seized the city during the Boxer Rebellion extended the railway inside the outer city wall to Yongdingmen in 1900 and then further north to Zhengyangmen (Qianmen) just outside the Inner City wall in 1903. They built an eastern spur to Tongzhou to carry grain shipped from the south on the Grand Canal. This extension breached the city wall at Dongbianmen. The Lugouqiao-Hankou Railway, financed by French-Belgian capital and built from 1896 to 1905, was renamed Beijing-Hankou Railway after it was routed to Qianmen from the west. This required the partial demotion of the Xuanwumen barbican. The completion of the Beijing\u2013Fengtian Railway in 1907 required a similar break in Chongwenmen's fortification. Thus, began the tearing down of city gates and walls to make way for rail transportation. The first railway in China built without foreign assistance was the Imperial Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway. Built from 1905 to 1909, it was designed by Zhan Tianyou and terminated just outside Xizhimen. By the late Qing dynasty, Beijing had rail connections to Hankou (Wuhan), Pukou (Nanjing), Fengtian (Shenyang) and Datong, and was a major railway hub in North China.\nRepublic of China.\nThe Qing dynasty was overthrown in the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 but the capital of the newly founded Republic of China remained in Beijing as former Qing general Yuan Shikai took control of the new government from revolutionaries in the south. Yuan and successors from his Beiyang Army ruled the Republic from Beijing until 1928 when Chinese Nationalists reunified the country through the Northern Expedition and moved the capital to Nanjing. Beijing was renamed Beiping. In 1937, a clash between Chinese and Japanese troops at the Marco Polo Bridge outside Beiping triggered the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Japanese occupiers created a collaborationist government in northern China and reverted the city's name to Beijing to serve as capital for the puppet regime. After Japan's surrender in 1945, the city returned to Chinese rule and was again renamed Beiping. During the subsequent civil war between the Chinese Nationalists and Communists, the city was peacefully transferred to Communist control in 1949 and renamed Beijing to become the capital of the People's Republic of China.\nXinhai Revolution.\nWhen the Wuchang Uprising erupted in October 1911, the Qing court summoned Yuan Shikai and his powerful Beiyang Army to suppress the insurrection. As he fought revolutionaries in the south, Yuan also negotiated with them. On January 1, 1912, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who returned from exile, founded the Republic of China in Nanjing and was elected provisional president. The new government was not recognized by any foreign powers, and Sun agreed to cede leadership to Yuan Shikai in exchange for the latter's assistance in ending the Qing dynasty. On February 12, Yuan compelled the Qing court, under the regency of Prince Chun, to abdicate. Empress Dowager Longyu signed the abdication agreement on behalf of the five-year-old Last Emperor, Puyi. The following day Sun resigned from the provisional presidency and recommended Yuan for the position. Under the terms of the imperial abdication, the Puyi would retain his dignitary title and staff and receive an annual stipend of 4 million Mexican silver dollars from the Republic. He was permitted to continue to reside in the Forbidden City for a time but was required to eventually move to the Summer Palace. His tomb and rituals were to be maintained at the expense of the Republic. The abdication ended the Qing dynasty and averted further bloodshed in the revolution.\nAs a condition for ceding leadership to Yuan, Sun insisted that the provisional government remain in Nanjing. On February 14, the Provisional Senate initially voted 20\u20135 in favor of making Beijing the capital over Nanjing, with two votes going for Wuhan and one for Tianjin. The Senate majority wanted to secure the peace agreement by taking power in Beijing. Zhang Jian and others reasoned that having the capital in Beijing would check against Manchu restoration and Mongol secession. But Sun and Huang Xing argued in favor of Nanjing to balance against Yuan's power base in the north. Li Yuanhong presented Wuhan as a compromise. The next day, the Provisional Senate voted again, this time, 19\u20136 in favor of Nanjing with two votes for Wuhan. Sun sent a delegation led by Cai Yuanpei and Wang Jingwei to persuade Yuan to move to Nanjing. Yuan welcomed the delegation and agreed to accompany the delegates back to the south. Then on the evening of February 29, riots and fires broke out in all over the city. They were allegedly started by disobedient troops of Cao Kun, a loyal officer of Yuan. Disorder among military ranks spread to Tongzhou, Tianjin and Baoding. These events gave Yuan the pretext to stay in the north to guard against unrest. On March 10, Yuan was inaugurated in Beijing as the provisional president of the Republic of China. Yuan based the executive office and residence in Zhongnanhai, next to the Forbidden City. On April 5, the Provisional Senate in Nanjing voted to make Beijing the capital of the Republic and convened in Beijing at the end of the month.\nIn August, Sun Yat-sen traveled to Beijing where he was welcomed by Yuan Shikai and a crowd of thousands. At the Huguang Guild Hall, the Revolutionary Alliance (\"Tongmenghui\") led by Sun, Huang Xing and Song Jiaoren joined several smaller parties to form the Kuomintang. The first national assembly elections were held from December 1912 to January 1913. Adult males over the age of 21 who were educated or owned property and paid taxes and who could prove two-year residency in a particular county could vote. An estimated 4\u20136% of China's population were registered for the election. The Nationalist Party won a majority in both houses of the National Assembly, which convened in Beijing in April 1913.\nAs the assembly set out to ratify the constitution, Yuan resisted efforts to share power. Without the assembly's knowledge, he arranged for the large and expensive Reorganization Loan from a consortium of foreign lenders to fund his military. The loan, signed into effect at the HSBC Bank in the Legation Quarter, effectively surrendered the government's collection of salt tax revenues to foreign control. Yuan's agents assassinated Nationalist leader Song Jiaoren in Shanghai. In response, Sun Yat-sen launched a Second Revolution in July 1913, which failed and forced him into exile. Yuan then forced the National Assembly to elect him as the president and expel Nationalist members. In early 1914, he dissolved the National Assembly and abolished the provisional constitution in May. On December 23, 1915, Yuan declared himself emperor, and his regime, the Empire of China (1915\u20131916). This declaration provoked the National Protection War as provinces in the south rebelled. Yuan was forced to step down from emperor to president in March 1916. He died in Beijing in June 1916, leaving military men from the Beiyang Army vying for control of the government. Over the next 12 years, the Beiyang Government in Beijing had no fewer than eight presidents, five parliaments, 24 cabinets, at least four constitutions and one brief restoration of the Manchu Monarchy.\nUnlike prior dynastic changes, the end of Qing rule in Beijing did not cause a substantial decline in the city's population, which was 785,442 in 1910, 670,000 in 1913 and 811,566 in 1917. The population of the surrounding region grew from 1.7 to 2.9 million over the same period. In 1917, Beijing was the fourth largest city in China after Guangzhou, Shanghai and Hankou, and the seventh largest capital city in the world.\nWorld War I and the May 4th Movement.\nAfter Yuan's death, Li Yuanhong became president and Duan Qirui, the prime minister, and the National Assembly was reconvened. The government soon faced a crisis over whether to enter World War I on the side of the Allied Powers or remain neutral. Li dismissed Duan, who favored entry into the war, and invited warlord Zhang Xun to the capital to mediate. Zhang and his pigtailed loyalist army marched into Beijing, dissolved the National Assembly and restored Puyi as Qing emperor on July 1. Li fled to the Japanese Embassy in the Legation. The imperial restoration lasted just 12 days as Duan Qirui's army reclaimed the capital, and sent Zhang seeking refuge in the Dutch Embassy. Under Duan's command, China declared war on the Central Powers and sent 140,000 Chinese laborers to work on the Western Front. With financial backing from Japan, Duan then engineered the election of a new parliament in 1918 that was stacked his supporters from the Anhui clique. The so-called Anfu Parliament was named after Anfu Hutong, near Zhongnanhai where Duan's Anhui-based supporters congregated.\nIn the spring of 1919, the Republic of China, as a victor nation sent a delegation to the Paris Peace Conference seeking the return of German concession in Shandong Province to China. Instead, the Treaty of Versailles gave those possessions to Japan. News of the treaty sparked outrage in the Chinese capital. On May 4, 3,000 students from 13 universities in Beijing gathered in Tiananmen Square to protest the betrayal of China by the other Western powers and the corruption of the Anfu government by Japanese financial support. They marched toward the foreign legation but were blocked and proceeded to the home of deputy foreign minister Cao Rulin, who had attended the Peace Conference and was known to be friendly to Japanese interests. They razed Cao's residence and beat up Zhang Zongxiang, another pro-Japanese diplomat. The police arrested 32 students, which provoked further protests and arrests. Within weeks, the movement had spread to 200 cities and towns in 22 provinces. Workers in Shanghai struck and merchants closed shops in support of the protests. By late June, the government pledged not to sign the treaty, removed Cao and Zhang from office and released students from jail.\nThe May Fourth Movement began a tradition of student activism in Beijing and had a profound political and cultural impact on modern China. Leading intellectuals including Cai Yuanpei and Hu Shih at Peking University, encouraged the development of new culture to replace the traditional order. The movement also heightened the appeal of Marxism-Leninism as Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, prominent May 4 figures, became early leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. Among the many youth who flocked to the Chinese capital during this period was a student from Hunan named Mao Zedong who worked as a library assistant under Li Dazhao at Peking University. Mao left the city for Shanghai in 1920 where he helped found the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. He did not return to Beijing until almost 30 years later.\nBeiyang regime.\nIn the 1920s, military strongmen of the Beiyang Army split into cliques and vied for control of the Republican government and its capital. In July 1920, Duan's government, weakened by the May 4 Protests, was driven out of Beijing by Wu Peifu and Cao Kun of the Zhili clique in the Zhili\u2013Anhui War. Two years later, the Zhili Clique fought off a challenge by Zhang Zuolin and his Manchuria-based Fengtian clique in the First Zhili\u2013Fengtian War. When the two sides squared off again in Second Zhili\u2013Fengtian War in 1924, one of Wu's officers Feng Yuxiang launched the Beijing Coup. On October 23, 1924, Feng seized the capital, imprisoned President Cao Kun, restored Duan Qirui as the head of state and invited Sun Yat-sen to Beijing for peace talks. At that time, Sun was building a Nationalist regime in Guangzhou with the assistance of the Soviet Comintern and support of the Chinese Communist Party. Sun was stricken with cancer when he arrived in Beijing in early 1925 for one last effort to heal the north\u2013south divide. He was welcomed by hundreds of civic organizations and called on Duan to include broad segments of civil society in reconstructing a united government. He died in Beijing on March 12, 1925, and was entombed at the Temple of Azure Clouds.\nZhang Zuolin and Wu Peifu joined forces against Feng Yuxiang, who relied on support from the Soviet Union. Feng took a generally accommodating stance toward the Nationalist and Communist parties which were active in spreading influence in the city. During this period, Beijing was a hotbed of student activism. In the May 30th Movement of 1925, 12,000 students from 90 schools marched through Wangfujing to Tiananmen in support of protesters in Shanghai. With the opening of private colleges such as Yenching University in 1919 and the Catholic University of Peking in 1925, the student population in Beijing grew substantially in the early 1920s. Middle school students also joined the protests. In October, students protested against imperialism during an international conference on customs and tariffs held in the city. In November, Li Dazhao organized the \"Capital Revolution\" a protest by students and workers demanding Duan's resignation. The protest was more violent, burning down a major newspaper office, but was disbanded.\nThough the Nationalists, under Sun's leadership, had allied with the Communists in the struggle against warlords, this alliance was not without tension. In November 1925, a group of right-wing Nationalist leaders met in the Western Hills and called for the expulsion of Communists from the Nationalist Party and severance of ties with the Comintern including advisor Mikhail Borodin. This manifesto was denounced by the Nationalists' party center in Guangzhou led by Chiang Kai-shek, Wang Jingwei, and Hu Hanmin, and members of the so-called \"Western Hills Group\" were either expelled or left out of the party leadership. They moved to Shanghai and regained power during the rupture between the Nationalists and Communists in April 1927.\nOn March 17, 1926, Feng Yuxiang's \"Guominjun\" troops at Dagu Fort near Tianjin exchanged fire with Japanese warships carrying Zhang Zuolin's Fengtian troops. Japan accused the Chinese government of violating the Boxer Protocol and, with the other seven Boxer Powers, issued an ultimatum demanding the removal of all defenses between Beijing and the sea as set forth under the Protocols. The ultimatum provoked student protests in Beijing that were jointly organized by the left-wing Nationalists and Communists. Two thousand students marched on Duan Qirui's executive office and called for the abrogation of the unequal treaties. Police opened fire and killed over 50 and wounded 200 in what became known as the March 18 Massacre. The government issued warrants for the arrest of Nationalists and Communists including Li Dazhao, who fled to the Soviet Embassy in the Legation quarters. Within weeks, Feng Yuxiang was defeated by Zhang Zuolin and Duan's government fell. After Zhang took power on May 1, 1926, both the Nationalists and Communists were driven underground. A year later, Zhang Zuolin raided the Soviet Embassy in the Legation and seized Li Dazhao. Li and 19 others Communist and Nationalist activists were executed in Beijing on April 25, 1927.\nZhang Zuolin controlled the Beiyang Government until June 1928 when the Nationalists on the Northern Expedition led by Chiang Kai-shek and allies Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang jointly advanced on Beijing. Zhang left the city for Manchuria and was assassinated en route by the Japanese Kwantung Army. Beijing was handed over peacefully to the victorious Nationalists who moved the capital and Sun Yat-sen's tomb to Nanjing. For the first time since 1421, Beijing was renamed Beiping \u5317\u5e73 (Wade\u2013Giles: Peip'ing), or \"Northern Peace\". Following the Northern Expedition, Beijing was under the \"de facto\" control of Shanxi warlord Yan Xishan who had allied himself with Nationalists. On 2 March 1929, the city was the place of a violent mutiny of soldiers who formerly belonged to the army of warlord Zhang Zongchang, a subordinate of Zhang Zuolin. Though the mutineers managed to seize the Yonghe Temple and spread terror in Beijing, their revolt was quickly suppressed. The city was made the provincial capital of Hebei Province, but lost that status to Tianjin in 1930. During the Central Plains War in 1930, Yan Xishan briefly tried to establish a rival national government in Beijing but lost the city to Zhang Xueliang, the son of Zhang Zuolin who was allied with Chiang Kai-shek.\nCity planning in the 1920s.\nDuring the Beiyang period, Beijing transitioned from an imperial capital into a modern city. The city's population grew from 725,235 in 1912 to 863,209 in 1921. The municipal government reconfigured city walls and gates, paved and widened streets, installed tram service and introduced urban planning and zoning rules. The authorities also built modern water utilities, improved urban sanitation, educated the public about the proper handling of food and waste and monitored outbreaks of infectious diseases. With these public health measures, infant mortality and life expectancy of the general population improved.\nUrban development also reflected changes in political attitudes as the republican form of government prevailed over the monarchy and attempts to reintroduce imperial rule. One example of the newfound emphasis on civic rights over imperial tradition was the development of city parks in Beijing. The idea of the public park as a place where common people could relax in a pastoral setting came to China from the West via Japan. Public parks in Beijing were almost all converted from imperial gardens and temples, which had previously been off-limits to most commoners. The Beijing municipal government, local gentry and merchants all promoted the development of public parks to provide wholesome entertainment and reduce alcoholism, gambling, and prostitution. After the Beijing Coup of 1924, Feng Yuxiang evicted Puyi from the Forbidden City, which was opened to the public as the Palace Museum. Parks also provided places for commercial activities and the open exchange of political and social ideas for the middle and upper classes.\nThe demotion of Beijing from national capital to a mere provincial city greatly constrained urban planners' initiatives to modernize the city. Along with political stature, Beiping also lost government revenue, jobs and jurisdiction. In 1921, large banks headquartered in Beijing accounted for 51.9% of bank capital held by the 23 most important banks in China. That proportion fell to just 2.8% in 1928 and 0% in 1935, as wealth followed political power out of the city. The city's jurisdiction also shrank as surrounding counties were redrawn into Hebei. For the first time since the Ming dynasty, city no longer had control over agricultural regions and watershed. Even the power plant for the city's trolley system in Tong County fell outside the city's jurisdiction. Appeals to Nanjing for the recovery of towns like Wanping and Daxing were denied. The city, anchored by its historical relics and universities, remained a center for tourism and higher education and became known as \"China's Boston.\" In 1935, the city's population stood at 1.11 million, with another 3.485 million in the surrounding region.\nSecond Sino-Japanese War.\nAfter Japan seized Manchuria through the Mukden Incident in 1931, Beiping was threatened by steady Japanese encroachment into northern China. The Tanggu Truce of 1933 gave control of the Great Wall to the Japanese and imposed a 100-km demilitarized zone south of the wall. This deprived Beiping of its northern defenses. The secret He-Umezu Agreement of May 1935 required the Chinese government to remove Central Army units from Hebei Province and suppress anti-Japanese activities by the Chinese public. The Qin-Doihara Agreement of June 1935 compelled the Nationalist 29th Army, a former unit of Feng Yuxiang's \"Guominjun\" that fought the Japanese in defense of the Great Wall, to evacuate from Chahar Province. This army was relocated and confined to an area south of the Beiping near Nanyuan. In November 1935, the Japanese created a puppet regime based in Tongzhou called the East Hebei Autonomous Council, which declared its independence from the Republic of China and controlled 22 counties east of Beiping, including Tongzhou and Pinggu in modern-day Beijing Municipality.\nIn response to the growing threat, the Palace Museum's art collection was removed to Nanjing in 1934 and air defense shelters were built in Zhongnanhai. The influx of refugees from Manchuria and presence of university campuses made Beiping a hotbed for anti-Japanese sentiment. On December 9, 1935, the university students in Beiping launched the December 9th Movement to protest the creation Hebei\u2013Chahar Political Council, a semi-autonomous authority to administer the remainder of Hebei and Chahar not yet under direct Japanese control.\nOn July 7, 1937, the 29th Army and the Japanese army in China exchanged fire at the Marco Polo Bridge near the Wanping Fortress southwest of the city. The Marco Polo Bridge Incident triggered the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II as it is known in China. After continued clashes and failed cease-fire talks, Japanese reinforcements with air support launched a full-scale offensive against Beiping and Tianjin in late July. In fighting south of the city, deputy commander of the 29th Army Tong Lin'ge and division commander Zhao Dengyu were both killed in action. They along with Zhang Zizhong, another 29th Army commander who died later in the war, are the only three modern personages after whom city streets are named in Beijing. In Tongzhou, the collaborationist militia of the East Hebei Council refused to join the Japanese in attacking the 29th Army and mutinied, but Chinese forces had retreated to the south. The city itself was spared of urban fighting and destruction that many other Chinese cities suffered in the war.\nThe Japanese created another puppet regime, the Provisional Government of the Republic of China, to manage occupied territories in northern China and designated Beiping, renamed Beijing, as its capital. This government later merged with Wang Jingwei's Reorganized National Government of China, a collaborationist government based in Nanjing, though effective control remained with the Japanese military.\nDuring the war, Peking and Tsinghua Universities relocated to unoccupied areas and formed the National Southwestern Associated University. Furen University was protected by the Holy See's neutrality with the Axis Powers. After the outbreak of the Pacific War with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Japanese shut down Yenching University and imprisoned its American staff. Some were rescued by Communist partisans that waged guerrilla warfare in rural outlying areas. The village of Jiaozhuanghu in Shunyi District still has a labyrinth of tunnels with underground command posts, meeting rooms, and camouflaged entrances from the war.\nIn 1938, the Japanese military secretly created North China Unit 1855, a biological warfare unit based in Beijing, which operated laboratories next to the Temple of Heaven, Beihai and in the Union Hospital. Like Unit 731, its more notorious counterpart, Unit 1855 devised virulent strains of bacteria and conducted lethal experiments on prisoners of war. Strains of infectious diseases developed by Unit 1855 were used about 70 times during the war, killing over 100,000 civilians in northern China. In 1943, a strain of cholera released by the unit in southern Beijing to test its virulence killed 1,872 residents. Biological warfare was banned by the Geneva Protocol of 1925. On August 15, 1945, immediately following the Japanese Emperor's announcement of surrender, Unit 1855 began removing or destroying evidence of its existence and departed the city ten days later leaving few traces of its activities. The unit evaded the Japanese war crimes tribunals and remained largely unknown until later research by historians.\nOn October 10, 1945, Japanese occupation of Beiping ended with surrender to Chinese Nationalist forces at a ceremony in the Forbidden City. With the end of World War II, the city reverted to Chinese Nationalist control and was renamed back to Beiping.\nChinese Civil War.\nThe Nationalists and Chinese Communists were allies during the Sino-Japanese War, but their domestic rivalry resumed after the defeat of Japan. To prevent the resumption of civil war, the U.S. government sent George C. Marshall to China to mediate. The Marshall Mission was headquartered in Beiping where a truce was brokered on January 10, 1946, and a three-person committee, consisting of a Nationalist, a Communist and an American representative, was created to investigate breaches in the ceasefire in North China and Manchuria. The truce began to unravel in June 1946 and the Marshall Mission ultimately failed to create a coalition government. The rape of Peking University student Shen Chong by two U.S. Marines in Dongdan on Christmas Eve 1946 sparked student demonstrations against the U.S. military presence in China. After Marshall's departure in February 1947, full-scale civil war erupted.\nBeiping was the headquarters of the Nationalists' North China military operations led by Fu Zuoyi who commanded 550,000 troops. The city in 1948 had 1.5 million residents and another 4.1 million in the surrounding region. Among them were over 20,000 student airlifted out of Manchuria by Nationalist authorities to relieve pressure on food supplies in besieged cities and to prevent the youth from joining the Communist movement. Once in Beiping, the student refugees were given meager food rations but no means of reconstituting their schools. Once their rations ran out, the students marched on the city government in protest but were fired upon by the Nationalists' Youth Army, which killed at least nine and wounded 48. The July 5th Massacre was widely condemned across the country. Then vice-president Li Zongren and Fu Zuoyi met with students and promising to hold the culprits accountable. Chiang Kai-shek agreed to pull the Youth Army out of Beiping, but over 250 student organizers were arrested in August.\nOn November 29, 1948, the Chinese Communists' People's Liberation Army (PLA), fresh off a decisive victory in Manchuria, launched the Pingjin Campaign. They captured Zhangjiakou to the northwest on December 24 and Tianjin to the southeast on January 15, 1949. With the defeat of the Nationalists in the Huaihai Campaign further south, Fu Zuoyi and over 200,000 Nationalist defenders were surrounded in Beiping. After weeks of intensive negotiations, Fu agreed on January 22, 1949, to pull his troops out of the city for \"reorganization by the PLA.\" His defection spared the city, its residents and its historical architecture from imminent destruction. On February 3, the PLA marched into Beiping.\nIn the spring of 1949, Nationalist leader Li Zongren attempted a last-ditch effort to secure a truce. Peace talks were held at the Six Nations Hotel in Beiping from April 1\u201312, but the Communists could not be persuaded to halt their advance at the Yangtze River and concede southern China to the Nationalists. On April 23, the PLA resumed the offensive across the Yangtze and captured the Nanjing on the following day.\nAs the PLA continued to gain control over the rest of the country, Communist leaders, friendly Nationalists and third party supporters convened the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference at Zhongnanhai in Beiping on September 21. In preparation for establishment of a new regime, they agreed to a new name, flag, emblem, anthem and capital for the nation.\nPeople's Republic of China.\nOn October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong stood atop the rostrum of Tiananmen Gate, proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China. The city's name was restored to Beijing, which again served as the national capital. At the time, the city limits contained of territory and had just over 2.03 million residents. Over the next sixty years, the city would reach unprecedented size in both territory (expanding 23-fold) and population (growing ten-fold) as well as political stature and importance. As the political center of a highly centralized government, Beijing witnessed and its residents took part in many of the political events and developments that shaped modern China.\n1949\u20131958.\nThe Communist leadership moved swiftly to establish a new order in Beijing. Within weeks of the founding of the new government, prostitution was banned in the city. Some 224 brothels were closed and 1,308 prostitutes were sent to reeducation centers where they received medical treatment and career retraining. Opium use was banned in 1952.\nWith the abolition of the unequal treaties, the foreign powers were deprived of special rights to station military units and consular offices in the Legation Quarter. The United States, France and Netherlands, which refused to recognize the new government, were forced to abandon their consulates and military offices by 1950. The Soviet Union negotiated a move to a new embassy in the northeast corner of the old city. The United Kingdom, which recognized the PRC, was among the last countries to leave the legation quarters in 1954. A new embassy district emerged east of the city walls in Sanlitun where allies in the Eastern Bloc and Third World opened diplomatic missions.\nAs the seat of power for the People's Republic, Beijing was transformed to reflect the ideals of socialist state. At a planning conference in November 1949, chaired by mayor Nie Rongzhen, renowned architect Liang Sicheng proposed to preserve the architectural integrity of the old walled city by building a new urban area and government center in Wukesong, Sanlihe, and Diaoyutai west of Tiananmen. Advisors from the Soviet Union countered with a proposal to concentrate new government buildings in the old urban core especially around Tiananmen Square. Building in the old city would enable government employees to reside in existing city neighborhoods as adding new residential units to accommodate a new government center in the suburbs was deemed uneconomical. The Soviet advisors also called for the city to industrialize, noting that workers accounted for only four percent of the local population and that the capital of a Communist government ought to have a strong proletarian class. The Soviet proposals largely prevailed and guided Beijing's urban planning for the next decade.\nTiananmen Square was expanded to accommodate large public rallies and parades. Landmark buildings and monuments, influenced by the socialist-realist style from the Soviet Union, including the Monument to the People's Heroes, Great Hall of the People, and the National Museum of China, were completed by 1959, in time for the 10th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. Many neighborhoods in the old city were razed to make room for factories, government bureaus and apartment buildings. Many palaces and gardens were converted to residences, schools and offices. Large factories were built in the western and eastern suburbs. The national leadership took residence in the Zhongnanhai, to the west of the Forbidden City, where the Ming dynasty royal garden and palace stood. The city wall fell into disrepair and was demolished in the 1960s during the construction of the Beijing Subway and replaced by what is now the 2nd Ring Road.\nDuring the Korean War, Beijing hosted the Asia and Pacific Rim Peace Conference, the city's first major international gathering. The conference, organized by Mme. Sun Yat-sen, Guo Moruo and Peng Zhen and held at the Peace Hotel on October 2\u201312, 1952, was attended by over 400 delegates from 37 countries. The newly developed residential neighborhood of Hepingli, or Place of Peace, was named after the conference.\nThe city became the most concentrated center for higher education and academic research in China. Though foreign-funded universities were closed or converted to public institutions\u2014Yenching University merged into Peking University, which moved from the city centre to the Yenching campus in the northwest suburbs and Fu Jen Catholic University merged into Beijing Normal University\u2014the number of universities in Beijing swelled with the relocation of institutions from guerilla areas such as Renmin University, BIT, Central Party School, Central Nationalities Institute, and Beijing Foreign Studies University, and the opening of national academies and institutes by various ministries.\nFrom 1949 to 1958, the city steadily acquired land from neighboring Hebei Province. The last major additions occurred in 1958 with the incorporation of nine counties: Tong County (now Tongzhou District), Shunyi, Daxing, Liangxiang (now part of Fangshan District), Fangshan, Pinggu, Miyun, Huairou and Yanqing, adding for a total of . In 1958, the municipal population reached 6,318,497, of which 31.5% resided in the walled city, 29% in the immediate suburbs and the remainder in outlying towns and rural areas. City planners set a target population of 10 million for Beijing.\nGreat Leap Forward.\nIn January 1958, Mao kicked off the second Five Year Plan with an ambitious campaign to accelerate economic development. The Great Leap Forward sought to overcome China's shortage of capital through mass mobilization, using large-scale collectivized farms to boost agricultural output and the food surplus to free up labor for industrial development. In urban Beijing, as in other cities, new apartment buildings were constructed without kitchens. Instead, residents dined in communal mess halls, which served free meals. Residents were mobilized to produce steel in homemade backyard furnaces using personal metal possessions (such as pots and cutlery, which they were presumed to no longer need as cooking was done centrally by the mess halls). The campaign hastened the demolition of city walls, whose bricks were used to build the furnaces. The low grade pig iron produced from these furnaces were ill-suited for industrial use. The policy was a complete failure and the misallocation of resources halted the city's reconstruction plans for years.\nAmong the most quixotic features early in the campaign was the effort to exterminate the Four Pests, including sparrows, which were blamed for eating grain. At the height of this effort in April 1958, over three million residents using fire crackers, gongs, clanging pots and colorful flags, literally deprived sparrows (and other birds) a place to land in the city so that the birds flew until they dropped dead from fatigue. Over 400,000 sparrows (and countless other birds) were killed over a three-day period. The campaign was halted after the eradication of sparrows led to a spike in the locust population.\nThroughout the summer and fall of 1958 the quality and quantity of food served at communal mess halls steadily declined, and mess halls were shut down altogether in early 1959. Residents instead received food ration tickets (15\u201317 kilos of grain per month for each man, 13.75\u00a0kg for each woman, 12.75\u00a0kg for young adults, 3.75\u00a0kg for children under age 10). Due to bullish grain production forecast, winter wheat was not planted in 1958 leaving no harvest in the spring of 1959. By May 1959, residents were forced to supplement their meager diet with elm bark, reed roots, willow shoots, wild amaranth, wild celery and other edible wild plants. Malnutrition became widespread in the city. Some 420,000 residents were sent to the countryside because the city could no longer support them. The food shortage caused the rate of \"deaths from non-natural causes\" in the Beijing to climb from 3.64% of the total population in 1958 to 4.4% in 1961, an increase of 90,000 deaths. The famine was far more severe in other provinces where the unnatural death rate in 1960 was as high as 13.8% in Anhui and 9.08% in Sichuan.\nMao initially clung to the Great Leap Forward, firing defense minister Peng Dehuai for objecting to the policy line at the Lushan Plenum in 1959. But as the scale of the disaster became more apparent, an extraordinary work conference for cadres from around the country was hastily convened in Beijing in early 1962. At the so-called 7,000 Cadre Conference held from January 11 to February 7, President Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping reported the severe decline in the economy and called for urgent course correction, citing numerous policy failures. Mao acknowledged that mistakes were made and the need for cadres to vent. Only Lin Biao, the new defense minister, prominently defended Chairman Mao. Liu and Deng's policy arguments drew extensively on research prepared by the Beijing Municipal Government and provided by mayor Peng Zhen. The conference paved the way for economic recovery led by Liu and Deng but also planted the seeds for the Cultural Revolution.\nCultural Revolution.\nThe Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao's campaign to change the social and cultural fabric of Chinese society, was launched from and ultimately halted in Beijing, with profound consequences for the city and country.\nMao initiated the campaign by directing attacks against political-literary figures in Beijing. The first target was Wu Han, the deputy mayor of Beijing and historian, whose book \"Hai Rui Dismissed from Office\", adapted from a Peking opera about an incorruptible Ming-era official, had been praised by Mao in the early 1960s. But on November 10, 1965, the work was criticized by Shanghai propagandist Yao Wenyuan as an attempt to rehabilitate Peng Dehuai. Yao was supported by Mao's wife Jiang Qing. The scope of attack then expanded to the \"Three Family Village\", so-named for a column in the \"People's Daily\" jointly written by Wu Han, Deng Tuo, the editor of the newspaper, and Liao Mosha, another Beijing literary figure and official. The trio was accused of making veiled attacks against Maoism. Deng Tuo committed suicide and Wu Han later died in prison. Their fall implicated the mayor of Beijing, Peng Zhen, who was accused of running the city government as his fiefdom and harboring anti-party conspirators. The attack on Peng Zhen, in turn, undermined the standing of Liu Shaoqi, an ally of Peng and Mao's ultimate target. The Beijing Municipal Government became the first casualty of the revolution; its leaders were replaced with radical Maoists.\nAs Mao expanded the power struggle at the elite level in the spring of 1966, he encouraged youth from Beijing's universities and high school to join his campaign. On May 16, 1966, Mao unveiled the \"May 16 Circular\", which officially launched a Cultural Revolution to cleanse the party and country of bourgeois and Soviet revisionist elements such as Peng Zhen. On May 25, 1966, several junior faculty at Peking University led by Nie Yuanzi, wrote a \"big-character poster\" accusing the school administrators of obstructing the Cultural Revolution and calling on the masses to destroy counter revolutionary and pro-Khrushchev elements. Nie was initially rebuked by the university but her poster was published nationally with Mao's blessing in the \"People's Daily\" on June 2 . On June 18, Peking University students held the first struggle session denouncing their teachers. Jiang Qing visited campus to lend her support to the rebellions students. By July 29, classes at all universities and high schools in the city were halted as students mobilized to join the Cultural Revolution.\nOn May 29, a group of students at Tsinghua University Middle School, organized the first \"Red Guard\" group to protect Chairman Mao from the enemies of the revolution. Students at other Beijing schools followed. In August, Mao praised the Red Guards and called on them to \"bombard the headquarters\" of bourgeois elements in government. The movement spread and Mao ordered that the Red Guards be given free rides on trains and room and board across the country to spread the revolution. From August 18 to November 26, he presided over eight Red Guard rallies in Tiananmen Square attended by over 11 million youth. The rallies helped drive Liu Shaoqi from power.\nHaving halted classes and toppled school administrations, the Red Guards then turned to enemies of the revolution in broader society. They ransacked homes of class enemies in search of incriminating evidence, smashed cultural relics deemed to be remnants of feudal culture, and struggled against political and cultural luminaries who were accused of following the capitalist road. Within one month of Mao's first rally on August 18, they ransacked 114,000 homes in the city, seizing 3.3 million items and \u00a575.2 million in cash. During the height of the Red Guard fervor in August and September, at least 1,772 residents were killed. Many were driven to suicide or beaten to death by the Red Guards. Notable Beijing residents who took their own lives include deputy mayor Liu Ren, renowned writer Lao She and table tennis star and coach Rong Guotuan. Countless others suffered public humiliation, beatings and extrajudicial detentions at the hands of Red Guards and rebels. Many historical sites, including those designated by the city's historical protection bureau, were damaged or destroyed in the mayhem. Landmarks such as the Temple of Heaven, Beihai, Old and New Summer Palaces, Ming Tombs, Yonghe Lamsery and the Great Wall were also targeted. Almost all houses of worship were shut down. The Forbidden City was protected on the orders of Premier Zhou Enlai. Many city streets were renamed after revolutionary slogans. The Red Guards sought to rename the city itself as East is Red City.\nBy 1967, with schools closed and authority figures toppled, Red Guard factions began to compete with each other for control of institutions they had seized. The clashes grew violent, and some groups turned to challenge Jiang Qing. In 1968, Mao ordered the military to take control of government, universities and factories and had the Red Guards disband and leave the city for the countryside where they would \"undergo reeducation from the peasants\". Hundreds of thousands of educated youth from Beijing were sent to rural and pastoralist areas.\nThe Cultural Revolution exacerbated tensions with the Soviet Union and some 300,000 city residents were mobilized to build elaborate underground bunkers designed to shelter up to 40% of the city's population in the event of a nuclear attack. Beijing's Underground City, built from 1969 to 1979, was later converted to underground shopping centers and a museum.\nAt the Ninth Party Congress held in Beijing in April 1969, Mao declared the Cultural Revolution completed and named Lin Biao as successor. But on September 13, 1971, Lin died in a plane crash as he tried to flee to the U.S.S.R. following an unsuccessful coup plot against Mao. After Lin's death, colleges were reopened to \"Worker-Peasant-Soldier students\" and some of the purged old guard leaders such as Deng Xiaoping were partially rehabilitated, but radical Gang of Four, led by Jiang Qing, continued to hold sway.\nIn July 1971, U.S. President Richard Nixon announced that he would be going to China and made a historic trip in February 1972 during which he met with Mao in Beijing, visited the Great Wall, received a pair of giant pandas from the Beijing Zoo and began the process of normalizing Sino-U.S. relations. The Nixon trip and the accession of the People's Republic to the China seat at the United Nations in October 1971, marked the beginning of the country's diplomatic orientation toward the Western bloc. In 1971\u201372, 30 countries, mostly in Europe and Latin America, severed ties with the Republic of China on Taiwan and established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China. The embassy district in eastern Beijing, outside Dongzhimen, Chaoyangmen and Jianguomen began to expand with diplomatic compounds, hotels, and Western business interests, and eventually developed into the city's Central Business District.\nAfter Zhou Enlai died on January 8, 1976, Yao Wenyuan published a series of propaganda works criticizing the legacy of Zhou, which drew widespread public disapproval. On March 20, 1976, students from the Niufang Primary School laid a wreath at the Monument to the People's Heroes in Tiananmen Square to commemorate Zhou, and others followed. Many of the wreaths carried poems remembering the Premier also criticized the Gang of Four through allegorical allusions. By the time of Qingming Festival on April 4, a traditional tomb-sweeping holiday, the square was filled with wreaths and poetry and an estimated two million city residents visited to pay their respects. The following day, the Gang of Four ordered the police to seize and destroy the wreaths and seal off the square from further access. In clashes with residents, hundreds were arrested. The April Fifth Incident, the largest spontaneous public gathering against the Cultural Revolution, was branded a counter-revolutionary criminal incident blamed on Deng Xiaoping, who was purged.\nMao died in Beijing on September 9, 1976, and his mausoleum in Tiananmen Square was completed one year later. Less than one month after his death on October 7, 1976, the Gang of Four was arrested in Zhongnanhai by Mao's former security chief, Wang Dongxing, in a bloodless coup supported by Mao's anointed successor Hua Guofeng and military chief Ye Jianying. The arrests ended the Cultural Revolution. Deng Xiaoping was rehabilitated and then wrested power away from Hua. At the Third Plenary Session of the 11th CCP Central Committee held in December 1978, the Party, under Deng's leadership, rehabilitated the victims of Cultural Revolution, reversed the verdict of the April Fifth Incident, and adopted a policy course of economic reforms. College entrance exams were restored in 1977 and most of the rusticated youth returned to the city.\n1976\u20131989.\nBeijing Spring.\nAs the national leadership was changing course, a brief period of political openness in the city known as Beijing Spring gave rise to a grassroots pro-democracy movement. In September 1978, a magazine of the Party Youth League, under the leadership of party liberal Hu Yaobang, sought to publish poetry from the April 5th Incident. The publication was blocked by propaganda chief Wang Dongxing for failing to praise Mao. In November, the articles were instead posted on a wall near a bus stop on Chang'an Avenue at Xidan, west of Tiananmen Square. Subsequently, Huang Xiang and several poets from Guizhou, who had posted political poetry outside the \"People's Daily\" office on Wangfujing Avenue in October, also posted their works on the wall. Others soon followed suit and the Xidan Democracy Wall, as it became known, attracted thousands of posters and hundreds of thousands of readers. Victims of the Cultural Revolution sought justice\u2014some called for the release of those jailed in the April Fifth Incident of 1976; some criticized Mao and Hua Guofeng's continuation of the Maoist line; and others complained of youth unable to return from the countryside. On November 26, Deng Xiaoping told a visiting Japanese politician that the writing of the big-character posters was protected by the Constitution. On December 5, Wei Jingsheng, an electrician at the Beijing Zoo, posted \"The Fifth Modernization\" a call for political reform. A public forum convened at the Monument to the People's Heroes where speakers debated the political future of the country.\nOn January 3, 1979, a \"People's Daily\" editorial, declared: \"Let the people's say what they wish. The heavens will not fall.\" On January 14, a crowd of Cultural Revolution victims marched from Tiananmen Square to Zhongnanhai calling for food, work, democracy and human rights. A China Human Rights Association was formed and distributed 19-point declaration demanding the freedom of speech and right to evaluate state leaders. The gatherings and public challenge to authority alarmed party conservatives who pressed Deng to take a harder line and he did so after consolidating control of the party. In late March, the city government restricted public postings and gatherings to only Xidan. Wei Jingsheng was arrested, and convicted and sentenced in October to 15 years in imprisonment for leaking state secrets about China's war with Vietnam. In December 1979, postings at the Xidan Wall were banned and instead consigned to the Temple of the Moon. In 1980, the State Constitution (1978 version) was amended to eliminate the right to post big-character posters. Although Beijing Spring ended, the tensions within the party between liberals and conservatives over the toleration of dissent continued into the next decade.\nUrban planning in the 1980s.\nAs the city emerged from the Mao era, urban planning in Beijing moved in a new direction. In April 1980, in reviewing the city's application for infrastructure funding, Hu Yaobang, the newly designated CCP General Party Secretary set forth the guiding principles for Beijing's development. As the country's political center, Beijing should become a center for international exchange to support China's opening to the world. As a window to the world, the city should be the most orderly, clean and scenic city in the country. The city should also strive to become among the most advanced in the world for science and technology, culture and education. The city should raise the standard of living for its residents and develop an economy suitable for the unique qualities of the national capital. Beijing would no longer attract heavy industry. In 1981, city planners devised a blueprint that organized urban expansion around concentric ring roads. The aging inner core of the city, where the historical relics are concentrated, would have low density development and renewed over time. New enterprises would be built in the second band (between the 2nd and 3rd Ring Roads). With the imposition of the one-child policy, city planners expected to control the city's population to 10 million by 2000 with 40% living in the urban center and the remainder in residential communities scattered around the third band. Examples of these satellite communities include the Asian Games Village in the north and Fangzhuang in the south. Beijing Subway's first line, which commenced trial operations in 1969 but was plagued by technical problems, finally passed inspection assessments in 1981.\n1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.\nThe student-led demonstrations in the spring of 1989, which drew broad support from city residents, attracted worldwide attention and exposed deep divisions within the country's leadership, ended in bloodshed on June 3\u20134, as conservative leaders ordered a military crackdown of unprecedented force. The confrontation in Tiananmen Square was the culmination of a decade-long debate within the Communist Party and society over the freedom of expression and the course of political reform.\nAs liberal leaders Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang guided the country through economic reforms, conservative leaders pushed back with a Campaign against \"Spiritual Pollution\" in 1983. Paramount leader Deng Xiaoping sided with the reformers and ended that campaign. By 1986, newspaper editorials began calling for political reform and university students organized democracy salons. Liberal physicist Fang Lizhi toured campuses, advocating democratic reforms and the independence of universities from the government. In December 1986, student protests in Hefei spread to Beijing, where students marched around campuses in the university district northwest of the city, calling for direct election of political representatives, freedom of the press and release of political prisoners. On January 1 and 2, 1987, several hundred students attempted to march on Tiananmen Square in defiance of orders of the city government. The protests attracted little public attention but party conservatives reacted with fury at Hu Yaobang for his \"weak\" response to \"bourgeois liberalism\". Hu Yaobang was forced to resign on January 17 and Fang Lizhi was expelled from the Communist Party. Zhao Ziyang succeeded Hu as Party General Secretary and Li Peng became Premier.\nWhen Hu Yaobang died suddenly on April 15, 1989, university students laid wreaths at the Monument to the People's Heroes and organized sit-ins outside the Great Hall of the People and Zhongnanhai. They demanded the Party rescind past criticism of Hu, renounce the campaigns against spiritual pollution and bourgeois liberalism, disclose the assets of the family members of party officials, lift orders against public assembly, permit freedom of the press, and increase salaries for university graduates. On the night of April 21, 100,000 students marched into Tiananmen Square to attend Hu's funeral, which was held inside the Great Hall of the People the following day. Officials inside the Hall did not meet with students in the Square, who began to boycott classes. Workers formed an independent union and joined the protests. On April 23, as Zhao Ziyang was departing for a trip to North Korea, he told Li Peng to restore normalcy, avoid worsening tensions with students and refrain from using force, except against those who commit offenses against life and property.\nOn April 24, at a meeting of the politburo chaired by Li Peng, Beijing Party Secretary Li Ximing and Mayor Chen Xitong said the student demonstrations were manipulated by plotters seeking to overthrow the party-state and had to be halted. The following day, Deng Xiaoping, after hearing reports from Premier Li Peng and President Yang Shangkun, called the demonstrations a \"disturbance\" that was to be halted through coercive measures. Deng's characterization was published in the \"People's Daily\" editorial of April 26. The students felt maligned by the editorial and 100,000 from more than 40 universities marched to the city center, past Tiananmen Square to the Lama Temple, breaking through police blockades along the way.\nWhen Zhao Ziyang returned from North Korea, he delivered a conciliatory speech commemorating the 70th Anniversary of the May Fourth Movement, which was favorably received by the students. On May 4, he also told the board of the Asian Development Bank that there would not be turmoil in China, that the students, who accepted the country's reforms, were not fundamentally opposed to party leadership and socialism, but simply wanted leaders to correct errors in their work. Students from 47 institutions, including thousands streaming in from other parts of the country, marched on May 4 without police interference. On May 8, Zhao Ziyang chaired a politburo standing committee meeting and proposed six points of reform including the disclosure of officials' assets, expanded press freedoms and rule of law. Wan Li, chairman of the National People's Congress, called a parliamentary session for June 20 to consider the reform agenda. Li Peng, however, opposed the agenda, and only a portion of which was published in the \"People's Daily\" on May 9.\nOn May 13, to support political reforms and demonstrate their peaceful resolve, about 300 students began a hunger strike in Tiananmen Square, which soon expanded to thousands. A makeshift tent city was set up for the hunger strikers, who attracted broad public sympathy. On May 15\u201317, more than million people visited the Square each day. Many government employees marched in support. Relaxed censorship allowed news of the hunger strike to be broadcast nationally. Foreign press on hand to cover the visit of Mikhail Gorbachev brought worldwide attention to the demonstrations. On May 18, Li Peng met with several student representatives but the two sides failed to agree on how to end the hunger strike. To defuse tensions, Zhao Ziyang tried to persuade Deng Xiaoping to back off of the April 26 editorial, but Li Peng said Zhao's approach was not working and the party center could not afford to speak with two voices. Student protests had spread to 27 cities. On the night of May 17, Deng Xiaoping resolved to impose martial law, which was signed by Li Peng and announced by Chen Xitong on May 19. That night, Zhao Ziyang made his final appearance in public, warning the hunger striking students in the Square that he had come too late. The students called off the hunger strike.\nOn May 20, at least 180,000 People's Liberation Army and People's Armed Police personnel advanced on the city to enforce martial law, but students and Beijing residents managed to block them outside the Third Ring Road by surrounding their vehicles. Residents brought food and water to the soldiers and pleaded with them not to advance on the peaceful demonstrations. More than a million people marched in defiance of the martial law order, many calling for the resignation of Deng Xiaoping and Li Peng. The troops pulled back on May 23. The commander of the 38th Army, who refused to enforce the martial law order, was court-martialed. On May 27, student leaders voted to end their occupation of the Square on May 30, but some students remained, believing that the protests would lose leverage and held out hope that National People's Congress would convene in June. On May 25, Wan Li, who had been on a foreign trip, was summoned by Zhao to call an emergency parliamentary meeting to invalidate the martial law order. But Wan's plane was diverted to Shanghai, and he subsequently declared support for martial law. On May 30, students and teachers from the Central Academy of Arts erected a 10-meter high \"Goddess of Democracy\" statue in the Square, which boosted student morale and drew millions of visitors.\nOn the afternoon of June 3, demonstrators confronted soldiers in plain clothes sneaking weapons into the city and police fired tear gas at the demonstrators. That evening, state-run television warned residents to stay indoors but crowds of people took to the streets to block the incoming army. Armored military units advanced on Beijing from every cardinal direction. At about 10:00 pm troops opened fire on protesters with live ammunition at Wukesong intersection west of the Square, where the first civilian fatality occurred. Crowds were stunned and responded by hurling insults and projectiles. Among those killed was Duan Changlong, a Tsinghua University student, who was shot in the chest as he tried to negotiate with soldiers at Xidan. Duan was the grand nephew of the warlord Duan Qirui, whose troops were responsible for the March 18 Massacre in 1926, deadliest use of force against students in the history of Beijing until 1989. As news of the lethal force reached the Square, students at the Square were persuaded to leave the Square by several older intellectuals, including future Nobel Peace Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo. At about 4:00 am, troops from the west and south fought their way to the Square, and at 5:00 am most of the students retreated out of the Square to the south. Several students were hit by lethal gunfire in the Square and nearly a dozen were run over by an armored personnel vehicle west of the Square. Tanks also ran over the tent city. Helicopters lifted away the debris. By dawn of June 4, the army controlled the Square and major intersections around the city although clashes with residents continued. Tiananmen Mothers, a victims' organization, has recorded civilian deaths all along Chang'an Avenue, from Wukesong in the west to Tiananmen in the center to Jianguomen in the east, and throughout the city, from Hongmiao in the east, Hepingli in the north, and Tianqiao and Zhushikou in the south. Hundreds of civilians were killed, thousands were wounded and thousands more were detained.\nOn June 5, foreign press in the Beijing Hotel photographed a lone protester blocking a long column of tanks driving east of the Square on Chang'an Avenue. The identity of this protester, like many facts about the events of spring 1989, remains unknown because the government has barred any reporting, research or remembrance of the \"June 4 Incident\", which was officially deemed a counterrevolutionary rebellion. Zhao Ziyang was placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life. Jiang Zemin assumed the position of General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. Martial law was lifted on January 11, 1990. In subsequent years, first-year students at colleges in Beijing were required to undergo a year of military training.\n1990s.\nIn 1990, Beijing's long-term residential population reached 10.32 million, of which 61% were in urban areas. In addition, the city had 1.27 million non-resident migrants, for a total population of 11.59 million.\nFrom September 22 to October 7, 1990, Beijing hosted the 11th Asian Games, which were held in China for the first time and attended by 6,122 athletes from 37 countries competing in 29 sports. The city was awarded the games in 1984 over Osaka. The Asian Games Village was built north of the city center beyond the Third Ring Road. The Worker Stadium served as the Games' main venue. The city's bid for the 2000 Summer Olympic Games ended in September 1993 with a narrow loss by a vote of 43\u201345 in the final round to Sydney.\nThe 2nd Ring Road, under construction since the 1960s and built on the foundation of the outer Ming city wall, was finally completed in 1992. Where city gates once stood are now overpass exits. The 3rd Ring Road followed in 1993. Construction of the city's three other ring roads began in the 1990s and were completed in 2001 (4th Ring), 2003 (5th Ring) and 2009 (6th Ring).\nThe 1990s and the start of the new millennium were a period of rapid economic growth in Beijing. Following the economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping, what was once farmland surrounding the city was developed into new residential and commercial districts. Modern expressways and high-rise buildings were built throughout the city to accommodate the growing and increasingly affluent population of the city. Foreign investment transformed Beijing into one of the most cosmopolitan and prosperous cities in the world. In September 1995, the city hosted the United Nation's Fourth World Conference on Women and a parallel gathering of non-government organizations in Huairou District.\nAlso in 1995, Beijing's city government was shaken by a leadership scandal as Chen Xitong, party secretary and a member of the politburo, was removed from office and deputy-mayor Wang Baosen committed suicide. Chen was convicted and sentenced to 16 years imprisonment in 1998 of corruption and negligence of official duty and became the highest ranking Chinese official to be convicted of a crime since the trial of the Gang of Four. Chen reportedly lost a power struggle against Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin and the \"Shanghai Clique\". He maintained that the charges against him were politically motivated.\nIn March 1997, two bombs detonated on Beijing buses. The first bomb hit a Route 22 Bus in Xidan on the night of March 7, killing three and injuring ten. The second, one day later, claimed two more lives. The bombings, which followed the outbreak of protests and bombings in Xinjiang, took place during the annual sessions of the legislature and political consultative conference in the capital, and were widely blamed on Uyghur separatists. In 1999, the Xinjiang Village at Ganjiakou, was demolished a mere seven years after the Haidian government had recognized it. Though Uyghur shopowners were compensated for their losses, their community in the capital scattered.\nIn the spring of 1999, two large public demonstrations took place in Beijing. On April 25, over 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners assembled outside Zhongnanhai to protest criticism of the sect in the state media. The gathering resulted in the government's prohibition of Falun Gong in China. On May 8, following NATO's bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, which killed three Chinese nationals, thousands of students and residents marched on the U.S. Embassy in Beijing to protest U.S. military aggression. Some of the protesters pelted the embassy compound with stones and smashed cars, keeping the U.S. ambassador and staff confined in the compound for several days. Then vice-president Hu Jintao declared the government's support for the demonstrations, which reflected the anger and patriotism of the Chinese people, but urged against extreme and illegal conduct. The crisis was diffused after U.S. President Bill Clinton issued an apology for the airstrike, which the Pentagon blamed on outdated maps, and agreed to pay $32.5 million to the victims of the bombing and to compensate for the damage to the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. The Chinese government agreed to pay $2.87 million to compensate the U.S. for damage to its embassy and consulates in China.\nOn October 1, 1999, the city celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic with a parade, the first since 1984.\n2000s.\nIn 2000, the city's total population reached 13.56 million, including 2.49 million temporary migrants. The city's population has continued to grow, largely through inbound migration, reaching 15.38 million in 2005 (including 3.57 million temporary migrants) and exceeding 20 million in 2011. Of the 20.18 million total population in 2011, 12.77 million were long-term residents with temporary migrants making up 7.4 million (36.7%).\nOn July 13, 2001, at the 112th meeting of the International Olympic Committee in Moscow, Beijing was awarded the right to host the 2008 Summer Olympic and Paralympics Games. Under the motto \"New Beijing, Great Olympics\", the city pledged that holding the Games in China for the first time would promote not only the city's economy but also education, health and human rights of its residents. Beijing prevailed over Paris, Toronto, Istanbul and Osaka with an absolute majority of votes in the second round of balloting.\nOver the next seven years, the city spent nearly \u00a5300 billion (about US$36 billion in 2005 exchange rate) in preparation. The city built 12 permanent athletic venues and 8 temporary venues, expanded 11 existing venues, and renovated 45 practice facilities. The bulk of the new venues was concentrated in the Olympic Green directly north of Tiananmen and the Forbidden City. Venues accounted for less than 5% of overall Olympic spending, the lion's share of which went to building infrastructure, including of express highways, , Terminal 3 of the Capital Airport and the Beijing South railway station, and a high-speed high-speed railway to Tianjin. To improve environmental quality, the city added nine sewage treatment plants, dredged of waterways and built waste incineration and wind power generation facilities. From 2001 to 2007, the city's economy doubled in size and per capita income rose from $3,262 to $7,654.\nIn March 2003, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) spread to Beijing from southern China. Initial underreporting of the epidemic by government authorities was exposed by Dr. Jiang Yanyong in early April and forced Health Minister Zhang Wenkang and mayor Meng Xuenong to resign in April. The city became the hardest hit in the SARS epidemic with 2,521 probable cases (including at least 394 infected medical personnel) and 191 deaths. Public schools, theaters, discos, and entertainment centers were closed at the order of the government in late April when 100 new cases were reported daily. A large quarantine base was set up in Changping District north of the city. After the last new case was reported on May 29, the epidemic subsided and the World Health Organization lifted the travel advisory for Beijing on June 24.\nRapid modernization and population growth also created numerous problems such as heavy traffic, pollution, the destruction of historic neighborhoods, and a large population of impoverished migrant workers from the countryside. By early 2005, the city government attempted to control urban sprawl by restricting development to two semicircular bands to the west and east of the city center, instead of the concentric rings of suburbs that had been built in the past.\nThe rapid growth of population, motor vehicles and factories has created high pollution levels. Days with gray, acrid skies, with an eye-reddening pollution score over 400, are common, as health officials advise wearing masks and staying indoors. Heavy trucks are allowed in only at night but their diesel fuels create much of the problem. By 2008 for the city's 12 million residents, pollution was not only a hazard, but a political issue tied in with the Summer Olympics scheduled for August 2008. The city's bid for the 2000 Olympics in 1993 failed partly because of high pollution levels; in response the city began a massive cleanup campaign. That campaign has been successful in terms of 2000 standards, but the city's economy is 2.5 times larger now, with millions more people. Over 3 million cars and trucks clog the streets, and 400,000 more are added annually as the wealth shoots up rapidly. Factories and power plants were changed to burn cleaner, low-sulfur coal; sulfur dioxide emissions fell by 25% 2001\u20132007, even though much more coal is burned, reaching 30 million tons in 2006. Furthermore, Beijing saw more than 160 million square meters (1.7 billion square feet) of new construction begun 2002\u20132007 due to pollution. Athletes may have some breathing problems, but in the long-run air quality is expected to remain a critical issue as the city grows beyond 20 million inhabitants. The city also imposed road space rationing, which remained in force after the Olympics.\nThe 2008 Summer Olympics opened on August 8, 2008, at 8:08\u00a0p.m. with a grand ceremony at the Beijing National Stadium (\"Bird's Nest\"). Along with 10,942 athletes from 204 countries and regions who competed in 28 sports and 302 events, leaders from 80 countries also gathered in Beijing, for the largest international event in the city's history. China, became the 22nd country to host the Olympics, and won the most gold medals for the first time. A record 86 countries medaled, with the United States topping the overall medal count. Some 1.7 million city residents volunteered during the games, setting an Olympic record. In keeping with its promise to IOC authorities that the right of public assembly would be respected during the Games, Beijing authorities designated three city parks as areas for demonstrations, but no permits for public demonstration were issued\u2014the applications were either withdrawn or denied\u2014and none took place.\nOn October 1, 2009, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China, a military parade was held on Chang'an Avenue and a gala concert in Tiananmen Square.\n2010s.\nIn the five years after the Olympics, Beijing's economy continued to grow rapidly, and the government's massive economic stimulus program in response to the global recession added enormous wealth to the city. By the end of 2012, the city's economy was 1.8 times bigger than in 2008 and triple the size of 2004. Due to the concentration of state owned enterprises in the national capital, Beijing in 2013 had more Fortune Global 500 Company headquarters than any other city in the world. It also ranked No. 4 in the number of billionaire residents after Moscow, New York and Hong Kong.\nThe rapid economic growth and expansionary monetary policy, which caused property prices to rise throughout China, made Beijing one of the most expensive cities in the country. By 2010, new apartments inside the Third Ring Road cost Y30,000 per m2 (US$360 per sq. ft.), about ten times the average monthly wages. In response, the city government pledged to build low-income housing and imposed stringent limitations on home ownership. In February 2011, Beijing couples who already owned two or more homes and single residents with at least one home were barred from buying additional properties in the city. Individuals without resident permits, who can own only one property in the city, must pay local income tax for five consecutive years before they are eligible to buy it. In March 2013, the state imposed capital gains taxes on real estate transactions and raised down payment requirements for mortgages, but prices continued to climb. By August 2013, the average price of apartments inside the Fourth Ring Road reached Y42,259 per m2 (US$634 per sq. ft.), nearly twice as high as in 2009, leading to concerns of a property bubble.\nThe 22nd annual meeting of leaders from countries in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum was held in Beijing on November 10\u201312, 2014. An international convention center was built by Yanqi Lake in Huairou District for the occasion.\nOn September 3, 2015, a massive military parade was held to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the victory in World War II with leaders from over two dozen countries attending and honor guards from 17 countries joining the People's Liberation Army in the procession.\nOn 18 November 2017, a fire killed nineteen people in Beijing in a southern industrial neighborhood. The municipal government launched a forty-day campaign to demolish \"illegal structures\", which housed millions of workers from foreign countries, who the government deems as Beijing's \"low-end population\".\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["6934277", "21791"], "permutation_1": ["21791", "6934277"], "permutation_2": ["21791", "6934277"], "permutation_3": ["6934277", "21791"]}
{"id": "2hop__442215_136211", "docs_added": {"27208": "Saint Lucia\nCountry in the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean Sea\nSaint Lucia is an island country of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean. Part of the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, it is located north/northeast of the island of Saint Vincent, northwest of Barbados and south of Martinique. It covers a land area of with an estimated population of over 180,000 people as of 2018. The nation's capital and largest city is Castries.\nThe first proven inhabitants of the island, the Arawaks, are believed to have been the first to settle on the island in 200\u2013400 AD. In 800 AD, the island was taken over by the Kalinago. The French were the first European colonists to settle on the island, and they signed a treaty with the native Caribs in 1660. The English took control of the island in 1663. In ensuing years, England and France fought 14 times for control of the island; consequently control over this immensely valuable geopolitical position changed frequently. Eventually, the British took complete control in 1814, shortly after the victory over French Emperor Napoleon I. Because the island switched so often between British and French control, Saint Lucia was also known as the \"Helen of the West\" after the Greek mythological character, Helen of Troy.\nRepresentative government was introduced in 1924 with universal suffrage being established in 1951. From 1958 to 1962, the island was a member of the West Indies Federation. On 22 February 1979, Saint Lucia became an independent state, while remaining as a Commonwealth realm.\nSaint Lucia is a member of the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the World Trade Organization, CARICOM and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). It is also a member of .\nEtymology.\nSaint Lucia is named after Saint Lucy of Syracuse (AD 283 \u2013 304). Saint Lucia is one of two sovereign states in the world named after a female and is the only one named after a woman (Ireland is named after a goddess). Legend states that French sailors were shipwrecked on the island on 13 December, the feast day of St. Lucy, and therefore named the island in her honour. \nA globe in the Vatican from 1520 shows the island as Sancta Lucia, indicating that the island was instead named by early Spanish explorers. Saint Lucia was first known as \"Louanalao\" by the Arawak Indians in 200 AD, meaning \"Island of the Iguanas,\" and then as \"Hewanorra\", in 800 AD, meaning \"there where iguanas are found,\" when the Carib Indians arrived and assimilated their culture into Saint Lucia.\nHistory.\nPre-Columbian.\nThe first proven inhabitants of Saint Lucia were the Arawaks, though there may have been other native peoples prior to them. The Arawaks are believed to have come from northern South America, sometime around AD 200\u2013400, as there are numerous archaeological sites on the island where specimens of their pottery have been found.\nThe Kalinago (Island Caribs) arrived around AD 800, and seized control from the Arawaks by killing their men and assimilating the women into their own society. \nEarly European exploration and colonization.\nIt is possible that Christopher Columbus may have sighted the island during his fourth voyage in 1502, but he does not mention the island in his log. Juan de la Cosa noted the island on his map of 1500, calling it \"El Falcon\", and another island to the south \"Las Agujas\". A Spanish c\u00e9dula from 1511 mentions the island within the Spanish domain, and a globe in the Vatican made in 1520, shows the island as Sancta Lucia.\nIn the late 1550s, the French pirate Fran\u00e7ois le Clerc (known as \"Jambe de Bois\", due to his wooden leg) set up a camp on Pigeon Island, from where he attacked passing Spanish ships. In 1605, an English vessel called the \"Oliphe Blossome\" was blown off-course on its way to Guyana, and the 67 colonists started a settlement on Saint Lucia, after initially being welcomed by the Carib chief Anthonie. By 26 September 1605, only 19 survived following continued attacks by the Carib chief Augraumart, so the settlers fled the island. The English tried to settle the island again in 1638, but the Caribs continued to be hostile. Eventually, the French successfully claimed the island in 1650 and they signed a treaty with the Caribs in 1660. In 1664, Thomas Warner (son of Sir Thomas Warner, the governor of St Kitts) claimed Saint Lucia for England but the English fled again in 1666, with the French gaining full control of the island after the signing of the Treaty of Breda. Saint Lucia was made an official French crown colony in 1674, as a dependency of Martinique.\n18th and 19th centuries.\nAfter the slave-based sugar industry developed, both the British and the French found the island attractive. During the 18th century, the island changed ownership, or was declared neutral territory, a dozen times, although the French settlements remained and the island was a de facto French colony well into the eighteenth century.\nIn 1722, George I of Great Britain granted both Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent to the 2nd Duke of Montagu. Montague appointed Nathaniel Uring, a merchant sea captain and adventurer, as deputy-governor. Uring went to the islands with a group of seven ships, and established settlement at Petit Carenage. Unable to get enough support from British warships, he and the new colonists were quickly run off by the French.\nDuring the Seven Years' War, Britain occupied Saint Lucia for a year, but handed the island back to the French in 1763, under the Treaty of Paris. Like the English and Dutch on other islands, in 1765, the French began to develop the land for the cultivation of sugar cane as a commodity crop on large plantations. The British occupied the island again in 1778.\nFrom 1782 to 1803, control of the island switched multiple times. In January 1791, during the French Revolution, the National Assembly sent four \"commissaires\" to St Lucia to spread the revolutionary philosophy. By August 1791, slaves began to abandon their estates and Governor Jean-Joseph Sourbader de Gimat fled. In December 1792, Lt. Jean-Baptiste Raymond de Lacrosse arrived with revolutionary pamphlets, and the impoverished whites and free people of colour began to arm themselves as \"patriots\". On 1 February 1793, France declared war on England and Holland, and General Nicolas Xavier de Ricard took over as Governor. The National Convention abolished enslavement on 4 February 1794. On 1 April 1794, St. Lucia was captured by a British expeditionary force led by Vice Admiral John Jervis. Morne Fortune was renamed \"Fort Charlotte\". Soon, a combined force of French Revolutionary Army soldiers and maroons, \"L'Armee Fran\u00e7aise dans les Bois\", began to fight back, starting the First Brigand War.\nA short time later, the British invaded the island as a part of the war with France that had recently broken out. On 21 February 1795, French forces under the nominal control of Victor Hugues, defeated a battalion of British troops at Vieux Fort and Rabot. In 1796, Castries was burned as part of the conflict. Leading the 27th (Inniskilling) Regiment, General John Moore retook Fort Charlotte in 1796, after two days of bitter fighting. As an honour, the Fusiliers' regimental colour was displayed on the flagstaff of the captured fortress at Morne Fortune for an hour before being replaced by the Union Jack. Upon the capture of the fort, Moore's superior, Ralph Abercromby, departed the island and placed Moore in charge of the British garrison. Moore remained at this post until falling ill with yellow fever, leading to his return to Britain before 1798.\nIn 1803, the British regained control of the island. Many members of the \"L'Armee Fran\u00e7aise dans les Bois\" escaped into the thick rainforest where they evaded capture and established maroon communities.\nSlavery on the island continued for a short time, but anti-slavery sentiment was rising in Britain. The British stopped the import of slaves by anyone, white or coloured, when they abolished the slave trade in 1807.\nFrance and Great Britain continued to contest Saint Lucia until the British secured it in 1814, as part of the Treaty of Paris, ending the Napoleonic Wars. Thereafter, Saint Lucia was considered one of the British Windward Islands colonies.\nThe institution of slavery was abolished on the island in 1834, as it was throughout the British Empire. After abolition, all former slaves had to serve a four-year \"apprenticeship\", to accustom them to the idea of freedom. During that period, they worked for their former masters for at least three-quarters of the work week. Full freedom was duly granted by the British in 1838. By that time, people of African ethnicity greatly outnumbered those of ethnic European background. People of Carib descent also comprised a minority on the island.\n20th century.\nSaint Lucia's first representative government was introduced in 1924, with the first election taking place in 1925. Many Saint Lucians served during the Second World War, and the conflict visited the island directly during the Battle of the Caribbean, when a German U-boat attacked and sank two British ships in Castries harbour on 9 March 1942. The United States used the island as a military hub during the war, including setting up a secondary naval base in Gros Islet and using what is now the island's international airport as an air force base.\nUniversal suffrage was introduced in 1951 and elections were held the same year. In 1958, Saint Lucia joined the West Indies Federation, although the federation was dissolved just a few years later in 1962. In 1967, Saint Lucia became one of the six members of the West Indies Associated States, with internal self-government. Independence was peacefully gained in 1979 under Sir John Compton of United Workers Party, with the island remaining within the British Commonwealth, keeping then-Queen Elizabeth II as Monarch, represented locally by a Governor-General.\nPost-independence era.\nDespite leading the country to independence, Compton's initial term as prime minister lasted only a few months, being defeated by the Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) under Allan Louisy in the 1979 Saint Lucian general election. In 1980, Hurricane Allen struck the island, destroying much of its infrastructure and reducing economic growth. Compton returned to power after the 1982 Saint Lucian general election after much instability during the labour government's term. During Compton's second term as the island's leader, banana exports significantly increased and became the nation's main source of revenue. There were improvements to infrastructure, and education was expanded to rural areas. Saint Lucia was key to the US invasion of Grenada. During the 1990s and 2000s, the nation's economy began shifting from agriculture to tourism under the leadership of Kenny Anthony. The 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001 killed two Saint Lucians, and caused an economic slowdown, although moderate growth continued until the Great Recession. The recession, as well as the landfall of Hurricane Tomas in 2010, led to slow economic growth during the early 2010s, although the economy picked up during the later part of the decade and avoided contraction until 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic caused major economic issues globally.\nIn June 2016, the United Workers Party (UWP), led by Allen Michael Chastanet, won 11 of the 17 seats in the general election, ousting the St Lucia Labour Party (SLP) of the incumbent Prime Minister Kenny Anthony. However, Saint Lucia Labour Party won the next election in July 2021, meaning its leader Philip J Pierre became the ninth Prime Minister of Saint Lucia since independence.\nGeography.\nSaint Lucia has a total area of 617 square kilometers (238 sq mi). As a volcanic island, Saint Lucia is very mountainous, with its highest point being Mount Gimie, at above sea level. The Pitons, two mountainous volcanic plugs, form the island's most famous landmark. Saint Lucia is also home to the world's only drive-in volcano, the Sulphur Springs. There are a number of small islands off the coast, the largest of which are the Maria Islands, located in the south-east of the island.\nSaint Lucia lies at latitude 14\u00b0 N and longitude 61\u00b0 W. The population tends to be concentrated around the coast, with the interior more sparsely populated, due to the presence of dense forests. \nFlora and fauna.\nMany species are endemic to the island, including \"Anolis luciae\", a species of lizard, and \"Boa orophias\", a species of boid snake.\nEcoregions.\nSaint Lucia has five terrestrial ecoregions: Windward Islands moist forests, Leeward Islands dry forests, Windward Islands dry forests, Windward Islands xeric scrub, and Lesser Antilles mangroves. The country had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 6.17/10, ranking it 84th globally out of 172 countries.\nClimate.\nSaint Lucia has a tropical climate, specifically a tropical rainforest climate (Af), moderated by northeast trade winds, with a dry season from 1 December to 31 May, and a wet/rainy season from 1 June to 30 November.\nAverage daytime and nighttime temperatures are around , and respectively. Being fairly close to the equator, the island's temperature does not fluctuate much between winter and summer.\nGeology.\nThe geology of St. Lucia can be described as composing three main areas. The oldest, 16\u201318 Ma, volcanic rocks are exposed from Castries northward and consist of eroded basalt and andesite centres. The middle, central highlands, portion of the island consists of dissected andesite centres, 10.4 to 1 Mya, while the lower southwest portion of the island contains recent activity from the Soufriere Volcanic Centre (SVC). This SVC, centred about the Qualibou depression, contains pyroclastic flow deposits, lava flows, domes, block and ash flow deposits, and explosion craters. This depression's perimeter includes the town of Soufriere, Mount Tabac, Mt. Gimie, Morne Bonin, and Gros Piton. At in diameter, though the western portion is open towards the Grenada basin, the depression formed as recently as 100 kya. The depression is noted for its geothermal activity, especially at Sulphur Springs and Soufri\u00e8re Estates, a phreatic eruption in 1776, and recent seismic activity (2000\u20132001).\nEroded andesitic stratovolcanoes to the north east of the depression include Mt. Gimie, Piton St Esprit, and Mt. Grand Magazin, all greater than 1 Ma in age. Andesitic and dacite pyroclastic flows from these volcanoes are found at Morne Tabac dome (532 ka), Morne Bonin dome (273 kya), and Bellevue (264 kya). Avalanche deposits from the formation of the Qualibou depression are found offshore, and in the massive blocks of Rabot, Pleisance, and Coubaril. The dacitic domes of Petit Piton (109 kya) and Gros Piton (71 kya) were then extruded onto the depression floor accompanied by the Anse John (104 kya) and La Pointe (59.8 kya) pyroclastic flows. Later, pyroclastic flows include pumice-rich Belfond and Anse Noir (20 kya). Finally, the dacitic domes of Terre Blanche (15.3 kya) and Belfond (13.6 kya) formed within the depression.\nGovernment.\nLike most Caribbean countries, Saint Lucia is a unitary state with a parliamentary system. It is a Commonwealth realm and a constitutional monarchy, with the current monarch being Charles III, who is represented on the island by a governor-general, currently Errol Charles. The prime minister (currently Philip J. Pierre) is the head of government, the head of the cabinet, and is normally the leader of the largest party in the House of Assembly. The house has 17 seats, with each member being elected via a plurality of votes in their constituency. The upper chamber of Parliament is the Senate which has 11 appointed members, the majority of which are appointed by the prime minister.\nAdministrative divisions.\nSaint Lucia is made up of 10 districts. The districts were created and named by French colonials, and the British chose to keep the names in an anglicised form. The largest district in both size and population is Castries, where the nation's capital of the same name is located. The following are the 10 districts placed in alphabetical order:\nLaw and crime.\nSaint Lucia is a mixed jurisdiction, meaning that it has a legal system based in part on both the civil law and English common law. The Civil Code of St. Lucia of 1867 was based on the Quebec Civil Code of 1866, as supplemented by English common law-style legislation. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was Saint Lucia's final court of appeal until 2023, when a constitutional amendment transferred this to the Caribbean Court of Justice.\nSaint Lucia's homicide rate has hit record highs in recent years. There were 75 homicides in 2021, a 34.5% increase compared with 55 homicides in 2020. 2021 saw the island record the most homicides in its history, and also its highest murder rate in its history, at 40 murders per 100,000 people.\nForeign relations.\nSaint Lucia is a member of the Caribbean Community, OECS, the Organization of American States and La Francophonie. As a Commonwealth Realm, Saint Lucia has relatively friendly relations with United Kingdom and Canada. France is also a major ally, in part due to Saint Lucia's border with Martinique. The United States is the island's largest trading partner, and Saint Lucia was key to the US invasion of Grenada in 1983, and voted against condemning the invasion. Saint Lucia became the 152nd member of the United Nations on 18 September 1979.\nSaint Lucia does not have a military although the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force has a Special Service Unit (SSU) and a Coast Guard. The island signed the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2018.\nEconomy.\nSaint Lucia is a Small Island Developing State, a designation similar to a developing country with a few substantial differences due to Saint Lucia's island nature. The service sector is the largest sector of the economy, accounting for 86.9% of GDP in 2020, followed by industrial and agricultural sectors at 10.9% and 2.2%, respectively.\nSaint Lucia has been able to attract foreign business and investment due to its educated workforce and improvements in roads, communications, water supply, sewerage, and port facilities. Like most small islands, Tourism and offshore banking are Saint Lucia's main sources of revenue. Agriculture, specifically the banana industry, was previously the largest sector of the economy, although its importance has declined significantly. The island's manufacturing sector has been called the most diverse in the Eastern Caribbean, with goods such as plastic being produced on a large scale.\nSaint Lucia's currency is the Eastern Caribbean Dollar (EC$), a regional currency shared among members of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECU). The country's main trade partners are the US, UK, EU and other CARICOM countries.\nTourism.\nTourism is the largest contributor to Saint Lucia's economy. Tourist numbers tend to be more substantial during the dry season (January to April), often referred to as the tourist season. Saint Lucia's tropical weather, scenery, beaches and resorts have made it a popular tourist destination, with 1.29\u00a0million visitors arriving in 2019.\nSome of Saint Lucia's tourist attractions include the Sulphur Springs, the Botanical Gardens, Pigeon Island and The Pitons.\nAgriculture.\nThe agricultural sector was once the main contributor to Saint Lucia's economy. This was especially thanks to the exporting of bananas. However, its importance to the economy has declined significantly, in part due to increased competition from South American countries in the banana industry. Nevertheless, agriculture is still an important part of the country's economy, providing 7.9% of jobs and contributing to 2.2% of the GDP in 2021.\nAbout 18% of land is used for agricultural practices. Bananas remain the main agricultural product grown in Saint Lucia, as well as coconuts, cocoa beans, mangoes, avocados, vegetables, citrus fruits, and root crops such as yams and sweet potatoes.\nSaint Lucia also has a small livestock sector, which is dominated by poultry. The island is self-sufficient in egg production and production of poultry and pork has increased in recent years. Fishing has also been of considerable importance to the nation's economy.\nInfrastructure.\nSaint Lucia has a wide-ranging public bus network which covers most of the island. Busses are owned by private individuals, whilst the government is responsible for setting up routes and hubs. The road network covers most of the island, although some rural areas still lack access to proper roads.\nThe island has two airports, including one International airport. Cruising and yachting are very important to the country's economy, with the main sea port being located in Castries, while the main marina is located in Rodney Bay which is also home to the St. Lucia Yacht Club. Meanwhile, the nation's main oil refinery is located in Bexon.\nThe main source of electricity in Saint Lucia is oil through its sole power station, the Cul De Sac Power Station, although solar energy is also a major source. There have also been attempts to introduce geothermal and wind energy to the island.\nDemographics.\nA census is normally held in Saint Lucia every 10 years. In the 2010 census, Saint Lucia reported a population of 165,595 in 58,920 households. This was a 5.1% increase from the 157,490 recorded at the previous census in 2001. Ages 0\u201314 made up 24.1% of the population whilst those 65 and over made up 8.6%. Nearly 40% of the island's population lived in the District of Castries, where the nation's capital of the same name is located.\nSaint Lucia had a fertility rate of 1.4 children per woman in 2021, the lowest in the Americas. This is much lower than in 1990, when the birth rate was 3.4 children per woman, and significantly lower than in 1959, when the birth rate peaked at 6.98 children per woman. Most emigration from Saint Lucia is primarily to Anglophone countries, with the United Kingdom having almost 10,000 Saint Lucian-born citizens, and over 30,000 of Saint Lucian heritage. The United States is home to many Saint Lucians, especially areas such as Miami and New York City. Canada is also home to many Saint Lucians, and especially in the French-speaking province of Quebec in the city of Montr\u00e9al. The median age of Saint Lucians was 33.1 years in 2021.\nEthnic groups.\nSaint Lucia was originally populated by Amerindian peoples. However, European colonisation led to a significant drop in the indigenous populations. Most residents of the island were white planters, but African slaves and indentured servants brought by the Europeans eventually came to outnumber them. Because of this, Saint Lucia's population is predominantly of African and mixed descent. As of 2010, 85.3% of the population are black and 10.9% are of multiracial descent. Other groups include Indo-Caribbean persons (2.2%), whites (0.6%), and Indigenous Persons (0.6%). A small number of Kalinago live in the Choiseul region and in other towns on the western coast. There is also a small population of Lebanese and Syrians.\nLanguages.\nThe official language of Saint Lucia is English, though Saint Lucian French Creole (Kw\u00e9y\u00f2l) is widely spoken. Referred to colloquially as \"Patois\" (\"Patwa\"), it is spoken by a majority of the population. It is a dialect of Antillean Creole and is also related to Haitian Creole, though it nonetheless has a number of distinctive features from the latter. The Creole language developed during the early period of French colonisation and is derived chiefly from French and West African languages. There have been some attempts to make the language official, but they have not yet been successful.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nIn the 2010 census, a majority of Saint Lucians identified as Christians. This can be traced back to the nation's colonization by French and British settlers. Due to heavy French influence, most Christians on the island are Catholics, with 62.5% of the island's residents identifying as such. 24.5% of the island's residents identify as Protestants. In addition, 1.9% of the population identified as members of the Rastafari movement and 1.4% of the population practice Hinduism. The number of residents claiming no religion stood at 5.9% in 2010.\nThere is no state religion in Saint Lucia. The nation's constitution guarantees freedom of religion and prohibits forcing persons to take oath to any religion in which they do not follow. Religious groups are also guaranteed the freedom to establish places of education.\nEducation.\nMost primary and secondary schools in Saint Lucia are operated by the government. Education is free and compulsory for children aged five to fifteen. This includes seven years of primary school and three to five years of secondary school. In the last two years of secondary school, students are allowed to choose the subjects that they would like to do, in preparation for regional CSEC examinations. In 2020, public spending on education was at 3.6%.\nTertiary educational facilities on the island are normally private institutions. These include Monroe College and International American University. However, there are still a few public institutions, including the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College and the University of the West Indies.\nHealthcare.\nHealth services in Saint Lucia are split between the government and private institutions. The island is served by 2 public hospitals and multiple health centers, although most dental and vision services are private. Public expenditure on healthcare stood at 2.1% in 2019.\nIn 2021, life expectancy was at 71.1 years (67.8 for men and 74.7 for women). This was compared to 73.4 years in 2019. The drop in life expectancy was largely attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nCulture.\nThe culture of Saint Lucia has been influenced by African, East Indian, French, and English heritage. The main secondary language of the island is Saint Lucian Creole (Kw\u00e9y\u00f2l), a French-based creole spoken by most of the population. The island boasts the highest ratio of Nobel laureates produced with respect to the total population of any sovereign country in the world. Two winners have come from Saint Lucia: Sir Arthur Lewis, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1979, and the poet Derek Walcott, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.\nSaint Lucia has two flower festivals, the La Rose festival, celebrated on 30 August, and the La Marguerite festival, celebrated on 17 October. Every summer, the island hosts a carnival as a way to present the country's culture and music. Annually, there are normally many festivals, most of them being music related.\nMusic.\nSaint Lucian music is heavily influenced by elements of African music, especially rhythmically. The most popular music genres in Saint Lucia are calypso, soca, dancehall, reggae, zouk, and folk music. Dennery Segment, a genre influenced by Angolan Kuduro, Saint Lucian Solo music and Dancehall was developed on the island. The internationally renowned Saint Lucia Jazz Festival is held annually, and the festival is a major source of revenue for the country's economy.\nFood.\nSaint Lucian cuisine is a mix of African, European, Indian and Caribbean dishes. Some common dishes include macaroni pie, stewed chicken, rice and peas, roti (Indian flatbreads) and soups packed full with fresh locally produced vegetables. All mainstream meat and poultry are eaten in St. Lucia; meat and seafood are normally stewed and browned to create a rich gravy sometimes served over \"ground provisions\" (vegetables) or rice. Johnny Cakes (known as bakes) are also common, and are served with different sides, such as saltfish. The national dish of Saint Lucia is green figs and saltfish.\nSports.\nAs with most Caribbean islands, cricket is the most popular sport in Saint Lucia. The Windward Islands cricket team includes players from Saint Lucia and plays in the West Indies regional tournament. Daren Sammy became the first Saint Lucian to represent the West Indies on his debut in 2007, and was made captain in 2010. The Saint Lucia Kings is a T20 franchise playing in the Caribbean Premier League based in this said island nation. Sailing is also a major sport in Saint Lucia, with the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) race beginning in the Canary Islands and ending on the island. Other sports that are popular on the island include football, basketball, tennis, golf and volleyball. Karate and boxing have also seen increased popularity in recent years. \nJulien Alfred won the nation's first-ever Olympic medal, when she won the women's 100 meters event in 10.72 seconds at the 2024 Summer Olympics held in Paris, France.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "8965431": "Fond d'Or River\nRiver of Saint Lucia\nThe Fond d'Or River is a river in Saint Lucia. It rises in the centre of the island, flowing north and then east to its mouth in Fond d'Or Bay, close to the village of Dennery on the central east coast.", "14937651": "Fond d'Or Bay\nBody of water of Saint Lucia\nFond d'Or Bay is a bay on the east side of the island of Saint Lucia, in the center of the coast. The Fond d'Or River has its mouth in the bay.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "15311981": "Fonds d'Or\nHuman settlement in France\nFonds d'Or is a settlement in Guadeloupe, on the island of Grande-Terre. To its north are Guillocheau and Laureal, and Boisvin is to the east.", "640277": "Val-d'Or\nVal-d'Or ( , , ; meaning \"Golden Valley\" or \"Valley of Gold\") is a city in Quebec, Canada with a population of 32,752 inhabitants according to the 2021 Canadian census. The city is located in the Abitibi-T\u00e9miscamingue region near La V\u00e9rendrye Wildlife Reserve.\nThe Algonquin toponym of the town is \"Ozawaconia Odena\".\nHistory.\nGold was discovered in the area in 1923. The name of the town is French for \"Valley of Gold.\" While gold is still mined in the area today, base metals, such as copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), and lead (Pb) have become increasingly important resources. The ore is usually found in volcanic rocks that were deposited on the sea floor over 2.7 billion years ago. They are referred to as volcanic-hosted (or volcanogenic) massive sulphide deposits (VMS).\nThe city is known for its vast parks, cycle tracks, and forests. Some other attractions include the City of Gold and the mining village of Bourlamaque, which were officially proclaimed historic sites in 1979.\nThe city hosted the Quebec Games in 1987. The local hockey team, the Val-d'Or Foreurs, have played in the QMJHL since 1993, winning the league championship in 1998, 2001 and 2014 to claim a spot in the Memorial Cup. They play at Centre Air Creebec. The Foreurs' mascot is called Dynamit, named after dynamite which was extensively used by the mining industry of Val-d'Or.\nVal-d'Or was once home to CFS Val-d'Or, a Canadian Forces Station.\nIn the municipal reorganizations of January 1, 2002, Val-d'Or was merged with the neighbouring municipalities of Dubuisson, Sullivan, Val-Senneville and Vassan.\nThe Radio-Canada investigative television program, Enqu\u00eate, revealed in October 2015 numerous allegations of assault and sexual abuse of local aboriginal women by members of the provincial police, the S\u00fbret\u00e9 du Qu\u00e9bec. The news propelled the town into the national spotlight, causing Qu\u00e9bec's Public Safety Minister, Lise Th\u00e9riault, to suspend the officers and launch an independent investigation led by the Montr\u00e9al police force.\nGeography.\nVal-d'Or is situated on the Canadian Shield at an elevation of 1100 feet (330m) above sea level. Although its name refers to a valley (\"Val\"), the city is actually situated on a vast, slightly undulating plain.\nVal-d'Or is at the heart of a vast hydrographic network which includes to the north Lake Blouin, the head water of the Harricana River and to the south Baie Carri\u00e8re, a reservoir which feeds the Ottawa River.\nClimate.\nVal-d'Or has a humid continental climate (K\u00f6ppen Climate Classification \"Dfb\"), closely bordering on a subarctic climate (\"Dfc\") with warm, humid summers and severely cold winters. Winters are snowy with a January mean of . There are 18.4 days where the temperature will fall below although with the wind chill factored in, it can occasionally drop below . Snowfall totals are heavy, averaging with reliable snow cover from November to April. Summers are warm with a July daily high of though highs reach above an average of 4.3 days per year. Val-d'Or receives \nof precipitation per year which is fairly evenly distributed throughout the year, though precipitation is heaviest during the warmest months. Val-d'Or receives 1853 hours of sunshine per or about 39.5 of possible daylight hours, ranging from a low of 19.2% in November to a high of 52.9% in July.\nDemographics.\nIn the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Val-d'Or had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.\n<templatestyles src=\"Canada census/styles.css\" />\nCanada census \u2013 Val-d'Or community profile\n References: 2021 2016 \n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nMother Tongue (2021):\nEconomy.\nAir Creebec, a regional airline, has its headquarters in Val-d'Or and the Val-d'Or Airport serves as its hub.\nVal-d'Or's proximity to the Abitibi gold belt has made it a large gold producer, being part of a region that produced 45 million ounces of gold since the 1930s.\nIn 2012, Quebec Lithium Corp. re-opened a lithium mine which had operated as an underground mine from 1955\u201365, planning to carve an open pit mine over pegmatite dikes. the mine is about north of Val d'Or, southeast of Amos, and"}, "descending_order": ["8965431", "14937651", "15311981", "640277", "27208"], "permutation_1": ["8965431", "14937651", "15311981", "640277", "27208"], "permutation_2": ["640277", "27208", "15311981", "8965431", "14937651"], "permutation_3": ["640277", "14937651", "8965431", "15311981", "27208"]}
{"id": "2hop__208969_11179", "docs_added": {"51585": "New Delhi\nCapital city of India\nNew Delhi (; , ) is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the Government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Sansad Bhavan, and the Supreme Court. New Delhi is a municipality within the NCT, administered by the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), which covers mostly Lutyens' Delhi and a few adjacent areas. The municipal area is part of a larger administrative district, the New Delhi district.\nAlthough colloquially \"Delhi\" and \"New Delhi\" are used interchangeably to refer to the National Capital Territory of Delhi, both are distinct entities, with the municipality and the New Delhi district forming a relatively small part within the megacity of Delhi. The National Capital Region is an even larger entity, comprising the entire NCT along with adjoining districts in the two neighbouring states forming a continuously built-up area with it, including Ghaziabad, Noida, Greater Noida, Meerut, YEIDA City, Gurgaon, and Faridabad.\nThe foundation stone of New Delhi, south of central Delhi, was laid by George V during the Delhi Durbar of 1911. It was designed by British architects Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker. The new capital was inaugurated on 13 February 1931, by Viceroy and Governor-General Irwin.\nHistory.\nEstablishment.\nUntil December 1911, Calcutta was the capital of India during the British Rule. However, it had become the centre of the nationalist movements since the late nineteenth century, which led to the Partition of Bengal by Viceroy Curzon. This created massive political and religious upsurge including political assassinations of British officials in Calcutta. The anti-colonial sentiments among the public led to a complete boycott of British goods, which forced the colonial government to reunite Bengal and immediately shift the capital to New Delhi.\nOld Delhi had served as the political and financial centre of several empires of medieval India and the Delhi Sultanate, most notably of the Mughal Empire from 1649 to 1857. During the early 1900s, a proposal was made to the British administration to shift the capital of the British Indian Empire, as India was officially named, from Calcutta on the east coast, to Delhi. The Government of British India felt that it would be logistically easier to administer India from Delhi, which is in the centre of northern India. The land for building the new city of Delhi was acquired under the Land Acquisition Act 1894.\nDuring the Delhi Durbar on 12 December 1911, George V while laying the foundation stone for the viceroy's residence in the Coronation Park, Kingsway Camp, declared that the capital of the Raj would be shifted from Calcutta to Delhi. Three days later, George V and his consort, Mary, laid the foundation stone of New Delhi at Kingsway Camp. Large parts of New Delhi were planned by Edwin Lutyens, who first visited Delhi in 1912, and Herbert Baker, both leading 20th-century British architects. The contract was given to Sobha Singh. The original plan called for its construction in Tughlaqabad, inside the Tughlaqabad Fort, but this was given up because of the Delhi-Calcutta trunk line that passed through the fort. Construction really began after World War I and was completed by 1931. The gardening and planning of plantations was led by A.E.P. Griessen, and later William Mustoe. The city that was later dubbed \"Lutyens' Delhi\" was inaugurated in ceremonies beginning on 10 February 1931 by Viceroy Irwin. Lutyens designed the central administrative area of the city as a testament to Britain's imperial aspirations.\nSoon Lutyens started considering other places. Indeed, the Delhi Town Planning Committee, set up to plan the new imperial capital, with George Swinton as chairman, and John A. Brodie and Lutyens as members, submitted reports for both north and south sites. However, it was rejected by the Viceroy when the cost of acquiring the necessary properties was found to be too high. The central axis of New Delhi, which today faces east at India Gate, was previously meant to be a north\u2013south axis linking the Viceroy's House at one end with Paharganj at the other. Eventually, owing to space constraints and the presence of a large number of heritage sites on the north side, the committee settled on the south site. A site atop the Raisina Hill, formerly Raisina Village, a Meo village, was chosen for the Rashtrapati Bhawan, then known as the Viceroy's House. The reason for this choice was that the hill lay directly opposite the Dinapanah citadel, which was also considered the site of Indraprastha, the ancient region of Delhi. Subsequently, the foundation stone was shifted from the site of Delhi Durbar of 1911\u20131912, where the Coronation Pillar stood, and embedded in the walls of the forecourt of the Secretariat. The Rajpath, also known as King's Way, stretched from the India Gate to the Rashtrapati Bhawan. The Secretariat building, the two blocks of which flank the Rashtrapati Bhawan and houses ministries of the government of India, and the Parliament House, both designed by Baker, are located at the Sansad Marg and run parallel to the Rajpath.\nIn the south, land up to Safdarjung's Tomb was acquired to create what is today known as Lutyens' Bungalow Zone. Before construction could begin on the rocky ridge of Raisina Hill, a circular railway line around the Council House (now Parliament House), called the \"Imperial Delhi Railway\", was built to transport construction material and workers for the next twenty years. The last stumbling block was the Agra-Delhi railway line that cut right through the site earmarked for the hexagonal All-India War Memorial (India Gate) and Kingsway (Rajpath), which was a problem because the Old Delhi Railway Station served the entire city at that time. The line was shifted to run along the Yamuna River, and it began operating in 1924. The New Delhi Railway Station opened in 1926, with a single platform at Ajmeri Gate near Paharganj, and was completed in time for the city's inauguration in 1931. As construction of the Viceroy's House (the present Rashtrapati Bhavan), Central Secretariat, Parliament House, and All-India War Memorial (India Gate) was winding down, the building of a shopping district and a new plaza, Connaught Place, began in 1929, and was completed by 1933. Named after Prince Arthur, 1st Duke of Connaught (1850\u20131942), it was designed by Robert Tor Russell, chief architect to the Public Works Department (PWD).\nAfter the capital of India moved to Delhi, a temporary secretariat building was constructed in a few months in 1912 in North Delhi. Most of the government offices of the new capital moved here from the 'Old secretariat' in Old Delhi (the building now houses the Delhi Legislative Assembly), a decade before the new capital was inaugurated in 1931. Many employees were brought into the new capital from distant parts of India, including the Bengal Presidency and Madras Presidency. Subsequently, housing for them has developed around Gole Market area in the 1920s. Built in the 1940s, to house government employees, with bungalows for senior officials in the nearby Lodi Estate area, Lodi Colony near historic Lodi Gardens, was the last residential areas built by the British Raj.\nPost-independence.\nAfter India gained independence in 1947, limited autonomy was conferred to New Delhi and was administered by a Chief Commissioner appointed by the Government of India. In 1966, Delhi was converted into a union territory and eventually the Chief Commissioner was replaced by a Lieutenant Governor. The Constitution (Sixty-ninth Amendment) Act, 1991 declared the Union Territory of Delhi to be formally known as the National Capital Territory of Delhi. A system was introduced under which the elected government was given wide powers, excluding law and order which remained with the Central Government. The actual enforcement of the legislation came in 1993.\nThe first major extension of New Delhi outside of Lutyens' Delhi came in the 1950s when the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) developed a large area of land southwest of Lutyens' Delhi to create the diplomatic enclave of Chanakyapuri, where land was allotted for embassies, chanceries, high commissions and residences of ambassadors, around a wide central vista, \"Shanti Path\".\nGeography.\nWith a total area of , the municipality of New Delhi forms a small part of the Delhi metropolitan area. Since the city is located on the Indo-Gangetic Plain, there is little difference in elevation across the city. New Delhi and surrounding areas were once a part of the Aravali Range; all that is left of those mountains is the Delhi Ridge, which is also called the Lungs of Delhi. While New Delhi lies on the floodplains of the Yamuna River, it is essentially a landlocked city. East of the river is the urban area of Shahdara.\nSeismology.\nNew Delhi falls under the seismic zone-IV, making it vulnerable to earthquakes. It lies on several fault lines and thus experiences frequent earthquakes, most of them of mild intensity. There was a spike in the number of earthquakes between 2011 and 2015, most notable being a 5.4 magnitude earthquake in 2015 with its epicentre in Nepal, a 4.7-magnitude earthquake on 25 November 2007, a 4.2-magnitude earthquake on 7 September 2011, a 5.2-magnitude earthquake on 5 March 2012, and a swarm of twelve earthquakes, including four of magnitudes 2.5, 2.8, 3.1, and 3.3, on 12 November 2013.\nClimate.\nThe climate of New Delhi is a dry-winter humid subtropical climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Cwa\") bordering on a hot semi-arid climate (K\u00f6ppen \"BSh\") with high variation between summer and winter in terms of both temperature and rainfall. The temperature varies from in summers to around in winters. The area's version of a humid subtropical climate is noticeably different from many other cities with this climate classification in that it features long and extremely hot summers with dust storms, relatively dry and mild winters with wildfire haze, and a monsoonal period. Summers are long, extending from early April to October, with the monsoon season occurring in the middle of the summer. Winter starts in November and peaks in January. Winters are very mild. The annual mean temperature is around ; monthly daily mean temperatures range from approximately . New Delhi's highest temperature ever recorded is on 28 May 2024 at Met Delhi Mungeshpur while the lowest temperature ever recorded is on 11 January 1967 at Indira Gandhi International Airport (formerly known as Palam Airport). The average annual rainfall is and monsoon rainfall from June to September is about , most of which is during the monsoons in July and August.\nAir quality.\nIn Mercer's 2015 annual quality-of-living survey, New Delhi ranks at number 154 out of 230 cities due to bad air quality and pollution. The World Health Organization ranked New Delhi as the world's worst polluted city in 2014 among about 1,600 cities the organisation tracked around the world. In 2016, United States Environmental Protection Agency listed New Delhi as the most polluted city on Earth and IQAir listed New Delhi as the world's most polluted capital city for the second straight year in year 2019.\nIn an attempt to lessen air pollution in New Delhi, which gets worse during the winter, a temporary alternate-day travel scheme for cars using the odd- and even-numbered licence plates system was announced by Delhi government in December 2015. In addition, trucks were to be allowed to enter India's capital only after 11\u00a0pm, two hours later than the existing restriction. The driving restriction scheme was planned to be implemented as a trial from 1 January 2016 for an initial period of 15 days. The restriction was in force between 8\u00a0am and 8\u00a0pm, and traffic was not restricted on Sundays. Public transportation service was increased during the restriction period.\nOn 16 December 2015, the Supreme Court of India mandated several restrictions on Delhi's transportation system to curb pollution. Among the measures, the court ordered to stop registrations of diesel cars and sport utility vehicles with an engine capacity of 2,000 cc and over until 31 March 2016. The court also ordered all taxis in the Delhi region to switch to compressed natural gas by 1 March 2016. Transportation vehicles that are more than 10 years old were banned from entering the capital.\nAnalysing real-time vehicle speed data from Uber Delhi revealed that during the odd-even program, average speeds went up by a statistically significant 5.4 per cent (2.8 standard deviations from normal). This means vehicles have less idling time in traffic and vehicle engines would run closer to minimum fuel consumption. In bordering areas, PM 2.5 levels were recorded more than 400 (ug/m3) while in inner areas in Delhi, they were recorded between 150 and 210 on an average. However, the sub-city of Dwarka, located in the southwest district, has a substantially low level of air pollution. At the NSIT University campus, located in sector 3 Dwarka, pollution levels were as low as 93 PPM.\nOn 7 November 2017, the Indian Medical Association declared a public health emergency due to high pollution levels. The highest being in the Punjabi Bagh district with an air quality index of 999 and in the RK Puram district with an index of 852. The lowest index recorded was in the Anand Vihar district with an index of 319. Levels of PM2.5 were recorded at 710\u00a0\u03bcg/m3, more than 11 times the World Health Organization's safe limit.\nIn a 2018 study, New Delhi was found to be the most polluted capital out of 61 capital cities around the world. In December 2019, IIT Bombay, in partnership with the McKelvey School of Engineering of Washington University in St. Louis, launched the Aerosol and Air Quality Research Facility to study air pollution in New Delhi, among other Indian cities. During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in India, the water quality of the Yamuna and Ganges river basins have improved as industries are closed due to the lockdown. The air quality has also significantly improved during the lockdown. On 5 November 2020, New Delhi recorded its most toxic day in a year, as the concentration of poisonous PM2.5 particles was recorded at 14 times the WHO's safe limit.\nDemographics.\nAs of 2011, the New Delhi Municipal Council area has a population of 249,998. Hindi is the most widely spoken language in New Delhi and the lingua franca of the city. English is primarily used as the formal language by business and government institutes. New Delhi has a literacy rate of 89.38% according to 2011 census, which is the highest in Delhi.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nReligion.\nAccording to 2011 census, Hinduism is the religion of 89.8% of New Delhi's population. There are also communities of Muslims (4.5%), Christians (2.9%), Sikhs (2.0%), Jains (0.4%). Other religious groups include Parsis, Buddhists, and Jews.\nGovernment.\nThe national capital of India, New Delhi is jointly administered by both the Central Government of India and the local Government of Delhi, it is also the capital of the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi.\nNew Delhi is administered through a municipal government, known as the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC). The other urban areas of the metropolis of Delhi are administered by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and Delhi Cantonment Board. As of 2015[ [update]], the government structure of the New Delhi Municipal Council includes a chairperson, three members of New Delhi's Legislative Assembly, two members nominated by the Chief Minister of the NCT of Delhi and five members nominated by the central government.\nThe districts of the NCT were redrawn in 2012 and include a district called New Delhi, albeit with different borders than the municipality. The New Delhi district includes not only the area of the municipality of the same name but also encompasses the Delhi Cantonment and parts of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi area.\nEconomy.\nNew Delhi is the largest commercial city in northern India. It has an estimated net State Domestic Product (FY 2010) of () in nominal terms and ~ () in PPP terms. As of 2013[ [update]], the per capita income of Delhi was Rs. 230000, second highest in India after Goa. GSDP in Delhi at the prices for 2012\u201313 is estimated at Rs 3.88\u00a0trillion (short scale) against Rs 3.11\u00a0trillion (short scale) in 2011\u201312.\nConnaught Place, one of North India's largest commercial and financial centres, is located in the northern part of New Delhi. Adjoining areas such as Barakhamba Road, ITO are also major commercial centres. The government and quasi-government sector was the primary employer in New Delhi. The city's service sector has expanded due in part to the large skilled English-speaking workforce that has attracted many multinational companies. Key service industries include information technology, telecommunications, hotels, banking, media, and tourism.\nThe 2011 World Wealth Report ranks economic activity in New Delhi at 39, but overall the capital is ranked at 37, above cities like Jakarta and Johannesburg. New Delhi, with Beijing, shares the top position as the most targeted emerging markets retail destination among Asia-Pacific markets.\nThe government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi does not release any economic figures specifically for New Delhi but publishes an official economic report on the whole of Delhi annually. According to the \"Economic Survey of Delhi\", the metropolis has a net State Domestic Product (SDP) of Rs. 830.85\u00a0billion (for the year 2004\u201305) and a per capita income of Rs. 53,976 ($1,200). In the year 2008\u201309 New Delhi had a per capita Income of Rs. ($2,595). It grew by 16.2% to reach Rs. ($3,018) in 2009\u201310 fiscal. New Delhi's per capita GDP (at PPP) was at $6,860 during 2009\u201310 fiscal, making it one of the richest cities in India. The tertiary sector contributes 78.4% of Delhi's gross SDP followed by secondary and primary sectors with 20.2% and 1.4% contribution respectively.\nThe gross state domestic product (GSDP) of Delhi at prices for the year 2011\u201312 has been estimated at Rs 3.13\u00a0trillion (short scale), which is an increase of 18.7 per cent over the previous fiscal.\nCulture.\nNew Delhi is a cosmopolitan city due to the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural presence of the vast Indian bureaucracy and political system. The city's capital status has amplified the importance of national events and holidays. National events such as Republic Day, Independence Day and \"Gandhi Jayanti\" (Gandhi's birthday) are celebrated with great enthusiasm in New Delhi and the rest of India. On India's Independence Day (15 August), the prime minister of India addresses the nation from the Red Fort. Most Delhiites celebrate the day by flying kites, which are considered a symbol of freedom. The Republic Day Parade is a large cultural and military parade showcasing India's cultural diversity and military might.\nReligious festivals include Diwali (the festival of light), Maha Shivaratri, Teej, Durga Puja, Chhath Puja, Mahavir Jayanti, Guru Nanak Jayanti, Holi, Lohri, Eid ul-Fitr, Eid ul-Adha, Easter, Raksha Bandhan, and Christmas. The Qutub Festival is a cultural event during which performances of musicians and dancers from all over India are showcased at night, with the Qutub Minar as the chosen backdrop of the event. Other events such as Kite Flying Festival, International Mango Festival and \"Vasant Panchami\" (the Spring Festival) are held every year in Delhi.\nIn 2007, the Japanese Buddhist organisation Nipponzan Myohoji decided to build a Peace Pagoda in the city containing Buddha relics. It was inaugurated by the Dalai Lama.\nHistoric sites, museums and gardens.\nNew Delhi is home to several historic sites and museums. The National Museum, which began with an exhibition of Indian art and artefacts at the Royal Academy in London in the winter of 1947\u201348, was later at the end was shown at the Rashtrapati Bhawan in 1949. Later it was to form a permanent National Museum. On 15 August 1949, the National Museum was formally inaugurated and has 200,000 works of art, both of Indian and foreign origin, covering over 5,000 years.\nThe India Gate, which was built in 1931, was inspired by the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. It is the national monument of India commemorating the 90,000 soldiers of the Indian Army who died while fighting for the British Raj in World War I and the Third Anglo-Afghan War. The monument is barricaded now with entry to the inside arch restricted.\nThe Rajpath, which was built similar to the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es in Paris, is the ceremonial boulevard for the Republic of India, located in New Delhi. The annual Republic Day parade takes place here on 26 January. The Beating retreat takes place here two days later.\nGandhi Smriti in New Delhi is the location where Mahatma Gandhi spent the last 144 days of his life and was assassinated on 30 January 1948. Rajghat is the place where Gandhi was cremated on 31 January 1948 after his assassination and his ashes were buried and make it a final resting place beside the sanctity of the Yamuna River. The Raj Ghat in the shape of the large square platform with black marble was designed by architect Vanu Bhuta.\nJantar Mantar located in Connaught Place was built by Maharaja Jai Singh II of Jaipur. It consists of 13 architectural astronomy instruments. The primary purpose of the observatory was to compile astronomical tables, and to predict the times and movements of the sun, moon and planets.\nNew Delhi is home to Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum, National Gallery of Modern Art, National Museum of Natural History, National Rail Museum, National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum, National Philatelic Museum, Nehru Planetarium, Shankar's International Dolls Museum. and Supreme Court of India Museum,\nIn the coming years, a new National War Memorial and Museum will be constructed in New Delhi for million ().\nNew Delhi is particularly renowned for its beautifully landscaped gardens that can look quite stunning in spring. The largest of these include Buddha Jayanti Park and the historic Lodi Gardens. In addition, there are the gardens in the Presidential Estate, the gardens along the Rajpath and India Gate, the gardens along Shanti Path, the Rose Garden, Nehru Park and the Railway Garden in Chanakya Puri. Also of note is the garden adjacent to the Jangpura Metro Station near the Defence Colony Flyover, as are the roundabout and neighbourhood gardens throughout the city.\nThe New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) area was declared the cleanest in North India, based on solid waste management, access to sanitation and other parameters of cleanliness, under the zone-wise Swachh Survekshan 2017.\nCityscape.\nMuch of New Delhi, planned by the leading 20th-century British architect Edwin Lutyens, was laid out to be the central administrative area of the city as a testament to Britain's imperial ambitions. New Delhi is structured around two central promenades called the Rajpath and the Janpath. The Rajpath, or King's Way, stretches from the Rashtrapati Bhavan to the India Gate. The Janpath (), formerly Queen's Way, begins at Connaught Circus and cuts the Rajpath at right angles. Nineteen foreign embassies are located on the nearby Shantipath (), making it the largest diplomatic enclave in India.\nAt the heart of the city is the magnificent Rashtrapati Bhavan (formerly known as Viceroy's House) which sits atop Raisina Hill. The Secretariat, which houses ministries of the government of India, flanks out of the Rashtrapati Bhavan. The Parliament House, designed by Herbert Baker, is located at the Sansad Marg, which runs parallel to the Rajpath. Connaught Place is a large, circular commercial area in New Delhi, modelled after the Royal Crescent in England. Twelve separate roads lead out of the outer ring of Connaught Place, one of them being the Janpath.\nArchitecture.\nThe New Delhi town plan, like its architecture, was chosen with one single chief consideration: to be a symbol of British power and supremacy. All other decisions were subordinate to this, and it was this framework that dictated the choice and application of symbology and influences from both Hindu and Islamic architecture.\nIt took about 20 years to build the city from 1911. Many elements of New Delhi architecture borrow from indigenous sources; however, they fit into a British Classical/Palladian tradition. The fact that there were any indigenous features in the design was due to the persistence and urging of both the Viceroy Hardinge and historians like E.B. Havell.\nIn the year 2019, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and Government of India introduced the Central Vista redevelopment project proposing the redevelopment of over , costing \u20b9 crore ().\nTransport.\nAir.\nIndira Gandhi International Airport, situated to the southwest of Delhi, is the main gateway for the city's domestic and international civilian air traffic. In 2012\u201313, the airport was used by more than 35\u00a0million passengers, making it one of the busiest airports in South Asia. Terminal 3, which cost () to construct between 2007 and 2010, handles an additional 37\u00a0million passengers annually.\nThe Delhi Flying Club, established in 1928 with two de Havilland Moth aircraft named \"Delhi\" and \"Roshanara\", was based at \"Safdarjung Airport\" which started operations in 1929, when it was the Delhi's only airport and the second in India. The airport functioned until 2001; however, in January 2002 the government closed the airport for flying activities because of security concerns following the New York attacks in September 2001. Since then, the club only carries out aircraft maintenance courses, and is used for helicopter rides to Indira Gandhi International Airport for VIP including the president and the prime minister.\nIn 2010, Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) was conferred the fourth best airport award in the world in the 15\u201325\u00a0million category, and \"Best Improved Airport\" in the Asia-Pacific Region by Airports Council International. The airport was rated as the \"Best airport in the world\" in the 25\u201340\u00a0million passengers category in 2015, by Airports Council International. Delhi Airport also bags two awards for \"The Best Airport in Central Asia/India\" and \"Best Airport Staff in Central Asia/India\" at the Skytrax World Airport Awards 2015.\nA second airport, Noida International Airport, is currently being built in Jewar.\nRoad.\nNew Delhi has one of India's largest bus transport systems. Buses are operated by the state-owned Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC), which owns the largest fleet of compressed natural gas (CNG)-fueled buses in the world and Delhi Transit. Personal vehicles especially cars also form a major chunk of vehicles plying on New Delhi roads. New Delhi has the highest number of registered cars compared to any other metropolitan city in India. Taxis and Auto Rickshaws also ply on New Delhi roads in large numbers. New Delhi has one of the highest road density in India and average vehicle speed is around in peak hours in the city.\nSome roads and expressways serve as important pillars of New Delhi's road infrastructure:\nNational Highways.\nNew Delhi is connected by road to the rest of India through National highways:\nRailway.\nNew Delhi is a major junction in the Indian railway network and is the headquarters of the Northern Railway. The five main railway stations are New Delhi railway station, Delhi Junction, Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station, Anand Vihar Terminal and Sarai Rohilla. The Delhi Ring Railway, a circular railway network in Delhi that runs parallel to the Ring Road, is a part of Delhi's suburban railway services.\nMetro.\nThe Delhi Metro is a rapid transit system serving Delhi, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon and Noida in the National Capital Region of India. Delhi Metro is the world's 12th largest metro system in terms of length. Delhi Metro was India's first modern public transportation system, which had revolutionised travel by providing a fast, reliable, safe, and comfortable means of transport. Presently, the network consists of 10 colour-coded lines serving 255 stations with a total length of . The network has now crossed the boundaries of Delhi to reach Ghaziabad and Noida in Uttar Pradesh, and Faridabad and Gurgaon in Haryana. All stations have escalators, elevators, and tactile tiles to guide the visually impaired from station entrances to trains. It has a combination of elevated, at-grade, and underground lines, and uses both broad gauge and standard gauge rolling stock. Four types of rolling stock are used: Mitsubishi-ROTEM Broad gauge, Bombardier MOVIA, Mitsubishi-ROTEM Standard gauge, and CAF Beasain Standard gauge. According to a study, Delhi Metro has helped in removing about 390,000 vehicles from the streets of Delhi.\nDelhi Metro is being built and operated by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Limited (DMRC), a state-owned company with equal equity participation from the Government of India and the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi. However, the organisation is under administrative control of the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India. Besides the construction and operation of the Delhi metro, DMRC is also involved in the planning and implementation of metro rail, monorail and high-speed rail projects in India and providing consultancy services to other metro projects in the country as well as abroad. The Delhi Metro project was spearheaded by E. Sreedharan, the managing director of DMRC and popularly known as the \"Metro Man\" of India. He famously resigned from DMRC, taking moral responsibility for a metro bridge collapse which took five lives. Sreedharan was awarded with the Legion of Honour by the French government for his contribution to Delhi Metro.\nSports.\nThe city hosted the 2010 Commonwealth Games and annually hosts Delhi Half Marathon foot-race. The city has previously hosted the 1951 Asian Games and the 1982 Asian Games. New Delhi was interested in bidding for the 2019 Asian Games but was turned down by the government on 2 August 2010 amid allegations of corruption in 2010 Commonwealth Games. The city also had a bid to host the 1992 Summer Olympics, but withdrew in March 1986, seven months before the host selection.\nMajor sporting venues in New Delhi include the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Ambedkar Stadium, Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium, Arun Jaitley Stadium, R.K. Khanna Tennis Complex, Dhyan Chand National Stadium and Siri Fort Sports Complex. \nInternational relations and organisations.\nThe city is home to numerous international organisations. The Asian and Pacific Centre for Transfer of Technology of the UNESCAP servicing the Asia-Pacific region is headquartered in New Delhi. New Delhi is home to most UN regional offices in India namely the UNDP, UNODC, UNESCO, UNICEF, WFP, UNV, UNCTAD, FAO, UNFPA, WHO, World Bank, ILO, IMF, UNIFEM, IFC and UNAIDS. UNHCR Representation in India is also located in the city.\nNew Delhi hosts 145 foreign embassies and high commissions.\nSummits, conferences and conventions.\nUnited Nations Conference on Trade and Development hosted its second meeting conference in the year 1968 at New Delhi.\nNew Delhi hosted the 7th NAM Summit in 1983, 4th BRICS Summit in 2012, IBSA Summit in 2015, and 5th Global Conference on CyberSpace in 2017. India has also host the G20 summit in 2023 in New Delhi.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "31985659": "Ankit Sharma (footballer)\nAnkit Sharma (born on 30 July 1991, in New Delhi) is an Indian professional football player who play as Midfielder and Striker. He has played for Delhi Football Team, Youth Indian National teams, HAL Bangalore and in the Divisiones Regionales de F\u00fatbol in the Community of Madrid, Spain. He is the first Indian to sign a professional contract with a Spanish Club and the fifth Indian to play overseas in the history of Indian Football.\nClub career.\nHAL.\nAnkit's professional career began at the young age of 19 with HAL in the I-league, 2010-11 season.\nSharma got injured in the Dr. B.C Roy Trophy Semi-Final match and had a six-month outing, but he recovered well and came back after recovering from a knee injury.\nHe appeared in all the matches post-signing for Hindustan Aeronautics Limited S.C. in 2010\u201311 season\nHe had one of the rarest and saddest experiences while playing his trade at his first club. HAL goalkeeper Arun Kumar collided with Ankit in a training session just before the match against Pune FC, fracturing his right shin bone and injuring Ankit's right knee, which kept him out of training for a week's rest.\nSan Cristobal.\nAnkit Sharma became the first Indian to sign a professional contract with a Spanish Club in 2011-12 and the fifth Indian to play overseas in the history of Indian Football. He signed for Spanish club in the Divisiones Regionales de F\u00fatbol in the Community of Madrid after a successful season with HAL in I-league 2010-11 season.\nBhawanipore.\nFor 2012-13, he signed a contract with IInd Division I-League and Calcutta Football League outfit Bhawanipore FC.\nHonours.\nIndia U-19\nHAL\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "35917265": "Ankit Sharma (cricketer)\nIndian cricketer (born 1991)\nAnkit Nagendra Sharma (born 20 April 1991) is an Indian cricketer who plays for Puducherry in domestic cricket. He is a left-handed batsman and a slow left-arm orthodox bowler.\nIn the 2015\u201316 season of Ranji Trophy, Ankit was the second-highest wicket-taker for Madhya Pradesh, picking up 33 wickets in 9 matches. Ankit also took his career-best bowling figures of 7 for 91 against Andhra Pradesh in that season, helping his team to quarter-final stage.\nHe scored his first century (104 runs) playing for Madhya Pradesh at Indore against Baroda during Ranji Trophy 2017-18 session.\nIn January 2018, he was bought by the Rajasthan Royals in the 2018 IPL auction.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "51073108": "Ankit Sharma (athlete)\nIndian long jumper\nAnkit Sharma (born 20 July 1992) is an Indian athlete who competes in the long jump event. He holds the long jump national record of 8.19 metres set"}, "descending_order": ["35917265", "51073108", "31985659", "51585"], "permutation_1": ["51073108", "51585", "35917265", "31985659"], "permutation_2": ["51585", "35917265", "51073108", "31985659"], "permutation_3": ["51585", "31985659", "35917265", "51073108"]}
{"id": "2hop__147409_42292", "docs_added": {"32908": "Warsaw\nCapital and largest city of Poland\nWarsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at 1.86\u00a0million residents within a greater metropolitan area of 3.27\u00a0million residents, which makes Warsaw the 6th most-populous city in the European Union. The city area measures and comprises 18 districts, while the metropolitan area covers . Warsaw is classified as an alpha global city, a major political, economic and cultural hub, and the country's seat of government. It is also the capital of the Masovian Voivodeship.\nWarsaw traces its origins to a small fishing town in Masovia. The city rose to prominence in the late 16th century, when Sigismund III decided to move the Polish capital and his royal court from Krak\u00f3w. Warsaw surpassed Gda\u0144sk as Poland's most populous city by the 18th century. It served as the de facto capital of the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1795, and subsequently as the seat of Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. The 19th century and its Industrial Revolution brought a demographic boom, which made it one of the largest and most densely populated cities in Europe. Known then for its elegant architecture and boulevards, Warsaw was bombed and besieged at the start of World War II in 1939. Much of the historic city was destroyed and its diverse population decimated by the Ghetto Uprising in 1943, the general Warsaw Uprising in 1944, and systematic razing.\nWarsaw is served by three international airports, the busiest being Warsaw Chopin, as well as Warsaw Modlin and Warsaw Radom Airport. Major public transport services operating in the city include the Warsaw Metro, buses, commuter rail service and an extensive tram network. The city is a significant economic centre for the region, with the Warsaw Stock Exchange being the largest in Central and Eastern Europe. It is the base for Frontex, the European Union agency for external border security, and ODIHR, one of the principal institutions of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Warsaw has one of Europe's highest concentrations of skyscrapers, and the Varso Tower is the tallest building in the European Union.\nThe city's primary educational and cultural institutions comprise the University of Warsaw, the Warsaw University of Technology, the SGH Warsaw School of Economics, the Chopin University of Music, the Polish Academy of Sciences, the National Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Museum, and the Warsaw Grand Theatre, the largest of its kind in the world. The reconstructed Old Town, which represents a variety of European architectural styles, was listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1980. Other landmarks include the Royal Castle, Sigismund's Column, the Wilan\u00f3w Palace, the Palace on the Isle, St. John's Archcathedral, Main Market Square, and numerous churches and mansions along the Royal Route. Warsaw is a green capital, with around a quarter of the city's area occupied by parks. In sports, the city is home to Legia Warsaw football club and hosts the annual Warsaw Marathon.\nToponymy and names.\nWarsaw's name in the Polish language is . Other previous spellings of the name may have included: , , or . The exact origin and meaning of the name is uncertain and has not been fully determined. Originally, Warszawa was the name of a small fishing settlement on the banks of the Vistula river. One hypothesis states that means \"belonging to Warsz\", being a shortened form of the masculine Old Polish name Warcis\u0142aw, which etymologically is linked with Wroc\u0142aw. However the ending -awa is unusual for a large city; the names of Polish cities derived from personal names usually end in -\u00f3w/owo/ew/ewo (e.g. Piotrk\u00f3w, Adam\u00f3w).\nFolk etymology attributes the city name to Wars and Sawa. There are several versions of the legend with their appearance. According to one version, Sawa was a mermaid living in the Vistula with whom fisherman Wars fell in love. The official city name in full is (\"The Capital City of Warsaw\").\nA native or resident of Warsaw is known as a \"Varsovian\" \u2013 in Polish , (male); (female); , and (plural). \nHistory.\n1300\u20131800.\nThe first fortified settlements on the site of today's Warsaw were located in Br\u00f3dno (9th/10th century) and Jazd\u00f3w (12th/13th century). After Jazd\u00f3w was raided by nearby clans and dukes, a new fortified settlement was established on the site of a small fishing village called \"Warszowa\". The Prince of P\u0142ock, Boles\u0142aw II of Masovia, established the modern-day city in about 1300 and the first historical document attesting to the existence of a castellany dates to 1313. With the completion of St John's Cathedral in 1390, Warsaw became one of the seats of the Dukes of Masovia and was officially made capital of the Masovian Duchy in 1413. The economy then predominantly rested on craftsmanship or trade, and the town housed approximately 4,500 people at the time.\nDuring the 15th century, the population migrated and spread beyond the northern city wall into a newly formed self-governing precinct called New Town. The existing older settlement became eventually known as the Old Town. Both possessed their own town charter and independent councils. The aim of establishing a separate district was to accommodate new incomers or \"undesirables\" who were not permitted to settle in Old Town, particularly Jews. Social and financial disparities between the classes in the two precincts led to a minor revolt in 1525. Following the sudden death of Janusz III and the extinction of the local ducal line, Masovia was incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland in 1526. Bona Sforza, wife of Sigismund I of Poland, was widely accused of poisoning the duke to uphold Polish rule over Warsaw.\nIn 1529, Warsaw for the first time became the seat of a General Sejm and held that privilege permanently from 1569. The city's rising importance encouraged the construction of a new set of defenses, including the landmark Barbican. Renowned Italian architects were brought to Warsaw to reshape the Royal Castle, the streets and the marketplace, resulting in the Old Town's early Italianate appearance. In 1573, the city gave its name to the Warsaw Confederation which formally established religious freedom in the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth. Due to its central location between the capitals of the Commonwealth's two component parts, Poland and Lithuania, which were Krak\u00f3w and Vilnius respectively, Warsaw became the capital of the Commonwealth and the Polish Crown when Sigismund III Vasa transferred his royal court in 1596. In the subsequent years the town significantly expanded to the south and westwards. Several private independent districts (\"jurydyka\") were the property of aristocrats and the gentry, which they ruled by their own laws. Between 1655 and 1658 the city was besieged and pillaged by the Swedish, Brandenburgian and Transylvanian forces. The conduct of the Great Northern War (1700\u20131721) also forced Warsaw to pay heavy tributes to the invading armies.\nThe reign of Augustus II and Augustus III was a time of great development for Warsaw, which turned into an early-capitalist city. The Saxon monarchs employed many German architects, sculptors and engineers, who rebuilt the city in a style similar to Dresden. The year 1727 marked the opening of the Saxon Garden in Warsaw, the first publicly accessible park. The Za\u0142uski Library, the first Polish public library and the largest at the time, was founded in 1747. Stanis\u0142aw II Augustus, who remodelled the interior of the Royal Castle, also made Warsaw a centre of culture and the arts. He extended the Royal Baths Park and ordered the construction or refurbishment of numerous palaces, mansions and richly-decorated tenements. This earned Warsaw the nickname \"Paris of the North\".\nWarsaw remained the capital of the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1795 when it was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia in the third and final partition of Poland; it subsequently became the capital of the province of South Prussia. During this time, Louis XVIII of France spent his exile in Warsaw under the pseudonym \"Comte de Lille\".\n1800\u20131939.\nWarsaw was made the capital of a newly created French client state, known as the Duchy of Warsaw, after a portion of Poland's territory was liberated from Prussia, Russia and Austria by Napoleon in 1806. Following Napoleon's defeat and exile, the 1815 Congress of Vienna assigned Warsaw to Congress Poland, a constitutional monarchy within the easternmost sector (or partition) under a personal union with Imperial Russia. The Royal University of Warsaw was established in 1816.\nWith the violation of the Polish constitution, the 1830 November Uprising broke out against foreign influence. The Polish-Russian war of 1831 ended in the uprising's defeat and in the curtailment of Congress Poland's autonomy. On 27 February 1861, a Warsaw crowd protesting against Russian control over Congress Poland was fired upon by Russian troops. Five people were killed. The Underground Polish National Government resided in Warsaw during the January Uprising in 1863\u201364.\nWarsaw flourished throughout the 19th century under Mayor Sokrates Starynkiewicz (1875\u201392), who was appointed by Alexander III. Under Starynkiewicz Warsaw saw its first water and sewer systems designed and built by the English engineer William Lindley and his son, William Heerlein Lindley, as well as the expansion and modernisation of trams, street lighting, and gas infrastructure. Between 1850 and 1882, the population grew by 134% to 383,000 as a result of rapid urbanisation and industrialisation. Many migrated from surrounding rural Masovian towns and villages to the city for employment opportunities. The western borough of Wola was transformed from an agricultural periphery occupied mostly by small farms and windmills (mills being the namesake of Wola's central neighbourhood M\u0142yn\u00f3w) to an industrial and manufacturing centre. Metallurgical, textile and glassware factories were commonplace, with chimneys dominating the westernmost skyline.\nLike London, Warsaw's population was subjected to income segmentation. Gentrification of inner suburbs forced poorer residents to move across the river into Praga or Powi\u015ble and Solec districts, similar to the East End of London and London Docklands. Poorer religious and ethnic minorities, such as the Jews, settled in the crowded parts of northern Warsaw, in Muran\u00f3w. The Imperial Census of 1897 recorded 626,000 people living in Warsaw, making it the third-largest city of the Empire after St. Petersburg and Moscow as well as the largest city in the region. Grand architectural complexes and structures were also erected in the city centre, including the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Church of the Holiest Saviour and tenements along Marsza\u0142kowska Street.\nDuring World War I, Warsaw was occupied by Germany from 4 August 1915 until November 1918. The Armistice of 11 November 1918 concluded that defeated Germany is to withdraw from all foreign areas, which included Warsaw. Germany did so, and underground leader J\u00f3zef Pi\u0142sudski returned to Warsaw on the same day which marked the beginning of the Second Polish Republic, the first truly sovereign Polish state after 1795. In the course of the Polish\u2013Soviet War (1919\u20131921), the 1920 Battle of Warsaw was fought on the eastern outskirts of the city. Poland successfully defended the capital, stopped the brunt of the Bolshevik Red Army and temporarily halted the \"export of the communist revolution\" to other parts of Europe.\nThe interwar period (1918\u20131939) was a time of major development in the city's infrastructure. New modernist housing estates were built in Mokot\u00f3w to de-clutter the densely populated inner suburbs. In 1921, Warsaw's total area was estimated at only 124.7\u00a0km2 with 1 million inhabitants\u2013over 8,000 people/km2 made Warsaw more densely populated than contemporary London. The \u015arednicowy Bridge was constructed for railway (1921\u20131931), connecting both parts of the city across the Vistula. Warszawa G\u0142\u00f3wna railway station (1932\u20131939) was not completed due to the outbreak of the Second World War.\nStefan Starzy\u0144ski was the Mayor of Warsaw between 1934 and 1939.\nSecond World War.\nAfter the German Invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 started the Second World War, Warsaw was defended until 27 September. Central Poland, including Warsaw, came under the rule of the General Government, a German Nazi colonial administration. All higher education institutions were immediately closed and Warsaw's entire Jewish population \u2013 several hundred thousand, some 30% of the city\u00a0\u2013 were herded into the Warsaw Ghetto. In July 1942, the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto began to be deported en masse to the Aktion Reinhard extermination camps, particularly Treblinka. The city would become the centre of urban resistance to Nazi rule in occupied Europe. When the order came to annihilate the ghetto as part of Hitler's \"Final Solution\" on 19 April 1943, Jewish fighters launched the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Despite being heavily outgunned and outnumbered, the ghetto held out for almost a month. When the fighting ended, almost all survivors were massacred, with only a few managing to escape or hide.\nBy July 1944, the Red Army was deep into Polish territory and pursuing the Nazis toward Warsaw. The Polish government-in-exile in London gave orders to the underground Home Army (AK) to try to seize control of Warsaw before the Red Army arrived. Thus, on 1 August 1944, as the Red Army was nearing the city, the Warsaw uprising began. The armed struggle, planned to last 48 hours, was partially successful, however, it went on for 63 days. Eventually, the Home Army fighters and civilians assisting them were forced to capitulate. They were transported to PoW camps in Germany, while the entire civilian population was expelled. Polish civilian deaths are estimated at between 150,000 and 200,000.\nHitler, ignoring the agreed terms of the capitulation, ordered the entire city to be razed to the ground and the library and museum collections taken to Germany or burned. Monuments and government buildings were blown up by special German troops known as \"Verbrennungs- und Vernichtungskommando\" (\"Burning and Destruction Detachments\"). About 85% of the city was destroyed, including the historic Old Town and the Royal Castle.\nOn 17 January 1945\u00a0\u2013 after the beginning of the Vistula\u2013Oder Offensive of the Red Army\u00a0\u2013 Soviet troops and Polish troops of the First Polish Army entered the ruins of Warsaw, and liberated Warsaw's suburbs from German occupation. The city was swiftly freed by the Soviet Army, which rapidly advanced towards \u0141\u00f3d\u017a, as German forces regrouped at a more westward position.\n1945\u20131989.\nIn 1945, after the bombings, revolts, fighting, and demolition had ended, most of Warsaw lay in ruins. The area of the former ghetto was razed to the ground, with only a sea of rubble remaining. The immense destruction prompted a temporary transfer of the new government and its officials to \u0141\u00f3d\u017a, which became the transitional seat of power. Nevertheless, Warsaw officially resumed its role as the capital of Poland and the country's centre of political and economic life.\nAfter World War II, the \"Bricks for Warsaw\" campaign was initiated and large prefabricated housing projects were erected in Warsaw to address the major housing shortage. Plattenbau-styled apartment buildings were seen as a solution to avoid Warsaw's former density problem and to create more green spaces. Some of the buildings from the 19th century that had survived in a reasonably reconstructible form were nonetheless demolished in the 1950s and 1960s, like the Kronenberg Palace. The \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie (central) region's urban system was completely reshaped; former cobblestone streets were asphalted and significantly widened for traffic use. Many notable streets such as G\u0119sia, Nalewki and Wielka disappeared as a result of these changes and some were split in half due to the construction of Plac Defilad (Parade Square), one of the largest of its kind in Europe.\nMuch of the central district was also designated for future skyscrapers. The 237-metre Palace of Culture and Science resembling New York's Empire State Building was built as a gift from the Soviet Union. Warsaw's urban landscape is one of modern and contemporary architecture. Despite wartime destruction and post-war remodelling, many of the historic streets, buildings, and churches were restored to their original form.\nJohn Paul II's visits to his native country in 1979 and 1983 brought support to the budding \"Solidarity\" movement and encouraged the growing anti-communist fervor there. In 1979, less than a year after becoming pope, John Paul celebrated Mass in Victory Square in Warsaw and ended his sermon with a call to \"renew the face\" of Poland. These words were meaningful for Varsovians and Poles who understood them as the incentive for liberal-democratic reforms.\n1989\u2013present.\nIn 1995, the Warsaw Metro opened with a single line. A second line was opened in March 2015. On 28 September 2022, three new Warsaw metro stations were opened, increasing the number of Warsaw Metro stations to 36 and its length to 38.3 kilometers. In February 2023, Warsaw's mayor, Rafa\u0142 Trzaskowski, announced plans to more than double the size of the city's metro system by 2050.\nWith the entry of Poland into the European Union in 2004,[ [update]] Warsaw is experiencing a large economic boom. The opening fixture of UEFA Euro 2012 took place in Warsaw and the city also hosted the 2013 United Nations Climate Change Conference and the 2016 NATO Summit. As of August 2022, Warsaw had received around 180,000 refugees from Ukraine, because of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The amount means a tenth of the Polish capital's population of 1.8 million \u2014 the second-largest single group of Ukrainian refugees.\nGeography.\nLocation and topography.\nWarsaw lies in east-central Poland about from the Carpathian Mountains and about from the Baltic Sea, east of Berlin, Germany. The city straddles the Vistula River. It is located in the heartland of the Masovian Plain, and its average elevation is above sea level. The highest point on the West side of the city lies at a height of (\"Redutowa\" bus depot, district of Wola), on the East side\u00a0\u2013 (\"Grosz\u00f3wka\" estate, district of Weso\u0142a, by the eastern border). The lowest point lies at a height (at the right bank of the Vistula, by the eastern border of Warsaw). There are some hills (mostly artificial) located within the confines of the city\u00a0\u2013 e.g. Warsaw Uprising Hill () and Szcz\u0119\u015bliwice hill (\u00a0\u2013 the highest point of Warsaw in general).\nWarsaw is located on two main geomorphologic formations: the plain moraine plateau and the Vistula Valley with its asymmetrical pattern of different terraces. The Vistula River is the specific axis of Warsaw, which divides the city into two parts, left and right. The left one is situated both on the moraine plateau ( above Vistula level) and on the Vistula terraces (max. above Vistula level). The significant element of the relief, in this part of Warsaw, is the edge of moraine plateau called Warsaw Escarpment. It is high in the Old Town and Central district and about in the north and south of Warsaw. It goes through the city and plays an important role as a landmark.\nThe plain moraine plateau has only a few natural and artificial ponds and also groups of clay pits. The pattern of the Vistula terraces is asymmetrical. The left side consists mainly of two levels: the highest one contains former flooded terraces and the lowest one is the floodplain terrace. The contemporary flooded terrace still has visible valleys and ground depressions with water systems coming from the old Vistula\u00a0\u2013 riverbed. They consist of still quite natural streams and lakes as well as the pattern of drainage ditches. The right side of Warsaw has a different pattern of geomorphological forms. There are several levels of the Vistula plain terraces (flooded as well as formerly flooded), and only a small part is a not-so-visible moraine escarpment. Aeolian sand with a number of dunes parted by peat swamps or small ponds cover the highest terrace. These are mainly forested areas (pine forest).\nClimate.\nWarsaw experiences an oceanic (K\u00f6ppen: \"Cfb)\" or humid continental (K\u00f6ppen: \"Dfb)\" climate, depending on the isotherm used; although the city used to be humid continental regardless of isotherm prior to the recent effect of climate change and the city's urban heat island. Meanwhile, by the genetic climate classification of Wincenty Oko\u0142owicz, it has a temperate \"fusion\" climate, with both oceanic and continental features.\nThe city has cold, sometimes snowy, cloudy winters, and warm, relatively sunny but frequently stormy summers. Spring and autumn can be unpredictable, highly prone to sudden weather changes; however, temperatures are usually mild, especially around May and September. The daily average temperature ranges between in January and in July and the mean year temperature is . Temperatures may reach in the summer, although the effects of hot weather are usually offset by relatively low dew points and large diurnal temperature differences. Warsaw is Europe's sixth driest major city (driest in Central Europe), with yearly rainfall averaging , the wettest month being July.\nCityscape.\nUrbanism and architecture.\nWarsaw's long and eclectic history left a noticeable mark on its architecture and urban form. Unlike most Polish cities, Warsaw's cityscape is mostly contemporary \u2013 modern glass buildings are towering above older historical edifices which is a common feature of North American metropolises. Warsaw is among the European cities with the highest number of skyscrapers and is home to European Union's tallest building. Skyscrapers are mostly centered around the \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie district, with many located in the commercial district of Wola. A concentric zone pattern emerged within the last decades; the majority of Warsaw's residents live outside the commercial city centre and commute by metro, bus or tram. Tenements and apartments in the central neighbourhoods are often reserved for commercial activity or temporary (tourist, student) accommodation. The nearest residential zones are predominantly located on the outskirts of the inner borough, in Ochota, Mokot\u00f3w and \u017boliborz or along the Vistula in Powi\u015ble.\nA seat of Polish monarchs since the end of the 16th century, Warsaw remained a small city with only privately owned palaces, mansions, villas and several streets of townhouses. These displayed a richness of color and architectonic details. The finest German, Italian and Dutch architects were employed, among them Tylman van Gameren, Andreas Schl\u00fcter, Jakub Fontana, and Enrico Marconi. The buildings situated in the vicinity of the Warsaw Old Town represent nearly every European architectural style and historical period. Warsaw has excellent examples of architecture from the Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassical periods, all of which are located within walking distance of the centre. This architectural richness has led to Warsaw being described by some commentators as a \"Paris of the East\".\nGothic architecture is represented in the majestic churches but also at the burgher houses and fortifications. The most significant buildings are St John's Cathedral (1390), a typical example of the so-called Masovian Brick Gothic style; St Mary's Church (1411); the Burbach townhouse (14th century); Gunpowder Tower (after 1379); and Royal Castle's \"Curia Maior\" (1407\u20131410). The most notable examples of Renaissance architecture in the city are the house of the Baryczko merchant family (1562), a building called \"The Negro\" (early 17th century), and Salwator tenement (1632), all situated on the Old Market Place. The most interesting examples of Mannerist architecture are the Royal Castle (1596\u20131619) and the Jesuit Church (1609\u20131626).\nBaroque architecture arrived in Warsaw at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries with the artists from the court circle of King Sigismund III Vasa (the early Warsaw Baroque is referred to as Vasa Baroque). Among the first structures of the early Baroque, the most important are St. Hyacinth's Church and Sigismund's Column, the first secular monument in the form of a column in modern history. At that time, part of the Royal Castle was rebuilt in this style, the Ujazd\u00f3w Castle and numerous Baroque palaces on the Vistula escarpment were constructed. In the architecture of Catholic churches, the Counter-Reformation type became a novelty, exemplified by the Church of St. Anthony of Padua, the Carmelite Church and the Holy Cross Church.\nWarsaw Baroque from the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries was characterized by building facades with a predominance of vertical elements close to the wall and numerous ornaments. The most important architect working in Warsaw at that time was Tylman van Gameren. His projects include the Krasi\u0144ski Palace, Palace of the Four Winds, Ostrogski Palace, Czapski Palace, Br\u00fchl Palace, and St. Kazimierz Church. The most significant Baroque building of this period is the Wilan\u00f3w Palace, built on the order of King John III Sobieski.\nThe late Baroque era was the epoch of the Saxon Kings (1697\u20131763). During this time, three major spatial projects were realized: the 880-meter Piaseczy\u0144ski Canal on the axis of Ujazd\u00f3w Castle, the Ujazd\u00f3w Calvary and the Saxon Axis. The Visitationist Church also dates from this period.\nThe neoclassical architecture began to be the main style in the capital's architecture in Warsaw in the second half of the 18th century thanks to King Stanis\u0142aw August Poniatowski. It can be described by the simplicity of the geometrical forms teamed with a great inspiration from the Roman period. The best-known architect who worked in Warsaw at the time was Domenico Merlini, who designed the Palace on the Isle. Other significant buildings from this period include Kr\u00f3likarnia, Holy Trinity Church, St. Anne's Church, Warsaw.\nAlso in the first half of the 19th century, neoclassicism dominated the architecture of Warsaw. Old buildings were rebuilt and new ones were built in this style. The neoclassical revival affected all aspects of architecture; the most notable examples are the Great Theater, buildings located at Bank Square, headquarters of the Warsaw Society of Friends of Sciences (Staszic Palace), St. Alexander's Church, the Belweder. Many classicist tenement houses were built on Senatorska Street and along Nowy \u015awiat Street. After the outbreak of the November Uprising, the Warsaw Citadel was constructed in the north of the city, and the Saxon Palace underwent a complete reconstruction, where the central body of the building was demolished and replaced by a monumental 11-bay colonnade.\nIn the mid-19th century, the industrial revolution reached Warsaw, leading to the mass use of iron as a building material. In 1845, the Warsaw-Vienna Railway Station was opened. Another important aspect of the developing city was ensuring access to water and sewage disposal. The first modern Warsaw water supply system was launched in 1855, designed by one of the most outstanding architects of that period \u2013 Enrico Marconi, who designed also All Saints Church. The dynamic development of the railway became a factor that enabled equally dynamic development of Warsaw's industry. Among the establishments built at that time were the Wedel factory and the extensive Municipal Gasworks complex.\nIn the architecture of the 1920s, national historicism and other historical forms were dominant. Art Deco forms also appeared, and towards the end of the decade, avant-garde functionalism emerged. The creation of urban plans for the capital of Poland can be traced back to 1916, when, after the retreat of the Russians from Warsaw and the beginnings of the German occupation, the territories of the surrounding municipalities were annexed to the city. Even before Poland regained its independence, parallel to the creation of the administration of the future state, the first urban visions were emerging. These included, among others, the construction of a representative government district in the southern part of \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie. However, major changes in urban planning and the architectural landscape of the city only began in the mid-1920s. The forming state structures needed headquarters, leading to the construction of many monumental public buildings, including the buildings of the Sejm and the Senate, the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Public Education, the Ministry of Public Works, the National Museum, the State Geological Institute, the State Agricultural Bank, the Domestic Economy Bank, the directorate of the Polish State Railways, the Supreme Audit Office, and the campus of the Warsaw School of Economics. New districts were also established in \u017boliborz, Ochota, and Mokot\u00f3w, often designed around a central square with radiating streets (Narutowicz Square, Wilson Square). Examples of new large urban projects are the Staszic and Lubecki colonies in Ochota.\nExceptional examples of the bourgeois architecture of the later periods were not restored by the communist authorities after the war or were remodelled into a socialist realist style (like Warsaw Philharmonic edifice originally inspired by Palais Garnier in Paris). Despite that, the Warsaw University of Technology (Polytechnic) building. is the most interesting of the late 19th-century architecture. Some 19th-century industrial and brick workhouse buildings in the Praga district were restored, though many have been poorly maintained or demolished. Notable examples of post-war architecture include the Palace of Culture and Science, a soc-realist and art deco skyscraper based on the Empire State Building in New York. The Constitution Square with its monumental socialist realism architecture (MDM estate) was modelled on the grand squares of Paris, London, Moscow and Rome. Italianate tuscan-styled colonnades based on those at Piazza della Repubblica in Rome were also erected on Saviour Square.\nContemporary architecture in Warsaw is represented by the Metropolitan Office Building at Pilsudski Square and Varso tower, both by Norman Foster, Warsaw University Library (BUW) by Marek Budzy\u0144ski and Zbigniew Badowski, featuring a garden on its roof and view of the Vistula River, Rondo 1 office building by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Z\u0142ota 44 residential skyscraper by Daniel Libeskind, Museum of the History of Polish Jews by Rainer Mahlam\u00e4ki and Golden Terraces, consisting of seven overlapping domes retail and business centre. Jointly with Moscow, Istanbul, Frankfurt, London, Paris and Rotterdam, Warsaw is one of the cities with the highest number of skyscrapers in Europe.\nLandmarks.\nAlthough contemporary Warsaw is a fairly young city compared to other European capitals, it has numerous tourist attractions and architectural monuments dating back centuries. Apart from the Warsaw Old Town area, reconstructed after World War II, each borough has something to offer. Among the most notable landmarks of the Old Town are the Royal Castle, Sigismund's Column, Market Square, and the Barbican.\nFurther south is the so-called Royal Route, with many historical churches, Baroque and Classicist palaces, most notably the Presidential Palace, and the University of Warsaw campus. The former royal residence of King John III Sobieski at Wilan\u00f3w is notable for its Baroque architecture and eloquent palatial garden.\nIn many places in the city the Jewish culture and history resonates down through time. Among them the most notable are the Jewish theater, the No\u017cyk Synagogue, Janusz Korczak's Orphanage and the picturesque Pr\u00f3\u017cna Street. The tragic pages of Warsaw's history are commemorated in places such as the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, the Umschlagplatz, fragments of the ghetto wall on Sienna Street and a mound in memory of the Jewish Combat Organization.\nMany places commemorate the heroic history of Warsaw such as Pawiak, a German Gestapo prison now occupied by a Mausoleum of Memory of Martyrdom and a museum. The Warsaw Citadel, a 19th-century fortification built after the defeat of the November Uprising, was a place of martyrdom for the Poles. Another important monument, the statue of Little Insurrectionist located at the ramparts of the Old Town, commemorates the children who served as messengers and frontline troops in the Warsaw Uprising, while the Warsaw Uprising Monument by Wincenty Ku\u0107ma was erected in memory of the largest insurrection of World War II.\nIn Warsaw there are many places connected with the life and work of Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin who was born near the city in \u017belazowa Wola. The heart of the Polish composer is sealed inside Warsaw's Holy Cross Church. During the summer time the Chopin Statue in \u0141azienki Park is a place where pianists give concerts to the park audience.\nAlso many references to Marie Curie, her work and her family can be found in Warsaw; Curie's birthplace at the Warsaw New Town, the working places where she did her first scientific works and the Radium Institute at Wawelska Street for the research and the treatment of which she founded in 1925.\nCemeteries.\nThe oldest necropolis in Warsaw is Stare Pow\u0105zki, established in 1790. It is one of Poland's national necropolises.\nThe cemetery covers an area of 43 ha. On the day of consecration of the Pow\u0105zki Cemetery, the foundation stone was laid for the construction of the church of Saint Charles Borromeo, designed by the royal architect Domenico Merlini. Catacombs were intended to be a prestigious resting place intended mainly for the nobles, such as Micha\u0142 Poniatowski, Hugo Ko\u0142\u0142\u0105taj, Micha\u0142 Kazimierz Ogi\u0144ski. Over a million people are buried at Stare Pow\u0105zki. In the Avenue of Merit there are the graves of insurgents and soldiers, independence activists, writers, poets, scientists, artists and thinkers. The nearby Pow\u0105zki Military Cemetery was established in 1912 for soldiers stationed in Warsaw. After World War II, the cemetery became a burial place for people associated with the Polish People's Republic - politicians, officials and military personnel.\nThe complex of non-Roman Catholic cemeteries consists of Evangelical\u2013Augsburg Cemetery, Evangelical Reformed Cemetery, Jewish Cemetery, Orthodox Cemetery and Muslim Tatar Cemetery. Other significant Warsaw necropolises are: Br\u00f3dno Cemetery Warsaw Insurgents Cemetery, S\u0142u\u017cew Old Cemetery, S\u0142u\u017cew New Cemetery. There are two large municipal cemeteries in the city \u2013 Northern Communal Cemetery and Southern Communal Cemetery.\nMemorials.\nThe city's symbol is the mermaid placed in the capital's coat of arms. There are three mermaid monuments in Warsaw: one on the banks of the Vistula, the second on the Old Town Square, and the third in Praga-Po\u0142udnie. The oldest monument in Warsaw is the Sigismund's Column. It was built in 1644 according to the design of the Italians: Augustine Locci and Constantin Tencall. The King of Poland Sigismund III Vasa stands on a 22-meter high tower, holding a cross and a sword in his hand. The monument was destroyed and rebuilt many times.\nMany monuments commemorate heroic and tragic moments in the history of Poland and Warsaw. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier located in Pi\u0142sudski Square was built on the initiative of General W\u0142adys\u0142aw Sikorski in the arcades of the Saxon Palace. In 1925, the ashes of the unknown soldier who died during the defense of Lviv were placed under the colonnade, then urns with soil from 24 battlefields were buried here. Among the monuments related to the World War II are Nike Monument that commemorates the heroes of Warsaw from 1939 to 1945, Monument to the Polish Underground State and Home Army, Monument to the Little Insurrectionist and Warsaw Uprising Monument in front of the Supreme Court building at Krasi\u0144ski Square. Monument to the Ghetto Heroes commemorates the\u00a0Warsaw Ghetto Uprising\u00a0of 1943.\nIn 1929, a monument to Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin was constructed in the Royal \u0141azienki Park. Every summer at its foot classical music concerts featuring world-famous pianists take place. Other important monuments are: Adam Mickiewicz Monument, Tadeusz Ko\u015bciuszko Monument, Marie Curie Monument, Prince J\u00f3zef Poniatowski Monument, Nicolaus Copernicus Monument, Stefan Starzy\u0144ski Monument, J\u00f3zef Pi\u0142sudski Monument, Janusz Korczak Monument.\nFlora and fauna.\nGreen space covers almost a quarter of Warsaw's total area. These range from small neighborhood parks and green spaces along streets or in courtyards, to tree-lined avenues, large historic parks, nature conservation areas and urban forests at the fringe of the city. There are as many as 82 parks in the city; the oldest ones were once part of representative palaces and include the Saxon and Krasi\u0144ski Gardens, \u0141azienki Park (Royal Baths Park) and Wilan\u00f3w Palace Parkland.\nThe Saxon Garden, covering an area of 15.5 ha, formally served as a royal garden to the now nonexistent Saxon Palace. In 1727, it was made into one of the world's first public parks and later remodelled in the forest-like English style. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is situated at the east end of the park near the central fountain, on Pi\u0142sudski Square. With its benches, flower carpets and a central pond, the Krasi\u0144ski Palace Garden was once a notable strolling destination for most Varsovians. The \u0141azienki Park covers an area of 76 ha and its unique character and history is reflected in the landscape architecture (pavilions, sculptures, bridges, water cascades) and vegetation (domestic and foreign species of trees and shrubs). The presence of peacocks, pheasants and squirrels at \u0141azienki attracts tourists and locals. The Wilan\u00f3w Palace Parkland on the outskirts of Warsaw traces it history to the second half of the 17th century and covers an area of 43 ha. Its French-styled alleys corresponds to the ancient, Baroque forms of the palace.\nThe Botanical Garden and the University Library rooftop garden host an extensive collection of rare domestic and foreign plants, while a palm house in the New Orangery displays plants of subtropics from all over the world. Mokot\u00f3w Field (once a racetrack), Ujazd\u00f3w Park and Skaryszewski Park are also located within the city borders. The oldest park in the Praga borough was established between 1865 and 1871.\nThe flora of Warsaw may be considered very rich in species on city standards. This is mainly due to the location of Warsaw within the border region of several big floral regions comprising substantial proportions of close-to-wilderness areas (natural forests, wetlands along the Vistula) as well as arable land, meadows and forests. The nearby Kampinos Nature Reserve is the last remaining part of the Masovian Primeval Forest and is protected by law. The Kabaty Woods are by the southern city border and are visited by the residents of southern boroughs such as Ursyn\u00f3w. There are 13 natural reserves in the vicinity and just from Warsaw, the environment features a perfectly preserved ecosystem with a habitat of animals like the otter, beavers and hundreds of bird species. There are also several lakes in Warsaw\u00a0\u2013 mainly the oxbow lakes at Czerniak\u00f3w and Kamionek.\nThe Warsaw Zoo covers an area of . There are about 5,000 animals representing nearly 500 species. Although officially created in 1928, it traces back its roots to 17th century private menageries, often open to the public.\nDemographics.\nDemographically, Warsaw was the most diverse city in Poland, with significant numbers of foreign-born residents. In addition to the Polish majority, there was a large and thriving Jewish minority. According to the Imperial Census of 1897, out of the total population of 638,000, Jews constituted 219,000 (equivalent to 34%). Prior to the Second World War, Warsaw hosted the world's second largest Jewish population after New York \u2013 approximately 30 percent of the city's total population in the late 1930s. In 1933, 833,500 out of 1,178,914 people declared Polish as their mother tongue. There was also a notable German community. The ethnic composition of contemporary Warsaw is incomparable to the diversity that existed for nearly 300 years. Most of the modern-day population growth is based on internal migration and urbanisation. In the 2021 census, 98.78% of Warsaw residents identified themselves as Polish, 0.46% as Ukrainian, 0.31% as Belarusian and 0.21% as Jewish.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nIn 1939, approximately 1,300,000 people resided in Warsaw; by 1945 the population had dropped to 420,000. During the first years after the war, the population growth rate was high and the city soon began to suffer from the lack of flats and dwellings to house new incomers. The first remedial measure was the enlargement of Warsaw's total area (1951)\u00a0\u2013 however the city authorities were still forced to introduce limitations; only the spouses and children of permanent residents as well as some persons of public importance (renowned specialists, artists, engineers) were permitted to stay. This negatively affected the image of an average Warsaw citizen, who was perceived as more privileged than those migrating from rural areas, towns or other cities. While all restrictions on residency registration were scrapped in 1990, the negative opinion of Varsovians in some form continues to this day.\nWarsaw metropolitan area is an example of the development of a strongly polarized region. The capital, along with its immediate surroundings, concentrates over half of the demographic potential of the Masovian Voivodeship, 2/3 of residents with higher education, and 3/4 of larger economic entities employing more than 50 workers.\nCurrent demographic development trends are as follows:\nIn the coming years, an increase in the city's population is predicted, with migration being the main factor determining the state and structure of Warsaw's population, including mainly internal (national) and external (foreign) influx. Changes in the population are not uniform for the entire Warsaw and in the division into districts, the predicted demographic changes will have a varied course. A decrease in population is forecasted in some central districts (Praga-P\u00f3\u0142noc, \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie) and an increase in other districts.\nImmigrant population.\nIn 2019, it was estimated that 40,000 people living in Warsaw were foreign-born. Of those, Ukrainians, Vietnamese, Belarusians, and Russians were the most prominent groups. After Russia's aggression against Ukraine, over 1.1 million refugees from Ukraine passed through Warsaw, and at the beginning of March 2022, approximately 40,000 people applied for help every day. According to official data, over 104,000 of Ukrainian citizens who arrived in the first days after the outbreak of the war still reside in the city, including 17,000 young people and children attending urban educational institutions. Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the immigrant population has increased significantly to about 340,000.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nThroughout its existence, Warsaw had been a multi-cultural and multi-religious city. According to the 1901 census, out of 711,988 inhabitants 56.2% were Catholics, 35.7% Jews, 5% Greek Orthodox Christians and 2.8% Protestants. Eight years later, in 1909, there were 281,754 Jews (36.9%), 18,189 Protestants (2.4%) and 2,818 Mariavites (0.4%). This led to construction of hundreds of places of religious worship in all parts of the town. Most of them were destroyed in the aftermath of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. After the war, the new communist authorities of Poland discouraged church construction and only a small number were rebuilt.\nThe archdiocese of Warsaw and the Diocese of Warsaw-Praga are the two ecclesiastical districts active in the city which serve the large Roman Catholic population of 1.4 million. The Lutheran Diocese of Warsaw is one of six in Poland; its main house of worship is the Holy Trinity Church from 1782, one of Warsaw's most important and historic landmarks. The Evangelical Reformed Parish (Calvinist) is leading the Polish Reformed Church. The main tserkva of the Orthodox Christians is Praga's Cathedral of St. Mary Magdalene from 1869. The Jewish Commune of Warsaw (\"Gmina Wyznaniowa \u017bydowska\") is one of eight in the country; Chief Rabbi of Poland Michael Schudrich resides in the city. There are also 3 active synagogues, one of which is the pre-war No\u017cyk Synagogue designated for Orthodox Jews. An Islamic Cultural Centre in Ochota and a small mosque in Wilan\u00f3w serve the Muslims.\nThere are several Marian shrines in the city, including: sanctuary of the Gracious Mother of God with her image crowned in 1651 in the presence of King John Casimir. Another patron of the city is Blessed W\u0142adys\u0142aw of Gielni\u00f3w, bernardine from the St. Anne's Church. The greatest cult is that of St. Andrew Bobola, patron of the metropolis of Warsaw, whose relics are in the sanctuary of St. Andrew Bobola in Mokot\u00f3w.\nGovernment and politics.\nAs the capital of Poland, Warsaw is the political centre of the country. Almost all central government institutions are located there, including the Chancellery of the President, both houses of the Polish Parliament (the lower house called Sejm and the upper house called Senate), the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, the Constitutional Tribunal, the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Administrative Court. Warsaw is also host to many major international organizations, including Frontex and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (the oldest and principal institution of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe).\nThe city is represented in the parliament by 20 members of Sejm (out of 460) and 4 senators (out of 100). In addition, Warsaw together with its metropolitan area elects 6 MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) out of 705.\nMunicipal government.\nThe first city mayor of Warsaw was Jan Andrzej Menich (1695\u20131696). The municipal self-government existed in Warsaw until World War II and was restored in 1990 (during the communist times, the National City Council\u00a0\u2013 \"Miejska Rada Narodowa\"\u00a0\u2013 governed in Warsaw). Since 1990, the structure of city government has been modified several times. Between 1975 and 1990 the Warsaw city mayors simultaneously led the Warsaw Voivodeship. In the years 1990\u20131994, the city mayor of Warsaw was elected by the city council. \nA controversial reform was introduced in 1994, which transformed the city into a loose municipal union of several gminas, dominated by one of them, the gmina Centrum encompassing the entire inner city. During this period, the mayor of gmina Centrum who was elected by its council was automatically designated as the city mayor of Warsaw, in spite of representing only a fraction of the population of the city. The city was becoming increasingly unmanageable, especially after the administrative reform of Poland in 1999 which further complicated the local government structure of Warsaw. In 2002, the new \"Warsaw Act\" of the Polish parliament restored Warsaw as a single urban gmina with the status of a city with powiat rights, led by a unified local government. At the same time, a significant reform was implemented in all Polish municipal governments, introducing direct elections of the w\u00f3jt/town mayor/city mayor in all Polish gminas. The first city mayor of Warsaw elected according to these rules was Lech Kaczy\u0144ski, who however resigned ahead of term when he was elected President of Polish Republic in 2005.\nWarsaw has thereafter remained an urban gmina with the status of a city with powiat rights. Legislative power in Warsaw is vested in a unicameral Warsaw City Council (\"Rada Miasta\"), which comprises 60 members. Council members are elected directly every five years (since 2018 election). Like most legislative bodies, the city council divides itself into committees which have the oversight of various functions of the city government. The city mayor exercises the executive power in the city, being the superior of all unelected municipal- or county-level officials and other employees and supervising all subsidiary entities of the city. The incumbent city mayor of Warsaw is Rafa\u0142 Trzaskowski.\nThe \"Warsaw Act\" imposes a mandatory division into 18 auxiliary units called \"dzielnica\" (district) on the city. In spite of remaining an integral part of the city as an entity, the districts have a degree of autonomy legally guaranteed through a form of an own local self-government exercising some powers devolved by law from the city. They have the duty to assist the city mayor and the City Council in their tasks, such as supervising some municipal companies, city-owned property or schools. Each of the 18 city districts has an own council (\"rada dzielnicy\") which elects an executive board (\"zarz\u0105d dzielnicy\") headed by a district mayor (\"burmistrz dzielnicy\"), the latter elected by the council among several candidates nominated by the city mayor of Warsaw among the council's members.\nDistricts.\nBia\u0142o\u0142\u0119ka\nBielany\nBemowo\n\u017boliborz\nPraga-P\u00f3\u0142noc\nTarg\u00f3wek\n\u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie\nWola\nOchota\nW\u0142ochy\nUrsus\nMokot\u00f3w\nWawer\nPraga-Po\u0142udnie\nRembert\u00f3w\nWeso\u0142a\nUrsyn\u00f3w\nWilan\u00f3w\nAs a result, Warsaw has thereafter continued as an urban gmina holding status of a city with powiat rights, divided into 18 districts (\"dzielnica\"), auxiliary municipal units established within the city as an entity as its integral parts, though with some limited powers devolved from the city to their own local self-governments. Each of the districts is customarily subdivided into several neighbourhoods lacking any meaningful legal or administrative powers. The central district of \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie includes the two founding neighbourhoods of the city, called the Old Town (\"Stare Miasto\") and the New Town (\"Nowe Miasto\").\nEconomy.\nWarsaw is the leading economic and financial hub of the Visegr\u00e1d Group and the Three Seas Initiative. In 2021, the city's gross metropolitan product (GDP) was estimated at \u20ac100 billion, which places Warsaw 20th among the metropolitan areas in the European Union with largest GDP. Warsaw generates almost 1/5 of the Polish GDP and the country's national income. In 2020, Warsaw was classified as a global city, because Warsaw is a major global city that links economic regions into the world economy.\nWarsaw's city centre (\u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie) and commercial Wola district are home not only to many national institutions and government agencies, but also to many domestic and international companies. Warsaw's ever-growing business community has been noticed globally, regionally, and nationally. In 2019 Warsaw was one of the top destinations for foreign investors in Europe.\nThe average monthly gross salary in the enterprise sector in the last quarter of 2022 amounted to 8,104 PLN and was 404 PLN higher than the average in the Masovian Voivodeship and as much as 1,450 PLN higher than in Poland. The highest gross salary was received by employees working in the information and communication section (11,701.47 PLN). There are 525,475 registered business entities in Warsaw, most of them in the districts of \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie, Mokot\u00f3w, Wola and Praga-Po\u0142udnie, 1.1 million people work in the enterprise sector. Warsaw has a well-developed office base, the office space is 6.27 million m2. The largest office buildings are Varso (63,800 m2), Warsaw Spire (60 000 m2), Forest Tower (51,500 m2) and P180 (32,000 m2), the largest projects under construction are The Bridge (47,000 m2) and Skyliner II (38,000 m2). The space resources of shopping centers in the Warsaw agglomeration in amount to over 1.7 million m2.\nIn October 2019 Warsaw's unemployment rate was 1.3%, the lowest in the country. Shopping and consumerism is an important component of Warsaw's economy. The retail streets in Warsaw are New World Street (\"Nowy \u015awiat\") along with Krakowskie Przedmie\u015bcie. These streets and their neighboring areas host many luxury stores and popular restaurants. However, most retailers choose to operate in the central shopping centres and malls such as Z\u0142ote Tarasy-Golden Terraces, Galeria Mokot\u00f3w and Westfield Arkadia. Luxury goods as well as designer labels can be found in the Vitkac Department Store and around Frascati.\nWarsaw Stock Exchange.\nWarsaw's first stock exchange was established in 1817 and continued trading until World War II. It was re-established in April 1991, following the end of a communist planned economy and the reintroduction of a free-market economy. Today, the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) is, according to many indicators, the largest market in the region, with 433 companies listed and total capitalisation of 1 trillion PLN as of 26 November 2020. From 1991 until 2000, the stock exchange was, ironically, located in the building previously used as the headquarters of the communist Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR).\nIndustry.\nThe most prominent industries and industrial sectors include high-tech, electrotechnical, chemical, cosmetic, construction, food processing, printing, metallurgy, machinery and clothing. The majority of production plants and facilities are concentrated within the WOP Warsaw Industrial Precinct (\"Warszawski Okr\u0119g Przemys\u0142owy\") which is situated around the city's peripheral localities such as Praga, Pruszk\u00f3w, Sochaczew, Piaseczno, Marki and \u017byrard\u00f3w. Warsaw has developed a particularly strong retail market/sector, representing around 13% of the total retail stock in the country.\nFollowing World War II, the authorities decided that the city will be transformed into a major centre for heavy industry and manufacturing. As a result, numerous large factories and production facilities were built in and around the city. Among the largest were \"Huta Warszawa\" steel works, now arcelor), the Ursus SA, and the Fabryka Samochod\u00f3w Osobowych (FSO) car factory. The now-defunct FSO, established in 1951, was once Warsaw's most successful corporation. Notable vehicles assembled there over the decades include the FSO Warszawa, FSO Syrena, Polski Fiat 125p and the FSO Polonez. In 1995, the factory was purchased by the South Korean car manufacturer Daewoo, which assembled its models in Warsaw for the European market.\nTourism.\nThe estimated number of tourist arrivals to Warsaw in 2022 was over 9 million. Most tourists came from the United Kingdom (347,000), Germany (321,000), the United States (206,000) and France (145,000). Additionally, Warsaw was visited by 5.8 million one-day tourists, giving a total of over 14.8 million tourists in 2022. The above data does not include Ukrainian citizens who came to Warsaw in connection with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The accommodation base consists of 1,010 hotels offering over 56,000 beds. The estimated contribution of the tourism economy to Warsaw's GDP is 12.9 billion PLN, and the tourism industry employs 87,703 people.\n144,220 people used Warsaw Tourist Lines in 2022 - almost 14,000 more than previous year. In the summer, Warsaw residents and tourists could use ferries across the Vistula, a ship to Serock, bus and tram lines operated with historic rolling stock, and a narrow-gauge railway. The most popular attraction among tourists was the Royal \u0141azienki Museum, which was visited by 5,265,110 tourists.\nWarsaw is an important center for conferences and congresses. The Warsaw Convention Bureau collected information on 9,000 events in 2022, which gathered a total of 1,240,467 participants in Warsaw.\nMedia and film.\nWarsaw is the media centre of Poland, and the location of the main headquarters of TVP and other numerous local and national TV and radio stations, such as Polskie Radio (Polish Radio), TVN, Polsat, TV4, TV Puls, Canal+ Poland, Cyfra+ and MTV Poland. Warsaw also has a sizable movie and television industry. The city houses several movie companies and studios.\nSince May 1661 the first Polish newspaper, the \"Polish Ordinary Mercury\", was printed in Warsaw. The city is also the printing capital of Poland with a wide variety of domestic and foreign periodicals expressing diverse views, and domestic newspapers are extremely competitive. \"Rzeczpospolita\", and \"Dziennik Polska-Europa-\u015awiat\", Poland's large nationwide daily newspapers, have their headquarters in Warsaw.\nSince World War II, Warsaw has been the most important centre of film production in Poland. Among the movie companies are TOR, Czo\u0142\u00f3wka, Zebra and Kadr which is behind several international movie productions. The city itself has featured in numerous movies, both Polish and foreign, for example: \"Kana\u0142\" and \"Korczak\" by Andrzej Wajda and \"The Decalogue\" by Krzysztof Kie\u015blowski, also including Oscar winner \"The Pianist\" by Roman Pola\u0144ski. It is also home to the National Film Archive, which, since 1955, has been collecting and preserving Polish film culture.\nEducation.\nWarsaw holds some of the finest institutions of higher education in Poland. It is home to four major universities and over 62 smaller schools of higher education. The overall number of students of all grades of education in Warsaw is almost 500,000 (29.2% of the city population; 2002). The number of university students is over 280,000. Most of the reputable universities are public, but in recent years there has also been an upsurge in the number of private universities.\nThe University of Warsaw was established in 1816, when the partitions of Poland separated Warsaw from the oldest and most influential Polish academic center, in Krak\u00f3w. The university is the largest in the country, and often regarded as one of the most prestigious, with international recognition in mathematics and science. Warsaw University of Technology is the second academic school of technology in the country, and one of the largest in East-Central Europe. Other institutions for higher education include the Medical University of Warsaw, the largest medical school in Poland and one of the most prestigious; the National Defence University, the highest military academic institution in Poland; the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music, the oldest and largest music school in Poland and one of the largest in Europe; the Warsaw School of Economics, the oldest and most renowned economic university in the country; the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, the largest agricultural university, founded in 1818; and the SWPS University, the first private secular university in the country.\nWarsaw has numerous libraries, many of which contain vast collections of historic documents. The most important library in terms of historic document collections is the National Library of Poland. The library holds 8.2\u00a0million volumes in its collection. Formed in 1928, it sees itself as a successor to the Za\u0142uski Library, the biggest in Poland and one of the first and biggest libraries in the world.\nAnother important library \u2013 the University Library, founded in 1816, is home to over two million items. The building was designed by architects Marek Budzy\u0144ski and Zbigniew Badowski and opened on 15 December 1999. It is surrounded by green. The University Library garden, designed by Irena Bajerska, was opened on 12 June 2002. It is one of the largest roof gardens in Europe with an area of more than , and plants covering . As the university garden it is open to the public every day.\nTransport.\nWarsaw is a considerable transport hub linking Western, Central and Eastern Europe. The city has a good network of buses and a continuously expanding perpendicular metro running north to south and east to west. The tram system is one of the biggest in Europe, with a total length of . As a result of increased foreign investment, economic growth and EU funding, the city has undertaken the construction of new roads, flyovers and bridges. The supervising body is the City Roads Authority (ZDM \u2013 \"Zarz\u0105d Dr\u00f3g Miejskich\").\nPublic transport.\nThe first section of the Warsaw Metro was opened in 1995 initially with a total of 11 stations. As of 2024, it has 39 stations running a distance of approximately .\nPublic transport also extends to light rail Warszawska Kolej Dojazdowa line, urban railway Szybka Kolej Miejska, regional rail Koleje Mazowieckie (Mazovian Railways), and bicycle sharing systems (Veturilo). The buses, trams, urban railway and Metro are managed by the Public Transport Authority and are collectively known as Warsaw Public Transport.\nThe table presents statistics on public transport in Warsaw.\nRoads.\nWarsaw lacks a complete ring road system and most traffic goes directly through the city centre, leading to the eleventh highest level of congestion in Europe. The Warsaw ring road has been planned to consist of four express roads: S2 (south), S8 (north-west) and S17 (east). S8, S2 and a small 3\u00a0km section of S17 are open. Additionally, the S2 and S8 have a concurrency with the S7 and the S2 has a short concurrency with the S8. A second ring road consisting of the A50 motorway (south) and S50 expressway (north) is also planned but it is unknown when construction will start.\nThe A2 motorway opened in June 2012, stretches west from Warsaw and is a direct motorway connection with \u0141\u00f3d\u017a, Pozna\u0144 and ultimately with Berlin.\nAviation.\nThe city has three international airports: Warsaw Chopin Airport, located just from the city centre, Warsaw-Radom Airport, located just south of Warsaw, which serves mainly low-cost and charter operations and finally Warsaw-Modlin Airport, located to the north, opened in July 2012. With around 100 international and domestic flights a day and with 7,440,056 passengers served in 2021, and it has also been called \"the most important and largest airport in Central Europe\".\nWarsaw Chopin Airport is the busiest airport in Poland a with 21.3 million passengers in 2024 handling approximately 40% of the country's total air passenger traffic. The airport is a central hub for LOT Polish Airlines as well as a base for Enter Air and Wizz Air. There are 50 air operations performed at the airport per hour. London, Frankfurt, Paris, and Amsterdam are the busiest international connections, while Krak\u00f3w, Wroc\u0142aw, and Gda\u0144sk are the most popular domestic ones. The complex contains 45 passenger gates, 27 of which are equipped with jetways. A rail link has been added to connect the city with the airport in 2012.\nRail.\nLong distance and intercity trains are operated by Polish State Railways (PKP). There are also some suburban bus lines run by private operators. Bus service covers the entire city, with approximately 256 routes totalling above , and with some 1,700 vehicles.\nThe main railway station is Warszawa Centralna serving both domestic traffic to almost every major city in Poland, and international connections. There are also five other major railway stations and a number of smaller suburban stations.\nCulture.\nMusic and theatre.\nThanks to numerous musical venues, including the \"Teatr Wielki\", the Polish National Opera, the Chamber Opera, the National Philharmonic Hall and the National Theatre, as well as the Roma and Buffo music theatres and the Congress Hall in the Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw hosts many events and festivals. Among the events worth particular attention are: the International Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin Piano Competition, the International Contemporary Music Festival Warsaw Autumn, the Jazz Jamboree, Warsaw Summer Jazz Days, the International Stanis\u0142aw Moniuszko Vocal Competition, the Mozart Festival, and the Festival of Old Music.\nWarsaw is also considered one of the European hubs of underground electronic music with a very attractive house and techno music scene.\nWarsaw is home to over 30 major theatres spread throughout the city, including the National Theatre (founded in 1765) and the Grand Theatre (established 1778).\nWarsaw also attracts many young and off-stream directors and performers who add to the city's theatrical culture. Their productions may be viewed mostly in smaller theatres and \"Houses of Culture\" (\"Domy Kultury\"), mostly outside \"\u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie\" (Central Warsaw). Warsaw hosts the International Theatrical Meetings.\nFrom 1833 to the outbreak of World War II, Plac Teatralny \"(Theatre Square)\" was the country's cultural hub and home to the various theatres. Plac Teatralny and its environs was the venue for numerous parades, celebrations of state holidays, carnival balls and concerts.\nThe main building housed the Great Theatre from 1833 to 1834, the Rozmaito\u015bci Theatre from 1836 to 1924 and then the National Theatre, the Reduta Theatre from 1919 to 1924, and from 1928 to 1939\u00a0\u2013 the Nowy Theatre, which staged productions of contemporary poetical drama, including those directed by Leon Schiller.\nNearby, in Ogr\u00f3d Saski (the Saxon Garden), the Summer Theatre was in operation from 1870 to 1939, and in the inter-war period, the theatre complex also included Momus, Warsaw's first literary cabaret, and Leon Schiller's musical theatre Melodram. The Wojciech Bogus\u0142awski Theatre (1922\u201326) was the best example of \"Polish monumental theatre\". From the mid-1930s, the Great Theatre building housed the Upati Institute of Dramatic Arts\u00a0\u2013 the first state-run academy of dramatic art, with an acting department and a stage directing department.\nMuseums and art galleries.\nThere are over 60 museums and galleries in Warsaw which are accessible to the public. Among the positions are the world's first Museum of Posters boasting one of the largest collections of art posters in the world, and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Among the most prestigious ones are the National Museum with a collection of works whose origin ranges in time from antiquity until the present epoch as well as one of the best collections of paintings in the country including some paintings from Adolf Hitler's private collection, and the Museum of the Polish Army whose set portrays the history of arms.\nThe collections of \u0141azienki and Wilan\u00f3w palaces focus on the paintings of the \"old masters\", as do those of the Royal Castle which displays the Lanckoro\u0144ski Collection including two paintings by Rembrandt. The Palace in Natolin, a former rural residence of Duke Czartoryski, is another venue with its interiors and park accessible to tourists.\nThe famous Copernicus Science Centre is an interactive science museum containing over 450 exhibits, enabling visitors to carry out experiments and discover the laws of science for themselves. Warsaw does not have a natural history museum. Yet, it hosts small museums of Evolution and the Earth, which play a similar role.\nHolding Poland's largest private collection of art, the Carroll Porczy\u0144ski Collection Museum displays works from such varied artists as Paris Bordone, Cornelis van Haarlem, Jos\u00e9 de Ribera, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Vincent van Gogh along with some copies of masterpieces of European painting.\nA fine tribute to the fall of Warsaw and history of Poland can be found in the Warsaw Uprising Museum and in the Katy\u0144 Museum which preserves the memory of that crime. The Warsaw Uprising Museum also operates a rare preserved and operating historic stereoscopic theatre, the Warsaw Fotoplastikon. The Museum of Independence preserves patriotic and political objects connected with Poland's struggles for independence. Dating back to 1936 the Warsaw Historical Museum contains 60 rooms which host a permanent exhibition of the history of Warsaw from its origins until today.\nThe 17th century Royal Ujazd\u00f3w Castle houses the Centre for Contemporary Art, with some permanent and temporary exhibitions, concerts, shows and creative workshops. The Centre realizes about 500 projects a year. The Zach\u0119ta National Gallery of Art, the oldest exhibition site in Warsaw, with a tradition stretching back to the mid-19th century organises exhibitions of modern art by Polish and International Artists and promotes art in many other ways. Since 2011, Warsaw Gallery Weekend is held on the last weekend of September.\n28 September 2023 the opening of the new building of the Museum of Polish History located at the Warsaw Citadel took place.\nThe city also possesses some oddities such as the Neon Museum, the Museum of Caricature, the Museum of John Paul II and Primate Wyszy\u0144ski, the Legia Warsaw Museum, and a Motorisation Museum in Otr\u0119busy.\nCuisine and food.\nWarsaw's culinary tradition was shaped by its once multicultural population; its cuisine is distinct from that of other cities and towns in Poland. Strong Jewish and French influences were cultivated over the years, in particular herring, consomm\u00e9, bagels, aspic and French meringue-based pastries or cakes. Traditional Varsovian food is hearty and includes a tripe soup for entr\u00e9e, a pyza dumpling for main and the iconic wuzetka (voo-zetka) chocolate cream pie for dessert. Crayfish and fish in gelatin were the classical dishes in Warsaw's restaurants throughout the 1920s and the 1930s.\nMuch like Paris or Vienna, Warsaw once possessed a prominent caf\u00e9 culture which dated back to the early 18th century, and the city's cafeterias were a place for socializing. The historic Wedel Chocolate Lounge on Szpitalna Street remains one of the most renowned spots for social gatherings. Cafeterias, confectioneries and patisseries such as Caff\u00e8 Nero, Costa Coffee and Starbucks are predominantly found along the Royal Route on New World Street. Thousands of Warsaw's residents also flock annually to the pastry workshops (\"p\u0105czkarnia\") to buy p\u0105czki doughnuts on Fat Thursday.\nRestaurants offering authentic Polish cuisine are concentrated around the Old Town district. Various spit cakes of Czech or Hungarian origin (k\u00fcrt\u0151skal\u00e1cs and trdeln\u00edk) are also sold primarily in the Old Town. Hala Koszyki is a popular meeting place in Warsaw noted for its food hall.\nIn the 20th century, Warsaw was famed for its state-owned milk bars (\"bar mleczny\") which offered cheap fast food in the form of home dinners. Examples of dishes popularized by these canteens include tomato soup, schnitzels, frikadeller, mizeria salad and many others. Contemporary fast food giants like McDonald's, KFC, Subway and Burger King are the successors to milk bars, though some reemerged in recent years due to widespread nostalgia.\nGourmet and haute cuisine establishments are situated in the vicinity of the downtown area or in the Frascati neighbourhood. Thirteen Varsovian restaurants were appreciated by the Michelin Guide, with two receiving a michelin star in 2019.\nIn 2021, National Geographic named Warsaw one of the top cities for vegans in Europe. \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie Po\u0142udniowe (Southern Downtown) and its \"hipster food culture\" was singled out as the epicenter.\nEvents.\nSeveral commemorative events take place every year, notably the Orange Warsaw Festival featuring music concerts. One of the more popular events is the procession of the Three Wise Men (in Polish known as the Three Kings) on Epiphany, shortly after the New Year. Paper crowns are usually worn by spectators throughout the day. The event, which runs along the Royal Route, is attended by Warsaw's highest officials and by the Polish president who resides nearby.\nGatherings of thousands of people on the banks of the Vistula on Midsummer's Night for a festival called Wianki (Polish for \"Wreaths\") have also become a tradition and a yearly event in the programme of cultural events in Warsaw. The festival traces its roots to a peaceful pagan ritual where maidens would float their wreaths of herbs on the water to predict when they would be married, and to whom. By the 19th century this tradition had become a festive event, and it continues today. The city council organize concerts and other events. Each Midsummer's Eve, apart from the official floating of wreaths, jumping over fires, and looking for the fern flower, there are musical performances, dignitaries' speeches, fairs and fireworks by the river bank.\nWarsaw Multimedia Fountain Park is located in an enchanting place, near the Old Town and the Vistula. The 'Water \u2013 Light \u2013 Sound' multimedia shows take place each Friday and Saturday from May until September at 9.30\u00a0pm (May and \u2013 9 October pm). On other weekdays, the shows do not include lasers and sound.\nThe Warsaw Film festival, an annual festival that takes place every October. Films are usually screened in their original language with Polish subtitles and participating cinemas include Kinoteka (Palace of Science and Culture), Multikino at Golden Terraces and Kultura. Over 100 films are shown throughout the festival, and awards are given to the best and most popular films.\nWarsaw Mermaid.\nThe mermaid (\"syrenka\") is Warsaw's symbol and can be found on statues throughout the city and on the city's coat of arms. This imagery has been in use since at least the mid-14th century. The oldest existing armed seal of Warsaw is from the year 1390, consisting of a round seal bordered with the Latin inscription \"Sigilium Civitatis Varsoviensis\" (Seal of the city of Warsaw). City records as far back as 1609 document the use of a crude form of a sea monster with a female upper body and holding a sword in its claws. In 1653 the poet Zygmunt Laukowski asks the question:\n<templatestyles src=\"Rquote/styles.css\"/>{ class=\"rquote pullquote floatcenter\" role=\"presentation\" style=\"display:table; border-collapse:collapse; border-style:none; float:center; margin:0.5em 0.75em; width:33%; \"\nThe Mermaid Statue stands in the very centre of Old Town Square, surrounded by a fountain. Due to vandalism, the original statue had been moved to the grounds of the Museum of Warsaw \u2013 the statue in the square is a copy.\nThis is not the only mermaid in Warsaw. Another is located on the bank of the Vistula River near \u015awi\u0119tokrzyski Bridge and another on Karowa Street.\nThe origin of the legendary figure is not fully known. The best-known legend, by Artur Oppman, is that long ago two of Triton's daughters set out on a journey through the depths of the oceans and seas. One of them decided to stay on the coast of Denmark and can be seen sitting at the entrance to the port of Copenhagen. The second mermaid reached the mouth of the Vistula River and plunged into its waters. She stopped to rest on a sandy beach by the village of Warszowa, where fishermen came to admire her beauty and listen to her beautiful voice. A greedy merchant also heard her songs; he followed the fishermen and captured the mermaid.\nAnother legend says that a mermaid once swam to Warsaw from the Baltic Sea for the love of the Griffin, the ancient defender of the city, who was killed in a struggle against the Swedish invasions of the 17th century. The mermaid, wishing to avenge his death, took the position of defender of Warsaw, becoming the symbol of the city.\nEvery member of the Queen's Royal Hussars of the UK's light cavalry wears the \"Maid of Warsaw\", the crest of the City of Warsaw, on the left sleeve of his No. 2 (Service) Dress. Members of 651 Squadron Army Air Corps of the United Kingdom also wear the \"Maid of Warsaw\" on the left sleeve of their No. 2 (Service) Dress.\nSports.\nOn 9 April 2008, the Mayor of Warsaw, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, obtained from the mayor of Stuttgart Wolfgang Schuster a challenge award\u00a0\u2013 a commemorative plaque awarded to Warsaw as the European capital of Sport in 2008.\nThe Kazimierz G\u00f3rski National Stadium, a 58,580-seat-capacity football (soccer) stadium, replaced Warsaw's recently demolished 10th-Anniversary Stadium. The National Stadium hosted the opening match, two group matches, a quarter-final, and a semi-final of UEFA Euro 2012.\nThere are many sports centres in the city as well. Most of these facilities are swimming pools and sports halls, many of them built by the municipality in the past several years. The main indoor venue is Hala Torwar, used for a variety of indoor sports (it was a venue for the 2009 EuroBasket but it is also used as an indoor skating rink). There is also an open-air skating rink (Stegny) and a horse racetrack (S\u0142u\u017cewiec).\nThe best of the city's swimming centres is at Wodny Park Warszawianka, south of the centre at Merliniego Street, where there's an Olympic-sized pool as well as water slides and children's areas.\nAmong the Varsovian football teams, the most recognisable is Legia Warsaw\u00a0\u2013 the army club with a nationwide following play at the Polish Army Stadium, just southeast of the centre at \u0141azienkowska Street. Established in 1916, they have won the country's championship fifteen times (most recently in 2021) and won the Polish Cup nineteen times. In the 1995\u201396 UEFA Champions League season, they reached the quarter-finals, where they lost to Greek club Panathinaikos.\nTheir local rivals, Polonia Warsaw, have significantly fewer supporters, yet they managed to win the country's championship two times (in 1946 and 2000) and won the cup twice as well. Polonia's home venue is located at Konwiktorska Street, a ten-minute walk north from the Old Town. Polonia was relegated from the country's top flight in 2013 because of their disastrous financial situation. They are now playing in the first league (2nd tier in Poland).\nLegia Warsaw's basketball team was one of the country's best teams in 50s and 60s. They are now participating in PLK, the highest-tier level of the Polish basketball.\nFamous people.\nOne of the most famous people born in Warsaw was Maria Sk\u0142odowska-Curie, who achieved international recognition for her research on radioactivity and was the first female recipient of the Nobel Prize. Famous musicians include W\u0142adys\u0142aw Szpilman, Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin and Witold Lutos\u0142awski. Though Chopin was born in the village of \u017belazowa Wola, about from Warsaw, he moved to the city with his family when he was seven months old. Casimir Pulaski, a Polish general and hero of the American Revolutionary War, was born here in 1745. Other important people, who lived in Warsaw (although were not born here) are also Rosa Luxemburg and L. L. Zamenhof.\nTamara de Lempicka was a famous artist born in Warsaw. She was born Maria G\u00f3rska in Warsaw to wealthy parents and in 1916 married a Polish lawyer Tadeusz \u0141empicki. Better than anyone else she represented the art deco style in painting and art. Another notable artist born in the city was Wojciech Fangor. He was associated with Op art and Color field movements and recognized as a key figure in the history of Polish postwar abstract art. Nathan Alterman, the Israeli poet, was born in Warsaw, as was Moshe Vilenski, the Israeli composer, lyricist, and pianist, who studied music at the Warsaw Conservatory.\nOther notable individuals from Warsaw include Samuel Goldwyn, the founder of Goldwyn Pictures, mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, physicist Joseph Rotblat, biochemist Casimir Funk, Moshe Prywes, an Israeli physician who was the first President of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and I. L. Peretz, one of the three founding fathers of modern Yiddish literature. Warsaw was the beloved city of Isaac Bashevis Singer, which he described in many of his novels: \"Warsaw has just now been destroyed. No one will ever see the Warsaw I knew. Let me just write about it. Let this Warsaw not disappear forever\", he wrote. Notable sportspeople born in Warsaw include footballers Robert Lewandowski and Wojciech Szcz\u0119sny as well as tennis player Iga \u015awi\u0105tek.\nInternational relations.\nTwin towns and sister cities.\nWarsaw is twinned with:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nFormer twin towns:\nPartnership and friendship.\nWarsaw also cooperates with:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nFormer partner cities:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "5601822": "Wac\u0142aw Berent\nPolish novelist and translator\nWac\u0142aw Berent (Warsaw, 28 September 1878 \u2013 19 November or 22 November 1940, Warsaw) was a Polish novelist, essayist and literary translator from the Art Nouveau period, publishing under the pen names S.A.M. and W\u0142. Rawicz. He studied Natural Science in Krak\u00f3w and Zurich, and obtained a PhD in Munich before returning to Warsaw and embarking on a literary career around the turn of the century. Having devoted himself to writing he was influenced by Nietzsche, whom he translated. Berent became a member of the prestigious Polish Academy of Literature () in 1933.\nLiterary output.\nBerent translated into Polish \"Thus Spoke Zarathustra\" by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Along with W\u0142adys\u0142aw Reymont, he was a leading representative of the realist trend in the Young Poland movement (). His main work, a social novel \"\u017bywe kamienie\" (\"Stones Alive\"), depicted the circumstances which threatened traditional moral values in the industrial era.\nHe was a critic of late nineteenth-century Positivist slogans, modernist Polish philosophy and European bohemianism, which postulated \"art for art's sake\". In his novel \"Ozimina\" (\"Winter Crop\") he depicted the emergence of the Polish independence movement prior to the Revolution of 1905. He was an aesthetic opponent of Romanticism.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["5601822", "32908"], "permutation_1": ["32908", "5601822"], "permutation_2": ["5601822", "32908"], "permutation_3": ["32908", "5601822"]}
{"id": "2hop__260647_120034", "docs_added": {"32839591": "Reichsm\u00fcnzordnung\nThe Reichsm\u00fcnzordnung (, \"imperial minting ordinance\") was an attempt to unify the numerous disparate coins in use in the various states of the Holy Roman Empire in the 16th century.\nThe ordinance was issued in several steps at Diets at Augsburg during the 1530s to 1560s, but it was never adopted entirely by all princes within the empire.\nA first \"Reichsm\u00fcnzordnung\" was issued by Charles V in 1524 at Esslingen, declaring the Cologne Mark as the general standard for coin weights. But due to protests by the larger principalities of the empire, the ordinance was never implemented.\nIn 1551, the Kreuzer was introduced as the standard for small silver coinage, with 72 Kreuzer being equivalent to a Gulden, or a silver Guldengroschen. The silver Taler was set at 68 Kreuzer.\nAn official \"Reichsgoldgulden\" was introduced but was only minted for a few years. The definition of a gold and a silver coin (Gulden vs. Guldengroschen) of equivalent value was problematic, as the value of the gold coin tended to rise above that of the silver one, and soon the Gulden was de facto traded at more than the official 72 Kreuzer. This led to the abolition of the official standard linking of gold and silver coins in 1559 under Ferdinand I. The Gulden was now set at 75 Kreuzer, the Ducat was introduced as an additional gold coin, and the Guldengroschen, now valued 60 Kreuzer, gradually fell out of use in favour of the Taler.\nIn 1566, the Diet was forced to recognize the new status quo and introduced the Reichstaler (at 29.23 grams of 88.9% silver) as the official coin of the empire. The Taler remained in use throughout the Holy Roman Empire until the early 18th century.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "13277": "Holy Roman Empire\nEuropean political entity (800\u20131806)\nThe Holy Roman Empire, also known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation after 1512, was a polity in Central and Western Europe, usually headed by the Holy Roman Emperor. It developed in the Early Middle Ages, and lasted for a millennium until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars.\nOn 25 December 800, Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne Roman emperor, reviving the title more than three centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476. The title lapsed in 924, but was revived in 962 when Otto\u00a0I was crowned emperor by Pope John XII, as Charlemagne's and the Carolingian Empire's successor. From 962 until the 12th century, the empire was one of the most powerful monarchies in Europe. It depended on cooperation between emperor and vassals; this was disturbed during the Salian period. The empire reached the apex of territorial expansion and power under the House of Hohenstaufen in the mid-13th century, but overextension led to a partial collapse. The imperial office was traditionally elective by the mostly German prince-electors. In theory and diplomacy, the emperors were considered the first among equals of all of Europe's Catholic monarchs.\nA process of Imperial Reform in the late 15th and early 16th centuries transformed the empire, creating a set of institutions which endured until its final demise in the 19th century. On 6 August 1806, Emperor Francis II abdicated and formally dissolved the empire following the creation by French emperor Napoleon of the Confederation of the Rhine from German client states loyal to France.\nName and general perception.\nSince Charlemagne, the realm was merely referred to as the \"Roman Empire\". The term (\"holy\", in the sense of \"consecrated\") in connection with the medieval Roman Empire was used beginning in 1157 under Frederick I Barbarossa (\"Holy Empire\"): the term was added to reflect Frederick's ambition to dominate Italy and the Papacy. The form \"Holy Roman Empire\" is attested from 1254 onward.\nThe exact term \"Holy Roman Empire\" was not used until the 13th century, before which the empire was referred to variously as (\"the whole kingdom\", as opposed to the regional kingdoms), (\"Christian empire\"), or (\"Roman empire\"), but the Emperor's legitimacy always rested on the concept of , that he held supreme power inherited from the ancient emperors of Rome.\nIn a decree following the Diet of Cologne in 1512, the name was changed to the \"Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation\" (, ), a form first used in a document in 1474. The adoption of this new name coincided with the loss of imperial territories in Italy and Burgundy to the south and west by the late 15th century, but also to emphasize the new importance of the German Imperial Estates in ruling the Empire due to the Imperial Reform. The Hungarian denomination \"German Roman Empire\" () is the shortening of this.\nBy the end of the 18th century, the term \"Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation\" fell out of official use. Contradicting the traditional view concerning that designation, Hermann Weisert has argued in a study on imperial titulature that, despite the claims of many textbooks, the name \"Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation\" never had an official status and points out that documents were thirty times as likely to omit the national suffix as include it.\nIn a famous assessment of the name, the political philosopher Voltaire remarked sardonically: \"This body which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.\"\nIn the modern period, the Empire was often informally called the \"German Empire\" () or \"Roman-German Empire\" (). After its dissolution through the end of the German Empire, it was often called \"the old Empire\" (). Beginning in 1923, early twentieth-century German nationalists and Nazi Party propaganda would identify the Holy Roman Empire as the \"First\" Reich (, meaning empire), with the German Empire as the \"Second\" Reich and what would eventually become Nazi Germany as the \"Third\" Reich.\nDavid S. Bachrach opines that the Ottonian kings actually built their empire on the back of military and bureaucratic apparatuses as well as the cultural legacy they inherited from the Carolingians, who ultimately inherited these from the Late Roman Empire. He argues that the Ottonian empire was hardly an archaic kingdom of primitive Germans, maintained by personal relationships only and driven by the desire of the magnates to plunder and divide the rewards among themselves but instead, notable for their abilities to amass sophisticated economic, administrative, educational and cultural resources that they used to serve their enormous war machine.\nUntil the end of the 15th century, the empire was in theory composed of three major blocs \u2013 Italy, Germany and Burgundy. Later territorially only the Kingdom of Germany and Bohemia remained, with the Burgundian territories lost to France. Although the Italian territories were formally part of the empire, the territories were ignored in the Imperial Reform and splintered into numerous de facto independent territorial entities. The status of Italy in particular varied throughout the 16th to 18th centuries. Some territories like Piedmont-Savoy became increasingly independent, while others became more dependent due to the extinction of their ruling noble houses causing these territories to often fall under the dominions of the Habsburgs and their cadet branches. Barring the loss of Franche-Comt\u00e9 in 1678, the external borders of the Empire did not change noticeably from the Peace of Westphalia \u2013 which acknowledged the exclusion of Switzerland and the Northern Netherlands, and the French protectorate over Alsace \u2013 to the dissolution of the Empire. At the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, most of the Holy Roman Empire was included in the German Confederation, with the main exceptions being the Italian states.\nHistory.\nEarly Middle Ages.\nCarolingian Empire.\nAs Roman power in Gaul declined during the 5th century, local Germanic tribes assumed control. In the late 5th and early 6th centuries, the Merovingians, under Clovis I and his successors, consolidated Frankish tribes and extended hegemony over others to gain control of northern Gaul and the middle Rhine river valley region. By the middle of the 8th century, the Merovingians were reduced to figureheads, and the Carolingians, led by Charles Martel, became the rulers. In 751, Martel's son Pepin became King of the Franks, and later gained the sanction of the Pope. The Carolingians would maintain a close alliance with the Papacy.\nIn 768, Pepin's son Charlemagne became King of the Franks and began an extensive expansion of the realm. He eventually incorporated the territories of present-day France, Germany, northern Italy, the Low Countries and beyond, linking the Frankish kingdom with Papal lands.\nAlthough antagonism about the expense of Byzantine domination had long persisted within Italy, a political rupture was set in motion in earnest in 726 by the iconoclasm of Emperor Leo III the Isaurian, in what Pope Gregory II saw as the latest in a series of imperial heresies. In 797, the Eastern Roman Emperor Constantine VI was removed from the throne by his mother, Empress Irene, who declared herself sole ruler. As the Latin Church only regarded a male Roman emperor as the head of Christendom, Pope Leo III sought a new candidate for the dignity, excluding consultation with the patriarch of Constantinople.\nCharlemagne's good service to the Church in his defense of Papal possessions against the Lombards made him the ideal candidate. On Christmas Day of 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor, restoring the title in the West for the first time in over three centuries. This can be seen as symbolic of the papacy turning away from the declining Byzantine Empire toward the new power of Carolingian Francia. Charlemagne adopted the formula (\"renewal of the Roman Empire\"). In 802, Irene was overthrown and exiled by Nikephoros I and henceforth there were two Roman emperors.\nAfter Charlemagne died in 814, the imperial crown passed to his son, Louis the Pious. Upon Louis' death in 840, it passed to his son Lothair, who had been his co-ruler. By this point the territory of Charlemagne was divided into several territories (\"cf\". Treaty of Verdun, Treaty of Pr\u00fcm, Treaty of Meerssen and Treaty of Ribemont), and over the course of the later 9th century the title of emperor was disputed by the Carolingian rulers of the Western Frankish Kingdom or West Francia and the Eastern Frankish Kingdom or East Francia, with first the western king (Charles the Bald) and then the eastern (Charles the Fat), who briefly reunited the Empire, attaining the prize. In the 9th century, Charlemagne and his successors promoted the intellectual revival, known as the Carolingian Renaissance. Some, like Mortimer Chambers, opine that the Carolingian Renaissance made possible the subsequent renaissances (even though by the early 10th century, the revival already diminished).\nAfter the death of Charles the Fat in 888, the Carolingian Empire broke apart, and was never restored. According to Regino of Pr\u00fcm, the parts of the realm \"spewed forth kinglets\", and each part elected a kinglet \"from its own bowels\". The last such emperor was Berengar I of Italy, who died in 924.\nPost-Carolingian Eastern Frankish Kingdom.\nAround 900, East Francia's autonomous stem duchies (Franconia, Bavaria, Swabia, Saxony, and Lotharingia) reemerged. After the Carolingian king Louis the Child died without issue in 911, East Francia did not turn to the Carolingian ruler of West Francia to take over the realm but instead elected one of the dukes, Conrad of Franconia, as . On his deathbed, Conrad yielded the crown to his main rival, Henry the Fowler of Saxony (r.\u2009919\u00a0\u2013\u00a0936), who was elected king at the Diet of Fritzlar in 919. Henry reached a truce with the raiding Magyars, and in 933 he won a first victory against them in the Battle of Riade.\nHenry died in 936, but his descendants, the Liudolfing (or Ottonian) dynasty, would continue to rule the Eastern kingdom or the Kingdom of Germany for roughly a century. Upon Henry the Fowler's death, Otto, his son and designated successor, was elected king in Aachen in 936. He overcame a series of revolts from a younger brother and from several dukes. After that, the king managed to control the appointment of dukes and often also employed bishops in administrative affairs. He replaced leaders of most of the major East Frankish duchies with his own relatives. At the same time, he was careful to prevent members of his own family from making infringements on his royal prerogatives.\nFormation of the Holy Roman Empire.\nIn 951, Otto came to the aid of Queen Adelaide of Italy, defeating her enemies, marrying her, and taking control over Italy. In 955, Otto won a decisive victory over the Magyars in the Battle of Lechfeld. In 962, Otto was crowned emperor by Pope John XII, thus intertwining the affairs of the German kingdom with those of Italy and the Papacy. Otto's coronation as emperor marked the German kings as successors to the empire of Charlemagne, which through the concept of , also made them consider themselves as successors to Ancient Rome. The flowering of arts beginning with Otto the Great's reign is known as the Ottonian Renaissance, centered in Germany but also happening in Northern Italy and France.\nOtto created the imperial church system, often called \"Ottonian church system of the Reich\", which tied the great imperial churches and their representatives to imperial service, thus providing \"a stable and long-lasting framework for Germany\". During the Ottonian era, imperial women played a prominent role in political and ecclesiastic affairs, often combining their functions as religious leader and advisor, regent or co-ruler, notably Matilda of Ringelheim, Eadgyth, Adelaide of Italy, Theophanu, and Matilda of Quedlinburg.\nIn 963, Otto deposed John XII and chose Leo VIII as the new pope (although John XII and Leo VIII both claimed the papacy until 964, when John XII died). This also renewed the conflict with the Byzantine emperor, especially after Otto's son Otto II (r.\u2009967\u00a0\u2013\u00a0983) adopted the designation . Still, Otto II formed marital ties with the east when he married the Byzantine princess Theophanu. Their son, Otto III, came to the throne only three years old, and was subjected to a power struggle and series of regencies until his age of majority in 994. Up to that time, he remained in Germany, while a deposed duke, Crescentius II, ruled over Rome and part of Italy, ostensibly in his stead.\nIn 996 Otto III appointed his cousin Gregory V the first German pope. A foreign pope and foreign papal officers were seen with suspicion by Roman nobles, who were led by Crescentius II to revolt. Otto III's former mentor Antipope John XVI briefly held Rome, until the Holy Roman emperor seized the city.\nOtto died young in 1002, and was succeeded by his cousin Henry II, who focused on Germany.\nOtto III's (and his mentor Pope Sylvester's) diplomatic activities coincided with and facilitated the Christianization and the spread of Latin culture in different parts of Europe. They coopted a new group of nations (Slavic) into the framework of Europe, with their empire functioning, as some remark, as a \"Byzantine-like presidency over a family of nations, centred on pope and emperor in Rome\". This has proved a lasting achievement. Otto's early death though made his reign \"the tale of largely unrealized potential\".\nHenry II died in 1024 and Conrad II, first of the Salian dynasty, was elected king only after some debate among dukes and nobles. This group eventually developed into the college of electors.\nThe Holy Roman Empire eventually came to be composed of four kingdoms:\nHigh Middle Ages.\nInvestiture Controversy.\nKings often employed bishops in administrative affairs and often determined who would be appointed to ecclesiastical offices. In the wake of the Cluniac Reforms, this involvement was increasingly seen as inappropriate by the Papacy. The reform-minded Pope Gregory VII was determined to oppose such practices, which led to the Investiture Controversy with King Henry IV (r.\u20091056\u00a0\u2013\u00a01106, crowned emperor in 1084).\nHenry IV repudiated the pope's interference and persuaded his bishops to excommunicate the pope, whom he famously addressed by his birth name \"Hildebrand\" rather than his papal name \"Gregory\". The pope, in turn, excommunicated the king, declared him deposed, and dissolved the oaths of loyalty made to Henry. The king found himself with almost no political support and was forced to make the famous Walk to Canossa in 1077, by which he achieved a lifting of the excommunication at the price of humiliation. Meanwhile, the German princes had elected another king, Rudolf of Swabia.\nHenry managed to defeat Rudolf, but was subsequently confronted with more uprisings, renewed excommunication, and even the rebellion of his sons. After his death, his second son, Henry V, reached an agreement with the Pope and the bishops in the 1122 Concordat of Worms. The political power of the Empire was maintained, but the conflict had demonstrated the limits of the ruler's power, especially in regard to the Church, and it robbed the king of the sacral status he had previously enjoyed. The pope and the German princes had surfaced as major players in the political system of the Holy Roman Empire.\nOstsiedlung.\nAs the result of Ostsiedlung, less populated regions of Central Europe (i.e. sparsely populated border areas in present-day Poland and Czechia) received a significant number of German speakers. Silesia became part of the Holy Roman Empire as the result of the local Piast dukes' push for autonomy from the Polish Crown. From the late 12th century, the Duchy of Pomerania was under the suzerainty of the Holy Roman Empire and the conquests of the Teutonic Order made that region German-speaking.\nHohenstaufen dynasty.\nWhen the Salian dynasty ended with Henry V's death in 1125, the princes chose not to elect the next of kin, but rather Lothair III, the moderately powerful but already old duke of Saxony. When he died in 1137, the princes again aimed to check royal power; accordingly they did not elect Lothair's favoured heir, his son-in-law, Henry the Proud of the Welf family, but Conrad III of the Hohenstaufen family, the grandson of Emperor Henry IV and nephew of Emperor Henry V. This led to over a century of strife between the two houses. Conrad ousted the Welfs from their possessions, but after his death in 1152, his nephew Frederick Barbarossa succeeded him and made peace with the Welfs, restoring his cousin Henry the Lion to his \u2013 albeit diminished \u2013 possessions.\nThe Hohenstaufen rulers increasingly lent land to \"ministeriales\", formerly non-free servicemen, who Frederick hoped would be more reliable than dukes. Initially used mainly for war services, this new class of people would form the basis for the later knights, another basis of imperial power. A further important constitutional move at Roncaglia was the establishment of a new peace mechanism for the entire empire, the Landfrieden, with the first imperial one being issued in 1103 under Henry IV at Mainz. This was an attempt to abolish private feuds, between the many dukes and other people, and to tie the emperor's subordinates to a legal system of jurisdiction and public prosecution of criminal acts\u00a0\u2013 a predecessor of the modern concept of rule of law. Another new concept of the time was the systematic founding of new cities by the emperor and by the local dukes. These were partly a result of the explosion in population; they also concentrated economic power at strategic locations. Before this, cities had only existed in the form of old Roman foundations or older bishoprics. Cities that were founded in the 12th century include Freiburg, possibly the economic model for many later cities, and Munich.\nFrederick Barbarossa was crowned emperor in 1155. He emphasized the \"Romanness\" of the empire, partly in an attempt to justify the power of the emperor independent of the (now strengthened) pope. An imperial assembly at the fields of Roncaglia in 1158 reclaimed imperial rights in reference to Justinian I's Corpus Juris Civilis. Imperial rights had been referred to as \"regalia\" since the Investiture Controversy but were enumerated for the first time at Roncaglia. This comprehensive list included public roads, tariffs, coining, collecting punitive fees, and the seating and unseating of office-holders. These rights were now explicitly rooted in Roman law, a far-reaching constitutional act.\nFrederick's policies were primarily directed at Italy, where he clashed with the free-minded cities of the north, especially the Duchy of Milan. He also embroiled himself in another conflict with the Papacy by supporting a candidate elected by a minority against Pope Alexander III (1159\u20131181). Frederick supported a succession of antipopes before finally making peace with Alexander in 1177. In Germany, the emperor had repeatedly protected Henry the Lion against complaints by rival princes or cities (especially in the cases of Munich and L\u00fcbeck). Henry gave only lackluster support to Frederick's policies, and, in a critical situation during the Italian wars, Henry refused the emperor's plea for military support. After returning to Germany, an embittered Frederick opened proceedings against the duke, resulting in a public ban and the confiscation of all Henry's territories. In 1190, Frederick participated in the Third Crusade, dying in the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia.\nDuring the Hohenstaufen period, German princes facilitated a successful, peaceful eastward settlement of lands that were uninhabited or inhabited sparsely by West Slavs. German-speaking farmers, traders, and craftsmen from the western part of the Empire, both Christians and Jews, moved into these areas. The gradual Germanization of these lands was a complex phenomenon that should not be interpreted in the biased terms of 19th-century nationalism. The eastward settlement expanded the influence of the empire to include Pomerania and Silesia, as did the intermarriage of the local, still mostly Slavic, rulers with German spouses. The Teutonic Knights were invited to Prussia by Duke Konrad of Masovia to Christianize the Prussians in 1226. The monastic state of the Teutonic Order () and its later German successor state of the Duchy of Prussia was never part of the Holy Roman Empire.\nUnder the son and successor of Frederick Barbarossa, Henry VI, the Hohenstaufen dynasty reached its apex, with the addition of the Norman kingdom of Sicily through the marriage of Henry VI and Constance of Sicily. Bohemia and Poland were under feudal dependence, while Cyprus and Lesser Armenia also paid homage. The Iberian-Moroccan caliph accepted his claims over the suzerainty over Tunis and Tripolitania and paid tribute. Fearing the power of Henry, the most powerful monarch in Europe since Charlemagne, the other European kings formed an alliance. But Henry broke this coalition by blackmailing English king Richard the Lionheart. The Byzantine emperor worried that Henry would turn his Crusade plan against his empire, and began to collect the \"alamanikon\" to prepare against the expected invasion. Henry also had plans for turning the Empire into a hereditary monarchy, although this met with opposition from some of the princes and the pope. The emperor suddenly died in 1197, leading to the partial collapse of his empire. As his son, Frederick II, though already elected king, was still a small child and living in Sicily, German princes chose to elect an adult king, resulting in the dual election of Frederick Barbarossa's youngest son Philip of Swabia and Henry the Lion's son Otto of Brunswick, who competed for the crown. After Philip was murdered in a private squabble in 1208, Otto prevailed for a while, until he began to also claim Sicily.\nPope Innocent III, who feared the threat posed by a union of the empire and Sicily, was now supported by Frederick II, who marched to Germany and defeated Otto. After his victory, Frederick did not act upon his promise to keep the two realms separate. Though he had made his son Henry king of Sicily before marching on Germany, he still reserved real political power for himself. This continued after Frederick was crowned emperor in 1220. Fearing Frederick's concentration of power, the pope finally excommunicated him. Another point of contention was the Crusade, which Frederick had promised but repeatedly postponed. Now, although excommunicated, Frederick led the Sixth Crusade in 1228, which ended in negotiations and a temporary restoration of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.\nFor his many-sided activities, prestige, and dynamic personality Frederick II has been called the greatest of all the medieval German emperors. In the Kingdom of Sicily and much of Italy, Frederick built upon the work of his Norman predecessors and forged an early absolutist state bound together by an efficient secular bureaucracy. Despite his imperial prestige and power, Frederick II's rule was a major turning point toward the partitioning of central rule in the Empire. Since his political focus was south of the Alps, he was mostly absent from Germany and issued far-reaching privileges to Germany's secular and ecclesiastical princes to ensure their cooperation. In the 1220 , Frederick gave up a number of \"regalia\" in favour of the bishops, among them tariffs, coining, and the right to build fortification. The 1232 mostly extended these privileges to secular territories. Although many of these privileges had existed earlier, they were now granted globally, and once and for all, to allow the German princes to maintain order north of the Alps while Frederick concentrated on Italy. The 1232 document marked the first time that the German dukes were called , owners of their lands, a remarkable change in terminology as well. the affirmed a division of labor between the emperor and the princes and laid much groundwork for the development of particularism in Germany. Even so, from 1232 the vassals of the emperor had a veto over imperial legislative decisions and any new law established by the emperor had to be approved by the princes.\nThese provisions not withstanding, royal power in Germany remained strong under Frederick and by the 1240s the crown was still rich in fiscal resources, land holdings, retinues, and all other rights, revenues, and jurisdictions. Frederick II used the political loyalty and practical jurisdictions granted to the higher German aristocracy to impose peace, order, and justice upon Germany. The jurisdictional autarky of the German princes was favoured by the crown itself in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the interests of order and local peace. The inevitable result was the territorial particularism of churchmen, lay princes, and interstitial cities. However, Frederick was a ruler of vast territories and \"could not be everywhere at once\". The transference of jurisdiction was a practical solution to secure the further support of the German princes and, moreover, was a process which had already been underway even under Henry VI and Frederick Barbarossa. It is unlikely that a particularly \"strong ruler\" such as Frederick II would have even pragmatically agreed to legislation that was truly concessionary rather than cooperative, neither would the princes have insisted on such. The Mainz Landfriede or , decreed at the Imperial Diet of 1235, became one of the basic laws of the empire and provided that the princes should share the burden of local government in Germany. The authority of the crown was not in question, rather its practical allocation in such a wide region which lacked a general administrative apparatus. Far from a broad diminution of royal power, the Mainz Landfriede was a constitutional recalibration based on the culmination of multi-decade political realities and a testament to Frederick II's considerable political strength, his increased prestige during the early 1230s, and sheer overpowering might that he succeeded in securing the princes' support and rebound them to Hohenstaufen power.\nKingdom of Bohemia.\nThe Kingdom of Bohemia was a significant regional power during the Middle Ages. In 1212, King Ottokar I (bearing the title \"king\" since 1198) extracted a Golden Bull of Sicily (a formal edict) from Emperor Frederick II, confirming the royal title for Ottokar and his descendants, and the Duchy of Bohemia was raised to a kingdom. Bohemia's political and financial obligations to the Empire were gradually reduced. Charles IV set Prague to be the seat of the Holy Roman emperor.\nInterregnum.\nAfter the death of Frederick II in 1250, Conrad IV, Frederick's son (died 1254), enjoyed a strong position having defeated his papal-backed rival anti-king, William of Holland (died 1256). However, Conrad's death was followed by the Interregnum, during which no king could achieve universal recognition, allowing the princes to consolidate their holdings and become even more independent as rulers. After 1257, the crown was contested between Richard of Cornwall, who was supported by the Guelph party, and Alfonso X of Castile, who was recognized by the Hohenstaufen party but never set foot on German soil. After Richard's death in 1273, Rudolf I of Germany, a minor pro-Hohenstaufen count, was elected. He was the first of the Habsburgs to hold a royal title, but he was never crowned emperor. After Rudolf's death in 1291, Adolf and Albert were two further weak kings who were never crowned emperor.\nAlbert was assassinated in 1308. Almost immediately, King Philip IV of France began aggressively seeking support for his brother, Charles of Valois, to be elected the next king of the Romans. Philip thought he had the backing of the French Pope, Clement V (established at Avignon in 1309), and that his prospects of bringing the empire into the orbit of the French royal house were good. He lavishly spread French money in the hope of bribing the German electors. Although Charles of Valois had the backing of pro-French Henry, Archbishop of Cologne, many were not keen to see an expansion of French power, least of all Clement V. The principal rival to Charles appeared to be Count Palatine Rudolf II.\nBut the electors, the great territorial magnates who had lived without a crowned emperor for decades, were unhappy with both Charles and Rudolf. Instead Count Henry of Luxembourg, with the aid of his brother, Archbishop Baldwin of Trier, was elected as Henry VII with six votes at Frankfurt on 27 November 1308. Though a vassal of King Philip, Henry was bound by few national ties, and thus suitable as a compromise candidate. Henry VII was crowned king at Aachen on 6 January 1309, and emperor by Pope Clement V on 29 June 1312 in Rome, ending the interregnum.\nChanges in political structure.\nDuring the 13th century, a general structural change in how land was administered prepared the shift of political power toward the rising bourgeoisie at the expense of the aristocratic feudalism that would characterize the Late Middle Ages. The rise of the cities and the emergence of the new burgher class eroded the societal, legal and economic order of feudalism.\nPeasants were increasingly required to pay tribute to their landlords. The concept of property began to replace more ancient forms of jurisdiction, although they were still very much tied together. In the territories (not at the level of the Empire), power became increasingly bundled: whoever owned the land had jurisdiction, from which other powers derived. Jurisdiction at the time did not include legislation, which was virtually nonexistent until well into the 15th century. Court practice heavily relied on traditional customs or rules described as customary.\nDuring this time, territories began to transform into the predecessors of modern states. The process varied greatly among the various lands and was most advanced in those territories that were almost identical to the lands of the old Germanic tribes, \"e.g.\", Bavaria. It was slower in those scattered territories that were founded through imperial privileges.\nIn the 12th century the Hanseatic League established itself as a commercial and defensive alliance of the merchant guilds of towns and cities in the empire and all over northern and central Europe. It dominated marine trade in the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and along the connected navigable rivers. Each of the affiliated cities retained the legal system of its sovereign and, with the exception of the Free imperial cities, had only a limited degree of political autonomy. By the late 14th century, the powerful league enforced its interests with military means, if necessary. This culminated in a war with the sovereign Kingdom of Denmark from 1361 to 1370. The league declined after 1450.\nLate Middle Ages.\nRise of the territories after the Hohenstaufens.\nThe difficulties in electing the king eventually led to the emergence of a fixed college of prince-electors (\"Kurf\u00fcrsten\"), whose composition and procedures were set forth in the Golden Bull of 1356, issued by Charles IV (reigned 1355\u20131378, King of the Romans since 1346), which remained valid until 1806. This development probably best symbolizes the emerging duality between emperor and realm (\"Kaiser und Reich\"), which were no longer considered identical. The Golden Bull also set forth the system for election of the Holy Roman Emperor. The emperor now was to be elected by a majority rather than by consent of all seven electors. For electors the title became hereditary, and they were given the right to mint coins and to exercise jurisdiction. Also it was recommended that their sons learn the imperial languages \u2013 German, Latin, Italian, and Czech. The decision by Charles IV is the subject of debates: on one hand, it helped to restore peace in the lands of the Empire, that had been engulfed in civil conflicts after the end of the Hohenstaufen era; on the other hand, the \"blow to central authority was unmistakable\". Thomas Brady Jr. opines that Charles IV's intention was to end contested royal elections (from the Luxembourghs' perspective, they also had the advantage that the King of Bohemia had a permanent and preeminent status as one of the Electors himself). At the same time, he built up Bohemia as the Luxembourghs' core land of the Empire and their dynastic base. His reign in Bohemia is often considered the land's Golden Age. According to Brady Jr. though, under all the glitter, one problem arose: the government showed an inability to deal with the German immigrant waves into Bohemia, thus leading to religious tensions and persecutions. The imperial project of the Luxembourgh halted under Charles's son Wenceslaus (reigned 1378\u20131419 as King of Bohemia, 1376\u20131400 as King of the Romans), who also faced opposition from 150 local baronial families.\nThe shift in power away from the emperor is also revealed in the way the post-Hohenstaufen kings attempted to sustain their power. Earlier, the Empire's strength (and finances) greatly relied on the Empire's own lands, the so-called \"Reichsgut\", which always belonged to the king of the day and included many Imperial Cities. After the 13th century, the relevance of the \"Reichsgut\" faded, even though some parts of it did remain until the Empire's end in 1806. Instead, the \"Reichsgut\" was increasingly pawned to local dukes, sometimes to raise money for the Empire, but more frequently to reward faithful duty or as an attempt to establish control over the dukes. The direct governance of the \"Reichsgut\" no longer matched the needs of either the king or the dukes.\nThe kings beginning with Rudolf I of Germany increasingly relied on the lands of their respective dynasties to support their power. In contrast with the \"Reichsgut\", which was mostly scattered and difficult to administer, these territories were relatively compact and thus easier to control. In 1282, Rudolf I thus lent Austria and Styria to his own sons. In 1312, Henry VII of the House of Luxembourg was crowned as the first Holy Roman Emperor since Frederick II. After him all kings and emperors relied on the lands of their own family (\"Hausmacht\"): Louis IV of Wittelsbach (king 1314, emperor 1328\u20131347) relied on his lands in Bavaria; Charles IV of Luxembourg, the grandson of Henry VII, drew strength from his own lands in Bohemia. It was thus increasingly in the king's own interest to strengthen the power of the territories, since the king profited from such a benefit in his own lands as well.\nImperial Reform.\nThe \"constitution\" of the Empire still remained largely unsettled at the beginning of the 15th century. Feuds often happened between local rulers. The \"robber baron\" (\"Raubritter\") became a social factor.\nSimultaneously, the Catholic Church experienced crises of its own, with wide-reaching effects in the Empire. The conflict between several papal claimants (two anti-popes and the \"legitimate\" Pope) ended only with the Council of Constance (1414\u20131418); after 1419 the Papacy directed much of its energy to suppressing the Hussites. The medieval idea of unifying all Christendom into a single political entity, with the Church and the Empire as its leading institutions, began to decline.\nWith these drastic changes, much discussion emerged in the 15th century about the Empire itself. Rules from the past no longer adequately described the structure of the time, and a reinforcement of earlier \"Landfrieden\" was urgently needed.\nThe vision for a simultaneous reform of the Empire and the Church on a central level began with Sigismund (reigned 1433\u20131437, King of the Romans since 1411), who, according to historian Thomas Brady Jr., \"possessed a breadth of vision and a sense of grandeur unseen in a German monarch since the thirteenth century\". But external difficulties, self-inflicted mistakes and the extinction of the Luxembourg male line made this vision unfulfilled.\nFrederick III was the first Habsburg to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor, in 1452. He had been very careful regarding the reform movement in the empire. For most of his reign, he considered reform as a threat to his imperial prerogatives. He avoided direct confrontations, which might lead to humiliation if the princes refused to give way. After 1440, the reform of the Empire and Church was sustained and led by local and regional powers, particularly the territorial princes. In his last years, he felt more pressure on taking action from a higher level. Berthold von Henneberg, the Archbishop of Mainz, who spoke on behalf of reform-minded princes (who wanted to reform the Empire without strengthening the imperial hand), capitalized on Frederick's desire to secure the imperial election for his son Maximilian. Thus, in his last years, he presided over the initial phase of Imperial Reform, which would mainly unfold under Maximilian. Maximilian himself was more open to reform, although naturally he also wanted to preserve and enhance imperial prerogatives. After Frederick retired to Linz in 1488, as a compromise, Maximilian acted as mediator between the princes and his father. When he attained sole rule after Frederick's death, he would continue this policy of brokerage, acting as the impartial judge between options suggested by the princes.\nCreation of institutions.\nMajor measures for the Reform were launched at the 1495 Reichstag at Worms. A new organ was introduced, the \"Reichskammergericht\", that was to be largely independent from the Emperor. A new tax was launched to finance it, the \"Gemeine Pfennig\", although this would only be collected under Charles V and Ferdinand I, and not fully.\nTo create a rival for the \"Reichskammergericht\", Maximilian established the \"Reichshofrat\" in 1497, which had its seat in Vienna. During Maximilian's reign, this council was not popular though. In the long run, the two Courts functioned in parallel, sometimes overlapping.\nIn 1500, Maximilian agreed to establish an organ called the \"Reichsregiment\" (central imperial government, consisting of twenty members including the Electors, with the Emperor or his representative as its chairman), first organized in 1501 in Nuremberg. But Maximilian resented the new organization, while the Estates failed to support it. The new organ proved politically weak, and its power returned to Maximilian in 1502.\nThe most important governmental changes targeted the heart of the regime: the chancery. Early in Maximilian's reign, the Court Chancery at Innsbruck competed with the Imperial Chancery (which was under the elector-archbishop of Mainz, the senior Imperial chancellor). By referring the political matters in Tyrol, Austria as well as Imperial problems to the Court Chancery, Maximilian gradually centralized its authority. The two chanceries became combined in 1502. In 1496, the emperor created a general treasury (\"Hofkammer\") in Innsbruck, which became responsible for all the hereditary lands. The chamber of accounts (\"Raitkammer\") at Vienna was made subordinate to this body. Under Paul von Liechtenstein, the \"Hofkammer\" was entrusted with not only hereditary lands' affairs, but Maximilian's affairs as the German king too.\nReception of Roman law.\nAt the 1495 Diet of Worms, the Reception of Roman Law was accelerated and formalized. The Roman Law was made binding in German courts, except in the case it was contrary to local statutes. In practice, it became the basic law throughout Germany, displacing Germanic local law to a large extent, although Germanic law was still operative at the lower courts. Other than the desire to achieve legal unity and other factors, the adoption also highlighted the continuity between the Ancient Roman empire and the Holy Roman Empire. To realize his resolve to reform and unify the legal system, the emperor frequently intervened personally in matters of local legal matters, overriding local charters and customs. This practice was often met with irony and scorn from local councils, who wanted to protect local codes.\nThe legal reform seriously weakened the ancient Vehmic court (\"Vehmgericht\", or Secret Tribunal of Westphalia, traditionally held to be instituted by Charlemagne but this theory is now considered unlikely), although it would not be abolished completely until 1811 (when it was abolished under the order of J\u00e9r\u00f4me Bonaparte).\nNational political culture.\nMaximilian and Charles V (despite the fact both emperors were internationalists personally) were the first who mobilized the rhetoric of the Nation, firmly identified with the Reich by the contemporary humanists. With encouragement from Maximilian and his humanists, iconic spiritual figures were reintroduced or became notable. The humanists rediscovered the work \"Germania\", written by Tacitus. According to Peter H. Wilson, the female figure of Germania was reinvented by the emperor as the virtuous pacific Mother of Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Whaley further suggests that, despite the later religious divide, \"patriotic motifs developed during Maximilian's reign, both by Maximilian himself and by the humanist writers who responded to him, formed the core of a national political culture.\"\nMaximilian's reign also witnessed the gradual emergence of the German common language, with the notable roles of the imperial chancery and the chancery of the Wettin Elector Frederick the Wise. The development of the printing industry together with the emergence of the postal system (the first modern one in the world), initiated by Maximilian himself with contribution from Frederick III and Charles the Bold, led to a revolution in communication and allowed ideas to spread. Unlike the situation in more centralized countries, the decentralized nature of the Empire made censorship difficult.\nTerence McIntosh comments that the expansionist, aggressive policy pursued by Maximilian I and Charles V at the inception of the early modern German nation (although not to further the aims specific to the German nation per se), relying on German manpower as well as utilizing fearsome Landsknechte and mercenaries, would affect the way neighbours viewed the German polity, although in the longue dur\u00e9e, Germany tended to be at peace.\nImperial power.\nMaximilian was \"the first Holy Roman Emperor in 250 years who ruled as well as reigned\". In the early 1500s, he was true master of the Empire, although his power weakened during the last decade before his death. Whaley notes that, despite struggles, what emerged at the end of Maximilian's rule was a strengthened monarchy and not an oligarchy of princes. Benjamin Curtis opines that while Maximilian was not able to fully create a common government for his lands (although the chancellery and court council were able to coordinate affairs across the realms), he strengthened key administrative functions in Austria and created central offices to deal with financial, political and judicial matters \u2013 these offices replaced the feudal system and became representative of a more modern system that was administered by professionalized officials. After two decades of reforms, the emperor retained his position as first among equals, while the empire gained common institutions through which the emperor shared power with the estates.\nBy the early 16th century, the Habsburg rulers had become the most powerful in Europe, but their strength relied on their composite monarchy as a whole, and not only the Holy Roman Empire (see also: Empire of Charles V). Maximilian had seriously considered combining the Burgundian lands (inherited from his wife Mary of Burgundy) with his Austrian lands to form a powerful core (while also extending toward the east). After the unexpected addition of Spain to the Habsburg Empire, at one point he intended to leave Austria (raised to a kingdom) to his younger grandson Ferdinand. His elder grandson Charles V later gave Spain and most of the Burgundian lands to his son Philip II of Spain, the founder of the Spanish branch, and the Habsburg hereditary lands to his brother Ferdinand, the founder of the Austrian branch.\nIn France and England, from the 13th century onward, stationary royal residences had begun to develop into capital cities that grew rapidly and developed corresponding infrastructure: the \"Palais de la Cit\u00e9\" and the \"Palace of Westminster\" became the respective main residences. This was not possible in the Holy Roman Empire because no real hereditary monarchy emerged, but rather the tradition of elective monarchy prevailed \"(see: Imperial election)\" which, in the High Middle Ages, led to kings of very different regional origins being elected \"(List of royal and imperial elections in the Holy Roman Empire)\". If they wanted to control the empire and its rebellious regional rulers, they could not limit themselves to their home region and their private palaces. As a result, kings and emperors continued to travel around the empire well into modern times, using their temporary residences \"(Kaiserpfalz)\" as transit stations for their \"itinerant courts\". From the late Middle Ages onward, the weakly fortified \"pfalzen\" were replaced by imperial castles. It was only King Ferdinand I, the younger brother of the then Emperor Charles V, who moved his main residence to the Vienna Hofburg in the middle of the 16th century, where most of the following Habsburg emperors subsequently resided. Vienna did not become the capital of the empire, just of a Habsburg hereditary state (the Archduchy of Austria). The emperors continued to travel to their elections and coronations at Frankfurt and Aachen, to the Imperial Diets at different places and to other occasions. The Perpetual Diet of Regensburg was based in Regensburg from 1663 to 1806. Rudolf II resided in Prague, the Wittelsbach emperor Charles VII in Munich. A German capital in the true sense only existed in the Second German Empire from 1871, when the Kaiser, Reichstag and Reichskanzler resided in Berlin.\nEarly capitalism.\nWhile particularism prevented the centralization of the Empire, it gave rise to early developments of capitalism. In Italian and Hanseatic cities like Genoa and Pisa, Hamburg and L\u00fcbeck, warrior-merchants appeared and pioneered raiding-and-trading maritime empires. These practices declined before 1500, but they managed to spread to the maritime periphery in Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands and England, where they \"provoked emulation in grander, oceanic scale\". William Thompson agrees with M.N. Pearson that this distinctively European phenomenon happened because in the Italian and Hanseatic cities which lacked resources and were \"small in size and population\", the rulers (whose social status was not much higher than the merchants) had to pay attention to trade. Thus the warrior-merchants gained the state's coercive powers, which they could not gain in Mughal or other Asian realms \u2013 whose rulers had few incentives to help the merchant class, as they controlled considerable resources and their revenue was land-bound.\nIn the 1450s, the economic development in Southern Germany gave rise to banking empires, cartels and monopolies in cities such as Ulm, Regensburg, and Augsburg. Augsburg in particular, associated with the reputation of the Fugger, Welser and Baumgartner families, is considered the capital city of early capitalism. Augsburg benefitted majorly from the establishment and expansion of the Kaiserliche Reichspost in the late 15th and early 16th century. Even when the Habsburg empire began to extend to other parts of Europe, Maximilian's loyalty to Augsburg, where he conducted a lot of his endeavours, meant that the imperial city became \"the dominant centre of early capitalism\" of the 16th century, and \"the location of the most important post office within the Holy Roman Empire\". From Maximilian's time, as the \"terminuses of the first transcontinental post lines\" began to shift from Innsbruck to Venice and from Brussels to Antwerp, in these cities, the communication system and the news market started to converge. As the Fuggers as well as other trading companies based their most important branches in these cities, these traders gained access to these systems as well. The 1557, 1575 and 1607 bankruptcies of the Spanish branch of the Habsburgs though damaged the Fuggers substantially. Moreover, \"Discovery of water routes to India and the New World shifted the focus of European economic development from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic \u2013 emphasis shifted from Venice and Genoa to Lisbon and Antwerp. Eventually American mineral developments reduced the importance of Hungarian and Tyrolean mineral wealth. The nexus of the European continent remained landlocked until the time of expedient land conveyances in the form of primarily rail and canal systems, which were limited in growth potential; in the new continent, on the other hand, there were ports in abundance to release the plentiful goods obtained from those new lands.\" The economic pinnacles achieved in Germany in the period between 1450 and 1550 would not be seen again until the end of the 19th century.\nIn the Netherlands part of the empire, financial centres evolved together with markets of commodities. Topographical development in the 15th century made Antwerp a port city. Boosted by the privileges it received as a loyal city after the Flemish revolts against Maximilian, it became the leading seaport city in Northern Europe and served as \"the conduit for a remarkable 40% of world trade\". Conflicts with the Habsburg-Spanish government in 1576 and 1585 though made merchants relocate to Amsterdam, which eventually replaced it as the leading port city.\nReformation and Renaissance.\nIn 1516, Ferdinand II of Aragon, grandfather of the future Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, died. Charles initiated his reign in Castile and Aragon, a union which evolved into Spain, in conjunction with his mother Joanna of Castile.\nIn 1519, already reigning as \"Carlos I\" in Spain, Charles took up the imperial title as \"Karl V\". The Holy Roman Empire would end up going to a more junior branch of the Habsburgs in the person of Charles's brother Ferdinand, while the senior branch continued to rule in Spain and the Burgundian inheritance in the person of Charles's son, Philip II of Spain. Many factors contribute to this result. For James D. Tracy, it was the polycentric character of the European civilization that made it hard to maintain \"a dynasty whose territories bestrode the continent from the Low Countries to Sicily and from Spain to Hungary\u00a0\u2013 not to mention Spain's overseas possessions\". Others point out the religious tensions, fiscal problems and obstruction from external forces including France and the Ottomans. On a more personal level, Charles failed to persuade the German princes to support his son Philip, whose \"awkward and withdrawn character and lack of German language skills doomed this enterprise to failure\".\nBefore Charles's reign in the Holy Roman Empire began, in 1517, Martin Luther launched what would later be known as the Reformation. The empire then became divided along religious lines, with the north, the east, and many of the major cities \u2013 Strasbourg, Frankfurt, and Nuremberg \u2013 becoming Protestant while the southern and western regions largely remained Catholic.\nAt the beginning of Charles's reign, another \"Reichsregiment\" was set up again (1522), although Charles declared that he would only tolerate it in his absence and its chairman had to be a representative of his. Charles V was absent in Germany from 1521 to 1530. Similar to the one set up in the early 1500s, the \"Reichsregiment\" failed to create a federal authority independent of the emperor, due to the unsteady participation and differences between princes. Charles V defeated the Protestant princes in 1547 in the Schmalkaldic War, but the momentum was lost and the Protestant estates were able to survive politically despite military defeat. In the 1555 Peace of Augsburg, Charles V, through his brother Ferdinand, officially recognized the right of rulers to choose Catholicism or Lutheranism (Zwinglians, Calvinists and radicals were not included). In 1555, Paul IV was elected pope and took the side of France, whereupon an exhausted Charles finally gave up his hopes of a world Christian empire.\nBaroque period.\nGermany would enjoy relative peace for the next six decades. On the eastern front, the Turks continued to loom large as a threat, although war would mean further compromises with the Protestant princes, and so the Emperor sought to avoid it. In the west, the Rhineland increasingly fell under French influence. After the Dutch revolt against Spain erupted, the Empire remained neutral, allowing the Netherlands to depart the empire in 1581. A side effect was the Cologne War, which ravaged much of the upper Rhine. Emperor Ferdinand III formally accepted Dutch neutrality in 1653, a decision ratified by the Reichstag in 1728.\nAfter Ferdinand died in 1564, his son Maximilian II became Emperor, and like his father accepted the existence of Protestantism and the need for occasional compromise with it. Maximilian was succeeded in 1576 by Rudolf II, who preferred classical Greek philosophy to Christianity and lived an isolated existence in Bohemia. He became afraid to act when the Catholic Church was forcibly reasserting control in Austria and Hungary, and the Protestant princes became upset over this.\nImperial power sharply deteriorated by the time of Rudolf's death in 1612. When Bohemians rebelled against the Emperor, the immediate result was the series of conflicts known as the Thirty Years' War (1618\u20131648), which devastated the empire. Foreign powers, including France and Sweden, intervened in the conflict and strengthened those fighting the Imperial power, but also seized considerable territory for themselves. Accordingly, the empire could never return to its former glory, leading Voltaire to make his infamous quip that the Holy Roman Empire was \"neither Holy nor Roman nor an Empire.\"\nStill, its actual end did not come for two centuries. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the Thirty Years' War allowed Calvinism, but Anabaptists, Arminians and other Protestant communities would still lack any support and continue to be persecuted well until the end of the empire. The Habsburg emperors focused on consolidating their own estates in Austria and elsewhere.\nAt the Battle of Vienna (1683), the Army of the Holy Roman Empire, led by the Polish King John III Sobieski, decisively defeated a large Turkish army, stopping the western Ottoman advance and leading to the eventual dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire in Europe. The army was one third forces of the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth and two thirds forces of the Holy Roman Empire.\nModern period.\nPrussia and Austria.\nBy the rise of Louis XIV, the Habsburgs were chiefly dependent on their hereditary lands to counter the rise of Prussia, which possessed territories inside the Empire. Throughout the 18th century, the Habsburgs were embroiled in various European conflicts, such as the War of the Spanish Succession (1701\u20131714), the War of the Polish Succession (1733\u20131735), and the War of the Austrian Succession (1740\u20131748). The German dualism between Austria and Prussia dominated the empire's history after 1740.\nFrench Revolutionary Wars and final dissolution.\nFrom 1792 onward, revolutionary France was at war with various parts of the Empire intermittently.\nThe German mediatization was the series of mediatizations and secularizations that occurred between 1795 and 1814, during the latter part of the era of the French Revolution and then the Napoleonic Era. \"Mediatization\" was the process of annexing the lands of one imperial estate to another, often leaving the annexed some rights. For example, the estates of the Imperial Knights were formally mediatized in 1806, having been seized by the great territorial states in 1803 in the so-called \"Rittersturm\". \"Secularization\" was the abolition of the temporal power of an ecclesiastical ruler such as a bishop or an abbot and the annexation of the secularized territory to a secular territory.\nThe empire was dissolved on 6 August 1806, when the last Holy Roman Emperor Francis II (from 1804, Emperor Francis I of Austria) abdicated, following a military defeat by the French under Napoleon at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805 (see Treaty of Pressburg). Napoleon reorganized much of the Empire into the Confederation of the Rhine, a French satellite. Francis' House of Habsburg-Lorraine survived the demise of the empire, continuing to reign as Emperors of Austria and Kings of Hungary until the Habsburg empire's final dissolution in 1918 in the aftermath of World War I.\nThe Napoleonic Confederation of the Rhine was replaced by a new union, the German Confederation in 1815, following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. It lasted until 1866 when Prussia founded the North German Confederation, a forerunner of the German Empire which united the German-speaking territories outside of Austria and Switzerland under Prussian leadership in 1871. This state developed into modern Germany.\nThe abdication indicated that the Kaiser no longer felt capable of fulfilling his duties as head of the Reich, and so declared:\n\"\"That we consider the tie that has bound us to the body politic of the German Reich to be broken, that we have expired the office and dignity of the head of the Reich through the unification of the confederated Rhenish estates and that we are thereby relieved of all the duties we have assumed towards the German Reich Consider counted, and lay down the imperial crown worn by the same until now and conducted imperial government, as is hereby done.\"\"\nThe only princely member states of the Holy Roman Empire that have preserved their status as monarchies until today are the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the Principality of Liechtenstein. The only Free Imperial Cities still existing as states within Germany are Hamburg and Bremen. All other historic member states of the Holy Roman Empire were either dissolved or have adopted republican systems of government.\nDemographics.\nPopulation.\nOverall population figures for the Holy Roman Empire are extremely vague and vary widely. The empire of Charlemagne may have had as many as 20 million people. Given the political fragmentation of the later Empire, there were no central agencies that could compile such figures. Nevertheless, it is believed the demographic disaster of the Thirty Years' War meant that the population of the Empire in the early 17th century was similar to what it was in the early 18th century; by one estimate, the Empire did not exceed 1618 levels of population until 1750.\nIn the early 17th century, the electors held under their rule the following number of Imperial subjects:\nWhile not electors, the Spanish Habsburgs had the second highest number of subjects within the Empire after the Austrian Habsburgs, with over 3 million in the early 17th century in the Burgundian Circle and Duchy of Milan.\nPeter Wilson estimates the Empire's population at 20 million in 1700, plus 5 million in Imperial Italy, a total of around 25 million. By 1800 he estimates the Empire's population at 29 million (excluding Italy), with another 12.6 million held by under Austrian and Prussian dominion outside of the Empire.\nAccording to a contemporary estimate of the Austrian War Archives for the first decade of the 18th century, the Empire\u00a0\u2013 including Bohemia and the Spanish Netherlands\u00a0\u2013 had a population of close to 28\u00a0million with a breakdown as follows:\nGerman demographic historians have traditionally worked on estimates of the population of the Holy Roman Empire based on assumed population within the frontiers of Germany in 1871 or 1914. More recent estimates use less outdated criteria, but they remain guesswork. One estimate based on the frontiers of Germany in 1870 gives a population of some 15\u201317\u00a0million around 1600, declined to 10\u201313\u00a0million around 1650 (following the Thirty Years' War). Other historians who work on estimates of the population of the early modern Empire suggest the population declined from 20\u00a0million to some 16\u201317\u00a0million by 1650.\nA credible estimate for 1800 gives 27\u201328\u00a0million inhabitants for the Empire (which at this point had already lost the remaining Low Countries, Italy, and the Left Bank of the Rhine in the 1797 Treaty of Campo Fornio) with an overall breakdown as follows:\nThere are also numerous estimates for the Italian states that were formally part of the Empire:\nLargest cities.\nLargest cities or towns of the Empire by year:\nReligion.\nCatholicism constituted the single official religion of the Empire until 1555; the Holy Roman Emperor was always Catholic.\nLutheranism was officially recognized in the Peace of Augsburg of 1555, and Calvinism in the Peace of Westphalia of 1648. Those two constituted the only officially recognized Protestant denominations, while various other Protestant confessions such as Anabaptism, Arminianism, etc. coexisted illegally within the Empire. Anabaptism came in a variety of denominations, including Mennonites, Schwarzenau Brethren, Hutterites, the Amish, and multiple other groups.\nFollowing the Peace of Augsburg, the official religion of a territory was determined by the principle according to which a ruler's religion determined that of his subjects. The Peace of Westphalia abrogated that principle by stipulating that the official religion of a territory was to be what it had been on 1 January 1624, considered to have been a \"normal year\". Henceforth, the conversion of a ruler to another faith did not entail the conversion of his subjects.\nIn addition, all Protestant subjects of a Catholic ruler and vice versa were guaranteed the rights that they had enjoyed on that date. While the adherents of a territory's official religion enjoyed the right of public worship, the others were allowed the right of private worship (in chapels without either spires or bells). In theory, no one was to be discriminated against or excluded from commerce, trade, craft or public burial on grounds of religion. For the first time, the permanent nature of the division between the Christian churches of the empire was more or less assumed.\nA Jewish minority existed in the Holy Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Emperors claimed the right of protection and taxation of all the Jews of the empire, but there were also large-scale massacres of Jews, especially at the time of the First Crusade and during the wars of religion in the 16th century.\nInstitutions.\nThe Holy Roman Empire was neither a centralized state nor a nation-state. Instead, it was divided into dozens \u2013 eventually hundreds \u2013 of individual entities governed by kings, dukes, counts, bishops, abbots, and other rulers, collectively known as princes. There were also some areas ruled directly by the Emperor.\nFrom the High Middle Ages onwards, the Holy Roman Empire was marked by an uneasy coexistence with the princes of the local territories who were struggling to take power away from it. To a greater extent than in other medieval kingdoms such as France and England, the emperors were unable to gain much control over the lands that they formally owned. Instead, to secure their own position from the threat of being deposed, emperors were forced to grant more and more autonomy to local rulers, both nobles and bishops. This process began in the 11th century with the Investiture Controversy and was more or less concluded with the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. Several Emperors attempted to reverse this steady dilution of their authority but were thwarted both by the papacy and by the princes of the Empire.\nImperial estates.\nThe number of territories represented in the Imperial Diet was considerable, numbering about 300 at the time of the Peace of Westphalia. Many of these \"Kleinstaaten\" (\"little states\") covered no more than a few square miles, or included several non-contiguous pieces, so the Empire was often called a (\"patchwork carpet\").\nAn entity was considered a (imperial estate) if, according to feudal law, it had no authority above it except the Holy Roman Emperor himself. The imperial estates comprised:\nA sum total of 1,500 Imperial estates has been reckoned. For a list of in 1792, see List of Imperial Diet participants (1792).\nThe most powerful lords of the later empire were the Austrian Habsburgs, who ruled of land within the Empire in the first half of the 17th century, mostly in modern-day Austria and Czechia. At the same time the lands ruled by the electors of Saxony, Bavaria, and Brandenburg (prior to the acquisition of Prussia) were all close to ; the Duke of Brunswick-L\u00fcneburg (later the Elector of Hanover) had a territory around the same size. These were the largest of the German realms. The Elector of the Palatinate had significantly less at , and the ecclesiastical Electorates of Mainz, Cologne, and Trier were much smaller, with around . Just larger than them, with roughly , were the Duchy of W\u00fcrttemberg, the Landgraviate of Hessen-Kassel, and the Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. They were roughly matched in size by the prince-bishoprics of Salzburg and M\u00fcnster. The majority of the other German territories, including the other prince-bishoprics, were under , the smallest being those of the Imperial Knights; around 1790 the Knights consisted of 350 families ruling a total of only collectively. Imperial Italy was less fragmented politically, most of it c.\u20091600 being divided between Savoy (Savoy, Piedmont, Nice, Aosta), the Grand Duchy of Tuscany (Tuscany, bar Lucca), the Republic of Genoa (Liguria, Corisca), the duchies of Modena-Reggio and Parma-Piacenza (Emilia), and the Spanish Duchy of Milan (most of Lombardy), each with between half a million and one and a half million people. The Low Countries were also more coherent than Germany, being entirely under the dominion of the Spanish Netherlands as part of the Burgundian Circle, at least nominally.\nIn 1792, 21 families (8 electors and 13 princely families) held 81 percent of the Empire's territory, plus all electoral and 56 of the 100 princely votes. These 21 families held 25 territories (some families had cadet branches e.g. the Bavarian and Palatinate Wittelsbachs), by far the largest being Austria and Prussia. Another 16.4 percent of the Empire was split between 151 ecclesiastical and secular lords, generally lacking princely status, with the majority of that 16.4 percent being held by a tenth of the lords. The remaining 2.6 percent of the Empire was split between 51 disconnected imperial cities and 400 families of Imperial Knights.\nKing of the Romans.\nA prospective Emperor first had to be elected King of the Romans. German kings had been elected since the 9th century; at that point they were chosen by the leaders of the five most important tribes (the Salian Franks of Lorraine, Ripuarian Franks of Franconia, Saxons, Bavarians, and Swabians). In the Holy Roman Empire, the main dukes and bishops of the kingdom elected the King of the Romans.\nThe imperial throne was transferred by election, but Emperors often ensured their own sons were elected during their lifetimes, enabling them to keep the crown for their families. This only changed after the end of the Salian dynasty in the 12th century.\nIn 1356, Emperor Charles IV issued the Golden Bull, which limited the electors to seven: the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the Duke of Saxony, the Margrave of Brandenburg, and the archbishops of Cologne, Mainz, and Trier. During the Thirty Years' War, the Duke of Bavaria was given the right to vote as the eighth elector, and the Duke of Brunswick-L\u00fcneburg (colloquially, Hanover) was granted a ninth electorate; additionally, the Napoleonic Wars resulted in several electorates being reallocated, but these new electors never voted before the Empire's dissolution. A candidate for election would be expected to offer concessions of land or money to the electors in order to secure their vote.\nAfter being elected, the King of the Romans could theoretically claim the title of \"Emperor\" only after being crowned by the Pope. In many cases, this took several years while the King was held up by other tasks: frequently he first had to resolve conflicts in rebellious northern Italy or was quarreling with the Pope himself. Later Emperors dispensed with the papal coronation altogether, being content with the styling \"Emperor-Elect\": the last Emperor to be crowned by the Pope was Charles V in 1530.\nThe Emperor had to be male and of noble blood. No law required him to be a Catholic, but as the majority of the Electors adhered to this faith, no Protestant was ever elected. Whether and to what degree he had to be German was disputed among the Electors, contemporary experts in constitutional law, and the public. During the Middle Ages, some Kings and Emperors were not of German origin, but since the Renaissance, German heritage was regarded as vital for a candidate in order to be eligible for imperial office.\nImperial Diet.\nThe Imperial Diet ( or ) was not a legislative body as is understood today, as its members envisioned it to be more like a central forum, where it was more important to negotiate than to decide. The Diet was theoretically superior to the emperor himself. It was divided into three classes. The first class, the Council of Electors, consisted of the electors, or the princes who could vote for King of the Romans. The second class, the Council of Princes, consisted of the other princes. The Council of Princes was divided into two \"benches\", one for secular rulers and one for ecclesiastical ones. Higher-ranking princes had individual votes, while lower-ranking princes were grouped into \"colleges\" by geography. Each college had one vote.\nThe third class was the Council of Imperial Cities, which was divided into two colleges: Swabia and the Rhine. The Council of Imperial Cities was not fully equal with the others; it could not vote on several matters such as the admission of new territories. The representation of the Free Cities at the Diet had become common since the late Middle Ages. Nevertheless, their participation was formally acknowledged only as late as 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia ending the Thirty Years' War.\nImperial Aulic Chancellery.\nThe Imperial Aulic Chancellery () was the main \"Aulic\" (Courtly) Chancellery of the Holy Roman Empire. It was formed in 1559, by emperor Ferdinand I, and existed until the dissolution of the Empire in 1806. During that period, it was headed by the Imperial Archchancellor (), a honorary post traditionally reserved for the Archbishops of Mainz. In practice, it was run by the Imperial Vicechancellor (), who was appointed among notable statesmen and administrators in imperial service.\nImperial courts.\nThe Empire also had two courts: the \"Reichshofrat\" (also known in English as the Aulic Council) at the court of the King/Emperor, and the \"Reichskammergericht\" (Imperial Chamber Court), established with the Imperial Reform of 1495 by Maximilian I. The Reichskammergericht and the Aulic Council were the two highest judicial instances in the Old Empire. The Imperial Chamber court's composition was determined by both the Holy Roman Emperor and the subject states of the Empire. Within this court, the Emperor appointed the chief justice, always a highborn aristocrat, several divisional chief judges, and some of the other puisne judges.\nThe Aulic Council held standing over many judicial disputes of state, both in concurrence with the Imperial Chamber court and exclusively on their own. The provinces Imperial Chamber Court extended to breaches of the public peace, cases of arbitrary distraint or imprisonment, pleas which concerned the treasury, violations of the Emperor's decrees or the laws passed by the Imperial Diet, disputes about property between immediate tenants of the Empire or the subjects of different rulers, and finally suits against immediate tenants of the Empire, with the exception of criminal charges and matters relating to imperial fiefs, which went to the Aulic Council. The Aulic Council even allowed the emperors the means to depose rulers who did not live up to expectations.\nImperial circles.\nAs part of the Imperial Reform, six Imperial circles were established in 1500; four more were established in 1512. These were regional groupings of most (though not all) of the various states of the Empire for the purposes of defense, imperial taxation, supervision of coining, peace-keeping functions, and public security. Each circle had its own parliament, known as a \"Kreistag\" (\"Circle Diet\"), and one or more directors, who coordinated the affairs of the circle. Not all imperial territories were included within the imperial circles, even after 1512; the Lands of the Bohemian Crown were excluded, as were Switzerland, the imperial fiefs in northern Italy, the lands of the Imperial Knights, and certain other small territories like the Lordship of Jever.\nArmy.\nThe Army of the Holy Roman Empire (, or ; ) was created in 1422 and as a result of the Napoleonic Wars came to an end even before the Empire. It should not be confused with the Imperial Army () of the Emperor.\nDespite appearances to the contrary, the Army of the Empire did not constitute a permanent standing army that was always at the ready to fight for the Empire. When there was danger, an Army of the Empire was mustered from among the elements constituting it, in order to conduct an imperial military campaign or . In practice, the imperial troops often had local allegiances stronger than their loyalty to the Emperor.\nAdministrative centres.\nThroughout the first half of its history the Holy Roman Empire was reigned over by a travelling court. Kings and emperors toured between the numerous Kaiserpfalzes (Imperial palaces), usually resided for several weeks or months and furnished local legal matters, law and administration. Most rulers maintained one or a number of favourites Imperial palace sites, where they would advance development and spent most of their time: Charlemagne (Aachen from 794), Otto I (Magdeburg, from 955), Frederick II (Palermo 1220\u20131254), Wittelsbacher (Munich 1328\u20131347 and 1744\u20131745), Habsburger (Prague 1355\u20131437 and 1576\u20131611; and Vienna 1438\u20131576, 1611\u20131740 and 1745\u20131806).\nThis practice eventually ended during the 16th century, as the emperors of the Habsburg dynasty chose Vienna and Prague and the Wittelsbach rulers chose Munich as their permanent residences (Maximilian I's \"true home\" was still \"the stirrup, the overnight rest and the saddle\", although Innsbruck was probably his most important base; Charles V was also a nomadic emperor). Vienna became Imperial capital during the 1550s under Ferdinand I (reigned 1556\u20131564). Except for a period under Rudolf II (reigned 1570\u20131612) who moved to Prague, Vienna kept its primacy under his successors. Before that, certain sites served only as the individual residence for a particular sovereign. A number of cities held official status, where the Imperial Estates would summon at Imperial Diets, the deliberative assembly of the empire.\nThe Imperial Diet (\"Reichstag\") resided variously in Paderborn, Bad Lippspringe, Ingelheim am Rhein, Diedenhofen (now Thionville), Aachen, Worms, Forchheim, Trebur, Fritzlar, Ravenna, Quedlinburg, Dortmund, Verona, Minden, Mainz, Frankfurt am Main, Merseburg, Goslar, W\u00fcrzburg, Bamberg, Schw\u00e4bisch Hall, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Quierzy-sur-Oise, Speyer, Gelnhausen, Erfurt, Eger (now Cheb), Esslingen, Lindau, Freiburg, Cologne, Konstanz and Trier before it was moved permanently to Regensburg.\nUntil the 15th century the elected emperor was crowned and anointed by the Pope in Rome, among some exceptions in Ravenna, Bologna and Reims. Since 1508 (emperor Maximilian I) Imperial elections took place in Frankfurt am Main, Augsburg, Rhens, Cologne or Regensburg.\nIn December 1497 the Aulic Council (\"Reichshofrat\") was established in Vienna.\nIn 1495 the \"Reichskammergericht\" was established, which variously resided in Worms, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Regensburg, Speyer and Esslingen before it was moved permanently to Wetzlar.\nForeign relations.\nThe Habsburg royal family had its own diplomats to represent its interests. The larger principalities in the Holy Roman Empire, beginning around 1648, also did the same. The Holy Roman Empire did not have its own dedicated ministry of foreign affairs and therefore the Imperial Diet had no control over these diplomats; occasionally the Diet criticised them.\nWhen Regensburg served as the site of the Diet, France and, in the late 1700s, Russia, had diplomatic representatives there. The kings of Denmark, Great Britain, and Sweden had land holdings in Germany and so had representation in the Diet itself. The Netherlands also had envoys in Regensburg. Regensburg was the place where envoys met as it was where representatives of the Diet could be reached.\nImperial families and dynasties.\nSome constituencies of the Holy Roman Empire had additional royal or imperial territories that were, sometimes from the outset, outside the jurisdiction of the Holy Roman Empire. Henry VI, inheriting both German aspirations for imperial sovereignty and the Norman Sicilian kings' dream of hegemony in the Mediterranean, had ambitious design for a world empire. Boettcher remarks that marriage policy also played an important role here, \"The marital policy of the Staufer ranged from Iberia to Russia, from Scandinavia to Sicily, from England to Byzantium and to the crusader states in the East. Henry was already casting his eyes beyond Africa and Greece, to Asia Minor and Syria and of course on Jerusalem.\" His annexation of Sicily changed the strategic balance in the Italian peninsula. The emperor, who wanted to make all his lands hereditary, also asserted that papal fiefs were imperial fiefs. On his death at the age of 31 though, he was unable to pass his powerful position to his son, Frederick II, who had only been elected King of the Romans. The union between Sicily and the Empire thus remained personal union. Frederick II became King of Sicily in 1225 through marriage to Isabella II (or Yolande) of Jerusalem and regained Bethlehem and Nazareth for the Christian side through negotiation with Al-Kamil. The Hohenstaufen dream of world empire ended with Frederick's death in 1250 though.\nIn its earlier days, the Empire provided the principal medium for Christianity to infiltrate the pagans' realms in the North and the East (Scandinavians, Magyars, Slavic people etc.). By the Reform era, the Empire, in its nature, was defensive and not aggressive, desiring of both internal peace and security against invading forces, a fact that even warlike princes such as Maximilian I appreciated. In the Early Modern age, the association with the Church (the Church Universal for the Luxemburgs, and the Catholic Church for the Habsburgs) as well as the emperor's responsibility for the defence of Central Europe remained a reality though. Even the trigger for the conception of the Imperial Reform under Sigismund was the idea of helping the Church to put its house in order.\nTraditionally, German dynasties had exploited the potential of the imperial title to bring Eastern Europe into the fold, in addition to their lands north and south of the Alps. Marriage and inheritance strategies, following by (usually defensive) warfare, played a great role both for the Luxemburgs and the Habsburgs. It was under Sigismund of the Luxemburg, who married Mary, Queen regnal and the rightful heir of Hungary and later consolidated his power with the marriage to the capable and well-connected noblewoman Barbara of Cilli, that the emperor's personal empire expanded to a kingdom outside the boundary of the Holy Roman Empire: Hungary. This last monarch of the Luxemburg dynasty (who wore four royal crowns) had managed to gain an empire almost comparable in scale to the later Habsburg empire, although at the same time they lost the Kingdom of Burgundy and control over Italian territories. The Luxemburgs' focus on the East, especially Hungary, allowed the new Burgundian rulers from the Valois dynasty to foster discontent among German princes. Thus, the Habsburgs were forced to refocus their attention on the West. Frederick III's cousin and predecessor, Albert II of Germany (who was Sigismund's son-in-law and heir through his marriage with Elizabeth of Luxembourg) had managed to combine the crowns of Germany, Hungary, Bohemia and Croatia under his rule, but he died young.\nDuring his rule, Maximilian I had a double focus on both the East and the West. The successful expansion (with the notable role of marriage policy) under Maximilian bolstered his position in the Empire, and also created more pressure for an imperial reform, so that they could get more resources and coordinated help from the German territories to defend their realms and counter hostile powers such as France. Ever since he became King of the Romans in 1486, the Empire provided essential help for his activities in Burgundian Netherlands as well as dealings with Bohemia, Hungary and other eastern polities. In the reigns of his grandsons, Croatia and the remaining rump of the Hungarian kingdom chose Ferdinand as their ruler after he managed to rescue Silesia and Bohemia from Hungary's fate against the Ottoman. Simms notes that their choice was a contractual one, tying Ferdinand's rulership in these kingdoms and territories to his election as King of the Romans and his ability to defend Central Europe. In turn, the Habsburgs' imperial rule also \"depended on holding these additional extensive lands as independent sources of wealth and prestige.\"\nThe later Austrian Habsburgs from Ferdinand I were careful to maintain a distinction between their dynastic empire and the Holy Roman Empire. Peter Wilson argues that the institutions and structures developed by the Imperial Reform mostly served German lands and, although the Habsburg monarchy \"remained closely entwined with the Empire\", the Habsburgs deliberately refrained from including their other territories in its framework. \"Instead, they developed their own institutions to manage what was, effectively, a parallel dynastic-territorial empire and which gave them an overwhelming superiority of resources, in turn allowing them to retain an almost unbroken grip on the imperial title over the next three centuries.\" Ferdinand had an interest in keeping Bohemia separate from imperial jurisdiction and making the connection between Bohemia and the Empire looser (Bohemia did not have to pay taxes to the Empire). As he refused the rights of an Imperial Elector as King of Bohemia (which provided him with half of his revenue), he was able to give Bohemia (as well as associated territories such as Upper and Lower Alsatia, Silesia and Moravia) the same privileged status as Austria, therefore affirming his superior position in the Empire. The Habsburgs also tried to mobilize imperial aid for Hungary (which, throughout the 16th century, cost the dynasty more money in defence expenditure than the total revenue it yielded).\nSince 1542, Charles V and Ferdinand had been able to collect the Common Penny tax, or \"T\u00fcrkenhilfe\" (Turkish aid), designed to protect the Empire against the Ottomans or France. But as Hungary, unlike Bohemia, was not part of the Empire, the imperial aid for Hungary depended on political factors. The obligation was only in effect if Vienna or the Empire were threatened. Wilson notes that, \"In the early 1520s the Reichstag hesitated to vote aid for Hungary's King Louis II, because it regarded him as a foreign prince. This changed once Hungary passed to the Habsburgs on Louis' death in battle in 1526 and the main objective of imperial taxation across the next 90 years was to subsidize the cost of defending the Hungarian frontier against the Ottomans. The bulk of the weaponry and other military materiel was supplied by firms based in the Empire and financed by German banks. The same is true of the troops who eventually evicted the Ottomans from Hungary between 1683 and 1699. The imperial law code of 1532 was used in parts of Hungary until the mid-17th century, but otherwise Hungary had its own legal system and did not import Austrian ones. Hungarian nobles resisted the use of Germanic titles like Graf for count until 1606, and very few acquired the personal status of imperial prince.\"\nResponding to the opinion that the Habsburg's dynastic concerns were damaging to the Holy Roman Empire, Whaley writes that, \"There was no fundamental incompatibility between dynasticism and participation in the empire, either for the Habsburgs or for the Saxons or others.\" Imperial marriage strategies had double-edged effects for the Holy Roman Empire though. The Spanish connection was an example: while it provided a powerful partner in the defence of Christendom against the Ottomans, it allowed Charles V to transfer the Burgundian Netherlands, Franche-Comte as well as other imperial fiefs such as Milan to his son Philip II's Spanish Empire.\nOther than the imperial families, other German princes possessed foreign lands as well, and foreign rulers could also acquire imperial fiefs and thus become imperial princes. This phenomenon contributed to the fragmentation of sovereignty, in which imperial vassals remained semi-sovereign, while strengthening the interconnections (and chances of mutual interference) between the Kingdom of Germany and the Empire in general with other kingdoms such as Denmark and Sweden, who accepted the status of imperial vassals on behalf of their German possessions (which were subjected to imperial laws). The two Scandinanvian monarchies honoured the obligations to come to the aid of the Empire in the wars of 17th and early 18th centuries. They also imported German princely families as rulers, although in both cases, this did not produce direct unions. Denmark consistently tried to take advantage of its influence in imperial institutions to gain new imperial fiefs along the Elbe, although these attempts generally did not succeed.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["32839591", "13277"], "permutation_1": ["13277", "32839591"], "permutation_2": ["32839591", "13277"], "permutation_3": ["13277", "32839591"]}
{"id": "2hop__664137_58115", "docs_added": {"23413471": "It's a Business Doing Pleasure with You\n\"It's a Business Doing Pleasure with You\" is a song written by Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger and country musician Brett James, and recorded by American country music artist Tim McGraw. The song is the first single to his tenth studio album, \"Southern Voice\". It is also McGraw's fifty-second chart entry on the \"Billboard\" country charts. The song was released to radio on June 29, 2009.\nContent.\nThe song's narrator is frustrated with buying items for his lover, telling her that \"it's a business doing pleasure with [her]\". The song's title is an inversion of the phrase \"It's a pleasure doing business with you.\"\nChart performance.\n\"It's a Business Doing Pleasure with You\" debuted at number 35 on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot Country Songs chart in July 2009, and reached a peak of number 13 on the chart in September 2009.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "525336": "Tim McGraw\nAmerican country singer and actor (born 1967)\nSamuel Timothy McGraw (born May 1, 1967) is an American country singer and actor. He has released 16 studio albums (11 for Curb Records, five for Big Machine Records and one for Arista Nashville). 10 of those albums have reached number one on the Top Country Albums charts, with his 1994 breakthrough album \"Not a Moment Too Soon\" being the top country album of 1994. In total, McGraw's albums have produced 65 singles, 25 of which have reached number one on the Hot Country Songs or Country Airplay charts.\nThree of these singles \u2013 \"It's Your Love\", \"Just to See You Smile\", and \"Live Like You Were Dying\" \u2013 were respectively the top country songs of 1997, 1998, and 2004 according to \"Billboard\" Year-End. He has also won three Grammy Awards, 14 Academy of Country Music awards, 11 Country Music Association (CMA) awards, 10 American Music Awards, and three People's Choice Awards. His Soul2Soul II Tour, which was done in partnership with his wife, Faith Hill, is one of the highest-grossing tours in country music history, and one of the top five among all genres of music. He has sold more than 80 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time.\nMcGraw has ventured into acting, with supporting roles in \"The Blind Side\", \"Friday Night Lights\", \"The Kingdom\", \"Tomorrowland\", \"Four Christmases\", flashback scenes in 2 episodes of \"Yellowstone\", and \"The Shack\" as well as lead roles in \"Flicka\" (2006), \"Country Strong\" (2010), and \"1883\" (2021). He was a minority owner of the Arena Football League's Nashville Kats. McGraw has been married to singer Faith Hill since 1996 and is the eldest son of former MLB pitcher Tug McGraw.\nEarly life and education.\nSamuel Timothy McGraw was born in Delhi, Louisiana, the only child of Elizabeth \"Betty\" Ann D'Agostino, a waitress from Jacksonville, Florida, and Frank Edwin \"Tug\" McGraw Jr., a pitcher for the minor league Jacksonville Suns and future star pitcher for the New York Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies. In 1966, D'Agostino was a student at Terry Parker High School. She lived in the same apartment building as Tug McGraw, who was playing baseball for Jacksonville. When she became pregnant with McGraw as a teen, D'Agostino's parents sent her to Louisiana to live with relatives. Through his father, McGraw has two half-brothers, Mark and Matthew, and a half-sister named Cari. He also has two younger half-sisters, Tracey and Sandra, through his mother's marriage to Horace Smith.\nMcGraw grew up believing Smith was his father, and used this stepfather's surname until meeting Tug. At age 11, McGraw discovered his birth certificate while searching in his mother's closet to look for a picture for a school project. Following the discovery, he learned from her who his biological father was and she took him to meet the elder McGraw for the first time. Tug McGraw denied the parentage for seven years until Tim was 18 years old. After that time, the two formed a relationship and remained close until the former baseball star died in 2004.\nAs a child, McGraw played competitive sports, including baseball, even before the knowledge of who his father was and his professional baseball career. McGraw was also a member of the FFA in high school. Following high school graduation, he attended Northeast Louisiana University on a baseball scholarship, where he was a pre-law major and pledged as a member of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. A knee injury sustained while playing baseball for the college prevented him from pursuing a professional career in sports.\nWhile in college, McGraw learned to play guitar and would frequently perform and sing for money. He has claimed his roommates often hid the guitar because he was so bad. McGraw followed his mother when she returned to Jacksonville, Florida, in 1987. After the move, he attended Florida Community College at Jacksonville for one term, and occasionally sat in with local bands. In 1989, on the day his hero Keith Whitley died, McGraw dropped out of college to head to Nashville and pursue a musical career.\nMusic career.\n1990s.\n\"Tim McGraw\".\nMcGraw came to the attention of Curb Records in 1990. After cutting a demo single, McGraw gave a copy to his father. A man who was friends with Curb Records executives heard the demo while driving with Tug one day and recommended that Curb contact the young singer. Several weeks later, he was able to play his tape for Curb executives, after which they signed him to a recording contract. McGraw made his debut with the single \"What Room Was the Holiday In\", which was released on March 29, 1991, and did not enter the \"Billboard\" Hot Country Songs chart upon its release. In a 2001 retrospective on McGraw's career in \"Billboard\", a former program director for Nashville station WSM-FM said that he added the song to the station's playlist because it showed \"undeniable promise\", while another former program director at WXTU in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, recalled that McGraw's debut single was \"terrible\" but that he booked the singer to make an appearance at the station due to his father's fame.\nTwo years later in April 1993, McGraw released his debut album \"Tim McGraw\", which was commercially unsuccessful and did not sell well. This is his only studio album not to achieve a music recording sales certification or to enter the Top Country Albums charts. Three more singles were released from \"Tim McGraw\": \"Welcome to the Club\", \"Memory Lane\", and \"Two Steppin' Mind\". None made country Top 40 and the album itself did not chart. Both \"Memory Lane\" and \"Tears in the Rain\", another cut from the album, were co-written by Joe Diffie. \"Memory Lane\" had originally appeared on Keith Palmer's self-titled 1991 debut album.\n\"Not a Moment Too Soon\".\nMcGraw's second album, entitled \"Not a Moment Too Soon\", was much more successful than his self-titled debut, and it was the best-selling country album of 1994. Its first single, \"Indian Outlaw\", sparked controversy, as critics argued that it presented Native Americans in a patronizing way. Some radio stations even chose not to play it. However, the controversy helped spur sales, and the song became McGraw's first Top 10 entry on the U.S. country charts after getting as high as number 8. The song also peaked at number 15 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100.\nThe album's second single, \"Don't Take the Girl\", became McGraw's first number one on the U.S. country charts, in addition to peaking at number 17 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. The song also \"helped cement his image as a ruggedly good-looking guy with a sensitive side.\" By year's end, the third single from the album, \"Down on the Farm\" peaked at number 2; after that, the album's fourth single, also its title track, became the singer's second number one song in early 1995. The fifth and final single \"Refried Dreams\" reached number 5. The album sold over 6 million copies, topping the \"Billboard\" 200 and Top Country Album charts. On the strength of this success, McGraw won Academy of Country Music awards for Album of the Year and Top New Male Vocalist in 1994. \"Billboard\" named \"Not a Moment Too Soon\" as the top country album of 1994 on Billboard Year-End.\n\"All I Want\".\nMcGraw's third studio album, \"All I Want\", was released in 1995. Just like its predecessor, this album debuted at No.\u00a01 on the country charts. The album even sold over 2 million copies in the United States and reached the Top 5 on the \"Billboard\" 200. The album's first single, \"I Like It, I Love It\", became McGraw's third number one on the American country charts and it also peaked at number 25 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. This song also eventually became the goal song for the Nashville Predators once they began their inaugural season and since then has been left unchanged. The album's next two singles, \"Can't Be Really Gone\" and \"All I Want Is a Life\" (its partial title track) both made the top 5 at numbers 2 and 5, respectively. The fourth single, \"She Never Lets It Go to Her Heart\", gave McGraw his fourth number one on the U.S. country charts in 1996. Finishing off the singles was \"Maybe We Should Just Sleep on It\", which peaked at number 4.\nIn 1996, McGraw headlined the most successful country tour of the year, The Spontaneous Combustion Tour, with Faith Hill as his supporting act. Hill broke off her engagement to her former producer Scott Hendricks so that she and McGraw could start dating each other; they then married on October 6, 1996.\n\"Everywhere\".\nThe singer's fourth album, \"Everywhere\" was released in 1997. It topped the country charts as well and reached No.\u00a02 on the \"Billboard\" 200, selling 4 million copies. The album spawned six singles. Four of those singles - \"It's Your Love\" (a duet with Faith Hill), the title track, \"Where the Green Grass Grows\", and \"Just to See You Smile\" - reached number one on the country charts. The Country Music Association awarded \"Everywhere\" its Album of the Year award for 1997. At the 40th Grammy Awards, \"It's Your Love\" received two Grammy Award nominations for Best Country Collaboration With Vocals and Best Country Song. Both \"It's Your Love\" and \"Just to See You Smile\" were the number one country songs of 1997 and 1998 according to \"Billboard\" Year-End charts; \"Just to See You Smile\" also set a record for the longest run on the country charts at the time, at 42 weeks. The album's other two singles, \"One of These Days\" and \"For a Little While\" both peaked at number 2.\n\"A Place in the Sun\".\nMcGraw's fifth album, \"A Place in the Sun\", continued his streak in 1999, debuting atop both the US country and pop album charts and selling 3 million copies. Over 251,000 of those copies were sold during its first week, making this the singer's first number 1 opener on the \"Billboard\" 200. It produced another four number one hits on the U.S. country charts with \"Please Remember Me\", \"Something Like That\", \"My Best Friend\", and \"My Next Thirty Years\". \"Some Things Never Change\" peaked at number 7 on the charts. McGraw also contributed a song for the Grammy-winning tribute album to Bob Wills entitled \"Ride With Bob\". A cover of \"Milk Cow Blues\", this song was recorded as a duet with Asleep at the Wheel, whom he had met while performing together at the George Strait Country Music Festival.\nMcGraw recorded two more duets with his wife in the late-1990s, both of which appeared on her albums. \"Just to Hear You Say That You Love Me\", from her multi-platinum-certified 1998 album \"Faith\", reached the Top 5 of the US country charts. Her follow-up album, 1999's \"Breathe\", featured \"Let's Make Love\", which won a Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Collaboration in 2000.\n2000s.\n\"Greatest Hits\".\nIn 2000, McGraw released his first \"Greatest Hits\" album, which topped the country albums charts for nine weeks and sold nearly 6 million copies, making this one of the biggest-selling albums in the modern country market. In the latter half of the year, he and Hill went out on the Soul2Soul Tour, playing to sellout crowds in 64 venues, including Madison Square Garden. The tour was one of the top tours of any genre in the U.S. It was also the leading country tour of 2000. While in Buffalo, New York, McGraw and Kenny Chesney became involved in a scuffle with police officers after Chesney attempted to ride a police horse. McGraw came to Chesney's aid after police officers nearby believed the horse was being stolen and tried to arrest him. The two were arrested and charged with assault but were later cleared. During a concert with the George Strait Country Music Festival several weeks later, Hill, dressed as a police officer, made an unscheduled appearance at the end of McGraw's set and led him off the stage.\n\"Set This Circus Down\".\nMcGraw's sixth studio album, \"Set This Circus Down\", was released in April 2001. It even spawned four number one hits on the country charts as well, this time with \"Grown Men Don't Cry\", \"Angry All the Time\" (with Faith Hill), \"The Cowboy in Me\", and \"Unbroken\". The singer provided harmony vocals for Jo Dee Messina's song \"Bring On the Rain\", which he also produced. That song topped the country charts. Hungry for more of his music, fans downloaded a version of his performance of the song \"Things Change\" from his appearance at the Country Music Association Awards Show. The song was played extensively on radio, becoming the first country song to appear on the charts from a fully downloaded version.\n\"Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors\".\nIn 2002, McGraw bucked country music traditions by recording his seventh studio album \"Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors\" with his tour band The Dancehall Doctors. Unlike rock music\u2014where it is commonplace for touring bands to provide the music on albums recorded by the artist they support, country albums are typically recorded with session musicians. McGraw chose to use his own touring band, in order to recognize their part in \nhis success, and to capture some of the feel of a real band.\nAll of the Dancehall Doctors have worked with McGraw since at least 1996. Their lineup includes:\nThe album debuted at No.\u00a02 on the country albums charts, Its fourth and fifth singles \"Real Good Man\" and \"Watch the Wind Blow By\" both climbed to number one on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot Country Songs chart. \"She's My Kind of Rain\" peaked at No.\u00a02 in 2003, and \"Red Rag Top\" reached number 5. The album also features a cover of Elton John's early-1970s classic \"Tiny Dancer,\" as well as duets with Kim Carnes on \"Comfort Me\" (a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks) and Don Henley and Timothy B. Schmit of the Eagles on \"Illegal.\" \"She's My Kind of Rain\" also received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Country Vocal Performance-Male at the 46th Grammy Awards.\n\"Live Like You Were Dying\".\nHis eighth album, 2004's \"Live Like You Were Dying\", continued the singer's record of commercial success. The album's first single and its title track was dedicated to his father Tug McGraw, who died of a brain tumor earlier in the year, was an ode to living life fully and in the moment. The second single \"Back When\" was a paean to an easy nostalgia. In December 2019, McGraw spoke on stage at the annual End Well Symposium about why he wrote \"Live Like You Were Dying\" and his struggles with caregiving for his dying father. \"Live Like You Were Dying\" spent seven non-consecutive weeks at No.\u00a01 on \"Billboard\" and went on to become the top country song of 2004 on the \"Billboard\" Year-End charts. It also became one of the most awarded records by winning ACM Single and Song of the Year, CMA Single and Song of the Year, and a Grammy. \"Back When\" went to number one on the country charts as well. The album produced three more singles with \"Drugs or Jesus\", \"Do You Want Fries with That\", and \"My Old Friend\". \"Drugs or Jesus\" became McGraw's first single since 1993 to not ever reach within the Top 10 on the U.S. country charts, while \"Do You Want Fries with That\" and \"My Old Friend\" peaked at numbers 5 and 6, respectively.\nIn late 2004, his unlikely duet with hip hop artist Nelly on \"Over and Over\" became a crossover hit, spending 10 weeks atop the top 40 chart. \"Over and Over\" brought McGraw a success he had never previously experienced on contemporary hit radio or R&B radio, and brought both artists success neither had previously experienced in the hot adult contemporary market. The song also spent a week at the top of the charts in the United Kingdom, becoming McGraw's first hit single in Britain and Nelly's third number one hit in the country after \"Dilemma\" and \"My Place\". \"Over and Over\" also reached the top of the charts in Australia, New Zealand, and the Republic of Ireland, and the top 10 in Austria, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Romania, and Switzerland.\nThroughout the 2005 NFL season, McGraw sang an alternate version of \"I Like It, I Love It\" every week during the season. The alternate lyrics, which changed each week, would make reference to plays during Sunday's games, and the song would be played alongside video highlights during halftime on \"Monday Night Football\". Later in the year, McGraw became a minority owner of the Arena Football League's Nashville Kats when majority owner Bud Adams (owner of the NFL's Tennessee Titans) was awarded the expansion franchise.\n\"Let It Go\".\nIn April 2006, McGraw and Hill began their 73-concert 55-city Soul2Soul II Tour, again to strong commercial acceptance. The tour grossed roughly $89 million and sold approximately 1.1 million tickets, making it the top-grossing tour in the history of country music. It was also named \"Major Tour of the Year\" by \"Pollstar\", beating out such heavyweights as Madonna and the Rolling Stones. In a special gesture, the couple donated all of the profits from their performance in New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina relief. McGraw, along with Kenny Chesney, contributed to a version of Tracy Lawrence's song \"Find Out Who Your Friends Are\", which can be found on Lawrence's album \"For the Love\". Although the official single version features only Lawrence's vocals, many stations have opted to play the version with McGraw and Chesney instead.\nMcGraw released his eleventh studio album, \"Let It Go\", on March 27, 2007. The album's first single, \"Last Dollar (Fly Away)\", peaked at number one on the Hot Country Songs chart. This marked McGraw's first No.\u00a01 single since \"Back When\" in late 2004. The album debuted at No.\u00a01 on both the \"Billboard\" 200 and Top Country Album charts, marking his fourth No.\u00a01 album on the 200 charts and his ninth overall. His daughters can be heard singing the chorus during the last few seconds of the song on the video. During the Academy of Country Music awards show on May 15, 2007, McGraw performed a song titled \"If You're Reading This\", which he co-wrote with The Warren Brothers. Several radio stations began to play the live recording of the song; as a result, it entered the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot Country Songs chart at No.\u00a035. McGraw also produced the debut album of country music duo Halfway to Hazard. The duo's first single, \"Daisy\", peaked at No.\u00a039 on the country charts in the summer of 2007. In the summer of 2007, McGraw and Hill toured together once again in the Soul2Soul 2007 tour.\nIn the edition of January 18, 2008 of the \"USA Today\" newspaper, McGraw was stated to be featured on the Def Leppard album \"Songs from the Sparkle Lounge\", having also co-written the first single, \"Nine Lives\", with Def Leppard band members Joe Elliott, Phil Collen, and Rick Savage. The unusual pairing goes back to 2006 when McGraw joined Def Leppard onstage for the song \"Pour Some Sugar On Me\", and then collaborated on the song \"Nine Lives\" afterward. The album was released on April 25, 2008. At the 2007 50th Annual Grammy Awards, McGraw received 5 nominations including Best Country Album (for \"Let It Go\"), Best Country Song (both for \"If You're Reading This\" and \"I Need You\"), Best Country Collaboration with Vocals (with \"I Need You\"), and Best Male Country Vocal Performance (with \"If You're Reading This\"). In May 2008, he hit the road with the Live Your Voice tour. The mainly-outdoor arena concert tour was his first solo outing in nearly three years. Also in May 2008, he debuted a new song in his follow-up to \"Let It Go\" at the Stagecoach Music Festival in Indio, California. In July 2008, the album's sixth single and its title track, \"Let It Go\", was released to country radio. Following that, a seventh single, \"Nothin' to Die For\", entered the Country charts at No.\u00a057 in late December. McGraw released his third greatest-hits package, \"Greatest Hits 3\" on October 7, 2008. The album features 12 tracks. McGraw was set to debut a new song at the 2009 ACM Awards, but then canceled his performance; he was replaced by Blake Shelton, who sang \"She Wouldn't Be Gone\".\n\"Southern Voice\".\nMcGraw's twelfth studio album, \"Southern Voice\", was released October 20, 2009, and led by the single \"It's A Business Doing Pleasure With You\", which was shipped to radio outlets in late June 2009.\n\"Southern Voice\" was argued to be McGraw's last album for Curb Records, following the dispute over releasing his third Greatest Hits collection back in October 2008 without his permission. McGraw did not approve of the release. On November 30, 2010, Curb Records released his fourth greatest hits compilation, \"Number One Hits\".\n2010s.\n\"Emotional Traffic\" and Curb Records lawsuit.\nOn January 2, 2011, McGraw announced plans for his Emotional Traffic Tour featuring opening acts Luke Bryan and The Band Perry.\nSirius XM announced on March 30, 2011, that they would be launching Tim McGraw radio, a commercial-free music channel devoted to McGraw's music, and featuring an in-depth interview with McGraw as well. As of fall 2010, McGraw had finished work on the album \"Emotional Traffic\", his last album with Curb Records. On May 13, 2011, Curb Records filed a breach-of-contract suit against McGraw. The label alleged that McGraw recorded tracks for his \"Emotional Traffic\" album too early prior to its delivery to the label. Several days later, McGraw filed a counter suit against the label seeking advance payment and recording-fund reimbursement, unspecified damages, and a jury trial. A trial was scheduled to begin in July 2012. In November 2011, a judge granted McGraw permission to record music for another label, ending his relationship with Curb Records that began in 1990. A few hours after the ruling, Curb released \"Better Than I Used to Be\", the first single from \"Emotional Traffic\". The album was released on January 24, 2012.\n\"Two Lanes of Freedom\".\nIn December 2011, McGraw released his first Christmas single, \"Christmas All Over the World\", on his own label StyleSonic Records. On May 21, 2012, however, he signed with Big Machine Records.\nMcGraw's debut album for Big Machine, entitled \"Two Lanes of Freedom\", was released on February 5, 2013. It debuted at number 2 on the charts by selling 108,000 copies. The album includes the singles \"Truck Yeah\", \"One of Those Nights\", \"Highway Don't Care\" (a duet with Taylor Swift which also features Keith Urban on lead guitar), and \"Southern Girl\". McGraw performed at the festival in London on March 16, 2013.\n\"Love Story\" and \"Sundown Heaven Town\".\nMcGraw released a single titled \"Lookin' for That Girl\" in January 2014 as the lead-off single to his second album for Big Machine. It was followed immediately by the announcement of the Sundown Heaven Town Tour. The album, titled \"Sundown Heaven Town\", was released on September 16, 2014. Four months into its run, \"Lookin' for That Girl\" was withdrawn as a single and replaced with \"Meanwhile, Back at Mama's\", which features backing vocals from Hill. \"Shotgun Rider\" became the album's third single and a number 1 Country Airplay hit by the end of 2014. Following it was \"Diamond Rings and Old Barstools\", a duet with Catherine Dunn. McGraw's eighth greatest hits album, \"Love Story\", is a compilation of his twelve biggest love songs and two previously unreleased recordings. It was released exclusively through Walmart on February 4, 2014, by Curb Records.\n\"Damn Country Music\".\nOn August 10, 2015, McGraw released a new single to digital retailers, titled \"Top of the World\", which was later released to radio on August 17, 2015, as the lead single to his third studio album for Big Machine Records. On September 17, McGraw announced that the album was titled \"Damn Country Music\", with a release date scheduled for November 6. The album's second single, \"Humble and Kind\", released to country radio on February 1, 2016, and went on to reach number 1 on the Billboard Hot Country charts. McGraw was selected as one of 30 artists to perform on \"Forever Country\", a mash-up track of Take Me Home, Country Roads, On the Road Again and I Will Always Love You which celebrates 50 years of the CMA Awards. The album's third single, \"How I'll Always Be\" released to country radio on July 11, 2016. It reached number 3 on the Country Airplay in January 2017.\n\"The Rest of Our Life\".\nOn October 4, 2016, during a show at the Ryman Auditorium, McGraw and Hill announced that they would be going back on the road together again on the . The tour began on April 7, 2017, in New Orleans and will continue into 2018, incorporating the festival held in the UK and Ireland throughout March 2018.\nBefore the commencement of the tour, it was reported that McGraw, alongside Hill, had signed a new deal with Sony Music Nashville. The signing also indicated the release of a duet album between the couple, and that multiple solo recordings would be produced. The new record label signing also preceded the release of \"Speak to a Girl\", the lead single from the duet album, \"The Rest of Our Life\", which was released on November 17, 2017. The release of the album coincided with the opening of an exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum titled \"Mississippi Woman, Louisiana Man\", which celebrates the careers of both McGraw and Hill.\nMcGraw released two major best-selling books in 2019, with the first co-written with \"Pulitzer Prize\" winner Jon Meacham which reached No. 2 on the New York Times Bestsellers list. Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music That Made a Nation. New York: Random House. 2019. . His second book, \"Grit and Grace\", also reached No. 2 on the New York Times Bestsellers list.\n2020s.\n\"Here on Earth\".\nIn February 2020, McGraw rejoined Big Machine Records, which he was previously signed to from 2011 to 2017. He released a new album, \"Here on Earth\", on August 21, 2020. The \"Here on Earth Tour\" was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In January 2021, McGraw released the single \"Undivided\" with Tyler Hubbard of Florida Georgia Line, which was included on a deluxe edition of \"Here on Earth\" released later that year. On October 9, 2021, McGraw confronted a heckler at a performance at the Nugget Events Center in Sparks, Nevada, after he forgot the words to his song \"Just to See You Smile.\" After removing the heckler, he explained that he had been filming a movie and had a lot on his mind, and asked for the audience's help in remembering the words.\n\"Standing Room Only\" and \"Poet's Resum\u00e9\".\nOn August 25, 2023, McGraw released his sixteenth studio album, \"Standing Room Only\". The title track was released as the album's lead single on March 10, 2023. It reached number 2 on the U.S. Country Airplay chart. Three months after releasing \"Standing Room Only\", McGraw surprise-released a six-track EP, \"Poet's Resum\u00e9\" on November 21, 2023.\nProduction career.\nMcGraw has occasionally served as a record producer in collaboration with Byron Gallimore, who has co-produced all of his albums. The two co-produced Jo Dee Messina's self-titled debut, as well as her next two albums, \"I'm Alright\" and \"Burn\". McGraw and Gallimore also produced the only album released by The Clark Family Experience in 2000, and Halfway to Hazard's 2007 self-titled debut album.\nActing career.\nMcGraw's first acting appearance came in a 1997 episode of \"The Jeff Foxworthy Show\", where he played Foxworthy's rival. In 2004, McGraw played a sheriff in Rick Schroder's independent release \"Black Cloud\". Later in the same year, McGraw received critical acclaim as the overbearing father of running back \"Donald Billingsley\" in the major studio Texas high school football drama \"Friday Night Lights\". The \"Dallas Observer\" said the role was \"played with unexpected ferocity by country singer Tim McGraw\". The movie went on to gross over $60 million worldwide at the box office, and sold millions in the DVD market. Most recently, it was named one of the Top 50 High School Movies of All Time (No.\u00a037) by \"Entertainment Weekly\".\nMcGraw's first lead role was in the 2006 film \"Flicka\", which was released in theaters October 20, 2006. In the remake of the classic book \"My Friend Flicka\", McGraw played the father, Rob, costarring with Alison Lohman and Maria Bello. The family-friendly movie debuted in the top 10 list and has grossed over $25 million at the box office. McGraw again achieved critical acclaim for his acting. Shortly before \"Flicka\" opened, McGraw received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His star is located at 6901 Hollywood Boulevard near stars honoring Julie Andrews, William Shatner, and the late Greta Garbo. One of his \"Flicka\" co-stars, Alison Lohman, attended the ceremony that included comments from Billy Bob Thornton, McGraw's co-star in the film \"Friday Night Lights\". In addition to acting in \"Flicka\", McGraw served as executive producer of the soundtrack album, which was released by his record label, StyleSonic Records, in association with Curb Records and Fox 2000 films. It featured the closing credit song \"My Little Girl\", one of the first two songs that McGraw recorded that he also co-wrote (the other being \"I've Got Friends That Do\", both of which were included on \"Greatest Hits Vol. 2\"). The song was nominated by the Broadcast Film Critics for \"Best Song\" in a film, and the movie was nominated in the category \"Best Family Film (Live Action)\". The movie proved to be another success in the DVD market, and has sold over a million copies, debuting at No.\u00a03 on the DVD sales chart.\nMcGraw also had a small part in the Michael Mann\u2013produced 2007 film \"The Kingdom\", reuniting him with \"Friday Night Lights\" director Peter Berg. McGraw played a bitter, angered widower whose wife was killed in the terrorist attack that is the centerpiece of the movie. On November 22, 2008, McGraw made his first appearance on \"Saturday Night Live\". He also played \"Dallas McVie\" in \"Four Christmases\". McGraw appeared in the 2009 film \"The Blind Side\" as Sean Tuohy, husband of Sandra Bullock's character, Leigh Anne Tuohy. \"The Blind Side\" is based on the true story of Michael Oher, a homeless African-American youngster from a broken home, taken in and adopted by the Tuohys, a well-to-do white family who help him fulfill his potential. He is among the stars of \"Dirty Girl\", a film that premiered on September 12, 2010, at the Toronto Film Festival, along with Juno Temple, Milla Jovovich, William H. Macy and Dwight Yoakam. Also in 2010, McGraw starred in \"Country Strong\" as James Canter, the husband and manager of the fictional country singer Kelly Canter (portrayed by Gwyneth Paltrow). In addition to his appearance in the film, McGraw's song \"Me and Tennessee\", a duet with Paltrow, was played during the closing credits and appears on the film's soundtrack. In 2015, McGraw appeared in Brad Bird's \"Tomorrowland\" as Eddie Newton, a NASA engineer, and Casey Newton's (played by Britt Robertson) father.\n\"1883\", a spinoff prequel to Taylor Sheridan's Yellowstone television series was released in late 2021 and stars McGraw, Faith Hill, and Sam Elliott.\nCharitable efforts.\nIn 1994, when McGraw first reached fame, he established the annual Swampstock event. It began as a charity softball game to raise money for hometown little league programs; the event now includes a celebrity softball game and a multi-artist concert that attracts over 11,000 fans per year. The combined events have funded new Little League parks and equipment, and have established college scholarship funds for students in the northeast Louisiana area.\nFrom 1996 to 1999, McGraw hosted an annual New Year's Eve concert in Nashville with special guests including Jeff Foxworthy, the Dixie Chicks, and Martina McBride. The 1997 show raised over $100,000 for the Country Music Foundation Hall of Fame and Museum. Beginning in 1999, McGraw would pick select cities on each tour, and the night before he was scheduled to perform, would choose a local club and host a quickly-organized show. This tour-within-a-tour became known as \"The Bread and Water Tour\", and all proceeds from the show would go to a charity from that community.\nMcGraw designed a charity T-shirt sold through Angelwear to benefit MusiCares. MusiCares supports musicians in times of need. His charity focuses particularly on health issues. The Tim McGraw Foundation raises funds to enhance the quality of life of children and adults with brain tumors. He supports the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center, the David Foster Foundation, which helps families of children in need of organ transplants, and Musicians on Call, which brings music to hospital patients' bedsides. He also performs during dinners and auctions to benefit children with disabilities. Hill and McGraw gave the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society $375,000 (the entire gate receipts from one of their concerts) to assist the families of 17 sailors following the terrorist attack on , the guided-missile destroyer that suffered significant damage in the Gulf of Aden, Yemen on October 12, 2000.\nIn the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina, McGraw who was raised in Mississippi, joined groups taking supplies to Gulfport, Mississippi. The two also hosted several charity concerts to benefit those who were displaced by the storm. Later in the year, the couple established the Neighbor's Keeper Foundation, which provides funding for community charities to assist with basic humanitarian services, in the event of a natural disaster, or for desperate personal circumstances.\nMcGraw is also a member of the American Red Cross National Celebrity Cabinet, to which various celebrities donate their time, skills, and fame, to help the Red Cross highlight important initiatives and response efforts.\nMcGraw has helped out with charity events held by Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre. The Brett Favre Fourward Foundation has featured McGraw performing concerts during dinners and auctions that benefit children with disabilities in Wisconsin and Mississippi. One instance is recorded on Favre's official website.\nOn July 12, 2007, it was made public that McGraw while in Grand Rapids, Michigan for a performance, donated $5,000 to Kailey Kozminski, the 3-year-old daughter of Officer Robert Kozminski, a Grand Rapids police officer who was killed on July 8, 2007, while responding to a domestic disturbance.\nIn April 2023, McGraw surprised rising country star Brandon Davis, whom he previously brought on tour with him in 2022, with a new guitar after all of his gear was stolen earlier in the month.\nPersonal politics.\nIn a 2006 interview with \"Esquire\" magazine, McGraw stated he would like to run for public office as a Democratic Party candidate, possibly for United States Senate or Governor of Tennessee\u2014his home state. In the same interview, he praised Bill Clinton.\nIn a 2008 interview with \"People\" magazine, McGraw referred to himself as a \"Blue Dog Democrat\" and stated that he and his family support Barack Obama.\nIn January 2021, McGraw performed on the \"Celebrating America\" inaugural special, a primetime virtual concert celebrating the inauguration of Joe Biden.\nPersonal life.\nMcGraw married fellow country singer Faith Hill in 1996, and they have three daughters. He and Hill own Goat Cay, which they unofficially named L'\u00eele d'Anges, a private island in the Bahamas.\nIn 2000, Kenny Chesney and McGraw became involved in a scuffle with police officers in Buffalo, New York, after Chesney was riding a State Police horse and refused to get off the horse. McGraw came to Chesney's aid after police officers nearby believed the horse was being stolen. The two were arrested and charged, Chesney for disorderly conduct and McGraw for assault, but were acquitted in 2001.\nMcGraw holds a private pilot license and owns a single-engine Cirrus SR22.\nIn 2015, \"Forbes\" estimated McGraw's annual income at $38 million.\nMcGraw is the godfather to the son of Garrett Hedlund and Emma Roberts. He and Hedlund became friends after co-starring in \"Friday Night Lights\" and \"Country Strong\".\nIn acknowledgment of his grandfather's Italian heritage, McGraw was honored by the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) in 2004, receiving the NIAF Special Achievement Award in Music during the Foundation's 29th Anniversary Gala.\nMcGraw's Bracco Italiano named Lepshi won Best of Breed at the 2023 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. The McGraw-Hill family also has two other Bracco Italianos, Caesar and Stromboli.\nTours.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["23413471", "525336"], "permutation_1": ["23413471", "525336"], "permutation_2": ["525336", "23413471"], "permutation_3": ["525336", "23413471"]}
{"id": "2hop__159029_26501", "docs_added": {"5334607": "Africa\nContinent\nAfrica is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3\u00a0million km2 (11.7\u00a0million square\u00a0miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surface area. With nearly billion people as of , it accounts for about of the world's human population. Africa's population is the youngest among all the continents; the median age in 2012 was 19.7, when the worldwide median age was 30.4. Based on 2024 projections, Africa's population will exceed 3.8 billion people by 2100. Africa is the least wealthy inhabited continent per capita and second-least wealthy by total wealth, ahead of Oceania. Scholars have attributed this to different factors including geography, climate, corruption, colonialism, the Cold War, and neocolonialism. Despite this low concentration of wealth, recent economic expansion and a large and young population make Africa an important economic market in the broader global context, and Africa has a large quantity of natural resources.\nAfrica straddles the equator and the prime meridian. The continent is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Arabian Plate and the Gulf of Aqaba to the northeast, the Indian Ocean to the southeast and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. The continent includes Madagascar and various archipelagos. It contains 54 fully recognised sovereign states, eight cities and islands that are part of non-African states, and two \"de facto\" independent states with limited or no recognition. This count does not include Malta and Sicily, which are geologically part of the African continent. Algeria is Africa's largest country by area, and Nigeria is its largest by population. African nations cooperate through the establishment of the African Union, which is headquartered in Addis Ababa.\nAfrica is highly biodiverse; it is the continent with the largest number of megafauna species, as it was least affected by the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna. However, Africa is also heavily affected by a wide range of environmental issues, including desertification, deforestation, water scarcity, and pollution. These entrenched environmental concerns are expected to worsen as climate change impacts Africa. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has identified Africa as the continent most vulnerable to climate change.\nThe history of Africa is long, complex, and varied, and has often been under-appreciated by the global historical community. In African societies the oral word is revered, and they have generally recorded their history via oral tradition, which has led anthropologists to term them \"oral civilisations\"\",\" contrasted with \"literate civilisations\" which pride the written word. African culture is rich and diverse both within and between the continent's regions, encompassing art, cuisine, music and dance, religion, and dress. \nAfrica, particularly Eastern Africa, is widely accepted to be the place of origin of humans and the Hominidae clade, also known as the great apes. The earliest hominids and their ancestors have been dated to around 7 million years ago, and \"Homo sapiens\" (modern human) are believed to have originated in Africa 350,000 to 260,000 years ago. In the 4th and 3rd millennia BCE Ancient Egypt, Kerma, Punt, and the Tichitt Tradition emerged in North, East and West Africa, while from 3000 BCE to 500 CE the Bantu expansion swept from modern-day Cameroon through Central, East, and Southern Africa, displacing or absorbing groups such as the Khoisan and Pygmies. Some African empires include Wagadu, Mali, Songhai, Sokoto, Ife, Benin, Asante, the Fatimids, Almoravids, Almohads, Ayyubids, Mamluks, Kongo, Mwene Muji, Luba, Lunda, Kitara, Aksum, Ethiopia, Adal, Ajuran, Kilwa, Sakalava, Imerina, Maravi, Mutapa, Rozvi, Mthwakazi, and Zulu. Despite the predominance of states, many societies were heterarchical and stateless. Slave trades created various diasporas, especially in the Americas. From the late 19th century to early 20th century, driven by the Second Industrial Revolution, most of Africa was rapidly conquered and colonised by European nations, save for Ethiopia and Liberia. European rule had significant impacts on Africa's societies, and colonies were maintained for the purpose of economic exploitation and extraction of natural resources. Most present states emerged from a process of decolonisation following World War II, and established the Organisation of African Unity in 1963, the predecessor to the African Union. The nascent countries decided to keep their colonial borders, with traditional power structures used in governance to varying degrees.\nEtymology.\n was a Latin name used to refer to the inhabitants of what was then known as northern Africa, located west of the Nile river, and in its widest sense referring to all lands south of the Mediterranean, also known as Ancient Libya. This name seems to have originally referred to a native Libyan tribe, an ancestor of modern Berbers; see Terence for discussion. The name had usually been connected with the Phoenician word \"\" meaning \"dust\", but a 1981 hypothesis has asserted that it stems from the Berber word (plural ) meaning \"cave\", in reference to cave dwellers. The same word may be found in the name of the Banu Ifran from Algeria and Tripolitania, a Berber tribe originally from Yafran (also known as \"Ifrane\") in northwestern Libya, as well as the city of Ifrane in Morocco.\nUnder Roman rule, Carthage became the capital of the province then named \"Africa Proconsularis\", following its defeat of the Carthaginians in the Third Punic War in 146 BC, which also included the coastal part of modern Libya. The Latin suffix can sometimes be used to denote a land (e.g., in from , as used by Julius Caesar). The later Muslim region of Ifriqiya, following its conquest of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire's \"Exarchatus Africae\", also preserved a form of the name.\nAccording to the Romans, Africa lies to the west of Egypt, while \"Asia\" was used to refer to Anatolia and lands to the east. A definite line was drawn between the two continents by the geographer Ptolemy (85\u2013165 CE), indicating Alexandria along the Prime Meridian and making the isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea the boundary between Asia and Africa. As Europeans came to understand the real extent of the continent, the idea of \"Africa\" expanded with their knowledge.\nOther etymological hypotheses have been postulated for the ancient name \"Africa\":\nHistory.\nHistory in Africa.\nIn accordance with African cosmology, African historical consciousness viewed historical change and continuity, order and purpose within the framework of man and his environment, the gods, and his ancestors, and he believed himself part of a holistic spiritual entity. In African societies, the historical process is largely a communal one, with eyewitness accounts, hearsay, reminiscences, and occasionally visions, dreams, and hallucinations crafted into narrative oral traditions which are performed and transmitted through generations.1248 In oral traditions time is sometimes mythical and social, and ancestors were considered historical actors. Mind and memory shapes traditions., as events are condensed over time and crystallise into clich\u00e9s.11 Oral tradition can be exoteric or esoteric. It speaks to people according to their understanding, unveiling itself in accordance with their aptitudes.168 In African epistemology, the epistemic subject \"experiences the epistemic object in a sensuous, emotive, intuitive, abstractive understanding, rather than through abstraction alone, as is the case in Western epistemology\" to arrive at a \"complete knowledge\", and as such oral traditions, music, proverbs, and the like were used in the preservation and transmission of knowledge.\nPrehistory.\nAfrica is considered by most paleoanthropologists to be the oldest inhabited territory on Earth, with the Human species originating from the continent. During the mid-20th century, anthropologists discovered many fossils and evidence of human occupation perhaps as early as seven million years ago (Before present, BP). Fossil remains of several species of early apelike humans thought to have evolved into modern humans, such as \"Australopithecus afarensis\" radiometrically dated to approximately 3.9\u20133.0\u00a0million years BP, \"Paranthropus boisei\" (c. 2.3\u20131.4\u00a0million years BP) and \"Homo ergaster\" (c. 1.9\u00a0million\u2013600,000 years BP) have been discovered.\nAfter the evolution of \"Homo sapiens\" approximately 350,000 to 260,000 years BP in Africa, the continent was mainly populated by groups of hunter-gatherers. These first modern humans left Africa and populated the rest of the globe during the Out of Africa II migration dated to approximately 50,000 years BP, exiting the continent either across Bab-el-Mandeb over the Red Sea, the Strait of Gibraltar in Morocco, or the Isthmus of Suez in Egypt.\nOther migrations of modern humans within the African continent have been dated to that time, with evidence of early human settlement found in Southern Africa, Southeast Africa, North Africa, and the Sahara.\nEmergence of civilization.\n \nThe size of the Sahara has historically been extremely variable, with its area rapidly fluctuating and at times disappearing depending on global climatic conditions. At the end of the Ice ages, estimated to have been around 10,500BC, the Sahara had again become a green fertile valley, and its African populations returned from the interior and coastal highlands in Africa, with rock art paintings depicting a fertile Sahara and large populations discovered in Tassili n'Ajjer dating back perhaps 10 millennia. However, the warming and drying climate meant that by 5,000BC, the Sahara region was becoming increasingly dry and hostile. Around 3500BC, due to a tilt in the Earth's orbit, the Sahara experienced a period of rapid desertification. The population trekked out of the Sahara region towards the Nile Valley below the Second Cataract where they made permanent or semi-permanent settlements. A major climatic recession occurred, lessening the heavy and persistent rains in Central and Eastern Africa. Since this time, dry conditions have prevailed in Eastern Africa and, increasingly during the last 200 years, in Ethiopia.\nThe domestication of cattle in Africa preceded agriculture and seems to have existed alongside hunter-gatherer cultures. It is speculated that by 6,000BC, cattle were domesticated in North Africa. In the Sahara-Nile complex, people domesticated many animals, including the donkey and a small screw-horned goat that was common from Algeria to Nubia. Between 10,000 and 9,000BC, pottery was independently invented in the region of Mali in the savannah of West Africa. In the steppes and savannahs of the Sahara and Sahel in Northern West Africa, people possibly ancestral to modern Nilo-Saharan and Mand\u00e9 cultures started to collect wild millet, around 8,000 to 6,000BC. Later, gourds, watermelons, castor beans, and cotton were also collected. Sorghum was first domesticated in Eastern Sudan around 4,000BC, in one of the earliest instances of agriculture in human history. Its cultivation would gradually spread across Africa, before spreading to India around 2000BC.\nPeople around modern-day Mauritania started making pottery and built stone settlements (e.g., Tichitt, Oualata). Fishing, using bone-tipped harpoons, became a major activity in the numerous streams and lakes formed from the increased rains. In West Africa, the wet phase ushered in an expanding rainforest and wooded savanna from Senegal to Cameroon. Between 9,000 and 5,000BC, Niger\u2013Congo speakers domesticated the oil palm and raffia palm. Black-eyed peas and voandzeia (African groundnuts), were domesticated, followed by okra and kola nuts. Since most of the plants grew in the forest, the Niger\u2013Congo speakers invented polished stone axes for clearing forest.\nAround 4,000BC, the Saharan climate started to become drier at an exceedingly fast pace. This climate change caused lakes and rivers to shrink significantly and caused increasing desertification. This, in turn, decreased the amount of land conducive to settlements and encouraged migrations of farming communities to the more tropical climate of West Africa. During the first millennium BC, a reduction in wild grain populations related to changing climate conditions facilitated the expansion of farming communities and the rapid adoption of rice cultivation around the Niger River.\nBy the first millennium BC, ironworking had been introduced in Northern Africa. Around that time it also became established in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, either through independent invention there or diffusion from the north and vanished under unknown circumstances around 500AD, having lasted approximately 2,000 years, and by 500BC, metalworking began to become commonplace in West Africa. Ironworking was fully established by roughly 500BC in many areas of East and West Africa, although other regions did not begin ironworking until the early centuries AD. Copper objects from Egypt, North Africa, Nubia, and Ethiopia dating from around 500BC have been excavated in West Africa, suggesting that Trans-Saharan trade networks had been established by this date.\n4th millenniumBC \u2013 6th centuryAD.\nNortheast Africa.\nFrom 3500BC, nomes (ruled by nomarchs) coalesced to form the kingdoms of Lower Egypt and Upper Egypt in northeast Africa. Around 3100BC Upper Egypt conquered Lower Egypt to unify Egypt under the 1st dynasty, with the process of consolidation and assimilation completed by the time of the 3rd dynasty who formed the Old Kingdom of Egypt in 2686BC. The Kingdom of Kerma emerged around this time to become the dominant force in Nubia, controlling territory as large as Egypt between the 1st and 4th cataracts of the Nile.\nThe 4th dynasty oversaw the height of the Old Kingdom, and constructed many great pyramids. Under the 6th dynasty power gradually decentralised to the nomarchs, culminating in the disintegration of the kingdom, exacerbated by drought and famine, thus commencing the First Intermediate Period in 2200BC. This shattered state would last until 2055BC when the 11th dynasty, based in Thebes, conquered the others to form the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, with the 12th dynasty expanding into Lower Nubia at the expense of Kerma. In 1700BC, the Middle Kingdom fractured in two, ushering in the Second Intermediate Period. The Hyksos, a militaristic people from Palestine, invaded and conquered Lower Egypt, while Kerma coordinated invasions deep into Egypt to reach its greatest extent.\nIn 1550BC, the 18th dynasty expelled the Hyksos, and established the New Kingdom of Egypt. Using the advanced military technology the Hyksos had brought, the New Kingdom conquered the Levant from the Canaanites, Mittani, Amorites, and Hittites, and extinguished Kerma, incorporating Nubia into the empire, and sending the Egyptian empire into its golden age. Internal struggles, drought, famine, and invasions by a confederation of seafaring peoples contributed to the New Kingdom's collapse in 1069BC, commencing the Third Intermediate Period.\nEgypt's collapse liberated the more Egyptianised Kingdom of Kush in Nubia, who manoeuvred into power in Upper Egypt and conquered Lower Egypt in 754BC to form the Kushite Empire. The Kushites ruled for a century and oversaw a revival in pyramid building, until they were driven out of Egypt by the Assyrians in 663BC in reprisal for their expansion towards the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrians installed a puppet dynasty that later gained independence and once more unified Egypt, until they were conquered by the Achaemenid Empire in 525BC. Egypt regained independence under the 28th dynasty in 404BC but they were reconquered by the Achaemenids in 343BC. The conquest of Achaemenid Egypt by Alexander the Great in 332BC marked the beginning of Hellenistic rule and the installation of the Macedonian Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt.\nThe Ptolemaics lost their holdings outside of Africa to the Seleucids in the Syrian Wars, expanded into Cyrenaica and subjugated Kush in the 3rd century BC. In the 1st century BC, Ptolemaic Egypt became entangled in a Roman civil war, leading to its conquest by the Romans in 30BC. The Crisis of the Third Century in the Roman Empire freed the Levantine city state of Palmyra, which conquered Egypt; their brief rule ended when they were reconquered by the Romans. In the midst of this, Kush regained independence from Egypt, and they would persist as a major regional power until, having been weakened from internal rebellion amid worsening climatic conditions, invasions by Aksum and the Noba caused their disintegration into Makuria, Alodia, and Nobatia in the 5th centuryAD. The Romans managed to hold on to Egypt for the rest of the ancient period.\nHorn of Africa.\nIn the Horn of Africa, there was the Land of Punt, a kingdom on the Red Sea, likely located in modern-day Eritrea or northern Somaliland. The Ancient Egyptians initially traded via middle-men with Punt until in 2350BC when they established direct relations. They would become close trading partners for over a millennium. Towards the end of the ancient period, northern Ethiopia and Eritrea bore the Kingdom of D'mt beginning in 980BC. In modern-day Somalia and Djibouti there was the Macrobian Kingdom, with archaeological discoveries indicating the possibility of other unknown sophisticated civilisations at this time. After D'mt's fall in the 5th century BC the Ethiopian Plateau came to be ruled by numerous smaller unknown kingdoms who experienced strong south Arabian influence, until the growth and expansion of Aksum in the 1st century BC. Along the Horn's coast there were many ancient Somali city-states that thrived off of the wider Red Sea trade and transported their cargo via beden, exporting myrrh, frankincense, spices, gum, incense, and ivory, with freedom from Roman interference causing Indians to give the cities a lucrative monopoly on cinnamon from ancient India.\nThe Kingdom of Aksum grew from a principality into a major power on the trade route between Rome and India through conquering its unfortunately unknown neighbours, gaining a monopoly on Indian Ocean trade in the region. Aksum's rise had them rule over much of the regions from Lake Tana to the valley of the Nile, and they further conquered parts of the ailing Kingdom of Kush, led campaigns against the Noba and Beja peoples, and expanded into South Arabia. This led the Persian prophet Mani to consider Aksum as one of the four great powers of the 3rd century AD alongside Persia, Rome, and China. In the 4th century AD Aksum's king converted to Christianity and Aksum's population, who had followed syncretic mixes of local beliefs, slowly followed. The end of the 5th century saw Aksum allied with the Byzantine Empire, who viewed themselves as defenders of Christendom, balanced against the Sassanid Empire and the Himyarite Kingdom in Arabia.\nNorthwest Africa.\nThe Maghreb and Ifriqiya were mostly cut off from the cradle of civilisation in Egypt by the Libyan desert, exacerbated by Egyptian boats being tailored to the Nile and not coping well in the open Mediterranean Sea. This caused its societies to develop contiguous to those of Southern Europe, until Phoenician settlements came to dominate the most lucrative trading locations in the Gulf of Tunis. Phoenician settlements subsequently grew into Ancient Carthage after gaining independence from Phoenicia in the 6th century BC, and they would build an extensive empire and a strict mercantile network, all secured by one of the largest and most powerful navies in the ancient Mediterranean. Carthage would meet its demise in the Punic Wars against the expansionary Roman Republic, however momentum in these wars was not linear, with Carthage initially experiencing considerable success in the Second Punic War following Hannibal's infamous crossing of the alps into northern Italy. Their defeat and subsequent collapse of their empire would produce two further polities in the Maghreb; Numidia, which had assisted the Romans in the Second Punic War, Mauretania, a Mauri tribal kingdom and home of the legendary King Atlas, and various tribes such as Garamantes, Musulamii, and Bavares. The Third Punic War would result in Carthage's total defeat in 146 BC and the Romans established the province of Africa, with Numidia assuming control of many of Carthage's African ports. Towards the end of the 2nd century BC Mauretania fought alongside Numidia's Jugurtha in the Jugurthine War against the Romans after he had usurped the Numidian throne from a Roman ally. Together they inflicted heavy casualties that quaked the Roman Senate, with the war only ending inconclusively when Mauretania's Bocchus I sold out Jugurtha to the Romans.\nAt the turn of the millennium, they both would face the same fate as Carthage and be conquered by the Romans who established Mauretania and Numidia as provinces of their empire, while Musulamii, led by Tacfarinas, and Garamantes were eventually defeated in war in the 1st century AD however weren't conquered. In the 5th century AD the Vandals conquered north Africa precipitating the fall of Rome. Swathes of indigenous peoples would regain self-governance in the Mauro-Roman Kingdom and its numerous successor polities in the Maghreb, namely the kingdoms of Ouarsenis, Aur\u00e8s, and Altava. The Vandals ruled Ifriqiya for a century until Byzantine reconquest in the early 6th century AD. The Byzantines and the Berber kingdoms fought minor inconsequential conflicts, such as in the case of Garmul, however largely coexisted. Further inland to the Byzantine Exarchate of Africa were the Sanhaja in modern-day Algeria, a broad grouping of three groupings of tribal confederations, one of which is the Masmuda grouping in modern-day Morocco, along with the nomadic Zenata; their composite tribes would later go onto shape much of North African history.\nWest Africa.\nIn the western Sahel the rise of settled communities occurred largely as a result of the domestication of millet and of sorghum. Archaeology points to sizable urban populations in West Africa beginning in the 4th millennium BC, which had crucially developed iron metallurgy by 1200BC, in both smelting and forging for tools and weapons. Extensive east-west belts of deserts, grasslands, and forests from north to south were crucial for the moulding of their respective societies and meant that prior to the accession of trans-Saharan trade routes, symbiotic trade relations developed in response to the opportunities afforded by north\u2013south diversity in ecosystems. Various civilisations prospered in this period. From 4000BC, the Tichitt culture in modern-day Mauritania and Mali was the oldest known complexly organised society in West Africa, with a four tiered hierarchical social structure. Other civilisations include the Kintampo culture from 2500BC in modern-day Ghana, the Nok culture from 1500 BC in modern-day Nigeria, the Daima culture around Lake Chad from 550BC, Djenn\u00e9-Djenno from 250BC in modern-day Mali, and the Serer civilisation in modern-day Senegal, which built the Senegambian stone circles from the 3rd century BC. There is also detailed record of Igodomigodo, a small kingdom founded presumably in 40BC, which would later go on to form the Benin Empire.\nTowards the end of the 3rd century AD, a wet period in the Sahel created areas for human habitation and exploitation that had not been habitable for the best part of a millennium, with the Kingdom of Wagadu, the local name of the Ghana Empire, rising out of the Tichitt culture, growing wealthy following the introduction of the camel to the western Sahel, revolutionising the trans-Saharan trade that linked their capital and Aoudaghost with Tahert and Sijilmasa in North Africa. Soninke traditions likely contain content from prehistory, mentioning four previous foundings of Wagadu, and holds that the final founding of Wagadu occurred after their first king did a deal with \"Bida\", a serpent deity who was guarding a well, to sacrifice one maiden a year in exchange for assurance regarding plenty of rainfall and gold supply. Wagadu's core traversed modern-day southern Mauritania and western Mali, and Soninke tradition portrays early Ghana as warlike, with horse-mounted warriors key to increasing its territory and population, although details of their expansion are extremely scarce. Wagadu made its profits from maintaining a monopoly on gold heading north and salt heading south, despite not controlling the gold fields themselves, located in the forest regions. It is probable that Wagadu's dominance on trade allowed for the gradual consolidation of many polities into a confederated state, whose composites stood in varying relations to the core, from fully administered to nominal tribute-paying parity. Based on large tumuli scattered across West Africa dating to this period, it has been stipulated that relative to Wagadu, there were further simultaneous and preceding kingdoms that have unfortunately been lost to time.\nCentral, Eastern, and Southern Africa.\nAt the 4th millennium BC the Congo Basin was inhabited by the Bambenga, Bayaka, Bakoya, and Babongo in the west, the Bambuti in the east, and the Batwa who were widely scattered and also present in the Great Lakes region; together they are grouped as Pygmies. On the later-named Swahili coast there were Cushitic-speaking peoples, and the Khoisan (a neologism for the Khoekhoe and San) in the continent's south.\nThe Bantu expansion constituted a major series of migrations of Bantu peoples from central Africa to eastern and southern Africa and was substantial in the settling of the continent. Commencing in the 2nd millennium BC, the Bantu began to migrate from Cameroon to central, eastern, and southern Africa, laying the foundations for future states such as the Kingdom of Kongo in the Congo Basin, the Empire of Kitara in the African Great Lakes, the Luba Empire in the Upemba Depression, the Kilwa Sultanate in the Swahili coast by crowding out Azania, with Rhapta being its last stronghold by the 1st century AD. These migrations also prefaced the Kingdom of Mapungubwe in the Zambezi basin. After reaching the Zambezi, the Bantu continued southward, with eastern groups continuing to modern-day Mozambique and reaching Maputo in the 2nd century AD. Further to the south, settlements of Bantu peoples who were iron-using agriculturists and herdsmen were well established south of the Limpopo River by the 4th century AD, displacing and absorbing the Khoisan.\nBy the Chari River south of Lake Chad the Sao civilisation flourished for over a millennium beginning in the 6th century BC, in territory that later became part of present-day Cameroon and Chad. Sao artifacts show that they were skilled workers in bronze, copper, and iron,19 with finds including bronze sculptures, terracotta statues of human and animal figures, coins, funerary urns, household utensils, jewellery, highly decorated pottery, and spears.19 Nearby, around Lake Ejagham in south-west Cameroon, the Ekoi civilisation rose circa 2nd century AD, and are most notable for constructing the Ikom monoliths and developing the Nsibidi script.\n9th to 18th centuries.\nPre-colonial Africa possessed as many as 10,000 different states and polities. These included small family groups of hunter-gatherers such as the San people of southern Africa; larger, more structured groups such as the family clan groupings of the Bantu peoples of central, southern, and eastern Africa; heavily structured clan groups in the Horn of Africa; the large Sahelian kingdoms; and autonomous city-states and kingdoms, such as those of the Akan; Edo, Yoruba, and Igbo people in West Africa; and the Swahili coastal trading towns of Southeast Africa.\nBy the 9th century AD, a string of dynastic states, including the earliest Hausa states, stretched across the sub-Saharan savannah from the western regions to central Sudan. The most powerful of these states were Ghana, Gao, and the Kanem-Bornu Empire. Ghana declined in the eleventh century, but was succeeded by the Mali Empire, which consolidated much of western Sudan in the thirteenth century. Kanem accepted Islam in the eleventh century.\nIn the forested regions of the West African coast, independent kingdoms grew with little influence from the Muslim north. The Kingdom of Nri, which was ruled by the Eze Nri, was established around the ninth century, making it one of the oldest kingdoms in present-day Nigeri. The Nri kingdom is famous for its elaborate bronzes, found at the town of Igbo-Ukwu.\nThe Kingdom of Ife, historically the first of these Yoruba city-states or kingdoms, established government under a priestly oba ('king' or 'ruler' in the Yoruba language), called the \"Ooni of Ife\". Ife was noted as a major religious and cultural centre in West Africa and for its unique naturalistic tradition of bronze sculpture. The Ife model of government was adapted by the Oyo Empire, whose obas, called the \"Alaafins of Oyo\", controlled many other Yoruba and non-Yoruba city-states and kingdoms including the Fon \"Kingdom of Dahomey\".\nThe Almoravids were a Berber dynasty from the Sahara that spread over northwestern Africa and the Iberian peninsula during the eleventh century. The Banu Hilal and Banu Ma'qil were a collection of Arab Bedouin tribes from the Arabian Peninsula who migrated westwards via Egypt between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Their migration resulted in the fusion of the Arabs and Berbers, where the locals were Arabized, and Arab culture absorbed elements of the local culture, under the unifying framework of Islam.\nFollowing the breakup of Mali, a local leader named Sonni Ali (1464\u20131492) founded the Songhai Empire in the region of middle Niger and the western Sudan and took control of the trans-Saharan trade. Sonni Ali seized Timbuktu in 1468 and Jenne in 1473, building his regime on trade revenues and the cooperation of Muslim merchants. His successor Askia Mohammad I (1493\u20131528) made Islam the official religion, built mosques, and brought to Gao Muslim scholars, including al-Maghili (d.1504), the founder of an important tradition of Sudanic African Muslim scholarship. By the eleventh century, some Hausa states \u2013 such as Kano, Jigawa, Katsina, and Gobir \u2013 had developed into walled towns engaging in trade, servicing caravans, and the manufacture of goods. Until the fifteenth century, these small states were on the periphery of the major Sudanic empires of the era, paying tribute to Songhai to the west and Kanem-Borno to the east.\nHeight of the slave trade.\nSlavery had long been practiced in Africa. Between the 15th and the 19th centuries, the Atlantic slave trade took an estimated 7\u201312\u00a0million slaves to the New World. In addition, more than 1 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa between the 16th and 19th centuries.\nIn West Africa, the decline of the Atlantic slave trade in the 1820s caused dramatic economic shifts in local polities. The gradual decline of slave-trading, prompted by a lack of demand for slaves in the New World, increasing anti-slavery legislation in Europe and America, and the British Royal Navy's increasing presence off the West African coast, obliged African states to adopt new economies. Between 1808 and 1860, the British West Africa Squadron seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard.\nAction was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against \"the usurping King of Lagos\", deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers. The largest powers of West Africa (the Asante Confederacy, the Kingdom of Dahomey, and the Oyo Empire) adopted different ways of adapting to the shift. Asante and Dahomey concentrated on the development of \"legitimate commerce\" in the form of palm oil, cocoa, timber and gold, forming the bedrock of West Africa's modern export trade. The Oyo Empire, unable to adapt, collapsed into civil wars.\nIndependence struggles.\nImperial rule by Europeans continued until after the conclusion of World War II, when almost all remaining colonial territories gradually obtained formal independence. Independence movements in Africa gained momentum following World War II, which left the major European powers weakened. In 1951, Libya, a former Italian colony, gained independence. In 1956, Tunisia and Morocco won their independence from France. Ghana followed suit the next year (March 1957), becoming the first of the sub-Saharan colonies to be granted independence. Over the next decade, waves of decolonization took place across the continent, culminating in the 1960 Year of Africa and the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity in 1963.\nPortugal's overseas presence in sub-Saharan Africa (most notably in Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, and S\u00e3o Tom\u00e9 and Pr\u00edncipe) lasted from the 16th century to 1975, after the Estado Novo regime was overthrown in a military coup in Lisbon. Rhodesia unilaterally declared independence from the United Kingdom in 1965, under the white minority government of Ian Smith, but was not internationally recognized as an independent state (as Zimbabwe) until 1980, when black nationalists gained power after a bitter guerrilla war. Although South Africa was one of the first African countries to gain independence, the state remained under the control of the country's white minority, initially through qualified voting rights and from 1956 by a system of racial segregation known as apartheid, until 1994.\nPost-colonial Africa.\nToday, Africa contains 54 sovereign countries. Since independence, African states have frequently been hampered by instability, corruption, violence, and authoritarianism. The vast majority of African states are republics that operate under some form of the presidential system of rule. However, few of them have been able to sustain democratic governments on a permanent basis\u2014per the criteria laid out by L\u00fchrmann et al. (2018), only Botswana and Mauritius have been consistently democratic for the entirety of their post-colonial history. Most African countries have experienced several coups or periods of military dictatorship. Between 1990 and 2018, though, the continent as a whole has trended towards more democratic governance.\nUpon independence an overwhelming majority of Africans lived in extreme poverty. The continent suffered from the lack of infrastructural or industrial development under colonial rule, along with political instability. With limited financial resources or access to global markets, relatively stable countries such as Kenya still experienced only very slow economic development. Only a handful of African countries succeeded in obtaining rapid economic growth prior to 1990. Exceptions include Libya and Equatorial Guinea, both of which possess large oil reserves.\nInstability throughout the continent after decolonization resulted primarily from marginalization of ethnic groups, and corruption. In pursuit of personal political gain, many leaders deliberately promoted ethnic conflicts, some of which had originated during the colonial period, such as from the grouping of multiple unrelated ethnic groups into a single colony, the splitting of a distinct ethnic group between multiple colonies, or existing conflicts being exacerbated by colonial rule (for instance, the preferential treatment given to ethnic Hutus over Tutsis in Rwanda during German and Belgian rule).\nFaced with increasingly frequent and severe violence, military rule was widely accepted by the population of many countries as means to maintain order, and during the 1970s and 1980s a majority of African countries were controlled by military dictatorships. Territorial disputes between nations and rebellions by groups seeking independence were also common in independent African states. The most devastating of these was the Nigerian Civil War, fought between government forces and an Igbo separatist republic, which resulted in a famine that killed 1\u20132 million people. Two civil wars in Sudan, the first lasting from 1955 to 1972 and the second from 1983 to 2005, collectively killed around 3 million. Both were fought primarily on ethnic and religious lines.\nCold War conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union also contributed to instability. Both the Soviet Union and the United States offered considerable incentives to African political and military leaders who aligned themselves with the superpowers' foreign policy. As an example, during the Angolan Civil War, the Soviet and Cuban aligned MPLA and the American aligned UNITA received the vast majority of their military and political support from these countries. Many African countries became highly dependent on foreign aid. The sudden loss of both Soviet and American aid at the end of the Cold War and fall of the USSR resulted in severe economic and political turmoil in the countries most dependent on foreign support.\nThere was a major famine in Ethiopia between 1983 and 1985, killing up to 1.2 million people, which most historians attribute primarily to the forced relocation of farmworkers and seizure of grain by communist Derg government, further exacerbated by the civil war. In 1994 a genocide in Rwanda resulted in up to 800,000 deaths, added to a severe refugee crisis and fueled the rise of militia groups in neighboring countries. This contributed to the outbreak of the first and second Congo Wars, which were the most devastating military conflicts in modern Africa, with up to 5.5\u00a0million deaths, making it by far the deadliest conflict in modern African history and one of the costliest wars in human history.\nVarious conflicts between various insurgent groups and governments continue. Since 2003, there has been an ongoing conflict in Darfur (Sudan), which peaked in intensity from 2003 to 2005 with notable spikes in violence in 2007 and 2013\u201315, killing around 300,000 people total. The Boko Haram Insurgency primarily within Nigeria (with considerable fighting in Niger, Chad, and Cameroon as well) has killed around 350,000 people since 2009. Most African conflicts have been reduced to low-intensity conflicts as of 2022. However, the Tigray War from 2020 to 2022 killed an estimated 300,000\u2013500,000 people, primarily due to famine.\nOverall though, violence across Africa has greatly declined in the 21st century, with the end of civil wars in Angola, Sierra Leone, and Algeria in 2002, Liberia in 2003, and Sudan and Burundi in 2005. The Second Congo War, which involved 9 countries and several insurgent groups, ended in 2003. This decline in violence coincided with many countries abandoning communist-style command economies and opening up for market reforms, which over the course of the 1990s and 2000s promoted the establishment of permanent, peaceful trade between neighboring countries (see Capitalist peace).\nImproved stability and economic reforms have led to a great increase in foreign investment into many African nations, mainly from China, which further spurred economic growth. Between 2000 and 2014, annual GDP growth in sub-Saharan Africa averaged 5.02%, doubling its total GDP from $811 billion to $1.63 trillion (constant 2015 USD). North Africa experienced comparable growth rates. A significant part of this growth can also be attributed to the facilitated diffusion of information technologies and specifically the mobile telephone. While several individual countries have maintained high growth rates, since 2014 overall growth has considerably slowed, primarily as a result of falling commodity prices, continued lack of industrialization, and epidemics of Ebola and COVID-19.\nGeography.\nAfrica is the largest of the three great southward projections from the largest landmass of the Earth. Separated from Europe by the Mediterranean Sea, it is joined to Asia at its northeast extremity by the Isthmus of Suez (transected by the Suez Canal), wide. Geopolitically, Egypt's Sinai Peninsula east of the Suez Canal is often considered part of Africa as well.\nThe coastline is long, and the absence of deep indentations of the shore is illustrated by the fact that Europe, which covers only \u2013 about a third of the surface of Africa \u2013 has a coastline of . From the most northerly point, Ras ben Sakka in Tunisia (37\u00b021' N), to the most southerly point, Cape Agulhas in South Africa (34\u00b051'15\" S), is a distance of approximately . Cape Verde, 17\u00b033'22\" W, the westernmost point, is a distance of approximately to Ras Hafun, 51\u00b027'52\" E, the most easterly projection that neighbours Cape Guardafui, the tip of the Horn of Africa.\nAfrica's largest country is Algeria, and its smallest country is Seychelles, an archipelago off the east coast. The smallest nation on the continental mainland is The Gambia.\nClimate.\nThe climate of Africa ranges from tropical to subarctic on its highest peaks. Its northern half is primarily desert, or arid, while its central and southern areas contain both savanna plains and dense jungle (rainforest) regions. In between, there is a convergence, where vegetation patterns such as sahel and steppe dominate. Africa is the hottest continent on Earth and 60% of the entire land surface consists of drylands and deserts. The record for the highest-ever recorded temperature, in Libya in 1922 (), was discredited in 2013.\nEcology and biodiversity.\nAfrica has over 3,000 protected areas, with 198 marine protected areas, 50 biosphere reserves, and 80 wetlands reserves. Significant habitat destruction, increases in human population and poaching are reducing Africa's biological diversity and arable land. Human encroachment, civil unrest and the introduction of non-native species threaten biodiversity in Africa. This has been exacerbated by administrative problems, inadequate personnel and funding problems.\nDeforestation is affecting Africa at twice the world rate, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). According to the University of Pennsylvania African Studies Center, 31% of Africa's pasture lands and 19% of its forests and woodlands are classified as degraded, and Africa is losing over four million hectares of forest per year, which is twice the average deforestation rate for the rest of the world. Some sources claim that approximately 90% of the original, virgin forests in West Africa have been destroyed. Over 90% of Madagascar's original forests have been destroyed since the arrival of humans 2000 years ago. About 65% of Africa's agricultural land suffers from soil degradation.\nFauna.\nAfrica boasts perhaps the world's largest combination of density and \"range of freedom\" of wild animal populations and diversity, with wild populations of large carnivores (such as lions, hyenas, and cheetahs) and herbivores (such as buffalo, elephants, camels, and giraffes) ranging freely on primarily open non-private plains. It is also home to a variety of \"jungle\" animals including snakes and primates and aquatic life such as crocodiles and amphibians. In addition, Africa has the largest number of megafauna species, as it was least affected by the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna.\nPolitics.\nAfrican Union.\nThe African Union (AU) is a continental union consisting of 55 member states. The union was formed, with Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, as its headquarters, on 26 June 2001. The union was officially established on 9 July 2002 as a successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). In July 2004, the African Union's Pan-African Parliament (PAP) was relocated to Midrand, in South Africa, but the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights remained in Addis Ababa.\nThe African Union, not to be confused with the AU Commission, is formed by the Constitutive Act of the African Union, which aims to transform the African Economic Community, a federated commonwealth, into a state under established international conventions. The African Union has a parliamentary government, known as the African Union Government, consisting of legislative, judicial and executive organs. It is led by the African Union President and Head of State, who is also the President of the Pan-African Parliament. A person becomes AU President by being elected to the PAP, and subsequently gaining majority support in the PAP. The powers and authority of the President of the African Parliament derive from the Constitutive Act and the Protocol of the Pan-African Parliament, as well as the inheritance of presidential authority stipulated by African treaties and by international treaties, including those subordinating the Secretary General of the OAU Secretariat (AU Commission) to the PAP. The government of the AU consists of all-union, regional, state, and municipal authorities, as well as hundreds of institutions, that together manage the day-to-day affairs of the institution.\nExtensive human rights abuses still occur in several parts of Africa, often under the oversight of the state. Most of such violations occur for political reasons, often as a side effect of civil war. Countries where major human rights violations have been reported in recent times include the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Ivory Coast.\nList of states and territories.\nAlgeria\nTogo\nBenin\nBotswana\nCameroon\nCent Afr Rep\nChad\nDemocraticRepublic ofthe Congo\nDjibouti\nEgypt\nEquatorial Guinea\nEritrea\nEthiopia\nCape*VerdeLibya\nMali\nGhana\nSierra<br>Leone\nIvoryCoast\nBurkinaFaso\nMauritania\nMorocco\nS\u00e3o Tom\u00e9<br>and Pr\u00edncipe*\nGabon\nNamibia\nNiger\nNigeriaCongo\nSomalia\nSouth Africa\nSudan\nSouth Sudan\nTunisia\nWesternSahara\nSenegal\nThe Gambia\nGuinea-Bissau\nGuinea\nKenya\nLiberiaMadagascar\nMalawi\nMozambique\nBurundi\nRwanda\nUganda\nTanzania\nAngola\nSaint Helena (UK)*\nLesotho\nEswatini\nZambia\nZimbabweMauritius*\nR\u00e9union*\n*Comoros\nSeychelles\nAtlanticOcean\nAtlanticOcean\nIndianOcean\nStrait of Gibraltar\nMediterranean Sea\nRed\u00a0 Sea\nThe countries in this table are categorized according to the scheme for geographic subregions used by the United Nations, and data included are per sources in cross-referenced articles. Where they differ, provisos are clearly indicated.\nEconomy.\nAlthough it has abundant natural resources, Africa remains the world's poorest and least-developed continent (other than Antarctica), the result of a variety of causes that may include corrupt governments that have often committed serious human rights violations, failed central planning, high levels of illiteracy, low self-esteem, lack of access to foreign capital, legacies of colonialism, the slave trade, and the Cold War, and frequent tribal and military conflict (ranging from guerrilla warfare to genocide). Its total nominal GDP remains behind that of the United States, China, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, India and France. According to the United Nations' Human Development Report in 2003, the bottom 24 ranked nations (151st to 175th) were all African.\nPoverty, illiteracy, malnutrition, inadequate water supply and sanitation, and poor health affect a large proportion of the people who reside on the African continent. In August 2008, the World Bank announced revised global poverty estimates based on a new international poverty line of $1.25 per day (versus the previous measure of $1.00). Eighty-one percent of the sub-Saharan African population was living on less than $2.50 (PPP) per day in 2005, compared with 86% for India.\nSub-Saharan Africa is the least successful region of the world in reducing poverty ($1.25 per day); some 50% of the population living in poverty in 1981 (200\u00a0million people), a figure that rose to 58% in 1996 before dropping to 50% in 2005 (380\u00a0million people). The average poor person in sub-Saharan Africa is estimated to live on only 70 cents per day, and was poorer in 2003 than in 1973, indicating increasing poverty in some areas. Some of it is attributed to unsuccessful economic liberalization programmes spearheaded by foreign companies and governments, but other studies have cited bad domestic government policies more than external factors.\nAfrica is now at risk of being in debt once again, particularly in sub-Saharan African countries. The last debt crisis in 2005 was resolved with help from the heavily indebted poor countries scheme (HIPC). The HIPC resulted in some positive and negative effects on the economy in Africa. About ten years after the 2005 debt crisis in sub-Saharan Africa was resolved, Zambia fell back into debt. A small reason was due to the fall in copper prices in 2011, but the bigger reason was that a large amount of the money Zambia borrowed was wasted or pocketed by the elite.\nFrom 1995 to 2005, Africa's rate of economic growth increased, averaging 5% in 2005. Some countries experienced still higher growth rates, notably Angola, Sudan and Equatorial Guinea, all of which had recently begun extracting their petroleum reserves or had expanded their oil extraction capacity.\nIn a recently published analysis based on World Values Survey data, the Austrian political scientist Arno Tausch maintained that several African countries, most notably Ghana, perform quite well on scales of mass support for democracy and the market economy. The following table is projection(s) as of 2024 in terms of the peak level of GDP (nominal) and (Purchasing Power Parity) by the IMF and the World Bank.\nTausch's global value comparison based on the World Values Survey derived the following factor analytical scales: 1. The non-violent and law-abiding society 2. Democracy movement 3. Climate of personal non-violence 4. Trust in institutions 5. Happiness, good health 6. No redistributive religious fundamentalism 7. Accepting the market 8. Feminism 9. Involvement in politics 10. Optimism and engagement 11. No welfare mentality, acceptancy of the Calvinist work ethics. The spread in the performance of African countries with complete data, Tausch concluded \"is really amazing\". While one should be especially hopeful about the development of future democracy and the market economy in Ghana, the article suggests pessimistic tendencies for Egypt and Algeria, and especially for Africa's leading economy, South Africa. High human inequality, as measured by the UNDP's Human Development Report's \"Index of Human Inequality\", impairs the development of human security. Tausch also maintains that the certain recent optimism, corresponding to economic and human rights data, emerging from Africa, is reflected in the development of a civil society.\nThe continent is believed to hold 90% of the world's cobalt, 90% of its platinum, 50% of its gold, 98% of its chromium, 70% of its tantalite, 64% of its manganese and one-third of its uranium. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has 70% of the world's coltan, a mineral used in the production of tantalum capacitors for electronic devices such as cell phones. The DRC also has more than 30% of the world's diamond reserves. Guinea is the world's largest exporter of bauxite. As the growth in Africa has been driven mainly by services and not manufacturing or agriculture, it has been growth without jobs and without reduction in poverty levels. In fact, the food security crisis of 2008, which took place on the heels of the global financial crisis, pushed 100 million people into food insecurity.\nIn recent years, China has built increasingly stronger ties with African nations and is Africa's largest trading partner. In 2007, Chinese companies invested a total of US$1\u00a0billion in Africa.\nA Harvard University study led by professor Calestous Juma showed that Africa could feed itself by making the transition from importer to self-sufficiency. \"African agriculture is at the crossroads; we have come to the end of a century of policies that favoured Africa's export of raw materials and importation of food. Africa is starting to focus on agricultural innovation as its new engine for regional trade and prosperity.\"\nElectricity generation.\nThe main source of electricity is hydropower, which contributes significantly to the current installed capacity for energy. The Kainji Dam is a typical hydropower resource generating electricity for all the large cities in Nigeria as well as their neighbouring country, Niger. Hence, the continuous investment in the last decade, which has increased the amount of power generated.\nInfrastructure.\nWater resources.\nWater development and management are complex in Africa due to the multiplicity of trans-boundary water resources (rivers, lakes and aquifers). Around 75% of sub-Saharan Africa falls within 53 international river basin catchments that traverse multiple borders. This particular constraint can also be converted into an opportunity if the potential for trans-boundary cooperation is harnessed in the development of the area's water resources. A multi-sectoral analysis of the Zambezi River, for example, shows that riparian cooperation could lead to a 23% increase in firm energy production without any additional investments. A number of institutional and legal frameworks for transboundary cooperation exist, such as the Zambezi River Authority, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Protocol, Volta River Authority and the Nile Basin Commission. However, additional efforts are required to further develop political will, as well as the financial capacities and institutional frameworks needed for win-win multilateral cooperative actions and optimal solutions for all riparians.\nDemographics.\n | caption= Proportion of total African population by country\n | other = yes\n | label1 = Nigeria\n | value1 = 15.38 | color1=#36A\n | label2 = Ethiopia\n | value2 = 8.37 | color2=#1A9\n | label3 = Egypt\n | value3 = 7.65 | color3=#6A5\n | label4 = Democratic Republic of the Congo\n | value4 = 6.57 | color4=#CC5\n | label5 = Tanzania\n | value5 = 4.55 | color5=#928\n | label6 = South Africa\n | value6 = 4.47 | color6=#E33\n | label7 = Kenya\n | value7 = 3.88 | color7=#E72\n | label8 = Uganda\n | value8 = 3.38 | color8=#FE3\n | label9 = Algeria\n | value9 = 3.36 | color9=#A45\nAfrica is considered by anthropologists to be the most genetically diverse continent as a result of being the longest inhabited. Africa's population has rapidly increased over the last 40 years, and is consequently relatively young. In some African states, more than half the population is under 25 years of age. The total number of people in Africa increased from 229 million in 1950 to 630\u00a0million in 1990. As of {{UN_Population|Year}}, the population of Africa is estimated at {{#expr:{{replace|{{UN_Population|Africa}}|,|}} / 1e9 round 1}} billion.{{UN_Population|ref}} Africa's total population surpassing other continents is fairly recent; African population surpassed Europe in the 1990s, while the Americas was overtaken sometime around the year 2000. This increase in number of babies born in Africa compared to the rest of the world is expected to reach approximately 37% in the year 2050; while in 1990 sub-Saharan Africa accounted for only 16% of the world's births.\nThe total fertility rate (children per woman) for Sub-Saharan Africa is 4.7 as of 2018, the highest in the world. All countries in sub-Saharan Africa had TFRs (average number of children) above replacement level in 2019 and accounted for 27.1% of global livebirths. In 2021, sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 29% of global births.\nSpeakers of Bantu languages (part of the Niger\u2013Congo family) are the majority in southern, central and southeast Africa. The Bantu-speaking peoples from the Sahel progressively expanded over most of sub-Saharan Africa. But there are also several Nilotic groups in South Sudan and East Africa, the mixed Swahili people on the Swahili Coast, and a few remaining indigenous Khoisan (\"San\" or \"Bushmen\") and Pygmy peoples in Southern and Central Africa, respectively. Bantu-speaking Africans also predominate in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, and are found in parts of southern Cameroon. In the Kalahari Desert of Southern Africa, the distinct people known as the Bushmen (also \"San\", closely related to, but distinct from \"Hottentots\") have long been present. The San are physically distinct from other Africans and are the indigenous people of southern Africa.{{citation needed|date=October 2023}} Pygmies are the pre-Bantu indigenous peoples of central Africa.\nThe peoples of West Africa primarily speak Niger\u2013Congo languages, belonging mostly to its non-Bantu branches, though some Nilo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic speaking groups are also found. The Niger\u2013Congo-speaking Yoruba, Igbo, Fulani, Akan, and Wolof ethnic groups are the largest and most influential. In the central Sahara, Mandinka or Mande groups are most significant. Chadic-speaking groups, including the Hausa, are found in more northerly parts of the region nearest to the Sahara, and Nilo-Saharan communities, such as the Songhai, Kanuri and Zarma, are found in the eastern parts of West Africa bordering Central Africa.\nThe peoples of North Africa consist of three main indigenous groups: Berbers in the northwest, Egyptians in the northeast, and Nilo-Saharan-speaking peoples in the east. The Arabs who arrived in the 7th century AD introduced the Arabic language and Islam to North Africa. The Semitic Phoenicians (who founded Carthage) and Hyksos, the Indo-Iranian Alans, the Indo-European Greeks, Romans, and Vandals settled in North Africa as well. Significant Berber communities remain within Morocco and Algeria in the 21st century, while, to a lesser extent, Berber speakers are also present in some regions of Tunisia and Libya. The Berber-speaking Tuareg and other often-nomadic peoples are the principal inhabitants of the Saharan interior of North Africa. In Mauritania, there is a small but near-extinct Berber community in the north and Niger\u2013Congo-speaking peoples in the south, though in both regions Arabic and Arab culture predominates. In Sudan, although Arabic and Arab culture predominate, it is mostly inhabited by groups that originally spoke Nilo-Saharan, such as the Nubians, Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa, who, over the centuries, have variously intermixed with migrants from the Arabian peninsula. Small communities of Afro-Asiatic-speaking Beja nomads can also be found in Egypt and Sudan.\nIn the Horn of Africa, some Ethiopian and Eritrean groups (like the Amhara and Tigrayans, collectively known as Habesha) speak languages from the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family, while the Oromo and Somali speak languages from the Cushitic branch of Afro-Asiatic.\nPrior to the decolonization movements of the post-World War II era, Europeans were represented in every part of Africa. Decolonization during the 1960s and 1970s often resulted in the mass emigration of white settlers\u2014especially from Algeria and Morocco (1.6\u00a0million \"pieds-noirs\" in North Africa), Kenya, Congo, Rhodesia, Mozambique and Angola. Between 1975 and 1977, over a million colonials returned to Portugal alone. Nevertheless, white Africans remain an important minority in many African states, particularly Zimbabwe, Namibia, R\u00e9union, and South Africa. The country with the largest white African population is South Africa. Dutch and British diasporas represent the largest communities of European ancestry on the continent today.\nEuropean colonization also brought sizable groups of Asians, particularly from the Indian subcontinent, to British colonies. Large Indian communities are found in South Africa, and smaller ones are present in Kenya, Tanzania, and some other southern and southeast African countries. The large Indian community in Uganda was expelled by the dictator Idi Amin in 1972, though many have since returned. The islands in the Indian Ocean are also populated primarily by people of Asian origin, often mixed with Africans and Europeans. The Malagasy people of Madagascar are an Austronesian people, but those along the coast are generally mixed with Bantu, Arab, Indian and European origins. Malay and Indian ancestries are also important components in the group of people known in South Africa as Cape Coloureds (people with origins in two or more races and continents). During the 20th century, small but economically important communities of Lebanese have also developed in the larger coastal cities of West and East Africa, respectively.\nAlternative Estimates of African Population, 1\u20132018 AD (in thousands).\nSource: Maddison and others. (University of Groningen).\nShares of Africa and World Population, 1\u20132020 AD (% of world total).\nSource: Maddison and others (University of Groningen).\nReligion.\nWhile Africans profess a wide variety of religious beliefs, the majority of the people respect African religions or parts of them. However, in formal surveys or census, most people will identify with major religions that came from outside the continent, mainly through colonisation. There are several reasons for this, the main one being the colonial idea that African religious beliefs and practices are not good enough. Religious beliefs and statistics on religious affiliation are difficult to come by since they are often a sensitive topic for governments with mixed religious populations. According to the \"World Book Encyclopedia\", Islam and Christianity are the two largest religions in Africa. Islam is most prevalent in Northern Africa, and is the state religion of many North African countries, such as Algeria, where 99% of the population practices Islam. The majority of people in most governments in Southern, Southeast, and Central Africa, as well as in a sizable portion of the Horn of Africa and West Africa, identify as Christians. The Coptic Christians constitute a sizable minority in Egypt, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is the largest church in Ethiopia, with 36 million and 51 million adherents. According to Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica, 45% of the population are Christians, 40% are Muslims, and 10% follow traditional religions.{{citation needed|date=October 2020}} A small number of Africans are Hindu, Buddhist, Confucianist, Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed, or Jewish. There is also a minority of people in Africa who are irreligious.\nLanguages.\nBy most estimates, well over a thousand languages (UNESCO has estimated around two thousand) are spoken in Africa. Most are of African origin, though some are of European or Asian origin. Africa is the most multilingual continent in the world, and it is not rare for individuals to fluently speak not only multiple African languages, but one or more European ones as well.{{Explain|reason=Africa is not one country with one single tradition of polyglots|date=February 2023}} There are four major groups indigenous to Africa:\nHealth.\nMore than 85% of individuals in Africa use traditional medicine as an alternative to often expensive allopathic medical health care and costly pharmaceutical products. The Organization of African Unity (OAU) Heads of State and Government declared the 2000s decade as the African Decade on African traditional medicine in an effort to promote The WHO African Region's adopted resolution for institutionalizing traditional medicine in health care systems across the continent. Public policy makers in the region are challenged with consideration of the importance of traditional/indigenous health systems and whether their coexistence with the modern medical and health sub-sector would improve the equitability and accessibility of health care distribution, the health status of populations, and the social-economic development of nations within sub-Saharan Africa.\nAIDS in post-colonial Africa is a prevalent issue. Although the continent is home to about 15.2 percent of the world's population, more than two-thirds of the total infected worldwide\u2014some 35 million people\u2014were Africans, of whom 15\u00a0million have already died. Sub-Saharan Africa alone accounted for an estimated 69 percent of all people living with HIV and 70 percent of all AIDS deaths in 2011. In the countries of sub-Saharan Africa most affected, AIDS has raised death rates and lowered life expectancy among adults between the ages of 20 and 49 by about twenty years. Furthermore, the life expectancy in many parts of Africa has declined, largely as a result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic with life-expectancy in some countries reaching as low as thirty-four years.\nCulture.\nSome aspects of traditional African cultures have become less practised in recent years as a result of neglect and suppression by colonial and post-colonial regimes. For example, African customs were discouraged, and African languages were prohibited in mission schools. Leopold II of Belgium attempted to \"civilize\" Africans by discouraging polygamy and witchcraft.\nObidoh Freeborn posits that colonialism is one element that has created the character of modern African art. According to authors Douglas Fraser and Herbert M. Cole, \"The precipitous alterations in the power structure wrought by colonialism were quickly followed by drastic iconographic changes in the art.\" Fraser and Cole assert that, in Igboland, some art objects \"lack the vigor and careful craftsmanship of the earlier art objects that served traditional functions.\" Author Chika Okeke-Agulu states that \"the racist infrastructure of British imperial enterprise forced upon the political and cultural guardians of empire a denial and suppression of an emergent sovereign Africa and modernist art.\" Editors F. Abiola Irele and Simon Gikandi comment that the current identity of African literature had its genesis in the \"traumatic encounter between Africa and Europe.\" On the other hand, Mhoze Chikowero believes that Africans deployed music, dance, spirituality, and other performative cultures to (re)assert themselves as active agents and indigenous intellectuals, to unmake their colonial marginalization and reshape their own destinies.\nThere is now a resurgence in the attempts to rediscover and revalue African traditional cultures, under such movements as the African Renaissance, led by Thabo Mbeki, Afrocentrism, led by a group of scholars, including Molefi Asante, as well as the increasing recognition of traditional spiritualism through decriminalization of Vodou and other forms of spirituality.\nAs of March 2023, 98 African properties are listed by UNESCO as World Heritage Sites. Among these proprieties, 54 are cultural sites, 39 are natural sites and 5 are mixed sites. The List Of World Heritage in Danger includes 15 African sites.\nSports.\nFifty-four African countries have football teams in the Confederation of African Football. Egypt has won the African Cup seven times, and a record-making three times in a row. Cameroon, Nigeria, Morocco, Senegal, Ghana, and Algeria have advanced to the knockout stage of recent FIFA World Cups. Morocco, at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar was the first African nation to reach the semi-finals of the FIFA Men's World Cup. South Africa hosted the 2010 World Cup tournament, becoming the first African country to do so. The top clubs in each African football league play the CAF Champions League, while lower-ranked clubs compete in CAF Confederation Cup.\nIn recent years, the continent has progressed in terms of state-of-the-art basketball facilities, which have been built in cities such as Cairo, Dakar, Johannesburg, Kigali, Luanda and Rades. The number of African basketball players who drafted into the U.S. NBA has experienced growth in the 2010s.\nCricket is popular in some African nations. South Africa and Zimbabwe have Test status, while Kenya is the leading non-test team and previously had One-Day International cricket (ODI) status (from 10 October 1997, until 30 January 2014). The three countries jointly hosted the 2003 Cricket World Cup. Namibia is the other African country to have played in a World Cup. Morocco, in northern Africa, hosted the 2002 Morocco Cup, but the national team has never qualified for a major tournament.\nRugby is popular in several southern African nations. Namibia and Zimbabwe have appeared on multiple occasions at the Rugby World Cup, while South Africa is the most successful national team at the Rugby World Cup, having won the tournament on four occasions, in 1995, 2007, 2019, and 2023.\nTraditional sports were strictly marginalised during the colonial era, and many are dying or have gone extinct under the pressure of modernisation, however lots remain popular despite not having formal governmental recognition or support.{{Rp|pages=193\u2013194}} Some examples are Senegalese wrestling, Dambe, Nguni stick-fighting, and Savika.\nExternal links.\nGeneral information\nHistory", "325363": "Sahara\nDesert on the African continent\nThe Sahara (, ) is a desert spanning across North Africa. With an area of , it is the largest hot desert in the world and the third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Arctic.\nThe name \"Sahara\" is derived from , a broken plural form of ( ), meaning \"desert\".\nThe desert covers much of North Africa, excluding the fertile region on the Mediterranean Sea coast, the Atlas Mountains of the Maghreb, and the Nile Valley in Egypt and the Sudan.\nIt stretches from the Red Sea in the east and the Mediterranean in the north to the Atlantic Ocean in the west, where the landscape gradually changes from desert to coastal plains. To the south it is bounded by the Sahel, a belt of semi-arid tropical savanna around the Niger River valley and the Sudan region of sub-Saharan Africa. The Sahara can be divided into several regions, including the western Sahara, the central Ahaggar Mountains, the Tibesti Mountains, the A\u00efr Mountains, the T\u00e9n\u00e9r\u00e9 desert, and the Libyan Desert.\nFor several hundred thousand years, the Sahara has alternated between desert and savanna grassland in a 20,000-year cycle caused by the precession of Earth's axis (about 26,000 years) as it rotates around the Sun, which changes the location of the North African monsoon.\nGeography.\nThe Sahara covers large parts of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Western Sahara and Sudan, and parts of southern Morocco and Tunisia. It covers , 31% of the African continent. If all areas with a mean annual precipitation of less than were included, the Sahara would be . It is one of three distinct physiographic provinces of the African massive physiographic division. The Sahara is so large and bright that, in theory, it could be detected from other stars as a surface feature of Earth, with near-current technology.\nThe Sahara is mainly rocky hamada (stone plateaus); ergs (sand seas \u2013 large areas covered with sand dunes) form only a minor part, contrary to common misconception, but many of the sand dunes are over high. Wind or rare rainfall shape the desert features: sand dunes, dune fields, sand seas, stone plateaus, gravel plains (\"reg\"), dry valleys (\"wadi\"), dry lakes (\"oued\"), and salt flats (\"shatt\" or \"chott\"). Unusual landforms include the Richat Structure in Mauritania.\nSeveral deeply dissected mountains, many volcanic, rise from the desert, including the A\u00efr Mountains, Ahaggar Mountains, Saharan Atlas, Tibesti Mountains, Adrar des Iforas, and the Red Sea Hills. The highest peak in the Sahara is Emi Koussi, a shield volcano in the Tibesti range of northern Chad.\nThe central Sahara is hyperarid, with sparse vegetation. The northern and southern reaches of the desert, along with the highlands, have areas of sparse grassland and desert shrub, with trees and taller shrubs in wadis, where moisture collects. In the central, hyperarid region, there are many subdivisions of the great desert: Tanezrouft, the T\u00e9n\u00e9r\u00e9, the Libyan Desert, the Eastern Desert, the Nubian Desert and others. These extremely arid areas often receive no rain for years.\nTo the north, the Sahara skirts the Mediterranean Sea in Egypt and portions of Libya, but in Cyrenaica and the Maghreb, the Sahara borders the Mediterranean forest, woodland, and scrub eco-regions of northern Africa, all of which have a Mediterranean climate characterized by hot summers and cool and rainy winters. According to the botanical criteria of Frank White and geographer Robert Capot-Rey, the northern limit of the Sahara corresponds to the northern limit of date palm cultivation and the southern limit of the range of esparto, a grass typical of the Mediterranean climate portion of the Maghreb and Iberia. The northern limit also corresponds to the isohyet of annual precipitation.\nTo the south, the Sahara is bounded by the Sahel, a belt of dry tropical savanna with a summer rainy season that extends across Africa from east to west. The southern limit of the Sahara is indicated botanically by the southern limit of \"Cornulaca monacantha\" (a drought-tolerant member of the Chenopodiaceae), or northern limit of \"Cenchrus biflorus\", a grass typical of the Sahel. According to climatic criteria, the southern limit of the Sahara corresponds to the isohyet of annual precipitation (this is a long-term average, since precipitation varies annually).\nImportant cities located in the Sahara include Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania; Tamanrasset, Ouargla, B\u00e9char, Hassi Messaoud, Gharda\u00efa, and El Oued in Algeria; Timbuktu in Mali; Agadez in Niger; Ghat in Libya; and Faya-Largeau in Chad.\nClimate.\nThe Sahara is the world's largest hot desert. It is located in the horse latitudes under the subtropical ridge, a significant belt of semi-permanent subtropical warm-core high pressure where the air from the upper troposphere usually descends, warming and drying the lower troposphere and preventing cloud formation.\nThe permanent absence of clouds allows unhindered light and thermal radiation. The stability of the atmosphere above the desert prevents any convective overturning, thus making rainfall virtually non-existent. As a consequence, the weather tends to be sunny, dry and stable with a minimal chance of rainfall. Subsiding, diverging, dry air masses associated with subtropical high-pressure systems are extremely unfavorable for the development of convectional showers. The subtropical ridge is the predominant factor that explains the hot desert climate (K\u00f6ppen climate classification \"BWh\") of this vast region. The descending airflow is the strongest and the most effective over the eastern part of the Great Desert, in the Libyan Desert: this is the sunniest, driest and the most nearly \"rainless\" place on the planet, rivaling the Atacama Desert, lying in Chile and Peru.\nThe rainfall inhibition and the dissipation of cloud cover are most accentuated over the eastern section of the Sahara rather than the western. The prevailing air mass lying above the Sahara is the continental tropical (cT) air mass, which is hot and dry. Hot, dry air masses primarily form over the North-African desert from the heating of the vast continental land area, and it affects the whole desert during most of the year. Because of this extreme heating process, a thermal low is usually noticed near the surface, and is the strongest and the most developed during the summertime. The Sahara High represents the eastern continental extension of the Azores High, centered over the North Atlantic Ocean. The subsidence of the Sahara High nearly reaches the ground during the coolest part of the year, while it is confined to the upper troposphere during the hottest periods.\nThe effects of local surface low pressure are extremely limited because upper-level subsidence still continues to block any form of air ascent. Also, to be protected against rain-bearing weather systems by the atmospheric circulation itself, the desert is made even drier by its geographical configuration and location. Indeed, the extreme aridity of the Sahara is not only explained by the subtropical high pressure: the Atlas Mountains of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia also help to enhance the aridity of the northern part of the desert. These major mountain ranges act as a barrier, causing a strong rain shadow effect on the leeward side by dropping much of the humidity brought by atmospheric disturbances along the polar front which affects the surrounding Mediterranean climates.\nThe primary source of rain in the Sahara is the Intertropical Convergence Zone, a continuous belt of low-pressure systems near the equator which bring the brief, short and irregular rainy season to the Sahel and southern Sahara. Rainfall in this giant desert has to overcome the physical and atmospheric barriers that normally prevent the production of precipitation. The harsh climate of the Sahara is characterized by: extremely low, unreliable, highly erratic rainfall; extremely high sunshine duration values; high temperatures year-round; negligible rates of relative humidity; a significant diurnal temperature variation; and extremely high levels of potential evaporation which are the highest recorded worldwide.\nTemperature.\nThe sky is usually clear above the desert, and the sunshine duration is extremely high everywhere in the Sahara. Most of the desert has more than 3,600 hours of bright sunshine per year (over 82% of daylight hours), and a wide area in the eastern part has over 4,000 hours of bright sunshine per year (over 91% of daylight hours). The highest values are very close to the theoretical maximum value. A value of 4300 hours (98%) of the time would be recorded in Upper Egypt (Aswan, Luxor) and in the Nubian Desert (Wadi Halfa). The annual average direct solar irradiation is around 2,800 kWh/(m2 year) in the Great Desert. The Sahara has a huge potential for solar energy production.\nThe high position of the Sun, the extremely low relative humidity, and the lack of vegetation and rainfall make the Great Desert the hottest large region in the world, and the hottest place on Earth during summer in some spots. The average high temperature exceeds during the hottest month nearly everywhere in the desert except at very high altitudes. The world's highest officially recorded average daily high temperature was in a remote desert town in the Algerian Desert called Bou Bernous, at an elevation of above sea level, and only Death Valley, California rivals it.\nOther hot spots in Algeria such as Adrar, Timimoun, In Salah, Ouallene, Aoulef, Reggane with an elevation between above sea level get slightly lower summer average highs, around during the hottest months of the year. Salah, well known in Algeria for its extreme heat, has average high temperatures of , , and in June, July, August and September respectively. There are even hotter spots in the Sahara, but they are located in extremely remote areas, especially in the Azalai, lying in northern Mali. The major part of the desert experiences around three to five months when the average high strictly exceeds ; while in the southern central part of the desert, there are up to six or seven months when the average high temperature strictly exceeds . Some examples of this are Bilma, Niger and Faya-Largeau, Chad. The annual average daily temperature exceeds everywhere and can approach in the hottest regions year-round. However, most of the desert has a value in excess of .\nSand and ground temperatures are even more extreme. During daytime, the sand temperature is extremely high: it can easily reach or more. A sand temperature of has been recorded in Port Sudan. Ground temperatures of have been recorded in the Adrar of Mauritania and a value of has been measured in Borkou, northern Chad.\nDue to lack of cloud cover and very low humidity, the desert usually has high diurnal temperature variations between days and nights. However, it is a myth that the nights are especially cold after extremely hot days in the Sahara. On average, nighttime temperatures tend to be cooler than in the daytime. The smallest variations are found along the coastal regions due to high humidity and are often even lower than a difference, while the largest variations are found in inland desert areas where the humidity is the lowest, mainly in the southern Sahara. Still, it is true that winter nights can be cold, as it can drop to the freezing point and even below, especially in high-elevation areas. The frequency of subfreezing winter nights in the Sahara is strongly influenced by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), with warmer winter temperatures during negative NAO events and cooler winters with more frosts when the NAO is positive. This is because the weaker clockwise flow around the eastern side of the subtropical anticyclone during negative NAO winters, although too dry to produce more than negligible precipitation, does reduce the flow of dry, cold air from higher latitudes of Eurasia into the Sahara significantly.\nPrecipitation.\nThe average annual rainfall ranges from very low in the northern and southern fringes of the desert to nearly non-existent over the central and the eastern part. The thin northern fringe of the desert receives more winter cloudiness and rainfall due to the arrival of low pressure systems over the Mediterranean Sea along the polar front, although very attenuated by the rain shadow effects of the mountains and the annual average rainfall ranges from to . For example, Biskra, Algeria, and Ouarzazate, Morocco, are found in this zone. The southern fringe of the desert along the border with the Sahel receives summer cloudiness and rainfall due to the arrival of the Intertropical Convergence Zone from the south and the annual average rainfall ranges from to . For example, Timbuktu, Mali and Agadez, Niger are found in this zone.\nThe vast central hyper-arid core of the desert is virtually never affected by northerly or southerly atmospheric disturbances and permanently remains under the influence of the strongest anticyclonic weather regime, and the annual average rainfall can drop to less than . In fact, most of the Sahara receives less than . Of the of desert land in the Sahara, an area of about (about 31% of the total area) receives an annual average rainfall amount of or less, while some (about 17% of the total area) receives an average of or less.\nThe annual average rainfall is virtually zero over a wide area of some in the eastern Sahara comprising deserts of: Libya, Egypt and Sudan (Tazirbu, Kufra, Dakhla, Kharga, Farafra, Siwa, Asyut, Sohag, Luxor, Aswan, Abu Simbel, Wadi Halfa) where the long-term mean approximates per year. Rainfall is very unreliable and erratic in the Sahara as it may vary considerably year by year. In full contrast to the negligible annual rainfall amounts, the annual rates of potential evaporation are extraordinarily high, roughly ranging from per year to more than per year in the whole desert. Nowhere else on Earth has air been found as dry and evaporative as in the Sahara region. However, at least two instances of snowfall have been recorded in Sahara, in February 1979 and December 2016, both in the town of Ain Sefra.\nDesertification and prehistoric climate.\nOne theory for the formation of the Sahara is that the monsoon in Northern Africa was weakened because of glaciation during the Quaternary period, starting two or three million years ago. Another theory is that the monsoon was weakened when the ancient Tethys Sea dried up during the Tortonian period around 7 million years ago.\nThe climate of the Sahara has undergone enormous variations between wet and dry over the last few hundred thousand years, believed to be caused by long-term changes in the North African climate cycle that alters the path of the North African Monsoon \u2013 usually southward. The cycle is caused by a 41,000-year cycle in which the tilt of the earth changes between 22\u00b0 and 24.5\u00b0. At present, it is in a dry period, but it is expected that the Sahara will become green again in 15,000 years. When the North African monsoon is at its strongest, annual precipitation and subsequent vegetation in the Sahara region increase, resulting in conditions commonly referred to as the \"green Sahara\". For a relatively weak North African monsoon, the opposite is true, with decreased annual precipitation and less vegetation resulting in a phase of the Sahara climate cycle known as the \"desert Sahara\".\nThe idea that changes in insolation (solar heating) caused by long-term changes in Earth's orbit are a controlling factor for the long-term variations in the strength of monsoon patterns across the globe was first suggested by Rudolf Spitaler in the late nineteenth century, The hypothesis was later formally proposed and tested by the meteorologist John Kutzbach in 1981. Kutzbach's ideas about the impacts of insolation on global monsoonal patterns have become widely accepted today as the underlying driver of long-term monsoonal cycles. Kutzbach never formally named his hypothesis and as such it is referred to here as the \"Orbital Monsoon Hypothesis\" as suggested by Ruddiman in 2001.\nDuring the last glacial period, the Sahara was much larger than it is today, extending south beyond its current boundaries. The end of the glacial period brought more rain to the Sahara, from about 8000 BCE to 6000 BCE, perhaps because of low pressure areas over the collapsing ice sheets to the north. Once the ice sheets were gone, the northern Sahara dried out. In the southern Sahara, the drying trend was initially counteracted by the monsoon, which brought rain further north than it does today. By around 4200 BCE, however, the monsoon retreated south to approximately where it is today, leading to the gradual desertification of the Sahara. The Sahara is now as dry as it was about 13,000 years ago.\nLake Chad is the remnant of a former inland sea, paleolake Mega-Chad, which existed during the African humid period. At its largest extent, sometime before 5000 BCE, Lake Mega-Chad was the largest of four Saharan paleolakes, and is estimated to have covered an area of 350,000\u00a0km2.\nThe Sahara pump theory describes this cycle. During periods of a wet or \"Green Sahara\", the Sahara becomes a savanna grassland and various flora and fauna become more common. Following inter-pluvial arid periods, the Sahara area then reverts to desert conditions and the flora and fauna are forced to retreat northwards to the Atlas Mountains, southwards into West Africa, or eastwards into the Nile Valley. This separates populations of some of the species in areas with different climates, forcing them to adapt, possibly giving rise to allopatric speciation.\nIt is also proposed that humans accelerated the drying-out period from 6000 to 2500 BCE by pastoralists overgrazing available grassland.\nEvidence for cycles.\nThe growth of speleothems (which requires rainwater) was detected in Hol-Zakh, Ashalim, Even-Sid, Ma'ale-ha-Meyshar, Ktora Cracks, Nagev Tzavoa Cave, and elsewhere, and has allowed tracking of prehistoric rainfall. The Red Sea coastal route was extremely arid before 140 and after 115 kya (thousands of years ago). Slightly wetter conditions appear at 90\u201387 kya, but it still was just one tenth the rainfall around 125 kya. In the southern Negev Desert speleothems did not grow between 185 and 140 kya (MIS 6), 110\u201390 (MIS 5.4\u20135.2), nor after 85 kya nor during most of the interglacial period (MIS 5.1), the glacial period and Holocene. This suggests that the southern Negev was arid-to-hyper-arid in these periods.\nDuring the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) the Sahara was more extensive than it is now with the extent of the tropical forests being greatly reduced, and the lower temperatures reduced the strength of the Hadley Cell. This is a climate cell which causes rising tropical air of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) to bring rain to the tropics, while dry descending air, at about 20 degrees north, flows back to the equator and brings desert conditions to this region. It is associated with high rates of wind-blown mineral dust, and these dust levels are found as expected in marine cores from the north tropical Atlantic. But around 12,500 BCE the amount of dust in the cores in the B\u00f8lling/Aller\u00f8d phase suddenly plummets and shows a period of much wetter conditions in the Sahara, indicating a Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) event (a sudden warming followed by a slower cooling of the climate). The moister Saharan conditions had begun about 12,500 BCE, with the extension of the ITCZ northward in the northern hemisphere summer, bringing moist wet conditions and a savanna climate to the Sahara, which (apart from a short dry spell associated with the Younger Dryas) peaked during the Holocene thermal maximum climatic phase at 4000 BCE when mid-latitude temperatures seem to have been between 2 and 3 degrees warmer than in the recent past. Analysis of Nile River deposited sediments in the delta also shows this period had a higher proportion of sediments coming from the Blue Nile, suggesting higher rainfall also in the Ethiopian Highlands. This was caused principally by a stronger monsoonal circulation throughout the sub-tropical regions, affecting India, Arabia and the Sahara. Lake Victoria only recently became the source of the White Nile and dried out almost completely around 15 kya.\nThe sudden subsequent movement of the ITCZ southwards with a Heinrich event (a sudden cooling followed by a slower warming), linked to changes with the El Ni\u00f1o-Southern Oscillation cycle, led to a rapid drying out of the Saharan and Arabian regions, which quickly became desert. This is linked to a marked decline in the scale of the Nile floods between 2700 and 2100 BCE.\nEcoregions.\nThe Sahara comprises several distinct ecoregions. With their variations in temperature, rainfall, elevation, and soil, these regions harbor distinct communities of plants and animals.\nFlora and fauna.\nThe flora of the Sahara is highly diversified based on the bio-geographical characteristics of this vast desert. Floristically, the Sahara has three zones based on the amount of rainfall received \u2013 the Northern (Mediterranean), Central and Southern Zones. There are two transitional zones \u2013 the Mediterranean-Sahara transition and the Sahel transition zone.\nThe Saharan flora comprises around 2800 species of vascular plants. Approximately a quarter of these are endemic. About half of these species are common to the flora of the Arabian deserts.\nThe central Sahara is estimated to include five hundred species of plants, which is extremely low considering the huge extent of the area. Plants such as acacia trees, palms, succulents, spiny shrubs, and grasses have adapted to the arid conditions, by growing lower to avoid water loss by strong winds, by storing water in their thick stems to use it in dry periods, by having long roots that travel horizontally to reach the maximum area of water and to find any surface moisture, and by having small thick leaves or needles to prevent water loss by evapotranspiration. Plant leaves may dry out totally and then recover.\nSeveral species of fox live in the Sahara including: the fennec fox, pale fox and R\u00fcppell's fox. The addax, a large white antelope, can go nearly a year in the desert without drinking. The dorcas gazelle is a north African gazelle that can also go for a long time without water. Other notable gazelles include the rhim gazelle and dama gazelle.\nThe Saharan cheetah (northwest African cheetah) lives in Algeria, Togo, Niger, Mali, Benin, and Burkina Faso. There remain fewer than 250 mature cheetahs, which are very cautious, fleeing any human presence. The cheetah avoids the sun from April to October, seeking the shelter of shrubs such as balanites and acacias. They are unusually pale. The other cheetah subspecies (northeast African cheetah) lives in Chad, Sudan and the eastern region of Niger. However, it is currently extinct in the wild in Egypt and Libya. There are approximately 2000 mature individuals left in the wild.\nOther animals include the monitor lizards, hyrax, sand vipers, and small populations of African wild dog, in perhaps only 14 countries and red-necked ostrich. Other animals exist in the Sahara (birds in particular) such as African silverbill and black-faced firefinch, among others. There are also small desert crocodiles in Mauritania and the Ennedi Plateau of Chad.\nThe deathstalker scorpion can be long. Its venom contains large amounts of agitoxin and scyllatoxin and is very dangerous; however, a sting from this scorpion rarely kills a healthy adult. The Saharan silver ant is unique in that due to the extreme high temperatures of their habitat, and the threat of predators, the ants are active outside their nest for only about ten minutes per day.\nDromedary camels and goats are the domesticated animals most commonly found in the Sahara. Because of its qualities of endurance and speed, the dromedary is the favourite animal used by nomads.\nHuman activities are more likely to affect the habitat in areas of permanent water (oases) or where water comes close to the surface. Here, the local pressure on natural resources can be intense. The remaining populations of large mammals have been greatly reduced by hunting for food and recreation. In recent years development projects have started in the deserts of Algeria and Tunisia using irrigated water pumped from underground aquifers. These schemes often lead to soil degradation and salinization.\nResearchers from Hacettepe University have reported that Saharan soil may have bio-available iron and also some essential macro and micro nutrient elements suitable for use as fertilizer for growing wheat.\nHistory.\nPeople lived on the edge of the desert thousands of years ago, since the end of the last glacial period. In the Central Sahara, engraved and painted rock art were created perhaps as early as 10,000 years ago, spanning the Bubaline Period, Kel Essuf Period, Round Head Period, Pastoral Period, Caballine Period, and Cameline Period. The Sahara was then a much wetter place than it is today. Over 30,000 petroglyphs of river animals such as crocodiles survive, with half found in the Tassili n'Ajjer in southeast Algeria. Fossils of dinosaurs, including \"Afrovenator\", \"Jobaria\" and \"Ouranosaurus\", have also been found here. The modern Sahara, though, is not lush in vegetation, except in the Nile Valley, at a few oases, and in the northern highlands, where Mediterranean plants such as the olive tree are found to grow. Shifts in Earth's axis increased temperatures and decreased precipitation, which caused an abrupt beginning of North Africa desertification about 5,400 years ago.\nKiffians.\nThe Kiffian culture is a prehistoric industry, or domain, that existed between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago in the Sahara, during the Neolithic Subpluvial. Human remains from this culture were found in 2000 at a site known as Gobero, located in Niger in the T\u00e9n\u00e9r\u00e9 Desert. The site is known as the largest and earliest grave of Stone Age people in the Sahara. The Kiffians were skilled hunters. Bones of many large savannah animals that were discovered in the same area suggest that they lived on the shores of a lake that was present during the Holocene Wet Phase, a period when the Sahara was verdant and wet. The Kiffian people were tall, standing over six feet in height. Craniometric analysis indicates that this early Holocene population was closely related to the Late Pleistocene Iberomaurusians and early Holocene Capsians of the Maghreb, as well as mid-Holocene Mechta groups. Traces of the Kiffian culture do not exist after 8,000 years ago, as the Sahara went through a dry period for the next thousand years. After this time, the Tenerian culture colonized the area.\nTenerians.\nGobero was discovered in 2000 during an archaeological expedition led by Paul Sereno, which sought dinosaur remains. Two distinct prehistoric cultures were discovered at the site: the early Holocene Kiffian culture, and the middle Holocene Tenerian culture. The post-Kiffian desiccation lasted until around 4600 BCE, when the earliest artefacts associated with the Tenerians have been dated to. Some 200 skeletons have been discovered at Gobero. The Tenerians were considerably shorter in height and less robust than the earlier Kiffians. Craniometric analysis also indicates that they were osteologically distinct. The Kiffian skulls are akin to those of the Late Pleistocene Iberomaurusians, early Holocene Capsians, and mid-Holocene Mechta groups, whereas the Tenerian crania are more like those of Mediterranean groups. Graves show that the Tenerians observed spiritual traditions, as they were buried with artifacts such as jewelry made of hippo tusks and clay pots. The most interesting find is a triple burial, dated to 5300 years ago, of an adult female and two children, estimated through their teeth as being five and eight years old, hugging each other. Pollen residue indicates they were buried on a bed of flowers. The three are assumed to have died within 24 hours of each other, but as their skeletons hold no apparent trauma (they did not die violently) and they have been buried so elaborately \u2013 unlikely if they had died of a plague \u2013 the cause of their deaths is a mystery.\nTashwinat Mummy.\nUan Muhuggiag appears to have been inhabited from at least the 6th millennium BCE to about 2700 BCE, although not necessarily continuously. The most noteworthy find at Uan Muhuggiag is the well-preserved mummy of a young boy of approximately <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />2+1\u20442 years old. The child was in a fetal position, then embalmed, then placed in a sack made of antelope skin, which was insulated by a layer of leaves. The boy's organs were removed, as evidenced by incisions in his stomach and thorax, and an organic preservative was inserted to stop his body from decomposing. An ostrich eggshell necklace was also found around his neck. Radiocarbon dating determined the age of the mummy to be approximately 5600 years old, which makes it about 1000 years older than the earliest previously recorded mummy in ancient Egypt. In 1958\u201359, an archaeological expedition led by Antonio Ascenzi conducted anthropological, radiological, histological and chemical analyses on the Uan Muhuggiag mummy. The team claimed that the mummy was a 30-month-old child of uncertain sex. They also found a long incision on the specimen's abdominal wall, which indicated that the body had been initially mummified by evisceration and later underwent natural desiccation. The team also stated that the mummy possessed \"Negroid features.\" However, modern genetics has since proven that the final claim is unscientific and not supported by evidence. A more recent publication referenced a laboratory examination of the cutaneous features of the child mummy in which the results verified that the child possessed a dark skin complexion. One other individual, an adult, was found at Uan Muhuggiag, buried in a crouched position. However, the body showed no evidence of evisceration or any other method of preservation. The body was estimated to date from about 7500 BP.\nNubians.\nDuring the Neolithic Era, before the onset of desertification around 9500 BCE, the central Sudan had been a rich environment supporting a large population ranging across what is now barren desert, like the Wadi el-Qa'ab. By the 5th millennium BCE, the people who inhabited what is now called Nubia were full participants in the \"agricultural revolution\", living a settled lifestyle with domesticated plants and animals. Saharan rock art of cattle and herdsmen suggests the presence of a cattle cult like those found in Sudan and other pastoral societies in Africa today. Megaliths found at Nabta Playa are overt examples of probably the world's first known archaeoastronomy devices, predating Stonehenge by some 2,000 years. This complexity, as observed at Nabta Playa, and as expressed by different levels of authority within the society there, likely formed the basis for the structure of both the Neolithic society at Nabta and the Old Kingdom of Egypt.\nArchaeological evidence has attested that population settlements occurred in Nubia as early as the Late Pleistocene era and from the 5th millennium BCE onwards, whereas there is \"no or scanty evidence\" of human presence in the Egyptian Nile Valley during these periods, which may be due to problems in site preservation.\nEgyptians.\nBy 6000 BCE predynastic Egyptians in the southwestern corner of Egypt were herding cattle and constructing large buildings. Subsistence in organized and permanent settlements in predynastic Egypt by the middle of the 6th millennium BCE centered predominantly on cereal and animal agriculture: cattle, goats, pigs and sheep. Metal objects replaced prior ones of stone. Tanning of animal skins, pottery and weaving were commonplace in this era also. There are indications of seasonal or only temporary occupation of the Al Fayyum in the 6th millennium BCE, with food activities centering on fishing, hunting and food-gathering. Stone arrowheads, knives and scrapers from the era are commonly found. Burial items included pottery, jewelry, farming and hunting equipment, and assorted foods including dried meat and fruit. Burial in desert environments appears to enhance Egyptian preservation rites, and the dead were buried facing due west. Several scholars have argued that the African origins of the Egyptian civilisation derived from pastoral communities which emerged in both the Egyptian and Sudanese regions of the Nile Valley in the fifth millennium BCE.\nBy 3400 BCE, the Sahara was as dry as it is today, due to reduced precipitation and higher temperatures resulting from a shift in Earth's orbit. As a result of this aridification, it became a largely impenetrable barrier to humans, with the remaining settlements mainly being concentrated around the numerous oases that dot the landscape. Little trade or commerce is known to have passed through the interior in subsequent periods, the only major exception being the Nile Valley. The Nile, however, was impassable at several cataracts, making trade and contact by boat difficult.\nTichitt culture.\nIn 4000 BCE, the start of sophisticated social structure (e.g., trade of cattle as valued assets) developed among herders amid the Pastoral Period of the Sahara. Saharan pastoral culture (e.g., fields of tumuli, lustrous stone rings, axes) was intricate. By 1800 BCE, Saharan pastoral culture expanded throughout the Saharan and Sahelian regions. The initial stages of sophisticated social structure among Saharan herders served as the segue for the development of sophisticated hierarchies found in African settlements, such as Dhar Tichitt. After migrating from the Central Sahara, proto-Mande peoples established their civilization in the Tichitt region of the Western Sahara The Tichitt Tradition of eastern Mauritania dates from 2200 BCE to 200 BCE. Tichitt culture, at Dhar N\u00e9ma, Dhar Tagant, Dhar Tichitt, and Dhar Walata, included a four-tiered hierarchal social structure, farming of cereals, metallurgy, numerous funerary tombs, and a rock art tradition At Dhar Tichitt and Dhar Walata, pearl millet may have also been independently tamed amid the Neolithic. Dhar Tichitt, which includes Dakhlet el Atrouss, may have served as the primary regional center for the multi-tiered hierarchical social structure of the Tichitt Tradition, and the Malian Lakes Region, which includes Tondidarou, may have served as a second regional center of the Tichitt Tradition. The urban Tichitt Tradition may have been the earliest large-scale, complexly organized society in West Africa, and an early civilization of the Sahara, which may have served as the segue for state formation in West Africa.\nAs areas where the Tichitt cultural tradition were present, Dhar Tichitt and Dhar Walata were occupied more frequently than Dhar N\u00e9ma. Farming of crops (e.g., millet) may have been a feature of the Tichitt cultural tradition as early as 3rd millennium BCE in Dhar Tichitt.\nAs part of a broader trend of iron metallurgy developed in the West African Sahel amid 1st millennium BCE, iron items (350 BCE \u2013 100 CE) were found at Dhar Tagant, iron metalworking and/or items (800 BCE \u2013 400 BCE) were found at Dia Shoma and Walald\u00e9, and the iron remnants (760 BCE \u2013 400 BCE) found at Bou Khzama and Djiganyai. The iron materials that were found are evidence of iron metalworking at Dhar Tagant. In the late period of the Tichitt Tradition at Dhar N\u00e9ma, tamed pearl millet was used to temper the tuyeres of an oval-shaped low shaft furnace; this furnace was one out of 16 iron furnaces located on elevated ground. Iron metallurgy may have developed before the second half of 1st millennium BCE, as indicated by pottery dated between 800 BCE and 200 BCE. At Dhar Walata and Dhar Tichitt, copper was also used.\nAfter its decline in Mauritania, the Tichitt Tradition spread to the Middle Niger region (e.g., M\u00e9ma, Macina, Dia Shoma, Jenne Jeno) of Mali where it developed into and persisted as Fa\u00efta Facies ceramics between 1300 BCE and 400 BCE among rammed earth architecture and iron metallurgy (which had developed after 900 BCE). Thereafter, the Ghana Empire developed in the 1st millennium CE.\nPhoenicians.\nThe people of Phoenicia, who flourished from 1200 to 800 BCE, created a chain of settlements along the coast of North Africa and traded extensively with its inhabitants. This put them in contact with the people of ancient Libya, who were the ancestors of people who speak Berber languages in North Africa and the Sahara today.\nThe Libyco-Berber alphabet of the ancient Libyans of north Africa seems to have been based on Phoenician, and its descendant Tifinagh is still used today by the (Berber) Tuareg of the central Sahara.\nThe Periplus of the Phoenician navigator Hanno, who lived sometime in the 5th century BCE, claims that he founded settlements along the Atlantic coast of Africa, possibly including the Western Sahara. The identification of the places discussed is controversial, and archeological confirmation is lacking.\nGreeks.\nBy 500 BCE, Greeks arrived in the desert. Greek traders spread along the eastern coast of the desert, establishing trading colonies along the Red Sea. The Carthaginians explored the Atlantic coast of the desert, but the turbulence of the waters and the lack of markets caused a lack of presence further south than modern Morocco. Centralized states thus surrounded the desert on the north and east; it remained outside the control of these states. Raids from the nomadic Berber people of the desert were of constant concern to those living on the edge of the desert.\nGaramantes.\nAn urban civilization, the Garamantes, arose around 500 BCE in the Sahara, in a valley that is now called the Wadi al-Ajal in Fezzan, Libya. The Garamantes built a prosperous empire in the heart of the desert. The Garamantes achieved this development by digging tunnels far into the mountains flanking the valley to tap fossil water and bring it to their fields. The Garamantes grew populous and strong, conquering their neighbors, and capturing and enslaving many individuals who were forced to work by extending the tunnels. The ancient Greeks and the Romans knew of the Garamantes and regarded them as uncivilized nomads. However, they traded with them, and a Roman bath has been found in the Garamantes' capital of Garama. Archaeologists have found eight major towns and many other important settlements in the Garamantes' territory. The Garamantes' civilization eventually collapsed after they had depleted available water in the aquifers and could no longer sustain the effort to extend the tunnels further into the mountains.\nBetween the first century BCE and the fourth century CE, several Roman expeditions into the Sahara were conducted by groups of military and commercial units of Romans.\nIslamic and Arabic expansion.\nThe Byzantine Empire ruled the northern shores of the Sahara from the 5th to the 7th centuries. After the Muslim conquest of Arabia, specifically the Arabian peninsula, the Muslim conquest of North Africa began in the mid-7th to early 8th centuries and Islamic influence expanded rapidly on the Sahara. By the end of 641 all of Egypt was in Muslim hands. Trade across the desert intensified, and a significant slave trade crossed the desert. It has been estimated that from the 10th to 19th centuries some 6,000 to 7,000 slaves were transported north each year.\nThe Beni \u1e24ass\u0101n and other nomadic Arab tribes dominated the Sanhaja Berber tribes of the western Sahara after the Char Bouba war of the 17th century. As a result, Arabian culture and language came to dominate, and the Berber tribes underwent some Arabization.\nOttoman Turkish era.\nIn the 16th century the northern fringe of the Sahara, such as coastal regencies in present-day Algeria and Tunisia, as well as some parts of present-day Libya, together with the semi-autonomous kingdom of Egypt, were occupied by the Ottoman Empire. From 1517 Egypt was a valued part of the Ottoman Empire, ownership of which provided the Ottomans with control over the Nile Valley, the east Mediterranean and North Africa. The benefit of the Ottoman Empire was the freedom of movement for citizens and goods. Traders exploited the Ottoman land routes to handle the spices, gold and silk from the East, manufactured goods from Europe, and the slave and gold traffic from Africa. Arabic continued as the local language and Islamic culture was much reinforced. The Sahel and southern Sahara regions were home to several independent states or to roaming Tuareg clans.\nEuropean colonialism.\nEuropean colonialism in the Sahara began in the 19th century. France conquered the regency of Algiers from the Ottomans in 1830, and French rule spread south from French Algeria and eastwards from Senegal into the upper Niger to include present-day Algeria, Chad, Mali then French Sudan including Timbuktu (1893), Mauritania, Morocco (1912), Niger, and Tunisia (1881). By the beginning of the 20th century, the trans-Saharan trade had clearly declined because goods were moved through more modern and efficient means, such as airplanes, rather than across the desert.\nThe French took advantage of long-standing animosity between the Chaamba Arabs and the Tuareg. The newly raised \"M\u00e9hariste\" camel corps were originally recruited mainly from the Chaamba nomadic tribe. In 1902, the French penetrated the Hoggar Mountains and defeated Ahaggar Tuareg in the battle of Tit.\nThe French Colonial Empire was the dominant presence in the Sahara. It established regular air links from Toulouse (HQ of famed A\u00e9ropostale), to Oran and over the Hoggar to Timbuktu and West to Bamako and Dakar, as well as trans-Sahara bus services run by La Compagnie Transsaharienne (est. 1927). A remarkable film shot by famous aviator Captain Ren\u00e9 Wauthier in 1933 documents the first crossing by a large truck convoy from Algiers to Tchad, across the Sahara.\nEgypt, under Muhammad Ali and his successors, conquered Nubia in 1820\u201322, founded Khartoum in 1823, and conquered Darfur in 1874. Egypt, including Sudan, became a British protectorate in 1882. Egypt and Britain lost control of the Sudan from 1882 to 1898 as a result of the Mahdist War. After its capture by British troops in 1898, the Sudan became an Anglo-Egyptian condominium.\nSpain captured present-day Western Sahara after 1874, although Rio del Oro remained largely under Sahrawi influence. In 1912, Italy captured parts of what was to be named Libya from the Ottomans. To promote the Roman Catholic religion in the desert, Pope Pius IX appointed a delegate Apostolic of the Sahara and the Sudan in 1868; later in the 19th century his jurisdiction was reorganized into the Vicariate Apostolic of Sahara.\nBreakup of the empires and afterwards.\nEgypt became independent of Britain in 1936, although the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936 allowed Britain to keep troops in Egypt and to maintain the British-Egyptian condominium in the Sudan. British military forces were withdrawn in 1954.\nMost of the Saharan states achieved independence after World War II: Libya in 1951; Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia in 1956; Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger in 1960; and Algeria in 1962. Spain withdrew from Western Sahara in 1975, and it was partitioned between Mauritania and Morocco. Mauritania withdrew in 1979; Morocco continues to hold the territory (see Western Sahara conflict).\nTuareg people in Mali rebelled several times during the 20th century before finally forcing the Malian armed forces to withdraw below the line demarcating Azawad from southern Mali during the 2012 rebellion. Islamist rebels in the Sahara calling themselves al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb have stepped up their violence in recent years.\nIn the post\u2013World War II era, several mines and communities have developed to use the desert's natural resources. These include large deposits of oil and natural gas in Algeria and Libya, and large deposits of phosphates in Morocco and Western Sahara. Libya's Great Man-Made River is the world's largest irrigation project. The project uses a pipeline system that pumps fossil water from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System to cities in the populous Libyan northern Mediterranean coast including Tripoli and Benghazi.\nA number of Trans-African highways have been proposed across the Sahara, including the Cairo\u2013Dakar Highway along the Atlantic coast, the Trans-Sahara Highway from Algiers on the Mediterranean to Kano in Nigeria, the Tripoli \u2013 Cape Town Highway from Tripoli in Libya to N'Djamena in Chad, and the Cairo \u2013 Cape Town Highway which follows the Nile. Each of these highways is partially complete, with significant gaps and unpaved sections.\nPeoples and languages.\nThe people of the Sahara are of various origins. Among them the Amazigh including the Tuareg, various Arabized Amazi\u0263 groups such as the Hassaniya-speaking Sahrawis, whose populations include the Znaga, a tribe whose name is a remnant of the pre-historic Zenaga language. Other major groups of people include the: Toubou, Nubians, Zaghawa, Kanuri, Hausa, Songhai, Beja, and Fula/Fulani (; ). The archaeological evidence from the Holocene period has shown that Nilo-Saharan speaking groups had populated the central and southern Sahara before the influx of Berber and Arabic speakers, around 1500 years ago, who now largely populate the Sahara in the modern era.\nArabic dialects are the most widely spoken languages in the Sahara. Arabic, Berber and its variants now regrouped under the term Amazigh (which includes the Guanche language spoken by the original Berber inhabitants of the Canary Islands) and Beja languages are part of the Afro-Asiatic or Hamito-Semitic family. Unlike neighboring West Africa and the central governments of the states that comprise the Sahara, the French language bears little relevance to inter-personal discourse and commerce within the region, its people retaining staunch ethnic and political affiliations with Tuareg and Berber leaders and culture. The legacy of the French colonial era administration is primarily manifested in the territorial reorganization enacted by the Third and Fourth republics, which engendered artificial political divisions within a hitherto isolated and porous region. Diplomacy with local clients was conducted primarily in Arabic, which was the traditional language of bureaucratic affairs. Mediation of disputes and inter-agency communication was served by interpreters contracted by the French government, who, according to Keenan, \"documented a space of intercultural mediation,\" contributing much to preserving the indigenous cultural identities in the region.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["325363", "5334607"], "permutation_1": ["5334607", "325363"], "permutation_2": ["5334607", "325363"], "permutation_3": ["325363", "5334607"]}
{"id": "3hop1__3157_3356_24627", "docs_added": {"191890": "American Idol\nAmerican singing competition\nAmerican Idol is an American singing competition television series created by Simon Fuller, produced by Fremantle North America and 19 Entertainment, and distributed by Fremantle North America. It aired on Fox from June 11, 2002, to April 7, 2016, for 15 seasons. It was on hiatus for two years until March 11, 2018, when a revival of the series began airing on ABC.\nIt started as an addition to the \"Idol\" format that was based on \"Pop Idol\" from British television, in which the programme's first series, which was won by Will Young, ended over four months before the show began, as it later became one of the most successful shows in the history of American television. The concept of the series involves discovering recording stars from unsigned singing talents, with the winner determined by American viewers using phones, Internet platforms, and SMS text voting. The winners of the first twenty-two seasons, as chosen by viewers, are Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Hicks, Jordin Sparks, David Cook, Kris Allen, Lee DeWyze, Scotty McCreery, Phillip Phillips, Candice Glover, Caleb Johnson, Nick Fradiani, Trent Harmon, Maddie Poppe, Laine Hardy, Just Sam, Chayce Beckham, Noah Thompson, Iam Tongi, and Abi Carter.\n\"American Idol\" employs a select panel of judges who critique the contestants' performances. The original judges, for seasons one through eight, were record producer and music manager Randy Jackson, singer and choreographer Paula Abdul, and music executive and manager Simon Cowell. The judging panel for the last three seasons on Fox consisted of singers Keith Urban, Jennifer Lopez, and Harry Connick Jr. Season sixteen brought three new judges: singers Luke Bryan, Katy Perry, and Lionel Richie. Beginning in the twenty-third season, Underwood replaced Perry, alongside returning judges Bryan and Richie. The show has been hosted by television presenter Ryan Seacrest throughout its run, apart from the show's inaugural season when comedian Brian Dunkleman joined Seacrest as co-host.\nThe success of \"American Idol\" has been described as \"unparalleled in broadcasting history\". A rival TV executive said the series was \"the most impactful show in the history of television\". It became a recognized springboard for launching the career of many artists as bona fide stars. According to \"Billboard\" magazine, in its first ten years, \"\"Idol\" has spawned 345 \"Billboard\" chart-toppers and a platoon of pop idols, including Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Chris Daughtry, Fantasia, Ruben Studdard, Jennifer Hudson, Clay Aiken, Adam Lambert, and Jordin Sparks while remaining a TV ratings juggernaut.\" For an unprecedented eight consecutive years, from the 2003\u201304 television season through the 2010\u201311 season, either its performance show or result show was ranked number one in U.S. television ratings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\n\"American Idol\" was based on the British show \"Pop Idol\" created by Simon Fuller, which was in turn inspired by the New Zealand television singing competition \"Popstars\". Television producer Nigel Lythgoe saw a version in Australia and helped bring it over to Britain. Fuller was inspired by the idea from \"Popstars\" of employing a panel of judges to select singers in audition. He then added other elements, including telephone voting by the viewing public (which at the time was already in use in shows, such as the \"Eurovision Song Contest\"), the drama of backstories, and real-life soap opera unfolding in real time. \"Pop Idol\" debuted in Britain in 2001 with Lythgoe as showrunner\u200d\u2014\u200cthe executive producer and production leader\u200d\u2014\u200cand Simon Cowell as one of the judges, and was successful with the viewing public.\nIn 2001, Fuller, Cowell, and TV producer Simon Jones attempted to sell the \"Pop Idol\" format to the United States, but the idea was initially met with poor responses from all the television networks including UPN and Fox. However, Rupert Murdoch, head of Fox's parent company, was later persuaded to buy the series by his daughter, Elisabeth, who had seen the British show. Although Fox's executives wanted to change the format, Murdoch insisted that it should remain the same as the British one. One change was nevertheless made due to the presence of multiple time zones in the United States that made it impractical for the country to vote in the same time period, an additional half-hour results show was therefore added the day following the performance show. The show was renamed \"\" and debuted in the summer of 2002. Cowell was initially offered the job of showrunner but turned down the offer; Lythgoe then took over that position. Much to the surprise of Cowell and Fox, it became one of the biggest shows of the summer. With its successful launch in the summer, the show was then moved to January and expanded. The show grew into a phenomenon largely due to its personal engagement with the contestants by prompting the viewers to vote, and the presence of the acid-tongued Cowell as a judge. By 2004, it had become the most-watched show on American television, a position it then held for seven consecutive seasons until 2011.\nHowever, after a few years of sharp declining ratings starting in 2012, with rating falls of over 20% each season, the fifteenth season would be its last on Fox, ending its run in April 2016. In May 2017, ABC acquired the rights to the series and the program returned for the 2017\u201318 television season. The first season of the revived series, or the sixteenth season overall, started airing in March 2018. Seven seasons have been aired on ABC as of May 2024.\nJudges and hosts.\nJudges.\nThe show had originally planned on having four judges following the \"Pop Idol\" format; however, only three judges had been found by the time of the audition round in the first season, namely Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell. A fourth judge, radio DJ Stryker, was originally chosen but he dropped out citing \"image concerns.\" In the second season, New York radio personality Angie Martinez had been hired as a fourth judge but withdrew after only a few days of auditions, due to being uncomfortable with giving out criticism. The show decided to continue with the three judges format until the eighth season. All three original judges stayed on the judging panel for eight seasons.\nIn the eighth season, Latin Grammy Award-nominated singer-songwriter and record producer Kara DioGuardi was added as a fourth judge. Abdul left the show in 2009, after the eighth season, as a result of failing to agree to terms with the show producers. Emmy Award-winning talk show host Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul for the ninth season, but left in 2010 after just one season. DioGuardi was let go from \"American Idol\" in 2010 after two seasons, as producers favored a return to the three-person judges panel previously used prior to DioGuardi's appearance on the show. Cowell also left the show in 2010 to introduce the American version of his show \"The X Factor\" in 2011. Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth.\nJennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined the judging panel in the tenth season, but both left in 2012 after two seasons. Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. They were replaced by three new judges, Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj, and Keith Urban, who joined Jackson in the twelfth season. However, both Carey and Minaj left after one season. Jackson also departed the judges table after twelve seasons, but would return as the in-house mentor for the thirteenth season in 2014, after which he left the show permanently.\nUrban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. After a one-season hiatus, Lopez returned to \"American Idol\" for the thirteenth season, and was joined by former mentor Harry Connick Jr. After this, Lopez, Urban, and Connick Jr. remained on the show until its cancellation after the fifteenth season in 2016.\nWhen the show was revived by ABC in 2018, Katy Perry, Luke Bryan, and Lionel Richie were selected as judges, marking the sixteenth season of \"Idol\". Bryan and Richie have remained on the show since, while Perry left the show in May 2024 after seven seasons. On July 31, 2024, published reports announced former \"Idol\" winner Carrie Underwood as Perry's replacement, joining Bryan and Richie for the twenty-third season.\nGuest judges may occasionally be introduced. In the second season, guest judges such as Richie and Gladys Knight were used, and in the third season, Donna Summer, Quentin Tarantino, Gloria Estefan, and some of the mentors also joined as judges to critique the performances in the final rounds. Guest judges were sporadically used during the audition rounds: Gene Simmons, LL Cool J, Brandy, Mark McGrath, and Kenny Loggins in the fourth season; Carole Bayer Sager, Jewel, and Olivia Newton-John in the sixth season; Shania Twain, Neil Patrick Harris, Avril Lavigne, Mary J. Blige, Joe Jonas, Kristin Chenoweth, Victoria Beckham, and Perry in the ninth season (substituting in the vacant chair, before DeGeneres was hired); and Adam Lambert filled in for Urban at one audition location during the fourteenth season. In the ABC version, two instances occurred during the live shows: Abdul filled in for Bryan on one episode of the nineteenth season, while Alanis Morissette and Ed Sheeran filled in for Perry and Richie on an episode of the twenty-first season.\nHosts.\nThe first season was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman, following the format of \"Pop Idol\" of using two presenters. Dunkleman quit thereafter, resulting in Seacrest becoming the sole emcee starting with the second season in 2003.\nSeacrest has remained as sole host of \"American Idol\" ever since, with the exception of the two-year hiatus between 2016 and 2018 as well as April 8, 2019, during the seventeenth season, when Bobby Bones subbed for Seacrest after the latter fell ill. Dunkleman did, however, return for the initial in 2016 as a guest.\nCast timeline.\nAnnotations\nSelection process.\nIn a series of steps, the show selected the eventual winner out of many tens of thousands of contestants.\nContestant eligibility.\nThe eligible age-range for contestants is fifteen to twenty-eight years old. The initial age limit was sixteen to twenty-four in the first three seasons, but the upper limit was raised to twenty-eight in the fourth season, and the lower limit was reduced to fifteen in the tenth season. The contestants have to be legal U.S. residents, can not have advanced to particular stages of the competition in previous seasons, and must not have held a current recording or talent representation contract by the semi-final stage (in previous years by the audition stage).\nInitial auditions.\nFor the first eighteen seasons, contestants went through at least three sets of cuts. The first was a brief audition with a few other contestants in front of selectors which may include one of the show's producers. Although auditions can exceed 10,000 in each city, only a few hundred of these made it past the preliminary round of auditions. Successful contestants then sing in front of producers, where more may be cut. Only then can they proceed to audition in front of the judges, which is the only audition stage shown on television. Those selected by the judges are sent to Hollywood. Between 10 and 60 people in each city may make it to Hollywood (the average total is between 150 and 200).\nFrom the nineteenth season onwards, contestants request a Zoom interview and audition remotely for the show's producers. If the audition goes well, they will then invite the contestants to audition in front of the judges, in one of the audition cities.\nHollywood week.\nOnce in Hollywood, the contestants perform individually or in groups in a series of rounds. Until the tenth season, there were usually three rounds of eliminations in Hollywood. In the first round the contestants emerged in groups but performed individually. For the next round, the contestants put themselves in small groups and performed a song together. In the final round, the contestants performed solo with a song of their choice a cappella or accompanied by a band\u200d\u2014\u200cdepending on the season. In the second and third seasons, contestants were also asked to write original lyrics or melody in an additional round after the first round. In the seventh season, the group round was eliminated and contestants may, after a first solo performance and on judges approval, skip a second solo round and move directly to the final Hollywood round. In the twelfth season, the executive producers split up the females and males and chose the members to form the groups in the group round.\nIn the tenth and eleventh seasons, a further round was added in Las Vegas, where the contestants performed in groups based on a theme, followed by one final solo round to determine the semi-finalists. At the end of this stage of the competition, 24 to 36 contestants were selected to move on to the semi-final stage. In the twelfth season the Las Vegas round became a Sudden Death round, where the judges had to choose five guys and five girls each night (four nights) to make the top twenty. In the thirteenth season, the Las Vegas round was eliminated and a new round called \"Hollywood or Home\" was added, where if the judges were uncertain about some contestants, those contestants were required to perform soon after landing in Los Angeles, and those who failed to impress were sent back home before they reached Hollywood. In the fourteenth season, the \"Hollywood or Home\" round was dropped, and a Showcase round was added, where the contestants performed at the House of Blues or auditorium for the judges and a live audience, and these performances determine who makes into the Top 24. In the seventeenth and eighteenth seasons, the showcase round took place in Hawaii. From the nineteenth season onward, a showstopper round was used.\nAudience voting.\nFrom the semi-finals onward, the fate of the contestants is decided by public vote. During the contestant's performance as well as the recap at the end, a toll-free telephone number for each contestant was displayed on the screen. For a two-hour period after the episode ends (up to four hours for the finale) in each US time zone, viewers may call or send a text message to their preferred contestant's telephone number, and each call or text message was registered as a vote for that contestant. Viewers were allowed to vote as many times as they can within the two-hour voting window. However, the show reserves the right to discard votes by power dialers. One or more of the least popular contestants may be eliminated in successive weeks until a winner emerges. Over 110\u00a0million votes were cast in the first season, and by the tenth season the seasonal total had increased to nearly 750 million. Voting via text messaging was made available in the second season when AT&T Wireless joined as a sponsor of the show, and 7.5\u00a0million text messages were sent to \"American Idol\" that season. The number of text messages rapidly increased, reaching 178\u00a0million texts by the eighth season. Online voting was offered for the first time in the tenth season. The votes are counted and verified by Telescope Inc.\nSemi-finals.\nIn the first three seasons, the semi-finalists were split into different groups to perform individually in their respective night. In the first season, there were three groups of ten, with the top three contestants from each group making the finals. In the second and third seasons, there were four groups of eight, and the top two of each selected. These seasons also featured a wildcard round, where contestants who failed to qualify were given another chance. In the first season, only one wildcard contestant was chosen by the judges, giving a total of ten finalists. In the second and third seasons, each of the three judges championed one contestant with the public advancing a fourth into the finals, making 12 finalists in all.\nFrom the fourth through seventh and ninth seasons, the twenty-four semi-finalists were divided by gender in order to ensure an equal gender division in the top twelve. The men and women sang separately on consecutive nights, and the bottom two in each groups were eliminated each week until only six of each remained to form the top twelve.\nThe wildcard round returned in the eighth season, wherein there were three groups of twelve, with three contestants moving forward \u2013 the highest male, the highest female, and the next highest-placed singer \u2013 for each night, and four wildcards were chosen by the judges to produce a final 13. Starting in tenth season, the girls and boys perform on separate nights. In the tenth and eleventh seasons, five of each gender were chosen, and three wildcards were chosen by the judges to form a final 13. In the twelfth season, the top twenty semifinalists were split into gender groups, with five of each gender advancing to form the final 10. In the thirteenth season, there were thirty semifinalists, but only twenty semifinalists (ten for each gender) were chosen by the judges to perform on the live shows, with five in each gender based on the vote and three wildcards chosen by the judges composing the final 13. In the fourteenth season, the top 24 performed at The Fillmore Detroit, starting with the 12 males on one night and then the 12 females on the next night. The following week, the same order went for the top 16, with four males eliminated, followed by four females based on the vote. Then, on the first night of finals, a similar sequence from the thirteenth season was used to determine the final 12, with five of each gender based on the vote and two wildcards chosen by the judges. In the fifteenth season, the top 24 performed at Cathedral of Saint Vibiana in Los Angeles and were split into two groups of twelve and performed twice, one being a solo performance and one being a duet with a former Idol contestant. In each group, the judges chose 7 contestants to advance to the top 14 where the judges chose 4 to advance to the top 10 and remaining 6 contestants were chosen based on the vote. In the sixteenth season, the top 24 performed at the Academy in the Heart of LA, and the show repeated the process from the previous season. However, instead of Idol alumnus as duet partners, superstar celebrity singers were used as the duet partners. In the seventeenth season, the same process was repeated again. However, instead of a top 24, it's a top 20, the contestants performed at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, and performed solos in one episode, and performed the duets in two episodes. In the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the top 20 performed at their homes, and based on the vote, half of the top 20 would advance to the top 10, and the other half would be eliminated. However, a wild card was given to one of the bottom 10 to save them from elimination. In the nineteenth season, the show used a combination of the process from the sixteenth and fourteenth seasons. In the twentieth season, the show repeated the process from the previous season, but they used a top 20 instead of a top 16, and there were no all star duets. In the twenty-first season, the same process was repeated, but they started with a top 26 instead of a top 24. In the twenty-second season, the show repeated the process from the twentieth season.\nFinals.\nThe finals are broadcast in primetime from Los Angeles, in front of a live studio audience (except the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic). From 2002 to 2019 and from 2021 to 2022, the venue was CBS Television City. Starting in 2023, it changed to Red Studios. The finals lasted eight weeks in the first season. From the second to ninth and fourteenth seasons, the finals lasted eleven weeks. The tenth and eleventh seasons lasted for twelve weeks, while the twelfth season lasted for ten weeks. In the thirteenth season, the finals lasted thirteen weeks. The finals lasted seven weeks in the fifteenth season, and six weeks in the sixteenth season. Each finalist performs songs based on a weekly theme which may be a musical genre such as Motown, disco, or big band, songs by artists such as Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley or The Beatles, or more general themes such as \"Billboard\" number-one hits or songs from the contestant's year of birth. Contestants usually worked with a celebrity mentor related to the theme. From the tenth to twelfth seasons, Jimmy Iovine was brought in as a mentor for the season. Initially the contestants sang one song each week, but this was increased to two songs from top four or five onwards, then three songs for the top two or three.\nThe most popular contestants are usually not revealed in the results show. Instead, typically the three contestants (two in later rounds) who received the lowest number of votes was called to the center of the stage. One of these three was usually sent to safety; however the two remaining were not necessarily the bottom two. The contestant with the fewest votes was then revealed and eliminated from the competition. A montage of the eliminated contestant's time on the show was played and they gave their final performance (from the fourteenth season onward, the montage and the final performance were dropped). However, in the sixth season, during the series' first ever Idol Gives Back episode, no contestant was eliminated, but on the following week, two were sent home. Moreover, from the eighth to the fourteenth seasons, and the seventeenth season onward, the judges may overturn viewers' decision with a \"Judges' Save\" if they unanimously agreed to. \"The save\" could only be used once, and only up through the Top 5. In the eighth to tenth and fourteenth seasons, a double elimination then took place in the week following the activation of the save, but in the eleventh and thirteenth seasons, a regular single elimination took place. The save was not activated in the twelfth season and consequently, a non-elimination took place in the week after its expiration with the votes then carrying over into the following week.\nThe \"Fan Save\" was introduced in the fourteenth season. During the finals, viewers were given a five-minute window to vote for the contestants in danger of elimination by using their Twitter account to decide which contestant will move on to the next show, starting with the Top 8.\nSeason finale.\nDuring the original run of \"American Idol\" on Fox, the finale week consisted of a one-hour long final performance night and a two-hour last episode of the season that culminates in revealing the winner, both of which are broadcast live in the U.S. Eastern and Central time zones. For the first, third through sixth and fourteenth through fifteenth seasons it was broadcast from the Dolby Theatre, which has an audience capacity of approximately 3,400. The second-season finale took place at the Gibson Amphitheatre, which had an audience capacity of over 6,000. In the seventh through thirteenth seasons, the venue was at the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live, which holds an audience of over 7,000. Since the show's reboot on ABC, the venue remains the same throughout the entire show (excluding auditions), but was still two episodes in the sixteenth season, and then stretched to a single three-hour season finale that is annually aired live simultaneously in all U.S. territories, starting with the seventeenth season. The eighteenth-season finale was conducted virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nRewards for winner and finalists.\nThe winner usually receives a record deal with a major label, which may be for up to six albums, and secures a management contract with \"American Idol\"-affiliated 19 Management (which has the right of first refusal to sign all contestants), as well as various lucrative contracts. All winners prior to the ninth season reportedly earned at least $1\u00a0million in their first year as winner. At first the contract came with a $250,000-plus advance, but dropped to about $62,500 over the Fox years. All the runners-up of the first ten seasons, as well as some of other finalists, had also received record deals with major labels. However, starting in the eleventh season, the runner-up may only be guaranteed a single-only deal. BMG/Sony (first through ninth seasons), UMG (tenth through fifteenth seasons), and Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records (sixteenth through eighteenth seasons) had the right of first refusal to sign contestants for three months after the season's finale. In the fourteenth and fifteenth seasons, the winner was signed with Big Machine Records. Prominent music mogul Clive Davis also produced some of the selected contestants' albums, such as Kelly Clarkson, Clay Aiken, Fantasia Barrino and Diana DeGarmo. All top 10 (11 in the tenth and twelfth seasons, 5 in the fourteenth season, and 7 in the sixteenth season) finalists earn the privilege of going on a tour, where the participants may each earn a six-figure sum.\nSeason synopses.\nEach season premieres with the audition round, taking place in different cities. The audition episodes typically feature a mix of potential finalists, interesting characters and woefully inadequate contestants. Each successful contestant receives a golden or platinum ticket to proceed on to the next round in Hollywood. Based on their performances during the Hollywood round (Las Vegas round from the tenth through twelfth seasons), 24 to 36 contestants are selected by the judges to participate in the semifinals. From the semifinals onward the contestants perform their songs live, with the judges making their critiques after each performance. The contestants are voted for by the viewing public, and the outcome of the public votes is then revealed during a results segment. The results segment feature group performances by the contestants as well as guest performers. The Top-three results also features homecoming events for the Top 3 finalists. The season reaches its climax in a two-hour results finale show, where the winner of the season is revealed.\nWith the exception of the first two seasons, the contestants in the semifinals onward perform in front of a studio audience. They perform with a full band in the finals. The current musical director is Kris Pooley, who has been with the show since the sixteenth season. In previous seasons, the \"American Idol\" band was led by Rickey Minor (fourth through ninth and thirteenth through fifteenth seasons) and Ray Chew (tenth through twelfth seasons). Assistance has also been given by vocal coaches and song arrangers, such as Michael Orland and Debra Byrd to contestants behind the scene. Starting with the seventh season, contestants may perform with a musical instrument from the Hollywood rounds onward. In later seasons, the contestants were allowed to perform with a musical instrument in the auditions. During the first nine seasons, performances were usually aired live on Tuesday nights, followed by the results shows on Wednesdays, but moved to Wednesdays and Thursdays from the tenth through thirteenth seasons, with the tenth, eleventh and thirteenth-season finales aired on Tuesday and Wednesday. From the fourteenth season onward, there were no separate results shows. On the fourteenth season, the show aired on Wednesday nights, and on the fifteenth season, Thursday nights. Since the sixteenth season, the show has been airing on Sundays and Mondays.\n2002\u20132016: Fox.\nSeason 1 (2002).\nThe first season of \"American Idol\" debuted as a summer replacement show in June 2002 on the Fox network. It was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell served as judges.\nIn the audition rounds, 121 contestants were selected from around 10,000 who attended the auditions. These were cut to 30 for the semifinal, with ten going on to the finals. One semifinalist, Delano Cagnolatti, was disqualified for lying to evade the show's age limit. One of the early favorites, Tamyra Gray, was eliminated at the top four, the first of several such shock eliminations that were to be repeated in later seasons. Christina Christian was hospitalized before the top six result show due to chest pains and palpitations, and she was eliminated while she was in the hospital. Jim Verraros was the first openly gay contestant on the show; his sexual orientation was revealed on his blog, however it was removed during the competition after a request from the show producers over concerns that it might be unfairly influencing votes.\nThe final showdown was between Justin Guarini, one of the early favorites, and Kelly Clarkson. Clarkson was not initially thought of as a contender, but impressed the judges with some good performances in the final rounds, such as her performance of Aretha Franklin's \"Natural Woman\", and Betty Hutton's \"Stuff Like That There\", and eventually won the crown on September 4, 2002.\nIn what was to become a tradition, Clarkson performed the coronation song during the finale, and released the song immediately after the season ended. The single, \"A Moment Like This\", went on to break a 38-year-old record held by The Beatles for the biggest leap to number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. Guarini did not release any song immediately after the show and remains the only runner-up not to do so. Both Clarkson and Guarini made a musical film, \"From Justin to Kelly\", which was released in 2003 but was widely panned. Clarkson has since become one of the most successful \"Idol\" contestants internationally, with worldwide album sales of more than 25\u00a0million.\nStarting September 30, 2006, this season was repackaged as \"\"American Idol Rewind\"\" and syndicated directly to stations in the U.S.\nSeason 2 (2003).\nFollowing the success of the first season, the second season was moved up to air in January 2003. The number of episodes increased, as did the show's budget and the charge for commercial spots. Dunkleman left the show, leaving Ryan Seacrest as the lone host. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Kristin Adams was a correspondent for this season.\nCorey Clark was disqualified during the finals for having an undisclosed police record; however, he later alleged that he and Paula Abdul had an affair while on the show and that this contributed to his expulsion. Clark also claimed that Abdul gave him preferential treatment on the show due to their affair. The allegations were dismissed by Fox after an independent investigation. Two semi-finalists were also disqualified that year \u2013 Jaered Andrews for an arrest on an assault charge, and Frenchie Davis for having previously modeled for an adult website.\nThe season finale drew more than 38 million viewers, marking \"Idol\"'s biggest audience ever for a single episode. Ruben Studdard emerged as the winner, beating Clay Aiken by a small margin. Out of a total of 24 million votes, Studdard finished just 134,000 votes ahead of Aiken. This slim margin of victory was controversial due to the large number of calls that failed to get through. In an interview prior to the fifth season, executive producer Nigel Lythgoe indicated that Aiken had led the fan voting from the wildcard week onward until the finale.\nBoth finalists found success after the show, but Aiken out-performed Studdard's coronation song \"Flying Without Wings\" with his single release from the show \"This Is the Night\", as well as in their subsequent album releases. The fourth-place finisher Josh Gracin also enjoyed some success as a country singer.\nSeason 3 (2004).\nThe third season premiered on January 19, 2004. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. One of the most talked-about contestants during the audition process was William Hung whose off-key rendition of Ricky Martin's \"She Bangs\" received widespread attention. His exposure on \"Idol\" landed him a record deal and surprisingly he became the third bestselling singer from that season.\nMuch media attention on the season had been focused on the three black singers, Fantasia Barrino, LaToya London, and Jennifer Hudson, dubbed the Three Divas. All three unexpectedly landed on the bottom three on the top seven result show, with Hudson controversially eliminated. Elton John, who was one of the mentors that season, called the results of the votes \"incredibly racist\". The prolonged stays of John Stevens and Jasmine Trias in the finals, despite negative comments from the judges, had aroused resentment, so much so that John Stevens reportedly received a death threat, which he dismissed as a joke 'blown out of proportion'.\nThe performance of \"Summertime\" by Barrino, later known simply as \"Fantasia\", at Top 8 was widely praised, and Simon Cowell considered it as his favorite \"Idol\" moment in the nine seasons he was on the show. Fantasia and Diana DeGarmo were the last two finalists, and Fantasia was crowned as the winner. Fantasia released as her coronation single \"I Believe\", a song co-written by the first season finalist Tamyra Gray, and DeGarmo released \"Dreams\".\nSeason 4 (2005).\nThe fourth season premiered on January 18, 2005. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This was the first full season of the series to be aired in high definition; the finale of the third season was also aired in high definition. The number of those attending the auditions by now had increased to over 100,000 from the 10,000 of the first season. The age limit was raised to 28 in this season, and among those who benefited from this new rule were Constantine Maroulis and Bo Bice, the two rockers of the show.\nThe top 12 finalists originally included Mario Vazquez, but he dropped out citing 'personal reasons' and was replaced by Nikko Smith. Later, an employee of Fremantle Media, which produces the show, sued the company for wrongful termination, claiming that he was dismissed after complaining about lewd behavior by Vazquez toward him during the show.\nDuring the top 11 week, due to a mix-up with the contestants' telephone number, voting was repeated on what was normally the result night, with the result reveal postponed until the following night.\nIn May 2005, Underwood was announced the winner, with Bice the runner-up. Both Underwood and Bice released the coronation song \"Inside Your Heaven\", with Underwood's version of the song making her the first country artist ever to debut at number-one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart. As of 2015, Underwood has become the most successful \"Idol\" contestant in the U.S., selling 16 million albums in the country, while selling a total of 65 million records worldwide.\nSeason 5 (2006).\nThe fifth season began on January 17, 2006. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. It remains the highest-rated season in the show's run so far. Two of the more prominent contestants during the Hollywood round were the Brittenum twins who were later disqualified for identity theft.\nChris Daughtry's performance of Fuel's \"Hemorrhage (In My Hands)\" on the show was widely praised and led to an invitation to join the band as Fuel's new lead singer, an invitation he declined. His performance of Live's version of \"I Walk the Line\" was well received by the judges but later criticized in some quarters for not crediting the arrangement to Live. He was eliminated at the top four in a shocking result.\nOn May 30, 2006, Taylor Hicks was named \"American Idol\", with Katharine McPhee the runner-up. \"Do I Make You Proud\" was released as Hicks' first single and McPhee's was \"My Destiny\".\nDespite being eliminated earlier in the season, Chris Daughtry (as lead of the band Daughtry) became the most successful recording artist from this season. Other contestants, such as Hicks, McPhee, Bucky Covington, Mandisa, Kellie Pickler, and Elliott Yamin have had varying levels of success.\nSeason 6 (2007).\nThe sixth season began on Tuesday, January 16, 2007. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The premiere drew a massive audience of 37.3\u00a0million viewers, peaking in the last half hour with more than 41\u00a0million viewers.\nTeenager Sanjaya Malakar was the season's most talked-about contestant for his unusual hairdo, and for managing to survive elimination for many weeks due in part to the weblog Vote for the Worst and satellite radio personality Howard Stern, who both encouraged fans to vote for him. However, on the Top 7 results, Sanjaya was voted off.\nThis season saw the first \"Idol Gives Back\" telethon-inspired event, which raised more than $76\u00a0million in corporate and viewer donations. No contestant was eliminated that week, but two (Phil Stacey and Chris Richardson) were eliminated the next.\nIn the May 23 season finale, Jordin Sparks was declared the winner with the runner-up being Blake Lewis. Sparks has had some success as a recording artist post-\"Idol\".\nThis season also saw the launch of the \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest which allows fans to vote for the \"coronation song\". Thousands of recordings of original songs were submitted by songwriters, and 20 entries selected for the public vote. The winning song, \"This Is My Now\", was performed by both finalists during the finale and released by Sparks on May 24, 2007.\nSeason 7 (2008).\nThe seventh season premiered on January 15, 2008, for a two-day, four-hour premiere. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The media focused on the professional status of the seventh season contestants, the so-called 'ringers', many of whom, including Kristy Lee Cook, Brooke White, Michael Johns, and in particular Carly Smithson, had prior recording contracts. Contestant David Hernandez also attracted some attention due to his past employment as a stripper.\nFor the finals, \"American Idol\" debuted a new state-of-the-art set and stage on March 11, 2008, along with a new on-air look. David Cook's performance of \"Billie Jean\" on top-ten night was lauded by the judges, but provoked controversy when they apparently mistook the Chris Cornell arrangement to be David Cook's own even though the performance was introduced as Cornell's version. Cornell himself said he was 'flattered' and praised David Cook's performance. David Cook was taken to the hospital after the top-nine performance show due to heart palpitations and high blood pressure.\nDavid Archuleta's performance of John Lennon's \"Imagine\" was considered by many as one of the best of the season. Jennifer Lopez, who was brought in as a judge in the tenth season, called it a beautiful song-moment that she will never forget. Jason Castro's semi-final performance of \"Hallelujah\" also received considerable attention, and it propelled Jeff Buckley's version of the song to the top of the \"Billboard\" digital song chart. This was the first season in which contestants' recordings were released onto iTunes after their performances, and although sales information was not released so as not to prejudice the contest, leaked information indicated that contestants' songs frequently reached the top of iTunes sales charts.\n\"Idol Gives Back\" returned on April 9, 2008, and raised $64\u00a0million for charity.\nThe finalists were Cook and Archuleta. David Cook was announced the winner on May 21, 2008, the first rocker to win the show. Both Cook and Archuleta had some success as recording artists with both selling over a million albums in the U.S.\nThe \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest was also held this season. From ten of the most popular submissions, each of the final two contestants chose a song to perform, although neither of their selections was used as the \"coronation song\". The winning song, \"The Time of My Life\", was recorded by David Cook and released on May 22, 2008.\nSeason 8 (2009).\nThe eighth season premiered on January 13, 2009. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This season featured the first major change to the judging panel; a fourth judge, Kara DioGuardi, was introduced. Mike Darnell, the president of alternative programming for Fox, stated that the season would focus more on the contestants' personal life.\nThis was also the first season without executive producer Nigel Lythgoe who left to focus on the international versions of his show \"So You Think You Can Dance\". The Hollywood round was moved to the Kodak Theatre for 2009 and was also extended to two weeks. \"Idol Gives Back\" was canceled for this season due to the global recession at the time.\nThere were 13 finalists this season, but two were eliminated in the first result show of the finals. A new feature introduced was the \"Judges' Save\", and Matt Giraud was saved from elimination at the top seven by the judges when he received the fewest votes. The next week, Lil Rounds and Anoop Desai were eliminated.\nThe two finalists were Kris Allen and Adam Lambert, both of whom had previously landed in the bottom three at the top five. Allen won the contest in the most controversial voting result since the second season. It was claimed, and then later retracted, that 38\u00a0million of the 100\u00a0million votes cast on the night came from Allen's home state of Arkansas alone, and that AT&T employees unfairly influenced the votes by giving lessons on power-texting at viewing parties in Arkansas.\nBoth Allen and Lambert released the coronation song, \"No Boundaries\" which was co-written by DioGuardi. This is the first season in which the winner failed to achieve gold album status.\nSeason 9 (2010).\nThe ninth season premiered on January 12, 2010. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Kara DioGuardi, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Paula Abdul left the show and Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul at the start of Hollywood Week. One of the most prominent auditioners this season was General Larry Platt whose performance of \"Pants on the Ground\" became a viral hit song.\nCrystal Bowersox, who has Type-I diabetes, fell ill due to diabetic ketoacidosis on the morning of the girls performance night for the top 20 week and was hospitalized. The schedule was rearranged so the boys performed first and she could perform the following night instead; she later revealed that Ken Warwick, the show producer, wanted to disqualify her but she begged to be allowed to stay on the show.\nMichael Lynche was the lowest vote getter at top nine and was given the Judges' Save. The next week Katie Stevens and Andrew Garcia were eliminated. That week, Adam Lambert was invited back to be a mentor, the first \"Idol\" alum to do so. \"Idol Gives Back\" returned this season on April 21, 2010, and raised $45 million.\nA special tribute to Simon Cowell was presented in the finale for his final season with the show. Many figures from the show's past, including Paula Abdul, made an appearance.\nThe final two contestants were Lee DeWyze and Bowersox. DeWyze was declared the winner during the May 26 finale. No new song was used as coronation song this year; instead, the two finalists each released a cover song \u2013 DeWyze chose U2's \"Beautiful Day\", and Bowersox chose Patty Griffin's \"Up to the Mountain\". This is the first season where neither finalist achieved significant album sales.\nSeason 10 (2011).\nThe tenth season premiered on January 19, 2011. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Many changes were introduced this season, from the format to the personnel of the show. Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined Randy Jackson as judges following the departures of Simon Cowell (who left to launch the American version of \"The X Factor\"), Kara DioGuardi (whose contract was not renewed) and Ellen DeGeneres, who left the show on her own accord.\nRandy Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth. Nigel Lythgoe returned as executive producer. Jimmy Iovine, chairman of the Interscope Geffen A&M label group, the new partner of \"American Idol\", acted as the in-house mentor in place of weekly guest mentors, although in later episodes special guest mentors such as Beyonc\u00e9, will.i.am and Lady Gaga were brought in.\nThe tenth season is the first to include online auditions where contestants could submit a 40-second video audition via Myspace. Karen Rodriguez was one such auditioner and reached the final rounds.\nOne of the more prominent contestants this year was Chris Medina, whose story of caring for his brain-damaged fianc\u00e9e received widespread coverage. Medina was cut in the Top 40 round. Casey Abrams, who suffers from ulcerative colitis, was hospitalized twice and missed the Top 13 result show. The judges used their one save on Abrams on the Top 11, and as a result this was the first season that 11 finalists went on tour instead of 10. In the following week, Naima Adedapo and Thia Megia were both eliminated.\nPia Toscano, one of the presumed favorites to advance far in the season, was unexpectedly eliminated on April 7, 2011, finishing in ninth place. Her elimination drew criticisms from some former \"Idol\" contestants, as well as actor Tom Hanks. After \"Idol\", Jennifer Lopez helped guide her career.\nThe two finalists in 2011 were Lauren Alaina and Scotty McCreery, both teenage country singers. McCreery won the competition on May 25, being the youngest male winner and the fourth male in a row to win \"American Idol\". McCreery released his first single, \"I Love You This Big\", as his coronation song, and Alaina released \"Like My Mother Does\". McCreery's debut album, \"Clear as Day\", became the first debut album by an \"Idol\" winner to reach No. 1 on the US \"Billboard\" 200 since Ruben Studdard's \"Soulful\" in 2003, and he became the youngest male artist to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200.\nSeason 11 (2012).\nThe eleventh season premiered on January 18, 2012. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez, and Randy Jackson returned as judges. One more finalist would join the Top 24 making it the Top 25, which was later revealed to be Jermaine Jones. However, on March 14, Jones was disqualified in 12th place for concealing arrests and outstanding warrants. Jones denied the accusation that he concealed his arrests.\nFinalist Phillip Phillips suffered from kidney pain and was taken to the hospital before the Top 13 results show, and later received medical procedure to alleviate a blockage caused by kidney stones. He was reported to have eight surgeries during his Idol run, and had considered quitting the show due to the pain. He underwent surgery to remove the stones and reconstruct his kidney soon after the season had finished.\nJessica Sanchez received the fewest votes during the Top 7 week, and the judges decided to use their \"save\" option on her, making her the first female recipient of the save. The following week, unlike previous seasons, Colton Dixon was the only contestant sent home. Sanchez later made the final two, the first season where a recipient of the save reached the finale.\nPhillips became the winner, beating Sanchez. During the finale, fifth season finalist Ace Young proposed marriage to third season runner-up Diana DeGarmo on stage \u2013 which she accepted.\nPhillips released \"Home\" as his coronation song, while Sanchez released \"Change Nothing\". Phillips' \"Home\" has since become the best selling of all coronation songs, with over 5 million copies sold.\nSeason 12 (2013).\nThe twelfth season premiered on January 16, 2013. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Judges Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler left the show after two seasons. Randy Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. This season's judging panel consisted of Randy Jackson, along with Mariah Carey, Keith Urban and Nicki Minaj.\nThis was the first season since the ninth season to have four judges on the panel. The pre-season buzz and the early episodes of the show were dominated by the feud between the judges Minaj and Carey after a video of their dispute was leaked to TMZ.\nThe top 10 contestants started with five males and five females, however, the males were eliminated consecutively in the first five weeks, with Lazaro Arbos the last male to be eliminated. For the first time in the show's history, the top 5 contestants were all female. It was also the first time that the judges' \"save\" was not used, the top four contestants were therefore given an extra week to perform again with their votes carried over with no elimination in the first week.\n23-year-old Candice Glover won the season with Kree Harrison taking the runner-up spot. Glover became the first female to win \"American Idol\" since Jordin Sparks, who won the show in 2007. Glover released \"I Am Beautiful\" as a single while Harrison released \"All Cried Out\" immediately after the show. Glover sold poorly with her debut album, and this is also the first season that the runner-up was not signed by a music label.\nTowards the end of the season, Randy Jackson, the last remaining of the original judges, announced he would no longer serve as a judge to pursue other business ventures. Both judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj also decided to leave after one season to focus on their music careers.\nSeason 13 (2014).\nThe thirteenth season premiered on January 15, 2014. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Keith Urban returned as a judge. Urban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. Randy Jackson returned, though Jackson moved from the judging panel to the role of in-mentor. Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj left the panel after one season. Former judge Jennifer Lopez and former mentor Harry Connick, Jr. joined Urban on the panel. Connick Jr. served as a mentor for \"Idol\" in 2010 and 2012. Also, Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick were replaced as executive producers by Per Blankens, Jesse Ignjatovic and Evan Pragger. Bill DeRonde replaced Warwick as a director of the audition episodes, while Louis J. Horvitz replaced Gregg Gelfand as a director of the show.\nThis was the first season where the contestants were permitted to perform in the final rounds songs they wrote themselves. In the Top 8, Sam Woolf received the fewest votes, but he was saved from elimination by the judges. The 500th episode of the series was the Top 3 performance night.\nCaleb Johnson was named the winner of the season, with Jena Irene as the runner-up. Johnson released \"As Long as You Love Me\" as his coronation single while Irene released \"We Are One\".\nSeason 14 (2015).\nThe fourteenth season premiered on January 7, 2015. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban and Harry Connick, Jr. returned for their respective fourth, third and second seasons as judges. Eighth season runner-up Adam Lambert filled in for Urban during the New York City auditions. Randy Jackson did not return as the in-house mentor and left the show permanently. Scott Borchetta replaced Jackson as the mentor.\nChanges this season include only airing one episode a week during the final ten. Coca-Cola ended their longtime sponsorship of the show and Ford Motor Company maintained a reduced role. The winner of the season also received a recording contract with Big Machine Records.\nNick Fradiani won the season, defeating Clark Beckham. Fradiani became the first winner from the Northeast region. Fradiani released \"Beautiful Life\" as his coronation single while Beckham released \"Champion\". Jax, the third place finalist, also released a single called \"Forcefield\".\nSeason 15 (2016).\nFox announced on May 11, 2015, that the fifteenth season would be the final season of \"American Idol\"; as such, the season was expected to have an additional focus on the program's alumni. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, with Harry Connick Jr., Keith Urban, and Jennifer Lopez all returning as judges. The fifteenth season premiered on January 6, 2016. The season was shortened by four weeks compared to previous years. During the finale episode, President Barack Obama praised the millions of young people that voted for contestants and pitched that they vote in the upcoming election. The farewell season concluded on April 7, 2016. Seacrest signed off by saying: \"And one more time\u2014this is so tough\u2014we say to you from Hollywood, goodnight America\", and then he added, \"for now.\"\nTrent Harmon won the season against runner-up La'Porsha Renae. Harmon released \"Falling\" co-written by Keith Urban as his coronation song. Renae's \"Battles\", third-place finisher Dalton Rapattoni's \"Strike A Match\" and fourth-place finisher MacKenzie Bourg's \"Roses\" were also released as singles.\n2018\u2013present: ABC revival.\nIn early 2017, \"Variety\" reported that Fremantle Media was in talks to revive the show for NBC or for its original network, Fox. A dispute between Fremantle and Core Media Group derailed these plans. In May 2017, ABC was making a bid to revive the program. ABC acquired the rights to the series, and \"American Idol\" returned for the 2017\u201318 television season.\nSeason 16 (2018).\nIn July 2017, it was announced that Ryan Seacrest would return as host, and by September 2017 it was revealed that Katy Perry, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie would serve as judges. The sixteenth season premiered on March 11, 2018. This was the first season of \"American Idol\" to air on ABC. The season was again shortened compared to the previous season to twelve weeks, with multiple elimination in the final rounds. Unlike previous seasons where only two finalists remained in the final episode, three finalists performed in the finale. On May 21, 2018, the season concluded with Maddie Poppe crowned the winner, beating Caleb Lee Hutchinson as runner-up and Gabby Barrett in third place. Her winning song was \"Going, Going, Gone\". Caleb Lee Hutchinson released \"Johnny Cash Heart\" as a single, while Gabby Barrett's song was \"Rivers Deep\".\nSeason 17 (2019).\nABC renewed the revival series for another season. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. The seventeenth season premiered on March 3, 2019. For the finale, the show no longer features separate performance and result shows. On May 19, 2019, the season concluded with three finalists, with Madison VanDenburg eliminated in third place after performing two songs, and the final two performing their last song. For the first time, there were no separate performance and grand finale shows this season. Laine Hardy was crowned the winner and Alejandro Aranda runner-up. Hardy released a single, \"Flame\", immediately after the win, but Aranda did not. However, Aranda later released a song he performed in the finale, \"Tonight\", under the name Scarypoolparty on June 28, 2019.\nSeason 18 (2020).\nOn May 13, 2019, the series was renewed for an eighteenth season and it premiered on February 16, 2020. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. For the first time, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, from the top 20 to the finale, the contestants performed in their own homes, while Ryan Seacrest hosted the show remotely in his own home in Los Angeles with the judges also in their respective homes. The season was also further truncated, with the top 5 performing in the finale. Each finalist also performed only two songs for the finale. On May 17, the season concluded, with Just Sam crowned as the winner, with Arthur Gunn finishing as the runner-up. \"Rise Up\", the song Just Sam performed for their audition and reprised on the finale, was released as their debut song.\nSeason 19 (2021).\nOn May 15, 2020, ABC renewed the series for a nineteenth season and it premiered on February 14, 2021. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. Later in October, it was announced that Bobby Bones will return as mentor. On May 23, the season concluded, with Chayce Beckham crowned the winner, with Willie Spence finishing as the runner-up. \"23\", the song Chayce Beckham wrote and performed for Top 4, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 20 (2022).\nOn May 13, 2021, ABC renewed the series for a twentieth season and it premiered on February 27, 2022. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On December 31, it was announced that Bones would not be returning as a mentor. On May 22, the season concluded, with Noah Thompson crowned as the winner, with HunterGirl finishing as the runner-up. \"One Day Tonight\", the song Noah Thompson performed for the Grand Finale, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 21 (2023).\nOn May 13, 2022, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-first season and it premiered on February 19, 2023. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On May 21, the season concluded, with Iam Tongi crowned as the winner, with Megan Danielle finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 22 (2024).\nOn May 16, 2023, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-second season and it premiered on February 18, 2024. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. In February 2024, Perry announced that the season would be her last. On May 20, the season concluded, with Abi Carter crowned as the winner, with Will Moseley finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 23 (2025).\nOn May 10, 2024, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-third season; it was also announced the network was in-talks with \"high-profile stars\" to replace the outgoing Perry. On July 31, 2024, it was announced Seacrest would return as host, with Bryan and Richie returning as judges; Underwood was named as Perry's successor. The season premiered on March 9, 2025.\nReception.\nU.S. television ratings.\nSeasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of \"American Idol\". It holds the distinction of having the longest winning streak in the Nielsen annual television ratings; it became the highest-rated of all television programs in the United States overall for an unprecedented seven consecutive years, or eight consecutive (and total) years when either its performance or result show was ranked number one overall.\n\"Each U.S. network television season starts in late September and ends in late May, which coincides with the completion of May sweeps.\"\n\"American Idol\" premiered in June 2002 and became the surprise summer hit show of 2002. The first show drew 9.9\u00a0million viewers, giving Fox the best viewing figure for the 8.30\u00a0pm spot in over a year. The audience steadily grew, and by finale night, the audience had averaged 23\u00a0million, with more than 40\u00a0million watching some part of that show. That episode was placed third amongst all age groups, but more importantly it led in the 18\u201349 demographic, the age group most valued by advertisers.\nThe growth continued into the next season, starting with a season premiere of 26.5 million. The season attracted an average of 21.7\u00a0million viewers, and was placed second overall amongst the 18\u201349 age group. The finale night when Ruben Studdard won over Clay Aiken was also the highest-rated ever \"American Idol\" episode at 38.1\u00a0million for the final hour. By the third season, the show had become the top show in the 18\u201349 demographic<ref name=\"realitytvworld_5/24/2007\"></ref> a position it has held for all subsequent years up to and including the tenth season, and its competition stages ranked first in the nationwide overall ratings. By the fourth season, \"American Idol\" had become the most-watched series amongst all viewers on American TV for the first time, with an average viewership of 26.8\u00a0million. The show reached its peak in the fifth season with numbers averaging 30.6\u00a0million per episode, and this season remains the highest-rated of the series.\nThe sixth season premiered with the series' highest-rated debut episode and a few of its succeeding episodes rank among the most-watched episodes of \"American Idol.\" During this time, many television executives begun to regard the show as a programming force unlike any seen before, as its consistent dominance of up to two hours two or three nights a week exceeded the 30- or 60-minute reach of previous hits such as NBC's \"The Cosby Show\". The show was dubbed \"the Death Star\", and competing networks often rearranged their schedules in order to minimize losses. However, the sixth season also showed a steady decline in viewership over the course of the season. The season finale saw a drop in ratings of 16% from the previous year. The sixth season was the first season wherein the average results show rated higher than the competition stages (unlike in the previous seasons), and became the second-highest-rated of the series after the preceding season.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the seventh season. The premiere was down 11% among total viewers, and the results show in which Kristy Lee Cook was eliminated delivered its lowest-rated Wednesday show among the 18\u201334 demo since the first season in 2002. However, the ratings rebounded for the seventh-season finale with the excitement over the battle of the Davids, and improved over the sixth season as the series' third most watched finale. The strong finish of season seven also helped Fox become the most watched TV network in the country for the first time since its inception, a first ever in American television history for a non-Big Three major broadcast network. Overall ratings for the season were down 10% from the sixth season, which is in line with the fall in viewership across all networks due in part to the 2007\u20132008 Writers Guild of America strike.\nThe declining trend however continued into the eighth season, as total viewers numbers fell by 5\u201310% for early episodes compared to the seventh season, and by 9% for the finale. In the ninth season, \"Idol\"'s six-year extended streak of perfection in the ratings was broken, when NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics on February 17 beat \"Idol\" in the same time slot with 30.1\u00a0million viewers over \"Idol\"'s 18.4\u00a0million. Nevertheless, \"American Idol\" overall finished its ninth season as the most watched TV series for the sixth year running, breaking the previous record of five consecutive seasons achieved by CBS' \"All in the Family\" and NBC's \"The Cosby Show\".\nIn the tenth season, the total viewer numbers for the first week of shows fell 12\u201313%, and by up to 23% in the 18\u201349 demo compared to the ninth season. Later episodes, however, retained viewers better, and the season ended on a high with a significant increase in viewership for the finale \u2013 up 12% for the adults 18\u201349 demographic and a 21% increase in total viewers from the ninth-season finale. While the overall viewer number has increased this season, its viewer demographics have continued to age year on year \u2013 the median age this season was 47.2 compared to a median age of 32.1 in its first season. The demographics also became \"whiter\" over time and less diverse. Nevertheless, in the 2010\u201311 television season, Fox maintained its lead on over other networks with its seventh consecutive season of victory overall in the 18\u201349 demographic ratings in the United States.\nThe eleventh season, however, suffered a steep drop in ratings, a drop attributed by some to the arrival of new shows such as \"The Voice\" and \"The X Factor\". The ratings for the first two episodes of the eleventh season fell 16\u201321% in overall viewer numbers and 24\u201327% in the 18/49 demo, while the season finale fell 27% in total viewer number and 30% in the 18\u201349 demo. The average viewership for the season fell below 20 million viewers the first time since 2003, a drop of 23% in total viewers and 30% in the 18/49 demo. For the first time in eight years, \"American Idol\" lost the leading position in both the total viewers number and the 18/49 demo, coming in second to \"NBC Sunday Night Football\", although the strengths of \"Idol\" in its second year in the Wednesday-Thursday primetime slots helped Fox achieve the longest period of 18\u201349 demographic victory in the Nielsen ratings, standing at 8 straight years from 2004 to 2012.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the twelfth season, which saw the show hitting a number of series low in the 18\u201349 demo. The finale had 7.2 million fewer viewers than the previous season, and saw a drop of 44% in the 18\u201349 demo. The season viewers averaged at 13.3 million, a drop of 24% from the previous season. The thirteenth season suffered a huge decline in the 18\u201349 demographic, a drop of 28% from the twelfth season, and \"American Idol\" lost its Top 10 position in the Nielsen ratings by the end of the 2013\u201314 television season for the first time since its entry to the rankings in 2003 as a result, and never regained its Top 10 position by the series' end in 2016.\nThe continuing decline influenced further changes for the fourteenth season, including the loss of Coca-Cola as the show's major sponsor, and a decision to only broadcast one, two-hour show per week during the top 12 rounds (with results from the previous week integrated into the performance show, rather than having a separate results show). On May 11, 2015, prior to the fourteenth-season finale, Fox announced that the fifteenth season of \"American Idol\" would be its last. Despite these changes, the show's ratings would decline more sharply. The fourteenth-season finale was the lowest-rated finale ever, with an average of only 8.03 million viewers watching the finale. The show's ratings, however, rebounded in its final season and ended its run in 2016 as Fox's first-ever program to conclude its run without dropping from the Nielsen Top 30 most-watched television shows in each of its seasons.\nFor the revived series on ABC, the ratings were lower but remained stable compared to previous seasons on Fox. The finale of the seventeenth season was slightly more watched than the sixteenth.\nCritical reception.\nEarly reviews were mixed in their assessment. Ken Tucker of \"Entertainment Weekly\" considered that \"As TV, \"American Idol\" is crazily entertaining; as music, it's dust-mote inconsequential\". Others, however, thought that \"the most striking aspect of the series was the genuine talent it revealed\". It was also described as a \"sadistic musical bake-off\", and \"a romp in humiliation\". Other aspects of the show have attracted criticisms. The product placement in the show in particular was noted, and some critics were harsh about what they perceived as its blatant commercial calculations \u2013 Karla Peterson of \"The San Diego Union-Tribune\" charged that \"American Idol\" is \"a conniving multimedia monster\" that has \"absorbed the sin of our debauched culture and spit them out in a lump of reconstituted evil\". The decision to send the first season winner to sing the national anthem at the Lincoln Memorial on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks in 2002 was also poorly received by many. Lisa de Moraes of \"The Washington Post\" noted sarcastically that \"The terrorists have won\" and, with a sideswipe at the show's commercialism and voting process, that the decision as to who \"gets to turn this important site into just another cog in the 'Great \"American Idol\" Marketing Mandala' is in the hands of the millions of girls who have made \"American Idol\" a hit. Them and a handful of phone-redialer geeks who have been clocking up to 10,000 calls each week for their contestant of choice (but who, according to Fox, are in absolutely no way skewing the outcome).\"\nSome of the later writers about the show were more positive, Michael Slezak, again of \"Entertainment Weekly\", thought that \"for all its bloated, synthetic, product-shilling, money-making trappings, \"Idol\" provides a once-a-year chance for the average American to combat the evils of today's music business.\" Singer Sheryl Crow, who was later to act as a mentor on the show, however took the view that the show \"undermines art in every way and promotes commercialism\". Pop music critic Ann Powers nevertheless suggested that Idol has \"reshaped the American songbook\", \"led us toward a new way of viewing ourselves in relationship to mainstream popular culture\", and connects \"the classic Hollywood dream to the multicentered popular culture of the future.\" Others focused on the personalities in the show; Ramin Setoodeh of \"Newsweek\" accused judge Simon Cowell's cruel critiques in the show of helping to establish in the wider world a culture of meanness, that \"Simon Cowell has dragged the rest of us in the mud with him.\" Some such as singer John Mayer disparaged the contestants, suggesting that those who appeared on \"Idol\" are not real artists with self-respect.\nSome in the entertainment industry were critical of the star-making aspect of the show. Usher, a mentor on the show, bemoaning the loss of the \"true art form of music\", thought that shows like \"American Idol\" made it seem \"so easy that everyone can do it, and that it can happen overnight\", and that \"television is a lie\". Musician Michael Feinstein, while acknowledging that the show had uncovered promising performers, said that \"American Idol\" \"isn't really about music. It's about all the bad aspects of the music business \u2013 the arrogance of commerce, this sense of 'I know what will make this person a star; artists themselves don't know.' \" That \"American Idol\" is seen to be a fast track to success for its contestants has been a cause of resentment for some in the industry. LeAnn Rimes, commenting on Carrie Underwood winning Best Female Artist in Country Music Awards over Faith Hill in 2006, said that \"Carrie has not paid her dues long enough to fully deserve that award\". It is a common theme that has been echoed by many others. Elton John, who had appeared as a mentor in the show but turned down an offer to be a judge on \"American Idol\", commenting on talent shows in general, said that \"there have been some good acts but the only way to sustain a career is to pay your dues in small clubs\". \"American Idol\" revolutionized American pop culture and the pop idol process and has provided an opportunity for many to bypass the small club scene and allow a much larger audience to participate in and select the next potential chart topping performer.\nThe success of the show's alumni, however, has led to a more positive assessment of the show, and the show was described as having \"proven it has a valid way to pick talent and a proven way to sell records\". While the industry is divided on the show success, its impact is felt particularly strongly in the country music format. According to a CMT exec, reflecting on the success of Idol alumni in the country genre, \"if you want to try and get famous fast by going to a cattle call audition on TV, Idol reasonably remains the first choice for anyone\", and that country music and Idol \"go together well\".\n\"American Idol\" was nominated for the Emmy's Outstanding Reality Competition Program for nine years but never won. Director Bruce Gower won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Series in 2009, and the show won a Creative Arts Emmys each in 2007 and 2008, three in 2009, and two in 2011, as well as a Governor's Award in 2007 for its Idol Gives Back edition. It won the People's Choice Award, which honors the popular culture of the previous year as voted by the public, for favorite competition/reality show in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2012. It won the first Critics' Choice Television Award in 2011 for Best Reality Competition.\nIn 2013, TV Guide ranked the series No. 48 on its list of the 60 Best Series of All Time.\nGeographical, ethnic, and gender bias.\nThroughout the series, twelve of the seventeen \"Idol\" winners, including its first five, had come from the Southern United States. A large number of other finalists during the series' run have also hailed from the American South, including Clay Aiken, Kellie Pickler, and Chris Daughtry, who are all from North Carolina. In 2012, an analysis of the 131 contestants who have appeared in the finals of all seasons of the show up to that point found that 48% have some connection to the Southern United States.\nThe show itself was popular in the Southern United States, with households in the Southeastern United States 10% more likely to watch \"American Idol\" during the eighth season in 2009, and those in the East Central region, such as Kentucky, were 16 percent more likely to tune into the series. Data from Nielsen SoundScan, a music-sales tracking service, showed that of the 47\u00a0million CDs sold by \"Idol\" contestants through January 2010, 85 percent were by contestants with ties to the American South.\nTheories given for the success of Southerners on \"Idol\" have been: more versatility with musical genres, as the Southern U.S. is home to several music genre scenes; not having as many opportunities to break into the pop music business; text-voting due to the South having the highest percentage of cell-phone only households; and the strong heritage of music and singing, which is notable in the Bible Belt, where it is in church that many people get their start in public singing. Others also suggest that the Southern character of these contestants appeal to the South, as well as local pride. According to fifth season winner Taylor Hicks, who is from the state of Alabama, \"People in the South have a lot of pride ... So, they're adamant about supporting the contestants who do well from their state or region.\"\nFor five consecutive seasons, starting in the seventh season, the title was given to a white male who plays the guitar \u2013 a trend that \"Idol\" pundits call the \"White guy with guitar\" or \"WGWG\" factor. Just hours before the eleventh-season finale, where Phillip Phillips was named the winner, Richard Rushfield, author of the book \"American Idol: The Untold Story\", said, \"You have this alliance between young girls and grandmas and they see it, not necessarily as a contest to create a pop star competing on the contemporary radio, but as ... who's the nicest guy in a popularity contest\", he says, \"And that has led to this dynasty of four, and possibly now five, consecutive, affable, very nice, good-looking white boys.\"\nStart order bias.\nSome fans call the final performance of the night the \"pimp spot\" because it usually receives a big boost in votes, due to the recency effect. By performing first, a performer may benefit from the primacy effect, but any other early performance may be stifled. The second performance spot is sometimes called the \"un-pimp spot\" because it is the least beneficial.\nControversy.\nThe show was criticized in earlier seasons over the onerous contract contestants had to sign that gave excessive control to 19 Entertainment over their future careers and handed a large part of their future earnings to the management.\nIndividual contestants have generated controversy in this competition for their past actions or for being 'ringers' planted by the producers. A number of contestants have been disqualified for various reasons, such as for having an existing contract or undisclosed criminal record, although the show has also been accused of a double standard for disqualifying some but not others.\nVoting results have been a consistent source of controversy. The mechanism of voting has aroused considerable criticism, most notably in the second season when Ruben Studdard beat Clay Aiken in a close vote, and in the eighth season, when the massive increase in text votes fueled the texting controversy. Concerns about power voting have been expressed from the first season. Since 2004, votes also have been affected to a limited degree by online communities such as DialIdol and Vote for the Worst.\nCultural impact.\nTelevision.\nThe enormous success of the show and the revenue it generated were transformative for the Fox Broadcasting Company. \"American Idol\" and other shows such as \"Survivor\" and \"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?\" were credited for expanding reality television programming in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s, and \"Idol\" became the most watched non-scripted primetime television series, which it remained for almost a decade, from 2003 to 2012, breaking records on U.S. television (dominated by drama shows and sitcoms in the preceding decades). On several occasions, notably in 2003 and 2008, \"American Idol\" overtook the Academy Awards as the most-watched non-sports entertainment event on U.S. television, marking the most recent time as of 2025 that a live regular non-sports primetime series has garnered such viewership in the country.\nThe show pushed Fox to become the number one U.S. TV network in overall viewers in 2008 and among adults aged 18\u201349, the key demographic coveted by advertisers, for an unprecedented eight consecutive years from 2005 to 2012. Its success also helped lift the ratings of other shows that were scheduled around it such as \"House\" and \"Bones\", and \"Idol\", for years, was Fox's strongest platform primetime television program for promoting eventual hit shows of the 2010s (of the same network) such as \"Glee\", \"New Girl\" and \"Empire\". The show, its creator Simon Fuller claimed, \"saved Fox\".\nThe show's massive success in the mid-2000s to early 2010s spawned a number of imitating singing-competition shows, such as \"Rock Star\", \"Nashville Star\", \"The Voice\", \"Rising Star\", \"The Sing-Off\", and \"The X Factor\". The number of imitative singing shows on American television had reached 17 by 2016. Its format also served as a blueprint for non-singing TV shows such as \"Dancing with the Stars\" and \"So You Think You Can Dance\", most of which contribute to the current highly competitive reality TV landscape on American television.\nMusic.\nAs one of the most successful shows on U.S. television history, \"American Idol\" has had a strong impact not just on television, but also in the wider world of entertainment. It helped create a number of highly successful recording artists, such as Kelly Clarkson, Daughtry and Carrie Underwood, as well as others of varying notability. The alumni of the show's original run scored 13 Grammy Award wins out of 54 Grammy nominations up to its end in 2016, with Underwood and Clarkson receiving 10 wins combined.\nVarious \"American Idol\" alumni had success on various record charts around the world; in the U.S. they had achieved 345 number ones on the \"Billboard\" charts in its first 10 years, and 458 by its last year of broadcast in 2016, with 100 achieved by Kelly Clarkson alone. According to Fred Bronson, author of books on the Billboard charts, no other entity has ever created as many hit-making artists and bestselling albums and singles. In 2007, \"American Idol\" alums accounted for 2.1% of all music sales. Its alumni have a massive impact on radio; in 2007, \"American Idol\" had become \"a dominant force in radio\" according to Rich Meyer, president of the radio station monitoring research company Mediabase. By 2010, four winners each had more than a million radio spins, with Kelly Clarkson leading the field with over four million spins.\nAt the end of the show's original run on Fox in 2016, \"Idol\"'s contestants have sold more than 60 million albums in the U.S. and more than 100 million records globally, more than 175 of which are certified platinum or gold. Its participants have generated more than 450 Billboard No. 1 hits and sold more than 260 million digital downloads.\nFilm and theater.\nThe impact of \"American Idol\" was also strongly felt in musical theater, where many of \"Idol\" alumni have forged successful careers. The striking effect of former \"American Idol\" contestants on Broadway has been noted and commented on. The casting of a popular \"Idol\" contestant can lead to significantly increased ticket sales. Other alumni have gone on to work in television and films, the most notable being Jennifer Hudson who, on the recommendation of the \"Idol\" vocal coach Debra Byrd, won a role in \"Dreamgirls\" and eventually went on to win an Academy Award for her performance. She later became the show's first and only alumnus ever to win the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). In all, as of 2025, \"American Idol\" finalists resulted to 5 Grammy Award winners (Clarkson, Barrino, Hudson, Underwood and Mandisa), 2 Emmy Award winners (Clarkson and Hudson), and an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Tony Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Critics' Choice Award winner (Hudson).\nIn 2007, a musical based on the show, \"\", played off-Broadway. The musical closed after its official opening night.\nRevenue and commercial ventures.\nThe dominance of \"American Idol\" in the ratings had made it the most profitable show in U.S. TV for many years. The show was estimated to generate $900\u00a0million for the year 2004 through sales of TV ads, albums, merchandise and concert tickets. By the seventh season, the show was estimated to earn around $900\u00a0million from its ad revenue alone, not including ancillary sponsorship deals and other income. One estimate puts the total TV revenue for the first eight seasons of \"American Idol\" at $6.4\u00a0billion. Sponsors that bought fully integrated packages can expect a variety of promotions of their products on the show, such as product placement, adverts and product promotion integrated into the show, and various promotional opportunities. Other off-air promotional partners pay for the rights to feature \"Idol\" branding on their packaging, products and marketing programs. \"American Idol\" also partnered with Disney in its theme park attraction The American Idol Experience.\nAdvertising revenue.\n\"American Idol\" became the most expensive series on broadcast networks for advertisers starting the fourth season, and by the next season, it had broken the record in advertising rate for a regularly scheduled prime-time network series, selling over $700,000 for a 30-seconds slot, and reaching up to $1.3\u00a0million for the finale. Its ad prices reached a peak in the seventh season at $737,000. Estimated revenue more than doubled from $404\u00a0million in the third season to $870\u00a0million in the sixth season. While that declined from the eighth season onwards, it still earned significantly more than its nearest competitor, with advertising revenue topping $800\u00a0million annually the next few seasons. However, the sharp drop in ratings in the eleventh season also resulted in a sharp drop in advertising rate for the twelfth season, and the show lost its leading position as the costliest show for advertisers. By 2014, ad revenue from had fallen to $427 million where a 30-second spot went for less than $300,000. For the relaunched \"Idol\" on ABC, it has been reported that a 30-second spot may cost between $120,000 and $160,000.\nMedia sponsorship.\nFord Motor Company and Coca-Cola were two of the first sponsors of \"American Idol\" in its first season. The sponsorship deal cost around $10\u00a0million in the first season, rising to $35\u00a0million by the seventh season, and between $50 and $60 million in the tenth season. The third major sponsor AT&T Wireless joined in the second season but ended after the twelfth season, and Coca-Cola officially ended its sponsorship after the thirteenth season amidst the declining ratings of \"Idol\" in the mid-2010s. iTunes sponsored the show since the seventh season.\n\"American Idol\" prominent display of its sponsors' logo and products had been noted since the early seasons. By the sixth season, \"Idol\" showed 4,349 product placements according to Nielsen Media Research. The branded entertainment integration proved beneficial to its advertisers \u2013 promotion of AT&T text-messaging as a means to vote successfully introduced the technology into the wider culture, and Coca-Cola has seen its equity increased during the show.\nCoca-Cola's archrival PepsiCo declined to sponsor \"American Idol\" at the show's start. What the \"Los Angeles Times\" later called \"missing one of the biggest marketing opportunities in a generation\" contributed to Pepsi losing market share, by 2010 falling to third place from second in the United States. PepsiCo sponsored the American version of Cowell's \"The X Factor\" in hopes of not repeating its \"Idol\" mistake until its cancellation.\nFor the revived series on ABC, Macy's and Johnson & Johnson's Zyrtec signed on as the major sponsors of the show.\nAmerican Idol tour.\nThe top ten (eleven in the tenth season, five in the fourteenth season, and seven in the sixteenth season) toured at the end of every season except for the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons. In the twelfth season tour a semi-finalist who won a sing-off was also added to the tour. Kellogg's Pop-Tarts was the sponsor for the first seven seasons, and Guitar Hero was added for the seventh season tour. M&M's Pretzel Chocolate Candies was a sponsor of the ninth season tour. The fifth season tour was the most successful tour with gross of over $35\u00a0million. However no concert tour was organized in the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons, the only seasons not to have an associated tour. The sixteenth season tour featured the band In Real Life as an opener on select dates.\n\"Idol Gives Back\".\n\"Idol Gives Back\" was a special charity event started in season six featuring performances by celebrities and various fund-raising initiatives. This event was also held in seasons seven and nine and has raised nearly $185\u00a0million in total.\nMusic releases.\n\"American Idol\" has traditionally released studio recordings of contestants' performances as well as the winner's coronation single for sale. For the first five seasons, the recordings were released as a compilation album at the end of the season. All five of these albums reached the top ten in Billboard 200 which made \"American Idol\" the most successful soundtrack franchise of any motion picture or television program. Starting late in the fifth season, individual performances were released during the season as digital downloads, initially from the \"American Idol\" official website only. In the seventh season the live performances and studio recordings were made available during the season from iTunes when it joined as a sponsor. In the tenth season the weekly studio recordings were also released as compilation digital album straight after performance night.\n19 Recordings, a recording label owned by 19 Entertainment, currently hold the rights to phonographic material recorded by all the contestants. 19 Recordings originally partnered with Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) to promote and distribute the recordings through its labels RCA Records, Arista Records, J Records, and Jive Records. From 2005\u20132007, BMG partnered with Sony Music Entertainment to form a joint venture known as Sony BMG Music Entertainment. From 2008 to 2010, following their acquisition of BMG, Sony Music handled the distribution of \"American Idol\"'s music. In 2010, UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records replaced Sony as the music label for \"American Idol\".\nTie-ins.\n\"American Idol\" video games\nTheme park attraction.\nOn February 14, 2009, The Walt Disney Company debuted \"The American Idol Experience\" at its Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. In this live production, co-produced by 19 Entertainment, park guests chose from a list of songs and auditioned privately for Disney cast members. Those selected then performed on a stage in a 1000-seat theater replicating the \"Idol\" set. Three judges, whose mannerisms and style mimicked those of the real \"Idol\" judges, critiqued the performances. Audience members then voted for their favorite performer. There were several preliminary-round shows during the day that culminated in a \"finals\" show in the evening where one of the winners of the previous rounds that day was selected as the overall winner. The winner of the finals show received a \"Dream Ticket\" that granted them front-of-the-line privileges at any future \"American Idol\" audition. The attraction closed on August 30, 2014.\nOther broadcasts.\n\"American Idol\" is broadcast to over 100 nations worldwide. In most nations these are not live broadcasts and may be tape delayed by several days or weeks, except for other season finales that are aired live in several countries simulcast with the U.S. broadcast on Fox (2002\u20132016) and ABC (since 2018). In Canada, the first thirteen seasons of American Idol were aired live countrywide by CTV and/or CTV Two, in simulcast with Fox. CTV dropped \"Idol\" after its thirteenth season and in August 2014, Yes TV announced that it had picked up Canadian rights to \"American Idol\" beginning in its 2015 season. In 2017, it was announced the show would return to CTV Two for its sixteenth season. Since season nineteen, the show started airing on Citytv. In Slovakia, American Idol was broadcast on Jednotka.\nIn Latin America, the show is broadcast and subtitled by Sony Entertainment Television. In Southeast Asia, it is broadcast by Sony Channel every Monday and Tuesday nine or ten hours after since its revival. In Philippines, it is aired every Thursday and Friday nine or ten hours after its United States telecast; from 2004 to 2007 on ABC; 2008\u201311 on QTV, then GMA News TV; 2012\u201316, 2018\u201319 on ETC; and since 2024 on TV5. In Indonesia, it was aired on RCTI in the 2002 to 2003 season with the Indonesian subtitles, before Indonesian Idol was held in the 2004, aired after each episode ended, and in the 2011 to 2013 season it was broadcast by B-Channel (now RTV). In Australia, it aired a few hours after the U.S. telecast. It was aired on Network Ten from 2002 to 2008 and then again in 2013. Between 2008 and 2012 it aired on Fox8 and the thirteenth and fourteenth seasons (2014\u201315) it aired on digital channel, Eleven, a sister channel to Network Ten. Its final season (2016) aired on Fox8 hours after the original U.S. broadcast. The show enjoyed a lot of popularity in Australia throughout the 2000s before declining in the ratings. In the United Kingdom, episodes were aired one day after the U.S. broadcast on digital channel ITV2. In the twelfth season, the episodes aired on 5*. It was also aired in Ireland on TV3 two days after the telecast. In Brazil and Israel, the show airs two days after its original broadcast, and broadcast live during the season finale. In the instances where the airing is delayed, the shows may sometimes be combined into one episode to summarize the results. In Italy, the twelfth season was broadcast by La3. In Singapore, The show was broadcast on Mediacorp Channel 5 for the ninth and tenth seasons.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21650": "North Carolina\nU.S. state\nNorth Carolina ( ) is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia to the southwest, and Tennessee to the west. The state is the 28th-largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. Along with South Carolina, it makes up the Carolinas region of the East Coast. At the 2020 census, the state had a population of 10,439,388. Raleigh is the state's capital and Charlotte is its most populous city. The Charlotte metropolitan area, with an estimated population of 2,805,115 in 2023, is the most populous metropolitan area in North Carolina, the 22nd-most populous in the United States, and the largest banking center in the nation after New York City. The Research Triangle, with an estimated population of 2,368,947 in 2023, is the second-most populous combined metropolitan area in the state, 31st-most populous in the United States, and is home to the largest research park in the United States, Research Triangle Park.\nThe earliest evidence of human occupation in North Carolina dates back 10,000 years, found at the Hardaway Site. North Carolina was inhabited by Carolina Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Siouan speaking tribes of Native Americans prior to the arrival of Europeans. King Charles II granted eight lord proprietors a colony they named Carolina after the king and which was established in 1670 with the first permanent settlement at Charles Town (Charleston). Because of the difficulty of governing the entire colony from Charles Town, the colony was eventually divided and North Carolina was established as a royal colony in 1729 and was one of the Thirteen Colonies. The Halifax Resolves resolution adopted by North Carolina on April 12, 1776, was the first formal call for independence from Great Britain among the American Colonies during the American Revolution.\nOn November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the United States Constitution. In the run-up to the American Civil War, North Carolina reluctantly declared its secession from the Union on May 20, 1861, becoming the tenth of eleven states to join the Confederate States of America. Following the Civil War, the state was restored to the Union on July 4, 1868. On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully piloted the world's first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina's Outer Banks. North Carolina often uses the slogan \"First in Flight\" on state license plates to commemorate this achievement, alongside a newer alternative design bearing the slogan \"First in Freedom\" in reference to the Mecklenburg Declaration and Halifax Resolves.\nNorth Carolina is defined by a wide range of elevations and landscapes. From west to east, North Carolina's elevation descends from the Appalachian Mountains to the Piedmont and Atlantic coastal plain. North Carolina's Mount Mitchell at is the highest point in North America east of the Mississippi River. Most of the state falls in the humid subtropical climate zone; however, the western, mountainous part of the state has a subtropical highland climate.\nHistory.\nNative Americans, lost colony, and permanent settlement.\nNorth Carolina was inhabited for at least 10,000 years by succeeding prehistoric Indigenous cultures. The Hardaway Site saw major periods of occupation dating to 10,000 years BCE. Before 200 AD, people were building earthwork platform mounds for ceremonial and religious purposes. Succeeding peoples, including those of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture, established by 1000 AD in the Piedmont and mountain region, continued to build this style of mounds. In contrast to some of the larger centers of the classic Mississippian culture in the area that became known as the western Carolinas, northeastern Georgia, and southeastern Tennessee, most of the larger towns had only one central platform mound. Smaller settlements had none, but were close to more prominent towns. This area became known as the homelands of the historic Cherokee people, who are believed to have migrated over time from the Great Lakes area.\nIn the 500\u2013700 years preceding European contact, the Mississippian culture built elaborate cities and maintained far-flung regional trading networks. Its largest city was Cahokia, which had numerous mounds for different purposes, a highly stratified society, and was located in present-day southwestern Illinois near the Mississippi River. Starting in 1540, the Native polities of the Mississippian culture fell apart and reformed as new groups, such as the Catawba, due to a series of destabilizing events known as the \"Mississippian shatter zone\". Introduction of colonial trading arrangements and hostile native groups from the north such as the Westo Indians hastened changes in an already tenuous regional hierarchy. As described by anthropologist Robbie Ethridge, the Mississippian shatter zone was a time of great instability in what is now the American South, caused by the instability of Mississippian chiefdoms, high mortality from new Eurasian diseases, conversion to an agricultural society and the accompanying population increase, and the emergence of Native \"militaristic slaving societies\".\nHistorically documented tribes in the North Carolina region include the Carolina Algonquian-speaking tribes of the coastal areas, such as the Chowanoc, Roanoke, Pamlico, Machapunga, and Coree, who were the first encountered by the English; the Iroquoian-speaking Meherrin, Cherokee, and Tuscarora of the interior; and Southeastern Siouan-speaking tribes, such as the Cheraw, Waxhaw, Saponi, Waccamaw, Cape Fear Indians, and Catawba of the Piedmont.\nIn the late 16th century, the first Spanish explorers traveling inland recorded meeting Mississippian culture people at Joara, a regional chiefdom near what later developed as Morganton. Records of Hernando de Soto attested to his meeting with them in 1540. In 1567, Captain Juan Pardo led an expedition to claim the area for the Spanish colony and to establish another route to reach silver mines in Mexico. Pardo made a winter base at Joara, which he renamed \"Cuenca\". His expedition built Fort San Juan and left a contingent of 30 Spaniards there, while Pardo traveled further. His forces built and garrisoned five other forts. He returned by a different route to Santa Elena on Parris Island, South Carolina, then a center of Spanish Florida. In the spring of 1568, natives killed all but seventy four of the Spaniards and burned the six forts in the interior, including Fort San Juan. Although the Spanish never returned to the interior, this effort marked the first European attempt at colonization of the interior of what became the United States. A 16th-century journal by Pardo's scribe Bandera, and archaeological findings since 1986 at Joara, have confirmed the settlement.\nAnglo-European settlement.\nIn 1584, Elizabeth I granted a charter to Sir Walter Raleigh, for whom the state capital is named, for land in present-day North Carolina (then part of the territory of Virginia). It was the second American territory that the English attempted to colonize. Raleigh established two colonies on the coast in the late 1580s, but both failed. The colony established in 1587 saw 118 colonists 'disappear' when John White was unable to return from a supply run during battles with the Spanish Armada. The fate of the \"Lost Colony\" of Roanoke Island remains one of the most widely debated mysteries of American history. Two native Chieftains, Manteo and Wanchese, of which the former helped the colonists and the latter was distrustful, had involvement in the colony and even accompanied Raleigh to England on a previous voyage in 1585. Manteo was also the first Indigenous North American to be baptized by English settlers. Upon White's return in 1590, neither native nor Englishman were to be found. Popular theory holds that the colonists either traveled away with or assimilated into local native culture. Virginia Dare, the first English person to be born in North America, was born on Roanoke Island on August 18, 1587; the surrounding Dare County is named for her.\nAs early as 1650, settlers from the Virginia colony had moved into the Albemarle Sound region. By 1663, King Charles\u00a0II of England granted a charter to start a new colony on the North American continent; this would generally establish North Carolina's borders. He named it \"Carolina\" in honor of his father, CharlesI. By 1665, a second charter was issued to attempt to resolve territorial questions. This charter rewarded the Lords Proprietors, eight Englishmen to whom King Charles II granted joint ownership of a tract of land in the state. All of these men either had remained loyal to the Crown or aided Charles's restoration to the English throne after Cromwell. In 1712, owing to disputes over governance, the Carolina colony split into North Carolina and South Carolina. North Carolina became a crown colony in 1729.\nMost of the English colonists had arrived as indentured servants, hiring themselves out as laborers for a fixed period to pay for their passage. In the early years the line between indentured servants and African slaves or laborers was fluid. Some Africans were allowed to earn their freedom before slavery became a lifelong status. Most of the free colored families formed in North Carolina before the Revolution were descended from unions or marriages between free whites and enslaved or free Africans or African-Americans. If the mothers were free, their children were born free. Many had migrated or were descendants of migrants from colonial Virginia. As the flow of indentured laborers to the colony decreased with improving economic conditions in Great Britain, planters imported more slaves, and the state's legal delineations between free and slave status tightened, effectively hardening the latter into a racial caste. Conditions for both slaves and workers worsened as the ranks of the former eclipsed the latter and expansion of farming operations into former Indigenous territories lowered prices. Unable to establish deep water ports such as at Charles Town and Norfolk, the economy's growth and prosperity was thus based on cheap labor and slave plantation systems, devoted primarily to the production of tobacco, then later cotton and textiles.\nIn 1738\u20131739, smallpox caused high fatalities among the Native Americans, who had no immunity to the new disease (it had become endemic over centuries in Europe). According to the historian Russell Thornton, \"The 1738 epidemic was said to have killed one-half of the Cherokee, with other tribes of the area suffering equally.\"\nColonial period.\nAfter the Spanish in the 16th century, the first permanent European settlers of North Carolina were English colonists who migrated south from Virginia. Virginia had grown rapidly and land was less available. Nathaniel Batts was documented as one of the first of these Virginian migrants. He settled south of the Chowan River and east of the Great Dismal Swamp in 1655. By 1663, this northeastern area of the Province of Carolina, known as the Albemarle Settlements, was undergoing full-scale English settlement. During the same period, the English monarch CharlesII gave provincial land grants to the Lords Proprietors, the group of noblemen who had helped restore him to the throne in 1660. These grants were predicated on an agreement that the Lords would use their influence to bring in colonists and establish ports of trade. This new Province of Carolina was named in honor and memory of his father, CharlesI (Latin: \"Carolus\").\nLacking a viable coastal port city due to geography, towns grew at a slower pace and remained small. By the late 17th century, Carolina was essentially two colonies, one centered in the Albemarle region in the north and the other located in the south around Charleston. In 1705 South Carolinian John Lawson purchased land on the Pamlico River and laid out Bath, North Carolina's first town. After returning to England, he published the book A New Voyage to Carolina, which became a travelogue and a marketing piece to encourage new colonists to Carolina. Lawson encouraged Baron Christoph Von Graffenried, the leader of a group of Swiss and German Protestants, to immigrate to Carolina. Von Graffenried purchased land between the Neuse and the Trent Rivers and established the town of New Bern. After an attack on New Bern in which hundreds were killed or injured, Lawson was caught then executed by Tuscarora Indians. A large revolt happened in the state in 1711, known as Cary's Rebellion. In 1712, North Carolina became a separate colony, and in 1729 it became a royal colony, with the exception of the Earl Granville holdings.\nIn June 1718, \"Queen Anne's Revenge\", the flagship of pirate Blackbeard, ran aground at Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina, in present-day Carteret County. After the grounding, her crew and supplies were transferred to smaller ships. In November 1718, after appealing to the governor of North Carolina, who promised safe-haven and a pardon, Blackbeard was killed in an ambush by troops from Virginia. In 1996, Intersal, Inc., a private maritime research firm, discovered the remains of a vessel likely to be the \"Queen Anne's Revenge\", which was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.\nNorth Carolina became one of the Thirteen Colonies and with the territory of South Carolina was originally known as the Province of North Carolina. The northern and southern parts of the original province separated in 1712, with North Carolina becoming a royal colony in 1729. Originally settled by small farmers, sometimes having a few slaves, who were oriented toward subsistence agriculture, the colony lacked large cities or towns. Pirates menaced the coastal settlements, but by 1718 piracy in the Carolinas was on the decline. Growth was strong in the middle of the 18th century, as the economy attracted Scots-Irish, Quaker, English and German immigrants. A majority of the North Carolina colonists generally supported the American Revolution, although there were some Loyalists. Loyalists in North Carolina were fewer in number than in some other colonies such as Georgia, South Carolina, Delaware, and New York.\nDuring colonial times, Edenton served as the state capital beginning in 1722, followed by New Bern becoming the capital in 1766. Construction of Tryon Palace, which served as the residence and offices of the provincial governor William Tryon, began in 1767 and was completed in 1771. In 1788, Raleigh was chosen as the site of the new capital, as its central location protected it from coastal attacks. Officially established in 1792 as both county seat and state capital, the city was named after Sir Walter Raleigh, sponsor of Roanoke, the \"lost colony\" on Roanoke Island. The population of the colony more than quadrupled from 52,000 in 1740 to 270,000 in 1780 from high immigration from Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, plus immigrants from abroad.\nNorth Carolina did not have any printer or print shops until 1749, when the North Carolina Assembly commissioned James Davis from Williamsburg Virginia to act as their official printer. Before this time the laws and legal journals of North Carolina were handwritten and were kept in a largely disorganized manner, prompting the hiring of Davis. Davis settled in New Bern, married, and in 1755 was appointed by Benjamin Franklin as North Carolina's first postmaster. In October of that year the North Carolina Assembly awarded Davis a contract to carry mail between Wilmington, North Carolina and Suffolk, Virginia. He was also active in North Carolina politics as a member of the Assembly and later as the Sheriff. Davis also founded and printed the \"North-Carolina Gazette\", North Carolina's first newspaper, printed in his printing house in New Bern.\nDifferences in the settlement patterns of eastern and western North Carolina, or the Atlantic coastal plain and uplands, affected the political, economic, and social life of the state from the 18th until the 20th century. Eastern North Carolina was settled chiefly by immigrants from rural England and Gaelic speakers from the Scottish Highlands. The Piedmont upcountry and western mountain region of North Carolina was settled chiefly by Scots-Irish, English, and German Protestants, the so-called \"cohee\". Arriving during the mid-to-late 18th century, the Scots-Irish, people of Scottish descent who migrated to and then emigrated from what is today Northern Ireland, were the largest non-English immigrant group before the Revolution; English indentured servants were overwhelmingly the largest immigrant group before the Revolution.\nRevolutionary War.\nDuring the American Revolutionary War, the English and Gaelic speaking Highland Scots of eastern North Carolina tended to remain loyal to the British Crown, because of longstanding business and personal connections with Great Britain. The English, Welsh, Scots-Irish, and German settlers of western North Carolina tended to favor American independence from Britain. British loyalists dubbed the Mecklenburg County area to be 'a hornet's nest' of radicals, birthing the name of the future Charlotte NBA team. On April 12, 1776, the colony became the first to instruct its delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence from the British Crown, through the Halifax Resolves passed by the North Carolina Provincial Congress. The date of this event is memorialized on the state flag and state seal. Throughout the Revolutionary War, fierce guerrilla warfare erupted between bands of pro-independence and pro-British colonists. In some cases the war was also an excuse to settle private grudges and rivalries.\nNorth Carolina had around 7,800 Patriots join the Continental Army under General George Washington; and an additional 10,000 served in local militia units under such leaders as General Nathanael Greene. There was some military action, especially in 1780\u201381. Many Carolinian frontiersmen had moved west over the mountains, into the Washington District (later known as Tennessee), but in 1789, following the Revolution, the state was persuaded to relinquish its claim to the western lands. It ceded them to the national government so the Northwest Territory could be organized and managed nationally.\nA major American victory in the war took place at King's Mountain along the North Carolina\u2013South Carolina border; on October 7, 1780, a force of 1,000 Patriots from western North Carolina (including what is today the state of Tennessee) and southwest Virginia overwhelmed a force of some 1,000 British troops led by Major Patrick Ferguson. Most of the soldiers fighting for the British side in this battle were Carolinians who had remained loyal to the Crown (they were called \"Tories\" or Loyalists). The American victory at King's Mountain gave the advantage to colonists who favored American independence, and it prevented the British Army from recruiting new soldiers from the Tories.\nThe road to Yorktown and America's independence from Great Britain led through North Carolina. As the British Army moved north from victories in Charleston and Camden, South Carolina, the Southern Division of the Continental Army and local militia prepared to meet them. Following General Daniel Morgan's victory over the British Cavalry Commander Banastre Tarleton at the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781, southern commander Nathanael Greene led British Lord Charles Cornwallis across the heartland of North Carolina, and away from the latter's base of supply in Charleston, South Carolina. This campaign is known as \"The Race to the Dan\" or \"The Race for the River\".\nIn the Battle of Cowan's Ford, Cornwallis met resistance along the banks of the Catawba River at Cowan's Ford on February 1, 1781, in an attempt to engage General Morgan's forces during a tactical withdrawal. Morgan had moved to the northern part of the state to combine with General Greene's newly recruited forces. Generals Greene and Cornwallis finally met at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in present-day Greensboro on March 15, 1781. Although the British troops held the field at the end of the battle, their casualties at the hands of the numerically superior Continental Army were crippling. Following this \"Pyrrhic victory\", Cornwallis chose to move to the Virginia coastline to get reinforcements, and to allow the Royal Navy to protect his battered army. This decision would result in Cornwallis' eventual defeat at Yorktown, Virginia, later in 1781. The Patriots' victory there guaranteed American independence. On November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the twelfth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.\nAntebellum period.\nAfter 1800, cotton and tobacco became important export crops. The eastern half of the state, especially the Coastal Plain region, developed a slave society based on a plantation system and slave labor. Planters owning large estates wielded significant political and socio-economic power in antebellum North Carolina. They placed their interests above those of the generally non-slave-holding yeoman farmers of North Carolina. While slaveholding was slightly less concentrated compared to some other Southern states, according to the 1860 census, more than 330,000 people, or 33% of the population out of 992,622 people in total, were enslaved African Americans. They lived and worked chiefly on plantations in the Piedmont and Coastal Plain regions of the state. In addition, 30,463 free people of color lived in the state. They were also mainly concentrated in the eastern coastal plain, especially at port cities such as Wilmington and New Bern, where a variety of jobs were available. Most were descendants from free African Americans who had migrated along with neighbors from Virginia during the 18th century. The majority were the descendants of unions in the working classes between white women, indentured servants or free, and African men, indentured, slave or free.\nAfter the American Revolution, Quakers and Mennonites worked to persuade slaveholders to free their slaves. Some were inspired by their efforts and the language of the Revolution to arrange for manumission of their slaves. The number of free people of color rose markedly in the first couple of decades after the Revolution. Many free people of color migrated to the frontier, along with their European-American neighbors, where the social system was looser. By 1810, nearly three percent of the free population consisted of free people of color, who numbered slightly more than 10,000. The western areas of North Carolina were mainly white families of European descent, especially Scotch-Irish, who operated small subsistence farms. In the early national period, the state became a center of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy, with a strong Whig presence, especially in the western part of the state. After Nat Turner's slave uprising in 1831, North Carolina and other southern states reduced the rights of free blacks. In 1835, the legislature withdrew their right to vote.\nIn mid-century, the state's rural and commercial areas were connected by the construction of a wooden plank road, known as a \"farmer's railroad\", from Fayetteville in the east to Bethania (northwest of Winston-Salem). On October 25, 1836, construction began on the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad to connect the port city of Wilmington with the state capital of Raleigh. In 1840, the state capitol building in Raleigh was completed, and still stands today.\nIn 1849, the North Carolina Railroad was created by act of the legislature to extend that railroad west to Greensboro, High Point, and Charlotte. During the Civil War, the Wilmington-to-Raleigh stretch of the railroad was vital to the Confederate war effort; supplies shipped into Wilmington were moved by rail through Raleigh to the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.\nAmerican Civil War.\nIn 1860, North Carolina was a slave state, in which one-third of the state's total population were African-American slaves. The state did not vote to join the Confederacy until President Abraham Lincoln called on it to invade its sister state, South Carolina, becoming the last or penultimate state to officially join the Confederacy. The title of \"last to join the Confederacy\" has been disputed; although Tennessee's informal secession on May 7, 1861, preceded North Carolina's official secession on May 20, the Tennessee legislature did not formally vote to secede until June 8, 1861.\nAround 125,000 troops from North Carolina served in the Confederate Army, and about 15,000 North Carolina troops (both black and white) served in Union Army regiments, including those who left the state to join Union regiments elsewhere. Over 30,000 North Carolina troops died from combat or disease during the war. Elected in 1862, Governor Zebulon Baird Vance tried to maintain state autonomy against Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Richmond. The state government was reluctant to support the demands of the national government in Richmond, and the state was the scene of only small battles. In 1865, Durham County saw the largest single surrender of Confederate soldiers at Bennett Place, when Joseph E. Johnston surrendered the Army of Tennessee and all remaining Confederate forces still active in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, totalling 89,270 soldiers.\nConfederate troops from all parts of North Carolina served in virtually all the major battles of the Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederacy's most famous army. The largest battle fought in North Carolina was at Bentonville, which was a futile attempt by Confederate General Joseph Johnston to slow Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's advance through the Carolinas in the spring of 1865. In April 1865, after losing the Battle of Morrisville, Johnston surrendered to Sherman at Bennett Place, in what is today Durham. North Carolina's port city of Wilmington, was the last Confederate port to fall to the Union, in February 1865, after the Union won the nearby Second Battle of Fort Fisher, its major defense downriver.\nThe first Confederate soldier to be killed in the Civil War was Private Henry Wyatt from North Carolina, in the Battle of Big Bethel in June 1861. At the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, the 26th North Carolina Regiment participated in Pickett/Pettigrew's Charge and advanced the farthest into Union lines of any Confederate regiment. During the Battle of Chickamauga, the 58th North Carolina Regiment advanced farther than any other regiment on Snodgrass Hill to push back the remaining Union forces from the battlefield. At Appomattox Court House in Virginia in April 1865, the 75th North Carolina Regiment, a cavalry unit, fired the last shots of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the Civil War. The phrase \"First at Bethel, Farthest at Gettysburg and Chickamauga, and Last at Appomattox\", later became used through much of the early 20th century.\nAfter secession, some North Carolinians refused to support the Confederacy. Some of the yeoman farmers chiefly in the state's mountains and western Piedmont region remained neutral during the Civil War, with others covertly supporting the Union cause during the conflict. Approximately 15,000 North Carolinians (both black and white) from across the state enlisted in the Union Army. Numerous slaves also escaped to Union lines, where they became essentially free.\nReconstruction era through late 19th century.\nFollowing the collapse of the Confederacy in 1865, North Carolina, along with other former Confederate States (except Tennessee), was put under direct control by the U.S. military and was relieved of its constitutional government and representation within the United States Congress in what is now referred to as the Reconstruction era. To earn back its rights, the state had to make concessions to Washington, one of which was ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment. Congressional Republicans during Reconstruction, commonly referred to as \"radical Republicans\", constantly pushed for new constitutions for each of the Southern states that emphasized equal rights for African-Americans. In 1868, a constitutional convention restored the state government of North Carolina. Though the Fifteenth Amendment was also adopted that same year, it remained in most cases ineffective for almost a century, not to mention paramilitary groups and their lynching with impunity.\nThe elections in April 1868 following the constitutional convention led to a narrow victory for a Republican-dominated government, with 19 African-Americans holding positions in the North Carolina State Legislature. In attempt to put the reforms into effect, the new Republican Governor William W. Holden declared martial law on any county allegedly not complying with law and order using the passage of the Shoffner Act.\nA Republican Party coalition of black freedmen, northern carpetbaggers and local scalawags controlled state government for three years. The white conservative Democrats regained control of the state legislature in 1870, in part by Ku Klux Klan violence and terrorism at the polls, to suppress black voting. Republicans were elected to the governorship until 1876, when the Red Shirts, a paramilitary organization that arose in 1874 and was allied with the Democratic Party, helped suppress black voting. More than 150 black Americans were murdered in electoral violence in 1876.\nPost\u2013Civil War-debt cycles pushed people to switch from subsistence agriculture to commodity agriculture. Among this time the notorious Crop-Lien system developed and was financially difficult on landless whites and blacks, due to high amounts of usury. Also due to the push for commodity agriculture, the free range was ended. Prior to this time people fenced in their crops and had their livestock feeding on the free range areas. After the ending of the free range people now fenced their animals and had their crops in the open.\nDemocrats were elected to the legislature and governor's office, but the Populists attracted voters displeased with them. In 1896 a biracial, Populist-Republican Fusionist coalition gained the governor's office and passed laws that would extend the voting franchise to blacks and poor whites. The Democrats regained control of the legislature in 1896 and passed laws to impose Jim Crow and racial segregation of public facilities. Voters of North Carolina's 2nd congressional district elected a total of four African-American congressmen through these years of the late 19th century.\nPolitical tensions ran so high a small group of white Democrats in 1898 planned to take over the Wilmington government if their candidates were not elected. In the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, white Democrats led around 2,000 of their supporters that attacked the black newspaper and neighborhood, killed an estimated 60 to 300 people, and ran off the white Republican mayor and aldermen. They installed their own people and elected Alfred M. Waddell as mayor, in the only successful coup d'\u00e9tat in United States history.\nIn 1899, the state legislature passed a new constitution, with requirements for poll taxes and literacy tests for voter registration which disenfranchised most black Americans in the state. Exclusion from voting had wide effects: it meant black Americans could not serve on juries or in any local office. After a decade of white supremacy, many people forgot North Carolina had ever had thriving middle-class black Americans. Black citizens had no political voice in the state until after the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed to enforce their constitutional rights. It was not until 1992 that another African American was elected as a U.S. Representative from North Carolina.\nEarly through mid-20th century.\nAfter the reconstruction era, North Carolina had become a one-party state, dominated by the Democratic Party. The state mainly continued with an economy based on tobacco, cotton textiles and commodity agriculture. Large towns and cities remained in few numbers. However, a major industrial base emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century, in the counties of the Piedmont Triad, based on cotton mills established at the fall line. Railroads were built to connect the new industrializing cities.\nThe state was the site of the first successful controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air flight, by the Wright brothers, near Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903.\nIn the first half of the 20th century, many African Americans left the state to go North for better opportunities, in the Great Migration. Their departure changed the demographic characteristics of many areas.\nNorth Carolina was hard hit by the Great Depression, but the New Deal programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt for cotton and tobacco significantly helped the farmers. After World War\u00a0II, the state's economy grew rapidly, highlighted by the growth of such cities as Charlotte, Raleigh, and Durham in the Piedmont region.\nResearch Triangle Park, established in 1959, serves as the largest research park in the United States. Formed near Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, the Research Triangle metro is a major area of universities and advanced scientific and technical research.\nThe Greensboro sit-ins in 1960 played a crucial role in the Civil Rights Movement to bring full equality to American blacks. By the late 1960s, spurred in part by the increasingly leftward tilt of national Democrats, conservative whites began to vote for Republican national candidates and gradually for more Republicans locally.\nLate 20th century to present.\nSince the 1970s, North Carolina has seen steady increases in population growth. This growth has largely occurred in metropolitan areas located within the Piedmont Crescent, in places such as Charlotte, Concord, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Durham and Raleigh. The Charlotte metropolitan area has experienced large growth mainly due to its finance, banking, and tech industries.\nBy the 1990s, Charlotte had become a major regional and national banking center. Towards Raleigh, North Carolina State, Duke University, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, have helped the Research Triangle area attract an educated workforce and develop more jobs.\nIn 1988, North Carolina gained its first professional sports franchise, the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The hornets team name stems from the American Revolutionary War, when British General Cornwallis described Charlotte as a \"hornet's nest of rebellion\". The Carolina Panthers of the National Football League (NFL) became based in Charlotte as well, with their first season being in 1995. The Carolina Hurricanes of the National Hockey League (NHL) moved to Raleigh in 1997, with their colors being the same as the NC State Wolfpack, who are also located in Raleigh.\nBy the late 20th century and into the early 21st century, economic industries such as technology, pharmaceuticals, banking, food processing, vehicle parts, and tourism started to emerge as North Carolina's main economic drivers. This marked a shift from the state's former main industries of tobacco, textiles, and furniture. Factors that played a role in this shift were globalization, the state's higher education system, national banking, the transformation of agriculture, and new companies moving to the state.\nGeography.\nNorth Carolina is bordered by South Carolina on the south, Georgia on the southwest, Tennessee on the west, Virginia on the north, and the Atlantic Ocean on the east. The United States Census Bureau places North Carolina in the South Atlantic division of the southern region. It has a total area of , of which is land and (9.66%) is water.\nNorth Carolina consists of three main geographic regions: the Atlantic coastal plain, occupying the eastern portion of the state; the central Piedmont region, and the mountain region in the west, which is part of the Appalachian Mountains. The coastal plain consists of more specifically defined areas known as the Outer Banks, a string of sandy, narrow barrier islands separated from the mainland by sounds or inlets, including Albemarle Sound and Pamlico Sound, the native home of the venus flytrap, and the inner coastal plain, where longleaf pine trees are native.\nSo many ships have been lost off Cape Hatteras that the area is known as the \"Graveyard of the Atlantic\"; more than a thousand ships have sunk in these waters since records began in 1526. The most famous of these is the \"Queen Anne's Revenge\" (flagship of the pirate Blackbeard), which went aground in Beaufort Inlet in 1718.\nThe coastal plain transitions to the Piedmont region along the Atlantic Seaboard fall line, the elevation at which waterfalls first appear on streams and rivers. The Piedmont region of central North Carolina is the state's most populous region, containing the six largest cities in the state by population. It consists of gently rolling countryside frequently broken by hills or low mountain ridges. Small, isolated, and deeply eroded mountain ranges and peaks are located in the Piedmont, including the Sauratown Mountains, Pilot Mountain, the Uwharrie Mountains, Crowder's Mountain, King's Pinnacle, the Brushy Mountains, and the South Mountains. The Piedmont ranges from about in elevation in the east to about in the west.\nThe western section of the state is part of the Blue Ridge Mountains of the larger Appalachian Mountain range. Among the subranges of the Blue Ridge Mountains located in the state are the Great Smoky Mountains and the Black Mountains. The Black Mountains are the highest in the eastern United States, and culminate in Mount Mitchell at , the highest point east of the Mississippi River.\nNorth Carolina has 17 major river basins. The five basins west of the Blue Ridge Mountains flow to the Gulf of Mexico, while the remainder flow to the Atlantic Ocean. Of the 17 basins, 11 originate within the state of North Carolina, but only four are contained entirely within the state's border\u2014the Cape Fear, the Neuse, the White Oak, and the Tar\u2013Pamlico basin.\nClimate.\nElevation above sea level is most responsible for temperature change across the state, with the mountainous regions being coolest year-round. The climate is also influenced by the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf Stream, especially in the coastal plain. These influences tend to cause warmer winter temperatures along the coast, where temperatures only occasionally drop below the freezing point at night. The coastal plain averages around of snow or ice annually, and in many years, there may be no snow or ice at all.\nThe Atlantic Ocean exerts less influence on the climate of the Piedmont region, which has hotter summers and colder winters than along the coast, though winters are still mild.\nNorth Carolina experiences severe weather both in summer and in winter, with summer bringing threat of hurricanes, tropical storms, heavy rain, and flooding. Destructive hurricanes that have hit North Carolina include Hurricane Fran, Hurricane Florence, Hurricane Floyd, Hurricane Hugo, and Hurricane Hazel, the latter being the strongest storm ever to make landfall in the state, as a Category4 in 1954. Hurricane Isabel ranks as the most destructive of the 21st century.\nNorth Carolina averages fewer than 20 tornadoes per year, many of them produced by hurricanes or tropical storms along the coastal plain. Tornadoes from thunderstorms are a risk, especially in the eastern part of the state. The western Piedmont is often protected by the mountains, which tend to break up storms as they cross over; the storms will often re-form farther east. A phenomenon known as \"cold-air damming\" often occurs in the northwestern part of the state, which can weaken storms but can also lead to major ice events in winter.\nIn April 2011, the worst tornado outbreak in North Carolina's history occurred. Thirty confirmed tornadoes touched down, mainly in the Eastern Piedmont and Sandhills, killing at least 24 people. In September 2019 Hurricane Dorian hit the area.\nParks and recreation.\nNorth Carolina provides a large range of recreational activities, from swimming at the beach to skiing in the mountains. North Carolina offers fall colors, freshwater and saltwater fishing, hunting, birdwatching, agritourism, ATV trails, ballooning, rock climbing, biking, hiking, skiing, boating and sailing, camping, canoeing, caving (spelunking), gardens, and arboretums. North Carolina has theme parks, aquariums, museums, historic sites, lighthouses, elegant theaters, concert halls, and fine dining.\nNorth Carolinians enjoy outdoor recreation using numerous local bike paths, 34 state parks, and 14 national parks. National Park Service units include the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, the Blue Ridge Parkway, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Cape Lookout National Seashore, Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site at Flat Rock, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site at Manteo, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Great Smoky Mountains Railroad, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park in Greensboro, Moores Creek National Battlefield near Currie in Pender County, the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, Old Salem National Historic Site in Winston-Salem, the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, and Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills.\nNational Forests include Uwharrie National Forest in central North Carolina, Croatan National Forest in Eastern North Carolina, Pisgah National Forest in the western mountains, and Nantahala National Forest in the southwestern part of the state.\nMajor cities.\nIn 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau released the 2023 population estimates for municipalities in North Carolina. Charlotte has the largest population, while Raleigh has the second-largest population in North Carolina.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nMost populous counties.\nAfter the 2020 census, Wake County\u2014with a population of 1,129,410\u2014became the most populous county in the state, overtaking Mecklenburg County\u2014with a population of 1,115,482\u2014by a margin of about 14,000. Both counties are still the only to have populations over one million in North Carolina and the Carolinas region.\nStatistical areas.\nNorth Carolina has four major combined statistical areas (CSA) with a population over 1\u00a0million (as of 2023):\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nThe United States Census Bureau determined the population of North Carolina was 10,439,388 at the 2020 census. Based on numbers in 2012 of the people residing in North Carolina 58.5% were born there; 33.1% were born in another state; 1.0% were born in Puerto Rico, U.S. island areas, or born abroad to American parent(s); and 7.4% were foreign-born.\nAccording to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 9,382 homeless people in North Carolina.\nThe top countries of origin for North Carolina's immigrants were Mexico, India, Honduras, China and El Salvador, as of 2018[ [update]].\nRace and ethnicity.\nAt the 2010 census, the racial composition of North Carolina was: White: 68.5% (65.3% non-Hispanic white, 3.2% White Hispanic), Black or African American: 21.5%, Latin and Hispanic American of any race: 8.4%, some other race: 4.3%, Multiracial American: 2.2%, Asian American: 2.2%, and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander: 1%. In 2020, North Carolina like much of the U.S. experienced a decline in its non-Hispanic white population; at the 2020 census, non-Hispanic whites were 62.2%, Blacks or African Americans 20.5%, American Indian and Alaska Natives 1.2%, Asians 3.3%, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders 0.1%, people from other race 5.9%, and multiracial Americans 6.8%.\nThe majority of the Black American population is concentrated in the urban areas and northeastern part of the state.\nNorth Carolina's Hispanic population has grown rapidly. The Hispanic population more than doubled in size between 1990 and 2000. Many of North Carolina's Hispanic residents are of Mexican descent. Many of North Carolina's newer Latino residents came from Mexico largely to work in agriculture, manufacturing, or on one of North Carolina's military installations.\nThe most common ancestries in North Carolina are African-American, American, German, English, and Irish.\nNorth Carolina has the eighth-largest Native American population in the country. The state is home to eight Native American tribes and four urban Native American organizations.\nLanguages.\nNorth Carolina is home to a spectrum of different dialects of Southern American English and Appalachian English.\nIn 2010, 89.66% (7,750,904) of North Carolina residents age five and older spoke English at home as a primary language, while 6.93% (598,756) spoke Spanish, 0.32% (27,310) French, 0.27% (23,204) German, and Chinese (which includes Mandarin) was spoken as a main language by 0.27% (23,072) of the population five and older. In total, 10.34% (893,735) of North Carolina's population age five and older spoke a mother language other than English. In 2019, 87.7% of the population aged 5 and older spoke English and 12.3% spoke another language. The most common non-English language was Spanish at the 2019 American Community Survey.\nReligion.\nNorth Carolina residents since the colonial era have historically been overwhelmingly Protestant\u2014first Anglican, then Baptist and Methodist. In 2010, the Southern Baptist Convention was the single largest Christian denomination, with 4,241 churches and 1,513,000 members. The second largest in 2024 was the Roman Catholic Church which is organised into two dioceses. In the west is the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte which includes Charlotte and has 530,000 members in 196 parishes. In the east is the Diocese of Raleigh with a total of 80 parishes and nearly 500,000 Catholics. The third largest was the United Methodist Church, with 660,000 members and 1,923 churches. The fourth largest was the Presbyterian Church (USA), with 186,000 members and 710 congregations; this denomination was brought by Scots-Irish immigrants who settled the backcountry in the colonial era. In 2020, the Southern Baptists remained the largest with 1,324,747 adherents, though Methodists and others were collectively overtaken by non/interdenominational Protestants numbering 1,053,564.\nIn 1845, the Baptists split into regional associations of the Northern United States and Southern U.S., over the issue of slavery. These new associations were the Northern Baptist Convention (today the American Baptist Churches USA) and Southern Baptist Convention. By the late 19th century, the largest Protestant denomination in North Carolina were Baptists. After emancipation, black Baptists quickly set up their own independent congregations in North Carolina and other states of the South, as they wanted to be free of white supervision. Black Baptists developed their own state and national associations, such as the National Baptist Convention. Other primarily African American Baptist conventions which grew in the state since the 20th century were the Progressive National Baptist Convention and Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship.\nMethodists (the second largest group among North Carolinian Protestants) were divided along racial lines in the United Methodist Church and African Methodist Episcopal Church. The Methodist tradition tends to be strong in the northern Piedmont, especially in populous Guilford County. Other prominent Protestant groups in North Carolina as of the Pew Research Center's 2014 study were non/interdenominational Protestants and Pentecostalism. The Assemblies of God and Church of God in Christ are the largest Pentecostal denominations operating in the state, while notable minorities include Oneness Pentecostals primarily affiliated with the United Pentecostal Church International.\nThe state also has a special history with the Moravian Church, as settlers of this faith (largely of German origin) settled in the Winston-Salem area in the 18th and 19th centuries. Historically Scots-Irish have had a strong presence in Charlotte and in Scotland County.\nA wide variety of non-Christian faiths are practiced by other residents in the state, including: Judaism, Islam, Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed, Buddhism, and Hinduism. The rapid influx of Northerners and immigrants from Latin America is steadily increasing ethnic and religious diversity within the state. The number of Roman Catholics and Jews in the state has increased, along with general religious diversity as a whole. There are also a substantial number of Quakers in Guilford County and northeastern North Carolina. Many universities and colleges in the state have been founded on religious traditions, and some currently maintain that affiliation, including:\nThe state also has several major seminaries, including the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, and the Hood Theological Seminary (AME Zion) in Salisbury.\nEconomy.\nNorth Carolina's 2018 total gross state product was $496 billion. Based on American Community Survey 2010\u20132014 data, North Carolina's median household income was $46,693. It ranked forty-first out of fifty states plus the District of Columbia for median household income. North Carolina had the fourteenth highest poverty rate in the nation at 17.6%, with 13% of families that were below the poverty line.\nThe state has a very diverse economy because of its great availability of hydroelectric power, its pleasant climate, and its wide variety of soils. The state ranks third among the South Atlantic states in population, but leads the region in industry and agriculture. North Carolina leads the nation in the production of tobacco.\nCharlotte, the state's largest city, is a major textile and trade center. According to a Forbes article written in 2013, employment in the \"Old North State\" has gained many different industry sectors. Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) industries in the area surrounding North Carolina's capital have grown 17.9 percent since 2001. Raleigh ranked the third best city for technology in 2020 due to the state's growing technology sector. In 2010, North Carolina's total gross state product was $424.9 billion, while the state debt in November 2012, according to one source, totaled $2.4 billion, while according to another, was in 2012 $57.8 billion. In 2011, the civilian labor force was at around 4.5 million with employment near 4.1 million.\nNorth Carolina is the leading U.S. state in production of flue-cured tobacco and sweet potatoes, and comes second in the farming of pigs and hogs, trout, and turkeys. In the three most recent USDA surveys (2002, 2007, 2012), North Carolina also ranked second in the production of Christmas trees.\nNorth Carolina has 15 metropolitan areas, and in 2010 was chosen as the third-best state for business by Forbes Magazine, and the second-best state by chief executive officer Magazine. Since 2000, there has been a clear division in the economic growth of North Carolina's urban and rural areas. While North Carolina's urban areas have enjoyed a prosperous economy with steady job growth, low unemployment, and rising wages, many of the state's rural counties have suffered from job loss, rising levels of poverty, and population loss as their manufacturing base has declined. According to one estimate, one-half of North Carolina's 100 counties have lost population since 2010, primarily due to the poor economy in many of North Carolina's rural areas. However, the population of the state's urban areas is steadily increasing.\nArts and culture.\nNorth Carolina has traditions in art, music, and cuisine. The nonprofit arts and culture industry generates $1.2billion in direct economic activity in North Carolina, supporting more than 43,600 full-time equivalent jobs and generating $119million in revenue for local governments and the state of North Carolina. North Carolina established the North Carolina Museum of Art as the first major museum collection in the country to be formed by state legislation and funding and continues to bring millions into the NC economy.\nOne of the more famous arts communities in the state is Seagrove, the handmade-pottery capital of the U.S., where artisans create handcrafted pottery inspired by the same traditions that began in this community more than two hundred years ago.\nMusic.\nNorth Carolina boasts a large number of noteworthy jazz musicians, some among the most important in the history of the genre. These include: John Coltrane, (Hamlet, High Point); Thelonious Monk (Rocky Mount); Billy Taylor (Greenville); Woody Shaw (Laurinburg); Lou Donaldson (Durham); Max Roach (Newland); Tal Farlow (Greensboro); Albert, Jimmy and Percy Heath (Wilmington); Nina Simone (Tryon); and Billy Strayhorn (Hillsborough).\nNorth Carolina is also famous for its tradition of old-time music, and many recordings were made in the early 20th century by folk-song collector Bascom Lamar Lunsford. Musicians such as the North Carolina Ramblers helped solidify the sound of country music in the late 1920s, while the influential bluegrass musician Doc Watson also hailed from North Carolina. Both North and South Carolina are hotbeds for traditional rural blues, especially the style known as the Piedmont blues.\nBen Folds Five originated in Winston-Salem, and Ben Folds still records and resides in Chapel Hill.\nThe British band Pink Floyd is named, in part, after Chapel Hill bluesman Floyd Council.\nThe Research Triangle area has long been a well-known center for folk, rock, metal, jazz and punk. James Taylor grew up around Chapel Hill, and his 1968 song \"Carolina in My Mind\" has been called an unofficial anthem for the state. Other famous musicians from North Carolina include J. Cole, DaBaby, 9th Wonder, Shirley Caesar, Roberta Flack, Clyde McPhatter, Nnenna Freelon, Link Wray, Warren Haynes, Jimmy Herring, Michael Houser, Eric Church, Future Islands, Randy Travis, Ryan Adams, Ronnie Milsap, Anthony Hamilton, The Avett Brothers, Charlie Daniels, and Luke Combs.\nMetal and punk acts such as Corrosion of Conformity, Between the Buried and Me, and Nightmare Sonata are native to North Carolina.\nEDM producer Porter Robinson hails from Chapel Hill.\nNorth Carolina is the home of more \"American Idol\" finalists than any other state: Clay Aiken (season two), Fantasia Barrino (season three), Chris Daughtry (season five), Kellie Pickler (season five), Bucky Covington (season five), Anoop Desai (season eight), Scotty McCreery (season ten), and Caleb Johnson (season thirteen). North Carolina also has the most \"American Idol\" winners with Barrino, McCreery, and Johnson.\nIn the mountains, the Brevard Music Center hosts choral, operatic, orchestral, and solo performances during its annual summer schedule.\nNorth Carolina has five professional opera companies: Opera Carolina in Charlotte, NC Opera in Raleigh, Greensboro Opera in Greensboro, Piedmont Opera in Winston-Salem, and Asheville Lyric Opera in Asheville. Academic conservatories and universities also produce fully staged operas, such as the A. J. Fletcher Opera Institute of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, the Department of Music of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and UNC Greensboro.\nAmong others, there are three high-level symphonic orchestras: NC Symphony in Raleigh, Charlotte Symphony, and Winston-Salem Symphony. The NC Symphony holds the North Carolina Master Chorale. The Carolina Ballet is headquartered in Raleigh, and there is also the Charlotte Ballet.\nThe state boasts three performing arts centers: DPAC in Durham, Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts in Raleigh, and the Blumenthal Performing Art Centers in Charlotte. They feature concerts, operas, recitals, and traveling Broadway musicals.\nShopping.\nNorth Carolina has a variety of shopping choices. SouthPark Mall in Charlotte is the largest and most upscale mall in the Carolinas, featuring multiple luxury tenants with their sole location in the state. Other major malls in Charlotte include Northlake Mall and Carolina Place Mall in nearby suburb Pineville. Other major malls throughout the state include Hanes Mall in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, The Thruway Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Crabtree Valley Mall, North Hills Mall, and Triangle Town Center in Raleigh; Friendly Center and Four Seasons Town Centre in Greensboro; Oak Hollow Mall in High Point; Concord Mills in Concord; Valley Hills Mall in Hickory; Cross Creek Mall in Fayetteville; and The Streets at Southpoint in Durham and Independence Mall in Wilmington, North Carolina, and Tanger Outlets in Charlotte, Nags Head, Blowing Rock, and Mebane, North Carolina.\nCuisine and agriculture.\nA culinary staple of North Carolina is pork barbecue. There are strong regional differences and rivalries over the sauces and methods used in making the barbecue. The common trend across Western North Carolina is the use of premium grade Boston butt. Western North Carolina pork barbecue uses a tomato-based sauce, and only the pork shoulder (dark meat) is used. Western North Carolina barbecue is commonly referred to as Lexington barbecue after the Piedmont Triad town of Lexington, home of the Lexington Barbecue Festival, which attracts more than 100,000 visitors each October. Eastern North Carolina pork barbecue uses a vinegar-and-red-pepper-based sauce and the \"whole hog\" is cooked, thus integrating both white and dark meat.\nKrispy Kreme, an international chain of doughnut stores, was started in North Carolina; the company's headquarters are in Winston-Salem. Pepsi-Cola was first produced in 1898 in New Bern. A regional soft drink, Cheerwine, was created and is still based in the city of Salisbury. Despite its name, the hot sauce Texas Pete was created in North Carolina; its headquarters are also in Winston-Salem. The Hardee's fast-food chain was started in Rocky Mount. Another fast-food chain, Bojangles', was started in Charlotte, and has its corporate headquarters there. A popular North Carolina restaurant chain is Golden Corral. Started in 1973, the chain was founded in Fayetteville, with headquarters located in Raleigh. Popular pickle brand Mount Olive Pickle Company was founded in Mount Olive in 1926. Fast casual burger chain Hwy 55 Burgers, Shakes & Fries also makes its home in Mount Olive. Cook Out, a popular fast-food chain featuring burgers, hot dogs, and milkshakes in a wide variety of flavors, was founded in Greensboro in 1989 and has begun expanding outside North Carolina. In 2013 \"Southern Living\" named Durham\u2013Chapel Hill the South's \"Tastiest City\".\nOver the last decade, North Carolina has become a cultural epicenter and haven for internationally prize-winning wine (Noni Bacca Winery), internationally prized cheeses (Ashe County), \"L'institut International aux Arts Gastronomiques: Conquerront Les Yanks les Truffes, January 15, 2010\" international hub for truffles (Garland Truffles), and beer making, as tobacco land has been converted to grape orchards while state laws regulating alcohol by volume (ABV) in beer allowed a jump from six to fifteen percent. The Yadkin Valley in particular has become a strengthening market for grape production, while Asheville recently won the recognition of being named \"Beer City USA\". Asheville boasts the largest number of breweries per capita of any city in the United States. Recognized and marketed brands of beer in North Carolina include Highland Brewing, Duck Rabbit Brewery, Mother Earth Brewery, Weeping Radish Brewery, Big Boss Brewing, Foothills Brewing, Carolina Brewing Company, Lonerider Brewing, and White Rabbit Brewing Company.\nNorth Carolina has large grazing areas for beef and dairy cattle. Truck farms can be found in North Carolina. A truck farm is a small farm where fruits and vegetables are grown to be sold at local markets. The state's shipping, commercial fishing, and lumber industries are important to its economy. Service industries, including education, health care, private research, and retail trade, are also important. Research Triangle Park, a large industrial complex located in the Raleigh-Durham area, is one of the major centers in the country for electronics and medical research.\nTobacco was one of the first major industries to develop after the Civil War. Many farmers grew some tobacco, and the invention of the cigarette made the product especially popular. Winston-Salem is the birthplace of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR), founded by R. J. Reynolds in 1874 as one of sixteen tobacco companies in the town. By 1914 it was selling 425 million packs of Camels a year. Today it is the second-largest tobacco company in the U.S. (behind Altria Group). RJR is an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Reynolds American Inc., which in turn is 42% owned by British American Tobacco.\nShips named for the state.\nSeveral ships have been named after the state, most famously in the Pacific Ocean theater of World War\u00a0II. Now decommissioned, she is part of the USS \"North Carolina\" Battleship Memorial in Wilmington. Another , a nuclear attack submarine, was commissioned in Wilmington on May 3, 2008.\nState parks.\nThe state maintains a group of protected areas known as the North Carolina State Park System, which is managed by the North Carolina Division of Parks & Recreation (NCDPR), an agency of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (NCDNCR).\nArmed forces installations.\nFort Bragg, near Fayetteville and Southern Pines, is a large and comprehensive military base and is the headquarters of the XVIII Airborne Corps, 82nd Airborne Division, and the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. Serving as the air wing for Fort Bragg is Pope Field, also located near Fayetteville.\nLocated in Jacksonville, Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, combined with nearby bases Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Cherry Point, MCAS New River, Camp Geiger, Camp Johnson, Stone Bay and Courthouse Bay, makes up the largest concentration of Marines and sailors in the world. MCAS Cherry Point is home of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing. Located in Goldsboro, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base is home of the 4th Fighter Wing and 916th Air Refueling Wing. One of the busiest air stations in the United States Coast Guard is located at the Coast Guard Air Station in Elizabeth City. Also stationed in North Carolina is the Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point in Southport.\nOn January 24, 1961, a B-52G broke up in midair and crashed after suffering a severe fuel loss, near Goldsboro, dropping two nuclear bombs in the process without detonation. In 2013, it was revealed that three safety mechanisms on one bomb had failed, leaving just one low-voltage switch preventing detonation.\nTourism.\nCharlotte is the most-visited city in the state, attracting 28.3million visitors in 2018. Area attractions include Carolina Panthers NFL football team and Charlotte Hornets basketball team, Carowinds amusement park, Catawba Two Kings Casino (in nearby Kings Mountain), Charlotte Motor Speedway, U.S. National Whitewater Center, Discovery Place, Great Wolf Lodge, Sea Life Aquarium, Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, Billy Graham Library, Carolinas Aviation Museum, Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, Levine Museum of the New South, McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Mint Museum, and the NASCAR Hall of Fame.\nEvery year the Appalachian Mountains attract several million tourists to the western part of the state, including the historic Biltmore Estate. The scenic Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smoky Mountains National Park are the two most visited national park and unit in the United States with more than 25million visitors in 2013. The City of Asheville is consistently voted as one of the top places to visit and live in the United States, known for its rich art deco architecture, mountain scenery and outdoor activities.\nIn Raleigh, many tourists visit the capital, African American Cultural Complex, Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh, Gregg Museum of Art & Design at NCSU, Haywood Hall House & Gardens, Marbles Kids Museum, North Carolina Museum of Art, North Carolina Museum of History, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, Raleigh City Museum, J. C. Raulston Arboretum, Joel Lane House, Mordecai House, Montfort Hall, and the Pope House Museum. The Carolina Hurricanes NHL hockey team is also located in the city.\nIn the Conover\u2013Hickory area, attractions include Hickory Motor Speedway, RockBarn Golf and Spa, home of the Greater Hickory Classic at Rock Barn; Catawba County Firefighters Museum, the SALT Block, and Valley Hills Mall.\nThe Piedmont Triad, or center of the state, is home to Krispy Kreme, Mayberry, Texas Pete, the Lexington Barbecue Festival, and Moravian cookies. The internationally acclaimed North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro attracts visitors to its animals, plants, and a 57-piece art collection along of shaded pathways in the world's largest-land-area natural-habitat park. Seagrove, in the central portion of the state, attracts many tourists along Pottery Highway (NC Hwy 705). MerleFest in Wilkesboro attracts more than 80,000 people to its four-day music festival; and Wet 'n Wild Emerald Pointe water park in Greensboro is another attraction.\nThe Outer Banks and surrounding beaches attract millions of people to the Atlantic beaches every year.\nThe mainland northeastern part of the state, having recently adopted the name the Inner Banks, is also known as the Albemarle Region, for the Albemarle Settlements, some of the first settlements on North Carolina's portion of the Atlantic Coastal Plain. The region's historic sites are connected by the Historic Albemarle Tour.\nTransportation.\nTransportation systems in North Carolina consist of air, water, road, rail, and public transportation including intercity rail via Amtrak and light rail in Charlotte. North Carolina has the second-largest state highway system in the country as well as the largest ferry system on the East Coast.\nNorth Carolina's airports serve destinations throughout the United States and international destinations in Canada, Europe, Central America, and the Caribbean. In July 2022, Charlotte Douglas International Airport, which serves as the second busiest hub for American Airlines, ranked as the 11th busiest airport in the United States with Raleigh-Durham International Airport, a focus-city for Delta Air Lines and formerly a hub for American Airlines and Midway Airlines, ranked as the 37th busiest airport in the United States.\nNorth Carolina has a growing passenger rail system with Amtrak serving most major cities. Charlotte is also home to North Carolina's only light rail system known as LYNX.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nElementary and secondary public schools are overseen by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. The North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction is the secretary of the North Carolina State Board of Education, but the board, rather than the superintendent, holds most of the legal authority for making public education policy. In 2009, the board's chairman also became the \"chief executive officer\" for the state's school system. North Carolina has 115 public school systems, each of which is overseen by a local school board. A county may have one or more systems within it. The largest school systems in North Carolina are the Wake County Public School System, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Guilford County Schools, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, and Cumberland County Schools. In total there are 2,425 public schools in the state, including over 200 charter schools. North Carolina Schools were segregated until the \"Brown v. Board of Education\" trial and the release of the Pearsall Plan.\nPreviously the SAT was the dominant university entrance examination students took. In 2004 76% of NC high school students took the SAT. In 2012 state law changed which required 11th grade students to take the ACT. The SAT testing rate fell to 46% in 2019. Because students now can take that test for free, the ACT became the dominant university entrance examination. This also caused SAT average scores to rise, as in 1996 North Carolina was 48th nationally in SAT scores, but the profile of students taking the SAT has gotten smaller.\nColleges and universities.\nIn 1795, North Carolina opened the first public university in the United States\u2014the University of North Carolina (now named the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). More than 200 years later, the University of North Carolina System encompasses 16 public universities, which are Appalachian State University, East Carolina University, Elizabeth City State University, Fayetteville State University, North Carolina A&T State University, North Carolina Central University, North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Asheville, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Western Carolina University, and Winston-Salem State University, and one public, boarding high school, the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. Along with its public universities, North Carolina has 58 public community colleges in its community college system. The largest university in North Carolina is currently North Carolina State University, with more than 34,000 students.\nNorth Carolina is also home to many well-known private colleges and universities, including Barton College, Belmont Abbey College (the only Catholic college in the Carolinas), Campbell University, Davidson College, Duke University, Elon University, Guilford College, High Point University, Laurel University, Lees-McRae College, Lenoir-Rhyne University (the only Lutheran university in North Carolina), Livingstone College, Meredith College, Methodist University, Montreat College, North Carolina Wesleyan University, Pfeiffer University, Salem College, Shaw University (the first historically black college or university in the South), University of Mount Olive, Wake Forest University, William Peace University, and Wingate University.\nNorth Carolina is also home to the oldest and largest folk school in the United States, the John C. Campbell Folk School.\nHealth.\nThe residents of North Carolina have a lower life expectancy than the U.S. national average of life expectancy. According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, in 2014, males in North Carolina lived an average of 75.4 years compared to the national average of 76.7 years. Females in North Carolina lived an average of 80.2 years compared to the national average of 81.5 years. Male life expectancy in North Carolina between 1980 and 2014 increased by an average of 6.9 years, slightly higher than the male national average of a 6.7-year increase. Life expectancy for females in North Carolina between 1980 and 2014 increased by 3.2 years, lower than the female national average of a 3.9-year increase.\nUsing 2017\u20132019 data, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation calculated that life expectancy for North Carolina counties ranged from 71.4 years for Swain County to 82.3 years for Orange County. Life expectancy for the state was 78.1 years. The Foundation estimated that life expectancy for the United States as a whole in 2021 was 79.2 years.\nMedia.\nEarly newspapers were established in the eastern part of North Carolina in the mid-18th century. The Fayetteville Observer, established in 1816, is the oldest newspaper still in publication in North Carolina. The Wilmington Star-News, established 1867, is the oldest continuously running newspaper. As of January 1, 2020, there were approximately 240 North Carolina newspapers in publication in the state of North Carolina.\nThe News and Observer was founded in 1871 and is the largest in circulation in the state. In 2006, The Charlotte Observer was acquired by the company, it is the second largest circulating news paper in the state.\nGovernment and politics.\nThe government of North Carolina is divided into three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. These consist of the Council of State (led by the Governor), the bicameral legislature (called the General Assembly), and the state court system (headed by the North Carolina Supreme Court). The state constitution delineates the structure and function of the state government. Most municipalities in North Carolina operate under council\u2013manager governments.\nNorth Carolina's party loyalties have undergone a series of important shifts in the last few years: While the 2010 midterms saw Tarheel voters elect a bicameral Republican majority legislature for the first time in more than a century, North Carolina has also become a Southern swing state in presidential races. Since Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter's comfortable victory in the state in 1976, the state had consistently leaned Republican in presidential elections until Democrat Barack Obama narrowly won the state in 2008. In the 1990s, Democrat Bill Clinton came within a point of winning the state in 1992 and also only narrowly lost the state in 1996. In 2000, Republican George W. Bush easily won the state by more than 13 points.\nBy 2008, demographic shifts, population growth, and increased liberalization in densely populated areas such as the Research Triangle, Charlotte, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Fayetteville, and Asheville, propelled Barack Obama to victory in North Carolina, the first Democrat to win the state since 1976. In 2012, North Carolina was again considered a competitive swing state, with the Democrats even holding their 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. However, Republican Mitt Romney ultimately eked out a two-point win in North Carolina, the only 2012 swing state Obama lost, and one of only two states (along with Indiana) to flip from Obama in 2008 to the GOP in 2012. Furthermore, Republican Donald Trump carried the state in 2016, 2020, and 2024.\nIn 2012, the state elected a Republican governor (Pat McCrory) and lieutenant governor (Dan Forest) for the first time in more than two decades, while also giving the Republicans veto-proof majorities in both the State House of Representatives and the State Senate. Several U.S. House of Representatives seats flipped control in 2012, with the Republicans holding nine seats to the Democrats' four. In the 2014 midterm elections, Republican David Rouzer won the state's 7th congressional district seat, increasing the congressional delegation party split to 10\u20133 in favor of the GOP, a split they retained in subsequent elections until 2020, when it narrowed to 8\u20135 in favor of the GOP. In 2016, despite Donald Trump winning the state, North Carolina voters elected Democrat Roy Cooper as governor, in part due to an unpopular law passed by former governor Pat McCrory known as HB2. Cooper went on to win re-election in 2020, despite Donald Trump narrowly winning the state again against Joe Biden.\nAs a result of the 2020 census, North Carolina gained another seat in the 118th United States Congress, for a total of 14. After the 2024 elections, the state was represented by 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats.\nIn a 2020 study, North Carolina was ranked as the 23rd easiest state for citizens to vote in.\nGerrymandering.\nThe state has been sued for racially gerrymandering the districts, which resulted in minority voting power being diluted in some areas, resulting in skewed representation. In 2000, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina ruled that the 12th congressional district was an illegal racial gerrymander. This was again appealed, now as \"Easley v. Cromartie\". The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Eastern District of North Carolina in 2001 and ruled that the 12th district boundaries were not racially based but was a partisan gerrymander. They said this was a political question that the courts should not rule upon.\nIn 2015, federal courts again ordered redistricting. Two lawsuits challenging the state congressional district map were led by \"two dozen voters, the state Democratic Party, the state chapter of the League of Women Voters, and the interest group Common Cause\". They contend that the redistricting resulted in deliberate under-representation of a substantial portion of voters. This case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in March 2019, which also heard a related partisan gerrymandering case from Maryland.\nOn February 4, 2022, the North Carolina Supreme Court struck down the congressional and state legislative district maps drawn by the GOP-controlled General Assembly on terms of partisan gerrymandering in a 4\u20133 ruling. Later that month, a panel of three former judges chosen by the Wake County Superior Court drew and approved a remedial congressional map after the new map proposed by the General Assembly was struck down by the North Carolina Supreme Court. Though, the state legislative maps proposed by the General Assembly were allowed to be used. The General Assembly would then redraw all three maps for the 2024 elections in the state.\nOn April 28, 2023, the North Carolina Supreme Court\u2014after Republicans gained a majority in the court following the 2022 judicial elections\u2014overturned the same ruling in a 5\u20132 decision, which cleared the way for gerrymandering in the next redistricting cycle. New maps were approved by the General Assembly on October 25, 2023. All three new maps heavily favor the GOP, with allegations of racial bias made against the maps as well.\nIn November 2023, a lawsuit was filed against the North Carolina Senate district map\u2014specifically the 1st and 2nd Senate districts\u2014in the Eastern District of North Carolina, arguing the map violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In December 2023, two lawsuits were filed in the Middle District of North Carolina, with the first challenging the 1st, 6th, 12th, and 14th congressional districts in the map, and the second, challenging multiple specific districts in all three maps, as racial gerrymanders. Both lawsuits were consolidated together in March 2024.\nOn January 26, 2024\u2014regarding the lawsuit currently in the Eastern District of North Carolina\u2014a preliminary injunction to block the current North Carolina Senate district map was denied, citing the \"Purcell\" principle. The ruling was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which upheld the lower court's decision on March 28, 2024. The lawsuit will continue in the district court, but no ruling will be made until after the 2024 elections.\nSports.\nNorth Carolina is home to four major league sports franchises: the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League, the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association, and Charlotte FC of Major League Soccer are based in Charlotte, while the Raleigh-based Carolina Hurricanes play in the National Hockey League. The Panthers and Hurricanes are the only two major professional sports teams that have the same geographical designation while playing in different metropolitan areas. The Hurricanes are the only major professional team from North Carolina to have won a league championship, having captured the Stanley Cup in 2006. North Carolina is also home to two other top-level professional teams \u2014 the Charlotte Hounds of Major League Lacrosse and the North Carolina Courage of the National Women's Soccer League.\nWhile North Carolina has no Major League Baseball team, it does have numerous Minor League Baseball teams, with the highest level of play coming from the Triple-A Charlotte Knights and Durham Bulls. Additionally, North Carolina has minor league teams in other team sports including soccer and ice hockey, most notably North Carolina FC and the Charlotte Checkers, both of which play in the second tier of their respective sports.\nIn addition to professional team sports, North Carolina has a strong affiliation with NASCAR and stock-car racing, with Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord hosting two Cup Series races every year. Charlotte also hosts the NASCAR Hall of Fame, while Concord is the home of several top-flight racing teams, including Hendrick Motorsports, Roush Fenway Racing, GMS Racing, Stewart-Haas Racing, and Chip Ganassi Racing. Numerous other tracks around North Carolina host races from low-tier NASCAR circuits as well.\nGolf is a popular summertime leisure activity, and North Carolina has hosted several important professional golf tournaments. Pinehurst Resort in Pinehurst has hosted a PGA Championship, Ryder Cup, two U.S. Opens, and one U.S. Women's Open. The Wells Fargo Championship is a regular stop on the PGA Tour and is held at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, and Quail Hollow has also played host to the PGA Championship. The Wyndham Championship is played annually in Greensboro at Sedgefield Country Club.\nCollege sports are also popular in North Carolina, with 18 schools competing at the Division I level. The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is headquartered in Greensboro, and both the ACC Football Championship Game (Charlotte) and the ACC men's basketball tournament (Greensboro) were most recently held in North Carolina. Additionally, the city of Charlotte is home to the National Junior College Athletics Association's (NJCAA) headquarters. College basketball is very popular in North Carolina, buoyed by the Tobacco Road rivalries between ACC members North Carolina, Duke, North Carolina State, and Wake Forest. The ACC Championship Game and the Duke's Mayo Bowl are held annually in Charlotte's Bank of America Stadium, featuring teams from the ACC and the Southeastern Conference. Additionally, the state has hosted the NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four on two occasions, in Greensboro in 1974 and in Charlotte in 1994.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["191890", "21650"], "permutation_1": ["21650", "191890"], "permutation_2": ["191890", "21650"], "permutation_3": ["191890", "21650"]}
{"id": "2hop__238962_136211", "docs_added": {"27208": "Saint Lucia\nCountry in the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean Sea\nSaint Lucia is an island country of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean. Part of the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, it is located north/northeast of the island of Saint Vincent, northwest of Barbados and south of Martinique. It covers a land area of with an estimated population of over 180,000 people as of 2018. The nation's capital and largest city is Castries.\nThe first proven inhabitants of the island, the Arawaks, are believed to have been the first to settle on the island in 200\u2013400 AD. In 800 AD, the island was taken over by the Kalinago. The French were the first European colonists to settle on the island, and they signed a treaty with the native Caribs in 1660. The English took control of the island in 1663. In ensuing years, England and France fought 14 times for control of the island; consequently control over this immensely valuable geopolitical position changed frequently. Eventually, the British took complete control in 1814, shortly after the victory over French Emperor Napoleon I. Because the island switched so often between British and French control, Saint Lucia was also known as the \"Helen of the West\" after the Greek mythological character, Helen of Troy.\nRepresentative government was introduced in 1924 with universal suffrage being established in 1951. From 1958 to 1962, the island was a member of the West Indies Federation. On 22 February 1979, Saint Lucia became an independent state, while remaining as a Commonwealth realm.\nSaint Lucia is a member of the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the World Trade Organization, CARICOM and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). It is also a member of .\nEtymology.\nSaint Lucia is named after Saint Lucy of Syracuse (AD 283 \u2013 304). Saint Lucia is one of two sovereign states in the world named after a female and is the only one named after a woman (Ireland is named after a goddess). Legend states that French sailors were shipwrecked on the island on 13 December, the feast day of St. Lucy, and therefore named the island in her honour. \nA globe in the Vatican from 1520 shows the island as Sancta Lucia, indicating that the island was instead named by early Spanish explorers. Saint Lucia was first known as \"Louanalao\" by the Arawak Indians in 200 AD, meaning \"Island of the Iguanas,\" and then as \"Hewanorra\", in 800 AD, meaning \"there where iguanas are found,\" when the Carib Indians arrived and assimilated their culture into Saint Lucia.\nHistory.\nPre-Columbian.\nThe first proven inhabitants of Saint Lucia were the Arawaks, though there may have been other native peoples prior to them. The Arawaks are believed to have come from northern South America, sometime around AD 200\u2013400, as there are numerous archaeological sites on the island where specimens of their pottery have been found.\nThe Kalinago (Island Caribs) arrived around AD 800, and seized control from the Arawaks by killing their men and assimilating the women into their own society. \nEarly European exploration and colonization.\nIt is possible that Christopher Columbus may have sighted the island during his fourth voyage in 1502, but he does not mention the island in his log. Juan de la Cosa noted the island on his map of 1500, calling it \"El Falcon\", and another island to the south \"Las Agujas\". A Spanish c\u00e9dula from 1511 mentions the island within the Spanish domain, and a globe in the Vatican made in 1520, shows the island as Sancta Lucia.\nIn the late 1550s, the French pirate Fran\u00e7ois le Clerc (known as \"Jambe de Bois\", due to his wooden leg) set up a camp on Pigeon Island, from where he attacked passing Spanish ships. In 1605, an English vessel called the \"Oliphe Blossome\" was blown off-course on its way to Guyana, and the 67 colonists started a settlement on Saint Lucia, after initially being welcomed by the Carib chief Anthonie. By 26 September 1605, only 19 survived following continued attacks by the Carib chief Augraumart, so the settlers fled the island. The English tried to settle the island again in 1638, but the Caribs continued to be hostile. Eventually, the French successfully claimed the island in 1650 and they signed a treaty with the Caribs in 1660. In 1664, Thomas Warner (son of Sir Thomas Warner, the governor of St Kitts) claimed Saint Lucia for England but the English fled again in 1666, with the French gaining full control of the island after the signing of the Treaty of Breda. Saint Lucia was made an official French crown colony in 1674, as a dependency of Martinique.\n18th and 19th centuries.\nAfter the slave-based sugar industry developed, both the British and the French found the island attractive. During the 18th century, the island changed ownership, or was declared neutral territory, a dozen times, although the French settlements remained and the island was a de facto French colony well into the eighteenth century.\nIn 1722, George I of Great Britain granted both Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent to the 2nd Duke of Montagu. Montague appointed Nathaniel Uring, a merchant sea captain and adventurer, as deputy-governor. Uring went to the islands with a group of seven ships, and established settlement at Petit Carenage. Unable to get enough support from British warships, he and the new colonists were quickly run off by the French.\nDuring the Seven Years' War, Britain occupied Saint Lucia for a year, but handed the island back to the French in 1763, under the Treaty of Paris. Like the English and Dutch on other islands, in 1765, the French began to develop the land for the cultivation of sugar cane as a commodity crop on large plantations. The British occupied the island again in 1778.\nFrom 1782 to 1803, control of the island switched multiple times. In January 1791, during the French Revolution, the National Assembly sent four \"commissaires\" to St Lucia to spread the revolutionary philosophy. By August 1791, slaves began to abandon their estates and Governor Jean-Joseph Sourbader de Gimat fled. In December 1792, Lt. Jean-Baptiste Raymond de Lacrosse arrived with revolutionary pamphlets, and the impoverished whites and free people of colour began to arm themselves as \"patriots\". On 1 February 1793, France declared war on England and Holland, and General Nicolas Xavier de Ricard took over as Governor. The National Convention abolished enslavement on 4 February 1794. On 1 April 1794, St. Lucia was captured by a British expeditionary force led by Vice Admiral John Jervis. Morne Fortune was renamed \"Fort Charlotte\". Soon, a combined force of French Revolutionary Army soldiers and maroons, \"L'Armee Fran\u00e7aise dans les Bois\", began to fight back, starting the First Brigand War.\nA short time later, the British invaded the island as a part of the war with France that had recently broken out. On 21 February 1795, French forces under the nominal control of Victor Hugues, defeated a battalion of British troops at Vieux Fort and Rabot. In 1796, Castries was burned as part of the conflict. Leading the 27th (Inniskilling) Regiment, General John Moore retook Fort Charlotte in 1796, after two days of bitter fighting. As an honour, the Fusiliers' regimental colour was displayed on the flagstaff of the captured fortress at Morne Fortune for an hour before being replaced by the Union Jack. Upon the capture of the fort, Moore's superior, Ralph Abercromby, departed the island and placed Moore in charge of the British garrison. Moore remained at this post until falling ill with yellow fever, leading to his return to Britain before 1798.\nIn 1803, the British regained control of the island. Many members of the \"L'Armee Fran\u00e7aise dans les Bois\" escaped into the thick rainforest where they evaded capture and established maroon communities.\nSlavery on the island continued for a short time, but anti-slavery sentiment was rising in Britain. The British stopped the import of slaves by anyone, white or coloured, when they abolished the slave trade in 1807.\nFrance and Great Britain continued to contest Saint Lucia until the British secured it in 1814, as part of the Treaty of Paris, ending the Napoleonic Wars. Thereafter, Saint Lucia was considered one of the British Windward Islands colonies.\nThe institution of slavery was abolished on the island in 1834, as it was throughout the British Empire. After abolition, all former slaves had to serve a four-year \"apprenticeship\", to accustom them to the idea of freedom. During that period, they worked for their former masters for at least three-quarters of the work week. Full freedom was duly granted by the British in 1838. By that time, people of African ethnicity greatly outnumbered those of ethnic European background. People of Carib descent also comprised a minority on the island.\n20th century.\nSaint Lucia's first representative government was introduced in 1924, with the first election taking place in 1925. Many Saint Lucians served during the Second World War, and the conflict visited the island directly during the Battle of the Caribbean, when a German U-boat attacked and sank two British ships in Castries harbour on 9 March 1942. The United States used the island as a military hub during the war, including setting up a secondary naval base in Gros Islet and using what is now the island's international airport as an air force base.\nUniversal suffrage was introduced in 1951 and elections were held the same year. In 1958, Saint Lucia joined the West Indies Federation, although the federation was dissolved just a few years later in 1962. In 1967, Saint Lucia became one of the six members of the West Indies Associated States, with internal self-government. Independence was peacefully gained in 1979 under Sir John Compton of United Workers Party, with the island remaining within the British Commonwealth, keeping then-Queen Elizabeth II as Monarch, represented locally by a Governor-General.\nPost-independence era.\nDespite leading the country to independence, Compton's initial term as prime minister lasted only a few months, being defeated by the Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) under Allan Louisy in the 1979 Saint Lucian general election. In 1980, Hurricane Allen struck the island, destroying much of its infrastructure and reducing economic growth. Compton returned to power after the 1982 Saint Lucian general election after much instability during the labour government's term. During Compton's second term as the island's leader, banana exports significantly increased and became the nation's main source of revenue. There were improvements to infrastructure, and education was expanded to rural areas. Saint Lucia was key to the US invasion of Grenada. During the 1990s and 2000s, the nation's economy began shifting from agriculture to tourism under the leadership of Kenny Anthony. The 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001 killed two Saint Lucians, and caused an economic slowdown, although moderate growth continued until the Great Recession. The recession, as well as the landfall of Hurricane Tomas in 2010, led to slow economic growth during the early 2010s, although the economy picked up during the later part of the decade and avoided contraction until 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic caused major economic issues globally.\nIn June 2016, the United Workers Party (UWP), led by Allen Michael Chastanet, won 11 of the 17 seats in the general election, ousting the St Lucia Labour Party (SLP) of the incumbent Prime Minister Kenny Anthony. However, Saint Lucia Labour Party won the next election in July 2021, meaning its leader Philip J Pierre became the ninth Prime Minister of Saint Lucia since independence.\nGeography.\nSaint Lucia has a total area of 617 square kilometers (238 sq mi). As a volcanic island, Saint Lucia is very mountainous, with its highest point being Mount Gimie, at above sea level. The Pitons, two mountainous volcanic plugs, form the island's most famous landmark. Saint Lucia is also home to the world's only drive-in volcano, the Sulphur Springs. There are a number of small islands off the coast, the largest of which are the Maria Islands, located in the south-east of the island.\nSaint Lucia lies at latitude 14\u00b0 N and longitude 61\u00b0 W. The population tends to be concentrated around the coast, with the interior more sparsely populated, due to the presence of dense forests. \nFlora and fauna.\nMany species are endemic to the island, including \"Anolis luciae\", a species of lizard, and \"Boa orophias\", a species of boid snake.\nEcoregions.\nSaint Lucia has five terrestrial ecoregions: Windward Islands moist forests, Leeward Islands dry forests, Windward Islands dry forests, Windward Islands xeric scrub, and Lesser Antilles mangroves. The country had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 6.17/10, ranking it 84th globally out of 172 countries.\nClimate.\nSaint Lucia has a tropical climate, specifically a tropical rainforest climate (Af), moderated by northeast trade winds, with a dry season from 1 December to 31 May, and a wet/rainy season from 1 June to 30 November.\nAverage daytime and nighttime temperatures are around , and respectively. Being fairly close to the equator, the island's temperature does not fluctuate much between winter and summer.\nGeology.\nThe geology of St. Lucia can be described as composing three main areas. The oldest, 16\u201318 Ma, volcanic rocks are exposed from Castries northward and consist of eroded basalt and andesite centres. The middle, central highlands, portion of the island consists of dissected andesite centres, 10.4 to 1 Mya, while the lower southwest portion of the island contains recent activity from the Soufriere Volcanic Centre (SVC). This SVC, centred about the Qualibou depression, contains pyroclastic flow deposits, lava flows, domes, block and ash flow deposits, and explosion craters. This depression's perimeter includes the town of Soufriere, Mount Tabac, Mt. Gimie, Morne Bonin, and Gros Piton. At in diameter, though the western portion is open towards the Grenada basin, the depression formed as recently as 100 kya. The depression is noted for its geothermal activity, especially at Sulphur Springs and Soufri\u00e8re Estates, a phreatic eruption in 1776, and recent seismic activity (2000\u20132001).\nEroded andesitic stratovolcanoes to the north east of the depression include Mt. Gimie, Piton St Esprit, and Mt. Grand Magazin, all greater than 1 Ma in age. Andesitic and dacite pyroclastic flows from these volcanoes are found at Morne Tabac dome (532 ka), Morne Bonin dome (273 kya), and Bellevue (264 kya). Avalanche deposits from the formation of the Qualibou depression are found offshore, and in the massive blocks of Rabot, Pleisance, and Coubaril. The dacitic domes of Petit Piton (109 kya) and Gros Piton (71 kya) were then extruded onto the depression floor accompanied by the Anse John (104 kya) and La Pointe (59.8 kya) pyroclastic flows. Later, pyroclastic flows include pumice-rich Belfond and Anse Noir (20 kya). Finally, the dacitic domes of Terre Blanche (15.3 kya) and Belfond (13.6 kya) formed within the depression.\nGovernment.\nLike most Caribbean countries, Saint Lucia is a unitary state with a parliamentary system. It is a Commonwealth realm and a constitutional monarchy, with the current monarch being Charles III, who is represented on the island by a governor-general, currently Errol Charles. The prime minister (currently Philip J. Pierre) is the head of government, the head of the cabinet, and is normally the leader of the largest party in the House of Assembly. The house has 17 seats, with each member being elected via a plurality of votes in their constituency. The upper chamber of Parliament is the Senate which has 11 appointed members, the majority of which are appointed by the prime minister.\nAdministrative divisions.\nSaint Lucia is made up of 10 districts. The districts were created and named by French colonials, and the British chose to keep the names in an anglicised form. The largest district in both size and population is Castries, where the nation's capital of the same name is located. The following are the 10 districts placed in alphabetical order:\nLaw and crime.\nSaint Lucia is a mixed jurisdiction, meaning that it has a legal system based in part on both the civil law and English common law. The Civil Code of St. Lucia of 1867 was based on the Quebec Civil Code of 1866, as supplemented by English common law-style legislation. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was Saint Lucia's final court of appeal until 2023, when a constitutional amendment transferred this to the Caribbean Court of Justice.\nSaint Lucia's homicide rate has hit record highs in recent years. There were 75 homicides in 2021, a 34.5% increase compared with 55 homicides in 2020. 2021 saw the island record the most homicides in its history, and also its highest murder rate in its history, at 40 murders per 100,000 people.\nForeign relations.\nSaint Lucia is a member of the Caribbean Community, OECS, the Organization of American States and La Francophonie. As a Commonwealth Realm, Saint Lucia has relatively friendly relations with United Kingdom and Canada. France is also a major ally, in part due to Saint Lucia's border with Martinique. The United States is the island's largest trading partner, and Saint Lucia was key to the US invasion of Grenada in 1983, and voted against condemning the invasion. Saint Lucia became the 152nd member of the United Nations on 18 September 1979.\nSaint Lucia does not have a military although the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force has a Special Service Unit (SSU) and a Coast Guard. The island signed the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2018.\nEconomy.\nSaint Lucia is a Small Island Developing State, a designation similar to a developing country with a few substantial differences due to Saint Lucia's island nature. The service sector is the largest sector of the economy, accounting for 86.9% of GDP in 2020, followed by industrial and agricultural sectors at 10.9% and 2.2%, respectively.\nSaint Lucia has been able to attract foreign business and investment due to its educated workforce and improvements in roads, communications, water supply, sewerage, and port facilities. Like most small islands, Tourism and offshore banking are Saint Lucia's main sources of revenue. Agriculture, specifically the banana industry, was previously the largest sector of the economy, although its importance has declined significantly. The island's manufacturing sector has been called the most diverse in the Eastern Caribbean, with goods such as plastic being produced on a large scale.\nSaint Lucia's currency is the Eastern Caribbean Dollar (EC$), a regional currency shared among members of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECU). The country's main trade partners are the US, UK, EU and other CARICOM countries.\nTourism.\nTourism is the largest contributor to Saint Lucia's economy. Tourist numbers tend to be more substantial during the dry season (January to April), often referred to as the tourist season. Saint Lucia's tropical weather, scenery, beaches and resorts have made it a popular tourist destination, with 1.29\u00a0million visitors arriving in 2019.\nSome of Saint Lucia's tourist attractions include the Sulphur Springs, the Botanical Gardens, Pigeon Island and The Pitons.\nAgriculture.\nThe agricultural sector was once the main contributor to Saint Lucia's economy. This was especially thanks to the exporting of bananas. However, its importance to the economy has declined significantly, in part due to increased competition from South American countries in the banana industry. Nevertheless, agriculture is still an important part of the country's economy, providing 7.9% of jobs and contributing to 2.2% of the GDP in 2021.\nAbout 18% of land is used for agricultural practices. Bananas remain the main agricultural product grown in Saint Lucia, as well as coconuts, cocoa beans, mangoes, avocados, vegetables, citrus fruits, and root crops such as yams and sweet potatoes.\nSaint Lucia also has a small livestock sector, which is dominated by poultry. The island is self-sufficient in egg production and production of poultry and pork has increased in recent years. Fishing has also been of considerable importance to the nation's economy.\nInfrastructure.\nSaint Lucia has a wide-ranging public bus network which covers most of the island. Busses are owned by private individuals, whilst the government is responsible for setting up routes and hubs. The road network covers most of the island, although some rural areas still lack access to proper roads.\nThe island has two airports, including one International airport. Cruising and yachting are very important to the country's economy, with the main sea port being located in Castries, while the main marina is located in Rodney Bay which is also home to the St. Lucia Yacht Club. Meanwhile, the nation's main oil refinery is located in Bexon.\nThe main source of electricity in Saint Lucia is oil through its sole power station, the Cul De Sac Power Station, although solar energy is also a major source. There have also been attempts to introduce geothermal and wind energy to the island.\nDemographics.\nA census is normally held in Saint Lucia every 10 years. In the 2010 census, Saint Lucia reported a population of 165,595 in 58,920 households. This was a 5.1% increase from the 157,490 recorded at the previous census in 2001. Ages 0\u201314 made up 24.1% of the population whilst those 65 and over made up 8.6%. Nearly 40% of the island's population lived in the District of Castries, where the nation's capital of the same name is located.\nSaint Lucia had a fertility rate of 1.4 children per woman in 2021, the lowest in the Americas. This is much lower than in 1990, when the birth rate was 3.4 children per woman, and significantly lower than in 1959, when the birth rate peaked at 6.98 children per woman. Most emigration from Saint Lucia is primarily to Anglophone countries, with the United Kingdom having almost 10,000 Saint Lucian-born citizens, and over 30,000 of Saint Lucian heritage. The United States is home to many Saint Lucians, especially areas such as Miami and New York City. Canada is also home to many Saint Lucians, and especially in the French-speaking province of Quebec in the city of Montr\u00e9al. The median age of Saint Lucians was 33.1 years in 2021.\nEthnic groups.\nSaint Lucia was originally populated by Amerindian peoples. However, European colonisation led to a significant drop in the indigenous populations. Most residents of the island were white planters, but African slaves and indentured servants brought by the Europeans eventually came to outnumber them. Because of this, Saint Lucia's population is predominantly of African and mixed descent. As of 2010, 85.3% of the population are black and 10.9% are of multiracial descent. Other groups include Indo-Caribbean persons (2.2%), whites (0.6%), and Indigenous Persons (0.6%). A small number of Kalinago live in the Choiseul region and in other towns on the western coast. There is also a small population of Lebanese and Syrians.\nLanguages.\nThe official language of Saint Lucia is English, though Saint Lucian French Creole (Kw\u00e9y\u00f2l) is widely spoken. Referred to colloquially as \"Patois\" (\"Patwa\"), it is spoken by a majority of the population. It is a dialect of Antillean Creole and is also related to Haitian Creole, though it nonetheless has a number of distinctive features from the latter. The Creole language developed during the early period of French colonisation and is derived chiefly from French and West African languages. There have been some attempts to make the language official, but they have not yet been successful.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nIn the 2010 census, a majority of Saint Lucians identified as Christians. This can be traced back to the nation's colonization by French and British settlers. Due to heavy French influence, most Christians on the island are Catholics, with 62.5% of the island's residents identifying as such. 24.5% of the island's residents identify as Protestants. In addition, 1.9% of the population identified as members of the Rastafari movement and 1.4% of the population practice Hinduism. The number of residents claiming no religion stood at 5.9% in 2010.\nThere is no state religion in Saint Lucia. The nation's constitution guarantees freedom of religion and prohibits forcing persons to take oath to any religion in which they do not follow. Religious groups are also guaranteed the freedom to establish places of education.\nEducation.\nMost primary and secondary schools in Saint Lucia are operated by the government. Education is free and compulsory for children aged five to fifteen. This includes seven years of primary school and three to five years of secondary school. In the last two years of secondary school, students are allowed to choose the subjects that they would like to do, in preparation for regional CSEC examinations. In 2020, public spending on education was at 3.6%.\nTertiary educational facilities on the island are normally private institutions. These include Monroe College and International American University. However, there are still a few public institutions, including the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College and the University of the West Indies.\nHealthcare.\nHealth services in Saint Lucia are split between the government and private institutions. The island is served by 2 public hospitals and multiple health centers, although most dental and vision services are private. Public expenditure on healthcare stood at 2.1% in 2019.\nIn 2021, life expectancy was at 71.1 years (67.8 for men and 74.7 for women). This was compared to 73.4 years in 2019. The drop in life expectancy was largely attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nCulture.\nThe culture of Saint Lucia has been influenced by African, East Indian, French, and English heritage. The main secondary language of the island is Saint Lucian Creole (Kw\u00e9y\u00f2l), a French-based creole spoken by most of the population. The island boasts the highest ratio of Nobel laureates produced with respect to the total population of any sovereign country in the world. Two winners have come from Saint Lucia: Sir Arthur Lewis, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1979, and the poet Derek Walcott, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.\nSaint Lucia has two flower festivals, the La Rose festival, celebrated on 30 August, and the La Marguerite festival, celebrated on 17 October. Every summer, the island hosts a carnival as a way to present the country's culture and music. Annually, there are normally many festivals, most of them being music related.\nMusic.\nSaint Lucian music is heavily influenced by elements of African music, especially rhythmically. The most popular music genres in Saint Lucia are calypso, soca, dancehall, reggae, zouk, and folk music. Dennery Segment, a genre influenced by Angolan Kuduro, Saint Lucian Solo music and Dancehall was developed on the island. The internationally renowned Saint Lucia Jazz Festival is held annually, and the festival is a major source of revenue for the country's economy.\nFood.\nSaint Lucian cuisine is a mix of African, European, Indian and Caribbean dishes. Some common dishes include macaroni pie, stewed chicken, rice and peas, roti (Indian flatbreads) and soups packed full with fresh locally produced vegetables. All mainstream meat and poultry are eaten in St. Lucia; meat and seafood are normally stewed and browned to create a rich gravy sometimes served over \"ground provisions\" (vegetables) or rice. Johnny Cakes (known as bakes) are also common, and are served with different sides, such as saltfish. The national dish of Saint Lucia is green figs and saltfish.\nSports.\nAs with most Caribbean islands, cricket is the most popular sport in Saint Lucia. The Windward Islands cricket team includes players from Saint Lucia and plays in the West Indies regional tournament. Daren Sammy became the first Saint Lucian to represent the West Indies on his debut in 2007, and was made captain in 2010. The Saint Lucia Kings is a T20 franchise playing in the Caribbean Premier League based in this said island nation. Sailing is also a major sport in Saint Lucia, with the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) race beginning in the Canary Islands and ending on the island. Other sports that are popular on the island include football, basketball, tennis, golf and volleyball. Karate and boxing have also seen increased popularity in recent years. \nJulien Alfred won the nation's first-ever Olympic medal, when she won the women's 100 meters event in 10.72 seconds at the 2024 Summer Olympics held in Paris, France.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "14937651": "Fond d'Or Bay\nBody of water of Saint Lucia\nFond d'Or Bay is a bay on the east side of the island of Saint Lucia, in the center of the coast. The Fond d'Or River has its mouth in the bay.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "8965431": "Fond d'Or River\nRiver of Saint Lucia\nThe Fond d'Or River is a river in Saint Lucia. It rises in the centre of the island, flowing north and then east to its mouth in Fond d'Or Bay, close to the village of Dennery on the central east coast.", "39831470": "Cape d'Or\nHeadland in Nova Scotia, Canada\nCape d'Or is a headland located near Advocate, Cumberland County, on the Bay of Fundy coast of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia.\nThe cape marks the north point of the entrance to the Minas Basin. Cape d'Or is a continuation of the North Mountain tholeiitic basalt formation, and is marked by dramatic cliffs on its western side and cliffs on its southern side overlooking treacherous tidal currents in the Minas Channel. A basalt reef extends from the Cape into the Bay of Fundy where it intersects the violent waters of the Dory Rips, a rip tide created by the collision of three strong tidal currents.\nHistory.\nCape d'Or was called L'mu'juiktuk by the Mi'kmaq, the native people of Nova Scotia. The cape was a centre of tool production and trade for the Mi'kmaq because of veins of hard dense rock such as chert which could be shaped to form sharp edges for tools and weapons. The Mi'kmaq also obtained copper from deposits in the basalt. An archaeological excavation near the lighthouses in 1980 found extensive native artifacts dated to about 2000 years ago.\nThe Cape was named by French explorers (Cape of Gold) because bright native copper deposits appeared golden. Samuel de Champlain explored the copper deposits at Cape d'Or in 1607 and bestowed the name Port of Mines on nearby Advocate Harbour to reflect the seams of copper ore at Cape d'Or. The French did not establish a mine at Cape d'Or as the massive cliffs and tides made the copper seams difficult to access but the name \"Les Mines\" became associated with the upper Bay of Fundy beyond Cape d'Or which became known as the \"Baie des Mines\", later Minas Basin, and the Acadian communities around the southern shore of the Minas Basin which became known as Les Mines.\nMineral rights at Cape d'Or were later granted to the Duke of Chandos but he was unable to establish a mine. However, in 1897 the Colonial Copper Company began a mine at Cape d'Or. Based out of New York and headed by J. A. Hanway, the company invested several million dollars in developing the site which went into operation in 1900. Three shafts were sunk along the cliff line and an ore processor was built. The shafts were connected to the processor and a shipping terminal at nearby Horseshoe Cove by a short narrow-gauge railway. A small company town was built with worker and manager houses. However, by 1905 the mine stopped excavation when the copper veins proved disappointing yields as they were excavated. The site was abandoned in 1907. The houses were shipped by sea to communities around the Bay of Fundy.\nCape d'Or Lighthouse.\nA steam-powered foghorn was established at Cape d'Or in 1875. A square wooden lighthouse was added in 1922, re-using a lighthouse tower originally located at Apple River. Two new bungalows were built for the lightkeeper and the assistant lightkeeper in 1958 and a new concrete lighthouse was built in 1965. The last keeper was Ernie Morris who served until the light was de-staffed in 1989. The Advocate District Development Association obtained a lease through the County of Cumberland to preserve the site and its structures in 1995. The lightkeeper's houses were repaired. Today, one serves as the Lightkeeper's Kitchen restaurant and the other as a Guesthouse.\nScenery.\nMost of the Cape is heavily forested, but the areas beside and above the lighthouse are cleared and grassy providing excellent long-distance views of the cliffs, sea stacks and tidal rips in good weather. The Cape's dramatic rocky landscapes have attracted many photographers including fashion photographers from Vogue Magazine who used Cape d'Or for a fashion shoot in 2015 featuring Karlie Kloss and Dylan Brosnan.\nNatural History.\nThe basalt rock that comprises Cape d'Or contains many minerals including copper, cuprite, calcite, apophyllite and many zeolite minerals including stilbite, analcime, chabazite, mesolite, thomsonite, and others. The minerals form in isolated vugs, veins, and breccias and are often beautifully crystallized. The forest is mixed hardwood and softwood with many plants that favor the coastal environment.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "8672733": "Cala d'Or\nCala d'Or is a village on the east coast of the island of Mallorca, in the municipality of Santany\u00ed, Balearic Islands, Spain.\nGeography.\nCala d'Or area belongs to the municipality of Santany\u00ed, which lies further inland. The capital city Palma and Palma airport are approximately 60km (37.3mi) away.\nThe Village of Cala d'Or unfolds on three promontories along the southeastern coastline. It consists of three principal areas: Cala d'Or (centre), Cala Egos (west) and Cala Ferrera (east). The part east of Avenida Felanitx belongs to the municipality of Felanitx.\nThe rough coastline is interrupted by several bays with sandy beaches. 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{"id": "2hop__738245_124425", "docs_added": {"10444955": "Gracie (film)\n2007 film by Davis Guggenheim\nGracie is a 2007 American sports drama film directed by Davis Guggenheim. It stars Carly Schroeder as Gracie Bowen, Dermot Mulroney as Bryan Bowen, Elisabeth Shue as Lindsay Bowen, Jesse Lee Soffer as Johnny Bowen, and Andrew Shue as Coach Owen Clark.\n\"Gracie\" takes place in New Jersey in 1978, before 1972's Title IX had taken much effect in women's college sports and when organized women's soccer was still very rare in the United States. Gracie, the film's central protagonist, overcomes the loss of her brother by convincing her family and school to allow her to play varsity soccer on an all-boys team. The story is partially based on the childhood experiences of Elisabeth Shue, who was one of the producers in addition to being the wife of Davis Guggenheim, the director, as well as a cast member.\nThe novelization of \"Gracie\", written by Suzanne Weyn, was released in June 2007.\nPlot.\nIn the year 1978, Gracie Bowen, a 15-year-old tomboy who lives in South Orange, New Jersey, is crazy about soccer, as are her three brothers and their former soccer star father. Although Gracie wants to join her brothers and neighbor Kyle in the nightly practices her father runs, she is discouraged by everyone except her older brother, Johnny.\nJohnny, Gracie and Kyle attend Columbia High School, where Johnny is the captain and star player for the varsity soccer team. After missing a shot at the end of a game, the despondent Johnny drives off with a friend's car and dies in a traffic accident.\nStruggling with grief, Gracie decides that she wants to replace her brother on the team. Her father does not believe that girls should play soccer, telling her she is neither tough nor talented enough. Her mother is a nurse who lacks the competitive drive of the rest of her family and fears for Gracie's safety. Her mother later tells Gracie that she would have liked to become a surgeon, but that option had not been available to her as a woman.\nRejected and depressed, Gracie begins to rebel; she stops doing her schoolwork, is caught cheating on an exam, and experiments with wild and self-destructive behavior. She is finally caught by her father almost having sex with a guy she met near the docks after telling her friend, \"I want to do something that I've never done before.\" This serves as a wake-up call for her parents, particularly her father. He quits his job to work with her on her soccer training.\nWhen the school board rejects her request to play boys' soccer, Gracie files an appeal. Citing the newly passed Title IX, Gracie argues that since a girls' soccer team does not exist, she should be allowed to play on the boys' varsity soccer team. The school board allows her to try out for the team. After a very rough tryout, she makes the junior varsity team and has to decide if she is willing to settle for playing at that level. She decides to make the most of playing on junior varsity.\nOne of the coaches asks her to come up to the main team for their championship game. After saying no at first she finally goes. Gracie watches from the bench as the game goes to sudden death overtime. New captain Kyle gets hurt and Gracie goes in for him, scoring the winning goal with a move that her dad taught her.\nCast.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>*Carly Schroeder as Grace Bowen\nHistorical background.\nThe premise of the film rests upon the conflicting expectations of two different American generations. As Gracie's parents were most likely both products of what is now referred to as the \"Silent Generation\" of children born during the Great Depression and World War II, they would have been raised to adhere to traditional gender roles. This would have included discouraging a girl from participating in \"boys' sports\" such as soccer, as opposed to \"girls' sports\" such as cheerleading or gymnastics. Gracie, on the other hand, came of age during the 1970s, when new and controversial ideas about gender were being introduced.\nEleanor Ringel Gillespie, critic for the \"Atlanta Journal-Constitution,\" noted an additional generation gap between those in the film and those in the audience, many of whom grew up with the United States women's national soccer team (which played its first game in 1985) as a reality:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Not so long ago \u2013 1978, actually \u2013 girls were not treated equally with boys when it came to school sports ... what happens in \"Gracie\" must seem like a tale from the Dark Ages to today's young athletes, something akin to slaying a dragon or housekeeping for seven dwarfs. But think of it this way: In 1978, future gold medalist and World Cup star Mia Hamm was only 6 years old.\nOther critics have also noted the multiple generation gaps. Kevin Cahillane observes in the \"New York Times\" that, \"this being 1978 (before Title IX turned a generation of girls from onlookers into athletes), her desire goes against the wishes of the coach, the principal, the other players and her heartbroken parents.\" In another article for the \"New York Times,\" Jeannette Catsoulis further argues that, \"[Gracie] is accustomed to having her abilities overlooked ... When tragedy strikes, and Grace channels her grief into a resolution to play on the all-male varsity team, even her best friend is horrified. As everyone knows, only lesbians play soccer.\"\nThe film closes with the following remarks: \"Thanks to Title IX and brave girls like Gracie, there are over 5\u00a0million girls who play soccer in America. Since 1991 the U.S. Women's National team has won Soccer's World Championships four times.\" (FIFA Women's World Cup Champions 1991, 1999, 2015, and 2019)\nProduction.\nDevelopment and casting.\nThe film is loosely based on life events concerning the Shue family. Former \"Melrose Place\" star Andrew Shue, who developed the film, was one of its producers, and acted a supporting role in the film, initially conceived of it as a story about his late brother William, the oldest Shue sibling, who was the captain of the Columbia High School soccer team that won the New Jersey state championship in 1978; he had died in an accident in 1988. As Andrew developed the idea with his brother-in-law Davis Guggenheim, the director of \"An Inconvenient Truth,\" the storyline began to shift towards Guggenheim's wife, Elisabeth Shue, Andrew's older sister. She became the model for Gracie, and William became the model for Johnny. As Andrew Shue noted in an interview:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />... It was going to be about my older brother, originally. It was really Davis, my sister's husband, who pointed out to me that my sister was the real underdog in our family. I didn't know the emotional turmoil of a girl in an all-boys family trying to get some credit for the fact that she had this courage to play with boys. She has gone from being a girl who was scared, to being this brave girl who could stand up and play with boys, and [went] into acting before any of us and inspired all of us in many ways. So I wanted to celebrate her and her journey.\nThis refers to Elisabeth Shue's own decision in 1972, at the age of nine, to play soccer on an all-boys team, making her the first girl in the South Orange and Maplewood areas of New Jersey to do so. Shue explained her reason for doing so in a 2007 interview. \"There was no other choice back then,\" she pointed out to the interviewer. \"There was no girls team to play on.\" Shue continued to play on the team until 1976, when she turned 13. Of her decision to leave the team, Shue stated, \"the movie is really what would have happened if I hadn't quit [playing soccer]. I quit because of what people would think of me. The pressure from the boys. The awkward development of my body. I really, really regret it. I wish I'd been brave enough.\"\nAndrew, Elizabeth, their brother John (who was also a producer on the film), and Guggenheim then engaged in an extensive search to find the right actress for the role of fifteen-year-old Gracie; they promoted the search on the website \"findinggracie.com.\" The role eventually went to athlete-actress Carly Schroeder. Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat argue that Schroeder \"puts in a stellar performance as the teenager who becomes a warrior when most of her peers are cheering from the sidelines.\"\nFilming took partial place at Columbia High School, both the setting of the events of the film and the actual high school the Shue family members had attended. Filming also took place in various locations in South Plainfield, New Jersey.\nAndrew Shue chose to honor his former Dartmouth and Columbia High School teammate Chris Colasanti by naming the story's coach after him. Colasanti, who had been the captain of Columbia's 1985 state championship team, was killed in the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.\nReception.\nReviews.\n\"At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper\" gave \"Gracie\" \"Two Thumbs up\", stating, \"You've seen it before, but you'll rarely see it better.\" \"Gracie\" is a \"New York Times Critics' Pick.\" Times critic Jeannette Catsoulis described \"Gracie\" as \"a familiar underdog story told with unusual sensitivity ... \"Gracie\" connects the adversity-drama dots \u2013 the beat-down, the bounce-back, the last-minute support from an unexpected quarter \u2013 with a subtle awareness of the shock waves of bereavement. Balancing the emotional complexity is Chris Manley's refreshingly unaffected cinematography; the drama of a free kick, like that of a good movie, is best viewed through a steady lens.\" Bill Zwecker, of the \"Chicago Sun-Times,\" stated, \"It's a sweet and uplifting film, and though quite predictable, gives us a family drama that showcases simple truths about overcoming seemingly impossible odds and leaves you with a warm and very satisfying feeling deep down. It's a solid, hopeful and inspiring story that reminds us of what we might call 'old-fashioned' values about perseverance and making your dreams come true. Old-fashioned? Not at all.\"\nOwen Gleiberman of \"Entertainment Weekly\" argued that \"in 1978, a high school girl playing competitive soccer wasn't just novel \u2013 it was barely heard of. This amiable rouser, based on the experiences of Elisabeth Shue and her family, tries to convey how gutsy and role-smashing it is for ... Gracie to cleat her way onto an all-boys soccer team. So why is Gracie as processed as an after-school special? You miss the knockabout edge of \"Bend It Like Beckham\" \u2013 though the ending, in its Pavlovian sports-flick way, pumps you up.\" Scott Tobias of \"The A.V. Club\" suggested that \"though \"Gracie\" fashions Shue's story into ready-made inspirational formula, it's nonetheless vivid in its particulars, from the looks and sounds of late-'70s New Jersey to the portrait of a soccer-driven family reformed by loss.\" Lael Loewenstein of the \"Los Angeles Times\" stated that \"Gracie\" is \"an earnest, well-acted, poignant drama that nevertheless runs afoul of sports movie clich\u00e9s.\"\nThe film received a 62% rating from Rotten Tomatoes based on 91 reviews, with an average rating of 5.90/10. The consensus reads, \"Gracie can be rousing and touching in spots, but is ultimately undone by its predictable story arc and a lack of nuance.\"\nBox office.\nOn a budget of $9 million, the limited release film made about $4 million at the box office and over $3 million in rentals.\nSoundtrack.\nThe soundtrack contains a number of popular classic rock songs, many of which are from the year 1978.\nSongs included in the CD.\nThe CD was released in 2007 by Lakeshore Records.\nSoundtrack.\nLakeshore Records also released a CD of the film's score, composed by Mark Isham.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1399902": "Davis Guggenheim\nAmerican film and television director and producer\nPhilip Davis Guggenheim is an American screenwriter, director, and producer.\nActive in television and film's directions and productions since the 1990s, from 2006 Guggenheim has specialized in making documentaries, ranking the top 100 highest-grossing documentaries of all time with three works: \"An Inconvenient Truth\", \"It Might Get Loud\", and \"Waiting for \"Superman\".\"\nGuggenheim's cinematographic projects received several awards and nominations, including the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film for \"An Inconvenient Truth\", the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Documentary Feature for \"He Named Me Malala\" and two nominations at the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Documentary/Nonfiction Program.\nHis credits include \"NYPD Blue\", \"ER\", \"24\", \"Alias\", \"The Shield\", \"Deadwood\", and the documentaries \"It Might Get Loud\", \"The Road We've Traveled\", \"Waiting for \"Superman\"\", \"\".\nEarly life.\nPhilip Davis Guggenheim was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Marion Davis (n\u00e9e Streett) and filmmaker Charles Guggenheim. His father was Jewish, whereas his mother was Episcopalian. He graduated from the Potomac School, Sidwell Friends School and Brown University.\nCareer.\nGuggenheim joined the HBO Western drama \"Deadwood\" as a producer and director for the first season in 2004. The series was created by David Milch and focused on a growing town in the American West. Guggenheim directed the episodes \"Deep Water\", \"Reconnoitering the Rim\", \"Plague\" and \"Sold Under Sin\". He left the show at the end of Season 1.\nThe documentary \"An Inconvenient Truth\" was produced and directed by Davis Guggenheim. \"An Inconvenient Truth\" won the Academy Award in 2007 for Best Documentary Feature. The film, released in 2006, featured former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and his international slideshow on global warming.\nThen-candidate Barack Obama's biographical film, which aired during the Democratic National Convention in August 2008, was directed by Guggenheim. Their infomercial, which was broadcast two months later, on October 29, 2008, was \"executed with high standards of cinematography\", according to \"The New York Times\". In 2012, he released \"The Road We've Traveled\", a 17-minute short film on the president.\nGuggenheim directed and was an executive producer of the 2009 pilot for \"Melrose Place\".\nIn 2008, he released \"It Might Get Loud\", a documentary that glimpses into the lives of guitarists Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White.\nGuggenheim's 2010 documentary \"Waiting for \"Superman\"\", a film about the failures of American public education sparked controversy and debate. Guggenheim knew his film would lead to this and said, \"I know people will say this movie is anti-this or pro-that. But it really is all about families trying to find great schools\". This film received the Audience Award for best documentary at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Its public release was in September 2010.\nA documentary film about the band U2 directed by Guggenheim titled \"From the Sky Down\" opened the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival in September.\nIn 2013, he directed \"The Dream is Now\", a 30-minute documentary about four undocumented students in the United States as they deal with the U.S. immigration system.\nIn 2015, he directed a documentary film \"He Named Me Malala\" about Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, who was targeted by Taliban gunmen, shot in the head and left wounded.\nIn 2019, he created and directed a documentary miniseries titled \"\". The series explores the mind and motivations behind the captain of industry and philanthropist Bill Gates, the rise of Microsoft, and the past and current pursuits of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.\nIn 2020, Guggenheim and Jonathan King launched production company Concordia Studio.\nIn 2023, the documentary \"\", directed by Guggenheim, was released on Apple TV+. Featuring read excerpts from Michael J. Fox's own books, the biopic stars Fox himself as both interviewee and narrator, recounting his career and experience contending with Parkinson's disease. The feature received seven Emmy Nominations.\nPersonal life.\nGuggenheim married actress Elisabeth Shue in 1994. They have three children together. He is the first cousin of actress Patty Guggenheim.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3124649": "Ryan Gracie\nBrazilian Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner and mixed martial arts fighter\nRyan Gracie (August 13, 1974 \u2013 December 15, 2007) was a Brazilian mixed martial artist with a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He was a member of the Gracie family and a grandson of Carlos Gracie.\nCareer.\nRyan trained with his brothers, Renzo Gracie and Ralph Gracie; the latter often served as his cornerman. He also trained Pancrase fighter Gabriel Vella and jiu-jitsu world champion Fabio Leopoldo while in Brazil.\nGracie had seven fights in the PRIDE organization, with his first at PRIDE 10 in 2000 and his most recent at PRIDE Shockwave 2004. PRIDE billed Ryan as the \"bad boy\" of the family who reputedly gained experience fighting in the streets of Brazil. In interviews in 2004, Gracie expressed a strong interest in fighting Kazushi Sakuraba and Hidehiko Yoshida. Sakuraba, known as the \"Gracie Hunter\" for his many victories over the Gracie family, defeated Ryan earlier with a decision win in 2000.\nRyan was the leader and head coach of Gracie S\u00e3o Paulo, one of the largest jiu-jitsu associations in Brazil, with affiliated schools spread over the world. Supported by his cousins Carlos Russo, Daniel Sim\u00f5es, and Renzo Gracie, the academy is home to several world champions.\nPersonal life.\nHe was the youngest son of the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Master Robson Gracie. On December 8, 2001, his only son, Rayron Gracie, was born. Ryan's brothers are Charles Gracie, Renzo Gracie, and Ralph Gracie.\nOn January 30, 2021, Ryan's son, Rayron, released a short documentary titled \"Letters to my Father\", which reveals his experiences growing up without his father through a series of letters he decided to write to Ryan throughout his teenage years.\nIn October 2005, Gracie suffered an accidental gunshot wound to the leg while reaching into a closet in his sister's house in Rio de Janeiro, according to a report by GracieMag.com. He was hospitalized and returned to stable condition after receiving a blood transfusion.\nDeath.\nOn December 15, 2007, at 7:00 A.M., Ryan Gracie was found dead in a jail cell in S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil. At approximately 1:30 A.M. that day, Gracie had been arrested for stealing and crashing a car and attempting to hijack a motorcycle. The owner of the motorcycle hit Gracie on the head, and Gracie was detained by several cyclists until police arrived. A toxicological examination at the Medical Legal Institute was conducted, after which Gracie was transported to the police station. While in jail, Gracie's wife called psychiatrist Dr. Sabino Ferreira de Faria to attend to him. The psychiatrist was later accused of medical negligence by over prescribing medication and causing Gracie's death. Ferreira was later sentenced to two years of community service for recklessness. The doctor was with Gracie most of the night, and was notified of Ryan Gracie's death as he was driving home. Gracie was found alone and slumped into a corner when police were doing a routine check of the jail cells.\nMixed martial arts record.\n!scope=\"col\"| Res.\n!scope=\"col\"| Record\n!scope=\"col\"| Opponent\n!scope=\"col\"| Method\n!scope=\"col\"| Event\n!scope=\"col\"| Date\n!scope=\"col\"| Round\n!scope=\"col\"| Time\n!scope=\"col\"| Location\n!scope=\"col\"| Notes\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2593203": "H\u00e9lio Gracie\nBrazilian co-inventor of Brazilian jiu-jitsu (1913\u20132009)\nH\u00e9lio Gracie (October 1, 1913 \u2013 January 29, 2009) was a Brazilian martial artist who together with his brothers Oswaldo, Gastao Jr, George and Carlos Gracie founded and developed the self-defense martial art system of Gracie jiu-jitsu, also known as Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ).\nConsidered as the Godfather of BJJ, according to his son Rorion, Gracie is one of the first sports heroes in Brazilian history; he was named Man of the Year in 1997 by the American martial arts publication \"Black Belt\" magazine. A patriarch of the Gracie family, multiple members of his family have gone on to have successful careers in combat sport competition including mixed martial arts (MMA).\nEarly life.\nGracie was born on October 1, 1913, in Bel\u00e9m, Brazil. Contrary to popular belief, he was a talented athlete, and trained and competed in rowing and swimming since his childhood. He had his first contact in martial arts at 16, when he started training judo (at that time commonly referred to as \"Kano jiu-jitsu\" or simply \"jiu-jitsu\"), with his brothers Carlos and George. He also learned catch wrestling under the renowned Orlando Americo \"Dud\u00fa\" da Silva, who taught his brothers for a time.\nWhen he was 16 years old, he had the opportunity to teach a judo class, which helped him develop his family style, \"Gracie jiu-jitsu\". When the director of the Bank of Brazil, Mario Brandt, arrived for a private class at the original Gracie Academy in Rio de Janeiro as scheduled Carlos Gracie, the instructor, was running late. H\u00e9lio offered to teach the class in Carlos's stead. When Carlos arrived with apologies, Brandt assured him it was no problem, and even requested that he be allowed to continue learning with H\u00e9lio.\nGracie realized, however, that even though he knew the techniques theoretically, the moves were much harder for him to execute. Consequently, he began adapting Mitsuyo Maeda's brand of judo, already heavily based around \"newaza\" ground fighting techniques. From these experiments, Gracie jiu-jitsu was created. Like its parent style of judo, these techniques allowed smaller and weaker practitioners the capability to defend themselves and even defeat much larger opponents. \"Carlos and Helio Gracie ... brought a fresh eye to jujitsu just as their fellow countryman brought a special new approach to football.\"\nAside from training with his brothers, Gracie learned further judo under Sumiyuki Kotani and Argentinian judo pioneer Chugo Sato. He might have also got training under a practitioner named Hiraichi Tada. However, the extent of his official training in this art remains unknown. According to Masahiko Kimura, Gracie held the rank of 6th dan in judo in 1951, while according to Robert Hill, Kodokan records show Gracie at the rank of 3rd dan at the time, though Hill also noted that it was not unusual for Kodokan records to show a lower rank than that actually held by non-Japanese judo practitioners.<templatestyles src=\"Citation/styles.css\"/>[a]\nFighting career.\nFirst challenges.\nGracie began his professional fighting career at 18 years old against boxer Antonio Portugal. The fight took place in the undercard of a \"jiu-jitsu vs. boxing\" event on January 16, 1932, which saw judoka Geo Omori defeating boxer Tavares Crespo. Gracie won his fight by submission in a short time, probably an armlock in 40 seconds. Portugal is sometimes incorrectly billed as a boxing champion.\nHis second match would be the same year in a jiu-jitsu exhibition against Takashi Namiki in September. As Namiki had a 7\u00a0kg (15\u00a0lb) weight advantage and was a native of Japan just like the art of jiu-jitsu, he was expected to defeat Gracie. Namiki dominated the match, but Gracie wasn't defeated, leading it to a draw after several rounds.\nMatches against wrestlers.\nAlso in 1932, Gracie faced professional wrestler Fred Ebert on November 6. It was his biggest challenge up to the point, as Ebert outweighed him by 29\u00a0kg (64\u00a0lb) and was a decorated freestyle wrestler, and their match would have no time limit. Gracie was positive, claiming he would submit Ebert in a short time. However, the bout lasted almost two hours, and was eventually stopped by the police at the promoters's discretion as none of the fighters was progressing or advancing position. Again, this fight is sometimes registered as a vale tudo match, but it was hosted under grappling only rules. In an interview, Gracie claimed that he had to undergo an urgent operation the next day and that the stop was demanded by the doctor due to Gracie having a high fever caused by a swelling.\nIn 1934, Gracie faced another jiu-jitsu practitioner named Miyaki. The latter (whose first name is unknown) was billed as a judo black belt, although he had fought only one professional fight, a loss against professional wrestler Robert Ruhmann. He is usually identified as the famous judoka and catch wrestler Taro Miyake, a theory possibly initiated by Mark Hewitt in his book \"Catch Wrestling: A Wild and Wooly Look at the Early Days of Pro Wrestling in America\" (2005). However, Miyake was 54 years old and weighted 90\u00a0kg (200\u00a0lb) at the time, while Miyaki's official stats were about 20 years old and 64\u00a0kg (141\u00a0lb), and photographic material seems to support them being different people.\nIn any case, Gracie passed the first 20 minutes of the match in guard position before he climbed up to mount. He then applied a gi choke which Miyaki didn't surrender to, making the Japanese fall unconscious for the victory.\nOn July 28, Gracie faced renowned professional wrestler Wladek Zbyszko who, very much like Ebert, had a 40\u00a0kg (88\u00a0lb) weight advantage (albeit was 22 years older) and was billed as a world champion. Although the match was promoted as a \"catch-as-catch-can vs. jiu-jitsu\" challenge, it was fought under jiu-jitsu rules, including judogis and a 20-minute time limit. It was an uneventful affair; Gracie pulled guard at the opening and they spent the rest of the match in said position, ending in a draw. Still, it was seen as a moral victory for Gracie not to have been finished by the larger Wladek. The wrestler himself praised Gracie's courage and resistance.\nGracie's next opponent was his own former teacher, Orlando Americo \"Dud\u00fa\" da Silva, who had defeated H\u00e9lio's brother George in a catch wrestling match earlier in the year 1935. Their match was stipulated as a vale tudo bout with a 20-minute time limit on February 2. During the match, the two fighters exchanged punches before Dud\u00fa, heavier by 20\u00a0kg, took Gracie down. Gracie defended from the guard, but Dud\u00fa landed heavy punishment in form of ground and pound, breaking Gracie's nose with a headbutt and making him bleed profusely. However, the wrestler ended up spending all his energy in the assault, and it allowed Gracie to counterattack gradually with short punches from the bottom. When they returned to standing by the referee, Gracie landed two side kicks of the kind called \"pis\u00e3o\" in capoeira, and the tired Dud\u00fa submitted verbally shortly after.\nMatches against judokas.\nAfter the fight against Dud\u00fa, Gracie was challenged by 5th dan judoka Yasuichi Ono to another vale tudo fight. This was met with heat by the Gracie side, as Ono had defeated George Gracie by choke in a jiu-jitsu match. Calling Ono a \"cretin\" in a newspaper interview, Gracie claimed to accept the challenge and the two were stipulated to fight in April 1935, but the bout was scrapped when Gracie pulled out. Eventually, Gracie accepted to fight Ono, but only under jiu-jitsu rules, without points or judges and in December. He also came to the match wearing a judogi with very short sleeves to make gripping difficult.\nThe affair saw Ono, though lighter than Gracie by 4\u00a0kg (9\u00a0lb), executing an exact number of 32 judo throws on Gracie through the entire match, as well as almost finishing him with a juji-gatame in the first round. However, Gracie never gave up and escaped all his holds, including one in which he dived out of the ring to avoid a choke (a legal action at the time), and even had his own modest submission attempts in the form of an armlock and a gi choke near of the ending. After 20 minutes, the bout ended in a draw.\nOn June 13, 1936, Gracie fought judoka Takeo Yano, a training partner of Ono who also had dominated George Gracie the previous year in a time draw. Again, Gracie demanded a match without judges and wore a modified judogi, and his brother Carlos predicted that Yano wouldn't last a single round. Indeed, Gracie showed improvement, threatening Yano with a gi choke in the second round, but Yano threw and took down Gracie repeatedly through the three rounds of the match, which ended in a draw. Ono challenged Gracie for a future rematch after the bout, which Gracie accepted. The same month, Gracie was involved in a challenge consistent in fighting three opponents the same night, being those Geroncio Barbosa, Manuel Fernandes and Simon Munich, but Gracie pulled out before the event and was replaced by his brother George.\nOn September 12, Gracie faced a 2\u00a0kg heavier fighter named Massagoishi. He was billed as both a sumo wrestler and judo black belt, although Takeo Yano was quoted as skeptical of the second claim. Gracie submitted Massagoishi with an armlock after 13 minutes of fighting. However, the match was criticized by the press, calling it \"a comedy and a farce\" due to Gracie and his opponent not living up to expectations. The Brazilian Federation of Pugilism actually suspended Massagoishi for his inactivity during the bout.\nGracie met Yasuichi Ono for the second time on October 3, 1936, again in a match under jiu-jitsu rules and with no points of judges. Press and critics were unanimous in H\u00e9lio's improvement from their first match, although Ono again threw Gracie a number of 27 times and controlled most of the match. Around the time, Gracie had another rematch, it being against Orlando Americo da Silva and under grappling only rules. Gracie lost the match when he was disqualified for using a forbidden hold. Gracie had also a match against Erwin Klausner in 1937. Klausner was mainly a boxer (although he was also known as a wrestler), but the match was contested under the usual jiu-jitsu rules. Gracie won by armlock at the second round.\nIn 1937, Gracie retired from competition for the first time. He did not fight again until 1950. The year of his return, Gracie challenged famous boxing champion Joe Louis to a vale tudo match in one of his visits to Brazil, but Louis declined and proposed a boxing match, which Gracie rejected.\nGracie vs. Kimura.\nIn 1951, Gracie issued a challenge against a touring judoka and professional wrestler, Masahiko Kimura. To fight him, Gracie faced before a lesser member of Kimura's troupe, Yukio Kato. Gracie and Kato went to a draw on September 6, 1951, with Kato immediately asking for a rematch. It took place on September 29, and it saw Gracie winning by choking out his opponent. Although the win was controversial, the match against Kimura was realized, and it happened on October 22. Kimura defeated Gracie by \"gyaku-ude-garami\" at the second round in a convincing fashion. Gyaku-ude-garami then went on to be known as the Kimura lock.\nAcademia Gracie vs Academia Fadda.\nOswaldo Fadda represents a non-Gracie line of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. He was trained by Luiz Fran\u00e7a who was a student of Mitsuyo Maeda around the same time as Carlos and H\u00e9lio Gracie. Fadda was known for training the poor in Rio de Janeiro, and for the use of leg locks, which the Gracies considered low class. He trained a number of students and challenged Gracie's academy in 1953. Fadda's academy won the majority of the matches.\nGracie vs. Santana.\nIn 1955, Gracie was challenged by Valdemar Santana, a former student of his academy who now trained and fought under the management of Carlos Renato and Haroldo Brito. Reasons why Santana left the Gracie team are diffuse; one of them is that he was expelled for taking a professional wrestling bout, something that their fighters had forbidden, while another tells how Santana accidentally flooded Gracie's gym while doing cleaning chores. Gracie accepted the challenge of a vale tudo match, even though Santana was 16 years younger and 60\u00a0lb heavier.\nThey fought in May, both wearing a jiu-jitsu gi. The bout lasted almost four hours, possibly three hours and 40 minutes. Gracie defended from his guard for most of the fight, hitting elbows to the head and heel kicks to the back, while his opponent threw punches through the guard. After a long time of fighting, Gracie got eventually tired, and Santana took over with headbutts and more strikes. At the end, Santana lifted Gracie up and slammed him on the mat, and then landed a soccer kick to the head of a kneeling Gracie. Gracie was knocked out and his cornermen threw the towel.\nAlthough luta livre veteran Euclydes Hatem challenged Gracie after the fight, Gracie's bout with Santana was his final match before his retirement.\nAssault and Rufino Dos Santos.\nA dispute between Gracie's brother Carlos and Manoel Rufino dos Santos worsened after Dos Santos won a public bout against Carlos in August 1932. Subsequently, the conflict then moved to the newspapers, where Rufino criticized Carlos's skill and dismissed his jiu-jitsu credentials, leading Carlos, George and H\u00e9lio Gracie to assault him in front of his teaching place at the Tijuca T\u00eanis Clube on October 18. They hit him repeatedly with a steel box and immobilized him for Carlos to apply an armlock, dislocating Rufino's shoulder so badly that it needed surgery. The brothers were arrested and were convicted to two and a half in prison for assault, as well as for trying to run away during the arrest, but their connections to President of Brazil Get\u00falio Vargas granted them a pardon.\nLater life.\nGracie's son, Rorion Gracie, was among the first Gracie family members to bring Gracie Jiu-Jitsu to the US. Royce Gracie, Rorion's younger brother, went on to become the first UFC champion in the organization's history; Helio coached Royce from outside the cage at UFC 1 and UFC 2.\nDeath.\nGracie died on the morning of January 29, 2009, in his sleep in Itaipava, in the city of Petr\u00f3polis, Rio de Janeiro. The cause of death, reported by the"}, "descending_order": ["10444955", "3124649", "2593203", "1399902"], "permutation_1": ["10444955", "2593203", "3124649", "1399902"], "permutation_2": ["10444955", "3124649", "2593203", "1399902"], "permutation_3": ["1399902", "2593203", "10444955", "3124649"]}
{"id": "2hop__776480_3429", "docs_added": {"191890": "American Idol\nAmerican singing competition\nAmerican Idol is an American singing competition television series created by Simon Fuller, produced by Fremantle North America and 19 Entertainment, and distributed by Fremantle North America. It aired on Fox from June 11, 2002, to April 7, 2016, for 15 seasons. It was on hiatus for two years until March 11, 2018, when a revival of the series began airing on ABC.\nIt started as an addition to the \"Idol\" format that was based on \"Pop Idol\" from British television, in which the programme's first series, which was won by Will Young, ended over four months before the show began, as it later became one of the most successful shows in the history of American television. The concept of the series involves discovering recording stars from unsigned singing talents, with the winner determined by American viewers using phones, Internet platforms, and SMS text voting. The winners of the first twenty-two seasons, as chosen by viewers, are Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Hicks, Jordin Sparks, David Cook, Kris Allen, Lee DeWyze, Scotty McCreery, Phillip Phillips, Candice Glover, Caleb Johnson, Nick Fradiani, Trent Harmon, Maddie Poppe, Laine Hardy, Just Sam, Chayce Beckham, Noah Thompson, Iam Tongi, and Abi Carter.\n\"American Idol\" employs a select panel of judges who critique the contestants' performances. The original judges, for seasons one through eight, were record producer and music manager Randy Jackson, singer and choreographer Paula Abdul, and music executive and manager Simon Cowell. The judging panel for the last three seasons on Fox consisted of singers Keith Urban, Jennifer Lopez, and Harry Connick Jr. Season sixteen brought three new judges: singers Luke Bryan, Katy Perry, and Lionel Richie. Beginning in the twenty-third season, Underwood replaced Perry, alongside returning judges Bryan and Richie. The show has been hosted by television presenter Ryan Seacrest throughout its run, apart from the show's inaugural season when comedian Brian Dunkleman joined Seacrest as co-host.\nThe success of \"American Idol\" has been described as \"unparalleled in broadcasting history\". A rival TV executive said the series was \"the most impactful show in the history of television\". It became a recognized springboard for launching the career of many artists as bona fide stars. According to \"Billboard\" magazine, in its first ten years, \"\"Idol\" has spawned 345 \"Billboard\" chart-toppers and a platoon of pop idols, including Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Chris Daughtry, Fantasia, Ruben Studdard, Jennifer Hudson, Clay Aiken, Adam Lambert, and Jordin Sparks while remaining a TV ratings juggernaut.\" For an unprecedented eight consecutive years, from the 2003\u201304 television season through the 2010\u201311 season, either its performance show or result show was ranked number one in U.S. television ratings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\n\"American Idol\" was based on the British show \"Pop Idol\" created by Simon Fuller, which was in turn inspired by the New Zealand television singing competition \"Popstars\". Television producer Nigel Lythgoe saw a version in Australia and helped bring it over to Britain. Fuller was inspired by the idea from \"Popstars\" of employing a panel of judges to select singers in audition. He then added other elements, including telephone voting by the viewing public (which at the time was already in use in shows, such as the \"Eurovision Song Contest\"), the drama of backstories, and real-life soap opera unfolding in real time. \"Pop Idol\" debuted in Britain in 2001 with Lythgoe as showrunner\u200d\u2014\u200cthe executive producer and production leader\u200d\u2014\u200cand Simon Cowell as one of the judges, and was successful with the viewing public.\nIn 2001, Fuller, Cowell, and TV producer Simon Jones attempted to sell the \"Pop Idol\" format to the United States, but the idea was initially met with poor responses from all the television networks including UPN and Fox. However, Rupert Murdoch, head of Fox's parent company, was later persuaded to buy the series by his daughter, Elisabeth, who had seen the British show. Although Fox's executives wanted to change the format, Murdoch insisted that it should remain the same as the British one. One change was nevertheless made due to the presence of multiple time zones in the United States that made it impractical for the country to vote in the same time period, an additional half-hour results show was therefore added the day following the performance show. The show was renamed \"\" and debuted in the summer of 2002. Cowell was initially offered the job of showrunner but turned down the offer; Lythgoe then took over that position. Much to the surprise of Cowell and Fox, it became one of the biggest shows of the summer. With its successful launch in the summer, the show was then moved to January and expanded. The show grew into a phenomenon largely due to its personal engagement with the contestants by prompting the viewers to vote, and the presence of the acid-tongued Cowell as a judge. By 2004, it had become the most-watched show on American television, a position it then held for seven consecutive seasons until 2011.\nHowever, after a few years of sharp declining ratings starting in 2012, with rating falls of over 20% each season, the fifteenth season would be its last on Fox, ending its run in April 2016. In May 2017, ABC acquired the rights to the series and the program returned for the 2017\u201318 television season. The first season of the revived series, or the sixteenth season overall, started airing in March 2018. Seven seasons have been aired on ABC as of May 2024.\nJudges and hosts.\nJudges.\nThe show had originally planned on having four judges following the \"Pop Idol\" format; however, only three judges had been found by the time of the audition round in the first season, namely Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell. A fourth judge, radio DJ Stryker, was originally chosen but he dropped out citing \"image concerns.\" In the second season, New York radio personality Angie Martinez had been hired as a fourth judge but withdrew after only a few days of auditions, due to being uncomfortable with giving out criticism. The show decided to continue with the three judges format until the eighth season. All three original judges stayed on the judging panel for eight seasons.\nIn the eighth season, Latin Grammy Award-nominated singer-songwriter and record producer Kara DioGuardi was added as a fourth judge. Abdul left the show in 2009, after the eighth season, as a result of failing to agree to terms with the show producers. Emmy Award-winning talk show host Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul for the ninth season, but left in 2010 after just one season. DioGuardi was let go from \"American Idol\" in 2010 after two seasons, as producers favored a return to the three-person judges panel previously used prior to DioGuardi's appearance on the show. Cowell also left the show in 2010 to introduce the American version of his show \"The X Factor\" in 2011. Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth.\nJennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined the judging panel in the tenth season, but both left in 2012 after two seasons. Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. They were replaced by three new judges, Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj, and Keith Urban, who joined Jackson in the twelfth season. However, both Carey and Minaj left after one season. Jackson also departed the judges table after twelve seasons, but would return as the in-house mentor for the thirteenth season in 2014, after which he left the show permanently.\nUrban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. After a one-season hiatus, Lopez returned to \"American Idol\" for the thirteenth season, and was joined by former mentor Harry Connick Jr. After this, Lopez, Urban, and Connick Jr. remained on the show until its cancellation after the fifteenth season in 2016.\nWhen the show was revived by ABC in 2018, Katy Perry, Luke Bryan, and Lionel Richie were selected as judges, marking the sixteenth season of \"Idol\". Bryan and Richie have remained on the show since, while Perry left the show in May 2024 after seven seasons. On July 31, 2024, published reports announced former \"Idol\" winner Carrie Underwood as Perry's replacement, joining Bryan and Richie for the twenty-third season.\nGuest judges may occasionally be introduced. In the second season, guest judges such as Richie and Gladys Knight were used, and in the third season, Donna Summer, Quentin Tarantino, Gloria Estefan, and some of the mentors also joined as judges to critique the performances in the final rounds. Guest judges were sporadically used during the audition rounds: Gene Simmons, LL Cool J, Brandy, Mark McGrath, and Kenny Loggins in the fourth season; Carole Bayer Sager, Jewel, and Olivia Newton-John in the sixth season; Shania Twain, Neil Patrick Harris, Avril Lavigne, Mary J. Blige, Joe Jonas, Kristin Chenoweth, Victoria Beckham, and Perry in the ninth season (substituting in the vacant chair, before DeGeneres was hired); and Adam Lambert filled in for Urban at one audition location during the fourteenth season. In the ABC version, two instances occurred during the live shows: Abdul filled in for Bryan on one episode of the nineteenth season, while Alanis Morissette and Ed Sheeran filled in for Perry and Richie on an episode of the twenty-first season.\nHosts.\nThe first season was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman, following the format of \"Pop Idol\" of using two presenters. Dunkleman quit thereafter, resulting in Seacrest becoming the sole emcee starting with the second season in 2003.\nSeacrest has remained as sole host of \"American Idol\" ever since, with the exception of the two-year hiatus between 2016 and 2018 as well as April 8, 2019, during the seventeenth season, when Bobby Bones subbed for Seacrest after the latter fell ill. Dunkleman did, however, return for the initial in 2016 as a guest.\nCast timeline.\nAnnotations\nSelection process.\nIn a series of steps, the show selected the eventual winner out of many tens of thousands of contestants.\nContestant eligibility.\nThe eligible age-range for contestants is fifteen to twenty-eight years old. The initial age limit was sixteen to twenty-four in the first three seasons, but the upper limit was raised to twenty-eight in the fourth season, and the lower limit was reduced to fifteen in the tenth season. The contestants have to be legal U.S. residents, can not have advanced to particular stages of the competition in previous seasons, and must not have held a current recording or talent representation contract by the semi-final stage (in previous years by the audition stage).\nInitial auditions.\nFor the first eighteen seasons, contestants went through at least three sets of cuts. The first was a brief audition with a few other contestants in front of selectors which may include one of the show's producers. Although auditions can exceed 10,000 in each city, only a few hundred of these made it past the preliminary round of auditions. Successful contestants then sing in front of producers, where more may be cut. Only then can they proceed to audition in front of the judges, which is the only audition stage shown on television. Those selected by the judges are sent to Hollywood. Between 10 and 60 people in each city may make it to Hollywood (the average total is between 150 and 200).\nFrom the nineteenth season onwards, contestants request a Zoom interview and audition remotely for the show's producers. If the audition goes well, they will then invite the contestants to audition in front of the judges, in one of the audition cities.\nHollywood week.\nOnce in Hollywood, the contestants perform individually or in groups in a series of rounds. Until the tenth season, there were usually three rounds of eliminations in Hollywood. In the first round the contestants emerged in groups but performed individually. For the next round, the contestants put themselves in small groups and performed a song together. In the final round, the contestants performed solo with a song of their choice a cappella or accompanied by a band\u200d\u2014\u200cdepending on the season. In the second and third seasons, contestants were also asked to write original lyrics or melody in an additional round after the first round. In the seventh season, the group round was eliminated and contestants may, after a first solo performance and on judges approval, skip a second solo round and move directly to the final Hollywood round. In the twelfth season, the executive producers split up the females and males and chose the members to form the groups in the group round.\nIn the tenth and eleventh seasons, a further round was added in Las Vegas, where the contestants performed in groups based on a theme, followed by one final solo round to determine the semi-finalists. At the end of this stage of the competition, 24 to 36 contestants were selected to move on to the semi-final stage. In the twelfth season the Las Vegas round became a Sudden Death round, where the judges had to choose five guys and five girls each night (four nights) to make the top twenty. In the thirteenth season, the Las Vegas round was eliminated and a new round called \"Hollywood or Home\" was added, where if the judges were uncertain about some contestants, those contestants were required to perform soon after landing in Los Angeles, and those who failed to impress were sent back home before they reached Hollywood. In the fourteenth season, the \"Hollywood or Home\" round was dropped, and a Showcase round was added, where the contestants performed at the House of Blues or auditorium for the judges and a live audience, and these performances determine who makes into the Top 24. In the seventeenth and eighteenth seasons, the showcase round took place in Hawaii. From the nineteenth season onward, a showstopper round was used.\nAudience voting.\nFrom the semi-finals onward, the fate of the contestants is decided by public vote. During the contestant's performance as well as the recap at the end, a toll-free telephone number for each contestant was displayed on the screen. For a two-hour period after the episode ends (up to four hours for the finale) in each US time zone, viewers may call or send a text message to their preferred contestant's telephone number, and each call or text message was registered as a vote for that contestant. Viewers were allowed to vote as many times as they can within the two-hour voting window. However, the show reserves the right to discard votes by power dialers. One or more of the least popular contestants may be eliminated in successive weeks until a winner emerges. Over 110\u00a0million votes were cast in the first season, and by the tenth season the seasonal total had increased to nearly 750 million. Voting via text messaging was made available in the second season when AT&T Wireless joined as a sponsor of the show, and 7.5\u00a0million text messages were sent to \"American Idol\" that season. The number of text messages rapidly increased, reaching 178\u00a0million texts by the eighth season. Online voting was offered for the first time in the tenth season. The votes are counted and verified by Telescope Inc.\nSemi-finals.\nIn the first three seasons, the semi-finalists were split into different groups to perform individually in their respective night. In the first season, there were three groups of ten, with the top three contestants from each group making the finals. In the second and third seasons, there were four groups of eight, and the top two of each selected. These seasons also featured a wildcard round, where contestants who failed to qualify were given another chance. In the first season, only one wildcard contestant was chosen by the judges, giving a total of ten finalists. In the second and third seasons, each of the three judges championed one contestant with the public advancing a fourth into the finals, making 12 finalists in all.\nFrom the fourth through seventh and ninth seasons, the twenty-four semi-finalists were divided by gender in order to ensure an equal gender division in the top twelve. The men and women sang separately on consecutive nights, and the bottom two in each groups were eliminated each week until only six of each remained to form the top twelve.\nThe wildcard round returned in the eighth season, wherein there were three groups of twelve, with three contestants moving forward \u2013 the highest male, the highest female, and the next highest-placed singer \u2013 for each night, and four wildcards were chosen by the judges to produce a final 13. Starting in tenth season, the girls and boys perform on separate nights. In the tenth and eleventh seasons, five of each gender were chosen, and three wildcards were chosen by the judges to form a final 13. In the twelfth season, the top twenty semifinalists were split into gender groups, with five of each gender advancing to form the final 10. In the thirteenth season, there were thirty semifinalists, but only twenty semifinalists (ten for each gender) were chosen by the judges to perform on the live shows, with five in each gender based on the vote and three wildcards chosen by the judges composing the final 13. In the fourteenth season, the top 24 performed at The Fillmore Detroit, starting with the 12 males on one night and then the 12 females on the next night. The following week, the same order went for the top 16, with four males eliminated, followed by four females based on the vote. Then, on the first night of finals, a similar sequence from the thirteenth season was used to determine the final 12, with five of each gender based on the vote and two wildcards chosen by the judges. In the fifteenth season, the top 24 performed at Cathedral of Saint Vibiana in Los Angeles and were split into two groups of twelve and performed twice, one being a solo performance and one being a duet with a former Idol contestant. In each group, the judges chose 7 contestants to advance to the top 14 where the judges chose 4 to advance to the top 10 and remaining 6 contestants were chosen based on the vote. In the sixteenth season, the top 24 performed at the Academy in the Heart of LA, and the show repeated the process from the previous season. However, instead of Idol alumnus as duet partners, superstar celebrity singers were used as the duet partners. In the seventeenth season, the same process was repeated again. However, instead of a top 24, it's a top 20, the contestants performed at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, and performed solos in one episode, and performed the duets in two episodes. In the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the top 20 performed at their homes, and based on the vote, half of the top 20 would advance to the top 10, and the other half would be eliminated. However, a wild card was given to one of the bottom 10 to save them from elimination. In the nineteenth season, the show used a combination of the process from the sixteenth and fourteenth seasons. In the twentieth season, the show repeated the process from the previous season, but they used a top 20 instead of a top 16, and there were no all star duets. In the twenty-first season, the same process was repeated, but they started with a top 26 instead of a top 24. In the twenty-second season, the show repeated the process from the twentieth season.\nFinals.\nThe finals are broadcast in primetime from Los Angeles, in front of a live studio audience (except the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic). From 2002 to 2019 and from 2021 to 2022, the venue was CBS Television City. Starting in 2023, it changed to Red Studios. The finals lasted eight weeks in the first season. From the second to ninth and fourteenth seasons, the finals lasted eleven weeks. The tenth and eleventh seasons lasted for twelve weeks, while the twelfth season lasted for ten weeks. In the thirteenth season, the finals lasted thirteen weeks. The finals lasted seven weeks in the fifteenth season, and six weeks in the sixteenth season. Each finalist performs songs based on a weekly theme which may be a musical genre such as Motown, disco, or big band, songs by artists such as Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley or The Beatles, or more general themes such as \"Billboard\" number-one hits or songs from the contestant's year of birth. Contestants usually worked with a celebrity mentor related to the theme. From the tenth to twelfth seasons, Jimmy Iovine was brought in as a mentor for the season. Initially the contestants sang one song each week, but this was increased to two songs from top four or five onwards, then three songs for the top two or three.\nThe most popular contestants are usually not revealed in the results show. Instead, typically the three contestants (two in later rounds) who received the lowest number of votes was called to the center of the stage. One of these three was usually sent to safety; however the two remaining were not necessarily the bottom two. The contestant with the fewest votes was then revealed and eliminated from the competition. A montage of the eliminated contestant's time on the show was played and they gave their final performance (from the fourteenth season onward, the montage and the final performance were dropped). However, in the sixth season, during the series' first ever Idol Gives Back episode, no contestant was eliminated, but on the following week, two were sent home. Moreover, from the eighth to the fourteenth seasons, and the seventeenth season onward, the judges may overturn viewers' decision with a \"Judges' Save\" if they unanimously agreed to. \"The save\" could only be used once, and only up through the Top 5. In the eighth to tenth and fourteenth seasons, a double elimination then took place in the week following the activation of the save, but in the eleventh and thirteenth seasons, a regular single elimination took place. The save was not activated in the twelfth season and consequently, a non-elimination took place in the week after its expiration with the votes then carrying over into the following week.\nThe \"Fan Save\" was introduced in the fourteenth season. During the finals, viewers were given a five-minute window to vote for the contestants in danger of elimination by using their Twitter account to decide which contestant will move on to the next show, starting with the Top 8.\nSeason finale.\nDuring the original run of \"American Idol\" on Fox, the finale week consisted of a one-hour long final performance night and a two-hour last episode of the season that culminates in revealing the winner, both of which are broadcast live in the U.S. Eastern and Central time zones. For the first, third through sixth and fourteenth through fifteenth seasons it was broadcast from the Dolby Theatre, which has an audience capacity of approximately 3,400. The second-season finale took place at the Gibson Amphitheatre, which had an audience capacity of over 6,000. In the seventh through thirteenth seasons, the venue was at the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live, which holds an audience of over 7,000. Since the show's reboot on ABC, the venue remains the same throughout the entire show (excluding auditions), but was still two episodes in the sixteenth season, and then stretched to a single three-hour season finale that is annually aired live simultaneously in all U.S. territories, starting with the seventeenth season. The eighteenth-season finale was conducted virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nRewards for winner and finalists.\nThe winner usually receives a record deal with a major label, which may be for up to six albums, and secures a management contract with \"American Idol\"-affiliated 19 Management (which has the right of first refusal to sign all contestants), as well as various lucrative contracts. All winners prior to the ninth season reportedly earned at least $1\u00a0million in their first year as winner. At first the contract came with a $250,000-plus advance, but dropped to about $62,500 over the Fox years. All the runners-up of the first ten seasons, as well as some of other finalists, had also received record deals with major labels. However, starting in the eleventh season, the runner-up may only be guaranteed a single-only deal. BMG/Sony (first through ninth seasons), UMG (tenth through fifteenth seasons), and Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records (sixteenth through eighteenth seasons) had the right of first refusal to sign contestants for three months after the season's finale. In the fourteenth and fifteenth seasons, the winner was signed with Big Machine Records. Prominent music mogul Clive Davis also produced some of the selected contestants' albums, such as Kelly Clarkson, Clay Aiken, Fantasia Barrino and Diana DeGarmo. All top 10 (11 in the tenth and twelfth seasons, 5 in the fourteenth season, and 7 in the sixteenth season) finalists earn the privilege of going on a tour, where the participants may each earn a six-figure sum.\nSeason synopses.\nEach season premieres with the audition round, taking place in different cities. The audition episodes typically feature a mix of potential finalists, interesting characters and woefully inadequate contestants. Each successful contestant receives a golden or platinum ticket to proceed on to the next round in Hollywood. Based on their performances during the Hollywood round (Las Vegas round from the tenth through twelfth seasons), 24 to 36 contestants are selected by the judges to participate in the semifinals. From the semifinals onward the contestants perform their songs live, with the judges making their critiques after each performance. The contestants are voted for by the viewing public, and the outcome of the public votes is then revealed during a results segment. The results segment feature group performances by the contestants as well as guest performers. The Top-three results also features homecoming events for the Top 3 finalists. The season reaches its climax in a two-hour results finale show, where the winner of the season is revealed.\nWith the exception of the first two seasons, the contestants in the semifinals onward perform in front of a studio audience. They perform with a full band in the finals. The current musical director is Kris Pooley, who has been with the show since the sixteenth season. In previous seasons, the \"American Idol\" band was led by Rickey Minor (fourth through ninth and thirteenth through fifteenth seasons) and Ray Chew (tenth through twelfth seasons). Assistance has also been given by vocal coaches and song arrangers, such as Michael Orland and Debra Byrd to contestants behind the scene. Starting with the seventh season, contestants may perform with a musical instrument from the Hollywood rounds onward. In later seasons, the contestants were allowed to perform with a musical instrument in the auditions. During the first nine seasons, performances were usually aired live on Tuesday nights, followed by the results shows on Wednesdays, but moved to Wednesdays and Thursdays from the tenth through thirteenth seasons, with the tenth, eleventh and thirteenth-season finales aired on Tuesday and Wednesday. From the fourteenth season onward, there were no separate results shows. On the fourteenth season, the show aired on Wednesday nights, and on the fifteenth season, Thursday nights. Since the sixteenth season, the show has been airing on Sundays and Mondays.\n2002\u20132016: Fox.\nSeason 1 (2002).\nThe first season of \"American Idol\" debuted as a summer replacement show in June 2002 on the Fox network. It was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell served as judges.\nIn the audition rounds, 121 contestants were selected from around 10,000 who attended the auditions. These were cut to 30 for the semifinal, with ten going on to the finals. One semifinalist, Delano Cagnolatti, was disqualified for lying to evade the show's age limit. One of the early favorites, Tamyra Gray, was eliminated at the top four, the first of several such shock eliminations that were to be repeated in later seasons. Christina Christian was hospitalized before the top six result show due to chest pains and palpitations, and she was eliminated while she was in the hospital. Jim Verraros was the first openly gay contestant on the show; his sexual orientation was revealed on his blog, however it was removed during the competition after a request from the show producers over concerns that it might be unfairly influencing votes.\nThe final showdown was between Justin Guarini, one of the early favorites, and Kelly Clarkson. Clarkson was not initially thought of as a contender, but impressed the judges with some good performances in the final rounds, such as her performance of Aretha Franklin's \"Natural Woman\", and Betty Hutton's \"Stuff Like That There\", and eventually won the crown on September 4, 2002.\nIn what was to become a tradition, Clarkson performed the coronation song during the finale, and released the song immediately after the season ended. The single, \"A Moment Like This\", went on to break a 38-year-old record held by The Beatles for the biggest leap to number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. Guarini did not release any song immediately after the show and remains the only runner-up not to do so. Both Clarkson and Guarini made a musical film, \"From Justin to Kelly\", which was released in 2003 but was widely panned. Clarkson has since become one of the most successful \"Idol\" contestants internationally, with worldwide album sales of more than 25\u00a0million.\nStarting September 30, 2006, this season was repackaged as \"\"American Idol Rewind\"\" and syndicated directly to stations in the U.S.\nSeason 2 (2003).\nFollowing the success of the first season, the second season was moved up to air in January 2003. The number of episodes increased, as did the show's budget and the charge for commercial spots. Dunkleman left the show, leaving Ryan Seacrest as the lone host. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Kristin Adams was a correspondent for this season.\nCorey Clark was disqualified during the finals for having an undisclosed police record; however, he later alleged that he and Paula Abdul had an affair while on the show and that this contributed to his expulsion. Clark also claimed that Abdul gave him preferential treatment on the show due to their affair. The allegations were dismissed by Fox after an independent investigation. Two semi-finalists were also disqualified that year \u2013 Jaered Andrews for an arrest on an assault charge, and Frenchie Davis for having previously modeled for an adult website.\nThe season finale drew more than 38 million viewers, marking \"Idol\"'s biggest audience ever for a single episode. Ruben Studdard emerged as the winner, beating Clay Aiken by a small margin. Out of a total of 24 million votes, Studdard finished just 134,000 votes ahead of Aiken. This slim margin of victory was controversial due to the large number of calls that failed to get through. In an interview prior to the fifth season, executive producer Nigel Lythgoe indicated that Aiken had led the fan voting from the wildcard week onward until the finale.\nBoth finalists found success after the show, but Aiken out-performed Studdard's coronation song \"Flying Without Wings\" with his single release from the show \"This Is the Night\", as well as in their subsequent album releases. The fourth-place finisher Josh Gracin also enjoyed some success as a country singer.\nSeason 3 (2004).\nThe third season premiered on January 19, 2004. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. One of the most talked-about contestants during the audition process was William Hung whose off-key rendition of Ricky Martin's \"She Bangs\" received widespread attention. His exposure on \"Idol\" landed him a record deal and surprisingly he became the third bestselling singer from that season.\nMuch media attention on the season had been focused on the three black singers, Fantasia Barrino, LaToya London, and Jennifer Hudson, dubbed the Three Divas. All three unexpectedly landed on the bottom three on the top seven result show, with Hudson controversially eliminated. Elton John, who was one of the mentors that season, called the results of the votes \"incredibly racist\". The prolonged stays of John Stevens and Jasmine Trias in the finals, despite negative comments from the judges, had aroused resentment, so much so that John Stevens reportedly received a death threat, which he dismissed as a joke 'blown out of proportion'.\nThe performance of \"Summertime\" by Barrino, later known simply as \"Fantasia\", at Top 8 was widely praised, and Simon Cowell considered it as his favorite \"Idol\" moment in the nine seasons he was on the show. Fantasia and Diana DeGarmo were the last two finalists, and Fantasia was crowned as the winner. Fantasia released as her coronation single \"I Believe\", a song co-written by the first season finalist Tamyra Gray, and DeGarmo released \"Dreams\".\nSeason 4 (2005).\nThe fourth season premiered on January 18, 2005. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This was the first full season of the series to be aired in high definition; the finale of the third season was also aired in high definition. The number of those attending the auditions by now had increased to over 100,000 from the 10,000 of the first season. The age limit was raised to 28 in this season, and among those who benefited from this new rule were Constantine Maroulis and Bo Bice, the two rockers of the show.\nThe top 12 finalists originally included Mario Vazquez, but he dropped out citing 'personal reasons' and was replaced by Nikko Smith. Later, an employee of Fremantle Media, which produces the show, sued the company for wrongful termination, claiming that he was dismissed after complaining about lewd behavior by Vazquez toward him during the show.\nDuring the top 11 week, due to a mix-up with the contestants' telephone number, voting was repeated on what was normally the result night, with the result reveal postponed until the following night.\nIn May 2005, Underwood was announced the winner, with Bice the runner-up. Both Underwood and Bice released the coronation song \"Inside Your Heaven\", with Underwood's version of the song making her the first country artist ever to debut at number-one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart. As of 2015, Underwood has become the most successful \"Idol\" contestant in the U.S., selling 16 million albums in the country, while selling a total of 65 million records worldwide.\nSeason 5 (2006).\nThe fifth season began on January 17, 2006. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. It remains the highest-rated season in the show's run so far. Two of the more prominent contestants during the Hollywood round were the Brittenum twins who were later disqualified for identity theft.\nChris Daughtry's performance of Fuel's \"Hemorrhage (In My Hands)\" on the show was widely praised and led to an invitation to join the band as Fuel's new lead singer, an invitation he declined. His performance of Live's version of \"I Walk the Line\" was well received by the judges but later criticized in some quarters for not crediting the arrangement to Live. He was eliminated at the top four in a shocking result.\nOn May 30, 2006, Taylor Hicks was named \"American Idol\", with Katharine McPhee the runner-up. \"Do I Make You Proud\" was released as Hicks' first single and McPhee's was \"My Destiny\".\nDespite being eliminated earlier in the season, Chris Daughtry (as lead of the band Daughtry) became the most successful recording artist from this season. Other contestants, such as Hicks, McPhee, Bucky Covington, Mandisa, Kellie Pickler, and Elliott Yamin have had varying levels of success.\nSeason 6 (2007).\nThe sixth season began on Tuesday, January 16, 2007. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The premiere drew a massive audience of 37.3\u00a0million viewers, peaking in the last half hour with more than 41\u00a0million viewers.\nTeenager Sanjaya Malakar was the season's most talked-about contestant for his unusual hairdo, and for managing to survive elimination for many weeks due in part to the weblog Vote for the Worst and satellite radio personality Howard Stern, who both encouraged fans to vote for him. However, on the Top 7 results, Sanjaya was voted off.\nThis season saw the first \"Idol Gives Back\" telethon-inspired event, which raised more than $76\u00a0million in corporate and viewer donations. No contestant was eliminated that week, but two (Phil Stacey and Chris Richardson) were eliminated the next.\nIn the May 23 season finale, Jordin Sparks was declared the winner with the runner-up being Blake Lewis. Sparks has had some success as a recording artist post-\"Idol\".\nThis season also saw the launch of the \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest which allows fans to vote for the \"coronation song\". Thousands of recordings of original songs were submitted by songwriters, and 20 entries selected for the public vote. The winning song, \"This Is My Now\", was performed by both finalists during the finale and released by Sparks on May 24, 2007.\nSeason 7 (2008).\nThe seventh season premiered on January 15, 2008, for a two-day, four-hour premiere. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The media focused on the professional status of the seventh season contestants, the so-called 'ringers', many of whom, including Kristy Lee Cook, Brooke White, Michael Johns, and in particular Carly Smithson, had prior recording contracts. Contestant David Hernandez also attracted some attention due to his past employment as a stripper.\nFor the finals, \"American Idol\" debuted a new state-of-the-art set and stage on March 11, 2008, along with a new on-air look. David Cook's performance of \"Billie Jean\" on top-ten night was lauded by the judges, but provoked controversy when they apparently mistook the Chris Cornell arrangement to be David Cook's own even though the performance was introduced as Cornell's version. Cornell himself said he was 'flattered' and praised David Cook's performance. David Cook was taken to the hospital after the top-nine performance show due to heart palpitations and high blood pressure.\nDavid Archuleta's performance of John Lennon's \"Imagine\" was considered by many as one of the best of the season. Jennifer Lopez, who was brought in as a judge in the tenth season, called it a beautiful song-moment that she will never forget. Jason Castro's semi-final performance of \"Hallelujah\" also received considerable attention, and it propelled Jeff Buckley's version of the song to the top of the \"Billboard\" digital song chart. This was the first season in which contestants' recordings were released onto iTunes after their performances, and although sales information was not released so as not to prejudice the contest, leaked information indicated that contestants' songs frequently reached the top of iTunes sales charts.\n\"Idol Gives Back\" returned on April 9, 2008, and raised $64\u00a0million for charity.\nThe finalists were Cook and Archuleta. David Cook was announced the winner on May 21, 2008, the first rocker to win the show. Both Cook and Archuleta had some success as recording artists with both selling over a million albums in the U.S.\nThe \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest was also held this season. From ten of the most popular submissions, each of the final two contestants chose a song to perform, although neither of their selections was used as the \"coronation song\". The winning song, \"The Time of My Life\", was recorded by David Cook and released on May 22, 2008.\nSeason 8 (2009).\nThe eighth season premiered on January 13, 2009. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This season featured the first major change to the judging panel; a fourth judge, Kara DioGuardi, was introduced. Mike Darnell, the president of alternative programming for Fox, stated that the season would focus more on the contestants' personal life.\nThis was also the first season without executive producer Nigel Lythgoe who left to focus on the international versions of his show \"So You Think You Can Dance\". The Hollywood round was moved to the Kodak Theatre for 2009 and was also extended to two weeks. \"Idol Gives Back\" was canceled for this season due to the global recession at the time.\nThere were 13 finalists this season, but two were eliminated in the first result show of the finals. A new feature introduced was the \"Judges' Save\", and Matt Giraud was saved from elimination at the top seven by the judges when he received the fewest votes. The next week, Lil Rounds and Anoop Desai were eliminated.\nThe two finalists were Kris Allen and Adam Lambert, both of whom had previously landed in the bottom three at the top five. Allen won the contest in the most controversial voting result since the second season. It was claimed, and then later retracted, that 38\u00a0million of the 100\u00a0million votes cast on the night came from Allen's home state of Arkansas alone, and that AT&T employees unfairly influenced the votes by giving lessons on power-texting at viewing parties in Arkansas.\nBoth Allen and Lambert released the coronation song, \"No Boundaries\" which was co-written by DioGuardi. This is the first season in which the winner failed to achieve gold album status.\nSeason 9 (2010).\nThe ninth season premiered on January 12, 2010. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Kara DioGuardi, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Paula Abdul left the show and Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul at the start of Hollywood Week. One of the most prominent auditioners this season was General Larry Platt whose performance of \"Pants on the Ground\" became a viral hit song.\nCrystal Bowersox, who has Type-I diabetes, fell ill due to diabetic ketoacidosis on the morning of the girls performance night for the top 20 week and was hospitalized. The schedule was rearranged so the boys performed first and she could perform the following night instead; she later revealed that Ken Warwick, the show producer, wanted to disqualify her but she begged to be allowed to stay on the show.\nMichael Lynche was the lowest vote getter at top nine and was given the Judges' Save. The next week Katie Stevens and Andrew Garcia were eliminated. That week, Adam Lambert was invited back to be a mentor, the first \"Idol\" alum to do so. \"Idol Gives Back\" returned this season on April 21, 2010, and raised $45 million.\nA special tribute to Simon Cowell was presented in the finale for his final season with the show. Many figures from the show's past, including Paula Abdul, made an appearance.\nThe final two contestants were Lee DeWyze and Bowersox. DeWyze was declared the winner during the May 26 finale. No new song was used as coronation song this year; instead, the two finalists each released a cover song \u2013 DeWyze chose U2's \"Beautiful Day\", and Bowersox chose Patty Griffin's \"Up to the Mountain\". This is the first season where neither finalist achieved significant album sales.\nSeason 10 (2011).\nThe tenth season premiered on January 19, 2011. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Many changes were introduced this season, from the format to the personnel of the show. Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined Randy Jackson as judges following the departures of Simon Cowell (who left to launch the American version of \"The X Factor\"), Kara DioGuardi (whose contract was not renewed) and Ellen DeGeneres, who left the show on her own accord.\nRandy Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth. Nigel Lythgoe returned as executive producer. Jimmy Iovine, chairman of the Interscope Geffen A&M label group, the new partner of \"American Idol\", acted as the in-house mentor in place of weekly guest mentors, although in later episodes special guest mentors such as Beyonc\u00e9, will.i.am and Lady Gaga were brought in.\nThe tenth season is the first to include online auditions where contestants could submit a 40-second video audition via Myspace. Karen Rodriguez was one such auditioner and reached the final rounds.\nOne of the more prominent contestants this year was Chris Medina, whose story of caring for his brain-damaged fianc\u00e9e received widespread coverage. Medina was cut in the Top 40 round. Casey Abrams, who suffers from ulcerative colitis, was hospitalized twice and missed the Top 13 result show. The judges used their one save on Abrams on the Top 11, and as a result this was the first season that 11 finalists went on tour instead of 10. In the following week, Naima Adedapo and Thia Megia were both eliminated.\nPia Toscano, one of the presumed favorites to advance far in the season, was unexpectedly eliminated on April 7, 2011, finishing in ninth place. Her elimination drew criticisms from some former \"Idol\" contestants, as well as actor Tom Hanks. After \"Idol\", Jennifer Lopez helped guide her career.\nThe two finalists in 2011 were Lauren Alaina and Scotty McCreery, both teenage country singers. McCreery won the competition on May 25, being the youngest male winner and the fourth male in a row to win \"American Idol\". McCreery released his first single, \"I Love You This Big\", as his coronation song, and Alaina released \"Like My Mother Does\". McCreery's debut album, \"Clear as Day\", became the first debut album by an \"Idol\" winner to reach No. 1 on the US \"Billboard\" 200 since Ruben Studdard's \"Soulful\" in 2003, and he became the youngest male artist to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200.\nSeason 11 (2012).\nThe eleventh season premiered on January 18, 2012. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez, and Randy Jackson returned as judges. One more finalist would join the Top 24 making it the Top 25, which was later revealed to be Jermaine Jones. However, on March 14, Jones was disqualified in 12th place for concealing arrests and outstanding warrants. Jones denied the accusation that he concealed his arrests.\nFinalist Phillip Phillips suffered from kidney pain and was taken to the hospital before the Top 13 results show, and later received medical procedure to alleviate a blockage caused by kidney stones. He was reported to have eight surgeries during his Idol run, and had considered quitting the show due to the pain. He underwent surgery to remove the stones and reconstruct his kidney soon after the season had finished.\nJessica Sanchez received the fewest votes during the Top 7 week, and the judges decided to use their \"save\" option on her, making her the first female recipient of the save. The following week, unlike previous seasons, Colton Dixon was the only contestant sent home. Sanchez later made the final two, the first season where a recipient of the save reached the finale.\nPhillips became the winner, beating Sanchez. During the finale, fifth season finalist Ace Young proposed marriage to third season runner-up Diana DeGarmo on stage \u2013 which she accepted.\nPhillips released \"Home\" as his coronation song, while Sanchez released \"Change Nothing\". Phillips' \"Home\" has since become the best selling of all coronation songs, with over 5 million copies sold.\nSeason 12 (2013).\nThe twelfth season premiered on January 16, 2013. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Judges Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler left the show after two seasons. Randy Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. This season's judging panel consisted of Randy Jackson, along with Mariah Carey, Keith Urban and Nicki Minaj.\nThis was the first season since the ninth season to have four judges on the panel. The pre-season buzz and the early episodes of the show were dominated by the feud between the judges Minaj and Carey after a video of their dispute was leaked to TMZ.\nThe top 10 contestants started with five males and five females, however, the males were eliminated consecutively in the first five weeks, with Lazaro Arbos the last male to be eliminated. For the first time in the show's history, the top 5 contestants were all female. It was also the first time that the judges' \"save\" was not used, the top four contestants were therefore given an extra week to perform again with their votes carried over with no elimination in the first week.\n23-year-old Candice Glover won the season with Kree Harrison taking the runner-up spot. Glover became the first female to win \"American Idol\" since Jordin Sparks, who won the show in 2007. Glover released \"I Am Beautiful\" as a single while Harrison released \"All Cried Out\" immediately after the show. Glover sold poorly with her debut album, and this is also the first season that the runner-up was not signed by a music label.\nTowards the end of the season, Randy Jackson, the last remaining of the original judges, announced he would no longer serve as a judge to pursue other business ventures. Both judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj also decided to leave after one season to focus on their music careers.\nSeason 13 (2014).\nThe thirteenth season premiered on January 15, 2014. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Keith Urban returned as a judge. Urban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. Randy Jackson returned, though Jackson moved from the judging panel to the role of in-mentor. Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj left the panel after one season. Former judge Jennifer Lopez and former mentor Harry Connick, Jr. joined Urban on the panel. Connick Jr. served as a mentor for \"Idol\" in 2010 and 2012. Also, Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick were replaced as executive producers by Per Blankens, Jesse Ignjatovic and Evan Pragger. Bill DeRonde replaced Warwick as a director of the audition episodes, while Louis J. Horvitz replaced Gregg Gelfand as a director of the show.\nThis was the first season where the contestants were permitted to perform in the final rounds songs they wrote themselves. In the Top 8, Sam Woolf received the fewest votes, but he was saved from elimination by the judges. The 500th episode of the series was the Top 3 performance night.\nCaleb Johnson was named the winner of the season, with Jena Irene as the runner-up. Johnson released \"As Long as You Love Me\" as his coronation single while Irene released \"We Are One\".\nSeason 14 (2015).\nThe fourteenth season premiered on January 7, 2015. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban and Harry Connick, Jr. returned for their respective fourth, third and second seasons as judges. Eighth season runner-up Adam Lambert filled in for Urban during the New York City auditions. Randy Jackson did not return as the in-house mentor and left the show permanently. Scott Borchetta replaced Jackson as the mentor.\nChanges this season include only airing one episode a week during the final ten. Coca-Cola ended their longtime sponsorship of the show and Ford Motor Company maintained a reduced role. The winner of the season also received a recording contract with Big Machine Records.\nNick Fradiani won the season, defeating Clark Beckham. Fradiani became the first winner from the Northeast region. Fradiani released \"Beautiful Life\" as his coronation single while Beckham released \"Champion\". Jax, the third place finalist, also released a single called \"Forcefield\".\nSeason 15 (2016).\nFox announced on May 11, 2015, that the fifteenth season would be the final season of \"American Idol\"; as such, the season was expected to have an additional focus on the program's alumni. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, with Harry Connick Jr., Keith Urban, and Jennifer Lopez all returning as judges. The fifteenth season premiered on January 6, 2016. The season was shortened by four weeks compared to previous years. During the finale episode, President Barack Obama praised the millions of young people that voted for contestants and pitched that they vote in the upcoming election. The farewell season concluded on April 7, 2016. Seacrest signed off by saying: \"And one more time\u2014this is so tough\u2014we say to you from Hollywood, goodnight America\", and then he added, \"for now.\"\nTrent Harmon won the season against runner-up La'Porsha Renae. Harmon released \"Falling\" co-written by Keith Urban as his coronation song. Renae's \"Battles\", third-place finisher Dalton Rapattoni's \"Strike A Match\" and fourth-place finisher MacKenzie Bourg's \"Roses\" were also released as singles.\n2018\u2013present: ABC revival.\nIn early 2017, \"Variety\" reported that Fremantle Media was in talks to revive the show for NBC or for its original network, Fox. A dispute between Fremantle and Core Media Group derailed these plans. In May 2017, ABC was making a bid to revive the program. ABC acquired the rights to the series, and \"American Idol\" returned for the 2017\u201318 television season.\nSeason 16 (2018).\nIn July 2017, it was announced that Ryan Seacrest would return as host, and by September 2017 it was revealed that Katy Perry, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie would serve as judges. The sixteenth season premiered on March 11, 2018. This was the first season of \"American Idol\" to air on ABC. The season was again shortened compared to the previous season to twelve weeks, with multiple elimination in the final rounds. Unlike previous seasons where only two finalists remained in the final episode, three finalists performed in the finale. On May 21, 2018, the season concluded with Maddie Poppe crowned the winner, beating Caleb Lee Hutchinson as runner-up and Gabby Barrett in third place. Her winning song was \"Going, Going, Gone\". Caleb Lee Hutchinson released \"Johnny Cash Heart\" as a single, while Gabby Barrett's song was \"Rivers Deep\".\nSeason 17 (2019).\nABC renewed the revival series for another season. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. The seventeenth season premiered on March 3, 2019. For the finale, the show no longer features separate performance and result shows. On May 19, 2019, the season concluded with three finalists, with Madison VanDenburg eliminated in third place after performing two songs, and the final two performing their last song. For the first time, there were no separate performance and grand finale shows this season. Laine Hardy was crowned the winner and Alejandro Aranda runner-up. Hardy released a single, \"Flame\", immediately after the win, but Aranda did not. However, Aranda later released a song he performed in the finale, \"Tonight\", under the name Scarypoolparty on June 28, 2019.\nSeason 18 (2020).\nOn May 13, 2019, the series was renewed for an eighteenth season and it premiered on February 16, 2020. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. For the first time, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, from the top 20 to the finale, the contestants performed in their own homes, while Ryan Seacrest hosted the show remotely in his own home in Los Angeles with the judges also in their respective homes. The season was also further truncated, with the top 5 performing in the finale. Each finalist also performed only two songs for the finale. On May 17, the season concluded, with Just Sam crowned as the winner, with Arthur Gunn finishing as the runner-up. \"Rise Up\", the song Just Sam performed for their audition and reprised on the finale, was released as their debut song.\nSeason 19 (2021).\nOn May 15, 2020, ABC renewed the series for a nineteenth season and it premiered on February 14, 2021. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. Later in October, it was announced that Bobby Bones will return as mentor. On May 23, the season concluded, with Chayce Beckham crowned the winner, with Willie Spence finishing as the runner-up. \"23\", the song Chayce Beckham wrote and performed for Top 4, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 20 (2022).\nOn May 13, 2021, ABC renewed the series for a twentieth season and it premiered on February 27, 2022. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On December 31, it was announced that Bones would not be returning as a mentor. On May 22, the season concluded, with Noah Thompson crowned as the winner, with HunterGirl finishing as the runner-up. \"One Day Tonight\", the song Noah Thompson performed for the Grand Finale, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 21 (2023).\nOn May 13, 2022, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-first season and it premiered on February 19, 2023. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On May 21, the season concluded, with Iam Tongi crowned as the winner, with Megan Danielle finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 22 (2024).\nOn May 16, 2023, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-second season and it premiered on February 18, 2024. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. In February 2024, Perry announced that the season would be her last. On May 20, the season concluded, with Abi Carter crowned as the winner, with Will Moseley finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 23 (2025).\nOn May 10, 2024, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-third season; it was also announced the network was in-talks with \"high-profile stars\" to replace the outgoing Perry. On July 31, 2024, it was announced Seacrest would return as host, with Bryan and Richie returning as judges; Underwood was named as Perry's successor. The season premiered on March 9, 2025.\nReception.\nU.S. television ratings.\nSeasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of \"American Idol\". It holds the distinction of having the longest winning streak in the Nielsen annual television ratings; it became the highest-rated of all television programs in the United States overall for an unprecedented seven consecutive years, or eight consecutive (and total) years when either its performance or result show was ranked number one overall.\n\"Each U.S. network television season starts in late September and ends in late May, which coincides with the completion of May sweeps.\"\n\"American Idol\" premiered in June 2002 and became the surprise summer hit show of 2002. The first show drew 9.9\u00a0million viewers, giving Fox the best viewing figure for the 8.30\u00a0pm spot in over a year. The audience steadily grew, and by finale night, the audience had averaged 23\u00a0million, with more than 40\u00a0million watching some part of that show. That episode was placed third amongst all age groups, but more importantly it led in the 18\u201349 demographic, the age group most valued by advertisers.\nThe growth continued into the next season, starting with a season premiere of 26.5 million. The season attracted an average of 21.7\u00a0million viewers, and was placed second overall amongst the 18\u201349 age group. The finale night when Ruben Studdard won over Clay Aiken was also the highest-rated ever \"American Idol\" episode at 38.1\u00a0million for the final hour. By the third season, the show had become the top show in the 18\u201349 demographic<ref name=\"realitytvworld_5/24/2007\"></ref> a position it has held for all subsequent years up to and including the tenth season, and its competition stages ranked first in the nationwide overall ratings. By the fourth season, \"American Idol\" had become the most-watched series amongst all viewers on American TV for the first time, with an average viewership of 26.8\u00a0million. The show reached its peak in the fifth season with numbers averaging 30.6\u00a0million per episode, and this season remains the highest-rated of the series.\nThe sixth season premiered with the series' highest-rated debut episode and a few of its succeeding episodes rank among the most-watched episodes of \"American Idol.\" During this time, many television executives begun to regard the show as a programming force unlike any seen before, as its consistent dominance of up to two hours two or three nights a week exceeded the 30- or 60-minute reach of previous hits such as NBC's \"The Cosby Show\". The show was dubbed \"the Death Star\", and competing networks often rearranged their schedules in order to minimize losses. However, the sixth season also showed a steady decline in viewership over the course of the season. The season finale saw a drop in ratings of 16% from the previous year. The sixth season was the first season wherein the average results show rated higher than the competition stages (unlike in the previous seasons), and became the second-highest-rated of the series after the preceding season.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the seventh season. The premiere was down 11% among total viewers, and the results show in which Kristy Lee Cook was eliminated delivered its lowest-rated Wednesday show among the 18\u201334 demo since the first season in 2002. However, the ratings rebounded for the seventh-season finale with the excitement over the battle of the Davids, and improved over the sixth season as the series' third most watched finale. The strong finish of season seven also helped Fox become the most watched TV network in the country for the first time since its inception, a first ever in American television history for a non-Big Three major broadcast network. Overall ratings for the season were down 10% from the sixth season, which is in line with the fall in viewership across all networks due in part to the 2007\u20132008 Writers Guild of America strike.\nThe declining trend however continued into the eighth season, as total viewers numbers fell by 5\u201310% for early episodes compared to the seventh season, and by 9% for the finale. In the ninth season, \"Idol\"'s six-year extended streak of perfection in the ratings was broken, when NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics on February 17 beat \"Idol\" in the same time slot with 30.1\u00a0million viewers over \"Idol\"'s 18.4\u00a0million. Nevertheless, \"American Idol\" overall finished its ninth season as the most watched TV series for the sixth year running, breaking the previous record of five consecutive seasons achieved by CBS' \"All in the Family\" and NBC's \"The Cosby Show\".\nIn the tenth season, the total viewer numbers for the first week of shows fell 12\u201313%, and by up to 23% in the 18\u201349 demo compared to the ninth season. Later episodes, however, retained viewers better, and the season ended on a high with a significant increase in viewership for the finale \u2013 up 12% for the adults 18\u201349 demographic and a 21% increase in total viewers from the ninth-season finale. While the overall viewer number has increased this season, its viewer demographics have continued to age year on year \u2013 the median age this season was 47.2 compared to a median age of 32.1 in its first season. The demographics also became \"whiter\" over time and less diverse. Nevertheless, in the 2010\u201311 television season, Fox maintained its lead on over other networks with its seventh consecutive season of victory overall in the 18\u201349 demographic ratings in the United States.\nThe eleventh season, however, suffered a steep drop in ratings, a drop attributed by some to the arrival of new shows such as \"The Voice\" and \"The X Factor\". The ratings for the first two episodes of the eleventh season fell 16\u201321% in overall viewer numbers and 24\u201327% in the 18/49 demo, while the season finale fell 27% in total viewer number and 30% in the 18\u201349 demo. The average viewership for the season fell below 20 million viewers the first time since 2003, a drop of 23% in total viewers and 30% in the 18/49 demo. For the first time in eight years, \"American Idol\" lost the leading position in both the total viewers number and the 18/49 demo, coming in second to \"NBC Sunday Night Football\", although the strengths of \"Idol\" in its second year in the Wednesday-Thursday primetime slots helped Fox achieve the longest period of 18\u201349 demographic victory in the Nielsen ratings, standing at 8 straight years from 2004 to 2012.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the twelfth season, which saw the show hitting a number of series low in the 18\u201349 demo. The finale had 7.2 million fewer viewers than the previous season, and saw a drop of 44% in the 18\u201349 demo. The season viewers averaged at 13.3 million, a drop of 24% from the previous season. The thirteenth season suffered a huge decline in the 18\u201349 demographic, a drop of 28% from the twelfth season, and \"American Idol\" lost its Top 10 position in the Nielsen ratings by the end of the 2013\u201314 television season for the first time since its entry to the rankings in 2003 as a result, and never regained its Top 10 position by the series' end in 2016.\nThe continuing decline influenced further changes for the fourteenth season, including the loss of Coca-Cola as the show's major sponsor, and a decision to only broadcast one, two-hour show per week during the top 12 rounds (with results from the previous week integrated into the performance show, rather than having a separate results show). On May 11, 2015, prior to the fourteenth-season finale, Fox announced that the fifteenth season of \"American Idol\" would be its last. Despite these changes, the show's ratings would decline more sharply. The fourteenth-season finale was the lowest-rated finale ever, with an average of only 8.03 million viewers watching the finale. The show's ratings, however, rebounded in its final season and ended its run in 2016 as Fox's first-ever program to conclude its run without dropping from the Nielsen Top 30 most-watched television shows in each of its seasons.\nFor the revived series on ABC, the ratings were lower but remained stable compared to previous seasons on Fox. The finale of the seventeenth season was slightly more watched than the sixteenth.\nCritical reception.\nEarly reviews were mixed in their assessment. Ken Tucker of \"Entertainment Weekly\" considered that \"As TV, \"American Idol\" is crazily entertaining; as music, it's dust-mote inconsequential\". Others, however, thought that \"the most striking aspect of the series was the genuine talent it revealed\". It was also described as a \"sadistic musical bake-off\", and \"a romp in humiliation\". Other aspects of the show have attracted criticisms. The product placement in the show in particular was noted, and some critics were harsh about what they perceived as its blatant commercial calculations \u2013 Karla Peterson of \"The San Diego Union-Tribune\" charged that \"American Idol\" is \"a conniving multimedia monster\" that has \"absorbed the sin of our debauched culture and spit them out in a lump of reconstituted evil\". The decision to send the first season winner to sing the national anthem at the Lincoln Memorial on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks in 2002 was also poorly received by many. Lisa de Moraes of \"The Washington Post\" noted sarcastically that \"The terrorists have won\" and, with a sideswipe at the show's commercialism and voting process, that the decision as to who \"gets to turn this important site into just another cog in the 'Great \"American Idol\" Marketing Mandala' is in the hands of the millions of girls who have made \"American Idol\" a hit. Them and a handful of phone-redialer geeks who have been clocking up to 10,000 calls each week for their contestant of choice (but who, according to Fox, are in absolutely no way skewing the outcome).\"\nSome of the later writers about the show were more positive, Michael Slezak, again of \"Entertainment Weekly\", thought that \"for all its bloated, synthetic, product-shilling, money-making trappings, \"Idol\" provides a once-a-year chance for the average American to combat the evils of today's music business.\" Singer Sheryl Crow, who was later to act as a mentor on the show, however took the view that the show \"undermines art in every way and promotes commercialism\". Pop music critic Ann Powers nevertheless suggested that Idol has \"reshaped the American songbook\", \"led us toward a new way of viewing ourselves in relationship to mainstream popular culture\", and connects \"the classic Hollywood dream to the multicentered popular culture of the future.\" Others focused on the personalities in the show; Ramin Setoodeh of \"Newsweek\" accused judge Simon Cowell's cruel critiques in the show of helping to establish in the wider world a culture of meanness, that \"Simon Cowell has dragged the rest of us in the mud with him.\" Some such as singer John Mayer disparaged the contestants, suggesting that those who appeared on \"Idol\" are not real artists with self-respect.\nSome in the entertainment industry were critical of the star-making aspect of the show. Usher, a mentor on the show, bemoaning the loss of the \"true art form of music\", thought that shows like \"American Idol\" made it seem \"so easy that everyone can do it, and that it can happen overnight\", and that \"television is a lie\". Musician Michael Feinstein, while acknowledging that the show had uncovered promising performers, said that \"American Idol\" \"isn't really about music. It's about all the bad aspects of the music business \u2013 the arrogance of commerce, this sense of 'I know what will make this person a star; artists themselves don't know.' \" That \"American Idol\" is seen to be a fast track to success for its contestants has been a cause of resentment for some in the industry. LeAnn Rimes, commenting on Carrie Underwood winning Best Female Artist in Country Music Awards over Faith Hill in 2006, said that \"Carrie has not paid her dues long enough to fully deserve that award\". It is a common theme that has been echoed by many others. Elton John, who had appeared as a mentor in the show but turned down an offer to be a judge on \"American Idol\", commenting on talent shows in general, said that \"there have been some good acts but the only way to sustain a career is to pay your dues in small clubs\". \"American Idol\" revolutionized American pop culture and the pop idol process and has provided an opportunity for many to bypass the small club scene and allow a much larger audience to participate in and select the next potential chart topping performer.\nThe success of the show's alumni, however, has led to a more positive assessment of the show, and the show was described as having \"proven it has a valid way to pick talent and a proven way to sell records\". While the industry is divided on the show success, its impact is felt particularly strongly in the country music format. According to a CMT exec, reflecting on the success of Idol alumni in the country genre, \"if you want to try and get famous fast by going to a cattle call audition on TV, Idol reasonably remains the first choice for anyone\", and that country music and Idol \"go together well\".\n\"American Idol\" was nominated for the Emmy's Outstanding Reality Competition Program for nine years but never won. Director Bruce Gower won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Series in 2009, and the show won a Creative Arts Emmys each in 2007 and 2008, three in 2009, and two in 2011, as well as a Governor's Award in 2007 for its Idol Gives Back edition. It won the People's Choice Award, which honors the popular culture of the previous year as voted by the public, for favorite competition/reality show in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2012. It won the first Critics' Choice Television Award in 2011 for Best Reality Competition.\nIn 2013, TV Guide ranked the series No. 48 on its list of the 60 Best Series of All Time.\nGeographical, ethnic, and gender bias.\nThroughout the series, twelve of the seventeen \"Idol\" winners, including its first five, had come from the Southern United States. A large number of other finalists during the series' run have also hailed from the American South, including Clay Aiken, Kellie Pickler, and Chris Daughtry, who are all from North Carolina. In 2012, an analysis of the 131 contestants who have appeared in the finals of all seasons of the show up to that point found that 48% have some connection to the Southern United States.\nThe show itself was popular in the Southern United States, with households in the Southeastern United States 10% more likely to watch \"American Idol\" during the eighth season in 2009, and those in the East Central region, such as Kentucky, were 16 percent more likely to tune into the series. Data from Nielsen SoundScan, a music-sales tracking service, showed that of the 47\u00a0million CDs sold by \"Idol\" contestants through January 2010, 85 percent were by contestants with ties to the American South.\nTheories given for the success of Southerners on \"Idol\" have been: more versatility with musical genres, as the Southern U.S. is home to several music genre scenes; not having as many opportunities to break into the pop music business; text-voting due to the South having the highest percentage of cell-phone only households; and the strong heritage of music and singing, which is notable in the Bible Belt, where it is in church that many people get their start in public singing. Others also suggest that the Southern character of these contestants appeal to the South, as well as local pride. According to fifth season winner Taylor Hicks, who is from the state of Alabama, \"People in the South have a lot of pride ... So, they're adamant about supporting the contestants who do well from their state or region.\"\nFor five consecutive seasons, starting in the seventh season, the title was given to a white male who plays the guitar \u2013 a trend that \"Idol\" pundits call the \"White guy with guitar\" or \"WGWG\" factor. Just hours before the eleventh-season finale, where Phillip Phillips was named the winner, Richard Rushfield, author of the book \"American Idol: The Untold Story\", said, \"You have this alliance between young girls and grandmas and they see it, not necessarily as a contest to create a pop star competing on the contemporary radio, but as ... who's the nicest guy in a popularity contest\", he says, \"And that has led to this dynasty of four, and possibly now five, consecutive, affable, very nice, good-looking white boys.\"\nStart order bias.\nSome fans call the final performance of the night the \"pimp spot\" because it usually receives a big boost in votes, due to the recency effect. By performing first, a performer may benefit from the primacy effect, but any other early performance may be stifled. The second performance spot is sometimes called the \"un-pimp spot\" because it is the least beneficial.\nControversy.\nThe show was criticized in earlier seasons over the onerous contract contestants had to sign that gave excessive control to 19 Entertainment over their future careers and handed a large part of their future earnings to the management.\nIndividual contestants have generated controversy in this competition for their past actions or for being 'ringers' planted by the producers. A number of contestants have been disqualified for various reasons, such as for having an existing contract or undisclosed criminal record, although the show has also been accused of a double standard for disqualifying some but not others.\nVoting results have been a consistent source of controversy. The mechanism of voting has aroused considerable criticism, most notably in the second season when Ruben Studdard beat Clay Aiken in a close vote, and in the eighth season, when the massive increase in text votes fueled the texting controversy. Concerns about power voting have been expressed from the first season. Since 2004, votes also have been affected to a limited degree by online communities such as DialIdol and Vote for the Worst.\nCultural impact.\nTelevision.\nThe enormous success of the show and the revenue it generated were transformative for the Fox Broadcasting Company. \"American Idol\" and other shows such as \"Survivor\" and \"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?\" were credited for expanding reality television programming in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s, and \"Idol\" became the most watched non-scripted primetime television series, which it remained for almost a decade, from 2003 to 2012, breaking records on U.S. television (dominated by drama shows and sitcoms in the preceding decades). On several occasions, notably in 2003 and 2008, \"American Idol\" overtook the Academy Awards as the most-watched non-sports entertainment event on U.S. television, marking the most recent time as of 2025 that a live regular non-sports primetime series has garnered such viewership in the country.\nThe show pushed Fox to become the number one U.S. TV network in overall viewers in 2008 and among adults aged 18\u201349, the key demographic coveted by advertisers, for an unprecedented eight consecutive years from 2005 to 2012. Its success also helped lift the ratings of other shows that were scheduled around it such as \"House\" and \"Bones\", and \"Idol\", for years, was Fox's strongest platform primetime television program for promoting eventual hit shows of the 2010s (of the same network) such as \"Glee\", \"New Girl\" and \"Empire\". The show, its creator Simon Fuller claimed, \"saved Fox\".\nThe show's massive success in the mid-2000s to early 2010s spawned a number of imitating singing-competition shows, such as \"Rock Star\", \"Nashville Star\", \"The Voice\", \"Rising Star\", \"The Sing-Off\", and \"The X Factor\". The number of imitative singing shows on American television had reached 17 by 2016. Its format also served as a blueprint for non-singing TV shows such as \"Dancing with the Stars\" and \"So You Think You Can Dance\", most of which contribute to the current highly competitive reality TV landscape on American television.\nMusic.\nAs one of the most successful shows on U.S. television history, \"American Idol\" has had a strong impact not just on television, but also in the wider world of entertainment. It helped create a number of highly successful recording artists, such as Kelly Clarkson, Daughtry and Carrie Underwood, as well as others of varying notability. The alumni of the show's original run scored 13 Grammy Award wins out of 54 Grammy nominations up to its end in 2016, with Underwood and Clarkson receiving 10 wins combined.\nVarious \"American Idol\" alumni had success on various record charts around the world; in the U.S. they had achieved 345 number ones on the \"Billboard\" charts in its first 10 years, and 458 by its last year of broadcast in 2016, with 100 achieved by Kelly Clarkson alone. According to Fred Bronson, author of books on the Billboard charts, no other entity has ever created as many hit-making artists and bestselling albums and singles. In 2007, \"American Idol\" alums accounted for 2.1% of all music sales. Its alumni have a massive impact on radio; in 2007, \"American Idol\" had become \"a dominant force in radio\" according to Rich Meyer, president of the radio station monitoring research company Mediabase. By 2010, four winners each had more than a million radio spins, with Kelly Clarkson leading the field with over four million spins.\nAt the end of the show's original run on Fox in 2016, \"Idol\"'s contestants have sold more than 60 million albums in the U.S. and more than 100 million records globally, more than 175 of which are certified platinum or gold. Its participants have generated more than 450 Billboard No. 1 hits and sold more than 260 million digital downloads.\nFilm and theater.\nThe impact of \"American Idol\" was also strongly felt in musical theater, where many of \"Idol\" alumni have forged successful careers. The striking effect of former \"American Idol\" contestants on Broadway has been noted and commented on. The casting of a popular \"Idol\" contestant can lead to significantly increased ticket sales. Other alumni have gone on to work in television and films, the most notable being Jennifer Hudson who, on the recommendation of the \"Idol\" vocal coach Debra Byrd, won a role in \"Dreamgirls\" and eventually went on to win an Academy Award for her performance. She later became the show's first and only alumnus ever to win the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). In all, as of 2025, \"American Idol\" finalists resulted to 5 Grammy Award winners (Clarkson, Barrino, Hudson, Underwood and Mandisa), 2 Emmy Award winners (Clarkson and Hudson), and an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Tony Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Critics' Choice Award winner (Hudson).\nIn 2007, a musical based on the show, \"\", played off-Broadway. The musical closed after its official opening night.\nRevenue and commercial ventures.\nThe dominance of \"American Idol\" in the ratings had made it the most profitable show in U.S. TV for many years. The show was estimated to generate $900\u00a0million for the year 2004 through sales of TV ads, albums, merchandise and concert tickets. By the seventh season, the show was estimated to earn around $900\u00a0million from its ad revenue alone, not including ancillary sponsorship deals and other income. One estimate puts the total TV revenue for the first eight seasons of \"American Idol\" at $6.4\u00a0billion. Sponsors that bought fully integrated packages can expect a variety of promotions of their products on the show, such as product placement, adverts and product promotion integrated into the show, and various promotional opportunities. Other off-air promotional partners pay for the rights to feature \"Idol\" branding on their packaging, products and marketing programs. \"American Idol\" also partnered with Disney in its theme park attraction The American Idol Experience.\nAdvertising revenue.\n\"American Idol\" became the most expensive series on broadcast networks for advertisers starting the fourth season, and by the next season, it had broken the record in advertising rate for a regularly scheduled prime-time network series, selling over $700,000 for a 30-seconds slot, and reaching up to $1.3\u00a0million for the finale. Its ad prices reached a peak in the seventh season at $737,000. Estimated revenue more than doubled from $404\u00a0million in the third season to $870\u00a0million in the sixth season. While that declined from the eighth season onwards, it still earned significantly more than its nearest competitor, with advertising revenue topping $800\u00a0million annually the next few seasons. However, the sharp drop in ratings in the eleventh season also resulted in a sharp drop in advertising rate for the twelfth season, and the show lost its leading position as the costliest show for advertisers. By 2014, ad revenue from had fallen to $427 million where a 30-second spot went for less than $300,000. For the relaunched \"Idol\" on ABC, it has been reported that a 30-second spot may cost between $120,000 and $160,000.\nMedia sponsorship.\nFord Motor Company and Coca-Cola were two of the first sponsors of \"American Idol\" in its first season. The sponsorship deal cost around $10\u00a0million in the first season, rising to $35\u00a0million by the seventh season, and between $50 and $60 million in the tenth season. The third major sponsor AT&T Wireless joined in the second season but ended after the twelfth season, and Coca-Cola officially ended its sponsorship after the thirteenth season amidst the declining ratings of \"Idol\" in the mid-2010s. iTunes sponsored the show since the seventh season.\n\"American Idol\" prominent display of its sponsors' logo and products had been noted since the early seasons. By the sixth season, \"Idol\" showed 4,349 product placements according to Nielsen Media Research. The branded entertainment integration proved beneficial to its advertisers \u2013 promotion of AT&T text-messaging as a means to vote successfully introduced the technology into the wider culture, and Coca-Cola has seen its equity increased during the show.\nCoca-Cola's archrival PepsiCo declined to sponsor \"American Idol\" at the show's start. What the \"Los Angeles Times\" later called \"missing one of the biggest marketing opportunities in a generation\" contributed to Pepsi losing market share, by 2010 falling to third place from second in the United States. PepsiCo sponsored the American version of Cowell's \"The X Factor\" in hopes of not repeating its \"Idol\" mistake until its cancellation.\nFor the revived series on ABC, Macy's and Johnson & Johnson's Zyrtec signed on as the major sponsors of the show.\nAmerican Idol tour.\nThe top ten (eleven in the tenth season, five in the fourteenth season, and seven in the sixteenth season) toured at the end of every season except for the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons. In the twelfth season tour a semi-finalist who won a sing-off was also added to the tour. Kellogg's Pop-Tarts was the sponsor for the first seven seasons, and Guitar Hero was added for the seventh season tour. M&M's Pretzel Chocolate Candies was a sponsor of the ninth season tour. The fifth season tour was the most successful tour with gross of over $35\u00a0million. However no concert tour was organized in the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons, the only seasons not to have an associated tour. The sixteenth season tour featured the band In Real Life as an opener on select dates.\n\"Idol Gives Back\".\n\"Idol Gives Back\" was a special charity event started in season six featuring performances by celebrities and various fund-raising initiatives. This event was also held in seasons seven and nine and has raised nearly $185\u00a0million in total.\nMusic releases.\n\"American Idol\" has traditionally released studio recordings of contestants' performances as well as the winner's coronation single for sale. For the first five seasons, the recordings were released as a compilation album at the end of the season. All five of these albums reached the top ten in Billboard 200 which made \"American Idol\" the most successful soundtrack franchise of any motion picture or television program. Starting late in the fifth season, individual performances were released during the season as digital downloads, initially from the \"American Idol\" official website only. In the seventh season the live performances and studio recordings were made available during the season from iTunes when it joined as a sponsor. In the tenth season the weekly studio recordings were also released as compilation digital album straight after performance night.\n19 Recordings, a recording label owned by 19 Entertainment, currently hold the rights to phonographic material recorded by all the contestants. 19 Recordings originally partnered with Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) to promote and distribute the recordings through its labels RCA Records, Arista Records, J Records, and Jive Records. From 2005\u20132007, BMG partnered with Sony Music Entertainment to form a joint venture known as Sony BMG Music Entertainment. From 2008 to 2010, following their acquisition of BMG, Sony Music handled the distribution of \"American Idol\"'s music. In 2010, UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records replaced Sony as the music label for \"American Idol\".\nTie-ins.\n\"American Idol\" video games\nTheme park attraction.\nOn February 14, 2009, The Walt Disney Company debuted \"The American Idol Experience\" at its Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. In this live production, co-produced by 19 Entertainment, park guests chose from a list of songs and auditioned privately for Disney cast members. Those selected then performed on a stage in a 1000-seat theater replicating the \"Idol\" set. Three judges, whose mannerisms and style mimicked those of the real \"Idol\" judges, critiqued the performances. Audience members then voted for their favorite performer. There were several preliminary-round shows during the day that culminated in a \"finals\" show in the evening where one of the winners of the previous rounds that day was selected as the overall winner. The winner of the finals show received a \"Dream Ticket\" that granted them front-of-the-line privileges at any future \"American Idol\" audition. The attraction closed on August 30, 2014.\nOther broadcasts.\n\"American Idol\" is broadcast to over 100 nations worldwide. In most nations these are not live broadcasts and may be tape delayed by several days or weeks, except for other season finales that are aired live in several countries simulcast with the U.S. broadcast on Fox (2002\u20132016) and ABC (since 2018). In Canada, the first thirteen seasons of American Idol were aired live countrywide by CTV and/or CTV Two, in simulcast with Fox. CTV dropped \"Idol\" after its thirteenth season and in August 2014, Yes TV announced that it had picked up Canadian rights to \"American Idol\" beginning in its 2015 season. In 2017, it was announced the show would return to CTV Two for its sixteenth season. Since season nineteen, the show started airing on Citytv. In Slovakia, American Idol was broadcast on Jednotka.\nIn Latin America, the show is broadcast and subtitled by Sony Entertainment Television. In Southeast Asia, it is broadcast by Sony Channel every Monday and Tuesday nine or ten hours after since its revival. In Philippines, it is aired every Thursday and Friday nine or ten hours after its United States telecast; from 2004 to 2007 on ABC; 2008\u201311 on QTV, then GMA News TV; 2012\u201316, 2018\u201319 on ETC; and since 2024 on TV5. In Indonesia, it was aired on RCTI in the 2002 to 2003 season with the Indonesian subtitles, before Indonesian Idol was held in the 2004, aired after each episode ended, and in the 2011 to 2013 season it was broadcast by B-Channel (now RTV). In Australia, it aired a few hours after the U.S. telecast. It was aired on Network Ten from 2002 to 2008 and then again in 2013. Between 2008 and 2012 it aired on Fox8 and the thirteenth and fourteenth seasons (2014\u201315) it aired on digital channel, Eleven, a sister channel to Network Ten. Its final season (2016) aired on Fox8 hours after the original U.S. broadcast. The show enjoyed a lot of popularity in Australia throughout the 2000s before declining in the ratings. In the United Kingdom, episodes were aired one day after the U.S. broadcast on digital channel ITV2. In the twelfth season, the episodes aired on 5*. It was also aired in Ireland on TV3 two days after the telecast. In Brazil and Israel, the show airs two days after its original broadcast, and broadcast live during the season finale. In the instances where the airing is delayed, the shows may sometimes be combined into one episode to summarize the results. In Italy, the twelfth season was broadcast by La3. In Singapore, The show was broadcast on Mediacorp Channel 5 for the ninth and tenth seasons.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "44973219": "Heartbeat Song (Kelly Clarkson song)\n\"Heartbeat Song\" is a song by American singer Kelly Clarkson from her seventh studio album, \"Piece by Piece\" (2015). Written by Mitch Allan, Audra Mae, Kara DioGuardi, and Jason Evigan, the song is an uptempo synth-pop track produced by Greg Kurstin. Lyrically, it sings of meeting a person who restores someone's faith in love. Inspired by 1980s synthpop music, \"Heartbeat Song\" was released by RCA Records as the album's lead single on January 12, 2015.\n\"Heartbeat Song\" was released to a positive response from music critics, who complimented the song's production and praised Clarkson's decision to return to mainstream pop music. Other critics, however, noted the strong resemblance the song's melody bore to that of Jimmy Eat World's single \"The Middle\" (2001), which later allowed the band to be credited as additional songwriters. Commercially, the single debuted on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart at number 37 and has peaked at number 21, marking Clarkson's sixteenth top 40 hit on the chart. It also became her fifth song to top the \"Billboard\" Hot Dance Club Songs chart and marked as her highest debut among her twenty career entries on the \"Billboard\" Adult Top 40 chart. Internationally, it became a top ten hit single in Austria, Iceland, Poland, Slovenia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom while also becoming a top 20 hit in the national charts of the Czech Republic, Germany, Mexico, Slovakia and Sweden.\nDirected by Marc Klasfeld, its accompanying music video features scenes of various downtrodden people and their process of finding love again. Clarkson premiered \"Heartbeat Song\" in a live televised performance on \"The Graham Norton Show\" in February 2015 and has performed it on \"The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon\" and the fourteenth season of \"American Idol\". The song was nominated for Best Pop Solo Performance at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards.\nBackground and composition.\nShortly after the release of her first Christmas album, \"Wrapped in Red\" (2013), Clarkson, despite her pregnancy, began to record material for her seventh studio album, with a target release date in 2014. One of these tracks, \"Heartbeat Song\", is an uptempo synthpop track produced by Greg Kurstin. Lyrically, the song sings of meeting a person who restores someone's faith in love. Sonically, \"USA Today\"'s Brian Mansfeld remarked that the record serves as sonic defibrillator, starting with a jolt of melody, its rhythms shifting a couple times before finally settling into its steady pulse; while Idolator's Bradley Stern described its production as Top 40 radio-friendly and remarked that the track sees Clarkson's pulse raising while falling in love above kicky drums, guitars and hints of synths.\n\"Heartbeat Song\" was written by Mitch Allan, Audra Mae, Kara DioGuardi, and Jason Evigan in a two-day session writing camp. In an interview on \"Entertainment Tonight\", Mae revealed that DioGuardi came up with the main idea and used it as the song's chorus, with everybody else contributing in. After pitching the song to different artists, including Demi Lovato, she later found out during the Christmas season that Clarkson had recorded it and planned to release the song as the album's lead single.\nMusically, the song is written in the key of G-flat major with a fast tempo of 149 beats per minute. It follows the chord progression G\u266d\u2013B\u266d\u2013E\u266dm\u2013C\u266d, and Clarkson's vocals span from G\u266d3 to E\u266d5.\nRelease and reception.\nIn January 2015, Clarkson revealed a set of clues for the single, posting the words \"Proof of life and Dr. Dre #TheNextEpisode (\"sic\")\". On January 7, 2015, she announced January 12, 2015, as its release date as a digital download by RCA Records, followed by a release to Mainstream Top 40 radio stations in the United States on January 13, 2015. A CD single was also issued by RCA's parent company Sony Music Entertainment on March 6, 2015.\nCritical response.\n\"Heartbeat Song\" garnered positive reviews from music critics, with Clarkson's return to mainstream pop music lauded, along with her vocals. \"Billboard\"'s associate editor Jason Lipshutz gave the song 4/5 stars, writing the song's production and vocals sounded invigorated. Reviewing for \"Rolling Stone\", Jon Dylan gave the song a three-and-a-half star rating, describing it as a \"warm, fuzzy snuggle-fest.\" In his midweek review for \"Spin\", assistant editor Brennan Carley wrote that the song is \"a Kurstin production that sparkles with new-found passion\" and said Clarkson sings a lyric of the chorus with a bubblegum snap. In his review for music website Popdust.com, Jason Scott gave the song an \"A\u2212\" grade, saying that song would fit quite nicely to Clarkson's previous studio album \"All I Ever Wanted\" (2009). He also added that despite the song's the chorus isn't quite as \"tasty\" as what she's capable of, it's just as momentous as her previous singles such as \"Mr. Know It All\" (2011) and \"Breakaway\" (2004). Reviewing for \"Time\", Nolan Feeney wrote that \"Heartbeat Song\" as more of a celebration of that than a hungry comeback, reminding listeners of what Clarkson has so reliably provided over the years, with just a few souped-up adjustments. He also praised Kurstin's production and Clarkson's \"arena-ready pipes\", describing the song as \"slick, sugary and incredibly catchy \u2014 everything you want in a pop song, really\". The song has been nominated for the Choice Music Single: Female Artist category for the 2015 Teen Choice Awards.\nCritics also compared \"Heartbeat Song\" to Jimmy Eat World's single \"The Middle\" (2001) due to a notable similarity between the melodies of the songs' verses, as well as their choruses. In his review for Idolator, Stern observed both songs' similitude. Hunter Hauk of \"The Dallas Morning News\" also remarked of the two songs' similarities, but was ambivalent of \"Heartbeat Song\"'s lack of innovation as compared to Clarkson's previous lead singles. Digital Spy rated this song with 2 stars out of 5 and concluded by describing it: \"ruthless in its pursuit of earworm status, and like it or not it'll find itself lodged in the inner vestibules of your brain.\nChart performance.\nOn the chart week ending January 31, 2015, \"Heartbeat Song\" debuted on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart at number 37 with 70,000 copies of digital downloads, becoming her 16th top 40 hit on the chart. It also marked as her third highest debut among her 25 career entries, following \"Never Again\", and \"Mr. Know It All\", which debuted at number 8 and number 18 respectively. On the chart week ending February 21, 2015, it moved to a peak of number 21. The song also debuted on other \"Billboard\" charts, including the \"Billboard\" Mainstream Top 40 chart, the \"Billboard\" Adult Contemporary chart, the Billboard Trending 140 and the \"Billboard\" Adult Top 40 chart, where it entered at number 20, marking a career-high for Clarkson. On July 23, 2015, \"Heartbeat Song\" was certified Platinum by RIAA for selling a million copies. In Canada, \"Heartbeat Song\" debuted on the \"Billboard\" Canadian Hot 100 chart at number 37 on the chart week ending January 31, 2015. In Australia, it entered the ARIA Singles Chart at number 51 on the chart week ending January 26, 2015. In the United Kingdom, the song debuted at number 7 on the Official UK Singles Chart, becoming Clarkson's ninth song to reach the chart's top 10. As of April 24, 2016 is sold over 362,000 copies in the United Kingdom. In addition, \"Heartbeat Song\" had attained a chart position in the national charts of Austria, Germany, Spain, and Sweden; and has also charted in the airplay charts of Czech Republic, Denmark, the Netherlands, Slovakia.\nAs of September 2017, the song has sold over 909,000 copies in the US.\nAwards and nominations.\nAt the 2015 Teen Choice Awards, \"Heartbeat Song\" was nominated for Choice Music Single: Female Artist. For the 58th Annual Grammy Awards the song is nominated for Best Pop Solo Performance. In 2016 Audra Mae won ASCAP Pop Music Award for co-writing the song. In May 2016, the song won at the 64th Annual BMI Pop Awards.\nMusic video.\nOn January 26, 2015, RCA released an animated lyric video for \"Heartbeat Song\", featuring heartbeat graphs of Clarkson and three other radio guests in Nashville using an ECG monitor. Directed by Marc Klasfeld, its accompanying music video premiered on February 5, 2015, on Vevo. It was filmed in Nashville, Tennessee.\nSynopsis.\nThe video depicts scenes of various heartbroken people unexpectedly finding a chance to love again. These scenes are inter-cut with footage of Clarkson performing the track in a colorful background. Upon its premiere, the video had received a generally positive response, with mild criticism targeting a scene depicting a couple kissing through the opposite seating sides of a bench. In his coverage for \"Spin\", Carley remarked that there are some surprisingly deep moments tracing the journey from loss to happiness in the video. Reviewing for Yahoo! Music, senior editor Wendy Geller wrote that despite the video's concept may sound hokey, but the idea that life can change from dark to light in an instant (couple with Clarkson's buoyant vocals) is irresistible.\nLive performances.\nClarkson premiered \"Heartbeat Song\" in a live televised performance on the British television programs \"The Graham Norton Show\" on February 20, 2015, and \"Loose Women\" on March 2, 2015. She also performed the song on \"The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon\" on March 2, 2015, \"Good Morning America\" on March 3, 2015, iHeartRadio Music Awards on March 29, 2015, and on \"The Ellen DeGeneres Show\", on April 3, 2015. On April 2, 2015, Clarkson performed the song on the fourteenth season of \"American Idol\" where she was also the guest mentor for the top 8 as part of the \"Evening with Kelly Clarkson\" week. Clarkson performed the song in a medley with \"Since U Been Gone\" and \"Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)\" on the season three finale of \"La Voix\" in Montreal on April 12, 2015. Additionally, Clarkson performed the song at the Summertime Ball hosted by Capital FM on June 6, 2015. In July 2015, Clarkson performed the song on \"Macy's 4th of July Spectacular\" on NBC.\nCredits and personnel.\nCredits adapted from the \"Heartbeat Song\" metadata.\nPersonnel\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["44973219", "191890"], "permutation_1": ["44973219", "191890"], "permutation_2": ["191890", "44973219"], "permutation_3": ["44973219", "191890"]}
{"id": "2hop__427142_36134", "docs_added": {"30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "11977826": "Tengako\nTengako is a peninsula at the north end of Fongafale islet of Funafuti, Tuvalu. At the end of the peninsula is Amatuku islet on which the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute is located. Further past that is Mulitefala.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11977826", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["11977826", "30227"], "permutation_2": ["30227", "11977826"], "permutation_3": ["30227", "11977826"]}
{"id": "2hop__564042_36090", "docs_added": {"11978458": "Motulalo\nMotulalo is the largest islet of Nukufetau, Tuvalu. The traditional history of Nukufetau recalls that in order to protect the atoll from raiders from Tonga, Tauasa, an aliki (chief), was given Motulalo. Tauasa would pull up coconut trees and throw them at the raiders.\nDuring World War II the American forces built an airfield and a deepwater wharf on Motulalo. After the war the airfield was dismantled and the land returned to its owners. Beginning in October 2023, the airfield returns to use, with domestic flights to Funafuti International Airport.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11978458", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["11978458", "30227"], "permutation_2": ["30227", "11978458"], "permutation_3": ["30227", "11978458"]}
{"id": "2hop__535539_774871", "docs_added": {"159172": "Iron Maiden\nEnglish heavy metal band\nIron Maiden are an English heavy metal band formed in Leyton, East London, in 1975 by bassist and primary songwriter Steve Harris. Although fluid in the early years of the band, the line-up for most of the band's history has consisted of Harris, lead vocalist Bruce Dickinson, drummer Nicko McBrain, and guitarists Dave Murray, Adrian Smith and Janick Gers. As pioneers of the new wave of British heavy metal movement, Iron Maiden released a series of UK and US Platinum and Gold albums, including 1980's debut album, 1981's \"Killers\", and 1982's \"The Number of the Beast\" \u2013 its first album with Dickinson, who in 1981 replaced Paul Di'Anno as lead singer. The addition of Dickinson was a turning point in their career, establishing them as one of heavy metal's most important bands. \"The Number of the Beast\" is among the most popular heavy metal albums of all time, having sold almost 20 million copies worldwide.\nAfter some turbulence in the 1990s, the return of lead vocalist Bruce Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith in 1999 saw the band undergo a resurgence in popularity, with a series of new albums and highly successful tours. Their three most recent albums \u2014 \"The Final Frontier\" (2010), \"The Book of Souls\" (2015), and \"Senjutsu\" (2021) \u2014 have all reached number\u00a01 in more than 25 countries. Iron Maiden have sold over 130\u00a0million copies of their albums worldwide and have obtained over\u00a0600 certifications. The band is considered to be one of the most influential and revered heavy metal bands of all time. They have received multiple industry awards, including the Grammy and Brit Awards.\nThe band have released 41 albums, including 17 studio albums, 13 live albums, four EPs and seven compilations. They have also released 47 singles and 20 video albums, and two video games. Iron Maiden's lyrics cover such topics as history, literature, war, mythology, dark fantasy, science fiction, society and religion. As of October\u00a02019[ [update]], the band have played 2,500 live shows. For over 40\u00a0years the band have featured their signature mascot, \"Eddie\", on the covers of almost all of their releases.\nHistory.\nEarly years (1975\u20131978).\nIron Maiden were formed on Christmas Day, 25 December 1975, by bassist Steve Harris shortly after he left his previous group, Smiler. Harris attributed the band's name to a film adaptation of \"The Man in the Iron Mask\" from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, as the title reminded him of the iron maiden torture device. They originally used the name Ash Mountain, but most of the band members preferred the name Iron Maiden. After months of rehearsal, Iron Maiden made their debut at St. Nicks Hall in Poplar on 1 May 1976, before taking up a semi-residency at the Cart and Horses Pub in Maryland, Stratford. The original line-up was short-lived, with vocalist Paul Mario Day being the first to go as, according to Harris, he lacked \"energy or charisma on stage\". He was replaced by Dennis Wilcock, a Kiss fan who used makeup and fake blood during live performances and had earlier played with Harris and Doug Sampson in the band Smiler. Wilcock's friend, guitarist Dave Murray, was invited to join, much to the dismay of the band's guitarists Dave Sullivan and Terry Rance. Their frustration led Harris to temporarily disband Iron Maiden in 1976, though the group reformed soon after with Murray as the sole guitarist. Harris and Murray remain the band's longest-serving members and have performed on all of their releases.\nIron Maiden recruited another guitarist in 1977, Bob Sawyer, who was sacked for embarrassing the band on stage by pretending to play guitar with his teeth. Tension ensued again, causing a rift between Murray and Wilcock, who convinced Harris to fire Murray, as well as original drummer Ron Matthews. A new line-up was put together, including future Cutting Crew member Tony Moore on keyboards, Terry Wapram on guitar and drummer Barry Purkis (better known today as Thunderstick). After a single gig with the band in January 1978, Moore was asked to leave as Harris decided keyboards did not suit the band's sound. Dave Murray rejoined in late March 1978, and when Terry Wapram disapproved he was sacked. A few weeks later, Dennis Wilcock decided to leave Iron Maiden to form his own band, V1, with Wapram, and drummer Barry Purkis also left. Former Smiler drummer Doug Sampson was at Dennis' and Thunderstick's last gig, and joined the band afterwards.\nHarris, Murray and Sampson spent the summer and autumn of 1978 rehearsing while they searched for a singer to complete the band's new line-up. A chance meeting at the Red Lion, a pub in Leytonstone, in November 1978 evolved into a successful audition for vocalist Paul Di'Anno. Steve Harris said, \"There's sort of a quality in Paul's voice, a raspiness in his voice, or whatever you want to call it, that just gave it this great edge\". At this time, Murray would typically act as their sole guitarist, with Harris commenting, \"Davey was so good he could do a lot of it on his own. The plan was always to get a second guitarist in, but finding one that could match Davey was really difficult\".\nRecord contract and early releases (1978\u20131981).\nOn New Year's Eve, 1978, Iron Maiden recorded a four-song demo at Spaceward Studios in Cambridge. Hoping the recording would help them secure more gigs, the band gave a copy to Neal Kay, who, at the time, was managing a heavy metal club called \"Bandwagon Heavy Metal Soundhouse\". After hearing the tape, Kay began playing the demo regularly at the Bandwagon, and one of the songs, \"Prowler\", eventually went to number\u00a01 in the Soundhouse charts, which were published weekly in \"Sounds\" magazine. A copy was also acquired by Rod Smallwood, who soon became the band's manager. As Iron Maiden's popularity increased, they released the demo on their own record label as \"The Soundhouse Tapes\", named after the club. Featuring only three tracks (one song, \"Strange World\", was excluded as the band were unsatisfied with its production), all 5,000 copies sold out within weeks.\nIn December 1979, the band secured a major record deal with EMI and asked Dave Murray's childhood friend, Adrian Smith of Urchin, to join the group as their second guitarist. Busy with his own band, Smith declined and Dennis Stratton was hired instead. Shortly after, Doug Sampson left due to health issues and was replaced by ex-Samson drummer Clive Burr at Stratton's suggestion on 26 December 1979. Iron Maiden's first appearance on an EMI album was on the \"Metal for Muthas\" compilation (released on 15 February 1980) with two early versions of \"Sanctuary\" and \"Wrathchild\". The release led to a tour including several other bands linked with the new wave of British heavy metal movement.\nIron Maiden released their self-titled album in 1980, which debuted at number\u00a04 in the UK Albums Chart. In addition to the title track, the album included other early favourites such as \"Running Free\", \"Transylvania\", \"Phantom of the Opera\" and \"Sanctuary\" \u2013 which was not on the original UK release, but appeared on the US version and subsequent remasters. The band embarked on a headline tour of the UK, before opening for Kiss on their 1980 Unmasked Tour's European leg as well as supporting Judas Priest on select dates. After the Kiss tour, Dennis Stratton was dismissed from the band as a result of creative and personal differences, and was replaced by Smith in October 1980. In December, the band played at the Rainbow Theatre in London, where their first live video was filmed. \"Live at the Rainbow\" was released in May 1981, and \"Iron Maiden\" and \"Wrathchild\" from this video received heavy rotation on MTV during its first hours on the air as the first metal videos ever.\nIn 1981, Iron Maiden released their second studio album, \"Killers\". Although many tracks were written prior to their debut release, it had two new songs: \"Prodigal Son\" and \"Murders in the Rue Morgue\" (the latter's title was taken from the short story by Edgar Allan Poe). Unsatisfied with the production on their debut album, the band hired veteran producer Martin Birch, who would continue to work with Iron Maiden until his retirement in 1992. The record was followed by the band's first world tour with their debut performance in the United States opening for Judas Priest at The Aladdin Casino in Las Vegas. \"Killers\" marked the band's USA album charts debut, reaching number\u00a078 on the \"Billboard\" 200, and they booked 132 shows to promote the album, including their first concert in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. During the summer, Iron Maiden played several festivals in Europe, including at the Golden Summernights 1981 festivals at Zeppelinfeld in Nuremberg in front of 100,000 people.\nSuccess (1981\u20131985).\nBy 1981, Paul Di'Anno was demonstrating increasingly erratic behaviour, particularly due to his drug usage, about which Di'Anno comments, \"It wasn't just that I was snorting a bit of coke, though; I was just going for it non-stop, 24 hours a day, every day\u00a0... the band had commitments piling up that went on for months, years, and I just couldn't see my way to the end of it. I knew I'd never last the whole tour. It was too much\". Di'Anno was dismissed following the Killer World Tour with the band already having selected his replacement. After a meeting with Rod Smallwood at the Reading Festival, Bruce Dickinson, formerly of Samson, auditioned for Iron Maiden in September 1981 and was immediately hired. The following month, Dickinson went out on the road with the band on a small headlining tour in Italy and a one-off show at the Rainbow Theatre in the UK. For the last show, and in anticipation of their forthcoming album, the band played \"Children of the Damned\" and \"22 Acacia Avenue\", introducing fans to their new material.\nIn 1982, Iron Maiden released their third studio album, \"The Number of the Beast\", which became the band's first number\u00a01 record on the UK Albums Chart, was a Top 10 hit in many other countries, and reached number\u00a033 on the \"Billboard\" 200. At the time, Dickinson was in the midst of legal difficulties with Samson's management and was not permitted to add his name to any of the songwriting credits, although he still made what he described as a \"moral contribution\" to \"Children of the Damned\", \"The Prisoner\", and \"Run to the Hills\". The band embarked on a world tour, dubbed The Beast on the Road, with shows in North America, Japan, Australia and Europe, including a headline appearance for 40,000 people at the Reading Festival. Iron Maiden played 188 shows in 10 months. The Beast on the Road's US leg proved controversial when an American conservative political lobbying group claimed Iron Maiden were Satanic because of the new album's title track and \"demonic\" cover art, and a group of Christian activists destroyed Iron Maiden records in protest. Dickinson later said the band treated this as \"silliness\" and the demonstrations in fact gave them \"loads of publicity\". \"The Number of the Beast\" sold 2.5 million copies in its first year, 14 million by 2010, and 20 million by 2022.\nIn December 1982, drummer Clive Burr was fired from the band and replaced by Nicko McBrain, who previously played for Trust. Although Harris said the dismissal took place because his live performances were affected by offstage activities, Burr later claimed he was unfairly ousted from the band. The band then recorded the first of three consecutive albums at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas. In 1983, they released their fourth studio album, \"Piece of Mind\", which reached the number\u00a03 spot in the UK and number\u00a014 on the \"Billboard\" 200. \"Piece of Mind\" features the singles \"The Trooper\" and \"Flight of Icarus\", the latter being one of the band's few songs to gain substantial airplay in the US. Iron Maiden played 147 concerts in Europe and North America as a part of the World Piece Tour. This was also their first major North American tour as headliners, selling out Madison Square Garden with a crowd of 20,000.\nAfter the success of \"Piece of Mind\" and its supporting tour, the band released their fifth studio album, \"Powerslave\", on 9 September 1984. The album features the singles \"2 Minutes to Midnight\" and \"Aces High\", the title track, and \"Rime of the Ancient Mariner\" (based on Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem \"Rime of the Ancient Mariner\"). \"Powerslave\" was another chart success, reaching number\u00a012 on the \"Billboard\" 200 and eventually number\u00a01 in the UK. The band's fifth studio album sold over 4 million copies in its first year after the premiere. The tour following the album, called World Slavery Tour, was the band's largest to date with 193 shows in 28 countries over 13 months, playing to an estimated 3,500,000 people. Many shows were played back to back in the same city, such as in Long Beach, California, where the band played four consecutive concerts at Long Beach Arena for a combined audience of 54,000 fans. Iron Maiden also made their debut appearance in South America, where they co-headlined the Rock in Rio festival with Queen for an audience estimated at 350,000\u2013500,000 people. The tour started in August 1984 with five shows in Poland. Iron Maiden were the first Western artists to bring full-scale production behind the Iron Curtain. The band's third official video, entitled \"Behind the Iron Curtain\", was released in October 1984. The World Slavery Tour documentary brought footage of the band touring Eastern Europe in 1984, performing shows in the countries visited, \"Behind the Iron Curtain\" was the first documentary ever published by a Western artist that showed them touring the countries of Eastern Bloc. The documentary movie was broadcast by MTV and local TV stations around the world.\nThe tour was physically gruelling for the band, who demanded six months off when it ended (although this was later reduced to four months). This was the first substantial touring break in the group's history, including the cancellation of a proposed supporting tour for the new live album, with Bruce Dickinson threatening to quit unless the tour ended. In October 1985, Iron Maiden released the double live album and home video, \"Live After Death\". A critical and commercial success, it peaked at number\u00a019 on the \"Billboard 200\" and number\u00a02 in the UK. The album was recorded at Long Beach Arena and also features additional tracks from four nights at London's Hammersmith Apollo. In November 1985, Iron Maiden were named the best rock and metal band in the world and awarded at Public Choice International.\nExperimentation (1986\u20131989).\nReturning from their time off, the band added different musical elements to their 1986 studio album, \"Somewhere in Time.\" These focused on synthesised bass and guitars to add textures and layers to the sound. The release performed well across the world, particularly the single \"Wasted Years\", but included no writing credits from Dickinson, whose material was rejected by the rest of the band. The album was the band's biggest American chart success to date, reaching number\u00a011 on the \"Billboard 200\" and number\u00a02 in the UK charts. The Somewhere on Tour was also a success. The band played 157 shows for over two and a half million fans, including eighty-one shows in North America. Once again, Iron Maiden visited Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia to play for tens of thousands of fans in each country. The experimentation evident on \"Somewhere in Time\" continued on their next album, \"Seventh Son of a Seventh Son\", which was released in 1988. A concept album recorded at Musicland Studios in Munich and based on the 1987 novel \"Seventh Son\" by Orson Scott Card, it was the band's first record to include keyboards, which were performed by Harris and Smith. Dickinson's enthusiasm was also renewed as his ideas were accepted for this album. Another popular release, it became Iron Maiden's third album to hit number\u00a01 in the UK charts and reached number\u00a012 on the \"Billboard 200.\"\nDuring the following tour, the band headlined the Monsters of Rock festival at Donington Park on 20 August 1988, playing to the largest crowd in the festival's history (107,000). The tour concluded with several headline shows in the UK in November and December 1988, with the concerts at the NEC Arena, Birmingham, recorded for a live video, entitled \"Maiden England\". The video debuted at top spots of worldwide music videos charts. In May, the group set out on a supporting tour, which saw them perform 103 shows to well over two million people worldwide over seven months. To recreate the album's keyboards onstage throughout the tour, the group recruited Michael Kenney, Steve Harris' bass technician; Kenney has served as the band's live keyboard player ever since, also performing on the band's four following albums.\nUpheaval (1989\u20131994).\nDuring a break in 1989, guitarist Adrian Smith released a solo album with his band ASAP, entitled \"Silver and Gold.\" Vocalist Bruce Dickinson also began work on a solo album with former Gillan guitarist Janick Gers, releasing \"Tattooed Millionaire\" in 1990, followed by a tour. At the same time, to mark the band's 10-year recording anniversary, Iron Maiden released a compilation collection, \"The First Ten Years\", a series of 10 CDs and double 12-inch singles. Between 24 February and 28 April 1990, the individual parts were released one by one, each containing two of Iron Maiden's singles, including the original B-sides.\nIron Maiden then began work on a new studio record. During the pre-production stages, Adrian Smith left the band due to differences with Steve Harris regarding the direction the band should be taking. Smith disagreed with the \"stripped down\" style they were leaning towards. Janick Gers, having worked on Dickinson's solo project, was chosen to replace Smith and became the band's first new member in seven years. The album \"No Prayer for the Dying\" was released in October 1990. It contained the hit singles \"Holy Smoke\" and \"Bring Your Daughter... to the Slaughter\", the band's first \u2013 and, to date, only \u2013 UK Singles Chart number\u00a01, originally recorded by Dickinson's solo project for the soundtrack of \"\". Iron Maiden's eighth studio album debuted at number\u00a02 on the UK albums chart and number\u00a017 on the \"Billboard 200\". \"No Prayer for the Dying\" was a return to their musical roots, especially in the simplicity of composition. The No Prayer on the Road tour was booked for 120 shows in Europe, North America, and Japan. Thirty-three shows in continental Europe were sold out with a reported 530,000 fans attending. In total, Iron Maiden played for some two million fans.\nAfter another break, the band recorded their next studio album, \"Fear of the Dark\", which was released in 1992. The title track became a regular part of the band's concert setlists. Achieving their fourth number\u00a01 on the UK albums chart and number\u00a012 on the \"Billboard 200\", the release also included the number\u00a02 single \"Be Quick or Be Dead\", the number\u00a021 single \"From Here to Eternity\", and the softer \"Wasting Love\". The album featured the first songwriting by Gers, and no collaboration between Harris and Dickinson on songs. The extensive worldwide tour that followed included their first-ever Latin American leg, although Christian organisations prevented Iron Maiden from performing in Chile and accused them of being \"emissaries of satanic propaganda\", and headlining the Monsters of Rock festivals in seven European countries. Iron Maiden's second performance at Donington Park, for a sold-out audience of 75,000, was filmed for the audio and video release \"Live at Donington\" and featured a guest appearance by Adrian Smith, who joined the band to perform \"Running Free\". The tour also saw conflicts between Bruce Dickinson and rest of the band.\nIn 1993, Dickinson left the band to pursue his solo career, but agreed to remain for a farewell tour and two live albums (later re-released in one package). The first, \"A Real Live One\", was released in March 1993 and featured songs from 1986 to 1992, and the second, \"A Real Dead One\", was released after Dickinson left the band and featured songs from 1980 to 1984. The tour did not go well, with Steve Harris claiming Dickinson would only perform properly for high-profile shows, and that at several concerts, he would only mumble into the microphone. Dickinson denied he was under-performing, saying it was impossible to \"make like Mr. Happy Face if the vibe wasn't right\", and that news of his exit from the band had prevented any chance of a good atmosphere during the tour. Dickinson played his farewell show with Iron Maiden on 28 August 1993. The show was filmed, broadcast by the BBC, MTV and released on video under the name \"Raising Hell\".\nDifficulties (1994\u20131999).\nIn 1994, the title track from the \"Fear of the Dark\" album received a Grammy Awards nomination for \"Best Metal Performance\", a first for Iron Maiden. The band listened to the thousands of tapes sent in by vocalists before convincing Blaze Bayley, formerly of the band Wolfsbane, who had supported Iron Maiden in 1990, to audition for them. Harris' preferred choice from the outset, Bayley had a different vocal style from his predecessor and ultimately received a mixed reception among fans.\nAfter a three-year hiatus \u2013 a record for the band at the time \u2013 Iron Maiden released their next studio album, \"The X Factor\". The band had their lowest chart position since 1981 for an album in the UK, debuting at number\u00a08; however, the album went on to win \"Album of the Year\" awards in France, Spain and Germany. The record included the 11-minute epic \"Sign of the Cross\", the band's longest song since \"Rime of the Ancient Mariner\", as well as the singles \"Man on the Edge\" (based on the film \"Falling Down\") and \"Lord of the Flies\", based on the novel \"Lord of the Flies\". The release is notable for its \"dark\" tone, inspired by Steve Harris' divorce. The band toured for the rest of 1995 and 1996, playing their first shows in Israel and South Africa as well as Malta, Bulgaria and Romania in Europe, before concluding in the Americas. The biggest show of the whole tour was a headline appearance for 60,000 people at the Monsters of Rock festival in S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil.\"The X Factor\" sold 1.3 million copies, the lowest sales result since 1981. After the tour, Iron Maiden released a compilation album, \"Best of the Beast\". The band's first compilation, it included a new single, \"Virus\", in which the lyrics attack critics who had recently written off the band.\nIn 1998, Iron Maiden released \"Virtual XI\", whose chart scores were the band's lowest to date. The album peaked at number\u00a016 in the UK, the band's lowest for a new studio record. At the same time, Steve Harris assisted in remastering the band's entire discography, up to and including \"Live at Donington\". Bayley's tenure in Iron Maiden ended in January 1999 when he was asked to leave during a band meeting. The dismissal took place due to issues Bayley had experienced with his voice during the Virtual XI World Tour, although Janick Gers said this was partly the band's fault for forcing him to perform songs pitched outside the natural range of his voice.\nReunion and renewed success (1999\u20132005).\nThe band entered into talks with Dickinson, who agreed to rejoin during a meeting in Brighton in January 1999, along with guitarist Adrian Smith, who was telephoned a few hours later. With Gers remaining, Iron Maiden now had a three-guitar line-up (nicknamed \"The Three Amigos\"), and embarked on a hugely successful reunion tour. Dubbed The Ed Hunter Tour, it tied in with the band's newly released greatest hits collection, \"Ed Hunter\", whose track listing was decided by a poll on the group's website, and also contained a computer game starring Eddie, the band's mascot.\nNot satisfied with the results from Harris' Barnyard Studios, located on his property in Essex, which had been used for the last four Iron Maiden studio albums, the band recorded the new release, \"Brave New World\", at Guillaume Tell Studios in Paris, France in November 1999 with producer Kevin Shirley. Iron Maiden continued to find inspiration in movies and books, as shown in songs like \"The Wicker Man\" \u2013 based on the 1973 British cult film \"The Wicker Man\" \u2013 and \"Brave New World\" \u2013 a title taken from the Aldous Huxley novel \"Brave New World\". The album revisited the more progressive and melodic sound featured in some earlier recordings, along with elaborate song structures and keyboard orchestration. The album was a commercial and artistic success.\nThe reunion world tour that followed had over 100\u00a0dates (including 31 shows of the 1999 tour), and culminated on 19 January 2001 in a show at the Rock in Rio festival in Brazil, where Iron Maiden played to an audience of over 250,000. While the performance was being produced for a CD and DVD release in March 2002, under the name \"Rock in Rio\", the band took a year off from touring, although they played three consecutive shows at Brixton Academy to raise funds for former drummer Clive Burr, who had recently announced that he had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The band performed two further concerts for Burr's MS Trust Fund charity in 2005, and 2007, before his death in 2013. During the 2000\u20132002 tour, Iron Maiden played 91 shows for over two million people in 33 countries. In addition to their touring success, the band was nominated twice for the annual Grammy Awards and received the International Achievement Award at the 2001 Ivor Novello Awards. In November 2001, a documentary movie about the making of \"The Number of the Beast\" album was produced by BBC as a part of the \"Classic Album series\".\nFollowing their summer 2003 Give Me Ed... 'Til I'm Dead Tour, with 57 shows in Europe and North America and headlining large festivals such as Roskilde, Heineken Jammin' Festival, Rock am Ring and Rock im Park (combined attendance of 130,000) and the first Download Festival held at Donington Park; a successor to Monsters of Rock, Iron Maiden released \"Dance of Death\", their thirteenth studio album. It met with worldwide critical and commercial success, reaching number\u00a02 on the UK Albums Chart and number\u00a018 on the \"Billboard 200\". Produced by Kevin Shirley, now the band's regular producer, many critics felt this release reached the standard of their earlier efforts. Historical and literary references were present, with \"Monts\u00e9gur\" focussing on the Cathar stronghold conquered in 1244, and \"Paschendale\" relating to the First World War battle.\nDuring the Dance of Death Tour 2003\u201304, which began in September 2003, Iron Maiden played 53 shows across Europe, North America, Latin America and Japan. The band's performance at Westfalenhalle, in Dortmund, Germany, was recorded and released in August 2005 as a live album and DVD entitled \"Death on the Road\". In 2005, the band announced the Eddie Rips Up the World Tour, which, tying in with their 2004 DVD entitled \"\", only featured material from their first four albums. As part of this celebration of their earlier years, \"The Number of the Beast\" single was re-released and went straight to number\u00a03 on the UK Chart. The tour featured many headlining stadium and festival dates, including a performance at Ullevi Stadium in Sweden to an audience of almost 60,000. This concert was also broadcast live on satellite television across Europe to approximately 60 million viewers. The band completed the tour by headlining the Reading and Leeds Festivals on 26\u201328 August, and the RDS Stadium in Ireland on 31 August.\nContinued success and expanded tours (2005\u20132014).\nAt the end of 2005, Iron Maiden began work on \"A Matter of Life and Death\", their fourteenth studio album, which was released in autumn 2006. War and religion are recurring themes in the lyrics and the cover artwork. The release was a critical and commercial success, marking the band's first top ten on the \"Billboard\" 200 and debuting at number one in the album charts of 13 countries. The supporting tour saw mixed critical reception, but included the band's first performance in Dubai at the Dubai Desert Rock Festival for 25,000 people, followed by a concert in Bangalore Palace Grounds, the first of any heavy metal band in India. The band then played a string of European dates, including an appearance at Download Festival, their fourth headline performance at Donington Park, to approximately 80,000 people.\nOn 5 September 2007, the band announced their Somewhere Back in Time World Tour, tying in with the DVD release of their \"Live After Death\" album. The setlist for the tour consisted of songs from the 1980s. They played their first concerts in Costa Rica and Colombia and their first shows in Australia and Puerto Rico since 1992. The tour led to the release of a new compilation album, entitled \"Somewhere Back in Time\", which included a selection of tracks from their 1980 eponymous debut to 1988's \"Seventh Son of a Seventh Son\", as well as several live versions from \"Live After Death\". In 2008\u201309 in Latin America the band played 27 concerts for about a million people in total, a record for a heavy rock performer. The tour continued with two legs in the US and Europe in the summer of 2008. The sole UK concert took place at Twickenham Stadium, marking the first time the band would headline a stadium in their own country. The 2008 tour was the second highest-grossing tour of the year for a British artist. The final leg included the band's first appearances in Peru and Ecuador, as well as their return to Venezuela and New Zealand after 17 years. The band also played another show in India at the Rock in India festival to a crowd of 20,000. At their concert in S\u00e3o Paulo on 15 March, Dickinson announced on stage that it was the largest non-festival show of their career, with an overall attendance of 100,000\u00a0people. The final leg ended in Florida on 2 April after which the band took a break. Overall, the tour reportedly had an attendance of over two and a half million people worldwide over both years. At the 2009 Brit Awards, Iron Maiden won the award for best British live act.\nOn 20 January 2009, the band announced they were planning to release a full-length documentary film in select cinemas on 21 April 2009. Entitled \"\", it documented the first part of the Somewhere Back in Time World Tour (between February and March 2008). \"Flight 666\" was co-produced by Banger Productions and was distributed in cinemas by Arts Alliance Media and EMI, with D&E Entertainment sub-distributing in the US. The film went on to have a Blu-ray, DVD, and CD release in May and June, topping the music DVD charts in 25 countries. In most of them the release went Gold, Platinum or Multi-Platinum.\nThe band had begun composing new material and booked studio time in early 2010 with Kevin Shirley producing, and \"The Final Frontier\" was announced on 4 March and featured three singles \"The Final Frontier\", \"El Dorado\" and \"Coming Home\", as well as epic, progressive opuses \"Isle of Avalon\", \"The Talisman\" and \"When The Wild Wind Blows\". The album, the band's fifteenth, was released on 16 August to critical acclaim. It was also the band's greatest commercial success to that point, reaching number\u00a01 in twenty-eight countries worldwide, including a debut at number\u00a04 on \"Billboard 200\".\nThe album's supporting tour saw the band perform 101 shows across the globe to an estimated audience of over two and a half million, including their first visits to Singapore, Indonesia, and South Korea. \"El Dorado\" won the Best Metal Performance award at the 2011 Grammy Awards, the band's first win after two previous nominations. On 15 March, a new compilation to accompany 2009's \"Somewhere Back in Time\" was announced. The double disc set covers the period 1990\u20132010 (the band's most recent eight studio albums). In 2012, the band announced a new live album and DVD release entitled \"En Vivo!\", based on footage from the Chile concert. The DVD topped the music video charts around the world. In addition to the concert footage, the video release includes an 88-minute tour documentary, entitled Behind The Beast, containing interviews with the band and their crew. In December 2012, one song from the release (\"Blood Brothers\") was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance at the 2013 Grammy Awards.\nOn 15 February, the band announced their third retrospective Maiden England World Tour 2012\u201314, which was based around the video \"Maiden England\". The tour commenced in North America in the summer of 2012 and was followed by further dates in 2013 and 2014, and included the band's fifth headline performance at Donington Park with 100,000 fans in attendance. Iron Maiden closed the tour in July 2014 at Sonisphere Festival, Knebworth, having undertaken 100 shows in 32 countries before an estimated audience of more than 2.7 million people.\nLatest albums and tours (2015\u2013present).\nThe band's 2015 album, \"The Book of Souls\", was released on 4 September. The band's first original studio album not to be issued by EMI outside North America, following Parlophone's acquisition by Warner Music Group in 2013, it was a critical and commercial success, becoming the band's fifth UK number\u00a01 album and hit number\u00a04 on \"Billboard 200\" in the US. The new release reached the number one position in the album charts of 43 countries. The new record was recorded at Guillaume Tell Studios in late summer 2014; its closing song, \"Empire of the Clouds\", penned by Dickinson, surpassed \"Rime of the Ancient Mariner\" (from 1984's \"Powerslave\") as Iron Maiden's longest song, at 18 minutes in length.\nIn February 2016, the band embarked on The Book of Souls World Tour, with shows in 35 countries across six continents, including their first performances in China, El Salvador, and Lithuania. It was the band's biggest album tour since 1996. In total, Iron Maiden played 117 shows on six continents for well over two and a half million people. The band then launched the Legacy of the Beast World Tour in Europe in 2018, with North and South American shows following in 2019. The tour was inspired by the band's new mobile game and comic series released in 2017, entitled \"Legacy of the Beast\". The tour was received very positively by fans and critics, spanning up to three years with 140 shows, performing to over 3.5 million fans.\nThe COVID-19 pandemic forced the rescheduling of nearly one million tickets from 2020, first to 2021, and then to 2022. In October 2020, the band announced they would release a live album from the Legacy of the Beast World Tour called \"Nights of the Dead, Legacy of the Beast: Live in Mexico City\". The double concert album was recorded during three sold-out concerts in Mexico City's Palacio de los Deportes for a combined audience of over 70,000 people.\nOn 15 July 2021, Iron Maiden released a video for their first song in six years, \"The Writing on the Wall\", which was directed by Nicos Livesey. Four days later, the band announced their seventeenth studio album, \"Senjutsu\", would be released on 3 September 2021. \"Senjutsu\" eventually reached the top of the best-seller lists in 27 countries, but it was the band's first album in fifteen years not to reach number one on the UK charts, although it did top the UK Rock & Metal Singles and Albums Charts. In total, \"Senjutsu\" reached the top three in 55 countries and the top five in 63 countries.\nOn 1 February 2023, the band received their second nomination for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The band started their 25th global tour, The Future Past World Tour, with a concert in Ljubljana in May 2023. On 6 October, the band performed at the Power Trip festival which drew nearly 100,000 people. Throughout the 2023\u201324 world tour, Iron Maiden performed 81 shows for almost two million fans. Following the conclusion of the tour in S\u00e3o Paulo in December 2024, McBrain retired from touring, but would still remain a member of Iron Maiden and be involved with various upcoming band-related projects in the studio. The following day, it was announced that British Lion drummer Simon Dawson would be his touring replacement for any further tours.\nOn 19 September 2024, the band announced their 26th global tour, Run For Your Lives World Tour, which is set to start in May 2025, to celebrate the band's 50th anniversary and is set to be focused on the band's first nine studio albums.\nImage and legacy.\nIron Maiden have received numerous nominations, honours and awards including Grammy Awards and equivalents awards in many countries, Brit Awards, Ivor Novello Awards, and Juno Awards. They have ranked highly in many polls of the greatest metal artists of all time. In 2012 \"The Number of the Beast\" was voted as Best British Album Ever by the British public as part of Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Iron Maiden have an exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Rock in Rio Wall of Fame.\nIron Maiden were inducted into Hollywood RockWalk, BPI Hall of Fame and Kerrang! Hall of Fame. Band's mascot Eddie the Head is a part of the British Music Experience permanent exhibition. In April 2021, the band's former members (Paul Di'Anno, Blaze Bayley, and illustrator Derek Riggs) were inducted into the Metal Hall of Fame. They have twice been nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In January 2023 Iron Maiden were honoured by Royal Mail UK with dedicated postal stamps and cards.\nIron Maiden have sold over 130\u00a0million copies of their albums worldwide, despite little radio or television support. According to many sources all audio-visual catalogue of the band have sold in over 200\u00a0million copies worldwide, including regular albums, singles, compilations, and videos. Their third studio album, \"The Number of the Beast,\" is among the most popular heavy metal albums of all time and the most commercially successful release of the band, having sold almost 20 million copies worldwide. As of 2022 their releases have been certified silver, gold and platinum around 600 times worldwide.\nIn 1979\u20131980, visual artist Derek Riggs created the macabre mascot named Eddie The Head. Since then, Eddie has been an integral part of the stage and media image of the group. Originally a papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 mask which would squirt fake blood during their live shows, the character featured on the band's debut album cover, also done by Derek Riggs. Eddie was painted exclusively by Riggs until 1992, at which point the band began using artwork from other artists, including Melvyn Grant.\nA large puppet version of Eddie has appeared many times during carnival celebrations in Rio de Janeiro and other South American cities. During the Cavalcade of Magi 2021 in the Spanish city of Cadiz, next to dolls representing characters known from the world of pop culture, there was a huge, inflatable mummy inspired by the image of the Iron Maiden mascot from 1985.\nIron Maiden's distinct logo has adorned all of the band's releases since their debut, 1979's \"The Soundhouse Tapes\" EP. The typeface originates with Vic Fair's poster design for the 1976 science fiction film, \"The Man Who Fell to Earth\", also used by Gordon Giltrap, although Steve Harris claims he designed it himself, using his training as an architectural draughtsman.\nInfluence on other artists and the genre.\nIron Maiden have influenced numerous artists and bands representing different genres of rock and metal music. Kiss co-founder Paul Stanley said Iron Maiden \"have helped spawn an entire genre of music\" and influenced literally thousands of other artists. According to \"Guitar World\", Iron Maiden's music has \"influenced generations of newer metal acts, from legends like Metallica to current stars like Avenged Sevenfold.\" Metallica members Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, and Jason Newsted have cited Iron Maiden as a major influence on their work. Other bands and artists directly influenced by Iron Maiden include Ghost, Avenged Sevenfold, In Flames, Anthrax, Exodus, and Alice in Chains.\nJournalist Geoff Barton says the band's music constituted an important passage between the classic heavy rock school during the 1960s and 1970s, based on rhythm and blues, and contemporary heavy metal, characterised by sub-genre diversification and stylistic eclecticism. Music journalist G\u00f6tz K\u00fchnemund said \"Iron Maiden were (and still are) the inspiration for all the heavy metal bands we know today because they're an intrinsically heavy metal group. They're equally important for those who play power metal, speed, thrash, death, black, nu metal, metal core and hard rock \u2013 almost every genre.\" The journalist stated the band introduced a DIY approach to all rock music. According to Rock 'n Roll Fantasy Camp the style and attitude of Iron Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain has inspired generations of heavy-metal drummers that followed. Music writer, heavy metal expert and radio broadcaster Scott Penfold stated band's \"influence on the genre is immeasurable, as they not only inspired subsequent generations of metal bands but also revolutionized live shows with their elaborate stage productions, further cementing their status as pioneers of heavy metal.\"\nMusic journalist and the writer Neil Daniels said Iron Maiden \"redefined the whole genre blending classic heavy rock influence with punky vibe, twin guitars attack and progressive approach which finally have created the new quality. [The] Band's influence on generations of rock and metal bands cannot be overstated. They elevated metal to an art form, proving that academic and musical inspirations can coexist.\" The band's profile by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame says \"in the 1980s, Iron Maiden released seven high-octane albums that cemented them as one of the greatest rock bands \u2013 creating a blueprint for how heavy metal bands should look, sound and tour.\" According to \"Metal Hammer\" Iron Maiden is the second band to Black Sabbath, which has had the most significant impact on metal and heavy rock music.\nAppearance in media.\nThe first heavy metal videos broadcast by MTV were the live versions of \"Iron Maiden\" and \"Wrathchild\" taken from the official VHS \"Live at the Rainbow (Iron Maiden)\". In 1989, Iron Maiden took part in the Rock Aid Armenia project (also known as Live Aid Armenia) - a humanitarian project by the British music industry. The project aimed to raise funds to help people affected by the earthquake in Armenia in 1988.\nThe number of releases in tribute to the British band can be estimated in the hundreds, with an extremely wide range of stylistic variants. In 2008, \"Kerrang!\" released \"\", an album composed of Iron Maiden cover songs performed by Metallica, Machine Head, Dream Theater, Trivium, Coheed and Cambria, Avenged Sevenfold, and other groups influenced by the band. In 2010, Maiden uniteD, an acoustic tribute band consisting of members of Ayreon, Threshold and Within Temptation, released \"Mind the Acoustic Pieces\", a re-interpretation of the entire \"Piece of Mind\" album. As of 2021 nearly 200 Iron Maiden cover audio-visual releases exist (each featuring various artists), including piano, electro, string quartet and hip-hop tributes.\nIn March 2025, Netflix will release \"Run to the Hills\", a documentary celebrating Iron Maiden's 50th anniversary. Directed by David Morgan, it will explore the band's rise from their early days in London to global heavy metal icons. The exact release date is yet to be confirmed.\nClaims of Satanic references.\nThe 1982 release of \"The Number of the Beast\" created some controversy for the band. The artwork and title track led to Christian groups in the United States branding the band as Satanists, encouraging people to destroy copies of the release. The band's manager, Rod Smallwood, later said the groups initially burnt the records, but later decided to destroy them with hammers due to fear of breathing in the melting vinyl's fumes. The protests were not restricted to the US, with Christian organisations preventing Iron Maiden from performing in Chile in 1992.\nThe band have always denied the notion they are Satanists, with lead vocalist, Bruce Dickinson, doing so on-stage in the \"Live After Death\" concert video. Steve Harris has since commented that, \"It was mad. They completely got the wrong end of the stick. They obviously hadn't read the lyrics. They just wanted to believe all that rubbish about us being Satanists.\" Harris has also said that \"The Number of the Beast\" song was inspired by a nightmare he had after watching \"\", and also influenced by Robert Burns' \"Tam o' Shanter\". The band's drummer, Nicko McBrain, has been a born-again Christian since 1999.\nEd Force One.\nFor their Somewhere Back in Time World Tour in 2008 and 2009, Iron Maiden commissioned an Astraeus Airlines Boeing 757 as transport. The aeroplane was converted into a combi configuration, which enabled it to carry the band, their crew and stage production, allowing the group to perform in countries which were previously deemed unreachable logistically. It was also repainted with a special Iron Maiden livery, which the airline decided to retain after receiving positive feedback from customers.\nThe aircraft, named \"Ed Force One\" after a competition on the band's website, was flown by Dickinson until 2022, as he was also a commercial airline pilot for Astraeus; the plane also appears in the documentary \"\". For The Book of Souls World Tour in 2016, the band upgraded to an ex-Air France Boeing 747-400 jumbo jet which allows for more space without the aircraft having to undergo a significant conversion to carry their equipment.\nIn 2025, the band announced that the 747-400 they used during 2016's The Book of Souls World Tour would be scrapped, and keychains constructed from the plane's parts could be collected by fans. \"She's been scrapped but bits of her will live on,\" Dickinson said. The keychains were sold for \u20ac66.66, which is a reference to the band's album The \"Number of the Beast\".\nMusical style and influences.\nSteve Harris, Iron Maiden's bassist and primary songwriter, has said his influences include Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes, Jethro Tull, Thin Lizzy, UFO, Queen, and Wishbone Ash. In 2010 Harris said, \"I think if anyone wants to understand Maiden's early thing, in particular the harmony guitars, all they have to do is listen to Wishbone Ash's \"Argus\" album. Thin Lizzy too, but not as much. And then we wanted to have a bit of a prog thing thrown in as well, because I was really into bands like Genesis and Jethro Tull. So you combine all that with the heavy riffs and the speed, and you've got it.\" In 2004, Harris explained the band's \"heaviness\" was inspired by \"Black Sabbath and Deep Purple with a bit of Zeppelin thrown in.\" Harris also developed his own playing style, which guitarist Janick Gers describes as \"more like a rhythm guitar.\" Harris's bass technique is responsible for the band's galloping style, heard in such songs as \"The Trooper\" and \"Run to the Hills\".\nThe band's guitarists, Dave Murray, Adrian Smith, and Janick Gers, each have their own individual influences and playing styles. Dave Murray is known for his legato technique which, he says, \"evolved naturally. I'd heard Jimi Hendrix using legato when I was growing up, and I liked that style of playing.\" Stating that he \"was inspired by blues rock rather than metal,\" Adrian Smith was influenced by Johnny Winter and Pat Travers, leading to him becoming a \"melodic player.\" Janick Gers prefers a more improvised style, largely inspired by Ritchie Blackmore, which he says is in contrast to Smith's \"rhythmic\" sound.\nSinger Bruce Dickinson, who typically works in collaboration with guitarist Adrian Smith, has an operatic vocal style, inspired by Arthur Brown, Peter Hammill, Ian Anderson and Ian Gillan, and is often considered to be one of the best heavy metal vocalists of all time. Although Nicko McBrain has only received one writing credit, on the \"Dance of Death\" album, Harris often relies on him while developing songs. Adrian Smith commented, \"Steve loves playing with him. [They] used to work for hours going over these bass and drum patterns.\"\nThroughout their career, the band's style has remained largely unchanged, although the addition of guitar synthesisers on 1986's \"Somewhere in Time\", keyboards on 1988's \"Seventh Son of a Seventh Son\", and an attempt to return to the \"stripped down\" production of their earlier material on 1990's \"No Prayer for the Dying\" marked some experimentation. In recent years, however, the band have begun using more progressive elements in their songs, which Steve Harris describes as not progressive \"in the modern sense, but like Dream Theater, more in a 70s way\". Greg Prato of Ultimate-Guitar wrote, \"By and large, Iron Maiden's long and lengthy career can be categorized into two separate eras: \"punk Maiden\" and \"prog Maiden\". According to Harris, \"Seventh Son of a Seventh Son\" was the band's first album which was \"more progressive\", and they would return to this style in 1995's \"The X Factor\", which he states is \"like an extension of \"Seventh Son\"..., in the sense of the progressive element to it\". The development contrasts with the band's raw-sounding earlier material, which AllMusic states was \"clearly drawing from elements of punk rock\", although Harris firmly denies this.\nBand members.\nCurrent lineup\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "4893894": "The Number of the Beast (song)\n\"The Number of the Beast\" is a song by the English heavy metal band Iron Maiden. It is Iron Maiden's seventh single release, and the second single from their 1982 studio album of the same name. It was reissued in 2005 and also prior to that in 1990 in \"The First Ten Years\" box set on CD and 12\" vinyl, in which it was combined with the previous single, \"Run to the Hills\".\nUpon release in 1982, the song caused controversy in the United States where its subject matter caused outrage amongst religious groups. In spite of this, it remains one of the band's more popular songs, reaching No. 18 in the UK Singles Chart on its original release, and No. 3 on two successive occasions in 1990 and 2005. It has been performed on almost all of their concert tours. Additionally, the song has been covered numerous times and has appeared in several video games and films.\nWriting and recording.\nAccording to the song's writer, bassist and band-founder Steve Harris, it was inspired by a nightmare he had after watching the film \"Damien: Omen II\" late at night, in addition to the poem \"Tam o' Shanter\" by Robert Burns.\nThe song opens with a spoken word passage, read by English actor Barry Clayton, which quotes Revelation 12:12 and . According to lead vocalist, Bruce Dickinson, the band originally asked Vincent Price to read the intro, but decided to hire Clayton after Price refused to do it for anything less than \u00a325,000.\nThe track is known for its very long, high-pitched and guttural wail at the end of the intro, which AllMusic describes as \"the most blood-curdling Dickinson scream on record\". In the \"Classic Albums\" documentary , Dickinson states that it came about through frustration with producer Martin Birch, who forced him to sing the introduction repeatedly for hours on end.\nThe promotional video was filmed in March 1982 in Newcastle City Hall and directed by David Mallet. The video added footages from notable horror and thriller films such as \"Nosferatu\", \"Mothra vs. Godzilla\", \"The Crimson Ghost\", and \"How to Make a Monster\". Near the end of the music video, a giant Eddie appeared on-stage for the first time.\nSingle details.\nThe single's cover is the last of three singles to feature Riggs' depiction of Satan, which debuted on the cover of the \"Purgatory\" single. The cover of \"The Number of the Beast\" is the aftermath to the cover of the \"Run to the Hills\" single where Eddie and Satan are depicted in battle.\nThe single was also released in red vinyl.\nThe live version of \"Remember Tomorrow\" was recorded during the Killer World Tour in Padua, Italy, on 29 October 1981 with Dickinson on vocals. Dickinson had sung live for the first time on an Iron Maiden tour only three nights earlier, on 26 October in Bologna, a month and a half following the dismissal of previous vocalist Paul Di'Anno. It is also the last single to feature Clive Burr on drums, as he was replaced by Nicko McBrain at the end of The Beast on the Road tour in 1982.\nIn 2005, to tie in with the 2004 DVD \"\", \"The Number of the Beast\" was re-released, along with live versions of the song and \"Hallowed Be Thy Name\", recorded in 2002.\nLegacy.\n\"The Number of the Beast\" is one of the band's most popular songs, appearing at No. 7 on VH1's 40 Greatest Metal Songs and No. 6 in Martin Popoff's book \"The Top 500 Heavy Metal Songs of All Time\", a list said to be compiled from 15,000 votes submitted by musicians, music journalists and the general public.\nSince its release, the song has been covered by Dream Theater, Avulsed, Iced Earth, Sinergy, Powderfinger, Djali Zwan (whose version was used for the soundtrack of the cult film \"Spun\"), The Iron Maidens and many other bands. In addition, it was covered on a String Quartet Tribute to the band.\nThe song has been featured in video games, such as \"Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4\", \"\", and can be downloaded to \"Rock Band\" (originally offered as a cover version, the original master recording complete with spoken introduction was also uploaded along with \"Run to the Hills\" and a live performance version of \"Hallowed Be Thy Name\"). On top of this, it can be heard in the film \"Murder by Numbers\" and the British TV series \"Sherlock\". In 2017, the song was featured in the episode \"Sons a Witches\" of the American animated television series \"South Park\". The Netflix film \"Rebel Ridge\" opens with the main character listening to the song on a \"metal mix\" on his phone while cycling.\nControversy.\nIn addition to the album's artwork and title, the song was a prominent target of religious groups in the United States who accused Iron Maiden of being a Satanic group. The controversy led to organised burnings of the group's albums as well as several protests during their 1982 tour, although this would only serve to give the band more publicity. Harris has since commented that the accusations made against them were mad. \"They completely got the wrong end of the stick. They obviously hadn't read the lyrics. They just wanted to believe all that rubbish about us being Satanists\".\nOn their following album, \"Piece of Mind\", the band placed a backmasked message at the beginning of the song \"Still Life,\" in which the band's drummer, McBrain, gives a drunken impression of Idi Amin. According to McBrain, the message, in which he says \"'What ho', said the t'ing wid the t'ree bonce, 'Don't meddle wid t'ings yo don't understand'\", was directed at those who had labelled Iron Maiden as devil worshippers, commenting, \"We thought, if people were going to be stupid about this sort of thing, we might as well give them something to be really stupid about, you know?\".\nWhen \"The Number of the Beast\"'s music video was first shown on MTV, Eddie's appearance at the end was edited out after complaints from frightened viewers.\nPersonnel.\nProduction credits are adapted from the 7-inch vinyl and reissue picture disc covers.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["4893894", "159172"], "permutation_1": ["4893894", "159172"], "permutation_2": ["4893894", "159172"], "permutation_3": ["159172", "4893894"]}
{"id": "2hop__64175_90973", "docs_added": {"723502": "Meg Griffin\nFictional character from Family Guy\nMegan \"Meg\" Griffin is a fictional character from the American animated television series \"Family Guy\". She first appeared in the show's pilot episode, \"Death Has a Shadow\", on January 31, 1999. The character was originally voiced by Lacey Chabert; however, she has been voiced by Mila Kunis since the show's second season. Writer Seth MacFarlane created and designed Meg after his 1995 student film, \"The Life of Larry\", was picked up by 20th Century Fox for a series order. Meg is the eldest child and only daughter of Peter and Lois Griffin and the sister of Chris and Stewie. A social outcast, Meg is typically depicted as being mistreated and neglected by her family, though this has been downplayed in later seasons. Despite this, she is shown to be extremely talented and resourceful, having a kinder personality compared to the rest of her family. \nPersonality.\nSimilar to Lois, Meg has gone through numerous personality changes since the debut of the show in 1999. In early seasons, she was portrayed as a self-conscious and insecure adolescent. She is treated unfairly and abused by various people and has numerous insecurities that prompt her to try to be part of the \"in-crowd\". However, this only results in her getting rebuffed by the many bullies of this circle, particularly Connie D'Amico, the head cheerleader of the local high school, James Woods Regional High School. In contrast to this, a nerdy Jewish student named Neil Goldman is attracted to her, to her dismay.\nWhile Meg is usually a pushover, she can get angry when pushed too far, though such occasions are usually rare. This can be seen in the episode \"Seahorse Seashell Party\", where she strongly insults and defames Peter, Lois, and even Chris for their inconsiderate actions toward her. In the episode \"Road to Rupert\", Meg assaults a man for insulting her after a fender-bender, and in \"The Chicken or the Meg\", she decapitates Ernie the Giant Chicken's head after a heated argument. In later seasons, she is shown to be very snarky and deliberately unpredictable towards others, such as in \"The Marrying Kind\", where she tells off Lois after the latter seeks validation for her jokes. Later seasons exaggerate her uncouth behavior and completely disregard her punching-bag status. \nDespite her persistent mistreatment, Meg has proven a variety of times throughout the series that she is more talented and has greater potential than most people bother to realize, such as bird calls, playing the saxophone, speaking and singing in foreign languages, and even sports such as bowling, field hockey, basketball, roller derby, and even Olympic sports. However, her parents are unaware of her talents, oftentimes being completely surprised at her apparent skills. \nMany of the show's storylines about Meg involve her trying to improve her life, finding a boyfriend, and reaching breaking points with her family and others who victimize her. She often becomes obsessed with men who show any kindness or affection to her, including the Griffin's friend and neighbor Joe Swanson in the episode \"The Hand That Rocks the Wheelchair\", and Brian in \"Barely Legal\". In addition to this, she has been shown to have suicidal tendencies, which has been exacerbated by the abuse she suffers at the hands of her parents.\nVoice actors.\nOn the season 1 DVD commentary for the \"Drawn Together\" episode \"Hot Tub\", Cree Summer claims she was offered the role to play Meg but was dismissed by the producers. Meg was voiced by an uncredited Lacey Chabert for the first season, and by Mila Kunis in subsequent seasons after Chabert became busy with school and her role on \"Party of Five\", although some of her work became second season episodes due to production order. Mila Kunis won the role after a series of auditions and callbacks where she was asked to speak more slowly and enunciate more; she was ultimately hired despite being unsure she understood what was expected of her. MacFarlane felt that Kunis invigorated the character, and that her work on \"That '70s Show\" showed she could command a scene. MacFarlane stated that Kunis \"had a very natural quality to Meg\" and she's \"in a lot of ways [...] almost more right for the character\". Kunis' voice is first heard as Meg in Episode 3 of season two \"Da Boom\", and the voices switch back and forth in the broadcast order until settling on Kunis. Tara Strong provides Meg's singing voice in \"Don't Make Me Over\". Archival recordings of Lacey Chabert's voice that she provided as Meg Griffin are used in the tenth season episode \"Back to the Pilot\" in which Brian and Stewie go back in time to the events of \"Death Has a Shadow\". However, Chabert does in fact return for the eleventh season episode \"Yug Ylimaf\" as Stewie references the fact that time has reversed so much that Meg's voice has reverted back from that of Kunis' to Chabert's.\nSocial life.\nIn the first three seasons of the show, Meg was portrayed with a more whiny and uptight personality who was often embarrassed by the family\u2019s acts of bumbling and stupidity, though they cared for her and meant well. In the post-cancellation seasons, this began to change as the inadvertent embarrassment became deliberate bullying and disrespect. Additionally, the show started to flesh out the characters to the point where most of the population of Quahog who knows her, or even just meets her, picks on or disdains her for no reason other than her simply being \"Meg\".\nMeg is depicted as being unpopular in high school due to both her plain appearance and personality. She desperately tries to be part of the cool crowd, but is usually coldly rebuffed. Because of her eagerness for acceptance, she has been recruited \"unknowingly\" into a suicidal religious cult, and later recruited again unwittingly into her school's Lesbian Alliance (in the episode \"Brian Sings and Swings\" ). However, Meg does have a moderate number of friends, the best of whom being a group of girls who are often seen with her during occasions such as her slumber parties and gossiping about boys. In later episodes, these girls, known by the names Beth, Patty, Collette, Esther, and Ruth, are characterized as being highly unpopular and dateless, much like Meg.\nIn some cases, Meg is depicted as being so unpopular at school that in one instance, a student fires a nail gun into his own abdomen twice (in shop class) in order to avoid a date with her, and in a later episode, another student shoots his own brother as an excuse not to go to a dance with her the following night. In \"Don't Make Me Over\", Lois is looking for new clothes for Meg, but with no luck; a saleswoman ends up pouring gasoline on herself, lighting a match, catching fire, and then jumping out of a window after looking at Meg in a pair of jeans. However, she is sought by nerd Neil Goldman. In \"8 Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter\", Neil starts dating a girl named Cecilia, Meg becomes instantly jealous and pretends to date Jake Tucker to make him jealous. This leads to her signing a contract to become Neil's girlfriend and (not knowing at first) his slave, but she gets him to tear up the contract after Lois seduces him. Perverted neighbor Glenn Quagmire has shown a repeated interest in her, mostly due to his very low standards, asking if she has reached the age of consent. Quagmire comes close to succeeding in \"Meg and Quagmire\" when Lois tells Peter to back off after he was ruining Meg and Quagmire's 'dates'. Then, they rescue Meg after Glenn takes her to his cabin, Peter and Lois arriving in time before anything happens.. Joe and Cleveland are generally more accepting of her, with Cleveland allowing her to stay at his house when she's dealing with various family issues, such as in \"Fifteen Minutes of Shame\", and \"Petarded\". In very rare instances, he shows disdain over her, such as in \"Hell Comes to Quahog\".\". In \"The Hand That Rocks the Wheelchair\", Joe rushes her to the hospital after she's accidentally run over by his vehicle, afterwards telling her that he's lucky to have her as his neighbor. \nIn several episodes she is shown dating, including stories with characters Mayor Adam West and nudist Jeff Campbell. She also loses her virginity unknowingly on live television to \"Saturday Night Live\" host Jimmy Fallon after having a drastic makeover; but, before all that happens, she goes out with a rebel at her school named Craig Hoffman. In \"Jerome is the New Black\", Jerome, an old flame of Lois's and Peter's new friend, admits to having sex with Meg, to which Peter replies indifferently. Carl is shown to have a dislike for her in \"Movin' Out (Brian's Song)\", which she reciprocates due to being fired from his convenience store. She is shown to be good friends with Bruce, who she hangs out with at the Bowling Alley. \nIn the episode \"Brian Sings and Swings\", a lesbian student named Sarah invites Meg to join in her Lesbian Alliance Club, with Meg not knowing at first what kind of club it was. Desperate to fit in, she pretends to be a lesbian and also pretends to be attracted to Sarah and even goes so far as to kiss her to prove it. At the end of the episode, Meg goes over to Sarah's house to admit she lied about being a lesbian (Sarah thought that Meg came over to have sex and even undresses when Meg is telling her that she lied), much to Glenn's (who was hiding in Sarah's closet) disappointment. She also used to have a crush on anchorman Tom Tucker, but it ended after she discovered his vanity and selfishness. In other episodes, she is portrayed as chronically incapable of finding a boyfriend. For her Junior Prom she accepts a pity date from Brian, the family dog and only after threatening suicide.\nEarlier in season 2, she dated Joe Swanson's son Kevin Swanson, but in \"Stew-Roids\" it is mentioned that Kevin died in Iraq. In the episode, \"Prick Up Your Ears\", she dates a boy named Doug, but he breaks up with her when he sees her naked right before almost having sex. In the episode \"Peter's Daughter\", Meg falls in love with a medical student named Michael Milano after coming out of a short coma (caused by Peter when he asked her to \"rescue\" beer and make him a sandwich out of an already flooded kitchen) and they start to date. After he breaks up with Meg (because of Peter being overprotective of her after promising that if she came out of the coma, he would \"treat her like a princess\"), she announces that she is pregnant by Michael and the two get engaged. After finding out that she is not actually pregnant, Meg tells Michael the truth hoping that he will stay, however, Michael quickly leaves Meg at the altar. In the episode \"Dial Meg for Murder\", she is dating a convict, while in the episode \"Go, Stewie, Go!\" she dates an attractive young man named Anthony, who is absolutely normal (much to the surprise of many of the other characters). It is presumed that she broke up with him after he and Lois had an affair.\nOverall, Meg has shown romantic interest in and dated several men throughout the series. However, there have been several instances in which she has shown hints of being bisexual or a lesbian: examples of this include \"Brian Sings and Swings\", \"Stew-Roids\", and \"Dial Meg for Murder\".\nFamily life.\nOut of all the members of the family, her father Peter abuses her the most, making her the butt of his jokes and picking on her numerous times. Occasionally, when Meg asks a question to Peter or just speaks when he is in the room, Peter responds by saying \"Shut up, Meg\". Despite this, he is shown to care deeply about her in various episodes, such as in \"Meg and Quagmire\" when he goes out of his way to prevent friend and neighbor Glenn Quagmire from having sex with her, and in \"This Little Piggy\" where he tries to get Meg out of a foot fetishism business. In later seasons, Peter's kindness towards her is more open, sometimes showing remorsefulness in certain situations.\nShe is jokingly implied to have been unwanted by Lois and Peter numerous times in the show. For instance, In the episode \"Stewie Kills Lois\", Peter tells guests on a cruise ship about how he and Lois had gone to get an abortion but decided against it when they arrived at the clinic and found out the abortionist had one hand. He then says \"two and a half months later, our daughter Meg was born\" \u2013 Much to Lois's embarrassment, causing her to get mad with Peter. In numerous episodes, she is jokingly implied to have been dropped off at a Fire Station when she was an Infant, such as in \"Ratings Guy\" and \"Baking Sad\".\nBrian's attention initially softens the lack of respect from Peter and the rest of family; he admits that he cares for Meg when she goes out with Mayor Adam West. While initially seeming to have more common decency for Meg than most people, this appears to almost completely disappear after the tenth season, as Brian's increasingly shallow and self-centered character begins to take more pleasure and joy in being rotten to Meg and often refuses to give her the time of day, such as desperately trying to avoid having to comfort her, finding humor in her being puked on, and even willing to deliberately urinate on her bed. Stewie on the other hand occasionally shows disdain towards her due to his personality, but softens up towards her in numerous episodes. In \"Stand By Meg\", she saves him from choking to death on a grape, earning his respect towards her. He is also shown to prefer sitting on Meg's lap numerous times throughout the show, as opposed to Lois. In some episodes, Brian and Stewie attempt to help Meg numerous times throughout the show, such as in \"Leggo My Meg-O\", where they rescue her from Human Traffickers, and \"Baking Sad\", where they help her start up a cookie business. \nHer most significant relationship is with her brother Chris, where he sometimes shares the brunt of the family's abuse just like her. In numerous episodes they're seen teaming up, such as in \"The Heartbreak Dog\", where they both steal from a retirement home to get back at the residents mistreating her, and \"Young Parent Trap\", where they disguise themselves as a young couple to spy on Peter and Lois on vacation. Despite this, he is sometimes shown to abuse her, such as in \"Better Off Meg\" where he capitalizes on her falsified death to gain popularity within school (and kidnaps her when she comes back).\nMeg's most complicated relationship among the family members after Peter would be with her mother Lois. Although not as abusive as Peter, Lois seldom (if ever) reprimands her husband for their treatment of their daughter and tends to be rather thoughtless of Meg herself, often putting her down for her lack of social achievement or social popularity. Throughout the series, Lois can best be described as a general foil to her daughter, being more rebellious, outgoing, and loose-spirited compared to her daughter's own uptight demeanor, easily-embarrassed personality, and lack of confidence. Before the more recent seasons of the series, Lois has also often shown sympathy for Meg and tried to boost her confidence in terms of teenage social matters. Despite this, such occasions resulted in her former getting carried away and stealing the show from Meg, such as in \"a Fish out of Water\". The most significant example of her cruelty towards her would be in \"Stew-Roids\", where she encourages Meg to commit suicide by giving her a Sylvia Plath novel and a bottle of Ambien, proclaiming \"Whatever happens, happens\". Despite this, she is shown to deeply care for her in numerous episodes by having a normal mother-daughter relationship and going out of her way to defend her. For example, In \"Barely Legal\" she is angered when Brian confesses to making out with Meg at her Junior Prom, and in \"Snapple Decision\", she defends her from kidnappers who attempt to abduct them during a vacation gone wrong. \nWhile she is well aware of how poorly she is treated by others, Meg is usually much too fragile and passive to push back or retaliate against her family and school tormentors. The family's treatment of Meg, however, finally reaches her limit in \"Dial Meg for Murder\" when Meg emerges from a short stint in a Young Offenders Institution as a hardened criminal, abusing her family and beating up anyone who makes fun of her. It is only after a conversation with Brian that she changes her ways. However, it comes to a head once again in \"Seahorse Seashell Party\", when Meg finally grows tired of her mistreatment and lashes out against Lois and Peter, informing them of their own flaws. Meg tells Lois that she is far from the perfect parent, harshly berates her for constantly and ruthlessly pointing out Meg's shortcomings. This breaks Lois' heart and she finally admits that she's been a terrible mother to Meg. She then turns on Peter, calling him a \"waste of a man\". After a short fight between the rest of the family, Brian talks to meg and says that he likes how she stood up for herself, but she sadly tells him that even though she meant every word, seeing Peter turn on everyone like wolves has made her think that it is ultimately her non-ideal role to serve as the Griffins' \"lightning rod that absorbs all the dysfunction\". He commends her on her maturity, and even goes on to say that Meg is the strongest person in the family. She soon apologizes to the others and says that she is actually the one at fault, with the family reconciling and hugging afterwards. \nThe abuse that Meg receives begins to fade away as a running gag by the start of Season 14, notably in \"Peter's Sister\", where she notices that Peter's pro wrestler sister Karen treats Peter exactly the way Peter treats her. They bond over this with a plan to embarrass Karen at a wrestling show\u2014which goes awry when Meg hits her with a metal folding chair instead of a breakaway one and injures Karen to the point where she ends up in a coma. In more recent seasons (From 20 onwards), she is rarely abused, if at all, with her family embracing her instead of ridiculing her.\nReception.\nFan Reception of Meg Griffin's character has been mostly positive, with her being ranked number 11 on \"IGN's Top 25 Family Guy Characters\". However, critical reception on her character has been mixed, with most criticism headed towards how the writers handled her character. In a review for \"Seahorse Seashell Party\", Kevin McFarland of \"The A.V. Club\" wrote \"I feel bad about Meg becoming the scapegoat. Not because she\u2019s a good character, but because instead of tweaking and working to make her appreciated or comically valuable, \"Family Guy\" spent years going down the path of least resistance and simply joined the fan chorus of hatred. One episode of pointed, forced justification for that shift doesn\u2019t change a thing.\"\nIn an interview, Mila Kunis stated: \"Meg gets picked on a lot. But it's funny. It's like the middle child. She is constantly in the state of being an awkward 16-year-old, when you're kind of going through puberty and what-not. She's just in perpetual mode of humiliation, and it's fun.\"\nIn November 2016, when asked by Splitsider if the writers will further develop the characters of Chris and Meg in future episodes, showrunner Alec Sulkin confirmed that the series crew members are working on doing so and added that there are plans for an episode where Meg comes out as a lesbian, taking inspiration from previous instances in which she exhibited signs of lesbian characteristics, like when she joins a lesbian alliance group at school in \"Brian Sings and Swings\" and is identified as a \"transgender man\" named \"Ron\" in \"\", the latter which takes place in the future. However, Sulkin also noted that the plotline has not yet been finalized and thus isn't officially set to be used in an episode.\nReferences.\nInformational notes\nCitations\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "6101072": "List of Family Guy cast members\nCast list for an animated series\n\"Family Guy\" is an American animated sitcom that features five main voice actors, and numerous regular cast and recurring guest stars. The principal voice cast consists of show creator Seth MacFarlane, Alex Borstein, Mila Kunis (who replaced Lacey Chabert after the first season (her last episode is \"Holy Crap,\" now marketed as the second episode of season two)), Seth Green, and Mike Henry; Patrick Warburton and Arif Zahir were later added to the main cast (the former being promoted from recurring cast); Recurring voice actors include Adam West, Sam Elliott, John G. Brennan, Nicole Sullivan and Jennifer Tilly, and repeat guest stars include Phyllis Diller, Charles Durning, Rush Limbaugh, James Woods and Phil LaMarr.\nMany cast members provide voices for multiple characters. The voice actors, in portraying the various character personalities on the show, draw inspiration from celebrities and pop culture. \"Family Guy\" characters have been played by more than one actor, after members of the show left the series or had conflicting obligations.\nKunis was nominated for an Annie Award for voicing Meg Griffin in the season 5 episode \"Barely Legal\" and MacFarlane has also won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance and an Annie Award for Best Voice Acting in an Animated Television Production, though no other cast member has won an award for their work on the series.\nCurrent cast.\nFrom seasons 1 to 4, \"Family Guy\" had four main cast members. Since season 5, there have been five main cast members. The casting of Meg Griffin changed after season 1.\nSeth MacFarlane.\nSeth MacFarlane voices four of the show's main characters: Peter Griffin, Brian Griffin, Stewie Griffin, and Glenn Quagmire. MacFarlane chose to voice these characters himself, believing it would be easier to portray the voices he had already envisioned than for someone else to attempt it. MacFarlane drew inspiration for the voice of Peter from a security guard he overheard talking while attending the Rhode Island School of Design. Stewie's voice was based on the voice of English actor Rex Harrison, especially his performance in the 1964 musical drama film \"My Fair Lady\". The voice for Glenn Quagmire is based on 1940s and 1950s radio commercials. MacFarlane uses his own voice while portraying Brian.\nMacFarlane also provides the voices for various other recurring and one-time only characters, including news anchor Tom Tucker, Lois' father Carter Pewterschmidt and Dr. Hartman. He is the only cast member to be in every episode.\nAlex Borstein.\nAlex Borstein voices Lois Griffin, Asian correspondent Tricia Takanawa, Loretta Brown and Lois' mother Barbara Pewterschmidt. Borstein was asked to provide a voice for the pilot while she was working on \"MADtv\". She had not met MacFarlane or seen any of his artwork and said it was \"really sight unseen\". At the time, Borstein performed in a stage show in Los Angeles, in which she played a redhead mother whose voice she had based on one of her cousins. The voice was originally slower (and deeper for the original season), but when MacFarlane heard it, he replied \"Make it a little less fucking annoying ... and speed it up, or every episode will last four hours.\"\nSeth Green.\nSeth Green primarily plays Chris Griffin and Neil Goldman. Green stated that he did an impression of the \"Buffalo Bill\" character from the thriller film \"The Silence of the Lambs\" during his audition. His main inspiration for Chris' voice came from envisioning how \"Buffalo Bill\" would sound if he were speaking through a public address system at a McDonald's.\nMila Kunis.\nMila Kunis voices Meg Griffin. Kunis won the role after the auditions and a slight rewrite of the character, in part due to her performance on \"That '70s Show\". MacFarlane called Kunis back after her first audition, instructing her to speak slower, and then told her to come back another time and enunciate more. Once she claimed that she had it under control, MacFarlane hired her. Kunis described her character as \"the scapegoat\". She further explained, \"Meg gets picked on a lot. But it's funny. It's like the middle child. She is constantly in the state of being an awkward 14-year-old, when you're kind of going through puberty and what-not. She's just in a perpetual mode of humiliation. And it's fun.\"\nMike Henry.\nMike Henry is the voice of Cleveland Brown, John Herbert \u201cThe Pervert\u201d, Bruce, Consuela, and various other characters. A \"Family Guy\" writer and producer, he began acting on the show as part of the recurring cast repertory (see below) but was promoted to main cast member in 2005. Since the cancellation of \"The Cleveland Show\", he also voices Cleveland's step-son Rallo Tubbs on \"Family Guy\". On June 26, 2020, after twenty years of voicing the character, Mike Henry announced on Twitter that he was stepping down from voicing Cleveland, stating \"persons of color should play characters of color.\" On September 25, 2020, it was announced that Arif Zahir would take over as the voice of Cleveland.\nRecurring cast.\nIn addition to both its main cast and guest stars, \"Family Guy\" utilizes a deep bench of regularly appearing supporting voice actors. Some appear in nearly every episode each season, while others appear less frequently. Some of these actors specifically play recurring characters, while others mainly play background citizens of Quahog or characters in cutaway gags.\nThe current supporting cast repertory includes the following actors:\nIn addition to the above, the following actors were formerly regularly recurring voice actors in the series:\nRecurring guest voices.\nThe recurring guest voices include Norm Macdonald and Adam Carolla as Death, Patrick Stewart as Susie Swanson, Scott Grimes as Kevin Swanson, Sanaa Lathan as Donna Tubbs Brown and Emily Osment as Ruth Cochamer. Previous recurring guests included Phyllis Diller in three episodes as Peter's Mother, Thelma, and Charles Durning as Peter's father, Francis. Both characters have since died, but Durning returned once to play Francis as a ghost. Early in the show's run, Fred Willard and Jane Lynch had a recurring role as a family of nudists and James Woods as himself. In 2020, it was announced that Sam Elliott would take over as Quahog's new mayor, Mayor West's estranged cousin Wyld West.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "400738": "Mila Kunis\nAmerican actress (born 1983)\nMilena Markovna \"Mila\" Kunis (born August 14, 1983) is an American actress. Born in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, and raised in Los Angeles, she was Jackie Burkhart on \"That '70s Show\" (1998\u20132006) and has voiced Meg Griffin on \"Family Guy\" since 1999.\nKunis's breakout film role was in the 2008 romantic comedy \"Forgetting Sarah Marshall\". She gained critical acclaim for her performance in the psychological thriller \"Black Swan\" (2010), receiving nominations for the SAG Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her other major films include the action films \"Max Payne\" (2008) and \"The Book of Eli\" (2010), the romantic comedy \"Friends with Benefits\" (2011), the fantasy film \"Oz the Great and Powerful\" (2013)\u2014as the Wicked Witch of the West\u2014and the comedies \"Ted\" (2012), \"Bad Moms\" (2016) and its sequel, \"A Bad Moms Christmas\" (2017).\nEarly life and education.\nMilena Markovna Kunis was born into a Jewish family on August 14, 1983, in Chernovtsy (now Chernivtsi), Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. Although Kunis's parents have since retired, previously her mother, Elvira, was a physics teacher who ran a pharmacy, and her father, Mark Kunis, was a mechanical engineer who worked as a cab driver after the family emigrated. Kunis has an older brother, Michael. Her grandparents were Holocaust survivors. Her mother tongue and the common language within her family is Russian. While participating in \"Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend\" Kunis confirmed she does not speak Ukrainian, stating Russian was the main language at the time she was there. Children were not taught Ukrainian in school until they were in second grade which was the time she left to come to the United States. She stated in 2011 that her parents had \"amazing jobs\", and that she \"was very lucky\" and the family was \"not poor\"; they had decided to leave the Soviet Union because they saw \"no future\" there for Mila and her brother. In 1991, when she was 7 years old, her family moved to Los Angeles under a religious-refugee visa, with $. \"That was all we were allowed to take with us. My parents had given up good jobs and degrees, which were not transferable. We arrived in New York on a Wednesday and by Friday morning my brother and I were at school in L.A.\"\nKunis has cited antisemitism in the Soviet Union as one of several reasons for her family's move to the United States. She has stated that her parents \"raised [her] Jewish as much as they could\", although religion was suppressed in the Soviet Union. On her second day in Los Angeles, Kunis was enrolled at Rosewood Elementary School, not knowing a word of English. She later recalled: \"I blocked out second grade completely. I have no recollection of it. I always talk to my mom and my grandma about it. It was because I cried every day. I didn't understand the culture. I didn't understand the people. I didn't understand the language. My first sentence of my essay to get into college was like, 'Imagine being blind and deaf at age seven.' And that's kind of what it felt like moving to the States.\"\nIn Los Angeles, she attended Hubert Howe Bancroft Middle School. She used an on-set tutor for most of her high school years while filming \"That '70s Show\". She briefly attended Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies (LACES), but when that school proved to be insufficiently flexible about her acting commitments, she transferred to Fairfax High School, graduating in 2001. She briefly attended University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. \nKunis is a naturalized US citizen.\nKunis has said that a genealogical DNA test described her ethnicity as 96% to 98% Ashkenazi Jewish.\nCareer.\n1994\u20132000: Career beginnings and television work.\nAt age nine, Kunis was enrolled by her father in acting classes after school at the Beverly Hills Studios, where she met Susan Curtis, who would become her manager. On her first audition she landed the role for a Barbie commercial. Shortly after, she did a commercial for the Lisa Frank product line. Her first television roles took place in 1994, first appearing on \"Days of Our Lives\", and a few months later doing her first of two appearances on \"Baywatch\". She had a minor role on the television shows \"7th Heaven\", and \"Walker, Texas Ranger\" as well as supporting roles in the films \"Santa with Muscles\", \"Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves\", and the Angelina Jolie film \"Gia\", as the young Gia Carangi.\nAt the age of 10, Kunis unsuccessfully auditioned for the role of a Russian Jewish girl who moves to North America in the film \"Make a Wish, Molly\". Instead, she was cast in the secondary role of a Mexican girl. In 1998, Kunis was cast as Jackie Burkhart in the Fox sitcom \"That '70s Show\". All who auditioned were required to be at least 18 years old; Kunis, who was 14 at the time, told the casting directors she would be 18 but did not say when. Though they eventually figured it out, the producers still thought Kunis was the best fit for the role. \"That '70s Show\" ran for eight seasons. She won two consecutive \"Young Star Awards\" as Best Young Actress in a Comedy TV Series in 1999 and 2000 for her performances.\nIn 1999, Kunis replaced Lacey Chabert in the role of Meg Griffin on the animated sitcom \"Family Guy\", created by Seth MacFarlane for Fox. Kunis won the role after auditions and a slight rewrite of the character, in part due to her performance on \"That '70s Show\". When Kunis auditioned for the role, she was called back by MacFarlane, who instructed her to speak slower. He then told her to come back another time and enunciate more. Once she claimed that she had it under control, MacFarlane hired her. MacFarlane added: \"What Mila Kunis brought to it was in a lot of ways, I thought, almost more right for the character. I say that Lacey did a phenomenal job, but there was something about Mila\u2014something very natural about Mila. She was 15 when she started, so you were listening to a 15-year-old. Oftentimes with animation they'll have adult actors doing the voices of teenagers and they always sound like Saturday morning voices. They sound oftentimes very forced. She had a very natural quality to Meg that really made what we did with that character kind of really work.\" Kunis was nominated for an Annie Award in the category of Voice Acting in an Animated Television Production in 2007. She also voiced Meg in \"Family Guy Video Game!\", released in 2006. Kunis described her character as \"the scapegoat\".\n2001\u20132008: Transition to film.\nIn 2001, she appeared in \"Get Over It\" opposite Kirsten Dunst. She followed that up in 2002, by starring in the straight-to-DVD horror film \"American Psycho 2\" alongside William Shatner, a sequel to the 2000 film \"American Psycho\". \"American Psycho 2\" was poorly reviewed by critics, and later, Kunis herself expressed embarrassment over the film. In 2004, Kunis starred in the film adaptation \"Tony n' Tina's Wedding\". Although the film was shot in 2004, it did not have a theatrical release until 2007. Most critics did not like the film, which mustered a 25% approval from Rotten Tomatoes. \"DVD talk\" concluded that \"fans would be much better off pretending the movie never happened in the first place\".\nIn 2005, Kunis co-starred with Jon Heder in \"Moving McAllister\", which was not released theatrically until 2007. The film received generally poor reviews and had a limited two-week run in theaters. She followed up with \"After Sex\" starring alongside Zoe Saldana, who had also appeared in \"Get Over It\". In October 2006, she began filming \"Boot Camp\" (originally titled \"Straight Edge\"). The film was not released in theaters in the United States, but was released on DVD on August 25, 2009.\nKunis starred as Rachel Jansen in the 2008 comedy film, \"Forgetting Sarah Marshall\", co-produced by Judd Apatow. The role, which she won after unsuccessfully auditioning for \"Knocked Up\", entailed improvisation on her part. The film garnered positive reviews, and was a commercial success, grossing $ worldwide. Kunis's performance was well-received; Joe Morgenstern of \"The Wall Street Journal\" praised her \"fresh beauty and focused energy\", while James Berardinelli wrote that she is \"adept with her performance and understands the concept of comic timing\". She was nominated for a Teen Choice Award. In an interview, Kunis credited Apatow with helping her to expand her career from \"That '70s Show\".\nAlso in 2008, Kunis portrayed Mona Sax, an assassin, alongside Mark Wahlberg in the action film \"Max Payne\", based on the video game of the same name. Kunis underwent training in guns, boxing, and martial arts for her role. \"Max Payne\" was relatively successful at the box office, grossing $ worldwide but was poorly reviewed by critics, with several reviewers calling Kunis miscast. Travis Estvold of \"Boise Weekly\" wrote that she was \"horribly miscast as some sort of undersized, warble-voiced crime boss\". Director John Moore defended"}, "descending_order": ["6101072", "400738", "723502"], "permutation_1": ["723502", "6101072", "400738"], "permutation_2": ["723502", "400738", "6101072"], "permutation_3": ["723502", "6101072", "400738"]}
{"id": "2hop__756388_36180", "docs_added": {"30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "1031829": "Motuloa (north of Nukufetau)\nMotuloa or Motulua is a very small island on the north of Nukufetau in Tuvalu. It is an oval with a length of 200 m, and lies between Teafuanonu (on the west) and Teafuaniua (on the east).\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["1031829", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["1031829", "30227"], "permutation_2": ["30227", "1031829"], "permutation_3": ["1031829", "30227"]}
{"id": "2hop__617866_61232", "docs_added": {"174949": "Super Bowl XXXVII\n2003 National Football League championship game\nSuper Bowl XXXVII was an American football game between the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Oakland Raiders and the National Football Conference (NFC) champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers to decide the National Football League (NFL) champion for the 2002 season. The Buccaneers defeated the Raiders by the score of 48\u201321, tied with Super Bowl XXXV for the seventh-largest Super Bowl margin of victory, winning their first-ever Super Bowl. The game was played on January 26, 2003, at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, California.\nTo date, this is the last Super Bowl to be played in the month of January, as all subsequent games have been played in February. It is also the last to have been played in the week following the conference championship games (the others being Super Bowls XVII, XXV, XXVIII, XXXIV, and XXXVI) and the last to be played at Qualcomm Stadium, which previously hosted Super Bowl XXII (then called Jack Murphy Stadium) and Super Bowl XXXII and was demolished in 2021. Since the NFL no longer has a team in San Diego after the Chargers relocated to Los Angeles in 2017, and the league has a policy not to award Super Bowls to metropolitan areas that do not have a team within them, Super Bowl XXXVII will be the last to be played in San Diego for the foreseeable future unless an NFL team returns to the area.\nThis was the first Super Bowl in which the league's number one-ranked offense (Raiders) faced the league's number one-ranked defense (Buccaneers). The game sometimes is referred to as the \"Gruden Bowl\", because the primary storyline surrounding the game revolved around Jon Gruden. Gruden was the Raiders' head coach from 1998 to 2001, and as a result of a trade then became the Buccaneers head coach in 2002. Tampa Bay, \"Gruden's \"new\" team\", made their first Super Bowl appearance in team history after posting a 12\u20134 regular season record. Oakland, \"Gruden's \"old\" team\", advanced to their fifth Super Bowl after an 11\u20135 regular season. Super Bowl XXXVII is also referred to as the \"Pirate Bowl\" or \"Battle of the Pirates\", due to both teams' pirate-themed mascots and logos.\nThe Raiders came into the game as four-point favorites. However, offensive struggles from the Raiders, and a dominant defensive performance from Tampa throughout much of the game would unravel the juggernaut Raider offense. Oakland quarterback Rich Gannon threw a Super Bowl record five interceptions, three of which were returned for touchdowns. The Buccaneers also sacked Gannon five times, and scored 34 consecutive points to build a 34\u20133 lead late in the third quarter. Tampa Bay safety Dexter Jackson, who had two of those interceptions and returned them for 34 yards, was named Super Bowl MVP. Jackson became only the second safety and third defensive back named Super Bowl MVP.\nBackground.\nHost selection process.\nNFL owners originally voted to award Super Bowl XXXVII to San Francisco during their October 15, 1997 meeting in Washington, D.C. The 49ers had recently announced plans for a new stadium, and were awarded the Super Bowl contingent upon its completion. This was the second time the city had been awarded the Super Bowl on a conditional basis. In 1994, Super Bowl XXXIII was awarded to Candlestick Park, based on a comprehensive stadium renovation plan. However, when funding for those renovation plans fell through, the hosting duties were withdrawn. This time around, the San Francisco hosting committee had planned to pursue XXXVI, but due to logistical complications, switched their proposal to XXXVII. The owners awarded the game to San Francisco, and no other cities were considered. They skipped the awarding of XXXVI, and scheduled the bidding for that game for the spring of 1998.\nThe plans for the new stadium and mall at Candlestick Point never materialized. Rumors quickly began to spread that the league would pull the game from San Francisco if no progress was made on stadium funding/construction. Like they attempted to do three years earlier for XXXIII, the Raiders once again stepped in, offering to move the game over to Oakland. Oakland mayor Jerry Brown put his support behind the effort, but it was rejected by league officials. On March 17, 1999, the league passed a resolution officially withdrawing the game from San Francisco.\nThe NFL immediately reopened the bidding for the game. San Diego (Qualcomm Stadium), which had lost out on XXXVI, announced its interest. Miami (Pro Player Stadium) was the only other city in consideration after Oakland dropped their plan once and for all. San Diego went in as an early favorite. They had just received \"rave reviews\" for XXXII, and there was a desire to keep the game on the west coast. San Diego was awarded the game during the May 26, 1999, owners meeting at Atlanta, needing only one round of balloting. It was the last Super Bowl played in California until Super Bowl 50 at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara. It was also the final Super Bowl at Qualcomm Stadium before the Chargers relocated to Los Angeles in 2017, and before the facility was demolished in 2020.\nOakland Raiders.\nOakland Raiders owner Al Davis was known to have the lowest salaries for coaches in the league, and head coach Jon Gruden was no exception. Instead of paying a high salary for Gruden, Davis opted to trade the rights for Gruden to the Buccaneers in exchange for four draft picks. The Buccaneers ended up giving two first-round picks, two second-round picks and $8 million to the Raiders to get Gruden.\nAs a result of Gruden's departure, Raiders offensive coordinator Bill Callahan was promoted to head coach. Despite the loss of Gruden in 2002, the Raiders still managed to earn a share of the AFC's best record at 11\u20135. The offense led the league in total passing yards (4,689) and ranked second in total yards gained (6,451).\nRaiders quarterback Rich Gannon had an MVP season, completing 418 out of 618 passes for 4,689 yards, 26 touchdowns, and 10 interceptions. His 418 completions and his 10 games with over 300 passing yards were both NFL records. He also ran 50 times for 156 yards and three touchdowns. Jerry Rice, who was already the NFL's all-time leader in nearly every receiving record after 17 seasons, had a Pro Bowl season for the 13th time in his career 1,211 receiving yards and seven touchdowns. Gannon's other weapons in passing game were 15-year veteran receiver Tim Brown (930 yards and two touchdowns) and young receiver Jerry Porter (688 yards and nine touchdowns). Multi-talented running back Charlie Garner was the team's leading rusher with 962 yards and seven touchdowns, while also leading all NFL running backs in receiving with 91 receptions for 941 yards and another four touchdowns. Running back Tyrone Wheatley was also a contributor with 419 rushing yards, while fullback Zack Crockett provided both of them with solid blocking and scored eight touchdowns. Up front, their offensive line was led by two Pro Bowlers, guard Lincoln Kennedy and center Barret Robbins.\nThe Raiders' weakness was primarily on their defense, which ranked 25th in the league in passing yards allowed (3,787) and 12th in total yards (5,240). Veteran Pro Bowl safety Rod Woodson recorded a league-leading eight interceptions including two touchdowns. Up front, their line was anchored by defensive tackle Rod Coleman, who led the team with 11 sacks. Behind him, the team had a solid veteran linebacker, Bill Romanowski, who was playing in his fifth Super Bowl. Defensive back Tory James was also a big contributor with four interceptions.\nTampa Bay Buccaneers.\nGruden had trouble getting the offense in sync during his first year as Tampa Bay's head coach. In 2002, the Buccaneers ranked 25th in the league in total yards gained (5,222). Quarterback Brad Johnson made the Pro Bowl, completing 281 out of 451 passes for 3,049 yards, 22 touchdowns, and six interceptions. Running back Michael Pittman led the team in rushing with 718 yards and one touchdown, and added 477 receiving yards. Pro Bowl fullback Mike Alstott had 548 rushing yards and five touchdowns, and also had 242 receiving yards and two touchdowns. Wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson led the team with 1,088 receiving yards and five touchdowns, while wide receiver Keenan McCardell had 670 receiving yards and six touchdowns.\nThe Buccaneers' defense was still the strength of the team, leading the NFL in total defense (252.8 yards per game), pass defense (155.6 yards per game), points allowed (12.3 points per game), passing touchdowns allowed (10), interceptions (31), and opponent passer rating (48.4). Brooks, Lynch, Sapp, and defensive end Simeon Rice all had Pro Bowl years. Brooks led the team with 87 tackles and excelled at pass coverage, recording five interceptions and four total touchdowns (an NFL record for a linebacker). The defense as a whole had nine total touchdowns during the regular season and playoffs. Rice led the team with 15.5 sacks. Sapp recorded 7.5 sacks and two interceptions. Cornerback Brian Kelly was also a big asset, leading the team with eight interceptions.\nPlayoffs.\nThe second-seeded Buccaneers defeated the fourth-seeded San Francisco 49ers, 31\u20136, and the top-seeded Philadelphia Eagles, 27\u201310, to make the Super Bowl for the first time in franchise history. The Buccaneers defense was dominant in both games. Meanwhile, the top-seeded Raiders were victorious against the fourth-seeded New York Jets, 30\u201310, and the second-seeded Tennessee Titans, 41\u201324. The Raiders won against the Titans through Gannon's pass-oriented offense.\nSuper Bowl pregame news.\nThe Raiders entered the game favored to win in their first Super Bowl in 19 years. They were also the first franchise to appear in the Super Bowl in four decades (1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 2000s). However, much of the media hype surrounded the Gruden trade prior to the season. This forced league commissioner Paul Tagliabue to issue a statement that he might ban all future trades for coaches involving draft choices because it might compromise the draft.\nA distraction for the Raiders was that starting center Barret Robbins went missing for most of the day before the Super Bowl. Hours before the game, he was admitted to a San Diego hospital, then spent time in rehab at the Betty Ford Clinic. He was subsequently diagnosed with bipolar disorder; it turned out that his disappearance was due to a manic episode. Robbins later said he had gone across the border and spent his missing time partying in Tijuana, Mexico, so disoriented that he thought the Raiders had already won the game and he was celebrating the victory. Backup Adam Treu (a former Pro Bowl-er) replaced Robbins.\nThe Buccaneers, as the designated home team, wore red jerseys and pewter pants. The kit is normally used at home for the second half of the season; the Buccaneers wear white at home during the first half due to the late summer-early autumn heat. The Raiders donned white jerseys with silver pants, the same combination they wore in Super Bowls XI and XV (both victories).\nBroadcasting.\nThe game was broadcast in the United States by ABC, with Al Michaels handling the play-by-play duties and color commentator John Madden. Madden became the first person to announce Super Bowls on different networks in consecutive years, having called Super Bowl XXXVI on Fox and then moving to ABC after Pat Summerall retired. Melissa Stark and Lynn Swann served as sideline reporters. Chris Berman from Disney-owned corporate sibling ESPN hosted all the events. Berman was joined by fellow ESPN analyst Steve Young, Baltimore Ravens head coach Brian Billick, and New York Giants defensive end Michael Strahan.\nThe Super Bowl was the first of three major professional sports championship series ABC broadcast in 2003, as they would also broadcast the Stanley Cup Finals and the NBA Finals. Both the Super Bowl and the Stanley Cup Finals ended up being hosted by Berman (who co-hosted the Stanley Cup Finals with John Saunders). The state of California ended up having representation in both Super Bowl XXXVII and the 2003 Stanley Cup Finals after the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim advanced to the latter. ABC's lead NHL broadcast team of Gary Thorne, Bill Clement, and John Davidson mentioned all of these when they called the Stanley Cup Finals.\nFor its Super Bowl lead-out program, ABC aired an episode of \"Alias\" titled \"Phase One\". Then after the break for late local news, the network premiered its new late night talk show \"Jimmy Kimmel Live!\".\nNBC, which did not hold any NFL television rights during this time between the 1998 and 2005 seasons, provided counter-programming against the halftime show, airing a live segment of \"Weekend Update\" from the comedy\u2013variety show \"Saturday Night Live\" featuring Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey.\nMemorable television commercials that aired during the game included the \"\" Reebok ad and the Budweiser Zebra Referee. Adbowl ranked FedEx's \"Castaway\" as the best commercial of the year.\nOn the radio side, the game was carried nationally by Westwood One. Marv Albert, in his first season as the network's lead NFL voice, called the game with Boomer Esiason as his analyst. John Dockery and Warren Moon reported from the field. Locally, the Raiders' broadcast was carried by their then-flagship KSFO with Greg Papa as lead announcer and Tom Flores as analyst. The Buccaneers' then-flagship WDAE carried their broadcast, with Gene Deckerhoff as lead announcer and Scot Brantley as analyst.\nEntertainment.\nPre-game ceremonies.\nA pre-game concert featured a performance by Carlos Santana with guests Beyonc\u00e9 Knowles and Michelle Branch. During its pre-game show, ABC also aired a pre-game concert outside of the stadium, which featured Bonnie Raitt, Goo Goo Dolls and Michael Bubl\u00e9. French-Canadian singer Celine Dion performed \"God Bless America\", while country group The Dixie Chicks performed the national anthem.\nAs the New England Patriots' did the previous year, both teams were introduced and entered as a team rather than individually by offensive and defensive starters, establishing this as the new standard practice. To honor the 30th anniversary of the 17\u20130 undefeated, perfect season of the 1972 Miami Dolphins, the following members of that team appeared during the coin toss ceremony: Don Shula, Bob Griese, Larry Csonka, Larry Little, Jim Langer, Nick Buoniconti, Paul Warfield.\nHalftime show.\nThe Super Bowl XXXVII halftime show was headlined by Shania Twain, No Doubt, and Sting.\nPost-game ceremonies.\nBon Jovi appeared as part of the post-game ceremonies, performing \"It's My Life\" prior to the Vince Lombardi Trophy presentation and \"Everyday\" afterwards (most of the latter performance was not shown on ABC because the network cut to commercials).\nGame summary.\nFirst quarter.\nThe Raiders had a great chance to score a touchdown early in the game after cornerback Charles Woodson intercepted Buccaneers quarterback Brad Johnson's pass on the third play of the game and returned it 12 yards to the Tampa Bay 36-yard line. However, six plays later, defensive end Simeon Rice sacked quarterback Rich Gannon on third down, forcing Oakland to settle for kicker Sebastian Janikowski's 40-yard field goal to give them a 3\u20130 lead.\nBuccaneers running back Aaron Stecker returned the ensuing kickoff 27 yards to the 29-yard line, then appeared to fumble the ball while being tackled. Although the officials initially ruled that the ball was recovered by Oakland defensive back Eric Johnson, Tampa Bay challenged the call, and instant replay determined that both of Stecker's knees were down, and the ball did not come loose until he hit the ground. Gruden and Stecker appeared upset at having to use a challenge so early in the game, when they both believed Stecker was clearly down.\nOn the first play of the drive, Brad Johnson completed an 11-yard pass to wide receiver Joe Jurevicius. Johnson's next two passes were incomplete, but he then completed a 23-yard pass to Jurevicius on 3rd-and-10 to advance the ball to the Oakland 37-yard line. Running back Michael Pittman then rushed for a 23-yard gain to the 13-yard line. However, on the next three plays, the Raiders' defense limited the Buccaneers to a pair of incompletions and a 1-yard run by Stecker. Kicker Mart\u00edn Gram\u00e1tica then made a 31-yard field goal to tie the game, 3\u20133. After the teams exchanged punts twice, with less than two minutes left in the quarter, a 17-yard punt return by cornerback Darrien Gordon gave Oakland the ball at their own 49-yard line. Gannon then threw an 8-yard pass to running back Charlie Garner to reach the Tampa Bay 43-yard line. However, on third down, safety Dexter Jackson intercepted Gannon's pass at the 40-yard line and returned it 9 yards to near midfield.\nSecond quarter.\nNine plays after the turnover, Gram\u00e1tica kicked his second field goal from 43 yards to give Tampa Bay a 6\u20133 lead.\nJackson intercepted another pass on the Raiders' next drive and returned it 25 yards to the Oakland 45-yard line, making him the first player ever to record two interceptions in the first half of the Super Bowl. However, the Buccaneers were unable to take advantage of the turnover and were forced to punt. Tampa Bay got a big assist from their punter Tom Tupa, who managed to pin Oakland all the way back at their own 11-yard line. The Raiders could not move the ball either, losing a yard on three plays with their ensuing drive. Tampa Bay wide receiver Karl Williams then returned Shane Lechler's punt 25 yards, giving the Buccaneers great field position at Oakland's 27-yard line. Aided by Pittman's gains of 6 and 19 yards, the Buccaneers scored the first touchdown of the game on a 2-yard run by fullback Mike Alstott, increasing their lead to 13\u20133. After forcing the Raiders to punt, with 3:45 left in the half, Tampa Bay drove 77 yards in nine plays, assisted by a pair of catches by Alstott for 28 yards and four runs by Pittman for 20 yards. Johnson finished the drive with a 5-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Keenan McCardell to give the Buccaneers a 20\u20133 halftime lead.\nThird quarter.\nTampa Bay continued to dominate the game for most of the third quarter. The Buccaneers forced the Raiders to punt on the opening drive of the second half. Next, Tampa Bay marched 89 yards on a 14-play drive, which was highlighted by Johnson's two passes to Jurevicius for 44 yards and took 7:52 off the clock. The drive ended with Johnson's 8-yard touchdown pass to McCardell to increase their lead to 27\u20133. Then on the second play of Oakland's ensuing drive, Buccaneers safety Dwight Smith intercepted Gannon's pass and returned it 44 yards for a touchdown, making the score 34\u20133 in favor of Tampa Bay.\nAfter giving up 34 consecutive points, Oakland finally managed to drive 82 yards down the field, aided by a 25-yard reception by tight end Doug Jolley. The drive ended with a 39-yard touchdown completion from Gannon to wide receiver Jerry Porter. Although he was initially ruled as being out of bounds, the Raiders challenged the call, and it was determined that Porter had both feet in the end zone when he caught the ball. Gannon was sacked by Simeon Rice on the two-point conversion attempt, but the Raiders had cut their deficit to 34\u20139.\nFourth quarter.\nThe Raiders' touchdown seemed to fire up their defense, who forced the Buccaneers to a fourth down on their ensuing possession. On the second play of the final quarter, Oakland linebacker Tim Johnson blocked Tupa's punt, and the ball flew high into the air and into the arms of Eric Johnson, who returned it 13 yards for a touchdown. Another two-point conversion failed when Gannon threw the ball over wide receiver Tim Brown's head, but Tampa Bay's lead was cut to 34\u201315.\nTampa Bay responded by moving the ball to the Oakland 9-yard line on their ensuing drive, featuring a 16-yard pass interference penalty against Woodson and a 24-yard run by Pittman, but during a 27-yard field goal attempt by Gram\u00e1tica, Tupa fumbled the snap, and Gram\u00e1tica attempted to run the ball himself before getting tackled by cornerback Tory James, giving the ball to Oakland on their own 22-yard line. After completing two passes to Jolley for 23 yards, Gannon threw a 48-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Jerry Rice with 6:06 left in the game, cutting the Raiders' deficit to 34\u201321 and were only two touchdowns away from taking the lead. Oakland's two-point conversion failed for the third straight time when Porter caught the ball out of bounds after being forced out by linebacker Nate Webster, but the officials deemed no interference, and therefore that part of the play was non-reviewable. Nonetheless, Oakland challenged the call, but the ruling stood, and they were charged a timeout.\nIn an attempt to prevent a Raiders comeback, the Buccaneers managed to run the clock down to 2:44 on their ensuing drive before being forced to punt. Then on 3rd-and-18 from the Oakland 29-yard line, linebacker Derrick Brooks cemented the Buccaneers' first Super Bowl title by intercepting a Gannon pass intended for wide receiver Marcus Knight and returning it 44 yards for a touchdown, giving the Buccaneers a 41\u201321 lead with only 1:18 left, and leading Buccaneers radio announcer Gene Deckerhoff to make his famous call: \"The dagger's in, we're gonna win the Super Bowl!\". Five plays later, Smith intercepted another pass, which was deflected by defensive end Greg Spires, and returned it 50 yards for his second touchdown of the game with only two seconds remaining, capping off the scoring at 48\u201321. Smith's two pick sixes made him the first player in Super Bowl history to score two defensive touchdowns. Raiders defensive lineman Chris Cooper returned Gram\u00e1tica's kickoff 6 yards before being tackled by linebacker Jack Golden, ending the game. Gannon said after the game that his performance was \"nightmarish\". With the win, Jon Gruden became, at 39, the youngest head coach to win a Super Bowl, surpassing John Madden who won Super Bowl XI at the age of 40.\nBox score.\nSuper Bowl XXXVII: Tampa Bay Buccaneers 48, Oakland Raiders 21\n\"at Qualcomm Stadium, San Diego, California\nStatistical overview.\nTampa Bay dominated Oakland, out-gaining them in total yards (365\u2013269), rushing yards (150\u201319), first downs (24\u201311), offensive plays (76\u201360), and forced turnovers (5\u20131). As many sports fans and writers predicted, Gruden's prior knowledge of the Raiders was a major factor. The most damaging piece of evidence is NFL Films footage of Tampa Bay defensive back John Lynch telling his teammates during the game that almost all of the plays ran by Oakland's offense were plays that Gruden (who that week even played the part of \"Rich Gannon\" by playing quarterback with the scout-team offense) specifically told them to look out for. Better still for the Buccaneers was that Oakland hadn't changed their audible-calling signals that Gruden himself had installed, thus tipping off plays repeatedly.\nJohnson finished the game with 18 out of 34 completions for 215 yards and 2 touchdowns, with 1 interception, along with 10 rushing yards. Pittman was the top rusher of the game with 129 yards. Alstott was the game's second leading rusher with 15 yards and a touchdown, and had 5 receptions for 43 yards. Joe Jurevicius was the game's leading receiver with 4 receptions for 78 yards. Keyshawn Johnson recorded 6 catches for 69 yards. Smith recorded 2 interceptions, 94 return yards, and 2 touchdowns. He also added another 23 yards on a kickoff return.\nGannon finished the game 24 out of 44 for 272 yards and 2 touchdowns, but was intercepted a Super Bowl record 5 times for a 48.9 passer rating. Garner was their leading rusher, but with only 10 yards, and caught 7 passes for 51 yards. Rice was the Raiders' leading receiver of the game with 5 catches for 77 yards and a touchdown. He became the first player to score touchdowns with two teams in Super Bowls (Ricky Proehl, Rob Gronkowski, and Muhsin Muhammad have since joined him). Wide receiver Marcus Knight returned 8 kickoffs for 143 yards.\nJerry Rice and Bill Romanowski joined Gene Upshaw as the only players to appear in Super Bowls in three decades. Rice played in Super Bowls XXIII, XXIV, and XXIX. Romanowski played in Super Bowls XXIII, XXIV, XXXII, and XXXIII; the Raiders' loss prevented Romanowski from joining Charles Haley as the only NFL players at that time to earn 5 Super Bowl rings (Haley was also with the 49ers for Super Bowls XXIII and XXIV, and later earned rings when the Dallas Cowboys won Super Bowls XXVII, XXVIII, and XXX). The Raiders became the first team to appear in Super Bowls under four head coaches. John Rauch coached them in Super Bowl II, John Madden (who himself called Super Bowl XXXVII on ABC), coached them in Super Bowl XI and Tom Flores coached them in Super Bowl XV and XVIII.\nThe teams combined for the most second half points in a Super Bowl with 46 (28 for Tampa Bay and 18 for Oakland) and the third most total points in a game with 69, tying Dallas and Buffalo who combined for 69 points in Super Bowl XXVII.\nFinal statistics.\nSources: NFL.com Super Bowl XXXVII, Super Bowl XXXVII Play Finder TB, Super Bowl XXXVII Play Finder Oak, Super Bowl XXXVII Play by Play\nIndividual statistics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-float/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-float/styles.css\" />\n1Completions/attempts\n2Carries\n3Long gain\n4Receptions\n5Times targeted\nStarting lineups.\nSource:\nPro Football Hall of Fame\u2021\nPost-game riots.\nIn Oakland, after the Raiders' loss, riots broke out on the streets of East Oakland. Twelve cars were set on fire and 400 police officers were sent to the streets.\nAftermath.\n\"The Tampa Tribune\" published a book by several staff writers called \"Pewter Power\" about the Buccaneers' winning season.\nBoth teams entered a period of decline after the Super Bowl that saw them enter lengthy playoff droughts. Neither made the playoffs in 2003, as Tampa Bay finished 7\u20139 and Oakland finished 4\u201312. Furthermore, Tampa Bay finished 5\u201311 in 2004, becoming the first Super Bowl winning team to follow up with consecutive losing seasons. The Buccaneers had only two subsequent postseason appearances in 2005 and 2007 and did not win another playoff game until their Super Bowl-winning season in 2020. The Raiders went 14 seasons without a winning record or playoff appearance, not obtaining either again until 2016, and have not won a playoff game since this season. The 2002 season also marked the Raiders' final postseason victory in Oakland following their relocation to Las Vegas in 2020.\nIn January 2013, retired Raiders receiver Tim Brown accused coach Bill Callahan of deliberately throwing the game, stating that Callahan originally planned the Raiders' strategy around running the ball, since Oakland's offensive line outweighed Tampa Bay's defensive line by a significant amount. However, Brown claimed Callahan changed the game plan to a more pass-heavy strategy two days before the game. While Brown stopped short of saying he was sure Callahan ruined their game plan on purpose, he said, \"But the facts are what they are, that less than 36 hours before the game we changed our game plan. And we go into that game absolutely knowing that we have no shot. That the only shot we had if Tampa Bay didn't show up.\" Brown also suggested the change contributed to Barret Robbins' mental breakdown, saying \"Barret Robbins begged Coach Callahan, 'Do not do this to me. I don't have time to make my calls, to get my calls ready. You can't do this to me on Friday. We haven't practiced full speed, we can't get this done. I'm not saying one had anything to do with the other. All I'm saying is those are the facts of what happened Super Bowl week. So our ire wasn't towards Barret Robbins, it was towards Bill Callahan. Because we feel as if he wouldn't have did what he did, then Barret wouldn't have done what he did.\"\nJerry Rice echoed Brown's concerns, saying \"For some reason - and I don't know why - Bill Callahan did not like me.\" \"In a way, maybe because he didn't like the Raiders, he decided, 'Maybe we should sabotage this a little bit and let Jon Gruden go out and win this one.\" Raiders linebacker Bill Romanowski disagreed, calling Brown's accusations \"delusional\".\n\"I am shocked, saddened and outraged by Tim Brown's allegations and Jerry Rice's support of those allegations,\" Callahan replied. \"To leave no doubt, I categorically and unequivocally deny the sum and substance of their allegation. To suggest otherwise, especially at this time when it involves the Super Bowl, is ludicrous and defamatory. Any suggestion that I would undermine the integrity of the sport that I love and dedicated my life to, or dishonor the commitment I made to our players, coaches and fans, is flat out wrong. I think it would be in the best interests of all including the game America loves that these allegations be retracted immediately.\"\nNotes and references.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1278536": "Ronde Barber\nAmerican football player (born 1975)\nJamael Orond\u00e9 Barber (born April 7, 1975) is an American former professional football cornerback who spent his entire 16-year career with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the National Football League (NFL). Barber grew up in Roanoke, Virginia, and played college football for the Virginia Cavaliers, earning third-team All-American honors twice.\nIn the 1997 NFL draft, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers selected Barber in the third round as the 66th overall pick. Over the course of his career, Barber was selected to five Pro Bowls, accumulated three first-team All-Pro and two second-team selections. He was selected to the NFL 2000s All-Decade Team. Additionally, he led the NFL in interceptions in 2001, and he is the Buccaneers all-time interceptions leader. Barber is one of the two members of the 40/20 club (40+ interceptions, 20+ quarterback sacks) alongside Charles Woodson, and the only member of the 45/25 club (45+ interceptions, 25+ quarterback sacks). He also holds the record for most consecutive starts by a defensive back. Barber was inducted into the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame in 2014, and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2023.\nEarly life.\nBarber is the son of Geraldine Barber and James Barber. The Barber twin boys were born five weeks premature. Barber was born seven minutes before his identical twin brother Tiki Barber. He was named Jamael Oronde which means \"first born son\". Tiki was a running back who played for the New York Giants.\nJames Barber was a star cornerback at Virginia Tech and later played in the World Football League. His roommate in college was Bruce Arians. Ronde's parents separated when Barber was very young. James Barber rarely saw his sons when they were growing up, and failed to provide suitable financial support to them. His mother Geraldine worked two, sometimes three jobs to support her three sons. He and Tiki have an older brother, Tarik Barber.\nBarber graduated from Cave Spring High School of Roanoke, Virginia in 1993, and was a standout in football, wrestling, and track. In football, Barber was a three-time All-District selection. In track, Barber won the national title in the 55-meter hurdles as a senior in 1993, with a career-best time of 7.18 seconds. He was timed at 14.05 seconds in the 110-meter hurdles. He also won four Group AAA hurdles titles in indoor and outdoor track.\nCollege career.\nBarber received an athletic scholarship to attend the University of Virginia, where he played for the Virginia Cavaliers football team. He redshirted the 1993 season and played for the Cavaliers from the 1994 to 1996 seasons as a defensive back. He was also a kick returner in 1994 and 1996; in 1994, Barber returned 10 kickoffs for 171 yards, and in 1996, he returned 3 for 36 yards. As a defensive back, Barber made 15 interceptions returned for 112 yards in his career with Virginia: 8 for 56 yards in 1994, 4 for 18 yards in 1995, and 3 for 38 yards in 1996. The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) recognized Barber as Freshman of the Year after the 1994 season, and Barber earned first-team All-ACC honors in all his three seasons with Virginia. Barber was part of the Virginia teams that won the 1994 Independence Bowl and December 1995 Peach Bowl. After his junior season in 1996, Barber declared for the 1997 NFL draft. Barber graduated from Virginia in 1997 with a bachelor's degree in commerce with an emphasis in marketing. During Barber's time at UVa, he was a member of the IMP Society, one of the university's secret societies.\nProfessional career.\nOn January 3, 1997, Barber announced his decision to forgo his final season of eligibility and enter the 1997 NFL draft. He became only the third player from the University of Virginia to enter the NFL draft with eligibility remaining.\n1997.\nThe Tampa Bay Buccaneers drafted Barber in the third round (66th overall) of the 1997 NFL draft. Barber was the third underclassmen selected in 1997 and was the tenth cornerback. His brother, Tiki Barber, was drafted in the second round (36th overall) by the New York Giants. Ronde and Tiki Barber became only the fourth set of twins to be selected in the same draft in NFL history, following Rich and Ron Saul (1970), Reggie and Raleigh McKenzie (1985), and Keith and Kerry Cash (1991). They also became only the seventh set of twins to play in the league.\nAs a rookie, Barber played only one game, in Week 5 (September 28) against the Arizona Cardinals. Barber had three tackles. Tampa advanced to the of the playoffs but lost to the Green Bay Packers.\n1998.\nIn his second season, Barber started nine games (three as left cornerback and six as right cornerback) and played in all 16 games, recording 68 tackles, 17 passes deflected, 3 sacks, 2 interceptions (returned for 67 yards), 2 forced fumbles, and 12 special teams tackles.\n1999.\nIn the 1999 season, Barber again played in all 16 games and started 15 as right cornerback. Improving from his previous seasons, Barber posted 74 tackles, two interceptions (60 yards), one sack, and 16 passes deflected. Making his postseason debut this season, Barber also started both playoff games; the Buccaneers lost the to eventual Super Bowl XXXIV champion St. Louis Rams.\n2000.\nFor the first time in his career, Barber started all 16 games in a season in 2000. Barber reached new career bests with 97 tackles, 20 passes deflected, and 5.5 sacks. With his 5.5 sacks, Barber led all NFC defensive backs in sacks. He had two interceptions (46 yards), one forced fumble, one fumble recovery, and six special teams tackles. For the Week 2 (September 10) game, Barber was NFC Defensive Player of the Week for 3 tackles, 2.5 sacks, a forced fumble, and a 24-yard fumble recovery for a touchdown against the Chicago Bears. Picking and returning for 37 yards a pass from former Tampa quarterback Vinny Testaverde, Barber scored his first career touchdown from an interception return in the Week 4 (September 24) 21\u201317 loss to the New York Jets. In the game on December 31, a 21\u20133 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, Barber made 5 tackles.\n2001.\nOn April 9, 2001, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers signed Barber to a six-year, $18.50 million contract.\nIn 2001, Barber started 16 of 16 regular season games and made 71 tackles, 1 sack, 14 passes deflected, and 10 interceptions (86 yards). Barber returned an intercepted pass from Aaron Brooks 36 yards for a touchdown in the Week 15 (December 23) win over the New Orleans Saints. Barber made his first Pro Bowl and All-Pro teams this season.\n2002.\nStarting all 16 games again this season, Barber made 79 tackles, 3 sacks, 17 passes deflected, and returned 2 interceptions for 9 yards. Barber was part of a Tampa secondary that ranked first in total defense and passes defended. Barber also started all three playoff games, including Tampa's Super Bowl XXXVII victory.\nIn the NFC Championship game on January 19, 2003, Barber picked off a pass from Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb and returned the interception 92 yards for a touchdown late in the fourth quarter to seal Tampa's 27\u201310 road victory and brought Veterans Stadium to near-silence. Bob Ford of \"The Philadelphia Inquirer\" labeled this game as \"the most ignominious defeat of Andy Reid's head coaching career\" because of Barber's interception return. In 2011, \"Tampa Bay Times\" sportswriter Rick Stroud ranked Barber's interception return for touchdown in the NFC Championship game as the greatest scoring play in team history. Barber also deflected 4 passes in that game. In Tampa's 48\u201321 victory over the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl XXXVII on January 26, 2003, Barber made five tackles.\n2003.\nFor the fourth consecutive season, Barber started all 16 regular season games. Barber again continued to make more tackles annually with 97 this season. Additionally, Barber deflected 3 passes, returned 2 interceptions for 53 yards, and forced 3 fumbles. In Week 5 (October 6), a 38\u201335 overtime loss to the Indianapolis Colts, Barber returned an intercepted pass from Peyton Manning 29 yards for a touchdown.\n2004.\nStarting all 16 regular-season games, Barber made 98 tackles, 3 sacks, 10 passes defended, 3 interceptions returned for 23 yards, and 2 forced fumbles. He also returned 2 fumbles for touchdowns. Chosen as a starter for the 2005 Pro Bowl, Barber made his second career Pro Bowl appearance. This season, Barber also earned first-team All-Pro honors from the Associated Press. For the second time since the 2002 Super Bowl championship season, Tampa's pass defense was number one in the league, and Tampa's total defense was in the top ten for the eighth straight season.\n2005.\nBarber had 99 tackles, 2 sacks, 15 passes defended, and 5 interceptions returned for 105 yards in 16 games (all starts) in 2005. Barber intercepted three passes (returned for 70 yards) from Saints quarterback Aaron Brooks on December 4 (Week 13) in Tampa's 10\u20133 win over New Orleans, including one in the end zone in the Saints' final drive. On December 11, in the Week 14 game against the Carolina Panthers, he became the first cornerback in the history of the NFL to record at least 20 interceptions and 20 sacks in his career. Tampa lost the Wild Card game 17\u201310 to the Washington Redskins, and Barber made 8 tackles that game. Barber made his third career Pro Bowl appearance in the 2006 Pro Bowl.\n2006.\nIn 2006, starting 16 of 16 regular-season games, Barber had 98 tackles and 13 passes deflected. He also returned 3 interceptions for 103 yards; two of those interceptions Barber returned for touchdowns. On October 22 (Week 7) against Philadelphia, Barber became the first player in Buccaneers history to return two interceptions for touchdowns in one regular-season game. After Barber scored in the second quarter on a 37-yard return of an interception from Donovan McNabb, Tampa took a 17\u20130 lead late in the third quarter with Barber's 66-yard interception return of a McNabb pass. Despite a late comeback by the Eagles, Tampa won 23\u201321 on a last-second field goal by Matt Bryant. Barber made his fourth career and third consecutive Pro Bowl in the 2007 Pro Bowl.\n2007.\nPrior to the season, the team voted Barber as defensive captain. In 16 games, Barber made 58 tackles, one sack, 14 passes deflected, 2 interceptions returned for 32 yards (including a 29-yard touchdown run), and one forced fumble. On November 25, 2007, he took the record from Donnie Abraham for the most interceptions in Buccaneers team history by catching his 32nd against the Washington Redskins. In a 37\u20133 victory over the Atlanta Falcons on Week 15 (December 16), Barber returned an interception of Chris Redman 29 yards for a touchdown.\n2008.\nIn 2008, starting 16 of 16 regular season games for the ninth straight season, Barber made 75 tackles, 2 sacks, 12 passes defended, and 4 interceptions returned for 69 yards (including a 65-yard return for touchdown). Again a team defensive captain, Barber made his fifth career and most recent Pro Bowl appearance in the 2009 Pro Bowl. In the Week 12 (November 23), a 38\u201320 win over the hosting Detroit Lions, Barber intercepted Lions quarterback Daunte Culpepper twice and returned one interception 65 yards for a touchdown.\n2009.\nIn the 2009 regular season, Barber made 77 tackles, 2 sacks, 6 passes defended, and 2 forced fumbles in 16 games (all starts). However, for the first time since his 1997 rookie season, Barber did not intercept a pass the entire season. Barber had some crucial plays on special teams: in Week 4 (October 4) against the Washington Redskins, Barber blocked an extra point kick by Shaun Suisham. In the Week 9 win over the Green Bay Packers, Barber returned a punt blocked by Geno Hayes 31 yards for a tying touchdown. Along with Tony Dungy, Derrick Brooks, and Warren Sapp, Barber was voted to the NFL 2000s All-Decade Team prior to the 2010 Pro Bowl.\n2010.\nBarber made 82 tackles, defended 13 passes, and returned 3 interceptions for 98 yards in 16 games. With his 172nd consecutive start in Week 6 (October 17), Barber surpassed Dick LeBeau for most consecutive starts by an NFL cornerback and played in his 200th career game two weeks later. On November 21, 2010, Barber became the only player in NFL history with at least 25 sacks (26 total) and 40 interceptions with a 21\u20130 win over the San Francisco 49ers.\n2011.\nStarting all 16 games as a right cornerback, Barber had 79 tackles, 9 passes defended, 1 safety, and 3 interceptions returned for 12 yards. On October 23 (Week 7), in an NFL International Series game against the Chicago Bears held in London, England, Barber recorded his first career safety when he tackled Matt Forte in the end zone.\n2012.\nOn May 15, 2012, Barber officially switched positions to become a free safety. Barber started all 16 games for the 13th straight season and had 91 tackles, 13 passes defended, 4 interceptions returned for 160 yards, and a forced fumble. On Week 6 (October 14) against the Kansas City Chiefs, Barber intercepted a pass from Brady Quinn and returned the interception 78 yards for a touchdown during the third quarter and also blocked a punt.\nIn this season's roster, Barber was the only member of the Super Bowl XXXVII championship team still active with the team. Responding to media speculation about retirement, Barber commented in December: \"I'm not ready to make a decision on it. I'm pretty sure it will play itself out when the time comes.\"\nRetirement.\nOn May 8, 2013, Barber announced his retirement. At the time of his retirement, he was the active leader in defensive touchdowns scored, with 14.\nOther work.\nIn 2010, Barber appeared on the satirical sports show \"The Onion Sportsdome\".\nAfter his retirement, Barber joined Fox Sports as an NFL color analyst. From 2013 to 2019 he called \"NFL on Fox\" telecasts with Chris Myers and Kenny Albert, and contributed to studio programming on Fox Sports 1.\nSince 2004, Ronde Barber has co-written eight children's books with his brother Tiki:\nPersonal life.\nHe is the identical twin brother of former NFL running back Tiki Barber.\nRonde Barber lives in Keystone, Florida. In Spring 2001 he married Filipino American Claudia Patron. She was a marketing and event planner. She is now with Diabetic Charitable Services. They have two daughters Yammile Rose and Justyce Rosina.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["1278536", "174949"], "permutation_1": ["1278536", "174949"], "permutation_2": ["174949", "1278536"], "permutation_3": ["1278536", "174949"]}
{"id": "3hop1__3157_3356_68437", "docs_added": {"191890": "American Idol\nAmerican singing competition\nAmerican Idol is an American singing competition television series created by Simon Fuller, produced by Fremantle North America and 19 Entertainment, and distributed by Fremantle North America. It aired on Fox from June 11, 2002, to April 7, 2016, for 15 seasons. It was on hiatus for two years until March 11, 2018, when a revival of the series began airing on ABC.\nIt started as an addition to the \"Idol\" format that was based on \"Pop Idol\" from British television, in which the programme's first series, which was won by Will Young, ended over four months before the show began, as it later became one of the most successful shows in the history of American television. The concept of the series involves discovering recording stars from unsigned singing talents, with the winner determined by American viewers using phones, Internet platforms, and SMS text voting. The winners of the first twenty-two seasons, as chosen by viewers, are Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Hicks, Jordin Sparks, David Cook, Kris Allen, Lee DeWyze, Scotty McCreery, Phillip Phillips, Candice Glover, Caleb Johnson, Nick Fradiani, Trent Harmon, Maddie Poppe, Laine Hardy, Just Sam, Chayce Beckham, Noah Thompson, Iam Tongi, and Abi Carter.\n\"American Idol\" employs a select panel of judges who critique the contestants' performances. The original judges, for seasons one through eight, were record producer and music manager Randy Jackson, singer and choreographer Paula Abdul, and music executive and manager Simon Cowell. The judging panel for the last three seasons on Fox consisted of singers Keith Urban, Jennifer Lopez, and Harry Connick Jr. Season sixteen brought three new judges: singers Luke Bryan, Katy Perry, and Lionel Richie. Beginning in the twenty-third season, Underwood replaced Perry, alongside returning judges Bryan and Richie. The show has been hosted by television presenter Ryan Seacrest throughout its run, apart from the show's inaugural season when comedian Brian Dunkleman joined Seacrest as co-host.\nThe success of \"American Idol\" has been described as \"unparalleled in broadcasting history\". A rival TV executive said the series was \"the most impactful show in the history of television\". It became a recognized springboard for launching the career of many artists as bona fide stars. According to \"Billboard\" magazine, in its first ten years, \"\"Idol\" has spawned 345 \"Billboard\" chart-toppers and a platoon of pop idols, including Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Chris Daughtry, Fantasia, Ruben Studdard, Jennifer Hudson, Clay Aiken, Adam Lambert, and Jordin Sparks while remaining a TV ratings juggernaut.\" For an unprecedented eight consecutive years, from the 2003\u201304 television season through the 2010\u201311 season, either its performance show or result show was ranked number one in U.S. television ratings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\n\"American Idol\" was based on the British show \"Pop Idol\" created by Simon Fuller, which was in turn inspired by the New Zealand television singing competition \"Popstars\". Television producer Nigel Lythgoe saw a version in Australia and helped bring it over to Britain. Fuller was inspired by the idea from \"Popstars\" of employing a panel of judges to select singers in audition. He then added other elements, including telephone voting by the viewing public (which at the time was already in use in shows, such as the \"Eurovision Song Contest\"), the drama of backstories, and real-life soap opera unfolding in real time. \"Pop Idol\" debuted in Britain in 2001 with Lythgoe as showrunner\u200d\u2014\u200cthe executive producer and production leader\u200d\u2014\u200cand Simon Cowell as one of the judges, and was successful with the viewing public.\nIn 2001, Fuller, Cowell, and TV producer Simon Jones attempted to sell the \"Pop Idol\" format to the United States, but the idea was initially met with poor responses from all the television networks including UPN and Fox. However, Rupert Murdoch, head of Fox's parent company, was later persuaded to buy the series by his daughter, Elisabeth, who had seen the British show. Although Fox's executives wanted to change the format, Murdoch insisted that it should remain the same as the British one. One change was nevertheless made due to the presence of multiple time zones in the United States that made it impractical for the country to vote in the same time period, an additional half-hour results show was therefore added the day following the performance show. The show was renamed \"\" and debuted in the summer of 2002. Cowell was initially offered the job of showrunner but turned down the offer; Lythgoe then took over that position. Much to the surprise of Cowell and Fox, it became one of the biggest shows of the summer. With its successful launch in the summer, the show was then moved to January and expanded. The show grew into a phenomenon largely due to its personal engagement with the contestants by prompting the viewers to vote, and the presence of the acid-tongued Cowell as a judge. By 2004, it had become the most-watched show on American television, a position it then held for seven consecutive seasons until 2011.\nHowever, after a few years of sharp declining ratings starting in 2012, with rating falls of over 20% each season, the fifteenth season would be its last on Fox, ending its run in April 2016. In May 2017, ABC acquired the rights to the series and the program returned for the 2017\u201318 television season. The first season of the revived series, or the sixteenth season overall, started airing in March 2018. Seven seasons have been aired on ABC as of May 2024.\nJudges and hosts.\nJudges.\nThe show had originally planned on having four judges following the \"Pop Idol\" format; however, only three judges had been found by the time of the audition round in the first season, namely Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell. A fourth judge, radio DJ Stryker, was originally chosen but he dropped out citing \"image concerns.\" In the second season, New York radio personality Angie Martinez had been hired as a fourth judge but withdrew after only a few days of auditions, due to being uncomfortable with giving out criticism. The show decided to continue with the three judges format until the eighth season. All three original judges stayed on the judging panel for eight seasons.\nIn the eighth season, Latin Grammy Award-nominated singer-songwriter and record producer Kara DioGuardi was added as a fourth judge. Abdul left the show in 2009, after the eighth season, as a result of failing to agree to terms with the show producers. Emmy Award-winning talk show host Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul for the ninth season, but left in 2010 after just one season. DioGuardi was let go from \"American Idol\" in 2010 after two seasons, as producers favored a return to the three-person judges panel previously used prior to DioGuardi's appearance on the show. Cowell also left the show in 2010 to introduce the American version of his show \"The X Factor\" in 2011. Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth.\nJennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined the judging panel in the tenth season, but both left in 2012 after two seasons. Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. They were replaced by three new judges, Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj, and Keith Urban, who joined Jackson in the twelfth season. However, both Carey and Minaj left after one season. Jackson also departed the judges table after twelve seasons, but would return as the in-house mentor for the thirteenth season in 2014, after which he left the show permanently.\nUrban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. After a one-season hiatus, Lopez returned to \"American Idol\" for the thirteenth season, and was joined by former mentor Harry Connick Jr. After this, Lopez, Urban, and Connick Jr. remained on the show until its cancellation after the fifteenth season in 2016.\nWhen the show was revived by ABC in 2018, Katy Perry, Luke Bryan, and Lionel Richie were selected as judges, marking the sixteenth season of \"Idol\". Bryan and Richie have remained on the show since, while Perry left the show in May 2024 after seven seasons. On July 31, 2024, published reports announced former \"Idol\" winner Carrie Underwood as Perry's replacement, joining Bryan and Richie for the twenty-third season.\nGuest judges may occasionally be introduced. In the second season, guest judges such as Richie and Gladys Knight were used, and in the third season, Donna Summer, Quentin Tarantino, Gloria Estefan, and some of the mentors also joined as judges to critique the performances in the final rounds. Guest judges were sporadically used during the audition rounds: Gene Simmons, LL Cool J, Brandy, Mark McGrath, and Kenny Loggins in the fourth season; Carole Bayer Sager, Jewel, and Olivia Newton-John in the sixth season; Shania Twain, Neil Patrick Harris, Avril Lavigne, Mary J. Blige, Joe Jonas, Kristin Chenoweth, Victoria Beckham, and Perry in the ninth season (substituting in the vacant chair, before DeGeneres was hired); and Adam Lambert filled in for Urban at one audition location during the fourteenth season. In the ABC version, two instances occurred during the live shows: Abdul filled in for Bryan on one episode of the nineteenth season, while Alanis Morissette and Ed Sheeran filled in for Perry and Richie on an episode of the twenty-first season.\nHosts.\nThe first season was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman, following the format of \"Pop Idol\" of using two presenters. Dunkleman quit thereafter, resulting in Seacrest becoming the sole emcee starting with the second season in 2003.\nSeacrest has remained as sole host of \"American Idol\" ever since, with the exception of the two-year hiatus between 2016 and 2018 as well as April 8, 2019, during the seventeenth season, when Bobby Bones subbed for Seacrest after the latter fell ill. Dunkleman did, however, return for the initial in 2016 as a guest.\nCast timeline.\nAnnotations\nSelection process.\nIn a series of steps, the show selected the eventual winner out of many tens of thousands of contestants.\nContestant eligibility.\nThe eligible age-range for contestants is fifteen to twenty-eight years old. The initial age limit was sixteen to twenty-four in the first three seasons, but the upper limit was raised to twenty-eight in the fourth season, and the lower limit was reduced to fifteen in the tenth season. The contestants have to be legal U.S. residents, can not have advanced to particular stages of the competition in previous seasons, and must not have held a current recording or talent representation contract by the semi-final stage (in previous years by the audition stage).\nInitial auditions.\nFor the first eighteen seasons, contestants went through at least three sets of cuts. The first was a brief audition with a few other contestants in front of selectors which may include one of the show's producers. Although auditions can exceed 10,000 in each city, only a few hundred of these made it past the preliminary round of auditions. Successful contestants then sing in front of producers, where more may be cut. Only then can they proceed to audition in front of the judges, which is the only audition stage shown on television. Those selected by the judges are sent to Hollywood. Between 10 and 60 people in each city may make it to Hollywood (the average total is between 150 and 200).\nFrom the nineteenth season onwards, contestants request a Zoom interview and audition remotely for the show's producers. If the audition goes well, they will then invite the contestants to audition in front of the judges, in one of the audition cities.\nHollywood week.\nOnce in Hollywood, the contestants perform individually or in groups in a series of rounds. Until the tenth season, there were usually three rounds of eliminations in Hollywood. In the first round the contestants emerged in groups but performed individually. For the next round, the contestants put themselves in small groups and performed a song together. In the final round, the contestants performed solo with a song of their choice a cappella or accompanied by a band\u200d\u2014\u200cdepending on the season. In the second and third seasons, contestants were also asked to write original lyrics or melody in an additional round after the first round. In the seventh season, the group round was eliminated and contestants may, after a first solo performance and on judges approval, skip a second solo round and move directly to the final Hollywood round. In the twelfth season, the executive producers split up the females and males and chose the members to form the groups in the group round.\nIn the tenth and eleventh seasons, a further round was added in Las Vegas, where the contestants performed in groups based on a theme, followed by one final solo round to determine the semi-finalists. At the end of this stage of the competition, 24 to 36 contestants were selected to move on to the semi-final stage. In the twelfth season the Las Vegas round became a Sudden Death round, where the judges had to choose five guys and five girls each night (four nights) to make the top twenty. In the thirteenth season, the Las Vegas round was eliminated and a new round called \"Hollywood or Home\" was added, where if the judges were uncertain about some contestants, those contestants were required to perform soon after landing in Los Angeles, and those who failed to impress were sent back home before they reached Hollywood. In the fourteenth season, the \"Hollywood or Home\" round was dropped, and a Showcase round was added, where the contestants performed at the House of Blues or auditorium for the judges and a live audience, and these performances determine who makes into the Top 24. In the seventeenth and eighteenth seasons, the showcase round took place in Hawaii. From the nineteenth season onward, a showstopper round was used.\nAudience voting.\nFrom the semi-finals onward, the fate of the contestants is decided by public vote. During the contestant's performance as well as the recap at the end, a toll-free telephone number for each contestant was displayed on the screen. For a two-hour period after the episode ends (up to four hours for the finale) in each US time zone, viewers may call or send a text message to their preferred contestant's telephone number, and each call or text message was registered as a vote for that contestant. Viewers were allowed to vote as many times as they can within the two-hour voting window. However, the show reserves the right to discard votes by power dialers. One or more of the least popular contestants may be eliminated in successive weeks until a winner emerges. Over 110\u00a0million votes were cast in the first season, and by the tenth season the seasonal total had increased to nearly 750 million. Voting via text messaging was made available in the second season when AT&T Wireless joined as a sponsor of the show, and 7.5\u00a0million text messages were sent to \"American Idol\" that season. The number of text messages rapidly increased, reaching 178\u00a0million texts by the eighth season. Online voting was offered for the first time in the tenth season. The votes are counted and verified by Telescope Inc.\nSemi-finals.\nIn the first three seasons, the semi-finalists were split into different groups to perform individually in their respective night. In the first season, there were three groups of ten, with the top three contestants from each group making the finals. In the second and third seasons, there were four groups of eight, and the top two of each selected. These seasons also featured a wildcard round, where contestants who failed to qualify were given another chance. In the first season, only one wildcard contestant was chosen by the judges, giving a total of ten finalists. In the second and third seasons, each of the three judges championed one contestant with the public advancing a fourth into the finals, making 12 finalists in all.\nFrom the fourth through seventh and ninth seasons, the twenty-four semi-finalists were divided by gender in order to ensure an equal gender division in the top twelve. The men and women sang separately on consecutive nights, and the bottom two in each groups were eliminated each week until only six of each remained to form the top twelve.\nThe wildcard round returned in the eighth season, wherein there were three groups of twelve, with three contestants moving forward \u2013 the highest male, the highest female, and the next highest-placed singer \u2013 for each night, and four wildcards were chosen by the judges to produce a final 13. Starting in tenth season, the girls and boys perform on separate nights. In the tenth and eleventh seasons, five of each gender were chosen, and three wildcards were chosen by the judges to form a final 13. In the twelfth season, the top twenty semifinalists were split into gender groups, with five of each gender advancing to form the final 10. In the thirteenth season, there were thirty semifinalists, but only twenty semifinalists (ten for each gender) were chosen by the judges to perform on the live shows, with five in each gender based on the vote and three wildcards chosen by the judges composing the final 13. In the fourteenth season, the top 24 performed at The Fillmore Detroit, starting with the 12 males on one night and then the 12 females on the next night. The following week, the same order went for the top 16, with four males eliminated, followed by four females based on the vote. Then, on the first night of finals, a similar sequence from the thirteenth season was used to determine the final 12, with five of each gender based on the vote and two wildcards chosen by the judges. In the fifteenth season, the top 24 performed at Cathedral of Saint Vibiana in Los Angeles and were split into two groups of twelve and performed twice, one being a solo performance and one being a duet with a former Idol contestant. In each group, the judges chose 7 contestants to advance to the top 14 where the judges chose 4 to advance to the top 10 and remaining 6 contestants were chosen based on the vote. In the sixteenth season, the top 24 performed at the Academy in the Heart of LA, and the show repeated the process from the previous season. However, instead of Idol alumnus as duet partners, superstar celebrity singers were used as the duet partners. In the seventeenth season, the same process was repeated again. However, instead of a top 24, it's a top 20, the contestants performed at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, and performed solos in one episode, and performed the duets in two episodes. In the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the top 20 performed at their homes, and based on the vote, half of the top 20 would advance to the top 10, and the other half would be eliminated. However, a wild card was given to one of the bottom 10 to save them from elimination. In the nineteenth season, the show used a combination of the process from the sixteenth and fourteenth seasons. In the twentieth season, the show repeated the process from the previous season, but they used a top 20 instead of a top 16, and there were no all star duets. In the twenty-first season, the same process was repeated, but they started with a top 26 instead of a top 24. In the twenty-second season, the show repeated the process from the twentieth season.\nFinals.\nThe finals are broadcast in primetime from Los Angeles, in front of a live studio audience (except the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic). From 2002 to 2019 and from 2021 to 2022, the venue was CBS Television City. Starting in 2023, it changed to Red Studios. The finals lasted eight weeks in the first season. From the second to ninth and fourteenth seasons, the finals lasted eleven weeks. The tenth and eleventh seasons lasted for twelve weeks, while the twelfth season lasted for ten weeks. In the thirteenth season, the finals lasted thirteen weeks. The finals lasted seven weeks in the fifteenth season, and six weeks in the sixteenth season. Each finalist performs songs based on a weekly theme which may be a musical genre such as Motown, disco, or big band, songs by artists such as Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley or The Beatles, or more general themes such as \"Billboard\" number-one hits or songs from the contestant's year of birth. Contestants usually worked with a celebrity mentor related to the theme. From the tenth to twelfth seasons, Jimmy Iovine was brought in as a mentor for the season. Initially the contestants sang one song each week, but this was increased to two songs from top four or five onwards, then three songs for the top two or three.\nThe most popular contestants are usually not revealed in the results show. Instead, typically the three contestants (two in later rounds) who received the lowest number of votes was called to the center of the stage. One of these three was usually sent to safety; however the two remaining were not necessarily the bottom two. The contestant with the fewest votes was then revealed and eliminated from the competition. A montage of the eliminated contestant's time on the show was played and they gave their final performance (from the fourteenth season onward, the montage and the final performance were dropped). However, in the sixth season, during the series' first ever Idol Gives Back episode, no contestant was eliminated, but on the following week, two were sent home. Moreover, from the eighth to the fourteenth seasons, and the seventeenth season onward, the judges may overturn viewers' decision with a \"Judges' Save\" if they unanimously agreed to. \"The save\" could only be used once, and only up through the Top 5. In the eighth to tenth and fourteenth seasons, a double elimination then took place in the week following the activation of the save, but in the eleventh and thirteenth seasons, a regular single elimination took place. The save was not activated in the twelfth season and consequently, a non-elimination took place in the week after its expiration with the votes then carrying over into the following week.\nThe \"Fan Save\" was introduced in the fourteenth season. During the finals, viewers were given a five-minute window to vote for the contestants in danger of elimination by using their Twitter account to decide which contestant will move on to the next show, starting with the Top 8.\nSeason finale.\nDuring the original run of \"American Idol\" on Fox, the finale week consisted of a one-hour long final performance night and a two-hour last episode of the season that culminates in revealing the winner, both of which are broadcast live in the U.S. Eastern and Central time zones. For the first, third through sixth and fourteenth through fifteenth seasons it was broadcast from the Dolby Theatre, which has an audience capacity of approximately 3,400. The second-season finale took place at the Gibson Amphitheatre, which had an audience capacity of over 6,000. In the seventh through thirteenth seasons, the venue was at the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live, which holds an audience of over 7,000. Since the show's reboot on ABC, the venue remains the same throughout the entire show (excluding auditions), but was still two episodes in the sixteenth season, and then stretched to a single three-hour season finale that is annually aired live simultaneously in all U.S. territories, starting with the seventeenth season. The eighteenth-season finale was conducted virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nRewards for winner and finalists.\nThe winner usually receives a record deal with a major label, which may be for up to six albums, and secures a management contract with \"American Idol\"-affiliated 19 Management (which has the right of first refusal to sign all contestants), as well as various lucrative contracts. All winners prior to the ninth season reportedly earned at least $1\u00a0million in their first year as winner. At first the contract came with a $250,000-plus advance, but dropped to about $62,500 over the Fox years. All the runners-up of the first ten seasons, as well as some of other finalists, had also received record deals with major labels. However, starting in the eleventh season, the runner-up may only be guaranteed a single-only deal. BMG/Sony (first through ninth seasons), UMG (tenth through fifteenth seasons), and Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records (sixteenth through eighteenth seasons) had the right of first refusal to sign contestants for three months after the season's finale. In the fourteenth and fifteenth seasons, the winner was signed with Big Machine Records. Prominent music mogul Clive Davis also produced some of the selected contestants' albums, such as Kelly Clarkson, Clay Aiken, Fantasia Barrino and Diana DeGarmo. All top 10 (11 in the tenth and twelfth seasons, 5 in the fourteenth season, and 7 in the sixteenth season) finalists earn the privilege of going on a tour, where the participants may each earn a six-figure sum.\nSeason synopses.\nEach season premieres with the audition round, taking place in different cities. The audition episodes typically feature a mix of potential finalists, interesting characters and woefully inadequate contestants. Each successful contestant receives a golden or platinum ticket to proceed on to the next round in Hollywood. Based on their performances during the Hollywood round (Las Vegas round from the tenth through twelfth seasons), 24 to 36 contestants are selected by the judges to participate in the semifinals. From the semifinals onward the contestants perform their songs live, with the judges making their critiques after each performance. The contestants are voted for by the viewing public, and the outcome of the public votes is then revealed during a results segment. The results segment feature group performances by the contestants as well as guest performers. The Top-three results also features homecoming events for the Top 3 finalists. The season reaches its climax in a two-hour results finale show, where the winner of the season is revealed.\nWith the exception of the first two seasons, the contestants in the semifinals onward perform in front of a studio audience. They perform with a full band in the finals. The current musical director is Kris Pooley, who has been with the show since the sixteenth season. In previous seasons, the \"American Idol\" band was led by Rickey Minor (fourth through ninth and thirteenth through fifteenth seasons) and Ray Chew (tenth through twelfth seasons). Assistance has also been given by vocal coaches and song arrangers, such as Michael Orland and Debra Byrd to contestants behind the scene. Starting with the seventh season, contestants may perform with a musical instrument from the Hollywood rounds onward. In later seasons, the contestants were allowed to perform with a musical instrument in the auditions. During the first nine seasons, performances were usually aired live on Tuesday nights, followed by the results shows on Wednesdays, but moved to Wednesdays and Thursdays from the tenth through thirteenth seasons, with the tenth, eleventh and thirteenth-season finales aired on Tuesday and Wednesday. From the fourteenth season onward, there were no separate results shows. On the fourteenth season, the show aired on Wednesday nights, and on the fifteenth season, Thursday nights. Since the sixteenth season, the show has been airing on Sundays and Mondays.\n2002\u20132016: Fox.\nSeason 1 (2002).\nThe first season of \"American Idol\" debuted as a summer replacement show in June 2002 on the Fox network. It was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell served as judges.\nIn the audition rounds, 121 contestants were selected from around 10,000 who attended the auditions. These were cut to 30 for the semifinal, with ten going on to the finals. One semifinalist, Delano Cagnolatti, was disqualified for lying to evade the show's age limit. One of the early favorites, Tamyra Gray, was eliminated at the top four, the first of several such shock eliminations that were to be repeated in later seasons. Christina Christian was hospitalized before the top six result show due to chest pains and palpitations, and she was eliminated while she was in the hospital. Jim Verraros was the first openly gay contestant on the show; his sexual orientation was revealed on his blog, however it was removed during the competition after a request from the show producers over concerns that it might be unfairly influencing votes.\nThe final showdown was between Justin Guarini, one of the early favorites, and Kelly Clarkson. Clarkson was not initially thought of as a contender, but impressed the judges with some good performances in the final rounds, such as her performance of Aretha Franklin's \"Natural Woman\", and Betty Hutton's \"Stuff Like That There\", and eventually won the crown on September 4, 2002.\nIn what was to become a tradition, Clarkson performed the coronation song during the finale, and released the song immediately after the season ended. The single, \"A Moment Like This\", went on to break a 38-year-old record held by The Beatles for the biggest leap to number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. Guarini did not release any song immediately after the show and remains the only runner-up not to do so. Both Clarkson and Guarini made a musical film, \"From Justin to Kelly\", which was released in 2003 but was widely panned. Clarkson has since become one of the most successful \"Idol\" contestants internationally, with worldwide album sales of more than 25\u00a0million.\nStarting September 30, 2006, this season was repackaged as \"\"American Idol Rewind\"\" and syndicated directly to stations in the U.S.\nSeason 2 (2003).\nFollowing the success of the first season, the second season was moved up to air in January 2003. The number of episodes increased, as did the show's budget and the charge for commercial spots. Dunkleman left the show, leaving Ryan Seacrest as the lone host. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Kristin Adams was a correspondent for this season.\nCorey Clark was disqualified during the finals for having an undisclosed police record; however, he later alleged that he and Paula Abdul had an affair while on the show and that this contributed to his expulsion. Clark also claimed that Abdul gave him preferential treatment on the show due to their affair. The allegations were dismissed by Fox after an independent investigation. Two semi-finalists were also disqualified that year \u2013 Jaered Andrews for an arrest on an assault charge, and Frenchie Davis for having previously modeled for an adult website.\nThe season finale drew more than 38 million viewers, marking \"Idol\"'s biggest audience ever for a single episode. Ruben Studdard emerged as the winner, beating Clay Aiken by a small margin. Out of a total of 24 million votes, Studdard finished just 134,000 votes ahead of Aiken. This slim margin of victory was controversial due to the large number of calls that failed to get through. In an interview prior to the fifth season, executive producer Nigel Lythgoe indicated that Aiken had led the fan voting from the wildcard week onward until the finale.\nBoth finalists found success after the show, but Aiken out-performed Studdard's coronation song \"Flying Without Wings\" with his single release from the show \"This Is the Night\", as well as in their subsequent album releases. The fourth-place finisher Josh Gracin also enjoyed some success as a country singer.\nSeason 3 (2004).\nThe third season premiered on January 19, 2004. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. One of the most talked-about contestants during the audition process was William Hung whose off-key rendition of Ricky Martin's \"She Bangs\" received widespread attention. His exposure on \"Idol\" landed him a record deal and surprisingly he became the third bestselling singer from that season.\nMuch media attention on the season had been focused on the three black singers, Fantasia Barrino, LaToya London, and Jennifer Hudson, dubbed the Three Divas. All three unexpectedly landed on the bottom three on the top seven result show, with Hudson controversially eliminated. Elton John, who was one of the mentors that season, called the results of the votes \"incredibly racist\". The prolonged stays of John Stevens and Jasmine Trias in the finals, despite negative comments from the judges, had aroused resentment, so much so that John Stevens reportedly received a death threat, which he dismissed as a joke 'blown out of proportion'.\nThe performance of \"Summertime\" by Barrino, later known simply as \"Fantasia\", at Top 8 was widely praised, and Simon Cowell considered it as his favorite \"Idol\" moment in the nine seasons he was on the show. Fantasia and Diana DeGarmo were the last two finalists, and Fantasia was crowned as the winner. Fantasia released as her coronation single \"I Believe\", a song co-written by the first season finalist Tamyra Gray, and DeGarmo released \"Dreams\".\nSeason 4 (2005).\nThe fourth season premiered on January 18, 2005. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This was the first full season of the series to be aired in high definition; the finale of the third season was also aired in high definition. The number of those attending the auditions by now had increased to over 100,000 from the 10,000 of the first season. The age limit was raised to 28 in this season, and among those who benefited from this new rule were Constantine Maroulis and Bo Bice, the two rockers of the show.\nThe top 12 finalists originally included Mario Vazquez, but he dropped out citing 'personal reasons' and was replaced by Nikko Smith. Later, an employee of Fremantle Media, which produces the show, sued the company for wrongful termination, claiming that he was dismissed after complaining about lewd behavior by Vazquez toward him during the show.\nDuring the top 11 week, due to a mix-up with the contestants' telephone number, voting was repeated on what was normally the result night, with the result reveal postponed until the following night.\nIn May 2005, Underwood was announced the winner, with Bice the runner-up. Both Underwood and Bice released the coronation song \"Inside Your Heaven\", with Underwood's version of the song making her the first country artist ever to debut at number-one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart. As of 2015, Underwood has become the most successful \"Idol\" contestant in the U.S., selling 16 million albums in the country, while selling a total of 65 million records worldwide.\nSeason 5 (2006).\nThe fifth season began on January 17, 2006. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. It remains the highest-rated season in the show's run so far. Two of the more prominent contestants during the Hollywood round were the Brittenum twins who were later disqualified for identity theft.\nChris Daughtry's performance of Fuel's \"Hemorrhage (In My Hands)\" on the show was widely praised and led to an invitation to join the band as Fuel's new lead singer, an invitation he declined. His performance of Live's version of \"I Walk the Line\" was well received by the judges but later criticized in some quarters for not crediting the arrangement to Live. He was eliminated at the top four in a shocking result.\nOn May 30, 2006, Taylor Hicks was named \"American Idol\", with Katharine McPhee the runner-up. \"Do I Make You Proud\" was released as Hicks' first single and McPhee's was \"My Destiny\".\nDespite being eliminated earlier in the season, Chris Daughtry (as lead of the band Daughtry) became the most successful recording artist from this season. Other contestants, such as Hicks, McPhee, Bucky Covington, Mandisa, Kellie Pickler, and Elliott Yamin have had varying levels of success.\nSeason 6 (2007).\nThe sixth season began on Tuesday, January 16, 2007. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The premiere drew a massive audience of 37.3\u00a0million viewers, peaking in the last half hour with more than 41\u00a0million viewers.\nTeenager Sanjaya Malakar was the season's most talked-about contestant for his unusual hairdo, and for managing to survive elimination for many weeks due in part to the weblog Vote for the Worst and satellite radio personality Howard Stern, who both encouraged fans to vote for him. However, on the Top 7 results, Sanjaya was voted off.\nThis season saw the first \"Idol Gives Back\" telethon-inspired event, which raised more than $76\u00a0million in corporate and viewer donations. No contestant was eliminated that week, but two (Phil Stacey and Chris Richardson) were eliminated the next.\nIn the May 23 season finale, Jordin Sparks was declared the winner with the runner-up being Blake Lewis. Sparks has had some success as a recording artist post-\"Idol\".\nThis season also saw the launch of the \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest which allows fans to vote for the \"coronation song\". Thousands of recordings of original songs were submitted by songwriters, and 20 entries selected for the public vote. The winning song, \"This Is My Now\", was performed by both finalists during the finale and released by Sparks on May 24, 2007.\nSeason 7 (2008).\nThe seventh season premiered on January 15, 2008, for a two-day, four-hour premiere. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The media focused on the professional status of the seventh season contestants, the so-called 'ringers', many of whom, including Kristy Lee Cook, Brooke White, Michael Johns, and in particular Carly Smithson, had prior recording contracts. Contestant David Hernandez also attracted some attention due to his past employment as a stripper.\nFor the finals, \"American Idol\" debuted a new state-of-the-art set and stage on March 11, 2008, along with a new on-air look. David Cook's performance of \"Billie Jean\" on top-ten night was lauded by the judges, but provoked controversy when they apparently mistook the Chris Cornell arrangement to be David Cook's own even though the performance was introduced as Cornell's version. Cornell himself said he was 'flattered' and praised David Cook's performance. David Cook was taken to the hospital after the top-nine performance show due to heart palpitations and high blood pressure.\nDavid Archuleta's performance of John Lennon's \"Imagine\" was considered by many as one of the best of the season. Jennifer Lopez, who was brought in as a judge in the tenth season, called it a beautiful song-moment that she will never forget. Jason Castro's semi-final performance of \"Hallelujah\" also received considerable attention, and it propelled Jeff Buckley's version of the song to the top of the \"Billboard\" digital song chart. This was the first season in which contestants' recordings were released onto iTunes after their performances, and although sales information was not released so as not to prejudice the contest, leaked information indicated that contestants' songs frequently reached the top of iTunes sales charts.\n\"Idol Gives Back\" returned on April 9, 2008, and raised $64\u00a0million for charity.\nThe finalists were Cook and Archuleta. David Cook was announced the winner on May 21, 2008, the first rocker to win the show. Both Cook and Archuleta had some success as recording artists with both selling over a million albums in the U.S.\nThe \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest was also held this season. From ten of the most popular submissions, each of the final two contestants chose a song to perform, although neither of their selections was used as the \"coronation song\". The winning song, \"The Time of My Life\", was recorded by David Cook and released on May 22, 2008.\nSeason 8 (2009).\nThe eighth season premiered on January 13, 2009. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This season featured the first major change to the judging panel; a fourth judge, Kara DioGuardi, was introduced. Mike Darnell, the president of alternative programming for Fox, stated that the season would focus more on the contestants' personal life.\nThis was also the first season without executive producer Nigel Lythgoe who left to focus on the international versions of his show \"So You Think You Can Dance\". The Hollywood round was moved to the Kodak Theatre for 2009 and was also extended to two weeks. \"Idol Gives Back\" was canceled for this season due to the global recession at the time.\nThere were 13 finalists this season, but two were eliminated in the first result show of the finals. A new feature introduced was the \"Judges' Save\", and Matt Giraud was saved from elimination at the top seven by the judges when he received the fewest votes. The next week, Lil Rounds and Anoop Desai were eliminated.\nThe two finalists were Kris Allen and Adam Lambert, both of whom had previously landed in the bottom three at the top five. Allen won the contest in the most controversial voting result since the second season. It was claimed, and then later retracted, that 38\u00a0million of the 100\u00a0million votes cast on the night came from Allen's home state of Arkansas alone, and that AT&T employees unfairly influenced the votes by giving lessons on power-texting at viewing parties in Arkansas.\nBoth Allen and Lambert released the coronation song, \"No Boundaries\" which was co-written by DioGuardi. This is the first season in which the winner failed to achieve gold album status.\nSeason 9 (2010).\nThe ninth season premiered on January 12, 2010. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Kara DioGuardi, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Paula Abdul left the show and Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul at the start of Hollywood Week. One of the most prominent auditioners this season was General Larry Platt whose performance of \"Pants on the Ground\" became a viral hit song.\nCrystal Bowersox, who has Type-I diabetes, fell ill due to diabetic ketoacidosis on the morning of the girls performance night for the top 20 week and was hospitalized. The schedule was rearranged so the boys performed first and she could perform the following night instead; she later revealed that Ken Warwick, the show producer, wanted to disqualify her but she begged to be allowed to stay on the show.\nMichael Lynche was the lowest vote getter at top nine and was given the Judges' Save. The next week Katie Stevens and Andrew Garcia were eliminated. That week, Adam Lambert was invited back to be a mentor, the first \"Idol\" alum to do so. \"Idol Gives Back\" returned this season on April 21, 2010, and raised $45 million.\nA special tribute to Simon Cowell was presented in the finale for his final season with the show. Many figures from the show's past, including Paula Abdul, made an appearance.\nThe final two contestants were Lee DeWyze and Bowersox. DeWyze was declared the winner during the May 26 finale. No new song was used as coronation song this year; instead, the two finalists each released a cover song \u2013 DeWyze chose U2's \"Beautiful Day\", and Bowersox chose Patty Griffin's \"Up to the Mountain\". This is the first season where neither finalist achieved significant album sales.\nSeason 10 (2011).\nThe tenth season premiered on January 19, 2011. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Many changes were introduced this season, from the format to the personnel of the show. Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined Randy Jackson as judges following the departures of Simon Cowell (who left to launch the American version of \"The X Factor\"), Kara DioGuardi (whose contract was not renewed) and Ellen DeGeneres, who left the show on her own accord.\nRandy Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth. Nigel Lythgoe returned as executive producer. Jimmy Iovine, chairman of the Interscope Geffen A&M label group, the new partner of \"American Idol\", acted as the in-house mentor in place of weekly guest mentors, although in later episodes special guest mentors such as Beyonc\u00e9, will.i.am and Lady Gaga were brought in.\nThe tenth season is the first to include online auditions where contestants could submit a 40-second video audition via Myspace. Karen Rodriguez was one such auditioner and reached the final rounds.\nOne of the more prominent contestants this year was Chris Medina, whose story of caring for his brain-damaged fianc\u00e9e received widespread coverage. Medina was cut in the Top 40 round. Casey Abrams, who suffers from ulcerative colitis, was hospitalized twice and missed the Top 13 result show. The judges used their one save on Abrams on the Top 11, and as a result this was the first season that 11 finalists went on tour instead of 10. In the following week, Naima Adedapo and Thia Megia were both eliminated.\nPia Toscano, one of the presumed favorites to advance far in the season, was unexpectedly eliminated on April 7, 2011, finishing in ninth place. Her elimination drew criticisms from some former \"Idol\" contestants, as well as actor Tom Hanks. After \"Idol\", Jennifer Lopez helped guide her career.\nThe two finalists in 2011 were Lauren Alaina and Scotty McCreery, both teenage country singers. McCreery won the competition on May 25, being the youngest male winner and the fourth male in a row to win \"American Idol\". McCreery released his first single, \"I Love You This Big\", as his coronation song, and Alaina released \"Like My Mother Does\". McCreery's debut album, \"Clear as Day\", became the first debut album by an \"Idol\" winner to reach No. 1 on the US \"Billboard\" 200 since Ruben Studdard's \"Soulful\" in 2003, and he became the youngest male artist to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200.\nSeason 11 (2012).\nThe eleventh season premiered on January 18, 2012. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez, and Randy Jackson returned as judges. One more finalist would join the Top 24 making it the Top 25, which was later revealed to be Jermaine Jones. However, on March 14, Jones was disqualified in 12th place for concealing arrests and outstanding warrants. Jones denied the accusation that he concealed his arrests.\nFinalist Phillip Phillips suffered from kidney pain and was taken to the hospital before the Top 13 results show, and later received medical procedure to alleviate a blockage caused by kidney stones. He was reported to have eight surgeries during his Idol run, and had considered quitting the show due to the pain. He underwent surgery to remove the stones and reconstruct his kidney soon after the season had finished.\nJessica Sanchez received the fewest votes during the Top 7 week, and the judges decided to use their \"save\" option on her, making her the first female recipient of the save. The following week, unlike previous seasons, Colton Dixon was the only contestant sent home. Sanchez later made the final two, the first season where a recipient of the save reached the finale.\nPhillips became the winner, beating Sanchez. During the finale, fifth season finalist Ace Young proposed marriage to third season runner-up Diana DeGarmo on stage \u2013 which she accepted.\nPhillips released \"Home\" as his coronation song, while Sanchez released \"Change Nothing\". Phillips' \"Home\" has since become the best selling of all coronation songs, with over 5 million copies sold.\nSeason 12 (2013).\nThe twelfth season premiered on January 16, 2013. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Judges Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler left the show after two seasons. Randy Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. This season's judging panel consisted of Randy Jackson, along with Mariah Carey, Keith Urban and Nicki Minaj.\nThis was the first season since the ninth season to have four judges on the panel. The pre-season buzz and the early episodes of the show were dominated by the feud between the judges Minaj and Carey after a video of their dispute was leaked to TMZ.\nThe top 10 contestants started with five males and five females, however, the males were eliminated consecutively in the first five weeks, with Lazaro Arbos the last male to be eliminated. For the first time in the show's history, the top 5 contestants were all female. It was also the first time that the judges' \"save\" was not used, the top four contestants were therefore given an extra week to perform again with their votes carried over with no elimination in the first week.\n23-year-old Candice Glover won the season with Kree Harrison taking the runner-up spot. Glover became the first female to win \"American Idol\" since Jordin Sparks, who won the show in 2007. Glover released \"I Am Beautiful\" as a single while Harrison released \"All Cried Out\" immediately after the show. Glover sold poorly with her debut album, and this is also the first season that the runner-up was not signed by a music label.\nTowards the end of the season, Randy Jackson, the last remaining of the original judges, announced he would no longer serve as a judge to pursue other business ventures. Both judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj also decided to leave after one season to focus on their music careers.\nSeason 13 (2014).\nThe thirteenth season premiered on January 15, 2014. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Keith Urban returned as a judge. Urban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. Randy Jackson returned, though Jackson moved from the judging panel to the role of in-mentor. Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj left the panel after one season. Former judge Jennifer Lopez and former mentor Harry Connick, Jr. joined Urban on the panel. Connick Jr. served as a mentor for \"Idol\" in 2010 and 2012. Also, Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick were replaced as executive producers by Per Blankens, Jesse Ignjatovic and Evan Pragger. Bill DeRonde replaced Warwick as a director of the audition episodes, while Louis J. Horvitz replaced Gregg Gelfand as a director of the show.\nThis was the first season where the contestants were permitted to perform in the final rounds songs they wrote themselves. In the Top 8, Sam Woolf received the fewest votes, but he was saved from elimination by the judges. The 500th episode of the series was the Top 3 performance night.\nCaleb Johnson was named the winner of the season, with Jena Irene as the runner-up. Johnson released \"As Long as You Love Me\" as his coronation single while Irene released \"We Are One\".\nSeason 14 (2015).\nThe fourteenth season premiered on January 7, 2015. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban and Harry Connick, Jr. returned for their respective fourth, third and second seasons as judges. Eighth season runner-up Adam Lambert filled in for Urban during the New York City auditions. Randy Jackson did not return as the in-house mentor and left the show permanently. Scott Borchetta replaced Jackson as the mentor.\nChanges this season include only airing one episode a week during the final ten. Coca-Cola ended their longtime sponsorship of the show and Ford Motor Company maintained a reduced role. The winner of the season also received a recording contract with Big Machine Records.\nNick Fradiani won the season, defeating Clark Beckham. Fradiani became the first winner from the Northeast region. Fradiani released \"Beautiful Life\" as his coronation single while Beckham released \"Champion\". Jax, the third place finalist, also released a single called \"Forcefield\".\nSeason 15 (2016).\nFox announced on May 11, 2015, that the fifteenth season would be the final season of \"American Idol\"; as such, the season was expected to have an additional focus on the program's alumni. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, with Harry Connick Jr., Keith Urban, and Jennifer Lopez all returning as judges. The fifteenth season premiered on January 6, 2016. The season was shortened by four weeks compared to previous years. During the finale episode, President Barack Obama praised the millions of young people that voted for contestants and pitched that they vote in the upcoming election. The farewell season concluded on April 7, 2016. Seacrest signed off by saying: \"And one more time\u2014this is so tough\u2014we say to you from Hollywood, goodnight America\", and then he added, \"for now.\"\nTrent Harmon won the season against runner-up La'Porsha Renae. Harmon released \"Falling\" co-written by Keith Urban as his coronation song. Renae's \"Battles\", third-place finisher Dalton Rapattoni's \"Strike A Match\" and fourth-place finisher MacKenzie Bourg's \"Roses\" were also released as singles.\n2018\u2013present: ABC revival.\nIn early 2017, \"Variety\" reported that Fremantle Media was in talks to revive the show for NBC or for its original network, Fox. A dispute between Fremantle and Core Media Group derailed these plans. In May 2017, ABC was making a bid to revive the program. ABC acquired the rights to the series, and \"American Idol\" returned for the 2017\u201318 television season.\nSeason 16 (2018).\nIn July 2017, it was announced that Ryan Seacrest would return as host, and by September 2017 it was revealed that Katy Perry, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie would serve as judges. The sixteenth season premiered on March 11, 2018. This was the first season of \"American Idol\" to air on ABC. The season was again shortened compared to the previous season to twelve weeks, with multiple elimination in the final rounds. Unlike previous seasons where only two finalists remained in the final episode, three finalists performed in the finale. On May 21, 2018, the season concluded with Maddie Poppe crowned the winner, beating Caleb Lee Hutchinson as runner-up and Gabby Barrett in third place. Her winning song was \"Going, Going, Gone\". Caleb Lee Hutchinson released \"Johnny Cash Heart\" as a single, while Gabby Barrett's song was \"Rivers Deep\".\nSeason 17 (2019).\nABC renewed the revival series for another season. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. The seventeenth season premiered on March 3, 2019. For the finale, the show no longer features separate performance and result shows. On May 19, 2019, the season concluded with three finalists, with Madison VanDenburg eliminated in third place after performing two songs, and the final two performing their last song. For the first time, there were no separate performance and grand finale shows this season. Laine Hardy was crowned the winner and Alejandro Aranda runner-up. Hardy released a single, \"Flame\", immediately after the win, but Aranda did not. However, Aranda later released a song he performed in the finale, \"Tonight\", under the name Scarypoolparty on June 28, 2019.\nSeason 18 (2020).\nOn May 13, 2019, the series was renewed for an eighteenth season and it premiered on February 16, 2020. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. For the first time, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, from the top 20 to the finale, the contestants performed in their own homes, while Ryan Seacrest hosted the show remotely in his own home in Los Angeles with the judges also in their respective homes. The season was also further truncated, with the top 5 performing in the finale. Each finalist also performed only two songs for the finale. On May 17, the season concluded, with Just Sam crowned as the winner, with Arthur Gunn finishing as the runner-up. \"Rise Up\", the song Just Sam performed for their audition and reprised on the finale, was released as their debut song.\nSeason 19 (2021).\nOn May 15, 2020, ABC renewed the series for a nineteenth season and it premiered on February 14, 2021. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. Later in October, it was announced that Bobby Bones will return as mentor. On May 23, the season concluded, with Chayce Beckham crowned the winner, with Willie Spence finishing as the runner-up. \"23\", the song Chayce Beckham wrote and performed for Top 4, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 20 (2022).\nOn May 13, 2021, ABC renewed the series for a twentieth season and it premiered on February 27, 2022. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On December 31, it was announced that Bones would not be returning as a mentor. On May 22, the season concluded, with Noah Thompson crowned as the winner, with HunterGirl finishing as the runner-up. \"One Day Tonight\", the song Noah Thompson performed for the Grand Finale, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 21 (2023).\nOn May 13, 2022, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-first season and it premiered on February 19, 2023. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On May 21, the season concluded, with Iam Tongi crowned as the winner, with Megan Danielle finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 22 (2024).\nOn May 16, 2023, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-second season and it premiered on February 18, 2024. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. In February 2024, Perry announced that the season would be her last. On May 20, the season concluded, with Abi Carter crowned as the winner, with Will Moseley finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 23 (2025).\nOn May 10, 2024, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-third season; it was also announced the network was in-talks with \"high-profile stars\" to replace the outgoing Perry. On July 31, 2024, it was announced Seacrest would return as host, with Bryan and Richie returning as judges; Underwood was named as Perry's successor. The season premiered on March 9, 2025.\nReception.\nU.S. television ratings.\nSeasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of \"American Idol\". It holds the distinction of having the longest winning streak in the Nielsen annual television ratings; it became the highest-rated of all television programs in the United States overall for an unprecedented seven consecutive years, or eight consecutive (and total) years when either its performance or result show was ranked number one overall.\n\"Each U.S. network television season starts in late September and ends in late May, which coincides with the completion of May sweeps.\"\n\"American Idol\" premiered in June 2002 and became the surprise summer hit show of 2002. The first show drew 9.9\u00a0million viewers, giving Fox the best viewing figure for the 8.30\u00a0pm spot in over a year. The audience steadily grew, and by finale night, the audience had averaged 23\u00a0million, with more than 40\u00a0million watching some part of that show. That episode was placed third amongst all age groups, but more importantly it led in the 18\u201349 demographic, the age group most valued by advertisers.\nThe growth continued into the next season, starting with a season premiere of 26.5 million. The season attracted an average of 21.7\u00a0million viewers, and was placed second overall amongst the 18\u201349 age group. The finale night when Ruben Studdard won over Clay Aiken was also the highest-rated ever \"American Idol\" episode at 38.1\u00a0million for the final hour. By the third season, the show had become the top show in the 18\u201349 demographic<ref name=\"realitytvworld_5/24/2007\"></ref> a position it has held for all subsequent years up to and including the tenth season, and its competition stages ranked first in the nationwide overall ratings. By the fourth season, \"American Idol\" had become the most-watched series amongst all viewers on American TV for the first time, with an average viewership of 26.8\u00a0million. The show reached its peak in the fifth season with numbers averaging 30.6\u00a0million per episode, and this season remains the highest-rated of the series.\nThe sixth season premiered with the series' highest-rated debut episode and a few of its succeeding episodes rank among the most-watched episodes of \"American Idol.\" During this time, many television executives begun to regard the show as a programming force unlike any seen before, as its consistent dominance of up to two hours two or three nights a week exceeded the 30- or 60-minute reach of previous hits such as NBC's \"The Cosby Show\". The show was dubbed \"the Death Star\", and competing networks often rearranged their schedules in order to minimize losses. However, the sixth season also showed a steady decline in viewership over the course of the season. The season finale saw a drop in ratings of 16% from the previous year. The sixth season was the first season wherein the average results show rated higher than the competition stages (unlike in the previous seasons), and became the second-highest-rated of the series after the preceding season.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the seventh season. The premiere was down 11% among total viewers, and the results show in which Kristy Lee Cook was eliminated delivered its lowest-rated Wednesday show among the 18\u201334 demo since the first season in 2002. However, the ratings rebounded for the seventh-season finale with the excitement over the battle of the Davids, and improved over the sixth season as the series' third most watched finale. The strong finish of season seven also helped Fox become the most watched TV network in the country for the first time since its inception, a first ever in American television history for a non-Big Three major broadcast network. Overall ratings for the season were down 10% from the sixth season, which is in line with the fall in viewership across all networks due in part to the 2007\u20132008 Writers Guild of America strike.\nThe declining trend however continued into the eighth season, as total viewers numbers fell by 5\u201310% for early episodes compared to the seventh season, and by 9% for the finale. In the ninth season, \"Idol\"'s six-year extended streak of perfection in the ratings was broken, when NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics on February 17 beat \"Idol\" in the same time slot with 30.1\u00a0million viewers over \"Idol\"'s 18.4\u00a0million. Nevertheless, \"American Idol\" overall finished its ninth season as the most watched TV series for the sixth year running, breaking the previous record of five consecutive seasons achieved by CBS' \"All in the Family\" and NBC's \"The Cosby Show\".\nIn the tenth season, the total viewer numbers for the first week of shows fell 12\u201313%, and by up to 23% in the 18\u201349 demo compared to the ninth season. Later episodes, however, retained viewers better, and the season ended on a high with a significant increase in viewership for the finale \u2013 up 12% for the adults 18\u201349 demographic and a 21% increase in total viewers from the ninth-season finale. While the overall viewer number has increased this season, its viewer demographics have continued to age year on year \u2013 the median age this season was 47.2 compared to a median age of 32.1 in its first season. The demographics also became \"whiter\" over time and less diverse. Nevertheless, in the 2010\u201311 television season, Fox maintained its lead on over other networks with its seventh consecutive season of victory overall in the 18\u201349 demographic ratings in the United States.\nThe eleventh season, however, suffered a steep drop in ratings, a drop attributed by some to the arrival of new shows such as \"The Voice\" and \"The X Factor\". The ratings for the first two episodes of the eleventh season fell 16\u201321% in overall viewer numbers and 24\u201327% in the 18/49 demo, while the season finale fell 27% in total viewer number and 30% in the 18\u201349 demo. The average viewership for the season fell below 20 million viewers the first time since 2003, a drop of 23% in total viewers and 30% in the 18/49 demo. For the first time in eight years, \"American Idol\" lost the leading position in both the total viewers number and the 18/49 demo, coming in second to \"NBC Sunday Night Football\", although the strengths of \"Idol\" in its second year in the Wednesday-Thursday primetime slots helped Fox achieve the longest period of 18\u201349 demographic victory in the Nielsen ratings, standing at 8 straight years from 2004 to 2012.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the twelfth season, which saw the show hitting a number of series low in the 18\u201349 demo. The finale had 7.2 million fewer viewers than the previous season, and saw a drop of 44% in the 18\u201349 demo. The season viewers averaged at 13.3 million, a drop of 24% from the previous season. The thirteenth season suffered a huge decline in the 18\u201349 demographic, a drop of 28% from the twelfth season, and \"American Idol\" lost its Top 10 position in the Nielsen ratings by the end of the 2013\u201314 television season for the first time since its entry to the rankings in 2003 as a result, and never regained its Top 10 position by the series' end in 2016.\nThe continuing decline influenced further changes for the fourteenth season, including the loss of Coca-Cola as the show's major sponsor, and a decision to only broadcast one, two-hour show per week during the top 12 rounds (with results from the previous week integrated into the performance show, rather than having a separate results show). On May 11, 2015, prior to the fourteenth-season finale, Fox announced that the fifteenth season of \"American Idol\" would be its last. Despite these changes, the show's ratings would decline more sharply. The fourteenth-season finale was the lowest-rated finale ever, with an average of only 8.03 million viewers watching the finale. The show's ratings, however, rebounded in its final season and ended its run in 2016 as Fox's first-ever program to conclude its run without dropping from the Nielsen Top 30 most-watched television shows in each of its seasons.\nFor the revived series on ABC, the ratings were lower but remained stable compared to previous seasons on Fox. The finale of the seventeenth season was slightly more watched than the sixteenth.\nCritical reception.\nEarly reviews were mixed in their assessment. Ken Tucker of \"Entertainment Weekly\" considered that \"As TV, \"American Idol\" is crazily entertaining; as music, it's dust-mote inconsequential\". Others, however, thought that \"the most striking aspect of the series was the genuine talent it revealed\". It was also described as a \"sadistic musical bake-off\", and \"a romp in humiliation\". Other aspects of the show have attracted criticisms. The product placement in the show in particular was noted, and some critics were harsh about what they perceived as its blatant commercial calculations \u2013 Karla Peterson of \"The San Diego Union-Tribune\" charged that \"American Idol\" is \"a conniving multimedia monster\" that has \"absorbed the sin of our debauched culture and spit them out in a lump of reconstituted evil\". The decision to send the first season winner to sing the national anthem at the Lincoln Memorial on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks in 2002 was also poorly received by many. Lisa de Moraes of \"The Washington Post\" noted sarcastically that \"The terrorists have won\" and, with a sideswipe at the show's commercialism and voting process, that the decision as to who \"gets to turn this important site into just another cog in the 'Great \"American Idol\" Marketing Mandala' is in the hands of the millions of girls who have made \"American Idol\" a hit. Them and a handful of phone-redialer geeks who have been clocking up to 10,000 calls each week for their contestant of choice (but who, according to Fox, are in absolutely no way skewing the outcome).\"\nSome of the later writers about the show were more positive, Michael Slezak, again of \"Entertainment Weekly\", thought that \"for all its bloated, synthetic, product-shilling, money-making trappings, \"Idol\" provides a once-a-year chance for the average American to combat the evils of today's music business.\" Singer Sheryl Crow, who was later to act as a mentor on the show, however took the view that the show \"undermines art in every way and promotes commercialism\". Pop music critic Ann Powers nevertheless suggested that Idol has \"reshaped the American songbook\", \"led us toward a new way of viewing ourselves in relationship to mainstream popular culture\", and connects \"the classic Hollywood dream to the multicentered popular culture of the future.\" Others focused on the personalities in the show; Ramin Setoodeh of \"Newsweek\" accused judge Simon Cowell's cruel critiques in the show of helping to establish in the wider world a culture of meanness, that \"Simon Cowell has dragged the rest of us in the mud with him.\" Some such as singer John Mayer disparaged the contestants, suggesting that those who appeared on \"Idol\" are not real artists with self-respect.\nSome in the entertainment industry were critical of the star-making aspect of the show. Usher, a mentor on the show, bemoaning the loss of the \"true art form of music\", thought that shows like \"American Idol\" made it seem \"so easy that everyone can do it, and that it can happen overnight\", and that \"television is a lie\". Musician Michael Feinstein, while acknowledging that the show had uncovered promising performers, said that \"American Idol\" \"isn't really about music. It's about all the bad aspects of the music business \u2013 the arrogance of commerce, this sense of 'I know what will make this person a star; artists themselves don't know.' \" That \"American Idol\" is seen to be a fast track to success for its contestants has been a cause of resentment for some in the industry. LeAnn Rimes, commenting on Carrie Underwood winning Best Female Artist in Country Music Awards over Faith Hill in 2006, said that \"Carrie has not paid her dues long enough to fully deserve that award\". It is a common theme that has been echoed by many others. Elton John, who had appeared as a mentor in the show but turned down an offer to be a judge on \"American Idol\", commenting on talent shows in general, said that \"there have been some good acts but the only way to sustain a career is to pay your dues in small clubs\". \"American Idol\" revolutionized American pop culture and the pop idol process and has provided an opportunity for many to bypass the small club scene and allow a much larger audience to participate in and select the next potential chart topping performer.\nThe success of the show's alumni, however, has led to a more positive assessment of the show, and the show was described as having \"proven it has a valid way to pick talent and a proven way to sell records\". While the industry is divided on the show success, its impact is felt particularly strongly in the country music format. According to a CMT exec, reflecting on the success of Idol alumni in the country genre, \"if you want to try and get famous fast by going to a cattle call audition on TV, Idol reasonably remains the first choice for anyone\", and that country music and Idol \"go together well\".\n\"American Idol\" was nominated for the Emmy's Outstanding Reality Competition Program for nine years but never won. Director Bruce Gower won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Series in 2009, and the show won a Creative Arts Emmys each in 2007 and 2008, three in 2009, and two in 2011, as well as a Governor's Award in 2007 for its Idol Gives Back edition. It won the People's Choice Award, which honors the popular culture of the previous year as voted by the public, for favorite competition/reality show in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2012. It won the first Critics' Choice Television Award in 2011 for Best Reality Competition.\nIn 2013, TV Guide ranked the series No. 48 on its list of the 60 Best Series of All Time.\nGeographical, ethnic, and gender bias.\nThroughout the series, twelve of the seventeen \"Idol\" winners, including its first five, had come from the Southern United States. A large number of other finalists during the series' run have also hailed from the American South, including Clay Aiken, Kellie Pickler, and Chris Daughtry, who are all from North Carolina. In 2012, an analysis of the 131 contestants who have appeared in the finals of all seasons of the show up to that point found that 48% have some connection to the Southern United States.\nThe show itself was popular in the Southern United States, with households in the Southeastern United States 10% more likely to watch \"American Idol\" during the eighth season in 2009, and those in the East Central region, such as Kentucky, were 16 percent more likely to tune into the series. Data from Nielsen SoundScan, a music-sales tracking service, showed that of the 47\u00a0million CDs sold by \"Idol\" contestants through January 2010, 85 percent were by contestants with ties to the American South.\nTheories given for the success of Southerners on \"Idol\" have been: more versatility with musical genres, as the Southern U.S. is home to several music genre scenes; not having as many opportunities to break into the pop music business; text-voting due to the South having the highest percentage of cell-phone only households; and the strong heritage of music and singing, which is notable in the Bible Belt, where it is in church that many people get their start in public singing. Others also suggest that the Southern character of these contestants appeal to the South, as well as local pride. According to fifth season winner Taylor Hicks, who is from the state of Alabama, \"People in the South have a lot of pride ... So, they're adamant about supporting the contestants who do well from their state or region.\"\nFor five consecutive seasons, starting in the seventh season, the title was given to a white male who plays the guitar \u2013 a trend that \"Idol\" pundits call the \"White guy with guitar\" or \"WGWG\" factor. Just hours before the eleventh-season finale, where Phillip Phillips was named the winner, Richard Rushfield, author of the book \"American Idol: The Untold Story\", said, \"You have this alliance between young girls and grandmas and they see it, not necessarily as a contest to create a pop star competing on the contemporary radio, but as ... who's the nicest guy in a popularity contest\", he says, \"And that has led to this dynasty of four, and possibly now five, consecutive, affable, very nice, good-looking white boys.\"\nStart order bias.\nSome fans call the final performance of the night the \"pimp spot\" because it usually receives a big boost in votes, due to the recency effect. By performing first, a performer may benefit from the primacy effect, but any other early performance may be stifled. The second performance spot is sometimes called the \"un-pimp spot\" because it is the least beneficial.\nControversy.\nThe show was criticized in earlier seasons over the onerous contract contestants had to sign that gave excessive control to 19 Entertainment over their future careers and handed a large part of their future earnings to the management.\nIndividual contestants have generated controversy in this competition for their past actions or for being 'ringers' planted by the producers. A number of contestants have been disqualified for various reasons, such as for having an existing contract or undisclosed criminal record, although the show has also been accused of a double standard for disqualifying some but not others.\nVoting results have been a consistent source of controversy. The mechanism of voting has aroused considerable criticism, most notably in the second season when Ruben Studdard beat Clay Aiken in a close vote, and in the eighth season, when the massive increase in text votes fueled the texting controversy. Concerns about power voting have been expressed from the first season. Since 2004, votes also have been affected to a limited degree by online communities such as DialIdol and Vote for the Worst.\nCultural impact.\nTelevision.\nThe enormous success of the show and the revenue it generated were transformative for the Fox Broadcasting Company. \"American Idol\" and other shows such as \"Survivor\" and \"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?\" were credited for expanding reality television programming in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s, and \"Idol\" became the most watched non-scripted primetime television series, which it remained for almost a decade, from 2003 to 2012, breaking records on U.S. television (dominated by drama shows and sitcoms in the preceding decades). On several occasions, notably in 2003 and 2008, \"American Idol\" overtook the Academy Awards as the most-watched non-sports entertainment event on U.S. television, marking the most recent time as of 2025 that a live regular non-sports primetime series has garnered such viewership in the country.\nThe show pushed Fox to become the number one U.S. TV network in overall viewers in 2008 and among adults aged 18\u201349, the key demographic coveted by advertisers, for an unprecedented eight consecutive years from 2005 to 2012. Its success also helped lift the ratings of other shows that were scheduled around it such as \"House\" and \"Bones\", and \"Idol\", for years, was Fox's strongest platform primetime television program for promoting eventual hit shows of the 2010s (of the same network) such as \"Glee\", \"New Girl\" and \"Empire\". The show, its creator Simon Fuller claimed, \"saved Fox\".\nThe show's massive success in the mid-2000s to early 2010s spawned a number of imitating singing-competition shows, such as \"Rock Star\", \"Nashville Star\", \"The Voice\", \"Rising Star\", \"The Sing-Off\", and \"The X Factor\". The number of imitative singing shows on American television had reached 17 by 2016. Its format also served as a blueprint for non-singing TV shows such as \"Dancing with the Stars\" and \"So You Think You Can Dance\", most of which contribute to the current highly competitive reality TV landscape on American television.\nMusic.\nAs one of the most successful shows on U.S. television history, \"American Idol\" has had a strong impact not just on television, but also in the wider world of entertainment. It helped create a number of highly successful recording artists, such as Kelly Clarkson, Daughtry and Carrie Underwood, as well as others of varying notability. The alumni of the show's original run scored 13 Grammy Award wins out of 54 Grammy nominations up to its end in 2016, with Underwood and Clarkson receiving 10 wins combined.\nVarious \"American Idol\" alumni had success on various record charts around the world; in the U.S. they had achieved 345 number ones on the \"Billboard\" charts in its first 10 years, and 458 by its last year of broadcast in 2016, with 100 achieved by Kelly Clarkson alone. According to Fred Bronson, author of books on the Billboard charts, no other entity has ever created as many hit-making artists and bestselling albums and singles. In 2007, \"American Idol\" alums accounted for 2.1% of all music sales. Its alumni have a massive impact on radio; in 2007, \"American Idol\" had become \"a dominant force in radio\" according to Rich Meyer, president of the radio station monitoring research company Mediabase. By 2010, four winners each had more than a million radio spins, with Kelly Clarkson leading the field with over four million spins.\nAt the end of the show's original run on Fox in 2016, \"Idol\"'s contestants have sold more than 60 million albums in the U.S. and more than 100 million records globally, more than 175 of which are certified platinum or gold. Its participants have generated more than 450 Billboard No. 1 hits and sold more than 260 million digital downloads.\nFilm and theater.\nThe impact of \"American Idol\" was also strongly felt in musical theater, where many of \"Idol\" alumni have forged successful careers. The striking effect of former \"American Idol\" contestants on Broadway has been noted and commented on. The casting of a popular \"Idol\" contestant can lead to significantly increased ticket sales. Other alumni have gone on to work in television and films, the most notable being Jennifer Hudson who, on the recommendation of the \"Idol\" vocal coach Debra Byrd, won a role in \"Dreamgirls\" and eventually went on to win an Academy Award for her performance. She later became the show's first and only alumnus ever to win the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). In all, as of 2025, \"American Idol\" finalists resulted to 5 Grammy Award winners (Clarkson, Barrino, Hudson, Underwood and Mandisa), 2 Emmy Award winners (Clarkson and Hudson), and an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Tony Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Critics' Choice Award winner (Hudson).\nIn 2007, a musical based on the show, \"\", played off-Broadway. The musical closed after its official opening night.\nRevenue and commercial ventures.\nThe dominance of \"American Idol\" in the ratings had made it the most profitable show in U.S. TV for many years. The show was estimated to generate $900\u00a0million for the year 2004 through sales of TV ads, albums, merchandise and concert tickets. By the seventh season, the show was estimated to earn around $900\u00a0million from its ad revenue alone, not including ancillary sponsorship deals and other income. One estimate puts the total TV revenue for the first eight seasons of \"American Idol\" at $6.4\u00a0billion. Sponsors that bought fully integrated packages can expect a variety of promotions of their products on the show, such as product placement, adverts and product promotion integrated into the show, and various promotional opportunities. Other off-air promotional partners pay for the rights to feature \"Idol\" branding on their packaging, products and marketing programs. \"American Idol\" also partnered with Disney in its theme park attraction The American Idol Experience.\nAdvertising revenue.\n\"American Idol\" became the most expensive series on broadcast networks for advertisers starting the fourth season, and by the next season, it had broken the record in advertising rate for a regularly scheduled prime-time network series, selling over $700,000 for a 30-seconds slot, and reaching up to $1.3\u00a0million for the finale. Its ad prices reached a peak in the seventh season at $737,000. Estimated revenue more than doubled from $404\u00a0million in the third season to $870\u00a0million in the sixth season. While that declined from the eighth season onwards, it still earned significantly more than its nearest competitor, with advertising revenue topping $800\u00a0million annually the next few seasons. However, the sharp drop in ratings in the eleventh season also resulted in a sharp drop in advertising rate for the twelfth season, and the show lost its leading position as the costliest show for advertisers. By 2014, ad revenue from had fallen to $427 million where a 30-second spot went for less than $300,000. For the relaunched \"Idol\" on ABC, it has been reported that a 30-second spot may cost between $120,000 and $160,000.\nMedia sponsorship.\nFord Motor Company and Coca-Cola were two of the first sponsors of \"American Idol\" in its first season. The sponsorship deal cost around $10\u00a0million in the first season, rising to $35\u00a0million by the seventh season, and between $50 and $60 million in the tenth season. The third major sponsor AT&T Wireless joined in the second season but ended after the twelfth season, and Coca-Cola officially ended its sponsorship after the thirteenth season amidst the declining ratings of \"Idol\" in the mid-2010s. iTunes sponsored the show since the seventh season.\n\"American Idol\" prominent display of its sponsors' logo and products had been noted since the early seasons. By the sixth season, \"Idol\" showed 4,349 product placements according to Nielsen Media Research. The branded entertainment integration proved beneficial to its advertisers \u2013 promotion of AT&T text-messaging as a means to vote successfully introduced the technology into the wider culture, and Coca-Cola has seen its equity increased during the show.\nCoca-Cola's archrival PepsiCo declined to sponsor \"American Idol\" at the show's start. What the \"Los Angeles Times\" later called \"missing one of the biggest marketing opportunities in a generation\" contributed to Pepsi losing market share, by 2010 falling to third place from second in the United States. PepsiCo sponsored the American version of Cowell's \"The X Factor\" in hopes of not repeating its \"Idol\" mistake until its cancellation.\nFor the revived series on ABC, Macy's and Johnson & Johnson's Zyrtec signed on as the major sponsors of the show.\nAmerican Idol tour.\nThe top ten (eleven in the tenth season, five in the fourteenth season, and seven in the sixteenth season) toured at the end of every season except for the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons. In the twelfth season tour a semi-finalist who won a sing-off was also added to the tour. Kellogg's Pop-Tarts was the sponsor for the first seven seasons, and Guitar Hero was added for the seventh season tour. M&M's Pretzel Chocolate Candies was a sponsor of the ninth season tour. The fifth season tour was the most successful tour with gross of over $35\u00a0million. However no concert tour was organized in the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons, the only seasons not to have an associated tour. The sixteenth season tour featured the band In Real Life as an opener on select dates.\n\"Idol Gives Back\".\n\"Idol Gives Back\" was a special charity event started in season six featuring performances by celebrities and various fund-raising initiatives. This event was also held in seasons seven and nine and has raised nearly $185\u00a0million in total.\nMusic releases.\n\"American Idol\" has traditionally released studio recordings of contestants' performances as well as the winner's coronation single for sale. For the first five seasons, the recordings were released as a compilation album at the end of the season. All five of these albums reached the top ten in Billboard 200 which made \"American Idol\" the most successful soundtrack franchise of any motion picture or television program. Starting late in the fifth season, individual performances were released during the season as digital downloads, initially from the \"American Idol\" official website only. In the seventh season the live performances and studio recordings were made available during the season from iTunes when it joined as a sponsor. In the tenth season the weekly studio recordings were also released as compilation digital album straight after performance night.\n19 Recordings, a recording label owned by 19 Entertainment, currently hold the rights to phonographic material recorded by all the contestants. 19 Recordings originally partnered with Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) to promote and distribute the recordings through its labels RCA Records, Arista Records, J Records, and Jive Records. From 2005\u20132007, BMG partnered with Sony Music Entertainment to form a joint venture known as Sony BMG Music Entertainment. From 2008 to 2010, following their acquisition of BMG, Sony Music handled the distribution of \"American Idol\"'s music. In 2010, UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records replaced Sony as the music label for \"American Idol\".\nTie-ins.\n\"American Idol\" video games\nTheme park attraction.\nOn February 14, 2009, The Walt Disney Company debuted \"The American Idol Experience\" at its Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. In this live production, co-produced by 19 Entertainment, park guests chose from a list of songs and auditioned privately for Disney cast members. Those selected then performed on a stage in a 1000-seat theater replicating the \"Idol\" set. Three judges, whose mannerisms and style mimicked those of the real \"Idol\" judges, critiqued the performances. Audience members then voted for their favorite performer. There were several preliminary-round shows during the day that culminated in a \"finals\" show in the evening where one of the winners of the previous rounds that day was selected as the overall winner. The winner of the finals show received a \"Dream Ticket\" that granted them front-of-the-line privileges at any future \"American Idol\" audition. The attraction closed on August 30, 2014.\nOther broadcasts.\n\"American Idol\" is broadcast to over 100 nations worldwide. In most nations these are not live broadcasts and may be tape delayed by several days or weeks, except for other season finales that are aired live in several countries simulcast with the U.S. broadcast on Fox (2002\u20132016) and ABC (since 2018). In Canada, the first thirteen seasons of American Idol were aired live countrywide by CTV and/or CTV Two, in simulcast with Fox. CTV dropped \"Idol\" after its thirteenth season and in August 2014, Yes TV announced that it had picked up Canadian rights to \"American Idol\" beginning in its 2015 season. In 2017, it was announced the show would return to CTV Two for its sixteenth season. Since season nineteen, the show started airing on Citytv. In Slovakia, American Idol was broadcast on Jednotka.\nIn Latin America, the show is broadcast and subtitled by Sony Entertainment Television. In Southeast Asia, it is broadcast by Sony Channel every Monday and Tuesday nine or ten hours after since its revival. In Philippines, it is aired every Thursday and Friday nine or ten hours after its United States telecast; from 2004 to 2007 on ABC; 2008\u201311 on QTV, then GMA News TV; 2012\u201316, 2018\u201319 on ETC; and since 2024 on TV5. In Indonesia, it was aired on RCTI in the 2002 to 2003 season with the Indonesian subtitles, before Indonesian Idol was held in the 2004, aired after each episode ended, and in the 2011 to 2013 season it was broadcast by B-Channel (now RTV). In Australia, it aired a few hours after the U.S. telecast. It was aired on Network Ten from 2002 to 2008 and then again in 2013. Between 2008 and 2012 it aired on Fox8 and the thirteenth and fourteenth seasons (2014\u201315) it aired on digital channel, Eleven, a sister channel to Network Ten. Its final season (2016) aired on Fox8 hours after the original U.S. broadcast. The show enjoyed a lot of popularity in Australia throughout the 2000s before declining in the ratings. In the United Kingdom, episodes were aired one day after the U.S. broadcast on digital channel ITV2. In the twelfth season, the episodes aired on 5*. It was also aired in Ireland on TV3 two days after the telecast. In Brazil and Israel, the show airs two days after its original broadcast, and broadcast live during the season finale. In the instances where the airing is delayed, the shows may sometimes be combined into one episode to summarize the results. In Italy, the twelfth season was broadcast by La3. In Singapore, The show was broadcast on Mediacorp Channel 5 for the ninth and tenth seasons.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21650": "North Carolina\nU.S. state\nNorth Carolina ( ) is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia to the southwest, and Tennessee to the west. The state is the 28th-largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. Along with South Carolina, it makes up the Carolinas region of the East Coast. At the 2020 census, the state had a population of 10,439,388. Raleigh is the state's capital and Charlotte is its most populous city. The Charlotte metropolitan area, with an estimated population of 2,805,115 in 2023, is the most populous metropolitan area in North Carolina, the 22nd-most populous in the United States, and the largest banking center in the nation after New York City. The Research Triangle, with an estimated population of 2,368,947 in 2023, is the second-most populous combined metropolitan area in the state, 31st-most populous in the United States, and is home to the largest research park in the United States, Research Triangle Park.\nThe earliest evidence of human occupation in North Carolina dates back 10,000 years, found at the Hardaway Site. North Carolina was inhabited by Carolina Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Siouan speaking tribes of Native Americans prior to the arrival of Europeans. King Charles II granted eight lord proprietors a colony they named Carolina after the king and which was established in 1670 with the first permanent settlement at Charles Town (Charleston). Because of the difficulty of governing the entire colony from Charles Town, the colony was eventually divided and North Carolina was established as a royal colony in 1729 and was one of the Thirteen Colonies. The Halifax Resolves resolution adopted by North Carolina on April 12, 1776, was the first formal call for independence from Great Britain among the American Colonies during the American Revolution.\nOn November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the United States Constitution. In the run-up to the American Civil War, North Carolina reluctantly declared its secession from the Union on May 20, 1861, becoming the tenth of eleven states to join the Confederate States of America. Following the Civil War, the state was restored to the Union on July 4, 1868. On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully piloted the world's first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina's Outer Banks. North Carolina often uses the slogan \"First in Flight\" on state license plates to commemorate this achievement, alongside a newer alternative design bearing the slogan \"First in Freedom\" in reference to the Mecklenburg Declaration and Halifax Resolves.\nNorth Carolina is defined by a wide range of elevations and landscapes. From west to east, North Carolina's elevation descends from the Appalachian Mountains to the Piedmont and Atlantic coastal plain. North Carolina's Mount Mitchell at is the highest point in North America east of the Mississippi River. Most of the state falls in the humid subtropical climate zone; however, the western, mountainous part of the state has a subtropical highland climate.\nHistory.\nNative Americans, lost colony, and permanent settlement.\nNorth Carolina was inhabited for at least 10,000 years by succeeding prehistoric Indigenous cultures. The Hardaway Site saw major periods of occupation dating to 10,000 years BCE. Before 200 AD, people were building earthwork platform mounds for ceremonial and religious purposes. Succeeding peoples, including those of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture, established by 1000 AD in the Piedmont and mountain region, continued to build this style of mounds. In contrast to some of the larger centers of the classic Mississippian culture in the area that became known as the western Carolinas, northeastern Georgia, and southeastern Tennessee, most of the larger towns had only one central platform mound. Smaller settlements had none, but were close to more prominent towns. This area became known as the homelands of the historic Cherokee people, who are believed to have migrated over time from the Great Lakes area.\nIn the 500\u2013700 years preceding European contact, the Mississippian culture built elaborate cities and maintained far-flung regional trading networks. Its largest city was Cahokia, which had numerous mounds for different purposes, a highly stratified society, and was located in present-day southwestern Illinois near the Mississippi River. Starting in 1540, the Native polities of the Mississippian culture fell apart and reformed as new groups, such as the Catawba, due to a series of destabilizing events known as the \"Mississippian shatter zone\". Introduction of colonial trading arrangements and hostile native groups from the north such as the Westo Indians hastened changes in an already tenuous regional hierarchy. As described by anthropologist Robbie Ethridge, the Mississippian shatter zone was a time of great instability in what is now the American South, caused by the instability of Mississippian chiefdoms, high mortality from new Eurasian diseases, conversion to an agricultural society and the accompanying population increase, and the emergence of Native \"militaristic slaving societies\".\nHistorically documented tribes in the North Carolina region include the Carolina Algonquian-speaking tribes of the coastal areas, such as the Chowanoc, Roanoke, Pamlico, Machapunga, and Coree, who were the first encountered by the English; the Iroquoian-speaking Meherrin, Cherokee, and Tuscarora of the interior; and Southeastern Siouan-speaking tribes, such as the Cheraw, Waxhaw, Saponi, Waccamaw, Cape Fear Indians, and Catawba of the Piedmont.\nIn the late 16th century, the first Spanish explorers traveling inland recorded meeting Mississippian culture people at Joara, a regional chiefdom near what later developed as Morganton. Records of Hernando de Soto attested to his meeting with them in 1540. In 1567, Captain Juan Pardo led an expedition to claim the area for the Spanish colony and to establish another route to reach silver mines in Mexico. Pardo made a winter base at Joara, which he renamed \"Cuenca\". His expedition built Fort San Juan and left a contingent of 30 Spaniards there, while Pardo traveled further. His forces built and garrisoned five other forts. He returned by a different route to Santa Elena on Parris Island, South Carolina, then a center of Spanish Florida. In the spring of 1568, natives killed all but seventy four of the Spaniards and burned the six forts in the interior, including Fort San Juan. Although the Spanish never returned to the interior, this effort marked the first European attempt at colonization of the interior of what became the United States. A 16th-century journal by Pardo's scribe Bandera, and archaeological findings since 1986 at Joara, have confirmed the settlement.\nAnglo-European settlement.\nIn 1584, Elizabeth I granted a charter to Sir Walter Raleigh, for whom the state capital is named, for land in present-day North Carolina (then part of the territory of Virginia). It was the second American territory that the English attempted to colonize. Raleigh established two colonies on the coast in the late 1580s, but both failed. The colony established in 1587 saw 118 colonists 'disappear' when John White was unable to return from a supply run during battles with the Spanish Armada. The fate of the \"Lost Colony\" of Roanoke Island remains one of the most widely debated mysteries of American history. Two native Chieftains, Manteo and Wanchese, of which the former helped the colonists and the latter was distrustful, had involvement in the colony and even accompanied Raleigh to England on a previous voyage in 1585. Manteo was also the first Indigenous North American to be baptized by English settlers. Upon White's return in 1590, neither native nor Englishman were to be found. Popular theory holds that the colonists either traveled away with or assimilated into local native culture. Virginia Dare, the first English person to be born in North America, was born on Roanoke Island on August 18, 1587; the surrounding Dare County is named for her.\nAs early as 1650, settlers from the Virginia colony had moved into the Albemarle Sound region. By 1663, King Charles\u00a0II of England granted a charter to start a new colony on the North American continent; this would generally establish North Carolina's borders. He named it \"Carolina\" in honor of his father, CharlesI. By 1665, a second charter was issued to attempt to resolve territorial questions. This charter rewarded the Lords Proprietors, eight Englishmen to whom King Charles II granted joint ownership of a tract of land in the state. All of these men either had remained loyal to the Crown or aided Charles's restoration to the English throne after Cromwell. In 1712, owing to disputes over governance, the Carolina colony split into North Carolina and South Carolina. North Carolina became a crown colony in 1729.\nMost of the English colonists had arrived as indentured servants, hiring themselves out as laborers for a fixed period to pay for their passage. In the early years the line between indentured servants and African slaves or laborers was fluid. Some Africans were allowed to earn their freedom before slavery became a lifelong status. Most of the free colored families formed in North Carolina before the Revolution were descended from unions or marriages between free whites and enslaved or free Africans or African-Americans. If the mothers were free, their children were born free. Many had migrated or were descendants of migrants from colonial Virginia. As the flow of indentured laborers to the colony decreased with improving economic conditions in Great Britain, planters imported more slaves, and the state's legal delineations between free and slave status tightened, effectively hardening the latter into a racial caste. Conditions for both slaves and workers worsened as the ranks of the former eclipsed the latter and expansion of farming operations into former Indigenous territories lowered prices. Unable to establish deep water ports such as at Charles Town and Norfolk, the economy's growth and prosperity was thus based on cheap labor and slave plantation systems, devoted primarily to the production of tobacco, then later cotton and textiles.\nIn 1738\u20131739, smallpox caused high fatalities among the Native Americans, who had no immunity to the new disease (it had become endemic over centuries in Europe). According to the historian Russell Thornton, \"The 1738 epidemic was said to have killed one-half of the Cherokee, with other tribes of the area suffering equally.\"\nColonial period.\nAfter the Spanish in the 16th century, the first permanent European settlers of North Carolina were English colonists who migrated south from Virginia. Virginia had grown rapidly and land was less available. Nathaniel Batts was documented as one of the first of these Virginian migrants. He settled south of the Chowan River and east of the Great Dismal Swamp in 1655. By 1663, this northeastern area of the Province of Carolina, known as the Albemarle Settlements, was undergoing full-scale English settlement. During the same period, the English monarch CharlesII gave provincial land grants to the Lords Proprietors, the group of noblemen who had helped restore him to the throne in 1660. These grants were predicated on an agreement that the Lords would use their influence to bring in colonists and establish ports of trade. This new Province of Carolina was named in honor and memory of his father, CharlesI (Latin: \"Carolus\").\nLacking a viable coastal port city due to geography, towns grew at a slower pace and remained small. By the late 17th century, Carolina was essentially two colonies, one centered in the Albemarle region in the north and the other located in the south around Charleston. In 1705 South Carolinian John Lawson purchased land on the Pamlico River and laid out Bath, North Carolina's first town. After returning to England, he published the book A New Voyage to Carolina, which became a travelogue and a marketing piece to encourage new colonists to Carolina. Lawson encouraged Baron Christoph Von Graffenried, the leader of a group of Swiss and German Protestants, to immigrate to Carolina. Von Graffenried purchased land between the Neuse and the Trent Rivers and established the town of New Bern. After an attack on New Bern in which hundreds were killed or injured, Lawson was caught then executed by Tuscarora Indians. A large revolt happened in the state in 1711, known as Cary's Rebellion. In 1712, North Carolina became a separate colony, and in 1729 it became a royal colony, with the exception of the Earl Granville holdings.\nIn June 1718, \"Queen Anne's Revenge\", the flagship of pirate Blackbeard, ran aground at Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina, in present-day Carteret County. After the grounding, her crew and supplies were transferred to smaller ships. In November 1718, after appealing to the governor of North Carolina, who promised safe-haven and a pardon, Blackbeard was killed in an ambush by troops from Virginia. In 1996, Intersal, Inc., a private maritime research firm, discovered the remains of a vessel likely to be the \"Queen Anne's Revenge\", which was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.\nNorth Carolina became one of the Thirteen Colonies and with the territory of South Carolina was originally known as the Province of North Carolina. The northern and southern parts of the original province separated in 1712, with North Carolina becoming a royal colony in 1729. Originally settled by small farmers, sometimes having a few slaves, who were oriented toward subsistence agriculture, the colony lacked large cities or towns. Pirates menaced the coastal settlements, but by 1718 piracy in the Carolinas was on the decline. Growth was strong in the middle of the 18th century, as the economy attracted Scots-Irish, Quaker, English and German immigrants. A majority of the North Carolina colonists generally supported the American Revolution, although there were some Loyalists. Loyalists in North Carolina were fewer in number than in some other colonies such as Georgia, South Carolina, Delaware, and New York.\nDuring colonial times, Edenton served as the state capital beginning in 1722, followed by New Bern becoming the capital in 1766. Construction of Tryon Palace, which served as the residence and offices of the provincial governor William Tryon, began in 1767 and was completed in 1771. In 1788, Raleigh was chosen as the site of the new capital, as its central location protected it from coastal attacks. Officially established in 1792 as both county seat and state capital, the city was named after Sir Walter Raleigh, sponsor of Roanoke, the \"lost colony\" on Roanoke Island. The population of the colony more than quadrupled from 52,000 in 1740 to 270,000 in 1780 from high immigration from Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, plus immigrants from abroad.\nNorth Carolina did not have any printer or print shops until 1749, when the North Carolina Assembly commissioned James Davis from Williamsburg Virginia to act as their official printer. Before this time the laws and legal journals of North Carolina were handwritten and were kept in a largely disorganized manner, prompting the hiring of Davis. Davis settled in New Bern, married, and in 1755 was appointed by Benjamin Franklin as North Carolina's first postmaster. In October of that year the North Carolina Assembly awarded Davis a contract to carry mail between Wilmington, North Carolina and Suffolk, Virginia. He was also active in North Carolina politics as a member of the Assembly and later as the Sheriff. Davis also founded and printed the \"North-Carolina Gazette\", North Carolina's first newspaper, printed in his printing house in New Bern.\nDifferences in the settlement patterns of eastern and western North Carolina, or the Atlantic coastal plain and uplands, affected the political, economic, and social life of the state from the 18th until the 20th century. Eastern North Carolina was settled chiefly by immigrants from rural England and Gaelic speakers from the Scottish Highlands. The Piedmont upcountry and western mountain region of North Carolina was settled chiefly by Scots-Irish, English, and German Protestants, the so-called \"cohee\". Arriving during the mid-to-late 18th century, the Scots-Irish, people of Scottish descent who migrated to and then emigrated from what is today Northern Ireland, were the largest non-English immigrant group before the Revolution; English indentured servants were overwhelmingly the largest immigrant group before the Revolution.\nRevolutionary War.\nDuring the American Revolutionary War, the English and Gaelic speaking Highland Scots of eastern North Carolina tended to remain loyal to the British Crown, because of longstanding business and personal connections with Great Britain. The English, Welsh, Scots-Irish, and German settlers of western North Carolina tended to favor American independence from Britain. British loyalists dubbed the Mecklenburg County area to be 'a hornet's nest' of radicals, birthing the name of the future Charlotte NBA team. On April 12, 1776, the colony became the first to instruct its delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence from the British Crown, through the Halifax Resolves passed by the North Carolina Provincial Congress. The date of this event is memorialized on the state flag and state seal. Throughout the Revolutionary War, fierce guerrilla warfare erupted between bands of pro-independence and pro-British colonists. In some cases the war was also an excuse to settle private grudges and rivalries.\nNorth Carolina had around 7,800 Patriots join the Continental Army under General George Washington; and an additional 10,000 served in local militia units under such leaders as General Nathanael Greene. There was some military action, especially in 1780\u201381. Many Carolinian frontiersmen had moved west over the mountains, into the Washington District (later known as Tennessee), but in 1789, following the Revolution, the state was persuaded to relinquish its claim to the western lands. It ceded them to the national government so the Northwest Territory could be organized and managed nationally.\nA major American victory in the war took place at King's Mountain along the North Carolina\u2013South Carolina border; on October 7, 1780, a force of 1,000 Patriots from western North Carolina (including what is today the state of Tennessee) and southwest Virginia overwhelmed a force of some 1,000 British troops led by Major Patrick Ferguson. Most of the soldiers fighting for the British side in this battle were Carolinians who had remained loyal to the Crown (they were called \"Tories\" or Loyalists). The American victory at King's Mountain gave the advantage to colonists who favored American independence, and it prevented the British Army from recruiting new soldiers from the Tories.\nThe road to Yorktown and America's independence from Great Britain led through North Carolina. As the British Army moved north from victories in Charleston and Camden, South Carolina, the Southern Division of the Continental Army and local militia prepared to meet them. Following General Daniel Morgan's victory over the British Cavalry Commander Banastre Tarleton at the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781, southern commander Nathanael Greene led British Lord Charles Cornwallis across the heartland of North Carolina, and away from the latter's base of supply in Charleston, South Carolina. This campaign is known as \"The Race to the Dan\" or \"The Race for the River\".\nIn the Battle of Cowan's Ford, Cornwallis met resistance along the banks of the Catawba River at Cowan's Ford on February 1, 1781, in an attempt to engage General Morgan's forces during a tactical withdrawal. Morgan had moved to the northern part of the state to combine with General Greene's newly recruited forces. Generals Greene and Cornwallis finally met at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in present-day Greensboro on March 15, 1781. Although the British troops held the field at the end of the battle, their casualties at the hands of the numerically superior Continental Army were crippling. Following this \"Pyrrhic victory\", Cornwallis chose to move to the Virginia coastline to get reinforcements, and to allow the Royal Navy to protect his battered army. This decision would result in Cornwallis' eventual defeat at Yorktown, Virginia, later in 1781. The Patriots' victory there guaranteed American independence. On November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the twelfth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.\nAntebellum period.\nAfter 1800, cotton and tobacco became important export crops. The eastern half of the state, especially the Coastal Plain region, developed a slave society based on a plantation system and slave labor. Planters owning large estates wielded significant political and socio-economic power in antebellum North Carolina. They placed their interests above those of the generally non-slave-holding yeoman farmers of North Carolina. While slaveholding was slightly less concentrated compared to some other Southern states, according to the 1860 census, more than 330,000 people, or 33% of the population out of 992,622 people in total, were enslaved African Americans. They lived and worked chiefly on plantations in the Piedmont and Coastal Plain regions of the state. In addition, 30,463 free people of color lived in the state. They were also mainly concentrated in the eastern coastal plain, especially at port cities such as Wilmington and New Bern, where a variety of jobs were available. Most were descendants from free African Americans who had migrated along with neighbors from Virginia during the 18th century. The majority were the descendants of unions in the working classes between white women, indentured servants or free, and African men, indentured, slave or free.\nAfter the American Revolution, Quakers and Mennonites worked to persuade slaveholders to free their slaves. Some were inspired by their efforts and the language of the Revolution to arrange for manumission of their slaves. The number of free people of color rose markedly in the first couple of decades after the Revolution. Many free people of color migrated to the frontier, along with their European-American neighbors, where the social system was looser. By 1810, nearly three percent of the free population consisted of free people of color, who numbered slightly more than 10,000. The western areas of North Carolina were mainly white families of European descent, especially Scotch-Irish, who operated small subsistence farms. In the early national period, the state became a center of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy, with a strong Whig presence, especially in the western part of the state. After Nat Turner's slave uprising in 1831, North Carolina and other southern states reduced the rights of free blacks. In 1835, the legislature withdrew their right to vote.\nIn mid-century, the state's rural and commercial areas were connected by the construction of a wooden plank road, known as a \"farmer's railroad\", from Fayetteville in the east to Bethania (northwest of Winston-Salem). On October 25, 1836, construction began on the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad to connect the port city of Wilmington with the state capital of Raleigh. In 1840, the state capitol building in Raleigh was completed, and still stands today.\nIn 1849, the North Carolina Railroad was created by act of the legislature to extend that railroad west to Greensboro, High Point, and Charlotte. During the Civil War, the Wilmington-to-Raleigh stretch of the railroad was vital to the Confederate war effort; supplies shipped into Wilmington were moved by rail through Raleigh to the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.\nAmerican Civil War.\nIn 1860, North Carolina was a slave state, in which one-third of the state's total population were African-American slaves. The state did not vote to join the Confederacy until President Abraham Lincoln called on it to invade its sister state, South Carolina, becoming the last or penultimate state to officially join the Confederacy. The title of \"last to join the Confederacy\" has been disputed; although Tennessee's informal secession on May 7, 1861, preceded North Carolina's official secession on May 20, the Tennessee legislature did not formally vote to secede until June 8, 1861.\nAround 125,000 troops from North Carolina served in the Confederate Army, and about 15,000 North Carolina troops (both black and white) served in Union Army regiments, including those who left the state to join Union regiments elsewhere. Over 30,000 North Carolina troops died from combat or disease during the war. Elected in 1862, Governor Zebulon Baird Vance tried to maintain state autonomy against Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Richmond. The state government was reluctant to support the demands of the national government in Richmond, and the state was the scene of only small battles. In 1865, Durham County saw the largest single surrender of Confederate soldiers at Bennett Place, when Joseph E. Johnston surrendered the Army of Tennessee and all remaining Confederate forces still active in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, totalling 89,270 soldiers.\nConfederate troops from all parts of North Carolina served in virtually all the major battles of the Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederacy's most famous army. The largest battle fought in North Carolina was at Bentonville, which was a futile attempt by Confederate General Joseph Johnston to slow Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's advance through the Carolinas in the spring of 1865. In April 1865, after losing the Battle of Morrisville, Johnston surrendered to Sherman at Bennett Place, in what is today Durham. North Carolina's port city of Wilmington, was the last Confederate port to fall to the Union, in February 1865, after the Union won the nearby Second Battle of Fort Fisher, its major defense downriver.\nThe first Confederate soldier to be killed in the Civil War was Private Henry Wyatt from North Carolina, in the Battle of Big Bethel in June 1861. At the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, the 26th North Carolina Regiment participated in Pickett/Pettigrew's Charge and advanced the farthest into Union lines of any Confederate regiment. During the Battle of Chickamauga, the 58th North Carolina Regiment advanced farther than any other regiment on Snodgrass Hill to push back the remaining Union forces from the battlefield. At Appomattox Court House in Virginia in April 1865, the 75th North Carolina Regiment, a cavalry unit, fired the last shots of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the Civil War. The phrase \"First at Bethel, Farthest at Gettysburg and Chickamauga, and Last at Appomattox\", later became used through much of the early 20th century.\nAfter secession, some North Carolinians refused to support the Confederacy. Some of the yeoman farmers chiefly in the state's mountains and western Piedmont region remained neutral during the Civil War, with others covertly supporting the Union cause during the conflict. Approximately 15,000 North Carolinians (both black and white) from across the state enlisted in the Union Army. Numerous slaves also escaped to Union lines, where they became essentially free.\nReconstruction era through late 19th century.\nFollowing the collapse of the Confederacy in 1865, North Carolina, along with other former Confederate States (except Tennessee), was put under direct control by the U.S. military and was relieved of its constitutional government and representation within the United States Congress in what is now referred to as the Reconstruction era. To earn back its rights, the state had to make concessions to Washington, one of which was ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment. Congressional Republicans during Reconstruction, commonly referred to as \"radical Republicans\", constantly pushed for new constitutions for each of the Southern states that emphasized equal rights for African-Americans. In 1868, a constitutional convention restored the state government of North Carolina. Though the Fifteenth Amendment was also adopted that same year, it remained in most cases ineffective for almost a century, not to mention paramilitary groups and their lynching with impunity.\nThe elections in April 1868 following the constitutional convention led to a narrow victory for a Republican-dominated government, with 19 African-Americans holding positions in the North Carolina State Legislature. In attempt to put the reforms into effect, the new Republican Governor William W. Holden declared martial law on any county allegedly not complying with law and order using the passage of the Shoffner Act.\nA Republican Party coalition of black freedmen, northern carpetbaggers and local scalawags controlled state government for three years. The white conservative Democrats regained control of the state legislature in 1870, in part by Ku Klux Klan violence and terrorism at the polls, to suppress black voting. Republicans were elected to the governorship until 1876, when the Red Shirts, a paramilitary organization that arose in 1874 and was allied with the Democratic Party, helped suppress black voting. More than 150 black Americans were murdered in electoral violence in 1876.\nPost\u2013Civil War-debt cycles pushed people to switch from subsistence agriculture to commodity agriculture. Among this time the notorious Crop-Lien system developed and was financially difficult on landless whites and blacks, due to high amounts of usury. Also due to the push for commodity agriculture, the free range was ended. Prior to this time people fenced in their crops and had their livestock feeding on the free range areas. After the ending of the free range people now fenced their animals and had their crops in the open.\nDemocrats were elected to the legislature and governor's office, but the Populists attracted voters displeased with them. In 1896 a biracial, Populist-Republican Fusionist coalition gained the governor's office and passed laws that would extend the voting franchise to blacks and poor whites. The Democrats regained control of the legislature in 1896 and passed laws to impose Jim Crow and racial segregation of public facilities. Voters of North Carolina's 2nd congressional district elected a total of four African-American congressmen through these years of the late 19th century.\nPolitical tensions ran so high a small group of white Democrats in 1898 planned to take over the Wilmington government if their candidates were not elected. In the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, white Democrats led around 2,000 of their supporters that attacked the black newspaper and neighborhood, killed an estimated 60 to 300 people, and ran off the white Republican mayor and aldermen. They installed their own people and elected Alfred M. Waddell as mayor, in the only successful coup d'\u00e9tat in United States history.\nIn 1899, the state legislature passed a new constitution, with requirements for poll taxes and literacy tests for voter registration which disenfranchised most black Americans in the state. Exclusion from voting had wide effects: it meant black Americans could not serve on juries or in any local office. After a decade of white supremacy, many people forgot North Carolina had ever had thriving middle-class black Americans. Black citizens had no political voice in the state until after the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed to enforce their constitutional rights. It was not until 1992 that another African American was elected as a U.S. Representative from North Carolina.\nEarly through mid-20th century.\nAfter the reconstruction era, North Carolina had become a one-party state, dominated by the Democratic Party. The state mainly continued with an economy based on tobacco, cotton textiles and commodity agriculture. Large towns and cities remained in few numbers. However, a major industrial base emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century, in the counties of the Piedmont Triad, based on cotton mills established at the fall line. Railroads were built to connect the new industrializing cities.\nThe state was the site of the first successful controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air flight, by the Wright brothers, near Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903.\nIn the first half of the 20th century, many African Americans left the state to go North for better opportunities, in the Great Migration. Their departure changed the demographic characteristics of many areas.\nNorth Carolina was hard hit by the Great Depression, but the New Deal programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt for cotton and tobacco significantly helped the farmers. After World War\u00a0II, the state's economy grew rapidly, highlighted by the growth of such cities as Charlotte, Raleigh, and Durham in the Piedmont region.\nResearch Triangle Park, established in 1959, serves as the largest research park in the United States. Formed near Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, the Research Triangle metro is a major area of universities and advanced scientific and technical research.\nThe Greensboro sit-ins in 1960 played a crucial role in the Civil Rights Movement to bring full equality to American blacks. By the late 1960s, spurred in part by the increasingly leftward tilt of national Democrats, conservative whites began to vote for Republican national candidates and gradually for more Republicans locally.\nLate 20th century to present.\nSince the 1970s, North Carolina has seen steady increases in population growth. This growth has largely occurred in metropolitan areas located within the Piedmont Crescent, in places such as Charlotte, Concord, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Durham and Raleigh. The Charlotte metropolitan area has experienced large growth mainly due to its finance, banking, and tech industries.\nBy the 1990s, Charlotte had become a major regional and national banking center. Towards Raleigh, North Carolina State, Duke University, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, have helped the Research Triangle area attract an educated workforce and develop more jobs.\nIn 1988, North Carolina gained its first professional sports franchise, the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The hornets team name stems from the American Revolutionary War, when British General Cornwallis described Charlotte as a \"hornet's nest of rebellion\". The Carolina Panthers of the National Football League (NFL) became based in Charlotte as well, with their first season being in 1995. The Carolina Hurricanes of the National Hockey League (NHL) moved to Raleigh in 1997, with their colors being the same as the NC State Wolfpack, who are also located in Raleigh.\nBy the late 20th century and into the early 21st century, economic industries such as technology, pharmaceuticals, banking, food processing, vehicle parts, and tourism started to emerge as North Carolina's main economic drivers. This marked a shift from the state's former main industries of tobacco, textiles, and furniture. Factors that played a role in this shift were globalization, the state's higher education system, national banking, the transformation of agriculture, and new companies moving to the state.\nGeography.\nNorth Carolina is bordered by South Carolina on the south, Georgia on the southwest, Tennessee on the west, Virginia on the north, and the Atlantic Ocean on the east. The United States Census Bureau places North Carolina in the South Atlantic division of the southern region. It has a total area of , of which is land and (9.66%) is water.\nNorth Carolina consists of three main geographic regions: the Atlantic coastal plain, occupying the eastern portion of the state; the central Piedmont region, and the mountain region in the west, which is part of the Appalachian Mountains. The coastal plain consists of more specifically defined areas known as the Outer Banks, a string of sandy, narrow barrier islands separated from the mainland by sounds or inlets, including Albemarle Sound and Pamlico Sound, the native home of the venus flytrap, and the inner coastal plain, where longleaf pine trees are native.\nSo many ships have been lost off Cape Hatteras that the area is known as the \"Graveyard of the Atlantic\"; more than a thousand ships have sunk in these waters since records began in 1526. The most famous of these is the \"Queen Anne's Revenge\" (flagship of the pirate Blackbeard), which went aground in Beaufort Inlet in 1718.\nThe coastal plain transitions to the Piedmont region along the Atlantic Seaboard fall line, the elevation at which waterfalls first appear on streams and rivers. The Piedmont region of central North Carolina is the state's most populous region, containing the six largest cities in the state by population. It consists of gently rolling countryside frequently broken by hills or low mountain ridges. Small, isolated, and deeply eroded mountain ranges and peaks are located in the Piedmont, including the Sauratown Mountains, Pilot Mountain, the Uwharrie Mountains, Crowder's Mountain, King's Pinnacle, the Brushy Mountains, and the South Mountains. The Piedmont ranges from about in elevation in the east to about in the west.\nThe western section of the state is part of the Blue Ridge Mountains of the larger Appalachian Mountain range. Among the subranges of the Blue Ridge Mountains located in the state are the Great Smoky Mountains and the Black Mountains. The Black Mountains are the highest in the eastern United States, and culminate in Mount Mitchell at , the highest point east of the Mississippi River.\nNorth Carolina has 17 major river basins. The five basins west of the Blue Ridge Mountains flow to the Gulf of Mexico, while the remainder flow to the Atlantic Ocean. Of the 17 basins, 11 originate within the state of North Carolina, but only four are contained entirely within the state's border\u2014the Cape Fear, the Neuse, the White Oak, and the Tar\u2013Pamlico basin.\nClimate.\nElevation above sea level is most responsible for temperature change across the state, with the mountainous regions being coolest year-round. The climate is also influenced by the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf Stream, especially in the coastal plain. These influences tend to cause warmer winter temperatures along the coast, where temperatures only occasionally drop below the freezing point at night. The coastal plain averages around of snow or ice annually, and in many years, there may be no snow or ice at all.\nThe Atlantic Ocean exerts less influence on the climate of the Piedmont region, which has hotter summers and colder winters than along the coast, though winters are still mild.\nNorth Carolina experiences severe weather both in summer and in winter, with summer bringing threat of hurricanes, tropical storms, heavy rain, and flooding. Destructive hurricanes that have hit North Carolina include Hurricane Fran, Hurricane Florence, Hurricane Floyd, Hurricane Hugo, and Hurricane Hazel, the latter being the strongest storm ever to make landfall in the state, as a Category4 in 1954. Hurricane Isabel ranks as the most destructive of the 21st century.\nNorth Carolina averages fewer than 20 tornadoes per year, many of them produced by hurricanes or tropical storms along the coastal plain. Tornadoes from thunderstorms are a risk, especially in the eastern part of the state. The western Piedmont is often protected by the mountains, which tend to break up storms as they cross over; the storms will often re-form farther east. A phenomenon known as \"cold-air damming\" often occurs in the northwestern part of the state, which can weaken storms but can also lead to major ice events in winter.\nIn April 2011, the worst tornado outbreak in North Carolina's history occurred. Thirty confirmed tornadoes touched down, mainly in the Eastern Piedmont and Sandhills, killing at least 24 people. In September 2019 Hurricane Dorian hit the area.\nParks and recreation.\nNorth Carolina provides a large range of recreational activities, from swimming at the beach to skiing in the mountains. North Carolina offers fall colors, freshwater and saltwater fishing, hunting, birdwatching, agritourism, ATV trails, ballooning, rock climbing, biking, hiking, skiing, boating and sailing, camping, canoeing, caving (spelunking), gardens, and arboretums. North Carolina has theme parks, aquariums, museums, historic sites, lighthouses, elegant theaters, concert halls, and fine dining.\nNorth Carolinians enjoy outdoor recreation using numerous local bike paths, 34 state parks, and 14 national parks. National Park Service units include the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, the Blue Ridge Parkway, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Cape Lookout National Seashore, Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site at Flat Rock, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site at Manteo, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Great Smoky Mountains Railroad, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park in Greensboro, Moores Creek National Battlefield near Currie in Pender County, the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, Old Salem National Historic Site in Winston-Salem, the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, and Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills.\nNational Forests include Uwharrie National Forest in central North Carolina, Croatan National Forest in Eastern North Carolina, Pisgah National Forest in the western mountains, and Nantahala National Forest in the southwestern part of the state.\nMajor cities.\nIn 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau released the 2023 population estimates for municipalities in North Carolina. Charlotte has the largest population, while Raleigh has the second-largest population in North Carolina.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nMost populous counties.\nAfter the 2020 census, Wake County\u2014with a population of 1,129,410\u2014became the most populous county in the state, overtaking Mecklenburg County\u2014with a population of 1,115,482\u2014by a margin of about 14,000. Both counties are still the only to have populations over one million in North Carolina and the Carolinas region.\nStatistical areas.\nNorth Carolina has four major combined statistical areas (CSA) with a population over 1\u00a0million (as of 2023):\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nThe United States Census Bureau determined the population of North Carolina was 10,439,388 at the 2020 census. Based on numbers in 2012 of the people residing in North Carolina 58.5% were born there; 33.1% were born in another state; 1.0% were born in Puerto Rico, U.S. island areas, or born abroad to American parent(s); and 7.4% were foreign-born.\nAccording to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 9,382 homeless people in North Carolina.\nThe top countries of origin for North Carolina's immigrants were Mexico, India, Honduras, China and El Salvador, as of 2018[ [update]].\nRace and ethnicity.\nAt the 2010 census, the racial composition of North Carolina was: White: 68.5% (65.3% non-Hispanic white, 3.2% White Hispanic), Black or African American: 21.5%, Latin and Hispanic American of any race: 8.4%, some other race: 4.3%, Multiracial American: 2.2%, Asian American: 2.2%, and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander: 1%. In 2020, North Carolina like much of the U.S. experienced a decline in its non-Hispanic white population; at the 2020 census, non-Hispanic whites were 62.2%, Blacks or African Americans 20.5%, American Indian and Alaska Natives 1.2%, Asians 3.3%, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders 0.1%, people from other race 5.9%, and multiracial Americans 6.8%.\nThe majority of the Black American population is concentrated in the urban areas and northeastern part of the state.\nNorth Carolina's Hispanic population has grown rapidly. The Hispanic population more than doubled in size between 1990 and 2000. Many of North Carolina's Hispanic residents are of Mexican descent. Many of North Carolina's newer Latino residents came from Mexico largely to work in agriculture, manufacturing, or on one of North Carolina's military installations.\nThe most common ancestries in North Carolina are African-American, American, German, English, and Irish.\nNorth Carolina has the eighth-largest Native American population in the country. The state is home to eight Native American tribes and four urban Native American organizations.\nLanguages.\nNorth Carolina is home to a spectrum of different dialects of Southern American English and Appalachian English.\nIn 2010, 89.66% (7,750,904) of North Carolina residents age five and older spoke English at home as a primary language, while 6.93% (598,756) spoke Spanish, 0.32% (27,310) French, 0.27% (23,204) German, and Chinese (which includes Mandarin) was spoken as a main language by 0.27% (23,072) of the population five and older. In total, 10.34% (893,735) of North Carolina's population age five and older spoke a mother language other than English. In 2019, 87.7% of the population aged 5 and older spoke English and 12.3% spoke another language. The most common non-English language was Spanish at the 2019 American Community Survey.\nReligion.\nNorth Carolina residents since the colonial era have historically been overwhelmingly Protestant\u2014first Anglican, then Baptist and Methodist. In 2010, the Southern Baptist Convention was the single largest Christian denomination, with 4,241 churches and 1,513,000 members. The second largest in 2024 was the Roman Catholic Church which is organised into two dioceses. In the west is the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte which includes Charlotte and has 530,000 members in 196 parishes. In the east is the Diocese of Raleigh with a total of 80 parishes and nearly 500,000 Catholics. The third largest was the United Methodist Church, with 660,000 members and 1,923 churches. The fourth largest was the Presbyterian Church (USA), with 186,000 members and 710 congregations; this denomination was brought by Scots-Irish immigrants who settled the backcountry in the colonial era. In 2020, the Southern Baptists remained the largest with 1,324,747 adherents, though Methodists and others were collectively overtaken by non/interdenominational Protestants numbering 1,053,564.\nIn 1845, the Baptists split into regional associations of the Northern United States and Southern U.S., over the issue of slavery. These new associations were the Northern Baptist Convention (today the American Baptist Churches USA) and Southern Baptist Convention. By the late 19th century, the largest Protestant denomination in North Carolina were Baptists. After emancipation, black Baptists quickly set up their own independent congregations in North Carolina and other states of the South, as they wanted to be free of white supervision. Black Baptists developed their own state and national associations, such as the National Baptist Convention. Other primarily African American Baptist conventions which grew in the state since the 20th century were the Progressive National Baptist Convention and Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship.\nMethodists (the second largest group among North Carolinian Protestants) were divided along racial lines in the United Methodist Church and African Methodist Episcopal Church. The Methodist tradition tends to be strong in the northern Piedmont, especially in populous Guilford County. Other prominent Protestant groups in North Carolina as of the Pew Research Center's 2014 study were non/interdenominational Protestants and Pentecostalism. The Assemblies of God and Church of God in Christ are the largest Pentecostal denominations operating in the state, while notable minorities include Oneness Pentecostals primarily affiliated with the United Pentecostal Church International.\nThe state also has a special history with the Moravian Church, as settlers of this faith (largely of German origin) settled in the Winston-Salem area in the 18th and 19th centuries. Historically Scots-Irish have had a strong presence in Charlotte and in Scotland County.\nA wide variety of non-Christian faiths are practiced by other residents in the state, including: Judaism, Islam, Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed, Buddhism, and Hinduism. The rapid influx of Northerners and immigrants from Latin America is steadily increasing ethnic and religious diversity within the state. The number of Roman Catholics and Jews in the state has increased, along with general religious diversity as a whole. There are also a substantial number of Quakers in Guilford County and northeastern North Carolina. Many universities and colleges in the state have been founded on religious traditions, and some currently maintain that affiliation, including:\nThe state also has several major seminaries, including the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, and the Hood Theological Seminary (AME Zion) in Salisbury.\nEconomy.\nNorth Carolina's 2018 total gross state product was $496 billion. Based on American Community Survey 2010\u20132014 data, North Carolina's median household income was $46,693. It ranked forty-first out of fifty states plus the District of Columbia for median household income. North Carolina had the fourteenth highest poverty rate in the nation at 17.6%, with 13% of families that were below the poverty line.\nThe state has a very diverse economy because of its great availability of hydroelectric power, its pleasant climate, and its wide variety of soils. The state ranks third among the South Atlantic states in population, but leads the region in industry and agriculture. North Carolina leads the nation in the production of tobacco.\nCharlotte, the state's largest city, is a major textile and trade center. According to a Forbes article written in 2013, employment in the \"Old North State\" has gained many different industry sectors. Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) industries in the area surrounding North Carolina's capital have grown 17.9 percent since 2001. Raleigh ranked the third best city for technology in 2020 due to the state's growing technology sector. In 2010, North Carolina's total gross state product was $424.9 billion, while the state debt in November 2012, according to one source, totaled $2.4 billion, while according to another, was in 2012 $57.8 billion. In 2011, the civilian labor force was at around 4.5 million with employment near 4.1 million.\nNorth Carolina is the leading U.S. state in production of flue-cured tobacco and sweet potatoes, and comes second in the farming of pigs and hogs, trout, and turkeys. In the three most recent USDA surveys (2002, 2007, 2012), North Carolina also ranked second in the production of Christmas trees.\nNorth Carolina has 15 metropolitan areas, and in 2010 was chosen as the third-best state for business by Forbes Magazine, and the second-best state by chief executive officer Magazine. Since 2000, there has been a clear division in the economic growth of North Carolina's urban and rural areas. While North Carolina's urban areas have enjoyed a prosperous economy with steady job growth, low unemployment, and rising wages, many of the state's rural counties have suffered from job loss, rising levels of poverty, and population loss as their manufacturing base has declined. According to one estimate, one-half of North Carolina's 100 counties have lost population since 2010, primarily due to the poor economy in many of North Carolina's rural areas. However, the population of the state's urban areas is steadily increasing.\nArts and culture.\nNorth Carolina has traditions in art, music, and cuisine. The nonprofit arts and culture industry generates $1.2billion in direct economic activity in North Carolina, supporting more than 43,600 full-time equivalent jobs and generating $119million in revenue for local governments and the state of North Carolina. North Carolina established the North Carolina Museum of Art as the first major museum collection in the country to be formed by state legislation and funding and continues to bring millions into the NC economy.\nOne of the more famous arts communities in the state is Seagrove, the handmade-pottery capital of the U.S., where artisans create handcrafted pottery inspired by the same traditions that began in this community more than two hundred years ago.\nMusic.\nNorth Carolina boasts a large number of noteworthy jazz musicians, some among the most important in the history of the genre. These include: John Coltrane, (Hamlet, High Point); Thelonious Monk (Rocky Mount); Billy Taylor (Greenville); Woody Shaw (Laurinburg); Lou Donaldson (Durham); Max Roach (Newland); Tal Farlow (Greensboro); Albert, Jimmy and Percy Heath (Wilmington); Nina Simone (Tryon); and Billy Strayhorn (Hillsborough).\nNorth Carolina is also famous for its tradition of old-time music, and many recordings were made in the early 20th century by folk-song collector Bascom Lamar Lunsford. Musicians such as the North Carolina Ramblers helped solidify the sound of country music in the late 1920s, while the influential bluegrass musician Doc Watson also hailed from North Carolina. Both North and South Carolina are hotbeds for traditional rural blues, especially the style known as the Piedmont blues.\nBen Folds Five originated in Winston-Salem, and Ben Folds still records and resides in Chapel Hill.\nThe British band Pink Floyd is named, in part, after Chapel Hill bluesman Floyd Council.\nThe Research Triangle area has long been a well-known center for folk, rock, metal, jazz and punk. James Taylor grew up around Chapel Hill, and his 1968 song \"Carolina in My Mind\" has been called an unofficial anthem for the state. Other famous musicians from North Carolina include J. Cole, DaBaby, 9th Wonder, Shirley Caesar, Roberta Flack, Clyde McPhatter, Nnenna Freelon, Link Wray, Warren Haynes, Jimmy Herring, Michael Houser, Eric Church, Future Islands, Randy Travis, Ryan Adams, Ronnie Milsap, Anthony Hamilton, The Avett Brothers, Charlie Daniels, and Luke Combs.\nMetal and punk acts such as Corrosion of Conformity, Between the Buried and Me, and Nightmare Sonata are native to North Carolina.\nEDM producer Porter Robinson hails from Chapel Hill.\nNorth Carolina is the home of more \"American Idol\" finalists than any other state: Clay Aiken (season two), Fantasia Barrino (season three), Chris Daughtry (season five), Kellie Pickler (season five), Bucky Covington (season five), Anoop Desai (season eight), Scotty McCreery (season ten), and Caleb Johnson (season thirteen). North Carolina also has the most \"American Idol\" winners with Barrino, McCreery, and Johnson.\nIn the mountains, the Brevard Music Center hosts choral, operatic, orchestral, and solo performances during its annual summer schedule.\nNorth Carolina has five professional opera companies: Opera Carolina in Charlotte, NC Opera in Raleigh, Greensboro Opera in Greensboro, Piedmont Opera in Winston-Salem, and Asheville Lyric Opera in Asheville. Academic conservatories and universities also produce fully staged operas, such as the A. J. Fletcher Opera Institute of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, the Department of Music of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and UNC Greensboro.\nAmong others, there are three high-level symphonic orchestras: NC Symphony in Raleigh, Charlotte Symphony, and Winston-Salem Symphony. The NC Symphony holds the North Carolina Master Chorale. The Carolina Ballet is headquartered in Raleigh, and there is also the Charlotte Ballet.\nThe state boasts three performing arts centers: DPAC in Durham, Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts in Raleigh, and the Blumenthal Performing Art Centers in Charlotte. They feature concerts, operas, recitals, and traveling Broadway musicals.\nShopping.\nNorth Carolina has a variety of shopping choices. SouthPark Mall in Charlotte is the largest and most upscale mall in the Carolinas, featuring multiple luxury tenants with their sole location in the state. Other major malls in Charlotte include Northlake Mall and Carolina Place Mall in nearby suburb Pineville. Other major malls throughout the state include Hanes Mall in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, The Thruway Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Crabtree Valley Mall, North Hills Mall, and Triangle Town Center in Raleigh; Friendly Center and Four Seasons Town Centre in Greensboro; Oak Hollow Mall in High Point; Concord Mills in Concord; Valley Hills Mall in Hickory; Cross Creek Mall in Fayetteville; and The Streets at Southpoint in Durham and Independence Mall in Wilmington, North Carolina, and Tanger Outlets in Charlotte, Nags Head, Blowing Rock, and Mebane, North Carolina.\nCuisine and agriculture.\nA culinary staple of North Carolina is pork barbecue. There are strong regional differences and rivalries over the sauces and methods used in making the barbecue. The common trend across Western North Carolina is the use of premium grade Boston butt. Western North Carolina pork barbecue uses a tomato-based sauce, and only the pork shoulder (dark meat) is used. Western North Carolina barbecue is commonly referred to as Lexington barbecue after the Piedmont Triad town of Lexington, home of the Lexington Barbecue Festival, which attracts more than 100,000 visitors each October. Eastern North Carolina pork barbecue uses a vinegar-and-red-pepper-based sauce and the \"whole hog\" is cooked, thus integrating both white and dark meat.\nKrispy Kreme, an international chain of doughnut stores, was started in North Carolina; the company's headquarters are in Winston-Salem. Pepsi-Cola was first produced in 1898 in New Bern. A regional soft drink, Cheerwine, was created and is still based in the city of Salisbury. Despite its name, the hot sauce Texas Pete was created in North Carolina; its headquarters are also in Winston-Salem. The Hardee's fast-food chain was started in Rocky Mount. Another fast-food chain, Bojangles', was started in Charlotte, and has its corporate headquarters there. A popular North Carolina restaurant chain is Golden Corral. Started in 1973, the chain was founded in Fayetteville, with headquarters located in Raleigh. Popular pickle brand Mount Olive Pickle Company was founded in Mount Olive in 1926. Fast casual burger chain Hwy 55 Burgers, Shakes & Fries also makes its home in Mount Olive. Cook Out, a popular fast-food chain featuring burgers, hot dogs, and milkshakes in a wide variety of flavors, was founded in Greensboro in 1989 and has begun expanding outside North Carolina. In 2013 \"Southern Living\" named Durham\u2013Chapel Hill the South's \"Tastiest City\".\nOver the last decade, North Carolina has become a cultural epicenter and haven for internationally prize-winning wine (Noni Bacca Winery), internationally prized cheeses (Ashe County), \"L'institut International aux Arts Gastronomiques: Conquerront Les Yanks les Truffes, January 15, 2010\" international hub for truffles (Garland Truffles), and beer making, as tobacco land has been converted to grape orchards while state laws regulating alcohol by volume (ABV) in beer allowed a jump from six to fifteen percent. The Yadkin Valley in particular has become a strengthening market for grape production, while Asheville recently won the recognition of being named \"Beer City USA\". Asheville boasts the largest number of breweries per capita of any city in the United States. Recognized and marketed brands of beer in North Carolina include Highland Brewing, Duck Rabbit Brewery, Mother Earth Brewery, Weeping Radish Brewery, Big Boss Brewing, Foothills Brewing, Carolina Brewing Company, Lonerider Brewing, and White Rabbit Brewing Company.\nNorth Carolina has large grazing areas for beef and dairy cattle. Truck farms can be found in North Carolina. A truck farm is a small farm where fruits and vegetables are grown to be sold at local markets. The state's shipping, commercial fishing, and lumber industries are important to its economy. Service industries, including education, health care, private research, and retail trade, are also important. Research Triangle Park, a large industrial complex located in the Raleigh-Durham area, is one of the major centers in the country for electronics and medical research.\nTobacco was one of the first major industries to develop after the Civil War. Many farmers grew some tobacco, and the invention of the cigarette made the product especially popular. Winston-Salem is the birthplace of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR), founded by R. J. Reynolds in 1874 as one of sixteen tobacco companies in the town. By 1914 it was selling 425 million packs of Camels a year. Today it is the second-largest tobacco company in the U.S. (behind Altria Group). RJR is an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Reynolds American Inc., which in turn is 42% owned by British American Tobacco.\nShips named for the state.\nSeveral ships have been named after the state, most famously in the Pacific Ocean theater of World War\u00a0II. Now decommissioned, she is part of the USS \"North Carolina\" Battleship Memorial in Wilmington. Another , a nuclear attack submarine, was commissioned in Wilmington on May 3, 2008.\nState parks.\nThe state maintains a group of protected areas known as the North Carolina State Park System, which is managed by the North Carolina Division of Parks & Recreation (NCDPR), an agency of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (NCDNCR).\nArmed forces installations.\nFort Bragg, near Fayetteville and Southern Pines, is a large and comprehensive military base and is the headquarters of the XVIII Airborne Corps, 82nd Airborne Division, and the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. Serving as the air wing for Fort Bragg is Pope Field, also located near Fayetteville.\nLocated in Jacksonville, Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, combined with nearby bases Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Cherry Point, MCAS New River, Camp Geiger, Camp Johnson, Stone Bay and Courthouse Bay, makes up the largest concentration of Marines and sailors in the world. MCAS Cherry Point is home of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing. Located in Goldsboro, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base is home of the 4th Fighter Wing and 916th Air Refueling Wing. One of the busiest air stations in the United States Coast Guard is located at the Coast Guard Air Station in Elizabeth City. Also stationed in North Carolina is the Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point in Southport.\nOn January 24, 1961, a B-52G broke up in midair and crashed after suffering a severe fuel loss, near Goldsboro, dropping two nuclear bombs in the process without detonation. In 2013, it was revealed that three safety mechanisms on one bomb had failed, leaving just one low-voltage switch preventing detonation.\nTourism.\nCharlotte is the most-visited city in the state, attracting 28.3million visitors in 2018. Area attractions include Carolina Panthers NFL football team and Charlotte Hornets basketball team, Carowinds amusement park, Catawba Two Kings Casino (in nearby Kings Mountain), Charlotte Motor Speedway, U.S. National Whitewater Center, Discovery Place, Great Wolf Lodge, Sea Life Aquarium, Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, Billy Graham Library, Carolinas Aviation Museum, Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, Levine Museum of the New South, McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Mint Museum, and the NASCAR Hall of Fame.\nEvery year the Appalachian Mountains attract several million tourists to the western part of the state, including the historic Biltmore Estate. The scenic Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smoky Mountains National Park are the two most visited national park and unit in the United States with more than 25million visitors in 2013. The City of Asheville is consistently voted as one of the top places to visit and live in the United States, known for its rich art deco architecture, mountain scenery and outdoor activities.\nIn Raleigh, many tourists visit the capital, African American Cultural Complex, Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh, Gregg Museum of Art & Design at NCSU, Haywood Hall House & Gardens, Marbles Kids Museum, North Carolina Museum of Art, North Carolina Museum of History, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, Raleigh City Museum, J. C. Raulston Arboretum, Joel Lane House, Mordecai House, Montfort Hall, and the Pope House Museum. The Carolina Hurricanes NHL hockey team is also located in the city.\nIn the Conover\u2013Hickory area, attractions include Hickory Motor Speedway, RockBarn Golf and Spa, home of the Greater Hickory Classic at Rock Barn; Catawba County Firefighters Museum, the SALT Block, and Valley Hills Mall.\nThe Piedmont Triad, or center of the state, is home to Krispy Kreme, Mayberry, Texas Pete, the Lexington Barbecue Festival, and Moravian cookies. The internationally acclaimed North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro attracts visitors to its animals, plants, and a 57-piece art collection along of shaded pathways in the world's largest-land-area natural-habitat park. Seagrove, in the central portion of the state, attracts many tourists along Pottery Highway (NC Hwy 705). MerleFest in Wilkesboro attracts more than 80,000 people to its four-day music festival; and Wet 'n Wild Emerald Pointe water park in Greensboro is another attraction.\nThe Outer Banks and surrounding beaches attract millions of people to the Atlantic beaches every year.\nThe mainland northeastern part of the state, having recently adopted the name the Inner Banks, is also known as the Albemarle Region, for the Albemarle Settlements, some of the first settlements on North Carolina's portion of the Atlantic Coastal Plain. The region's historic sites are connected by the Historic Albemarle Tour.\nTransportation.\nTransportation systems in North Carolina consist of air, water, road, rail, and public transportation including intercity rail via Amtrak and light rail in Charlotte. North Carolina has the second-largest state highway system in the country as well as the largest ferry system on the East Coast.\nNorth Carolina's airports serve destinations throughout the United States and international destinations in Canada, Europe, Central America, and the Caribbean. In July 2022, Charlotte Douglas International Airport, which serves as the second busiest hub for American Airlines, ranked as the 11th busiest airport in the United States with Raleigh-Durham International Airport, a focus-city for Delta Air Lines and formerly a hub for American Airlines and Midway Airlines, ranked as the 37th busiest airport in the United States.\nNorth Carolina has a growing passenger rail system with Amtrak serving most major cities. Charlotte is also home to North Carolina's only light rail system known as LYNX.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nElementary and secondary public schools are overseen by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. The North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction is the secretary of the North Carolina State Board of Education, but the board, rather than the superintendent, holds most of the legal authority for making public education policy. In 2009, the board's chairman also became the \"chief executive officer\" for the state's school system. North Carolina has 115 public school systems, each of which is overseen by a local school board. A county may have one or more systems within it. The largest school systems in North Carolina are the Wake County Public School System, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Guilford County Schools, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, and Cumberland County Schools. In total there are 2,425 public schools in the state, including over 200 charter schools. North Carolina Schools were segregated until the \"Brown v. Board of Education\" trial and the release of the Pearsall Plan.\nPreviously the SAT was the dominant university entrance examination students took. In 2004 76% of NC high school students took the SAT. In 2012 state law changed which required 11th grade students to take the ACT. The SAT testing rate fell to 46% in 2019. Because students now can take that test for free, the ACT became the dominant university entrance examination. This also caused SAT average scores to rise, as in 1996 North Carolina was 48th nationally in SAT scores, but the profile of students taking the SAT has gotten smaller.\nColleges and universities.\nIn 1795, North Carolina opened the first public university in the United States\u2014the University of North Carolina (now named the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). More than 200 years later, the University of North Carolina System encompasses 16 public universities, which are Appalachian State University, East Carolina University, Elizabeth City State University, Fayetteville State University, North Carolina A&T State University, North Carolina Central University, North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Asheville, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Western Carolina University, and Winston-Salem State University, and one public, boarding high school, the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. Along with its public universities, North Carolina has 58 public community colleges in its community college system. The largest university in North Carolina is currently North Carolina State University, with more than 34,000 students.\nNorth Carolina is also home to many well-known private colleges and universities, including Barton College, Belmont Abbey College (the only Catholic college in the Carolinas), Campbell University, Davidson College, Duke University, Elon University, Guilford College, High Point University, Laurel University, Lees-McRae College, Lenoir-Rhyne University (the only Lutheran university in North Carolina), Livingstone College, Meredith College, Methodist University, Montreat College, North Carolina Wesleyan University, Pfeiffer University, Salem College, Shaw University (the first historically black college or university in the South), University of Mount Olive, Wake Forest University, William Peace University, and Wingate University.\nNorth Carolina is also home to the oldest and largest folk school in the United States, the John C. Campbell Folk School.\nHealth.\nThe residents of North Carolina have a lower life expectancy than the U.S. national average of life expectancy. According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, in 2014, males in North Carolina lived an average of 75.4 years compared to the national average of 76.7 years. Females in North Carolina lived an average of 80.2 years compared to the national average of 81.5 years. Male life expectancy in North Carolina between 1980 and 2014 increased by an average of 6.9 years, slightly higher than the male national average of a 6.7-year increase. Life expectancy for females in North Carolina between 1980 and 2014 increased by 3.2 years, lower than the female national average of a 3.9-year increase.\nUsing 2017\u20132019 data, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation calculated that life expectancy for North Carolina counties ranged from 71.4 years for Swain County to 82.3 years for Orange County. Life expectancy for the state was 78.1 years. The Foundation estimated that life expectancy for the United States as a whole in 2021 was 79.2 years.\nMedia.\nEarly newspapers were established in the eastern part of North Carolina in the mid-18th century. The Fayetteville Observer, established in 1816, is the oldest newspaper still in publication in North Carolina. The Wilmington Star-News, established 1867, is the oldest continuously running newspaper. As of January 1, 2020, there were approximately 240 North Carolina newspapers in publication in the state of North Carolina.\nThe News and Observer was founded in 1871 and is the largest in circulation in the state. In 2006, The Charlotte Observer was acquired by the company, it is the second largest circulating news paper in the state.\nGovernment and politics.\nThe government of North Carolina is divided into three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. These consist of the Council of State (led by the Governor), the bicameral legislature (called the General Assembly), and the state court system (headed by the North Carolina Supreme Court). The state constitution delineates the structure and function of the state government. Most municipalities in North Carolina operate under council\u2013manager governments.\nNorth Carolina's party loyalties have undergone a series of important shifts in the last few years: While the 2010 midterms saw Tarheel voters elect a bicameral Republican majority legislature for the first time in more than a century, North Carolina has also become a Southern swing state in presidential races. Since Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter's comfortable victory in the state in 1976, the state had consistently leaned Republican in presidential elections until Democrat Barack Obama narrowly won the state in 2008. In the 1990s, Democrat Bill Clinton came within a point of winning the state in 1992 and also only narrowly lost the state in 1996. In 2000, Republican George W. Bush easily won the state by more than 13 points.\nBy 2008, demographic shifts, population growth, and increased liberalization in densely populated areas such as the Research Triangle, Charlotte, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Fayetteville, and Asheville, propelled Barack Obama to victory in North Carolina, the first Democrat to win the state since 1976. In 2012, North Carolina was again considered a competitive swing state, with the Democrats even holding their 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. However, Republican Mitt Romney ultimately eked out a two-point win in North Carolina, the only 2012 swing state Obama lost, and one of only two states (along with Indiana) to flip from Obama in 2008 to the GOP in 2012. Furthermore, Republican Donald Trump carried the state in 2016, 2020, and 2024.\nIn 2012, the state elected a Republican governor (Pat McCrory) and lieutenant governor (Dan Forest) for the first time in more than two decades, while also giving the Republicans veto-proof majorities in both the State House of Representatives and the State Senate. Several U.S. House of Representatives seats flipped control in 2012, with the Republicans holding nine seats to the Democrats' four. In the 2014 midterm elections, Republican David Rouzer won the state's 7th congressional district seat, increasing the congressional delegation party split to 10\u20133 in favor of the GOP, a split they retained in subsequent elections until 2020, when it narrowed to 8\u20135 in favor of the GOP. In 2016, despite Donald Trump winning the state, North Carolina voters elected Democrat Roy Cooper as governor, in part due to an unpopular law passed by former governor Pat McCrory known as HB2. Cooper went on to win re-election in 2020, despite Donald Trump narrowly winning the state again against Joe Biden.\nAs a result of the 2020 census, North Carolina gained another seat in the 118th United States Congress, for a total of 14. After the 2024 elections, the state was represented by 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats.\nIn a 2020 study, North Carolina was ranked as the 23rd easiest state for citizens to vote in.\nGerrymandering.\nThe state has been sued for racially gerrymandering the districts, which resulted in minority voting power being diluted in some areas, resulting in skewed representation. In 2000, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina ruled that the 12th congressional district was an illegal racial gerrymander. This was again appealed, now as \"Easley v. Cromartie\". The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Eastern District of North Carolina in 2001 and ruled that the 12th district boundaries were not racially based but was a partisan gerrymander. They said this was a political question that the courts should not rule upon.\nIn 2015, federal courts again ordered redistricting. Two lawsuits challenging the state congressional district map were led by \"two dozen voters, the state Democratic Party, the state chapter of the League of Women Voters, and the interest group Common Cause\". They contend that the redistricting resulted in deliberate under-representation of a substantial portion of voters. This case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in March 2019, which also heard a related partisan gerrymandering case from Maryland.\nOn February 4, 2022, the North Carolina Supreme Court struck down the congressional and state legislative district maps drawn by the GOP-controlled General Assembly on terms of partisan gerrymandering in a 4\u20133 ruling. Later that month, a panel of three former judges chosen by the Wake County Superior Court drew and approved a remedial congressional map after the new map proposed by the General Assembly was struck down by the North Carolina Supreme Court. Though, the state legislative maps proposed by the General Assembly were allowed to be used. The General Assembly would then redraw all three maps for the 2024 elections in the state.\nOn April 28, 2023, the North Carolina Supreme Court\u2014after Republicans gained a majority in the court following the 2022 judicial elections\u2014overturned the same ruling in a 5\u20132 decision, which cleared the way for gerrymandering in the next redistricting cycle. New maps were approved by the General Assembly on October 25, 2023. All three new maps heavily favor the GOP, with allegations of racial bias made against the maps as well.\nIn November 2023, a lawsuit was filed against the North Carolina Senate district map\u2014specifically the 1st and 2nd Senate districts\u2014in the Eastern District of North Carolina, arguing the map violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In December 2023, two lawsuits were filed in the Middle District of North Carolina, with the first challenging the 1st, 6th, 12th, and 14th congressional districts in the map, and the second, challenging multiple specific districts in all three maps, as racial gerrymanders. Both lawsuits were consolidated together in March 2024.\nOn January 26, 2024\u2014regarding the lawsuit currently in the Eastern District of North Carolina\u2014a preliminary injunction to block the current North Carolina Senate district map was denied, citing the \"Purcell\" principle. The ruling was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which upheld the lower court's decision on March 28, 2024. The lawsuit will continue in the district court, but no ruling will be made until after the 2024 elections.\nSports.\nNorth Carolina is home to four major league sports franchises: the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League, the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association, and Charlotte FC of Major League Soccer are based in Charlotte, while the Raleigh-based Carolina Hurricanes play in the National Hockey League. The Panthers and Hurricanes are the only two major professional sports teams that have the same geographical designation while playing in different metropolitan areas. The Hurricanes are the only major professional team from North Carolina to have won a league championship, having captured the Stanley Cup in 2006. North Carolina is also home to two other top-level professional teams \u2014 the Charlotte Hounds of Major League Lacrosse and the North Carolina Courage of the National Women's Soccer League.\nWhile North Carolina has no Major League Baseball team, it does have numerous Minor League Baseball teams, with the highest level of play coming from the Triple-A Charlotte Knights and Durham Bulls. Additionally, North Carolina has minor league teams in other team sports including soccer and ice hockey, most notably North Carolina FC and the Charlotte Checkers, both of which play in the second tier of their respective sports.\nIn addition to professional team sports, North Carolina has a strong affiliation with NASCAR and stock-car racing, with Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord hosting two Cup Series races every year. Charlotte also hosts the NASCAR Hall of Fame, while Concord is the home of several top-flight racing teams, including Hendrick Motorsports, Roush Fenway Racing, GMS Racing, Stewart-Haas Racing, and Chip Ganassi Racing. Numerous other tracks around North Carolina host races from low-tier NASCAR circuits as well.\nGolf is a popular summertime leisure activity, and North Carolina has hosted several important professional golf tournaments. Pinehurst Resort in Pinehurst has hosted a PGA Championship, Ryder Cup, two U.S. Opens, and one U.S. Women's Open. The Wells Fargo Championship is a regular stop on the PGA Tour and is held at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, and Quail Hollow has also played host to the PGA Championship. The Wyndham Championship is played annually in Greensboro at Sedgefield Country Club.\nCollege sports are also popular in North Carolina, with 18 schools competing at the Division I level. The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is headquartered in Greensboro, and both the ACC Football Championship Game (Charlotte) and the ACC men's basketball tournament (Greensboro) were most recently held in North Carolina. Additionally, the city of Charlotte is home to the National Junior College Athletics Association's (NJCAA) headquarters. College basketball is very popular in North Carolina, buoyed by the Tobacco Road rivalries between ACC members North Carolina, Duke, North Carolina State, and Wake Forest. The ACC Championship Game and the Duke's Mayo Bowl are held annually in Charlotte's Bank of America Stadium, featuring teams from the ACC and the Southeastern Conference. Additionally, the state has hosted the NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four on two occasions, in Greensboro in 1974 and in Charlotte in 1994.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["191890", "21650"], "permutation_1": ["21650", "191890"], "permutation_2": ["191890", "21650"], "permutation_3": ["21650", "191890"]}
{"id": "2hop__18025_34455", "docs_added": {"2174": "Arsenal F.C.\nAssociation football club in England\nFootball club\nThe Arsenal Football Club, commonly known as simply Arsenal, is a professional football club based in Islington, North London, England. They compete in the Premier League, the top tier of English football. In domestic football, Arsenal have won 13 league titles (including one unbeaten title), a record 14 FA Cups, 2 League Cups, 17 FA Community Shields, and a Football League Centenary Trophy. In European football, they have one European Cup Winners' Cup and one Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. In terms of trophies won, it is the third-most successful club in English football.\nArsenal was the first club from southern England to join the Football League in 1893, and it reached the First Division in 1904. Relegated only once, in 1913, it continues the longest streak in the top division, and has won the second-most top-flight matches in English football history. In the 1930s, Arsenal won five League Championships and two FA Cups, and another FA Cup and two Championships after the war. In 1970\u201371, it won its first League and FA Cup double. Between 1989 and 2005, they won five league titles and five FA Cups, including two more doubles. They completed the 20th century with the highest average league position. Between 1998 and 2017, Arsenal qualified for the UEFA Champions League for an English football record nineteen consecutive seasons.\nIn 1886, munitions workers at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich founded the club as Dial Square. In 1913, the club crossed the city to Arsenal Stadium in Highbury, becoming close neighbours of Tottenham Hotspur, and creating the North London derby. Herbert Chapman won the club its first silverware, and his legacy enabled a trophy-laden period in the 1930s. He helped introduce the WM formation, floodlights, and shirt numbers; he also added the white sleeves and brighter red to the club's jersey. Ars\u00e8ne Wenger is the club's longest-serving manager and has won the most trophies. He won a record seven FA Cups, and his third and final title-winning team set an English record for the longest top-flight unbeaten league run at 49 games between 2003 and 2004, receiving the nickname The Invincibles.\nIn 2006, the club moved to the nearby Emirates Stadium. With an annual revenue of \u00a3367.1m in the 2021\u201322 season, Arsenal was estimated to be worth US$2.26 billion by \"Forbes\", making it the world's tenth-most valuable football club, while it is one of the most followed on social media. The motto of the club is \"Victoria Concordia Crescit\", Latin for \"Victory Through Harmony\".\nHistory.\n1886\u20131912: Dial Square to Royal Arsenal.\nIn October 1886, Scotsman David Danskin and fifteen fellow munitions workers in Woolwich formed Dial Square Football Club, named after a workshop at the heart of the Royal Arsenal complex. Each member contributed sixpence, and Danskin also added three shillings to help form the club. Dial Square played their first match on 11 December 1886 against the Eastern Wanderers and won 6\u20130. The club had been renamed Royal Arsenal by January 1887, and its first home was Plumstead Common, though they spent most of their time playing at the Manor Ground. Their first trophies were the Kent Senior Cup and London Charity Cup in 1889\u201390 and the London Senior Cup in 1890\u201391; these were the only county association trophies Arsenal won during their time in South East London. In 1891, Royal Arsenal became the first London club to turn professional.\nRoyal Arsenal was renamed for the second time upon becoming a limited liability company in 1893. They registered their new name, Woolwich Arsenal, with the Football League when the club ascended later that year. Woolwich Arsenal was the first southern member of the Football League, starting out in the Second Division and reaching the First Division in 1904. Falling attendances, due to financial difficulties among the munitions workers and the arrival of more accessible football clubs elsewhere in the city, led the club close to bankruptcy by 1910. Businessmen Henry Norris and William Hall became involved in the club, and sought to move them elsewhere.\n1912\u20131925: Bank of England club.\nIn 1913, soon after relegation back to the Second Division, the club moved across the river to the new Arsenal Stadium in Highbury. In 1919, the Football League controversially voted to promote The Arsenal, instead of relegated local rivals Tottenham Hotspur, into the newly enlarged First Division, despite only finishing fifth in the Second Division's last pre-war season of 1914\u201315. Later that year, The Arsenal started dropping \"The\" in official documents, gradually shifting its name for the final time towards Arsenal, as it is generally known today.\nWith a new home and First Division football, attendances were more than double those at the Manor Ground, and Arsenal's budget grew rapidly. With record-breaking spending and gate receipts, Arsenal quickly became known as the Bank of England club.\n1925\u20131934: Herbert Chapman's legendary Gunners.\nArsenal's location and record-breaking salary offer lured star Huddersfield Town manager Herbert Chapman in 1925. Over the next five years, Chapman built a revolutionary new Arsenal. Firstly, he appointed an enduring new trainer, Tom Whittaker who would one day rise to become a fabled Arsenal manager himself. With the help of player Charlie Buchan, implemented the nascent WM formation which would serve as a stable bedrock to his outfit. He also captured generational young talents such as Cliff Bastin and Eddie Hapgood, whilst also lavishing Highbury's high income on stars such as David Jack and Alex James.\nTransformed, Chapman's Arsenal claimed their first national trophy, the FA Cup in 1930, and League Championships followed in 1930\u201331 and 1932\u201333. Chapman also presided over off-pitch changes: white sleeves and shirt numbers were added to the kit; a Tube station was named after the club; and the first of two opulent Art Deco stands was completed, with some of the first floodlights in English football. Suddenly, in the middle of the 1933\u201334 season, Chapman died of pneumonia.\n1934\u20131947: Shaw, Allison and the Second World War.\nChapman's death meant work was left to his colleagues Joe Shaw and George Allison, with both proving to be shrewd and consummate custodians of Chapman's excellent Arsenal team, seeing out a hat-trick of league wins with the 1933\u201334, 1934\u201335, and 1937\u201338 titles, and then furthermore winning the 1936 FA Cup.\nWorld War II meant the Football League was suspended for seven years. While Arsenal were paraded by the nation as a symbol of solidarity with war efforts, the war took a huge toll on the team as the club had had more players killed than any top flight club. Furthermore, debt from reconstructing an ambitious North Bank Stand redevelopment greatly bled Arsenal's resources.\n1947\u20131962: Tom Whittaker's meteoric Gunners.\nDespite this period of turbulence and churn, Arsenal returned to win the league in the second post-war season of 1947\u201348. This was Tom Whittaker's first season as manager, and meant the club equalled the champions of England record. Whittaker, despite his disarming humble and modest disposition, was oft-referred to as the \"brains\" behind charismatic Chapman's legendary Arsenal side. He gathered a successful and highly skilled Arsenal side in spite of greatly limited resources, with a fiery and expansive style that drove great fanfare at the time.\nThey won a third FA Cup in 1950, and then won a record-breaking seventh championship in 1952\u201353 making Arsenal the most successful team in English history at the time.\n1962\u20131984: Billy Wright, Bertie Mee and Terry Neill's cohorts.\nArsenal were not to win the League or the FA Cup for another 18 years. The '53 Champions squad had aged, and the club failed to attract strong enough replacements. Although Arsenal were competitive during these years, their fortunes had waned; the club spent most of the 1950s and 1960s in mid-table mediocrity. Even former England captain Billy Wright could not bring the club any success as manager, in a stint between 1962 and 1966.\nArsenal tentatively appointed club physiotherapist Bertie Mee as acting manager in 1966. With new assistant Don Howe and new players such as Bob McNab and George Graham, Mee led Arsenal to their first League Cup finals, in 1967\u201368 and 1968\u201369. Next season saw a breakthrough, with Arsenal's first competitive European trophy, the 1969\u201370 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. The season after, Arsenal achieved an even greater triumph with their first League and FA Cup double, and a new champions of England record. This marked a premature high point of the decade; the Double-winning side was soon broken up and the rest of the decade was characterised by a series of near misses, with Arsenal finishing as FA Cup runners up in 1972, and First Division runners-up in 1972\u201373.\nFormer player Terry Neill succeeded Mee in 1976. At the age of 34, he became the youngest Arsenal manager to date. With new signings like Malcolm Macdonald and Pat Jennings, and a crop of talent in the side like Liam Brady and Frank Stapleton, the club reached a trio of FA Cup finals (1978 FA Cup, 1979 FA Cup and 1980 FA Cup), and lost the 1980 European Cup Winners' Cup Final on penalties. The club's only trophy during this time was the 1979 FA Cup, achieved with a last-minute 3\u20132 victory over Manchester United, in a final is widely regarded as a classic.\n1984\u20131996: George Graham's Arsenal.\nOne of Mee's double winners, George Graham, returned as manager in 1986, with Arsenal winning their first League Cup in 1987, Graham's first season in charge. New signings Nigel Winterburn, Lee Dixon and Steve Bould had joined the club by 1988 to complete the \"famous Back Four\", led by homegrown player Tony Adams. Graham's credo of prioritising defensive excellence seemingly clashed with the club's traditionally expansive motifs and many had skepticism whether it would work with the young squad at the club in that time period; however, his methods quickly gained a cult following after initial successes.\nThe side immediately won the 1988 Football League Centenary Trophy, and followed it with the 1988\u201389 Football League title, snatched with a last-minute goal in the final game of the season against fellow title challengers Liverpool. Graham's Arsenal won another title in 1990\u201391, losing only one match, won the FA Cup and League Cup double in 1993, and the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1994. Graham's reputation was tarnished when he was found to have taken kickbacks from agent Rune Hauge for signing certain players, and he was dismissed in 1995. His replacement, Bruce Rioch, lasted for only one season, leaving the club after a dispute with the board of directors.\n1996\u20132018: Arsene Wenger years.\nThe club metamorphosed during the tenure of French manager Ars\u00e8ne Wenger, who was appointed in 1996. Attacking football, an overhaul of dietary and fitness practices, and elite scouting defined his reign. Accumulating key players from Wenger's homeland, such as Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry, Arsenal won a second League and Cup double in 1997\u201398 and a third in 2001\u201302. In addition, the club reached the final of the 1999\u20132000 UEFA Cup, were victorious in the 2003 and 2005 FA Cup finals, and won the Premier League in 2003\u201304 without losing a single match, an achievement which earned the side the nickname \"The Invincibles\". This feat came within a run of 49 league matches unbeaten from 7 May 2003 to 24 October 2004, a national record.\nArsenal finished in either first or second place in the league in eight of Wenger's first nine seasons at the club, although they never won the title in two consecutive seasons.\nThe club had never progressed beyond the quarter-finals of the Champions League until 2005\u201306; in that season, they became the first club from London to reach the final in the competition's fifty-year history, but were beaten 2\u20131 by Barcelona. In July 2006, they moved into the Emirates Stadium, after 93 years at Highbury.\nArsenal reached the finals of the 2007 and 2011 League Cups, losing 2\u20131 to Chelsea and Birmingham City respectively. The club had not gained a trophy since the 2005 FA Cup until, spearheaded by club record acquisition Mesut \u00d6zil, Arsenal beat Hull City in the 2014 FA Cup Final, coming back from a 2\u20130 deficit to win the match 3\u20132. A year later, Arsenal completed another victorious FA Cup campaign, and became the most successful club in the tournament's history by winning their 13th FA Cup in 2016\u201317. However, in that same season Arsenal finished fifth in the league, the first time they had finished outside the top four since before Wenger arrived in 1996. In his 21st and final season, Arsenal under Arsene Wenger finished sixth and won the FA Community Shield. Wenger departed Arsenal following the end of the season on 13 May 2018.\n2018\u20132020: post-Wenger revolution.\nAfter conducting an overhaul in the club's operating model to coincide with Wenger's departure, Spaniard Unai Emery was named as the club's new head coach on 23 May 2018. He became the club's first ever 'head coach' and second manager from outside the United Kingdom. In Emery's first season, Arsenal finished fifth in the Premier League and as runner-up in the Europa League. On 29 November 2019, Emery was dismissed as manager and former player and assistant first team coach Freddie Ljungberg was appointed as interim head coach.\n2020\u2013: Mikel Arteta era.\nOn 20 December 2019, Arsenal appointed former club captain Mikel Arteta as the new head coach. Arsenal finished the 2019\u201320 season in eighth, their lowest finish since 1994\u201395, but beat Chelsea 2\u20131 to earn a record-extending 14th FA Cup win. After the season, Arteta's title was changed from head coach to manager. On 18 April 2021, Arsenal were announced as a founding club of the breakaway European competition The Super League; they withdrew from the competition two days later amid near-universal condemnation. Arsenal finished the 2020\u201321 season in eighth place once again, not qualifying for a European competition for the first time in 26 years. The season after (2021\u201322), Arteta had assembled the youngest outfit in the Premier League with an average starting age of 24 years and 308 days \u2013 more than a whole year younger than the next team. They finished in fifth in the Premier League that year, and qualified for next season's UEFA Europa League.\nBy the 2022\u201323 season, Arsenal returned to the Champions League by coming second to Manchester City, setting a record for most time spent on top of the table without actually winning the league, ending on 84 points. In the 2023\u201324 season, Arsenal beat Manchester City to claim their 17th FA Community Shield, they finished second in the Premier League to Manchester City with an improved 89 points from their previous campaign.\nCrest.\nUnveiled in 1888, Royal Arsenal's first crest featured three cannons viewed from above, pointing northwards, similar to the coat of arms of the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich (nowadays transferred to the coat of arms of the Royal Borough of Greenwich). These can sometimes be mistaken for chimneys, but the presence of a carved lion's head and a cascabel on each are clear indicators that they are cannons. This was dropped after the move to Highbury in 1913, only to be reinstated in 1922, when the club adopted a crest featuring a single cannon, pointing eastwards, with the club's nickname, \"The Gunners\", inscribed alongside it; this crest only lasted until 1925, when the cannon was reversed to point westward and its barrel slimmed down.\nIn 1949, the club unveiled a modernised crest featuring the same style of cannon below the club's name, set in blackletter typography, and above the coat of arms of the Metropolitan Borough of Islington and a scroll inscribed with the club's newly adopted Latin motto, \"Victoria Concordia Crescit\" (VCC) \u2013 \"victory comes from harmony\" \u2013 coined by the club's programme editor Harry Homer. For the first time, the crest was rendered in colour, which varied slightly over the crest's lifespan, finally becoming red, gold and green. Because of the numerous revisions of the crest, Arsenal were unable to copyright it. Although the club had managed to register the crest as a trademark, and had fought (and eventually won) a long legal battle with a local street trader who sold \"unofficial\" Arsenal merchandise, Arsenal eventually sought a more comprehensive legal protection. Therefore, in 2002 they introduced a new crest featuring more modern curved lines and a simplified style, which was copyrightable.\nThe cannon once again faces east, and the club's name is written in a sans-serif typeface above the cannon. Green was replaced by dark blue. The new crest was criticised by some supporters; the Arsenal Independent Supporters' Association claimed that the club had ignored much of Arsenal's history and tradition with such a radical modern design, and that fans had not been properly consulted on the issue.\nUntil the 1960s, a badge was worn on the playing shirt only for high-profile matches such as FA Cup finals, usually in the form of a monogram of the club's initials in red on a white background.\nThe monogram theme was developed into an Art Deco-style badge on which the letters A and C framed a football rather than the letter F, the whole set within a hexagonal border. This early example of a corporate logo, introduced as part of Herbert Chapman's rebranding of the club in the 1930s, was used not only on Cup Final shirts but as a design feature throughout Highbury Stadium, including above the main entrance and inlaid in the floors.\nFrom 1967, a white cannon was regularly worn on the shirts, until replaced by the club crest, sometimes with the addition of the nickname \"The Gunners\", in the 1990s.\nIn the 2011\u201312 season, Arsenal celebrated their 125th anniversary. The celebrations included a modified version of the current crest worn on their jerseys for the season. The crest was all-white, surrounded by 15 oak leaves to the right and 15 laurel leaves to the left. The oak leaves represent the 15 founding members of the club who met at the Royal Oak pub. The 15 laurel leaves represent the design detail on the six pence pieces paid by the founding fathers to establish the club. The laurel leaves also represent strength. To complete the crest, 1886 and 2011 are shown on either sides of the motto \"Forward\" at the bottom of the crest.\nStarting in the 2021\u201322 season, Adidas reintroduced the cannon-only crest on that season's away kit. It was the first time it had been seen on an Arsenal shirt since 1991. It would remain in use on the away kit in 2022\u201323 and in 2023\u201324 would be added to the third kit as well, before being used on all three kits in 2024\u201325 - marking the first time the crest would not be seen on an Arsenal kit since its introduction in 2002.\nColours.\n Arsenal's original home colours. The team wore a similar kit (but with redcurrant socks) during the 2005\u201306 season.\nWhite sleeves first appeared on the shirt in 1933.\nYellow shirt with blue trim and blue shorts are Arsenal's traditional away colours.\nSince the 1990s, Blue has been prominently used for either the away or third kit.\nFor much of Arsenal's history, their home colours have been bright red shirts with white sleeves and white shorts, though this has not always been the case. The choice of red is in recognition of a charitable donation from Nottingham Forest, soon after Arsenal's foundation in 1886. Two of Dial Square's founding members, Fred Beardsley and Morris Bates, were former Forest players who had moved to Woolwich for work. As they put together the first team in the area, no kit could be found, so Beardsley and Bates wrote home for help and received a set of kit and a ball. The shirt was redcurrant, a dark shade of red, and was worn with white shorts and socks with blue and white hoops.\nIn 1933, Herbert Chapman, wanting his players to be more distinctly dressed, updated the kit, adding white sleeves and changing the shade to a brighter pillar box red. Two possibilities have been suggested for the origin of the white sleeves. One story reports that Chapman noticed a supporter in the stands wearing a red sleeveless sweater over a white shirt; another was that he was inspired by a similar outfit worn by the cartoonist Tom Webster, with whom Chapman played golf. Regardless of which story is true, the red-and-white shirts have come to define Arsenal, and the team have worn that combination ever since that time, aside from two seasons. The first was 1966\u201367, when Arsenal wore all-red shirts; this proved unpopular, and the white sleeves returned the following season. The second was 2005\u201306, the last season that Arsenal played at Highbury, when the team wore commemorative redcurrant shirts similar to those worn in 1913, their first season in the stadium; the side reverted to their normal colours at the start of the next season. In the 2008\u201309 season, Arsenal replaced the traditional all-white sleeves with red sleeves that bore a broad white stripe.\nArsenal's home colours have been the inspiration for at least three other clubs. In 1909, Sparta Prague adopted a dark red kit like the one Arsenal wore at the time; in 1938, Hibernian adopted the design of the Arsenal shirt sleeves in their own green-and-white strip. In 1941, Luis Robledo, an England-schooled founder of Santa Fe and a fan of Arsenal, selected the main colours for his newly created team. In 1920, Sporting Clube de Braga's manager returned from a game at Highbury and changed his team's green kit to a duplicate of Arsenal's red-with-white-sleeves-and-shorts, giving rise to the team's nickname of \"Os Arsenalistas\". These teams still wear those designs to this day.\nFor many years Arsenal's away colours were white or navy blue. However, in 1968 the FA banned navy shirts (they looked too similar to referees' black kit), so in the 1969\u201370 season Arsenal introduced an away kit of yellow shirts with blue shorts. This kit was worn in the 1971 FA Cup Final when Arsenal beat Liverpool to secure the double for the first time in their history. The yellow and blue strip became almost as famous as their iconic red-and-white home kit. Arsenal reached the FA Cup final again the following year wearing the red-and-white home strip and were beaten by Leeds United. Arsenal then competed in three consecutive FA Cup finals between 1978 and 1980 wearing their \"lucky\" yellow and blue strip, which remained the club's away strip until the release of a green and navy away kit in 1982\u201383. The following season, Arsenal returned to the yellow and blue scheme, albeit with a darker shade of blue than before.\nWhen Nike took over from Adidas as Arsenal's kit provider in 1994, Arsenal's away colours were again changed to two-tone blue shirts and shorts. Since the advent of the lucrative replica kit market, the away kits have been changed regularly, with Arsenal usually releasing both away and third choice kits. During this period the designs have been either all blue designs, or variations on the traditional yellow and blue, such as the metallic gold and navy strip used in the 2001\u201302 season, the yellow and dark grey used from 2005 to 2007, and the yellow and maroon of 2010 to 2013.\nUntil 2014, the away kit was changed every season, and the outgoing away kit became the third-choice kit if a new home kit was being introduced in the same year.\nAfter Puma began manufacturing Arsenal's kits in 2014, new home, away and third kits were released every season. In the 2017\u201318 season, Puma released a new colour scheme for the away and third kits. The away kit was a light blue, which faded to a darker blue near the bottom, while the third kit was black with red highlight. Puma returned to the original colour scheme for the 2018\u201319 season. From the 2019\u201320 season Arsenal's kits are manufactured by Adidas.\nStadiums.\nBefore joining the Football League, Arsenal played briefly on Plumstead Common, then at the Manor Ground in Plumstead, then spent three years between 1890 and 1893 at the nearby Invicta Ground. Upon joining the Football League in 1893, the club returned to the Manor Ground and installed stands and terracing, upgrading it from just a field. Arsenal continued to play their home games there for the next twenty years (with two exceptions in the 1894\u201395 season), until the move to north London in 1913.\nWidely referred to as Highbury, Arsenal Stadium was the club's home from September 1913 until May 2006. The original stadium was designed by the renowned football architect Archibald Leitch, and had a design common to many football grounds in the UK at the time, with a single covered stand and three open-air banks of terracing. The entire stadium was given a massive overhaul in the 1930s: new Art Deco West and East stands were constructed, opening in 1932 and 1936 respectively, and a roof was added to the North Bank terrace, which was bombed during the Second World War and not restored until 1954.\nHighbury could hold more than 60,000 spectators at its peak, and had a capacity of 57,000 until the early 1990s. The Taylor Report and Premier League regulations obliged Arsenal to convert Highbury to an all-seater stadium in time for the 1993\u201394 season, thus reducing the capacity to 38,419 seated spectators. This capacity had to be reduced further during Champions League matches to accommodate additional advertising boards, so much so that for two seasons, from 1998 to 2000, Arsenal played Champions League home matches at Wembley, which could house more than 70,000 spectators.\nExpansion of Highbury was restricted because the East Stand had been designated as a Grade II listed building and the other three stands were close to residential properties. These limitations prevented the club from maximising matchday revenue during the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century, putting them in danger of being left behind in the football boom of that time. After considering various options, in 2000 Arsenal proposed building a new 60,361-capacity stadium at Ashburton Grove, since named the Emirates Stadium, about 500\u00a0metres south-west of Highbury. The project was initially delayed by red tape and rising costs, and construction was completed in July 2006, in time for the start of the 2006\u201307 season. The stadium was named after its sponsors, the airline company Emirates, with whom the club signed the largest sponsorship deal in English football history, worth around \u00a3100\u00a0million. Some fans referred to the ground as Ashburton Grove, or the Grove, as they did not agree with corporate sponsorship of stadium names. The stadium will be officially known as Emirates Stadium until at least 2028, and the airline will be the club's shirt sponsor until at least 2024. From the start of the 2010\u201311 season on, the stands of the stadium have been officially known as North Bank, East Stand, West Stand and Clock end. The capacity of the Emirates now stands at 60,704.\nArsenal's players train at the Shenley Training Centre in Hertfordshire, a purpose-built facility which opened in 1999.\nBefore that the club used facilities on a nearby site owned by the University College of London Students' Union. Until 1961 they had trained at Highbury.\nArsenal's Academy under-18 teams play their home matches at Shenley, while the reserves play their games at Meadow Park, which is also the home of Boreham Wood. Both the Academy under-18 team and the reserves occasionally play their big games at the Emirates in front of a crowd reduced to only the lower west stand.\nSupporters and rivalries.\nArsenal's fanbase are referred to as \"Gooners\" \u2013 the name derived from the club's nickname \"The Gunners\". Virtually all home matches sell out; in 2007\u201308 Arsenal had the second-highest average League attendance for an English club (60,070, which was 99.5% of available capacity), and, as of 2015, the third-highest all-time average attendance. Arsenal have the seventh highest average attendance of European football clubs only behind Borussia Dortmund, Barcelona, Manchester United, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Schalke 04. The club's location, adjoining wealthy areas such as Canonbury and Barnsbury, mixed areas such as Islington, Holloway, Highbury, and the adjacent London Borough of Camden, and largely working-class areas such as Finsbury Park and Stoke Newington, has meant that Arsenal's supporters have come from a variety of social classes. Much of the Afro-Caribbean support comes from the neighbouring London Borough of Hackney and a large portion of the South Asian Arsenal supporters commute to the stadium from Wembley Park, North West of the capital. There was also traditionally a large Irish community that followed Arsenal, with the surrounding Islington and particularly the nearby Archway area having a large community of residents with Irish heritage. But Irish migration to North London is recently much lower than in the 1960s or 1970s.\nLike all major English football clubs, Arsenal have a number of domestic supporters' clubs, including the Arsenal Football Supporters' Club, which works closely with the club, and the Arsenal Independent Supporters' Association, which maintains a more independent line. The Arsenal Supporters' Trust promotes greater participation in ownership of the club by fans. The club's supporters also publish fanzines such as \"The Gooner\", \"Gunflash\" and the satirical \"Up The Arse!\"\nThere have always been Arsenal supporters outside London, and since the advent of satellite television, a supporter's attachment to a football club has become less dependent on geography. Consequently, Arsenal have a significant number of fans from beyond London and all over the world; in 2007, 24 UK, 37 Irish and 49 other overseas supporters' clubs were affiliated with the club. A 2011 report by SPORT+MARKT estimated Arsenal's global fanbase at 113\u00a0million. The club's social media activity was the fifth highest in world football during the 2014\u201315 season.\nChants.\nThe team's anthem is \"The Angel (North London Forever)\" by Louis Dunford. The song is typically played at Arsenal home games before a match.\nIn addition to the usual English football chants, Arsenal's supporters sing \"One-Nil to the Arsenal\" (to the tune of \"Go West\") and also regularly sing \"Who's that team they call the Arsenal\", \"Good Old Arsenal\" (to the tune of \"Rule, Britannia!\") and \"We're the North Bank/Clock End Highbury\". The fans also chant \"Boring, Boring Arsenal\" in self-deprecating reference to Arsenal's reputation during the 1970s and 1980s as an overly defensive, cautious team.\nRivalries.\nArsenal's longest-running and deepest rivalry is with their nearest major neighbour, Tottenham Hotspur; matches between the two are referred to as the North London derby. There also exists a rivalry between Arsenal and Chelsea. In addition, Arsenal and Manchester United developed a strong on-pitch rivalry in the late 1980s, which intensified in the early 2000s when both clubs were competing for the Premier League title.\nMascot.\nThe club mascot is Gunnersaurus Rex, a smiling, seven-foot-tall green dinosaur, who first appeared at a home match against Manchester City in August 1994 (or 1993). He is based on a drawing by then-11-year-old Peter Lovell, whose design and another similar idea won a Junior Gunners contest; his official backstory is that he hatched from an egg found during renovations at Highbury.\nThe same performer, Jerry Quy, has been inside the suit from the start; in early October 2020, as part of cost-cutting brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, the club made him redundant from that and his other part-time job in supporter liaison, together with 55 full-time employees, although they later said Gunnersaurus could return after spectators were allowed back in stadiums. An online fundraiser was begun for Quy, and Mesut \u00d6zil offered to pay his salary himself as long as he remains with Arsenal. In November 2020, in advance of COVID-19 regulations being relaxed to allow supporters to attend home games from 3 December, Arsenal announced that Gunnersaurus would return, to be played by a roster of people that could include Quy if he wished.\nOwnership and finances.\nThe largest shareholder on the Arsenal board is American sports tycoon Stan Kroenke. Kroenke first launched a bid for the club in April 2007, and faced competition for shares from Red and White Securities, which acquired its first shares from David Dein in August 2007. Red & White Securities was co-owned by Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov and London-based Iranian financier Farhad Moshiri, though Usmanov bought Moshiri's stake in 2016. Kroenke came close to the 30% takeover threshold in November 2009, when he increased his holding to 18,594 shares (29.9%). In April 2011, Kroenke achieved a full takeover by purchasing the shareholdings of Nina Bracewell-Smith and Danny Fiszman, taking his shareholding to 62.89%. In May 2017, Kroenke owned 41,721 shares (67.05%) and Red & White Securities owned 18,695 shares (30.04%). In January 2018, Kroenke expanded his ownership by buying twenty-two more shares, taking his total ownership to 67.09%. In August 2018, Kroenke bought out Usmanov for \u00a3550m. Now owning more than 90% of the shares, he had the required stake to complete the buyout of the remaining shares and become the sole owner. There has been criticism of Arsenal's poor performance since Kroenke took over, which has been attributed to his ownership. Ivan Gazidis was the club's Chief executive from 2009 to 2018.\nArsenal's parent company, Arsenal Holdings plc, operates as an unlisted public limited company, whose ownership is considerably different from that of other football clubs. Only 62,219 shares in Arsenal have been issued, and they are not traded on a public exchange such as the FTSE or AIM; instead, they are traded relatively infrequently on the ICAP Securities and Derivatives Exchange, a specialist market. On 29 May 2017, a single share in Arsenal had a mid price of \u00a318,000, which sets the club's market capitalisation value at approximately \u00a31,119.9m. Most football clubs are not listed on an exchange, which makes direct comparisons of their values difficult. Consultants Brand Finance valued the club's brand and intangible assets at $703m in 2015, and consider Arsenal an AAA global brand. Business magazine \"Forbes\" valued Arsenal as a whole at $2.238\u00a0billion (\u00a31.69\u00a0billion) in 2018, ranked third in English football. Research by the Henley Business School ranked Arsenal second in English football, modelling the club's value at \u00a31.118\u00a0billion in 2015.\nArsenal's financial results for the 2019\u201320 season showed an after tax loss of \u00a347.8m, due in part to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Deloitte Football Money League is a publication that homogenises and compares clubs' annual revenue. Deloitte put Arsenal's footballing revenue in 2019 at \u00a3392.7m (\u20ac445.6m), ranking Arsenal eleventh among world football clubs. Arsenal and Deloitte both listed the match day revenue generated in 2019 by the Emirates Stadium as \u20ac109.2m (\u00a396.2m).\nIn popular culture.\nPartly due to their proximity to the Alexandra Palace transmitter, Arsenal have appeared in a number of media \"firsts\". On 22 January 1927, their match at Highbury against Sheffield United was the first English League match to be broadcast live on radio. A decade later, on 16 September 1937, an exhibition match between Arsenal's first team and the reserves was the first football match in the world to be televised live. Arsenal also featured in the first edition of the BBC's \"Match of the Day\", which screened highlights of their match against Liverpool at Anfield on 22 August 1964. Sky's coverage of Arsenal's January 2010 match against Manchester United was the first live public broadcast of a sports event on 3D television.\nAs one of the most successful teams in the country, Arsenal have often featured when football is depicted in the arts in Britain. They formed the backdrop to one of the earliest football-related novels, \"The Arsenal Stadium Mystery\" (1939), which was made into a film in the same year. The story centres on a friendly match between Arsenal and an amateur side, one of whose players is poisoned while playing. Many Arsenal players appeared as themselves in the film and manager George Allison was given a speaking part. The book \"Fever Pitch\" by Nick Hornby was an autobiographical account of Hornby's life and relationship with football, and with Arsenal in particular. Published in 1992, it formed part of the revival and rehabilitation of football in British society during the 1990s. The book was twice adapted for the cinema\u00a0\u2013 the 1997 British film focuses on Arsenal's 1988\u201389 title win, and a 2005 American version features a fan of baseball's Boston Red Sox.\nArsenal have often been stereotyped as a defensive and \"boring\" side, especially during the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1997 film \"The Full Monty\" the principal characters move forward in a line and raise their hands, deliberately mimicking the Arsenal defence's offside trap, in an attempt to co-ordinate their striptease routine.\nFifteen years later, an almost identical scene was included in the 2012 Disney science-fiction film \"John Carter\" (director and co-writer Andrew Stanton, a notable overseas supporter of the club), along with other visual cues and oblique dialogue hints and references to the club throughout the film.\nAnother film reference to the club's defence comes in the film \"Plunkett & Macleane\", in which two characters are named Dixon and Winterburn after Arsenal's long-serving full backs \u2013 the right-sided Lee Dixon and the left-sided Nigel Winterburn.\nIn August 2022, Amazon Prime Video released an eight-episode docuseries called \"\". It documented the club by spending time with the coaching staff and players behind the scenes both on and off the field throughout their 2021\u201322 season, in which they were the youngest team in the Premier League with an average starting age of 24 years and 308 days \u2013 more than a whole year younger than the next team.\nIn the community.\nIn 1985, Arsenal founded a community scheme, \"Arsenal in the Community\", which offered sporting, social inclusion, educational and charitable projects. The club support a number of charitable causes directly and in 1992 established The Arsenal Charitable Trust, which by 2006 had raised more than \u00a32 million for local causes. An ex-professional and celebrity football team associated with the club also raised money by playing charity matches. The club launched the Arsenal for Everyone initiative in 2008 as an annual celebration of the diversity of the Arsenal family. In the 2009\u201310 season Arsenal announced that they had raised a record breaking \u00a3818,897 for the Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity. The original target was \u00a3500,000. In 2022, Arsenal and Adidas partnered up to launch the \"No More Red\" campaign to support the long-standing work being done by Arsenal in the Community to help keep young people safe from knife crime and youth violence. To promote the event, the club launched an exclusive all white kit that was not commercially available and only awarded to individuals who are making a positive difference in the community.\nSave the Children has been Arsenal global charity partner since 2011 and have worked together in numerous projects to improve safety and well-being for vulnerable children in London and abroad. On 3 September 2016 The Arsenal Foundation has donated \u00a31m to build football pitches for children in London, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan and Somalia thanks to The Arsenal Foundation Legends Match against Milan Glorie at the Emirates Stadium. On 3 June 2018, Arsenal played Real Madrid in the Corazon Classic Match 2018 at the Bernabeu, where the proceeds went to Realtoo Real Madrid Foundation projects that are aimed at the most vulnerable children. In addition there will be a return meeting on 8 September 2018 at the Emirates stadium where proceeds will go towards the Arsenal foundation.\nDuring 2007 in Pleiku, Vietnam, Arsenal partnered with the JMG Academy and the Hoang Anh Gia Lai Corporation to found a youth academy for the V.League 1 side Ho\u00e0ng Anh Lai Lai, which saw a selection of Vietnam-based players train with Arsenal; the club ended their partnership with the club in 2017. Additionally, the club formally partnered with a variety of clubs overseas including Virginia based Richmond Strikers and Cairo based Wadi Degla.\n \"As of 31 January 2025\"\nPlayers.\nFirst-team squad.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Football squad player/styles.css\" />\nOut on loan.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Football squad player/styles.css\" />\n \"As of 3 February 2025\"\n Players with at least one first-team appearance for Arsenal.\nAcademy.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Football squad player/styles.css\" />\nOut on loan.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Football squad player/styles.css\" />\nStatistics and records.\nArsenal's tally of 13 League Championships is the third highest in English football, after Manchester United (20) and Liverpool (19),\nand they were the first club to reach a seventh and an eighth League Championship. As of June 2020, they are one of seven teams, the others being Manchester United, Blackburn Rovers, Chelsea, Manchester City, Leicester City and Liverpool, to have won the Premier League since its formation in 1992.\nThey hold the highest number of FA Cup trophies, with 14. The club is one of only six clubs to have won the FA Cup twice in succession, in 2002 and 2003, and 2014 and 2015.\nArsenal have achieved three League and FA Cup \"Doubles\" (in 1971, 1998 and 2002), a feat only previously achieved by Manchester United (in 1994, 1996 and 1999).\nThey were the first side in English football to complete the FA Cup and League Cup double, in 1993.\nArsenal were also the first London club to reach the final of the UEFA Champions League, in 2006, losing the final 2\u20131 to Barcelona.\nArsenal have one of the best top-flight records in history, having finished below fourteenth only seven times. They have won the second most top flight league matches in English football, and have also accumulated the second most points, whether calculated by two points per win or by the contemporary points value. They have been in the top flight for the most consecutive seasons (98 as of 2023\u201324). Arsenal also have the highest average league finishing position for the 20th century, with an average league placement of 8.5.\nArsenal hold the record for the longest run of unbeaten League matches (49 between May 2003 and October 2004). This included all 38 matches of their title-winning 2003\u201304 season, when Arsenal became only the second club to finish a top-flight campaign unbeaten, after Preston North End (who played only 22 matches) in 1888\u201389. They also hold the record for the longest top flight win streak. Arsenal set a Champions League record during the 2005\u201306 season by going ten matches without conceding a goal, beating the previous best of seven set by AC Milan. They went a record total stretch of 995\u00a0minutes without letting an opponent score; the streak ended in the final, when Samuel Eto'o scored a 76th-minute equaliser for Barcelona.\nDavid O'Leary holds the record for Arsenal appearances, having played 722 first-team matches between 1975 and 1993. Fellow centre half and former captain Tony Adams comes second, having played 669 times. The record for a goalkeeper is held by David Seaman, with 564 appearances. Thierry Henry is the club's top goalscorer with 228 goals in all competitions between 1999 and 2012; he surpassed Ian Wright's total of 185 in October 2005. Wright's record had stood since September 1997, when he overtook the longstanding total of 178 goals set by winger Cliff Bastin in 1939. Henry also holds the club record for goals scored in the League, with 175, a record that had been held by Bastin until February 2006. Declan Rice holds the Arsenal record signing price after a deal with West Ham United was completed in July 2023, for an initial \u00a3100 million. This easily surpassed the former record of \u00a372 million for Nicolas Pepe.\nArsenal's record home attendance is 73,707, for a UEFA Champions League match against Lens on 25 November 1998 at Wembley, where the club formerly played home European matches because of the limits on Highbury's capacity. The record attendance for an Arsenal match at Highbury is 73,295, for a 0\u20130 draw against Sunderland on 9 March 1935, while that at Emirates Stadium is 60,161, for a 2\u20132 draw with Manchester United on 3 November 2007.\nHonours.\nArsenal's first ever silverware was won as the Royal Arsenal in 1890. The Kent Junior Cup, won by Royal Arsenal's reserves, was the club's first trophy, while the first team's first trophy came three weeks later when they won the Kent Senior Cup. Their first national senior honour came in 1930, when they won the FA Cup. The club enjoyed further success in the 1930s, winning another FA Cup and five Football League First Division titles. Arsenal won their first league and cup double in the 1970\u201371 season and twice repeated the feat, in 1997\u201398 and 2001\u201302, as well as winning a cup double of the FA Cup and League Cup in 1992\u201393. The 2003\u201304 season was the only 38-match league season unbeaten in English football history. A special gold version of the Premier League trophy was commissioned and presented to the club the following season.\nOther.\nWhen the FA Cup was the only national football association competition available to Arsenal, the other football association competitions were County Cups, and they made up many of the matches the club played during a season. Arsenal's first first-team trophy was a County Cup, the inaugural Kent Senior Cup. Arsenal became ineligible for the London Cups when the club turned professional in 1891, and rarely participated in County Cups after this. Due to the club's original location within the borders of both the London and Kent Football Associations, Arsenal competed in and won trophies organised by each.\nDuring Arsenal's history, the club has participated in and won a variety of pre-season and friendly honours. These include Arsenal's own pre-season competition the Emirates Cup, begun in 2007. During the wars, previous competitions were widely suspended and the club had to participate in wartime competitions. During WWII, Arsenal won several of these.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "11250": "Premier League\nAssociation football league\nFootball league\nThe Premier League is a professional association football league in England and the highest level of the English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Football League (EFL). Seasons usually run from August to May, with each team playing 38 matches: two against each other team, one home and one away. Most games are played on weekend afternoons, with occasional weekday evening fixtures.\nThe competition was founded as the FA Premier League on 20\u00a0February 1992, following the decision of First Division (the top-tier league from 1888 until 1992) clubs to break away from the English Football League. However, teams are still relegated to and promoted from the EFL Championship at the conclusion of each season. The Premier League is a corporation managed by a chief executive, with member clubs acting as shareholders. The Premier League takes advantage of a \u00a35\u00a0billion television rights deal, with Sky and BT Group securing the domestic rights to broadcast 128 and 32 games, respectively. This deal will rise to \u00a36.7\u00a0billion for the four seasons from 2025 to 2029. The league is projected to earn $7.2\u00a0billion in overseas TV rights from 2022 to 2025. Clubs were apportioned central payment revenues of \u00a32.4\u00a0billion in 2016\u201317, with a further \u00a3343\u00a0million in solidarity payments to EFL clubs.\nThe Premier League is the most-watched sports league in the world, broadcast in 212 territories to 643\u00a0million homes, with a potential TV audience of 4.7\u00a0billion people. For the 2023\u201324 season, the average Premier League match attendance was 38,375, second to the German Bundesliga's 39,512, whilst aggregated attendance across all matches in a 38-game season is the highest of any association football league. Most stadium occupancies are near capacity. As of 2024/25[ [update]], the Premier League is ranked first in the UEFA coefficient rankings based on performances in European competitions over the past five seasons, ahead of Spain's La\u00a0Liga. The English top-flight has produced the second-highest number of European Cup / UEFA Champions League titles, with a record six English clubs having won fifteen European cups in total.\nFifty-one clubs have competed in the Premier League since its inception in 1992: 49 from England and 2 from Wales. Seven have won the title: Manchester United (13), Manchester City (8), Chelsea (5), Arsenal (3), Blackburn Rovers (1), Leicester City (1), and Liverpool (1). Only six clubs have played in every season to date: Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United, and Tottenham Hotspur.\nHistory.\nOrigins.\nDespite major European success in the 1970s and early 1980s, the mid-to-late 1980s marked a low point for English football. Stadiums were ageing with poor facilities, hooliganism was rife, and English clubs faced a 5-year ban from European competition following the events of the 1985 Heysel Stadium disaster. The Football League First Division, the top level of English football since 1888, was behind leagues such as Italy's Serie A and Spain's La Liga in attendance and revenues, and several top English players had moved abroad.\nBy the turn of the 1990s, the downward trend was starting to reverse. At the 1990 FIFA World Cup, England reached the semi-finals; UEFA, European football's governing body, lifted the five-year ban on English clubs playing in European competitions in 1990, resulting in Manchester United lifting the Cup Winners' Cup in 1991. The Taylor Report on stadium safety standards, which proposed expensive upgrades to create all-seater stadiums in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster (between the fans of Liverpool and the fans of Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough Stadium, Sheffield, Yorkshire on 15 April 1989) was published in January 1990.\nDuring the 1980s, major English clubs began to transform into business ventures, applying commercial principles to club administration to maximise revenue. Martin Edwards of Manchester United, Irving Scholar of Tottenham Hotspur, and David Dein of Arsenal were among the leaders in this transformation. The commercial imperative led to the top clubs seeking to increase their power and revenue: the clubs in Division One threatened to break away from the Football League, and in doing so, they managed to increase their voting power and gain a more favourable financial arrangement, taking a 50% share of all television and sponsorship income in 1986. They demanded that television companies should pay more for their coverage of football matches, and revenue from television grew in importance. The Football League received \u00a36.3\u00a0million for a two-year agreement in 1986, but by 1988, in a deal agreed with ITV, the price rose to \u00a344\u00a0million over four years, with the leading clubs taking 75% of the cash. According to Scholar, who was involved in the negotiations of television deals, each of the First Division clubs received only around \u00a325,000 per year from television rights before 1986, this increased to around \u00a350,000 in the 1986 negotiation, then to \u00a3600,000 in 1988. The 1988 negotiations were conducted under the threat of ten clubs leaving to form a \"super league\", but they were eventually persuaded to stay, with the top clubs taking the lion's share of the deal. The negotiations also convinced the bigger clubs that, in order to receive enough votes, they needed to take the whole of the First Division with them instead of a smaller \"super league\". By the beginning of the 1990s, the big clubs again considered breaking away, especially now that they had to fund the cost of stadium upgrades as proposed by the Taylor Report.\nIn 1990, the managing director of London Weekend Television (LWT), Greg Dyke, met with the representatives of the \"big five\" football clubs in England (Manchester United, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur, Everton, and Arsenal) over a dinner. The meeting was to pave the way for a breakaway from the Football League. Dyke believed that it would be more lucrative for LWT if only the larger clubs in the country were featured on national television and wanted to establish whether the clubs would be interested in a larger share of television rights money. The five clubs agreed with the suggestion and decided to press ahead with it; however, the league would have no credibility without the backing of the Football Association, and so David Dein of Arsenal held talks to see whether the FA were receptive to the idea. The FA did not have an amicable relationship with the Football League at the time and considered it a way to weaken the Football League's position. The FA released a report in June 1991, \"Blueprint for the Future of Football\", that supported the plan for the Premier League, with the FA as the ultimate authority that would oversee the breakaway league.\nFounding and Manchester United dominance (1990s).\nAt the close of the 1990\u20131991 season, a proposal was tabled for the establishment of a new league that would bring more money into the game overall. The Founder Members Agreement, signed on 17 July 1991, by the game's top-flight clubs, established the basic principles for setting up the FA Premier League. The newly formed top division was to have commercial independence from the Football Association and the Football League, giving the FA Premier League licence to negotiate its own broadcast and sponsorship agreements. The argument given at the time was that the extra income would allow English clubs to compete with teams across Europe. Although Dyke played a significant role in the creation of the Premier League, he and ITV (of which LWT was part) lost out in the bidding for broadcast rights: BSkyB won with a bid of \u00a3304\u00a0million over five years, with the BBC awarded the highlights package broadcast on \"Match of the Day\".\nLuton Town, Notts County, and West Ham United were the three teams relegated from the old First Division at the end of the 1991\u201392 season, and did not take part in the inaugural Premier League season. They were replaced by Ipswich Town, Middlesbrough, and Blackburn Rovers, promoted from the old Second Division. The 22 First Division clubs resigned en masse from the Football League in 1992, and on 27 May that year, the FA Premier League was formed as a limited company, working out of an office at the Football Association's then headquarters in Lancaster Gate. The 22 inaugural members of the new Premier League were:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nThis meant a break-up of the 104-year-old Football League that had operated until then with four divisions; the Premier League would operate with a single division and the Football League with three. There was no change in competition format; the same number of teams competed in the top flight, and promotion and relegation between the Premier League and the new First Division remained the same as the old First and Second Divisions, with three teams relegated from the league and three promoted.\nThe league held its first season in 1992\u201393. It was composed of 22 clubs for that season (reduced to 20 in the 1995\u201396 season). The first Premier League goal was scored by Brian Deane of Sheffield United in a 2\u20131 win against Manchester United.\nManchester United won the inaugural edition of the new league, ending a twenty-six year wait to be crowned champions of England. Bolstered by this breakthrough, United immediately became the competition's dominant team, winning seven of the first nine trophies, two League and FA Cup 'doubles' and a European treble, initially under a team of hardened veterans such as Bryan Robson, Steve Bruce, Paul Ince, Mark Hughes, and Eric Cantona, before Cantona, Bruce, and Roy Keane led a young, dynamic new team filled with the Class of 92, a group of young players including David Beckham who came through the Manchester United Academy.\nBetween 1993 and 1997, Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United came close to challenging Manchester United's early dominance, both of whom housed Alan Shearer up front. Blackburn won the 1994\u201395 FA Premier League and Newcastle led the title charge over United for much of the 1995\u201396 season. As the decade closed, Arsenal replicated Manchester United's dominance by winning the League and FA Cup double in 1997\u201398, and together they would form a duopoly over the league between 1997 and 2003.\nEmergence of the \"Big Four\" (2000s).\nThe 2000s saw Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Manchester United dominate the Premier League, forming the so-called \"Big Four\". Manchester United won five league titles (1999\u20132000, 2000\u201301, 2002\u201303, 2006\u201307, 2007\u201308), Arsenal claimed two (2001\u201302, 2003\u201304), while Chelsea rose to prominence with three under Jos\u00e9 Mourinho (2004\u201305, 2005\u201306, 2009\u201310). Arsenal\u2019s unbeaten 2003\u201304 season earned them the nickname \"The Invincibles,\" the only team to achieve this in the Premier League era. Only three other clubs secured a top-four finish during the decade: Newcastle United (2001\u201302, 2002\u201303), Everton (2004\u201305), and Tottenham Hotspur (2009\u201310). However, the Big Four consistently dominated the top spots, with three of them finishing in the top four every season from 1999\u20132000 to 2009\u201310.\nPremier League clubs were also highly competitive in Europe. Between 2005 and 2012, an English side reached seven of eight Champions League finals, with Liverpool (2005), Manchester United (2008), and Chelsea (2012) winning. Arsenal (2006), Liverpool (2007), Chelsea (2008), and Manchester United (2009, 2011) finished as runners-up. Leeds United were the only non-Big Four side to reach the semi-finals, doing so in 2000\u201301. Three English clubs made the semi-finals in 2006\u201307, 2007\u201308, and 2008\u201309\u2014a feat only matched twice by other leagues.\nIn the UEFA Cup/Europa League, four Premier League teams reached the final between 2000 and 2010, with only Liverpool lifting the trophy in 2001. Arsenal (2000), Middlesbrough (2006), and Fulham (2010) all fell short.\nThe decade saw record-breaking points tallies, including Chelsea\u2019s 95-point haul in 2004\u201305 and Manchester United\u2019s three consecutive title wins (2006\u201307 to 2008\u201309). The rise of billionaire owners, including Roman Abramovich at Chelsea and Sheikh Mansour at Manchester City (2008), began reshaping the league\u2019s financial landscape, setting the stage for a more competitive 2010s.\nEmergence of the \"Big Six\" (2010s).\nAfter 2009, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City regularly broke into the top four, forming a \"Big Six\". In 2009\u201310, Tottenham finished fourth, the first new club to do so since Everton five years earlier.\nDespite growing competition, criticism remains over the financial gap between elite clubs and the rest of the league. Manchester City's 2011\u201312 title win was the first by a club outside the \"Big Four\" since Blackburn Rovers in 1994\u201395. That season also saw Chelsea and Liverpool finish outside the top four for the first time since 1994\u201395.\nWith only four UEFA Champions League spots available, competition among the \"Big Six\" intensified. In the five seasons after 2011\u201312, Manchester United and Liverpool missed the top four three times, and Chelsea finished 10th in 2015\u201316. Arsenal\u2019s 2016\u201317 fifth-place finish ended their 20-year top-four streak.\nIn 2015\u201316, Leicester City defied 5000/1 odds to win the league, becoming the first non-\"Big Six\" champion since Blackburn in 1994\u201395.\nFinancially, the \"Big Six\" hold outsized influence, arguing for a greater revenue share due to their global status and style of play. Critics argue that the league's egalitarian revenue model ensures long-term competitiveness. The 2016\u201317 Deloitte Football Money League highlighted the revenue gap. The \"Big Six\" each earned over \u20ac350\u00a0million, with Manchester United leading at \u20ac676.3\u00a0million. Leicester City was closest, with \u20ac271.1\u00a0million, boosted by Champions League participation. West Ham, eighth in revenue (\u20ac213.3\u00a0million), earned less than half of fifth-place Liverpool (\u20ac424.2\u00a0million).\nTV broadcast deals accounted for a large portion of club revenues, with the top clubs earning between \u00a3150\u00a0million and nearly \u00a3200\u00a0million in 2016\u201317. By 2019, all \"Big Six\" clubs ranked in the world\u2019s top ten richest.\nLiverpool and Manchester City dominance (2020s).\nFrom the 2019\u201320 season, video assistant referees were used in the league. The 2019\u201320 season saw Liverpool win their first Premier League trophy, their first top-flight trophy in 30 years.\nProject Big Picture was announced in October 2020 that described a plan to reunite the top Premier League clubs with the English Football League, proposed by Manchester United and Liverpool. It has been criticised by the Premier League leadership and the UK government's Department for Culture, Media and Sport.\nOn 26 April 2021, play was stopped during a match between Leicester City and Crystal Palace to allow Muslim players Wesley Fofana and Cheikhou Kouyat\u00e9 to break Ramadan fast. It is believed to be the first time in Premier League history that a game was paused to allow Muslim players to eat and drink after the sun had set in accordance with the rules of the faith.\nThe 2022\u201323 season was the first to take a six-week break between November and December 2022 to allow for the first winter World Cup, with a return for the Boxing Day fixtures. The Premier League players decided to take the knee at selected \"significant moments\". They assured to \"remain resolutely committed to eradicate racial prejudice\". That season was notable for Newcastle United and Brighton & Hove Albion breaking the traditional \"Big Six\" as they finished fourth and sixth, respectively, whilst \"Big Six\" teams Tottenham and Chelsea finished eighth and twelfth. Meanwhile, 2015\u201316 champions Leicester City were relegated, becoming the second league-winning club to suffer relegation since 1992, after Blackburn Rovers in the 2011\u201312 season.\nIn the 2023\u201324 season, Manchester City won the Premier League for the sixth time in seven years to become the first top-flight team to win four consecutive league titles in English football history. Meanwhile, non-Big Six club Aston Villa finished fourth and qualified for the 2024\u201325 UEFA Champions League.\nCorporate structure.\nThe Football Association Premier League Ltd (FAPL) is operated as a corporation and is owned by the 20 member clubs. Each club is a shareholder, with one vote each on issues such as rule changes and contracts. The clubs select a chairman, chief executive, and board of directors to oversee the daily operations of the league. The Football Association is not directly involved in the day-to-day operations of the Premier League, but has veto power as a special shareholder during the election of the chairman and chief executive and when new rules are adopted by the league.\nThe current chief executive is Richard Masters, who was appointed in December 2019. The chair is currently Alison Brittain, who took over the role in early 2023.\nThe Premier League sends representatives to UEFA's European Club Association, the number of clubs and the clubs themselves chosen according to UEFA coefficients. For the 2023\u201324 season, the Premier League has 13 representatives in the Association: Arsenal, Aston Villa, Brighton & Hove Albion, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Newcastle United, Nottingham Forest, Tottenham Hotspur, West Ham United, and Wolverhampton Wanderers. The European Club Association is responsible for electing three members to UEFA's Club Competitions Committee, which is involved in the operations of UEFA competitions such as the Champions League and UEFA Europa League.\nCriticism of governance.\nThe Premier League has faced criticism of its governance due to an alleged lack of transparency and accountability.\nFollowing the Premier League's blocking of the attempted takeover of Newcastle United by a PIF-backed consortium through the league's Owners' and Directors' test, many MPs, Newcastle United fans and related parties to the deal denounced the Premier League for its perceived lack of transparency and accountability throughout the process. On 6 July 2021, consortium member Amanda Staveley of PCP Capital Partners said that \"fans surely deserve absolute transparency from the regulators across all their processes \u2013 to best ensure that they act responsibly. They (the Premier League) are performing a function like that of a government regulator \u2013 but without the same systems for accountability.\"\nOn 22 July 2021, Tracey Crouch MP \u2013 chair of the fan-led review into the UK's football governance \u2013 announced in the review's interim findings that the Premier League had \"lost the trust and confidence\" of fans. The review also recommended that a new independent regulator be created to oversee matters such as club takeovers.\nPremier League chief executive Richard Masters had earlier spoken out against the implementation of an independent regulator, saying in May 2021, \"I don't think that the independent regulator is the answer to the question. I would defend the Premier League's role as regulator of its clubs over the past 30 years.\"\nCompetition format.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n[The Premier League] is very tough and is different. If you compare this league to another league, it's like playing another sport.\n\u2013Antonio Conte, on the competitiveness of the Premier League.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nIn [The Premier League] you never really know what is going to happen, there is very little between the teams.\n\u2013Luis Suarez \nCompetition.\nThere are 20 clubs in the Premier League. During the course of a season (from August to May) each club plays the others twice (a double round-robin system), once at their home stadium and once at that of their opponents, for 38 games. Teams receive three points for a win and one point for a draw. No points are awarded for a loss. Teams are ranked by total points, then goal difference, and then goals scored. If still equal, teams are deemed to occupy the same position. If there is a tie for the championship, for relegation, or for qualification to other competitions, the head-to-head record between the tied teams is taken into consideration (points scored in the matches between the teams, followed by away goals in those matches.) If two teams are still tied, a play-off match at a neutral venue decides rank.\nPromotion and relegation.\nA system of promotion and relegation exists between the Premier League and the EFL Championship. The three lowest placed teams in the Premier League are relegated to the Championship, and the top two teams from the Championship promoted to the Premier League, with an additional team promoted after a series of play-offs involving the third, fourth, fifth and sixth placed clubs. The number of clubs was reduced from 22 to 20 in 1995, when four teams were relegated from the league and only two teams promoted. The top flight had only been expanded to 22 teams at the start of the 1991\u201392 season \u2013 the year prior to the formation of the Premier League.\nOn 8 June 2006, FIFA requested that all major European leagues, including Italy's Serie A and Spain's La Liga, be reduced to 18 teams by the start of the 2007\u201308 season. The Premier League responded by announcing their intention to resist such a reduction. Ultimately, the 2007\u201308 season kicked off again with 20 teams.\nVideo Assistant Referee.\nVideo assistant referee (VAR), was introduced to the Premier League at the beginning of the 2019\u201320 season. It uses technology and officials to assist the referee in making decisions on the pitch. However, its use has been met with mixed receptions from fans and pundits, with some praising its accuracy whilst others criticise its impact on the flow of the game and consistency of decision-making.\nThe on-field referee still makes the final decision, but VAR can assist the referee in the decision-making process. VAR can only be used for four types of decisions: goals, penalty decisions, direct red card incidents, and cases of mistaken identity. VAR officials review the video footage and communicate with the on-field referee via a headset. The VAR officials are located in a central control room, which is equipped with multiple camera angles and the ability to replay footage at various speeds.\nA study evaluating fan reception of VAR in the Premier League was made by Otto Kolbinger and Melanie Knopp and was done by analysing Twitter data. The researchers used sentiment analysis to measure the overall positive or negative attitudes towards VAR, as well as topic modelling to identify specific issues that fans are discussing related to VAR. The study found that the reception of VAR on Twitter is largely negative, with fans expressing frustration and criticism of the technology's impact on the flow of the game and the inconsistency of decisions. The researchers also identified specific issues, such as handball and offside decisions, that fans are particularly critical of. The study concludes that VAR has not been well received by fans in the Premier League, and that efforts to improve the technology and increase transparency in decision-making are needed to address these concerns.\nClubs.\nFifty-one clubs have played in the Premier League from its inception in 1992, up to and including the 2023\u201324 season.\nChampions.\n\"Italics\" indicate former Premier League champions that are currently outside the Premier League.\n2024\u201325 season.\nTwenty clubs are competing in the 2024\u201325 season \u2013 top seventeen from the previous season and three promoted from the Championship.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nNon-English clubs.\nIn 2011, after Swansea City gained promotion, a Welsh club participated in the Premier League for the first time. The first Premier League match to be played outside England was Swansea City's home match at Liberty Stadium against Wigan Athletic on 20 August 2011. The number of Welsh clubs in the Premier League increased to two in 2013\u201314, as Cardiff City gained promotion, but they were relegated after their maiden season. Cardiff were promoted again in 2017\u201318 but the number of Welsh clubs remained the same for the 2018\u201319 Premier League season, as Swansea City had been relegated from the Premier League in 2017\u201318. Following Cardiff City's relegation after the 2018\u201319 season, there are currently no Welsh clubs participating in the Premier League.\nBecause they are members of the Football Association of Wales (FAW), the question of whether clubs like Swansea should represent England or Wales in European competitions has caused long-running discussions in UEFA. Swansea took one of England's three available places in the Europa League in 2013\u201314 by winning the League Cup in 2012\u201313. The right of Welsh clubs to take up such English places was in doubt until UEFA clarified the matter in March 2012, allowing them to participate.\nParticipation in the Premier League by some Scottish or Irish clubs has sometimes been discussed, but without result. The idea came closest to reality in 1998, when Wimbledon received Premier League approval to relocate to Dublin, Ireland, but the move was blocked by the Football Association of Ireland. Additionally, the media occasionally discusses the idea that Scotland's two biggest teams, Celtic and Rangers, should or will take part in the Premier League, but nothing has come of these discussions.\nInternational competitions.\nQualification for European competitions.\nQualification criteria for 2024\u201325.\nThe top four teams in the Premier League qualify automatically for the subsequent season's UEFA Champions League league phase. The champions of the Champions League and UEFA Europa League may earn an additional qualification for the subsequent season's Champions League league phase if did not finish in the top four. If this means six Premier League teams qualify, then the fourth-placed team in the Premier League is instead entered in the Europa League, as any single nation is limited to a maximum of five teams in the Champions League. However, starting from the 2024\u201325 UEFA Champions League there are additional berths for the two best associations in the previous season's ranking, which may result in a maximum of six teams from one association in the Champions League.\nThe fifth-placed team in the Premier League, as well as the winners of the FA Cup, qualify for the subsequent season's Europa League league phase, but if the winner of the FA Cup also finishes in the top five places in the Premier League or has won one of UEFA's major tournaments, then this place reverts to the team that finished sixth. The winner of the EFL Cup qualifies for the subsequent season's UEFA Conference League, but if the winner had already qualified for a UEFA competition via their performance in another competition, then this place reverts to the team that finished sixth in the Premier League, or seventh if the FA Cup result had already caused the sixth-placed team to qualify.\nThe number of places allocated to English clubs in UEFA competitions is dependent upon the position the country holds in the UEFA coefficient rankings, which are calculated based on the performance of teams in UEFA competitions over the previous five years. Currently, England is ranked first, ahead of Spain.\nAs of 26 September 2024, the coefficients for are as follows (only top five European leagues are shown):\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nPrevious seasons.\nAn exception to the usual European qualification system happened in 2005, after Liverpool won the Champions League the season before, but did not finish in a Champions League qualification place in the Premier League. UEFA gave special dispensation for Liverpool to enter the Champions League, giving England five qualifiers. The governing body subsequently ruled that the defending champions qualify for the competition the following year regardless of their domestic league placing. However, for those leagues with four entrants in the Champions League, this meant that if the Champions League winners finished outside the top four in its domestic league, it would qualify at the expense of the fourth-placed team. At that time, no association could have more than four entrants in the Champions League. This occurred in 2012, when Chelsea \u2013 who had won the Champions League that summer, but finished sixth in the league \u2013 qualified for the 2012\u201313 Champions League in place of Tottenham Hotspur, who went into the Europa League.\nFrom 2015\u201316, the Europa League champions qualify for the Champions League, increasing the maximum number of participants per country to five. This took effect in England in 2016\u201317, when Manchester United finished sixth in the Premier League and won the Europa League, giving England five Champions League entrants for 2017\u201318. In these instances, any Europa League berth vacated is not handed down to the next-best Premier League finisher outside of a qualifying place. If both Champions League and Europa League winners are of the same association and both finish outside the top four, then the fourth-placed team is transferred to the Europa League.\nPerformance in international competition.\nWith 48 continental trophies won, English clubs are the third-most successful in European football, behind Italy (50) and Spain (67). In the top-tier UEFA Champions League, a record six English clubs have won a total of 15 titles and lost a further 11 finals, behind Spanish clubs with 20 and 11, respectively. In the second-tier UEFA Europa League, English clubs are third, with nine victories and eight losses in the finals. In the former second-tier UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, English teams won a record eight titles and had a further five finalists. In the non-UEFA organised Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, English clubs provided four winners and four runners-up, the second-most behind Spain with six and three, respectively. In the newly created third-tier UEFA Conference League, English clubs have won a joint-record one title so far. In the former fourth-tier UEFA Intertoto Cup, England won four titles and had a further final appearance, placing it fifth in the rankings, although English clubs were notorious for treating the tournament with disdain, either sending \"B\" squads or withdrawing from it altogether. In the one-off UEFA Super Cup, England has ten winners and ten runners-up, the second-most behind Spain with 17 and 15, respectively. Similarly to the Intertoto Cup, English teams did not take the former Intercontinental Cup seriously enough, despite its international status of the \"Club World Championship\". They a made a total of six appearances in the one-off competition, winning only one of them, and withdrew a further three times. English clubs have won the FIFA-organised Club World Cup four times, tied for the second-most with Brazil, and behind only Spain, with eight.\nSponsorship.\nAfter an inaugural season with no sponsorship, the Premier League was sponsored by Carling from 1993 until 2001, during which time it was known as the FA Carling Premiership. In 2001, a new sponsorship deal with Barclaycard saw the league rebranded the FA Barclaycard Premiership, which was changed to the FA Barclays Premiership in time for the 2004\u201305 season.\nFor the 2007\u201308 season, the league was rebranded the Barclays Premier League.\nBarclays' deal with the Premier League expired at the end of the 2015\u201316 season. The organisation announced on 4 June 2015 that it would not pursue any further title sponsorship deals for the Premier League, arguing that they wanted to build a \"clean\" brand for the competition more in line with those of major U.S. sports leagues.\nAs well as sponsorship for the league itself, the Premier League has a number of official partners and suppliers. The official ball supplier for the league is Nike who have had the contract since the 2000\u201301 season when they took over from Mitre. Under its \"Merlin\" brand, Topps held the licence to produce collectables for the Premier League between 1994 and 2019 including stickers (for their sticker album) and trading cards. Launched in the 2007\u201308 season, Topps' Match Attax, the official Premier League trading card game, is the best selling boys collectable in the UK, and is also the biggest selling sports trading card game in the world. In October 2018, Panini were awarded the licence to produce collectables from the 2019\u201320 season. The chocolate company Cadbury has been the official snack partner of the Premier League since 2017, and sponsored the Golden Boot, Golden Glove and Playmaker of the Season awards from the 2017\u201318 season to 2019\u201320 season. The Coca-Cola Company (under its Coca-Cola Zero Sugar product line) sponsored these awards during the 2020\u201321 season with Castrol being the current sponsor as of the 2021\u201322 season.\nFinances.\nThe Premier League has the highest revenue of any association football league in the world, with total club revenues of \u20ac2.48\u00a0billion in 2009\u201310. In 2013\u201314, due to improved television revenues and cost controls, the Premier League clubs collectively made a net profit in excess of \u00a378\u00a0million, exceeding all other football leagues. In 2010 the Premier League was awarded the Queen's Award for Enterprise in the International Trade category for its outstanding contribution to international trade and the value it brings to English football and the United Kingdom's broadcasting industry.\nThe Premier League includes some of the richest football clubs in the world. Deloitte's \"Football Money League\" listed seven Premier League clubs in the top 20 for the 2009\u201310 season, and all 20 clubs were in the top 40 globally by the end of the 2013\u201314 season, largely as a result of increased broadcasting revenue. In 2019, the league generated around \u00a33.1\u00a0billion per year in domestic and international television rights.\nPremier League clubs agreed in principle in December 2012, to radical new cost controls. The two proposals consist of a break-even rule and a cap on the amount clubs can increase their wage bill by each season. With the new television deals on the horizon, momentum has been growing to find ways of preventing the majority of the cash going straight to players and agents.\nCentral payments for the 2016\u201317 season amounted to \u00a32,398,515,773 across the 20 clubs, with each team receiving a flat participation fee of \u00a335,301,989 and additional payments for TV broadcasts (\u00a31,016,690 for general UK rights to match highlights, \u00a31,136,083 for each live UK broadcast of their games and \u00a339,090,596 for all overseas rights), commercial rights (a flat fee of \u00a34,759,404) and a notional measure of \"merit\" which was based upon final league position. The merit component was a nominal sum of \u00a31,941,609 multiplied by each finishing place, counted from the foot of the table (e.g., Burnley finished 16th in May 2017, five places counting upwards, and received 5 \u00d7 \u00a31,941,609 = \u00a39,708,045 merit payment).\nRelegation.\nSince its split with the Football League, established clubs in the Premier League have a funding disparity from counterparts in lower leagues. Revenue from television rights between the leagues has played a part in this.\nPromoted teams have found it difficult to avoid relegation in their first Premier League season. One Premier League newcomer has been relegated back to the Football League every season, save the 2001\u201302, 2011\u201312, 2017\u201318 & 2022\u201323 seasons. In the 1997\u201398 and 2023\u201324 seasons, all three promoted clubs were relegated by the season's end.\nThe Premier League distributes a portion of its television revenue as \"parachute payments\" to relegated clubs for adjustment to television revenue loss. The average Premier League team receives \u00a341\u00a0million whilst the average Championship club receives \u00a32\u00a0million. Starting with the 2013\u201314 season, these payments are in excess of \u00a360\u00a0million over four seasons. Critics maintain that the payments widen the gap between teams that have reached the Premier League and those that have not, leading to the common occurrence of teams \"bouncing back\" soon after their relegation.\nClubs which have failed to win immediate promotion back to the Premier League have seen financial problems, in some cases administration or liquidation. Further relegations down the footballing ladder have occurred for multiple clubs unable to cope with the gap.\nMedia coverage.\nUnited Kingdom and Ireland.\nTelevision has played a major role in the history of the Premier League. The League's decision to assign broadcasting rights to Sky in 1992 was at the time a radical decision, but one that has paid off. At the time, paid television was an almost untested proposition in the UK market as was charging fans to watch live televised football. However, a combination of Sky's strategy, the quality of Premier League football and the public's appetite for the game has seen the value of the Premier League's TV rights soar.\nThe Premier League sells its television rights on a collective basis. This is in contrast to some other European leagues, including La Liga, in which each club sells its rights individually, leading to a much higher share of the total income going to the top few clubs. The money is divided into three parts: half is divided equally between the clubs; one quarter is awarded on a merit basis based on final league position, the top club getting twenty times as much as the bottom club, and equal steps all the way down the table; the final quarter is paid out as facilities fees for games that are shown on television, with the top clubs generally receiving the largest shares of this. The income from overseas rights is divided equally between the twenty clubs.\nNot all Premier League matches are televised in the United Kingdom, as the league upholds the long-standing prohibition on telecasts of any association football match (domestic or otherwise) that kicks off between 2:45\u00a0p.m. and 5:15\u00a0p.m. on Saturday matchdays.\nThe first Sky television rights agreement was worth \u00a3304\u00a0million over five seasons. The next contract, negotiated to start from the 1997\u201398 season, rose to \u00a3670\u00a0million over four seasons. The third contract was a \u00a31.024\u00a0billion deal with BSkyB for the three seasons from 2001 to 2004. The league brought in \u00a3320\u00a0million from the sale of its international rights for the three-year period from 2004 to 2007. It sold the rights itself on a territory-by-territory basis. Sky's monopoly was broken from August 2006 when Setanta Sports was awarded rights to show two out of the six packages of matches available. This occurred following an insistence by the European Commission that exclusive rights should not be sold to one television company. Sky and Setanta paid \u00a31.7\u00a0billion, a two-thirds increase which took many commentators by surprise as it had been widely assumed that the value of the rights had levelled off following many years of rapid growth. Setanta also hold rights to a live 3\u00a0pm match solely for Irish viewers. The BBC retained the rights to show highlights for the same three seasons (on \"Match of the Day\") for \u00a3171.6\u00a0million, a 63\u00a0per\u00a0cent increase on the \u00a3105\u00a0million it paid for the previous three-year period. Sky and BT Group (via its new channel BT Sport, now TNT Sports) agreed to jointly pay \u00a384.3\u00a0million for delayed television rights to 242 games (that is the right to broadcast them in full on television and over the internet) in most cases for a period of 50 hours after 10\u00a0p.m. on matchday. Overseas television rights fetched \u00a3625\u00a0million, nearly double the previous contract. The total raised from those deals was more than \u00a32.7\u00a0billion, giving Premier League clubs an average media income from league games of around \u00a340\u00a0million-a-year from 2007 to 2010.\nThe TV rights agreement between the Premier League and Sky faced accusations of being a cartel, and a number of court cases arose as a result. An investigation by the Office of Fair Trading in 2002 found BSkyB to be dominant within the pay TV sports market, but concluded that there were insufficient grounds for the claim that BSkyB had abused its dominant position. In July 1999 the Premier League's method of selling rights collectively for all member clubs was investigated by the UK Restrictive Practices Court, which concluded that the agreement was not contrary to the public interest.\nThe BBC's highlights package on Saturday and Sunday nights, as well as other evenings when fixtures justify, ran until 2016. Television rights alone for the period 2010 to 2013 were purchased for \u00a31.782\u00a0billion. On 22 June 2009, due to troubles encountered by Setanta Sports after it failed to meet a final deadline over a \u00a330\u00a0million payment to the Premier League, ESPN was awarded two packages of UK rights containing 46 matches that were available for the 2009\u201310 season as well as a package of 23 matches per season from 2010 to 2013. On 13 June 2012, the Premier League announced that BT had been awarded 38 games a season for the 2013\u201314, 2014\u201315 and 2015\u201316 seasons at \u00a3246\u00a0million-a-year. The remaining 116 games were retained by Sky, which paid \u00a3760\u00a0million-a-year. The total domestic rights raised \u00a33.018\u00a0billion, an increase of 70.2% over the 2010\u201311 to 2012\u201313 rights. The value of the licensing deal rose by another 70.2% in 2015, when Sky and BT paid \u00a35.136\u00a0billion to renew their contracts with the Premier League for another three years up to the 2018\u201319 season.\nA new rights cycle began in the 2019\u201320 season, with the domestic package increasing to 200 matches overall; in February 2018, BT were awarded the package of 32 lunchtime fixtures on Saturdays, whilst Sky was awarded four of the seven packages, covering the majority of weekend fixtures (including eight new prime time fixtures on Saturdays), as well as Monday and Friday matches. Two remaining packages of 20 fixtures each were to be sold at a later date, including three rounds of mid-week fixtures and a bank holiday round. As Sky already owned the maximum number of matches it could hold without breaching a 148-match cap, it was speculated that at least one of the new packages could go to a new entrant, such as a streaming service. The five packages sold to BT and Sky were valued at \u00a34.464\u00a0billion. In June 2018, it was announced that Amazon Prime Video and BT had acquired the remaining two packages; Amazon acquired rights to 20 matches per-season, covering a mid-week round in December, and all Boxing Day fixtures. The Amazon telecasts are produced in association with Sunset + Vine and BT Sport.\nWith the resumption of play in the 2019\u201320 Premier League due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, the Premier League announced that all remaining matches would be carried on British television, split primarily across Sky, BT, and Amazon. A large number of these matches were also scheduled for free-to-air broadcasts, with Sky airing 25 on Pick, Amazon streaming its four matches on Twitch, and the BBC \u2013 for the first time in league history \u2013 carrying four live matches.\nAs matches would continue to be played without spectators upon the start of the 2020\u201321 Premier League, its clubs voted on 8 September to continue broadcasting all matches through at least September (with the BBC and Amazon each holding one additional match), and \"appropriate arrangements\" being made for October. It was later announced that matches not selected for broadcast would be carried on pay-per-view via BT Sport Box Office and Sky Box Office at a cost of \u00a314.95 per-match. The PPV scheme was poorly received; the Football Supporters' Federation felt that the price was too high, and there were concerns that it could encourage piracy. There were calls from supporters to boycott the pay-per-views, and make donations to support charitable causes instead (with Newcastle's \"Charity Not PPV\" campaign raising \u00a320,000 for a local food bank, and Arsenal fans raising \u00a334,000 for Islington Giving). On 13 November, amid the reintroduction of measures across the UK, the Premier League officially announced that the non-televised matches would be assigned to its main broadcast partners, and again including additional matches for the BBC and Amazon Prime.\nThe next cycle of rights between 2022\u201323 and 2024\u201325 season was renewed without tender due to compelling and exceptional circumstances in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, rights remained as they were since the 2019\u201320 season.\nUK highlights\nIn August 2016, it was announced the BBC would be creating a new magazine-style show for the Premier League entitled \"The Premier League Show\".\nWorldwide.\nThe Premier League is the most-watched football league in the world, broadcast in 212 territories to 643\u00a0million homes and a potential TV audience of 4.7\u00a0billion people. The Premier League's production arm, Premier League Productions, is operated by IMG Productions and produces content for its international television partners. On 22 November 2024, the Premier League announced plans to end its agreement with IMG and take Premier League Productions in-house beginning in 2026\u201327.\nThe Premier League is the most widely distributed sports programme in Asia. In the Indian subcontinent, the matches are broadcast live on STAR Sports. In MENA region, BeIN Sports holds exclusive rights to the Premier League. In China, the broadcast rights were awarded to iQiyi, Migu and CCTV that began in the 2021\u201322 season. SCTV broadcast the matches for Indonesia, and Astro for Malaysia. In Australia, Optus telecommunications holds exclusive rights to the Premier League, providing live broadcasts and online access (Fox Sports formerly held rights). As of the 2022\u201323 season, Canadian media rights to the Premier League are owned by FuboTV, after having been jointly owned by Sportsnet and TSN, and most recently DAZN.\nThe Premier League is broadcast in the United States by NBC Sports, a division of Sky parent Comcast. Acquiring the rights to the Premier League in 2013 (replacing Fox Soccer and ESPN), NBC Sports has been widely praised for its coverage. NBC Sports reached a six-year extension with the Premier League in 2015 to broadcast the league until the end of the 2021\u201322 season in a deal valued at $1\u00a0billion (\u00a3640\u00a0million). In November 2021, NBC reached another six-year extension through 2028 in a deal valued at $2.76\u00a0billion (\u00a32\u00a0billion).\nThe Premier League is broadcast by SuperSport across sub-Saharan Africa. Broadcasters to continental Europe until 2025 include Canal+ for France, Sky Sport Germany for Germany and Austria, Match TV for Russia, Sky Sport Italy for Italy, Eleven Sports for Portugal, DAZN for Spain, beIN Sports Turkey to Turkey, Digi Sport for Romania, and NENT to Nordic countries (Sweden, Denmark and Norway), Poland and the Netherlands. In South America, ESPN covers much of the continent, with coverage in Brazil shared between ESPN Brasil and ESPN4. Paramount+ broadcasts the league in Central America.\nStadiums.\nAs of the 2023\u201324 season, Premier League football has been played in 61 stadiums since the formation of the division. The Hillsborough disaster in 1989 and the subsequent Taylor Report saw a recommendation that standing terraces should be abolished. As a result, all stadiums in the Premier League are all-seater. Since the formation of the Premier League, football grounds in England have seen constant improvements to capacity and facilities, with some clubs moving to new-build stadiums. Eleven stadiums that have seen Premier League football have now been demolished. The stadiums for the 2023\u201324 season show a large disparity in capacity. For example, Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United, has a capacity of 74,031 whilst Dean Court, the home of Bournemouth, has a capacity of 11,307. The combined total capacity of the Premier League in the 2023\u201324 season is 787,002 with an average capacity of 39,350.\nStadium attendances are a significant source of regular income for Premier League clubs. For the 2022\u201323 season, average attendances across the league clubs were 40,235 for Premier League matches with an aggregate attendance of 15,289,340.<ref name=\"2022/23 Attendance\"></ref> This represents an increase of 19,109 from the average attendance of 21,126 recorded in the Premier League's first season (1992\u201393). However, during the 1992\u201393 season, the capacities of most stadiums were reduced as clubs replaced terraces with seats in order to meet the Taylor Report's 1994\u201395 deadline for all-seater stadiums. The 2022\u201323 season also set a competition record for total attendance with more than 15\u00a0million spectators, with average attendance also reaching record levels, surpassing the previous record of 39,989 set in the 2021\u201322 season, which in turn broke an over 70-year-old record set in the 1948\u201349 season.\nIn October 2024 it was reported that the government is planning to grant the independent regulator authority to stop Premier League clubs from selling their stadiums to affiliated or third-party companies.\nManagers.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nI have never known this level before. Of course, there are managers in Germany, Italy, and Spain, but in the Premier League, these are the best managers, the elite managers. The quality, the preparation. The level is so high.\n Pep Guardiola, on the quality of managers of Premier League teams.\nManagers in the Premier League are involved in the day-to-day running of the team, including the training, team selection and player acquisition. Their influence varies from club-to-club and is related to the ownership of the club and the relationship of the manager with fans. Managers are required to have a UEFA Pro Licence which is the final coaching qualification available, and follows the completion of the UEFA 'B' and 'A' Licences. The UEFA Pro Licence is required by every person who wishes to manage a club in the Premier League on a permanent basis (\"i.e.\", more than 12 weeks, the amount of time an unqualified caretaker manager is allowed to take control). Caretaker appointments are managers that fill the gap between a managerial departure and a new appointment. Several caretaker managers have gone on to secure a permanent managerial post after performing well as a caretaker, including Paul Hart at Portsmouth, David Pleat at Tottenham Hotspur and Ole Gunnar Solskj\u00e6r at Manchester United.\nArs\u00e8ne Wenger is the longest-serving manager, having been in charge of Arsenal in the Premier League from 1996 to his departure at the conclusion of the 2017\u201318 season, and holds the record for most matches managed in the Premier League with 828, all with Arsenal. He broke the record set by Alex Ferguson, who had managed 810 matches with Manchester United from the Premier League's inception to his retirement at the end of the 2012\u201313 season. Ferguson was in charge of Manchester United from November 1986 until his retirement at the end of the 2012\u201313 season, meaning he was manager for the last five years of the old Football League First Division and all of the first 21 seasons of the Premier League.\nNotably, since its creation the Premier League has never been won by an English manager.\nThere have been several studies into the reasoning behind, and effects of, managerial sackings. Most famously, Sue Bridgewater of the University of Liverpool and Bas ter Weel of the University of Amsterdam, performed two separate studies which helped to explain the statistics behind managerial sackings. Bridgewater's study found clubs generally sack their managers upon dropping below an average of one point per match.\nPlayers.\nTransfer regulations and foreign players.\nPlayer transfers may only take place within transfer windows set by the Football Association. The two transfer windows run from the last day of the season to 31 August and from 31 December to 31 January. Player registrations cannot be exchanged outside these windows except under specific licence from the FA, usually on an emergency basis. As of the 2010\u201311 season, the Premier League introduced new rules mandating that each club must register a maximum 25-man squad of players aged over 21, with the squad list only allowed to be changed in transfer windows or in exceptional circumstances. This was to enable the \"home grown\" rule to be enacted, whereby the Premier League would also from 2010 require at least eight members of the named 25-man squad to be \"home-grown players\".\nAt the inception of the Premier League in 1992\u201393, just 11 players named in the starting line-ups for the first round of matches hailed from outside of the United Kingdom or Ireland. By 2000\u201301, the number of foreign players participating in the Premier League was 36% of the total. In the 2004\u201305 season, the figure had increased to 45%. On 26 December 1999, Chelsea became the first Premier League side to field an entirely foreign starting line-up, and on 14 February 2005, Arsenal were the first to name a completely foreign 16-man squad for a match. By 2009, under 40% of the players in the Premier League were English. By February 2020, 117 different nationalities had played in the Premier League, and 101 nationalities had scored in the competition.\nIn 1999, in response to concerns that clubs were increasingly passing over young English players in favour of foreign players, the Home Office tightened its rules for granting work permits to players from countries outside of the European Union. A non-EU player applying for the permit must have played for his country in at least 75\u00a0per\u00a0cent of its competitive 'A' team matches for which he was available for selection during the previous two years, and his country must have averaged at least 70th place in the official FIFA world rankings over the previous two years. If a player does not meet those criteria, the club wishing to sign him may appeal.\nFollowing the implementation of Brexit in January 2021, new regulations were introduced which require all foreign players to obtain a Governing Body Endorsement (GBE) in order to play football in the United Kingdom, regardless of EU status.\n \"As of 9 March 2025\"\nTop scorers.\n\"Italics\" denotes players still playing professional football,Bold denotes players still playing in the Premier League.\nThe Premier League Golden Boot is awarded each season to the top scorer in the division. Former Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United striker Alan Shearer holds the record for most Premier League goals with 260. Thirty-three players have reached the 100-goal mark. Since the first Premier League season in 1992\u201393, 23 players from 11 clubs have won or shared the top scorer title. Thierry Henry won his fourth overall scoring title by scoring 27 goals in the 2005\u201306 season. Erling Haaland holds the record for most goals in a Premier League season (38 matches) with 36 goals as of 15 May 2023. Ryan Giggs of Manchester United holds the record for scoring goals in consecutive seasons, having scored in the first 21 seasons of the league. Giggs also holds the record for the most Premier League assists, with 162.\nWages.\nThere is no team or individual salary cap in the Premier League. As a result of the increasingly lucrative television deals, player wages rose sharply following the formation of the Premier League, when the average player wage was \u00a375,000 per year. In the 2018\u201319 season the average annual salary stood at \u00a32.99\u00a0million.\nThe total salary bill for the 20 Premier League clubs in the 2018\u201319 season was \u00a31.62\u00a0billion; this compares to \u00a31.05\u00a0billion in La Liga, \u00a30.83\u00a0billion in Serie A, \u00a30.72\u00a0billion in Bundesliga, and \u00a30.54\u00a0billion in Ligue 1. The club with the highest average wage is Manchester United at \u00a36.5\u00a0million. This is smaller than the club with the highest wage bill in Spain (Barcelona \u00a310.5\u00a0million) and Italy (Juventus \u00a36.7\u00a0million), but higher than in Germany (Bayern Munich \u00a36.4\u00a0million) and France (Paris Saint-Germain \u00a36.1\u00a0million). For the 2018\u201319 season, the ratio of the wages of the highest-paid team to lowest-paid in the Premier League is 6.82 to 1. This is much lower than in La Liga (19.1 to 1), Serie A (16 to 1), Bundesliga (20.5 to 1), and Ligue 1 (26.6 to 1). Because of the lower differential between team wage bills in the Premier League, it is often regarded as being more competitive than other top European leagues.\nPlayer transfer fees.\nThe record transfer fee for a Premier League player has risen steadily over the lifetime of the competition. Before the start of the first Premier League season, Alan Shearer became the first British player to command a transfer fee of more than \u00a33\u00a0million. The record has increased steadily and Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez is now the most expensive transfer fee paid by a Premier League club at \u00a3106.8\u00a0million, whilst Philippe Coutinho is the biggest transfer involving a Premier League club at \u00a3105\u00a0million.\nAwards.\nTrophy.\nThe Premier League maintains two trophies \u2013 the genuine trophy (held by the reigning champions) and a spare replica. Two trophies are held for the purpose of making the award within minutes of the title being secured, in the event that on the final day of the season two clubs are still within reach of winning the League. In the rare event that more than two clubs are vying for the title on the final day of the season, a replica won by a previous club is used.\nThe current Premier League trophy was created by Royal Jewellers Garrard & Co/Asprey of London and was designed in house at Garrard & Co by Trevor Brown and Paul Marsden. It consists of a trophy with a golden crown and a malachite plinth base. The plinth weighs and the trophy weighs . The trophy and plinth are tall, wide and deep.\nIts main body is solid sterling silver and silver gilt, whilst its plinth is made of malachite, a semi-precious stone. The plinth has a silver band around its circumference, upon which the names of the title-winning clubs are listed. The green of the malachite represents the green field of play. The design of the trophy is based on the heraldry of Three Lions that is associated with English football. Two of the lions are found above the handles on either side of the trophy \u2013 the third is symbolised by the captain of the title-winning team as he raises the trophy, and its gold crown, above his head at the end of the season. The ribbons that drape the handles are presented in the team colours of the league champions that year. In 2004, a special gold version of the trophy was commissioned to commemorate Arsenal winning the title without a single defeat.\nPlayer and manager awards.\nIn addition to the winner's trophy and the individual winner's medals awarded to players who win the title, the Premier League also issues other awards throughout the season.\nA man-of-the-match award is awarded to the player who has the greatest impact in an individual match.\nMonthly awards are also given for the Manager of the Month, Player of the Month and Goal of the Month. These are also issued annually for Manager of the Season, Player of the Season and Goal of the Season. The Young Player of the Season award is given to the most outstanding U-23 player starting from the 2019\u201320 season.\nThe Golden Boot award is given to the top goalscorer of every season, the Playmaker of the Season award is given to the player who makes the most assists of every season, and the Golden Glove award is given to the goalkeeper with the most clean sheets at the end of the season.\nStarting with the 2021\u201322 season, four new awards are given. The Save of the Season is awarded to the goalkeeper deemed to have made the most impressive save. The Game Changer of the Season is earned by the player with the single most game-changing performance over the course of the campaign. The Most Powerful Goal is given to the player whose goal-scoring shot had the highest average velocity from the time it was struck to the time it crossed the goal line, and the Most Improbable Comeback award is meant for the team that, based on calculations performed by Oracle Corporation, goes behind and overcomes a deficit to win their respective match.\nFrom the 2017\u201318 season, players receive a milestone award for 100 appearances and every century there after and also players who score 50 goals and multiples thereof. Each player to reach these milestones is to receive a presentation box from the Premier League containing a special medallion and a plaque commemorating their achievement.\n20 Seasons Awards.\nIn 2012, the Premier League celebrated its second decade by holding the 20 Seasons Awards:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["2174", "11250"], "permutation_1": ["11250", "2174"], "permutation_2": ["2174", "11250"], "permutation_3": ["11250", "2174"]}
{"id": "2hop__770487_494646", "docs_added": {"1165426": "Mono Lake Committee\nThe Mono Lake Committee (MLC) is an environmental organization based in Lee Vining, California in the United States. Its mission is to preserve Mono Lake, by reducing diversions of water from the Eastern Sierra watersheds by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP).\nMono Lake.\nMono Lake is an alkaline lake east of Yosemite National Park, largely fed by streams from the Sierra Nevada; it has no natural outlet. In 1919 the level of the lake peaked at 6427' above sea level. Birds bred and nested on a few volcanic islands in the lake, sustained by the extensive brine shrimp and alkali flies, which also attracted large numbers of migratory birds.\nIn 1941, the LADWP began redirecting water from the streams feeding Mono Lake into the Los Angeles Aqueduct. As time passed, this both reduced the level of the lake and dried out the lower sections of the source streams. By 1981 the level of the lake had been reduced to 6372' above sea level, with the lake's volume cut in half, and its salinity doubled. Negit Island, a breeding site for birds, developed a land bridge and became susceptible to land-based predators such as coyotes.\nFormation of the Mono Lake Committee.\nIn 1975, David Winkler, Jefferson Burch, and Christine Weigen obtained a grant from the NSF, with help and encouragement from ecologist David Gaines, to study the ecology of Mono Lake. Gaines had found that, starting in 1941, LADWP's diversions of water from Mono Lake's inflow creeks had caused it to lose half its volume and double its salinity. These changes, Gaines reported, reduced the ability of the lake to support its saline ecosystem. During 1976\u20131977, Gaines witnessed the lake's water level drop even further, and he determined to take action.\nThe committee was founded in March 1978 by Gaines, David Winkler, Sally Judy and Mark Ross. Gray Brechin soon became the committee's first director; he joined Gaines and others in lobbying California politicians\nMono Lake is an important habitat for migratory birds (including the California gull). The lowering of the water level endangered the bird nesting grounds on Negit Island in the middle of the lake: a land bridge had formed, which allowed predators to attack the bird nests.\nLADWP Lawsuit.\nIn 1979, the MLC, along with the Audubon Society filed suit in Mono County, California Superior Court, claiming that LADWP's water diversions violated the public trust doctrine: that all navigable water must be managed for the benefit of everyone. In 1983, MLC won the argument in front of the California Supreme Court, who directed that the public trust doctrine overrides prior water rights.\nBruce Dodge, of Morrison and Foerster, served as the pro-bono attorney in the case.\nEventually, multiple litigations were adjudicated in 1994, by the California State Water Resources Control Board. In that ruling, LADWP was required to let enough water into Mono Lake to raise the lake level above the then-current level of below the 1941 level. As of 2018, the water level in Mono Lake has risen of the required . Los Angeles made up for the lost water through state-funded conservation and recycling projects.\nCurrent Status and Activities.\nThe Mono Lake Committee currently monitors the status of the lake and the compliance of the LADWP with the court decision, supports scientific research in the Mono Lake region, and is actively working on restoring the incoming stream environments. They also provide extensive educational activities to schools and the general public, and maintain an office, information center, and bookstore in Lee Vining, CA that also serves as the Lee Vining Chamber of Commerce.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1165731": "Lee Vining, California\nLee Vining (formerly Leevining, Poverty Flat, and Lakeview) is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Mono County, California, United States. It is located south-southeast of Bridgeport. Lee Vining is located on the southwest shore of Mono Lake. The population was 217 as of the 2020 census.\nHistory.\nThe town was named after Leroy Vining, who founded the town in 1852 as a mining camp. In 1926, the town was laid out by Chris Mattly and named \"Lakeview\", but when a post office was sought in 1928, it was learned that another town, Lakeview, California, already had the name. The name of Lee Vining was chosen in 1953. The place was also called \"Poverty Flat\" for its unfavorable conditions for agriculture.\nGeography.\nLee Vining is in western Mono County along U.S. Route 395, at the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada. US 395 leads northwest to Bridgeport, the Mono county seat, and southeast the same distance to the junction for Mammoth Lakes. California State Route 120 climbs west from Lee Vining to the top of Tioga Pass, the east entrance to Yosemite National Park. According to the United States Census Bureau, the Lee Vining CDP covers an area of , 99.95% of it land and 0.05% of it water.\nClimate.\nLee Vining, on the boundary between the Sierra Nevada and Great Basin ecoregions, has a transitional climate: warmer and drier than the mountains to the west but cooler and much snowier than the vast desert to the east. Despite only getting of water-equivalent precipitation annually, the town averages nearly of snow, sometimes falling as late as April or even May. Precipitation is highest in the winter months of December through March, but some can be expected to fall every month of the year, and the town does not typically experience the four to six month dry spells of more coastal parts of California.\nEconomy.\nThe economy of Lee Vining relies largely on tourism, since it is the closest town to the east entrance of Yosemite National Park, and is near other tourist destinations such as Mono Lake, the ghost town of Bodie, popular trout fishing destinations, and June Mountain and Mammoth Mountain ski areas, and the June Lake recreational area. Although off-season tourism has increased in recent years, most tourists visit in the summer months because State Route 120 through Yosemite is often closed otherwise because of heavy snowfall in the winter. Lee Vining has a year-round information center for visitors.\nSights.\nLee Vining is situated near the foot of Lee Vining Canyon. State Route 120 runs from town, through the canyon, up to Tioga Pass. Lee Vining Canyon is one of only two ice climbing venues in California. U.S. Route 395 also runs through the town, connecting to Los Angeles to the south, and Reno, Nevada to the north. Gus Hess Park commemorates an early miner in Lee Vining.\nThe town is the site of the Upside-Down House, a distinctive local landmark built by silent film actress Nellie Bly O'Bryan. Also located in the town is the Whoa Nellie Deli, which was once described by the \"San Francisco Chronicle\" as \"a misplaced Fellini set carved into the edge of the Mono Basin, dust devils skipping around in the distance like extras on the floor of Owens Valley.\"\nThe Lee Vining Airport lies near the town. The ZIP Code is 93541. The community is inside area codes 442 and 760.\nDemographics.\nThe 2010 United States Census reported that Lee Vining had a population of 222. The population density was . The racial makeup of Lee Vining was 126 (56.8%) White, 0 (0.0%) African American, 25 (11.3%) Native American, 0 (0.0%) Asian/Pacific Islander, 64 (28.8%) from other races, and 7 (3.2%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 96 persons (43.2%).\nThe Census reported that 213 people (95.9% of the population) lived in households, 9 (4.1%) lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 0 (0%) were institutionalized.\nThere were 85 households, out of which 31 (36.5%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 44 (51.8%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 4 (4.7%) had a female householder with no husband present, 5 (5.9%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 5 (5.9%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 1 (1.2%) same-sex married couples or partnerships. 28 households (32.9%) were made up of individuals, and 6 (7.1%) had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.51. There were 53 families (62.4% of all households); the average family size was 3.25.\nThe population was spread out, with 56 people (25.2%) under the age of 18, 26 people (11.7%) aged 18 to 24, 71 people (32.0%) aged 25 to 44, 52 people (23.4%) aged 45 to 64, and 17 people (7.7%) who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 30.4 years. For every 100 females, there were 107.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 102.4 males.\nThere were 112 housing units at an average density of , of which 43 (50.6%) were owner-occupied, and 42 (49.4%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 2.3%; the rental vacancy rate was 10.6%. 108 people (48.6% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 105 people (47.3%) lived in rental housing units.\nGovernment.\nIn the California State Legislature, Lee Vining is in the Senate District, represented by Democrat Angelique Ashby, and in the Assembly District, represented by Republican Joe Patterson.\nIn the United States House of Representatives, Lee Vining is in California's congressional district, represented by Democrat John Garamendi.\nEducation.\nLee Vining is in the Eastern Sierra Unified School District. An elementary school and a high school (Lee Vining High School) are located in Lee Vining. Lee Vining also has a public library.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "46795": "Mono Lake\nEndorheic lake in California\nMono Lake ( ) is a saline soda lake in Mono County, California, formed at least 760,000 years ago as a terminal lake in an endorheic basin. The lack of an outlet causes high levels of salts to accumulate in the lake which make its water alkaline.\nThe desert lake has an unusually productive ecosystem based on brine shrimp, which thrive in its waters, and provides critical habitat for two million annual migratory birds that feed on the shrimp and alkali flies (\"Ephydra hians\"). Historically, the native Kutzadika'a people ate the alkali flies' pupae, which live in the shallow waters around the edge of the lake.\nWhen the city of Los Angeles diverted water from the freshwater streams flowing into the lake, it lowered the lake level, which imperiled the migratory birds. The Mono Lake Committee formed in response and won a legal battle that forced Los Angeles to partially replenish the lake level.\nGeology.\nMono Lake occupies part of the Mono Basin, an endorheic basin that has no outlet to the ocean. Dissolved salts in the runoff thus remain in the lake and raise the water's pH levels and salt concentration. The tributaries of Mono Lake include Lee Vining Creek, Rush Creek and Mill Creek which flows through Lundy Canyon.\nThe basin was formed by geological forces over the last five million years: basin and range crustal stretching and associated volcanism and faulting at the base of the Sierra Nevada.\nFrom 4.5 to 2.6 million years ago, large volumes of basalt were extruded around what is now Cowtrack Mountain (east and south of Mono Basin); eventually covering and reaching a maximum thickness of . Later volcanism in the area occurred 3.8 million to 250,000 years ago. This activity was northwest of Mono Basin and included the formation of Aurora Crater, Beauty Peak, Cedar Hill (later an island in the highest stands of Mono Lake), and Mount Hicks.\nLake Russell was the prehistoric predecessor to Mono Lake, during the Pleistocene. Its shoreline reached the modern-day elevation of , about higher than the present-day lake. As of 1.6 million years ago, Lake Russell discharged to the northeast, into the Walker River drainage. After the Long Valley Caldera eruption 760,000 years ago, Lake Russell discharged into Adobe Lake to the southeast, then into the Owens River, and eventually into Lake Manly in Death Valley. Prominent shore lines of Lake Russell, called strandlines by geologists, can be seen west of Mono Lake.\nThe area around Mono Lake is currently geologically active. Volcanic activity is related to the Mono\u2013Inyo Craters: the most recent eruption occurred 350 years ago, resulting in the formation of Paoha Island. Panum Crater (on the south shore of the lake) is an example of a combined rhyolite dome and cinder cone.\nTufa towers.\nMany columns of limestone rise above the surface of Mono Lake. These limestone towers consist primarily of calcium carbonate minerals such as calcite (CaCO3). This type of limestone rock is referred to as tufa, which is a term used for limestone that forms in low to moderate temperatures.\nTufa tower formation.\nMono Lake is a highly alkaline lake, or soda lake. Alkalinity is a measure of how many bases are in a solution, and how well the solution can neutralize acids. Carbonate (CO32-) and bicarbonate (HCO3\u2212) are both bases. Hence, Mono Lake has a very high content of dissolved inorganic carbon. Through supply of calcium ions (Ca2+), the water will precipitate carbonate-minerals such as calcite (CaCO3). Subsurface waters enter the bottom of Mono Lake through small springs. High concentrations of dissolved calcium ions in these subsurface waters cause huge amounts of calcite to precipitate around the spring orifices.\nThe tufa originally formed at the bottom of the lake. It took many decades or even centuries to form the well-recognized tufa towers. When lake levels fell, the tufa towers came to rise above the water surface and stand as the pillars seen today (see Mono lake#Lake Level History for more information).\nTufa morphology.\nDescription of the Mono Lake tufa dates back to the 1880s, when Edward S. Dana and Israel C. Russell made the first systematic descriptions of the Mono Lake tufa. The tufa occurs as \"modern\" tufa towers. There are tufa sections from old shorelines, when the lake levels were higher. These pioneering works in tufa morphology are referred to by researchers and were confirmed by James R. Dunn in 1953. The tufa types can roughly be divided into three main categories based on morphology:\nThrough time, many hypotheses were developed regarding the formation of the large thinolite crystals (also referred to as glendonite) in thinolitic tufa. It was relatively clear that the thinolites represented a calcite pseudomorph after some unknown original crystal. The original crystal was only determined when the mineral ikaite was discovered in 1963. Ikaite, or hexahydrated CaCO3, is metastable and only crystallizes at near-freezing temperatures. It is also believed that calcite crystallization inhibitors such as phosphate, magnesium, and organic carbon may aid in the stabilization of ikaite. When heated, ikaite breaks down and becomes replaced by smaller crystals of calcite. In the Ikka Fjord of Greenland, ikaite was also observed to grow in columns similar to the tufa towers of Mono Lake. This has led scientists to believe that thinolitic tufa is an indicator of past climates in Mono Lake because they reflect very cold temperatures.\nTufa chemistry.\nRussell (1883) studied the chemical composition of the different tufa types in Lake Lahontan, a large Pleistocene system of multiple lakes in California, Nevada, and Oregon. Not surprisingly, it was found that the tufas consisted primarily of CaO and CO2. However, they also contain minor constituents of MgO (~2 wt%), Fe/Al-oxides (.25-1.29 wt%), and PO5 (0.3 wt%).\nLimnology.\nThe limnology of the lake shows it contains approximately 280 million tons of dissolved salts, with the salinity varying depending upon the amount of water in the lake at any given time. Before 1941, average salinity was approximately 50\u00a0grams per liter (g/L) (compared to a value of 31.5 g/L for the world's oceans). In January 1982, when the lake reached its lowest level of , the salinity had nearly doubled to 99 g/L. In 2002, it was measured at 78 g/L and is expected to stabilize at an average 69 g/L as the lake replenishes over the next 20 years.\nAn unintended consequence of ending the water diversions was the onset of a period of \"meromixis\" in Mono Lake. In the time prior to this, Mono Lake was typically \"monomictic\"; which means that at least once each year the deeper waters and the shallower waters of the lake mixed thoroughly, thus bringing oxygen and other nutrients to the deep waters. In meromictic lakes, the deeper waters do not undergo this mixing; the deeper layers are more saline than the water near the surface, and are typically nearly devoid of oxygen. As a result, becoming meromictic greatly changes a lake's ecology.\nMono Lake has experienced meromictic periods in the past; this most recent episode of meromixis, brought on by the end of the water diversions, commenced in 1994 and had ended by 2004.\nLake-level history.\nAn important characteristic of Mono Lake is that it is a closed lake, meaning it has no outflow. Water can only escape the lake if it evaporates or is lost to groundwater. This may cause closed lakes to become very saline. The reconstruction of historical Mono Lake levels through carbon and oxygen isotopes have also revealed a correlation with well-documented changes in climate.\nIn the recent past, Earth experienced periods of increased glaciation known as ice ages. This geological period of ice ages is known as the Pleistocene, which lasted until ~11 ka. Lake levels in Mono Lake can reveal how the climate fluctuated. For example, during the cold climate of the Pleistocene the lake level was higher because there was less evaporation and more precipitation. Following the Pleistocene, the lake level was generally lower due to increased evaporation and decreased precipitation associated with a warmer climate.\nThe lake level has fluctuated during the Holocene, since the end of the ice ages. The Holocene high point is at elevation , reached in approximately 1820 BCE. The low point before modern diversions is at elevation , reached in 143 CE. The lowest modern level due to diversions is at , reached in 1980.\nEcology.\nAquatic life.\n<templatestyles src=\"Stack/styles.css\"/>\nThe hypersalinity and high alkalinity (pH=10 or equivalent to 4 milligrams of NaOH per liter of water) of the lake means that no fish are native to the lake. An attempt by the California Department of Fish and Game to stock the lake failed.\nThe whole food chain of the lake is based on the high population of single-celled planktonic algae present in the photic zone of the lake. These algae reproduce rapidly during winter and early spring after winter runoff brings nutrients to the surface layer of water. By March the lake is \"as green as pea soup\" with photosynthesizing algae.\nThe lake is famous for the Mono Lake brine shrimp, \"Artemia monica\", a tiny species of brine shrimp, no bigger than a thumbnail, that are endemic to the lake. During the warmer summer months, an estimated 4\u20136 trillion brine shrimp inhabit the lake. Brine shrimp have no food value for humans, but are a staple for birds of the region. The brine shrimp feed on microscopic algae.\nAlkali flies, \"Ephydra hians,\" live along the shores of the lake and walk underwater, encased in small air bubbles, for grazing and to lay eggs. These flies are an important source of food for migratory and nesting birds.\nEight nematode species were found living in the littoral sediment:\nBirds.\nMono Lake is a vital resting and eating stop for migratory shorebirds and has been recognized as a site of international importance by the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network.\nNearly 2,000,000 waterbirds, including 35 species of shorebirds, use Mono Lake to rest and eat for at least part of the year. Some shorebirds that depend on the resources of Mono Lake include American avocets, killdeer, and sandpipers. One to two million eared grebes and phalaropes use Mono Lake during their long migrations.\nLate every summer tens of thousands of Wilson's phalaropes and red-necked phalaropes arrive from their nesting grounds, and feed until they continue their migration to South America or the tropical oceans respectively.\nIn addition to migratory birds, a few species spend several months to nest at Mono Lake. Mono Lake has the second largest nesting population of California gulls, \"Larus californicus\", second only to the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Since abandoning the landbridged Negit Island in the late 1970s, California gulls have moved to some nearby islets and have established new, if less protected, nesting sites. Cornell University and Point Blue Conservation Science have continued the study of nesting populations on Mono Lake that was begun 35 years ago. Snowy plovers also arrive at Mono Lake each spring to nest along the northern and eastern shores.\nHistory.\nNative Americans.\nThe indigenous people of Mono Lake are from a band of the Northern Paiute, called the Kutzadika'a. They speak the Northern Paiute language. The Kutzadika'a traditionally forage alkali fly pupae, called kutsavi in their language.\nThe term \"Mono\" is derived from \"Monachi\", a Yokuts term for the tribes that live on both the east and west side of the Sierra Nevada.\nDuring early contact, the first known Mono Lake Paiute chief was Captain John.\nThe Mono tribe has two bands: Eastern and Western. The Eastern Mono joined the Western Mono bands' villages annually at Hetch Hetchy Valley, Yosemite Valley, and along the Merced River to gather acorns, different plant species, and to trade. The Western Mono and Eastern mono traditionally lived in the south-central Sierra Nevada foothills, including Historical Yosemite Valley.\nPresent day Mono Reservations are currently located in Big Pine, Bishop, and several in Madera County and Fresno County, California.\nConservation efforts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Stack/styles.css\"/>\nThe city of Los Angeles diverted water from the Owens River into the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913. In 1941, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power extended the Los Angeles Aqueduct system farther northward into the Mono Basin with the completion of the Mono Craters Tunnel between the Grant Lake Reservoir on Rush Creek and the Upper Owens River. So much water was diverted that evaporation soon exceeded inflow and the surface level of Mono Lake fell rapidly. By 1982 the lake was reduced to , 69 percent of its 1941 surface area. By 1990, the lake had dropped 45 vertical feet and had lost half its volume relative to the 1941 pre-diversion water level. As a result, alkaline sands and formerly submerged tufa towers became exposed, the water salinity doubled, and Negit Island became a peninsula, exposing the nests of California gulls to predators (such as coyotes), and forcing the gull colony to abandon this site.\nIn 1974, ecologist David Gaines and his student David Winkler studied the Mono Lake ecosystem and became instrumental in alerting the public of the effects of the lower water level with Winkler's 1976 ecological inventory of the Mono Basin. The National Science Foundation funded the first comprehensive ecological study of Mono Lake, conducted by Gaines and undergraduate students. In June 1977, the Davis Institute of Ecology of the University of California published a report, \"An Ecological Study of Mono Lake, California,\" which alerted California to the ecological dangers posed by the redirection of water away from the lake for municipal uses.\nGaines formed the Mono Lake Committee in 1978. He and Sally Judy, a UC Davis student, led the committee and pursued an informational tour of California. They joined with the Audubon Society to fight a now famous court battle, the National Audubon Society v. Superior Court, to protect Mono Lake through state public trust laws. While these efforts have resulted in positive change, the surface level is still below historical levels, and exposed shorelines are a source of significant alkaline dust during periods of high winds.\nOwens Lake, the once-navigable terminus of the Owens River which had sustained a healthy ecosystem, is now a dry lake bed during dry years due to water diversion beginning in the 1920s. Mono Lake was spared this fate when the California State Water Resources Control Board (after over a decade of litigation) issued an order (SWRCB Decision 1631) to protect Mono Lake and its tributary streams on September 28, 1994. SWRCB Board Vice-chair Marc Del Piero was the sole Hearing Officer (see D-1631). In 1941 the surface level was at above sea level. As of October 2022, Mono Lake was at above sea level. The lake level of above sea level is the goal, designed to ensure that the lake would be able to reach and sustain a minimum surface level that is generally agreed to be the minimum for keeping the ecosystem healthy. It has been more difficult during years of drought in the American West.\nIn popular culture.\nArtwork.\nIn 1968, the artist Robert Smithson made \"Mono Lake Non-Site (Cinders near Black Point)\" using pumice collected while visiting Mono on July 27, 1968, with his wife Nancy Holt and Michael Heizer (both prominent visual artists). In 2004, Nancy Holt made a short film entitled \"Mono Lake\" using Super 8 footage and photographs of this trip. An audio recording by Smithson and Heizer, two songs by Waylon Jennings, and Michel Legrand's \"Le Jeu\", the main theme of Jacques Demy's film \"Bay of Angels\" (1963), were used for the soundtrack.\n\"The Diver\", a photo taken by Aubrey Powell of Hipgnosis for Pink Floyd's album \"Wish You Were Here\" (1975), features what appears to be a man diving into a lake, creating no ripples. The photo was taken at Mono Lake, and the tufa towers are a prominent part of the landscape. The effect was actually created when the diver performed a handstand underwater until the ripples dissipated.\nIn print.\nMark Twain's \"Roughing It\", published in 1872, provides an informative early description of Mono Lake in its natural condition in the 1860s. Twain found the lake to be lying \"in a lifeless, treeless, hideous desert... the loneliest place on earth.\"\nIn film.\nA scene featuring a volcano in the film \"Fair Wind to Java\" (1953) was shot at Mono Lake.\nMost of the film \"High Plains Drifter\" (1973) by Clint Eastwood was shot on the southern shores of Mono Lake in the 1970s. An entire town was built here for the film, and later removed when shooting was complete.\nIn music.\nThe music video for glam metal band Cinderella's 1988 power ballad \"Don't Know What You Got ('Till It's Gone)\" was filmed by the lake.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "54113277": "David Gaines (environmentalist)\nAmerican environmentalist\nDavid Allen Gaines (December 30, 1947 \u2013 January 11, 1988) was an American environmentalist and the founder of the Mono Lake Committee. The Mono Lake Committee (along with the Audubon Society) initiated a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to reduce or stop the water diversions that were lowering Mono Lake; Gaines' approach in the lawsuit was to work with the opposition instead of demonizing them. He and his wife, Sally Gaines, began the committee in 1978. They required help from students at Stanford University, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, and Earlham College. Based on research in the Mono Basin, Gaines co-wrote a chapter in the book \"California Riparian Systems\". This helped bring scientific attention to the issues at Mono Lake. As a collaborative team, The Mono Lake Committee took a stand against LADWP.\nOn January 11, 1988, less than two weeks after his 40th birthday, Gaines died in a car accident during a snowstorm on Highway 395 at the base of Crestview Summit, approximately halfway between Mono Lake and Mammoth Lakes. Sally and his two children, Vireo and Sage, survived the accident.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "31197216": "National Audubon Society v. Superior Court\nNational Audubon Society v. Superior Court (Supreme Court of California, 1983, ) was a key case in California highlighting the conflict between the public trust doctrine and appropriative water rights. The Public Trust Doctrine is based on the principle that certain resources (such as navigable waters) are too valuable to be privately owned and must remain available for public use. In \"National Audubon Society v. Superior Court,\" the court held that the public trust doctrine restricts the amount of water that can be withdrawn from navigable waterways. The basis for the Public Trust Doctrine goes back to Roman law. Under Roman law, the air, the rivers, the sea and the seashore were incapable of private ownership; they were dedicated to the use of the public. In essence, the public trust doctrine establishes the role of the state as having trustee environmental duties owed to the public that are subsequently enforceable by the public. There is judicial recognition of this, dictating that certain rights of the public are key to individual common law rights (such as state recognition of the public right or trust for waterways and coastal zones). Judicial recognition of the public trust doctrine has been established for tidelands and non-navigable waterways, submerged land (such as lake beds) and the waters above them, and preservation of a public interest (such as recreation, swimming, access, and sport fishing).\nIn \"National Audubon Society v. Superior Court,\" it was alleged by the plaintiffs that the public trust doctrine was being violated due to environmental damages to Mono Lake in the form of significant water level declines as a result of water diversions by the City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP). DWP based their defense on the fact that they held permits, issued by the state for the diversions, and so the diversions were allowable. The central issue in the case was whether appropriative water rights (granted in the past) must consider the public trust doctrine, requiring protection of natural resources by the state. More specifically, the issue being addressed by the court was whether Mono Lake was subject to a public trust, which would invalidate Los Angeles' use of the streams feeding the lake. The California Supreme Court held that the state, under the public trust doctrine, had continuing responsibility for the state's navigable waters and that the public trust doctrine, therefore, prevented any party from appropriating water in a manner that harmed the public trust interests. However, the court also recognized that LA depended on these diversions as a critical water source, and this in turn mitigated the rule of law as the court held that water transfers were permissible even though some damage to the environment would occur as long as this was kept to minimal harm to the extent feasible. This ruling established that the public trust doctrine and appropriative water rights are \"part of an integrated system of water law\" and so both must be considered when determining appropriate use of water in California.\nCase summary.\nIn 1979, the National Audubon Society, Mono Lake Committee, and others (\"Audubon\") filed a suit against City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power \"DWP\" to suppress their diversion of the four tributaries that originally supplied Mono Lake with water from Sierra snowmelt. The public trust doctrine is the cornerstone and crux of this court case; the doctrine originates from Roman law and has persisted throughout European and English Common law. The Institutes of Justinian from the Sixth Century A.D. stated: \"by the law of nature these things are common to mankind -the air, running water, the sea and consequently the shores of the sea\". Spanish and Mexican law also recognizes the public trust doctrine; the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo guarantees these rights in California. \nThus, the public trust doctrine is a philosophical and realized extension of the concept of communal property, which belongs to the people and is to be held in a \"trust\" by the government. The public trust doctrine holds that our water, fish, and wildlife are shared resources to be held in an exalted position, above that of any industrial, commercial, or private uses in any administrative or judicial review of water allocation, and establishes that the government must uphold and protect this trusteeship as a moral obligation.\nAudubon's original complaint, filed with the Superior Court of Mono County, asserted the diversions were a violation of the public trust doctrine, were both a public and private nuisance, and a violation of California State Constitution Article X, Section 4 & Article XVI, Section 6, which respectively prohibit obstruction of navigable waters and gifts by the state of a state asset. The suit attempted to establish Public Trust rights in Mono Basin, and sought declaratory and injunctive relief. This case eventually reached the Supreme Court of California, where a landmark ruling was handed down in favor of \"Audubon\", which held that the public trust doctrine applied to the Los Angeles Mono Basin diversions and that the state must exercise continuous supervision to ensure that trust values are continuously considered.\nBackground.\nThe leading case that established the public trust doctrine in the U.S. is the 1892 Supreme Court case Illinois Central Railroad v. Illinois. The Court held that \"public trust submerged lands belong to the respective States within which they are found, with the consequent right to use or dispose of any portion thereof, when that can be done without substantial impairment of the interest of the public in the waters\u2026.\" setting a precedent for strict scrutiny of any private taking of public trust land. The Court in Illinois voided the deed because under public trust law it did not promote a primary public purpose. \nThis meaning has been supported by Federal and California Court decisions in \"Woodruff v. North Bloomfield\", \"People v. Gold Run Ditch\" \"Mining Co., People ex rel Ricks Water Co. v. Elk River Mill\" and \"Lumber Co and People v. Truckee Lumber Co\". These cases make it clear as a matter of law one must exercise rights or use property so as not to infringe on the rights, interests or properties of others.\nProcedural history.\n1928: California State Constitution Article X, Section 2 states that all waters of the state must be put to reasonable and beneficial use. Any waters in excess of the \"reasonable and beneficial uses\" are considered surplus waters available for use by others, as stipulated under the appropriative water rights administered by California State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) Water rights are granted by the SWRBC after an application to appropriate water is approved and a permit is issued. The permit allows construction of a project needed to divert the water according to the terms and conditions of the permit, which includes submission of periodic progress reports by the applicant with SWRCB to ensure the application of the water is for beneficial use. If the conditional terms of the permit are met, SWRCB"}, "descending_order": ["46795", "1165426", "54113277", "31197216", "1165731"], "permutation_1": ["31197216", "1165731", "46795", "1165426", "54113277"], "permutation_2": ["1165426", "46795", "1165731", "31197216", "54113277"], "permutation_3": ["1165426", "46795", "54113277", "1165731", "31197216"]}
{"id": "2hop__776480_3089", "docs_added": {"44973219": "Heartbeat Song (Kelly Clarkson song)\n\"Heartbeat Song\" is a song by American singer Kelly Clarkson from her seventh studio album, \"Piece by Piece\" (2015). Written by Mitch Allan, Audra Mae, Kara DioGuardi, and Jason Evigan, the song is an uptempo synth-pop track produced by Greg Kurstin. Lyrically, it sings of meeting a person who restores someone's faith in love. Inspired by 1980s synthpop music, \"Heartbeat Song\" was released by RCA Records as the album's lead single on January 12, 2015.\n\"Heartbeat Song\" was released to a positive response from music critics, who complimented the song's production and praised Clarkson's decision to return to mainstream pop music. Other critics, however, noted the strong resemblance the song's melody bore to that of Jimmy Eat World's single \"The Middle\" (2001), which later allowed the band to be credited as additional songwriters. Commercially, the single debuted on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart at number 37 and has peaked at number 21, marking Clarkson's sixteenth top 40 hit on the chart. It also became her fifth song to top the \"Billboard\" Hot Dance Club Songs chart and marked as her highest debut among her twenty career entries on the \"Billboard\" Adult Top 40 chart. Internationally, it became a top ten hit single in Austria, Iceland, Poland, Slovenia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom while also becoming a top 20 hit in the national charts of the Czech Republic, Germany, Mexico, Slovakia and Sweden.\nDirected by Marc Klasfeld, its accompanying music video features scenes of various downtrodden people and their process of finding love again. Clarkson premiered \"Heartbeat Song\" in a live televised performance on \"The Graham Norton Show\" in February 2015 and has performed it on \"The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon\" and the fourteenth season of \"American Idol\". The song was nominated for Best Pop Solo Performance at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards.\nBackground and composition.\nShortly after the release of her first Christmas album, \"Wrapped in Red\" (2013), Clarkson, despite her pregnancy, began to record material for her seventh studio album, with a target release date in 2014. One of these tracks, \"Heartbeat Song\", is an uptempo synthpop track produced by Greg Kurstin. Lyrically, the song sings of meeting a person who restores someone's faith in love. Sonically, \"USA Today\"'s Brian Mansfeld remarked that the record serves as sonic defibrillator, starting with a jolt of melody, its rhythms shifting a couple times before finally settling into its steady pulse; while Idolator's Bradley Stern described its production as Top 40 radio-friendly and remarked that the track sees Clarkson's pulse raising while falling in love above kicky drums, guitars and hints of synths.\n\"Heartbeat Song\" was written by Mitch Allan, Audra Mae, Kara DioGuardi, and Jason Evigan in a two-day session writing camp. In an interview on \"Entertainment Tonight\", Mae revealed that DioGuardi came up with the main idea and used it as the song's chorus, with everybody else contributing in. After pitching the song to different artists, including Demi Lovato, she later found out during the Christmas season that Clarkson had recorded it and planned to release the song as the album's lead single.\nMusically, the song is written in the key of G-flat major with a fast tempo of 149 beats per minute. It follows the chord progression G\u266d\u2013B\u266d\u2013E\u266dm\u2013C\u266d, and Clarkson's vocals span from G\u266d3 to E\u266d5.\nRelease and reception.\nIn January 2015, Clarkson revealed a set of clues for the single, posting the words \"Proof of life and Dr. Dre #TheNextEpisode (\"sic\")\". On January 7, 2015, she announced January 12, 2015, as its release date as a digital download by RCA Records, followed by a release to Mainstream Top 40 radio stations in the United States on January 13, 2015. A CD single was also issued by RCA's parent company Sony Music Entertainment on March 6, 2015.\nCritical response.\n\"Heartbeat Song\" garnered positive reviews from music critics, with Clarkson's return to mainstream pop music lauded, along with her vocals. \"Billboard\"'s associate editor Jason Lipshutz gave the song 4/5 stars, writing the song's production and vocals sounded invigorated. Reviewing for \"Rolling Stone\", Jon Dylan gave the song a three-and-a-half star rating, describing it as a \"warm, fuzzy snuggle-fest.\" In his midweek review for \"Spin\", assistant editor Brennan Carley wrote that the song is \"a Kurstin production that sparkles with new-found passion\" and said Clarkson sings a lyric of the chorus with a bubblegum snap. In his review for music website Popdust.com, Jason Scott gave the song an \"A\u2212\" grade, saying that song would fit quite nicely to Clarkson's previous studio album \"All I Ever Wanted\" (2009). He also added that despite the song's the chorus isn't quite as \"tasty\" as what she's capable of, it's just as momentous as her previous singles such as \"Mr. Know It All\" (2011) and \"Breakaway\" (2004). Reviewing for \"Time\", Nolan Feeney wrote that \"Heartbeat Song\" as more of a celebration of that than a hungry comeback, reminding listeners of what Clarkson has so reliably provided over the years, with just a few souped-up adjustments. He also praised Kurstin's production and Clarkson's \"arena-ready pipes\", describing the song as \"slick, sugary and incredibly catchy \u2014 everything you want in a pop song, really\". The song has been nominated for the Choice Music Single: Female Artist category for the 2015 Teen Choice Awards.\nCritics also compared \"Heartbeat Song\" to Jimmy Eat World's single \"The Middle\" (2001) due to a notable similarity between the melodies of the songs' verses, as well as their choruses. In his review for Idolator, Stern observed both songs' similitude. Hunter Hauk of \"The Dallas Morning News\" also remarked of the two songs' similarities, but was ambivalent of \"Heartbeat Song\"'s lack of innovation as compared to Clarkson's previous lead singles. Digital Spy rated this song with 2 stars out of 5 and concluded by describing it: \"ruthless in its pursuit of earworm status, and like it or not it'll find itself lodged in the inner vestibules of your brain.\nChart performance.\nOn the chart week ending January 31, 2015, \"Heartbeat Song\" debuted on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart at number 37 with 70,000 copies of digital downloads, becoming her 16th top 40 hit on the chart. It also marked as her third highest debut among her 25 career entries, following \"Never Again\", and \"Mr. Know It All\", which debuted at number 8 and number 18 respectively. On the chart week ending February 21, 2015, it moved to a peak of number 21. The song also debuted on other \"Billboard\" charts, including the \"Billboard\" Mainstream Top 40 chart, the \"Billboard\" Adult Contemporary chart, the Billboard Trending 140 and the \"Billboard\" Adult Top 40 chart, where it entered at number 20, marking a career-high for Clarkson. On July 23, 2015, \"Heartbeat Song\" was certified Platinum by RIAA for selling a million copies. In Canada, \"Heartbeat Song\" debuted on the \"Billboard\" Canadian Hot 100 chart at number 37 on the chart week ending January 31, 2015. In Australia, it entered the ARIA Singles Chart at number 51 on the chart week ending January 26, 2015. In the United Kingdom, the song debuted at number 7 on the Official UK Singles Chart, becoming Clarkson's ninth song to reach the chart's top 10. As of April 24, 2016 is sold over 362,000 copies in the United Kingdom. In addition, \"Heartbeat Song\" had attained a chart position in the national charts of Austria, Germany, Spain, and Sweden; and has also charted in the airplay charts of Czech Republic, Denmark, the Netherlands, Slovakia.\nAs of September 2017, the song has sold over 909,000 copies in the US.\nAwards and nominations.\nAt the 2015 Teen Choice Awards, \"Heartbeat Song\" was nominated for Choice Music Single: Female Artist. For the 58th Annual Grammy Awards the song is nominated for Best Pop Solo Performance. In 2016 Audra Mae won ASCAP Pop Music Award for co-writing the song. In May 2016, the song won at the 64th Annual BMI Pop Awards.\nMusic video.\nOn January 26, 2015, RCA released an animated lyric video for \"Heartbeat Song\", featuring heartbeat graphs of Clarkson and three other radio guests in Nashville using an ECG monitor. Directed by Marc Klasfeld, its accompanying music video premiered on February 5, 2015, on Vevo. It was filmed in Nashville, Tennessee.\nSynopsis.\nThe video depicts scenes of various heartbroken people unexpectedly finding a chance to love again. These scenes are inter-cut with footage of Clarkson performing the track in a colorful background. Upon its premiere, the video had received a generally positive response, with mild criticism targeting a scene depicting a couple kissing through the opposite seating sides of a bench. In his coverage for \"Spin\", Carley remarked that there are some surprisingly deep moments tracing the journey from loss to happiness in the video. Reviewing for Yahoo! Music, senior editor Wendy Geller wrote that despite the video's concept may sound hokey, but the idea that life can change from dark to light in an instant (couple with Clarkson's buoyant vocals) is irresistible.\nLive performances.\nClarkson premiered \"Heartbeat Song\" in a live televised performance on the British television programs \"The Graham Norton Show\" on February 20, 2015, and \"Loose Women\" on March 2, 2015. She also performed the song on \"The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon\" on March 2, 2015, \"Good Morning America\" on March 3, 2015, iHeartRadio Music Awards on March 29, 2015, and on \"The Ellen DeGeneres Show\", on April 3, 2015. On April 2, 2015, Clarkson performed the song on the fourteenth season of \"American Idol\" where she was also the guest mentor for the top 8 as part of the \"Evening with Kelly Clarkson\" week. Clarkson performed the song in a medley with \"Since U Been Gone\" and \"Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)\" on the season three finale of \"La Voix\" in Montreal on April 12, 2015. Additionally, Clarkson performed the song at the Summertime Ball hosted by Capital FM on June 6, 2015. In July 2015, Clarkson performed the song on \"Macy's 4th of July Spectacular\" on NBC.\nCredits and personnel.\nCredits adapted from the \"Heartbeat Song\" metadata.\nPersonnel\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "191890": "American Idol\nAmerican singing competition\nAmerican Idol is an American singing competition television series created by Simon Fuller, produced by Fremantle North America and 19 Entertainment, and distributed by Fremantle North America. It aired on Fox from June 11, 2002, to April 7, 2016, for 15 seasons. It was on hiatus for two years until March 11, 2018, when a revival of the series began airing on ABC.\nIt started as an addition to the \"Idol\" format that was based on \"Pop Idol\" from British television, in which the programme's first series, which was won by Will Young, ended over four months before the show began, as it later became one of the most successful shows in the history of American television. The concept of the series involves discovering recording stars from unsigned singing talents, with the winner determined by American viewers using phones, Internet platforms, and SMS text voting. The winners of the first twenty-two seasons, as chosen by viewers, are Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Hicks, Jordin Sparks, David Cook, Kris Allen, Lee DeWyze, Scotty McCreery, Phillip Phillips, Candice Glover, Caleb Johnson, Nick Fradiani, Trent Harmon, Maddie Poppe, Laine Hardy, Just Sam, Chayce Beckham, Noah Thompson, Iam Tongi, and Abi Carter.\n\"American Idol\" employs a select panel of judges who critique the contestants' performances. The original judges, for seasons one through eight, were record producer and music manager Randy Jackson, singer and choreographer Paula Abdul, and music executive and manager Simon Cowell. The judging panel for the last three seasons on Fox consisted of singers Keith Urban, Jennifer Lopez, and Harry Connick Jr. Season sixteen brought three new judges: singers Luke Bryan, Katy Perry, and Lionel Richie. Beginning in the twenty-third season, Underwood replaced Perry, alongside returning judges Bryan and Richie. The show has been hosted by television presenter Ryan Seacrest throughout its run, apart from the show's inaugural season when comedian Brian Dunkleman joined Seacrest as co-host.\nThe success of \"American Idol\" has been described as \"unparalleled in broadcasting history\". A rival TV executive said the series was \"the most impactful show in the history of television\". It became a recognized springboard for launching the career of many artists as bona fide stars. According to \"Billboard\" magazine, in its first ten years, \"\"Idol\" has spawned 345 \"Billboard\" chart-toppers and a platoon of pop idols, including Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Chris Daughtry, Fantasia, Ruben Studdard, Jennifer Hudson, Clay Aiken, Adam Lambert, and Jordin Sparks while remaining a TV ratings juggernaut.\" For an unprecedented eight consecutive years, from the 2003\u201304 television season through the 2010\u201311 season, either its performance show or result show was ranked number one in U.S. television ratings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\n\"American Idol\" was based on the British show \"Pop Idol\" created by Simon Fuller, which was in turn inspired by the New Zealand television singing competition \"Popstars\". Television producer Nigel Lythgoe saw a version in Australia and helped bring it over to Britain. Fuller was inspired by the idea from \"Popstars\" of employing a panel of judges to select singers in audition. He then added other elements, including telephone voting by the viewing public (which at the time was already in use in shows, such as the \"Eurovision Song Contest\"), the drama of backstories, and real-life soap opera unfolding in real time. \"Pop Idol\" debuted in Britain in 2001 with Lythgoe as showrunner\u200d\u2014\u200cthe executive producer and production leader\u200d\u2014\u200cand Simon Cowell as one of the judges, and was successful with the viewing public.\nIn 2001, Fuller, Cowell, and TV producer Simon Jones attempted to sell the \"Pop Idol\" format to the United States, but the idea was initially met with poor responses from all the television networks including UPN and Fox. However, Rupert Murdoch, head of Fox's parent company, was later persuaded to buy the series by his daughter, Elisabeth, who had seen the British show. Although Fox's executives wanted to change the format, Murdoch insisted that it should remain the same as the British one. One change was nevertheless made due to the presence of multiple time zones in the United States that made it impractical for the country to vote in the same time period, an additional half-hour results show was therefore added the day following the performance show. The show was renamed \"\" and debuted in the summer of 2002. Cowell was initially offered the job of showrunner but turned down the offer; Lythgoe then took over that position. Much to the surprise of Cowell and Fox, it became one of the biggest shows of the summer. With its successful launch in the summer, the show was then moved to January and expanded. The show grew into a phenomenon largely due to its personal engagement with the contestants by prompting the viewers to vote, and the presence of the acid-tongued Cowell as a judge. By 2004, it had become the most-watched show on American television, a position it then held for seven consecutive seasons until 2011.\nHowever, after a few years of sharp declining ratings starting in 2012, with rating falls of over 20% each season, the fifteenth season would be its last on Fox, ending its run in April 2016. In May 2017, ABC acquired the rights to the series and the program returned for the 2017\u201318 television season. The first season of the revived series, or the sixteenth season overall, started airing in March 2018. Seven seasons have been aired on ABC as of May 2024.\nJudges and hosts.\nJudges.\nThe show had originally planned on having four judges following the \"Pop Idol\" format; however, only three judges had been found by the time of the audition round in the first season, namely Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell. A fourth judge, radio DJ Stryker, was originally chosen but he dropped out citing \"image concerns.\" In the second season, New York radio personality Angie Martinez had been hired as a fourth judge but withdrew after only a few days of auditions, due to being uncomfortable with giving out criticism. The show decided to continue with the three judges format until the eighth season. All three original judges stayed on the judging panel for eight seasons.\nIn the eighth season, Latin Grammy Award-nominated singer-songwriter and record producer Kara DioGuardi was added as a fourth judge. Abdul left the show in 2009, after the eighth season, as a result of failing to agree to terms with the show producers. Emmy Award-winning talk show host Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul for the ninth season, but left in 2010 after just one season. DioGuardi was let go from \"American Idol\" in 2010 after two seasons, as producers favored a return to the three-person judges panel previously used prior to DioGuardi's appearance on the show. Cowell also left the show in 2010 to introduce the American version of his show \"The X Factor\" in 2011. Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth.\nJennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined the judging panel in the tenth season, but both left in 2012 after two seasons. Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. They were replaced by three new judges, Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj, and Keith Urban, who joined Jackson in the twelfth season. However, both Carey and Minaj left after one season. Jackson also departed the judges table after twelve seasons, but would return as the in-house mentor for the thirteenth season in 2014, after which he left the show permanently.\nUrban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. After a one-season hiatus, Lopez returned to \"American Idol\" for the thirteenth season, and was joined by former mentor Harry Connick Jr. After this, Lopez, Urban, and Connick Jr. remained on the show until its cancellation after the fifteenth season in 2016.\nWhen the show was revived by ABC in 2018, Katy Perry, Luke Bryan, and Lionel Richie were selected as judges, marking the sixteenth season of \"Idol\". Bryan and Richie have remained on the show since, while Perry left the show in May 2024 after seven seasons. On July 31, 2024, published reports announced former \"Idol\" winner Carrie Underwood as Perry's replacement, joining Bryan and Richie for the twenty-third season.\nGuest judges may occasionally be introduced. In the second season, guest judges such as Richie and Gladys Knight were used, and in the third season, Donna Summer, Quentin Tarantino, Gloria Estefan, and some of the mentors also joined as judges to critique the performances in the final rounds. Guest judges were sporadically used during the audition rounds: Gene Simmons, LL Cool J, Brandy, Mark McGrath, and Kenny Loggins in the fourth season; Carole Bayer Sager, Jewel, and Olivia Newton-John in the sixth season; Shania Twain, Neil Patrick Harris, Avril Lavigne, Mary J. Blige, Joe Jonas, Kristin Chenoweth, Victoria Beckham, and Perry in the ninth season (substituting in the vacant chair, before DeGeneres was hired); and Adam Lambert filled in for Urban at one audition location during the fourteenth season. In the ABC version, two instances occurred during the live shows: Abdul filled in for Bryan on one episode of the nineteenth season, while Alanis Morissette and Ed Sheeran filled in for Perry and Richie on an episode of the twenty-first season.\nHosts.\nThe first season was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman, following the format of \"Pop Idol\" of using two presenters. Dunkleman quit thereafter, resulting in Seacrest becoming the sole emcee starting with the second season in 2003.\nSeacrest has remained as sole host of \"American Idol\" ever since, with the exception of the two-year hiatus between 2016 and 2018 as well as April 8, 2019, during the seventeenth season, when Bobby Bones subbed for Seacrest after the latter fell ill. Dunkleman did, however, return for the initial in 2016 as a guest.\nCast timeline.\nAnnotations\nSelection process.\nIn a series of steps, the show selected the eventual winner out of many tens of thousands of contestants.\nContestant eligibility.\nThe eligible age-range for contestants is fifteen to twenty-eight years old. The initial age limit was sixteen to twenty-four in the first three seasons, but the upper limit was raised to twenty-eight in the fourth season, and the lower limit was reduced to fifteen in the tenth season. The contestants have to be legal U.S. residents, can not have advanced to particular stages of the competition in previous seasons, and must not have held a current recording or talent representation contract by the semi-final stage (in previous years by the audition stage).\nInitial auditions.\nFor the first eighteen seasons, contestants went through at least three sets of cuts. The first was a brief audition with a few other contestants in front of selectors which may include one of the show's producers. Although auditions can exceed 10,000 in each city, only a few hundred of these made it past the preliminary round of auditions. Successful contestants then sing in front of producers, where more may be cut. Only then can they proceed to audition in front of the judges, which is the only audition stage shown on television. Those selected by the judges are sent to Hollywood. Between 10 and 60 people in each city may make it to Hollywood (the average total is between 150 and 200).\nFrom the nineteenth season onwards, contestants request a Zoom interview and audition remotely for the show's producers. If the audition goes well, they will then invite the contestants to audition in front of the judges, in one of the audition cities.\nHollywood week.\nOnce in Hollywood, the contestants perform individually or in groups in a series of rounds. Until the tenth season, there were usually three rounds of eliminations in Hollywood. In the first round the contestants emerged in groups but performed individually. For the next round, the contestants put themselves in small groups and performed a song together. In the final round, the contestants performed solo with a song of their choice a cappella or accompanied by a band\u200d\u2014\u200cdepending on the season. In the second and third seasons, contestants were also asked to write original lyrics or melody in an additional round after the first round. In the seventh season, the group round was eliminated and contestants may, after a first solo performance and on judges approval, skip a second solo round and move directly to the final Hollywood round. In the twelfth season, the executive producers split up the females and males and chose the members to form the groups in the group round.\nIn the tenth and eleventh seasons, a further round was added in Las Vegas, where the contestants performed in groups based on a theme, followed by one final solo round to determine the semi-finalists. At the end of this stage of the competition, 24 to 36 contestants were selected to move on to the semi-final stage. In the twelfth season the Las Vegas round became a Sudden Death round, where the judges had to choose five guys and five girls each night (four nights) to make the top twenty. In the thirteenth season, the Las Vegas round was eliminated and a new round called \"Hollywood or Home\" was added, where if the judges were uncertain about some contestants, those contestants were required to perform soon after landing in Los Angeles, and those who failed to impress were sent back home before they reached Hollywood. In the fourteenth season, the \"Hollywood or Home\" round was dropped, and a Showcase round was added, where the contestants performed at the House of Blues or auditorium for the judges and a live audience, and these performances determine who makes into the Top 24. In the seventeenth and eighteenth seasons, the showcase round took place in Hawaii. From the nineteenth season onward, a showstopper round was used.\nAudience voting.\nFrom the semi-finals onward, the fate of the contestants is decided by public vote. During the contestant's performance as well as the recap at the end, a toll-free telephone number for each contestant was displayed on the screen. For a two-hour period after the episode ends (up to four hours for the finale) in each US time zone, viewers may call or send a text message to their preferred contestant's telephone number, and each call or text message was registered as a vote for that contestant. Viewers were allowed to vote as many times as they can within the two-hour voting window. However, the show reserves the right to discard votes by power dialers. One or more of the least popular contestants may be eliminated in successive weeks until a winner emerges. Over 110\u00a0million votes were cast in the first season, and by the tenth season the seasonal total had increased to nearly 750 million. Voting via text messaging was made available in the second season when AT&T Wireless joined as a sponsor of the show, and 7.5\u00a0million text messages were sent to \"American Idol\" that season. The number of text messages rapidly increased, reaching 178\u00a0million texts by the eighth season. Online voting was offered for the first time in the tenth season. The votes are counted and verified by Telescope Inc.\nSemi-finals.\nIn the first three seasons, the semi-finalists were split into different groups to perform individually in their respective night. In the first season, there were three groups of ten, with the top three contestants from each group making the finals. In the second and third seasons, there were four groups of eight, and the top two of each selected. These seasons also featured a wildcard round, where contestants who failed to qualify were given another chance. In the first season, only one wildcard contestant was chosen by the judges, giving a total of ten finalists. In the second and third seasons, each of the three judges championed one contestant with the public advancing a fourth into the finals, making 12 finalists in all.\nFrom the fourth through seventh and ninth seasons, the twenty-four semi-finalists were divided by gender in order to ensure an equal gender division in the top twelve. The men and women sang separately on consecutive nights, and the bottom two in each groups were eliminated each week until only six of each remained to form the top twelve.\nThe wildcard round returned in the eighth season, wherein there were three groups of twelve, with three contestants moving forward \u2013 the highest male, the highest female, and the next highest-placed singer \u2013 for each night, and four wildcards were chosen by the judges to produce a final 13. Starting in tenth season, the girls and boys perform on separate nights. In the tenth and eleventh seasons, five of each gender were chosen, and three wildcards were chosen by the judges to form a final 13. In the twelfth season, the top twenty semifinalists were split into gender groups, with five of each gender advancing to form the final 10. In the thirteenth season, there were thirty semifinalists, but only twenty semifinalists (ten for each gender) were chosen by the judges to perform on the live shows, with five in each gender based on the vote and three wildcards chosen by the judges composing the final 13. In the fourteenth season, the top 24 performed at The Fillmore Detroit, starting with the 12 males on one night and then the 12 females on the next night. The following week, the same order went for the top 16, with four males eliminated, followed by four females based on the vote. Then, on the first night of finals, a similar sequence from the thirteenth season was used to determine the final 12, with five of each gender based on the vote and two wildcards chosen by the judges. In the fifteenth season, the top 24 performed at Cathedral of Saint Vibiana in Los Angeles and were split into two groups of twelve and performed twice, one being a solo performance and one being a duet with a former Idol contestant. In each group, the judges chose 7 contestants to advance to the top 14 where the judges chose 4 to advance to the top 10 and remaining 6 contestants were chosen based on the vote. In the sixteenth season, the top 24 performed at the Academy in the Heart of LA, and the show repeated the process from the previous season. However, instead of Idol alumnus as duet partners, superstar celebrity singers were used as the duet partners. In the seventeenth season, the same process was repeated again. However, instead of a top 24, it's a top 20, the contestants performed at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, and performed solos in one episode, and performed the duets in two episodes. In the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the top 20 performed at their homes, and based on the vote, half of the top 20 would advance to the top 10, and the other half would be eliminated. However, a wild card was given to one of the bottom 10 to save them from elimination. In the nineteenth season, the show used a combination of the process from the sixteenth and fourteenth seasons. In the twentieth season, the show repeated the process from the previous season, but they used a top 20 instead of a top 16, and there were no all star duets. In the twenty-first season, the same process was repeated, but they started with a top 26 instead of a top 24. In the twenty-second season, the show repeated the process from the twentieth season.\nFinals.\nThe finals are broadcast in primetime from Los Angeles, in front of a live studio audience (except the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic). From 2002 to 2019 and from 2021 to 2022, the venue was CBS Television City. Starting in 2023, it changed to Red Studios. The finals lasted eight weeks in the first season. From the second to ninth and fourteenth seasons, the finals lasted eleven weeks. The tenth and eleventh seasons lasted for twelve weeks, while the twelfth season lasted for ten weeks. In the thirteenth season, the finals lasted thirteen weeks. The finals lasted seven weeks in the fifteenth season, and six weeks in the sixteenth season. Each finalist performs songs based on a weekly theme which may be a musical genre such as Motown, disco, or big band, songs by artists such as Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley or The Beatles, or more general themes such as \"Billboard\" number-one hits or songs from the contestant's year of birth. Contestants usually worked with a celebrity mentor related to the theme. From the tenth to twelfth seasons, Jimmy Iovine was brought in as a mentor for the season. Initially the contestants sang one song each week, but this was increased to two songs from top four or five onwards, then three songs for the top two or three.\nThe most popular contestants are usually not revealed in the results show. Instead, typically the three contestants (two in later rounds) who received the lowest number of votes was called to the center of the stage. One of these three was usually sent to safety; however the two remaining were not necessarily the bottom two. The contestant with the fewest votes was then revealed and eliminated from the competition. A montage of the eliminated contestant's time on the show was played and they gave their final performance (from the fourteenth season onward, the montage and the final performance were dropped). However, in the sixth season, during the series' first ever Idol Gives Back episode, no contestant was eliminated, but on the following week, two were sent home. Moreover, from the eighth to the fourteenth seasons, and the seventeenth season onward, the judges may overturn viewers' decision with a \"Judges' Save\" if they unanimously agreed to. \"The save\" could only be used once, and only up through the Top 5. In the eighth to tenth and fourteenth seasons, a double elimination then took place in the week following the activation of the save, but in the eleventh and thirteenth seasons, a regular single elimination took place. The save was not activated in the twelfth season and consequently, a non-elimination took place in the week after its expiration with the votes then carrying over into the following week.\nThe \"Fan Save\" was introduced in the fourteenth season. During the finals, viewers were given a five-minute window to vote for the contestants in danger of elimination by using their Twitter account to decide which contestant will move on to the next show, starting with the Top 8.\nSeason finale.\nDuring the original run of \"American Idol\" on Fox, the finale week consisted of a one-hour long final performance night and a two-hour last episode of the season that culminates in revealing the winner, both of which are broadcast live in the U.S. Eastern and Central time zones. For the first, third through sixth and fourteenth through fifteenth seasons it was broadcast from the Dolby Theatre, which has an audience capacity of approximately 3,400. The second-season finale took place at the Gibson Amphitheatre, which had an audience capacity of over 6,000. In the seventh through thirteenth seasons, the venue was at the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live, which holds an audience of over 7,000. Since the show's reboot on ABC, the venue remains the same throughout the entire show (excluding auditions), but was still two episodes in the sixteenth season, and then stretched to a single three-hour season finale that is annually aired live simultaneously in all U.S. territories, starting with the seventeenth season. The eighteenth-season finale was conducted virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nRewards for winner and finalists.\nThe winner usually receives a record deal with a major label, which may be for up to six albums, and secures a management contract with \"American Idol\"-affiliated 19 Management (which has the right of first refusal to sign all contestants), as well as various lucrative contracts. All winners prior to the ninth season reportedly earned at least $1\u00a0million in their first year as winner. At first the contract came with a $250,000-plus advance, but dropped to about $62,500 over the Fox years. All the runners-up of the first ten seasons, as well as some of other finalists, had also received record deals with major labels. However, starting in the eleventh season, the runner-up may only be guaranteed a single-only deal. BMG/Sony (first through ninth seasons), UMG (tenth through fifteenth seasons), and Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records (sixteenth through eighteenth seasons) had the right of first refusal to sign contestants for three months after the season's finale. In the fourteenth and fifteenth seasons, the winner was signed with Big Machine Records. Prominent music mogul Clive Davis also produced some of the selected contestants' albums, such as Kelly Clarkson, Clay Aiken, Fantasia Barrino and Diana DeGarmo. All top 10 (11 in the tenth and twelfth seasons, 5 in the fourteenth season, and 7 in the sixteenth season) finalists earn the privilege of going on a tour, where the participants may each earn a six-figure sum.\nSeason synopses.\nEach season premieres with the audition round, taking place in different cities. The audition episodes typically feature a mix of potential finalists, interesting characters and woefully inadequate contestants. Each successful contestant receives a golden or platinum ticket to proceed on to the next round in Hollywood. Based on their performances during the Hollywood round (Las Vegas round from the tenth through twelfth seasons), 24 to 36 contestants are selected by the judges to participate in the semifinals. From the semifinals onward the contestants perform their songs live, with the judges making their critiques after each performance. The contestants are voted for by the viewing public, and the outcome of the public votes is then revealed during a results segment. The results segment feature group performances by the contestants as well as guest performers. The Top-three results also features homecoming events for the Top 3 finalists. The season reaches its climax in a two-hour results finale show, where the winner of the season is revealed.\nWith the exception of the first two seasons, the contestants in the semifinals onward perform in front of a studio audience. They perform with a full band in the finals. The current musical director is Kris Pooley, who has been with the show since the sixteenth season. In previous seasons, the \"American Idol\" band was led by Rickey Minor (fourth through ninth and thirteenth through fifteenth seasons) and Ray Chew (tenth through twelfth seasons). Assistance has also been given by vocal coaches and song arrangers, such as Michael Orland and Debra Byrd to contestants behind the scene. Starting with the seventh season, contestants may perform with a musical instrument from the Hollywood rounds onward. In later seasons, the contestants were allowed to perform with a musical instrument in the auditions. During the first nine seasons, performances were usually aired live on Tuesday nights, followed by the results shows on Wednesdays, but moved to Wednesdays and Thursdays from the tenth through thirteenth seasons, with the tenth, eleventh and thirteenth-season finales aired on Tuesday and Wednesday. From the fourteenth season onward, there were no separate results shows. On the fourteenth season, the show aired on Wednesday nights, and on the fifteenth season, Thursday nights. Since the sixteenth season, the show has been airing on Sundays and Mondays.\n2002\u20132016: Fox.\nSeason 1 (2002).\nThe first season of \"American Idol\" debuted as a summer replacement show in June 2002 on the Fox network. It was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell served as judges.\nIn the audition rounds, 121 contestants were selected from around 10,000 who attended the auditions. These were cut to 30 for the semifinal, with ten going on to the finals. One semifinalist, Delano Cagnolatti, was disqualified for lying to evade the show's age limit. One of the early favorites, Tamyra Gray, was eliminated at the top four, the first of several such shock eliminations that were to be repeated in later seasons. Christina Christian was hospitalized before the top six result show due to chest pains and palpitations, and she was eliminated while she was in the hospital. Jim Verraros was the first openly gay contestant on the show; his sexual orientation was revealed on his blog, however it was removed during the competition after a request from the show producers over concerns that it might be unfairly influencing votes.\nThe final showdown was between Justin Guarini, one of the early favorites, and Kelly Clarkson. Clarkson was not initially thought of as a contender, but impressed the judges with some good performances in the final rounds, such as her performance of Aretha Franklin's \"Natural Woman\", and Betty Hutton's \"Stuff Like That There\", and eventually won the crown on September 4, 2002.\nIn what was to become a tradition, Clarkson performed the coronation song during the finale, and released the song immediately after the season ended. The single, \"A Moment Like This\", went on to break a 38-year-old record held by The Beatles for the biggest leap to number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. Guarini did not release any song immediately after the show and remains the only runner-up not to do so. Both Clarkson and Guarini made a musical film, \"From Justin to Kelly\", which was released in 2003 but was widely panned. Clarkson has since become one of the most successful \"Idol\" contestants internationally, with worldwide album sales of more than 25\u00a0million.\nStarting September 30, 2006, this season was repackaged as \"\"American Idol Rewind\"\" and syndicated directly to stations in the U.S.\nSeason 2 (2003).\nFollowing the success of the first season, the second season was moved up to air in January 2003. The number of episodes increased, as did the show's budget and the charge for commercial spots. Dunkleman left the show, leaving Ryan Seacrest as the lone host. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Kristin Adams was a correspondent for this season.\nCorey Clark was disqualified during the finals for having an undisclosed police record; however, he later alleged that he and Paula Abdul had an affair while on the show and that this contributed to his expulsion. Clark also claimed that Abdul gave him preferential treatment on the show due to their affair. The allegations were dismissed by Fox after an independent investigation. Two semi-finalists were also disqualified that year \u2013 Jaered Andrews for an arrest on an assault charge, and Frenchie Davis for having previously modeled for an adult website.\nThe season finale drew more than 38 million viewers, marking \"Idol\"'s biggest audience ever for a single episode. Ruben Studdard emerged as the winner, beating Clay Aiken by a small margin. Out of a total of 24 million votes, Studdard finished just 134,000 votes ahead of Aiken. This slim margin of victory was controversial due to the large number of calls that failed to get through. In an interview prior to the fifth season, executive producer Nigel Lythgoe indicated that Aiken had led the fan voting from the wildcard week onward until the finale.\nBoth finalists found success after the show, but Aiken out-performed Studdard's coronation song \"Flying Without Wings\" with his single release from the show \"This Is the Night\", as well as in their subsequent album releases. The fourth-place finisher Josh Gracin also enjoyed some success as a country singer.\nSeason 3 (2004).\nThe third season premiered on January 19, 2004. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. One of the most talked-about contestants during the audition process was William Hung whose off-key rendition of Ricky Martin's \"She Bangs\" received widespread attention. His exposure on \"Idol\" landed him a record deal and surprisingly he became the third bestselling singer from that season.\nMuch media attention on the season had been focused on the three black singers, Fantasia Barrino, LaToya London, and Jennifer Hudson, dubbed the Three Divas. All three unexpectedly landed on the bottom three on the top seven result show, with Hudson controversially eliminated. Elton John, who was one of the mentors that season, called the results of the votes \"incredibly racist\". The prolonged stays of John Stevens and Jasmine Trias in the finals, despite negative comments from the judges, had aroused resentment, so much so that John Stevens reportedly received a death threat, which he dismissed as a joke 'blown out of proportion'.\nThe performance of \"Summertime\" by Barrino, later known simply as \"Fantasia\", at Top 8 was widely praised, and Simon Cowell considered it as his favorite \"Idol\" moment in the nine seasons he was on the show. Fantasia and Diana DeGarmo were the last two finalists, and Fantasia was crowned as the winner. Fantasia released as her coronation single \"I Believe\", a song co-written by the first season finalist Tamyra Gray, and DeGarmo released \"Dreams\".\nSeason 4 (2005).\nThe fourth season premiered on January 18, 2005. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This was the first full season of the series to be aired in high definition; the finale of the third season was also aired in high definition. The number of those attending the auditions by now had increased to over 100,000 from the 10,000 of the first season. The age limit was raised to 28 in this season, and among those who benefited from this new rule were Constantine Maroulis and Bo Bice, the two rockers of the show.\nThe top 12 finalists originally included Mario Vazquez, but he dropped out citing 'personal reasons' and was replaced by Nikko Smith. Later, an employee of Fremantle Media, which produces the show, sued the company for wrongful termination, claiming that he was dismissed after complaining about lewd behavior by Vazquez toward him during the show.\nDuring the top 11 week, due to a mix-up with the contestants' telephone number, voting was repeated on what was normally the result night, with the result reveal postponed until the following night.\nIn May 2005, Underwood was announced the winner, with Bice the runner-up. Both Underwood and Bice released the coronation song \"Inside Your Heaven\", with Underwood's version of the song making her the first country artist ever to debut at number-one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart. As of 2015, Underwood has become the most successful \"Idol\" contestant in the U.S., selling 16 million albums in the country, while selling a total of 65 million records worldwide.\nSeason 5 (2006).\nThe fifth season began on January 17, 2006. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. It remains the highest-rated season in the show's run so far. Two of the more prominent contestants during the Hollywood round were the Brittenum twins who were later disqualified for identity theft.\nChris Daughtry's performance of Fuel's \"Hemorrhage (In My Hands)\" on the show was widely praised and led to an invitation to join the band as Fuel's new lead singer, an invitation he declined. His performance of Live's version of \"I Walk the Line\" was well received by the judges but later criticized in some quarters for not crediting the arrangement to Live. He was eliminated at the top four in a shocking result.\nOn May 30, 2006, Taylor Hicks was named \"American Idol\", with Katharine McPhee the runner-up. \"Do I Make You Proud\" was released as Hicks' first single and McPhee's was \"My Destiny\".\nDespite being eliminated earlier in the season, Chris Daughtry (as lead of the band Daughtry) became the most successful recording artist from this season. Other contestants, such as Hicks, McPhee, Bucky Covington, Mandisa, Kellie Pickler, and Elliott Yamin have had varying levels of success.\nSeason 6 (2007).\nThe sixth season began on Tuesday, January 16, 2007. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The premiere drew a massive audience of 37.3\u00a0million viewers, peaking in the last half hour with more than 41\u00a0million viewers.\nTeenager Sanjaya Malakar was the season's most talked-about contestant for his unusual hairdo, and for managing to survive elimination for many weeks due in part to the weblog Vote for the Worst and satellite radio personality Howard Stern, who both encouraged fans to vote for him. However, on the Top 7 results, Sanjaya was voted off.\nThis season saw the first \"Idol Gives Back\" telethon-inspired event, which raised more than $76\u00a0million in corporate and viewer donations. No contestant was eliminated that week, but two (Phil Stacey and Chris Richardson) were eliminated the next.\nIn the May 23 season finale, Jordin Sparks was declared the winner with the runner-up being Blake Lewis. Sparks has had some success as a recording artist post-\"Idol\".\nThis season also saw the launch of the \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest which allows fans to vote for the \"coronation song\". Thousands of recordings of original songs were submitted by songwriters, and 20 entries selected for the public vote. The winning song, \"This Is My Now\", was performed by both finalists during the finale and released by Sparks on May 24, 2007.\nSeason 7 (2008).\nThe seventh season premiered on January 15, 2008, for a two-day, four-hour premiere. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The media focused on the professional status of the seventh season contestants, the so-called 'ringers', many of whom, including Kristy Lee Cook, Brooke White, Michael Johns, and in particular Carly Smithson, had prior recording contracts. Contestant David Hernandez also attracted some attention due to his past employment as a stripper.\nFor the finals, \"American Idol\" debuted a new state-of-the-art set and stage on March 11, 2008, along with a new on-air look. David Cook's performance of \"Billie Jean\" on top-ten night was lauded by the judges, but provoked controversy when they apparently mistook the Chris Cornell arrangement to be David Cook's own even though the performance was introduced as Cornell's version. Cornell himself said he was 'flattered' and praised David Cook's performance. David Cook was taken to the hospital after the top-nine performance show due to heart palpitations and high blood pressure.\nDavid Archuleta's performance of John Lennon's \"Imagine\" was considered by many as one of the best of the season. Jennifer Lopez, who was brought in as a judge in the tenth season, called it a beautiful song-moment that she will never forget. Jason Castro's semi-final performance of \"Hallelujah\" also received considerable attention, and it propelled Jeff Buckley's version of the song to the top of the \"Billboard\" digital song chart. This was the first season in which contestants' recordings were released onto iTunes after their performances, and although sales information was not released so as not to prejudice the contest, leaked information indicated that contestants' songs frequently reached the top of iTunes sales charts.\n\"Idol Gives Back\" returned on April 9, 2008, and raised $64\u00a0million for charity.\nThe finalists were Cook and Archuleta. David Cook was announced the winner on May 21, 2008, the first rocker to win the show. Both Cook and Archuleta had some success as recording artists with both selling over a million albums in the U.S.\nThe \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest was also held this season. From ten of the most popular submissions, each of the final two contestants chose a song to perform, although neither of their selections was used as the \"coronation song\". The winning song, \"The Time of My Life\", was recorded by David Cook and released on May 22, 2008.\nSeason 8 (2009).\nThe eighth season premiered on January 13, 2009. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This season featured the first major change to the judging panel; a fourth judge, Kara DioGuardi, was introduced. Mike Darnell, the president of alternative programming for Fox, stated that the season would focus more on the contestants' personal life.\nThis was also the first season without executive producer Nigel Lythgoe who left to focus on the international versions of his show \"So You Think You Can Dance\". The Hollywood round was moved to the Kodak Theatre for 2009 and was also extended to two weeks. \"Idol Gives Back\" was canceled for this season due to the global recession at the time.\nThere were 13 finalists this season, but two were eliminated in the first result show of the finals. A new feature introduced was the \"Judges' Save\", and Matt Giraud was saved from elimination at the top seven by the judges when he received the fewest votes. The next week, Lil Rounds and Anoop Desai were eliminated.\nThe two finalists were Kris Allen and Adam Lambert, both of whom had previously landed in the bottom three at the top five. Allen won the contest in the most controversial voting result since the second season. It was claimed, and then later retracted, that 38\u00a0million of the 100\u00a0million votes cast on the night came from Allen's home state of Arkansas alone, and that AT&T employees unfairly influenced the votes by giving lessons on power-texting at viewing parties in Arkansas.\nBoth Allen and Lambert released the coronation song, \"No Boundaries\" which was co-written by DioGuardi. This is the first season in which the winner failed to achieve gold album status.\nSeason 9 (2010).\nThe ninth season premiered on January 12, 2010. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Kara DioGuardi, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Paula Abdul left the show and Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul at the start of Hollywood Week. One of the most prominent auditioners this season was General Larry Platt whose performance of \"Pants on the Ground\" became a viral hit song.\nCrystal Bowersox, who has Type-I diabetes, fell ill due to diabetic ketoacidosis on the morning of the girls performance night for the top 20 week and was hospitalized. The schedule was rearranged so the boys performed first and she could perform the following night instead; she later revealed that Ken Warwick, the show producer, wanted to disqualify her but she begged to be allowed to stay on the show.\nMichael Lynche was the lowest vote getter at top nine and was given the Judges' Save. The next week Katie Stevens and Andrew Garcia were eliminated. That week, Adam Lambert was invited back to be a mentor, the first \"Idol\" alum to do so. \"Idol Gives Back\" returned this season on April 21, 2010, and raised $45 million.\nA special tribute to Simon Cowell was presented in the finale for his final season with the show. Many figures from the show's past, including Paula Abdul, made an appearance.\nThe final two contestants were Lee DeWyze and Bowersox. DeWyze was declared the winner during the May 26 finale. No new song was used as coronation song this year; instead, the two finalists each released a cover song \u2013 DeWyze chose U2's \"Beautiful Day\", and Bowersox chose Patty Griffin's \"Up to the Mountain\". This is the first season where neither finalist achieved significant album sales.\nSeason 10 (2011).\nThe tenth season premiered on January 19, 2011. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Many changes were introduced this season, from the format to the personnel of the show. Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined Randy Jackson as judges following the departures of Simon Cowell (who left to launch the American version of \"The X Factor\"), Kara DioGuardi (whose contract was not renewed) and Ellen DeGeneres, who left the show on her own accord.\nRandy Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth. Nigel Lythgoe returned as executive producer. Jimmy Iovine, chairman of the Interscope Geffen A&M label group, the new partner of \"American Idol\", acted as the in-house mentor in place of weekly guest mentors, although in later episodes special guest mentors such as Beyonc\u00e9, will.i.am and Lady Gaga were brought in.\nThe tenth season is the first to include online auditions where contestants could submit a 40-second video audition via Myspace. Karen Rodriguez was one such auditioner and reached the final rounds.\nOne of the more prominent contestants this year was Chris Medina, whose story of caring for his brain-damaged fianc\u00e9e received widespread coverage. Medina was cut in the Top 40 round. Casey Abrams, who suffers from ulcerative colitis, was hospitalized twice and missed the Top 13 result show. The judges used their one save on Abrams on the Top 11, and as a result this was the first season that 11 finalists went on tour instead of 10. In the following week, Naima Adedapo and Thia Megia were both eliminated.\nPia Toscano, one of the presumed favorites to advance far in the season, was unexpectedly eliminated on April 7, 2011, finishing in ninth place. Her elimination drew criticisms from some former \"Idol\" contestants, as well as actor Tom Hanks. After \"Idol\", Jennifer Lopez helped guide her career.\nThe two finalists in 2011 were Lauren Alaina and Scotty McCreery, both teenage country singers. McCreery won the competition on May 25, being the youngest male winner and the fourth male in a row to win \"American Idol\". McCreery released his first single, \"I Love You This Big\", as his coronation song, and Alaina released \"Like My Mother Does\". McCreery's debut album, \"Clear as Day\", became the first debut album by an \"Idol\" winner to reach No. 1 on the US \"Billboard\" 200 since Ruben Studdard's \"Soulful\" in 2003, and he became the youngest male artist to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200.\nSeason 11 (2012).\nThe eleventh season premiered on January 18, 2012. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez, and Randy Jackson returned as judges. One more finalist would join the Top 24 making it the Top 25, which was later revealed to be Jermaine Jones. However, on March 14, Jones was disqualified in 12th place for concealing arrests and outstanding warrants. Jones denied the accusation that he concealed his arrests.\nFinalist Phillip Phillips suffered from kidney pain and was taken to the hospital before the Top 13 results show, and later received medical procedure to alleviate a blockage caused by kidney stones. He was reported to have eight surgeries during his Idol run, and had considered quitting the show due to the pain. He underwent surgery to remove the stones and reconstruct his kidney soon after the season had finished.\nJessica Sanchez received the fewest votes during the Top 7 week, and the judges decided to use their \"save\" option on her, making her the first female recipient of the save. The following week, unlike previous seasons, Colton Dixon was the only contestant sent home. Sanchez later made the final two, the first season where a recipient of the save reached the finale.\nPhillips became the winner, beating Sanchez. During the finale, fifth season finalist Ace Young proposed marriage to third season runner-up Diana DeGarmo on stage \u2013 which she accepted.\nPhillips released \"Home\" as his coronation song, while Sanchez released \"Change Nothing\". Phillips' \"Home\" has since become the best selling of all coronation songs, with over 5 million copies sold.\nSeason 12 (2013).\nThe twelfth season premiered on January 16, 2013. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Judges Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler left the show after two seasons. Randy Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. This season's judging panel consisted of Randy Jackson, along with Mariah Carey, Keith Urban and Nicki Minaj.\nThis was the first season since the ninth season to have four judges on the panel. The pre-season buzz and the early episodes of the show were dominated by the feud between the judges Minaj and Carey after a video of their dispute was leaked to TMZ.\nThe top 10 contestants started with five males and five females, however, the males were eliminated consecutively in the first five weeks, with Lazaro Arbos the last male to be eliminated. For the first time in the show's history, the top 5 contestants were all female. It was also the first time that the judges' \"save\" was not used, the top four contestants were therefore given an extra week to perform again with their votes carried over with no elimination in the first week.\n23-year-old Candice Glover won the season with Kree Harrison taking the runner-up spot. Glover became the first female to win \"American Idol\" since Jordin Sparks, who won the show in 2007. Glover released \"I Am Beautiful\" as a single while Harrison released \"All Cried Out\" immediately after the show. Glover sold poorly with her debut album, and this is also the first season that the runner-up was not signed by a music label.\nTowards the end of the season, Randy Jackson, the last remaining of the original judges, announced he would no longer serve as a judge to pursue other business ventures. Both judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj also decided to leave after one season to focus on their music careers.\nSeason 13 (2014).\nThe thirteenth season premiered on January 15, 2014. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Keith Urban returned as a judge. Urban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. Randy Jackson returned, though Jackson moved from the judging panel to the role of in-mentor. Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj left the panel after one season. Former judge Jennifer Lopez and former mentor Harry Connick, Jr. joined Urban on the panel. Connick Jr. served as a mentor for \"Idol\" in 2010 and 2012. Also, Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick were replaced as executive producers by Per Blankens, Jesse Ignjatovic and Evan Pragger. Bill DeRonde replaced Warwick as a director of the audition episodes, while Louis J. Horvitz replaced Gregg Gelfand as a director of the show.\nThis was the first season where the contestants were permitted to perform in the final rounds songs they wrote themselves. In the Top 8, Sam Woolf received the fewest votes, but he was saved from elimination by the judges. The 500th episode of the series was the Top 3 performance night.\nCaleb Johnson was named the winner of the season, with Jena Irene as the runner-up. Johnson released \"As Long as You Love Me\" as his coronation single while Irene released \"We Are One\".\nSeason 14 (2015).\nThe fourteenth season premiered on January 7, 2015. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban and Harry Connick, Jr. returned for their respective fourth, third and second seasons as judges. Eighth season runner-up Adam Lambert filled in for Urban during the New York City auditions. Randy Jackson did not return as the in-house mentor and left the show permanently. Scott Borchetta replaced Jackson as the mentor.\nChanges this season include only airing one episode a week during the final ten. Coca-Cola ended their longtime sponsorship of the show and Ford Motor Company maintained a reduced role. The winner of the season also received a recording contract with Big Machine Records.\nNick Fradiani won the season, defeating Clark Beckham. Fradiani became the first winner from the Northeast region. Fradiani released \"Beautiful Life\" as his coronation single while Beckham released \"Champion\". Jax, the third place finalist, also released a single called \"Forcefield\".\nSeason 15 (2016).\nFox announced on May 11, 2015, that the fifteenth season would be the final season of \"American Idol\"; as such, the season was expected to have an additional focus on the program's alumni. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, with Harry Connick Jr., Keith Urban, and Jennifer Lopez all returning as judges. The fifteenth season premiered on January 6, 2016. The season was shortened by four weeks compared to previous years. During the finale episode, President Barack Obama praised the millions of young people that voted for contestants and pitched that they vote in the upcoming election. The farewell season concluded on April 7, 2016. Seacrest signed off by saying: \"And one more time\u2014this is so tough\u2014we say to you from Hollywood, goodnight America\", and then he added, \"for now.\"\nTrent Harmon won the season against runner-up La'Porsha Renae. Harmon released \"Falling\" co-written by Keith Urban as his coronation song. Renae's \"Battles\", third-place finisher Dalton Rapattoni's \"Strike A Match\" and fourth-place finisher MacKenzie Bourg's \"Roses\" were also released as singles.\n2018\u2013present: ABC revival.\nIn early 2017, \"Variety\" reported that Fremantle Media was in talks to revive the show for NBC or for its original network, Fox. A dispute between Fremantle and Core Media Group derailed these plans. In May 2017, ABC was making a bid to revive the program. ABC acquired the rights to the series, and \"American Idol\" returned for the 2017\u201318 television season.\nSeason 16 (2018).\nIn July 2017, it was announced that Ryan Seacrest would return as host, and by September 2017 it was revealed that Katy Perry, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie would serve as judges. The sixteenth season premiered on March 11, 2018. This was the first season of \"American Idol\" to air on ABC. The season was again shortened compared to the previous season to twelve weeks, with multiple elimination in the final rounds. Unlike previous seasons where only two finalists remained in the final episode, three finalists performed in the finale. On May 21, 2018, the season concluded with Maddie Poppe crowned the winner, beating Caleb Lee Hutchinson as runner-up and Gabby Barrett in third place. Her winning song was \"Going, Going, Gone\". Caleb Lee Hutchinson released \"Johnny Cash Heart\" as a single, while Gabby Barrett's song was \"Rivers Deep\".\nSeason 17 (2019).\nABC renewed the revival series for another season. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. The seventeenth season premiered on March 3, 2019. For the finale, the show no longer features separate performance and result shows. On May 19, 2019, the season concluded with three finalists, with Madison VanDenburg eliminated in third place after performing two songs, and the final two performing their last song. For the first time, there were no separate performance and grand finale shows this season. Laine Hardy was crowned the winner and Alejandro Aranda runner-up. Hardy released a single, \"Flame\", immediately after the win, but Aranda did not. However, Aranda later released a song he performed in the finale, \"Tonight\", under the name Scarypoolparty on June 28, 2019.\nSeason 18 (2020).\nOn May 13, 2019, the series was renewed for an eighteenth season and it premiered on February 16, 2020. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. For the first time, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, from the top 20 to the finale, the contestants performed in their own homes, while Ryan Seacrest hosted the show remotely in his own home in Los Angeles with the judges also in their respective homes. The season was also further truncated, with the top 5 performing in the finale. Each finalist also performed only two songs for the finale. On May 17, the season concluded, with Just Sam crowned as the winner, with Arthur Gunn finishing as the runner-up. \"Rise Up\", the song Just Sam performed for their audition and reprised on the finale, was released as their debut song.\nSeason 19 (2021).\nOn May 15, 2020, ABC renewed the series for a nineteenth season and it premiered on February 14, 2021. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. Later in October, it was announced that Bobby Bones will return as mentor. On May 23, the season concluded, with Chayce Beckham crowned the winner, with Willie Spence finishing as the runner-up. \"23\", the song Chayce Beckham wrote and performed for Top 4, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 20 (2022).\nOn May 13, 2021, ABC renewed the series for a twentieth season and it premiered on February 27, 2022. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On December 31, it was announced that Bones would not be returning as a mentor. On May 22, the season concluded, with Noah Thompson crowned as the winner, with HunterGirl finishing as the runner-up. \"One Day Tonight\", the song Noah Thompson performed for the Grand Finale, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 21 (2023).\nOn May 13, 2022, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-first season and it premiered on February 19, 2023. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On May 21, the season concluded, with Iam Tongi crowned as the winner, with Megan Danielle finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 22 (2024).\nOn May 16, 2023, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-second season and it premiered on February 18, 2024. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. In February 2024, Perry announced that the season would be her last. On May 20, the season concluded, with Abi Carter crowned as the winner, with Will Moseley finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 23 (2025).\nOn May 10, 2024, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-third season; it was also announced the network was in-talks with \"high-profile stars\" to replace the outgoing Perry. On July 31, 2024, it was announced Seacrest would return as host, with Bryan and Richie returning as judges; Underwood was named as Perry's successor. The season premiered on March 9, 2025.\nReception.\nU.S. television ratings.\nSeasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of \"American Idol\". It holds the distinction of having the longest winning streak in the Nielsen annual television ratings; it became the highest-rated of all television programs in the United States overall for an unprecedented seven consecutive years, or eight consecutive (and total) years when either its performance or result show was ranked number one overall.\n\"Each U.S. network television season starts in late September and ends in late May, which coincides with the completion of May sweeps.\"\n\"American Idol\" premiered in June 2002 and became the surprise summer hit show of 2002. The first show drew 9.9\u00a0million viewers, giving Fox the best viewing figure for the 8.30\u00a0pm spot in over a year. The audience steadily grew, and by finale night, the audience had averaged 23\u00a0million, with more than 40\u00a0million watching some part of that show. That episode was placed third amongst all age groups, but more importantly it led in the 18\u201349 demographic, the age group most valued by advertisers.\nThe growth continued into the next season, starting with a season premiere of 26.5 million. The season attracted an average of 21.7\u00a0million viewers, and was placed second overall amongst the 18\u201349 age group. The finale night when Ruben Studdard won over Clay Aiken was also the highest-rated ever \"American Idol\" episode at 38.1\u00a0million for the final hour. By the third season, the show had become the top show in the 18\u201349 demographic<ref name=\"realitytvworld_5/24/2007\"></ref> a position it has held for all subsequent years up to and including the tenth season, and its competition stages ranked first in the nationwide overall ratings. By the fourth season, \"American Idol\" had become the most-watched series amongst all viewers on American TV for the first time, with an average viewership of 26.8\u00a0million. The show reached its peak in the fifth season with numbers averaging 30.6\u00a0million per episode, and this season remains the highest-rated of the series.\nThe sixth season premiered with the series' highest-rated debut episode and a few of its succeeding episodes rank among the most-watched episodes of \"American Idol.\" During this time, many television executives begun to regard the show as a programming force unlike any seen before, as its consistent dominance of up to two hours two or three nights a week exceeded the 30- or 60-minute reach of previous hits such as NBC's \"The Cosby Show\". The show was dubbed \"the Death Star\", and competing networks often rearranged their schedules in order to minimize losses. However, the sixth season also showed a steady decline in viewership over the course of the season. The season finale saw a drop in ratings of 16% from the previous year. The sixth season was the first season wherein the average results show rated higher than the competition stages (unlike in the previous seasons), and became the second-highest-rated of the series after the preceding season.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the seventh season. The premiere was down 11% among total viewers, and the results show in which Kristy Lee Cook was eliminated delivered its lowest-rated Wednesday show among the 18\u201334 demo since the first season in 2002. However, the ratings rebounded for the seventh-season finale with the excitement over the battle of the Davids, and improved over the sixth season as the series' third most watched finale. The strong finish of season seven also helped Fox become the most watched TV network in the country for the first time since its inception, a first ever in American television history for a non-Big Three major broadcast network. Overall ratings for the season were down 10% from the sixth season, which is in line with the fall in viewership across all networks due in part to the 2007\u20132008 Writers Guild of America strike.\nThe declining trend however continued into the eighth season, as total viewers numbers fell by 5\u201310% for early episodes compared to the seventh season, and by 9% for the finale. In the ninth season, \"Idol\"'s six-year extended streak of perfection in the ratings was broken, when NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics on February 17 beat \"Idol\" in the same time slot with 30.1\u00a0million viewers over \"Idol\"'s 18.4\u00a0million. Nevertheless, \"American Idol\" overall finished its ninth season as the most watched TV series for the sixth year running, breaking the previous record of five consecutive seasons achieved by CBS' \"All in the Family\" and NBC's \"The Cosby Show\".\nIn the tenth season, the total viewer numbers for the first week of shows fell 12\u201313%, and by up to 23% in the 18\u201349 demo compared to the ninth season. Later episodes, however, retained viewers better, and the season ended on a high with a significant increase in viewership for the finale \u2013 up 12% for the adults 18\u201349 demographic and a 21% increase in total viewers from the ninth-season finale. While the overall viewer number has increased this season, its viewer demographics have continued to age year on year \u2013 the median age this season was 47.2 compared to a median age of 32.1 in its first season. The demographics also became \"whiter\" over time and less diverse. Nevertheless, in the 2010\u201311 television season, Fox maintained its lead on over other networks with its seventh consecutive season of victory overall in the 18\u201349 demographic ratings in the United States.\nThe eleventh season, however, suffered a steep drop in ratings, a drop attributed by some to the arrival of new shows such as \"The Voice\" and \"The X Factor\". The ratings for the first two episodes of the eleventh season fell 16\u201321% in overall viewer numbers and 24\u201327% in the 18/49 demo, while the season finale fell 27% in total viewer number and 30% in the 18\u201349 demo. The average viewership for the season fell below 20 million viewers the first time since 2003, a drop of 23% in total viewers and 30% in the 18/49 demo. For the first time in eight years, \"American Idol\" lost the leading position in both the total viewers number and the 18/49 demo, coming in second to \"NBC Sunday Night Football\", although the strengths of \"Idol\" in its second year in the Wednesday-Thursday primetime slots helped Fox achieve the longest period of 18\u201349 demographic victory in the Nielsen ratings, standing at 8 straight years from 2004 to 2012.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the twelfth season, which saw the show hitting a number of series low in the 18\u201349 demo. The finale had 7.2 million fewer viewers than the previous season, and saw a drop of 44% in the 18\u201349 demo. The season viewers averaged at 13.3 million, a drop of 24% from the previous season. The thirteenth season suffered a huge decline in the 18\u201349 demographic, a drop of 28% from the twelfth season, and \"American Idol\" lost its Top 10 position in the Nielsen ratings by the end of the 2013\u201314 television season for the first time since its entry to the rankings in 2003 as a result, and never regained its Top 10 position by the series' end in 2016.\nThe continuing decline influenced further changes for the fourteenth season, including the loss of Coca-Cola as the show's major sponsor, and a decision to only broadcast one, two-hour show per week during the top 12 rounds (with results from the previous week integrated into the performance show, rather than having a separate results show). On May 11, 2015, prior to the fourteenth-season finale, Fox announced that the fifteenth season of \"American Idol\" would be its last. Despite these changes, the show's ratings would decline more sharply. The fourteenth-season finale was the lowest-rated finale ever, with an average of only 8.03 million viewers watching the finale. The show's ratings, however, rebounded in its final season and ended its run in 2016 as Fox's first-ever program to conclude its run without dropping from the Nielsen Top 30 most-watched television shows in each of its seasons.\nFor the revived series on ABC, the ratings were lower but remained stable compared to previous seasons on Fox. The finale of the seventeenth season was slightly more watched than the sixteenth.\nCritical reception.\nEarly reviews were mixed in their assessment. Ken Tucker of \"Entertainment Weekly\" considered that \"As TV, \"American Idol\" is crazily entertaining; as music, it's dust-mote inconsequential\". Others, however, thought that \"the most striking aspect of the series was the genuine talent it revealed\". It was also described as a \"sadistic musical bake-off\", and \"a romp in humiliation\". Other aspects of the show have attracted criticisms. The product placement in the show in particular was noted, and some critics were harsh about what they perceived as its blatant commercial calculations \u2013 Karla Peterson of \"The San Diego Union-Tribune\" charged that \"American Idol\" is \"a conniving multimedia monster\" that has \"absorbed the sin of our debauched culture and spit them out in a lump of reconstituted evil\". The decision to send the first season winner to sing the national anthem at the Lincoln Memorial on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks in 2002 was also poorly received by many. Lisa de Moraes of \"The Washington Post\" noted sarcastically that \"The terrorists have won\" and, with a sideswipe at the show's commercialism and voting process, that the decision as to who \"gets to turn this important site into just another cog in the 'Great \"American Idol\" Marketing Mandala' is in the hands of the millions of girls who have made \"American Idol\" a hit. Them and a handful of phone-redialer geeks who have been clocking up to 10,000 calls each week for their contestant of choice (but who, according to Fox, are in absolutely no way skewing the outcome).\"\nSome of the later writers about the show were more positive, Michael Slezak, again of \"Entertainment Weekly\", thought that \"for all its bloated, synthetic, product-shilling, money-making trappings, \"Idol\" provides a once-a-year chance for the average American to combat the evils of today's music business.\" Singer Sheryl Crow, who was later to act as a mentor on the show, however took the view that the show \"undermines art in every way and promotes commercialism\". Pop music critic Ann Powers nevertheless suggested that Idol has \"reshaped the American songbook\", \"led us toward a new way of viewing ourselves in relationship to mainstream popular culture\", and connects \"the classic Hollywood dream to the multicentered popular culture of the future.\" Others focused on the personalities in the show; Ramin Setoodeh of \"Newsweek\" accused judge Simon Cowell's cruel critiques in the show of helping to establish in the wider world a culture of meanness, that \"Simon Cowell has dragged the rest of us in the mud with him.\" Some such as singer John Mayer disparaged the contestants, suggesting that those who appeared on \"Idol\" are not real artists with self-respect.\nSome in the entertainment industry were critical of the star-making aspect of the show. Usher, a mentor on the show, bemoaning the loss of the \"true art form of music\", thought that shows like \"American Idol\" made it seem \"so easy that everyone can do it, and that it can happen overnight\", and that \"television is a lie\". Musician Michael Feinstein, while acknowledging that the show had uncovered promising performers, said that \"American Idol\" \"isn't really about music. It's about all the bad aspects of the music business \u2013 the arrogance of commerce, this sense of 'I know what will make this person a star; artists themselves don't know.' \" That \"American Idol\" is seen to be a fast track to success for its contestants has been a cause of resentment for some in the industry. LeAnn Rimes, commenting on Carrie Underwood winning Best Female Artist in Country Music Awards over Faith Hill in 2006, said that \"Carrie has not paid her dues long enough to fully deserve that award\". It is a common theme that has been echoed by many others. Elton John, who had appeared as a mentor in the show but turned down an offer to be a judge on \"American Idol\", commenting on talent shows in general, said that \"there have been some good acts but the only way to sustain a career is to pay your dues in small clubs\". \"American Idol\" revolutionized American pop culture and the pop idol process and has provided an opportunity for many to bypass the small club scene and allow a much larger audience to participate in and select the next potential chart topping performer.\nThe success of the show's alumni, however, has led to a more positive assessment of the show, and the show was described as having \"proven it has a valid way to pick talent and a proven way to sell records\". While the industry is divided on the show success, its impact is felt particularly strongly in the country music format. According to a CMT exec, reflecting on the success of Idol alumni in the country genre, \"if you want to try and get famous fast by going to a cattle call audition on TV, Idol reasonably remains the first choice for anyone\", and that country music and Idol \"go together well\".\n\"American Idol\" was nominated for the Emmy's Outstanding Reality Competition Program for nine years but never won. Director Bruce Gower won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Series in 2009, and the show won a Creative Arts Emmys each in 2007 and 2008, three in 2009, and two in 2011, as well as a Governor's Award in 2007 for its Idol Gives Back edition. It won the People's Choice Award, which honors the popular culture of the previous year as voted by the public, for favorite competition/reality show in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2012. It won the first Critics' Choice Television Award in 2011 for Best Reality Competition.\nIn 2013, TV Guide ranked the series No. 48 on its list of the 60 Best Series of All Time.\nGeographical, ethnic, and gender bias.\nThroughout the series, twelve of the seventeen \"Idol\" winners, including its first five, had come from the Southern United States. A large number of other finalists during the series' run have also hailed from the American South, including Clay Aiken, Kellie Pickler, and Chris Daughtry, who are all from North Carolina. In 2012, an analysis of the 131 contestants who have appeared in the finals of all seasons of the show up to that point found that 48% have some connection to the Southern United States.\nThe show itself was popular in the Southern United States, with households in the Southeastern United States 10% more likely to watch \"American Idol\" during the eighth season in 2009, and those in the East Central region, such as Kentucky, were 16 percent more likely to tune into the series. Data from Nielsen SoundScan, a music-sales tracking service, showed that of the 47\u00a0million CDs sold by \"Idol\" contestants through January 2010, 85 percent were by contestants with ties to the American South.\nTheories given for the success of Southerners on \"Idol\" have been: more versatility with musical genres, as the Southern U.S. is home to several music genre scenes; not having as many opportunities to break into the pop music business; text-voting due to the South having the highest percentage of cell-phone only households; and the strong heritage of music and singing, which is notable in the Bible Belt, where it is in church that many people get their start in public singing. Others also suggest that the Southern character of these contestants appeal to the South, as well as local pride. According to fifth season winner Taylor Hicks, who is from the state of Alabama, \"People in the South have a lot of pride ... So, they're adamant about supporting the contestants who do well from their state or region.\"\nFor five consecutive seasons, starting in the seventh season, the title was given to a white male who plays the guitar \u2013 a trend that \"Idol\" pundits call the \"White guy with guitar\" or \"WGWG\" factor. Just hours before the eleventh-season finale, where Phillip Phillips was named the winner, Richard Rushfield, author of the book \"American Idol: The Untold Story\", said, \"You have this alliance between young girls and grandmas and they see it, not necessarily as a contest to create a pop star competing on the contemporary radio, but as ... who's the nicest guy in a popularity contest\", he says, \"And that has led to this dynasty of four, and possibly now five, consecutive, affable, very nice, good-looking white boys.\"\nStart order bias.\nSome fans call the final performance of the night the \"pimp spot\" because it usually receives a big boost in votes, due to the recency effect. By performing first, a performer may benefit from the primacy effect, but any other early performance may be stifled. The second performance spot is sometimes called the \"un-pimp spot\" because it is the least beneficial.\nControversy.\nThe show was criticized in earlier seasons over the onerous contract contestants had to sign that gave excessive control to 19 Entertainment over their future careers and handed a large part of their future earnings to the management.\nIndividual contestants have generated controversy in this competition for their past actions or for being 'ringers' planted by the producers. A number of contestants have been disqualified for various reasons, such as for having an existing contract or undisclosed criminal record, although the show has also been accused of a double standard for disqualifying some but not others.\nVoting results have been a consistent source of controversy. The mechanism of voting has aroused considerable criticism, most notably in the second season when Ruben Studdard beat Clay Aiken in a close vote, and in the eighth season, when the massive increase in text votes fueled the texting controversy. Concerns about power voting have been expressed from the first season. Since 2004, votes also have been affected to a limited degree by online communities such as DialIdol and Vote for the Worst.\nCultural impact.\nTelevision.\nThe enormous success of the show and the revenue it generated were transformative for the Fox Broadcasting Company. \"American Idol\" and other shows such as \"Survivor\" and \"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?\" were credited for expanding reality television programming in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s, and \"Idol\" became the most watched non-scripted primetime television series, which it remained for almost a decade, from 2003 to 2012, breaking records on U.S. television (dominated by drama shows and sitcoms in the preceding decades). On several occasions, notably in 2003 and 2008, \"American Idol\" overtook the Academy Awards as the most-watched non-sports entertainment event on U.S. television, marking the most recent time as of 2025 that a live regular non-sports primetime series has garnered such viewership in the country.\nThe show pushed Fox to become the number one U.S. TV network in overall viewers in 2008 and among adults aged 18\u201349, the key demographic coveted by advertisers, for an unprecedented eight consecutive years from 2005 to 2012. Its success also helped lift the ratings of other shows that were scheduled around it such as \"House\" and \"Bones\", and \"Idol\", for years, was Fox's strongest platform primetime television program for promoting eventual hit shows of the 2010s (of the same network) such as \"Glee\", \"New Girl\" and \"Empire\". The show, its creator Simon Fuller claimed, \"saved Fox\".\nThe show's massive success in the mid-2000s to early 2010s spawned a number of imitating singing-competition shows, such as \"Rock Star\", \"Nashville Star\", \"The Voice\", \"Rising Star\", \"The Sing-Off\", and \"The X Factor\". The number of imitative singing shows on American television had reached 17 by 2016. Its format also served as a blueprint for non-singing TV shows such as \"Dancing with the Stars\" and \"So You Think You Can Dance\", most of which contribute to the current highly competitive reality TV landscape on American television.\nMusic.\nAs one of the most successful shows on U.S. television history, \"American Idol\" has had a strong impact not just on television, but also in the wider world of entertainment. It helped create a number of highly successful recording artists, such as Kelly Clarkson, Daughtry and Carrie Underwood, as well as others of varying notability. The alumni of the show's original run scored 13 Grammy Award wins out of 54 Grammy nominations up to its end in 2016, with Underwood and Clarkson receiving 10 wins combined.\nVarious \"American Idol\" alumni had success on various record charts around the world; in the U.S. they had achieved 345 number ones on the \"Billboard\" charts in its first 10 years, and 458 by its last year of broadcast in 2016, with 100 achieved by Kelly Clarkson alone. According to Fred Bronson, author of books on the Billboard charts, no other entity has ever created as many hit-making artists and bestselling albums and singles. In 2007, \"American Idol\" alums accounted for 2.1% of all music sales. Its alumni have a massive impact on radio; in 2007, \"American Idol\" had become \"a dominant force in radio\" according to Rich Meyer, president of the radio station monitoring research company Mediabase. By 2010, four winners each had more than a million radio spins, with Kelly Clarkson leading the field with over four million spins.\nAt the end of the show's original run on Fox in 2016, \"Idol\"'s contestants have sold more than 60 million albums in the U.S. and more than 100 million records globally, more than 175 of which are certified platinum or gold. Its participants have generated more than 450 Billboard No. 1 hits and sold more than 260 million digital downloads.\nFilm and theater.\nThe impact of \"American Idol\" was also strongly felt in musical theater, where many of \"Idol\" alumni have forged successful careers. The striking effect of former \"American Idol\" contestants on Broadway has been noted and commented on. The casting of a popular \"Idol\" contestant can lead to significantly increased ticket sales. Other alumni have gone on to work in television and films, the most notable being Jennifer Hudson who, on the recommendation of the \"Idol\" vocal coach Debra Byrd, won a role in \"Dreamgirls\" and eventually went on to win an Academy Award for her performance. She later became the show's first and only alumnus ever to win the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). In all, as of 2025, \"American Idol\" finalists resulted to 5 Grammy Award winners (Clarkson, Barrino, Hudson, Underwood and Mandisa), 2 Emmy Award winners (Clarkson and Hudson), and an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Tony Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Critics' Choice Award winner (Hudson).\nIn 2007, a musical based on the show, \"\", played off-Broadway. The musical closed after its official opening night.\nRevenue and commercial ventures.\nThe dominance of \"American Idol\" in the ratings had made it the most profitable show in U.S. TV for many years. The show was estimated to generate $900\u00a0million for the year 2004 through sales of TV ads, albums, merchandise and concert tickets. By the seventh season, the show was estimated to earn around $900\u00a0million from its ad revenue alone, not including ancillary sponsorship deals and other income. One estimate puts the total TV revenue for the first eight seasons of \"American Idol\" at $6.4\u00a0billion. Sponsors that bought fully integrated packages can expect a variety of promotions of their products on the show, such as product placement, adverts and product promotion integrated into the show, and various promotional opportunities. Other off-air promotional partners pay for the rights to feature \"Idol\" branding on their packaging, products and marketing programs. \"American Idol\" also partnered with Disney in its theme park attraction The American Idol Experience.\nAdvertising revenue.\n\"American Idol\" became the most expensive series on broadcast networks for advertisers starting the fourth season, and by the next season, it had broken the record in advertising rate for a regularly scheduled prime-time network series, selling over $700,000 for a 30-seconds slot, and reaching up to $1.3\u00a0million for the finale. Its ad prices reached a peak in the seventh season at $737,000. Estimated revenue more than doubled from $404\u00a0million in the third season to $870\u00a0million in the sixth season. While that declined from the eighth season onwards, it still earned significantly more than its nearest competitor, with advertising revenue topping $800\u00a0million annually the next few seasons. However, the sharp drop in ratings in the eleventh season also resulted in a sharp drop in advertising rate for the twelfth season, and the show lost its leading position as the costliest show for advertisers. By 2014, ad revenue from had fallen to $427 million where a 30-second spot went for less than $300,000. For the relaunched \"Idol\" on ABC, it has been reported that a 30-second spot may cost between $120,000 and $160,000.\nMedia sponsorship.\nFord Motor Company and Coca-Cola were two of the first sponsors of \"American Idol\" in its first season. The sponsorship deal cost around $10\u00a0million in the first season, rising to $35\u00a0million by the seventh season, and between $50 and $60 million in the tenth season. The third major sponsor AT&T Wireless joined in the second season but ended after the twelfth season, and Coca-Cola officially ended its sponsorship after the thirteenth season amidst the declining ratings of \"Idol\" in the mid-2010s. iTunes sponsored the show since the seventh season.\n\"American Idol\" prominent display of its sponsors' logo and products had been noted since the early seasons. By the sixth season, \"Idol\" showed 4,349 product placements according to Nielsen Media Research. The branded entertainment integration proved beneficial to its advertisers \u2013 promotion of AT&T text-messaging as a means to vote successfully introduced the technology into the wider culture, and Coca-Cola has seen its equity increased during the show.\nCoca-Cola's archrival PepsiCo declined to sponsor \"American Idol\" at the show's start. What the \"Los Angeles Times\" later called \"missing one of the biggest marketing opportunities in a generation\" contributed to Pepsi losing market share, by 2010 falling to third place from second in the United States. PepsiCo sponsored the American version of Cowell's \"The X Factor\" in hopes of not repeating its \"Idol\" mistake until its cancellation.\nFor the revived series on ABC, Macy's and Johnson & Johnson's Zyrtec signed on as the major sponsors of the show.\nAmerican Idol tour.\nThe top ten (eleven in the tenth season, five in the fourteenth season, and seven in the sixteenth season) toured at the end of every season except for the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons. In the twelfth season tour a semi-finalist who won a sing-off was also added to the tour. Kellogg's Pop-Tarts was the sponsor for the first seven seasons, and Guitar Hero was added for the seventh season tour. M&M's Pretzel Chocolate Candies was a sponsor of the ninth season tour. The fifth season tour was the most successful tour with gross of over $35\u00a0million. However no concert tour was organized in the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons, the only seasons not to have an associated tour. The sixteenth season tour featured the band In Real Life as an opener on select dates.\n\"Idol Gives Back\".\n\"Idol Gives Back\" was a special charity event started in season six featuring performances by celebrities and various fund-raising initiatives. This event was also held in seasons seven and nine and has raised nearly $185\u00a0million in total.\nMusic releases.\n\"American Idol\" has traditionally released studio recordings of contestants' performances as well as the winner's coronation single for sale. For the first five seasons, the recordings were released as a compilation album at the end of the season. All five of these albums reached the top ten in Billboard 200 which made \"American Idol\" the most successful soundtrack franchise of any motion picture or television program. Starting late in the fifth season, individual performances were released during the season as digital downloads, initially from the \"American Idol\" official website only. In the seventh season the live performances and studio recordings were made available during the season from iTunes when it joined as a sponsor. In the tenth season the weekly studio recordings were also released as compilation digital album straight after performance night.\n19 Recordings, a recording label owned by 19 Entertainment, currently hold the rights to phonographic material recorded by all the contestants. 19 Recordings originally partnered with Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) to promote and distribute the recordings through its labels RCA Records, Arista Records, J Records, and Jive Records. From 2005\u20132007, BMG partnered with Sony Music Entertainment to form a joint venture known as Sony BMG Music Entertainment. From 2008 to 2010, following their acquisition of BMG, Sony Music handled the distribution of \"American Idol\"'s music. In 2010, UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records replaced Sony as the music label for \"American Idol\".\nTie-ins.\n\"American Idol\" video games\nTheme park attraction.\nOn February 14, 2009, The Walt Disney Company debuted \"The American Idol Experience\" at its Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. In this live production, co-produced by 19 Entertainment, park guests chose from a list of songs and auditioned privately for Disney cast members. Those selected then performed on a stage in a 1000-seat theater replicating the \"Idol\" set. Three judges, whose mannerisms and style mimicked those of the real \"Idol\" judges, critiqued the performances. Audience members then voted for their favorite performer. There were several preliminary-round shows during the day that culminated in a \"finals\" show in the evening where one of the winners of the previous rounds that day was selected as the overall winner. The winner of the finals show received a \"Dream Ticket\" that granted them front-of-the-line privileges at any future \"American Idol\" audition. The attraction closed on August 30, 2014.\nOther broadcasts.\n\"American Idol\" is broadcast to over 100 nations worldwide. In most nations these are not live broadcasts and may be tape delayed by several days or weeks, except for other season finales that are aired live in several countries simulcast with the U.S. broadcast on Fox (2002\u20132016) and ABC (since 2018). In Canada, the first thirteen seasons of American Idol were aired live countrywide by CTV and/or CTV Two, in simulcast with Fox. CTV dropped \"Idol\" after its thirteenth season and in August 2014, Yes TV announced that it had picked up Canadian rights to \"American Idol\" beginning in its 2015 season. In 2017, it was announced the show would return to CTV Two for its sixteenth season. Since season nineteen, the show started airing on Citytv. In Slovakia, American Idol was broadcast on Jednotka.\nIn Latin America, the show is broadcast and subtitled by Sony Entertainment Television. In Southeast Asia, it is broadcast by Sony Channel every Monday and Tuesday nine or ten hours after since its revival. In Philippines, it is aired every Thursday and Friday nine or ten hours after its United States telecast; from 2004 to 2007 on ABC; 2008\u201311 on QTV, then GMA News TV; 2012\u201316, 2018\u201319 on ETC; and since 2024 on TV5. In Indonesia, it was aired on RCTI in the 2002 to 2003 season with the Indonesian subtitles, before Indonesian Idol was held in the 2004, aired after each episode ended, and in the 2011 to 2013 season it was broadcast by B-Channel (now RTV). In Australia, it aired a few hours after the U.S. telecast. It was aired on Network Ten from 2002 to 2008 and then again in 2013. Between 2008 and 2012 it aired on Fox8 and the thirteenth and fourteenth seasons (2014\u201315) it aired on digital channel, Eleven, a sister channel to Network Ten. Its final season (2016) aired on Fox8 hours after the original U.S. broadcast. The show enjoyed a lot of popularity in Australia throughout the 2000s before declining in the ratings. In the United Kingdom, episodes were aired one day after the U.S. broadcast on digital channel ITV2. In the twelfth season, the episodes aired on 5*. It was also aired in Ireland on TV3 two days after the telecast. In Brazil and Israel, the show airs two days after its original broadcast, and broadcast live during the season finale. In the instances where the airing is delayed, the shows may sometimes be combined into one episode to summarize the results. In Italy, the twelfth season was broadcast by La3. In Singapore, The show was broadcast on Mediacorp Channel 5 for the ninth and tenth seasons.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["44973219", "191890"], "permutation_1": ["191890", "44973219"], "permutation_2": ["191890", "44973219"], "permutation_3": ["44973219", "191890"]}
{"id": "2hop__624551_92444", "docs_added": {"25788953": "Baby (Justin Bieber song)\n2010 song by Justin Bieber featuring Ludacris\n\"Baby\" is a song by Canadian singer Justin Bieber featuring American rapper Ludacris. It was released as the lead single on Bieber's debut studio album, \"My World 2.0\". The track was written by the artists alongside Christina Milian and producers Tricky Stewart and The-Dream.\nIt was available for digital download on January 18, 2010. The song received airplay directly after release, officially impacting mainstream and rhythmic radio on January 26, 2010.\nThe song received positive reviews from critics, who complimented the song's effective lyrics and chorus and commended Ludacris' part and the song's ability to have an urban twist.\nThe song was a commercial success, peaking at number one in France and Scotland, and charting in the top ten of the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Australia, Norway, Japan, Ireland, Hungary, Belgium (Flanders), Slovakia and New Zealand. \"Baby\" was the fourth most successful single of 2010 in France. The accompanying music video takes place in a mall/bowling-alley setting. The video features several cameos such as Drake, Lil Twist and Tinashe, in which Bieber pursues a girl. As of May 2013, the song has sold 3.9 million digital downloads in the United States and is certified 12\u00d7 platinum by the RIAA.\nThe official music video is the 39th most-viewed video on YouTube. As of January 2025, it is also the fourth-most-disliked video and the most-disliked music video on the platform. It had been the most-viewed YouTube video from July 16, 2010, when it surpassed the music video for \"Bad Romance\" by Lady Gaga, until November 24, 2012, when it was surpassed by the music video for \"Gangnam Style\" by Psy. Bieber performed the song several times, including on \"Saturday Night Live\", and the ninth season of \"American Idol\". Bieber also performed an acoustic rendition of the remix version with Drake at the 2010 Juno Awards. The official remix in the United Kingdom features British hip-hop artist Chipmunk.\nBackground and writing.\n\"Baby\" was written by Bieber with Christopher \"Tricky\" Stewart (who worked on Bieber's debut single \"One Time\"), R&B singer The-Dream and his then-wife, Christina Milian, as well as Def Jam label-mate and the songs co-performer, Ludacris. When asked how the collaboration initially came about, Bieber said, \"[Ludacris and I] both live in Atlanta. I met him a year prior to this and we figured it was a perfect collaboration for him, so we invited him out to do it.\" A few days before the release of the single, Bieber posted an acoustic version of the song to his YouTube with his guitarist Dan Kanter, similar to the way he did with \"Favorite Girl\". \"Billboard\" said that: \"Bieber delivers his characteristically clean vocals with conviction: \"My first love broke my heart for the first time / and I'm like, 'baby, baby, baby, no!' I thought you'd always be mine.\" Also in a review of the acoustic version Bill Lamb of About.com said that, \"I think the vocals here will convince some that Justin Bieber really does have the vocal chops.\"\nStyle and composition.\nThe song is predominantly upbeat, featuring Bieber's R&B vocals over a backdrop containing a dance infused beat, full of keyboard and \"disco string\" synths. The song is played at a tempo of 130 BPM and is composed in the key of E\u266d major with Bieber's vocal range spanning from the low-note of G3 to the high-note of C5. According to Jody Rosen of \"Rolling Stone\", the song \"blends winks at Fifties doo-wop with hip-hop chants\", comparing the style and the lyrics \"My first love broke my heart for the first time/And I was like/Baby, baby, baby, ooooh/I thought you'd always be mine\" to fifties ballads like \"Tears on My Pillow\", \"Why Do Fools Fall in Love\" and \"Earth Angel\". Lyrically, Bieber's lines explain his distress over his lost love, and promise to get it back, featured in lines like, \"And I wanna play it cool/But I'm losin' you\u2026/I'm in pieces/So come and fix me\u2026\". The chorus features the distinct and repetitive \"baby, baby, baby, ohhhh (nooooo)\" hook. After the second verse, Ludacris comes in with the verse-rap, an anecdote of young love when he was thirteen, as it runs \"When I was 13/I had my first love/She had me going crazy/Oh, I was star-struck/She woke me up daily/Don't need no Starbucks\u2026\".\nCritical reception.\nNick Levine of Digital Spy felt the song was \"no great departure from what he's given us before\", but felt the production of Tricky and The-Dream helped give the song a \"simple\", \"big\" chorus about \"puppy love\" that works. Melanie Bertoldi of \"Billboard\" said, \"The midtempo number's undeniably contagious chorus should keep Bieber's tween fan base satisfied, and Ludacris' brief cameo adds a welcome urban twist.\" Bertoli went on to say, \"The matchup adds a layer of maturity to Bieber's repertoire and should further solidify his growing presence on the charts.\" \"Rap-Up\" magazine said that \"the sweet pop fare gets a little street cred courtesy of the teen sensation's labelmate Ludacris.\" Jody Rosen of \"Rolling Stone\" appreciated the song's vintage doo-wop and fifties aesthetic and hip-hop chants, and said the song included \"one of the catchiest choruses concocted by the-Dream and Tricky Stewart, the duo behind \"Umbrella\" and \"Single Ladies\". Luke O'Neill of \"Boston Globe\" had mixed thoughts about the song calling Ludacris' cameo \"goofy\", and said, the song \"effects a musical anachronism, albeit a catchy one, but in this sped-up recycling moment all styles all at once are grist for the mill.\"\nChart performance.\nIn the United States, \"Baby\" debuted at number five on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, becoming Bieber's highest-charting single in the US. Bieber then went on to surpass this chart position when \"Boyfriend\" debuted at number two in April 2012. The song was also Ludacris's biggest song to date, solo or featuring, since 2007's \"Glamorous\". \"Baby\" was beaten out as the week's highest debut by Taylor Swift's \"Today Was a Fairytale\", which debuted at number two. The debuting of the pair of songs was just the third time in history that the Hot 100 had two new top-five debuts. The instance had last happened in 2003 when \"American Idol\"'s Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken's debut singles charted at number one and two. \nDuring its first week of radio impact, the song had over 1400 spins, and was the top gainer for mainstream and rhythmic radio formats. \nThe song debuted at thirty-three on the Pop Songs chart on the week labeled February 13, 2010. The song missed out becoming the greatest gainer by one spot, which was Kesha's \"Blah Blah Blah\". However the following week, the song did collect greatest gainer recognition, jumping to twenty-five on the chart, and has since peaked at sixteen. On August 2, 2010, the song was certified double-platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America for shipments of 2,000,000 units. \nAs of May 2013, the song had sold 3.9 million digital downloads in the United States. With the inclusion of streaming in the RIAA certifications in 2013, the song became the highest certificated single of all time at 12\u00d7 Platinum (surpassing \"Candle in the Wind 1997\" by Elton John at 11\u00d7 Platinum).\n\"Baby\" debuted and peaked on the Canadian Hot 100 at number three, becoming his highest-charting single at the time. On the issue dated February 8, 2010, the song debuted in Australia on the official ARIA Singles Chart at number thirty-seven. After twelve weeks of ascending and descending the charts the single reached a peak of three. \"Baby\" has since been certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) for shipments of 70,000 units. \nIn New Zealand, the song entered the chart at nineteen. After weeks of ascending and descending the charts, \"Baby\" reached a peak of four. The song dropped to the number five position the following week and after weeks of fluctuating around the chart it attained the number four position once again. It has since been certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (RIANZ). \nThe song peaked at number three on the UK Singles Chart on the issue date March 14, 2010. The following week, \"Baby\" fell to number four, but climbed back to its previous peak position of three on the issue date March 28, 2010. In the process of climbing the charts, \"Baby\" gained a new peak of two on the R&B Singles Chart. \nBy June 2012, Baby had sold 442,432 copies in the United Kingdom.\nMusic video.\nFilming for the music video began during the week of January 25, 2010, in Los Angeles. It was filmed at Universal CityWalk and Lucky Strike Lanes, by director Ray Kay, who had previously directed videos for Beyonc\u00e9 Knowles, Lady Gaga, Alexandra Burke, and Cheryl Cole, among others. Ludacris said that the video \"is like a 2010 version of Michael Jackson's \"The Way You Make Me Feel\".\" Bieber said that the video \"will capture the song's message of trying to woo back a girl.\" In explaining the concept of the video, Bieber said, \"It starts off, I really like this girl, but we didn't [get] along; we couldn't be together. Basically I want her back and [I'm] kind of going through the whole thing. I'm chasing her around, trying to get her, and she's kind of playing hard to get, but I'm persistent. I keep going.\" The video premiered exclusively on Vevo on Friday, February 19, 2010. Singer and actress Jasmine Villegas portrays Bieber's love interest in the video. Bieber's friends, Young Money artists Drake and Lil Twist also appeared in the video, along with Tinashe and jerkin' crew The Rangers.\nThe video takes place in a mall-like setting with a bowling alley and more. After the video was released, MTV commented on the video being the new version of \"The Way You Make Me Feel\" saying, \"... and the choreography does use a few of Jackson's less-suggestive moves.\" The MTV review goes on to say, \"most of the video takes place in the bowling alley, there are also scenes of Bieber in other settings, hanging out with Luda, doing the moonwalk, messing with his hair and mugging for the camera. During the video Bieber's friends and Villegas's friends have several dance offs and Villegas eventually smiles at him. Regardless of his crush's apparent frustration with him, Bieber eventually wins her over. The video concludes with the pair walking off into the night holding hands.\"\n\"Billboard\" reviewed the video, saying, \"Those new dance moves he's showing off can only mean one thing: all over the world, tweens' hearts are melting right now.\" In July 2010, the video became the most viewed video in YouTube history until it was surpassed by Psy's hit single, \"Gangnam Style\", in November 2012.\nThe video received 7.7 million views within its first seven days.\nAs of September 2023, the video has received over 3 billion views on the video-sharing website YouTube. It was also the most disliked video of all time (briefly surpassed by \"Friday\" by Rebecca Black upon that video's release in 2011). \"Baby\"'s music video held the record for the most disliked video for over 7 years, until it was surpassed in December 2018 by (the current most disliked video). The video currently sits as the fourth most disliked YouTube video.\nLive performances.\nBieber first premiered the song performing on the MuchMusic series \"Live at Much\" on December 28, 2009. He sang the song on VH1's Pepsi Super Bowl Fan Jam, along with other performers Rihanna, JoJo and Timbaland, and on CBS' \"The Early Show\" as a part of their \"Super Bowl\" programming. He performed the song the first time with Ludacris on BET's \"SOS: Saving Ourselves \u2013 Help for Haiti Telethon\", on February 6, 2010, which also aired on VH1, and MTV. During the chorus, he changed the lyrics to \"Baby, baby, Haiti\", to show support for the cause, and the reason everyone came together for the show. In the week of his album release, he performed the song on \"The View\" and \"106 & Park\". Bieber also performed the song at the 2010 Kids Choice Awards on March 27. Bieber performed the song along with \"U Smile\" on the eighteenth episode of season thirty five of \"Saturday Night Live\". Bieber performed an acoustic rendition of the song along with a freestyle by good friend Drake at the 2010 Juno Awards. In April 2010, Bieber noted that due to his voice changing, he could no longer hit all the notes in \"Baby\", and for live performances, the key is lowered. Bieber performed the song live in Sydney, Australia on April 26, 2010, in the \"Sunrise\" studios after his public performance was cancelled. Bieber also performed the song on May 11, 2010, on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Bieber performed the song on June 4, 2010, on the Today Show along with \"Never Say Never\", \"Somebody to Love\", and \"One Time\". He performed the song with \"Somebody to Love\" at the 2010 MuchMusic Video Awards.\nCover versions and samples.\nJazz pianist Jacky Terrasson covered \"Baby\" with his trio on his 2012 album \"Gouache\".\nThe song was also covered by Relient K in 2011 for their cover album \"Is For Karaoke\". It was also covered by \"Weird Al\" Yankovic in the polka medley, \"Polka Face\" in the same year for his 2011 album \"Alpocalypse\".\nIt was sampled 40 times. In 2012, Alexa Ilacad, Mika Dela Cruz, Noemi Oineza and Angel Sy, AKA T.O.P., sampled this song for their single \"Crush\".\nParody versions.\nYes We Canberra released a parody version satirising then Opposition leader Tony Abbott during the lead-up to the 2010 Australian federal election.\nIn the 2012 film \"\", Greg Heffley's older brother Rodrick (portrayed by Devon Bostick) performs a hard rock cover of the song with his band, L\u00f6ded Diper, in an attempt to impress his love interest Heather Hills (older sister of Greg's love interest, Holly) during her Sweet 16th party. His performance causes the event to end in disaster.\nIn the Annoying Orange episode, \"OMG\" (parody of TMZ), there is a clip of Justin Bieberry (portrayal of Bieber) singing a parody version called \"Gravy\".\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "24609969": "One Less Lonely Girl\n\"One Less Lonely Girl\" is a song by Canadian singer Justin Bieber. It was written and produced by Ezekiel Lewis and Balewa Muhammad of The Clutch, and Sean Hamilton, John \"J.R.\" Harris and Hyuk Shin of the production team A-Rex. The song was released exclusively to iTunes as the second single from his debut release, \"My World\", on October 6, 2009, and was later released to more digital distributions and mainstream and rhythmic radio soon after.\nThe song's accompanying music video was published on YouTube on November 30, 2009; both of which saw positive reception, with critics commending the song's delivery and comparing it to pop-R&B songs by Chris Brown and Rihanna. It was a success in the United States and Canada, Bieber's highest peaks in the countries at sixteen and ten, respectively until \"Baby\" bested both in 2010. It also charted in the Belgium (Flanders) tip chart and in Germany within the top thirty, and also charted in Austria, Australia, and United Kingdom. The music video features Bieber attracted to a girl he sees in the laundromat, as he leads her on a scavenger hunt to win a date with her. Bieber has performed the song in a number of live appearances including the Fearless Tour, \"The Next Star\", and \"Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest\".\nBackground and release.\nRegarding the concept of the song, Bieber told MTV News, \"I think it's really important these girls have something so they can be one less lonely girl.\" Bieber joked that \"Lonely Girl\" wasn't always the choice for his second single stating \"It was either between that or 'I Love High School.'\", a remix of \"I Love College\" by label mate, Asher Roth. \"One Less Lonely Girl\" was released digitally on the iTunes Store on October 6, 2009.\nComposition and critical reception.\nCrystal Bell of \"Billboard\" gave the song a generally positive review stating \"much as he did on his debut single, \"One Time,\" Bieber makes a strong case for why he's the next pop heartthrob. 'I'm gonna put you first, I'll show you what you're worth/If you let me inside your world,' he sings. The stump speech is hard to resist, especially when set to an arrangement that follows the lineage of hit midtempo ballads \"With You\", and \"Irreplaceable\". Although the lyrics are generic, Bieber's smooth delivery is right on point, and his tender vocals blend well with the song's easy-flowing beat.\" Jon Caramanica of \"The New York Times\" called the song along with \"Down to Earth\", \"uncomplicatedly beautiful and earnest.\" Andy Kellman of \"Allmusic\" listed the song as one of his recommended tracks from the album.\nChart performance.\nIn the U.S., the single had 113,000 downloads in its first week, propelling it to debut at number sixteen on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 on the issue dated October 24, 2009. Bieber scored the second highest debut of the week, only being surpassed by \"3\" by Britney Spears. Due to the impact of mainstream radio in the U.S., the song entered at thirty-six on the Billboard Pop Songs on the week ending December 12, 2009, and in turn also re-entered the Hot 100 at sixty-nine. It dropped the next week on the Hot 100, but rose to thirty-two on the Pop Songs, and rose again to twenty-six the following week. The single peaked at twenty-one on the pop chart. Due to increased airplay and digital sales of \"My World\", on the week ending January 9, 2010, the song rose thirty positions from sixty to thirty on the Hot 100.\nAs of February 2011, the single has sold over 1,025,000 digital copies in the United States. The song debuted at number ten on the Canadian Hot 100 on the issue dated October 24, 2009.\nIt debuted in Austria at number fifty-four, where it peaked, and remained four weeks on the chart. It debuted on the Belgian Tip Chart in Flanders at number twenty-five, where it peaked, and remained for two weeks. It debuted in Germany at number twenty-two, where it peaked, and remained for nine weeks. The song also peaked at sixty-eight in Australia and sixty-two in the United Kingdom.\nMusic video.\nIn an October 7, 2009, exclusive with MTV News, Bieber confirmed that a music video had been shot in Watertown, Tennessee (a small town approximately 50 miles east of Nashville, Tennessee) with Roman White who directed the music video for \"You Belong With Me\" by Taylor Swift. The video premiered on perezhilton.com on October 9, 2009, and was released to iTunes three days later. It later premiered on Bieber's official site and YouTube on October 13, 2009, Bieber's mother, Pattie Mallette, makes a cameo during the flower stand scene in the music video. While filming the music video, Bieber joked and said, \"It\u2019s like the biggest town I\u2019ve ever been in.\" He went on to say, \"\"It\u2019s really small and quaint and cute and cool. Everyone probably knows everyone I guess.\" Promotional photography took place around the town a few days before the rest of the video shoot, including Bieber holding posters of his first shoot, and with an old turquoise truck. The video was the first to feature Bieber wearing his signature dog tag. In a behind-the-scenes feature, Bieber said that a fan gave it to him, and it belonged to one of their friends that died in the war. Bieber stated, \"I wear it because its cool and kind of a memory.\" The basic concept of the video is Bieber's goal to win a girl's heart after leading her around the town. Director Roman White said, \"It\u2019s romantic, it\u2019s in a laundromat...that\u2019s all it takes to win a girl is strung lights\".\nIn the music video, Bieber is attracted to a girl (Grace Marie Wilson) he sees every day washing clothes at the local laundromat. In the opening scenes, Bieber is wearing a green hooded sweatshirt, similar to the gray one he wore in the \"One Time\" video, along with a cranberry shirt. One day while he is waiting for his clothes and is tuning his guitar, she drops a scarf, and he picks it up. In the laundromat scene Bieber is wearing a mixed purple, blue & orange plaid collared shirt, with a dark purple tee. The girl comes back the next day however he is not there. He then posts a sign beside the washer that he found her missing scarf. He leads the girl on a scavenger hunt for the scarf, posting signs with pictures of him on them around the town to encourage her to go on a date with him. He takes pictures of him in situations such as buying chocolate for her and the puppies scene, and others, with notes doting quips of what he would do for her. During the date and ending scenes Bieber has on a white striped collared shirt, with a dark cyan tee. She finally finds him at the end of the video, and they have their date.\nMTV called the video \"lost-and-found action with a scarf that eventually leads to some young love,\" and gives credit to Bieber as a new sensation, stating \"The setting for \"One Less Lonely Girl\" seems to be Main Street, USA...And why not? Is this kid not the slice of apple pie cooling on the window sill of the American teen dream?\" AOL calls the video a \"treasure hunt\" and commended the pet store scene, saying \"And then, as if the video couldn't get more cute, they bring out the puppies.\" \"One Less Lonely Girl\" officially published on YouTube on .\nMerchandise.\nThe \"One Less Lonely Girl\" phrase spawned several products from Bieber's official store to have the coined phrase on them. One of the products is a cranberry colored scarf, the same color as a shirt Bieber wore in the music video. One end of the scarf has a patch with the \"One Less Lonely Girl\" phrase on it and the other end has a signature by Bieber. Tamar Antai of \"MTV Buzzworthy\" called the scarf \"boundsly adorable\" and \"a total bargain for less loneliness\". Another product was a white t-shirt that had the phrase stylized as \"1LessL\u2665nelyGirl\" in variations of sky blue colors. In December 2009, Bieber teamed up with 1-800-Flowers for a promotion. The company came out with a \"One Less Lonely Girl\"-branded bouquet of red \"intuition\" roses and a Valentine's Day card from Bieber, depicting the singer holding a heart. Packages could either have a twenty-four or twelve count stems, and a red, silver or clear vase. The flowers could be set for delivery between January 12-February 12, 2010, before Valentine's Day. The first one thousand customers received a free replica of the scarf in the \"One Less Lonely Girl\" video. A portion of the proceeds went to Pencils of Promise, a charity that helps build schools in developing areas of the world. Bieber frequently participates in the charity. A contest was also set in place in which a winner would be greeted with their flowers by Bieber himself, or could win the flower bouquet and other Justin Bieber merchandise.\nLive performances.\nBieber has performed \"One Less Lonely Girl\" as an acoustic rendition and with the original musical background. He premiered the song, performing an acoustic rendition when he made a return appearance to his native Canada on the finale of YTV's \"The Next Star\". Bieber performed the song along with his lead single \"One Time\" on September 26, 2009. He also performed the song acoustically when he appeared on \"It's On with Alexa Chung\" on November 19, 2009. When Bieber performs the song with the musical background, he invites one or two girls on stage to be the object of his affection or the \"lonely girl\" during the performance and gives them flowers. (The \"lonely girl\" traditionally does not appear on stage until the song's bridge.) Bieber performed the song with the original musical background along with \"One Time\", and \"Favorite Girl\" on his U.S. network television debut on \"The Today Show\". He also performed the song with the musical background on \"The Ellen DeGeneres Show\", and during Winter 2009 when he performed at several different Jingle Ball concerts. When Bieber performed at Q100's Jingle Ball in Atlanta, Georgia, where Bieber's career is based out of, he invited good friend and former girlfriend, Caitlin Beadles, who had recently recovered from a boating accident, on stage as the girl during the song. Bieber performed the single as his second song during Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest, and invited his friend and fellow performer that night, Selena Gomez on stage to act as the lonely girl. The performance onstage fueled further speculation of a relationship between Bieber and Gomez but both claimed they were just friends, as they did before. He sang the song on VH1's Pepsi Super Bowl Fan Jam, along with other performers Rihanna and Timbaland, and on CBS' The Early Show as a part of their Super Bowl programming. He performed a medley of \"One Less Lonely Girl\" and \"Never Let You Go\", along with \"Baby\" at BET's SOS: Help for Haiti Telethon. With the telethon also being broadcast in Haiti, Bieber sang the first verse in French. The song was also on the set list for the My World Tour and the Believe Tour. When Bieber performed the song as part of the Believe Tour, instead of giving the \"lonely girl\" flowers, he placed a wreath of flowers on her head. During the Purpose World Tour, Bieber unexpectedly performed the song during the tour for the last time.\nControversy.\nA parody of the song performed by Bieber caused controversy after a video of it was released by the entertainment news website TMZ on June 4, 2014. The video featured a then 15-year-old Bieber, parodying the song with the main lyric \"One less lonely nigger,\" and singing that if he were to kill \"one less lonely nigger,\" he'd be \"part of the KKK.\" Sources stated that Bieber told his mentors, musicians Usher and Will Smith, about the video after it was filmed, after which Usher showed Bieber some videos about the history of racism in an effort to teach him about the derogatory intent of the word \"nigger\" and other racial epithets. On June 5, 2014, the rapper and president of Young Money Entertainment, Mack Maine chose to defend Bieber after the racist remarks. Maine said Bieber is still family for the artists on Young Money, according to TMZ. The publication reports that Maine says Bieber has black friends and that \"Bieber does not have a slave mentality.\" According to Mack Maine, Bieber \"treats his people with respect.\" Mack Maine has said that he brought up a racial joke in his past. \"I remember telling a White man, Chinese man, Black man joke as a kid that was terrible,\" Maine says, \"and I told it to my friends because I thought they'd think it was funny.\" Mack Maine also confirms that Young Money and Justin Bieber are slated to continue working together. On the same day, Bieber apologized for the parody, saying \"I didn\u2019t realize at the time that it wasn\u2019t funny and that in fact my actions were continuing the ignorance\" and \"I take all my friendships with people of all cultures very seriously and I apologize for offending or hurting anyone with my childish and inexcusable behavior.\"\nCredits and personnel.\nSource \nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "7180710": "Baby-Baby-Baby\n1992 single by TLC\n\"Baby-Baby-Baby\" is a song by American girl group TLC. It was the second single released from their debut studio album, \"Ooooooohhh... On the TLC Tip\" (1992), and their second consecutive top-10 hit. It was the most successful single from the album, reaching number two on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot R&B Singles chart, giving them their first number-one on the latter.\nBackground.\n\"Baby-Baby-Baby\" was written and produced by Babyface, L.A. Reid and Daryl Simmons. The song features lead vocals from Tionne \"T-Boz\" Watkins, with Rozonda \"Chilli\" Thomas adlibbing and singing the middle-8 sections. It is the first song not to contain a rap by Lisa \"Left Eye\" Lopes, who instead recorded a rap for the song's remix version.\nCritical reception.\nAllmusic gave \"Baby-Baby-Baby\" a 5-star rating.\nCommercial performance.\n\"Baby-Baby-Baby\" held the runner-up spot on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 for six consecutive weeks, from August 15 to September 19, 1992. It also reached number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot R&B Singles chart. \"Baby-Baby-Baby\" finished at number five on the \"Billboard\" Year-End Hot 100 Singles of 1992, and was certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 1992.\nMusic video.\n\"Baby-Baby-Baby\" had a video depicting TLC at Bowie State University campus and in their dorms, where they have a slumber party. One of the posters reads 'Protection is Priority'.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2572892": "The Lonely Island\nAmerican comedy troupe\nThe Lonely Island is an American comedy trio, formed by Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer in Berkeley, California, in 2001. They have written for and starred in the American TV program \"Saturday Night Live\" (\"SNL\").\nThe three first met in junior high. After graduating from college, they regrouped and moved to Los Angeles, where they struggled to find work and began making short films, combining absurdist comedy and occasionally music. Among the first performers to post their material on the Internet, they involved themselves with Channel 101, a non-profit monthly short film festival. Their popularity at the screenings led to unsuccessful pilot deals with Fox and Comedy Central and a writing job for the 2005 MTV Movie Awards. Subsequently, that show's host, Jimmy Fallon, recommended them to Lorne Michaels, the creator of \"Saturday Night Live\".\nThe group was hired for \"SNL\" in 2005, with all three as writers and Samberg as a featured player. Bypassing the traditional process of pitching, they recorded their own material independently and submitted it to the program. Their second sketch to air, \"Lazy Sunday\", became an internet sensation, the first of many viral videos they produced while at \"SNL\". They led their own division at the program \u2014 \"SNL\" Digital Shorts \u2014 which led to numerous viral videos, including \"Motherlover\", \"Dick in a Box\", \"Jizz in My Pants\", \"I'm on a Boat\", \"Like a Boss\", \"I Just Had Sex\", \"Jack Sparrow\", and \"YOLO\". Their musical comedic work has comprised four full studio albums: \"Incredibad\" (2009), \"Turtleneck & Chain\" (2011), \"The Wack Album\" (2013), and \"The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience\" (2019), along with a soundtrack album for their 2016 film \"\". The three retired from \"SNL\" in the early 2010s, but occasionally make guest appearances.\nThe troupe has written, directed and starred in two feature-length films, \"Hot Rod\", released in 2007, and \"\", co-produced by Judd Apatow and released in 2016. The group also produced the 2020 film \"Palm Springs\", starring Samberg and Cristin Milioti.\nHistory.\nFormation and early years (1990\u20132004).\nThe Lonely Island first formed at Willard Junior High School in Berkeley, California, in the early 1990s. Schaffer and Taccone first met in seventh grade Spanish class, and the group later expanded to include Samberg, a year behind the two. The trio belonged to a large group of friends interested in skateboarding. Each had plans to pursue the arts following their graduation from Berkeley High School, but they split apart, attending different colleges. Taccone attended the University of California, Los Angeles to study theatre, while Schaffer and Samberg both attended the University of California, Santa Cruz as film students. Samberg later transferred to New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in his sophomore year, with the three communicating over the phone during this period. Following college, the trio regrouped in Berkeley to decide their future. Their two options \u2014 either stay in Berkeley and begin making short films or move to Los Angeles, \"get real jobs,\" and eventually begin making films \u2014ended in a compromise.\nIn September 2000, they moved to Los Angeles and created their website, which would host short films. They named themselves The Lonely Island, after the \"modest, low-rent\" L.A. apartment that they shared with roommates Chester Tam and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin. The latter was a musician, and their late nights together often led to the trio making comedic rap songs, which they began to upload online. Their videos were produced via borrowed equipment and edited on a single PowerMac, and they were first uploaded to websites such as iFilm and Heavy.com. Their first \"fake rap\" song, \"Ka-Blamo!\", was uploaded in September 2001. They released their work under Creative Commons licenses, which allowed anyone to distribute their content (such as blogs and peer-to-peer networks), perhaps leading to wider audiences. In December 2001, they produced a pilot for a television series titled \"The Lonely Island\"; the first episode involved the three becoming addicted to teeth whitening products. The video gained the trio agents, and it was notable for a scene in which they mug an elderly woman. During the shoot, actor Kiefer Sutherland, not realizing it was a video, stopped and tried to intervene. Their agents requested they convert their shorts to VHS tape because they did not have high-speed internet at the time.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n We would come home every night after having some drinks and challenge ourselves. Like: 'It's only midnight. By 2am, let's have this video done.' It would be the shittiest 8mm camcorder effort, and"}, "descending_order": ["24609969", "7180710", "2572892", "25788953"], "permutation_1": ["2572892", "25788953", "24609969", "7180710"], "permutation_2": ["2572892", "25788953", "7180710", "24609969"], "permutation_3": ["7180710", "25788953", "24609969", "2572892"]}
{"id": "2hop__166845_159000", "docs_added": {"7473": "Chelsea F.C.\nAssociation football club in England\nFootball club\nChelsea Football Club is a professional football club based in Fulham, West London, England. Named after neighbouring area Chelsea, they compete in the Premier League, the top tier of English football. Founded in 1905, the team play their home games at Stamford Bridge. The club won their first major honour, the League championship, in 1955. They won the FA Cup for the first time in 1970, won their first European honour, the Cup Winners' Cup, in 1971, and became the third English club to win the Club World Cup in 2022.\nChelsea is one of five clubs and the first English club to have won all three pre-1999 main European club competitions, the \"European Treble\" of the European Cup/UEFA Champions League, European/UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, and UEFA Cup/UEFA Europa League. They are the only club to have won all three major European competitions twice. They are the only London club to have won the Champions League and the Club World Cup. Domestically, the club has won six league titles, eight FA Cups, five League Cups, and four FA Community Shields. Internationally, they have won the UEFA Champions League, the UEFA Europa League, the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup and the UEFA Super Cup twice each, and the FIFA Club World Cup once. In terms of overall trophies won, Chelsea is the fifth-most successful club in English football.\nThe club has rivalries with fellow London teams Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur, and a historic rivalry with Leeds United. In terms of club value, Chelsea is the ninth-most-valuable football club in the world (as of 2024[ [update]]), worth $3.13\u00a0billion, and is the ninth-highest-earning football club in the world.\nHistory.\nFounding and early years (1905\u20131952).\nIn 1904, Gus Mears acquired the Stamford Bridge athletics stadium in Fulham with the aim of turning it into a football ground. An offer to lease it to nearby Fulham F.C. was turned down, so Mears opted to found his own club to use the stadium. As there was already a team named Fulham in the borough, the name of the adjacent borough of Chelsea was chosen for the new club; names like \"Kensington FC\", \"Stamford Bridge FC\" and \"London FC\" were considered. Chelsea F.C. was founded on 10 March 1905 at The Rising Sun pub (now The Butcher's Hook), opposite the present-day main entrance to the ground on Fulham Road, and were elected to the Football League shortly afterwards.\nChelsea won promotion to the First Division in their second season, and yo-yoed between the First and Second Divisions in its early years. The team reached the 1915 FA Cup final, where they lost to Sheffield United at Old Trafford, and finished third in the First Division in 1920, the club's best league campaign to that point. Chelsea had a reputation for signing star players and attracted large crowds. The club had the highest average attendance in English football in ten separate seasons including 1907\u201308, 1909\u201310, 1911\u201312, 1912\u201313, 1913\u201314 and 1919\u201320. They were FA Cup semi-finalists in 1920 and 1932 and remained in the First Division throughout the 1930s, but success eluded the club in the inter-war years.\nModernisation and the first league championship (1952\u20131983).\nFormer Arsenal and England centre-forward Ted Drake was appointed manager in 1952 and proceeded to modernise the club. He removed the club's Chelsea pensioner crest, improved the youth set-up and training regime, rebuilt the side with shrewd signings from the lower divisions and amateur leagues, and led Chelsea to their first major trophy success \u2013 the League championship \u2013 in 1954\u201355. The following season saw UEFA create the European Champions' Cup, but after objections from The Football League, Chelsea were persuaded to withdraw from the competition before it started. Chelsea failed to build on this success, and spent the remainder of the 1950s in mid-table. Drake was dismissed in 1961 and replaced by player-coach Tommy Docherty.\nDocherty built a new team around the group of talented young players emerging from the club's youth set-up, and Chelsea challenged for honours throughout the 1960s, enduring several near-misses. They were on course for a treble of League, FA Cup and League Cup going into the final stages of the 1964\u201365 season, winning the League Cup but faltering late on in the other two. In three seasons the side were beaten in three major semi-finals and were FA Cup runners-up. Under Docherty's successor, Dave Sexton, Chelsea won the FA Cup in 1970, beating Leeds United 2\u20131 in a final replay. The following year, Chelsea took their first European honour, a UEFA Cup Winners' Cup triumph, with another replayed win, this time over Real Madrid in Athens.\nRedevelopment and financial crisis (1983\u20132003).\nThe late 1970s through to the '80s was a turbulent period for Chelsea. An ambitious redevelopment of Stamford Bridge threatened the financial stability of the club, star players were sold and the team were relegated. Further problems were caused by a notorious hooligan element among the support, which was to plague the club throughout the decade. In 1982, at the nadir of their fortunes, Chelsea were acquired by Ken Bates from Mears' great-nephew Brian Mears, for the nominal sum of \u00a31. Bates bought a controlling stake in the club and floated Chelsea on the AIM stock exchange in March 1996 although by now the Stamford Bridge freehold had been sold to property developers, meaning the club faced losing their home. On the pitch, the team had fared little better, coming close to relegation to the Third Division for the first time, but in 1983 manager John Neal put together an impressive new team for minimal outlay. Chelsea won the Second Division title in 1983\u201384 and established themselves in the top division with two top-six finishes, before being relegated again in 1988. The club bounced back immediately by winning the Second Division championship in 1988\u201389.\nAfter a long-running legal battle, Bates reunited the stadium freehold with the club in 1992 by doing a deal with the banks of the property developers, who had been bankrupted by a market crash. In the mid-1990s Chelsea fan and businessman Matthew Harding became a director and loaned the club \u00a326\u00a0million to build the new North Stand and invest in new players. Chelsea's form in the new Premier League was unconvincing, although they did reach the 1994 FA Cup final. The appointment of Ruud Gullit as player-manager in 1996 began an upturn in the team's fortunes. He added several top international players to the side and led the club to their first major honour since 1971, the FA Cup. Gullit was replaced by Gianluca Vialli, whose reign saw Chelsea win the League Cup, the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup and the UEFA Super Cup in 1998, and the FA Cup in 2000. They mounted a strong title challenge in 1998\u201399, finishing four points behind champions Manchester United, and made their first appearance in the UEFA Champions League. Vialli was sacked in favour of Claudio Ranieri, who guided Chelsea to the 2002 FA Cup final and Champions League qualification in 2002\u201303.\nAbramovich ownership (2003\u20132022).\nWith the club facing an apparent financial crisis, Bates unexpectedly sold Chelsea F.C. in June 2003 for \u00a360\u00a0million. In so doing, he reportedly recognised a personal profit of \u00a317\u00a0million on the club he had bought for \u00a31 in 1982 (his stake had been diluted to just below 30% over the years). The club's new owner was Russian oligarch and billionaire Roman Abramovich, who took on responsibility for the club's \u00a380\u00a0million of debt, quickly paying some of it. Sergei Pugachev alleged Chelsea was bought on Putin's orders, an allegation Abramovich has denied. Bates mentioned that Abramovich was in talks to buy Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur before he bought Chelsea in a deal sealed in a day.\nOver \u00a3100\u00a0million was spent on new players, but Ranieri was unable to deliver any trophies, and was replaced by Jos\u00e9 Mourinho. Under Mourinho, Chelsea became the fifth English team to win back-to-back league championships since the Second World War (2004\u201305 and 2005\u201306), in addition to winning an FA Cup (2007) and two League Cups (2005 and 2007). After a poor start to the 2007\u201308 season, Mourinho was replaced by Avram Grant, who led the club to their first UEFA Champions League final, which they lost on penalties to Manchester United. The club did not turn a profit in the first nine years of Abramovich's ownership, and made record losses of \u00a3140m in June 2005.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nI am a fan of special nature. I'm excited before every single game. The trophy at the end is less important than the process itself.\n\u2014Abramovich discussing two trophy-laden years at Chelsea (2006).\nIn 2009, under caretaker manager Guus Hiddink, Chelsea won another FA Cup. In 2009\u201310, his successor Carlo Ancelotti led them to their first Premier League and FA Cup Double, becoming the first English top-flight club to score 100 league goals in a season since 1963. In 2012, Roberto Di Matteo led Chelsea to their seventh FA Cup, and their first UEFA Champions League title, beating Bayern Munich 4\u20133 on penalties, the first London club to win the trophy. The following year the club won the UEFA Europa League, making them the first club to hold two major European titles simultaneously and one of five clubs to have won the three main UEFA trophies. Mourinho returned as manager in 2013 and led Chelsea to League Cup success in March 2015, and the Premier League title two months later. Mourinho was sacked after four months of the following season after a poor start.\nIn November 2012, Chelsea announced a profit of \u00a31.4\u00a0million for the year ending 30 June 2012, the first time the club had made a profit under Abramovich's ownership. This was followed by a loss in 2013 and then their highest ever profit of \u00a318.4\u00a0million for the year to June 2014. In 2018 Chelsea announced a record after-tax profit of \u00a362\u00a0million.\nIn 2017, under new coach Antonio Conte, Chelsea won their sixth English title and the following season won their eighth FA Cup. In 2018 Conte was sacked after a fifth-place finish and replaced with Maurizio Sarri, under whom Chelsea reached the League Cup final, which they lost on penalties to Manchester City and won the Europa League for a second time, beating Arsenal 4\u20131 in the final. Sarri then left the club to become manager of Juventus and was replaced by former Chelsea player Frank Lampard.\nIn Lampard's first season, he guided Chelsea to fourth place in the Premier League and reached the FA Cup final, losing 2\u20131 to Arsenal. Lampard was dismissed in January 2021 and replaced with Thomas Tuchel. \nUnder Tuchel, Chelsea reached the FA Cup final, losing 1\u20130 to Leicester City, and won their second UEFA Champions League title with a 1\u20130 win over Manchester City in Porto. The club subsequently won the 2021 UEFA Super Cup for the second time by defeating Villarreal 6\u20135 in a penalty shootout, after it had ended 1\u20131 in Belfast after extra time, and the 2021 FIFA Club World Cup (the first for the club) in Abu Dhabi after beating Brazilian Palmeiras 2\u20131.\nOn 18 April 2021, Chelsea announced it would be joining a new European Super League, a league competition comprising the biggest European clubs. After a backlash from supporters, the club announced their withdrawal days later. The club opted against furloughing their non-matchday staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the decision reportedly coming from Abramovich himself. Chelsea, one of the first clubs to help the National Health Service, lent the club-owned Millennium Hotel for the NHS staff.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"[Chelsea] have been a success machine for the last 10\u201320 years. That doesn't just come with money, we've seen at Manchester United and Arsenal where they've put billions into the team and not had the success that Chelsea have had. Chelsea can feel comfortable that they'll have rich owners, but will they have football-smart owners? Because that's what Abramovich has been.\n\u2014Gary Neville on Abramovich's legacy.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"I don't want to throw my money away but it's really about having fun and that means success and trophies.\"\n\u2014Roman Abramovich, in an interview with the BBC following the takeover.\nAmidst financial sanctions leveled at Russian oligarchs by Western governments in response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Abramovich stated on 26 February that he would hand over the stewardship of Chelsea to the trustees of the Chelsea Foundation. The trustees did not immediately agree, due to legal concerns regarding the rules of the Charity Commission for England and Wales. A week later, Abramovich wrote-off the \u00a31.5 billion the club owed him, and put the club up for sale, pledging to donate net proceeds from it to the victims of the war in Ukraine.\nOn 10 March 2022, the British government announced sanctions on Abramovich with Chelsea allowed to operate under a special license until 31 May. In the following weeks, reports emerged of Abramovich's involvement in brokering a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia and securing safe evacuation corridors in besieged Ukrainian cities. An American government official revealed that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy had requested that the US government not levy sanctions against Abramovich given his importance to war relief efforts.\nBlueCo ownership (2022\u2013present).\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nWe're all in \u2013 100% \u2013 every minute of every match. Our vision as owners is clear: we want to make the fans proud.\n\u2014Todd Boehly, addressing the press after the takeover.\nOn 7 May 2022, Chelsea confirmed that terms had been agreed for a new ownership group, led by Todd Boehly, Clearlake Capital, Mark Walter and Hansj\u00f6rg Wyss, to acquire the club. The group was later known as BlueCo. The UK government approved the \u00a34.25bn takeover, ending Abramovich's 19-year ownership of the club. Bruce Buck, who served as chairman since 2003, was replaced by Boehly, while long-serving club director and \"de facto\" sporting director Marina Granovskaia left, as did Petr \u010cech from the role of technical and performance advisor.\nThe club brought in Graham Potter from Brighton & Hove Albion to replace Tuchel on 8 September 2022. Chelsea won six of the first 11 games of the 2022\u201323 season, but only five of the remaining 27. Potter would be sacked on 2 April 2023 and eventually be replaced by Frank Lampard as caretaker manager. Under Lampard the club would only win one of their last 11 matches resulting in a 9% win percentage. Lampard's win percentage was the worst for any Chelsea manager who managed three games or more. Chelsea scored a record-low 38 goals across the entire season and finished in the bottom half of the table for the first time since 1995\u201396.\nMauricio Pochettino was announced as Lampard's replacement in 2023. He led Chelsea to a 6th-place finish, and a place in the Conference League play-off round qualification. After clashing with the sporting directors Laurence Stewart and Paul Winstanley over strategy and management of the young squad, Pochettino agreed to leave the club at the end of the season.\nOn 3 June 2024, Enzo Maresca was announced as Pochettino's replacement, with the Italian beginning his term as manager on 1 July 2024.\nLeague history.\nL1 = Level 1 of the football league system; L2 = Level 2 of the football league system\nStadium.\nChelsea have only had one home ground, Stamford Bridge, where they have played since the team's foundation. The stadium was officially opened on 28 April 1877 and for the next 28 years it was used by the London Athletic Club as an arena for athletics meetings. In 1904, the ground was acquired by businessman Gus Mears and his brother Joseph, who had purchased nearby land (formerly a large market garden) with the aim of staging football matches on the now 12.5\u00a0acre (51,000\u00a0m2) site. Stamford Bridge was designed for the Mears family by the noted football architect Archibald Leitch, who had designed Ibrox, Craven Cottage and Hampden Park. Most football clubs were founded first, and then sought grounds in which to play, but Chelsea were founded for Stamford Bridge.\nStarting with an open bowl-like design and one grandstand with seating, Stamford Bridge had an original capacity of around 100,000, making it the second biggest stadium in England after Crystal Palace. The early 1930s saw the construction of a terrace on the southern part of the ground with a roof that covered around 20% of the stand. As the roof resembled that of a corrugated iron shed, the stand eventually became known as the \"Shed End\", although it is unknown who first coined this name. From the 1960s, it became known as the home of Chelsea's most loyal and vocal supporters. In 1939, another small seated stand was added, the North Stand, which remained until its demolition in 1975.\nIn the early 1970s, the club's owners announced a modernisation of Stamford Bridge with plans for a state-of-the-art 50,000 all-seater stadium. Work began in 1972 but the project was beset with problems and ultimately only the East Stand was completed; the cost brought the club close to bankruptcy. The freehold was sold to property developers and the club were under threat of eviction from the stadium. Following a long legal battle, it was not until the mid-1990s that Chelsea's future at Stamford Bridge was secured and renovation work resumed. The north, west and southern parts of the ground were converted into all-seater stands and moved closer to the pitch, a process completed by 2001. The East Stand was retained from the 1970s development. In 1996, the north stand was renamed the Matthew Harding stand, after the club director and benefactor who was killed in a helicopter crash earlier that year.\nWhen Stamford Bridge was redeveloped in the Bates era many additional features were added to the complex including two Millennium & Copthorne hotels, apartments, bars, restaurants, the Chelsea Megastore, and an interactive visitor attraction called Chelsea World of Sport. The intention was that these facilities would provide extra revenue to support the football side of the business, but they were less successful than hoped and before the Abramovich takeover in 2003 the debt taken on to finance them was a major burden on the club. Soon after the takeover a decision was taken to drop the \"Chelsea Village\" brand and refocus on Chelsea as a football club. However, the stadium is sometimes still referred to as part of \"Chelsea Village\" or \"The Village\".\nThe Stamford Bridge freehold, the pitch, the turnstiles and Chelsea's naming rights are now owned by Chelsea Pitch Owners, a non-profit organisation in which fans are the shareholders. The CPO was created to ensure the stadium could never again be sold to developers. As a condition for using the Chelsea FC name, the club has to play its first team matches at Stamford Bridge, which means that if the club moves to a new stadium, they may have to change their name.\nChelsea's training ground is located in Cobham, Surrey. Chelsea moved to Cobham in 2004. Their previous training ground in Harlington was taken over by QPR in 2005. The new training facilities in Cobham were completed in 2007.\nStamford Bridge hosted the FA Cup final from 1920 to 1922, has held 10 FA Cup Semi-finals (most recently in 1978), ten FA Charity Shield matches (the last in 1970), and three England international matches, the last in 1932; it was the venue for an unofficial \"Victory International\" in 1946. The 2013 UEFA Women's Champions League final was played at Stamford Bridge as well. \nThe stadium has been used for a variety of other sports. In October 1905 it hosted a rugby union match between the All Blacks and Middlesex, and in 1914 hosted a baseball match between the touring New York Giants and the Chicago White Sox. It was the venue for a boxing match between world flyweight champion Jimmy Wilde and Joe Conn in 1918. The running track was used for dirt track racing between 1928 and 1932, greyhound racing from 1933 to 1968, and Midget car racing in 1948. In 1980, Stamford Bridge hosted the first international floodlit cricket match in the UK, between Essex and the West Indies. It was the home stadium of the London Monarchs American Football team for the 1997 season.\nThe previous owner Abramovich and the club's then executive board determined that a larger stadium is necessary in order for Chelsea to stay competitive with rival clubs who have significantly larger stadia, such as Arsenal and Manchester United. Owing to its location next to a main road and two railway lines, fans can only enter Stamford Bridge via the Fulham Road, which places constraints on expansion due to health and safety regulations. The club have consistently affirmed their desire to keep Chelsea at their current home, but have nonetheless been linked with a move to various nearby sites, including the Earls Court Exhibition Centre, Battersea Power Station and the Chelsea Barracks. In October 2011, a proposal from the club to buy back the freehold to the land on which Stamford Bridge sits was voted down by Chelsea Pitch Owners shareholders. In May 2012, the club made a formal bid to purchase Battersea Power Station, with a view to developing the site into a new stadium, but lost out to a Malaysian consortium. The club subsequently announced plans to redevelop Stamford Bridge into a 60,000-seater stadium,\nand in January 2017 these plans were approved by Hammersmith and Fulham council. However, on 31 May 2018, the club released a statement saying that the new stadium project had been put on hold indefinitely, citing \"the current unfavourable investment climate\".\nIn July 2022, it was reported that the club's new owner Todd Boehly had appointed American architect Janet Marie Smith to oversee the renovation of the stadium.\nIdentity.\nCrest.\nChelsea has had four main crests, which all underwent minor variations. The first, adopted when the club was founded, was the image of a Chelsea Pensioner, the army veterans who reside at the nearby Royal Hospital Chelsea. This contributed to the club's original \"pensioner\" nickname, and remained for the next half-century, though it never appeared on the shirts. When Ted Drake became Chelsea manager in 1952, he began to modernise the club. Believing the Chelsea pensioner crest to be old-fashioned, he insisted that it be replaced. A stop-gap badge which comprised the initials C.F.C. was adopted for a year. In 1953, the club crest was changed to an upright blue lion looking backwards and holding a staff. It was based on elements in the coat of arms of the Metropolitan Borough of Chelsea with the \"lion rampant regardant\" taken from the arms of then club president Viscount Chelsea and the staff from the Abbots of Westminster, former Lords of the Manor of Chelsea. It featured three red roses, to represent England, and two footballs. This was the first Chelsea crest to appear on the shirts, in the early 1960s. In 1975, a heraldic badge was granted by the College of Arms to the English Football League for use by Chelsea. The badge took the form of the familiar lion and staff encircled by a blue ring but without lettering and without the red roses and red footballs (blazoned as \"A lion rampant reguardant azure supporting with the forepaws a crozier or all within an annulet azure\"). In 1986, with Ken Bates owner of the club, Chelsea's crest was changed again as part of another attempt to modernise and because the old rampant lion badge could not be trademarked. The new badge featured a more naturalistic non-heraldic lion, in white and not blue, standing over the C.F.C. initials. This lasted for the next 19 years, with some modifications such as the use of different colours, including red from 1987 to 1995, and yellow from 1995 until 1999, before the white returned. With the new ownership of Roman Abramovich, and the club's centenary approaching, combined with demands from fans for the popular 1950s badge to be restored, it was decided that the crest should be changed again in 2005. The new crest was officially adopted for the start of the 2005\u201306 season and marked a return to the older design, used from 1953 to 1986, featuring a blue heraldic lion holding a staff. For the centenary season this was accompanied by the words '100 Years' and 'Centenary 2005\u20132006' on the top and bottom of the crest respectively.\nColours.\nChelsea's first home colours (1905 \u2013 c.\u20091912)\nChelsea have always worn blue shirts, although they originally used the paler eton blue, which was taken from the racing colours of then club president, Earl Cadogan, and was worn with white shorts and dark blue or black socks. The light blue shirts were replaced by a royal blue version in around 1912. In the 1960s Chelsea manager Tommy Docherty changed the kit again, switching to blue shorts (which have remained ever since) and white socks, believing it made the club's colours more modern and distinctive, since no other major side used that combination; this kit was first worn during the 1964\u201365 season. Since then Chelsea have always worn white socks with their home kit apart from a short spell from 1985 to 1992, when blue socks were reintroduced.\nChelsea's away colours are usually all yellow or all white with blue trim. More recently, the club have had a number of black or dark blue away kits which alternate every year. As with most teams, they have had some more unusual ones. At Docherty's behest, in the 1966 FA Cup semi-final they wore blue and black stripes, based on Inter Milan's kit. In the mid-1970s, the away strip was a red, white and green kit inspired by the Hungarian national side of the 1950s. Other away kits include an all jade strip worn from 1986 to 1989, red and white diamonds from 1990 to 1992, graphite and tangerine from 1994 to 1996, and luminous yellow from 2007 to 2008. The graphite and tangerine strip has appeared in lists of the worst football kits ever.\nSongs and fan chants.\nThe song \"Blue is the Colour\" was released as a single in the build-up to the 1972 League Cup final, with all members of Chelsea's first team squad singing; it reached number five in the UK Singles Chart. The song has since been adopted by a number of other sports teams around the world, including the Vancouver Whitecaps (as \"White is the Colour\") and the Saskatchewan Roughriders (as \"Green is the Colour\").\nChelsea released the song \"No One Can Stop Us Now\" in 1994 for reaching the 1994 FA Cup final. It reached number 23 in the UK Singles Chart. In the build-up to the 1997 FA Cup final, the song \"Blue Day\", performed by Suggs and members of the Chelsea squad, reached number 22 in the UK chart. In 2000, Chelsea released the song \"Blue Tomorrow\". It reached number 22 in the UK Singles Chart.\nAt matches, Chelsea fans sing chants such as \"Carefree\" (to the tune of \"Lord of the Dance\", whose lyrics were probably written by supporter Mick Greenaway), \"Ten Men Went to Mow\", \"We All Follow the Chelsea\" (to the tune of \"Land of Hope and Glory\"), \"Zigga Zagga\", and the celebratory \"Celery\". The latter is often accompanied by fans throwing celery at each other, although the vegetable was banned inside Stamford Bridge after an incident involving midfielder Cesc F\u00e0bregas at the 2007 League Cup final. Popular fan chants include, \"Super Chelsea\", \"Super Frank\" (dedicated to all-time leading goal scorer Frank Lampard), \"We love you Chelsea\" and \"Come on Chelsea\". There are situation-specific or team-specific chants meant to rile up opposition teams, managers or players.\nSupport.\nChelsea is among the most widely supported football clubs in the world. It has the sixth-highest average attendance in the history of English football, and regularly attract over 40,000 fans to Stamford Bridge; they were the ninth best-supported Premier League team in the 2023\u201324 season, with an average gate of 39,700. Chelsea's traditional fanbase comes from all over the Greater London area including working-class parts such as Hammersmith and Battersea, wealthier areas like Chelsea and Kensington, and from the home counties. There are numerous official supporters clubs in the United Kingdom and all over the world. Between 2007 and 2012, Chelsea were ranked fourth worldwide in annual replica kit sales, with an average of 910,000. As of 2023, Chelsea has 118.9\u00a0million followers on social media, the fourth highest among football clubs.\nDuring the 1970s and 1980s in particular, Chelsea supporters were associated with football hooliganism. The club's \"football firm\", originally known as the Chelsea Shed Boys, and subsequently as the Chelsea Headhunters, were nationally notorious for football violence, alongside hooligan firms from other clubs such as West Ham United's Inter City Firm and Millwall's Bushwackers, before, during and after matches. The increase of hooligan incidents in the 1980s led chairman Ken Bates to propose erecting an electric fence to deter them from invading the pitch, a proposal that the Greater London Council rejected.\nSince the 1990s, there has been a marked decline in crowd trouble at matches, as a result of stricter policing, CCTV in grounds and the advent of all-seater stadia. In 2007, the club launched the Back to the Shed campaign to improve the atmosphere at home matches, with notable success. According to Home Office statistics, 126 Chelsea fans were arrested for football-related offences during the 2009\u201310 season, the third highest in the division, and 27 banning orders were issued, the fifth-highest in the division.\nRivalries.\nChelsea have long-standing rivalries with North London clubs Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur. A strong rivalry with Leeds United dates back to several heated and controversial matches in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly the 1970 FA Cup final. More recently a rivalry with Liverpool has grown following repeated clashes in cup competitions. Fellow West London clubs Brentford, Fulham and Queens Park Rangers are considered rivals, but less so in recent times as matches have only taken place intermittently due to the teams often being in separate divisions.\nA 2004 survey by Planetfootball.com found that Chelsea fans consider their main rivalries to be with (in descending order): Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United. In the same survey, fans of Arsenal, Fulham, Leeds United, QPR, Tottenham, and West Ham United named Chelsea as one of their three main rivals. A 2012 survey, conducted among 1,200 supporters of the top four league divisions across the country, found that many clubs' main rivals had changed since 2003 and reported that Chelsea fans consider Tottenham to be their main rivals, above Arsenal and Manchester United. Additionally, fans of Arsenal, Brentford, Fulham, Liverpool, Manchester United, QPR, Tottenham and West Ham identified Chelsea as one of their top three rivals.\nRecords and statistics.\nChelsea's highest appearance-maker is ex-captain Ron Harris, who played in 795 competitive games for the club between 1961 and 1980. Five other players made more than 500 appearances for the club: Peter Bonetti (729; 1959\u201379), John Terry (717; 1998\u20132017), Frank Lampard (648; 2001\u20132014), John Hollins (592; 1963\u20131975 and 1983\u20131984), and C\u00e9sar Azpilicueta (508; 2012\u20132023). With 103 caps (101 while at the club) for England, Lampard is Chelsea's most capped international player. Every starting player in Chelsea's 57 games of the 2013\u201314 season was a full international \u2013 a new club record.\nLampard is Chelsea's all-time top goalscorer, having scored 211 goals in 648 games (2001\u20132014); he passed Bobby Tambling's longstanding record of 202 in May 2013. Eight other players have scored over 100 goals for Chelsea: George Hilsdon (1906\u20131912), George Mills (1929\u20131939), Roy Bentley (1948\u20131956), Jimmy Greaves (1957\u20131961), Peter Osgood (1964\u20131974 and 1978\u20131979), Kerry Dixon (1983\u20131992), Didier Drogba (2004\u20132012 and 2014\u20132015), and Eden Hazard (2012\u20132019). Greaves holds the club record for the most goals scored in one season (43 in 1960\u201361). While a Chelsea player, Greaves became the youngest ever player to score 100 goals in the English top-flight, at 20 years and 290 days.\nChelsea's biggest winning scoreline in a competitive match is 13\u20130, achieved against Jeunesse Hautcharage in the Cup Winners' Cup in 1971. The club's biggest top-flight win was an 8\u20130 victory against Wigan Athletic in 2010, which was matched in 2012 against Aston Villa. Chelsea's biggest loss was an 8\u20131 reverse against Wolverhampton Wanderers in 1953. The club's 21\u20130 aggregate victory over Jeunesse Hautcharage in the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1971 is a record in European competition. Officially, Chelsea's highest home attendance is 82,905 for a First Division match against Arsenal on 12 October 1935. However, an estimated crowd of over 100,000 attended a friendly match against Soviet team Dynamo Moscow on 13 November 1945.\nFrom 20 March 2004 to 26 October 2008, Chelsea went a record 86 consecutive league matches at home without defeat, beating the previous record of 63 matches unbeaten set by Liverpool between 1978 and 1980. Chelsea hold the English record for the fewest goals conceded during a league season (15), the highest number of clean sheets overall in a Premier League season (25) (both set during the 2004\u201305 season), and the most consecutive clean sheets from the start of a league season (6, set during the 2005\u201306 season). Chelsea is the only Premier League side to have won its opening nine league games of the season, doing so in 2005\u201306. From 2009 to 2013, Chelsea were unbeaten in a record 29 consecutive FA Cup matches (excluding penalty shoot-outs).\nOn 25 August 1928, Chelsea, along with Arsenal, became the first club to play with shirt numbers, in their match against Swansea Town. They were the first English side to travel by aeroplane to a domestic away match, when they visited Newcastle United on 19 April 1957, and the first First Division side to play a match on a Sunday, when they faced Stoke City on 27 January 1974. On 26 December 1999, Chelsea became the first British side to field an entirely foreign starting line-up (no British or Irish players) in a Premier League match against Southampton. In May 2007, Chelsea were the first team to win the FA Cup at the new Wembley Stadium, having been the last to win it at the old Wembley. They were the first English club to be ranked No. 1 under UEFA's five-year coefficient system in the 21st century. They were the first Premier League team, and the first team in the English top flight since 1962\u201363, to score at least 100 goals in a single season, reaching the milestone during the 2009\u201310 season. Chelsea is the only London club to have won the UEFA Champions League. Upon winning the 2012\u201313 UEFA Europa League, Chelsea became the first English club to win all four UEFA club trophies and the only club to hold the Champions League and the Europa League at the same time.\nChelsea have broken the record for the highest transfer fee paid by a British club three times. Their \u00a330.8\u00a0million purchase of Andriy Shevchenko from A.C. Milan in June 2006 was a British record until surpassed by the \u00a332.5\u00a0million paid by Manchester City for Robinho in September 2008. The club's \u00a350\u00a0million purchase of Fernando Torres from Liverpool in January 2011 held the record until \u00c1ngel Di Mar\u00eda signed for Manchester United in August 2014 for \u00a359.7\u00a0million. The club's \u00a371\u00a0million purchase of Kepa Arrizabalaga in August 2018 remains a world record fee paid for a goalkeeper.\nOn 12 February 2022, Chelsea became the first London club to win the FIFA Club World Cup. In the final it beat Palmeiras with Kai Havertz scoring a late penalty. Chelsea broke the spending record in the winter transfer window with a \u00a3289 million spending spree on eight new signings, with the \u00a3107 million signing of Enzo Fernandez breaking the British transfer record.\nOwnership and finances.\nChelsea Football Club was founded by Gus Mears in 1905. After his death in 1912, his descendants continued to own the club until 1982, when Ken Bates bought the club from Mears' great-nephew Brian Mears for \u00a31. Bates bought a controlling stake in the club and floated Chelsea on the AIM stock exchange in March 1996. In the mid-1990s Chelsea fan and businessman Matthew Harding became a director, and loaned the club \u00a326\u00a0million to build the new North Stand and invest in new players.\nIn July 2003, Roman Abramovich purchased just over 50% of Chelsea Village plc's share capital, including Bates' 29.5% stake, for \u00a330\u00a0million and over the following weeks bought out most of the remaining 12,000 shareholders at 35 pence per share, completing a \u00a3140\u00a0million takeover. Other shareholders at the time of the takeover included the Matthew Harding estate (21%), BSkyB (9.9%) and various anonymous offshore trusts.\nAt the time of the Abramovich takeover, the club had debts of around \u00a3100\u00a0million, which included a 10-year \u00a375\u00a0million Eurobond taken out in 1997 by the Bates regime to buy the freehold of Stamford Bridge and finance the redevelopment of the stadium. The 9% interest on the loan cost the club around \u00a37\u00a0million a year and according to Bruce Buck, Chelsea were struggling to pay an instalment due in July 2003. Abramovich paid off some of that debt immediately, but the outstanding \u00a336\u00a0million on the Eurobond was not fully repaid until 2008. Since then, the club had no external debt.\nAbramovich changed the ownership name to Chelsea FC plc, whose ultimate parent company was Fordstam Limited, which was controlled by him. Chelsea were additionally funded by Abramovich via interest free soft loans channelled through his holding company Fordstam Limited. The loans stood at \u00a3709\u00a0million in December 2009, when they were all converted to equity by Abramovich, leaving the club themselves debt free, although the debt remained with Fordstam.\nChelsea did not turn a profit in the first nine years of Abramovich's ownership, and made record losses of \u00a3140m in June 2005. In November 2012, Chelsea announced a profit of \u00a31.4\u00a0million for the year ending 30 June 2012, the first time the club had made a profit under Abramovich's ownership. This was followed by a loss in 2013 and then their highest ever profit of \u00a318.4\u00a0million for the year to June 2014. In 2018 Chelsea announced a record after-tax profit of \u00a362\u00a0million.\nChelsea has been described as a global brand; a 2012 report by Brand Finance ranked Chelsea fifth among football brands and valued the club's brand value at US$398\u00a0million \u2013 an increase of 27% from the previous year, valuing it at US$10\u00a0million more than the sixth best brand, London rivals Arsenal \u2013 and gave the brand a strength rating of AA (very strong). In 2016, \"Forbes\" magazine ranked Chelsea the seventh most valuable football club in the world, at \u00a31.15\u00a0billion ($1.66\u00a0billion). As of 2016[ [update]], Chelsea was ranked eighth in the Deloitte Football Money League with an annual commercial revenue of \u00a3322.59\u00a0million.\nAs of May 2022, Chelsea was ranked the eighth-most valuable club in the world according to \"Forbes\", and eighth according to Deloitte, with an annual commercial revenue of \u20ac493.1 million.\nThe club's recent accounting records highlight \u00a326.6m they lost in compensation to former head coach Antonio Conte for sacking and to pay off his backroom staff and the legal costs that followed.\nOn 26 February 2022, during the Russo-Ukrainian War, Abramovich handed over \"stewardship and care\" of Chelsea FC to the Chelsea Charitable Foundation. Abramovich released an official statement on 2 March 2022 confirming that he was selling the club due to the ongoing situation in Ukraine. Although the UK government froze Abramovich's assets in United Kingdom on 10 March due to his \"close ties with Kremlin\", it was made clear that the Chelsea club will be allowed to operate in terms of activities which are football related. On 12 March, the Premier League disqualified Abramovich as a director of Chelsea Football Club.\nOn 19 March 2022, there were five confirmed bids to acquire Chelsea FC: submitted to Raine Capital which was handling the sale of the club. Some of these were a consortium led by ex-Liverpool chairman Sir Martin Broughton, a group of investors led by the Ricketts family (among them Joe and Pete Ricketts), Swiss and American businessmen Hansj\u00f6rg Wyss and Todd Boehly, Aethel Partners headed by Portuguese Ricardo Santos Silva and British businessman Nick Candy, supported by former Chelsea striker Gianluca Vialli.\nOn 7 May, the club finally confirmed that \"terms have been agreed\" for a new ownership group led by Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital. On 30 May, it was confirmed that the Boehly consortium had completed the purchase of the club. The consortium includes Wyss and Mark Walter. Walter and Boehly are also owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Los Angeles Lakers, and the Los Angeles Sparks. The consortium was later known as BlueCo. The transaction had received all necessary approvals from the governments of the United Kingdom and, the Premier League, and other authorities.\nSponsorship.\nChelsea's kit has been manufactured by Nike since July 2017. Previously, the kit was manufactured by Adidas, which was originally contracted to supply the club's kit from 2006 to 2018. The partnership was extended in October 2010 in a deal worth \u00a3160\u00a0million over eight years. This deal was again extended in June 2013 in a deal worth \u00a3300\u00a0million over another 10 years. In May 2016, Adidas announced that by mutual agreement, the kit sponsorship would end six years early on 30 June 2017. Chelsea had to pay \u00a340m in compensation to Adidas. In October 2016, Nike was announced as the new kit sponsor, in a deal worth \u00a3900m over 15 years, until 2032. Previously, the kit was manufactured by Umbro (1975\u201381), Le Coq Sportif (1981\u201386), The Chelsea Collection (1986\u201387), Umbro (1987\u20132006), and Adidas (2006\u20132017).\nChelsea's first shirt sponsor was Gulf Air, agreed during the 1983\u201384 season. The club was then sponsored by Grange Farms, Bai Lin Tea and Simod before a long-term deal was signed with Commodore International in 1989; Amiga, an offshoot of Commodore, appeared on the shirts. Chelsea was subsequently sponsored by Coors beer (1994\u201397), Autoglass (1997\u20132001), Emirates (2001\u201305), Samsung Mobile (2005\u201308), Samsung (2008\u201315) and Yokohama Tyres (2015\u201320). From July 2020, Chelsea's sponsor was Three; however, it temporarily suspended its sponsorship in March 2022 in response to sanctions leveled by the UK government against Abramovich. It restored its sponsorship after the change of ownership of the club.\nFollowing the introduction of sleeve sponsors in the Premier League, Chelsea had Alliance Tyres as its first sleeve sponsor in the 2017\u201318 season, followed by Hyundai Motor Company in 2018\u201319 season. In 2022\u201323 season, Amber Group became the new sleeve sponsor, with the flagship digital asset platform WhaleFin appearing on the sleeves of both men's and women's teams.\nThe club has a variety of other sponsors and official partners, which include Cadbury, EA Sports, FICO, Hilton Worldwide, 3 (company), Levy Restaurants, MSC Cruises, Oman Air, Parimatch, Rexona, Singha, The St. James, Trivago and BingX.\nPopular culture.\nIn 1930, Chelsea featured in one of the earliest football films, \"The Great Game\". One-time Chelsea centre forward, Jack Cock, who by then was playing for Millwall, was the star of the film and several scenes were shot at Stamford Bridge, including on the pitch, the boardroom, and the dressing rooms. It included guest appearances by then-Chelsea players Andrew Wilson, George Mills, and Sam Millington. Owing to the notoriety of the Chelsea Headhunters, a football firm associated with the club, Chelsea have featured in films about football hooliganism, including 2004's \"The Football Factory\". Chelsea appeared in the Hindi film \"Jhoom Barabar Jhoom\". In April 2011, Montenegrin comedy series \"Nijesmo mi od ju\u010de\" made an episode in which Chelsea played against FK Sutjeska Nik\u0161i\u0107 for qualification of the UEFA Champions League.\nUp until the 1950s, the club had a long-running association with the music halls; their underachievement often provided material for comedians such as George Robey. It culminated in comedian Norman Long's release of a comic song in 1933, ironically titled \"On the Day That Chelsea Went and Won the Cup\", the lyrics of which describe a series of bizarre and improbable occurrences on the hypothetical day when Chelsea finally won a trophy. In Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 film \"The 39 Steps\", Mr Memory claims that Chelsea last won the Cup in 63 BC, \"in the presence of the Emperor Nero.\" Scenes in a 1980 episode of \"Minder\" were filmed during a real match at Stamford Bridge between Chelsea and Preston North End with Terry McCann (Dennis Waterman) standing on the terraces.\n \"As of 4 February 2025\"\nPlayers.\nFirst-team squad.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Football squad player/styles.css\" />\n \"As of 13 March 2025\"\nDevelopment Squad and Academy.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Football squad player/styles.css\" />\n \"As of 21 February 2025\"\nOut on loan.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Football squad player/styles.css\" />\nManagement.\nNotable managers.\nThe following managers won at least one trophy when in charge of Chelsea:\nHonours.\nUpon winning the 2012\u201313 UEFA Europa League, Chelsea became the fourth club in history to have won the \"European Treble\" of European Cup/UEFA Champions League, UEFA Cup/UEFA Europa League, and European Cup Winners' Cup/UEFA Cup Winners' Cup after Juventus, Ajax and Bayern Munich. Chelsea is the first English club to have won all three major UEFA trophies.\nChelsea Women.\nChelsea operate a women's football team, Chelsea Football Club Women, formerly known as Chelsea Ladies. They have been affiliated to the men's team since 2004 and are part of the club's Community Development programme. They play their home games at Kingsmeadow, formerly the home ground of the EFL League Two club AFC Wimbledon. The club were promoted to the Premier Division for the first time in 2005 as Southern Division champions and won the Surrey County Cup nine times between 2003 and 2013. In 2010, Chelsea Ladies were one of the eight founder members of the FA Women's Super League. In 2015, Chelsea Ladies won the FA Women's Cup for the first time, beating Notts County Ladies at Wembley Stadium, and a month later clinched their first FA WSL title to complete a league and cup double. In 2018, they won a second league and FA Cup double. Two years later, in 2020, they repeated their double success by winning the third league title and the FA Women's League Cup for the first time. In the 2020\u201321 season, Chelsea won a domestic treble by winning the league, FA Cup and League Cup. They reached the final of the UEFA Women's Champions League for the first time, losing to Barcelona 4\u20130.\nJohn Terry, former captain of the Chelsea men's team, is the president of Chelsea Women.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFootnotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "31034757": "Cobham Training Centre\nTraining ground of Chelsea Football Club\nThe Cobham Training Centre, is the training ground of Chelsea Football Club located in the village of Stoke d'Abernon near the village of Cobham, Surrey. The Chelsea first team have trained at Stoke D'Abernon since 2005, but it was not officially opened until 2007.\nHistory.\nWhen Roman Abramovich purchased Chelsea FC in July 2003, the club's training facilities were identified as an important area for new investment. Chelsea had used the Harlington training ground since the 1970s, but it was owned by Imperial College, and its facilities were regarded as outdated in comparison to those of clubs such as Manchester United (Trafford Training Centre) and Arsenal (Arsenal Training Centre). Then-Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho regarded the move to a new, modern, training ground as \"significant step forward\" in the club's ambitions. Planning permission for a new state-of-the-art complex in Cobham was granted by Elmbridge Borough Council in 2004. Chelsea began training at Cobham in 2005, while construction was still ongoing, and the facility was officially unveiled in July 2007. In 2008, the final phase of the complex, an Academy and Community Pavilion for Chelsea's youth teams and \"Football in the Community\" department, was opened.\nFacilities.\nCosting a reported \u00a320\u00a0million, the training ground is on a 140-acre site and, like a campus, it houses all of the club's football activities, from the first team to the academy, reserve and women's teams. It features \"the latest in training, rehabilitation, medical, pitch and media technology\" and its facilities include nine football pitches (three with undersoil heating and six to Premier League standard), an indoor artificial pitch, a media centre, gyms, cold immersion pools, a sauna, a steam room and a 56\u00a0ft HydroWorx hydrotherapy pool.\nAs a condition for receiving planning permission, none of the buildings in the complex were permitted to be taller than others in the surrounding area. Thus, approximately a third of the facility is underground; a moat was installed to reflect light into the basement rooms and to reduce energy usage. The main building also has a turf roof in order to help it blend into its surroundings and to improve air quality. Water from the surrounding area is collected in a reservoir for use on the pitch irrigation system.\nAcademy graduates.\nPlayers who have graduated from the Cobham academy include:\nOther uses.\nCobham has hosted the Surrey Positive Mental Awareness League, a football league for people with mental health problems. It also hosts the \"Cobham Cup\", a tournament for under-16 teams from around the world, including River Plate and Bayern Munich. In 2007, the Chinese Olympic football team trained at Cobham for two weeks in preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympics. Old Malvernians play their home matches at Cobham. The training facilities are also used by Cobham Rugby Football Club.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["31034757", "7473"], "permutation_1": ["7473", "31034757"], "permutation_2": ["31034757", "7473"], "permutation_3": ["31034757", "7473"]}
{"id": "2hop__46086_71972", "docs_added": {"65459": "Nolan Ryan\nAmerican baseball player (born 1947)\nLynn Nolan Ryan Jr. (born January 31, 1947), nicknamed \"the Ryan Express\", is an American former professional baseball pitcher and sports executive. Over a record 27-year playing career in Major League Baseball (MLB), Ryan pitched for the New York Mets, California Angels, Houston Astros, and Texas Rangers. After his retirement in 1993, Ryan served as chief executive officer (CEO) of the Texas Rangers and an executive advisor to the Houston Astros. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1999 in his first year of eligibility, and is widely considered to be one of the greatest pitchers of all time.\nRyan was a right-handed power pitcher who consistently threw pitches that were clocked above 100 miles per hour (161\u00a0km/h). He maintained this velocity throughout his pitching career, being known as one of the top pitchers in Major League Baseball into his mid-40s. Ryan was also known to throw a devastating 12\u20136 curveball at exceptional velocity for a breaking ball.\nRyan had a lifetime win\u2013loss record of 324\u2013292 (.526) and was an eight-time All-Star. He has 5,714 career strikeouts, an MLB record that is 839 more than runner-up Randy Johnson. Similarly, Ryan's 2,795 bases on balls lead second-place Steve Carlton by 962 \u2013 walking over 50% more hitters than any other pitcher in MLB history. Ryan's lifetime batting average against of .204 is also a major league record. He recorded 300 strikeouts in a season six different times, a Major League record. Ryan, Pedro Mart\u00ednez, Randy Johnson, Trevor Hoffman, and Sandy Koufax are the only five pitchers inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame who had more strikeouts than innings pitched. Ryan is one of three players in history to have his number retired by at least three teams, along with Jackie Robinson (whose number was retired by Major League Baseball) and Frank Robinson.\nRyan is the all-time leader in no-hitters with seven, three more than any other pitcher. He is tied with Bob Feller for the most one-hitters, with 12. Ryan also pitched 18 two-hitters. Despite this, he never pitched a perfect game, nor did he ever win a Cy Young Award; both were largely attributed to his high walk rate. Ryan is one of only 31 players in baseball history to have appeared in MLB games in four different decades.\nEarly life.\nLynn Nolan Ryan Jr. was born on January 31, 1947, in Refugio, Texas, a small town located just south of Victoria in the southern part of the state. Ryan was the youngest of six children born to Martha Lee (\"n\u00e9e\" Hancock; 1913\u20131990) and Lynn Nolan Ryan Sr. (1907\u20131970). The senior Ryan operated a newspaper delivery service for the \"Houston Post\" that required him to rise in the early morning hours to prepare 1,500 newspapers for delivery over a 55-mile route. The children were expected to help with the daily tasks. Ryan's family lived in nearby Woodsboro, Texas, in Refugio County, until they moved to Alvin, Texas, in Brazoria County, when Nolan was six weeks old. As a young boy, Nolan enjoyed throwing objects at any target. His father thought baseball a better usage for his arm; therefore, he encouraged Nolan to play the game.\nRyan joined Alvin Little League Baseball when he was nine, made the all-star team when he was 11 and 12, and pitched the first no-hitter of his life a few years later. Ryan also played various positions besides pitcher. In junior high school, Ryan could throw a softball over 100 yards. After ninth grade, Ryan quit playing football after a tackle and fumble caused by future NFL running back Norm Bulaich made him decide to focus on baseball.\nRyan played baseball for Coach Jim Watson at Alvin High School for all of his high school career. Ryan held the school's single game strikeout record for 44 years, striking out 21 hitters in a seven-inning game. The record was tied by Alvin High School pitchers Aaron Stewart and Josh Land in the same week in 2009. In 1963, at an Alvin High School game at Clear Creek High School in League City, Texas, Red Murff, a scout for the New York Mets, first noticed sophomore pitcher Ryan. Coach Watson recounted to Murff that some opponents refused to bat against Ryan and how his hard pitches would sometimes break bones in his catchers' hands. In his subsequent report to the Mets, Murff stated that Ryan had \"the best arm I've seen in my life.\" As a senior in 1965, Ryan had a 19\u20133 record and led the Alvin Yellow Jackets to the Texas high school state finals. Ryan pitched in 27 games, with 20 starts. He had 12 complete games, with 211 strikeouts and 61 walks.\nProfessional career.\nDraft and minor leagues.\nAfter graduating from Alvin, the New York Mets selected Ryan in the 12th round, with the 295th overall pick, of the 1965 Major League Baseball draft. Ryan signed with the Mets and immediately pitched for the Marion Mets in the Appalachian League and for the Mets team in the Florida Instructional League. Overall, he was 6\u20139 in 1965 with a 4.33 ERA and 150 strikeouts in 120 innings. In 1966, Ryan pitched for the Class A Greenville Mets of the Western Carolinas League, where he went 17\u20132 with a 2.51 ERA and 272 strikeouts in 183 innings. He was then promoted to the Class AA Williamsport Mets of the Eastern League, where he was 0\u20132 with a 0.95 ERA, striking out 35 batters in 19 innings. Overall, Ryan had 307 strikeouts in 202 minor league innings in 1966, earning a late-season call-up to the New York Mets. In 1967, Ryan pitched three games in relief for the Class AAA Jacksonville Suns, started one game for the Class A Winter Haven Mets and pitched eight games for the Mets team in the Florida Instructional League. In 34 total innings, Ryan had 54 strikeouts in 1967.\nNew York Mets (1966, 1968\u20131971).\nWhen Ryan was called up by the New York Mets in 1966, he was the second-youngest player in the league. Playing in only two games, his first strikeout was Pat Jarvis, and he gave up his first major league home run to Joe Torre.\nRyan missed much of the 1967 season due to illness, an arm injury, and service with the Army Reserve; he pitched only seven innings for the Mets' minor league affiliate in Jacksonville. In the 1968 season, Ryan returned to the major leagues, where he stayed until his retirement in 1993. Ryan was unable to crack into the Mets' pitching rotation, led by Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman. Ryan was used as a reliever and spot starter by the 1969 Mets. Ryan had frequent blisters on his throwing hand and tried several remedies including dipping his fingers in pickle brine.\nRyan pitched well for the Mets in the 1969 postseason. Against the Atlanta Braves in the NLCS, Ryan completed a Mets sweep by throwing seven innings of relief in Game 3, getting his first playoff win (it took him 12 years to get another). Then in the 1969 World Series, Ryan saved Game 3, pitching <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />2+1\u20443 shutout innings against the Baltimore Orioles. The Game 3 victory gave the Mets a 2\u20131 lead in the Series, which they went on to win in five games. It was Ryan's only World Series appearance in his career.\nOn April 18, 1970, Ryan tied a Mets record by striking out 15 batters in one game. Four days later, Ryan's teammate Seaver topped it with a then-MLB record 19 against the San Diego Padres (Ryan tied this record four years later). Ryan has credited his time with Seaver and the Mets with turning him from just a flamethrower into a pitcher.\nRyan's performance declined sharply in the second half of his final season with the Mets. His earned run average for the first half of the 1971 season was 2.24; in the second half, it was 7.74. As of 2021[ [update]], this was the steepest second half increase in ERA for a starting pitcher in MLB history.\nIn five seasons with the Mets, 105 games and 74 starts, Ryan had a 29\u201338 record, with a 3.58 ERA, 1.39 WHIP, with 344 walks and 493 strikeouts in 511 innings.\nCalifornia Angels (1972\u20131979).\nOn December 10, 1971, the 24-year-old Ryan was traded to the California Angels along with pitcher Don Rose, catcher Francisco Estrada, and outfielder Leroy Stanton for shortstop Jim Fregosi (who later managed Ryan in Anaheim). The deal has been cited as one of the worst in Mets history, but was not viewed as unreasonable at the time given Ryan's relatively unremarkable numbers as a Met and Fregosi's good career to that point.\nIn his first season with the Angels, Ryan was given a chance to pitch regularly as a starter for the first time in his career, mainly because by then he had fulfilled his military obligation and no longer had to commute to Houston every other week. He had a league-leading 329 strikeouts\u2014nearly a third more than the AL runner-up, and the fourth-highest total of the 20th century to that point. Within five seasons, the season was only Ryan's fourth-highest strikeout total. He also set a still-standing Major League record by allowing only 5.26 hits per nine innings, breaking Luis Tiant's 5.30 in 1968, as well as posting a 2.28 earned run average that year, to date the second-lowest in franchise history, trailing only Dean Chance's 1.65 in 1964. Though Ryan's actual winning percentage hovered only slightly over .500, his strikeouts and no-hitters brought him media attention. Meanwhile, Fregosi failed to produce as a Met, making no significant contribution to the Mets' 1973 pennant-winning campaign; he was sold to the Texas Rangers mid-season.\nAlthough the Angels were a sub-.500 team and remained one for much of Ryan's time with them, he managed to post some winning records, notably 19\u201316 in 1972, 21\u201316 in 1973, and 22\u201316 in 1974 (the 22 wins tied what remains the Angels franchise record, set by Clyde Wright in 1970). He finished second in the Cy Young Award balloting (losing to Jim Palmer 88\u201362) in 1973. It was the closest he ever came to winning the award. Ryan also led the league in losses in 1976 with a 17\u201318 record (one short of the franchise record for losses). In the early 1970s, many teams used a four-man rotation and expected the starter to complete the game; thus most of the games Ryan started ended in a decision.\nOn July 9, 1972, Ryan struck out three batters on nine pitches in the second inning of a 3\u20130 win over the Boston Red Sox; he became the seventh American League pitcher to accomplish the immaculate inning, and the first pitcher in Major League history to accomplish the feat in both leagues (on April 19, 1968, he had struck out three batters on nine pitches in the second inning of a 2\u20131 win over the St.\u00a0Louis Cardinals, becoming the eighth National League pitcher and the 14th pitcher in Major League history to accomplish the feat).\nRyan threw a no-hitter against the Kansas City Royals on May 15, 1973. He threw a second no-hitter on July 15 against the Detroit Tigers, he struck out 17 batters \u2013 the most in a recorded no-hitter. (This record was later tied by Max Scherzer on October 3, 2015.) Ryan was so dominant in this game, it led to one of baseball's best-remembered pranks. Tigers first baseman and cleanup hitter Norm Cash came to the plate with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, having already struck out twice, and was carrying a clubhouse table leg instead of a bat. Plate umpire Ron Luciano ordered Cash to go back and get a regulation bat, to which Cash replied, \"Why? I won't hit him anyway!\" With a regulation bat in hand, Cash did finally make contact, but popped out to end the game. Cash's teammate Mickey Stanley commented on facing Ryan that day by saying, \"Those were the best pitches I ever heard.\"\nIn 1973, Ryan set his first major record when he struck out 383 batters in one season, beating Sandy Koufax's old mark by one. Remarking on this feat, Koufax joked, \"Yeah, and he also surpassed my total for bases on balls in a single season by 91. I suspect half of those guys he struck out swung rather than get hit.\" Ryan finished second in balloting for the Cy Young Award, behind Jim Palmer.\nPitching 13 innings against the Boston Red Sox on June 14, 1974, Ryan threw 235 pitches, striking out 19, walking 10 and getting a no-decision.\nDuring a September 7, 1974 game against the Chicago White Sox at Anaheim Stadium, Ryan became the first Major League pitcher to have his pitch speed measured during a game. A primitive radar gun clocked a ninth-inning fastball at when it was in front of home plate. This exceeded an earlier pitch by Bob Feller which was measured at at home plate and previously thought to be the fastest pitch ever recorded.\nRyan added a third no-hitter in 1974 and a fourth in 1975, tying another of Koufax's records. In 1974 he twice struck out 19 batters, tying Tom Seaver and Steve Carlton for the single-game record for a nine-inning game. Roger Clemens became the first pitcher with a 20-strikeout game in 1986.\nThe Angels finally made the playoffs in Ryan's eighth and final year there in 1979. He started Game 1 of the ALCS against the Baltimore Orioles and threw seven innings against the Orioles' Jim Palmer, but neither man was involved in the decision as Baltimore won in the 10th inning. Ryan was scheduled to pitch Game 5, but the Angels were eliminated in four. The season complete, Ryan became a free agent.\nRyan led the American League in strikeouts seven times during his eight seasons with the Angels, but he also led the league in walks in six of those years, and finished second the other two seasons: 1975 and 1979. Aside from Bob Feller in 1938, Ryan is the only man since 1900 to walk 200 batters in a season, which he did twice: in 1974 and 1977. Emblematic of this, his 1974 no-hitter against the Minnesota Twins included eight walks.\nThough Ryan's strikeouts and no-hitters got him considerable media attention, he did not persuade Angels general manager Buzzie Bavasi, who dismissed him as a flashy .500 pitcher (Ryan was 26\u201327 in the last two years he was with the Angels).\nIn his eight seasons with the Angels, Ryan was 138\u2013121, a 3.07 ERA, 1.29 WHIP, with 1,302 walks and 2,416 strikeouts in 2181 innings over 288 starts and 156 complete games.\nHouston Astros (1980\u20131988).\nOn November 19, 1979, Ryan signed a four-year contract worth $4.5\u00a0million (equivalent to $\u00a0million in 2024) with the Houston Astros, becoming MLB's first million-dollar player. The salary quadrupled what he had been making with the California Angels. In a nationally televised game against the Los Angeles Dodgers on April 12, 1980, Ryan hit a three-run home run off Don Sutton. It was the first of two homers in Ryan's career and produced half of the six RBIs he got that year. On July 4 at Riverfront Stadium, Ryan recorded his 3,000th career strikeout, the victim being C\u00e9sar Ger\u00f3nimo of the Cincinnati Reds. The Astros made the 1980 MLB postseason. In the 1980 NLCS versus the Philadelphia Phillies, Ryan pitched well in Game 2, leaving the game tied 2\u20132 in the seventh (having contributed to both Astros runs with a run scored following a walk, and a sacrifice bunt leading to a run) but again got a no-decision in a game that went extra innings. In the fifth and final game of the series, Ryan and the Astros held a 5\u20132 lead entering the 8th inning. But Ryan allowed three consecutive singles before walking in the third run. The Houston bullpen allowed the Phillies to take a 7\u20135 lead, and only a game-tying Astro rally permitted Ryan to escape the loss.\nOn September 26, 1981, Ryan threw his fifth no-hitter, breaking Koufax's mark while becoming the third pitcher to throw a no-hitter in each league. That season, his 1.69 ERA was the best in the National League.\nFacing the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1981 NLDS, Ryan threw a complete game two-hitter in the opener, outlasting the Dodgers' rookie sensation Fernando Valenzuela. It was Ryan's second and last career postseason win. In the fifth and final game of the series, Ryan left trailing 3\u20130 and took the loss.\nBy the end of the 1982 season, both Ryan and Steve Carlton were approaching Walter Johnson's all-time strikeout record, sometimes passing one another's career totals in successive starts. On April 27, 1983, Ryan won the race with his 3,509th whiff, against Brad Mills of the Montreal Expos. (Carlton reached the same mark two weeks after Ryan, and Gaylord Perry did so later that season.) On July 11, 1985, Ryan struck out Danny Heep for his 4,000th career strikeout.\nIn 1986, Ryan's Astros faced the New York Mets in the National League Championship Series. Ryan had a shaky start in Game 2, taking the loss. He returned in Game 5, throwing 9 innings of 2-hit, 1-run, 12-strikeout ball, but one of those hits was a Darryl Strawberry home run that tied the game at 1, as Dwight Gooden matched Ryan pitch for pitch. Ryan got a no-decision as his Astros lost in 12 innings.\nIn 1987, Ryan led the major leagues in both ERA (2.76) and strikeouts (270) at the age of 40, but finished 8\u201316 as the result of extremely poor run support; the Astros scored a total of 27 runs in his 16 losses\u2013an average of 1.69 runs per game. Despite his .333 winning percentage, Ryan tied for 5th place in the 1987 Cy Young voting. Ryan hit his second and final career home run in a 12\u20133 win on May 1, 1987, against the Atlanta Braves.\nIn nine seasons as a pitcher with the Astros (his longest tenure with any team), Ryan compiled a 106\u201394 record in 282 starts, a 3.13 ERA, 1.20 WHIP, with 796 walks and 1,866 strikeouts in 1,854 innings.\nTexas Rangers (1989\u20131993).\nRyan left Houston after a contract dispute following the 1988 season and signed with the Texas Rangers at age 42. He became the first player to play for all four MLB original expansion teams: the Mets, Angels, Houston Colt .45s/ Astros and Washington Senators/Texas Rangers. (Ryan was joined in this category by Darren Oliver, who made his major league debut as Ryan's teammate in September 1993. Oliver's father Bob had also been a teammate of Ryan's, with the Angels from 1972 to 1974.) In 1989, he went 16\u201310 and led the league with 301 strikeouts. Against the Oakland Athletics on August 22, Ryan struck out Rickey Henderson, becoming the only pitcher to record 5,000 career strikeouts. Following the game, Henderson was quoted as saying, \"If he ain't struck you out, then you ain't nobody.\" His 4,999th and 5,001st strikeouts were against the same man, Athletics catcher Ron Hassey. Two years later, at 44, Ryan finished fifth in the league in ERA (2.91) and third in strikeouts (203).\nIn 1990, Ryan threw his sixth no-hitter on June 11 against the Athletics, and earned his 300th win on July 31 against the Milwaukee Brewers. On May 1, 1991, at age 44, Ryan extended his record by throwing the seventh no-hitter of his career, striking out Roberto Alomar of the Toronto Blue Jays for the final out. On August 6, 1992, Ryan had the only ejection of his career after engaging in a shouting match with Oakland Athletics outfielder Willie Wilson with two outs in the eighth inning.\nBefore the 1993 season began, Ryan announced that he would retire as a player at the end of that season. On August 4, Ryan hit Robin Ventura of the Chicago White Sox with a pitch, and Ventura charged the mound in order to fight Ryan, who was 20 years his senior. Ryan secured the 26-year-old Ventura in a headlock with his left arm, while pummeling Ventura's head with his right fist six times before catcher Iv\u00e1n Rodr\u00edguez was able to pull Ventura away from Ryan. Ryan stated afterwards that it was the same maneuver he used on steers he had to brand on his Texas ranch. Videos of the incident were played that evening throughout the country. While Ventura was ejected, Ryan\u2013who had barely moved from his spot on the mound in the fracas\u2013was allowed to remain in the game. White Sox manager Gene Lamont vehemently argued this, leading to his own ejection. Ryan pitched a hitless game the rest of the way. He had been determined to be more aggressive after coming out on the wrong side of an altercation with Dave Winfield in 1980.\nRyan tore a ligament in his pitching arm in Seattle on September 22, 1993. The injury ended his career two starts earlier than planned, at age 46. Ryan briefly attempted to pitch past the injury, and he threw one additional pitch after tearing his ligament. Ryan's last start was his career-worst; he allowed a single, four walks, and a grand slam in the top of the first without recording an out. It was his record-setting 10th grand slam given up of his career. (Ryan left trailing 5\u20130, and the fourth walk was completed by a reliever after Ryan's injury, but credited to Ryan.) Greg Myers of the California Angels was the last strikeout victim of Nolan Ryan's career, on September 17, 1993.\nRyan finished his career having played in the major leagues a record of 27 seasons. He was the final active player from the 1960s to retire from Major League Baseball, outlasting Carlton Fisk (the final active position player) by three months.\nIn five seasons with the Rangers, Ryan had a 51\u201339 record, a 3.43 ERA, 1.12 WHIP, with 353 walks and 939 strikeouts in 840 innings over 129 starts.\nSeven no-hitters.\nRyan threw a record seven no-hitters during his major league career, three more than any other pitcher. The no-hitters spanned three decades of pitching. In those seven games, Ryan accumulated a total of 94 strikeouts and 26 walks; a ratio of 3.6 strikeouts per walk (his career K:BB was 2.0). Ryan struck out 17 in his no-hitter on July 15, 1973, versus Detroit and walked eight in his subsequent no-hitter against Minnesota, both respective highs for his no-hitters.\nMLB records.\nRyan holds 51 total MLB records, including:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nLater activity.\nNolan Ryan's post-retirement business interests include being the principal owner of Ryan Sanders Sports and Entertainment, which is the ownership group for the Round Rock Express, the Triple-A Affiliate of the Texas Rangers.\nRyan threw out the ceremonial first pitch before Game 3 of the 2005 World Series between the Astros and the White Sox, the first World Series game played in Texas. That game went 14 innings, equaling the longest in innings in World Series history (at 5 hours and 41 minutes, it was the longest in time). ESPN suggested the Astros might have needed to pull the 58-year-old Ryan out of retirement if the game had gone much longer.\nRyan has co-written six books: autobiographies \"Miracle Man\" (with Jerry Jenkins, 1992), \"Throwing Heat\" (with Harvey Frommer, 1988) and \"The Road to Cooperstown\" (with Mickey Herskowitz and T.R. Sullivan, 1999); \"Kings of the Hill\" (with Mickey Herskowitz, 1992), about contemporary pitchers; and instructional books \"Pitching and Hitting\" (with Joe Torre and Joel Cohen, 1977), and \"Nolan Ryan's Pitcher's Bible\" (with Tom House, 1991).\nIn addition to his baseball activities, Ryan was majority owner and chairman of Express Bank of Alvin but sold his interest in 2005. He also owned a restaurant in Three Rivers, Texas. He served on the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission from 1995 to 2001. He appeared as a TV spokesman for Advil for several years. He also has appeared in various television commercials shown in the Texas market.\nAfter retiring from baseball, Ryan teamed up with the federal government to promote physical fitness. His likeness was used in the \"Nolan Ryan Fitness Guide\", published by The President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports in 1994. Ryan suffered a heart attack on April 25, 2000, and had to receive a double coronary bypass.\nTexas Rangers president and CEO (2008\u20132013).\nIn February 2008, the Rangers hired Ryan as team president. After the 2009 season, Ryan and Chuck Greenberg submitted a bid to purchase the Rangers from owner Tom Hicks. At midnight on August 5, 2010, the Ryan/Greenberg group, Rangers Baseball Express, was announced the winners of the final auction to purchase the Rangers, after final approval from Major League Baseball. The final cash bid to purchase the franchise was $385 million. The opposing high bidder was Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. Greenberg became managing general partner and CEO, while Ryan remained as team president.\nGreenberg left the group in March 2011, reportedly due to a philosophical clash with Ryan. Ryan was immediately named as CEO while keeping the title of president. Although Texas oil magnates Ray Davis and Bob Simpson served as co-chairmen and held larger stakes, Ryan became the undisputed head of the franchise, with Davis and Simpson serving mostly as senior consultants.\nRyan was named the Dallas\u2013Fort Worth's 2012 CEO of the Year by Southern Methodist University's Cox School of Business.\nDuring the baseball owners' meetings in Scottsdale, Arizona, on March 1, 2013, the Rangers announced that general manager Jon Daniels would add president of baseball operations to his title. Rick George was promoted to president of business operations. Ryan's title was changed simply to CEO, but he remained operating head of the franchise; both Daniels and George reported to him. On October 17, 2013, Ryan announced that he was stepping down as Rangers CEO effective October 31, 2013.\nHouston Astros special assistant (2014\u20132019).\nOn February 11, 2014, Ryan accepted a position as an executive adviser for the Houston Astros under owner Jim Crane. Ryan's son, Reid Ryan, was hired the previous year as president of business operations for the Astros. The Astros won the 2017 World Series and won the 2019 American League pennant. Reid Ryan was demoted by the Astros after the 2019 World Series, and shortly thereafter Nolan Ryan sent a text message to a reporter indicating that he would not return to the Astros front office for the 2020 season.\nLegacy.\nRyan played in more seasons (27) than any other major league player since 1900. (For all-time he is tied with Cap Anson for #1). Ryan ranks first for all-time in strikeouts (5,714), fewest hits allowed per nine innings (6.56), and no-hitters (7). He is also fifth in innings pitched (5,386), second in games started (773), seventh in shutouts (61), is tied for 14th in wins (324), and is third in losses (292).\nOpposing hitters hit only .204 against Ryan during his career, although they had a .309 on-base percentage against him. He also limited hitters to a .298 slugging percentage. Ryan had 15 or more strikeouts in a game 26 times, second only to Randy Johnson, who had 28. Ryan's lengthy career spanned generations as he struck out seven pairs of fathers and sons (for example, Bobby Bonds and Barry Bonds), another major league record. Ryan also played during the administrations of seven U.S. Presidents\u2014Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.\u00a0W. Bush, and Bill Clinton\u2014equaling a 20th-century record that had been set by Jim Kaat.\nRyan also ranks high on the list for four \"negative\" records; he ranks first all-time in walks allowed (2,795), first in wild pitches (277), third in losses (292 \u2013 most in the post-1920 live-ball era), and ninth in batters hit (158). Ryan was the first pitcher in MLB history to give up ten grand slam home runs, including one to Dann Howitt, the next-to-last batter Ryan faced in his career; that record has since been surpassed.\nBill James focused on this dichotomy between Ryan's positive and negative statistics. While ranking him as the 24th best pitcher of all time, he noted, \"Ryan has been retired almost ten years [as of 2001], in another ten perhaps we will begin to get a little bit of perspective on him. Ryan's log of spectacular accomplishments is as thick as Bill Clinton's little black book; his list of flaws and failures is lengthy but dry, and will never make for good reading.\"\nOther writers have delved more into the specifics of James' general concerns. ESPN writer Rob Neyer stated in a 2003 column that while Ryan was among the 20 best pitchers since World War\u00a0II, he \"often had trouble throwing strikes, [and] he wasn't any good at fielding his position\". In another column, Neyer, while stating that Ryan belonged in the Hall of Fame, pointed to Ryan's record-breaking walks total and noted that his .309 on-base percentage against \"wasn't even close to being in the top 100\".\nRyan and Frank Robinson are the only two major league players to have their number retired by three teams on which they played. The California Angels retired the number 30 on June 16, 1992; the Texas Rangers retired his number 34 on September 15, 1996; and the Houston Astros retired number 34 on September 29, 1996. His number was the first retired by the Rangers.\nRyan was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1999 in his first year of eligibility with 98.79% of the vote (491 out of 497 possible), six votes short of a unanimous election and the sixth-highest percentage in history, behind Mariano Rivera (100%, 425 out of 425 possible), Derek Jeter (99.75%, 396 out of 397 possible), Ichiro Suzuki (99.75%, 393 out of 394 possible), Ken Griffey Jr. (99.32%, 437 out of 440 possible), and Tom Seaver (98.84%, 425 out of 430 possible). He chose to wear a Rangers cap for his HOF plaque to reflect his Texas heritage, as well as the fact that his 300th win, 5000th strikeout, and last two no-hitters came as a Ranger. He was the first Hall of Famer inducted as a Ranger. However, the Hall of Fame recognizes the Los Angeles Angels as his primary team.\nIn 1999, he ranked 41st on \"The Sporting News\" list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players and was elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. He was inducted into the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame in 2003, and named the Rangers', and Astros' Hometown Hero in 2006\u2014the only player to be so named by two franchises. In 2020, \"The Athletic\" ranked Ryan at number 50 on its \"Baseball 100\" list, complied by sportswriter Joe Posnanski.\nIn 2011, he was inducted into the Irish American Baseball Hall of Fame.\nIn 1992, the United States Mint produced a $1 commemorative coin honoring Olympic baseball depicting a pitcher in a USA Baseball uniform in a pose nearly identical to Ryan's photo on his 1991 Fleer baseball card. The numismatic community subsequently referred to the coin as the \"Nolan Ryan dollar.\"\nIn 1995 the Texas State Legislature declared State Highway 288, which passes near Alvin, as the Nolan Ryan Expressway.\nThe Alvin Independent School District opened Nolan Ryan Junior High School, located at 11500 Shadow Creek Parkway (FM 2234) in Pearland, Texas, just a few hundred yards away from the Nolan Ryan Expressway.\nThe Nolan Ryan Foundation is a Texas nonprofit organization that supports youth, education, and community development and is headquartered in Round Rock, Texas.\nThe Texas Trail of Fame inducted Ryan in 2009. The Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame inducted Ryan in 2010.\nA documentary, \"Facing Nolan\", was released in 2022.\nPersonal life.\nRyan married his high school sweetheart, Ruth Holdorff, on June 26, 1967. Nolan and Ruth attended Alvin High School together. Ruth was a high school state tennis champion. They have three children: Reid, Reese, and Wendy. Reid and Reese were both pitchers for the TCU Horned Frogs. Reid also pitched briefly in the minor leagues. On May 17, 2013, Reid was announced as president of the Houston Astros.\nNolan frequently pitched in the off-seasons, with Ruth often donning catching gear and serving as his catcher. Ruth Ryan also coached their sons' little league teams for a few summers.\nNolan Ryan resides in the Cimarron Hills community in Georgetown, Texas.\nPolitical activity.\nRyan wrote in his 1992 autobiography \"Miracle Man\" that he voted for Jimmy Carter over Gerald Ford in 1976, but since then has generally identified as a Republican, though he does not automatically vote this way and looks at individual candidates, mentioning disgust at one particular election in which the two major parties were forcing a choice between \"the racist or the criminal.\" He also crossed party lines in 2002 to headline a group of Republicans and Independents supporting a Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Texas. He has maintained a decades-long friendship with the Bush family, partially due to George W. Bush being a part-owner of the Rangers while Ryan played there. However, in his 1992 book Ryan expressed some criticisms of the elder Bush's (George H.W. Bush) management of domestic issues and said he wasn't \"locked in\" to voting for Bush that fall. In 1996 Ryan campaigned on behalf of Ron Paul in the election for Texas's 14th congressional district; his hometown of Alvin was located in the district.\nOn April 7, 2011, Todd Staples announced that Nolan Ryan would be his statewide chairman for his exploratory committee for lieutenant governor. Ryan is quoted as saying, \"Todd Staples is the top prospect for the Texas Republican Party in 2014.\" Staples, however, lost that race to current Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick of Houston.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2976205": "List of Major League Baseball career strikeout leaders\n\"This list is for pitchers. For career strikeouts by batters, see List of Major League Baseball career strikeouts by batters leaders\"\nThe following list is of the top 100 pitchers in career strikeouts in Major League Baseball. In baseball, a strikeout occurs when the batter receives three strikes during his time at bat. Strikeouts are associated with dominance on the part of the pitcher and failure on the part of the batter.\nNolan Ryan has the most career strikeouts in Major League Baseball. During a record 27-year career, he struck out 5,714 batters. The American League record is held by Roger Clemens (4,167 strikeouts), while in the National League, the record is 4,000 by Steve Carlton.\nThe parentheses adjacent to an active player denote the number of strikeouts in the current season. The last change in the cutoff for the top 100 occurred on June 22, 2024, when Charlie Morton struck out his 1,957th batter, displacing Whitey Ford.\nList.\nA player is considered \"inactive\" if he has not played baseball for one year or has announced his retirement.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["2976205", "65459"], "permutation_1": ["65459", "2976205"], "permutation_2": ["65459", "2976205"], "permutation_3": ["2976205", "65459"]}
{"id": "2hop__90773_715759", "docs_added": {"1074789": "Robert Serber\nAmerican physicist (1909\u20131997)\nRobert Serber (March 14, 1909 \u2013 June 1, 1997) was an American physicist who participated in the Manhattan Project. Serber's lectures explaining the basic principles and goals of the project were printed and supplied to all incoming scientific staff, and became known as \"The Los Alamos Primer\". The \"New York Times\" called him \"the intellectual midwife at the birth of the atomic bomb.\"\nEarly life and education.\nHe was born in Philadelphia, the eldest son of Rose (Frankel) and David Serber. His family was Jewish. His mother died in 1922 and his father married her cousin Frances Leof in 1928. Robert Serber earned his BS in engineering physics from Lehigh University in 1930 and earned his PhD in physics from the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison with John Van Vleck in 1934. He married Charlotte Leof (26 Jul 1911 \u2013 1967), the daughter of his stepmother's uncle, in 1933.\nShortly before receiving his doctorate, Serber was selected for a National Research Council postdoctoral fellowship and planned on conducting research at Princeton University with Eugene Wigner. However, after spontaneously enrolling at the University of Michigan's physics summer school, he changed his plans and went to work with J. Robert Oppenheimer at the University of California, Berkeley. For the next four years, he shuttled with Oppenheimer between Berkeley and the California Institute of Technology, where Oppenheimer held a secondary faculty appointment. In 1938, he took one of the era's few tenure-track professorships in physics at the University of Illinois Urbana\u2013Champaign, where he stayed until he was recruited for the Manhattan Project.\nManhattan Project.\nHe was recruited for the Manhattan Project in 1941, and was in Project Alberta on the dropping of the bomb. When the Los Alamos National Laboratory was first organized, Oppenheimer decided not to compartmentalize the technical information among different departments. This boosted the technical workers' effectiveness in problem-solving and underscored the project's urgency, as they now understood its significance. Consequently, Serber was tasked with delivering a series of lectures to explain the basic principles and objectives of the project. These lectures were printed and supplied to all incoming scientific staff, and became known as \"The Los Alamos Primer\", LA-1. It was declassified in 1965. Serber developed the first good theory of bomb assembly hydrodynamics.\nSerber's wife Charlotte Serber was appointed by Oppenheimer to head the technical library at Los Alamos, where she was the only wartime female section leader.\nSerber created the code-names for all three design projects, the \"Little Boy\" (uranium gun), \"Thin Man\" (plutonium gun), and \"Fat Man\" (plutonium implosion), according to his reminiscences (1998). The names were based on their design shapes; the \"Thin Man\" would be a very long device, and the name came from the Dashiell Hammett detective novel and series of movies of the same name; the \"Fat Man\" bomb would be round and fat and was named after Sydney Greenstreet's character in \"The Maltese Falcon\" (from Hammett's novel). \"Little Boy\" would come last and be named only to contrast to the \"Thin Man\" bomb. This differs from the unsupported, abandoned theory that \"Fat Man\" was named after Churchill and \"Thin Man\" after Roosevelt.\nAfter receiving an identification card noting that his civilian noncombatant duties were commensurate in profile to the Army of the United States rank of colonel (an administrative designation only ostensibly valid if he were captured as a prisoner of war under the 1929 Geneva Convention, although he was frequently afforded salutations and other perquisites of the rank in practice by military personnel while traveling), Serber was to go on \"Big Stink\", the camera plane for the Nagasaki mission, as a technical advisor; however, it left without him when group operations officer Major James I. Hopkins ordered him off the plane because he had forgotten his parachute, reportedly after the B-29 had already taxied onto the runway. Since Serber was the only crew member who knew how to operate the high-speed camera, Hopkins had to be instructed by radio from Tinian on its use. Serber was with the first American team to enter Hiroshima and Nagasaki to assess the results of the atomic bombing of the two cities.\nPost-war work and personal life.\nAlthough Oppenheimer sought an appointment for Serber in the Berkeley physics department following the end of the war, this was soon forestalled, possibly because of the anti-Semitism of department chair Raymond Thayer Birge. Birge had previously refused to offer a tenure-track appointment to Serber after he received his University of Illinois offer, opining that \"one Jew in the department is enough.\" Oppenheimer prevailed in placing him as head of the theoretical division of the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory under Ernest Lawrence; however, as his mentor segued into policy consultancies and the presidency of the Institute for Advanced Study in 1947, Serber frequently took over his courses, ultimately resulting in his appointment to the Berkeley faculty.\nIn 1948, Serber had to defend himself against anonymous accusations of disloyalty, mostly because his wife Charlotte's family were Jewish intellectuals with socialist leanings, and also because he tried to remove politics from discussions of the feasibility of the fusion bomb, leading to arguments with Edward Teller. There was some speculation that Serber was a member of the Communist Party. Oppenheimer said it was possible he was member, but did not know, whereas the FBI concluded that \"no definite evidence is known\" for his membership. Although he had been cleared of any potential wrongdoing at a subsequent hearing that year, he was denied a prerequisite security clearance for a Japanese physics conference in 1952, precipitating his refusal to join a Teller-chaired Department of Defense advisory group.\nWhile he reluctantly signed the loyalty oath stipulated by the Levering Act for Berkeley personnel in 1950, growing antagonism between Oppenheimer and the more conservative Lawrence eventually spurred his departure. In 1951, he became a professor of physics at Columbia University at the behest of Manhattan Project colleague I. I. Rabi. He served as chair of the department from 1975 until his retirement as professor emeritus in 1978.\nAt Columbia, Serber served as doctoral advisor to future Nobelist Leon Cooper. He also collaborated with Abraham Pais on meson studies and developed the Serber-Dancoff method, a refined technique for analyzing strong coupling. He also consulted numerous labs, businesses, and commissions, including Brookhaven National Laboratory (where he worked one day a week during the academic year and occasional summers for twenty years) and Fermilab, as a specialist in the proton\u2013proton chain reaction and the focusing properties of particle accelerators. Although largely bereft of any ideology, he refused to join the Defense Department-affiliated JASON consulting group because of his previous clearance issues and opposition to the Vietnam War.\nAfter being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, Charlotte Serber suffered from depression and took her own life with an overdose of sleeping pills on May 22, 1967. Serber then entered a relationship with Kitty Oppenheimer, who had been widowed in February 1967. She talked him into buying a yawl, which they sailed from New York to Grenada. In 1972, they purchased a ketch, with the intention of sailing through the Panama Canal and to Japan via the Galapagos Islands and Tahiti during Serber's sabbatical. They set out, but Kitty became ill, and was taken to Gorgas Hospital, where she died of an embolism on October 27, 1972. Serber and Toni Oppenheimer scattered her cremains near the Oppenheimers' longtime vacation home in Saint John, U.S. Virgin Islands, which he continued to use.\nFollowing his retirement, he married Fiona St. Clair, a fabric designer from Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, in 1979. He adopted her son Zachariah, and they had another son, William, in November 1980.\nHe served as president of the American Physical Society in 1971. A year later, Serber was awarded the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize.\nSerber appears in the Oscar-nominated documentary \"The Day After Trinity\" (1980).\nSerber died June 1, 1997, at his home in Manhattan from complications of surgery for brain cancer.\nIn popular culture.\nHe was portrayed by Michael Angarano in Christopher Nolan's 2023 film \"Oppenheimer\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "11148129": "Dayton Project\nThe Dayton Project was a research and development project to produce polonium during World War II, as part of the larger Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bombs. Work took place at several sites in and around Dayton, Ohio. Those working on the project were ultimately responsible for creating the polonium-based modulated neutron initiators that were used to begin the chain reactions in the atomic bombs.\nThe Dayton Project began in 1943 when Monsanto's Charles Allen Thomas was recruited by the Manhattan Project to coordinate the plutonium purification and production work being carried out at various sites. Scientists at the Los Alamos Laboratory calculated that a plutonium bomb would require a neutron initiator. The best-known neutron sources used radioactive polonium and beryllium, so Thomas undertook to produce polonium at Monsanto's laboratories in Dayton. While most Manhattan Project activity took place at remote locations, the Dayton Project was located in a populated, urban area. It ran from 1943 to 1949, when the Mound Laboratories were completed in nearby Miamisburg, Ohio, and the work moved there.\nThe Dayton Project developed techniques for extracting polonium from the lead dioxide ore in which it occurs naturally, and from bismuth targets that had been bombarded by neutrons in a nuclear reactor. Ultimately, polonium-based neutron initiators were used in both the gun-type Little Boy and the implosion-type Fat Man used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively. The fact that polonium was used as an initiator was classified until the 1960s, but George Koval, a technician with the Manhattan Project's Special Engineer Detachment, penetrated the Dayton Project as a spy for the Soviet Union.\nBackground.\nIn December 1942, during World War II, Charles Allen Thomas, a chemist and director of research at Monsanto in St. Louis, joined the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) as the deputy chief of its Division 8, which was responsible for propellants, explosives and the like. Early in 1943, he traveled to the east with Richard C. Tolman, a member of the NDRC, and James B. Conant, the president of Harvard University and the chairman of the NDRC, to witness a demonstration of a new underwater explosive. Conant and Tolman took the opportunity to quietly investigate Thomas' background. He was then invited to a meeting in Washington D.C., with Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves, Jr., the director of the wartime Manhattan Project responsible for building an atomic bomb. When he got there, Thomas found Conant was also present.\nGroves and Conant were hoping to harness Thomas's industrial expertise. They offered him a post as a deputy to Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, but he did not wish to move his family or give up his responsibilities at Monsanto. Instead, he accepted the role of coordinating the plutonium purification and production work being carried out at Los Alamos, the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago, Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, and Ames Laboratory in Iowa. Chemistry and metallurgy at Los Alamos would be led by the youthful Joseph W. Kennedy.\nAt Los Alamos, physicist Robert Serber proposed that instead of relying on spontaneous fission, the chain reaction inside the atomic bomb should be triggered by a neutron initiator. The best-known neutron sources were radium-beryllium and polonium-beryllium. The latter was chosen, as polonium has a 138-day half-life, which made it intense enough to be useful but not long-lived enough to be stockpiled. Thomas took charge of the development of techniques to industrially refine polonium for use with beryllium in the \"urchin\" internal neutron initiators. This effort became the Dayton Project.\nOrganization.\nThomas brought in key personnel from Monsanto's Thomas and Hochwalt Laboratories in Dayton, Ohio, including Caroll Hochwalt, James Lum and Nicholas Samaras. Thomas became Director of the Dayton Project, with Hochwalt as Assistant Project Director and Lum as Laboratory Director. They decided that about twelve chemists would be required, and Lum set about recruiting professors, graduate students and industrial chemists from universities and laboratories in the area. The first of these recruits commenced in August 1943, but few had any experience with radiochemistry. Numbers increased from 46 full-time employees at the end of 1943 to 101 at the end of 1944, 201 at the end of 1945, and 334 at the end of 1946, including 34 members of the Army's Special Engineer Detachment.\nLocations.\nOffice space was initially found in the Monsanto offices at 1515 Nicholas Rd, which became known as Unit I. Unit II was the Monsanto Rocket Propellant works off Betty Lane near Ohio State Route 741. While it was administered by Monsanto, it was not used by the Dayton Project. The site handled explosives including ammonium nitrate and ammonium picrate, but no radioactive materials were handled there. Work at Unit II ceased in the fall of 1945. Consideration was given to using it in December 1946, but this proposal was rejected in favor of erecting a Quonset hut at Unit III.\nA laboratory site was found at 1601 W. First Street that had originally been constructed to house the Bonebrake Seminary. It was a three-story brick building built in 1879, and owned by the Dayton Board of Education, which used it as a warehouse. Monsanto leased the site on 15 October 1943, and began converting it into a laboratory known as Unit III. The building was in poor shape when the Dayton Project took it over, with many broken windows, and the staircase between the second and third floors was missing. New heating and lighting were installed, windows were replaced, new flooring was laid, and some rooms were re-plastered. A pair of guard houses known as buildings J and K were added, as was a chemical storage shed known as building F, and a wire fence. Laboratory activities were transferred there from Unit I on 25 September. Initially only the bottom two floors were occupied, providing of laboratory space. Later, the third floor was taken over as well, providing another . In May 1945, five additional temporary buildings were constructed on land leased from the Board of Education that housed offices, a cafeteria, locker rooms, a physics laboratory and a laundry. A new guardhouse was also built. To this was added two portable buildings in 1946.\nBy 1944, space was running short, and Monsanto began negotiations to acquire the Runnymede Playhouse in the wealthy residential Dayton suburb of Oakwood. Built in 1927, the Playhouse was a leisure facility that included an outdoor swimming pool, a ballroom, a squash court, a tennis court with a cork floor and a stage for community theater. It had showers with Italian marble and a <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1+1\u20442-story garage. The estate was owned by the Talbott Realty Company, which was controlled by Thomas's wife's family. The Talbotts were among the heirs of the Delco company, which was by then a part of General Motors. The Oakwood City Council wanted the Playhouse as a community center. Thomas appeared before the council and assured them that it would not be damaged, although he could not disclose what he was intending to use it for. When Talbott Realty proved reluctant to sell, the United States Army Corps of Engineers condemned the property, which became Unit IV on 15 February 1944. A lease was signed on 10 March 1944, under which the Talbott Realty was paid $4,266.72 per annum for the property. The lease was initially up to 30 June 1944, but was then extended annually until 30 June 1949. The lease specified that the property would be returned in its original condition. Talbott Realty were told that the property would be used to produce training films.\nRemodeling began on 17 March 1944. The tennis courts were subdivided into multiple rooms. The ceiling was lowered, and heating, air conditioning and air filtration systems were added. One of the greenhouses was converted into a loading dock. The property was enclosed in a barbed wire fence that was floodlit by night, and patrolled around the clock by armed guards; there were 43 guards at Units III and IV. The Production Group began moving in on 1 June. Three guard houses were added, along with a wire fence. Changes to the site were minimized in order to make it easier to restore later. Because it was located in a residential area, efforts were also made to minimize noise and other disruptions.\nIn May 1945, Monsanto rented three floors of a warehouse at 601 East Third Street from General Electric. Initially it was used to receive and store equipment used by the Project. Later the fourth floor was used as office space, and a laboratory was established on the fifth floor where studies were carried out on the effects of polonium on laboratory animals. Analysis of bioassay samples was carried out there to minimize the danger of polonium contamination of the samples.\nResearch.\nFew people had seen polonium before. It was a silvery metal. In a dark room, it gave off an eerie, purple glow. Polonium occurs naturally in various ores, and the lead dioxide residues from the refinery in Port Hope, Ontario, left over after the removal of uranium and radium, were estimated to contain of polonium per metric ton. A curie of polonium weighs about . Port Hope was already under contract from the Manhattan Project for the supply and refining of uranium ore. The first of radioactive lead dioxide was delivered to the Dayton Project on 10 November 1943. The first batch was processed by 8 December, which made of polonium available for experiments a week later.\nThree processes were investigated for extracting the polonium from the ore. J. H. Dillon of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company had patented a process in which the lead oxide was dissolved in hydrochloric acid:\nPbO2 + 4 HCl \u2192 PbCl2 + Cl2 + 2H2O\nThe polonium could then be deposited on copper or nickel sheets. This required large-scale glass-lined equipment not available in Dayton, but available at the Monsanto B plant in Monsanto, Illinois. After small-scale tests at Unit III revealed that the process was practical, some three tons of lead dioxide were sent to the B plant, and were recovered. Getting the polonium off the copper and nickel sheets proved more problematic.\nA second method attempted was a kiln process. The idea was to simply roast the lead dioxide and vaporize the polonium. The problem was that lead dioxide slagged at , which was too low for the process to work. So lead orthophosphate was tried, which slagged at . This was made by mixing the lead dioxide with phosphoric acid. Experiments showed that the polonium vaporized well when the lead orthophosphate was heated to for four hours. Unfortunately, the process then ran into problems with dust and other foreign matter, and with contamination of the personnel and equipment involved.\nThe third method involved dissolving the lead dioxide in a mixture of concentrated nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide:\nPbO2 + 2HNO3 + H2O2 \u2192 2 + O2 + 2H2O\nThis proved to be the best way to separate the polonium from the lead dioxide, although there were problems with the precipitation of various contaminants, including iron and aluminum. Although about of lead dioxide were treated with nitric acid, and about of polonium were produced, the process did not proceed beyond the pilot stage because a better source of polonium became available. The lead dioxide was not purchased by the Manhattan Project, and early in the war had been acquired by the Canadian government. In June 1945, the lead was precipitated as a lead carbonate slurry, and shipped to the Manhattan District's Madison Square area to be dried and returned to Canada.\nProduction.\nPolonium could also be produced by neutron irradiation of bismuth. In 1943 the only polonium produced in this manner was in cyclotrons, but the Manhattan Project's development of nuclear reactors offered the prospect of producing large amounts of polonium in this manner:\nBi + \u2192 Bi \u2192 Po + \nA metric ton of bismuth irradiated in the Manhattan Project's X-10 Graphite Reactor at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, contained of polonium, a vast improvement over the yields from Port Hope's lead dioxide. Irradiated bismuth came from Clinton in the form of bricks that weighed about . They were shipped to Dayton by rail in wooden boxes, which were stored in a tile-lined cavity in the floor at Unit IV.\nThese procedures were adequate because the quantity of polonium in the bismuth was still fairly low, but starting in June 1945, the Dayton Project began receiving bismuth irradiated in the more powerful reactors at the Hanford Site in Washington, which now became the major source of supply. Even at Clinton, unprotected bismuth proved problematic when a brick broke apart and chips fell into containers of uranium slugs, and had to be hazardously separated by hand by project personnel. Bismuth slugs irradiated in the reactors at Hanford were therefore canned in aluminium. The canned slugs were in diameter, and long. The problem was that the aluminium contained impurities such as iron, manganese, copper, lead, tin, zinc, silicon, titanium, nickel, magnesium, chromium, vanadium, bismuth and gallium, and when irradiated, these could form radioactive isotopes. Most were of little concern for the Dayton Project, as they had short half-lives, and would become harmless during the slugs' cooling off period in water at Hanford; but iron could form iron-59, which had a half-life of 45 days, and produced gamma radiation. The slugs were therefore shipped in casks, each of which contained several tubes which held the slugs. The spaces between the tubes was filled with lead. At Dayton, the slugs were stored in a lead-lined safe with doors on both sides containing tubes. They were also stored underwater on racks, and could be removed with tongs. A periscope allowed the identification markings on the slugs to be checked without removing them from the pool.\nBy the end of 1946 Hanford was shipping material that contained up to per metric ton of bismuth. Bismuth was purchased from the American Smelting and Refining Company of the highest purity that it could produce. It was sent to Hanford, where it was canned, and placed inside a reactor for 100 days. The irradiated slugs were then shipped by road to Unit IV, where they were bathed in hydrochloric acid, which dissolved the aluminum. This formed an aluminum chloride solution that was disposed of, as it was highly radioactive due to the iron impurities in the aluminum. The bismuth slugs were then dissolved in aqua regia. This was too weak for electroplating the polonium, so the nitric acid was removed, and then the polonium deposited on bismuth by adding powdered bismuth. This resulted in a 100\u20131 concentration. This could then be repeated by dissolving in aqua regia again to achieve a 1000\u20131 concentration. This was again dissolved, and the polonium electroplated on platinum foils. The main problem with the process was that it required glass-lined containers due to the aqua regia, and mechanisms for safe handling of the radioactive material. The Dayton Project explored alternative purification methods that were found to be workable, but less efficient or safe.\nThe first consignment of polonium left for Los Alamos on 15 March 1944 in a lead-lined suitcase carried by a military courier. Regular shipments were made thereafter. Initiator testing at Los Alamos required more polonium than anticipated, and in December 1944, Oppenheimer was forced to ask Thomas if he could ship per month. The Dayton Project was able to do so. In February 1945, Thomas agreed to increase shipments to per month by June, and 500 per month by December.\nThe total cost of the Dayton Project up to the end of 1946 was $3,666,507 ($ in today's dollars).\nHealth and safety.\nDayton Project employees were not allowed to eat or smoke in processing areas, and had to scrub their hands before leaving these areas. The chemists wore protective gear, with surgical, cloth and rubber gloves worn in three layers. When leaving for lunch or at the end of the shift, they had to wash their hands with dilute hydrochloric acid, dilute Clorox, and soap. The radioactive residue on their hands was measured with a special Geiger counter designed for the purpose by physicist John J. Sopka. No more than one thousand counts per minute per hand was permissible. They had to shower at the end of each day's work, and were subjected to weekly urine tests. Employees with elevated levels of polonium were not allowed in the processing areas. Working with polonium without spreading contamination proved to be almost impossible. Fortunately, it is not a bone seeker like radium or plutonium, and is thus readily excreted in urine. Detection methods had already been developed, making it easy to track. The employee at Unit IV with the highest levels of polonium in her urine had contaminated her hair, and often held bobby pins in her mouth.\nEspionage.\nGeorge Koval was drafted into the United States Army in 1943, and was inducted into the Manhattan Project's Special Engineer Detachment. He was initially assigned to the Clinton Engineer Works, where his job as a health physics officer gave him access to much of the site. He began passing secrets relating to the production of polonium at Oak Ridge to the Soviet Union through his GRU (Soviet military intelligence) handler code-named \"Clyde\". In 1945 Koval was transferred to Dayton. Again, his job as a health physics officer gave him wide access to the secret installation. In 2007 Russian President Vladimir Putin posthumously awarded Koval a gold star, making him a hero of the Russian Federation for his work as the GRU spy \"Delmar\". Russian officials stated that the initiator for their Joe-1 bomb had been \"prepared to the recipe provided by Delmar\". The fact that polonium was used as an initiator remained classified until the 1960s.\nInitiators.\nAfter Leonard I. Schiff calculated that an initiator might improve the efficiency of a gun-type fission weapon, Oppenheimer gave approval on 15 March 1945 for initiators to be included in the Little Boy design. The initiators were tested to ensure they were rugged enough to handle being transported in an airplane and being accidentally dropped. Eventually, about forty initiators were dispatched to Tinian, where four were inserted into the bomb that was used in the bombing of Hiroshima.\nThe initiator used in the implosion design of the Fat Man bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki was code-named \"urchin\". In order to increase the efficiency of the explosion, the initiator had to emit a large number of neutrons in a few microseconds while the plutonium core was fully compressed. At the heart of the urchin was a solid beryllium sphere in diameter. This was gold-plated and coated with of polonium. The gold kept the polonium's alpha particles from striking the beryllium. This fitted inside two beryllium hemispheres with 15 parallel grooves cut into the inner surface. These grooves converted the shock wave of the implosion into jets that shattered the spheres and caused the beryllium and polonium to mix and emit neutrons. The hemispheres were nickel-plated and the outer surface was coated in gold and of polonium. The initiator, which was hot to the touch, fitted neatly inside the hole in the center of the plutonium pit. \nMound Laboratories.\nBy 1945, the Dayton Project had assumed such importance that the Manhattan Project decided to make it into a permanent facility. The original intention was to move operations to Oak Ridge, but it was decided that a site near Dayton was preferable. Few of the scientific and technical staff wanted to move to Tennessee, and there were concerns about the dangers of polonium contamination at a plutonium processing site. A search for a suitable site began in early 1946, and one was found in Miamisburg, about from Dayton. The site was next to a state park containing a large prehistoric Indian burial mound, which ultimately gave the Mound Laboratories its name. It was initially known as Unit V. Monsanto began construction in May 1946, using the Detroit firm of Giffels and Vallet as architects, while the plant was built by the Maxon Construction of Dayton. The design called for an underground complex that could withstand a direct hit from a bomb, with protection against biological and chemical weapons, at a cost of $17,900,000.\nResponsibility for nuclear weapons production was transferred from the Manhattan Project to the Atomic Energy Commission in 1947, but work continued on the Mound Laboratories. The first building was completed in May 1948, and polonium processing commenced at the Mound Laboratories in February 1949. Altogether, 14 major buildings were constructed with a total floor space of at a cost of $25.5 million. Due to fear of attack or sabotage, the former Scioto Laboratory Complex in Marion, Ohio, was acquired by the Atomic Energy Commission in 1948. It was maintained as a cold standby site until it was no longer needed in 1953.\nSite cleanup.\nUnit I continued to be used by Monsanto as an administrative facility until 1988, when it was demolished. The land was sold to Quality Chemicals in 1992, and then to DuPont in 2002. Unit III, the former Bonebrake Theological Seminary, was decontaminated in 1950 and returned to the Dayton Board of Education. The original seminary building was subsequently demolished, but several structures remain from the Dayton Project. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on 10 May 2006. Although the lease on Unit IV, the former Runnymede Playhouse, specified that it was to be returned, it was deemed to be too contaminated. The building was demolished in February 1950. The cobblestones in the driveway were removed and taken away, along with of earth from under the house. The excavation was filled in, and the site was returned to the Talbott family, who were paid $138,750 in compensation. As of 2017[ [update]], all that remains of the original playhouse is a brass doorknob and part of the greenhouse roof, which are part of the collection of the Mound Science and Energy Museum. Private residences now occupy the site. The Dayton Warehouse was decontaminated in 1950 and returned to its owners. The Mound Laboratories continued to produce polonium initiators until 1969. Polonium continued to be produced there for commercial sales and use in satellites until 1972. The laboratories were decommissioned in 1993, and the area was decontaminated. As of 2017[ [update]], it houses the Mound Advanced Technology Center.\nIn 1996, the Department of Energy, which had succeeded the Atomic Energy Commission, decided that since the Dayton sites already had been decontaminated, they did not warrant inclusion in the Army Corps of Engineers' Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP). The local community in Dayton was concerned that the cleanup did not meet 21st-century environmental standards. Therefore, the state of Ohio asked the United States Congress to have the Army Corps of Engineers conduct a review. This was carried out in 2004 and 2005. The review concluded that no radioactive contaminants were found that would warrant inclusion in FUSRAP.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "2451331": "History of the Teller\u2013Ulam design\nHistory of technical design of modern hydrogen bombs\nThe Teller\u2013Ulam design is a technical concept behind modern thermonuclear weapons, also known as hydrogen bombs. The design \u2013 the details of which are military secrets and known to only a handful of major nations \u2013 is believed to be used in virtually all modern nuclear weapons that make up the arsenals of the major nuclear powers.\nHistory.\nTeller's \"Super\".\nThe idea of using the energy from a fission device to begin a fusion reaction was first proposed by the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi to his colleague Edward Teller in late 1941 during what would soon become the Manhattan Project, the World War II effort by the United States and United Kingdom to develop the first nuclear weapons. Teller soon was a participant at Robert Oppenheimer's 1942 conference on the development of a fission bomb held at the University of California, Berkeley, where he guided discussion towards the idea of creating his \"Super\" bomb, which would hypothetically be many times more powerful than the yet-undeveloped fission weapon. Teller assumed creating the fission bomb would be nothing more than an engineering problem, and that the \"Super\" provided a much more interesting theoretical challenge.\nFor the remainder of the war the effort was focused on first developing fission weapons. Nevertheless, Teller continued to pursue the \"Super\", to the point of neglecting work assigned to him for the fission weapon at the secret Los Alamos lab where he worked. (Much of the work Teller declined to do was given instead to Klaus Fuchs, who was later discovered to be a spy for the Soviet Union.430) Teller was given some resources with which to study the \"Super\", and contacted his friend Maria G\u00f6ppert-Mayer to help with laborious calculations relating to opacity. The \"Super\", however, proved elusive, and the calculations were difficult to perform, especially since there was no existing way to run small-scale tests of the principles involved (in comparison, the properties of fission could be more easily probed with cyclotrons, newly created nuclear reactors, and various other tests).\nEven though they had witnessed the Trinity test, after the atomic bombings of Japan scientists at Los Alamos were surprised by how devastating the effects of the weapon had been.35 Many of the scientists rebelled against the notion of creating a weapon thousands of times more powerful than the first atomic bombs. For the scientists the question was in part technical\u2014the weapon design was still quite uncertain and unworkable\u2014and in part moral: such a weapon, they argued, could only be used against large civilian populations, and could thus only be used as a weapon of genocide. Many scientists, such as Teller's colleague Hans Bethe (who had discovered stellar nucleosynthesis, the nuclear fusion that takes place in stars), urged that the United States should not develop such weapons and set an example towards the Soviet Union. Promoters of the weapon, including Teller and Berkeley physicists Ernest Lawrence and Luis Alvarez, argued that such a development was inevitable, and to deny such protection to the people of the United States\u2014especially when the Soviet Union was likely to create such a weapon itself\u2014was itself an immoral and unwise act. Still others, such as Oppenheimer, simply thought that the existing stockpile of fissile material was better spent in attempting to develop a large arsenal of tactical atomic weapons rather than potentially squandered on the development of a few massive \"Supers\".\nIn any case, work slowed greatly at Los Alamos, as some 5,500 of the 7,100 scientists and related staff who had been there at the conclusion of the war left to go back to their previous positions at universities and laboratories. A conference was held at Los Alamos in 1946 to examine the feasibility of building a Super; it concluded that it was feasible, but there were a number of dissenters to that conclusion.91\nWhen the Soviet Union exploded their own atomic bomb (dubbed \"Joe 1\" by the US) in August 1949, it caught Western analysts off guard, and over the next several months there was an intense debate within the US government, military, and scientific communities on whether to proceed with"}, "descending_order": ["2451331", "11148129", "1074789"], "permutation_1": ["11148129", "2451331", "1074789"], "permutation_2": ["11148129", "2451331", "1074789"], "permutation_3": ["11148129", "2451331", "1074789"]}
{"id": "2hop__205401_127375", "docs_added": {"567703": "Grinspoon\nAustralian rock band\nGrinspoon are an Australian rock band from Lismore, New South Wales, which formed in 1995 by Pat Davern on guitar, Joe Hansen on bass guitar, Kristian Hopes on drums and frontman Phil Jamieson on vocals and guitar. Also in that year, Grinspoon won the national youth radio, Triple J\u2013sponsored Unearthed competition for Lismore, with their post-grunge song \"Sickfest\". The band's name references Lester Grinspoon, an associate professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who supported marijuana for medical use.\nAll eight of Grinspoon's studio albums have reached the ARIA albums chart top\u00a010. Their sound changed to mainstream rock with the release of their third studio album, \"New Detention\" (2002), which peaked at No.\u00a02; likewise, their fifth studio album \"Alibis & Other Lies\" (2007) also reached No.\u00a02. The 2004 fourth album, \"Thrills, Kills & Sunday Pills\", peaked at No.\u00a04. At the ARIA Music Awards of 2005 it won the Best Rock Album Award.\nThe band were signed to Universal Records in the United States by late 1998, and were promoted with the songs \"Champion\", which featured in \"Gran Turismo 3\"; \"Post Enebriated Anxiety\", which was on the international version of \"Guide to Better Living\" (1999); \"Chemical Heart\", via the internet; and a cover of the Prong song \"Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck\", from Grinspoon's \"Pushing Buttons\" (1998) EP, which was also included on \"\" (1998). On 4 December 2013, the band members announced an indefinite hiatus to pursue individual projects, although they made a return in earnest in 2017. Their eighth studio album, \"Whatever, Whatever\" (2024) reached No.\u00a03.\nHistory.\n1995-2000: Early years.\nIn July 1995, Pat Davern (guitar), Joe Hansen (bass guitar), Kristian Hopes (drums) and Phil Jamieson (vocals, guitar) met at a Lismore hotel, The Gollan, for a jam night. They decided to form a band and three\u00a0weeks later they recorded a two-track demo, which they entered for the national youth radio station Triple J's Unearthed competition. Their name was taken from Lester Grinspoon, an associate professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who supported marijuana for medical use. They won the competition with their post-grunge, alternative rock song \"Sickfest\" \u2013 their first track ever written together by Davern and Jamieson.\nGrinspoon gained airplay on Triple J and independent radio stations. They developed a strong following among the Australian \"alternative\" and \"mosh pit crowd.\" Their debut extended Play (EP) was the six-track, \"Grinspoon\" (a.k.a. \"Green Album\"), was released in 1995 through the independent Oracle Records. It contained the songs \"Sickfest\" and \"More Than You Are\" that became popular with fans and were rerecorded on later releases.\nGrinspoon's second EP, \"Licker Bottle Cozy\", recorded in June 1996 and produced by Phil McKellar, was released by Grudge Records in December. It had a slightly heavier sound than their earlier EP with five tracks including the songs \"Champion\" and \"Pig Pen\". In September 1997 they released their first full-length album, \"Guide to Better Living\", co-produced by McKellar and well-known Swiss-American heavy metal producer Ulrich Wild. The album peaked at No.\u00a011 on the ARIA Albums Charts and went platinum with sales of over 70,000 in Australia. It represents the Helmet-influenced alternative metal sound of their early career with heavier songs like \"Pressure Tested 1984\". The Australian version of the album features five live songs\u2014illustrating the band's sense of humour and ability to play live\u2014and a hidden track, the acoustic \"Protest\". US branch of Universal Records signed the band by late 1998 and released an altered version of \"Guide to Better Living\" in March 1999.\nWhilst in US touring for ten months as support act for Creed, Lit, Godsmack and Anthrax, Grinspoon released a six track EP, \"Pushing Buttons\", for their Australian market in September 1998. It featured the popular heavy song \"Black Friday\" and the lighter songs \"Busy\" and \"Explain\". After the intense US touring, Grinspoon released their second album, \"Easy\" in September 1999, which peaked at No.\u00a04 and went platinum in Australia. It contained the singles \"Ready 1\" and \"Rock Show\".\n2001-2007: Changing direction.\nAfter a break to reconsider their direction and sound Grinspoon started recording their next album, \"New Detention\", in Sydney's Festival Studios in September 2001 but prior to finishing the studios were shut down and so vocals and guitars were recorded in smaller studios. Further delays occurred after Hopes injured his hand on a studio window. \"New Detention\" was released in June 2002 and was more commercial\u2014it peaked at No.\u00a02 on the ARIA Albums Charts and went platinum. The first single from the album, \"Chemical Heart\", released in February had created a stir with long term fans and the media because it was different from their previous grunge sound. The band insisted the change was a natural one and was an improvement. Nevertheless, the band still performs older tracks in their live shows. They released a four track EP in March 2003, \"Panic Attack\"\u2014containing a cover of INXS's \"Don't Change\"\u2014which reached No.\u00a013 on the ARIA Singles Chart.\nIn August 2004, they released a new single, \"Hard Act To Follow\", which reached the Top 30. It was from the September album \"Thrills, Kills & Sunday Pills\", which peaked at No.\u00a04 and went platinum. Grinspoon also performed at the 2004 NRL grand final before a second single, \"Better Off Alone\", issued in November, also reached the Top 30. The third single was \"Hold on Me\" released in February 2005. For \"Thrills, Kills & Sunday Pills\", the band agreed that they were deliberately seeking a new audience, claiming they wrote a number of songs for the release and rejected any that sounded like earlier work. It won the 2005 'Best Rock Album Award' at the ARIA Music Awards. They had previously been nominated 9 times.\nGrinspoon had built a strong local following after their rise, they were regulars at Australian music festivals. On 26 March 2006, Grinspoon performed \"Hard Act To Follow\" and \"Better Off Alone\" at the 2006 Commonwealth Games Closing Ceremony in Melbourne. They headlined the inaugural \"Thank God It's Over\" in Melbourne, at \"BOBFest '06\" in South Australia in October and at Odyssey 2006 at Dreamworld for New Year's Eve.\nIn February 2007, Jamieson admitted himself to rehab due to addiction to crystal methamphetamine. On Andrew Denton's \"Enough Rope\" in July, Jamieson discussed his drug addictions, an extramarital affair, stealing money from bandmates, detox and rehab experiences.\nThe band completed, \"Alibis & Other Lies\" in July 2007, as their final album for Universal. It was co-produced by the band and Ramesh Sathiah, who had worked with them on their earliest recordings. Earlier albums before this were pop-oriented rock, while \"Easy\" and \"Alibis & Other Lies\" were more heavy rock. The first single from the album, \"Black Tattoo\", was released as a digital download on 23 June and physically a week later. The album peaked at No.\u00a02, their equal highest album chart position (with \"New Detention\" in 2002). Grinspoon released a 2-disc compilation entitled \"Best in Show\". The first disc featured their hits and several older songs, like \"Champion\", which landed the song on \"Gran Turismo 3\". The second disc includes a collection of covers recorded over the years. In the US, all Grinspoon albums had been released on iTunes and other online music stores. The first four were \"Guide To Better Living\", \"Best In Show\", \"Thrills, Kills, and Sunday Pills\", and \"New Detention\". \"Easy\" and \"Alibis & Other Lies\" followed on 31 October 2007.\n2008-2009: Hiatus.\nOn 5 February 2008, Jamieson announced, via the band's official website, that Grinspoon were on hiatus following their appearance at Big Day Out in late January. Grinspoon headlined the Newton's Playground festival, held atop Bathurst's famous Mount Panorama in March, with their song \"Lost Control\" played in advertisements for the festival. On 1 May, Grinspoon announced they would complete more shows before writing a new album.\nGrinspoon recorded The Easybeats' track \"St. Louis\" for a tribute album, \"Easy Fever: A Tribute to The Easybeats and Stevie Wright\"\u2014released in October 2008\u2014while Jamieson's duet with The Wrights on \"Evie part 3: I'm Losing You\" from 2005 was included. The band contributed the track \"Blind Lead Blind\", their B side of 2007's \"Minute By Minute\", to a compilation CD for The Buttery Drug and Alcohol Rehab Centre titled \"Caution: Life Ahead\", which included contributions from other Australian acts such as Powderfinger, Midnight Oil and The Living End, and was released in November.\nGrinspoon performed on 26 July 2009 at the annual Splendour in the Grass Festival in Byron Bay. Jamieson then toured with a supergroup composed of The Living End's Chris Cheney, You Am I's Tim Rogers, and Josh Pyke with a 17-piece band in August 2009. The group performed a tribute to The Beatles' White Album for its 40th anniversary.\n2010: \"Six to Midnight\".\nGrinspoon's next album, titled \"Six to Midnight\", was released on 11 September 2009 on the band's imprint Chk Chk Boom Records, distributed by Universal Records, which peaked at No.\u00a06. Two tracks, \"Dogs\" and the first single, \"Comeback\", were released to radio earlier. For promotion of the album, the band toured in a more intimate setting than most of their previous concerts. On 6 November, Grinspoon played live on Triple J radio and confirmed that \"Summer\" was the second single from the album. In 2010 Premonitions was released as the third single from the album. The band toured for the album including two acoustic shows in London in early 2012 featuring Phil and Pat.\n2011\u20132019: \"Black Rabbits\" and hiatus.\nIn September 2011 Grinspoon announced on their website that they are writing and recording their seventh studio album.\nIn May 2012 the band announced that they were heading to the United States for a month to record the album. The band also hinted that the title of the album would be \"Black Rabbits\". The album was later slated to feature guest musicians including Chris Cheney of The Living End, Tim Rogers of You Am I and Scott Russo of Unwritten Law.\nOn 23 July 2012, Grinspoon released the artwork of the album on their official Facebook page, confirming the name of the release \"Black Rabbits\".\nThe album was released on 28 September, debuting at number 8 on the ARIA charts.\nOn 5 December 2013 a statement on the official Grinspoon website announced that the band would be going on hiatus. A section of the statement reads: \"Thanks to all our families, friends, and especially our fans for the support over the last 18 years \u2013 it's been a wild ride to say the least. We are still a band of brothers but it's time for us to take a break and recharge the batteries. We're excited to see what our future holds\u2026adios amigos, it's been a blast!\"\nIn August 2015, it was announced that the band would be reforming exclusively to play a run of dates opening for Cold Chisel.\nIn 2017, the band announced they would be re-releasing a special 20th Anniversary edition of Guide To Better Living and announced an Australia wide tour. The tour was sold out.\nIn 2019, the group released the compilation, \"Chemical Hearts\".\n2020\u2013present: \"Whatever, Whatever\".\nIn May 2024, the group released the single \"Unknown Pretenders\", which was written in February 2020. At the same time, they announced the release of their eighth studio album \"Whatever, Whatever\".\nAwards and nominations.\nAPRA Awards.\nThe APRA Awards are presented annually from 1982 by the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), \"honouring composers and songwriters\". They commenced in 1982.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Awards table/styles.css\" />\n! scope=\"col\" | Year\n! scope=\"col\" | Nominee / work\n! scope=\"col\" | Award\n! scope=\"col\" | Result\n! Ref.\nARIA Awards.\nThe ARIA Music Awards are a set of annual ceremonies presented by Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), which recognise excellence, innovation, and achievement across all genres of the music of Australia. They commenced in 1987. Grinspoon has won 2 awards from 14 nominations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Awards table/styles.css\" />\n! scope=\"col\" | Year\n! scope=\"col\" | Nominee / work\n! scope=\"col\" | Award\n! scope=\"col\" | Result\nJ Awards.\nThe J Awards are an annual series of Australian music awards that were established by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's youth-focused radio station Triple J. They commenced in 2005.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Awards table/styles.css\" />\n! scope=\"col\" | Year\n! scope=\"col\" | Nominee / work\n! scope=\"col\" | Award\n! scope=\"col\" | Result\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "12274843": "1000 Miles (Grinspoon song)\n\"1000 Miles\" is the fourth single by Australian rock band Grinspoon from their third studio album \"New Detention\" (June 2002). It was released on 18 August 2003 by Universal Music Australia, which reached the ARIA Singles Chart top\u00a0100.\nThe three other tracks on the single were recorded in early 2003 at the band's live performance at the Enmore Theatre in Sydney, on their Panic Attack Tour. This release also includes a music video for the song, which is animated and was not broadcast on television, it features rednecks and has band member, Phil Jamieson, as a preacher endorsing alcohol.\nThe song was played on Triple J radio as an album track during the latter half of 2002 and reached No.\u00a047 on the station's Hottest 100 for that year.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2327464": "Buddy Miles\nAmerican drummer and singer (1947\u20132008)\nGeorge Allen \"Buddy\" Miles Jr. (September 5, 1947\u00a0\u2013 February 26, 2008) was an American composer, drummer, guitarist, vocalist and producer. He was a founding member of the Electric Flag (1967), a member of Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys (1969\u20131970), founder and leader of the Buddy Miles Express and later, the Buddy Miles Band. Miles also played and recorded with Carlos Santana, John McLaughlin, and others. He also sang lead vocals on the California Raisins claymation TV commercials and recorded two California Raisins R&B albums.\nBiography and career.\nEarly life.\nMiles was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on September 5, 1947. Miles's father played upright bass for Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, and others. By age twelve, Miles had begun touring with his father's band, the Bebops. He played with his father's band for several years.\nGiven the nickname \"Buddy\" by his aunt after the drummer Buddy Rich, he was often seen as a teenager hanging out and recording at Universal Promotions Corporation recording studios, which later became Rainbow Recording Studios.\nMiles did not finish high school. In order to become a professional musician, he dropped out of Omaha North High in 1965. Omaha North High awarded him an honorary degree in 1998.\n1960s: Early career.\nMiles played with a variety of rhythm and blues and soul acts as a teenager, including Ruby & the Romantics, the Delfonics, and Wilson Pickett. In 1964, at the age of 16, Miles met Jimi Hendrix at a show in Montreal, where both were performing as sidemen for other artists.\nIn 1967, Miles joined Hendrix in a jam session at the Malibu home of Stephen Stills. They also went on to play together again in 1968 in both Los Angeles and New York. In the same year, Miles moved to Chicago where he teamed with guitarist Mike Bloomfield and vocalist Nick Gravenites to form the Electric Flag, a blues/soul/rock band. In addition to playing drums, Miles sometimes sang lead vocals for the band, which made its live debut at the Monterey Pop Festival in mid-1967.\nIn early 1968, the band released \"A Long Time Comin'\", its first album for Columbia. The Electric Flag's second album, \"An American Music Band\", followed late the same year. Shortly after that release, the group disbanded. In the same year, Hendrix used several guest artists, including Miles, during the recording of his album, \"Electric Ladyland\". Miles played drums on one long jam that was eventually split into two album cuts, \"Rainy Day, Dream Away\" and \"Still Raining, Still Dreaming\", with a different song, \"1983... (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)\", edited in between.\nAt age 21, after the breakup of the Electric Flag, Miles put together a new band with Jim McCarty, who later became the guitarist for Cactus. This new group performed and recorded as the Buddy Miles Express. In 1969, Hendrix wrote a short poem as a liner note for \"Expressway To Your Skull\", the first studio album recorded by the Buddy Miles Express. Hendrix went on to produce four of the tracks on the group's follow-up album, \"Electric Church\". The title of the latter LP was taken from Hendrix's poem on the first.\nIn 1969 he appeared on British jazz guitarist John McLaughlin's album \"Devotion.\"\n1970s: More bands and collaborations.\nIn 1970, after the Buddy Miles Express split up, Miles began a collaboration with Hendrix and bassist Billy Cox. Together, they formed Band of Gypsys, producing one self-titled live album before disbanding.\nLater in 1970, while recording the album \"We Got to Live Together\", Miles learned of the death of Hendrix, which he mentioned on the inner cover of the album. Released in 1971, \"We Got to Live Together\" was produced by Miles and Robin McBride.\nAlso in 1971, although the Electric Flag had been inactive for nearly three years, Columbia released a greatest hits album. In 1974, Miles and the Electric Flag re-formed briefly and released another album, \"The Band Kept Playing\", on the Atlantic label.\nMiles went on to produce other records as the Buddy Miles Band. One song he had written and recorded with the Band of Gypsys, \"Changes\", was also recorded by Miles with his own band and released by Mercury Records as \"Them Changes\" soon after Hendrix's death. Miles' former Band of Gypsys sideman, Billy Cox, performed bass guitar on this track. The band also included bassist David Hull and guitarist Charlie Karp. The Buddy Miles Band's live album again included \"Them Changes,\" which had become Miles' signature song. The song was released a fourth time on a live record Miles recorded with Carlos Santana.\nIt was mentioned in the February 10 issue of \"Billboard\", in both the From The Music Capitals of the World section and Sam Sutherland's Studio Track section that Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper were to reunite with Buddy Miles to record an album for the Columbia label. It was to be released around mid 1973.\nIn 1973, Miles recorded an album with the Gun's Adrian Gurvitz called \"Chapter VII\", as well as drummed on a song from Gurvitz's project Three Man Army's album \"Third of a Lifetime\". The \"Chapter VII\" album cover included photos of Miles and his family along with some shots of Carlos Santana, Jimi Hendrix, and Sly Stone. In 1974 Miles released \"All The Faces Of Buddy Miles\" on CBS produced by Johnny Bristol, an album aimed at the funk and soul market. It included \"Pull Yourself Together,\" which gave Miles a chart placement on the R&B charts when it was issued as a 7\" single. Another track, \"I'm Just A Kiss Away\", was a huge dance hit amongst followers of the UK \"rare groove.\"\nMiles was signed by the record label, Casablanca Records. Miles' work for the label included the album released under his own name, \"Bicentennial Gathering of the Tribes\" (1976). The album's liner notes a quote from President John F. Kennedy concerning American Indians. In the mid 1970s, Miles recorded \"Roadrunner\" co-produced by long time friend Jim Paris. In 1980 Paris and Miles re-united, and together they produced \"Sneak Attack\" with Miles's new band The Regiment, released by Atlantic Records in 1981.\n1980s: The Club Fed Sessions.\nMiles served a prison term for grand theft in the late 1970s and later another term for auto theft in the early 1980s.\nIn late 1984 and early 1985 while living in a halfway house in Oakland, California, Miles commuted almost daily to San Rafael to collaborate with a handful of musicians and songwriters at the Ice House Studios. Collaborators included Producer Jim Gaines, Pat Craig and Dave Carlson from The Tazmanian Devils, David Jenkins from Pablo Cruise, Bill Craig, Tony Saunders (Merl Saunders' son) and Drew Youngs. The project soon moved to the Record Plant in Sausalito, where the group produced over 15 songs, ranging from funky, soulful grooves to R&B ballads. \"Anna\", the title song of the proposed album, helped Miles land his next recording job with the California Raisins. However, during the album's production, the Record Plant was seized by the government when its owner was indicted on drug trafficking charges. The musicians and employees working there began calling the studio \"Club Fed\"; hence the name \"The Club Fed Sessions\". The album was never released.\nIn 1986, Miles performed vocals for the California Raisins claymation ad campaign, most notably singing \"I Heard It Through the Grapevine\", and also performed lead vocals on two California Raisins albums featuring 1960s R&B covers. In 1986 and 1987, he rejoined Carlos Santana as a vocalist on Santana's album \"Freedom\". In 1987\u20131988, Miles moved to Southern California and with a new band toured the California coast, and the Chitlin' Circuit in the U.S. south before disbanding in early 1989.\n1990s: Tours and remembering Hendrix.\nWhile residing in Chicago in 1990, Miles, along with guitarists Kevon Smith and Joe Thomas, formed MST. They recorded \"Hell and Back\" in 1994, and toured the US and Europe until 1997. They were also featured in the DVD, \"Tribute to Jimi Hendrix \u2013 CAS\" (1997)..\nIn 1992, Miles worked with bassist Bootsy Collins and guitarist Steve Salas under the supergroup moniker Hardware, which released one album called \"Third Eye Open\".\nFrom 1994 to 2007, Miles formulated his new version of the Buddy Miles Express in the New York City area, with Charlie Torres on bass guitar and vocals, Rod Kohn on guitar and vocals, Mark \"Muggie Doo\" Leach on Hammond B3, background vocals, and keyboards, and Kenn Moutenot on drums and vocals and handling management. They toured nearly nonstop in the United States and overseas, with nearly 1000 concerts and festivals to their credit.\nIn 1997, Miles relocated to Fort Worth, Texas. Soon, he began collaborating with a young guitarist from Dallas, Lance Lopez. He went on to mentor Lopez, co-producing Lopez's debut album, \"First Things First\", with Jay Newland. The Lopez album was released independently in 1999.\nMiles was also seen in the Hendrix-family owned official video release, \"The Making of Electric Ladyland\" on Rhino Records. The video featured interviews with the majority of players who were involved in recording the album. The video includes footage of Miles playing his drum tracks in the studio against the original multi-track recordings of Hendrix. In 1999, Miles performed on the late Bruce Cameron's album, \"Midnight Daydream\", which included other Hendrix alumni Billy Cox, Mitch Mitchell, Jack Bruce, and others.\n2000s: Final albums and unreleased songs.\nIn 2000, Miles and Leach collaborated with Stevie Ray Vaughan's \"Double Trouble\" rhythm section, creating the Buddy Miles \"Blues Berries\" album which featured Rocky Athas of Black Oak Arkansas. This lineup also contributed a cover of Jimi Hendrix's \"Wind Cries Mary\" on the \"Blue Haze, Songs of Jimi Hendrix\" album in 2001. In addition, Miles also composed and recorded many songs with this new version of the Buddy Miles Express that are yet to be released. It was Miles' most enduring live band, with the touring lineup continuing for six years with the same members.\nThe band continued on with Miles and Leach and a host of other players until Miles's passing. The Miles/Leach duo, along with sax man Patrick Gage and bassist Dave Blackerby, also released the Buddy Miles Express' final album, \"Road to Sturgis\", a benefit CD for the Children's Craniofacial Foundation. Miles and Leach continued writing new but unreleased music until just days before Miles' passing.\nAlso in 2004, Miles reunited yet again with Billy Cox of the Band of Gypsys to re-record songs from the original 1970 live album with guitarists Eric Gales, Kenny Olsen, Sheldon Reynolds, Andy Aledort and Gary Serkin. The album, titled \"The Band of Gypsys Return\" was released in 2006. Until his death, Miles continued to be active musically and performed many shows with proceeds going to help support victims of natural disasters and other charitable causes.\nMiles is credited on sessions with George Clinton/Parliament/Funkadelic.\nFriendship and collaboration with Jimi Hendrix.\nMiles stated that between late September and mid-October 1969, \"Jimi was not happy. He felt powerless. He couldn't do what he wanted to do\". In mid-October 1969, Hendrix founded a short-lived band called Band of Gypsys, which Miles would join. Alan Douglas and Stephan Bright were initially brought in to produce their recording sessions, but bassist Billy Cox clashed with the pair, deeming them unworthy. Cox stormed out of the sessions after a furious row with Bright and went home to Nashville for two weeks, before being coaxed back. At the end of Douglas and Bright's one-and-a-half months together, they had only produced one usable backing track, \"Room Full of Mirrors\". Douglas and Bright resigned, stating pressures from the record label, Hendrix's manager Michael Jeffery, and Hendrix's own \"lack of interest\".\nThe same day Douglas resigned, Hendrix signed the contract with Bill Graham for two dates at the Fillmore East. Hendrix had been talking about a Band of Gypsys \"jam\" LP since late 1968, after the settlement with Ed Chalpin. The recording of the Fillmore East concert was initially a single LP, but additional cuts from the concerts have been released on a double CD, \"Live at the Fillmore East\". During the <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />2+1\u20442 months before the two nights' worth of recordings for the LP, the band rehearsed and recorded in New York City. Hendrix was required to give his next LP to Chalpin to be released by the Capitol Records label, but he had become entangled in litigation concerning the contract with Chalpin's PPX record company that he had signed, his agreement with Jeffery & Chandler prior to the contract, and becoming internationally recognized. This fact led to Miles and Billy Cox being hired as full-time employees for the duration of the three-month collaboration called the 'Band of Gypsys'. In the end, the band produced the LP for Chalpin and Capitol, as well as a single for Reprise.\nDuring a one-off charity event for the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam committee a month later, Hendrix had a minor meltdown on stage. Speculations include a possibly drug-related meltdown on stage, as well as an act of sabotage on the part of Jeffery. Miles said about the incident years later, \"Jeffery slipped [Hendrix] two half-tabs of acid on stage as he went on... [Hendrix] just freaked out. I told Jeffery he was an out-and-out complete idiot... One of the biggest reasons why Jimi is dead is because of that guy.\" Miles and Jeffery already had a strained relationship, as Jeffery was uncomfortable with Hendrix's and Miles' close friendship. After this one-off charity event at Madison Square Garden in January 1970, Jeffery told Miles that he was fired and the Band of Gypsys was no more. Although Cox, and presumably Miles as well, had already been paid off as full-time salaried employees with a $1,000 bonus for their services the week before.\nWhile with Hendrix, Miles recorded a number of jams, demos, and songs. Over the years, more material recorded at the Fillmore East on New Years 1969\u20131970 has been issued. In 2019, the complete performances from all four shows were released on the box set '. The original versions of \"Stepping Stone\" and \"Izabella\", songs which he recorded for the 1970 single with Cox and Hendrix, were restored and included on the 2001 compilation '. Three other songs that were recorded with Cox and Hendrix were used for early posthumous Hendrix albums, including \"The Cry of Love\" and \"Rainbow Bridge\". Additional studio recordings by the trio in various stages of development were released on \"South Saturn Delta\", \"The Jimi Hendrix Experience\" box set, \"Burning Desire\", \"\", and \"People, Hell and Angels\".\nDeath and legacy.\nAt the age of 60, Buddy Miles died on February 26, 2008, at his home in Austin, Texas, with his family by his side. According to his website, he died of congestive heart disease. Miles was cremated, and there was no funeral.\nThe day before Miles died, he heard Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton playing \"Them Changes\" at Madison Square Garden through his cell phone. \"Them Changes\" is now part of Clapton's set on tour as a tribute to Miles. The UK-based newspaper \"The Independent\" ran an almost full-page obituary in its Friday, February 29, 2008, edition.\nAsked how he would like to be remembered by the American music magazine \"Seconds\" in 1995, Miles simply said: \"The baddest of the bad. People say I'm the baddest drummer. If that's true, thank you world.\" A memorial concert took place on March 30, 2008, at Threadgill's on Riverside Drive, South Austin that included performances by Bernie Worrell, The Family Stone Project, Doug Pinnick, Cyril Neville, The Sixth Chamber and surviving members of the Buddy Miles Express.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "11269930": "Miles (band)\nBangladeshi rock band\nMiles is a Bangladeshi rock band formed in Dhaka on 1 August 1979 by Farid Rashid.\nThey released their self titled debut studio album \"Miles\" in 1982, which contained English numbers. They released their second album \"A Step Farther\" in 1986. After four years, they released their third studio and first Bengali album \"Protisruti (Promise)\" in 1991.\nHistory.\nTheir first album, \"Miles\", was produced in 1982 including five original songs and seven cover songs. Their second album, \"A Step Farther\" was released in 1986 and it consisted of 7 original and 5 cover songs. Their first Bengali album, \"Protisruti\", was released in 1991. It included 12 original Bengali songs. Their second Bengali album, \"Prottasha\", was released in 1993.\nThe fourth Bengali album, \"Probaho\", was produced in 1999.\nIn 2011, Grameenphone announced that it would release their album \"Proticchobi\". The album was released in 2015.\nConcerts.\nFrom 1979 to 1982, Miles played at the Chambeeli Super Club at the Hotel Intercontinental in Dhaka five nights a week. They went on to perform on Bangladesh Television.\nIn 1982, Miles made their first appearance in public concert at Shilpakala Academy Auditorium in Dhaka.\nIn 1991, they performed their first concert outside Bangladesh, in Bangalore. In 1992, Miles performed in the very first BAMBA concert. They signed a lucrative sponsor deal with Pepsi in 1995 where exclusive concerts were held in Bangladesh. In 1996 and 1998 they went back to India to perform in Kolkata. In 1996 they did a major tour in the United States and Canada over two months. They performed in New York City, Dallas, Oklahoma City, Chicago, Miami and Montreal.\nIn 1999, they performed in a large concert at Chittagong stadium with over 30,000 attending. Miles toured Australia and Italy in 2008.\nIn 2010, Miles performed mainly in stadium concerts across the country, in cities including Rangpur, Comilla, Mymensingh, Khulna, Rajshahi, Chittagong and Dhaka.\nIn 2012, Miles started their 30-year anniversary tour by performing in cities of America including Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San Jose and Seattle.\nIn 2019, \"Miles 40th Anniversary\" was celebrated by touring and performing in USA's Jersey City, Alexandria, Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York, Atlantic City, Phoenix, San Jose, Tampa, Buffalo, Detroit, Columbus, West Lafayette, Dallas and Canada's Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and also Australia's Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne as well as Bangladesh's Chittagong and a grand concert in Dhaka.\nMembers.\nPresent members\nPast members\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "43070751": "1000 Miles (H.E.A.T song)\n\"1000 Miles\" is a song written by"}, "descending_order": ["12274843", "2327464", "11269930", "43070751", "567703"], "permutation_1": ["567703", "2327464", "12274843", "43070751", "11269930"], "permutation_2": ["567703", "11269930", "12274843", "43070751", "2327464"], "permutation_3": ["2327464", "43070751", "12274843", "11269930", "567703"]}
{"id": "2hop__792870_774871", "docs_added": {"159172": "Iron Maiden\nEnglish heavy metal band\nIron Maiden are an English heavy metal band formed in Leyton, East London, in 1975 by bassist and primary songwriter Steve Harris. Although fluid in the early years of the band, the line-up for most of the band's history has consisted of Harris, lead vocalist Bruce Dickinson, drummer Nicko McBrain, and guitarists Dave Murray, Adrian Smith and Janick Gers. As pioneers of the new wave of British heavy metal movement, Iron Maiden released a series of UK and US Platinum and Gold albums, including 1980's debut album, 1981's \"Killers\", and 1982's \"The Number of the Beast\" \u2013 its first album with Dickinson, who in 1981 replaced Paul Di'Anno as lead singer. The addition of Dickinson was a turning point in their career, establishing them as one of heavy metal's most important bands. \"The Number of the Beast\" is among the most popular heavy metal albums of all time, having sold almost 20 million copies worldwide.\nAfter some turbulence in the 1990s, the return of lead vocalist Bruce Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith in 1999 saw the band undergo a resurgence in popularity, with a series of new albums and highly successful tours. Their three most recent albums \u2014 \"The Final Frontier\" (2010), \"The Book of Souls\" (2015), and \"Senjutsu\" (2021) \u2014 have all reached number\u00a01 in more than 25 countries. Iron Maiden have sold over 130\u00a0million copies of their albums worldwide and have obtained over\u00a0600 certifications. The band is considered to be one of the most influential and revered heavy metal bands of all time. They have received multiple industry awards, including the Grammy and Brit Awards.\nThe band have released 41 albums, including 17 studio albums, 13 live albums, four EPs and seven compilations. They have also released 47 singles and 20 video albums, and two video games. Iron Maiden's lyrics cover such topics as history, literature, war, mythology, dark fantasy, science fiction, society and religion. As of October\u00a02019[ [update]], the band have played 2,500 live shows. For over 40\u00a0years the band have featured their signature mascot, \"Eddie\", on the covers of almost all of their releases.\nHistory.\nEarly years (1975\u20131978).\nIron Maiden were formed on Christmas Day, 25 December 1975, by bassist Steve Harris shortly after he left his previous group, Smiler. Harris attributed the band's name to a film adaptation of \"The Man in the Iron Mask\" from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, as the title reminded him of the iron maiden torture device. They originally used the name Ash Mountain, but most of the band members preferred the name Iron Maiden. After months of rehearsal, Iron Maiden made their debut at St. Nicks Hall in Poplar on 1 May 1976, before taking up a semi-residency at the Cart and Horses Pub in Maryland, Stratford. The original line-up was short-lived, with vocalist Paul Mario Day being the first to go as, according to Harris, he lacked \"energy or charisma on stage\". He was replaced by Dennis Wilcock, a Kiss fan who used makeup and fake blood during live performances and had earlier played with Harris and Doug Sampson in the band Smiler. Wilcock's friend, guitarist Dave Murray, was invited to join, much to the dismay of the band's guitarists Dave Sullivan and Terry Rance. Their frustration led Harris to temporarily disband Iron Maiden in 1976, though the group reformed soon after with Murray as the sole guitarist. Harris and Murray remain the band's longest-serving members and have performed on all of their releases.\nIron Maiden recruited another guitarist in 1977, Bob Sawyer, who was sacked for embarrassing the band on stage by pretending to play guitar with his teeth. Tension ensued again, causing a rift between Murray and Wilcock, who convinced Harris to fire Murray, as well as original drummer Ron Matthews. A new line-up was put together, including future Cutting Crew member Tony Moore on keyboards, Terry Wapram on guitar and drummer Barry Purkis (better known today as Thunderstick). After a single gig with the band in January 1978, Moore was asked to leave as Harris decided keyboards did not suit the band's sound. Dave Murray rejoined in late March 1978, and when Terry Wapram disapproved he was sacked. A few weeks later, Dennis Wilcock decided to leave Iron Maiden to form his own band, V1, with Wapram, and drummer Barry Purkis also left. Former Smiler drummer Doug Sampson was at Dennis' and Thunderstick's last gig, and joined the band afterwards.\nHarris, Murray and Sampson spent the summer and autumn of 1978 rehearsing while they searched for a singer to complete the band's new line-up. A chance meeting at the Red Lion, a pub in Leytonstone, in November 1978 evolved into a successful audition for vocalist Paul Di'Anno. Steve Harris said, \"There's sort of a quality in Paul's voice, a raspiness in his voice, or whatever you want to call it, that just gave it this great edge\". At this time, Murray would typically act as their sole guitarist, with Harris commenting, \"Davey was so good he could do a lot of it on his own. The plan was always to get a second guitarist in, but finding one that could match Davey was really difficult\".\nRecord contract and early releases (1978\u20131981).\nOn New Year's Eve, 1978, Iron Maiden recorded a four-song demo at Spaceward Studios in Cambridge. Hoping the recording would help them secure more gigs, the band gave a copy to Neal Kay, who, at the time, was managing a heavy metal club called \"Bandwagon Heavy Metal Soundhouse\". After hearing the tape, Kay began playing the demo regularly at the Bandwagon, and one of the songs, \"Prowler\", eventually went to number\u00a01 in the Soundhouse charts, which were published weekly in \"Sounds\" magazine. A copy was also acquired by Rod Smallwood, who soon became the band's manager. As Iron Maiden's popularity increased, they released the demo on their own record label as \"The Soundhouse Tapes\", named after the club. Featuring only three tracks (one song, \"Strange World\", was excluded as the band were unsatisfied with its production), all 5,000 copies sold out within weeks.\nIn December 1979, the band secured a major record deal with EMI and asked Dave Murray's childhood friend, Adrian Smith of Urchin, to join the group as their second guitarist. Busy with his own band, Smith declined and Dennis Stratton was hired instead. Shortly after, Doug Sampson left due to health issues and was replaced by ex-Samson drummer Clive Burr at Stratton's suggestion on 26 December 1979. Iron Maiden's first appearance on an EMI album was on the \"Metal for Muthas\" compilation (released on 15 February 1980) with two early versions of \"Sanctuary\" and \"Wrathchild\". The release led to a tour including several other bands linked with the new wave of British heavy metal movement.\nIron Maiden released their self-titled album in 1980, which debuted at number\u00a04 in the UK Albums Chart. In addition to the title track, the album included other early favourites such as \"Running Free\", \"Transylvania\", \"Phantom of the Opera\" and \"Sanctuary\" \u2013 which was not on the original UK release, but appeared on the US version and subsequent remasters. The band embarked on a headline tour of the UK, before opening for Kiss on their 1980 Unmasked Tour's European leg as well as supporting Judas Priest on select dates. After the Kiss tour, Dennis Stratton was dismissed from the band as a result of creative and personal differences, and was replaced by Smith in October 1980. In December, the band played at the Rainbow Theatre in London, where their first live video was filmed. \"Live at the Rainbow\" was released in May 1981, and \"Iron Maiden\" and \"Wrathchild\" from this video received heavy rotation on MTV during its first hours on the air as the first metal videos ever.\nIn 1981, Iron Maiden released their second studio album, \"Killers\". Although many tracks were written prior to their debut release, it had two new songs: \"Prodigal Son\" and \"Murders in the Rue Morgue\" (the latter's title was taken from the short story by Edgar Allan Poe). Unsatisfied with the production on their debut album, the band hired veteran producer Martin Birch, who would continue to work with Iron Maiden until his retirement in 1992. The record was followed by the band's first world tour with their debut performance in the United States opening for Judas Priest at The Aladdin Casino in Las Vegas. \"Killers\" marked the band's USA album charts debut, reaching number\u00a078 on the \"Billboard\" 200, and they booked 132 shows to promote the album, including their first concert in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. During the summer, Iron Maiden played several festivals in Europe, including at the Golden Summernights 1981 festivals at Zeppelinfeld in Nuremberg in front of 100,000 people.\nSuccess (1981\u20131985).\nBy 1981, Paul Di'Anno was demonstrating increasingly erratic behaviour, particularly due to his drug usage, about which Di'Anno comments, \"It wasn't just that I was snorting a bit of coke, though; I was just going for it non-stop, 24 hours a day, every day\u00a0... the band had commitments piling up that went on for months, years, and I just couldn't see my way to the end of it. I knew I'd never last the whole tour. It was too much\". Di'Anno was dismissed following the Killer World Tour with the band already having selected his replacement. After a meeting with Rod Smallwood at the Reading Festival, Bruce Dickinson, formerly of Samson, auditioned for Iron Maiden in September 1981 and was immediately hired. The following month, Dickinson went out on the road with the band on a small headlining tour in Italy and a one-off show at the Rainbow Theatre in the UK. For the last show, and in anticipation of their forthcoming album, the band played \"Children of the Damned\" and \"22 Acacia Avenue\", introducing fans to their new material.\nIn 1982, Iron Maiden released their third studio album, \"The Number of the Beast\", which became the band's first number\u00a01 record on the UK Albums Chart, was a Top 10 hit in many other countries, and reached number\u00a033 on the \"Billboard\" 200. At the time, Dickinson was in the midst of legal difficulties with Samson's management and was not permitted to add his name to any of the songwriting credits, although he still made what he described as a \"moral contribution\" to \"Children of the Damned\", \"The Prisoner\", and \"Run to the Hills\". The band embarked on a world tour, dubbed The Beast on the Road, with shows in North America, Japan, Australia and Europe, including a headline appearance for 40,000 people at the Reading Festival. Iron Maiden played 188 shows in 10 months. The Beast on the Road's US leg proved controversial when an American conservative political lobbying group claimed Iron Maiden were Satanic because of the new album's title track and \"demonic\" cover art, and a group of Christian activists destroyed Iron Maiden records in protest. Dickinson later said the band treated this as \"silliness\" and the demonstrations in fact gave them \"loads of publicity\". \"The Number of the Beast\" sold 2.5 million copies in its first year, 14 million by 2010, and 20 million by 2022.\nIn December 1982, drummer Clive Burr was fired from the band and replaced by Nicko McBrain, who previously played for Trust. Although Harris said the dismissal took place because his live performances were affected by offstage activities, Burr later claimed he was unfairly ousted from the band. The band then recorded the first of three consecutive albums at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas. In 1983, they released their fourth studio album, \"Piece of Mind\", which reached the number\u00a03 spot in the UK and number\u00a014 on the \"Billboard\" 200. \"Piece of Mind\" features the singles \"The Trooper\" and \"Flight of Icarus\", the latter being one of the band's few songs to gain substantial airplay in the US. Iron Maiden played 147 concerts in Europe and North America as a part of the World Piece Tour. This was also their first major North American tour as headliners, selling out Madison Square Garden with a crowd of 20,000.\nAfter the success of \"Piece of Mind\" and its supporting tour, the band released their fifth studio album, \"Powerslave\", on 9 September 1984. The album features the singles \"2 Minutes to Midnight\" and \"Aces High\", the title track, and \"Rime of the Ancient Mariner\" (based on Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem \"Rime of the Ancient Mariner\"). \"Powerslave\" was another chart success, reaching number\u00a012 on the \"Billboard\" 200 and eventually number\u00a01 in the UK. The band's fifth studio album sold over 4 million copies in its first year after the premiere. The tour following the album, called World Slavery Tour, was the band's largest to date with 193 shows in 28 countries over 13 months, playing to an estimated 3,500,000 people. Many shows were played back to back in the same city, such as in Long Beach, California, where the band played four consecutive concerts at Long Beach Arena for a combined audience of 54,000 fans. Iron Maiden also made their debut appearance in South America, where they co-headlined the Rock in Rio festival with Queen for an audience estimated at 350,000\u2013500,000 people. The tour started in August 1984 with five shows in Poland. Iron Maiden were the first Western artists to bring full-scale production behind the Iron Curtain. The band's third official video, entitled \"Behind the Iron Curtain\", was released in October 1984. The World Slavery Tour documentary brought footage of the band touring Eastern Europe in 1984, performing shows in the countries visited, \"Behind the Iron Curtain\" was the first documentary ever published by a Western artist that showed them touring the countries of Eastern Bloc. The documentary movie was broadcast by MTV and local TV stations around the world.\nThe tour was physically gruelling for the band, who demanded six months off when it ended (although this was later reduced to four months). This was the first substantial touring break in the group's history, including the cancellation of a proposed supporting tour for the new live album, with Bruce Dickinson threatening to quit unless the tour ended. In October 1985, Iron Maiden released the double live album and home video, \"Live After Death\". A critical and commercial success, it peaked at number\u00a019 on the \"Billboard 200\" and number\u00a02 in the UK. The album was recorded at Long Beach Arena and also features additional tracks from four nights at London's Hammersmith Apollo. In November 1985, Iron Maiden were named the best rock and metal band in the world and awarded at Public Choice International.\nExperimentation (1986\u20131989).\nReturning from their time off, the band added different musical elements to their 1986 studio album, \"Somewhere in Time.\" These focused on synthesised bass and guitars to add textures and layers to the sound. The release performed well across the world, particularly the single \"Wasted Years\", but included no writing credits from Dickinson, whose material was rejected by the rest of the band. The album was the band's biggest American chart success to date, reaching number\u00a011 on the \"Billboard 200\" and number\u00a02 in the UK charts. The Somewhere on Tour was also a success. The band played 157 shows for over two and a half million fans, including eighty-one shows in North America. Once again, Iron Maiden visited Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia to play for tens of thousands of fans in each country. The experimentation evident on \"Somewhere in Time\" continued on their next album, \"Seventh Son of a Seventh Son\", which was released in 1988. A concept album recorded at Musicland Studios in Munich and based on the 1987 novel \"Seventh Son\" by Orson Scott Card, it was the band's first record to include keyboards, which were performed by Harris and Smith. Dickinson's enthusiasm was also renewed as his ideas were accepted for this album. Another popular release, it became Iron Maiden's third album to hit number\u00a01 in the UK charts and reached number\u00a012 on the \"Billboard 200.\"\nDuring the following tour, the band headlined the Monsters of Rock festival at Donington Park on 20 August 1988, playing to the largest crowd in the festival's history (107,000). The tour concluded with several headline shows in the UK in November and December 1988, with the concerts at the NEC Arena, Birmingham, recorded for a live video, entitled \"Maiden England\". The video debuted at top spots of worldwide music videos charts. In May, the group set out on a supporting tour, which saw them perform 103 shows to well over two million people worldwide over seven months. To recreate the album's keyboards onstage throughout the tour, the group recruited Michael Kenney, Steve Harris' bass technician; Kenney has served as the band's live keyboard player ever since, also performing on the band's four following albums.\nUpheaval (1989\u20131994).\nDuring a break in 1989, guitarist Adrian Smith released a solo album with his band ASAP, entitled \"Silver and Gold.\" Vocalist Bruce Dickinson also began work on a solo album with former Gillan guitarist Janick Gers, releasing \"Tattooed Millionaire\" in 1990, followed by a tour. At the same time, to mark the band's 10-year recording anniversary, Iron Maiden released a compilation collection, \"The First Ten Years\", a series of 10 CDs and double 12-inch singles. Between 24 February and 28 April 1990, the individual parts were released one by one, each containing two of Iron Maiden's singles, including the original B-sides.\nIron Maiden then began work on a new studio record. During the pre-production stages, Adrian Smith left the band due to differences with Steve Harris regarding the direction the band should be taking. Smith disagreed with the \"stripped down\" style they were leaning towards. Janick Gers, having worked on Dickinson's solo project, was chosen to replace Smith and became the band's first new member in seven years. The album \"No Prayer for the Dying\" was released in October 1990. It contained the hit singles \"Holy Smoke\" and \"Bring Your Daughter... to the Slaughter\", the band's first \u2013 and, to date, only \u2013 UK Singles Chart number\u00a01, originally recorded by Dickinson's solo project for the soundtrack of \"\". Iron Maiden's eighth studio album debuted at number\u00a02 on the UK albums chart and number\u00a017 on the \"Billboard 200\". \"No Prayer for the Dying\" was a return to their musical roots, especially in the simplicity of composition. The No Prayer on the Road tour was booked for 120 shows in Europe, North America, and Japan. Thirty-three shows in continental Europe were sold out with a reported 530,000 fans attending. In total, Iron Maiden played for some two million fans.\nAfter another break, the band recorded their next studio album, \"Fear of the Dark\", which was released in 1992. The title track became a regular part of the band's concert setlists. Achieving their fourth number\u00a01 on the UK albums chart and number\u00a012 on the \"Billboard 200\", the release also included the number\u00a02 single \"Be Quick or Be Dead\", the number\u00a021 single \"From Here to Eternity\", and the softer \"Wasting Love\". The album featured the first songwriting by Gers, and no collaboration between Harris and Dickinson on songs. The extensive worldwide tour that followed included their first-ever Latin American leg, although Christian organisations prevented Iron Maiden from performing in Chile and accused them of being \"emissaries of satanic propaganda\", and headlining the Monsters of Rock festivals in seven European countries. Iron Maiden's second performance at Donington Park, for a sold-out audience of 75,000, was filmed for the audio and video release \"Live at Donington\" and featured a guest appearance by Adrian Smith, who joined the band to perform \"Running Free\". The tour also saw conflicts between Bruce Dickinson and rest of the band.\nIn 1993, Dickinson left the band to pursue his solo career, but agreed to remain for a farewell tour and two live albums (later re-released in one package). The first, \"A Real Live One\", was released in March 1993 and featured songs from 1986 to 1992, and the second, \"A Real Dead One\", was released after Dickinson left the band and featured songs from 1980 to 1984. The tour did not go well, with Steve Harris claiming Dickinson would only perform properly for high-profile shows, and that at several concerts, he would only mumble into the microphone. Dickinson denied he was under-performing, saying it was impossible to \"make like Mr. Happy Face if the vibe wasn't right\", and that news of his exit from the band had prevented any chance of a good atmosphere during the tour. Dickinson played his farewell show with Iron Maiden on 28 August 1993. The show was filmed, broadcast by the BBC, MTV and released on video under the name \"Raising Hell\".\nDifficulties (1994\u20131999).\nIn 1994, the title track from the \"Fear of the Dark\" album received a Grammy Awards nomination for \"Best Metal Performance\", a first for Iron Maiden. The band listened to the thousands of tapes sent in by vocalists before convincing Blaze Bayley, formerly of the band Wolfsbane, who had supported Iron Maiden in 1990, to audition for them. Harris' preferred choice from the outset, Bayley had a different vocal style from his predecessor and ultimately received a mixed reception among fans.\nAfter a three-year hiatus \u2013 a record for the band at the time \u2013 Iron Maiden released their next studio album, \"The X Factor\". The band had their lowest chart position since 1981 for an album in the UK, debuting at number\u00a08; however, the album went on to win \"Album of the Year\" awards in France, Spain and Germany. The record included the 11-minute epic \"Sign of the Cross\", the band's longest song since \"Rime of the Ancient Mariner\", as well as the singles \"Man on the Edge\" (based on the film \"Falling Down\") and \"Lord of the Flies\", based on the novel \"Lord of the Flies\". The release is notable for its \"dark\" tone, inspired by Steve Harris' divorce. The band toured for the rest of 1995 and 1996, playing their first shows in Israel and South Africa as well as Malta, Bulgaria and Romania in Europe, before concluding in the Americas. The biggest show of the whole tour was a headline appearance for 60,000 people at the Monsters of Rock festival in S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil.\"The X Factor\" sold 1.3 million copies, the lowest sales result since 1981. After the tour, Iron Maiden released a compilation album, \"Best of the Beast\". The band's first compilation, it included a new single, \"Virus\", in which the lyrics attack critics who had recently written off the band.\nIn 1998, Iron Maiden released \"Virtual XI\", whose chart scores were the band's lowest to date. The album peaked at number\u00a016 in the UK, the band's lowest for a new studio record. At the same time, Steve Harris assisted in remastering the band's entire discography, up to and including \"Live at Donington\". Bayley's tenure in Iron Maiden ended in January 1999 when he was asked to leave during a band meeting. The dismissal took place due to issues Bayley had experienced with his voice during the Virtual XI World Tour, although Janick Gers said this was partly the band's fault for forcing him to perform songs pitched outside the natural range of his voice.\nReunion and renewed success (1999\u20132005).\nThe band entered into talks with Dickinson, who agreed to rejoin during a meeting in Brighton in January 1999, along with guitarist Adrian Smith, who was telephoned a few hours later. With Gers remaining, Iron Maiden now had a three-guitar line-up (nicknamed \"The Three Amigos\"), and embarked on a hugely successful reunion tour. Dubbed The Ed Hunter Tour, it tied in with the band's newly released greatest hits collection, \"Ed Hunter\", whose track listing was decided by a poll on the group's website, and also contained a computer game starring Eddie, the band's mascot.\nNot satisfied with the results from Harris' Barnyard Studios, located on his property in Essex, which had been used for the last four Iron Maiden studio albums, the band recorded the new release, \"Brave New World\", at Guillaume Tell Studios in Paris, France in November 1999 with producer Kevin Shirley. Iron Maiden continued to find inspiration in movies and books, as shown in songs like \"The Wicker Man\" \u2013 based on the 1973 British cult film \"The Wicker Man\" \u2013 and \"Brave New World\" \u2013 a title taken from the Aldous Huxley novel \"Brave New World\". The album revisited the more progressive and melodic sound featured in some earlier recordings, along with elaborate song structures and keyboard orchestration. The album was a commercial and artistic success.\nThe reunion world tour that followed had over 100\u00a0dates (including 31 shows of the 1999 tour), and culminated on 19 January 2001 in a show at the Rock in Rio festival in Brazil, where Iron Maiden played to an audience of over 250,000. While the performance was being produced for a CD and DVD release in March 2002, under the name \"Rock in Rio\", the band took a year off from touring, although they played three consecutive shows at Brixton Academy to raise funds for former drummer Clive Burr, who had recently announced that he had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The band performed two further concerts for Burr's MS Trust Fund charity in 2005, and 2007, before his death in 2013. During the 2000\u20132002 tour, Iron Maiden played 91 shows for over two million people in 33 countries. In addition to their touring success, the band was nominated twice for the annual Grammy Awards and received the International Achievement Award at the 2001 Ivor Novello Awards. In November 2001, a documentary movie about the making of \"The Number of the Beast\" album was produced by BBC as a part of the \"Classic Album series\".\nFollowing their summer 2003 Give Me Ed... 'Til I'm Dead Tour, with 57 shows in Europe and North America and headlining large festivals such as Roskilde, Heineken Jammin' Festival, Rock am Ring and Rock im Park (combined attendance of 130,000) and the first Download Festival held at Donington Park; a successor to Monsters of Rock, Iron Maiden released \"Dance of Death\", their thirteenth studio album. It met with worldwide critical and commercial success, reaching number\u00a02 on the UK Albums Chart and number\u00a018 on the \"Billboard 200\". Produced by Kevin Shirley, now the band's regular producer, many critics felt this release reached the standard of their earlier efforts. Historical and literary references were present, with \"Monts\u00e9gur\" focussing on the Cathar stronghold conquered in 1244, and \"Paschendale\" relating to the First World War battle.\nDuring the Dance of Death Tour 2003\u201304, which began in September 2003, Iron Maiden played 53 shows across Europe, North America, Latin America and Japan. The band's performance at Westfalenhalle, in Dortmund, Germany, was recorded and released in August 2005 as a live album and DVD entitled \"Death on the Road\". In 2005, the band announced the Eddie Rips Up the World Tour, which, tying in with their 2004 DVD entitled \"\", only featured material from their first four albums. As part of this celebration of their earlier years, \"The Number of the Beast\" single was re-released and went straight to number\u00a03 on the UK Chart. The tour featured many headlining stadium and festival dates, including a performance at Ullevi Stadium in Sweden to an audience of almost 60,000. This concert was also broadcast live on satellite television across Europe to approximately 60 million viewers. The band completed the tour by headlining the Reading and Leeds Festivals on 26\u201328 August, and the RDS Stadium in Ireland on 31 August.\nContinued success and expanded tours (2005\u20132014).\nAt the end of 2005, Iron Maiden began work on \"A Matter of Life and Death\", their fourteenth studio album, which was released in autumn 2006. War and religion are recurring themes in the lyrics and the cover artwork. The release was a critical and commercial success, marking the band's first top ten on the \"Billboard\" 200 and debuting at number one in the album charts of 13 countries. The supporting tour saw mixed critical reception, but included the band's first performance in Dubai at the Dubai Desert Rock Festival for 25,000 people, followed by a concert in Bangalore Palace Grounds, the first of any heavy metal band in India. The band then played a string of European dates, including an appearance at Download Festival, their fourth headline performance at Donington Park, to approximately 80,000 people.\nOn 5 September 2007, the band announced their Somewhere Back in Time World Tour, tying in with the DVD release of their \"Live After Death\" album. The setlist for the tour consisted of songs from the 1980s. They played their first concerts in Costa Rica and Colombia and their first shows in Australia and Puerto Rico since 1992. The tour led to the release of a new compilation album, entitled \"Somewhere Back in Time\", which included a selection of tracks from their 1980 eponymous debut to 1988's \"Seventh Son of a Seventh Son\", as well as several live versions from \"Live After Death\". In 2008\u201309 in Latin America the band played 27 concerts for about a million people in total, a record for a heavy rock performer. The tour continued with two legs in the US and Europe in the summer of 2008. The sole UK concert took place at Twickenham Stadium, marking the first time the band would headline a stadium in their own country. The 2008 tour was the second highest-grossing tour of the year for a British artist. The final leg included the band's first appearances in Peru and Ecuador, as well as their return to Venezuela and New Zealand after 17 years. The band also played another show in India at the Rock in India festival to a crowd of 20,000. At their concert in S\u00e3o Paulo on 15 March, Dickinson announced on stage that it was the largest non-festival show of their career, with an overall attendance of 100,000\u00a0people. The final leg ended in Florida on 2 April after which the band took a break. Overall, the tour reportedly had an attendance of over two and a half million people worldwide over both years. At the 2009 Brit Awards, Iron Maiden won the award for best British live act.\nOn 20 January 2009, the band announced they were planning to release a full-length documentary film in select cinemas on 21 April 2009. Entitled \"\", it documented the first part of the Somewhere Back in Time World Tour (between February and March 2008). \"Flight 666\" was co-produced by Banger Productions and was distributed in cinemas by Arts Alliance Media and EMI, with D&E Entertainment sub-distributing in the US. The film went on to have a Blu-ray, DVD, and CD release in May and June, topping the music DVD charts in 25 countries. In most of them the release went Gold, Platinum or Multi-Platinum.\nThe band had begun composing new material and booked studio time in early 2010 with Kevin Shirley producing, and \"The Final Frontier\" was announced on 4 March and featured three singles \"The Final Frontier\", \"El Dorado\" and \"Coming Home\", as well as epic, progressive opuses \"Isle of Avalon\", \"The Talisman\" and \"When The Wild Wind Blows\". The album, the band's fifteenth, was released on 16 August to critical acclaim. It was also the band's greatest commercial success to that point, reaching number\u00a01 in twenty-eight countries worldwide, including a debut at number\u00a04 on \"Billboard 200\".\nThe album's supporting tour saw the band perform 101 shows across the globe to an estimated audience of over two and a half million, including their first visits to Singapore, Indonesia, and South Korea. \"El Dorado\" won the Best Metal Performance award at the 2011 Grammy Awards, the band's first win after two previous nominations. On 15 March, a new compilation to accompany 2009's \"Somewhere Back in Time\" was announced. The double disc set covers the period 1990\u20132010 (the band's most recent eight studio albums). In 2012, the band announced a new live album and DVD release entitled \"En Vivo!\", based on footage from the Chile concert. The DVD topped the music video charts around the world. In addition to the concert footage, the video release includes an 88-minute tour documentary, entitled Behind The Beast, containing interviews with the band and their crew. In December 2012, one song from the release (\"Blood Brothers\") was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance at the 2013 Grammy Awards.\nOn 15 February, the band announced their third retrospective Maiden England World Tour 2012\u201314, which was based around the video \"Maiden England\". The tour commenced in North America in the summer of 2012 and was followed by further dates in 2013 and 2014, and included the band's fifth headline performance at Donington Park with 100,000 fans in attendance. Iron Maiden closed the tour in July 2014 at Sonisphere Festival, Knebworth, having undertaken 100 shows in 32 countries before an estimated audience of more than 2.7 million people.\nLatest albums and tours (2015\u2013present).\nThe band's 2015 album, \"The Book of Souls\", was released on 4 September. The band's first original studio album not to be issued by EMI outside North America, following Parlophone's acquisition by Warner Music Group in 2013, it was a critical and commercial success, becoming the band's fifth UK number\u00a01 album and hit number\u00a04 on \"Billboard 200\" in the US. The new release reached the number one position in the album charts of 43 countries. The new record was recorded at Guillaume Tell Studios in late summer 2014; its closing song, \"Empire of the Clouds\", penned by Dickinson, surpassed \"Rime of the Ancient Mariner\" (from 1984's \"Powerslave\") as Iron Maiden's longest song, at 18 minutes in length.\nIn February 2016, the band embarked on The Book of Souls World Tour, with shows in 35 countries across six continents, including their first performances in China, El Salvador, and Lithuania. It was the band's biggest album tour since 1996. In total, Iron Maiden played 117 shows on six continents for well over two and a half million people. The band then launched the Legacy of the Beast World Tour in Europe in 2018, with North and South American shows following in 2019. The tour was inspired by the band's new mobile game and comic series released in 2017, entitled \"Legacy of the Beast\". The tour was received very positively by fans and critics, spanning up to three years with 140 shows, performing to over 3.5 million fans.\nThe COVID-19 pandemic forced the rescheduling of nearly one million tickets from 2020, first to 2021, and then to 2022. In October 2020, the band announced they would release a live album from the Legacy of the Beast World Tour called \"Nights of the Dead, Legacy of the Beast: Live in Mexico City\". The double concert album was recorded during three sold-out concerts in Mexico City's Palacio de los Deportes for a combined audience of over 70,000 people.\nOn 15 July 2021, Iron Maiden released a video for their first song in six years, \"The Writing on the Wall\", which was directed by Nicos Livesey. Four days later, the band announced their seventeenth studio album, \"Senjutsu\", would be released on 3 September 2021. \"Senjutsu\" eventually reached the top of the best-seller lists in 27 countries, but it was the band's first album in fifteen years not to reach number one on the UK charts, although it did top the UK Rock & Metal Singles and Albums Charts. In total, \"Senjutsu\" reached the top three in 55 countries and the top five in 63 countries.\nOn 1 February 2023, the band received their second nomination for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The band started their 25th global tour, The Future Past World Tour, with a concert in Ljubljana in May 2023. On 6 October, the band performed at the Power Trip festival which drew nearly 100,000 people. Throughout the 2023\u201324 world tour, Iron Maiden performed 81 shows for almost two million fans. Following the conclusion of the tour in S\u00e3o Paulo in December 2024, McBrain retired from touring, but would still remain a member of Iron Maiden and be involved with various upcoming band-related projects in the studio. The following day, it was announced that British Lion drummer Simon Dawson would be his touring replacement for any further tours.\nOn 19 September 2024, the band announced their 26th global tour, Run For Your Lives World Tour, which is set to start in May 2025, to celebrate the band's 50th anniversary and is set to be focused on the band's first nine studio albums.\nImage and legacy.\nIron Maiden have received numerous nominations, honours and awards including Grammy Awards and equivalents awards in many countries, Brit Awards, Ivor Novello Awards, and Juno Awards. They have ranked highly in many polls of the greatest metal artists of all time. In 2012 \"The Number of the Beast\" was voted as Best British Album Ever by the British public as part of Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Iron Maiden have an exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Rock in Rio Wall of Fame.\nIron Maiden were inducted into Hollywood RockWalk, BPI Hall of Fame and Kerrang! Hall of Fame. Band's mascot Eddie the Head is a part of the British Music Experience permanent exhibition. In April 2021, the band's former members (Paul Di'Anno, Blaze Bayley, and illustrator Derek Riggs) were inducted into the Metal Hall of Fame. They have twice been nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In January 2023 Iron Maiden were honoured by Royal Mail UK with dedicated postal stamps and cards.\nIron Maiden have sold over 130\u00a0million copies of their albums worldwide, despite little radio or television support. According to many sources all audio-visual catalogue of the band have sold in over 200\u00a0million copies worldwide, including regular albums, singles, compilations, and videos. Their third studio album, \"The Number of the Beast,\" is among the most popular heavy metal albums of all time and the most commercially successful release of the band, having sold almost 20 million copies worldwide. As of 2022 their releases have been certified silver, gold and platinum around 600 times worldwide.\nIn 1979\u20131980, visual artist Derek Riggs created the macabre mascot named Eddie The Head. Since then, Eddie has been an integral part of the stage and media image of the group. Originally a papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 mask which would squirt fake blood during their live shows, the character featured on the band's debut album cover, also done by Derek Riggs. Eddie was painted exclusively by Riggs until 1992, at which point the band began using artwork from other artists, including Melvyn Grant.\nA large puppet version of Eddie has appeared many times during carnival celebrations in Rio de Janeiro and other South American cities. During the Cavalcade of Magi 2021 in the Spanish city of Cadiz, next to dolls representing characters known from the world of pop culture, there was a huge, inflatable mummy inspired by the image of the Iron Maiden mascot from 1985.\nIron Maiden's distinct logo has adorned all of the band's releases since their debut, 1979's \"The Soundhouse Tapes\" EP. The typeface originates with Vic Fair's poster design for the 1976 science fiction film, \"The Man Who Fell to Earth\", also used by Gordon Giltrap, although Steve Harris claims he designed it himself, using his training as an architectural draughtsman.\nInfluence on other artists and the genre.\nIron Maiden have influenced numerous artists and bands representing different genres of rock and metal music. Kiss co-founder Paul Stanley said Iron Maiden \"have helped spawn an entire genre of music\" and influenced literally thousands of other artists. According to \"Guitar World\", Iron Maiden's music has \"influenced generations of newer metal acts, from legends like Metallica to current stars like Avenged Sevenfold.\" Metallica members Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, and Jason Newsted have cited Iron Maiden as a major influence on their work. Other bands and artists directly influenced by Iron Maiden include Ghost, Avenged Sevenfold, In Flames, Anthrax, Exodus, and Alice in Chains.\nJournalist Geoff Barton says the band's music constituted an important passage between the classic heavy rock school during the 1960s and 1970s, based on rhythm and blues, and contemporary heavy metal, characterised by sub-genre diversification and stylistic eclecticism. Music journalist G\u00f6tz K\u00fchnemund said \"Iron Maiden were (and still are) the inspiration for all the heavy metal bands we know today because they're an intrinsically heavy metal group. They're equally important for those who play power metal, speed, thrash, death, black, nu metal, metal core and hard rock \u2013 almost every genre.\" The journalist stated the band introduced a DIY approach to all rock music. According to Rock 'n Roll Fantasy Camp the style and attitude of Iron Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain has inspired generations of heavy-metal drummers that followed. Music writer, heavy metal expert and radio broadcaster Scott Penfold stated band's \"influence on the genre is immeasurable, as they not only inspired subsequent generations of metal bands but also revolutionized live shows with their elaborate stage productions, further cementing their status as pioneers of heavy metal.\"\nMusic journalist and the writer Neil Daniels said Iron Maiden \"redefined the whole genre blending classic heavy rock influence with punky vibe, twin guitars attack and progressive approach which finally have created the new quality. [The] Band's influence on generations of rock and metal bands cannot be overstated. They elevated metal to an art form, proving that academic and musical inspirations can coexist.\" The band's profile by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame says \"in the 1980s, Iron Maiden released seven high-octane albums that cemented them as one of the greatest rock bands \u2013 creating a blueprint for how heavy metal bands should look, sound and tour.\" According to \"Metal Hammer\" Iron Maiden is the second band to Black Sabbath, which has had the most significant impact on metal and heavy rock music.\nAppearance in media.\nThe first heavy metal videos broadcast by MTV were the live versions of \"Iron Maiden\" and \"Wrathchild\" taken from the official VHS \"Live at the Rainbow (Iron Maiden)\". In 1989, Iron Maiden took part in the Rock Aid Armenia project (also known as Live Aid Armenia) - a humanitarian project by the British music industry. The project aimed to raise funds to help people affected by the earthquake in Armenia in 1988.\nThe number of releases in tribute to the British band can be estimated in the hundreds, with an extremely wide range of stylistic variants. In 2008, \"Kerrang!\" released \"\", an album composed of Iron Maiden cover songs performed by Metallica, Machine Head, Dream Theater, Trivium, Coheed and Cambria, Avenged Sevenfold, and other groups influenced by the band. In 2010, Maiden uniteD, an acoustic tribute band consisting of members of Ayreon, Threshold and Within Temptation, released \"Mind the Acoustic Pieces\", a re-interpretation of the entire \"Piece of Mind\" album. As of 2021 nearly 200 Iron Maiden cover audio-visual releases exist (each featuring various artists), including piano, electro, string quartet and hip-hop tributes.\nIn March 2025, Netflix will release \"Run to the Hills\", a documentary celebrating Iron Maiden's 50th anniversary. Directed by David Morgan, it will explore the band's rise from their early days in London to global heavy metal icons. The exact release date is yet to be confirmed.\nClaims of Satanic references.\nThe 1982 release of \"The Number of the Beast\" created some controversy for the band. The artwork and title track led to Christian groups in the United States branding the band as Satanists, encouraging people to destroy copies of the release. The band's manager, Rod Smallwood, later said the groups initially burnt the records, but later decided to destroy them with hammers due to fear of breathing in the melting vinyl's fumes. The protests were not restricted to the US, with Christian organisations preventing Iron Maiden from performing in Chile in 1992.\nThe band have always denied the notion they are Satanists, with lead vocalist, Bruce Dickinson, doing so on-stage in the \"Live After Death\" concert video. Steve Harris has since commented that, \"It was mad. They completely got the wrong end of the stick. They obviously hadn't read the lyrics. They just wanted to believe all that rubbish about us being Satanists.\" Harris has also said that \"The Number of the Beast\" song was inspired by a nightmare he had after watching \"\", and also influenced by Robert Burns' \"Tam o' Shanter\". The band's drummer, Nicko McBrain, has been a born-again Christian since 1999.\nEd Force One.\nFor their Somewhere Back in Time World Tour in 2008 and 2009, Iron Maiden commissioned an Astraeus Airlines Boeing 757 as transport. The aeroplane was converted into a combi configuration, which enabled it to carry the band, their crew and stage production, allowing the group to perform in countries which were previously deemed unreachable logistically. It was also repainted with a special Iron Maiden livery, which the airline decided to retain after receiving positive feedback from customers.\nThe aircraft, named \"Ed Force One\" after a competition on the band's website, was flown by Dickinson until 2022, as he was also a commercial airline pilot for Astraeus; the plane also appears in the documentary \"\". For The Book of Souls World Tour in 2016, the band upgraded to an ex-Air France Boeing 747-400 jumbo jet which allows for more space without the aircraft having to undergo a significant conversion to carry their equipment.\nIn 2025, the band announced that the 747-400 they used during 2016's The Book of Souls World Tour would be scrapped, and keychains constructed from the plane's parts could be collected by fans. \"She's been scrapped but bits of her will live on,\" Dickinson said. The keychains were sold for \u20ac66.66, which is a reference to the band's album The \"Number of the Beast\".\nMusical style and influences.\nSteve Harris, Iron Maiden's bassist and primary songwriter, has said his influences include Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes, Jethro Tull, Thin Lizzy, UFO, Queen, and Wishbone Ash. In 2010 Harris said, \"I think if anyone wants to understand Maiden's early thing, in particular the harmony guitars, all they have to do is listen to Wishbone Ash's \"Argus\" album. Thin Lizzy too, but not as much. And then we wanted to have a bit of a prog thing thrown in as well, because I was really into bands like Genesis and Jethro Tull. So you combine all that with the heavy riffs and the speed, and you've got it.\" In 2004, Harris explained the band's \"heaviness\" was inspired by \"Black Sabbath and Deep Purple with a bit of Zeppelin thrown in.\" Harris also developed his own playing style, which guitarist Janick Gers describes as \"more like a rhythm guitar.\" Harris's bass technique is responsible for the band's galloping style, heard in such songs as \"The Trooper\" and \"Run to the Hills\".\nThe band's guitarists, Dave Murray, Adrian Smith, and Janick Gers, each have their own individual influences and playing styles. Dave Murray is known for his legato technique which, he says, \"evolved naturally. I'd heard Jimi Hendrix using legato when I was growing up, and I liked that style of playing.\" Stating that he \"was inspired by blues rock rather than metal,\" Adrian Smith was influenced by Johnny Winter and Pat Travers, leading to him becoming a \"melodic player.\" Janick Gers prefers a more improvised style, largely inspired by Ritchie Blackmore, which he says is in contrast to Smith's \"rhythmic\" sound.\nSinger Bruce Dickinson, who typically works in collaboration with guitarist Adrian Smith, has an operatic vocal style, inspired by Arthur Brown, Peter Hammill, Ian Anderson and Ian Gillan, and is often considered to be one of the best heavy metal vocalists of all time. Although Nicko McBrain has only received one writing credit, on the \"Dance of Death\" album, Harris often relies on him while developing songs. Adrian Smith commented, \"Steve loves playing with him. [They] used to work for hours going over these bass and drum patterns.\"\nThroughout their career, the band's style has remained largely unchanged, although the addition of guitar synthesisers on 1986's \"Somewhere in Time\", keyboards on 1988's \"Seventh Son of a Seventh Son\", and an attempt to return to the \"stripped down\" production of their earlier material on 1990's \"No Prayer for the Dying\" marked some experimentation. In recent years, however, the band have begun using more progressive elements in their songs, which Steve Harris describes as not progressive \"in the modern sense, but like Dream Theater, more in a 70s way\". Greg Prato of Ultimate-Guitar wrote, \"By and large, Iron Maiden's long and lengthy career can be categorized into two separate eras: \"punk Maiden\" and \"prog Maiden\". According to Harris, \"Seventh Son of a Seventh Son\" was the band's first album which was \"more progressive\", and they would return to this style in 1995's \"The X Factor\", which he states is \"like an extension of \"Seventh Son\"..., in the sense of the progressive element to it\". The development contrasts with the band's raw-sounding earlier material, which AllMusic states was \"clearly drawing from elements of punk rock\", although Harris firmly denies this.\nBand members.\nCurrent lineup\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "6034919": "Wasting Love\n\"Wasting Love\" is a song by the English heavy metal band Iron Maiden. It is the third single from their ninth studio album, \"Fear of the Dark\", released in 1992.\nSynopsis.\nThe song was a collaboration of singer Bruce Dickinson, and guitarist Janick Gers. The lyrics deal with the subject of loneliness brought on by sex outside the context of love.\nThe single was only officially released in the Netherlands, although different one-track promotional CDs exist, one for U.S. radio stations and another for Spain, which had the only vinyl version of the single.\nThe single cover is the third Iron Maiden single not to feature the band's iconic mascot Eddie on the front cover (the previous examples being \"Running Free (live)\" and \"From Here to Eternity\"). The cover photo alludes to the music video, which portrays a man tattooing the names of women all over his body. The song's video was directed by Samuel Bayer.\nThe guitar solo in \"Wasting Love\" is played by Janick Gers.\nB-sides.\nThe B-side features three live tracks recorded at London's Wembley Arena on the \"No Prayer On The Road\" tour to support the \"No Prayer for the Dying\" album in 1990. These live recordings of \"Tailgunner\", \"Holy Smoke\" and \"The Assassin\" are also available on a very rare Australian digi-pack (CD) version of the \"Fear of the Dark\" album that was released to promote the Australian leg of the tour in 1992.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["6034919", "159172"], "permutation_1": ["6034919", "159172"], "permutation_2": ["6034919", "159172"], "permutation_3": ["159172", "6034919"]}
{"id": "2hop__31867_17274", "docs_added": {"9282173": "Israel\nCountry in West Asia\nIsrael, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. Situated in the Southern Levant of the Middle East, it shares borders with Lebanon and Syria to the north, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the southwest, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. It occupies the Palestinian territories of the West Bank in the east and the Gaza Strip in the southwest. Israel also has a small coastline on the Red Sea at its southernmost point, and part of the Dead Sea lies along its eastern border. Its proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, while Tel Aviv is the country's largest urban area and economic center.\nIsrael is located in a region known as the Land of Israel, synonymous with the Canaan region and the Holy Land. In antiquity, it was home to the Canaanite civilisation followed by the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Situated at a continental crossroad, the region experienced demographic changes under the rule of empires from the Romans to the Ottomans. European antisemitism in the late 19th century galvanised Zionism, which sought a Jewish homeland in Palestine and gained British support. After World War I, Britain occupied the region and established Mandatory Palestine in 1920. Increased Jewish immigration in the leadup to the Holocaust and British foreign policy in the Middle East led to intercommunal conflict between Jews and Arabs, which escalated into a civil war in 1947 after a proposed partition by the United Nations was rejected by the Arabs.\nAfter the end of the British Mandate for Palestine, Israel declared independence on 14 May 1948. Neighboring Arab states invaded the area the next day, beginning the First Arab\u2013Israeli War. Subsequent armistice agreements established Israeli control over 77 percent of the former Mandate territory. The majority of Palestinian Arabs were either expelled or fled in what is known as the Nakba, with those remaining becoming the new state's main minority. Over the following decades, Israel's population increased greatly as the country received an influx of Jews who emigrated, fled or were expelled from the Muslim world. Following the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Egyptian Sinai Peninsula and Syrian Golan Heights. Israel established and continues to expand settlements across the illegally occupied territories, contrary to international law, and has effectively annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in moves largely unrecognised internationally. After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel signed peace treaties with Egypt\u2014returning the Sinai in 1982\u2014and Jordan. In 1993, Israel signed the Oslo Accords which established mutual recognition and limited Palestinian self-governance in parts of the West Bank and Gaza. In the 2020s, it normalised relations with several more Arab countries via the Abraham Accords. However, efforts to resolve the Israeli\u2013Palestinian conflict after the interim Oslo Accords have not succeeded, and the country has engaged in several wars and clashes with Palestinian militant groups. Israel's practices in its occupation of the Palestinian territories have drawn sustained international criticism\u2014along with accusations that it has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinian people\u2014from human rights organisations and United Nations officials.\nThe country's Basic Laws establish a parliament elected by proportional representation, the Knesset, which determines the makeup of the government headed by the prime minister and elects the figurehead president. Israel is the only country to have a revived official language, Hebrew. It is the only country where Jews constitute more than 2% of the total population, and in which they are the largest demographic. Its culture comprises Jewish and Jewish diaspora elements alongside Arab influences. Israel has one of the largest economies in the Middle East, the third highest nominal GDP per capita in Asia, and one of the highest standards of living in Asia. One of the most technologically advanced and developed countries in the world, it spends proportionally more on research and development than any other country in the world and is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons.\nEtymology.\nUnder the British Mandate (1920\u20131948), the entire region was known as \"Palestine\". Upon establishment in 1948, the country formally adopted the name \"State of Israel\" (, ; , , ) after other proposed names including \"Land of Israel\" (), \"Ever\" (from ancestor Eber), \"Zion\", and \"Judea\", were considered but rejected. The name \"Israel\" was suggested by David Ben-Gurion and passed by a vote of 6\u20133. In the early weeks after establishment, the government chose the term \"Israeli\" to denote a citizen of the Israeli state.\nThe names Land of Israel and Children of Israel have historically been used to refer to the biblical Kingdom of Israel and the entire Jewish people respectively. The name \"Israel\" (Hebrew: ; Septuagint , , \"El (God) persists/rules\") refers to the patriarch Jacob who, according to the Hebrew Bible, was given the name after he successfully wrestled with the Angel of the Lord. The earliest known archaeological artifact to mention the word \"Israel\" as a collective is the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt (dated to the late 13th century BCE).\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nEarly hominin presence in the Levant, where Israel is located, dates back at least 1.5 million years based on the Ubeidiya prehistoric site. The Skhul and Qafzeh hominins, dating back 120,000 years, are some of the earliest traces of anatomically modern humans outside of Africa. The Natufian culture, which may have been linked to Proto-Afroasiatic language, emerged by the 10th millennium BCE, followed by the Ghassulian culture by around 4,500 BCE.\nBronze and Iron Ages.\nEarly references to \"Canaanites\" and \"Canaan\" appear in Near Eastern and Egyptian texts (c. 2000 BCE); these populations were structured as politically independent city-states. During the Late Bronze Age (1550\u20131200 BCE), large parts of Canaan formed vassal states of the New Kingdom of Egypt. As a result of the Late Bronze Age collapse, Canaan fell into chaos, and Egyptian control over the region collapsed. Ancestors of the Israelites are thought to have included ancient Semitic-speaking peoples native to this area. Modern archaeological accounts suggest that the Israelites and their culture branched out of the Canaanite peoples through the development of a distinct monolatristic\u2014and later monotheistic\u2014religion centered on Yahweh. They spoke an archaic form of Hebrew, known as Biblical Hebrew. Around the same time, the Philistines settled on the southern coastal plain.\nMost modern scholars agree that the Exodus narrative in the Torah and Old Testament did not take place as depicted; however, some elements of these traditions do have historical roots. There is debate about the earliest existence of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah and their extent and power. While it is unclear if there was a United Kingdom of Israel, historians and archaeologists agree that the northern Kingdom of Israel existed by ca. 900 BCE and the Kingdom of Judah by ca. 850 BCE. The Kingdom of Israel was the more prosperous of the two and soon developed into a regional power, with a capital at Samaria; during the Omride dynasty, it controlled Samaria, Galilee, the upper Jordan Valley, the plain of Sharon and large parts of Transjordan.\nThe Kingdom of Israel was conquered around 720 BCE by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Kingdom of Judah, under Davidic rule with its capital in Jerusalem, later became a client state of first the Neo-Assyrian Empire and then the Neo-Babylonian Empire. It is estimated that the region's population was around 400,000 in the Iron Age II. In 587/6 BCE, following a revolt in Judah, King Nebuchadnezzar II besieged and destroyed Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple, dissolved the kingdom and exiled much of the Judean elite to Babylon.\nClassical antiquity.\nAfter capturing Babylon in 539 BCE, Cyrus the Great, founder of the Achaemenid Empire, issued a proclamation allowing the exiled Judean population to return. The construction of the Second Temple was completed c.\u2009520 BCE. The Achaemenids ruled the region as the province of Yehud Medinata. In 332 BCE, Alexander the Great conquered the region as part of his campaign against the Achaemenid Empire. After his death, the area was controlled by the Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires as a part of Coele-Syria. Over the ensuing centuries, the Hellenisation of the region led to cultural tensions that came to a head during the reign of Antiochus IV, giving rise to the Maccabean Revolt of 167 BCE. The civil unrest weakened Seleucid rule, and in the late 2nd century the semi-autonomous Hasmonean Kingdom of Judea arose, eventually attaining full independence and expanding into neighboring regions.\nThe Roman Republic invaded the region in 63 BCE, first taking control of Syria, and then intervening in the Hasmonean civil war. The struggle between pro-Roman and pro-Parthian factions in Judea led to the installation of Herod the Great as a dynastic vassal of Rome. In 6 CE, the area was annexed as the Roman province of Judaea; tensions with Roman rule led to a series of Jewish\u2013Roman wars, resulting in widespread destruction. The First Jewish\u2013Roman War (66\u201373 CE) resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple and a sizable portion of the population being killed or displaced.\nA second uprising known as the Bar Kokhba revolt (132\u2013136 CE) initially allowed the Jews to form an independent state, but the Romans brutally crushed the rebellion, devastating and depopulating Judea's countryside. Jerusalem was rebuilt as a Roman colony (Aelia Capitolina), and the province of Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina. Jews were expelled from the districts surrounding Jerusalem. Nevertheless, there was a continuous small Jewish presence, and Galilee became its religious center.\nLate antiquity and the medieval period.\nEarly Christianity displaced Roman paganism in the 4th century CE, with Constantine embracing and promoting the Christian religion and Theodosius I making it the state religion. A series of laws were passed that discriminated against Jews and Judaism, and Jews were persecuted by both the church and the authorities. Many Jews had emigrated to flourishing diaspora communities, while locally there was both Christian immigration and local conversion. By the middle of the 5th century, there was a Christian majority. Towards the end of the 5th century, Samaritan revolts erupted, continuing until the late 6th century and resulting in a large decrease in the Samaritan population. After the Sasanian conquest of Jerusalem and the short-lived Jewish revolt against Heraclius in 614 CE, the Byzantine Empire reconsolidated control of the area in 628.\nIn 634\u2013641 CE, the Rashidun Caliphate conquered the Levant. Over the next six centuries, control of the region transferred between the Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid caliphates, and subsequently the Seljuk and Ayyubid dynasties. The population drastically decreased during the following several centuries, dropping from an estimated 1 million during Roman and Byzantine periods to about 300,000 by the early Ottoman period, and there was steady Arabisation and Islamisation. The end of the 11th century brought the Crusades, papally-sanctioned incursions of Christian crusaders intent on wresting Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim control and establishing crusader states. The Ayyubids pushed back the crusaders before Muslim rule was fully restored by the Mamluk sultans of Egypt in 1291.\nModern period and the emergence of Zionism.\nIn 1516, the Ottoman Empire conquered the region and ruled it as part of Ottoman Syria. Two violent incidents took place against Jews, the 1517 Safed attacks and the 1517 Hebron attacks, after the Turkish Ottomans ousted the Mamluks during the Ottoman\u2013Mamluk War. Under the Ottoman Empire, the Levant was fairly cosmopolitan, with religious freedoms for Christians, Muslims, and Jews. In 1561 the Ottoman sultan invited Sephardi Jews escaping the Spanish Inquisition to settle in and rebuild the city of Tiberias.\nUnder the Ottoman Empire's millet system, Christians and Jews were considered \"dhimmi\" (\"protected\") under Ottoman law in exchange for loyalty to the state and payment of the \"jizya\" tax. Non-Muslim Ottoman subjects faced geographic and lifestyle restrictions, though these were not always enforced. The millet system organised non-Muslims into autonomous communities on the basis of religion.\nThe concept of the \"return\" remained a symbol within religious Jewish belief which emphasised that their return should be determined by Divine Providence rather than human action. Leading Zionist historian Shlomo Avineri describes this connection: \"Jews did not relate to the vision of the Return in a more active way than most Christians viewed the Second Coming.\" The religious Judaic notion of being a nation was distinct from the modern European notion of nationalism. The Jewish population of Palestine from the Ottoman rule to the beginning of the Zionist movement, known as the Old Yishuv, comprised a minority and fluctuated in size. During the 16th century, Jewish communities struck roots in the Four Holy Cities\u2014Jerusalem, Tiberias, Hebron, and Safed\u2014and in 1697, Rabbi Yehuda Hachasid led 1,500 Jews to Jerusalem. A 1660 Druze revolt against the Ottomans destroyed Safed and Tiberias. In the second half of the 18th century, Eastern European Jews who were opponents of Hasidism, known as the Perushim, settled in Palestine.\nIn the late 18th century, local Arab Sheikh Zahir al-Umar created a de facto independent emirate in the Galilee. Ottoman attempts to subdue the sheikh failed. After Zahir's death the Ottomans regained control of the area. In 1799, governor Jazzar Pasha repelled an assault on Acre by Napoleon's troops, prompting the French to abandon the Syrian campaign. In 1834, a revolt by Palestinian Arab peasants against Egyptian conscription and taxation policies under Muhammad Ali was suppressed; Muhammad Ali's army retreated and Ottoman rule was restored with British support in 1840. The Tanzimat reforms were implemented across the Ottoman Empire.\nThe first wave of modern Jewish migration to Ottoman-ruled Palestine, known as the First Aliyah, began in 1881, as Jews fled pogroms in Eastern Europe. The 1882 May Laws increased economic discrimination against Jews, and restricted where they could live. In response, political Zionism took form, a movement that sought to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, thus offering a solution to the Jewish question of the European states. Antisemitism, pogroms and official policies, in tsarist Russia led to the emigration of three million Jews in the years between 1882 and 1914, only 1% of which went to Palestine. Those who went to Palestine were driven primarily by ideas of self-determination and Jewish identity, rather than as a response to pogroms or economic insecurity.\nThe Second Aliyah (1904\u20131914) began after the Kishinev pogrom; some 40,000 Jews settled in Palestine, although nearly half left eventually. Both the first and second waves of migrants were mainly Orthodox Jews. The Second Aliyah included Zionist socialist groups who established the \"kibbutz\" movement based on the idea of establishing a separate Jewish economy based exclusively on Jewish labour. Those of the Second Aliyah who became leaders of the Yishuv in the coming decades believed that the Jewish settler economy should not depend on Arab labour. This would be a dominant source of antagonism with the Arab population, with the new Yishuv's nationalist ideology overpowering its socialist one. Though the immigrants of the Second Aliyah largely sought to create communal Jewish agricultural settlements, Tel Aviv was established as the first planned Jewish town in 1909. Jewish armed militias emerged during this period, the first being Bar-Giora in 1907. Two years later, the larger Hashomer organisation was founded as its replacement.\nBritish Mandate for Palestine.\nChaim Weizmann's efforts to garner British support for the Zionist movement eventually secured the Balfour Declaration of 1917, stating Britain's support for the creation of a Jewish \"national home\" in Palestine. Weizmann's interpretation of the declaration was that negotiations on the future of the country were to happen directly between Britain and the Jews, excluding Arabs. Jewish-Arab relations in Palestine deteriorated dramatically in the following years.\nIn 1918 the Jewish Legion, primarily Zionist volunteers, assisted in the British conquest of Palestine. In 1920 the territory was divided between Britain and France under the mandate system, and the British-administered area (including modern Israel) was named Mandatory Palestine. Arab opposition to British rule and Jewish immigration led to the 1920 Palestine riots and the formation of a Jewish militia known as the Haganah as an outgrowth of Hashomer, from which the Irgun and Lehi paramilitaries later split. In 1922, the League of Nations granted Britain the Mandate for Palestine under terms which included the Balfour Declaration with its promise to the Jews and with similar provisions regarding the Arab Palestinians. The population of the area was predominantly Arab and Muslim, with Jews accounting for about 11% and Arab Christians about 9.5% of the population.\nThe Third (1919\u20131923) and Fourth Aliyahs (1924\u20131929) brought an additional 100,000 Jews to Palestine. The rise of Nazism, and the increasing persecution of Jews in 1930s Europe led to the Fifth Aliyah, with an influx of a quarter of a million Jews. This was a major cause of the Arab revolt of 1936\u201339, which was suppressed by British security forces and Zionist militias. Several hundred British security personnel and Jews were killed; 5,032 Arabs were killed, 14,760 wounded, and 12,622 detained. An estimated ten percent of the adult male Palestinian Arab population was killed, wounded, imprisoned or exiled.\nThe British introduced restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine with the White Paper of 1939. With countries around the world turning away Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust, a clandestine movement known as Aliyah Bet was organised to bring Jews to Palestine. By the end of World War II, 31% of the population of Palestine was Jewish. The UK found itself facing a Jewish insurgency over immigration restrictions and continued conflict with the Arab community over limit levels. The Haganah joined Irgun and Lehi in an armed struggle against British rule. The Haganah attempted to bring tens of thousands of Jewish refugees and Holocaust survivors to Palestine by ship. Most of the ships were intercepted by the Royal Navy and the refugees placed in detention camps in Atlit and Cyprus.\nOn 22 July 1946, Irgun bombed the British administrative headquarters for Palestine, killing 91. The attack was a response to Operation Agatha (a series of raids, including one on the Jewish Agency, by the British) and was the deadliest directed at the British during the Mandate era. The Jewish insurgency continued throughout 1946 and 1947 despite concerted efforts by the British military and Palestine Police Force to suppress it. British efforts to mediate with Jewish and Arab representatives also failed as the Jews were unwilling to accept any solution that did not involve a Jewish state and suggested a partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, while the Arabs were adamant that a Jewish state in any part of Palestine was unacceptable and that the only solution was a unified Palestine under Arab rule. In February 1947, the British referred the Palestine issue to the newly formed United Nations. On 15 May 1947, the UN General Assembly resolved that a Special Committee be created \"to prepare ... a report on the question of Palestine\". The Report of the Committee proposed a plan to replace the British Mandate with \"an independent Arab State, an independent Jewish State, and the City of Jerusalem [...] the last to be under an International Trusteeship System\". Meanwhile, the Jewish insurgency continued and peaked in July 1947, with a series of widespread guerrilla raids culminating in the Sergeants affair, in which the Irgun took two British sergeants hostage as attempted leverage against the planned execution of three Irgun operatives. After the executions were carried out, the Irgun killed the two British soldiers, hanged their bodies from trees, and left a booby trap at the scene which injured a British soldier. The incident caused widespread outrage in the UK. In September 1947, the British cabinet decided to evacuate Palestine as the Mandate was no longer tenable.\nOn 29 November 1947, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 (II). The plan attached to the resolution was essentially that proposed in the report of 3 September. The Jewish Agency, the recognised representative of the Jewish community, accepted the plan, which assigned 55\u201356% of Mandatory Palestine to the Jews. At the time, the Jews were about a third of the population and owned around 6\u20137% of the land. Arabs constituted the majority and owned about 20% of the land, with the remainder held by the Mandate authorities or foreign landowners. The Arab League and Arab Higher Committee of Palestine rejected it on the basis that the partition plan privileged European interests over those of the Palestinians, and indicated that they would reject any other plan of partition. On 1 December 1947, the Arab Higher Committee proclaimed a three-day strike, and riots broke out in Jerusalem. The situation spiraled into a civil war. Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones announced that the British Mandate would end on 15 May 1948, at which point the British would evacuate. As Arab militias and gangs attacked Jewish areas, they were faced mainly by the Haganah as well as the smaller Irgun and Lehi. In April 1948, the Haganah moved onto the offensive.\nState of Israel.\nEstablishment and early years.\nOn 14 May 1948, the day before the expiration of the British Mandate, David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, declared \"the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel\". The following day, the armies of four Arab countries\u2014Egypt, Syria, Transjordan and Iraq\u2014entered what had been Mandatory Palestine, launching the 1948 Arab\u2013Israeli War; contingents from Yemen, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan joined the war. The purpose of the invasion was to prevent the establishment of the Jewish state. The Arab League stated the invasion was to restore order and prevent further bloodshed.\nAfter a year of fighting, a ceasefire was declared and temporary borders, known as the Green Line, were established. Jordan annexed what became known as the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip. Over 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled by Zionist militias and the Israeli military\u2014what would become known in Arabic as the \"nakba\" ('catastrophe'). The events also led to the destruction of most of Palestine's Arab culture, identity, and national aspirations. Some 156,000 Arabs remained and became Arab citizens of Israel.\nBy United Nations General Assembly Resolution 273, Israel was admitted as a member of the UN on 11 May 1949. In the early years of the state, the Labour Zionist movement led by Prime Minister Ben-Gurion dominated Israeli politics. Immigration to Israel during the late 1940s and early 1950s was aided by the Israeli Immigration Department and the non-government sponsored Mossad LeAliyah Bet (lit. \"Institute for Immigration B\"). The latter engaged in clandestine operations in countries, particularly in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, where the lives of Jews were in danger and exit was difficult. Mossad LeAliyah Bet was disbanded in 1953. The immigration was in accordance with the One Million Plan. Some immigrants held Zionist beliefs or came for the promise of a better life, while others moved to escape persecution or were expelled from their homes.\nAn influx of Holocaust survivors and Jews from Arab and Muslim countries to Israel during the first three years increased the number of Jews from 700,000 to 1,400,000. By 1958, the population had risen to two million. Between 1948 and 1970, approximately 1,150,000 Jewish refugees relocated to Israel. Some immigrants arrived as refugees and were housed in temporary camps known as \"ma'abarot\"; by 1952, over 200,000 people were living in these tent cities. Jews of European background were often treated more favourably than Jews from Middle Eastern and North African countries\u2014housing units reserved for the latter were often re-designated for the former, so Jews newly arrived from Arab lands generally ended up staying longer in transit camps. During this period, food, clothes and furniture were rationed in what became known as the austerity period. The need to solve the crisis led Ben-Gurion to sign a reparations agreement with West Germany that triggered mass protests by Jews angered at the idea that Israel could accept monetary compensation for the Holocaust.\nArab\u2013Israeli conflict.\nDuring the 1950s, Israel was frequently attacked by Palestinian fedayeen, nearly always against civilians, mainly from the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip, leading to several Israeli reprisal operations. In 1956, the UK and France aimed at regaining control of the Suez Canal, which Egypt had nationalised. The continued blockade of the Suez Canal and Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, together with increasing fedayeen attacks against Israel's southern population and recent Arab threatening statements, prompted Israel to attack Egypt. Israel joined a secret alliance with the UK and France and overran the Sinai Peninsula in the Suez Crisis but was pressured to withdraw by the UN in return for guarantees of Israeli shipping rights. The war resulted in significant reduction of Israeli border infiltration.\nIn the early 1960s, Israel captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and brought him to Israel for trial. Eichmann remains the only person executed in Israel by conviction in an Israeli civilian court. In 1963, Israel was engaged in a diplomatic standoff with the United States in relation to the Israeli nuclear programme.\nSince 1964 Arab countries, concerned over Israeli plans to divert waters of the Jordan River into the coastal plain, had been trying to divert the headwaters to deprive Israel of water resources, provoking tensions between Israel on the one hand, and Syria and Lebanon on the other. Arab nationalists led by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser refused to recognise Israel and called for its destruction. By 1966 Israeli-Arab relations had deteriorated to the point of battles taking place between Israeli and Arab forces.\nIn May 1967, Egypt massed its army near the border with Israel, expelled UN peacekeepers stationed in the Sinai Peninsula since 1957, and blocked Israel's access to the Red Sea. Other Arab states mobilised their forces. Israel reiterated that these actions were a \"casus belli\" and launched a pre-emptive strike (Operation Focus) against Egypt in June. Jordan, Syria and Iraq attacked Israel. In the Six-Day War, Israel captured and occupied the West Bank from Jordan, the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Jerusalem's boundaries were enlarged, incorporating East Jerusalem. The 1949 Green Line became the administrative boundary between Israel and the occupied territories.\nFollowing the 1967 war and the \"Three Nos\" resolution of the Arab League, Israel faced attacks from the Egyptians in the Sinai Peninsula during the 1967\u20131970 War of Attrition, and from Palestinian groups targeting Israelis in the occupied territories, globally, and in Israel. Most important among the Palestinian and Arab groups was the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), established in 1964, which initially committed itself to \"armed struggle as the only way to liberate the homeland\". In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Palestinian groups launched attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets around the world, including a massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. The Israeli government responded with an assassination campaign against the organisers of the massacre, a bombing and a raid on the PLO headquarters in Lebanon.\nOn 6 October 1973, the Egyptian and Syrian armies launched a surprise attack against Israeli forces in the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights, opening the Yom Kippur War. The war ended on 25 October with Israel repelling Egyptian and Syrian forces but suffering great losses. An internal inquiry exonerated the government of responsibility for failures before and during the war, but public anger forced Prime Minister Golda Meir to resign. In July 1976, an airliner was hijacked in flight from Israel to France by Palestinian guerrillas; Israeli commandos rescued 102 of 106 Israeli hostages.\nPeace process.\nThe 1977 Knesset elections marked a major turning point in Israeli political history as Menachem Begin's Likud party took control from the Labour Party. Later that year, Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat made a trip to Israel and spoke before the Knesset in what was the first recognition of Israel by an Arab head of state. Sadat and Begin signed the Camp David Accords (1978) and the Egypt\u2013Israel peace treaty (1979). In return, Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula and agreed to enter negotiations over autonomy for Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.\nOn 11 March 1978, a PLO guerilla raid from Lebanon led to the Coastal Road massacre. Israel responded by launching an invasion of southern Lebanon to destroy PLO bases. Begin's government meanwhile provided incentives for Israelis to settle in the occupied West Bank, increasing friction with the Palestinians there.\nThe 1980 Jerusalem Law was believed by some to reaffirm Israel's 1967 annexation of Jerusalem by government decree and reignited international controversy over the status of the city. No Israeli legislation has defined the territory of Israel, and no act specifically included East Jerusalem therein. In 1981 Israel effectively annexed the Golan Heights. The international community largely rejected these moves, with the UN Security Council declaring both the Jerusalem Law and the Golan Heights Law null and void. Several waves of Ethiopian Jews immigrated to Israel since the 1980s, while between 1990 and 1994, immigration from the post-Soviet states increased Israel's population by twelve percent.\nOn 7 June 1981, during the Iran\u2013Iraq War, the Israeli air force destroyed Iraq's sole nuclear reactor, then under construction, in order to impede the Iraqi nuclear weapons programme. Following a series of PLO attacks in 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon to destroy the PLO bases. In the first six days, Israel destroyed the military forces of the PLO in Lebanon and decisively defeated the Syrians. An Israeli government inquiry (the Kahan Commission) held Begin and several Israeli generals indirectly responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacre and held defence minister Ariel Sharon as bearing \"personal responsibility\". Sharon was forced to resign. In 1985, Israel responded to a Palestinian terrorist attack in Cyprus by bombing the PLO headquarters in Tunisia. Israel withdrew from most of Lebanon in 1986 but maintained a borderland buffer zone in southern Lebanon until 2000, from where Israeli forces engaged in conflict with Hezbollah. The First Intifada, a Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule, broke out in 1987, with waves of uncoordinated demonstrations and violence in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Over the following six years, the intifada became more organised and included economic and cultural measures aimed at disrupting the Israeli occupation. Over 1,000 people were killed. During the 1991 Gulf War, the PLO supported Saddam Hussein and Iraqi missile attacks against Israel. Despite public outrage, Israel heeded American calls to refrain from hitting back.\nIn 1992, Yitzhak Rabin became prime minister following an election in which his party called for compromise with Israel's neighbours. The following year, Shimon Peres on behalf of Israel and Yasser Arafat for the PLO signed the Oslo Accords, which gave the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) the right to govern parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The PLO also recognised Israel's right to exist and pledged an end to terrorism. In 1994, the Israel\u2013Jordan peace treaty was signed, making Jordan the second Arab country to normalise relations with Israel. Arab public support for the Accords was damaged by the continuation of Israeli settlements and checkpoints, and the deterioration of economic conditions. Israeli public support for the Accords waned after Palestinian suicide attacks. In November 1995, Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, a far-right Jew who opposed the Accords.\nDuring Benjamin Netanyahu's premiership at the end of the 1990s, Israel agreed to withdraw from Hebron, though this was never ratified or implemented, and he signed the Wye River Memorandum. The agreement dealt with further redeployments in the West Bank and security issues. The memorandum was criticised by major international human rights organisations for its \"encouragement\" of human rights abuses.\nEhud Barak, elected prime minister in 1999, withdrew forces from southern Lebanon and conducted negotiations with PNA Chairman Yasser Arafat and U.S. President Bill Clinton at the 2000 Camp David Summit. Barak offered a plan for the establishment of a Palestinian state, including the entirety of the Gaza Strip and over 90% of the West Bank with Jerusalem as a shared capital. Each side blamed the other for the failure of the talks.\n21st century.\nIn late 2000, after a controversial visit by Sharon to the Temple Mount, the Second Intifada began. The popular uprising faced disproportionate repression from the Israeli state. Palestinian suicide bombings eventually developed into a recurrent feature of the intifada. Some commentators contend that the intifada was pre-planned by Arafat after the collapse of peace talks. Sharon became prime minister in a 2001 election; he carried out his plan to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip and spearheaded the construction of the West Bank barrier, ending the intifada. Between 2000 and 2008, 1,063 Israelis, 5,517 Palestinians and 64 foreign citizens were killed.\nIn 2006, a Hezbollah artillery assault on Israel's northern border communities and a cross-border abduction of two Israeli soldiers precipitated the month-long Second Lebanon War. In 2007 the Israeli Air Force destroyed a nuclear reactor in Syria. In 2008, a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel collapsed, resulting in the three-week Gaza War. In what Israel described as a response to over a hundred Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israeli cities, Israel began an operation in the Gaza Strip in 2012, lasting eight days. Israel started another operation in Gaza following an escalation of rocket attacks by Hamas in July 2014. In May 2021 another round of fighting took place in Gaza and Israel, lasting eleven days.\nBy the 2010s, increasing regional cooperation between Israel and Arab League countries have been established, culminating in the signing of the Abraham Accords. The Israeli security situation shifted from the traditional Arab\u2013Israeli conflict towards the Iran\u2013Israel proxy conflict and direct confrontation with Iran during the Syrian civil war. On 7 October 2023, Palestinian militant groups from Gaza, led by Hamas, launched a series of coordinated attacks on Israel, leading to the start of the Gaza war. On that day, approximately 1,300 Israelis, predominantly civilians, were killed in communities near the Gaza Strip border and during a music festival. Over 200 hostages were kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip.\nAfter clearing militants from its territory, Israel launched one of the most destructive bombing campaigns in modern history and invaded Gaza on 27 October with the stated objectives of destroying Hamas and freeing hostages. The fifth war of the Gaza\u2013Israel conflict since 2008, it has been the deadliest for Palestinians in the entire Israeli\u2013Palestinian conflict and the most significant military engagement in the region since the Yom Kippur War in 1973. On 1 October 2024, Israel invaded Southern Lebanon, marking the fifth Israeli invasion of Lebanon since 1978. The invasion took place after nearly 12 months of Israel\u2013Hezbollah conflict.\nIsrael is accused of carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian people by a United Nations agency, experts, governments, and non-governmental organisations during its invasion of the Gaza Strip in the ongoing Gaza war.\nGeography.\nGeography of Israel\nGalilee \nCoastalplain \nJudaeanMountains \nJordanValley \nNegev \n \n \n \n \n \nIsrael is located in the Levant area of the Fertile Crescent. At the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, it is bounded by Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan and the West Bank to the east, and Egypt and the Gaza Strip to the southwest. It lies between latitudes 29\u00b0 and 34\u00b0 N, and longitudes 34\u00b0 and 36\u00b0 E.\nThe sovereign territory of Israel (according to the demarcation lines of the 1949 Armistice Agreements and excluding all territories captured by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War) is approximately , of which two\u00a0percent is water. However Israel is so narrow (100\u00a0km at its widest, compared to 400\u00a0km from north to south) that the exclusive economic zone in the Mediterranean is double the land area of the country. The total area under Israeli law, including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, is , and the total area under Israeli control, including the military-controlled and partially Palestinian-governed territory of the West Bank, is .\nDespite its small size, Israel is home to a variety of geographic features, from the Negev desert in the south to the inland fertile Jezreel Valley, with mountain ranges of the Galilee, Carmel and towards the Golan in the north. The Israeli coastal plain on the shores of the Mediterranean is home to most of the population. East of the central highlands lies the Jordan Rift Valley, a small part of the Great Rift Valley. The Jordan River runs along the Jordan Rift Valley, from Mount Hermon through the Hulah Valley and the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on the surface of the Earth. Further south is the Arabah, ending with the Gulf of Eilat, part of the Red Sea. Makhtesh, or \"erosion cirques\" are unique to the Negev and the Sinai Peninsula, the largest being the Makhtesh Ramon at 38\u00a0km in length. Israel has the largest number of plant species per square meter of the countries in the Mediterranean Basin and contains four terrestrial ecoregions: Eastern Mediterranean conifer\u2013sclerophyllous\u2013broadleaf forests, Southern Anatolian montane conifer and deciduous forests, Arabian Desert, and Mesopotamian shrub desert. Forests accounted for 8.5% of the area in 2016, up from 2% in 1948, as the result of a large-scale forest planting programme by the Jewish National Fund.\nTectonics and seismicity.\nThe Jordan Rift Valley is the result of tectonic movements within the Dead Sea Transform (DST) fault system. The DST forms the transform boundary between the African Plate to the west and the Arabian Plate to the east. The Golan Heights and all of Jordan are part of the Arabian Plate, while the Galilee, West Bank, Coastal Plain, and Negev along with the Sinai Peninsula are on the African Plate. This tectonic disposition leads to a relatively high seismic activity. The entire Jordan Valley segment is thought to have ruptured repeatedly, for instance during the last two major earthquakes along this structure in 749 and 1033. The deficit in slip that has built up since 1033 is sufficient to cause an earthquake of ~7.4.\nThe most catastrophic known earthquakes occurred in 31 BCE, 363, 749, and 1033 CE, that is every ca. 400 years on average. Destructive earthquakes strike about every 80 years, leading to serious loss of life . While stringent construction regulations are in place and recently built structures are earthquake resistant, as of 2007[ [update]] many public buildings as well as 50,000 residential buildings did not meet the new standards and were \"expected to collapse\" if exposed to a strong earthquake.\nClimate.\nTemperatures vary widely, especially during the winter. Coastal areas, such as those of Tel Aviv and Haifa, have a typical Mediterranean climate with cool, rainy winters and long, hot summers. The area of Beersheba and the northern Negev have a semi-arid climate with hot summers, cool winters, and fewer rainy days. The southern Negev and the Arabah areas have a desert climate with very hot, dry summers, and mild winters with few days of rain. The highest temperature of 54\u00a0\u00b0C (129\u00a0\u00b0F) was recorded in 1942 in the Tirat Zvi kibbutz. Mountainous regions can be windy and cold, and areas at elevation of or more (same elevation as Jerusalem) usually receive at least one snowfall each year. From May to September, rain is rare.\nThere are four different phytogeographic regions, due to its location between the temperate and tropical zones. For this reason, the flora and fauna are extremely diverse. There are 2,867 known species of plants in Israel. Of these, at least 253 species are introduced and non-native. There are 380 Israeli nature reserves.\nWith scarce water resources, Israel has developed various water-saving technologies, including drip irrigation. The considerable sunlight available for solar energy makes Israel the leading nation in solar energy use per capita\u2014practically every house uses solar panels for water heating. The Ministry of Environmental Protection has reported that climate change \"will have a decisive impact on all areas of life\", particularly for vulnerable populations.\nGovernment and politics.\nIsrael has a parliamentary system, proportional representation and universal suffrage. A member of parliament supported by a parliamentary majority becomes the prime minister\u2014usually this is the chair of the largest party. The prime minister is the head of government and of cabinet. The president is head of state, with largely ceremonial duties.\nIsrael is governed by a 120-member parliament, known as the Knesset. Membership of the Knesset is based on proportional representation of political parties, with a 3.25% electoral threshold, which in practice has resulted in coalition governments. Residents of Israeli settlements in the West Bank are eligible to vote, and after the 2015 election 10 of the 120 members of the Knesset () were settlers. Parliamentary elections are scheduled every four years, but unstable coalitions or a no-confidence vote can dissolve a government earlier. The first Arab-led party was established in 1988, and as of 2022 Arab-led parties hold about 10% of seats. A party cannot run for election to the Knesset if its objectives or actions include the \"negation of the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people\".\nThe Basic Laws of Israel function as an uncodified constitution. These define Israel as a Jewish and democratic state and the nation-state of exclusively the Jewish people. In 2003, the Knesset began to draft an official constitution based on these laws.\nIsrael has no official religion, but the definition of the state as \"Jewish and democratic\" creates a strong connection with Judaism. On 19 July 2018, the Knesset passed a Basic Law that characterizes Israel as principally a \"\" and Hebrew as its official language. The bill ascribes an undefined \"special status\" to the Arabic language. The same bill gives Jews a unique right to national self-determination and views the developing of Jewish settlement in the country as \"a national interest\", empowering the government to \"take steps to encourage, advance and implement this interest\".\nAdministrative divisions.\nDistricts of Israel\nCentral \nHaifa \nJerusalem \nNorthern \nSouthern \nTel Aviv \n\"JudeaandSamariaArea\" \nThe State of Israel is divided into six main administrative districts, known as \"mehozot\" (; sg.: \"mahoz\")\u2014Center, Haifa, Jerusalem, North, South, and Tel Aviv, as well as the Judea and Samaria Area in the West Bank. All of the Judea and Samaria Area and parts of the Jerusalem and Northern districts are not recognised internationally as part of Israel. Districts are divided into 15 sub-districts known as \"nafot\" (; sg.: \"nafa\"), which are partitioned into 50 natural regions.\n<templatestyles src=\"Citation/styles.css\"/>^a Including 361,700 Arabs and 233,900 Jews in East Jerusalem, as of 2020[ [update]].\n<templatestyles src=\"Citation/styles.css\"/>^b Israeli citizens only.\nIsraeli citizenship law.\nThe 1950 Law of Return grants Jews the unrestricted right to immigrate to Israel and obtain Israeli citizenship. Individuals born within the country receive birthright citizenship if at least one parent is a citizen. Israeli law defines Jewish nationality as distinct from Israeli nationality, and the Supreme Court of Israel has ruled that an Israeli nationality does not exist. A Jewish national is defined as any person practicing Judaism and their descendants.\nIsraeli-occupied territories.\nIn 1967, as a result of the Six-Day War, Israel captured and occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. Israel also captured the Sinai Peninsula but returned it to Egypt as part of the 1979 Egypt\u2013Israel peace treaty. Between 1982 and 2000, Israel occupied part of southern Lebanon, in what was known as the Security Belt. Since capture of these territories, Israeli settlements and military installations have been built within each of them, except Lebanon.\nThe Golan Heights and East Jerusalem have been fully incorporated under Israeli law but not under international law. Israel has applied civilian law to both areas and granted their inhabitants permanent residency status and the ability to apply for citizenship. The UN Security Council has declared the annexation of the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem to be \"null and void\" and continues to view the territories as occupied. The status of East Jerusalem in any future peace settlement has at times been a difficult issue in negotiations between Israeli governments and representatives of the Palestinians.\nThe West Bank excluding East Jerusalem is known as the Judea and Samaria Area. The almost 400,000 Israeli settlers residing in the area are considered part of Israel's population, have Knesset representation, are subject to a large part of Israel's civil and criminal laws, and their output is considered part of Israel's economy. The land is not considered part of Israel under Israeli law, as Israel has consciously refrained from annexing the territory, without ever relinquishing its legal claim to the land or defining a border. Israeli political opposition to annexation primarily stems from the perceived \"demographic threat\" of incorporating the West Bank's Palestinian population into Israel. Outside of the Israeli settlements, the West Bank remains under direct Israeli military rule, and Palestinians in the area cannot become Israeli citizens.\nThe international community maintains that Israel does not have sovereignty in the West Bank and considers Israel's control of the area to be the longest military occupation in modern history. The West Bank was occupied and annexed by Jordan in 1950, following the 1949 Armistice Agreements. Only Britain recognised this annexation, and Jordan has since ceded its claim to the territory to the PLO. The population is mainly Palestinians, including refugees of the 1948 Arab\u2013Israeli War. From their occupation in 1967 until 1993, the Palestinians living in these territories were under Israeli military administration. Since the Israel\u2013PLO letters of recognition, most of the Palestinian population and cities have been under the internal jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, and only partial Israeli military control, although Israel has redeployed its troops and reinstated full military administration during periods of unrest. Israel's claim of universal suffrage has been questioned due to its blurred territorial boundaries, its simultaneous extension of voting rights to Israeli settlers in the occupied territories and denial of voting rights to their Palestinian neighbours, as well as the alleged ethnocratic nature of the state.\nThe Gaza Strip is considered to be a \"foreign territory\" under Israeli law. Israel and Egypt operate a land, air, and sea blockade of the Gaza Strip. The Gaza Strip was occupied by Israel after 1967. In 2005, as part of a unilateral disengagement plan, Israel removed its settlers and forces from the territory but continues to maintain control of its airspace and waters. The international community, including numerous international humanitarian organisations and UN bodies, consider Gaza to remain occupied. Following the 2007 Battle of Gaza, when Hamas assumed power in the Gaza Strip, Israel tightened control of the Gaza crossings along its border, as well as by sea and air, and prevented persons from entering and exiting except for isolated cases it deemed humanitarian. Gaza has a border with Egypt, and an agreement between Israel, the EU, and the PA governs how border crossings take place. The application of democracy to its Palestinian citizens and the selective application of Israeli democracy in the Israeli-controlled Palestinian territories have been criticised.\nInternational opinion.\nThe International Court of Justice said, in its 2004 advisory opinion on the legality of the construction of the West Bank barrier, that the lands captured by Israel in the Six-Day War, including East Jerusalem, are occupied territory and found that the construction of the wall within the occupied Palestinian territory violates international law. Most negotiations relating to the territories have been on the basis of UN Security Council Resolution 242, which emphasises \"the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war\", and calls on Israel to withdraw from occupied territories in return for normalisation of relations with Arab states (\"Land for peace\"). Israel has been criticised for engaging in systematic and widespread violations of human rights in the occupied territories, including occupation and war crimes against civilians. The allegations include violations of international humanitarian law by the UN Human Rights Council. The U.S. State Department has called reports of abuses of significant human rights of Palestinians \"credible\" both within Israel and the occupied territories. Amnesty International and other NGOs have documented mass arbitrary arrests, torture, unlawful killings, systemic abuses and impunity in tandem with a denial of the right to Palestinian self-determination. Prime Minister Netanyahu has defended the country's security forces for protecting the innocent from terrorists and expressed contempt for what he describes as a lack of concern about the human rights violations committed by \"criminal killers\".\nThe international community widely regards Israeli settlements in the occupied territories illegal under international law. United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 (passed 2016) states that Israel's settlement activity constitutes a \"flagrant violation\" of international law and demands that Israel stop such activity and fulfill its obligations as an occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention. A United Nations special rapporteur concluded that the settlement programme was a war crime under the Rome Statute, and Amnesty International found that the settlement programme constitutes an illegal transfer of civilians into occupied territory and \"pillage\", which is prohibited by the Hague Conventions and Geneva Conventions as well as being a war crime under the Rome Statute.\nIn a 2024 advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice stated that occupation of the Palestinian territories violated international law; Israel should end its occupation as quickly as possible and pay reparations. In addition, the court found that Israel was in breach of article 3 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which requires states to prevent, prohibit and eradicate all practices of racial segregation and apartheid.\nAccusations of Apartheid.\nTreatment of Palestinians within the occupied territories and to a lesser extent in Israel itself have drawn widespread accusations that it is guilty of apartheid, a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute and the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. \"The Washington Post\"'s 2021 survey of scholars and academic experts on the Middle East found an increase from 59% to 65% of these scholars describing Israel as a \"one-state reality akin to apartheid\". The claim that Israel's policies for Palestinians within Israel amount to apartheid has been affirmed by Israeli human rights organisation B'tselem and international human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din has also accused Israel of apartheid. Amnesty's claim was criticised by politicians and representatives from Israel and its closest allies such as, the US, the UK, the European Commission, Australia, Netherlands and Germany, while said accusations were welcomed by Palestinians and the Arab League. In 2022, Michael Lynk, a Canadian law professor appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council said that the situation met the legal definition of apartheid, and concluded: \"Israel has imposed upon Palestine an apartheid reality in a post-apartheid world\". Subsequent reports from his successor, Francesca Albanese and from Permanent United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Israel Palestine conflict chair Navi Pillay echoed the opinion.\nIn February 2024, the ICJ held public hearings in regards to the legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory including East Jerusalem. During the hearings, 24 states and three international organisations said that Israeli practices amount to a breach of the prohibition of apartheid and/or amount to prohibited acts of racial discrimination. The International Court of Justice in its 2024 advisory opinion found that Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories constitutes systemic discrimination and is in breach of Article 3 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which prohibits racial segregation and apartheid. The opinion is silent as to whether the discrimination amounts to apartheid; individual judges were split on the question.\nForeign relations.\nIsrael maintains diplomatic relations with\u00a0\u00a0UN member states, the Holy See, Kosovo, the Cook Islands and Niue. It has 107 diplomatic missions; countries with which it has no diplomatic relations include most Muslim countries. Six out of 22 nations in the Arab League have normalised relations with Israel. Israel remains formally in a state of war with Syria, dating back uninterrupted to 1948. It has been in a similarly formal state of war with Lebanon since the end of the Lebanese Civil War in 2000, with the Israel\u2013Lebanon border remaining unagreed by treaty.\nDespite the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, Israel is still widely considered an enemy country among Egyptians. Iran withdrew its recognition of Israel during the Islamic Revolution. Israeli citizens may not visit Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen without permission from the Ministry of the Interior. As a result of the 2008\u201309 Gaza War, Mauritania, Qatar, Bolivia, and Venezuela suspended political and economic ties with Israel, though Bolivia renewed ties in 2019.\nThe United States and the Soviet Union were the first two countries to recognise the State of Israel, having declared recognition roughly simultaneously. Diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union were broken in 1967 following the Six-Day War and renewed in 1991. The United States regards Israel as its \"most reliable partner in the Middle East\", based on \"common democratic values, religious affinities, and security interests\". The US has provided $68\u00a0billion in military assistance and $32\u00a0billion in grants to Israel since 1967, under the Foreign Assistance Act (period beginning 1962), more than any other country for that period until 2003. Most surveyed Americans have held consistently favourable views of Israel. The United Kingdom is seen as having a \"natural\" relationship with Israel because of the Mandate for Palestine. By 2007[ [update]], Germany had paid 25\u00a0billion euros in reparations to Israel and individual Israeli Holocaust survivors. Israel is included in the European Union's European Neighbourhood Policy.\nAlthough Turkey and Israel did not establish full diplomatic relations until 1991, Turkey has cooperated with the Jewish state since its recognition of Israel in 1949. Turkey's ties to other Muslim-majority nations in the region have at times resulted in pressure from Arab and Muslim states to temper its relationship with Israel. Relations took a downturn after the 2008\u201309 Gaza War and Israel's raid of the Gaza flotilla. Relations between Greece and Israel have improved since 1995 after decline of Israeli\u2013Turkish relations. The two countries have a defence cooperation agreement and in 2010, the Israeli Air Force hosted Greece's Hellenic Air Force in a joint exercise. The joint Cyprus-Israel oil and gas explorations centered on the Leviathan gas field are an important factor for Greece, given its strong links with Cyprus. Cooperation in the world's longest submarine power cable, the EuroAsia Interconnector, has strengthened Cyprus\u2013Israel relations.\nAzerbaijan is one of the few majority Muslim countries to develop strategic and economic relations with Israel. Kazakhstan also has an economic and strategic partnership with Israel. India established full diplomatic ties with Israel in 1992 and has fostered a strong military, technological and cultural partnership with the country since then. India is the largest customer of the Israeli military equipment, and Israel is the second-largest military partner of India after Russia. Ethiopia is Israel's main ally in Africa due to common political, religious and security interests.\nForeign aid.\nIsrael has a history of providing emergency foreign aid and humanitarian response to disasters across the world. In 1955 Israel began its foreign aid programme in Burma and then shifted to Africa. Israel's humanitarian efforts officially began in 1957 with the establishment of Mashav, the Israel's Agency for International Development Cooperation. In this early period, whilst Israel's aid represented only a small percentage of total aid to Africa, its programme was effective in creating goodwill; however, following the 1967 war relations soured. Israel's foreign aid programme subsequently shifted its focus to Latin America.\nSince the late 1970s Israel's foreign aid has gradually decreased, although in recent years Israel has tried to reestablish aid to Africa. There are additional Israeli humanitarian and emergency response groups that work with the government, including IsraAid, a joint programme run by Israeli organisations and North American Jewish groups, ZAKA, The Fast Israeli Rescue and Search Team, Israeli Flying Aid, Save a Child's Heart and Latet. Between 1985 and 2015, Israel sent 24 delegations of their search and rescue unit the Home Front Command to 22 countries. Currently Israeli foreign aid ranks low among OECD nations, spending less than 0.1% of its GNI on development assistance. The country ranked 38th in the 2018 World Giving Index.\nMilitary.\nThe Israel Defence Forces (IDF) is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces and is headed by its Chief of the General Staff, the \"Ramatkal\", subordinate to the Cabinet. The IDF consists of the army, air force and navy. It was founded during the 1948 Arab\u2013Israeli War by consolidating paramilitary organisations\u2014chiefly the Haganah. The IDF also draws upon the resources of the Military Intelligence Directorate (\"Aman\"). The IDF have been involved in several major wars and border conflicts, making it one of the most battle-trained armed forces in the world.\nMost Israelis are conscripted at age 18. Men serve two years and eight months, and women serve two years. Following mandatory service, Israeli men join the reserve forces and usually do up to several weeks of reserve duty every year until their forties. Most women are exempt from reserve duty. Arab citizens of Israel (except the Druze) and those engaged in full-time religious studies are exempt, although the exemption of yeshiva students has been a source of contention. An alternative for those who receive exemptions on various grounds is \"Sherut Leumi\", or national service, which involves a programme of service in social welfare frameworks. A small minority of Israeli Arabs also volunteer in the army. As a result of its conscription programme, the IDF maintains approximately 176,500 active troops and 465,000 reservists, giving Israel one of the world's highest percentage of citizens with military training.\nThe military relies heavily on high-tech weapons systems designed and manufactured in Israel as well as some foreign imports. The Arrow missile is one of the world's few operational anti-ballistic missile systems. The Python air-to-air missile series is often considered one of the most crucial weapons in its military history. Israel's Spike missile is one of the most widely exported anti-tank guided missiles in the world. Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile air defence system gained worldwide acclaim after intercepting hundreds of rockets fired by Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip. Since the Yom Kippur War, Israel has developed a network of reconnaissance satellites. The \"Ofeq\" programme has made Israel one of seven countries capable of launching such satellites.\nIsrael is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons and per a 1993 report, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. Israel has not signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and maintains a policy of deliberate ambiguity towards its nuclear capabilities. The Israeli Navy's Dolphin submarines are believed to be armed with nuclear missiles offering second-strike capability. Since the Gulf War in 1991, all homes in Israel are required to have a reinforced security room, Merkhav Mugan, impermeable to chemical and biological substances.\nSince Israel's establishment, military expenditure constituted a significant portion of the country's gross domestic product, with peak of 30.3% of GDP in 1975. In 2021, Israel ranked 15th in the world by total military expenditure, with $24.3 billion, and 6th by defence spending as a percentage of GDP, with 5.2%. Since 1974, the United States has been a particularly notable contributor of military aid. Under a memorandum of understanding signed in 2016, the U.S. is expected to provide the country with $3.8\u00a0billion per year, or around 20% of Israel's defence budget, from 2018 to 2028. Israel ranked 9th globally for arms exports in 2022. The majority of Israel's arms exports are unreported for security reasons. Israel is consistently rated low in the Global Peace Index, ranking 134th out of 163 nations in 2022.\nLegal system.\nIsrael has a three-tier court system. At the lowest level are magistrate courts, situated in most cities across the country. Above them are district courts, serving as both appellate courts and courts of first instance; they are situated in five of Israel's six districts. The third and highest tier is the Supreme Court, located in Jerusalem; it serves a dual role as the highest court of appeals and the High Court of Justice. In the latter role, the Supreme Court rules as a court of first instance, allowing both citizens and non-citizens to petition against the decisions of state authorities.\nThe legal system combines three legal traditions: English common law, civil law, and Jewish law. It is based on the principle of \"stare decisis\" (precedent) and is an adversarial system. Court cases are decided by professional judges. Marriage and divorce are under the jurisdiction of the religious courts: Jewish, Muslim, Druze, and Christian. The election of judges is carried out by a selection committee chaired by the justice minister (currently Yariv Levin). Israel's seeks to defend human rights and liberties in Israel. The United Nations Human Rights Council and Israeli human rights organisation Adalah have highlighted that this law does not in fact contain a general provision for equality and non-discrimination. As a result of \"Enclave law\", large portions of Israeli civil law are applied to Israeli settlements and Israeli residents in the occupied territories.\nEconomy.\nIsrael is considered the most advanced country in West Asia and the Middle East in economic and industrial development. As of \u00a02023[ [update]], the IMF estimated its GDP at 521.7 billion dollars and GDP per capita at 53.2 thousand (ranking 13th worldwide). It is the third richest country in Asia by nominal per capita income and has the highest average wealth per adult in the Middle East.\"The Economist\" ranked Israel as the 4th most successful economy among the developed countries for 2022. It has the most billionaires in the Middle East and the 18th most in the world. In recent years Israel had one of the highest growth rates in the developed world. In 2010, it joined the OECD. The country is ranked 20th in the World Economic Forum's \"Global Competitiveness Report\" and 35th on the World Bank's \"Ease of Doing Business\" index. Economic data covers the economic territory of Israel, including the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and Israeli settlements in the West Bank.\nDespite limited natural resources, intensive development of the agricultural and industrial sectors over the past decades has made Israel largely self-sufficient in food production, apart from grains and beef. Imports, totaling $96.5 billion in 2020, include raw materials, military equipment, investment goods, rough diamonds, fuels, grain, and consumer goods. Leading exports include machinery, equipment, software, cut diamonds, agricultural products, chemicals, textiles, and apparel; in 2020, exports reached $114 billion. The Bank of Israel holds $201 billion of foreign-exchange reserves, the 17th highest in the world. Since the 1970s, Israel has received military aid from the United States, as well as loan guarantees, which account for roughly half of Israel's external debt. Israel has one of the lowest external debts in the developed world, and is a lender in terms of net external debt (assets vs. liabilities abroad), which in 2015[ [update]] stood at a surplus of $69 billion.\nIsrael has the second-largest number of startup companies after the United States and the third-largest number of NASDAQ-listed companies. It is the world leader for number of start-ups per capita and has been dubbed the \"Start-Up Nation\". Intel and Microsoft built their first overseas research and development facilities in Israel, and other high-tech multinational corporations have opened research and development centres in the country.\nThe days which are allocated to working times are Sunday through Thursday (for a five-day workweek), or Friday (for a six-day workweek). In observance of \"Shabbat\", in places where Friday is a work day and the majority of population is Jewish, Friday is a \"short day\". Several proposals have been raised to adjust the work week with the majority of the world.\nScience and technology.\nIsrael's development of cutting-edge technologies in software, communications and the life sciences have evoked comparisons with Silicon Valley. Israel is first in the world in expenditure on research and development as a percentage of GDP. It is ranked 15th in the Global Innovation Index in 2024, and 5th in the 2019 Bloomberg Innovation Index. Israel has 140 scientists, technicians, and engineers per 10,000 employees, the highest number in the world and has produced six Nobel Prize-winning scientists, mostly in chemistry, since 2004 and has been frequently ranked as one of the countries with the highest ratios of scientific papers per capita. Israeli universities are ranked among the top 50 world universities in computer science (Technion and Tel Aviv University), mathematics (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and chemistry (Weizmann Institute of Science).\nIn 2012, Israel was ranked ninth in the world by the Futron's Space Competitiveness Index. The Israel Space Agency coordinates all space research programmes with scientific and commercial goals, and have designed and built at least 13 commercial, research and spy satellites. Some satellites are ranked among the world's most advanced space systems. Shavit is a space launch vehicle produced by Israel to launch small satellites into low Earth orbit. It was first launched in 1988, making Israel the eighth nation to have a space launch capability. In 2003, Ilan Ramon became Israel's first astronaut, serving on the fatal mission of Space Shuttle \"Columbia\".\nThe ongoing water shortage has spurred innovation in water conservation techniques, and a substantial agricultural modernisation, drip irrigation, was invented in Israel. Israel is also at the technological forefront of desalination and water recycling. The Sorek desalination plant is the largest seawater reverse osmosis desalination facility in the world. By 2014, desalination programmes provided roughly 35% of the drinking water, and it is expected to supply 70% by 2050. As of 2015[ [update]], over 50 percent of the water for households, agriculture and industry is artificially produced. In 2011, Israel's water technology industry was worth around $2 billion per year with annual exports of products and services in the tens of millions of dollars. As a result of innovations in reverse osmosis technology, Israel is set to become a net exporter of water.\nIsrael has embraced solar energy; its engineers are on the cutting edge of solar energy technology, and its solar companies work on projects around the world. Over 90% of homes use solar energy for hot water, the highest per capita. According to government figures, the country saves 8% of its electricity consumption per year because of its solar energy use in heating. The high annual incident solar irradiance at its geographic latitude creates ideal conditions for what is an internationally renowned solar research and development industry in the Negev. Israel had a modern electric car infrastructure involving a countrywide network of charging stations; however, its electric car company Better Place shut down in 2013.\nEnergy.\nIsrael began producing natural gas from its own offshore gas fields in 2004. In 2009 Tamar gas field was discovered near the coast, and Leviathan gas field was discovered in 2010. The natural gas reserves in these two fields could make Israel energy-secure for more than 50 years. Commercial production of natural gas from the Tamar field began in 2013, with over 7.5 billion cubic meters (bcm) produced annually. Israel had 199 billion bcm of proven reserves of natural gas as of 2016. The Leviathan gas field started production in 2019.\nKetura Sun is Israel's first commercial solar field. Built in 2011 by the Arava Power Company, the field will produce about 9 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year, sparing the production of some 125,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide over 20 years.\nTransport.\nIsrael has of paved roads and 3 million motor vehicles. The number of motor vehicles per 1,000 persons is 365, relatively low among developed countries. The country aims to have 30% of vehicles on its roads powered by electricity by 2030.\nIsrael has 5,715 buses on scheduled routes, operated by several carriers, the largest and oldest of which is Egged, serving most of the country. Railways stretch across and are operated by government-owned Israel Railways. Following major investments beginning in the early to mid-1990s, the number of train passengers per year has grown from 2.5 million in 1990, to 53 million in 2015; railways transport 7.5 million tons of cargo per year.\nIsrael is served by three international airports: Ben Gurion Airport, the country's main hub for international air travel; Ramon Airport; and Haifa Airport. Ben Gurion handled over 21.1 million passengers in 2023. There are three main ports: the Port of Haifa, the oldest and largest; Ashdod Port; and the Port of Eilat on the Red Sea.\nTourism.\nTourism, especially religious tourism, is an important industry, with beaches, archaeological, other historical and biblical sites, and unique geography also drawing tourists. In 2017, a record 3.6 million tourists visited Israel, yielding a 25 percent growth since 2016 and contributed NIS 20 billion to the economy.\nReal estate.\nHousing prices are listed in the top third of all countries, with an average of 150 salaries required to buy an apartment. As of 2022, there are about 2.7 million properties in Israel, with an annual increase of over 50,000. However, demand for housing exceeds supply, with a shortage of about 200,000 apartments as of 2021. As a result, by 2021 housing prices rose by 5.6%. In 2021, Israelis took a record of NIS 116.1 billion in mortgages, an increase of 50% from 2020.\nDemographics.\nIsrael has the largest Jewish population in the world and is the only country where Jews are the majority, and the only country in which Jews make up more than 2% of the total national population. As of 2024[ [update]], the population was an estimated . In 2022, the government recorded 73.6% of the population as Jews, 21.1% as Arabs, and 5.3% as \"Others\" (non-Arab Christians and people who have no religion listed). Over the last decade, large numbers of migrant workers from Romania, Thailand, China, Africa, and South America have settled in Israel. Exact figures are unknown, as many of them are living in the country illegally, but estimates run from 166,000 to 203,000. By June 2012, approximately 60,000 African migrants had entered Israel.\nAbout 93% of Israelis live in urban areas. 90% of Palestinian Israelis reside in 139 densely populated towns and villages concentrated in the Galilee, Triangle and Negev regions, with the remaining 10% in mixed cities and neighbourhoods. The OECD in 2016 estimated the average life expectancy at 82.5 years, the 6th-highest in the world. Israeli Arab life expectancy lags by 3 to 4 years and is higher than in most Arab and Muslim countries. The country has the highest fertility rate in the OECD and the only one which is above the replacement figure of 2.1. Retention of Israel's population since 1948 is about even or greater, when compared to other countries with mass immigration. Jewish emigration from Israel (called \"yerida\"), primarily to the United States and Canada, is described by demographers as modest, but is often cited by Israeli government ministries as a major threat to Israel's future.\nApproximately 80% of Israeli Jews are born in Israel, 14% are immigrants from Europe and the Americas, and 6% are immigrants from Asia and Africa. Jews from Europe and the former Soviet Union and their descendants born in Israel, including Ashkenazi Jews, constitute approximately 44% of Jewish Israelis. Jews from Arab and Muslim countries and their descendants, including both Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews, form most of the rest of the Jewish population. Jewish intermarriage rates run at over 35% and recent studies suggest that the percentage of Israelis descended from both Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews increases by 0.5 percent yearly, with over 25% of schoolchildren now originating from both. Around 4% of Israelis (300,000), ethnically defined as \"others\", are Russian descendants of Jewish origin or family who are not Jewish according to rabbinical law, but were eligible for citizenship under the Law of Return.\nIsraeli settlers beyond the Green Line number over 600,000 (\u224810% of the Jewish Israeli population). In 2016[ [update]], 399,300 Israelis lived in West Bank settlements, including those that predated the establishment of the State of Israel and which were re-established after the Six-Day War. Additionally there were more than 200,000 Jews living in East Jerusalem and 22,000 in the Golan Heights. Approximately 7,800 Israelis lived in settlements in the Gaza Strip, known as Gush Katif, until they were evacuated by the government as part of its 2005 disengagement plan.\nIsraeli Arabs (including the Arab population of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights) comprise 21.1% of the population or 1,995,000 people. In a 2017 poll, 40% of Arab citizens of Israel identified as \"Arab in Israel\" or \"Arab citizen of Israel\", 15% identified as \"Palestinian\", 8.9% as \"Palestinian in Israel\" or \"Palestinian citizen of Israel\", and 8.7% as \"Arab\"; a poll found that 60% of Israeli Arabs have a positive view of the state.\nMajor urban areas.\nIsrael has four major metropolitan areas: Gush Dan (Tel Aviv metropolitan area; population 3,854,000), Jerusalem (population 1,253,900), Haifa (924,400), and Beersheba (377,100). The largest municipality, in population and area, is Jerusalem with 981,711 residents in an area of . Statistics on Jerusalem include the population and area of East Jerusalem, the status of which is in international dispute. Tel Aviv and Haifa rank as Israel's next most populous cities, with populations of 474,530 and 290,306, respectively. The (mainly Haredi) city of Bnei Brak is the most densely populated city in Israel and one of the 10 most densely populated cities in the world.\nIsrael has 16 cities with populations over 100,000. As of 2018[ [update]] there are 77 localities granted \"municipalities\" (or \"city\") status by the Ministry of the Interior, four of which are in the West Bank.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nLanguage.\nThe official language is Hebrew. Hebrew is the primary language of the state and is spoken daily by the majority of the population. Prior to 1948, opposition to Yiddish, the historical language of the Ashkenazi Jews, was common among supporters of the Zionist movement, including the Yishuv, who sought to promote Hebrew's revival as a unifying national language. These sentiments were reflected in the early policies of the Israeli government, which largely banned Yiddish theatre and publications. Until 2018, Arabic was also an official language; in 2018 it was downgraded to having a \"special status in the state\". Arabic is spoken by the Arab minority, with Arabic and Hebrew taught in Arab schools. Arabic is studied in most Jewish schools and is often used on signage and in transport announcements.\nDue to mass immigration from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia (some 130,000 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel), Russian and Amharic are widely spoken. Over one million Russian-speaking immigrants arrived in Israel between 1990 and 2004. French is spoken by around 700,000 Israelis, mostly originating from France and North Africa (see Maghrebi Jews). English was an official language during the Mandate period; it lost this status after the establishment of Israel, but retains a role comparable to that of an official language. Many Israelis communicate reasonably well in English, as many television programmes are broadcast in English with subtitles and the language is taught in elementary school. Israeli universities offer courses in English.\nReligion.\nThe estimated religious affiliation as of 2022 was 73.5% Jewish, 18.1% Muslim, 1.9% Christian, 1.6% Druze, and 4.9% other. The religious affiliation of Israeli Jews varies widely: a 2016 survey by Pew Research indicates that 49% self-identify as Hiloni (secular), 29% as Masorti (traditional), 13% as Dati (religious) and 9% as Haredi (ultra-Orthodox). Haredi Jews are expected to represent over 20% of the Jewish population by 2028. Muslims constitute the largest religious minority, making up about 18.1% of the population. About 1.9% of the population is Christian, and 1.6% is Druze. The Christian population comprises primarily Arab Christians and Aramean Christians but also includes post-Soviet immigrants, foreign labourers, Armenian Christians, and followers of Messianic Judaism, considered by most Christians and Jews to be a form of Christianity. Members of many other religious groups, including Buddhists and Hindus, maintain a presence in Israel, albeit in small numbers. Out of over one million immigrants from the former Soviet Union, about 300,000 are considered not Jewish by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel.\nIsrael comprises a major part of the Holy Land, a region of significant importance to all Abrahamic religions. Jerusalem is of special importance to Jews, Muslims, and Christians, as it is the home of sites that are pivotal to their religious beliefs, such as the Old City that incorporates the Western Wall and the Temple Mount (Al-Aqsa Mosque compound) and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Other locations of religious importance are Nazareth (site of the Annunciation of Mary), Tiberias and Safed (two of the Four Holy Cities in Judaism), the White Mosque in Ramla (shrine of the prophet Saleh), and the Church of Saint George and Mosque of Al-Khadr, Lod (tomb of Saint George or Al Khidr). A number of other religious landmarks are located in the West Bank, including Joseph's Tomb, the birthplace of Jesus, Rachel's Tomb, and the Cave of the Patriarchs. The administrative center of the Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith and the Shrine of the B\u00e1b are located at the Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed World Centre in Haifa; the leader of the faith is buried in Acre. The Mahmood Mosque is affiliated with the reformist Ahmadiyya movement. Kababir, Haifa's mixed neighbourhood of Jews and Ahmadi Arabs, is one of a few of its kind in the country.\nEducation.\nIn 2015, Israel ranked third among OECD members for the percentage of 25\u201364-year-olds that have attained tertiary education with 49% compared with the OECD average of 35%. In 2012, the country ranked third in the number of academic degrees per capita (20 percent of the population).\nIsrael has a school life expectancy of 16 years and a literacy rate of 97.8%. The State Education Law (1953) established five types of schools: state secular, state religious, ultra orthodox, communal settlement schools, and Arab schools. The public secular is the largest school group and is attended by the majority of Jewish and non-Arab pupils. Most Arabs send their children to schools where Arabic is the language of instruction. Education is compulsory for children between the ages of three and eighteen. Schooling is divided into three tiers\u2014primary school (grades 1\u20136), middle school (grades 7\u20139), and high school (grades 10\u201312)\u2014culminating with \"Bagrut\" matriculation exams. Proficiency in core subjects such as mathematics, the Hebrew language, Hebrew and general literature, the English language, history, Biblical scripture and civics is necessary to receive a Bagrut certificate.\nThe Jewish population maintains a relatively high level of educational attainment where just under half of all Israeli Jews (46%) hold post-secondary degrees. Israeli Jews 25 and older have an average 11.6 years of schooling, making them one of the most highly educated of all major religious groups in the world. In Arab, Christian and Druze schools, the exam on Biblical studies is replaced by an exam on Muslim, Christian or Druze heritage, respectively. In 2020, 68.7% of 12th graders earned a matriculation certificate.\nIsrael has a tradition of higher education where its university education has been largely responsible in spurring modern economic development. Israel has nine public universities subsidised by the state and 49 private colleges. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem houses the National Library of Israel, the world's largest repository of Judaica and Hebraica. The Technion and the Hebrew University consistently ranked among world's 100 top universities by ARWU ranking. Other major universities include the Weizmann Institute of Science, Tel Aviv University, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Bar-Ilan University, the University of Haifa, and the Open University of Israel.\nCulture.\nCultural diversity stems from its diverse population: Jews from various diaspora communities brought their cultural and religious traditions with them. Arab influences are present in many cultural spheres, being found in architecture, music, and cuisine. Israel is the only country where life revolves around the Hebrew calendar. Holidays are determined by the Jewish holidays. The official day of rest is Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.\nLiterature.\nIsraeli literature is primarily poetry and prose written in Hebrew, as part of the renaissance of Hebrew as a spoken language since the mid-19th century, although a small body of literature is published in other languages. By law, two copies of all works published in Israel must be deposited in the National Library of Israel. In 2016, 89\u00a0percent of the 7,300 books transferred to the library were in Hebrew.\nIn 1966, Shmuel Yosef Agnon shared the Nobel Prize in Literature with German Jewish author Nelly Sachs. Leading poets include Yehuda Amichai, Nathan Alterman, Leah Goldberg, and Rachel Bluwstein. Internationally famous contemporary novelists include Amos Oz, Etgar Keret and David Grossman.\nMusic and dance.\nIsraeli music includes Mizrahi and Sephardic music, Hasidic melodies, Greek music, jazz, and pop rock. The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra has been in operation for over seventy years and performs more than two hundred concerts each year. Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman and Ofra Haza are among the internationally acclaimed musicians born in Israel. Israel has participated in the Eurovision Song Contest nearly every year since 1973, winning the competition four times and hosting it twice. Eilat has hosted its own international music festival, the Red Sea Jazz Festival, every summer since 1987. The nation's canonical folk songs are known as \"Songs of the Land of Israel\".\nCinema and theatre.\nTen Israeli films have been final nominees for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. Palestinian Israeli filmmakers have made films dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict and status of Palestinians within Israel, such as Mohammed Bakri's 2002 film \"Jenin, Jenin\" and \"The Syrian Bride\".\nContinuing the strong theatrical traditions of the Yiddish theatre in Eastern Europe, Israel maintains a vibrant theatre scene. Founded in 1918, Habima Theatre in Tel Aviv is Israel's oldest repertory theater company and national theater. Other theatres include Ohel, the Cameri and Gesher.\nArts.\nIsraeli Jewish art has been particularly influenced by the Kabbalah, the Talmud and the Zohar. Another art movement that held a prominent role in the 20th century was the School of Paris. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the Yishuv's art was dominated by art trends emanating Bezalel. Beginning in the 1920s, the local art scene was heavily influenced by modern French art, first introduced by Isaac Frenkel Frenel. Jewish masters of the school of Paris, such as Soutine, Kikoine, Frenkel, Chagall heavily influenced the subsequent development of Israeli art. Israeli sculpture took inspiration from modern European sculpture as well Mesopotamian, Assyrian and local art. Avraham Melnikov's roaring lion, David Polus' Alexander Zaid and Ze'ev Ben Zvi's cubist sculpture exemplify some of the different streams in sculpture.\nCommon themes in art are the mystical cities of Safed and Jerusalem, the bohemian caf\u00e9 culture of Tel Aviv, agricultural landscapes, biblical stories and war. Today Israeli art has delved into optical art, AI art, digital art and the use of salt in sculpture.\nArchitecture.\nDue to the immigration of Jewish architects, architecture has come to reflect different styles. In the early 20th century Jewish architects sought to combine Occidental and Oriental architecture producing buildings that showcase a myriad of infused styles. The eclectic style gave way to the modernist Bauhaus style with the influx of German Jewish architects (among them Erich Mendelsohn) fleeing Nazi persecution. The White City of Tel Aviv is a UNESCO heritage site. Following independence, multiple government projects were commissioned, a grand part built in a brutalist style with heavy emphasis on the use of concrete and acclimatisation to the desert climate.\nSeveral novel ideas such as the Garden City were implemented in Israeli cities; the Geddes plan of Tel Aviv became renowned internationally for its revolutionary design and adaptation to the local climate. The design of kibbutzim also came to reflect ideology, such as the planning of the circular kibbutz Nahalal by Richard Kauffmann.\nMedia.\nMedia is diverse, reflecting the spectrum of audiences. Notable newspapers include the leftwing \"Haaretz\", centrist \"Yedioth Ahronoth\", and center-right \"Israel Hayom\". There are several major TV channels which cater to different audiences, from Russian-language Channel 9 to Arabic-language Kan 33. The 2024 Freedom House report found Israeli media is \"vibrant and free to criticise government policy\". In the 2024 Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders, Israel was placed 101st of 180 countries, second in the Middle East and North Africa. Reporters Without Borders noted that the Israel Defence Forces had killed more than 100 journalists in Gaza. Since the Gaza war, Israel had been \"been trying to suppress the reporting coming out of the besieged enclave while disinformation infiltrates its own media ecosystem\". In May 2024, Israel shut down the local offices of Al Jazeera. Israel later briefly seized equipment belonging to the Associated Press, saying that its video stream of Gaza was being provided to Al Jazeera; after an intervention by the U.S. government the equipment was returned.\nMuseums.\nThe Israel Museum in Jerusalem is one of Israel's most important cultural institutions and houses the Dead Sea Scrolls, along with an extensive collection of Judaica and European art. The Yad Vashem is the world central archive of Holocaust-related information. ANU - Museum of the Jewish People is an interactive museum devoted to the history of Jewish communities around the world.\nIsrael has the highest number of museums per capita. Several museums are devoted to Islamic culture, including the Rockefeller Museum and the L. A. Mayer Institute for Islamic Art, both in Jerusalem. The Rockefeller specialises in archaeological remains from Middle East history. It is also the home of the first hominid fossil skull found in West Asia, called Galilee Man.\nCuisine.\nIsraeli cuisine includes local dishes as well as Jewish cuisine brought to the country by immigrants. Particularly since the late 1970s, a fusion cuisine has developed. The cuisine has adapted elements of the Mizrahi, Sephardi, and Ashkenazi styles of cooking. It incorporates many foods traditionally eaten in the Levantine, Arab, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisines, such as falafel, hummus, shakshouka, couscous, and za'atar. Schnitzel, pizza, hamburgers, French fries, rice and salad are common.\nRoughly half of the Jewish population attests to keeping kosher at home. Kosher restaurants make up around a quarter of the total as of 2015[ [update]]. Together with non-kosher fish, rabbits and ostriches, pork\u2014often called \"white meat\" in Israel\u2014is produced and consumed, though it is forbidden by both Judaism and Islam.\nSports.\nThe most popular spectator sports in Israel are association football and basketball. The Israeli Premier League is the country's premier football league, and the Israeli Basketball Premier League is the premier basketball league. Maccabi Haifa, Maccabi Tel Aviv, Hapoel Tel Aviv and Beitar Jerusalem are the largest football clubs. Maccabi Tel Aviv, Maccabi Haifa and Hapoel Tel Aviv have competed in the UEFA Champions League and Hapoel Tel Aviv reached the UEFA Cup quarter-finals. Israel hosted and won the 1964 AFC Asian Cup; in 1970 the Israel national football team qualified for the FIFA World Cup, the only time it participated. The 1974 Asian Games, held in Tehran, were the last Asian Games in which Israel participated, plagued by Arab countries that refused to compete with Israel. Israel was excluded from the 1978 Asian Games and since then has not competed in Asian sport events. In 1994, UEFA agreed to admit Israel, and its football teams now compete in Europe. Maccabi Tel Aviv B.C. has won the European championship in basketball six times.\nIsrael has won nine Olympic medals since its first win in 1992, including a gold medal in windsurfing at the 2004 Summer Olympics. Israel has won over 100 gold medals in the Paralympic Games and is ranked 20th in the all-time medal count. The 1968 Summer Paralympics were hosted by Israel. The Maccabiah Games, an Olympic-style event for Jewish and Israeli athletes, was inaugurated in the 1930s, and has been held every four years since. Krav Maga, a martial art developed by Jewish ghetto defenders, is used by the Israeli security forces and police.\nChess is a leading sport. There are many Israeli grandmasters and Israeli chess players have won a number of youth world championships. Israel stages an annual international championship and hosted the World Team Chess Championship in 2005.\nReferences.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "5593": "Cyprus\nMediterranean island country in the Middle East\nCyprus (), officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Although it is geographically located in West Asia, its cultural identity and geopolitical make-up are overwhelmingly Southeast European. It is the third largest and third most populous island in the Mediterranean. It is located southeast of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and Lebanon, northwest of Israel and Palestine, and north of Egypt. Its capital and largest city is Nicosia. Cyprus hosts the British-controlled military bases Akrotiri and Dhekelia, whilst the northeast portion of the island is \"de facto\" governed by the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is separated from the Republic of Cyprus by the United Nations Buffer Zone.\nCyprus was first settled by hunter-gatherers around 13,000 years ago, with farming settlements emerging a few thousand years later. During the late Bronze Age, Cyprus (then called Alashiya) developed an urbanised society closely connected to the wider Mediterranean world. Cyprus experienced waves of settlement by Mycenaean Greeks at the end of the 2nd millennium BC. It was subsequently occupied by several empires, including the Assyrians, Ancient Egyptians, and Persians, from whom the island was seized in 333 BC by Alexander the Great. Subsequent rule by Ptolemaic Egypt, the Classical and Eastern Roman Empire, Arab caliphates, the French Lusignans, and the Venetians was followed by over three centuries of Ottoman rule between 1571 and 1878 (\"de jure\" until 1914). Cyprus was placed under the United Kingdom's administration based on the Cyprus Convention in 1878, and was formally annexed by the UK in 1914.\nThe future of the island became a matter of disagreement between the two prominent ethnic communities, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. From the 19th century onwards, the Greek Cypriot population pursued \"enosis\" (union with Greece), which became a Greek national policy in the 1950s. The Turkish Cypriot population initially advocated for the continuation of British rule, then demanded the annexation of the island to Turkey; in the 1950s, together with Turkey, they established a policy of \"taksim\" (the partition of Cyprus and the creation of a Turkish polity in the north of the island). Following nationalist violence in the 1950s, Cyprus was granted independence in 1960. The crisis of 1963\u201364 brought further intercommunal violence between the two communities, displaced more than 25,000 Turkish Cypriots into enclaves, and brought the end of Turkish Cypriot representation in the republic. On 15 July 1974, a coup d'\u00e9tat was staged by Greek Cypriot nationalists and elements of the Greek military junta. This action precipitated the Turkish invasion of Cyprus on 20 July, which led to the capture of the present-day territory of Northern Cyprus and the displacement of over 150,000 Greek Cypriots and 50,000 Turkish Cypriots. A separate Turkish Cypriot state in the north was established by unilateral declaration in 1983, which was widely condemned by the international community and led to Turkey being the only country to recognise the new state. These events and the resulting political situation are matters of an ongoing dispute.\nCyprus is a major tourist destination with an advanced high-income economy. It has been a member of the Commonwealth of Nations since 1961 and was a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement until it joined the European Union on 1 May 2004. On 1 January 2008, it joined the eurozone. Cyprus has long maintained good relations with NATO while refusing to join it, but confirmed in 2024 that it now intends to officially join.\nEtymology.\nThe earliest attested reference to \"Cyprus\" is the 15th\u00a0century\u00a0BC Mycenaean Greek , \"ku-pi-ri-jo\", meaning \"Cypriot\" (Greek: ), written in Linear B syllabic script.\nThe classical Greek form of the name is (\"K\u00fdpros\").\nThe etymology of the name is unknown.\nSuggestions include:\nThrough overseas trade, the island has given its name to the Classical Latin word for copper through the phrase \"aes Cyprium\", \"metal of Cyprus\", later shortened to \"Cuprum\".\nThe standard demonym relating to Cyprus or its people or culture is \"Cypriot\". The terms \"Cypriote\" and \"Cyprian\" (later a personal name) are also used, though less frequently.\nThe state's official name in Greek literally translates to \"Cypriot Republic\" in English, but this translation is not used officially; \"Republic of Cyprus\" is used instead.\nHistory.\nPrehistoric and ancient period.\nHunter-gatherers first arrived on Cyprus around 13\u201312,000 years ago (11,000 to 10,000 BC), based on dating of sites like Aetokremnos on the south coast and the inland site of Vretsia Roudias. The arrival of the first humans coincides with the extinction of the high Cypriot pygmy hippopotamus and tall Cyprus dwarf elephant, the only large mammals native to the island. Neolithic farming communities emerged on the island by around 10,500 years ago (8500 BC).\nRemains of an eight-month-old cat were discovered buried with a human body at a separate Neolithic site in Cyprus. The grave is estimated to be 9,500 years old (7500\u00a0BC), predating ancient Egyptian civilisation and pushing back the earliest known feline-human association significantly. The remarkably well-preserved Neolithic village of Khirokitia is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, dating to approximately 6800\u00a0BC.\nDuring the Late Bronze Age, from around 1650 BC Cyprus (identified in whole or part as Alashiya in contemporary texts) became more connected to the wider Mediterranean world driven by the trade in copper extracted from the Troodos Mountains, which stimulated the development of urbanised settlements across the island, with records suggesting that Cyprus at this time was ruled by \"kings\" who corresponded with the leaders of other Mediterranean states (like the pharaohs of the New Kingdom of Egypt, as documented in the Amarna letters). The first recorded name of a Cypriot king is \"Kushmeshusha\", as appears on letters sent to Ugarit in the 13th\u00a0century\u00a0BC.\nAt the end of the Bronze Age, the island experienced two waves of Greek settlement. The first wave consisted of Mycenaean Greek traders, who started visiting Cyprus around 1400\u00a0BC. A major wave of Greek settlement is believed to have taken place following the Late Bronze Age collapse of Mycenaean Greece from 1100 to 1050\u00a0BC, with the island's predominantly Greek character dating from this period. Cyprus occupies an important role in Greek mythology, being the birthplace of Aphrodite and Adonis, and home to King Cinyras, Teucer and Pygmalion. Literary evidence suggests an early Phoenician presence at Kition, which was under Tyrian rule at the beginning of the 10th century BC. Some Phoenician merchants who were believed to come from Tyre colonised the area and expanded the political influence of Kition. After c.\u00a0850\u00a0BC, the sanctuaries [at the Kathari site] were rebuilt and reused by the Phoenicians.\nCyprus is at a strategic location in the Eastern Mediterranean. It was ruled by the Neo-Assyrian Empire for a century starting in 708\u00a0BC, before a brief spell under Egyptian rule and eventually Achaemenid rule in 545\u00a0BC. The Cypriots, led by Onesilus, king of Salamis, joined their fellow Greeks in the Ionian cities during the unsuccessful Ionian Revolt in 499\u00a0BC against the Achaemenids. The revolt was suppressed, but Cyprus managed to maintain a high degree of autonomy and remained inclined towards the Greek world. \nDuring the whole period of the Persian rule, there is a continuity in the reign of the Cypriot kings and during their rebellions they were crushed by Persian rulers from Asia Minor, which is an indication that the Cypriots were ruling the island with directly regulated relations with the Great King and there was not a Persian satrap. The Kingdoms of Cyprus enjoyed special privileges and a semi-autonomous status, but they were still considered vassal subjects of the Great King.\nThe island was conquered by Alexander the Great in 333\u00a0BC and Cypriot navy helped Alexander during the siege of Tyre (332 BC). The Cypriot fleet was also sent to help Amphoterus. In addition, Alexander had two Cypriot generals Stasander and Stasanor both from the Soli and later both became satraps in Alexander's empire.\nFollowing Alexander's death, the division of his empire, and the subsequent Wars of the Diadochi, Cyprus became part of the Hellenistic empire of Ptolemaic Egypt. It was during this period that the island was fully Hellenised. In 58\u00a0BC Cyprus was acquired by the Roman Republic and became Roman Cyprus in 22 BC.\nMiddle Ages.\nWhen the Roman Empire was divided into Eastern and Western parts in 286, Cyprus became part of the East Roman Empire (also called the Byzantine Empire), and would remain so for some 900 years. Under Byzantine rule, the Greek orientation that had been prominent since antiquity developed the strong Hellenistic-Christian character that continues to be a hallmark of the Greek Cypriot community.\nBeginning in 649, Cyprus endured repeated attacks and raids launched by Umayyad Caliphate. Many were quick raids, but others were large-scale attacks in which many Cypriots were killed and great wealth carried off or destroyed. The city of Salamis was destroyed and never rebuilt. Byzantine control remained stronger in the northern coast, the Arabs exerted more influence in the south. In 688, Emperor Justinian\u00a0II and Caliph Abd al-Malik signed a treaty whereby Cyprus would be paying an equal amount of tribute to the Caliphate and tax to the Empire, but would remain politically neutral to both while being retained as a province administered by the Empire. There are no Byzantine churches which survive from this period, and the island entered a period of impoverishment. Full Byzantine rule was restored in 965, when Emperor Nikephoros\u00a0II Phokas scored decisive victories on land and sea.\nIn 1156 Raynald of Ch\u00e2tillon and Thoros II of Armenia brutally sacked Cyprus over a period of three weeks, stealing so much plunder and capturing so many of the leading citizens and their families for ransom, that the island took generations to recover. Several Greek priests were mutilated and sent away to Constantinople.\nIn 1185 Isaac Komnenos, a member of the Byzantine imperial family, took over Cyprus and declared it independent of the Empire. In 1191, during the Third Crusade, Richard I of England captured the island from Isaac. He used it as a major supply base that was relatively safe from the Saracens. A year later Richard sold the island to the Knights Templar, who, following a bloody revolt, in turn sold it to Guy of Lusignan. His brother and successor Aimery was recognised as King of Cyprus by Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor.\nFollowing the death in 1473 of James\u00a0II, the last Lusignan king, the Republic of Venice assumed control of the island, while the late king's Venetian widow, Queen Catherine Cornaro, reigned as figurehead. Venice formally annexed the Kingdom of Cyprus in 1489, following the abdication of Catherine. The Venetians fortified Nicosia by building the Walls of Nicosia, and used it as an important commercial hub. Throughout Venetian rule, the Ottoman Empire frequently raided Cyprus. In 1539 the Ottomans destroyed Limassol and so fearing the worst, the Venetians also fortified Famagusta and Kyrenia.\nAlthough the Lusignan French aristocracy remained the dominant social class in Cyprus throughout the medieval period, the former assumption that Greeks were treated only as serfs on the island is no longer considered by academics to be accurate. It is now accepted that the medieval period saw increasing numbers of Greek Cypriots elevated to the upper classes, a growing Greek middle ranks, and the Lusignan royal household even marrying Greeks. This included King John\u00a0II of Cyprus who married Helena Palaiologina.\nOttoman Cyprus.\nIn 1570, a full-scale Ottoman assault with 60,000 troops brought the island under Ottoman control, despite stiff resistance by the inhabitants of Nicosia and Famagusta. Ottoman forces capturing Cyprus massacred many Greek and Armenian Christian inhabitants. The previous Latin elite were destroyed and the first significant demographic change since antiquity took place with the formation of a Muslim community. Soldiers who fought in the conquest settled on the island and Turkish peasants and craftsmen were brought to the island from Anatolia. This new community also included banished Anatolian tribes, \"undesirable\" persons and members of various \"troublesome\" Muslim sects, as well as a number of new converts on the island.\nThe Ottomans abolished the feudal system previously in place and applied the millet system to Cyprus, under which non-Muslim peoples were governed by their own religious authorities. In a reversal from the days of Latin rule, the head of the Church of Cyprus was invested as leader of the Greek Cypriot population and acted as mediator between Christian Greek Cypriots and the Ottoman authorities. This status ensured that the Church of Cyprus was in a position to end the Catholic Church's constant expansion efforts on the island. Ottoman rule of Cyprus was at times indifferent, at times oppressive, depending on the temperaments of the sultans and local officials.\nThe ratio of Muslims to Christians fluctuated throughout the period of Ottoman domination. In 1777\u201378, 47,000 Muslims constituted a majority over the island's 37,000 Christians. By 1872, the population of the island had risen to 144,000, comprising 44,000 Muslims and 100,000 Christians. The Muslim population included numerous crypto-Christians, including the Linobambaki, a crypto-Catholic community that arose due to religious persecution of the Catholic community by the Ottoman authorities; this community would assimilate into the Turkish Cypriot community during British rule.\nAs soon as the Greek War of Independence broke out in 1821, several Greek Cypriots left for Greece to join the Greek forces. In response, the Ottoman governor of Cyprus arrested and executed 486 prominent Greek Cypriots, including the Archbishop of Cyprus, Kyprianos, and four other bishops. In 1828, modern Greece's first president Ioannis Kapodistrias called for union of Cyprus with Greece, and numerous minor uprisings took place. Reaction to Ottoman misrule led to uprisings by both Greek and Turkish Cypriots, although none were successful. After centuries of neglect by the Ottoman Empire, the poverty of most of the people and the ever-present tax collectors fueled Greek nationalism, and by the 20th century the idea of \"union\" with newly independent Greece was firmly rooted among Greek Cypriots.\nUnder Ottoman rule, numeracy, school enrolment and literacy rates were all low. They persisted some time after Ottoman rule ended, and then increased rapidly during the twentieth century.\nBritish Cyprus.\nIn the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War (1877\u20131878) and the Congress of Berlin, Cyprus was leased to the British Empire which \"de facto\" took over its administration in 1878 (though, in terms of sovereignty, Cyprus remained a \"de jure\" Ottoman territory until 5 November 1914, together with Egypt and Sudan) in exchange for guarantees that Britain would use the island as a base to protect the Ottoman Empire against possible Russian aggression.\nThe island would serve Britain as a key military base for its colonial routes. By 1906, when the Famagusta harbour was completed, Cyprus was a strategic naval outpost overlooking the Suez Canal, the crucial main route to India which was then Britain's most important overseas possession. Following the outbreak of the First World War and the decision of the Ottoman Empire to join the war on the side of the Central Powers, on 5 November 1914 the British Empire formally annexed Cyprus and declared the Ottoman \"Khedivate\" of Egypt and Sudan a \"Sultanate\" and British protectorate.\nIn October 1915, Britain offered Cyprus to Greece, ruled by King Constantine I of Greece, on the condition that Greece join the war on the side of the British and went to Serbia\u2019s assistance, in order to fulfill her Treaty obligations under the Serbo-Greek pact of May 1913. It gave Greece a golden \n\u201copportunity\u201d in achieving \"enosis\" with Cyprus. Alternatively it was a\n\u201clost opportunity\u201d when the Zaimis administration declined the British proposal.\nIn 1923, under the Treaty of Lausanne, the nascent Turkish republic relinquished any claim to Cyprus, and in 1925 it was declared a British crown colony. During the Second World War, many Greek and Turkish Cypriots enlisted in the Cyprus Regiment.\nThe Greek Cypriot population, meanwhile, had become hopeful that the British administration would lead to \"enosis\". The idea of \"enosis\" was historically part of the \"Megali Idea\", a greater political ambition of a Greek state encompassing the territories with large Greek populations in the former Ottoman Empire, including Cyprus and Asia Minor with a capital in Constantinople, and was actively pursued by the Cypriot Orthodox Church, which had its members educated in Greece. These religious officials, together with Greek military officers and professionals, some of whom still pursued the \"Megali Idea\", would later found the guerrilla organisation EOKA \"(Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston\" or National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters). The Greek Cypriots viewed the island as historically Greek and believed that union with Greece was a natural right. In the 1950s, the pursuit of \"enosis\" became a part of the Greek national policy.\nInitially, the Turkish Cypriots favoured the continuation of the British rule. However, they were alarmed by the Greek Cypriot calls for \"enosis\", as they saw the union of Crete with Greece, which led to the exodus of Cretan Turks, as a precedent to be avoided, and they took a pro-partition stance in response to the militant activity of EOKA. The Turkish Cypriots also viewed themselves as a distinct ethnic group of the island and believed in their having a separate right to self-determination from Greek Cypriots. Meanwhile, in the 1950s, Turkish leader Menderes considered Cyprus an \"extension of Anatolia\", rejected the partition of Cyprus along ethnic lines and favoured the annexation of the whole island to Turkey. Nationalistic slogans centred on the idea that \"Cyprus is Turkish\" and the ruling party declared Cyprus to be a part of the Turkish homeland that was vital to its security. Upon realising that the fact that the Turkish Cypriot population was only 20% of the islanders made annexation unfeasible, the national policy was changed to favour partition. The slogan \"Partition or Death\" was frequently used in Turkish Cypriot and Turkish protests starting in the late 1950s and continuing throughout the 1960s. Although after the Z\u00fcrich and London conferences Turkey seemed to accept the existence of the Cypriot state and to distance itself from its policy of favouring the partition of the island, the goal of the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot leaders remained that of creating an independent Turkish state in the northern part of the island.\nIn January 1950, the Church of Cyprus organised a referendum under the supervision of clerics and with no Turkish Cypriot participation, where 96% of the participating Greek Cypriots voted in favour of \"enosis\". The Greeks were 80.2% of the total island's population at the time (census 1946). Restricted autonomy under a constitution was proposed by the British administration but eventually rejected. In 1955 the EOKA organisation was founded, seeking union with Greece through armed struggle. At the same time the Turkish Resistance Organisation (TMT), calling for Taksim, or partition, was established by the Turkish Cypriots as a counterweight. British officials also tolerated the creation of the Turkish underground organisation TMT The Secretary of State for the Colonies in a letter dated 15 July 1958 had advised the Governor of Cyprus not to act against TMT despite its illegal actions so as not to harm British relations with the Turkish government.\nIndependence and inter-communal violence.\nDuring British rule, the future of the island became a matter of disagreement between the two prominent ethnic communities, Greek Cypriots, who made up 77% of the population in 1960, and Turkish Cypriots, who made up 18% of the population. From the 19th century onwards, the Greek Cypriot population pursued \"enosis\", union with Greece, which became a Greek national policy in the 1950s. The Turkish Cypriot population initially advocated the continuation of the British rule, then demanded the annexation of the island to Turkey, and in the 1950s, together with Turkey, established a policy of \"taksim\", the partition of Cyprus and the creation of a Turkish polity in the north.\nCyprus was granted independence in 1960, following an armed campaign spearheaded by EOKA. As per the Z\u00fcrich and London Agreement, Cyprus officially attained independence on 16 August 1960, and at the time had a total population of 573,566; of whom 442,138 (77.1%) were Greeks, 104,320 (18.2%) Turks, and 27,108 (4.7%) others. The UK retained the two Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia, while government posts and public offices were allocated by ethnic quotas, giving the minority Turkish Cypriots a permanent veto, 30% in parliament and administration, and granting the three mother-states guarantor rights.\nHowever, the division of power as foreseen by the constitution soon resulted in legal impasses and discontent on both sides, and nationalist militants started training again, with the military support of Greece and Turkey respectively. The Greek Cypriot leadership believed that the rights given to Turkish Cypriots under the 1960 constitution were too extensive and designed the Akritas plan, which was aimed at reforming the constitution in favour of Greek Cypriots, persuading the international community about the correctness of the changes and violently subjugating Turkish Cypriots in a few days should they not accept the plan. Tensions were heightened when Cypriot President Archbishop Makarios\u00a0III called for constitutional changes, which were rejected by Turkey and opposed by Turkish Cypriots.\nIntercommunal violence erupted on 21 December 1963, when two Turkish Cypriots were killed at an incident involving the Greek Cypriot police. The violence resulted in the death of 364\u00a0Turkish and 174\u00a0Greek Cypriots, destruction of 109 Turkish Cypriot or mixed villages and displacement of 25,000\u201330,000 Turkish Cypriots. The crisis resulted in the end of the Turkish Cypriot involvement in the administration and their claiming that it had lost its legitimacy; the nature of this event is still controversial. In some areas, Greek Cypriots prevented Turkish Cypriots from travelling and entering government buildings, while some Turkish Cypriots willingly withdrew due to the calls of the Turkish Cypriot administration. Turkish Cypriots started living in enclaves. The republic's structure was changed, unilaterally, by Makarios, and Nicosia was divided by the Green Line, with the deployment of UNFICYP troops.\nIn 1964, Turkey threatened to invade Cyprus in response to the continuing Cypriot intercommunal violence, but this was stopped by a strongly worded telegram from the US President Lyndon B. Johnson on 5 June, warning that the US would not stand beside Turkey in case of a consequential Soviet invasion of Turkish territory. Meanwhile, by 1964, \"enosis\" was a Greek policy and would not be abandoned; Makarios and the Greek prime minister Georgios Papandreou agreed that \"enosis\" should be the ultimate aim and King Constantine wished Cyprus \"a speedy union with the mother country\". Greece dispatched 10,000 troops to Cyprus to counter a possible Turkish invasion.\nThe crisis of 1963\u201364 had brought further intercommunal violence between the two communities, displaced more than 25,000 Turkish Cypriots into enclaves and brought the end of Turkish Cypriot representation in the republic.\n1974 coup d'\u00e9tat, invasion, and division.\nOn 15 July 1974, the Greek military junta under Dimitrios Ioannides carried out a coup d'\u00e9tat in Cyprus, to unite the island with Greece. The coup ousted president Makarios\u00a0III and replaced him with pro-enosis nationalist Nikos Sampson. In response to the coup, five days later, on 20 July 1974, the Turkish army invaded the island, citing a right to intervene to restore the constitutional order from the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee. This justification has been rejected by the United Nations and the international community.\nThe Turkish air force began bombing Greek positions in Cyprus, and hundreds of paratroopers were dropped in the area between Nicosia and Kyrenia, where well-armed Turkish Cypriot enclaves had been long-established; while off the Kyrenia coast, Turkish troop ships landed 6,000 men as well as tanks, trucks and armoured vehicles.\nThree days later, when a ceasefire had been agreed, Turkey had landed 30,000 troops on the island and captured Kyrenia, the corridor linking Kyrenia to Nicosia, and the Turkish Cypriot quarter of Nicosia itself. The junta in Athens, and then the Sampson regime in Cyprus fell from power. In Nicosia, Glafkos Clerides temporarily assumed the presidency. But after the peace negotiations in Geneva, the Turkish government reinforced their Kyrenia bridgehead and started a second invasion on 14 August. The invasion resulted in Morphou, Karpass, Famagusta and the Mesaoria coming under Turkish control.\nInternational pressure led to a ceasefire, and by then 36% of the island had been taken over by the Turks and 180,000 Greek Cypriots had been evicted from their homes in the north. At the same time, around 50,000 Turkish Cypriots were displaced to the north and settled in the properties of the displaced Greek Cypriots. Among a variety of sanctions against Turkey, in mid-1975 the US Congress imposed an arms embargo on Turkey for using US-supplied equipment during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. There were 1,534 Greek Cypriots and 502 Turkish Cypriots missing as a result of the fighting from 1963 to 1974.\nThe Republic of Cyprus has \"de jure\" sovereignty over the entire island, including its territorial waters and exclusive economic zone, with the exception of the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia, which remain under the UK's control according to the London and Z\u00fcrich Agreements. However, the Republic of Cyprus is \"de facto\" partitioned into two main parts: the area under the effective control of the Republic, in the south and west and comprising about 59% of the island's area, and the north, administered by the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, covering about 36% of the island's area. Another nearly 4% of the island's area is covered by the UN buffer zone. The international community considers the northern part of the island to be territory of the Republic of Cyprus occupied by Turkish forces. The occupation is viewed as illegal under international law and amounting to illegal occupation of EU territory since Cyprus became a member of the European Union.\nPost-division.\nAfter the restoration of constitutional order and the return of Archbishop Makarios\u00a0III to Cyprus in December 1974, Turkish troops remained, occupying the northeastern portion of the island. In 1983, the Turkish Cypriot parliament, led by the Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denkta\u015f, proclaimed the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), which is recognised only by Turkey.\nThe events of the summer of 1974 dominate the politics on the island, as well as Greco-Turkish relations. Turkish settlers have been settled in the north with the encouragement of the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot states. The Republic of Cyprus considers their presence a violation of the Geneva Convention, whilst many Turkish settlers have since severed their ties to Turkey and their second generation considers Cyprus to be their homeland.\nThe Turkish invasion, the ensuing occupation and the declaration of independence by the TRNC have been condemned by United Nations resolutions, which are reaffirmed by the Security Council every year.\n21st century.\nAttempts to resolve the Cyprus dispute have continued. In 2004, the Annan Plan, drafted by then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, was put to a referendum in both Cypriot administrations. 65% of Turkish Cypriots voted in support of the plan and 74% Greek Cypriots voted against the plan, saying that it disproportionately favoured Turkish Cypriots and gave unreasonable influence over the nation to Turkey. In total, 66.7% of the voters rejected the Annan Plan.\nOn 1 May 2004 Cyprus joined the European Union, together with nine other countries. Cyprus was accepted into the EU as a whole, although the EU legislation is suspended in Northern Cyprus until a final settlement of the Cyprus problem.\nEfforts have been made to enhance freedom of movement between the two sides. In April 2003, Northern Cyprus unilaterally eased checkpoint restrictions, permitting Cypriots to cross between the two sides for the first time in 30 years. In March 2008, a wall that had stood for decades at the boundary between the Republic of Cyprus and the UN buffer zone was demolished. The wall had cut across Ledra Street in the heart of Nicosia and was seen as a strong symbol of the island's 32-year division. On 3 April 2008, Ledra Street was reopened in the presence of Greek and Turkish Cypriot officials. The two sides relaunched reunification talks in 2015, but these collapsed in 2017.\nThe European Union warned in February 2019 that Cyprus was selling EU passports to Russian oligarchs, and thus would allow organised crime syndicates to infiltrate the EU. In 2020, leaked documents revealed a wider range of former and current officials from Afghanistan, China, Dubai, Lebanon, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine and Vietnam who bought a Cypriot citizenship prior to a change of the law in July 2019. Since 2020 Cyprus and Turkey have been engaged in a dispute over the extent of their exclusive economic zones, ostensibly sparked by oil and gas exploration in the area.\nIn November 2023, the Cyprus Confidential data leak published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists showed the country's financial network entertaining strong links with Russian oligarchs and high-up figures in the Kremlin, supporting the regime of Vladimir Putin.\nIn July 2024, on the 50th anniversary of the Turkish invasion of Northern Cyprus, Turkish President Erdo\u011fan rejected a United Nations-endorsed plan for a federal government and supported the idea of having two separate states within Cyprus. Greek Cypriots immediately rejected Erdo\u011fan's two-state proposal, calling it a \"non-starter\".\nGeography.\nCyprus is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after the Italian islands of Sicily and Sardinia, both in terms of area and population. It is also the world's 80th largest by area and world's 51st largest by population. It measures long from end to end and wide at its widest point, with Turkey to the north. It lies between latitudes 34\u00b0 and 36\u00b0 N, and longitudes 32\u00b0 and 35\u00b0 E.\nOther neighbouring territories include Syria and Lebanon to the east and southeast (, respectively), Israel to the southeast, The Gaza Strip 427 kilometres (265\u00a0mi) to the southeast, Egypt to the south, and Greece to the northwest: to the small Dodecanesian island of Kastellorizo (Megisti), to Rhodes and to the Greek mainland. Cyprus is at the crossroads of three continents, with some sources placing Cyprus in Europe, and some sources placing Cyprus in Western Asia and the Middle East.\nThe physical relief of the island is dominated by two mountain ranges, the Troodos Mountains and the smaller Kyrenia Range, and the central plain they encompass, the Mesaoria. The Mesaoria plain is drained by the Pedieos River, the longest on the island. The Troodos Mountains cover most of the southern and western portions of the island and account for roughly half its area. The highest point on Cyprus is Mount Olympus at , in the centre of the Troodos range. The narrow Kyrenia Range, extending along the northern coastline, occupies substantially less area, and elevations are lower, reaching a maximum of . The island lies within the Anatolian Plate.\nCyprus contains the Cyprus Mediterranean forests ecoregion. It had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 7.06/10, ranking it 59th globally out of 172 countries.\nGeopolitically, the island is subdivided into four main segments. The Republic of Cyprus occupies the southern two-thirds of the island (59.74%). The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus occupies the northern third (34.85%), and the United Nations-controlled Green Line provides a buffer zone that separates the two and covers 2.67% of the island. Lastly, there are two bases under British sovereignty on the island: Akrotiri and Dhekelia, covering the remaining 2.74%.\nClimate.\nCyprus has a subtropical climate \u2013 Mediterranean and semi-arid type (in the north-eastern part of the island) \u2013 K\u00f6ppen climate classifications \"Csa\" and \"BSh\", with very mild winters (on the coast) and warm to hot summers. Snow is possible only in the Troodos Mountains in the central part of island. Rain occurs mainly in winter, with summer being generally dry.\nCyprus has one of the warmest climates in the Mediterranean part of the European Union. The average annual temperature on the coast is around during the day and at night. Generally, summers last about eight months, beginning in April with average temperatures of during the day and at night, and ending in November with average temperatures of during the day and at night, although in the remaining four months temperatures sometimes exceed .\nSunshine hours on the coast are around 3,200 per year, from an average of 5\u20136 hours of sunshine per day in December to an average of 12\u201313 hours in July. This is about double that of cities in the northern half of Europe; for comparison, London receives about 1,540 per year. In December, London receives about 50 hours of sunshine while coastal locations in Cyprus about 180 hours (almost as much as in May in London).\nWater supply.\nCyprus suffers from a chronic shortage of water. The country relies heavily on rain to provide household water, but in the past 30\u00a0years average yearly precipitation has decreased. Between 2001 and 2004, exceptionally heavy annual rainfall pushed water reserves up, with supply exceeding demand, allowing total storage in the island's reservoirs to rise to an all-time high by the start of 2005.\nHowever, since then demand has increased annually \u2013 a result of local population growth, foreigners moving to Cyprus and the number of visiting tourists \u2013 while supply has fallen as a result of more frequent droughts (2006 European heat wave, 2018 European heat wave, 2019 European heat waves, 2022 European heat waves).\nDams remain the principal source of water both for domestic and agricultural use; Cyprus has a total of 108 dams and reservoirs, with a total water storage capacity of about . Water desalination plants are gradually being constructed to deal with recent years of prolonged drought.\nThe Government has invested heavily in the creation of water desalination plants which have supplied almost 50 per cent of domestic water since 2001. Efforts have also been made to raise public awareness of the situation and to encourage domestic water users to take more responsibility for the conservation of this increasingly scarce commodity.\nTurkey has built a water pipeline under the Mediterranean Sea from Anamur on its southern coast to the northern coast of Cyprus, to supply Northern Cyprus with potable and irrigation water \"(see Northern Cyprus Water Supply Project)\".\nFlora and fauna.\nCyprus is home to a number of endemic species, including the Cypriot mouse, the golden oak and the Cyprus cedar.\nGovernment and politics.\nCyprus is a presidential republic. The head of state and of the government is elected by a process of universal suffrage for a five-year term. Executive power is exercised by the government with legislative power vested in the House of Representatives whilst the Judiciary is independent of both the executive and the legislature.\nThe 1960 Constitution provided for a presidential system of government with independent executive, legislative and judicial branches as well as a complex system of checks and balances including a weighted power-sharing ratio designed to protect the interests of the Turkish Cypriots. The executive was led by a Greek Cypriot president and a Turkish Cypriot vice-president elected by their respective communities for five-year terms and each possessing a right of veto over certain types of legislation and executive decisions. Legislative power rested on the House of Representatives who were also elected on the basis of separate voters' rolls.\nSince 1965, following clashes between the two communities, the Turkish Cypriot seats in the House have remained vacant. In 1974 Cyprus was divided \"de facto\" when the Turkish army occupied the northern third of the island. The Turkish Cypriots subsequently declared independence in 1983 as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus but were recognised only by Turkey. In 1985 the TRNC adopted a constitution and held its first elections. The United Nations recognises the sovereignty of the Republic of Cyprus over the entire island of Cyprus.\nAs of 2007, the House of Representatives had 56 members elected for a five-year term by proportional representation, and three observer members representing the Armenian, Latin and Maronite minorities. Twenty-four seats were allocated to the Turkish community but have remained vacant since 1964. The political environment was dominated by the communist AKEL, the liberal conservative Democratic Rally, the centrist Democratic Party, and the social-democratic EDEK.\nIn 2008, Dimitris Christofias became the country's first Communist head of state. Due to his involvement in the 2012\u201313 Cypriot financial crisis, Christofias did not run for re-election in 2013. The Presidential election in 2013 resulted in Democratic Rally candidate Nicos Anastasiades winning 57.48% of the vote. As a result, Anastasiades was sworn in on 28 February 2013. Anastasiades was re-elected with 56% of the vote in the 2018 presidential election. On 28 February 2023, Nikos Christodoulides, the winner of the 2023 presidential election run-off, was sworn in as the eighth president of the Republic of Cyprus.\nAdministrative divisions.\nThe Republic of Cyprus is divided into six districts: Nicosia, Famagusta, Kyrenia, Larnaca, Limassol and Paphos.\nExclaves and enclaves.\nCyprus has four exclaves, all in territory that belongs to the British Sovereign Base Area of Dhekelia. The first two are the villages of Ormidhia and Xylotymvou. The third is the Dhekelia Power Station, which is divided by a British road into two parts. The northern part is the EAC refugee settlement. The southern part, even though located by the sea, is also an exclave because it has no territorial waters of its own, those being UK waters.\nThe UN buffer zone runs up against Dhekelia and picks up again from its east side off Ayios Nikolaos and is connected to the rest of Dhekelia by a thin land corridor. In that sense the buffer zone turns the Paralimni area on the southeast corner of the island into a \"de facto\", though not \"de jure\", exclave.\nForeign relations.\nThe Republic of Cyprus is a member of the following international groups: Australia Group, CN, CE, CFSP, EBRD, EIB, EU, FAO, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICC, ICCt, ITUC, IDA, IFAD, IFC, IHO, ILO, IMF, IMO, Interpol, IOC, IOM, IPU, ITU, MIGA, NAM, NSG, OPCW, OSCE, PCA, UN, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNHCR, UNIDO, UPU, WCL, WCO, WFTU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WToO, WTO.\nCyprus is the 88th most peaceful country in the world, according to the 2024 Global Peace Index.\nMilitary.\nThe Cypriot National Guard is the main military institution of the Republic of Cyprus. It is a combined arms force, with land, air and naval elements. Historically all male citizens were required to spend 24 months serving in the National Guard after their 17th birthday, but in 2016 this period of compulsory service was reduced to 14 months.\nAnnually, approximately 10,000 persons are trained in recruit centres. Depending on their awarded speciality the conscript recruits are then transferred to speciality training camps or to operational units.\nWhile until 2016 the armed forces were mainly conscript based, since then a large professional enlisted institution has been adopted (\u03a3\u03a5\u039f\u03a0), which combined with the reduction of conscript service produces an approximate 3:1 ratio between conscript and professional enlisted.\nLaw, justice and human rights.\nThe Cyprus Police (Greek: , ) is the only National Police Service of the Republic of Cyprus and is under the Ministry of Justice and Public Order since 1993.\nIn \"Freedom in the World 2011\", Freedom House rated Cyprus as \"free\". In January 2011, the Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the question of Human Rights in Cyprus noted that the ongoing division of Cyprus continues to affect human rights throughout the island \"including freedom of movement, human rights pertaining to the question of missing persons, discrimination, the right to life, freedom of religion, and economic, social and cultural rights\". The constant focus on the division of the island can sometimes mask other human rights issues. Prostitution is rife, and the island has been criticised for its role in the sex trade as one of the main routes of human trafficking from Eastern Europe.\nIn 2014, Turkey was ordered by the European Court of Human Rights to pay well over $100m in compensation to Cyprus for the invasion; Ankara announced that it would ignore the judgment. In 2014, a group of Cypriot refugees and a European parliamentarian, later joined by the Cypriot government, filed a complaint to the International Court of Justice, accusing Turkey of violating the Geneva Conventions by directly or indirectly transferring its civilian population into occupied territory. Other violations of the Geneva and the Hague Conventions\u2014both ratified by Turkey\u2014amount to what archaeologist Sophocles Hadjisavvas called \"the organised destruction of Greek and Christian heritage in the north\". These violations include looting of cultural treasures, deliberate destruction of churches, neglect of works of art, and altering the names of important historical sites, which was condemned by the International Council on Monuments and Sites. Hadjisavvas has asserted that these actions are motivated by a Turkish policy of erasing the Greek presence in Northern Cyprus within a framework of ethnic cleansing. But some perpetrators are just motivated by greed and are seeking profit. Art law expert Alessandro Chechi has classified the connection of cultural heritage destruction to ethnic cleansing as the \"Greek Cypriot viewpoint\", which he reports as having been dismissed by two PACE reports. Chechi asserts joint Greek and Turkish Cypriot responsibility for the destruction of cultural heritage in Cyprus, noting the destruction of Turkish Cypriot heritage in the hands of Greek Cypriot extremists.\nEconomy.\nIn the early 21st century, Cyprus boasted a prosperous service-based economy that made it the wealthiest of the ten countries that joined the European Union in 2004. However, the Cypriot economy was later damaged by the global financial crisis and the Eurozone crisis. In June 2012, the Cypriot government announced it would need \u20ac1.8 billion in foreign aid to support the Cyprus Popular Bank, and this was followed by Fitch downgrading Cyprus's credit rating to junk status. Fitch stated Cyprus would need an additional \u20ac4 billion to support its banks and the downgrade was mainly due to the exposure of Bank of Cyprus, Cyprus Popular Bank, and Hellenic Bank, Cyprus's three largest banks, to the Greek financial crisis.\nThe 2012\u20132013 Cypriot financial crisis led to an agreement with the Eurogroup in March 2013 to split Cyprus Popular Bank, into a \"bad\" bank which would be wound down over time and a \"good\" bank which would be absorbed by the Bank of Cyprus. In return for a \u20ac10 billion bailout from the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, often referred to as the \"troika\", the Cypriot government was required to impose a significant haircut on uninsured deposits, a large proportion of which were held by wealthy Russians who used Cyprus as a tax haven. Insured deposits of \u20ac100,000 or less were not affected.\nCyprus made a staggering economic recovery in the 2010s, and according to the 2023 International Monetary Fund estimates, Cyprus' per capita GDP at $54,611 is the highest in Southern Europe, though slightly below the European Union average. Tourism, financial services and shipping are significant parts of the economy, and Cyprus has been sought as a base for several offshore businesses due its low tax rates and ease of doing business. Robust growth was achieved in the 1980s and 1990s, due to the focus placed by Cypriot governments on meeting the criteria for admission to the European Union. The Cypriot government adopted the euro as the national currency on 1 January 2008, replacing the Cypriot pound.\nCyprus is the last EU member fully isolated from energy interconnections and it is expected that it will be connected to European network via the EuroAsia Interconnector, a 2000 MW high-voltage direct current undersea power cable. EuroAsia Interconnector will connect Greek, Cypriot, and Israeli power grids. It is a leading Project of Common Interest of the European Union and also priority Electricity Highway Interconnector Project.\nIn recent years significant quantities of offshore natural gas have been discovered in the area known as Aphrodite (at the exploratory drilling block 12) in Cyprus's exclusive economic zone (EEZ), about south of Limassol at 33\u00b05'40\u2033N and 32\u00b059'0\u2033E. However, Turkey's offshore drilling companies have accessed both natural gas and oil resources since 2013. Cyprus demarcated its maritime border with Egypt in 2003, with Lebanon in 2007, and with Israel in 2010. In August 2011, the US-based firm Noble Energy entered into a production-sharing agreement with the Cypriot government regarding the block's commercial development.\nTurkey, which does not recognise the border agreements of Cyprus with its neighbours, threatened to mobilise its naval forces if Cyprus proceeded with plans to begin drilling at Block\u00a012. Cyprus's drilling efforts have the support of the US, EU, and UN, and on 19 September 2011 drilling in Block\u00a012 began without any incidents being reported.\nInfrastructure.\nCyprus is one of only three EU nations in which vehicles drive on the left-hand side of the road, a remnant of British rule. A series of motorways runs along the coast from Paphos to Ayia Napa, with two motorways running inland to Nicosia, one from Limassol and one from Larnaca.\nPer capita private car ownership is the 29th-highest in the world. There were approximately 344,000 privately owned vehicles, and a total of 517,000 registered motor vehicles in the Republic of Cyprus in 2006. In 2006, plans were announced to improve and expand bus services and other public transport throughout Cyprus, with the financial backing of the European Union Development Bank. In 2010 the new bus network was implemented.\nCyprus has two international airports in the government-controlled areas, the busier one being in Larnaca and the other in Paphos. The Ercan International Airport is the only active one in the non-government-controlled areas, but all international flights there must have a stopover in Turkey.\nThe main harbours of the island are Limassol and Larnaca, which serve cargo, passenger and cruise ships.\nCyta, the state-owned telecommunications company, manages most telecommunications and Internet connections on the island. However, following deregulation of the sector, a few private telecommunications companies emerged, including epic, Cablenet, OTEnet Telecom, Omega Telecom and PrimeTel. In the non-government-controlled areas of Cyprus, two different companies administer the mobile phone network: Turkcell and KKTC Telsim.\nDemographics.\nAccording to the Republic of Cyprus' website, the population in the government controlled areas was 918,100 at the 2021 Census, with the most populous district being Nicosia (38%), followed by Limassol (28%). The Nicosia Metropolitan area, consisting of seven municipalities, is the largest urban area on the island with a population of 255,309.\nAs per the first population census after independence, carried out in December 1960 and covering the entire island, Cyprus had a total population of 573,566, of whom 442,138 (77.1%) were Greeks, 104,320 (18.2%) Turks, and 27,108 (4.7%) others. The CIA World Factbook calculated that in 2001, Greek Cypriots comprised 77%, Turkish Cypriots 18%, and others 5% of the total Cypriot population.\nDue to the inter-communal ethnic tensions between 1963 and 1974, an island-wide census was regarded as impossible. Nevertheless, the Cypriot government conducted one in 1973, without the Turkish Cypriot populace. According to this census, the Greek Cypriot population was 482,000. One year later, in 1974, the Cypriot government's Department of Statistics and Research estimated the total population of Cyprus at 641,000; of whom 506,000 (78.9%) were Greeks, and 118,000 (18.4%) Turkish. After the military occupation of part of the island in 1974, the government of Cyprus conducted six more censuses: in 1976, 1982, 1992, 2001, 2011 and 2021; these excluded the Turkish population which was resident in non-government-controlled areas of the island.\nIn addition to this, the Republic of Cyprus is home to 110,200 foreign permanent residents and an estimated 10,000\u201330,000 undocumented illegal immigrants. As of 2011, there were 10,520 people of Russian origin living in Cyprus.\nAccording to the 2006 census carried out by Northern Cyprus, there were 256,644 (\"de jure\") people living in Northern Cyprus. 178,031 were citizens of Northern Cyprus, of whom 147,405 were born in Cyprus (112,534 from the north; 32,538 from the south; 371 did not indicate what region of Cyprus they were from); 27,333 born in Turkey; 2,482 born in the UK and 913 born in Bulgaria. Of the 147,405 citizens born in Cyprus, 120,031 say both parents were born in Cyprus; 16,824 say both parents born in Turkey; 10,361 have one parent born in Turkey and one parent born in Cyprus.\nIn 2010, the International Crisis Group estimated that the total population of the island was 1.1 million, of which there were an estimated 300,000 residents in the north, perhaps half of whom were either born in Turkey or are children of such settlers.\nThe villages of Rizokarpaso (in Northern Cyprus), Potamia (in Nicosia district) and Pyla (in Larnaca District) are the only settlements remaining with a mixed Greek and Turkish Cypriot population.\nY-Dna haplogroups are found at the following frequencies in Cyprus: J (43.07% including 6.20% J1), E1b1b (20.00%), R1 (12.30% including 9.2% R1b), F (9.20%), I (7.70%), K (4.60%), A (3.10%). J, K, F and E1b1b haplogroups consist of lineages with differential distribution within Middle East, North Africa and Europe.\nOutside Cyprus there are significant and thriving diasporas \u2013 both a Greek Cypriot diaspora and a Turkish Cypriot diaspora \u2013 in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, the United States, Greece and Turkey. According to Council of Europe, approximately 1,250 Romani people live in Cyprus.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nReligion.\nThe majority of Greek Cypriots identify as Christians, specifically Greek Orthodox, whereas most Turkish Cypriots are adherents of Sunni Islam. The first President of Cyprus, Makarios\u00a0III, was an archbishop.\nHala Sultan Tekke, situated near the Larnaca Salt Lake is an object of pilgrimage for Muslims.\nAccording to the 2001 census carried out in the government-controlled areas, 94.8% of the population was Eastern Orthodox, 0.9% Armenian and Maronite, 1.5% Roman Catholic, 1.0% Church of England, and 0.6% Muslim. There is also a Jewish community on Cyprus. The remaining 1.3% adhered to other religious denominations or did not state their religion. The Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic Church, and both the Maronite and Latin Catholics are constitutionally recognised denominations and exempt from taxes.\nLanguages.\nCyprus has two official languages, Greek and Turkish. Armenian and Cypriot Maronite Arabic are recognised as minority languages. Although without official status, English is widely spoken and features widely on road signs and in public notices and advertisements. English was the sole official language during British colonial rule and the lingua franca until 1960, and continued to be used (\"de facto\") in courts of law until 1989 and in legislation until 1996. In 2010, 80.4% of Cypriots were proficient in English as a second language. Russian is widely spoken among the country's minorities, residents and citizens of post-Soviet countries, and Pontic Greeks. Russian, after English and Greek, is the third language used on many signs of shops and restaurants, particularly in Limassol and Paphos. In addition, in 2006, 12% of the population spoke French and 5% spoke German.\nThe everyday spoken language of Greek Cypriots is Cypriot Greek, and that of Turkish Cypriots is Cypriot Turkish. These vernaculars both differ from their standard registers significantly.\nEducation.\nCyprus has a highly developed system of primary and secondary education offering both public and private education. The high quality of instruction can be attributed in part to the fact that nearly 7% of the GDP is spent on education which makes Cyprus one of the top three spenders of education in the EU along with Denmark and Sweden. Cyprus was ranked 27th in the Global Innovation Index in 2024.\nState schools are generally seen as equivalent in quality of education to private-sector institutions. However, the value of a state high-school diploma is limited by the fact that the grades obtained account for only around 25% of the final grade for each topic, with the remaining 75% assigned by the teacher during the semester, in a minimally transparent way. Cypriot universities (like universities in Greece) ignore high school grades almost entirely for admissions purposes. While a high-school diploma is mandatory for university attendance, admissions are decided almost exclusively on the basis of scores at centrally administered university entrance examinations that all university candidates are required to take.\nThe majority of Cypriots receive their higher education at Greek, British, Turkish, other European and North American universities. Cyprus currently has the highest percentage of citizens of working age who have higher-level education in the EU at 30% which is ahead of Finland's 29.5%. In addition, 47% of its population aged 25\u201334 have tertiary education, which is the highest in the EU. The body of Cypriot students is highly mobile, with 78.7% studying in a university outside Cyprus.\nCulture.\nGreek and Turkish Cypriots share many cultural traits, while also possessing some differences. Several traditional food (such as souvla and halloumi) and beverages are similar, as well as expressions and ways of life. Hospitality and buying or offering food and drinks for guests or others are common among both. In both communities, music, dance and art are integral parts of social life and many artistic, verbal and nonverbal expressions, traditional dances such as tsifteteli, similarities in dance costumes and importance placed on social activities are shared between the communities. However, the two communities have distinct religions and religious cultures, with the Greek Cypriots traditionally being Greek Orthodox and Turkish Cypriots traditionally being Sunni Muslims, which has partly hindered cultural exchange. Greek Cypriots have influences from Greece and Christianity, while Turkish Cypriots have influences from Turkey and Islam.\nThe Limassol Carnival Festival is an annual carnival which is held at Limassol, in Cyprus. The event which is very popular in Cyprus was introduced in the 20th century.\nArts.\nThe art history of Cyprus can be said to stretch back up to 10,000 years, following the discovery of a series of Chalcolithic period carved figures in the villages of Khoirokoitia and Lempa. The island is the home to numerous examples of high quality religious icon painting from the Middle Ages as well as many painted churches. Cypriot architecture was heavily influenced by French Gothic and Italian renaissance introduced in the island during the era of Latin domination (1191\u20131571).\nA well known traditional art that dates at least from the 14th\u00a0century is the Lefkara lace, which originates from the village of Lefkara. Lefkara lace is recognised as an intangible cultural heritage (ICH) by UNESCO, and it is characterised by distinct design patterns, and its intricate, time-consuming production process. Another local form of art that originated from Lefkara is the production of Cypriot Filigree (locally known as \"Trifourenio\"), a type of jewellery that is made with twisted threads of silver.\nIn modern times Cypriot art history begins with the painter Vassilis Vryonides (1883\u20131958) who studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. Arguably the two founding fathers of modern Cypriot art were Adamantios Diamantis (1900\u20131994) who studied at London's Royal College of Art and \nChristophoros Savva (1924\u20131968) who also studied in London, at Saint Martin's School of Art. In 1960, Savva founded, together with Welsh artist Glyn Hughes, Apophasis [Decision], the first independent cultural centre of the newly established Republic of Cyprus. In 1968, Savva was among the artists representing Cyprus in its inaugural Pavilion at the 34th Venice Biennale. English Cypriot Artist Glyn HUGHES 1931\u20132014. In many ways these two artists set the template for subsequent Cypriot art and both their artistic styles and the patterns of their education remain influential to this day. In particular the majority of Cypriot artists still train in England while others train at art schools in Greece and local art institutions such as the Cyprus College of Art, University of Nicosia and the Frederick Institute of Technology.\nOne of the features of Cypriot art is a tendency towards figurative painting although conceptual art is being rigorously promoted by a number of art \"institutions\" and most notably the Nicosia Municipal Art Centre. Municipal art galleries exist in all the main towns and there is a large and lively commercial art scene.\nOther notable Greek Cypriot artists include Panayiotis Kalorkoti, Nicos Nicolaides, Stass Paraskos, Telemachos Kanthos, and Chris Achilleos; and Turkish Cypriot artists include \u0130smet G\u00fcney, Ruzen Atakan and Mutlu \u00c7erkez.\nMusic.\nThe traditional folk music of Cyprus has several common elements with Greek, Turkish, and Arabic Music, all of which have descended from Byzantine music, including Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot dances such as the tillirkotissa, as well as the Middle Eastern-inspired \"tsifteteli\" and \"arapies\". There is also a form of musical poetry known as \"chattista\" which is often performed at traditional feasts and celebrations. The instruments commonly associated with Cyprus folk music are the violin (\"fkiolin\"), lute (\"laouto\"), Cyprus flute (\"pithkiavlin\"), oud (\"outi\"), kanonaki and percussions (including the \"tamboutsia\"). Composers associated with traditional Cypriot music include Solon Michaelides, Marios Tokas, Evagoras Karageorgis and Savvas Salides. Among musicians is also the acclaimed pianist Cyprien Katsaris, composer Andreas G. Orphanides, and composer and artistic director of the European Capital of Culture initiative Marios Joannou Elia.\nPopular music in Cyprus is generally influenced by the Greek \"La\u00efka\" scene; artists who play in this genre include international platinum star Anna Vissi, Evridiki, and Sarbel. Hip hop and R&B have been supported by the emergence of Cypriot rap and the urban music scene at Ayia Napa, while in the last years the reggae scene is growing, especially through the participation of many Cypriot artists at the annual Reggae Sunjam festival. Is also noted Cypriot rock music and \"\u00c9ntekhno\" rock is often associated with artists such as Michalis Hatzigiannis and Alkinoos Ioannidis. Metal also has a small following in Cyprus represented by bands such as Armageddon (rev.16:16), Blynd, Winter's Verge, Methysos and Quadraphonic.\nLiterature.\nLiterary production of the antiquity includes the \"Cypria\", an epic poem, probably composed in the late 7th\u00a0century\u00a0BC and attributed to Stasinus. The \"Cypria\" is one of the first specimens of Greek and European poetry. The Cypriot Zeno of Citium was the founder of the Stoic school of philosophy.\nEpic poetry, notably the \"acritic songs\", flourished during the Middle Ages. Two chronicles, one written by Leontios Machairas and the other by Georgios Boustronios, cover the entire Middle Ages until the end of Frankish rule (4th\u00a0century\u20131489). \"Po\u00e8mes d'amour\" written in medieval Greek Cypriot date back from the 16th\u00a0century. Some of them are actual translations of poems written by Petrarch, Bembo, Ariosto and G.\u00a0Sannazzaro. Many Cypriot scholars fled Cyprus at troubled times, such as Ioannis Kigalas (c.\u00a01622\u20131687) who migrated from Cyprus to Italy in the 17th\u00a0century, several of his works have survived in books of other scholars.\nHasan Hilmi Efendi, a Turkish Cypriot poet, was rewarded by the Ottoman sultan Mahmud\u00a0II and said to be the \"sultan of the poems\".\nModern Greek Cypriot literary figures include the poet and writer Costas Montis, poet Kyriakos Charalambides, poet Michalis Pasiardis, writer Nicos Nicolaides, Stylianos Atteshlis, Altheides, Loukis Akritas and Demetris Th. Gotsis. Dimitris Lipertis, Vasilis Michaelides and Pavlos Liasides are folk poets who wrote poems mainly in the Cypriot-Greek dialect. Among leading Turkish Cypriot writers are Osman T\u00fcrkay, twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, \u00d6zker Ya\u015f\u0131n, Neriman Cahit, Urkiye Mine Balman, Mehmet Ya\u015f\u0131n and Ne\u015fe Ya\u015f\u0131n.\nThere is an increasingly strong presence of both temporary and permanent emigre Cypriot writers in world literature, as well as writings by second and third-generation Cypriot writers born or raised abroad, often writing in English. This includes writers such as Michael Paraskos and Stephanos Stephanides.\nExamples of Cyprus in foreign literature include the works of Shakespeare, with most of the play \"Othello\" by William Shakespeare set on the island of Cyprus. British writer Lawrence Durrell lived in Cyprus from 1952 until 1956, during his time working for the British colonial government on the island, and wrote the book \"Bitter Lemons\" about his time in Cyprus which won the second Duff Cooper Prize in 1957.\nMass media.\nIn the 2015 Freedom of the Press report of Freedom House, the Republic of Cyprus and Northern Cyprus were ranked \"free\". The Republic of Cyprus scored 25/100 in press freedom, 5/30 in Legal Environment, 11/40 in Political Environment, and 9/30 in Economic Environment (the lower scores the better). Reporters Without Borders rank the Republic of Cyprus 24th out of 180 countries in the 2015 World Press Freedom Index, with a score of 15.62.\nThe law provides for freedom of speech and press, and the government generally respects these rights in practice. An independent press, an effective judiciary, and a functioning democratic political system combine to ensure freedom of speech and of the press. The law prohibits arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, or correspondence, and the government generally respects these prohibitions in practice.\nLocal television companies in Cyprus include the state owned Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation which runs two television channels. In addition on the Greek side of the island there are the private channels ANT1 Cyprus, Plus TV, Mega Channel, Sigma TV, Nimonia TV (NTV) and New Extra. In Northern Cyprus, the local channels are BRT, the Turkish Cypriot equivalent to the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation, and a number of private channels. The majority of local arts and cultural programming is produced by the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation and BRT, with local arts documentaries, review programmes and filmed drama series.\nCinema.\nThe most worldwide known Cypriot director, to have worked abroad, is Michael Cacoyannis.\nIn the late 1960s and early 1970s, George Filis produced and directed \"Gregoris Afxentiou\", \"Etsi Prodothike i Kypros\", and \"The Mega Document\". In 1994, Cypriot film production received a boost with the establishment of the Cinema Advisory Committee. In 2000, the annual amount set aside for filmmaking in the national budget was CYP\u00a3500,000 (about \u20ac850,000). In addition to government grants, Cypriot co-productions are eligible for funding from the Council of Europe's Eurimages Fund, which finances European film co-productions. To date, four feature films on which a Cypriot was an executive producer have received funding from Eurimages. The first was \"I Sphagi tou Kokora\" (1996), followed by \"Hellados\" (unreleased), \"To Tama\" (1999), and \"O Dromos gia tin Ithaki\" (2000).\nCuisine.\nDuring the medieval period, under the French Lusignan monarchs of Cyprus an elaborate form of courtly cuisine developed, fusing French, Byzantine and Middle Eastern forms. The Lusignan kings were known for importing Syrian cooks to Cyprus, and it has been suggested that one of the key routes for the importation of Middle Eastern recipes into France and other Western European countries, such as blancmange, was via the Lusignan Kingdom of Cyprus. These recipes became known in the West as \"vyands de Chypre\", or foods of Cyprus, and the food historian William Woys Weaver has identified over one hundred of them in English, French, Italian and German recipe books of the Middle Ages. One that became particularly popular across Europe in the medieval and early modern periods was a stew made with chicken or fish called \"malmonia\", which in English became mawmeny.\nAnother example of a Cypriot food ingredient entering the Western European canon is the cauliflower, still popular and used in a variety of ways on the island today, which was associated with Cyprus from the early Middle Ages. Writing in the 12th and 13th centuries the Arab botanists Ibn al-'Awwam and Ibn al-Baitar claimed the vegetable had its origins in Cyprus, and this association with the island was echoed in Western Europe, where cauliflowers were originally known as Cyprus cabbage or \"Cyprus colewart\". There was also a long and extensive trade in cauliflower seeds from Cyprus, until well into the sixteenth century.\nAlthough much of the Lusignan food culture was lost after the fall of Cyprus to the Ottomans in 1571, a number of dishes that would have been familiar to the Lusignans survive today, including various forms of tahini and houmous, zalatina, skordalia and pickled wild song birds called ambelopoulia. Ambelopoulia, which is today highly controversial, and illegal, was exported in vast quantities from Cyprus during the Lusignan and Venetian periods, particularly to Italy and France. In 1533 the English traveller to Cyprus, John Locke, claimed to have seen the pickled wild birds packed into large jars, of which 1200 jars were exported from Cyprus annually.\nAlso familiar to the Lusignans would have been Halloumi cheese, which some food writers today claim originated in Cyprus during the Byzantine period although the name of the cheese itself is thought by academics to be of Arabic origin. There is no surviving written documentary evidence of the cheese being associated with Cyprus before the year 1554, when the Italian historian Florio Bustron wrote of a sheep-milk cheese from Cyprus he called \"calumi\". Halloumi (Hellim) is commonly served sliced, grilled, fried and sometimes fresh, as an appetiser or meze dish.\nSeafood and fish dishes include squid, octopus, red mullet, and sea bass. Cucumber and tomato are used widely in salads. Common vegetable preparations include potatoes in olive oil and parsley, pickled cauliflower and beets, asparagus and taro. Other traditional delicacies are meat marinated in dried coriander seeds and wine, and eventually dried and smoked, such as \"lountza\" (smoked pork loin), charcoal-grilled lamb, souvlaki (pork and chicken cooked over charcoal), and sheftalia (minced meat wrapped in mesentery). \"Pourgouri\" (bulgur, cracked wheat) is the traditional source of carbohydrate other than bread, and is used to make the delicacy koubes.\nFresh vegetables and fruits are common ingredients. Frequently used vegetables include courgettes, green peppers, okra, green beans, artichokes, carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and grape leaves, and pulses such as beans, broad beans, peas, black-eyed beans, chick-peas and lentils. The most common fruits and nuts are pears, apples, grapes, oranges, mandarines, nectarines, medlar, blackberries, cherry, strawberries, figs, watermelon, melon, avocado, lemon, pistachio, almond, chestnut, walnut, and hazelnut.\nCyprus is also well known for its desserts, including \"lokum\" (also known as Turkish delight) and Soutzoukos. This island has protected geographical indication (PGI) for its \"lokum\" produced in the village of Geroskipou.\nSports.\nSport governing bodies include the Cyprus Football Association, Cyprus Basketball Federation, Cyprus Volleyball Federation, Cyprus Automobile Association, Cyprus Badminton Federation, Cyprus Cricket Association, Cyprus Rugby Federation and the Cyprus Pool Association.\nNotable sports teams in the Cyprus leagues include APOEL FC, Anorthosis Famagusta FC, AC Omonia, AEL Limassol FC, Apollon Limassol FC, Nea Salamis Famagusta FC, Olympiakos Nicosia, AEK Larnaca FC, Aris Limassol FC, AEL Limassol B.C., Keravnos B.C. and Apollon Limassol B.C. Stadiums or sports venues include the GSP Stadium (the largest in the Republic of Cyprus-controlled areas), Tsirion Stadium (second largest), Neo GSZ Stadium, Antonis Papadopoulos Stadium, Ammochostos Stadium. Makario Stadium and Alphamega Stadium.\nIn the 2008\u201309 season, Anorthosis Famagusta FC was the first Cypriot team to qualify for the UEFA Champions League Group stage. Next season, APOEL FC qualified for the UEFA Champions League group stage, and reached the last 8 of the 2011\u201312 UEFA Champions League after finishing top of its group and beating French Olympique Lyonnais in the Round of 16.\nThe Cyprus national rugby union team known as \"The Moufflons\" currently holds the record for most consecutive international wins, which is especially notable as the Cyprus Rugby Federation was only formed in 2006.\nFootballer Sotiris Kaiafas won the European Golden Shoe in the 1975\u201376 season; Cyprus is the smallest country by population to have one of its players win the award. Tennis player Marcos Baghdatis was ranked 8th in the world, was a finalist at the Australian Open, and reached the Wimbledon semi-final, all in 2006. High jumper Kyriakos Ioannou achieved a jump of 2.35m at the 11th IAAF World Championships in Athletics in Osaka, Japan, in 2007, winning the bronze medal. He has been ranked third in the world. In motorsports, Tio Ellinas is a successful race car driver, currently racing in the GP3 Series for Marussia Manor Motorsport. There is also mixed martial artist Costas Philippou, who competed in UFC's middleweight division from 2011 until 2015. Costas holds a 6\u20134 record in UFC bouts.\nAlso notable for a Mediterranean island, the siblings Christopher and Sophia Papamichalopoulou qualified for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. They were the only athletes who managed to qualify and thus represented Cyprus at the 2010 Winter Olympics.\nThe country's first ever Olympic medal, a silver medal, was won by the sailor Pavlos Kontides, at the 2012 Summer Olympics in the Men's Laser class.\nReferences.\nInformational notes\nCitations\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nGeneral Information\nGovernment\nTourism\nCuisine\nArchaeology\nOfficial publications"}, "descending_order": ["5593", "9282173"], "permutation_1": ["5593", "9282173"], "permutation_2": ["5593", "9282173"], "permutation_3": ["5593", "9282173"]}
{"id": "2hop__780238_110949", "docs_added": {"43393965": "Till dom ensamma\n\"Till dom ensamma\" is a song written and recorded by Mauro Scocco for his 1991 studio album \"Dr. Space dagbok\", and released as a single the same year. The song charted at Svensktoppen for 22 weeks between 8 December 1991-10 May 1992, topping the chart. It also peaked at number 12 on the Swedish Singles Chart.\nOther recordings.\nDate participated at Dansbandskampen 2009, performing the song, and they also recorded it for their 2010 album \"H\u00e4r och nu!\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "7345089": "Mauro Scocco\nSwedish musician (born 1962)\nMauro Scocco (born 11 September 1962) is a Swedish pop musician of Italian descent. He has been described as \"one of the sharpest songwriters in Sweden\". Scocco was the singer for the pop group Ratata (1980\u201383) transformed into a duo with Johan Ekelund (1983\u201389). After Ratata, Scocco has continued as a solo artist since. In 2014, he cooperated with Plura Jonsson releasing a joint album as \"Mauro & Plura\".\nEarly life and career.\nScocco was born in Fristad in Bor\u00e5s. He grew up in Stockholm and in Bor\u00e5s. Scocco formed the pop group Ratata in 1980 along with a few classmates while he was still in school. The first single was \"F\u00f6r varje dag\" (\"For each day\") released on the debut album \"Ratata\" in 1981. After the break-up of Ratata in 1989 Scocco started a successful solo career and has released many songs that have reached top positions on the Swedish charts; \"Sarah\", \"Vem \u00e4r han?\" (\"Who is he?\"), \"Till de ensamma\" (\"For the lonely\"), \"Nelly\", \"L\u00e5ngsamt farv\u00e4l\" (\"Long Goodbye\") and \"\u00d6verallt\" (\"Everywhere\") are among the most recognized. Besides being a solo artist he also writes and produces music for other pop singers, of which Lisa Nilsson is the most famous. Scocco wrote \"Himlen runt h\u00f6rnet\" (\"Heaven around the corner\") for her and it became a hit in Scandinavia in the early 1990s that made her career skyrocket.\nIn 1991, Scocco released an album with instrumental piano music, \"Det Sjungande Tr\u00e4det\" (\"The singing tree\"), with inspiration from Erik Satie and expressionistic art. In the spring of 2004, Scocco was a disc jockey in the talkshow Sen kv\u00e4ll med Luuk on TV4, in line with the dry, ironic humour of the show. In the fall of 2005 Scocco released the single \"Kall Stj\u00e4rna\" (\"Cold star\") from the album \"Herr Jimsons \u00c4ventyr\" (\"The adventures of Mr. Jimson\"), which made it to the top list over downloaded singles on iTunes.\nRatata.\nMauro Scocco was also a lead singer of the four-piece Swedish band Ratata, formed in 1980, which also included Heinz Liljedahl, Anders Skog, and Johan Kling. Their debut single was \"F\u00f6r varje dag\" in 1981 followed by \"\u00d6gon av is\". Both appeared in their self-titled 1982 debut album \"Ratata\". Immediately after release of \"Jackie\", their second album, including the title track as single, Ratata disbanded in 1982 after just three years of activity.\nBut Scocco continued to use the name as a duo when he was joined by Johan Ekelund. For studio and live gigs, the duo relied on musicians to aid in the shows. The duo continued to have a great number of hit singles and released many more charting albums. The duo had a brief comeback in 2002.\nPersonal life.\nMauro Scocco's brother Sandro Scocco is a well-known Swedish economist.\nDiscography.\nOthers\nSolo compilations\nSingles\nMauro & Plura\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "75162374": "Till dom som bryr sig\nTill dom som bryr sig is the second studio album by Swedish indie pop band Solen. It was released on 29 October 2014. The album was nominated for the 2015 Grammis Award for \"Best Rock\" album.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "20442289": "Benjamin Till\nEnglish composer, director and film maker\nBenjamin Till (born 8 August 1974) is a multi-award-winning English composer, director and film maker.\nEarly years.\nTill was born in Oswestry, Shropshire, and spent much of his childhood in the Northamptonshire town of Higham Ferrers. He attended the Northamptonshire Music and Performing Arts Trust (NMPAT) and sang in the Northamptonshire County Youth Choir.\nEducation.\nHe studied music and composition at The University of York, then trained on the directing course at London's Mountview Theatre School.\nComposing.\nMosaic Voices.\nTill is the Composer in Residence for Mosaic Voices, a British vocal ensemble specialising in music from the Jewish tradition based at New West End Synagogue in Bayswater, London. He also sings as baritone in the ensemble. Mosaic Voices' most recent album, \"Letter To Kamilla\", (released by Chandos Records) was a top 5 album in the official UK Classical Music charts and was described by \"Gramophone magazine\" as \"moving but never mawkish\" and by \"BBC Music Magazine\" as \"sung with power and passion... simply heartbreaking.\"\nTill has written over fifty original compositions for the ensemble and arranged or re-scored more than one hundred further pieces. His composition, Time, was performed in January 2024. It tells the story of The New West End Synagogue through newspaper reports, mostly from the Jewish Chronicle. His setting of Psalm 23 (The Lord's My Shepherd) was turned into a short film which documented the lives of UK Jewish People during lockdown. This film won a \nNene.\nIn 2016, Till was commissioned by NMPAT (Northamptonshire Music and Performing Arts Trust) to compose a major orchestral and choral work about the River Nene, which flows through his childhood home town of Higham Ferrers. The composition was scored for 800 musicians and premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in 2017, before being performed at Northampton's Derngate Theatre and Peterborough Cathedral. His composition follows the river from its source in Badby all the way to the sea (100 miles away) in Norfolk. The piece quotes tradition folk melodies from towns and villages along the river, and explores ghost stories, myths and legends associated with the Nene. Till also musicalises the sounds of the river and its associated wildlife, including the calls of red kites.\nThe Pepys Motet.\nIn 2010, St. Olave's Church, where Samuel Pepys is buried, commissioned Till to write a 40-part motet to mark the 350th anniversary of Pepys' beginning to write his diary. Four of the six movements were performed live in November 2010 at St. Olave's. The fourth movement, \"The Great Fire\", was broadcast on BBC Radio 3's \"In Tune\" programme, whilst \"The Pepys Motet\" was re-scored for 20 voices and recorded and released by Hind Style Records in 2016.\n\"The London Requiem\".\nCompleted in 2012, \"The London Requiem\" is a setting of gravestone inscriptions which Till found in cemeteries across London. This ten-movement work is scored for string orchestra, string quartet, four percussionists and three keyboard players, alongside full SATB choir and soloists. The work was featured on The Space, a pilot BBC project. Ten short films were created for each of the movements, and subsequently a live performance of the full piece was broadcast from Abney Park Cemetery. \"The London Requiem\" was recorded in 2012 and featured the Balanescu Quartet and soloists including Maddy Prior, Matt Lucas, Tanita Tikaram and Barbara Windsor.\nOranges and Lemons.\nIn early 2009, Till recorded all the bells mentioned in the nursery rhyme, \"Oranges and Lemons\" (two hundred bells in seventeen London churches), and wrote a piece of music to feature them all playing in harmony, alongside a choir of people who live or work in one of the areas around the churches. This twelve-minute composition, which included 4000 individual bell strikes was featured on BBC Radio 3's \"In Tune\" and BBC Radio 4's \"Today Programme\", alongside in depth coverage by BBC London, who sponsored the piece with Arts Council England. \nThe piece received its premiere performance on 11 July 2009 at St. Mary le Bow Church, London.\nBenjamin Till's various compositions also include some liturgical Jewish works for \"a cappella\" male vocal ensemble, commissioned by Mosaic Voices, the resident choir at the New West End Synagogue, of which he is a member.\nTheatre work.\n\"Brass\".\nIn 2014, Till was commissioned by the National Youth Music Theatre to create a new musical to commemorate the centenary of the First World War. \"Brass\" has book, music and lyrics by Till, with additional lyrics by Sir Arnold Wesker and Nathan Taylor. The show premiered in August 2014 at Leeds City Varieties Music Hall and tells the story of a group of men from a Leeds-based brass band who sign up to fight as part of the Leeds Pals battalion, and their women folk who decide to learn the instruments the men have left behind in the hope of playing triumphantly for them on their return from war.\nThe show, directed by Sara Kestelman and choreographed by Matt Flint, went on to win Best Musical at the UK Theatre Awards 2014. A cast recording was released the following year. \"Brass \"was later revived by the NYMT in a new production at the Hackney Empire in August 2016, directed by Hannah Chissick, and was met with rave reviews, especially from Theatre Critic and Associate Editor of \"The Stage\", Mark Shenton, who said the show was a \"magnificent miracle of a musical...with epic sweep and originality.\"\nFrom 31 October to 24 November 2018, the show received its professional premiere in a new production at the Union Theatre, directed by Sasha Regan, the theatre's founder and artistic director. The production received a full complement of four and five-star reviews. Michael Arditti in the \"Sunday Express\" wrote \"Benjamin Till's rich, melodious score, its influences, ranging from Marie Lloyd to Vaughan Williams, powerfully conveys the fervour, horror and heartbreak both in the trenches and at home\". The production was nominated for five Offies. Brass is published by Rodgers and Hammerstein Theatricals.\nEm.\nIn 2017, Till wrote the musical \"Em\", set in Liverpool in 1965, which tells the story of a woman who is trying to keep a baby born out of wedlock, which the authorities want to take away from her. The musical was performed by Central School of Speech and Drama, and subsequently released as a cast album.\nOther theatre.\nIn 1997, Till was approached by playwright Sir Arnold Wesker to collaborate with him on a one-woman musical play that he had written in 1990. The piece was called \"Letter to a Daughter\", and the UK premiere opened at the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh on Till's birthday, 8 August 1998.\nFilm and television.\nCasting.\nFrom 2004 to 2006, Till worked as a casting assistant to casting director Shaheen Baig, and worked on such films as \"Control\", \"Notes on a Scandal\", \"Brick Lane\" and \"28 Weeks Later\", the last of which he also worked on closely with the two young leads, Imogen Poots and Mackintosh Muggleton.\nBBC films.\nIn early 2005, he submitted a pitch to BBC London News, who were looking for people to make a two-minute short film on the subject of \"Untold London.\" The pitch was for a musical film featuring the different communities who use and enjoy Hampstead Heath. Till was one of ten directors chosen to make their films, and \"Hampstead Heath: The Musical\" was born. The film was nominated for a Royal Television Society award.\nBBC producer Penny Wrout then commissioned him to make a three-minute musical film for the Children in Need telethon, showcasing the bizarre and wacky ways that people were raising money for the popular charity: the film was shown twice during the telethon in November that year.\n\"The Busker Symphony\" (2006).\nIn 2006, Till made four short films for Channel 4's \"Three-Minute Wonder\" season. The project was called \"The Busker Symphony\", and a four-movement piece he composed was performed by buskers past and present at various locations around London. Each film featured one movement from the Symphony, variously entitled \"Andante\", \"Adagio\", \"Scherzo\" and \"Final\u00e9\": the films were broadcast in April 2006.\n\"A1: the Road Musical\" (2008).\nIn April 2008, Till started work on his largest-scale project to date, \"A1: the Road Musical\", again for Channel 4. The half-hour film was produced by Endemol, and followed a lorry driver's journey up the A1, from London to Edinburgh, during which he met various people along the way; they all tell their stories, either in song or set to a specially composed soundtrack.\nThe film starts with Londoners singing their thoughts while stuck in city traffic, then further up the road a young Polish man is introduced: he is deliberating whether or not to leave England and return to Poland. We then meet a woman who was involved in a severe car accident and the mysterious stranger who helped her, a choir of ex-miners lamenting the demise of the coal industry, a young man who lost his brother in an accident on the A1, two motorbikers railing at the government red tape that threatens to stifle people's independence and a Berwick-upon-Tweed resident who is campaigning to have the Scottish border redrawn to make his town part of Scotland, where he feels it rightly belongs.\nThe film was broadcast on 29 August 2008, and became the fourth most-praised programme aired on Channel 4 that month, based on telephone calls to the station to congratulate the makers.\n\"Coventry Market: The Musical\" (2008).\nOn 4 November 2008, BBC Coventry and Warwickshire screened the premiere of \"Coventry Market: The Musical\", a film made by Till to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the town's indoor market. Drawing on the whole community surrounding the market, and those who work in it or patronise it, the film spawned a large multi-platform project, with many radio hours dedicated to its creation, and the stories of some of those featured in it. In addition, there were associated online blogs and news documentaries shown in the region.\n\"Metro: The Musical\" (2011).\nOn 24 March 2011, BBC Look North, premiered Till's \"Metro: The Musical\". The work celebrated 30 years of the Tyne and Wear Metro carrying the North-Eastern community from the busy epicentre of Monument to the sunny coast of Tynemouth, or the bustling runways of Newcastle Airport. It featured a cast of 180 \u2013 all of whom have worked or been passengers on the network since 1980 \u2013 sharing their stories.\n\"Our Gay Wedding: The Musical\" (2014).\nOn 29 March 2014, Till married his long-term partner Nathan Taylor, in the process becoming one of the first same-sex couples to get married in the UK. They were married in a musical, which was commissioned by Channel 4, in Alexandra Palace Theatre and broadcast two days after the wedding itself. The multi-award-winning film received wide praise. Ed Power, writing in \"The Daily Telegraph\" said it was \"more powerful than anything all the romcom writers in the world could have put together\".\n\"The Guardian\"'s Tim Dowling wrote \"When I say I cried I cried all the way through [...] an hour of unbridled joy, an inventive and wholly appropriate way to celebrate the advent of equal marriage [...] better than perfect, it was fabulous.\" In Metro, Simon Swift reviewed it as \"The wedding that was better than Kate and Will's [...] a heartwarming, uplifting, tear-jerking celebration of gay marriage [...] Best. Wedding. Ever.\"\n\"100 Faces\" (2018).\nIn 2018, Benjamin made the film \"100 Faces\" which features 100 Jewish British people, one born every year between 1918 and 2017. Some sing, some speak, all state what being Jewish means to them in a single sentence. The film is accompanied by a soundtrack recorded by the Israel Camerata orchestra. The film was premiered at the UK Jewish Film Festival in 2018 and has subsequently been screened in festivals around the world. In 2019, it shared the gold prize at the prestigious Robinson Short Film Awards.\nRadio.\nTill worked with long-term friend Sir Arnold Wesker again in 2007, when he was asked to write the featured song (to Wesker's lyrics) and incidental music for Wesker's radio play, \"The Rocking Horse\", commissioned by the BBC World Service to celebrate theirs and Wesker's 75th birthday. The play was aired in November 2007.\nPersonal life.\nBenjamin Till is married to actor and knitting guru Nathan Taylor. The couple live in London.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "228787": "Ensamma mamman\nSwedish comic strip created by Cecilia Torudd\nEnsamma mamman (\"single mom\") is a Swedish comic strip created by Cecilia Torudd. \"Ensamma mamman\" first made a brief appearance in \"Dagens Nyheter\" in 1985. It was well received by the readers and returned in 1987 as a fixed feature. Torudd continued drawing it until 1991, when it was syndicated by Bull, and it has since been rerun in many newspapers. \"Ensamma mamman\" deals with a single mother and her two teenage children, her 14-year-old son Beppe and her daughter Mia, 17 years old. \n\"Ensamma mamman\" received the Urhunden Prize by the \"Swedish Association for Promotion of Comics\", in 1989.\nSource.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "32573626": "Dom Capuano\nItalian musical artist (born 1975)\nDom Capuano (born Domenico Capuano 21 April 1975), is an Italian music composer and producer of pop music, electronic dance music and orchestra.\nHis breakthrough as a producer and songwriter arrived in the mid to late 1990s after crafting a string of hits for pop artists like Eiffel 65, Da Blitz, Gabry Ponte and Karmah. He has also collaborated with several international artists including: Toni Braxton, S Club 7, Busta Rhymes, Jean Michel Jarre, Kool & The Gang, Laura Pausini, 883, Aqua, Zucchero, Nek, Andreas Johnson, Alphaville.\nEarly life and career.\nHe studied music, in particular double bass at the G. Verdi Conservatory of Music in Turin, Italy. He is also a piano player, composer and conductor. His entire musical career can be split into two different paths: the recording industry and symphonic music.\nIn the early 1990s, he succeeded as a composer and record music producer and he is now considered a \"successful composer on the mainstream\" due to his continuous \"maniacal\" research and experimentation of new sounds.\nOver the years, he has composed and produced many hits. In 1993, he composed \"Let Me Be\" launching the career of Da Blitz. (#11 in Italian charts). In 1994, he composed \"Take My Way\".\nAs a composer and arranger for DaBlitz, he has entered repeatedly Italian charts with \"Let Me Be\" and \"Stay with Me\" (which eventually reached the 1st position). Da Blitz will be in the standings again with the songs \"Movin' On\" and \"Take Me Back\" (which both peaked at number 4) and \"I Believe\" (which got to number 8 )\nWorldwide recognition.\nThe album \"Europop\" by Eiffel 65 was released in US by Universal reaching the 4th position of U.S. charts by selling a total of 3,800,000 copies. Europop was also released worldwide with different record labels including Warner Music and Sony Music, receiving good reviews from the American press (Ref: Pop Matters , Entertainment Weekly  All Music )\nEiffel 65 received a Grammy Awards Nomination in 2001(source: Rockonthenet ) and their track \"Move Your Body\" was played at the World Music Awards of Montecarlo in 2000, in front of a VIP audience hall, that included Mariah Carey and Michael Jackson. In 2002 international press recognised the market distribution of Eiffel 65 as 15 million units sold worldwide including albums and singles.\nIn 2000 and 2001, Dom remixed more than 40 songs for various international artists including \"Tout est Bleu\" by Jean Michel Jarre which co-produced the song step by step together with him. Dom says that it was a huge honor to collaborate with Mr. Jarre and it was one of the best satisfactions of his entire life since he had studied years before electronic music having non-other than Jean Michel Jarre and Mike Oldfield as references.\nOver the years, Dom has produced also remixes for the Italian band 883 including, \"Come Mai\", \"La Donna, Il Sogno e Il Grande Incubo\", \"Gli Anni\" credited by Bliss Team and also \"Viaggio al centro del mondo\" and the hit \"La Regina del Celebrit\u00e0\" credited by Eiffel 65.\nBetween 2002 and 2005, Dom collaborated with Gabry Ponte producing and writing songs like \"The Man in the Moon\" and \"Depends on You\" from the albums \"Doctor Jekyll & Mr. DJ\". From the album \"Gabry Ponte\" was extracted the single \"Figli di Pitagora\" performed by Italian Rock'n' Roll Legend \"Little Tony\". Both albums were released by Universal Italy and both reached the top of national rankings. (source: HitParadeItalia 2002  ) (2003: ).\nIn 2005, at Bliss Corporation, Dom produced, with Gabry Ponte, several tracks for the band \"Karmah\" which experienced quite a big success in Europe (mainly in Germany) peaking at #5 with a cover of SOS' \"Just Be Good to Me\" which contained a sample of the song \"Every Breath You Take\" by The Police.\nItalian pop music.\nIn the summer of 2006, Dom met the band Dari and began an artistic collaboration as producer and co-author of some of their songs. In February 2008 the band achieved success in Italy with the song \"Wale (Tanto Wale)\". Soon after he received the following awards: the Italian Revelation video of the year for the track \"wALE (tANTo wALE)\" in 2008; 2 MTV TRL Awards in 2009 as \"Best New Artist\" and 2010 for the \"Best Look\".\nIn 2010, Capuano has produced the Rock band \"Fonokit\". In the same year he completed his music studies as conductor, which gave him the input to move to the US to pursue his passion for movies and soundtracks. (source: Imdb )\nFilm scoring and Hollywood.\nIn 2006, a new chapter began with the study of music composition for cinema and in 2008 Dom produces his first real and complete work for a 45 minutes film, \"Calibro 70\", directed by Alessandro Rota. (source: Imdb ). The film won some international film festivals (source: Imdb ). In 2009 he composed the soundtrack \"Hey Gio\" for the Disney Channel TV series \"Chiamatemi Gio\" (an Italian revision of \"Ugly Betty\"). (source: Imdb ).\nAfter the soundtracks of \"Ninja Turtles\" and some other short films, in 2011 he moved to Los Angeles to pursue his career as a composer for film.\nIn 2011, Dom composed and produced the soundtrack for the Australian film \"The Sleeping Warrior\". (Source: Imdb ) which treats a philosophical-political issue and was directed by the Indian filmmaker Chayan Sarkar. In 2012 he composed and produced the soundtrack for the American film \"Solid State\" (source: Imdb ) starring Vivica A. Fox.\nHe composed and produced the second episode of the trilogy directed by Stefano Milla \"Richard The Lionheart: Rebellion\": a story on the vicissitudes of the rise to the throne of the future King of England Richard I \"the Lionheart\", son of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine. (Source: Imdb ). With a first release in 2015 the film eventually got distributed by STUDIOCANAL for the UE and Sony Pictures for the U.S. In the same year he composed the soundtrack of the TV movie \"Beautiful Destroyer\". (Source: Imdb )\nDom is still composing for films and in 2016 he scored \"The Silent Lynx\" and \"Branded\" directed by Phil Gorn starring the London twins, Jeremy and James London, known for several TV series that have brought them to prominence in the '90s and Christopher Showerman, famous for his role in \"George of the jungle\" by Disney. (Source: Imdb )\nAmong his most appreciated collaborations there is \"Kingdom of Gladiators, the Tournament\" a film about fights and gladiators starring the hero of the WWF and WWE wrestling walk of fame star Solofa Fatu Jr. better known as Rikishi. (Source: Imdb )\nIn 2018, \"Enter the Fire\" starring Lou Ferrigno, had been released. The music scored by Dom Capuano is a revolutionary concept of soundscape and techno music which drives the movie to another level of soundtrack experience. (Source: )\nOther works.\nAlways close to the academies and education, Dom composed numerous short films for students of American universities such as: USC University of Southern California, UCLA University of California Los Angeles, NYFA (New York Film Academy), AFI, (HIFA) Hollywood International Film Academy (source: Imdb ), (source: Imdb  )\nAwards.\nWith the album \"Europop\" he obtained a triple platinum award in the U.S. (certified RIAA) with over 3 million sales which include the song \"Move Your Body\" by Eiffel 65 and reaching over 10 million in sales worldwide. The single \"Move Your Body\" archived 3 Platinums in Australia, France and Germany, 2 Golds in UK and Austria with a total amount of over 1,500,000 sales. He also received other several gold awards with Da Blitz (6 golds in Italy and 1 in Spain), Gabry Ponte (2 golds), Karmah (2 golds in Germany)\nDiscography.\nAlbums.\nSelected albums from sales chart rankings:\nSingles.\nSelected singles from sales chart rankings:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "313155": "Till Eulenspiegel\nFictional character from German folklore\nTill Eulenspiegel (; ) is the protagonist of a European narrative tradition. A German chapbook published around 1510 is the oldest known extant publication about the folk hero (a first edition of c.\u20091510/12 is preserved fragmentarily), but a background in earlier Middle Low German folklore is likely. The character may have been based on a historical person.\nEulenspiegel is a native of the Duchy of Brunswick-L\u00fcneburg whose picaresque career takes him to many places throughout the Holy Roman Empire. \nHe plays practical jokes on his contemporaries, at every turn exposing vices. His life is set in the first half of the 14th century, and the final chapters of the chapbook describe his death from the plague of 1350.\nEulenspiegel's surname translates to \"owl-mirror\"; and the frontispiece of the 1515 chapbook, as well as his alleged tombstone in M\u00f6lln, Schleswig-Holstein, render it as a rebus comprising an owl and a hand mirror. It has been suggested that the name is in fact a pun on a Low German phrase that translates as \"wipe-arse\".\nModern retellings of the Eulenspiegel story have been published since the latter 19th century. \"The Legend of Thyl Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak\", by Charles De Coster (1867), transfers the character to the period of the Reformation and the Dutch Revolt; the novel's \"Ulenspiegel\" (in modern Dutch, \"Tijl Uilenspiegel\") was adopted as a symbol by the Flemish Movement.\nOrigin and historicity.\nAccording to the chapbook, Eulenspiegel was born in Kneitlingen in Lower Saxony near Brunswick around 1300. As a vagrant (\"Landfahrer\"), he travelled through the Holy Roman Empire, especially Northern Germany, but also the Low Countries, Bohemia, and Italy. \nHe is said to have died in M\u00f6lln, Schleswig-Holstein, near L\u00fcbeck and Hamburg, of the Black Death in 1350.\nThe first known chapbook on Eulenspiegel was printed in c.\u20091510\u20131512 in Strasbourg. It is reasonable to place the folkloristic origins of the tradition in the 15th century, although, in spite of suggestions to the effect \"that the name 'Eulenspiegel' was used in tales of rogues and liars in Lower Saxony as early as 1400\", 15th-century references to a Till Eulenspiegel turn out to be surprisingly elusive. \nThe text of the first extant edition, printed by Johannes Gr\u00fcninger, is in the High German language. \nThere has been a debate surrounding the possible existence of an older Low German edition, now lost.\nThis version has been attributed to Hans Dorn, the only known printer active in Brunswick at the beginning of the 16th century (active from at least 1502). Sodmann (1980) in support of this hypothesis adduced the woodcut of a fool on horseback holding a hand mirror used by Dorn in later prints, as the title illustration of his \"Liber Vagatorum\" and \"Grobianus\", which may originally have served as the title illustration of the lost Eulenspiegel edition.\nThere are several suggestions as to the author of the 1510 chapbook, none of which has gained mainstream acceptance. \nCandidates include Thomas Murner, Hermann Bote, Hieronymus Brunschwig, or an author collective surrounding Johannes Gr\u00fcninger, including Thomas Murner, Johannes Adelphus, Tilemann Conradi and Hermannus Buschius.\nThe author of the 1515 edition in a short preface identifies himself only as \"N\". He gives the year 1500 as the date when he originally began to collect the tales, stressing the difficulty of the project and how he wanted to abandon it several times, saying that he is now publishing it after all to \"lighten the mood in hard times\". The preface also announces the inclusion of material from Pfaff Amis and Pfaff vom Kahlenberg, but no such material is present in the 1515 edition.\nThe literal translation of the High German name \"Eulenspiegel\" is \"owl-mirror\" (hence \"owle-glasse\"). It is both innocuous and indicative of his character and has been explained as a garbled form of an expression for \"wipe-the-arse\".\nMany of Till's pranks are scatological in nature, and involve tricking people into touching, smelling, or even eating Till's excrement.\nScatological stories abound, beginning with Till's early childhood (in which he rides behind his father and exposes his rear-end to the townspeople) and persisting until his death bed (where he tricks a priest into soiling his hands with feces).\nIn modern scholarship, there have been some attempts to find evidence for the historicity of Till Eulenspiegel's person. \nHucker (1980) mentions that according to a contemporary legal register of the city of Brunswick one \"Till van Cletlinge\" (\"Till from/of Kneitlingen\") was incarcerated there in the year 1339, along with four of his accomplices, for highway robbery.\nIn M\u00f6lln, the reported site of Eulenspiegel's death and burial in the plague year of 1350, a memorial stone was commissioned by the town council in 1544, now on display in an alcove on the outside wall of the tower of St. Nicolai church. The stone is inscribed in Low German, as follows:\n<templatestyles src=\"Verse translation/styles.css\" />\nThe inscription (including the date of 1350) was allegedly copied from an older tombstone, now lost. This older tombstone is referred to in the chapbook of 1515, and it is mentioned as still being extant in 1536.\nThe 1544 stone is mentioned by Fynes Moryson in his \"Itinerary\" of 1591.\nMoryson also reports that in his time, the citizens of M\u00f6lln held a yearly festival in Eulenspiegel's honour, on which occasion they would present the clothes worn by Eulenspiegel when he died.\nChapbook tradition.\nThe two earliest printed editions, in Early New High German, were printed by Johannes Gr\u00fcninger in Strasbourg. The first edition was unknown before sixteen folia of printing proofs \nwere discovered in 1971 in the binding of a Latin edition of Reynard.\nPeter Honegger dated these pages to 1510/11 based on the type used, but this date has since been called into question. \nOnly a single specimen of the first edition has been preserved, discovered in 1975. Thirty folia are missing, including the title page. \nA previous owner has replaced the missing pages by pages torn from an Eulenspiegel edition of c. 1700.\nIt was most likely published in 1512. The sixteen folia discovered by Honegger are likely printing proofs for this edition.\nIt consists of 100 folia with 66 woodcuts of high quality.\nThe 1515 edition was also printed by Gr\u00fcninger in Strasbourg. Its full title reads:\n<templatestyles src=\"Verse translation/styles.css\" />\nThe text is divided into 95 chapters (numbered to 96 as chapter number 42 is missing).\nThe 1515 edition is decidedly inferior, missing many of the illustrations of the older edition, and showing signs of careless copying of the text.\nIt is uncertain how many of these chapters were present in the earlier edition of 1510/12, although some of the chapters appear to be later additions. The initials of the final six chapters form the \"acrostic\" \"ERMANB\", which has been taken as a hidden reference to the book's author.\nThe first chapters are dedicated to Till's childhood. In chapter nine, Till leaves his mother and begins his life as a vagrant. He takes up diverse occupations, but each chapter ends with his moving on to another place.\nThe final seven chapters are dedicated to his death and burial.\nIn the chapbooks,"}, "descending_order": ["43393965", "75162374", "20442289", "228787", "32573626", "313155", "7345089"], "permutation_1": ["32573626", "228787", "75162374", "7345089", "20442289", "43393965", "313155"], "permutation_2": ["75162374", "228787", "32573626", "20442289", "43393965", "7345089", "313155"], "permutation_3": ["43393965", "228787", "313155", "75162374", "7345089", "32573626", "20442289"]}
{"id": "2hop__535216_63979", "docs_added": {"43173676": "Thinking Out Loud\n2014 single by Ed Sheeran\n\"Thinking Out Loud\" is a song by English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran recorded for his second studio album, \"\u00d7\" (2014). It was written by Ed Sheeran and Amy Wadge, and produced by frequent collaborator Jake Gosling. It was released in the US on 14 August 2014 as the album's third single.\nIn the UK, the song spent 19 weeks within the top 40 before peaking at number one in early November 2014; it became Sheeran's second number-one single there. The single has also reached the top spot in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Denmark, the Netherlands, Slovakia and South Africa, and peaked at number two on both the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and the Canadian Hot 100. It was Sheeran's highest-charting single in North America until \"Shape of You\" topped the charts in both countries in 2017.\nIn June 2015, \"Thinking Out Loud\" became the first single to spend a full year in the UK top 40. In September 2015, it also became the seventh single to have achieved triple platinum certification in the UK during the 21st century. In October 2015, the song became the first to be streamed over 500 million times on Spotify, is also one of the most streamed songs in the UK and has been viewed more than 3.8 billion times on YouTube as of February 2025.\n\"Thinking Out Loud\" received nominations for Grammy Award for Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance at the 58th Grammy Awards, winning the latter two.\nBackground and writing.\nSheeran wrote \"Thinking Out Loud\" with Amy Wadge, a Wales-based singer-songwriter. He met Wadge when he was 17 years old and they had since written several songs together. Of these, five songs composed the extended play \"Songs I Wrote with Amy\", which Sheeran independently released on 4 April 2010. Wadge also co-wrote the song \"Gold Rush\", a track on the deluxe version of Sheeran's debut album, \"+\" (2011).\nIn February 2014, Wadge visited Sheeran at home for a \"chilling-out time\". Around that time, Sheeran's second studio album, \"\u00d7\", was nearly completed. Wadge revealed that her visit was not supposed to be a songwriting session. While Sheeran was taking a shower, Wadge played a few chords on a guitar. The tune caught the attention of Sheeran and he ran downstairs. Sheeran suggested working with the tune, but only after returning home from dinner, work began. The melody developed from a simple riff. According to Sheeran, he composed the melody on a guitar in a manner which was \"very Van-like\", referring to Van Morrison. The Irish musician has been an inspiration to Sheeran since a young age, and Sheeran wanted to capture that vibe when he composed the song.\nIn the kitchen, Sheeran and Wadge began writing the song at 2:00am on 4 February 2014, and completed it in 20 minutes. According to Wadge, the lyrical content resulted from her and Sheeran's talking about \"everlasting love\", inspired by the circumstances relevant at that time. Sheeran also revealed that the lyrics were inspired by his then-girlfriend, Athina Andrelos, whom Sheeran met in early 2014. Sheeran would later explain that he wrote the song \"in a relationship at a really, really happy point\". Sheeran revealed that he also had his grandparents in mind and maintaining love in old age (\"'til we're 70\" in the lyrics), and the early version of the chorus was \"I'm singing out now\" before it became \"I'm thinking out loud\". Immediately after writing, Sheeran recorded the song on his phone. He was keen to include \"Thinking Out Loud\" on the second album. He properly recorded the song the following day at the Sticky Studios, a recording facility located in the small Surrey village of Windlesham, and informed Wadge of its inclusion on the album. It became the last song recorded for the album. For \"Thinking Out Loud\", Sheeran sought the assistance of Jake Gosling, who produced much of his debut album and had earlier contributed tracks, four of which appear on the standard version of the second album.\nComposition.\n\"Thinking Out Loud\" is a romantic ballad with blue-eyed soul influences. Sheeran referred to it as a \"walking down the aisle song\". In the lyrics, Sheeran reflects on \"getting older and fidelity and love in a fairly conventional context\", according to Eric Clarke, professor of music at University of Oxford.\nThe song was composed in the key of D major with a tempo of 79 beats per minute. Sheeran's vocals range from B2 to A4. In the mix, Sheeran's voice is \"unusually\" loud over the instruments, which, for Mike Senior of the music technology magazine, \"Sound on Sound\", is \"surprisingly rare\" in contemporary records. Senior analysed the vocal elements in which he found that, in spite of several notes sung off pitch, \"the overall framework of the vocal remains fundamentally in tune\".\nJournalists noted similarities between \"Thinking Out Loud\" and \"Let's Get It On\", a 1973 single by soul musician Marvin Gaye. Andrew Unterberger of \"Spin\" wrote that \"the gently loping four-note bass pattern and crisp '70s soul drums absolutely smack of the Gaye classic, as do the embrace-insistent lyrics and general candlelit-bedroom feel\". Jason Lipshutz of \"Billboard\" called it a \"sleek update\" of the classic.\nRelease.\nPrior to the album release, Sheeran debuted \"Thinking Out Loud\" on 24 May 2014 by performing it live on the British music television show, \"Later... with Jools Holland\". The debut followed the release of the video accompaniment to \"Sing\", the album's lead single. \"Thinking Out Loud\" was immediately perceived as having contrast to \"Sing\", which is a \"high-energy funk/R&B-infused song\". \"Thinking Out Loud\" became available on 18 June 2014 as an \"instant grat\" download for consumers who pre-ordered \"\u00d7\" on the iTunes Store. It served as a promotional single from \"\u00d7\", which was released two days later. On the standard version of the album, \"Thinking Out Loud\" is the next-to-last track, the last being \"Afire Love\".\n\"Thinking Out Loud\" was initially serviced to Australian radio on 14 August 2014 and later released on 24 September 2014. It served as the third of five singles released from the album; it followed the songs, \"Sing\" and \"Don't\", the first and second single respectively. According to Sheeran, no one from his record label wanted to release \"Thinking Out Loud\" as a single, favouring over \"Photograph\" as the \"big song\". \"Photograph\" was supposed to be the main single, but when \"Thinking Out Loud\" spent several weeks within the top 20 on the UK Singles Chart albeit not receiving rotation, the latter song was kept as the third single. \"Photograph\" was later released as the fifth and final single. \"Thinking Out Loud\" was issued on 7\" vinyl exclusively as part of the Black Friday Record Store Day, which was celebrated on 28 November 2014. The vinyl record included, as a B-side, the live version of \"I'm A Mess\" which Sheeran performed at the Lightship 95 studio. On 26 December 2015, Sheeran released an Irish-language version of \"Thinking Out Loud\" for the Irish album \"CEOL 2016\".\nCritical reception.\nLauren Murphy of \"The Irish Times\" noted that the \"injection of blue-eyed soul\" on the song is \"enjoyable\", and that it \"makes Sheeran's aptitude for melody difficult to dismiss\". Jim Beviglia of the \"American Songwriter\" thought that although \"tidy\", \"Thinking Out Loud\" comes \"toothless\" compared with the \"daring confessionals\" Sheeran made on the other songs.\n\"The Washington Post\" writer, Allison Stewart, has hailed the song as \"a blatant and mercilessly effective bid for 'I'll Be'-style wedding-song immortality\". \"Billboard\" magazine's Jason Lipshutz, commented that Sheeran \"pushes this bold stab at romance past its sappiest moments, and ends the album on a likable note\". Jamieson Cox of \"Time\" wrote that \"the album's greatest moment by a country mile is relegated to its penultimate slot\", referring to \"Thinking Out Loud\".\nChart performance.\n\"Thinking Out Loud\" topped several charts in Europe, Oceania and South Africa, and reached the top ten in several other countries in North America (see Weekly charts below). Upon the album's release, the single debuted at number 26 on the UK Singles Chart. On 2 November 2014, \"Thinking Out Loud\" topped the UK Singles Chart in its 19th week in the Top 40, becoming Sheeran's second UK number one and breaking the record for the longest ascent to number one. In the week ending 27 June 2015, it had spent a record consecutive 52 weeks (or a full year) inside the top 40. Around the same time, the single had accumulated 1.65 million combined sales and streams; it became one of the 161 million-selling singles and the 26th best-selling of the 2010s in the UK. On 18 September 2015, the British Phonographic Industry certified the single triple platinum for combined sales (including streaming points) of 1,800,000 units. As of September 2017, the song has sold 1,219,000 copies with 130 million streams, making a total of 2,521,000 units sold in the United Kingdom. In February 2025, its certification was upgraded to octuple platinum, denoting sales and streams of over 4,800,000.\nIn the US, \"Thinking Out Loud\" peaked at number two on the all-encompassing chart \"Billboard\" Hot 100; the single became Sheeran's highest-charting single until the release of \"Shape of You\" in 2017. It remained the runner-up spot for eight consecutive weeks, a chart feat last held in 2004. \"Thinking Out Loud\" was kept off the top spot by \"Uptown Funk\", although it outperformed the latter song for a week in February 2015 on the \"Billboard\" Digital Songs. On other specific US charts, \"Thinking Out Loud\" reached number one on the \"Billboard\" Adult Pop Songs for the week ending 21 February 2015, marking Sheeran's first. For the week ending 21 March 2015, \"Thinking Out Loud\" held the top position on the \"Billboard\" Pop Songs, Adult Pop Songs, and Adult Contemporary charts, becoming the fourth song in history to lead all three adult charts simultaneously. In celebration of Google Play's fifth anniversary, Google announced \"Thinking Out Loud\" as the top-selling song on the platform. \"Thinking Out Loud\" is Sheeran's best-selling song in the United States, with 5,622,000 copies sold as of September 2017.\nOn streaming services.\nIn the UK, Sheeran's native country, \"Thinking Out Loud\" claimed the record for the most streams in a single week in December 2014. The track accumulated over 1,638,000 streams, and subsequently achieved a personal best of 1,850,000 streams in the week ending 21 December 2014. This record has since been broken by several songs.\nIn April 2015, the song ranked as the most popular based on the 2.8 million sleep-themed playlists created by Spotify users. Sleep is one of the company's most popular categories that, according to Spotify, \"people also use for general relaxation and to help themselves unwind\". \"The Guardian\" columnist Tim Dowling suggested that the report indicated \"very popular, slightly mellow songs that keep cropping up on sleep playlists\" but not a list of a \"carefully curated journey to unconsciousness\".\nIn October 2015, \"Thinking Out Loud\" set the record of most streams of a song on Spotify, having accumulated over 500 million streams. The company created the \"Sheerio Index\", an interactive graphic map which showed where Sheeran was most popular. The colour-based map indicated that Sheeran was most popular in Denmark. It was surpassed a month later by \"Lean On\", a song by Major Lazer and DJ Snake featuring M\u00d8.\nMusic video.\nEmil Nava directed the video accompaniment to the single. Most of it was filmed in the Crystal Ballroom at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, California. The video was shot continuously using a 16 mm film camera.\nUnlike Sheeran's earlier videos, where he assumed a low profile, he took the lead role on \"Thinking Out Loud\". In the video, Sheeran executes a contemporary dance with Brittany Cherry, a contestant from the televised American dance competition, \"So You Think You Can Dance\". The routine was choreographed by Nappytabs and with training help from Paul Karmiryan. While on concert tour, Sheeran spent five hours a day for three weeks to practice with Cherry.\nThe video was released on 7 October 2014. After the first 24 hours, the video had over 2.7 million views on video-sharing website, YouTube. As of October 2022, it has 3.5 billion views, making it the 17th most viewed video on the site. The music video received four nominations at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards including Video of the Year and Best Male Video.\nLive performances.\nOn 26 October 2014, Sheeran performed the song on third live results show of series 11 of \"The X Factor\". He also performed it on 9 November 2014 in the 2014 MTV Europe Music Awards. Sheeran also performed the song as a special guest at \"The Voice\"'s live finale on 16 December 2014. Furthermore, Sheeran performed the track on the Christmas Special of \"The Jonathan Ross Show\" on 20 December 2014. He also performed the song at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards on 8 February 2015 along with John Mayer, Questlove, Adam Blackstone, and Herbie Hancock. Sheeran performed \"Thinking Out Loud\" on 13 April 2015 results show of the second series of \"The X Factor\" in New Zealand. Sheeran also performed the song at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show 2014. On 15 August 2024, Sheeran and Taylor Swift performed \"Thinking Out Loud\" at Wembley Stadium in London as part of a mashup with their collaborations \"Everything Has Changed\" and \"End Game\" for Swift's Eras Tour (2023\u20132024).\nParodies and usage in media.\nOn 28 April 2015 episode of \"The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon\", actor Jeremy Renner, known for his role as Hawkeye in the \"Avengers\" movies, performed on piano and sang a song captioned by Fallon's show on YouTube as \"Hawkeye Sings About His Super Powers\". While not parodying Sheeran's lyrics, it is sung to the same tune. The lyrics suggest that Hawkeye feels defensive compared with the other Avengers as he was the only mortally human one in a team of superhuman or enhanced heroes: \"But listen, I've got powers too; they're pretty sweet. / I promise I can do so much more than just archery ... / I can open a pickle jar. / I'm friggin' Hawkeye. / Maybe I'm as super as they are.\"\nThe song and video were also parodied in the CW series \"Crazy Ex-Girlfriend\". Titled \"Let's Have Intercourse\", the song was sung by Scott Michael Foster with Rachel Bloom appearing in the scene dancing with Foster in the same manner as Sheeran and Cherry. The lyrics are an appeal by Foster's character, Nathaniel Plimpton III, to series protagonist Rebecca Bunch (Bloom) to have sex whilst trapped in an elevator.\nPlagiarism allegations.\nOn 10 August 2016, it was announced that the family of Ed Townsend, who co-wrote Marvin Gaye's \"Let's Get It On\", was suing Sheeran, alleging that \"the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic compositions of 'Thinking' are substantially and/or strikingly similar to the drum composition of 'Let's [Get It On]'.\" The case was dismissed without prejudice in February 2017. Two years later, on 28 June 2018, Ed Sheeran was again sued on similar grounds, this time for $100 million in damages by Structured Asset Sales, owners of one-third of the copyright to \"Let's Get It On\". The case was heard by a jury in New York City in 2023, which found in favor of Sheeran.\nSheeran's defence rests on the argument that, while the two songs have similar \"building blocks\" and a specific chord progression in particular, such features are true for many pop songs. After winning the trial, Sheeran said: \"These chords are common building blocks which were used to create music long before 'Let\u2019s Get It On' was written and will be used to create music long after we are all gone.\"\nFormats and track listings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCredits and personnel.\nCredits adapted from the album liner notes:\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nChad Brownlee version.\nCanadian country singer Chad Brownlee recorded a cover version and released it as a single in 2015. He also released a video of himself performing the song.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "43175225": "Photograph (Ed Sheeran song)\n\"Photograph\" is a song by English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran from his second studio album, \"\u00d7\" (2014). Sheeran wrote the song with Snow Patrol member Johnny McDaid, who had a piano loop from which the composition developed. After recording several versions with other producers, Sheeran eventually solicited help from Jeff Bhasker; the collaboration generated a version that Bhasker further enhanced for months. The ballad derives its music primarily from an acoustic guitar, piano and programmed drums. With visually descriptive lyrics, it discusses a long-distance relationship inspired by Sheeran's own experience of being away from his then-girlfriend while he was on tour.\nThe song received generally supportive commentary from critics, who noted the lyrics and Sheeran's use of love for all people. \"Photograph\" served as the fifth and final single from the album. It reached the top five on the main singles charts in more than five countries. In the US, where it peaked at number ten, \"Photograph\" became the third single from the album to have reached within the top ten. In the UK, it reached number fifteen and has since been certified quadruple platinum. The single has also been certified double platinum in Australia and Canada, and platinum in New Zealand and Italy.\nThe single's release on 23 June 2014 followed the premiere of the music video on 9 May 2015. The video is a montage of real home footage of Sheeran's infancy, childhood and adolescence, providing insight on his private early life, such as his inclination to playing music instruments and fondness of Lego. The video was nominated for Best Video at the 2016 Brit Awards. Sheeran performed the song on television shows and on his x Tour, which ran from 2014 to 2015.\nBackground and composition.\nEd Sheeran wrote \"Photograph\" in May 2012 with Johnny McDaid, instrumentalist and background vocalist of the Irish band Snow Patrol. Sheeran toured with the band as a support act in select North American dates. McDaid had a three-note piano loop that became the basis of \"Photograph\". The song's development began when Sheeran, while in a hotel room in Kansas City, was humming \"loving can hurt, loving can hurt\" to the loop that was playing on McDaid's laptop. Sheeran recalled: \"I started humming, and then [McDaid] put a beat behind it.\"\nThey developed ideas for the song while Sheeran was building a Lego and McDaid was working on his laptop. After four hours, Sheeran picked up a guitar and they began properly structuring the composition. According to Sheeran, they ended up composing the song \"within about half an hour\". Both realized what had transpired only after listening back to the song the following day; they then decided on recording it. Sheeran completed writing the song while in Denver, Colorado.\nSheeran credited \"Photograph\" as the first record \"properly\" completed for his second studio album. According to him, he had \"probably\" recorded 60 to 70 versions of the song; these varied from live to that with piano accompaniment. Aside from the earlier versions he made with McDaid, Sheeran had recordings with songwriter-producer, Jake Gosling, who produced much of Sheeran's debut album, and producer, Rick Rubin, who was involved in other tracks from the follow-up album. However, Sheeran thought these versions \"never fit\" and he eventually solicited help from producer, Jeff Bhasker. This particular collaboration generated a version that Bhasker continued to enhance for several months. Emile Haynie was credited on the album's liner notes for his additional production. On 24 January 2015, Sheeran recalled the backstory of \"Photograph\" for the VH1 Storytellers.\nMusic, lyrics and inspiration.\nAn acoustic pop ballad, \"Photograph\" derives its music from an acoustic guitar, piano, strings, organ, electric and bass guitar, and programmed drums. The melody builds up with the guitar strums and piano keys; the drums, strings, organ etc. then follow. It has a tempo of 108 beats per minute and the originally published key is in E major. \"Photograph\" features a chord progression that is common in popular music.\nThe lyrics to the song chronicle a long-distance relationship. It contains detailed imagery such as the protagonist remembering his girlfriend kissing him \"under the lamppost, back on 6th street\", and keeping a picture of him \"in the pocket of [her] ripped jeans\". These lyrics were inspired by Sheeran's own experience on a long-distance relationship. He dated Nina Nesbitt, a Scottish singer/songwriter, for more than a year. While in this relationship, Sheeran spent five months away from Nesbitt: three months while on a concert tour with Snow Patrol and further two months on his own tour. At his concert in Kansas City on 27 June 2017, Sheeran noted that he wrote \"Photograph\" at Kansas City's Intercontinental Hotel during a previous tour.\nRelease.\nIn February 2013, Sheeran played a demo version of \"Photograph\" to a German radio station. This performance was not recorded in film or audio. Sheeran played the song again pre-release at a show at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York on 14 July 2014. Taylor Swift was seen at the concert, notably, the only person in the crowd who knew the lyrics to this unreleased song.\" Sheeran favoured the song as one of the best in the album and claimed: \"I think [\"Photograph\"] will be the one that will change my, kind of, career path.\" He also asserted that \"Photograph\" would serve as the \"collateral\" song that could \"sell [the album]\" even if the rest of the tracks would not prove appealing.\nThe song was released as an \"instant grat\" digital download to the iTunes Store on 20 June 2014; it served as the final of seven promotional singles from his second studio album, \u00d7 (2014). On 22 April 2015, through his Twitter account, Sheeran announced that \"Photograph\" would be the next single off \"\u00d7\". It was released on 11 May 2015 to hot adult contemporary format, and the following day to contemporary hit radio in the US. On 12 June 2015, \"Photograph\" was released to the German market in CD format with the B-side, \"I Will Take You Home\". The latter track was featured in the American television sitcom, \"Cougar Town\".\n\"Photograph\" served as the fifth and last single released from the album. Of the five singles, preceded by two upbeat songs such as the lead single, \"Sing\", \"Photograph\" was the second mellow track released from \"\u00d7\". The first was \"Thinking Out Loud\", the third single, which is a blue-eyed soul record produced by Gosling. According to Sheeran, no one from his label wanted \"Thinking Out Loud\" as a single release; they favoured \"Photograph\" as the \"big song\". \"Photograph\" was supposed to be the main single, but when \"Thinking Out Loud\" spent several weeks within the top 20 on the UK Singles Chart albeit not in radio rotation, the latter song was kept as the third single.\nCritical reception.\nUpon the album's release, critical response to \"Photograph\" was generally positive. In his track-by-track review of \"x\" for \"Billboard\" magazine, Jason Lipshutz suggested that the line \"Loving can hurt sometimes/But it's the only thing that I know\" in \"Photograph\" was the \"lynchpin line of the whole album\". Sarah Rodman of \"The Boston Globe\" had the same sentiment; she called the song \"haunting\" and felt it \"[crept] up on you with [its] tunefulness\". Jamieson Cox of \"Time\" described Sheeran's use of \"detail and powerful imagery\" in the lyrics as \"smart\"; Cox opined that it \"[brought the song] to life\".\nNeil McCormick of \"The Daily Telegraph\" deemed the track \"soulful balladry\" and felt it showcased that Sheeran \"can slip smoothly through the gears\" on the album. Lipshutz described his singing as being \"restrained\" over \"hesitant\" acoustic guitar strum before the \"arena drums kick in\". Paul Cantor of \"Vibe\" picked \"Photograph\" as one of the standouts from the album, and noted that the song's \"brooding arrangement is an emotional roller coaster\". Kitty Empire of \"The Observer\" called \"Photograph\" a \"swelling ballad\", and suggested that Sheeran's writing was \"particularly calculated\". In his review for MusicOMH, John Murphy also felt that \"Photograph\" was \"calculated and a bit cynical, almost as if it's been written specifically as a soundtrack to a particularly emotional scene in a US television series\".\nOn her analysis of the lyrical content of the album, Annie Zaleski of \"The A.V. Club\" expressed that Sheeran's \"self-awareness extends to the rest\" of the album by tackling homesickness in \"Photograph\", for instance. Meanwhile, Carolyn Menyes of the Music Times wrote in her review of the song that \"in the grander scheme of x, 'Photograph' doesn't quite seem to line up lyrically\", and noted that most of the album's songs explored \"the feelings of a lover scorned, cheating exes and a little bit of the excess life\". She also said: \"Simply put: 'Photograph' is one of Sheeran's more simplistically beautiful songs.\"\nMcDaid's involvement in the song was noted by a few critics. Kevin Harly of \"The Independent\" wrote: \"If you didn\u2019t know Snow Patrol's Johnny McDaid produced the ballad 'Photograph', its stolid plod through clich\u00e9s about how lovin' 'can hurt' and 'heal' should tell you\". Meanwhile, Dave Hanratty of \"Drowned in Sound\" remarked: \"... the cloying 'Photograph' ... is co-written and produced by a member of Snow Patrol should surprise nobody, given that it follows their heartstring-tugging script so resolutely. At least it moves.\" \"The Herald\"'s Alan Morrison felt that \"Photograph\" was \"identikit Snow Patrol\".\nChart performance.\n\"Photograph\" and the rest of the album's tracks entered the UK Singles Chart due to high streaming rates. The single debuted at number 44 on the chart week ending 5 July 2014, ten months prior to the single's release. It peaked at number 15, and has spent 50 weeks on the chart as of the week ending 5 November 2015. On 17 March 2017, the British Phonographic Industry certified the single quadruple platinum for combined sales of 2.4\u00a0million units. As of September 2017, the song has accumulated 386,000 copies in actual sales, and with 96\u00a0million streams, it has a combined total of 1,347,000 units.\nIn the US, the single reached number 10 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and marked the third top 10 from the album. With \"Photograph\", Sheeran also became the ninth male solo artist since 2010 to spawn four top 20 hits from a single album, excluding deluxe editions. In specific formats such as the Mainstream Top 40, the single reached the top 10 on the week ending 29 August 2015; it gave the album four that have achieved the threshold. The single was first certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America on 21 July 2015, double platinum on 29 February 2016 and triple platinum on 16 August 2017. As of June 2016, the song has sold 1,551,000 copies in the US. Elsewhere, the single reached top five in Austria, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Slovakia, and South Africa.\nIn April 2015, commercial streaming company Spotify released a report of the most streamed tracks worldwide under the category sleep. \"Photograph\" placed at number 18; it joined Sheeran's other six songs ranked in the top 20. Sleep is one of the company's most popular categories that, according to Spotify, \"people also use for general relaxation and to help themselves unwind\". \"The Guardian\" columnist Tim Dowling suggested that the report was an indication of \"very popular, slightly mellow songs that keep cropping up on sleep playlists\" but not a list of a \"carefully curated journey to unconsciousness\".\nControversy.\nOn 9 June 2016, it was reported that Sheeran was being sued by songwriters Martin Harrington and Thomas Leonard, writers of Matt Cardle's 2011 single \"Amazing\", for $20\u00a0million for copyright infringement. The lawsuit says: \"Given the striking similarity between the chorus of Amazing and Photograph, (the) defendants knew when writing, publishing, recording, releasing, and distributing Photograph that they were infringing on a pre-existing musical composition.\" The lawsuit was privately settled in April 2017, with no admission of guilt. \nIn March 2022, while in court for a separate lawsuit over his song \"Shape of You\", Sheeran said that he settled the \"Photograph\" complaint on the advice of his lawyers, as the case was \"more trouble than it was worth\". He later also said he was on tour at the time, and was advised that the culture around copyright claims meant that he \"probably would lose\". He thought that settling the case opened a floodgate of claims, and led to the \"Shape of You\" lawsuit. After he won the \"Shape of You\" case, he said he regretted settling the claim for \"Photograph\", not because of the money involved, but because it changed his relationship with the song. He said: \"I didn't play 'Photograph' for ages after that. I just stopped playing it. I felt weird about it, it kind of made me feel dirty.\"\nMusic video.\nAn accompanying music video for \"Photograph\" was released on 9 May 2015. The video is a montage of real home footage. Sheeran sourced the clips from his father, who was then compiling it into DVDs for their family Christmas present. He initially intended the clips for inclusion in a documentary that was being produced around that time; but looking through the collection, he thought it might work for a music video. Sheeran also admitted he could not attend to an actual video shoot, hence he opted for the montage. Emil Nava, who had previously worked with Sheeran on his other promotional music videos, directed \"Photograph\". Editor Ellie Johnson worked with Sheeran's father while in central London. According to Johnson, they spent a weekend gathering the clips used in the montage.\nThe montage chronicles Sheeran's infancy, childhood and adolescence (1990s and 2000s). It features Sheeran playing various music instruments (including piano, cello, bass, acoustic guitar and drums), suggesting that he was musically inclined at a young age. He is also shown displaying his skill in Bodhr\u00e1n, an Irish frame drum. Other footage depicts a teen Sheeran busking in Galway, Ireland. In another clip before the final, Sheeran is shown performing to a crowd at a festival. Daniel Kreps of \"Rolling Stone\" noted that the clips also revealed Sheeran's \"lifelong obsession with Legos\", an object the latter referenced on his 2011 single \"Lego House\". Another clip shows Sheeran as a toddler in the bathtub with a toy that appears to be of Thomas the Tank Engine. \nAccording to Ryan Book of the Music Times, the media form utilized in the montage contradicted the song's title. Kreps stated that the video was reminiscent of \"\", a documentary film about Nirvana front man and 1990s rock icon Kurt Cobain. According to Kreps, the private life of both artists in their youth were revealed through real home videos.\nLive performances and usage in media.\n\"Photograph\" was performed on television prior to its commercial release. On 13 December 2014, Sheeran appeared on \"The X Factor UK\", where he gave his first televised performance of the song. This performance contributed to the song's first ascent inside the top 40 on the UK Singles Chart. Sheeran also performed the song for various US television shows such as on \"Good Morning America\", \"The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon\", and \"Undateable\", at Canada's Much Music Video Awards, and at the 2015 Global Citizen Festival. The song was part of the setlist in Sheeran's x Tour; the concert tour ran from 2014 to 2015.\nEnglish singer Foxes covered the song for the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge.\nOther recordings.\nThe song was recorded by Jordan Feliz, for his debut studio album, \"Beloved\", released by Centricity Music. A critic says the acoustic rendition shows, \"his falsetto shining\", while another writes it is an \"incredible\" cover song, on a track meant to convey the temporal nature with which worldly mortal relationships have compared to one with God's son Jesus Christ. Jessica Mauboy covered the song on her 2016 album, \"\". \nIn 2021, The Portraits (an alt-folk duo, Jeremy and Lorraine Millington, previously known for a 2020 cover of \"Together in Electric Dreams\" with their daughter, which they said was similar to the 2021 John Lewis advert song) released a cover of \"Photograph\" with their 15-year-old daughter, Ciara Mill, on lead vocals again and a Somerset choir called the Skylarks backing them, alongside The Somerset County orchestra. Picked as one of the Official Charts Company's Christmas No 1 Contenders, the record has been recorded as a charity release for Cruse Bereavement Support and Mental Health Ireland and comes with a video which features 300 photos of people who lost their lives during the Covid pandemic.\nIt was performed by Trace Adkins and I\u00f1igo Pascual on the second episode of the country music drama series \"Monarch\".\nCredits and personnel.\nCredits adapted from the album liner notes.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["43173676", "43175225"], "permutation_1": ["43173676", "43175225"], "permutation_2": ["43175225", "43173676"], "permutation_3": ["43175225", "43173676"]}
{"id": "2hop__297833_13640", "docs_added": {"8469462": "List of Bones episodes\n\"Bones\" is an American crime drama television series created by Hart Hanson that premiered on Fox on September 13, 2005.\nThe show is based on forensic anthropology and forensic archaeology, with each episode focusing on an FBI case concerning the mystery behind human remains brought by FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) to the forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance \"Bones\" Brennan (Emily Deschanel). The rest of the main cast includes Michaela Conlin as forensic artist Angela Montenegro, T. J. Thyne as entomologist Dr. Jack Hodgins, Eric Millegan as Dr. Zack Addy (seasons 1\u20133; guest, 4\u20135, 11\u201312), Jonathan Adams as Dr. Daniel Goodman (season 1), Tamara Taylor as pathologist Dr. Camille Saroyan (seasons 2\u201312), John Francis Daley as psychologist Dr. Lance Sweets (seasons 3\u201310), and John Boyd as FBI agent James Aubrey (seasons 10\u201312).\nSeries overview.\n<onlyinclude></onlyinclude>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> ", "11127": "Federal Bureau of Investigation\nU.S. federal law enforcement agency\nThe Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. An agency of the United States Department of Justice, the FBI is a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community and reports to both the attorney general and the director of national intelligence. A leading American counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and criminal investigative organization, the FBI has jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crimes.\nAlthough many of the FBI's functions are unique, its activities in support of national security are comparable to those of the British MI5 and NCA, the New Zealand GCSB and the Russian FSB. Unlike the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which has no law enforcement authority and is focused on intelligence collection abroad, the FBI is primarily a domestic agency, maintaining 56 field offices in major cities throughout the United States, and more than 400 resident agencies in smaller cities and areas across the nation. At an FBI field office, a senior-level FBI officer concurrently serves as the representative of the director of national intelligence.\nDespite its domestic focus, the FBI also maintains a significant international footprint, operating 60 Legal Attache (LEGAT) offices and 15 sub-offices in U.S. embassies and consulates across the globe. These foreign offices exist primarily for the purpose of coordination with foreign security services and do not usually conduct unilateral operations in the host countries. The FBI can and does at times carry out secret activities overseas, just as the CIA has a limited domestic function. These activities generally require coordination across government agencies.\nThe FBI was established in 1908 as the Bureau of Investigation, the BOI or BI for short. Its name was changed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1935. The FBI headquarters is the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C. The FBI has a list of the top 10 most wanted fugitives.\nMission, priorities and budget.\nMission.\nThe mission of the FBI is to \"protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States\".\nPriorities.\nCurrently, the FBI's top priorities are:\nBudget.\nIn the fiscal year 2019, the Bureau's total budget was approximately $9.6\u00a0billion.\nIn the Authorization and Budget Request to Congress for fiscal year 2021, the FBI asked for $9,800,724,000. Of that money, $9,748,829,000 would be used for Salaries and Expenses (S&E) and $51,895,000 for Construction. The S&E program saw an increase of $199,673,000.\nHistory.\nBackground.\nIn 1896, the National Bureau of Criminal Identification was founded, providing agencies across the country with information to identify known criminals. The 1901 assassination of President William McKinley created a perception that the United States was under threat from anarchists. The Departments of Justice and Labor had been keeping records on anarchists for years, but President Theodore Roosevelt wanted more power to monitor them.\nThe Justice Department had been tasked with the regulation of interstate commerce since 1887, though it lacked the staff to do so. It had made little effort to relieve its staff shortage until the Oregon land fraud scandal at the turn of the 20th century. President Roosevelt instructed Attorney General Charles Bonaparte to organize an autonomous investigative service that would report only to the Attorney General.\nBonaparte contacted other agencies, including the U.S. Secret Service, for personnel, investigators in particular. On May 27, 1908, Congress forbade this use of Treasury employees by the Justice Department, citing fears that the new agency would serve as a secret police department. Again at Roosevelt's urging, Bonaparte moved to organize a formal Bureau of Investigation, which would then have its own staff of special agents.\nCreation of BOI.\nThe Bureau of Investigation (BOI) was created on July 26, 1908. Attorney General Bonaparte, using Department of Justice expense funds, hired thirty-four people, including some veterans of the Secret Service, to work for a new investigative agency. Its first \"chief\" (the title is now \"director\") was Stanley Finch. Bonaparte notified the Congress of these actions in December 1908.\nThe bureau's first official task was visiting and making surveys of the houses of prostitution in preparation for enforcing the \"White Slave Traffic Act\" or Mann Act, passed on June 25, 1910. In 1932, the bureau was renamed the United States Bureau of Investigation.\nCreation of FBI.\nThe following year, 1933, the BOI was linked to the Bureau of Prohibition and rechristened the Division of Investigation (DOI); it became an independent service within the Department of Justice in 1935. In the same year, its name was officially changed from the Division of Investigation to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).\nJ. Edgar Hoover as FBI director.\nJ. Edgar Hoover served as FBI director from 1924 to 1972, a combined 48 years with the BOI, DOI, and FBI. He was chiefly responsible for creating the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory, or the FBI Laboratory, which officially opened in 1932, as part of his work to professionalize investigations by the government. Hoover was substantially involved in most major cases and projects that the FBI handled during his tenure. But as detailed below, his tenure as Bureau director proved to be highly controversial, especially in its later years. After Hoover's death, Congress passed legislation that limited the tenure of future FBI directors to ten years.\nEarly homicide investigations of the new agency included the Osage Indian murders. During the \"War on Crime\" of the 1930s, FBI agents apprehended or killed a number of notorious criminals who committed kidnappings, bank robberies, and murders throughout the nation, including John Dillinger, \"Baby Face\" Nelson, Kate \"Ma\" Barker, Alvin \"Creepy\" Karpis, and George \"Machine Gun\" Kelly.\nOther activities of its early decades focused on the scope and influence of the white supremacist group Ku Klux Klan, a group with which the FBI was evidenced to be working in the Viola Liuzzo lynching case. Earlier, through the work of Edwin Atherton, the BOI claimed to have successfully apprehended an entire army of Mexican neo-revolutionaries under the leadership of General Enrique Estrada in the mid-1920s, east of San Diego, California.\nHoover began using wiretapping in the 1920s during Prohibition to arrest bootleggers. In the 1927 case \"Olmstead v. United States\", in which a bootlegger was caught through telephone tapping, the United States Supreme Court ruled that FBI wiretaps did not violate the Fourth Amendment as unlawful search and seizure, as long as the FBI did not break into a person's home to complete the tapping. After Prohibition's repeal, Congress passed the Communications Act of 1934, which outlawed non-consensual phone tapping, but did allow bugging. In the 1939 case \"Nardone v. United States\", the court ruled that due to the 1934 law, evidence the FBI obtained by phone tapping was inadmissible in court. After \"Katz v. United States\" (1967) overturned \"Olmstead\", Congress passed the Omnibus Crime Control Act, allowing public authorities to tap telephones during investigations, as long as they obtained warrants beforehand.\nNational security.\nBeginning in the 1940s and continuing into the 1970s, the bureau investigated cases of espionage against the United States and its allies. Eight Nazi agents who had planned sabotage operations against American targets were arrested, and six were executed (\"Ex parte Quirin\") under their sentences. Also during this time, a joint US/UK code-breaking effort called \"The Venona Project\"\u2014with which the FBI was heavily involved\u2014broke Soviet diplomatic and intelligence communications codes, allowing the US and British governments to read Soviet communications. This effort confirmed the existence of Americans working in the United States for Soviet intelligence. Hoover was administering this project, but he failed to notify the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of it until 1952. Another notable case was the arrest of Soviet spy Rudolf Abel in 1957. The discovery of Soviet spies operating in the US motivated Hoover to pursue his longstanding concern with the threat he perceived from the American Left.\nJapanese American internment.\nIn 1939, the Bureau began compiling a custodial detention list with the names of those who would be taken into custody in the event of war with Axis nations. The majority of the names on the list belonged to Issei community leaders, as the FBI investigation built on an existing Naval Intelligence index that had focused on Japanese Americans in Hawaii and the West Coast, but many German and Italian nationals also found their way onto the FBI Index list. Robert Shivers, head of the Honolulu office, obtained permission from Hoover to start detaining those on the list on December 7, 1941, while bombs were still falling over Pearl Harbor. Mass arrests and searches of homes, in most cases conducted without warrants, began a few hours after the attack, and over the next several weeks more than 5,500 Issei men were taken into FBI custody. \nOn February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing the removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. FBI Director Hoover opposed the subsequent mass removal and confinement of Japanese Americans authorized under Executive Order 9066, but Roosevelt prevailed. The vast majority went along with the subsequent exclusion orders, but in a handful of cases where Japanese Americans refused to obey the new military regulations, FBI agents handled their arrests. The Bureau continued surveillance on Japanese Americans throughout the war, conducting background checks on applicants for resettlement outside camp, and entering the camps, usually without the permission of War Relocation Authority officials, and grooming informants to monitor dissidents and \"troublemakers\". After the war, the FBI was assigned to protect returning Japanese Americans from attacks by hostile white communities.\nSex deviates program.\nAccording to Douglas M. Charles, the FBI's \"sex deviates\" program began on April 10, 1950, when J. Edgar Hoover forwarded to the White House, to the U.S. Civil Service Commission, and to branches of the armed services a list of 393 alleged federal employees who had allegedly been arrested in Washington, D.C., since 1947, on charges of \"sexual irregularities\". On June 20, 1951, Hoover expanded the program by issuing a memo establishing a \"uniform policy for the handling of the increasing number of reports and allegations concerning present and past employees of the United States Government who assertedly [sic] are sex deviates\". The program was expanded to include non-government jobs. According to Athan Theoharis, \"In 1951 he [Hoover] had unilaterally instituted a Sex Deviates program to purge alleged homosexuals from any position in the federal government, from the lowliest clerk to the more powerful position of White house aide.\" On May 27, 1953, Executive Order 10450 went into effect. The program was expanded further by this executive order by making all federal employment of homosexuals illegal. On July 8, 1953, the FBI forwarded to the U.S. Civil Service Commission information from the sex deviates program. Between 1977 and 1978, 300,000 pages in the sex deviates program, collected between 1930 and the mid-1970s, were destroyed by FBI officials.\nCivil rights movement.\nDuring the 1950s and 1960s, FBI officials became increasingly concerned about the influence of civil rights leaders, whom they believed either had communist ties or were unduly influenced by communists or \"fellow travelers\". In 1956, for example, Hoover sent an open letter denouncing Dr. T. R. M. Howard, a civil rights leader, surgeon, and wealthy entrepreneur in Mississippi who had criticized FBI inaction in solving recent murders of George W. Lee, Emmett Till, and other blacks in the South. The FBI carried out controversial domestic surveillance in an operation it called the COINTELPRO, from \"COunter-INTELligence PROgram\". It was to investigate and disrupt the activities of dissident political organizations within the United States, including both militant and non-violent organizations. Among its targets was the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a leading civil rights organization whose clergy leadership included the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr..\nThe FBI frequently investigated King. In the mid-1960s, King began to criticize the Bureau for giving insufficient attention to the use of terrorism by white supremacists. Hoover responded by publicly calling King the most \"notorious liar\" in the United States. In his 1991 memoir, \"Washington Post\" journalist Carl Rowan asserted that the FBI had sent at least one anonymous letter to King encouraging him to commit suicide. Historian Taylor Branch documents an anonymous November 1964 \"suicide package\" sent by the Bureau that combined a letter to the civil rights leader telling him \"You are done. There is only one way out for you.\" with audio recordings of King's sexual indiscretions.\nIn March 1971, the residential office of an FBI agent in Media, Pennsylvania, was burgled by a group calling itself the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI. Numerous files were taken and distributed to a range of newspapers, including \"The Harvard Crimson\". The files detailed the FBI's extensive COINTELPRO program, which included investigations into lives of ordinary citizens\u2014including a black student group at a Pennsylvania military college and the daughter of Congressman Henry S. Reuss of Wisconsin. The country was \"jolted\" by the revelations, which included assassinations of political activists, and the actions were denounced by members of the Congress, including House Majority Leader Hale Boggs. The phones of some members of the Congress, including Boggs, had allegedly been tapped.\nKennedy's assassination.\nWhen President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed, the jurisdiction fell to the local police departments until President Lyndon B. Johnson directed the FBI to take over the investigation. To ensure clarity about the responsibility for investigation of homicides of federal officials, Congress passed a law in 1965 that included investigations of such deaths of federal officials, especially by homicide, within FBI jurisdiction.\nOrganized crime.\nIn response to organized crime, on August 25, 1953, the FBI created the Top Hoodlum Program. The national office directed field offices to gather information on mobsters in their territories and to report it regularly to Washington for a centralized collection of intelligence on racketeers. After the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, for RICO Act, took effect, the FBI began investigating the former Prohibition-organized groups, which had become fronts for crime in major cities and small towns. All the FBI work was done undercover and from within these organizations, using the provisions provided in the RICO Act. Gradually the agency dismantled many of the groups. Although Hoover initially denied the existence of a National Crime Syndicate in the United States, the Bureau later conducted operations against known organized crime syndicates and families, including those headed by Sam Giancana and John Gotti. The RICO Act is still used today for all organized crime and any individuals who may fall under the Act's provisions.\nIn 2003, a congressional committee called the FBI's organized crime informant program \"one of the greatest failures in the history of federal law enforcement\". The FBI allowed four innocent men to be convicted of the March 1965 gangland murder of Edward \"Teddy\" Deegan in order to protect Vincent Flemmi, an FBI informant. Three of the men were sentenced to death (which was later reduced to life in prison), and the fourth defendant was sentenced to life in prison. Two of the four men died in prison after serving almost 30 years, and two others were released after serving 32 and 36 years. In July 2007, U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner in Boston found that the Bureau had helped convict the four men using false witness accounts given by mobster Joseph Barboza. The U.S. Government was ordered to pay $100\u00a0million in damages to the four defendants.\nSpecial FBI teams.\nIn 1982, the FBI formed an elite unit to help with problems that might arise at the 1984 Summer Olympics to be held in Los Angeles, particularly terrorism and major-crime. This was a result of the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, when terrorists murdered the Israeli athletes. Named the Hostage Rescue Team, or HRT, it acts as a dedicated FBI SWAT team dealing primarily with counter-terrorism scenarios. Unlike the special agents serving on local FBI SWAT teams, HRT does not conduct investigations. Instead, HRT focuses solely on additional tactical proficiency and capabilities. Also formed in 1984 was the \"Computer Analysis and Response Team\", or CART.\nFrom the end of the 1980s to the early 1990s, the FBI reassigned more than 300 agents from foreign counter-intelligence duties to violent crime, and made violent crime the sixth national priority. With cuts to other well-established departments, and because terrorism was no longer considered a threat after the end of the Cold War, the FBI assisted local and state police forces in tracking fugitives who had crossed state lines, which is a federal offense. The FBI Laboratory helped develop DNA testing, continuing its pioneering role in identification that began with its fingerprinting system in 1924.\nNotable efforts in the 1990s.\nOn May 1, 1992, FBI SWAT and HRT personnel in Los Angeles County, California aided local officials in securing peace within the area during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. HRT operators, for instance, spent 10 days conducting vehicle-mounted patrols throughout Los Angeles, before returning to Virginia.\nBetween 1993 and 1996, the FBI increased its counter-terrorism role following the first 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York City, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and the arrest of the Unabomber in 1996. Technological innovation and the skills of FBI Laboratory analysts helped ensure that the three cases were successfully prosecuted. However, Justice Department investigations into the FBI's roles in the Ruby Ridge and Waco incidents were found to have been obstructed by agents within the Bureau. During the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, the FBI was criticized for its investigation of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. It has settled a dispute with Richard Jewell, who was a private security guard at the venue, along with some media organizations, in regard to the leaking of his name during the investigation; this had briefly led to his being wrongly suspected of the bombing.\nAfter Congress passed the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA, 1994), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA, 1996), and the Economic Espionage Act (EEA, 1996), the FBI followed suit and underwent a technological upgrade in 1998, just as it did with its CART team in 1991. Computer Investigations and Infrastructure Threat Assessment Center (CITAC) and the National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) were created to deal with the increase in Internet-related problems, such as computer viruses, worms, and other malicious programs that threatened U.S. operations. With these developments, the FBI increased its electronic surveillance in public safety and national security investigations, adapting to the telecommunications advancements that changed the nature of such problems.\nSeptember 11 attacks.\nDuring the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, FBI agent Leonard W. Hatton Jr. was killed during the rescue effort while helping the rescue personnel evacuate the occupants of the South Tower, and he stayed when it collapsed. Within months after the attacks, FBI Director Robert Mueller, who had been sworn in a week before the attacks, called for a re-engineering of FBI structure and operations. He made countering every federal crime a top priority, including the prevention of terrorism, countering foreign intelligence operations, addressing cybersecurity threats, other high-tech crimes, protecting civil rights, combating public corruption, organized crime, white-collar crime, and major acts of violent crime.\nIn February 2001, Robert Hanssen was caught selling information to the Russian government. It was later learned that Hanssen, who had reached a high position within the FBI, had been selling intelligence since as early as 1979. He pleaded guilty to espionage and received a life sentence in 2002, but the incident led many to question the security practices employed by the FBI. There was also a claim that Hanssen might have contributed information that led to the September 11, 2001, attacks.\nThe 9/11 Commission's final report on July 22, 2004, stated that the FBI and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were both partially to blame for not pursuing intelligence reports that could have prevented the September 11 attacks. In its most damning assessment, the report concluded that the country had \"not been well served\" by either agency and listed numerous recommendations for changes within the FBI. While the FBI did accede to most of the recommendations, including oversight by the new director of National Intelligence, some former members of the 9/11 Commission publicly criticized the FBI in October 2005, claiming it was resisting any meaningful changes.\nOn July 8, 2007, \"The Washington Post\" published excerpts from UCLA Professor Amy Zegart's book \"Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11\". The \"Post\" reported, from Zegart's book, that government documents showed that both the CIA and the FBI had missed 23 potential chances to disrupt the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The primary reasons for the failures included: agency cultures resistant to change and new ideas; inappropriate incentives for promotion; and a lack of cooperation between the FBI, CIA, and the rest of the United States Intelligence Community. The book blamed the FBI's decentralized structure, which prevented effective communication and cooperation among different FBI offices. The book suggested that the FBI had not evolved into an effective counter-terrorism or counter-intelligence agency, due in large part to deeply ingrained agency cultural resistance to change. For example, FBI personnel practices continued to treat all staff other than special agents as support staff, classifying intelligence analysts alongside the FBI's auto mechanics and janitors.\nFaulty bullet analysis.\nFor over 40 years, the FBI crime lab in Quantico had believed that lead alloys used in bullets had unique chemical signatures. It was analyzing the bullets with the goal of matching them chemically, not only to a single batch of ammunition coming out of a factory, but also to a single box of bullets. The National Academy of Sciences conducted an 18-month independent review of comparative bullet-lead analysis. In 2003, its National Research Council published a report whose conclusions called into question 30 years of FBI testimony. It found the analytic model used by the FBI for interpreting results was deeply flawed, and the conclusion, that bullet fragments could be matched to a box of ammunition, was so overstated that it was misleading under the rules of evidence. One year later, the FBI decided to stop conducting bullet lead analyses.\nAfter a \"60 Minutes\"/\"The Washington Post\" investigation in November 2007, two years later, the Bureau agreed to identify, review, and release all pertinent cases, and notify prosecutors about cases in which faulty testimony was given.\nTechnology.\nIn 2012, the FBI formed the National Domestic Communications Assistance Center to develop technology for assisting law enforcement with technical knowledge regarding communication services, technologies, and electronic surveillance.\nJanuary 6 United States Capitol attack.\nAn FBI informant who participated in the January 6 United States Capitol attack on democratic institutions in Washington D.C. later testified in support of the Proud boys, who were part of the plot. Revelations about the informant raised fresh questions about intelligence failures by the FBI before the riot. According to the Brennan Center, and Senate committees, the FBI's response to white supremacist violence was \"woefully inadequate\". The FBI has long been suspected to have turned a blind eye towards right-wing extremists while disseminating \"conspiracy theories\" on the origin of SARS-CoV-2.\nOrganization.\nOrganizational structure.\nThe FBI is organized into functional branches and the Office of the Director, which contains most administrative offices. An executive assistant director manages each branch. Each branch is then divided into offices and divisions, each headed by an assistant director. The various divisions are further divided into sub-branches, led by deputy assistant directors. Within these sub-branches, there are various sections headed by section chiefs. Section chiefs are ranked analogous to special agents in charge. Four of the branches report to the deputy director while two report to the associate director.\nThe main branches of the FBI are:\nEach branch focuses on different tasks, and some focus on more than one. Here are some of the tasks that different branches are in charge of:\nFBI Headquarters Washington D.C..\nNational Security Branch (NSB)\nIntelligence Branch (IB)\nFBI Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch (CCRSB)\nScience and Technology Branch (STB)\nOther Headquarter Offices.\nInformation and Technology Branch (ITB)\nHuman Resources Branch (HRB)\nAdministrative and financial management support\nOffice of the Director.\nThe Office of the Director serves as the central administrative organ of the FBI. The office provides staff support functions (such as finance and facilities management) to the five function branches and the various field divisions. The office is managed by the FBI associate director, who also oversees the operations of both the Information and Technology and Human Resources Branches.\nSenior staff\nOffice of the Director\nRank structure.\nThe following is a listing of the rank structure found within the FBI (in ascending order):\nLegal authority.\nThe FBI's mandate is established in Title 28 of the United States Code (U.S. Code), Section 533, which authorizes the Attorney General to \"appoint officials to detect and prosecute crimes against the United States\". Other federal statutes give the FBI the authority and responsibility to investigate specific crimes.\nThe FBI's chief tool against organized crime is the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. The FBI is also charged with the responsibility of enforcing compliance of the United States Civil Rights Act of 1964 and investigating violations of the act in addition to prosecuting such violations with the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). The FBI also shares concurrent jurisdiction with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in the enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970.\nThe USA PATRIOT Act increased the powers allotted to the FBI, especially in wiretapping and monitoring of Internet activity. One of the most controversial provisions of the act is the so-called \"sneak and peek\" provision, granting the FBI powers to search a house while the residents are away, and not requiring them to notify the residents for several weeks afterward. Under the PATRIOT Act's provisions, the FBI also resumed inquiring into the library records of those who are suspected of terrorism (something it had supposedly not done since the 1970s).\nIn the early 1980s, Senate hearings were held to examine FBI undercover operations in the wake of the Abscam controversy, which had allegations of entrapment of elected officials. As a result, in the following years a number of guidelines were issued to constrain FBI activities.\nInformation obtained through an FBI investigation is presented to the appropriate U.S. Attorney or Department of Justice official, who decides if prosecution or other action is warranted.\nThe FBI often works in conjunction with other federal agencies, including the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in seaport and airport security, and the National Transportation Safety Board in investigating airplane crashes and other critical incidents. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) has nearly the same amount of investigative manpower as the FBI and investigates the largest range of crimes. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, then\u2013Attorney General Ashcroft assigned the FBI as the designated lead organization in terrorism investigations after the creation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. HSI and the FBI are both integral members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force.\nIndian reservations.\nThe federal government has the primary responsibility for investigating and prosecuting serious crime on Indian reservations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" /><poem>There are 565 federally recognized American Indian Tribes in the United States, and the FBI has federal law enforcement responsibility on nearly 200 Indian reservations. This federal jurisdiction is shared concurrently with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Office of Justice Services (BIA-OJS).\nLocated within the FBI's Criminal Investigative Division, the Indian Country Crimes Unit (ICCU) is responsible for developing and implementing strategies, programs, and policies to address identified crime problems in Indian Country (IC) for which the FBI has responsibility.</poem>\nThe FBI does not specifically list crimes in Native American land as one of its priorities. Often serious crimes have been either poorly investigated or prosecution has been declined. Tribal courts can impose sentences of up to three years, under certain restrictions.\nInfrastructure.\nThe FBI is headquartered at the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C., with 56 field offices in major cities across the United States. The FBI also maintains over 400 resident agencies across the United States, as well as over 50 legal attach\u00e9s at United States embassies and consulates. Many specialized FBI functions are located at facilities in Quantico, Virginia, as well as a \"data campus\" in Clarksburg, West Virginia, where 96\u00a0million sets of fingerprints \"from across the United States are stored, along with others collected by American authorities from prisoners in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan\". The FBI is in process of moving its Records Management Division, which processes Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, to Winchester, Virginia.\nAccording to \"The Washington Post\", the FBI \"is building a vast repository controlled by people who work in a top-secret vault on the fourth floor of the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington. This one stores the profiles of tens of thousands of Americans and legal residents who are not accused of any crime. What they have done is appear to be acting suspiciously to a town sheriff, a traffic cop or even a neighbor.\"\nThe FBI Laboratory, established with the formation of the BOI, did not appear in the J. Edgar Hoover Building until its completion in 1974. The lab serves as the primary lab for most DNA, biological, and physical work. Public tours of FBI headquarters ran through the FBI laboratory workspace before the move to the J. Edgar Hoover Building. The services the lab conducts include \"Chemistry\", \"Combined DNA Index System\" (CODIS), \"Computer Analysis and Response\", \"DNA Analysis\", \"Evidence Response\", \"Explosives\", \"Firearms and Tool marks\", \"Forensic Audio\", \"Forensic Video\", \"Image Analysis\", \"Forensic Science Research\", \"Forensic Science Training\", \"Hazardous Materials Response\", \"Investigative and Prospective Graphics\", \"Latent Prints\", \"Materials Analysis\", \"Questioned Documents\", \"Racketeering Records\", \"Special Photographic Analysis\", \"Structural Design\", and \"Trace Evidence\". The services of the FBI Laboratory are used by many state, local, and international agencies free of charge. The lab also maintains a second lab at the FBI Academy.\nThe FBI Academy, located in Quantico, Virginia, is home to the communications and computer laboratory the FBI utilizes. It is also where new agents are sent for training to become FBI special agents. Going through the 21-week course is required for every special agent. First opened for use in 1972, the facility is located on of woodland. The Academy trains state and local law enforcement agencies, which are invited to the law enforcement training center. The FBI units that reside at Quantico are the \"Field and Police Training Unit\", \"Firearms Training Unit\", \"Forensic Science Research and Training Center\", \"Technology Services Unit\" (TSU), \"Investigative Training Unit\", \"Law Enforcement Communication Unit\", \"Leadership and Management Science Units\" (LSMU), \"Physical Training Unit\", \"New Agents' Training Unit\" (NATU), \"Practical Applications Unit\" (PAU), the \"Investigative Computer Training Unit\" and the \"College of Analytical Studies\".\nIn 2000, the FBI began the Trilogy project to upgrade its outdated information technology (IT) infrastructure. This project, originally scheduled to take three years and cost around $380\u00a0million, ended up over budget and behind schedule. Efforts to deploy modern computers and networking equipment were generally successful, but attempts to develop new investigation software, outsourced to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), were not. Virtual Case File, or VCF, as the software was known, was plagued by poorly defined goals, and repeated changes in management. \nIn January 2005, more than two years after the software was originally planned for completion, the FBI abandoned the project. At least $100\u00a0million, and much more by some estimates, was spent on the project, which never became operational. The FBI has been forced to continue using its decade-old Automated Case Support system, which IT experts consider woefully inadequate. In March 2005, the FBI announced it was beginning a new, more ambitious software project, code-named Sentinel, which they expected to complete by 2009.\nCarnivore was an electronic eavesdropping software system implemented by the FBI during the Clinton administration; it was designed to monitor email and electronic communications. After prolonged negative coverage in the press, the FBI changed the name of its system from \"Carnivore\" to \"DCS1000\". DCS is reported to stand for \"Digital Collection System\"; the system has the same functions as before. The Associated Press reported in mid-January 2005 that the FBI essentially abandoned the use of Carnivore in 2001, in favor of commercially available software, such as NarusInsight.\nThe Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division is located in Clarksburg, West Virginia. Organized beginning in 1991, the office opened in 1995 as the youngest agency division. The complex is the length of three football fields. It provides a main repository for information in various data systems. Under the roof of the CJIS are the programs for the \"National Crime Information Center\" (NCIC), \"Uniform Crime Reporting\" (UCR), \"Fingerprint Identification\", \"Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System\" (IAFIS), \"NCIC 2000\", and the \"National Incident-Based Reporting System\" (NIBRS). Many state and local agencies use these data systems as a source for their own investigations and contribute to the database using secure communications. FBI provides these tools of sophisticated identification and information services to local, state, federal, and international law enforcement agencies.\nThe FBI heads the National Virtual Translation Center, which provides \"timely and accurate translations of foreign intelligence for all elements of the Intelligence Community\".\nIn June 2021, the FBI held a groundbreaking for its planned FBI Innovation Center, set to be built in Huntsville, Alabama. The Innovation Center is to be part of a large, college-like campus costing a total of $1.3 billion in Redstone Arsenal and will act as a center for cyber threat intelligence, data analytics, and emerging threat training.\nPersonnel.\nAs of December\u00a031, 2009[ [update]], the FBI had a total of 33,852 employees. That includes 13,412 special agents and 20,420 support professionals, such as intelligence analysts, language specialists, scientists, information technology specialists, and other professionals.\nLine of Duty Deaths.\nAccording to the Officer Down Memorial Page 87 FBI agents and 2 K9s have died in the line of duty from 1925 to February 2021.\nHiring process.\nTo apply to become an FBI agent, one must be between the ages of 23 and 37, unless one is a preference-eligible veteran, in which case one may apply after age 37. The applicant must also hold U.S. citizenship, be of high moral character, have a clean record, and hold at least a four-year bachelor's degree. At least three years of professional work experience prior to application is also required. All FBI employees require a Top Secret (TS) security clearance, and in many instances, employees need a TS/SCI (Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information) clearance. \nTo obtain a security clearance, all potential FBI personnel must pass a series of Single Scope Background Investigations (SSBI), which are conducted by the Office of Personnel Management. Special agent candidates also have to pass a Physical Fitness Test (PFT), which includes a 300-meter run, one-minute sit-ups, maximum push-ups, and a run. Personnel must pass a polygraph test with questions including possible drug use. Applicants who fail polygraphs may not gain employment with the FBI. Up until 1975, the FBI had a minimum height requirement of .\nBOI and FBI directors.\nFBI directors are appointed (nominated) by the president of the United States and must be confirmed by the United States Senate to serve a term of office of ten years, subject to resignation or removal by the president at his/her discretion before their term ends. Additional terms are allowed following the same procedure.\nJ. Edgar Hoover, appointed by President Calvin Coolidge in 1924, was by far the longest-serving director, serving until his death in 1972. In 1968, Congress passed legislation, as part of the \"Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968\", requiring Senate confirmation of appointments of future directors. As the incumbent, this legislation did not apply to Hoover. The last FBI director was Andrew McCabe. The current FBI director is Kash Patel, appointed by President Donald Trump.\nThe FBI director is responsible for the day-to-day operations at the FBI. Along with the deputy director, the director makes sure cases and operations are handled correctly. The director also is in charge of making sure the leadership in the FBI field offices is staffed with qualified agents. Before the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act was passed in the wake of the September 11 attacks, the FBI director would directly brief the president of the United States on any issues that arise from within the FBI. Since then, the director now reports to the director of national intelligence (DNI), who in turn reports to the President.\nFirearms.\nUpon qualification, an FBI special agent is issued a full-size Glock 22 or compact Glock 23 semi-automatic pistol, both of which are chambered in the .40 S&W cartridge. In May 1997, the FBI officially adopted the Glock, in .40 S&W, for general agent use, and first issued it to New Agent Class 98-1 in October 1997. At present, the Glock 23 \"FG&R\" (finger groove and rail; either 3rd generation or \"Gen4\") is the issue sidearm. \nNew agents are issued firearms, on which they must qualify, on successful completion of their training at the FBI Academy. The Glock 26 (subcompact 9\u00a0mm Parabellum), Glock 23 and Glock 27 (.40 S&W compact and subcompact, respectively) are authorized as secondary weapons. Special agents are also authorized to purchase and qualify with the Glock 21 in .45 ACP.\nSpecial agents of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) and regional SWAT teams are issued the Springfield Armory Professional Model 1911 pistol in .45 ACP.\nIn June 2016, the FBI awarded Glock a contract for new handguns. Unlike the currently issued .40 S&W chambered Glock pistols, the new Glocks will be chambered for 9\u00a0mm Parabellum. The contract is for the full-size Glock 17M and the compact Glock 19M. The \"M\" means the Glocks have been modified to meet government standards specified by a 2015 government request for proposal.\nPublications.\nThe \"FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin\" is published monthly by the FBI Law Enforcement Communication Unit, with articles of interest to state and local law enforcement personnel. First published in 1932 as \"Fugitives Wanted by Police\", the \"FBI Law Bulletin\" covers topics including law enforcement technology and issues, such as crime mapping and use of force, as well as recent criminal justice research, and ViCAP alerts, on wanted suspects and key cases.\nThe FBI also publishes some reports for both law enforcement personnel as well as regular citizens covering topics including law enforcement, terrorism, cybercrime, white-collar crime, violent crime, and statistics. The vast majority of federal government publications covering these topics are published by the Office of Justice Programs agencies of the United States Department of Justice, and disseminated through the National Criminal Justice Reference Service.\nCrime statistics.\nDuring the 1920s the FBI began issuing crime reports by gathering numbers from local police departments. Due to limitations of this system that were discovered during the 1960s and 1970s\u2014victims often simply did not report crimes to the police in the first place\u2014the Department of Justice developed an alternative method of tallying crime, the victimization survey.\nUniform Crime Reports.\nThe Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) compile data from over 17,000 law enforcement agencies across the country. They provide detailed data regarding the volume of crimes to include arrest, clearance (or closing a case), and law enforcement officer information. The UCR focuses its data collection on violent crimes, hate crimes, and property crimes. Created in the 1920s, the UCR system has not proven to be as \"uniform\" as its name implies. The UCR data only reflect the most serious offense in the case of connected crimes and has a very restrictive definition of rape. Since about 93% of the data submitted to the FBI is in this format, the UCR stands out as the publication of choice as most states require law enforcement agencies to submit this data.\nPreliminary Annual \"Uniform Crime Report\" for 2006 was released on June 4, 2006. The report shows violent crime offenses rose 1.3%, but the number of property crime offenses decreased 2.9% compared to 2005.\nNational Incident-Based Reporting System.\nThe National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) crime statistics system aims to address limitations inherent in UCR data. The system is used by law enforcement agencies in the United States for collecting and reporting data on crimes. Local, state, and federal agencies generate NIBRS data from their records management systems. Data is collected on every incident and arrest in the Group A offense category. The Group A offenses are 46 specific crimes grouped in 22 offense categories. Specific facts about these offenses are gathered and reported in the NIBRS system. In addition to the Group A offenses, eleven Group B offenses are reported with only the arrest information. The NIBRS system is in greater detail than the summary-based UCR system. As of 2004[ [update]], 5,271 law enforcement agencies submitted NIBRS data. That amount represents 20% of the United States population and 16% of the crime statistics data collected by the FBI.\neGuardian.\neGuardian is the name of an FBI system, launched in January 2009, to share tips about possible terror threats with local police agencies. The program aims to get law enforcement at all levels sharing data quickly about suspicious activity and people.\neGuardian enables near real-time sharing and tracking of terror information and suspicious activities with local, state, tribal, and federal agencies. The eGuardian system is a spin-off of a similar but classified tool called Guardian that has been used inside the FBI, and shared with vetted partners since 2005.\nControversies.\nThroughout its history, the FBI has been the subject of many controversies, both at home and abroad.\nSpecific practices include:\nMedia portrayal.\nThe FBI has been frequently depicted in popular media since the 1930s. The bureau has participated to varying degrees, which has ranged from direct involvement in the creative process of film or TV series development, to providing consultation on operations and closed cases. A few of the notable portrayals of the FBI on television are the series \"The X-Files\", which started in 1993 and concluded its eleventh season in early 2018, and concerned investigations into paranormal phenomena by five fictional special agents, and the fictional Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) agency in the TV drama \"24\", which is patterned after the FBI Counterterrorism Division. \nThe 1991 movie \"Point Break\" depicts an undercover FBI agent who infiltrated a gang of bank robbers. The 1997 movie \"Donnie Brasco\" is based on the true story of undercover FBI agent Joseph D. Pistone infiltrating the Mafia. The 2005\u20132020 television series \"Criminal Minds\", that follows the team members of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) in the pursuit of serial killers. The 2017 TV series Riverdale where one of the main characters is an FBI agent. The 2015 TV series \"Quantico\", titled after the location of the Bureau's training facility, deals with probationary and special agents, not all of whom, within the show's format, may be fully reliable or even trustworthy. \nThe 2018 series \"FBI\", set in NYC that follows the personal and professional lives of the agents assigned to 26 Federal Plaza (NYC FBI field office). \"FBI\"'s first spin-off titled ' (2019), follows the FBI's Fugitive Task Force in chasing down the US's most wanted criminals, and the second spin-off, ' (2021), follows the FBI's International Fly Team that goes where ever they are needed in the world to protect the US's interests.\nNotable FBI personnel.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["8469462", "11127"], "permutation_1": ["11127", "8469462"], "permutation_2": ["8469462", "11127"], "permutation_3": ["11127", "8469462"]}
{"id": "2hop__510925_774871", "docs_added": {"159172": "Iron Maiden\nEnglish heavy metal band\nIron Maiden are an English heavy metal band formed in Leyton, East London, in 1975 by bassist and primary songwriter Steve Harris. Although fluid in the early years of the band, the line-up for most of the band's history has consisted of Harris, lead vocalist Bruce Dickinson, drummer Nicko McBrain, and guitarists Dave Murray, Adrian Smith and Janick Gers. As pioneers of the new wave of British heavy metal movement, Iron Maiden released a series of UK and US Platinum and Gold albums, including 1980's debut album, 1981's \"Killers\", and 1982's \"The Number of the Beast\" \u2013 its first album with Dickinson, who in 1981 replaced Paul Di'Anno as lead singer. The addition of Dickinson was a turning point in their career, establishing them as one of heavy metal's most important bands. \"The Number of the Beast\" is among the most popular heavy metal albums of all time, having sold almost 20 million copies worldwide.\nAfter some turbulence in the 1990s, the return of lead vocalist Bruce Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith in 1999 saw the band undergo a resurgence in popularity, with a series of new albums and highly successful tours. Their three most recent albums \u2014 \"The Final Frontier\" (2010), \"The Book of Souls\" (2015), and \"Senjutsu\" (2021) \u2014 have all reached number\u00a01 in more than 25 countries. Iron Maiden have sold over 130\u00a0million copies of their albums worldwide and have obtained over\u00a0600 certifications. The band is considered to be one of the most influential and revered heavy metal bands of all time. They have received multiple industry awards, including the Grammy and Brit Awards.\nThe band have released 41 albums, including 17 studio albums, 13 live albums, four EPs and seven compilations. They have also released 47 singles and 20 video albums, and two video games. Iron Maiden's lyrics cover such topics as history, literature, war, mythology, dark fantasy, science fiction, society and religion. As of October\u00a02019[ [update]], the band have played 2,500 live shows. For over 40\u00a0years the band have featured their signature mascot, \"Eddie\", on the covers of almost all of their releases.\nHistory.\nEarly years (1975\u20131978).\nIron Maiden were formed on Christmas Day, 25 December 1975, by bassist Steve Harris shortly after he left his previous group, Smiler. Harris attributed the band's name to a film adaptation of \"The Man in the Iron Mask\" from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, as the title reminded him of the iron maiden torture device. They originally used the name Ash Mountain, but most of the band members preferred the name Iron Maiden. After months of rehearsal, Iron Maiden made their debut at St. Nicks Hall in Poplar on 1 May 1976, before taking up a semi-residency at the Cart and Horses Pub in Maryland, Stratford. The original line-up was short-lived, with vocalist Paul Mario Day being the first to go as, according to Harris, he lacked \"energy or charisma on stage\". He was replaced by Dennis Wilcock, a Kiss fan who used makeup and fake blood during live performances and had earlier played with Harris and Doug Sampson in the band Smiler. Wilcock's friend, guitarist Dave Murray, was invited to join, much to the dismay of the band's guitarists Dave Sullivan and Terry Rance. Their frustration led Harris to temporarily disband Iron Maiden in 1976, though the group reformed soon after with Murray as the sole guitarist. Harris and Murray remain the band's longest-serving members and have performed on all of their releases.\nIron Maiden recruited another guitarist in 1977, Bob Sawyer, who was sacked for embarrassing the band on stage by pretending to play guitar with his teeth. Tension ensued again, causing a rift between Murray and Wilcock, who convinced Harris to fire Murray, as well as original drummer Ron Matthews. A new line-up was put together, including future Cutting Crew member Tony Moore on keyboards, Terry Wapram on guitar and drummer Barry Purkis (better known today as Thunderstick). After a single gig with the band in January 1978, Moore was asked to leave as Harris decided keyboards did not suit the band's sound. Dave Murray rejoined in late March 1978, and when Terry Wapram disapproved he was sacked. A few weeks later, Dennis Wilcock decided to leave Iron Maiden to form his own band, V1, with Wapram, and drummer Barry Purkis also left. Former Smiler drummer Doug Sampson was at Dennis' and Thunderstick's last gig, and joined the band afterwards.\nHarris, Murray and Sampson spent the summer and autumn of 1978 rehearsing while they searched for a singer to complete the band's new line-up. A chance meeting at the Red Lion, a pub in Leytonstone, in November 1978 evolved into a successful audition for vocalist Paul Di'Anno. Steve Harris said, \"There's sort of a quality in Paul's voice, a raspiness in his voice, or whatever you want to call it, that just gave it this great edge\". At this time, Murray would typically act as their sole guitarist, with Harris commenting, \"Davey was so good he could do a lot of it on his own. The plan was always to get a second guitarist in, but finding one that could match Davey was really difficult\".\nRecord contract and early releases (1978\u20131981).\nOn New Year's Eve, 1978, Iron Maiden recorded a four-song demo at Spaceward Studios in Cambridge. Hoping the recording would help them secure more gigs, the band gave a copy to Neal Kay, who, at the time, was managing a heavy metal club called \"Bandwagon Heavy Metal Soundhouse\". After hearing the tape, Kay began playing the demo regularly at the Bandwagon, and one of the songs, \"Prowler\", eventually went to number\u00a01 in the Soundhouse charts, which were published weekly in \"Sounds\" magazine. A copy was also acquired by Rod Smallwood, who soon became the band's manager. As Iron Maiden's popularity increased, they released the demo on their own record label as \"The Soundhouse Tapes\", named after the club. Featuring only three tracks (one song, \"Strange World\", was excluded as the band were unsatisfied with its production), all 5,000 copies sold out within weeks.\nIn December 1979, the band secured a major record deal with EMI and asked Dave Murray's childhood friend, Adrian Smith of Urchin, to join the group as their second guitarist. Busy with his own band, Smith declined and Dennis Stratton was hired instead. Shortly after, Doug Sampson left due to health issues and was replaced by ex-Samson drummer Clive Burr at Stratton's suggestion on 26 December 1979. Iron Maiden's first appearance on an EMI album was on the \"Metal for Muthas\" compilation (released on 15 February 1980) with two early versions of \"Sanctuary\" and \"Wrathchild\". The release led to a tour including several other bands linked with the new wave of British heavy metal movement.\nIron Maiden released their self-titled album in 1980, which debuted at number\u00a04 in the UK Albums Chart. In addition to the title track, the album included other early favourites such as \"Running Free\", \"Transylvania\", \"Phantom of the Opera\" and \"Sanctuary\" \u2013 which was not on the original UK release, but appeared on the US version and subsequent remasters. The band embarked on a headline tour of the UK, before opening for Kiss on their 1980 Unmasked Tour's European leg as well as supporting Judas Priest on select dates. After the Kiss tour, Dennis Stratton was dismissed from the band as a result of creative and personal differences, and was replaced by Smith in October 1980. In December, the band played at the Rainbow Theatre in London, where their first live video was filmed. \"Live at the Rainbow\" was released in May 1981, and \"Iron Maiden\" and \"Wrathchild\" from this video received heavy rotation on MTV during its first hours on the air as the first metal videos ever.\nIn 1981, Iron Maiden released their second studio album, \"Killers\". Although many tracks were written prior to their debut release, it had two new songs: \"Prodigal Son\" and \"Murders in the Rue Morgue\" (the latter's title was taken from the short story by Edgar Allan Poe). Unsatisfied with the production on their debut album, the band hired veteran producer Martin Birch, who would continue to work with Iron Maiden until his retirement in 1992. The record was followed by the band's first world tour with their debut performance in the United States opening for Judas Priest at The Aladdin Casino in Las Vegas. \"Killers\" marked the band's USA album charts debut, reaching number\u00a078 on the \"Billboard\" 200, and they booked 132 shows to promote the album, including their first concert in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. During the summer, Iron Maiden played several festivals in Europe, including at the Golden Summernights 1981 festivals at Zeppelinfeld in Nuremberg in front of 100,000 people.\nSuccess (1981\u20131985).\nBy 1981, Paul Di'Anno was demonstrating increasingly erratic behaviour, particularly due to his drug usage, about which Di'Anno comments, \"It wasn't just that I was snorting a bit of coke, though; I was just going for it non-stop, 24 hours a day, every day\u00a0... the band had commitments piling up that went on for months, years, and I just couldn't see my way to the end of it. I knew I'd never last the whole tour. It was too much\". Di'Anno was dismissed following the Killer World Tour with the band already having selected his replacement. After a meeting with Rod Smallwood at the Reading Festival, Bruce Dickinson, formerly of Samson, auditioned for Iron Maiden in September 1981 and was immediately hired. The following month, Dickinson went out on the road with the band on a small headlining tour in Italy and a one-off show at the Rainbow Theatre in the UK. For the last show, and in anticipation of their forthcoming album, the band played \"Children of the Damned\" and \"22 Acacia Avenue\", introducing fans to their new material.\nIn 1982, Iron Maiden released their third studio album, \"The Number of the Beast\", which became the band's first number\u00a01 record on the UK Albums Chart, was a Top 10 hit in many other countries, and reached number\u00a033 on the \"Billboard\" 200. At the time, Dickinson was in the midst of legal difficulties with Samson's management and was not permitted to add his name to any of the songwriting credits, although he still made what he described as a \"moral contribution\" to \"Children of the Damned\", \"The Prisoner\", and \"Run to the Hills\". The band embarked on a world tour, dubbed The Beast on the Road, with shows in North America, Japan, Australia and Europe, including a headline appearance for 40,000 people at the Reading Festival. Iron Maiden played 188 shows in 10 months. The Beast on the Road's US leg proved controversial when an American conservative political lobbying group claimed Iron Maiden were Satanic because of the new album's title track and \"demonic\" cover art, and a group of Christian activists destroyed Iron Maiden records in protest. Dickinson later said the band treated this as \"silliness\" and the demonstrations in fact gave them \"loads of publicity\". \"The Number of the Beast\" sold 2.5 million copies in its first year, 14 million by 2010, and 20 million by 2022.\nIn December 1982, drummer Clive Burr was fired from the band and replaced by Nicko McBrain, who previously played for Trust. Although Harris said the dismissal took place because his live performances were affected by offstage activities, Burr later claimed he was unfairly ousted from the band. The band then recorded the first of three consecutive albums at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas. In 1983, they released their fourth studio album, \"Piece of Mind\", which reached the number\u00a03 spot in the UK and number\u00a014 on the \"Billboard\" 200. \"Piece of Mind\" features the singles \"The Trooper\" and \"Flight of Icarus\", the latter being one of the band's few songs to gain substantial airplay in the US. Iron Maiden played 147 concerts in Europe and North America as a part of the World Piece Tour. This was also their first major North American tour as headliners, selling out Madison Square Garden with a crowd of 20,000.\nAfter the success of \"Piece of Mind\" and its supporting tour, the band released their fifth studio album, \"Powerslave\", on 9 September 1984. The album features the singles \"2 Minutes to Midnight\" and \"Aces High\", the title track, and \"Rime of the Ancient Mariner\" (based on Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem \"Rime of the Ancient Mariner\"). \"Powerslave\" was another chart success, reaching number\u00a012 on the \"Billboard\" 200 and eventually number\u00a01 in the UK. The band's fifth studio album sold over 4 million copies in its first year after the premiere. The tour following the album, called World Slavery Tour, was the band's largest to date with 193 shows in 28 countries over 13 months, playing to an estimated 3,500,000 people. Many shows were played back to back in the same city, such as in Long Beach, California, where the band played four consecutive concerts at Long Beach Arena for a combined audience of 54,000 fans. Iron Maiden also made their debut appearance in South America, where they co-headlined the Rock in Rio festival with Queen for an audience estimated at 350,000\u2013500,000 people. The tour started in August 1984 with five shows in Poland. Iron Maiden were the first Western artists to bring full-scale production behind the Iron Curtain. The band's third official video, entitled \"Behind the Iron Curtain\", was released in October 1984. The World Slavery Tour documentary brought footage of the band touring Eastern Europe in 1984, performing shows in the countries visited, \"Behind the Iron Curtain\" was the first documentary ever published by a Western artist that showed them touring the countries of Eastern Bloc. The documentary movie was broadcast by MTV and local TV stations around the world.\nThe tour was physically gruelling for the band, who demanded six months off when it ended (although this was later reduced to four months). This was the first substantial touring break in the group's history, including the cancellation of a proposed supporting tour for the new live album, with Bruce Dickinson threatening to quit unless the tour ended. In October 1985, Iron Maiden released the double live album and home video, \"Live After Death\". A critical and commercial success, it peaked at number\u00a019 on the \"Billboard 200\" and number\u00a02 in the UK. The album was recorded at Long Beach Arena and also features additional tracks from four nights at London's Hammersmith Apollo. In November 1985, Iron Maiden were named the best rock and metal band in the world and awarded at Public Choice International.\nExperimentation (1986\u20131989).\nReturning from their time off, the band added different musical elements to their 1986 studio album, \"Somewhere in Time.\" These focused on synthesised bass and guitars to add textures and layers to the sound. The release performed well across the world, particularly the single \"Wasted Years\", but included no writing credits from Dickinson, whose material was rejected by the rest of the band. The album was the band's biggest American chart success to date, reaching number\u00a011 on the \"Billboard 200\" and number\u00a02 in the UK charts. The Somewhere on Tour was also a success. The band played 157 shows for over two and a half million fans, including eighty-one shows in North America. Once again, Iron Maiden visited Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia to play for tens of thousands of fans in each country. The experimentation evident on \"Somewhere in Time\" continued on their next album, \"Seventh Son of a Seventh Son\", which was released in 1988. A concept album recorded at Musicland Studios in Munich and based on the 1987 novel \"Seventh Son\" by Orson Scott Card, it was the band's first record to include keyboards, which were performed by Harris and Smith. Dickinson's enthusiasm was also renewed as his ideas were accepted for this album. Another popular release, it became Iron Maiden's third album to hit number\u00a01 in the UK charts and reached number\u00a012 on the \"Billboard 200.\"\nDuring the following tour, the band headlined the Monsters of Rock festival at Donington Park on 20 August 1988, playing to the largest crowd in the festival's history (107,000). The tour concluded with several headline shows in the UK in November and December 1988, with the concerts at the NEC Arena, Birmingham, recorded for a live video, entitled \"Maiden England\". The video debuted at top spots of worldwide music videos charts. In May, the group set out on a supporting tour, which saw them perform 103 shows to well over two million people worldwide over seven months. To recreate the album's keyboards onstage throughout the tour, the group recruited Michael Kenney, Steve Harris' bass technician; Kenney has served as the band's live keyboard player ever since, also performing on the band's four following albums.\nUpheaval (1989\u20131994).\nDuring a break in 1989, guitarist Adrian Smith released a solo album with his band ASAP, entitled \"Silver and Gold.\" Vocalist Bruce Dickinson also began work on a solo album with former Gillan guitarist Janick Gers, releasing \"Tattooed Millionaire\" in 1990, followed by a tour. At the same time, to mark the band's 10-year recording anniversary, Iron Maiden released a compilation collection, \"The First Ten Years\", a series of 10 CDs and double 12-inch singles. Between 24 February and 28 April 1990, the individual parts were released one by one, each containing two of Iron Maiden's singles, including the original B-sides.\nIron Maiden then began work on a new studio record. During the pre-production stages, Adrian Smith left the band due to differences with Steve Harris regarding the direction the band should be taking. Smith disagreed with the \"stripped down\" style they were leaning towards. Janick Gers, having worked on Dickinson's solo project, was chosen to replace Smith and became the band's first new member in seven years. The album \"No Prayer for the Dying\" was released in October 1990. It contained the hit singles \"Holy Smoke\" and \"Bring Your Daughter... to the Slaughter\", the band's first \u2013 and, to date, only \u2013 UK Singles Chart number\u00a01, originally recorded by Dickinson's solo project for the soundtrack of \"\". Iron Maiden's eighth studio album debuted at number\u00a02 on the UK albums chart and number\u00a017 on the \"Billboard 200\". \"No Prayer for the Dying\" was a return to their musical roots, especially in the simplicity of composition. The No Prayer on the Road tour was booked for 120 shows in Europe, North America, and Japan. Thirty-three shows in continental Europe were sold out with a reported 530,000 fans attending. In total, Iron Maiden played for some two million fans.\nAfter another break, the band recorded their next studio album, \"Fear of the Dark\", which was released in 1992. The title track became a regular part of the band's concert setlists. Achieving their fourth number\u00a01 on the UK albums chart and number\u00a012 on the \"Billboard 200\", the release also included the number\u00a02 single \"Be Quick or Be Dead\", the number\u00a021 single \"From Here to Eternity\", and the softer \"Wasting Love\". The album featured the first songwriting by Gers, and no collaboration between Harris and Dickinson on songs. The extensive worldwide tour that followed included their first-ever Latin American leg, although Christian organisations prevented Iron Maiden from performing in Chile and accused them of being \"emissaries of satanic propaganda\", and headlining the Monsters of Rock festivals in seven European countries. Iron Maiden's second performance at Donington Park, for a sold-out audience of 75,000, was filmed for the audio and video release \"Live at Donington\" and featured a guest appearance by Adrian Smith, who joined the band to perform \"Running Free\". The tour also saw conflicts between Bruce Dickinson and rest of the band.\nIn 1993, Dickinson left the band to pursue his solo career, but agreed to remain for a farewell tour and two live albums (later re-released in one package). The first, \"A Real Live One\", was released in March 1993 and featured songs from 1986 to 1992, and the second, \"A Real Dead One\", was released after Dickinson left the band and featured songs from 1980 to 1984. The tour did not go well, with Steve Harris claiming Dickinson would only perform properly for high-profile shows, and that at several concerts, he would only mumble into the microphone. Dickinson denied he was under-performing, saying it was impossible to \"make like Mr. Happy Face if the vibe wasn't right\", and that news of his exit from the band had prevented any chance of a good atmosphere during the tour. Dickinson played his farewell show with Iron Maiden on 28 August 1993. The show was filmed, broadcast by the BBC, MTV and released on video under the name \"Raising Hell\".\nDifficulties (1994\u20131999).\nIn 1994, the title track from the \"Fear of the Dark\" album received a Grammy Awards nomination for \"Best Metal Performance\", a first for Iron Maiden. The band listened to the thousands of tapes sent in by vocalists before convincing Blaze Bayley, formerly of the band Wolfsbane, who had supported Iron Maiden in 1990, to audition for them. Harris' preferred choice from the outset, Bayley had a different vocal style from his predecessor and ultimately received a mixed reception among fans.\nAfter a three-year hiatus \u2013 a record for the band at the time \u2013 Iron Maiden released their next studio album, \"The X Factor\". The band had their lowest chart position since 1981 for an album in the UK, debuting at number\u00a08; however, the album went on to win \"Album of the Year\" awards in France, Spain and Germany. The record included the 11-minute epic \"Sign of the Cross\", the band's longest song since \"Rime of the Ancient Mariner\", as well as the singles \"Man on the Edge\" (based on the film \"Falling Down\") and \"Lord of the Flies\", based on the novel \"Lord of the Flies\". The release is notable for its \"dark\" tone, inspired by Steve Harris' divorce. The band toured for the rest of 1995 and 1996, playing their first shows in Israel and South Africa as well as Malta, Bulgaria and Romania in Europe, before concluding in the Americas. The biggest show of the whole tour was a headline appearance for 60,000 people at the Monsters of Rock festival in S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil.\"The X Factor\" sold 1.3 million copies, the lowest sales result since 1981. After the tour, Iron Maiden released a compilation album, \"Best of the Beast\". The band's first compilation, it included a new single, \"Virus\", in which the lyrics attack critics who had recently written off the band.\nIn 1998, Iron Maiden released \"Virtual XI\", whose chart scores were the band's lowest to date. The album peaked at number\u00a016 in the UK, the band's lowest for a new studio record. At the same time, Steve Harris assisted in remastering the band's entire discography, up to and including \"Live at Donington\". Bayley's tenure in Iron Maiden ended in January 1999 when he was asked to leave during a band meeting. The dismissal took place due to issues Bayley had experienced with his voice during the Virtual XI World Tour, although Janick Gers said this was partly the band's fault for forcing him to perform songs pitched outside the natural range of his voice.\nReunion and renewed success (1999\u20132005).\nThe band entered into talks with Dickinson, who agreed to rejoin during a meeting in Brighton in January 1999, along with guitarist Adrian Smith, who was telephoned a few hours later. With Gers remaining, Iron Maiden now had a three-guitar line-up (nicknamed \"The Three Amigos\"), and embarked on a hugely successful reunion tour. Dubbed The Ed Hunter Tour, it tied in with the band's newly released greatest hits collection, \"Ed Hunter\", whose track listing was decided by a poll on the group's website, and also contained a computer game starring Eddie, the band's mascot.\nNot satisfied with the results from Harris' Barnyard Studios, located on his property in Essex, which had been used for the last four Iron Maiden studio albums, the band recorded the new release, \"Brave New World\", at Guillaume Tell Studios in Paris, France in November 1999 with producer Kevin Shirley. Iron Maiden continued to find inspiration in movies and books, as shown in songs like \"The Wicker Man\" \u2013 based on the 1973 British cult film \"The Wicker Man\" \u2013 and \"Brave New World\" \u2013 a title taken from the Aldous Huxley novel \"Brave New World\". The album revisited the more progressive and melodic sound featured in some earlier recordings, along with elaborate song structures and keyboard orchestration. The album was a commercial and artistic success.\nThe reunion world tour that followed had over 100\u00a0dates (including 31 shows of the 1999 tour), and culminated on 19 January 2001 in a show at the Rock in Rio festival in Brazil, where Iron Maiden played to an audience of over 250,000. While the performance was being produced for a CD and DVD release in March 2002, under the name \"Rock in Rio\", the band took a year off from touring, although they played three consecutive shows at Brixton Academy to raise funds for former drummer Clive Burr, who had recently announced that he had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The band performed two further concerts for Burr's MS Trust Fund charity in 2005, and 2007, before his death in 2013. During the 2000\u20132002 tour, Iron Maiden played 91 shows for over two million people in 33 countries. In addition to their touring success, the band was nominated twice for the annual Grammy Awards and received the International Achievement Award at the 2001 Ivor Novello Awards. In November 2001, a documentary movie about the making of \"The Number of the Beast\" album was produced by BBC as a part of the \"Classic Album series\".\nFollowing their summer 2003 Give Me Ed... 'Til I'm Dead Tour, with 57 shows in Europe and North America and headlining large festivals such as Roskilde, Heineken Jammin' Festival, Rock am Ring and Rock im Park (combined attendance of 130,000) and the first Download Festival held at Donington Park; a successor to Monsters of Rock, Iron Maiden released \"Dance of Death\", their thirteenth studio album. It met with worldwide critical and commercial success, reaching number\u00a02 on the UK Albums Chart and number\u00a018 on the \"Billboard 200\". Produced by Kevin Shirley, now the band's regular producer, many critics felt this release reached the standard of their earlier efforts. Historical and literary references were present, with \"Monts\u00e9gur\" focussing on the Cathar stronghold conquered in 1244, and \"Paschendale\" relating to the First World War battle.\nDuring the Dance of Death Tour 2003\u201304, which began in September 2003, Iron Maiden played 53 shows across Europe, North America, Latin America and Japan. The band's performance at Westfalenhalle, in Dortmund, Germany, was recorded and released in August 2005 as a live album and DVD entitled \"Death on the Road\". In 2005, the band announced the Eddie Rips Up the World Tour, which, tying in with their 2004 DVD entitled \"\", only featured material from their first four albums. As part of this celebration of their earlier years, \"The Number of the Beast\" single was re-released and went straight to number\u00a03 on the UK Chart. The tour featured many headlining stadium and festival dates, including a performance at Ullevi Stadium in Sweden to an audience of almost 60,000. This concert was also broadcast live on satellite television across Europe to approximately 60 million viewers. The band completed the tour by headlining the Reading and Leeds Festivals on 26\u201328 August, and the RDS Stadium in Ireland on 31 August.\nContinued success and expanded tours (2005\u20132014).\nAt the end of 2005, Iron Maiden began work on \"A Matter of Life and Death\", their fourteenth studio album, which was released in autumn 2006. War and religion are recurring themes in the lyrics and the cover artwork. The release was a critical and commercial success, marking the band's first top ten on the \"Billboard\" 200 and debuting at number one in the album charts of 13 countries. The supporting tour saw mixed critical reception, but included the band's first performance in Dubai at the Dubai Desert Rock Festival for 25,000 people, followed by a concert in Bangalore Palace Grounds, the first of any heavy metal band in India. The band then played a string of European dates, including an appearance at Download Festival, their fourth headline performance at Donington Park, to approximately 80,000 people.\nOn 5 September 2007, the band announced their Somewhere Back in Time World Tour, tying in with the DVD release of their \"Live After Death\" album. The setlist for the tour consisted of songs from the 1980s. They played their first concerts in Costa Rica and Colombia and their first shows in Australia and Puerto Rico since 1992. The tour led to the release of a new compilation album, entitled \"Somewhere Back in Time\", which included a selection of tracks from their 1980 eponymous debut to 1988's \"Seventh Son of a Seventh Son\", as well as several live versions from \"Live After Death\". In 2008\u201309 in Latin America the band played 27 concerts for about a million people in total, a record for a heavy rock performer. The tour continued with two legs in the US and Europe in the summer of 2008. The sole UK concert took place at Twickenham Stadium, marking the first time the band would headline a stadium in their own country. The 2008 tour was the second highest-grossing tour of the year for a British artist. The final leg included the band's first appearances in Peru and Ecuador, as well as their return to Venezuela and New Zealand after 17 years. The band also played another show in India at the Rock in India festival to a crowd of 20,000. At their concert in S\u00e3o Paulo on 15 March, Dickinson announced on stage that it was the largest non-festival show of their career, with an overall attendance of 100,000\u00a0people. The final leg ended in Florida on 2 April after which the band took a break. Overall, the tour reportedly had an attendance of over two and a half million people worldwide over both years. At the 2009 Brit Awards, Iron Maiden won the award for best British live act.\nOn 20 January 2009, the band announced they were planning to release a full-length documentary film in select cinemas on 21 April 2009. Entitled \"\", it documented the first part of the Somewhere Back in Time World Tour (between February and March 2008). \"Flight 666\" was co-produced by Banger Productions and was distributed in cinemas by Arts Alliance Media and EMI, with D&E Entertainment sub-distributing in the US. The film went on to have a Blu-ray, DVD, and CD release in May and June, topping the music DVD charts in 25 countries. In most of them the release went Gold, Platinum or Multi-Platinum.\nThe band had begun composing new material and booked studio time in early 2010 with Kevin Shirley producing, and \"The Final Frontier\" was announced on 4 March and featured three singles \"The Final Frontier\", \"El Dorado\" and \"Coming Home\", as well as epic, progressive opuses \"Isle of Avalon\", \"The Talisman\" and \"When The Wild Wind Blows\". The album, the band's fifteenth, was released on 16 August to critical acclaim. It was also the band's greatest commercial success to that point, reaching number\u00a01 in twenty-eight countries worldwide, including a debut at number\u00a04 on \"Billboard 200\".\nThe album's supporting tour saw the band perform 101 shows across the globe to an estimated audience of over two and a half million, including their first visits to Singapore, Indonesia, and South Korea. \"El Dorado\" won the Best Metal Performance award at the 2011 Grammy Awards, the band's first win after two previous nominations. On 15 March, a new compilation to accompany 2009's \"Somewhere Back in Time\" was announced. The double disc set covers the period 1990\u20132010 (the band's most recent eight studio albums). In 2012, the band announced a new live album and DVD release entitled \"En Vivo!\", based on footage from the Chile concert. The DVD topped the music video charts around the world. In addition to the concert footage, the video release includes an 88-minute tour documentary, entitled Behind The Beast, containing interviews with the band and their crew. In December 2012, one song from the release (\"Blood Brothers\") was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance at the 2013 Grammy Awards.\nOn 15 February, the band announced their third retrospective Maiden England World Tour 2012\u201314, which was based around the video \"Maiden England\". The tour commenced in North America in the summer of 2012 and was followed by further dates in 2013 and 2014, and included the band's fifth headline performance at Donington Park with 100,000 fans in attendance. Iron Maiden closed the tour in July 2014 at Sonisphere Festival, Knebworth, having undertaken 100 shows in 32 countries before an estimated audience of more than 2.7 million people.\nLatest albums and tours (2015\u2013present).\nThe band's 2015 album, \"The Book of Souls\", was released on 4 September. The band's first original studio album not to be issued by EMI outside North America, following Parlophone's acquisition by Warner Music Group in 2013, it was a critical and commercial success, becoming the band's fifth UK number\u00a01 album and hit number\u00a04 on \"Billboard 200\" in the US. The new release reached the number one position in the album charts of 43 countries. The new record was recorded at Guillaume Tell Studios in late summer 2014; its closing song, \"Empire of the Clouds\", penned by Dickinson, surpassed \"Rime of the Ancient Mariner\" (from 1984's \"Powerslave\") as Iron Maiden's longest song, at 18 minutes in length.\nIn February 2016, the band embarked on The Book of Souls World Tour, with shows in 35 countries across six continents, including their first performances in China, El Salvador, and Lithuania. It was the band's biggest album tour since 1996. In total, Iron Maiden played 117 shows on six continents for well over two and a half million people. The band then launched the Legacy of the Beast World Tour in Europe in 2018, with North and South American shows following in 2019. The tour was inspired by the band's new mobile game and comic series released in 2017, entitled \"Legacy of the Beast\". The tour was received very positively by fans and critics, spanning up to three years with 140 shows, performing to over 3.5 million fans.\nThe COVID-19 pandemic forced the rescheduling of nearly one million tickets from 2020, first to 2021, and then to 2022. In October 2020, the band announced they would release a live album from the Legacy of the Beast World Tour called \"Nights of the Dead, Legacy of the Beast: Live in Mexico City\". The double concert album was recorded during three sold-out concerts in Mexico City's Palacio de los Deportes for a combined audience of over 70,000 people.\nOn 15 July 2021, Iron Maiden released a video for their first song in six years, \"The Writing on the Wall\", which was directed by Nicos Livesey. Four days later, the band announced their seventeenth studio album, \"Senjutsu\", would be released on 3 September 2021. \"Senjutsu\" eventually reached the top of the best-seller lists in 27 countries, but it was the band's first album in fifteen years not to reach number one on the UK charts, although it did top the UK Rock & Metal Singles and Albums Charts. In total, \"Senjutsu\" reached the top three in 55 countries and the top five in 63 countries.\nOn 1 February 2023, the band received their second nomination for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The band started their 25th global tour, The Future Past World Tour, with a concert in Ljubljana in May 2023. On 6 October, the band performed at the Power Trip festival which drew nearly 100,000 people. Throughout the 2023\u201324 world tour, Iron Maiden performed 81 shows for almost two million fans. Following the conclusion of the tour in S\u00e3o Paulo in December 2024, McBrain retired from touring, but would still remain a member of Iron Maiden and be involved with various upcoming band-related projects in the studio. The following day, it was announced that British Lion drummer Simon Dawson would be his touring replacement for any further tours.\nOn 19 September 2024, the band announced their 26th global tour, Run For Your Lives World Tour, which is set to start in May 2025, to celebrate the band's 50th anniversary and is set to be focused on the band's first nine studio albums.\nImage and legacy.\nIron Maiden have received numerous nominations, honours and awards including Grammy Awards and equivalents awards in many countries, Brit Awards, Ivor Novello Awards, and Juno Awards. They have ranked highly in many polls of the greatest metal artists of all time. In 2012 \"The Number of the Beast\" was voted as Best British Album Ever by the British public as part of Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Iron Maiden have an exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Rock in Rio Wall of Fame.\nIron Maiden were inducted into Hollywood RockWalk, BPI Hall of Fame and Kerrang! Hall of Fame. Band's mascot Eddie the Head is a part of the British Music Experience permanent exhibition. In April 2021, the band's former members (Paul Di'Anno, Blaze Bayley, and illustrator Derek Riggs) were inducted into the Metal Hall of Fame. They have twice been nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In January 2023 Iron Maiden were honoured by Royal Mail UK with dedicated postal stamps and cards.\nIron Maiden have sold over 130\u00a0million copies of their albums worldwide, despite little radio or television support. According to many sources all audio-visual catalogue of the band have sold in over 200\u00a0million copies worldwide, including regular albums, singles, compilations, and videos. Their third studio album, \"The Number of the Beast,\" is among the most popular heavy metal albums of all time and the most commercially successful release of the band, having sold almost 20 million copies worldwide. As of 2022 their releases have been certified silver, gold and platinum around 600 times worldwide.\nIn 1979\u20131980, visual artist Derek Riggs created the macabre mascot named Eddie The Head. Since then, Eddie has been an integral part of the stage and media image of the group. Originally a papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 mask which would squirt fake blood during their live shows, the character featured on the band's debut album cover, also done by Derek Riggs. Eddie was painted exclusively by Riggs until 1992, at which point the band began using artwork from other artists, including Melvyn Grant.\nA large puppet version of Eddie has appeared many times during carnival celebrations in Rio de Janeiro and other South American cities. During the Cavalcade of Magi 2021 in the Spanish city of Cadiz, next to dolls representing characters known from the world of pop culture, there was a huge, inflatable mummy inspired by the image of the Iron Maiden mascot from 1985.\nIron Maiden's distinct logo has adorned all of the band's releases since their debut, 1979's \"The Soundhouse Tapes\" EP. The typeface originates with Vic Fair's poster design for the 1976 science fiction film, \"The Man Who Fell to Earth\", also used by Gordon Giltrap, although Steve Harris claims he designed it himself, using his training as an architectural draughtsman.\nInfluence on other artists and the genre.\nIron Maiden have influenced numerous artists and bands representing different genres of rock and metal music. Kiss co-founder Paul Stanley said Iron Maiden \"have helped spawn an entire genre of music\" and influenced literally thousands of other artists. According to \"Guitar World\", Iron Maiden's music has \"influenced generations of newer metal acts, from legends like Metallica to current stars like Avenged Sevenfold.\" Metallica members Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, and Jason Newsted have cited Iron Maiden as a major influence on their work. Other bands and artists directly influenced by Iron Maiden include Ghost, Avenged Sevenfold, In Flames, Anthrax, Exodus, and Alice in Chains.\nJournalist Geoff Barton says the band's music constituted an important passage between the classic heavy rock school during the 1960s and 1970s, based on rhythm and blues, and contemporary heavy metal, characterised by sub-genre diversification and stylistic eclecticism. Music journalist G\u00f6tz K\u00fchnemund said \"Iron Maiden were (and still are) the inspiration for all the heavy metal bands we know today because they're an intrinsically heavy metal group. They're equally important for those who play power metal, speed, thrash, death, black, nu metal, metal core and hard rock \u2013 almost every genre.\" The journalist stated the band introduced a DIY approach to all rock music. According to Rock 'n Roll Fantasy Camp the style and attitude of Iron Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain has inspired generations of heavy-metal drummers that followed. Music writer, heavy metal expert and radio broadcaster Scott Penfold stated band's \"influence on the genre is immeasurable, as they not only inspired subsequent generations of metal bands but also revolutionized live shows with their elaborate stage productions, further cementing their status as pioneers of heavy metal.\"\nMusic journalist and the writer Neil Daniels said Iron Maiden \"redefined the whole genre blending classic heavy rock influence with punky vibe, twin guitars attack and progressive approach which finally have created the new quality. [The] Band's influence on generations of rock and metal bands cannot be overstated. They elevated metal to an art form, proving that academic and musical inspirations can coexist.\" The band's profile by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame says \"in the 1980s, Iron Maiden released seven high-octane albums that cemented them as one of the greatest rock bands \u2013 creating a blueprint for how heavy metal bands should look, sound and tour.\" According to \"Metal Hammer\" Iron Maiden is the second band to Black Sabbath, which has had the most significant impact on metal and heavy rock music.\nAppearance in media.\nThe first heavy metal videos broadcast by MTV were the live versions of \"Iron Maiden\" and \"Wrathchild\" taken from the official VHS \"Live at the Rainbow (Iron Maiden)\". In 1989, Iron Maiden took part in the Rock Aid Armenia project (also known as Live Aid Armenia) - a humanitarian project by the British music industry. The project aimed to raise funds to help people affected by the earthquake in Armenia in 1988.\nThe number of releases in tribute to the British band can be estimated in the hundreds, with an extremely wide range of stylistic variants. In 2008, \"Kerrang!\" released \"\", an album composed of Iron Maiden cover songs performed by Metallica, Machine Head, Dream Theater, Trivium, Coheed and Cambria, Avenged Sevenfold, and other groups influenced by the band. In 2010, Maiden uniteD, an acoustic tribute band consisting of members of Ayreon, Threshold and Within Temptation, released \"Mind the Acoustic Pieces\", a re-interpretation of the entire \"Piece of Mind\" album. As of 2021 nearly 200 Iron Maiden cover audio-visual releases exist (each featuring various artists), including piano, electro, string quartet and hip-hop tributes.\nIn March 2025, Netflix will release \"Run to the Hills\", a documentary celebrating Iron Maiden's 50th anniversary. Directed by David Morgan, it will explore the band's rise from their early days in London to global heavy metal icons. The exact release date is yet to be confirmed.\nClaims of Satanic references.\nThe 1982 release of \"The Number of the Beast\" created some controversy for the band. The artwork and title track led to Christian groups in the United States branding the band as Satanists, encouraging people to destroy copies of the release. The band's manager, Rod Smallwood, later said the groups initially burnt the records, but later decided to destroy them with hammers due to fear of breathing in the melting vinyl's fumes. The protests were not restricted to the US, with Christian organisations preventing Iron Maiden from performing in Chile in 1992.\nThe band have always denied the notion they are Satanists, with lead vocalist, Bruce Dickinson, doing so on-stage in the \"Live After Death\" concert video. Steve Harris has since commented that, \"It was mad. They completely got the wrong end of the stick. They obviously hadn't read the lyrics. They just wanted to believe all that rubbish about us being Satanists.\" Harris has also said that \"The Number of the Beast\" song was inspired by a nightmare he had after watching \"\", and also influenced by Robert Burns' \"Tam o' Shanter\". The band's drummer, Nicko McBrain, has been a born-again Christian since 1999.\nEd Force One.\nFor their Somewhere Back in Time World Tour in 2008 and 2009, Iron Maiden commissioned an Astraeus Airlines Boeing 757 as transport. The aeroplane was converted into a combi configuration, which enabled it to carry the band, their crew and stage production, allowing the group to perform in countries which were previously deemed unreachable logistically. It was also repainted with a special Iron Maiden livery, which the airline decided to retain after receiving positive feedback from customers.\nThe aircraft, named \"Ed Force One\" after a competition on the band's website, was flown by Dickinson until 2022, as he was also a commercial airline pilot for Astraeus; the plane also appears in the documentary \"\". For The Book of Souls World Tour in 2016, the band upgraded to an ex-Air France Boeing 747-400 jumbo jet which allows for more space without the aircraft having to undergo a significant conversion to carry their equipment.\nIn 2025, the band announced that the 747-400 they used during 2016's The Book of Souls World Tour would be scrapped, and keychains constructed from the plane's parts could be collected by fans. \"She's been scrapped but bits of her will live on,\" Dickinson said. The keychains were sold for \u20ac66.66, which is a reference to the band's album The \"Number of the Beast\".\nMusical style and influences.\nSteve Harris, Iron Maiden's bassist and primary songwriter, has said his influences include Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes, Jethro Tull, Thin Lizzy, UFO, Queen, and Wishbone Ash. In 2010 Harris said, \"I think if anyone wants to understand Maiden's early thing, in particular the harmony guitars, all they have to do is listen to Wishbone Ash's \"Argus\" album. Thin Lizzy too, but not as much. And then we wanted to have a bit of a prog thing thrown in as well, because I was really into bands like Genesis and Jethro Tull. So you combine all that with the heavy riffs and the speed, and you've got it.\" In 2004, Harris explained the band's \"heaviness\" was inspired by \"Black Sabbath and Deep Purple with a bit of Zeppelin thrown in.\" Harris also developed his own playing style, which guitarist Janick Gers describes as \"more like a rhythm guitar.\" Harris's bass technique is responsible for the band's galloping style, heard in such songs as \"The Trooper\" and \"Run to the Hills\".\nThe band's guitarists, Dave Murray, Adrian Smith, and Janick Gers, each have their own individual influences and playing styles. Dave Murray is known for his legato technique which, he says, \"evolved naturally. I'd heard Jimi Hendrix using legato when I was growing up, and I liked that style of playing.\" Stating that he \"was inspired by blues rock rather than metal,\" Adrian Smith was influenced by Johnny Winter and Pat Travers, leading to him becoming a \"melodic player.\" Janick Gers prefers a more improvised style, largely inspired by Ritchie Blackmore, which he says is in contrast to Smith's \"rhythmic\" sound.\nSinger Bruce Dickinson, who typically works in collaboration with guitarist Adrian Smith, has an operatic vocal style, inspired by Arthur Brown, Peter Hammill, Ian Anderson and Ian Gillan, and is often considered to be one of the best heavy metal vocalists of all time. Although Nicko McBrain has only received one writing credit, on the \"Dance of Death\" album, Harris often relies on him while developing songs. Adrian Smith commented, \"Steve loves playing with him. [They] used to work for hours going over these bass and drum patterns.\"\nThroughout their career, the band's style has remained largely unchanged, although the addition of guitar synthesisers on 1986's \"Somewhere in Time\", keyboards on 1988's \"Seventh Son of a Seventh Son\", and an attempt to return to the \"stripped down\" production of their earlier material on 1990's \"No Prayer for the Dying\" marked some experimentation. In recent years, however, the band have begun using more progressive elements in their songs, which Steve Harris describes as not progressive \"in the modern sense, but like Dream Theater, more in a 70s way\". Greg Prato of Ultimate-Guitar wrote, \"By and large, Iron Maiden's long and lengthy career can be categorized into two separate eras: \"punk Maiden\" and \"prog Maiden\". According to Harris, \"Seventh Son of a Seventh Son\" was the band's first album which was \"more progressive\", and they would return to this style in 1995's \"The X Factor\", which he states is \"like an extension of \"Seventh Son\"..., in the sense of the progressive element to it\". The development contrasts with the band's raw-sounding earlier material, which AllMusic states was \"clearly drawing from elements of punk rock\", although Harris firmly denies this.\nBand members.\nCurrent lineup\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "6077573": "Virus (Iron Maiden song)\n\"Virus\" is a single from Iron Maiden, released in 1996. It is the first single since 1980's \"Women in Uniform\" that does not appear on any official Iron Maiden studio album. It was, however, featured as a brand new track on the band's first ever career retrospective \u2013 1996's double-disc \"Best of the Beast\". It is the only Iron Maiden song to be credited to both of the band's guitarists. It has never been performed live by Iron Maiden, but Blaze Bayley performed it several times in his solo career. Lyrically, the song warns of rising business and government corruption in an increasingly Internet-dependent world.\nBackground.\nIn order to celebrate the band's 21 years, the single was released in three different formats. The first format, contains a short edit omitting the intro and features the same B-sides as the \"Lord of the Flies\" single from 1996, which included covers from The Who and UFO. These tracks were previously unreleased in the UK. The second features the full-length unedited version and songs from the 1979 compilation album \"Metal for Muthas\", which marks the only studio recordings to feature former guitarist Tony Parsons. The third features two songs from Maiden's legendary 1978 demo recordings, \"The Soundhouse Tapes\".\nThe single was the last until 2015's \"Speed of Light\" to use the classic variant of the band's logo: every single release from 1998's \"The Angel and the Gambler\" to 2010's \"El Dorado\" used an alternate that removed the extended ends of the \"R\", \"M\", and both \"N\"s.\nOn the EP \"Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada\" by instrumental rock group Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the track \"BBF3\" features a vox pop interview to a person going by the name of Blaise Bailey Finnegan III who recites a poem made from the lyrics from \"Virus\", written by Blaze Bayley.\nThe intro riff was used by the Bristol-based trio Kosheen on the song \"I Want It All\" from their 2001 album \"Resist\".\nPersonnel.\nProduction credits are adapted from the CD covers.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["6077573", "159172"], "permutation_1": ["6077573", "159172"], "permutation_2": ["159172", "6077573"], "permutation_3": ["159172", "6077573"]}
{"id": "3hop1__3157_3356_24603", "docs_added": {"21650": "North Carolina\nU.S. state\nNorth Carolina ( ) is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia to the southwest, and Tennessee to the west. The state is the 28th-largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. Along with South Carolina, it makes up the Carolinas region of the East Coast. At the 2020 census, the state had a population of 10,439,388. Raleigh is the state's capital and Charlotte is its most populous city. The Charlotte metropolitan area, with an estimated population of 2,805,115 in 2023, is the most populous metropolitan area in North Carolina, the 22nd-most populous in the United States, and the largest banking center in the nation after New York City. The Research Triangle, with an estimated population of 2,368,947 in 2023, is the second-most populous combined metropolitan area in the state, 31st-most populous in the United States, and is home to the largest research park in the United States, Research Triangle Park.\nThe earliest evidence of human occupation in North Carolina dates back 10,000 years, found at the Hardaway Site. North Carolina was inhabited by Carolina Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Siouan speaking tribes of Native Americans prior to the arrival of Europeans. King Charles II granted eight lord proprietors a colony they named Carolina after the king and which was established in 1670 with the first permanent settlement at Charles Town (Charleston). Because of the difficulty of governing the entire colony from Charles Town, the colony was eventually divided and North Carolina was established as a royal colony in 1729 and was one of the Thirteen Colonies. The Halifax Resolves resolution adopted by North Carolina on April 12, 1776, was the first formal call for independence from Great Britain among the American Colonies during the American Revolution.\nOn November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the United States Constitution. In the run-up to the American Civil War, North Carolina reluctantly declared its secession from the Union on May 20, 1861, becoming the tenth of eleven states to join the Confederate States of America. Following the Civil War, the state was restored to the Union on July 4, 1868. On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully piloted the world's first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina's Outer Banks. North Carolina often uses the slogan \"First in Flight\" on state license plates to commemorate this achievement, alongside a newer alternative design bearing the slogan \"First in Freedom\" in reference to the Mecklenburg Declaration and Halifax Resolves.\nNorth Carolina is defined by a wide range of elevations and landscapes. From west to east, North Carolina's elevation descends from the Appalachian Mountains to the Piedmont and Atlantic coastal plain. North Carolina's Mount Mitchell at is the highest point in North America east of the Mississippi River. Most of the state falls in the humid subtropical climate zone; however, the western, mountainous part of the state has a subtropical highland climate.\nHistory.\nNative Americans, lost colony, and permanent settlement.\nNorth Carolina was inhabited for at least 10,000 years by succeeding prehistoric Indigenous cultures. The Hardaway Site saw major periods of occupation dating to 10,000 years BCE. Before 200 AD, people were building earthwork platform mounds for ceremonial and religious purposes. Succeeding peoples, including those of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture, established by 1000 AD in the Piedmont and mountain region, continued to build this style of mounds. In contrast to some of the larger centers of the classic Mississippian culture in the area that became known as the western Carolinas, northeastern Georgia, and southeastern Tennessee, most of the larger towns had only one central platform mound. Smaller settlements had none, but were close to more prominent towns. This area became known as the homelands of the historic Cherokee people, who are believed to have migrated over time from the Great Lakes area.\nIn the 500\u2013700 years preceding European contact, the Mississippian culture built elaborate cities and maintained far-flung regional trading networks. Its largest city was Cahokia, which had numerous mounds for different purposes, a highly stratified society, and was located in present-day southwestern Illinois near the Mississippi River. Starting in 1540, the Native polities of the Mississippian culture fell apart and reformed as new groups, such as the Catawba, due to a series of destabilizing events known as the \"Mississippian shatter zone\". Introduction of colonial trading arrangements and hostile native groups from the north such as the Westo Indians hastened changes in an already tenuous regional hierarchy. As described by anthropologist Robbie Ethridge, the Mississippian shatter zone was a time of great instability in what is now the American South, caused by the instability of Mississippian chiefdoms, high mortality from new Eurasian diseases, conversion to an agricultural society and the accompanying population increase, and the emergence of Native \"militaristic slaving societies\".\nHistorically documented tribes in the North Carolina region include the Carolina Algonquian-speaking tribes of the coastal areas, such as the Chowanoc, Roanoke, Pamlico, Machapunga, and Coree, who were the first encountered by the English; the Iroquoian-speaking Meherrin, Cherokee, and Tuscarora of the interior; and Southeastern Siouan-speaking tribes, such as the Cheraw, Waxhaw, Saponi, Waccamaw, Cape Fear Indians, and Catawba of the Piedmont.\nIn the late 16th century, the first Spanish explorers traveling inland recorded meeting Mississippian culture people at Joara, a regional chiefdom near what later developed as Morganton. Records of Hernando de Soto attested to his meeting with them in 1540. In 1567, Captain Juan Pardo led an expedition to claim the area for the Spanish colony and to establish another route to reach silver mines in Mexico. Pardo made a winter base at Joara, which he renamed \"Cuenca\". His expedition built Fort San Juan and left a contingent of 30 Spaniards there, while Pardo traveled further. His forces built and garrisoned five other forts. He returned by a different route to Santa Elena on Parris Island, South Carolina, then a center of Spanish Florida. In the spring of 1568, natives killed all but seventy four of the Spaniards and burned the six forts in the interior, including Fort San Juan. Although the Spanish never returned to the interior, this effort marked the first European attempt at colonization of the interior of what became the United States. A 16th-century journal by Pardo's scribe Bandera, and archaeological findings since 1986 at Joara, have confirmed the settlement.\nAnglo-European settlement.\nIn 1584, Elizabeth I granted a charter to Sir Walter Raleigh, for whom the state capital is named, for land in present-day North Carolina (then part of the territory of Virginia). It was the second American territory that the English attempted to colonize. Raleigh established two colonies on the coast in the late 1580s, but both failed. The colony established in 1587 saw 118 colonists 'disappear' when John White was unable to return from a supply run during battles with the Spanish Armada. The fate of the \"Lost Colony\" of Roanoke Island remains one of the most widely debated mysteries of American history. Two native Chieftains, Manteo and Wanchese, of which the former helped the colonists and the latter was distrustful, had involvement in the colony and even accompanied Raleigh to England on a previous voyage in 1585. Manteo was also the first Indigenous North American to be baptized by English settlers. Upon White's return in 1590, neither native nor Englishman were to be found. Popular theory holds that the colonists either traveled away with or assimilated into local native culture. Virginia Dare, the first English person to be born in North America, was born on Roanoke Island on August 18, 1587; the surrounding Dare County is named for her.\nAs early as 1650, settlers from the Virginia colony had moved into the Albemarle Sound region. By 1663, King Charles\u00a0II of England granted a charter to start a new colony on the North American continent; this would generally establish North Carolina's borders. He named it \"Carolina\" in honor of his father, CharlesI. By 1665, a second charter was issued to attempt to resolve territorial questions. This charter rewarded the Lords Proprietors, eight Englishmen to whom King Charles II granted joint ownership of a tract of land in the state. All of these men either had remained loyal to the Crown or aided Charles's restoration to the English throne after Cromwell. In 1712, owing to disputes over governance, the Carolina colony split into North Carolina and South Carolina. North Carolina became a crown colony in 1729.\nMost of the English colonists had arrived as indentured servants, hiring themselves out as laborers for a fixed period to pay for their passage. In the early years the line between indentured servants and African slaves or laborers was fluid. Some Africans were allowed to earn their freedom before slavery became a lifelong status. Most of the free colored families formed in North Carolina before the Revolution were descended from unions or marriages between free whites and enslaved or free Africans or African-Americans. If the mothers were free, their children were born free. Many had migrated or were descendants of migrants from colonial Virginia. As the flow of indentured laborers to the colony decreased with improving economic conditions in Great Britain, planters imported more slaves, and the state's legal delineations between free and slave status tightened, effectively hardening the latter into a racial caste. Conditions for both slaves and workers worsened as the ranks of the former eclipsed the latter and expansion of farming operations into former Indigenous territories lowered prices. Unable to establish deep water ports such as at Charles Town and Norfolk, the economy's growth and prosperity was thus based on cheap labor and slave plantation systems, devoted primarily to the production of tobacco, then later cotton and textiles.\nIn 1738\u20131739, smallpox caused high fatalities among the Native Americans, who had no immunity to the new disease (it had become endemic over centuries in Europe). According to the historian Russell Thornton, \"The 1738 epidemic was said to have killed one-half of the Cherokee, with other tribes of the area suffering equally.\"\nColonial period.\nAfter the Spanish in the 16th century, the first permanent European settlers of North Carolina were English colonists who migrated south from Virginia. Virginia had grown rapidly and land was less available. Nathaniel Batts was documented as one of the first of these Virginian migrants. He settled south of the Chowan River and east of the Great Dismal Swamp in 1655. By 1663, this northeastern area of the Province of Carolina, known as the Albemarle Settlements, was undergoing full-scale English settlement. During the same period, the English monarch CharlesII gave provincial land grants to the Lords Proprietors, the group of noblemen who had helped restore him to the throne in 1660. These grants were predicated on an agreement that the Lords would use their influence to bring in colonists and establish ports of trade. This new Province of Carolina was named in honor and memory of his father, CharlesI (Latin: \"Carolus\").\nLacking a viable coastal port city due to geography, towns grew at a slower pace and remained small. By the late 17th century, Carolina was essentially two colonies, one centered in the Albemarle region in the north and the other located in the south around Charleston. In 1705 South Carolinian John Lawson purchased land on the Pamlico River and laid out Bath, North Carolina's first town. After returning to England, he published the book A New Voyage to Carolina, which became a travelogue and a marketing piece to encourage new colonists to Carolina. Lawson encouraged Baron Christoph Von Graffenried, the leader of a group of Swiss and German Protestants, to immigrate to Carolina. Von Graffenried purchased land between the Neuse and the Trent Rivers and established the town of New Bern. After an attack on New Bern in which hundreds were killed or injured, Lawson was caught then executed by Tuscarora Indians. A large revolt happened in the state in 1711, known as Cary's Rebellion. In 1712, North Carolina became a separate colony, and in 1729 it became a royal colony, with the exception of the Earl Granville holdings.\nIn June 1718, \"Queen Anne's Revenge\", the flagship of pirate Blackbeard, ran aground at Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina, in present-day Carteret County. After the grounding, her crew and supplies were transferred to smaller ships. In November 1718, after appealing to the governor of North Carolina, who promised safe-haven and a pardon, Blackbeard was killed in an ambush by troops from Virginia. In 1996, Intersal, Inc., a private maritime research firm, discovered the remains of a vessel likely to be the \"Queen Anne's Revenge\", which was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.\nNorth Carolina became one of the Thirteen Colonies and with the territory of South Carolina was originally known as the Province of North Carolina. The northern and southern parts of the original province separated in 1712, with North Carolina becoming a royal colony in 1729. Originally settled by small farmers, sometimes having a few slaves, who were oriented toward subsistence agriculture, the colony lacked large cities or towns. Pirates menaced the coastal settlements, but by 1718 piracy in the Carolinas was on the decline. Growth was strong in the middle of the 18th century, as the economy attracted Scots-Irish, Quaker, English and German immigrants. A majority of the North Carolina colonists generally supported the American Revolution, although there were some Loyalists. Loyalists in North Carolina were fewer in number than in some other colonies such as Georgia, South Carolina, Delaware, and New York.\nDuring colonial times, Edenton served as the state capital beginning in 1722, followed by New Bern becoming the capital in 1766. Construction of Tryon Palace, which served as the residence and offices of the provincial governor William Tryon, began in 1767 and was completed in 1771. In 1788, Raleigh was chosen as the site of the new capital, as its central location protected it from coastal attacks. Officially established in 1792 as both county seat and state capital, the city was named after Sir Walter Raleigh, sponsor of Roanoke, the \"lost colony\" on Roanoke Island. The population of the colony more than quadrupled from 52,000 in 1740 to 270,000 in 1780 from high immigration from Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, plus immigrants from abroad.\nNorth Carolina did not have any printer or print shops until 1749, when the North Carolina Assembly commissioned James Davis from Williamsburg Virginia to act as their official printer. Before this time the laws and legal journals of North Carolina were handwritten and were kept in a largely disorganized manner, prompting the hiring of Davis. Davis settled in New Bern, married, and in 1755 was appointed by Benjamin Franklin as North Carolina's first postmaster. In October of that year the North Carolina Assembly awarded Davis a contract to carry mail between Wilmington, North Carolina and Suffolk, Virginia. He was also active in North Carolina politics as a member of the Assembly and later as the Sheriff. Davis also founded and printed the \"North-Carolina Gazette\", North Carolina's first newspaper, printed in his printing house in New Bern.\nDifferences in the settlement patterns of eastern and western North Carolina, or the Atlantic coastal plain and uplands, affected the political, economic, and social life of the state from the 18th until the 20th century. Eastern North Carolina was settled chiefly by immigrants from rural England and Gaelic speakers from the Scottish Highlands. The Piedmont upcountry and western mountain region of North Carolina was settled chiefly by Scots-Irish, English, and German Protestants, the so-called \"cohee\". Arriving during the mid-to-late 18th century, the Scots-Irish, people of Scottish descent who migrated to and then emigrated from what is today Northern Ireland, were the largest non-English immigrant group before the Revolution; English indentured servants were overwhelmingly the largest immigrant group before the Revolution.\nRevolutionary War.\nDuring the American Revolutionary War, the English and Gaelic speaking Highland Scots of eastern North Carolina tended to remain loyal to the British Crown, because of longstanding business and personal connections with Great Britain. The English, Welsh, Scots-Irish, and German settlers of western North Carolina tended to favor American independence from Britain. British loyalists dubbed the Mecklenburg County area to be 'a hornet's nest' of radicals, birthing the name of the future Charlotte NBA team. On April 12, 1776, the colony became the first to instruct its delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence from the British Crown, through the Halifax Resolves passed by the North Carolina Provincial Congress. The date of this event is memorialized on the state flag and state seal. Throughout the Revolutionary War, fierce guerrilla warfare erupted between bands of pro-independence and pro-British colonists. In some cases the war was also an excuse to settle private grudges and rivalries.\nNorth Carolina had around 7,800 Patriots join the Continental Army under General George Washington; and an additional 10,000 served in local militia units under such leaders as General Nathanael Greene. There was some military action, especially in 1780\u201381. Many Carolinian frontiersmen had moved west over the mountains, into the Washington District (later known as Tennessee), but in 1789, following the Revolution, the state was persuaded to relinquish its claim to the western lands. It ceded them to the national government so the Northwest Territory could be organized and managed nationally.\nA major American victory in the war took place at King's Mountain along the North Carolina\u2013South Carolina border; on October 7, 1780, a force of 1,000 Patriots from western North Carolina (including what is today the state of Tennessee) and southwest Virginia overwhelmed a force of some 1,000 British troops led by Major Patrick Ferguson. Most of the soldiers fighting for the British side in this battle were Carolinians who had remained loyal to the Crown (they were called \"Tories\" or Loyalists). The American victory at King's Mountain gave the advantage to colonists who favored American independence, and it prevented the British Army from recruiting new soldiers from the Tories.\nThe road to Yorktown and America's independence from Great Britain led through North Carolina. As the British Army moved north from victories in Charleston and Camden, South Carolina, the Southern Division of the Continental Army and local militia prepared to meet them. Following General Daniel Morgan's victory over the British Cavalry Commander Banastre Tarleton at the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781, southern commander Nathanael Greene led British Lord Charles Cornwallis across the heartland of North Carolina, and away from the latter's base of supply in Charleston, South Carolina. This campaign is known as \"The Race to the Dan\" or \"The Race for the River\".\nIn the Battle of Cowan's Ford, Cornwallis met resistance along the banks of the Catawba River at Cowan's Ford on February 1, 1781, in an attempt to engage General Morgan's forces during a tactical withdrawal. Morgan had moved to the northern part of the state to combine with General Greene's newly recruited forces. Generals Greene and Cornwallis finally met at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in present-day Greensboro on March 15, 1781. Although the British troops held the field at the end of the battle, their casualties at the hands of the numerically superior Continental Army were crippling. Following this \"Pyrrhic victory\", Cornwallis chose to move to the Virginia coastline to get reinforcements, and to allow the Royal Navy to protect his battered army. This decision would result in Cornwallis' eventual defeat at Yorktown, Virginia, later in 1781. The Patriots' victory there guaranteed American independence. On November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the twelfth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.\nAntebellum period.\nAfter 1800, cotton and tobacco became important export crops. The eastern half of the state, especially the Coastal Plain region, developed a slave society based on a plantation system and slave labor. Planters owning large estates wielded significant political and socio-economic power in antebellum North Carolina. They placed their interests above those of the generally non-slave-holding yeoman farmers of North Carolina. While slaveholding was slightly less concentrated compared to some other Southern states, according to the 1860 census, more than 330,000 people, or 33% of the population out of 992,622 people in total, were enslaved African Americans. They lived and worked chiefly on plantations in the Piedmont and Coastal Plain regions of the state. In addition, 30,463 free people of color lived in the state. They were also mainly concentrated in the eastern coastal plain, especially at port cities such as Wilmington and New Bern, where a variety of jobs were available. Most were descendants from free African Americans who had migrated along with neighbors from Virginia during the 18th century. The majority were the descendants of unions in the working classes between white women, indentured servants or free, and African men, indentured, slave or free.\nAfter the American Revolution, Quakers and Mennonites worked to persuade slaveholders to free their slaves. Some were inspired by their efforts and the language of the Revolution to arrange for manumission of their slaves. The number of free people of color rose markedly in the first couple of decades after the Revolution. Many free people of color migrated to the frontier, along with their European-American neighbors, where the social system was looser. By 1810, nearly three percent of the free population consisted of free people of color, who numbered slightly more than 10,000. The western areas of North Carolina were mainly white families of European descent, especially Scotch-Irish, who operated small subsistence farms. In the early national period, the state became a center of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy, with a strong Whig presence, especially in the western part of the state. After Nat Turner's slave uprising in 1831, North Carolina and other southern states reduced the rights of free blacks. In 1835, the legislature withdrew their right to vote.\nIn mid-century, the state's rural and commercial areas were connected by the construction of a wooden plank road, known as a \"farmer's railroad\", from Fayetteville in the east to Bethania (northwest of Winston-Salem). On October 25, 1836, construction began on the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad to connect the port city of Wilmington with the state capital of Raleigh. In 1840, the state capitol building in Raleigh was completed, and still stands today.\nIn 1849, the North Carolina Railroad was created by act of the legislature to extend that railroad west to Greensboro, High Point, and Charlotte. During the Civil War, the Wilmington-to-Raleigh stretch of the railroad was vital to the Confederate war effort; supplies shipped into Wilmington were moved by rail through Raleigh to the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.\nAmerican Civil War.\nIn 1860, North Carolina was a slave state, in which one-third of the state's total population were African-American slaves. The state did not vote to join the Confederacy until President Abraham Lincoln called on it to invade its sister state, South Carolina, becoming the last or penultimate state to officially join the Confederacy. The title of \"last to join the Confederacy\" has been disputed; although Tennessee's informal secession on May 7, 1861, preceded North Carolina's official secession on May 20, the Tennessee legislature did not formally vote to secede until June 8, 1861.\nAround 125,000 troops from North Carolina served in the Confederate Army, and about 15,000 North Carolina troops (both black and white) served in Union Army regiments, including those who left the state to join Union regiments elsewhere. Over 30,000 North Carolina troops died from combat or disease during the war. Elected in 1862, Governor Zebulon Baird Vance tried to maintain state autonomy against Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Richmond. The state government was reluctant to support the demands of the national government in Richmond, and the state was the scene of only small battles. In 1865, Durham County saw the largest single surrender of Confederate soldiers at Bennett Place, when Joseph E. Johnston surrendered the Army of Tennessee and all remaining Confederate forces still active in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, totalling 89,270 soldiers.\nConfederate troops from all parts of North Carolina served in virtually all the major battles of the Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederacy's most famous army. The largest battle fought in North Carolina was at Bentonville, which was a futile attempt by Confederate General Joseph Johnston to slow Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's advance through the Carolinas in the spring of 1865. In April 1865, after losing the Battle of Morrisville, Johnston surrendered to Sherman at Bennett Place, in what is today Durham. North Carolina's port city of Wilmington, was the last Confederate port to fall to the Union, in February 1865, after the Union won the nearby Second Battle of Fort Fisher, its major defense downriver.\nThe first Confederate soldier to be killed in the Civil War was Private Henry Wyatt from North Carolina, in the Battle of Big Bethel in June 1861. At the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, the 26th North Carolina Regiment participated in Pickett/Pettigrew's Charge and advanced the farthest into Union lines of any Confederate regiment. During the Battle of Chickamauga, the 58th North Carolina Regiment advanced farther than any other regiment on Snodgrass Hill to push back the remaining Union forces from the battlefield. At Appomattox Court House in Virginia in April 1865, the 75th North Carolina Regiment, a cavalry unit, fired the last shots of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the Civil War. The phrase \"First at Bethel, Farthest at Gettysburg and Chickamauga, and Last at Appomattox\", later became used through much of the early 20th century.\nAfter secession, some North Carolinians refused to support the Confederacy. Some of the yeoman farmers chiefly in the state's mountains and western Piedmont region remained neutral during the Civil War, with others covertly supporting the Union cause during the conflict. Approximately 15,000 North Carolinians (both black and white) from across the state enlisted in the Union Army. Numerous slaves also escaped to Union lines, where they became essentially free.\nReconstruction era through late 19th century.\nFollowing the collapse of the Confederacy in 1865, North Carolina, along with other former Confederate States (except Tennessee), was put under direct control by the U.S. military and was relieved of its constitutional government and representation within the United States Congress in what is now referred to as the Reconstruction era. To earn back its rights, the state had to make concessions to Washington, one of which was ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment. Congressional Republicans during Reconstruction, commonly referred to as \"radical Republicans\", constantly pushed for new constitutions for each of the Southern states that emphasized equal rights for African-Americans. In 1868, a constitutional convention restored the state government of North Carolina. Though the Fifteenth Amendment was also adopted that same year, it remained in most cases ineffective for almost a century, not to mention paramilitary groups and their lynching with impunity.\nThe elections in April 1868 following the constitutional convention led to a narrow victory for a Republican-dominated government, with 19 African-Americans holding positions in the North Carolina State Legislature. In attempt to put the reforms into effect, the new Republican Governor William W. Holden declared martial law on any county allegedly not complying with law and order using the passage of the Shoffner Act.\nA Republican Party coalition of black freedmen, northern carpetbaggers and local scalawags controlled state government for three years. The white conservative Democrats regained control of the state legislature in 1870, in part by Ku Klux Klan violence and terrorism at the polls, to suppress black voting. Republicans were elected to the governorship until 1876, when the Red Shirts, a paramilitary organization that arose in 1874 and was allied with the Democratic Party, helped suppress black voting. More than 150 black Americans were murdered in electoral violence in 1876.\nPost\u2013Civil War-debt cycles pushed people to switch from subsistence agriculture to commodity agriculture. Among this time the notorious Crop-Lien system developed and was financially difficult on landless whites and blacks, due to high amounts of usury. Also due to the push for commodity agriculture, the free range was ended. Prior to this time people fenced in their crops and had their livestock feeding on the free range areas. After the ending of the free range people now fenced their animals and had their crops in the open.\nDemocrats were elected to the legislature and governor's office, but the Populists attracted voters displeased with them. In 1896 a biracial, Populist-Republican Fusionist coalition gained the governor's office and passed laws that would extend the voting franchise to blacks and poor whites. The Democrats regained control of the legislature in 1896 and passed laws to impose Jim Crow and racial segregation of public facilities. Voters of North Carolina's 2nd congressional district elected a total of four African-American congressmen through these years of the late 19th century.\nPolitical tensions ran so high a small group of white Democrats in 1898 planned to take over the Wilmington government if their candidates were not elected. In the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, white Democrats led around 2,000 of their supporters that attacked the black newspaper and neighborhood, killed an estimated 60 to 300 people, and ran off the white Republican mayor and aldermen. They installed their own people and elected Alfred M. Waddell as mayor, in the only successful coup d'\u00e9tat in United States history.\nIn 1899, the state legislature passed a new constitution, with requirements for poll taxes and literacy tests for voter registration which disenfranchised most black Americans in the state. Exclusion from voting had wide effects: it meant black Americans could not serve on juries or in any local office. After a decade of white supremacy, many people forgot North Carolina had ever had thriving middle-class black Americans. Black citizens had no political voice in the state until after the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed to enforce their constitutional rights. It was not until 1992 that another African American was elected as a U.S. Representative from North Carolina.\nEarly through mid-20th century.\nAfter the reconstruction era, North Carolina had become a one-party state, dominated by the Democratic Party. The state mainly continued with an economy based on tobacco, cotton textiles and commodity agriculture. Large towns and cities remained in few numbers. However, a major industrial base emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century, in the counties of the Piedmont Triad, based on cotton mills established at the fall line. Railroads were built to connect the new industrializing cities.\nThe state was the site of the first successful controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air flight, by the Wright brothers, near Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903.\nIn the first half of the 20th century, many African Americans left the state to go North for better opportunities, in the Great Migration. Their departure changed the demographic characteristics of many areas.\nNorth Carolina was hard hit by the Great Depression, but the New Deal programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt for cotton and tobacco significantly helped the farmers. After World War\u00a0II, the state's economy grew rapidly, highlighted by the growth of such cities as Charlotte, Raleigh, and Durham in the Piedmont region.\nResearch Triangle Park, established in 1959, serves as the largest research park in the United States. Formed near Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, the Research Triangle metro is a major area of universities and advanced scientific and technical research.\nThe Greensboro sit-ins in 1960 played a crucial role in the Civil Rights Movement to bring full equality to American blacks. By the late 1960s, spurred in part by the increasingly leftward tilt of national Democrats, conservative whites began to vote for Republican national candidates and gradually for more Republicans locally.\nLate 20th century to present.\nSince the 1970s, North Carolina has seen steady increases in population growth. This growth has largely occurred in metropolitan areas located within the Piedmont Crescent, in places such as Charlotte, Concord, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Durham and Raleigh. The Charlotte metropolitan area has experienced large growth mainly due to its finance, banking, and tech industries.\nBy the 1990s, Charlotte had become a major regional and national banking center. Towards Raleigh, North Carolina State, Duke University, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, have helped the Research Triangle area attract an educated workforce and develop more jobs.\nIn 1988, North Carolina gained its first professional sports franchise, the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The hornets team name stems from the American Revolutionary War, when British General Cornwallis described Charlotte as a \"hornet's nest of rebellion\". The Carolina Panthers of the National Football League (NFL) became based in Charlotte as well, with their first season being in 1995. The Carolina Hurricanes of the National Hockey League (NHL) moved to Raleigh in 1997, with their colors being the same as the NC State Wolfpack, who are also located in Raleigh.\nBy the late 20th century and into the early 21st century, economic industries such as technology, pharmaceuticals, banking, food processing, vehicle parts, and tourism started to emerge as North Carolina's main economic drivers. This marked a shift from the state's former main industries of tobacco, textiles, and furniture. Factors that played a role in this shift were globalization, the state's higher education system, national banking, the transformation of agriculture, and new companies moving to the state.\nGeography.\nNorth Carolina is bordered by South Carolina on the south, Georgia on the southwest, Tennessee on the west, Virginia on the north, and the Atlantic Ocean on the east. The United States Census Bureau places North Carolina in the South Atlantic division of the southern region. It has a total area of , of which is land and (9.66%) is water.\nNorth Carolina consists of three main geographic regions: the Atlantic coastal plain, occupying the eastern portion of the state; the central Piedmont region, and the mountain region in the west, which is part of the Appalachian Mountains. The coastal plain consists of more specifically defined areas known as the Outer Banks, a string of sandy, narrow barrier islands separated from the mainland by sounds or inlets, including Albemarle Sound and Pamlico Sound, the native home of the venus flytrap, and the inner coastal plain, where longleaf pine trees are native.\nSo many ships have been lost off Cape Hatteras that the area is known as the \"Graveyard of the Atlantic\"; more than a thousand ships have sunk in these waters since records began in 1526. The most famous of these is the \"Queen Anne's Revenge\" (flagship of the pirate Blackbeard), which went aground in Beaufort Inlet in 1718.\nThe coastal plain transitions to the Piedmont region along the Atlantic Seaboard fall line, the elevation at which waterfalls first appear on streams and rivers. The Piedmont region of central North Carolina is the state's most populous region, containing the six largest cities in the state by population. It consists of gently rolling countryside frequently broken by hills or low mountain ridges. Small, isolated, and deeply eroded mountain ranges and peaks are located in the Piedmont, including the Sauratown Mountains, Pilot Mountain, the Uwharrie Mountains, Crowder's Mountain, King's Pinnacle, the Brushy Mountains, and the South Mountains. The Piedmont ranges from about in elevation in the east to about in the west.\nThe western section of the state is part of the Blue Ridge Mountains of the larger Appalachian Mountain range. Among the subranges of the Blue Ridge Mountains located in the state are the Great Smoky Mountains and the Black Mountains. The Black Mountains are the highest in the eastern United States, and culminate in Mount Mitchell at , the highest point east of the Mississippi River.\nNorth Carolina has 17 major river basins. The five basins west of the Blue Ridge Mountains flow to the Gulf of Mexico, while the remainder flow to the Atlantic Ocean. Of the 17 basins, 11 originate within the state of North Carolina, but only four are contained entirely within the state's border\u2014the Cape Fear, the Neuse, the White Oak, and the Tar\u2013Pamlico basin.\nClimate.\nElevation above sea level is most responsible for temperature change across the state, with the mountainous regions being coolest year-round. The climate is also influenced by the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf Stream, especially in the coastal plain. These influences tend to cause warmer winter temperatures along the coast, where temperatures only occasionally drop below the freezing point at night. The coastal plain averages around of snow or ice annually, and in many years, there may be no snow or ice at all.\nThe Atlantic Ocean exerts less influence on the climate of the Piedmont region, which has hotter summers and colder winters than along the coast, though winters are still mild.\nNorth Carolina experiences severe weather both in summer and in winter, with summer bringing threat of hurricanes, tropical storms, heavy rain, and flooding. Destructive hurricanes that have hit North Carolina include Hurricane Fran, Hurricane Florence, Hurricane Floyd, Hurricane Hugo, and Hurricane Hazel, the latter being the strongest storm ever to make landfall in the state, as a Category4 in 1954. Hurricane Isabel ranks as the most destructive of the 21st century.\nNorth Carolina averages fewer than 20 tornadoes per year, many of them produced by hurricanes or tropical storms along the coastal plain. Tornadoes from thunderstorms are a risk, especially in the eastern part of the state. The western Piedmont is often protected by the mountains, which tend to break up storms as they cross over; the storms will often re-form farther east. A phenomenon known as \"cold-air damming\" often occurs in the northwestern part of the state, which can weaken storms but can also lead to major ice events in winter.\nIn April 2011, the worst tornado outbreak in North Carolina's history occurred. Thirty confirmed tornadoes touched down, mainly in the Eastern Piedmont and Sandhills, killing at least 24 people. In September 2019 Hurricane Dorian hit the area.\nParks and recreation.\nNorth Carolina provides a large range of recreational activities, from swimming at the beach to skiing in the mountains. North Carolina offers fall colors, freshwater and saltwater fishing, hunting, birdwatching, agritourism, ATV trails, ballooning, rock climbing, biking, hiking, skiing, boating and sailing, camping, canoeing, caving (spelunking), gardens, and arboretums. North Carolina has theme parks, aquariums, museums, historic sites, lighthouses, elegant theaters, concert halls, and fine dining.\nNorth Carolinians enjoy outdoor recreation using numerous local bike paths, 34 state parks, and 14 national parks. National Park Service units include the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, the Blue Ridge Parkway, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Cape Lookout National Seashore, Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site at Flat Rock, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site at Manteo, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Great Smoky Mountains Railroad, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park in Greensboro, Moores Creek National Battlefield near Currie in Pender County, the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, Old Salem National Historic Site in Winston-Salem, the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, and Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills.\nNational Forests include Uwharrie National Forest in central North Carolina, Croatan National Forest in Eastern North Carolina, Pisgah National Forest in the western mountains, and Nantahala National Forest in the southwestern part of the state.\nMajor cities.\nIn 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau released the 2023 population estimates for municipalities in North Carolina. Charlotte has the largest population, while Raleigh has the second-largest population in North Carolina.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nMost populous counties.\nAfter the 2020 census, Wake County\u2014with a population of 1,129,410\u2014became the most populous county in the state, overtaking Mecklenburg County\u2014with a population of 1,115,482\u2014by a margin of about 14,000. Both counties are still the only to have populations over one million in North Carolina and the Carolinas region.\nStatistical areas.\nNorth Carolina has four major combined statistical areas (CSA) with a population over 1\u00a0million (as of 2023):\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nThe United States Census Bureau determined the population of North Carolina was 10,439,388 at the 2020 census. Based on numbers in 2012 of the people residing in North Carolina 58.5% were born there; 33.1% were born in another state; 1.0% were born in Puerto Rico, U.S. island areas, or born abroad to American parent(s); and 7.4% were foreign-born.\nAccording to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 9,382 homeless people in North Carolina.\nThe top countries of origin for North Carolina's immigrants were Mexico, India, Honduras, China and El Salvador, as of 2018[ [update]].\nRace and ethnicity.\nAt the 2010 census, the racial composition of North Carolina was: White: 68.5% (65.3% non-Hispanic white, 3.2% White Hispanic), Black or African American: 21.5%, Latin and Hispanic American of any race: 8.4%, some other race: 4.3%, Multiracial American: 2.2%, Asian American: 2.2%, and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander: 1%. In 2020, North Carolina like much of the U.S. experienced a decline in its non-Hispanic white population; at the 2020 census, non-Hispanic whites were 62.2%, Blacks or African Americans 20.5%, American Indian and Alaska Natives 1.2%, Asians 3.3%, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders 0.1%, people from other race 5.9%, and multiracial Americans 6.8%.\nThe majority of the Black American population is concentrated in the urban areas and northeastern part of the state.\nNorth Carolina's Hispanic population has grown rapidly. The Hispanic population more than doubled in size between 1990 and 2000. Many of North Carolina's Hispanic residents are of Mexican descent. Many of North Carolina's newer Latino residents came from Mexico largely to work in agriculture, manufacturing, or on one of North Carolina's military installations.\nThe most common ancestries in North Carolina are African-American, American, German, English, and Irish.\nNorth Carolina has the eighth-largest Native American population in the country. The state is home to eight Native American tribes and four urban Native American organizations.\nLanguages.\nNorth Carolina is home to a spectrum of different dialects of Southern American English and Appalachian English.\nIn 2010, 89.66% (7,750,904) of North Carolina residents age five and older spoke English at home as a primary language, while 6.93% (598,756) spoke Spanish, 0.32% (27,310) French, 0.27% (23,204) German, and Chinese (which includes Mandarin) was spoken as a main language by 0.27% (23,072) of the population five and older. In total, 10.34% (893,735) of North Carolina's population age five and older spoke a mother language other than English. In 2019, 87.7% of the population aged 5 and older spoke English and 12.3% spoke another language. The most common non-English language was Spanish at the 2019 American Community Survey.\nReligion.\nNorth Carolina residents since the colonial era have historically been overwhelmingly Protestant\u2014first Anglican, then Baptist and Methodist. In 2010, the Southern Baptist Convention was the single largest Christian denomination, with 4,241 churches and 1,513,000 members. The second largest in 2024 was the Roman Catholic Church which is organised into two dioceses. In the west is the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte which includes Charlotte and has 530,000 members in 196 parishes. In the east is the Diocese of Raleigh with a total of 80 parishes and nearly 500,000 Catholics. The third largest was the United Methodist Church, with 660,000 members and 1,923 churches. The fourth largest was the Presbyterian Church (USA), with 186,000 members and 710 congregations; this denomination was brought by Scots-Irish immigrants who settled the backcountry in the colonial era. In 2020, the Southern Baptists remained the largest with 1,324,747 adherents, though Methodists and others were collectively overtaken by non/interdenominational Protestants numbering 1,053,564.\nIn 1845, the Baptists split into regional associations of the Northern United States and Southern U.S., over the issue of slavery. These new associations were the Northern Baptist Convention (today the American Baptist Churches USA) and Southern Baptist Convention. By the late 19th century, the largest Protestant denomination in North Carolina were Baptists. After emancipation, black Baptists quickly set up their own independent congregations in North Carolina and other states of the South, as they wanted to be free of white supervision. Black Baptists developed their own state and national associations, such as the National Baptist Convention. Other primarily African American Baptist conventions which grew in the state since the 20th century were the Progressive National Baptist Convention and Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship.\nMethodists (the second largest group among North Carolinian Protestants) were divided along racial lines in the United Methodist Church and African Methodist Episcopal Church. The Methodist tradition tends to be strong in the northern Piedmont, especially in populous Guilford County. Other prominent Protestant groups in North Carolina as of the Pew Research Center's 2014 study were non/interdenominational Protestants and Pentecostalism. The Assemblies of God and Church of God in Christ are the largest Pentecostal denominations operating in the state, while notable minorities include Oneness Pentecostals primarily affiliated with the United Pentecostal Church International.\nThe state also has a special history with the Moravian Church, as settlers of this faith (largely of German origin) settled in the Winston-Salem area in the 18th and 19th centuries. Historically Scots-Irish have had a strong presence in Charlotte and in Scotland County.\nA wide variety of non-Christian faiths are practiced by other residents in the state, including: Judaism, Islam, Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed, Buddhism, and Hinduism. The rapid influx of Northerners and immigrants from Latin America is steadily increasing ethnic and religious diversity within the state. The number of Roman Catholics and Jews in the state has increased, along with general religious diversity as a whole. There are also a substantial number of Quakers in Guilford County and northeastern North Carolina. Many universities and colleges in the state have been founded on religious traditions, and some currently maintain that affiliation, including:\nThe state also has several major seminaries, including the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, and the Hood Theological Seminary (AME Zion) in Salisbury.\nEconomy.\nNorth Carolina's 2018 total gross state product was $496 billion. Based on American Community Survey 2010\u20132014 data, North Carolina's median household income was $46,693. It ranked forty-first out of fifty states plus the District of Columbia for median household income. North Carolina had the fourteenth highest poverty rate in the nation at 17.6%, with 13% of families that were below the poverty line.\nThe state has a very diverse economy because of its great availability of hydroelectric power, its pleasant climate, and its wide variety of soils. The state ranks third among the South Atlantic states in population, but leads the region in industry and agriculture. North Carolina leads the nation in the production of tobacco.\nCharlotte, the state's largest city, is a major textile and trade center. According to a Forbes article written in 2013, employment in the \"Old North State\" has gained many different industry sectors. Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) industries in the area surrounding North Carolina's capital have grown 17.9 percent since 2001. Raleigh ranked the third best city for technology in 2020 due to the state's growing technology sector. In 2010, North Carolina's total gross state product was $424.9 billion, while the state debt in November 2012, according to one source, totaled $2.4 billion, while according to another, was in 2012 $57.8 billion. In 2011, the civilian labor force was at around 4.5 million with employment near 4.1 million.\nNorth Carolina is the leading U.S. state in production of flue-cured tobacco and sweet potatoes, and comes second in the farming of pigs and hogs, trout, and turkeys. In the three most recent USDA surveys (2002, 2007, 2012), North Carolina also ranked second in the production of Christmas trees.\nNorth Carolina has 15 metropolitan areas, and in 2010 was chosen as the third-best state for business by Forbes Magazine, and the second-best state by chief executive officer Magazine. Since 2000, there has been a clear division in the economic growth of North Carolina's urban and rural areas. While North Carolina's urban areas have enjoyed a prosperous economy with steady job growth, low unemployment, and rising wages, many of the state's rural counties have suffered from job loss, rising levels of poverty, and population loss as their manufacturing base has declined. According to one estimate, one-half of North Carolina's 100 counties have lost population since 2010, primarily due to the poor economy in many of North Carolina's rural areas. However, the population of the state's urban areas is steadily increasing.\nArts and culture.\nNorth Carolina has traditions in art, music, and cuisine. The nonprofit arts and culture industry generates $1.2billion in direct economic activity in North Carolina, supporting more than 43,600 full-time equivalent jobs and generating $119million in revenue for local governments and the state of North Carolina. North Carolina established the North Carolina Museum of Art as the first major museum collection in the country to be formed by state legislation and funding and continues to bring millions into the NC economy.\nOne of the more famous arts communities in the state is Seagrove, the handmade-pottery capital of the U.S., where artisans create handcrafted pottery inspired by the same traditions that began in this community more than two hundred years ago.\nMusic.\nNorth Carolina boasts a large number of noteworthy jazz musicians, some among the most important in the history of the genre. These include: John Coltrane, (Hamlet, High Point); Thelonious Monk (Rocky Mount); Billy Taylor (Greenville); Woody Shaw (Laurinburg); Lou Donaldson (Durham); Max Roach (Newland); Tal Farlow (Greensboro); Albert, Jimmy and Percy Heath (Wilmington); Nina Simone (Tryon); and Billy Strayhorn (Hillsborough).\nNorth Carolina is also famous for its tradition of old-time music, and many recordings were made in the early 20th century by folk-song collector Bascom Lamar Lunsford. Musicians such as the North Carolina Ramblers helped solidify the sound of country music in the late 1920s, while the influential bluegrass musician Doc Watson also hailed from North Carolina. Both North and South Carolina are hotbeds for traditional rural blues, especially the style known as the Piedmont blues.\nBen Folds Five originated in Winston-Salem, and Ben Folds still records and resides in Chapel Hill.\nThe British band Pink Floyd is named, in part, after Chapel Hill bluesman Floyd Council.\nThe Research Triangle area has long been a well-known center for folk, rock, metal, jazz and punk. James Taylor grew up around Chapel Hill, and his 1968 song \"Carolina in My Mind\" has been called an unofficial anthem for the state. Other famous musicians from North Carolina include J. Cole, DaBaby, 9th Wonder, Shirley Caesar, Roberta Flack, Clyde McPhatter, Nnenna Freelon, Link Wray, Warren Haynes, Jimmy Herring, Michael Houser, Eric Church, Future Islands, Randy Travis, Ryan Adams, Ronnie Milsap, Anthony Hamilton, The Avett Brothers, Charlie Daniels, and Luke Combs.\nMetal and punk acts such as Corrosion of Conformity, Between the Buried and Me, and Nightmare Sonata are native to North Carolina.\nEDM producer Porter Robinson hails from Chapel Hill.\nNorth Carolina is the home of more \"American Idol\" finalists than any other state: Clay Aiken (season two), Fantasia Barrino (season three), Chris Daughtry (season five), Kellie Pickler (season five), Bucky Covington (season five), Anoop Desai (season eight), Scotty McCreery (season ten), and Caleb Johnson (season thirteen). North Carolina also has the most \"American Idol\" winners with Barrino, McCreery, and Johnson.\nIn the mountains, the Brevard Music Center hosts choral, operatic, orchestral, and solo performances during its annual summer schedule.\nNorth Carolina has five professional opera companies: Opera Carolina in Charlotte, NC Opera in Raleigh, Greensboro Opera in Greensboro, Piedmont Opera in Winston-Salem, and Asheville Lyric Opera in Asheville. Academic conservatories and universities also produce fully staged operas, such as the A. J. Fletcher Opera Institute of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, the Department of Music of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and UNC Greensboro.\nAmong others, there are three high-level symphonic orchestras: NC Symphony in Raleigh, Charlotte Symphony, and Winston-Salem Symphony. The NC Symphony holds the North Carolina Master Chorale. The Carolina Ballet is headquartered in Raleigh, and there is also the Charlotte Ballet.\nThe state boasts three performing arts centers: DPAC in Durham, Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts in Raleigh, and the Blumenthal Performing Art Centers in Charlotte. They feature concerts, operas, recitals, and traveling Broadway musicals.\nShopping.\nNorth Carolina has a variety of shopping choices. SouthPark Mall in Charlotte is the largest and most upscale mall in the Carolinas, featuring multiple luxury tenants with their sole location in the state. Other major malls in Charlotte include Northlake Mall and Carolina Place Mall in nearby suburb Pineville. Other major malls throughout the state include Hanes Mall in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, The Thruway Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Crabtree Valley Mall, North Hills Mall, and Triangle Town Center in Raleigh; Friendly Center and Four Seasons Town Centre in Greensboro; Oak Hollow Mall in High Point; Concord Mills in Concord; Valley Hills Mall in Hickory; Cross Creek Mall in Fayetteville; and The Streets at Southpoint in Durham and Independence Mall in Wilmington, North Carolina, and Tanger Outlets in Charlotte, Nags Head, Blowing Rock, and Mebane, North Carolina.\nCuisine and agriculture.\nA culinary staple of North Carolina is pork barbecue. There are strong regional differences and rivalries over the sauces and methods used in making the barbecue. The common trend across Western North Carolina is the use of premium grade Boston butt. Western North Carolina pork barbecue uses a tomato-based sauce, and only the pork shoulder (dark meat) is used. Western North Carolina barbecue is commonly referred to as Lexington barbecue after the Piedmont Triad town of Lexington, home of the Lexington Barbecue Festival, which attracts more than 100,000 visitors each October. Eastern North Carolina pork barbecue uses a vinegar-and-red-pepper-based sauce and the \"whole hog\" is cooked, thus integrating both white and dark meat.\nKrispy Kreme, an international chain of doughnut stores, was started in North Carolina; the company's headquarters are in Winston-Salem. Pepsi-Cola was first produced in 1898 in New Bern. A regional soft drink, Cheerwine, was created and is still based in the city of Salisbury. Despite its name, the hot sauce Texas Pete was created in North Carolina; its headquarters are also in Winston-Salem. The Hardee's fast-food chain was started in Rocky Mount. Another fast-food chain, Bojangles', was started in Charlotte, and has its corporate headquarters there. A popular North Carolina restaurant chain is Golden Corral. Started in 1973, the chain was founded in Fayetteville, with headquarters located in Raleigh. Popular pickle brand Mount Olive Pickle Company was founded in Mount Olive in 1926. Fast casual burger chain Hwy 55 Burgers, Shakes & Fries also makes its home in Mount Olive. Cook Out, a popular fast-food chain featuring burgers, hot dogs, and milkshakes in a wide variety of flavors, was founded in Greensboro in 1989 and has begun expanding outside North Carolina. In 2013 \"Southern Living\" named Durham\u2013Chapel Hill the South's \"Tastiest City\".\nOver the last decade, North Carolina has become a cultural epicenter and haven for internationally prize-winning wine (Noni Bacca Winery), internationally prized cheeses (Ashe County), \"L'institut International aux Arts Gastronomiques: Conquerront Les Yanks les Truffes, January 15, 2010\" international hub for truffles (Garland Truffles), and beer making, as tobacco land has been converted to grape orchards while state laws regulating alcohol by volume (ABV) in beer allowed a jump from six to fifteen percent. The Yadkin Valley in particular has become a strengthening market for grape production, while Asheville recently won the recognition of being named \"Beer City USA\". Asheville boasts the largest number of breweries per capita of any city in the United States. Recognized and marketed brands of beer in North Carolina include Highland Brewing, Duck Rabbit Brewery, Mother Earth Brewery, Weeping Radish Brewery, Big Boss Brewing, Foothills Brewing, Carolina Brewing Company, Lonerider Brewing, and White Rabbit Brewing Company.\nNorth Carolina has large grazing areas for beef and dairy cattle. Truck farms can be found in North Carolina. A truck farm is a small farm where fruits and vegetables are grown to be sold at local markets. The state's shipping, commercial fishing, and lumber industries are important to its economy. Service industries, including education, health care, private research, and retail trade, are also important. Research Triangle Park, a large industrial complex located in the Raleigh-Durham area, is one of the major centers in the country for electronics and medical research.\nTobacco was one of the first major industries to develop after the Civil War. Many farmers grew some tobacco, and the invention of the cigarette made the product especially popular. Winston-Salem is the birthplace of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR), founded by R. J. Reynolds in 1874 as one of sixteen tobacco companies in the town. By 1914 it was selling 425 million packs of Camels a year. Today it is the second-largest tobacco company in the U.S. (behind Altria Group). RJR is an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Reynolds American Inc., which in turn is 42% owned by British American Tobacco.\nShips named for the state.\nSeveral ships have been named after the state, most famously in the Pacific Ocean theater of World War\u00a0II. Now decommissioned, she is part of the USS \"North Carolina\" Battleship Memorial in Wilmington. Another , a nuclear attack submarine, was commissioned in Wilmington on May 3, 2008.\nState parks.\nThe state maintains a group of protected areas known as the North Carolina State Park System, which is managed by the North Carolina Division of Parks & Recreation (NCDPR), an agency of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (NCDNCR).\nArmed forces installations.\nFort Bragg, near Fayetteville and Southern Pines, is a large and comprehensive military base and is the headquarters of the XVIII Airborne Corps, 82nd Airborne Division, and the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. Serving as the air wing for Fort Bragg is Pope Field, also located near Fayetteville.\nLocated in Jacksonville, Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, combined with nearby bases Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Cherry Point, MCAS New River, Camp Geiger, Camp Johnson, Stone Bay and Courthouse Bay, makes up the largest concentration of Marines and sailors in the world. MCAS Cherry Point is home of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing. Located in Goldsboro, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base is home of the 4th Fighter Wing and 916th Air Refueling Wing. One of the busiest air stations in the United States Coast Guard is located at the Coast Guard Air Station in Elizabeth City. Also stationed in North Carolina is the Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point in Southport.\nOn January 24, 1961, a B-52G broke up in midair and crashed after suffering a severe fuel loss, near Goldsboro, dropping two nuclear bombs in the process without detonation. In 2013, it was revealed that three safety mechanisms on one bomb had failed, leaving just one low-voltage switch preventing detonation.\nTourism.\nCharlotte is the most-visited city in the state, attracting 28.3million visitors in 2018. Area attractions include Carolina Panthers NFL football team and Charlotte Hornets basketball team, Carowinds amusement park, Catawba Two Kings Casino (in nearby Kings Mountain), Charlotte Motor Speedway, U.S. National Whitewater Center, Discovery Place, Great Wolf Lodge, Sea Life Aquarium, Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, Billy Graham Library, Carolinas Aviation Museum, Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, Levine Museum of the New South, McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Mint Museum, and the NASCAR Hall of Fame.\nEvery year the Appalachian Mountains attract several million tourists to the western part of the state, including the historic Biltmore Estate. The scenic Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smoky Mountains National Park are the two most visited national park and unit in the United States with more than 25million visitors in 2013. The City of Asheville is consistently voted as one of the top places to visit and live in the United States, known for its rich art deco architecture, mountain scenery and outdoor activities.\nIn Raleigh, many tourists visit the capital, African American Cultural Complex, Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh, Gregg Museum of Art & Design at NCSU, Haywood Hall House & Gardens, Marbles Kids Museum, North Carolina Museum of Art, North Carolina Museum of History, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, Raleigh City Museum, J. C. Raulston Arboretum, Joel Lane House, Mordecai House, Montfort Hall, and the Pope House Museum. The Carolina Hurricanes NHL hockey team is also located in the city.\nIn the Conover\u2013Hickory area, attractions include Hickory Motor Speedway, RockBarn Golf and Spa, home of the Greater Hickory Classic at Rock Barn; Catawba County Firefighters Museum, the SALT Block, and Valley Hills Mall.\nThe Piedmont Triad, or center of the state, is home to Krispy Kreme, Mayberry, Texas Pete, the Lexington Barbecue Festival, and Moravian cookies. The internationally acclaimed North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro attracts visitors to its animals, plants, and a 57-piece art collection along of shaded pathways in the world's largest-land-area natural-habitat park. Seagrove, in the central portion of the state, attracts many tourists along Pottery Highway (NC Hwy 705). MerleFest in Wilkesboro attracts more than 80,000 people to its four-day music festival; and Wet 'n Wild Emerald Pointe water park in Greensboro is another attraction.\nThe Outer Banks and surrounding beaches attract millions of people to the Atlantic beaches every year.\nThe mainland northeastern part of the state, having recently adopted the name the Inner Banks, is also known as the Albemarle Region, for the Albemarle Settlements, some of the first settlements on North Carolina's portion of the Atlantic Coastal Plain. The region's historic sites are connected by the Historic Albemarle Tour.\nTransportation.\nTransportation systems in North Carolina consist of air, water, road, rail, and public transportation including intercity rail via Amtrak and light rail in Charlotte. North Carolina has the second-largest state highway system in the country as well as the largest ferry system on the East Coast.\nNorth Carolina's airports serve destinations throughout the United States and international destinations in Canada, Europe, Central America, and the Caribbean. In July 2022, Charlotte Douglas International Airport, which serves as the second busiest hub for American Airlines, ranked as the 11th busiest airport in the United States with Raleigh-Durham International Airport, a focus-city for Delta Air Lines and formerly a hub for American Airlines and Midway Airlines, ranked as the 37th busiest airport in the United States.\nNorth Carolina has a growing passenger rail system with Amtrak serving most major cities. Charlotte is also home to North Carolina's only light rail system known as LYNX.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nElementary and secondary public schools are overseen by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. The North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction is the secretary of the North Carolina State Board of Education, but the board, rather than the superintendent, holds most of the legal authority for making public education policy. In 2009, the board's chairman also became the \"chief executive officer\" for the state's school system. North Carolina has 115 public school systems, each of which is overseen by a local school board. A county may have one or more systems within it. The largest school systems in North Carolina are the Wake County Public School System, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Guilford County Schools, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, and Cumberland County Schools. In total there are 2,425 public schools in the state, including over 200 charter schools. North Carolina Schools were segregated until the \"Brown v. Board of Education\" trial and the release of the Pearsall Plan.\nPreviously the SAT was the dominant university entrance examination students took. In 2004 76% of NC high school students took the SAT. In 2012 state law changed which required 11th grade students to take the ACT. The SAT testing rate fell to 46% in 2019. Because students now can take that test for free, the ACT became the dominant university entrance examination. This also caused SAT average scores to rise, as in 1996 North Carolina was 48th nationally in SAT scores, but the profile of students taking the SAT has gotten smaller.\nColleges and universities.\nIn 1795, North Carolina opened the first public university in the United States\u2014the University of North Carolina (now named the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). More than 200 years later, the University of North Carolina System encompasses 16 public universities, which are Appalachian State University, East Carolina University, Elizabeth City State University, Fayetteville State University, North Carolina A&T State University, North Carolina Central University, North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Asheville, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Western Carolina University, and Winston-Salem State University, and one public, boarding high school, the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. Along with its public universities, North Carolina has 58 public community colleges in its community college system. The largest university in North Carolina is currently North Carolina State University, with more than 34,000 students.\nNorth Carolina is also home to many well-known private colleges and universities, including Barton College, Belmont Abbey College (the only Catholic college in the Carolinas), Campbell University, Davidson College, Duke University, Elon University, Guilford College, High Point University, Laurel University, Lees-McRae College, Lenoir-Rhyne University (the only Lutheran university in North Carolina), Livingstone College, Meredith College, Methodist University, Montreat College, North Carolina Wesleyan University, Pfeiffer University, Salem College, Shaw University (the first historically black college or university in the South), University of Mount Olive, Wake Forest University, William Peace University, and Wingate University.\nNorth Carolina is also home to the oldest and largest folk school in the United States, the John C. Campbell Folk School.\nHealth.\nThe residents of North Carolina have a lower life expectancy than the U.S. national average of life expectancy. According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, in 2014, males in North Carolina lived an average of 75.4 years compared to the national average of 76.7 years. Females in North Carolina lived an average of 80.2 years compared to the national average of 81.5 years. Male life expectancy in North Carolina between 1980 and 2014 increased by an average of 6.9 years, slightly higher than the male national average of a 6.7-year increase. Life expectancy for females in North Carolina between 1980 and 2014 increased by 3.2 years, lower than the female national average of a 3.9-year increase.\nUsing 2017\u20132019 data, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation calculated that life expectancy for North Carolina counties ranged from 71.4 years for Swain County to 82.3 years for Orange County. Life expectancy for the state was 78.1 years. The Foundation estimated that life expectancy for the United States as a whole in 2021 was 79.2 years.\nMedia.\nEarly newspapers were established in the eastern part of North Carolina in the mid-18th century. The Fayetteville Observer, established in 1816, is the oldest newspaper still in publication in North Carolina. The Wilmington Star-News, established 1867, is the oldest continuously running newspaper. As of January 1, 2020, there were approximately 240 North Carolina newspapers in publication in the state of North Carolina.\nThe News and Observer was founded in 1871 and is the largest in circulation in the state. In 2006, The Charlotte Observer was acquired by the company, it is the second largest circulating news paper in the state.\nGovernment and politics.\nThe government of North Carolina is divided into three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. These consist of the Council of State (led by the Governor), the bicameral legislature (called the General Assembly), and the state court system (headed by the North Carolina Supreme Court). The state constitution delineates the structure and function of the state government. Most municipalities in North Carolina operate under council\u2013manager governments.\nNorth Carolina's party loyalties have undergone a series of important shifts in the last few years: While the 2010 midterms saw Tarheel voters elect a bicameral Republican majority legislature for the first time in more than a century, North Carolina has also become a Southern swing state in presidential races. Since Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter's comfortable victory in the state in 1976, the state had consistently leaned Republican in presidential elections until Democrat Barack Obama narrowly won the state in 2008. In the 1990s, Democrat Bill Clinton came within a point of winning the state in 1992 and also only narrowly lost the state in 1996. In 2000, Republican George W. Bush easily won the state by more than 13 points.\nBy 2008, demographic shifts, population growth, and increased liberalization in densely populated areas such as the Research Triangle, Charlotte, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Fayetteville, and Asheville, propelled Barack Obama to victory in North Carolina, the first Democrat to win the state since 1976. In 2012, North Carolina was again considered a competitive swing state, with the Democrats even holding their 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. However, Republican Mitt Romney ultimately eked out a two-point win in North Carolina, the only 2012 swing state Obama lost, and one of only two states (along with Indiana) to flip from Obama in 2008 to the GOP in 2012. Furthermore, Republican Donald Trump carried the state in 2016, 2020, and 2024.\nIn 2012, the state elected a Republican governor (Pat McCrory) and lieutenant governor (Dan Forest) for the first time in more than two decades, while also giving the Republicans veto-proof majorities in both the State House of Representatives and the State Senate. Several U.S. House of Representatives seats flipped control in 2012, with the Republicans holding nine seats to the Democrats' four. In the 2014 midterm elections, Republican David Rouzer won the state's 7th congressional district seat, increasing the congressional delegation party split to 10\u20133 in favor of the GOP, a split they retained in subsequent elections until 2020, when it narrowed to 8\u20135 in favor of the GOP. In 2016, despite Donald Trump winning the state, North Carolina voters elected Democrat Roy Cooper as governor, in part due to an unpopular law passed by former governor Pat McCrory known as HB2. Cooper went on to win re-election in 2020, despite Donald Trump narrowly winning the state again against Joe Biden.\nAs a result of the 2020 census, North Carolina gained another seat in the 118th United States Congress, for a total of 14. After the 2024 elections, the state was represented by 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats.\nIn a 2020 study, North Carolina was ranked as the 23rd easiest state for citizens to vote in.\nGerrymandering.\nThe state has been sued for racially gerrymandering the districts, which resulted in minority voting power being diluted in some areas, resulting in skewed representation. In 2000, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina ruled that the 12th congressional district was an illegal racial gerrymander. This was again appealed, now as \"Easley v. Cromartie\". The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Eastern District of North Carolina in 2001 and ruled that the 12th district boundaries were not racially based but was a partisan gerrymander. They said this was a political question that the courts should not rule upon.\nIn 2015, federal courts again ordered redistricting. Two lawsuits challenging the state congressional district map were led by \"two dozen voters, the state Democratic Party, the state chapter of the League of Women Voters, and the interest group Common Cause\". They contend that the redistricting resulted in deliberate under-representation of a substantial portion of voters. This case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in March 2019, which also heard a related partisan gerrymandering case from Maryland.\nOn February 4, 2022, the North Carolina Supreme Court struck down the congressional and state legislative district maps drawn by the GOP-controlled General Assembly on terms of partisan gerrymandering in a 4\u20133 ruling. Later that month, a panel of three former judges chosen by the Wake County Superior Court drew and approved a remedial congressional map after the new map proposed by the General Assembly was struck down by the North Carolina Supreme Court. Though, the state legislative maps proposed by the General Assembly were allowed to be used. The General Assembly would then redraw all three maps for the 2024 elections in the state.\nOn April 28, 2023, the North Carolina Supreme Court\u2014after Republicans gained a majority in the court following the 2022 judicial elections\u2014overturned the same ruling in a 5\u20132 decision, which cleared the way for gerrymandering in the next redistricting cycle. New maps were approved by the General Assembly on October 25, 2023. All three new maps heavily favor the GOP, with allegations of racial bias made against the maps as well.\nIn November 2023, a lawsuit was filed against the North Carolina Senate district map\u2014specifically the 1st and 2nd Senate districts\u2014in the Eastern District of North Carolina, arguing the map violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In December 2023, two lawsuits were filed in the Middle District of North Carolina, with the first challenging the 1st, 6th, 12th, and 14th congressional districts in the map, and the second, challenging multiple specific districts in all three maps, as racial gerrymanders. Both lawsuits were consolidated together in March 2024.\nOn January 26, 2024\u2014regarding the lawsuit currently in the Eastern District of North Carolina\u2014a preliminary injunction to block the current North Carolina Senate district map was denied, citing the \"Purcell\" principle. The ruling was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which upheld the lower court's decision on March 28, 2024. The lawsuit will continue in the district court, but no ruling will be made until after the 2024 elections.\nSports.\nNorth Carolina is home to four major league sports franchises: the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League, the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association, and Charlotte FC of Major League Soccer are based in Charlotte, while the Raleigh-based Carolina Hurricanes play in the National Hockey League. The Panthers and Hurricanes are the only two major professional sports teams that have the same geographical designation while playing in different metropolitan areas. The Hurricanes are the only major professional team from North Carolina to have won a league championship, having captured the Stanley Cup in 2006. North Carolina is also home to two other top-level professional teams \u2014 the Charlotte Hounds of Major League Lacrosse and the North Carolina Courage of the National Women's Soccer League.\nWhile North Carolina has no Major League Baseball team, it does have numerous Minor League Baseball teams, with the highest level of play coming from the Triple-A Charlotte Knights and Durham Bulls. Additionally, North Carolina has minor league teams in other team sports including soccer and ice hockey, most notably North Carolina FC and the Charlotte Checkers, both of which play in the second tier of their respective sports.\nIn addition to professional team sports, North Carolina has a strong affiliation with NASCAR and stock-car racing, with Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord hosting two Cup Series races every year. Charlotte also hosts the NASCAR Hall of Fame, while Concord is the home of several top-flight racing teams, including Hendrick Motorsports, Roush Fenway Racing, GMS Racing, Stewart-Haas Racing, and Chip Ganassi Racing. Numerous other tracks around North Carolina host races from low-tier NASCAR circuits as well.\nGolf is a popular summertime leisure activity, and North Carolina has hosted several important professional golf tournaments. Pinehurst Resort in Pinehurst has hosted a PGA Championship, Ryder Cup, two U.S. Opens, and one U.S. Women's Open. The Wells Fargo Championship is a regular stop on the PGA Tour and is held at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, and Quail Hollow has also played host to the PGA Championship. The Wyndham Championship is played annually in Greensboro at Sedgefield Country Club.\nCollege sports are also popular in North Carolina, with 18 schools competing at the Division I level. The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is headquartered in Greensboro, and both the ACC Football Championship Game (Charlotte) and the ACC men's basketball tournament (Greensboro) were most recently held in North Carolina. Additionally, the city of Charlotte is home to the National Junior College Athletics Association's (NJCAA) headquarters. College basketball is very popular in North Carolina, buoyed by the Tobacco Road rivalries between ACC members North Carolina, Duke, North Carolina State, and Wake Forest. The ACC Championship Game and the Duke's Mayo Bowl are held annually in Charlotte's Bank of America Stadium, featuring teams from the ACC and the Southeastern Conference. Additionally, the state has hosted the NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four on two occasions, in Greensboro in 1974 and in Charlotte in 1994.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "191890": "American Idol\nAmerican singing competition\nAmerican Idol is an American singing competition television series created by Simon Fuller, produced by Fremantle North America and 19 Entertainment, and distributed by Fremantle North America. It aired on Fox from June 11, 2002, to April 7, 2016, for 15 seasons. It was on hiatus for two years until March 11, 2018, when a revival of the series began airing on ABC.\nIt started as an addition to the \"Idol\" format that was based on \"Pop Idol\" from British television, in which the programme's first series, which was won by Will Young, ended over four months before the show began, as it later became one of the most successful shows in the history of American television. The concept of the series involves discovering recording stars from unsigned singing talents, with the winner determined by American viewers using phones, Internet platforms, and SMS text voting. The winners of the first twenty-two seasons, as chosen by viewers, are Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Hicks, Jordin Sparks, David Cook, Kris Allen, Lee DeWyze, Scotty McCreery, Phillip Phillips, Candice Glover, Caleb Johnson, Nick Fradiani, Trent Harmon, Maddie Poppe, Laine Hardy, Just Sam, Chayce Beckham, Noah Thompson, Iam Tongi, and Abi Carter.\n\"American Idol\" employs a select panel of judges who critique the contestants' performances. The original judges, for seasons one through eight, were record producer and music manager Randy Jackson, singer and choreographer Paula Abdul, and music executive and manager Simon Cowell. The judging panel for the last three seasons on Fox consisted of singers Keith Urban, Jennifer Lopez, and Harry Connick Jr. Season sixteen brought three new judges: singers Luke Bryan, Katy Perry, and Lionel Richie. Beginning in the twenty-third season, Underwood replaced Perry, alongside returning judges Bryan and Richie. The show has been hosted by television presenter Ryan Seacrest throughout its run, apart from the show's inaugural season when comedian Brian Dunkleman joined Seacrest as co-host.\nThe success of \"American Idol\" has been described as \"unparalleled in broadcasting history\". A rival TV executive said the series was \"the most impactful show in the history of television\". It became a recognized springboard for launching the career of many artists as bona fide stars. According to \"Billboard\" magazine, in its first ten years, \"\"Idol\" has spawned 345 \"Billboard\" chart-toppers and a platoon of pop idols, including Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Chris Daughtry, Fantasia, Ruben Studdard, Jennifer Hudson, Clay Aiken, Adam Lambert, and Jordin Sparks while remaining a TV ratings juggernaut.\" For an unprecedented eight consecutive years, from the 2003\u201304 television season through the 2010\u201311 season, either its performance show or result show was ranked number one in U.S. television ratings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\n\"American Idol\" was based on the British show \"Pop Idol\" created by Simon Fuller, which was in turn inspired by the New Zealand television singing competition \"Popstars\". Television producer Nigel Lythgoe saw a version in Australia and helped bring it over to Britain. Fuller was inspired by the idea from \"Popstars\" of employing a panel of judges to select singers in audition. He then added other elements, including telephone voting by the viewing public (which at the time was already in use in shows, such as the \"Eurovision Song Contest\"), the drama of backstories, and real-life soap opera unfolding in real time. \"Pop Idol\" debuted in Britain in 2001 with Lythgoe as showrunner\u200d\u2014\u200cthe executive producer and production leader\u200d\u2014\u200cand Simon Cowell as one of the judges, and was successful with the viewing public.\nIn 2001, Fuller, Cowell, and TV producer Simon Jones attempted to sell the \"Pop Idol\" format to the United States, but the idea was initially met with poor responses from all the television networks including UPN and Fox. However, Rupert Murdoch, head of Fox's parent company, was later persuaded to buy the series by his daughter, Elisabeth, who had seen the British show. Although Fox's executives wanted to change the format, Murdoch insisted that it should remain the same as the British one. One change was nevertheless made due to the presence of multiple time zones in the United States that made it impractical for the country to vote in the same time period, an additional half-hour results show was therefore added the day following the performance show. The show was renamed \"\" and debuted in the summer of 2002. Cowell was initially offered the job of showrunner but turned down the offer; Lythgoe then took over that position. Much to the surprise of Cowell and Fox, it became one of the biggest shows of the summer. With its successful launch in the summer, the show was then moved to January and expanded. The show grew into a phenomenon largely due to its personal engagement with the contestants by prompting the viewers to vote, and the presence of the acid-tongued Cowell as a judge. By 2004, it had become the most-watched show on American television, a position it then held for seven consecutive seasons until 2011.\nHowever, after a few years of sharp declining ratings starting in 2012, with rating falls of over 20% each season, the fifteenth season would be its last on Fox, ending its run in April 2016. In May 2017, ABC acquired the rights to the series and the program returned for the 2017\u201318 television season. The first season of the revived series, or the sixteenth season overall, started airing in March 2018. Seven seasons have been aired on ABC as of May 2024.\nJudges and hosts.\nJudges.\nThe show had originally planned on having four judges following the \"Pop Idol\" format; however, only three judges had been found by the time of the audition round in the first season, namely Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell. A fourth judge, radio DJ Stryker, was originally chosen but he dropped out citing \"image concerns.\" In the second season, New York radio personality Angie Martinez had been hired as a fourth judge but withdrew after only a few days of auditions, due to being uncomfortable with giving out criticism. The show decided to continue with the three judges format until the eighth season. All three original judges stayed on the judging panel for eight seasons.\nIn the eighth season, Latin Grammy Award-nominated singer-songwriter and record producer Kara DioGuardi was added as a fourth judge. Abdul left the show in 2009, after the eighth season, as a result of failing to agree to terms with the show producers. Emmy Award-winning talk show host Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul for the ninth season, but left in 2010 after just one season. DioGuardi was let go from \"American Idol\" in 2010 after two seasons, as producers favored a return to the three-person judges panel previously used prior to DioGuardi's appearance on the show. Cowell also left the show in 2010 to introduce the American version of his show \"The X Factor\" in 2011. Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth.\nJennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined the judging panel in the tenth season, but both left in 2012 after two seasons. Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. They were replaced by three new judges, Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj, and Keith Urban, who joined Jackson in the twelfth season. However, both Carey and Minaj left after one season. Jackson also departed the judges table after twelve seasons, but would return as the in-house mentor for the thirteenth season in 2014, after which he left the show permanently.\nUrban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. After a one-season hiatus, Lopez returned to \"American Idol\" for the thirteenth season, and was joined by former mentor Harry Connick Jr. After this, Lopez, Urban, and Connick Jr. remained on the show until its cancellation after the fifteenth season in 2016.\nWhen the show was revived by ABC in 2018, Katy Perry, Luke Bryan, and Lionel Richie were selected as judges, marking the sixteenth season of \"Idol\". Bryan and Richie have remained on the show since, while Perry left the show in May 2024 after seven seasons. On July 31, 2024, published reports announced former \"Idol\" winner Carrie Underwood as Perry's replacement, joining Bryan and Richie for the twenty-third season.\nGuest judges may occasionally be introduced. In the second season, guest judges such as Richie and Gladys Knight were used, and in the third season, Donna Summer, Quentin Tarantino, Gloria Estefan, and some of the mentors also joined as judges to critique the performances in the final rounds. Guest judges were sporadically used during the audition rounds: Gene Simmons, LL Cool J, Brandy, Mark McGrath, and Kenny Loggins in the fourth season; Carole Bayer Sager, Jewel, and Olivia Newton-John in the sixth season; Shania Twain, Neil Patrick Harris, Avril Lavigne, Mary J. Blige, Joe Jonas, Kristin Chenoweth, Victoria Beckham, and Perry in the ninth season (substituting in the vacant chair, before DeGeneres was hired); and Adam Lambert filled in for Urban at one audition location during the fourteenth season. In the ABC version, two instances occurred during the live shows: Abdul filled in for Bryan on one episode of the nineteenth season, while Alanis Morissette and Ed Sheeran filled in for Perry and Richie on an episode of the twenty-first season.\nHosts.\nThe first season was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman, following the format of \"Pop Idol\" of using two presenters. Dunkleman quit thereafter, resulting in Seacrest becoming the sole emcee starting with the second season in 2003.\nSeacrest has remained as sole host of \"American Idol\" ever since, with the exception of the two-year hiatus between 2016 and 2018 as well as April 8, 2019, during the seventeenth season, when Bobby Bones subbed for Seacrest after the latter fell ill. Dunkleman did, however, return for the initial in 2016 as a guest.\nCast timeline.\nAnnotations\nSelection process.\nIn a series of steps, the show selected the eventual winner out of many tens of thousands of contestants.\nContestant eligibility.\nThe eligible age-range for contestants is fifteen to twenty-eight years old. The initial age limit was sixteen to twenty-four in the first three seasons, but the upper limit was raised to twenty-eight in the fourth season, and the lower limit was reduced to fifteen in the tenth season. The contestants have to be legal U.S. residents, can not have advanced to particular stages of the competition in previous seasons, and must not have held a current recording or talent representation contract by the semi-final stage (in previous years by the audition stage).\nInitial auditions.\nFor the first eighteen seasons, contestants went through at least three sets of cuts. The first was a brief audition with a few other contestants in front of selectors which may include one of the show's producers. Although auditions can exceed 10,000 in each city, only a few hundred of these made it past the preliminary round of auditions. Successful contestants then sing in front of producers, where more may be cut. Only then can they proceed to audition in front of the judges, which is the only audition stage shown on television. Those selected by the judges are sent to Hollywood. Between 10 and 60 people in each city may make it to Hollywood (the average total is between 150 and 200).\nFrom the nineteenth season onwards, contestants request a Zoom interview and audition remotely for the show's producers. If the audition goes well, they will then invite the contestants to audition in front of the judges, in one of the audition cities.\nHollywood week.\nOnce in Hollywood, the contestants perform individually or in groups in a series of rounds. Until the tenth season, there were usually three rounds of eliminations in Hollywood. In the first round the contestants emerged in groups but performed individually. For the next round, the contestants put themselves in small groups and performed a song together. In the final round, the contestants performed solo with a song of their choice a cappella or accompanied by a band\u200d\u2014\u200cdepending on the season. In the second and third seasons, contestants were also asked to write original lyrics or melody in an additional round after the first round. In the seventh season, the group round was eliminated and contestants may, after a first solo performance and on judges approval, skip a second solo round and move directly to the final Hollywood round. In the twelfth season, the executive producers split up the females and males and chose the members to form the groups in the group round.\nIn the tenth and eleventh seasons, a further round was added in Las Vegas, where the contestants performed in groups based on a theme, followed by one final solo round to determine the semi-finalists. At the end of this stage of the competition, 24 to 36 contestants were selected to move on to the semi-final stage. In the twelfth season the Las Vegas round became a Sudden Death round, where the judges had to choose five guys and five girls each night (four nights) to make the top twenty. In the thirteenth season, the Las Vegas round was eliminated and a new round called \"Hollywood or Home\" was added, where if the judges were uncertain about some contestants, those contestants were required to perform soon after landing in Los Angeles, and those who failed to impress were sent back home before they reached Hollywood. In the fourteenth season, the \"Hollywood or Home\" round was dropped, and a Showcase round was added, where the contestants performed at the House of Blues or auditorium for the judges and a live audience, and these performances determine who makes into the Top 24. In the seventeenth and eighteenth seasons, the showcase round took place in Hawaii. From the nineteenth season onward, a showstopper round was used.\nAudience voting.\nFrom the semi-finals onward, the fate of the contestants is decided by public vote. During the contestant's performance as well as the recap at the end, a toll-free telephone number for each contestant was displayed on the screen. For a two-hour period after the episode ends (up to four hours for the finale) in each US time zone, viewers may call or send a text message to their preferred contestant's telephone number, and each call or text message was registered as a vote for that contestant. Viewers were allowed to vote as many times as they can within the two-hour voting window. However, the show reserves the right to discard votes by power dialers. One or more of the least popular contestants may be eliminated in successive weeks until a winner emerges. Over 110\u00a0million votes were cast in the first season, and by the tenth season the seasonal total had increased to nearly 750 million. Voting via text messaging was made available in the second season when AT&T Wireless joined as a sponsor of the show, and 7.5\u00a0million text messages were sent to \"American Idol\" that season. The number of text messages rapidly increased, reaching 178\u00a0million texts by the eighth season. Online voting was offered for the first time in the tenth season. The votes are counted and verified by Telescope Inc.\nSemi-finals.\nIn the first three seasons, the semi-finalists were split into different groups to perform individually in their respective night. In the first season, there were three groups of ten, with the top three contestants from each group making the finals. In the second and third seasons, there were four groups of eight, and the top two of each selected. These seasons also featured a wildcard round, where contestants who failed to qualify were given another chance. In the first season, only one wildcard contestant was chosen by the judges, giving a total of ten finalists. In the second and third seasons, each of the three judges championed one contestant with the public advancing a fourth into the finals, making 12 finalists in all.\nFrom the fourth through seventh and ninth seasons, the twenty-four semi-finalists were divided by gender in order to ensure an equal gender division in the top twelve. The men and women sang separately on consecutive nights, and the bottom two in each groups were eliminated each week until only six of each remained to form the top twelve.\nThe wildcard round returned in the eighth season, wherein there were three groups of twelve, with three contestants moving forward \u2013 the highest male, the highest female, and the next highest-placed singer \u2013 for each night, and four wildcards were chosen by the judges to produce a final 13. Starting in tenth season, the girls and boys perform on separate nights. In the tenth and eleventh seasons, five of each gender were chosen, and three wildcards were chosen by the judges to form a final 13. In the twelfth season, the top twenty semifinalists were split into gender groups, with five of each gender advancing to form the final 10. In the thirteenth season, there were thirty semifinalists, but only twenty semifinalists (ten for each gender) were chosen by the judges to perform on the live shows, with five in each gender based on the vote and three wildcards chosen by the judges composing the final 13. In the fourteenth season, the top 24 performed at The Fillmore Detroit, starting with the 12 males on one night and then the 12 females on the next night. The following week, the same order went for the top 16, with four males eliminated, followed by four females based on the vote. Then, on the first night of finals, a similar sequence from the thirteenth season was used to determine the final 12, with five of each gender based on the vote and two wildcards chosen by the judges. In the fifteenth season, the top 24 performed at Cathedral of Saint Vibiana in Los Angeles and were split into two groups of twelve and performed twice, one being a solo performance and one being a duet with a former Idol contestant. In each group, the judges chose 7 contestants to advance to the top 14 where the judges chose 4 to advance to the top 10 and remaining 6 contestants were chosen based on the vote. In the sixteenth season, the top 24 performed at the Academy in the Heart of LA, and the show repeated the process from the previous season. However, instead of Idol alumnus as duet partners, superstar celebrity singers were used as the duet partners. In the seventeenth season, the same process was repeated again. However, instead of a top 24, it's a top 20, the contestants performed at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, and performed solos in one episode, and performed the duets in two episodes. In the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the top 20 performed at their homes, and based on the vote, half of the top 20 would advance to the top 10, and the other half would be eliminated. However, a wild card was given to one of the bottom 10 to save them from elimination. In the nineteenth season, the show used a combination of the process from the sixteenth and fourteenth seasons. In the twentieth season, the show repeated the process from the previous season, but they used a top 20 instead of a top 16, and there were no all star duets. In the twenty-first season, the same process was repeated, but they started with a top 26 instead of a top 24. In the twenty-second season, the show repeated the process from the twentieth season.\nFinals.\nThe finals are broadcast in primetime from Los Angeles, in front of a live studio audience (except the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic). From 2002 to 2019 and from 2021 to 2022, the venue was CBS Television City. Starting in 2023, it changed to Red Studios. The finals lasted eight weeks in the first season. From the second to ninth and fourteenth seasons, the finals lasted eleven weeks. The tenth and eleventh seasons lasted for twelve weeks, while the twelfth season lasted for ten weeks. In the thirteenth season, the finals lasted thirteen weeks. The finals lasted seven weeks in the fifteenth season, and six weeks in the sixteenth season. Each finalist performs songs based on a weekly theme which may be a musical genre such as Motown, disco, or big band, songs by artists such as Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley or The Beatles, or more general themes such as \"Billboard\" number-one hits or songs from the contestant's year of birth. Contestants usually worked with a celebrity mentor related to the theme. From the tenth to twelfth seasons, Jimmy Iovine was brought in as a mentor for the season. Initially the contestants sang one song each week, but this was increased to two songs from top four or five onwards, then three songs for the top two or three.\nThe most popular contestants are usually not revealed in the results show. Instead, typically the three contestants (two in later rounds) who received the lowest number of votes was called to the center of the stage. One of these three was usually sent to safety; however the two remaining were not necessarily the bottom two. The contestant with the fewest votes was then revealed and eliminated from the competition. A montage of the eliminated contestant's time on the show was played and they gave their final performance (from the fourteenth season onward, the montage and the final performance were dropped). However, in the sixth season, during the series' first ever Idol Gives Back episode, no contestant was eliminated, but on the following week, two were sent home. Moreover, from the eighth to the fourteenth seasons, and the seventeenth season onward, the judges may overturn viewers' decision with a \"Judges' Save\" if they unanimously agreed to. \"The save\" could only be used once, and only up through the Top 5. In the eighth to tenth and fourteenth seasons, a double elimination then took place in the week following the activation of the save, but in the eleventh and thirteenth seasons, a regular single elimination took place. The save was not activated in the twelfth season and consequently, a non-elimination took place in the week after its expiration with the votes then carrying over into the following week.\nThe \"Fan Save\" was introduced in the fourteenth season. During the finals, viewers were given a five-minute window to vote for the contestants in danger of elimination by using their Twitter account to decide which contestant will move on to the next show, starting with the Top 8.\nSeason finale.\nDuring the original run of \"American Idol\" on Fox, the finale week consisted of a one-hour long final performance night and a two-hour last episode of the season that culminates in revealing the winner, both of which are broadcast live in the U.S. Eastern and Central time zones. For the first, third through sixth and fourteenth through fifteenth seasons it was broadcast from the Dolby Theatre, which has an audience capacity of approximately 3,400. The second-season finale took place at the Gibson Amphitheatre, which had an audience capacity of over 6,000. In the seventh through thirteenth seasons, the venue was at the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live, which holds an audience of over 7,000. Since the show's reboot on ABC, the venue remains the same throughout the entire show (excluding auditions), but was still two episodes in the sixteenth season, and then stretched to a single three-hour season finale that is annually aired live simultaneously in all U.S. territories, starting with the seventeenth season. The eighteenth-season finale was conducted virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nRewards for winner and finalists.\nThe winner usually receives a record deal with a major label, which may be for up to six albums, and secures a management contract with \"American Idol\"-affiliated 19 Management (which has the right of first refusal to sign all contestants), as well as various lucrative contracts. All winners prior to the ninth season reportedly earned at least $1\u00a0million in their first year as winner. At first the contract came with a $250,000-plus advance, but dropped to about $62,500 over the Fox years. All the runners-up of the first ten seasons, as well as some of other finalists, had also received record deals with major labels. However, starting in the eleventh season, the runner-up may only be guaranteed a single-only deal. BMG/Sony (first through ninth seasons), UMG (tenth through fifteenth seasons), and Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records (sixteenth through eighteenth seasons) had the right of first refusal to sign contestants for three months after the season's finale. In the fourteenth and fifteenth seasons, the winner was signed with Big Machine Records. Prominent music mogul Clive Davis also produced some of the selected contestants' albums, such as Kelly Clarkson, Clay Aiken, Fantasia Barrino and Diana DeGarmo. All top 10 (11 in the tenth and twelfth seasons, 5 in the fourteenth season, and 7 in the sixteenth season) finalists earn the privilege of going on a tour, where the participants may each earn a six-figure sum.\nSeason synopses.\nEach season premieres with the audition round, taking place in different cities. The audition episodes typically feature a mix of potential finalists, interesting characters and woefully inadequate contestants. Each successful contestant receives a golden or platinum ticket to proceed on to the next round in Hollywood. Based on their performances during the Hollywood round (Las Vegas round from the tenth through twelfth seasons), 24 to 36 contestants are selected by the judges to participate in the semifinals. From the semifinals onward the contestants perform their songs live, with the judges making their critiques after each performance. The contestants are voted for by the viewing public, and the outcome of the public votes is then revealed during a results segment. The results segment feature group performances by the contestants as well as guest performers. The Top-three results also features homecoming events for the Top 3 finalists. The season reaches its climax in a two-hour results finale show, where the winner of the season is revealed.\nWith the exception of the first two seasons, the contestants in the semifinals onward perform in front of a studio audience. They perform with a full band in the finals. The current musical director is Kris Pooley, who has been with the show since the sixteenth season. In previous seasons, the \"American Idol\" band was led by Rickey Minor (fourth through ninth and thirteenth through fifteenth seasons) and Ray Chew (tenth through twelfth seasons). Assistance has also been given by vocal coaches and song arrangers, such as Michael Orland and Debra Byrd to contestants behind the scene. Starting with the seventh season, contestants may perform with a musical instrument from the Hollywood rounds onward. In later seasons, the contestants were allowed to perform with a musical instrument in the auditions. During the first nine seasons, performances were usually aired live on Tuesday nights, followed by the results shows on Wednesdays, but moved to Wednesdays and Thursdays from the tenth through thirteenth seasons, with the tenth, eleventh and thirteenth-season finales aired on Tuesday and Wednesday. From the fourteenth season onward, there were no separate results shows. On the fourteenth season, the show aired on Wednesday nights, and on the fifteenth season, Thursday nights. Since the sixteenth season, the show has been airing on Sundays and Mondays.\n2002\u20132016: Fox.\nSeason 1 (2002).\nThe first season of \"American Idol\" debuted as a summer replacement show in June 2002 on the Fox network. It was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell served as judges.\nIn the audition rounds, 121 contestants were selected from around 10,000 who attended the auditions. These were cut to 30 for the semifinal, with ten going on to the finals. One semifinalist, Delano Cagnolatti, was disqualified for lying to evade the show's age limit. One of the early favorites, Tamyra Gray, was eliminated at the top four, the first of several such shock eliminations that were to be repeated in later seasons. Christina Christian was hospitalized before the top six result show due to chest pains and palpitations, and she was eliminated while she was in the hospital. Jim Verraros was the first openly gay contestant on the show; his sexual orientation was revealed on his blog, however it was removed during the competition after a request from the show producers over concerns that it might be unfairly influencing votes.\nThe final showdown was between Justin Guarini, one of the early favorites, and Kelly Clarkson. Clarkson was not initially thought of as a contender, but impressed the judges with some good performances in the final rounds, such as her performance of Aretha Franklin's \"Natural Woman\", and Betty Hutton's \"Stuff Like That There\", and eventually won the crown on September 4, 2002.\nIn what was to become a tradition, Clarkson performed the coronation song during the finale, and released the song immediately after the season ended. The single, \"A Moment Like This\", went on to break a 38-year-old record held by The Beatles for the biggest leap to number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. Guarini did not release any song immediately after the show and remains the only runner-up not to do so. Both Clarkson and Guarini made a musical film, \"From Justin to Kelly\", which was released in 2003 but was widely panned. Clarkson has since become one of the most successful \"Idol\" contestants internationally, with worldwide album sales of more than 25\u00a0million.\nStarting September 30, 2006, this season was repackaged as \"\"American Idol Rewind\"\" and syndicated directly to stations in the U.S.\nSeason 2 (2003).\nFollowing the success of the first season, the second season was moved up to air in January 2003. The number of episodes increased, as did the show's budget and the charge for commercial spots. Dunkleman left the show, leaving Ryan Seacrest as the lone host. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Kristin Adams was a correspondent for this season.\nCorey Clark was disqualified during the finals for having an undisclosed police record; however, he later alleged that he and Paula Abdul had an affair while on the show and that this contributed to his expulsion. Clark also claimed that Abdul gave him preferential treatment on the show due to their affair. The allegations were dismissed by Fox after an independent investigation. Two semi-finalists were also disqualified that year \u2013 Jaered Andrews for an arrest on an assault charge, and Frenchie Davis for having previously modeled for an adult website.\nThe season finale drew more than 38 million viewers, marking \"Idol\"'s biggest audience ever for a single episode. Ruben Studdard emerged as the winner, beating Clay Aiken by a small margin. Out of a total of 24 million votes, Studdard finished just 134,000 votes ahead of Aiken. This slim margin of victory was controversial due to the large number of calls that failed to get through. In an interview prior to the fifth season, executive producer Nigel Lythgoe indicated that Aiken had led the fan voting from the wildcard week onward until the finale.\nBoth finalists found success after the show, but Aiken out-performed Studdard's coronation song \"Flying Without Wings\" with his single release from the show \"This Is the Night\", as well as in their subsequent album releases. The fourth-place finisher Josh Gracin also enjoyed some success as a country singer.\nSeason 3 (2004).\nThe third season premiered on January 19, 2004. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. One of the most talked-about contestants during the audition process was William Hung whose off-key rendition of Ricky Martin's \"She Bangs\" received widespread attention. His exposure on \"Idol\" landed him a record deal and surprisingly he became the third bestselling singer from that season.\nMuch media attention on the season had been focused on the three black singers, Fantasia Barrino, LaToya London, and Jennifer Hudson, dubbed the Three Divas. All three unexpectedly landed on the bottom three on the top seven result show, with Hudson controversially eliminated. Elton John, who was one of the mentors that season, called the results of the votes \"incredibly racist\". The prolonged stays of John Stevens and Jasmine Trias in the finals, despite negative comments from the judges, had aroused resentment, so much so that John Stevens reportedly received a death threat, which he dismissed as a joke 'blown out of proportion'.\nThe performance of \"Summertime\" by Barrino, later known simply as \"Fantasia\", at Top 8 was widely praised, and Simon Cowell considered it as his favorite \"Idol\" moment in the nine seasons he was on the show. Fantasia and Diana DeGarmo were the last two finalists, and Fantasia was crowned as the winner. Fantasia released as her coronation single \"I Believe\", a song co-written by the first season finalist Tamyra Gray, and DeGarmo released \"Dreams\".\nSeason 4 (2005).\nThe fourth season premiered on January 18, 2005. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This was the first full season of the series to be aired in high definition; the finale of the third season was also aired in high definition. The number of those attending the auditions by now had increased to over 100,000 from the 10,000 of the first season. The age limit was raised to 28 in this season, and among those who benefited from this new rule were Constantine Maroulis and Bo Bice, the two rockers of the show.\nThe top 12 finalists originally included Mario Vazquez, but he dropped out citing 'personal reasons' and was replaced by Nikko Smith. Later, an employee of Fremantle Media, which produces the show, sued the company for wrongful termination, claiming that he was dismissed after complaining about lewd behavior by Vazquez toward him during the show.\nDuring the top 11 week, due to a mix-up with the contestants' telephone number, voting was repeated on what was normally the result night, with the result reveal postponed until the following night.\nIn May 2005, Underwood was announced the winner, with Bice the runner-up. Both Underwood and Bice released the coronation song \"Inside Your Heaven\", with Underwood's version of the song making her the first country artist ever to debut at number-one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart. As of 2015, Underwood has become the most successful \"Idol\" contestant in the U.S., selling 16 million albums in the country, while selling a total of 65 million records worldwide.\nSeason 5 (2006).\nThe fifth season began on January 17, 2006. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. It remains the highest-rated season in the show's run so far. Two of the more prominent contestants during the Hollywood round were the Brittenum twins who were later disqualified for identity theft.\nChris Daughtry's performance of Fuel's \"Hemorrhage (In My Hands)\" on the show was widely praised and led to an invitation to join the band as Fuel's new lead singer, an invitation he declined. His performance of Live's version of \"I Walk the Line\" was well received by the judges but later criticized in some quarters for not crediting the arrangement to Live. He was eliminated at the top four in a shocking result.\nOn May 30, 2006, Taylor Hicks was named \"American Idol\", with Katharine McPhee the runner-up. \"Do I Make You Proud\" was released as Hicks' first single and McPhee's was \"My Destiny\".\nDespite being eliminated earlier in the season, Chris Daughtry (as lead of the band Daughtry) became the most successful recording artist from this season. Other contestants, such as Hicks, McPhee, Bucky Covington, Mandisa, Kellie Pickler, and Elliott Yamin have had varying levels of success.\nSeason 6 (2007).\nThe sixth season began on Tuesday, January 16, 2007. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The premiere drew a massive audience of 37.3\u00a0million viewers, peaking in the last half hour with more than 41\u00a0million viewers.\nTeenager Sanjaya Malakar was the season's most talked-about contestant for his unusual hairdo, and for managing to survive elimination for many weeks due in part to the weblog Vote for the Worst and satellite radio personality Howard Stern, who both encouraged fans to vote for him. However, on the Top 7 results, Sanjaya was voted off.\nThis season saw the first \"Idol Gives Back\" telethon-inspired event, which raised more than $76\u00a0million in corporate and viewer donations. No contestant was eliminated that week, but two (Phil Stacey and Chris Richardson) were eliminated the next.\nIn the May 23 season finale, Jordin Sparks was declared the winner with the runner-up being Blake Lewis. Sparks has had some success as a recording artist post-\"Idol\".\nThis season also saw the launch of the \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest which allows fans to vote for the \"coronation song\". Thousands of recordings of original songs were submitted by songwriters, and 20 entries selected for the public vote. The winning song, \"This Is My Now\", was performed by both finalists during the finale and released by Sparks on May 24, 2007.\nSeason 7 (2008).\nThe seventh season premiered on January 15, 2008, for a two-day, four-hour premiere. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The media focused on the professional status of the seventh season contestants, the so-called 'ringers', many of whom, including Kristy Lee Cook, Brooke White, Michael Johns, and in particular Carly Smithson, had prior recording contracts. Contestant David Hernandez also attracted some attention due to his past employment as a stripper.\nFor the finals, \"American Idol\" debuted a new state-of-the-art set and stage on March 11, 2008, along with a new on-air look. David Cook's performance of \"Billie Jean\" on top-ten night was lauded by the judges, but provoked controversy when they apparently mistook the Chris Cornell arrangement to be David Cook's own even though the performance was introduced as Cornell's version. Cornell himself said he was 'flattered' and praised David Cook's performance. David Cook was taken to the hospital after the top-nine performance show due to heart palpitations and high blood pressure.\nDavid Archuleta's performance of John Lennon's \"Imagine\" was considered by many as one of the best of the season. Jennifer Lopez, who was brought in as a judge in the tenth season, called it a beautiful song-moment that she will never forget. Jason Castro's semi-final performance of \"Hallelujah\" also received considerable attention, and it propelled Jeff Buckley's version of the song to the top of the \"Billboard\" digital song chart. This was the first season in which contestants' recordings were released onto iTunes after their performances, and although sales information was not released so as not to prejudice the contest, leaked information indicated that contestants' songs frequently reached the top of iTunes sales charts.\n\"Idol Gives Back\" returned on April 9, 2008, and raised $64\u00a0million for charity.\nThe finalists were Cook and Archuleta. David Cook was announced the winner on May 21, 2008, the first rocker to win the show. Both Cook and Archuleta had some success as recording artists with both selling over a million albums in the U.S.\nThe \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest was also held this season. From ten of the most popular submissions, each of the final two contestants chose a song to perform, although neither of their selections was used as the \"coronation song\". The winning song, \"The Time of My Life\", was recorded by David Cook and released on May 22, 2008.\nSeason 8 (2009).\nThe eighth season premiered on January 13, 2009. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This season featured the first major change to the judging panel; a fourth judge, Kara DioGuardi, was introduced. Mike Darnell, the president of alternative programming for Fox, stated that the season would focus more on the contestants' personal life.\nThis was also the first season without executive producer Nigel Lythgoe who left to focus on the international versions of his show \"So You Think You Can Dance\". The Hollywood round was moved to the Kodak Theatre for 2009 and was also extended to two weeks. \"Idol Gives Back\" was canceled for this season due to the global recession at the time.\nThere were 13 finalists this season, but two were eliminated in the first result show of the finals. A new feature introduced was the \"Judges' Save\", and Matt Giraud was saved from elimination at the top seven by the judges when he received the fewest votes. The next week, Lil Rounds and Anoop Desai were eliminated.\nThe two finalists were Kris Allen and Adam Lambert, both of whom had previously landed in the bottom three at the top five. Allen won the contest in the most controversial voting result since the second season. It was claimed, and then later retracted, that 38\u00a0million of the 100\u00a0million votes cast on the night came from Allen's home state of Arkansas alone, and that AT&T employees unfairly influenced the votes by giving lessons on power-texting at viewing parties in Arkansas.\nBoth Allen and Lambert released the coronation song, \"No Boundaries\" which was co-written by DioGuardi. This is the first season in which the winner failed to achieve gold album status.\nSeason 9 (2010).\nThe ninth season premiered on January 12, 2010. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Kara DioGuardi, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Paula Abdul left the show and Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul at the start of Hollywood Week. One of the most prominent auditioners this season was General Larry Platt whose performance of \"Pants on the Ground\" became a viral hit song.\nCrystal Bowersox, who has Type-I diabetes, fell ill due to diabetic ketoacidosis on the morning of the girls performance night for the top 20 week and was hospitalized. The schedule was rearranged so the boys performed first and she could perform the following night instead; she later revealed that Ken Warwick, the show producer, wanted to disqualify her but she begged to be allowed to stay on the show.\nMichael Lynche was the lowest vote getter at top nine and was given the Judges' Save. The next week Katie Stevens and Andrew Garcia were eliminated. That week, Adam Lambert was invited back to be a mentor, the first \"Idol\" alum to do so. \"Idol Gives Back\" returned this season on April 21, 2010, and raised $45 million.\nA special tribute to Simon Cowell was presented in the finale for his final season with the show. Many figures from the show's past, including Paula Abdul, made an appearance.\nThe final two contestants were Lee DeWyze and Bowersox. DeWyze was declared the winner during the May 26 finale. No new song was used as coronation song this year; instead, the two finalists each released a cover song \u2013 DeWyze chose U2's \"Beautiful Day\", and Bowersox chose Patty Griffin's \"Up to the Mountain\". This is the first season where neither finalist achieved significant album sales.\nSeason 10 (2011).\nThe tenth season premiered on January 19, 2011. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Many changes were introduced this season, from the format to the personnel of the show. Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined Randy Jackson as judges following the departures of Simon Cowell (who left to launch the American version of \"The X Factor\"), Kara DioGuardi (whose contract was not renewed) and Ellen DeGeneres, who left the show on her own accord.\nRandy Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth. Nigel Lythgoe returned as executive producer. Jimmy Iovine, chairman of the Interscope Geffen A&M label group, the new partner of \"American Idol\", acted as the in-house mentor in place of weekly guest mentors, although in later episodes special guest mentors such as Beyonc\u00e9, will.i.am and Lady Gaga were brought in.\nThe tenth season is the first to include online auditions where contestants could submit a 40-second video audition via Myspace. Karen Rodriguez was one such auditioner and reached the final rounds.\nOne of the more prominent contestants this year was Chris Medina, whose story of caring for his brain-damaged fianc\u00e9e received widespread coverage. Medina was cut in the Top 40 round. Casey Abrams, who suffers from ulcerative colitis, was hospitalized twice and missed the Top 13 result show. The judges used their one save on Abrams on the Top 11, and as a result this was the first season that 11 finalists went on tour instead of 10. In the following week, Naima Adedapo and Thia Megia were both eliminated.\nPia Toscano, one of the presumed favorites to advance far in the season, was unexpectedly eliminated on April 7, 2011, finishing in ninth place. Her elimination drew criticisms from some former \"Idol\" contestants, as well as actor Tom Hanks. After \"Idol\", Jennifer Lopez helped guide her career.\nThe two finalists in 2011 were Lauren Alaina and Scotty McCreery, both teenage country singers. McCreery won the competition on May 25, being the youngest male winner and the fourth male in a row to win \"American Idol\". McCreery released his first single, \"I Love You This Big\", as his coronation song, and Alaina released \"Like My Mother Does\". McCreery's debut album, \"Clear as Day\", became the first debut album by an \"Idol\" winner to reach No. 1 on the US \"Billboard\" 200 since Ruben Studdard's \"Soulful\" in 2003, and he became the youngest male artist to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200.\nSeason 11 (2012).\nThe eleventh season premiered on January 18, 2012. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez, and Randy Jackson returned as judges. One more finalist would join the Top 24 making it the Top 25, which was later revealed to be Jermaine Jones. However, on March 14, Jones was disqualified in 12th place for concealing arrests and outstanding warrants. Jones denied the accusation that he concealed his arrests.\nFinalist Phillip Phillips suffered from kidney pain and was taken to the hospital before the Top 13 results show, and later received medical procedure to alleviate a blockage caused by kidney stones. He was reported to have eight surgeries during his Idol run, and had considered quitting the show due to the pain. He underwent surgery to remove the stones and reconstruct his kidney soon after the season had finished.\nJessica Sanchez received the fewest votes during the Top 7 week, and the judges decided to use their \"save\" option on her, making her the first female recipient of the save. The following week, unlike previous seasons, Colton Dixon was the only contestant sent home. Sanchez later made the final two, the first season where a recipient of the save reached the finale.\nPhillips became the winner, beating Sanchez. During the finale, fifth season finalist Ace Young proposed marriage to third season runner-up Diana DeGarmo on stage \u2013 which she accepted.\nPhillips released \"Home\" as his coronation song, while Sanchez released \"Change Nothing\". Phillips' \"Home\" has since become the best selling of all coronation songs, with over 5 million copies sold.\nSeason 12 (2013).\nThe twelfth season premiered on January 16, 2013. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Judges Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler left the show after two seasons. Randy Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. This season's judging panel consisted of Randy Jackson, along with Mariah Carey, Keith Urban and Nicki Minaj.\nThis was the first season since the ninth season to have four judges on the panel. The pre-season buzz and the early episodes of the show were dominated by the feud between the judges Minaj and Carey after a video of their dispute was leaked to TMZ.\nThe top 10 contestants started with five males and five females, however, the males were eliminated consecutively in the first five weeks, with Lazaro Arbos the last male to be eliminated. For the first time in the show's history, the top 5 contestants were all female. It was also the first time that the judges' \"save\" was not used, the top four contestants were therefore given an extra week to perform again with their votes carried over with no elimination in the first week.\n23-year-old Candice Glover won the season with Kree Harrison taking the runner-up spot. Glover became the first female to win \"American Idol\" since Jordin Sparks, who won the show in 2007. Glover released \"I Am Beautiful\" as a single while Harrison released \"All Cried Out\" immediately after the show. Glover sold poorly with her debut album, and this is also the first season that the runner-up was not signed by a music label.\nTowards the end of the season, Randy Jackson, the last remaining of the original judges, announced he would no longer serve as a judge to pursue other business ventures. Both judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj also decided to leave after one season to focus on their music careers.\nSeason 13 (2014).\nThe thirteenth season premiered on January 15, 2014. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Keith Urban returned as a judge. Urban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. Randy Jackson returned, though Jackson moved from the judging panel to the role of in-mentor. Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj left the panel after one season. Former judge Jennifer Lopez and former mentor Harry Connick, Jr. joined Urban on the panel. Connick Jr. served as a mentor for \"Idol\" in 2010 and 2012. Also, Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick were replaced as executive producers by Per Blankens, Jesse Ignjatovic and Evan Pragger. Bill DeRonde replaced Warwick as a director of the audition episodes, while Louis J. Horvitz replaced Gregg Gelfand as a director of the show.\nThis was the first season where the contestants were permitted to perform in the final rounds songs they wrote themselves. In the Top 8, Sam Woolf received the fewest votes, but he was saved from elimination by the judges. The 500th episode of the series was the Top 3 performance night.\nCaleb Johnson was named the winner of the season, with Jena Irene as the runner-up. Johnson released \"As Long as You Love Me\" as his coronation single while Irene released \"We Are One\".\nSeason 14 (2015).\nThe fourteenth season premiered on January 7, 2015. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban and Harry Connick, Jr. returned for their respective fourth, third and second seasons as judges. Eighth season runner-up Adam Lambert filled in for Urban during the New York City auditions. Randy Jackson did not return as the in-house mentor and left the show permanently. Scott Borchetta replaced Jackson as the mentor.\nChanges this season include only airing one episode a week during the final ten. Coca-Cola ended their longtime sponsorship of the show and Ford Motor Company maintained a reduced role. The winner of the season also received a recording contract with Big Machine Records.\nNick Fradiani won the season, defeating Clark Beckham. Fradiani became the first winner from the Northeast region. Fradiani released \"Beautiful Life\" as his coronation single while Beckham released \"Champion\". Jax, the third place finalist, also released a single called \"Forcefield\".\nSeason 15 (2016).\nFox announced on May 11, 2015, that the fifteenth season would be the final season of \"American Idol\"; as such, the season was expected to have an additional focus on the program's alumni. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, with Harry Connick Jr., Keith Urban, and Jennifer Lopez all returning as judges. The fifteenth season premiered on January 6, 2016. The season was shortened by four weeks compared to previous years. During the finale episode, President Barack Obama praised the millions of young people that voted for contestants and pitched that they vote in the upcoming election. The farewell season concluded on April 7, 2016. Seacrest signed off by saying: \"And one more time\u2014this is so tough\u2014we say to you from Hollywood, goodnight America\", and then he added, \"for now.\"\nTrent Harmon won the season against runner-up La'Porsha Renae. Harmon released \"Falling\" co-written by Keith Urban as his coronation song. Renae's \"Battles\", third-place finisher Dalton Rapattoni's \"Strike A Match\" and fourth-place finisher MacKenzie Bourg's \"Roses\" were also released as singles.\n2018\u2013present: ABC revival.\nIn early 2017, \"Variety\" reported that Fremantle Media was in talks to revive the show for NBC or for its original network, Fox. A dispute between Fremantle and Core Media Group derailed these plans. In May 2017, ABC was making a bid to revive the program. ABC acquired the rights to the series, and \"American Idol\" returned for the 2017\u201318 television season.\nSeason 16 (2018).\nIn July 2017, it was announced that Ryan Seacrest would return as host, and by September 2017 it was revealed that Katy Perry, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie would serve as judges. The sixteenth season premiered on March 11, 2018. This was the first season of \"American Idol\" to air on ABC. The season was again shortened compared to the previous season to twelve weeks, with multiple elimination in the final rounds. Unlike previous seasons where only two finalists remained in the final episode, three finalists performed in the finale. On May 21, 2018, the season concluded with Maddie Poppe crowned the winner, beating Caleb Lee Hutchinson as runner-up and Gabby Barrett in third place. Her winning song was \"Going, Going, Gone\". Caleb Lee Hutchinson released \"Johnny Cash Heart\" as a single, while Gabby Barrett's song was \"Rivers Deep\".\nSeason 17 (2019).\nABC renewed the revival series for another season. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. The seventeenth season premiered on March 3, 2019. For the finale, the show no longer features separate performance and result shows. On May 19, 2019, the season concluded with three finalists, with Madison VanDenburg eliminated in third place after performing two songs, and the final two performing their last song. For the first time, there were no separate performance and grand finale shows this season. Laine Hardy was crowned the winner and Alejandro Aranda runner-up. Hardy released a single, \"Flame\", immediately after the win, but Aranda did not. However, Aranda later released a song he performed in the finale, \"Tonight\", under the name Scarypoolparty on June 28, 2019.\nSeason 18 (2020).\nOn May 13, 2019, the series was renewed for an eighteenth season and it premiered on February 16, 2020. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. For the first time, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, from the top 20 to the finale, the contestants performed in their own homes, while Ryan Seacrest hosted the show remotely in his own home in Los Angeles with the judges also in their respective homes. The season was also further truncated, with the top 5 performing in the finale. Each finalist also performed only two songs for the finale. On May 17, the season concluded, with Just Sam crowned as the winner, with Arthur Gunn finishing as the runner-up. \"Rise Up\", the song Just Sam performed for their audition and reprised on the finale, was released as their debut song.\nSeason 19 (2021).\nOn May 15, 2020, ABC renewed the series for a nineteenth season and it premiered on February 14, 2021. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. Later in October, it was announced that Bobby Bones will return as mentor. On May 23, the season concluded, with Chayce Beckham crowned the winner, with Willie Spence finishing as the runner-up. \"23\", the song Chayce Beckham wrote and performed for Top 4, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 20 (2022).\nOn May 13, 2021, ABC renewed the series for a twentieth season and it premiered on February 27, 2022. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On December 31, it was announced that Bones would not be returning as a mentor. On May 22, the season concluded, with Noah Thompson crowned as the winner, with HunterGirl finishing as the runner-up. \"One Day Tonight\", the song Noah Thompson performed for the Grand Finale, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 21 (2023).\nOn May 13, 2022, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-first season and it premiered on February 19, 2023. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On May 21, the season concluded, with Iam Tongi crowned as the winner, with Megan Danielle finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 22 (2024).\nOn May 16, 2023, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-second season and it premiered on February 18, 2024. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. In February 2024, Perry announced that the season would be her last. On May 20, the season concluded, with Abi Carter crowned as the winner, with Will Moseley finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 23 (2025).\nOn May 10, 2024, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-third season; it was also announced the network was in-talks with \"high-profile stars\" to replace the outgoing Perry. On July 31, 2024, it was announced Seacrest would return as host, with Bryan and Richie returning as judges; Underwood was named as Perry's successor. The season premiered on March 9, 2025.\nReception.\nU.S. television ratings.\nSeasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of \"American Idol\". It holds the distinction of having the longest winning streak in the Nielsen annual television ratings; it became the highest-rated of all television programs in the United States overall for an unprecedented seven consecutive years, or eight consecutive (and total) years when either its performance or result show was ranked number one overall.\n\"Each U.S. network television season starts in late September and ends in late May, which coincides with the completion of May sweeps.\"\n\"American Idol\" premiered in June 2002 and became the surprise summer hit show of 2002. The first show drew 9.9\u00a0million viewers, giving Fox the best viewing figure for the 8.30\u00a0pm spot in over a year. The audience steadily grew, and by finale night, the audience had averaged 23\u00a0million, with more than 40\u00a0million watching some part of that show. That episode was placed third amongst all age groups, but more importantly it led in the 18\u201349 demographic, the age group most valued by advertisers.\nThe growth continued into the next season, starting with a season premiere of 26.5 million. The season attracted an average of 21.7\u00a0million viewers, and was placed second overall amongst the 18\u201349 age group. The finale night when Ruben Studdard won over Clay Aiken was also the highest-rated ever \"American Idol\" episode at 38.1\u00a0million for the final hour. By the third season, the show had become the top show in the 18\u201349 demographic<ref name=\"realitytvworld_5/24/2007\"></ref> a position it has held for all subsequent years up to and including the tenth season, and its competition stages ranked first in the nationwide overall ratings. By the fourth season, \"American Idol\" had become the most-watched series amongst all viewers on American TV for the first time, with an average viewership of 26.8\u00a0million. The show reached its peak in the fifth season with numbers averaging 30.6\u00a0million per episode, and this season remains the highest-rated of the series.\nThe sixth season premiered with the series' highest-rated debut episode and a few of its succeeding episodes rank among the most-watched episodes of \"American Idol.\" During this time, many television executives begun to regard the show as a programming force unlike any seen before, as its consistent dominance of up to two hours two or three nights a week exceeded the 30- or 60-minute reach of previous hits such as NBC's \"The Cosby Show\". The show was dubbed \"the Death Star\", and competing networks often rearranged their schedules in order to minimize losses. However, the sixth season also showed a steady decline in viewership over the course of the season. The season finale saw a drop in ratings of 16% from the previous year. The sixth season was the first season wherein the average results show rated higher than the competition stages (unlike in the previous seasons), and became the second-highest-rated of the series after the preceding season.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the seventh season. The premiere was down 11% among total viewers, and the results show in which Kristy Lee Cook was eliminated delivered its lowest-rated Wednesday show among the 18\u201334 demo since the first season in 2002. However, the ratings rebounded for the seventh-season finale with the excitement over the battle of the Davids, and improved over the sixth season as the series' third most watched finale. The strong finish of season seven also helped Fox become the most watched TV network in the country for the first time since its inception, a first ever in American television history for a non-Big Three major broadcast network. Overall ratings for the season were down 10% from the sixth season, which is in line with the fall in viewership across all networks due in part to the 2007\u20132008 Writers Guild of America strike.\nThe declining trend however continued into the eighth season, as total viewers numbers fell by 5\u201310% for early episodes compared to the seventh season, and by 9% for the finale. In the ninth season, \"Idol\"'s six-year extended streak of perfection in the ratings was broken, when NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics on February 17 beat \"Idol\" in the same time slot with 30.1\u00a0million viewers over \"Idol\"'s 18.4\u00a0million. Nevertheless, \"American Idol\" overall finished its ninth season as the most watched TV series for the sixth year running, breaking the previous record of five consecutive seasons achieved by CBS' \"All in the Family\" and NBC's \"The Cosby Show\".\nIn the tenth season, the total viewer numbers for the first week of shows fell 12\u201313%, and by up to 23% in the 18\u201349 demo compared to the ninth season. Later episodes, however, retained viewers better, and the season ended on a high with a significant increase in viewership for the finale \u2013 up 12% for the adults 18\u201349 demographic and a 21% increase in total viewers from the ninth-season finale. While the overall viewer number has increased this season, its viewer demographics have continued to age year on year \u2013 the median age this season was 47.2 compared to a median age of 32.1 in its first season. The demographics also became \"whiter\" over time and less diverse. Nevertheless, in the 2010\u201311 television season, Fox maintained its lead on over other networks with its seventh consecutive season of victory overall in the 18\u201349 demographic ratings in the United States.\nThe eleventh season, however, suffered a steep drop in ratings, a drop attributed by some to the arrival of new shows such as \"The Voice\" and \"The X Factor\". The ratings for the first two episodes of the eleventh season fell 16\u201321% in overall viewer numbers and 24\u201327% in the 18/49 demo, while the season finale fell 27% in total viewer number and 30% in the 18\u201349 demo. The average viewership for the season fell below 20 million viewers the first time since 2003, a drop of 23% in total viewers and 30% in the 18/49 demo. For the first time in eight years, \"American Idol\" lost the leading position in both the total viewers number and the 18/49 demo, coming in second to \"NBC Sunday Night Football\", although the strengths of \"Idol\" in its second year in the Wednesday-Thursday primetime slots helped Fox achieve the longest period of 18\u201349 demographic victory in the Nielsen ratings, standing at 8 straight years from 2004 to 2012.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the twelfth season, which saw the show hitting a number of series low in the 18\u201349 demo. The finale had 7.2 million fewer viewers than the previous season, and saw a drop of 44% in the 18\u201349 demo. The season viewers averaged at 13.3 million, a drop of 24% from the previous season. The thirteenth season suffered a huge decline in the 18\u201349 demographic, a drop of 28% from the twelfth season, and \"American Idol\" lost its Top 10 position in the Nielsen ratings by the end of the 2013\u201314 television season for the first time since its entry to the rankings in 2003 as a result, and never regained its Top 10 position by the series' end in 2016.\nThe continuing decline influenced further changes for the fourteenth season, including the loss of Coca-Cola as the show's major sponsor, and a decision to only broadcast one, two-hour show per week during the top 12 rounds (with results from the previous week integrated into the performance show, rather than having a separate results show). On May 11, 2015, prior to the fourteenth-season finale, Fox announced that the fifteenth season of \"American Idol\" would be its last. Despite these changes, the show's ratings would decline more sharply. The fourteenth-season finale was the lowest-rated finale ever, with an average of only 8.03 million viewers watching the finale. The show's ratings, however, rebounded in its final season and ended its run in 2016 as Fox's first-ever program to conclude its run without dropping from the Nielsen Top 30 most-watched television shows in each of its seasons.\nFor the revived series on ABC, the ratings were lower but remained stable compared to previous seasons on Fox. The finale of the seventeenth season was slightly more watched than the sixteenth.\nCritical reception.\nEarly reviews were mixed in their assessment. Ken Tucker of \"Entertainment Weekly\" considered that \"As TV, \"American Idol\" is crazily entertaining; as music, it's dust-mote inconsequential\". Others, however, thought that \"the most striking aspect of the series was the genuine talent it revealed\". It was also described as a \"sadistic musical bake-off\", and \"a romp in humiliation\". Other aspects of the show have attracted criticisms. The product placement in the show in particular was noted, and some critics were harsh about what they perceived as its blatant commercial calculations \u2013 Karla Peterson of \"The San Diego Union-Tribune\" charged that \"American Idol\" is \"a conniving multimedia monster\" that has \"absorbed the sin of our debauched culture and spit them out in a lump of reconstituted evil\". The decision to send the first season winner to sing the national anthem at the Lincoln Memorial on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks in 2002 was also poorly received by many. Lisa de Moraes of \"The Washington Post\" noted sarcastically that \"The terrorists have won\" and, with a sideswipe at the show's commercialism and voting process, that the decision as to who \"gets to turn this important site into just another cog in the 'Great \"American Idol\" Marketing Mandala' is in the hands of the millions of girls who have made \"American Idol\" a hit. Them and a handful of phone-redialer geeks who have been clocking up to 10,000 calls each week for their contestant of choice (but who, according to Fox, are in absolutely no way skewing the outcome).\"\nSome of the later writers about the show were more positive, Michael Slezak, again of \"Entertainment Weekly\", thought that \"for all its bloated, synthetic, product-shilling, money-making trappings, \"Idol\" provides a once-a-year chance for the average American to combat the evils of today's music business.\" Singer Sheryl Crow, who was later to act as a mentor on the show, however took the view that the show \"undermines art in every way and promotes commercialism\". Pop music critic Ann Powers nevertheless suggested that Idol has \"reshaped the American songbook\", \"led us toward a new way of viewing ourselves in relationship to mainstream popular culture\", and connects \"the classic Hollywood dream to the multicentered popular culture of the future.\" Others focused on the personalities in the show; Ramin Setoodeh of \"Newsweek\" accused judge Simon Cowell's cruel critiques in the show of helping to establish in the wider world a culture of meanness, that \"Simon Cowell has dragged the rest of us in the mud with him.\" Some such as singer John Mayer disparaged the contestants, suggesting that those who appeared on \"Idol\" are not real artists with self-respect.\nSome in the entertainment industry were critical of the star-making aspect of the show. Usher, a mentor on the show, bemoaning the loss of the \"true art form of music\", thought that shows like \"American Idol\" made it seem \"so easy that everyone can do it, and that it can happen overnight\", and that \"television is a lie\". Musician Michael Feinstein, while acknowledging that the show had uncovered promising performers, said that \"American Idol\" \"isn't really about music. It's about all the bad aspects of the music business \u2013 the arrogance of commerce, this sense of 'I know what will make this person a star; artists themselves don't know.' \" That \"American Idol\" is seen to be a fast track to success for its contestants has been a cause of resentment for some in the industry. LeAnn Rimes, commenting on Carrie Underwood winning Best Female Artist in Country Music Awards over Faith Hill in 2006, said that \"Carrie has not paid her dues long enough to fully deserve that award\". It is a common theme that has been echoed by many others. Elton John, who had appeared as a mentor in the show but turned down an offer to be a judge on \"American Idol\", commenting on talent shows in general, said that \"there have been some good acts but the only way to sustain a career is to pay your dues in small clubs\". \"American Idol\" revolutionized American pop culture and the pop idol process and has provided an opportunity for many to bypass the small club scene and allow a much larger audience to participate in and select the next potential chart topping performer.\nThe success of the show's alumni, however, has led to a more positive assessment of the show, and the show was described as having \"proven it has a valid way to pick talent and a proven way to sell records\". While the industry is divided on the show success, its impact is felt particularly strongly in the country music format. According to a CMT exec, reflecting on the success of Idol alumni in the country genre, \"if you want to try and get famous fast by going to a cattle call audition on TV, Idol reasonably remains the first choice for anyone\", and that country music and Idol \"go together well\".\n\"American Idol\" was nominated for the Emmy's Outstanding Reality Competition Program for nine years but never won. Director Bruce Gower won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Series in 2009, and the show won a Creative Arts Emmys each in 2007 and 2008, three in 2009, and two in 2011, as well as a Governor's Award in 2007 for its Idol Gives Back edition. It won the People's Choice Award, which honors the popular culture of the previous year as voted by the public, for favorite competition/reality show in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2012. It won the first Critics' Choice Television Award in 2011 for Best Reality Competition.\nIn 2013, TV Guide ranked the series No. 48 on its list of the 60 Best Series of All Time.\nGeographical, ethnic, and gender bias.\nThroughout the series, twelve of the seventeen \"Idol\" winners, including its first five, had come from the Southern United States. A large number of other finalists during the series' run have also hailed from the American South, including Clay Aiken, Kellie Pickler, and Chris Daughtry, who are all from North Carolina. In 2012, an analysis of the 131 contestants who have appeared in the finals of all seasons of the show up to that point found that 48% have some connection to the Southern United States.\nThe show itself was popular in the Southern United States, with households in the Southeastern United States 10% more likely to watch \"American Idol\" during the eighth season in 2009, and those in the East Central region, such as Kentucky, were 16 percent more likely to tune into the series. Data from Nielsen SoundScan, a music-sales tracking service, showed that of the 47\u00a0million CDs sold by \"Idol\" contestants through January 2010, 85 percent were by contestants with ties to the American South.\nTheories given for the success of Southerners on \"Idol\" have been: more versatility with musical genres, as the Southern U.S. is home to several music genre scenes; not having as many opportunities to break into the pop music business; text-voting due to the South having the highest percentage of cell-phone only households; and the strong heritage of music and singing, which is notable in the Bible Belt, where it is in church that many people get their start in public singing. Others also suggest that the Southern character of these contestants appeal to the South, as well as local pride. According to fifth season winner Taylor Hicks, who is from the state of Alabama, \"People in the South have a lot of pride ... So, they're adamant about supporting the contestants who do well from their state or region.\"\nFor five consecutive seasons, starting in the seventh season, the title was given to a white male who plays the guitar \u2013 a trend that \"Idol\" pundits call the \"White guy with guitar\" or \"WGWG\" factor. Just hours before the eleventh-season finale, where Phillip Phillips was named the winner, Richard Rushfield, author of the book \"American Idol: The Untold Story\", said, \"You have this alliance between young girls and grandmas and they see it, not necessarily as a contest to create a pop star competing on the contemporary radio, but as ... who's the nicest guy in a popularity contest\", he says, \"And that has led to this dynasty of four, and possibly now five, consecutive, affable, very nice, good-looking white boys.\"\nStart order bias.\nSome fans call the final performance of the night the \"pimp spot\" because it usually receives a big boost in votes, due to the recency effect. By performing first, a performer may benefit from the primacy effect, but any other early performance may be stifled. The second performance spot is sometimes called the \"un-pimp spot\" because it is the least beneficial.\nControversy.\nThe show was criticized in earlier seasons over the onerous contract contestants had to sign that gave excessive control to 19 Entertainment over their future careers and handed a large part of their future earnings to the management.\nIndividual contestants have generated controversy in this competition for their past actions or for being 'ringers' planted by the producers. A number of contestants have been disqualified for various reasons, such as for having an existing contract or undisclosed criminal record, although the show has also been accused of a double standard for disqualifying some but not others.\nVoting results have been a consistent source of controversy. The mechanism of voting has aroused considerable criticism, most notably in the second season when Ruben Studdard beat Clay Aiken in a close vote, and in the eighth season, when the massive increase in text votes fueled the texting controversy. Concerns about power voting have been expressed from the first season. Since 2004, votes also have been affected to a limited degree by online communities such as DialIdol and Vote for the Worst.\nCultural impact.\nTelevision.\nThe enormous success of the show and the revenue it generated were transformative for the Fox Broadcasting Company. \"American Idol\" and other shows such as \"Survivor\" and \"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?\" were credited for expanding reality television programming in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s, and \"Idol\" became the most watched non-scripted primetime television series, which it remained for almost a decade, from 2003 to 2012, breaking records on U.S. television (dominated by drama shows and sitcoms in the preceding decades). On several occasions, notably in 2003 and 2008, \"American Idol\" overtook the Academy Awards as the most-watched non-sports entertainment event on U.S. television, marking the most recent time as of 2025 that a live regular non-sports primetime series has garnered such viewership in the country.\nThe show pushed Fox to become the number one U.S. TV network in overall viewers in 2008 and among adults aged 18\u201349, the key demographic coveted by advertisers, for an unprecedented eight consecutive years from 2005 to 2012. Its success also helped lift the ratings of other shows that were scheduled around it such as \"House\" and \"Bones\", and \"Idol\", for years, was Fox's strongest platform primetime television program for promoting eventual hit shows of the 2010s (of the same network) such as \"Glee\", \"New Girl\" and \"Empire\". The show, its creator Simon Fuller claimed, \"saved Fox\".\nThe show's massive success in the mid-2000s to early 2010s spawned a number of imitating singing-competition shows, such as \"Rock Star\", \"Nashville Star\", \"The Voice\", \"Rising Star\", \"The Sing-Off\", and \"The X Factor\". The number of imitative singing shows on American television had reached 17 by 2016. Its format also served as a blueprint for non-singing TV shows such as \"Dancing with the Stars\" and \"So You Think You Can Dance\", most of which contribute to the current highly competitive reality TV landscape on American television.\nMusic.\nAs one of the most successful shows on U.S. television history, \"American Idol\" has had a strong impact not just on television, but also in the wider world of entertainment. It helped create a number of highly successful recording artists, such as Kelly Clarkson, Daughtry and Carrie Underwood, as well as others of varying notability. The alumni of the show's original run scored 13 Grammy Award wins out of 54 Grammy nominations up to its end in 2016, with Underwood and Clarkson receiving 10 wins combined.\nVarious \"American Idol\" alumni had success on various record charts around the world; in the U.S. they had achieved 345 number ones on the \"Billboard\" charts in its first 10 years, and 458 by its last year of broadcast in 2016, with 100 achieved by Kelly Clarkson alone. According to Fred Bronson, author of books on the Billboard charts, no other entity has ever created as many hit-making artists and bestselling albums and singles. In 2007, \"American Idol\" alums accounted for 2.1% of all music sales. Its alumni have a massive impact on radio; in 2007, \"American Idol\" had become \"a dominant force in radio\" according to Rich Meyer, president of the radio station monitoring research company Mediabase. By 2010, four winners each had more than a million radio spins, with Kelly Clarkson leading the field with over four million spins.\nAt the end of the show's original run on Fox in 2016, \"Idol\"'s contestants have sold more than 60 million albums in the U.S. and more than 100 million records globally, more than 175 of which are certified platinum or gold. Its participants have generated more than 450 Billboard No. 1 hits and sold more than 260 million digital downloads.\nFilm and theater.\nThe impact of \"American Idol\" was also strongly felt in musical theater, where many of \"Idol\" alumni have forged successful careers. The striking effect of former \"American Idol\" contestants on Broadway has been noted and commented on. The casting of a popular \"Idol\" contestant can lead to significantly increased ticket sales. Other alumni have gone on to work in television and films, the most notable being Jennifer Hudson who, on the recommendation of the \"Idol\" vocal coach Debra Byrd, won a role in \"Dreamgirls\" and eventually went on to win an Academy Award for her performance. She later became the show's first and only alumnus ever to win the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). In all, as of 2025, \"American Idol\" finalists resulted to 5 Grammy Award winners (Clarkson, Barrino, Hudson, Underwood and Mandisa), 2 Emmy Award winners (Clarkson and Hudson), and an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Tony Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Critics' Choice Award winner (Hudson).\nIn 2007, a musical based on the show, \"\", played off-Broadway. The musical closed after its official opening night.\nRevenue and commercial ventures.\nThe dominance of \"American Idol\" in the ratings had made it the most profitable show in U.S. TV for many years. The show was estimated to generate $900\u00a0million for the year 2004 through sales of TV ads, albums, merchandise and concert tickets. By the seventh season, the show was estimated to earn around $900\u00a0million from its ad revenue alone, not including ancillary sponsorship deals and other income. One estimate puts the total TV revenue for the first eight seasons of \"American Idol\" at $6.4\u00a0billion. Sponsors that bought fully integrated packages can expect a variety of promotions of their products on the show, such as product placement, adverts and product promotion integrated into the show, and various promotional opportunities. Other off-air promotional partners pay for the rights to feature \"Idol\" branding on their packaging, products and marketing programs. \"American Idol\" also partnered with Disney in its theme park attraction The American Idol Experience.\nAdvertising revenue.\n\"American Idol\" became the most expensive series on broadcast networks for advertisers starting the fourth season, and by the next season, it had broken the record in advertising rate for a regularly scheduled prime-time network series, selling over $700,000 for a 30-seconds slot, and reaching up to $1.3\u00a0million for the finale. Its ad prices reached a peak in the seventh season at $737,000. Estimated revenue more than doubled from $404\u00a0million in the third season to $870\u00a0million in the sixth season. While that declined from the eighth season onwards, it still earned significantly more than its nearest competitor, with advertising revenue topping $800\u00a0million annually the next few seasons. However, the sharp drop in ratings in the eleventh season also resulted in a sharp drop in advertising rate for the twelfth season, and the show lost its leading position as the costliest show for advertisers. By 2014, ad revenue from had fallen to $427 million where a 30-second spot went for less than $300,000. For the relaunched \"Idol\" on ABC, it has been reported that a 30-second spot may cost between $120,000 and $160,000.\nMedia sponsorship.\nFord Motor Company and Coca-Cola were two of the first sponsors of \"American Idol\" in its first season. The sponsorship deal cost around $10\u00a0million in the first season, rising to $35\u00a0million by the seventh season, and between $50 and $60 million in the tenth season. The third major sponsor AT&T Wireless joined in the second season but ended after the twelfth season, and Coca-Cola officially ended its sponsorship after the thirteenth season amidst the declining ratings of \"Idol\" in the mid-2010s. iTunes sponsored the show since the seventh season.\n\"American Idol\" prominent display of its sponsors' logo and products had been noted since the early seasons. By the sixth season, \"Idol\" showed 4,349 product placements according to Nielsen Media Research. The branded entertainment integration proved beneficial to its advertisers \u2013 promotion of AT&T text-messaging as a means to vote successfully introduced the technology into the wider culture, and Coca-Cola has seen its equity increased during the show.\nCoca-Cola's archrival PepsiCo declined to sponsor \"American Idol\" at the show's start. What the \"Los Angeles Times\" later called \"missing one of the biggest marketing opportunities in a generation\" contributed to Pepsi losing market share, by 2010 falling to third place from second in the United States. PepsiCo sponsored the American version of Cowell's \"The X Factor\" in hopes of not repeating its \"Idol\" mistake until its cancellation.\nFor the revived series on ABC, Macy's and Johnson & Johnson's Zyrtec signed on as the major sponsors of the show.\nAmerican Idol tour.\nThe top ten (eleven in the tenth season, five in the fourteenth season, and seven in the sixteenth season) toured at the end of every season except for the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons. In the twelfth season tour a semi-finalist who won a sing-off was also added to the tour. Kellogg's Pop-Tarts was the sponsor for the first seven seasons, and Guitar Hero was added for the seventh season tour. M&M's Pretzel Chocolate Candies was a sponsor of the ninth season tour. The fifth season tour was the most successful tour with gross of over $35\u00a0million. However no concert tour was organized in the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons, the only seasons not to have an associated tour. The sixteenth season tour featured the band In Real Life as an opener on select dates.\n\"Idol Gives Back\".\n\"Idol Gives Back\" was a special charity event started in season six featuring performances by celebrities and various fund-raising initiatives. This event was also held in seasons seven and nine and has raised nearly $185\u00a0million in total.\nMusic releases.\n\"American Idol\" has traditionally released studio recordings of contestants' performances as well as the winner's coronation single for sale. For the first five seasons, the recordings were released as a compilation album at the end of the season. All five of these albums reached the top ten in Billboard 200 which made \"American Idol\" the most successful soundtrack franchise of any motion picture or television program. Starting late in the fifth season, individual performances were released during the season as digital downloads, initially from the \"American Idol\" official website only. In the seventh season the live performances and studio recordings were made available during the season from iTunes when it joined as a sponsor. In the tenth season the weekly studio recordings were also released as compilation digital album straight after performance night.\n19 Recordings, a recording label owned by 19 Entertainment, currently hold the rights to phonographic material recorded by all the contestants. 19 Recordings originally partnered with Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) to promote and distribute the recordings through its labels RCA Records, Arista Records, J Records, and Jive Records. From 2005\u20132007, BMG partnered with Sony Music Entertainment to form a joint venture known as Sony BMG Music Entertainment. From 2008 to 2010, following their acquisition of BMG, Sony Music handled the distribution of \"American Idol\"'s music. In 2010, UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records replaced Sony as the music label for \"American Idol\".\nTie-ins.\n\"American Idol\" video games\nTheme park attraction.\nOn February 14, 2009, The Walt Disney Company debuted \"The American Idol Experience\" at its Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. In this live production, co-produced by 19 Entertainment, park guests chose from a list of songs and auditioned privately for Disney cast members. Those selected then performed on a stage in a 1000-seat theater replicating the \"Idol\" set. Three judges, whose mannerisms and style mimicked those of the real \"Idol\" judges, critiqued the performances. Audience members then voted for their favorite performer. There were several preliminary-round shows during the day that culminated in a \"finals\" show in the evening where one of the winners of the previous rounds that day was selected as the overall winner. The winner of the finals show received a \"Dream Ticket\" that granted them front-of-the-line privileges at any future \"American Idol\" audition. The attraction closed on August 30, 2014.\nOther broadcasts.\n\"American Idol\" is broadcast to over 100 nations worldwide. In most nations these are not live broadcasts and may be tape delayed by several days or weeks, except for other season finales that are aired live in several countries simulcast with the U.S. broadcast on Fox (2002\u20132016) and ABC (since 2018). In Canada, the first thirteen seasons of American Idol were aired live countrywide by CTV and/or CTV Two, in simulcast with Fox. CTV dropped \"Idol\" after its thirteenth season and in August 2014, Yes TV announced that it had picked up Canadian rights to \"American Idol\" beginning in its 2015 season. In 2017, it was announced the show would return to CTV Two for its sixteenth season. Since season nineteen, the show started airing on Citytv. In Slovakia, American Idol was broadcast on Jednotka.\nIn Latin America, the show is broadcast and subtitled by Sony Entertainment Television. In Southeast Asia, it is broadcast by Sony Channel every Monday and Tuesday nine or ten hours after since its revival. In Philippines, it is aired every Thursday and Friday nine or ten hours after its United States telecast; from 2004 to 2007 on ABC; 2008\u201311 on QTV, then GMA News TV; 2012\u201316, 2018\u201319 on ETC; and since 2024 on TV5. In Indonesia, it was aired on RCTI in the 2002 to 2003 season with the Indonesian subtitles, before Indonesian Idol was held in the 2004, aired after each episode ended, and in the 2011 to 2013 season it was broadcast by B-Channel (now RTV). In Australia, it aired a few hours after the U.S. telecast. It was aired on Network Ten from 2002 to 2008 and then again in 2013. Between 2008 and 2012 it aired on Fox8 and the thirteenth and fourteenth seasons (2014\u201315) it aired on digital channel, Eleven, a sister channel to Network Ten. Its final season (2016) aired on Fox8 hours after the original U.S. broadcast. The show enjoyed a lot of popularity in Australia throughout the 2000s before declining in the ratings. In the United Kingdom, episodes were aired one day after the U.S. broadcast on digital channel ITV2. In the twelfth season, the episodes aired on 5*. It was also aired in Ireland on TV3 two days after the telecast. In Brazil and Israel, the show airs two days after its original broadcast, and broadcast live during the season finale. In the instances where the airing is delayed, the shows may sometimes be combined into one episode to summarize the results. In Italy, the twelfth season was broadcast by La3. In Singapore, The show was broadcast on Mediacorp Channel 5 for the ninth and tenth seasons.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["191890", "21650"], "permutation_1": ["21650", "191890"], "permutation_2": ["21650", "191890"], "permutation_3": ["191890", "21650"]}
{"id": "2hop__450687_7666", "docs_added": {"31327401": "Allan Wicker\nAllan W. Wicker (born 1941) studied with the founders of ecological psychology, Roger G. Barker and Herbert Wright, in the social psychology program at the University of Kansas, where he earned the Ph.D. in 1967. He taught at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana before taking a position at Claremont Graduate School (now Claremont Graduate University) in 1971, where he was a professor of psychology until early retirement in 1999. He is currently an emeritus professor.\nBest-known contributions.\nWicker is recognized for significant contributions to ecological psychology and for a widely cited paper on the attitude-behavior relationship.\nEcological Psychology.\nHis \"Introduction to Ecological Psychology\" (1979) was praised by reviewers for providing a readable and personal account of the empirical and theoretical works of ecological psychologists. One reviewer noted these contributions of the text: connection of ecological psychology with other specialties in psychology and with related disciplines, revision of traditional positions that Wicker viewed as unnecessarily restrictive, and \"development of original, constructive advances within the [ecological psychology] framework\".\nIn subsequent publications, Wicker sought to refine and elaborate the basic environmental unit of ecological psychology, the behavior setting. According to Scott, \"Wicker emerged as the individual in this group of researchers [ecological psychologists following Barker] who has taken the theoretical conceptualizations the farthest. Wicker (1987) proposed four extensions of behavior setting theory, now adding considerations of the life cycles of behavior settings, the larger contextual environments of the molar level setting environments, the individuals within the settings (this point brought him into some disagreement with the classicists), and more practical applications of settings\".\nSocial Psychology.\nIn 1969, Wicker published a review paper on the relationship between verbal expressions of attitudes and overt behaviors that stimulated much debate and research in social psychology. The paper was designated a \"citation classic\" in 1980.\nHonors and recognition.\nWicker was elected a Fellow of the following divisions of the American Psychological Association: Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Society for Community Research and Action, and Division of Population and Environmental Psychology. He was president of the last-mentioned division in 1985\u20131986. He is a Charter Member Emeritus and Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. Wicker has held Fulbright appointments in Zimbabwe (1989), Ghana (1993), Malaysia (1997), and Japan (2009). His \"Working in Ghana\" project, which documents the work lives of more than 50 Ghanaian and expatriate workers, grew out of the Ghana appointment (see External Links below).\nSelected publications.\nBook.\nWicker, A. W. (1984). \"An introduction to ecological psychology\". New York: Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1979)\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "163327": "University of Kansas\nPublic university in Lawrence, Kansas, US\nThe University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States. Two branch campuses are in the Kansas City metropolitan area on the Kansas side: the university's medical school and hospital in Kansas City, Kansas, the Edwards Campus in Overland Park. There are also educational and research sites in Garden City, Hays, Leavenworth, Parsons, and Topeka, an agricultural education center in rural north Douglas County, and branches of the medical school in Salina and Wichita. The university is a member of the Association of American Universities and is classified among \"R1: Doctoral Universities \u2013 Very high research activity\".\nFounded March 21, 1865, the university was opened in 1866 under a charter granted by the Kansas State Legislature in 1864 and legislation passed in 1863 under the state constitution, which was adopted two years after the 1861 admission of the former Kansas Territory as the 34th state into the Union.\nAs of fall 2022[ [update]], 23,872 students were enrolled at the Lawrence and Edwards campuses with an additional 2,836 students enrolled at the University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC) for a total enrollment of 26,708 students across the three campuses. Overall, the university (including KUMC) employed 3,196 faculty members (faculty, faculty administrators, librarians, and unclassified academic staff) in fall 2022[ [update]].\nKansas's athletic teams compete in NCAA Division I sports as the Jayhawks, as members of the Big 12 Conference. They field 16 varsity sports, as well as club-level sports for ice hockey, rugby, men's volleyball, soccer, basketball, rock climbing, triathlon, cross country, track, swim, pickleball, table tennis, and water skiing.\nHistory.\nOn February 20, 1863, Kansas Governor Thomas Carney signed into law a bill creating the state university in Lawrence. The law was conditioned upon a gift from Lawrence of a $15,000 endowment fund and a site for the university, in or near the town, of not less than of land. If Lawrence failed to meet these conditions, Emporia instead of Lawrence would get the university.\nThe site selected for the university was a hill known as Hogback Ridge (later known as Mount Oread), which was privately donated by Charles L. Robinson, the Republican governor of the state of Kansas from 1861 to 1863, and one of the original settlers of Lawrence, Kansas. Robinson and his wife Sara bestowed the site to the State of Kansas in exchange for land elsewhere. The philanthropist Amos Adams Lawrence donated $10,000 of the necessary endowment fund, and the citizens of Lawrence raised the remaining money themselves via private donations. On November 2, 1863, Governor Carney announced Lawrence had met the conditions to get into the state university, and the following year the university was officially organized.\nThe school's Board of Regents held its first meeting in March 1865, which is the event that KU dates its founding from. Work on the first college building began later that year. The school opened for classes on September 12, 1866, and the first class graduated in 1873. According to William L. Burdick, the first degree awarded by the university was a Doctor of Divinity, bestowed upon noted abolitionist preacher Richard Cordley.\nDuring the early development of the University of Kansas, Chancellors Joshua Lippincott, Francis H. Snow, and Frank Strong, along with the Kansas Board of Regents, worked to establish the university as not only a center for higher education but also a representative agency of the state. Snow, who served from 1890 to 1901, emphasized scientific research and public engagement, while Strong, beginning in 1902, advanced the university\u2019s role in public service. This vision aligned with the sentiments expressed by Professor M. S. Ward, who stated in 1891 that \"Students should find in the University preparation for all the various pursuits and callings of society. The ultimate aim of our own State University ought to be [promoting] the highest Christian culture, an ample professional training, [which] will make our civilization the highest possible on earth.\"\nIn an effort to appeal to the predominantly Christian population of Kansas, many of who in the early history of the university were critical of state money being used to fund a secular institution, Chancellor Lippincott sought to reassure the public that the University of Kansas maintained strong Christian values. In response to a concerned parent questioning the university\u2019s mission, Lippincott wrote, \"The University is a Christian institution founded by a Christian state. We have daily prayers conducted for the most part by members of the Faculty of whom nearly all are Christian and several ministers of the Gospel.\"\nAlthough the university was a secular institution, religion remained a central cultural force among students. In an 1880 community letter, an anonymous student reflected on the broader moral and spiritual purpose of education at KU, writing, \"We are all seeking the truth, we are all earnest in our effort to correctly solve the great problem of a worthy and useful existence\u2014we all recognize the wonderful features of a Christian age and a Christian country and we all hope to be true men and women [of the country] and almost all acknowledge that in accomplishing this we need an inspiration which is not of this earth nor fashioned after this world.\"\nChancellor Lippincott emphasized the importance of individual development in higher education, distinguishing universities from more rigid collegiate institutions in other parts of the country. In a lecture to students, James Marvin, the third Chancellor of the University stated, \"Higher education should aid students to realize all their potentialities, but only in a university are all individualities respected. Colleges that require all students [to] follow the same course have a factory air about them. Students go through the same milling process and come out machines, but God did not intend man to be a machine, and the University of Kansas should be about His work.\"\nBeginning in 1880, the University began to field intercollegiate athletics programs, starting with baseball. The University would introduce football in 1890, men's basketball in 1898, a women's club basketball team in 1902, and various other varsity athletics programs throughout the 20th century.\nDuring World War I, the University of Kansas became a key training ground for military personnel, and courses were added for male students to reflect this. Military drills and coursework in military science were made mandatory for male students, and in 1918, KU established a unit of the Students' Army Training Corps (SATC) to provide academic and military instruction. Faculty contributed to war-related research, while female students supported Red Cross efforts. Chancellor Frank Strong emphasized KU\u2019s role in preparing students for both military service and national responsibility. Strong was a vocal opponent of the United States entering a foreign war, and helped found the Kansas Branch of the League to Enforce Peace in 1915, which was a collection of activists who were opposed to American involvement in foreign conflicts. Strong advocated for patriotism during his later years as Chancellor, stating at the University Assembly in 1915 that \"it is America's destiny to preserve Western Civilization, which seems to be destroying itself abroad. While the youth of Europe are on its battlefields, the youth of America must seek higher education to enable them to carry on the material for the leadership of the world. America and its universities, with the University of Kansas having a big place among them, must become the center of the greatest intellectual life that the next generation should know.\" In April 1917, after Congress declared a state of war, Strong sent a letter to Congress stating that the University \"has always been loyal to country and to the flag, and always will be.\"\nDuring World War II, Kansas was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program, which offered students a path to a Navy commission.\nLandmarks and structures.\nKU is home to the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics, the Beach Center on Disability, Lied Center of Kansas and radio stations KJHK, 90.7 FM, and KANU, 91.5 FM. The university is also host to several significant museums. These include the University of Kansas Natural History Museum, founded in 1927, which contains important collections in mammalogy, ornithology, vertebrate paleontology, and entomology; and the Spencer Museum of Art, founded in 1928, home to a wide variety of cultural materials from all around the world, with a particular emphasis on American Indian materials. The libraries of the university include Watson Library, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, the Murphy Art and Architecture Library, Thomas Gorton Music & Dance Library, and Anschutz Library. Of athletic note, the university is home to Allen Fieldhouse, which is heralded as one of the greatest basketball arenas in the world, and David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium, which is the eighth oldest college football stadium in the country.\nAcademics.\nThe University of Kansas is a large, state-sponsored university with five campuses. KU is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU) and is classified among \"R1: Doctoral Universities \u2013 Very high research activity\". KU features the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, which includes the School of the Arts and the School of Public Affairs & Administration; and the schools of Architecture, Design & Planning; Business; Education; Engineering; Health Professions; Journalism & Mass Communications; Law; Medicine; Music; Nursing; Pharmacy; and Social Welfare. The university offers more than 345 degree programs. In 2017 Johnson County accounted for most of instate enrollment.\nAccording to the National Science Foundation, KU spent $339 million on research and development in 2018, ranking it 74th in the nation.\nSchool of Architecture and Design.\nThe University of Kansas School of Architecture and Design (ArcD), with its main building being Marvin Hall, traces its architectural roots to the creation of the architectural engineering degree program in KU's School of Engineering in 1912. The Bachelor of Architecture degree was added in 1920. In 1969, the School of Architecture and Urban Design (SAUD) was formed. In 2001, architectural engineering merged with civil and environmental engineering. The design programs from the discontinued School of Fine Arts were merged into the school in 2009, forming the School of Architecture and Design.\nThe Department of Design began in 1921. The Bachelor of Fine Arts degree program began eight years later. Industrial Design was added in 1941, interior design in 1946, jewelry and silversmithing, art history, and the Masters of Fine Arts program in 1948.\nIn 2009, the university reorganized the School of Fine Arts. The professional design practice programs became the Department of Design, administratively located in the School of Architecture and Design.\nSchool of Business.\nThe University of Kansas School of Business is a public business school on the main campus of the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. The KU School of Business was founded in 1924 and has more than 80 faculty members and approximately 1500 students.\nNamed one of the best business schools in the Midwest by Princeton Review, the KU School of Business has been continually accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) for its undergraduate and graduate programs in business and accounting.\nFor 2021, \"U.S. News & World Report\" ranked KU's business school 68th out of 477 evaluated.\nIn 2016, The University of Kansas completed construction on a new home for the business school, named Capitol Federal Hall. It is located at 1654 Naismith Drive, near KU's Rec Center and across the street from Allen Fieldhouse. Capitol Federal Hall is a 166,500 square-foot building complete with state-of-the-art technology and several research labs.\nSchool of Law.\nThe University of Kansas School of Law, founded in 1878, was the top law school in the state of Kansas, and tied for 70th out of 198 nationally, according to the 2021 \"U.S. News & World Report\" rankings. Classes are held in Green Hall at W 15th St and Burdick Dr, which is named after former dean James Green.\nSchool of Engineering.\nThe KU School of Engineering is a public engineering school located on the main campus. The School of Engineering was founded officially in 1891, although engineering degrees were awarded as early as 1873.\nIn the \"U.S. News & World Report\"'s \"America's Best Colleges\" 2021 issue, KU's School of Engineering was ranked tied for 102nd among 218 engineering schools whose highest degree is a doctorate.\nNotable alumni include Charles E. Spahr (1934), the former CEO of Standard Oil of Ohio.\nSchool of Journalism and Mass Communications.\nIn addition to its academic programs, the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications sponsors publications including \"The University Daily Kansan\", \"Jayplay\" magazine, and KUJH TV.\nMedical Center.\nThe University of Kansas Medical Center features three schools: the School of Medicine, School of Nursing, and School of Health Professions that each has its own programs of graduate study. As of the Fall 2013 semester, there were 3,349 students enrolled at KU Med. The Medical Center also offers four-year instruction at the Wichita campus, and features a medical school campus in Salina, Kansas devoted to rural health care.\nThe University of Kansas Health System is co-located at the University of Kansas Medical Center.\nEdwards Campus, Overland Park.\nKU's Edwards Campus is in Overland Park, Kansas. Established in 1993, its goal is to provide adults with the opportunity to complete undergraduate, graduate, and certificate programs. About 2,000 students attend the Edwards Campus, with an average age of 31.\nUniversity of Kansas Leavenworth.\nNear the beginning of the 2018\u20132019 school year, KU launched classes in Leavenworth, Kansas, offering classes to \"both civilian and military\" students, emphasizing a \"high priority in supporting military-affiliated students\". The Leavenworth classes offer both undergraduate and graduate courses.\nComputing innovations.\nKU's School of Business launched interdisciplinary management science graduate studies in operations research during Fall Semester 1965. The program provided the foundation for decision science applications supporting NASA Project Apollo Command Capsule Recovery Operations.\nKU's academic computing department was an active participant in setting up the Internet and is the developer of the early Lynx text-based web browser. Lynx provided hypertext browsing and navigation prior to Tim Berners Lee's invention of HTTP and HTML.\nStudent activities.\nAthletics.\nThe University of Kansas has had teams representing them athletically since at least 1867, a year after classes officially started. Starting in 1866, a baseball team made up of KU students represented the University of Kansas in games played at the Kansas State Fair against local teams from around the state of Kansas. \nThe school's sports teams, wearing crimson and blue, are called the Kansas Jayhawks. They participate in the NCAA's Division I and in the Big 12 Conference. The University of Kansas has won thirteen National Championships all-time: six in men's basketball (two Helms Foundation championships and four NCAA championships, most recently in 2022), three in men's indoor track and field, three in men's outdoor track and field, one in men's cross country and one in women's outdoor track and field. The home course for KU Cross Country is Rim Rock Farm. Their most recent championship came in 2022, the men's basketball team won the 2022 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament.\nKansas football dates from 1890 and is one of the oldest continuous programs in the nation. They have played in the Orange Bowl three times: 1948, 1969, and 2008, as well as nine other bowl games. They are currently coached by Lance Leipold, who was hired in May 2021. From its inception in 1890 to 1929, the program saw consistent success, winning several conference titles in 4 different conferences. After joining the Big 6 Conference (which would eventually become the Big 8) in 1929, Kansas began to struggle in the win-loss column. With the formation of the Big 8 conference in 1960, Kansas became a consistent winner again and fielded legendary coaches like Pepper Rodgers, Don Fambrough, Bud Moore, and Glen Mason. In 2008, under the leadership of Mark Mangino, the #7 Jayhawks emerged victorious in their first BCS bowl game, the FedEx Orange Bowl, with a 24\u201321 victory over the #3 Virginia Tech Hokies. This capstone victory marked the end of the most successful season in school history, in which the Jayhawks went 12\u20131 (.923). The team plays at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium, which recently underwent an $85 million renovation to add an indoor practice facility with a 120-yard field, an outdoor practice facility with 2 full fields and three partial fields, new locker rooms, a new weight training facility, new residencies for players, new offices, new turf, new seats, and a state-of-the-art video board.\nThe KU men's basketball team has fielded a team every year since 1898. The Jayhawks are a perennial national contender, coached by Hall of Fame coach Bill Self. The team has won six national titles, including four NCAA tournament championships in 1952, 1988, 2008, and 2022. The basketball program is currently the winningest program in college basketball history with an overall record of 2,355\u2013877 up to their Final Four appearance in the 2021\u201322 season. The team plays at Allen Fieldhouse. Perhaps its best-recognized player was Wilt Chamberlain, who played in the 1950s, later becoming an NBA star and Harlem Globetrotter.\nKansas has counted among its coaches James Naismith (the inventor of basketball), Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Phog Allen (\"the Father of basketball coaching\" and a Kansas alumnus himself), Dick Harp, Ted Owens, Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Roy Williams, and Basketball Hall of Fame inductee and former NBA Champion Detroit Pistons coach Larry Brown. Currently, Kansas is coached by Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Bill Self. In addition, legendary University of Kentucky coach and Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Adolph Rupp played for KU's 1922 and 1923 Helms National Championship teams, and NCAA Hall of Fame inductee and University of North Carolina Coach Dean Smith played for KU's 1952 NCAA Championship team. Both Rupp and Smith played under Phog Allen. Allen also coached Hall of Fame coaches Dutch Lonborg and Ralph Miller. Allen founded the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC), which started what is now the NCAA Tournament. The Tournament began in 1939 under the NABC and the next year was handed off to the newly formed NCAA.\nKansas fielded its first women's soccer team in 1995. The women's soccer team launched in 1980 as a club sport, but was promoted to varsity play in the NCAA in 1995 when Lori Walker was hired as the head coach. Since 1995 they've appeared in the NCAA tournament ten times, and have won the Big 12 championship three times. They compete at Rock Chalk Park, a 2,500 seat stadium built in 2014. In cooperation with Kansas Athletics, FIFA is using Rock Chalk Park as a training facility and team base camp for the 2026 World Cup, with one of the host sites being nearby Kansas City. \nNotable non-varsity sports include rugby, men's hockey, and men's soccer. The rugby team owns its private facility and tours internationally every two years. The men's hockey team plays at AdventHealth Sports Park in Overland Park, Kansas. They also practice in Topeka and Lawrence. They compete in the American Collegiate Hockey Association. Men's soccer competes in the South Conference of the Upper Midwest Collegiate Soccer League. They play on an artificial turf field next to student dorms next to Allen Fieldhouse.\nDebate teams.\nThe University of Kansas has had more teams (70) compete in the National Debate Tournament than any other university. Kansas has won the tournament 6 times (1954, 1970, 1976, 1983, 2009, and 2018) and had 15 teams make it to the final four. Kansas trails only Northwestern (15) and Harvard (7) for most tournaments won and is tied with Dartmouth (6). Kansas also won the Copeland Award in 1981\u201382 and 2017\u201318.\nMedia.\nThe university's newspaper is \"University Daily Kansan\", which placed first in the Intercollegiate Writing Competition of the prestigious William Randolph Hearst Writing Foundation competition. In the winter of 2008, a group of students created KUpedia, a wiki about all things KU. They received student funding for operations in 2008\u201309. The KU Department of English publishes the \"Coal City Review\", an annual literary journal of prose, poetry, reviews, and illustrations. The \"Review\" typically features the work of many writers, but periodically spotlights one author, as in the case of 2006 Nelson Poetry Book Award-winner \"Voyeur Poems\" by Matthew Porubsky.\nThe \"University Daily Kansan\" operates outside of the university's William Allen White School of Journalism and reaches at least 30,000 daily readers through its print and online publications.\nThe university houses the following public broadcasting stations: KJHK, a student-run campus radio station, KUJH-LP, an independent station that primarily broadcasts public affairs programs, and KANU, the NPR-affiliated radio station. Kansas Public Radio station KANU was one of the nation's first public radio stations. KJHK, the campus radio has roots back to 1952 and is completely run by students.\nCenter for Community Health and Development.\nThe university's Center for Community Health and Development (formerly KU Work Group) was designated as a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Community Health and Development in 2004. It is affiliated with the Department of Applied Behavioral Science and the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies at the university, and supports community health and development through a variety of means, including its free online resource, the Community Tool Box.\nFoundations.\nUniversity of Kansas Memorial Corporation.\nThe first union was built on campus in 1926 as a campus community center. The unions are still the \"living rooms\" of campus and include three locations \u2013 the Kansas Union and Burge Union at the Lawrence Campus and Jayhawk Central at the Edwards Campus. The KU Memorial Unions Corporation manages the KU Bookstore (with seven locations). The KU Bookstore is the official bookstore of KU. The corporation also includes KU Dining Services, with more than 20 campus locations, including The Market (inside the Kansas Union) and The Underground (located in Wescoe Hall). The KU Bookstore and KU Dining Services are not-for-profit, with proceeds supporting student programs, such as Student Union Activities.\nKU Endowment.\nKU Endowment was established in 1891 as the university's primary institutional foundation to manage and build the university's endowment.\nNotable alumni and faculty.\nAffiliated with the university as students, researchers, or faculty members have been 325 Fulbright Scholars, 27 Rhodes Scholars, 10 Marshall Scholars, 2 Mitchell Scholars, 12 MacArthur Fellows, 7 Pulitzer Prize winners, 5 NASA astronauts, 3 Nobel Prize laureates, 2 Fields Medal winners, 3 Hugo Award or Nebula Award winners and 1 Academy Award winner.\nAdditionally, two people associated with the school have been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Dean Smith, who played basketball at Kansas from 1949 to 1953 and was a Hall of Fame men's basketball coach at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was given the award by Barack Obama in 2013. Politician Bob Dole, who played football and basketball at the school but did not graduate, was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom award by Bill Clinton in 1997.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "74560122": "Addison Wiley\nAmerican middle-distance runner\nAddison \"Addy\" Wiley (born October 24, 2003) is an American professional middle- and long-distance runner and the American Record Holder in the 1000m.\nWiley is an eight-time NAIA national champion in cross country and track and field. She holds the high school national record for the 1600m with a time of 4:26.16 and the collegiate record for the 1500m with a time of 3:59.17. She placed 5th in the World Athletics U20 Championships in the 1500m in 2022 and won gold in the NACAC U23 championships in 2023. She placed 2nd at the USATF indoor championships in the 800m to qualify for the 2024 world indoor championships in Glasgow, United Kingdom.\nHigh school career.\nWiley attended Huntington North High School in Huntington, Indiana. She was a multi-sport athlete that did not fully commit to running until her senior season. She played on the varsity soccer team and was named All-Conference all four years, earning First Team honors as a sophomore, junior, and senior while leading her team in goals scored. She also played varsity basketball as a freshman and sophomore.\n2019.\nIn her freshman track season, Wiley ran the fastest time ever by an Indiana freshman in winning her first state championship in the 1600m in 4:46.93. She added another All-State performance by placing 7th in the 800m in 2:13.26.\nAs a sophomore in the fall, she competed in cross country for the first time. Despite limited running training due to being a member of the soccer team, Wiley achieved All-State by placing 10th at the state championships in 18:28.6.\n2020.\nWiley was unable to defend her 1600m state championship title in spring of her sophomore year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nIn the fall of her junior year, Wiley achieved All-State status in cross country again by placing 6th with a time of 18:25.9.\n2021.\nOn March 26 & 28, Wiley competed in the NSAF USA Meet of Champions in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina where she won the mile in 4:48.23 and placed second in the 5000m in 17:16.15.\nAt the 2021 IHSAA State Track and Field Championships, she became the first Indiana runner to win both the 800m (2:08.62) and the 1600m (4:45.27). She was subsequently named the 2020\u20132021 Gatorade Player of the Year award winner for Indiana Girls Track and Field.\nOn June 12, Wiley competed in the RunningLane Track Championships in Madison, Alabama. She won the mile in a new personal record of 4:38.14, the fastest high school time in the nation in 2021 and the fastest ever by an Indiana runner. Her time also ranked No. 9 on the all-time high school list for the outdoor mile.\nWiley next traveled to Renton, Washington to compete in the Brooks PR Invitational. Despite finishing second, her time of 2:04.41 was a new Indiana state record and the No. 5 fastest time in the nation for 2021.\nWiley ended her track season on July 3 at the Nike Outdoor National Championships at historic Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon. She won her first high school national championship in the mile with a time of 4:42.78.\nOn October 30, Wiley finished her high school cross country career, achieving All-State status for the third time by placing 7th with a time of 18:40.2.\nWiley signed her National Letter of Intent with the University of Colorado on November 22, but would de-commit the following summer to enroll at her hometown college, Huntington University.\n2022.\nWiley opened her senior track season on March 12 at Nike Indoor Nationals at the Ocean Breeze Athletic Complex on Staten Island, New York. She earned All-America honors in both the 800m (3rd in 2:09.52) and the mile (2nd in 4:52.55).\nAt the 2022 IHSAA State Track and Field Championships on June 3, she repeated as state champion in both the 800m and 1600m. For the second consecutive year, she completed the double that no other Indiana runner has ever accomplished. She won the 1600m in 4:38.69 and the 800m in 2:06.26, both of which were state meet records. She then finished third in the 3200m in 10:38.57, and finally anchored the 4x400 relay team with a split time of 57.03. All four races were run within a timespan of only two hours, 17 minutes.\nWiley finished her high school career as a five-time Indiana State Champion and holder of six school records \u2013 200m (26.24), 400m (57.12), 800m (2:04.40), 1600m (4:37.98), mile (4:38.14), and 3200m (10:13.40). For the second consecutive year, Wiley was honored as the 2021\u20132022 Gatorade Player of the Year award winner for Indiana Girls Track and Field.\nOn June 11, one week after the state championship meet, Wiley competed in the Midwest Redemption Meet at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. Her 1600m time of 4:26.16 broke the national high school record of 4:33.29, set by Alexa Efraimson in 2014. Her time converts to a 4:27.71 for the mile, faster than the overall national record of 4:28.25 set by Mary Cain in 2013 and the outdoor mile record of 4:33.87 set by Katelyn Tuohy in 2018.\nWiley next competed in the Nike Outdoor National Championships in Eugene, Oregon, on June 19. She won her second national title, this time in the 800m. Her winning time of 2:04.64 was the No. 5 fastest time in the nation for 2022.\nThe following weekend, Wiley again competed in Eugene in the USATF U20 Outdoor Championships. She won her first USA Track & Field national title in the 1500m with a time of 4:15.53. Her placing earned her a spot on the United States team that would compete in the World Athletics U20 Championships the following month.\nAt the 2022 World Athletics U20 Championships in Cali, Colombia, Wiley qualified for the final by placing second in her heat with a time of 4:19.39. In the final, Wiley placed 5th with a personal record of 4:11.43.\nCollege career.\n2022.\nWiley began her collegiate career at Huntington University in the fall of 2022. She won her first three cross country races, the Louisville Classic in Louisville, Kentucky, the Great Lakes Challenge in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the Crossroads League Championships hosted by Marian University in Shelbyville, Indiana. At the 2022 NAIA Cross Country Championships held in Apalachee Regional Park in Tallahassee, Florida, Wiley finished in second place to earn her first collegiate All-America honor with a time of 16:58.9. Huntington placed 13th overall in the team standings.\n2023.\nWiley opened her track season at the Camel City Elite Races at the JDL Fast Track in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Her mile time of 4:32.15 set a new NAIA national record and was the fastest collegiate time ever run at the Camel City Elite Races. She had to decline the $6,000 winnings due to NAIA regulations. It was the first time a collegiate athlete had won an Elite Race at Camel City.\nOn February 18, Wiley competed in the 1500m at the 2023 USA Indoor Track and Field Championships in Albuquerque, New Mexico."}, "descending_order": ["74560122", "31327401", "163327"], "permutation_1": ["74560122", "163327", "31327401"], "permutation_2": ["74560122", "31327401", "163327"], "permutation_3": ["163327", "74560122", "31327401"]}
{"id": "2hop__128711_654550", "docs_added": {"15812310": "WYYU\nWYYU (104.5 FM, \"Mix 104.5\") is a radio station broadcasting an adult contemporary music format, and licensed to serve Dalton, Georgia, United States. The station is owned by North Georgia Radio Group, L.P. and features programming from CBS News Radio and Westwood One.\nThe station can be heard over much of northwest Georgia, and around and east of Chattanooga in southeast Tennessee. It transmits from the ridge northeast of Dalton and northwest of Chatsworth, near Georgia 286. Its studios and transmitter are separately located in Dalton.\nHistory.\nThe station went on the air as WAKP on April 28, 1995. On June 1, 1995, the station changed its call sign to the current WYYU.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "110437": "Dalton, Georgia\nDalton is a city and the county seat of Whitfield County, Georgia, United States. It is also the principal city of the Dalton Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Murray and Whitfield counties.\nAs of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 34,417 people; the city's metro area was 124,837. Dalton is located just off Interstate 75 in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in northwest Georgia and is the second-largest city in northwest Georgia, after Rome.\nDalton is home to many of the nation's floor-covering manufacturers, primarily those producing carpet, rugs, and vinyl flooring. It is home to the Dalton Convention Center, which showcases the Georgia Athletic Coaches' Hall of Fame and hosts a variety of events.\nGeography.\nDalton is located at (34.771088, -84.971553). According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and (0.10%) is water.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2020 census.\nAs of the 2020 United States census, there were 34,417 people, 11,305 households, and 7,470 families residing in the city.\n2010 census.\nAccording to the 2010 census Dalton had a population of 33,128 living in 11,337 households. The racial and ethnic composition of the population was 42.4% non-Hispanic white, 22.6% Hispanic, 6.4% black, 0.6% Native American, 2.4% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 0.1% non-Hispanic reporting some other race, 22.2% Hispanic reporting some other race and 3.2% reporting two or more races. 48.0% of the population was Hispanic or Latino.\n2000 census.\nAccording to the census estimate of 2006, there were 33,604 people, 10,689 households, and 8,511 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 11,229 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 20% White, 22% Black, 1% Native American, 1% Asian, 1% Pacific Islander, 21.15% from other races, and 6% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 50% of the population.\nThere were 9,689 households, out of which 34.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 49.9% were married couples living together, 11.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.8% were non-families. 27.6% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.81, and the average family size was 3.43.\nIn the city, the population was spread out, with 27.3% under the age of 18, 12.0% from 18 to 24, 30.3% from 25 to 44, 18.9% from 45 to 64, and 11.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 31 years. For every 100 females, there were 104.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 101.6 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $34,312, and the median income for a family was $41,111. Males had a median income of $28,158 versus $23,701 for females. The per capita income for the city was $20,575. About 11.9% of families and 16.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 19.0% of those under age 18 and 8.9% of those aged 65 or over. After the lay-offs companies like Mohawk Industries paid workers with twenty years seniority a \"small severance package.\"\nMexican Americans.\nIn the 1990s, Mexicans began to immigrate to Dalton to work at carpet factories. By 2010, 48% of Dalton's 33,000 residents were Latino, comprising a plurality of all residents. During the late 1980s economic boom \u2013 when demand for carpet mill laborers reached an all-time high \u2013 the 320 carpet mills aggressively recruited Latino workers. As of 2012, Hispanics constituted the plurality of students at Dalton High School. In 2024 multiple churches, restaurants, and home decorations reflected the bicultural ties.\nClimate.\nDalton has a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\"), with hot, humid summers, and mild to cool winters, and straddles the border between USDA Hardiness Zones 7B and 8A. The monthly daily mean temperature ranges from in January to in July; on average, there are 37.9 days of + highs, 2.0 days where the high fails to reach above freezing, and 62.6 nights where the low falls to or below annually.\nSports.\nSoccer.\nIn 2018, the USL League Two awarded a soccer franchise to Dalton. The Dalton Red Wolves SC's inaugural season was in 2019 and the club plays out of Lakeshore Park in Dalton.\nArts and culture.\nCreative Arts Guild.\nThe Creative Arts Guild is the oldest multi-disciplinary community arts center in the state of Georgia. Founded in 1963 by a group of civic leaders, the Creative Arts Guild began as a grass-roots community movement originally housed in the Old Firehouse on Pentz Street in historic Downtown Dalton. The Guild began offering art, music, dance and theatre classes as well as gallery shows and exhibitions. As programming and class attendance grew, plans for a larger facility were developed. In 1981, the Guild moved to its permanent home at 520 West Waugh Street. The vision of that small group of patrons has grown into an organization that now houses four educational departments (visual art, dance, gymnastics, and music) as well as the Arts in Education outreach programs, events, gallery exhibits, music and dance concerts and recitals and acts as a hub of culture for North West Georgia and South East Tennessee.\nArtistic Civic Theatre.\nArtistic Civic Theatre has served the Northwest Georgia community for twenty-four years, and has reached thousands of citizens through major musical, comedy, and drama productions, ACT2 (the children's wing), student productions in cooperation with schools in Dalton, Whitfield, and Murray counties, touring productions of original adaptations of classic fairy tales, theatrical arts classes co-sponsored with the Creative Arts Guild, the annual Youth Theatre Camp, and the Studio Cabaret live music series. ACT's programs are funded through individual and family memberships, as well as corporate sponsorships and donations. Consider becoming a member or corporate sponsor and help us continue to provide theatrical arts opportunities, entertainment, and educational programs to the Northwest Georgia Community.\nDalton Little Theatre.\nDalton Little Theatre held its first documented performance in 1869. The organization began as the Dalton Amateurs and continued as the Sophoclean Dramatic Club, and the Dalton Players, before becoming Dalton Little Theatre in 1955. The theatre has performed continuously except for breaks during World War I and World War II. The organization formally incorporated in 1958 and found its first home in 1981 when it converted the former firehouse built in 1888 into the Firehouse Theatre. The Firehouse Theatre is often referred to as the Old Dalton Firehouse, and it remains the home of Dalton Little Theatre to this day.\nOther events.\nThe Downtown Dalton Development Authority hosts a number of events throughout the year, including the Downtown Dalton Farmers Market (May\u2013August), a Downtown Sampler, and an annual Beer Festival. The Dalton Area Convention & Visitors Bureau partners with the DDDA to host the Downtown Dalton Summer Concert Series, featuring local bands. The Young Professionals of Northwest Georgia host a monthly social event to connect and engage area young professionals\nHistory.\nPre-history.\nWoodland Indians and Creek Nation initially held the area of present-day Dalton, Georgia. The first recorded white man in the area was Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto (1540). By the mid-18th century, when the Cherokee forced the Creek Nation out of their homelands, to the west and south, the Cherokee Indians called the mountains of north Georgia their \"Enchanted Land\" until their own forced removal in 1838.\nIndustrialization.\nBy the time the last Cherokees were removed from the land, work was underway for a railroad, the Western and Atlantic Railroad (W&A), to join the Tennessee River with the Georgia Railroad then under construction. In 1847, Dalton was defined as a mile radius from the city center, the Western and Atlantic Depot. The final segment of this pivotal railway was completed in Tunnel Hill, Whitfield County in 1850. A second railroad, East Tennessee and Georgia, was completed in 1852.\nCatherine Evans Whitener's revitalization of the pre-Civil War-era craft of candlewicking gave rise to a cottage chenille bedspread industry. Homes along U.S. Highway 41 displayed brightly patterned homemade bedspreads on front yard clotheslines in hopes of luring tourists into a purchase. The stretch of highway passing through Whitfield County became known colloquially as \"Peacock Alley\" in reference to one of the most common patterns depicted on the bedspreads. The bedspread business boomed to a multimillion-dollar industry by the 1950s, and from this early origin, the carpet tufting industry grew in Dalton after Glenn Looper developed an adaptation that allowed the mechanism used to tuft yarn into muslin or cotton for bedspreads to tuft into jute, shifting the nation's carpet manufacturers from woven wool products in the northeast to tufted synthetic carpets in northwest Georgia. Today, carpet mills remain the region's major employers and economic drivers.\nDalton was named for Edward Dalton White.\nCivil War.\nDuring the Civil War, the city of Dalton saw its first action during the Great Locomotive Chase, on April 12, 1862. More than a year later, on September 18\u201320, 1863, massive Union and Confederate forces battled a few miles west of Dalton at the Battle of Chickamauga, and later during the Chattanooga campaign. The war came to Whitfield County at the First Battle of Dalton, a series of skirmishes between February 22 and February 27, 1864, during which Union Major General George H. Thomas probed Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee to determine if the loss of two full divisions to reinforce Confederate forces elsewhere had made the Army of Tennessee vulnerable to Union attack. Johnston's forces held and Thomas withdrew to Chattanooga. At the beginning of the Atlanta campaign, the Battle of Rocky Face Ridge and Dug Gap began on May 7, 1864, and ended when Johnston completed the withdrawal of his forces from Dalton on May 12. The Second Battle of Dalton occurred during the Atlanta campaign on August 14\u201315, 1864.\nIn John Bell Hood's Tennessee campaign, soldiers of Major General Samuel G. French's Division of Lieutenant General Alexander Stewart's Corps of the Confederate Army of Tennessee attacked a Union blockhouse in Tilton before passing through Dalton and heading west.\nThe U.S. government recently declared Dalton and Whitfield County to have more intact Civil War artifacts than any other place in the country. Also of interest is the site of the historic Western & Atlantic Railroad Station; one of the few still standing and restored to its original architectural state, this site used to be the location of the Dalton Depot Restaurant (closed since 2015). The steel center marker for the original surveying of the city of Dalton is still inside the depot.\nModern history.\nThe A. D. Strickland Store was once a rural county store, built c. 1878, and is now part of the National Register of Historic Places.\nThe Bohannon Gang was arrested in Dalton on the 27th of August, 1897. The gang of \"car thieves\" were believed to have been robbing area cargo trains for about a decade before their capture, and were accused of over $100,000 in cargo theft, now over $3.7 million today. Led by Hiram Walter Bohannon, the gang's trial was quickly followed by the \"merchant's trials\" in which many Dalton area businessmen were accused and convicted of receiving stolen goods. The trial was widely publicized and even appeared in the October 24th, 1897 New York Times. The ring leaders were sentenced to the Cole City Convict Camp, in Cole City, Georgia. The last to be released was Hiram Walter Bohannon, in 1903, after receiving a pardon from Joseph M. Terrell.\nCarpet industry.\nDalton is often referred to as the \"Carpet Capital of the World,\" home to over 150 carpet plants. The industry employs more than 30,000 people in the Whitfield County area. More than 90% of the functional carpet produced in the world today is made within a radius of the city.\nThe agglomeration of the carpet industry in Dalton can be traced back to a wedding gift given in 1895 by a teenage girl, Catherine Evans Whitener, to her brother, Henry Alexander Evans, and his bride, Elizabeth Cramer. The gift was an unusual tufted bedspread. Copying a quilt pattern, she sewed thick cotton yarns with a running stitch into unbleached muslin, clipped the ends of the yarn so they would fluff out, and finally, washed the spread in hot water to hold the yarns by shrinking the fabric. Interest grew in young Catherine's bedspreads, and in 1900, she made the first sale of a spread for $2.50. Demand for the spreads became so great that by the 1930s, local women had \"haulers,\" who would take the stamped sheeting and yarns to front porch workers. Often entire families worked to hand-tuft the spreads for 10 to 25 cents per spread. Nearly 10,000 area cottage \"tufters,\" men, women, and children were involved in the industry. Income generated by the bedspreads was instrumental in helping many area families survive the Depression. Chenille bedspreads became popular all over the country and provided a new name for Dalton: the Bedspread Capital of the World.\nWhen a form of mechanized carpet making was developed after World War II, Dalton became the center of the new industry because specialized tufting skills were required and the city had a ready pool of workers with those skills.\nBy the 1970s manufacturers had begun to develop techniques to move from plain tufted carpet to sculpted carpet. Improved patterning, stain and wear resistance, and colors have made the modern tufted carpet the choice for functional carpet for the vast majority of homes and moved woven carpet to a decorative role.\nBy the 1990s carpet scraps had made up 60% of the area's waste, and a balefill site called the Carpet Landfill was created to accommodate the unique issue. It currently stores over 500,000 tons of baled carpet.\nFrom June 2011 to June 2012 as carpet mills that had employed thousands restructured, downsized, cut back productivity and closed, Dalton lost 4,600 jobs\u2014according to the U.S. Labor Department\u2014making it the city with the worst job loss in the United States.\nThe city's unemployment rate has since dipped to as low as 5.5%.\nThe solar industry.\nDalton is poised for a remarkable transformation as it emerges as a leader in the solar industry. This shift began in 2019 when Hanwha Qcells, one of the world's largest solar panel manufacturers, opened a massive factory in Dalton, employing 750 people to produce an impressive 1.7 GW of solar panels. This facility stands as the largest solar manufacturing site in the Western Hemisphere.\nThe initial investment significantly boosted local employment, and subsequent expansion plans by Qcells have promised even more growth. On October 18, 2023, Qcells completed expansions that added an additional 2 GW of solar capacity, increasing the factory's total output to over 5.1 GW and creating 510 new jobs in solar manufacturing.\nToday, Qcells\u2019 Dalton factory operates as a powerhouse, producing nearly 30,000 solar panels daily and solidifying its position as the fourth-largest manufacturer in Dalton, trailing only three established flooring giants.\nThis growth has been supported by Sen. Jon Ossoff's Solar Energy Manufacturing for America Act, which was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on November 19, 2021. This legislation provides tax credits to American manufacturers across the entire solar supply chain, from polysilicon production to fully assembled solar modules. By encouraging local manufacturing in the solar sector, the act aims to strengthen Georgia's renewable energy infrastructure, reduce dependence on imports, create local jobs, and contribute to broader green economy goals in the United States.\nThe shift towards solar energy presents Dalton with an opportunity to diversify its economy, potentially cultivating a new generation of Daltonians employed in the clean energy sector.\nEnvironmental problems.\nDalton's carpet production has taken up to one-third of the Conasauga River summer water flow. The river and city water supply has been contaminated with perfluorinated compounds used to make carpets stain-resistant. Dalton Utilities' has processed wastewater using a land application system, that spread effluent on more than nine thousand forested acres in an area called Looper's Bend. Runoff was found to drip down into the river.\nEducation.\nPublic schools.\nThe Dalton City School District, which covers the entire city of Dalton, holds pre-school to grade twelve, and consists of six elementary schools, a middle school, and two high schools. The district has 366 full-time teachers and over 5,739 students.\nThe Whitfield County School District serves areas outside of the Dalton city limits, even if they have \"Dalton, GA\" postal addresses. Coahulla Creek High School, Phoenix High School, and Southeast Whitfield High School have Dalton postal addresses but lie outside of the city limits and serve areas not in the city limits.\nCharter schools\nAlternative schools\nInfrastructure.\nAir.\nDalton Municipal Airport, a general aviation airport, lacking scheduled commercial flights, is southeast of the city. International airports are in Chattanooga to the north and Atlanta to the south.\nRail.\nThe Southern Railway had two Cincinnati to Florida named trains, \"Ponce de Leon\" (Cincinnati to Florida via Lexington, Chattanooga and Atlanta) and \"Royal Palm\" (Cincinnati to Florida via Lexington, Chattanooga and Atlanta) that made stops in the town into the 1960s. The Louisville and Nashville Railroad's \"Dixie Flagler\" (Chicago and St. Louis to Florida), \"Dixie Flyer\" (Chicago and St. Louis to Florida) and \"Georgian\" (Chicago and St. Louis to Atlanta) also made stops in Dalton. The last train was an unnamed L&N Evansville, Indiana - Atlanta, Georgia remnant of the \"Georgian,\" ending service on April 30, 1971.\nRoads.\nInterstate 75 runs a short distance west of the city. The modern U.S. Route 41 and U.S. Route 76 circumvent Dalton, but historically they ran through the city. Georgia State Route 52 runs through the city's downtown.", "18321072": "WYWY\nWYWY (950 AM) is a radio station licensed to Barbourville, Kentucky, United States.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "23508479": "List of counties in Tennessee\nThere are 95 counties in the U.S. State of Tennessee. As of 2024, Shelby County was both Tennessee's most populous county, with 910,530 residents, and the largest county in area, covering an area of . The least populous county was Pickett County (5,108) and the smallest in area was Trousdale County, covering . As of the same year, Davidson County, in which the capital Nashville is located, covers with a population of 729,505. The population of the state of Tennessee as of the 2024 census estimate was 7,227,750 in an area of . The oldest county is Washington County, founded in 1777. The most recently formed county is Chester County (1879).\nAccording to the 2020 census, the center of population for Tennessee was located at , southeast of Murfreesboro in Rutherford County. The center of population pinpoints the location at which the population of the state, as placed on a map of the state where they reside, would balance out the map. The geographic center, the point where the map of Tennessee would balance without the population, is located northeast of Murfreesboro. In 1976, the Rutherford County Historical Society marked the geographic center of Tennessee with an obelisk.\nSome of the counties were formed in part or completely from lands previously controlled by American Indians. The \"Indian lands\" were territories that American Indians had occupied from pre-Columbian times and to which they were granted the legal right of occupancy in an act of the United States government. In cases where counties had been formed from that territory, the legal right of American Indian occupancy was revoked in a federal act prior to the formal establishment of the county. For Tennessee, ten treaties were negotiated between 1770 and 1835, defining the areas assigned to European settlers and to American Indians, regulating the right of occupancy regarding the lands. The remaining indigenous population was eventually removed from Tennessee to what became the state of Oklahoma.\nThe Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) code, which is used by the United States government to uniquely identify counties, is provided with each entry. FIPS codes are five-digit numbers; for Tennessee the codes start with 47 and are completed with the three-digit county code. The FIPS code for each county in the table links to census data for that county.\nDefunct counties.\nThere are two defunct counties in Tennessee:\nConsolidated counties.\nThree Tennessee counties operate under consolidated city\u2013county governments, a city and county that have been merged into one jurisdiction. As such, these governments are simultaneously a city, which is a municipal corporation, and a county, which is an administrative division of a state.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "14238213": "WYSU\nWYSU (88.5 FM, \"Radio You Need to Know\") is a National Public Radio member radio station. Licensed to serve Youngstown, Ohio, United States, the station is currently owned by Youngstown State University.\nWYSU also hosts the Youngstown Radio Reading Service, which broadcasts on a subcarrier.\nTranslators.\nWYSU simulcasts on two low-power transmitters: W201DP in Ashtabula, broadcasting on 88.1\u00a0MHz with 38 watts, and W209CQ in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, broadcasting on 89.7\u00a0MHz with 27 watts.", "22785932": "Airport Boulevard (Mobile, Alabama)\nAirport Boulevard is one of the main thoroughfares in Mobile County, Alabama. It is an east\u2013west highway between Mobile County at the Mississippi state line and the city of Mobile.\nIn Mississippi, Airport Boulevard is known as Mississippi Highway 614. When it crosses the Alabama state line, its designation changes to Mobile County Highway 56 and its name changes to Airport Boulevard.\nIn 2001, State Farm Insurance identified the intersection of Airport Boulevard\u2013University Boulevard as the most dangerous in the state of Alabama.\nLocation.\nAirport Boulevard is the most important east\u2013west thoroughfare in the county which does not enter the downtown business district. Airport Boulevard is a two-lane highway from the Mississippi state line until it intersects with Snow Road in the western part of the county where it becomes a five-lane highway. It becomes a divided four-lane highway near the Mobile Regional Airport, territory which was annexed into the city in January 2008. Its first major intersection in the city limits is with Schillinger Road, a four-lane highway which has become a major shopping district over the years, which is what prompted the city to annex it around the same time as the airport. Airport continues as a four-lane highway until it reaches Cody Road (Mobile County Highway 37, the pre-2007 city limit in this area). Once it crosses Cody, Airport becomes a six-lane highway.\nAirport continues through Mobile, having major intersections at Hillcrest, University, McGregor/Azalea, Downtowner, Montlimar/Yester Oaks, Interstate 65, Bel Air, Sage and Florida. East of the Florida Street intersection, Airport reverts to a four-lane highway until it reaches Williams Street where it becomes a two-lane road (with a turn lane) before transitioning into a two-lane side street. The last two major intersections of Airport Boulevard are with Dauphin Island Parkway (for which Airport serves as the northern end) and the Government Street (U.S. Highway 90)/Houston Street intersection. Airport continues east of Government Street very briefly where it finally terminates at Old Government Street.\nOverview.\nAirport Boulevard serves as both the heart of Mobile and a geographic boundary. West of the Government\u2013Houston intersection, the city of Mobile considers Airport to be the dividing line between the north and south sides, determining how the city allocates public services, such as garbage pickup.\nAirport is a semi-controlled access thoroughfare between Azalea and Sage; some turns which would hinder traffic are forbidden from Airport onto north\u2013south intersecting roads, with the service roads being the required method of entry.\nAirport Boulevard serves as the north\u2013south dividing line for Azalea Road and McGregor Boulevard. South of Airport the thoroughfare is a four-lane highway known as Azalea Road. North of Airport it is a two-lane neighborhood street known as McGregor Avenue, which traverses the upscale Spring Hill district.\nAirport also serves as the dividing line between Yester Oaks Drive, which becomes Montlimar south of the highway, and McGregor Drive. Montlimar is a wholly commercial thoroughfare, which is a four-lane highway with a turn lane. Yester Oaks is a residential street that passes through the Spring Hill district.\nBusinesses.\nAirport Boulevard is ringed with service roads, primarily east of Azalea Road, which remain a prominent feature of the thoroughfare until it reaches Sage Avenue.\nMobile's major malls are located on Airport and the area around Airport and 65 was the premier shopping region until the development of the Schillinger Road area and the shopping centers in Baldwin County. In the last decade, the malls have seen many major stores leave. Airport is also home to Providence Catholic Hospital, which moved to its Airport location from a Midtown location in 1986.\nAirport Boulevard has one educational facility, located outside of the Mobile city limits. That facility is Baker High School. Airport is also close to Corpus Christi Catholic School, which is located on McKenna Drive, which is a spur of Hillcrest roughly a half mile north of Airport and which can also be reached by Hillview Road, which is a spur of Airport.\nBoundary line.\nUpon entering the city limits, Airport briefly serves as the north\u2013south boundary line between City Council Districts 6 and 7 (with 6 to the south and 7 to the north). Furthermore, it is split evenly between City Council District 6 and City Council District 5. The boundary line is University Boulevard, with District 6 to the west and District 5 to the east. District 5 is currently represented by Reggie Copeland, the city council president, who has served on the council since 1985. District 6 is currently represented by Connie Hudson, who has served on the council since 2001.\nMajor subdivisions and neighborhoods along Airport include Huntleigh Woods, Willowbrook, Pinehurst, Bit & Spur, Ridgefield, Regency (home to one of Mobile's two synagogues), Jackson Heights, Sunset Woods, Yester Oaks, Llanfair, and Delwood (a neighborhood of 1950s era mansions with very unusual architecture).\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "57823": "Benton County, Washington\nCounty in Washington, United States\nBenton County is a county in the south-central portion of the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, its population was 206,873. The county seat is Prosser, and its most populous city is Kennewick. The Columbia River demarcates the county's north, south, and east boundaries.\nBenton County was created from what were then larger versions of Klickitat County and Yakima County on March 8, 1905, and was named after Missouri statesman Thomas Hart Benton.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and (3.4%) is water. The highest point of land elevation within the county is the summit of Rattlesnake Mountain at 3,527 feet; and the lowest point of land elevation is along the southwestern shore of Crow Butte at 265 feet (fluctuates due to level of Columbia River).\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nAs of the 2010 census, there were 175,177 people, 65,304 households, and 45,699 families residing in the county. The population density was . There were 68,618 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the county was 82.4% white, 2.7% Asian, 1.3% black or African American, 0.9% American Indian, 0.1% Pacific islander, 9.0% from other races, and 3.6% from two or more races. Those of Hispanic or Latino origin made up 18.7% of the population. In terms of ancestry, 22.3% were German, 13.4% were English, 12.5% were Irish, and 7.9% were American.\nOf the 65,304 households, 36.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 53.8% were married couples living together, 11.1% had a female householder with no husband present, 30.0% were non-families, and 24.3% of all households were made up of individuals. The average household size was 2.66 and the average family size was 3.17. The median age was 35.6 years.\nThe median income for a household in the county was $57,354 and the median income for a family was $69,834. Males had a median income of $57,496 versus $36,575 for females. The per capita income for the county was $27,161. About 9.3% of families and 12.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 19.3% of those under age 18 and 6.1% of those age 65 or over.\n2000 census.\nAs of the 2000 census, there were 142,475 people, 52,866 households, and 38,063 families residing in the county. The population density was . There were 55,963 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the county was 86.2% White, 0.9% Black or African American, 0.8% Native American, 2.2% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 7.0% from other races, and 2.7% from two or more races. 12.5% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. 18.1% were of German, 11.0% English, 9.1% United States or American and 8.4% Irish ancestry. 86.4% spoke English and 10.3% Spanish as their first language.\nThere were 52,866 households, out of which 38.20% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 57.60% were married couples living together, 10.20% had a female householder with no husband present, and 28.00% were non-families. 23.20% of all households were made up of individuals, and 7.70% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.68 and the average family size was 3.17.\nIn the county, the population was spread out, with 29.70% under the age of 18, 8.60% from 18 to 24, 28.50% from 25 to 44, 22.90% from 45 to 64, and 10.30% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females there were 98.70 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 96.30 males.\nThe median income for a household in the county was $47,044, and the median income for a family was $54,146. Males had a median income of $45,556 versus $27,232 for females. The per capita income for the county was $21,301. About 7.80% of families and 10.30% of the population were below the poverty line, including 14.30% of those under age 18 and 6.90% of those age 65 or over.\nGovernment.\nBenton County is one of the 33 counties in Washington that operates under the non-chartered \"commission\" or \"plural executive\" form of government. Three commissioners share administrative aegis with several other partisan officials independently elected to four-year terms of office. Judges of the superior court are also independently elected. In Benton County, the commissioners appoint a county administrator to oversee all departments that do not fall under other elected officials.\nThe County government is seated in Prosser, with many departments having satellite and auxiliary offices and facilities in Richland, Kennewick, and elsewhere. An attempt to move the county seat from Prosser to Kennewick resulted in a November 1984 ballot measure, which had 54.4 percent approval but failed to meet the required 60 percent threshold.\nThere are five incorporated cities within Benton County. The two larger cities\u2014Kennewick and Richland\u2014employ the \"council-manager\" form of government where the mayor is elected from the city council and serves a more ceremonial role, whereby"}, "descending_order": ["15812310", "18321072", "23508479", "14238213", "22785932", "57823", "110437"], "permutation_1": ["14238213", "15812310", "22785932", "23508479", "18321072", "57823", "110437"], "permutation_2": ["14238213", "18321072", "15812310", "22785932", "23508479", "57823", "110437"], "permutation_3": ["23508479", "15812310", "18321072", "22785932", "57823", "110437", "14238213"]}
{"id": "2hop__49676_90382", "docs_added": {"199511": "Paul Tibbets\nUnited States Air Force general (1915\u20132007)\nPaul Warfield Tibbets Jr. (23 February 1915 \u2013 1 November 2007) was a brigadier general in the United States Air Force. He is best known as the aircraft captain who flew the B-29 Superfortress known as the \"Enola Gay\" (named after his mother) when it dropped a Little Boy, the first of two atomic bombs used in warfare, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.\nTibbets enlisted in the United States Army in 1937 and qualified as a pilot in 1938. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he flew anti-submarine patrols over the Atlantic. In February 1942, he became the commanding officer of the 340th Bombardment Squadron of the 97th Bombardment Group, which was equipped with the Boeing B-17. In July 1942, the 97th became the first heavy bombardment group to be deployed as part of the Eighth Air Force, and Tibbets became deputy group commander. He flew the lead plane in the first American daylight heavy bomber mission against German-occupied Europe on 17 August 1942, and the first American raid of more than 100 bombers in Europe on 9 October 1942. Tibbets was chosen to fly Major General Mark W. Clark and Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower to Gibraltar. After flying 43 combat missions, he became the assistant for bomber operations on the staff of the Twelfth Air Force.\nTibbets returned to the United States in February 1943 to help with the development of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress. In September 1944, he was appointed the commander of the 509th Composite Group, which would conduct the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the war, he participated in the Operation Crossroads nuclear weapon tests at Bikini Atoll in mid-1946, and was involved in the development of the Boeing B-47 Stratojet in the early 1950s. He commanded the 308th Bombardment Wing and 6th Air Division in the late 1950s, and was military attach\u00e9 in India from 1964 to 1966. After leaving the Air Force in 1966, he worked for Executive Jet Aviation, serving on the founding board and as its president from 1976 until his retirement in 1987.\nAfter the war he received wide publicity, including motion picture portrayals, and became a symbolic figure in the debate over the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.\nEarly life.\nPaul Warfield Tibbets Jr. was born in Quincy, Illinois, on 23 February 1915, the son of Paul Warfield Tibbets Sr. and his wife, Enola Gay Tibbets. When he was five years old, the family moved to Davenport, Iowa, and then to Iowa's capital, Des Moines, where he was raised, and where his father became a confections wholesaler. When he was eight, his family moved to Hialeah, Florida, to escape from harsh midwestern winters. As a boy, he was very interested in flying. One day, his mother agreed to pay one dollar to get him into an airplane at the local carnival. In 1927, Tibbet's father, hired\nbarnstormer, Doug Davis, to fly over Hialeah Park Race Track as a promotional stunt. Tibbets, who was 12 years old at the time, flew with Davis, dropping Baby Ruth candy bars with tiny parachutes to the crowd of people attending the races.\nIn the late 1920s, business issues forced Tibbets's family to return to Alton, Illinois, where he graduated from Western Military Academy in 1933. He then attended the University of Florida in Gainesville, and became an initiated member of the Epsilon Zeta chapter of Sigma Nu fraternity in 1934. During that time, Tibbets took private flying lessons at Miami's Opa-locka Airport with Rusty Heard, who later became a captain at Eastern Airlines. After his undergraduate work, Tibbets had planned on becoming an abdominal surgeon. He transferred to the University of Cincinnati after his second year to complete his pre-med studies there, because the University of Florida had no medical school at the time. However, he attended for only a year and a half as he changed his mind about wanting to become a doctor. Instead, he decided to enlist in the United States Army and become a pilot in the United States Army Air Corps.\nEarly military career.\nBecause he went to a military school, attended some college, and had some flight experience, Tibbets qualified for the Aviation Cadet Training Program. On 25 February 1937, he enlisted in the army at Fort Thomas, Kentucky, and was sent to Randolph Field in San Antonio, Texas, for primary and basic flight instruction. During his training, he showed himself to be an above-average pilot. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant and received his pilot rating in 1938 at Kelly Field in San Antonio.\nAfter graduation, Tibbets was assigned to the 16th Observation Squadron, which was based at Lawson Field, Georgia, with a flight supporting the Infantry School at nearby Fort Benning. It was at Fort Benning that Tibbets met Lucy Frances Wingate, then a clerk at a department store in Columbus, Georgia. The two quietly married in a Roman Catholic seminary in Holy Trinity, Alabama, on 19 June 1938 even though Tibbets was a Protestant. Tibbets did not inform his family or his commanding officer, and the couple arranged for the notice to be kept out of the local newspaper. They had two sons. Paul III was born in 1940, in Columbus, Georgia, and graduated from Huntingdon College and Auburn University. He was a colonel in the United States Army Reserve and worked as a hospital pharmacist. He died in West Monroe, Louisiana, in 2016. The younger son, Gene Wingate Tibbets, was born in 1944, and was at the time of his death in 2012 residing in Georgiana in Butler County in southern Alabama.\nWhile Tibbets was stationed at Fort Benning, he was promoted to first lieutenant and served as a personal pilot for Brigadier General George S. Patton, Jr., in 1940 and 1941. In June 1941, Tibbets transferred to the 9th Bombardment Squadron of the 3d Bombardment Group at Hunter Field, Savannah, Georgia, as the engineering officer, and flew the A-20 Havoc. While there he was promoted to captain. In December 1941, he received orders to join the 29th Bombardment Group at MacDill Field, Florida, for training on the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. On 7 December 1941, Tibbets heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor while listening to the radio during a routine flight. Due to fears that German U-boats might enter Tampa Bay and bombard MacDill Field, the 29th Bombardment Group moved to Savannah. Tibbets remained on temporary duty with the 3d Bombardment Group, forming an anti-submarine patrol at Pope Army Airfield, North Carolina, with 21 B-18 Bolo medium bombers. The B-18s were used as an intermediate trainer, which pilots flew after basic flight training in a Cessna UC-78 and before qualifying in the B-17.\nWar against Germany.\nIn February 1942, Tibbets reported for duty with the 29th Bombardment Group as its engineering officer. Three weeks later he was named the commanding officer of the 340th Bombardment Squadron of the 97th Bombardment Group, equipped with the B-17D. It was initially based at MacDill, and then Sarasota Army Airfield, Florida, before moving to Godfrey Army Airfield in Bangor, Maine.\nIn July 1942 the 97th became the first heavy bombardment group of the Eighth Air Force to be deployed to England, where it was based at RAF Polebrook. It had been hastily assembled to meet demands for an early deployment, and arrived without any training in the basics of high altitude daylight bombing. In the first weeks of August 1942, under the tutelage of Royal Air Force veterans, the group received intensive training for its first mission. The group commander, Lieutenant Colonel Cornelius W. Cousland, was replaced by Colonel Frank A. Armstrong Jr., who appointed Tibbets as his deputy.\nTibbets flew the lead bomber \"Butcher Shop\" for the first American daylight heavy bomber mission on 17 August 1942, a shallow-penetration raid against a marshalling yard in Rouen in Occupied France, with Armstrong as his co-pilot. This was not Tibbets's regular aircraft, \"Red Gremlin\", nor his regular crew, which included bombardier Thomas Ferebee and navigator Theodore Van Kirk, who later flew with him in \"Enola Gay\". On 9 October 1942, Tibbets led the first American raid of more than 100 bombers in Europe, attacking industrial targets in the French city of Lille. Poor bombing accuracy resulted in numerous civilian casualties and less damage to the rail installations than hoped, but the mission was hailed an overall success because it reached its target against heavy and constant fighter attack. Of the 108 aircraft in the raid, 33 were shot down or had to turn back due to mechanical problems.\nOn that first mission, Tibbets saw in real time that his bombs were falling on innocent civilians. At the time, he thought to himself, \"People are getting killed down there that don't have any business getting killed. Those are not soldiers\". But then he thought back to a lesson he had learned during his time at medical school from his roommate who was a doctor. This doctor explained to him about his former classmates who failed the program and ended up in drug sales. The reason why they had failed the program was because \"they had too much sympathy for their patients\", which \"destroyed their ability to render the medical necessities\". It dawned on Tibbets that:<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I am just like that if I get to thinking about some innocent person getting hit on the ground. I am supposed to be a bomber pilot and destroy a target. I won't be worth anything if I do that ... I made up my mind then that the morality of dropping that bomb was not my business. I was instructed to perform a military mission to drop the bomb. That was the thing that I was going to do the best of my ability. Morality, there is no such thing in warfare. I don't care whether you are dropping atom bombs, or 100-pound bombs, or shooting a rifle. You have got to leave the moral issue out of it.\nIn the leadup to Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa, the commander of the Eighth Air Force, Major General Carl Spaatz was ordered to provide his best two pilots for a secret mission. He chose Tibbets and Major Wayne Connors. Tibbets flew Major General Mark W. Clark from Polebrook to Gibraltar while Connors flew Clark's chief of staff, Brigadier General Lyman Lemnitzer. A few weeks later Tibbets flew the Supreme Allied Commander, Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower, there. \"By reputation\", historian Stephen Ambrose wrote, Tibbets was \"the best flier in the Army Air Force\".\nTibbets had flown 25 combat missions against targets in France when the 97th Bomb Group was transferred to North Africa as part of Major General Jimmy Doolittle's Twelfth Air Force. For Tibbets, the war in North Africa introduced him to the realities of aerial warfare. He said that he saw the real effects of bombing civilians and the trauma of losing his brothers in arms. In January 1943, Tibbets, who had now flown 43 combat missions, was assigned as the assistant for bomber operations to Colonel Lauris Norstad, Assistant Chief of Staff of Operations (A-3) of the Twelfth Air Force. Tibbets had recently been given a battlefield promotion to colonel, but did not receive it, as such promotions had to be confirmed by a panel of officers. He was told that Norstad had vetoed the promotion, saying \"there's only going to be one colonel in operations\".\nTibbets did not get along well with Norstad, or with Doolittle's chief of staff, Brigadier General Hoyt Vandenberg. In one planning meeting, Norstad wanted an all-out raid on Bizerte to be flown at . Tibbets protested that flak would be most effective at that altitude. When challenged by Norstad, Tibbets said he would lead the mission himself at 6,000 feet if Norstad would fly as his co-pilot. Norstad backed down, and the mission was successfully flown at .\nWar against Japan.\nWhen General Henry H. \"Hap\" Arnold, the Chief of United States Army Air Forces, requested an experienced bombardment pilot to help with the development of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, Doolittle recommended Tibbets. Tibbets returned to the United States in February 1943. At the time, the B-29 program was beset by a host of technical problems, and the chief test pilot, Edmund T. Allen, had been killed in a crash of the prototype aircraft.\nWorking with the Boeing plant in Wichita, Kansas, Tibbets test-flew the B-29 and soon accumulated more flight time in it than any other pilot. He found that without defensive armament and armor plating, the aircraft was lighter, and its performance was much improved. In simulated combat engagements against a P-47 fighter at the B-29's cruising altitude of , he discovered that the B-29 had a smaller turning radius than the P-47, and could avoid it by turning away.\nAfter a year of developmental testing of the B-29, Tibbets was assigned in March 1944 as director of operations of the 17th Bombardment Operational Training Wing (Very Heavy), a B-29 training unit based at Grand Island Army Air Field, Nebraska, and commanded by Armstrong. Its role was to transition pilots to the B-29. Crews were reluctant to embrace the troublesome B-29, and to shame the male crews, Tibbets taught and certified two Women Airforce Service Pilots, Dora Dougherty and Dorothea (Didi) Johnson Moorman, to fly the B-29 as demonstration pilots, and the crews' attitude changed.\nOn 1 September 1944, Tibbets reported to Colorado Springs Army Airfield, the headquarters of the Second Air Force, where he met with its commander, Major General Uzal Ent, and three representatives of the Manhattan Project, Lieutenant Colonel John Lansdale Jr., Captain William S. Parsons, and Norman F. Ramsey Jr., who briefed him on the project. Tibbets was told that he would be in charge of the 509th Composite Group, a fully self-contained organization of about 1,800 men, which would have 15 B-29s and a high priority for all kinds of military stores. Ent gave Tibbets a choice of three possible bases: Great Bend Army Airfield, Kansas; Mountain Home Army Airfield, Idaho; or Wendover Army Air Field, Utah. Tibbets selected Wendover for its remoteness.\nWhen the operation was still in its development stages, Armstrong and Colonel Roscoe C. Wilson were the leading candidates to command the group who was designated to drop the atomic bomb. Wilson was the Army Air Force project officer who provided liaison support to the Manhattan Project. Armstrong was an experienced combat veteran against German targets, but he was in his forties and had been severely injured in a fire in the summer of 1943. Wilson had no combat experience and was qualified primarily because of his engineering background and association with the project. Tibbets was considerably younger than both men and had experience in both staff and command duties in heavy bomber combat operations. He was already an experienced B-29 pilot, which made him an ideal candidate for the top-secret project. Tibbets indicated that the decision on what aircraft to use to deliver the bomb was left to him.\nTibbets was promoted to colonel in January 1945 and brought his wife and family along with him to Wendover. He felt that allowing married men in the group to bring their families would improve morale, although it put a strain on his own marriage. In order to disguise all the civilian engineers on base who were working on the Manhattan Project, Tibbets was forced to lie to his wife; he told her that the engineers were \"sanitary workers\". At one point, Tibbets found that Lucy had co-opted a scientist to unplug a drain. During a meeting with these \"sanitary engineers\", Tibbets was told by Robert Oppenheimer that his aircraft might not survive the shock waves from an atomic bomb explosion.\nOn 6 March 1945 (concurrent with the activation of Project Alberta), the 1st Ordnance Squadron, Special (Aviation) was activated at Wendover, again using Army Air Forces personnel on hand or already at Los Alamos. Its purpose was to provide \"skilled machinists, welders and munitions workers\" and special equipment to the group to enable it to assemble atomic weapons at its operating base, thereby allowing the weapons to be transported more safely in their component parts. A rigorous candidate selection process was used to recruit personnel, reportedly with an 80% rejection rate. The 509th Composite Group reached full strength in May 1945.\nWith the addition of the 1st Ordnance Squadron to its roster in March 1945, the 509th Composite Group had an authorized strength of 225 officers and 1,542 enlisted men, almost all of whom deployed to Tinian, an island in the northern Marianas within striking distance of Japan, in May and June 1945. The 320th Troop Carrier Squadron kept its base of operations at Wendover. In addition to its authorized strength, the 509th had attached to it on Tinian all 51 civilian and military personnel of Project Alberta. Furthermore, two representatives from Washington, D.C. were present on the island: the deputy director of the Manhattan Project, Brigadier General Thomas Farrell, and Rear Admiral William R. Purnell of the Military Policy Committee.\nThe ground support echelon of the 509th Composite Group received movement orders and moved by rail on 26 April 1945, to its port of embarkation at Seattle, Washington. On 6 May the support elements sailed on the SS \"Cape Victory\" for the Marianas, while the group's materiel was shipped on the SS \"Emile Berliner\". An advance party of the air echelon flew by C-54 to North Field, Tinian, between 15 and 22 May, where it was joined by the ground echelon on 29 May 1945. Project Alberta's \"Destination Team\" also sent most of its members to Tinian to supervise the assembly, loading, and dropping of the bombs under the administrative title of 1st Technical Services Detachment, Miscellaneous War Department Group.\nOn 5 August 1945, Tibbets formally named his B-29 \"Enola Gay\" after his mother. \"Enola Gay\", serial number 4486292, had been personally selected by him, on recommendation of a civilian production supervisor, while it was still on the assembly line at the Glenn L. Martin Company plant in Bellevue, Nebraska. The regularly assigned aircraft commander, Robert A. Lewis, was unhappy to be displaced by Tibbets for this important mission, and became furious when he arrived at the airfield on the morning of 6 August to see the aircraft he considered his painted with the now-famous nose art. Lewis would fly the mission as Tibbets's co-pilot.\nAt 02:45 the next day\u2014in accordance with the terms of Operations Order No. 35\u2014the \"Enola Gay\" departed North Field for Hiroshima, Japan, with Tibbets at the controls. Tinian was approximately away from Japan, so it took six hours to reach Hiroshima. The atomic bomb, code-named \"Little Boy\", was dropped over Hiroshima at 08:15 local time. Tibbets recalled that the city was covered with a tall mushroom cloud after the bomb was dropped.\nTibbets was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross by Spaatz immediately after landing on Tinian. He became a celebrity, with pictures and interviews of his wife and children in the major American newspapers. He was seen as a national hero who had ended the war with Japan. Tibbets later received an invitation from President Harry S. Truman to visit the White House. The 509th Composite Group was awarded an Air Force Outstanding Unit Award in 1999.\nPost-war military career.\nThe 509th Composite Group returned to the United States on 6 November 1945, and was stationed at Roswell Army Airfield, New Mexico. Colonel William H. Blanchard replaced Tibbets as group commander on 22 January 1946, and also became the first commander of the 509th Bombardment Wing, the successor to the 509th Composite Group. Tibbets was a technical advisor to the 1946 Operation Crossroads nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific, but he and his \"Enola Gay\" crew were not chosen to drop another atomic bomb.\nTibbets then attended the Air Command and Staff School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. On graduating in 1947 he was posted to the Directorate of Requirements at Air Force Headquarters at the Pentagon. When the head of the directorate, Brigadier General Thomas S. Power, was posted to London as air attach\u00e9, he was replaced by Brigadier General Carl Brandt. Brandt appointed Tibbets as director of Directorate of Requirements's Strategic Air Division, which was responsible for drawing up requirements for future bombers. Tibbets was convinced that the bombers of the future would be jet aircraft and thus became involved in the Boeing B-47 Stratojet program. He subsequently served as B-47 project officer at Boeing in Wichita from July 1950 until February 1952. He then became commander of the Proof Test Division at Eglin Air Force Base in Valparaiso, Florida, where flight testing of the B-47 was conducted.\nTibbets returned to Maxwell Air Force Base, where he attended the Air War College. After he graduated in June 1955, he became Director of War Plans at the Allied Air Forces in Central Europe Headquarters at Fontainebleau, France. He left Lucy and his sons behind in Alabama, and he and Lucy divorced that year. During his posting to France, he met a French divorcee named Andrea Quattrehomme, who became his second wife. He returned to the United States in February 1956 to command the 308th Bombardment Wing at Hunter Air Force Base, Georgia, and married her in the base chapel on 4 May 1956. They had a son, James Tibbets.\nIn January 1958, Tibbets became commander of the 6th Air Division at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. and was promoted to brigadier general in 1959. This was followed by another tour of duty at the Pentagon as director of Management Analysis. In July 1962, he was assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff as deputy director for operations, and then, in June 1963, as deputy director for the National Military Command System. In 1964, Tibbets was named military attach\u00e9 in India. He spent 22 months there on this posting, which ended in June 1966. He retired from the United States Air Force (USAF) on 31 August 1966.\nLater life and death.\nAfter his retirement from the Air Force, Tibbets worked for Executive Jet Aviation (EJA), an air taxi company based in Columbus, Ohio, and now called NetJets. He was one of the founding board members and attempted to extend the company's operations to Europe, but was unsuccessful. He retired from the company in 1968, and returned to Miami, Florida, where he had spent part of his childhood. The banks foreclosed on EJA in 1970, and Bruce Sundlun became president. Sundlun lured Tibbets back to EJA that year. Tibbets succeeded Sundlun as president on 21 April 1976, and remained in the role until 1986. He served for a year as a consultant before his second and final retirement from EJA in 1987.\nTibbets died in his Columbus, Ohio, home on 1 November 2007, at the age of 92. He had suffered small strokes and heart failure during his final years and had been in hospice care. He was survived by his French-born wife, Andrea, and two sons from his first marriage, Paul III and Gene as well as his son, James, from his second marriage. Tibbets had asked for no funeral or headstone, because he feared that opponents of the bombing might use it as a place of protest or destruction. In accordance with his wishes, his body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered over the English Channel; he had flown over the Channel many times during the war.\nTibbets' grandson Paul W. Tibbets IV graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1989, and in April 2006 became commander of the 393rd Bomb Squadron, flying the B-2 Spirit at Whiteman AFB, Missouri. The squadron was one of the two operational squadrons that had formed part of the 509th Composite Group when Tibbets commanded it. Paul Tibbets IV was promoted to brigadier general in 2014, and became Deputy Director for Nuclear Operations at the Global Operations Directorate of the United States Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. As such, he was responsible for America's strategic nuclear forces. On 5 June 2015, he assumed command of the 509th Bomb Wing.\nLegacy.\nIn later life, Tibbets strongly defended the decision to use the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and became a symbolic figure in the debate over their use. At the time of his posting to India, a newspaper denounced him as the \"world's greatest killer\". In a 1975 interview he said: \"I'm proud that I was able to start with nothing, plan it and have it work as perfectly as it did\u00a0... I sleep clearly every night\". \"I knew when I got the assignment\", he told a reporter in 2005, \"it was going to be an emotional thing. We had feelings, but we had to put them in the background. We knew it was going to kill people right and left. But my one driving interest was to do the best job I could so that we could end the killing as quickly as possible\".\nIn 1976, the United States government apologized to Japan after Tibbets re-enacted the bombing\u2014complete with a mushroom cloud\u2014in a restored B-29 at an air show in Texas. He said that he had not intended for the re-enactment to insult the Japanese people. In 1995, he denounced the 50th-anniversary exhibition of the \"Enola Gay\" at the Smithsonian Institution, which attempted to present the bombing in context with the destruction it caused, as a \"damn big insult\", due to its focus on the Japanese casualties rather than the brutality of the Japanese government. He was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1996.\nTibbets, Paul W.\nColonel (Air Corps), U.S. Army Air Forces\n393d Bombardment Squadron, 509th Composite Wing, Twentieth Air Force\nDate of Action: 6 August 1945\nAwards and decorations.\nDistinguished Service Cross citation.\nCitation:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress 9 July 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross to Colonel (Air Corps) Paul Warfield Tibbets, Jr., United States Army Air Forces, for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an armed enemy while serving as Pilot of a B-29 Very Heavy Bomber in the 393d Bombardment Squadron, 509th Composite Group (VH), Twentieth Air force, while participating in a bombing mission on 6 August 1945, over Japan. On this date Colonel Tibbets flew a B-29 type aircraft in a daring daylight strike against the city of Hiroshima on the main island of Honshu, Japan, from a base in the Marianas Islands carrying for the first time a type of bomb totally new to modern warfare. Flying the 1,500 miles of open water to the coast of Japan, he guided his plane over the island of Shikoku and the Inland Sea, threatened with the constant danger of anti-aircraft. He successfully dropped his bomb upon reaching the Target city, this single attack being the culmination of many months of tireless effort, training and organization unique in the Army Air Forces history, during which he constantly coped with new problems in precision bombing and engineering. The result of this attack was tremendous damage to the city of Hiroshima, contributing materially to the effectiveness of our strikes against the enemy. By extraordinary flying skill, gallant leadership, and successful performance of the flight despite considerable danger, Colonel Tibbets thereby rendered outstanding, distinguished and valorous service to our Nation.\nIn popular culture.\nBarry Nelson played Tibbets in the film \"The Beginning or the End\" (1947). \"Above and Beyond\" (1952) depicted the World War II events that involved Tibbets; Robert Taylor starred as Tibbets and Eleanor Parker played the role of his first wife Lucy. Tibbets was also the model for screenwriter Sy Bartlett's fictional character \"Major Joe Cobb\" in the film \"Twelve O'Clock High\" (1949), and for a brief period in February 1949 was slated to be the film's technical advisor until his replacement at the last minute by Colonel John H. deRussy. ', a 1980 made-for-television movie, somewhat fictionalized, told the story of Tibbets crew. Patrick Duffy played Tibbets and Kim Darby played Lucy.\nIn other fictional portrayals, Nicholas Kilbertus was Tibbets in the film \"Day One\" (1989), David Gow played him in the TV movie \"Hiroshima\" (1995), and Ian Shaw played the part in the BBC's TV docudrama \"Hiroshima\" (2005), for which Tibbets was also interviewed on camera. An interview with Tibbets also appeared in the movie \"Atomic Cafe\" (1982), as well as was in the 1970s British documentary series \"The World at War\", and the \"Men Who Brought the Dawn\" episode of the Smithsonian Networks' \"War Stories\" (1995). Tibbets figured largely in the 2000 book \"Duty: A Father, His Son and the Man Who Won the War\" by Bob Greene of the \"Chicago Tribune\". In 1989, he published his memoir \"Flight of the Enola Gay\" which chronicles his life to that date.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "18597": "Little Boy\nAtomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima\nLittle Boy was a type of atomic bomb created by the United States as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II. The name is also often used to describe the specific bomb (L-11) used in the bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress \"Enola Gay\" on 6 August 1945, making it the first nuclear weapon used in warfare, and the second nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity nuclear test. It exploded with an energy of approximately and had an explosion radius of approximately which caused widespread death across the city. It was a gun-type fission weapon which used uranium that had been enriched in the isotope uranium-235 to power its explosive reaction. \nLittle Boy was developed by Lieutenant Commander Francis Birch's group at the Los Alamos Laboratory. It was the successor to a plutonium-fueled gun-type fission design, Thin Man, which was abandoned in 1944 after technical difficulties were discovered. Little Boy used a charge of nitrocellulose to fire a hollow cylinder (the \"bullet\") of highly enriched uranium through an artillery gun barrel into a solid cylinder (the \"target\") of the same material. The design was highly inefficient: the weapon used on Hiroshima contained of uranium, but less than a kilogram underwent nuclear fission. Unlike the implosion design developed for the Trinity test and the Fat Man bomb design that was used against Nagasaki, which required sophisticated coordination of shaped explosive charges, the simpler but inefficient gun-type design was considered almost certain to work, and was never tested prior to its use at Hiroshima.\nAfter the war, numerous components for additional Little Boy bombs were built. By 1950, at least five weapons were completed; all were retired by November 1950.\nNaming the bomb.\nThere are two primary accounts of how the first atomic bombs got their names. Los Alamos Laboratory and Project Alberta physicist Robert Serber stated, many decades after the fact, that he had named the first two atomic bomb designs during World War II based on their shapes: Thin Man and Fat Man. The \"Thin Man\" was a long, thin device, and its name came from the Dashiell Hammett detective novel and series of movies about \"The Thin Man\". The \"Fat Man\" was round and fat so it was named after Kasper Gutman, a rotund character in Hammett's 1930 novel \"The Maltese Falcon\", played by Sydney Greenstreet in the 1941 film version. Little Boy was named by others as an allusion to Thin Man since it was based on its design. It was also sometimes referred to as the \"Mark I\" nuclear bomb design, with \"Mark II\" referring to the abandoned Thin Man, and \"Mark III\" to the \"Fat Man.\"\nIn September 1945, another Project Alberta physicist, Norman F. Ramsey, stated in his brief \"History of Project A,\" that the early bomb ballistic test shapes designs were referred to as \"Thin Man\" and \"Fat Man\" by (unspecified) \"Air Force representatives\" for \"security reasons,\" so that their communications over telephones sounded \"as if they were modifying a plane to carry Roosevelt (the Thin Man) and Churchill (the Fat Man),\" as opposed to modifying the B-29s to carry the two atomic bomb shapes as part of Project Silverplate in late 1943.\nAnother explanation of the names, from a classified United States Air Force history of Project Silverplate from the 1950s, implies a possible reconciliation of the two versions: that the terms \"Thin Man\" and \"Fat Man\" were first developed by someone at or from Los Alamos (i.e., Serber), but were consciously adopted by the officers in Silverplate when they were adopting their own codenames for their own project (including \"Silverplate\"). As Silverplate involved modifying B-29s for a secret purpose, deliberately using codenames that would align with modifying vehicles for Roosevelt and Churchill would serve their needs well.\nDevelopment.\nEarly gun-type design work.\nBecause of its perceived simplicity, the gun-type nuclear weapon design was the first approach pursued by the scientists working on bomb design during the Manhattan Project. In 1942, it was not yet known which of the two fissile materials pathways being simultaneously pursued\u2014uranium-235 or plutonium-239\u2014would be successful, or if there were significant differences between the two fuels that would impact the design work. Coordination with British scientists in May 1942 convinced the American scientists, led by J. Robert Oppenheimer, that the atomic bomb would not be difficult to design and that the difficulty would lie only in the production of fuel. Calculations in mid-1942 by theoretical physicists working on the project reinforced the idea that an ordinary artillery gun barrel would be able to impart sufficient velocity to the fissile material projectile.\nSeveral different weapon designs, including autocatalytic assembly, a nascent version of implosion, and alternative gun designs (e.g., using high explosives as a propellent, or creating a \"double gun\" with two projectiles) were pursued in the early years of the project, while the facilities to manufacture fissile material were being constructed. The belief that the gun design would be an easy engineering task once fuel was available led to a sense of optimism at Los Alamos, although Oppenheimer established a small research group to study implosion as a fallback in early 1943. A full ordnance program for gun-design development was established by March 1943, with expertise provided by E.L. Rose, an experienced gun designer and engineer. Work was begun to study the properties of barrels, internal and external ballistics, and tampers of gun weapons. Oppenheimer led aspects of the effort, telling Rose that \"at the present time [May 1945] our estimates are so ill founded that I think it better for me to take responsibility for putting them forward.\" He soon delegated the work to Naval Captain William Sterling Parsons, who, along with Ed McMillan, Charles Critchfield, and Joseph Hirschfelder would be responsible for rendering the theory into practice.\nConcern that impurities in reactor-bred plutonium would make predetonation more likely meant that much of the gun-design work was focused on the plutonium gun. To achieve high projectile velocities, the plutonium gun was long with a narrow diameter (suggesting its codename as the Thin Man) which created considerable difficulty in its ballistics dropping from aircraft and fitting it into the bomb bay of a B-29.\nIn early 1944, Emilio G. Segr\u00e8 and his P-5 Group at Los Alamos received the first samples of plutonium produced from a nuclear reactor, the X-10 Graphite Reactor at Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Analyzing it, they discovered that the presence of the isotope plutonium-240 (Pu-240) raised the rate of spontaneous fission of the plutonium to an unacceptable amount. Previous analyses of plutonium had been made from samples created by cyclotrons and did not have as much of the contaminating isotope. If reactor-bred plutonium was used in a gun-type design, they concluded, it would predetonate, causing the weapon to destroy itself before achieving the conditions for a large-scale explosion.\nFrom Thin Man to Little Boy.\nAs a consequence of the discovery of the Pu-240 contamination problem, in July 1944 almost all research at Los Alamos was redirected to the implosion-type plutonium weapon, and the laboratory was entirely reorganized around the implosion problem. Work on the gun-type weapon continued under Person's Ordnance (O) Division, for use exclusively with highly enriched uranium as a fuel. All the design, development, and technical work at Los Alamos was consolidated under Lieutenant Commander Francis Birch's group.\nIn contrast to the plutonium implosion-type nuclear weapon and the plutonium gun-type fission weapon, the uranium gun-type weapon was much simpler to design. As a high-velocity gun was no longer required, the overall length of the gun barrel could be dramatically decreased, and this allowed the weapon to fit into a B-29 bomb bay without difficulty. Though not an optimal use of fissile material compared to the implosion design, it was seen as a nearly guaranteed weapon.\nThe design specifications were completed in February 1945, and contracts were let to build the components. Three different plants were used so that no one would have a copy of the complete design. The gun and breech were made by the Naval Gun Factory in Washington, D.C.; the target case and some other components by the Naval Ordnance Plant in Center Line, Michigan; and the tail fairing and mounting brackets by the Expert Tool and Die Company in Detroit, Michigan. The bomb, except for the uranium payload, was ready at the beginning of May 1945. Manhattan District Engineer Kenneth Nichols expected on 1 May 1945 to have enriched uranium \"for one weapon before August 1 and a second one sometime in December\", assuming the second weapon would be a gun type; designing an implosion bomb for enriched uranium was considered, and this would increase the production rate. The enriched uranium projectile was completed on 15 June, and the target was completed on 24 July. The target and bomb pre-assemblies (partly assembled bombs without the fissile components) left Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, California, on 16 July aboard the heavy cruiser , arriving on 26 July. The target inserts followed by air on 30 July.\nAlthough all of its components had been individually tested, no full test of a gun-type nuclear weapon occurred before the Little Boy was dropped over Hiroshima. The only test explosion of a nuclear weapon concept had been of an implosion-type device employing plutonium as its fissile material, which took place on 16 July 1945 at the Trinity nuclear test. There were several reasons for not testing a Little Boy type of device. Primarily, there was the issue of fissile material availability. K-25 at Clinton Engineer Works was designed to produce around 30 kilograms of enriched uranium per month, and the Little Boy design used over 60 kilograms per bomb. So testing the weapon would incur a considerable delay in use of the weapon. (By comparison, B Reactor at the Hanford Site was designed to produce around 20 kilograms of plutonium per month, and each Fat Man bomb used around 6 kilograms of material.) Because of the simplicity of the gun-type design, laboratory testing could establish that its parts worked correctly on their own: for example, dummy projectiles could be shot down the gun barrel to make sure they were \"seated\" correctly onto a dummy target. Absence of a full-scale test in the implosion-type design made it much more difficult to establish whether the necessary simultaneity of compression had been achieved. While there was at least one prominent scientist (Ernest O. Lawrence) who advocated for a full-scale test, by early 1945 Little Boy was regarded as nearly a sure thing and was expected to have a higher yield than the first-generation implosion bombs.\nThough Little Boy incorporated various safety mechanisms, an accidental detonation of a fully-assembled weapon was very possible. Should the bomber carrying the device crash, the hollow \"bullet\" could be driven into the \"target\" cylinder, possibly detonating the bomb from gravity alone (though tests suggested this was unlikely), but easily creating a critical mass that would release dangerous amounts of radiation. A crash of the B-29 and subsequent fire could trigger the explosives, causing the weapon to detonate. If immersed in water, the uranium components were subject to a neutron moderator effect, which would not cause an explosion but would release radioactive contamination. For this reason, pilots were advised to crash on land rather than at sea. Ultimately, Parsons opted to keep the explosives out of the Little Boy bomb until after the B-29 had taken off, to avoid the risk of a crash that could destroy or damage the military base from which the weapon was launched.\nDesign.\nThe Little Boy was in length, in diameter and weighed approximately . The design used the gun method to explosively force a hollow sub-critical mass of enriched uranium and a solid target cylinder together into a super-critical mass, initiating a nuclear chain reaction. This was accomplished by shooting one piece of the uranium onto the other by means of four cylindrical silk bags of cordite powder. This was a widely used smokeless propellant consisting of a mixture of 65 percent nitrocellulose, 30 percent nitroglycerine, 3 percent petroleum jelly, and 2 percent carbamite that was extruded into tubular granules. This gave it a high surface area and a rapid burning area, and could attain pressures of up to . Cordite for the wartime Little Boy was sourced from Canada; propellant for post-war Little Boys was obtained from the Picatinny Arsenal. The bomb contained of enriched uranium. Most was enriched to 89% but some was only 50% uranium-235, for an average enrichment of 80%. Less than a kilogram of uranium underwent nuclear fission, and of this mass only was transformed into several forms of energy, mostly kinetic energy, but also heat and radiation.\nAssembly details.\nInside the weapon, the uranium-235 material was divided into two parts, following the gun principle: the \"projectile\" and the \"target\". The projectile was a hollow cylinder with 60% of the total mass (). It consisted of a stack of nine uranium rings, each in diameter with a bore in the center, and a total length of , pressed together into the front end of a thin-walled projectile long. Filling in the remainder of the space behind these rings in the projectile was a tungsten carbide disc with a steel back. At ignition, the projectile slug was pushed along the , smooth-bore gun barrel. The slug \"insert\" was a 4-inch cylinder, 7 inches in length with a axial hole. The slug comprised 40% of the total fissile mass (). The insert was a stack of six washer-like uranium discs somewhat thicker than the projectile rings that were slid over a 1-inch rod. This rod then extended forward through the tungsten carbide plug, impact-absorbing anvil, and nose plug backstop, eventually protruding out of the front of the bomb casing. This entire target assembly was secured at both ends with locknuts.\nWhen the hollow-front projectile reached the target and slid over the target insert, the assembled super-critical mass of uranium would be completely surrounded by a tamper and neutron reflector of tungsten carbide and steel, both materials having a combined mass of . Neutron initiators inside the assembly were activated by the impact of the projectile into the target.\nCounter-intuitive design.\nThe material was split almost in half, with at one end a group of rings of highly enriched uranium with 40% of the supercritical mass, and at the other end another group of slightly larger rings with 60% of the supercritical mass, which was fired onto the smaller group, with four polonium-beryllium neutron initiators to make the supercritical mass explode.\nA hole in the center of the larger piece dispersed the mass and increased the surface area, allowing more fission neutrons to escape, thus preventing a premature chain reaction. But, for this larger, hollow piece to have minimal contact with the tungsten carbide tamper, it must be the projectile, since only the projectile's back end was in contact with the tamper prior to detonation. The rest of the tungsten carbide tamper surrounded the sub-critical mass target cylinder (called the \"insert\" by the designers) with air space between it and the insert. This arrangement packs the maximum amount of fissile material into a gun-assembly design.\nFor the first fifty years after 1945, every published description and drawing of the Little Boy mechanism assumed that a small, solid projectile was fired into the center of a larger, stationary target. However, critical mass considerations dictated that in Little Boy the more extensive, hollow piece would be the projectile. Hollow cylinders have higher critical masses than solid pieces of fissile material, because any neutrons encountered by or generated by the material are more likely to get scattered in the air than to continue a chain reaction. The larger piece would also avoid the effects of neutron reflection from the tungsten carbide tamper until it was fully joined with the rest of the fuel. Once joined and with its neutrons reflected, the assembled fissile core would comprise more than two critical masses of uranium-235. In 2004, John Coster-Mullen, a truck driver and model maker from Illinois who had studied every photograph and document on the Hiroshima bomb to make an accurate model, corrected earlier published accounts.\nFuze system.\nThe fuzing system was designed to trigger at the most destructive altitude, which calculations suggested was . It employed a three-stage interlock system:\nRehearsals.\nThe Little Boy pre-assemblies were designated L-1, L-2, L-3, L-4, L-5, L-6, L-7, and L-11. Of these, L-1, L-2, L-5, and L-6 were expended in test drops. The first drop test was conducted with L-1 on 23 July 1945. It was dropped over the sea near Tinian in order to test the radar altimeter by the B-29 later known as \"Big Stink\", piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, the commander of the 509th Composite Group. Two more drop tests over the sea were made on 24 and 25 July, using the L-2 and L-5 units in order to test all components. Tibbets was the pilot for both missions, but this time the bomber used was the one subsequently known as \"Jabit\". L-6 was used as a dress rehearsal on 29 July. The B-29 \"Next Objective\", piloted by Major Charles W. Sweeney, flew to Iwo Jima, where emergency procedures for loading the bomb onto a standby aircraft were practiced. This rehearsal was repeated on 31 July, but this time L-6 was reloaded onto a different B-29, \"Enola Gay\", piloted by Tibbets, and the bomb was test dropped near Tinian. L-11 was the assembly used for the Hiroshima bomb, and was fully assembled with its nuclear fuel by 31 July.\nBombing of Hiroshima.\nParsons, the \"Enola Gay\"'s weaponeer, was concerned about the possibility of an accidental detonation if the plane crashed on takeoff, so he decided not to load the four cordite powder bags into the gun breech until the aircraft was in flight. After takeoff, Parsons and his assistant, Second Lieutenant Morris R. Jeppson, made their way into the bomb bay along the narrow catwalk on the port side. Jeppson held a flashlight while Parsons disconnected the primer wires, removed the breech plug, inserted the powder bags, replaced the breech plug, and reconnected the wires. Before climbing to altitude on approach to the target, Jeppson switched the three safety plugs between the electrical connectors of the internal battery and the firing mechanism from green to red. The bomb was then fully armed. Jeppson monitored the bomb's circuits.\nThe bomb was dropped at approximately 08:15 (JST) on 6 August 1945. After falling for 44.4 seconds, the time and barometric triggers started the firing mechanism. The detonation happened at an altitude of . It was less powerful than the Fat Man, which was dropped on Nagasaki, but the damage and the number of victims at Hiroshima were much higher, as Hiroshima was on flat terrain, while the hypocenter of Nagasaki lay in a small valley. According to figures published in 1945, 66,000 people were killed as a direct result of the Hiroshima blast, and 69,000 were injured to varying degrees. Later estimates put the deaths as high as 140,000 people. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey estimated that out of 24,158 Imperial Japanese Army soldiers in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing, 6,789 were killed or missing as a result of the bombing.\nThe exact measurement of the explosive yield of the bomb was problematic since the weapon had never been tested. President Harry S. Truman officially announced that the yield was . This was based on Parsons's visual assessment that the blast was greater than what he had seen at the Trinity nuclear test. Since that had been estimated at , speech writers rounded up to 20 kilotons. Further discussion was then suppressed, for fear of lessening the impact of the bomb on the Japanese. Data had been collected by Luis Alvarez, Harold Agnew, and Lawrence H. Johnston on the instrument plane, \"The Great Artiste\", but this was not used to calculate the yield at the time. More rigorous estimates of the bomb yield and conventional bomb equivalent were made when more data was acquired following the end of the war. A 1985 study estimated the bomb's yield was around . \nPhysical effects.\nAfter being selected in April 1945, Hiroshima was spared conventional bombing to serve as a pristine target, where the effects of a nuclear bomb on an undamaged city could be observed. While damage could be studied later, the energy yield of the untested Little Boy design could be determined only at the moment of detonation, using instruments dropped by parachute from a plane flying in formation with the one that dropped the bomb. Radio-transmitted data from these instruments indicated a yield of about 15 kilotons.\nComparing this yield to the observed damage produced a rule of thumb called the lethal area rule. Approximately all the people inside the area where the shock wave carried such an overpressure or greater would be killed. At Hiroshima, that area was in diameter.\nThe damage came from three main effects: blast, fire, and radiation.\nBlast.\nThe blast from a nuclear bomb is the result of X-ray-heated air (the fireball) sending a shock wave or pressure wave in all directions, initially at a velocity greater than the speed of sound, analogous to thunder generated by lightning. Knowledge about urban blast destruction is based largely on studies of Little Boy at Hiroshima. Nagasaki buildings suffered similar damage at similar distances, but the Nagasaki bomb detonated from the city center over hilly terrain that was partially bare of buildings.\nIn Hiroshima, almost everything within of the point directly under the explosion was completely destroyed, except for about 50 heavily reinforced, earthquake-resistant concrete buildings, only the shells of which remained standing. Most were completely gutted, with their windows, doors, sashes, and frames ripped out. The perimeter of severe blast damage approximately followed the contour at .\nLater test explosions of nuclear weapons with houses and other test structures nearby confirmed the 5\u00a0psi overpressure threshold. Ordinary urban buildings experiencing it were crushed, toppled, or gutted by the force of air pressure. The picture at right shows the effects of a nuclear bomb-generated 5\u00a0psi pressure wave on a test structure in Nevada in 1953.\nA major effect of this kind of structural damage was that it created fuel for fires that were started simultaneously throughout the severe destruction region.\nFire.\nThe first effect of the explosion was blinding light, accompanied by radiant heat from the fireball. The Hiroshima fireball was in diameter, with a surface temperature of , about the same temperature as at the surface of the sun. Near ground zero, everything flammable burst into flame. One famous, anonymous Hiroshima victim, sitting on stone steps from the hypocenter, left a permanent shadow, having absorbed the fireball heat that permanently bleached the surrounding stone. Simultaneous fires were started throughout the blast-damaged area by fireball heat and by overturned stoves and furnaces, electrical shorts, etc. Twenty minutes after the detonation, these fires had merged into a firestorm, pulling in surface air from all directions to feed an inferno which consumed everything flammable.\nThe Hiroshima firestorm was roughly in diameter, corresponding closely to the severe blast-damage zone. (See the USSBS map, right.) Blast-damaged buildings provided fuel for the fire. Structural lumber and furniture were splintered and scattered about. Debris-choked roads obstructed firefighters. Broken gas pipes fueled the fire, and broken water pipes rendered hydrants useless. At Nagasaki, the fires failed to merge into a single firestorm, and the fire-damaged area was only one-quarter as great as at Hiroshima, due in part to a southwest wind that pushed the fires away from the city.\nAs the map shows, the Hiroshima firestorm jumped natural firebreaks (river channels), as well as prepared firebreaks. The spread of fire stopped only when it reached the edge of the blast-damaged area, encountering less available fuel. The Manhattan Project report on Hiroshima estimated that 60% of immediate deaths were caused by fire, but with the caveat that \"many persons near the center of explosion suffered fatal injuries from more than one of the bomb effects.\"\nRadiation.\nLocal fallout is dust and ash from a bomb crater, contaminated with radioactive fission products. It falls to earth downwind of the crater and can produce, with radiation alone, a lethal area much larger than that from blast and fire. With an air burst, the fission products rise into the stratosphere, where they dissipate and become part of the global environment. Because Little Boy was an air burst above the ground, there was no bomb crater and no local radioactive fallout.\nHowever, a burst of intense neutron and gamma radiation came directly from the fission of the uranium. Its lethal radius was approximately , covering about half of the firestorm area. An estimated 30% of immediate fatalities were people who received lethal doses of this direct radiation, but died in the firestorm before their radiation injuries would have become apparent. Over 6,000 people survived the blast and fire, but died of radiation injuries. Among injured survivors, 30% had radiation injuries from which they recovered, but with a lifelong increase in cancer risk. To date, no radiation-related evidence of heritable diseases has been observed among the survivors' children.\nAfter the surrender of Japan was finalized, Manhattan Project scientists began to immediately survey the city of Hiroshima to better understand the damage, and to communicate with Japanese physicians about radiation effects in particular. The collaboration became the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in 1946, a joint U.S.\u2013Japanese project to track radiation injuries among survivors. In 1975 its work was superseded by the Radiation Effects Research Foundation.\nIn 1962, scientists at Los Alamos created a mockup of Little Boy known as \"Project Ichiban\" in order to answer some of the unanswered questions about the exact radiation output of the bomb, which would be useful for setting benchmarks for interpreting the relationship between radiation exposure and later health outcomes. But it failed to clear up all the issues. In 1982, Los Alamos created a replica Little Boy from the original drawings and specifications. This was then tested with enriched uranium but in a safe configuration that would not cause a nuclear explosion. A hydraulic lift was used to move the projectile, and experiments were run to assess neutron emission.\nConventional weapon equivalent.\nAfter hostilities ended, a survey team from the Manhattan Project that included William Penney, Robert Serber, and George T. Reynolds was sent to Hiroshima to evaluate the effects of the blast. From evaluating the effects on objects and structures, Penney concluded that the yield was 12 \u00b1 1 kilotons. Later calculations based on charring pointed to a yield of 13 to 14 kilotons. In 1953, Frederick Reines calculated the yield as . Based on the Project Ichiban data, and the pressure-wave data from \"The Great Artiste\", the yield was estimated in the 1960s at 16.6 \u00b1 0.3 kilotons. A review conducted by a scientist at Los Alamos in 1985 concluded, on the basis of existing blast, thermal, and radiological data, and then-current models of weapons effects, that the best estimate of the yield was with an uncertainty of 20% (\u00b13 kt). By comparison, the best value for the Nagasaki bomb was evaluated as with an uncertainty of 10% (\u00b12 kt), the difference in uncertainty owing to having better data on the latter.\nTo put these numerical differences into context, it is necessary to know that the acute effects of nuclear detonations, especially the blast and thermal effects, do not scale linearly, but generally as a cubic root. Specifically, the distance of these effects scale as a function of the yield raised to an exponential power of <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1\u20443. So the range of the overpressure damage expected from a detonated 12 kiloton weapon with a height of burst at would be expected to be , whereas a 20 kiloton weapon would have the same range extend to , a difference of only . The areas affected for each would be and , respectively. As such, the practical differences in effects at these yield ranges are smaller than may at first appear, if one assumes that there is a linear relationship between yield and damage.\nAlthough Little Boy exploded with the energy equivalent of around 15 kilotons of TNT, in 1946 the Strategic Bombing Survey estimated that the same blast and fire effect could have been caused by 2.1 kilotons of conventional bombs distributed evenly over the same target area: \"220 B-29s carrying 1.2 kilotons of incendiary bombs, 400 tons of high-explosive bombs, and 500 tons of anti-personnel fragmentation bombs.\" Since the target was spread across a two-dimensional plane, the vertical component of a single spherical nuclear explosion was largely wasted. A cluster bomb pattern of smaller explosions would have been a more energy-efficient match to the target.\nPost-WWII.\nWhen the war ended, it was not expected that the inefficient Little Boy design would ever again be required, and many plans and diagrams were destroyed. However, by mid-1946 the Hanford Site reactors were suffering badly from the Wigner effect. Faced with the prospect of no more plutonium for new cores and no more polonium for the initiators for the cores that had already been produced, the Director of the Manhattan Project, Major General Leslie R. Groves, ordered that some Little Boys be prepared as an interim measure until a solution could be found. No Little Boy assemblies were available, and no comprehensive set of diagrams of the Little Boy could be found, although there were drawings of the various components, and stocks of spare parts.\nAt Sandia Base, three Army officers, Captains Albert Bethel, Richard Meyer, and Bobbie Griffin attempted to re-create the Little Boy. They were supervised by Harlow W. Russ, an expert on Little Boy who served with Project Alberta on Tinian, and was now leader of the Z-11 Group of the Los Alamos Laboratory's Z Division at Sandia. Gradually, they managed to locate the correct drawings and parts, and figured out how they went together. Eventually, they built six Little Boy assemblies. Although the casings, barrels, and components were tested, no enriched uranium was supplied for the bombs. By early 1947, the problem caused by the Wigner effect was on its way to solution, and the three officers were reassigned.\nThe Navy Bureau of Ordnance began in 1947 to produce 25 \"revised\" Little Boy mechanical assemblies for use by the nuclear-capable Lockheed P2V Neptune aircraft carrier aircraft (which could be launched from, but not land on, the \"Midway\"-class aircraft carriers). Components were produced by the Naval Ordnance Plants in Pocatello, Idaho, and Louisville, Kentucky. Enough fissionable material was available by 1948 to build ten projectiles and targets, although there were only enough initiators for six. However, no actual fissionable components were produced by the end of 1948, and only two outer casings were available. By the end of 1950, only five complete Little Boy assemblies had been built. All were retired by November 1950.\nThe Smithsonian Institution displayed a Little Boy (complete, except for enriched uranium), until 1986. The Department of Energy took the weapon from the museum to remove its inner components, so the bomb could not be stolen and detonated with fissile material. The government returned the emptied casing to the Smithsonian in 1993. Three other disarmed bombs are on display in the United States; another is at the Imperial War Museum in London.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["18597", "199511"], "permutation_1": ["18597", "199511"], "permutation_2": ["18597", "199511"], "permutation_3": ["18597", "199511"]}
{"id": "2hop__329940_127008", "docs_added": {"6501369": "Electric Barbarella\n\"Electric Barbarella\" is the 29th single by the English pop rock band Duran Duran, and the first official single from the album \"Medazzaland\". In 1997, the single and album were released only in the United States; \"Electric Barbarella\" was not issued as a single in the UK until January 1999 on the back of the late 1998 release of the compilation album \"Greatest\".\nThe band's previous single, \"Out of My Mind\", was another track from \"Medazzaland\", but was released as a single from \"The Saint\" soundtrack album instead.\nBackground.\n\"Electric Barbarella\" is a direct tribute to the 1968 Roger Vadim film \"Barbarella\", from which a character named Durand Durand inspired the band's name. It is considered as the first ever single by a major label artist available for digital purchase/download on the internet.\nMusic video.\nThe video, directed by photographer Ellen von Unwerth, involved a robot sex doll played by American model Myka Dunkle. Simon Le Bon stated during an interview with Carson Daly on Total Request Live that von Unwerth specifically requested to use Dunkle, despite the fact that the band had other models and friends (including Devon Aoki and Sophie Dahl, both of whom appear in the video's party scene) in mind, due to her background as a dancer, and her ability to \"do the mime that would actually make her appear to be a robot.\" The video had to be mildly censored before receiving airplay on MTV or VH1; by the time the modified video was delivered, the song had already fallen off the charts.\nB-sides, bonus tracks and remixes.\nThe B-sides for individual \"Electric Barbarella\" releases included remixes of previously released singles, such as \"Girls on Film\" or \"Out of My Mind\". Numerous remixes of the track were also issued on various promo releases and on the internet as well.\nMedia references.\nThe cosmetics company Hard Candy was preparing to launch a colour of nail polish named \"Electric Barbarella\" at the same time the single was released, but had to halt it because the proper permissions had not been received from the owners of the Barbarella name.\nChart positions.\nThe song was released on 16 September in the United States, and peaked at No. 52 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 on 1 November and one year later reached No. 23 in UK singles charts. Due to the debacle over its download release, temporary censoring of the music video and late release to other markets the single is generally considered to have under-performed.\nPersonnel.\nDuran Duran\nAdditional musicians\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "148703": "Duran Duran\nEnglish pop rock band\nDuran Duran () are an English pop rock band formed in Birmingham in 1978 by singer Stephen Duffy, keyboardist Nick Rhodes and guitarist/bassist John Taylor. After several early changes, the band's line-up settled in May 1980 as Rhodes, Taylor, singer Simon Le Bon, guitarist Andy Taylor and drummer Roger Taylor. \nEmerging as members of the New Romantic scene, Duran Duran were innovators of the music video and a leading band in the MTV-driven Second British Invasion of the US in the 1980s. By 1984, the band had achieved levels of fame similar to Beatlemania. The band's first major hit was \"Girls on Film\" (1981), from their self-titled debut album, the popularity of which was enhanced by a controversial music video. The band's breakthrough second album was \"Rio\" (1982), a worldwide hit. The songs \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Rio\" featured cinematic music videos directed by Australian film maker Russell Mulcahy and became two of their biggest hits. Their third album, \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\", became their only UK number one album and featured the US and UK number one single \"The Reflex\". In 1985, the band topped the US charts with the single \"A View to a Kill\" from the soundtrack of the James Bond film of the same title.\nAndy Taylor and Roger Taylor both left the band before the recording of their fourth album, \"Notorious\" (1986), which yielded the top ten title track. Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor initially continued as a core trio, before adding drummer Sterling Campbell and former Frank Zappa and Missing Persons guitarist Warren Cuccurullo as full-time members in 1989, though Campbell departed in 1991. The band spent the late 1980s and early 1990s releasing albums and singles to only moderate success. Their comeback album, 1993's \"Duran Duran\" (commonly called \"The Wedding Album\"), featured two top ten worldwide hits \"Ordinary World\" and \"Come Undone\". John Taylor left the band in 1997, though four years later, in 2001, a full reunion of the classic 1980\u20131985 line-up of Le Bon, Rhodes and all three Taylors took place, which led to a number of highly successful concert tours and the 2004 album \"Astronaut\", which reached number three in the UK and top 40 in numerous other countries. The album's lead single \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\" was an international dance hit, and reached number five in the UK. Andy Taylor left again in 2006, and the band have released five additional albums, with the most recent being \"Danse Macabre\" in 2023.\nAccording to \"Billboard\", Duran Duran have sold over 100 million records. They achieved 30 top 40 singles in the UK Singles Chart (14 of them top 10) and 21 top 40 singles in the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100. The band have won numerous awards throughout their career: two Brit Awards including the 2004 award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, two Grammy Awards, an MTV Video Music Award for Lifetime Achievement and a Video Visionary Award from the MTV Europe Music Awards. They were also awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The band were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.\nHistory.\n1978\u20131980: Formation and early years.\nJohn Taylor and Nick Rhodes formed Duran Duran in 1978 in Birmingham, England, with Taylor's art school friend Stephen Duffy, naming their band after \"Dr. Durand Durand\", Milo O'Shea's character from the science fiction film \"Barbarella\" (1968), the day after the film was broadcast on BBC on 20 October 1978. The three of them (Taylor on guitar and vocals, Rhodes on synthesizer and tapes, Duffy on vocals and bass) played their first gig on 5 April 1979 at the Birmingham Polytechnic. Soon after, they were joined by Simon Colley on clarinet and bass. John (then going by his first name Nigel) was the guitarist at this point. After a few gigs, including a performance at Barbarella's in Birmingham opening for the band Fashion, Duffy and Colley left the band in June 1979.\nTaylor and Rhodes then recruited lead vocalist Andy Wickett (formerly frontman of \"TV Eye\") and decided that they needed a live drummer. They hired Roger Taylor, a former member of various local bands (most recently \"The Scent Organs\" who also played at Barbarella's), while John Taylor switched to bass guitar. In September 1979, this incarnation of the band recorded a four-track demo including an early version of \"Girls on Film\" co-written by Andy Wickett. Soon afterwards Alan Curtis was recruited as lead guitarist. After a few gigs with this line-up Wickett left the band in late 1979.\nWickett was replaced by Roger Taylor's friend and former singer of \"The Scent Organs\" Jeff Thomas. In early 1980, they became the resident band at the city's Rum Runner nightclub. They were doing jobs at the club and began rehearsing and regularly playing at the venue. Curtis was unhappy with the Rum Runner club scene and left the band to form Dif Juz with his brother. Thomas was fired shortly after following disagreements and repeated arguments. The three remaining members started to look for a new lead vocalist and guitarist. The owners of the club, brothers Paul and Michael Berrow, became the band's management, paying them to work as doormen, disc jockeys (DJs) and barmen when they were not rehearsing, and also formed the Tritec Music company.\nIn April 1980, guitarist Andy Taylor came from Newcastle upon Tyne to audition after responding to an advertisement in \"Melody Maker\". Andy already had a lot of experience from playing with cover bands for years and although he came from a totally different rock music background his versatile playing style was seen as a perfect complement to the band. In May 1980, London vocalist and drama student Simon Le Bon was recommended to the band by an ex-girlfriend who worked at the Rum Runner. The band were immediately impressed by Le Bon and soon completed their first composition with the new line-up, \"Sound of Thunder\", featuring lyrics by Le Bon. Duran Duran's first performance with the lineup of Le Bon, Rhodes and the three Taylors was on 16\u00a0July 1980 at the Rum Runner.\nDuran Duran spent the next months writing, developing and demoing their songs and performed in clubs around Birmingham and London. In September 1980 they had written all of what would become their debut album. Touring as an opening act for Hazel O'Connor, the band attracted critical attention, resulting in a bidding war between the record companies EMI and Phonogram. \"A certain patriotism\" toward the label of the Beatles led them to sign with EMI in December. A week later, the first article about Duran Duran in a national magazine appeared in \"Sounds\". The members of Duran Duran had noticed that Betty Page (pen name for Beverley Glick) was writing about a new movement called New Romantic that would fit the band perfectly and invited her to meet them at the Rum Runner.\nShortly after signing the recording contract with EMI, Duran Duran went to London to record their debut album with producer Colin Thurston, and initial plans for an independent release of the songs \"Planet Earth\" and \"Is There Anyone Out There?\" on the Tritec Music label were scrapped.\n1981\u20131982: Self-titled debut, \"Rio\" and Second British Invasion.\nThe band's debut album, \"Duran Duran\", was released on the EMI label in June 1981. The first single, \"Planet Earth\", had reached the United Kingdom's top 20 at number 12 in February. A follow-up, \"Careless Memories\", released in April, stalled at number 37. The third single, \"Girls on Film\", was released in July and went to number 5 in the UK. The video, featuring topless women mud wrestling, pillow fighting and stylised depictions of other sexual fetishes, was made with directing duo Godley & Creme in August. The video was filmed just two weeks after MTV was launched in the United States. The band expected the \"Girls on Film\" video to be played in the newer nightclubs that had video screens or on pay TV channels like the Playboy Channel. Kevin Godley explained the thinking behind it:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />We were very explicitly told by Duran Duran's management to make a very sensational and erotic piece that would be for clubs, where it would get shown uncensored just to make people take notice and talk about it.\nThe video was heavily edited for MTV. The album peaked in the UK top twenty at number three. Later in 1981 the band embarked on their first United States club tour followed by more dates in Germany and the UK. This second tour of Britain coincided with a wave of riots sparked by unemployment and racial tension, including those of Moss Side and Toxteth. The band played Birmingham the day after the Handsworth riots. The band also began writing and demoing songs for a new album. In November 1981, they released a new single, the disco-influenced \"My Own Way\", that reached number 14 in the UK, followed in early 1982 by the recording of their second album at AIR Studios in London.\nIn May 1982, Duran Duran released their second album, \"Rio\", which entered the UK Albums Chart at number four and peaked at number two the following week. The band scored three UK top 10 hits on the singles chart from the album with \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" at number five in June, \"Save a Prayer\" at number two in September and the title song \"Rio\" at number nine in December, while the earlier top 20 hit \"My Own Way\" was included in a re-recorded version on the album.\nWith the album Duran Duran also began to achieve worldwide recognition. A headlining tour of Australia, Japan and the US was followed by a stint supporting Blondie during that band's final American tour. Diana, Princess of Wales declared Duran Duran her favourite band, and the band were dubbed \"the Fab Five\" by the British press, comparing them to the Beatles whose nickname was the Fab Four.\nAt first, the \"Rio\" album did not do well in the United States. EMI in the UK had promoted Duran Duran as a New Romantic band, but the New Romantic movement was barely known in the US, and EMI's American subsidiary Capitol Records was at a loss about how to sell them. After \"Carnival\" (an EP of \"Rio\"'s dance remixes) became popular with DJs in the fall, the band arranged to have most of the album remixed by David Kershenbaum. In June 1982, Duran Duran appeared for the first time on American television, performing \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Rio\" on \"Dancin' on Air\", the forerunner to the national hit show \"Dance Party USA\".\nNow promoted as a dance album, \"Rio\" was re-released in the US in November and began to climb the American charts six months after its European success. MTV placed \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and several other Duran Duran videos into heavy rotation, pushing the single and album into the US top twenty in early 1983. The ballad \"Save a Prayer\" also did well. \"The band was a natural for music television,\" noted \"Rolling Stone\". \"They may be the first rock group to ride in on a video wave.\" The album ultimately peaked at number six in the US and remained on the charts there for 129 weeks. In 2003, \"Rio\" was listed at number 65 in the \"NME\"'s list of the 100 Greatest Albums of All Time.\nDuran Duran were among the earliest bands to work on their own remixes. Before the days of digital synthesizer and easy audio sampling, they created multi-layered arrangements of their singles, sometimes recording entirely different extended performances of the songs in the studio. These \"night versions\" were generally available only on vinyl as b-sides to 45 rpm singles or on 12-inch club singles until the release of the compilation \"\" in 1998.\n1983\u20131985: The \"Fab Five\", Side projects and Live Aid.\nThe band began 1983 at the Palladium in New York playing the MTV New Year's Eve Rock n' Roll Ball with \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" still climbing the charts in the US, and the American reissue of the \"Rio\" single to follow in March. To satisfy America's appetite for their music, the band re-released their eponymous first album in the US in the middle of the year with the addition of the new single \"Is There Something I Should Know?\". Upon its release, this song entered the chart at number one in the UK (a rarity then and their first chart-topper in their home country) and reached number five on the American charts. During the promotion of this album, Rhodes and Le Bon were MTV guest VJs for a show, during which artist and admirer Andy Warhol dropped by to greet them. \"Our first gigs in the United States were crazy and culty\", Rhodes said later, \"But when we came back after 'Hungry' was a hit, it was mayhem. It was Beatlemania. We were doing a signing of the 'Girls on Film' video at a store in Times Square. We couldn't get out of the store. The cops sealed off the streets.\" Also in 1983, Rhodes produced the UK number one and US number five hit \"Too Shy\" for English band Kajagoogoo and Andy Taylor became the first member of Duran Duran to get married.\nThe band spent the next year as tax exiles, writing songs at a ch\u00e2teau in France where \"The Tube\" with Jools Holland filmed a documentary with the band in May 1983 before they flew to Montserrat and then Sydney to record and mix their third album. During the summer, they returned to the UK to perform two concerts, the first on 20 July in front of the Prince and Princess of Wales at the Dominion Theatre, and the second, a charity concert at Aston Villa's home ground. The band were under pressure to follow up the success of \"Rio\", and the recording process took over six months as different band members went through bouts of perfectionism and insecurity. A newly decadent lifestyle and substance abuse issues for some members added complications. In the documentary film \"Extraordinary World\", filmed a decade later, Rhodes described the effect on their sound as \"barely controlled hysteria, scratching beneath the surface\".\nThe new album, \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" (1983), included the late 1983 hit \"Union of the Snake\" (with the soprano saxophone solo by Andy Hamilton). With \"Hungry Like the Wolf\", \"Rio\", \"Save a Prayer\" and \"Is There Something I Should Know?\", Duran Duran now had five US Top Twenty hits from three different albums in a single year. The band made music headlines by deciding to release the \"Union of the Snake\" video to MTV a full week before the single was released to radio. They followed up with \"New Moon on Monday\", which reached number nine in the UK. Their next single \"The Reflex\", taken from \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" and given a significant remix overhaul by Nile Rodgers of Chic fame, became their first number one hit in the United States. \"The Reflex\" was also their second and final UK number one and was successful in numerous other countries around the world.\nThe band embarked on a global tour that continued throughout the first four months of 1984 including their first major stadium dates in America. A film crew led by director Russell Mulcahy followed the band closely, leading to the documentary film \"Sing Blue Silver\" and the accompanying concert film \"Arena\". The live album \"Arena\" was also recorded during the tour and was released with the new single \"The Wild Boys\", which went to number two on both sides of the Atlantic. In February 1984, the band appeared on the cover of \"Rolling Stone\" magazine and won two Grammy Awards in the brand-new Long Form and Short Form music video categories. Meanwhile, \"Save a Prayer\" gained momentum in North America, and a special US remix of the song became a single in January 1985. It peaked at number 16 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 in March. A live version of the song was used for the single's B-side, taken from the concert video footage for \"Arena\" / \"As the Lights Go Down\".\nDuring this period, all of the band members became heartthrobs for many of their young teenage fans. After the tour, Roger Taylor was married in Naples, Italy, and Rhodes wed in London, wearing a pink velvet tuxedo and top hat. At the end of 1984, the group featured on the Band Aid benefit single \"Do They Know It's Christmas?\" along with other popular British and Irish musical acts. Le Bon sang fourth on the song, after Paul Young, Boy George and George Michael sing their lines.\nEven with Duran Duran on hold, band members were soon anxious to record new music, leading to a supposedly temporary split into two side projects. John Taylor and Andy Taylor wanted to break away from the Duran Duran sound and pursue hard rock material; they collaborated with lead vocalist Robert Palmer and Chic's drummer Tony Thompson to form the rock/funk supergroup the Power Station, releasing two top 10 singles. Le Bon and Rhodes wanted to further explore Duran Duran's atmospheric aspect and formed Arcadia, releasing one album (\"So Red the Rose\") and an accompanying single (\"Election Day\"). Contributors to that album included guitarist Masami Tsuchiya, bassist Mark Egan, percussionist David Van Tieghem, drummer Steve Jordan, Sting, Herbie Hancock and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. Roger Taylor was a drummer for Arcadia as well as contributing percussion to the Power Station album. According to Rhodes, the two side projects \"were commercial suicide... But we've always been good at that.\" The band regrouped to contribute \"A View to a Kill\" to the 1985 James Bond film of the same name. This single was the first Bond theme to go to number one on the US charts, and was at the time the joint highest-placed Bond theme on the UK chart where it reached number two. It was the last single the band recorded as the original five-piece for close to twenty years.\nAs a follow-up to the Christmas 1984 Band Aid single, Duran Duran performed in front of 90,000 people (and an estimated 1.5\u00a0billion TV viewers) at the Live Aid charity concert at John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 13 July 1985 while their Bond song held the top spot on the American charts. It was not intended to be a farewell performance\u2014the band planned only to take a break after four years of non-stop touring and public appearances\u2014but the original five did not play live together again until July 2003. During their Live Aid set, Le Bon inadvertently hit an off-key falsetto note in the chorus of \"A View to a Kill\", an error that was trumpeted by numerous media outlets as \"The Bum Note Heard Round the World\" (in contrast to Freddie Mercury's \"Note Heard Round the World\" at the Wembley Stadium Live Aid show). Le Bon later described the moment as the most embarrassing of his career.\n1986\u20131989: Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor trio.\nAfter releasing three studio albums and one live album in five years, each accompanied by heavy media promotion and lengthy concert tours, the band lost two of its core members to fatigue and tension in 1986. After Live Aid and Arcadia, Roger Taylor left the band and retired to the English countryside, suffering from exhaustion.\nAndy Taylor led the remaining members to believe he would return to work on a new Duran Duran album, even as he was signing a solo recording contract in Los Angeles with MCA Records, eventually releasing a solo album in 1986 called \"Thunder\". The band resorted to legal measures to get him into the studio but after numerous delays they let him go at last. He played on only a few songs on the next album, including \"A Matter of Feeling\", whilst the disagreements were being settled.\nWithout a guitarist or a drummer, Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor had producer (and former Chic guitarist) Nile Rodgers play a few tracks on guitar, and hired Steve Ferrone to play drums while they searched for replacements. In September 1986, Warren Cuccurullo (formerly of Missing Persons and Frank Zappa's band) was hired as a session guitarist. With Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor, he recorded the rest of the \"Notorious\" album, which was released in October 1986. The black-and-white documentary film \"Three to Get Ready\" chronicled the recording of the album, legal tensions, and preparations for the tour.\nAlthough the song \"Notorious\" was a US and UK top ten hit, the album was a relative failure globally, reaching number 16 in the UK and spending one week in the top 50 album chart. The band found they had lost much of the momentum and hysteria they had left behind in 1985. In the three years between the release of \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" and \"Notorious\", many of their teenage fans had grown up and the music was funkier, more mature, and less \"pop\", given the added experience of their work on Arcadia and Power Station and with other musicians. \"Skin Trade\" and \"Meet El Presidente\", the two subsequent singles, made the charts but fared poorly compared to the band's earlier successes. Finally in late 1987, Sterling Campbell was hired as a session drummer.\nSubsequently, Duran Duran struggled to escape the teen idol image and gain respect among critics with more complex music. The new serious image was not accepted at first and their popularity began to wane. \"Rolling Stone\" said, \"In their search for musical maturity, the surviving Durans have lost a good deal of their identity.\" In contrast the \"New York Times\" said, \"Duran Duran's newfound disillusionment may mark a step toward maturity...they managed to catch a trend on the upswing, perhaps \"Notorious\" suggests that for late 1980s grit and pessimism is coming into style.\" Another factor was the band's dismissal of early managers, the Berrow brothers. There was no announcement of the reasons for the decision, but disagreements over money, and the brothers' involvement in Le Bon's yachting adventures (they were co-owners of \"Drum\") were thought to have played a part. Whatever the reason, Duran Duran switched managers frequently and undertook periods of self-management in the later stages of their career. In addition, EMI fired its president and went through a major corporate restructuring that summer and seemed to have lost interest in promoting the band. According to Rhodes the band needed to break up in order to come back together stronger.\nThe next album \"Big Thing\" (1988) yielded the singles \"I Don't Want Your Love\" (number four in the US), and \"All She Wants Is\" (the last top ten hit in the UK until 1993). The record was experimental, mixing influences from house music and raves with Duran's atmospheric synth-pop and the creative guitar work of Cuccurullo (now a full band member), as well as more mature lyrics.\n1989\u20131991: Five again, \"Decade\" and \"Liberty\".\nBy the end of 1989 and at the start of the 1990s, the popularity of synth-pop was fading and losing fans to other momentum-gaining music genres at the time, such as hip hop, techno and alternative rock. After touring for the album finished, the band regained a five-man membership as Cuccurullo and Campbell were made full members of Duran Duran.\nThe compilation album \"Decade\" was released late in 1989, along with the megamix single \"Burning the Ground\", which consisted of woven snippets of the band's hits from the previous ten years, created and produced with John Jones, who began working with the band after the release of \"Big Thing\". The single came and went with little fanfare, but the album became another major seller for the band. The 1990 release \"Liberty\" (a retreat from the experimentation of \"Big Thing\") failed to capitalise on any regained momentum. The album entered the UK album chart in the top ten, but faded away quickly. The singles \"Violence of Summer (Love's Taking Over)\" and \"Serious\" were only mildly successful. For the first time, Duran Duran did not tour in support of an album, performing on only a handful of club dates and TV shows. Campbell left the band early in 1991, going on to work with Soul Asylum and David Bowie. The quartet of Le Bon, Rhodes, John Taylor and Cuccurullo would remain intact for six more years.\n1992\u20131996: Quartet line-up and a brief comeback.\nIn 1993, the band released a second self-titled album: this \"Duran Duran\" album is known as \"The Wedding Album\" (for Nick Egan's cover art featuring the wedding photos of the band members' parents) to distinguish it from the 1981 release, and was produced and recorded with John Jones. The release of this first \"comeback\" album was delayed, with then manager at Left Bank, Tommy Manzi, later telling HitQuarters that this was due to industry resistance to the revival of the band, who he said would rather focus on \"the next hip band\". Listener demand for leaked single \"Ordinary World\" forced it onto radio playlists months earlier than planned; it reached number three on the US chart and number six in the UK and won a prestigious Ivor Novello Award for song writing.\n\"Come Undone\", primarily written by Cuccurullo, with lyrics by Le Bon, made number seven in the US and number 13 in the UK. Both the band and the record label seemed to be caught by surprise by the album's critical and commercial success (number four in the UK, number seven in the US). John Taylor had been considering leaving the band but changed his mind. The band's largest tour ever, which included stops in the Middle East, the then recently de-embargoed South Africa, and South America, was halted after seven months when Le Bon suffered from strained vocal cords. After six weeks' recuperation, the band performed intermittently for another five months, including appearances in Israel, Thailand, and Indonesia.\nIn 1995, the band released the cover album \"Thank You\". Songs from \"Thank You\" included covers of Lou Reed's \"Perfect Day\" and Melle Mel's \"White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)\" (with backing vocals from the original artists). The album also marked the temporary return of former drummer Roger Taylor, who joined the band in studio to play drums on \"Watching the Detectives\" and \"Perfect Day\" (as well as a cover of \"Jeepster\" by T. Rex that did not appear on the album). In a video interview provided with the album's electronic press kit, Reed said he considered Duran Duran's version the best cover ever done of one of his songs, and they received praise from Robert Plant and Jimmy Page for their cover of Led Zeppelin's \"Thank You\".\n1997\u20132000: John Taylor's departure and second trio.\nAfter the promo tour for \"Thank You\" was completed, John Taylor co-founded the B5 Records label, recorded a solo album, founded and toured with the supergroup Neurotic Outsiders, and reunited the Power Station, though the project proceeded without him when he had to withdraw to deal with his divorce. Finally, after struggling for months to record the next album, \"Medazzaland\", in January 1997, John Taylor announced at the DuranCon fan convention that he was leaving the band \"for good\". His departure reduced the band to two long time members (Le Bon and Rhodes) and Cuccurullo, who decided to continue recording under the name Duran Duran.\nFreed from some internal writing conflicts, the band returned to the studio to rewrite and re-record many of the songs on \"Medazzaland\" (John Taylor's work remains on only four tracks). The album marked a return to the layered experimentation of \"Big Thing\", with intricate guitar textures and processed vocals. The track \"Out of My Mind\" was used as the theme song for the film \"The Saint\" (1997), but the only true single to be released in the United States was the quirky \"Electric Barbarella\", which is one of the first singles ever to be sold online. The music video for this single, featuring a sexy robot purchased and played with by band members, had to be censored before airing on MTV, but there was little of the controversy that had surrounded \"Girls on Film\". \"Electric Barbarella\" peaked at number 52 in the US in October 1997. Although \"Medazzaland\" was released in the US in October 1997, the album was never released in the UK. \"Electric Barbarella\" was later released in the UK as a single from the 1998 \"Greatest\" compilation album and peaked at number 23 on the UK chart in January 1999. The group played a set at the Princess Diana Tribute Concert on 27 June 1998 by special request of her family.\nDuran Duran parted ways with Capitol/EMI in 1999, although the label has since used Duran Duran's back catalogue to release several compilations of remixes and rare vinyl-only B-sides. The band then signed what was intended to be a three-album contract with Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records, but it lasted only through the poorly received 2000 album \"Pop Trash\". This slow-paced and heavy album seemed out-of-keeping with earlier band material. Rhodes' intricate production and Cuccurullo's songwriting and experimentation with guitar sounds and time signatures were not enough to hook the public, and the album did not perform well. The dreamy single \"Someone Else Not Me\" lasted barely two weeks on the radio, although its video was noted as the first to be produced entirely with Flash animation. While supporting \"Medazzaland\" and \"Pop Trash\", Duran Duran toured with bassist Wes Wehmiller and drummer Joe Travers.\n2001\u20132005: Reunion.\nIn 2000, Le Bon approached John Taylor with a proposal to reform Duran Duran's classic line-up. They agreed to part company with Cuccurullo after completing the \"Pop Trash\" tour. Cuccurullo then announced on his website that he was leaving Duran Duran to resume work with his 1980s band Missing Persons. This announcement was confirmed the next day by Duran Duran's website, followed a day later by the news that John, Roger and Andy had rejoined. To fulfill contractual obligations, Cuccurullo played three Duran Duran concerts in Japan in June 2001, ending his tenure in the band.\nThroughout 2001, 2002 and 2003, the band worked on writing new material, initially renting a house in Saint-Tropez where audio engineer Mark Tinley built a recording studio for their first serious writing session. They then returned to London to do some self-financed work with various producers (including old friend Nile Rodgers) and search for a new record deal. It proved difficult to find a record label willing to gamble on the band's comeback, so Duran Duran went on tour to prove the drawing power of the reunited band. The response of the fans and the media exceeded expectations. The band played a handful of 25th-anniversary dates across 2003, starting with two arena dates in Tokyo filled to capacity. Tickets sold out for each show within minutes, and celebrities turned out \"en masse\" for reunion dates. Amongst these were a number of shows at smaller venues that the band had played on both sides of the pond when they first got together in the early 1980s. In August, the band were booked as presenters at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, only to be surprised with a Lifetime Achievement Award. They also received a Lifetime Achievement award from \"Q\" magazine in October, and the equivalent Outstanding Contribution award at the BRIT Awards in February 2004.\nThe pace picked up with a sold-out tour of America, Australia and New Zealand. The band played a full concert at a private tailgate party at Super Bowl XXXVIII, their performance of \"The Wild Boys\" broadcast to millions during the pre-game show. A remix of the new track \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\" was released on many TV shows in February while magazines hailed (the modern \"Fab Five\") Duran Duran as one of the greatest bands of all time. Duran Duran then celebrated their homecoming to the UK with fourteen stadium dates in April 2004, including five sold-out nights at Wembley Arena. The British press, traditionally hostile to the band, accorded the shows some very warm reviews. Duran Duran brought along band Goldfrapp and the Scissor Sisters as alternating opening acts for this tour. The last two shows were filmed, resulting in the concert DVD \"Duran Duran: Live from London\" which was released in November.\nFinally, with more than thirty-five songs completed, the band signed a two-album contract with Epic Records in June, and completed the new album, now titled \"Astronaut\". The album was released in October 2004 and entered the UK charts at number three and the US charts at number 17. The first single was \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\", which reached number one on the \"Billboard\" US Dance chart in November and peaked at number five on the UK Singles Chart, Duran Duran's highest chart position since \"A View to a Kill\" in 1985. A second single, \"What Happens Tomorrow\", debuted at No.\u00a011 on the UK chart in February. A 5.1 mix of \"Astronaut\" was created by Jeremy Wheatley for the dual-disc release of \"Astronaut\". The CD side contains the album as-is and the DVD side contains the 5.1 mix of the album in DVD Audio format along with some DVD footage and videos.\nAfter a world tour in early 2005, Duran Duran were presented with the PRS Outstanding Contribution to British Music at the 2005 Ivor Novello Awards. Later that summer, the band headlined the massive Live 8 concert, Rome on 2 July 2005 in the Circus Maximus.\n2006\u20132008: \"Red Carpet Massacre\" and Andy Taylor's second departure.\nIn early 2006, Duran Duran covered John Lennon's song \"Instant Karma!\" for the \"Make Some Noise\" campaign sponsored by Amnesty International. Their version later appeared on \"\" as an iTunes exclusive bonus track. They also performed at two high-profile events\u00a0\u2013 the Nobel Prize Awards and the 2006 Winter Olympics. After a couple of weeks of songwriting in Northern California, the band began working with producer Michael Patterson in London, and continued intermittently for the next several months. At one point, they reported having had fifteen tracks nearly complete for an album tentatively titled \"Reportage\", but no further news emerged from the band for months afterward. In September, the band held meetings in New York City with Justin Timberlake and producer Timbaland with an eye to a potential collaboration and were soon reported to have completed three songs with the producer, including a song with Justin Timberlake.\nOn 25 October 2006, Duran Duran parted company with Andy Taylor once again. In an official announcement on their website, the band stated that an \"unworkable gulf\" had developed between them and Taylor and that \"we can no longer effectively function together\". It was noted by Andy Taylor in his book \"Wild Boy\" that tensions had arisen between the group's management and himself, and he was also diagnosed with clinical depression connected with the death of his father. Dom Brown, who had previously toured with the band, again took over guitar duties and has been performing with them since. After Taylor's departure, the band scrapped the \"Reportage\" album. They wrote and recorded a new album titled \"Red Carpet Massacre\" (2007), which included the Timbaland tracks. Dom Brown is the featured guitarist on the album.\nIn July 2007, the band performed twice at Wembley Stadium. Their first appearance at the stadium was the Concert for Diana which celebrated the life of Princess Diana almost 10 years after her death. The band performed \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\", \"The Wild Boys\" and \"Rio\". Their second appearance was at Live Earth concert, London. On 25 September, the Timberlake collaboration \"Falling Down\" was released as a download single on iTunes, and the band announced that they would play nine shows at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway to launch the \"Red Carpet Massacre\" album. The album launch was later extended to incorporate a show in London on 3 December 2007 and one in Dublin on 5 December 2007.\nIn May 2008, they toured the US leg of their 2008 world tour and were supported by the British band Your Vegas. In June 2008, they played the Louvre in Paris in a fundraising effort that contributed to the restoration of a Louis XV drawing room. Guests dined, privately viewed some of the museum's artworks, then attended a performance by the band in the I.M. Pei-designed Pyramid du Louvre. The group's performance marked a first for the 18th-century museum which had never before allowed a rock concert to occur anywhere within the grounds or buildings and another groundbreaker for Duran Duran.\nOn 2 July 2008, in Paris, Mark Ronson performed a unique live set with Duran Duran for an exclusive, invitation-only performance. Together, they showcased specially re-worked versions of some of Duran Duran's classic hits re-created by Ronson, along with tracks from \"Red Carpet Massacre\". Le Bon also performed songs from Ronson's latest album, \"Version\" (2007), as one of Ronson's featured guest vocalists. Unlike the band's previous album \"Astronaut\" (2004), \"Red Carpet Massacre\" sold poorly and received mixed responses from the music press. In 2008, \"Rio\" was included in the \"Classic Albums\" series.\n2009\u20132012: \"All You Need Is Now\".\nThe band departed from Epic Records in 2009, after releasing just two albums. In early 2010, it was revealed that the band would be contributing a cover of \"Boys Keep Swinging\" to a tribute/charity record for David Bowie called \"\" from which all profits go to War Child. Other contributing artists included Carla Bruni, Devendra Banhart, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, and Warpaint. The album was released on 14 September 2010 on Manimal Vinyl Records. A limited edition split 7-inch single with Duran Duran and Carla Bruni was also released on Manimal Vinyl in December 2010.\nOn 21 December 2010, Duran Duran's thirteenth album, titled \"All You Need Is Now\", produced by the Grammy Award-winning Mark Ronson and mixed by Spike Stent, was released exclusively on iTunes and hit the number one spot on download charts in 15 countries (including the UK). The first single from the record, title track \"All You Need Is Now\", was free to download worldwide on 8 December 2010 exclusively in iTunes. Guitarist and songwriter Dom Brown co-wrote all but two songs on the album.\nOn 25 February 2011, while in Milan, Duran Duran received a Style Icons of the 20th Century Award and a key to the city, presented by the city's mayor Letizia Moratti.\nIn March 2011 the band embarked on a world tour in support of the album. After a warm-up show in London, the tour officially began 16 March 2011 in Austin, Texas. On 23 March, the band performed live at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles as the start of the second season of \"\". The concert was directed by David Lynch and live-streamed on YouTube. The band was joined onstage by Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, Beth Ditto of Gossip, and Kelis. On 17 April 2011, Duran Duran performed at the Coachella Music Festival located at Empire Polo Grounds, in Indio, California. In May 2011, Le Bon contracted laryngitis leading to either cancellation or rescheduling of most of the European dates for the \"All You Need Is Now\" World Tour.\nOn 27 July 2012, Duran Duran headlined the London Summer Olympics 2012 Opening Ceremony celebration in Hyde Park. They represented England, along with Snow Patrol for Northern Ireland, Stereophonics for Wales, and Paolo Nutini for Scotland. At the end of August 2012, with one week left of their 18-month world tour, the band were forced to cancel the rest of the North American leg of the tour as Nick Rhodes had become ill with a viral infection.\n2013\u20132018: \"Paper Gods\".\nOn 4 March 2013, the band returned to the studio to work on their fourteenth album, and continued during the week beginning 23 September. They reconvened 13 to 18 December. On 31 December 2013, the band posted a mixtape curated by John Taylor as a New Year's \"thank you\" to their fans. On 10 February 2014, John Taylor and Roger Taylor worked with the Voce Chamber Choir and London Youth Chamber Choir on vocals for use on some Duran Duran tracks. Then former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante worked with the band on the new album.\nOn 11 September 2015, the album \"Paper Gods\" was released. The single \"Pressure Off\" was also released the same week, first via Microsoft's Xbox Music. The song subsequently appeared on Google Play Music. The album debuted at number 10 on the \"Billboard\" 200, the band's highest debut in 22 years. The album also reached number two in Italy, number four in the Netherlands, and number five in the UK. In 2016, the artist MNDR stood in for Rhodes during part of the third leg of the Paper Gods tour in the United States, while he returned to the UK in order to attend to an urgent family matter. Rhodes was quoted as saying, \"I will be back as soon as I can but know, in the meantime, that I am leaving both the band and fans in great hands, with the fabulous MNDR.\" Also, several remixes of their song \"Last Night in the City\" were released in digital form in that year.\nIn December 2016, the original five-piece lineup lost a case in the British High Court after they attempted to reclaim the U.S. copyright on their first three albums from Gloucester Place Music, part of EMI Music Publishing. Rhodes commented, \"We signed a publishing agreement as unsuspecting teenagers, over three decades ago, when just starting out and when we knew no better... if left untested, this judgment sets a very bad precedent for all songwriters of our era.\" In March 2020, Duran Duran signed with the Warner/Chappell Music publisher, covering their post-1986 catalogue. The band spent 2017 touring the American continent and playing a handful of festival dates in Europe and Asia.\n2019\u20132022: \"Future Past\" and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction.\nIn 2019, Duran Duran were working on a new album with Ronson, Erol Alkan and Giorgio Moroder handling production duties, and Graham Coxon and Lykke Li being confirmed as collaborators. Rhodes described the content and sound of a possible first single to be \"very different for us.\" Initially planned for release in 2020, the recording of the album was put on hold in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On 8 January 2021, a cover of \"Five Years\" by David Bowie was released for the fifth anniversary of his death. On 13 January 2021, \"Rolling Stone\" included the album at number 50 on their \"54 Most Anticipated Albums of 2021\" list. Le Bon said that the album is \"quite naked, raw. The grass is slightly sharp and twinkly rather than smooth,\" and is \"groovy (and) modern and very honest. The lyrics are quite something.\u201d On 18 May, the album title was announced as \"Future Past\".\nOn 19 May, the first single from the album \"Invisible\" was released along with a music video, and features Coxon as a guitarist and co-writer. On 9 July, the band premiered a second song from the album titled \"Give It All Up\" on NBC's \"Today\" show. On 5 August, Duran Duran released the album's second single \"More Joy!\", featuring further collaboration with Coxon, Erol Alkan and also Japanese rock band Chai. On 12 August, the band appeared on \"The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon\" performing \"Invisible\". On 31 August, Duran Duran released the album's third single \"Anniversary\", followed by the fourth single, \"Tonight United\", on 24 September. On 14 and 15 September, the band played two sold-out gigs at Birmingham's O2 Institute. That was the first time they played live since their last live gig in 2019. Along with their hit songs, they performed three tracks from \"Future Past\"\u2014\"Invisible\", \"Anniversary\" and \"Tonight United\". The band headlined the Isle of Wight festival on 19 September.\nOn 22 October 2021, \"Future Past\" was released. The album entered the UK Album Chart at number three, the band's highest peak since 2004's \"Astronaut\". This also earned the band the distinction of having UK Top 5 albums in each of the five decades they had been releasing music (1980s\u20132020s). On 22 January 2022, Duran Duran played on \"Austin City Limits\". In June 2022, Duran Duran performed at the Platinum Party at the Palace. In July 2022, the band returned to the city of their origin, Birmingham to headline the opening ceremony of Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games playing to a capacity Alexander Stadium.\nIn 2022, the band topped the fan vote (over 1 million preferences) for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the class of 2022, and in May of that year were announced as one of the seven inductees in the \"Performer\" category. \nOn 11 July 2022, Duran Duran headlined a concert in Hyde Park, London, to more than 80,000 adoring fans, as part of the 2022 BST concert series.\nThe ceremony at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was held on 5 November 2022, where Robert Downey Jr. inducted the band. John Taylor, Roger Taylor, Rhodes and Le Bon each attended the induction ceremony and performed \"Girls on Film\", \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Ordinary World\" along with longtime touring guitarist Dom Brown. During the acceptance speech, Simon Le Bon read from a letter written by Andy Taylor, who was absent from the ceremony, that revealed he has been privately fighting stage IV metastatic prostate cancer for the past four years and was \"massively disappointed\" he couldn't attend.\n2023\u2013present: \"Danse Macabre\".\nOn 20 March 2023, Duran Duran took to their Instagram to announce they are working on a new musical project, set for release in late 2023. The work will feature a collaboration with former band members Andy Taylor and Warren Cuccurullo. The project, \"Danse Macabre\", was released on 27 October. A Halloween-themed album, it features new songs, reworkings of older material and several covers.\nThe first single \u2013 the title track \"Danse Macabre\" \u2013 was released on 30 August 2023. The second single, \"Black Moonlight\", followed on 21 September.\nOn 13 September 2024, the band released a new reworking of their 1983 single \"New Moon on Monday\" titled \"New Moon (Dark Phase)\", ahead of a planned deluxe reissue of \"Danse Macabre\". The single features contributions from Andy Taylor.\nIn 2025, Carlo Conti announced that Duran Duran would be special guests of Sanremo Music Festival in the third night. They perform with Victoria De Angelis.\nInfluences.\nAlthough they began their career as \"a group of art school, experimental, post punk rockers,\" the band's quick rise to stardom, polished good looks and embrace of the teen press almost guaranteed disfavour from music critics. During the 1980s, Duran Duran were considered the quintessential manufactured, throw-away pop group. However, according to the \"Sunday Herald\", \"To describe them, as some have, as the first boy band, misrepresents their appeal. Their weapons were never just their looks, but self-penned songs.\" Moby said of the band in his blog in 2003: \"...\u00a0they were cursed by what we can call the 'Bee Gees' curse, which is: 'write amazing songs, sell tons of records, and consequently incur the wrath or disinterest of the rock obsessed critical establishment.'\"\nInfluences on Duran Duran included David Bowie, Roxy Music, the Beatles and the Doors; the electronic music of John Foxx's Ultravox, Kraftwerk, the Yellow Magic Orchestra and Giorgio Moroder; glam rock and American rock such as T. Rex, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and Sparks; British punk and post-punk bands such as the Clash, Sex Pistols and Siouxsie and the Banshees; and the disco/funk band Chic. Duran Duran were also influenced by contemporary synth-pop groups, with records by Japan, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and the Human League becoming fixtures in Rhodes's 1980 DJ sets at the Rum Runner club. Andy Taylor was a fan of the rock band AC/DC, \"...all these different influences were coming into the studio. Somehow, it had its own life. It became very unique in itself. It was influenced by a lot of different people\", Roger Taylor said in a 2012 interview.\nSeveral of the band's contemporaries including the Bangles, Elton John, Kylie Minogue, Paul Young and even the Monkees, have named themselves fans of the band's music. Le Bon described the group as \"the band to dance to when the bomb drops\". Successors like Barenaked Ladies, Beck, Jonathan Davis of Korn, the Bravery, Gwen Stefani and Pink have all cited Duran Duran as a key band in their formative years. Justin Timberlake is a fan of the band and presented them with the Outstanding Contribution award at the 2004 Brit Awards. The most recent crop of performers to name Duran Duran as an influence include Dido, Franz Ferdinand, Panic! at the Disco, Goldfrapp and Brandon Flowers of the Killers, who said, \"Nick Rhodes is an absolute hero of mine\u2014their records still sound fresh, which is no mean feat as far as synths are concerned.\"\nRhodes has directly lent his production techniques to Kajagoogoo's debut album \"White Feathers\" (1983) and its number one single \"Too Shy\", and to the Dandy Warhols' fourth album \"Welcome to the Monkey House\" (2003). The band's music has been used by several hip hop artists, most notably the Notorious B.I.G., who sampled Duran Duran's 1986 single \"Notorious\". Numerous bands have covered their music on record and in concert.\nVideos.\nThe MTV cable channel and the band were launched at about the same time, and each had a hand in propelling the other to greater heights. MTV needed showcase videos with charismatic performers. Les Garland, senior executive vice-president at MTV, said \"I remember our director of talent and artist relations came running in and said, \"You have got to see this video that's come in\". Duran Duran were getting zero radio airplay at the time, and MTV wanted to try to break new music. \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" was the greatest video I'd ever seen\". The band's video work was influential in several ways. First, Duran Duran filmed in exotic locales like Sri Lanka and Antigua, creating memorable images that were radically different from the then-common low budget \"band-playing-on-a-stage\" videos. Second, rather than simply playing their instruments, the band participated in mini-storylines (often taking inspiration from contemporary movies: \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" riffs on 1981's \"Raiders of the Lost Ark\", \"The Wild Boys\" on 1981's \"Mad Max 2\"), etc. While videos were already headed in this direction, Duran Duran led the trend with a style, featuring quick editing, arresting graphic design, and surreal-to-nonsensical image inserts, that drew attention from commentators and spawned a wealth of imitators.\nDuran Duran were among the first bands to have their videos shot with a professional movie camera on 35mm film, rather than on videotape, making them look superior to many of the quickly shot videos which had been MTV staples until then. MTV provided Duran Duran with access to American radio markets that were unfriendly to British music, new wave music, or \"anything with synthesisers\". Because MTV was not available everywhere in the United States at first, it was easy to see a pattern: where MTV went, listener demand for Duran Duran, Tears for Fears, Def Leppard and other European bands with interesting videos went through the roof. The band's sun-drenched videos for \"Rio\", \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Save a Prayer\", and the surreal \"Is There Something I Should Know?\" were filmed by future movie director Russell Mulcahy, who made eleven videos for the band. Duran Duran have always sought out innovative directors and techniques, even in their later years when MTV gave them little airplay. In addition to Mulcahy, they have had videos filmed by influential photographers Dean Chamberlain and Ellen von Unwerth, Chinese director Chen Kaige, documentary filmmaker Julien Temple, and the Polish Brothers, among others. According to Rhodes, \"Video is to us like stereo was to Pink Floyd.\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"The British won out here, hands down. Next to the prosaic, foursquare appearance of the American bands, such acts as Duran Duran seemed like caviar. MTV opened up a whole new world that could not be fully apprehended over the radio. The visual angle played to the arty conceits of Britain's young style barons, suggesting something more exotic than the viewer was likely to find in the old hometown. The big Duran Duran hits, \"Girls on Film\" and \"Hungry Like the Wolf\", were MTV favorites three months before radio began to pick up on them. And via MTV, Duran Duran and their like have engendered an outpouring of good old-fashioned hysteria among teenage girls.\"\nIn 1984, Duran Duran introduced video technology into their live stadium shows by being among the first acts to provide video screens above the stage. They have recorded concerts using IMAX and 360-degree panoramic \"immersive video\" cameras, with 10.2 channel audio. In 2000, they experimented with augmented reality technology, which allowed three-dimensional computer-generated images to appear on stage with the band. They appeared on several century-end video countdowns: The MTV \"100 Greatest Videos Ever Made\" featured \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" at No.\u00a011 and \"Girls on Film\" at No.\u00a068, and the \"VH1: 100 Greatest Videos\" listed \"Hungry\" at No.\u00a031 and \"Rio\" at No.\u00a060. MTV named \"Hungry\" the 15th of their most played videos of all time.\nThe band has released several video compilations, starting with the self-titled \"video album\" \"Duran Duran\" (1983), for which they won a Grammy Award, up to the 2004 two-disc DVD release \"Greatest\", which included alternative versions of several popular videos as Easter eggs. In addition to \"Greatest\", the documentary \"Sing Blue Silver\", and the concert film \"Arena\" (both from 1984) were released on DVD in 2004. \"Live from London\", a concert video from one of their sold-out 2004 reunion shows at Wembley Arena, was released in the fall of 2005.\nOther video collections, concert films, and documentaries remain available only on videotape, and Duran Duran have not yet released a collection which includes all their videos. The band has said that a huge amount of unreleased concert and documentary footage has been filmed over the years, which they hope can be edited and released in some form in the near future. The video for \"Falling Down\" was released in October 2007. The Nick Egan-directed video for the lead single and title track from \"All You Need Is Now\" was premiered via Yahoo Music on 20 December 2010. The second video from \"All You Need Is Now\", \"Girl Panic\", was released on 8 November 2011. It features some of the world's most famous supermodels, such as Yasmin Le Bon, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Eva Herzigov\u00e1 and Helena Christensen, playing the band. The video was directed by Jonas Akerlund, and during the filming, an editorial was made for \"Harper's Bazaar\" magazine.\nVisual style.\nFrom the beginning of their career, all the members had a keen sense of visual style. They worked with stylist Perry Haines and fashion designers such as Kahn & Bell and Antony Price to build a sharp and elegant image, soon outgrowing the ruffles and sashes of the pirate-flavoured early New Romantic look that had been popularised by Adam Ant during 1980\u201381. They have continued to present fashion as part of their package throughout their career. In the 1990s they worked with Vivienne Westwood and in the 2000s with Giorgio Armani. The band retained creative control of their visual presentation having worked closely with graphic designer Malcolm Garrett and many others over the years to create album covers, tour programs and other materials.\nTeen and music magazines in the UK latched onto their good looks quickly, and the USA soon followed. It was a rare month in the early 1980s when there was not at least one picture of the band members in teen magazines such as \"Smash Hits\" or \"Tiger Beat\". John Taylor once remarked that the band was \"like a box of Quality Street [chocolates]; everyone is someone's favourite\" Duran Duran later came to regret this early pin-up exposure, but at the time it helped attract national attention. In an interview with \"Rock Fever Superstars\" magazine in early 1988, John Taylor stated:\nWe used to be a very chi-chi name to drop in '79, but then the Fab Five hype started and something went wrong. Something went really wrong. That wasn't what I wanted. [...] Not that I didn't like being screamed at. At one point I really did\".\nDiscography.\nStudio albums\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nTours.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nExplanatory notes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["6501369", "148703"], "permutation_1": ["6501369", "148703"], "permutation_2": ["148703", "6501369"], "permutation_3": ["6501369", "148703"]}
{"id": "2hop__445544_127008", "docs_added": {"30220094": "From Mediterranea with Love\nFrom Mediterranea with Love is a 3-track EP by the English pop rock band Duran Duran, released as a download on iTunes for several European countries on 23 December 2010.\nThe EP includes the title track \"Mediterranea\", produced by Mark Ronson during sessions for the \"All You Need Is Now\" album in 2010. Released near Christmas, the EP also includes two live recordings and artwork based on images created by Clunie Reid with graphic design by Pop magazine. The EP was made available as a free download on iTunes for one day only in December 2010.\nWhile a previously unreleased track at the time the EP came out, \"Mediterranea\" was later included in an expanded version of \"All You Need Is Now\" in March 2011.\nPersonnel.\nDuran Duran\nAdditional musicians\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "148703": "Duran Duran\nEnglish pop rock band\nDuran Duran () are an English pop rock band formed in Birmingham in 1978 by singer Stephen Duffy, keyboardist Nick Rhodes and guitarist/bassist John Taylor. After several early changes, the band's line-up settled in May 1980 as Rhodes, Taylor, singer Simon Le Bon, guitarist Andy Taylor and drummer Roger Taylor. \nEmerging as members of the New Romantic scene, Duran Duran were innovators of the music video and a leading band in the MTV-driven Second British Invasion of the US in the 1980s. By 1984, the band had achieved levels of fame similar to Beatlemania. The band's first major hit was \"Girls on Film\" (1981), from their self-titled debut album, the popularity of which was enhanced by a controversial music video. The band's breakthrough second album was \"Rio\" (1982), a worldwide hit. The songs \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Rio\" featured cinematic music videos directed by Australian film maker Russell Mulcahy and became two of their biggest hits. Their third album, \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\", became their only UK number one album and featured the US and UK number one single \"The Reflex\". In 1985, the band topped the US charts with the single \"A View to a Kill\" from the soundtrack of the James Bond film of the same title.\nAndy Taylor and Roger Taylor both left the band before the recording of their fourth album, \"Notorious\" (1986), which yielded the top ten title track. Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor initially continued as a core trio, before adding drummer Sterling Campbell and former Frank Zappa and Missing Persons guitarist Warren Cuccurullo as full-time members in 1989, though Campbell departed in 1991. The band spent the late 1980s and early 1990s releasing albums and singles to only moderate success. Their comeback album, 1993's \"Duran Duran\" (commonly called \"The Wedding Album\"), featured two top ten worldwide hits \"Ordinary World\" and \"Come Undone\". John Taylor left the band in 1997, though four years later, in 2001, a full reunion of the classic 1980\u20131985 line-up of Le Bon, Rhodes and all three Taylors took place, which led to a number of highly successful concert tours and the 2004 album \"Astronaut\", which reached number three in the UK and top 40 in numerous other countries. The album's lead single \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\" was an international dance hit, and reached number five in the UK. Andy Taylor left again in 2006, and the band have released five additional albums, with the most recent being \"Danse Macabre\" in 2023.\nAccording to \"Billboard\", Duran Duran have sold over 100 million records. They achieved 30 top 40 singles in the UK Singles Chart (14 of them top 10) and 21 top 40 singles in the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100. The band have won numerous awards throughout their career: two Brit Awards including the 2004 award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, two Grammy Awards, an MTV Video Music Award for Lifetime Achievement and a Video Visionary Award from the MTV Europe Music Awards. They were also awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The band were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.\nHistory.\n1978\u20131980: Formation and early years.\nJohn Taylor and Nick Rhodes formed Duran Duran in 1978 in Birmingham, England, with Taylor's art school friend Stephen Duffy, naming their band after \"Dr. Durand Durand\", Milo O'Shea's character from the science fiction film \"Barbarella\" (1968), the day after the film was broadcast on BBC on 20 October 1978. The three of them (Taylor on guitar and vocals, Rhodes on synthesizer and tapes, Duffy on vocals and bass) played their first gig on 5 April 1979 at the Birmingham Polytechnic. Soon after, they were joined by Simon Colley on clarinet and bass. John (then going by his first name Nigel) was the guitarist at this point. After a few gigs, including a performance at Barbarella's in Birmingham opening for the band Fashion, Duffy and Colley left the band in June 1979.\nTaylor and Rhodes then recruited lead vocalist Andy Wickett (formerly frontman of \"TV Eye\") and decided that they needed a live drummer. They hired Roger Taylor, a former member of various local bands (most recently \"The Scent Organs\" who also played at Barbarella's), while John Taylor switched to bass guitar. In September 1979, this incarnation of the band recorded a four-track demo including an early version of \"Girls on Film\" co-written by Andy Wickett. Soon afterwards Alan Curtis was recruited as lead guitarist. After a few gigs with this line-up Wickett left the band in late 1979.\nWickett was replaced by Roger Taylor's friend and former singer of \"The Scent Organs\" Jeff Thomas. In early 1980, they became the resident band at the city's Rum Runner nightclub. They were doing jobs at the club and began rehearsing and regularly playing at the venue. Curtis was unhappy with the Rum Runner club scene and left the band to form Dif Juz with his brother. Thomas was fired shortly after following disagreements and repeated arguments. The three remaining members started to look for a new lead vocalist and guitarist. The owners of the club, brothers Paul and Michael Berrow, became the band's management, paying them to work as doormen, disc jockeys (DJs) and barmen when they were not rehearsing, and also formed the Tritec Music company.\nIn April 1980, guitarist Andy Taylor came from Newcastle upon Tyne to audition after responding to an advertisement in \"Melody Maker\". Andy already had a lot of experience from playing with cover bands for years and although he came from a totally different rock music background his versatile playing style was seen as a perfect complement to the band. In May 1980, London vocalist and drama student Simon Le Bon was recommended to the band by an ex-girlfriend who worked at the Rum Runner. The band were immediately impressed by Le Bon and soon completed their first composition with the new line-up, \"Sound of Thunder\", featuring lyrics by Le Bon. Duran Duran's first performance with the lineup of Le Bon, Rhodes and the three Taylors was on 16\u00a0July 1980 at the Rum Runner.\nDuran Duran spent the next months writing, developing and demoing their songs and performed in clubs around Birmingham and London. In September 1980 they had written all of what would become their debut album. Touring as an opening act for Hazel O'Connor, the band attracted critical attention, resulting in a bidding war between the record companies EMI and Phonogram. \"A certain patriotism\" toward the label of the Beatles led them to sign with EMI in December. A week later, the first article about Duran Duran in a national magazine appeared in \"Sounds\". The members of Duran Duran had noticed that Betty Page (pen name for Beverley Glick) was writing about a new movement called New Romantic that would fit the band perfectly and invited her to meet them at the Rum Runner.\nShortly after signing the recording contract with EMI, Duran Duran went to London to record their debut album with producer Colin Thurston, and initial plans for an independent release of the songs \"Planet Earth\" and \"Is There Anyone Out There?\" on the Tritec Music label were scrapped.\n1981\u20131982: Self-titled debut, \"Rio\" and Second British Invasion.\nThe band's debut album, \"Duran Duran\", was released on the EMI label in June 1981. The first single, \"Planet Earth\", had reached the United Kingdom's top 20 at number 12 in February. A follow-up, \"Careless Memories\", released in April, stalled at number 37. The third single, \"Girls on Film\", was released in July and went to number 5 in the UK. The video, featuring topless women mud wrestling, pillow fighting and stylised depictions of other sexual fetishes, was made with directing duo Godley & Creme in August. The video was filmed just two weeks after MTV was launched in the United States. The band expected the \"Girls on Film\" video to be played in the newer nightclubs that had video screens or on pay TV channels like the Playboy Channel. Kevin Godley explained the thinking behind it:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />We were very explicitly told by Duran Duran's management to make a very sensational and erotic piece that would be for clubs, where it would get shown uncensored just to make people take notice and talk about it.\nThe video was heavily edited for MTV. The album peaked in the UK top twenty at number three. Later in 1981 the band embarked on their first United States club tour followed by more dates in Germany and the UK. This second tour of Britain coincided with a wave of riots sparked by unemployment and racial tension, including those of Moss Side and Toxteth. The band played Birmingham the day after the Handsworth riots. The band also began writing and demoing songs for a new album. In November 1981, they released a new single, the disco-influenced \"My Own Way\", that reached number 14 in the UK, followed in early 1982 by the recording of their second album at AIR Studios in London.\nIn May 1982, Duran Duran released their second album, \"Rio\", which entered the UK Albums Chart at number four and peaked at number two the following week. The band scored three UK top 10 hits on the singles chart from the album with \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" at number five in June, \"Save a Prayer\" at number two in September and the title song \"Rio\" at number nine in December, while the earlier top 20 hit \"My Own Way\" was included in a re-recorded version on the album.\nWith the album Duran Duran also began to achieve worldwide recognition. A headlining tour of Australia, Japan and the US was followed by a stint supporting Blondie during that band's final American tour. Diana, Princess of Wales declared Duran Duran her favourite band, and the band were dubbed \"the Fab Five\" by the British press, comparing them to the Beatles whose nickname was the Fab Four.\nAt first, the \"Rio\" album did not do well in the United States. EMI in the UK had promoted Duran Duran as a New Romantic band, but the New Romantic movement was barely known in the US, and EMI's American subsidiary Capitol Records was at a loss about how to sell them. After \"Carnival\" (an EP of \"Rio\"'s dance remixes) became popular with DJs in the fall, the band arranged to have most of the album remixed by David Kershenbaum. In June 1982, Duran Duran appeared for the first time on American television, performing \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Rio\" on \"Dancin' on Air\", the forerunner to the national hit show \"Dance Party USA\".\nNow promoted as a dance album, \"Rio\" was re-released in the US in November and began to climb the American charts six months after its European success. MTV placed \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and several other Duran Duran videos into heavy rotation, pushing the single and album into the US top twenty in early 1983. The ballad \"Save a Prayer\" also did well. \"The band was a natural for music television,\" noted \"Rolling Stone\". \"They may be the first rock group to ride in on a video wave.\" The album ultimately peaked at number six in the US and remained on the charts there for 129 weeks. In 2003, \"Rio\" was listed at number 65 in the \"NME\"'s list of the 100 Greatest Albums of All Time.\nDuran Duran were among the earliest bands to work on their own remixes. Before the days of digital synthesizer and easy audio sampling, they created multi-layered arrangements of their singles, sometimes recording entirely different extended performances of the songs in the studio. These \"night versions\" were generally available only on vinyl as b-sides to 45 rpm singles or on 12-inch club singles until the release of the compilation \"\" in 1998.\n1983\u20131985: The \"Fab Five\", Side projects and Live Aid.\nThe band began 1983 at the Palladium in New York playing the MTV New Year's Eve Rock n' Roll Ball with \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" still climbing the charts in the US, and the American reissue of the \"Rio\" single to follow in March. To satisfy America's appetite for their music, the band re-released their eponymous first album in the US in the middle of the year with the addition of the new single \"Is There Something I Should Know?\". Upon its release, this song entered the chart at number one in the UK (a rarity then and their first chart-topper in their home country) and reached number five on the American charts. During the promotion of this album, Rhodes and Le Bon were MTV guest VJs for a show, during which artist and admirer Andy Warhol dropped by to greet them. \"Our first gigs in the United States were crazy and culty\", Rhodes said later, \"But when we came back after 'Hungry' was a hit, it was mayhem. It was Beatlemania. We were doing a signing of the 'Girls on Film' video at a store in Times Square. We couldn't get out of the store. The cops sealed off the streets.\" Also in 1983, Rhodes produced the UK number one and US number five hit \"Too Shy\" for English band Kajagoogoo and Andy Taylor became the first member of Duran Duran to get married.\nThe band spent the next year as tax exiles, writing songs at a ch\u00e2teau in France where \"The Tube\" with Jools Holland filmed a documentary with the band in May 1983 before they flew to Montserrat and then Sydney to record and mix their third album. During the summer, they returned to the UK to perform two concerts, the first on 20 July in front of the Prince and Princess of Wales at the Dominion Theatre, and the second, a charity concert at Aston Villa's home ground. The band were under pressure to follow up the success of \"Rio\", and the recording process took over six months as different band members went through bouts of perfectionism and insecurity. A newly decadent lifestyle and substance abuse issues for some members added complications. In the documentary film \"Extraordinary World\", filmed a decade later, Rhodes described the effect on their sound as \"barely controlled hysteria, scratching beneath the surface\".\nThe new album, \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" (1983), included the late 1983 hit \"Union of the Snake\" (with the soprano saxophone solo by Andy Hamilton). With \"Hungry Like the Wolf\", \"Rio\", \"Save a Prayer\" and \"Is There Something I Should Know?\", Duran Duran now had five US Top Twenty hits from three different albums in a single year. The band made music headlines by deciding to release the \"Union of the Snake\" video to MTV a full week before the single was released to radio. They followed up with \"New Moon on Monday\", which reached number nine in the UK. Their next single \"The Reflex\", taken from \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" and given a significant remix overhaul by Nile Rodgers of Chic fame, became their first number one hit in the United States. \"The Reflex\" was also their second and final UK number one and was successful in numerous other countries around the world.\nThe band embarked on a global tour that continued throughout the first four months of 1984 including their first major stadium dates in America. A film crew led by director Russell Mulcahy followed the band closely, leading to the documentary film \"Sing Blue Silver\" and the accompanying concert film \"Arena\". The live album \"Arena\" was also recorded during the tour and was released with the new single \"The Wild Boys\", which went to number two on both sides of the Atlantic. In February 1984, the band appeared on the cover of \"Rolling Stone\" magazine and won two Grammy Awards in the brand-new Long Form and Short Form music video categories. Meanwhile, \"Save a Prayer\" gained momentum in North America, and a special US remix of the song became a single in January 1985. It peaked at number 16 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 in March. A live version of the song was used for the single's B-side, taken from the concert video footage for \"Arena\" / \"As the Lights Go Down\".\nDuring this period, all of the band members became heartthrobs for many of their young teenage fans. After the tour, Roger Taylor was married in Naples, Italy, and Rhodes wed in London, wearing a pink velvet tuxedo and top hat. At the end of 1984, the group featured on the Band Aid benefit single \"Do They Know It's Christmas?\" along with other popular British and Irish musical acts. Le Bon sang fourth on the song, after Paul Young, Boy George and George Michael sing their lines.\nEven with Duran Duran on hold, band members were soon anxious to record new music, leading to a supposedly temporary split into two side projects. John Taylor and Andy Taylor wanted to break away from the Duran Duran sound and pursue hard rock material; they collaborated with lead vocalist Robert Palmer and Chic's drummer Tony Thompson to form the rock/funk supergroup the Power Station, releasing two top 10 singles. Le Bon and Rhodes wanted to further explore Duran Duran's atmospheric aspect and formed Arcadia, releasing one album (\"So Red the Rose\") and an accompanying single (\"Election Day\"). Contributors to that album included guitarist Masami Tsuchiya, bassist Mark Egan, percussionist David Van Tieghem, drummer Steve Jordan, Sting, Herbie Hancock and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. Roger Taylor was a drummer for Arcadia as well as contributing percussion to the Power Station album. According to Rhodes, the two side projects \"were commercial suicide... But we've always been good at that.\" The band regrouped to contribute \"A View to a Kill\" to the 1985 James Bond film of the same name. This single was the first Bond theme to go to number one on the US charts, and was at the time the joint highest-placed Bond theme on the UK chart where it reached number two. It was the last single the band recorded as the original five-piece for close to twenty years.\nAs a follow-up to the Christmas 1984 Band Aid single, Duran Duran performed in front of 90,000 people (and an estimated 1.5\u00a0billion TV viewers) at the Live Aid charity concert at John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 13 July 1985 while their Bond song held the top spot on the American charts. It was not intended to be a farewell performance\u2014the band planned only to take a break after four years of non-stop touring and public appearances\u2014but the original five did not play live together again until July 2003. During their Live Aid set, Le Bon inadvertently hit an off-key falsetto note in the chorus of \"A View to a Kill\", an error that was trumpeted by numerous media outlets as \"The Bum Note Heard Round the World\" (in contrast to Freddie Mercury's \"Note Heard Round the World\" at the Wembley Stadium Live Aid show). Le Bon later described the moment as the most embarrassing of his career.\n1986\u20131989: Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor trio.\nAfter releasing three studio albums and one live album in five years, each accompanied by heavy media promotion and lengthy concert tours, the band lost two of its core members to fatigue and tension in 1986. After Live Aid and Arcadia, Roger Taylor left the band and retired to the English countryside, suffering from exhaustion.\nAndy Taylor led the remaining members to believe he would return to work on a new Duran Duran album, even as he was signing a solo recording contract in Los Angeles with MCA Records, eventually releasing a solo album in 1986 called \"Thunder\". The band resorted to legal measures to get him into the studio but after numerous delays they let him go at last. He played on only a few songs on the next album, including \"A Matter of Feeling\", whilst the disagreements were being settled.\nWithout a guitarist or a drummer, Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor had producer (and former Chic guitarist) Nile Rodgers play a few tracks on guitar, and hired Steve Ferrone to play drums while they searched for replacements. In September 1986, Warren Cuccurullo (formerly of Missing Persons and Frank Zappa's band) was hired as a session guitarist. With Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor, he recorded the rest of the \"Notorious\" album, which was released in October 1986. The black-and-white documentary film \"Three to Get Ready\" chronicled the recording of the album, legal tensions, and preparations for the tour.\nAlthough the song \"Notorious\" was a US and UK top ten hit, the album was a relative failure globally, reaching number 16 in the UK and spending one week in the top 50 album chart. The band found they had lost much of the momentum and hysteria they had left behind in 1985. In the three years between the release of \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" and \"Notorious\", many of their teenage fans had grown up and the music was funkier, more mature, and less \"pop\", given the added experience of their work on Arcadia and Power Station and with other musicians. \"Skin Trade\" and \"Meet El Presidente\", the two subsequent singles, made the charts but fared poorly compared to the band's earlier successes. Finally in late 1987, Sterling Campbell was hired as a session drummer.\nSubsequently, Duran Duran struggled to escape the teen idol image and gain respect among critics with more complex music. The new serious image was not accepted at first and their popularity began to wane. \"Rolling Stone\" said, \"In their search for musical maturity, the surviving Durans have lost a good deal of their identity.\" In contrast the \"New York Times\" said, \"Duran Duran's newfound disillusionment may mark a step toward maturity...they managed to catch a trend on the upswing, perhaps \"Notorious\" suggests that for late 1980s grit and pessimism is coming into style.\" Another factor was the band's dismissal of early managers, the Berrow brothers. There was no announcement of the reasons for the decision, but disagreements over money, and the brothers' involvement in Le Bon's yachting adventures (they were co-owners of \"Drum\") were thought to have played a part. Whatever the reason, Duran Duran switched managers frequently and undertook periods of self-management in the later stages of their career. In addition, EMI fired its president and went through a major corporate restructuring that summer and seemed to have lost interest in promoting the band. According to Rhodes the band needed to break up in order to come back together stronger.\nThe next album \"Big Thing\" (1988) yielded the singles \"I Don't Want Your Love\" (number four in the US), and \"All She Wants Is\" (the last top ten hit in the UK until 1993). The record was experimental, mixing influences from house music and raves with Duran's atmospheric synth-pop and the creative guitar work of Cuccurullo (now a full band member), as well as more mature lyrics.\n1989\u20131991: Five again, \"Decade\" and \"Liberty\".\nBy the end of 1989 and at the start of the 1990s, the popularity of synth-pop was fading and losing fans to other momentum-gaining music genres at the time, such as hip hop, techno and alternative rock. After touring for the album finished, the band regained a five-man membership as Cuccurullo and Campbell were made full members of Duran Duran.\nThe compilation album \"Decade\" was released late in 1989, along with the megamix single \"Burning the Ground\", which consisted of woven snippets of the band's hits from the previous ten years, created and produced with John Jones, who began working with the band after the release of \"Big Thing\". The single came and went with little fanfare, but the album became another major seller for the band. The 1990 release \"Liberty\" (a retreat from the experimentation of \"Big Thing\") failed to capitalise on any regained momentum. The album entered the UK album chart in the top ten, but faded away quickly. The singles \"Violence of Summer (Love's Taking Over)\" and \"Serious\" were only mildly successful. For the first time, Duran Duran did not tour in support of an album, performing on only a handful of club dates and TV shows. Campbell left the band early in 1991, going on to work with Soul Asylum and David Bowie. The quartet of Le Bon, Rhodes, John Taylor and Cuccurullo would remain intact for six more years.\n1992\u20131996: Quartet line-up and a brief comeback.\nIn 1993, the band released a second self-titled album: this \"Duran Duran\" album is known as \"The Wedding Album\" (for Nick Egan's cover art featuring the wedding photos of the band members' parents) to distinguish it from the 1981 release, and was produced and recorded with John Jones. The release of this first \"comeback\" album was delayed, with then manager at Left Bank, Tommy Manzi, later telling HitQuarters that this was due to industry resistance to the revival of the band, who he said would rather focus on \"the next hip band\". Listener demand for leaked single \"Ordinary World\" forced it onto radio playlists months earlier than planned; it reached number three on the US chart and number six in the UK and won a prestigious Ivor Novello Award for song writing.\n\"Come Undone\", primarily written by Cuccurullo, with lyrics by Le Bon, made number seven in the US and number 13 in the UK. Both the band and the record label seemed to be caught by surprise by the album's critical and commercial success (number four in the UK, number seven in the US). John Taylor had been considering leaving the band but changed his mind. The band's largest tour ever, which included stops in the Middle East, the then recently de-embargoed South Africa, and South America, was halted after seven months when Le Bon suffered from strained vocal cords. After six weeks' recuperation, the band performed intermittently for another five months, including appearances in Israel, Thailand, and Indonesia.\nIn 1995, the band released the cover album \"Thank You\". Songs from \"Thank You\" included covers of Lou Reed's \"Perfect Day\" and Melle Mel's \"White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)\" (with backing vocals from the original artists). The album also marked the temporary return of former drummer Roger Taylor, who joined the band in studio to play drums on \"Watching the Detectives\" and \"Perfect Day\" (as well as a cover of \"Jeepster\" by T. Rex that did not appear on the album). In a video interview provided with the album's electronic press kit, Reed said he considered Duran Duran's version the best cover ever done of one of his songs, and they received praise from Robert Plant and Jimmy Page for their cover of Led Zeppelin's \"Thank You\".\n1997\u20132000: John Taylor's departure and second trio.\nAfter the promo tour for \"Thank You\" was completed, John Taylor co-founded the B5 Records label, recorded a solo album, founded and toured with the supergroup Neurotic Outsiders, and reunited the Power Station, though the project proceeded without him when he had to withdraw to deal with his divorce. Finally, after struggling for months to record the next album, \"Medazzaland\", in January 1997, John Taylor announced at the DuranCon fan convention that he was leaving the band \"for good\". His departure reduced the band to two long time members (Le Bon and Rhodes) and Cuccurullo, who decided to continue recording under the name Duran Duran.\nFreed from some internal writing conflicts, the band returned to the studio to rewrite and re-record many of the songs on \"Medazzaland\" (John Taylor's work remains on only four tracks). The album marked a return to the layered experimentation of \"Big Thing\", with intricate guitar textures and processed vocals. The track \"Out of My Mind\" was used as the theme song for the film \"The Saint\" (1997), but the only true single to be released in the United States was the quirky \"Electric Barbarella\", which is one of the first singles ever to be sold online. The music video for this single, featuring a sexy robot purchased and played with by band members, had to be censored before airing on MTV, but there was little of the controversy that had surrounded \"Girls on Film\". \"Electric Barbarella\" peaked at number 52 in the US in October 1997. Although \"Medazzaland\" was released in the US in October 1997, the album was never released in the UK. \"Electric Barbarella\" was later released in the UK as a single from the 1998 \"Greatest\" compilation album and peaked at number 23 on the UK chart in January 1999. The group played a set at the Princess Diana Tribute Concert on 27 June 1998 by special request of her family.\nDuran Duran parted ways with Capitol/EMI in 1999, although the label has since used Duran Duran's back catalogue to release several compilations of remixes and rare vinyl-only B-sides. The band then signed what was intended to be a three-album contract with Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records, but it lasted only through the poorly received 2000 album \"Pop Trash\". This slow-paced and heavy album seemed out-of-keeping with earlier band material. Rhodes' intricate production and Cuccurullo's songwriting and experimentation with guitar sounds and time signatures were not enough to hook the public, and the album did not perform well. The dreamy single \"Someone Else Not Me\" lasted barely two weeks on the radio, although its video was noted as the first to be produced entirely with Flash animation. While supporting \"Medazzaland\" and \"Pop Trash\", Duran Duran toured with bassist Wes Wehmiller and drummer Joe Travers.\n2001\u20132005: Reunion.\nIn 2000, Le Bon approached John Taylor with a proposal to reform Duran Duran's classic line-up. They agreed to part company with Cuccurullo after completing the \"Pop Trash\" tour. Cuccurullo then announced on his website that he was leaving Duran Duran to resume work with his 1980s band Missing Persons. This announcement was confirmed the next day by Duran Duran's website, followed a day later by the news that John, Roger and Andy had rejoined. To fulfill contractual obligations, Cuccurullo played three Duran Duran concerts in Japan in June 2001, ending his tenure in the band.\nThroughout 2001, 2002 and 2003, the band worked on writing new material, initially renting a house in Saint-Tropez where audio engineer Mark Tinley built a recording studio for their first serious writing session. They then returned to London to do some self-financed work with various producers (including old friend Nile Rodgers) and search for a new record deal. It proved difficult to find a record label willing to gamble on the band's comeback, so Duran Duran went on tour to prove the drawing power of the reunited band. The response of the fans and the media exceeded expectations. The band played a handful of 25th-anniversary dates across 2003, starting with two arena dates in Tokyo filled to capacity. Tickets sold out for each show within minutes, and celebrities turned out \"en masse\" for reunion dates. Amongst these were a number of shows at smaller venues that the band had played on both sides of the pond when they first got together in the early 1980s. In August, the band were booked as presenters at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, only to be surprised with a Lifetime Achievement Award. They also received a Lifetime Achievement award from \"Q\" magazine in October, and the equivalent Outstanding Contribution award at the BRIT Awards in February 2004.\nThe pace picked up with a sold-out tour of America, Australia and New Zealand. The band played a full concert at a private tailgate party at Super Bowl XXXVIII, their performance of \"The Wild Boys\" broadcast to millions during the pre-game show. A remix of the new track \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\" was released on many TV shows in February while magazines hailed (the modern \"Fab Five\") Duran Duran as one of the greatest bands of all time. Duran Duran then celebrated their homecoming to the UK with fourteen stadium dates in April 2004, including five sold-out nights at Wembley Arena. The British press, traditionally hostile to the band, accorded the shows some very warm reviews. Duran Duran brought along band Goldfrapp and the Scissor Sisters as alternating opening acts for this tour. The last two shows were filmed, resulting in the concert DVD \"Duran Duran: Live from London\" which was released in November.\nFinally, with more than thirty-five songs completed, the band signed a two-album contract with Epic Records in June, and completed the new album, now titled \"Astronaut\". The album was released in October 2004 and entered the UK charts at number three and the US charts at number 17. The first single was \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\", which reached number one on the \"Billboard\" US Dance chart in November and peaked at number five on the UK Singles Chart, Duran Duran's highest chart position since \"A View to a Kill\" in 1985. A second single, \"What Happens Tomorrow\", debuted at No.\u00a011 on the UK chart in February. A 5.1 mix of \"Astronaut\" was created by Jeremy Wheatley for the dual-disc release of \"Astronaut\". The CD side contains the album as-is and the DVD side contains the 5.1 mix of the album in DVD Audio format along with some DVD footage and videos.\nAfter a world tour in early 2005, Duran Duran were presented with the PRS Outstanding Contribution to British Music at the 2005 Ivor Novello Awards. Later that summer, the band headlined the massive Live 8 concert, Rome on 2 July 2005 in the Circus Maximus.\n2006\u20132008: \"Red Carpet Massacre\" and Andy Taylor's second departure.\nIn early 2006, Duran Duran covered John Lennon's song \"Instant Karma!\" for the \"Make Some Noise\" campaign sponsored by Amnesty International. Their version later appeared on \"\" as an iTunes exclusive bonus track. They also performed at two high-profile events\u00a0\u2013 the Nobel Prize Awards and the 2006 Winter Olympics. After a couple of weeks of songwriting in Northern California, the band began working with producer Michael Patterson in London, and continued intermittently for the next several months. At one point, they reported having had fifteen tracks nearly complete for an album tentatively titled \"Reportage\", but no further news emerged from the band for months afterward. In September, the band held meetings in New York City with Justin Timberlake and producer Timbaland with an eye to a potential collaboration and were soon reported to have completed three songs with the producer, including a song with Justin Timberlake.\nOn 25 October 2006, Duran Duran parted company with Andy Taylor once again. In an official announcement on their website, the band stated that an \"unworkable gulf\" had developed between them and Taylor and that \"we can no longer effectively function together\". It was noted by Andy Taylor in his book \"Wild Boy\" that tensions had arisen between the group's management and himself, and he was also diagnosed with clinical depression connected with the death of his father. Dom Brown, who had previously toured with the band, again took over guitar duties and has been performing with them since. After Taylor's departure, the band scrapped the \"Reportage\" album. They wrote and recorded a new album titled \"Red Carpet Massacre\" (2007), which included the Timbaland tracks. Dom Brown is the featured guitarist on the album.\nIn July 2007, the band performed twice at Wembley Stadium. Their first appearance at the stadium was the Concert for Diana which celebrated the life of Princess Diana almost 10 years after her death. The band performed \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\", \"The Wild Boys\" and \"Rio\". Their second appearance was at Live Earth concert, London. On 25 September, the Timberlake collaboration \"Falling Down\" was released as a download single on iTunes, and the band announced that they would play nine shows at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway to launch the \"Red Carpet Massacre\" album. The album launch was later extended to incorporate a show in London on 3 December 2007 and one in Dublin on 5 December 2007.\nIn May 2008, they toured the US leg of their 2008 world tour and were supported by the British band Your Vegas. In June 2008, they played the Louvre in Paris in a fundraising effort that contributed to the restoration of a Louis XV drawing room. Guests dined, privately viewed some of the museum's artworks, then attended a performance by the band in the I.M. Pei-designed Pyramid du Louvre. The group's performance marked a first for the 18th-century museum which had never before allowed a rock concert to occur anywhere within the grounds or buildings and another groundbreaker for Duran Duran.\nOn 2 July 2008, in Paris, Mark Ronson performed a unique live set with Duran Duran for an exclusive, invitation-only performance. Together, they showcased specially re-worked versions of some of Duran Duran's classic hits re-created by Ronson, along with tracks from \"Red Carpet Massacre\". Le Bon also performed songs from Ronson's latest album, \"Version\" (2007), as one of Ronson's featured guest vocalists. Unlike the band's previous album \"Astronaut\" (2004), \"Red Carpet Massacre\" sold poorly and received mixed responses from the music press. In 2008, \"Rio\" was included in the \"Classic Albums\" series.\n2009\u20132012: \"All You Need Is Now\".\nThe band departed from Epic Records in 2009, after releasing just two albums. In early 2010, it was revealed that the band would be contributing a cover of \"Boys Keep Swinging\" to a tribute/charity record for David Bowie called \"\" from which all profits go to War Child. Other contributing artists included Carla Bruni, Devendra Banhart, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, and Warpaint. The album was released on 14 September 2010 on Manimal Vinyl Records. A limited edition split 7-inch single with Duran Duran and Carla Bruni was also released on Manimal Vinyl in December 2010.\nOn 21 December 2010, Duran Duran's thirteenth album, titled \"All You Need Is Now\", produced by the Grammy Award-winning Mark Ronson and mixed by Spike Stent, was released exclusively on iTunes and hit the number one spot on download charts in 15 countries (including the UK). The first single from the record, title track \"All You Need Is Now\", was free to download worldwide on 8 December 2010 exclusively in iTunes. Guitarist and songwriter Dom Brown co-wrote all but two songs on the album.\nOn 25 February 2011, while in Milan, Duran Duran received a Style Icons of the 20th Century Award and a key to the city, presented by the city's mayor Letizia Moratti.\nIn March 2011 the band embarked on a world tour in support of the album. After a warm-up show in London, the tour officially began 16 March 2011 in Austin, Texas. On 23 March, the band performed live at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles as the start of the second season of \"\". The concert was directed by David Lynch and live-streamed on YouTube. The band was joined onstage by Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, Beth Ditto of Gossip, and Kelis. On 17 April 2011, Duran Duran performed at the Coachella Music Festival located at Empire Polo Grounds, in Indio, California. In May 2011, Le Bon contracted laryngitis leading to either cancellation or rescheduling of most of the European dates for the \"All You Need Is Now\" World Tour.\nOn 27 July 2012, Duran Duran headlined the London Summer Olympics 2012 Opening Ceremony celebration in Hyde Park. They represented England, along with Snow Patrol for Northern Ireland, Stereophonics for Wales, and Paolo Nutini for Scotland. At the end of August 2012, with one week left of their 18-month world tour, the band were forced to cancel the rest of the North American leg of the tour as Nick Rhodes had become ill with a viral infection.\n2013\u20132018: \"Paper Gods\".\nOn 4 March 2013, the band returned to the studio to work on their fourteenth album, and continued during the week beginning 23 September. They reconvened 13 to 18 December. On 31 December 2013, the band posted a mixtape curated by John Taylor as a New Year's \"thank you\" to their fans. On 10 February 2014, John Taylor and Roger Taylor worked with the Voce Chamber Choir and London Youth Chamber Choir on vocals for use on some Duran Duran tracks. Then former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante worked with the band on the new album.\nOn 11 September 2015, the album \"Paper Gods\" was released. The single \"Pressure Off\" was also released the same week, first via Microsoft's Xbox Music. The song subsequently appeared on Google Play Music. The album debuted at number 10 on the \"Billboard\" 200, the band's highest debut in 22 years. The album also reached number two in Italy, number four in the Netherlands, and number five in the UK. In 2016, the artist MNDR stood in for Rhodes during part of the third leg of the Paper Gods tour in the United States, while he returned to the UK in order to attend to an urgent family matter. Rhodes was quoted as saying, \"I will be back as soon as I can but know, in the meantime, that I am leaving both the band and fans in great hands, with the fabulous MNDR.\" Also, several remixes of their song \"Last Night in the City\" were released in digital form in that year.\nIn December 2016, the original five-piece lineup lost a case in the British High Court after they attempted to reclaim the U.S. copyright on their first three albums from Gloucester Place Music, part of EMI Music Publishing. Rhodes commented, \"We signed a publishing agreement as unsuspecting teenagers, over three decades ago, when just starting out and when we knew no better... if left untested, this judgment sets a very bad precedent for all songwriters of our era.\" In March 2020, Duran Duran signed with the Warner/Chappell Music publisher, covering their post-1986 catalogue. The band spent 2017 touring the American continent and playing a handful of festival dates in Europe and Asia.\n2019\u20132022: \"Future Past\" and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction.\nIn 2019, Duran Duran were working on a new album with Ronson, Erol Alkan and Giorgio Moroder handling production duties, and Graham Coxon and Lykke Li being confirmed as collaborators. Rhodes described the content and sound of a possible first single to be \"very different for us.\" Initially planned for release in 2020, the recording of the album was put on hold in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On 8 January 2021, a cover of \"Five Years\" by David Bowie was released for the fifth anniversary of his death. On 13 January 2021, \"Rolling Stone\" included the album at number 50 on their \"54 Most Anticipated Albums of 2021\" list. Le Bon said that the album is \"quite naked, raw. The grass is slightly sharp and twinkly rather than smooth,\" and is \"groovy (and) modern and very honest. The lyrics are quite something.\u201d On 18 May, the album title was announced as \"Future Past\".\nOn 19 May, the first single from the album \"Invisible\" was released along with a music video, and features Coxon as a guitarist and co-writer. On 9 July, the band premiered a second song from the album titled \"Give It All Up\" on NBC's \"Today\" show. On 5 August, Duran Duran released the album's second single \"More Joy!\", featuring further collaboration with Coxon, Erol Alkan and also Japanese rock band Chai. On 12 August, the band appeared on \"The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon\" performing \"Invisible\". On 31 August, Duran Duran released the album's third single \"Anniversary\", followed by the fourth single, \"Tonight United\", on 24 September. On 14 and 15 September, the band played two sold-out gigs at Birmingham's O2 Institute. That was the first time they played live since their last live gig in 2019. Along with their hit songs, they performed three tracks from \"Future Past\"\u2014\"Invisible\", \"Anniversary\" and \"Tonight United\". The band headlined the Isle of Wight festival on 19 September.\nOn 22 October 2021, \"Future Past\" was released. The album entered the UK Album Chart at number three, the band's highest peak since 2004's \"Astronaut\". This also earned the band the distinction of having UK Top 5 albums in each of the five decades they had been releasing music (1980s\u20132020s). On 22 January 2022, Duran Duran played on \"Austin City Limits\". In June 2022, Duran Duran performed at the Platinum Party at the Palace. In July 2022, the band returned to the city of their origin, Birmingham to headline the opening ceremony of Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games playing to a capacity Alexander Stadium.\nIn 2022, the band topped the fan vote (over 1 million preferences) for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the class of 2022, and in May of that year were announced as one of the seven inductees in the \"Performer\" category. \nOn 11 July 2022, Duran Duran headlined a concert in Hyde Park, London, to more than 80,000 adoring fans, as part of the 2022 BST concert series.\nThe ceremony at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was held on 5 November 2022, where Robert Downey Jr. inducted the band. John Taylor, Roger Taylor, Rhodes and Le Bon each attended the induction ceremony and performed \"Girls on Film\", \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Ordinary World\" along with longtime touring guitarist Dom Brown. During the acceptance speech, Simon Le Bon read from a letter written by Andy Taylor, who was absent from the ceremony, that revealed he has been privately fighting stage IV metastatic prostate cancer for the past four years and was \"massively disappointed\" he couldn't attend.\n2023\u2013present: \"Danse Macabre\".\nOn 20 March 2023, Duran Duran took to their Instagram to announce they are working on a new musical project, set for release in late 2023. The work will feature a collaboration with former band members Andy Taylor and Warren Cuccurullo. The project, \"Danse Macabre\", was released on 27 October. A Halloween-themed album, it features new songs, reworkings of older material and several covers.\nThe first single \u2013 the title track \"Danse Macabre\" \u2013 was released on 30 August 2023. The second single, \"Black Moonlight\", followed on 21 September.\nOn 13 September 2024, the band released a new reworking of their 1983 single \"New Moon on Monday\" titled \"New Moon (Dark Phase)\", ahead of a planned deluxe reissue of \"Danse Macabre\". The single features contributions from Andy Taylor.\nIn 2025, Carlo Conti announced that Duran Duran would be special guests of Sanremo Music Festival in the third night. They perform with Victoria De Angelis.\nInfluences.\nAlthough they began their career as \"a group of art school, experimental, post punk rockers,\" the band's quick rise to stardom, polished good looks and embrace of the teen press almost guaranteed disfavour from music critics. During the 1980s, Duran Duran were considered the quintessential manufactured, throw-away pop group. However, according to the \"Sunday Herald\", \"To describe them, as some have, as the first boy band, misrepresents their appeal. Their weapons were never just their looks, but self-penned songs.\" Moby said of the band in his blog in 2003: \"...\u00a0they were cursed by what we can call the 'Bee Gees' curse, which is: 'write amazing songs, sell tons of records, and consequently incur the wrath or disinterest of the rock obsessed critical establishment.'\"\nInfluences on Duran Duran included David Bowie, Roxy Music, the Beatles and the Doors; the electronic music of John Foxx's Ultravox, Kraftwerk, the Yellow Magic Orchestra and Giorgio Moroder; glam rock and American rock such as T. Rex, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and Sparks; British punk and post-punk bands such as the Clash, Sex Pistols and Siouxsie and the Banshees; and the disco/funk band Chic. Duran Duran were also influenced by contemporary synth-pop groups, with records by Japan, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and the Human League becoming fixtures in Rhodes's 1980 DJ sets at the Rum Runner club. Andy Taylor was a fan of the rock band AC/DC, \"...all these different influences were coming into the studio. Somehow, it had its own life. It became very unique in itself. It was influenced by a lot of different people\", Roger Taylor said in a 2012 interview.\nSeveral of the band's contemporaries including the Bangles, Elton John, Kylie Minogue, Paul Young and even the Monkees, have named themselves fans of the band's music. Le Bon described the group as \"the band to dance to when the bomb drops\". Successors like Barenaked Ladies, Beck, Jonathan Davis of Korn, the Bravery, Gwen Stefani and Pink have all cited Duran Duran as a key band in their formative years. Justin Timberlake is a fan of the band and presented them with the Outstanding Contribution award at the 2004 Brit Awards. The most recent crop of performers to name Duran Duran as an influence include Dido, Franz Ferdinand, Panic! at the Disco, Goldfrapp and Brandon Flowers of the Killers, who said, \"Nick Rhodes is an absolute hero of mine\u2014their records still sound fresh, which is no mean feat as far as synths are concerned.\"\nRhodes has directly lent his production techniques to Kajagoogoo's debut album \"White Feathers\" (1983) and its number one single \"Too Shy\", and to the Dandy Warhols' fourth album \"Welcome to the Monkey House\" (2003). The band's music has been used by several hip hop artists, most notably the Notorious B.I.G., who sampled Duran Duran's 1986 single \"Notorious\". Numerous bands have covered their music on record and in concert.\nVideos.\nThe MTV cable channel and the band were launched at about the same time, and each had a hand in propelling the other to greater heights. MTV needed showcase videos with charismatic performers. Les Garland, senior executive vice-president at MTV, said \"I remember our director of talent and artist relations came running in and said, \"You have got to see this video that's come in\". Duran Duran were getting zero radio airplay at the time, and MTV wanted to try to break new music. \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" was the greatest video I'd ever seen\". The band's video work was influential in several ways. First, Duran Duran filmed in exotic locales like Sri Lanka and Antigua, creating memorable images that were radically different from the then-common low budget \"band-playing-on-a-stage\" videos. Second, rather than simply playing their instruments, the band participated in mini-storylines (often taking inspiration from contemporary movies: \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" riffs on 1981's \"Raiders of the Lost Ark\", \"The Wild Boys\" on 1981's \"Mad Max 2\"), etc. While videos were already headed in this direction, Duran Duran led the trend with a style, featuring quick editing, arresting graphic design, and surreal-to-nonsensical image inserts, that drew attention from commentators and spawned a wealth of imitators.\nDuran Duran were among the first bands to have their videos shot with a professional movie camera on 35mm film, rather than on videotape, making them look superior to many of the quickly shot videos which had been MTV staples until then. MTV provided Duran Duran with access to American radio markets that were unfriendly to British music, new wave music, or \"anything with synthesisers\". Because MTV was not available everywhere in the United States at first, it was easy to see a pattern: where MTV went, listener demand for Duran Duran, Tears for Fears, Def Leppard and other European bands with interesting videos went through the roof. The band's sun-drenched videos for \"Rio\", \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Save a Prayer\", and the surreal \"Is There Something I Should Know?\" were filmed by future movie director Russell Mulcahy, who made eleven videos for the band. Duran Duran have always sought out innovative directors and techniques, even in their later years when MTV gave them little airplay. In addition to Mulcahy, they have had videos filmed by influential photographers Dean Chamberlain and Ellen von Unwerth, Chinese director Chen Kaige, documentary filmmaker Julien Temple, and the Polish Brothers, among others. According to Rhodes, \"Video is to us like stereo was to Pink Floyd.\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"The British won out here, hands down. Next to the prosaic, foursquare appearance of the American bands, such acts as Duran Duran seemed like caviar. MTV opened up a whole new world that could not be fully apprehended over the radio. The visual angle played to the arty conceits of Britain's young style barons, suggesting something more exotic than the viewer was likely to find in the old hometown. The big Duran Duran hits, \"Girls on Film\" and \"Hungry Like the Wolf\", were MTV favorites three months before radio began to pick up on them. And via MTV, Duran Duran and their like have engendered an outpouring of good old-fashioned hysteria among teenage girls.\"\nIn 1984, Duran Duran introduced video technology into their live stadium shows by being among the first acts to provide video screens above the stage. They have recorded concerts using IMAX and 360-degree panoramic \"immersive video\" cameras, with 10.2 channel audio. In 2000, they experimented with augmented reality technology, which allowed three-dimensional computer-generated images to appear on stage with the band. They appeared on several century-end video countdowns: The MTV \"100 Greatest Videos Ever Made\" featured \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" at No.\u00a011 and \"Girls on Film\" at No.\u00a068, and the \"VH1: 100 Greatest Videos\" listed \"Hungry\" at No.\u00a031 and \"Rio\" at No.\u00a060. MTV named \"Hungry\" the 15th of their most played videos of all time.\nThe band has released several video compilations, starting with the self-titled \"video album\" \"Duran Duran\" (1983), for which they won a Grammy Award, up to the 2004 two-disc DVD release \"Greatest\", which included alternative versions of several popular videos as Easter eggs. In addition to \"Greatest\", the documentary \"Sing Blue Silver\", and the concert film \"Arena\" (both from 1984) were released on DVD in 2004. \"Live from London\", a concert video from one of their sold-out 2004 reunion shows at Wembley Arena, was released in the fall of 2005.\nOther video collections, concert films, and documentaries remain available only on videotape, and Duran Duran have not yet released a collection which includes all their videos. The band has said that a huge amount of unreleased concert and documentary footage has been filmed over the years, which they hope can be edited and released in some form in the near future. The video for \"Falling Down\" was released in October 2007. The Nick Egan-directed video for the lead single and title track from \"All You Need Is Now\" was premiered via Yahoo Music on 20 December 2010. The second video from \"All You Need Is Now\", \"Girl Panic\", was released on 8 November 2011. It features some of the world's most famous supermodels, such as Yasmin Le Bon, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Eva Herzigov\u00e1 and Helena Christensen, playing the band. The video was directed by Jonas Akerlund, and during the filming, an editorial was made for \"Harper's Bazaar\" magazine.\nVisual style.\nFrom the beginning of their career, all the members had a keen sense of visual style. They worked with stylist Perry Haines and fashion designers such as Kahn & Bell and Antony Price to build a sharp and elegant image, soon outgrowing the ruffles and sashes of the pirate-flavoured early New Romantic look that had been popularised by Adam Ant during 1980\u201381. They have continued to present fashion as part of their package throughout their career. In the 1990s they worked with Vivienne Westwood and in the 2000s with Giorgio Armani. The band retained creative control of their visual presentation having worked closely with graphic designer Malcolm Garrett and many others over the years to create album covers, tour programs and other materials.\nTeen and music magazines in the UK latched onto their good looks quickly, and the USA soon followed. It was a rare month in the early 1980s when there was not at least one picture of the band members in teen magazines such as \"Smash Hits\" or \"Tiger Beat\". John Taylor once remarked that the band was \"like a box of Quality Street [chocolates]; everyone is someone's favourite\" Duran Duran later came to regret this early pin-up exposure, but at the time it helped attract national attention. In an interview with \"Rock Fever Superstars\" magazine in early 1988, John Taylor stated:\nWe used to be a very chi-chi name to drop in '79, but then the Fab Five hype started and something went wrong. Something went really wrong. That wasn't what I wanted. [...] Not that I didn't like being screamed at. At one point I really did\".\nDiscography.\nStudio albums\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nTours.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nExplanatory notes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["30220094", "148703"], "permutation_1": ["148703", "30220094"], "permutation_2": ["30220094", "148703"], "permutation_3": ["148703", "30220094"]}
{"id": "2hop__64323_55840", "docs_added": {"25080984": "The King's Speech\n2010 film by Tom Hooper\nThe King's Speech is a 2010 historical drama film directed by Tom Hooper and written by David Seidler. Colin Firth plays the future King George VI who, to cope with a stammer, sees Lionel Logue, an Australian speech and language therapist played by Geoffrey Rush. The men become friends as they work together, and after his brother abdicates the throne, the new king relies on Logue to help him make his first wartime radio broadcast upon Britain's declaration of war on Germany in 1939.\nSeidler read about George VI's life after learning to manage a stuttering condition he developed during his youth. He started writing about the relationship between the therapist and his royal patient as early as the 1980s, but at the request of the King's widow, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, postponed work until she died in 2002. He later rewrote his screenplay for the stage to focus on the essential relationship between the two protagonists. Nine weeks before filming began, the filmmakers learned of the existence of notes written by Logue that were being used by his grandson Mark and Peter Conradi as the basis of a , and were granted permission to incorporate material from the notes and book into the script.\nPrincipal photography took place in London and around Britain from November 2009 to January 2010. Hard light was used to give the story a greater resonance and wider-than-normal lenses were employed to recreate the Duke of York's feelings of constriction. A third technique Hooper employed was the off-centre framing of characters.\n\"The King's Speech\" was a major box office and critical success. It was widely praised by film critics for its visual style, art direction, screenplay, directing, score, and acting. Other commentators discussed the film's representation of historical detail, especially the reversal of Winston Churchill's opposition to abdication. The film received many awards and nominations, particularly for Colin Firth's performance, which resulted in his first Academy Award for Best Actor. At the 83rd Academy Awards, \"The King's Speech\" received 12 Oscar nominations, more than any other film in that year, and subsequently won four, including Best Picture. Censors initially gave it adult ratings due to profanity, though these were later revised downward after criticism by the makers and distributors in the UK and some instances of swearing were muted in the US. On a budget of \u00a38\u00a0million, it earned over \u00a3250\u00a0million internationally.\nPlot.\nAt the official closing of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Stadium, Prince Albert \"Bertie\", Duke of York, the second son of King George V, addresses the crowd with a strong stammer. His search for treatment has been discouraging, but his wife, Elizabeth, persuades him to see Australian-born Lionel Logue, a non-medically trained Harley Street speech defects therapist. Bertie believes the first session is not going well, but Lionel has him recite Hamlet's \"To be, or not to be\" soliloquy while listening to classical music over a pair of headphones. Bertie is frustrated but Lionel gives him the acetate recording that he has made of the reading as a souvenir.\nAfter Bertie's father, King George V, broadcasts his 1934 Royal Christmas Message, he explains to Bertie that the wireless will play a significant part in the role of the royal family, allowing them to enter the homes of the people, and that Bertie's brother's neglect of his responsibilities makes training in it necessary. The attempt at reading the message himself is a failure, but Bertie plays the recording Lionel gave him that night and is astonished at the lack of stutter. He returns for daily treatments to overcome the physical and psychological roots of his stutter.\nGeorge V dies in 1936. His eldest son David ascends the throne as King Edward VIII. A constitutional crisis arises with Edward over a prospective marriage with twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson. Edward, as the supreme governor of the Church of England, cannot marry her, even if her second divorce occurs, since both her previous husbands are alive.\nAt an unscheduled session, Bertie expresses frustration that, while his speech has mostly improved, he still stammers when talking to David, simultaneously revealing the extent of Edward VIII's folly with Simpson. When Lionel insists that Bertie himself could make a good king, Bertie accuses Lionel of treason and angrily quits Lionel. They reconvene after King Edward decides to abdicate to marry. Bertie, urged by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, ascends the throne as King George VI and visits Lionel's home with his wife before their coronation, much to the surprise of Mrs. Logue when she learns who Lionel's client has been.\nBertie and Lionel's relationship is questioned by the King's advisors during preparations for his coronation in Westminster Abbey. The archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang, points out that George never sought advice from his advisors about his treatment and that Lionel lacks formal training. Lionel explains to an outraged Bertie that at the time he started with speech defects there were no formal qualifications and that the only known help that was available for returning Great War shell-shocked Australian soldiers was from personal experience. Bertie remains unconvinced until provoked to protest at Lionel's disrespect for King Edward's Chair and the Stone of Scone. After realising he has just expressed himself without impairment, Bertie is able to rehearse with Lionel and complete the ceremony.\nAs king, Bertie has a crisis when he must broadcast to Britain and the Empire following the declaration of war on Nazi Germany in 1939. Lionel is summoned to Buckingham Palace to prepare the king for his speech. Knowing the challenge that lies before him, Lang, Winston Churchill, and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain accompany for support. Bertie and Logue are left in the broadcasting room. He delivers his speech with Logue conducting him, but eventually begins speaking freely. Logue mentions that Bertie still struggles enunciating \"w\", to which Bertie replies, \"I had to throw in a few so they'd know it was me.\"\nAs the Royal Family step onto the palace balcony and are applauded by the crowd, a title card explains that Logue, who was made Commander of the Royal Victorian Order for services to the Crown, was always present at King George VI's speeches during the war and that they remained friends until the King's death from lung cancer in 1952.\nCast.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>* Colin Firth as King George VI\nProduction.\nDevelopment.\nAs a child, David Seidler developed a stammer, which he believes was caused by the emotional trauma of World War II and the murder of his grandparents during the Holocaust. King George VI's success in overcoming his stammer inspired the young Seidler, \"Here was a stutterer who was a king and had to give radio speeches where everyone was listening to every syllable he uttered, and yet did so with passion and intensity.\" When Seidler became an adult, he resolved to write about King George VI. During the late 1970s and 1980s he voraciously researched the King, but found little information on Logue. Eventually Seidler contacted Valentine Logue, who agreed to discuss his father and make his notebooks available if the Queen Mother gave her permission. She asked him not to do so in her lifetime, and Seidler halted the project.\nThe Queen Mother died in 2002. Three years later, Seidler returned to the story during a bout of creative work inspired by a recovery from cancer. His research, including a chance encounter with an uncle whom Logue had treated, indicated he used mechanical breathing exercises combined with psychological counselling to probe the underlying causes of the condition. Thus prepared, Seidler imagined the sessions. He showed the finished screenplay to his wife, who liked it, but pronounced it too \"seduced by cinematic technique\". She suggested he rewrite it as a stage play to focus on the essential relationship between the King and Logue. After he had completed it, he sent it to a few friends who worked in theatre in London and New York for feedback.\nIn 2005 a small production company in London, received the script. The owner Joan Lane started talking with Simon Egan and Gareth Unwin of Bedlam Productions, and they invited Seidler to London to rewrite the play again, this time for the screen. Together, they and Bedlam Productions organised a reading of the play in Pleasance Theatre, a small house in north London, to a group of Australian expatriates, among whom was Tom Hooper's mother. She called her son and said, \"I've found your next project\".\nInstead of trying to contact his agent, Lane asked an Australian staff member to hand-deliver the script to Geoffrey Rush's house, not far away from hers in Melbourne. Unwin reports that he received a four-page e-mail from Rush's manager admonishing them for the breach of etiquette, but ending with an invitation to discuss the project further. Iain Canning from See-Saw Films became involved and, in Gareth Unwin's words: \"We worked with ex-chair of BAFTA Richard Price, and started turning this story about two grumpy men sitting in a room into something bigger.\" Hooper liked the story, but thought that the original ending needed to be changed to reflect events more closely: \"Originally, it had a Hollywood ending\u00a0... If you hear the real speech, he's clearly coping with his stammer. But it's not a perfect performance. He's managing it.\"\nThe production team learned\u00a0\u2013 some nine weeks prior to the start of filming\u00a0\u2013 of a diary containing Logue's original notes on his treatment of the Duke, which was in the process of being turned into a non-fiction book by Logue's grandson Mark and journalist Peter Conradi, titled \"\". Striking an agreement with the authors, they then went back and re-worked the script to reflect what was in the notes and the book. Some lines, such as at the climax, when Logue smiles and says, \"You still stammered on the W\" to the King, who replies, \"I had to throw in a few so they would know it was me\" were direct quotations from Logue's notes. Changes from the script to reflect the historical record included Michael Gambon improvising the ramblings of George V as he signed away authority, and the decision in the opening scene to dress the Duke in an overcoat rather than regal finery.\nSeidler thought Paul Bettany would be a good choice to play King George\u00a0VI, while Hooper preferred Hugh Grant, though both actors declined the offer. Once they met with Firth and heard him read for the part, Seidler and Hooper were convinced of his suitability for the role.\nThe UK Film Council awarded the production \u00a31\u00a0million in June 2009. Filming began in December 2009, and lasted 39 days. Most was shot in the three weeks before Christmas because Rush would be performing in a play in January. The schedule was further complicated by Bonham Carter's availability: she worked on \"Harry Potter\" during the week, so her scenes had to be filmed during the weekend.\nLocation and design.\nThe film depicted both regal opulence and scruffy, depression-era London. On 25 November 2009 the crew took over the Pullens buildings in Southwark and gave it the appearance of a street from 1930s London. Large advertisements for (among other things) Bovril and fascism were added to walls, and grit and grime to streets and buildings. To reproduce London smog of the time\u00a0\u2013 thick enough that cars might need guidance from someone walking ahead\u00a0\u2013 so much artificial smoke was used that fire alarms were triggered.\nOn 26 November, a week's filming with Firth, Rush, and Jacobi began at Ely Cathedral, the location used for Westminster Abbey. The production had asked for permission to film in the Abbey but were denied due to the demands of tourism. Though Lincoln Cathedral is architecturally a closer match to the Abbey, they preferred Ely, a favoured filming location. Its size allowed them to build sets showing not just the coronation, but the preparations before it.\nLancaster House, an opulent government-owned period house in London, was rented (at \u00a320,000 per day) for interior scenes of Buckingham Palace. The 1936 Accession Council at St. James's Palace, where George VI swore an oath, was filmed in the Livery Hall of Drapers' Hall. The room, ornate and vast, met the occasion: the daunting nature of the new King's responsibilities was shown by surrounding him with rich detail, flags and royal portraiture.\nThe crew investigated Logue's former consultation rooms, but they were too small to film in. Instead, they found a high, vaulted room not far away in 33 Portland Place. Eve Stewart, the production designer, liked the mottled, peeling wallpaper there so much that she recreated the effect throughout the entire room. In his DVD commentary, Hooper said he liked Portland Place as a set because it felt \"lived in\", unlike other period houses in London. The scenes of the Duke of York at home with his family were also filmed here; showing the Prince living in a townhouse \"subverted\" expectations of a royal drama.\nThe opening scene, set at the closing ceremony of the 1925 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Stadium, was filmed on location at Elland Road, home of Leeds United, and Odsal Stadium, home of Bradford RLFC. Elland Road was used for the speech elements of the prince stammering his way through his first public address, and Odsal Stadium was selected because of the resemblance of its curved ends to Wembley Stadium in 1925. The crew had access to the stadium only at 10\u00a0pm, after a football game. They filled the terraces with inflatable dummies and over 250 extras dressed in period costumes. Live actors were interspersed to give the impression of a crowd. Additional people, as well as more ranks of soldiers on the pitch, were added in post-production with visual effects.\nOther locations include Cumberland Lodge, Harley Street, Knebworth, Hatfield House, the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, Queen Street Mill Textile Museum in Burnley, and Battersea Power Station, which doubled as a BBC wireless control room. The final cut of the film was completed on 31 August 2010.\nDialogue.\nIn developing his portrayal of George VI's stammer, Firth worked with Neil Swain, the voice coach for the film. His sister, Kate Firth, also a professional voice coach to actors, proposed exercises the King might have done with Logue, and made suggestions on how to imagine Logue's mix of physical and psychological coaching for the film.\nIn addition, Firth watched archive footage of the King speaking. In an interview with Allan Tyrer published by the British Stammering Association, Swain said: \"[It] was very interesting while we were working on the film just to think tonally how far we could go and should go with the strength of George's stammer. I think a less courageous director than Tom [Hooper] \u2013 and indeed a less courageous actor than Colin [Firth] \u2013 might have felt the need to slightly sanitise the degree and authenticity of that stammer, and I'm really really pleased that neither of them did.\" In May 2011 Firth said he was finding traces of the stammer difficult to eliminate: \"You can probably hear even from this interview, there are moments when it's quite infectious. You find yourself doing it and if I start thinking about it the worse it gets. If nothing else it's an insight into what it feels like.\"\nMusic.\nThe film's original music is composed by Alexandre Desplat, which consisted of a sparse arrangement of strings and piano. The London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Terry Davies, limited orchestral score by only adding oboe and harp in one cut, to convey the character of the king, while also using single note to represent the stickiness of the King's speech. Old microphones extracted from the EMI archives, specially made for the royal family, had been used to record the score, to create a dated sound.\nThe use of the 2nd movement (Allegretto) of Beethoven's 7th Symphony, played during the broadcast of the 1939 radio speech from the film's climax, was played as a temp track added by editor Tariq Anwar. Desplat did not want to change the track and defended Anwar's suggestion, as the theme has a universal quality. Hooper further remarked that the stature of the piece helps elevate the status of the speech to a public event. The score album also featured the second movement of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 \"Emperor\" and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Marriage of Figaro overture. The score was nominated for several awards, including Best Original Score at the Oscars, Golden Globes, and BAFTAs, winning the latter award. The score also won a Grammy at the 54th Grammy Awards.\nVisual style.\nHooper employed a number of cinematic techniques to evoke the King's feelings of constriction. He and cinematographer Danny Cohen used wider than normal lenses to photograph the film, typically 14mm, 18mm, 21mm, 25mm and 27mm, where the subtle distortion of the picture helps to convey the King's discomfort. For instance, the subjective point of view shot during the Empire exhibition speech used a close up of the microphone with a wider lens, similar to the filming technique used for one of the Duke's early consultations with a physician. In \"The New York Times\", Manohla Dargis wrote that the feeling of entrapment inside the King's head was rendered overly literal with what she believed to be a fisheye lens, though in these scenes the wider lenses were used. Hooper also discussed using the 18mm lens, one he likes \"because it puts human beings in their context\".\nRoger Ebert noted that the majority of the film was shot indoors, where oblong sets, corridors, and small spaces manifest constriction and tightness, in contrast to the usual emphasis on sweep and majesty in historical dramas. Hooper used wide shots to capture the actors' body language, particularly that of Geoffrey Rush, who trained at L'\u00c9cole Internationale de Th\u00e9\u00e2tre Jacques Lecoq in Paris and \"is consequently brilliant in the way he carries his body\". Hooper widened his scope first to capture Rush's gestures, then full body movements and silhouettes. The approach carried over to Firth as well. In the first consultation scene, the Duke is squeezed against the end of a long couch framed against a large wall, \"as if to use the arm of the sofa as a kind of friend, as a security blanket?\" Martin Filler praised the \"low-wattage\" cinematography of Danny Cohen's, as making everything look like it has been \"steeped in strong tea\".\nAt other times, the camera was positioned very close to the actors to catch the emotion in their faces: \"If you put a lens 6 inches from somebody's face, you get more emotion than if you're on a long lens 20 feet away,\" Cohen said in an interview. Hooper sought a second subtlety while filming the first consultation room scene between the two men, having placed the camera 18\u00a0inches from Colin Firth's face: \"I wanted the nervousness of the first day to percolate into his performances,\" he said.\nHistorical dramas traditionally tend to use \"soft light\", but Hooper wanted to use a harsher glare, which gives a more contemporary feel, and thus a greater emotional resonance. To achieve the effect, the lighting team erected huge blackout tents over the Georgian buildings and used large lights filtered through Egyptian cotton.\nHistorical accuracy.\nSeveral events in the film did not happen, or were exaggerated. The visual blog \"Information is Beautiful\" deduced that, while taking creative licence into account, the film was 74.4% accurate when compared to real-life events, summarising: \"Some nips and tucks of the historical record, but mostly an accurate retelling of a unique friendship\".\nRelationship with Lionel Logue.\nThe filmmakers not only tightened the chronology of the events to just a few years but even shifted the timeline of treatment. The Duke of York actually began working with Logue in October 1926, ten years before the abdication crisis, and the improvement in his speech was apparent in months rather than years as suggested by the film. When he was dispatched to Australia to open their new Parliament House in Canberra in 1927, the Duke gave numerous speeches during the journey and performed well despite Logue not accompanying him on the trip. He wrote to Logue from the Caribbean, \"You remember my fear of 'The King'. I give it every evening at dinner on board. This does not worry me any more.\" Of his speech opening Parliament it was observed that he spoke \"resonantly and without stuttering\".\nRobert Logue, a grandson of Lionel, doubted the film's depiction of the speech therapist, stating \"I don't think he ever swore in front of the King and he certainly never called him 'Bertie'\". Andrew Roberts, an English historian, states that the severity of the King's stammer was exaggerated and the characters of Edward VIII, Wallis Simpson, and George V made more antagonistic than they really were, to increase the dramatic effect.\nPolitics.\nChristopher Hitchens and Isaac Chotiner have criticised the film for failing to indict the appeasement of the era or to portray Edward VIII's sympathetic attitude to Nazi Germany. \"The Guardian\" also corrected the portrayal of Stanley Baldwin as having resigned due to his refusal to order Britain's re-armament, when he in fact stepped down as \"a national hero, exhausted by more than a decade at the top\". Stanley's grandson, Earl Baldwin, was particularly unhappy with this film due to its factual distortions and portrayal of his grandfather as a dithering fool who misunderstood Hitler's intentions.\nHugo Vickers, an adviser on the film, agreed that the alteration of historical details to preserve the essence of the dramatic story was sometimes necessary. The high-ranking officials, for instance, would not have been present when the King made his speech, nor would Churchill have been involved at any level, \"but the average viewer knows who Churchill is; he doesn't know who Lord Halifax and Sir Samuel Hoare are.\"\nHitchens and Chotiner also challenged the film's portrayal of Winston Churchill's role in the abdication crisis. It is well established that Churchill encouraged Edward VIII to resist pressure to abdicate, whereas he is portrayed in the film as supportive of the Duke of York and not opposed to the abdication. Hitchens attributes this treatment to the \"cult\" surrounding Churchill's legacy. In a smart, well-made film \"would the true story not have been fractionally more interesting for the audience?\", he wondered.\nRealism.\nMartin Filler acknowledged that the film legitimately used artistic licence to make valid dramatic points, such as in the probably imagined scene when George V lectures his son on the importance of broadcasting. Filler cautions that George VI would never have tolerated Logue addressing him casually, nor swearing, and the King almost certainly would have understood a newsreel of Hitler speaking in German. Filler makes the larger point that both the King and his wife were, in reality, lukewarm towards Churchill because of the latter's support for his brother during the abdication crisis.\nCommenting on the film's final scene on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, Andrew Roberts has written, \"The scene is fairly absurd from a historical point of view\u00a0\u2013 Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill were not present and there were no cheering crowds outside Buckingham Palace.\" However, Roberts praises the film overall as a sympathetic portrayal of the King's \"quiet, unassuming heroism [...] The portrayals by Firth and Bonham Carter are sympathetic and acute, and the movie's occasional factual b\u00eatises should not detract from that.\"\nRelease.\nCinema release.\nThe film had its world premi\u00e8re on 6 September 2010 at the Telluride Film Festival in the United States. It was screened at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival, on Firth's 50th birthday, where it received a standing ovation and won the People's Choice Award. The cinema release poster was re-designed to show an extreme close-up of Firth's jaw and a microphone after Hooper criticised the first design as a \"train smash\". Tim Appelo called the original, air-brushed effort, which showed the three leads, \"shockingly awful\" though the new one \"really is worthwhile\".\nThe film was distributed by Transmission Films in Australia and by Momentum Pictures in the United Kingdom. The Weinstein Company distributed it in North America, Germany, the Benelux countries, Scandinavia, China, Hong Kong, and Latin America. The film was released in France on 2 February 2011 by Wild Bunch under the title \"Le discours d'un roi\".\nRatings controversy.\nThe film was originally given a 15 classification the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) due to the use of strong language, at the time BBFC guidelines at 12A / 12 stated that: \u2018The use of strong language (for example, \u2018fuck\u2019) must be infrequent.\u2019\nThe film contains two instances, in which the character of King George VI uses strong language several times at the instigation of his therapist during speech therapy sessions he is undergoing to alleviate his stammer, resulted in the term being used around 17 times in total.\nAt the London Film Festival, Hooper criticised the decision, questioning how the board could certify the film \"15\" for bad language but allow films such as \"Salt\" (2010) and \"Casino Royale\" (2006) to have \"12A\" ratings, despite their graphic torture scenes. Following Hooper's criticism, the board lowered the rating to \"12A\", allowing children under 12 years of age to see the film if they are accompanied by an adult. Hooper levelled the same criticism at the Motion Picture Association of America, which gave the film an \"R\" rating, preventing anyone under the age of 17 from seeing the film without an adult. In his review, Roger Ebert criticised the \"R\" rating, calling it \"utterly inexplicable\", and wrote, \"This is an excellent film for teenagers.\"\nIn January 2011 Harvey Weinstein, the executive producer and distributor, said he was considering having the film re-edited to remove some profanity, so that it would receive a lower classification and reach a larger audience. Hooper refused to cut the film, though he considered covering the swear words with bleeps. Helena Bonham Carter also defended the film, saying, \"[The film] is not violent. It's full of humanity and wit. [It's] for people not with just a speech impairment, but who have got confidence [doubts].\" After receiving his Academy Award, Colin Firth noted that he does not support re-editing the film; while he does not condone the use of profanity, he maintains that its use was not offensive in this context. \"The scene serves a purpose\", Firth states. An alternative version, with some of the profanities muted out, was classified as \"PG-13\" in the United States; this version was released to cinemas on 1 April 2011, replacing the R-rated one. The PG-13 version of this film is not available on DVD and Blu-ray.\nReception.\nBox office.\nIn Great Britain and Ireland, the film was the highest earning film on its opening weekend. It took in \u00a33,510,000 from 395 cinemas. \"The Guardian\" said that it was one of the biggest takes in recent memory, and compared it to \"Slumdog Millionaire\" (2008), which, two years earlier, earned \u00a31.5\u00a0million less. \"The King's Speech\" continued a \"stunning three weeks\" atop the UK Box office, and earned over \u00a33\u00a0million for four consecutive weekends, the first film to do so since \"Toy Story 3\" (2010). After five weeks on UK release, it was hailed as the most successful independent British film ever.\nIn the United States \"The King's Speech\" opened with $355,450 (\u00a3220,000) in four cinemas. It holds the record for the highest per-cinema gross of 2010. It was widened to 700 screens on Christmas Day and 1,543 screens on 14 January 2011. It eventually made $138\u00a0million in North America overall.\nIn Australia \"The King's Speech\" made more than A$6,281,686 (\u00a34\u00a0million) in the first two weeks, according to figures collected by the Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia. The executive director of Palace Cinemas, Benjamin Zeccola, said customer feedback on the film was spectacular. \"It's our No.1 for all the period, all throughout the country.\u00a0... I think this is more successful than \"Slumdog Millionaire\" and a more uplifting film. It's a good example of a film that started out in the independent cinemas and then spread to the mainstream cinemas.\"\nOf the film's net profit of some $30\u201340\u00a0million (\u00a320\u201325\u00a0million) from the cinema release alone, about a fifth was shared between Geoffrey Rush (as executive producer), Tom Hooper and Colin Firth, with the remainder being divided equally between the film's producers and its equity investors. The UK Film Council invested \u00a31\u00a0million of public funds from the United Kingdom lottery into the film. In March 2011 \"Variety\" estimated that the return could be between fifteen and twenty times that. The council's merger into the British Film Institute means that the profits were to be returned to that body.\nCritical response.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nAs the actor of the year in the film of the year, I can't think of enough adjectives to praise Firth properly. \"The King's Speech\" has left me speechless.\n\u2014Rex Reed, \"New York Observer\"\n\"The King's Speech\" has received widespread critical acclaim, with Firth's performance receiving universal praise. Bonham Carter and Rush were also widely praised with both going on to win BAFTAs and receiving Academy Award nominations. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 94% based on reviews from 297 critics; the film's average rating was calculated as 8.60/10. The website's critical consensus reads: \"Colin Firth gives a masterful performance in \"The King's Speech\", a predictable but stylishly produced and rousing period drama.\" Metacritic gave the film a weighted score of 88/100, based on 41 critical reviews, which indicates \"universal acclaim\". CinemaScore reported that audiences gave the film a rare \"A+\" grade. \"Empire\" gave the film five stars out of five, commenting, \"You'll be lost for words.\" Lisa Kennedy of \"The Denver Post\" gave the film full marks for its humane qualities and craftsmanship: \"It is an intelligent, winning drama fit for a king \u2013 and the rest of us\", she said. Roger Ebert of the \"Chicago Sun-Times\" awarded the film a full four stars, commenting that \"what we have here is a superior historical drama and a powerful personal one.\" Peter Bradshaw of \"The Guardian\" gave four stars out of five, stating, \"Tom Hooper's richly enjoyable and handsomely produced movie\u00a0... is a massively confident crowd-pleaser.\"\nManohla Dargis, while generally ambivalent towards the film, called the lead performances one of its principal attractions. \"With their volume turned up, the appealing, impeccably professional Mr. Firth and Mr. Rush rise to the acting occasion by twinkling and growling as their characters warily circle each other before settling into the therapeutic swing of things and unknowingly preparing for the big speech that partly gives the film its title,\" she wrote. \"The Daily Telegraph\" called Guy Pearce's performance as Edward VIII \"formidable ... with glamour, charisma and utter self-absorption\". \"Empire\" said he played the role well as \"a flash harry flinty enough to shed a nation for a wife.\" \"The New York Times\" thought he was able to create \"a thorny tangle of complications in only a few abbreviated scenes\". Hooper praised the actor in the DVD commentary, saying he \"nailed\" the 1930s royal accent. Richard Corliss of \"Time\" magazine named Colin Firth's performance one of the Top 10 Movie Performances of 2010.\nAlloCin\u00e9, a French cinema website, gave the film an average of four out of five stars, based on a survey of 21 reviews. \"Le Monde\", which characterised the film as the \"latest manifestation of British narcissism\" and summarised it as \"We are ugly and boring, but, By Jove!, we are right!\", nevertheless admired the performances of Firth, Rush, and Bonham Carter. It said that, though the film swept British appeasement under the carpet, it was still enjoyable.\nQueen Elizabeth II, the daughter and successor of King George VI, was sent two copies of the film before Christmas 2010. \"The Sun\" newspaper reported she had watched the film in a private screening at Sandringham House. A palace source described her reaction as being \"touched by a moving portrayal of her father\". Seidler called the reports \"the highest honour\" the film could receive.\nDepiction of stuttering.\nThe British Stammering Association welcomed the release of \"The King's Speech\", congratulating the film makers on their \"realistic depiction of the frustration and the fear of speaking faced by people who stammer on a daily basis.\" It said that \"Colin Firth's portrayal of the King's stammer in particular strikes us as very authentic and accurate.\" The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists welcomed the film, and launched their \"Giving Voice\" campaign around the time of its commercial release.\nDisfluency advocate Jonah Lehrer called the film \"an inspiring tale\" and praised its portrayal of the troubles suffered by Firth's character.\n However, Lehrer and other advocates criticized the film's depiction of stuttering as a result of emotional repression and childhood trauma. The treatment performed by Rush's character also drew criticism. Lehrer did admit it was a necessary artistic license: \"[the film] would have been a rather tedious piece of entertainment if the climactic scene involved Logue telling the monarch that his primary motor cortex was to blame.\"\nScience journalist Jeremy Hsu wrote that the film \"mainly succeeds by tackling the social stigma that surrounds stuttering.\" However, similar to Lehrer, he disapproved that it perpetuated myths about the condition, namely its relationship with childhood trauma and overly strict parenting.\nColumnist Jane Ahlin praised the film as it \"brings out of the shadows a common problem figuring into the lives of children and adults from every culture around the world.\" At the same time, she stated, \"heartwarming though the movie \"The King's Speech\" is, as someone who married a stutterer and is the mother of a stutterer, I'm not sure it does anything to put myths about stuttering to rest.\" She criticized the depiction of family and social dynamics as causes of the condition, as well as the portrayal of stutterering as connected to emotional or psychological problems.\nAwards and nominations.\nAt the 83rd Academy Awards, \"The King's Speech\" won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director (Hooper), Best Actor (Firth), and Best Original Screenplay (Seidler). The film had received 12 Oscar nominations, more than any other film in that year. Besides the four categories it won, the film received nominations for Best Cinematography (Danny Cohen) and two for the supporting actors (Bonham Carter and Rush), as well as two for its mise-en-sc\u00e8ne: Art Direction and Costumes.\nAt the 64th British Academy Film Awards, it won seven awards, including Best Film, Outstanding British Film, Best Actor for Firth, Best Supporting Actor for Rush, Best Supporting Actress for Bonham Carter, Best Original Screenplay for Seidler, and Best Music for Alexandre Desplat. The film had been nominated for 14 BAFTAs, more than any other film. At the 68th Golden Globe Awards, Firth won for Best Actor. The film won no other Golden Globes, despite earning seven nominations, more than any other film.\nAt the 17th Screen Actors Guild Awards, Firth won the Best Actor award and the entire cast won Best Ensemble, meaning Firth went home with two acting awards in one evening. Hooper won the Directors Guild of America Awards 2010 for Best Director. The film won the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Best Theatrical Motion Picture at the Producers Guild of America Awards 2010.\n\"The King's Speech\" won the People's Choice Award at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival, Best British Independent Film at the 2010 British Independent Film Awards, and the 2011 Goya Award for Best European Film from the Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematogr\u00e1ficas de Espa\u00f1a (Spanish Academy of Cinematic Art and Science).\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "46755": "George VI\nKing of the United Kingdom from 1936 to 1952\nGeorge VI (Albert Frederick Arthur George; 14 December 1895 \u2013 6 February 1952) was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 until his death in 1952. He was also the last Emperor of India from 1936 until the British Raj was dissolved in August 1947, and the first head of the Commonwealth following the London Declaration of 1949.\nThe future George VI was born during the reign of his great-grandmother Queen Victoria; he was named Albert at birth after his great-grandfather Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and was known as \"Bertie\" to his family and close friends. His father ascended the throne as George V in 1910. As the second son of the king, Albert was not expected to inherit the throne. He spent his early life in the shadow of his elder brother, Edward, the heir apparent. Albert attended naval college as a teenager and served in the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force during the First World War. In 1920, he was made Duke of York. He married Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in 1923, and they had two daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret. In the mid-1920s, he engaged speech therapist Lionel Logue to treat his stutter, which he learned to manage to some degree. His elder brother ascended the throne as Edward VIII after their father died in 1936, but Edward abdicated later that year to marry the twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson. As heir presumptive to Edward VIII, Albert became king, taking the regnal name George VI.\nIn September 1939, the British Empire and most Commonwealth countries\u2014but not Ireland\u2014declared war on Nazi Germany, following the invasion of Poland. War with the Kingdom of Italy and the Empire of Japan followed in 1940 and 1941, respectively. George VI was seen as sharing the hardships of the common people and his popularity soared. Buckingham Palace was bombed during the Blitz while the King and Queen were there, and his younger brother the Duke of Kent was killed on active service. George became known as a symbol of British determination to win the war. Britain and its allies were victorious in 1945, but the British Empire declined. Ireland had largely broken away, followed by the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947. George relinquished the title of Emperor of India in June 1948 and instead adopted the new title of Head of the Commonwealth. He was beset by smoking-related health problems in the later years of his reign and died at Sandringham House, aged 56, of a coronary thrombosis. He was succeeded by his elder daughter, Elizabeth II.\nEarly life.\nAlbert was born at York Cottage, on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, during the reign of his great-grandmother Queen Victoria. His father was Prince George, Duke of York (later King George V), the second and only surviving son of the Prince and Princess of Wales (later King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra). His mother, the Duchess of York (later Queen Mary), was the eldest child and only daughter of Francis, Duke of Teck, and Princess Mary Adelaide, Duchess of Teck. His birthday, 14 December 1895, was the 34th anniversary of the death of his great-grandfather Albert, Prince Consort. Uncertain of how the Prince Consort's widow, Queen Victoria, would take the news of the birth, the Prince of Wales wrote to the Duke of York that the Queen had been \"rather distressed\". Two days later, he wrote again: \"I really think it would gratify her if you yourself proposed the name \"Albert\" to her.\"\nThe Queen was mollified by the proposal to name the new baby Albert, and wrote to the Duchess of York: \"I am all impatience to see the new one, born on such a sad day but rather more dear to me, especially as he will be called by that dear name which is a byword for all that is great and good.\" Consequently, he was baptised \"Albert Frederick Arthur George\" at St Mary Magdalene Church, Sandringham on 17 February 1896. Formally he was His Highness Prince Albert of York; within the royal family he was known informally as \"Bertie\". The Duchess of Teck did not like the first name her grandson had been given, and she wrote prophetically that she hoped the last name \"may supplant the less favoured one\". Albert was fourth in line to the throne at birth, after his grandfather, father and elder brother, Edward.\nAlbert was ill often and was described as \"easily frightened and somewhat prone to tears\". His parents were generally removed from their children's day-to-day upbringing, as was the norm in aristocratic families of that era. He had a stutter that lasted for many years. Although naturally left-handed, he was forced to write with his right hand, as was common practice at the time. He had chronic stomach problems as well as knock knees, for which he was forced to wear painful corrective splints.\nQueen Victoria died on 22 January 1901, and the Prince of Wales succeeded her as King Edward VII. Prince Albert moved up to third in line to the throne, after his father and elder brother.\nMilitary career and education.\nBeginning in 1909, Albert attended the Royal Naval College, Osborne, as a naval cadet. In 1911 he came bottom of the class in the final examination, but despite this he progressed to the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. When his grandfather Edward VII died in 1910, his father became King George V. Prince Edward became Prince of Wales, with Albert second in line to the throne.\nAlbert spent the first six months of 1913 on the training ship in the West Indies and on the east coast of Canada. He was rated as a midshipman aboard on 15 September 1913. He spent three months in the Mediterranean, but never overcame his seasickness. Three weeks after the outbreak of World War I he was medically evacuated from the ship to Aberdeen, where his appendix was removed by John Marnoch. He was mentioned in dispatches for his actions as a turret officer aboard \"Collingwood\" in the Battle of Jutland (31 May \u2013 1 June 1916), the great naval battle of the war. He did not see further combat, largely because of ill health caused by a duodenal ulcer, for which he had an operation in November 1917.\nIn February 1918 Albert was appointed Officer in Charge of Boys at the Royal Naval Air Service's training establishment at Cranwell. With the establishment of the Royal Air Force Albert transferred from the Royal Navy to the Royal Air Force. He served as Officer Commanding Number 4 Squadron of the Boys' Wing at Cranwell until August 1918, before reporting for duty on the staff of the RAF's Cadet Brigade at St Leonards-on-Sea and then at Shorncliffe. He completed a fortnight's training and took command of a squadron on the Cadet Wing. He was the first member of the British royal family to be certified as a fully qualified pilot.\nAlbert wanted to serve on the Continent while the war was still in progress and welcomed a posting to General Trenchard's staff in France. On 23 October, he flew across the Channel to Autigny. For the closing weeks of the war, he served on the staff of the RAF's Independent Air Force at its headquarters in Nancy, France. Following the disbanding of the Independent Air Force in November 1918, he remained on the Continent for two months as an RAF staff officer until posted back to Britain. He accompanied King Albert I of Belgium on his triumphal re-entry into Brussels on 22 November. The prince qualified as an RAF pilot on 31 July 1919 and was promoted to squadron leader the following day.\nIn October 1919, Albert attended Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied history, economics and civics for a year, with the historian R. V. Laurence as his \"official mentor\". On 4 June 1920 his father created him Duke of York, Earl of Inverness and Baron Killarney. He began to take on more royal duties. He represented his father and toured coal mines, factories, and railyards. Through such visits he acquired the nickname of the \"Industrial Prince\". His stutter, and his embarrassment over it, together with a tendency to shyness, caused him to appear less confident in public than his older brother, Edward. However, he was physically active and enjoyed playing tennis. He played at Wimbledon in the Men's Doubles with Louis Greig in 1926, losing in the first round. He developed an interest in working conditions, and was president of the Industrial Welfare Society. His series of annual summer camps for boys between 1921 and 1939 brought together boys from different social backgrounds.\nMarriage.\nIn a time when royalty were expected to marry fellow royalty, it was unusual that Albert had a great deal of freedom in choosing a prospective wife. An infatuation with the already-married Australian socialite Lady Loughborough came to an end in April 1920 when the King, with the promise of the dukedom of York, persuaded Albert to stop seeing her. That year, he met for the first time since childhood Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the youngest daughter of the Earl and Countess of Strathmore. He became determined to marry her. Elizabeth rejected his proposal twice, in 1921 and 1922, reportedly because she was reluctant to make the sacrifices necessary to become a member of the royal family. In the words of Lady Strathmore, Albert would be \"made or marred\" by his choice of wife. After a protracted courtship, Elizabeth agreed to marry him.\nAlbert and Elizabeth were married on 26 April 1923 in Westminster Abbey. Albert's marriage to someone not of royal birth was considered a modernising gesture. The newly formed British Broadcasting Company wished to record and broadcast the event on radio, but the Abbey Chapter vetoed the idea (although the Dean, Herbert Edward Ryle, was in favour).\nFrom December 1924 to April 1925, the Duke and Duchess toured Kenya, Uganda, and the Sudan, travelling via the Suez Canal and Aden. During the trip, they both went big-game hunting.\nBecause of his stutter, Albert dreaded public speaking. After his closing speech at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley on 31 October 1925, one which was an ordeal for both him and his listeners, he began to see Lionel Logue, an Australian-born speech therapist. The Duke and Logue practised breathing exercises, and the Duchess rehearsed with him patiently. Subsequently, he was able to speak with less hesitation. With his delivery improved, Albert opened the new Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, during a tour of the empire with his wife in 1927. Their journey by sea to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji took them via Jamaica, where Albert played doubles tennis partnered with a black man, Bertrand Clark, which was unusual at the time and taken locally as a display of equality between races.\nThe Duke and Duchess had two children: Elizabeth (the future Elizabeth II, called \"Lilibet\" by the family) who was born in 1926, and Margaret who was born in 1930. The close family lived at White Lodge, Richmond Park, and then at 145 Piccadilly, rather than one of the royal palaces. In 1931, the Canadian prime minister, R. B. Bennett, considered Albert for Governor General of Canada\u2014a proposal that King George V rejected on the advice of the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, J. H. Thomas.\nReign.\nReluctant king.\nKing George V had severe reservations about Prince Edward, saying \"After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself in twelve months\" and \"I pray God that my eldest son will never marry and that nothing will come between Bertie and Lilibet and the throne.\" On 20 January 1936, George V died and Edward ascended the throne as King Edward VIII. In the Vigil of the Princes, Prince Albert and his three brothers (the new king, Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and Prince George, Duke of Kent) took a shift standing guard over their father's body as it lay in state, in a closed casket, in Westminster Hall.\nAs Edward was unmarried and had no children, Albert was the heir presumptive to the throne. Less than a year later, on 11 December 1936, Edward abdicated in order to marry Wallis Simpson, who was divorced from her first husband and divorcing her second. Edward had been advised by British prime minister Stanley Baldwin that he could not remain king and marry a divorced woman with two living ex-husbands. He abdicated and Albert, though he had been reluctant to accept the throne, became king. The day before the abdication, Albert went to London to see his mother, Queen Mary. He wrote in his diary, \"When I told her what had happened, I broke down and sobbed like a child.\"\nOn the day of Edward's abdication, the Oireachtas, the parliament of the Irish Free State, removed all direct mention of the monarch from the Irish constitution. The next day, it passed the External Relations Act, which gave the monarch limited authority (strictly on the advice of the government) to appoint diplomatic representatives for Ireland and to be involved in the making of foreign treaties. The two acts made the Irish Free State a republic in essence without removing its links to the Commonwealth.\nAcross Britain, gossip spread that Albert was physically and psychologically incapable of being king. No evidence has been found to support the contemporaneous rumour that the government considered bypassing him, his children and his brother Prince Henry, in favour of their younger brother Prince George, Duke of Kent. This seems to have been suggested on the grounds that Prince George was at that time the only brother with a son.\nEarly reign.\nAlbert assumed the regnal name \"George VI\" to emphasise continuity with his father and restore confidence in the monarchy. The beginning of George VI's reign was taken up by questions surrounding his predecessor and brother, whose titles, style and position were uncertain. He had been introduced as \"His Royal Highness Prince Edward\" for the abdication broadcast, but George VI felt that by abdicating and renouncing the succession, Edward had lost the right to bear royal titles, including \"Royal Highness\". In settling the issue, George's first act as king was to confer upon Edward the title \"Duke of Windsor\" with the style \"Royal Highness\", but the letters patent creating the dukedom prevented any wife or children from bearing royal styles. George VI was forced to buy from Edward the royal residences of Balmoral Castle and Sandringham House, as these were private properties and did not pass to him automatically. Three days after his accession, on his 41st birthday, he invested his wife, the new queen consort, with the Order of the Garter.\nGeorge VI's coronation at Westminster Abbey took place on 12 May 1937, the date previously intended for Edward's coronation. In a break with tradition, Queen Mary attended the ceremony in a show of support for her son. There was no Durbar held in Delhi for George VI, as had occurred for his father, as the cost would have been a burden to the Government of India. Rising Indian nationalism made the welcome that the royal party would have received likely to be muted at best, and a prolonged absence from Britain would have been undesirable in the tense period before the Second World War. Two overseas tours were undertaken, to France and to North America, both of which promised greater strategic advantages in the event of war.\nThe growing likelihood of war in Europe dominated the early reign of George VI. The King was constitutionally bound to support British prime minister Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler. When the King and Queen greeted Chamberlain on his return from negotiating the Munich Agreement in 1938, they invited him to appear on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with them. This public association of the monarchy with a politician was exceptional, as balcony appearances were traditionally restricted to the royal family. While broadly popular among the general public, Chamberlain's policy towards Hitler was the subject of some opposition in the House of Commons, which led historian and politician John Grigg to describe George's behaviour in associating himself so prominently with a politician as \"the most unconstitutional act by a British sovereign in the present century\".\nIn May and June 1939, the King and Queen toured Canada and the United States; it was the first visit of a reigning British monarch to North America, although George had been to Canada prior to his accession. From Ottawa, George and Elizabeth were accompanied by Canadian prime minister Mackenzie King, to present themselves in North America as King and Queen of Canada. Both Mackenzie King and the Canadian governor general, Lord Tweedsmuir, hoped that George's presence in Canada would demonstrate the principles of the Statute of Westminster 1931, which gave full sovereignty to the British Dominions. On 19 May, George personally accepted and approved the letter of credence of the new U.S. ambassador to Canada, Daniel Calhoun Roper; gave royal assent to nine parliamentary bills; and ratified two international treaties with the Great Seal of Canada. The official royal tour historian, Gustave Lanctot, wrote \"the Statute of Westminster had assumed full reality\" and George gave a speech emphasising \"the free and equal association of the nations of the Commonwealth\".\nThe trip was intended to soften the strong isolationist tendencies among the North American public with regard to the developing tensions in Europe. Although the aim of the tour was mainly political, to shore up Atlantic support for the United Kingdom in any future war, the King and Queen were enthusiastically received by the public. The fear that George would be compared unfavourably to his predecessor was dispelled. They visited the 1939 New York World's Fair and stayed with President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House and at his private estate at Hyde Park, New York. A strong bond of friendship was forged between Roosevelt and the royal couple during the tour, which had major significance in the relations between the United States and the United Kingdom through the ensuing war years.\nSecond World War.\nFollowing the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, the United Kingdom and the self-governing Dominions other than Ireland declared war on Nazi Germany. The King and Queen resolved to stay in London, despite German bombing raids. They officially stayed in Buckingham Palace throughout the war, although they usually spent nights at Windsor Castle. The first night of the Blitz on London, on 7 September 1940, killed about one thousand civilians, mostly in the East End. On 13 September, the couple narrowly avoided death when two German bombs exploded in a courtyard at Buckingham Palace while they were there. In defiance, the Queen declared: \"I am glad we have been bombed. It makes me feel we can look the East End in the face.\" The royal family were portrayed as sharing the same dangers and deprivations as the rest of the country. They were subject to British rationing restrictions, and the U.S. first lady Eleanor Roosevelt remarked on the rationed food served and the limited bathwater that was permitted during a stay at the unheated and boarded-up Palace. In August 1942, the King's brother, the Duke of Kent, was killed on active service.\nIn 1940, Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister, though personally George would have preferred to appoint Lord Halifax. After the King's initial dismay over Churchill's appointment of Lord Beaverbrook to the Cabinet, he and Churchill developed \"the closest personal relationship in modern British history between a monarch and a Prime Minister\". Every Tuesday for four and a half years from September 1940, the two men met privately for lunch to discuss the war in secret and with frankness. George related much of what the two discussed in his diary, which is the only extant first-hand account of these conversations.\nThroughout the war, George and Elizabeth provided morale-boosting visits throughout the United Kingdom, visiting bomb sites, munitions factories, and troops. George visited military forces abroad in France in December 1939, North Africa and Malta in June 1943, Normandy in June 1944, southern Italy in July 1944, and the Low Countries in October 1944. Their high public profile and apparently indefatigable determination secured their place as symbols of national resistance. At a social function in 1944, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Alan Brooke, revealed that every time he met Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, he thought Montgomery was after his job. George replied: \"You should worry, when I meet him, I always think he's after mine!\"\nIn 1945, crowds shouted \"We want the King!\" in front of Buckingham Palace during the Victory in Europe Day celebrations. In an echo of Chamberlain's appearance, the King invited Churchill to appear with the royal family on the balcony to public acclaim. In January 1946, George addressed the United Nations at its first assembly, which was held in London, and reaffirmed \"our faith in the equal rights of men and women and of nations great and small\".\nEmpire to Commonwealth.\nGeorge VI's reign saw the acceleration of the dissolution of the British Empire. The Statute of Westminster 1931 had already acknowledged the evolution of the Dominions into separate sovereign states. The process of transformation from an empire to a voluntary association of independent states, known as the Commonwealth, gathered pace after the Second World War. During the ministry of Clement Attlee, British India became the two independent Dominions of India and Pakistan in August 1947. George relinquished the title of Emperor of India, and became King of India and King of Pakistan instead. In late April 1949, the Commonwealth leaders issued the London Declaration, which laid the foundation of the modern Commonwealth and recognised George as Head of the Commonwealth. In January 1950, he ceased to be King of India when it became a republic. He remained King of Pakistan until his death. Other countries left the Commonwealth, such as Burma in January 1948, Palestine (divided between Israel and the Arab states) in May 1948 and the Republic of Ireland in 1949.\nIn 1947, George and his family toured southern Africa. The prime minister of the Union of South Africa, Jan Smuts, was facing an election and hoped to make political capital out of the visit. George was appalled, however, when instructed by the South African government to shake hands only with whites, and referred to his South African bodyguards as \"the Gestapo\". Despite the tour, Smuts lost the election the following year, and the new government instituted a strict policy of racial segregation.\nIllness and death.\nThe stress of the war had taken its toll on George's health, made worse by his heavy smoking, and subsequent development of lung cancer among other ailments, including arteriosclerosis and Buerger's disease. A planned tour of Australia and New Zealand was postponed after George developed an arterial blockage in his right leg, which threatened the loss of the leg and was treated with a right lumbar sympathectomy in March 1949. His elder daughter and heir presumptive, Elizabeth, took on more royal duties as her father's health deteriorated. The delayed tour was re-organised, with Princess Elizabeth and her husband, Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, taking the place of the King and Queen.\nGeorge was well enough to open the Festival of Britain in May 1951, but on 4 June it was announced that he would need immediate and complete rest for the next four weeks, despite the arrival of Haakon VII of Norway the following afternoon for an official visit. On 23 September 1951, his left lung was removed in a surgical operation performed by Clement Price Thomas after a malignant tumour was found. In October 1951, Elizabeth and Philip went on a month-long tour of Canada; the trip had been delayed for a week due to George's illness. At the State Opening of Parliament in November, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Simonds, read the King's speech from the throne. The King's Christmas broadcast of 1951 was recorded in sections, and then edited together.\nOn 31 January 1952, despite advice from those close to him, George went to London Airport to see Elizabeth and Philip off on their tour to Australia via Kenya. It was his last public appearance. Six days later, at 07:30 GMT on the morning of 6 February, he was found dead in bed at Sandringham House in Norfolk. He had died in the night from a coronary thrombosis at the age of 56. His daughter flew back to Britain from Kenya as Queen Elizabeth II.\nFrom 9 February George's coffin rested in St Mary Magdalene Church, Sandringham, before lying in state at Westminster Hall from 11 February. His funeral took place at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, on 15 February. He was interred initially in the Royal Vault until he was transferred to the King George VI Memorial Chapel inside St George's on 26 March 1969. In 2002, fifty years after his death, the remains of his widow, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, and the ashes of his younger daughter, Princess Margaret, who both died that year, were interred in the chapel alongside him. In 2022, the remains of Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, were also interred in the chapel.\nLegacy.\nIn the words of Labour Member of Parliament (MP) George Hardie, the abdication crisis of 1936 did \"more for republicanism than fifty years of propaganda\". George VI wrote to his brother Edward that in the aftermath of the abdication he had reluctantly assumed \"a rocking throne\" and tried \"to make it steady again\". He became king at a point when public faith in the monarchy was at a low ebb. During his reign, his people endured the hardships of war, and imperial power was eroded. However, as a dutiful family man and by showing personal courage, he succeeded in restoring the popularity of the monarchy.\nThe George Cross and the George Medal were founded at the King's suggestion during the Second World War to recognise acts of exceptional civilian bravery. He bestowed the George Cross on the entire \"island fortress of Malta\" in 1943. He was posthumously awarded the Order of Liberation by the French government in 1960, one of only two people (the other being Churchill in 1958) to be awarded the medal after 1946.\nColin Firth won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as George VI in the 2010 film \"The King's Speech\".\nTitles, honours and arms.\nAs Duke of York, Albert bore the royal arms of the United Kingdom differenced with a label of three points argent, the centre point bearing an anchor azure\u2014a difference earlier awarded to his father, George V, when he was Duke of York, and then later awarded to his grandson Prince Andrew, Duke of York. As king he bore the royal arms undifferenced.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["25080984", "46755"], "permutation_1": ["25080984", "46755"], "permutation_2": ["25080984", "46755"], "permutation_3": ["46755", "25080984"]}
{"id": "2hop__740073_51612", "docs_added": {"3744098": "Hannah Montana\nAmerican teen sitcom (2006\u20132011)\nHannah Montana is an American teen sitcom created by Michael Poryes, Rich Correll, and Barry O'Brien that aired on Disney Channel for four seasons between March2006 and January2011. The series centers on Miley Stewart (played by Miley Cyrus), a teenage girl living a double life as famous pop singer Hannah Montana, an alter ego she adopted so she could maintain her anonymity and live a normal life as a typical teenager. Episodes deal with Miley's everyday struggles to cope with the social and personal issues of adolescence while maintaining the added complexities of her secret identity, which she sustains by wearing a blonde wig. Miley has strong relationships with her brother Jackson (Jason Earles) and father Robby Ray (Billy Ray Cyrus), as well as her best friends Lilly Truscott (Emily Osment) and Oliver Oken (Mitchel Musso), who become aware of her secret. Overarching themes include a focus on family and friendships as well as the importance of music and discovering one's identity.\nThe Walt Disney Company commissioned the series after the success of Disney Channel's previous music-based franchises, such as the made-for-television film \"High School Musical\" (2006). \"Hannah Montana\" was produced by It's a Laugh Productions in association with Poryes's production company, and premiered on Disney Channel on March 24, 2006. A concert film, ', in which Miley Cyrus performs as Hannah Montana and herself, was released in 2008. The following year, the feature film ' was released. The series concluded on January 16, 2011, as a result of Cyrus's growing popularity and music career, and her desire to move into more mature acting roles.\n\"Hannah Montana\" is one of Disney Channel's most commercially successful franchises. It received consistently high viewership in the United States on cable television and influenced the development of merchandise, soundtrack albums, and concert tours; however, television critics disliked the writing and depiction of gender roles and stereotypes. \"Hannah Montana\" helped launch Cyrus's musical career and established her as a teen idol; after Cyrus began developing an increasingly provocative public image, commentators criticized \"Hannah Montana\" as having a negative influence on its audience. The series was nominated for four Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Children's Program between 2007 and 2010; Cyrus won a Young Artist Award for Best Performance in a TV Series, Leading Young Actress in 2008.\nPremise.\nStory and characters.\nMiley Stewart is a fourteen-year-old middle school student who appears to live a normal life but has a secret identity, pop singer Hannah Montana, an alias she chose so she could have a private life away from the public spotlight. To conceal her true identity, she wears a blonde wig when she appears as Hannah. Miley's father, Robby Ray Stewart, was a famous country music singer before retiring after his wife's death to focus on raising Miley and her older brother Jackson. At the start of the series, the family have moved from Tennessee to Malibu, California, to allow Miley to develop her musical career; Robby Ray works as her manager. As her schoolmates idolize Hannah Montana, Miley is often tempted to reveal her secret and assume a celebrity status at school. In the pilot episode, Miley's best friend Lilly Truscott uncovers the truth about her alter ego and adopts the alias Lola Luftnagle to help protect Miley's secret. Miley later reveals her secret to close friend Oliver Oken, leaving him and Lilly as the only schoolmates she has trusted with the secret; he adopts the alias Mike Stanley III. Jackson works for Rico Suave at a local beach food stand; he and Rico often feature in the show's subplots. Miley and her friends begin attending high school at the start of the second season, and in the following season, Lilly and Oliver develop a romantic relationship.\nIn the third season finale, Miley relocates her horse Blue Jeans to California after she feels homesick for Tennessee. The horse is uncomfortable after being moved, and Miley contemplates permanently returning to her hometown. The Stewart family compromise and move out of their house in Malibu to a nearby ranch. In the final season, Miley is faced with extra difficulties in maintaining her double life, which affect her capacity to attend college with Lilly. Faced with the choice between continuing being Hannah Montana and divulging her secret, she ultimately reveals her true identity to the world and has to deal with the effects of this decision before leaving for college. She merges her celebrity persona with her former private identity, and Miley Stewart enters adulthood with a newfound celebrity status.\nThemes.\nThe central conflict of the series is the disconnect between the public and private lives of Miley Stewart, and the lengths to which she must go to secure her life as a normal teenager and protect her relationships with her friends. She values her core identity as \"just Miley\" and endeavors to protect her sense of self. This is made evident in the pilot when she fears her friends might not treat her the same way if they become aware of her celebrity status; Miley's friendships and social opportunities at school are important to her. Jacques Steinberg of \"The New York Times\" said the series suggests celebrity status should not be confused with real life and that happiness comes as a result of staying true to one's self. In the \"Celebrity Studies\" journal, Melanie Kennedy states Miley must learn to remain as her \"authentic self\" while still being a celebrity; Tyler Bickford of \"Women's Studies Quarterly\" observes that lyrics in the theme song \"celebrate authenticity\" while also accentuating the benefits of a celebrity lifestyle. Morgan Genevieve Blue of \"Feminist Media Studies\" distinguished \"Hannah Montana\" from other programs about secret identities because of the public nature of Miley's alter ego.\nSeries creator Michael Poryes said his goal was not to focus on the gimmick but to write about characters and relationships, exploring the real issues Miley faces and how they would be affected by her celebrity lifestyle. While Miley discloses her secret to her close friends, she largely continues to hide her identity because the loss of the anonymity would, to her, represent a loss of her youth. When she reveals her true identity to the world, it is a symbolic representation of the end of her childhood. The final episodes reflect Miley's struggle to say goodbye to her alter ego.\nAccording to Kennedy, \"Hannah Montana\" parallels the idea of \"becoming a celebrity\" with \"growing up female\" and teaches young women the perceived importance of investing in celebrity culture. This intensifies and normalizes the desire of young people to become famous. Bickford said the series discusses themes of publicness and consumerism. Friendship is an important theme of the series, which is evident between Miley and her best friend Lilly. When Miley tells Lilly about her hidden persona in the pilot episode, Lilly promises not to divulge the secret to anyone. Bickford described these relationships as the \"emotionally fraught\", \"intensely valued\" core of the series, reflecting the way best-friendship is an important element of childhood.\nProduction.\nDevelopment.\nIn the early 2000s, The Walt Disney Company found success with its pay television network Disney Channel, which had a pattern of original programming for a preadolescent audience that featured music. The girl group The Cheetah Girls was made popular by the eponymous television film and found commercial success outside the movie, and Hilary Duff's music was used to cross-promote the series \"Lizzie McGuire\". Disney sponsored concerts featuring music from the network and used their talent to build on the brands; Gary Marsh, the president of Disney Channels Worldwide, cited \"Lizzie McGuire\" as its \"first success\". The network believed the new series \"Hannah Montana\" could be marketed in a similar manner. Disney Channel had also found success with musical episodes of its earlier comedy series \"Even Stevens\" and \"That's So Raven\". Hollywood.com said the show could build on the success of Disney's television film \"High School Musical\" (2006), which also includes music. The sitcom premiered two months after \"High School Musical\". The concept of \"Hannah Montana\" was originally labeled \"cast contingent\", meaning the series would not progress until the central roles were appropriately cast. The project was publicly announced in 2004; casting advertisements for the filming of a pilot were published in January 2005.\nDisney Channel officially greenlit \"Hannah Montana\" as a new, half-hour sitcom in August2005. Twenty episodes were initially ordered for the first season and six extra episodes were later added to the commission. The series was developed by Michael Poryes, who had previously co-created and produced \"That's So Raven\" for Disney Channel. Poryes created \"Hannah Montana\" with director Rich Correll and writer Barry O'Brien, while Steven Peterman joined Poryes as an executive producer. Disney selected the pilot for \"Hannah Montana\" to progress to a series against a potential spin-off of \"Lizzie McGuire\", which the network also considered during the 2004\u201305 pilot season. The full main cast were attached to the project in August and filming for the remainder of the first season was scheduled to begin in November 2005. It's a Laugh Productions produced the program in association with the network. Former president of Disney Channels Worldwide Rich Ross stated the concept of the series conforms to the typical Disney Channel formula; \"an ordinary person in an extraordinary situation\". The series is primarily aimed at a preadolescent female audience, however, its framework as a family sitcom allows it to have a wider appeal.\nCasting.\nThe program and its primary cast were announced in August2005; Miley Cyrus would be portraying the central character of Miley Stewart. After receiving the script from her agents, Miley Cyrus, aged eleven at the time, auditioned against over 1,000 applicants for the lead role, originally named Chloe Stewart. She was rejected for being too young to play the character; Marsh cited her lack of professional experience. Cyrus persistently sent the producers more audition tapes. After six months of further casting searches, Marsh asked Cyrus, aged twelve, to audition again, and she received the role. Poryes later stated Marsh was responsible for selecting Cyrus over other \"safe\" choices who were more in-line with the producers' original vision. After Cyrus was cast, the character's name was changed to Miley Stewart in an attempt to limit confusion about the show's characters and premise. Network executives cited her confidence, comic timing, and \"husky\" singing voice as reasons for her casting on the series. In 2006, \"Time\" commented that Disney typically selected actors who had the potential to become popular celebrity figures and that Cyrus would likely experience the same process.\nCyrus's father, Billy Ray Cyrus, joined the cast as Miley's father Robby Ray Stewart; he was only asked to audition after his daughter had received the role. Peterman praised the pair's \"natural chemistry\". Billy Ray Cyrus was initially apprehensive about being cast in the series\u2014he did not want to \"screw up Miley's show\" and suggested a \"real actor\" be cast instead\u2014but later accepted the role.\nThe series also stars Emily Osment as Lilly Truscott, Mitchel Musso as Oliver Oken, and Jason Earles as Miley's older brother Jackson Stewart. Mois\u00e9s Arias appears as Rico Suave in a supporting role throughout the first season; he was promoted to the main cast for the show's second season. The network dropped Musso's character Oliver to a recurring role in the fourth season because he had been cast in \"Pair of Kings\", which was developed for the sister channel Disney XD.\nGuest stars including Vicki Lawrence, Jesse McCartney, and the Jonas Brothers appear throughout the series. Brooke Shields portrays Miley's deceased mother in dream sequences, through which she typically offers advice. Singer Dolly Parton, Cyrus's real life godmother, had a recurring role as Miley's godmother, Aunt Dolly. Parton stated Cyrus persuaded executives to write her into the series and credited her role for gaining her a following among young people. The final season includes guest roles from musicians Sheryl Crow and Iyaz; actors Christine Taylor, Ray Liotta, and Angus T. Jones; and television personalities Phil McGraw, Jay Leno, and Kelly Ripa.\nMusic.\n\"Hannah Montana\" includes original music; Disney released albums of songs from the series. Miley Cyrus performs as Hannah Montana and sings the show's theme song, \"The Best of Both Worlds\". By April 2006, a soundtrack was scheduled for release in the latter half of the year; this would be followed by a studio album by Cyrus the following year. The soundtrack album \"Hannah Montana\" was released in October2006; many of the songs' lyrics allude to the show's premise and Miley Stewart's secret identity. Songwriter Matthew Gerrard intended to encompass the show's premise in the lyrics of the songs. Jeannie Lurie, another key songwriter, explained that it was important for their team to capture the character's voice and feelings within each song's lyrics. The soundtrack albums \"\" (2007), \"Hannah Montana 3\" (2009), and \"Hannah Montana Forever\" (2010) were released to coincide with their respective seasons. The lyrical themes later became more mature, and reflected storylines from the series such as romantic relationships.\nThe show's music includes elements of teen pop, pop rock, and country pop genres. Steve Vincent, an executive of Disney Channel music, had previously worked on \"The Cheetah Girls\" and \"High School Musical\", and helped to develop the sound of the projects. Vincent drew inspiration from country pop artists Shania Twain and Carrie Underwood, as well as pop artists such as Kelly Clarkson, to establish Hannah Montana's musical style. The music makes prominent use of acoustic guitars, synthesizers, and backing vocals. \"Ready, Set, Don't Go\", a song Billy Ray Cyrus wrote when Miley was cast, was used in the program. Guest stars, such as singer-songwriter David Archuleta, also contributed to songs on the series.\nFilming.\n\"Hannah Montana\" was recorded in front of a live studio audience at Sunset Bronson Studios on Thursdays and Fridays. Cyrus was required to attend school on set, while Osment attended an external prep school. While filming the pilot, Cyrus performed a concert as Hannah Montana at Glendale Centre Theatre to acquire footage for the show.\nProduction of the second season began in Los Angeles, California, in November2006, and concluded in September2007. In April2008, the program was renewed for a third season, which had commenced production by August. By this time, Disney had optioned the program for a fourth season.\nThat December, the network ordered another six episodes, extending the third season to 30 episodes. Filming for the third season concluded in mid-2009.\nThe series also filmed episodes which aired as part of network crossover specials. The first special, \"That's So Suite Life of Hannah Montana\", aired on July 28, 2006, as a crossover featuring \"That's So Raven\" and \"The Suite Life of Zack & Cody\". The second special, \"Wizards on Deck with Hannah Montana\", aired on July 17, 2009, and contained episodes of \"Wizards of Waverly Place\" and \"The Suite Life on Deck\".\nConclusion and impact on Cyrus.\n\"Hannah Montana\" was renewed for a fourth season on June 1, 2009. The new set of episodes has a new setting; the Stewart family move out of their Malibu home to a nearby ranch. Billy Ray Cyrus stated this would be the final season and that Miley Cyrus hoped there would be a conclusion to the show's story. Production for the season began in January2010, when Disney confirmed the program would be officially concluding. The series finale was scheduled to air in early 2011. As the final season was filmed, Cyrus said she wanted to move on from the series, stating, \"I can't base my career off of the six-year-olds\". She became increasingly uncomfortable wearing the extravagant, colorful costumes associated with Hannah and stated she had \"grown out of it\". In 2019, Cyrus said at the time she felt she had matured beyond working on the series and dressing up as Hannah Montana. The final season premiered on July 11, 2010.\nReception.\nCritical reception.\nBickford said \"Hannah Montana\" helped Disney return to a level of commercial success that had been absent since its musical films of the 1990s, and built on the success of the network's programs \"Lizzie McGuire\" and \"That's So Raven\". He explained that \"Hannah Montana\" adopted a business model of combining celebrity acts with film, television, and popular music for a pre-adolescent audience and compared this model to 1990s teen pop artists such as Britney Spears and NSYNC, who were also marketed to children. Heather Phares of AllMusic described the melodies of the featured songs as strong and Cyrus's vocals as charismatic. Ruthann Mayes-Elma said in a journal article \"Hannah Montana\" is a wholesome, \"bubble-gum\" television show, and that the use of Miley's catchphrase \"sweet nibblets\" in the place of profanity in the scripts helped solidify the show's family-friendly appeal. \"The A.V. Club\"'s Marah Eakin found fault with the writing of \"Hannah Montana\", criticizing its \"oppressive\" laugh track, and its use of stereotypes.\nThe series has been examined for its depiction of gender roles and stereotypes. Blue said the series establishes stereotypical femininity as part of girlhood. She explained that the primary female characters, Miley and her alter ego\u2014Hannah, are positioned as post-feminist subjects in a way their representation is confined to notions of celebrity and consumerism. Bickford interpreted the theme song \"The Best of Both Worlds\" as an expression of Miley's choice between her contradictory identities, saying the choice is \"as simple as choosing a pair of shoes\" and that the character is privileged because she has multiple shoes and identities. Blue noted the contradiction of Miley's \"normal life\" being directly influenced by her celebrity status in ways such as financial security and a spacious home; she suggested Miley supports the family financially. Mayes-Elma criticized the portrayal of Miley as an \"airhead\" rather than as a \"strong, agentic girl\", and Blue said Lilly is depicted as a tomboy who does not uphold the femininity Miley represents.\nIn the book \"The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom\", Tison Pugh analyzed the subtle sexualization present within the characters of \"Hannah Montana\", such as Jackson's girlfriend Siena, who works as a bikini model. In a journal article, Shirley Steinberg cites Miley as a character who maintains chastity but wears objectifying clothing. Mayes-Elma said guest stars such as the Jonas Brothers were incorporated by Disney to encourage the viewership of young teenage girls. Pugh stated that the program obscures the divergence between fiction and reality, due to the character of Miley Stewart sharing similarities to Miley Cyrus, Robby Ray Stewart being difficult to distinguish from Billy Ray Cyrus, and guest actors such as Parton and the Jonas Brothers playing fictional versions of themselves. Kennedy added that featuring celebrity guests, such as Leno and his real talk-show \"The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,\" contributed to Miley being placed in the \"real world\" and thus becoming easily confusable with Cyrus. Pugh explained that displaying Miley as an authentic and likable character was a key marketing strategy, which led to Cyrus becoming closely associated with the \"Hannah Montana\" branding; Mayes-Elma explicated that Disney was selling Cyrus\u2014a then-sixteen-year-old girl\u2014to consumers as a \"form of pop cultural prostitution\". Blue also took note of the intersection between the world of the fictional characters and that of Cyrus.\nU.S. television ratings.\nThe series premiere of \"Hannah Montana\" was aired on March 24, 2006, as a lead-in to a rerun of \"High School Musical\", and received 5.4 million viewers. This was the highest-rating premiere episode in the history of Disney Channel as of 2006. By April2006, \"Hannah Montana\" had an average of more than 3.5 million viewers for each episode, many whom were aged between six and fourteen. The show's most-viewed episode, \"Me and Mr. Jonas and Mr. Jonas and Mr. Jonas\", was aired on August 17, 2007, as a lead-out to the premiere of \"High School Musical 2\" and was viewed by 10.7\u00a0million people.\nControversies.\nCyrus's public image.\nIn 2008, Marsh commented on the importance of Cyrus maintaining a wholesome public image while starring on the network. He said, \"for Miley Cyrus to be a 'good girl' is now a business decision for her\". Cyrus, however, continued to develop an increasingly provocative image as \"Hannah Montana\" progressed and the series received criticism for appearing to be a negative influence on its younger audience. Pugh writes that the series acted as a natural appendage to Cyrus's \"controversial transition into a sexual provocateur\". Cyrus performed a pole dance the following year during her act at the Teen Choice Awards, later defending it as \"right for the song and that performance\", while Disney representatives did not comment. Her suggestive persona continued with the music video for \"Can't Be Tamed\" in 2010. The following year, Cyrus was listed as the worst celebrity influence in a \"JSYK\" poll voted on by children, following the leakage of a video showing her smoking the psychoactive plant \"Salvia divinorum\" at the age of eighteen. In the journal \"Tobacco Control\", Cyrus's high-risk actions were described as a \"turning point\" for how fans perceived her behavior. Cyrus's public image continued to become more provocative and sexualized following the conclusion of the series. After a controversial performance at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, Melissa Henson of the Parents Television Council said parents would no longer feel comfortable allowing their children to watch \"Hannah Montana\" due to Cyrus's sexualized stage persona.\nBilly Ray Cyrus blamed the program for damaging his family and causing Miley's unpredictable behavior. Miley Cyrus expressed her annoyance at her history with the program in 2013, stating she wanted to suppress her previous music and re-establish her career as a mature artist. By 2019, while Cyrus believed many had viewed her as a \"Disney mascot\" rather than as a person during her time working for the company, she said she was proud of her work on the series. She said she would like to play the character of Hannah Montana again. Cyrus explained in 2021 that she found it difficult to separate herself from the persona of Hannah Montana.\nRevised episode.\nA second-season episode titled \"No Sugar, Sugar\" was planned to air in the United States on November 2, 2008, but was removed from the schedule after complaints about its subject matter. The episode, in which Oliver is diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, was previewed online; viewers said it presented inaccurate information about the disorder. Some viewers said there was a risk of uninformed children following the episode's health information, while others commended the episode's themes of acceptance and support for diabetics. The network revised the episode after consulting diabetes research-funding organization JDRF and filming new scenes; an updated version of the episode titled \"Uptight (Oliver's Alright)\" was aired during the program's third season on September 20, 2009.\nLawsuits.\nTelevision writer Buddy Sheffield alleged he pitched the concept for a television series titled \"Rock and Roland\" to Disney Channel in 2001; it would have focused on a junior-high school student who leads a secret double life as a rock star. The initial proposal was unsuccessful, and in August2007, Sheffield filed a lawsuit against the network based on the similarities between his pitch and \"Hannah Montana\". The lawsuit said Sheffield was owed millions of dollars in damages. A trial was scheduled to begin in August2008, but the case was resolved privately beforehand.\nIn April2010, Correll and O'Brien filed a lawsuit against Disney Channel for $5\u00a0million over profits from the program. The pair alleged they were denied their share of profits based on requirements for creators from the Writers Guild of America West. Correll, who also directed a number of episodes, further alleged he was unfairly terminated by Disney in response to giving testimony within the arbitration. By 2016, it was reported the arbitrator found $18 million in under-reported amounts, but the franchise was still operating at a $24 million deficit so no compensation was owed. The pair took their case to open court and claimed they were prejudiced by their arbitrator; in 2018, however, the request to overturn the ruling was refused. Poryes had filed a similar lawsuit in October2008, but this was ultimately settled.\nOther media.\nFilms.\nIn 2008, Walt Disney Pictures released a concert film, \"\", as a three-dimensional film for a limited theatrical run. The film consists of footage of Cyrus performing as herself and as Hannah Montana at a concert during the 2007\u20132008 Best of Both Worlds Tour. It earned a gross of $70.6\u00a0million worldwide. A soundtrack album of the live performances, \"Best of Both Worlds Concert\", was released in April2008.\nIn 2007, Cyrus reported plans to adapt the television series into a theatrical feature film had commenced, and that she would like to film it in her hometown, Nashville, Tennessee; production began in Los Angeles and Nashville in April2008. ', was originally scheduled for release on May 1, 2009, but its release was preponed to April 10 that year. The film, directed by Peter Chelsom, follows Miley as the popularity of Hannah Montana begins to take control of her life. It grossed $169.2\u00a0million worldwide. A soundtrack album, ', was released in March2009.\nMerchandising.\nIn December 2006, Disney released its first line of merchandise linked to \"Hannah Montana\", which included clothing, jewelry, toys, and dolls; the line of clothing duplicated outfits Hannah wears in the series. A line of video games was also developed; the first, \"Hannah Montana\", was released on the Nintendo DS on October 5, 2006. By February 2008, the \"Hannah Montana\" franchise had become so profitable Disney convened an \"80-person, all-platform international meeting\" to discuss its future. Disney's 2008 annual report to shareholders listed the brand as one of the leading contributors to growth across the company. MSNBC estimated the \"Hannah Montana\" franchise was worth $1billion by the end of 2008. The program was a commercially successful franchise for Disney Channel.\nPotential spin-off.\nIn 2011, Billy Ray Cyrus had said he wanted to produce a prequel series. \"Hollywood Life\" reported in 2020 that a potential prequel about Miley Stewart's rise to fame as a pop singer, with another child actor playing the character, was being discussed for Disney+. Billy Ray Cyrus again expressed his interest in being involved, while reports said Miley Cyrus would not be.\nReferences.\nNotes\nCitations\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography", "27120543": "Can't Be Tamed (song)\n2010 single by Miley Cyrus\n\"Can't Be Tamed\" is a song by American singer Miley Cyrus for her third studio album of the same name (2010). It was released on May 3, 2010, by Hollywood Records as the lead single from the record. The song was written by Cyrus, Antonina Armato, and Tim James. A Rockangeles remix version featuring rapper Lil Jon was included as a bonus track on digital editions of the album. According to Cyrus, \"Can't Be Tamed\" describes a desire to break out and experience freedom. The song's lyrics deal with the themes of freedom and self-expression.\n\"Can't Be Tamed\" received favorable reviews from music critics. It also attained commercial success, peaking within the top ten in the US, Canada, New Zealand and Ireland. The song's accompanying music video was directed by Robert Hales and follows Cyrus performing with backup dancers throughout a museum. The singer is first trapped in a giant cage, being observed by spectators; she then escapes and trashes the museum. Cyrus promoted \"Can't Be Tamed\" by performing the song at several venues, including a performance on \"Britain's Got Talent\" that resulted in negative reactions from the media. The song was also included in the setlist of Cyrus' third and fourth world tours, the Gypsy Heart Tour and the Bangerz Tour. \"Can't Be Tamed\" premiered before its official release on April 30, 2010, on Cyrus' official MySpace.\nBackground.\n\"Can't Be Tamed\" was co-written by Cyrus, Antonina Armato and Tim James, who also produced the track. According to Cyrus, the track's moral is to free yourself from any biding or hindrance, in particular application to women. Cyrus said the song's message applies to different situations. Personally to her, \"it is about being a cage and people looking at you.\" As for others, she believed it could describe high school, in a situation where \"someone feeling they have to be one way to be with a clique and they want to be who they are. A relationship, or whatever, it is just breaking out and feeling free.\" Hollywood Records described \"Can't Be Tamed\" as \"a self-empowering song in which Miley asserts that she has to stay true to herself in relationships\".\nAt four meetings throughout Europe, Cyrus' manager, Jason Morey, presented the album \"Can't Be Tamed\" to representatives from Universal Music Group; the representatives confirmed what Hollywood Records in the United States had already decided, that the track would be released as the lead single. \"Can't Be Tamed\" premiered on April 30, 2010, on Cyrus' official MySpace page; it was officially released for airplay on May 3, 2010, and released as a digital download on May 18, 2010. In May 2010, Cyrus recorded the Rockangeles remix of \"Can't Be Tamed\" with rapper Lil Jon at Rock Mafia Studios in Santa Monica, California. Lil Jon said the collaboration was \"crazy\" and thought audiences would enjoy the remix. Cyrus added, \"He just came in and let it out. It's pretty rockin.\" They believed Lil Jon gave the remix more energy than the original version had.\nComposition.\n\"Can't Be Tamed\" is a synth-pop and dance-pop song two minutes and 48 seconds long. The song has been described as \"grown-up club sound\". The song is set in compound time of 12/8 and has a fast tempo of 118 beats per minute. It is written in the key of B minor and Cyrus' vocals span two octaves, from A3 to D5. Cyrus belts her way through the choruses, while some lines in the verses feature processed vocals with the use of auto-tune. It follows the chord progression B5\u2013D\u2013A. Driven by a dark, pounding beat and the heavy use of synths, \"Can't Be Tamed\"'s instrumentation relies on drum machine.\nWritten solely in first person, \"Can't Be Tamed\" explores the themes of freedom and self-expression, approached by sultry lyrics. It puts emphasis to how she cannot be changed or molded into being something she is not. In the verses, Cyrus addresses confidence and the attempt to discover for what she is yearning for, respectively. Choruses have Cyrus shouting the title and variations of it in a repetitive manner, against the beat of the song. Monica Herrera of \"Billboard\" interpreted the lyrics \"If there was a question about my intentions, I'll tell ya / I'm not here to sell ya\" to be an official declaration of rebellion in order to dispose herself of tween role-model responsibilities. Likewise, various other critics believed \"Can't Be Tamed\" spoke of her completely drawing away from the image she had developed through \"Hannah Montana\", which first aired in March 2006.\nCritical reception.\nCritics typically reviewed \"Can't Be Tamed\" favorably. Leah Greenblatt of \"Entertainment Weekly\" felt the song was \"not bad business for stationary cardio, but not the stuff year-end top tens are made of, either.\" She said it didn't offer \"major sensations\" and found it similar to Christina Aguilera\u2019s \"Not Myself Tonight\" (2010). Greenblatt was also disappointed with the song's rhyming in the lines, \"I'm not here to sell ya' / Or tell you to go to hell\". Sonya Sorich of \"Ledger-Enquirer\" said that while she anticipated some negative reception, \"Can't Be Tamed\" was also a prime candidate for a guilty pleasure dance track.\" Heather Phares of Allmusic referred to \"Can't Be Tamed\" as \"stomping\" and selected it as one of the album's best. Fraser McAlpine of BBC said that though the song has strong sexual undercurrents, Cyrus maintained classy throughout the track . \"If Miley's gonna weather the Ensexification Moment it'll be because she's doing it during a period of extrema GaGa, when videos are less about acreage of flesh and more about feathers and Victorian scientists. Oh, and because she's got the songs and the voice, that always helps\", McAlpine concluded.\nRob Sheffield of \"Rolling Stone\" rated the song three out of five stars and compared it to the musical styles of Rihanna. He added, \"It's no 'Party in the U.S.A.' or 'See You Again,' but the chorus packs plenty of electro-fizz pizzazz\". Bill Lamb of About.com rated \"Can't Be Tamed\" two and half out of five stars. He criticized the song for lyrics that headed into a \"selfish territory\", however, believing it would have airplay success. Monica Herrera of \"Billboard\" gave \"Can't Be Tamed\" a favorable review, writing, \"But Cyrus knows how to proffer her sass. When she sneers, 'I'm not a fake, it's in my DNA,' in pre-emptive retaliation against her critics, she does it with the professionalism of a Disney-groomed star.\" Jarett Wieselman of \"The New York Post\" said he liked the song and that though he did not buy Cyrus' \"Party in the U.S.A.\" (2009), he feared he would not \"be able to resist\" buying \"Can't Be Tamed\". He said the song had a \"naughty old school Britney Spears\" vibe, called it \"totally catchy\" and predicted it would be a summer hit. Ailbhe Malone of \"The Irish Times\" wrote, \"Miley\u2019s taken a sexy electro-edge. Less \"Party in the U.S.A.\", more Party With My Parents Away, we like this. A LOT.\"\nCommercial performance.\nOn the week ending June 5, 2010, \"Can't Be Tamed\" became the week's \"hot shot debut\" by entering and peaking at number eight on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, selling 191,000 digital downloads. The sales marked Cyrus' second-best debut sales week, following \"Party in the U.S.A.\", which sold 226,000 digital downloads in its first week in August 2009. With the appearance on the chart, the song became her fourth top ten debut on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, including a song credited to her alias Hannah Montana. In the following week, the song descended ten positions to number 18. It spent its last week on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 on the week ending August 7, 2010, spending a total of ten weeks on the chart. \"Can't Be Tamed\" also peaked at number 16 on Mainstream Top 40 (Pop Songs). The song peaked at number six on the Canadian Hot 100 and spent a total of 14 weeks upon the chart. As of March 2023, \"Can't Be Tamed\" has sold 2,000,000 units in the United States and was certified two-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).\nThe song also achieved commercial success in Australia and New Zealand. \"Can't Be Tamed\" debuted at number 18 on the Australian Singles Chart on the week ending June 6, 2010. After six weeks of ascending the Australian Singles Chart, the song found a new peak at number 17. In the succeeding week, it reached its peak at number 14 and spent 11 weeks on the chart. The single was certified gold by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) for shipping over 35,000 copies. On the week ending May 24, 2010, \"Can't Be Tamed\" debuted and peaked at number five on the New Zealand Singles Chart. It spent nine weeks ascending and descending the New Zealand Singles Chart before completely dropping from the chart on the week ending July 19, 2010. In Japan, \"Can't Be Tamed\" debuted at number 53 and peaked at number 12.\nIn the United Kingdom, \"Can't Be Tamed\" debuted and peaked at number 13 on the week ending June 12, 2010. It spent eight weeks on the UK Singles Chart. The song peaked at number five on the Irish Singles Chart. In mainland Europe, \"Can't Be Tamed\" maintained similar outcomes. It became Cyrus' best-charting single on the Eurochart Hot 100 Singles, peaking at number 15 in July 2010 and surpassing \"Party in the U.S.A.\", which peaked at number 17 in January 2010. It peaked at number 15 on the French Singles Chart, number 15 on the Norwegian Singles Chart, and number 14 on the Spanish Singles Chart. It also charted within the top 30 in Austria and Germany and within the top 40 of Belgium (Flanders and Wallonia).\nMusic video.\nBackground.\nThe music video for \"Can't Be Tamed\"' was directed by Robert Hales. The dance routines were choreographed by Jamal Sims, who also choreographed Cyrus' \"Hoedown Throwdown\". Cyrus and Sims conceived the plot for the video together and proposed it to Hales, who \"envisioned it the way [they] did\". In regards to the video's theme, Cyrus stated, \"I think the video explains my life but it doesn't exclude other people's lives. It's not just about how fabulous and glamorous and all this. It's about the core of 'I don't wanna be in a cage. I want to be free and do what I love'\". The video was meant to transition Cyrus away from the good-girl image she had developed through \"Hannah Montana\". However, she believed her fans would be able to identify with the video's message through their own circumstances; for example, she believed that her desire to \"stand out [rather] than fit in\" was shared by teenagers hoping to break out of high school cliques. In an interview with the singer, Ryan Seacrest noted the video's strong sexual appeal. Cyrus agreed that the video was sexy, though it was not supposed to be the premise: \"The video isn't about being sexy or who can wear the less clothes [...] It's about explaining the song and living the lyrics.\"\nDevelopment and synopsis.\nThe music video was shot on April 10\u201311, 2010, at Sony Studios in Culver City, California. Over 20 female and 20 male backup dancers were employed. The video stars Cyrus as an exotic songbird breaking out of its cage, symbolizing Cyrus as a singer breaking out of her good-girl image. Before the shoot, Cyrus meticulously recorded her ideas for the video on paper. For example, she chose her backup dancers make-up pallets and contemplated their outfits; while she did not want her dancer's bodies \"to look like normal bodies\", she also did not want for them to wear scales as, according to her, it would make them resemble to be fish and look scary. Hales wanted Cyrus to resemble a bird without \"actually having a beak\" or otherwise being overly explicit, so Cyrus' stylists invented bird-like accessories. Among these were arm bands with long leather straps, feathered shoulder pads, and a feathered vest worn over a black leotard and thigh-high black leather boots. Cyrus said she had originally worn a \"completely different\" outfit, but wasn't \"feeling it\" the morning of the shoot. \"So we made this one right there in the morning, and we added pieces throughout the day... more leather and more feathers. I think it's really fun and kept changing the look,\" she said. Cyrus' make-up artist, Denika Bedrossian, focused on the singer's eyes; he used \"rich jewel-toned shades\" and eyelashes with feathered tips to give Cyrus a \"deep peacock eye\". In cut-scenes, Cyrus wears a corset made of 2,400 silver metal pieces and numerous peacock feathers. It was designed by The Blonds, debuted during their fall 2010 fashion show, and cost $25,000.\nThe video commences with formally dressed spectators entering a museum as a curator introduces \"a creature so rare it was believed to be extinct. In captivity for the first time, the rarest creature on Earth, \"Avis Cyrus\".\" White curtains are pulled down to reveal Cyrus, dressed in a black leotard and expansive black CGI wings, asleep in a giant bird nest locked inside a giant cage. Cyrus rises and approaches the audience, but a camera flash startles her and causes her to shield her face with her wings. The music starts, and Cyrus unveils herself again and joins a large group of feathered dancers. As Cyrus sings, she and the dancers escape the cage and prowl the museum, shattering museum exhibits as they pass them. They perform provocative dances both inside the cage and in darkened museum halls. Cut-scenes feature Cyrus lying down, dressed in a silver corset attached to a bed of peacock feathers, or writhing alone in her nest in the cage. The video ends with Cyrus back in her cage and the museum empty and trashed.\nReception.\nThe video premiered on May 4, 2010, on E! News. The video received generally positive reviews from critics. It also received numerous comparisons to videos by Britney Spears and Lady Gaga, though Cyrus said she \"wanted it to be something different for a female artist\". Cristina Gibson of E! described the video as \"edgy\", similar to Cyrus' video for \"Party in the U.S.A.\", but \"on steroids\". Tina Warren of MTV News said the video was a good step toward ridding Cyrus of her good-girl image and gave the video a positive review, calling it \"intriguing\" and stating, \"The video [...] is actually quite magnetic and you can\u2019t look away\". Tanner Stransky of \"Entertainment Weekly\" agreed. While he acknowledged the video \"might be dark and a tad conceptually racy\", he claimed it was smart move. \"She isn\u2019t moving too fast, honestly [...] it\u2019s not like Miley is stripping or baring much skin\". Rather, Stransky said Cyrus had \"some super-fun dance moves\" and \"[made] a statement\", albeit a darker one. The official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, \"People's Daily\", said the video featured \"bold\" costumes and \"revealed Cyrus' sexy side\". The website, Yahoo! added the video to the list of \"Worst Music Videos of 2010\" Daniel Rutledge of 3 News in New Zealand said Cyrus had made \"it very clear she wishes to cast aside any resemblance to the Disney alter ego that made her famous and be regarded from now on as an adult singer.\" Singaporean newspaper \"My Paper\" defended Cyrus against claims that the video was too provocative and reported, \"If nothing else, this vid shows that Cyrus knows how to entertain, and marks the beginning of truly high-quality videos.\" Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon.com offered a contrary opinion, stating that while Cyrus is a \"talented singer [who] deserves to break out of her Disney mold\", the \"Can't Be Tamed\" music video was poor. Williams said Cyrus has \"talent galore\" and \"incredible pipes\", but her video was \"predictable, derivative and dumb\" due to its unoriginality. According to \"People\" magazine, online reaction to the music video has been greatly varied. \"Fans and bloggers lit up the Web with comments ranging from 'stunning, gorgeous, fierce' to 'wow way too much for someone her age'\", the magazine reported. \"NME\" put the video at number 28 on their list of the \"50 Worst Music Videos Ever\".\nLive performances.\nCyrus first performed \"Can't Be Tamed\" live on May 18, 2010, on \"Dancing With the Stars\". Donning the black leotard and accessories used in the music video, Cyrus appeared in a human-sized cage and then performed throughout the stage with many costumed backup dancers; Cyrus' dancing was minimal. Her first performance of the song outside the United States was at the Rock in Rio concert in Lisbon, Portugal on May 29, 2010. Cyrus appeared on June 1, 2010, at the Paris nightclub 1515 Club and on June 3, 2010, on \"Britain's Got Talent\"'s semifinals to perform \"Can't Be Tamed\". On the latter, Cyrus wore hot pants, fishnets and boots as she performed. Midway through the performance, Cyrus grabbed a female backup dancer, dipping her low, and simulated a kiss. The performance was met with negative reactions from the media and caused her to release a statement in which Cyrus promised she did not kiss the backup dancer. Cyrus wrote, \"It is ridiculous that two entertainers can\u2019t even rock out with each other without the media making it some type of story. I really hope my fans are not\ndisappointed in me because the truth is I did nothing wrong. I got up\nthere and did my job which is to perform to the best of my ability.\" Cyrus later performed the song at the Rock in Rio concert in Madrid, Spain and the London nightclubs Heaven and G-A-Y. She has performed the track on \"Good Morning America\", \"Late Show with David Letterman\", MuchMusic Video Awards in Canada, and concert at the House of Blues in Los Angeles, California, which was streamed across over 30 websites owned by MTV Networks.\nCyrus performed the song during the Gypsy Heart Tour as well as her Bangerz Tour. She wore a black sequined bra and furry monochrome chaps with falconry gloves during the performance. She was also accompanied by an enormous replica of her dog, Floyd. The performance received positive reviews from critics.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["27120543", "3744098"], "permutation_1": ["3744098", "27120543"], "permutation_2": ["27120543", "3744098"], "permutation_3": ["27120543", "3744098"]}
{"id": "2hop__129019_11426", "docs_added": {"5414799": "WMID\nWMID (1340 kHz) is a radio station licensed to Atlantic City, New Jersey, which plays \"the classic oldies\". Its parent company is The Jersey Giant WMID, LLC. Its studios are located in Ocean City, and its transmitter is located on Murray Avenue in Atlantic City.\nHistory.\nWMID began broadcasting May 30, 1947. It was a Mutual affiliate on 1340\u00a0kHz with 250 W of power.\nIn the 1950s, WMID broadcast from a small studio in the old Brighton Hotel that stood in the beach block of Indiana Avenue, across the street from the Claridge Hotel. The Brighton was torn down to make way for the Sands Casino, itself now closed and demolished. Since the 1960s the station has broadcast from studios adjacent to its tower site at Ohio and Murray Avenues, just off U.S. Route 30 next to the Jersey-Atlantic Wind Farm.\nDuring the fifties, sixties, and early to mid-seventies, WMID was the dominant Top 40 station in the Atlantic City area. In its peak years as a Top 40 station in the early to mid-seventies, it was known as \"The Jersey Giant\", although for a while after the introduction of gambling in Atlantic City, it labeled itself \"the Lucky 13\". Its play during its peak years was extremely formatted, with the number one song of the week repeated every two hours, with new songs being labeled \"future giants\", and, in keeping with the city's resort image, with oldies being labeled \"souvenirs\". The station presented a locally produced \"top 40 countdown\" every Monday night. The station also boasted a strong jingle package with a classic \"WMID, Atlantic City\" station ID at the top of the hour, with the disc jockey introduction, \"From the Jersey Giant, Jackson Chase (or other disc jockey)\" once an hour, with the introduction of the number one song, \"WMID, Giant Play One, Play One, Play One,\" and with other catchy jingles, such as, \"The World Comes Here to Play, 1340, WMID\", \"Summer at the Jersey Shore, 1340, Atlantic City, WMID\". News was limited several minutes leading to the top of the hour from ABC's American Contemporary Radio. In summary, at its peak, WMID in the early to mid-seventies was one of the most professionally run and cleanly produced small to medium-market stations in the country. As AM broadcasting listenership declined in the late seventies, the station went through a series of format changes (including Adult Contemporary and Big Band) before settling on the oldies format.\nClassic Oldies 1340 AM WMID focuses on the history of music and radio when rock and roll was on AM radio. The mission of WMID is to re-create the old days when the memorable sound of rock & roll dominated the AM frequency, a sound no one who experienced has ever forgotten. WMID plays the songs and voices \u2013 the timeless music that is never left the rock and roll generation \u2013 all day and all night. The motto of the station is: \"It's the Music you grew up with on the Station you grew up with: AM 1340 Classic Oldies WMID\".\nFrom January 2, 2012, until March 2021, WMID was the Atlantic City affiliate for \"The Rush Limbaugh Show\".\nThe station briefly aired in 2017 on W230AA at 93.9\u00a0MHz FM before W230AA switched to WSJO-HD2.\nIn September 2023, Equity Communications sold WMID and WCMC to Rick Brancadora under the name The Jersey Giant WMID, LLC. The sale took effect in mid-December 2023.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "106211": "Atlantic City, New Jersey\nCity in Atlantic County, New Jersey, US\nAtlantic City, sometimes referred to by its initials A.C., is a Jersey Shore seaside resort city in Atlantic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.\nAtlantic City comprises the second half of the Atlantic City-Hammonton metropolitan statistical area, which encompasses those cities and all of Atlantic County for statistical purposes. Both Atlantic City and Hammonton, as well as the surrounding Atlantic County, are culturally tied to Philadelphia and constitute part of the larger Philadelphia metropolitan area or Delaware Valley, the nation's seventh-largest metropolitan area as of 2020.\nLocated in South Jersey on Absecon Island and known for its taxis, casinos, nightlife, boardwalk, and Atlantic Ocean beaches and coastline, the city is prominently known as the \"Las Vegas of the East Coast\" and inspired the U.S. version of the board game \"Monopoly\", which uses various Atlantic City street names and destinations in the game. New Jersey voters legalized casino gambling in Atlantic City in 1976, and the first casino opened two years later. From 1921 to 2004, Atlantic City hosted the Miss America pageant, which later returned to the city from 2013 to 2018.\nAs of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 38,497, a decline of 1,061 (\u22122.7%) from the 2010 census count of 39,558, which in turn reflected a decrease of 959 (\u22122.4%) from the 40,517 counted in the 2000 census.\nThe city was incorporated on May 1, 1854, from portions of Egg Harbor Township and Galloway Township. It is located on Absecon Island and borders Absecon, Brigantine, Egg Harbor Township, Galloway Township, Pleasantville, Ventnor City, and the Atlantic Ocean.\nHistory.\nPrior to Atlantic City's founding, the region served as a summer home for the Lenape, a Native American tribe. While the precise date of European settlement in present-day Atlantic City is not precisely determined, it is commonly thought that it was in 1783, when Jeremiah Leeds built and occupied a year-round home there.\n19th century.\nIn 1850, present-day Atlantic City was developed into a resort town. Three years later, in early 1853, it was named Atlantic City.\nBecause of its location in South Jersey, which hugs the Atlantic Ocean between marshlands and islands, Atlantic City was then viewed by developers as prime real estate and a potential resort town. In 1853, the city's first commercial hotel, the Belloe House, was built at the intersection of Massachusetts and Atlantic Avenues.\nThe following year, in 1854, the city was incorporated. The same year, train service began on the Camden and Atlantic Railroad. Built on the edge of the bay, this served as the direct link of this remote parcel of land with Philadelphia, the second-most populous city in the United States at the time and the largest city in Pennsylvania. The same year, construction of the Absecon Lighthouse, designed by George Meade of the Corps of Topographical Engineers, was approved, with work initiated the next year.\nBy 1874, almost 500,000 passengers a year were coming to Atlantic City by rail. In \"Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City\", \"Atlantic City's Godfather\" Jonathan Pitney, known as the \"Father of Atlantic City\", initially sought to develop Atlantic City as a health resort. Pitney persuaded municipal authorities that a railroad to the beach in Atlantic City would be beneficial. His successful business relationship with Samuel Richards, an entrepreneur and member of what was then the most influential family in South Jersey, was designed to construct the railroad with the first 600 riders, who \"were chosen carefully by Samuel Richards and Jonathan Pitney\":\nAfter arriving in Atlantic City, a second train brought the visitors to the door of the resort's first public lodging, the United States Hotel. The hotel was owned by the railroad. It was a sprawling, four-story structure built to house 2,000 guests. It opened while it was still under construction, with only one wing standing, and even that wasn't completed. By year's end, when it was fully constructed, the United States Hotel was not only the first hotel in Atlantic City but also the largest in the nation. Its rooms totaled more than 600, and its grounds covered some 14 acres.\nThe first boardwalk was built in 1870 along a portion of the beach in an effort to help hotel owners keep sand out of their lobbies. Businesses were restricted and the boardwalk was removed each year at the end of the peak season. Because of its effectiveness and popularity, the boardwalk was expanded in length and width, and modified several times in subsequent years.\nPrior to the destructive 1944 Great Atlantic Hurricane, the historic length of the boardwalk was about and it extended from Atlantic City to Longport, through Ventnor and Margate.\nThe first road connecting the city to the mainland at Pleasantville was completed in 1870 and charged a 30-cent toll. Albany Avenue was the first road to the mainland available without a toll.\nBy 1878, because of the growing popularity of the city, one railroad line could no longer keep up with demand. Soon, the Philadelphia and Atlantic City Railway was also constructed to transport tourists to Atlantic City. At this point massive hotels like the United States Hotel and Surf House, as well as smaller rooming houses, had sprung up all over town. The United States Hotel took up a full city block between Atlantic, Pacific, Delaware, and Maryland Avenues. These hotels were not only impressive in size, but featured the most up-to-date amenities, and were considered quite luxurious for their time.\nIn 1883, salt water taffy was conceived in Atlantic City by David Bradley. The traditional story is that Bradley's shop close to the beach was flooded with ocean water after a storm, soaking his taffy. He sold the \"salt water taffy\" to a girl, who walked down to the beach to show her friends. Bradley's mother was in the back of the store when the sale was made, and loved the name, giving the candy its name.\n20th century.\nIn the early 20th century, Atlantic City experienced a radical building boom. Many of the modest boarding houses that dotted the boardwalk were replaced with large hotels. Two of the city's most distinctive hotels were the Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel and the Traymore Hotel.\nIn 1902, Josiah White III bought a parcel of land near Ohio Avenue and the boardwalk, where he started construction and built the Queen Anne style Marlborough House. The hotel was a success. In 1905, he chose to expand the hotel and bought another parcel of land adjacent to his Marlborough House. In an effort to make his new hotel a source of conversation, White hired the architectural firm of Price and McLanahan. The firm made use of reinforced concrete, a new building material invented by Jean-Louis Lambot in 1848, and Joseph Monier received the patent in 1867. The hotel's Spanish and Moorish themes, capped off with its signature dome and chimneys, represented a step forward from other hotels that had a classically designed influence. White named the new hotel the Blenheim and merged the two hotels into the Marlborough-Blenheim. Bally's Atlantic City was later constructed at this location.\nThe Traymore Hotel was located at the corner of Illinois Avenue and the boardwalk. Constructed in 1879 as a small boarding house, the hotel grew through a series of uncoordinated expansions. By 1914, the hotel's owner, Daniel White, Josiah White's half-brother, taking a hint from the Marlborough-Blenheim, commissioned the firm of Price and McLanahan to build an even bigger hotel. Rising 16 stories, the tan brick and gold-capped hotel would become one of the city's best-known landmarks. The hotel made use of ocean-facing hotel rooms by jutting its wings farther from the main portion of the hotel along Pacific Avenue.\nOne by one, additional large hotels were constructed along the boardwalk, including the Brighton, Chelsea, Shelburne, Ambassador, Ritz Carlton, Mayflower, Madison House, and the Breakers. The Quaker-owned Chalfonte House, opened in 1868, and Haddon House, opened in 1869, flanked North Carolina Avenue at the beach end. Over the years, their original wood-frame structures would be enlarged, and even moved closer to the beach. The modern Chalfonte Hotel, eight stories tall, opened in 1904. The modern Haddon Hall was built in stages and was completed in 1929, at eleven stories. By this time, they were under the same ownership and merged into the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall Hotel, becoming the city's largest hotel with nearly 1,000 rooms. By 1930, the Claridge, the city's last large hotel before the casinos, opened its doors.\nThe 400-room Claridge was built by a partnership that included renowned Philadelphia contractor John McShain. At 24 stories, it would become known as the \"Skyscraper by the Sea\".\nWith tourism peaking in the 1920s, the period is often considered by historians to be Atlantic City's golden age. During Prohibition, which was enacted nationally in 1919 and lasted until 1933, much liquor was consumed and gambling regularly took place in the back rooms of nightclubs and restaurants. During Prohibition, racketeer and political boss Enoch L. \"Nucky\" Johnson rose to power. Prohibition was largely unenforced in Atlantic City. Because alcohol that had been smuggled into the city with the implicit approval of local officials, it was easily obtained at restaurants and other establishments, and the resort's popularity grew further. The city then dubbed itself as \"The World's Playground\". Nucky Johnson's income, which reached as much as $500,000 annually, came from the kickbacks he took on illegal liquor, gambling and prostitution operating in the city, as well as from kickbacks on construction projects.\nDuring this time, Atlantic City was led by mayor Edward L. Bader, known for his contributions to the construction, athletics and aviation of Atlantic City. Despite opposition, he had Atlantic City purchase the land that became the city's municipal airport and high school football stadium, both of which were later named Bader Field in his honor. He led the initiative, in 1923, to construct the Atlantic City High School at Albany and Atlantic Avenues. Bader, in November 1923, initiated a public referendum, during the general election, at which time residents approved the construction of a Convention Center. The city passed an ordinance approving a bond issue for $1.5\u00a0million to be used for the purchase of land for Convention Hall, now known as the Boardwalk Hall, finalized on September 30, 1924. Bader was also a driving force behind the creation of the Miss America competition.\nIn May 1929, Johnson hosted a conference for organized crime figures from all across America that created a National Crime Syndicate. The men who called this meeting were Masseria family lieutenant Charles \"Lucky\" Luciano and former Chicago South Side Gang boss Johnny \"the Fox\" Torrio, with heads of the Bugs and Meyer Mob, Meyer Lansky and Benjamin Siegel, being used as muscle for the meeting.\nGangster and businessman Al Capone attended the conference and was photographed walking along the Atlantic City boardwalk with Johnson.\nThe 1930s through the 1960s were a heyday for nightclub entertainment. Popular venues on the white-populated south side included the 500 Club, the Clicquot Club, and the Jockey Club. In the Northside neighborhood, home to African Americans in the racially segregated city, a black entertainment district reigned on Kentucky Avenue.\nFour major nightclubs, Club Harlem, the Paradise Club, Grace's Little Belmont, and Wonder Gardens, drew both black and white patrons. During the summer tourist season, jazz and R&B music could be heard into the wee hours of the morning. Soul food restaurants and ribs joints also lined Kentucky Avenue, including Wash's Restaurant, Jerry's and Sap's.\nLike many older East Coast cities after World War II, Atlantic City became plagued with poverty, crime, corruption, and general economic decline in the mid-to-late 20th century. The neighborhood known as the \"Inlet\" became particularly impoverished. The reasons for the resort's decline were multi-layered. First, the automobile became more readily available to many Americans after the war. Atlantic City had initially relied upon visitors coming by train and staying for a couple of weeks. The car allowed them to come and go as they pleased, and many people would spend only a few days, rather than weeks. The advent of suburbia also played a significant role. With many families moving to their own private houses, luxuries such as home air conditioning and swimming pools diminished their interest in flocking to the luxury beach resorts during the hot summer. Finally, the rise of relatively cheap jet airline service allowed visitors to travel to year-round resort places such as Miami Beach and the Bahamas.\nThe city hosted the 1964 Democratic National Convention which nominated Lyndon Johnson for president and Hubert Humphrey as vice president. The convention and the press coverage it generated, however, cast a harsh light on Atlantic City, which by then was in the midst of a long period of economic decline. Many felt that the friendship between Johnson and Governor of New Jersey Richard J. Hughes led Atlantic City to host the Democratic Convention.\nBy the late 1960s, many of the resort's once great hotels were suffering from high vacancy rates. Most of them were either shut down, converted to cheap apartments, or converted to nursing home facilities by the end of the decade. Prior to and during the advent of legalized gambling, many of these hotels were demolished. The Breakers, The Chelsea, the Brighton, the Shelburne, the Mayflower, the Traymore and the Marlborough-Blenheim were demolished in the 1970s and 1980s. Of the many pre-casino resorts that bordered the boardwalk, only the Claridge, the Dennis, the Ritz-Carlton, and the Haddon Hall survive to this day as parts of Bally's Atlantic City, a condo complex, and Resorts Atlantic City. The old Ambassador Hotel was purchased by Ramada in 1978 and was gutted to become the Tropicana Casino and Resort Atlantic City, only reusing the steelwork of the original building. Smaller hotels off the boardwalk, such as the Madison also survived.\nLegalized gambling.\nIn an effort at revitalizing the city, New Jersey voters in 1976 passed a referendum, approving casino gambling for Atlantic City; this came after a 1974 referendum on legalized gambling failed to pass. Immediately after the legislation passed, the owners of the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall Hotel began converting it into the Resorts International. It was the first legal casino in the eastern United States when it opened on May 26, 1978.\nOther casinos were soon constructed along the Boardwalk and, later, in the marina district for a total of nine today. The introduction of gambling did not, however, quickly eliminate many of the urban problems that plagued Atlantic City. Many people have suggested that it only served to exacerbate those problems, as attested to by the stark contrast between tourism intensive areas and the adjacent impoverished working-class neighborhoods.\nWhile Atlantic City has been less popular than Las Vegas as a gambling city in the United States, Donald Trump helped bring big name boxing bouts to the city to attract customers to his casinos. Mike Tyson fought most of his fights in Atlantic City in the 1980s, which helped Atlantic City achieve national attention as a gambling resort and vacation destination.\nSeveral highrise condominiums were built for use as permanent residences or second homes. By end of the decade, it was one of the most popular tourist destinations in the United States.\n21st century.\nLegalized sports betting.\nOn June 27, 2017, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear \"Christie v. National Collegiate Athletic Association\" and heard oral arguments in December 2017. Then, on May 14, 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) was unconstitutional. The act was overturned, allowing New Jersey to move ahead with plans to implement legalized sports betting.\nDespite being the state to initiate the landmark ruling, New Jersey was actually the third state to legalize sports betting after Nevada and Delaware. In June 2018, New Jersey governor Phil Murphy signed the legislation into law, and several New Jersey\u2013based casino brands subsequently opened sportsbooks, especially in Atlantic City.\nWith the redevelopment of the Las Vegas Strip and the opening of Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun in Connecticut in the early 1990s, along with newly built casinos in the nearby Philadelphia metro area in the 2000s, Atlantic City's tourism began to decline due to its failure to diversify away from gambling. In 1999 the Atlantic City Redevelopment Authority partnered with Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn to develop a new roadway to a barren section of the city near the Marina. Nicknamed \"The Tunnel Project\", Steve Wynn planned the proposed 'Mirage Atlantic City' around the idea that he would connect the $330\u00a0million tunnel stretching from the Atlantic City Expressway to his new resort. The roadway was later officially named the Atlantic City-Brigantine Connector, and funnels incoming traffic off of the expressway into the city's marina district and the city of Brigantine.\nAlthough Wynn's plans for development in the city were scrapped in 2002, the tunnel opened in 2001. The new roadway prompted Boyd Gaming in partnership with MGM/Mirage to build Atlantic City's newest casino. Borgata opened in July 2003, and its success brought an influx of developers to Atlantic City with plans for building grand, Las Vegas-style mega casinos to revitalize the aging city.\nOwing to economic conditions and the late 2000s recession, many of the proposed mega casinos never advanced further than the initial planning stage. One of these developers was Pinnacle Entertainment, which purchased the Sands Atlantic City for $250\u2013$270 million and closed it on November 11, 2006 with plans to replace it with a larger casino. The following year, the resort was demolished in an implosion, the first of its kind in Atlantic City. While Pinnacle Entertainment intended to replace it with a $1.5-$2-billion casino resort, the company canceled its construction plans and sold the land for $29.5 million. MGM Resorts International announced in October 2007 that it would pull out of all development for Atlantic City, effectively ending its plans for the MGM Grand Atlantic City.\nIn 2006, Morgan Stanley purchased directly north of the Showboat Atlantic City for a new $2-billion-plus casino resort. Revel Entertainment Group was named as the project's developer for the Revel Casino. Revel was hindered with many problems, the biggest setback occurring in April 2010 when Morgan Stanley, the owner of 90% of Revel Entertainment Group, decided to discontinue funding for continued construction and put its stake in Revel up for sale. Early in 2010, the New Jersey state legislature passed a bill offering tax incentives to attract new investors and complete the job, but a poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind released in March 2010 showed that 60% of voters opposed the legislation, and two of three of those who opposed it \"strongly\" opposed it. Ultimately, Governor Chris Christie offered Revel $261\u00a0million in state tax credits to assist the casino once it opened.\nRevel completed all of the exterior work and had continued work on the interior after finally receiving the funding necessary to complete construction, and had a soft opening in April 2012 before being fully open the next month. Ten months later, in February 2013, after serious losses and a write-down in the value of the resort from $2.4\u00a0billion to $450\u00a0million, Revel filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It was restructured but still could not carry on and re-entered bankruptcy on June 19, 2014. It was put up for sale, however as no suitable bids were received the resort closed its doors in September 2014. The property was bought by AC Ocean Walk, LLC for $200\u00a0million in 2017, and reopened in 2018 as Ocean Casino Resort.\nIn the wake of the closures and declining revenue from casinos, Governor Christie said in September 2014 that the state would consider a 2015 referendum to end the 40-year-old monopoly that Atlantic City holds on casino gambling and allowing gambling in other municipalities. With casino revenue declining from $5.2\u00a0billion in 2006 to $2.9\u00a0billion in 2013, the state saw a drop in money from its 8% tax on those earnings, which is used to fund programs for senior citizens and the disabled.\nOn October 29, 2012, \"Superstorm Sandy\" struck Atlantic City and caused flooding and power-outages but left minimal damage to any of the tourist areas. The storm produced an all-time record low barometric pressure reading of 943 mb (27.85\") for not only Atlantic City, but the state of New Jersey.\nIn 2019, the Atlantic City area had the highest rates of foreclosures in the nation. This has disproportionately affected Black residents in neighborhoods segregated by redlining, a legacy that is mirrored by the values of properties on the Monopoly game board.\nAfter several casino closures and the COVID-19 pandemic, strikes and pickets were being threatened in June 2022 by casino employees which were short-staffed and wanted pay raises.\nFood desert.\nAtlantic City is widely known as a food desert, with the nearest fully-functioning supermarket being located in neighboring Ventnor City, which is away from the majority of Atlantic City's population. As a result, proposals for a supermarket were floated beginning in May 2021, and Atlantic City's City Council gave permission to the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority to look for a contender to build a supermarket.\nAs of December 2023, there was only one functioning supermarket in Atlantic City, the Save-A-Lot food store located in Renaissance Plaza, an area of the city known for its significant homeless population and drug use. The Casino Reinvestment Development Authority has proposed a new supermarket that would be located on an empty parking lot behind the Tanger Outlets and near the Atlantic City Expressway.\nGroundbreaking for a ShopRite supermarket had taken place in October 2021, after Village Super Market received $18.7 million from the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority to construct the store. The supermarket was expected to be completed by December 2022, although no construction or building had happened on the site, which drew attention from residents. After the time for the contract expired, the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA) announced that the deal with Village Super Market (VSM) was dead and that they were looking for new contenders. VSM created a new plan for CRDA and the city's Council to review and by July 2023, it and a Chinese conglomerate headquartered in Hong Kong emerged as the two candidates to build the supermarket. However, as of November 2023, no further progress had been made on the construction plans and the two proposals were still \"being reviewed.\"\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, Atlantic City had a total area of 17.21 square miles (44.59\u00a0km2), including 10.76 square miles (27.87\u00a0km2) of land and 6.45 square miles (16.72\u00a0km2) of water (37.50%).\nThe city is located on Absecon Island, along with Ventnor City, Margate City and Longport to the southwest.\nAtlantic City borders the Atlantic County municipalities of Absecon, Brigantine, Egg Harbor Township, Galloway Township, Pleasantville, and Ventnor City.\nThe city is located southeast of Philadelphia and south of New York City.\nUnincorporated communities, localities and place names located partially or completely within the city include Chelsea, City Island, Great Island and Venice Park.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen climate classification system, Atlantic City has a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\") with warm, moderately humid summers, cool winters and year-around precipitation. Cfa climates are characterized by all months having an average mean temperature above , at least four months with an average mean temperature at or above , at least one month with an average mean temperature at or above and no significant precipitation difference between seasons. During the summer months in Atlantic City, a cooling afternoon sea breeze is present on most days, but episodes of extreme heat and humidity can occur with heat index values at or above . During the winter months, episodes of extreme cold and wind can occur with wind chill values below . The plant hardiness zone at Atlantic City Beach is 7b with an average annual extreme minimum air temperature of . The average seasonal (November\u2013April) snowfall total is , and the average snowiest month is February which corresponds with the annual peak in nor'easter activity.\nEcology.\nAccording to the A. W. Kuchler U.S. potential natural vegetation types, Atlantic City would have a dominant vegetation type of Northern Cordgrass (\"73\") with a dominant vegetation form of Coastal Prairie (\"20\").\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nThe 2010 United States census counted 39,558 people, 15,504 households, and 8,558 families in the city. The population density was . There were 20,013 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup was 26.65% (10,543) White, 38.29% (15,148) Black or African American, 0.61% (242) Native American, 15.55% (6,153) Asian, 0.05% (18) Pacific Islander, 14.03% (5,549) from other races, and 4.82% (1,905) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 30.45% (12,044) of the population.\nOf the 15,504 households, 27.3% had children under the age of 18; 25.9% were married couples living together; 22.2% had a female householder with no husband present and 44.8% were non-families. Of all households, 37.5% were made up of individuals and 14.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.50 and the average family size was 3.34.\nPeople under the age of 18 account for 24.6%, 10.2% from 18 to 24, 26.8% from 25 to 44, 25.8% from 45 to 64, and 12.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36.3 years. For every 100 females, the population had 96.2 males. For every 100 females ages 18 and older there were 94.4 males.\nThe Census Bureau's 2006\u20132010 American Community Survey showed that (in 2010 inflation-adjusted dollars) median household income was $30,237 (with a margin of error of +/\u2212 $2,354) and the median family income was $35,488 (+/\u2212 $2,607). Males had a median income of $32,207 (+/\u2212 $1,641) versus $29,298 (+/\u2212 $1,380) for females. The per capita income for the city was $20,069 (+/\u2212 $2,532). About 23.1% of families and 25.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 36.6% of those under age 18 and 16.8% of those age 65 or over.\n2000 census.\nAs of the 2000 United States census, there were 40,517 people, 15,848 households, and 8,700 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 20,219 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 44.16% black or African American, 26.68% White, 0.48% Native American, 10.40% Asian, 0.06% Pacific Islander, 13.76% other races, and 4.47% from two or more races. 24.95% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. 19.44% of the population was non-Hispanic whites.\nThere were 15,848 households, out of which 27.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 24.8% were married couples living together, 23.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 37.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 15.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.46 and the average family size was 3.26.\nIn the city the age distribution of the population shows 25.7% under the age of 18, 8.9% from 18 to 24, 31.0% from 25 to 44, 20.2% from 45 to 64, and 14.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females, there were 96.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.2 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $26,969, and the median income for a family was $31,997. Males had a median income of $25,471 versus $23,863 for females. The per capita income for the city was $15,402. About 19.1% of families and 23.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 29.1% of those under age 18 and 18.9% of those age 65 or over.\nEconomy.\nIn September 2014, the greater Atlantic City area had one of the highest unemployment rates in the country at 13.8%, out of a labor force of around 141,000.\nTourism district.\nIn July 2010, Governor Chris Christie announced that a state takeover of the city and local government \"was imminent\". Comparing regulations in Atlantic City to an \"antique car\", Atlantic City regulatory reform was a key piece of Governor Chris Christie's plan to reinvigorate an industry mired in a four-year slump in revenue and hammered by fresh competition from casinos in the surrounding states of Delaware, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and more recently, Maryland. In January 2011, Chris Christie announced the creation of the Atlantic City Tourism District, a state-run district encompassing the boardwalk casinos, the marina casinos, the Atlantic City Outlets, and Bader Field. Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind poll surveyed New Jersey voters' attitudes on the takeover. A February 2011 survey showed that 43% opposed the measure while 29% favored direct state oversight. The poll also found that even South Jersey voters expressed opposition to the plan; 40% reported they opposed the measure and 37% reported they were in favor of it.\nOn April 29, 2011, the boundaries for the state-run tourism district were set. The district would include heavier police presence, as well as beautification projects and infrastructure improvements. The CRDA would oversee all functions of the district and make changes to attract new businesses and attractions. New construction has already resulted in cases of eminent domain being used to seize properties for development.\nThe tourism district would comprise several key areas in the city: the Marina District, Ducktown, Chelsea, South Inlet, Bader Field, and Gardner's Basin. Also included are 10 roadways that lead into the district, including several in the city's northern end, or North Beach. Gardner's Basin, which is home to the Atlantic City Aquarium, was initially left out of the tourism district, while a residential neighborhood in the Chelsea section was removed from the final boundaries, owing to complaints from the city. Also, the inclusion of Bader Field in the district was controversial and received much scrutiny from mayor Lorenzo Langford, who cast the lone \"no\" vote on the creation of the district citing its inclusion.\nCasinos and gambling.\nThe history of gambling in Atlantic City traces back to Prohibition and the 1920s, with racketeer Louis Kuehnle running an underground hotel and casino. Enoch \"Nucky\" Johnson followed and furthered Atlantic City's rise through the Roaring Twenties as a destination for drinking, gambling, and nightlife. In 1974, New Jersey voters voted 60%\u201340% against legalizing casino gambling at four sites statewide, but two years later approved by 56%\u201344% a new referendum which legalized casinos, but restricted them to Atlantic City. Resorts Atlantic City was the first casino to open, in May 1978, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony featuring Governor of New Jersey Brendan Byrne. Atlantic City is considered the \"Gambling Capital of the East Coast\", and currently has nine large casinos. In 2011, New Jersey's then 12 casinos employed approximately 33,000 employees, had 28.5\u00a0million visitors, made $3.3\u00a0billion in gaming revenue, and paid $278\u00a0million in taxes. They are regulated by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission and the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement.\nIn the wake of the economic downturn following the Great Recession and the legalization of gambling in adjacent and nearby states (including Delaware, Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania), four casino closures took place in 2014: the Atlantic Club on January 13; the Showboat on August 31; the Revel, which was Atlantic City's second-newest casino, on September 2; and Trump Plaza, which originally opened in 1984, and was the poorest performing casino in the city, on September 16.\nExecutives at Trump Entertainment Resorts, whose sole remaining property at the time was the Trump Taj Mahal, said in 2013 that they were considering the option of selling the Taj and winding down and exiting the gaming and hotel business. Trump Taj Mahal closed October 10, 2016, after failing to come to terms with union workers.\nCaesars Entertainment executives have been reconsidering the future of their three remaining Atlantic City properties (Bally's, Caesars and Harrah's), in the wake of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by the company's casino operating unit in January 2015. In 2020, Bally's Atlantic City was acquired by Bally's Corporation. Gross gaming revenue of the city's nine operating casinos in 2022 totaled $2.79 billion, a 9% increase from the $2.55 billion earned the previous year.\na The Wild Wild West Casino, which opened on July 2, 1997, and has an American Old West theme, was part of Bally's Atlantic City until 2020, when it became part of Caesars.\nBoardwalk.\nThe Atlantic City Boardwalk opened on June 26, 1870, a temporary structure erected for the summer season that was the first boardwalk in the world. At long, the Atlantic City Boardwalk is also the world's longest and busiest boardwalk.\nThe Boardwalk starts at Absecon Inlet in the north and runs along the beach south-west to the city limit away then continues into Ventnor City. Casino/hotels front the boardwalk, as well as retail stores, restaurants, and amusements. Notable attractions include the Boardwalk Hall, House of Blues, and the Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum.\nIn October 2012, Hurricane Sandy destroyed the northern part of the boardwalk fronting Absecon Inlet, in the residential section called South Inlet. The oceanfront boardwalk in front of the Atlantic City casinos survived the storm with minimal damage.\nThe first pier along the boardwalk, Applegate's Pier, opened in 1884. It was acquired by John L. Young in 1891, who expanded and operated it as Young's Ocean Pier, but it was mostly destroyed in a 1912 fire. The remaining part of the pier was rebuilt in 1922 as the Central Pier, which is still in operation.\nA Heinz-owned pier named Heinz Pier was destroyed in the 1944 Great Atlantic hurricane.\nThe most famous Atlantic City pier was Steel Pier, which opened in 1898, and which once billed itself as \"The Showplace of the Nation\". It closed in 1978, and was mostly destroyed in a 1982 fire. It was rebuilt in the late 1980s and is now operated as an amusement pier across from the Hard Rock.\nSteeplechase Pier opened in 1899 and operated until 1986. It suffered significant damage in a 1988 fire, and the remnants of the pier were removed in 1996. The \"Steeplechase Pier Heliport\" on Steel Pier is named in its honor.\nCaptain John L. Young opened \"Young's Million Dollar Pier\" in 1906, and on the seaward side \"erected a marble mansion\", fronted by a formal garden, with lighting and landscaping designed by Young's longtime friend Thomas Alva Edison. Million Dollar Pier once rivaled Steel Pier as Atlantic City's leading pier, but after suffering decades of decline, was rebuilt into a shopping mall in the 1980s, known as \"Shops on Ocean One\". In 2006, the Ocean One mall was bought, renovated and re-branded as \"The Pier Shops at Caesars\" and in 2015, it was renamed \"Playground Pier\". In September 2023, it was renamed \"ACX1 Studios\" for the film and entertainment production studios that took over the building, with a planned grand reopening containing a mixture of retail, restaurants, creative space, and production studios in summer of 2024.\nGarden Pier, located opposite Ocean Casino Resort, once housed a movie theater, and is now home to the Atlantic City Historical Museum.\nShopping.\nAtlantic City has many different shopping districts and malls, many of which are located inside or adjacent to the casino resorts. Several smaller themed retail and dining areas in casino hotels include the Borgata Shops and The Shoppes at Water Club inside Borgata, the Waterfront Shops inside of Harrah's, Spice Road inside the Trump Taj Mahal, while Resorts Casino Hotel has a small collection of stores and restaurants. Major shopping malls are also located in and around Atlantic City.\nAtlantic City shops include:\nExhibition.\nBoardwalk Hall, formally known as the \"Historic Atlantic City Convention Hall\", is an arena in Atlantic City along the boardwalk. Boardwalk Hall was Atlantic City's primary convention center until the opening of the Atlantic City Convention Center in 1997. The Atlantic City Convention Center includes of showroom space, 5 exhibit halls, 45 meeting rooms with of space, a garage with 1,400 parking spaces, and an adjacent Sheraton hotel. Both the Boardwalk Hall and Convention Center are operated by the Atlantic City Convention & Visitors Authority.\nArts and culture.\n\"Monopoly\".\nAtlantic City (sometimes referred to as \"Monopoly City\") has become well-known over the years for its portrayal in the U.S. version of the popular board game \"Monopoly\", in which properties on the board are named after locations in and near Atlantic City. While the original incarnation of the game did not feature Atlantic City, it was in Indianapolis that Ruth Hoskins learned the game, and took it back to Atlantic City. After she arrived, Hoskins made a new board with Atlantic City street names, and taught it to a group of friends, who ultimately passed in on to Charles Darrow, who made some modifications to the game and claimed it as his own invention. The relative prices of the places on the board reflect to some extent the social status of neighborhoods at the time, with wealthy white streets being worth more, and streets where Black and Asian residents lived being cheaper.\nMarvin Gardens, the leading yellow property on the board, is actually a misspelling of the original location name, \"Marven Gardens\". The misspelling was said to have been introduced by Charles Todd and passed on when his home-made \"Monopoly\" board was copied by Charles Darrow and thence Parker Brothers. It was not until 1995 that Parker Brothers acknowledged this mistake and formally apologized to the residents of Marven Gardens for the misspelling, although the spelling error was not corrected.\nSome of the actual locations that correspond to board elements have changed since the game's release. Illinois Avenue was renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in the 1980s. St. Charles Place no longer exists, as the Showboat Casino Hotel was developed where it once ran.\nThe \"Short Line\" is believed to refer to the Shore Fast Line, a streetcar line that served Atlantic City, or a bus route. The B&O Railroad did not serve Atlantic City. A booklet included with the reprinted 1935 edition states that the four railroads that served Atlantic City in the mid-1930s were the Jersey Central, the Seashore Lines, the Reading Railroad, and the Pennsylvania Railroad.\nThe actual \"Electric Company\" and \"Water Works\" serving the city are the Atlantic City Electric Company and the Atlantic City Municipal Utilities Authority, respectively.\nAttractions.\nEver since Atlantic City's growth as a resort town, numerous attractions and tourist traps have originated in the city. A popular fixture in the early 20th century at the Steel Pier was horse diving, which was introduced by William \"Doc\" Carver. The Steel Pier featured several other novelty attractions, including the Diving Bell, human high-divers and a water circus. Advertisements for the Steel Pier in its heyday featured plaster sculptures set upon wooden bases along roads leading up to Atlantic City. By the end of World War II, many animal demonstrations declined in popularity after criticisms of animal abuse and neglect.\nRolling chairs, which were introduced in 1876 and in continuous use since 1887, have been a boardwalk fixture to this day. While powered carts appeared in the 1960s, the original and most common were made of wicker. The wicker canopied chairs-on-wheels are manually pushed the length of the boardwalk by attendants, much like a rickshaw. A tram service was introduced in 2015, initially using the warning announcements that had been used on Wildwood's tram cars until it was changed after complaints from Wildwood.\nThe Absecon Lighthouse is a coastal lighthouse located in the South Inlet section of Atlantic City overlooking Absecon Inlet. It is the tallest lighthouse in the state of New Jersey and is the third tallest masonry lighthouse in the United States. Construction began in 1854, with the light first lit on January 15, 1857. The lighthouse was deactivated in 1933 and although the light still shines every night, it is no longer an active navigational aid. Gardner's Basin, which is home to the Atlantic City Aquarium as well as small shops and restaurants, is located a short distance north of Absecon Light.\nWhile located south of Atlantic City in Margate City, Lucy the Elephant has become almost an icon for the Atlantic City area. Lucy is a six-story elephant-shaped example of novelty architecture, constructed of wood and tin sheeting in 1882 by James V. Lafferty in an effort to sell real estate and attract tourism. Over the years, Lucy had served as a restaurant, business office, cottage, and tavern (the last closed by Prohibition). Lucy had fallen into disrepair by the 1960s and was scheduled for demolition. The structure was moved and refurbished as a result of a \"Save Lucy\" campaign in 1970 and received designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1976, and is open as a museum.\nMiss America pageant.\nAtlantic City was the home of the Miss America competition, hosting the event from its inception until 2004, and again from 2013 to 2018. The Miss America competition originated on September 7, 1921, as a two-day beauty contest, and it included state contestants as well as women from various cities around the country. The event that year was called the \"Atlantic City Pageant\", and the winner of the grand prize, Margaret Gorman, took home the 3-foot Golden Mermaid trophy. Gorman was not called \"Miss America\" until 1922, when she re-entered the pageant and lost to Mary Campbell. The pageant was initiated to extend the tourist season after the Labor Day weekend. The pageant has been nationally televised since 1954. It peaked in the early 1960s, when it was repeatedly the highest-rated program on American television. It was seen as a symbol of the United States, with Miss America often being referred to as the female equivalent of the President. The pageant's longtime emcee, Bert Parks, hosted the event from 1955 to 1979. At the Atlantic City Convention Center, there is a interactive statue of Parks holding a crown. When a visitor puts their head inside the crown, sensors activate a recorded playback of his \"There She Is...\" line through speakers hidden behind nearby bushes.\n\"Boardwalk Empire\".\nThe television show \"Boardwalk Empire\", an American series from cable network HBO set in Atlantic City during the Prohibition era, raised interest in the Roaring Twenties-era city. Starring Steve Buscemi, the show was adapted from a chapter about historical criminal kingpin Enoch \"Nucky\" Johnson (who is renamed \"Enoch Thompson\" in the show) in Nelson Johnson's book, \"Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City\".\nThe Orange Loop.\nThe Orange Loop is a neighborhood near the beach in Atlantic City with a focus on live music establishments like Anchor Rock Club and Tennessee Beer Hall.\nIt runs perpendicular from the boardwalk inland roughly to St. Nicholas of Tolentine Church.\nIt is bounded by Tennessee Avenue, St. James Place, Pacific Avenue and the boardwalk, and derives its name from the orange color of those streets on a traditional Monopoly gameboard. The Orange Loop Amphitheater hosted the Frantic City indie rock music festival on the loop in 2022.\nSports.\nThe Atlantic City Race Course in Hamilton Township was a horse racing track that operated from 1946 to 2015.\nThe ShopRite LPGA Classic is an LPGA Tour women's golf tournament held near Atlantic City since it started in 1986.\nProfessional boxing.\nSince February 2, 1887, the city of Atlantic City has seen 2,538 (as of September 2018) professional boxing fight programs, the first one being one with a main event fight between Willie Clark, 3-0-3, and debuting Horace Leeds, won by Clark on points over four rounds. During the 1980s, professional boxing activity boomed in Atlantic City, at times rivaling Las Vegas, Nevada, in staging major boxing fights. Fighters who fought in Atlantic City at that era include Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns, Wilfredo G\u00f3mez, Jeff Chandler, Larry Holmes, George Foreman, Mike Tyson and others. Fights included The Brawl For it All, Tyson versus Holmes, Tyson versus Michael Spinks, and Roberto Dur\u00e1n versus Iran Barkley. Many boxing matches were held at Donald Trump's Trump Plaza, promoted either by Bob Arum or Don King.\nParks and recreation.\nAtlantic City is one of five municipalities in the state\u2014and the only one outside of Cape May County\u2014that offer free public access to oceanfront beaches monitored by lifeguards, joining Wildwood, North Wildwood, Wildwood Crest and Upper Township's Strathmere section.\nGovernment.\nLocal government.\nAtlantic City is governed within the Faulkner Act (formally known as the Optional Municipal Charter Law) under the Mayor-Council system of municipal government (Plan D), implemented by direct petition effective as of July 1, 1982. The city is one of 71 municipalities (of the 564) statewide governed under this form. The governing body of Atlantic City comprises the Mayor and the City Council, all elected on a partisan basis to serve four-year terms of office as part of the November general election. The council includes nine members, who are elected on a staggered basis, with one member from each of six wards and three serving at-large. The six ward seats are up for election together and the mayoral seat and the council at-large seats are up for vote together two years later. The City Council exercises the legislative power of the municipality for the purpose of holding Council meetings to introduce ordinances and resolutions to regulate City government. In addition, Council members review budgets submitted by the Mayor; provide for an annual audit of the city's accounts and financial transactions; organize standing committees and hold public hearings to address important issues which impact Atlantic City. Former Mayor Bob Levy created the Atlantic City Ethics Board in 2007, but the Board was dissolved two years later by vote of the Atlantic City Council.\nAs of 2024[ [update]], the Mayor is Democrat Marty Small Sr., whose term of office ends December 31, 2025. Small succeeded Frank M. Gilliam Jr. following his resignation on October 3, 2019. Small initially served as mayor on an interim basis for an unexpired term ending on December 31, 2021. Members of the City Council are Council President Council President Aaron \"Sporty\" Randolph (D, 2027; 1st Ward), Council Vice President Kaleem Shabazz (D, 2027; 3rd Ward), George \"Animal\" Crouch (D, 2027; 4th Ward), LaToya Dunston (D, 2027; Second Ward \u2013 elected to serve an unexpired term), Jesse O. Kurtz (R, 2027; 6th Ward), Stephanie Marshall (D, 2025; At-Large), George Tibbitt (D, 2025; At-Large), Bruce Weekes (D, 2025; At-Large) and Maria Lacca (R, 2027; 5th Ward).\nIn 2024, Democrat Muhammed \"Anjum\" Zia, who served as a councilman for the 5th ward, was removed from office after it was found the he did not reside in Atlantic City, but instead with his family in Egg Harbor Township. He was ousted from the city council, and in a court-ordered special election that November, Republican Maria Lacca, who brought about the investigation against Zia, flipped the seat, becoming the first Republican to win it since 1988. She became one out of two Republicans now currently on Atlantic City's council, with the other being councilman Jesse O. Kurtz of the 6th ward.\nIn May 2020, voters rejected by a 3\u20131 margin a referendum that would have changed the city to a council-manager form of government which would have reduced the size of the city council and shifted responsibility for day-to-day operation from an elected mayor to an appointed city manager.\nIn December 2019, LaToya Dunston was selected from a list of three candidates nominated by the Democratic municipal committee to serve the remainder of the term of the Second Ward seat that had been held by Marty Small until he stepped down when he was appointed as mayor. In January 2020, Dunston was appointed to fill the Second Ward seat expiring in December 2023 that Small had won in November 2019 but declined to fill; Dunston will serve on an interim basis until the November 2020 general election, when voters will select a candidate to serve the balance of the term of office.\nMayoral disappearance and resignation.\nFollowing questions about false claims he had made about his military record, Mayor Bob Levy left City Hall in September 2007 in a city-owned vehicle for an unknown destination. After a 13-day absence, his lawyer revealed that Levy was in Carrier Clinic, a rehabilitation hospital. Levy resigned in October 2007 and then-Council President William Marsh assumed the office of Mayor and served six weeks until an interim mayor was named.\nFederal, state and county representation.\nAtlantic City is located in the 2nd Congressional district and is part of New Jersey's 2nd state legislative district.\nFor the 119th United States Congress, New Jersey congressional district is represented by Jeff Van Drew (R, Dennis Township). New Jersey is represented in the United States Senate by Democrats Cory Booker (Newark, term ends 2027) and Andy Kim (Moorestown, term ends 2031).\nFor the 2024-2025 session, the 2nd legislative district of the New Jersey Legislature is represented in the New Jersey Senate by Vincent J. Polistina (R, Egg Harbor Township) and in the General Assembly by Don Guardian (R, Atlantic City) and Claire Swift (R, Margate City).\nAtlantic County is governed by a directly elected county executive and a nine-member Board of County Commissioners, responsible for legislation. The executive serves a four-year term and the commissioners are elected to staggered three-year terms, of which four are elected from the county on an at-large basis and five of the commissioners represent equally populated districts. As of 2025[ [update]], Atlantic County's Executive is Dennis Levinson (R, Northfield), whose term of office ends December 31, 2027. Members of the Board of County Commissioners are:\nErnest D. Coursey (D, District 1-- Atlantic City, Egg Harbor Township (part), Longport, Margate City, and Ventnor City; 2025, Atlantic City), Chair Maureen Kern (R, District 2-- Egg Harbor Township (part), Linwood, Northfield, Somers Point and Pleasantville; 2027, Somers Point), Andrew Parker III (R, District 3-- Egg Harbor Township (part) and Hamilton Township (part); 2026, Egg Harbor Township), Richard R. Dase (R, District 4, including Brigantine, Galloway Township, Egg Harbor Township (part), and Port Republic; 2025, Galloway Township), Vice Chair James A. Bertino (R, District 5-- Buena, Buena Vista Township, Corbin City, Egg Harbor City, Estell Manor, Folsom, Hamilton Township (part), Hammonton, Mullica Township and Weymouth Township; 2027, Hammonton), June Byrnes (R, At-Large; 2026, Linwood), Michael Ruffu (R, At-Large; Margate, 2027) Amy L. Gatto (R, At-large; 2025, Hamilton Township) and John W. Risley (R, At-Large; 2026, Egg Harbor Township)\nAtlantic County's constitutional officers are: \nClerk Joesph J. Giralo (R, 2026, Hammonton), \nSheriff Joe O'Donoghue (R, 2026, Egg Harbor Township) and \nSurrogate James Curcio (R, 2025, Hammonton).\nPolitics.\nAs of March 23, 2011, there were a total of 20,001 registered voters in Atlantic City, of which 12,063 (60.3% vs. 30.5% countywide) were registered as Democrats, 1,542 (7.7% vs. 25.2%) were registered as Republicans and 6,392 (32.0% vs. 44.3%) were registered as Unaffiliated. There were 4 voters registered to other parties. Among the city's 2010 Census population, 50.6% (vs. 58.8% in Atlantic County) were registered to vote, including 67.0% of those ages 18 and over (vs. 76.6% countywide).\nIn the 2012 presidential election, Democrat Barack Obama received 9,948 votes (86.6% vs. 57.9% countywide), ahead of Republican Mitt Romney with 1,548 votes (13.5% vs. 41.1%) and other candidates with 49 votes (0.4% vs. 0.9%), among the 11,489 ballots cast by the city's 21,477 registered voters, for a turnout of 53.5% (vs. 65.8% in Atlantic County). In the 2008 presidential election, Democrat Barack Obama received 10,975 votes (82.1% vs. 56.5% countywide), ahead of Republican John McCain with 2,175 votes (16.3% vs. 41.6%) and other candidates with 82 votes (0.6% vs. 1.1%), among the 13,370 ballots cast by the city's 26,030 registered voters, for a turnout of 51.4% (vs. 68.1% in Atlantic County). In the 2004 presidential election, Democrat John Kerry received 8,487 votes (74.5% vs. 52.0% countywide), ahead of Republican George W. Bush with 2,687 votes (23.6% vs. 46.2%) and other candidates with 96 votes (0.8% vs. 0.8%), among the 11,389 ballots cast by the city's 23,310 registered voters, for a turnout of 48.9% (vs. 69.8% in the whole county).\nIn the 2013 gubernatorial election, Democrat Barbara Buono received 4,293 ballots cast (52.6% vs. 34.9% countywide), ahead of Republican Chris Christie with 2,897 votes (35.5% vs. 60.0%) and other candidates with 63 votes (0.8% vs. 1.3%), among the 8,155 ballots cast by the city's 23,049 registered voters, yielding a 35.4% turnout (vs. 41.5% in the county). In the 2009 gubernatorial election, Democrat Jon Corzine received 4,988 ballots cast (69.9% vs. 44.5% countywide), ahead of Republican Chris Christie with 1,578 votes (22.1% vs. 47.7%), Independent Chris Daggett with 157 votes (2.2% vs. 4.8%) and other candidates with 99 votes (1.4% vs. 1.2%), among the 7,141 ballots cast by the city's 22,585 registered voters, yielding a 31.6% turnout (vs. 44.9% in the county).\nCity and state agencies.\nNew Jersey Casino Control Commission.\nThe New Jersey Casino Control Commission is a New Jersey state governmental agency that was founded in 1977 as the state's Gaming Control Board, responsible for administering the Casino Control Act and its regulations to assure public trust and confidence in the credibility and integrity of the casino industry and casino operations in Atlantic City. Casinos operate under licenses granted by the commission. The commission is headquartered in the Arcade Building at Tennessee Avenue and Boardwalk in Atlantic City.\nNew Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement.\nThe New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement is a division of the New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety and is responsible for certifying casino gaming revenue, registering casino employees and non-gaming vendors, licensing gaming vendors, and handling all casino patron complaints.\nCasino Reinvestment Development Authority.\nThe CRDA was founded in 1984 and is responsible for directing the spending of casino reinvestment funds in public and private projects to benefit Atlantic City and other areas of the state. From 1985 through April 2008, CRDA spent US$1.5\u00a0billion on projects in Atlantic City and US$300\u00a0million throughout New Jersey.\nAtlantic City Convention and Visitors Authority.\nThe Convention & Visitors Authority (ACCVA) was in charge of advertising and marketing for the city as well as promoting economic growth through convention and leisure tourism development. The ACCVA managed the Boardwalk Hall and Atlantic City Convention Center, as well as the Boardwalk Welcome Center inside Boardwalk Hall and a welcome center on the Atlantic City Expressway. In 2011, the ACCVA was absorbed into the CRDA as part of the state takeover that created the tourism district.\nAtlantic City Special Improvement District.\nThe Atlantic City Special Improvement District (SID) was a nonprofit organization created in 1992, funded by a special assessment tax on businesses within the improvement district. It carried out various activities to improve the city's business community, including street cleaning and promotional efforts. In 2011, the SID was absorbed by the CRDA; the former SID boundaries would be expanded to the include all areas in the newly formed tourism district. Under the new structure, established by state legislation, the CRDA assumed responsibility for the staff, equipment and programs of the SID. The new SID division includes a SID committee made up of CRDA board members and an advisory council consisting of the current trustees and others.\nFire department.\nThe Atlantic City Fire Department (ACFD) provides fire protection and first responder emergency medical services to the city. The ACFD operates out of six fire stations, located throughout the city in one battalion, under the command of a battalion chief, who in-turn reports to an on-duty Deputy Chief, or Tour Commander each shift.\nPolice department.\nThe city is protected by the Atlantic City Police Department, which handles 150,000 calls per year. The Chief of Police is James A. Sarkos.\nEducation.\nThe Atlantic City School District serves students in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grades. As of the 2020\u201321 school year, the district, consisting of 11 schools, had an enrollment of 6,553 students and 617.3 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student\u2013teacher ratio of 10.6:1. Schools in the district (with 2020\u201321 enrollment data from the National Center for Education Statistics) are \nVenice Park School (36 students in PreK), \nBrighton Avenue School (315 students; in grades PreK-5), \nChelsea Heights School (332; PreK-8), \nDr. Martin Luther King Jr. School Complex (543; PreK-8), \nNew York Avenue School (548; PreK-8), \nPennsylvania Avenue School (549; PreK-8), \nRichmond Avenue School (615; PreK-8), \nSovereign Avenue School (696; PreK-8),\nTexas Avenue School (499; K-8), \nUptown School Complex (536; PreK-8) and \nAtlantic City High School (1,771; 9\u201312). Pennsylvania Avenue School opened for the 2012\u201313 school year, with most students shifting from New Jersey Avenue School, which had been one of the district's oldest and most rundown schools.\nStudents from Brigantine, Longport, Margate City and Ventnor City attend Atlantic City High School as part of sending/receiving relationships with the respective school districts.\nCity public school students are also eligible to attend the Atlantic County Institute of Technology in the Mays Landing section of Hamilton Township or the Charter-Tech High School for the Performing Arts, located in Somers Point.\nOceanside Charter School, which offered pre-Kindergarten through eighth grade, was founded in 1999 and closed in June 2013 when its charter was not renewed by the New Jersey Department of Education.\nFounded in 1908, Our Lady Star of the Sea Regional School is a Catholic elementary school, operates under the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Camden.\nNearby college campuses include those of Atlantic Cape Community College and Stockton University, the latter of which offers classes and resources in the city such as the Carnegie Library Center, which was turned back to the control of the city in April 2022.\nMedia outlets.\nNewspapers and magazines.\n\"Former publications\":\nTelevision stations.\nAtlantic City is part of the Philadelphia television market. There are six stations licensed in the area.\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nRoads and highways.\nAs of \u00a02010[ [update]], the city had a total of of roadways, of which were maintained by the municipality, by Atlantic County, by the New Jersey Department of Transportation and by the South Jersey Transportation Authority.\nThe three roadways that enter Atlantic City are: Black Horse Pike/Harding Highway (US 322/40 via the Albany Avenue drawbridge), White Horse Pike (US 30), and the Atlantic City Expressway through the Brigantine Connector. Atlantic City is roughly south of New York City via the Garden State Parkway and southeast of Philadelphia.\nPublic transportation.\nAtlantic City is connected to other cities in several ways. NJ Transit's Atlantic City Rail Terminal at the Atlantic City Convention Center provides service from 30th Street Station in Philadelphia through several smaller South Jersey communities via the Atlantic City Line.\nOn June 20, 2006, the board of NJ Transit approved a three-year trial of express train service between New York Penn Station and the Atlantic City Rail Terminal. The line, known as ACES (Atlantic City Express Service), ran from February 2009 to March 2012. The approximate travel time was <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />2+1\u20442 hours, with a stop at Newark's Penn Station, and was part of the casinos' multimillion-dollar investments in Atlantic City. Most of the funding for the transit line was provided by Harrah's Entertainment (owners of both Harrah's Atlantic City and Caesars Atlantic City) and the Borgata.\nThe Atlantic City Bus Terminal is the home to local, intrastate and interstate bus companies including NJ Transit, OurBus and Greyhound bus lines. The Greyhound Lucky Streak Express offers service to Atlantic City from New York City, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. In addition to stopping at the Atlantic City Bus Terminal, Greyhound buses stop at various casinos in Atlantic City. Martz Trailways provides bus service to various casinos in Atlantic City from Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, and White Haven in Pennsylvania. Klein Transportation provides bus service to various casinos in Atlantic City from Shillington, Douglassville, Royersford, and Audubon in Pennsylvania.\nWithin the city, public transportation is provided by NJ Transit along 13 routes, including service between the city and the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown Manhattan on the 319 route, and service to and from Atlantic City on routes 501 (to Brigantine Beach), 502 (to Atlantic Cape Community College), 504 (to Ventnor Plaza), 505 (to Longport), 507 (to Ocean City), 508 (to the Hamilton Mall), 509 (to Ocean City), 551 (to Philadelphia), 552 (to Cape May), 553 (to Upper Deerfield Township), 554 (to the Lindenwold PATCO station) and 559 (to Lakewood Township).\nThe Atlantic City Jitney Association (ACJA) offers service on four fixed-route lines and on shuttles to and from the rail terminal.\nAirline service.\nCommercial airlines serving Atlantic City include Atlantic City International Airport, located northwest of the city in Egg Harbor Township. Many travelers also fly into Philadelphia International Airport, Trenton-Mercer Airport, or Newark Liberty International Airport, where there are wider selections of carriers from which to choose. The historic downtown Bader Field airport is now permanently closed and plans are in the works to redevelop the land.\nAtlantic City International Airport, which is served by various scheduled chartered flight company, is a focus city for Spirit Airlines\nHealthcare.\nThe AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center is a health system based in Atlantic City. Founded in 1898, it includes two hospitals; the Atlantic City Campus and the Mainland Campus in Pomona, New Jersey. It has Atlantic City's only cancer institute, heart institute, and neonatal intensive care unit.\nUtilities.\nSouth Jersey Industries provides natural gas to the city under the South Jersey Gas division. Marina Energy and its subsidiary, Energenic, a joint business venture with a long-time business partner, operate two thermal power stations in the city. The Marina Thermal Plant serves the Borgata while a second plant serves the Resorts Hotel and Casino. Another thermal plant is the Midtown Thermal Control Center on Atlantic and Ohio Avenues built by Conectiv, which opened in 1997 and provides chilled water for hotels and other facilities along the Boardwalk.\nElectrical power in Atlantic City and its immediate surrounding area is provided primarily served Atlantic City Electric, which was incorporated in 1924 and provides power from the Beesley's Point Generating Station in Upper Township and other locations.\nThe Jersey-Atlantic Wind Farm, opened in 2005, is the first onshore coastal wind farm in the United States. In October 2010, North American Offshore Wind Conference was held in the city and included tours of the facility and potential sites for further development. In February 2011, the state passed legislation permitting the construction of windmills for electricity along pre-existing piers, such as the Steel Pier. The first phase of the Atlantic Wind Connection, a planned electrical transmission backbone along the Jersey Shore was planned to be operational in 2013.\nIn popular culture.\nAtlantic City is featured prominently in films, television, and music, including:\nNotable people.\nPeople who were born in, residents of, or otherwise closely associated with Atlantic City include:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["5414799", "106211"], "permutation_1": ["5414799", "106211"], "permutation_2": ["5414799", "106211"], "permutation_3": ["5414799", "106211"]}
{"id": "2hop__360434_136211", "docs_added": {"27208": "Saint Lucia\nCountry in the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean Sea\nSaint Lucia is an island country of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean. Part of the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, it is located north/northeast of the island of Saint Vincent, northwest of Barbados and south of Martinique. It covers a land area of with an estimated population of over 180,000 people as of 2018. The nation's capital and largest city is Castries.\nThe first proven inhabitants of the island, the Arawaks, are believed to have been the first to settle on the island in 200\u2013400 AD. In 800 AD, the island was taken over by the Kalinago. The French were the first European colonists to settle on the island, and they signed a treaty with the native Caribs in 1660. The English took control of the island in 1663. In ensuing years, England and France fought 14 times for control of the island; consequently control over this immensely valuable geopolitical position changed frequently. Eventually, the British took complete control in 1814, shortly after the victory over French Emperor Napoleon I. Because the island switched so often between British and French control, Saint Lucia was also known as the \"Helen of the West\" after the Greek mythological character, Helen of Troy.\nRepresentative government was introduced in 1924 with universal suffrage being established in 1951. From 1958 to 1962, the island was a member of the West Indies Federation. On 22 February 1979, Saint Lucia became an independent state, while remaining as a Commonwealth realm.\nSaint Lucia is a member of the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the World Trade Organization, CARICOM and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). It is also a member of .\nEtymology.\nSaint Lucia is named after Saint Lucy of Syracuse (AD 283 \u2013 304). Saint Lucia is one of two sovereign states in the world named after a female and is the only one named after a woman (Ireland is named after a goddess). Legend states that French sailors were shipwrecked on the island on 13 December, the feast day of St. Lucy, and therefore named the island in her honour. \nA globe in the Vatican from 1520 shows the island as Sancta Lucia, indicating that the island was instead named by early Spanish explorers. Saint Lucia was first known as \"Louanalao\" by the Arawak Indians in 200 AD, meaning \"Island of the Iguanas,\" and then as \"Hewanorra\", in 800 AD, meaning \"there where iguanas are found,\" when the Carib Indians arrived and assimilated their culture into Saint Lucia.\nHistory.\nPre-Columbian.\nThe first proven inhabitants of Saint Lucia were the Arawaks, though there may have been other native peoples prior to them. The Arawaks are believed to have come from northern South America, sometime around AD 200\u2013400, as there are numerous archaeological sites on the island where specimens of their pottery have been found.\nThe Kalinago (Island Caribs) arrived around AD 800, and seized control from the Arawaks by killing their men and assimilating the women into their own society. \nEarly European exploration and colonization.\nIt is possible that Christopher Columbus may have sighted the island during his fourth voyage in 1502, but he does not mention the island in his log. Juan de la Cosa noted the island on his map of 1500, calling it \"El Falcon\", and another island to the south \"Las Agujas\". A Spanish c\u00e9dula from 1511 mentions the island within the Spanish domain, and a globe in the Vatican made in 1520, shows the island as Sancta Lucia.\nIn the late 1550s, the French pirate Fran\u00e7ois le Clerc (known as \"Jambe de Bois\", due to his wooden leg) set up a camp on Pigeon Island, from where he attacked passing Spanish ships. In 1605, an English vessel called the \"Oliphe Blossome\" was blown off-course on its way to Guyana, and the 67 colonists started a settlement on Saint Lucia, after initially being welcomed by the Carib chief Anthonie. By 26 September 1605, only 19 survived following continued attacks by the Carib chief Augraumart, so the settlers fled the island. The English tried to settle the island again in 1638, but the Caribs continued to be hostile. Eventually, the French successfully claimed the island in 1650 and they signed a treaty with the Caribs in 1660. In 1664, Thomas Warner (son of Sir Thomas Warner, the governor of St Kitts) claimed Saint Lucia for England but the English fled again in 1666, with the French gaining full control of the island after the signing of the Treaty of Breda. Saint Lucia was made an official French crown colony in 1674, as a dependency of Martinique.\n18th and 19th centuries.\nAfter the slave-based sugar industry developed, both the British and the French found the island attractive. During the 18th century, the island changed ownership, or was declared neutral territory, a dozen times, although the French settlements remained and the island was a de facto French colony well into the eighteenth century.\nIn 1722, George I of Great Britain granted both Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent to the 2nd Duke of Montagu. Montague appointed Nathaniel Uring, a merchant sea captain and adventurer, as deputy-governor. Uring went to the islands with a group of seven ships, and established settlement at Petit Carenage. Unable to get enough support from British warships, he and the new colonists were quickly run off by the French.\nDuring the Seven Years' War, Britain occupied Saint Lucia for a year, but handed the island back to the French in 1763, under the Treaty of Paris. Like the English and Dutch on other islands, in 1765, the French began to develop the land for the cultivation of sugar cane as a commodity crop on large plantations. The British occupied the island again in 1778.\nFrom 1782 to 1803, control of the island switched multiple times. In January 1791, during the French Revolution, the National Assembly sent four \"commissaires\" to St Lucia to spread the revolutionary philosophy. By August 1791, slaves began to abandon their estates and Governor Jean-Joseph Sourbader de Gimat fled. In December 1792, Lt. Jean-Baptiste Raymond de Lacrosse arrived with revolutionary pamphlets, and the impoverished whites and free people of colour began to arm themselves as \"patriots\". On 1 February 1793, France declared war on England and Holland, and General Nicolas Xavier de Ricard took over as Governor. The National Convention abolished enslavement on 4 February 1794. On 1 April 1794, St. Lucia was captured by a British expeditionary force led by Vice Admiral John Jervis. Morne Fortune was renamed \"Fort Charlotte\". Soon, a combined force of French Revolutionary Army soldiers and maroons, \"L'Armee Fran\u00e7aise dans les Bois\", began to fight back, starting the First Brigand War.\nA short time later, the British invaded the island as a part of the war with France that had recently broken out. On 21 February 1795, French forces under the nominal control of Victor Hugues, defeated a battalion of British troops at Vieux Fort and Rabot. In 1796, Castries was burned as part of the conflict. Leading the 27th (Inniskilling) Regiment, General John Moore retook Fort Charlotte in 1796, after two days of bitter fighting. As an honour, the Fusiliers' regimental colour was displayed on the flagstaff of the captured fortress at Morne Fortune for an hour before being replaced by the Union Jack. Upon the capture of the fort, Moore's superior, Ralph Abercromby, departed the island and placed Moore in charge of the British garrison. Moore remained at this post until falling ill with yellow fever, leading to his return to Britain before 1798.\nIn 1803, the British regained control of the island. Many members of the \"L'Armee Fran\u00e7aise dans les Bois\" escaped into the thick rainforest where they evaded capture and established maroon communities.\nSlavery on the island continued for a short time, but anti-slavery sentiment was rising in Britain. The British stopped the import of slaves by anyone, white or coloured, when they abolished the slave trade in 1807.\nFrance and Great Britain continued to contest Saint Lucia until the British secured it in 1814, as part of the Treaty of Paris, ending the Napoleonic Wars. Thereafter, Saint Lucia was considered one of the British Windward Islands colonies.\nThe institution of slavery was abolished on the island in 1834, as it was throughout the British Empire. After abolition, all former slaves had to serve a four-year \"apprenticeship\", to accustom them to the idea of freedom. During that period, they worked for their former masters for at least three-quarters of the work week. Full freedom was duly granted by the British in 1838. By that time, people of African ethnicity greatly outnumbered those of ethnic European background. People of Carib descent also comprised a minority on the island.\n20th century.\nSaint Lucia's first representative government was introduced in 1924, with the first election taking place in 1925. Many Saint Lucians served during the Second World War, and the conflict visited the island directly during the Battle of the Caribbean, when a German U-boat attacked and sank two British ships in Castries harbour on 9 March 1942. The United States used the island as a military hub during the war, including setting up a secondary naval base in Gros Islet and using what is now the island's international airport as an air force base.\nUniversal suffrage was introduced in 1951 and elections were held the same year. In 1958, Saint Lucia joined the West Indies Federation, although the federation was dissolved just a few years later in 1962. In 1967, Saint Lucia became one of the six members of the West Indies Associated States, with internal self-government. Independence was peacefully gained in 1979 under Sir John Compton of United Workers Party, with the island remaining within the British Commonwealth, keeping then-Queen Elizabeth II as Monarch, represented locally by a Governor-General.\nPost-independence era.\nDespite leading the country to independence, Compton's initial term as prime minister lasted only a few months, being defeated by the Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) under Allan Louisy in the 1979 Saint Lucian general election. In 1980, Hurricane Allen struck the island, destroying much of its infrastructure and reducing economic growth. Compton returned to power after the 1982 Saint Lucian general election after much instability during the labour government's term. During Compton's second term as the island's leader, banana exports significantly increased and became the nation's main source of revenue. There were improvements to infrastructure, and education was expanded to rural areas. Saint Lucia was key to the US invasion of Grenada. During the 1990s and 2000s, the nation's economy began shifting from agriculture to tourism under the leadership of Kenny Anthony. The 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001 killed two Saint Lucians, and caused an economic slowdown, although moderate growth continued until the Great Recession. The recession, as well as the landfall of Hurricane Tomas in 2010, led to slow economic growth during the early 2010s, although the economy picked up during the later part of the decade and avoided contraction until 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic caused major economic issues globally.\nIn June 2016, the United Workers Party (UWP), led by Allen Michael Chastanet, won 11 of the 17 seats in the general election, ousting the St Lucia Labour Party (SLP) of the incumbent Prime Minister Kenny Anthony. However, Saint Lucia Labour Party won the next election in July 2021, meaning its leader Philip J Pierre became the ninth Prime Minister of Saint Lucia since independence.\nGeography.\nSaint Lucia has a total area of 617 square kilometers (238 sq mi). As a volcanic island, Saint Lucia is very mountainous, with its highest point being Mount Gimie, at above sea level. The Pitons, two mountainous volcanic plugs, form the island's most famous landmark. Saint Lucia is also home to the world's only drive-in volcano, the Sulphur Springs. There are a number of small islands off the coast, the largest of which are the Maria Islands, located in the south-east of the island.\nSaint Lucia lies at latitude 14\u00b0 N and longitude 61\u00b0 W. The population tends to be concentrated around the coast, with the interior more sparsely populated, due to the presence of dense forests. \nFlora and fauna.\nMany species are endemic to the island, including \"Anolis luciae\", a species of lizard, and \"Boa orophias\", a species of boid snake.\nEcoregions.\nSaint Lucia has five terrestrial ecoregions: Windward Islands moist forests, Leeward Islands dry forests, Windward Islands dry forests, Windward Islands xeric scrub, and Lesser Antilles mangroves. The country had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 6.17/10, ranking it 84th globally out of 172 countries.\nClimate.\nSaint Lucia has a tropical climate, specifically a tropical rainforest climate (Af), moderated by northeast trade winds, with a dry season from 1 December to 31 May, and a wet/rainy season from 1 June to 30 November.\nAverage daytime and nighttime temperatures are around , and respectively. Being fairly close to the equator, the island's temperature does not fluctuate much between winter and summer.\nGeology.\nThe geology of St. Lucia can be described as composing three main areas. The oldest, 16\u201318 Ma, volcanic rocks are exposed from Castries northward and consist of eroded basalt and andesite centres. The middle, central highlands, portion of the island consists of dissected andesite centres, 10.4 to 1 Mya, while the lower southwest portion of the island contains recent activity from the Soufriere Volcanic Centre (SVC). This SVC, centred about the Qualibou depression, contains pyroclastic flow deposits, lava flows, domes, block and ash flow deposits, and explosion craters. This depression's perimeter includes the town of Soufriere, Mount Tabac, Mt. Gimie, Morne Bonin, and Gros Piton. At in diameter, though the western portion is open towards the Grenada basin, the depression formed as recently as 100 kya. The depression is noted for its geothermal activity, especially at Sulphur Springs and Soufri\u00e8re Estates, a phreatic eruption in 1776, and recent seismic activity (2000\u20132001).\nEroded andesitic stratovolcanoes to the north east of the depression include Mt. Gimie, Piton St Esprit, and Mt. Grand Magazin, all greater than 1 Ma in age. Andesitic and dacite pyroclastic flows from these volcanoes are found at Morne Tabac dome (532 ka), Morne Bonin dome (273 kya), and Bellevue (264 kya). Avalanche deposits from the formation of the Qualibou depression are found offshore, and in the massive blocks of Rabot, Pleisance, and Coubaril. The dacitic domes of Petit Piton (109 kya) and Gros Piton (71 kya) were then extruded onto the depression floor accompanied by the Anse John (104 kya) and La Pointe (59.8 kya) pyroclastic flows. Later, pyroclastic flows include pumice-rich Belfond and Anse Noir (20 kya). Finally, the dacitic domes of Terre Blanche (15.3 kya) and Belfond (13.6 kya) formed within the depression.\nGovernment.\nLike most Caribbean countries, Saint Lucia is a unitary state with a parliamentary system. It is a Commonwealth realm and a constitutional monarchy, with the current monarch being Charles III, who is represented on the island by a governor-general, currently Errol Charles. The prime minister (currently Philip J. Pierre) is the head of government, the head of the cabinet, and is normally the leader of the largest party in the House of Assembly. The house has 17 seats, with each member being elected via a plurality of votes in their constituency. The upper chamber of Parliament is the Senate which has 11 appointed members, the majority of which are appointed by the prime minister.\nAdministrative divisions.\nSaint Lucia is made up of 10 districts. The districts were created and named by French colonials, and the British chose to keep the names in an anglicised form. The largest district in both size and population is Castries, where the nation's capital of the same name is located. The following are the 10 districts placed in alphabetical order:\nLaw and crime.\nSaint Lucia is a mixed jurisdiction, meaning that it has a legal system based in part on both the civil law and English common law. The Civil Code of St. Lucia of 1867 was based on the Quebec Civil Code of 1866, as supplemented by English common law-style legislation. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was Saint Lucia's final court of appeal until 2023, when a constitutional amendment transferred this to the Caribbean Court of Justice.\nSaint Lucia's homicide rate has hit record highs in recent years. There were 75 homicides in 2021, a 34.5% increase compared with 55 homicides in 2020. 2021 saw the island record the most homicides in its history, and also its highest murder rate in its history, at 40 murders per 100,000 people.\nForeign relations.\nSaint Lucia is a member of the Caribbean Community, OECS, the Organization of American States and La Francophonie. As a Commonwealth Realm, Saint Lucia has relatively friendly relations with United Kingdom and Canada. France is also a major ally, in part due to Saint Lucia's border with Martinique. The United States is the island's largest trading partner, and Saint Lucia was key to the US invasion of Grenada in 1983, and voted against condemning the invasion. Saint Lucia became the 152nd member of the United Nations on 18 September 1979.\nSaint Lucia does not have a military although the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force has a Special Service Unit (SSU) and a Coast Guard. The island signed the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2018.\nEconomy.\nSaint Lucia is a Small Island Developing State, a designation similar to a developing country with a few substantial differences due to Saint Lucia's island nature. The service sector is the largest sector of the economy, accounting for 86.9% of GDP in 2020, followed by industrial and agricultural sectors at 10.9% and 2.2%, respectively.\nSaint Lucia has been able to attract foreign business and investment due to its educated workforce and improvements in roads, communications, water supply, sewerage, and port facilities. Like most small islands, Tourism and offshore banking are Saint Lucia's main sources of revenue. Agriculture, specifically the banana industry, was previously the largest sector of the economy, although its importance has declined significantly. The island's manufacturing sector has been called the most diverse in the Eastern Caribbean, with goods such as plastic being produced on a large scale.\nSaint Lucia's currency is the Eastern Caribbean Dollar (EC$), a regional currency shared among members of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECU). The country's main trade partners are the US, UK, EU and other CARICOM countries.\nTourism.\nTourism is the largest contributor to Saint Lucia's economy. Tourist numbers tend to be more substantial during the dry season (January to April), often referred to as the tourist season. Saint Lucia's tropical weather, scenery, beaches and resorts have made it a popular tourist destination, with 1.29\u00a0million visitors arriving in 2019.\nSome of Saint Lucia's tourist attractions include the Sulphur Springs, the Botanical Gardens, Pigeon Island and The Pitons.\nAgriculture.\nThe agricultural sector was once the main contributor to Saint Lucia's economy. This was especially thanks to the exporting of bananas. However, its importance to the economy has declined significantly, in part due to increased competition from South American countries in the banana industry. Nevertheless, agriculture is still an important part of the country's economy, providing 7.9% of jobs and contributing to 2.2% of the GDP in 2021.\nAbout 18% of land is used for agricultural practices. Bananas remain the main agricultural product grown in Saint Lucia, as well as coconuts, cocoa beans, mangoes, avocados, vegetables, citrus fruits, and root crops such as yams and sweet potatoes.\nSaint Lucia also has a small livestock sector, which is dominated by poultry. The island is self-sufficient in egg production and production of poultry and pork has increased in recent years. Fishing has also been of considerable importance to the nation's economy.\nInfrastructure.\nSaint Lucia has a wide-ranging public bus network which covers most of the island. Busses are owned by private individuals, whilst the government is responsible for setting up routes and hubs. The road network covers most of the island, although some rural areas still lack access to proper roads.\nThe island has two airports, including one International airport. Cruising and yachting are very important to the country's economy, with the main sea port being located in Castries, while the main marina is located in Rodney Bay which is also home to the St. Lucia Yacht Club. Meanwhile, the nation's main oil refinery is located in Bexon.\nThe main source of electricity in Saint Lucia is oil through its sole power station, the Cul De Sac Power Station, although solar energy is also a major source. There have also been attempts to introduce geothermal and wind energy to the island.\nDemographics.\nA census is normally held in Saint Lucia every 10 years. In the 2010 census, Saint Lucia reported a population of 165,595 in 58,920 households. This was a 5.1% increase from the 157,490 recorded at the previous census in 2001. Ages 0\u201314 made up 24.1% of the population whilst those 65 and over made up 8.6%. Nearly 40% of the island's population lived in the District of Castries, where the nation's capital of the same name is located.\nSaint Lucia had a fertility rate of 1.4 children per woman in 2021, the lowest in the Americas. This is much lower than in 1990, when the birth rate was 3.4 children per woman, and significantly lower than in 1959, when the birth rate peaked at 6.98 children per woman. Most emigration from Saint Lucia is primarily to Anglophone countries, with the United Kingdom having almost 10,000 Saint Lucian-born citizens, and over 30,000 of Saint Lucian heritage. The United States is home to many Saint Lucians, especially areas such as Miami and New York City. Canada is also home to many Saint Lucians, and especially in the French-speaking province of Quebec in the city of Montr\u00e9al. The median age of Saint Lucians was 33.1 years in 2021.\nEthnic groups.\nSaint Lucia was originally populated by Amerindian peoples. However, European colonisation led to a significant drop in the indigenous populations. Most residents of the island were white planters, but African slaves and indentured servants brought by the Europeans eventually came to outnumber them. Because of this, Saint Lucia's population is predominantly of African and mixed descent. As of 2010, 85.3% of the population are black and 10.9% are of multiracial descent. Other groups include Indo-Caribbean persons (2.2%), whites (0.6%), and Indigenous Persons (0.6%). A small number of Kalinago live in the Choiseul region and in other towns on the western coast. There is also a small population of Lebanese and Syrians.\nLanguages.\nThe official language of Saint Lucia is English, though Saint Lucian French Creole (Kw\u00e9y\u00f2l) is widely spoken. Referred to colloquially as \"Patois\" (\"Patwa\"), it is spoken by a majority of the population. It is a dialect of Antillean Creole and is also related to Haitian Creole, though it nonetheless has a number of distinctive features from the latter. The Creole language developed during the early period of French colonisation and is derived chiefly from French and West African languages. There have been some attempts to make the language official, but they have not yet been successful.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nIn the 2010 census, a majority of Saint Lucians identified as Christians. This can be traced back to the nation's colonization by French and British settlers. Due to heavy French influence, most Christians on the island are Catholics, with 62.5% of the island's residents identifying as such. 24.5% of the island's residents identify as Protestants. In addition, 1.9% of the population identified as members of the Rastafari movement and 1.4% of the population practice Hinduism. The number of residents claiming no religion stood at 5.9% in 2010.\nThere is no state religion in Saint Lucia. The nation's constitution guarantees freedom of religion and prohibits forcing persons to take oath to any religion in which they do not follow. Religious groups are also guaranteed the freedom to establish places of education.\nEducation.\nMost primary and secondary schools in Saint Lucia are operated by the government. Education is free and compulsory for children aged five to fifteen. This includes seven years of primary school and three to five years of secondary school. In the last two years of secondary school, students are allowed to choose the subjects that they would like to do, in preparation for regional CSEC examinations. In 2020, public spending on education was at 3.6%.\nTertiary educational facilities on the island are normally private institutions. These include Monroe College and International American University. However, there are still a few public institutions, including the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College and the University of the West Indies.\nHealthcare.\nHealth services in Saint Lucia are split between the government and private institutions. The island is served by 2 public hospitals and multiple health centers, although most dental and vision services are private. Public expenditure on healthcare stood at 2.1% in 2019.\nIn 2021, life expectancy was at 71.1 years (67.8 for men and 74.7 for women). This was compared to 73.4 years in 2019. The drop in life expectancy was largely attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nCulture.\nThe culture of Saint Lucia has been influenced by African, East Indian, French, and English heritage. The main secondary language of the island is Saint Lucian Creole (Kw\u00e9y\u00f2l), a French-based creole spoken by most of the population. The island boasts the highest ratio of Nobel laureates produced with respect to the total population of any sovereign country in the world. Two winners have come from Saint Lucia: Sir Arthur Lewis, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1979, and the poet Derek Walcott, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.\nSaint Lucia has two flower festivals, the La Rose festival, celebrated on 30 August, and the La Marguerite festival, celebrated on 17 October. Every summer, the island hosts a carnival as a way to present the country's culture and music. Annually, there are normally many festivals, most of them being music related.\nMusic.\nSaint Lucian music is heavily influenced by elements of African music, especially rhythmically. The most popular music genres in Saint Lucia are calypso, soca, dancehall, reggae, zouk, and folk music. Dennery Segment, a genre influenced by Angolan Kuduro, Saint Lucian Solo music and Dancehall was developed on the island. The internationally renowned Saint Lucia Jazz Festival is held annually, and the festival is a major source of revenue for the country's economy.\nFood.\nSaint Lucian cuisine is a mix of African, European, Indian and Caribbean dishes. Some common dishes include macaroni pie, stewed chicken, rice and peas, roti (Indian flatbreads) and soups packed full with fresh locally produced vegetables. All mainstream meat and poultry are eaten in St. Lucia; meat and seafood are normally stewed and browned to create a rich gravy sometimes served over \"ground provisions\" (vegetables) or rice. Johnny Cakes (known as bakes) are also common, and are served with different sides, such as saltfish. The national dish of Saint Lucia is green figs and saltfish.\nSports.\nAs with most Caribbean islands, cricket is the most popular sport in Saint Lucia. The Windward Islands cricket team includes players from Saint Lucia and plays in the West Indies regional tournament. Daren Sammy became the first Saint Lucian to represent the West Indies on his debut in 2007, and was made captain in 2010. The Saint Lucia Kings is a T20 franchise playing in the Caribbean Premier League based in this said island nation. Sailing is also a major sport in Saint Lucia, with the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) race beginning in the Canary Islands and ending on the island. Other sports that are popular on the island include football, basketball, tennis, golf and volleyball. Karate and boxing have also seen increased popularity in recent years. \nJulien Alfred won the nation's first-ever Olympic medal, when she won the women's 100 meters event in 10.72 seconds at the 2024 Summer Olympics held in Paris, France.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "14956050": "Morne Ciseaux\nMorne Ciseaux is a town in the Anse la Raye District of the island nation of Saint Lucia. There is also a second-order subdivision, Morne Ciseaux, that has a population of 160 in 2010. The town is located towards the heart of the island, between Vanard and La Treille.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "14956030": "La Treille, Saint Lucia\nLa Treille is a town on the island of Saint Lucia; it is located towards the heart of the island, between Sarot and Morne Ciseaux.", "15914304": "Cussy-en-Morvan\n \nCussy-en-Morvan (; lit. \"Cussy-in-Morvan\"), commonly referred to simply as Cussy, is a rural commune in the Sa\u00f4ne-et-Loire department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comt\u00e9 region in central-east France.\nIt is located some northwest of Autun, in the heart of Morvan Regional Natural Park. As of 2019, Cussy-en-Morvan had a population of 378. It covers an area of .\nIt is situated on the departmental border with both Ni\u00e8vre and C\u00f4te-d'Or at Gien-sur-Cure and the M\u00e9nessaire exclave, respectively.\nHistory.\nGeorges Leyton (code name Socrate), \"one of the most popular leaders of the Resistance of the Morvan\" in World War II, was buried in the local cemetery in Cussy-en-Morvan on 12 August 1944, after being shot by German occupying forces near the nearby village of La Celle-en-Morvan.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "13357912": "Scissors-glasses\nVariety of eyeglasses\nScissors-glasses (or binocles-ciseaux) are eyeglasses, normally used to correct distance vision, mounted on scissoring stems rather than on temple stems as modern eyeglasses are.\nThe invention of scissors-glasses solved the problem of the single-lensed monocle or \"quizzing glass\", thought to be tiresome to the eye, by providing two lenses on a Y-shaped frame. They usually had a ring in the end of the handle so that they could be worn on a ribbon or gold chain around the neck.\nElegant examples, often gilded and highly ornamented, became common among the more fashionable members of French and German society in the second half of the 18th century. George Washington, Lafayette and Napoleon used scissors-glasses. In French they are called \"binocles\" or \"binocles-ciseaux\", and the French scissors-glasses are more delicate and ornate and more of a fashion accessory than those made in other parts of Europe. The lorgnette may have developed from scissors-glasses.", "10406211": "Cuisy, Seine-et-Marne\n \nCuisy () is a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in the \u00cele-de-France region in north-central France.\nDemographics.\nInhabitants of Cuisy are called \"Cuisiaciens\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2440023": "Boulevard Saint-Germain\nBoulevard in Paris, France\nThe Boulevard Saint-Germain () is a major street in Paris on the Rive Gauche of the Seine.\nIt curves in a 3.5-kilometre (2.1 miles) arc from the Pont de Sully in the east (the bridge at the edge of \u00cele Saint-Louis) to the Pont de la Concorde (the bridge to the Place de la Concorde) in the west and traverses the 5th, 6th and 7th arrondissements. At its midpoint, the boulevard is traversed by the north-south Boulevard Saint-Michel. The boulevard is most famous for crossing the Saint-Germain-des-Pr\u00e9s quarter from which it derives its name.\nHistory.\nThe Boulevard Saint-Germain was the most important part of Haussmann's renovation of Paris (1850s and '60s) on the Left Bank. The boulevard replaced numerous small streets which approximated its path, including, from west to east (to the current Boulevard Saint-Michel), the Rue Saint-Dominique, Rue Taranne, Rue Sainte-Marguerite, Rue des Boucheries and Rue des Cordeliers. One landmark removed to make way for the project was the prison of the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pr\u00e9s which stood entirely on what is now the boulevard, just west of what is now the Passage de la Petite Boucherie.\nThe boulevard derives its name from the church of Saint-Germain-des-Pr\u00e9s which dates back to the Middle Ages. This area around the boulevard is also referred to as the Faubourg (\"Suburb\") Saint-Germain which developed around the abbey.\nIn the 17th century, the Saint-Germain quarter became a major site for noble town houses, or \"h\u00f4tels particuliers\". This reputation continued throughout the 19th century, where the old aristocracy of the Saint-Germain quarter is frequently contrasted with the new upper bourgeoisie of the Right Bank, having their homes on the Boulevard Saint-Honor\u00e9 or on the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es (as noted, for example, in the novels of Honor\u00e9 de Balzac and Marcel Proust).\nFrom 1908 to the outbreak of World War II, number 195 was the headquarter of the Office international d'hygi\u00e8ne publique, ancestor of the WHO.\nFrom the 1930s on, Saint-Germain has been associated with its nightlife, caf\u00e9s and students (the boulevard traverses the Latin Quarter). Home to a number of famous caf\u00e9s, such as Les Deux Magots and Caf\u00e9 de Flore, the Saint-Germain quarter was the centre of the"}, "descending_order": ["14956050", "14956030", "15914304", "13357912", "10406211", "2440023", "27208"], "permutation_1": ["10406211", "14956050", "27208", "15914304", "13357912", "2440023", "14956030"], "permutation_2": ["27208", "14956050", "14956030", "13357912", "10406211", "15914304", "2440023"], "permutation_3": ["14956030", "27208", "10406211", "15914304", "13357912", "2440023", "14956050"]}
{"id": "2hop__386993_131909", "docs_added": {"42108": "Kassel\nKassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, in central Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name, and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020. The former capital of the state of Hesse-Kassel, it has many palaces and parks, including the Bergpark Wilhelmsh\u00f6he, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Kassel is also known for the \"documenta\" exhibitions of contemporary art. Kassel has a public university with 25,000 students (2018) and a multicultural population (39% of the citizens in 2017 had a migration background).\nHistory.\nKassel was first mentioned in 913 AD, as the place where two deeds were signed by King Conrad I. The place was called \"Chasella\" or \"Chassalla\" and was a fortification at a bridge crossing the Fulda river. There are several yet unproven assumptions about the origin of the name. It could be derived from the ancient \"Castellum Cattorum\", a castle of the Chatti, a German tribe that had lived in the area since Roman times. Another assumption is a portmanteau from Frankonian \"cas\", meaning \u2018valley\u2019 or \u2018recess\u2019, and \"sali\" meaning \u2018hall\u2019 or \u2018service building\u2019, which can be interpreted as \u2018(town) hall in a valley\u2019.\nA deed from 1189 certifies that Cassel had city rights, but the date when they were granted is not known.\nThe first castle in Kassel was constructed in 1277, later replaced by a Renaissance castle, the Kassel City Palace, which burned down in 1811.\nIn 1567 the Landgraviate of Hesse, until then centered in Marburg, was divided among four sons, with Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel) becoming one of its successor states. Kassel was its capital and became a centre of Calvinist Protestantism in Germany. Strong fortifications were built to protect the Protestant stronghold against Catholic enemies. Secret societies, such as Rosicrucianism, came to the rise, with Christian Rosenkreutz's work \"Fama Fraternitatis\" first published in 1617. In 1685 Kassel became a refuge for 1,700 Huguenots, who found shelter in the newly established borough of Oberneustadt. Landgrave Charles, who was responsible for this humanitarian act, also ordered the construction of the \"Oktogon\" (Hercules monument) and of the \"Orangerie\". In the late 18th century, Hesse-Kassel became infamous for selling mercenaries (Hessians) to the British crown to help suppress the American Revolution and to finance the construction of palaces and the Landgrave's opulent lifestyle.\nThe Brothers Grimm lived in Kassel in the early 19th century, where they collected and wrote most of their fairy tales. At that time, around 1803, the Landgraviate was elevated to a Principality and its ruler to \"Prince-elector\". Shortly after, it was annexed by Napoleon and became the capital of the short-lived Kingdom of Westphalia under Napoleon's brother J\u00e9r\u00f4mein 1807. The Electorate was restored in 1813.\nHaving sided with Austria in the Austro-Prussian War to gain supremacy in Germany, the principality was annexed by Prussia in 1866. The Prussian administration united Nassau, Frankfurt and Hesse-Kassel into the new Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau. Kassel ceased to be a princely residence but soon developed into a major industrial centre as well as a major railway junction. Henschel & Son, the largest railway locomotive manufacturer in Germany at the end of the nineteenth century, was based in Kassel.\nIn 1870, after the Battle of Sedan, Napoleon III was sent as a prisoner to the Wilhelmsh\u00f6he Palace above the city. During World War I, the German military headquarters were located in the Wilhelmsh\u00f6he Palace. In the late 1930s, Nazis destroyed Heinrich H\u00fcbsch's Kassel Synagogue.\nDuring World War II, Kassel was the headquarters for Germany's Wehrkreis IX, and a local subcamp of Dachau concentration camp provided forced labour for the Henschel facilities, which included tank production plants. There was also a camp for Sinti and Romani people (see \"Romani Holocaust\"). Allied prisoners of war from the Stalag IX-A POW camp were deployed to forced labour in the local arms industry in violation of the Geneva Conventions. The most severe bombing of Kassel in World War II destroyed 90% of the downtown area, and some 10,000 people were killed and 150,000 were made homeless. Most of the casualties were civilians or wounded soldiers recuperating in local hospitals, whereas factories survived the attack generally undamaged. Karl Gerland replaced the regional Gauleiter, Karl Weinrich, soon after the raid.\nThe Allied ground advance into Germany reached Kassel at the beginning of April 1945. The US 80th Infantry Division captured Kassel in house-to-house fighting during 1\u20134 April 1945, which included numerous German panzer-grenadier counterattacks, and resulted in further damage to bombed and unbombed structures alike.\nPost-war, most of the ancient buildings in the city centre were not restored, and large parts of the inner city area were completely rebuilt in the style of the 1950s. A few historic buildings, however, such as the Museum Fridericianum, were restored. \nIn 1949, the interim parliament (\"Parlamentarischer Rat\") eliminated Kassel in the first round as a city to become the provisional capital of the Federal Republic of Germany, which the western city of Bonn won.\nIn 1964, the town hosted the fourth \"Hessentag\" state festival. \nIn 1970, the Chancellor of West Germany Willy Brandt and the prime minister of the German Democratic Republic Willy Stoph met in Wilhelmsh\u00f6he Palace for negotiations between the two German states. In 1991, the central rail station moved from \"Hauptbahnhof\" (\"main station\") to \"Kassel-Wilhelmsh\u00f6he\", the former now being used exclusively for regional trains. The city had a dynamic economic and social development in the recent years, reducing the unemployment rate by half and attracting new citizens.\nEconomy.\nSeveral international operating companies have factories or headquarters in the city (Volkswagen, Mercedes Benz, SMA, Wintershall, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, Rheinmetall, Bombardier). The city is home to several hospitals; the public Klinikum Kassel is one of the largest hospitals in the federal state.\nGeography.\nKassel is the largest city in the north of the federated state of Hesse in the south-western part of Germany, about 70 kilometers northwest of the geographic center of Germany.\nIt is located on both sides of the river Fulda. Kassel's deepest point is in the north-eastern Fulda valley at 132.9 m above sea level.\nThe urban area of Kassel is divided into 23 local districts, each of which has a local council with a local mayor as chairman. The local councils are elected every five years by the population of the local districts. The local advisory board can be heard on all important issues affecting the local district. However, the final decision on a measure rests with the Kassel city council.\nNeighboring communities.\nAround Kassel is the administrative district (\"Landkreis\") of Landkreis Kassel. The following cities and municipalities border the city of Kassel (starting clockwise in the north): Ahnatal, Vellmar, Fuldatal, Staufenberg, Niestetal, Kaufungen, Lohfelden, Fuldabr\u00fcck, Baunatal, Schauenburg, Habichtswald. Of these, Vellmar and Fuldatal in the north, Kaufungen in the east, Lohfelden in the southeast and Baunatal in the south are growing closer to the urban area.\nCulture.\nThe first German observatory was built in Kassel in 1558, and a later version from 1714 survives as the Bellevue Palace. The \"Ottoneum\", the first permanent German theatre building, was built in 1606. The old building is today the Natural History Museum, and the now-called Staatstheater Kassel is located in a nearby building that was constructed in the 1950s. \nSince 1927, Kassel has been home to B\u00e4renreiter, a music publishing house distributing compositions of several critically acclaimed classical musicians.\nSince 1955 the \"documenta\", an international exhibition of modern and contemporary art, has been held regularly in Kassel. The \"documenta\" now takes place every five years. As a result of the \"documenta 6\" in 1977, Kassel became the first city in the world to be illuminated by laser beams at night (Laserscape, by artist Horst H. Baumann). This laser installation is nowadays still visible at weekends. Artworks from former editions of the \"documenta\" (mainly sculptures) can be found in multiple places in Kassel; among those are the \"7000 Oaks\", a work of land art by the German artist Joseph Beuys. The latest/current edition of the \"documenta\", known as \"documenta 15\", ran from 18 June until 25 September 2022.\nClimate.\nKassel experiences an oceanic climate (K\u00f6ppen: \"Cfb\") close to marine climates, with a more notable continental influence than Berlin. Using the 1961\u20131990 normal and 0\u00a0\u00b0C isotherm, the city already had a humid continental climate (\"Dfb\").\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nKassel has a population of about 200,000, and is the 3rd largest city in Hesse state and the only large city in the North Hesse region. \nKassel is often called the city that located on the center of Germany due to its position. \nKassel first reached its first population peak of over 100,000 in 1899, and its second in 1943 with about 225,000. Kassel was destroyed during World War II and became an industrial city in 1950s. Today, Kassel is home to multiple companies and universities.\nSights.\nThe bombing raids of 1943 destroyed 90% of the city center. The city center was almost completely rebuilt during the 1950s and is a combination of renovated or reconstructed old buildings and architecture of the 1950s. Outside the city center, the suburbs are dominated by 19th-century architecture. Timber-framed old towns are situated in suburbs like Harleshausen and Bad Wilhelmsh\u00f6he. The oldest monument is the Druselturm; the Br\u00fcderkirche and the Martinskirche are also, in part, of medieval origin. The towers of the Martinskirche are from the 1950s.\nChurches.\nSt. Martin, Kassel.\nThe main Protestant church of Kassel, it was begun in 1364 and finished in 1462. Severely damaged by British bombing in 1943, it was later reconstructed in a more modern style between 1954 and 1958.\nSt. Bonifatius, Kassel.\nSt. Bonifatius was designed and built in 1956 by Josef Bieling.\nBergpark Wilhelmsh\u00f6he.\nThe complex includes Wilhelmsh\u00f6he Palace (with the Antiquities Collection and Old Masters), the Hercules monument, and the Lions Castle.\nWilhelmsh\u00f6he Palace above the city was built in 1786, by landgrave Wilhelm IX of Hesse-Kassel. The palace is now a museum and houses an important collection of Graeco-Roman antiques and a fine gallery of paintings comprising the second largest collection of Rembrandts in Germany. It is surrounded by the beautiful Bergpark Wilhelmsh\u00f6he with many appealing sights. The complex was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013.\nThe Hercules monument is a huge octagonal stone structure carrying a giant replica of Hercules \"Farnese\" (now at Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples, Italy). From its base down to Wilhelmsh\u00f6he Palace runs a long set of artificial cascades. Every Sunday and Wednesday afternoon at 14:30 (from May until October), the famous water features take place, which start at the Oktagon, and during a one-hour walk through the park visitors can follow the water's way until they reach the lake of the Wilhelmsh\u00f6he Palace, where a fountain of about marks the end of the features.\nThe \"L\u00f6wenburg\" (\"Lions Castle\") is a replica of a medieval castle, also built during the reign of Wilhelm IX. After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870\u201371, Napol\u00e9on III was imprisoned in Wilhelmsh\u00f6he. In 1918, Wilhelmsh\u00f6he became the seat of the German Army High Command (OHL); it was there that the military commanders Hindenburg and Ludendorff prepared the German capitulation.\nStaatspark Karlsaue (Karlsaue Park).\nThe Karlsaue is a large park along the Fulda River that is part of the European Garden Heritage Network. Established in the 16th century, it is known for the Orangerie, a palace built in 1710 as a summer residence for the landgraves. Today, the Orangerie contains the Museum of Astronomy and Technology, with a scale model of the Solar System spanning the entire park and beyond. \nIn addition, the Park Sch\u00f6nfeld contains a small, municipal botanical garden, the Botanischer Garten Kassel.\nArt museums.\nEurope's first public museum, the Museum Fridericianum, was founded in 1779. By the end of the 19th century, the museum held one of the largest collections of watches and clocks in the world.\nOther art museums in Kassel include: \nSports.\nHessen Kassel is the football club in the city, who plays in the Hessenliga after being relegated from the Regionalliga S\u00fcdwest in the 2017/2018 season. The city's own football stadium, the Auestadion was built in 1953 and is able to hold 18,737 people. It is located in the south of Kassel at the quarter S\u00fcdstadt, next to the Karlsaue.\nKassel has a long ice hockey tradition, but it was not until 1977 that the Kassel ice rink (Eissporthalle) opened on a private initiative. The Kassel Huskies were founding members of the DEL in 1994, belonging to the league from 1994 to 2006 and again from 2008 to 2010. In 1997, they were runners-up in the championship playoffs, losing to Adler Mannheim, and reached the semi-finals on three more occasions. The Huskies ran into financial difficulties and dissolved in 2010. The \"Young Huskies\", which is a junior and youth hockey club, decided to enter a men's team in the Hessenliga. This is the fifth division and the lowest men's competition in the state of Hesse. The new club was expecting no more than 3,000 supporters for the first home game in the Hessenliga. However, they had over 5,000 supporters come to watch.\nTransport.\nKassel has seven tram lines (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8), with trams arriving usually every 15 minutes. The city also operates a light rail Stadtbahn network called \"RegioTram\" using Regio Citadis low-floor trams which run on both tram and main line railway tracks with three lines (RT1, RT4, RT5). Moreover, a number of low-floor buses complete the Kassel public transport system. The introduction of low-floor buses led to the development of the Kassel kerb which improves the accessibility at bus stops.\nThe city is connected to the national rail network at two stations, Kassel Central, and Kassel-Wilhelmsh\u00f6he. The traditional central station (Hauptbahnhof) has been reduced to the status of a regional station since the opening of the Hanover-W\u00fcrzburg high-speed rail line in 1991 and its station (Kassel-Wilhelmsh\u00f6he) on the high-speed line at which the InterCityExpress (ICE) and InterCity services call as well as Nightjet and Flixtrain.\nKassel is connected to the motorways A 7, A 49 and A 44.\nThe city is served by Kassel Calden Airport.\nPolitics.\nMayor.\nThe current mayor of Kassel is Sven Schoeller of Alliance 90/The Greens, who was elected in March 2023. He succeeded Christian Geselle (SPD), who had been in office since 2017.\nCity council.\nThe Kassel city council (\"Stadtverordnetenversammlung\") governs the city alongside the Mayor. The most recent city council election was held on 14 March 2021, and the results were as follows:\nEducation and research.\nUniversity of Kassel.\nThe University of Kassel is a public higher education institution and was founded in 1971 as a so-called reform university. It is the newest university in the state of Hessen and has an urban inner-city campus between the city center and the Northern city district. There were around 25,000 students enrolled at the university in 2018, 3,359 of them non-Germans. Two hundred and twenty-four students obtained their doctorate from the university in 2017.\nThe university offers a range of study programs, and several English master's programs as well as two short-term international programs, the Summer University and the Winter University. The Kunsthochschule Kassel (University of Fine Arts) is also part of the university with a satellite campus directly at the Karlsaue park in the Southern city district.\nCourts.\nSeveral courts are located in Kassel, including:\nTwin towns \u2013 sister cities.\nKassel is twinned with:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n Media related to at Wikimedia Commons\n travel guide from Wikivoyage", "350200": "Eberhard Taubert\nNazi politician (1907\u20131976\nEberhard Taubert (11 May 1907 in Kassel \u2013 2 November 1976 in Cologne) was a lawyer and anti-Semitic Nazi propagandist. He joined the Nazi Party on 1 November 1931 (membership number 712,249). At the same time, he joined the \"Sturmabteilung\" (SA), the Nazi paramilitary unit where he served on the staff of SA-\"Gruppe\" Berlin-Brandenburg with the rank of SA-\"Sturmf\u00fchrer\". At the beginning of 1932, Taubert became head of the legal department of Gau Berlin and the anti-Bolshevism advisor to Joseph Goebbels, the \"Gauleiter\". He became involved in both anti-Communist and anti-Jewish propaganda. From 1933 to 1945 he worked as a high official in the \"Propagandaministerium\" under Goebbels, where he headed its anti-Komintern department.\nHis nickname in Nazi circles was \"Dr. Anti\". From 1939 he headed the Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question. He worked in 1940 on the script for the anti-Semitic propaganda film \"Der ewige Jude\" (English: \"The Eternal Jew\"). He also served as a lay judge at the People's Court. After the Second World War he changed his name to Erwin Kohl and worked for $3,000 a month for the German Christian Democratic Union in West Germany, providing material against more radical Marxists.\nAs \"Erwin Kohl\" Taubert was one of the founders of the People's Union for Peace and Freedom (VFF) in 1950. The VFF saw itself as \"the central anti-communist organization in the Federal Republic\" and was supported and subsidized by the Federal Ministry for All-German Questions (predecessor of the Federal Ministry for Intra-German Relations). Mathias Friedel regarded the VFF as a replica of the \"Anti-Komintern\" during the Nazi regime. After his true identity and background was revealed, Eberhard had to retire from the VFF. Taubert was a member of the Naumann Circle, which aimed to infiltrate the Free Democratic Party, and eventually restore Nazism in Germany.\nAfter 1957 he worked in South America, Iran, Lebanon, Egypt and South Africa and as the counsel of the German minister Franz Josef Strau\u00df. Taubert maintained a liaison office in Bonn, which worked for NATO on matters of psychological defense (PSV).\nTaubert was still a counter-intelligence expert for US secret services and in 1959 took on a job for the Iranian secret service (SAVAK) and other Middle Eastern intelligence services. Under the pseudonym Dr. Marcel Wallensdorfer, Taubert was given a press service entitled \"Anti-Comintern Service\".\nFrom 1970 he was employed by German industrialists and largely withdrew from political life due to his illness.\nHis rhetorical ability made him the talented and wanted propagandist he was, not only during the NS-regime. His agitative style used in the Nazi propaganda was reused after the war to boost the Western fear of communism. For this mission he worked with secret services (for example CIC) and right-wing politicians and journals.\nTaubert died in a car crash in Cologne in 1976. Three people attended his funeral.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "42653723": "Emil Taubert\nGerman philologist and writer (1844\u20131895)\nEmil Taubert (23 January 1844 in Berlin \u2013 10 April 1895 in Berlin) was a German philologist, writer and librettist. He was the son of composer Wilhelm Taubert and studied philology and philosophy at the Friedrich-Wilhelms University in his hometown. After completing his studies he got a job as a teacher at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Berlin.\nThe Franco-Prussian War of 1870\u20131871 made the military-logistic Taubert return to the teaching profession. In 1877, he became a senior teacher at the \"K\u00f6nigliche Lehrerinnen-Seminar,\" and nine years later he was promoted to Intendantur-Rat, a military administrative authority, at the Royal Theater. In addition to his day job he developed an extensive literary work over the years, which attracted considerable attention from the public and literary criticism. His final resting place is at the Friedh\u00f6fe vor dem Halleschen Tor in Berlin.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "70513543": "Siegfried Taubert\nGerman SS general and functionary\nSiegfried Taubert (born 11 December 1880; died 13 February 1946) was a Nazi, SS-\"Obergruppenf\u00fchrer\" and General of the Waffen-SS. From 1935 to 1938 Taubert was chief of staff in Reinhard Heydrich's \"Sicherheitsdienst\" (Security Service; SD) in the main SS office. From 1938 to 1945 he was the captain of the SS at Wewelsburg castle, which was Heinrich Himmler's SS headquarters and training center for head SS officers. Taubert died in Kiel in 1946.\nEarly life and World War I.\nSiegfried Taubert was born on 11 December 1880 in Brallentin, Poland; his father was a Protestant pastor. After passing his university entrance test, enrolled in military school as a \"Fahnenjunker\" (junior). He was assigned to the Infantry Regiment Duke Ferdinand von Braunschweig 57 in Wesel-Westphalia. On 5 May 1904 he married Arnoldine Johanna Juta from the Netherlands; they had three children, including Ilse, who married Ernst-Robert Grawitz a SS German physician. From 1914 to 1918 he was a career officer during World War I. In November 1919 he departed the army with the rank of major. From 1921 to 1924 he became an industrial Manager in Poland and leader in steel helmet factory in Greifenhagen. In August 1925 Taubert sold his house in the Greifenhagen and moved to Berlin and worked as a sales manager in a piano factory. In 1931 he moved over to insurance work at the Swiss Life Insurance and Pension Fund in Berlin. and was thereafter unemployed. In 1931 he lost his job and became politically active in the \"Frontbann\", also \"Tannenbergbund\" organizations.\nNazi career and World War II.\nIn 1931 he join the Nazi Party (membership number 525.246) and the \"Schutzstaffel\" (SS number 23.128). Working for SS General Kurt Daluege, he was promoted to SS-\"Oberf\u00fchrer\". From 1935 to 1938 Taubert was chief of staff in Reinhard Heydrich's \"Sicherheitsdienst\" (Security Service; SD) in the main SS office. On 13 September 1936 he was promoted to SS-\"Brigadef\u00fchrer\". From 1938 to 1945 he was the captain of the SS at Wewelsburg castle, after Manfred von Knobelsdorff. Wewelsburg castle was Heinrich Himmler's SS headquarters and ideological training center for head SS officers.\nTaubert duties often took him away from the Wewelsburg castle. Before the war, Taubert used the Reich Labor Service for Himmler's SS Research and Education Center projects at the castle, when the war in Europe started he then used concentration camp inmates. The inmate laborers were housed behind barbed wire in the neighboring village of Niederhage. Taubert became the lay judge at the People's Court \"Volksgerichtshof\". He also was the adjutant captain of the castle Gottlieb Bernhardt. In October 1943 Taubert visited the Princess Sophie of Greece and Denmark at Himmler request. In 1943 he became SS-\"Obergruppenf\u00fchrer\" and General of the Waffen-SS. Near the end of World War II in Europe, on 31 March 1945, he fled from Wewelsburg castle to Schleswig-Holstein as the US 3rd Armored Division approached the castle. Taubert knowing that US Army was coming, he had the castle antiquities and artworks packed and moved to the nearby Boddeker estate, while others were moved and hidden in other facilities and nearby homes. Some art was hidden within the walls of the estate\u2019s buildings. Himmler ordered Wewelsburg castle destroyed, but Taubert refused. Taubert died in Kiel in 1946.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "13642738": "Wilhelm Taubert\nGerman pianist, composer and conductor (1811 - 1891)\nCarl Gottfried Wilhelm Taubert (23 March 1811 \u2013 7 January 1891) was a German pianist, composer, and conductor, and the father of philologist and writer Emil Taubert.\nLife.\nBorn in Berlin, Taubert studied under Ludwig Berger (piano) and Bernhard Klein (composition). In 1831, he became assistant conductor and accompanist for Berlin court concerts. Between 1845 and 1848, he was music director of the Berlin Royal Opera and was also court conductor in Berlin from 1845 to 1869. From 1865, he taught music at the Prussian Academy of Arts; Theodor Kullak was one of his pupils.\nHis compositions include six operas, incidental music, four symphonies, concertos for piano and cello, four string quartets, other orchestral, choral, and piano works, and more than 300 songs. His early compositions were praised by the composer Felix Mendelssohn, who had also studied piano with Berger.\nTaubert died in Berlin. His grave is preserved in the Protestant \"Friedhof I der Jerusalems- und Neuen Kirchengemeinde\" (Cemetery No. I of the congregations of Jerusalem's Church and New Church) in Berlin-Kreuzberg, south of Hallesches Tor.", "50912306": "Paul Hermann Wilhelm Taubert\nGerman botanist (1862\u20131897)\nPaul Hermann Wilhelm Taubert (12 August 1862 \u2013 1 January 1897) was a German botanist.\nTaubert was born in Berlin, where he studied botany as a pupil of Ignatz Urban. While a student, he collected plants in Cyrenaica (1887). From 1889 to 1895 he was associated with the Botanical Museum in Berlin, working as a scientific assistant in 1893\u201395. Afterwards, he embarked on a botanical expedition to Brazil, where he conducted botanical investigations in the states of Pernambuco, Cear\u00e1, Piau\u00ed, Maranh\u00e3o and Amazonas. He died in Man\u00e1os on 1 January 1897 (age 34).\nHe was the taxonomic authority of many plant species. In 1893 Karl Moritz Schumann named the plant genus \"Taubertia\" (family Menispermaceae) in his honor.\nSelected works.\n<templatestyles src=\"Botanist/styles.css\"/>The standard author abbreviation Taub. is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "64004406": "Frank Taubert\nGerman diver\nFrank Taubert (born 10 March 1956) is a German diver. He competed at the 1976 Summer Olympics and the 1980 Summer Olympics.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "8867699": "Taubert\nTaubert is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include:\n<templatestyles src=\"Dmbox/styles.css\" />\n Surname listThis page lists people with the surname Taubert. ", "67375815": "Gottfried Taubert\nGerman choreaographer\nGottfried Taubert (baptized 30 July 1670-died July 6, 1746) was a German dance master of the Baroque period.\nLife.\nTaubert was born in Ronneburg, Thuringia, the son of Christoph Tauber[t] and of Anna Br\u00e4mmer. He attended lectures at Leipzig University from 1686 and from 1693. Until 1695, he studied in the fair city. In 1702, he settled in Danzig, but returned to Leipzig in 1715, where he published his extensive dance book \"Rechtschaffener Tanzmeister\" in 1717. It also contains the first German translation of the French \"Choreography\" by Raoul-Auger Feuillet as well as the instructions of the dances after Raoul-Auger Feuillet and Louis P\u00e9cour. From about 1730 until his death, he was court dance master in Zerbst.\nTaubert may have exerted the most lasting influence among German dance book authors. It is ultimately the most comprehensive record of the German reception of Baroque French dance. Tilden Russell brought out an English translation of this work in 2012, providing it with an introductory volume built on extensive preliminary studies. At the beginning of the 18th century, Leipzig was virtually a \"stronghold of the academic art of dance\", as Walter Salmen called it...). Taubert played a big part in making this happen.\nTaubert died in Zerbst at the age of 75.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "28262692": "Ernst Eduard Taubert\nPomeranian composer, music critic and professor (1838 - 1934)\nErnst Eduard Taubert (25 September 1838 in Regenwalde \u2013 14 July 1934) was a Pomeranian composer, music critic, and music educator. He began his education in Bonn where he was first a student of theology and later a music pupil of Albert Dietrich. He then studied under Friedrich Kiel in Berlin. He remained in Berlin for the rest of his life where he worked as a music critic for local publications and taught at the Stern Conservatory, first as a lecturer and then as a full professor since 1898. In 1905 he was elected a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts where he taught until his death in Berlin in 1934. He is best remembered today for his \"Quintet for Piano and Winds, Op. 48\" and his \"String Quartet, Op. 56\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18715601": "Eberhard Fjord\nChilean fjord of \u00daltima Esperanza Sound\nEberhard Fjord is an arm of Seno Ultima Esperanza in the Patagonian region of Chile. This surface water body was named after Hermann Eberhard, the first European to explore this region. Eberhard used the fjord to find the Cueva del Milod\u00f3n, where he discovered remains of the extinct Giant sloth; archaeological recovery of evidence of prehistoric man was also found at this cave complex. Geologically this fjord is within the Magallanes Basin.\nLine notes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "61750222": "Agnes Taubert\nGerman philosopher and writer (1844\u20131877)\nAgnes Marie Constanze von Hartmann (n\u00e9e\u00a0Taubert; 7 January 1844 \u2013 8 May 1877), who wrote under the name A. Taubert, was a German philosopher and writer. She was married to the philosopher Eduard von Hartmann and was a passionate advocate for his work, \"Philosophy of the Unconscious\" (1869). She authored two books that both critiqued and defended his ideas: \"Philosophie gegen naturwissenschaftliche Ueberhebung\" (\"Philosophy Against the Overreach of Natural Sciences\"; 1872) and \"Der Pessimismus und seine Gegner\" (\"Pessimism and Its Opponents\"; 1873). These works played a significant role in the intellectual debates surrounding the pessimism controversy in Germany.\nBiography.\nAgnes Marie Constanze Taubert was born on 7 January 1844, in Stralsund, Kingdom of Prussia. She was the daughter of an artillery colonel, who was friends with the father of the philosopher Eduard von Hartmann. In 1872, Taubert married Von Hartmann in Berlin-Charlottenburg and had a child with him.\nTaubert was a staunch supporter of her husband's work, \"Philosophy of the Unconscious\" (1869), and wrote two books\u2014both critiquing and defending his ideas\u2014under the pen name A. Taubert. By publishing under a pen name"}, "descending_order": ["42653723", "70513543", "350200", "13642738", "50912306", "64004406", "8867699", "67375815", "28262692", "18715601", "61750222", "42108"], "permutation_1": ["64004406", "13642738", "50912306", "61750222", "8867699", "28262692", "70513543", "42108", "67375815", "18715601", "350200", "42653723"], "permutation_2": ["70513543", "50912306", "64004406", "61750222", "13642738", "8867699", "28262692", "67375815", "350200", "42108", "42653723", "18715601"], "permutation_3": ["67375815", "350200", "13642738", "18715601", "42108", "42653723", "70513543", "50912306", "61750222", "8867699", "64004406", "28262692"]}
{"id": "2hop__69_59409", "docs_added": {"6521181": "Song Cry\n2002 single by Jay-Z\n\"Song Cry\" is a song by American rapper Jay-Z and produced by Just Blaze. Released on April 16, 2002, it was the fourth and final single from his sixth studio album \"The Blueprint\" and also appears on the 2001 live album \"\".\n\"Song Cry\" was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Male Rap Solo Performance but lost to \"Hot in Herre\" by Nelly. The song samples Bobby Glenn's \"Sounds Like a Love Song\".\nBackground and content.\nIn an interview with Bill Maher, Jay-Z stated that this song was actually inspired by three different relationships he had in the past, and he wrote about his different experiences all together in different verses.\nThe song is a slow and quiet melodic rap ballad in which Jay-Z laments the break-up of an earlier relationship due to his own neglect and infidelity. Admitting that he is too prideful to publicly display his emotions (\"I can't see 'em coming down my eyes\"), Jay-Z forces the song to \"cry\" instead. This allows Jay-Z to mourn the break-up free of any damage to his masculine image as a street hustler. This furthers the notion that emotional vulnerability is a sign of weakness, especially within the Black community, as Black men in particular suppress vulnerability \"in order to survive.\"\nLive performances.\nThe live performance of \"Song Cry\" from Jay-Z's 2001 MTV Unplugged album features female vocalist Jaguar Wright singing a sample of \"Sounds Like a Love Song\" by Bobby Glenn, though Wright is not identified in the liner notes of the album.\nDuring his 2006 \"Water for Life\" Tour, Jay-Z performed \"Song Cry\" at the Royal Albert Hall, the venue's first ever hip hop show. American actress Gwyneth Paltrow did the chorus.\nThe song was also included on the set-lists of his all-stadium tours On the Run Tour in 2014 and OTR II in 2018, both with co-headliner and wife Beyonc\u00e9.\nCredits and personnel.\nThe credits for \"Song Cry\" are adapted from the liner notes of \"The Blueprint\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "83688": "Beyonc\u00e9\nAmerican singer (born 1981) \nBeyonc\u00e9 Giselle Knowles-Carter ( ; n\u00e9e Knowles; born September 4, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, actress and businesswoman. She has had a significant impact on the music industry and is known for her vocal ability, musical versatility, live performances, and culturally important works.\nBeyonc\u00e9 rose to fame in 1997 as a member of Destiny's Child, one of the best-selling girl groups of all time. Her debut solo album, \"Dangerously in Love\" (2003), became one of the best-selling albums of the 21st century and spawned the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100 number-one singles \"Crazy in Love\" and \"Baby Boy\". Beyonc\u00e9's commercial success continued with the albums \"B'Day\" (2006), \"I Am... Sasha Fierce\" (2008) and \"4\" (2011), all of which featured hit singles including \"Check on It\", \"Irreplaceable\", \"If I Were a Boy\", \"Single Ladies (Put a Ring on it)\", \"Halo\", \"Run the World (Girls)\", and \"Love On Top\". She has also ventured into acting, starring in the films \"Austin Powers in Goldmember\" (2002), \"Dreamgirls\" (2006), \"Cadillac Records\" (2008), \"Obsessed\" (2009) and \"Black Is King\" (2020), as well as voicing Nala in \"The Lion King\" (2019) and \"\" (2024).\nBeyonc\u00e9's career shifted after forming her own management company Parkwood Entertainment, creating monocultural events through acclaimed concept albums. She explored personal and political themes on \"Beyonc\u00e9\" (2013) and \"Lemonade\" (2016), which are credited with popularizing the surprise album and visual album. The former inspired setting Friday as the Global Release Day, while the latter was the best-selling album worldwide in 2016. Her ongoing trilogy project \u2013 currently consisting of the queer-inspired dance album \"Renaissance\" (2022) and Americana epic \"Cowboy Carter\" (2024) \u2013 has highlighted the contributions of Black pioneers to American musical and cultural history, spawning the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100 number-one singles \"Break My Soul\" and \"Texas Hold 'Em\".\nBeyonc\u00e9 is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with estimated sales of over 200 million records. She is the only female artist to debut all of their eight studio albums at number one on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200. She is the most awarded and nominated artist of all time in the history of the Grammy Awards, as well as the most awarded artist at the BET, NAACP Image, and Soul Train Music Awards. Her inductions include the \"Guinness World Records\" Hall of Fame and the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame. The first woman to headline an all-stadium tour, Beyonc\u00e9 is one of the highest-grossing live acts in history. \"Billboard\" named her the Top Female Artist of the 2000s and the Greatest Pop Star of the 21st Century. \"Rolling Stone\" listed her as one of the greatest singers ever and included several of her albums, singles, and music videos among the greatest of all time.\nEarly life.\nBeyonc\u00e9 Giselle Knowles was born on September 4, 1981, at the Park Plaza Hospital in Houston, Texas, to Tina Knowles (n\u00e9e\u00a0Beyonc\u00e9), a hairdresser and salon owner, and Mathew Knowles, a Xerox sales manager. Tina is Louisiana Creole and Mathew is African American. Beyonc\u00e9's younger sister, Solange Knowles, is also a singer and a former backup dancer for Destiny's Child. Solange and Beyonc\u00e9 are the first sisters both to have had number one solo albums. Beyonc\u00e9 researched her ancestry and discovered that she is descended from a slave owner who married his slave. Her mother is also of distant Irish and Jewish ancestry. Beyonc\u00e9 also has Belgian ancestry from Hainaut Province, Wallonia and is related to a former mayor of Froidchapelle, Belgium.\nBeyonc\u00e9 was raised with multiple religious traditions, attending St. John's United Methodist Church in Houston as well as St. Mary of the Purification Catholic Church. She went to St. Mary's Catholic Montessori School in Houston and enrolled in dance classes there. Her singing ability was discovered when dance instructor Darlette Johnson began humming a song and Beyonc\u00e9 finished it, able to hit the high-pitched notes. Beyonc\u00e9's interest in music and performing continued after winning a school talent show at age seven, singing John Lennon's \"Imagine\" to beat 15/16-year-olds. In the fall of 1990, Beyonc\u00e9 enrolled in Parker Elementary School, a music magnet school in Houston, where she performed with the school's choir. She also attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and later Alief Elsik High School. Beyonc\u00e9 was also a member of the choir at St. John's United Methodist Church where she sang her first solo and was a soloist for two years.\nCareer.\nCareer beginnings.\nWhen Beyonc\u00e9 was eight, she met LaTavia Roberson at an audition for an all-girl entertainment group. They were placed into a group called Girl's Tyme with three other girls, and rapped and danced on the talent show circuit in Houston. After seeing the group, R&B producer Arne Frager brought them to his Northern California studio and placed them in \"Star Search\", the largest talent show on national TV at the time. Girl's Tyme failed to win, and Beyonc\u00e9 later said the song they performed was not good. In 1995, Beyonc\u00e9's father, Mathew, resigned from his job to manage the group. The move reduced the family's income by half, and Beyonc\u00e9's parents were forced to sell their house and cars and move into separated apartments.\nMathew cut the original line-up to four and the group continued performing as an opening act for other established R&B girl groups. The girls auditioned before record labels and were finally signed to Elektra Records, moving to Atlanta Records briefly to work on their first recording, only to be cut by the company. This put further strain on the family, and Beyonc\u00e9's parents separated. On October 5, 1995, Dwayne Wiggins's Grass Roots Entertainment signed the group. In 1996, the girls began recording their debut album under an agreement with Sony Music, the Knowles family reunited, and shortly after, the group got a contract with Columbia Records with the assistance of Columbia talent scout Teresa LaBarbera Whites.\n1997\u20132002: Destiny's Child.\nThe group changed their name to Destiny's Child in 1996, based upon a passage in the Book of Isaiah. In 1997, Destiny's Child released their major label debut song \"Killing Time\" on the soundtrack to the 1997 film \"Men in Black\". In November, the group released their debut single and first major hit, \"No, No, No\". They released their self-titled debut album in February 1998, which established the group as a viable act in the music industry. The group released their Multi-Platinum second album \"The Writing's on the Wall\" in 1999. The record features songs such as \"Bills, Bills, Bills\", the group's first number-one single, \"Jumpin' Jumpin'\" and \"Say My Name\", which became their most successful song at the time, and would remain one of their signature songs. \"Say My Name\" won the Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals and the Best R&B Song at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards. \"The Writing's on the Wall\" sold more than eight million copies worldwide. During this time, Beyonc\u00e9 recorded a duet with Marc Nelson, an original member of Boyz II Men, on the song \"After All Is Said and Done\" for the soundtrack to the 1999 film, \"The Best Man\", as well as \"Ways To Get Cut Off\", a collaboration with fellow Columbia Records signee JoJo Robinson that was later shelved.\nThe remaining band members recorded \"Independent Women Part I\", which appeared on the soundtrack to the 2000 film \"Charlie's Angels\". It became their best-charting single, topping the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart for eleven consecutive weeks. In early 2001, while Destiny's Child was completing their third album, Beyonc\u00e9 landed a major role in the MTV made-for-television film, \"\", starring alongside American actor Mekhi Phifer. Set in Philadelphia, the film is a modern interpretation of the 19th-century opera \"Carmen\" by French composer Georges Bizet. When the third album \"Survivor\" was released in May 2001, Luckett and Roberson filed a lawsuit claiming that the songs were aimed at them. The album debuted at number one on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200, with first-week sales of 663,000 copies sold. The album spawned other number-one hits, \"Bootylicious\" and the title track, \"Survivor\", the latter of which earned the group a Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. After releasing their holiday album \"8 Days of Christmas\" in October 2001, the group announced a hiatus to further pursue solo careers.\nIn July 2002, Beyonc\u00e9 made her theatrical film debut, playing Foxxy Cleopatra alongside Mike Myers in the comedy film \"Austin Powers in Goldmember\", which spent its first weekend atop the U.S. box office and grossed $73\u00a0million. Beyonc\u00e9 released \"Work It Out\" as the lead single from its soundtrack album which entered the top ten in the UK, Norway, and Belgium. In 2003, Beyonc\u00e9 starred opposite Cuba Gooding Jr. in the musical comedy \"The Fighting Temptations\" as Lilly, a single mother with whom Gooding's character falls in love. The film received mixed reviews from critics but grossed $30\u00a0million in the U.S. Beyonc\u00e9 released \"Fighting Temptation\" as the lead single from the film's soundtrack album, with Missy Elliott, MC Lyte, and Free which was also used to promote the film. Another of Beyonc\u00e9's contributions to the soundtrack, \"Summertime\", fared better on the U.S. charts.\n2003\u20132007: \"Dangerously in Love\", \"B'Day\", and \"Dreamgirls\".\nBeyonc\u00e9's first solo recording was a feature on Jay-Z's song \"'03 Bonnie & Clyde\" that was released in October 2002, peaking at number four on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart. On June 14, 2003, Beyonc\u00e9 premiered songs from her first solo album \"Dangerously in Love\" during her first solo concert and the pay-per-view television special, \"Ford Presents Beyonc\u00e9 Knowles, Friends & Family, Live From Ford's 100th Anniversary Celebration in Dearborn, Michigan\". The album was released on June 24, 2003, after Michelle Williams and Kelly Rowland had released their solo efforts. The album sold 317,000 copies in its first week, debuted atop the \"Billboard\" 200, and has since sold 11\u00a0million copies worldwide.\nThe album's lead single, \"Crazy in Love\", featuring Jay-Z, became Beyonc\u00e9's first number-one single as a solo artist in the US. The single \"Baby Boy\" also reached number one, and singles, \"Me, Myself and I\" and \"Naughty Girl\", both reached the top-five. The album earned Beyonc\u00e9 a then record-tying five awards at the 46th Annual Grammy Awards; Best Contemporary R&B Album, Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for \"Dangerously in Love 2\", Best R&B Song and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for \"Crazy in Love\", and Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals for \"The Closer I Get to You\" with Luther Vandross. During the ceremony, she performed with Prince.\nIn November 2003, she embarked on the Dangerously in Love Tour in Europe and later toured alongside Missy Elliott and Alicia Keys for the Verizon Ladies First Tour in North America. On February 1, 2004, Beyonc\u00e9 performed the American national anthem at Super Bowl XXXVIII, at the Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas. After the release of \"Dangerously in Love\", Beyonc\u00e9 had planned to produce a follow-up album using several of the left-over tracks. However, this was put on hold so she could concentrate on recording \"Destiny Fulfilled\", the final studio album by Destiny's Child. Released on November 15, 2004, in the U.S. and peaking at number two on the \"Billboard\" 200, \"Destiny Fulfilled\" included the singles \"Lose My Breath\" and \"Soldier\", which reached the top five on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart.\nDestiny's Child embarked on a worldwide concert tour, Destiny Fulfilled... and Lovin' It sponsored by McDonald's Corporation, and performed songs such as \"No, No, No\", \"Survivor\", \"Say My Name\", \"Independent Women\" and \"Lose My Breath\". In addition to renditions of the group's recorded material, they also performed songs from each singer's solo careers, including numbers from \"Dangerously in Love\". During the last stop of their European tour, in Barcelona on June 11, 2005, Rowland announced that Destiny's Child would disband following the North American leg of the tour. The group released their first compilation album \"Number\u00a01's\" on October 25, 2005, in the U.S. and accepted a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in March 2006. The group has sold 60\u00a0million records worldwide.\nBeyonc\u00e9's second solo album \"B'Day\" was released on September 4, 2006, in the U.S., to coincide with her twenty-fifth birthday. It sold 541,000 copies in its first week and debuted atop the \"Billboard\" 200, becoming Beyonc\u00e9's second consecutive number-one album in the United States. The album's lead single \"D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu\", featuring Jay-Z, reached the top five on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart. The second international single \"Irreplaceable\" was a commercial success worldwide, reaching number one in Australia, Hungary, Ireland, New Zealand and the United States. \"B'Day\" also produced three other singles; \"Ring the Alarm\", \"Get Me Bodied\", and \"Green Light\" (released in the United Kingdom only).\nAt the 49th Annual Grammy Awards (2007), \"B'Day\" was nominated for five Grammy Awards, including Best Contemporary R&B Album, Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for \"Ring the Alarm\" and Best R&B Song and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration\"for \"D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu\"; the Freemasons club mix of \"D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu\" without the rap was put forward in the Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical category. \"B'Day\" won the award for Best Contemporary R&B Album. The following year, \"B'Day\" received two nominations \u2013 for Record of the Year for \"Irreplaceable\" and Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for \"Beautiful Liar\" (with Shakira), also receiving a nomination for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for Motion Pictures, Television or Other Visual Media for her appearance on \"\" (2006).\nHer first acting role of 2006 was in the comedy film \"The Pink Panther\" starring opposite Steve Martin, grossing $158.8\u00a0million at the box office worldwide. Her second film \"Dreamgirls\", the film version of the 1981 Broadway musical loosely based on The Supremes, received acclaim from critics and grossed $154\u00a0million internationally. In it, she starred opposite Jennifer Hudson, Jamie Foxx, and Eddie Murphy playing a pop singer based on Diana Ross. To promote the film, Beyonc\u00e9 released \"Listen\" as the lead single from the . In April 2007, Beyonc\u00e9 embarked on The Beyonc\u00e9 Experience, her first worldwide concert tour, visiting 97 venues and grossed over $24\u00a0million. Beyonc\u00e9 conducted pre-concert food donation drives during six major stops in conjunction with her pastor at St. John's and America's Second Harvest. At the same time, \"B'Day\" was re-released with five additional songs, including her duet with Shakira \"Beautiful Liar\".\n2008\u20132012: \"I Am... Sasha Fierce\" and \"4\".\n\"I Am... Sasha Fierce\" was released in November 2008 and formally introduced Beyonc\u00e9's alter ego Sasha Fierce. It was met with mixed reviews from critics, but sold 482,000 copies in its first week, debuting atop the \"Billboard\" 200, and giving Beyonc\u00e9 her third consecutive number-one album in the U.S. The album featured her fourth UK number-one single \"If I Were a Boy\" and her fifth U.S. number-one song \"Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)\". \"Halo\" achieved the accomplishment of becoming her longest-running Hot 100 single in her career, \"Halo\"'s success in the U.S. helped Beyonc\u00e9 attain more top-ten singles on the list than any other woman during the 2000s.\nThe music video for \"Single Ladies\" has been parodied and imitated around the world, spawning the \"first major dance craze\" of the Internet age according to the \"Toronto Star\". At the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, the video won three categories, including Video of the Year. In March 2009, Beyonc\u00e9 embarked on the I Am... Tour, her second headlining worldwide concert tour, consisting of 108 shows, grossing $119.5\u00a0million.\nBeyonc\u00e9 further expanded her acting career, starring as blues singer Etta James in the 2008 musical biopic \"Cadillac Records\". Her performance in the film received praise from critics, and she garnered several nominations for her portrayal of James, including a Satellite Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and an NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress. Beyonc\u00e9 donated her entire salary from the film to Phoenix House, an organization of rehabilitation centers for heroin addicts around the country. Beyonc\u00e9 starred opposite Ali Larter and Idris Elba in the thriller, \"Obsessed\". She played Sharon Charles, a mother and wife whose family is threatened by her husband's stalker. The film received negative reviews from critics, and did well at the U.S. box office, grossing $68 million \u2013 $60 million more than \"Cadillac Records\"\u00a0\u2013 on a budget of $20\u00a0million.\nAt the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards, Beyonc\u00e9 received ten nominations, tying with Lauryn Hill for most Grammy nominations in a single year by a female artist. Beyonc\u00e9 went on to win six of those nominations, breaking a record she previously tied in 2004 for the most Grammy awards won in a single night by a female artist with six. In 2010, Beyonc\u00e9 provide guest vocals on Lady Gaga's single \"Telephone\". The song topped the U.S. Pop Songs chart, becoming the sixth number-one for both Beyonc\u00e9 and Gaga, tying them with Mariah Carey for most number-ones since the Nielsen Top 40 airplay chart launched in 1992.\nBeyonc\u00e9 announced a hiatus from her music career in January 2010, heeding her mother's advice, \"to live life, to be inspired by things again\". During the break, she and her father parted ways as business partners. Beyonc\u00e9's musical break lasted nine months and saw her visit multiple European cities, the Great Wall of China, the Egyptian pyramids, Australia, English music festivals and various museums and ballet performances. \"Eat, Play, Love\", a cover story written by Beyonc\u00e9 for \"Essence\" that detailed her 2010 career break, won her a writing award from the New York Association of Black Journalists.\nOn June 26, 2011, she became the first solo female artist to headline the main Pyramid stage at the 2011 Glastonbury Festival in over twenty years. The performance was lauded, with several publications noting an ascension in Knowles' capabilities as a live performer. Other publications discussed the polarized attitude of the UK music establishment in response to a Black woman performing on the same stages and to the same crowd sizes that were past reserved for legacy rock acts. Her fourth studio album \"4\" was released two days prior in the U.S. \"4\" sold 310,000 copies in its first week and debuted atop the \"Billboard\" 200 chart, giving Beyonc\u00e9 her fourth consecutive number-one album in the U.S. The album was preceded by two of its singles \"Run the World (Girls)\" and \"Best Thing I Never Had\". The fourth single \"Love on Top\" spent seven consecutive weeks at number one on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, while peaking at number 20 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, the highest peak from the album.\nIn late 2011, she took the stage at New York's Roseland Ballroom for four nights of special performances: the 4 Intimate Nights with Beyonc\u00e9 concerts saw the performance of her \"4\" album to a standing room only. On August 1, 2011, the album was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), having shipped 1\u00a0million copies to retail stores. By December 2015, it reached sales of 1.5\u00a0million copies in the U.S. The album reached one billion Spotify streams on February 5, 2018, making Beyonc\u00e9 the first female artist to have three of their albums surpass one billion streams on the platform. In June 2012, she at Revel Atlantic City's Ovation Hall to celebrate the resort's opening, her first performances since giving birth to her daughter.\n2013\u20132014: \"Beyonc\u00e9\".\nIn January 2013, Beyonc\u00e9 performed the American national anthem singing along with a pre-recorded track at President Obama's second inauguration in Washington, D.C. The following month, Beyonc\u00e9 performed at the Super Bowl XLVII halftime show, held at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans. The performance stands as the second most tweeted about moment in history at 268,000 tweets per minute. Her feature-length documentary film, \"Life Is But a Dream\", first aired on HBO on February 16, 2013. The film was co-directed by Beyonc\u00e9 herself.\nBeyonc\u00e9 embarked on The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour on April 15 in Belgrade, Serbia; the tour included 132 dates that ran through to March 2014. It became the one of the most successful tours of her career. In May, Beyonc\u00e9's cover of Amy Winehouse's \"Back to Black\" with Andr\u00e9 3000 on \"The Great Gatsby\" soundtrack was released. Beyonc\u00e9 voiced Queen Tara in the 3D CGI animated film, \"Epic\", released by 20th Century Fox on May 24, and recorded an original song for the film, \"Rise Up\", co-written with Sia.\nOn December 13, 2013, Beyonc\u00e9 unexpectedly released her eponymous fifth studio album on the iTunes Store without any prior announcement or promotion. The album debuted atop the \"Billboard\" 200 chart, giving Beyonc\u00e9 her fifth consecutive number-one album in the U.S. This made her the first woman in the chart's history to have her first five studio albums debut at number one. \"Beyonc\u00e9\" received critical acclaim and commercial success, selling one million digital copies worldwide in six days; Musically an electro-R&B album, it concerns darker themes previously unexplored in her work, such as \"bulimia, postnatal depression [and] the fears and insecurities of marriage and motherhood\". The single \"Drunk in Love\", featuring Jay-Z, peaked at number two on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart.\nAccording to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), \"Beyonc\u00e9\" sold 2.3\u00a0million units worldwide, becoming the tenth best-selling album of 2013. The album also went on to become the twentieth best-selling album of 2014. As of November\u00a02014[ [update]], \"Beyonc\u00e9\" has sold over 5\u00a0million copies worldwide and has generated over 1\u00a0billion streams, as of March\u00a02015[ [update]]. At the 57th Annual Grammy Awards in February 2015, Beyonc\u00e9 was nominated for six awards, ultimately winning three: Best R&B Performance and Best R&B Song for \"Drunk in Love\", and Best Surround Sound Album for \"Beyonc\u00e9\".\nIn April 2014, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z officially announced their On the Run Tour. It served as the couple's first co-headlining stadium tour together. On August 24, 2014, she received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards. Beyonc\u00e9 also won home three competitive awards: Best Video with a Social Message and Best Cinematography for \"Pretty Hurts\", as well as best collaboration for \"Drunk in Love\". In November, \"Forbes\" reported that Beyonc\u00e9 was the top-earning woman in music for the second year in a row\u00a0\u2013 earning $115\u00a0million in the year, more than double her earnings in 2013.\n2015\u20132017: \"Lemonade\".\nBeyonc\u00e9 released \"Formation\" in on February 6, 2016, and performed it live for the first time during the NFL Super Bowl 50 halftime show. The appearance was considered controversial as it appeared to reference the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party and the NFL forbids political statements in its performances. Immediately following the performance, Beyonc\u00e9 announced The Formation World Tour, which highlighted stops in both North America and Europe. It marked the first ever all-stadium tour by a female artist and ended on October 7, with Beyonc\u00e9 bringing out her husband Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, and Serena Williams for the last show. The tour went on to win Tour of the Year at the 44th American Music Awards.\nIn April 2016, Beyonc\u00e9 released a teaser clip for a project called \"Lemonade\". A one-hour film which aired on HBO on April 23, a corresponding album with the same title was released on the same day exclusively on Tidal. \"Lemonade\" debuted at number one on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200, making Beyonc\u00e9 the first act in \"Billboard\" history to have their first six studio albums debut atop the chart; she broke a record previously tied with DMX in 2013. With all 12 tracks of \"Lemonade\" debuting on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart, Beyonc\u00e9 also became the first female act to chart 12 or more songs at the same time. \"Lemonade\" was streamed 115\u00a0million times through Tidal, setting a record for the most-streamed album in a single week by a female artist in history. It was 2016's third highest-selling album in the U.S. with 1.554\u00a0million copies sold in that time period within the country as well as the best-selling album worldwide with global sales of 2.5\u00a0million throughout the year.\n\"Lemonade\" became the most critically acclaimed work of her career. Several music publications included the album among the best of 2016, including \"Rolling Stone\", which listed \"Lemonade\" at number one. The album's visuals were nominated in 11 categories at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards, the most ever received by Beyonc\u00e9 in a single year, and went on to win 8 awards, including Video of the Year for \"Formation\". The eight wins made Beyonc\u00e9 the most-awarded artist in the history of the VMAs (24), surpassing Madonna (20). Beyonc\u00e9 occupied the sixth place for \"Time\" magazine's 2016 Person of the Year.\nIn January 2017, it was announced that Beyonc\u00e9 would headline the Coachella Music and Arts Festival. This would have made Beyonc\u00e9 only the second female headliner of the festival since it was founded in 1999. It was later announced on February 23, 2017, that Beyonc\u00e9 would no longer be able to perform at the festival due to doctor's concerns regarding her pregnancy. The festival owners announced that she would instead headline the 2018 festival. Upon the announcement of Beyonc\u00e9's departure from the festival lineup, ticket prices dropped by 12%. At the 59th Grammy Awards in February 2017, \"Lemonade\" led the nominations with nine, including Album, Record, and Song of the Year for \"Lemonade\" and \"Formation\" respectively, ultimately winning two, Best Urban Contemporary Album for \"Lemonade\" and Best Music Video for \"Formation\".\nIn September 2017, Beyonc\u00e9 collaborated with J Balvin and Willy William, to release a remix of the song \"Mi Gente\". Beyonc\u00e9 donated all proceeds from the song to hurricane charities for those affected by Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma in Texas, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and other Caribbean Islands. On November 10, Eminem released \"Walk on Water\" featuring Beyonc\u00e9 as the lead single from his album \"Revival\". On November 30, Ed Sheeran announced that Beyonc\u00e9 would feature on the remix to his song \"Perfect\". \"Perfect Duet\" was released on December 1, 2017. The song reached number-one in the United States, becoming Beyonc\u00e9's sixth song of her solo career to do so.\n2018\u20132021: \"Everything Is Love\" and \"The Lion King\".\nOn January 4, 2018, the music video of Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z's \"\" collaboration, \"Family Feud\" was released. It was directed by Ava DuVernay. On March 1, 2018, DJ Khaled released \"Top Off\" as the first single from his forthcoming album \"Father of Asahd\" featuring Beyonc\u00e9, husband Jay-Z, and Future. On April 14, 2018, Beyonc\u00e9 played the first of two weekends as the headlining act of the Coachella Music Festival. Her performance of April 14, attended by 125,000 festival-goers, was immediately praised, with multiple media outlets describing it as historic. It was also named one of the greatest concert performances of all time. The performance became the most-tweeted-about performance of weekend one, as well as the most-watched live Coachella performance and the most-watched live performance on YouTube of all time. The show paid tribute to black culture, specifically historically black colleges and universities and featured a live band with over 100 dancers. Destiny's Child also reunited during the show. Its livestream on YouTube was the most watched of all time.\nOn June 6, 2018, Beyonc\u00e9 and husband Jay-Z kicked-off the On the Run II Tour in Cardiff, United Kingdom. Ten days later, at their final London performance, the pair unveiled \"Everything Is Love\", their joint studio album, credited under the name The Carters, and initially available exclusively on Tidal. The pair also released the video for the album's lead single, \"Apeshit\", on Beyonc\u00e9's official YouTube channel. \"Everything Is Love\" received generally positive reviews, and debuted at number two on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200, with 123,000 album-equivalent units, of which 70,000 were pure album sales. On December 2, 2018, Beyonc\u00e9 alongside Jay-Z headlined the Global Citizen Festival: Mandela 100 which was held at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa. Their 2-hour performance had concepts similar to the On the Run II Tour and Beyonc\u00e9 was praised for her outfits, which paid tribute to Africa's diversity.\n', a documentary and concert film focusing on Beyonc\u00e9's historic 2018 Coachella performances, was released by Netflix on April 17, 2019. The film was accompanied by the surprise live album '. It was later reported that Beyonc\u00e9 and Netflix had signed a $60\u00a0million deal to produce three different projects, one of which is \"Homecoming\". \"Homecoming: A Film by Beyonc\u00e9\" received six nominations at the 71st Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards.\nBeyonc\u00e9 starred as the voice of Nala in the remake \"The Lion King\", which was released in July 2019. Beyonc\u00e9 is featured on the film's soundtrack, released on July 11, 2019, with a remake of the song \"Can You Feel the Love Tonight\" alongside Donald Glover, Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen, which was originally composed by Elton John. An original song from the film by Beyonc\u00e9, \"Spirit\", was released as the lead single from both the soundtrack and \"\" \u2013 a companion album released alongside the film, produced and curated by Beyonc\u00e9.\nBeyonc\u00e9 called \"The Lion King: The Gift\" a \"sonic cinema\". She stated that the album was influenced by R&B,\u00a0pop,\u00a0hip hop, gqom and\u00a0Afro Beat. The songs were produced by African producers, which Beyonc\u00e9 said was because \"authenticity and heart were important to [her]\", since the film is set in Africa. In September of the same year, a documentary chronicling the development, production and early music video filming of \"The Lion King: The Gift\" entitled \"\" was aired on ABC.\nIn April 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 was featured on the remix of Megan Thee Stallion's song \"Savage\", marking her first music release for the year. The song peaked at number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, marking Beyonc\u00e9's eleventh song to do so across all acts. On June 19, 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 released the nonprofit charity single \"Black Parade\". On June 23, she followed up the release of its studio version with an a cappella version exclusively on Tidal. \"Black Is King\", a visual album based on the music of \"The Lion King: The Gift\", premiered globally on Disney+ on July 31, 2020. Produced by Disney and Parkwood Entertainment, the film was written, directed and executively produced by Beyonc\u00e9. The film was described by Disney as \"a celebratory memoir for the world on the Black experience\". Beyonc\u00e9 received the most nominations (9) at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards and the most awards (4), which made her the most-awarded singer, most-awarded female artist, and second-most-awarded artist in Grammy history. In 2021, Beyonc\u00e9 wrote and recorded a song titled \"Be Alive\" for the biographical drama film \"King Richard\". She received her first Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song at the 94th Academy Awards for the song, alongside co-writer Dixson.\n2022\u2013present: \"Renaissance\" and \"Cowboy Carter\".\nOn March 27, 2022, Beyonc\u00e9 performed \"Be Alive\" at the 94th Academy Awards. Choreographed by friend and past collaborator Fatima Robinson, Beyonc\u00e9 was applauded for choosing to perform on the Compton tennis courts Venus and Serena Williams practiced on in their childhood instead of at the venue.\nOn June 9, 2022, Beyonc\u00e9 removed her profile pictures across various social media platforms, causing speculation that she would be releasing new music. Days later, Beyonc\u00e9 caused further speculation via her nonprofit BeyGood's Twitter account hinting at her upcoming seventh studio album. On June 15, 2022, Beyonc\u00e9 officially announced her seventh studio album, titled \"Renaissance\". The lead single of \"Renaissance\", \"Break My Soul\", was released on June 20, 2022. The album was released on July 29, 2022. \"Break My Soul\" became Beyonc\u00e9's 20th top ten single on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, which made her join Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson as the only artists in Hot 100 history to achieve at least twenty top tens as a solo artist and ten as a member of a group.\nAs \"Renaissance\" was released, Beyonc\u00e9 announced that the album was the first installment of a trilogy she conceived and recorded over three years during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time she found to be her \"most creative [period].\" The three recorded projects are designated into acts under Roman numerals. Upon release, \"Renaissance\" received universal acclaim from critics. \"Renaissance\" debuted at number one on the \"Billboard\" 200 chart, making her the first female artist to have her first seven studio albums debut at number one in the United States. \"Break My Soul\" concurrently rose to number-one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, becoming the twelfth song to do so across her career discography.\nOn January 21, 2023, Beyonc\u00e9 performed in Dubai at a private show. The performance, which was her first full concert in more than four years, was delivered to an audience of influencers and journalists. Beyonc\u00e9 was reportedly paid $24 million to perform. Beyonc\u00e9 faced criticism for her decision to perform in the United Arab Emirates where homosexuality is illegal. On February 1, Beyonc\u00e9 announced the Renaissance World Tour with dates in North America and Europe, which would become for a short-span the highest-grossing tour by a female artist. On July 28, Beyonc\u00e9 appeared on \"Delresto (Echoes)\", the second single from rapper Travis Scott's album \"Utopia\", eventually becoming her 100th career appearance on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart (encompassing Destiny's Child, her solo career, and musical duo The Carters). On November 30, 2023, Beyonc\u00e9 released documentary concert film \"\" written, directed, and produced by her in collaboration with film distributor AMC Theatres. The film chronicles the development and execution of Beyonc\u00e9's Renaissance World Tour, and contained new song \"My House\" in the end credits.\nIn February 2024, Beyonc\u00e9 launched her hair care brand C\u00e9cred. On February 11, 2024, immediately following a partner commercial with Verizon for the Super Bowl LVIII, she announced the second installment of her trilogy project and released its first two songs, \"Texas Hold 'Em\" and \"16 Carriages\". \"Texas Hold 'Em\" became her highest chart debut in her career, her ninth solo number-one and her thirteenth across all credits on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. On March 12, 2024, she announced the album's title, \"Cowboy Carter\". A country and gospel-tinged record, it was released on March 29 to universal acclaim from critics, and includes collaborations with artists including Tanner Adell and her daughter Rumi Carter, Miley Cyrus, Tiera Kennedy, Willie Jones, Post Malone, Linda Martell, Willie Nelson, Shaboozey, Brittney Spencer, Dolly Parton, and Reyna Roberts.\nIn July 2024, NBC released two promotional commercials featuring Beyonc\u00e9 for their coverage of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France. Set to \"Cowboy Carter\" songs \"Ya Ya\" and \"Just For Fun\", she introduced the entire USA Olympic Team and Gold-medal gymnast Simone Biles, respectively. On August 20, Beyonc\u00e9 announced SirDavis, a whiskey in collaboration with Mo\u00ebt Hennessy developed for years prior and co-founded with master distiller Dr. Bill Lumsden. In October 2024, Levi's launched a four-part global campaign with Beyonc\u00e9 titled \"Reiimagine\" that will stretch into 2025 and focus on women's history of the company, using \"Cowboy Carter\" track \"Levii's Jeans\". The first commercial starring Beyonc\u00e9 amassed 2.4 billion impressions in under a month.\nBeyonc\u00e9 reprised her role as Nala for \"\", a prequel to the 2019 remake, released in December 2024. She headlined the first ever NFL Christmas Gameday Halftime Show that month, performing songs from \"Cowboy Carter\" for the first time. The \"Cowboy Carter Tour\" was announced on February 1, 2025. At the 67th Annual Grammy Awards, Beyonc\u00e9 became the first Black artist in 50 years, since Charley Pride and the Pointer Sisters, to win an award in the country music categories. She is the first Black artist ever to win the Grammy Award for Best Country Album. She additionally won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, becoming the first Black woman to do so since Lauryn Hill won for \"The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill\" in 1999.\nArtistry.\nVoice and musical style.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n With \"Single Ladies\", clearly I'd just gotten married, and people want to get married every day\u00a0\u2013 then there was the whole Justin Timberlake thing [recreating the video] on \"Saturday Night Live\", and it was also the year YouTube blew up. With \"Irreplaceable\", the aggressive lyrics, the acoustic guitar, and the 808 drum machine\u00a0\u2013 those things don't typically go together, and it sounded fresh. \"Crazy in Love\" was another one of those classic moments in pop culture that none of us expected. I asked Jay to get on the song the night before I had to turn my album in \u2013 thank God he did. It still never gets old, no matter how many times I sing it.\n\u2014Beyonc\u00e9\nCritics have described Beyonc\u00e9's voice as being mezzo-soprano. Jody Rosen highlights her tone and timbre as particularly distinctive, describing her voice as \"one of the most compelling instruments in popular music\". Her vocal abilities mean she is identified as the centerpiece of Destiny's Child. Jon Pareles of \"The New York Times\" commented that her voice is \"velvety yet tart, with an insistent flutter and reserves of soul belting\". Rosen notes that the hip hop era highly influenced Beyonc\u00e9's unique rhythmic vocal style, but also finds her quite traditionalist in her use of balladry, gospel and falsetto.\nOther critics praise her range and power, with Chris Richards of \"The Washington Post\" saying she was \"capable of punctuating any beat with goose-bump-inducing whispers or full-bore diva-roars.\" On the 2023 \"Rolling Stone\"'s list of the 200 Greatest Singers of all time, Beyonc\u00e9 ranked at number 8, with the publication noting that \"in [her] voice lies the entire history of Black music\".\nBeyonc\u00e9's music is generally R&B, pop and hip hop but she also incorporates soul and funk into her songs. \"4\" demonstrated Beyonc\u00e9's exploration of 1990s-style R&B, as well as further use of soul and hip hop than compared to previous releases. While she almost exclusively releases English songs, Beyonc\u00e9 recorded several Spanish songs for \"Irreemplazable\" (re-recordings of songs from \"B'Day\" for a Spanish-language audience), and the re-release of \"B'Day\". To record these, Beyonc\u00e9 was coached phonetically by American record producer Rudy Perez.\nSongwriting.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has received co-writing credits for most of her songs. Her early songs with Destiny's Child were personally driven and female-empowerment themed compositions like \"Independent Women\" and \"Survivor\", but after the start of her relationship with Jay-Z, she transitioned to more man-tending anthems such as \"Cater 2 U\".\nBeyonc\u00e9's songwriting process is also known for combining parts of different tracks, resulting in alteration of song structures. Sia, who co-wrote \"Pretty Hurts\", called Beyonc\u00e9 \"very Frankenstein when she comes to songs\"; Diana Gordon, who co-wrote \"Don't Hurt Yourself\" called her a \"scientist of songs\"; Caroline Polachek who co-wrote \"No Angel\", called her a \"genius writer and producer for this reason. She's so good at seeing connections.\"\nIn 2001, she became the first Black woman and second female lyricist to win the Pop Songwriter of the Year award at the ASCAP Pop Music Awards. Beyonc\u00e9 was the third woman to have writing credits on three number-one songs (\"Irreplaceable\", \"Grillz\" and \"Check on It\") in the same year, after Carole King in 1971 and Mariah Carey in 1991. She is tied with American lyricist Diane Warren at third with nine songwriting credits on number-one singles. The latter wrote her song \"I Was Here\" for \"4\", which was motivated by the September 11 attacks. In May 2011, \"Billboard\" magazine listed Beyonc\u00e9 at number 17 on their list of the Top 20 Hot 100 Songwriters for having co-written eight singles that hit number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart. She was one of only three women on that list, along with Alicia Keys and Taylor Swift.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has received criticism, including from journalists and musicians, for the extensive writing credits on her songs. The controversy surrounding her songwriting credits began with interviews in which she attributed herself as the songwriter for songs in which she was a co-writer or for which her contributions were marginal. In a cover story for \"Vanity Fair\" in 2005, she claimed to have \"written\" several number-one songs for Destiny's Child, contrary to the credits, which list her as a co-writer among others. During a 2007 interview with Barbara Walters, she claimed to have conceived the musical idea for the Destiny's Child song \"Bootylicious\", which provoked the song's producer Rob Fusari to call her father and then-manager Mathew Knowles in protest over the claim. In 2010, Fusari told \"Billboard\": \"[Knowles] explained to me, in a nice way, he said, 'People don't want to hear about Rob Fusari, producer from Livingston, N.J. No offense, but that's not what sells records. What sells records is people believing that the artist is everything.'\" However, in an interview for \"Entertainment Weekly\" in 2016, Fusari said Beyonc\u00e9 \"had the 'Bootylicious' concept in her head. That was totally her. She knew what she wanted to say. It was very urban pop angle that they were taking on the record.\"\nProduction.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I am really passionate about all of the steps [during] the production [...] I love to stack vocals, and I love to create my own little Oreo with arrangements, sometimes it can be thousands of vocals [and then] I go back and then kind of piece things together, because usually the songs are way too long [...] I go back and edit the structure of the song. [I] make sure that [...] every section has an intention, so that takes months. [...] I hear certain elements of things that go with things that are opposites. I am rarely happy with one track, it's usually four or five things put together that again don't really go together. I am so excited when I'm able to adjust the tempo and key and mute certain elements that don't complement and put opposites together. Sometimes it's just like the EQ of a synth or the warmth of a bass or the distortion of a bass that's on a different song and I can hear like, 'Ah! That's exactly what is missing to make the track full and complete!'\nBeyonc\u00e9's collaborators frequently mention her involvement in the record production of her songs, sometimes describing her as a genius in the skill. She is known to have favorite saturation and distortion plug\u2011ins and intentionality about stereo imaging.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />She is a true genius at producing and she\u2019s brilliantly right on it, all the time. [...] We have very similar taste in sonics and we\u2019re always painting in the sense that there\u2019s a focal point \u2014 the lead vocals, the drums, the bass, the chords, all the stuff that\u2019s the meat of the track \u2014 and then we\u2019ve got all these sounds that are more in the distance, as in \u2018Let\u2019s make this sound like it\u2019s down a long hallway, or in a fishbowl.\u2019 I work closely with her in terms of where stuff goes in a 3D space.\nInfluences.\nBeyonc\u00e9 names Michael Jackson as her major musical influence. Aged five, Beyonc\u00e9 attended her first ever concert where Jackson performed and she claims to have realized her purpose. When she presented him with a tribute award at the World Music Awards in 2006, Beyonc\u00e9 said, \"if it wasn't for Michael Jackson, I would never ever have performed.\" Beyonc\u00e9 was heavily influenced by Tina Turner, and once said \"Tina Turner is someone that I admire, because she made her strength feminine and sexy\".\nShe admires Diana Ross as an \"all-around entertainer\", and Whitney Houston, who she said \"inspired me to get up there and do what she did\". Beyonc\u00e9 cited Madonna as an influence \"not only for her musical style, but also for her business sense\", saying that she wanted to \"follow in the footsteps of Madonna and be a powerhouse and have my own empire\". She also credits Mariah Carey's singing and her song \"Vision of Love\" as influencing her to begin practicing vocal runs as a child. Her other musical influences include Rachelle Ferrell, Aaliyah, Janet Jackson, Prince, Lauryn Hill, Sade Adu, Donna Summer, Fairuz, Mary J. Blige, Selena, Anita Baker, and Toni Braxton.\nThe feminism and female empowerment themes on Beyonc\u00e9's second solo album \"B'Day\" were inspired by her role in \"Dreamgirls\" and by singer Josephine Baker. Beyonc\u00e9 paid homage to Baker by performing \"D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu\" at the 2006 Fashion Rocks concert wearing Baker's trademark mini-hula skirt embellished with fake bananas. Beyonc\u00e9's third solo album, \"I Am... Sasha Fierce\", was inspired by Jay-Z and especially by Etta James, whose \"boldness\" inspired Beyonc\u00e9 to explore other musical genres and styles. Her fourth solo album, \"4\", was inspired by Fela Kuti, 1990s R&B, Earth, Wind & Fire, DeBarge, Lionel Richie, Teena Marie, The Jackson 5, New Edition, Adele, Florence and the Machine, and Prince.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has stated that she is personally inspired by Michelle Obama (the 44th First Lady of the United States), saying \"she proves you can do it all\", and has described Oprah Winfrey as \"the definition of inspiration and a strong woman\". She has also discussed how Jay-Z is a continuing inspiration to her, both with what she describes as his lyrical genius and in the obstacles he has overcome in his life. Beyonc\u00e9 has expressed admiration for the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, posting in a letter \"what I find in the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, I search for in every day in music\u00a0... he is lyrical and raw\". Beyonc\u00e9 has also cited Cher as a fashion inspiration.\nVideography and stage.\nIn 2006, Beyonc\u00e9 introduced her all-female tour band Suga Mama (also the name of a song on \"B'Day\") which includes bassists, drummers, guitarists, horn players, keyboardists and percussionists. Her background singers, The Mamas, consist of Montina Cooper-Donnell, Crystal Collins and Tiffany Moniqu\u00e9 Riddick. They made their debut appearance at the 2006 BET Awards and re-appeared in the music videos for \"Irreplaceable\" and \"Green Light\". The band have supported Beyonc\u00e9 in most subsequent live performances, including her 2007 concert tour The Beyonc\u00e9 Experience, I Am... Tour (2009\u20132010), The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour (2013\u20132014) and The Formation World Tour (2016).\nBeyonc\u00e9 has received praise for her stage presence and voice during live performances. According to Barbara Ellen of \"The Guardian,\" Beyonc\u00e9 is the most in-charge female artist she's seen onstage. Similarly, Alice Jones of \"The Independent\" wrote she \"takes her role as entertainer so seriously she's almost too good\". The ex-President of Def Jam L.A. Reid has described Beyonc\u00e9 as the greatest entertainer alive. Jim Farber of the \"Daily News\" and Stephanie Classen of \"The StarPhoenix\" both praised her strong voice and her stage presence. \nBeyonc\u00e9 has worked with numerous directors for her music videos throughout her career, including Melina Matsoukas, Jonas \u00c5kerlund, and Jake Nava. Bill Condon, director of \"Beauty and the Beast\", stated that the \"Lemonade\" visuals in particular served as inspiration for his film, commenting, \"You look at Beyonc\u00e9's brilliant movie \"Lemonade\", this genre is taking on so many different forms\u00a0... I do think that this very old-school break-out-into-song traditional musical is something that people understand again and really want.\"\nAlter ego.\nDescribed as being \"sexy, seductive and provocative\" when performing on stage, Beyonc\u00e9 has said that she originally created the alter ego \"Sasha Fierce\" to keep that stage persona separate from who she really is. She described Sasha Fierce as being \"too aggressive, too strong, too sassy [and] too sexy\", stating, \"I'm not like her in real life at all.\" Sasha was conceived during the making of \"Crazy in Love\", and Beyonc\u00e9 introduced her with the release of her 2008 album, \"I Am... Sasha Fierce\". In February 2010, she announced in an interview with \"Allure\" magazine that she was comfortable enough with herself to no longer need Sasha Fierce. However, Beyonc\u00e9 announced in May 2012 that she would bring her back for her \"Revel Presents: Beyonc\u00e9 Live\" shows later that month.\nPublic image.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has been described as having sex appeal, with music journalist Tour\u00e9 writing that since the release of \"Dangerously in Love\", she has \"become a crossover sex symbol\". When off stage, Beyonc\u00e9 says that while she likes to dress sexily, her onstage dress \"is absolutely for the stage\". Due to her curves and the term's catchiness, in the 2000s, the media often used the term \"bootylicious\" (a portmanteau of the words \"booty\" and \"delicious\") to describe Beyonc\u00e9, the term popularized by the single of the same name by her group Destiny's Child. In 2006, it was added to the \"Oxford English Dictionary\".\nIn September 2010, Beyonc\u00e9 made her runway modelling debut at Tom Ford's Spring/Summer 2011 fashion show. She was named the \"World's Most Beautiful Woman\" by \"People\" and the \"Hottest Female Singer of All Time\" by \"Complex\" in 2012. In January 2013, \"GQ\" placed her on its cover, featuring her atop its \"100 Sexiest Women of the 21st Century\" list. VH1 listed her at number 1 on its 100 Sexiest Artists list. Several wax figures of Beyonc\u00e9 are found at Madame Tussauds Wax Museums in major cities around the world.\nAccording to Italian fashion designer Roberto Cavalli, Beyonc\u00e9 uses different fashion styles to work with her music while performing. Her mother co-wrote a book, published in 2002, titled \"Destiny's Style\", an account of how fashion affected the trio's success. The \"B'Day Anthology Video Album\" showed many instances of fashion-oriented footage, depicting classic to contemporary wardrobe styles. In 2007, Beyonc\u00e9 was featured on the cover of the \"Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue\", becoming the second African American woman after model and television personality Tyra Banks, and \"People\" magazine recognized Beyonc\u00e9 as the best-dressed celebrity.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has been nicknamed \"Queen Bey\" by publications over the years. The term is a reference to the common phrase \"queen bee\", a term used for the leader of a group of females. The nickname also refers to the Queen bee of a beehive, with her fan base being named \"BeyHive\". \"BeyHive\" was previously titled \"The Beyontourage\", (a portmanteau of Beyonc\u00e9 and entourage), but was changed after online petitions on Twitter and online news reports during competitions.\nIn 2006, the animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), criticized Beyonc\u00e9 for wearing and using fur in her clothing line House of Der\u00e9on. Emmett Price, a professor of music at Northeastern University, wrote in 2007 that he thinks race plays a role in many criticisms of Beyonc\u00e9's image, saying white celebrities who dress similarly do not attract as many comments. In 2008, the French personal care company L'Or\u00e9al was accused of whitening her skin in Feria hair color advertisements, responding that \"it is categorically untrue\", while Beyonc\u00e9 reportedly pressured H&M to use \"only natural pictures\" instead of retouching images in a 2013 campaign.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has been a vocal advocate for the Black Lives Matter movement. The release of \"Formation\" on February 6, 2016, saw her celebrate her Sub-Saharan Black African ancestry, with the song's music video featuring pro-black imagery and a shot of wall graffiti that says \"Stop shooting us\". The day after the song's release, she performed it at the 2016 Super Bowl halftime show with back up dancers dressed to represent the Black Panther Party. This incited criticism from conservative politicians and police officers, with some police boycotting Beyonc\u00e9's then upcoming Formation World Tour. Beyonc\u00e9 responded to the backlash by releasing tour merchandise that said \"Boycott Beyonc\u00e9\", and later clarified her sentiment, saying: \"Anyone who perceives my message as anti-police is completely mistaken. I have so much admiration and respect for officers and the families of officers who sacrifice themselves to keep us safe,\" Beyonc\u00e9 said. \"But let's be clear: I am against police brutality and injustice. Those are two separate things.\"\nPersonal life.\nMarriage and children.\nIn 2002, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z collaborated on the song \"'03 Bonnie & Clyde\", which appeared on his seventh album \"\" (2002). Beyonc\u00e9 appeared as Jay-Z's girlfriend in the music video for the song, fueling speculation about their relationship. On April 4, 2008, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z married without publicity. As of April\u00a02014[ [update]], the couple had sold a combined 300\u00a0million records together. They are known for their private relationship, although they have appeared to become more relaxed since 2013. Both have acknowledged difficulty that arose in their marriage after Jay-Z had an affair.\nBeyonc\u00e9 miscarried around 2010 or 2011, describing it as \"the saddest thing\" she had ever endured. She returned to the studio and wrote music to cope with the loss. In April 2011, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z traveled to Paris to shoot the album cover for \"4\", where she unexpectedly became pregnant. In August, the couple attended the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, at which Beyonc\u00e9 performed \"Love On Top\" and ended the performance by revealing she was pregnant. Her appearance helped that year's MTV Video Music Awards become the most-watched broadcast in MTV history, pulling in 12.4\u00a0million viewers; the announcement was listed in \"Guinness World Records\" for \"most tweets per second recorded for a single event\" on Twitter, receiving 8,868 tweets per second and \"Beyonce pregnant\" was the most Googled phrase the week of August 29, 2011. On January 7, 2012, Beyonc\u00e9 gave birth to a daughter, Blue Ivy, at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.\nFollowing the release of \"Lemonade\", which included the single \"Sorry\", in 2016, speculations arose about Jay-Z's alleged infidelity with a mistress referred to as \"Becky\". Jon Pareles in \"The New York Times\" pointed out that many of the accusations were \"aimed specifically and recognizably\" at him. Similarly, Rob Sheffield of \"Rolling Stone\" noted the lines \"Suck on my balls, I've had enough\" were an \"unmistakable hint\" that the lyrics revolve around Jay-Z.\nOn February 1, 2017, she revealed on her Instagram account that she was expecting twins. Her announcement gained over 6.3\u00a0million likes within eight hours, breaking the world record for the most liked image on the website at the time. On July 13, 2017, Beyonc\u00e9 uploaded the first image of herself and the twins onto her Instagram account, confirming their birth date as a month prior, on June 13, 2017, with the post becoming the second most liked on Instagram, behind her own pregnancy announcement. The twins, a daughter named Rumi and a son named Sir, were born at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in California via caesarean section. She wrote of her pregnancy and its aftermath in the September 2018 issue of \"Vogue\", in which she had full control of the cover, shot at Hammerwood Park by photographer Tyler Mitchell.\nPolitics.\nBeyonc\u00e9 performed \"America the Beautiful\" at President Barack Obama's 2009 presidential inauguration, as well as \"At Last\" during the first inaugural dance at the Neighborhood Ball two days later. The couple held a fundraiser at Jay-Z's 40/40 Club in Manhattan for President Obama's 2012 presidential campaign which raised $4\u00a0million. Beyonc\u00e9 voted for Obama in the 2012 presidential election. She performed the American national anthem \"The Star-Spangled Banner\" at his second inauguration in January 2013.\n\"The Washington Post\" reported in May 2015, that Beyonc\u00e9 attended a major celebrity fundraiser for 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. She also headlined for Clinton in a concert held the weekend before Election Day the next year. In this performance, Beyonc\u00e9 and her entourage of backup dancers wore pantsuits; a clear allusion to Clinton's frequent dress-of-choice. The backup dancers also wore\u00a0\"I'm with her\"\u00a0tee shirts, the campaign slogan for Clinton. In a brief speech at this performance Beyonc\u00e9 said, \"I want my daughter to grow up seeing a woman lead our country and knowing that her possibilities are limitless.\" She endorsed the bid of Beto O'Rourke during the 2018 United States Senate election in Texas.\nIn July 2024, Beyonc\u00e9 gave Vice President Kamala Harris permission to use \"Lemonade\" promotional single \"Freedom\" as the official song for her 2024 presidential campaign. Harris subsequently launched a digital ad in support of her candidacy featuring the song. In October 2024, Beyonc\u00e9, alongside her mother Tina and Kelly Rowland endorsed Harris for president at a campaign rally in her hometown of Houston.\nActivism.\nIn a 2013 interview with \"Vogue\", Beyonc\u00e9 stated that she considered herself to be \"a modern-day feminist\". She would later align herself more publicly with the movement, sampling \"We should all be feminists\", a speech delivered by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at a TEDx talk in April 2013, in her song \"Flawless\", released later that year. The next year she performed live at the MTV Video Awards in front a giant backdrop reading \"Feminist\". Her self-identification incited a circulation of opinions and debate about whether her feminism is aligned with older, more established feminist ideals. Annie Lennox, celebrated artist and feminist advocate, referred to Beyonc\u00e9's use of her word feminist as 'feminist lite'.\nAdichie responded with \"her type of feminism is not mine, as it is the kind that, at the same time, gives quite a lot of space to the necessity of men.\" Adichie expands upon what \"feminist lite\" means to her, referring that \"more troubling is the idea, in Feminism Lite, that men are naturally superior but should be expected to 'treat women well'\" and \"we judge powerful women more harshly than we judge powerful men. And Feminism Lite enables this.\" Beyonc\u00e9 responded about her intent by utilizing the definition of feminist with her platform was to \"give clarity to the true meaning\" behind it. She says to understand what being a feminist is, \"it's very simple. It's someone who believes in equal rights for men and women.\"\nShe has also contributed to the Ban Bossy campaign, which uses TV and social media to encourage leadership in girls. Following Beyonc\u00e9's public identification as a feminist, the sexualized nature of her performances and the fact that she championed her marriage was questioned.\nIn December 2012, Beyonc\u00e9 along with a variety of other celebrities teamed up and produced a video campaign for \"Demand A Plan\", a bipartisan effort by a group of 950 U.S. mayors and others designed to influence the federal government into rethinking its gun control laws, following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Beyonc\u00e9 publicly endorsed same-sex marriage on March 26, 2013, after the Supreme Court debate on California's Proposition 8. She spoke against North Carolina's Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, a bill passed (and later repealed) that discriminated against the LGBT community in public places in a statement during her concert in Raleigh as part of the Formation World Tour in 2016.\nShe has condemned police brutality against black Americans. She and Jay-Z attended a rally in 2013 in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin. The film for her sixth album \"Lemonade\" included the mothers of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner, holding pictures of their sons in the video for \"Freedom\". In a 2016 interview with \"Elle\", Beyonc\u00e9 responded to the controversy surrounding her song \"Formation\" which was perceived to be critical of the police. She clarified, \"I am against police brutality and injustice. Those are two separate things. If celebrating my roots and culture during Black History Month made anyone uncomfortable, those feelings were there long before a video and long before me\".\nIn February 2017, Beyonc\u00e9 spoke out against the withdrawal of protections for transgender students in public schools by Donald Trump's presidential administration. Posting a link to the \"100 Days of Kindness\" campaign on her Facebook page, Beyonc\u00e9 voiced her support for transgender youth and joined a roster of celebrities who spoke out against Trump's decision.\nInterests.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has been documented pursuing many passions, sometimes being described as a renaissance woman. Some of these include canvas painting, video editing, poetry, scriptwriting, lighting and stage design, animation and clothes design, photography, cultural historiography and beekeeping (with around 80,000 bees).\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I started painting portraits of women [in 2002], while filming \"Austin Powers\" [...] I got hooked and wouldn't sleep. I made this special room with saris and pillows. I would light candles, play Miles Davis and Bj\u00f6rk, and paint all night. It was very therapeutic. Whenever I finish one of my paintings, I try to figure out what it represents in my life. I'll be like, 'It's dark behind her and light in front of her, so a dark period must be coming to an end. Something light and beautiful is going to happen.'\nWealth.\n\"Forbes\" magazine began reporting on Beyonc\u00e9's earnings in 2008, calculating that the $80\u00a0million earned between June 2007 to June 2008, for her music, tour, films and clothing line made her the world's best-paid music personality at the time, above Madonna and Celine Dion. It placed her fourth on the Celebrity 100 list in 2009 and ninth on the \"Most Powerful Women in the World\" list in 2010. The following year, the magazine placed her eighth on the \"Best-Paid Celebrities Under 30\" list, having earned $35\u00a0million in the past year for her clothing line and endorsement deals. In 2012, \"Forbes\" placed Beyonc\u00e9 at number 16 on the Celebrity 100 list, twelve places lower than three years ago yet still having earned $40\u00a0million in the past year for her album \"4\", clothing line and endorsement deals.\nIn 2012, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z placed at number one on the \"World's Highest-Paid Celebrity Couples\", for collectively earning $78\u00a0million. The couple made it into the previous year's \"Guinness World Records\" as the \"highest-earning power couple\" for collectively earning $122\u00a0million in 2009. For the years 2009 to 2011, Beyonc\u00e9 earned an average of $70\u00a0million per year, and earned $40\u00a0million in 2012. In 2013, Beyonc\u00e9's endorsements of Pepsi and H&M made her and Jay-Z the world's first billion-dollar couple in the music industry. That year, Beyonc\u00e9 was listed as the fourth-most-powerful celebrity in the \"Forbes\" rankings.\nIn June 2014, Beyonc\u00e9 ranked at number one on the \"Forbes\" Celebrity 100 list, earning an estimated $115\u00a0million throughout June 2013 \u2013 June 2014. This in turn was the first time she had topped the Celebrity 100 list as well as being her highest yearly earnings to date. In 2016, Beyonc\u00e9 ranked at number 34 on the Celebrity 100 list with earnings of $54\u00a0million. She and Jay-Z also topped the highest-paid celebrity couple list, with combined earnings of $107.5\u00a0million.\nBeyonc\u00e9 is one of the wealthiest musical artists. As of 2018[ [update]], \"Forbes\" calculated her net worth to be $355\u00a0million, and in June of the same year, ranked her as the 35th-highest-earning celebrity, with annual earnings of $60\u00a0million. This tied Beyonc\u00e9 with Madonna as the only two female artists to earn more than $100\u00a0million within a single year twice. As a couple, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z have a combined net worth of $1.16\u00a0billion. In July 2017, \"Billboard\" announced that Beyonc\u00e9 was the highest-paid musician of 2016, with an estimated total of $62.1\u00a0million. By December 2023, \"Forbes\" estimated Beyonc\u00e9's net worth to be $800 million.\nIn 2023, the couple bought a house in Malibu, California, designed by the architect Tadao Ando, for $200 million. It established a record for the most expensive residence sold in the state of California.\nLegacy.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has been recognized as one of the most influential figures in music history by numerous publications, including \"Rolling Stone\" and the Associated Press. She was named \"Billboard\"'s Greatest Pop Star of the 21st Century, and topped NPR list of the \"21st Century's Most Influential Women Musicians\". She was repeatedly named the defining artist of both the 2000s decade and the 2010s decade. In \"The New Yorker\", music critic Jody Rosen described Beyonc\u00e9 as \"the most important and compelling popular musician of the twenty-first century\u00a0... the result, the logical end point, of a century-plus of pop.\" James Clear, in his book \"Atomic Habits\" (2018), draws a parallel between Beyonc\u00e9's success and the dramatic transformations in modern society: \"In the last one hundred years, we have seen the rise of the car, the airplane, the television, the personal computer, the internet, the smartphone, and Beyonc\u00e9.\" In 2018, \"Rolling Stone\" included her on its Millennial 100 list.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has revolutionized the music industry, transforming the production, distribution, promotion, and consumption of music. Beyonc\u00e9 has been credited with reviving the album format in an era dominated by singles and streaming, with albums becoming increasingly cohesive and narrative-led. She revolutionized how music is released and marketed with the invention of the surprise album, which became a common practice in the 2010s and 2020s. This move was \"arguably the single most pivotal moment in all of 21st-century pop music\" according to \"Billboard\", with Beyonc\u00e9 reorienting the music market to cohesive albums and unconventional promotional rollouts. She is also credited with reviving the music video as an art form and popularizing the visual album. Her impact on the music industry led to the Global Release Day being moved to Friday.\nBeyonc\u00e9's use of staccato rap-singing and chopped and re-pitched vocals have changed the sound of popular music and became defining features of the 21st-century music landscape. With her work frequently transcending traditional genre boundaries, Beyonc\u00e9 has created new artistic standards that have shaped contemporary music and set the precedent for music artists to move between and beyond genre confines. Beyonc\u00e9 has helped to revive and popularize several genres of music, including hip-hop in the 2000s, R&B in the 2010s, Afrobeats in the late 2010s / early 2020s, and country music in the 2020s.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has been recognized as setting the playbook for music artists in the modern era, with musicians from across genres, generations and countries citing her as a major influence on their career. Taylor Swift described Beyonc\u00e9's as a major influence and a \"guiding light throughout my career\", who has \"paved the road\" and shown how to \"break rules and defy industry norms\". Lady Gaga explained how Beyonc\u00e9 gave her the determination to become a musician, recalling seeing her in Destiny's Child music video and saying: \"Oh, she's a star. I want that.\" Rihanna was inspired to start her singing career after watching Beyonc\u00e9, telling \"etalk\" that after Beyonc\u00e9 released \"Dangerously In Love\" (2003), \"I was like 'wow, I want to be just like that.' She's huge and just an inspiration.\" Ariana Grande learned to sing by mimicking Beyonc\u00e9. Adele cited Beyonc\u00e9 as her inspiration and favorite artist, telling \"Vogue\": \"She's been a huge and constant part of my life as an artist since I was about ten or eleven\u00a0... I think she's inspiring. She's beautiful. She's ridiculously talented, and she is one of the kindest people I've ever met\u00a0... She makes me want to do things with my life.\" Both Paul McCartney and Garth Brooks said they watch Beyonc\u00e9's performances to get inspiration for their shows, with Brooks saying that when watching one of her performances, \"take out your notebook and take notes. No matter how long you've been on the stage \u2013 take notes on that one.\"\nShe is known for coining popular phrases such as \"put a ring on it\", a term for marriage proposal, \"I woke up like this\", which started a trend of posting morning selfies with the hashtag #iwokeuplikethis, and \"boy, bye\", which was used as part of the Democratic National Committee's campaign for the 2020 election. In January 2012, research scientist Bryan Lessard named \"Scaptia beyonceae\", a species of horse-fly found in Northern Queensland, Australia after Beyonc\u00e9 due to the fly's unique golden hairs on its abdomen.\nAchievements.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has received numerous awards and is the most-awarded female artist of all time. Having sold over 200 million records worldwide (a further 60 million additionally with Destiny's Child), Beyonc\u00e9 is one of the best-selling music artists of all time. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) listed Beyonc\u00e9 as the top certified artist of the 2000s decade, with a total of 64 certifications. In 2009, \"Billboard\" named her the Top Female Artist and Top Radio Songs Artist of the Decade.\nIn 2010, \"Billboard\" named her in their Top 50 R&B/Hip-Hop Artists of the Past 25 Years list at number 15. In 2012, VH1 ranked her third on their list of the \"100 Greatest Women in Music\", behind Mariah Carey and Madonna. In 2002, she received Songwriter of the Year from American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers becoming the First African American woman to win the award. In 2004 and 2019, she received NAACP Image Award for Entertainer of the Year and the Soul Train Music Award for Sammy Davis Jr. \u2013 Entertainer of the Year.\nIn 2005, she also received APEX Award at the Trumpet Award honoring the achievements of Black African Americans. In 2007, Beyonc\u00e9 received the International Artist of Excellence award by the American Music Awards. She also received Honorary Otto at the Bravo Otto. The following year, she received the Legend Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts at the World Music Awards and Career Achievement Award at the LOS40 Music Awards. In 2010, she received the Award of Honor for Artist of the Decade at the NRJ Music Award. At the 2011 \"Billboard\" Music Awards, Beyonc\u00e9 received the inaugural \"Billboard\" Millennium Award.\nBeyonc\u00e9 received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards and was honored as Honorary Mother of the Year at the Australian Mother of the Year Award in Barnardo's Australia for her Humanitarian Effort in the region and the Council of Fashion Designers of America Fashion Icon Award in 2016. In 2019, alongside Jay-Z, she received GLAAD Vanguard Award which is presented to a member of the entertainment community who does not identify as LGBT but who has made a significant difference in promoting equal rights for LGBT people. In 2020, she was awarded the BET Humanitarian Award. \"Consequence\" named her the 30th best singer of all time.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has won 35 Grammy Awards, both as a solo artist and member of Destiny's Child and The Carters, making her the most honored individual by the Grammys. She is also the most nominated artist in Grammy Award history with a total of 88 nominations. \"Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)\" won Song of the Year in 2010 while \"Say My Name\", \"Crazy in Love\" and \"Drunk in Love\" have each won Best R&B Song. \"Dangerously in Love\", \"B'Day\" and \"I Am... Sasha Fierce\" have won Best Contemporary R&B Album, while \"Lemonade\" has won Best Urban Contemporary Album. Beyonc\u00e9 set the record for the most Grammy awards won by a female artist in one night in 2010 when she won six awards, breaking the tie she previously held with Alicia Keys, Norah Jones, Alison Krauss, and Amy Winehouse, with Adele equaling this in 2012.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has won 30 MTV Video Music Awards, making her the joint most-decorated artist in Video Music Award history. She won 26 awards as a solo artist, two awards each with The Carters and Destiny's Child, making her lifetime total of 30 VMAs. \"Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)\" and \"Formation\" won Video of the Year in 2009 and 2016 respectively. Beyonc\u00e9 tied the record set by Lady Gaga in 2010 for the most VMAs won in one night for a female artist with eight in 2016. She is also the most-awarded and nominated artist in BET Award history, winning 36 awards (including two with Destiny's Child) from over 80 nominations, the most-awarded artist of the Soul Train Music Awards with 25 wins (21 as a soloist and four with Destiny's child), and the most-decorated artist at the NAACP Image Awards with 27 wins as a solo artist and five with Destiny's Child.\nFollowing her role in \"Dreamgirls\", Beyonc\u00e9 was nominated for Best Original Song for \"Listen\" and Best Actress at the Golden Globe Awards, and Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture at the NAACP Image Awards. Beyonc\u00e9 won two awards at the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards 2006; Best Song for \"Listen\" and Best Original Soundtrack for \"Dreamgirls: Music from the Motion Picture\". According to Fuse in 2014, Beyonc\u00e9 is the second-most award-winning artist of all time, after Michael Jackson. \"Lemonade\" won a Peabody Award in 2017. In 2022, \"Be Alive\" was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song, the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Song, and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.\nShe was named on the 2016 BBC Radio 4 \"Woman's Hour\" Power List as one of seven women judged to have had the biggest impact on women's lives over the past 70 years, alongside Margaret Thatcher, Barbara Castle, Helen Brook, Germaine Greer, Jayaben Desai and Bridget Jones, She was named the Most Powerful Woman in Music on the same list in 2020. In the same year, \"Billboard\" named her with Destiny's Child the third Greatest Music Video artists of all time, behind Madonna and Michael Jackson.\nIn June 2021, Beyonc\u00e9 won the award of \"top touring artist\" of the decade (2010s) at the \"Pollstar\" Awards. In that same month, Beyonc\u00e9 was inducted into the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame as a member of the inaugural class.\nBusiness and ventures.\nIn 2010, Beyonc\u00e9 founded her own entertainment company Parkwood Entertainment which formed as an imprint based from Columbia Records, the company began as a production unit for videos and films in 2008. Parkwood Entertainment is named after a street in Houston, Texas where Beyonc\u00e9 once lived. With headquarters in New York City, the company serves as an umbrella for the entertainer's various brands in music, movies, videos, and fashion. The staff of Parkwood Entertainment have experiences in arts and entertainment, from filmmaking and video production to web and fashion design. In addition to departments in marketing, digital, creative, publicity, fashion design and merchandising, the company houses a state-of-the-art editing suite, where Beyonc\u00e9 works on content for her worldwide tours, music videos, and television specials. Parkwood Entertainment's first production was the musical biopic \"Cadillac Records\" (2008), in which Beyonc\u00e9 starred and co-produced. The company has distributed Beyonc\u00e9's albums such as her self-titled fifth studio album (2013), \"Lemonade\" (2016) and The Carters, \"Everything is Love\" (2018). Beyonc\u00e9 has signed other artists to Parkwood such as Chloe x Halle, who performed at Super Bowl LIII in February 2019.\nIn February 2024, Beyonc\u00e9 launched C\u00e9cred, a hair care product line developed to fit different hair textures. Following its launch, she established an annual grant in collaboration with BeyGood. This is an effort to provide financial support to cosmetology students and professional hair stylists within the beauty industry. A yearly $500,000 is funding cosmetology school scholarships and salon business grants across five cities chosen for their large, diverse community of hair stylists: Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and Clementon.\nEndorsements and partnerships.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has worked with Pepsi since 2002, and in 2004 appeared in a Gladiator-themed commercial with Britney Spears, Pink, and Enrique Iglesias. In 2012, Beyonc\u00e9 signed a $50\u00a0million deal to endorse Pepsi. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPINET) wrote Beyonc\u00e9 an open letter asking her to reconsider the deal because of the unhealthiness of the product and to donate the proceeds to a medical organisation. Nevertheless, NetBase found that Beyonc\u00e9's campaign was the most talked about endorsement in April 2013, with a 70 percent positive audience response to the commercial and print ads.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has worked with Tommy Hilfiger for the fragrances True Star (singing a cover version of \"Wishing on a Star\") and True Star Gold; she also promoted Emporio Armani's Diamonds fragrance in 2007. Beyonc\u00e9 launched her first official fragrance, Heat, in 2010. In February 2011, Beyonc\u00e9 launched her second fragrance, Heat Rush. Beyonc\u00e9's third fragrance, Pulse, was launched in September 2011. In 2013, The Mrs. Carter Show Limited Edition version of Heat was released. The six editions of Heat are the world's best-selling celebrity fragrance line, with sales of over $400\u00a0million.\nThe release of a video-game \"Starpower: Beyonc\u00e9\" was cancelled after Beyonc\u00e9 pulled out of a $100 million deal with GateFive who alleged the cancellation meant the sacking of 70 staff and millions of pounds lost in development. It was settled out of court by her lawyers in June 2013 who said that they had cancelled because GateFive had lost its financial backers. Beyonc\u00e9 also has had deals with American Express, Nintendo DS and L'Or\u00e9al since the age of 18.\nIn March 2015, Beyonc\u00e9 became a co-owner, with other artists, of the music streaming service Tidal. The service specializes in lossless audio and high definition music videos. Beyonc\u00e9's husband Jay-Z acquired the parent company of Tidal, Aspiro, in the first quarter of 2015. Including Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z, sixteen artist stakeholders (such as Kanye West, Rihanna, Madonna, Chris Martin, Nicki Minaj and more) co-own Tidal, with the majority owning a 3% equity stake. The idea of having an all artist owned streaming service was created by those involved to adapt to the increased demand for streaming within the current music industry.\nIn November 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 formed a multi-year partnership with exercise equipment and media company Peloton. The partnership was formed to celebrate homecoming season in historically black colleges and universities, providing themed workout experiences inspired by Beyonc\u00e9's 2019 \"Homecoming\" film and after 2020's homecoming celebrations were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of the partnership, Beyonc\u00e9 and Peloton are donating free memberships to all students at 10 HBCUs, and Peloton are pursuing long-term recruiting partnerships at the HCBUs. Gwen Bethel Riley, head of music at Peloton, said: \"When we had conversations with Beyonc\u00e9 around how critical a social impact component was to all of us, it crystallized how important it was to embrace Homecoming as an opportunity to celebrate and create dialogue around Black culture and music, in partnership with HBCUs.\" Upon news of the partnership, a decline in Peloton's shares reversed, and its shares rose by 8.6%.\nIn 2021, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z partnered with Tiffany & Co. for the company's \"About Love\" campaign. Beyonc\u00e9 became the fourth woman, and first Black woman, to wear the 128.54-carat Tiffany Yellow Diamond. The campaign featured a robin egg blue painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat titled \"Equals Pi\" (1982). Both Beyonce and the brand faced significant backlash for the campaign, as the Tiffany Yellow Diamond, which was discovered in the Kimberley diamond mines in South Africa in 1877, is classified as a blood diamond and viewed as a symbol of British colonialism over Africa.\nFashion lines.\nBeyonc\u00e9 and her mother introduced House of Der\u00e9on, a women's fashion line, in 2005. The concept is inspired by three generations of women in their family, with the name paying tribute to Beyonc\u00e9's grandmother, Agn\u00e8z Der\u00e9on, a respected seamstress. According to Tina, the overall style of the line best reflects her and Beyonc\u00e9's taste and style. Beyonc\u00e9 and her mother founded their family's company Beyond Productions, which provides the licensing and brand management for House of Der\u00e9on, and its junior collection, Der\u00e9on. House of Der\u00e9on pieces were exhibited in Destiny's Child's shows and tours, during their \"Destiny Fulfilled\" era. The collection features sportswear, denim offerings with fur, outerwear and accessories that include handbags and footwear, and are available at department and specialty stores across the U.S. and Canada.\nIn 2005, Beyonc\u00e9 teamed up with House of Brands, a shoe company, to produce a range of footwear for House of Der\u00e9on. In January 2008, Starwave Mobile launched Beyonc\u00e9 Fashion Diva, a \"high-style\" mobile game with a social networking component, featuring the House of Der\u00e9on collection. In July 2009, Beyonc\u00e9 and her mother launched a new junior apparel label, Sasha Fierce for Der\u00e9on, for back-to-school selling. The collection included sportswear, outerwear, handbags, footwear, eyewear, lingerie and jewelry. It was available at department stores including Macy's and Dillard's, and specialty stores Jimmy Jazz and Against All Odds. \nIn October 2014, Beyonc\u00e9 signed a deal to launch an activewear line of clothing with British fashion retailer Topshop. The 50\u201350 venture is called Ivy Park and was launched in April 2016. The brand's name is a nod to Beyonc\u00e9's daughter and her favorite number four (IV in Roman numerals), and also references the park where she used to run in Texas. She has since bought out Topshop owner Philip Green from his 50% share after he was alleged to have sexually harassed, bullied and racially abused employees. She now owns the brand herself.\nIn April 2019, it was announced that Beyonc\u00e9 would become a creative partner with Adidas and further develop her athletic brand Ivy Park with the company. Knowles will also develop new clothes and footwear for Adidas. Shares for the company rose 1.3% upon the news release. In December 2019, they announced a launch date of January 18, 2020. Beyonc\u00e9 uploaded a teaser on her website and Instagram. The collection was previewed on the upcoming \"Elle\" January 2020 issue, where Beyonc\u00e9 is seen wearing several garments, accessories and footwear from the first collection. In February 2023, \"The Wall Street Journal\" reported that the line was struggling financially with revenue falling by more than 50% over the past fiscal year to $40 million; well short of the company's $250 million projected forecast. In March 2023, it was announced that Beyonc\u00e9 and Adidas reached a mutual decision to end their partnership.\nIn March 2023, Olivier Rousteing, the creative director of Balmain, announced that he and Beyonc\u00e9 collaborated on a couture collection complete with sixteen looks corresponding to the sixteen tracks on her album \"Renaissance\". This \"Renaissance Couture\" collection marked the first time that a Black woman oversaw the development of a collection from a Parisian couture house.\nIn September 2024, Beyonc\u00e9 partnered with Levi Strauss & Co. to remake a classic '80s 'Launderette' campaign. Michelle Gass, the CEO of Levis Strauss & Co., shared insights regarding the advantages of the company's collaboration with Beyonc\u00e9, emphasizing that the advertising campaign could significantly enhance sales in the women's clothing segment.\nPhilanthropy.\nIn 2002, Beyonc\u00e9, Kelly Rowland and Tina Knowles built the Knowles-Rowland Center for Youth, a community center in Downtown Houston. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Beyonc\u00e9 and Rowland founded the Survivor Foundation to provide transitional housing to displaced families and provide means for new building construction, to which Beyonc\u00e9 contributed an initial $250,000. The foundation has since expanded to work with other charities in the city, and also provided relief following Hurricane Ike three years later. Beyonc\u00e9 also donated $100,000 to the Gulf Coast Ike Relief Fund. In 2007, Beyonc\u00e9 founded the Knowles-Temenos Place Apartments, a housing complex offering living space for 43 displaced individuals. As of 2016, Beyonc\u00e9 had donated $7\u00a0million for the maintenance of the complex.\nAfter starring in \"Cadillac Records\" in 2009 and learning about Phoenix House, a non-profit drug and alcohol rehabilitation organization, Beyonc\u00e9 donated her full $4\u00a0million salary from the film to the organization. Beyonc\u00e9 and her mother subsequently established the Beyonc\u00e9 Cosmetology Center, which offers a seven-month cosmetology training course helping Phoenix House's clients gain career skills during their recovery.\nIn January 2010, Beyonc\u00e9 participated in George Clooney and Wyclef Jean's telethon, donated a large sum to the organization, and was named the official face of the limited edition Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) \"Fashion For Haiti\" T-shirt. In April 2011, Beyonc\u00e9 joined forces with U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama and the National Association of Broadcasters Education Foundation, to help boost the latter's campaign against child obesity by reworking her single \"Get Me Bodied\". Following the death of Osama bin Laden, Beyonc\u00e9 released her cover of the Lee Greenwood song \"God Bless the U.S.A.\", as a charity single to help raise funds for the New York Police and Fire Widows' and Children's Benefit Fund.\nBeyonc\u00e9 became an ambassador for the 2012 World Humanitarian Day campaign donating her song \"I Was Here\" and its music video, shot in the UN, to the campaign. In 2013, it was announced that Beyonc\u00e9 would work with Salma Hayek and Frida Giannini on a Gucci \"Chime for Change\" campaign that aims to spread female empowerment. The campaign, which aired on February 28, was set to her new music. A concert for the cause took place on June 1, 2013, in London. With help of the crowdfunding platform Catapult, visitors of the concert could choose between several projects promoting education of women and girls. Beyonc\u00e9 also took part in \"Miss a Meal\", a food-donation campaign, and supported Goodwill Industries through online charity auctions at Charitybuzz that support job creation throughout Europe and the U.S.\nBeyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z secretly donated tens of thousands of dollars to bail out Black Lives Matter protesters in Baltimore and Ferguson, as well as funded infrastructure for the establishment of Black Lives Matter chapters across the U.S. Before Beyonc\u00e9's Formation World Tour show in Tampa, her team held a private luncheon for more than 20 community leaders to discuss how Beyonc\u00e9 could support local charitable initiatives, including pledging on the spot to fund 10 scholarships to provide students with financial aid. Tampa Sports Authority board member Thomas Scott said: \"I don't know of a prior artist meeting with the community, seeing what their needs are, seeing how they can invest in the community. It says a lot to me about Beyonc\u00e9. She not only goes into a community and walks away with (money), but she also gives money back to that community.\"\nIn June 2016, Beyonc\u00e9 donated over $82,000 to the United Way of Genesee County to support victims of the Flint water crisis. Beyonc\u00e9 additionally donated money to support 14 students in Michigan with their college expenses. In August 2016, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z donated $1.5 million to civil rights groups including Black Lives Matter, Hands Up United and Dream Defenders. After Hurricane Matthew, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z donated $15 million to the Usain Bolt Foundation to support its efforts in rebuilding homes in Haiti.\nDuring Hurricane Harvey in August 2017, Beyonc\u00e9 launched BeyGOOD Houston to support those affected by the hurricane in Houston. The organization donated necessities such as cots, blankets, pillows, baby products, feminine products and wheelchairs, and funded long-term revitalization projects. On September 8, Beyonc\u00e9 visited Houston, where she sponsored a lunch for 400 survivors at her local church, visited the George R Brown Convention Center to discuss with people displaced by the flooding about their needs, served meals to those who lost their homes, and made a significant donation to local causes. Beyonc\u00e9 additionally donated $75,000 worth of new mattresses to survivors of the hurricane. Later that month, Beyonc\u00e9 released a remix of J Balvin and Willy William's \"Mi Gente\", with all of her proceeds being donated to disaster relief charities in Puerto Rico, Mexico, the U.S. and the Caribbean after hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, and the Chiapas and Puebla earthquakes.\nIn April 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 donated $6\u00a0million to the National Alliance in Mental Health, UCLA and local community-based organizations in order to provide mental health and personal wellness services to essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. BeyGOOD also teamed up with local organizations to help provide resources to communities of color, including food, water, cleaning supplies, medicines and face masks. The same month, Beyonc\u00e9 released a remix of Megan Thee Stallion's \"Savage\", with all proceeds benefiting Bread of Life Houston's COVID-19 relief efforts, which includes providing over 14 tons of food and supplies to 500 families and 100 senior citizens in Houston weekly.\nIn May 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 provided 1,000 free COVID-19 tests in Houston as part of her and her mother's #IDidMyPart initiative, which was established due to the disproportionate deaths in African-American communities. Additionally, 1,000 gloves, masks, hot meals, essential vitamins, grocery vouchers and household items were provided. In July 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 established the Black-Owned Small Business Impact Fund in partnership with the NAACP, which offers $10,000 grants to black-owned small businesses in need following the George Floyd protests. All proceeds from Beyonc\u00e9's single \"Black Parade\" were donated to the fund. In September 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 announced that she had donated an additional $1\u00a0million to the fund. As of December 31, 2020, the fund had given 715 grants to black-owned small businesses, amounting to $7.15 million donated.\nIn October 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 released a statement that she has been working with the Feminist Coalition to assist supporters of the End SARS movement in Nigeria, including covering medical costs for injured protestors, covering legal fees for arrested protestors, and providing food, emergency shelter, transportation and telecommunication means to those in need. Beyonc\u00e9 also showed support for those fighting against other issues in Africa, such as the Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon, ShutItAllDown in Namibia, Zimbabwean Lives Matter in Zimbabwe and the Rape National Emergency in Liberia. In December 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 donated $500,000 to help alleviate the housing crisis in the U.S. caused by the cessation of the eviction moratorium, giving 100 $5,000 grants to individuals and families facing foreclosures and evictions.\nDiscography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nTours and residencies.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["6521181", "83688"], "permutation_1": ["83688", "6521181"], "permutation_2": ["6521181", "83688"], "permutation_3": ["6521181", "83688"]}
{"id": "2hop__726843_136211", "docs_added": {"27208": "Saint Lucia\nCountry in the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean Sea\nSaint Lucia is an island country of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean. Part of the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, it is located north/northeast of the island of Saint Vincent, northwest of Barbados and south of Martinique. It covers a land area of with an estimated population of over 180,000 people as of 2018. The nation's capital and largest city is Castries.\nThe first proven inhabitants of the island, the Arawaks, are believed to have been the first to settle on the island in 200\u2013400 AD. In 800 AD, the island was taken over by the Kalinago. The French were the first European colonists to settle on the island, and they signed a treaty with the native Caribs in 1660. The English took control of the island in 1663. In ensuing years, England and France fought 14 times for control of the island; consequently control over this immensely valuable geopolitical position changed frequently. Eventually, the British took complete control in 1814, shortly after the victory over French Emperor Napoleon I. Because the island switched so often between British and French control, Saint Lucia was also known as the \"Helen of the West\" after the Greek mythological character, Helen of Troy.\nRepresentative government was introduced in 1924 with universal suffrage being established in 1951. From 1958 to 1962, the island was a member of the West Indies Federation. On 22 February 1979, Saint Lucia became an independent state, while remaining as a Commonwealth realm.\nSaint Lucia is a member of the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the World Trade Organization, CARICOM and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). It is also a member of .\nEtymology.\nSaint Lucia is named after Saint Lucy of Syracuse (AD 283 \u2013 304). Saint Lucia is one of two sovereign states in the world named after a female and is the only one named after a woman (Ireland is named after a goddess). Legend states that French sailors were shipwrecked on the island on 13 December, the feast day of St. Lucy, and therefore named the island in her honour. \nA globe in the Vatican from 1520 shows the island as Sancta Lucia, indicating that the island was instead named by early Spanish explorers. Saint Lucia was first known as \"Louanalao\" by the Arawak Indians in 200 AD, meaning \"Island of the Iguanas,\" and then as \"Hewanorra\", in 800 AD, meaning \"there where iguanas are found,\" when the Carib Indians arrived and assimilated their culture into Saint Lucia.\nHistory.\nPre-Columbian.\nThe first proven inhabitants of Saint Lucia were the Arawaks, though there may have been other native peoples prior to them. The Arawaks are believed to have come from northern South America, sometime around AD 200\u2013400, as there are numerous archaeological sites on the island where specimens of their pottery have been found.\nThe Kalinago (Island Caribs) arrived around AD 800, and seized control from the Arawaks by killing their men and assimilating the women into their own society. \nEarly European exploration and colonization.\nIt is possible that Christopher Columbus may have sighted the island during his fourth voyage in 1502, but he does not mention the island in his log. Juan de la Cosa noted the island on his map of 1500, calling it \"El Falcon\", and another island to the south \"Las Agujas\". A Spanish c\u00e9dula from 1511 mentions the island within the Spanish domain, and a globe in the Vatican made in 1520, shows the island as Sancta Lucia.\nIn the late 1550s, the French pirate Fran\u00e7ois le Clerc (known as \"Jambe de Bois\", due to his wooden leg) set up a camp on Pigeon Island, from where he attacked passing Spanish ships. In 1605, an English vessel called the \"Oliphe Blossome\" was blown off-course on its way to Guyana, and the 67 colonists started a settlement on Saint Lucia, after initially being welcomed by the Carib chief Anthonie. By 26 September 1605, only 19 survived following continued attacks by the Carib chief Augraumart, so the settlers fled the island. The English tried to settle the island again in 1638, but the Caribs continued to be hostile. Eventually, the French successfully claimed the island in 1650 and they signed a treaty with the Caribs in 1660. In 1664, Thomas Warner (son of Sir Thomas Warner, the governor of St Kitts) claimed Saint Lucia for England but the English fled again in 1666, with the French gaining full control of the island after the signing of the Treaty of Breda. Saint Lucia was made an official French crown colony in 1674, as a dependency of Martinique.\n18th and 19th centuries.\nAfter the slave-based sugar industry developed, both the British and the French found the island attractive. During the 18th century, the island changed ownership, or was declared neutral territory, a dozen times, although the French settlements remained and the island was a de facto French colony well into the eighteenth century.\nIn 1722, George I of Great Britain granted both Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent to the 2nd Duke of Montagu. Montague appointed Nathaniel Uring, a merchant sea captain and adventurer, as deputy-governor. Uring went to the islands with a group of seven ships, and established settlement at Petit Carenage. Unable to get enough support from British warships, he and the new colonists were quickly run off by the French.\nDuring the Seven Years' War, Britain occupied Saint Lucia for a year, but handed the island back to the French in 1763, under the Treaty of Paris. Like the English and Dutch on other islands, in 1765, the French began to develop the land for the cultivation of sugar cane as a commodity crop on large plantations. The British occupied the island again in 1778.\nFrom 1782 to 1803, control of the island switched multiple times. In January 1791, during the French Revolution, the National Assembly sent four \"commissaires\" to St Lucia to spread the revolutionary philosophy. By August 1791, slaves began to abandon their estates and Governor Jean-Joseph Sourbader de Gimat fled. In December 1792, Lt. Jean-Baptiste Raymond de Lacrosse arrived with revolutionary pamphlets, and the impoverished whites and free people of colour began to arm themselves as \"patriots\". On 1 February 1793, France declared war on England and Holland, and General Nicolas Xavier de Ricard took over as Governor. The National Convention abolished enslavement on 4 February 1794. On 1 April 1794, St. Lucia was captured by a British expeditionary force led by Vice Admiral John Jervis. Morne Fortune was renamed \"Fort Charlotte\". Soon, a combined force of French Revolutionary Army soldiers and maroons, \"L'Armee Fran\u00e7aise dans les Bois\", began to fight back, starting the First Brigand War.\nA short time later, the British invaded the island as a part of the war with France that had recently broken out. On 21 February 1795, French forces under the nominal control of Victor Hugues, defeated a battalion of British troops at Vieux Fort and Rabot. In 1796, Castries was burned as part of the conflict. Leading the 27th (Inniskilling) Regiment, General John Moore retook Fort Charlotte in 1796, after two days of bitter fighting. As an honour, the Fusiliers' regimental colour was displayed on the flagstaff of the captured fortress at Morne Fortune for an hour before being replaced by the Union Jack. Upon the capture of the fort, Moore's superior, Ralph Abercromby, departed the island and placed Moore in charge of the British garrison. Moore remained at this post until falling ill with yellow fever, leading to his return to Britain before 1798.\nIn 1803, the British regained control of the island. Many members of the \"L'Armee Fran\u00e7aise dans les Bois\" escaped into the thick rainforest where they evaded capture and established maroon communities.\nSlavery on the island continued for a short time, but anti-slavery sentiment was rising in Britain. The British stopped the import of slaves by anyone, white or coloured, when they abolished the slave trade in 1807.\nFrance and Great Britain continued to contest Saint Lucia until the British secured it in 1814, as part of the Treaty of Paris, ending the Napoleonic Wars. Thereafter, Saint Lucia was considered one of the British Windward Islands colonies.\nThe institution of slavery was abolished on the island in 1834, as it was throughout the British Empire. After abolition, all former slaves had to serve a four-year \"apprenticeship\", to accustom them to the idea of freedom. During that period, they worked for their former masters for at least three-quarters of the work week. Full freedom was duly granted by the British in 1838. By that time, people of African ethnicity greatly outnumbered those of ethnic European background. People of Carib descent also comprised a minority on the island.\n20th century.\nSaint Lucia's first representative government was introduced in 1924, with the first election taking place in 1925. Many Saint Lucians served during the Second World War, and the conflict visited the island directly during the Battle of the Caribbean, when a German U-boat attacked and sank two British ships in Castries harbour on 9 March 1942. The United States used the island as a military hub during the war, including setting up a secondary naval base in Gros Islet and using what is now the island's international airport as an air force base.\nUniversal suffrage was introduced in 1951 and elections were held the same year. In 1958, Saint Lucia joined the West Indies Federation, although the federation was dissolved just a few years later in 1962. In 1967, Saint Lucia became one of the six members of the West Indies Associated States, with internal self-government. Independence was peacefully gained in 1979 under Sir John Compton of United Workers Party, with the island remaining within the British Commonwealth, keeping then-Queen Elizabeth II as Monarch, represented locally by a Governor-General.\nPost-independence era.\nDespite leading the country to independence, Compton's initial term as prime minister lasted only a few months, being defeated by the Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) under Allan Louisy in the 1979 Saint Lucian general election. In 1980, Hurricane Allen struck the island, destroying much of its infrastructure and reducing economic growth. Compton returned to power after the 1982 Saint Lucian general election after much instability during the labour government's term. During Compton's second term as the island's leader, banana exports significantly increased and became the nation's main source of revenue. There were improvements to infrastructure, and education was expanded to rural areas. Saint Lucia was key to the US invasion of Grenada. During the 1990s and 2000s, the nation's economy began shifting from agriculture to tourism under the leadership of Kenny Anthony. The 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001 killed two Saint Lucians, and caused an economic slowdown, although moderate growth continued until the Great Recession. The recession, as well as the landfall of Hurricane Tomas in 2010, led to slow economic growth during the early 2010s, although the economy picked up during the later part of the decade and avoided contraction until 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic caused major economic issues globally.\nIn June 2016, the United Workers Party (UWP), led by Allen Michael Chastanet, won 11 of the 17 seats in the general election, ousting the St Lucia Labour Party (SLP) of the incumbent Prime Minister Kenny Anthony. However, Saint Lucia Labour Party won the next election in July 2021, meaning its leader Philip J Pierre became the ninth Prime Minister of Saint Lucia since independence.\nGeography.\nSaint Lucia has a total area of 617 square kilometers (238 sq mi). As a volcanic island, Saint Lucia is very mountainous, with its highest point being Mount Gimie, at above sea level. The Pitons, two mountainous volcanic plugs, form the island's most famous landmark. Saint Lucia is also home to the world's only drive-in volcano, the Sulphur Springs. There are a number of small islands off the coast, the largest of which are the Maria Islands, located in the south-east of the island.\nSaint Lucia lies at latitude 14\u00b0 N and longitude 61\u00b0 W. The population tends to be concentrated around the coast, with the interior more sparsely populated, due to the presence of dense forests. \nFlora and fauna.\nMany species are endemic to the island, including \"Anolis luciae\", a species of lizard, and \"Boa orophias\", a species of boid snake.\nEcoregions.\nSaint Lucia has five terrestrial ecoregions: Windward Islands moist forests, Leeward Islands dry forests, Windward Islands dry forests, Windward Islands xeric scrub, and Lesser Antilles mangroves. The country had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 6.17/10, ranking it 84th globally out of 172 countries.\nClimate.\nSaint Lucia has a tropical climate, specifically a tropical rainforest climate (Af), moderated by northeast trade winds, with a dry season from 1 December to 31 May, and a wet/rainy season from 1 June to 30 November.\nAverage daytime and nighttime temperatures are around , and respectively. Being fairly close to the equator, the island's temperature does not fluctuate much between winter and summer.\nGeology.\nThe geology of St. Lucia can be described as composing three main areas. The oldest, 16\u201318 Ma, volcanic rocks are exposed from Castries northward and consist of eroded basalt and andesite centres. The middle, central highlands, portion of the island consists of dissected andesite centres, 10.4 to 1 Mya, while the lower southwest portion of the island contains recent activity from the Soufriere Volcanic Centre (SVC). This SVC, centred about the Qualibou depression, contains pyroclastic flow deposits, lava flows, domes, block and ash flow deposits, and explosion craters. This depression's perimeter includes the town of Soufriere, Mount Tabac, Mt. Gimie, Morne Bonin, and Gros Piton. At in diameter, though the western portion is open towards the Grenada basin, the depression formed as recently as 100 kya. The depression is noted for its geothermal activity, especially at Sulphur Springs and Soufri\u00e8re Estates, a phreatic eruption in 1776, and recent seismic activity (2000\u20132001).\nEroded andesitic stratovolcanoes to the north east of the depression include Mt. Gimie, Piton St Esprit, and Mt. Grand Magazin, all greater than 1 Ma in age. Andesitic and dacite pyroclastic flows from these volcanoes are found at Morne Tabac dome (532 ka), Morne Bonin dome (273 kya), and Bellevue (264 kya). Avalanche deposits from the formation of the Qualibou depression are found offshore, and in the massive blocks of Rabot, Pleisance, and Coubaril. The dacitic domes of Petit Piton (109 kya) and Gros Piton (71 kya) were then extruded onto the depression floor accompanied by the Anse John (104 kya) and La Pointe (59.8 kya) pyroclastic flows. Later, pyroclastic flows include pumice-rich Belfond and Anse Noir (20 kya). Finally, the dacitic domes of Terre Blanche (15.3 kya) and Belfond (13.6 kya) formed within the depression.\nGovernment.\nLike most Caribbean countries, Saint Lucia is a unitary state with a parliamentary system. It is a Commonwealth realm and a constitutional monarchy, with the current monarch being Charles III, who is represented on the island by a governor-general, currently Errol Charles. The prime minister (currently Philip J. Pierre) is the head of government, the head of the cabinet, and is normally the leader of the largest party in the House of Assembly. The house has 17 seats, with each member being elected via a plurality of votes in their constituency. The upper chamber of Parliament is the Senate which has 11 appointed members, the majority of which are appointed by the prime minister.\nAdministrative divisions.\nSaint Lucia is made up of 10 districts. The districts were created and named by French colonials, and the British chose to keep the names in an anglicised form. The largest district in both size and population is Castries, where the nation's capital of the same name is located. The following are the 10 districts placed in alphabetical order:\nLaw and crime.\nSaint Lucia is a mixed jurisdiction, meaning that it has a legal system based in part on both the civil law and English common law. The Civil Code of St. Lucia of 1867 was based on the Quebec Civil Code of 1866, as supplemented by English common law-style legislation. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was Saint Lucia's final court of appeal until 2023, when a constitutional amendment transferred this to the Caribbean Court of Justice.\nSaint Lucia's homicide rate has hit record highs in recent years. There were 75 homicides in 2021, a 34.5% increase compared with 55 homicides in 2020. 2021 saw the island record the most homicides in its history, and also its highest murder rate in its history, at 40 murders per 100,000 people.\nForeign relations.\nSaint Lucia is a member of the Caribbean Community, OECS, the Organization of American States and La Francophonie. As a Commonwealth Realm, Saint Lucia has relatively friendly relations with United Kingdom and Canada. France is also a major ally, in part due to Saint Lucia's border with Martinique. The United States is the island's largest trading partner, and Saint Lucia was key to the US invasion of Grenada in 1983, and voted against condemning the invasion. Saint Lucia became the 152nd member of the United Nations on 18 September 1979.\nSaint Lucia does not have a military although the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force has a Special Service Unit (SSU) and a Coast Guard. The island signed the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2018.\nEconomy.\nSaint Lucia is a Small Island Developing State, a designation similar to a developing country with a few substantial differences due to Saint Lucia's island nature. The service sector is the largest sector of the economy, accounting for 86.9% of GDP in 2020, followed by industrial and agricultural sectors at 10.9% and 2.2%, respectively.\nSaint Lucia has been able to attract foreign business and investment due to its educated workforce and improvements in roads, communications, water supply, sewerage, and port facilities. Like most small islands, Tourism and offshore banking are Saint Lucia's main sources of revenue. Agriculture, specifically the banana industry, was previously the largest sector of the economy, although its importance has declined significantly. The island's manufacturing sector has been called the most diverse in the Eastern Caribbean, with goods such as plastic being produced on a large scale.\nSaint Lucia's currency is the Eastern Caribbean Dollar (EC$), a regional currency shared among members of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECU). The country's main trade partners are the US, UK, EU and other CARICOM countries.\nTourism.\nTourism is the largest contributor to Saint Lucia's economy. Tourist numbers tend to be more substantial during the dry season (January to April), often referred to as the tourist season. Saint Lucia's tropical weather, scenery, beaches and resorts have made it a popular tourist destination, with 1.29\u00a0million visitors arriving in 2019.\nSome of Saint Lucia's tourist attractions include the Sulphur Springs, the Botanical Gardens, Pigeon Island and The Pitons.\nAgriculture.\nThe agricultural sector was once the main contributor to Saint Lucia's economy. This was especially thanks to the exporting of bananas. However, its importance to the economy has declined significantly, in part due to increased competition from South American countries in the banana industry. Nevertheless, agriculture is still an important part of the country's economy, providing 7.9% of jobs and contributing to 2.2% of the GDP in 2021.\nAbout 18% of land is used for agricultural practices. Bananas remain the main agricultural product grown in Saint Lucia, as well as coconuts, cocoa beans, mangoes, avocados, vegetables, citrus fruits, and root crops such as yams and sweet potatoes.\nSaint Lucia also has a small livestock sector, which is dominated by poultry. The island is self-sufficient in egg production and production of poultry and pork has increased in recent years. Fishing has also been of considerable importance to the nation's economy.\nInfrastructure.\nSaint Lucia has a wide-ranging public bus network which covers most of the island. Busses are owned by private individuals, whilst the government is responsible for setting up routes and hubs. The road network covers most of the island, although some rural areas still lack access to proper roads.\nThe island has two airports, including one International airport. Cruising and yachting are very important to the country's economy, with the main sea port being located in Castries, while the main marina is located in Rodney Bay which is also home to the St. Lucia Yacht Club. Meanwhile, the nation's main oil refinery is located in Bexon.\nThe main source of electricity in Saint Lucia is oil through its sole power station, the Cul De Sac Power Station, although solar energy is also a major source. There have also been attempts to introduce geothermal and wind energy to the island.\nDemographics.\nA census is normally held in Saint Lucia every 10 years. In the 2010 census, Saint Lucia reported a population of 165,595 in 58,920 households. This was a 5.1% increase from the 157,490 recorded at the previous census in 2001. Ages 0\u201314 made up 24.1% of the population whilst those 65 and over made up 8.6%. Nearly 40% of the island's population lived in the District of Castries, where the nation's capital of the same name is located.\nSaint Lucia had a fertility rate of 1.4 children per woman in 2021, the lowest in the Americas. This is much lower than in 1990, when the birth rate was 3.4 children per woman, and significantly lower than in 1959, when the birth rate peaked at 6.98 children per woman. Most emigration from Saint Lucia is primarily to Anglophone countries, with the United Kingdom having almost 10,000 Saint Lucian-born citizens, and over 30,000 of Saint Lucian heritage. The United States is home to many Saint Lucians, especially areas such as Miami and New York City. Canada is also home to many Saint Lucians, and especially in the French-speaking province of Quebec in the city of Montr\u00e9al. The median age of Saint Lucians was 33.1 years in 2021.\nEthnic groups.\nSaint Lucia was originally populated by Amerindian peoples. However, European colonisation led to a significant drop in the indigenous populations. Most residents of the island were white planters, but African slaves and indentured servants brought by the Europeans eventually came to outnumber them. Because of this, Saint Lucia's population is predominantly of African and mixed descent. As of 2010, 85.3% of the population are black and 10.9% are of multiracial descent. Other groups include Indo-Caribbean persons (2.2%), whites (0.6%), and Indigenous Persons (0.6%). A small number of Kalinago live in the Choiseul region and in other towns on the western coast. There is also a small population of Lebanese and Syrians.\nLanguages.\nThe official language of Saint Lucia is English, though Saint Lucian French Creole (Kw\u00e9y\u00f2l) is widely spoken. Referred to colloquially as \"Patois\" (\"Patwa\"), it is spoken by a majority of the population. It is a dialect of Antillean Creole and is also related to Haitian Creole, though it nonetheless has a number of distinctive features from the latter. The Creole language developed during the early period of French colonisation and is derived chiefly from French and West African languages. There have been some attempts to make the language official, but they have not yet been successful.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nIn the 2010 census, a majority of Saint Lucians identified as Christians. This can be traced back to the nation's colonization by French and British settlers. Due to heavy French influence, most Christians on the island are Catholics, with 62.5% of the island's residents identifying as such. 24.5% of the island's residents identify as Protestants. In addition, 1.9% of the population identified as members of the Rastafari movement and 1.4% of the population practice Hinduism. The number of residents claiming no religion stood at 5.9% in 2010.\nThere is no state religion in Saint Lucia. The nation's constitution guarantees freedom of religion and prohibits forcing persons to take oath to any religion in which they do not follow. Religious groups are also guaranteed the freedom to establish places of education.\nEducation.\nMost primary and secondary schools in Saint Lucia are operated by the government. Education is free and compulsory for children aged five to fifteen. This includes seven years of primary school and three to five years of secondary school. In the last two years of secondary school, students are allowed to choose the subjects that they would like to do, in preparation for regional CSEC examinations. In 2020, public spending on education was at 3.6%.\nTertiary educational facilities on the island are normally private institutions. These include Monroe College and International American University. However, there are still a few public institutions, including the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College and the University of the West Indies.\nHealthcare.\nHealth services in Saint Lucia are split between the government and private institutions. The island is served by 2 public hospitals and multiple health centers, although most dental and vision services are private. Public expenditure on healthcare stood at 2.1% in 2019.\nIn 2021, life expectancy was at 71.1 years (67.8 for men and 74.7 for women). This was compared to 73.4 years in 2019. The drop in life expectancy was largely attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nCulture.\nThe culture of Saint Lucia has been influenced by African, East Indian, French, and English heritage. The main secondary language of the island is Saint Lucian Creole (Kw\u00e9y\u00f2l), a French-based creole spoken by most of the population. The island boasts the highest ratio of Nobel laureates produced with respect to the total population of any sovereign country in the world. Two winners have come from Saint Lucia: Sir Arthur Lewis, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1979, and the poet Derek Walcott, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.\nSaint Lucia has two flower festivals, the La Rose festival, celebrated on 30 August, and the La Marguerite festival, celebrated on 17 October. Every summer, the island hosts a carnival as a way to present the country's culture and music. Annually, there are normally many festivals, most of them being music related.\nMusic.\nSaint Lucian music is heavily influenced by elements of African music, especially rhythmically. The most popular music genres in Saint Lucia are calypso, soca, dancehall, reggae, zouk, and folk music. Dennery Segment, a genre influenced by Angolan Kuduro, Saint Lucian Solo music and Dancehall was developed on the island. The internationally renowned Saint Lucia Jazz Festival is held annually, and the festival is a major source of revenue for the country's economy.\nFood.\nSaint Lucian cuisine is a mix of African, European, Indian and Caribbean dishes. Some common dishes include macaroni pie, stewed chicken, rice and peas, roti (Indian flatbreads) and soups packed full with fresh locally produced vegetables. All mainstream meat and poultry are eaten in St. Lucia; meat and seafood are normally stewed and browned to create a rich gravy sometimes served over \"ground provisions\" (vegetables) or rice. Johnny Cakes (known as bakes) are also common, and are served with different sides, such as saltfish. The national dish of Saint Lucia is green figs and saltfish.\nSports.\nAs with most Caribbean islands, cricket is the most popular sport in Saint Lucia. The Windward Islands cricket team includes players from Saint Lucia and plays in the West Indies regional tournament. Daren Sammy became the first Saint Lucian to represent the West Indies on his debut in 2007, and was made captain in 2010. The Saint Lucia Kings is a T20 franchise playing in the Caribbean Premier League based in this said island nation. Sailing is also a major sport in Saint Lucia, with the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) race beginning in the Canary Islands and ending on the island. Other sports that are popular on the island include football, basketball, tennis, golf and volleyball. Karate and boxing have also seen increased popularity in recent years. \nJulien Alfred won the nation's first-ever Olympic medal, when she won the women's 100 meters event in 10.72 seconds at the 2024 Summer Olympics held in Paris, France.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "9260114": "Roseau River (Saint Lucia)\nRiver in Saint Lucia\nThe Roseau River is a river in the Anse-la-Raye Quarter of the island country of Saint Lucia. It flows north and then west from the central highlands in the south of the island, reaching the Caribbean Sea to the north of the town of Anse la Raye. The Roseau river is also the longest in the country and is dammed by the John Compton Dam near Millet.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2422900": "Roseau River Anishinabe First Nation\nRoseau River Anishinabe First Nation (Ojibwe: \"Okwewanashko-ziibiing\", meaning: \"Rag Weed River\") is an Ojibway First Nation in southern Manitoba, Canada, situated around the Roseau River. \nIts main reserve is Roseau River No. 2 with a population of 564 as of the 2021 Canadian census while the First Nation has a total membership of approximately 2,000 people.\nHistory.\nThe people of Roseau River Anishinabe First Nation have a long history in the area of the Pembina and Red River Valleys in Manitoba, Minnesota, and North Dakota. The Roseau River people had a long history with a clan system which assigned different responsibilities to various clans and societies. Collectively, the Anishinabe (Ojibway) of Manitoba, Western Ontario, North Dakota and Northern Minnesota were known in Ojibwe as the \"Zoong-gi-dah Anishinabe\".\nWith the arrival of Europeans in the area, they were first called the Pembina Band due to their location in the Pembina Valley. However, as more and more settlers arrived and pushed the people away from their original lands where they hunted, they gradually abandoned these lands. Eventually, with the signing of Treaty 1 on 3 August 1871, a parcel of land was given to the peoples around the Roseau River where the community is now located. Negotiations around land claims remained unresolved until finally being settled in 2011 with an $80 million agreement, part of which is held in trust for future generations.\nThe community had to be evacuated in 1997, 2009, and 2011 as a result of flooding which cut off road access to the community. The community is protected by a ring dike which has prevented large inundation of the community during these floods.\nReserve lands.\nIt has a registered population of 2,152 individuals. \nThe First Nation has three reserves: \nRoseau River No. 2 & 2A are located approximately apart, and about approximately south of Winnipeg. \nLeadership.\nRoseau River Anishinabe First Nation is a member of the Dakota Ojibway Tribal Council. The current Chief and Council are: Chief Gary Roberts; Councillor Terrance Nelson, Councillor Evan Roberts, Councillor Jason Henry and Councillor Rachel Seenie.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "94910": "Roseau County, Minnesota\nCounty in Minnesota, United States\nRoseau County () is a county in the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Minnesota, along the Canada\u2013US border. As of the 2020 census, the population was 15,331. Its county seat is Roseau. Roseau County borders the Canadian province of Manitoba.\nPart of the Red Lake Indian Reservation is in Roseau County.\nHistory.\nRoseau County was once the home of many Ojibwe, Sioux, and Mandan tribes. Archeologists have found artifacts within the county belonging to these tribes that date back 7,200 years. More recent history includes fur trappers and European-based explorers. By 1822, a fur-trading post was established in the area. In 1885, the future Roseau City hosted four settlers; by 1895 there were 600, and the area was incorporated as Roseau.\nBy the mid-1880s the early settlers of eastern Kittson County were feeling the disadvantage of their location, far from the county seat, and petitioned the government for a separate county. On December 31, 1894, Governor Knute Nelson proclaimed the eastern portion of Kittson a new county, to be named Roseau. On February 11, 1896, the next governor, David Marston Clough, added part of Beltrami County to Roseau County. Roseau was named the county seat.\nGeography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Stack/styles.css\"/>\nRoseau County is in far northern Minnesota. Its northern boundary abuts Canada. The Roseau River drains the upper part of the county, flowing west into Kittson County on its way to the Hudson Bay. The county terrain consists of low rolling hills, devoted to agriculture, and dotted with lakes and drainages. There is considerable wooded area, especially in the southeast portion. The county has an area of , of which is land and (0.4%) is water. Roseau is one of 17 Minnesota savanna counties with more savanna soils than prairie or forest soils.\nTransportation.\nMajor highways.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nAdjacent counties and rural municipalities.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nProtected areas.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2000 census.\nAs of the census of 2000, there were 16,338 people, 6,190 households, and 4,438 families in the county. The population density was . There were 7,101 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the county was 95.92% White, 0.13% Black or African American, 1.42% Native American, 1.73% Asian, 0."}, "descending_order": ["2422900", "94910", "9260114", "27208"], "permutation_1": ["9260114", "94910", "2422900", "27208"], "permutation_2": ["94910", "9260114", "2422900", "27208"], "permutation_3": ["9260114", "27208", "2422900", "94910"]}
{"id": "2hop__345_59409", "docs_added": {"6521181": "Song Cry\n2002 single by Jay-Z\n\"Song Cry\" is a song by American rapper Jay-Z and produced by Just Blaze. Released on April 16, 2002, it was the fourth and final single from his sixth studio album \"The Blueprint\" and also appears on the 2001 live album \"\".\n\"Song Cry\" was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Male Rap Solo Performance but lost to \"Hot in Herre\" by Nelly. The song samples Bobby Glenn's \"Sounds Like a Love Song\".\nBackground and content.\nIn an interview with Bill Maher, Jay-Z stated that this song was actually inspired by three different relationships he had in the past, and he wrote about his different experiences all together in different verses.\nThe song is a slow and quiet melodic rap ballad in which Jay-Z laments the break-up of an earlier relationship due to his own neglect and infidelity. Admitting that he is too prideful to publicly display his emotions (\"I can't see 'em coming down my eyes\"), Jay-Z forces the song to \"cry\" instead. This allows Jay-Z to mourn the break-up free of any damage to his masculine image as a street hustler. This furthers the notion that emotional vulnerability is a sign of weakness, especially within the Black community, as Black men in particular suppress vulnerability \"in order to survive.\"\nLive performances.\nThe live performance of \"Song Cry\" from Jay-Z's 2001 MTV Unplugged album features female vocalist Jaguar Wright singing a sample of \"Sounds Like a Love Song\" by Bobby Glenn, though Wright is not identified in the liner notes of the album.\nDuring his 2006 \"Water for Life\" Tour, Jay-Z performed \"Song Cry\" at the Royal Albert Hall, the venue's first ever hip hop show. American actress Gwyneth Paltrow did the chorus.\nThe song was also included on the set-lists of his all-stadium tours On the Run Tour in 2014 and OTR II in 2018, both with co-headliner and wife Beyonc\u00e9.\nCredits and personnel.\nThe credits for \"Song Cry\" are adapted from the liner notes of \"The Blueprint\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "83688": "Beyonc\u00e9\nAmerican singer (born 1981) \nBeyonc\u00e9 Giselle Knowles-Carter ( ; n\u00e9e Knowles; born September 4, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, actress and businesswoman. She has had a significant impact on the music industry and is known for her vocal ability, musical versatility, live performances, and culturally important works.\nBeyonc\u00e9 rose to fame in 1997 as a member of Destiny's Child, one of the best-selling girl groups of all time. Her debut solo album, \"Dangerously in Love\" (2003), became one of the best-selling albums of the 21st century and spawned the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100 number-one singles \"Crazy in Love\" and \"Baby Boy\". Beyonc\u00e9's commercial success continued with the albums \"B'Day\" (2006), \"I Am... Sasha Fierce\" (2008) and \"4\" (2011), all of which featured hit singles including \"Check on It\", \"Irreplaceable\", \"If I Were a Boy\", \"Single Ladies (Put a Ring on it)\", \"Halo\", \"Run the World (Girls)\", and \"Love On Top\". She has also ventured into acting, starring in the films \"Austin Powers in Goldmember\" (2002), \"Dreamgirls\" (2006), \"Cadillac Records\" (2008), \"Obsessed\" (2009) and \"Black Is King\" (2020), as well as voicing Nala in \"The Lion King\" (2019) and \"\" (2024).\nBeyonc\u00e9's career shifted after forming her own management company Parkwood Entertainment, creating monocultural events through acclaimed concept albums. She explored personal and political themes on \"Beyonc\u00e9\" (2013) and \"Lemonade\" (2016), which are credited with popularizing the surprise album and visual album. The former inspired setting Friday as the Global Release Day, while the latter was the best-selling album worldwide in 2016. Her ongoing trilogy project \u2013 currently consisting of the queer-inspired dance album \"Renaissance\" (2022) and Americana epic \"Cowboy Carter\" (2024) \u2013 has highlighted the contributions of Black pioneers to American musical and cultural history, spawning the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100 number-one singles \"Break My Soul\" and \"Texas Hold 'Em\".\nBeyonc\u00e9 is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with estimated sales of over 200 million records. She is the only female artist to debut all of their eight studio albums at number one on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200. She is the most awarded and nominated artist of all time in the history of the Grammy Awards, as well as the most awarded artist at the BET, NAACP Image, and Soul Train Music Awards. Her inductions include the \"Guinness World Records\" Hall of Fame and the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame. The first woman to headline an all-stadium tour, Beyonc\u00e9 is one of the highest-grossing live acts in history. \"Billboard\" named her the Top Female Artist of the 2000s and the Greatest Pop Star of the 21st Century. \"Rolling Stone\" listed her as one of the greatest singers ever and included several of her albums, singles, and music videos among the greatest of all time.\nEarly life.\nBeyonc\u00e9 Giselle Knowles was born on September 4, 1981, at the Park Plaza Hospital in Houston, Texas, to Tina Knowles (n\u00e9e\u00a0Beyonc\u00e9), a hairdresser and salon owner, and Mathew Knowles, a Xerox sales manager. Tina is Louisiana Creole and Mathew is African American. Beyonc\u00e9's younger sister, Solange Knowles, is also a singer and a former backup dancer for Destiny's Child. Solange and Beyonc\u00e9 are the first sisters both to have had number one solo albums. Beyonc\u00e9 researched her ancestry and discovered that she is descended from a slave owner who married his slave. Her mother is also of distant Irish and Jewish ancestry. Beyonc\u00e9 also has Belgian ancestry from Hainaut Province, Wallonia and is related to a former mayor of Froidchapelle, Belgium.\nBeyonc\u00e9 was raised with multiple religious traditions, attending St. John's United Methodist Church in Houston as well as St. Mary of the Purification Catholic Church. She went to St. Mary's Catholic Montessori School in Houston and enrolled in dance classes there. Her singing ability was discovered when dance instructor Darlette Johnson began humming a song and Beyonc\u00e9 finished it, able to hit the high-pitched notes. Beyonc\u00e9's interest in music and performing continued after winning a school talent show at age seven, singing John Lennon's \"Imagine\" to beat 15/16-year-olds. In the fall of 1990, Beyonc\u00e9 enrolled in Parker Elementary School, a music magnet school in Houston, where she performed with the school's choir. She also attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and later Alief Elsik High School. Beyonc\u00e9 was also a member of the choir at St. John's United Methodist Church where she sang her first solo and was a soloist for two years.\nCareer.\nCareer beginnings.\nWhen Beyonc\u00e9 was eight, she met LaTavia Roberson at an audition for an all-girl entertainment group. They were placed into a group called Girl's Tyme with three other girls, and rapped and danced on the talent show circuit in Houston. After seeing the group, R&B producer Arne Frager brought them to his Northern California studio and placed them in \"Star Search\", the largest talent show on national TV at the time. Girl's Tyme failed to win, and Beyonc\u00e9 later said the song they performed was not good. In 1995, Beyonc\u00e9's father, Mathew, resigned from his job to manage the group. The move reduced the family's income by half, and Beyonc\u00e9's parents were forced to sell their house and cars and move into separated apartments.\nMathew cut the original line-up to four and the group continued performing as an opening act for other established R&B girl groups. The girls auditioned before record labels and were finally signed to Elektra Records, moving to Atlanta Records briefly to work on their first recording, only to be cut by the company. This put further strain on the family, and Beyonc\u00e9's parents separated. On October 5, 1995, Dwayne Wiggins's Grass Roots Entertainment signed the group. In 1996, the girls began recording their debut album under an agreement with Sony Music, the Knowles family reunited, and shortly after, the group got a contract with Columbia Records with the assistance of Columbia talent scout Teresa LaBarbera Whites.\n1997\u20132002: Destiny's Child.\nThe group changed their name to Destiny's Child in 1996, based upon a passage in the Book of Isaiah. In 1997, Destiny's Child released their major label debut song \"Killing Time\" on the soundtrack to the 1997 film \"Men in Black\". In November, the group released their debut single and first major hit, \"No, No, No\". They released their self-titled debut album in February 1998, which established the group as a viable act in the music industry. The group released their Multi-Platinum second album \"The Writing's on the Wall\" in 1999. The record features songs such as \"Bills, Bills, Bills\", the group's first number-one single, \"Jumpin' Jumpin'\" and \"Say My Name\", which became their most successful song at the time, and would remain one of their signature songs. \"Say My Name\" won the Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals and the Best R&B Song at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards. \"The Writing's on the Wall\" sold more than eight million copies worldwide. During this time, Beyonc\u00e9 recorded a duet with Marc Nelson, an original member of Boyz II Men, on the song \"After All Is Said and Done\" for the soundtrack to the 1999 film, \"The Best Man\", as well as \"Ways To Get Cut Off\", a collaboration with fellow Columbia Records signee JoJo Robinson that was later shelved.\nThe remaining band members recorded \"Independent Women Part I\", which appeared on the soundtrack to the 2000 film \"Charlie's Angels\". It became their best-charting single, topping the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart for eleven consecutive weeks. In early 2001, while Destiny's Child was completing their third album, Beyonc\u00e9 landed a major role in the MTV made-for-television film, \"\", starring alongside American actor Mekhi Phifer. Set in Philadelphia, the film is a modern interpretation of the 19th-century opera \"Carmen\" by French composer Georges Bizet. When the third album \"Survivor\" was released in May 2001, Luckett and Roberson filed a lawsuit claiming that the songs were aimed at them. The album debuted at number one on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200, with first-week sales of 663,000 copies sold. The album spawned other number-one hits, \"Bootylicious\" and the title track, \"Survivor\", the latter of which earned the group a Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. After releasing their holiday album \"8 Days of Christmas\" in October 2001, the group announced a hiatus to further pursue solo careers.\nIn July 2002, Beyonc\u00e9 made her theatrical film debut, playing Foxxy Cleopatra alongside Mike Myers in the comedy film \"Austin Powers in Goldmember\", which spent its first weekend atop the U.S. box office and grossed $73\u00a0million. Beyonc\u00e9 released \"Work It Out\" as the lead single from its soundtrack album which entered the top ten in the UK, Norway, and Belgium. In 2003, Beyonc\u00e9 starred opposite Cuba Gooding Jr. in the musical comedy \"The Fighting Temptations\" as Lilly, a single mother with whom Gooding's character falls in love. The film received mixed reviews from critics but grossed $30\u00a0million in the U.S. Beyonc\u00e9 released \"Fighting Temptation\" as the lead single from the film's soundtrack album, with Missy Elliott, MC Lyte, and Free which was also used to promote the film. Another of Beyonc\u00e9's contributions to the soundtrack, \"Summertime\", fared better on the U.S. charts.\n2003\u20132007: \"Dangerously in Love\", \"B'Day\", and \"Dreamgirls\".\nBeyonc\u00e9's first solo recording was a feature on Jay-Z's song \"'03 Bonnie & Clyde\" that was released in October 2002, peaking at number four on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart. On June 14, 2003, Beyonc\u00e9 premiered songs from her first solo album \"Dangerously in Love\" during her first solo concert and the pay-per-view television special, \"Ford Presents Beyonc\u00e9 Knowles, Friends & Family, Live From Ford's 100th Anniversary Celebration in Dearborn, Michigan\". The album was released on June 24, 2003, after Michelle Williams and Kelly Rowland had released their solo efforts. The album sold 317,000 copies in its first week, debuted atop the \"Billboard\" 200, and has since sold 11\u00a0million copies worldwide.\nThe album's lead single, \"Crazy in Love\", featuring Jay-Z, became Beyonc\u00e9's first number-one single as a solo artist in the US. The single \"Baby Boy\" also reached number one, and singles, \"Me, Myself and I\" and \"Naughty Girl\", both reached the top-five. The album earned Beyonc\u00e9 a then record-tying five awards at the 46th Annual Grammy Awards; Best Contemporary R&B Album, Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for \"Dangerously in Love 2\", Best R&B Song and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for \"Crazy in Love\", and Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals for \"The Closer I Get to You\" with Luther Vandross. During the ceremony, she performed with Prince.\nIn November 2003, she embarked on the Dangerously in Love Tour in Europe and later toured alongside Missy Elliott and Alicia Keys for the Verizon Ladies First Tour in North America. On February 1, 2004, Beyonc\u00e9 performed the American national anthem at Super Bowl XXXVIII, at the Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas. After the release of \"Dangerously in Love\", Beyonc\u00e9 had planned to produce a follow-up album using several of the left-over tracks. However, this was put on hold so she could concentrate on recording \"Destiny Fulfilled\", the final studio album by Destiny's Child. Released on November 15, 2004, in the U.S. and peaking at number two on the \"Billboard\" 200, \"Destiny Fulfilled\" included the singles \"Lose My Breath\" and \"Soldier\", which reached the top five on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart.\nDestiny's Child embarked on a worldwide concert tour, Destiny Fulfilled... and Lovin' It sponsored by McDonald's Corporation, and performed songs such as \"No, No, No\", \"Survivor\", \"Say My Name\", \"Independent Women\" and \"Lose My Breath\". In addition to renditions of the group's recorded material, they also performed songs from each singer's solo careers, including numbers from \"Dangerously in Love\". During the last stop of their European tour, in Barcelona on June 11, 2005, Rowland announced that Destiny's Child would disband following the North American leg of the tour. The group released their first compilation album \"Number\u00a01's\" on October 25, 2005, in the U.S. and accepted a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in March 2006. The group has sold 60\u00a0million records worldwide.\nBeyonc\u00e9's second solo album \"B'Day\" was released on September 4, 2006, in the U.S., to coincide with her twenty-fifth birthday. It sold 541,000 copies in its first week and debuted atop the \"Billboard\" 200, becoming Beyonc\u00e9's second consecutive number-one album in the United States. The album's lead single \"D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu\", featuring Jay-Z, reached the top five on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart. The second international single \"Irreplaceable\" was a commercial success worldwide, reaching number one in Australia, Hungary, Ireland, New Zealand and the United States. \"B'Day\" also produced three other singles; \"Ring the Alarm\", \"Get Me Bodied\", and \"Green Light\" (released in the United Kingdom only).\nAt the 49th Annual Grammy Awards (2007), \"B'Day\" was nominated for five Grammy Awards, including Best Contemporary R&B Album, Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for \"Ring the Alarm\" and Best R&B Song and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration\"for \"D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu\"; the Freemasons club mix of \"D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu\" without the rap was put forward in the Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical category. \"B'Day\" won the award for Best Contemporary R&B Album. The following year, \"B'Day\" received two nominations \u2013 for Record of the Year for \"Irreplaceable\" and Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for \"Beautiful Liar\" (with Shakira), also receiving a nomination for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for Motion Pictures, Television or Other Visual Media for her appearance on \"\" (2006).\nHer first acting role of 2006 was in the comedy film \"The Pink Panther\" starring opposite Steve Martin, grossing $158.8\u00a0million at the box office worldwide. Her second film \"Dreamgirls\", the film version of the 1981 Broadway musical loosely based on The Supremes, received acclaim from critics and grossed $154\u00a0million internationally. In it, she starred opposite Jennifer Hudson, Jamie Foxx, and Eddie Murphy playing a pop singer based on Diana Ross. To promote the film, Beyonc\u00e9 released \"Listen\" as the lead single from the . In April 2007, Beyonc\u00e9 embarked on The Beyonc\u00e9 Experience, her first worldwide concert tour, visiting 97 venues and grossed over $24\u00a0million. Beyonc\u00e9 conducted pre-concert food donation drives during six major stops in conjunction with her pastor at St. John's and America's Second Harvest. At the same time, \"B'Day\" was re-released with five additional songs, including her duet with Shakira \"Beautiful Liar\".\n2008\u20132012: \"I Am... Sasha Fierce\" and \"4\".\n\"I Am... Sasha Fierce\" was released in November 2008 and formally introduced Beyonc\u00e9's alter ego Sasha Fierce. It was met with mixed reviews from critics, but sold 482,000 copies in its first week, debuting atop the \"Billboard\" 200, and giving Beyonc\u00e9 her third consecutive number-one album in the U.S. The album featured her fourth UK number-one single \"If I Were a Boy\" and her fifth U.S. number-one song \"Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)\". \"Halo\" achieved the accomplishment of becoming her longest-running Hot 100 single in her career, \"Halo\"'s success in the U.S. helped Beyonc\u00e9 attain more top-ten singles on the list than any other woman during the 2000s.\nThe music video for \"Single Ladies\" has been parodied and imitated around the world, spawning the \"first major dance craze\" of the Internet age according to the \"Toronto Star\". At the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, the video won three categories, including Video of the Year. In March 2009, Beyonc\u00e9 embarked on the I Am... Tour, her second headlining worldwide concert tour, consisting of 108 shows, grossing $119.5\u00a0million.\nBeyonc\u00e9 further expanded her acting career, starring as blues singer Etta James in the 2008 musical biopic \"Cadillac Records\". Her performance in the film received praise from critics, and she garnered several nominations for her portrayal of James, including a Satellite Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and an NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress. Beyonc\u00e9 donated her entire salary from the film to Phoenix House, an organization of rehabilitation centers for heroin addicts around the country. Beyonc\u00e9 starred opposite Ali Larter and Idris Elba in the thriller, \"Obsessed\". She played Sharon Charles, a mother and wife whose family is threatened by her husband's stalker. The film received negative reviews from critics, and did well at the U.S. box office, grossing $68 million \u2013 $60 million more than \"Cadillac Records\"\u00a0\u2013 on a budget of $20\u00a0million.\nAt the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards, Beyonc\u00e9 received ten nominations, tying with Lauryn Hill for most Grammy nominations in a single year by a female artist. Beyonc\u00e9 went on to win six of those nominations, breaking a record she previously tied in 2004 for the most Grammy awards won in a single night by a female artist with six. In 2010, Beyonc\u00e9 provide guest vocals on Lady Gaga's single \"Telephone\". The song topped the U.S. Pop Songs chart, becoming the sixth number-one for both Beyonc\u00e9 and Gaga, tying them with Mariah Carey for most number-ones since the Nielsen Top 40 airplay chart launched in 1992.\nBeyonc\u00e9 announced a hiatus from her music career in January 2010, heeding her mother's advice, \"to live life, to be inspired by things again\". During the break, she and her father parted ways as business partners. Beyonc\u00e9's musical break lasted nine months and saw her visit multiple European cities, the Great Wall of China, the Egyptian pyramids, Australia, English music festivals and various museums and ballet performances. \"Eat, Play, Love\", a cover story written by Beyonc\u00e9 for \"Essence\" that detailed her 2010 career break, won her a writing award from the New York Association of Black Journalists.\nOn June 26, 2011, she became the first solo female artist to headline the main Pyramid stage at the 2011 Glastonbury Festival in over twenty years. The performance was lauded, with several publications noting an ascension in Knowles' capabilities as a live performer. Other publications discussed the polarized attitude of the UK music establishment in response to a Black woman performing on the same stages and to the same crowd sizes that were past reserved for legacy rock acts. Her fourth studio album \"4\" was released two days prior in the U.S. \"4\" sold 310,000 copies in its first week and debuted atop the \"Billboard\" 200 chart, giving Beyonc\u00e9 her fourth consecutive number-one album in the U.S. The album was preceded by two of its singles \"Run the World (Girls)\" and \"Best Thing I Never Had\". The fourth single \"Love on Top\" spent seven consecutive weeks at number one on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, while peaking at number 20 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, the highest peak from the album.\nIn late 2011, she took the stage at New York's Roseland Ballroom for four nights of special performances: the 4 Intimate Nights with Beyonc\u00e9 concerts saw the performance of her \"4\" album to a standing room only. On August 1, 2011, the album was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), having shipped 1\u00a0million copies to retail stores. By December 2015, it reached sales of 1.5\u00a0million copies in the U.S. The album reached one billion Spotify streams on February 5, 2018, making Beyonc\u00e9 the first female artist to have three of their albums surpass one billion streams on the platform. In June 2012, she at Revel Atlantic City's Ovation Hall to celebrate the resort's opening, her first performances since giving birth to her daughter.\n2013\u20132014: \"Beyonc\u00e9\".\nIn January 2013, Beyonc\u00e9 performed the American national anthem singing along with a pre-recorded track at President Obama's second inauguration in Washington, D.C. The following month, Beyonc\u00e9 performed at the Super Bowl XLVII halftime show, held at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans. The performance stands as the second most tweeted about moment in history at 268,000 tweets per minute. Her feature-length documentary film, \"Life Is But a Dream\", first aired on HBO on February 16, 2013. The film was co-directed by Beyonc\u00e9 herself.\nBeyonc\u00e9 embarked on The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour on April 15 in Belgrade, Serbia; the tour included 132 dates that ran through to March 2014. It became the one of the most successful tours of her career. In May, Beyonc\u00e9's cover of Amy Winehouse's \"Back to Black\" with Andr\u00e9 3000 on \"The Great Gatsby\" soundtrack was released. Beyonc\u00e9 voiced Queen Tara in the 3D CGI animated film, \"Epic\", released by 20th Century Fox on May 24, and recorded an original song for the film, \"Rise Up\", co-written with Sia.\nOn December 13, 2013, Beyonc\u00e9 unexpectedly released her eponymous fifth studio album on the iTunes Store without any prior announcement or promotion. The album debuted atop the \"Billboard\" 200 chart, giving Beyonc\u00e9 her fifth consecutive number-one album in the U.S. This made her the first woman in the chart's history to have her first five studio albums debut at number one. \"Beyonc\u00e9\" received critical acclaim and commercial success, selling one million digital copies worldwide in six days; Musically an electro-R&B album, it concerns darker themes previously unexplored in her work, such as \"bulimia, postnatal depression [and] the fears and insecurities of marriage and motherhood\". The single \"Drunk in Love\", featuring Jay-Z, peaked at number two on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart.\nAccording to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), \"Beyonc\u00e9\" sold 2.3\u00a0million units worldwide, becoming the tenth best-selling album of 2013. The album also went on to become the twentieth best-selling album of 2014. As of November\u00a02014[ [update]], \"Beyonc\u00e9\" has sold over 5\u00a0million copies worldwide and has generated over 1\u00a0billion streams, as of March\u00a02015[ [update]]. At the 57th Annual Grammy Awards in February 2015, Beyonc\u00e9 was nominated for six awards, ultimately winning three: Best R&B Performance and Best R&B Song for \"Drunk in Love\", and Best Surround Sound Album for \"Beyonc\u00e9\".\nIn April 2014, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z officially announced their On the Run Tour. It served as the couple's first co-headlining stadium tour together. On August 24, 2014, she received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards. Beyonc\u00e9 also won home three competitive awards: Best Video with a Social Message and Best Cinematography for \"Pretty Hurts\", as well as best collaboration for \"Drunk in Love\". In November, \"Forbes\" reported that Beyonc\u00e9 was the top-earning woman in music for the second year in a row\u00a0\u2013 earning $115\u00a0million in the year, more than double her earnings in 2013.\n2015\u20132017: \"Lemonade\".\nBeyonc\u00e9 released \"Formation\" in on February 6, 2016, and performed it live for the first time during the NFL Super Bowl 50 halftime show. The appearance was considered controversial as it appeared to reference the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party and the NFL forbids political statements in its performances. Immediately following the performance, Beyonc\u00e9 announced The Formation World Tour, which highlighted stops in both North America and Europe. It marked the first ever all-stadium tour by a female artist and ended on October 7, with Beyonc\u00e9 bringing out her husband Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, and Serena Williams for the last show. The tour went on to win Tour of the Year at the 44th American Music Awards.\nIn April 2016, Beyonc\u00e9 released a teaser clip for a project called \"Lemonade\". A one-hour film which aired on HBO on April 23, a corresponding album with the same title was released on the same day exclusively on Tidal. \"Lemonade\" debuted at number one on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200, making Beyonc\u00e9 the first act in \"Billboard\" history to have their first six studio albums debut atop the chart; she broke a record previously tied with DMX in 2013. With all 12 tracks of \"Lemonade\" debuting on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart, Beyonc\u00e9 also became the first female act to chart 12 or more songs at the same time. \"Lemonade\" was streamed 115\u00a0million times through Tidal, setting a record for the most-streamed album in a single week by a female artist in history. It was 2016's third highest-selling album in the U.S. with 1.554\u00a0million copies sold in that time period within the country as well as the best-selling album worldwide with global sales of 2.5\u00a0million throughout the year.\n\"Lemonade\" became the most critically acclaimed work of her career. Several music publications included the album among the best of 2016, including \"Rolling Stone\", which listed \"Lemonade\" at number one. The album's visuals were nominated in 11 categories at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards, the most ever received by Beyonc\u00e9 in a single year, and went on to win 8 awards, including Video of the Year for \"Formation\". The eight wins made Beyonc\u00e9 the most-awarded artist in the history of the VMAs (24), surpassing Madonna (20). Beyonc\u00e9 occupied the sixth place for \"Time\" magazine's 2016 Person of the Year.\nIn January 2017, it was announced that Beyonc\u00e9 would headline the Coachella Music and Arts Festival. This would have made Beyonc\u00e9 only the second female headliner of the festival since it was founded in 1999. It was later announced on February 23, 2017, that Beyonc\u00e9 would no longer be able to perform at the festival due to doctor's concerns regarding her pregnancy. The festival owners announced that she would instead headline the 2018 festival. Upon the announcement of Beyonc\u00e9's departure from the festival lineup, ticket prices dropped by 12%. At the 59th Grammy Awards in February 2017, \"Lemonade\" led the nominations with nine, including Album, Record, and Song of the Year for \"Lemonade\" and \"Formation\" respectively, ultimately winning two, Best Urban Contemporary Album for \"Lemonade\" and Best Music Video for \"Formation\".\nIn September 2017, Beyonc\u00e9 collaborated with J Balvin and Willy William, to release a remix of the song \"Mi Gente\". Beyonc\u00e9 donated all proceeds from the song to hurricane charities for those affected by Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma in Texas, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and other Caribbean Islands. On November 10, Eminem released \"Walk on Water\" featuring Beyonc\u00e9 as the lead single from his album \"Revival\". On November 30, Ed Sheeran announced that Beyonc\u00e9 would feature on the remix to his song \"Perfect\". \"Perfect Duet\" was released on December 1, 2017. The song reached number-one in the United States, becoming Beyonc\u00e9's sixth song of her solo career to do so.\n2018\u20132021: \"Everything Is Love\" and \"The Lion King\".\nOn January 4, 2018, the music video of Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z's \"\" collaboration, \"Family Feud\" was released. It was directed by Ava DuVernay. On March 1, 2018, DJ Khaled released \"Top Off\" as the first single from his forthcoming album \"Father of Asahd\" featuring Beyonc\u00e9, husband Jay-Z, and Future. On April 14, 2018, Beyonc\u00e9 played the first of two weekends as the headlining act of the Coachella Music Festival. Her performance of April 14, attended by 125,000 festival-goers, was immediately praised, with multiple media outlets describing it as historic. It was also named one of the greatest concert performances of all time. The performance became the most-tweeted-about performance of weekend one, as well as the most-watched live Coachella performance and the most-watched live performance on YouTube of all time. The show paid tribute to black culture, specifically historically black colleges and universities and featured a live band with over 100 dancers. Destiny's Child also reunited during the show. Its livestream on YouTube was the most watched of all time.\nOn June 6, 2018, Beyonc\u00e9 and husband Jay-Z kicked-off the On the Run II Tour in Cardiff, United Kingdom. Ten days later, at their final London performance, the pair unveiled \"Everything Is Love\", their joint studio album, credited under the name The Carters, and initially available exclusively on Tidal. The pair also released the video for the album's lead single, \"Apeshit\", on Beyonc\u00e9's official YouTube channel. \"Everything Is Love\" received generally positive reviews, and debuted at number two on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200, with 123,000 album-equivalent units, of which 70,000 were pure album sales. On December 2, 2018, Beyonc\u00e9 alongside Jay-Z headlined the Global Citizen Festival: Mandela 100 which was held at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa. Their 2-hour performance had concepts similar to the On the Run II Tour and Beyonc\u00e9 was praised for her outfits, which paid tribute to Africa's diversity.\n', a documentary and concert film focusing on Beyonc\u00e9's historic 2018 Coachella performances, was released by Netflix on April 17, 2019. The film was accompanied by the surprise live album '. It was later reported that Beyonc\u00e9 and Netflix had signed a $60\u00a0million deal to produce three different projects, one of which is \"Homecoming\". \"Homecoming: A Film by Beyonc\u00e9\" received six nominations at the 71st Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards.\nBeyonc\u00e9 starred as the voice of Nala in the remake \"The Lion King\", which was released in July 2019. Beyonc\u00e9 is featured on the film's soundtrack, released on July 11, 2019, with a remake of the song \"Can You Feel the Love Tonight\" alongside Donald Glover, Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen, which was originally composed by Elton John. An original song from the film by Beyonc\u00e9, \"Spirit\", was released as the lead single from both the soundtrack and \"\" \u2013 a companion album released alongside the film, produced and curated by Beyonc\u00e9.\nBeyonc\u00e9 called \"The Lion King: The Gift\" a \"sonic cinema\". She stated that the album was influenced by R&B,\u00a0pop,\u00a0hip hop, gqom and\u00a0Afro Beat. The songs were produced by African producers, which Beyonc\u00e9 said was because \"authenticity and heart were important to [her]\", since the film is set in Africa. In September of the same year, a documentary chronicling the development, production and early music video filming of \"The Lion King: The Gift\" entitled \"\" was aired on ABC.\nIn April 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 was featured on the remix of Megan Thee Stallion's song \"Savage\", marking her first music release for the year. The song peaked at number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, marking Beyonc\u00e9's eleventh song to do so across all acts. On June 19, 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 released the nonprofit charity single \"Black Parade\". On June 23, she followed up the release of its studio version with an a cappella version exclusively on Tidal. \"Black Is King\", a visual album based on the music of \"The Lion King: The Gift\", premiered globally on Disney+ on July 31, 2020. Produced by Disney and Parkwood Entertainment, the film was written, directed and executively produced by Beyonc\u00e9. The film was described by Disney as \"a celebratory memoir for the world on the Black experience\". Beyonc\u00e9 received the most nominations (9) at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards and the most awards (4), which made her the most-awarded singer, most-awarded female artist, and second-most-awarded artist in Grammy history. In 2021, Beyonc\u00e9 wrote and recorded a song titled \"Be Alive\" for the biographical drama film \"King Richard\". She received her first Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song at the 94th Academy Awards for the song, alongside co-writer Dixson.\n2022\u2013present: \"Renaissance\" and \"Cowboy Carter\".\nOn March 27, 2022, Beyonc\u00e9 performed \"Be Alive\" at the 94th Academy Awards. Choreographed by friend and past collaborator Fatima Robinson, Beyonc\u00e9 was applauded for choosing to perform on the Compton tennis courts Venus and Serena Williams practiced on in their childhood instead of at the venue.\nOn June 9, 2022, Beyonc\u00e9 removed her profile pictures across various social media platforms, causing speculation that she would be releasing new music. Days later, Beyonc\u00e9 caused further speculation via her nonprofit BeyGood's Twitter account hinting at her upcoming seventh studio album. On June 15, 2022, Beyonc\u00e9 officially announced her seventh studio album, titled \"Renaissance\". The lead single of \"Renaissance\", \"Break My Soul\", was released on June 20, 2022. The album was released on July 29, 2022. \"Break My Soul\" became Beyonc\u00e9's 20th top ten single on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, which made her join Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson as the only artists in Hot 100 history to achieve at least twenty top tens as a solo artist and ten as a member of a group.\nAs \"Renaissance\" was released, Beyonc\u00e9 announced that the album was the first installment of a trilogy she conceived and recorded over three years during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time she found to be her \"most creative [period].\" The three recorded projects are designated into acts under Roman numerals. Upon release, \"Renaissance\" received universal acclaim from critics. \"Renaissance\" debuted at number one on the \"Billboard\" 200 chart, making her the first female artist to have her first seven studio albums debut at number one in the United States. \"Break My Soul\" concurrently rose to number-one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, becoming the twelfth song to do so across her career discography.\nOn January 21, 2023, Beyonc\u00e9 performed in Dubai at a private show. The performance, which was her first full concert in more than four years, was delivered to an audience of influencers and journalists. Beyonc\u00e9 was reportedly paid $24 million to perform. Beyonc\u00e9 faced criticism for her decision to perform in the United Arab Emirates where homosexuality is illegal. On February 1, Beyonc\u00e9 announced the Renaissance World Tour with dates in North America and Europe, which would become for a short-span the highest-grossing tour by a female artist. On July 28, Beyonc\u00e9 appeared on \"Delresto (Echoes)\", the second single from rapper Travis Scott's album \"Utopia\", eventually becoming her 100th career appearance on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart (encompassing Destiny's Child, her solo career, and musical duo The Carters). On November 30, 2023, Beyonc\u00e9 released documentary concert film \"\" written, directed, and produced by her in collaboration with film distributor AMC Theatres. The film chronicles the development and execution of Beyonc\u00e9's Renaissance World Tour, and contained new song \"My House\" in the end credits.\nIn February 2024, Beyonc\u00e9 launched her hair care brand C\u00e9cred. On February 11, 2024, immediately following a partner commercial with Verizon for the Super Bowl LVIII, she announced the second installment of her trilogy project and released its first two songs, \"Texas Hold 'Em\" and \"16 Carriages\". \"Texas Hold 'Em\" became her highest chart debut in her career, her ninth solo number-one and her thirteenth across all credits on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. On March 12, 2024, she announced the album's title, \"Cowboy Carter\". A country and gospel-tinged record, it was released on March 29 to universal acclaim from critics, and includes collaborations with artists including Tanner Adell and her daughter Rumi Carter, Miley Cyrus, Tiera Kennedy, Willie Jones, Post Malone, Linda Martell, Willie Nelson, Shaboozey, Brittney Spencer, Dolly Parton, and Reyna Roberts.\nIn July 2024, NBC released two promotional commercials featuring Beyonc\u00e9 for their coverage of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France. Set to \"Cowboy Carter\" songs \"Ya Ya\" and \"Just For Fun\", she introduced the entire USA Olympic Team and Gold-medal gymnast Simone Biles, respectively. On August 20, Beyonc\u00e9 announced SirDavis, a whiskey in collaboration with Mo\u00ebt Hennessy developed for years prior and co-founded with master distiller Dr. Bill Lumsden. In October 2024, Levi's launched a four-part global campaign with Beyonc\u00e9 titled \"Reiimagine\" that will stretch into 2025 and focus on women's history of the company, using \"Cowboy Carter\" track \"Levii's Jeans\". The first commercial starring Beyonc\u00e9 amassed 2.4 billion impressions in under a month.\nBeyonc\u00e9 reprised her role as Nala for \"\", a prequel to the 2019 remake, released in December 2024. She headlined the first ever NFL Christmas Gameday Halftime Show that month, performing songs from \"Cowboy Carter\" for the first time. The \"Cowboy Carter Tour\" was announced on February 1, 2025. At the 67th Annual Grammy Awards, Beyonc\u00e9 became the first Black artist in 50 years, since Charley Pride and the Pointer Sisters, to win an award in the country music categories. She is the first Black artist ever to win the Grammy Award for Best Country Album. She additionally won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, becoming the first Black woman to do so since Lauryn Hill won for \"The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill\" in 1999.\nArtistry.\nVoice and musical style.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n With \"Single Ladies\", clearly I'd just gotten married, and people want to get married every day\u00a0\u2013 then there was the whole Justin Timberlake thing [recreating the video] on \"Saturday Night Live\", and it was also the year YouTube blew up. With \"Irreplaceable\", the aggressive lyrics, the acoustic guitar, and the 808 drum machine\u00a0\u2013 those things don't typically go together, and it sounded fresh. \"Crazy in Love\" was another one of those classic moments in pop culture that none of us expected. I asked Jay to get on the song the night before I had to turn my album in \u2013 thank God he did. It still never gets old, no matter how many times I sing it.\n\u2014Beyonc\u00e9\nCritics have described Beyonc\u00e9's voice as being mezzo-soprano. Jody Rosen highlights her tone and timbre as particularly distinctive, describing her voice as \"one of the most compelling instruments in popular music\". Her vocal abilities mean she is identified as the centerpiece of Destiny's Child. Jon Pareles of \"The New York Times\" commented that her voice is \"velvety yet tart, with an insistent flutter and reserves of soul belting\". Rosen notes that the hip hop era highly influenced Beyonc\u00e9's unique rhythmic vocal style, but also finds her quite traditionalist in her use of balladry, gospel and falsetto.\nOther critics praise her range and power, with Chris Richards of \"The Washington Post\" saying she was \"capable of punctuating any beat with goose-bump-inducing whispers or full-bore diva-roars.\" On the 2023 \"Rolling Stone\"'s list of the 200 Greatest Singers of all time, Beyonc\u00e9 ranked at number 8, with the publication noting that \"in [her] voice lies the entire history of Black music\".\nBeyonc\u00e9's music is generally R&B, pop and hip hop but she also incorporates soul and funk into her songs. \"4\" demonstrated Beyonc\u00e9's exploration of 1990s-style R&B, as well as further use of soul and hip hop than compared to previous releases. While she almost exclusively releases English songs, Beyonc\u00e9 recorded several Spanish songs for \"Irreemplazable\" (re-recordings of songs from \"B'Day\" for a Spanish-language audience), and the re-release of \"B'Day\". To record these, Beyonc\u00e9 was coached phonetically by American record producer Rudy Perez.\nSongwriting.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has received co-writing credits for most of her songs. Her early songs with Destiny's Child were personally driven and female-empowerment themed compositions like \"Independent Women\" and \"Survivor\", but after the start of her relationship with Jay-Z, she transitioned to more man-tending anthems such as \"Cater 2 U\".\nBeyonc\u00e9's songwriting process is also known for combining parts of different tracks, resulting in alteration of song structures. Sia, who co-wrote \"Pretty Hurts\", called Beyonc\u00e9 \"very Frankenstein when she comes to songs\"; Diana Gordon, who co-wrote \"Don't Hurt Yourself\" called her a \"scientist of songs\"; Caroline Polachek who co-wrote \"No Angel\", called her a \"genius writer and producer for this reason. She's so good at seeing connections.\"\nIn 2001, she became the first Black woman and second female lyricist to win the Pop Songwriter of the Year award at the ASCAP Pop Music Awards. Beyonc\u00e9 was the third woman to have writing credits on three number-one songs (\"Irreplaceable\", \"Grillz\" and \"Check on It\") in the same year, after Carole King in 1971 and Mariah Carey in 1991. She is tied with American lyricist Diane Warren at third with nine songwriting credits on number-one singles. The latter wrote her song \"I Was Here\" for \"4\", which was motivated by the September 11 attacks. In May 2011, \"Billboard\" magazine listed Beyonc\u00e9 at number 17 on their list of the Top 20 Hot 100 Songwriters for having co-written eight singles that hit number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart. She was one of only three women on that list, along with Alicia Keys and Taylor Swift.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has received criticism, including from journalists and musicians, for the extensive writing credits on her songs. The controversy surrounding her songwriting credits began with interviews in which she attributed herself as the songwriter for songs in which she was a co-writer or for which her contributions were marginal. In a cover story for \"Vanity Fair\" in 2005, she claimed to have \"written\" several number-one songs for Destiny's Child, contrary to the credits, which list her as a co-writer among others. During a 2007 interview with Barbara Walters, she claimed to have conceived the musical idea for the Destiny's Child song \"Bootylicious\", which provoked the song's producer Rob Fusari to call her father and then-manager Mathew Knowles in protest over the claim. In 2010, Fusari told \"Billboard\": \"[Knowles] explained to me, in a nice way, he said, 'People don't want to hear about Rob Fusari, producer from Livingston, N.J. No offense, but that's not what sells records. What sells records is people believing that the artist is everything.'\" However, in an interview for \"Entertainment Weekly\" in 2016, Fusari said Beyonc\u00e9 \"had the 'Bootylicious' concept in her head. That was totally her. She knew what she wanted to say. It was very urban pop angle that they were taking on the record.\"\nProduction.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I am really passionate about all of the steps [during] the production [...] I love to stack vocals, and I love to create my own little Oreo with arrangements, sometimes it can be thousands of vocals [and then] I go back and then kind of piece things together, because usually the songs are way too long [...] I go back and edit the structure of the song. [I] make sure that [...] every section has an intention, so that takes months. [...] I hear certain elements of things that go with things that are opposites. I am rarely happy with one track, it's usually four or five things put together that again don't really go together. I am so excited when I'm able to adjust the tempo and key and mute certain elements that don't complement and put opposites together. Sometimes it's just like the EQ of a synth or the warmth of a bass or the distortion of a bass that's on a different song and I can hear like, 'Ah! That's exactly what is missing to make the track full and complete!'\nBeyonc\u00e9's collaborators frequently mention her involvement in the record production of her songs, sometimes describing her as a genius in the skill. She is known to have favorite saturation and distortion plug\u2011ins and intentionality about stereo imaging.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />She is a true genius at producing and she\u2019s brilliantly right on it, all the time. [...] We have very similar taste in sonics and we\u2019re always painting in the sense that there\u2019s a focal point \u2014 the lead vocals, the drums, the bass, the chords, all the stuff that\u2019s the meat of the track \u2014 and then we\u2019ve got all these sounds that are more in the distance, as in \u2018Let\u2019s make this sound like it\u2019s down a long hallway, or in a fishbowl.\u2019 I work closely with her in terms of where stuff goes in a 3D space.\nInfluences.\nBeyonc\u00e9 names Michael Jackson as her major musical influence. Aged five, Beyonc\u00e9 attended her first ever concert where Jackson performed and she claims to have realized her purpose. When she presented him with a tribute award at the World Music Awards in 2006, Beyonc\u00e9 said, \"if it wasn't for Michael Jackson, I would never ever have performed.\" Beyonc\u00e9 was heavily influenced by Tina Turner, and once said \"Tina Turner is someone that I admire, because she made her strength feminine and sexy\".\nShe admires Diana Ross as an \"all-around entertainer\", and Whitney Houston, who she said \"inspired me to get up there and do what she did\". Beyonc\u00e9 cited Madonna as an influence \"not only for her musical style, but also for her business sense\", saying that she wanted to \"follow in the footsteps of Madonna and be a powerhouse and have my own empire\". She also credits Mariah Carey's singing and her song \"Vision of Love\" as influencing her to begin practicing vocal runs as a child. Her other musical influences include Rachelle Ferrell, Aaliyah, Janet Jackson, Prince, Lauryn Hill, Sade Adu, Donna Summer, Fairuz, Mary J. Blige, Selena, Anita Baker, and Toni Braxton.\nThe feminism and female empowerment themes on Beyonc\u00e9's second solo album \"B'Day\" were inspired by her role in \"Dreamgirls\" and by singer Josephine Baker. Beyonc\u00e9 paid homage to Baker by performing \"D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu\" at the 2006 Fashion Rocks concert wearing Baker's trademark mini-hula skirt embellished with fake bananas. Beyonc\u00e9's third solo album, \"I Am... Sasha Fierce\", was inspired by Jay-Z and especially by Etta James, whose \"boldness\" inspired Beyonc\u00e9 to explore other musical genres and styles. Her fourth solo album, \"4\", was inspired by Fela Kuti, 1990s R&B, Earth, Wind & Fire, DeBarge, Lionel Richie, Teena Marie, The Jackson 5, New Edition, Adele, Florence and the Machine, and Prince.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has stated that she is personally inspired by Michelle Obama (the 44th First Lady of the United States), saying \"she proves you can do it all\", and has described Oprah Winfrey as \"the definition of inspiration and a strong woman\". She has also discussed how Jay-Z is a continuing inspiration to her, both with what she describes as his lyrical genius and in the obstacles he has overcome in his life. Beyonc\u00e9 has expressed admiration for the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, posting in a letter \"what I find in the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, I search for in every day in music\u00a0... he is lyrical and raw\". Beyonc\u00e9 has also cited Cher as a fashion inspiration.\nVideography and stage.\nIn 2006, Beyonc\u00e9 introduced her all-female tour band Suga Mama (also the name of a song on \"B'Day\") which includes bassists, drummers, guitarists, horn players, keyboardists and percussionists. Her background singers, The Mamas, consist of Montina Cooper-Donnell, Crystal Collins and Tiffany Moniqu\u00e9 Riddick. They made their debut appearance at the 2006 BET Awards and re-appeared in the music videos for \"Irreplaceable\" and \"Green Light\". The band have supported Beyonc\u00e9 in most subsequent live performances, including her 2007 concert tour The Beyonc\u00e9 Experience, I Am... Tour (2009\u20132010), The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour (2013\u20132014) and The Formation World Tour (2016).\nBeyonc\u00e9 has received praise for her stage presence and voice during live performances. According to Barbara Ellen of \"The Guardian,\" Beyonc\u00e9 is the most in-charge female artist she's seen onstage. Similarly, Alice Jones of \"The Independent\" wrote she \"takes her role as entertainer so seriously she's almost too good\". The ex-President of Def Jam L.A. Reid has described Beyonc\u00e9 as the greatest entertainer alive. Jim Farber of the \"Daily News\" and Stephanie Classen of \"The StarPhoenix\" both praised her strong voice and her stage presence. \nBeyonc\u00e9 has worked with numerous directors for her music videos throughout her career, including Melina Matsoukas, Jonas \u00c5kerlund, and Jake Nava. Bill Condon, director of \"Beauty and the Beast\", stated that the \"Lemonade\" visuals in particular served as inspiration for his film, commenting, \"You look at Beyonc\u00e9's brilliant movie \"Lemonade\", this genre is taking on so many different forms\u00a0... I do think that this very old-school break-out-into-song traditional musical is something that people understand again and really want.\"\nAlter ego.\nDescribed as being \"sexy, seductive and provocative\" when performing on stage, Beyonc\u00e9 has said that she originally created the alter ego \"Sasha Fierce\" to keep that stage persona separate from who she really is. She described Sasha Fierce as being \"too aggressive, too strong, too sassy [and] too sexy\", stating, \"I'm not like her in real life at all.\" Sasha was conceived during the making of \"Crazy in Love\", and Beyonc\u00e9 introduced her with the release of her 2008 album, \"I Am... Sasha Fierce\". In February 2010, she announced in an interview with \"Allure\" magazine that she was comfortable enough with herself to no longer need Sasha Fierce. However, Beyonc\u00e9 announced in May 2012 that she would bring her back for her \"Revel Presents: Beyonc\u00e9 Live\" shows later that month.\nPublic image.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has been described as having sex appeal, with music journalist Tour\u00e9 writing that since the release of \"Dangerously in Love\", she has \"become a crossover sex symbol\". When off stage, Beyonc\u00e9 says that while she likes to dress sexily, her onstage dress \"is absolutely for the stage\". Due to her curves and the term's catchiness, in the 2000s, the media often used the term \"bootylicious\" (a portmanteau of the words \"booty\" and \"delicious\") to describe Beyonc\u00e9, the term popularized by the single of the same name by her group Destiny's Child. In 2006, it was added to the \"Oxford English Dictionary\".\nIn September 2010, Beyonc\u00e9 made her runway modelling debut at Tom Ford's Spring/Summer 2011 fashion show. She was named the \"World's Most Beautiful Woman\" by \"People\" and the \"Hottest Female Singer of All Time\" by \"Complex\" in 2012. In January 2013, \"GQ\" placed her on its cover, featuring her atop its \"100 Sexiest Women of the 21st Century\" list. VH1 listed her at number 1 on its 100 Sexiest Artists list. Several wax figures of Beyonc\u00e9 are found at Madame Tussauds Wax Museums in major cities around the world.\nAccording to Italian fashion designer Roberto Cavalli, Beyonc\u00e9 uses different fashion styles to work with her music while performing. Her mother co-wrote a book, published in 2002, titled \"Destiny's Style\", an account of how fashion affected the trio's success. The \"B'Day Anthology Video Album\" showed many instances of fashion-oriented footage, depicting classic to contemporary wardrobe styles. In 2007, Beyonc\u00e9 was featured on the cover of the \"Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue\", becoming the second African American woman after model and television personality Tyra Banks, and \"People\" magazine recognized Beyonc\u00e9 as the best-dressed celebrity.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has been nicknamed \"Queen Bey\" by publications over the years. The term is a reference to the common phrase \"queen bee\", a term used for the leader of a group of females. The nickname also refers to the Queen bee of a beehive, with her fan base being named \"BeyHive\". \"BeyHive\" was previously titled \"The Beyontourage\", (a portmanteau of Beyonc\u00e9 and entourage), but was changed after online petitions on Twitter and online news reports during competitions.\nIn 2006, the animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), criticized Beyonc\u00e9 for wearing and using fur in her clothing line House of Der\u00e9on. Emmett Price, a professor of music at Northeastern University, wrote in 2007 that he thinks race plays a role in many criticisms of Beyonc\u00e9's image, saying white celebrities who dress similarly do not attract as many comments. In 2008, the French personal care company L'Or\u00e9al was accused of whitening her skin in Feria hair color advertisements, responding that \"it is categorically untrue\", while Beyonc\u00e9 reportedly pressured H&M to use \"only natural pictures\" instead of retouching images in a 2013 campaign.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has been a vocal advocate for the Black Lives Matter movement. The release of \"Formation\" on February 6, 2016, saw her celebrate her Sub-Saharan Black African ancestry, with the song's music video featuring pro-black imagery and a shot of wall graffiti that says \"Stop shooting us\". The day after the song's release, she performed it at the 2016 Super Bowl halftime show with back up dancers dressed to represent the Black Panther Party. This incited criticism from conservative politicians and police officers, with some police boycotting Beyonc\u00e9's then upcoming Formation World Tour. Beyonc\u00e9 responded to the backlash by releasing tour merchandise that said \"Boycott Beyonc\u00e9\", and later clarified her sentiment, saying: \"Anyone who perceives my message as anti-police is completely mistaken. I have so much admiration and respect for officers and the families of officers who sacrifice themselves to keep us safe,\" Beyonc\u00e9 said. \"But let's be clear: I am against police brutality and injustice. Those are two separate things.\"\nPersonal life.\nMarriage and children.\nIn 2002, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z collaborated on the song \"'03 Bonnie & Clyde\", which appeared on his seventh album \"\" (2002). Beyonc\u00e9 appeared as Jay-Z's girlfriend in the music video for the song, fueling speculation about their relationship. On April 4, 2008, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z married without publicity. As of April\u00a02014[ [update]], the couple had sold a combined 300\u00a0million records together. They are known for their private relationship, although they have appeared to become more relaxed since 2013. Both have acknowledged difficulty that arose in their marriage after Jay-Z had an affair.\nBeyonc\u00e9 miscarried around 2010 or 2011, describing it as \"the saddest thing\" she had ever endured. She returned to the studio and wrote music to cope with the loss. In April 2011, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z traveled to Paris to shoot the album cover for \"4\", where she unexpectedly became pregnant. In August, the couple attended the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, at which Beyonc\u00e9 performed \"Love On Top\" and ended the performance by revealing she was pregnant. Her appearance helped that year's MTV Video Music Awards become the most-watched broadcast in MTV history, pulling in 12.4\u00a0million viewers; the announcement was listed in \"Guinness World Records\" for \"most tweets per second recorded for a single event\" on Twitter, receiving 8,868 tweets per second and \"Beyonce pregnant\" was the most Googled phrase the week of August 29, 2011. On January 7, 2012, Beyonc\u00e9 gave birth to a daughter, Blue Ivy, at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.\nFollowing the release of \"Lemonade\", which included the single \"Sorry\", in 2016, speculations arose about Jay-Z's alleged infidelity with a mistress referred to as \"Becky\". Jon Pareles in \"The New York Times\" pointed out that many of the accusations were \"aimed specifically and recognizably\" at him. Similarly, Rob Sheffield of \"Rolling Stone\" noted the lines \"Suck on my balls, I've had enough\" were an \"unmistakable hint\" that the lyrics revolve around Jay-Z.\nOn February 1, 2017, she revealed on her Instagram account that she was expecting twins. Her announcement gained over 6.3\u00a0million likes within eight hours, breaking the world record for the most liked image on the website at the time. On July 13, 2017, Beyonc\u00e9 uploaded the first image of herself and the twins onto her Instagram account, confirming their birth date as a month prior, on June 13, 2017, with the post becoming the second most liked on Instagram, behind her own pregnancy announcement. The twins, a daughter named Rumi and a son named Sir, were born at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in California via caesarean section. She wrote of her pregnancy and its aftermath in the September 2018 issue of \"Vogue\", in which she had full control of the cover, shot at Hammerwood Park by photographer Tyler Mitchell.\nPolitics.\nBeyonc\u00e9 performed \"America the Beautiful\" at President Barack Obama's 2009 presidential inauguration, as well as \"At Last\" during the first inaugural dance at the Neighborhood Ball two days later. The couple held a fundraiser at Jay-Z's 40/40 Club in Manhattan for President Obama's 2012 presidential campaign which raised $4\u00a0million. Beyonc\u00e9 voted for Obama in the 2012 presidential election. She performed the American national anthem \"The Star-Spangled Banner\" at his second inauguration in January 2013.\n\"The Washington Post\" reported in May 2015, that Beyonc\u00e9 attended a major celebrity fundraiser for 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. She also headlined for Clinton in a concert held the weekend before Election Day the next year. In this performance, Beyonc\u00e9 and her entourage of backup dancers wore pantsuits; a clear allusion to Clinton's frequent dress-of-choice. The backup dancers also wore\u00a0\"I'm with her\"\u00a0tee shirts, the campaign slogan for Clinton. In a brief speech at this performance Beyonc\u00e9 said, \"I want my daughter to grow up seeing a woman lead our country and knowing that her possibilities are limitless.\" She endorsed the bid of Beto O'Rourke during the 2018 United States Senate election in Texas.\nIn July 2024, Beyonc\u00e9 gave Vice President Kamala Harris permission to use \"Lemonade\" promotional single \"Freedom\" as the official song for her 2024 presidential campaign. Harris subsequently launched a digital ad in support of her candidacy featuring the song. In October 2024, Beyonc\u00e9, alongside her mother Tina and Kelly Rowland endorsed Harris for president at a campaign rally in her hometown of Houston.\nActivism.\nIn a 2013 interview with \"Vogue\", Beyonc\u00e9 stated that she considered herself to be \"a modern-day feminist\". She would later align herself more publicly with the movement, sampling \"We should all be feminists\", a speech delivered by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at a TEDx talk in April 2013, in her song \"Flawless\", released later that year. The next year she performed live at the MTV Video Awards in front a giant backdrop reading \"Feminist\". Her self-identification incited a circulation of opinions and debate about whether her feminism is aligned with older, more established feminist ideals. Annie Lennox, celebrated artist and feminist advocate, referred to Beyonc\u00e9's use of her word feminist as 'feminist lite'.\nAdichie responded with \"her type of feminism is not mine, as it is the kind that, at the same time, gives quite a lot of space to the necessity of men.\" Adichie expands upon what \"feminist lite\" means to her, referring that \"more troubling is the idea, in Feminism Lite, that men are naturally superior but should be expected to 'treat women well'\" and \"we judge powerful women more harshly than we judge powerful men. And Feminism Lite enables this.\" Beyonc\u00e9 responded about her intent by utilizing the definition of feminist with her platform was to \"give clarity to the true meaning\" behind it. She says to understand what being a feminist is, \"it's very simple. It's someone who believes in equal rights for men and women.\"\nShe has also contributed to the Ban Bossy campaign, which uses TV and social media to encourage leadership in girls. Following Beyonc\u00e9's public identification as a feminist, the sexualized nature of her performances and the fact that she championed her marriage was questioned.\nIn December 2012, Beyonc\u00e9 along with a variety of other celebrities teamed up and produced a video campaign for \"Demand A Plan\", a bipartisan effort by a group of 950 U.S. mayors and others designed to influence the federal government into rethinking its gun control laws, following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Beyonc\u00e9 publicly endorsed same-sex marriage on March 26, 2013, after the Supreme Court debate on California's Proposition 8. She spoke against North Carolina's Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, a bill passed (and later repealed) that discriminated against the LGBT community in public places in a statement during her concert in Raleigh as part of the Formation World Tour in 2016.\nShe has condemned police brutality against black Americans. She and Jay-Z attended a rally in 2013 in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin. The film for her sixth album \"Lemonade\" included the mothers of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner, holding pictures of their sons in the video for \"Freedom\". In a 2016 interview with \"Elle\", Beyonc\u00e9 responded to the controversy surrounding her song \"Formation\" which was perceived to be critical of the police. She clarified, \"I am against police brutality and injustice. Those are two separate things. If celebrating my roots and culture during Black History Month made anyone uncomfortable, those feelings were there long before a video and long before me\".\nIn February 2017, Beyonc\u00e9 spoke out against the withdrawal of protections for transgender students in public schools by Donald Trump's presidential administration. Posting a link to the \"100 Days of Kindness\" campaign on her Facebook page, Beyonc\u00e9 voiced her support for transgender youth and joined a roster of celebrities who spoke out against Trump's decision.\nInterests.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has been documented pursuing many passions, sometimes being described as a renaissance woman. Some of these include canvas painting, video editing, poetry, scriptwriting, lighting and stage design, animation and clothes design, photography, cultural historiography and beekeeping (with around 80,000 bees).\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I started painting portraits of women [in 2002], while filming \"Austin Powers\" [...] I got hooked and wouldn't sleep. I made this special room with saris and pillows. I would light candles, play Miles Davis and Bj\u00f6rk, and paint all night. It was very therapeutic. Whenever I finish one of my paintings, I try to figure out what it represents in my life. I'll be like, 'It's dark behind her and light in front of her, so a dark period must be coming to an end. Something light and beautiful is going to happen.'\nWealth.\n\"Forbes\" magazine began reporting on Beyonc\u00e9's earnings in 2008, calculating that the $80\u00a0million earned between June 2007 to June 2008, for her music, tour, films and clothing line made her the world's best-paid music personality at the time, above Madonna and Celine Dion. It placed her fourth on the Celebrity 100 list in 2009 and ninth on the \"Most Powerful Women in the World\" list in 2010. The following year, the magazine placed her eighth on the \"Best-Paid Celebrities Under 30\" list, having earned $35\u00a0million in the past year for her clothing line and endorsement deals. In 2012, \"Forbes\" placed Beyonc\u00e9 at number 16 on the Celebrity 100 list, twelve places lower than three years ago yet still having earned $40\u00a0million in the past year for her album \"4\", clothing line and endorsement deals.\nIn 2012, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z placed at number one on the \"World's Highest-Paid Celebrity Couples\", for collectively earning $78\u00a0million. The couple made it into the previous year's \"Guinness World Records\" as the \"highest-earning power couple\" for collectively earning $122\u00a0million in 2009. For the years 2009 to 2011, Beyonc\u00e9 earned an average of $70\u00a0million per year, and earned $40\u00a0million in 2012. In 2013, Beyonc\u00e9's endorsements of Pepsi and H&M made her and Jay-Z the world's first billion-dollar couple in the music industry. That year, Beyonc\u00e9 was listed as the fourth-most-powerful celebrity in the \"Forbes\" rankings.\nIn June 2014, Beyonc\u00e9 ranked at number one on the \"Forbes\" Celebrity 100 list, earning an estimated $115\u00a0million throughout June 2013 \u2013 June 2014. This in turn was the first time she had topped the Celebrity 100 list as well as being her highest yearly earnings to date. In 2016, Beyonc\u00e9 ranked at number 34 on the Celebrity 100 list with earnings of $54\u00a0million. She and Jay-Z also topped the highest-paid celebrity couple list, with combined earnings of $107.5\u00a0million.\nBeyonc\u00e9 is one of the wealthiest musical artists. As of 2018[ [update]], \"Forbes\" calculated her net worth to be $355\u00a0million, and in June of the same year, ranked her as the 35th-highest-earning celebrity, with annual earnings of $60\u00a0million. This tied Beyonc\u00e9 with Madonna as the only two female artists to earn more than $100\u00a0million within a single year twice. As a couple, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z have a combined net worth of $1.16\u00a0billion. In July 2017, \"Billboard\" announced that Beyonc\u00e9 was the highest-paid musician of 2016, with an estimated total of $62.1\u00a0million. By December 2023, \"Forbes\" estimated Beyonc\u00e9's net worth to be $800 million.\nIn 2023, the couple bought a house in Malibu, California, designed by the architect Tadao Ando, for $200 million. It established a record for the most expensive residence sold in the state of California.\nLegacy.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has been recognized as one of the most influential figures in music history by numerous publications, including \"Rolling Stone\" and the Associated Press. She was named \"Billboard\"'s Greatest Pop Star of the 21st Century, and topped NPR list of the \"21st Century's Most Influential Women Musicians\". She was repeatedly named the defining artist of both the 2000s decade and the 2010s decade. In \"The New Yorker\", music critic Jody Rosen described Beyonc\u00e9 as \"the most important and compelling popular musician of the twenty-first century\u00a0... the result, the logical end point, of a century-plus of pop.\" James Clear, in his book \"Atomic Habits\" (2018), draws a parallel between Beyonc\u00e9's success and the dramatic transformations in modern society: \"In the last one hundred years, we have seen the rise of the car, the airplane, the television, the personal computer, the internet, the smartphone, and Beyonc\u00e9.\" In 2018, \"Rolling Stone\" included her on its Millennial 100 list.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has revolutionized the music industry, transforming the production, distribution, promotion, and consumption of music. Beyonc\u00e9 has been credited with reviving the album format in an era dominated by singles and streaming, with albums becoming increasingly cohesive and narrative-led. She revolutionized how music is released and marketed with the invention of the surprise album, which became a common practice in the 2010s and 2020s. This move was \"arguably the single most pivotal moment in all of 21st-century pop music\" according to \"Billboard\", with Beyonc\u00e9 reorienting the music market to cohesive albums and unconventional promotional rollouts. She is also credited with reviving the music video as an art form and popularizing the visual album. Her impact on the music industry led to the Global Release Day being moved to Friday.\nBeyonc\u00e9's use of staccato rap-singing and chopped and re-pitched vocals have changed the sound of popular music and became defining features of the 21st-century music landscape. With her work frequently transcending traditional genre boundaries, Beyonc\u00e9 has created new artistic standards that have shaped contemporary music and set the precedent for music artists to move between and beyond genre confines. Beyonc\u00e9 has helped to revive and popularize several genres of music, including hip-hop in the 2000s, R&B in the 2010s, Afrobeats in the late 2010s / early 2020s, and country music in the 2020s.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has been recognized as setting the playbook for music artists in the modern era, with musicians from across genres, generations and countries citing her as a major influence on their career. Taylor Swift described Beyonc\u00e9's as a major influence and a \"guiding light throughout my career\", who has \"paved the road\" and shown how to \"break rules and defy industry norms\". Lady Gaga explained how Beyonc\u00e9 gave her the determination to become a musician, recalling seeing her in Destiny's Child music video and saying: \"Oh, she's a star. I want that.\" Rihanna was inspired to start her singing career after watching Beyonc\u00e9, telling \"etalk\" that after Beyonc\u00e9 released \"Dangerously In Love\" (2003), \"I was like 'wow, I want to be just like that.' She's huge and just an inspiration.\" Ariana Grande learned to sing by mimicking Beyonc\u00e9. Adele cited Beyonc\u00e9 as her inspiration and favorite artist, telling \"Vogue\": \"She's been a huge and constant part of my life as an artist since I was about ten or eleven\u00a0... I think she's inspiring. She's beautiful. She's ridiculously talented, and she is one of the kindest people I've ever met\u00a0... She makes me want to do things with my life.\" Both Paul McCartney and Garth Brooks said they watch Beyonc\u00e9's performances to get inspiration for their shows, with Brooks saying that when watching one of her performances, \"take out your notebook and take notes. No matter how long you've been on the stage \u2013 take notes on that one.\"\nShe is known for coining popular phrases such as \"put a ring on it\", a term for marriage proposal, \"I woke up like this\", which started a trend of posting morning selfies with the hashtag #iwokeuplikethis, and \"boy, bye\", which was used as part of the Democratic National Committee's campaign for the 2020 election. In January 2012, research scientist Bryan Lessard named \"Scaptia beyonceae\", a species of horse-fly found in Northern Queensland, Australia after Beyonc\u00e9 due to the fly's unique golden hairs on its abdomen.\nAchievements.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has received numerous awards and is the most-awarded female artist of all time. Having sold over 200 million records worldwide (a further 60 million additionally with Destiny's Child), Beyonc\u00e9 is one of the best-selling music artists of all time. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) listed Beyonc\u00e9 as the top certified artist of the 2000s decade, with a total of 64 certifications. In 2009, \"Billboard\" named her the Top Female Artist and Top Radio Songs Artist of the Decade.\nIn 2010, \"Billboard\" named her in their Top 50 R&B/Hip-Hop Artists of the Past 25 Years list at number 15. In 2012, VH1 ranked her third on their list of the \"100 Greatest Women in Music\", behind Mariah Carey and Madonna. In 2002, she received Songwriter of the Year from American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers becoming the First African American woman to win the award. In 2004 and 2019, she received NAACP Image Award for Entertainer of the Year and the Soul Train Music Award for Sammy Davis Jr. \u2013 Entertainer of the Year.\nIn 2005, she also received APEX Award at the Trumpet Award honoring the achievements of Black African Americans. In 2007, Beyonc\u00e9 received the International Artist of Excellence award by the American Music Awards. She also received Honorary Otto at the Bravo Otto. The following year, she received the Legend Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts at the World Music Awards and Career Achievement Award at the LOS40 Music Awards. In 2010, she received the Award of Honor for Artist of the Decade at the NRJ Music Award. At the 2011 \"Billboard\" Music Awards, Beyonc\u00e9 received the inaugural \"Billboard\" Millennium Award.\nBeyonc\u00e9 received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards and was honored as Honorary Mother of the Year at the Australian Mother of the Year Award in Barnardo's Australia for her Humanitarian Effort in the region and the Council of Fashion Designers of America Fashion Icon Award in 2016. In 2019, alongside Jay-Z, she received GLAAD Vanguard Award which is presented to a member of the entertainment community who does not identify as LGBT but who has made a significant difference in promoting equal rights for LGBT people. In 2020, she was awarded the BET Humanitarian Award. \"Consequence\" named her the 30th best singer of all time.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has won 35 Grammy Awards, both as a solo artist and member of Destiny's Child and The Carters, making her the most honored individual by the Grammys. She is also the most nominated artist in Grammy Award history with a total of 88 nominations. \"Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)\" won Song of the Year in 2010 while \"Say My Name\", \"Crazy in Love\" and \"Drunk in Love\" have each won Best R&B Song. \"Dangerously in Love\", \"B'Day\" and \"I Am... Sasha Fierce\" have won Best Contemporary R&B Album, while \"Lemonade\" has won Best Urban Contemporary Album. Beyonc\u00e9 set the record for the most Grammy awards won by a female artist in one night in 2010 when she won six awards, breaking the tie she previously held with Alicia Keys, Norah Jones, Alison Krauss, and Amy Winehouse, with Adele equaling this in 2012.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has won 30 MTV Video Music Awards, making her the joint most-decorated artist in Video Music Award history. She won 26 awards as a solo artist, two awards each with The Carters and Destiny's Child, making her lifetime total of 30 VMAs. \"Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)\" and \"Formation\" won Video of the Year in 2009 and 2016 respectively. Beyonc\u00e9 tied the record set by Lady Gaga in 2010 for the most VMAs won in one night for a female artist with eight in 2016. She is also the most-awarded and nominated artist in BET Award history, winning 36 awards (including two with Destiny's Child) from over 80 nominations, the most-awarded artist of the Soul Train Music Awards with 25 wins (21 as a soloist and four with Destiny's child), and the most-decorated artist at the NAACP Image Awards with 27 wins as a solo artist and five with Destiny's Child.\nFollowing her role in \"Dreamgirls\", Beyonc\u00e9 was nominated for Best Original Song for \"Listen\" and Best Actress at the Golden Globe Awards, and Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture at the NAACP Image Awards. Beyonc\u00e9 won two awards at the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards 2006; Best Song for \"Listen\" and Best Original Soundtrack for \"Dreamgirls: Music from the Motion Picture\". According to Fuse in 2014, Beyonc\u00e9 is the second-most award-winning artist of all time, after Michael Jackson. \"Lemonade\" won a Peabody Award in 2017. In 2022, \"Be Alive\" was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song, the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Song, and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.\nShe was named on the 2016 BBC Radio 4 \"Woman's Hour\" Power List as one of seven women judged to have had the biggest impact on women's lives over the past 70 years, alongside Margaret Thatcher, Barbara Castle, Helen Brook, Germaine Greer, Jayaben Desai and Bridget Jones, She was named the Most Powerful Woman in Music on the same list in 2020. In the same year, \"Billboard\" named her with Destiny's Child the third Greatest Music Video artists of all time, behind Madonna and Michael Jackson.\nIn June 2021, Beyonc\u00e9 won the award of \"top touring artist\" of the decade (2010s) at the \"Pollstar\" Awards. In that same month, Beyonc\u00e9 was inducted into the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame as a member of the inaugural class.\nBusiness and ventures.\nIn 2010, Beyonc\u00e9 founded her own entertainment company Parkwood Entertainment which formed as an imprint based from Columbia Records, the company began as a production unit for videos and films in 2008. Parkwood Entertainment is named after a street in Houston, Texas where Beyonc\u00e9 once lived. With headquarters in New York City, the company serves as an umbrella for the entertainer's various brands in music, movies, videos, and fashion. The staff of Parkwood Entertainment have experiences in arts and entertainment, from filmmaking and video production to web and fashion design. In addition to departments in marketing, digital, creative, publicity, fashion design and merchandising, the company houses a state-of-the-art editing suite, where Beyonc\u00e9 works on content for her worldwide tours, music videos, and television specials. Parkwood Entertainment's first production was the musical biopic \"Cadillac Records\" (2008), in which Beyonc\u00e9 starred and co-produced. The company has distributed Beyonc\u00e9's albums such as her self-titled fifth studio album (2013), \"Lemonade\" (2016) and The Carters, \"Everything is Love\" (2018). Beyonc\u00e9 has signed other artists to Parkwood such as Chloe x Halle, who performed at Super Bowl LIII in February 2019.\nIn February 2024, Beyonc\u00e9 launched C\u00e9cred, a hair care product line developed to fit different hair textures. Following its launch, she established an annual grant in collaboration with BeyGood. This is an effort to provide financial support to cosmetology students and professional hair stylists within the beauty industry. A yearly $500,000 is funding cosmetology school scholarships and salon business grants across five cities chosen for their large, diverse community of hair stylists: Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and Clementon.\nEndorsements and partnerships.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has worked with Pepsi since 2002, and in 2004 appeared in a Gladiator-themed commercial with Britney Spears, Pink, and Enrique Iglesias. In 2012, Beyonc\u00e9 signed a $50\u00a0million deal to endorse Pepsi. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPINET) wrote Beyonc\u00e9 an open letter asking her to reconsider the deal because of the unhealthiness of the product and to donate the proceeds to a medical organisation. Nevertheless, NetBase found that Beyonc\u00e9's campaign was the most talked about endorsement in April 2013, with a 70 percent positive audience response to the commercial and print ads.\nBeyonc\u00e9 has worked with Tommy Hilfiger for the fragrances True Star (singing a cover version of \"Wishing on a Star\") and True Star Gold; she also promoted Emporio Armani's Diamonds fragrance in 2007. Beyonc\u00e9 launched her first official fragrance, Heat, in 2010. In February 2011, Beyonc\u00e9 launched her second fragrance, Heat Rush. Beyonc\u00e9's third fragrance, Pulse, was launched in September 2011. In 2013, The Mrs. Carter Show Limited Edition version of Heat was released. The six editions of Heat are the world's best-selling celebrity fragrance line, with sales of over $400\u00a0million.\nThe release of a video-game \"Starpower: Beyonc\u00e9\" was cancelled after Beyonc\u00e9 pulled out of a $100 million deal with GateFive who alleged the cancellation meant the sacking of 70 staff and millions of pounds lost in development. It was settled out of court by her lawyers in June 2013 who said that they had cancelled because GateFive had lost its financial backers. Beyonc\u00e9 also has had deals with American Express, Nintendo DS and L'Or\u00e9al since the age of 18.\nIn March 2015, Beyonc\u00e9 became a co-owner, with other artists, of the music streaming service Tidal. The service specializes in lossless audio and high definition music videos. Beyonc\u00e9's husband Jay-Z acquired the parent company of Tidal, Aspiro, in the first quarter of 2015. Including Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z, sixteen artist stakeholders (such as Kanye West, Rihanna, Madonna, Chris Martin, Nicki Minaj and more) co-own Tidal, with the majority owning a 3% equity stake. The idea of having an all artist owned streaming service was created by those involved to adapt to the increased demand for streaming within the current music industry.\nIn November 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 formed a multi-year partnership with exercise equipment and media company Peloton. The partnership was formed to celebrate homecoming season in historically black colleges and universities, providing themed workout experiences inspired by Beyonc\u00e9's 2019 \"Homecoming\" film and after 2020's homecoming celebrations were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of the partnership, Beyonc\u00e9 and Peloton are donating free memberships to all students at 10 HBCUs, and Peloton are pursuing long-term recruiting partnerships at the HCBUs. Gwen Bethel Riley, head of music at Peloton, said: \"When we had conversations with Beyonc\u00e9 around how critical a social impact component was to all of us, it crystallized how important it was to embrace Homecoming as an opportunity to celebrate and create dialogue around Black culture and music, in partnership with HBCUs.\" Upon news of the partnership, a decline in Peloton's shares reversed, and its shares rose by 8.6%.\nIn 2021, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z partnered with Tiffany & Co. for the company's \"About Love\" campaign. Beyonc\u00e9 became the fourth woman, and first Black woman, to wear the 128.54-carat Tiffany Yellow Diamond. The campaign featured a robin egg blue painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat titled \"Equals Pi\" (1982). Both Beyonce and the brand faced significant backlash for the campaign, as the Tiffany Yellow Diamond, which was discovered in the Kimberley diamond mines in South Africa in 1877, is classified as a blood diamond and viewed as a symbol of British colonialism over Africa.\nFashion lines.\nBeyonc\u00e9 and her mother introduced House of Der\u00e9on, a women's fashion line, in 2005. The concept is inspired by three generations of women in their family, with the name paying tribute to Beyonc\u00e9's grandmother, Agn\u00e8z Der\u00e9on, a respected seamstress. According to Tina, the overall style of the line best reflects her and Beyonc\u00e9's taste and style. Beyonc\u00e9 and her mother founded their family's company Beyond Productions, which provides the licensing and brand management for House of Der\u00e9on, and its junior collection, Der\u00e9on. House of Der\u00e9on pieces were exhibited in Destiny's Child's shows and tours, during their \"Destiny Fulfilled\" era. The collection features sportswear, denim offerings with fur, outerwear and accessories that include handbags and footwear, and are available at department and specialty stores across the U.S. and Canada.\nIn 2005, Beyonc\u00e9 teamed up with House of Brands, a shoe company, to produce a range of footwear for House of Der\u00e9on. In January 2008, Starwave Mobile launched Beyonc\u00e9 Fashion Diva, a \"high-style\" mobile game with a social networking component, featuring the House of Der\u00e9on collection. In July 2009, Beyonc\u00e9 and her mother launched a new junior apparel label, Sasha Fierce for Der\u00e9on, for back-to-school selling. The collection included sportswear, outerwear, handbags, footwear, eyewear, lingerie and jewelry. It was available at department stores including Macy's and Dillard's, and specialty stores Jimmy Jazz and Against All Odds. \nIn October 2014, Beyonc\u00e9 signed a deal to launch an activewear line of clothing with British fashion retailer Topshop. The 50\u201350 venture is called Ivy Park and was launched in April 2016. The brand's name is a nod to Beyonc\u00e9's daughter and her favorite number four (IV in Roman numerals), and also references the park where she used to run in Texas. She has since bought out Topshop owner Philip Green from his 50% share after he was alleged to have sexually harassed, bullied and racially abused employees. She now owns the brand herself.\nIn April 2019, it was announced that Beyonc\u00e9 would become a creative partner with Adidas and further develop her athletic brand Ivy Park with the company. Knowles will also develop new clothes and footwear for Adidas. Shares for the company rose 1.3% upon the news release. In December 2019, they announced a launch date of January 18, 2020. Beyonc\u00e9 uploaded a teaser on her website and Instagram. The collection was previewed on the upcoming \"Elle\" January 2020 issue, where Beyonc\u00e9 is seen wearing several garments, accessories and footwear from the first collection. In February 2023, \"The Wall Street Journal\" reported that the line was struggling financially with revenue falling by more than 50% over the past fiscal year to $40 million; well short of the company's $250 million projected forecast. In March 2023, it was announced that Beyonc\u00e9 and Adidas reached a mutual decision to end their partnership.\nIn March 2023, Olivier Rousteing, the creative director of Balmain, announced that he and Beyonc\u00e9 collaborated on a couture collection complete with sixteen looks corresponding to the sixteen tracks on her album \"Renaissance\". This \"Renaissance Couture\" collection marked the first time that a Black woman oversaw the development of a collection from a Parisian couture house.\nIn September 2024, Beyonc\u00e9 partnered with Levi Strauss & Co. to remake a classic '80s 'Launderette' campaign. Michelle Gass, the CEO of Levis Strauss & Co., shared insights regarding the advantages of the company's collaboration with Beyonc\u00e9, emphasizing that the advertising campaign could significantly enhance sales in the women's clothing segment.\nPhilanthropy.\nIn 2002, Beyonc\u00e9, Kelly Rowland and Tina Knowles built the Knowles-Rowland Center for Youth, a community center in Downtown Houston. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Beyonc\u00e9 and Rowland founded the Survivor Foundation to provide transitional housing to displaced families and provide means for new building construction, to which Beyonc\u00e9 contributed an initial $250,000. The foundation has since expanded to work with other charities in the city, and also provided relief following Hurricane Ike three years later. Beyonc\u00e9 also donated $100,000 to the Gulf Coast Ike Relief Fund. In 2007, Beyonc\u00e9 founded the Knowles-Temenos Place Apartments, a housing complex offering living space for 43 displaced individuals. As of 2016, Beyonc\u00e9 had donated $7\u00a0million for the maintenance of the complex.\nAfter starring in \"Cadillac Records\" in 2009 and learning about Phoenix House, a non-profit drug and alcohol rehabilitation organization, Beyonc\u00e9 donated her full $4\u00a0million salary from the film to the organization. Beyonc\u00e9 and her mother subsequently established the Beyonc\u00e9 Cosmetology Center, which offers a seven-month cosmetology training course helping Phoenix House's clients gain career skills during their recovery.\nIn January 2010, Beyonc\u00e9 participated in George Clooney and Wyclef Jean's telethon, donated a large sum to the organization, and was named the official face of the limited edition Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) \"Fashion For Haiti\" T-shirt. In April 2011, Beyonc\u00e9 joined forces with U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama and the National Association of Broadcasters Education Foundation, to help boost the latter's campaign against child obesity by reworking her single \"Get Me Bodied\". Following the death of Osama bin Laden, Beyonc\u00e9 released her cover of the Lee Greenwood song \"God Bless the U.S.A.\", as a charity single to help raise funds for the New York Police and Fire Widows' and Children's Benefit Fund.\nBeyonc\u00e9 became an ambassador for the 2012 World Humanitarian Day campaign donating her song \"I Was Here\" and its music video, shot in the UN, to the campaign. In 2013, it was announced that Beyonc\u00e9 would work with Salma Hayek and Frida Giannini on a Gucci \"Chime for Change\" campaign that aims to spread female empowerment. The campaign, which aired on February 28, was set to her new music. A concert for the cause took place on June 1, 2013, in London. With help of the crowdfunding platform Catapult, visitors of the concert could choose between several projects promoting education of women and girls. Beyonc\u00e9 also took part in \"Miss a Meal\", a food-donation campaign, and supported Goodwill Industries through online charity auctions at Charitybuzz that support job creation throughout Europe and the U.S.\nBeyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z secretly donated tens of thousands of dollars to bail out Black Lives Matter protesters in Baltimore and Ferguson, as well as funded infrastructure for the establishment of Black Lives Matter chapters across the U.S. Before Beyonc\u00e9's Formation World Tour show in Tampa, her team held a private luncheon for more than 20 community leaders to discuss how Beyonc\u00e9 could support local charitable initiatives, including pledging on the spot to fund 10 scholarships to provide students with financial aid. Tampa Sports Authority board member Thomas Scott said: \"I don't know of a prior artist meeting with the community, seeing what their needs are, seeing how they can invest in the community. It says a lot to me about Beyonc\u00e9. She not only goes into a community and walks away with (money), but she also gives money back to that community.\"\nIn June 2016, Beyonc\u00e9 donated over $82,000 to the United Way of Genesee County to support victims of the Flint water crisis. Beyonc\u00e9 additionally donated money to support 14 students in Michigan with their college expenses. In August 2016, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z donated $1.5 million to civil rights groups including Black Lives Matter, Hands Up United and Dream Defenders. After Hurricane Matthew, Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z donated $15 million to the Usain Bolt Foundation to support its efforts in rebuilding homes in Haiti.\nDuring Hurricane Harvey in August 2017, Beyonc\u00e9 launched BeyGOOD Houston to support those affected by the hurricane in Houston. The organization donated necessities such as cots, blankets, pillows, baby products, feminine products and wheelchairs, and funded long-term revitalization projects. On September 8, Beyonc\u00e9 visited Houston, where she sponsored a lunch for 400 survivors at her local church, visited the George R Brown Convention Center to discuss with people displaced by the flooding about their needs, served meals to those who lost their homes, and made a significant donation to local causes. Beyonc\u00e9 additionally donated $75,000 worth of new mattresses to survivors of the hurricane. Later that month, Beyonc\u00e9 released a remix of J Balvin and Willy William's \"Mi Gente\", with all of her proceeds being donated to disaster relief charities in Puerto Rico, Mexico, the U.S. and the Caribbean after hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, and the Chiapas and Puebla earthquakes.\nIn April 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 donated $6\u00a0million to the National Alliance in Mental Health, UCLA and local community-based organizations in order to provide mental health and personal wellness services to essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. BeyGOOD also teamed up with local organizations to help provide resources to communities of color, including food, water, cleaning supplies, medicines and face masks. The same month, Beyonc\u00e9 released a remix of Megan Thee Stallion's \"Savage\", with all proceeds benefiting Bread of Life Houston's COVID-19 relief efforts, which includes providing over 14 tons of food and supplies to 500 families and 100 senior citizens in Houston weekly.\nIn May 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 provided 1,000 free COVID-19 tests in Houston as part of her and her mother's #IDidMyPart initiative, which was established due to the disproportionate deaths in African-American communities. Additionally, 1,000 gloves, masks, hot meals, essential vitamins, grocery vouchers and household items were provided. In July 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 established the Black-Owned Small Business Impact Fund in partnership with the NAACP, which offers $10,000 grants to black-owned small businesses in need following the George Floyd protests. All proceeds from Beyonc\u00e9's single \"Black Parade\" were donated to the fund. In September 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 announced that she had donated an additional $1\u00a0million to the fund. As of December 31, 2020, the fund had given 715 grants to black-owned small businesses, amounting to $7.15 million donated.\nIn October 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 released a statement that she has been working with the Feminist Coalition to assist supporters of the End SARS movement in Nigeria, including covering medical costs for injured protestors, covering legal fees for arrested protestors, and providing food, emergency shelter, transportation and telecommunication means to those in need. Beyonc\u00e9 also showed support for those fighting against other issues in Africa, such as the Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon, ShutItAllDown in Namibia, Zimbabwean Lives Matter in Zimbabwe and the Rape National Emergency in Liberia. In December 2020, Beyonc\u00e9 donated $500,000 to help alleviate the housing crisis in the U.S. caused by the cessation of the eviction moratorium, giving 100 $5,000 grants to individuals and families facing foreclosures and evictions.\nDiscography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nTours and residencies.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["6521181", "83688"], "permutation_1": ["83688", "6521181"], "permutation_2": ["6521181", "83688"], "permutation_3": ["83688", "6521181"]}
{"id": "2hop__151455_120171", "docs_added": {"4634910": "Castle of Riddles\n1983 video game\nCastle of Riddles is a text adventure released by Acornsoft for the BBC Micro (in 1982) and Acorn Electron (1984) home computers. The game was written by Peter Killworth and was one of a series of text adventures written for, or ported to the BBC Micro by the same author (others including \"Countdown to Doom\" and \"Philosopher's Quest\"). As with all such games, only text is used. The player must use a simple 'verb-noun' format (e.g. 'Go North', 'Get lamp') to control the game. Unlike Killworth's other Acornsoft adventures, \"Castle of Riddles\" was not updated and reissued by Topologika so it became unavailable after 1985 when Acorn Computers (parent company of Acornsoft) pulled out of the games publishing market. Some of the puzzles however were included in the Topologika version of \"Philosopher's Quest\".\nPlot.\nThe player takes the role of a 'professional adventurer' who is 'down to his last silver piece'. His services are hired by a wizard whose castle has been taken over by a warlock. The warlock has also found the wizard's \"Magic Ring of Power\" which must be returned. The player must navigate the castle, solve problems and avoid booby traps set by the warlock in order to recover the magic ring for the wizard. At various moments in the game, the adventurer is asked to answer a riddle. The adventurer must also search for treasure and deposit it in a safe. The treasure may be kept as payment.\nGameplay.\nPoints are awarded for picking up treasure and again for depositing it in the safe and completing certain tasks. The maximum possible score is 250.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "476011": "Acornsoft\nFormer software division of Acorn Computers\nAcornsoft was the software arm of Acorn Computers, and a major publisher of software for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron. As well as games, it also produced a large number of educational titles, extra computer languages and business and utility packages \u2013 these included word processor \"VIEW\" and the spreadsheet \"ViewSheet\" supplied on ROM and cartridge for the BBC Micro/Acorn Electron and included as standard in the BBC Master and Acorn Business Computer.\nHistory.\nAcornsoft was formed in late 1980 by Acorn Computers directors Hermann Hauser and Chris Curry, and David Johnson-Davies, author of the first game for a UK personal computer and of the official Acorn Atom manual \"Atomic Theory and Practice\". David Johnson-Davies was managing director and in early 1981 was joined by Tim Dobson, Programmer and Chris Jordan, Publications Editor.\nWhile some of their games were clones or remakes of popular arcade games (e.g. \"Hopper\" is a clone of Sega's \"Frogger\", \"Snapper\" is Namco's \"Pac-Man\", \"Arcadians\" is Namco's \"Galaxian\"), they also published a number of original titles such as \"Aviator\", \"Elite\", and \"Revs\". Acornsoft also published text adventures by authors such as Peter Killworth, including \"Philosopher's Quest\" (previously titled \"Brand X\") and \"Countdown to Doom\".\nAs a result of the publication of a method to circumvent copy protection measures employed by Acornsoft titles, a High Court injunction against Computing Publications - publisher of Personal Computer World - was granted to Acorn Computers \"requiring all copies of the January 1984 issue of PCW to be withdrawn from sale\", with the article concerned being regarded as inciting readers to \"duplicate computer programs\". This injunction was subsequently lifted as a consequence of an out-of-court settlement between the parties involving a damages payment of \u00a365,000 plus costs to Acorn \"to meet Acorn's expenses in developing a new locking device\". The article's author, Guy Kewney, and the magazine's editor, Jane Bird, argued that printing a software routine showing how to save Acornsoft cassette software to disk was a service to the magazine's readers. The cost of printing the magazine issue concerned was estimated at \u00a3100,000.\nAcornsoft became a subsidiary within Acorn Computer Group, distinct from Acorn Computers who were responsible for the development of Acorn's microcomputer systems, but Acornsoft ceased to operate as a separate company upon the departure of David Johnson-Davies in January 1986. Past this date, Acorn Computers used the Acornsoft name on office software it released in the \"VIEW\" family for the BBC Master series. In 1986 Superior Software was granted a licence to publish some Acornsoft games and re-released many, individually and as compilations such as the \"Play It Again Sam\" and \"Acornsoft Hits\" series. By agreement, the Acornsoft name was also used on the packaging of some of the subsequent Superior games. Superior chose not to take on Acornsoft's text adventure games, most of which were released in updated versions by Topologika along with some sequels from the same authors.\nIn 1997, Acorn sought to revive the Acornsoft brand for new software releases, such as upgrades to RISC OS, programming tools, a new Web browser, multitasking movie playback (using Acorn Replay), and Java for RISC OS. A stated objective was to demonstrate that a \"wide range of innovative software at competitive prices\" was available for RISC OS, with support also being potentially offered to third-party software producers. Acornsoft products themselves would be supported by marketing, including advertising, and the provision of press review samples.\nBranding.\nAcornsoft titles extended their consistent branding to the software's loading screens.\nAcornsoft Games range.\nIncluding all arcade, text adventure and board games. All games were compatible with the BBC Micro Model B. Games followed by \"Model A & B\" were compatible with both machines. Games followed by \"Electron\" were also released separately for the Acorn Electron. Games are listed by their catalogue numbers which are roughly the order of release of the BBC versions.\nThere are also a number of completed but unreleased games that have found their way into the public domain such as \"Crazy Balloon\", \"Hellforce\" and \"Bandit\" that date from around 1983.\nAcornsoft Education range.\nAcornsoft produced a wide range of educational titles aimed at many different age groups.\nAcornsoft also published and distributed a range of educational software developed by ASK (Applied Systems Knowledge) that were widely used in schools running BBC Micros. These included \"Podd\" (find out which actions a red blobby character can perform (e.g. jump, smile, dance), \"Squeeze\" (a two player strategy game of squeezing shapes onto a board) and \"Cranky\" (solve maths problems to repair a living calculator). These titles were part of the Acornsoft catalogue but used a different code (XBE?? \u2013 all other Acornsoft titles began with S so the Education range on BBC Micro cassettes would be SBE??). They ran on both the BBC Micro Model B and Acorn Electron.\nThe \"Ivan Berg Software\" range was also mainly educational but had its own distinct code (XBX??). This included the 6 \"Grandmaster Quiz\"zes (Theatre, Crime & Detection, Music, History, Science Fiction and Royal), relationship aids \"\"..I Do\" Your Guide to a Happy Marriage\" and \"The Dating Game\" and GCE/CSE revision guides (Mathematics, Biology and English).\nAcornsoft also distributed other ranges of educational programs developed by companies such as ICL, Good Housekeeping and Bourne but they are not considered part of the official catalogue.\nAcornsoft Business range.\nAcornsoft produced a range of office software for home and business use.\nThe series continues but mainly with add-on products for the \"VIEW\" word processor such as \"ViewIndex\" (an automatic index generator) and \"ViewSpell\" (spell-checker) as well as newer versions.\nView Professional (1987) was a combined wordprocessor, spreadsheet and database similar to PipeDream on the Z88.\nAlthough primarily a programming language suite, Acornsoft released its P-System product featuring UCSD Pascal and Fortran 77 compilers as part of its business range. Developed by TDI for Acornsoft, the product required a 6502 second processor and disc system, preferably with two drives. Despite the \u00a3299 price, various tools including an assembler and linker were omitted from the product, these being made available in a separate Advanced Development Toolkit from TDI.\nAcornsoft Languages range.\nAcorn systems came with a version of the BBC BASIC programming language as standard but Acornsoft also produced a wide range of other languages that could be loaded in by cassette or disc or in some cases, supplied in ROM form.\nThe relative performance of some of Acornsoft's languages was evaluated using a benchmark based on the Takeuchi function, \"Tak\" by former Acornsoft managing director, David Johnson-Davies, noting that \"it is difficult to imagine a language that performs badly on \"Tak\" being much use for anything\", illustrating a diversity amongst these language implementations in terms of readability, speed and generated code size. A follow-up article expanded the comparison to other language implementations such as Oxford Pascal, Z80 versions of BBC BASIC, Turbo Pascal and Small-C.\nAcornsoft Graphics range and more.\nThe graphics range was used to demonstrate the graphical power of the Acorn computers but only three titles were made available. The X?? code was then used for other types of software.\nThe range took on various themes including \"Creative Sound\" (X26).\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3984830": "Tohby Riddle\nAustralian artist and writer/illustrator of picture books and illustrated books\nTohby Riddle is an Australian artist and writer/illustrator of picture books and illustrated books that have been published in many countries, and translated into many languages, around the world. His work has been translated by Haruki Murakami and he has been nominated for the 2022 Hans Christian Andersen Medal.\nRiddle's picture books include \"The Great Escape from City Zoo\", \"The Royal Guest\", \"Nobody Owns the Moon\", \"My Uncle's Donkey\" and \"Unforgotten\". Other books include \"The Greatest Gatsby: a visual book of grammar\", the Word Spy books written by Ursula Dubosarsky and illustrated by Riddle, the novel \"The Lucky Ones\", and two cartoon collections, \"What's the Big Idea?\" and \"Pink Freud\". The cartoon collections are selected from his work as the weekly cartoonist for \"Good Weekend\" magazine (\"Sydney Morning Herald\" and Melbourne's \"Age\"), a position he held for nearly ten years from 1997\u20132006.\nIn 2005 he became editor of The School Magazine, a literary magazine for children founded in 1916, in which his illustrations, non-fiction pieces and poems have also appeared regularly. In 2009 he won the Patricia Wrightson Prize in the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards with Ursula Dubosarsky for their book \"The Word Spy\".\nIn 2018, Riddle's book \"My Uncle's Donkey\" was translated into a Japanese edition by one of the world's greatest living writers Haruki Murakami after Mr Murakami discovered the book in a Melbourne bookshop on a visit to Australia. This edition was published in December 2018 by Asunaro Shobo.\nIn December 2020 Riddle was nominated by Australia for the 2022 Hans Christian Andersen Award.\nAs an artist, Riddle's paintings have continued to gain a following since a sell-out show in 2018. In 2022, His first solo exhibition, Silent Light, was held at the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre to considerable acclaim and 38 paintings were sold. In 2023, his Wynne Prize entry was included in the Salon des Refuses, at the SH Ervin Gallery. His paintings are in the collections of the State Library of NSW and the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "268683": "Riddle\nStatement with a double meaning used as a puzzle\nA riddle is a statement, question, or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: \"enigmas\", which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that require ingenuity and careful thinking for their solution, and \"conundra\", which are questions relying for their effects on punning in either the question or the answer.\nArcher Taylor says that \"we can probably say that riddling is a universal art\" and cites riddles from hundreds of different cultures including Finnish, Hungarian, American Indian, Chinese, Russian, Dutch, and Filipino sources amongst many others. Many riddles and riddle-themes are internationally widespread.\nIn the assessment of Elli K\u00f6ng\u00e4s-Maranda (originally writing about Malaitian riddles, but with an insight that has been taken up more widely), whereas myths serve to encode and establish social norms, \"riddles make a point of playing with conceptual boundaries and crossing them for the intellectual pleasure of showing that things are not quite as stable as they seem\" \u2014 though the point of doing so may still ultimately be to \"play with boundaries, but ultimately to affirm them\".\nDefinitions and research.\nEtymology.\nThe modern English word \"riddle\" shares its origin with the word \"read\", both stemming from the Common Germanic verb *\"r\u0113dan\u0105\", which meant 'to interpret, guess'. From this verb came the West Germanic noun *\"r\u0101disl\u012b\", literally meaning 'thing to be guessed, thing to be interpreted'. From this comes Dutch \"raadsel\", German \"R\u00e4tsel\", and Old English *\"r\u01e3dels\", the latter of which became modern English \"riddle\".\nDefinitions.\nDefining riddles precisely is hard and has attracted a fair amount of scholarly debate. The first major modern attempt to define the riddle in modern Western scholarship was by Robert Petsch in 1899, with another seminal contribution, inspired by structuralism, by Robert A. Georges and Alan Dundes in 1963. Georges and Dundes suggested that \"a riddle is a traditional verbal expression which contains one or more descriptive elements, a pair of which may be in opposition; the referent of the elements is to be guessed\". There are many possible sub-sets of the riddle, including charades, droodles, and some jokes.\nIn some traditions and contexts, riddles may overlap with proverbs. For example, the Russian phrase \"Nothing hurts it, but it groans all the time\" can be deployed as a proverb (when its referent is a hypochondriac) or as a riddle (when its referent is a pig).\nResearch.\nMuch academic research on riddles has focused on collecting, cataloguing, defining, and typologising riddles. Key work on cataloguing and typologising riddles was published by Antti Aarne in 1918\u201320, and by Archer Taylor. In the case of ancient riddles recorded without solutions, considerable scholarly energy also goes into proposing and debating solutions.\nWhereas previously researchers had tended to take riddles out of their social performance contexts, the rise of anthropology in the post-War period encouraged more researchers to study the social role of riddles and riddling, highlighting their role of re-orienting reality in the face of fear and anxiety. However, wide-ranging studies of riddles have tended to be limited to Western countries, with Asian and African riddles being relatively neglected.\nRiddles have also attracted linguists, often studying riddles from the point of view of semiotics; meanwhile, the twenty-first century has seen the rise of extensive work on medieval European riddles from the point of view of eco-criticism, exploring how riddles can inform us about people's conceptualisation and exploration of their environment.\nInternational riddles.\nMany riddles appear in similar form across many countries, and often continents. Borrowing of riddles happens both on a local scale, and across great distances. Kofi Dorvlo gives an example of a riddle that has been borrowed from the Ewe language by speakers of the neighboring Logba language: \"This woman has not been to the riverside for water, but there is water in her tank\". The answer is \"a coconut\". On a much wider scale, the Riddle of the Sphinx has also been documented in the Marshall Islands, possibly carried there by Western contacts in the last two centuries.\nKey examples of internationally widespread riddles follow, based on the classic (European-focused) study by Antti Aarne.\nWriting-riddle.\nThe basic form of the writing-riddle is 'White field, black seeds', where the field is a page and the seeds are letters. An example is the eighth- or ninth-century Veronese Riddle:\n<templatestyles src=\"Verse translation/styles.css\" />\nHere, the oxen are the scribe's finger(s) and thumb, and the plough is the pen. Among literary riddles, riddles on the pen and other writing equipment are particularly widespread.\nYear-riddle.\nThe year-riddle is found across Eurasia. For example, a riddle in the Sanskrit \"Rig Veda\", from around 1500\u20131000 BCE, describes a 'twelve-spoked wheel, upon which stand 720 sons of one birth' (i.e. the twelve months of the year, which together supposedly have 360 days and 360 nights).\nPerson-riddle.\nThe most famous example of this type is the riddle of the Sphinx. This Estonian example shows the pattern:\n<templatestyles src=\"Verse translation/styles.css\" />\nThe riddle describes a crawling baby, a standing person, and an old person with a walking stick.\nTwo-legs, three-legs, and four-legs.\nThis type includes riddles along the lines of this German example:\n<templatestyles src=\"Verse translation/styles.css\" />\nThe conceit here is that Two-legs is a person, Three-legs is a three-legged stool, Four-legs is a dog, and One-leg is a ham hock.\nFour Hang; Two Point the Way.\nAn example of Four Hang; Two Point the Way, to which the pre-eminent solution is 'cow' is given here in thirteenth-century Icelandic form:\n<templatestyles src=\"Verse translation/styles.css\" />\nThe cow has four teats, four legs, two horns, two back legs, and one tail.\nFeatherless bird-riddle.\nThe featherless bird-riddle is best known in Central Europe. An English version is:\n<poem style=\"margin-left:2em\">\nWhite bird featherless\nFlew from Paradise,\nPerched upon the castle wall;\nUp came Lord John landless,\nTook it up handless,\nAnd rode away horseless to the King's white hall.</poem>\nHere, a snowflake falls from the sky, and is blown off by the wind.\nRiddle-traditions by region.\nThe riddle was at times a prominent literary form in the ancient and medieval world, so riddles are extensively, if patchily, attested in our written records from these periods. More recently, riddles have been collected from oral tradition by scholars in many parts of the world.\nBabylon.\nAccording to Archer Taylor, \"the oldest recorded riddles are Babylonian school texts which show no literary polish\". The answers to the riddles are not preserved; the riddles include \"my knees hasten, my feet do not rest, a shepherd without pity drives me to pasture\" (a river? A rowboat?); \"you went and took the enemy's property; the enemy came and took your property\" (a weaving shuttle?); \"who becomes pregnant without conceiving, who becomes fat without eating?\" (a raincloud?). These may be riddles from oral tradition that a teacher has put into a schoolbook.\nSouth Asia.\nIt is thought that the world's earliest surviving poetic riddles survive in the Sanskrit \"Rigveda\". of the first book of the \"Rigveda\" can be understood to comprise a series of riddles or enigmas which are now obscure but may have been an enigmatic exposition of the pravargya ritual. These riddles overlap in significant part with a collection of forty-seven in the Atharvaveda; riddles also appear elsewhere in Vedic texts. Taylor cited the following example: '\"Who moves in the air? Who makes a noise on seeing a thief? Who is the enemy of lotuses? Who is the climax of fury?\" The answers to the first three questions, when combined in the manner of a charade, yield the answer to the fourth question. The first answer is bird (\"vi\"), the second dog (\"\u015bv\u0101\"), the third sun (\"mitra\"), and the whole is Vishvamitra, Rama's first teacher and counselor and a man noted for his outbursts of rage'.\nAccordingly, riddles are treated in early studies of Sanskrit poetry such as Da\u1e47\u1e0din's seventh- or eighth-century \"K\u0101vy\u0101dar\u015ba\".\nEarly narrative literature also sometimes includes riddles, prominently the \"Mahabharata\", which for example contains the Yaksha Prashna, a series of riddles posed by a nature-spirit (\"yaksha\") to Yudhishthira.\nThe first riddle collection in a medieval Indic language is traditionally thought to be the riddles of Amir Khusrow (1253\u20131325), which are written in Hindawi, in verse, in the m\u0101trika metre.\nAs of the 1970s, folklorists had not undertaken extensive collecting of riddles in India, but riddling was known to be thriving as a form of folk-literature, sometimes in verse. Riddles have also been collected in Tamil.\nHebrew, Arabic and Persian.\nWhile riddles are not numerous in the Bible, they are present, most famously in Samson's riddle in Judges xiv.14, but also in I Kings 10:1\u201313 (where the Queen of Sheba tests Solomon's wisdom), and in the Talmud. Sirach also mentions riddles as a popular dinner pastime, while the Aramaic \"Story of Ahikar\" contains a long section of proverbial wisdom that in some versions also contains riddles. Otherwise, riddles are sparse in ancient Semitic writing.\nIn the medieval period, however, verse riddles, alongside other puzzles and conundra, became a significant literary form in the Arabic-speaking world, and accordingly in Islamic Persian culture and in Hebrew \u2014 particularly in Al-Andalus. Since early Arabic and Persian poetry often features rich, metaphorical description, and ekphrasis, there is a natural overlap in style and approach between poetry generally and riddles specifically; literary riddles are therefore often a subset of the descriptive poetic form known in both traditions as \"wasf\". Riddles are attested in anthologies of poetry and in prosimetrical portrayals of riddle-contests in Arabic \"maq\u0101m\u0101t\" and in Persian epics such as the \"Shahnameh\". Meanwhile, in Hebrew, Dunash ben Labrat (920\u2013990), credited with transposing Arabic metres into Hebrew, composed a number of riddles, mostly apparently inspired by folk-riddles. Other Hebrew-writing exponents included Moses ibn Ezra, Yehuda Alharizi, Judah Halevi, Immanuel the Roman, and Israel Onceneyra.\nIn both Arabic and Persian, riddles seem to have become increasingly scholarly in style over time, increasingly emphasising riddles and puzzles in which the interpreter has to resolve clues to letters and numbers to put together the word which is the riddle's solution.\nRiddles have been collected by modern scholars throughout the Arabic-speaking world.\nEurope.\nGreek.\nRiddles are known to have been popular in Greece in Hellenistic times, and possibly before; they were prominent among the entertainments and challenges presented at symposia. Oracles were also represented as speaking in often riddlic language. However, the first significant corpus of Greek riddles survives in an anthology of earlier material known as the \"Greek Anthology\", which contains about 50 verse riddles, probably put into its present form by Constantine Cephalas, working in the tenth century CE. Most surviving ancient Greek riddles are in verse. In the second chapter of Book III of Aristotle's \"Rhetoric\", the philosopher stated that \"good riddles do, in general, provide us with satisfactory metaphors: for metaphors imply riddles, and therefore a good riddle can furnish a good metaphor.\"\nLiterary riddles were also composed in Byzantium, from perhaps the tenth century with the work of John Geometres, into the fifteenth century, along with a neo-Byzantine revival in around the early eighteenth century. There was a particular peak around the long twelfth century.\nLatin and romance.\nTwo Latin riddles are preserved as graffiti in the Basilica at Pompeii. The pre-eminent collection of ancient Latin riddles is a collection of 100 hexametrical riddles by Symphosius which were influential on later medieval Latin writers. The Bern Riddles, a collection of Latin riddles clearly modelled on Symphosius, were composed in the early seventh century by an unknown author, perhaps in northern Italy. Symphosius's collection also inspired a number of Anglo-Saxon riddlers who wrote in Latin. They remained influential in medieval Castilian tradition, being the basis for the second set of riddles in the thirteenth-century \"Libro de Apolonio\", posed by Apolonio's daughter Tarsiana to her father.\nThe perhaps eighth- or ninth-century Veronese Riddle is a key witness to the linguistic transition from Latin to Romance, but riddles are otherwise rare in medieval romance languages. However, in the early modern period, printed riddle collections were published in French, including the \"Adevineaux amoureux\" (printed in Bruges by Colard Mansion around 1479); and \"Demandes joyeuses en maniere de quolibets\", the basis for Wynkyn de Worde's 1511 \"Demaundes Joyous\".\nThe Germanic-speaking world.\nRiddles survive only fragmentarily in Old High German: three, very short, possible examples exist in manuscripts from the Monastery of St Gallen, but, while certainly cryptic, they are not necessarily riddles in a strict sense. About 150 survive in Middle High German, mostly quoted in other literary contexts. Likewise, riddles are rare in Old Norse: almost all occur in one section of \"Hervarar saga ok Hei\u00f0reks\", in which the god \u00d3\u00f0inn propounds around 37 riddles (depending on the manuscript). These riddles do, however, provide insights into Norse mythology, medieval Scandinavian social norms, and rarely attested poetic forms.\nBy contrast, verse riddles were prominent in early medieval England, following the seminal composition of one hundred and one riddles by Aldhelm (c. 639\u2013709), written in Latin and inspired by the fourth- or fifth-century Latin poet Symphosius. Aldhelm was followed by a number of other Anglo-Saxons writing riddles in Latin. This prestigious literary heritage contextualises the survival of nearly one hundred riddles in the tenth-century Exeter Book, one of the main surviving collections of Old English verse. The riddles in this book vary in subject matter from ribald innuendo to theological sophistication. Three, Exeter Book Riddle 35 and Riddles 40/66, are in origin translations of riddles by Aldhelm (and Riddle 35 the only Old English riddle to be attested in another manuscript besides the Exeter Book). Unlike the pithy three-line riddles of Symphosius, the Old English riddles tend to be discursive, often musing on complex processes of manufacture when describing artefacts such as mead (Exeter Book Riddle 27) or a reed-pen or -pipe (Exeter Book Riddle 60). They are noted for providing perspectives on the world which give voice to actors which tend not to appear in Old English poetry, ranging from female slaves to animals and plants. In addition, they often subvert the conventions of Old English heroic and religious poetry.\nWhile medieval records of Germanic-language riddles are patchy, with the advent of print in the West, collections of riddles and similar kinds of questions began to be published. A large number of riddle collections were printed in the German-speaking world and, partly under German influence, in Scandinavia. Riddles were evidently hugely popular in Germany: a recent research project uncovered more than 100,000 early modern German riddles, with the most important collection being that \"Strassburger R\u00e4tselbuch\", first published around 1500 and many times reprinted. This is one of the most famous riddles of that time:\n<templatestyles src=\"Verse translation/styles.css\" />\nThat is, \"the snow (featherless bird) lies on a bare tree in winter (leafless tree), and the sun (speechless maiden) causes the snow to melt (ate the featherless bird)\".\nLikewise, early modern English-speakers published printed riddle collections, such as the 1598 \"Riddles of Heraclitus and Democritus\", which includes for example the following riddle:<poem style=\"margin-left:2em\">\nFirst I was small, and round like a pearl;\nThen long and slender, as brave as an earl;\nSince, like an hermit, I lived in a cell,\nAnd now, like a rogue, in the wide world I dwell.\n</poem>\nAfter the early Middle Ages, the riddle was seldom used as a literary form in English. Tellingly, while Jonathan Swift composed at least eight verse riddles on themes such as a pen, gold, and the privy, this was seen as a lapse in taste by many of his contemporaries. However, although riddles are seldom used today as a literary form in their own right, they have arguably influenced the approach to poetry of a number of twentieth-century poets, such as Francis Ponge, Wallace Stevens, Richard Wilbur, Rainer M. Rilke, and Henrikas Radauskas. The famed Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote \"All is a riddle, and the key to a riddle\u00a0... is another riddle\".\nRiddles continued to flourish until recently as an oral form of entertainment, however; the seminal collection of Anglophone riddles from the early modern period through to the twentieth century is Archer Taylor's. Riddles are, for example, prominent in some early-modern ballads collected from oral tradition. Some of those included in the Child Ballads are \"Riddles Wisely Expounded\" (Child 1), \"The Elfin Knight\" (Child 2), \"King John and the Bishop\" (Child 45), \"Captain Wedderburn's Courtship\" (Child 46), and \"Proud Lady Margaret\" (Child 47). Contemporary English-language riddles typically use puns and double entendres for humorous effect, rather than to puzzle the butt of the joke, as in \"Why is six afraid of seven?\" \"Because seven eight nine (eight can be replaced with ate).\" These riddles are now mostly children's humour and games rather than literary compositions.\nSome riddles are composed of foreign words and play on similar sounds, as in:\n\"There were two cats, one two three cat and un deux trois cat. They had a swimming race from England to France. Who won?\"\n\"One two three cat, because un deux trois quatre cinq (un deux trois cat sank).\"\nThis plays on the fact that the French words for four and five are pronounced similarly to the English words \"cat\" and \"sank\".\nThe Celtic-speaking world.\nFew riddles are attested in medieval Celtic languages, though this depends on how narrowly a riddle is defined; some early medieval Welsh and Irish juridical texts have been read as being riddles. One undisputed riddle is attested in medieval Welsh, an elaborate text entitled 'Canu y Gwynt' ('song of the wind') in the fourteenth-century Book of Taliesin probably inspired by Latin riddles on the same theme. However, this record is supplemented by Latin material, apparently from a Brittonic cultural background in North Britain, about Lailoken: in a twelfth-century text, Lailoken poses three riddles to his captor King Meldred.\nThe earliest riddles attested in Irish are generally held to be found in a short collection from the fifteenth-century Book of Fermoy. However, other forms of wisdom contest do occur in Irish literature, such as \"The Colloquy of the Two Sages\", first attested in twelfth-century manuscripts, and in one such contest, in \"Imthecht na Tromdaime\", first attested in the fifteenth century, at least one riddle is arguably posed.\nEven research on the post-medieval Celtic-speaking world has yielded a \"comparatively meagre corpus\".\nThe Finnic-speaking world.\nThe corpus of traditional riddles from the Finnic-speaking world (including the modern Finland, Estonia, and parts of Western Russia) is fairly unitary, though eastern Finnish-speaking regions show particular influence of Russian Orthodox Christianity and Slavonic riddle culture. The Finnish for \"riddle\" is \"arvoitus\" (pl. \"arvoitukset\"), related to the verb \"arvata\" (\"guess\").\nFinnic riddles are noteworthy in relation to the rest of the world's oral riddle canon for its original imagery, their abundance of sexual riddles, and the interesting collision of influences from east and west; along with the attestation in some regions of an elaborate riddle-game. Riddles provide some of the first surviving evidence for Finnish-language literature.\nEast Asia.\nChina.\nIn modern Chinese, the standard word for 'riddle' is \"mi\" (\u8b0e, literally \"to bewilder\"). Riddles are spoken of as having a \"mian\" (\u9762, \"surface\", the question component of the riddle), and a \"di\" (\u5e95, \"base\", the answer component). Ancient Chinese terms for 'riddle' include \"yin\" (\u8b94) and \"sou\" (\u5ecb), which both mean \"hidden\".\nLiterary riddles in China first begin to be attested in significant numbers around the second century CE.\nThe Chinese riddle-tradition makes much use of visual puns on Chinese characters. One example is the riddle \"\u5343 \u91cc \u4f1a \u5343 \u91d1\"; these characters respectively mean 'thousand kilometre meet thousand gold'.\nThus the answer to \"thousand kilometres meet thousand gold\" is \"\u5988\" (mother).\nThe posing and solving of riddles has long been an important part of the Chinese Lantern Festival. China also contributed a distinctive kind of riddle known in English as the \"k\u014dan\" (), developed as a teaching technique in Zen Buddhism in the Tang dynasty (618\u2013907). In this tradition, the answer to the riddle is to be established through years of meditation, informed by Zen thought, as part of a process of seeking enlightenment.\nIn the twentieth century, thousands of riddles and similar enigmas have been collected, capitalising on the large number of homophones in Chinese. Examples of folk-riddles include:\nThe Philippines.\nQuite similar to its English counterpart, the riddle in the Philippines is called \"Bugtong\". It is traditionally used during a funeral wake together with other games such as \"tong-its\" or the more popular \"sakla\"; later generations use \"Bugtong\" as a form of past time or as an activity. One peculiarity of the Filipino version is the way they start with the phrase \"Bugtong-bugtong\" before saying the riddle; usually it is common to create riddles that rhyme.\nThis is an example of a \"Tagalog\" \"Bugtong\":\n<templatestyles src=\"Verse translation/styles.css\" />\nFurther south, in Sulawesi, Indonesia, among the Pendau, riddles are also used at funeral gatherings.\nAfrica.\nAnthropological research in Africa has produced extensive collections of riddles over the last century or so. Riddles have been characterised as \"one of the most important forms of oral art in Africa\"; Hamnett analyzes African riddling from an anthropological viewpoint; Yoruba riddles have enjoyed a recent monograph study. Wambi Cornelius Gulere wrote his doctoral project at Makerere University, titled \"Riddle Performance and Societal Discourses: Lessons from Busoga\". He argues for recognition of the importance of the riddling act, not merely gathering and studying lists of riddles. Grivas Muchineripi Kayange has seen African riddles as a window into African philosophy.\nThe Americas.\nNative American traditions.\nRiddles in the Americas are of particular interest to scholarship because it was long thought that native American cultures had no autochthonous riddle traditions (as opposed to riddles inspired by European culture, as with the twenty-two Aztec riddles collected by Bernardino de Sahag\u00fan in the sixteenth century, in the famous Florentine codex). If so, this would have suggested that riddles are not a universal art form. However, Hieronymus Lalemant gave a"}, "descending_order": ["4634910", "3984830", "268683", "476011"], "permutation_1": ["4634910", "3984830", "476011", "268683"], "permutation_2": ["476011", "3984830", "268683", "4634910"], "permutation_3": ["3984830", "476011", "4634910", "268683"]}
{"id": "2hop__143172_58115", "docs_added": {"11521851": "If You're Reading This\n\"If You're Reading This\" is a song performed by American country music artist Tim McGraw. The song was first performed at the Academy of Country Music (ACM) awards, which were held in Las Vegas, Nevada and aired May 15, 2007 on CBS. Shortly after McGraw's live performance, several radio stations began playing a telecast of the song, boosting it to a debut at No. 35 on the \"Billboard\" Hot Country Songs charts from unsolicited airplay. A remixed version of the live recording was later released to radio as a single, overlapping McGraw's then-current single, \"I Need You\", a duet with wife Faith Hill.\n\"If You're Reading This\" eventually peaked at No. 3 on the \"Billboard\" country charts in October 2007, becoming McGraw's forty-second Top Ten country hit overall. The song also peaked at No. 41 on the \"\"Billboard\" Hot 100\".\nAbout the song.\n\"If You're Reading This\" is a tribute to the families of soldiers who have died. Its lyrics take the form of a letter written from a soldier to his family \u2014 a letter that is intended to be sent only if the soldier dies (\"If you're reading this / I'm already home\").\nMcGraw co-wrote the song, with Brad and Brett Warren of country duo The Warren Brothers, approximately three weeks before the ACM awards aired. The three were inspired by reading a magazine article on war casualties.\nWhen McGraw performed the song at the ACM telecast, one hundred relatives of soldiers joined him onstage, under a banner that read \"Families of Fallen Heroes\". After performing the song, he received a standing ovation.\nChart performance.\nDespite the lack of a studio recording, the song received airplay on country radio after several stations began playing the CBS telecast of McGraw's live performance. As a result, it entered \"Billboard\"'s Hot Country Songs chart at number 35. Scott Siman, McGraw's manager, had been working with both the label (Curb Records) and radio stations to \"address the fact that we don't have a studio recorded version of this song\". A remixed version (with most of the audience noise removed, except for applause at the end) was released to radio in June 2007, while McGraw's then-current single \"I Need You\" (a Faith Hill duet) was also climbing the charts. This remix was added to later presses of his then current album \"Let It Go\", and Curb began promoting the song as a single in place of \"I Need You\".\n\"If You're Reading This\" is the second song in McGraw's career that has charted due to a live performance. In 2001, \"unknown fans\" taped McGraw's performance of the song \"Things Change\" during the CMA awards, and posted the recording to Napster; as a result, several stations downloaded and played the live telecast of that song.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "525336": "Tim McGraw\nAmerican country singer and actor (born 1967)\nSamuel Timothy McGraw (born May 1, 1967) is an American country singer and actor. He has released 16 studio albums (11 for Curb Records, five for Big Machine Records and one for Arista Nashville). 10 of those albums have reached number one on the Top Country Albums charts, with his 1994 breakthrough album \"Not a Moment Too Soon\" being the top country album of 1994. In total, McGraw's albums have produced 65 singles, 25 of which have reached number one on the Hot Country Songs or Country Airplay charts.\nThree of these singles \u2013 \"It's Your Love\", \"Just to See You Smile\", and \"Live Like You Were Dying\" \u2013 were respectively the top country songs of 1997, 1998, and 2004 according to \"Billboard\" Year-End. He has also won three Grammy Awards, 14 Academy of Country Music awards, 11 Country Music Association (CMA) awards, 10 American Music Awards, and three People's Choice Awards. His Soul2Soul II Tour, which was done in partnership with his wife, Faith Hill, is one of the highest-grossing tours in country music history, and one of the top five among all genres of music. He has sold more than 80 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time.\nMcGraw has ventured into acting, with supporting roles in \"The Blind Side\", \"Friday Night Lights\", \"The Kingdom\", \"Tomorrowland\", \"Four Christmases\", flashback scenes in 2 episodes of \"Yellowstone\", and \"The Shack\" as well as lead roles in \"Flicka\" (2006), \"Country Strong\" (2010), and \"1883\" (2021). He was a minority owner of the Arena Football League's Nashville Kats. McGraw has been married to singer Faith Hill since 1996 and is the eldest son of former MLB pitcher Tug McGraw.\nEarly life and education.\nSamuel Timothy McGraw was born in Delhi, Louisiana, the only child of Elizabeth \"Betty\" Ann D'Agostino, a waitress from Jacksonville, Florida, and Frank Edwin \"Tug\" McGraw Jr., a pitcher for the minor league Jacksonville Suns and future star pitcher for the New York Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies. In 1966, D'Agostino was a student at Terry Parker High School. She lived in the same apartment building as Tug McGraw, who was playing baseball for Jacksonville. When she became pregnant with McGraw as a teen, D'Agostino's parents sent her to Louisiana to live with relatives. Through his father, McGraw has two half-brothers, Mark and Matthew, and a half-sister named Cari. He also has two younger half-sisters, Tracey and Sandra, through his mother's marriage to Horace Smith.\nMcGraw grew up believing Smith was his father, and used this stepfather's surname until meeting Tug. At age 11, McGraw discovered his birth certificate while searching in his mother's closet to look for a picture for a school project. Following the discovery, he learned from her who his biological father was and she took him to meet the elder McGraw for the first time. Tug McGraw denied the parentage for seven years until Tim was 18 years old. After that time, the two formed a relationship and remained close until the former baseball star died in 2004.\nAs a child, McGraw played competitive sports, including baseball, even before the knowledge of who his father was and his professional baseball career. McGraw was also a member of the FFA in high school. Following high school graduation, he attended Northeast Louisiana University on a baseball scholarship, where he was a pre-law major and pledged as a member of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. A knee injury sustained while playing baseball for the college prevented him from pursuing a professional career in sports.\nWhile in college, McGraw learned to play guitar and would frequently perform and sing for money. He has claimed his roommates often hid the guitar because he was so bad. McGraw followed his mother when she returned to Jacksonville, Florida, in 1987. After the move, he attended Florida Community College at Jacksonville for one term, and occasionally sat in with local bands. In 1989, on the day his hero Keith Whitley died, McGraw dropped out of college to head to Nashville and pursue a musical career.\nMusic career.\n1990s.\n\"Tim McGraw\".\nMcGraw came to the attention of Curb Records in 1990. After cutting a demo single, McGraw gave a copy to his father. A man who was friends with Curb Records executives heard the demo while driving with Tug one day and recommended that Curb contact the young singer. Several weeks later, he was able to play his tape for Curb executives, after which they signed him to a recording contract. McGraw made his debut with the single \"What Room Was the Holiday In\", which was released on March 29, 1991, and did not enter the \"Billboard\" Hot Country Songs chart upon its release. In a 2001 retrospective on McGraw's career in \"Billboard\", a former program director for Nashville station WSM-FM said that he added the song to the station's playlist because it showed \"undeniable promise\", while another former program director at WXTU in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, recalled that McGraw's debut single was \"terrible\" but that he booked the singer to make an appearance at the station due to his father's fame.\nTwo years later in April 1993, McGraw released his debut album \"Tim McGraw\", which was commercially unsuccessful and did not sell well. This is his only studio album not to achieve a music recording sales certification or to enter the Top Country Albums charts. Three more singles were released from \"Tim McGraw\": \"Welcome to the Club\", \"Memory Lane\", and \"Two Steppin' Mind\". None made country Top 40 and the album itself did not chart. Both \"Memory Lane\" and \"Tears in the Rain\", another cut from the album, were co-written by Joe Diffie. \"Memory Lane\" had originally appeared on Keith Palmer's self-titled 1991 debut album.\n\"Not a Moment Too Soon\".\nMcGraw's second album, entitled \"Not a Moment Too Soon\", was much more successful than his self-titled debut, and it was the best-selling country album of 1994. Its first single, \"Indian Outlaw\", sparked controversy, as critics argued that it presented Native Americans in a patronizing way. Some radio stations even chose not to play it. However, the controversy helped spur sales, and the song became McGraw's first Top 10 entry on the U.S. country charts after getting as high as number 8. The song also peaked at number 15 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100.\nThe album's second single, \"Don't Take the Girl\", became McGraw's first number one on the U.S. country charts, in addition to peaking at number 17 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. The song also \"helped cement his image as a ruggedly good-looking guy with a sensitive side.\" By year's end, the third single from the album, \"Down on the Farm\" peaked at number 2; after that, the album's fourth single, also its title track, became the singer's second number one song in early 1995. The fifth and final single \"Refried Dreams\" reached number 5. The album sold over 6 million copies, topping the \"Billboard\" 200 and Top Country Album charts. On the strength of this success, McGraw won Academy of Country Music awards for Album of the Year and Top New Male Vocalist in 1994. \"Billboard\" named \"Not a Moment Too Soon\" as the top country album of 1994 on Billboard Year-End.\n\"All I Want\".\nMcGraw's third studio album, \"All I Want\", was released in 1995. Just like its predecessor, this album debuted at No.\u00a01 on the country charts. The album even sold over 2 million copies in the United States and reached the Top 5 on the \"Billboard\" 200. The album's first single, \"I Like It, I Love It\", became McGraw's third number one on the American country charts and it also peaked at number 25 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. This song also eventually became the goal song for the Nashville Predators once they began their inaugural season and since then has been left unchanged. The album's next two singles, \"Can't Be Really Gone\" and \"All I Want Is a Life\" (its partial title track) both made the top 5 at numbers 2 and 5, respectively. The fourth single, \"She Never Lets It Go to Her Heart\", gave McGraw his fourth number one on the U.S. country charts in 1996. Finishing off the singles was \"Maybe We Should Just Sleep on It\", which peaked at number 4.\nIn 1996, McGraw headlined the most successful country tour of the year, The Spontaneous Combustion Tour, with Faith Hill as his supporting act. Hill broke off her engagement to her former producer Scott Hendricks so that she and McGraw could start dating each other; they then married on October 6, 1996.\n\"Everywhere\".\nThe singer's fourth album, \"Everywhere\" was released in 1997. It topped the country charts as well and reached No.\u00a02 on the \"Billboard\" 200, selling 4 million copies. The album spawned six singles. Four of those singles - \"It's Your Love\" (a duet with Faith Hill), the title track, \"Where the Green Grass Grows\", and \"Just to See You Smile\" - reached number one on the country charts. The Country Music Association awarded \"Everywhere\" its Album of the Year award for 1997. At the 40th Grammy Awards, \"It's Your Love\" received two Grammy Award nominations for Best Country Collaboration With Vocals and Best Country Song. Both \"It's Your Love\" and \"Just to See You Smile\" were the number one country songs of 1997 and 1998 according to \"Billboard\" Year-End charts; \"Just to See You Smile\" also set a record for the longest run on the country charts at the time, at 42 weeks. The album's other two singles, \"One of These Days\" and \"For a Little While\" both peaked at number 2.\n\"A Place in the Sun\".\nMcGraw's fifth album, \"A Place in the Sun\", continued his streak in 1999, debuting atop both the US country and pop album charts and selling 3 million copies. Over 251,000 of those copies were sold during its first week, making this the singer's first number 1 opener on the \"Billboard\" 200. It produced another four number one hits on the U.S. country charts with \"Please Remember Me\", \"Something Like That\", \"My Best Friend\", and \"My Next Thirty Years\". \"Some Things Never Change\" peaked at number 7 on the charts. McGraw also contributed a song for the Grammy-winning tribute album to Bob Wills entitled \"Ride With Bob\". A cover of \"Milk Cow Blues\", this song was recorded as a duet with Asleep at the Wheel, whom he had met while performing together at the George Strait Country Music Festival.\nMcGraw recorded two more duets with his wife in the late-1990s, both of which appeared on her albums. \"Just to Hear You Say That You Love Me\", from her multi-platinum-certified 1998 album \"Faith\", reached the Top 5 of the US country charts. Her follow-up album, 1999's \"Breathe\", featured \"Let's Make Love\", which won a Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Collaboration in 2000.\n2000s.\n\"Greatest Hits\".\nIn 2000, McGraw released his first \"Greatest Hits\" album, which topped the country albums charts for nine weeks and sold nearly 6 million copies, making this one of the biggest-selling albums in the modern country market. In the latter half of the year, he and Hill went out on the Soul2Soul Tour, playing to sellout crowds in 64 venues, including Madison Square Garden. The tour was one of the top tours of any genre in the U.S. It was also the leading country tour of 2000. While in Buffalo, New York, McGraw and Kenny Chesney became involved in a scuffle with police officers after Chesney attempted to ride a police horse. McGraw came to Chesney's aid after police officers nearby believed the horse was being stolen and tried to arrest him. The two were arrested and charged with assault but were later cleared. During a concert with the George Strait Country Music Festival several weeks later, Hill, dressed as a police officer, made an unscheduled appearance at the end of McGraw's set and led him off the stage.\n\"Set This Circus Down\".\nMcGraw's sixth studio album, \"Set This Circus Down\", was released in April 2001. It even spawned four number one hits on the country charts as well, this time with \"Grown Men Don't Cry\", \"Angry All the Time\" (with Faith Hill), \"The Cowboy in Me\", and \"Unbroken\". The singer provided harmony vocals for Jo Dee Messina's song \"Bring On the Rain\", which he also produced. That song topped the country charts. Hungry for more of his music, fans downloaded a version of his performance of the song \"Things Change\" from his appearance at the Country Music Association Awards Show. The song was played extensively on radio, becoming the first country song to appear on the charts from a fully downloaded version.\n\"Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors\".\nIn 2002, McGraw bucked country music traditions by recording his seventh studio album \"Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors\" with his tour band The Dancehall Doctors. Unlike rock music\u2014where it is commonplace for touring bands to provide the music on albums recorded by the artist they support, country albums are typically recorded with session musicians. McGraw chose to use his own touring band, in order to recognize their part in \nhis success, and to capture some of the feel of a real band.\nAll of the Dancehall Doctors have worked with McGraw since at least 1996. Their lineup includes:\nThe album debuted at No.\u00a02 on the country albums charts, Its fourth and fifth singles \"Real Good Man\" and \"Watch the Wind Blow By\" both climbed to number one on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot Country Songs chart. \"She's My Kind of Rain\" peaked at No.\u00a02 in 2003, and \"Red Rag Top\" reached number 5. The album also features a cover of Elton John's early-1970s classic \"Tiny Dancer,\" as well as duets with Kim Carnes on \"Comfort Me\" (a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks) and Don Henley and Timothy B. Schmit of the Eagles on \"Illegal.\" \"She's My Kind of Rain\" also received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Country Vocal Performance-Male at the 46th Grammy Awards.\n\"Live Like You Were Dying\".\nHis eighth album, 2004's \"Live Like You Were Dying\", continued the singer's record of commercial success. The album's first single and its title track was dedicated to his father Tug McGraw, who died of a brain tumor earlier in the year, was an ode to living life fully and in the moment. The second single \"Back When\" was a paean to an easy nostalgia. In December 2019, McGraw spoke on stage at the annual End Well Symposium about why he wrote \"Live Like You Were Dying\" and his struggles with caregiving for his dying father. \"Live Like You Were Dying\" spent seven non-consecutive weeks at No.\u00a01 on \"Billboard\" and went on to become the top country song of 2004 on the \"Billboard\" Year-End charts. It also became one of the most awarded records by winning ACM Single and Song of the Year, CMA Single and Song of the Year, and a Grammy. \"Back When\" went to number one on the country charts as well. The album produced three more singles with \"Drugs or Jesus\", \"Do You Want Fries with That\", and \"My Old Friend\". \"Drugs or Jesus\" became McGraw's first single since 1993 to not ever reach within the Top 10 on the U.S. country charts, while \"Do You Want Fries with That\" and \"My Old Friend\" peaked at numbers 5 and 6, respectively.\nIn late 2004, his unlikely duet with hip hop artist Nelly on \"Over and Over\" became a crossover hit, spending 10 weeks atop the top 40 chart. \"Over and Over\" brought McGraw a success he had never previously experienced on contemporary hit radio or R&B radio, and brought both artists success neither had previously experienced in the hot adult contemporary market. The song also spent a week at the top of the charts in the United Kingdom, becoming McGraw's first hit single in Britain and Nelly's third number one hit in the country after \"Dilemma\" and \"My Place\". \"Over and Over\" also reached the top of the charts in Australia, New Zealand, and the Republic of Ireland, and the top 10 in Austria, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Romania, and Switzerland.\nThroughout the 2005 NFL season, McGraw sang an alternate version of \"I Like It, I Love It\" every week during the season. The alternate lyrics, which changed each week, would make reference to plays during Sunday's games, and the song would be played alongside video highlights during halftime on \"Monday Night Football\". Later in the year, McGraw became a minority owner of the Arena Football League's Nashville Kats when majority owner Bud Adams (owner of the NFL's Tennessee Titans) was awarded the expansion franchise.\n\"Let It Go\".\nIn April 2006, McGraw and Hill began their 73-concert 55-city Soul2Soul II Tour, again to strong commercial acceptance. The tour grossed roughly $89 million and sold approximately 1.1 million tickets, making it the top-grossing tour in the history of country music. It was also named \"Major Tour of the Year\" by \"Pollstar\", beating out such heavyweights as Madonna and the Rolling Stones. In a special gesture, the couple donated all of the profits from their performance in New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina relief. McGraw, along with Kenny Chesney, contributed to a version of Tracy Lawrence's song \"Find Out Who Your Friends Are\", which can be found on Lawrence's album \"For the Love\". Although the official single version features only Lawrence's vocals, many stations have opted to play the version with McGraw and Chesney instead.\nMcGraw released his eleventh studio album, \"Let It Go\", on March 27, 2007. The album's first single, \"Last Dollar (Fly Away)\", peaked at number one on the Hot Country Songs chart. This marked McGraw's first No.\u00a01 single since \"Back When\" in late 2004. The album debuted at No.\u00a01 on both the \"Billboard\" 200 and Top Country Album charts, marking his fourth No.\u00a01 album on the 200 charts and his ninth overall. His daughters can be heard singing the chorus during the last few seconds of the song on the video. During the Academy of Country Music awards show on May 15, 2007, McGraw performed a song titled \"If You're Reading This\", which he co-wrote with The Warren Brothers. Several radio stations began to play the live recording of the song; as a result, it entered the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot Country Songs chart at No.\u00a035. McGraw also produced the debut album of country music duo Halfway to Hazard. The duo's first single, \"Daisy\", peaked at No.\u00a039 on the country charts in the summer of 2007. In the summer of 2007, McGraw and Hill toured together once again in the Soul2Soul 2007 tour.\nIn the edition of January 18, 2008 of the \"USA Today\" newspaper, McGraw was stated to be featured on the Def Leppard album \"Songs from the Sparkle Lounge\", having also co-written the first single, \"Nine Lives\", with Def Leppard band members Joe Elliott, Phil Collen, and Rick Savage. The unusual pairing goes back to 2006 when McGraw joined Def Leppard onstage for the song \"Pour Some Sugar On Me\", and then collaborated on the song \"Nine Lives\" afterward. The album was released on April 25, 2008. At the 2007 50th Annual Grammy Awards, McGraw received 5 nominations including Best Country Album (for \"Let It Go\"), Best Country Song (both for \"If You're Reading This\" and \"I Need You\"), Best Country Collaboration with Vocals (with \"I Need You\"), and Best Male Country Vocal Performance (with \"If You're Reading This\"). In May 2008, he hit the road with the Live Your Voice tour. The mainly-outdoor arena concert tour was his first solo outing in nearly three years. Also in May 2008, he debuted a new song in his follow-up to \"Let It Go\" at the Stagecoach Music Festival in Indio, California. In July 2008, the album's sixth single and its title track, \"Let It Go\", was released to country radio. Following that, a seventh single, \"Nothin' to Die For\", entered the Country charts at No.\u00a057 in late December. McGraw released his third greatest-hits package, \"Greatest Hits 3\" on October 7, 2008. The album features 12 tracks. McGraw was set to debut a new song at the 2009 ACM Awards, but then canceled his performance; he was replaced by Blake Shelton, who sang \"She Wouldn't Be Gone\".\n\"Southern Voice\".\nMcGraw's twelfth studio album, \"Southern Voice\", was released October 20, 2009, and led by the single \"It's A Business Doing Pleasure With You\", which was shipped to radio outlets in late June 2009.\n\"Southern Voice\" was argued to be McGraw's last album for Curb Records, following the dispute over releasing his third Greatest Hits collection back in October 2008 without his permission. McGraw did not approve of the release. On November 30, 2010, Curb Records released his fourth greatest hits compilation, \"Number One Hits\".\n2010s.\n\"Emotional Traffic\" and Curb Records lawsuit.\nOn January 2, 2011, McGraw announced plans for his Emotional Traffic Tour featuring opening acts Luke Bryan and The Band Perry.\nSirius XM announced on March 30, 2011, that they would be launching Tim McGraw radio, a commercial-free music channel devoted to McGraw's music, and featuring an in-depth interview with McGraw as well. As of fall 2010, McGraw had finished work on the album \"Emotional Traffic\", his last album with Curb Records. On May 13, 2011, Curb Records filed a breach-of-contract suit against McGraw. The label alleged that McGraw recorded tracks for his \"Emotional Traffic\" album too early prior to its delivery to the label. Several days later, McGraw filed a counter suit against the label seeking advance payment and recording-fund reimbursement, unspecified damages, and a jury trial. A trial was scheduled to begin in July 2012. In November 2011, a judge granted McGraw permission to record music for another label, ending his relationship with Curb Records that began in 1990. A few hours after the ruling, Curb released \"Better Than I Used to Be\", the first single from \"Emotional Traffic\". The album was released on January 24, 2012.\n\"Two Lanes of Freedom\".\nIn December 2011, McGraw released his first Christmas single, \"Christmas All Over the World\", on his own label StyleSonic Records. On May 21, 2012, however, he signed with Big Machine Records.\nMcGraw's debut album for Big Machine, entitled \"Two Lanes of Freedom\", was released on February 5, 2013. It debuted at number 2 on the charts by selling 108,000 copies. The album includes the singles \"Truck Yeah\", \"One of Those Nights\", \"Highway Don't Care\" (a duet with Taylor Swift which also features Keith Urban on lead guitar), and \"Southern Girl\". McGraw performed at the festival in London on March 16, 2013.\n\"Love Story\" and \"Sundown Heaven Town\".\nMcGraw released a single titled \"Lookin' for That Girl\" in January 2014 as the lead-off single to his second album for Big Machine. It was followed immediately by the announcement of the Sundown Heaven Town Tour. The album, titled \"Sundown Heaven Town\", was released on September 16, 2014. Four months into its run, \"Lookin' for That Girl\" was withdrawn as a single and replaced with \"Meanwhile, Back at Mama's\", which features backing vocals from Hill. \"Shotgun Rider\" became the album's third single and a number 1 Country Airplay hit by the end of 2014. Following it was \"Diamond Rings and Old Barstools\", a duet with Catherine Dunn. McGraw's eighth greatest hits album, \"Love Story\", is a compilation of his twelve biggest love songs and two previously unreleased recordings. It was released exclusively through Walmart on February 4, 2014, by Curb Records.\n\"Damn Country Music\".\nOn August 10, 2015, McGraw released a new single to digital retailers, titled \"Top of the World\", which was later released to radio on August 17, 2015, as the lead single to his third studio album for Big Machine Records. On September 17, McGraw announced that the album was titled \"Damn Country Music\", with a release date scheduled for November 6. The album's second single, \"Humble and Kind\", released to country radio on February 1, 2016, and went on to reach number 1 on the Billboard Hot Country charts. McGraw was selected as one of 30 artists to perform on \"Forever Country\", a mash-up track of Take Me Home, Country Roads, On the Road Again and I Will Always Love You which celebrates 50 years of the CMA Awards. The album's third single, \"How I'll Always Be\" released to country radio on July 11, 2016. It reached number 3 on the Country Airplay in January 2017.\n\"The Rest of Our Life\".\nOn October 4, 2016, during a show at the Ryman Auditorium, McGraw and Hill announced that they would be going back on the road together again on the . The tour began on April 7, 2017, in New Orleans and will continue into 2018, incorporating the festival held in the UK and Ireland throughout March 2018.\nBefore the commencement of the tour, it was reported that McGraw, alongside Hill, had signed a new deal with Sony Music Nashville. The signing also indicated the release of a duet album between the couple, and that multiple solo recordings would be produced. The new record label signing also preceded the release of \"Speak to a Girl\", the lead single from the duet album, \"The Rest of Our Life\", which was released on November 17, 2017. The release of the album coincided with the opening of an exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum titled \"Mississippi Woman, Louisiana Man\", which celebrates the careers of both McGraw and Hill.\nMcGraw released two major best-selling books in 2019, with the first co-written with \"Pulitzer Prize\" winner Jon Meacham which reached No. 2 on the New York Times Bestsellers list. Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music That Made a Nation. New York: Random House. 2019. . His second book, \"Grit and Grace\", also reached No. 2 on the New York Times Bestsellers list.\n2020s.\n\"Here on Earth\".\nIn February 2020, McGraw rejoined Big Machine Records, which he was previously signed to from 2011 to 2017. He released a new album, \"Here on Earth\", on August 21, 2020. The \"Here on Earth Tour\" was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In January 2021, McGraw released the single \"Undivided\" with Tyler Hubbard of Florida Georgia Line, which was included on a deluxe edition of \"Here on Earth\" released later that year. On October 9, 2021, McGraw confronted a heckler at a performance at the Nugget Events Center in Sparks, Nevada, after he forgot the words to his song \"Just to See You Smile.\" After removing the heckler, he explained that he had been filming a movie and had a lot on his mind, and asked for the audience's help in remembering the words.\n\"Standing Room Only\" and \"Poet's Resum\u00e9\".\nOn August 25, 2023, McGraw released his sixteenth studio album, \"Standing Room Only\". The title track was released as the album's lead single on March 10, 2023. It reached number 2 on the U.S. Country Airplay chart. Three months after releasing \"Standing Room Only\", McGraw surprise-released a six-track EP, \"Poet's Resum\u00e9\" on November 21, 2023.\nProduction career.\nMcGraw has occasionally served as a record producer in collaboration with Byron Gallimore, who has co-produced all of his albums. The two co-produced Jo Dee Messina's self-titled debut, as well as her next two albums, \"I'm Alright\" and \"Burn\". McGraw and Gallimore also produced the only album released by The Clark Family Experience in 2000, and Halfway to Hazard's 2007 self-titled debut album.\nActing career.\nMcGraw's first acting appearance came in a 1997 episode of \"The Jeff Foxworthy Show\", where he played Foxworthy's rival. In 2004, McGraw played a sheriff in Rick Schroder's independent release \"Black Cloud\". Later in the same year, McGraw received critical acclaim as the overbearing father of running back \"Donald Billingsley\" in the major studio Texas high school football drama \"Friday Night Lights\". The \"Dallas Observer\" said the role was \"played with unexpected ferocity by country singer Tim McGraw\". The movie went on to gross over $60 million worldwide at the box office, and sold millions in the DVD market. Most recently, it was named one of the Top 50 High School Movies of All Time (No.\u00a037) by \"Entertainment Weekly\".\nMcGraw's first lead role was in the 2006 film \"Flicka\", which was released in theaters October 20, 2006. In the remake of the classic book \"My Friend Flicka\", McGraw played the father, Rob, costarring with Alison Lohman and Maria Bello. The family-friendly movie debuted in the top 10 list and has grossed over $25 million at the box office. McGraw again achieved critical acclaim for his acting. Shortly before \"Flicka\" opened, McGraw received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His star is located at 6901 Hollywood Boulevard near stars honoring Julie Andrews, William Shatner, and the late Greta Garbo. One of his \"Flicka\" co-stars, Alison Lohman, attended the ceremony that included comments from Billy Bob Thornton, McGraw's co-star in the film \"Friday Night Lights\". In addition to acting in \"Flicka\", McGraw served as executive producer of the soundtrack album, which was released by his record label, StyleSonic Records, in association with Curb Records and Fox 2000 films. It featured the closing credit song \"My Little Girl\", one of the first two songs that McGraw recorded that he also co-wrote (the other being \"I've Got Friends That Do\", both of which were included on \"Greatest Hits Vol. 2\"). The song was nominated by the Broadcast Film Critics for \"Best Song\" in a film, and the movie was nominated in the category \"Best Family Film (Live Action)\". The movie proved to be another success in the DVD market, and has sold over a million copies, debuting at No.\u00a03 on the DVD sales chart.\nMcGraw also had a small part in the Michael Mann\u2013produced 2007 film \"The Kingdom\", reuniting him with \"Friday Night Lights\" director Peter Berg. McGraw played a bitter, angered widower whose wife was killed in the terrorist attack that is the centerpiece of the movie. On November 22, 2008, McGraw made his first appearance on \"Saturday Night Live\". He also played \"Dallas McVie\" in \"Four Christmases\". McGraw appeared in the 2009 film \"The Blind Side\" as Sean Tuohy, husband of Sandra Bullock's character, Leigh Anne Tuohy. \"The Blind Side\" is based on the true story of Michael Oher, a homeless African-American youngster from a broken home, taken in and adopted by the Tuohys, a well-to-do white family who help him fulfill his potential. He is among the stars of \"Dirty Girl\", a film that premiered on September 12, 2010, at the Toronto Film Festival, along with Juno Temple, Milla Jovovich, William H. Macy and Dwight Yoakam. Also in 2010, McGraw starred in \"Country Strong\" as James Canter, the husband and manager of the fictional country singer Kelly Canter (portrayed by Gwyneth Paltrow). In addition to his appearance in the film, McGraw's song \"Me and Tennessee\", a duet with Paltrow, was played during the closing credits and appears on the film's soundtrack. In 2015, McGraw appeared in Brad Bird's \"Tomorrowland\" as Eddie Newton, a NASA engineer, and Casey Newton's (played by Britt Robertson) father.\n\"1883\", a spinoff prequel to Taylor Sheridan's Yellowstone television series was released in late 2021 and stars McGraw, Faith Hill, and Sam Elliott.\nCharitable efforts.\nIn 1994, when McGraw first reached fame, he established the annual Swampstock event. It began as a charity softball game to raise money for hometown little league programs; the event now includes a celebrity softball game and a multi-artist concert that attracts over 11,000 fans per year. The combined events have funded new Little League parks and equipment, and have established college scholarship funds for students in the northeast Louisiana area.\nFrom 1996 to 1999, McGraw hosted an annual New Year's Eve concert in Nashville with special guests including Jeff Foxworthy, the Dixie Chicks, and Martina McBride. The 1997 show raised over $100,000 for the Country Music Foundation Hall of Fame and Museum. Beginning in 1999, McGraw would pick select cities on each tour, and the night before he was scheduled to perform, would choose a local club and host a quickly-organized show. This tour-within-a-tour became known as \"The Bread and Water Tour\", and all proceeds from the show would go to a charity from that community.\nMcGraw designed a charity T-shirt sold through Angelwear to benefit MusiCares. MusiCares supports musicians in times of need. His charity focuses particularly on health issues. The Tim McGraw Foundation raises funds to enhance the quality of life of children and adults with brain tumors. He supports the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center, the David Foster Foundation, which helps families of children in need of organ transplants, and Musicians on Call, which brings music to hospital patients' bedsides. He also performs during dinners and auctions to benefit children with disabilities. Hill and McGraw gave the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society $375,000 (the entire gate receipts from one of their concerts) to assist the families of 17 sailors following the terrorist attack on , the guided-missile destroyer that suffered significant damage in the Gulf of Aden, Yemen on October 12, 2000.\nIn the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina, McGraw who was raised in Mississippi, joined groups taking supplies to Gulfport, Mississippi. The two also hosted several charity concerts to benefit those who were displaced by the storm. Later in the year, the couple established the Neighbor's Keeper Foundation, which provides funding for community charities to assist with basic humanitarian services, in the event of a natural disaster, or for desperate personal circumstances.\nMcGraw is also a member of the American Red Cross National Celebrity Cabinet, to which various celebrities donate their time, skills, and fame, to help the Red Cross highlight important initiatives and response efforts.\nMcGraw has helped out with charity events held by Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre. The Brett Favre Fourward Foundation has featured McGraw performing concerts during dinners and auctions that benefit children with disabilities in Wisconsin and Mississippi. One instance is recorded on Favre's official website.\nOn July 12, 2007, it was made public that McGraw while in Grand Rapids, Michigan for a performance, donated $5,000 to Kailey Kozminski, the 3-year-old daughter of Officer Robert Kozminski, a Grand Rapids police officer who was killed on July 8, 2007, while responding to a domestic disturbance.\nIn April 2023, McGraw surprised rising country star Brandon Davis, whom he previously brought on tour with him in 2022, with a new guitar after all of his gear was stolen earlier in the month.\nPersonal politics.\nIn a 2006 interview with \"Esquire\" magazine, McGraw stated he would like to run for public office as a Democratic Party candidate, possibly for United States Senate or Governor of Tennessee\u2014his home state. In the same interview, he praised Bill Clinton.\nIn a 2008 interview with \"People\" magazine, McGraw referred to himself as a \"Blue Dog Democrat\" and stated that he and his family support Barack Obama.\nIn January 2021, McGraw performed on the \"Celebrating America\" inaugural special, a primetime virtual concert celebrating the inauguration of Joe Biden.\nPersonal life.\nMcGraw married fellow country singer Faith Hill in 1996, and they have three daughters. He and Hill own Goat Cay, which they unofficially named L'\u00eele d'Anges, a private island in the Bahamas.\nIn 2000, Kenny Chesney and McGraw became involved in a scuffle with police officers in Buffalo, New York, after Chesney was riding a State Police horse and refused to get off the horse. McGraw came to Chesney's aid after police officers nearby believed the horse was being stolen. The two were arrested and charged, Chesney for disorderly conduct and McGraw for assault, but were acquitted in 2001.\nMcGraw holds a private pilot license and owns a single-engine Cirrus SR22.\nIn 2015, \"Forbes\" estimated McGraw's annual income at $38 million.\nMcGraw is the godfather to the son of Garrett Hedlund and Emma Roberts. He and Hedlund became friends after co-starring in \"Friday Night Lights\" and \"Country Strong\".\nIn acknowledgment of his grandfather's Italian heritage, McGraw was honored by the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) in 2004, receiving the NIAF Special Achievement Award in Music during the Foundation's 29th Anniversary Gala.\nMcGraw's Bracco Italiano named Lepshi won Best of Breed at the 2023 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. The McGraw-Hill family also has two other Bracco Italianos, Caesar and Stromboli.\nTours.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11521851", "525336"], "permutation_1": ["11521851", "525336"], "permutation_2": ["525336", "11521851"], "permutation_3": ["525336", "11521851"]}
{"id": "2hop__766294_22183", "docs_added": {"24028": "Pope Paul VI\nHead of the Catholic Church from 1963 to 1978\nPope Paul VI (; ; born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini, ; 26 September 1897\u00a0\u2013 6 August 1978) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 21 June 1963 to his death on 6 August 1978. Succeeding John XXIII, he continued the Second Vatican Council, which he closed in 1965, implementing its numerous reforms. He fostered improved ecumenical relations with Eastern Orthodox and Protestant churches, which resulted in many historic meetings and agreements. In January 1964, he flew to Jordan, the first time a reigning pontiff had left Italy in more than a century.\nMontini served in the Holy See's Secretariat of State from 1922 to 1954, and along with Domenico Tardini was considered the closest and most influential advisor of Pope Pius XII. In 1954, Pius named Montini Archbishop of Milan, the largest Italian diocese. Montini later became the Secretary of the Italian Bishops' Conference. John XXIII elevated Montini to the College of Cardinals in 1958, and after his death, Montini was, with little to no opposition, elected his successor, taking the name Paul VI.\nHe reconvened the Second Vatican Council, which had been suspended during the interregnum. After its conclusion, Paul VI took charge of the interpretation and implementation of its mandates, finely balancing the conflicting expectations of various Catholic groups. The resulting reforms were among the widest and deepest in the Church's history.\nPaul VI spoke repeatedly to Marian conventions and Mariological meetings, visited Marian shrines and issued three Marian encyclicals. Following Ambrose of Milan, he named Mary as the Mother of the Church during the Second Vatican Council. He described himself as a humble servant of a suffering humanity and demanded significant changes from the rich in North America and Europe in favour of the poor in the Third World. His opposition to birth control was published in the 1968 encyclical .\nPope Benedict XVI, citing his heroic virtue, proclaimed him venerable on 20 December 2012. Pope Francis beatified Paul VI on 19 October 2014, after the recognition of a miracle attributed to his intercession. His liturgical feast was celebrated on the date of his birth, 26 September, until 2019 when it was changed to the date of his priestly ordination, 29 May. Pope Francis canonised him on 14 October 2018.\nEarly life.\nGiovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini was born in the village of Concesio, in the Province of Brescia, Lombardy, Italy, in 1897. His father, (1860\u20131943), was a lawyer, journalist, director of the Catholic Action, and member of the Italian Parliament. His mother, Giudetta Alghisi (1874\u20131943), was from a family of rural nobility. He had two brothers, Francesco Montini (1900\u20131971), who became a physician, and (1896\u20131990), who became a lawyer and politician. On 30 September 1897, he was baptised with the name Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini. He attended the Cesare Arici school, run by the Jesuits, and in 1916 received a diploma from the Arnaldo da Brescia public school in Brescia. His education was often interrupted by bouts of illness.\nIn 1916, he entered the seminary to become a Catholic priest. He was ordained on 29 May 1920 in Brescia and celebrated his first Mass at the Santa Maria delle Grazie, Brescia. Montini concluded his studies in Milan with a doctorate in canon law in the same year. He later studied at the Gregorian University, the University of Rome La Sapienza and, at the request of Giuseppe Pizzardo, the Pontifical Academy of Ecclesiastical Nobles. In 1922, at the age of twenty-five, again at the request of Giuseppe Pizzardo, Montini entered the Secretariat of State, where he worked under Pizzardo together with Francesco Borgongini-Duca, Alfredo Ottaviani, Carlo Grano, Domenico Tardini and Francis Spellman. Consequently, he never had an appointment as a parish priest. In 1925 he helped found the publishing house Morcelliana in Brescia, focused on promoting a 'Christian-inspired culture'.\nVatican career.\nDiplomatic service.\nMontini had just one foreign posting in the diplomatic service of the Holy See as Secretary in the office of the papal nuncio to Poland in 1923. Of the nationalism he experienced there he wrote: \"This form of nationalism treats foreigners as enemies, especially foreigners with whom one has common frontiers. Then one seeks the expansion of one's own country at the expense of the immediate neighbours. People grow up with a feeling of being hemmed in. Peace becomes a transient compromise between wars.\" He described his experience in Warsaw as \"useful, though not always joyful\". When he became pope, the Communist government of Poland refused him permission to visit Poland on a Marian pilgrimage.\nRoman Curia.\nHis organisational skills led him to a career in the Roman Curia, the papal civil service. On 19 October 1925, he was appointed a papal chamberlain in the rank of Supernumerary Privy Chamberlain of His Holiness. In 1931, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli appointed him to teach history at the Pontifical Academy for Diplomats; he was promoted to Domestic Prelate of His Holiness on 8 July of the same year. On 24 September 1936, he was appointed a Referendary Prelate of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura.\nOn 16 December 1937, after his mentor Giuseppe Pizzardo was named a cardinal and was succeeded by Domenico Tardini, Montini was named Substitute for Ordinary Affairs under Cardinal Pacelli, the Secretary of State. His immediate supervisor was Domenico Tardini, with whom he got along well. He was further appointed Consultor of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office and of the Sacred Consistorial Congregation on 24 December, and was promoted to Protonotary apostolic (\"ad instar participantium\"), the most senior class of papal prelate, on 10 May 1938.\nPacelli became Pope Pius XII in 1939 and confirmed Montini's appointment as Substitute under the new Cardinal Secretary of State Luigi Maglione. In that role, roughly that of a chief of staff, he met the Pope every morning until 1954 and developed a rather close relationship with him. Of his service to two popes he wrote:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />It is true, my service to the Pope was not limited to the political or extraordinary affairs according to Vatican language. The goodness of Pope Pius XII opened to me the opportunity to look into the thoughts, even into the soul of this great pontiff. I could quote many details how Pius XII, always using measured and moderate speech, was hiding, nay revealing a noble position of great strength and fearless courage.\nWhen war broke out, Maglione, Tardini, and Montini were the principal figures in the Secretariat of State of the Holy See. Montini dispatched \"ordinary affairs\" in the morning, while in the afternoon he moved informally to the third floor Office of the Private Secretary of the Pontiff, serving in place of a personal secretary. During the war years, he replied to thousands of letters from all parts of the world with understanding and prayer, and arranging for help when possible.\nAt the request of the Pope, Montini created an information office regarding prisoners of war and refugees, which from 1939 to 1947 received almost ten million requests for information about missing persons and produced over eleven million replies. Montini was several times attacked by Benito Mussolini's government for meddling in politics, but the Holy See consistently defended him. When Maglione died in 1944, Pius XII appointed Tardini and Montini as joint heads of the Secretariat, each a Pro-Secretary of State. Montini described Pius XII with a filial admiration:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />His richly cultivated mind, his unusual capacity for thought and study led him to avoid all distractions and every unnecessary relaxation. He wished to enter fully into the history of his own afflicted time: with a deep understanding, that he was himself a part of that history. He wished to participate fully in it, to share his sufferings in his own heart and soul.\nAs Pro-Secretary of State, Montini coordinated the activities of assistance to persecuted fugitives hidden in Catholic convents, parishes, seminaries, and schools.\nAt the Pope's instruction, Montini, Ferdinando Baldelli, and Otto Faller established the Pontificia Commissione di Assistenza (\"Pontifical Commission for Assistance\"), which supplied a large number of Romans and refugees from everywhere with shelter, food and other necessities. In Rome alone it distributed almost two million portions of free food in 1944. The Papal Residence of Castel Gandolfo was opened to refugees, as was Vatican City in so far as space allowed. Some 15,000 lived in Castel Gandolfo, supported by the Pontificia Commissione di Assistenza. Montini was also involved in the re-establishment of Church Asylum, extending protection to hundreds of Allied soldiers escaped from prison camps, to Jews, anti-Fascists, Socialists, Communists, and after the liberation of Rome, to German soldiers, partisans, displaced persons and others. As pope in 1971, Montini turned the Pontificia Commissione di Assistenza into \"Caritas Italiana\".\nArchbishop of Milan.\nAfter the death of Cardinal Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster in 1954, Montini was appointed to succeed him as Archbishop of Milan, which made him the secretary of the Italian Bishops Conference. Pius XII presented the new archbishop \"as his personal gift to Milan\". He was consecrated bishop in Saint Peter's Basilica by Cardinal Eug\u00e8ne Tisserant, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, since Pius XII was severely ill.\nOn 12 December 1954, Pius XII delivered a radio address from his sick bed about Montini's appointment to the crowd in St. Peter's Basilica. Both Montini and the Pope had tears in their eyes when Montini departed for his diocese with its 1,000 churches, 2,500 priests and 3,500,000 souls. On 5 January 1955, Montini formally took possession of his Cathedral of Milan. Montini settled well into his new tasks among all groups of the faithful in the city, meeting cordially with intellectuals, artists, and writers.\nMontini's philosophy.\nIn his first months, Montini showed his interest in working conditions and labour issues by speaking to many unions and associations. He initiated the building of over 100 new churches, believing them the only non-utilitarian buildings in modern society, places for spiritual rest.\nHis public speeches were noticed in Milan, Rome, and elsewhere. Some considered him a liberal when he asked lay people to love not only Catholics but also schismatics, Protestants, Anglicans, the indifferent, Muslims, pagans, and atheists. He gave a friendly welcome to a group of Anglican clergy visiting Milan in 1957 and subsequently exchanged letters with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher.\nPope Pius XII revealed at the 1952 secret consistory that both Montini and Tardini had declined appointments to the cardinalate,\nand, in fact, Montini was never to be made a cardinal by Pius XII, who held no consistory and created no cardinals between the time he appointed Montini to Milan and his own death four years later. After Montini's friend Angelo Roncalli became Pope John XXIII, he made Montini a cardinal in December 1958.\nWhen the new pope announced an Ecumenical Council, Cardinal Montini reacted with disbelief and said to Giulio Bevilacqua: \"This old boy does not know what a hornets nest he is stirring up.\" Montini was appointed to the Central Preparatory Commission in 1961. During the council, Pope John XXIII asked him to live in the Vatican, where he was a Commission for Extraordinary Affairs member, though he did not engage much in the floor debates. His main advisor was Giovanni Colombo, whom he later appointed as his successor in Milan The commission was significantly overshadowed by the insistence of John XXIII that the Council complete all its work before Christmas 1962, to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the Council of Trent, an insistence which may have also been influenced by the Pope's having recently been told that he had cancer.\nJohn had a vision but \"did not have a clear agenda. His rhetoric seems to have had a note of over-optimism, a confidence in progress, which was characteristic of the 1960s.\"\nPastoral progressivism.\nDuring his period in Milan, Montini was widely seen as a progressive member of the Catholic hierarchy. He adopted new approaches to reach the faithful with pastoral care and carried through the liturgical reforms of Pius XII at the local level. For example, huge posters announced throughout the city that 1,000 voices would speak to them from 10 to 24 November 1957: more than 500 priests and many bishops, cardinals, and lay people delivered 7,000 sermons, not only in churches but in factories, meeting halls, houses, courtyards, schools, offices, military barracks, hospitals, hotels and wherever people congregated. His goal was re-introducing faith to a city without much religion. \"If only we can say Our Father and know what this means, then we would understand the Christian faith.\"\nPius XII asked Archbishop Montini to Rome in October 1957, where he gave the main presentation to the Second World Congress of Lay Apostolate. As Pro-Secretary of State, he had worked hard to form this worldwide organisation of lay people in 58 nations, representing 42 national organisations. He presented them to Pius XII in Rome in 1951. The second meeting in 1957 gave Montini an opportunity to express the lay apostolate in modern terms: \"Apostolate means love. We will love all, but especially those, who need help... We will love our time, our technology, our art, our sports, our world.\"\nCardinal.\nOn 20 June 1958, Saul Alinsky recalled meeting with Montini: \"I had three wonderful meetings with Montini and I am sure that you have heard from him since.\u201d Alinsky also wrote to George Nauman Shuster, two days before the papal conclave that elected John XXIII: \"No, I don't know who the next Pope will be, but if it's to be Montini, the drinks will be on me for years to come.\"\nAlthough some cardinals seem to have viewed Montini as a likely papabile candidate, possibly receiving some votes in the 1958 conclave, he had the handicap of not yet being a cardinal. Angelo Roncalli was elected pope on 28 October 1958 and took the name John XXIII. On 17 November 1958, \"L'Osservatore Romano\" announced a consistory for the creation of new cardinals, with Montini at the top of the list. When the Pope raised Montini to the cardinalate on 15 December 1958, he became Cardinal-Priest of Ss. Silvestro e Martino ai Monti. The Pope appointed him simultaneously to several Vatican congregations, drawing him frequently to Rome in the coming years.\nCardinal Montini journeyed to Africa in 1962, visiting Ghana, Sudan, Kenya, Congo, Rhodesia, South Africa, and Nigeria. After this journey, John XXIII called Montini to a private audience to report on his trip, speaking for several hours. In fifteen other trips, he visited Brazil (1960) and the USA (1960), including New York City, Washington DC, Chicago, the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. He usually vacationed in Engelberg Abbey, a secluded Benedictine monastery in Switzerland.\nPapacy.\nPapal conclave.\nMontini was generally seen as the most likely papal successor, being close to both Popes Pius XII and John XXIII, as well as his pastoral and administrative background, his insight, and his determination. John XXIII had previously known the Vatican as an official until his appointment to Venice was a papal diplomat, but returning to Rome at age 66, he may at times have felt uncertain in dealing with the professional Roman Curia, but Montini had learned its innermost workings while working in it for a generation.\nUnlike the papabile cardinals Giacomo Lercaro of Bologna and Giuseppe Siri of Genoa, Montini was identified neither left nor right nor as a radical reformer. He was viewed as most likely to continue the Second Vatican Council, which had adjourned without tangible results.\nIn the conclave after John XXIII's death, Montini was elected pope on the sixth ballot on 21 June. When the Dean of the College of Cardinals Eug\u00e8ne Tisserant asked if he accepted the election, Montini said \"Accepto, in nomine Domini\" (\"I accept, in the name of the Lord\"). He took the name \"Paul VI\" in honor of Paul the Apostle.\nAt one point during the conclave on 20 June, it was said that Cardinal Gustavo Testa lost his temper and demanded that opponents of Montini halt their efforts to thwart his election. Montini, fearful of causing strife, started to rise to dissuade the cardinals from voting for him, but Cardinal Giovanni Urbani dragged him back, muttering, \"Eminence, shut up!\"\nThe white smoke first rose from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel at 11:22 am, when Protodeacon Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani announced to the public the successful election of Montini. When the new pope appeared on the central loggia, he gave the shorter episcopal blessing as his first apostolic blessing rather than the longer, traditional \"Urbi et Orbi\".\nOf the papacy, Paul VI wrote in his journal: \"The position is unique. It brings great solitude. 'I was solitary before, but now my solitude becomes complete and awesome.'\"\nLess than two years later, on 2 May 1965, Paul informed the dean of the College of Cardinals that his health might make it impossible to function as pope. He wrote, \"In case of infirmity, which is believed to be incurable or is of long duration and which impedes us from sufficiently exercising the functions of our apostolic ministry; or in the case of another serious and prolonged impediment\", he would renounce his office \"both as bishop of Rome as well as head of the same holy Catholic Church\".\nReforms of papal ceremony.\nPaul VI did away with much of the papacy's regal splendor. His coronation on 30 June 1963 was the last such ceremony; his successor Pope John Paul I substituted an inauguration (which Paul had substantially modified, but which he left mandatory in his 1975 apostolic constitution \"Romano Pontifici Eligendo\"). At his coronation, Paul wore a tiara presented by the Archdiocese of Milan. Near the end of the third session of the Second Vatican Council in 1964, Paul VI descended the steps of the papal throne in St. Peter's Basilica and ascended the altar, on which he laid the tiara as a sign of the renunciation of human glory and power in keeping with the innovative spirit of the council. It was announced that the tiara would be sold for charity. The purchasers arranged for it to be displayed as a gift to American Catholics in the crypt of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.\nIn 1968, with the motu proprio \"Pontificalis Domus\", he discontinued most of the ceremonial functions of the old Papal nobility at the court (reorganized as the household), save for the Prince Assistants to the Papal Throne. He also abolished the Palatine Guard and the Noble Guard, leaving the Pontifical Swiss Guard as the sole military order of the Vatican.\nCompletion of the Vatican Council.\nPaul VI decided to reconvene Vatican II and completed it in 1965. Faced with conflicting interpretations and controversies, he directed the implementation of its reform goals.\nEcumenical orientation.\nDuring Vatican II, the council fathers avoided statements that might anger non-Catholic Christians. Cardinal Augustin Bea, the President of the Christian Unity Secretariat, always had the full support of Paul VI in his attempts to ensure that the Council language was friendly and open to the sensitivities of Protestant and Orthodox churches, whom he had invited to all sessions at the request of Pope John XXIII. Bea also was strongly involved in the passage of \"Nostra aetate\", which regulates the Church's relations with Judaism and members of other religions.\nDialogue with the world.\nAfter being elected Bishop of Rome, Paul VI first met with the priests in his new diocese. He told them that he started a dialogue with the modern world in Milan and asked them to seek contact with people from all walks of life. Six days after his election, he announced that he would continue Vatican II and convened the opening on 29 September 1963. In a radio address to the world, Paul VI praised his predecessors, the strength of Pius XI, the wisdom and intelligence of Pius XII, and the love of John XXIII. As his pontifical goals, he mentioned the continuation and completion of Vatican II, the Canon Law reform, and improved social peace and justice worldwide. The unity of Christianity would be central to his activities.\nCouncil priorities.\nThe Pope re-opened the Ecumenical Council on 29 September 1963, giving it four key priorities:\nHe reminded the Council Fathers that only a few years earlier, Pope Pius XII had issued the encyclical \"Mystici corporis\" about the mystical body of Christ. He asked them not to repeat or create new dogmatic definitions but to simply explain how the Church sees itself. He thanked the representatives of other Christian communities for their attendance and asked for their forgiveness if the Catholic Church was at fault for their separation. He also reminded the Council Fathers that many bishops from the East had been forbidden to attend by their national governments.\nThird and fourth sessions.\nPaul VI opened the third period on 14 September 1964, telling the Council Fathers that he viewed the text about the Church as the most important document to come out from the council. As the Council discussed the role of bishops in the papacy, Paul VI issued an explanatory note confirming the primacy of the papacy, a step that was viewed by some as meddling in the council's affairs. American bishops pushed for a speedy resolution on religious freedom, but Paul VI insisted this be approved together with related texts on topics such as ecumenism. The Pope concluded the session on 21 November 1964 with the formal pronouncement of Mary as Mother of the Church.\nBetween the third and fourth sessions, the Pope announced reforms in the areas of Roman Curia, revision of Canon law, regulations for interfaith marriages, and birth control issues. He opened the council's final session, concelebrating with bishops from countries where the Church was persecuted. Several texts proposed for his approval had to be changed, but all were finally agreed upon. The council was concluded on 8 December 1965: the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.\nIn the council's final session, Paul VI announced that he would open the canonisation processes of his immediate predecessors: Pope Pius XII and Pope John XXIII.\nUniversal call to holiness.\nAccording to Paul VI, \"the most characteristic and ultimate purpose of the teachings of the Council\" is the universal call to holiness: \"all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity; by this holiness as such a more human manner of living is promoted in this earthly society.\" This teaching is found in \"Lumen Gentium\", the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, promulgated by Paul VI on 21 November 1964.\nChurch reforms.\nSynod of Bishops.\nOn 14 September 1965, he established the Synod of Bishops as a permanent institution of the Catholic Church and an advisory body to the papacy. Several meetings were held on specific issues during his pontificate, such as the Synod of Bishops on evangelization in the modern world, which started on 9 September 1974.\nCuria reform.\nPope Paul VI knew the Roman Curia well, having worked there for a generation from 1922 to 1954. He implemented his reforms in stages. On 1 March 1968, he issued a regulation, a process initiated by Pius XII and continued by John XXIII. On 28 March, with \"Pontificalis Domus\", and in several additional Apostolic Constitutions in the following years, he revamped the entire Curia, which included reduction of bureaucracy, streamlining of existing congregations, and a broader representation of non-Italians in the Curial positions.\nAge limits and restrictions.\nOn 6 August 1966, Paul VI asked all bishops to submit their resignations to the pontiff by their 75th birthday. They were not required to do so but \"earnestly requested of their own free will to tender their resignation from office\". He extended this request to all cardinals in \"Ingravescentem aetatem\" on 21 November 1970, with the further provision that cardinals would relinquish their offices in the Roman Curia upon reaching their 80th birthday. These retirement rules enabled the Pope to fill several positions with younger prelates and reduce the Italian domination of the Roman Curia. His 1970 measures also revolutionised papal elections by restricting the right to vote in papal conclaves to cardinals who had not yet reached their 80th birthday, a class known since then as \"cardinal electors\". This reduced the power of the Italians and the Curia in the next conclave. Some senior cardinals objected to losing their voting privilege without effect.\nPaul VI's measures also limited the number of cardinal electors to a maximum of 120, a rule disregarded on several occasions by each of his successors. Previously, Paul VI himself had been the first pope to increase the number above 120 (from 82 in 1963 to 134 in April 1969; but he reduced the number of cardinal electors below 120 in 1971 by simultaneously introducing the voting age limit).\nSome prelates questioned whether he should not apply these retirement rules to himself. When Pope Paul was asked towards the end of his papacy whether he would retire at age 80, he replied \"Kings can abdicate, Popes cannot.\"\nLiturgy.\nReform of the liturgy, an aim of the 20th-century liturgical movement, mainly in France and Germany, was officially recognised as legitimate by Pius XII in his encyclical \"Mediator Dei\". During his pontificate, he eased regulations on the obligatory use of Latin in Catholic liturgies, permitting some use of vernacular languages during baptisms, funerals, and other events. In 1951 and 1955, he revised the Easter liturgies, most notably that of the Easter Triduum. The Second Vatican Council (1962\u20131965) gave some directives in its document \"Sacrosanctum Concilium\" for a general revision of the Roman Missal. Within four years of the close of the council, Paul VI promulgated in 1969 the first postconciliar edition, which included three new Eucharistic Prayers in addition to the Roman Canon, until then the only anaphora in the Roman Rite. Use of vernacular languages was expanded by decision of episcopal conferences, not by papal command. In addition to his revision of the Roman Missal, Pope Paul VI issued instructions in 1964, 1967, 1968, 1969, and 1970, reforming other elements of the liturgy of the Roman Church.\nThese reforms were not universally welcomed. Questions were raised about the need to replace the 1962 Roman Missal, which, though decreed on 23 June 1962, became available only in 1963, a few months before the Second Vatican Council's \"Sacrosanctum Concilium\" decree ordered that it be altered. attachment to it led to open ruptures, of which the most widely known is that of Marcel Lefebvre. Pope John Paul II granted bishops the right to authorise the use of the 1962 Missal (\"Quattuor abhinc annos\" and \"Ecclesia Dei\") and in 2007 Pope Benedict XVI, while stating that the Mass of Paul VI and John Paul II \"obviously is and continues to be the normal Form \u2013 the \"Forma ordinaria\" \u2013 of the Eucharistic Liturgy\", gave general permission to priests of the Latin Church to use either the 1962 Missal or the post-Vatican II Missal both privately and, under certain conditions, publicly. In 2021, Pope Francis removed many of faculties granted by Pope Benedict XVI with the publishing of his \"motu proprio\", \"Traditionis Custodes\", thus limiting the use of 1962 Roman Missal.\nRelations and dialogues.\nTo Paul VI, a dialogue with all of humanity was essential not as an aim but as a means to find the truth. According to Paul, dialogue is based on the full equality of all participants. This equality is rooted in the common search for the truth. He said: \"Those who have the truth, are in a position as not having it, because they are forced to search for it every day in a deeper and more perfect way. Those who do not have it, but search for it with their whole heart, have already found it.\"\nDialogues.\nIn 1964, Paul VI created a Secretariat for non-Christians, later renamed the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and a year later, a new Secretariat (later Pontifical Council) for Dialogue with Non-Believers. This latter one was in 1993 incorporated by Pope John Paul II in the Pontifical Council for Culture, which he had established in 1982. In 1971, Paul VI created a papal office for economic development and catastrophic assistance. To foster common bonds with all persons of goodwill, he decreed an annual peace day to be celebrated on 1 January every year. Trying to improve the condition of Christians behind the Iron Curtain, Paul VI engaged in dialogue with Communist authorities at several levels, receiving Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet Nikolai Podgorny in 1966 and 1967 in the Vatican. The situation of the Church in Hungary, Poland, and Romania improved during his pontificate.\nForeign travels.\nPope Paul VI became the first pope to visit six continents. He was also the first pontiff to travel on an airplane, visit the Holy Land on pilgrimage, and travel outside Italy in a century. He travelled more widely than any of his predecessors, earning the nickname \"the Pilgrim Pope\". He visited the Holy Land in 1964 and participated in Eucharistic congresses in Bombay, India, and Bogot\u00e1, Colombia. In 1966, he was twice denied permission to visit Poland for the thousandth anniversary of the introduction of Christianity in Poland. In 1967, he visited the shrine of Our Lady of F\u00e1tima in Portugal on the fiftieth anniversary of the apparitions there. He undertook a pastoral visit to Uganda in 1969, the first by a reigning pope to Africa. Pope Paul VI became the first reigning pontiff to visit the Western hemisphere when he addressed the United Nations in New York City in October 1965. As the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was escalating, Paul VI pleaded for peace before the U.N.:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Our very brief visit has given us a great honour; that of proclaiming to the whole world, from the Headquarters of the United Nations, Peace! We shall never forget this extraordinary hour. Nor can We bring it to a more fitting conclusion than by expressing the wish that this central seat of human relationships for the civil peace of the world may ever be conscious and worthy of this high privilege.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />No more war, never again war. Peace, it is peace that must guide the destinies of people and of all mankind.\"\nAttempted assassination.\nShortly after arriving at Manila International Airport, the Philippines on 27 November 1970, the Pope, closely followed by President Ferdinand Marcos and personal aide Pasquale Macchi, who was private secretary to Pope Paul VI, were encountered suddenly by a crew-cut, cassock-clad man who tried to attack the Pope with a knife. Macchi pushed the man away; police identified the would-be assassin as Benjam\u00edn Mendoza y Amor Flores of La Paz, Bolivia. Mendoza was an artist living in the Philippines. The Pope continued his trip and thanked Marcos and Macchi, who had moved to protect him during the attack.\nNew diplomacy.\nLike his predecessor Pius XII, Paul VI put much emphasis on the dialogue with all nations of the world through establishing diplomatic relations. The number of foreign embassies accredited to the Vatican doubled during his pontificate. This was a reflection of a new understanding between church and state, which had been formulated first by Pius XI and Pius XII but decreed by Vatican II. The pastoral constitution \"Gaudium et spes\" stated that the Catholic Church is not bound to any form of government and is willing to cooperate with all forms. The Church maintained its right to select bishops on its own without any interference by the State.\nPope Paul VI sent one of 73 Apollo 11 Goodwill Messages to NASA for the historic first lunar landing. The message still rests on the lunar surface today. It has the words of the 8th Psalm, and the Pope wrote, \"To the Glory of the name of God who gives such power to men, we ardently pray for this wonderful beginning.\"\nTheology.\nMariology.\nPope Paul VI made extensive contributions to Mariology (theological teaching and devotions) during his pontificate. Given its new ecumenical orientation, he attempted to present the Marian teachings of the church. In his inaugural encyclical \"Ecclesiam suam\" (section below), the Pope called Mary the ideal of Christian perfection. He regards \"devotion to the Mother of God as of paramount importance in living the life of the Gospel.\"\nEncyclicals.\nPaul VI authored seven encyclicals.\n\"Ecclesiam suam\".\n\"Ecclesiam suam\" was given at St. Peter's Basilica, Rome, on the Feast of the Transfiguration, 6 August 1964, the second year of his pontificate. It is considered an important document, identifying the Catholic Church with the Body of Christ. A later Council document, \"Lumen gentium\", stated that the Church subsists in the Body of Christ, raising questions as to the difference between \"is\" and \"subsists in\". Paul VI appealed to \"all people of good will\" and discussed necessary dialogues within the Church, between the churches, and with atheism.\n\"Mense maio\".\nThe encyclical \"Mense maio\" (from 29 April 1965) focused on the Virgin Mary, to whom traditionally the month of May is dedicated as the Mother of God. Paul VI writes that Mary is rightly regarded as how people are led to Christ. Therefore, the person who encounters Mary cannot help but encounter Christ.\n\"Mysterium fidei\".\nOn 3 September 1965, Paul VI issued \"Mysterium fidei\", on the mystery of the faith. He opposed relativistic notions that would have only given the Eucharist a symbolic character. The Church, according to Paul VI, has no reason to give up the deposit of faith in such a vital matter.\n\"Christi Matri\".\nOn 15 September 1966, Paul VI issued \"Christi Matri\", a request for the faithful to pray for peace during October 1966. As reasons for this call to prayer, Paul VI alludes to the Vietnam War and lists concern about \"the growing nuclear armaments race, the senseless nationalism, the racism, the obsession for revolution, the separations imposed upon citizens, the nefarious plots, the slaughter of innocent people.\"\n\"Populorum progressio\".\n\"Populorum progressio\", released on 26 March 1967, dealt with \"the development of peoples\" and that the world's economy should serve humanity and not just a few. It touches on a variety of traditional principles of Catholic social teaching: the right to a just wage, the right to security of employment, the right to fair and reasonable working conditions, the right to join a union and strike as a last resort, and the universal destination of resources and goods.\nIn addition, \"Populorum progressio\" opines that real peace in the world is conditional on justice. He repeated his demands expressed in Bombay in 1964 for a large-scale World Development Organization as a matter of international justice and peace. He rejected notions of instigating revolution and force in changing economic conditions.\n\"Sacerdotalis caelibatus\".\n\"Sacerdotalis caelibatus\" (Latin for \"Of the celibate priesthood\"), promulgated on 24 June 1967, defends the Catholic Church's tradition of priestly celibacy in the West. This encyclical was written in the wake of Vatican II when the Catholic Church was questioning and revising many long-held practices. Priestly celibacy is considered a discipline rather than dogma, and some had expected that it might be relaxed. In response to these questions, the Pope reaffirmed the discipline as a long-held practice important to the Catholic Church. The encyclical \"Sacerdotalis caelibatus\" from 24 June 1967 confirms the traditional Church teaching that celibacy is an ideal state and continues to be mandatory for Catholic priests. To Catholic conceptions of the priesthood, celibacy symbolizes the reality of the kingdom of God amid modern society. The priestly celibacy is closely linked to the sacramental priesthood. However, during his pontificate, Paul VI was permissive in allowing bishops to grant laicisation of priests who wanted to leave the sacerdotal state. John Paul II changed this policy in 1980, and the 1983 Code of Canon Law made it explicit that only the Pope can, in exceptional circumstances, grant laicization.\n\"Humanae vitae\".\nOf his seven encyclicals, Pope Paul VI is best known for his encyclical \"Humanae vitae\" (\"Of Human Life\", subtitled \"On the Regulation of Birth\"), published on 25 July 1968. In this encyclical, he reaffirmed the Catholic Church's traditional view of marriage and marital relations and its condemnation of artificial birth control. There were two papal committees and numerous independent experts looking into the latest advancement of science and medicine on the question of artificial birth control. which the Pope noted in his encyclical The expressed views of Paul VI reflected the teachings of his predecessors, especially Pius XI, Pius XII and John XXIII and never changed, as he repeatedly stated them in the first few years of his Pontificate.\nTo the Pope, as to all his predecessors, marital relations are much more than a union of two people. They constitute a union of the loving couple with a loving God, in which the two persons create a new person materially, while God completes the creation by adding the soul. For this reason, Paul VI taught in the first sentence of \"Humanae vitae\" that the transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God. This divine partnership, according to Paul VI, does not allow for arbitrary human decisions, which may limit divine providence. The Pope does not paint an overly romantic picture of marriage: marital relations are a source of great joy, but also of difficulties and hardships. The question of human procreation exceeds in the view of Paul VI specific disciplines such as biology, psychology, demography or sociology. The reason for this, according to Paul VI, is that married love takes its origin from God, who \"is love\". From this basic dignity, he defines his position:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Love is total\u2014that very special form of personal friendship in which husband and wife generously share everything, allowing no unreasonable exceptions and not thinking solely of their own convenience. Whoever really loves his partner loves not only for what he receives, but loves that partner for the partner's own sake, content to be able to enrich the other with the gift of himself.\nThe reaction to the encyclical's continued prohibitions of artificial birth control was very mixed. The encyclical was welcomed in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Poland. In Latin America, much support developed for the Pope and his encyclical. As World Bank president Robert McNamara declared at the 1968 Annual Meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group that countries permitting birth control practices would get preferential access to resources, doctors in La Paz, Bolivia, called it insulting that money should be exchanged for the conscience of a Catholic nation. In Colombia, Cardinal Archbishop An\u00edbal Mu\u00f1oz Duque declared, \"If American conditionality undermines Papal teachings, we prefer not to receive one cent.\" The Senate of Bolivia passed a resolution stating that \"Humanae vitae\" could be discussed in its implications for individual consciences but was of greatest significance because the papal document defended the rights of developing nations to determine their own population policies. The Jesuit journal \"Sic\" dedicated one edition to the encyclical with supportive contributions.\nPaul VI was concerned but not surprised by the adverse reaction in Western Europe and the United States. He fully anticipated this reaction to be a temporary one: \"Don't be afraid,\" he reportedly told Edouard Gagnon on the eve of the encyclical, \"in twenty years' time, they'll call me a prophet.\" His biography on the Vatican's website notes his reaffirmations of priestly celibacy and the traditional teaching on contraception that \"[t]he controversies over these two pronouncements tended to overshadow the last years of his pontificate\". Pope John Paul II later reaffirmed and expanded upon \"Humanae vitae\" with the encyclical \"Evangelium vitae\".\nEvangelism.\nBy taking the name of Paul, the newly elected pope showed his intention to take Paul the Apostle as a model for his papal ministry. In 1967, when he reorganised the Roman Curia, Pope Paul renamed the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith as the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. Pope Paul was the first pope in history to make apostolic journeys to other continents. The Pope chose the theme of evangelism for the synod of bishops in 1974. From materials generated by that synod, he composed the 1975 apostolic exhortation on evangelisation, \"Evangelii nuntiandi\".\nEcumenism and ecumenical relations.\nAfter the council, Paul VI contributed in two ways to the continued growth of ecumenical dialogue: The separated brothers and sisters, as he called them, could not contribute to the council as invited observers. After the council, many took the initiative to seek out their Catholic counterparts and the Pope in Rome, who welcomed such visits. However, the Catholic Church recognized from the many previous ecumenical encounters that much needed to be done within to be an open partner for ecumenism. To those entrusted with the highest and deepest truth, therefore, Paul VI believed that he had the most challenging part to communicate. Ecumenical dialogue, in the view of Paul VI, requires from a Catholic the whole person: one's entire reason, will, and heart. Paul VI, like Pius XII before him, was reluctant to give in on a lowest possible point. And yet, Paul felt compelled to admit his ardent Gospel-based desire to be everything to everybody and to help all people Being the successor of Peter, he felt the words of Christ, \"Do you love me more\" like a sharp knife penetrating to the marrow of his soul. These words meant to Paul VI love without limits, and they underscore the church's fundamental approach to ecumenism.\nOriental Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox Apostolic.\nPaul VI visited the Eastern Orthodox Apostolic Patriarchs of Jerusalem and Constantinople in 1964 and 1967. He was the first pope since the ninth century to visit the East, labelling the Eastern Churches as sister churches. He was also the first pope in centuries to meet the heads of various Eastern Orthodox communities. Notably, his meeting with Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I in 1964 in Jerusalem led to rescinding the excommunications of the Great Schism, which took place in 1054.\nThis was a significant step towards restoring communion between Rome and Constantinople. It produced the Catholic-Eastern Orthodox Apostolic Joint Declaration of 1965, read on 7 December 1965, simultaneously at a public meeting of the Second Vatican Council in Rome and at a special ceremony in Istanbul. The declaration did not end the schism but showed a desire for greater reconciliation between the two churches. In May 1973, the Coptic Patriarch Shenouda III of Alexandria from the Coptic Orthodox Church visited the Vatican, where he met three times with Pope Paul VI. A common declaration and a joint creed issued after the visit proclaimed unity in a number of theological issues, but also that other theological differences \"since the year 451\" \"cannot be ignored\" while both traditions work to a greater unity.\nAnglicans.\nPaul VI was the first pope to receive an Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, in official audience as Head of Church, after the private audience visit of Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher to Pope John XXIII on 2 December 1960. Ramsey met Paul three times during his visit and opened the Anglican Centre in Rome to increase their mutual knowledge. He praised Paul VI and his contributions in the service of unity. Paul replied, \"By entering into our house, you are entering your own house; we are happy to open our door and heart to you.\" The two church leaders signed a joint declaration, ending past disputes and outlining a common future agenda.\nCardinal Augustin Bea, the head of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, added at the end of the visit, \"Let us move forward in Christ. God wants it. Humanity is waiting for it.\" Unmoved by a harsh condemnation by the Congregation of Faith on mixed marriages precisely at this time of the visit, Paul VI and Ramsey appointed a preparatory commission which was to put the common agenda into practice on such issues as mixed marriages. This resulted in a joint Malta declaration, the first joint agreement on the Creed since the Reformation. Paul VI was a good friend of the Anglican Church, which he described as \"our beloved sister Church.\" This description was unique to Paul and not used by later popes.\nProtestants.\nIn 1965, Paul VI decided to create a joint working group with the World Council of Churches to map all possible avenues of dialogue and cooperation. Eight sessions were held in the following three years, resulting in many joint proposals. It was proposed to work closely together in social justice and development and \u201cThird World\u201d issues such as hunger and poverty. On the religious side, it was agreed to be shared in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which would be held annually. The joint working group was to prepare texts which were to be used by all Christians. On 19 July 1968, the meeting of the World Council of Churches took place in Uppsala, Sweden, which Pope Paul called a sign of the times. He sent his blessing ecumenically: \"May the Lord bless everything you do for the case of Christian Unity.\" The World Council of Churches decided on including Catholic theologians in its committees, provided they have the backing of the Vatican.\nThe Lutherans were the first Protestant church offering a dialogue to the Catholic Church in September 1964 in Reykjav\u00edk, Iceland. It resulted in joint study groups of several issues. The dialogue with the Methodist Church began in October 1965, after its representatives officially applauded the past five years' remarkable changes, friendship, and cooperation. The Reformed Churches entered four years later into a dialogue with the Catholic Church. The President of the Lutheran World Federation and member of the central committee of the World Council of Churches Fredrik A. Schiotz stated during the 450th anniversary of the Reformation, that earlier commemorations were viewed almost as a triumph. He welcomed the announcement of Pope Paul VI to celebrate the 1900th anniversary of the death of the Apostle Peter and Apostle Paul, and promised participation and co-operation in the festivities.\nPaul VI supported the new-found harmony and cooperation with Protestants on many levels. When Cardinal Augustin Bea went to see him for permission for a joint Catholic-Protestant translation of the Bible with Protestant Bible societies, the Pope walked towards him and exclaimed, \"As far as the cooperation with Bible societies is concerned, I am totally in favour.\" He issued a formal approval on Pentecost 1967, the feast on which the Holy Spirit descended on the Christians, overcoming all linguistic difficulties, according to Christian tradition.\nBeatifications and canonisations.\nPaul VI beatified 38 individuals in his pontificate and canonized 84 saints in 21 causes. Among the beatifications included Maximilian Kolbe (1971) and the Korean Martyrs (1968). He canonised saints such as Nikola Taveli\u0107 (1970) and the Ugandan Martyrs (1964).\nPaul VI also named two Doctors of the Church and, in so doing, named the first two female Doctors of the Church. He named Teresa of \u00c1vila (he titled her \"Doctor orationis\" or \"Doctor of Prayer\") on 27 September 1970 and Catherine of Siena on 4 October 1970.\nConsistories.\nPope Paul VI held six consistories between 1965 and 1977 that raised 143 men to the cardinalate in his fifteen years as pope:\nThe successive three popes were created cardinals by him. His immediate successor, Albino Luciani, who took the name Pope John Paul I, was created a cardinal in the consistory of 5 March 1973. Karol J\u00f3zef Wojty\u0142a (later Pope John Paul II) was created a cardinal in the consistory of 26 June 1967. Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) was made a cardinal in the small four-appointment consistory of 27 June 1977 that was the Pope's last. Paul VI named \u0160t\u011bp\u00e1n Trochta and Iuliu Hossu as cardinals \"\" in 1969 and only revealed Hossu's name in 1973 after Hossu died while formally naming Trochta. Similarly, Paul VI named both Franti\u0161ek Tom\u00e1\u0161ek and Joseph-Marie Tr\u1ecbnh Nh\u01b0 Khu\u00ea \"in pectore\" in 1976, only announcing the former in 1977 and the latter at the 1976 consistory itself, a month after having announced it and his hidden selection.\nWith the six consistories, Paul VI continued the internationalisation policies started by Pius XII in 1946 and continued by John XXIII. In his 1976 consistory, five of twenty cardinals originated from Africa, one of them a son of a tribal chief with fifty wives. Several prominent Latin Americans like Eduardo Francisco Pironio of Argentina; Luis Aponte Martinez of Puerto Rico, Eug\u00eanio de Ara\u00fajo Sales and Aloisio Lorscheider from Brazil were also elevated by him. There were voices within the church at the time saying that the European period of the church was coming to a close, a view shared by Britain's Cardinal Basil Hume. At the same time, the members of the College of Cardinals lost some of their previous influences, after Paul VI decreed, that membership by bishops in committees and other bodies of the Roman Curia would not be limited to cardinals. The age limit of eighty years imposed by the Pope, a numerical increase of Cardinals by almost 100%, and a reform of the formal dress of the \"Princes of the Church\" further contributed to a service-oriented perception of Cardinals under his pontificate. The increased number of Cardinals from the Third World and the papal emphasis on related issues were nevertheless welcomed by many in Western Europe. The consistory of 1969 was the largest consistory since 1946 and would be surpassed later in 2001.\nIn 1965, the theologian Romano Guardini declined an invitation by Paul VI to be inducted into the College of Cardinals. In 1967, he also intended to nominate Pietro Sigismondi, but he died a month before the consistory was held. Also in 1967, according to the memoirs of Louis Bouyer, Paul VI intended to name Bouyer to the cardinalate after the Second Vatican Council; however, Paul VI was forced to abandon the idea after realizing that the French episcopacy would not warmly receive the appointment since Bouyer had been very critical of many of the positions taken by the French bishops. Other sources indicate that the Pope intended to name his friend Jacques Maritain to the cardinalate in 1969. Not only did Maritain decline, but if he had been elevated, it would have made him the first lay cardinal since 1858. On 22 February 1969, Paul VI and Monsignor Hieronymus Menges discussed nominating Iuliu Hossu and \u00c1ron M\u00e1rton to the cardinalate (Pius XII dropped an idea to name M\u00e1rton to the cardinalate in 1946), however, M\u00e1rton's potential elevation was not considered acceptable, hence, Hossu was named \"in pectore\" since the Romanians would not have accepted Hossu either.\nFinal years and death.\nAllegations of homosexuality.\nIn 1976 Paul VI became the first pontiff in the modern era to deny the accusation of homosexuality. On 29 December 1975, the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a document entitled \"Persona Humana: Declaration on Certain Questions concerning Sexual Ethics\", that reaffirmed church teaching that pre- or extramarital sex, homosexual activity, and masturbation are sinful acts. In response, Roger Peyrefitte, who had already written in two of his books that Paul VI had a longtime homosexual relationship, repeated his charges in a magazine interview with a French gay magazine that, when reprinted in Italian, brought the rumours to a wider public and caused an uproar. He said that the Pope was a hypocrite who had a longtime sexual relationship with an actor. Widespread rumours identified the actor as Paolo Carlini, who had a small part in the Audrey Hepburn film \"Roman Holiday\" (1953). In a brief address to a crowd of approximately 20,000 in St Peter's Square on 18 April 1976, Paul VI called the charges \"horrible and slanderous insinuations\" and appealed for prayers on his behalf. Special prayers for the Pope were said in all Italian Catholic churches in \"a day of consolation\". The charges have resurfaced periodically. In 1994, Franco Bellegrandi, a former Vatican honour chamberlain and correspondent for the Vatican newspaper \"L'Osservatore Romano\", alleged that Paul VI had been blackmailed and had promoted other gay men to positions of power within the Vatican. In 2006, the newspaper \"L'Espresso\" reported that the private papers of police commander General Giorgio Manes confirmed the blackmail story as true, and that Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro had been asked to help.\nHealth.\nPaul VI had been in good health prior to his pontifical election. His health following his papal election took a turn when he needed to undergo a serious operation to treat an enlarged prostate. The Pope procrastinated in this but relented in November 1967; the operation took place on a simple table in an improvised operating theatre in the papal apartments by a team led by Professor Pietro Valdoni. The Vatican was delicate in their description of what the Pope underwent and referred to it as \"the malaise from which the Holy Father had been suffering for weeks\". As a result of the delay in having the operation, the Pope had to wear a catheter for a period following the operation and still was by December.\nThe Pope discussed business from his bed about 48 hours after the operation with Cardinal Amleto Giovanni Cicognani and at that point was off intravenous feeding in favour of orange juice and hot broth. Cardinal Cicognani said the Pope was \"in good general condition\" and that he spoke in a \"clear and firm voice\". The Pope's two brothers also visited him at his bedside following a \"tranquil night\" for the Pope. The doctors also reported the Pope's condition to have been \"excellent\".\nKidnapping and death of Aldo Moro.\nOn 16 March 1978, former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro\u2014a friend of Paul VI's from his FUCI student days\u2014was kidnapped by a far-left Italian terrorist group known as the Red Brigades. The kidnapping kept the world and the Pope in suspense for 55 days. On 20 April, Moro directly appealed to the Pope to intervene as Pope Pius XII had intervened in the case of Professor Giuliano Vassalli in the same situation. The eighty-year-old Paul VI wrote a letter to the Red Brigades:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nSome in the Italian government accused the Pope of treating the Red Brigades too kindly. Paul VI continued looking for ways to pay ransom for Moro, but his efforts were fruitless. On 9 May, the bullet-riddled body of Aldo Moro was found in a car in Rome. Pope Paul VI later celebrated his State Funeral Mass.\nFinal days.\nPope Paul VI left the Vatican to go to the papal summer residence, the Palace of Castel Gandolfo, on 14 July 1978, visiting on the way the tomb of Cardinal Giuseppe Pizzardo, who had introduced him to the Vatican half a century earlier. Although he was sick, he agreed to see the new Italian President Sandro Pertini for over two hours. In the evening he watched a Western on television, happy only when he saw \"horses, the most beautiful animals that God had created.\" He had breathing problems and needed oxygen. On Sunday, at the Feast of the Transfiguration, he was tired, but wanted to say the Angelus. He was neither able nor permitted to do so and instead stayed in bed, his temperature rising.\nDeath.\nFrom his bed he participated in Sunday Mass at 18:00. After receiving communion, the Pope suffered a massive heart attack, after which he lived on for three more hours. On 6 August 1978 at 21:41, Paul VI died in Castel Gandolfo. Before he died, the pontiff had been lucid after the first heart attack. An hour before his death, he said he felt dizzy and asked those present to continue the prayers in his stead. Present at his bedside at the time of his death were Cardinal Jean-Marie Villot, Bishop Giuseppe Caprio, and his personal secretary Pasquale Macchi, as well as two nuns and his personal physician. By the time the Pope died, he was already confined to bed due to a flare up in his chronic joint arthritis and could not get up to personally celebrate the Mass. Upon the initial heart attack, the Pope was immediately given oxygen; however, the Holy See indicated that his heart condition was aggravated by a pulmonary edema, or the seeping of fluid into the lungs.\nSyria declared nine days of mourning; Egypt declared seven days of mourning; Spain declared four days of mourning; Brazil, Italy Lebanon and Zaire declared three days of mourning; The Philippines declared one day of mourning.\nPaul VI left a will and a spiritual testament. Those were released by the Vatican shortly after his death. In it, he asked for his burial to be simple, and that his correspondence, personal memos and other writings be destroyed. He also legated all his belongings to the Vatican.\nPaul VI does not have an ornate sarcophagus, but is buried in a grave beneath the floor of Saint Peter's Basilica, in the Vatican Grottoes near the tombs of other popes.\nHis position mirrors the statements attributed to Pius XI: \"a Pope may suffer but he must be able to function\" and by Pius XII. Pope Paul, reflecting on \"Hamlet\", wrote the following in a private note in 1978:<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />What is my state of mind? Am I Hamlet? Or Don Quixote? On the left? On the right? I do not think I have been properly understood. I am filled with 'great joy (Superabundo gaudio)' With all our affliction, I am overjoyed (2 Cor 2:4).\nHis confessor, the Jesuit Paolo Dezza, said that \"this pope is a man of great joy\", and that:\nIf Paul VI was not a saint, when he was elected Pope, he became one during his pontificate. I was able to witness not only with what energy and dedication he toiled for Christ and the Church but also and above all, how much he suffered for Christ and the Church. I always admired not only his deep inner resignation but also his constant abandonment to divine providence. \nCanonisation.\nThe diocesan process for beatification for Paul VI\u2014titled then as a Servant of God\u2014opened in Rome on 11 May 1993 under Pope John Paul II after the \"nihil obstat\" (\"nothing against\") was declared the previous 18 March. Cardinal Camillo Ruini opened the diocesan process in Rome. The title of Servant of God is the first of four steps toward possible canonisation. The diocesan process concluded its business on 18 March 1998.\nOn 20 December 2012, Pope Benedict XVI, in an audience with the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints Angelo Amato, declared that the late pontiff had lived a life of heroic virtue, which means that he could be called \"Venerable\".\nOn 12 December 2013, Vatican officials comprising a medical panel approved a supposed miracle that was attributed to the intercession of the late pontiff, which was the curing of an unborn child in California, U.S.A in the 1990s. This miracle was investigated in California from 7 July 2003 until 12 July 2004. It was expected that Pope Francis would approve the miracle in the near future, thus, warranting the beatification of the late pontiff. In February 2014, it was reported that the consulting Vatican theologians to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints recognised the miracle attributed to the late pontiff on 18 February.\nOn 24 April 2014, it was reported in the Italian magazine \"Credere\" that the late pope could possibly be beatified on 19 October 2014. This report from the magazine further stated that several cardinals and bishops would meet on 5 May to confirm the miracle that had previously been approved, and then present it to Pope Francis who may sign the decree for beatification shortly after that. The Congregation for the Causes of Saints' cardinal and bishop members held that meeting and positively concluded that the healing was indeed a miracle that could be attributed to the late pope. The matter would then be presented by the Cardinal Prefect to the Pope for approval.\nThe second miracle required for his canonisation was reported to have occurred in 2014 not long after his beatification. The vice-postulator, Antonio Lanzoni, suggested that the canonisation could be approved in the near future which would allow for the canonisation sometime in spring 2016; this did not materialise because the investigations were still ongoing at that stage. It was further reported in January 2017 that Pope Francis was considering canonising Paul VI either in that year, or in 2018 (marking 40 years since the late pope's death), without the second miracle required for sainthood. This too was proven false since the miracle from 2014 was being presented to the competent Vatican officials for assessment.\nThe late pope's liturgical feast day was then established to be celebrated on the date of his birth, 26 September, rather than the day of his death, as is usual since the latter falls on the Feast of the Transfiguration, a major feast in the liturgical year.\nThe final miracle needed for the late pope's canonisation was investigated in Verona, the investigation beining closed on 11 March 2017. The miracle in question involves the healing of an unborn girl, Amanda Maria Paola (born 25 December 2014), after her parents (Vanna and Alberto) went to the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Brescia, to pray for the late pope's intercession the previous 29 October, just ten days after Paul VI was beatified. The miracle regarding Amanda was the fact that she had survived for months despite the fact that the placenta was broken. On 23 September, a month before the beatification, Amanda's mother Vanna Pironato (aged 35) was hospitalised due to the premature rupture of the placenta, with doctors declaring her pregnancy to be at great risk. The documents regarding the alleged miracle were by now in Rome awaiting approval, so he should be canonised should this healing be approved. Theologians advising the Congregation for the Causes of Saints voiced their approval to this miracle on 13 December 2017 (following the confirmation of doctors on 26 October) and had this sent to the cardinal and bishop members of the C.C.S. who had to vote on the cause also before taking it to Pope Francis for his approval. Brescian media reported the canonisation could take place in October 2018 to coincide with the synod on the youth. The cardinal and bishop members of the C.C.S. issued their unanimous approval to this miracle in their meeting held on 6 February 2018. Pope Francis confirmed that the canonisation would be approved and celebrated in 2018 in remarks made during a meeting with Roman priests on 14 February 2018. On 6 March 2018, the Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, speaking at a plenary meeting of the International Catholic Migration Commission in Rome, confirmed that Paul VI would be canonised in at the close of the synod on 28 October 2018. On 6 March, the Pope confirmed the healing as a miracle, thereby approving Paul VI's canonisation; a consistory of cardinals on 19 May 2018 determined that the official date for Paul VI's canonisation, along with that of the assassinated Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, would be 14 October 2018.\nPaul VI's liturgical feast day, which had previously been celebrated on 26 September, the date of his birth, was moved to 29 May, the day of his priestly ordination, in 2019.\nLegacy and controversies.\nIn 2011, newly uncovered documents went up for auction and contained, among other items, proof that beginning in September 1950, while then serving as deputy of foreign affairs for the Vatican, Montini worked with former Nazis and members of the Spanish military in planning for a mercenary style army to operate within the African continent. Another revelation was a letter from the priest of former Nazi Lieutenant Colonel Otto Skorzeny to Montini in which the priest praised Montini's efforts to fund, harbour, and give safe passage to former Nazis evading Allied capture and punishment.\nPope Paul VI continued the opening and internationalisation of the church that began under Pius XII and implemented the reforms of John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council. Yet, unlike these popes, Paul VI faced criticism throughout his papacy from both traditionalists and liberals for steering a middle course during Vatican II and during the implementation of its reforms thereafter. He expressed a desire for peace during the Vietnam War.\nOn basic Church teachings, the Pope was unwavering. On the tenth anniversary of \"Humanae vitae\", he reconfirmed this teaching. In his style and methodology, he was a disciple of Pius XII, whom he deeply revered. He suffered for the attacks on Pius XII for his alleged silences during the Holocaust. Pope Paul VI was said to have been less intellectually gifted than his predecessors: he was not credited with an encyclopaedic memory, nor a gift for languages, nor the brilliant writing style of Pius XII, nor did he have the charisma and outpouring love, sense of humor and human warmth of John XXIII. He took on himself the unfinished reform work of these two popes, bringing them diligently with great humility and common sense and without much fanfare to conclusion. In doing so, Paul VI saw himself following in the footsteps of the Apostle Paul, who, being torn to several directions, said, \"I am attracted to two sides at once, because the Cross always divides.\"\nPaul VI refused to excommunicate opponents. He admonished but did not punish those with other views. The new theological freedoms which he fostered\u00a0resulted in a pluralism of opinions and uncertainties among the faithful. New demands were voiced, which were taboo at the council: the reintegration of divorced Catholics, the sacramental character of the confession, and the role of women in the church and its ministries. Conservatives complained \"women wanted to be priests, priests wanted to get married, bishops became regional popes and theologians claimed absolute teaching authority. Protestants claimed equality, homosexuals and the divorced called for full acceptance.\" Changes such as the reorientation of the liturgy, alterations to the ordinary of the Mass, alterations to the liturgical calendar in the motu proprio \"Mysterii Paschalis\", and the relocation of the tabernacle were controversial among some Catholics.\nWhile the total number of Catholics increased during the pontificate of Paul VI, the number of priests did not keep up. In the United States, at beginning of Paul's reign there were almost 1,600 priestly ordinations a year, while the number dropped to nearly 900 a year at his death. The number of seminarians at the same time dropped by three quarters. More pronounced declines were evident in religious life where the number of sisters and brothers declined sharply. Infant baptisms began to decline almost at once after Paul's election and did not begin to recover until 1980. In the same period adult conversions to the church declined by a third. While marriages increased annulments also increased but at a much greater rate. There was a 1,322% increase in declarations of nullity between 1968 and 1970 alone. While 65% of US Catholics went to Sunday Mass in 1965, that percentage had slipped to 40% by the time of Paul's death. Similar collapses occurred in other developed countries.\nPaul VI renounced many traditional symbols of the papacy and the Catholic Church; some of his changes to the papal dress were temporarily reversed by Pope Benedict XVI in the early 21st century. Refusing a Vatican army of colourful military uniforms from past centuries, he got rid of them, leaving only the Swiss Guard in function. He became the first pope to visit five continents. Paul VI systematically continued and completed the efforts of his predecessors, to turn the Euro-centric church into a church of the world, by integrating the bishops from all continents in its government and in the Synods which he convened. His 6 August 1967 motu proprio \"Pro Comperto Sane\" opened the Roman Curia to the bishops of the world. Until then, only Cardinals could be leading members of the Curia.\nSome critiqued Paul VI's decision; the newly created Synod of Bishops had an advisory role only and could not make decisions on their own, although the Council decided exactly that. During the pontificate of Paul VI, five such synods took place, and he is on record of implementing all their decisions. Related questions were raised about the new National Bishop Conferences, which became mandatory after Vatican II. Others questioned his Ostpolitik and contacts with Communism and the deals he engaged in for the faithful.\nPaul VI suffered from the responses within the church to \"Humanae vitae\". Most regions and bishops supported the pontiff, including notable support from Patrick O'Boyle. However, a small part of the church, especially in the Netherlands, Canada, and Germany openly disagreed with the Pope, which deeply wounded him for the rest of his life.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "4292770": "Sacerdotalis caelibatus\n1967 papal encyclical\nSacerdotalis caelibatus (Latin for \"Of priestly celibacy\") is an encyclical written by Pope Paul VI. Acknowledging the traditions given by the Holy Spirit to the Church in the East and acknowledging some few pastoral exceptions in the West, the encyclical explains and defends the Catholic Church's tradition of clerical celibacy in the West. The encyclical is dated 24 June 1967.\nSummary of the encyclical.\nThis encyclical was written in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, when the Catholic Church was examining and revising many long-held practices. Priestly celibacy is a discipline, a practice, rather than required dogma, and many at the time had expected that it might be relaxed together with some other practices.\nIn response to these questions, the pope reaffirms the teaching as a principled, long-held practice with special importance in the Catholic Church.\nDiscussion of arguments against priestly celibacy.\nPaul VI begins the encyclical by considering arguments against celibacy for the priesthood. Among these, he lists:\nConfirmation of the law of celibacy.\nIn response to these, Paul VI brings as witness the value of celibacy testified by many religious in the Church throughout the world, in many times and locations. Paul goes on to reaffirm the law of celibacy as something that should be continued: \"Hence We consider that the present law of celibacy should today continue to be linked to the ecclesiastical ministry.\"\nPaul VI agrees that the priestly life and the celibate life are distinguishable, but he affirms the authority of the Church's magisterium to determine the conditions under which the priesthood may be granted to its members: \n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />the priestly vocation, although inspired by God, does not become definitive or operative without having been tested and accepted by those in the Church who hold power and bear responsibility for the ministry serving the ecclesial community. It is, therefore, the task of those who hold authority in the Church to determine, in accordance with the varying conditions of time and place, who in actual practice are to be considered suitable candidates for the religious and pastoral service of the Church, and what should be required of them.\nReasons for celibacy.\nMuch of the encyclical is spent discussing reasons why Paul VI believes that celibacy in the priesthood is of value for the Church. Among these, he lists:\nSurvey of celibacy in Christian tradition.\nHistory of celibacy.\nThe Pope then very briefly outlines the history of celibacy in the Church, tracing its support in the West to the 4th century. He also recalls its confirmation in later Church councils.\nComparison with the Eastern Church.\nPaul VI notes that although non-celibates may be ordained as priests in the Eastern Church, they only ordain as bishops priests who are celibates. He also mentions that in the East, once ordained as priests, men are no longer allowed to marry.\nSpecial exceptions.\nWhile affirming the importance of celibacy as a general law in the Catholic Church, the Pope nevertheless allows that married persons who enter the Church from other traditions may in some cases be ordained as priests. He emphasizes, however, that this must not be understood as a relaxation of the law, nor as a first step to its abolition.\nPaul VI also expresses doubt that relaxing the law of celibacy would help increase vocations to the Catholic priesthood, by noting that it has not done so in other Christian traditions.\nDefense of celibacy.\nThe Pope devotes much text to defending the practice of celibacy against the argument that it is contrary to human nature.\nThe aid of grace.\nAbove all, Paul states that the human person is more than simply flesh, and that any true call to a life devoted to God that includes celibacy will also be aided by God's own grace to sustain it: \n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The true, profound reason for dedicated celibacy is, as We have said, the choice of a closer and more complete relationship with the mystery of Christ and the Church for the good of all mankind: in this choice there is no doubt that those highest human values are able to find their fullest expression.\nThe Pope also cautions that a priest's celibacy should never attempt to be based on a complete ignorance or avoidance of human sexuality, an ignorance that he agrees would indeed be counter to true human nature. Rather, it should be based on a free choice based on true knowledge and understanding.\nCelibacy as a viable alternative to marriage.\nAlthough the Pope upholds the sanctity of the sacrament of marriage, he rejects the notion that it is the only reasonable path available to a person. Rather, the love that feeds a priest's choice of celibate life also draws on God:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />His charity is drawn from the purest source, practiced in the imitation of God and Christ, and is no less demanding and real than any other genuine love. It gives the priest a limitless horizon, deepens and gives breadth to his sense of responsibility \u2013 a mark of mature personality \u2013 and inculcates in him, as a sign of a higher and greater fatherhood, a generosity and refinement of heart which offer a superlative enrichment.\nCelibacy as a means to greater union with God.\nBy freeing himself from other obligations, Paul teaches that a priest is thereby freer to devote himself to God. He also says that the increased solitude away from the demands of wife and family may nourish a priest's spiritual life.\nConsiderations for priestly formation.\nPaul VI understands that celibacy is a difficult requirement for many, and encourages increased care to help those discerning priestly vocation to make sure that they are truly called to it: \"Let educators appreciate that this is one of their very grave duties.\" Paul also points out that support by others for a priest's celibate life must continue even after ordination.\nPaul VI emphasizes that celibacy is a serious choice, and that it must not be entered into without accompanying ascetic practices for the rest of the priest's life.\nPaul VI also says that before being undertaken with a solemn vow, a candidate for the priesthood ought to undergo temporary vows of celibacy before solemnly taking a permanent vow.\nDispensations from the priesthood.\nThe Pope then turns to consider those who have decided to leave the life of priestly celibacy. He allows that inquiry may be taken concerning those who claim that their vows were taken under freedom and responsibility to see if they may be relieved of their vow. However, Paul sternly warns,\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />If these priests knew how much sorrow, dishonor and unrest they bring to the holy Church of God, if they reflected on the seriousness and beauty of their obligations and on the dangers to which they are exposed in this life and in the next, there would be greater care and reflection in their decisions; they would pray more assiduously and show greater courage and logic in forestalling the causes of their spiritual and moral collapse.\nAppeal to the laity.\nPaul VI concludes the encyclical by appealing to the laity to pray for vocations to the priesthood and encourages their friendship with priests as a means of supporting them in their life."}, "descending_order": ["24028", "4292770"], "permutation_1": ["4292770", "24028"], "permutation_2": ["4292770", "24028"], "permutation_3": ["4292770", "24028"]}
{"id": "2hop__621690_62776", "docs_added": {"3382": "Britney Spears\nAmerican singer (born 1981)\nBritney Jean Spears (born December 2, 1981) is an American singer. Often referred to as the \"Princess of Pop\", she has sold over 150 million records worldwide, making her one of the world's best-selling music artists. An influential figure in popular music, Spears became the best-selling teenage artist of all time, credited with the revival of teen pop during the late 1990s and early 2000s.\nSpears was born in McComb, Mississippi. After appearing in the television shows \"Star Search\" and \"The Mickey Mouse Club\", Spears signed with Jive Records in 1997 at age 15. Her first two studio albums, \"...Baby One More Time\" (1999) and \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" (2000), are among the best-selling albums of all time. She adopted a more mature and provocative style for her albums \"Britney\" (2001) and \"In the Zone\" (2003). Spears was the executive producer of her fifth studio album, \"Blackout\" (2007), often referred to as her best work. She returned to the top of the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200 chart with the albums \"Circus\" (2008) and \"Femme Fatale\" (2011), and embarked on a four-year concert residency, (2013\u20132017), to promote her next two albums, \"Britney Jean\" (2013) and \"Glory\" (2016). Spears' catalog of high-charting singles includes \"...Baby One More Time\", \"Oops!... I Did It Again\", \"I'm a Slave 4 U\", \"Toxic\", \"Gimme More\", \"Womanizer\", \"3\", \"Hold It Against Me\", and \"Scream & Shout\".\nSpears' life, including her high-profile relationships and personal struggles during the 2000s, received widespread media coverage. In 2008, she was involuntarily placed in a conservatorship following a highly publicized breakdown. In 2019, her legal battle over her conservatorship led to the establishment of the #FreeBritney movement and a release of the documentary \"Framing Britney Spears\" (2021). The conservatorship was terminated in 2021, following her public testimony in which she accused her management team and family of abuse. Spears' 2023 memoir, \"The Woman in Me\", reached number one on \"The New York Times\" Best Seller list in its first week of release. Her other ventures include starring in the film \"Crossroads\" (2002) and launching numerous products, with her 2005 fragrance Fantasy with Elizabeth Arden, Inc. generating over $1.5 billion in sales.\nIn the United States, Spears is the fourth best-selling female album artist of the Nielsen SoundScan era, as well as the best-selling female album artist of the 2000s. Her accolades include a Grammy Award, 15 Guinness World Records, six MTV Video Music Awards, seven \"Billboard\" Music Awards (including the Millennium Award), the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. \"Billboard\" ranked her sixth on their list of the Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century. \"...Baby One More Time\" was named the greatest debut single of all time by \"Rolling Stone\" in 2020. \"Forbes\" listed Spears as the world's highest-paid female musician in 2001 and 2012. By 2012, she had topped Yahoo!'s list of most searched celebrities seven times in twelve years. \"Time\" named Spears one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2021, placing first in the reader poll.\nLife and career.\n1981\u20131997: Early life, family, and career beginnings.\nBritney Jean Spears was born on December 2, 1981, in McComb, Mississippi, the second child of James \"Jamie\" Parnell Spears and Lynne Irene Bridges. Her maternal grandmother, Lillian Portell, was English and born in London, and one of Spears' maternal great-grandfathers was Maltese. Her siblings are Bryan James Spears and Jamie Lynn Spears.\nBorn in the Bible Belt, where socially conservative evangelical Protestantism is a particularly strong religious influence, she was baptized as a Southern Baptist and sang in a church choir as a child. As an adult, she has studied Kabbalist teachings. On August 5, 2021, Spears announced that she had converted to Catholicism. Her mother, sister, and nieces Maddie Aldridge and Ivey Joan Watson, are also Catholic. However, on September 5, 2022, after Spears' ex-husband, Kevin Federline, and youngest son did an interview defending her father's actions during her conservatorship, she stated: \"I don't believe in God anymore because of the way my children and my family have treated me. There is nothing to believe in anymore. I'm an atheist y'all\".\nAt age three, Spears began attending dance lessons in her hometown of Kentwood, Louisiana, and was selected to perform as a solo artist at the annual recital. Aged five she made her local stage debut, singing \"What Child Is This?\" at her kindergarten graduation. During her childhood, she also had gymnastics and voice lessons and won many state-level competitions and children's talent shows. In gymnastics, Spears attended B\u00e9la K\u00e1rolyi's training camp. She said of her ambition as a child, \"I was in my own world,\u00a0... I found out what I'm supposed to do at an early age\".\nWhen Spears was eight, she and her mother Lynne traveled to Atlanta, Georgia, to audition for the 1990s revival of \"The Mickey Mouse Club\". Casting director Matt Casella rejected her as too young, but introduced her to Nancy Carson, a New York City talent agent. Carson was impressed with Spears' singing and suggested enrolling her at the Professional Performing Arts School.\nSpears was hired for her first professional role as the understudy for the lead role of Tina Denmark in the off-Broadway musical \"Ruthless!\" She also appeared as a contestant on the popular television show \"Star Search\" and was cast in a number of commercials. In December 1992, she was cast in \"The All-New Mickey Mouse Club\". Other fellow cast members included Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, Ryan Gosling, Keri Russell, and JC Chasez. After the show was canceled in 1994, she returned to Mississippi and enrolled at McComb's Parklane Academy. Although she made friends with most of her classmates, she compared the school to \"the opening scene in \"Clueless\" with all the cliques.\u00a0... I was so bored. I was the point guard on the basketball team. I had my boyfriend, and I went to homecoming and Christmas formal. But I wanted more.\"\nIn June 1997, Spears was in talks with manager Lou Pearlman to join the female pop group Innosense. Lynne asked family friend and entertainment lawyer Larry Rudolph for his opinion and submitted a tape of Spears singing over a Whitney Houston karaoke song along with some pictures. Rudolph decided that he wanted to pitch her to record labels, for which she needed a professional demo made. He sent Spears an unused song of Toni Braxton; she rehearsed for a week and recorded her vocals in a studio. Spears traveled to New York with the demo and met with executives from four labels, returning to Kentwood the same day. Three of the labels rejected her, saying that audiences wanted pop bands such as the Backstreet Boys and the Spice Girls, and \"there wasn't going to be another Madonna, another Debbie Gibson, or another Tiffany.\"\nTwo weeks later, executives from Jive Records returned calls to Rudolph. Senior vice president of A&R Jeff Fenster said about Spears' audition that \"it's very rare to hear someone that age who can deliver emotional content and commercial appeal\u00a0... For any artist, the motivation\u2014the 'eye of the tiger'\u2014is extremely important. And Britney had that.\" Spears sang Houston's \"I Have Nothing\" (1992) for the executives, and was subsequently signed to the label. They assigned her to work with producer Eric Foster White for a month; he reportedly shaped her voice from \"lower and less poppy\" delivery to \"distinctively, unmistakably Britney\". After hearing the recorded material, president Clive Calder ordered a full album. Spears had originally envisioned \"Sheryl Crow music, but younger; more adult contemporary\". She felt secure with her label's appointment of producers, since \"It made more sense to go pop, because I can dance to it\u2014it's more me.\" She flew to Cheiron Studios in Stockholm, Sweden, where half of the album was recorded from March to April 1998, with producers Max Martin, Denniz Pop, and Rami Yacoub, among others.\n1998\u20132000: \"...Baby One More Time\" and \"Oops!... I Did It Again\".\nAfter Spears returned to the United States, she embarked on a shopping mall promotional tour, titled L'Oreal Hair Zone Mall Tour, to promote her upcoming debut album. Her show was a four-song set and she was accompanied by two back-up dancers. Her first concert tour followed, as an opening act for NSYNC. Her debut studio album, \"...Baby One More Time\", was released on January 12, 1999. It debuted at number one on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200 and was certified two-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America after a month. Worldwide, the album topped the charts in fifteen countries and sold over 10 million copies in a year. It became the biggest-selling album ever by a teenage artist.\n\"...Baby One More Time\" was released as the lead single from the album on September 29, 1998. Originally, Jive Records wanted the associated music video to be animated; however, Spears rejected this idea, and suggested the final concept of a Catholic schoolgirl. The single peaked at number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, topping the chart for two consecutive weeks in January\u2013February 1999. It sold more than 10 million copies, making it one of the best-selling singles of all time. \"...Baby One More Time\" later received a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. The title track also topped the singles chart for two weeks in the United Kingdom, and became the fastest-selling single ever by a female artist, shipping over 460,000 copies. It would later become the 25th-most successful song of all time in British chart history. Spears is the youngest female artist to have a million seller in the UK. The album's third single, \"(You Drive Me) Crazy\", became a top-ten hit worldwide and further propelled the success of the \"...Baby One More Time\" album. The album has sold 30 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. It is the best-selling debut album by any artist.\nOn June 28, 1999, Spears began her first headlining ...Baby One More Time Tour in North America, which was positively received by critics. It also generated some controversy due to her racy outfits. An extension of the tour, titled (You Drive Me) Crazy Tour, followed in March 2000. Spears premiered songs from her upcoming second album during the show.\n\"Oops!... I Did It Again\", Spears' second studio album, was released in May 2000. It debuted at number one in the US, selling 1.3 million copies, breaking the Nielsen SoundScan record for the highest debut sales by any solo artist. It has sold over 20 million copies worldwide to date, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. Rob Sheffield of \"Rolling Stone\" said that \"the great thing about \"Oops!\"\u00a0\u2013 under the cheese surface, Britney's demand for satisfaction is complex, fierce and downright scary, making her a true child of rock & roll tradition.\" The album's lead single, \"Oops!... I Did It Again\", peaked at the top of the charts in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and many other European nations, while the second single, \"Lucky\", peaked at number one in Austria, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland. The album as well as the title track received Grammy nominations for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, respectively.\nThe same year, Spears embarked on the Oops!... I Did It Again Tour, which grossed $40.5 million; she also released her first book, \"Britney Spears' Heart to Heart\", co-written with her mother. On September 7, 2000, Spears performed at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards. Halfway through the performance, she ripped off her black suit to reveal a sequined flesh-colored bodysuit, followed by heavy dance routine. It is noted by critics as the moment that Spears showed signs of becoming a more provocative performer. Amidst media speculation, Spears confirmed she was dating NSYNC member Justin Timberlake. Spears and Timberlake both graduated from high school via distance learning from the University of Nebraska High School. She also bought a home in Destin, Florida. In her 2023 memoir, Spears revealed that she had an abortion in late 2000 while dating Timberlake after he said they were not prepared for parenthood. Spears called the abortion \"one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.\"\n2001\u20132002: \"Britney\" and \"Crossroads\".\nIn January 2001, Spears hosted the 28th Annual American Music Awards, starred at Rock in Rio alongside NSYNC, and performed as a special guest in the Super Bowl XXXV halftime show headlined by Aerosmith and NSYNC. In February 2001, she signed a $7\u20138 million promotional deal with Pepsi, and released another book co-written with her mother, \"A Mother's Gift\". Her third studio album, \"Britney\", was released in November 2001, with a funkier sound inspired by hip hop artists such as Jay-Z and the Neptunes. \"Britney\" debuted at number one in the \"Billboard\" 200 and reached top five positions in Australia, the United Kingdom, and mainland Europe, and has sold 10 million copies worldwide.\nStephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic called \"Britney\" \"the record where she strives to deepen her persona, making it more adult while still recognizably Britney.\u00a0... It does sound like the work of a star who has now found and refined her voice, resulting in her best record yet.\" It was nominated for the Grammy awards for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for \"Overprotected\", and in 2007 it was named one of the best albums of the preceding 25 years by \"Entertainment Weekly\". The lead single, \"I'm a Slave 4 U\", became a top-ten hit in several countries.\nSpears' performance of the single at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards featured a caged tiger (wrangled by Bhagavan Antle) and a large albino python draped over her shoulders. It was harshly received by animal rights organization PETA, who claimed the animals were mistreated and scrapped plans for an anti-fur billboard that was to feature Spears. Jocelyn Vena of MTV News summarized Spears' performance at the ceremony, saying, \"draping herself in a white python and slithering around a steamy garden setting \u2013 surrounded by dancers in zebra and tiger outfits \u2013 Spears created one of the most striking visuals in the 27-year history of the show.\"\nTo support the album, Spears embarked on the Dream Within a Dream Tour. The show was critically praised for its technical innovations, the \"pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance\" being a water screen that pumped two tons of water into the stage. The tour grossed $53.3 million, becoming the second highest-grossing tour of 2002 by a female artist, behind Cher's . Her career success was highlighted by \"Forbes\" in 2002, as Spears was ranked the world's most powerful celebrity. Spears also landed her first starring role in \"Crossroads\", released in February 2002. Although the film was largely panned, critics praised Spears' acting. The film was a box office success, grossing over $61.1 million worldwide on a $12 million budget.\nIn June 2002, Spears opened her first restaurant, Nyla, in New York City, but terminated her relationship in November due to mismanagement and \"management's failure to keep her fully apprised\". In July 2002, Spears announced she would take a six-month break from her career; however, she went back into the studio in November to record her new album. Spears' relationship with Justin Timberlake ended after three years. In November 2002, Timberlake released the song \"Cry Me a River\" as the second single from his solo debut album. The music video featured a Spears look-alike and fueled the rumors that she had been engaging in an affair, fueled by further rumors of possible relationships involving Timberlake's choreographer Wade Robson and Limp Bizkit's frontman Fred Durst. Spears had initially denied the allegations of a possible affair involving Durst, despite the two being spotted together on multiple occasions; even claiming the two had a friendly connection. In 2023, she admitted to engaging in an affair with Robson. As a response, Spears wrote the ballad \"Everytime\" with her backing vocalist and friend Annet Artani.\n2003\u20132005: \"In the Zone\" and first two marriages.\nIn August 2003, Spears opened the MTV Video Music Awards with Christina Aguilera, performing \"Like a Virgin\". Halfway through they were joined by Madonna, whom they both kissed. The incident was highly publicized. In 2008, MTV listed the performance as the number-one opening moment in the history of MTV Video Music Awards, while \"Blender\" cited it as one of the 25 sexiest music moments on television history.\nSpears released her fourth studio album, \"In the Zone\", in November 2003. She assumed more creative control by writing and co-producing most of the material. \"Vibe\" called it \"a supremely confident dance record that also illustrates Spears' development as a songwriter\". NPR named it one of the most important recordings of the decade, writing that \"the decade's history of impeccably crafted pop is written on her body of work\". \"In the Zone\" sold over 609,000 copies during its first week of availability in the United States, debuting at the top of the charts, making Spears the first female artist in the SoundScan era to have her first four studio albums to debut at number one. It also debuted at the top of the charts in France and the top ten in Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands. The album produced four singles: \"Me Against the Music\", a collaboration with Madonna; \"Toxic\"\u2014which won Spears her first Grammy for Best Dance Recording; \"Everytime\", and \"Outrageous\".\nIn January 2004, Spears married her childhood friend <templatestyles src=\"Template:Visible anchor/styles.css\" />Jason Allen Alexander at A Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada. The marriage was annulled 55 hours later, following a petition to the court that stated that Spears \"lacked understanding of her actions\".\nIn March 2004, Spears embarked on the Onyx Hotel Tour in support of \"In the Zone\". The tour was canceled in June 2004, when she fell and injured her left knee during the music video shoot for \"Outrageous\". She underwent arthroscopic surgery and wore a thigh brace for six weeks, followed by eight to twelve weeks of rehabilitation. That year, Spears became involved in the Kabbalah Centre through her friendship with Madonna.\nIn July 2004, Spears became engaged to dancer Kevin Federline, whom she had met three months earlier. The romance was the subject of intense media attention, since Federline had recently broken up with actress Shar Jackson, who was still pregnant with their second child at the time. The stages of their relationship were chronicled in Spears' first reality show \"\", which premiered on May 17, 2005, on UPN. Spears later referred to the show in a 2013 interview as \"probably the worst thing I've done in my career\". They held a wedding ceremony on September 18, 2004, but were not legally married until three weeks later on October 6 due to a delay finalizing the couple's prenuptial agreement.\nShortly after, she released her first perfume, Curious, with Elizabeth Arden, which broke the company's first-week gross for a perfume. In October 2004, Spears took a career break to start a family. ', her first greatest hits compilation album, was released in November 2004. Spears' cover version of Bobby Brown's \"My Prerogative\" was released as the lead single from the album, reaching the top of the charts in Finland, Ireland, Italy, and Norway. The second single, \"Do Somethin'\", was a top ten hit in Australia, the United Kingdom, and other countries of mainland Europe. In August 2005, Spears released \"Someday (I Will Understand)\", which was dedicated to her first child, a son named Sean Preston, who was born the following month. In November 2005, she released her first remix compilation, ', which consists of 11 remixes.\n2006\u20132007: Personal struggles and \"Blackout\".\nIn February 2006, pictures surfaced of Spears driving with her son, Sean, on her lap instead of in a car seat. Child advocates were horrified by the photos of her holding the wheel with one hand and Sean with the other. Spears claimed that the situation happened because of a frightening encounter with paparazzi, and that it was a mistake on her part. The following month, she guest-starred on the \"Will & Grace\" episode \"Buy, Buy Baby\" as closeted lesbian Amber-Louise. She announced she no longer studied Kabbalah in May 2006, explaining, \"my baby is my religion\". Spears posed nude for the August 2006 cover of \"Harper's Bazaar\"; the photograph was compared to Demi Moore's August 1991 \"Vanity Fair\" cover. In September 2006, she gave birth to her second son, Jayden James. In November 2006, Spears filed for divorce from Federline, citing irreconcilable differences. Their divorce was finalized in July 2007, when the two reached a global settlement and agreed to share joint custody of their sons.\nSpears' maternal aunt Sandra Bridges Covington, with whom she had been very close, died of ovarian cancer in January 2007. In February, Spears stayed in a drug rehabilitation facility in Antigua for less than a day. The following night, she shaved her head with electric clippers at a hair salon in Tarzana, Los Angeles. She admitted herself to other treatment facilities during the following weeks. In May 2007, she produced a series of promotional concerts at House of Blues venues, titled The M+M's Tour. In October 2007, Spears lost physical custody of her sons to Federline. The reasons of the court ruling were not revealed to the public. Spears was also sued by Louis Vuitton over her 2005 music video \"Do Somethin'\" for upholstering her Hummer interior in counterfeit Louis Vuitton cherry blossom fabric, which resulted in the video being banned on European TV stations.\nIn October 2007, Spears released her fifth studio album, \"Blackout\". The album debuted atop the charts in Canada and Ireland, at number two in the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200, France, Japan, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, and the top ten in Australia, South Korea, New Zealand, and many European nations. In the United States, it was Spears' first album not to debut at number one, although, she did become the only female artist to have her first five studio albums debut at the two top slots of the chart. The album received positive reviews from critics and had sold 3.1 million copies worldwide by the end of 2008. \"Blackout\" won Album of the Year at the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards and was listed as the fifth Best Pop Album of the Decade by \"The Times\".\nSpears performed the lead single, \"Gimme More\", at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards. The performance was widely panned by critics. Despite the criticism, the single enjoyed worldwide success, peaking at number one in Canada and within the top ten in almost every country it charted. The second single, \"Piece of Me\", reached the top of the charts in Ireland and reached the top five in Australia, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The third single, \"Break the Ice\", was released the following year, and respectively reached numbers seven and nine in Ireland and Canada. In December 2007, Spears began a relationship with paparazzo Adnan Ghalib.\n2008\u20132010: Conservatorship and \"Circus\".\nIn January 2008, Spears refused to relinquish custody of her sons to Federline's representatives. She was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after police that had arrived at her house noted she appeared to be under the influence of an unidentified substance. The following day, Spears' visitation rights were suspended at an emergency court hearing, and Federline was given sole physical and legal custody of their sons. She was committed to the psychiatric ward of Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and put on 5150 involuntary psychiatric hold under California state law. The court placed her under a conservatorship led by her father, Jamie Spears, and attorney Andrew Wallet, giving them complete control of her assets. She was released five days later.\nThe following month, Spears guest-starred on the \"How I Met Your Mother\" episode \"Ten Sessions\" as receptionist Abby. She received positive reviews for her performance, as well as bringing the series its highest ratings ever. In July 2008, Spears regained some visitation rights after coming to an agreement with Federline and his counsel. In September 2008, Spears opened the MTV Video Music Awards with a pre-taped comedy sketch with Jonah Hill and an introduction speech. She won Best Female Video, Best Pop Video, and Video of the Year for \"Piece of Me\". A 60-minute introspective documentary, \"\", was produced to chronicle Spears' return to the recording industry. Directed by Phil Griffin, \"For the Record\" was shot in Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and New York City during the third quarter of 2008. The documentary was broadcast on MTV to 5.6 million viewers for the two airings on the premiere night. It was the highest rating in its Sunday night timeslot and in the network's history. \nIn December 2008, Spears' sixth studio album, \"Circus\", was released. It received positive reviews from critics and debuted at number one in Canada, Czech Republic, and the United States, and within the top ten in many European nations. In the United States, Spears became the youngest female artist to have five albums debut at number one, earning a place in \"Guinness World Records\". She also became the only act in the SoundScan era to have four albums debut with 500,000 or more copies sold. The album was one of the fastest-selling albums of the year, and has sold 4 million copies worldwide. Its lead single, \"Womanizer\", became Spears' first chart-topper on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 since \"...Baby One More Time\". The single also topped the charts in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Norway, and Sweden. It was also nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording.\nIn January 2009, Spears and her father obtained a restraining order against her former manager Sam Lutfi, ex-boyfriend Adnan Ghalib, and attorney Jon Eardley, all of whom had been accused of conspiring to gain control of Spears' affairs. Spears embarked on The Circus Starring Britney Spears tour in March 2009. With a gross of U.S. $131.8 million, it became the fifth highest-grossing tour of the year. In November 2009, Spears released her second greatest hits album, \"The Singles Collection\". The album's lead and only single, \"3\", became her third number-one single in the U.S.\nIn May 2010, Spears' representatives confirmed she was dating her agent, Jason Trawick, and that they had decided to end their professional relationship to focus on their personal relationship. Spears designed a limited edition clothing line for Candie's, which was released in stores in July 2010. In September 2010, she made a cameo appearance on a Spears-themed tribute episode of the television series \"Glee\", titled \"Britney/Brittany\"; the episode drew the highest Nielsen rating\u00a0\u2013 up to that point in the series's run\u00a0\u2013 in the 18\u201349 demographic.\n2011\u20132012: \"Femme Fatale\" and \"The X Factor\".\nIn March 2011, Spears released her seventh studio album, \"Femme Fatale\". The album peaked at number one in the United States, Canada, and Australia, and within the top ten on nearly every other chart. Its peak in the United States tied Spears with Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson for the third-most number ones among women. \"Femme Fatale\" has been certified platinum by the RIAA and as of February 2014, it had sold 2.4 million copies worldwide.\nThe album's lead single, \"Hold It Against Me\", debuted atop the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, becoming Spears' fourth number-one single on the chart and making her the second artist in history to have two consecutive singles debut at number one, after Mariah Carey. The second single, \"Till the World Ends\", peaked at number three on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 in May, while the third single, \"I Wanna Go\", reached number seven in August. \"Femme Fatale\" became Spears' first album in which three of its songs reached the top ten of the chart. The fourth and final single \"Criminal\" was released in September 2011. The music video sparked controversy when British politicians criticized Spears for using replica guns while filming the video in a London area that had been badly affected by the 2011 England riots. Spears' management briefly responded, stating, \"The video is a fantasy story featuring Britney's boyfriend, Jason Trawick, which literally plays out the lyrics of a song written three years before the riots ever happened.\" In April 2011, Spears appeared in a remix of Rihanna's song \"S&M\". It reached number one in the US later that month, giving Spears her fifth number one on the chart. On \"Billboard\"'s 2011 Year-End list, Spears was ranked number fourteen on the Artists of the Year, thirty-two on \"Billboard\" 200 artists, and ten on \"Billboard\" Hot 100 artists. Spears co-wrote \"Whiplash\", a song from the album \"When the Sun Goes Down\" (2011) by Selena Gomez & the Scene.\nIn June 2011, Spears embarked on her Femme Fatale Tour. The first ten dates of the tour grossed $6.2 million, landing the fifty-fifth spot on \"Pollstar\"'s Top 100 North American Tours list for the half-way point of the year. The tour ended on December 10, 2011, in Puerto Rico, after 79 performances. A DVD of the tour was released in November 2011. In August 2011, Spears received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards. The next month, she released her second remix album, \"\". In December 2011, Spears became engaged to her long-time boyfriend Jason Trawick, who had formerly been her agent. Trawick was legally granted a role as co-conservator, alongside her father, in April 2012.\nIn May 2012, Spears was hired to replace Paula Abdul as a judge for the second season of the USA show of \"The X Factor\", joining Simon Cowell, L.A. Reid, and fellow new judge Demi Lovato, who replaced Nicole Scherzinger. With a reported salary of $15 million, she became the highest-paid judge on a singing competition series in television history. However, Katy Perry broke her record in 2018 after Perry was signed for a $25-million salary to serve as a judge on ABC's revival of \"American Idol\". Spears mentored the Teens category; her final act, Carly Rose Sonenclar, was named the runner-up of the season. Spears did not return for the show's third season and was replaced by Paulina Rubio.\nSpears appeared on the song \"Scream & Shout\" with will.i.am, which was released as the third single from his fourth studio album, \"#willpower\" (2013). The song later became Spears' sixth number-one single on the UK Singles Chart and peaked at number three on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. \"Scream & Shout\" was among the best-selling songs of 2012 and 2013 with denoting sales of over 8.1 million worldwide, the accompanying music video was the third most-viewed video in 2013 on Vevo despite the video being released in 2012. In December 2012, \"Forbes\" named her music's top-earning woman of 2012, with estimated earnings of $58 million.\n2013\u20132015: \"Britney Jean\" and Britney: Piece of Me.\nSpears began work on her eighth studio album, \"Britney Jean\", in December 2012, and enlisted will.i.am as its executive producer in May 2013. In January 2013, Spears and Jason Trawick ended their engagement. Trawick was also removed as Spears' co-conservator, restoring her father as the sole conservator. Following the breakup, she began dating David Lucado in March; the couple split in August 2014. During the production of \"Britney Jean\", Spears recorded the song \"Ooh La La\" for the soundtrack of \"The Smurfs 2\", which was released in June 2013.\nOn September 17, 2013, she appeared on \"Good Morning America\" to announce her two-year concert residency at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, titled . It began on December 27, 2013, and included a total of 100 shows throughout 2014 and 2015. During the same appearance, Spears announced that \"Britney Jean\" would be released on December 3, 2013, in the United States. It was released through RCA Records due to the disbandment of Jive Records in 2011, which had formed the joint RCA/Jive Label Group (initially known as BMG Label Group) between 2007 and 2011.\n\"Britney Jean\" became Spears' final project under her original recording contract with Jive, which had guaranteed the release of eight studio albums. The record received a low amount of promotion and had little commercial impact, reportedly due to time conflicts involving preparations for Britney: Piece of Me. Upon its release, the record debuted at number four on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200 with first-week sales of 107,000 copies, becoming her lowest-peaking and lowest-selling album in the United States. \"Britney Jean\" debuted at number 34 on the UK Albums Chart, selling 12,959 copies in its first week. In doing so, it became Spears' lowest-charting and lowest-selling album in the country.\n\"Work Bitch\" was released as the lead single from \"Britney Jean\" in September 2013. It debuted and peaked at number 12 on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100 marking Spears' 31st entry on the chart and the fifth highest debut of her career on the chart, and her seventh in the top 20. It also marked Spears' 19th top 20 entry and overall her 23rd top 40 single. The song marked Spears' highest sales debut since her 2011 number-one single \"Hold It Against Me\". \"Work Bitch\" debuted and peaked at number seven on the UK Singles Chart. The song also peaked within the top ten of the charts in Brazil, Canada, France, Italy, Mexico, and Spain.\nThe second single, \"Perfume\", premiered in November 2013. It debuted and peaked at number 76 on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100. In October 2013, she was featured as a guest vocalist on the song \"SMS (Bangerz)\" by Miley Cyrus, from the latter's fourth studio album, \"Bangerz\" (2013). On January 8, 2014, Spears won Favorite Pop Artist at the 40th People's Choice Awards at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. In August 2014, Spears confirmed she had renewed her contract with RCA and that she was writing and recording new music for her next album.\nSpears announced via Twitter in August 2014 that she would be releasing an intimate apparel line called \"The Intimate Britney Spears\". It was available to be purchased beginning on September 9, 2014, in the United States and Canada through Spears' Intimate Collection website. It was later available on September 25 for purchase in Europe. The company now ships to over 200 countries including Australia and New Zealand. On September 25, 2014, Spears confirmed on \"Good Morning Britain\" that she extended her contract to perform her Britney: Piece of Me concert residency at Planet Hollywood Las Vegas for two additional years. Spears began dating television producer Charlie Ebersol in October 2014. The pair were split in June 2015.\nOn May 14, 2015, Spears released a single, \"Pretty Girls\", with Iggy Azalea. It reached number 29 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and charted moderately in international territories. Spears and Azalea performed the track live at the 2015 \"Billboard\" Music Awards from The AXIS, the home of Spears' residency, to positive critical response. \"Entertainment Weekly\" praised the performance, noting \"Spears gave one of her most energetic televised performances in years.\"\nOn June 16, 2015, Giorgio Moroder released the album \"D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu\", which featured Spears on \"Tom's Diner\". The song was released as the fourth single from the album on October 9, 2015. In an interview, Moroder praised Spears' vocals and said she \"sounds so good that you would hardly recognize her\". At the 2015 Teen Choice Awards, Spears received the Candie's Style Icon Award, her ninth Teen Choice Award. In November 2015, Spears guest-starred as a fictionalized version of herself on the CW series \"Jane the Virgin\". On the show, she danced to \"Toxic\" with Gina Rodriguez's character.\n2016\u20132018: \"Glory\", continued residency, and the Piece of Me Tour.\nIn November 2015, Spears confirmed via social media that she had begun recording her ninth studio album. On March 1, 2016, \"V\" announced that Spears would appear on the cover of its 100th issue, dated March 8, 2016, in addition to revealing three different covers shot by photographer Mario Testino for the milestone publication. The \"V\" editor-in-chief, Stephen Gan, said Spears was selected because of her status as an icon in the industry, and asked: \"Who in our world did not grow up listening to her music?\" In May 2016, Spears launched a casual role-play gaming application, \"\". The app, created by Glu Mobile, was made available through both iOS and Google Play.\nOn May 22, 2016, Spears performed a medley of her past singles at the 2016 \"Billboard\" Music Awards. In addition to opening the show, Spears was honored with the \"Billboard\" Millennium Award. On July 15, 2016, Spears released the lead single, \"Make Me\", from her ninth studio album, featuring guest vocals from American rapper G-Eazy. The album, \"Glory\", was formally released on August 26, 2016. On August 16, 2016, MTV and Spears announced that she would perform at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards. The performance marked Spears' first time returning to the VMA stage after her widely panned performance of \"Gimme More\" at the 2007 show nine years earlier. Along with \"Make Me\", Spears and G-Eazy also performed the latter's hit song \"Me, Myself & I\".\nSpears appeared on the cover of \"Marie Claire\" UK for the October 2016 issue. In the publication, Spears revealed that she had suffered from crippling anxiety in the past, and that motherhood played a major role in helping her overcome it. \"My boys don't care if everything isn't perfect. They don't judge me\", Spears said in the issue. In November 2016, during an interview with Las Vegas Blog, Spears confirmed she had already begun work on her next album, stating: \"I'm not sure what I want the next album to sound like.\u00a0... I just know that I'm excited to get into the studio again and actually have already been back recording.\" In the same month, she released a remix version of \"Slumber Party\" as the second single from \"Glory\", featuring Tinashe.\nShe began dating \"Slumber Party\"'s music video co-star Sam Asghari after the two met on set. In January 2017, Spears received four wins out of four nominations at the 43rd People's Choice Awards, including Favorite Pop Artist, Female Artist, Social Media Celebrity, as well as Comedic Collaboration for a skit with Ellen DeGeneres for \"The Ellen DeGeneres Show\". In March 2017, Spears announced that her residency concert would be performed abroad as a world tour, , with dates in select Asian cities. In April 2017, the Israeli Labor Party announced that it would reschedule its July primary election to avoid conflict with Spears' sold-out Tel Aviv concert, citing traffic, and security concerns.\nSpears' manager Larry Rudolph also announced the residency would not be extended following her contract expiration with Caesars Entertainment at the end of 2017. On April 29, 2017, Spears became the first recipient of the Icon Award at the 2017 Radio Disney Music Awards. On November 4, 2017, Spears attended the grand opening of the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation Britney Spears Campus in Las Vegas. Later that month, \"Forbes\" announced that Spears was the 8th highest earning female musician, earning $34 million in 2017. On December 31, 2017, Spears performed the final show of Britney: Piece of Me. The final performance reportedly brought in $1.172 million, setting a new box office record for a single show in Las Vegas, and breaking the record previously held by Jennifer Lopez. Performances of \"Toxic\" and \"Work Bitch\" were recorded on earlier dates and aired on ABC's \"Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve\" to a record audience of 25.6 million.\nIn January 2018, Spears released her 24th perfume with Elizabeth Arden, Sunset Fantasy, and announced the Piece of Me Tour which took place in July 2018 in North America and Europe. Tickets were sold out within minutes for major cities, and additional dates were added to meet the demand. Pitbull was the supporting act for the European leg. The tour ranked at 86 and 30 on \"Pollstar\"'s 2018 Year-End Top 100 Tours chart both in North America and worldwide, respectively. In total, the tour grossed $54.3 million with 260,531 tickets sold and was the sixth highest-grossing female tour of 2018, and was the United Kingdom's second best-selling female tour of 2018.\nOn March 20, 2018, Spears was announced as part of a campaign for French luxury fashion house Kenzo. The company said it aimed to shake up the 'jungle' world of fashion with Spears' 'La Collection Memento No. 2' campaign. On April 12, 2018, Spears was honored with the 2018 GLAAD Vanguard Award at the GLAAD Media Awards for her role in \"accelerating acceptance for the LGBTQ community\". On April 27, 2018, Epic Rights announced a new partnership with Spears to debut her own fashion line in 2019, which would include clothing, fitness apparel, accessories, and electronics.\nIn July 2018, Spears released her first unisex fragrance, Prerogative. On October 18, 2018, Spears announced her second Las Vegas residency show, Britney: Domination, which was set to launch at Park MGM's Park Theatre on February 13, 2019. Spears was slated to make $507,000 per show, which would have made her the highest paid act on the Las Vegas Strip. On October 21, 2018, Spears performed at the Formula One Grand Prix in Austin, the final performance of her Piece of Me Tour.\n2019\u20132021: Conservatorship dispute, #FreeBritney, and abuse allegations.\nOn January 4, 2019, Spears announced an indefinite hiatus and the cancellation of her Las Vegas residency after her father, Jamie, suffered a near-fatal colon rupture. In March 2019, Andrew Wallet resigned as co-conservator of her estate after 11 years. Spears entered a psychiatric facility amidst stress from her father's illness that same month. The following month, a fan podcast, \"Britney's Gram\", released a voicemail message from a source who claimed to be a former member of Spears' legal team. They alleged that Jamie had canceled the residency due to Spears' refusal to take her medication, that he had been holding her in the facility against her will since January 2019 after she violated a no-driving rule, and that her conservatorship was supposed to have ended in 2009. The allegations gave rise to a movement to terminate the conservatorship, #FreeBritney, which received support from celebrities including singers Cher, Paris Hilton, and Miley Cyrus, and the nonprofit organization American Civil Liberties Union. On April 22, 2019, fans protested outside the West Hollywood City Hall and demanded Spears' release. Spears said \"all [was] well\" two days later and left the facility later that month.\nIn a May 2019 hearing, Judge Brenda Penny ordered a professional evaluation of the conservatorship. In September, Spears' ex-husband Federline obtained a restraining order against Britney's father, Jamie, following an alleged physical altercation between Jamie and one of her sons. Spears' longtime care manager, Jodi Montgomery, temporarily replaced Jamie as her conservator that same month, which also saw a hearing where no decisions about the arrangement were reached. An interactive pop-up museum dedicated to Spears, dubbed \"The Zone\", opened in Los Angeles in February 2020, though it was later suspended in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. She released \"Glory\"'s Japanese-exclusive bonus track, \"Mood Ring\" as a single, and debuted a new cover of the album to streaming and digital platforms worldwide in May 2020. In August, Jamie called the #FreeBritney movement \"a joke\" and its organizers \"conspiracy theorists\".\nOn August 17, 2020, Spears' court-appointed lawyer, Samuel D. Ingham III, submitted a court filing that documented Spears' desire to have her conservatorship altered to reflect her wishes as well as lifestyle, to instate Montgomery as her permanent conservator, and to replace Jamie with a fiduciary as conservator of her estate. Four days later, Penny extended the established arrangement until February 2021. In November 2020, Penny approved Bessemer Trust as co-conservator of Spears' estate alongside Jamie. The following month, Spears released a new deluxe edition of \"Glory\", which includes \"Mood Ring\" and new songs \"Swimming in the Stars\" and \"Matches\".\nA documentary about Spears' career and conservatorship, \"Framing Britney Spears\", premiered on FX in February 2021. Spears later revealed that she had seen parts of the documentary, stating that she felt humiliated by the perception of her that was presented and that she \"cried for two weeks\" following the initial broadcast. The following month, Ingham filed a petition to permanently replace Jamie with Montgomery as the conservator of Spears' person, citing a 2014 order that determined that Spears did not have the capacity to consent to medical treatment of any form.\nOn June 22, 2021, shortly before Spears was set to speak to the court, \"The New York Times\" obtained confidential court documents stating that Spears had pushed for years to end her conservatorship. Spears spoke to the court on June 23, calling the conservatorship \"abusive\". She said she had lied by \"telling the whole world I'm OK and I'm happy\", and that she was traumatized and angry. The court statement received widespread media coverage and generated over 1 million shares on Twitter, over 500,000 messages using the tag #FreeBritney, and more than 150,000 messages with a new hashtag referencing the court appearance, #BritneySpeaks.\nOn July 1, Bessemer Trust asked the judge to allow them to withdraw from the conservatorship, saying that they had been misled and had entered into the arrangement on the understanding that the conservatorship was voluntary. The same day, senators Elizabeth Warren and Bob Casey Jr. called on federal agencies to increase oversight of the country's conservatorship systems. Spears' manager of 25 years, Larry Rudolph, resigned on July 6 due to her \"intention to officially retire\" and on that same day, it was reported that Ingham planned to file documents to the court asking to be dismissed. In a July 14 hearing, Judge Penny approved the resignations of Bessemer Trust and Ingham. The court also approved of Spears' request to hire attorney Mathew S. Rosengart to represent her. Rosengart informed the court that he would be working to terminate the conservatorship. Later that day, Spears publicly endorsed the #FreeBritney movement for the first time, using the hashtag in a caption on an Instagram post. She mentioned feeling \"blessed\" after earning \"real representation\", referring to Judge Penny's decision to allow her to choose her own counsel.\nOn July 26, Rosengart filed a petition seeking to remove Jamie as conservator of Spears' estate and to replace him with Jason Rubin, a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) at Certified Strategies Inc. in Woodland Hills, California. On August 12, Jamie agreed to step down as conservator at some future date, with his lawyers stating that he wanted \"an orderly transition to a new conservator\". On September 7, Jamie filed a petition to end the conservatorship. Five days later, Spears announced her engagement to her longtime boyfriend, Sam Asghari, through an Instagram post. On September 29, Judge Penny suspended Jamie as conservator of Spears' estate, with accountant John Zabel replacing him on a temporary basis. On November 12, Judge Penny terminated the conservatorship.\n2022\u2013present: Third marriage, \"The Woman in Me\", and retirement from singing.\nIn April 2022, she announced her pregnancy with Asghari's child, which ended in a miscarriage the following month. The couple married on June 9 at her home in Thousand Oaks, Los Angeles. None of Spears' immediate family (including her parents, sister, and brother) were invited; her two sons did not attend. Spears' first husband, Jason Alexander, attempted to crash the wedding by breaking into her home, armed with a knife, but was arrested. Spears had a three-year restraining order against him. On August 26, Spears and English musician Elton John released the duet \"Hold Me Closer\", a remake of John's 1972 single \"Tiny Dancer\". It was Spears' first musical release since the termination of her conservatorship. \"Hold Me Closer\" debuted at number six on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100, becoming her 14th top-ten single and her highest-charting song in the chart since \"Scream & Shout\" (2012). It debuted at number three on the UK Singles Chart, earning Spears her 24th top-ten.\nSince the termination of her conservatorship, Spears' personal life, social media presence, and overall well-being have been subject to renewed media interest and fan speculation, giving rise to conspiracy theories. On January 24, 2023, deputies from the Ventura County Sheriff's Office performed a welfare check at Spears' residence after receiving several calls from fans who were concerned after she deleted her Instagram account. A spokesperson for the Sheriff's Department stated that Spears \"was safe and in no danger\". Spears addressed the incident on her Twitter account, asking fans to respect her privacy. Spears and the rapper will.i.am released their single, \"Mind Your Business\", on July 21, 2023. On August 16, it was announced Spears and Asghari separated after 14 months of marriage. On May 1, 2024, they reached a divorce settlement. The following day, the judge signed off on the settlement and the couple were divorced on December 2, 2024. In September 2023, an additional welfare check was initiated when Spears posted an Instagram video of herself dancing with knives. Her security team assured the attending officer that there was no immediate threat to her safety, and the officer departed. Spears also clarified that the knives were not real.\nIn February 2022, Spears signed a $15 million book deal for a memoir in one of the biggest book deals of all time. The memoir, \"The Woman in Me,\" was released on October 24, 2023. It details her rise to fame, public media events, her conservatorship, and her newfound freedom. In the United States, it sold 1.1 million copies, while worldwide it sold 2.4 million copies in print sales during its first week of release.\nIn January 2024, reports circulated that Charli XCX and Julia Michaels had been asked to write songs for Spears, and \"Rolling Stone\" reported that \"management and A&R are trying to get her excited for the music\". Spears denied the reports, saying she would never return to the music industry. However, she also said that she had written more than 20 songs for other artists in the previous two years. In May 2024, Charli XCX confirmed in an interview that she was indeed asked to write for Spears, for which she traveled to Malibu, but that she did not know if Spears was a part of the process explaining that \"the team were present... But she didn't record it. She obviously didn't.\"\nArtistry.\nInfluences.\nSpears has cited Madonna, Janet Jackson, and Whitney Houston as major influences, her \"three favorite artists\" as a child, whom she would \"sing along to\u00a0... day and night in [her] living room\"; Houston's \"I Have Nothing\" was the song she auditioned to that landed her record deal with Jive Records. Spears also named Mariah Carey as \"one of the main reasons I started singing\". Throughout her career, Spears has drawn frequent comparisons to Madonna and Jackson in particular, in terms of vocals, choreography, and stage presence. According to Spears: \"I know when I was younger, I looked up to people\u00a0... like, you know, Janet Jackson and Madonna. And they were major inspirations for me. But I also had my own identity and I knew who I was.\"\nIn the 2002 book \"Madonnastyle\" by Carol Clerk, she is quoted saying: \"I have been a huge fan of Madonna since I was a little girl. She's the person that I've really looked up to. I would really, really like to be a legend like Madonna.\" Spears cited \"That's the Way Love Goes\" as the inspiration for her song \"Touch of My Hand\" from her album \"In the Zone\", saying \"I like to compare it to 'That's the Way Love Goes,' kind of a Janet Jackson thing.\" She also said her song \"Just Luv Me\" from her \"Glory\" album also reminded her of \"That's the Way Love Goes\".\nAfter meeting Spears face to face, Janet Jackson stated: \"she said to me, 'I'm such a big fan; I really admire you.' That's so flattering. Everyone gets inspiration from some place. And it's awesome to see someone else coming up who's dancing and singing, and seeing how all these kids relate to her. A lot of people put it down, but what she does is a positive thing.\" Madonna said of Spears in the documentary \"\": \"I admire her talent as an artist\u00a0... There are aspects about her that I recognize in myself when I first started out in my career\". Spears has also named Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Sheryl Crow, Otis Redding, Shania Twain, Brandy, Beyonc\u00e9, Natalie Imbruglia, Cher, and Prince as inspirations, and younger artists such as Selena Gomez and Ariana Grande.\nMusical style.\nSpears is described as a pop artist and generally explores the genre in the form of Following her debut, she was credited with influencing the revival of teen pop in the late 1990s. Rob Sheffield of \"Rolling Stone\" wrote: \"Spears carries on the classic archetype of the rock & roll teen queen, the dungaree doll, the angel baby who just has to make a scene.\" In a review of \"...Baby One More Time\", Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic described her music as a \"blend of infectious, rap-inflected dance-pop and smooth balladry\". \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" saw Spears working with several R&B producers to create \"a combination of bubblegum, urban soul, and raga\". Her third studio album, \"Britney\", derived from the teen pop niche \"[r]hythmically and melodically\", but was described as \"sharper, tougher than what came before\", incorporating genres such as R&B, disco, and funk.\nSpears has explored and heavily incorporated the genres of electropop and dance music in her records, as well as influences of urban and hip hop, which are most present on \"In the Zone\" and \"Blackout\". \"In the Zone\" also experiments with Euro trance, reggae, and Middle Eastern music. \"Femme Fatale\" and \"Britney Jean\" were also heavily influenced by electronic music genres. Spears' ninth studio album, \"Glory\", is more eclectic and experimental than her previous released work. She commented that it \"took a lot of time\u00a0... it's really different\u00a0... there are like two or three songs that go in the direction of more urban that I've wanted to do for a long time now, and I just haven't really done that.\"\n\"...Baby One More Time\" and \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" address themes such as love and relationships from a teenager's point of view. Following the massive commercial success of her first two studio albums, Spears' team and producers wanted to maintain the formula that took her to the top of the charts. Spears, however, was no longer satisfied with the sound and themes covered on her records. She co-wrote five songs and choose each track's producer on her third studio album, \"Britney\", which lyrics address the subjects of reaching adulthood, sexuality, and self-discovery. Sex, dancing, freedom, and love continued to be Spears' music main subjects on her subsequent albums. Her fifth studio effort, \"Blackout\", also addresses issues such as fame and media scrutiny, including on the song \"Piece of Me\".\nSpears' music has also been noted for some catchphrases. The opening in her debut single \"...Baby One More Time\", \"Oh, baby baby\" is considered to be one of her signature lines and has been parodied in the media by various artists such as Nicole Scherzinger and Ariana Grande. It has been used in variating forms throughout her music, such as simply, \"baby\" and \"oh baby\", as well as the \"Blackout\" track, \"Ooh Ooh Baby\". On the initial development of \"...Baby One More Time\", Barry Weiss noted Spears' inception of the catchphrase from her strange ad-libbing during the recording of the song. He commented further, \"We thought it was really weird at first. It was strange. It was not the way Max wrote it. But it worked! We thought it could be a really good opening salvo for her.\" The opening line in \"Gimme More\", \"It's Britney, bitch\" has become another signature phrase. An early review of \"Blackout\" suggested the phrase was \"simply laughable\". Amy Roberts of \"Bustle\" called it \"an indelible cultural turning point, transforming a frenetic, floundering moment in the superstar's career to one of strength and empowerment\".\nVoice.\nSpears is a soprano. Other sources state that she possesses a contralto vocal range. Prior to her breakthrough success, she is described as having sung \"much deeper than her highly recognizable trademark voice of today\", with Eric Foster White, who worked with Spears on her debut album, \"...Baby One More Time\", being cited as \"[shaping] her voice over the course of a month\" upon being signed to Jive Records \"to where it is today\u2014distinctively, unmistakably Britney\". Rami Yacoub, who co-produced Spears' debut album with lyricist Max Martin, commented, \"I know from Denniz Pop and Max's previous productions, when we do songs, there's kind of a nasal thing. With N' Sync and the Backstreet Boys, we had to push for that mid-nasal voice. When Britney did that, she got this kind of raspy, sexy voice.\"\nGuy Blackman of \"The Age\" wrote that \"[t]he thing about Spears, though, is that her biggest songs, no matter how committee-created or impossibly polished, have always been convincing because of her delivery, her commitment and her presence.\u00a0... Spears expresses perfectly the conflicting urges of adolescence, the tension between chastity and sexual experience, between hedonism and responsibility, between confidence and vulnerability.\" Producer William Orbit, who worked with Spears on her album \"Britney Jean\", stated regarding her vocals: \"[Britney] didn't get so big just because [she] put on great shows; [she] got to be that way because [her voice is] unique: you hear two words and you know who is singing\".\nSpears has also been criticized for her reliance on Auto-Tune and her vocals being \"over-processed\" on records. Erlewine criticized Spears' singing abilities in a review of her \"Blackout\" album, stating: \"Never the greatest vocalist, her thin squawk could be dismissed early in her career as an adolescent learning the ropes, but nearly a decade later her singing hasn't gotten any better, even if the studio tools to masquerade her weaknesses have.\" Joan Anderman of \"The Boston Globe\" remarked that \"Spears sounds robotic, nearly inhuman, on her records, so processed is her voice by digital pitch-shifters and synthesizers.\"\nKayla Upadhyaya of \"The Michigan Daily\" has provided a different point of view, stating: \"Auto-tuned and over-processed vocals define [Spears]'s voice as an artist, and in her music, auto-tune isn't so much a gimmick as it is an instrument used to highlight, contort and make a statement.\" Adam Markovitz of \"Entertainment Weekly\" opines that \"Spears is no technical singer, that's for sure. But backed by Martin and Dr. Luke's wall of sound, her vocals melt into a mix of babytalk coo and coital panting that is, in its own overprocessed way, just as iconic and propulsive as Michael Jackson's yips or Eminem's snarls.\"\nStage performances and videos.\nSpears is known for her stage performances, particularly the elaborate dance routines which incorporate \"belly-dancing and tempered erotic moves\" that are credited with influencing \"dance-heavy acts\" such as Danity Kane and the Pussycat Dolls. \"Rolling Stone\" readers voted Spears their second-favorite dancing musician. Spears is described as being much more shy than her stage persona suggests. She said that performing is \"a boost to [her] confidence. It's like an alter-ego type thing. Something clicks and I go and turn into this different person. I think it's kind of a gift to be able to do that.\" Her 2000, 2001, and 2003 MTV Video Music Awards performances were lauded, while her 2007 presentation was widely panned by critics, as she \"teetered through her dance steps and mouthed only occasional words\". \"Billboard\" called her 2016 \"comeback\" performance at the show \"an effective, but not entirely glorious, bid to regain pop superstardom\".\nAfter her knee injuries and personal problems, Spears' \"showmanship\" and dance abilities came under criticism. Serge F. Kovaleski of \"The New York Times\" watched her in 2016 and stated: \"Once a fluid, natural dancer, Ms. Spears can appear stiff, even robotic, today, relying on flailing arms and flashy sets.\" \"Las Vegas Sun\"'s Robin Leach seemed more impressed over Spears' efforts on the concert by saying that she delivered a \"flawless performance\" on the residency's opening night.\nIt has been widely reported that Spears lip-syncs during live performances, which often prompts criticism from music critics and concert goers. Some, however, claimed that, although she \"got plenty of digital support\", she \"doesn't merely lip-sync\" during her live shows. In 2016, Sabrina Weiss of Refinery29 referred to her lip-syncing as a \"well-known fact that's not even taboo anymore.\" Noting on the prevalence of lip-syncing, the \"Los Angeles Daily News\" opined: \"In the context of a Britney Spears concert, does it really matter?\u00a0... you [just] go for the somewhat-ridiculous spectacle of it all\". Spears herself has commented on the topic, arguing: \"Because I'm dancing so much, I do have a little bit of playback, but there's a mixture of my voice and the playback.\u00a0... It really pisses me off because I'm busting my ass out there and singing at the same time and nobody ever gives me credit for it\".\nIn 2012, VH1 ranked Spears as the fourth Greatest Woman of the Video Era, while \"Billboard\" ranked her as the eight Greatest Music Video Artist of All Time in 2020, explaining: \"The storylines, the dancing, the \"outfits\". Right from the start, the pop princess established the lengths of her creativity with some of the most memorable videos of the last three decades.\" She has been retroactively noted as the pioneer for her early career videography. She conceptualized the \"iconic Catholic schoolgirl and cheerleader motif\" in the \"...Baby One More Time\" video, rejecting the animation video idea. She also made the \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" video \"dance-centric rather than space-centric as her producers suggested\". She also used her dancer's intuition to help select the beats for each track.\nPublic image.\nUpon launching her music career with \"...Baby One More Time\", Spears was labeled a teen idol, and \"Rolling Stone\" described her as \"the latest model of a classic product: the unneurotic pop star who performs her duties with vaudevillian pluck and spokesmodel charm.\" The April 1999 cover of \"Rolling Stone\" pictured a 17-year-old Spears reclining on a bed, wearing an exposed bra and hot pants while cradling a Teletubby in one arm. The American Family Association (AFA) decried the image as \"a disturbing mix of childhood innocence and adult sexuality\" and called on \"God-loving Americans to boycott stores selling Britney's albums\". Spears addressed the outcry, commenting: \"What's the big deal? I have strong morals.\u00a0... I'd do it again. I thought the pictures were fine. And I was tired of being compared to Debbie Gibson and all of this bubblegum pop all the time.\" Shortly before this, Spears had announced publicly she would remain abstinent until marriage.\nAn early criticism of Spears dismissed her as \"the product of a Swedish songwriting factory that had no real hand in either her music or her persona\". \"Vox\" editor Constance Grady wrote this was perpetuated from the fact that Spears debuted in the late 1990s, when music was dominated by rockism, that prizes \"so-called authenticity and grittiness of rock above all else\". Spears' \"slick, breezy pop was an affront to rockist sensibilities, and claiming that Spears was fake was an easy way to dismiss her.\" Ron Levy for \"Rolling Stone\" noted that \"I have to tell you, if the record company could have created more than one Britney Spears, they would have done it, and they tried!\"\n\"Billboard\" opined that, by the time Spears released her second album, \"Oops!... I Did It Again\", \"There was a shift occurring in both the music and her public image: She was sharper, sexier and singing about more grown-up fare, setting the stage for 2001's \"Britney\", which shed her innocent skin and ushered her into adulthood.\" \"Britney\"'s lead single, \"I'm a Slave 4 U\", and its music video were also credited for distancing her from her previous \"wholesome bubblegum star\" image. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic remarked, \"If 2001's \"Britney\" was a transitional album, capturing Spears at the point when she wasn't a girl and not yet a woman, its 2003 follow-up, \"In the Zone\", is where she has finally completed that journey and turned into Britney, the Adult Woman.\" Erlewine likened Spears to fellow singer Christina Aguilera, explaining that both equated \"maturity with transparent sexuality and the pounding sounds of nightclubs\". Brittany Spanos of \"LA Weekly\" stated that Spears \"set the bar for the 'adulthood' transition teen pop stars often struggle with\".\nSpears' erratic behavior and personal problems during 2006\u20132008 were highly publicized and affected both her career and public image. Erlewine writes that \"each new disaster [was] stripping away any residual sexiness in her public image\". In a 2008 article, \"Rolling Stone\"'s Vanessa Grigoriadis described her much-publicized personal issues as \"the most public downfall of any star in history\". Spears later received favorable media attention; \"Billboard\" wrote that her appearance at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards \"was a picture of professionalism and poise\" after her \"disastrous\" performance the previous year, while \"Business Insider\" ran an article on how she had \"lost control of her life\u00a0... and then made an incredible career comeback\". In 2017, Spears said: \"I think I had to give myself more breaks through my career and take responsibility for my mental health.\u00a0... I wrote back then, that I was lost and didn't know what to do with myself. I was trying to please everyone around me because that's who I am deep inside. There are moments where I look back and think: 'What the hell was I thinking?'\"\nIn September 2002, Spears was placed at number eight on VH1's 100 Sexiest Artists list. She was placed at number one on \"FHM\"'s 100 Sexiest Women in the World list in 2004, and, in December 2012, \"Complex\" ranked her 12th on its 100 Hottest Female Singers of All Time list. Remarking upon her perceived image as a sex symbol, Spears stated: \"When I'm on stage, that's my time to do my thing and go there and be that \u2014 and it's fun. It's exhilarating just to be something that you're not. And people tend to believe it.\" In 2003, \"People\" cited her as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People.\nSpears is recognized as a gay icon and received the 2018 GLAAD Vanguard Award at the GLAAD Media Awards for her role in \"accelerating acceptance for the LGBTQ community\". She addressed the \"unwavering loyalty\" and \"lack of judgment\" of her LGBTQ fans in \"Billboard\"'s Love Letters to the LGBTQ Community. She said: \"Your stories are what inspire me, bring me joy, and make me and my sons strive to be better people.\" Manuel Betancourt of \"Vice\" wrote about the \"queer adoration\", especially of gay men, on Spears, and said that \"Where other gay icons exude self-possession, Spears' fragile resilience has made her an even more fascinating role model, closer to Judy Garland than to Lady Gaga\u00a0... she's a glittering mirror ball, a fractured reflection of those men on the dance floor back onto themselves.\" \"HuffPost\"'s Ben Appel attributed Spears' status as a gay icon to her \"oh-so-innocent/not that innocent\" Monroe-like sensuality, her sweet, almost saccharine nature, her beyond basic but addictive pop songs, her dance moves, her phoenix-out-of-the-fire comeback from a series of mental health crises, and her unmistakable tenderness. \"Britney is camp. She is a fashion plate. A doll. Britney is a drag queen.\"\nSince her early years in the public eye, Spears has been a tabloid fixture and a paparazzi target. According to \"Vanity Fair\", photos of Spears sold for a combined value of $100 million in 2007. Harvey Levin, the founder of \"TMZ\", said in an interview, \"Britney is gold. She is crack to our readers. Her life is a complete train-wreck, and I thank God for her every day.\" Steve Huey of AllMusic remarked that \"among female singers of [Spears'] era\u00a0... her celebrity star power was rivaled only by Jennifer Lopez.\" 'Britney Spears' was Yahoo!'s most popular search term between 2005 and 2008, and has been in a total of seven different years. Spears was named as Most Searched Person in the \"Guinness World Records\" book edition 2007 and 2009. She was later named as the most searched person of the decade 2000\u20132009.\nAs a public figure, Spears \"has never been known to her fans as a politically active, committed\u2014or even aware\u2014entertainer.\" In a 2003 interview with Tucker Carlson, she commented on President George W. Bush and the Iraq War, saying that \"we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes\u00a0... and be faithful in what happens\". Michael Moore included the footage of Spears' answer in his \"anti-Bush\" documentary \"Fahrenheit 9/11\", which, according to \"The Washington Times\"'s James Frazier, presented her \"as an example of a naive American blindly trusting a dishonest commander in chief\" and fueled the \"urban legend\" of a \"conservative\" Spears. Frazier also said that \"the few positions she has taken can hardly be considered conservative\", such as supporting same-sex marriage. In 2016, Spears posted pictures of a meeting with Hillary Clinton on social media. She described Clinton as \"an inspiration and [a] beautiful voice for women around the world\".\nIn December 2017, Spears publicly showed support for the DREAM Act in the wake of the announcement that Donald Trump would end the DACA policy, which previously granted undocumented immigrants who came to the country as minors a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation. She posted a photo of herself on social media wearing a black T-shirt that reads \"We Are All Dreamers\" in white letters. The caption read, \"Tell Congress to pass the #DreamAct\".\nOn September 15, 2021, Spears was named one of the 100 most influential people of 2021 by \"Time.\" A few days before the editors's list was released, Spears was put at the top of the readers voting list of which personalities should be included on the annual \"Time\" 100 list. Deemed an icon of 2021, editors highlighted the impact of her fight against her conservatorship as well as of the #FreeBritney movement. In October 2021, Spears thanked her fans and the #FreeBritney movement for \"freeing me from my conservatorship\". Britney Spears was also named most famous celebrity from Louisiana according to a study done by Baton Rouge.\nLegacy.\nReferred to as the \"Princess of Pop\", Spears was credited as one of the \"driving force[s] behind the return of teen pop in the late 1990s\". \"Rolling Stone\"'s Stacy Lambe explained that she \"help[ed] to usher in a new era for the genre that had gone dormant in the decade that followed New Kids on the Block.\u00a0... Spears would lead an army of pop stars\u00a0... built on slick Max Martin productions, plenty of sexual innuendo and dance-heavy performances. [She became] one of the most successful artists of all time\u2014and a cautionary tale for a generation, whether they paid attention or not.\" In a 2021 article for \"Time\", Maura Johnston opined that \"Spears' legacy as a pop artist is complex, made up of dazzling musical heights and music-business-borne lows\". Johnston also commented: \"While Spears' catalog is part of the canon that defines the first 20 years of this millennium, one hopes that her public struggles, and the strength she's shown while enduring them, will lead to her cementing her true legacy: Reshaping the machine that turns those songs into cultural touchstones.\"\n\"Glamour\" contributor Christopher Rosa described her as \"one of pop music's defining voices.\u00a0... When she emerged onto the scene in 1998 with \"...Baby One More Time\", the world hadn't seen a performer like her. Not since Madonna had a female artist affected the genre so profoundly.\" \"Billboard\"'s Robert Kelly observed that Spears' \"sexy and coy\" vocals on her debut single \"...Baby One More Time\" \"kicked off a new era of pop vocal stylings that would influence countless artists to come\". In 2020, \"Rolling Stone\" ranked the song at number one on a list of the 100 Greatest Debut Singles of All Time and Rob Sheffield described it as \"One of those pop manifestos that announces a new sound, a new era, a new century. But most of all, a new star\u00a0... With \"...Baby One More Time\", [Spears] changed the sound of pop forever: It's Britney, bitch. Nothing was ever the same.\"\nSpears was at the forefront of the female teen pop explosion starting in 1999 and extending through the 2000s, leading the pack of Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, and Mandy Moore. All of these performers had been developing material in 1998, but the market changed dramatically in December 1998 when Spears' single and video were charting highly. RCA Records quickly signed Aguilera and released her debut single to capitalize on Spears' success, producing her debut hit single \"Genie in a Bottle\". Simpson consciously modeled her persona as more mature than Spears; her \"I Wanna Love You Forever\" charted in September 1999, and her album \"Sweet Kisses\" followed shortly after. Moore's first single, \"Candy\", hit the airwaves a month before Simpson's single, but it did not perform as well on the charts; Moore was often seen as less accomplished than Spears and the others, coming in fourth of the \"pop princesses\". Fueling media stories about their competition for first place, Spears and Aguilera traded barbs but also compliments through the 2000s.\nAlim Kheraj of \"Dazed\" called Spears \"one of pop's most important pioneers\". After eighteen years as a performer, \"Billboard\" described her as having \"earned her title as one of pop's reigning queens. Since her early days as a Mouseketeer, [Spears] has pushed the boundaries of 21st century sounds, paving the way for a generation of artists to shamelessly embrace glossy pop and redefine how one can accrue consistent success in the music industry.\" \"Entertainment Weekly\"'s Adam Markovitz described Spears as \"an American institution, as deeply sacred and messed up as pro wrestling or the filibuster.\" In 2012, she was ranked as the fourth VH1's 50 Greatest Women of the Video Era show list. VH1 also cited her among its choices on the 100 Greatest Women in Music in 2012 and the 200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons in 2003. In 2020, \"Billboard\" ranked her eight on its 100 Greatest Music Video Artists of all-time list. In October 2024, \"Billboard\" placed Spears at number six on their Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century list.\nSpears and her work have influenced various artists including Katy Perry, Meghan Trainor, Demi Lovato, Kelly Key, Kristinia DeBarge, Little Boots, Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, Marina Diamandis, the Weeknd, Tegan and Sara, Pixie Lott, Grimes, Selena Gomez, Hailee Steinfeld, Pabllo Vittar, Tinashe, Victoria Justice, Cassie, Leah Wellbaum of Slothrust, the Saturdays, Normani, Miley Cyrus, Cheryl, Lana Del Rey, Ava Max, Sam Smith, and Rina Sawayama. During the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, Lady Gaga said that Spears \"taught us all how to be fearless, and the industry wouldn't be the same without her.\" Gaga has also cited Spears as an influence, calling her \"the most provocative performer of my time\".\nBefore Spears joined \"The X Factor\", Simon Cowell explained that he is \"fascinated by [Britney]. The fact that she's one of the most talked about \u2013 not just pop stars \u2013 but people in the world today, means that you've got this star power.\u00a0... She's still hot, she's still having hit records and she's still controversial, there's a reason for that.\" Marina Diamandis named Spears as the main influence behind her album \"Electra Heart\". Lana Del Rey said that the music video for \"Toxic\" inspires her. Porcelain Black describes her music as a \"love child\" of Spears and Marilyn Manson. Rita Ora's 2019 music video for \"Only Want You\" was inspired by Spears' \"Everytime\" music video, and said in a stories from Instagram, \"Hey @britneyspears this was for you because I love you so. Pay homage to the ones who inspire! #icon.\"\nSpears has been credited with redefining Las Vegas residencies as a retirement place for musicians. Her debut concert residency was described as \"the natural evolution of Celine Dion's powerhourse Vegas residency, a still-charting star of another generation redefining the role of Strip headliner.\" \"Forbes\" named Spears the sixth-highest-earning female musician of 2015.\" She is credited with influencing and paving the way for other artists's residencies such as Jennifer Lopez's , Bruno Mars's Bruno Mars at Park MGM, and Backstreet Boys' . The arrival of Spears \"saw the pop promoters finally tap into the younger crowd arriving in town for a good time\".\nSpears' much-publicized personal problems and her subsequent career comeback have inspired some artists. Gwyneth Paltrow's character in the 2010 film \"Country Strong\" was inspired by Spears' treatment by the media. According to film director Shana Fest, \"that's where this movie came from. I mean, I was seeing what was happening in the media to Britney Spears. I think it's tragic how we treat people who give us so much, and we love to see them knocked down to build them back up again, to knock them down again.\" Nicki Minaj has cited Spears' comeback after her much-publicized personal issues as an inspiration. Spears' hounding by paparazzi and personal problems also inspired Barry Manilow's album \"15 Minutes\". Manilow said: \"She couldn't have a life without them pulling up next to her car and following her and driving her crazy to the point where, that was around the time she shaved off her hair.\u00a0... We all looked at it in horror\u00a0... So it seemed like a thing to be writing an album about.\" Bebo Norman wrote a song about Spears, called \"Britney\", which was inspired by \"culture's make-or-break treatment of celebrities\".\nIn 2008, \"Salon\" published an article titled \"The Britney Economy\" describing how Spears is a driving force in music and fashion, stimulating consumer purchases and media coverage. Magazines, paparazzi, and record labels make millions of dollars, and Spears profits to a lesser degree. Along with Alicia Silverstone, Christy Turlington, and Naomi Campbell, Spears has been credited with introducing the navel piercing to mainstream culture.\nAchievements.\nSpears' awards and accolades include a Grammy Award; 15 Guinness World Records; six MTV Video Music Awards, including the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award; seven \"Billboard\" Music Awards, including the Millennium Award; the inaugural Radio Disney Icon Award; the GLAAD Media Award's Vanguard Award; and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.\nSpears is listed by the \"Guinness World Records\" as having the \"Best-selling album by a teenage solo artist\" for her debut studio album, \"...Baby One More Time\", which sold over 13 million copies in the United States. Melissa Ruggieri of the \"Richmond Times-Dispatch\" reported: \"She's also marked for being the best-selling teenage artist. Before she turned 20 in 2001, Spears had sold over 37 million albums worldwide\".\nAs of 2023[ [update]], according to the \"Evening Standard\", Spears has sold over 150 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time. She also sold more than 70 million records in United States, including 36.9 million digital singles and 33.6 million digital albums. Spears is further recognized as the best-selling female albums artist of the 2000s in the United States, as well as the fifth overall. In December 2009, \"Billboard\" ranked Spears the 8th Artist of the 2000s decade in the United States. She is one of the few artists in history to have had a number-one single and a number-one studio album in the US during each of the three decades of her career. With \"3\" in 2009 and \"Hold It Against Me\" in 2011, she became the second artist after Mariah Carey in the Hot 100's history to debut at number one with two or more songs. In 2016, Spears ranked at number twenty on \"Billboard\"'s Greatest Of All Time Top Dance Club Artists list.\nOther ventures.\nProduct and endorsements.\nIn 2000, Spears released a limited edition of sunglasses titled Shades of Britney. In 2001, she signed a deal with shoe company Skechers, and a $7\u20138 million promotional deal with Pepsi, their biggest entertainment deal at the time. Aside from numerous commercials with the latter during that year, she also appeared in a 2004 Pepsi television commercial in the theme of \"Gladiators\" with singers Beyonc\u00e9, Pink, and Enrique Iglesias. On June 19, 2002, she released her first multi-platform video game, \"Britney's Dance Beat\", which received positive reviews.\nIn March 2009, Spears was announced as the new face of clothing brand Candie's. Dari Marder, chief marketing officer for the brand, said: \"Everybody loves a comeback and nobody's doing it better than Britney. She's just poised for even greater success.\" In 2010, Spears designed a limited edition line for the brand, which was released in stores in July 2010. In 2011, she teamed up with Sony, Make Up For Ever, and Plenty of Fish to release her music video for \"Hold It Against Me\", earning her $500,000 for the product placement.\nSpears also teamed up with Hasbro in 2012 to release an exclusive version of \"Twister Dance\", which includes a remix of \"Till the World Ends\". She was also featured on a commercial, which was directed by Ray Kay, to promote the game. Spears was also featured on the commercial of \"Twister Dance Rave\", and the game included a Twister remix of \"Circus\". In March 2018, it was revealed that Spears would be the face of Kenzo, a contemporary French luxury clothing house.\nSpears' range of commercial deals and products also includes beauty care products and perfumes. She released her first perfume with Elizabeth Arden, Curious in 2004, which broke the company's first-week gross for a perfume. By 2009, she had released seven more perfumes including Fantasy. In 2010, Spears released her eighth fragrance, Radiance.\nIn 2011, Radiance was reissued as a new perfume titled Cosmic Radiance. Worldwide, Spears sold over one million bottles in the first five years, with gross receipts of $1.5 billion. In 2016, Spears contacted Glu Mobile to create her own role-playing game, \"\". The app officially launched in May 2016 and is compatible with iOS and Android. On June 17, 2016, Spears announced the release of her twentieth fragrance, Private Show. As of January\u00a02018[ [update]], Spears has released 24 fragrances through Elizabeth Arden.\nPhilanthropy.\nSpears founded The Britney Spears Foundation, a charitable entity set up to help children in need. The philosophy behind the Foundation was that music and entertainment has a healing quality that can benefit children. The Foundation also supported the annual Britney Spears Camp for the Performing Arts, where campers had the opportunity to explore and develop their talents. In April 2002, through the efforts of Spears and The Britney Spears Foundation, a grant of $1 million was made to the Twin Towers Fund to support the children of uniformed service heroes affected by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, including New York City Fire Department and its Emergency Medical Services Command, the New York City Police Department, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the New York State Office of court Administration and other government offices. However, it was reported in 2008 that the Foundation had a deficit of $200,000. After Spears went through conservatorship, her father and lawyer Andrew Wallet zeroed out the effort, leading to its closure in 2011.\nOn October 30, 2001, Spears, alongside Bono and other popular recording artists under the name \"Artists Against AIDS Worldwide\", released an album consisting of multiple versions of Marvin Gaye's \"What's Going On\", intending to benefit AIDS programs in Africa and other impoverished regions. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Spears donated $350,000 to Music Rising. Spears has also helped several charities during her career, including Madonna's Kabbalah-based Spirituality for Kids, cancer charity Gilda's Club Worldwide, Promises Foundation, and United Way, with the latter two focused on giving families from various disadvantaged situations new hope and stable foundations for the future.\nOn October 24, 2015, Spears donated $120,000 to the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation. In addition, $1 of each ticket sale for her Las Vegas residency, Britney: Piece of Me, was donated to the nonprofit organization. Spears also fundraised for the charity through social media, in addition to selling limited edition merchandise, with all proceeds going to the NCCF. On October 27, 2016, Spears partnered with Zappos and XCYCLE to host the \"Britney Spears Piece of Me Charity Ride\" in Boca Park, Las Vegas to raise additional money toward her goal of $1 million for the NCCF, with $450,000 having already been raised from Spears' ticket sales and merchandise. Participants were entered for a chance to win a spin class with Spears herself. The event ultimately went on to raise $553,130. The fundraising ultimately led to the development of the NCCF Britney Spears Campus in Las Vegas, which saw its grand opening on November 4, 2017. Spears also regularly participates in Spirit Day to combat bullying of LGBTQ youth and bullying.\nIn March 2020, Spears was participating in the #DoYourPartChallenge, which entails helping people with anything they might need during the COVID-19 pandemic. She told fans to send her messages on Instagram if they need supportive words during the coronavirus pandemic, with Spears picking three fans. In February 2024, Spears partnered with New York City dessert shop Glace, to create the \"Britney Br\u00fbl\u00e9e\" dessert, with a portion of the proceeds from its sales being donated to The Trevor Project.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBook sources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "11301081": "The M+M's Tour\n2007 concert tour by Britney Spears\nThe M+M's Tour was the sixth concert tour by American entertainer Britney Spears, consisting of six brief shows at clubs in the United States. Spears expressed interest in touring again as early as February 2006. She started rehearsing for a show at House of Blues venues in secret, and pulled out of a surprise performance on April 25, 2007, at Los Angeles nightclub Forty Deuce. After a marquee reading \"The M+M's\" at the House of Blues in San Diego, California, appeared in late April 2007, media sources identified the act as Spears, and the show quickly sold out. The title, \"M+M's\" code name was claimed to be Mother (after having two children) and Miss (after being divorced). The tour marked the first time Spears performed live since The Onyx Hotel Tour in June 2004.\nThe show, which ran 12\u201316 minutes in length, featured Spears accompanied by four female back-up dancers performing choreographed dance numbers to shortened versions of five songs, including hits such as \"...Baby One More Time\" and \"Toxic\". During the performance of one song, a male audience member participated onstage. Spears' vocals during the performance were lip-synched. The shows received mixed reviews from critics and fans. Some said that Spears looked happy and in great shape, while others deemed the show as subpar. Scalpers outside the San Diego venue sold tickets with a face value of $35 for prices between $200 and $500.\nBackground and development.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"She wants people to forget she's famous for shaving her head and going into rehab. She's famous for 'Baby One More Time' and for being a dancer and being sexy and being a professional music artist. This was just a teaser, and a way for her to get some of the nerves out of the way.\"\n\u2014Craig Marks, editor-in-chief of \"Blender\" talking about the tour.\nThe shows took place against a backdrop of Spears' life struggles the previous few years that had made her fodder for tabloid reports. These included a two-day marriage, a stormy two-year marriage and divorce after having two children, shaving her head, entering rehabilitation, and various run-ins with the paparazzi.\nIn an interview with \"People\" in February 2006, Spears explained that she was anxious to resume her career, saying, \"This may sound weird, but I miss traveling. I miss the road, seeing different places and being with the dancers and having fun. That feeling of being on the stage, knowing it's your best\u00a0\u2014 I love that. I needed a break. I needed to be hungry again.\" On April 26, 2007, Ivan Kane, the owner of Los Angeles nightclub Forty Deuce, told \"E! News\" that Spears had pulled out of a surprise performance at the venue the previous night. Kane stated that during rehearsal, she was \"looking very hot, with four backup dancers and [she] sang three songs. They ran through the set several times, the choreography was smokin', and she sounded great.\" Marc Malkin of \"E! News\" said that Spears thought she might need more time to prepare. He also reported that she was planning to tour House of Blues venues in the United States. Spears wanted to keep the rehearsals a secret, and did not even inform the owners of the different dance studios the reason for the preparation. In late April 2007, a marquee reading \"The M+M's\" appeared at the House of Blues in San Diego. Several gossip websites and local media sources identified the act as Spears, prompting the show to quickly sell out. The title, \"M+M's\" code name was claimed to be Mother (after having two children) and Miss (after being divorced). On May 1, 2007, a front-page story on \"The San Diego Union-Tribune\" fueled the speculation. The same day, the doors opened at 19:00 PST (03:00 UTC), and Spears took the stage at 22:00 PST (06:00 UTC). It marked the first time Spears was on stage since her knee injury caused The Onyx Hotel Tour to be cancelled in June 2004.\nConcert synopsis.\nThe concert opened with Spears taking the stage accompanied by four blonde female dancers to perform a short version of \"...Baby One More Time\", wearing a silver beaded bra, a pleated white skirt and white boots. She wore a long brown (blond in later dates) wig to cover the head she had shaved two and a half months previously and appeared in physically good shape. The show then segued into a flashy shortened version of \"I'm a Slave 4 U\". Though while Spears performed the original choreography, the performance was compared to the style of the Pussycat Dolls. The dancers then left Spears alone onstage to perform a chair routine of \"Breathe on Me\". They re-entered with a male fan from the audience with them and Spears giving him a lap dance. Halfway through the lap dance, Spears disappeared for a costume change leaving her dancers to continue the performance. She then reappeared in a hot pink bra, white fur coat and jean skirt to perform \"Do Somethin'\" with Spears throwing air guitars to the crowd. The show then concluded with \"Toxic\", which featured Spears and her dancers performing in a mix of Spears and Shakira dance styles. As the performance came to an end, Spears said \"Thank you so much. These are my dancers\"\u00a0\u2013 her only words during the show\u00a0\u2013 and left the stage. The show lasted around 12\u201316 minutes.\nThe first show in San Diego began two hours after the stated time. There was no live band for the shows; Spears and the dancers performed to recorded tracks. Spears' vocals during the show were also not live but rather were lip-synched to the recording. At some points, she was chewing gum while performing. The lack of live singing became most prominent during the Orlando stop of the tour, when the CD to which Spears was miming began skipping during \"Do Somethin'\", reportedly caused some in the audience to start booing. By the Florida shows, Spears was up to four costume changes.\nReception.\nTeri VanHorn of MTV said that with \"Her body newly toned and her smile beaming, she looked every bit like a woman who had emerged from her quarter-life crisis stronger than yesterday.\" She also said Spears performed with \"a naughty, free-spirited attitude\", as though she \"had invited 900 friends to her dirty little dance party, and too bad for you if you couldn't roll with the fun.\" SuChin Pak, also from MTV stated the show was \"no huge revelation\", explaining, \"It was not the kind of show that says: 'She's back. She's going to come out with the biggest album of her career.' Nor did it say that she's lost forever and we'll never see the old Britney back again. These are all really tiny baby steps.\" Thomas K. Arnold of \"USA Today\" said the show \"turned out to be more rehearsal than comeback\", although \"all those post-rehab workouts were worth the effort.\" On May 2, 2007, scalpers outside the House of Blues in San Diego were selling tickets with a face value of $35 for prices between $200 and $500. Chris Lee of the \"Los Angeles Times\" wrote that \"her 'comeback'\u00a0\u2013 if you want to call it that\u00a0\u2013 cemented Spears' place as pop music's reigning drama queen, capable of capturing worldwide tabloid headlines with a bare minimum of creative expenditure.\"\nFan reaction to the show was generally divided.\nSome fans attending the show were dissatisfied with its short length, with one quoted afterward as saying, \"That was so disappointing.\" Some fans were also disappointed by the performance quality, with one quoted as saying, \"It looked like she lip-synched her way through the whole thing.\" Other fans were more accommodating, pleased to be seeing her in good health and appearance and with one quoted as saying, \"Whatever, we love her. She's amazing.\" One group of female fans wore matching pink tops that said \"Bald Ambition\" on one side and \"The Comeback 2007\" on the other. Jim Abbott of the \"Orlando Sentinel\" summed up some of the reaction by writing that fans at the tail end of the tour \"knew that the show would be short. ... They also knew that she would be lip-synching, but this wasn't about music as much as it was about celebrity, loyalty and beating adversity.\"\nSetlist.\nSetlist adapted from MTV.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11301081", "3382"], "permutation_1": ["11301081", "3382"], "permutation_2": ["3382", "11301081"], "permutation_3": ["11301081", "3382"]}
{"id": "2hop__846388_19320", "docs_added": {"18987": "Mexico City\nCapital and most populous city of Mexico\nMexico City is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and is also North America's most populous city. It is one of the most important cultural and financial centers in the world. Mexico City is located in the Valley of Mexico within the high Mexican central plateau, at an altitude of . The city has 16 boroughs or , which are in turn divided into neighborhoods or . \nThe 2020 population for the city proper was 9,209,944, with a land area of . According to the most recent definition agreed upon by the federal and state governments, the population of Greater Mexico City is 21,804,515, which makes it the sixth-largest metropolitan area in the world, the second-largest urban agglomeration in the Western Hemisphere (behind S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil), and the largest Spanish-speaking city (city proper) in the world. Greater Mexico City has a GDP of $411 billion in 2011, which makes it one of the most productive urban areas in the world. The city was responsible for generating 15.8% of Mexico's GDP, and the metropolitan area accounted for about 22% of the country's GDP. If it were an independent country in 2013, Mexico City would be the fifth-largest economy in Latin America.\nMexico City is the oldest capital city in the Americas and one of two founded by Indigenous people. The city was originally built on a group of islands in Lake Texcoco by the Mexica around 1325, under the name Tenochtitlan. It was almost completely destroyed in the 1521 siege of Tenochtitlan and subsequently redesigned and rebuilt in accordance with the Spanish urban standards. In 1524, the municipality of Mexico City was established, known as , and as of 1585, it was officially known as (Mexico City). Mexico City played a major role in the Spanish colonial empire as a political, administrative, and financial center. Following independence from Spain, the federal district was established in 1824.\nAfter years of demanding greater political autonomy, residents were finally given the right to elect both a head of government and the representatives of the unicameral Legislative Assembly by election in 1997. Ever since, left-wing parties (first the Party of the Democratic Revolution and later the National Regeneration Movement) have controlled both of them. The city has several progressive policies, such as elective abortions, a limited form of euthanasia, no-fault divorce, same-sex marriage, and legal gender change. On 29 January 2016, it ceased to be the \"Federal District\" ( or ) and is now officially known as (or ), with a greater degree of autonomy. A clause in the Constitution of Mexico, however, prevents it from becoming a state within the Mexican federation, as long it remains the capital of the country.\nNicknames and mottos.\nMexico City was traditionally known as \"La Ciudad de los Palacios\" (\"the City of the Palaces\"), a nickname attributed to Baron Alexander von Humboldt when visiting the city in the 19th century, who, sending a letter back to Germany, said Mexico City could rival any major city in Europe. But it was English politician Charles Latrobe who really penned the following: \"... look at their works: the moles, aqueducts, churches, roads\u2014and the luxurious \"City of Palaces\" which has risen from the clay-built ruins of Tenochtitlan...\", on page 84 of the Letter V of \"The Rambler in Mexico\".\nDuring the colonial period, the city's motto was \"Muy Noble e Insigne, Muy Leal e Imperial\" (Very Noble and Distinguished, Very Loyal and Imperial). During Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador's administration a political slogan was introduced: \"la Ciudad de la Esperanza\" (lit.\u2009'The City of Hope'). This motto was quickly adopted as a city nickname but has faded since the new motto, \"Capital en Movimiento\" (\"Capital in Movement\"), was adopted by the administration headed by Marcelo Ebrard, though the latter is not treated as often as a nickname in media. \nUp until 2013, it was common to refer to the city by the initialism \n\"DF\" from \"Distrito Federal de M\u00e9xico\". Since 2013, the abbreviation \"CDMX\" (Ciudad de M\u00e9xico) has been more common, particularly in relation to government campaigns.\nThe city is colloquially known as \"Chilangolandia\" after the locals' nickname \"chilangos\". Chilango is used pejoratively by people living outside Mexico City to \"connote a loud, arrogant, ill-mannered, loutish person\". For their part those living in Mexico City designate insultingly those who live elsewhere as living in \"la provincia\" ('the provinces', 'the periphery') and many proudly embrace the term chilango. Residents of Mexico City are more recently called \"defe\u00f1os\" (deriving from the postal abbreviation of the Federal District in Spanish: D.F., which is read \"De-Efe\"). They are formally called \"capitalinos\" (in reference to the city being the capital of the country), but \"[p]erhaps because capitalino is the more polite, specific, and correct word, it is almost never utilized\".\nHistory.\nThe oldest signs of human occupation in the area of Mexico City are those of the \"Pe\u00f1\u00f3n woman\" and others found in San Bartolo Atepehuacan (Gustavo A. Madero). They were believed to correspond to the lower Cenolithic period (9500\u20137000 BC). However, a 2003 study placed the age of the Pe\u00f1on woman at 12,700 years old (calendar age), one of the oldest human remains discovered in the Americas. Studies of her mitochondrial DNA suggest she was either of Asian or European or Aboriginal Australian origin.\nThe area was the destination of the migrations of the Teochichimecas during the 8th and 13th centuries, people that would give rise to the Toltec, and Mexica (Aztecs) cultures. The latter arrived around the 14th century to settle first on the shores of the lake.\nAztec period.\nThe city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan was founded by the Mexica people in 1325 or 1327. The old Mexica city that is now referred to as Tenochtitlan was built on an island in the center of the inland lake system of the Valley of Mexico, which is shared with a smaller city-state called Tlatelolco. According to legend, the Mexicas' principal god, Huitzilopochtli, indicated the site where they were to build their home by presenting a golden eagle perched on a prickly pear devouring a rattlesnake.\nBetween 1325 and 1521, Tenochtitlan grew in size and strength, eventually dominating the other city-states around Lake Texcoco and in the Valley of Mexico. When the Spaniards arrived, the Aztec Empire had reached much of Mesoamerica, touching both the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean.\nSpanish conquest.\nAfter landing in Veracruz, Spanish explorer Hern\u00e1n Cort\u00e9s advanced upon Tenochtitlan with the aid of many of the other native peoples,\narriving there on 8 November 1519. Cort\u00e9s and his men marched along the causeway leading into the city from Iztapalapa (Ixtapalapa), and the city's ruler, Moctezuma II, greeted the Spaniards; they exchanged gifts, but the camaraderie did not last long. Cort\u00e9s put Moctezuma under house arrest, hoping to rule through him.\nTensions increased until, on the night of 30 June 1520 \u2013 during a struggle known as \"La Noche Triste\" \u2013 the Aztecs rose up against the Spanish intrusion and managed to capture or drive out the Europeans and their Tlaxcalan allies. Cort\u00e9s regrouped at Tlaxcala. The Aztecs thought the Spaniards were permanently gone, and they elected a new king, Cuitl\u00e1huac, but he soon died; the next king was Cuauht\u00e9moc. Cort\u00e9s began a siege of Tenochtitlan in May 1521. For three months, the city suffered from the lack of food and water as well as the spread of smallpox brought by the Europeans. Cort\u00e9s and his allies landed their forces in the south of the island and slowly fought their way through the city. Cuauht\u00e9moc surrendered in August 1521. The Spaniards practically razed Tenochtitlan during the final siege of the conquest.\nCort\u00e9s first settled in Coyoac\u00e1n, but decided to rebuild the Aztec site to erase all traces of the old order. He did not establish a territory under his own personal rule, but remained loyal to the Spanish crown. The first Spanish viceroy arrived in Mexico City fourteen years later. By that time, the city had again become a city-state, having power that extended far beyond its borders. Although the Spanish preserved Tenochtitlan's basic layout, they built Catholic churches over the old Aztec temples and claimed the imperial palaces for themselves. Tenochtitlan was renamed \"Mexico\" because the Spanish found the word easier to pronounce.\nGrowth of colonial Mexico City.\nThe city had been the capital of the Aztec Empire and in the colonial era, Mexico City became the capital of New Spain. The viceroy of Mexico or vice-king lived in the viceregal palace on the main square or Z\u00f3calo. The Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral, the seat of the Archbishopric of New Spain, was constructed on another side of the Z\u00f3calo, as was the archbishop's palace, and across from it the building housing the city council or \"ayuntamiento\" of the city. A late seventeenth-century painting of the Z\u00f3calo by Crist\u00f3bal de Villalpando depicts the main square, which had been the old Aztec ceremonial center. The existing central plaza of the Aztecs was effectively and permanently transformed to the ceremonial center and seat of power during the colonial period, and remains to this day in modern Mexico, the central plaza of the nation. The rebuilding of the city after the siege of Tenochtitlan was accomplished by the abundant indigenous labor in the surrounding area. Franciscan friar Toribio de Benavente Motolinia, one of the Twelve Apostles of Mexico who arrived in New Spain in 1524, described the rebuilding of the city as one of the afflictions or plagues of the early period:\nThe seventh plague was the construction of the great City of Mexico, which, during the early years used more people than in the construction of Jerusalem. The crowds of laborers were so numerous that one could hardly move in the streets and causeways, although they are very wide. Many died from being crushed by beams, or falling from high places, or in tearing down old buildings for new ones. \nPreconquest Tenochtitlan was built in the center of the inland lake system, with the city reachable by canoe and by wide causeways to the mainland. The causeways were rebuilt under Spanish rule with indigenous labor. Colonial Spanish cities were constructed on a grid pattern, if no geographical obstacle prevented it. In Mexico City, the Z\u00f3calo (main square) was the central place from which the grid was then built outward. The Spanish lived in the area closest to the main square in what was known as the \"traza\", in orderly, well laid-out streets. Indigenous residences were outside that exclusive zone and houses were haphazardly located. Spaniards sought to keep indigenous people separate but since the Z\u00f3calo was a center of commerce for Amerindians, they were a constant presence in the central area, so strict segregation was never enforced. At intervals Z\u00f3calo was where major celebrations took place as well as executions. It was also the site of two major riots in the seventeenth century, one in 1624, the other in 1692.\nThe city grew as the population did, coming up against the lake's waters. As the depth of the lake water fluctuated, Mexico City was subject to periodic flooding. A major labor draft, the desag\u00fce, compelled thousands of indigenous over the colonial period to work on infrastructure to prevent flooding. Floods were not only an inconvenience but also a health hazard, since during flood periods human waste polluted the city's streets. By draining the area, the mosquito population dropped as did the frequency of the diseases they spread. However, draining the wetlands also changed the habitat for fish and birds and the areas accessible for indigenous cultivation close to the capital. The 16th century saw a proliferation of churches, many of which can still be seen today in the historic center.\nEconomically, Mexico City prospered as a result of trade. Unlike Brazil or Peru, Mexico had easy contact with both the Atlantic and Pacific worlds. Although the Spanish crown tried to completely regulate all commerce in the city, it had only partial success.\nThe concept of nobility flourished in New Spain in a way not seen in other parts of the Americas. Spaniards encountered a society in which the concept of nobility mirrored that of their own. Spaniards respected the indigenous order of nobility and added to it. In the ensuing centuries, possession of a noble title in Mexico did not mean one exercised great political power, for one's power was limited even if the accumulation of wealth was not. The concept of nobility in Mexico was not political but rather a very conservative Spanish social one, based on proving the worthiness of the family. Most of these families proved their worth by making fortunes in New Spain outside of the city itself, then spending the revenues in the capital, building churches, supporting charities and building extravagant palatial homes. The craze to build the most opulent residence possible reached its height in the last half of the 18th century. Many of these palaces can still be seen today, leading to Mexico City's nickname of \"The city of palaces\" given by Alexander Von Humboldt.\nThe Grito de Dolores (\"Cry of Dolores\"), also known as El Grito de la Independencia (\"Cry of Independence\"), marked the beginning of the Mexican War of Independence. The Battle of Guanajuato, the first major engagement of the insurgency, occurred four days later. After a decade of war, Mexico's independence from Spain was effectively declared in the Declaration of Independence of the Mexican Empire on 27 September 1821. Agust\u00edn de Iturbide is proclaimed Emperor of the First Mexican Empire by Congress, crowned in the Cathedral of Mexico. \nThe Mexican Federal District was established by the new government and by the signing of their new constitution, where the concept of a federal district was adapted from the United States Constitution. Before this designation, Mexico City had served as the seat of government for both the State of Mexico and the nation as a whole. Texcoco de Mora and then Toluca became the capital of the State of Mexico.\nBattle of Mexico City in the U.S.\u2013Mexican War of 1847.\nDuring the 19th century, Mexico City was the center stage of all the political disputes of the country. It was the imperial capital on two occasions (1821\u20131823 and 1864\u20131867), and of two federalist states and two centralist states that followed innumerable coups d'\u00e9tats in the space of half a century before the triumph of the Liberals after the Reform War. It was also the objective of one of the two French invasions to Mexico (1861\u20131867), and occupied for a year by American troops in the framework of the Mexican\u2013American War (1847\u20131848).\nThe Battle for Mexico City was the series of engagements from 8 to 15 September 1847, in the general vicinity of Mexico City during the U.S. Mexican War. Included are major actions at the battles of Molino del Rey and Chapultepec, culminating with the fall of Mexico City. The U.S. Army under Winfield Scott scored a major success that ended the war. The American invasion into the Federal District was first resisted during the Battle of Churubusco on 8 August, where the Saint Patrick's Battalion, which was composed primarily of Catholic Irish and German immigrants but also Canadians, English, French, Italians, Poles, Scots, Spaniards, Swiss, and Mexicans, fought for the Mexican cause, repelling the American attacks. After defeating the Saint Patrick's Battalion, the Mexican\u2013American War came to a close after the United States deployed combat units deep into Mexico resulting in the capture of Mexico City and Veracruz by the U.S. Army's 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Divisions. The invasion culminated with the storming of Chapultepec Castle in the city itself.\nDuring this battle, on 13 September, the 4th Division, under John A. Quitman, spearheaded the attack against Chapultepec and carried the castle. Future Confederate generals George E. Pickett and James Longstreet participated in the attack. Serving in the Mexican defense were the cadets later immortalized as \"Los Ni\u00f1os H\u00e9roes\" (the \"Boy Heroes\"). The Mexican forces fell back from Chapultepec and retreated within the city. Attacks on the Bel\u00e9n and San Cosme Gates came afterwards. The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in what is now the far north of the city.\nMexican Revolution (1910\u20131920).\nThe capital escaped the worst of the violence of the ten-year conflict of the Mexican Revolution. The most significant episode of this period for the city was the Decena Tr\u00e1gica (\"Ten Tragic Days\") of February 1913, when forces counter to the elected government of Francisco I. Madero staged a successful coup. The center of the city was subjected to artillery attacks from the army stronghold of the \"ciudadela\" or citadel, with significant civilian casualties and the undermining of confidence in the Madero government. Victoriano Huerta, chief general of the Federal Army, saw a chance to take power, forcing Madero and Pino Suarez to sign resignations. The two were murdered later while on their way to Lecumberri prison. Huerta's ouster in July 1914 saw the entry of the armies of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, but the city did not experience violence. Huerta had abandoned the capital and the conquering armies marched in. Venustiano Carranza's Constitutionalist faction ultimately prevailed in the revolutionary civil war and Carranza took up residence in the presidential palace.\n20th century to present.\nIn the 20th century the phenomenal growth of the city and its environmental and political consequences dominate. In 1900, the population of Mexico City was about 500,000. The city began to grow rapidly westward in the early part of the 20th century and then began to grow upwards in the 1950s, with the Torre Latinoamericana becoming the city's first skyscraper.\nThe rapid development of Mexico City as a center for modernist architecture was most fully manifested in the mid-1950s construction of the Ciudad Universitaria, Mexico City, the main campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Designed by the most prestigious architects of the era, including Mario Pani, Eugenio Peschard, and Enrique del Moral, the buildings feature murals by artists Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Jos\u00e9 Ch\u00e1vez Morado. It has since been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.\nThe 1968 Olympic Games brought about the construction of large sporting facilities. In 1969, the Mexico City Metro was inaugurated. Explosive growth in the population of the city started in the 1960s, with the population overflowing the boundaries of the Federal District into the neighboring State of Mexico, especially to the north, northwest, and northeast. Between 1960 and 1980 the city's population more than doubled to nearly 9\u00a0million.\nIn 1980, half of all the industrial jobs in Mexico were located in Mexico City. Under relentless growth, the Mexico City government could barely keep up with services. Villagers from the countryside who continued to pour into the city to escape poverty only compounded the city's problems. With no housing available, they took over lands surrounding the city, creating huge shanty towns.\nThe inhabitants of Mexico City faced serious air pollution and water pollution problems, as well as groundwater-related subsidence. Air and water pollution has been contained and improved in several areas due to government programs, the renovation of vehicles and the modernization of public transportation.\nThe autocratic government that ruled Mexico City since the Revolution was tolerated, mostly because of the continued economic expansion since World War II. This was the case even though this government could not handle the population and pollution problems adequately. Nevertheless, discontent and protests began in the 1960s leading to the massacre of an unknown number of protesting students in Tlatelolco.\nThree years later, a demonstration in the Maestros avenue, organized by former members of the 1968 student movement, was violently repressed by a paramilitary group called \"Los Halcones\", composed of gang members and teenagers from many sports clubs who received training in the US.\nOn 19 September 1985, at 7:19am CST, the area was struck by the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. The earthquake proved to be a disaster politically for the one-party state government. The Mexican government was paralyzed by its own bureaucracy and corruption, forcing ordinary citizens to create and direct their own rescue efforts and to reconstruct much of the housing that was lost as well.\nIn 1987, the Historic center of Mexico City, a central neighborhood of Mexico City was enlisted as UNESCO World Heritage Site for its large collection of ancient Aztec and colonial architecture.\nHowever, the last straw may have been the controversial elections of 1988. That year, the presidency was set between the P.R.I.'s candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, and a coalition of left-wing parties led by Cuauht\u00e9moc C\u00e1rdenas, son of the former president L\u00e1zaro C\u00e1rdenas. The counting system \"fell\" because coincidentally the power went out and suddenly, when it returned, the winning candidate was Salinas, even though C\u00e1rdenas had the upper hand.\nAs a result of the fraudulent election, C\u00e1rdenas became a member of the Party of the Democratic Revolution. Discontent over the election eventually led Cuauht\u00e9moc C\u00e1rdenas to become the first elected mayor of Mexico City in 1997. C\u00e1rdenas promised a more democratic government, and his party claimed some victories against crime, pollution, and other major problems. He resigned in 1999 to run for the presidency.\nGeography.\nMexico City is located in the Valley of Mexico, sometimes called the Basin of Mexico. This valley is located in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt in the high plateaus of south-central Mexico.\nIt has a minimum altitude of above sea level and is surrounded by mountains and volcanoes that reach elevations of over . This valley has no natural drainage outlet for the waters that flow from the mountainsides, making the city vulnerable to flooding. Drainage was engineered through the use of canals and tunnels starting in the 17th century.\nMexico City primarily rests on what was Lake Texcoco. Seismic activity is frequent there. Lake Texcoco was drained starting from the 17th century. Although none of the lake waters remain, the city rests on the lake bed's heavily saturated clay. This soft base is collapsing due to the over-extraction of groundwater, called \"groundwater-related subsidence\".\nSince the beginning of the 20th century the city has sunk as much as in some areas. On average Mexico City sinks every year. This sinking is causing problems with runoff and wastewater management, leading to flooding problems, especially during the summer. The entire lake bed is now paved over and most of the city's remaining forested areas lie in the southern boroughs of Milpa Alta, Tlalpan and Xochimilco.\nEnvironment.\nOriginally much of the valley lay beneath the waters of Lake Texcoco, a system of interconnected salt and freshwater lakes. The Aztecs built dikes to separate the fresh water used to raise crops in \"chinampas\" and to prevent recurrent floods. These dikes were destroyed during the siege of Tenochtitlan, and during colonial times the Spanish regularly drained the lake to prevent floods. Only a small section of the original lake remains, located outside Mexico City, in the municipality of Atenco, State of Mexico.\nArchitects Teodoro Gonz\u00e1lez de Le\u00f3n and Alberto Kalach along with a group of Mexican urbanists, engineers and biologists have developed the project plan for \"Recovering the City of Lakes\". If approved by the government the project will contribute to the supply of water from natural sources to the Valley of Mexico, the creation of new natural spaces, a great improvement in air quality, and greater population establishment planning.\nPollution.\nBy the 1990s Mexico City had become infamous as one of the world's most polluted cities; however, the city has since become a model for drastically lowering pollution levels. By 2014 carbon monoxide pollution had dropped drastically, while sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide were at levels about a third of those in 1992. The levels of signature pollutants in Mexico City are similar to those of Los Angeles. Despite the cleanup, the metropolitan area is still the most ozone-polluted part of the country, with ozone levels 2.5 times beyond WHO-defined safe limits.\nTo clean up pollution, the federal and local governments implemented numerous plans including the constant monitoring and reporting of environmental conditions, such as ozone and nitrogen oxides. When the levels of these two pollutants reached critical levels, contingency actions were implemented which included closing factories, changing school hours, and extending the \"A day without a car\" program to two days of the week. The government also instituted industrial technology improvements, a strict biannual vehicle emission inspection and the reformulation of gasoline and diesel fuels. The introduction of Metrob\u00fas bus rapid transit and the Ecobici bike-sharing were among efforts to encourage alternate, greener forms of transportation.\nParks and recreation.\nChapultepec, the city's most iconic public park, has history back to the Aztec emperors who used the area as a retreat. It is south of Polanco district, and houses the Chapultepec Zoo the main city's zoo, several ponds and seven museums, including the National Museum of Anthropology. Other iconic city parks include the Alameda Central, it is recognized as the oldest public park in the Americas. Parque M\u00e9xico and Parque Espa\u00f1a in the hip Condesa district; Parque Hundido and \"Parque de los Venados\" in Colonia del Valle, and Parque Lincoln in Polanco. There are many smaller parks throughout the city. Most are small \"squares\" occupying two or three square blocks amid residential or commercial districts. Several other larger parks such as the Bosque de Tlalpan and Viveros de Coyoac\u00e1n, and in the east Alameda Oriente, offer many recreational activities. Northwest of the city is a large ecological reserve, the Bosque de Arag\u00f3n. In the southeast is the Xochimilco Ecological Park and Plant Market, a World Heritage Site. West of Santa Fe district are the pine forests of the Desierto de los Leones National Park. Amusement parks include Six Flags M\u00e9xico, in Ajusco neighborhood which is the largest in Latin America. There are numerous seasonal fairs present in the city.\nMexico City has three zoos. Chapultepec Zoo, the San Juan de Aragon Zoo and Los Coyotes Zoo. Chapultepec Zoo is located in the first section of Chapultepec Park in the Miguel Hidalgo. It was opened in 1924. Visitors can see about 243 specimens of different species including kangaroos, giant panda, gorillas, caracal, hyena, hippos, jaguar, giraffe, lemur, lion, among others. Zoo San Juan de Aragon is near the San Juan de Aragon Park in the Gustavo A. Madero. In this zoo, opened in 1964, there are species that are in danger of extinction such as the jaguar and the Mexican wolf. Other guests are the golden eagle, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, caracara, zebras, African elephant, macaw, hippo, among others. Zoo Los Coyotes is a 27.68-acre (11.2 ha) zoo located south of Mexico City in the Coyoacan. It was inaugurated on 2 February 1999. It has more than 301 specimens of 51 species of wild native or endemic fauna from the area, featuring eagles, ajolotes, coyotes, macaws, bobcats, Mexican wolves, raccoons, mountain lions, teporingos, foxes, white-tailed deer.\nClimate.\nMexico City has a subtropical highland climate (K\u00f6ppen climate classification \"Cwb\"), due to its tropical location but high elevation. The lower region of the valley receives less rainfall than the upper regions of the south; the lower boroughs of Iztapalapa, Iztacalco, Venustiano Carranza and the east portion of Gustavo A. Madero are usually drier and warmer than the upper southern boroughs of Tlalpan and Milpa Alta, a mountainous region of pine and oak trees known as the range of Ajusco. The average annual temperature varies from , depending on the altitude of the borough. The temperature is rarely below or above . At the Tacubaya observatory, the lowest temperature ever registered was on 13 February 1960, and the highest temperature on record was on 25 May 2024. Overall precipitation is heavily concentrated in the summer months, and includes dense hail.\nSnow falls in the city scarcely, although somewhat more often on nearby mountaintops. Throughout its history, the Central Valley of Mexico was accustomed to having several snowfalls per decade (including a period between 1878 and 1895 in which every single year\u2014except 1880\u2014recorded snowfalls), mostly lake-effect snow. The effects of the draining of Lake Texcoco and global warming have greatly reduced snowfalls after the snow flurries of 12 February 1907. Since 1908, snow has only fallen thrice: snow on 14 February 1920; snow flurries on 14 March 1940; and on 12 January 1967, when of snow fell on the city, the most on record. The 1967 snowstorm coincided with the operation of \"Deep Drainage System\" that resulted in the total draining of what was left of Lake Texcoco. After the disappearance of Lake Texcoco, snow has never fallen again over Mexico City. The region of the Valley of Mexico receives anti-cyclonic systems. The weak winds of these systems do not allow for the dispersion, outside the basin, of the air pollutants which are produced by the 50,000 industries and 4\u00a0million vehicles operating in and around the metropolitan area.\nThe area receives about of annual rainfall, which is concentrated from May through October with little or no precipitation for the remainder of the year. The area has two main seasons. The wet humid summer runs from May to October when winds bring in tropical moisture from the sea, the wettest month being July. The cool sunny winter runs from November to April, when the air is relatively drier, the driest month being December. This season is subdivided into a cold winter period and a warm spring period. The cold period spans from November to February, when polar air masses push down from the north and keep the air fairly dry. The warm period extends from March to May when subtropical winds again dominate but do not yet carry enough moisture for rain to form.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nHistorically, and since Pre-Columbian times, the Valley of Anahuac has been one of the most densely populated areas in Mexico. When the Federal District was created in 1824, the urban area of Mexico City extended approximately to the area of today's Cuauht\u00e9moc borough. At the beginning of the 20th century, began migrating to the south and west and soon the small towns of Mixcoac and San \u00c1ngel were incorporated by the growing conurbation. According to the 1921 census, 54.78% of the city's population was considered Mestizo (Indigenous mixed with European), 22.79% considered European, and 18.74% considered Indigenous.\nUp to the 1990s, the Federal District was the most populous federal entity in Mexico, but since then, its population has remained stable at around 8.7\u00a0million. The growth of the city has extended beyond the limits of the city proper to 59 municipalities of the State of Mexico and 1 in the state of Hidalgo. With a population of approximately 19.8\u00a0million inhabitants (2008), it is one of the most populous conurbations in the world. Nonetheless, the annual rate of growth of the Metropolitan Area of Mexico City is much lower than that of other large urban agglomerations in Mexico, a phenomenon most likely attributable to the environmental policy of decentralization. The net migration rate of Mexico City from 1995 to 2000 was negative.\nMetropolitan area.\nThe metropolitan area, Greater Mexico City ('Zona Metropolitana del Valle de M\u00e9xico' or 'ZMVM' in Spanish) consists of Mexico City itself plus 60 municipalities in the State of Mexico and one in Hidalgo state. With a population of 21,804,515 (2020 census), Greater Mexico City is both the biggest and the densest metropolitan area in the country. Of the ca. 21.8 million, 9.2 million live in Mexico City proper and 12.4 million in the State of Mexico (ca. 75% of the state's population), including the municipalities of:\nMegalopolis.\nGreater Mexico City, in turn, forms part of an even larger megalopolis officially known as the \"Corona regional del centro de M\u00e9xico\" (Mexico City megalopolis), with a population of 33.4 million, more than one quarter of the country's population according to the 2020 census. The megalopolis as defined by the Environmental Commission of the Megalopolis (\"CAMe\") covers Mexico City and the states of Mexico, Hidalgo, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Morelos, and since 2019, Quer\u00e9taro, thus encompassing the metropolitan areas of Mexico City, Puebla, Quer\u00e9taro, Toluca, Cuernavaca, Pachuca, and others.\nGrowth.\nGreater Mexico City was the fastest growing metropolitan area in the country until the late 1980s. Since then, government policies have supported decentralization with the aim of reducing pollution in Greater Mexico City. While still growing, the annual rate of growth has decreased and is lower than that of Greater Guadalajara and Greater Monterrey.\nThe net migration rate of Mexico City proper from 1995 to 2000 was negative, which implies that residents are moving to the suburbs of the metropolitan area, or to other states of Mexico. In addition, some inner suburbs are losing population to outer suburbs, indicating the continuing expansion of Greater Mexico City.\nReligion.\nThe majority (82%) of the residents in Mexico City are Catholic, slightly lower than the 2010 census national percentage of 87%, making it the largest Christian denomination, though it has been decreasing over the last decades. Many other religions and philosophies are also practiced in the city: many different types of Protestant groups, different types of Jewish communities, Buddhist, Islamic and other spiritual and philosophical groups. There are also growing numbers of irreligious people, whether agnostic or atheist.\nThe patron saint of Mexico City is Saint Philip of Jesus, a Mexican Catholic missionary who became one of the Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan.\nThe Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico is the largest archdiocese in the world. There are two Catholic cathedrals in the city, the Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral and the Iztapalapa Cathedral, and three former Catholic churches who are now the cathedrals of other rites, the San Jos\u00e9 de Gracia Cathedral (Anglican church), the Porta Coeli Cathedral (Melkite Greek Catholic church) and the Valvanera Cathedral (Maronite church).\nEthnic groups.\nRepresenting around 18.74% of the city's population, indigenous peoples from different areas of Mexico have migrated to the capital in search of better economic opportunities. Nahuatl, Otomi, Mixtec, Zapotec and Mazahua are the indigenous languages with the greatest number of speakers in Mexico City. According to the 2020 Census, 2.03% of Mexico City's population identified as Black, Afro-Mexican, or of African descent.\nAdditionally, Mexico City is home to large communities of expatriates and immigrants from the rest of North America (U.S. and Canada), from South America (mainly from Argentina and Colombia, but also from Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Venezuela), from Central America and the Caribbean (mainly from Cuba, Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti and Honduras); from Europe (mainly from Spain, Germany and Switzerland, but also from Czech Republic, Hungary, France, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland and Romania), and from the Arab world (mostly from Lebanon, and other countries like Syria and Egypt).\nMexico City is home to the largest population of Americans living outside the United States. Estimates are as high as 700,000 Americans living in Mexico City, while in 1999 the U.S. Bureau of Consular Affairs estimated over 440,000 Americans lived in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area.\nHealth.\nMexico City is home to some of the best private hospitals in the country, including Hospital \u00c1ngeles, Hospital ABC and M\u00e9dica Sur. The national public healthcare institution for private-sector employees, IMSS, has its largest facilities in Mexico City\u2014including the National Medical Center and the La Raza Medical Center\u2014and has an annual budget of over 6\u00a0billion pesos. The IMSS and other public health institutions, including the ISSSTE (Public Sector Employees' Social Security Institute) and the National Health Ministry (SSA) maintain large specialty facilities in the city. These include the National Institutes of Cardiology, Nutrition, Psychiatry, Oncology, Pediatrics, Rehabilitation, among others.\nEducation.\nAmong its many public and private schools (K\u201313), the city offers multi-cultural, multi-lingual and international schools attended by Mexican and foreign students. Best known are the Colegio Alem\u00e1n (German school with three main campuses), the Liceo Mexicano Japon\u00e9s (Japanese), the Centro Cultural Coreano en M\u00e9xico (Korean), the Lyc\u00e9e Franco-Mexicain (French), the American School, The Westhill Institute (American School), the Edron Academy and the Greengates School (British). Mexico City joined the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities in 2015.\nIn the Plaza de las Tres Culturas is the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco that is recognized for being the first and oldest European school of higher learning in the Americas and the first major school of interpreters and translators in the New World. Other, the now-defunct Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico is considered the father of the UNAM, and it was located in the city and was the third oldest university in the Americas.\nThe National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), located in Mexico City, is the largest university on the continent, with more than 300,000 students from all backgrounds. Three Nobel laureates, several Mexican entrepreneurs and most of Mexico's modern-day presidents are among its former students. UNAM conducts 50% of Mexico's scientific research and has presence all across the country with satellite campuses, observatories and research centers. UNAM ranked 74th in the Top 200 World University Ranking published by Times Higher Education (then called Times Higher Education Supplement) in 2006, making it the highest ranked Spanish-speaking university in the world. The sprawling main campus of the university, known as Ciudad Universitaria, was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2007.\nThe second largest higher-education institution is the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), which includes among many other relevant centers the Centro de Investigaci\u00f3n y de Estudios Avanzados (Cinvestav), where varied high-level scientific and technological research is done. Other major higher-education institutions in the city include the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM), the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH), the Instituto Tecnol\u00f3gico Aut\u00f3nomo de M\u00e9xico (ITAM), the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (3 campuses), the Universidad Panamericana (UP), the Universidad La Salle, the Universidad Intercontinental (UIC), the Universidad del Valle de M\u00e9xico (UVM), the Universidad An\u00e1huac, Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar University (USB), the Universidad Intercontinental (UIC), the Alliant International University, the Universidad Iberoamericana, El Colegio de M\u00e9xico (Colmex), Escuela Libre de Derecho and the Centro de Investigaci\u00f3n y Docencia Econ\u00f3mica, (CIDE).\nIn addition, the prestigious University of California maintains a campus known as \"Casa de California\" in the city. The Universidad Tecnol\u00f3gica de M\u00e9xico is also in Mexico City.\nPolitics.\nPolitical structure.\nThe Acta Constitutiva de la Federaci\u00f3n of 31 January 1824, and the Federal Constitution of 4 October 1824, fixed the political and administrative organization of the United Mexican States after the Mexican War of Independence. In addition, Section XXVIII of Article 50 gave the new Congress the right to choose where the federal government would be located. This location would then be appropriated as federal land, with the federal government acting as the local authority. The two main candidates to become the capital were Mexico City and Quer\u00e9taro.\nDue in large part to the persuasion of representative Servando Teresa de Mier, Mexico City was chosen because it was the center of the country's population and history, even though Queretaro was closer to the center geographically. The choice was official on 18 November 1824, and Congress delineated a surface area of two leagues square (8,800 acres) centered on the Zocalo. This area was then separated from the State of Mexico, forcing that state's government to move from the Palace of the Inquisition (now Museum of Mexican Medicine) in the city to Texcoco. This area did not include the population centers of the towns of Coyoac\u00e1n, Xochimilco, Mexicaltzingo and Tlalpan, all of which remained as part of the State of Mexico.\nIn 1854 president Antonio L\u00f3pez de Santa Anna enlarged the area of Mexico City almost eightfold from the original , annexing the rural and mountainous areas to secure the strategic mountain passes to the south and southwest to protect the city in event of a foreign invasion. (The Mexican\u2013American War had just been fought.) The last changes to the limits of Mexico City were made between 1898 and 1902, reducing the area to the current by adjusting the southern border with the state of Morelos. By that time, the total number of municipalities within Mexico City was twenty-two. In 1941, the General Anaya borough was merged with the Central Department, which was then renamed \"Mexico City\" (thus reviving the name but not the autonomous municipality). From 1941 to 1970, the Federal District comprised twelve \"delegaciones\" and Mexico City. In 1970, Mexico City was split into four different \"delegaciones\": Cuauht\u00e9moc, Miguel Hidalgo, Venustiano Carranza and Benito Ju\u00e1rez, increasing the number of \"delegaciones\" to 16. Since then, the whole Federal District, whose \"delegaciones\" had by then almost formed a single urban area, began to be considered \"de facto\" a synonym of Mexico City.\nThe lack of a \"de jure\" stipulation left a legal vacuum that led to a number of sterile discussions about whether one concept had engulfed the other or if the latter had ceased to exist altogether. In 1993, the situation was solved by an amendment to the 44th article of the Constitution of Mexico; Mexico City and the Federal District were stated to be the same entity. The amendment was later introduced into the second article of the Statute of Government of the Federal District.\nOn 29 January 2016, Mexico City ceased to be the \"Federal District\" (Spanish: \"Distrito Federal\" or D.F.), and was officially renamed \"Ciudad de M\u00e9xico\" (or \"CDMX\"). On that date, Mexico City began a transition to becoming the country's 32nd federal entity, giving it a level of autonomy comparable to that of a state. It will have its own constitution and its legislature, and its \"delegaciones\" will now be headed by mayors. Because of a clause in the Mexican Constitution, however, as it is the seat of the powers of the federation, it can never become a state, or the capital of the country has to be relocated elsewhere.\nIn response to the demands, Mexico City received a greater degree of autonomy, with the 1987 elaboration the first Statute of Government (\"Estatuto de Gobierno\") and the creation of an assembly of representatives. The city has a Statute of Government, and as of its ratification on 31 January 2017, a , similar to the states of the Union. As part of the recent changes in autonomy, the budget is administered locally; it is proposed by the head of government and approved by the Legislative Assembly. Nonetheless, it is the Congress of the Union that sets the ceiling to internal and external public debt issued by the city government.\nThe politics pursued by the administrations of heads of government in Mexico City at the end of the 20th century have usually been more liberal than those of the rest of the country, whether with the support of the federal government, as was the case with the approval of several comprehensive environmental laws in the 1980s, or by laws that were since approved by the Legislative Assembly. The Legislative Assembly expanded provisions on abortions, becoming the first federal entity to expand abortion in Mexico beyond cases of rape and economic reasons, to permit it at the choice of the mother before the 12th week of pregnancy. In December 2009, the then Federal District became the first city in Latin America and one of very few in the world to legalize same-sex marriage.\nBoroughs and neighborhoods.\nAfter the political reforms in 2016, the city is divided for administrative purposes into 16 boroughs (, colloquially \"alcald\u00edas\"), formerly called \"delegaciones\". While they are not fully equivalent to municipalities, the boroughs have gained significant autonomy. Formerly appointed by the Federal District's head of government, local authorities were first elected directly by plurality in 2000. From 2016, each borough is headed by a mayor, expanding their local government powers.\nThe boroughs of Mexico City with their 2020 populations are:\nThe Human Development Index report of 2005 shows that there were three boroughs with a very high Human Development Index, 12 with a high HDI value (9 above .85), and one with a medium HDI value (almost high). Benito Ju\u00e1rez borough had the highest HDI of the country (0.9510) followed by Miguel Hidalgo, which came up fourth nationally with an HDI of (0.9189), and Coyoac\u00e1n was fifth nationally, with an HDI of (0.9169). Cuajimalpa (15th), Cuauht\u00e9moc (23rd), and Azcapotzalco (25th) also had very high values of 0.8994, 0.8922, and 0.8915, respectively.\nIn contrast, the boroughs of Xochimilco (172nd), Tl\u00e1huac (177th), and Iztapalapa (183rd) presented the lowest HDI values of Mexico City, with values of 0.8481, 0.8473, and 0.8464, respectively, which are still in the global high-HDI range. The only borough that did not have a high HDI was that of rural Milpa Alta, which had a \"medium\" HDI of 0.7984, far below those of all the other boroughs (627th nationally, the rest being in the top 200). Mexico City's HDI for the 2005 report was 0.9012 (very high), and its 2010 value of 0.9225 (very high), or (by newer methodology) 0.8307, was Mexico's highest.\nLaw enforcement.\nThe Secretariat of Public Security of Mexico City (Secretar\u00eda de Seguridad P\u00fablica de la Ciudad de M\u00e9xico \u2013 SSP) manages a combined force of over 90,000 officers in Mexico City. The SSP is charged with maintaining public order and safety in the heart of Mexico City. The historic district is also roamed by tourist police, aiming to orient and serve tourists. These horse-mounted agents dress in traditional uniforms. The investigative Judicial Police of Mexico City (Polic\u00eda Judicial de la Ciudad de M\u00e9xico \u2013 PJCDMX) is organized under the Office of the Attorney General of Mexico City (the Procuradur\u00eda General de Justicia de la Ciudad de M\u00e9xico). The PGJCDMX maintains 16 precincts (delegaciones) with an estimated 3,500 judicial police, 1,100 investigating agents for prosecuting attorneys (agentes del ministerio p\u00fablico), and nearly 1,000 criminology experts or specialists (peritos).\nBetween 2000 and 2004 an average of 478 crimes were reported each day in Mexico City; however, the actual crime rate is thought to be much higher \"since most people are reluctant to report crime\". Under policies enacted by Mayor Marcelo Ebrard between 2009 and 2011, Mexico City underwent a major security upgrade with violent and petty crime rates both falling significantly despite the rise in violent crime in other parts of the country. Some of the policies enacted included the installation of 11,000 security cameras around the city and a very large expansion of the police force. Mexico City has one of the world's highest police officer-to-resident ratios, with one uniformed officer per 100 citizens. Since 1997 the prison population has increased by more than 500%. Political scientist Markus-Michael M\u00fcller argues that mostly informal street vendors are hit by these measures. He sees punishment \"related to the growing politicization of security and crime issues and the resulting criminalization of the people living at the margins of urban society, in particular those who work in the city's informal economy\".\nIn 2016, the incidence of femicides was 3.2 per 100 000 inhabitants, the national average being 4.2. A 2015 city government report found that two of three women over the age of 15 in the capital suffered some form of violence. In addition to street harassment, one of the places where women in Mexico City are subjected to violence is on and around public transport. Annually the Metro of Mexico City receives 300 complaints of sexual harassment.\nInternational relations.\nMexico City is twinned with:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nEconomy.\nMexico City is one of the most important economic hubs in Latin America. The city proper produces 15.8% of the country's gross domestic product. In 2002, Mexico City had a Human Development Index score of 0.915, identical to that of South Korea. In 2007, residents in the top twelve percent of GDP per capita holders in the city had a mean disposable income of US$. The high spending power of Mexico City inhabitants makes the city attractive for companies offering prestige and luxury goods. According to a 2009 study conducted by PwC, Mexico City had a GDP of $390 billion, ranking it as the eighth richest city in the world and the richest in Latin America. In 2009, Mexico City alone would rank as the 30th largest economy in the world.\nMexico City is the greatest contributor to the country's industrial GDP (15.8%) and also the greatest contributor to the country's GDP in the service sector (25.3%). Due to the limited non-urbanized space at the south\u2014most of which is protected through environmental laws\u2014the contribution of Mexico City in agriculture is the smallest of all federal entities in the country. The economic reforms of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari had a tremendous effect on the city, as a number of businesses, including banks and airlines, were privatized. He also signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This led to decentralization and a shift in Mexico City's economic base, from manufacturing to services, as most factories moved away to either the State of Mexico, or more commonly to the northern border. By contrast, corporate office buildings set their base in the city.\nMexico City offers an immense and varied consumer retail market, ranging from basic foods to ultra high-end luxury goods. Consumers may buy in fixed indoor markets, in mobile markets (\"tianguis\"), from street vendors, from downtown shops in a street dedicated to a certain type of good, in convenience stores and traditional neighborhood stores, in modern supermarkets, in warehouse and membership stores and the shopping centers that they anchor, in department stores, in big-box stores, and in modern shopping malls. In addition, \"tianguis\" or mobile markets set up shop on streets in many neighborhoods, depending on day of week. Sundays see the largest number of these markets.\nThe city's main source of fresh produce is the Central de Abasto. This in itself is a self-contained mini-city in Iztapalapa borough covering an area equivalent to several dozen city blocks. The wholesale market supplies most of the city's \"mercados\", supermarkets and restaurants, as well as people who come to buy the produce for themselves. Tons of fresh produce are trucked in from all over Mexico every day. The principal fish market is known as La Nueva Viga, in the same complex as the Central de Abastos. The world-renowned market of Tepito occupies 25 blocks, and sells a variety of products. A staple for consumers in the city is the omnipresent \"mercado\". Every major neighborhood in the city has its own borough-regulated market, often more than one. These are large well-established facilities offering most basic products, such as fresh produce and meat/poultry, dry goods, tortiller\u00edas, and many other services such as locksmiths, herbal medicine, hardware goods, sewing implements; and a multitude of stands offering freshly made, home-style cooking and drinks in the tradition of aguas frescas and atole.\nStreet vendors ply their trade from stalls in the \"tianguis\" as well as at non-officially controlled concentrations around metro stations and hospitals; at \"plazas comerciales\", where vendors of a certain \"theme\" (e.g. stationery) are housed; originally these were organized to accommodate vendors formerly selling on the street; or simply from improvised stalls on a city sidewalk. In addition, food and goods are sold from people walking with baskets, pushing carts, from bicycles or the backs of trucks, or simply from a tarp or cloth laid on the ground. In the center of the city informal street vendors are increasingly targeted by laws and prosecution. The weekly San Felipe de Jes\u00fas Tianguis is reported to be the largest in Latin America.\nThe Historic Center of Mexico City is widely known for specialized, often low-cost retailers. Certain blocks or streets are dedicated to shops selling a certain type of merchandise, with areas dedicated to over 40 categories such as home appliances, lamps and electricals, closets and bathrooms, housewares, wedding dresses, jukeboxes, printing, office furniture and safes, books, photography, jewelry, and opticians.\nTourism.\nMexico City is a destination for many foreign tourists. The Historic center of Mexico City (\"Centro Hist\u00f3rico\") and the \"floating gardens\" of Xochimilco in the southern borough have been declared World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. Landmarks in the Historic Center include the Plaza de la Constituci\u00f3n (Z\u00f3calo), the main central square with its epoch-contrasting Spanish-era Metropolitan Cathedral and National Palace, ancient Aztec temple ruins Templo Mayor (\"Major Temple\") and modern structures, all within a few steps of one another. (The Templo Mayor was discovered in 1978 while workers were digging to place underground electric cables).\nThe most recognizable icon of Mexico City is the golden Angel of Independence on the wide, elegant avenue Paseo de la Reforma, modeled by the order of the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico after the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es in Paris. This avenue was designed over the Americas' oldest known major roadway in the 19th century to connect the National Palace (seat of government) with the Castle of Chapultepec, the imperial residence. Today, this avenue is an important financial district in which the Mexican Stock Exchange and several corporate headquarters are located. Another important avenue is the Avenida de los Insurgentes, which extends and is one of the longest single avenues in the world.\nChapultepec Park houses the Chapultepec Castle, now a museum on a hill that overlooks the park and its numerous museums, monuments and the national zoo and the National Museum of Anthropology (which houses the Aztec Calendar Stone). \nAnother piece of architecture is the Palacio de Bellas Artes, a white marble theater/museum whose weight is such that it has gradually been sinking into the soft ground below. Its construction began during the presidency of Porfirio D\u00edaz and ended in 1934, after being interrupted by the Mexican Revolution in the 1920s.\nThe Plaza de las Tres Culturas, in this square are located the College of Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, that is the first and oldest European school of higher learning in the Americas, and the archeological site of the city-state of Tlatelolco, and the shrine and Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe are also important sites. There is a double-decker bus, known as the \"Turibus\", that circles most of these sites, and has timed audio describing the sites in multiple languages as they are passed.\nIn addition, according to the Secretariat of Tourism, the city has about 170 museums\u2014is among the top ten of cities in the world with highest number of museums\u2014over 100 art galleries, and some 30 concert halls, all of which maintain a constant cultural activity during the whole year. Many areas (e.g. Palacio Nacional and the National Institute of Cardiology) have murals painted by Diego Rivera. He and his wife Frida Kahlo lived in Coyoac\u00e1n, where several of their homes, studios, and art collections are open to the public. The house where Leon Trotsky was initially granted asylum and finally murdered in 1940 is also in Coyoac\u00e1n. In addition, there are several \"haciendas\" that are now restaurants, such as the San \u00c1ngel Inn, the Hacienda de Tlalpan, Hacienda de Cort\u00e9s and the Hacienda de los Morales.\nTransportation.\nAirports.\nMexico City International Airport is Mexico City's primary airport (IATA Airport Code: MEX), and serves as the hub of Aerom\u00e9xico (Skyteam). Felipe \u00c1ngeles International Airport (IATA Airport Code: NLU) is Mexico City's secondary airport, and was opened in 2022, rebuilt from the former Santa Luc\u00eda Air Force Base. It is located in Zumpango, State of Mexico, north-northeast of the historic center of Mexico City by car.\nSistema de Movilidad Integrada.\nIn 2019, the graphic designer Lance Wyman was engaged to create an integrated map of the multimodal public transportation system; he presented a new logo for the Sistema de Movilidad Integrada, describing eight distinct modes of transportation. The head of the government, Claudia Sheinbaum, said the branding would be used for a new single payment card to streamline public transportation fare collection.\nMetro.\nMexico City is served by the Mexico City Metro, a metro system, which is the largest in Latin America. The first portions were opened in 1969 and it has expanded to 12 lines with 195 stations, transporting 4.4\u00a0million people every day.\nTren Suburbano.\nA suburban rail system, the Tren Suburbano serves the metropolitan area, beyond the reach of the metro, with one line serving to municipalities such as Tlalnepantla and Cuautitl\u00e1n Izcalli, but with future lines planned to serve e.g. Chalco and La Paz.\nElectric transport other than the metro also exists, in the form of several Mexico City trolleybus routes and the Xochimilco Light Rail line, both of which are operated by Servicio de Transportes El\u00e9ctricos. The central area's last streetcar line (tramway, or \"\") closed in 1979.\nBus.\nMexico City has an extensive bus network, consisting of public buses, bus rapid transit, and trolleybuses.\nRoads.\nMexico City has a large road network, and relatively high private car usage, estimated at more than 4.5 million in 2016. There is an environmental program, called Hoy No Circula (\"Today Does Not Run\", or \"One Day without a Car\"), whereby vehicles that have not passed emissions testing are restricted from circulating on certain days according to the ending digit of their license plates, in an attempt to cut down on pollution and traffic congestion.\nCycling.\nThe Mexico City local government oversees the administration of Ecobici, North America's second-largest bicycle sharing system. Established to promote sustainable urban transportation, Ecobici facilitates convenient access to bicycles for residents and visitors alike. As of September 2013, the system comprised 276 stations strategically positioned across an expansive area extending from the Historic center to Polanco, a prominent district in the city. Within this network, approximately 4,000 bicycles are available for public use, enabling individuals to navigate the metropolitan landscape efficiently and reduce reliance on traditional motorized modes of transportation. Ecobici serves as a model for environmentally conscious urban mobility initiatives, reflecting Mexico City's commitment to fostering sustainable development and enhancing the quality of life for its populace.\nCulture.\nArt.\nSecular works of art of this period include the equestrian sculpture of Charles IV of Spain, locally known as \"El Caballito\" (\"The little horse\"). This piece, in bronze, was the work of Manuel Tols\u00e1 and it has been placed at the Plaza Tols\u00e1, in front of the Palacio de Mineria (Mining Palace). Directly in front of this building is the Museo Nacional de Arte (Munal) (the National Museum of Art).\nDuring the 19th century, an important producer of art was the Academia de San Carlos (San Carlos Art Academy), founded during colonial times, and which later became the Escuela Nacional de Artes Pl\u00e1sticas (the National School of Arts) including painting, sculpture and graphic design, one of UNAM's art schools. Many of the works produced by the students and faculty of that time are now displayed in the Museo Nacional de San Carlos (National Museum of San Carlos). One of the students, Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Velasco, is considered one of the greatest Mexican landscape painters of the 19th century. Porfirio D\u00edaz's regime sponsored arts, especially those that followed the French school. Popular arts in the form of cartoons and illustrations flourished, e.g. those of Jos\u00e9 Guadalupe Posada and Manuel Manilla. The permanent collection of the San Carlos Museum also includes paintings by European masters such as Rembrandt, Vel\u00e1zquez, Murillo, and Rubens.\nAfter the Mexican Revolution, an avant-garde artistic movement originated in Mexico City: muralism. Many of the works of muralists Jos\u00e9 Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera are displayed in numerous buildings in the city, most notably at the National Palace and the Palacio de Bellas Artes. Frida Kahlo, wife of Rivera, with a strong nationalist expression, was also one of the most renowned of Mexican painters. Her house has become a museum that displays many of her works.\nThe former home of Rivera muse Dolores Olmedo houses the namesake museum. The facility is in Xochimilco borough in southern Mexico City and includes several buildings surrounded by sprawling manicured lawns. It houses a large collection of Rivera and Kahlo paintings and drawings, as well as living \"Xoloizcuintles\" (Mexican Hairless Dog). It also regularly hosts small but important temporary exhibits of classical and modern art (e.g. Venetian Masters and Contemporary New York artists).\nDuring the 20th century, many artists immigrated to Mexico City from different regions of Mexico, such as Leopoldo M\u00e9ndez, an engraver from Veracruz, who supported the creation of the socialist Taller de la Gr\u00e1fica Popular (Popular Graphics Workshop), designed to help blue-collar workers find a venue to express their art. Other painters came from abroad, such as Catalan painter Remedios Varo and other Spanish and Jewish exiles. It was in the second half of the 20th century that the artistic movement began to drift apart from the Revolutionary theme. Jos\u00e9 Luis Cuevas opted for a modernist style in contrast to the muralist movement associated with social politics.\nMuseums.\nMexico City has numerous museums dedicated to art, including Mexican colonial, modern and contemporary art, and international art. The Museo Tamayo was opened in the mid-1980s to house the collection of international contemporary art donated by Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo. The collection includes pieces by Picasso, Klee, Kandinsky, Warhol and many others, though most of the collection is stored while visiting exhibits are shown. The Museo de Arte Moderno is a repository of Mexican artists from the 20th century, including Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros, Kahlo, Gerzso, Carrington, Tamayo, and also regularly hosts temporary exhibits of international modern art. In southern Mexico City, the Carrillo Gil Museum showcases avant-garde artists, as does the Museo Universitario Arte Contempor\u00e1neo, designed by Mexican architect Teodoro Gonz\u00e1lez de Le\u00f3n, inaugurated in late 2008.\nThe Museo Soumaya, named after the wife of Mexican magnate Carlos Slim, has the largest private collection of original Rodin sculptures outside of France. It also has a large collection of Dal\u00ed sculptures, and recently began showing pieces in its masters collection including El Greco, Vel\u00e1zquez, Picasso and Canaletto. The museum inaugurated a new futuristic-design facility in 2011 just north of Polanco, while maintaining a smaller facility in Plaza Loreto in southern Mexico City. The Colecci\u00f3n J\u00famex is a contemporary art museum located on the sprawling grounds of the Jumex juice company in the northern industrial suburb of Ecatepec. It has the largest private contemporary art collection in Latin America and hosts pieces from its permanent collection as well as traveling exhibits. The Museo de San Ildefonso, housed in the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso in Mexico City's historic downtown district is a 17th-century colonnaded palace housing an art museum that regularly hosts world-class exhibits of Mexican and international art. The Museo Nacional de Arte is also located in a former palace in the historic center. It houses a large collection of pieces by all major Mexican artists of the last 400 years and also hosts visiting exhibits.\nJack Kerouac, the noted American author, spent extended periods of time in the city, and wrote his 1959 masterpiece volume of poetry \"Mexico City Blues\" here. Another American author, William S. Burroughs, also lived in Colonia Roma where he accidentally shot his wife. Most of Mexico City's museums can be visited from Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 5pm, although some of them have extended schedules, such as the Museum of Anthropology and History, which is open to 7pm. In addition to this, entrance to most museums are free on Sunday. In some cases a modest fee may be charged.\nThe Memory and Tolerance Museum, inaugurated in 2011, showcases historical events of discrimination and genocide. Permanent exhibits include those on the Holocaust and other large-scale atrocities. It also houses temporary exhibits; one on Tibet was inaugurated by the Dalai Lama in September 2011.\nMusic, theater and entertainment.\nMexico City is home to a number of orchestras offering season programs. These include the Mexico City Philharmonic, which performs at the Sala Ollin Yoliztli; the National Symphony Orchestra, whose home base is the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of the Fine Arts), a masterpiece of art nouveau and art dec\u00f3 styles; the Philharmonic Orchestra of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (OFUNAM), and the Miner\u00eda Symphony Orchestra, both of which perform at the Sala Nezahualc\u00f3yotl, which was the first wrap-around concert hall in the Western Hemisphere when inaugurated in 1976. There are also many smaller ensembles that enrich the city's musical scene, including the Carlos Ch\u00e1vez Youth Symphony, the Cuarteto Latinoamericano, the New World Orchestra (Orquesta del Nuevo Mundo), the National Polytechnical Symphony and the Bellas Artes Chamber Orchestra (Orquesta de C\u00e1mara de Bellas Artes).\nThe city is also a leading center of popular culture and music. There are a multitude of venues hosting Spanish and foreign-language performers. These include the 10,000-seat National Auditorium that regularly schedules the Spanish and English-language pop and rock artists, as well as many of the world's leading performing arts ensembles, the auditorium also broadcasts grand opera performances from New York's Metropolitan Opera on giant, high definition screens. In 2007 National Auditorium was selected world's best venue by multiple genre media. Other sites for pop-artist performances include the 3,000-seat Teatro Metropolitan, the 15,000-seat Palacio de los Deportes, and the larger 50,000-seat Foro Sol Stadium, where popular international artists perform on a regular basis. The Cirque du Soleil has held several seasons at the Carpa Santa Fe, in the Santa Fe district in the western part of the city. There are numerous venues for smaller musical ensembles and solo performers. These include the Hard Rock Live, Batacl\u00e1n, Foro Scotiabank, Lunario, Circo Volador and Voil\u00e1 Acoustique. Recent additions include the 20,000-seat Arena Ciudad de M\u00e9xico, the 3,000-seat Pepsi Center World Trade Center, and the 2,500-seat Auditorio Blackberry.\nThe Centro Nacional de las Artes (National Center for the Arts) has several venues for music, theater, dance. UNAM's main campus, also in the southern part of the city, is home to the Centro Cultural Universitario (the University Culture Center) (CCU). The CCU also houses the National Library, the interactive Universum, Museo de las Ciencias, the Sala Nezahualc\u00f3yotl concert hall, several theaters and cinemas, and the new University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC). A branch of the National University's CCU cultural center was inaugurated in 2007 in the facilities of the former Ministry of Foreign Affairs, known as Tlatelolco, in north-central Mexico City.\nThe Jos\u00e9 Vasconcelos Library, a national library, is located on the grounds of the former Buenavista railroad station in the northern part of the city. The Papalote Museo del Ni\u00f1o (Kite Children's Museum), which houses the world's largest dome screen, is located in the wooded park of Chapultepec, near the Museo Tecnol\u00f3gico, and Aztl\u00e1n Parque Urbano, an amusement park. The theme park Six Flags M\u00e9xico (the largest amusement park in Latin America) is located in the Ajusco neighborhood, in Tlalpan borough, southern Mexico City. During the winter, the main square of the Z\u00f3calo is transformed into a gigantic ice skating rink, which is said to be the largest in the world behind that of Moscow's Red Square.\nThe Cineteca Nacional (Mexican Film Library), near the Coyoac\u00e1n suburb, shows a variety of films, and stages many film festivals, including the annual International Showcase, and many smaller ones ranging from Scandinavian and Uruguayan cinema, to Jewish and LGBT-themed films. Cin\u00e9polis and Cinemex, the two biggest film business chains, also have several film festivals throughout the year, with both national and international movies. Mexico City has a number of IMAX theaters, providing residents and visitors access to films ranging from documentaries to blockbusters on these large screens.\nCuisine.\nOnce considered plebeian fare, by the 19th century tacos had become a standard of Mexico City's cuisine. Furthermore, as authorities struggled to tax local taquerias, imposing licensing requirements and penalties, they recorded some details of the types of foods being served by these establishments. The most frequent reference was for \"tacos de barbacoa\". Also mentioned are enchiladas, \"tacos de minero\" and \"gorditas\", along with oyster shops and fried fish stands. There is evidence of some regional specialties being made available for recent migrants; at least two shops were known to serve \"pozole\", a type of stew similar to hominy that is a staple of Guadalajara, Jalisco. Mexico City is known for having some of the freshest fish and seafood in Mexico's interior. La Nueva Viga Market is the second largest seafood market in the world after the Tsukiji fish market in Japan.\nMexico City offers a variety of cuisines: restaurants specializing in the regional cuisines of Mexico's 31 states are available in the city, and the city also has several branches of internationally recognized restaurants. These include Paris' Au Pied de Cochon and Brasserie Lipp, Philippe (by Philippe Chow); Nobu, Quintonil, Morimoto; P\u00e1mpano, owned by Mexican-raised opera singer Pl\u00e1cido Domingo. There are branches of Japanese restaurant Suntory, Italian restaurant Alfredo, as well as New York steakhouses Morton's and The Palm, and Monte Carlo's BeefBar. Three of Lima's Haute restaurants, serving Peruvian cuisine, have locations in Mexico City: La Mar, Segundo Muelle and Astrid y Gast\u00f3n.\nFor the 2023 list of World's 50 Best Restaurants as named by the British magazine \"Restaurant\", Mexico City ranked 13th best with the Mexican avant-garde restaurant Pujol (owned by Mexican chef Enrique Olvera). Also notable is the Basque-Mexican fusion restaurant Biko (run and co-owned by Bruno Oteiza and Mikel Alonso), which placed outside the list at 59th, but in previous years has ranked within the top 50. Other that has been placed on the list in 2019 is the restaurant Sud 777 at 58th place. In 2024, seven restaurants in the city received Michelin stars. At the other end of the scale are working class pulque bars known as \"pulquer\u00edas\", a challenge for tourists to locate and experience.\nMedia.\nMexico City is Mexico's most important hub for the printed media and book publishing industries. Dozens of daily newspapers are published, including \"El Universal\", \"Exc\u00e9lsior\", \"Reforma\" and \"La Jornada\". Other major papers include \"Milenio\", \"Cr\u00f3nica\", \"El Economista\" and . Leading magazines include , \"Proceso\", \"Poder\", as well as dozens of entertainment publications such as \"Vanidades\", \"Qui\u00e9n\", \"Chilango\", \"TV Notas\", and local editions of \"Vogue\", \"GQ\", and \"Architectural Digest\".\nIt is also a leading center of the advertising industry. Most international ad firms have offices in the city, including Grey, JWT, Leo Burnett, Euro RSCG, BBDO, Ogilvy, Saatchi & Saatchi, and McCann Erickson. Many local firms also compete in the sector, including Alazraki, Olabuenaga/Chemistri, Ter\u00e1n, Augusto El\u00edas, and Clemente C\u00e1mara, among others. There are 60 radio stations operating in the city and many local community radio transmission networks.\nThe two largest media companies in the Spanish-speaking world, Televisa and TV Azteca, are headquartered in Mexico City. Televisa often presents itself as the largest producer of Spanish-language content. Other local television channels include:\nXHDF 1 (Azteca Uno),\nXEW 2 (Televisa W),\nXHCTMX 3,\nXHTV 4,\nXHGC 5,\nXHTDMX 6,\nXHIMT 7,\nXEQ 9,\nXEIPN 11,\nXHUNAM 20,\nXHCDM 21,\nXEIMT 22,\nXHTRES 28,\nXHTVM 40 and\nXHHCU 45.\nSports.\nAssociation football is the country's most popular and most televised franchised sport. Its important venues in Mexico City include the Azteca Stadium, home to the Mexico national football team and giants Am\u00e9rica and Cruz Azul, which can seat 91,653 fans, making it the biggest stadium in Latin America. The Olympic Stadium in Ciudad Universitaria is home to the football club giants Universidad Nacional, with a seating capacity of over 52,000. The Sports City Stadium, which seats 33,042 fans, is near the World Trade Center Mexico City in the Nochebuena neighborhood, and is home to the historical Atlante. Am\u00e9rica, Cruz Azul and Universidad Nacional are based in Mexico City and play in the First Division; they are also part, with Guadalajara-based giants Club Deportivo Guadalajara, of Mexico's traditional \"Big Four\". The city's three derbies are the \"Cl\u00e1sico Joven\", played between Am\u00e9rica and Cruz Azul, the capital's two most popular and successful teams; the \"Cl\u00e1sico Capitalino\", between Am\u00e9rica and Universidad Nacional, and the \"Cl\u00e1sico Metropolitano\", between Cruz Azul and Universidad Nacional.\nThe country hosted the FIFA World Cup in 1970 and 1986, and Azteca Stadium is the first stadium in World Cup history to host the final twice. The city will be one of the host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Mexico City is the first Latin American city to host the Olympic Games, having held the Summer Olympics in 1968, winning bids against Buenos Aires, Lyon and Detroit. The city hosted the 1955 and 1975 Pan American Games, the latter after Santiago and S\u00e3o Paulo withdrew. The ICF Flatwater Racing World Championships were hosted here in 1974 and 1994. Lucha libre is a Mexican style of wrestling, and is one of the more popular sports throughout the country. The main venues in the city are Arena M\u00e9xico and Arena Coliseo.\nThe Aut\u00f3dromo Hermanos Rodr\u00edguez is the main venue for motorsport, and hosts the Formula 1 Mexican Grand Prix since its return to the sport in 2015, the event being held in the past from 1962 to 1970, and again from 1986 to 1992. Since 2016, it also hosts the Formula E Mexico City ePrix. From 1980 to 1981 and again from 2002 to 2007, the circuit hosted the Champ Car World Series Gran Premio de M\u00e9xico. Beginning in 2005, the NASCAR Nationwide Series ran the Telcel-Motorola M\u00e9xico 200. 2005 also marked the first running of the Mexico City 250 by the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series. Both races were removed from their series' schedules for 2009.\nBaseball is another sport played professionally in the city. Mexico City is home of the Mexico City Red Devils of the Mexican League, which is considered a Triple-A league by Major League Baseball. The Devils play their home games at Estadio Alfredo Harp Hel\u00fa designed by international Mexican-American architect FGP Atelier Founder Francisco Gonzalez Pulido in collaboration with local architect Taller ADG. Mexico City has some 10 Little Leagues for young baseball players. In 2005, Mexico City became the first city to host an NFL regular season game outside of the United States, at the Azteca Stadium. The crowd of 103,467 people attending this game was the largest ever for a regular season game in NFL history until 2009.\nThe city has also hosted several NBA pre-season games and has hosted international basketball's FIBA Americas Championship, along with north-of-the-border Major League Baseball exhibition games at Foro Sol. In 2017, NBA commissioner Adam Silver expressed interest in placing an NBA G League expansion team in Mexico City as early as 2018. This came to fruition on 12 December 2019 when commissioner Silver announced at a press conference in Mexico City Arena that LNBP team, Capitanes de Ciudad de M\u00e9xico will be joining the G League in the 2020\u201321 season on a five-year agreement.\nOther sports facilities in Mexico City are the Palacio de los Deportes indoor arena, Francisco M\u00e1rquez Olympic Swimming Pool, the Hip\u00f3dromo de Las Am\u00e9ricas, the Agustin Melgar Olympic Velodrome, and venues for equestrianism and horse racing, ice hockey, rugby, American-style football, baseball, and basketball. Prior to the 2025 ban on traditional bullfights enacted by Mexico City's Congress, bullfighting was held every Sunday during the season at the 50,000-seat Plaza M\u00e9xico, the world's largest bullring. Mexico City's golf courses have hosted Women's LPGA action, and two Men's Golf World Cups. Courses throughout the city are available as private as well as public venues.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "8906902": "Pedro Ram\u00edrez V\u00e1zquez\nMexican architect\nPedro Ram\u00edrez V\u00e1zquez (April 16, 1919 \u2013 April 16, 2013) was a Mexican architect. He was persuaded to study architecture by writer and poet Carlos Pellicer.\nRam\u00edrez V\u00e1zquez earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree from National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 1943. He was responsible for the construction of some of Mexico's most emblematic buildings. He was a modern architect with influences from the European modern movement, Latin American modern architects and precolumbian cultures. Concrete is the material he used most often.\nHe developed a system to construct schools in rural areas, constructing thousands of schools in Mexico and abroad. The UNICEF has used such system. He was the president of the organizing committee of the Mexico City Olympics in 1968 and the World Cup in 1970. He was a member of the International Olympic Committee.\nHe won several awards including the National Arts Award in 1973, Cemex Award in 2003 and IDSA's Special Award in 1969 for notable results, creative and innovative concepts and long-term benefits to the industrial design profession, its educational functions and society at large. He was minister of public infrastructure and human settlements during president's Jos\u00e9 L\u00f3pez Portillo government. He was founder and rector of the Universidad Aut\u00f3noma Metropolitana. He was part of the faculty of the UNAM and received various honorary degrees (doctor honoris causa) granted by several universities including the UNAM.\nThe \"Los Angeles Times\" wrote that \"Ramirez Vazquez was known for stunningly original designs that blended a European modernist sensibility with pre-Columbia aesthetics.\"\nHumanism.\nPedro Ramirez Vazquez has focused his professional activity as a form of service that enriches the lives of its recipients with his architectural work, his dreams, or with his activity in other areas as organizer of the Olympic Games, as a public servant or person humanist conviction.\nIn the Olympics created the advertising program for peace and identity link between the cultures of young people participating countries. He thought it was more important to leave a legacy of peace in which young people would identify the traits that unite them and that they meet not only to compete, but to appreciate how every aspect and resources of their time are likely to be applied to keep hope alive for peace; for this reason, among others, Ram\u00edrez V\u00e1zquez promoted and managed that the International Olympic Committee withdrew the invitation for the Olympic Committee of South Africa to participate in the games in solidarity with the marginalized minority of people who lived in that country.\nHe included in the official movie game (produced by the organizing committee), the scene of the award of the 200 freestyle planes in which Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised his fist in protest, demanding greater equality for the human rights of the African American population in the United States (this against the wishes of the President of the International Olympic Committee, and the then Mexican members of that body).\nIn the Olympics for the first time, Pedro Ram\u00edrez V\u00e1zquez wanted to give women an important place in the celebration of the games. The 1968 Summer Olympics were the first in which a woman lit the Olympic fire in the stadium.\nHe managed that the then West Germany and East Germany, participated under one anthem, and under the same flag, in the context of a Cold War with radically opposing positions, Ram\u00edrez V\u00e1zquez managed to find common ground between them, and because of this, the Mexico 1968 Olympics were the only time during the period of the Cold War, that the two German Nations were united in their identity elements, which were their official anthem and flag. He also managed that the Spanish Olympic Committee delegation participated in the games, when Mexico had no relations with the government of Francisco Franco and the Spanish Republican Government in exile, laid in Mexico City. This was able, thanks and through Ram\u00edrez V\u00e1zquez\u00b4s management with the Republican government in exile.\nHe organized the children's painting festival for children around the world to come together and express themselves through art. He organized the youth camp for the young people around the world so that they could come together with the purpose of enriching each other by understanding their traditions, so that they would know each other better than they did before. He also organized numerous events of coexistence, and cultural enrichment for the youth and human genetics program.\nThe exhibition space of knowledge and exposure on the application of nuclear energy to the welfare of mankind, so that young people knew of the cultures of young people from other parts of the world, and achieved thus better understand each other. He organized the exhibition of popular atesan\u00edas, the world festival of folklore, international gathering of poets, meeting the international festival of arts, international meeting of sculptors, and exhibition of masterpieces of world art. It organized a film festival whose theme was the \"mission of youth\".\nIn 1968, he chaired in Mexico Pro Defense Committee of the Jewish minority in the Soviet Union. As president of the International Cultural Commission of the International Olympic Committee, he proposed in said organism, the rescue of the Olympic Truce, and proposed to invite Nobel Peace Prize winners to the Olympic Games.\nUrbanism.\nRestoration work on the Cathedral and Sacred Metropolitano. The urban landscape project included works to restore the integrity of the facades, and construction levels. Another issue that was addressed was the valuable monuments of the Historical Center, who saw their integrity affected by differential subsidence of soil, for example, the Temple of the Most Holy, the Loreto, the La Soledad, the church of Santa Teresa Antigua, and the group of the temples of San Juan de Dios, and the Plaza de la Santa Veracruz.\nSome of his projects.\nSome relevant projects include:\nFurniture design.\nThe creative spirit of Pedro Ram\u00edrez V\u00e1zquez was not limited to architecture, because it also included furniture design, both indoors as urban furniture. This activity began in the 1950s, with the design of a wooden chair with leather. In the early 1970s, he developed a line of furniture in steel plate with different finishes, covering indoor and outdoor chairs, coffee tables and dining room tables. All in different designs, shapes and sizes, and some wooden furniture. With the same concept in steel plate designed benches for urban accessories, among them several models \"you and me\", or love seat characteristic can be found in the City of Yucat\u00e1n, in Mexico. These designs also include street signs in large format, designs that were applied in the State of Mexico, during the government of Professor Carlos Hank Gonzalez.\nIt was at this time when equipal contemporary designs inspired by traditional Mexican equipal, showing its principle expressed in current form, the cultural constants regarding typical furniture.\nThese designs are still valid, now the Civic Plaza of the Chamber of Deputies in Mexico, is equipped with this type of seats. In turn, the furniture Ramirez Vazquez is now known in the design world of interior design, as it has been released by the magazine \"Wallpaper\", \"New York Post\", \"Metropolis\" Magazine, \"Architectural Digest\", \"Paris Match\", \"The Editor at Large\", and the \"Wall Street Journal\". Its main selling points are found in the United States.\nArt Object in glassware.\nIn 1965, when Ram\u00edrez V\u00e1zquez designed the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, then Secretary Don. Antonio Carrillo Flores commissioned to design glassware for such dependence. Inspired by the \"Glass pulquero of Tlatelolco\" PRV designed crystal glasses with a similar shape, making a cut that similar to the shape of a maguey. From this design, he defined that working with glass was just as \"making sculpture with light\", as it is a material in which transparency all sides are visual at the same time, and depending on the cuts, reflexes are variable by the appearance of a piece of Glass, according to the view as it looks and the lighting it receives.\nHe had a shop called \"Cristal-Art\" and installed a cutting workshop in his office, which still remains operating, and continues to produce Ram\u00edrez V\u00e1zquez\u00b4s designs, given that he left many of them in sketch.\nHis pieces of art object in crystal, have been requested as awards from various institutions, such as Nadro, ANTAD, The International Olympic Committee, the WBC, the Mexican Foundation Health, etc. For its quality, there have been exhibitions in the Merk Up gallery, the Misratchi gallery, the Glass Museum in Monterrey, Mexico, the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico, the Museum of Anthropology Mexico City, and the Caba\u00f1as Cultural Institute, Guadalajara, Mexico.\nHe performed with Salvador Dal\u00ed, and many other important artists, designs in glass paste (p\u00e2te du verre) for DAUM glassware. Other important personalities such as, Juan Antonio Samaranch, Manuel Espinosa Yglesias, Jose Lopez Portillo, (President of Mexico from 1976-1982), among others, had collection of pieces of Pedro Ram\u00edrez Vazquez.\nHe designed glassware for Cristaluxus Monterrey, Mexico different pieces for DAUM line (France), and lines for the same firm, Articles of crystal Macrisa, Nouvel Studio and own. There are pieces designed by himself in the Museums of DAUM, (Nancy, France), Museum of Glass Monterrey, Mexico, Museum of Death (Aguascalientes), Mexico, Amparo Museum (Puebla) Mexico, Olympic Museum (Lausanne, Switzerland), Museum of Coahuila Presidents Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico, Hollmenkollen Ski Museum (Oslo, Norway), Staub\u00f8 Museum collection (Hamar, Norway).\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["8906902", "18987"], "permutation_1": ["8906902", "18987"], "permutation_2": ["8906902", "18987"], "permutation_3": ["18987", "8906902"]}
{"id": "2hop__393757_386152", "docs_added": {"107458": "Reedley, California\nCity in the Central Valley of California\nReedley is a city in Fresno County, California, United States. It is located in the San Joaquin Valley, east-southeast of Fresno, at an elevation of . The population at the 2010 census was . Its chief economic source is agriculture, particularly fruit and vegetable cultivation and has thus dubbed itself \"The World's Fruit Basket\". Reedley is situated along the Kings River, downstream from Centerville.\nReedley hosts several cultural festivals, including but not limited to the Reedley Fiesta, and the Electrical Farm Equipment Parade.\nReedley is named for Thomas Law Reed, a Civil War veteran who gave half of his holdings to the township in 1888.\nHistory.\nIn the mid-1800s, American Civil War Union veteran Thomas Law Reed settled in Reedley to grow wheat for Gold Rush miners. His donation of land for a railroad station site established the town as the center of the San Joaquin Valley's booming wheat industry. Southern Pacific Railroad officials commemorated his donation by naming the depot in his honor, which the city itself then adopted.\nWhen gold mining fever began to fade, wheat demand slackened. Water from the Kings River was diverted for crop irrigation, and the region's agriculture diversified to include fruits, including grapes, figs, and peaches.\nWith the establishment of water and railroad services, farming families of European immigrants were recruited, and the settlement was incorporated in 1913, with Ordinance No. 1 adopting and prescribing the style of a Common Seal on February 25, 1913. That same year, the city's first cement sidewalks, sewer system, and fire department, as well as the first of two steel water towers were constructed. Because of proximity, the Reedley post office provided rural mail delivery to the surrounding region, including Route 2 which covered a section of nearby Tulare County (about 5 miles west of Dinuba).\nA colony of Plautdietsch-speaking Mennonites, who travelled to California to escape the ecological disaster of the Dust Bowl played an important role in the town's early history, settling in Township 8, an area now known as Navelencia. Reedley contains a community of 25 different Christian churches, including Anglican, Catholic, Armenian, Baptist, and Mennonite congregations. The town is also home to a Buddhist temple. The city's cultural influences include Filipino, Finnish, Lebanese, Korean and Japanese immigrants. Since the 1940s, Reedley has seen a large increase in its Hispanic and Latino immigrant population, who have come to represent the majority of Reedley's ethnic makeup.\nIn 1988, Reedley celebrated the first 100 years since the construction of its Southern Pacific depot, and the 75th anniversary of incorporation. In 2013, the city celebrated its centennial.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which, of it is land and of it (1.39%) is water.\nCity Buildings and Services.\nReedley National Bank.\nThe Reedley National Bank building was built in 1907, when the city was first connected to electricity. The bank has since ceased operation. The building is situated on 1100 G Street.\nMid Valley Times.\nReedley's downtown is the home of the local newspaper the \"Mid Valley Times\", formerly known as the \"Reedley Exponent\". The \"Exponent\" merged with the \"Sanger Herald\" and the \"Dinuba Sentinel\" in July 2019 in order to improve circulation.\nJansen Opera House.\nThe building that houses the Opera House was built in 1903, after a fire destroyed two blocks of downtown Reedley. Danish grain merchant, Jesse Jansen, rallied the downtown shopkeepers to rebuild Reedley's downtown out of brick. The Opera House itself was built at Jansen's personal expense to serve as a cultural and community center. In 1913, the population of Reedley met at the Opera House to vote for incorporation. After the early 1920s, movie houses replaced the popularity of theatre, and the building went into disuse until restoration in 1986. The City of Reedley acquired the building in 2002 by donation.\nIn 2003, the River City Theatre Company was founded by Mark Norwood, who served as artistic director until his retirement in 2016. The River City Theatre Company currently leases the Opera House and produces musicals and stage plays.\nReedley Municipal Airport.\nNorth of the city and southwest of Mount Campbell, Reedley Municipal Airport () is a public airport, serving southeast Fresno County and northwest Tulare County. There are 21 single-engine aircraft based at Reedley Municipal Airport, and during the 12-month period ending on January 30, 2020, the airport logged 33,000 operations.\nCity administration and policing.\nGovernment.\nReedley has a Council-City Manager form of municipal government, located at 845 G Street.\nPolice.\nThe Reedley Police Department is headquartered at 843 G Street, sharing a building with the city government.\nThe small communities and area surrounding Reedley are served by the Fresno County Sheriff's Office.\nEducation.\nKings Canyon Unified School District is a public school system headquartered in Reedley, but also has schools located in the nearby city of Orange Cove, the towns of Dunlap, Miramonte, and the mountain communities. Reedley also offers private educational institutions such as St. La Salle School (Roman Catholic Private K-8) and Immanuel Schools (Mennonite Private K-12). The local community college, Reedley College, offers undergraduate higher education up to an associate degree as well as various certification courses.\nEducational institutions in Reedley:\nElementary\nK-8 schools\nMiddle schools\nHigh schools\nAlternative education\nCommunity college\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2010.\nAt the 2010 census Reedley had a population of . The population density was people per square mile (/km2). The racial makeup of Reedley was () White, 169 () African American, 267 () Native American, 797 () Asian, 8 () Pacific Islander, () from other races, and 998 () from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were persons ().\nThe census reported that people ( of the population) lived in households, 119 () lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 130 () were institutionalized.\nThere were households, out of which () had children under the age of 18 living in them, () were opposite-sex married couples living together, 946 () had a female householder with no husband present, 521 () had a male householder with no wife present. There were 440 () unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 39 () same-sex married couples or partnerships. 886 households () were one person and 471 () had someone living alone who was 65 or older. The average household size was 3.65. There were families ( of all households); the average family size was 3.94.\nThe age distribution was people () under the age of 18, people () aged 18 to 24, people () aged 25 to 44, people () aged 45 to 64, and people () who were 65 or older. The median age was 29.1 years. For every 100 females, there were 104.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 102.7 males.\nThere were housing units at an average density of per square mile (/km2), of which 6,569 were occupied, of which () were owner-occupied, and () were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 1.8%; the rental vacancy rate was 3.7%. people ( of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and people () lived in rental housing units.\n2000.\nAt the 2000 census there were people, households, and families in the city. The population density was people per square mile (/km2). There were housing units at an average density of per square mile (/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 51.76% White, 1.73% Black or African American, 1.21% Native American, 8.83% Asian, 37.72% from other races, and 4.44% from two or more races. 57.59% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.\nThere were households, 46.8% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 61.5% were married couples living together, 12.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 19.4% were non-families. 15.8% of households were one person and 8.5% were one person aged 65 or older. The average household size was 3.53 and the average family size was 3.87.\nThe age distribution was 32.1% under the age of 18, 12.2% from 18 to 24, 29.1% from 25 to 44, 15.2% from 45 to 64, and 11.3% 65 or older. The median age was 29 years. For every 100 females, there were 105.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 104.6 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was , and the median family income was $. Males had a median income of $ versus $ for females. The per capita income for the city was $. About 18.5% of families and 21.4% of the population were below the poverty line, including 31.6% of those under age 18 and 10.4% of those age 65 or over.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "28739891": "Rob Lock\nAmerican basketball player (born 1966)\nRobert Alan Lock (born May 22, 1966) is an American former professional basketball player. Lock was born and raised in Reedley, California and played collegiate ball with the University of Kentucky (1984\u20131988) where he was a solid contributor off the bench and increased his stats every year he played. He entered the 1988 NBA draft and was picked 51st in the third round by the Los Angeles Clippers; however, Lock accepted an offer to play in Italy instead. He did eventually return to play for just 20 games with Clippers during the latter part of the 1988-89 NBA season.\nAfter retiring from basketball, Lock pursued his childhood dream of becoming a pilot. He is currently the owner of Waldo Wright's Flying Service where he gives open cockpit rides to visitors in restored vintage biplanes. The family business is based in Polk City, Florida and is currently the largest provider of open cockpit flights.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "23207981": "Rob Locke\nBritish/American actor, television host and voice-over artist (born 1971)\nRob Locke is a British/American actor, television host and voice-over artist, based in Los Angeles and London.\nBiography.\nLocke was born in Lincoln, Lincolnshire, on 7 October 1971 and grew up in London. His first acting experience was a school play, at the age of six, after which he performed regularly in youth theatre.\nAt the age of eighteen, he left school and started working in the television industry. In 1992 Locke began acting in children's TV. For the ensuing five years he was a regular on several shows for the Children's Channel (TCC), where he also hosted live interstitial programs and game show segments. In 1996 he guest-starred on \"Words and Pictures\" alongside Sophie Aldred, whom he had previously worked with at the Children's Channel.\nIn 1998 and 1999, Locke's hosted his own regional talk show called \"The Locke Exchange\", alongside a daytime current affairs show and late-night music series. This was in addition to seven years as one of QVC UK's prime-time hosts between 1995 and 2002.\nLocke emigrated to the United States in 2003. There he worked on \"Team Butkus Life Performance\" (a talk show he developed and co-hosted with Dick Butkus in 2006). In 2007 Locke returned to live television as a prime-time host on GemsTV USA.\nAt the end of 2008, Locke moved to Los Angeles. There he guest-starred on Spike TV's \"1000 Ways to Die\" and GSN's \"Instant Recall\" pilot, making his film debut in the independent feature \"Cinema Salvation\", and starring as Niles in 2009 VH1 series \"Megan Wants a Millionaire\".\nIn 2010, Locke starred in a national commercial for Microsoft to launch Internet Explorer 8 in Britain, hosted a pilot for the poker-based game show \"Call the Floorman\", recurred as a BP executive on ABC's \"Jimmy Kimmel Live!\", narrated the VH1 series \"You're Cut Off!\", and played the science correspondent in History's pilot \"Breaking News\".\nIn 2011, Locke was again narrator for season 2 of VH1's \"You're Cut Off!\", returned to ABC's \"Jimmy Kimmel Live!\" as the voice of Colin Firth, became the national TV spokesman for NET10 Wireless, and co-anchored \"Prius Records\" (a 2-day live webcast for Toyota Prius). He appeared in a viral video for the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, played the British news anchor in EA's live-action trailer for \"Mass Effect 3\", and voiced additional characters in the video game \"\". Locke also co-starred as a Czech mobster in the season 2 finale of \" \" on CBS, played supporting roles in the feature films \"Default\", \"Spanners\" and \"I Love Your Moves\", and starred as a psychopathic London gangster in the feature film \"Geezas\".\nAt the beginning of 2012, Locke was cast as Niko in the pilot of ABC's mid-season sitcom \"Family Tools\", starring Leah Remini, J.K. Simmons and Kyle Bornheimer.\nFrom 16 April 2015 to 18 April, Locke was the narrator for the Old Spice Nature Adventure, a live action video game experience on Twitch.tv.\nIn 2017, Locke appeared in a single episode of \"2 Broke Girls\", appeared in various roles on \"Jimmy Kimmel Live!\", made three appearances as Father Stanislov on \"General Hospital\", and as Viktor Lopuchin in a single episode of \"NCIS\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "132071": "Lock Haven, Pennsylvania\nCity in Pennsylvania, US\nLock Haven is a city in, and the county seat of, Clinton County, in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Located near the confluence of the West Branch Susquehanna River and Bald Eagle Creek, it is the principal city of the Lock Haven Micropolitan Statistical Area, itself part of the Williamsport\u2013Lock Haven combined statistical area. At the 2020 census, Lock Haven's population was 8,108.\nBuilt on a site long favored by pre-Columbian peoples, Lock Haven began in 1833 as a timber town and a haven for loggers, boatmen, and other travelers on the river or the West Branch Canal. Resource extraction and efficient transportation financed much of the city's growth through the end of the 19th\u00a0century. In the 20th\u00a0century, a light-aircraft factory, a college, and a paper mill, along with many smaller enterprises, drove the economy. Frequent floods, especially in 1972, damaged local industry and led to a high rate of unemployment in the 1980s.\nThe city has three sites on the National Register of Historic Places\u2014Memorial Park Site, a significant pre-Columbian archaeological find; Heisey House, a Victorian-era museum; and Water Street District, an area with a mix of 19th- and 20th-century architecture. A levee, completed in 1995, protects the city from further flooding. While industry remains important to the city, about a third of Lock Haven's workforce is employed in education, health care, or social services.\nHistory.\nPre-European.\nThe earliest settlers in Pennsylvania arrived from Asia between 12000\u00a0BCE and 8000\u00a0BCE, when the glaciers of the Pleistocene Ice Age were receding. Fluted point spearheads from this era, known as the Paleo-Indian Period, have been found in most parts of the state. Archeological discoveries at the Memorial Park Site 36Cn164 near the confluence of the West Branch Susquehanna River and Bald Eagle Creek collectively span about 8,000\u00a0years and represent every major prehistoric period from the Middle Archaic to the Late Woodland period. Prehistoric cultural periods over that span included the Middle Archaic starting at 6500 BCE; the Late Archaic starting at 3000 BCE; the Early Woodland starting at 1000 BCE; the Middle Woodland starting at 0 CE; and the Late Woodland starting at 900 CE. First contact with Europeans occurred in Pennsylvania between 1500 and 1600 CE.\n18th century.\nIn the early 18th\u00a0century, a tribal confederacy known as the Six Nations of the Iroquois, headquartered in New York, ruled the Indian (Native American) tribes of Pennsylvania, including those who lived near what would become Lock Haven. Indian settlements in the area included three Munsee villages on the Great Island in the West Branch Susquehanna River at the mouth of Bald Eagle Creek. Four Indian trails, the Great Island Path, the Great Shamokin Path, the Bald Eagle Creek Path, and the Sinnemahoning Path, crossed the island, and a fifth, Logan's Path, met Bald Eagle Creek Path a few miles upstream near the mouth of Fishing Creek. During the French and Indian War (1754\u201363), colonial militiamen on the Kittanning Expedition destroyed Munsee property on the Great Island and along the West Branch. By 1763, the Munsee had abandoned their island villages and other villages in the area.\nWith the signing of the first Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, the British gained control from the Iroquois of lands south of the West Branch. However, European settlers continued to appropriate land, including tracts in and near the future site of Lock Haven, not covered by the treaty. \nIn 1769, Cleary Campbell, the first European settler in the area, built a log cabin near the present site of Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, and by 1773 William Reed, another settler, had built a cabin surrounded by a stockade and called it Reed's Fort. It was the westernmost of 11 mostly primitive forts along the West Branch; Fort Augusta, located by the confluence of the East (or North) and West branches of the Susquehanna at what is now Sunbury, was the easternmost and most defensible. In response to settler incursions, and encouraged by the British during the American Revolution (1775\u201383), Indians attacked colonists and their settlements along the West Branch. Fort Reed and the other European settlements in the area were temporarily abandoned in 1778 during a general evacuation known as the Big Runaway. Hundreds of people fled along the river to Fort Augusta, about from Fort Reed; some did not return for five years. In 1784, the second Treaty of Fort Stanwix, between the Iroquois and the United States, transferred most of the remaining Indian territory in Pennsylvania, including what would become Lock Haven, to the state. The U.S. acquired the last remaining tract, the Erie Triangle, through a separate treaty and sold it to Pennsylvania in 1792.\n19th century.\nLock Haven was laid out as a town in 1833, and it became the county seat in 1839, when Clinton County was created out of parts of Lycoming and Centre counties. Incorporated as a borough in 1840 and as a city in 1870, Lock Haven prospered in the 19th\u00a0century largely because of timber and transportation. The forests of Clinton County and counties upriver held a huge supply of white pine and hemlock as well as oak, ash, maple, poplar, cherry, beech, and magnolia. The wood was used locally for such things as frame houses, shingles, canal boats, and wooden bridges, and whole logs were floated to Chesapeake Bay and on to Baltimore, to make spars for ships. Log driving and log rafting, competing forms of transporting logs to sawmills, began along the West Branch around 1800. By 1830, slightly before the founding of the town, the lumber industry was well established.\nThe West Branch Canal, which opened in 1834, ran from Northumberland to Farrandsville, about upstream from Lock Haven. A state-funded extension called the Bald Eagle Cut ran from the West Branch through Lock Haven and Flemington to Bald Eagle Creek. A privately funded extension, the Bald Eagle and Spring Creek Navigation, eventually reached Bellefonte, upstream. Lock Haven's founder, Jeremiah Church, and his brother, Willard, chose the town site in 1833 partly because of the river, the creek, and the canal. Church named the town \"Lock Haven\" because it had a canal lock and because it was a haven for loggers, boatmen, and other travelers. Over the next quarter century, canal boats wide and long carried passengers and mail as well as cargo such as coal, ashes for lye and soap, firewood, food, furniture, dry goods, and clothing. A rapid increase in Lock Haven's population (to 830 by 1850) followed the opening of the canal.\nA Lock Haven log boom, smaller than but otherwise similar to the Susquehanna Boom at Williamsport, was constructed in 1849. Large cribs of timbers weighted with tons of stone were arranged in the pool behind the Dunnstown Dam, named for a settlement on the shore opposite Lock Haven. The piers, about from one another, stretched in a line from the dam to a point upriver. Connected by timbers shackled together with iron yokes and rings, the piers anchored an enclosure into which the river current forced floating logs. Workers called \"boom rats\" sorted the captured logs, branded like cattle, for delivery to sawmills and other owners. Lock Haven became the lumber center of Clinton County and the site of many businesses related to forest products.\nThe Sunbury and Erie Railroad, renamed the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad in 1861, reached Lock Haven in 1859, and with it came a building boom. Hoping that the area's coal, iron ore, white pine, and high-quality clay would produce significant future wealth, railroad investors led by Christopher and John Fallon financed a line to Lock Haven. On the strength of the railroad's potential value to the city, local residents had invested heavily in housing, building large homes between 1854 and 1856. Although the Fallons' coal and iron ventures failed, Gothic Revival, Greek Revival, and Italianate mansions and commercial buildings such as the Fallon House, a large hotel, remained, and the railroad provided a new mode of transport for the ongoing timber era. A second rail line, the Bald Eagle Valley Railroad, originally organized as the Tyrone and Lock Haven Railroad and completed in the 1860s, linked Lock Haven to Tyrone, to the southwest. The two rail lines soon became part of the network controlled by the Pennsylvania Railroad.\nDuring the era of log floating, logjams sometimes occurred when logs struck an obstacle. Log rafts floating down the West Branch had to pass through chutes in canal dams. The rafts were commonly wide\u2014narrow enough to pass through the chutes\u2014and to long. In 1874, a large raft got wedged in the chute of the Dunnstown Dam and caused a jam that blocked the channel from bank to bank with a pile of logs high. The jam eventually trapped another 200\u00a0log rafts, and 2\u00a0canal boats, \"The Mammoth of Newport\" and \"The Sarah Dunbar\".\nIn terms of volume, the peak of the lumber era in Pennsylvania arrived in about 1885, when 1.9 million logs went through the boom at Williamsport. These logs produced a total of of sawed lumber. After that, production steadily declined throughout the state. Lock Haven's timber business was also affected by flooding, which badly damaged the canals and destroyed the log boom in 1889.\nThe Central State Normal School, established to train teachers for central Pennsylvania, held its first classes in 1877 at a site overlooking the West Branch Susquehanna River. The small school, with enrollments below 150 until the 1940s, eventually became Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania. In the early 1880s, the New York and Pennsylvania Paper Mill in Castanea Township near Flemington began paper production on the site of a former sawmill; the paper mill remained a large employer until the end of the 20th\u00a0century.\n20th century.\nAs older forms of transportation such as the canal boat disappeared, new forms arose. One of these, the electric trolley, began operation in Lock Haven in 1894. The Lock Haven Electric Railway, managed by the Lock Haven Traction Company and after 1900 by the Susquehanna Traction Company, ran passenger trolleys between Lock Haven and Mill Hall, about to the west. The trolley line extended from the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad station in Lock Haven to a station of the Central Railroad of Pennsylvania, which served Mill Hall. The route went through Lock Haven's downtown, close to the Normal School, across town to the trolley car barn on the southwest edge of the city, through Flemington, over the Bald Eagle Canal and Bald Eagle Creek, and on to Mill Hall via what was then known as the Lock Haven, Bellefonte, and Nittany Valley Turnpike. Plans to extend the line from Mill Hall to Salona, south of Mill Hall, and to Avis northeast of Lock Haven, were never carried out, and the line remained unconnected to other trolley lines. The system, always financially marginal, declined after World War I. Losing business to automobiles and buses, it ceased operations around 1930.\nWilliam T. Piper Sr. built the Piper Aircraft Corporation factory in Lock Haven in 1937 after the company's Taylor Aircraft manufacturing plant in Bradford, Pennsylvania, was destroyed by fire. The factory began operations in a building that once housed a silk mill. As the company grew, the original factory expanded to include engineering and office buildings. Piper remained in the city until 1984, when its new owner, Lear-Siegler, moved production to Vero Beach, Florida. The Clinton County Historical Society opened the Piper Aviation Museum at the site of the former factory in 1985, and 10\u00a0years later the museum became an independent organization.\nThe state of Pennsylvania acquired Central State Normal School in 1915 and renamed it Lock Haven State Teachers College in 1927. Between 1942 and 1970, the student population grew from 146 to more than 2,300; the number of teaching faculty rose from 25 to 170, and the college carried out a large building program. The school's name was changed to Lock Haven State College in 1960, and its emphasis shifted to include the humanities, fine arts, mathematics, and social sciences, as well as teacher education. Becoming Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania in 1983, it opened a branch campus in Clearfield, west of Lock Haven, in 1989.\nAn industrial area in Castanea Township adjacent to Lock Haven was placed on the National Priorities List of uncontrolled hazardous waste sites, commonly referred to as Superfund sites, in 1982. Drake Chemical, which went bankrupt in 1981, made ingredients for pesticides and other compounds at the site from the 1960s to 1981. Starting in 1982, the United States Environmental Protection Agency began a clean-up of contaminated containers, buildings, and soils at the site and by the late 1990s had replaced the soils. Equipment to treat contaminated groundwater at the site was installed in 2000 and continues to operate.\nFloods.\nPennsylvania's streams have frequently flooded. According to William H. Shank, the Native Americans of Pennsylvania warned white settlers that great floods occurred on the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers every 14\u00a0years. Shank tested this idea by tabulating the highest floods on record at key points throughout the state over a 200-year period and found that a major flood had occurred, on average, once every 25\u00a0years between 1784 and 1972. Big floods recorded at Harrisburg, on the main stem of the Susquehanna about downstream from Lock Haven, occurred in 1784, 1865, 1889, 1894, 1902, 1936, and 1972. Readings from the Williamsport stream gauge, below Lock Haven on the West Branch of the Susquehanna, showed major flooding between 1889 and 1972 in the same years as the Harrisburg station; in addition, a large flood occurred on the West Branch at Williamsport in 1946. Estimated flood-crest readings between 1847 and 1979\u2014based on data from the National Weather Service flood gauge at Lock Haven\u2014show that flooding likely occurred in the city 19\u00a0times in 132\u00a0years. The biggest flood occurred on March 18, 1936, when the river crested at , which was about above the flood stage of .\nThe third biggest flood, cresting at in Lock Haven, occurred on June 1, 1889, and coincided with the Johnstown Flood. The flood demolished Lock Haven's log boom, and millions of feet of stored timber were swept away. The flood damaged the canals, which were subsequently abandoned, and destroyed the last of the canal boats based in the city.\nThe most damaging Lock Haven flood was caused by the remnants of Hurricane Agnes in 1972. The storm, just below hurricane strength when it reached the region, made landfall on June 22 near New York City. Agnes merged with a non-tropical low on June 23, and the combined system affected the northeastern United States until June 25. The combination produced widespread rains of with local amounts up to in western Schuylkill County, about southeast of Lock Haven. At Lock Haven, the river crested on June 23 at , second only to the 1936 crest. The flood greatly damaged the paper mill and Piper Aircraft.\nIn 1992, federal, state, and local governments began construction of barriers to protect the city. The project included a levee of and a flood wall of along the Susquehanna River and Bald Eagle Creek, closure structures, retention basins, a pumping station, and some relocation of roads and buildings. Completed in 1995, the levee protected the city from high water in the year of the Blizzard of 1996, and again 2004, when rainfall from the remnants of Hurricane Ivan threatened the city.\nGeography.\nLock Haven is the county seat of Clinton County. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land. About , 6\u00a0percent, is water.\nLock Haven is at above sea level near the confluence of Bald Eagle Creek and the West Branch of the Susquehanna River in north-central Pennsylvania. The city is approximately by highway northwest of Philadelphia and northeast of Pittsburgh. U.S. Route 220, a major transportation corridor, skirts the city on its southern edge, intersecting with Pennsylvania Route 120, which passes through the city and connects it with Renovo in northern Clinton County. Other highways entering Lock Haven include state routes 150, which connects to Avis, and 664.\nThe city and nearby smaller communities, including Castanea, Dunnstown, Flemington, and Mill Hall, are mainly at valley level in the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, a mountain belt characterized by long, even valleys running between long continuous ridges. Bald Eagle Mountain, one of these ridges, runs parallel to Bald Eagle Creek on the south side of the city. Upstream of the confluence with Bald Eagle Creek, the West Branch Susquehanna River drains part of the Allegheny Plateau, a region of dissected highlands (also called the \"Deep Valleys Section\") generally north of the city. The geologic formations in the southeastern part of the city are mostly limestone, while those to the north and west consist mostly of siltstone and shale. Large parts of the city are flat, but slopes rise to the west, and very steep slopes are found along the river, on the university campus, and along Pennsylvania Route\u00a0120 as it approaches U.S. Route\u00a0220.\nClimate.\nUnder the K\u00f6ppen climate classification, Lock Haven is in zone \"Dfa\", meaning a humid continental climate with hot or very warm summers. The average temperature here in January is , and in July it is . Between 1888 and 1996, the highest recorded temperature for the city was in 1936, and the lowest recorded temperature was in 1912. The average wettest month is June. Between 1926 and 1977, the mean annual precipitation was approximately , and the number of days each year with precipitation of or more was 77. Annual snowfall amounts between 1888 and 1996 varied from 0 in several years to about in 1942. The maximum recorded snowfall in a single month was in April 1894.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nAs of the census of 2020, there were 8,108\u00a0people living in the city. The average household size during the years 2018\u201322 was 2.19. The rate of home ownership was 33\u00a0percent, and the median value of owner-occupied units was about $133,000. The population density in 2020 was 3,248\u00a0people per square mile (8,410 per km2). The reported racial makeup of the city was about 91\u00a0percent White and about 4\u00a0percent African-American, with other categories totaling about 5\u00a0percent. People of Hispanic or Latino origin accounted for about 3\u00a0percent of the residents. Between 2018 and 2022, about 3\u00a0percent of the city's residents were foreign-born, and about 3\u00a0percent of the population over the age of 5 spoke a language other than English at home. In 2020, the city's population included about 5\u00a0percent under the age of 18 and about 15\u00a0percent who were 65 years of age or older. Females accounted for 52\u00a0percent of the total population. \nBetween 2018 and 2022, of the people who were older than 25, 89\u00a0percent had graduated from high school, and 23\u00a0percent had at least a bachelor's degree. In 2017, 126 businesses with employees operated in Lock Haven. The mean travel time to work for employees who were at least 16 years old was 21\u00a0minutes. The median income for a household in the city during 2018\u201322 was about $43,000 compared to about $75,000 for the entire United States. The per capita income for the city was about $24,000, and about"}, "descending_order": ["28739891", "23207981", "132071", "107458"], "permutation_1": ["132071", "23207981", "107458", "28739891"], "permutation_2": ["28739891", "23207981", "132071", "107458"], "permutation_3": ["132071", "28739891", "23207981", "107458"]}
{"id": "2hop__225894_776926", "docs_added": {"14143509": "Galenstock\nMountain in Switzerland\nThe Galenstock (3,586 m) is the fourth highest mountain in the Urner Alps in Switzerland. Its summit ridge lies on the border between the cantons of Uri and the Valais.\nIt was first climbed by Eduard Desor, Daniel Dollfuss Sr., and Daniel Dollfuss Jr., with guides H. W\u00e4hren, M. Bannholzer, P. Brigger and H. Jaun on 18 August 1845.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n Media related to at Wikimedia Commons", "12965562": "Uri Alps\nMountain range in central Switzerland\nThe Uri Alps (also known as \"Urner Alps\", ) are a mountain range in Central Switzerland and part of the Western Alps. They extend into the cantons of Obwalden, Valais, Bern, Uri and Nidwalden and are bordered by the Bernese Alps (Grimsel Pass) and the Emmental Alps to the west (the four lakes: Lungerersee, Sarnersee, Wichelsee, and Alpnachersee), the Schwyzer Alps to the north (Lake Lucerne), the Lepontine Alps to the south (the valley of Urseren with Andermatt) and the Glarus Alps to the east (Reuss).\nThe Uri Alps are composed of two distinct groups separated by the Susten Pass. The Dammastock massif on the south is the most glaciated part while the northern part, which culminates on Titlis, has lower summits but greater extent.\nGeography.\nThe group south of the Susten Pass forms the dividing range between the head waters of the Aare (west) from those of the Reuss. In addition a small portion of the range (south-west) is located in the basin of the Rhone. This part lies entirely within the valley of the Rhone Glacier. This group forms a complex mass including four considerable ridges and attains its greatest height at the Dammastock and the Galenstock. The group includes four nearly parallel ridges running NNW. and SSE. That forming the eastern boundary of the valley of Hasli reaches 3,383 metres at the Tieralplistock, whence it extends NNW. to the M\u00e4hrenhorn, and south to the G\u00e4rstenh\u00f6rner. A wide reservoir of snow whence the Trift Glacier flows to the north and the Rhone Glacier to the south, divides this range from the more easterly range whose highest point is the Dammastock. North of the Dammastock the range collectively known as the Hinter Tierberg, attains 3,447 metres. Further east than the last is the Sustenhorn range, rising at its highest point to 3,505 metres, divided from the last by the Stein Glacier and the upper part of the G\u00f6schenental. Lastly, another ridge still further east is separated from the last by the Voralptal, a branch of the G\u00f6schenental. Its highest summits are the Fleckistock and the Stucklistock. The lower part of the G\u00f6schenental is bounded on the south by a range running west to east diverging from the ridge between the Dammastock and the Galenstock.\nOn the north side of the Susten Pass the ranges are lower and, except the highest mountains on the south, free of glaciers. The main ridge, culminating at the Titlis divides the basins of the Aare and the Reuss. From the Grassen, tripoint border between the cantons of Bern, Obwalden and Uri, a small range diverges from the main watershed and runs from west to east and culminates at the Gross Spannort.\nPrincipal summits.\nThe principal summits of the Uri Alps are:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nGlaciers.\nMain glaciers :\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "12985196": "Allg\u00e4u Alps\nMountain range in the Northern Limestone Alps\nThe Allg\u00e4u Alps () are a mountain range in the Northern Limestone Alps, located on the Austria\u2013Germany border, which covers parts of the German states of Bavaria and Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg and the Austrian states of Tyrol and Vorarlberg. The range lies directly east of Lake Constance.\nCharacter.\nThe mountain range is characterised by an unusual variety of rock formations and consequently a rich tapestry of landscapes, in particular, the steep \"grass mountains\" (\"Grasberge\") of the Allg\u00e4u Alps with gradients of up to 70\u00b0. Its flora is amongst the most varied in the whole Alpine region and its accessibility by lifts and paths is outstanding. The mountain paths (\"H\u00f6henwege\") running from hut to hut are well known and hikers can spend seven to ten days walking in the mountains without descending to inhabited valleys. Thanks to its location on the northern edge of the Alps, the region has relatively high precipitation and is the rainiest in Germany. In winter the Allg\u00e4u Alps \u2013 at least in the higher regions \u2013 are comparatively snowy. Even a small glacier and several permanent snowfields survive.\nThe Allg\u00e4u Alps and the Allg\u00e4u region are not identical. The Allg\u00e4u is a landscape that, according to present-day understanding, is (almost entirely, but see Tannheimer Tal) on German soil. By contrast, the Allg\u00e4u Alps are a mountain range of the Alps whose definition falls out of the Alpine Club classification of the Eastern Alps. Parts of the Allg\u00e4u Alps, including its highest summit, lie on Austrian soil. The Allg\u00e4u region, however, extends far beyond the Allg\u00e4u Alps to the north and northwest.\nNeighbouring ranges.\nThe Allg\u00e4u Alps border on the Bregenz Forest Mountains in the west, the Lechquellen Mountains in the southwest, the Lechtal Alps in the south and southeast and the Ammergau Alps in the east. All these ranges belong, like the Allg\u00e4u Alps themselves, to the Northern Limestone Alps. In the north the Allg\u00e4u Alps give way to the Alpine Foreland.\nBoundary.\nThe boundary of the range is only unambiguously clear in the east, southeast and south.\nThe river Lech forms the boundary here from where it leaves the Alps and enters the Alpine Foreland near F\u00fcssen upstream to its confluence with the Krumbach near Warth (Vorarlberg). The Krumbach forms the boundary as far as the Hochtann Mountain Pass. It then continues along the Seebach and Bregenzer Ach streams to Au-Rehmen.\nThe border of the Allg\u00e4u Alps in the west, where it transitions to the Bregenz Forest Mountains is not orographically distinct. The Alpine Club classification of the Eastern Alps, published in 1984, draws the boundary as follows: from Au-Rehmen along the Rehmerbach upstream to the Stogger Saddle. Then it descends, following the Osterguntenbach, the \"Sch\u00f6nenbach\" and the Subersach to its confluence with the Bregenzer Ach and along this river to where it joins the Wei\u00dfach or event to Lake Constance.\nThe limit of the Allg\u00e4u Alps in the north is indistinct. One more restricted variant runs from the confluence of the Wei\u00dfach and Bregenzer Ach along the Wei\u00dfach to Oberstaufen. It then continues along the Konstanzer Ache and the Gro\u00dfer Alpsee lake to Immenstadt and onwards through the villages of Rettenberg, Wertach, Nesselwang to Pfronten-Ried. Then it continues along the Vils stream to where it discharges into the Lech near the town of Vils. However, there are more mountains north of this line which, albeit not especially high - are made of the same rock as the larger mountains of the Allg\u00e4u Alps and were uplifted by the same orogenic processes. If these ridges are counted as part of the Allg\u00e4u Alps, then the northern boundary runs from Lake Constance near Lindau to Isny and northwards around the Adelegg to Kempten. From there it goes via Nesselwang and F\u00fcssen to the Lech, the boundary running north of the Falken ridge.\nThe Hochtann Mountain Pass joins the Allg\u00e4u Alps to the Lechquellen. The Stogger Saddle is the link with the Bregenz Forest Mountains.\nTopography.\nThe mountain ranges of the Northern Limestone Alps can be divided into two categories in terms of their topography: mountain chains and plateaux. With the exception of the area around the limestone plateau of the Hoher Ifen, the western mountain ranges, including the Allg\u00e4u Alps, form mountain chains unlike the eastern plateau ranges, such as the Lofer Steinberg mountains.\nThe only mountain chain proper runs through the south-eastern and eastern part of the Allg\u00e4u Alps and forms the Austro-German border. This main chain, with a brief interruption in the area of Rauheck, is built from a very widespread rock formation, known as main dolomite. It begins at the saddle of the Schrofen Pass at the head of the Rappenalpen valley and runs largely in a straight course to the Oberjoch saddle.\nA large number of side ridges branch off the main chain. Heading southwest are the: Hohe Licht and Peischel Group to the south and east, the Himmelschrofen ridge to the north, the Hornbach Range to the east, the F\u00fcrschie\u00dfer to the northwest, the Kegelk\u00f6pfe to the northwest, the H\u00f6fats Group to the northwest, the Kanzberg ridge to the east, the Daumen Group with its branches to the north, the east and the Rosskar Group to the east and the Leilach Group with its branches to the east and northeast. \nThe main chain of the Allg\u00e4u Alps is not in the middle of the mountain range, but on its southern and south-eastern perimeter. It follows that the side ridges branch off to the north and north-west are longer than those branching to the south and east. The valleys leading from the north to the main chain, are also longer than the valleys to its south. This has a significant impact on mountain tourism. For example, it is quicker to get to large parts of the main chain from the south than from the north, especially bearing in mind that several valleys south of Oberstdorf and near Hinterstein are out of bounds to private cars. It is, for example, only 3.5\u00a0km as the crow flies from the summit of the Hohes Licht to the Lech valley road to the south. To the north, however, the nearest public highway is 8.5\u00a0km away. For the Hochvogel, the corresponding distances are 3\u00a0km to the south, but 11\u00a0km to the north. In addition, the starting points for walks south of the main ridge are often situated higher than those to the north. Despite these clear factors, hikers still approach the Allg\u00e4u Alps, including their main chain, predominantly from the north, i.e. from the German side.\nIn the western part of the Allg\u00e4u Alps there is no continuous main ridge. From the Fellhorn to the Widderstein, there is a ridge in front of the main chain, which terminates in a semicircle at the head of the Kleines Walsertal valley. The mountain chain character of the Allg\u00e4u Alps is interrupted by the Ifen and the Gottesacker Plateau (Cretaceous rocks). Here a karst plateau has been formed - uniquely for the Allg\u00e4u Alps and beyond. Further north the Flysch Mountains again form small chains. This is followed by Nagelfluh chain which is made of molasse. This is the most attractive molasse mountain range sculpted in the entire Alps. The lower mountains further north also form small chains.\nThe central part of the Tannheim group is made of Wetterstein limestone, a reef limestone. This accounts for the isolated location of these mountains which are not topographically connected to the main chain of the Allg\u00e4u Alps. Within the Tannheim group there is a local main ridge between Aggenstein and Hahnenkamm. The mountains to the east and north of it are individual mountain massifs.\nSubgroups.\nThe older, out-of-print editions of the Alpine Club Guide for the Allg\u00e4u Alps divide the range into the Main Chain of the Allg\u00e4u (\"Allg\u00e4uer Hauptkamm\") and the Side Ridges and Other Groups (\"Seitenk\u00e4mme und \u00fcbrige Gruppen\").\nThe Main Chain of the Allg\u00e4u is divided into eight subgroups: the Rappen Alps, the Hochlicht Group, Peischel Group, M\u00e4delegabel Group, Krottenspitze Group, Wilden Group, Hochvogel Group and Rauhhorn Ridge (\"Rauhhornzug\").\nThe Side Ridges and Other Groups comprise ten subgroups: the Hornbach chain, H\u00f6fats Group, Daumen Group, Ro\u00dfzahn Group, Vilsalpsee-(Leilach) Group, the mountains between Breitach and Stillach (Schafalpen and Warmatsgund), the Walsertal Mountains (\"Walsertaler Berge\") left of the Breitach, foothills west of the Iller, foothills east of the Iller and the Tannheim Mountains (\"Tannheimer Berge\").\nThe current, 16th edition, of the Alpine Club Guide for the Allg\u00e4u Alps adopts a coarser division into only twelve subgroups. A direct comparison between the subgroups of the old schema and the subdivisions of the new one is not possible, because the boundaries between the subgroups have been redrawn in places.\nAllg\u00e4u Prealps west of the Iller.\nThe southern boundary of this subrange runs from Oberstdorf via Rohrmoos to Sibratsgf\u00e4ll. Its highest peak is the Hochgrat, \u00a0NN. These mountains are a popular walking area. Its rock formation is varied. In the north it is dominated by molasse. This forms the well known Nagelfluh chain with mountains like the Hochgrat, the Rindalphorn, the Stuiben and the Steineberg. The increasingly lower mountains north of the Nagelfluh chain are also made of molasse, as is the adjoining southern chain around the Girenkopf and the Siplingerkopf.\nThe summits rising to the south consist of flysch. This is the more northerly of the two flysch zones in the Allg\u00e4u Alps. The mountains have a more gentle, rounded shape. As a result, they are a popular area in winter for ski and snowshoe tours. The best known mountain of this flysch zone is the Riedberger Horn, which is easy to climb from the Riedberg Pass. The so-called \"horns\" (\"H\u00f6rner\") - the Ofterschwanger Horn, Sigiswanger Horn, Rangiswanger Horn and Bolsterlanger Horn - also belong to the flysch zone.\nSouth of the Riedberg Pass the rock changes again. This is the start of the Schratten limestone of the chalk formation, the rock which forms the prominent peak of Besler. Its summit can be reached via an exposed incline or somewhat more easily using a detour from the south. The Besler, like many other mountains of this subrange, offers a good view of the main chain of the Allg\u00e4u Alps.\nNorthwestern Walsertal Mountains.\nThe valley known as the Kleinwalsertal forms the southern edge of the Northwestern Walsertal Mountains (\"Nordwestliche Walsertaler Berge\"); the valley running from Oberstdorf via Rohrmoos to Sibratsgf\u00e4ll is its northern demarcation. The Northwestern and Southeastern Walsertal Mountains meet at the \u00dcntschen Pass. The highest peak is the Hohe Ifen, \u00a0NN. This mountain, together with the neighbouring Gottesacker plateau is also the most striking feature of this subrange and is formed from rocks of the Cretaceous, unlike the remaining mountains of the subgroup which are built of flysch. This is a part of the southern flysch zone of the Allg\u00e4u Alps. The Hohe Ifen and Gottesacker plateau separate the southern from the northern flysch zones. Thus the Hohe Ifen and the Gottesacker plateau form a geological window through which the next oldest rock below the flysch layer (\"Flyschdecke\") comes to light.\nSoutheastern Walsertal Mountains.\nThe subgroup of the Southeastern Walsertal Mountains (\"S\u00fcd\u00f6stliche Walsertaler Berge\") is bounded in the north by the \"Kleine Walsertal\" valley. To the east and southeast are the valleys of the Stillach and the Rappenalpenbach. The \u00dcntschen Pass connects the Southeastern Walsertal Mountains with the Northwestern Walsertal Mountains. The Schrofen Pass is the bridge to the central chain of the Allg\u00e4u Alps. The highest mountain in the subgroup is the Widderstein, 2,533\u00a0m. Other notable peaks include Mindelheimer K\u00f6pfl. The range is home to the well-known hiking and skiing area of the Fellhorn and Kanzelwand ski lifts and the famous Mindelheimer Klettersteig. Very popular areas, such as the Fellhorn or in the vicinity of the Mindelheimer Hut, contrast with areas of greater solitude opposite in the mountains northeast of the Fiderescharte col. The Fellhorn is located in the southern flysch zone of the Allg\u00e4u Alps. The ridgeline from the Widderstein via the Schafalpenk\u00f6pfe to the Griesgundkopf consists of main dolomite. The subrange also contains lias, for example, at the Elfer.\nMain Chain.\nThe sub-group of the Main Chain of the Allg\u00e4u Alps (\"Zentraler Hauptkamm\") extends from the Schrofen Pass to the M\u00e4delejoch saddle and forms the centre of the Allg\u00e4u Alps. The famous Heilbronn Way runs along here. Famous peaks such as the triumvirate of the Trettachspitze, M\u00e4delegabel and Hochfrottspitze or Hohes Licht (the highest peak of the subgroup at \u00a0NN) are located in this sub-range. However, there are also isolated areas such as the Himmelschrofen ridge and Peischel Group which lies to the south alongside the Lech Valley. The main peaks are formed from main dolomite. This so-called Lechtal Nappe (\"Lechtaldecke\") has been pushed onto the Allg\u00e4u Beds made of lias. There are examples of this overthrust plate in many places, for example, in the vicinity of the Kempten Hut (Trettach Gully) or the Rappensee Hut (Linkerskopf). In some cases even a double overthrust of the rocks may be observed. Thus, the northern part of Himmelschrofen ridge is made of main dolomite. The southern part consists of lias rock of the Allg\u00e4u Beds that have been pushed over the main dolomite. In turn the main dolomite has been thrust over the Allg\u00e4u Beds again.\nAllg\u00e4u Prealps east of the Iller.\nThis sub-group is located north of the Oberjoch saddle. The Iller valley forms its western boundary, the Ostrach valley delineates it to the south and the Vilstal valley to the east. The highest mountain is the Gr\u00fcnten, \u00a0NN. These mountains offer a scenic backdrop for leisure activities, especially for hikers. They also have the advantage of being snow-free for longer than the adjoining subranges of the Allg\u00e4u Alps to the south. The mountains consist of four rock groups. In the northernmost ridges molasse is dominant. In places flysch is represented, as is main dolomite. And finally, there are the Schratten limestones of the Cretaceous period on the Gr\u00fcnten, making it a geological relative of the Hoher Ifen.\nTannheim Mountains.\nThe subgroup of the Tannheim Mountains (\"Tannheimer Berge\") was still counted in the first half of the last century as an independent mountain range in the Northern Limestone Alps. In places the name \"Vils Alps\" (\"Vilser Alpen\") was common. Only later was it considered part of the Allg\u00e4u Alps. The highest mountain is the K\u00f6llenspitze, \u00a0NN. The broad Tannheim valley clearly separates the Tannheim Mountains from the rest of the Allg\u00e4u Alps. There are geological differences too. Whilst large areas of the Allg\u00e4u Alps are made of brittle main dolomite or Jurassic rocks of the Allg\u00e4u Beds which must also be carefully handled, Wetterstein limestone, a reef limestone, dominates the main part of the Tannheim Mountains. This is a solid rock. As a result, the Tannheim Mountains, with their well known peaks, the Rote Fl\u00fch, Gimpel, K\u00f6llenspitze and Gehrenspitze, are a renowned climbing area. The subrange is also popular with mountain hikers. Especially in the early summer, when the main chain of the Allg\u00e4u Alps is still snow-covered, there are many paths here that are already passable.\nFalkenstein ridge.\nThe Falkenstein ridge (\"Kamm des Falkensteins\") is a very small and not especially high subgroup on the northeast edge of the Allg\u00e4u Alps between Pfronten and F\u00fcssen. Locally it is called the \"Falkensteinkamm\" or even the \"Zirmgrat\". The Vils river separates the subrange from the Tannheim Mountains. On the far side of the River Lech are the Ammergau Alps.\nThe highest peak is the \"Salober\" or \"Zw\u00f6lferkopf\" (also \"Zirmgrat\"),\u00a0(1,293\u00a0m). The well known and legendary lake of Alatsee is located in these mountains, the larger Wei\u00dfensee lies on their northern edge. The mountain chain may be cross on footpaths. Views are somewhat restricted due to trees. As a result, on the predominant Wetterstein limestone there are, however, striking rock formations. The south side is a rugged rock face in places.\nVilsalpsee mountains.\nThe Vilsalpsee mountains (\"Vilsalpseeberge\") are located in the northeast of the Allg\u00e4u Alps between the Oberjoch and Notl\u00e4nd saddles. They are bounded by the Tannheim, Lech, Tyrolean Schwarzwasser and Ostrach valleys. The highest peak is the Leilachspitze, 2,274\u00a0m, and main dolomite is the predominant rock. The lake of Vilsalpsee, accessible from the Tannheim valley, lies in the middle of the subgroup. In the literature, this sub-range is sometimes also counted as part of the Tannheim Mountains. Mountain paths pass through the range, but many summits are hardly visited. They may be climbed by experiences mountain walkers without too much difficulty despite the lack of trails to their summits.\nDaumen Group.\nThe Daumen Group is located east of the Iller valley. The Himmeleck Saddle links them with the other sub-ranges. Apart from the Iller valley, the Ostrach, Berg\u00fcndle and Oybach valleys form its boundaries. The highest summit is the Gro\u00dfer Daumen, \u00a0NN. The famous Nebelhorn cable car mountain lies within this subgroup as does the Hindelanger Klettersteig. Mountain paths with panoramic views cross the southern part of the Daumen Group. Geologically they are split three ways. The crest around the Nebelhorn and the Gro\u00dfer Daumen consist of main dolomite. The Sonnenk\u00f6pfe are formed from flysch. And lias rocks, with their steep grass-covered slopes, predominate south of the Nebelhorn. Well known peaks in this region are the Schneck, the Himmelhorn and the Laufbacher Eck.\nH\u00f6fats and Rauheck Group.\nThe H\u00f6fats and Rauheck Group cover that part of the Allg\u00e4u main chain between the \"M\u00e4rzle\" and \"Hornbachjoch\" saddles. Their defining valleys are those of the Trettach, Traufbach, Oybach, Hornbach and Jochbach. The highest peak is the Rauheck, 2,384\u00a0m. The steep grass mountains of lias rock dominate here more than in any other subgroup of the Allg\u00e4u Alps. The best known mountain and the symbol of the Allg\u00e4u Alps \u2013 is the H\u00f6fats. Other grass mountains are the Rauheck and Kreuzeck on the main crest and the Kegelk\u00f6pfe. Only in the northern spurs of the H\u00f6fats is main dolomite the bedrock. The mountain path between the Kemptner Hut and Prinz Luitpold Haus runs through the subgroup. Otherwise there are hardly any mountains that are accessible on trails.\nHochvogel and Rosszahn Group.\nThis sub-range also covers part of the main chain of the Allg\u00e4u, this time between the saddles of Hornbachjoch and Notl\u00e4nd. The Himmeleck is the boundary with the Daumen Group. The surrounding valleys are those of the Jochbach, Hornbach, Lech, Schwarzwasser and B\u00e4rg\u00fcndle. The subgroup is formed predominantly of main dolomite. Its highest peak is the Hochvogel, 2,592\u00a0m which is also considered the most attractively shaped mountain in the Allg\u00e4u Alps, especially when seen from the north. The Hochvogel, with its main base, the Prinz Luitpold Haus, is also the most climbed mountain in this sub-range by a long chalk. All other peaks in the surrounding area are considerably lower and much less popular. In hardly any other subgroup is the contrast between mass tourism and absolute tranquility so marked. Only a few kilometres from the Hochvogel are the summits of the Rosszahn Group which scarcely receive any visitors.\nRauhhorn ridge.\nThe Rauhhorn ridge is the eastern spur of the Allg\u00e4u main chain east of Bad Hindelang. With its numerous summits the mountain ridge runs roughly from south to north. Its western slopes rise above the valley of the Ostrach. To the east runs the long valley of the Schwarzwasser from the foot of the Sattelk\u00f6pfe and which empties into the Lech south of Wei\u00dfenbach and should not be confused with its better known counterpart in the Kleinwalsertal. A walk on the Jubilee Trail between the Willersalpe and Prinz Luitpold Haus takes the visitor along a mountain path at considerable height along most of the chain. From the high saddle of Oberjoch the linking trail runs to the Jubilee Trail via Iseler, Bschie\u00dfer and Ponten to the Willersalpe.\nHornbach chain.\nThe Hornbach chain is the largest side ridge of the main chain of the Allg\u00e4u Alps. This subgroup branches from the main ridge at the \u00d6fnerspitze. In the south it is bounded by the Lech valley, in the north by the eponymous en Hornbach valley. In the Hornbach chain is the highest peak of the Allg\u00e4u Alps, the Gro\u00dfer Krottenkopf, 2,656\u00a0m, and several other peaks that belong to the 20 highest mountains in the Allg\u00e4u Alps. Despite its importance the Hornbach chain is rather isolated. Its summits consist of main dolomite. Its peaks and high cirques alternate in exemplary fashion. Many \u2013 also very high \u2013 summits in the Hornbach chain receive only a few visits per year.\nTerritorial division.\nThe Allg\u00e4u Alps as a geographical unit and mountain range of the Alps span two countries and four federal states. The Bavarian portion accounts for slightly more than half of the total area and coincides to a large extent with the catchment area of the River Iller. The Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg portion comprises only the extreme northwest of the Allg\u00e4u Alps, in its broader sense, by the Adelegg. The Tyrolean portion largely comprises the Lech river and its tributaries and the Vorarlberg part centres on the catchment area of Bregenzer Ach.\nAt one point, the three states of Bavaria, Tyrol and Vorarlberg meet. This tripoint (\"Dreil\u00e4nderpunkt\") is relatively unspectacular. It is located a few metres west of the Gehrner Berg. This rather unspectacular elevation is 1.5\u00a0km north of the Vorarlberg village of Warth and 4\u00a0km west of the Biberkopf.\nThe border between Bavaria and the Tyrol does not precisely follow the European watershed between the North Sea and the Black Sea. For example, the German village of Balderschwang is on the western side of the watershed. Conversely, the Kleines Walsertal belonging to Vorarlberg is on the eastern side of the watershed. The border between Bavaria and Tyrol generally follows the main chain of the Allg\u00e4u Alps, however.\nThe Bavarian part of the Allg\u00e4u Alps is located entirely within the province of Swabia. The county of Oberallg\u00e4u incorporates the central area around the Iller; the county of Ostallg\u00e4u contains the northeastern areas such as Tannheim group, and the county of Lindau includes the northwestern part of the Allg\u00e4u Alps in its broader sense.\nThe Tyrolean part of the Allg\u00e4u Alps is located entirely within Reutte and the Vorarlberg part is entirely within Bregenz.\nLooking at the Allg\u00e4u Alps in a wider sense, including the Adelegg, the German federal state of Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg also has share. This element is located within the administrative region of T\u00fcbingen and the county of Ravensburg.\nThe Kleines Walsertal in Vorarlberg and the village of Jungholz in Tyrol are German customs union territories. Both areas are accessible by road only from German territory. Although the Kleines Walsertal has a relatively long border with the rest of Vorarlberg, high mountains have prevented a road connection being built. In the 1960s and 1970s there were plans for a road tunnel between the Kleines Walsertal and the valley of the Bregenzerach. However, the local population turned down the tunnel, on the one hand, because the Kleines Walsertal would have become a corridor for through traffic and, on the other hand, it would still have been further to the central locations of Vorarlberg than the centres of the Allg\u00e4u. The village of Jungholz is only connected at one point with the rest of the Tyrol: on the top of the Sorgschrofen.\nPeaks.\nAll independent summits with a topographic prominence of over 30 metres are given at the List of mountains of the Allg\u00e4u Alps.\nThe ten highest peaks.\nThe highest peaks of the Allg\u00e4u Alps are located either on Austrian soil or on the Austro-German border.\nOther well-known summits.\nIn the Allg\u00e4u Alps there are over 600 named summits with spot heights. Amongst the better known are the following (in order of height excluding the top ten). Those marked with an asterisk (*) are outside the narrower definition of the Allg\u00e4u Alps (see Boundary section):\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nGrass mountains.\nThe following are the so-called \"grass mountains\" (\"Grasberge\"), made from rocks of the Black Jurassic, whose mountainsides have gradients of up to 70\u00b0. They are the distinguishing feature of the Allg\u00e4u Alps and are not found in any other mountain group as prominently as they are here (listed in alphabetical order).\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "23809027": "Giant Mountains\nCzech and Polish mountain range\nThe Giant Mountains, Krkono\u0161e, or Karkonosze ( , , ), are a mountain range located in the north of the Czech Republic and the south-west of Poland, part of the Sudetes mountain system (part of the Bohemian Massif). The Czech\u2013Polish border, which divides the historic regions of Bohemia and Silesia, runs along the main ridge. The highest peak, Sn\u011b\u017eka (), is the Czech Republic's highest natural point with an elevation of .\nOn both sides of the border, large areas of the mountains are designated national parks (Krkono\u0161e National Park in the Czech Republic and Karkonosze National Park in Poland), and these together comprise the Krkono\u0161e/Karkonosze Transboundary Biosphere Reserve under the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Programme. The source of the River Elbe is within the Giant Mountains. The range has a number of major ski resorts, and is a popular destination for tourists engaging in downhill and cross-country skiing, hiking, cycling and other activities.\nNames.\nThe range has been called the Giant Mountains in English literature since at least 1719.\nThe Czech name \"Krkono\u0161e\" is first mentioned (in the singular, as \"Krkono\u0161\") in a 1492 record of the division of the Manor of \u0160t\u011bpanice into two parts. The first map occurrence of the name dates back to 1518 to Klaudy\u00e1n map of Bohemia, when it is referred to the mountains as \"Krkonoss\". The origin of the name is usually interpreted as a compound of \"krk\" or \"krak\", an Old Slavonic word for Krummholz (a reference to the local vegetation) \u2013 and \"no\u0161\", derived from \"nosit\" (to carry). Alternative linguistic theories mention a connection with the pre\u2013Indo-European word \"Corconti\", which is first listed by Ptolemy and refers to a pre-Celtic or Germanic people.\nIn Simon H\u00fcttel's chronicle of Trautenau (Trutnov) from 1549 the names \"Hrisenpergisches Gebirge\", \"Hrisengepirge\", \"Hrisengebirge\", \"Risengepirge\" appeared for the first time, but in the following centuries several other names were still used too. Martin Helwig's map of Silesia mentions Ri\u017fenberg (Risenberg).\nIn 1380, P\u0159ib\u00edk Pulkava called the mountains the \"Sn\u011b\u017en\u00e9 hory\" (Snowy Mountains). The Czech writer Bohuslav Balb\u00edn recorded in 1679 that the mountains were known under various names: Krkono\u0161e (Cerconossios), Rhipaeos Montes, Obrovski Mountains, Snow Mountains or Riesen Gebirge.\nThe modern names of \"Krkono\u0161e\" (Czech), \"Riesengebirge\" (German) and \"Karkonosze\" (Polish) became widely accepted only in the 19th century.\nGeography.\nThe area of the Giant Mountains amounts to , within the Czech Republic and in Poland. While most of the Sudetes are middle-sized \"Mittelgebirge\" mountains, the Giant Mountains have a few characteristics of proper high mountains such as glacial cirques, small periglacial landforms and an elevation significantly above the tree line.\nThe main ridge of the mountains runs from east to west and forms the border between these two countries. Its highest peak, Sn\u011b\u017eka/\u015anie\u017cka, is the highest peak of the Czech Republic. The Silesian northern part, in Poland, drops steeply to the Jelenia G\u00f3ra valley, whereas the southern Czech part slopes gently to the Bohemian basin. In the north-easterly direction the Giant Mountains continue to Rudawy Janowickie, and in the south-east to R\u00fdchory. The pass Novosv\u011btsk\u00fd pr\u016fsmyk () at Jakuszyce forms the western border with the Jizera Mountains.\nThe Bohemian ridge in the Czech Republic, running parallel to the main ridge, forms a second ridge (also called inner ridge). At \u0160pindler\u016fv Ml\u00fdn the river Elbe divides the Bohemian ridge.\nThe ridges are divided by the rivers Elbe, Mumlava, B\u00edl\u00e9 Labe, Velka \u00dapa, Mal\u00e1 \u00dapa and Jizera, which originates in the Jizera Mountains. The rivers on the Czech side often fall over steep edges into valleys formed by ice-age glaciers. The largest waterfalls on the southern side of the mountains are the Labsk\u00fd vodop\u00e1d with a height of , Pan\u010davsk\u00fd waterfall (, the highest waterfall in the Czech Republic), Horn\u00ed \u00dapsk\u00fd waterfall, Doln\u00ed \u00dapsk\u00fd waterfall and Mumlava Waterfall (). The most important rivers on the Polish side are Kamienna, \u0141omnica and B\u00f3br. They also form impressive waterfalls, such as Kamie\u0144czyk Falls (), Szklarki Falls () Wodospad na \u0141omnicy () or Podg\u00f3rna Falls ().\nThe main ridge of the Giant Mountains forms the watershed between the North Sea and the Baltic. The rivers on the south side drain into the North Sea, those on the north side into the Baltic.\nFlora.\nThe river valleys and lower layers form the sub-montane zone. The aboriginal hardwood and mixed forests are largely"}, "descending_order": ["14143509", "12985196", "23809027", "12965562"], "permutation_1": ["23809027", "14143509", "12965562", "12985196"], "permutation_2": ["14143509", "23809027", "12985196", "12965562"], "permutation_3": ["12965562", "14143509", "23809027", "12985196"]}
{"id": "2hop__385392_756039", "docs_added": {"110656": "Notus, Idaho\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nNotus is a small rural city in Canyon County, Idaho. The population was 531 at the time of the 2010 census and is the smallest town out of the eight in Canyon County. It is part of the Boise metropolitan area.\nHistory.\nThe present day location of the City of Notus is located along Highway 20/26.\nin 1874, the Lower Boise Post Office was established on the homestead of C.L.F Peterson. The inclusion of the Lower Boise Post Office is considered to be the primary reason for the present location of Notus. According to an \"Idaho Press Tribune\" article from 1986, Notus got its name from the daughter of a local railroad official. The daughter reportedly thought \"notus\" was of Native American origin and meant \"it's all right.\" The town of Notus was almost known as 'Lemp'.\nIn 1926, the Notus secondary school was founded. In 2017, the old building was demolished.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which, is land and is water.\nFeatures.\nNotus has one secondary school and one elementary school. Notus also has a city park, a museum located along highway 20/26, a public library, and one restaurant.\nDemographics.\n2010 census.\nAs of the census of 2010, there were 531 people, 182 households, and 139 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 198 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 73.3% White, 0.2% African American, 2.4% Native American, 0.4% Asian, 18.5% from other races, and 5.3% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 29.8% of the population.\nThere were 182 households, of which 41.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 61.5% were married couples living together, 9.3% had a female householder with no husband present, 5.5% had a male householder with no wife present, and 23.6% were non-families. 18.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 9.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.92 and the average family size was 3.34.\nThe median age in the city was 35.5 years. 31.1% of residents were under the age of 18; 6.9% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 25% were from 25 to 44; 25.4% were from 45 to 64; and 11.7% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 47.1% male and 52.9% female.\n2000 census.\nAs of the census of 2000, there were 458 people, 147 households, and 113 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 156 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 86.90% White, 1.31% Native American, 0.66% Asian, 8.73% from other races, and 2.40% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 22.05% of the population.\nThere were 147 households, out of which 44.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 64.6% were married couples living together, 6.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 23.1% were non-families. 18.4% of all households were made up of individuals, and 5.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.12 and the average family size was 3.58.\nIn the city, the population was spread out, with 33.4% under the age of 18, 7.6% from 18 to 24, 27.7% from 25 to 44, 20.1% from 45 to 64, and 11.1% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 31 years. For every 100 females, there were 100.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.0 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $32,813, and the median income for a family was $43,750. Males had a median income of $25,000 versus $21,250 for females. The per capita income for the city was $11,801. About 10.4% of families and 13.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 11.2% of those under age 18 and 28.3% of those age 65 or over.", "15544633": "KTRP (AM)\nRadio station in Notus, Idaho\nKTRP (1450 AM) is a radio station licensed to serve the community of Notus, Idaho, United States. The station is owned by Centro Familiar Cristiano. KTRP is silent as of \u00a020, 2016[ [update]].\nHistory.\nThe station went on the air June 14, 1965 as KYET. It changed its call sign to KACY on October 1, 1984. On January 30, 1990, the station changed its call sign to KIOV. The station took on the KWEI call sign on March 25, 2011; three years later, the station swapped call signs with 1260 AM and became KTRP.\nUntil April 20, 2016, KTRP broadcast a Tejano format to the greater Boise, Idaho, area and was the only full-time Tejano station in the state of Idaho. The station went off the air on April 20, 2016, following a transmitter failure.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "51593425": "KTRP\nKTRP refers to the following broadcasting stations in the United States:\n<templatestyles src=\"Dmbox/styles.css\" />\n Topics referred to by the same termThis page lists articles about radio and/or television stations with the same/similar call signs or branding.", "34635416": "KQRR\nKQRR (1130 AM) is an American radio station licensed to serve the community of Mount Angel, Oregon. The station, originally licensed as KTRP, is owned by Bustos Media and the broadcast license is held by Bustos Media Holdings, LLC.\nThe station was assigned the call sign KQRR by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on December 13, 2011 and again on March 15, 2022.\nIn 2010, the station filed an application with the FCC to increase its day power to 50,000 watts. The application was dismissed.\nOn February 12, 2015, KQRR changed its call letters to KXET.\nOn March 15, 2022, KXET changed its call letters to KQRR. The Russian Christian radio format also moved to KQRR.\nProgramming.\nSince December 2011, the station broadcasts a Russian-language religious radio format. As KPWX, the station previously aired a Regional Mexican music format branded as \"1130 La Mexicana\". In 2015, KXET began broadcasting community programs, produced by Slavic Family Media Center. It was branded as Slavic Family Radio.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "41414565": "KTRG\nKTRG (94.1 FM) is a radio station licensed to Hooks, Texas, serving the Texarkana, Texas area. The station broadcasts a sports format and is owned by E Radio Network LLC. Studios were located along Summerhill Road in northwest Texarkana, and the transmitter was located northwest of Texarkana city limits in Bowie County.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1979690": "KTRU-LP\nRadio station at Rice University in Houston\nKTRU-LP (stylized as ktru) is the college radio station of Rice University, a private university in south-central Houston, Texas, United States.\nKTRU-LP broadcasts a freeform-eclectic music format on 96.1 FM; its programming includes modern classical, reggae, indie rock, chopped and screwed, spoken word and local experimental noise bands. During evening hours, the station broadcasts shows geared to particular musical genres and themes. The station is owned by the university, which maintains an FM transmitter atop Rice Stadium, and is managed by its students.\nThe current KTRU-LP license dates to 2015, but Rice's first foray into FM radio began in 1971, and radio at the university has a history dating to 1967.\nHistory.\nKTRU at 91.7.\nThe roots of KTRU began in February 1967 in a residential college at Rice, Hanszen College, where several students broadcast music in the Old Section part of the dorm using an unlicensed 2-watt AM station, using the call sign KHCR (Hanszen College radio) and the wiring of a buzzer system. The next fall, the station transformed into an AM carrier current station with wires running through the steam tunnel system connecting the dormitories to a studio located in the basement of the Rice Memorial Center using the call sign KOWL, a nod to the Rice University mascot.\nThe station moved to FM after a license was granted by the FCC to the Rice University Board of Governors. Since KOWL was already in use at the time, KTRU was chosen as a substitute. KTRU began operations in 1971 with a transmitter located in Sid Richardson College. Initially broadcasting at 10 watts, the students engineered an increase to 340 watts in April 1974 and 650 watts in October 1980. The broadcast day also increased from the initial evening-only hours to 10 to 12 hours a day on weekdays and most of the weekend. In 1981, KTRU expanded its broadcast hours to 24 hours per day. In 1987, a major expansion of the student center was completed, and KTRU's studios were relocated to the 2nd floor of the Ley Student Center.\nIn 1991, KTRU's transmitter was moved to the north of Houston, increased in power to 50,000 watts and was presented with an operating endowment by Mike Stude, the owner of Houston-area radio station KRTS (now KROI) and an heir of the founders of Brown & Root. This move enabled Stude's KRTS to increase from 3,000 watts to 50,000 watts and improve its own coverage without interfering with KTRU's signal on the second adjacent channel. While KTRU gained a significant increase in overall coverage area, the signal was weakened tremendously around the Rice campus, leading to the request and subsequent grant of a low-power translator broadcasting from the top of Rice Stadium on 91.5\u00a0MHz in 1999, in order to restore a strong signal around the entirety of the campus.\nIn 1997, a university committee released a report recommending expanding coverage of university programs to 12 hours of the broadcast day, the hiring of professional staff, and increasing marketing of the station, in addition to studio expansion and technology upgrades. At the recommendation of the committee, a professional General Manager was hired in 1998 with the Station Manager still staffed by a student volunteer.\nIn 2000, university administrators threatened to withhold financing and other resources KTRU received through student fees unless the station increased the broadcast air time devoted specifically to Rice University sports. As a result, KTRU more than doubled the number of sports games it broadcast per week. On November 30, 2000, student volunteers entered the station to host their weekly punk show and found that their slot had been preempted by a sports game without prior notice and they were expected to operate the board during the broadcast. The DJs protested by playing punk rock music concurrently with the game during its last hour. A university administrator called the station manager and demanded that he discipline the DJs. When the station manager refused, the university administration responded by physically locking students out of the station and replacing its programming with a satellite feed from the World Radio Network. The administration cited the station's by-laws which gives the university president ultimate authority over the station. Students protested the shut-down, including a silent protest outside the University Board of Governors meeting. The station shutdown and protests received coverage in the press and students submitted a petition in support of the student-run station with over 700 signatures. The lockout lasted 8 days before the station was returned to student control with joint oversight from the university administration.\nSale of 91.7 and move online.\nOn August 17, 2010, Rice University announced that it had been in negotiations to sell KTRU's broadcast tower, FM frequency and license to the University of Houston System in order for 91.7 to become a full-time classical music and fine arts programming station, relieving KUHF from all music programming and allowing it to become a full-time news station. The new station at 91.7, KUHA (since resold and now KHVU), would be operated as a not-for-profit outlet, with listener support funding the new classical music home. The FCC approved the sale and granted the transfer of license to the University of Houston\u00a0System on April 15, 2011.\nOn February 14, 2011, Pacifica Radio's KPFT (90.1 FM) began broadcasting KTRU's programming on its HD2 channel.\nKTRU ceased broadcasting on 91.7 FM at 6 a.m. on April 28, 2011.\nIn the aftermath of the sale to the University of Houston, KTRU's programming continued to be broadcast, through an agreement with station owner Pacifica, in a digital-only format as the HD2 subchannel of 90.1 KPFT.\nReturn to the air.\nKTRU returned to an over-the-air FM broadcast in Houston when it acquired a construction permit to build a 41-watt low-power FM at 96.1\u00a0MHz, licensed as KBLT-LP, and signing on October 2, 2015. Concurrent with the launch of KBLT-LP, Pacifica removed KTRU programming from its HD2 subchannel. The current signal has a coverage radius of from Rice Stadium, covering southwest Houston within the Interstate 610 loop. As a result, the station relies heavily on online streaming to reach listeners outside of its limited broadcast range.\nCall letters.\nThe KTRU call letters, used by Rice FM radio from 1971 to 2011, had been claimed on May 17, 2011 by a new radio station owned by Grace Public Radio in La Harpe, Kansas (near Iola), after Rice abandoned them in the sale to the University of Houston. Grace Public Radio made it clear there was no desire to share the call sign with the university, for the new low-power facility to use; therefore, Rice accepted a random call sign given to the new facility by the Federal Communications Commission. There was no meaning behind the KBLT-LP call sign this facility initially used to legally broadcast.\nIn early 2019, the Kansas station was sold to new ownership who were more receptive in allowing Rice to reclaim use of the KTRU call letters. On August 21, 2019, Rice University acquired the right, through purchase, to once again utilize the KTRU calls as KTRU-LP; the $10,000 cost was fully funded by an anonymous donor. (The full-powered KTRU facility remains in Kansas.)\nThe station has promoted and sponsored independent and local music through sponsoring shows at local venues and on its university campus. The station organizes a Rice battle of the bands every year as well as an annual outdoor show featuring local and touring bands.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "27680135": "Call signs in the Middle East\nUnique identifiers for radio communication\nCall signs in the Middle East are unique identifiers for telecommunications and broadcasting in the Middle East. Call signs are regulated internationally by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and nationally by local government and international agencies in Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, The Palestinian Authority, occupied territories and other nations or DXCC entities.\nAbout 9,100 licensed operators in the Middle East have call signs. Since callsign allocation from the ITU is administered by national political authorities and international mandates, it is a story of transition, compromise, and internationally unrecognized operation to follow the history of such allocations in the 20th century in this area.\nCall sign blocks for telecommunication.\nThe ITU has assigned countries in the Middle East the following call sign blocks for all radio communication, broadcasting or transmission:\nThe DXCC deleted entities list notes that for the British Protectorate prefix of ZC6 and the Palestine prefix of 4X1, only contacts made June 30, 1968, and before, count for Palestine as an entity. Contacts made July 1, 1968, and after, count as Israel (4X).\n4W used to be a prefix for Yemen, but only contacts made May 21, 1990, and before, count for this entity. With the merger of North and South Yemen, only \"7O\" is used. However, amateur operation from this entity is extremely rare.\nWhile not directly related to call signs, the ITU further has divided all countries assigned amateur radio prefixes into three regions; the Middle East is located in ITU Region 1. It is assigned ITU Zone 39 with Egypt being mainly in ITU Zone 38 and Iran in ITU Zone 40, and CQ Zones 20 & 21 with Egypt mainly in CQ Zone 34.\nHistory of call sign allocation.\nThe callsign allocation history of this region is complex and follows the political interests of various countries who exercised political control in the region. It also changed in relation to various independence movements, particularly following World War II.\nHowever, as early as 1931 the prefix \"AP\" (i.e., for Asia/Pacific) arose for the region. Today that is used for Pakistan.\nBefore 1945 the prefixes ZC1 and ZC6 were used for Transjordan and Palestine respectively, still seen as a British Protectorate.\nInternational Radiotelegraph Conferences.\nThe conference held in 1927 assigned call prefixes to Persia (RVA\u2013RVZ), Egypt (SUA\u2013SUZ), Turkey (TAA\u2013TCZ), and Iraq (YIA\u2013YIZ). These, however, did not necessarily include amateur radio operation. Middle East areas administered politically by mandated countries (i.e., Great Britain's mandate over Palestine) adopted call sign regulations of those entities.\nThe 1947 Atlantic City ITU Conference reallocated call sign blocks to Iraq (HNA\u2013HNZ, YIA\u2013YIZ), Egypt (SSA\u2013SUZ), Turkey (TAA\u2013TCZ, YMA\u2013YMZ), and to British Colonies and Protectorates (ZBA\u2013ZJZ, ZNA\u2013ZOZ, ZQA\u2013ZQZ, and 4PA\u20134SZ). The United Nations was assigned 4UA\u20134UZ which sometimes was used in the Middle East.\nCyprus, including UK Sovereign Base Areas and northern Cyprus.\nThe island of Cyprus includes two DXCC entities as well as one other recognized only by the government of Turkey.\nThe Republic of Cyprus became independent from Great Britain in 1960. It has \"de jure\" governance over most of the island of Cyprus, except for the United Kingdom Sovereign Base Areas (SBA) of Akrotiri and Dhekelia in the south and east of the island. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is a self-proclaimed state on the part of the island occupied by Turkey. This situation came about after a Turkish invasion of the island in 1974 and a unilateral declaration of independence for the north in 1983. The international community, including the United Nations and the European Union, recognises the \"de jure\" sovereignty of the Republic of Cyprus over the entire island, less the SBAs.\nThe ITU has assigned \"5B\", \"C4\", \"H2\" and \"P3\" prefixes to the Republic of Cyprus. As the SBAs are not under the sovereignty of Cyprus, Great Britain assigns the pre-1960 colonial call sign prefix \"ZC4\" to roughly 50 amateur radio operators in the SBAs.\nNorthern Cyprus uses the prefix block of \"1BA\u20131BZ\", which has not been allocated by the ITU, for its radio operation. There is regular tension with the block's use, especially for visitors to the north who sign with a \"1B/\" prefix. Operators in the south tell them to use \"5B/\".\nSyria.\nWhat is known today as Syria was part of the Ottoman Empire until World War I. In 1920 it became a League of Nations French Mandate, which included Lebanon. Syria became republic in 1946 with France's withdrawal.\nIntermediate callsign prefixes of \"AR\" were available to amateurs in the region until after World War II. In 1949 the Syrian Amateur Radio League was formed and YK1 was adopted as the Syrian prefix. Syria has made use of the \"6C\" prefix for special events. United Nations peacekeepers in the border area with Israel have used their callsigns with a \"/YK\" added.\nPalestine and Transjordan/Jordan.\nCallsigns until 1945 were split between ZC1 for Transjordan and ZC6 for Palestine, as part of Great Britain's scheme for overseas radio. All the stations belonged to members of the British Forces. Palestine counted as a separate DXCC country for contacts made until June 30, 1968, as the British still granted licences mainly to their own nationals. After the creation of the State of Israel, UN Headquarters retained the use of the ZC6 prefix with station ZC6UNJ at the Jerusalem headquarters.\nJordan changed to the JY prefix under the use of British personnel in the area. King Hussein in the 1950s was an amateur radio operator and popularized the use of the JY1 prefix for foreigners and citizens following the British exodus from the region.\nPalestine was added to the DXCC List under paragraph b) effective 1 October 1999, with start date of 1 February 1999. The only prefix acceptable is E4 since the call-sign group ZC6 is registered for Great Britain and its overseas possessions. Under the DXCC rules, contacts with the deleted entity of Palestine made prior to June 30, 1968, do not count for this entity. There is no commonality of territory or administration. E4 is in WAZ Zone 20, ITU Zone 39.\nIsrael.\nThe September before the creation of the State of Israel, the station ZC6AA identified its location as \"Tel Aviv, Israel.\"\n4X and 4Z were activated when the state of Israel was proclaimed, however afterwards some individual operators adopted call signs assuming that the territory was still \"Arab Palestine\". The UN Headquarters signed \"Jerusalem\" in 1947 and \"Jerusalem, Palestine\" in 1957, with callsigns ZC6UNJ and ZC6UNU.\nDuring the Suez crisis in 1957, some Israeli operators signed in the Sinai with an Israelis prefix, but with a /SINAI appended to their call sign.\nIsrael can issue a National Israeli call sign in the series 4Z8 to foreign amateurs whose countries participate in the CEPT Recommendation T/R 61-02.\nThe Israeli Amateur Radio Club (IARC) was founded on February 18, 1948, and is a member at IARU. Presently call signs are issued within Israel by the Ministry of Communications according to this table:\nIn July 2012 a 4Z5 operator was upgraded to class A without a callsign change. Some 4X6 stations are also class A.\nGaza.\nGaza became part of the British Mandate following World War I. After the 1948 Arab/Israeli war Gaza was administered by Egypt, but was captured by Israel in the 1967 war. In 1993 the area was transferred to the Palestinian National Authority.\nAfter Egypt's loss of Gaza to Israel in 1967, amateur radio operation by civilians was generally forbidden. UN stations sometimes added \"/4U\" to their national call signs and one added the British Protectorate prefix \"/ZC6\" to his.\nOn 2 December 1994 the Palestine Authority for Gaza and Jericho issued the call-signs to Palestine nationals, ZC6A to Ali Yashruti and ZC6B to Dr. Sama Tarazi (previously KF2GJ) who ran a short operation from the Gaza strip, using the historic call sign ZC6B. Designations used by foreigners have been /GAZA and /ZC6 following their own national call signs. This practice continued until as late as 2001.\nIn 1999 Palestine was allocated the E4 block of call signs and the Palestine Authority granted visitor licenses. Some Hungarian and Japanese nationals used /E4 following their call signs from that date.\nIn October 2012, an E40 call was issued to a Gaza ham who calls on the Jerusalem (Israel Amateur Radio Club) R1 repeater. Since that call was already issued by the Palestinian Authority to a Russian DX'er, as of early December 2012 he started using E44M. He was off the repeater during most of November 2012 due to the 2012 Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip.\nLebanon.\nAmateur radio in Lebanon is governed by the Ministry of Telecommunications including the Ministry of Defense \u2013 Intelligence Unit and Ministry of Transport \u2013 Civil aviation. Reciprocal and temporary licenses are offered in Lebanon by the Ministry of Telecommunications on a case by case basis, as Lebanon has no agreements with any other country.\nThe ITU assigns the call sign block ODA\u2013ODZ to Lebanon. Until the mid-1950s amateurs there operated with an AR8 prefix.\nSaudi Arabia.\nSaudi public amateur radio licensing commenced in 2004, as the Saudi Communications and Information Technology Commission took over regulation within the HZ, 7Z and 8Z ITU call sign area. Foreign hams before then could operate from club stations, like the Dhahran Amateur Radio Club (HZ1AB).\nHZ1AB was originally the United States Military Training Mission and the station formally closed in 2004. The call sign is now issued to a Saudi national.\nAfter deregulation, there are now about 500 licensed radio amateurs in Saudi Arabia. Class 1 licensees (HF, VHF & SHF) are using the prefixes HZ1 or 7Z1, HZ2, 7Z2 stations have licenses class 2 (VHF & SHF only).\nSaudi Arabia has constructed OSCAR satellites for amateur use. Saudi-OSCAR 41 (SO-41, Saudisat 1A) and Saudi-OSCAR 42 (SO-42, Saudisat 1B) were both launched on September 26, 2000, and are now non-operational. Saudi-OSCAR 50 (SO-50, Saudisat-1C) was launched on December 20, 2002, and remains operational.\nYemen.\nThe club station 7O1AA operated for six months in 1990. On May 22, 1990, Yemen Arab Republic (4W) and People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (7O) were deleted from the DXCC list as the two countries united into one becoming Yemen (7O). There have been various claims that no amateur station licenses have been issued since. North Korea and Yemen remain the only two national jurisdictions which do not issue amateur radio licenses to their citizens.\nAccording to an editorial by Bernie McClenny, W3UR, in \"The Daily DX\", after the creation of the DXCC entity for unified Yemen, a team from Kuwait consisting of 9K2CS, 9K2DR and 9K2EC operated as 7O1AA in late May and early June 1990. Shortly after F2VX and F6EXV operated as 7O8AA during late July and early August 1990. And finally OH2YY was QRV as 7O/OH2YY in early May 2002. Each of these were accepted by ARRL for DXCC. There have been several operations from 7O that did not count for DXCC (7O1A \u2013 1996, 7O1YGF \u2013 2000).\"\nThe ARRL DXCC desk does also recognize the Yemen operation by Pekka Ahlqvist, OH2YY, in May 2002 as it was conducted with written approval from the Yemeni government. A recent operation from Socotra Island using callsign 7O6T took place in May 2012. It was organized by a multinational team led by Dmitri Zhikharev RA9USU from Russia.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "26543304": "KTRT\nKTRT (97.5 FM, \"The Root\") is a radio station licensed to Winthrop, Washington, United States.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "37211439": "KLTR\nKLTR 94.1 FM is a radio station broadcasting an adult contemporary format. The station is currently licensed to Brenham, Texas, with a construction permit in place to move the facility farther north and upgrade the facility to 50 kilowatts with an elevation decrease to 90 meters. This will upgrade 94.1 from its current C3 license to a C2, and will also shift its COL to Hempstead, Texas, covering the majority of the Bryan/College Station area, as well as the northwest suburbs of Houston. The station is owned by Roy E. Henderson, d.b.a. Fort Bend Broadcasting. KLTR, then KULF, began broadcasting on March 16, 1989. It was founded by May Broadcasting.\nThe station's studios and transmitter are located separately in Brenham.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "37426531": "Harold A. Lafount\nAmerican businessman (1880\u20131952)\nHarold Arundel Lafount (January 5, 1880\u00a0\u2013 October 21, 1952) was an American businessman who served on the Federal Radio Commission from 1927 to 1934. He was the father of Lenore Romney; the father-in-law of businessman and politician George W. Romney; and the maternal grandfather of businessman and politician Mitt Romney.\nEnglish-born, Lafount moved to the United States as a teenager and grew up in Utah. He managed several local businesses and was active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Appointed to the Federal Radio Commission by President Calvin Coolidge, he was in charge of the zone covering the Western United States. Lafount played an important part in developments and decisions regarding the regulation of the broadcasting industry in the U.S., favoring perspectives that saw radio broadcasting as a fundamentally commercial enterprise. He was also an early influence in making radio airtime available to political candidates and parties.\nLafount later managed a number of well-known radio stations in the northeastern United States on behalf of Arde Bulova and served as president of the National Independent Broadcasters. A licensing issue regarding a station Lafount co-owned resulted in a protracted regulatory and legal matter that was finally decided in the U.S. Supreme Court.\nEarly life and education, marriage and family.\nLafount was born in Aston town within Birmingham, England, on January 5, 1880, the son of Robert Arthur Lafount, originally from Belbroughton, Worcestershire, and mother Emily Ethel (Hewitt). He had at least one sibling, a sister called Elsie. The family came with Mormon missionaries to the United States in 1893 and settled in Utah.\nLafount gained a degree in civil engineering from Utah State Agricultural College. He returned to England as a Mormon missionary himself, arriving in Liverpool in August 1902 and being dispatched to Sheffield. However, he returned to the U.S. from Sheffield ahead of schedule in May 1903 due to illness.\nOn October 28, 1903, Lafount married Alma Luella Robison (born in Montpelier, Idaho, in 1882). \nThey had four daughters: Elsie (born c. 1906), Lenore (born 1908), Constance (born c. 1911), and Ruth (born c. 1913).\nEarly career.\nLafount first worked as an assistant in his father's hardware store in Logan, Utah, known as the Lafount Hardware Company, and then worked as its manager. He was in the hardware business for twelve years starting in 1903.\nBeginning in 1909, while still living in Logan, Lafount held the position of general manager at the newly founded Pacific Land & Water Company of Salt Lake City, which acquired and developed land for agricultural and mining purposes. The company also had offices in Logan; on one trip between the two cities, he escaped with only bruises when the gasoline tank of his automobile exploded, hurling him some forty feet. Lafount worked at Pacific Land & Water for ten years. He was then a receiver for the Sevier River Land and Water Company from 1923 to 1927. By the mid-1920s, he was a manufacturer of earphones for crystal radio receivers. He knew prominent people socially, including LDS Church President Heber J. Grant and U.S. Senator from Utah Reed Smoot.\nDuring the 1910s, the Lafount family had moved from Logan to Salt Lake City, where they lived in a large brick house located at Fifteenth South and Ninth East.\nFrom 1919 to 1924, Lafount was bishop of the ward (ecclesiastical and administrative head of his congregation) in the same area where he lived. His wife worked for the church, was a leader in social charities, and gave well-received dramatic readings.\nDaughter Lenore later described Harold as \"a man of temper and drive\" who was prone to angry outbursts.\nFederal Radio Commission.\nUpon the recommendation of Senator Smoot, in November 1927, President Calvin Coolidge appointed Lafount to the Federal Radio Commission (FRC), a new federal body created by the Radio Act of 1927 to regulate radio use in the United States, and the first such separate agency. The commission had gotten off to a slow start earlier that year due to problems with vacancies; Lafount was slotted for the Fifth Zone of the new entity, to replace original commissioner John F. Dillon, who had died shortly after taking that position. News of the appointment came as a surprise to the other members of the commission, since Lafount had little presence in the radio industry.\nUpon arriving in Washington, D.C., for his new position, Lafount wanted to thank the president personally. Told by an appointment secretary that he would need a new morning suit, Lafount spent $175 to get"}, "descending_order": ["51593425", "15544633", "34635416", "41414565", "1979690", "27680135", "26543304", "37211439", "37426531", "110656"], "permutation_1": ["110656", "27680135", "41414565", "15544633", "1979690", "37211439", "37426531", "51593425", "26543304", "34635416"], "permutation_2": ["37426531", "37211439", "15544633", "51593425", "26543304", "1979690", "110656", "41414565", "27680135", "34635416"], "permutation_3": ["15544633", "41414565", "26543304", "51593425", "110656", "37211439", "27680135", "34635416", "1979690", "37426531"]}
{"id": "2hop__256258_127008", "docs_added": {"1819340": "The Reflex\n1984 single by Duran Duran\n\"The Reflex\" is the eleventh single by the English pop rock band Duran Duran, released on 16 April 1984. The song was heavily remixed for single release and was the third and last to be taken from their third studio album \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" (1983). The single became the band's first to reach the top of the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and their second to top the UK Singles Chart. On Billboard's chart, it also became the first of two songs keeping Bruce Springsteen's \"Dancing in the Dark\" from reaching number one, (The other one was Prince's \"When Doves Cry\").\nSong history.\nProducer Ian Little recalled the sound Nick Rhodes came up with on his Roland Jupiter-8 keyboard: \"...whenever I hear that steel-drum part it always brings a smile to my face because it's so out of tune. Steel drums always are, but it was exactly right in terms of rhythm and tone. So a wood-block sound was mixed in to make it even more percussive and, successfully, it did the job.\"\nCritical reception.\n\"Cash Box\" said, \"Spotlighting the slick vocals of Simon Le Bon and the tight Euro-pop rhythms set to a funk beat, 'The Reflex' will certainly cause a stir for current fans and it will probably reach a new, more dance oriented crowd.\"\nMusic video.\nMain photography of the music video for \"The Reflex\" took place during the \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" tour at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on 5 March 1984. Director Russell Mulcahy filmed some of the close-up footage in the indoor arena that afternoon, and the band's performance was filmed live during that evening's concert.\nB-sides, bonus tracks and remixes.\nIn addition to the 4:26 single remix, the 12\" also included an extended remix of \"The Reflex\". The live B-side \"Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)\" is a cover version of a Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel song, recorded 16 November 1982 at Hammersmith Odeon in London, England, with lead Rebel Steve Harley joining the band onstage.\nA second live B-side released on the US single, \"New Religion\", was recorded 7 February 1984 at the Forum in Los Angeles, California. This is not the same live version that appears on the album \"Arena\" (1984).\nFormats and track listings.\n7\": EMI / Duran 2 United Kingdom\n12\": EMI / 12 Duran 2 United Kingdom\n7\": Capitol / B-5345 United States\n12\": Capitol / V-8587 United States\nCD: Part of \"Singles Box Set 1981\u20131985\"\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nAs of October\u00a02021[ [update]], \"The Reflex\" was the fourth-most streamed Duran Duran song in the UK.\nCover versions.\nCover versions have been recorded by Less Than Jake and the duo of Kylie Minogue and Ben Lee.\nMedia references.\nA chain of 1980s-themed nightclubs in the UK is named after the song. The Birmingham branch is located directly opposite the former site of the Rum Runner, Duran Duran's early home base. American stand-up comedian Dave Chappelle sings an excerpt from the song during a \"Stereotype Pixies\" sketch from \"Chappelle's Show\".\nThe song is featured in the sixth episode of the sixth season of \"Better Call Saul\", \"Axe and Grind\". It is also on the soundtrack of the 2008 video game \"Saints Row 2\", on the fictional radio station 107.77 The Mix FM.\nThe song is used in American Wedding as Stifler and Bear dance-off in a night club.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "148703": "Duran Duran\nEnglish pop rock band\nDuran Duran () are an English pop rock band formed in Birmingham in 1978 by singer Stephen Duffy, keyboardist Nick Rhodes and guitarist/bassist John Taylor. After several early changes, the band's line-up settled in May 1980 as Rhodes, Taylor, singer Simon Le Bon, guitarist Andy Taylor and drummer Roger Taylor. \nEmerging as members of the New Romantic scene, Duran Duran were innovators of the music video and a leading band in the MTV-driven Second British Invasion of the US in the 1980s. By 1984, the band had achieved levels of fame similar to Beatlemania. The band's first major hit was \"Girls on Film\" (1981), from their self-titled debut album, the popularity of which was enhanced by a controversial music video. The band's breakthrough second album was \"Rio\" (1982), a worldwide hit. The songs \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Rio\" featured cinematic music videos directed by Australian film maker Russell Mulcahy and became two of their biggest hits. Their third album, \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\", became their only UK number one album and featured the US and UK number one single \"The Reflex\". In 1985, the band topped the US charts with the single \"A View to a Kill\" from the soundtrack of the James Bond film of the same title.\nAndy Taylor and Roger Taylor both left the band before the recording of their fourth album, \"Notorious\" (1986), which yielded the top ten title track. Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor initially continued as a core trio, before adding drummer Sterling Campbell and former Frank Zappa and Missing Persons guitarist Warren Cuccurullo as full-time members in 1989, though Campbell departed in 1991. The band spent the late 1980s and early 1990s releasing albums and singles to only moderate success. Their comeback album, 1993's \"Duran Duran\" (commonly called \"The Wedding Album\"), featured two top ten worldwide hits \"Ordinary World\" and \"Come Undone\". John Taylor left the band in 1997, though four years later, in 2001, a full reunion of the classic 1980\u20131985 line-up of Le Bon, Rhodes and all three Taylors took place, which led to a number of highly successful concert tours and the 2004 album \"Astronaut\", which reached number three in the UK and top 40 in numerous other countries. The album's lead single \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\" was an international dance hit, and reached number five in the UK. Andy Taylor left again in 2006, and the band have released five additional albums, with the most recent being \"Danse Macabre\" in 2023.\nAccording to \"Billboard\", Duran Duran have sold over 100 million records. They achieved 30 top 40 singles in the UK Singles Chart (14 of them top 10) and 21 top 40 singles in the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100. The band have won numerous awards throughout their career: two Brit Awards including the 2004 award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, two Grammy Awards, an MTV Video Music Award for Lifetime Achievement and a Video Visionary Award from the MTV Europe Music Awards. They were also awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The band were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.\nHistory.\n1978\u20131980: Formation and early years.\nJohn Taylor and Nick Rhodes formed Duran Duran in 1978 in Birmingham, England, with Taylor's art school friend Stephen Duffy, naming their band after \"Dr. Durand Durand\", Milo O'Shea's character from the science fiction film \"Barbarella\" (1968), the day after the film was broadcast on BBC on 20 October 1978. The three of them (Taylor on guitar and vocals, Rhodes on synthesizer and tapes, Duffy on vocals and bass) played their first gig on 5 April 1979 at the Birmingham Polytechnic. Soon after, they were joined by Simon Colley on clarinet and bass. John (then going by his first name Nigel) was the guitarist at this point. After a few gigs, including a performance at Barbarella's in Birmingham opening for the band Fashion, Duffy and Colley left the band in June 1979.\nTaylor and Rhodes then recruited lead vocalist Andy Wickett (formerly frontman of \"TV Eye\") and decided that they needed a live drummer. They hired Roger Taylor, a former member of various local bands (most recently \"The Scent Organs\" who also played at Barbarella's), while John Taylor switched to bass guitar. In September 1979, this incarnation of the band recorded a four-track demo including an early version of \"Girls on Film\" co-written by Andy Wickett. Soon afterwards Alan Curtis was recruited as lead guitarist. After a few gigs with this line-up Wickett left the band in late 1979.\nWickett was replaced by Roger Taylor's friend and former singer of \"The Scent Organs\" Jeff Thomas. In early 1980, they became the resident band at the city's Rum Runner nightclub. They were doing jobs at the club and began rehearsing and regularly playing at the venue. Curtis was unhappy with the Rum Runner club scene and left the band to form Dif Juz with his brother. Thomas was fired shortly after following disagreements and repeated arguments. The three remaining members started to look for a new lead vocalist and guitarist. The owners of the club, brothers Paul and Michael Berrow, became the band's management, paying them to work as doormen, disc jockeys (DJs) and barmen when they were not rehearsing, and also formed the Tritec Music company.\nIn April 1980, guitarist Andy Taylor came from Newcastle upon Tyne to audition after responding to an advertisement in \"Melody Maker\". Andy already had a lot of experience from playing with cover bands for years and although he came from a totally different rock music background his versatile playing style was seen as a perfect complement to the band. In May 1980, London vocalist and drama student Simon Le Bon was recommended to the band by an ex-girlfriend who worked at the Rum Runner. The band were immediately impressed by Le Bon and soon completed their first composition with the new line-up, \"Sound of Thunder\", featuring lyrics by Le Bon. Duran Duran's first performance with the lineup of Le Bon, Rhodes and the three Taylors was on 16\u00a0July 1980 at the Rum Runner.\nDuran Duran spent the next months writing, developing and demoing their songs and performed in clubs around Birmingham and London. In September 1980 they had written all of what would become their debut album. Touring as an opening act for Hazel O'Connor, the band attracted critical attention, resulting in a bidding war between the record companies EMI and Phonogram. \"A certain patriotism\" toward the label of the Beatles led them to sign with EMI in December. A week later, the first article about Duran Duran in a national magazine appeared in \"Sounds\". The members of Duran Duran had noticed that Betty Page (pen name for Beverley Glick) was writing about a new movement called New Romantic that would fit the band perfectly and invited her to meet them at the Rum Runner.\nShortly after signing the recording contract with EMI, Duran Duran went to London to record their debut album with producer Colin Thurston, and initial plans for an independent release of the songs \"Planet Earth\" and \"Is There Anyone Out There?\" on the Tritec Music label were scrapped.\n1981\u20131982: Self-titled debut, \"Rio\" and Second British Invasion.\nThe band's debut album, \"Duran Duran\", was released on the EMI label in June 1981. The first single, \"Planet Earth\", had reached the United Kingdom's top 20 at number 12 in February. A follow-up, \"Careless Memories\", released in April, stalled at number 37. The third single, \"Girls on Film\", was released in July and went to number 5 in the UK. The video, featuring topless women mud wrestling, pillow fighting and stylised depictions of other sexual fetishes, was made with directing duo Godley & Creme in August. The video was filmed just two weeks after MTV was launched in the United States. The band expected the \"Girls on Film\" video to be played in the newer nightclubs that had video screens or on pay TV channels like the Playboy Channel. Kevin Godley explained the thinking behind it:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />We were very explicitly told by Duran Duran's management to make a very sensational and erotic piece that would be for clubs, where it would get shown uncensored just to make people take notice and talk about it.\nThe video was heavily edited for MTV. The album peaked in the UK top twenty at number three. Later in 1981 the band embarked on their first United States club tour followed by more dates in Germany and the UK. This second tour of Britain coincided with a wave of riots sparked by unemployment and racial tension, including those of Moss Side and Toxteth. The band played Birmingham the day after the Handsworth riots. The band also began writing and demoing songs for a new album. In November 1981, they released a new single, the disco-influenced \"My Own Way\", that reached number 14 in the UK, followed in early 1982 by the recording of their second album at AIR Studios in London.\nIn May 1982, Duran Duran released their second album, \"Rio\", which entered the UK Albums Chart at number four and peaked at number two the following week. The band scored three UK top 10 hits on the singles chart from the album with \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" at number five in June, \"Save a Prayer\" at number two in September and the title song \"Rio\" at number nine in December, while the earlier top 20 hit \"My Own Way\" was included in a re-recorded version on the album.\nWith the album Duran Duran also began to achieve worldwide recognition. A headlining tour of Australia, Japan and the US was followed by a stint supporting Blondie during that band's final American tour. Diana, Princess of Wales declared Duran Duran her favourite band, and the band were dubbed \"the Fab Five\" by the British press, comparing them to the Beatles whose nickname was the Fab Four.\nAt first, the \"Rio\" album did not do well in the United States. EMI in the UK had promoted Duran Duran as a New Romantic band, but the New Romantic movement was barely known in the US, and EMI's American subsidiary Capitol Records was at a loss about how to sell them. After \"Carnival\" (an EP of \"Rio\"'s dance remixes) became popular with DJs in the fall, the band arranged to have most of the album remixed by David Kershenbaum. In June 1982, Duran Duran appeared for the first time on American television, performing \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Rio\" on \"Dancin' on Air\", the forerunner to the national hit show \"Dance Party USA\".\nNow promoted as a dance album, \"Rio\" was re-released in the US in November and began to climb the American charts six months after its European success. MTV placed \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and several other Duran Duran videos into heavy rotation, pushing the single and album into the US top twenty in early 1983. The ballad \"Save a Prayer\" also did well. \"The band was a natural for music television,\" noted \"Rolling Stone\". \"They may be the first rock group to ride in on a video wave.\" The album ultimately peaked at number six in the US and remained on the charts there for 129 weeks. In 2003, \"Rio\" was listed at number 65 in the \"NME\"'s list of the 100 Greatest Albums of All Time.\nDuran Duran were among the earliest bands to work on their own remixes. Before the days of digital synthesizer and easy audio sampling, they created multi-layered arrangements of their singles, sometimes recording entirely different extended performances of the songs in the studio. These \"night versions\" were generally available only on vinyl as b-sides to 45 rpm singles or on 12-inch club singles until the release of the compilation \"\" in 1998.\n1983\u20131985: The \"Fab Five\", Side projects and Live Aid.\nThe band began 1983 at the Palladium in New York playing the MTV New Year's Eve Rock n' Roll Ball with \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" still climbing the charts in the US, and the American reissue of the \"Rio\" single to follow in March. To satisfy America's appetite for their music, the band re-released their eponymous first album in the US in the middle of the year with the addition of the new single \"Is There Something I Should Know?\". Upon its release, this song entered the chart at number one in the UK (a rarity then and their first chart-topper in their home country) and reached number five on the American charts. During the promotion of this album, Rhodes and Le Bon were MTV guest VJs for a show, during which artist and admirer Andy Warhol dropped by to greet them. \"Our first gigs in the United States were crazy and culty\", Rhodes said later, \"But when we came back after 'Hungry' was a hit, it was mayhem. It was Beatlemania. We were doing a signing of the 'Girls on Film' video at a store in Times Square. We couldn't get out of the store. The cops sealed off the streets.\" Also in 1983, Rhodes produced the UK number one and US number five hit \"Too Shy\" for English band Kajagoogoo and Andy Taylor became the first member of Duran Duran to get married.\nThe band spent the next year as tax exiles, writing songs at a ch\u00e2teau in France where \"The Tube\" with Jools Holland filmed a documentary with the band in May 1983 before they flew to Montserrat and then Sydney to record and mix their third album. During the summer, they returned to the UK to perform two concerts, the first on 20 July in front of the Prince and Princess of Wales at the Dominion Theatre, and the second, a charity concert at Aston Villa's home ground. The band were under pressure to follow up the success of \"Rio\", and the recording process took over six months as different band members went through bouts of perfectionism and insecurity. A newly decadent lifestyle and substance abuse issues for some members added complications. In the documentary film \"Extraordinary World\", filmed a decade later, Rhodes described the effect on their sound as \"barely controlled hysteria, scratching beneath the surface\".\nThe new album, \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" (1983), included the late 1983 hit \"Union of the Snake\" (with the soprano saxophone solo by Andy Hamilton). With \"Hungry Like the Wolf\", \"Rio\", \"Save a Prayer\" and \"Is There Something I Should Know?\", Duran Duran now had five US Top Twenty hits from three different albums in a single year. The band made music headlines by deciding to release the \"Union of the Snake\" video to MTV a full week before the single was released to radio. They followed up with \"New Moon on Monday\", which reached number nine in the UK. Their next single \"The Reflex\", taken from \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" and given a significant remix overhaul by Nile Rodgers of Chic fame, became their first number one hit in the United States. \"The Reflex\" was also their second and final UK number one and was successful in numerous other countries around the world.\nThe band embarked on a global tour that continued throughout the first four months of 1984 including their first major stadium dates in America. A film crew led by director Russell Mulcahy followed the band closely, leading to the documentary film \"Sing Blue Silver\" and the accompanying concert film \"Arena\". The live album \"Arena\" was also recorded during the tour and was released with the new single \"The Wild Boys\", which went to number two on both sides of the Atlantic. In February 1984, the band appeared on the cover of \"Rolling Stone\" magazine and won two Grammy Awards in the brand-new Long Form and Short Form music video categories. Meanwhile, \"Save a Prayer\" gained momentum in North America, and a special US remix of the song became a single in January 1985. It peaked at number 16 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 in March. A live version of the song was used for the single's B-side, taken from the concert video footage for \"Arena\" / \"As the Lights Go Down\".\nDuring this period, all of the band members became heartthrobs for many of their young teenage fans. After the tour, Roger Taylor was married in Naples, Italy, and Rhodes wed in London, wearing a pink velvet tuxedo and top hat. At the end of 1984, the group featured on the Band Aid benefit single \"Do They Know It's Christmas?\" along with other popular British and Irish musical acts. Le Bon sang fourth on the song, after Paul Young, Boy George and George Michael sing their lines.\nEven with Duran Duran on hold, band members were soon anxious to record new music, leading to a supposedly temporary split into two side projects. John Taylor and Andy Taylor wanted to break away from the Duran Duran sound and pursue hard rock material; they collaborated with lead vocalist Robert Palmer and Chic's drummer Tony Thompson to form the rock/funk supergroup the Power Station, releasing two top 10 singles. Le Bon and Rhodes wanted to further explore Duran Duran's atmospheric aspect and formed Arcadia, releasing one album (\"So Red the Rose\") and an accompanying single (\"Election Day\"). Contributors to that album included guitarist Masami Tsuchiya, bassist Mark Egan, percussionist David Van Tieghem, drummer Steve Jordan, Sting, Herbie Hancock and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. Roger Taylor was a drummer for Arcadia as well as contributing percussion to the Power Station album. According to Rhodes, the two side projects \"were commercial suicide... But we've always been good at that.\" The band regrouped to contribute \"A View to a Kill\" to the 1985 James Bond film of the same name. This single was the first Bond theme to go to number one on the US charts, and was at the time the joint highest-placed Bond theme on the UK chart where it reached number two. It was the last single the band recorded as the original five-piece for close to twenty years.\nAs a follow-up to the Christmas 1984 Band Aid single, Duran Duran performed in front of 90,000 people (and an estimated 1.5\u00a0billion TV viewers) at the Live Aid charity concert at John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 13 July 1985 while their Bond song held the top spot on the American charts. It was not intended to be a farewell performance\u2014the band planned only to take a break after four years of non-stop touring and public appearances\u2014but the original five did not play live together again until July 2003. During their Live Aid set, Le Bon inadvertently hit an off-key falsetto note in the chorus of \"A View to a Kill\", an error that was trumpeted by numerous media outlets as \"The Bum Note Heard Round the World\" (in contrast to Freddie Mercury's \"Note Heard Round the World\" at the Wembley Stadium Live Aid show). Le Bon later described the moment as the most embarrassing of his career.\n1986\u20131989: Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor trio.\nAfter releasing three studio albums and one live album in five years, each accompanied by heavy media promotion and lengthy concert tours, the band lost two of its core members to fatigue and tension in 1986. After Live Aid and Arcadia, Roger Taylor left the band and retired to the English countryside, suffering from exhaustion.\nAndy Taylor led the remaining members to believe he would return to work on a new Duran Duran album, even as he was signing a solo recording contract in Los Angeles with MCA Records, eventually releasing a solo album in 1986 called \"Thunder\". The band resorted to legal measures to get him into the studio but after numerous delays they let him go at last. He played on only a few songs on the next album, including \"A Matter of Feeling\", whilst the disagreements were being settled.\nWithout a guitarist or a drummer, Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor had producer (and former Chic guitarist) Nile Rodgers play a few tracks on guitar, and hired Steve Ferrone to play drums while they searched for replacements. In September 1986, Warren Cuccurullo (formerly of Missing Persons and Frank Zappa's band) was hired as a session guitarist. With Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor, he recorded the rest of the \"Notorious\" album, which was released in October 1986. The black-and-white documentary film \"Three to Get Ready\" chronicled the recording of the album, legal tensions, and preparations for the tour.\nAlthough the song \"Notorious\" was a US and UK top ten hit, the album was a relative failure globally, reaching number 16 in the UK and spending one week in the top 50 album chart. The band found they had lost much of the momentum and hysteria they had left behind in 1985. In the three years between the release of \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" and \"Notorious\", many of their teenage fans had grown up and the music was funkier, more mature, and less \"pop\", given the added experience of their work on Arcadia and Power Station and with other musicians. \"Skin Trade\" and \"Meet El Presidente\", the two subsequent singles, made the charts but fared poorly compared to the band's earlier successes. Finally in late 1987, Sterling Campbell was hired as a session drummer.\nSubsequently, Duran Duran struggled to escape the teen idol image and gain respect among critics with more complex music. The new serious image was not accepted at first and their popularity began to wane. \"Rolling Stone\" said, \"In their search for musical maturity, the surviving Durans have lost a good deal of their identity.\" In contrast the \"New York Times\" said, \"Duran Duran's newfound disillusionment may mark a step toward maturity...they managed to catch a trend on the upswing, perhaps \"Notorious\" suggests that for late 1980s grit and pessimism is coming into style.\" Another factor was the band's dismissal of early managers, the Berrow brothers. There was no announcement of the reasons for the decision, but disagreements over money, and the brothers' involvement in Le Bon's yachting adventures (they were co-owners of \"Drum\") were thought to have played a part. Whatever the reason, Duran Duran switched managers frequently and undertook periods of self-management in the later stages of their career. In addition, EMI fired its president and went through a major corporate restructuring that summer and seemed to have lost interest in promoting the band. According to Rhodes the band needed to break up in order to come back together stronger.\nThe next album \"Big Thing\" (1988) yielded the singles \"I Don't Want Your Love\" (number four in the US), and \"All She Wants Is\" (the last top ten hit in the UK until 1993). The record was experimental, mixing influences from house music and raves with Duran's atmospheric synth-pop and the creative guitar work of Cuccurullo (now a full band member), as well as more mature lyrics.\n1989\u20131991: Five again, \"Decade\" and \"Liberty\".\nBy the end of 1989 and at the start of the 1990s, the popularity of synth-pop was fading and losing fans to other momentum-gaining music genres at the time, such as hip hop, techno and alternative rock. After touring for the album finished, the band regained a five-man membership as Cuccurullo and Campbell were made full members of Duran Duran.\nThe compilation album \"Decade\" was released late in 1989, along with the megamix single \"Burning the Ground\", which consisted of woven snippets of the band's hits from the previous ten years, created and produced with John Jones, who began working with the band after the release of \"Big Thing\". The single came and went with little fanfare, but the album became another major seller for the band. The 1990 release \"Liberty\" (a retreat from the experimentation of \"Big Thing\") failed to capitalise on any regained momentum. The album entered the UK album chart in the top ten, but faded away quickly. The singles \"Violence of Summer (Love's Taking Over)\" and \"Serious\" were only mildly successful. For the first time, Duran Duran did not tour in support of an album, performing on only a handful of club dates and TV shows. Campbell left the band early in 1991, going on to work with Soul Asylum and David Bowie. The quartet of Le Bon, Rhodes, John Taylor and Cuccurullo would remain intact for six more years.\n1992\u20131996: Quartet line-up and a brief comeback.\nIn 1993, the band released a second self-titled album: this \"Duran Duran\" album is known as \"The Wedding Album\" (for Nick Egan's cover art featuring the wedding photos of the band members' parents) to distinguish it from the 1981 release, and was produced and recorded with John Jones. The release of this first \"comeback\" album was delayed, with then manager at Left Bank, Tommy Manzi, later telling HitQuarters that this was due to industry resistance to the revival of the band, who he said would rather focus on \"the next hip band\". Listener demand for leaked single \"Ordinary World\" forced it onto radio playlists months earlier than planned; it reached number three on the US chart and number six in the UK and won a prestigious Ivor Novello Award for song writing.\n\"Come Undone\", primarily written by Cuccurullo, with lyrics by Le Bon, made number seven in the US and number 13 in the UK. Both the band and the record label seemed to be caught by surprise by the album's critical and commercial success (number four in the UK, number seven in the US). John Taylor had been considering leaving the band but changed his mind. The band's largest tour ever, which included stops in the Middle East, the then recently de-embargoed South Africa, and South America, was halted after seven months when Le Bon suffered from strained vocal cords. After six weeks' recuperation, the band performed intermittently for another five months, including appearances in Israel, Thailand, and Indonesia.\nIn 1995, the band released the cover album \"Thank You\". Songs from \"Thank You\" included covers of Lou Reed's \"Perfect Day\" and Melle Mel's \"White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)\" (with backing vocals from the original artists). The album also marked the temporary return of former drummer Roger Taylor, who joined the band in studio to play drums on \"Watching the Detectives\" and \"Perfect Day\" (as well as a cover of \"Jeepster\" by T. Rex that did not appear on the album). In a video interview provided with the album's electronic press kit, Reed said he considered Duran Duran's version the best cover ever done of one of his songs, and they received praise from Robert Plant and Jimmy Page for their cover of Led Zeppelin's \"Thank You\".\n1997\u20132000: John Taylor's departure and second trio.\nAfter the promo tour for \"Thank You\" was completed, John Taylor co-founded the B5 Records label, recorded a solo album, founded and toured with the supergroup Neurotic Outsiders, and reunited the Power Station, though the project proceeded without him when he had to withdraw to deal with his divorce. Finally, after struggling for months to record the next album, \"Medazzaland\", in January 1997, John Taylor announced at the DuranCon fan convention that he was leaving the band \"for good\". His departure reduced the band to two long time members (Le Bon and Rhodes) and Cuccurullo, who decided to continue recording under the name Duran Duran.\nFreed from some internal writing conflicts, the band returned to the studio to rewrite and re-record many of the songs on \"Medazzaland\" (John Taylor's work remains on only four tracks). The album marked a return to the layered experimentation of \"Big Thing\", with intricate guitar textures and processed vocals. The track \"Out of My Mind\" was used as the theme song for the film \"The Saint\" (1997), but the only true single to be released in the United States was the quirky \"Electric Barbarella\", which is one of the first singles ever to be sold online. The music video for this single, featuring a sexy robot purchased and played with by band members, had to be censored before airing on MTV, but there was little of the controversy that had surrounded \"Girls on Film\". \"Electric Barbarella\" peaked at number 52 in the US in October 1997. Although \"Medazzaland\" was released in the US in October 1997, the album was never released in the UK. \"Electric Barbarella\" was later released in the UK as a single from the 1998 \"Greatest\" compilation album and peaked at number 23 on the UK chart in January 1999. The group played a set at the Princess Diana Tribute Concert on 27 June 1998 by special request of her family.\nDuran Duran parted ways with Capitol/EMI in 1999, although the label has since used Duran Duran's back catalogue to release several compilations of remixes and rare vinyl-only B-sides. The band then signed what was intended to be a three-album contract with Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records, but it lasted only through the poorly received 2000 album \"Pop Trash\". This slow-paced and heavy album seemed out-of-keeping with earlier band material. Rhodes' intricate production and Cuccurullo's songwriting and experimentation with guitar sounds and time signatures were not enough to hook the public, and the album did not perform well. The dreamy single \"Someone Else Not Me\" lasted barely two weeks on the radio, although its video was noted as the first to be produced entirely with Flash animation. While supporting \"Medazzaland\" and \"Pop Trash\", Duran Duran toured with bassist Wes Wehmiller and drummer Joe Travers.\n2001\u20132005: Reunion.\nIn 2000, Le Bon approached John Taylor with a proposal to reform Duran Duran's classic line-up. They agreed to part company with Cuccurullo after completing the \"Pop Trash\" tour. Cuccurullo then announced on his website that he was leaving Duran Duran to resume work with his 1980s band Missing Persons. This announcement was confirmed the next day by Duran Duran's website, followed a day later by the news that John, Roger and Andy had rejoined. To fulfill contractual obligations, Cuccurullo played three Duran Duran concerts in Japan in June 2001, ending his tenure in the band.\nThroughout 2001, 2002 and 2003, the band worked on writing new material, initially renting a house in Saint-Tropez where audio engineer Mark Tinley built a recording studio for their first serious writing session. They then returned to London to do some self-financed work with various producers (including old friend Nile Rodgers) and search for a new record deal. It proved difficult to find a record label willing to gamble on the band's comeback, so Duran Duran went on tour to prove the drawing power of the reunited band. The response of the fans and the media exceeded expectations. The band played a handful of 25th-anniversary dates across 2003, starting with two arena dates in Tokyo filled to capacity. Tickets sold out for each show within minutes, and celebrities turned out \"en masse\" for reunion dates. Amongst these were a number of shows at smaller venues that the band had played on both sides of the pond when they first got together in the early 1980s. In August, the band were booked as presenters at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, only to be surprised with a Lifetime Achievement Award. They also received a Lifetime Achievement award from \"Q\" magazine in October, and the equivalent Outstanding Contribution award at the BRIT Awards in February 2004.\nThe pace picked up with a sold-out tour of America, Australia and New Zealand. The band played a full concert at a private tailgate party at Super Bowl XXXVIII, their performance of \"The Wild Boys\" broadcast to millions during the pre-game show. A remix of the new track \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\" was released on many TV shows in February while magazines hailed (the modern \"Fab Five\") Duran Duran as one of the greatest bands of all time. Duran Duran then celebrated their homecoming to the UK with fourteen stadium dates in April 2004, including five sold-out nights at Wembley Arena. The British press, traditionally hostile to the band, accorded the shows some very warm reviews. Duran Duran brought along band Goldfrapp and the Scissor Sisters as alternating opening acts for this tour. The last two shows were filmed, resulting in the concert DVD \"Duran Duran: Live from London\" which was released in November.\nFinally, with more than thirty-five songs completed, the band signed a two-album contract with Epic Records in June, and completed the new album, now titled \"Astronaut\". The album was released in October 2004 and entered the UK charts at number three and the US charts at number 17. The first single was \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\", which reached number one on the \"Billboard\" US Dance chart in November and peaked at number five on the UK Singles Chart, Duran Duran's highest chart position since \"A View to a Kill\" in 1985. A second single, \"What Happens Tomorrow\", debuted at No.\u00a011 on the UK chart in February. A 5.1 mix of \"Astronaut\" was created by Jeremy Wheatley for the dual-disc release of \"Astronaut\". The CD side contains the album as-is and the DVD side contains the 5.1 mix of the album in DVD Audio format along with some DVD footage and videos.\nAfter a world tour in early 2005, Duran Duran were presented with the PRS Outstanding Contribution to British Music at the 2005 Ivor Novello Awards. Later that summer, the band headlined the massive Live 8 concert, Rome on 2 July 2005 in the Circus Maximus.\n2006\u20132008: \"Red Carpet Massacre\" and Andy Taylor's second departure.\nIn early 2006, Duran Duran covered John Lennon's song \"Instant Karma!\" for the \"Make Some Noise\" campaign sponsored by Amnesty International. Their version later appeared on \"\" as an iTunes exclusive bonus track. They also performed at two high-profile events\u00a0\u2013 the Nobel Prize Awards and the 2006 Winter Olympics. After a couple of weeks of songwriting in Northern California, the band began working with producer Michael Patterson in London, and continued intermittently for the next several months. At one point, they reported having had fifteen tracks nearly complete for an album tentatively titled \"Reportage\", but no further news emerged from the band for months afterward. In September, the band held meetings in New York City with Justin Timberlake and producer Timbaland with an eye to a potential collaboration and were soon reported to have completed three songs with the producer, including a song with Justin Timberlake.\nOn 25 October 2006, Duran Duran parted company with Andy Taylor once again. In an official announcement on their website, the band stated that an \"unworkable gulf\" had developed between them and Taylor and that \"we can no longer effectively function together\". It was noted by Andy Taylor in his book \"Wild Boy\" that tensions had arisen between the group's management and himself, and he was also diagnosed with clinical depression connected with the death of his father. Dom Brown, who had previously toured with the band, again took over guitar duties and has been performing with them since. After Taylor's departure, the band scrapped the \"Reportage\" album. They wrote and recorded a new album titled \"Red Carpet Massacre\" (2007), which included the Timbaland tracks. Dom Brown is the featured guitarist on the album.\nIn July 2007, the band performed twice at Wembley Stadium. Their first appearance at the stadium was the Concert for Diana which celebrated the life of Princess Diana almost 10 years after her death. The band performed \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\", \"The Wild Boys\" and \"Rio\". Their second appearance was at Live Earth concert, London. On 25 September, the Timberlake collaboration \"Falling Down\" was released as a download single on iTunes, and the band announced that they would play nine shows at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway to launch the \"Red Carpet Massacre\" album. The album launch was later extended to incorporate a show in London on 3 December 2007 and one in Dublin on 5 December 2007.\nIn May 2008, they toured the US leg of their 2008 world tour and were supported by the British band Your Vegas. In June 2008, they played the Louvre in Paris in a fundraising effort that contributed to the restoration of a Louis XV drawing room. Guests dined, privately viewed some of the museum's artworks, then attended a performance by the band in the I.M. Pei-designed Pyramid du Louvre. The group's performance marked a first for the 18th-century museum which had never before allowed a rock concert to occur anywhere within the grounds or buildings and another groundbreaker for Duran Duran.\nOn 2 July 2008, in Paris, Mark Ronson performed a unique live set with Duran Duran for an exclusive, invitation-only performance. Together, they showcased specially re-worked versions of some of Duran Duran's classic hits re-created by Ronson, along with tracks from \"Red Carpet Massacre\". Le Bon also performed songs from Ronson's latest album, \"Version\" (2007), as one of Ronson's featured guest vocalists. Unlike the band's previous album \"Astronaut\" (2004), \"Red Carpet Massacre\" sold poorly and received mixed responses from the music press. In 2008, \"Rio\" was included in the \"Classic Albums\" series.\n2009\u20132012: \"All You Need Is Now\".\nThe band departed from Epic Records in 2009, after releasing just two albums. In early 2010, it was revealed that the band would be contributing a cover of \"Boys Keep Swinging\" to a tribute/charity record for David Bowie called \"\" from which all profits go to War Child. Other contributing artists included Carla Bruni, Devendra Banhart, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, and Warpaint. The album was released on 14 September 2010 on Manimal Vinyl Records. A limited edition split 7-inch single with Duran Duran and Carla Bruni was also released on Manimal Vinyl in December 2010.\nOn 21 December 2010, Duran Duran's thirteenth album, titled \"All You Need Is Now\", produced by the Grammy Award-winning Mark Ronson and mixed by Spike Stent, was released exclusively on iTunes and hit the number one spot on download charts in 15 countries (including the UK). The first single from the record, title track \"All You Need Is Now\", was free to download worldwide on 8 December 2010 exclusively in iTunes. Guitarist and songwriter Dom Brown co-wrote all but two songs on the album.\nOn 25 February 2011, while in Milan, Duran Duran received a Style Icons of the 20th Century Award and a key to the city, presented by the city's mayor Letizia Moratti.\nIn March 2011 the band embarked on a world tour in support of the album. After a warm-up show in London, the tour officially began 16 March 2011 in Austin, Texas. On 23 March, the band performed live at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles as the start of the second season of \"\". The concert was directed by David Lynch and live-streamed on YouTube. The band was joined onstage by Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, Beth Ditto of Gossip, and Kelis. On 17 April 2011, Duran Duran performed at the Coachella Music Festival located at Empire Polo Grounds, in Indio, California. In May 2011, Le Bon contracted laryngitis leading to either cancellation or rescheduling of most of the European dates for the \"All You Need Is Now\" World Tour.\nOn 27 July 2012, Duran Duran headlined the London Summer Olympics 2012 Opening Ceremony celebration in Hyde Park. They represented England, along with Snow Patrol for Northern Ireland, Stereophonics for Wales, and Paolo Nutini for Scotland. At the end of August 2012, with one week left of their 18-month world tour, the band were forced to cancel the rest of the North American leg of the tour as Nick Rhodes had become ill with a viral infection.\n2013\u20132018: \"Paper Gods\".\nOn 4 March 2013, the band returned to the studio to work on their fourteenth album, and continued during the week beginning 23 September. They reconvened 13 to 18 December. On 31 December 2013, the band posted a mixtape curated by John Taylor as a New Year's \"thank you\" to their fans. On 10 February 2014, John Taylor and Roger Taylor worked with the Voce Chamber Choir and London Youth Chamber Choir on vocals for use on some Duran Duran tracks. Then former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante worked with the band on the new album.\nOn 11 September 2015, the album \"Paper Gods\" was released. The single \"Pressure Off\" was also released the same week, first via Microsoft's Xbox Music. The song subsequently appeared on Google Play Music. The album debuted at number 10 on the \"Billboard\" 200, the band's highest debut in 22 years. The album also reached number two in Italy, number four in the Netherlands, and number five in the UK. In 2016, the artist MNDR stood in for Rhodes during part of the third leg of the Paper Gods tour in the United States, while he returned to the UK in order to attend to an urgent family matter. Rhodes was quoted as saying, \"I will be back as soon as I can but know, in the meantime, that I am leaving both the band and fans in great hands, with the fabulous MNDR.\" Also, several remixes of their song \"Last Night in the City\" were released in digital form in that year.\nIn December 2016, the original five-piece lineup lost a case in the British High Court after they attempted to reclaim the U.S. copyright on their first three albums from Gloucester Place Music, part of EMI Music Publishing. Rhodes commented, \"We signed a publishing agreement as unsuspecting teenagers, over three decades ago, when just starting out and when we knew no better... if left untested, this judgment sets a very bad precedent for all songwriters of our era.\" In March 2020, Duran Duran signed with the Warner/Chappell Music publisher, covering their post-1986 catalogue. The band spent 2017 touring the American continent and playing a handful of festival dates in Europe and Asia.\n2019\u20132022: \"Future Past\" and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction.\nIn 2019, Duran Duran were working on a new album with Ronson, Erol Alkan and Giorgio Moroder handling production duties, and Graham Coxon and Lykke Li being confirmed as collaborators. Rhodes described the content and sound of a possible first single to be \"very different for us.\" Initially planned for release in 2020, the recording of the album was put on hold in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On 8 January 2021, a cover of \"Five Years\" by David Bowie was released for the fifth anniversary of his death. On 13 January 2021, \"Rolling Stone\" included the album at number 50 on their \"54 Most Anticipated Albums of 2021\" list. Le Bon said that the album is \"quite naked, raw. The grass is slightly sharp and twinkly rather than smooth,\" and is \"groovy (and) modern and very honest. The lyrics are quite something.\u201d On 18 May, the album title was announced as \"Future Past\".\nOn 19 May, the first single from the album \"Invisible\" was released along with a music video, and features Coxon as a guitarist and co-writer. On 9 July, the band premiered a second song from the album titled \"Give It All Up\" on NBC's \"Today\" show. On 5 August, Duran Duran released the album's second single \"More Joy!\", featuring further collaboration with Coxon, Erol Alkan and also Japanese rock band Chai. On 12 August, the band appeared on \"The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon\" performing \"Invisible\". On 31 August, Duran Duran released the album's third single \"Anniversary\", followed by the fourth single, \"Tonight United\", on 24 September. On 14 and 15 September, the band played two sold-out gigs at Birmingham's O2 Institute. That was the first time they played live since their last live gig in 2019. Along with their hit songs, they performed three tracks from \"Future Past\"\u2014\"Invisible\", \"Anniversary\" and \"Tonight United\". The band headlined the Isle of Wight festival on 19 September.\nOn 22 October 2021, \"Future Past\" was released. The album entered the UK Album Chart at number three, the band's highest peak since 2004's \"Astronaut\". This also earned the band the distinction of having UK Top 5 albums in each of the five decades they had been releasing music (1980s\u20132020s). On 22 January 2022, Duran Duran played on \"Austin City Limits\". In June 2022, Duran Duran performed at the Platinum Party at the Palace. In July 2022, the band returned to the city of their origin, Birmingham to headline the opening ceremony of Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games playing to a capacity Alexander Stadium.\nIn 2022, the band topped the fan vote (over 1 million preferences) for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the class of 2022, and in May of that year were announced as one of the seven inductees in the \"Performer\" category. \nOn 11 July 2022, Duran Duran headlined a concert in Hyde Park, London, to more than 80,000 adoring fans, as part of the 2022 BST concert series.\nThe ceremony at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was held on 5 November 2022, where Robert Downey Jr. inducted the band. John Taylor, Roger Taylor, Rhodes and Le Bon each attended the induction ceremony and performed \"Girls on Film\", \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Ordinary World\" along with longtime touring guitarist Dom Brown. During the acceptance speech, Simon Le Bon read from a letter written by Andy Taylor, who was absent from the ceremony, that revealed he has been privately fighting stage IV metastatic prostate cancer for the past four years and was \"massively disappointed\" he couldn't attend.\n2023\u2013present: \"Danse Macabre\".\nOn 20 March 2023, Duran Duran took to their Instagram to announce they are working on a new musical project, set for release in late 2023. The work will feature a collaboration with former band members Andy Taylor and Warren Cuccurullo. The project, \"Danse Macabre\", was released on 27 October. A Halloween-themed album, it features new songs, reworkings of older material and several covers.\nThe first single \u2013 the title track \"Danse Macabre\" \u2013 was released on 30 August 2023. The second single, \"Black Moonlight\", followed on 21 September.\nOn 13 September 2024, the band released a new reworking of their 1983 single \"New Moon on Monday\" titled \"New Moon (Dark Phase)\", ahead of a planned deluxe reissue of \"Danse Macabre\". The single features contributions from Andy Taylor.\nIn 2025, Carlo Conti announced that Duran Duran would be special guests of Sanremo Music Festival in the third night. They perform with Victoria De Angelis.\nInfluences.\nAlthough they began their career as \"a group of art school, experimental, post punk rockers,\" the band's quick rise to stardom, polished good looks and embrace of the teen press almost guaranteed disfavour from music critics. During the 1980s, Duran Duran were considered the quintessential manufactured, throw-away pop group. However, according to the \"Sunday Herald\", \"To describe them, as some have, as the first boy band, misrepresents their appeal. Their weapons were never just their looks, but self-penned songs.\" Moby said of the band in his blog in 2003: \"...\u00a0they were cursed by what we can call the 'Bee Gees' curse, which is: 'write amazing songs, sell tons of records, and consequently incur the wrath or disinterest of the rock obsessed critical establishment.'\"\nInfluences on Duran Duran included David Bowie, Roxy Music, the Beatles and the Doors; the electronic music of John Foxx's Ultravox, Kraftwerk, the Yellow Magic Orchestra and Giorgio Moroder; glam rock and American rock such as T. Rex, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and Sparks; British punk and post-punk bands such as the Clash, Sex Pistols and Siouxsie and the Banshees; and the disco/funk band Chic. Duran Duran were also influenced by contemporary synth-pop groups, with records by Japan, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and the Human League becoming fixtures in Rhodes's 1980 DJ sets at the Rum Runner club. Andy Taylor was a fan of the rock band AC/DC, \"...all these different influences were coming into the studio. Somehow, it had its own life. It became very unique in itself. It was influenced by a lot of different people\", Roger Taylor said in a 2012 interview.\nSeveral of the band's contemporaries including the Bangles, Elton John, Kylie Minogue, Paul Young and even the Monkees, have named themselves fans of the band's music. Le Bon described the group as \"the band to dance to when the bomb drops\". Successors like Barenaked Ladies, Beck, Jonathan Davis of Korn, the Bravery, Gwen Stefani and Pink have all cited Duran Duran as a key band in their formative years. Justin Timberlake is a fan of the band and presented them with the Outstanding Contribution award at the 2004 Brit Awards. The most recent crop of performers to name Duran Duran as an influence include Dido, Franz Ferdinand, Panic! at the Disco, Goldfrapp and Brandon Flowers of the Killers, who said, \"Nick Rhodes is an absolute hero of mine\u2014their records still sound fresh, which is no mean feat as far as synths are concerned.\"\nRhodes has directly lent his production techniques to Kajagoogoo's debut album \"White Feathers\" (1983) and its number one single \"Too Shy\", and to the Dandy Warhols' fourth album \"Welcome to the Monkey House\" (2003). The band's music has been used by several hip hop artists, most notably the Notorious B.I.G., who sampled Duran Duran's 1986 single \"Notorious\". Numerous bands have covered their music on record and in concert.\nVideos.\nThe MTV cable channel and the band were launched at about the same time, and each had a hand in propelling the other to greater heights. MTV needed showcase videos with charismatic performers. Les Garland, senior executive vice-president at MTV, said \"I remember our director of talent and artist relations came running in and said, \"You have got to see this video that's come in\". Duran Duran were getting zero radio airplay at the time, and MTV wanted to try to break new music. \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" was the greatest video I'd ever seen\". The band's video work was influential in several ways. First, Duran Duran filmed in exotic locales like Sri Lanka and Antigua, creating memorable images that were radically different from the then-common low budget \"band-playing-on-a-stage\" videos. Second, rather than simply playing their instruments, the band participated in mini-storylines (often taking inspiration from contemporary movies: \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" riffs on 1981's \"Raiders of the Lost Ark\", \"The Wild Boys\" on 1981's \"Mad Max 2\"), etc. While videos were already headed in this direction, Duran Duran led the trend with a style, featuring quick editing, arresting graphic design, and surreal-to-nonsensical image inserts, that drew attention from commentators and spawned a wealth of imitators.\nDuran Duran were among the first bands to have their videos shot with a professional movie camera on 35mm film, rather than on videotape, making them look superior to many of the quickly shot videos which had been MTV staples until then. MTV provided Duran Duran with access to American radio markets that were unfriendly to British music, new wave music, or \"anything with synthesisers\". Because MTV was not available everywhere in the United States at first, it was easy to see a pattern: where MTV went, listener demand for Duran Duran, Tears for Fears, Def Leppard and other European bands with interesting videos went through the roof. The band's sun-drenched videos for \"Rio\", \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Save a Prayer\", and the surreal \"Is There Something I Should Know?\" were filmed by future movie director Russell Mulcahy, who made eleven videos for the band. Duran Duran have always sought out innovative directors and techniques, even in their later years when MTV gave them little airplay. In addition to Mulcahy, they have had videos filmed by influential photographers Dean Chamberlain and Ellen von Unwerth, Chinese director Chen Kaige, documentary filmmaker Julien Temple, and the Polish Brothers, among others. According to Rhodes, \"Video is to us like stereo was to Pink Floyd.\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"The British won out here, hands down. Next to the prosaic, foursquare appearance of the American bands, such acts as Duran Duran seemed like caviar. MTV opened up a whole new world that could not be fully apprehended over the radio. The visual angle played to the arty conceits of Britain's young style barons, suggesting something more exotic than the viewer was likely to find in the old hometown. The big Duran Duran hits, \"Girls on Film\" and \"Hungry Like the Wolf\", were MTV favorites three months before radio began to pick up on them. And via MTV, Duran Duran and their like have engendered an outpouring of good old-fashioned hysteria among teenage girls.\"\nIn 1984, Duran Duran introduced video technology into their live stadium shows by being among the first acts to provide video screens above the stage. They have recorded concerts using IMAX and 360-degree panoramic \"immersive video\" cameras, with 10.2 channel audio. In 2000, they experimented with augmented reality technology, which allowed three-dimensional computer-generated images to appear on stage with the band. They appeared on several century-end video countdowns: The MTV \"100 Greatest Videos Ever Made\" featured \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" at No.\u00a011 and \"Girls on Film\" at No.\u00a068, and the \"VH1: 100 Greatest Videos\" listed \"Hungry\" at No.\u00a031 and \"Rio\" at No.\u00a060. MTV named \"Hungry\" the 15th of their most played videos of all time.\nThe band has released several video compilations, starting with the self-titled \"video album\" \"Duran Duran\" (1983), for which they won a Grammy Award, up to the 2004 two-disc DVD release \"Greatest\", which included alternative versions of several popular videos as Easter eggs. In addition to \"Greatest\", the documentary \"Sing Blue Silver\", and the concert film \"Arena\" (both from 1984) were released on DVD in 2004. \"Live from London\", a concert video from one of their sold-out 2004 reunion shows at Wembley Arena, was released in the fall of 2005.\nOther video collections, concert films, and documentaries remain available only on videotape, and Duran Duran have not yet released a collection which includes all their videos. The band has said that a huge amount of unreleased concert and documentary footage has been filmed over the years, which they hope can be edited and released in some form in the near future. The video for \"Falling Down\" was released in October 2007. The Nick Egan-directed video for the lead single and title track from \"All You Need Is Now\" was premiered via Yahoo Music on 20 December 2010. The second video from \"All You Need Is Now\", \"Girl Panic\", was released on 8 November 2011. It features some of the world's most famous supermodels, such as Yasmin Le Bon, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Eva Herzigov\u00e1 and Helena Christensen, playing the band. The video was directed by Jonas Akerlund, and during the filming, an editorial was made for \"Harper's Bazaar\" magazine.\nVisual style.\nFrom the beginning of their career, all the members had a keen sense of visual style. They worked with stylist Perry Haines and fashion designers such as Kahn & Bell and Antony Price to build a sharp and elegant image, soon outgrowing the ruffles and sashes of the pirate-flavoured early New Romantic look that had been popularised by Adam Ant during 1980\u201381. They have continued to present fashion as part of their package throughout their career. In the 1990s they worked with Vivienne Westwood and in the 2000s with Giorgio Armani. The band retained creative control of their visual presentation having worked closely with graphic designer Malcolm Garrett and many others over the years to create album covers, tour programs and other materials.\nTeen and music magazines in the UK latched onto their good looks quickly, and the USA soon followed. It was a rare month in the early 1980s when there was not at least one picture of the band members in teen magazines such as \"Smash Hits\" or \"Tiger Beat\". John Taylor once remarked that the band was \"like a box of Quality Street [chocolates]; everyone is someone's favourite\" Duran Duran later came to regret this early pin-up exposure, but at the time it helped attract national attention. In an interview with \"Rock Fever Superstars\" magazine in early 1988, John Taylor stated:\nWe used to be a very chi-chi name to drop in '79, but then the Fab Five hype started and something went wrong. Something went really wrong. That wasn't what I wanted. [...] Not that I didn't like being screamed at. At one point I really did\".\nDiscography.\nStudio albums\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nTours.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nExplanatory notes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["1819340", "148703"], "permutation_1": ["148703", "1819340"], "permutation_2": ["148703", "1819340"], "permutation_3": ["1819340", "148703"]}
{"id": "2hop__10833_26501", "docs_added": {"4745": "Black people\nRacialized classification of people\nBlack is a racialized classification of people, usually a political and skin color-based category for specific populations with a mid- to dark brown complexion. Not all people considered \"black\" have dark skin; in certain countries, often in socially based systems of racial classification in the Western world, the term \"black\" is used to describe persons who are perceived as dark-skinned compared to other populations. It is most commonly used for people of sub-Saharan African ancestry, Indigenous Australians and Melanesians, though it has been applied in many contexts to other groups, and is no indicator of any close ancestral relationship whatsoever. Indigenous African societies do not use the term \"black\" as a racial identity outside of influences brought by Western cultures.\nContemporary anthropologists and other scientists, while recognizing the reality of biological variation between different human populations, regard the concept of a unified, distinguishable \"Black race\" as socially constructed. Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified \"black\", and these social constructs have changed over time. In a number of countries, societal variables affect classification as much as skin color, and the social criteria for \"blackness\" vary. Some perceive the term 'black' as a derogatory, outdated, reductive or otherwise unrepresentative label, and as a result neither use nor define it, especially in African countries with little to no history of colonial racial segregation.\nIn the anglosphere the term can carry a variety of meanings depending on the country. In the United Kingdom, \"black\" was historically equivalent with \"person of color\", a general term for non-European peoples. While the term \"person of color\" is commonly used and accepted in the United States, the near-sounding term \"colored person\" is considered highly offensive, except in South Africa, where it is a descriptor for a person of mixed race. In other regions such as Australasia, settlers applied the adjective \"black\" to the indigenous population. It was universally regarded as highly offensive in Australia until the 1960s and 70s. \"Black\" was generally not used as a noun, but rather as an adjective qualifying some other descriptor (e.g. \"black ****\"). As desegregation progressed after the 1967 referendum, some Aboriginals adopted the term, following the American fashion, but it remains problematic.\nSeveral American style guides, including the \"AP Stylebook\", changed their guides to capitalize the 'b' in 'black', following the 2020 murder of George Floyd, an African American. The \"ASA Style Guide\" says that the 'b' should not be capitalized.\nAfrica.\nNorthern Africa.\nNumerous communities of dark-skinned peoples are present in North Africa, some dating from prehistoric communities. Others descend from migrants via the historical trans-Saharan trade or, after the Arab invasions of North Africa in the 7th century, from slaves from the trans-Saharan slave trade in North Africa.\nIn the 18th century, the Moroccan Sultan Moulay Ismail \"the Warrior King\" (1672\u20131727) raised a corps of 150,000 black soldiers, called his Black Guard.\nAccording to Carlos Moore, resident scholar at Brazil's University of the State of Bahia, in the 21st century Afro-multiracials in the Arab world, including Arabs in North Africa, self-identify in ways that resemble multi-racials in Latin America. He claims that darker-toned Arabs, much like darker-toned Latin Americans, consider themselves white because they have some distant white ancestry.\nEgyptian President Anwar Sadat had a mother who was a dark-skinned Nubian Sudanese (Sudanese Arab) woman and a father who was a lighter-skinned Egyptian. In response to an advertisement for an acting position, as a young man he said, \"I am not white but I am not exactly black either. My blackness is tending to reddish\".\nDue to the patriarchal nature of Arab society, Arab men, including during the slave trade in North Africa, enslaved more African women than men. The female slaves were often put to work in domestic service and agriculture. The men interpreted the Quran to permit sexual relations between a male master and his enslaved females outside of marriage (see Ma malakat aymanukum and sex), leading to many mixed-race children. When an enslaved woman became pregnant with her Arab master's child, she was considered as \"umm walad\" or \"mother of a child\", a status that granted her privileged rights. The child was given rights of inheritance to the father's property, so mixed-race children could share in any wealth of the father. Because the society was patrilineal, the children inherited their fathers' social status at birth and were born free.\nSome mixed-race children succeeded their respective fathers as rulers, such as Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur, who ruled Morocco from 1578 to 1608. He was not technically considered as a mixed-race child of a slave; his mother was Fulani and a concubine of his father.\nIn early 1991, non-Arabs of the Zaghawa people of Sudan attested that they were victims of an intensifying Arab apartheid campaign, segregating Arabs and non-Arabs (specifically, people of Nilotic ancestry). Sudanese Arabs, who controlled the government, were widely referred to as practicing apartheid against Sudan's non-Arab citizens. The government was accused of \"deftly manipulating Arab solidarity\" to carry out policies of apartheid and ethnic cleansing.\nSudanese Arabs are also black people in that they are culturally and linguistically Arabized indigenous peoples of Sudan of mostly Nilo-Saharan, Nubian, and Cushitic ancestry; their skin tone and appearance resembles that of other black people.\nAmerican University economist George Ayittey accused the Arab government of Sudan of practicing acts of racism against black citizens. According to Ayittey, \"In Sudan... the Arabs monopolized power and excluded blacks \u2013 Arab apartheid.\" Many African commentators joined Ayittey in accusing Sudan of practicing Arab apartheid.\nSahara.\nIn the Sahara, the native Tuareg Berber populations kept \"negro\" slaves. Most of these captives were of Nilo-Saharan extraction, and were either purchased by the Tuareg nobles from slave markets in the Western Sudan or taken during raids. Their origin is denoted via the Ahaggar Berber word \"Ibenheren\" (sing. \"\u00c9benher\"), which alludes to slaves that only spoke a Nilo-Saharan language. These slaves were also sometimes known by the borrowed Songhay term \"Bella\".\nSimilarly, the Sahrawi indigenous peoples of the Western Sahara observed a class system consisting of high castes and low castes. Outside of these traditional tribal boundaries were \"Negro\" slaves, who were drawn from the surrounding areas.\nNorth-Eastern Africa.\nIn Ethiopia and Somalia, the slave classes mainly consisted of captured peoples from the Sudanese-Ethiopian and Kenyan-Somali international borders or other surrounding areas of Nilotic and Bantu peoples who were collectively known as \"Shanqella\" and \"Adone\" (both analogues to \"negro\" in an English-speaking context). Some of these slaves were captured during territorial conflicts in the Horn of Africa and then sold off to slave merchants. The earliest representation of this tradition dates from a seventh or eighth century BC inscription belonging to the Kingdom of Damat.\nThese captives and others of analogous morphology were distinguished as \"tsalim barya\" (dark-skinned slave) in contrast with the Afroasiatic-speaking nobles or \"saba qayh\" (\"red men\") or light-skinned slave; while on the other hand, western racial category standards do not differentiate between \"saba qayh\" (\"red men\"\u2014light-skinned) or \"saba tiqur\" (\"black men\"\u2014dark-skinned) Horn Africans (of either Afroasiatic-speaking, Nilotic-speaking or Bantu origin) thus considering all of them as \"black people\" (and in some case \"negro\") according to Western society's notion of race.\nSouthern Africa.\nIn South Africa, the period of colonisation resulted in many unions and marriages between European and Africans (Bantu peoples of South Africa and Khoisans) from various tribes, resulting in mixed-race children. As the European colonialists acquired control of territory, they generally pushed the mixed-race and African populations into second-class status. During the first half of the 20th century, the white-dominated government classified the population according to four main racial groups: \"Black\", \"White\", \"Asian\" (mostly Indian), and \"Coloured\". The Coloured group included people of mixed Bantu, Khoisan, and European ancestry (with some Malay ancestry, especially in the Western Cape). The Coloured definition occupied an intermediary political position between the Black and White definitions in South Africa. It imposed a system of legal racial segregation, a complex of laws known as apartheid.\nThe apartheid bureaucracy devised complex (and often arbitrary) criteria in the Population Registration Act of 1945 to determine who belonged in which group. Minor officials administered tests to enforce the classifications. When it was unclear from a person's physical appearance whether the individual should be considered Coloured or Black, the \"pencil test\" was used. A pencil was inserted into a person's hair to determine if the hair was kinky enough to hold the pencil, rather than having it pass through, as it would with smoother hair. If so, the person was classified as Black. Such classifications sometimes divided families.\nSandra Laing is a South African woman who was classified as Coloured by authorities during the apartheid era, due to her skin colour and hair texture, although her parents could prove at least three generations of European ancestors. At age 10, she was expelled from her all-white school. The officials' decisions based on her anomalous appearance disrupted her family and adult life. She was the subject of the 2008 biographical dramatic film \"Skin\", which won numerous awards. During the apartheid era, those classed as \"Coloured\" were oppressed and discriminated against. But, they had limited rights and overall had slightly better socioeconomic conditions than those classed as \"Black\". The government required that Blacks and Coloureds live in areas separate from Whites, creating large townships located away from the cities as areas for Blacks.\nIn the post-apartheid era, the Constitution of South Africa has declared the country to be a \"Non-racial democracy\". In an effort to redress past injustices, the ANC government has introduced laws in support of affirmative action policies for Blacks; under these they define \"Black\" people to include \"Africans\", \"Coloureds\" and \"Asians\". Some affirmative action policies favor \"Africans\" over \"Coloureds\" in terms of qualifying for certain benefits. Some South Africans categorized as \"African Black\" say that \"Coloureds\" did not suffer as much as they did during apartheid. \"Coloured\" South Africans are known to discuss their dilemma by saying, \"we were not white enough under apartheid, and we are not black enough under the ANC (African National Congress)\".\nIn 2008, the High Court in South Africa ruled that Chinese South Africans who were residents during the apartheid era (and their descendants) are to be reclassified as \"Black people\", solely for the purposes of accessing affirmative action benefits, because they were also \"disadvantaged\" by racial discrimination. Chinese people who arrived in the country after the end of apartheid do not qualify for such benefits.\nOther than by appearance, \"Coloureds\" can usually be distinguished from \"Blacks\" by language. Most speak Afrikaans or English as a first language, as opposed to Bantu languages such as Zulu or Xhosa. They also tend to have more European-sounding names than Bantu names.\nAsia.\nAfro-Asians.\n\"Afro-Asians\" or \"African-Asians\" are persons of mixed sub-Saharan African and Asian ancestry. In the United States, they are also called \"black Asians\" or \"Blasians\". Historically, Afro-Asian populations have been marginalized as a result of human migration and social conflict.\nWestern Asia.\nArab world.\nIn the medieval Arab world, the ethnic designation of \"Black\" encompassed not only Zanj, or Africans, but also communities like Zutt, Sindis and Indians from the Indian subcontinent. Historians estimate that between the advent of Islam in 650 CE and the abolition of slavery in the Arabian Peninsula in the mid-20th century, 10 to 18 million black Africans (known as the Zanj) were enslaved by east African slave traders and transported to the Arabian Peninsula and neighboring countries. This number far exceeded the number of slaves who were taken to the Americas. Slavery in Saudi Arabia and slavery in Yemen was abolished in 1962, slavery in Dubai in 1963, and slavery in Oman in 1970.\nSeveral factors affected the visibility of descendants of this diaspora in 21st-century Arab societies: The traders shipped more female slaves than males, as there was a demand for them to serve as concubines in harems in the Arabian Peninsula and neighboring countries. Male slaves were castrated in order to serve as harem guards. The death toll of black African slaves from forced labor was high. The mixed-race children of female slaves and Arab owners were assimilated into the Arab owners' families under the patrilineal kinship system. As a result, few distinctive Afro-Arab communities have survived in the Arabian Peninsula and neighboring countries.\nDistinctive and self-identified black communities have been reported in countries such as Iraq, with a reported 1.2 million black people (Afro-Iraqis), and they attest to a history of discrimination. These descendants of the Zanj have sought minority status from the government, which would reserve some seats in Parliament for representatives of their population. According to Alamin M. Mazrui et al., generally in the Arabian Peninsula and neighboring countries, most of these communities identify as both black and Arab.\nIran.\nAfro-Iranians are people of black African ancestry residing in Iran. During the Qajar dynasty, many wealthy households imported black African women and children as slaves to perform domestic work. This slave labor was drawn exclusively from the Zanj, who were Bantu-speaking peoples that lived along the African Great Lakes, in an area roughly comprising modern-day Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi.\nIsrael.\nAbout 150,000 East African and black people live in Israel, amounting to just over 2% of the nation's population. The vast majority of these, some 120,000, are Beta Israel, most of whom are recent immigrants who came during the 1980s and 1990s from Ethiopia. In addition, Israel is home to more than 5,000 members of the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem movement that are ancestry of African Americans who emigrated to Israel in the 20th century, and who reside mainly in a distinct neighborhood in the Negev town of Dimona. Unknown numbers of black converts to Judaism reside in Israel, most of them converts from the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.\nAdditionally, there are around 60,000 non-Jewish African immigrants in Israel, some of whom have sought asylum. Most of the migrants are from communities in Sudan and Eritrea, particularly the Niger-Congo-speaking Nuba groups of the southern Nuba Mountains; some are illegal immigrants.\nTurkey.\nBeginning several centuries ago, during the period of the Ottoman Empire, tens of thousands of Zanj captives were brought by slave traders to plantations and agricultural areas situated between Antalya and Istanbul, which gave rise to the Afro-Turk population in present-day Turkey. Some of their ancestry remained \"in situ\", and many migrated to larger cities and towns. Other black slaves were transported to Crete, from where they or their descendants later reached the \u0130zmir area through the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923, or indirectly from Ayval\u0131k in pursuit of work.\nApart from the historical Afro-Turk presence Turkey also hosts a sizeable immigrant black population since the end of the 1990s. The community is composed mostly of modern immigrants from Ghana, Ethiopia, DRC, Sudan, Nigeria, Kenya, Eritrea, Somalia and Senegal. According to official figures 1.5 million Africans live in Turkey and around 25% of them are located in Istanbul. Other studies state the majority of Africans in Turkey lives in Istanbul and report Tarlaba\u015f\u0131, Dolapdere, Kumkap\u0131, Yenikap\u0131 and Kurtulu\u015f as having a strong African presence.\nMost of the African immigrants in Turkey come to Turkey to further migrate to Europe. Immigrants from Eastern Africa are usually refugees, meanwhile Western and Central African immigration is reported to be economically driven. It is reported that African immigrants in Turkey regularly face economic and social challenges, notably racism and opposition to immigration by locals.\nSouthern Asia.\nThe Siddi are an ethnic group inhabiting India and Pakistan. Members are descended from the Bantu peoples of Southeast Africa. Some were merchants, sailors, indentured servants, slaves or mercenaries. The Siddi population is currently estimated at 270,000\u2013350,000 individuals, living mostly in Karnataka, Gujarat, and Hyderabad in India and Makran and Karachi in Pakistan. In the Makran strip of the Sindh and Balochistan provinces in southwestern Pakistan, these Bantu descendants are known as the Makrani. There was a brief \"Black Power\" movement in Sindh in the 1960s and many Siddi are proud of and celebrate their African ancestry.\nSoutheastern Asia.\nNegritos, are a collection of various, often unrelated peoples, who were once considered a single distinct population of closely related groups, but genetic studies showed that they descended from the same ancient East Eurasian meta-population which gave rise to modern East Asian peoples, and consist of several separate groups, as well as displaying genetic heterogeneity. They inhabit isolated parts of Southeast Asia, and are now confined primarily to Southern Thailand, the Malay Peninsula, and the Andaman Islands of India.\nNegrito means \"little black people\" in Spanish (negrito is the Spanish diminutive of negro, i.e., \"little black person\"); it is what the Spaniards called the aborigines that they encountered in the Philippines. The term \"Negrito\" itself has come under criticism in countries like Malaysia, where it is now interchangeable with the more acceptable Semang, although this term actually refers to a specific group.\nThey have dark skin, often curly-hair and Asiatic facial characteristics, and are stockily built.\nNegritos in the Philippines frequently face discrimination. Because of their traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle, they are marginalized and live in poverty, unable to find employment.\nEurope.\nWestern Europe.\nFrance.\nWhile census collection of ethnic background is illegal in France, it is estimated that there are about 2.5\u00a0\u2013 5 million black people residing there.\nGermany.\nAs of 2020, there are approximately one million black people living in Germany.\nNetherlands.\nAfro-Dutch are residents of the Netherlands who are of Black African or Afro-Caribbean ancestry. They tend to be from the former and present Dutch overseas territories of Aruba, Bonaire, Cura\u00e7ao, Sint Maarten and Suriname. The Netherlands also has sizable Cape Verdean and other African communities.\nPortugal.\nAs of 2021, there were at least 232,000 people of recent Black-African immigrant background living in Portugal. They mainly live in the regions of Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra. As Portugal doesn't collect information dealing with ethnicity, the estimate includes only people that, as of 2021, hold the citizenship of a Sub Saharan African country or people who have acquired Portuguese citizenship from 2008 to 2021, thus excluding descendants, people of more distant African ancestry or people who have settled in Portugal generations ago and are now Portuguese citizens.\nSpain.\nThe term \"Moors\" has been used in Europe in a broader, somewhat derogatory sense to refer to Muslims, especially those of Arab or Berber ancestry, whether living in North Africa or Iberia. Moors were not a distinct or self-defined people. Medieval and early modern Europeans applied the name to Muslim Arabs, Berbers, Sub-Saharan Africans and Europeans alike.\nIsidore of Seville, writing in the 7th century, claimed that the Latin word Maurus was derived from the Greek \"mauron\", \u03bc\u03b1\u03cd\u03c1\u03bf\u03bd, which is the Greek word for \"black\". Indeed, by the time Isidore of Seville came to write his \"Etymologies\", the word Maurus or \"Moor\" had become an adjective in Latin, \"for the Greeks call black, mauron\". \"In Isidore's day, Moors were black by definition...\"\nAfro-Spaniards are Spanish nationals of West/Central African ancestry. Today, they mainly come from Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Gambia, Mali, Nigeria and Senegal. Additionally, many Afro-Spaniards born in Spain are from the former Spanish colony Equatorial Guinea. Today, there are an estimated 683,000 Afro-Spaniards in Spain.\nUnited Kingdom.\nAccording to the Office for National Statistics, at the 2001 census there were more than a million black people in the United Kingdom; 1% of the total population described themselves as \"Black Caribbean\", 0.8% as \"Black African\", and 0.2% as \"Black other\". Britain encouraged the immigration of workers from the Caribbean after World War II; the first symbolic movement was of those who came on the ship the \"Empire Windrush\" and, hence, those who migrated between 1948 and 1970 are known as the Windrush generation. The preferred official umbrella term is \"black, Asian and minority ethnic\" (BAME), but sometimes the term \"black\" is used on its own, to express unified opposition to racism, as in the Southall Black Sisters, which started with a mainly British Asian constituency, and the National Black Police Association, which has a membership of \"African, African-Caribbean and Asian origin\".\nEastern Europe.\nAs African states became independent in the 1960s, the Soviet Union offered many of their citizens the chance to study in Russia. Over a period of 40 years, about 400,000 African students from various countries moved to Russia to pursue higher studies, including many black Africans. This extended beyond the Soviet Union to many countries of the Eastern bloc.\nBalkans.\nDue to the slave trade in the Ottoman Empire that had flourished in the Balkans, the coastal town of Ulcinj in Montenegro had its own black community. In 1878, that community consisted of about 100 people.\nOceania.\nIndigenous Australians.\nIndigenous Australians have been referred to as \"black people\" in Australia since the early days of European settlement. While originally related to skin colour, the term is used today to indicate Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander ancestry in general and can refer to people of any skin pigmentation.\nBeing identified as either \"black\" or \"white\" in Australia during the 19th and early 20th centuries was critical in one's employment and social prospects. Various state-based Aboriginal Protection Boards were established which had virtually complete control over the lives of Indigenous Australians \u2013 where they lived, their employment, marriage, education and included the power to separate children from their parents. Aborigines were not allowed to vote and were often confined to reserves and forced into low paid or effectively slave labour. The social position of mixed-race or \"half-caste\" individuals varied over time. A 1913 report by Baldwin Spencer states that:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />the half-castes belong neither to the aboriginal nor to the whites, yet, on the whole, they have more leaning towards the former; ... One thing is certain and that is that the white population as a whole will never mix with half-castes... the best and kindest thing is to place them on reserves along with the natives, train them in the same schools and encourage them to marry amongst themselves.\nAfter the First World War, however, it became apparent that the number of mixed-race people was growing at a faster rate than the white population, and, by 1930, fear of the \"half-caste menace\" undermining the White Australia ideal from within was being taken as a serious concern. Cecil Cook, the Northern Territory Protector of Natives, noted that:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />generally by the fifth and invariably by the sixth generation, all native characteristics of the Australian Aborigine are eradicated. The problem of our half-castes will quickly be eliminated by the complete disappearance of the black race, and the swift submergence of their progeny in the white.\nThe official policy became one of biological and cultural assimilation: \"Eliminate the full-blood and permit the white admixture to half-castes and eventually the race will become white\". This led to different treatment for \"black\" and \"half-caste\" individuals, with lighter-skinned individuals targeted for removal from their families to be raised as \"white\" people and prohibited from speaking their native language and practicing traditional customs, a process now known as the Stolen Generation.\nThe second half of the 20th century to the present has seen a gradual shift towards improved human rights for Aboriginal people. In a 1967 referendum, more than 90% of the Australian population voted to end constitutional discrimination and to include Aborigines in the national census. During this period, many Aboriginal activists began to embrace the term \"black\" and use their ancestry as a source of pride. Activist Bob Maza said:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I only hope that when I die I can say I'm black and it's beautiful to be black. It is this sense of pride which we are trying to give back to the aborigine [\"sic\"] today.\nIn 1978, Aboriginal writer Kevin Gilbert received the National Book Council award for his book \"Living Black: Blacks Talk to Kevin Gilbert\", a collection of Aboriginal people's stories, and in 1998 was awarded (but refused to accept) the Human Rights Award for Literature for \"Inside Black Australia\", a poetry anthology and exhibition of Aboriginal photography. In contrast to previous definitions based solely on the degree of Aboriginal ancestry, the Government changed the legal definition of Aboriginal in 1990 to include any:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />person of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent who identifies as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander and is accepted as such by the community in which he [or she] lives\nThis nationwide acceptance and recognition of Aboriginal people led to a significant increase in the number of people self-identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. The reappropriation of the term \"black\" with a positive and more inclusive meaning has resulted in its widespread use in mainstream Australian culture, including public media outlets, government agencies, and private companies. In 2012, a number of high-profile cases highlighted the legal and community attitude that identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander is not dependent on skin color, with a well-known boxer Anthony Mundine being widely criticized for questioning the \"blackness\" of another boxer and journalist Andrew Bolt being successfully sued for publishing discriminatory comments about Aboriginals with light skin.\nMelanesians.\nThe region of Melanesia is named from Greek , \"black\", and , \"island\", etymologically meaning \"islands of black [people]\", in reference to the dark skin of the indigenous peoples. Early European settlers, such as Spanish explorer Y\u00f1igo Ortiz de Retez, noted the resemblance of the people to those in Africa.\nMelanesians, along with other Pacific Islanders, were frequently deceived or coerced during the 19th and 20th centuries into forced labour for sugarcane, cotton, and coffee planters in countries distant to their native lands in a practice known as blackbirding. In Queensland, some 55,000 to 62,500 were brought from the New Hebrides, the Solomon Islands, and New Guinea to work in sugarcane fields. Under the Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901, most islanders working in Queensland were repatriated back to their homelands. \nThose who remained in Australia, commonly called South Sea Islanders, often faced discrimination similarly to Indigenous Australians by white-dominated society. Many indigenous rights activists have South Sea Islander ancestry, including Faith Bandler, Evelyn Scott and Bonita Mabo.\nMany Melanesians have taken up the term 'Melanesia' as a way to empower themselves as a collective people. Stephanie Lawson writes that the term \"moved from a term of denigration to one of affirmation, providing a positive basis for contemporary subregional identity as well as a formal organisation\". For instance, the term is used in the Melanesian Spearhead Group, which seeks to promote economic growth among Melanesian countries.\nOther.\nJohn Caesar, nicknamed \"Black Caesar\", a convict and bushranger with parents born in an unknown area in Africa, was one of the first people of recent black African ancestry to arrive in Australia.\nAt the 2006 Census, 248,605 residents declared that they were born in Africa. This figure pertains to all immigrants to Australia who were born in nations in Africa regardless of race, and includes white Africans.\nNorth America.\nCanada.\n\"Black Canadians\" is a designation used for people of black African ancestry who are citizens or permanent residents of Canada. The majority of black Canadians are of Caribbean origin, though the population also consists of African American immigrants and their descendants (including black Nova Scotians), as well as many African immigrants.\nBlack Canadians often draw a distinction between those of Afro-Caribbean ancestry and those of other African roots. The term \"African Canadian\" is occasionally used by some black Canadians who trace their heritage to the first slaves brought by British and French colonists to the North American mainland. Promised freedom by the British during the American Revolutionary War, thousands of Black Loyalists were resettled by the Crown in Canada afterward, such as Thomas Peters. In addition, an estimated ten to thirty thousand fugitive slaves reached freedom in Canada from the Southern United States during the Antebellum years, aided by people along the Underground Railroad.\nMany black people of Caribbean origin in Canada reject the term \"African Canadian\" as an elision of the uniquely Caribbean aspects of their heritage, and instead identify as \"Caribbean Canadian\". Unlike in the United States, where \"African American\" has become a widely used term, in Canada controversies associated with distinguishing African or Caribbean heritage have resulted in the term \"black Canadian\" being widely accepted there.\nUnited States.\nThere were eight principal areas used by Europeans to buy and ship slaves to the Western Hemisphere. The number of enslaved people sold to the New World varied throughout the slave trade. As for the distribution of slaves from regions of activity, certain areas produced far more enslaved people than others. Between 1650 and 1900, 10.24 million enslaved West Africans arrived in the Americas from the following regions in the following proportions:\nBy the early 1900s, \"nigger\" had become a pejorative word in the United States. In its stead, the term \"colored\" became the mainstream alternative to \"negro\" and its derived terms. After the American Civil Rights Movement, the terms \"colored\" and \"negro\" gave way to \"black\". \"Negro\" had superseded \"colored\" as the most polite word for African Americans at a time when \"black\" was considered more offensive. This term was accepted as normal, including by people classified as Negroes, until the later Civil Rights movement in the late 1960s. One well-known example is the use by Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. of \"Negro\" in his famous speech of 1963, I Have a Dream. During the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, some African-American leaders in the United States, notably Malcolm X, objected to the word \"Negro\" because they associated it with the long history of slavery, segregation, and discrimination that treated African Americans as second-class citizens, or worse. Malcolm X preferred \"Black\" to \"Negro\", but later gradually abandoned that as well for \"Afro-American\" after leaving the Nation of Islam.\nSince the late 1960s, various other terms for African Americans have been more widespread in popular usage. Aside from \"black American\", these include \"Afro-American\" (in use from the late 1960s to 1990) and \"African American\" (used in the United States to refer to Black Americans, people often referred to in the past as \"American Negroes\").\nIn the first 200 years that black people were in the United States, they primarily identified themselves by their specific ethnic group (closely allied to language) and not by skin color. Individuals identified themselves, for example, as Ashanti, Igbo, Bakongo, or Wolof. However, when the first captives were brought to the Americas, they were often combined with other groups from West Africa, and individual ethnic affiliations were not generally acknowledged by English colonists. In areas of the Upper South, different ethnic groups were brought together. This is significant as the captives came from a vast geographic region: the West African coastline stretching from Senegal to Angola and in some cases from the south-east coast such as Mozambique. A new \"African-American\" identity and culture was born that incorporated elements of the various ethnic groups and of European cultural heritage, resulting in fusions such as the Black church and African-American English. This new identity was based on provenance and slave status rather than membership in any one ethnic group.\nBy contrast, slave records from Louisiana show that the French and Spanish colonists recorded more complete identities of the West Africans, including ethnicities and given tribal names.\nThe U.S. racial or ethnic classification \"black\" refers to people with all possible kinds of skin pigmentation, from the darkest through to the very lightest skin colors, including albinos, if they are believed by others to have African ancestry (in any discernible percentage). There are also certain cultural traits associated with being \"African American\", a term used effectively as a synonym for \"black person\" within the United States.\nIn March 1807, Great Britain, which largely controlled the Atlantic, declared the transatlantic slave trade illegal, as did the United States. (The latter prohibition took effect 1 January 1808, the earliest date on which Congress had the power to do so after protecting the slave trade under of the United States Constitution.)\nBy that time, the majority of black people in the United States were native-born, so the use of the term \"African\" became problematic. Though initially a source of pride, many blacks feared that the use of African as an identity would be a hindrance to their fight for full citizenship in the United States. They also felt that it would give ammunition to those who were advocating repatriating black people back to Africa. In 1835, black leaders called upon Black Americans to remove the title of \"African\" from their institutions and replace it with \"Negro\" or \"Colored American\". A few institutions chose to keep their historic names, such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church. African Americans popularly used the terms \"Negro\" or \"colored\" for themselves until the late 1960s.\nThe term \"black\" was used throughout but not frequently since it carried a certain stigma. In his 1963 \"I Have a Dream\" speech, Martin Luther King Jr. uses the terms \"negro\" fifteen times and \"black\" four times. Each time that he uses \"black\", it is in parallel construction with \"white\"; for example, \"black men and white men\".\nWith the successes of the American Civil Rights Movement, a new term was needed to break from the past and help shed the reminders of legalized discrimination. In place of \"Negro\", activists promoted the use of \"black\" as standing for racial pride, militancy, and power. Some of the turning points included the use of the term \"Black Power\" by Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) and the popular singer James Brown's song \"Say It Loud \u2013 I'm Black and I'm Proud\".\nIn 1988, the civil rights leader Jesse Jackson urged Americans to use instead the term \"African American\" because it had a historical cultural base and was a construction similar to terms used by European descendants, such as German American, Italian American, etc. Since then, African American and black have often had parallel status. However, controversy continues over which, if any, of the two terms is more appropriate. Maulana Karenga argues that the term African-American is more appropriate because it accurately articulates their geographical and historical origin. Others have argued that \"black\" is a better term because \"African\" suggests foreignness, although black Americans helped found the United States. Still others believe that the term \"black\" is inaccurate because African Americans have a variety of skin tones. Some surveys suggest that the majority of Black Americans have no preference for \"African American\" or \"black\", although they have a slight preference for \"black\" in personal settings and \"African American\" in more formal settings.\nIn the U.S. census race definitions, black and African Americans are citizens and residents of the United States with origins in the black racial groups of Africa. According to the Office of Management and Budget, the grouping includes individuals who self-identify as African American, as well as persons who emigrated from nations in the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa. The grouping is thus based on geography, and may contradict or misrepresent an individual's self-identification, since not all immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa are \"black\". The Census Bureau also notes that these classifications are socio-political constructs and should not be interpreted as scientific or anthropological.\nAccording to U.S. Census Bureau data, African immigrants generally do not self-identify as African American. The overwhelming majority of African immigrants identify instead with their own respective ethnicities (~95%). Immigrants from some Caribbean, Central American and South American nations and their descendants may or may not also self-identify with the term.\nRecent surveys of African Americans using a genetic testing service have found varied ancestries that show different tendencies by region and sex of ancestors. These studies found that on average, African Americans have 73.2\u201380.9% West African, 18\u201324% European, and 0.8\u20130.9% Native American genetic heritage, with large variation between individuals.\nAccording to studies in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, U.S. residents consistently overestimate the size, physical strength, and formidability of young black men.\nNew Great Migration.\nThe New Great Migration is not evenly distributed throughout the South. As with the earlier Great Migration, the New Great Migration is primarily directed toward cities and large urban areas, such as Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Dallas, Raleigh, Washington, D.C., Tampa, Virginia Beach, San Antonio, Memphis, Orlando, Nashville, Jacksonville, and so forth. North Carolina's Charlotte metro area in particular, is a hot spot for African American migrants in the US. Between 1975 and 1980, Charlotte saw a net gain of 2,725 African Americans in the area. This number continued to rise as between 1985 and 1990 as the area had a net gain of 7,497 African Americans, and from 1995 to 2000 the net gain was 23,313 African Americans. \nThis rise in net gain points to Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, and Houston being a growing hot spots for the migrants of The New Great Migration. The percentage of Black Americans who live in the South has been increasing since 1990, and the biggest gains have been in the region's large urban areas, according to census data. The Black population of metro Atlanta more than doubled between 1990 and 2020, surpassing 2 million in the most recent census. The Black population also more than doubled in metro Charlotte while Greater Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth both saw their Black populations surpass 1 million for the first time. Several smaller metro areas also saw sizable gains, including San Antonio; Raleigh and Greensboro, N.C.; and Orlando. Primary destinations are states that have the most job opportunities, especially Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee, Florida and Texas. Other southern states, including Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama and Arkansas, have seen little net growth in the African American population from return migration.\nOne-drop rule.\nFrom the late 19th century, the South used a colloquial term, the \"one-drop rule\", to classify as black a person of any known African ancestry. This practice of hypodescent was not put into law until the early 20th century. Legally, the definition varied from state to state. Racial definition was more flexible in the 18th and 19th centuries before the American Civil War. For instance, President Thomas Jefferson held in slavery persons who were legally white (less than 25% black) according to Virginia law at the time, but, because they were born to slave mothers, they were born into slavery, according to the principle of \"partus sequitur ventrem\", which Virginia adopted into law in 1662.\nOutside of the United States, some other countries have adopted the one-drop rule, but the definition of who is black and the extent to which the one-drop \"rule\" applies varies greatly from country to country.\nThe one-drop rule may have originated as a means of increasing the number of black slaves and was maintained as an attempt to keep the white race \"pure\". One of the results of the one-drop rule was the uniting of the African-American community. Some of the most prominent abolitionists and civil-rights activists of the 19th century were multiracial, such as Frederick Douglass, Robert Purvis and James Mercer Langston. They advocated equality for all.\nBlackness.\nThe concept of blackness in the United States has been described as the degree to which one associates themselves with mainstream African-American culture, politics, and values. To a certain extent, this concept is not so much about race but more about political orientation, culture and behavior. Blackness can be contrasted with \"acting white\", where black Americans are said to behave with assumed characteristics of stereotypical white Americans with regard to fashion, dialect, taste in music, and possibly, from the perspective of a significant number of black youth, academic achievement.\nDue to the often political and cultural contours of blackness in the United States, the notion of blackness can also be extended to non-black people. Toni Morrison once described Bill Clinton as the first black President of the United States, because, as she put it, he displayed \"almost every trope of blackness\". Clinton welcomed the label.\nThe question of blackness also arose in the Democrat Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Commentators questioned whether Obama, who was elected the first president with black ancestry, was \"black enough\", contending that his background is not typical because his mother was a white American and his father was a black student visitor from Kenya. Obama chose to identify as black and African American.\nMexico.\nThe 2015 preliminary survey to the 2020 census allowed Afro-Mexicans to self-identify for the first time in Mexico and recorded a total of 1.4 million (1.2% of the total Mexican population). The majority of Afro-Mexicans live in the Costa Chica of Guerrero region.\nCaribbean.\nDominican Republic.\nThe first Afro-Dominican slaves were shipped to the Dominican Republic by Spanish conquistadors during the Transatlantic slave trade.\nPuerto Rico.\nSpanish conquistadors shipped slaves from West Africa to Puerto Rico. Afro-Puerto Ricans in part trace ancestry to this colonization of the island.\nSouth America.\nApproximately 12 million people were shipped from Africa to the Americas during the Atlantic slave trade from 1492 to 1888. Of these, 11.5 million of those shipped to South America and the Caribbean. Brazil was the largest importer in the Americas, with 5.5 million African slaves imported, followed by the British Caribbean with 2.76 million, the Spanish Caribbean and Spanish Mainland with 1.59 million Africans, and the French Caribbean with 1.32 million. Today their descendants number approximately 150 million in South America and the Caribbean. In addition to skin color, other physical characteristics such as facial features and hair texture are often variously used in classifying peoples as black in South America and the Caribbean. In South America and the Caribbean, classification as black is also closely tied to social status and socioeconomic variables, especially in light of social conceptions of \"blanqueamiento\" (racial whitening) and related concepts.\nBrazil.\nThe concept of race in Brazil is complex. A Brazilian child was never automatically identified with the racial type of one or both of their parents, nor were there only two categories to choose from. Between an individual of unmixed West African ancestry and a very light mulatto individual, more than a dozen racial categories were acknowledged, based on various combinations of hair color, hair texture, eye color, and skin color. These types grade into each other like the colors of the spectrum, and no one category stands significantly isolated from the rest. In Brazil, people are classified by appearance, not heredity.\nScholars disagree over the effects of social status on racial classifications in Brazil. It is generally believed that achieving upward mobility and education results in individuals being classified as a category of lighter skin. The popular claim is that in Brazil, poor whites are considered black and wealthy blacks are considered white. Some scholars disagree, arguing that \"whitening\" of one's social status may be open to people of mixed race, a large part of the population known as \"pardo\", but a person perceived as \"preto\" (black) will continue to be classified as black regardless of wealth or social status.\nStatistics.\nFrom the years 1500 to 1850, an estimated 3.5 million captives were forcibly shipped from West/Central Africa to Brazil. The territory received the highest number of slaves of any country in the Americas. Scholars estimate that more than half of the Brazilian population is at least in part descended from these individuals. Brazil has the largest population of Afro-ancestry outside Africa. In contrast to the US, during the slavery period and after, the Portuguese colonial government in Brazil and the later Brazilian government did not pass formal anti-miscegenation or segregation laws. As in other Latin American countries, intermarriage was prevalent during the colonial period and continued afterward. In addition, people of mixed race (\"pardo\") often tended to marry white spouses, and their descendants became accepted as white. As a result, some of the European descended population also has West African or Amerindian blood. According to the last census of the 20th century, in which Brazilians could choose from five color/ethnic categories with which they identified, 54% of individuals identified as white, 6.2% identified as black, and 39.5% identified as pardo (brown)\u2014a broad multi-racial category, including tri-racial persons.\nIn the 19th century, a philosophy of racial whitening emerged in Brazil, related to the assimilation of mixed-race people into the white population through intermarriage. Until recently the government did not keep data on race. However, statisticians estimate that in 1835, roughly 50% of the population was \"preto\" (black; most were enslaved), a further 20% was \"pardo\" (brown), and 25% white, with the remainder Amerindian. Some classified as pardo were tri-racial.\nBy the 2000 census, demographic changes including the end to slavery, immigration from Europe and Asia, assimilation of multiracial persons, and other factors resulted in a population in which 6.2% of the population identified as black, 40% as pardo, and 55% as white. Essentially most of the black population was absorbed into the multi-racial category by intermixing. A 2007 genetic study found that at least 29% of the middle-class, white Brazilian population had some recent (since 1822 and the end of the colonial period) African ancestry.\nRace relations in Brazil.\nAccording to the 2022 census, 10.2% of Brazilians said they were black, compared with 7.6% in 2010, and 45.3% said they were racially mixed, up from 43.1%, while the proportion of self-declared white Brazilians has fallen from 47.7% to 43.5%. Activists from Brazil's Black movement attribute the racial shift in the population to a growing sense of pride among African-descended Brazilians in recognising and celebrating their ancestry.\nThe philosophy of the racial democracy in Brazil has drawn some criticism, based on economic issues. Brazil has one of the largest gaps in income distribution in the world. The richest 10% of the population earn 28 times the average income of the bottom 40%. The richest 10 percent is almost exclusively white or predominantly European in ancestry. One-third of the population lives under the poverty line, with blacks and other people of color accounting for 70 percent of the poor.\nIn 2015 United States, African Americans, including multiracial people, earned 76.8% as much as white people. By contrast, black and mixed race Brazilians earned on average 58% as much as whites in 2014. The gap in income between blacks and other non-whites is relatively small compared to the large gap between whites and all people of color. Other social factors, such as illiteracy and education levels, show the same patterns of disadvantage for people of color.\nSome commentators observe that the United States practice of segregation and white supremacy in the South, and discrimination in many areas outside that region, forced many African Americans to unite in the civil rights struggle, whereas the fluid nature of race in Brazil has divided individuals of African ancestry between those with more or less ancestry and helped sustain an image of the country as an example of post-colonial harmony. This has hindered the development of a common identity among black Brazilians.\nThough Brazilians of at least partial African heritage make up a large percentage of the population, few blacks have been elected as politicians. The city of Salvador, Bahia, for instance, is 80% people of color, but voters have not elected a mayor of color.\nPatterns of discrimination against non-whites have led some academic and other activists to advocate for use of the Portuguese term \"negro\" to encompass all African-descended people, in order to stimulate a \"black\" consciousness and identity.\nColombia.\nAfro-Colombians are the third-largest African diaspora population in Latin America after Afro-Brazilians and Afro-Haitians.\nVenezuela.\nMost black Venezuelans descend from people brought as slaves to Venezuela directly from Africa during colonization; others have been descendants of immigrants from the Antilles and Colombia. Many blacks were part of the independence movement, and several managed to be heroes. There is a deep-rooted heritage of African culture in Venezuelan culture, as demonstrated in many traditional Venezuelan music and dances, such as the Tambor, a musical genre inherited from black members of the colony, or the Llanera music or the Gaita zuliana that both are a fusion of all the three major peoples that contribute to the cultural heritage. Also, black inheritance is present in the country's gastronomy.\nThere are entire communities of blacks in the Barlovento zone, as well as part of the Bol\u00edvar state and in other small towns; they also live peaceably among the general population in the rest of Venezuela. Currently, blacks represent a plurality of the Venezuelan population, although many are actually mixed people.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "325363": "Sahara\nDesert on the African continent\nThe Sahara (, ) is a desert spanning across North Africa. With an area of , it is the largest hot desert in the world and the third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Arctic.\nThe name \"Sahara\" is derived from , a broken plural form of ( ), meaning \"desert\".\nThe desert covers much of North Africa, excluding the fertile region on the Mediterranean Sea coast, the Atlas Mountains of the Maghreb, and the Nile Valley in Egypt and the Sudan.\nIt stretches from the Red Sea in the east and the Mediterranean in the north to the Atlantic Ocean in the west, where the landscape gradually changes from desert to coastal plains. To the south it is bounded by the Sahel, a belt of semi-arid tropical savanna around the Niger River valley and the Sudan region of sub-Saharan Africa. The Sahara can be divided into several regions, including the western Sahara, the central Ahaggar Mountains, the Tibesti Mountains, the A\u00efr Mountains, the T\u00e9n\u00e9r\u00e9 desert, and the Libyan Desert.\nFor several hundred thousand years, the Sahara has alternated between desert and savanna grassland in a 20,000-year cycle caused by the precession of Earth's axis (about 26,000 years) as it rotates around the Sun, which changes the location of the North African monsoon.\nGeography.\nThe Sahara covers large parts of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Western Sahara and Sudan, and parts of southern Morocco and Tunisia. It covers , 31% of the African continent. If all areas with a mean annual precipitation of less than were included, the Sahara would be . It is one of three distinct physiographic provinces of the African massive physiographic division. The Sahara is so large and bright that, in theory, it could be detected from other stars as a surface feature of Earth, with near-current technology.\nThe Sahara is mainly rocky hamada (stone plateaus); ergs (sand seas \u2013 large areas covered with sand dunes) form only a minor part, contrary to common misconception, but many of the sand dunes are over high. Wind or rare rainfall shape the desert features: sand dunes, dune fields, sand seas, stone plateaus, gravel plains (\"reg\"), dry valleys (\"wadi\"), dry lakes (\"oued\"), and salt flats (\"shatt\" or \"chott\"). Unusual landforms include the Richat Structure in Mauritania.\nSeveral deeply dissected mountains, many volcanic, rise from the desert, including the A\u00efr Mountains, Ahaggar Mountains, Saharan Atlas, Tibesti Mountains, Adrar des Iforas, and the Red Sea Hills. The highest peak in the Sahara is Emi Koussi, a shield volcano in the Tibesti range of northern Chad.\nThe central Sahara is hyperarid, with sparse vegetation. The northern and southern reaches of the desert, along with the highlands, have areas of sparse grassland and desert shrub, with trees and taller shrubs in wadis, where moisture collects. In the central, hyperarid region, there are many subdivisions of the great desert: Tanezrouft, the T\u00e9n\u00e9r\u00e9, the Libyan Desert, the Eastern Desert, the Nubian Desert and others. These extremely arid areas often receive no rain for years.\nTo the north, the Sahara skirts the Mediterranean Sea in Egypt and portions of Libya, but in Cyrenaica and the Maghreb, the Sahara borders the Mediterranean forest, woodland, and scrub eco-regions of northern Africa, all of which have a Mediterranean climate characterized by hot summers and cool and rainy winters. According to the botanical criteria of Frank White and geographer Robert Capot-Rey, the northern limit of the Sahara corresponds to the northern limit of date palm cultivation and the southern limit of the range of esparto, a grass typical of the Mediterranean climate portion of the Maghreb and Iberia. The northern limit also corresponds to the isohyet of annual precipitation.\nTo the south, the Sahara is bounded by the Sahel, a belt of dry tropical savanna with a summer rainy season that extends across Africa from east to west. The southern limit of the Sahara is indicated botanically by the southern limit of \"Cornulaca monacantha\" (a drought-tolerant member of the Chenopodiaceae), or northern limit of \"Cenchrus biflorus\", a grass typical of the Sahel. According to climatic criteria, the southern limit of the Sahara corresponds to the isohyet of annual precipitation (this is a long-term average, since precipitation varies annually).\nImportant cities located in the Sahara include Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania; Tamanrasset, Ouargla, B\u00e9char, Hassi Messaoud, Gharda\u00efa, and El Oued in Algeria; Timbuktu in Mali; Agadez in Niger; Ghat in Libya; and Faya-Largeau in Chad.\nClimate.\nThe Sahara is the world's largest hot desert. It is located in the horse latitudes under the subtropical ridge, a significant belt of semi-permanent subtropical warm-core high pressure where the air from the upper troposphere usually descends, warming and drying the lower troposphere and preventing cloud formation.\nThe permanent absence of clouds allows unhindered light and thermal radiation. The stability of the atmosphere above the desert prevents any convective overturning, thus making rainfall virtually non-existent. As a consequence, the weather tends to be sunny, dry and stable with a minimal chance of rainfall. Subsiding, diverging, dry air masses associated with subtropical high-pressure systems are extremely unfavorable for the development of convectional showers. The subtropical ridge is the predominant factor that explains the hot desert climate (K\u00f6ppen climate classification \"BWh\") of this vast region. The descending airflow is the strongest and the most effective over the eastern part of the Great Desert, in the Libyan Desert: this is the sunniest, driest and the most nearly \"rainless\" place on the planet, rivaling the Atacama Desert, lying in Chile and Peru.\nThe rainfall inhibition and the dissipation of cloud cover are most accentuated over the eastern section of the Sahara rather than the western. The prevailing air mass lying above the Sahara is the continental tropical (cT) air mass, which is hot and dry. Hot, dry air masses primarily form over the North-African desert from the heating of the vast continental land area, and it affects the whole desert during most of the year. Because of this extreme heating process, a thermal low is usually noticed near the surface, and is the strongest and the most developed during the summertime. The Sahara High represents the eastern continental extension of the Azores High, centered over the North Atlantic Ocean. The subsidence of the Sahara High nearly reaches the ground during the coolest part of the year, while it is confined to the upper troposphere during the hottest periods.\nThe effects of local surface low pressure are extremely limited because upper-level subsidence still continues to block any form of air ascent. Also, to be protected against rain-bearing weather systems by the atmospheric circulation itself, the desert is made even drier by its geographical configuration and location. Indeed, the extreme aridity of the Sahara is not only explained by the subtropical high pressure: the Atlas Mountains of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia also help to enhance the aridity of the northern part of the desert. These major mountain ranges act as a barrier, causing a strong rain shadow effect on the leeward side by dropping much of the humidity brought by atmospheric disturbances along the polar front which affects the surrounding Mediterranean climates.\nThe primary source of rain in the Sahara is the Intertropical Convergence Zone, a continuous belt of low-pressure systems near the equator which bring the brief, short and irregular rainy season to the Sahel and southern Sahara. Rainfall in this giant desert has to overcome the physical and atmospheric barriers that normally prevent the production of precipitation. The harsh climate of the Sahara is characterized by: extremely low, unreliable, highly erratic rainfall; extremely high sunshine duration values; high temperatures year-round; negligible rates of relative humidity; a significant diurnal temperature variation; and extremely high levels of potential evaporation which are the highest recorded worldwide.\nTemperature.\nThe sky is usually clear above the desert, and the sunshine duration is extremely high everywhere in the Sahara. Most of the desert has more than 3,600 hours of bright sunshine per year (over 82% of daylight hours), and a wide area in the eastern part has over 4,000 hours of bright sunshine per year (over 91% of daylight hours). The highest values are very close to the theoretical maximum value. A value of 4300 hours (98%) of the time would be recorded in Upper Egypt (Aswan, Luxor) and in the Nubian Desert (Wadi Halfa). The annual average direct solar irradiation is around 2,800 kWh/(m2 year) in the Great Desert. The Sahara has a huge potential for solar energy production.\nThe high position of the Sun, the extremely low relative humidity, and the lack of vegetation and rainfall make the Great Desert the hottest large region in the world, and the hottest place on Earth during summer in some spots. The average high temperature exceeds during the hottest month nearly everywhere in the desert except at very high altitudes. The world's highest officially recorded average daily high temperature was in a remote desert town in the Algerian Desert called Bou Bernous, at an elevation of above sea level, and only Death Valley, California rivals it.\nOther hot spots in Algeria such as Adrar, Timimoun, In Salah, Ouallene, Aoulef, Reggane with an elevation between above sea level get slightly lower summer average highs, around during the hottest months of the year. Salah, well known in Algeria for its extreme heat, has average high temperatures of , , and in June, July, August and September respectively. There are even hotter spots in the Sahara, but they are located in extremely remote areas, especially in the Azalai, lying in northern Mali. The major part of the desert experiences around three to five months when the average high strictly exceeds ; while in the southern central part of the desert, there are up to six or seven months when the average high temperature strictly exceeds . Some examples of this are Bilma, Niger and Faya-Largeau, Chad. The annual average daily temperature exceeds everywhere and can approach in the hottest regions year-round. However, most of the desert has a value in excess of .\nSand and ground temperatures are even more extreme. During daytime, the sand temperature is extremely high: it can easily reach or more. A sand temperature of has been recorded in Port Sudan. Ground temperatures of have been recorded in the Adrar of Mauritania and a value of has been measured in Borkou, northern Chad.\nDue to lack of cloud cover and very low humidity, the desert usually has high diurnal temperature variations between days and nights. However, it is a myth that the nights are especially cold after extremely hot days in the Sahara. On average, nighttime temperatures tend to be cooler than in the daytime. The smallest variations are found along the coastal regions due to high humidity and are often even lower than a difference, while the largest variations are found in inland desert areas where the humidity is the lowest, mainly in the southern Sahara. Still, it is true that winter nights can be cold, as it can drop to the freezing point and even below, especially in high-elevation areas. The frequency of subfreezing winter nights in the Sahara is strongly influenced by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), with warmer winter temperatures during negative NAO events and cooler winters with more frosts when the NAO is positive. This is because the weaker clockwise flow around the eastern side of the subtropical anticyclone during negative NAO winters, although too dry to produce more than negligible precipitation, does reduce the flow of dry, cold air from higher latitudes of Eurasia into the Sahara significantly.\nPrecipitation.\nThe average annual rainfall ranges from very low in the northern and southern fringes of the desert to nearly non-existent over the central and the eastern part. The thin northern fringe of the desert receives more winter cloudiness and rainfall due to the arrival of low pressure systems over the Mediterranean Sea along the polar front, although very attenuated by the rain shadow effects of the mountains and the annual average rainfall ranges from to . For example, Biskra, Algeria, and Ouarzazate, Morocco, are found in this zone. The southern fringe of the desert along the border with the Sahel receives summer cloudiness and rainfall due to the arrival of the Intertropical Convergence Zone from the south and the annual average rainfall ranges from to . For example, Timbuktu, Mali and Agadez, Niger are found in this zone.\nThe vast central hyper-arid core of the desert is virtually never affected by northerly or southerly atmospheric disturbances and permanently remains under the influence of the strongest anticyclonic weather regime, and the annual average rainfall can drop to less than . In fact, most of the Sahara receives less than . Of the of desert land in the Sahara, an area of about (about 31% of the total area) receives an annual average rainfall amount of or less, while some (about 17% of the total area) receives an average of or less.\nThe annual average rainfall is virtually zero over a wide area of some in the eastern Sahara comprising deserts of: Libya, Egypt and Sudan (Tazirbu, Kufra, Dakhla, Kharga, Farafra, Siwa, Asyut, Sohag, Luxor, Aswan, Abu Simbel, Wadi Halfa) where the long-term mean approximates per year. Rainfall is very unreliable and erratic in the Sahara as it may vary considerably year by year. In full contrast to the negligible annual rainfall amounts, the annual rates of potential evaporation are extraordinarily high, roughly ranging from per year to more than per year in the whole desert. Nowhere else on Earth has air been found as dry and evaporative as in the Sahara region. However, at least two instances of snowfall have been recorded in Sahara, in February 1979 and December 2016, both in the town of Ain Sefra.\nDesertification and prehistoric climate.\nOne theory for the formation of the Sahara is that the monsoon in Northern Africa was weakened because of glaciation during the Quaternary period, starting two or three million years ago. Another theory is that the monsoon was weakened when the ancient Tethys Sea dried up during the Tortonian period around 7 million years ago.\nThe climate of the Sahara has undergone enormous variations between wet and dry over the last few hundred thousand years, believed to be caused by long-term changes in the North African climate cycle that alters the path of the North African Monsoon \u2013 usually southward. The cycle is caused by a 41,000-year cycle in which the tilt of the earth changes between 22\u00b0 and 24.5\u00b0. At present, it is in a dry period, but it is expected that the Sahara will become green again in 15,000 years. When the North African monsoon is at its strongest, annual precipitation and subsequent vegetation in the Sahara region increase, resulting in conditions commonly referred to as the \"green Sahara\". For a relatively weak North African monsoon, the opposite is true, with decreased annual precipitation and less vegetation resulting in a phase of the Sahara climate cycle known as the \"desert Sahara\".\nThe idea that changes in insolation (solar heating) caused by long-term changes in Earth's orbit are a controlling factor for the long-term variations in the strength of monsoon patterns across the globe was first suggested by Rudolf Spitaler in the late nineteenth century, The hypothesis was later formally proposed and tested by the meteorologist John Kutzbach in 1981. Kutzbach's ideas about the impacts of insolation on global monsoonal patterns have become widely accepted today as the underlying driver of long-term monsoonal cycles. Kutzbach never formally named his hypothesis and as such it is referred to here as the \"Orbital Monsoon Hypothesis\" as suggested by Ruddiman in 2001.\nDuring the last glacial period, the Sahara was much larger than it is today, extending south beyond its current boundaries. The end of the glacial period brought more rain to the Sahara, from about 8000 BCE to 6000 BCE, perhaps because of low pressure areas over the collapsing ice sheets to the north. Once the ice sheets were gone, the northern Sahara dried out. In the southern Sahara, the drying trend was initially counteracted by the monsoon, which brought rain further north than it does today. By around 4200 BCE, however, the monsoon retreated south to approximately where it is today, leading to the gradual desertification of the Sahara. The Sahara is now as dry as it was about 13,000 years ago.\nLake Chad is the remnant of a former inland sea, paleolake Mega-Chad, which existed during the African humid period. At its largest extent, sometime before 5000 BCE, Lake Mega-Chad was the largest of four Saharan paleolakes, and is estimated to have covered an area of 350,000\u00a0km2.\nThe Sahara pump theory describes this cycle. During periods of a wet or \"Green Sahara\", the Sahara becomes a savanna grassland and various flora and fauna become more common. Following inter-pluvial arid periods, the Sahara area then reverts to desert conditions and the flora and fauna are forced to retreat northwards to the Atlas Mountains, southwards into West Africa, or eastwards into the Nile Valley. This separates populations of some of the species in areas with different climates, forcing them to adapt, possibly giving rise to allopatric speciation.\nIt is also proposed that humans accelerated the drying-out period from 6000 to 2500 BCE by pastoralists overgrazing available grassland.\nEvidence for cycles.\nThe growth of speleothems (which requires rainwater) was detected in Hol-Zakh, Ashalim, Even-Sid, Ma'ale-ha-Meyshar, Ktora Cracks, Nagev Tzavoa Cave, and elsewhere, and has allowed tracking of prehistoric rainfall. The Red Sea coastal route was extremely arid before 140 and after 115 kya (thousands of years ago). Slightly wetter conditions appear at 90\u201387 kya, but it still was just one tenth the rainfall around 125 kya. In the southern Negev Desert speleothems did not grow between 185 and 140 kya (MIS 6), 110\u201390 (MIS 5.4\u20135.2), nor after 85 kya nor during most of the interglacial period (MIS 5.1), the glacial period and Holocene. This suggests that the southern Negev was arid-to-hyper-arid in these periods.\nDuring the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) the Sahara was more extensive than it is now with the extent of the tropical forests being greatly reduced, and the lower temperatures reduced the strength of the Hadley Cell. This is a climate cell which causes rising tropical air of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) to bring rain to the tropics, while dry descending air, at about 20 degrees north, flows back to the equator and brings desert conditions to this region. It is associated with high rates of wind-blown mineral dust, and these dust levels are found as expected in marine cores from the north tropical Atlantic. But around 12,500 BCE the amount of dust in the cores in the B\u00f8lling/Aller\u00f8d phase suddenly plummets and shows a period of much wetter conditions in the Sahara, indicating a Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) event (a sudden warming followed by a slower cooling of the climate). The moister Saharan conditions had begun about 12,500 BCE, with the extension of the ITCZ northward in the northern hemisphere summer, bringing moist wet conditions and a savanna climate to the Sahara, which (apart from a short dry spell associated with the Younger Dryas) peaked during the Holocene thermal maximum climatic phase at 4000 BCE when mid-latitude temperatures seem to have been between 2 and 3 degrees warmer than in the recent past. Analysis of Nile River deposited sediments in the delta also shows this period had a higher proportion of sediments coming from the Blue Nile, suggesting higher rainfall also in the Ethiopian Highlands. This was caused principally by a stronger monsoonal circulation throughout the sub-tropical regions, affecting India, Arabia and the Sahara. Lake Victoria only recently became the source of the White Nile and dried out almost completely around 15 kya.\nThe sudden subsequent movement of the ITCZ southwards with a Heinrich event (a sudden cooling followed by a slower warming), linked to changes with the El Ni\u00f1o-Southern Oscillation cycle, led to a rapid drying out of the Saharan and Arabian regions, which quickly became desert. This is linked to a marked decline in the scale of the Nile floods between 2700 and 2100 BCE.\nEcoregions.\nThe Sahara comprises several distinct ecoregions. With their variations in temperature, rainfall, elevation, and soil, these regions harbor distinct communities of plants and animals.\nFlora and fauna.\nThe flora of the Sahara is highly diversified based on the bio-geographical characteristics of this vast desert. Floristically, the Sahara has three zones based on the amount of rainfall received \u2013 the Northern (Mediterranean), Central and Southern Zones. There are two transitional zones \u2013 the Mediterranean-Sahara transition and the Sahel transition zone.\nThe Saharan flora comprises around 2800 species of vascular plants. Approximately a quarter of these are endemic. About half of these species are common to the flora of the Arabian deserts.\nThe central Sahara is estimated to include five hundred species of plants, which is extremely low considering the huge extent of the area. Plants such as acacia trees, palms, succulents, spiny shrubs, and grasses have adapted to the arid conditions, by growing lower to avoid water loss by strong winds, by storing water in their thick stems to use it in dry periods, by having long roots that travel horizontally to reach the maximum area of water and to find any surface moisture, and by having small thick leaves or needles to prevent water loss by evapotranspiration. Plant leaves may dry out totally and then recover.\nSeveral species of fox live in the Sahara including: the fennec fox, pale fox and R\u00fcppell's fox. The addax, a large white antelope, can go nearly a year in the desert without drinking. The dorcas gazelle is a north African gazelle that can also go for a long time without water. Other notable gazelles include the rhim gazelle and dama gazelle.\nThe Saharan cheetah (northwest African cheetah) lives in Algeria, Togo, Niger, Mali, Benin, and Burkina Faso. There remain fewer than 250 mature cheetahs, which are very cautious, fleeing any human presence. The cheetah avoids the sun from April to October, seeking the shelter of shrubs such as balanites and acacias. They are unusually pale. The other cheetah subspecies (northeast African cheetah) lives in Chad, Sudan and the eastern region of Niger. However, it is currently extinct in the wild in Egypt and Libya. There are approximately 2000 mature individuals left in the wild.\nOther animals include the monitor lizards, hyrax, sand vipers, and small populations of African wild dog, in perhaps only 14 countries and red-necked ostrich. Other animals exist in the Sahara (birds in particular) such as African silverbill and black-faced firefinch, among others. There are also small desert crocodiles in Mauritania and the Ennedi Plateau of Chad.\nThe deathstalker scorpion can be long. Its venom contains large amounts of agitoxin and scyllatoxin and is very dangerous; however, a sting from this scorpion rarely kills a healthy adult. The Saharan silver ant is unique in that due to the extreme high temperatures of their habitat, and the threat of predators, the ants are active outside their nest for only about ten minutes per day.\nDromedary camels and goats are the domesticated animals most commonly found in the Sahara. Because of its qualities of endurance and speed, the dromedary is the favourite animal used by nomads.\nHuman activities are more likely to affect the habitat in areas of permanent water (oases) or where water comes close to the surface. Here, the local pressure on natural resources can be intense. The remaining populations of large mammals have been greatly reduced by hunting for food and recreation. In recent years development projects have started in the deserts of Algeria and Tunisia using irrigated water pumped from underground aquifers. These schemes often lead to soil degradation and salinization.\nResearchers from Hacettepe University have reported that Saharan soil may have bio-available iron and also some essential macro and micro nutrient elements suitable for use as fertilizer for growing wheat.\nHistory.\nPeople lived on the edge of the desert thousands of years ago, since the end of the last glacial period. In the Central Sahara, engraved and painted rock art were created perhaps as early as 10,000 years ago, spanning the Bubaline Period, Kel Essuf Period, Round Head Period, Pastoral Period, Caballine Period, and Cameline Period. The Sahara was then a much wetter place than it is today. Over 30,000 petroglyphs of river animals such as crocodiles survive, with half found in the Tassili n'Ajjer in southeast Algeria. Fossils of dinosaurs, including \"Afrovenator\", \"Jobaria\" and \"Ouranosaurus\", have also been found here. The modern Sahara, though, is not lush in vegetation, except in the Nile Valley, at a few oases, and in the northern highlands, where Mediterranean plants such as the olive tree are found to grow. Shifts in Earth's axis increased temperatures and decreased precipitation, which caused an abrupt beginning of North Africa desertification about 5,400 years ago.\nKiffians.\nThe Kiffian culture is a prehistoric industry, or domain, that existed between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago in the Sahara, during the Neolithic Subpluvial. Human remains from this culture were found in 2000 at a site known as Gobero, located in Niger in the T\u00e9n\u00e9r\u00e9 Desert. The site is known as the largest and earliest grave of Stone Age people in the Sahara. The Kiffians were skilled hunters. Bones of many large savannah animals that were discovered in the same area suggest that they lived on the shores of a lake that was present during the Holocene Wet Phase, a period when the Sahara was verdant and wet. The Kiffian people were tall, standing over six feet in height. Craniometric analysis indicates that this early Holocene population was closely related to the Late Pleistocene Iberomaurusians and early Holocene Capsians of the Maghreb, as well as mid-Holocene Mechta groups. Traces of the Kiffian culture do not exist after 8,000 years ago, as the Sahara went through a dry period for the next thousand years. After this time, the Tenerian culture colonized the area.\nTenerians.\nGobero was discovered in 2000 during an archaeological expedition led by Paul Sereno, which sought dinosaur remains. Two distinct prehistoric cultures were discovered at the site: the early Holocene Kiffian culture, and the middle Holocene Tenerian culture. The post-Kiffian desiccation lasted until around 4600 BCE, when the earliest artefacts associated with the Tenerians have been dated to. Some 200 skeletons have been discovered at Gobero. The Tenerians were considerably shorter in height and less robust than the earlier Kiffians. Craniometric analysis also indicates that they were osteologically distinct. The Kiffian skulls are akin to those of the Late Pleistocene Iberomaurusians, early Holocene Capsians, and mid-Holocene Mechta groups, whereas the Tenerian crania are more like those of Mediterranean groups. Graves show that the Tenerians observed spiritual traditions, as they were buried with artifacts such as jewelry made of hippo tusks and clay pots. The most interesting find is a triple burial, dated to 5300 years ago, of an adult female and two children, estimated through their teeth as being five and eight years old, hugging each other. Pollen residue indicates they were buried on a bed of flowers. The three are assumed to have died within 24 hours of each other, but as their skeletons hold no apparent trauma (they did not die violently) and they have been buried so elaborately \u2013 unlikely if they had died of a plague \u2013 the cause of their deaths is a mystery.\nTashwinat Mummy.\nUan Muhuggiag appears to have been inhabited from at least the 6th millennium BCE to about 2700 BCE, although not necessarily continuously. The most noteworthy find at Uan Muhuggiag is the well-preserved mummy of a young boy of approximately <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />2+1\u20442 years old. The child was in a fetal position, then embalmed, then placed in a sack made of antelope skin, which was insulated by a layer of leaves. The boy's organs were removed, as evidenced by incisions in his stomach and thorax, and an organic preservative was inserted to stop his body from decomposing. An ostrich eggshell necklace was also found around his neck. Radiocarbon dating determined the age of the mummy to be approximately 5600 years old, which makes it about 1000 years older than the earliest previously recorded mummy in ancient Egypt. In 1958\u201359, an archaeological expedition led by Antonio Ascenzi conducted anthropological, radiological, histological and chemical analyses on the Uan Muhuggiag mummy. The team claimed that the mummy was a 30-month-old child of uncertain sex. They also found a long incision on the specimen's abdominal wall, which indicated that the body had been initially mummified by evisceration and later underwent natural desiccation. The team also stated that the mummy possessed \"Negroid features.\" However, modern genetics has since proven that the final claim is unscientific and not supported by evidence. A more recent publication referenced a laboratory examination of the cutaneous features of the child mummy in which the results verified that the child possessed a dark skin complexion. One other individual, an adult, was found at Uan Muhuggiag, buried in a crouched position. However, the body showed no evidence of evisceration or any other method of preservation. The body was estimated to date from about 7500 BP.\nNubians.\nDuring the Neolithic Era, before the onset of desertification around 9500 BCE, the central Sudan had been a rich environment supporting a large population ranging across what is now barren desert, like the Wadi el-Qa'ab. By the 5th millennium BCE, the people who inhabited what is now called Nubia were full participants in the \"agricultural revolution\", living a settled lifestyle with domesticated plants and animals. Saharan rock art of cattle and herdsmen suggests the presence of a cattle cult like those found in Sudan and other pastoral societies in Africa today. Megaliths found at Nabta Playa are overt examples of probably the world's first known archaeoastronomy devices, predating Stonehenge by some 2,000 years. This complexity, as observed at Nabta Playa, and as expressed by different levels of authority within the society there, likely formed the basis for the structure of both the Neolithic society at Nabta and the Old Kingdom of Egypt.\nArchaeological evidence has attested that population settlements occurred in Nubia as early as the Late Pleistocene era and from the 5th millennium BCE onwards, whereas there is \"no or scanty evidence\" of human presence in the Egyptian Nile Valley during these periods, which may be due to problems in site preservation.\nEgyptians.\nBy 6000 BCE predynastic Egyptians in the southwestern corner of Egypt were herding cattle and constructing large buildings. Subsistence in organized and permanent settlements in predynastic Egypt by the middle of the 6th millennium BCE centered predominantly on cereal and animal agriculture: cattle, goats, pigs and sheep. Metal objects replaced prior ones of stone. Tanning of animal skins, pottery and weaving were commonplace in this era also. There are indications of seasonal or only temporary occupation of the Al Fayyum in the 6th millennium BCE, with food activities centering on fishing, hunting and food-gathering. Stone arrowheads, knives and scrapers from the era are commonly found. Burial items included pottery, jewelry, farming and hunting equipment, and assorted foods including dried meat and fruit. Burial in desert environments appears to enhance Egyptian preservation rites, and the dead were buried facing due west. Several scholars have argued that the African origins of the Egyptian civilisation derived from pastoral communities which emerged in both the Egyptian and Sudanese regions of the Nile Valley in the fifth millennium BCE.\nBy 3400 BCE, the Sahara was as dry as it is today, due to reduced precipitation and higher temperatures resulting from a shift in Earth's orbit. As a result of this aridification, it became a largely impenetrable barrier to humans, with the remaining settlements mainly being concentrated around the numerous oases that dot the landscape. Little trade or commerce is known to have passed through the interior in subsequent periods, the only major exception being the Nile Valley. The Nile, however, was impassable at several cataracts, making trade and contact by boat difficult.\nTichitt culture.\nIn 4000 BCE, the start of sophisticated social structure (e.g., trade of cattle as valued assets) developed among herders amid the Pastoral Period of the Sahara. Saharan pastoral culture (e.g., fields of tumuli, lustrous stone rings, axes) was intricate. By 1800 BCE, Saharan pastoral culture expanded throughout the Saharan and Sahelian regions. The initial stages of sophisticated social structure among Saharan herders served as the segue for the development of sophisticated hierarchies found in African settlements, such as Dhar Tichitt. After migrating from the Central Sahara, proto-Mande peoples established their civilization in the Tichitt region of the Western Sahara The Tichitt Tradition of eastern Mauritania dates from 2200 BCE to 200 BCE. Tichitt culture, at Dhar N\u00e9ma, Dhar Tagant, Dhar Tichitt, and Dhar Walata, included a four-tiered hierarchal social structure, farming of cereals, metallurgy, numerous funerary tombs, and a rock art tradition At Dhar Tichitt and Dhar Walata, pearl millet may have also been independently tamed amid the Neolithic. Dhar Tichitt, which includes Dakhlet el Atrouss, may have served as the primary regional center for the multi-tiered hierarchical social structure of the Tichitt Tradition, and the Malian Lakes Region, which includes Tondidarou, may have served as a second regional center of the Tichitt Tradition. The urban Tichitt Tradition may have been the earliest large-scale, complexly organized society in West Africa, and an early civilization of the Sahara, which may have served as the segue for state formation in West Africa.\nAs areas where the Tichitt cultural tradition were present, Dhar Tichitt and Dhar Walata were occupied more frequently than Dhar N\u00e9ma. Farming of crops (e.g., millet) may have been a feature of the Tichitt cultural tradition as early as 3rd millennium BCE in Dhar Tichitt.\nAs part of a broader trend of iron metallurgy developed in the West African Sahel amid 1st millennium BCE, iron items (350 BCE \u2013 100 CE) were found at Dhar Tagant, iron metalworking and/or items (800 BCE \u2013 400 BCE) were found at Dia Shoma and Walald\u00e9, and the iron remnants (760 BCE \u2013 400 BCE) found at Bou Khzama and Djiganyai. The iron materials that were found are evidence of iron metalworking at Dhar Tagant. In the late period of the Tichitt Tradition at Dhar N\u00e9ma, tamed pearl millet was used to temper the tuyeres of an oval-shaped low shaft furnace; this furnace was one out of 16 iron furnaces located on elevated ground. Iron metallurgy may have developed before the second half of 1st millennium BCE, as indicated by pottery dated between 800 BCE and 200 BCE. At Dhar Walata and Dhar Tichitt, copper was also used.\nAfter its decline in Mauritania, the Tichitt Tradition spread to the Middle Niger region (e.g., M\u00e9ma, Macina, Dia Shoma, Jenne Jeno) of Mali where it developed into and persisted as Fa\u00efta Facies ceramics between 1300 BCE and 400 BCE among rammed earth architecture and iron metallurgy (which had developed after 900 BCE). Thereafter, the Ghana Empire developed in the 1st millennium CE.\nPhoenicians.\nThe people of Phoenicia, who flourished from 1200 to 800 BCE, created a chain of settlements along the coast of North Africa and traded extensively with its inhabitants. This put them in contact with the people of ancient Libya, who were the ancestors of people who speak Berber languages in North Africa and the Sahara today.\nThe Libyco-Berber alphabet of the ancient Libyans of north Africa seems to have been based on Phoenician, and its descendant Tifinagh is still used today by the (Berber) Tuareg of the central Sahara.\nThe Periplus of the Phoenician navigator Hanno, who lived sometime in the 5th century BCE, claims that he founded settlements along the Atlantic coast of Africa, possibly including the Western Sahara. The identification of the places discussed is controversial, and archeological confirmation is lacking.\nGreeks.\nBy 500 BCE, Greeks arrived in the desert. Greek traders spread along the eastern coast of the desert, establishing trading colonies along the Red Sea. The Carthaginians explored the Atlantic coast of the desert, but the turbulence of the waters and the lack of markets caused a lack of presence further south than modern Morocco. Centralized states thus surrounded the desert on the north and east; it remained outside the control of these states. Raids from the nomadic Berber people of the desert were of constant concern to those living on the edge of the desert.\nGaramantes.\nAn urban civilization, the Garamantes, arose around 500 BCE in the Sahara, in a valley that is now called the Wadi al-Ajal in Fezzan, Libya. The Garamantes built a prosperous empire in the heart of the desert. The Garamantes achieved this development by digging tunnels far into the mountains flanking the valley to tap fossil water and bring it to their fields. The Garamantes grew populous and strong, conquering their neighbors, and capturing and enslaving many individuals who were forced to work by extending the tunnels. The ancient Greeks and the Romans knew of the Garamantes and regarded them as uncivilized nomads. However, they traded with them, and a Roman bath has been found in the Garamantes' capital of Garama. Archaeologists have found eight major towns and many other important settlements in the Garamantes' territory. The Garamantes' civilization eventually collapsed after they had depleted available water in the aquifers and could no longer sustain the effort to extend the tunnels further into the mountains.\nBetween the first century BCE and the fourth century CE, several Roman expeditions into the Sahara were conducted by groups of military and commercial units of Romans.\nIslamic and Arabic expansion.\nThe Byzantine Empire ruled the northern shores of the Sahara from the 5th to the 7th centuries. After the Muslim conquest of Arabia, specifically the Arabian peninsula, the Muslim conquest of North Africa began in the mid-7th to early 8th centuries and Islamic influence expanded rapidly on the Sahara. By the end of 641 all of Egypt was in Muslim hands. Trade across the desert intensified, and a significant slave trade crossed the desert. It has been estimated that from the 10th to 19th centuries some 6,000 to 7,000 slaves were transported north each year.\nThe Beni \u1e24ass\u0101n and other nomadic Arab tribes dominated the Sanhaja Berber tribes of the western Sahara after the Char Bouba war of the 17th century. As a result, Arabian culture and language came to dominate, and the Berber tribes underwent some Arabization.\nOttoman Turkish era.\nIn the 16th century the northern fringe of the Sahara, such as coastal regencies in present-day Algeria and Tunisia, as well as some parts of present-day Libya, together with the semi-autonomous kingdom of Egypt, were occupied by the Ottoman Empire. From 1517 Egypt was a valued part of the Ottoman Empire, ownership of which provided the Ottomans with control over the Nile Valley, the east Mediterranean and North Africa. The benefit of the Ottoman Empire was the freedom of movement for citizens and goods. Traders exploited the Ottoman land routes to handle the spices, gold and silk from the East, manufactured goods from Europe, and the slave and gold traffic from Africa. Arabic continued as the local language and Islamic culture was much reinforced. The Sahel and southern Sahara regions were home to several independent states or to roaming Tuareg clans.\nEuropean colonialism.\nEuropean colonialism in the Sahara began in the 19th century. France conquered the regency of Algiers from the Ottomans in 1830, and French rule spread south from French Algeria and eastwards from Senegal into the upper Niger to include present-day Algeria, Chad, Mali then French Sudan including Timbuktu (1893), Mauritania, Morocco (1912), Niger, and Tunisia (1881). By the beginning of the 20th century, the trans-Saharan trade had clearly declined because goods were moved through more modern and efficient means, such as airplanes, rather than across the desert.\nThe French took advantage of long-standing animosity between the Chaamba Arabs and the Tuareg. The newly raised \"M\u00e9hariste\" camel corps were originally recruited mainly from the Chaamba nomadic tribe. In 1902, the French penetrated the Hoggar Mountains and defeated Ahaggar Tuareg in the battle of Tit.\nThe French Colonial Empire was the dominant presence in the Sahara. It established regular air links from Toulouse (HQ of famed A\u00e9ropostale), to Oran and over the Hoggar to Timbuktu and West to Bamako and Dakar, as well as trans-Sahara bus services run by La Compagnie Transsaharienne (est. 1927). A remarkable film shot by famous aviator Captain Ren\u00e9 Wauthier in 1933 documents the first crossing by a large truck convoy from Algiers to Tchad, across the Sahara.\nEgypt, under Muhammad Ali and his successors, conquered Nubia in 1820\u201322, founded Khartoum in 1823, and conquered Darfur in 1874. Egypt, including Sudan, became a British protectorate in 1882. Egypt and Britain lost control of the Sudan from 1882 to 1898 as a result of the Mahdist War. After its capture by British troops in 1898, the Sudan became an Anglo-Egyptian condominium.\nSpain captured present-day Western Sahara after 1874, although Rio del Oro remained largely under Sahrawi influence. In 1912, Italy captured parts of what was to be named Libya from the Ottomans. To promote the Roman Catholic religion in the desert, Pope Pius IX appointed a delegate Apostolic of the Sahara and the Sudan in 1868; later in the 19th century his jurisdiction was reorganized into the Vicariate Apostolic of Sahara.\nBreakup of the empires and afterwards.\nEgypt became independent of Britain in 1936, although the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936 allowed Britain to keep troops in Egypt and to maintain the British-Egyptian condominium in the Sudan. British military forces were withdrawn in 1954.\nMost of the Saharan states achieved independence after World War II: Libya in 1951; Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia in 1956; Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger in 1960; and Algeria in 1962. Spain withdrew from Western Sahara in 1975, and it was partitioned between Mauritania and Morocco. Mauritania withdrew in 1979; Morocco continues to hold the territory (see Western Sahara conflict).\nTuareg people in Mali rebelled several times during the 20th century before finally forcing the Malian armed forces to withdraw below the line demarcating Azawad from southern Mali during the 2012 rebellion. Islamist rebels in the Sahara calling themselves al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb have stepped up their violence in recent years.\nIn the post\u2013World War II era, several mines and communities have developed to use the desert's natural resources. These include large deposits of oil and natural gas in Algeria and Libya, and large deposits of phosphates in Morocco and Western Sahara. Libya's Great Man-Made River is the world's largest irrigation project. The project uses a pipeline system that pumps fossil water from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System to cities in the populous Libyan northern Mediterranean coast including Tripoli and Benghazi.\nA number of Trans-African highways have been proposed across the Sahara, including the Cairo\u2013Dakar Highway along the Atlantic coast, the Trans-Sahara Highway from Algiers on the Mediterranean to Kano in Nigeria, the Tripoli \u2013 Cape Town Highway from Tripoli in Libya to N'Djamena in Chad, and the Cairo \u2013 Cape Town Highway which follows the Nile. Each of these highways is partially complete, with significant gaps and unpaved sections.\nPeoples and languages.\nThe people of the Sahara are of various origins. Among them the Amazigh including the Tuareg, various Arabized Amazi\u0263 groups such as the Hassaniya-speaking Sahrawis, whose populations include the Znaga, a tribe whose name is a remnant of the pre-historic Zenaga language. Other major groups of people include the: Toubou, Nubians, Zaghawa, Kanuri, Hausa, Songhai, Beja, and Fula/Fulani (; ). The archaeological evidence from the Holocene period has shown that Nilo-Saharan speaking groups had populated the central and southern Sahara before the influx of Berber and Arabic speakers, around 1500 years ago, who now largely populate the Sahara in the modern era.\nArabic dialects are the most widely spoken languages in the Sahara. Arabic, Berber and its variants now regrouped under the term Amazigh (which includes the Guanche language spoken by the original Berber inhabitants of the Canary Islands) and Beja languages are part of the Afro-Asiatic or Hamito-Semitic family. Unlike neighboring West Africa and the central governments of the states that comprise the Sahara, the French language bears little relevance to inter-personal discourse and commerce within the region, its people retaining staunch ethnic and political affiliations with Tuareg and Berber leaders and culture. The legacy of the French colonial era administration is primarily manifested in the territorial reorganization enacted by the Third and Fourth republics, which engendered artificial political divisions within a hitherto isolated and porous region. Diplomacy with local clients was conducted primarily in Arabic, which was the traditional language of bureaucratic affairs. Mediation of disputes and inter-agency communication was served by interpreters contracted by the French government, who, according to Keenan, \"documented a space of intercultural mediation,\" contributing much to preserving the indigenous cultural identities in the region.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["325363", "4745"], "permutation_1": ["4745", "325363"], "permutation_2": ["4745", "325363"], "permutation_3": ["4745", "325363"]}
{"id": "2hop__613374_3429", "docs_added": {"191890": "American Idol\nAmerican singing competition\nAmerican Idol is an American singing competition television series created by Simon Fuller, produced by Fremantle North America and 19 Entertainment, and distributed by Fremantle North America. It aired on Fox from June 11, 2002, to April 7, 2016, for 15 seasons. It was on hiatus for two years until March 11, 2018, when a revival of the series began airing on ABC.\nIt started as an addition to the \"Idol\" format that was based on \"Pop Idol\" from British television, in which the programme's first series, which was won by Will Young, ended over four months before the show began, as it later became one of the most successful shows in the history of American television. The concept of the series involves discovering recording stars from unsigned singing talents, with the winner determined by American viewers using phones, Internet platforms, and SMS text voting. The winners of the first twenty-two seasons, as chosen by viewers, are Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Hicks, Jordin Sparks, David Cook, Kris Allen, Lee DeWyze, Scotty McCreery, Phillip Phillips, Candice Glover, Caleb Johnson, Nick Fradiani, Trent Harmon, Maddie Poppe, Laine Hardy, Just Sam, Chayce Beckham, Noah Thompson, Iam Tongi, and Abi Carter.\n\"American Idol\" employs a select panel of judges who critique the contestants' performances. The original judges, for seasons one through eight, were record producer and music manager Randy Jackson, singer and choreographer Paula Abdul, and music executive and manager Simon Cowell. The judging panel for the last three seasons on Fox consisted of singers Keith Urban, Jennifer Lopez, and Harry Connick Jr. Season sixteen brought three new judges: singers Luke Bryan, Katy Perry, and Lionel Richie. Beginning in the twenty-third season, Underwood replaced Perry, alongside returning judges Bryan and Richie. The show has been hosted by television presenter Ryan Seacrest throughout its run, apart from the show's inaugural season when comedian Brian Dunkleman joined Seacrest as co-host.\nThe success of \"American Idol\" has been described as \"unparalleled in broadcasting history\". A rival TV executive said the series was \"the most impactful show in the history of television\". It became a recognized springboard for launching the career of many artists as bona fide stars. According to \"Billboard\" magazine, in its first ten years, \"\"Idol\" has spawned 345 \"Billboard\" chart-toppers and a platoon of pop idols, including Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Chris Daughtry, Fantasia, Ruben Studdard, Jennifer Hudson, Clay Aiken, Adam Lambert, and Jordin Sparks while remaining a TV ratings juggernaut.\" For an unprecedented eight consecutive years, from the 2003\u201304 television season through the 2010\u201311 season, either its performance show or result show was ranked number one in U.S. television ratings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\n\"American Idol\" was based on the British show \"Pop Idol\" created by Simon Fuller, which was in turn inspired by the New Zealand television singing competition \"Popstars\". Television producer Nigel Lythgoe saw a version in Australia and helped bring it over to Britain. Fuller was inspired by the idea from \"Popstars\" of employing a panel of judges to select singers in audition. He then added other elements, including telephone voting by the viewing public (which at the time was already in use in shows, such as the \"Eurovision Song Contest\"), the drama of backstories, and real-life soap opera unfolding in real time. \"Pop Idol\" debuted in Britain in 2001 with Lythgoe as showrunner\u200d\u2014\u200cthe executive producer and production leader\u200d\u2014\u200cand Simon Cowell as one of the judges, and was successful with the viewing public.\nIn 2001, Fuller, Cowell, and TV producer Simon Jones attempted to sell the \"Pop Idol\" format to the United States, but the idea was initially met with poor responses from all the television networks including UPN and Fox. However, Rupert Murdoch, head of Fox's parent company, was later persuaded to buy the series by his daughter, Elisabeth, who had seen the British show. Although Fox's executives wanted to change the format, Murdoch insisted that it should remain the same as the British one. One change was nevertheless made due to the presence of multiple time zones in the United States that made it impractical for the country to vote in the same time period, an additional half-hour results show was therefore added the day following the performance show. The show was renamed \"\" and debuted in the summer of 2002. Cowell was initially offered the job of showrunner but turned down the offer; Lythgoe then took over that position. Much to the surprise of Cowell and Fox, it became one of the biggest shows of the summer. With its successful launch in the summer, the show was then moved to January and expanded. The show grew into a phenomenon largely due to its personal engagement with the contestants by prompting the viewers to vote, and the presence of the acid-tongued Cowell as a judge. By 2004, it had become the most-watched show on American television, a position it then held for seven consecutive seasons until 2011.\nHowever, after a few years of sharp declining ratings starting in 2012, with rating falls of over 20% each season, the fifteenth season would be its last on Fox, ending its run in April 2016. In May 2017, ABC acquired the rights to the series and the program returned for the 2017\u201318 television season. The first season of the revived series, or the sixteenth season overall, started airing in March 2018. Seven seasons have been aired on ABC as of May 2024.\nJudges and hosts.\nJudges.\nThe show had originally planned on having four judges following the \"Pop Idol\" format; however, only three judges had been found by the time of the audition round in the first season, namely Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell. A fourth judge, radio DJ Stryker, was originally chosen but he dropped out citing \"image concerns.\" In the second season, New York radio personality Angie Martinez had been hired as a fourth judge but withdrew after only a few days of auditions, due to being uncomfortable with giving out criticism. The show decided to continue with the three judges format until the eighth season. All three original judges stayed on the judging panel for eight seasons.\nIn the eighth season, Latin Grammy Award-nominated singer-songwriter and record producer Kara DioGuardi was added as a fourth judge. Abdul left the show in 2009, after the eighth season, as a result of failing to agree to terms with the show producers. Emmy Award-winning talk show host Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul for the ninth season, but left in 2010 after just one season. DioGuardi was let go from \"American Idol\" in 2010 after two seasons, as producers favored a return to the three-person judges panel previously used prior to DioGuardi's appearance on the show. Cowell also left the show in 2010 to introduce the American version of his show \"The X Factor\" in 2011. Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth.\nJennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined the judging panel in the tenth season, but both left in 2012 after two seasons. Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. They were replaced by three new judges, Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj, and Keith Urban, who joined Jackson in the twelfth season. However, both Carey and Minaj left after one season. Jackson also departed the judges table after twelve seasons, but would return as the in-house mentor for the thirteenth season in 2014, after which he left the show permanently.\nUrban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. After a one-season hiatus, Lopez returned to \"American Idol\" for the thirteenth season, and was joined by former mentor Harry Connick Jr. After this, Lopez, Urban, and Connick Jr. remained on the show until its cancellation after the fifteenth season in 2016.\nWhen the show was revived by ABC in 2018, Katy Perry, Luke Bryan, and Lionel Richie were selected as judges, marking the sixteenth season of \"Idol\". Bryan and Richie have remained on the show since, while Perry left the show in May 2024 after seven seasons. On July 31, 2024, published reports announced former \"Idol\" winner Carrie Underwood as Perry's replacement, joining Bryan and Richie for the twenty-third season.\nGuest judges may occasionally be introduced. In the second season, guest judges such as Richie and Gladys Knight were used, and in the third season, Donna Summer, Quentin Tarantino, Gloria Estefan, and some of the mentors also joined as judges to critique the performances in the final rounds. Guest judges were sporadically used during the audition rounds: Gene Simmons, LL Cool J, Brandy, Mark McGrath, and Kenny Loggins in the fourth season; Carole Bayer Sager, Jewel, and Olivia Newton-John in the sixth season; Shania Twain, Neil Patrick Harris, Avril Lavigne, Mary J. Blige, Joe Jonas, Kristin Chenoweth, Victoria Beckham, and Perry in the ninth season (substituting in the vacant chair, before DeGeneres was hired); and Adam Lambert filled in for Urban at one audition location during the fourteenth season. In the ABC version, two instances occurred during the live shows: Abdul filled in for Bryan on one episode of the nineteenth season, while Alanis Morissette and Ed Sheeran filled in for Perry and Richie on an episode of the twenty-first season.\nHosts.\nThe first season was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman, following the format of \"Pop Idol\" of using two presenters. Dunkleman quit thereafter, resulting in Seacrest becoming the sole emcee starting with the second season in 2003.\nSeacrest has remained as sole host of \"American Idol\" ever since, with the exception of the two-year hiatus between 2016 and 2018 as well as April 8, 2019, during the seventeenth season, when Bobby Bones subbed for Seacrest after the latter fell ill. Dunkleman did, however, return for the initial in 2016 as a guest.\nCast timeline.\nAnnotations\nSelection process.\nIn a series of steps, the show selected the eventual winner out of many tens of thousands of contestants.\nContestant eligibility.\nThe eligible age-range for contestants is fifteen to twenty-eight years old. The initial age limit was sixteen to twenty-four in the first three seasons, but the upper limit was raised to twenty-eight in the fourth season, and the lower limit was reduced to fifteen in the tenth season. The contestants have to be legal U.S. residents, can not have advanced to particular stages of the competition in previous seasons, and must not have held a current recording or talent representation contract by the semi-final stage (in previous years by the audition stage).\nInitial auditions.\nFor the first eighteen seasons, contestants went through at least three sets of cuts. The first was a brief audition with a few other contestants in front of selectors which may include one of the show's producers. Although auditions can exceed 10,000 in each city, only a few hundred of these made it past the preliminary round of auditions. Successful contestants then sing in front of producers, where more may be cut. Only then can they proceed to audition in front of the judges, which is the only audition stage shown on television. Those selected by the judges are sent to Hollywood. Between 10 and 60 people in each city may make it to Hollywood (the average total is between 150 and 200).\nFrom the nineteenth season onwards, contestants request a Zoom interview and audition remotely for the show's producers. If the audition goes well, they will then invite the contestants to audition in front of the judges, in one of the audition cities.\nHollywood week.\nOnce in Hollywood, the contestants perform individually or in groups in a series of rounds. Until the tenth season, there were usually three rounds of eliminations in Hollywood. In the first round the contestants emerged in groups but performed individually. For the next round, the contestants put themselves in small groups and performed a song together. In the final round, the contestants performed solo with a song of their choice a cappella or accompanied by a band\u200d\u2014\u200cdepending on the season. In the second and third seasons, contestants were also asked to write original lyrics or melody in an additional round after the first round. In the seventh season, the group round was eliminated and contestants may, after a first solo performance and on judges approval, skip a second solo round and move directly to the final Hollywood round. In the twelfth season, the executive producers split up the females and males and chose the members to form the groups in the group round.\nIn the tenth and eleventh seasons, a further round was added in Las Vegas, where the contestants performed in groups based on a theme, followed by one final solo round to determine the semi-finalists. At the end of this stage of the competition, 24 to 36 contestants were selected to move on to the semi-final stage. In the twelfth season the Las Vegas round became a Sudden Death round, where the judges had to choose five guys and five girls each night (four nights) to make the top twenty. In the thirteenth season, the Las Vegas round was eliminated and a new round called \"Hollywood or Home\" was added, where if the judges were uncertain about some contestants, those contestants were required to perform soon after landing in Los Angeles, and those who failed to impress were sent back home before they reached Hollywood. In the fourteenth season, the \"Hollywood or Home\" round was dropped, and a Showcase round was added, where the contestants performed at the House of Blues or auditorium for the judges and a live audience, and these performances determine who makes into the Top 24. In the seventeenth and eighteenth seasons, the showcase round took place in Hawaii. From the nineteenth season onward, a showstopper round was used.\nAudience voting.\nFrom the semi-finals onward, the fate of the contestants is decided by public vote. During the contestant's performance as well as the recap at the end, a toll-free telephone number for each contestant was displayed on the screen. For a two-hour period after the episode ends (up to four hours for the finale) in each US time zone, viewers may call or send a text message to their preferred contestant's telephone number, and each call or text message was registered as a vote for that contestant. Viewers were allowed to vote as many times as they can within the two-hour voting window. However, the show reserves the right to discard votes by power dialers. One or more of the least popular contestants may be eliminated in successive weeks until a winner emerges. Over 110\u00a0million votes were cast in the first season, and by the tenth season the seasonal total had increased to nearly 750 million. Voting via text messaging was made available in the second season when AT&T Wireless joined as a sponsor of the show, and 7.5\u00a0million text messages were sent to \"American Idol\" that season. The number of text messages rapidly increased, reaching 178\u00a0million texts by the eighth season. Online voting was offered for the first time in the tenth season. The votes are counted and verified by Telescope Inc.\nSemi-finals.\nIn the first three seasons, the semi-finalists were split into different groups to perform individually in their respective night. In the first season, there were three groups of ten, with the top three contestants from each group making the finals. In the second and third seasons, there were four groups of eight, and the top two of each selected. These seasons also featured a wildcard round, where contestants who failed to qualify were given another chance. In the first season, only one wildcard contestant was chosen by the judges, giving a total of ten finalists. In the second and third seasons, each of the three judges championed one contestant with the public advancing a fourth into the finals, making 12 finalists in all.\nFrom the fourth through seventh and ninth seasons, the twenty-four semi-finalists were divided by gender in order to ensure an equal gender division in the top twelve. The men and women sang separately on consecutive nights, and the bottom two in each groups were eliminated each week until only six of each remained to form the top twelve.\nThe wildcard round returned in the eighth season, wherein there were three groups of twelve, with three contestants moving forward \u2013 the highest male, the highest female, and the next highest-placed singer \u2013 for each night, and four wildcards were chosen by the judges to produce a final 13. Starting in tenth season, the girls and boys perform on separate nights. In the tenth and eleventh seasons, five of each gender were chosen, and three wildcards were chosen by the judges to form a final 13. In the twelfth season, the top twenty semifinalists were split into gender groups, with five of each gender advancing to form the final 10. In the thirteenth season, there were thirty semifinalists, but only twenty semifinalists (ten for each gender) were chosen by the judges to perform on the live shows, with five in each gender based on the vote and three wildcards chosen by the judges composing the final 13. In the fourteenth season, the top 24 performed at The Fillmore Detroit, starting with the 12 males on one night and then the 12 females on the next night. The following week, the same order went for the top 16, with four males eliminated, followed by four females based on the vote. Then, on the first night of finals, a similar sequence from the thirteenth season was used to determine the final 12, with five of each gender based on the vote and two wildcards chosen by the judges. In the fifteenth season, the top 24 performed at Cathedral of Saint Vibiana in Los Angeles and were split into two groups of twelve and performed twice, one being a solo performance and one being a duet with a former Idol contestant. In each group, the judges chose 7 contestants to advance to the top 14 where the judges chose 4 to advance to the top 10 and remaining 6 contestants were chosen based on the vote. In the sixteenth season, the top 24 performed at the Academy in the Heart of LA, and the show repeated the process from the previous season. However, instead of Idol alumnus as duet partners, superstar celebrity singers were used as the duet partners. In the seventeenth season, the same process was repeated again. However, instead of a top 24, it's a top 20, the contestants performed at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, and performed solos in one episode, and performed the duets in two episodes. In the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the top 20 performed at their homes, and based on the vote, half of the top 20 would advance to the top 10, and the other half would be eliminated. However, a wild card was given to one of the bottom 10 to save them from elimination. In the nineteenth season, the show used a combination of the process from the sixteenth and fourteenth seasons. In the twentieth season, the show repeated the process from the previous season, but they used a top 20 instead of a top 16, and there were no all star duets. In the twenty-first season, the same process was repeated, but they started with a top 26 instead of a top 24. In the twenty-second season, the show repeated the process from the twentieth season.\nFinals.\nThe finals are broadcast in primetime from Los Angeles, in front of a live studio audience (except the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic). From 2002 to 2019 and from 2021 to 2022, the venue was CBS Television City. Starting in 2023, it changed to Red Studios. The finals lasted eight weeks in the first season. From the second to ninth and fourteenth seasons, the finals lasted eleven weeks. The tenth and eleventh seasons lasted for twelve weeks, while the twelfth season lasted for ten weeks. In the thirteenth season, the finals lasted thirteen weeks. The finals lasted seven weeks in the fifteenth season, and six weeks in the sixteenth season. Each finalist performs songs based on a weekly theme which may be a musical genre such as Motown, disco, or big band, songs by artists such as Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley or The Beatles, or more general themes such as \"Billboard\" number-one hits or songs from the contestant's year of birth. Contestants usually worked with a celebrity mentor related to the theme. From the tenth to twelfth seasons, Jimmy Iovine was brought in as a mentor for the season. Initially the contestants sang one song each week, but this was increased to two songs from top four or five onwards, then three songs for the top two or three.\nThe most popular contestants are usually not revealed in the results show. Instead, typically the three contestants (two in later rounds) who received the lowest number of votes was called to the center of the stage. One of these three was usually sent to safety; however the two remaining were not necessarily the bottom two. The contestant with the fewest votes was then revealed and eliminated from the competition. A montage of the eliminated contestant's time on the show was played and they gave their final performance (from the fourteenth season onward, the montage and the final performance were dropped). However, in the sixth season, during the series' first ever Idol Gives Back episode, no contestant was eliminated, but on the following week, two were sent home. Moreover, from the eighth to the fourteenth seasons, and the seventeenth season onward, the judges may overturn viewers' decision with a \"Judges' Save\" if they unanimously agreed to. \"The save\" could only be used once, and only up through the Top 5. In the eighth to tenth and fourteenth seasons, a double elimination then took place in the week following the activation of the save, but in the eleventh and thirteenth seasons, a regular single elimination took place. The save was not activated in the twelfth season and consequently, a non-elimination took place in the week after its expiration with the votes then carrying over into the following week.\nThe \"Fan Save\" was introduced in the fourteenth season. During the finals, viewers were given a five-minute window to vote for the contestants in danger of elimination by using their Twitter account to decide which contestant will move on to the next show, starting with the Top 8.\nSeason finale.\nDuring the original run of \"American Idol\" on Fox, the finale week consisted of a one-hour long final performance night and a two-hour last episode of the season that culminates in revealing the winner, both of which are broadcast live in the U.S. Eastern and Central time zones. For the first, third through sixth and fourteenth through fifteenth seasons it was broadcast from the Dolby Theatre, which has an audience capacity of approximately 3,400. The second-season finale took place at the Gibson Amphitheatre, which had an audience capacity of over 6,000. In the seventh through thirteenth seasons, the venue was at the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live, which holds an audience of over 7,000. Since the show's reboot on ABC, the venue remains the same throughout the entire show (excluding auditions), but was still two episodes in the sixteenth season, and then stretched to a single three-hour season finale that is annually aired live simultaneously in all U.S. territories, starting with the seventeenth season. The eighteenth-season finale was conducted virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nRewards for winner and finalists.\nThe winner usually receives a record deal with a major label, which may be for up to six albums, and secures a management contract with \"American Idol\"-affiliated 19 Management (which has the right of first refusal to sign all contestants), as well as various lucrative contracts. All winners prior to the ninth season reportedly earned at least $1\u00a0million in their first year as winner. At first the contract came with a $250,000-plus advance, but dropped to about $62,500 over the Fox years. All the runners-up of the first ten seasons, as well as some of other finalists, had also received record deals with major labels. However, starting in the eleventh season, the runner-up may only be guaranteed a single-only deal. BMG/Sony (first through ninth seasons), UMG (tenth through fifteenth seasons), and Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records (sixteenth through eighteenth seasons) had the right of first refusal to sign contestants for three months after the season's finale. In the fourteenth and fifteenth seasons, the winner was signed with Big Machine Records. Prominent music mogul Clive Davis also produced some of the selected contestants' albums, such as Kelly Clarkson, Clay Aiken, Fantasia Barrino and Diana DeGarmo. All top 10 (11 in the tenth and twelfth seasons, 5 in the fourteenth season, and 7 in the sixteenth season) finalists earn the privilege of going on a tour, where the participants may each earn a six-figure sum.\nSeason synopses.\nEach season premieres with the audition round, taking place in different cities. The audition episodes typically feature a mix of potential finalists, interesting characters and woefully inadequate contestants. Each successful contestant receives a golden or platinum ticket to proceed on to the next round in Hollywood. Based on their performances during the Hollywood round (Las Vegas round from the tenth through twelfth seasons), 24 to 36 contestants are selected by the judges to participate in the semifinals. From the semifinals onward the contestants perform their songs live, with the judges making their critiques after each performance. The contestants are voted for by the viewing public, and the outcome of the public votes is then revealed during a results segment. The results segment feature group performances by the contestants as well as guest performers. The Top-three results also features homecoming events for the Top 3 finalists. The season reaches its climax in a two-hour results finale show, where the winner of the season is revealed.\nWith the exception of the first two seasons, the contestants in the semifinals onward perform in front of a studio audience. They perform with a full band in the finals. The current musical director is Kris Pooley, who has been with the show since the sixteenth season. In previous seasons, the \"American Idol\" band was led by Rickey Minor (fourth through ninth and thirteenth through fifteenth seasons) and Ray Chew (tenth through twelfth seasons). Assistance has also been given by vocal coaches and song arrangers, such as Michael Orland and Debra Byrd to contestants behind the scene. Starting with the seventh season, contestants may perform with a musical instrument from the Hollywood rounds onward. In later seasons, the contestants were allowed to perform with a musical instrument in the auditions. During the first nine seasons, performances were usually aired live on Tuesday nights, followed by the results shows on Wednesdays, but moved to Wednesdays and Thursdays from the tenth through thirteenth seasons, with the tenth, eleventh and thirteenth-season finales aired on Tuesday and Wednesday. From the fourteenth season onward, there were no separate results shows. On the fourteenth season, the show aired on Wednesday nights, and on the fifteenth season, Thursday nights. Since the sixteenth season, the show has been airing on Sundays and Mondays.\n2002\u20132016: Fox.\nSeason 1 (2002).\nThe first season of \"American Idol\" debuted as a summer replacement show in June 2002 on the Fox network. It was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell served as judges.\nIn the audition rounds, 121 contestants were selected from around 10,000 who attended the auditions. These were cut to 30 for the semifinal, with ten going on to the finals. One semifinalist, Delano Cagnolatti, was disqualified for lying to evade the show's age limit. One of the early favorites, Tamyra Gray, was eliminated at the top four, the first of several such shock eliminations that were to be repeated in later seasons. Christina Christian was hospitalized before the top six result show due to chest pains and palpitations, and she was eliminated while she was in the hospital. Jim Verraros was the first openly gay contestant on the show; his sexual orientation was revealed on his blog, however it was removed during the competition after a request from the show producers over concerns that it might be unfairly influencing votes.\nThe final showdown was between Justin Guarini, one of the early favorites, and Kelly Clarkson. Clarkson was not initially thought of as a contender, but impressed the judges with some good performances in the final rounds, such as her performance of Aretha Franklin's \"Natural Woman\", and Betty Hutton's \"Stuff Like That There\", and eventually won the crown on September 4, 2002.\nIn what was to become a tradition, Clarkson performed the coronation song during the finale, and released the song immediately after the season ended. The single, \"A Moment Like This\", went on to break a 38-year-old record held by The Beatles for the biggest leap to number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. Guarini did not release any song immediately after the show and remains the only runner-up not to do so. Both Clarkson and Guarini made a musical film, \"From Justin to Kelly\", which was released in 2003 but was widely panned. Clarkson has since become one of the most successful \"Idol\" contestants internationally, with worldwide album sales of more than 25\u00a0million.\nStarting September 30, 2006, this season was repackaged as \"\"American Idol Rewind\"\" and syndicated directly to stations in the U.S.\nSeason 2 (2003).\nFollowing the success of the first season, the second season was moved up to air in January 2003. The number of episodes increased, as did the show's budget and the charge for commercial spots. Dunkleman left the show, leaving Ryan Seacrest as the lone host. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Kristin Adams was a correspondent for this season.\nCorey Clark was disqualified during the finals for having an undisclosed police record; however, he later alleged that he and Paula Abdul had an affair while on the show and that this contributed to his expulsion. Clark also claimed that Abdul gave him preferential treatment on the show due to their affair. The allegations were dismissed by Fox after an independent investigation. Two semi-finalists were also disqualified that year \u2013 Jaered Andrews for an arrest on an assault charge, and Frenchie Davis for having previously modeled for an adult website.\nThe season finale drew more than 38 million viewers, marking \"Idol\"'s biggest audience ever for a single episode. Ruben Studdard emerged as the winner, beating Clay Aiken by a small margin. Out of a total of 24 million votes, Studdard finished just 134,000 votes ahead of Aiken. This slim margin of victory was controversial due to the large number of calls that failed to get through. In an interview prior to the fifth season, executive producer Nigel Lythgoe indicated that Aiken had led the fan voting from the wildcard week onward until the finale.\nBoth finalists found success after the show, but Aiken out-performed Studdard's coronation song \"Flying Without Wings\" with his single release from the show \"This Is the Night\", as well as in their subsequent album releases. The fourth-place finisher Josh Gracin also enjoyed some success as a country singer.\nSeason 3 (2004).\nThe third season premiered on January 19, 2004. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. One of the most talked-about contestants during the audition process was William Hung whose off-key rendition of Ricky Martin's \"She Bangs\" received widespread attention. His exposure on \"Idol\" landed him a record deal and surprisingly he became the third bestselling singer from that season.\nMuch media attention on the season had been focused on the three black singers, Fantasia Barrino, LaToya London, and Jennifer Hudson, dubbed the Three Divas. All three unexpectedly landed on the bottom three on the top seven result show, with Hudson controversially eliminated. Elton John, who was one of the mentors that season, called the results of the votes \"incredibly racist\". The prolonged stays of John Stevens and Jasmine Trias in the finals, despite negative comments from the judges, had aroused resentment, so much so that John Stevens reportedly received a death threat, which he dismissed as a joke 'blown out of proportion'.\nThe performance of \"Summertime\" by Barrino, later known simply as \"Fantasia\", at Top 8 was widely praised, and Simon Cowell considered it as his favorite \"Idol\" moment in the nine seasons he was on the show. Fantasia and Diana DeGarmo were the last two finalists, and Fantasia was crowned as the winner. Fantasia released as her coronation single \"I Believe\", a song co-written by the first season finalist Tamyra Gray, and DeGarmo released \"Dreams\".\nSeason 4 (2005).\nThe fourth season premiered on January 18, 2005. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This was the first full season of the series to be aired in high definition; the finale of the third season was also aired in high definition. The number of those attending the auditions by now had increased to over 100,000 from the 10,000 of the first season. The age limit was raised to 28 in this season, and among those who benefited from this new rule were Constantine Maroulis and Bo Bice, the two rockers of the show.\nThe top 12 finalists originally included Mario Vazquez, but he dropped out citing 'personal reasons' and was replaced by Nikko Smith. Later, an employee of Fremantle Media, which produces the show, sued the company for wrongful termination, claiming that he was dismissed after complaining about lewd behavior by Vazquez toward him during the show.\nDuring the top 11 week, due to a mix-up with the contestants' telephone number, voting was repeated on what was normally the result night, with the result reveal postponed until the following night.\nIn May 2005, Underwood was announced the winner, with Bice the runner-up. Both Underwood and Bice released the coronation song \"Inside Your Heaven\", with Underwood's version of the song making her the first country artist ever to debut at number-one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart. As of 2015, Underwood has become the most successful \"Idol\" contestant in the U.S., selling 16 million albums in the country, while selling a total of 65 million records worldwide.\nSeason 5 (2006).\nThe fifth season began on January 17, 2006. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. It remains the highest-rated season in the show's run so far. Two of the more prominent contestants during the Hollywood round were the Brittenum twins who were later disqualified for identity theft.\nChris Daughtry's performance of Fuel's \"Hemorrhage (In My Hands)\" on the show was widely praised and led to an invitation to join the band as Fuel's new lead singer, an invitation he declined. His performance of Live's version of \"I Walk the Line\" was well received by the judges but later criticized in some quarters for not crediting the arrangement to Live. He was eliminated at the top four in a shocking result.\nOn May 30, 2006, Taylor Hicks was named \"American Idol\", with Katharine McPhee the runner-up. \"Do I Make You Proud\" was released as Hicks' first single and McPhee's was \"My Destiny\".\nDespite being eliminated earlier in the season, Chris Daughtry (as lead of the band Daughtry) became the most successful recording artist from this season. Other contestants, such as Hicks, McPhee, Bucky Covington, Mandisa, Kellie Pickler, and Elliott Yamin have had varying levels of success.\nSeason 6 (2007).\nThe sixth season began on Tuesday, January 16, 2007. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The premiere drew a massive audience of 37.3\u00a0million viewers, peaking in the last half hour with more than 41\u00a0million viewers.\nTeenager Sanjaya Malakar was the season's most talked-about contestant for his unusual hairdo, and for managing to survive elimination for many weeks due in part to the weblog Vote for the Worst and satellite radio personality Howard Stern, who both encouraged fans to vote for him. However, on the Top 7 results, Sanjaya was voted off.\nThis season saw the first \"Idol Gives Back\" telethon-inspired event, which raised more than $76\u00a0million in corporate and viewer donations. No contestant was eliminated that week, but two (Phil Stacey and Chris Richardson) were eliminated the next.\nIn the May 23 season finale, Jordin Sparks was declared the winner with the runner-up being Blake Lewis. Sparks has had some success as a recording artist post-\"Idol\".\nThis season also saw the launch of the \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest which allows fans to vote for the \"coronation song\". Thousands of recordings of original songs were submitted by songwriters, and 20 entries selected for the public vote. The winning song, \"This Is My Now\", was performed by both finalists during the finale and released by Sparks on May 24, 2007.\nSeason 7 (2008).\nThe seventh season premiered on January 15, 2008, for a two-day, four-hour premiere. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The media focused on the professional status of the seventh season contestants, the so-called 'ringers', many of whom, including Kristy Lee Cook, Brooke White, Michael Johns, and in particular Carly Smithson, had prior recording contracts. Contestant David Hernandez also attracted some attention due to his past employment as a stripper.\nFor the finals, \"American Idol\" debuted a new state-of-the-art set and stage on March 11, 2008, along with a new on-air look. David Cook's performance of \"Billie Jean\" on top-ten night was lauded by the judges, but provoked controversy when they apparently mistook the Chris Cornell arrangement to be David Cook's own even though the performance was introduced as Cornell's version. Cornell himself said he was 'flattered' and praised David Cook's performance. David Cook was taken to the hospital after the top-nine performance show due to heart palpitations and high blood pressure.\nDavid Archuleta's performance of John Lennon's \"Imagine\" was considered by many as one of the best of the season. Jennifer Lopez, who was brought in as a judge in the tenth season, called it a beautiful song-moment that she will never forget. Jason Castro's semi-final performance of \"Hallelujah\" also received considerable attention, and it propelled Jeff Buckley's version of the song to the top of the \"Billboard\" digital song chart. This was the first season in which contestants' recordings were released onto iTunes after their performances, and although sales information was not released so as not to prejudice the contest, leaked information indicated that contestants' songs frequently reached the top of iTunes sales charts.\n\"Idol Gives Back\" returned on April 9, 2008, and raised $64\u00a0million for charity.\nThe finalists were Cook and Archuleta. David Cook was announced the winner on May 21, 2008, the first rocker to win the show. Both Cook and Archuleta had some success as recording artists with both selling over a million albums in the U.S.\nThe \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest was also held this season. From ten of the most popular submissions, each of the final two contestants chose a song to perform, although neither of their selections was used as the \"coronation song\". The winning song, \"The Time of My Life\", was recorded by David Cook and released on May 22, 2008.\nSeason 8 (2009).\nThe eighth season premiered on January 13, 2009. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This season featured the first major change to the judging panel; a fourth judge, Kara DioGuardi, was introduced. Mike Darnell, the president of alternative programming for Fox, stated that the season would focus more on the contestants' personal life.\nThis was also the first season without executive producer Nigel Lythgoe who left to focus on the international versions of his show \"So You Think You Can Dance\". The Hollywood round was moved to the Kodak Theatre for 2009 and was also extended to two weeks. \"Idol Gives Back\" was canceled for this season due to the global recession at the time.\nThere were 13 finalists this season, but two were eliminated in the first result show of the finals. A new feature introduced was the \"Judges' Save\", and Matt Giraud was saved from elimination at the top seven by the judges when he received the fewest votes. The next week, Lil Rounds and Anoop Desai were eliminated.\nThe two finalists were Kris Allen and Adam Lambert, both of whom had previously landed in the bottom three at the top five. Allen won the contest in the most controversial voting result since the second season. It was claimed, and then later retracted, that 38\u00a0million of the 100\u00a0million votes cast on the night came from Allen's home state of Arkansas alone, and that AT&T employees unfairly influenced the votes by giving lessons on power-texting at viewing parties in Arkansas.\nBoth Allen and Lambert released the coronation song, \"No Boundaries\" which was co-written by DioGuardi. This is the first season in which the winner failed to achieve gold album status.\nSeason 9 (2010).\nThe ninth season premiered on January 12, 2010. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Kara DioGuardi, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Paula Abdul left the show and Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul at the start of Hollywood Week. One of the most prominent auditioners this season was General Larry Platt whose performance of \"Pants on the Ground\" became a viral hit song.\nCrystal Bowersox, who has Type-I diabetes, fell ill due to diabetic ketoacidosis on the morning of the girls performance night for the top 20 week and was hospitalized. The schedule was rearranged so the boys performed first and she could perform the following night instead; she later revealed that Ken Warwick, the show producer, wanted to disqualify her but she begged to be allowed to stay on the show.\nMichael Lynche was the lowest vote getter at top nine and was given the Judges' Save. The next week Katie Stevens and Andrew Garcia were eliminated. That week, Adam Lambert was invited back to be a mentor, the first \"Idol\" alum to do so. \"Idol Gives Back\" returned this season on April 21, 2010, and raised $45 million.\nA special tribute to Simon Cowell was presented in the finale for his final season with the show. Many figures from the show's past, including Paula Abdul, made an appearance.\nThe final two contestants were Lee DeWyze and Bowersox. DeWyze was declared the winner during the May 26 finale. No new song was used as coronation song this year; instead, the two finalists each released a cover song \u2013 DeWyze chose U2's \"Beautiful Day\", and Bowersox chose Patty Griffin's \"Up to the Mountain\". This is the first season where neither finalist achieved significant album sales.\nSeason 10 (2011).\nThe tenth season premiered on January 19, 2011. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Many changes were introduced this season, from the format to the personnel of the show. Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined Randy Jackson as judges following the departures of Simon Cowell (who left to launch the American version of \"The X Factor\"), Kara DioGuardi (whose contract was not renewed) and Ellen DeGeneres, who left the show on her own accord.\nRandy Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth. Nigel Lythgoe returned as executive producer. Jimmy Iovine, chairman of the Interscope Geffen A&M label group, the new partner of \"American Idol\", acted as the in-house mentor in place of weekly guest mentors, although in later episodes special guest mentors such as Beyonc\u00e9, will.i.am and Lady Gaga were brought in.\nThe tenth season is the first to include online auditions where contestants could submit a 40-second video audition via Myspace. Karen Rodriguez was one such auditioner and reached the final rounds.\nOne of the more prominent contestants this year was Chris Medina, whose story of caring for his brain-damaged fianc\u00e9e received widespread coverage. Medina was cut in the Top 40 round. Casey Abrams, who suffers from ulcerative colitis, was hospitalized twice and missed the Top 13 result show. The judges used their one save on Abrams on the Top 11, and as a result this was the first season that 11 finalists went on tour instead of 10. In the following week, Naima Adedapo and Thia Megia were both eliminated.\nPia Toscano, one of the presumed favorites to advance far in the season, was unexpectedly eliminated on April 7, 2011, finishing in ninth place. Her elimination drew criticisms from some former \"Idol\" contestants, as well as actor Tom Hanks. After \"Idol\", Jennifer Lopez helped guide her career.\nThe two finalists in 2011 were Lauren Alaina and Scotty McCreery, both teenage country singers. McCreery won the competition on May 25, being the youngest male winner and the fourth male in a row to win \"American Idol\". McCreery released his first single, \"I Love You This Big\", as his coronation song, and Alaina released \"Like My Mother Does\". McCreery's debut album, \"Clear as Day\", became the first debut album by an \"Idol\" winner to reach No. 1 on the US \"Billboard\" 200 since Ruben Studdard's \"Soulful\" in 2003, and he became the youngest male artist to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200.\nSeason 11 (2012).\nThe eleventh season premiered on January 18, 2012. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez, and Randy Jackson returned as judges. One more finalist would join the Top 24 making it the Top 25, which was later revealed to be Jermaine Jones. However, on March 14, Jones was disqualified in 12th place for concealing arrests and outstanding warrants. Jones denied the accusation that he concealed his arrests.\nFinalist Phillip Phillips suffered from kidney pain and was taken to the hospital before the Top 13 results show, and later received medical procedure to alleviate a blockage caused by kidney stones. He was reported to have eight surgeries during his Idol run, and had considered quitting the show due to the pain. He underwent surgery to remove the stones and reconstruct his kidney soon after the season had finished.\nJessica Sanchez received the fewest votes during the Top 7 week, and the judges decided to use their \"save\" option on her, making her the first female recipient of the save. The following week, unlike previous seasons, Colton Dixon was the only contestant sent home. Sanchez later made the final two, the first season where a recipient of the save reached the finale.\nPhillips became the winner, beating Sanchez. During the finale, fifth season finalist Ace Young proposed marriage to third season runner-up Diana DeGarmo on stage \u2013 which she accepted.\nPhillips released \"Home\" as his coronation song, while Sanchez released \"Change Nothing\". Phillips' \"Home\" has since become the best selling of all coronation songs, with over 5 million copies sold.\nSeason 12 (2013).\nThe twelfth season premiered on January 16, 2013. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Judges Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler left the show after two seasons. Randy Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. This season's judging panel consisted of Randy Jackson, along with Mariah Carey, Keith Urban and Nicki Minaj.\nThis was the first season since the ninth season to have four judges on the panel. The pre-season buzz and the early episodes of the show were dominated by the feud between the judges Minaj and Carey after a video of their dispute was leaked to TMZ.\nThe top 10 contestants started with five males and five females, however, the males were eliminated consecutively in the first five weeks, with Lazaro Arbos the last male to be eliminated. For the first time in the show's history, the top 5 contestants were all female. It was also the first time that the judges' \"save\" was not used, the top four contestants were therefore given an extra week to perform again with their votes carried over with no elimination in the first week.\n23-year-old Candice Glover won the season with Kree Harrison taking the runner-up spot. Glover became the first female to win \"American Idol\" since Jordin Sparks, who won the show in 2007. Glover released \"I Am Beautiful\" as a single while Harrison released \"All Cried Out\" immediately after the show. Glover sold poorly with her debut album, and this is also the first season that the runner-up was not signed by a music label.\nTowards the end of the season, Randy Jackson, the last remaining of the original judges, announced he would no longer serve as a judge to pursue other business ventures. Both judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj also decided to leave after one season to focus on their music careers.\nSeason 13 (2014).\nThe thirteenth season premiered on January 15, 2014. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Keith Urban returned as a judge. Urban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. Randy Jackson returned, though Jackson moved from the judging panel to the role of in-mentor. Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj left the panel after one season. Former judge Jennifer Lopez and former mentor Harry Connick, Jr. joined Urban on the panel. Connick Jr. served as a mentor for \"Idol\" in 2010 and 2012. Also, Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick were replaced as executive producers by Per Blankens, Jesse Ignjatovic and Evan Pragger. Bill DeRonde replaced Warwick as a director of the audition episodes, while Louis J. Horvitz replaced Gregg Gelfand as a director of the show.\nThis was the first season where the contestants were permitted to perform in the final rounds songs they wrote themselves. In the Top 8, Sam Woolf received the fewest votes, but he was saved from elimination by the judges. The 500th episode of the series was the Top 3 performance night.\nCaleb Johnson was named the winner of the season, with Jena Irene as the runner-up. Johnson released \"As Long as You Love Me\" as his coronation single while Irene released \"We Are One\".\nSeason 14 (2015).\nThe fourteenth season premiered on January 7, 2015. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban and Harry Connick, Jr. returned for their respective fourth, third and second seasons as judges. Eighth season runner-up Adam Lambert filled in for Urban during the New York City auditions. Randy Jackson did not return as the in-house mentor and left the show permanently. Scott Borchetta replaced Jackson as the mentor.\nChanges this season include only airing one episode a week during the final ten. Coca-Cola ended their longtime sponsorship of the show and Ford Motor Company maintained a reduced role. The winner of the season also received a recording contract with Big Machine Records.\nNick Fradiani won the season, defeating Clark Beckham. Fradiani became the first winner from the Northeast region. Fradiani released \"Beautiful Life\" as his coronation single while Beckham released \"Champion\". Jax, the third place finalist, also released a single called \"Forcefield\".\nSeason 15 (2016).\nFox announced on May 11, 2015, that the fifteenth season would be the final season of \"American Idol\"; as such, the season was expected to have an additional focus on the program's alumni. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, with Harry Connick Jr., Keith Urban, and Jennifer Lopez all returning as judges. The fifteenth season premiered on January 6, 2016. The season was shortened by four weeks compared to previous years. During the finale episode, President Barack Obama praised the millions of young people that voted for contestants and pitched that they vote in the upcoming election. The farewell season concluded on April 7, 2016. Seacrest signed off by saying: \"And one more time\u2014this is so tough\u2014we say to you from Hollywood, goodnight America\", and then he added, \"for now.\"\nTrent Harmon won the season against runner-up La'Porsha Renae. Harmon released \"Falling\" co-written by Keith Urban as his coronation song. Renae's \"Battles\", third-place finisher Dalton Rapattoni's \"Strike A Match\" and fourth-place finisher MacKenzie Bourg's \"Roses\" were also released as singles.\n2018\u2013present: ABC revival.\nIn early 2017, \"Variety\" reported that Fremantle Media was in talks to revive the show for NBC or for its original network, Fox. A dispute between Fremantle and Core Media Group derailed these plans. In May 2017, ABC was making a bid to revive the program. ABC acquired the rights to the series, and \"American Idol\" returned for the 2017\u201318 television season.\nSeason 16 (2018).\nIn July 2017, it was announced that Ryan Seacrest would return as host, and by September 2017 it was revealed that Katy Perry, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie would serve as judges. The sixteenth season premiered on March 11, 2018. This was the first season of \"American Idol\" to air on ABC. The season was again shortened compared to the previous season to twelve weeks, with multiple elimination in the final rounds. Unlike previous seasons where only two finalists remained in the final episode, three finalists performed in the finale. On May 21, 2018, the season concluded with Maddie Poppe crowned the winner, beating Caleb Lee Hutchinson as runner-up and Gabby Barrett in third place. Her winning song was \"Going, Going, Gone\". Caleb Lee Hutchinson released \"Johnny Cash Heart\" as a single, while Gabby Barrett's song was \"Rivers Deep\".\nSeason 17 (2019).\nABC renewed the revival series for another season. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. The seventeenth season premiered on March 3, 2019. For the finale, the show no longer features separate performance and result shows. On May 19, 2019, the season concluded with three finalists, with Madison VanDenburg eliminated in third place after performing two songs, and the final two performing their last song. For the first time, there were no separate performance and grand finale shows this season. Laine Hardy was crowned the winner and Alejandro Aranda runner-up. Hardy released a single, \"Flame\", immediately after the win, but Aranda did not. However, Aranda later released a song he performed in the finale, \"Tonight\", under the name Scarypoolparty on June 28, 2019.\nSeason 18 (2020).\nOn May 13, 2019, the series was renewed for an eighteenth season and it premiered on February 16, 2020. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. For the first time, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, from the top 20 to the finale, the contestants performed in their own homes, while Ryan Seacrest hosted the show remotely in his own home in Los Angeles with the judges also in their respective homes. The season was also further truncated, with the top 5 performing in the finale. Each finalist also performed only two songs for the finale. On May 17, the season concluded, with Just Sam crowned as the winner, with Arthur Gunn finishing as the runner-up. \"Rise Up\", the song Just Sam performed for their audition and reprised on the finale, was released as their debut song.\nSeason 19 (2021).\nOn May 15, 2020, ABC renewed the series for a nineteenth season and it premiered on February 14, 2021. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. Later in October, it was announced that Bobby Bones will return as mentor. On May 23, the season concluded, with Chayce Beckham crowned the winner, with Willie Spence finishing as the runner-up. \"23\", the song Chayce Beckham wrote and performed for Top 4, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 20 (2022).\nOn May 13, 2021, ABC renewed the series for a twentieth season and it premiered on February 27, 2022. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On December 31, it was announced that Bones would not be returning as a mentor. On May 22, the season concluded, with Noah Thompson crowned as the winner, with HunterGirl finishing as the runner-up. \"One Day Tonight\", the song Noah Thompson performed for the Grand Finale, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 21 (2023).\nOn May 13, 2022, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-first season and it premiered on February 19, 2023. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On May 21, the season concluded, with Iam Tongi crowned as the winner, with Megan Danielle finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 22 (2024).\nOn May 16, 2023, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-second season and it premiered on February 18, 2024. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. In February 2024, Perry announced that the season would be her last. On May 20, the season concluded, with Abi Carter crowned as the winner, with Will Moseley finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 23 (2025).\nOn May 10, 2024, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-third season; it was also announced the network was in-talks with \"high-profile stars\" to replace the outgoing Perry. On July 31, 2024, it was announced Seacrest would return as host, with Bryan and Richie returning as judges; Underwood was named as Perry's successor. The season premiered on March 9, 2025.\nReception.\nU.S. television ratings.\nSeasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of \"American Idol\". It holds the distinction of having the longest winning streak in the Nielsen annual television ratings; it became the highest-rated of all television programs in the United States overall for an unprecedented seven consecutive years, or eight consecutive (and total) years when either its performance or result show was ranked number one overall.\n\"Each U.S. network television season starts in late September and ends in late May, which coincides with the completion of May sweeps.\"\n\"American Idol\" premiered in June 2002 and became the surprise summer hit show of 2002. The first show drew 9.9\u00a0million viewers, giving Fox the best viewing figure for the 8.30\u00a0pm spot in over a year. The audience steadily grew, and by finale night, the audience had averaged 23\u00a0million, with more than 40\u00a0million watching some part of that show. That episode was placed third amongst all age groups, but more importantly it led in the 18\u201349 demographic, the age group most valued by advertisers.\nThe growth continued into the next season, starting with a season premiere of 26.5 million. The season attracted an average of 21.7\u00a0million viewers, and was placed second overall amongst the 18\u201349 age group. The finale night when Ruben Studdard won over Clay Aiken was also the highest-rated ever \"American Idol\" episode at 38.1\u00a0million for the final hour. By the third season, the show had become the top show in the 18\u201349 demographic<ref name=\"realitytvworld_5/24/2007\"></ref> a position it has held for all subsequent years up to and including the tenth season, and its competition stages ranked first in the nationwide overall ratings. By the fourth season, \"American Idol\" had become the most-watched series amongst all viewers on American TV for the first time, with an average viewership of 26.8\u00a0million. The show reached its peak in the fifth season with numbers averaging 30.6\u00a0million per episode, and this season remains the highest-rated of the series.\nThe sixth season premiered with the series' highest-rated debut episode and a few of its succeeding episodes rank among the most-watched episodes of \"American Idol.\" During this time, many television executives begun to regard the show as a programming force unlike any seen before, as its consistent dominance of up to two hours two or three nights a week exceeded the 30- or 60-minute reach of previous hits such as NBC's \"The Cosby Show\". The show was dubbed \"the Death Star\", and competing networks often rearranged their schedules in order to minimize losses. However, the sixth season also showed a steady decline in viewership over the course of the season. The season finale saw a drop in ratings of 16% from the previous year. The sixth season was the first season wherein the average results show rated higher than the competition stages (unlike in the previous seasons), and became the second-highest-rated of the series after the preceding season.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the seventh season. The premiere was down 11% among total viewers, and the results show in which Kristy Lee Cook was eliminated delivered its lowest-rated Wednesday show among the 18\u201334 demo since the first season in 2002. However, the ratings rebounded for the seventh-season finale with the excitement over the battle of the Davids, and improved over the sixth season as the series' third most watched finale. The strong finish of season seven also helped Fox become the most watched TV network in the country for the first time since its inception, a first ever in American television history for a non-Big Three major broadcast network. Overall ratings for the season were down 10% from the sixth season, which is in line with the fall in viewership across all networks due in part to the 2007\u20132008 Writers Guild of America strike.\nThe declining trend however continued into the eighth season, as total viewers numbers fell by 5\u201310% for early episodes compared to the seventh season, and by 9% for the finale. In the ninth season, \"Idol\"'s six-year extended streak of perfection in the ratings was broken, when NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics on February 17 beat \"Idol\" in the same time slot with 30.1\u00a0million viewers over \"Idol\"'s 18.4\u00a0million. Nevertheless, \"American Idol\" overall finished its ninth season as the most watched TV series for the sixth year running, breaking the previous record of five consecutive seasons achieved by CBS' \"All in the Family\" and NBC's \"The Cosby Show\".\nIn the tenth season, the total viewer numbers for the first week of shows fell 12\u201313%, and by up to 23% in the 18\u201349 demo compared to the ninth season. Later episodes, however, retained viewers better, and the season ended on a high with a significant increase in viewership for the finale \u2013 up 12% for the adults 18\u201349 demographic and a 21% increase in total viewers from the ninth-season finale. While the overall viewer number has increased this season, its viewer demographics have continued to age year on year \u2013 the median age this season was 47.2 compared to a median age of 32.1 in its first season. The demographics also became \"whiter\" over time and less diverse. Nevertheless, in the 2010\u201311 television season, Fox maintained its lead on over other networks with its seventh consecutive season of victory overall in the 18\u201349 demographic ratings in the United States.\nThe eleventh season, however, suffered a steep drop in ratings, a drop attributed by some to the arrival of new shows such as \"The Voice\" and \"The X Factor\". The ratings for the first two episodes of the eleventh season fell 16\u201321% in overall viewer numbers and 24\u201327% in the 18/49 demo, while the season finale fell 27% in total viewer number and 30% in the 18\u201349 demo. The average viewership for the season fell below 20 million viewers the first time since 2003, a drop of 23% in total viewers and 30% in the 18/49 demo. For the first time in eight years, \"American Idol\" lost the leading position in both the total viewers number and the 18/49 demo, coming in second to \"NBC Sunday Night Football\", although the strengths of \"Idol\" in its second year in the Wednesday-Thursday primetime slots helped Fox achieve the longest period of 18\u201349 demographic victory in the Nielsen ratings, standing at 8 straight years from 2004 to 2012.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the twelfth season, which saw the show hitting a number of series low in the 18\u201349 demo. The finale had 7.2 million fewer viewers than the previous season, and saw a drop of 44% in the 18\u201349 demo. The season viewers averaged at 13.3 million, a drop of 24% from the previous season. The thirteenth season suffered a huge decline in the 18\u201349 demographic, a drop of 28% from the twelfth season, and \"American Idol\" lost its Top 10 position in the Nielsen ratings by the end of the 2013\u201314 television season for the first time since its entry to the rankings in 2003 as a result, and never regained its Top 10 position by the series' end in 2016.\nThe continuing decline influenced further changes for the fourteenth season, including the loss of Coca-Cola as the show's major sponsor, and a decision to only broadcast one, two-hour show per week during the top 12 rounds (with results from the previous week integrated into the performance show, rather than having a separate results show). On May 11, 2015, prior to the fourteenth-season finale, Fox announced that the fifteenth season of \"American Idol\" would be its last. Despite these changes, the show's ratings would decline more sharply. The fourteenth-season finale was the lowest-rated finale ever, with an average of only 8.03 million viewers watching the finale. The show's ratings, however, rebounded in its final season and ended its run in 2016 as Fox's first-ever program to conclude its run without dropping from the Nielsen Top 30 most-watched television shows in each of its seasons.\nFor the revived series on ABC, the ratings were lower but remained stable compared to previous seasons on Fox. The finale of the seventeenth season was slightly more watched than the sixteenth.\nCritical reception.\nEarly reviews were mixed in their assessment. Ken Tucker of \"Entertainment Weekly\" considered that \"As TV, \"American Idol\" is crazily entertaining; as music, it's dust-mote inconsequential\". Others, however, thought that \"the most striking aspect of the series was the genuine talent it revealed\". It was also described as a \"sadistic musical bake-off\", and \"a romp in humiliation\". Other aspects of the show have attracted criticisms. The product placement in the show in particular was noted, and some critics were harsh about what they perceived as its blatant commercial calculations \u2013 Karla Peterson of \"The San Diego Union-Tribune\" charged that \"American Idol\" is \"a conniving multimedia monster\" that has \"absorbed the sin of our debauched culture and spit them out in a lump of reconstituted evil\". The decision to send the first season winner to sing the national anthem at the Lincoln Memorial on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks in 2002 was also poorly received by many. Lisa de Moraes of \"The Washington Post\" noted sarcastically that \"The terrorists have won\" and, with a sideswipe at the show's commercialism and voting process, that the decision as to who \"gets to turn this important site into just another cog in the 'Great \"American Idol\" Marketing Mandala' is in the hands of the millions of girls who have made \"American Idol\" a hit. Them and a handful of phone-redialer geeks who have been clocking up to 10,000 calls each week for their contestant of choice (but who, according to Fox, are in absolutely no way skewing the outcome).\"\nSome of the later writers about the show were more positive, Michael Slezak, again of \"Entertainment Weekly\", thought that \"for all its bloated, synthetic, product-shilling, money-making trappings, \"Idol\" provides a once-a-year chance for the average American to combat the evils of today's music business.\" Singer Sheryl Crow, who was later to act as a mentor on the show, however took the view that the show \"undermines art in every way and promotes commercialism\". Pop music critic Ann Powers nevertheless suggested that Idol has \"reshaped the American songbook\", \"led us toward a new way of viewing ourselves in relationship to mainstream popular culture\", and connects \"the classic Hollywood dream to the multicentered popular culture of the future.\" Others focused on the personalities in the show; Ramin Setoodeh of \"Newsweek\" accused judge Simon Cowell's cruel critiques in the show of helping to establish in the wider world a culture of meanness, that \"Simon Cowell has dragged the rest of us in the mud with him.\" Some such as singer John Mayer disparaged the contestants, suggesting that those who appeared on \"Idol\" are not real artists with self-respect.\nSome in the entertainment industry were critical of the star-making aspect of the show. Usher, a mentor on the show, bemoaning the loss of the \"true art form of music\", thought that shows like \"American Idol\" made it seem \"so easy that everyone can do it, and that it can happen overnight\", and that \"television is a lie\". Musician Michael Feinstein, while acknowledging that the show had uncovered promising performers, said that \"American Idol\" \"isn't really about music. It's about all the bad aspects of the music business \u2013 the arrogance of commerce, this sense of 'I know what will make this person a star; artists themselves don't know.' \" That \"American Idol\" is seen to be a fast track to success for its contestants has been a cause of resentment for some in the industry. LeAnn Rimes, commenting on Carrie Underwood winning Best Female Artist in Country Music Awards over Faith Hill in 2006, said that \"Carrie has not paid her dues long enough to fully deserve that award\". It is a common theme that has been echoed by many others. Elton John, who had appeared as a mentor in the show but turned down an offer to be a judge on \"American Idol\", commenting on talent shows in general, said that \"there have been some good acts but the only way to sustain a career is to pay your dues in small clubs\". \"American Idol\" revolutionized American pop culture and the pop idol process and has provided an opportunity for many to bypass the small club scene and allow a much larger audience to participate in and select the next potential chart topping performer.\nThe success of the show's alumni, however, has led to a more positive assessment of the show, and the show was described as having \"proven it has a valid way to pick talent and a proven way to sell records\". While the industry is divided on the show success, its impact is felt particularly strongly in the country music format. According to a CMT exec, reflecting on the success of Idol alumni in the country genre, \"if you want to try and get famous fast by going to a cattle call audition on TV, Idol reasonably remains the first choice for anyone\", and that country music and Idol \"go together well\".\n\"American Idol\" was nominated for the Emmy's Outstanding Reality Competition Program for nine years but never won. Director Bruce Gower won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Series in 2009, and the show won a Creative Arts Emmys each in 2007 and 2008, three in 2009, and two in 2011, as well as a Governor's Award in 2007 for its Idol Gives Back edition. It won the People's Choice Award, which honors the popular culture of the previous year as voted by the public, for favorite competition/reality show in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2012. It won the first Critics' Choice Television Award in 2011 for Best Reality Competition.\nIn 2013, TV Guide ranked the series No. 48 on its list of the 60 Best Series of All Time.\nGeographical, ethnic, and gender bias.\nThroughout the series, twelve of the seventeen \"Idol\" winners, including its first five, had come from the Southern United States. A large number of other finalists during the series' run have also hailed from the American South, including Clay Aiken, Kellie Pickler, and Chris Daughtry, who are all from North Carolina. In 2012, an analysis of the 131 contestants who have appeared in the finals of all seasons of the show up to that point found that 48% have some connection to the Southern United States.\nThe show itself was popular in the Southern United States, with households in the Southeastern United States 10% more likely to watch \"American Idol\" during the eighth season in 2009, and those in the East Central region, such as Kentucky, were 16 percent more likely to tune into the series. Data from Nielsen SoundScan, a music-sales tracking service, showed that of the 47\u00a0million CDs sold by \"Idol\" contestants through January 2010, 85 percent were by contestants with ties to the American South.\nTheories given for the success of Southerners on \"Idol\" have been: more versatility with musical genres, as the Southern U.S. is home to several music genre scenes; not having as many opportunities to break into the pop music business; text-voting due to the South having the highest percentage of cell-phone only households; and the strong heritage of music and singing, which is notable in the Bible Belt, where it is in church that many people get their start in public singing. Others also suggest that the Southern character of these contestants appeal to the South, as well as local pride. According to fifth season winner Taylor Hicks, who is from the state of Alabama, \"People in the South have a lot of pride ... So, they're adamant about supporting the contestants who do well from their state or region.\"\nFor five consecutive seasons, starting in the seventh season, the title was given to a white male who plays the guitar \u2013 a trend that \"Idol\" pundits call the \"White guy with guitar\" or \"WGWG\" factor. Just hours before the eleventh-season finale, where Phillip Phillips was named the winner, Richard Rushfield, author of the book \"American Idol: The Untold Story\", said, \"You have this alliance between young girls and grandmas and they see it, not necessarily as a contest to create a pop star competing on the contemporary radio, but as ... who's the nicest guy in a popularity contest\", he says, \"And that has led to this dynasty of four, and possibly now five, consecutive, affable, very nice, good-looking white boys.\"\nStart order bias.\nSome fans call the final performance of the night the \"pimp spot\" because it usually receives a big boost in votes, due to the recency effect. By performing first, a performer may benefit from the primacy effect, but any other early performance may be stifled. The second performance spot is sometimes called the \"un-pimp spot\" because it is the least beneficial.\nControversy.\nThe show was criticized in earlier seasons over the onerous contract contestants had to sign that gave excessive control to 19 Entertainment over their future careers and handed a large part of their future earnings to the management.\nIndividual contestants have generated controversy in this competition for their past actions or for being 'ringers' planted by the producers. A number of contestants have been disqualified for various reasons, such as for having an existing contract or undisclosed criminal record, although the show has also been accused of a double standard for disqualifying some but not others.\nVoting results have been a consistent source of controversy. The mechanism of voting has aroused considerable criticism, most notably in the second season when Ruben Studdard beat Clay Aiken in a close vote, and in the eighth season, when the massive increase in text votes fueled the texting controversy. Concerns about power voting have been expressed from the first season. Since 2004, votes also have been affected to a limited degree by online communities such as DialIdol and Vote for the Worst.\nCultural impact.\nTelevision.\nThe enormous success of the show and the revenue it generated were transformative for the Fox Broadcasting Company. \"American Idol\" and other shows such as \"Survivor\" and \"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?\" were credited for expanding reality television programming in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s, and \"Idol\" became the most watched non-scripted primetime television series, which it remained for almost a decade, from 2003 to 2012, breaking records on U.S. television (dominated by drama shows and sitcoms in the preceding decades). On several occasions, notably in 2003 and 2008, \"American Idol\" overtook the Academy Awards as the most-watched non-sports entertainment event on U.S. television, marking the most recent time as of 2025 that a live regular non-sports primetime series has garnered such viewership in the country.\nThe show pushed Fox to become the number one U.S. TV network in overall viewers in 2008 and among adults aged 18\u201349, the key demographic coveted by advertisers, for an unprecedented eight consecutive years from 2005 to 2012. Its success also helped lift the ratings of other shows that were scheduled around it such as \"House\" and \"Bones\", and \"Idol\", for years, was Fox's strongest platform primetime television program for promoting eventual hit shows of the 2010s (of the same network) such as \"Glee\", \"New Girl\" and \"Empire\". The show, its creator Simon Fuller claimed, \"saved Fox\".\nThe show's massive success in the mid-2000s to early 2010s spawned a number of imitating singing-competition shows, such as \"Rock Star\", \"Nashville Star\", \"The Voice\", \"Rising Star\", \"The Sing-Off\", and \"The X Factor\". The number of imitative singing shows on American television had reached 17 by 2016. Its format also served as a blueprint for non-singing TV shows such as \"Dancing with the Stars\" and \"So You Think You Can Dance\", most of which contribute to the current highly competitive reality TV landscape on American television.\nMusic.\nAs one of the most successful shows on U.S. television history, \"American Idol\" has had a strong impact not just on television, but also in the wider world of entertainment. It helped create a number of highly successful recording artists, such as Kelly Clarkson, Daughtry and Carrie Underwood, as well as others of varying notability. The alumni of the show's original run scored 13 Grammy Award wins out of 54 Grammy nominations up to its end in 2016, with Underwood and Clarkson receiving 10 wins combined.\nVarious \"American Idol\" alumni had success on various record charts around the world; in the U.S. they had achieved 345 number ones on the \"Billboard\" charts in its first 10 years, and 458 by its last year of broadcast in 2016, with 100 achieved by Kelly Clarkson alone. According to Fred Bronson, author of books on the Billboard charts, no other entity has ever created as many hit-making artists and bestselling albums and singles. In 2007, \"American Idol\" alums accounted for 2.1% of all music sales. Its alumni have a massive impact on radio; in 2007, \"American Idol\" had become \"a dominant force in radio\" according to Rich Meyer, president of the radio station monitoring research company Mediabase. By 2010, four winners each had more than a million radio spins, with Kelly Clarkson leading the field with over four million spins.\nAt the end of the show's original run on Fox in 2016, \"Idol\"'s contestants have sold more than 60 million albums in the U.S. and more than 100 million records globally, more than 175 of which are certified platinum or gold. Its participants have generated more than 450 Billboard No. 1 hits and sold more than 260 million digital downloads.\nFilm and theater.\nThe impact of \"American Idol\" was also strongly felt in musical theater, where many of \"Idol\" alumni have forged successful careers. The striking effect of former \"American Idol\" contestants on Broadway has been noted and commented on. The casting of a popular \"Idol\" contestant can lead to significantly increased ticket sales. Other alumni have gone on to work in television and films, the most notable being Jennifer Hudson who, on the recommendation of the \"Idol\" vocal coach Debra Byrd, won a role in \"Dreamgirls\" and eventually went on to win an Academy Award for her performance. She later became the show's first and only alumnus ever to win the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). In all, as of 2025, \"American Idol\" finalists resulted to 5 Grammy Award winners (Clarkson, Barrino, Hudson, Underwood and Mandisa), 2 Emmy Award winners (Clarkson and Hudson), and an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Tony Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Critics' Choice Award winner (Hudson).\nIn 2007, a musical based on the show, \"\", played off-Broadway. The musical closed after its official opening night.\nRevenue and commercial ventures.\nThe dominance of \"American Idol\" in the ratings had made it the most profitable show in U.S. TV for many years. The show was estimated to generate $900\u00a0million for the year 2004 through sales of TV ads, albums, merchandise and concert tickets. By the seventh season, the show was estimated to earn around $900\u00a0million from its ad revenue alone, not including ancillary sponsorship deals and other income. One estimate puts the total TV revenue for the first eight seasons of \"American Idol\" at $6.4\u00a0billion. Sponsors that bought fully integrated packages can expect a variety of promotions of their products on the show, such as product placement, adverts and product promotion integrated into the show, and various promotional opportunities. Other off-air promotional partners pay for the rights to feature \"Idol\" branding on their packaging, products and marketing programs. \"American Idol\" also partnered with Disney in its theme park attraction The American Idol Experience.\nAdvertising revenue.\n\"American Idol\" became the most expensive series on broadcast networks for advertisers starting the fourth season, and by the next season, it had broken the record in advertising rate for a regularly scheduled prime-time network series, selling over $700,000 for a 30-seconds slot, and reaching up to $1.3\u00a0million for the finale. Its ad prices reached a peak in the seventh season at $737,000. Estimated revenue more than doubled from $404\u00a0million in the third season to $870\u00a0million in the sixth season. While that declined from the eighth season onwards, it still earned significantly more than its nearest competitor, with advertising revenue topping $800\u00a0million annually the next few seasons. However, the sharp drop in ratings in the eleventh season also resulted in a sharp drop in advertising rate for the twelfth season, and the show lost its leading position as the costliest show for advertisers. By 2014, ad revenue from had fallen to $427 million where a 30-second spot went for less than $300,000. For the relaunched \"Idol\" on ABC, it has been reported that a 30-second spot may cost between $120,000 and $160,000.\nMedia sponsorship.\nFord Motor Company and Coca-Cola were two of the first sponsors of \"American Idol\" in its first season. The sponsorship deal cost around $10\u00a0million in the first season, rising to $35\u00a0million by the seventh season, and between $50 and $60 million in the tenth season. The third major sponsor AT&T Wireless joined in the second season but ended after the twelfth season, and Coca-Cola officially ended its sponsorship after the thirteenth season amidst the declining ratings of \"Idol\" in the mid-2010s. iTunes sponsored the show since the seventh season.\n\"American Idol\" prominent display of its sponsors' logo and products had been noted since the early seasons. By the sixth season, \"Idol\" showed 4,349 product placements according to Nielsen Media Research. The branded entertainment integration proved beneficial to its advertisers \u2013 promotion of AT&T text-messaging as a means to vote successfully introduced the technology into the wider culture, and Coca-Cola has seen its equity increased during the show.\nCoca-Cola's archrival PepsiCo declined to sponsor \"American Idol\" at the show's start. What the \"Los Angeles Times\" later called \"missing one of the biggest marketing opportunities in a generation\" contributed to Pepsi losing market share, by 2010 falling to third place from second in the United States. PepsiCo sponsored the American version of Cowell's \"The X Factor\" in hopes of not repeating its \"Idol\" mistake until its cancellation.\nFor the revived series on ABC, Macy's and Johnson & Johnson's Zyrtec signed on as the major sponsors of the show.\nAmerican Idol tour.\nThe top ten (eleven in the tenth season, five in the fourteenth season, and seven in the sixteenth season) toured at the end of every season except for the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons. In the twelfth season tour a semi-finalist who won a sing-off was also added to the tour. Kellogg's Pop-Tarts was the sponsor for the first seven seasons, and Guitar Hero was added for the seventh season tour. M&M's Pretzel Chocolate Candies was a sponsor of the ninth season tour. The fifth season tour was the most successful tour with gross of over $35\u00a0million. However no concert tour was organized in the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons, the only seasons not to have an associated tour. The sixteenth season tour featured the band In Real Life as an opener on select dates.\n\"Idol Gives Back\".\n\"Idol Gives Back\" was a special charity event started in season six featuring performances by celebrities and various fund-raising initiatives. This event was also held in seasons seven and nine and has raised nearly $185\u00a0million in total.\nMusic releases.\n\"American Idol\" has traditionally released studio recordings of contestants' performances as well as the winner's coronation single for sale. For the first five seasons, the recordings were released as a compilation album at the end of the season. All five of these albums reached the top ten in Billboard 200 which made \"American Idol\" the most successful soundtrack franchise of any motion picture or television program. Starting late in the fifth season, individual performances were released during the season as digital downloads, initially from the \"American Idol\" official website only. In the seventh season the live performances and studio recordings were made available during the season from iTunes when it joined as a sponsor. In the tenth season the weekly studio recordings were also released as compilation digital album straight after performance night.\n19 Recordings, a recording label owned by 19 Entertainment, currently hold the rights to phonographic material recorded by all the contestants. 19 Recordings originally partnered with Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) to promote and distribute the recordings through its labels RCA Records, Arista Records, J Records, and Jive Records. From 2005\u20132007, BMG partnered with Sony Music Entertainment to form a joint venture known as Sony BMG Music Entertainment. From 2008 to 2010, following their acquisition of BMG, Sony Music handled the distribution of \"American Idol\"'s music. In 2010, UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records replaced Sony as the music label for \"American Idol\".\nTie-ins.\n\"American Idol\" video games\nTheme park attraction.\nOn February 14, 2009, The Walt Disney Company debuted \"The American Idol Experience\" at its Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. In this live production, co-produced by 19 Entertainment, park guests chose from a list of songs and auditioned privately for Disney cast members. Those selected then performed on a stage in a 1000-seat theater replicating the \"Idol\" set. Three judges, whose mannerisms and style mimicked those of the real \"Idol\" judges, critiqued the performances. Audience members then voted for their favorite performer. There were several preliminary-round shows during the day that culminated in a \"finals\" show in the evening where one of the winners of the previous rounds that day was selected as the overall winner. The winner of the finals show received a \"Dream Ticket\" that granted them front-of-the-line privileges at any future \"American Idol\" audition. The attraction closed on August 30, 2014.\nOther broadcasts.\n\"American Idol\" is broadcast to over 100 nations worldwide. In most nations these are not live broadcasts and may be tape delayed by several days or weeks, except for other season finales that are aired live in several countries simulcast with the U.S. broadcast on Fox (2002\u20132016) and ABC (since 2018). In Canada, the first thirteen seasons of American Idol were aired live countrywide by CTV and/or CTV Two, in simulcast with Fox. CTV dropped \"Idol\" after its thirteenth season and in August 2014, Yes TV announced that it had picked up Canadian rights to \"American Idol\" beginning in its 2015 season. In 2017, it was announced the show would return to CTV Two for its sixteenth season. Since season nineteen, the show started airing on Citytv. In Slovakia, American Idol was broadcast on Jednotka.\nIn Latin America, the show is broadcast and subtitled by Sony Entertainment Television. In Southeast Asia, it is broadcast by Sony Channel every Monday and Tuesday nine or ten hours after since its revival. In Philippines, it is aired every Thursday and Friday nine or ten hours after its United States telecast; from 2004 to 2007 on ABC; 2008\u201311 on QTV, then GMA News TV; 2012\u201316, 2018\u201319 on ETC; and since 2024 on TV5. In Indonesia, it was aired on RCTI in the 2002 to 2003 season with the Indonesian subtitles, before Indonesian Idol was held in the 2004, aired after each episode ended, and in the 2011 to 2013 season it was broadcast by B-Channel (now RTV). In Australia, it aired a few hours after the U.S. telecast. It was aired on Network Ten from 2002 to 2008 and then again in 2013. Between 2008 and 2012 it aired on Fox8 and the thirteenth and fourteenth seasons (2014\u201315) it aired on digital channel, Eleven, a sister channel to Network Ten. Its final season (2016) aired on Fox8 hours after the original U.S. broadcast. The show enjoyed a lot of popularity in Australia throughout the 2000s before declining in the ratings. In the United Kingdom, episodes were aired one day after the U.S. broadcast on digital channel ITV2. In the twelfth season, the episodes aired on 5*. It was also aired in Ireland on TV3 two days after the telecast. In Brazil and Israel, the show airs two days after its original broadcast, and broadcast live during the season finale. In the instances where the airing is delayed, the shows may sometimes be combined into one episode to summarize the results. In Italy, the twelfth season was broadcast by La3. In Singapore, The show was broadcast on Mediacorp Channel 5 for the ninth and tenth seasons.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1680590": "Breakaway (Kelly Clarkson song)\n2004 song by Kelly Clarkson\n\"Breakaway\" is a power ballad song recorded by American singer Kelly Clarkson. The song, written by Matthew Gerrard, Bridget Benenate, and Avril Lavigne, was originally intended for Lavigne's debut studio album, \"Let Go\" (2002). After being deemed unsuitable for the album, it was passed to Clarkson to be recorded as a soundtrack for the film \"\" (2004). Clarkson, who was finishing her second studio album at that time, recorded \"Breakaway\" to tide her fans over until the first single from her new album was released. However, the song's success prompted its inclusion on Clarkson's second album, while the record label decided to name the album after the song. \"Breakaway\" was first released as the first single from on July 19, 2004. In May 2006, \"Breakaway\" was reissued as the fifth and final single from the album of the same name.\n\"Breakaway\" received positive reviews from music critics, who could relate to the song's message and simple lyrics. It incorporates acoustic guitars and airy drums which are interspersed with Clarkson's controlled voice. The lyrics narrate Clarkson's journey as a girl growing up in a small town who follows her dream for self-improvement. \"Breakaway\" was a commercial success outside of the United States, where it peaked within the top 20 of multiple European countries, and in the top 10 in Australia, Belgium, Hungary, and the Netherlands. In the United States, the song peaked at number six on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart and became her third top ten song in the chart. It also topped the US Adult Contemporary for twenty-one non-consecutive weeks, a record for female artists that is now shared between herself, Celine Dion's \"A New Day Has Come\" and Adele's \"Hello\".\nDirected by Dave Meyers, the accompanying music video for \"Breakaway\" portrays Clarkson as a young girl from a small town who follows her dream and becomes an international star. It also contained scenes interspersed from \"The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement\". Clarkson acted out most of the lyrics in the music video because she felt that the song was autobiographical. Critics responded positively to the music video for being faithful to the central theme shared by the song, the film, and Clarkson's personal biography. Clarkson performed the song in a series of live appearances such as television shows \"Saturday Night Live\", \"The Oprah Winfrey Show\" and \"The Tonight Show with Jay Leno\". She has performed the song in her concert tours, including the Stronger Tour. \"Breakaway\" has also been covered by many contestants from reality television singing competitions, notably Katie Stevens, a contestant in the ninth season of \"American Idol\", as well as an English pop quartet Belle Amie, who finished eleventh in the seventh season of \"The X Factor\".\nBackground and release.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"As it turned out, it wasn't quite right for Avril's album, so we pitched it to Kelly Clarkson. It all worked out great. Kelly sounds great singing it, and it was a big hit for us.\"\n\u2014 Matthew Gerrard on \"Breakaway\"'s success.\n\"Breakaway\" was originally written by Avril Lavigne, Bridget Benenate and Matthew Gerrard. According to Benenate, the song was written in 2001 when she was working with Gerrard for Lavigne's first album, \"Let Go\". Benenate explained that Lavigne came to her to write the song, saying:\nAvril talked about her life and what things were important to her \u2013 she was the inspiration for the song. Matthew began creating the melody and track, and I started working on the lyrics. I remember staying in bed for three days, writing 25 versions of the lyric. I love being in bed and writing lyrics, and having my dog Jet and my kitty Dash on the bed. Anyway, we finally finished the lyric, then we completed the demo.\nAfter the production of the song was deemed unsuitable for Lavigne's album, the song was passed to several artists including Samantha Moore before finally being recorded by Kelly Clarkson. Benenate also added that it was Mitchell Leib, the President of Music and Soundtracks for Walt Disney Pictures and Television/Buena Vista Music Group, who secured \"Breakaway\" as one of the soundtracks of \"\". In an interview with MTV, Clarkson said that she recorded \"Breakaway\" to tide fans over until September that year before she released the first single from her second album. Nevertheless, the song's huge success prompted its inclusion on the album, which Clarkson decided to name \"Breakaway\". Clarkson expressed that \"Breakaway\" was different from everything she has done, saying that it \"is a simple song, and I think that its simplicity is what's beautiful about it. Whenever writers or producers come to work with me, they take advantage of the fact that I can really belt it out. What's cool about 'Breakaway' is that it doesn't take advantage of that. The song just uses the simplicity of my voice.\" The song was officially released to radio stations on July 19, 2004, as the first single of . Lavigne's original demo of the song leaked onto the internet nearly a decade later in April 2014. A brand new recording was officially released as part of the 20th anniversary re-release of her debut album on June 3, 2022.\nComposition.\n\"Breakaway\" is a folk-pop song with a length of three minutes and 57 seconds. It is composed in the key of C major, with a tempo of 160 beats per minute. T.U. Dawood of \"Dawn\" lauded the song for being the best track on the album, writing \"\"Breakaway\" is an enchanting single that will have you humming along to its infectious, gentle chorus and the inspiring lyrics.\" It has a chord progression of C\u2013G\u2013Am7-F(9) and Clarkson's vocal range in the song spans two octaves from the low note of G3 to the note of D5. Sam Lansky of PopCrush.com thought that Clarkson's vocal floated over strummed guitars and airy drums, a combination which elevated the inspirational message of the song. Dave Donelly of Sputnikmusic noted that \"Breakaway\" successfully contrasted typical acoustic verse with a soaring pop chorus which was interspersed by Clarkson's controlled but powerful voice.\nLyrically, the song is about growing up and moving on in life. Natalie Nichols of \"The Baltimore Sun\" considered \"Breakaway\" as Clarkson's anthem which is about a small-town girl going for her dreams. Clarkson admitted that she could relate to the song, saying:\nIt describes how I got into the business, verbatim. I did grow up in a small town, I wanted to get out, I felt like there was something... not better for me, but something different for me. I didn't feel like I fit in at school. Whether you are a DJ, or if you work with computers, or if you're a teacher, everyone has that point where they feel, 'I'm bored and this isn't what I wanted to do with my life.'\nReception.\nCritical response.\nWhile reviewing the album, Shirley Shipin of \"Rolling Stone\" opined that \"Breakaway\" was the highlight of the album where Clarkson sounded \"more Avril than Ashlee\". Rhonda Lynn of Florida Entertainment Scene praised the acoustic guitar in the song which is instrumental in holding the whole structure together. Tammy La Gorce of Amazon.com thought that the song would not wear out due to its \"rock-friendly thumps, dips, and rolls.\" In a different perspective, Joan Anderman of \"Boston.com\" remarked that \"Breakaway\" is not new or exciting-sounding but he admitted that the \"hit single accomplishes the rare feat of being thoroughly middle-of-the-road without sacrificing grace or intelligence\". Chuck Taylor of \"Billboard\" felt that the song was a weak choice as a single compared to Clarkson's previous hits, writing \"'Breakaway' sounds more like an Irish folk song propped up with pop production than the anthemic material with which Clarkson has won over legions of fans.\" Kathi Kamen Goldmark of Disney Family.com felt that the song was tedious, simultaneously dull and so emotionally overwrought that it almost sounds like a parody of itself. Michael Wood of \"The Village Voice\" described the song as \"a swoony acoustic folk-pop that Goo Goo Doll Johnny Rzeznik would trade his hair gel for\". Jill Salama of Oprah.com listed \"Breakaway\" as one of her nine favourite \"Idol\" singles of all time, writing \"There is nothing that gets us more than a song about a girl going out on her own. Making a wish, making a change and, of course, breaking away. But seriously, this song is more than just a high school graduation anthem.\"\nBill Lamb of About.com ranked \"Breakaway\" at number four in his list of Top 10 Kelly Clarkson songs. The song received a nomination in the category of Song of the Year: Adult Hit Radio at the 2005 Radio Music Awards but lost to Green Day's \"Boulevard of Broken Dreams\". It was one of the recipients of BDSCertified Spin Awards in November 2004 with 100,000 spins accumulated throughout the year. On March 5, 2013, \"Billboard\" ranked the song at number five in its list of Top 100 American Idol Hits of All Time. Additionally, it also appeared at number four of Clarkson's Top 15 Biggest \"Billboard\" Hot 100 hits through the week ending April 29, 2017.\nChart performance.\nOn the week ending August 28, 2004, \"Breakaway\" debuted at number 60 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. On its tenth week, the song jumped from number 12 to number 10 to become Clarkson's third Top 10 song in the chart, following \"A Moment Like This\" and \"Miss Independent\". It peaked at number six on the week ending November 20, 2004. The song spent 46 weeks in \"Billboard\" Hot 100, a feat that was later achieved by its immediate successor, \"Since U Been Gone\". It was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on February 5, 2005. \"Breakaway\" also debuted at number 37 on the US Pop Songs on the week dated August 21, 2004. Three months later, it peaked at number two on the week ending November 13, 2004, and was held off the top spot by Nelly featuring Tim McGraw's \"Over and Over\". The song entered \"Billboard\" Adult Pop Songs at number 36 on the week dated August 21, 2004, before peaking at number two on the week ending February 12, 2005.\n\"Breakaway\" also made an appearance on the US Adult Contemporary at number 30 on the week ending September 18, 2004. The song fell out of the chart after its debut, before re-entering the chart at the same position of number 30 in its second week. Six months later, \"Breakaway\" topped \"Billboard\" Adult Contemporary, dethroning Los Lonely Boys' \"Heaven\" on the week ending March 12, 2005. The song spent 20 consecutive weeks at number one on the chart before being dethroned by Michael Bubl\u00e9's \"Home\". However, the song returned to top the \"Billboard\" Adult Contemporary for the 21st week on the week ending August 6, 2005. With this achievement, \"Breakaway\" tied the record with Celine Dion's \"A New Day Has Come\" as the longest-running Adult Contemporary chart-topper by a female artist. \"Breakaway\" is also the longest-running chart-topper to come from a film in \"Billboard\" Adult Contemporary history, surpassing the nineteen-week record held jointly by Phil Collins's \"You'll Be in My Heart\" from \"Tarzan\" and Celine Dion's \"Because You Loved Me\" from \"Up Close & Personal\". It remains as Clarkson's longest-running number one in her career. As of September 2017, \"Breakaway\" has sold 2,128,000 paid digital downloads.\nInternationally, \"Breakaway\" was a commercial success. In Australia, \"Breakaway\" debuted at number 14 on the week ending September 26, 2004, before peaking at number 10, three weeks later. It was certified gold by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) for shipments of over 35,000 units. In New Zealand, \"Breakaway\" entered the New Zealand Singles Chart at number 19 on the week ending October 18, 2004. Six weeks later, the song ascended to a new peak of number 12. On July 8, 2006, the song debuted and peaked at number 22 in the United Kingdom. In Ireland, it debuted and peaked at number 12 on the week ending June 29, 2006. Elsewhere in Europe, \"Breakaway\" peaked at number six in Belgium, number eight in Austria, as well as number nine in the Netherlands.\nMusic video.\nThe accompanying music video for \"Breakaway\" was directed by Dave Meyers, which was shot in two days from July 10 to 11, 2004. In the video, the younger version of Clarkson was played by Lindsey Krueger. According to Meyers, working with Clarkson was a pleasant experience because he felt she was good and honest, although he had initial doubts in the beginning. He explained, \"I was a little worried, her coming off 'American Idol,' it inherently feels manufactured and I didn't know how much of it was true artistry. But when I met her, she really does have a good, solid vibe. It was an honor to bring some of that out of her.\" Since the song is autobiographical, Clarkson decided to act out most of the lyrics in the video. Meyers also realized that the song was featured in \"The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement\" and he struggled to find a way to address the film-footage in the music video, saying \"Since it's a movie tie-in, the idea stems from trying to figure out a new way of addressing the film-footage requirement they put on you, so we came up with the idea of her attending the premiere, which is very much something she will do in real life.\"\nThe video begins with the younger version of Clarkson sitting at the back seat of a station wagon. Singing the first verse, she witnesses a depressing scene of her brother quarreling with her sister who are scolded by their mother. She slowly clasps both her hands before the video shifts to the present day where Clarkson is seen arriving on the red carpet with her publicist for the world premiere of \"The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement\". After posing for the photographers, she enters the cinema and watches the film. The next scene switches back to the younger Clarkson who is sitting and looking around her neighborhood at her house's rooftop as a plane is seen flying across the sky. The video switches back to the older Clarkson who is now watching the aforementioned film in her laptop inside the plane as it goes through a mild turbulence. Clarkson is also seen reminiscing about her past job as a worker in a movie theater, singing with her co-workers. The next scene shows Clarkson singing with her band in a backyard party which is shown alternately with scenes from the film, as well as a montage of her family and co-workers waving away from her. In the final scene, the younger Clarkson is shown praying by her bedside.\nThe video was uploaded to MTV's website on August 9, 2004. The video reached number five on the AOL Music Top Video chart in September 2004, with 740,176 streams. Johnni Macke of E! deemed the early 2000s as Clarkson's \"music video prime\". She opined that the video was a great Cinderella story, writing \"\"Breakaway\" shows the story of a young tomboy girl dealing with her insane family and what she grows up into...AKA a popstar named Kelly Clarkson.\" Kate Aurthur of \"The New York Times\" praised the music video for successfully illustrating the message of a girl following her own dream, which is a central theme shared by the song, the movie and Clarkson's biography. She also lauded the director of the video, Dave Meyers, for his ability to use Clarkson's evolution as an element to overshadow the distracting clips from \"The Princess Diaries: Royal Engagement\" despite noticing that the use of visual metaphors in the music video was overwrought.\nLive performances.\nClarkson first performed \"Breakaway\" on \"The Tonight Show with Jay Leno\" in August 2004. In February 2005, she performed \"Breakaway\" as well as \"Since U Been Gone\" on \"Saturday Night Live\". On September 23, 2005, she appeared on \"The Oprah Winfrey Show\" and performed \"Breakaway\" as well as \"Because of You\". While touring at the Palace Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio during her Breakaway World Tour, Clarkson performed \"Breakaway\" while signing several autographs for her fans near the stage to purposely let the crowd belt out the chorus. \"Breakaway\" was also included in the setlist of Clarkson's 2009 All I Ever Wanted Tour where she performed the song in Hammerstein Ballroom without any dancers, acrobatics, moving set pieces and no special effects. Caryn Ganz noted that Clarkson belted the ballad song effortlessly by walking back and forth across the stage with her right hand on the mic and her left resting on her chest. Jim Cantiello of MTV opined that Clarkson's \"low chest-voice cooed the verses of 'Breakaway'\" and complimented the singer's vocal prowess throughout the concert. On April 3, 2012, Clarkson performed \"Breakaway\" as an encore to her Stronger Tour at Nokia Theatre L.A. Live, Los Angeles, where she told the audience that people started supporting her because of the song.\nIn 2019, Avril Lavigne performed the song for the first time live at select venues during her Head Above Water Tour.\nCover versions and use in media.\n\"Breakaway\" has also been covered by contestants from reality television singing competitions. Katie Stevens covered the song on the ninth season of \"American Idol\". Despite listening to the judges' comments to sing a contemporary song, her rendition was criticized by the judges; Randy Jackson thought the note was too big for Stevens while Ellen DeGeneres felt Stevens did not sell the lyrics. Kara DioGuardi said, \"I don't think you know who you are yet as an artist\", an opinion agreed by Simon Cowell. Jim Cantiello of MTV noted that Stevens' performance of the song was her weakest performance in the show, stating \"Unfortunately, her uneven vocals on 'Breakaway' exposed her youthful inexperience.\" The same opinion was echoed by Eric Ditzian of MTV who opined that Stevens failed to resonate her youthful energy favouring the song choice.\n\"Breakaway\" was performed by Julie Zorrilla in the semi-finals on the tenth season of \"American Idol.\" Samantha Stephens of \"The Republican\" felt Zorrilla's performance was mediocre. Gil Kaufman of MTV remarked that Zorrilla's voice was shaky, and it lacked personality. After landing in the bottom two, Belle Amie, an English pop quartet contestant on the seventh season of \"The X Factor\", decided to perform \"Breakaway\" as their survival song. Nevertheless, they were eliminated in the episode. The song was also performed by Megan Hilty on the episode titled \"Understudy\" of the American television series \"Smash\", which aired on April 7, 2012. Matt Tucker of KSiteTV.com thought the performance was \"lovely\", describing it as one of the things that stood out in the episode. The song was covered by Jenna Ushkowitz, Kevin McHale and Darren Criss, on the 97th episode, \"Frenemies\", of the musical series \"Glee\", which aired on February 25, 2014. For the thirteenth season of \"American Idol\", the song is used as the sendoff song when a contestant is voted off. The contestant who is voted off, their cover of the song is played during the goodbye montage video package. It was also used in \"The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants\" trailer and in the thirtieth season of Brazilian soap opera \"Malha\u00e7\u00e3o\". The song was also featured on the 2020 episode \"The Son\" on the television show \"Little America.\"\nIn 2022, singer-songwriter Avril Lavigne, who originally co-wrote the song for her debut studio album, \"Let Go\", released her version of the song for the expanded edition of said album to commemorate the 20th anniversary since its release. The lyrics included the original word 'snow' which Kelly Clarkson had changed to 'rain' to fit her perspective.\nCredits and personnel.\nCredits are adapted from the liner notes of \"Breakaway\".\nRecording\nPersonnel\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["1680590", "191890"], "permutation_1": ["191890", "1680590"], "permutation_2": ["1680590", "191890"], "permutation_3": ["191890", "1680590"]}
{"id": "2hop__444807_136211", "docs_added": {"27208": "Saint Lucia\nCountry in the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean Sea\nSaint Lucia is an island country of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean. Part of the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, it is located north/northeast of the island of Saint Vincent, northwest of Barbados and south of Martinique. It covers a land area of with an estimated population of over 180,000 people as of 2018. The nation's capital and largest city is Castries.\nThe first proven inhabitants of the island, the Arawaks, are believed to have been the first to settle on the island in 200\u2013400 AD. In 800 AD, the island was taken over by the Kalinago. The French were the first European colonists to settle on the island, and they signed a treaty with the native Caribs in 1660. The English took control of the island in 1663. In ensuing years, England and France fought 14 times for control of the island; consequently control over this immensely valuable geopolitical position changed frequently. Eventually, the British took complete control in 1814, shortly after the victory over French Emperor Napoleon I. Because the island switched so often between British and French control, Saint Lucia was also known as the \"Helen of the West\" after the Greek mythological character, Helen of Troy.\nRepresentative government was introduced in 1924 with universal suffrage being established in 1951. From 1958 to 1962, the island was a member of the West Indies Federation. On 22 February 1979, Saint Lucia became an independent state, while remaining as a Commonwealth realm.\nSaint Lucia is a member of the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the World Trade Organization, CARICOM and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). It is also a member of .\nEtymology.\nSaint Lucia is named after Saint Lucy of Syracuse (AD 283 \u2013 304). Saint Lucia is one of two sovereign states in the world named after a female and is the only one named after a woman (Ireland is named after a goddess). Legend states that French sailors were shipwrecked on the island on 13 December, the feast day of St. Lucy, and therefore named the island in her honour. \nA globe in the Vatican from 1520 shows the island as Sancta Lucia, indicating that the island was instead named by early Spanish explorers. Saint Lucia was first known as \"Louanalao\" by the Arawak Indians in 200 AD, meaning \"Island of the Iguanas,\" and then as \"Hewanorra\", in 800 AD, meaning \"there where iguanas are found,\" when the Carib Indians arrived and assimilated their culture into Saint Lucia.\nHistory.\nPre-Columbian.\nThe first proven inhabitants of Saint Lucia were the Arawaks, though there may have been other native peoples prior to them. The Arawaks are believed to have come from northern South America, sometime around AD 200\u2013400, as there are numerous archaeological sites on the island where specimens of their pottery have been found.\nThe Kalinago (Island Caribs) arrived around AD 800, and seized control from the Arawaks by killing their men and assimilating the women into their own society. \nEarly European exploration and colonization.\nIt is possible that Christopher Columbus may have sighted the island during his fourth voyage in 1502, but he does not mention the island in his log. Juan de la Cosa noted the island on his map of 1500, calling it \"El Falcon\", and another island to the south \"Las Agujas\". A Spanish c\u00e9dula from 1511 mentions the island within the Spanish domain, and a globe in the Vatican made in 1520, shows the island as Sancta Lucia.\nIn the late 1550s, the French pirate Fran\u00e7ois le Clerc (known as \"Jambe de Bois\", due to his wooden leg) set up a camp on Pigeon Island, from where he attacked passing Spanish ships. In 1605, an English vessel called the \"Oliphe Blossome\" was blown off-course on its way to Guyana, and the 67 colonists started a settlement on Saint Lucia, after initially being welcomed by the Carib chief Anthonie. By 26 September 1605, only 19 survived following continued attacks by the Carib chief Augraumart, so the settlers fled the island. The English tried to settle the island again in 1638, but the Caribs continued to be hostile. Eventually, the French successfully claimed the island in 1650 and they signed a treaty with the Caribs in 1660. In 1664, Thomas Warner (son of Sir Thomas Warner, the governor of St Kitts) claimed Saint Lucia for England but the English fled again in 1666, with the French gaining full control of the island after the signing of the Treaty of Breda. Saint Lucia was made an official French crown colony in 1674, as a dependency of Martinique.\n18th and 19th centuries.\nAfter the slave-based sugar industry developed, both the British and the French found the island attractive. During the 18th century, the island changed ownership, or was declared neutral territory, a dozen times, although the French settlements remained and the island was a de facto French colony well into the eighteenth century.\nIn 1722, George I of Great Britain granted both Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent to the 2nd Duke of Montagu. Montague appointed Nathaniel Uring, a merchant sea captain and adventurer, as deputy-governor. Uring went to the islands with a group of seven ships, and established settlement at Petit Carenage. Unable to get enough support from British warships, he and the new colonists were quickly run off by the French.\nDuring the Seven Years' War, Britain occupied Saint Lucia for a year, but handed the island back to the French in 1763, under the Treaty of Paris. Like the English and Dutch on other islands, in 1765, the French began to develop the land for the cultivation of sugar cane as a commodity crop on large plantations. The British occupied the island again in 1778.\nFrom 1782 to 1803, control of the island switched multiple times. In January 1791, during the French Revolution, the National Assembly sent four \"commissaires\" to St Lucia to spread the revolutionary philosophy. By August 1791, slaves began to abandon their estates and Governor Jean-Joseph Sourbader de Gimat fled. In December 1792, Lt. Jean-Baptiste Raymond de Lacrosse arrived with revolutionary pamphlets, and the impoverished whites and free people of colour began to arm themselves as \"patriots\". On 1 February 1793, France declared war on England and Holland, and General Nicolas Xavier de Ricard took over as Governor. The National Convention abolished enslavement on 4 February 1794. On 1 April 1794, St. Lucia was captured by a British expeditionary force led by Vice Admiral John Jervis. Morne Fortune was renamed \"Fort Charlotte\". Soon, a combined force of French Revolutionary Army soldiers and maroons, \"L'Armee Fran\u00e7aise dans les Bois\", began to fight back, starting the First Brigand War.\nA short time later, the British invaded the island as a part of the war with France that had recently broken out. On 21 February 1795, French forces under the nominal control of Victor Hugues, defeated a battalion of British troops at Vieux Fort and Rabot. In 1796, Castries was burned as part of the conflict. Leading the 27th (Inniskilling) Regiment, General John Moore retook Fort Charlotte in 1796, after two days of bitter fighting. As an honour, the Fusiliers' regimental colour was displayed on the flagstaff of the captured fortress at Morne Fortune for an hour before being replaced by the Union Jack. Upon the capture of the fort, Moore's superior, Ralph Abercromby, departed the island and placed Moore in charge of the British garrison. Moore remained at this post until falling ill with yellow fever, leading to his return to Britain before 1798.\nIn 1803, the British regained control of the island. Many members of the \"L'Armee Fran\u00e7aise dans les Bois\" escaped into the thick rainforest where they evaded capture and established maroon communities.\nSlavery on the island continued for a short time, but anti-slavery sentiment was rising in Britain. The British stopped the import of slaves by anyone, white or coloured, when they abolished the slave trade in 1807.\nFrance and Great Britain continued to contest Saint Lucia until the British secured it in 1814, as part of the Treaty of Paris, ending the Napoleonic Wars. Thereafter, Saint Lucia was considered one of the British Windward Islands colonies.\nThe institution of slavery was abolished on the island in 1834, as it was throughout the British Empire. After abolition, all former slaves had to serve a four-year \"apprenticeship\", to accustom them to the idea of freedom. During that period, they worked for their former masters for at least three-quarters of the work week. Full freedom was duly granted by the British in 1838. By that time, people of African ethnicity greatly outnumbered those of ethnic European background. People of Carib descent also comprised a minority on the island.\n20th century.\nSaint Lucia's first representative government was introduced in 1924, with the first election taking place in 1925. Many Saint Lucians served during the Second World War, and the conflict visited the island directly during the Battle of the Caribbean, when a German U-boat attacked and sank two British ships in Castries harbour on 9 March 1942. The United States used the island as a military hub during the war, including setting up a secondary naval base in Gros Islet and using what is now the island's international airport as an air force base.\nUniversal suffrage was introduced in 1951 and elections were held the same year. In 1958, Saint Lucia joined the West Indies Federation, although the federation was dissolved just a few years later in 1962. In 1967, Saint Lucia became one of the six members of the West Indies Associated States, with internal self-government. Independence was peacefully gained in 1979 under Sir John Compton of United Workers Party, with the island remaining within the British Commonwealth, keeping then-Queen Elizabeth II as Monarch, represented locally by a Governor-General.\nPost-independence era.\nDespite leading the country to independence, Compton's initial term as prime minister lasted only a few months, being defeated by the Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) under Allan Louisy in the 1979 Saint Lucian general election. In 1980, Hurricane Allen struck the island, destroying much of its infrastructure and reducing economic growth. Compton returned to power after the 1982 Saint Lucian general election after much instability during the labour government's term. During Compton's second term as the island's leader, banana exports significantly increased and became the nation's main source of revenue. There were improvements to infrastructure, and education was expanded to rural areas. Saint Lucia was key to the US invasion of Grenada. During the 1990s and 2000s, the nation's economy began shifting from agriculture to tourism under the leadership of Kenny Anthony. The 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001 killed two Saint Lucians, and caused an economic slowdown, although moderate growth continued until the Great Recession. The recession, as well as the landfall of Hurricane Tomas in 2010, led to slow economic growth during the early 2010s, although the economy picked up during the later part of the decade and avoided contraction until 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic caused major economic issues globally.\nIn June 2016, the United Workers Party (UWP), led by Allen Michael Chastanet, won 11 of the 17 seats in the general election, ousting the St Lucia Labour Party (SLP) of the incumbent Prime Minister Kenny Anthony. However, Saint Lucia Labour Party won the next election in July 2021, meaning its leader Philip J Pierre became the ninth Prime Minister of Saint Lucia since independence.\nGeography.\nSaint Lucia has a total area of 617 square kilometers (238 sq mi). As a volcanic island, Saint Lucia is very mountainous, with its highest point being Mount Gimie, at above sea level. The Pitons, two mountainous volcanic plugs, form the island's most famous landmark. Saint Lucia is also home to the world's only drive-in volcano, the Sulphur Springs. There are a number of small islands off the coast, the largest of which are the Maria Islands, located in the south-east of the island.\nSaint Lucia lies at latitude 14\u00b0 N and longitude 61\u00b0 W. The population tends to be concentrated around the coast, with the interior more sparsely populated, due to the presence of dense forests. \nFlora and fauna.\nMany species are endemic to the island, including \"Anolis luciae\", a species of lizard, and \"Boa orophias\", a species of boid snake.\nEcoregions.\nSaint Lucia has five terrestrial ecoregions: Windward Islands moist forests, Leeward Islands dry forests, Windward Islands dry forests, Windward Islands xeric scrub, and Lesser Antilles mangroves. The country had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 6.17/10, ranking it 84th globally out of 172 countries.\nClimate.\nSaint Lucia has a tropical climate, specifically a tropical rainforest climate (Af), moderated by northeast trade winds, with a dry season from 1 December to 31 May, and a wet/rainy season from 1 June to 30 November.\nAverage daytime and nighttime temperatures are around , and respectively. Being fairly close to the equator, the island's temperature does not fluctuate much between winter and summer.\nGeology.\nThe geology of St. Lucia can be described as composing three main areas. The oldest, 16\u201318 Ma, volcanic rocks are exposed from Castries northward and consist of eroded basalt and andesite centres. The middle, central highlands, portion of the island consists of dissected andesite centres, 10.4 to 1 Mya, while the lower southwest portion of the island contains recent activity from the Soufriere Volcanic Centre (SVC). This SVC, centred about the Qualibou depression, contains pyroclastic flow deposits, lava flows, domes, block and ash flow deposits, and explosion craters. This depression's perimeter includes the town of Soufriere, Mount Tabac, Mt. Gimie, Morne Bonin, and Gros Piton. At in diameter, though the western portion is open towards the Grenada basin, the depression formed as recently as 100 kya. The depression is noted for its geothermal activity, especially at Sulphur Springs and Soufri\u00e8re Estates, a phreatic eruption in 1776, and recent seismic activity (2000\u20132001).\nEroded andesitic stratovolcanoes to the north east of the depression include Mt. Gimie, Piton St Esprit, and Mt. Grand Magazin, all greater than 1 Ma in age. Andesitic and dacite pyroclastic flows from these volcanoes are found at Morne Tabac dome (532 ka), Morne Bonin dome (273 kya), and Bellevue (264 kya). Avalanche deposits from the formation of the Qualibou depression are found offshore, and in the massive blocks of Rabot, Pleisance, and Coubaril. The dacitic domes of Petit Piton (109 kya) and Gros Piton (71 kya) were then extruded onto the depression floor accompanied by the Anse John (104 kya) and La Pointe (59.8 kya) pyroclastic flows. Later, pyroclastic flows include pumice-rich Belfond and Anse Noir (20 kya). Finally, the dacitic domes of Terre Blanche (15.3 kya) and Belfond (13.6 kya) formed within the depression.\nGovernment.\nLike most Caribbean countries, Saint Lucia is a unitary state with a parliamentary system. It is a Commonwealth realm and a constitutional monarchy, with the current monarch being Charles III, who is represented on the island by a governor-general, currently Errol Charles. The prime minister (currently Philip J. Pierre) is the head of government, the head of the cabinet, and is normally the leader of the largest party in the House of Assembly. The house has 17 seats, with each member being elected via a plurality of votes in their constituency. The upper chamber of Parliament is the Senate which has 11 appointed members, the majority of which are appointed by the prime minister.\nAdministrative divisions.\nSaint Lucia is made up of 10 districts. The districts were created and named by French colonials, and the British chose to keep the names in an anglicised form. The largest district in both size and population is Castries, where the nation's capital of the same name is located. The following are the 10 districts placed in alphabetical order:\nLaw and crime.\nSaint Lucia is a mixed jurisdiction, meaning that it has a legal system based in part on both the civil law and English common law. The Civil Code of St. Lucia of 1867 was based on the Quebec Civil Code of 1866, as supplemented by English common law-style legislation. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was Saint Lucia's final court of appeal until 2023, when a constitutional amendment transferred this to the Caribbean Court of Justice.\nSaint Lucia's homicide rate has hit record highs in recent years. There were 75 homicides in 2021, a 34.5% increase compared with 55 homicides in 2020. 2021 saw the island record the most homicides in its history, and also its highest murder rate in its history, at 40 murders per 100,000 people.\nForeign relations.\nSaint Lucia is a member of the Caribbean Community, OECS, the Organization of American States and La Francophonie. As a Commonwealth Realm, Saint Lucia has relatively friendly relations with United Kingdom and Canada. France is also a major ally, in part due to Saint Lucia's border with Martinique. The United States is the island's largest trading partner, and Saint Lucia was key to the US invasion of Grenada in 1983, and voted against condemning the invasion. Saint Lucia became the 152nd member of the United Nations on 18 September 1979.\nSaint Lucia does not have a military although the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force has a Special Service Unit (SSU) and a Coast Guard. The island signed the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2018.\nEconomy.\nSaint Lucia is a Small Island Developing State, a designation similar to a developing country with a few substantial differences due to Saint Lucia's island nature. The service sector is the largest sector of the economy, accounting for 86.9% of GDP in 2020, followed by industrial and agricultural sectors at 10.9% and 2.2%, respectively.\nSaint Lucia has been able to attract foreign business and investment due to its educated workforce and improvements in roads, communications, water supply, sewerage, and port facilities. Like most small islands, Tourism and offshore banking are Saint Lucia's main sources of revenue. Agriculture, specifically the banana industry, was previously the largest sector of the economy, although its importance has declined significantly. The island's manufacturing sector has been called the most diverse in the Eastern Caribbean, with goods such as plastic being produced on a large scale.\nSaint Lucia's currency is the Eastern Caribbean Dollar (EC$), a regional currency shared among members of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECU). The country's main trade partners are the US, UK, EU and other CARICOM countries.\nTourism.\nTourism is the largest contributor to Saint Lucia's economy. Tourist numbers tend to be more substantial during the dry season (January to April), often referred to as the tourist season. Saint Lucia's tropical weather, scenery, beaches and resorts have made it a popular tourist destination, with 1.29\u00a0million visitors arriving in 2019.\nSome of Saint Lucia's tourist attractions include the Sulphur Springs, the Botanical Gardens, Pigeon Island and The Pitons.\nAgriculture.\nThe agricultural sector was once the main contributor to Saint Lucia's economy. This was especially thanks to the exporting of bananas. However, its importance to the economy has declined significantly, in part due to increased competition from South American countries in the banana industry. Nevertheless, agriculture is still an important part of the country's economy, providing 7.9% of jobs and contributing to 2.2% of the GDP in 2021.\nAbout 18% of land is used for agricultural practices. Bananas remain the main agricultural product grown in Saint Lucia, as well as coconuts, cocoa beans, mangoes, avocados, vegetables, citrus fruits, and root crops such as yams and sweet potatoes.\nSaint Lucia also has a small livestock sector, which is dominated by poultry. The island is self-sufficient in egg production and production of poultry and pork has increased in recent years. Fishing has also been of considerable importance to the nation's economy.\nInfrastructure.\nSaint Lucia has a wide-ranging public bus network which covers most of the island. Busses are owned by private individuals, whilst the government is responsible for setting up routes and hubs. The road network covers most of the island, although some rural areas still lack access to proper roads.\nThe island has two airports, including one International airport. Cruising and yachting are very important to the country's economy, with the main sea port being located in Castries, while the main marina is located in Rodney Bay which is also home to the St. Lucia Yacht Club. Meanwhile, the nation's main oil refinery is located in Bexon.\nThe main source of electricity in Saint Lucia is oil through its sole power station, the Cul De Sac Power Station, although solar energy is also a major source. There have also been attempts to introduce geothermal and wind energy to the island.\nDemographics.\nA census is normally held in Saint Lucia every 10 years. In the 2010 census, Saint Lucia reported a population of 165,595 in 58,920 households. This was a 5.1% increase from the 157,490 recorded at the previous census in 2001. Ages 0\u201314 made up 24.1% of the population whilst those 65 and over made up 8.6%. Nearly 40% of the island's population lived in the District of Castries, where the nation's capital of the same name is located.\nSaint Lucia had a fertility rate of 1.4 children per woman in 2021, the lowest in the Americas. This is much lower than in 1990, when the birth rate was 3.4 children per woman, and significantly lower than in 1959, when the birth rate peaked at 6.98 children per woman. Most emigration from Saint Lucia is primarily to Anglophone countries, with the United Kingdom having almost 10,000 Saint Lucian-born citizens, and over 30,000 of Saint Lucian heritage. The United States is home to many Saint Lucians, especially areas such as Miami and New York City. Canada is also home to many Saint Lucians, and especially in the French-speaking province of Quebec in the city of Montr\u00e9al. The median age of Saint Lucians was 33.1 years in 2021.\nEthnic groups.\nSaint Lucia was originally populated by Amerindian peoples. However, European colonisation led to a significant drop in the indigenous populations. Most residents of the island were white planters, but African slaves and indentured servants brought by the Europeans eventually came to outnumber them. Because of this, Saint Lucia's population is predominantly of African and mixed descent. As of 2010, 85.3% of the population are black and 10.9% are of multiracial descent. Other groups include Indo-Caribbean persons (2.2%), whites (0.6%), and Indigenous Persons (0.6%). A small number of Kalinago live in the Choiseul region and in other towns on the western coast. There is also a small population of Lebanese and Syrians.\nLanguages.\nThe official language of Saint Lucia is English, though Saint Lucian French Creole (Kw\u00e9y\u00f2l) is widely spoken. Referred to colloquially as \"Patois\" (\"Patwa\"), it is spoken by a majority of the population. It is a dialect of Antillean Creole and is also related to Haitian Creole, though it nonetheless has a number of distinctive features from the latter. The Creole language developed during the early period of French colonisation and is derived chiefly from French and West African languages. There have been some attempts to make the language official, but they have not yet been successful.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nIn the 2010 census, a majority of Saint Lucians identified as Christians. This can be traced back to the nation's colonization by French and British settlers. Due to heavy French influence, most Christians on the island are Catholics, with 62.5% of the island's residents identifying as such. 24.5% of the island's residents identify as Protestants. In addition, 1.9% of the population identified as members of the Rastafari movement and 1.4% of the population practice Hinduism. The number of residents claiming no religion stood at 5.9% in 2010.\nThere is no state religion in Saint Lucia. The nation's constitution guarantees freedom of religion and prohibits forcing persons to take oath to any religion in which they do not follow. Religious groups are also guaranteed the freedom to establish places of education.\nEducation.\nMost primary and secondary schools in Saint Lucia are operated by the government. Education is free and compulsory for children aged five to fifteen. This includes seven years of primary school and three to five years of secondary school. In the last two years of secondary school, students are allowed to choose the subjects that they would like to do, in preparation for regional CSEC examinations. In 2020, public spending on education was at 3.6%.\nTertiary educational facilities on the island are normally private institutions. These include Monroe College and International American University. However, there are still a few public institutions, including the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College and the University of the West Indies.\nHealthcare.\nHealth services in Saint Lucia are split between the government and private institutions. The island is served by 2 public hospitals and multiple health centers, although most dental and vision services are private. Public expenditure on healthcare stood at 2.1% in 2019.\nIn 2021, life expectancy was at 71.1 years (67.8 for men and 74.7 for women). This was compared to 73.4 years in 2019. The drop in life expectancy was largely attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nCulture.\nThe culture of Saint Lucia has been influenced by African, East Indian, French, and English heritage. The main secondary language of the island is Saint Lucian Creole (Kw\u00e9y\u00f2l), a French-based creole spoken by most of the population. The island boasts the highest ratio of Nobel laureates produced with respect to the total population of any sovereign country in the world. Two winners have come from Saint Lucia: Sir Arthur Lewis, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1979, and the poet Derek Walcott, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.\nSaint Lucia has two flower festivals, the La Rose festival, celebrated on 30 August, and the La Marguerite festival, celebrated on 17 October. Every summer, the island hosts a carnival as a way to present the country's culture and music. Annually, there are normally many festivals, most of them being music related.\nMusic.\nSaint Lucian music is heavily influenced by elements of African music, especially rhythmically. The most popular music genres in Saint Lucia are calypso, soca, dancehall, reggae, zouk, and folk music. Dennery Segment, a genre influenced by Angolan Kuduro, Saint Lucian Solo music and Dancehall was developed on the island. The internationally renowned Saint Lucia Jazz Festival is held annually, and the festival is a major source of revenue for the country's economy.\nFood.\nSaint Lucian cuisine is a mix of African, European, Indian and Caribbean dishes. Some common dishes include macaroni pie, stewed chicken, rice and peas, roti (Indian flatbreads) and soups packed full with fresh locally produced vegetables. All mainstream meat and poultry are eaten in St. Lucia; meat and seafood are normally stewed and browned to create a rich gravy sometimes served over \"ground provisions\" (vegetables) or rice. Johnny Cakes (known as bakes) are also common, and are served with different sides, such as saltfish. The national dish of Saint Lucia is green figs and saltfish.\nSports.\nAs with most Caribbean islands, cricket is the most popular sport in Saint Lucia. The Windward Islands cricket team includes players from Saint Lucia and plays in the West Indies regional tournament. Daren Sammy became the first Saint Lucian to represent the West Indies on his debut in 2007, and was made captain in 2010. The Saint Lucia Kings is a T20 franchise playing in the Caribbean Premier League based in this said island nation. Sailing is also a major sport in Saint Lucia, with the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) race beginning in the Canary Islands and ending on the island. Other sports that are popular on the island include football, basketball, tennis, golf and volleyball. Karate and boxing have also seen increased popularity in recent years. \nJulien Alfred won the nation's first-ever Olympic medal, when she won the women's 100 meters event in 10.72 seconds at the 2024 Summer Olympics held in Paris, France.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "8968431": "Mindoo Phillip Park\nMulti purpose stadium in Saint Lucia\nMindoo Phillip Park is a multipurpose stadium located in Marchand, Castries, Saint Lucia. It is a training and competition venue for cricket, association football, rugby and track and field, among other sports. It was formerly a home venue for the Windward Islands cricket team.\nThe ground hosted two One Day Internationals, in 1978 and 1984. Both matches involved West Indies and Australia. On 12 April 1978, Australia beat West Indies by two wickets. On 19 April 1984, West Indies returned the favour, winning by seven wickets.\nFirst-class cricket has not been played at Mindoo Phillip Park since 2001 due to the construction of Beausejour Stadium. \nThe venue had previously been known as Victoria Park, but in 1979 was renamed in honour of Francis Mindoo Phillip, widely acclaimed as the island's greatest cricketer.\nInternational Centuries.\nSingle ODI century has been scored at the venue.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "40912083": "Mindoo Phillip\nSt Lucian cricketer\nFrancis \"Mindoo\" Phillip (7 August 1929 \u2013 5 May 2006) was a cricketer from Saint Lucia.\nBiography.\nPhillip was born in Castries, Saint Lucia. He attended the St Aloysius Roman Catholic Boys School from 1934 to 1944 where he was first introduced to football and cricket at the level of inter-school competition.\nMindoo's father was a carpenter, a trade in which he apprenticed for a short time with the Public Works Department in the 1940s, before being hired as the handyman at Victoria Park, then the island's sole first class cricket venue, and home to football, track and field, rugby and a host of cultural events.\nIn the late forties, Mindoo was a member of the Hollywood Club before leaving to join Charles Augustin's New Park Cricket Club. He spent the remainder of his cricketing career with New Park. His close friend, Stanley French, described Mindoo as \"a destroyer of all kinds of bowling and as a gifted all-rounder at home in any part of the field.\" Although he was recognized around the region as a fine batsman, and was a fixture on the Windward Islands team, he was never selected to the West Indies team. He was also a decent bowler, could field anywhere, including behind the stumps, and was a goalkeeper of some ability.\nHe played in only one international match, for Windward Islands against Australia on 26 May 1955.\nOn his retirement from cricket, Mindoo stayed on at the park as curator. He was also a football referee and a national cricket coach, a selector for the national team, an umpire and President of the Saint Lucia Umpires Association. He was also President of the Marchand Football League.\nIn the 1971 New Year Honours Phillips was awarded the British Empire Medal \"for services to cricket in Saint Lucia\".\nMindoo was the curator of Victoria Park in Marchand up until his death, and one of the island's greatest sports personalities. In March 1979, Victoria Park was renamed Mindoo Phillip Park in his honour. Upon his death, he was buried at the park and construction began on a monument to his life.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18617569": "Philips Park, Prestwich\nPhilips Park is an area of parkland situated within the Metropolitan Borough of Bury on the boundary of Whitefield and Prestwich, in Greater Manchester. The park consists of rich woodland and grassland habitat and is home to an assortment of wildlife. Two thirds of the site was once the Philips family estate, and the remainder, known as Waterdale, is Irwell Valley land reclaimed following the demolition of two bleach and dye works. The park is a local nature reserve.\nThe park is also home to the Barn Countryside Centre. The visitor centre hosts many events for all ages, including willow weaving and pottery workshops, pond dipping and woodland management training courses.\nHistory.\nThe park owes its name to the Philips family, who owned the land between 1799 and 1948. The land, which was originally part of the medieval Pilkington Park deer park was purchased by Robert Philips of the textile firm J. & N. Philips, in 1798. Robert and his wife Ann had two sons (the politicians Mark Philips and Robert Philips), and nine daughters. Responsible for the construction of the buildings, the Philips family also retained some natural and man-made features when landscaping the area. These included the ancient woodlands of North Wood, Mid Wood, Mere Clough, and a Medieval Deer pale marking the southern and eastern boundaries.\nThe Liberal Party politician Mark Philips was born in the park on 4 November 1800.\nThe family lived in Philips Park until the granddaughter of Robert Philips, Anna Maria Philips, died in 1946. The park was sold to Whitefield Council (to be shared with Prestwich Council) and opened as a public park in 1948. The contents of the park were auctioned, with items such as a Georgian mahogany dining room sideboard by Robert Gillow being sold for \u00a36.\nIn 1971 the construction of the M62 motorway reached the area, removing much of the valley of the North Wood during construction.\nBuildings.\nThe park.\nCompleted by Robert Philips in 1830, \"the park\" was the family's main residence. Built in the Italian villa style and furnished by Robert Gillow, the house was situated close to a steep bank which sheltered it from the north. The front was well proportioned and the back faced onto a lawn. The house fell into disrepair and was demolished in 1950. The area where it stood is now occupied by a car park.\nAccess to the park was originally from Park Lane. In 1852 a vi"}, "descending_order": ["8968431", "40912083", "18617569", "27208"], "permutation_1": ["40912083", "8968431", "18617569", "27208"], "permutation_2": ["8968431", "40912083", "18617569", "27208"], "permutation_3": ["27208", "8968431", "40912083", "18617569"]}
{"id": "2hop__508340_92444", "docs_added": {"25788953": "Baby (Justin Bieber song)\n2010 song by Justin Bieber featuring Ludacris\n\"Baby\" is a song by Canadian singer Justin Bieber featuring American rapper Ludacris. It was released as the lead single on Bieber's debut studio album, \"My World 2.0\". The track was written by the artists alongside Christina Milian and producers Tricky Stewart and The-Dream.\nIt was available for digital download on January 18, 2010. The song received airplay directly after release, officially impacting mainstream and rhythmic radio on January 26, 2010.\nThe song received positive reviews from critics, who complimented the song's effective lyrics and chorus and commended Ludacris' part and the song's ability to have an urban twist.\nThe song was a commercial success, peaking at number one in France and Scotland, and charting in the top ten of the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Australia, Norway, Japan, Ireland, Hungary, Belgium (Flanders), Slovakia and New Zealand. \"Baby\" was the fourth most successful single of 2010 in France. The accompanying music video takes place in a mall/bowling-alley setting. The video features several cameos such as Drake, Lil Twist and Tinashe, in which Bieber pursues a girl. As of May 2013, the song has sold 3.9 million digital downloads in the United States and is certified 12\u00d7 platinum by the RIAA.\nThe official music video is the 39th most-viewed video on YouTube. As of January 2025, it is also the fourth-most-disliked video and the most-disliked music video on the platform. It had been the most-viewed YouTube video from July 16, 2010, when it surpassed the music video for \"Bad Romance\" by Lady Gaga, until November 24, 2012, when it was surpassed by the music video for \"Gangnam Style\" by Psy. Bieber performed the song several times, including on \"Saturday Night Live\", and the ninth season of \"American Idol\". Bieber also performed an acoustic rendition of the remix version with Drake at the 2010 Juno Awards. The official remix in the United Kingdom features British hip-hop artist Chipmunk.\nBackground and writing.\n\"Baby\" was written by Bieber with Christopher \"Tricky\" Stewart (who worked on Bieber's debut single \"One Time\"), R&B singer The-Dream and his then-wife, Christina Milian, as well as Def Jam label-mate and the songs co-performer, Ludacris. When asked how the collaboration initially came about, Bieber said, \"[Ludacris and I] both live in Atlanta. I met him a year prior to this and we figured it was a perfect collaboration for him, so we invited him out to do it.\" A few days before the release of the single, Bieber posted an acoustic version of the song to his YouTube with his guitarist Dan Kanter, similar to the way he did with \"Favorite Girl\". \"Billboard\" said that: \"Bieber delivers his characteristically clean vocals with conviction: \"My first love broke my heart for the first time / and I'm like, 'baby, baby, baby, no!' I thought you'd always be mine.\" Also in a review of the acoustic version Bill Lamb of About.com said that, \"I think the vocals here will convince some that Justin Bieber really does have the vocal chops.\"\nStyle and composition.\nThe song is predominantly upbeat, featuring Bieber's R&B vocals over a backdrop containing a dance infused beat, full of keyboard and \"disco string\" synths. The song is played at a tempo of 130 BPM and is composed in the key of E\u266d major with Bieber's vocal range spanning from the low-note of G3 to the high-note of C5. According to Jody Rosen of \"Rolling Stone\", the song \"blends winks at Fifties doo-wop with hip-hop chants\", comparing the style and the lyrics \"My first love broke my heart for the first time/And I was like/Baby, baby, baby, ooooh/I thought you'd always be mine\" to fifties ballads like \"Tears on My Pillow\", \"Why Do Fools Fall in Love\" and \"Earth Angel\". Lyrically, Bieber's lines explain his distress over his lost love, and promise to get it back, featured in lines like, \"And I wanna play it cool/But I'm losin' you\u2026/I'm in pieces/So come and fix me\u2026\". The chorus features the distinct and repetitive \"baby, baby, baby, ohhhh (nooooo)\" hook. After the second verse, Ludacris comes in with the verse-rap, an anecdote of young love when he was thirteen, as it runs \"When I was 13/I had my first love/She had me going crazy/Oh, I was star-struck/She woke me up daily/Don't need no Starbucks\u2026\".\nCritical reception.\nNick Levine of Digital Spy felt the song was \"no great departure from what he's given us before\", but felt the production of Tricky and The-Dream helped give the song a \"simple\", \"big\" chorus about \"puppy love\" that works. Melanie Bertoldi of \"Billboard\" said, \"The midtempo number's undeniably contagious chorus should keep Bieber's tween fan base satisfied, and Ludacris' brief cameo adds a welcome urban twist.\" Bertoli went on to say, \"The matchup adds a layer of maturity to Bieber's repertoire and should further solidify his growing presence on the charts.\" \"Rap-Up\" magazine said that \"the sweet pop fare gets a little street cred courtesy of the teen sensation's labelmate Ludacris.\" Jody Rosen of \"Rolling Stone\" appreciated the song's vintage doo-wop and fifties aesthetic and hip-hop chants, and said the song included \"one of the catchiest choruses concocted by the-Dream and Tricky Stewart, the duo behind \"Umbrella\" and \"Single Ladies\". Luke O'Neill of \"Boston Globe\" had mixed thoughts about the song calling Ludacris' cameo \"goofy\", and said, the song \"effects a musical anachronism, albeit a catchy one, but in this sped-up recycling moment all styles all at once are grist for the mill.\"\nChart performance.\nIn the United States, \"Baby\" debuted at number five on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, becoming Bieber's highest-charting single in the US. Bieber then went on to surpass this chart position when \"Boyfriend\" debuted at number two in April 2012. The song was also Ludacris's biggest song to date, solo or featuring, since 2007's \"Glamorous\". \"Baby\" was beaten out as the week's highest debut by Taylor Swift's \"Today Was a Fairytale\", which debuted at number two. The debuting of the pair of songs was just the third time in history that the Hot 100 had two new top-five debuts. The instance had last happened in 2003 when \"American Idol\"'s Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken's debut singles charted at number one and two. \nDuring its first week of radio impact, the song had over 1400 spins, and was the top gainer for mainstream and rhythmic radio formats. \nThe song debuted at thirty-three on the Pop Songs chart on the week labeled February 13, 2010. The song missed out becoming the greatest gainer by one spot, which was Kesha's \"Blah Blah Blah\". However the following week, the song did collect greatest gainer recognition, jumping to twenty-five on the chart, and has since peaked at sixteen. On August 2, 2010, the song was certified double-platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America for shipments of 2,000,000 units. \nAs of May 2013, the song had sold 3.9 million digital downloads in the United States. With the inclusion of streaming in the RIAA certifications in 2013, the song became the highest certificated single of all time at 12\u00d7 Platinum (surpassing \"Candle in the Wind 1997\" by Elton John at 11\u00d7 Platinum).\n\"Baby\" debuted and peaked on the Canadian Hot 100 at number three, becoming his highest-charting single at the time. On the issue dated February 8, 2010, the song debuted in Australia on the official ARIA Singles Chart at number thirty-seven. After twelve weeks of ascending and descending the charts the single reached a peak of three. \"Baby\" has since been certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) for shipments of 70,000 units. \nIn New Zealand, the song entered the chart at nineteen. After weeks of ascending and descending the charts, \"Baby\" reached a peak of four. The song dropped to the number five position the following week and after weeks of fluctuating around the chart it attained the number four position once again. It has since been certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (RIANZ). \nThe song peaked at number three on the UK Singles Chart on the issue date March 14, 2010. The following week, \"Baby\" fell to number four, but climbed back to its previous peak position of three on the issue date March 28, 2010. In the process of climbing the charts, \"Baby\" gained a new peak of two on the R&B Singles Chart. \nBy June 2012, Baby had sold 442,432 copies in the United Kingdom.\nMusic video.\nFilming for the music video began during the week of January 25, 2010, in Los Angeles. It was filmed at Universal CityWalk and Lucky Strike Lanes, by director Ray Kay, who had previously directed videos for Beyonc\u00e9 Knowles, Lady Gaga, Alexandra Burke, and Cheryl Cole, among others. Ludacris said that the video \"is like a 2010 version of Michael Jackson's \"The Way You Make Me Feel\".\" Bieber said that the video \"will capture the song's message of trying to woo back a girl.\" In explaining the concept of the video, Bieber said, \"It starts off, I really like this girl, but we didn't [get] along; we couldn't be together. Basically I want her back and [I'm] kind of going through the whole thing. I'm chasing her around, trying to get her, and she's kind of playing hard to get, but I'm persistent. I keep going.\" The video premiered exclusively on Vevo on Friday, February 19, 2010. Singer and actress Jasmine Villegas portrays Bieber's love interest in the video. Bieber's friends, Young Money artists Drake and Lil Twist also appeared in the video, along with Tinashe and jerkin' crew The Rangers.\nThe video takes place in a mall-like setting with a bowling alley and more. After the video was released, MTV commented on the video being the new version of \"The Way You Make Me Feel\" saying, \"... and the choreography does use a few of Jackson's less-suggestive moves.\" The MTV review goes on to say, \"most of the video takes place in the bowling alley, there are also scenes of Bieber in other settings, hanging out with Luda, doing the moonwalk, messing with his hair and mugging for the camera. During the video Bieber's friends and Villegas's friends have several dance offs and Villegas eventually smiles at him. Regardless of his crush's apparent frustration with him, Bieber eventually wins her over. The video concludes with the pair walking off into the night holding hands.\"\n\"Billboard\" reviewed the video, saying, \"Those new dance moves he's showing off can only mean one thing: all over the world, tweens' hearts are melting right now.\" In July 2010, the video became the most viewed video in YouTube history until it was surpassed by Psy's hit single, \"Gangnam Style\", in November 2012.\nThe video received 7.7 million views within its first seven days.\nAs of September 2023, the video has received over 3 billion views on the video-sharing website YouTube. It was also the most disliked video of all time (briefly surpassed by \"Friday\" by Rebecca Black upon that video's release in 2011). \"Baby\"'s music video held the record for the most disliked video for over 7 years, until it was surpassed in December 2018 by (the current most disliked video). The video currently sits as the fourth most disliked YouTube video.\nLive performances.\nBieber first premiered the song performing on the MuchMusic series \"Live at Much\" on December 28, 2009. He sang the song on VH1's Pepsi Super Bowl Fan Jam, along with other performers Rihanna, JoJo and Timbaland, and on CBS' \"The Early Show\" as a part of their \"Super Bowl\" programming. He performed the song the first time with Ludacris on BET's \"SOS: Saving Ourselves \u2013 Help for Haiti Telethon\", on February 6, 2010, which also aired on VH1, and MTV. During the chorus, he changed the lyrics to \"Baby, baby, Haiti\", to show support for the cause, and the reason everyone came together for the show. In the week of his album release, he performed the song on \"The View\" and \"106 & Park\". Bieber also performed the song at the 2010 Kids Choice Awards on March 27. Bieber performed the song along with \"U Smile\" on the eighteenth episode of season thirty five of \"Saturday Night Live\". Bieber performed an acoustic rendition of the song along with a freestyle by good friend Drake at the 2010 Juno Awards. In April 2010, Bieber noted that due to his voice changing, he could no longer hit all the notes in \"Baby\", and for live performances, the key is lowered. Bieber performed the song live in Sydney, Australia on April 26, 2010, in the \"Sunrise\" studios after his public performance was cancelled. Bieber also performed the song on May 11, 2010, on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Bieber performed the song on June 4, 2010, on the Today Show along with \"Never Say Never\", \"Somebody to Love\", and \"One Time\". He performed the song with \"Somebody to Love\" at the 2010 MuchMusic Video Awards.\nCover versions and samples.\nJazz pianist Jacky Terrasson covered \"Baby\" with his trio on his 2012 album \"Gouache\".\nThe song was also covered by Relient K in 2011 for their cover album \"Is For Karaoke\". It was also covered by \"Weird Al\" Yankovic in the polka medley, \"Polka Face\" in the same year for his 2011 album \"Alpocalypse\".\nIt was sampled 40 times. In 2012, Alexa Ilacad, Mika Dela Cruz, Noemi Oineza and Angel Sy, AKA T.O.P., sampled this song for their single \"Crush\".\nParody versions.\nYes We Canberra released a parody version satirising then Opposition leader Tony Abbott during the lead-up to the 2010 Australian federal election.\nIn the 2012 film \"\", Greg Heffley's older brother Rodrick (portrayed by Devon Bostick) performs a hard rock cover of the song with his band, L\u00f6ded Diper, in an attempt to impress his love interest Heather Hills (older sister of Greg's love interest, Holly) during her Sweet 16th party. His performance causes the event to end in disaster.\nIn the Annoying Orange episode, \"OMG\" (parody of TMZ), there is a clip of Justin Bieberry (portrayal of Bieber) singing a parody version called \"Gravy\".\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "9559805": "Favorite Girl\n\"Favorite Girl\" is a song by Canadian singer Justin Bieber. The song was written and produced by D'Mile, and Antea Birchett, Anesha Birchett, and Delisha Thomas also receive writing credits. Bieber debuted the acoustic version of his song in his official YouTube account after American singer Taylor Swift used Bieber's single \"One Time\" as background music in one of her video tour diaries. The song was later released exclusively to iTunes as the second promotional single from his debut studio release, \"My World\" on November 2, 2009.\nThe song is mid-tempo and merges teen pop and R&B elements. It debuted at number 12 and 26 in Canada and the United States, respectively. It also charted at number 92 Australia, and at numbers 76 and 27 in the United Kingdom and the UK R&B chart, respectively. Bieber performed the song on several occasions, most of them being the acoustic version of the song, including as a supporting act on Swift's Fearless Tour.\nBackground.\nSinger Taylor Swift used Bieber's \"One Time\" as background music and music that she and her friends were dancing to in a tour video diary that she posted on her official YouTube account in August 2009. In response to Swift using his song, Bieber posted an acoustic rendition of the then never-before heard \"Favorite Girl\" on his YouTube. When asked about his learning of Swift using his song, Bieber stated, \"It was really funny because I heard about it from a fan. I watched it and it was hilarious!\" Bieber and Swift then met in person at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, and she later invited him to be a special guest on her Fearless Tour when she returned to the United Kingdom.\nThe song was written by Dernst \"D'Mile\" Emile II, Antea Birchett, Anesha Birchet, and Delisha Thomas. Emile also has production credits. The song was recorded by Blake Eisemen at Icon Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, where Bieber's career is based. Mixing was done by Dave Pensado and Jaycen-Joshua Fowler, at Larrabee Studios in North Hollywood, California. The song became a popular trending topic on Twitter on the day of its release. \"Favorite Girl\" be is a teen-pop song, which integrates characteristics of R&B music. According to the sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by Universal Music Publishing, Ltd., \"Favorite Girl\" is set in common time, and has a moderate tempo of 88 beats per minute. It is composed in the key of E minor with Bieber's vocals spanning from the low-note of G3 to the high-note of B4. The song follows in the chord progression of C\u2013Em\u2013G\nChart performance.\nThe song had hot shot debuts and limited stays on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and Canadian Hot 100 due to the single being released via iTunes only. It debuted in the U.S. at number twenty-six on the week ending November 21, 2009, and remained on the chart for two weeks. The same week it debuted at number fifteen in Canada, remaining on the chart for two weeks. The song returned to the Canadian Hot 100 at number ninety-nine on the week ending January 9, 2010. In 2010, the chart also appeared on the UK Singles Chart at seventy-six, and on the UK R&B Chart.\nPerformances.\nMost Bieber performances of the song are of the acoustic rendition. Bieber originally performed the song for the first time, acoustically, when he appeared for a second time on \"The Ellen DeGeneres Show\" on November 3, 2009, the same day the song was released to iTunes. Regarding the performance, MTV News praised the song as a \"funky, groovy, swaggerific jam\". Bieber performed the song on the Fearless Tour, during Winter 2009 while performing at radio station-hosted Jingle Ball concerts, and during a live session with MTV, in which he was named MTV's Artist of the Week. During the live session with MTV, he performed the song while playing the keyboard. In a review of his acoustic performance of the song at Z100's 2009 Jingle Ball, Jon Caramanica of \"The New York Times\" called it his best performance of the night.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "35280112": "Favorite Song (Colbie Caillat song)\n\"Favorite Song\" is a song by American recording artist Colbie Caillat. It was written by Caillat and Ryan Tedder, and produced by Tedder and it features American rapper Common. The song was released as the third single from her third studio album \"All of You\" (2011). it was released on May 8, 2012. Musically, the song is a guitar-driven pop, hip-hop jam, and the lyrics speak about being in love with someone and desiring that the person feels the same. The song is a metaphor for wanting to be the object of someone\u2019s affection.\nThe song received mixed reviews, some critics commended the track for having a \"summer and island vibe\", but some others dismissed Common's appearance and the chorus. They performed the track for the first time on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. The music video for the song was released on May 3, 2012. The video was filmed outdoors by the beach and palm trees of Venice, California. In the video, the two singers, along with other party people, take over the streets and skate parks of the ocean walk. Teenagers rocked bikinis and rollerblades as Common rapped away before the sunset.\nBackground and release.\n\"I've loved Common's music for years,\" Caillat says of the unlikely pairing, which was put into motion when the two artists met each other at an event for the Grammys in 2009. \"He ended up singing his song 'The Light,' and he needed a girl singer [for the chorus] and I was like, 'I know it!' Afterward he was like, \"I love your song and I love your voice.' It took about a year for us to get something together, but it worked out better than we could have imagined.\"\nAt the Universal Republic website, it was initiated a poll to decide the third single of the album. Later, she announced that Favorite Song was chosen as the third single. On April 6, Caillat and Common performed the song for the first time ever on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.\nComposition and lyrics.\n\"Favorite Song\" is a guitar-driven pop song, written by Caillat and co-written and produced by Ryan Tedder. It features the American rapper Common. The song is different from Caillat's usual sound, being considered a hip-hop jam.\nThe song is a metaphor for wanting to be the object of someone\u2019s affection. Colbie sings, \"I\u2019ll be the thing that you want to sing back / Stuck in your head like I knew you would.\" In the sing-a-long chorus, she sings: \u201cI want to be your favorite song/ You can turn it up/ Turn me on all night long/ I want to be your favorite song/ La-la-la-la, la-la-la / I want to be your melody/ Going through your head when you think of me/ I want to be your favorite song/ La-la-la-la.\u201d Meanwhile, Common\u2019s lyrics are softhearted as he tries his hand at crooning. \u201cGirl the songs you sing / They my favorite things / You stay in my dreams / Something so supreme,\u201d he warbles. Later, he raps: \u201cWe stay in tune with each other / And in our room we will discover / New ways to do covers / No matter how they dub us / We should stay true to the trust / And the winner of the best duo/ Is us.\u201d\nCritical reception.\nBill Lamb wrote for About.com that the song \"is bright, summery, and it is utterly charming\". Mike Diver from BBC Music wrote that the song has \"a Bruno Mars-style summertime vibe to it, and the rapper is a reliable presence on any recording.\" Kyle Anderson from Entertainment Weekly called it \"an island groove\". Melinda Newman from HitFix wrote that \"she shakes things up a little with the track and Common\u2019s gruff rap proves the perfect foil to Caillat\u2019s smooth, Sheryl Crow-redolent vocals.\" Trent Fitzgerald wrote a positive review for \"Pop Crush\", stating that \" is the two-time Grammy-winner\u2019s metaphoric love ditty that features playful electric guitars and feel-good lyrics.\" He also wrote that \" is the perfect sunshine-y ballad for the summer and it will most likely do well on Hot Adult Contemporary radio.\" Michelle Thompson wrote a positive review for The Tune, writing that on the album, the song \"stands out the most with an absolutely infectious melody and hook, this is the track that will have you dancing nonstop, and it might get stuck in your head for a long while.\" Idolator staff wrote that \"With a sweetly strummed guitar groove, charming reliance on la la\u2019s and woo-hoo\u2019s, and riding-in-a-car-with-the-top-down rhythm, 'Favorite Song' is instantly recognizable as a Colbie Caillat hit-in-the-making and Common lends a little hip-hop credibility to the track, offering three rhymed verses plus a little sing-song help later on.\"\nJaymie Baxley wrote an extense review for Slant Magazine, declaring that \"the appearance of Common on 'Favorite Song' does threaten to disrupt business as usual. In fact, the harsh strums of electric guitar that preface the rapper's unexpected guest turn seem obstinately placed there to alert the listener of the ostensibly provocative rap verse to follow. But then Common starts dispensing bars of clumsy, musical-themed innuendo; it becomes clear that the song is just as bland and inoffensive as the rest of the album and those guitars were merely a tease. And the chorus is laughably unsexy: 'I want to be your favorite song/You can turn it up, play me all night long'.\" Another negative review came from Sputnikmusic, who wrote that \"Caillat concocts what is quite possibly her cheesiest chorus yet, and it probably goes without saying that Common sounds sorely out of place. It is actually kind of reminiscent of those old-school Radio Disney songs that would mimic the melody of some major hit, make it a thousand times cheesier, and then have a rapper enter midway through to appeal to the \u201cnew, hip generation.\u201d Needless to say, Colbie\u2019s hip-hop experiment ends in futility.\" Andrea Hinton from Stanford Daily wrote that the song \"has Caillat almost yelling during the grating chorus and, along with an unbelievably underwhelming contribution from rapper Common, seems out of place in the album.\"\nChart performance.\nThe song debuted at number forty on the Adult Pop Songs chart. It later, climbed to number thirty-five. In the third week, it reached a peak of number twenty-nine. In the fourth week, the song reached number twenty-seven. The song ultimately peaked at number 21.\nMusic video.\nA music video for the song was shot on March 29, 2012 on the beach in Venice, California. The singer posted a photo from herself and Common on the set of the music video.\nColbie spoke about the video in an interview:\n\"It\u2019s a really cool concept. Common and I are singing on the rooftop of this house, overlooking the beach in Venice [California]. Basically the music travels down throughout the town and though the beach. It hits everyone and they all start singing it, and these people in their bathing suits walking on the boardwalk or guys on skateboards, they all find the music and come up to me and Common on the rooftop and watch us perform for them.\" \nThe music video premiered on May 2, 2012. It is \"a bright, beach-set\" video that features Caillat and Common bopping around young beautiful people shooting hoops, skateboarding, catching rays and walking on the Venice boardwalk.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "7180710": "Baby-Baby-Baby\n1992 single by TLC\n\"Baby-Baby-Baby\" is a song by American girl group TLC. It was the second single released from their debut studio album, \"Ooooooohhh... On the TLC Tip\" (1992), and their second consecutive top-10 hit. It was the most successful single from the album, reaching number two on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot R&B Singles chart, giving them their first number-one on the latter.\nBackground.\n\"Baby-Baby-Baby\" was written and produced by Babyface, L.A. Reid and Daryl Simmons. The song features lead vocals from Tionne \"T-Boz\" Watkins, with Rozonda \"Chilli\" Thomas adlibbing and singing the middle-8 sections. It is the first song not to contain a rap by Lisa \"Left Eye\" Lopes, who instead recorded a rap for the song's remix version.\nCritical reception.\nAllmusic gave \"Baby-Baby-Baby\" a 5-star rating.\nCommercial performance.\n\"Baby-Baby-Baby\" held the runner-up spot on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 for six consecutive weeks, from August 15 to September 19, 1992. It also reached number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot R&B Singles chart. \"Baby-Baby-Baby\" finished at number five on the \"Billboard\" Year-End Hot 100 Singles of 1992, and was certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 1992.\nMusic video.\n\"Baby-Baby-Baby\" had a video depicting TLC at Bowie State University campus and in their dorms, where they have a slumber party. One of the posters reads 'Protection is Priority'.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1843395": "Always Be My Baby\n1996 single by Mariah Carey\n\"Always Be My Baby\" is a song by American singer-songwriter Mariah Carey from her fifth studio album, \"Daydream\" (1995). Written by Carey, Jermaine Dupri and Manuel Seal, and produced by Carey and Dupri, It was released by Columbia Records on February 20, 1996, as the album's third single in the United States and fourth single internationally. A midtempo pop and R&B ballad, \"Always Be My Baby\" describes the attachment the singer feels towards an estranged lover, while confidently asserting that they will eventually reunite. Described by critics as both a love song and a breakup song, its composition is characterized by piano keyboards, drums, acoustic guitars, and layered background vocals.\n\"Always Be My Baby\" received critical acclaim upon release, with reviewers praising its production and Carey's vocals. In retrospect, several publications have ranked it one of Carey's best songs. The song was a commercial success, becoming Carey's eleventh chart-topper on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, tying her with Madonna and Whitney Houston for most number-one singles by a female artist at the time. It spent two weeks atop the chart and became Carey's eighth chart-topper on the Canadian \"RPM\" Top Singles chart. The song is certified five-times platinum in the US with 1,254,000 units coming from physical sales, 890,000 coming from digital sales, and 856,000 coming from streaming equivalent units. It is also certified platinum by RIAA for selling 1 million units as master tone in the US by 2007. In other regions, the single performed well, peaking at number three in the United Kingdom, number five in New Zealand, number 17 in Australia and in the top 20 in most music markets where it charted.\nThe accompanying music video for \"Always Be My Baby\" features scenes of Carey frolicking by a campsite in upstate New York, as well as swinging on a Cooper Tire over a lake. Additional inter-cuts include scenes of two children, one male and female, sneaking out at night and spending time together by a campfire similar to Carey's location. Most scenes from the video were filmed at The Fresh Air Fund's Camp Mariah, named after Carey for her generous support and dedication to Fresh Air Fund children. The song was performed live during her Daydream World Tour (1996) and many of her future tours and concerts. \"Always Be My Baby\" was also featured in Carey's compilation albums: \"#1's\" (1998), \"Greatest Hits\" (2001), \"The Ballads\" (2008) and \"#1 to Infinity\" (2015). The U.S. and Canadian B-side \"Slipping Away\" is included in the compilation album \"The Rarities\" (2020).\nBackground and recording.\nSinger Mariah Carey began writing and recording material for what would become her fifth studio album, \"Daydream\", in late 1994, and began recruiting new producers to give her music a different sound. Sony Music Entertainment CEO Tommy Mottola, who was Carey's husband and manager at the time, suggested that she work with record producer Jermaine Dupri after the two met each other at a Grammy party hosted by Columbia, their shared record label. In 1994, Dupri had previously remixed Carey's song, \"Never Forget You\", for its single release, but \"Always Be My Baby\" was their first time collaborating on a project. According to Carey, she opted to work with Dupri because he had a \"very distinct vibe\", and said they share a lot of musical influences and childhood favorite songs. Meanwhile, Dupri identified \"Always Be My Baby\" as the first time he had worked with an artist of Carey's caliber, prior to whom he had mainly worked with newer, upcoming artists. \nCarey had envisioned the song as having a harder, rawer production than her previous records, originally suggesting that she record over the beat from \"C.R.E.A.M.\" by Wu-Tang Clan, which shocked Dupri. Additionally, Carey commissioned assistance from hip-hop and R&B producer Manuel Seal. As Seal played different keys on the piano, Carey led him with the melody she was \"hearing inside her head\" and began humming the phrase \"always be my baby\". Carey said she described how she wanted the song to feel to Dupri and Seal, while Dupri programmed the drums and Seal played keyboard. Carey sang the melody as the collaborators worked on the bridge and B-section for lyrics that Carey had already outlined. According to Dupri, \"the whole song actually came from Mariah\", and claims he had little to no involvement writing the song's lyrics. \n\"Always Be My Baby\" marked the first of several collaborations between Carey and Dupri. Like producers before him, Dupri commended Carey's vocal abilities, \"she can pretty much do anything with her voice. She's really strong vocally.\" Another musical craft the song featured was the inclusion of heavy background vocals of her lower registers, with Carey then belting and singing the higher notes over her background vocals and melody, creating a \"double voice effect\". When discussing the technique used in the background vocals, Carey said:\nThe background vocals are an important part of the picture for me. That's why I like to do them myself a lot of the time, or initially I'll lay down the tracks. I'll double my voice or do a couple of tracks of my own voice. It's easy for me to match my voice. And then if I'm going to use other background singers, I'll let them go on top of mine.\nThe producer recalled feeling unaccustomed to the rigid schedule of his recording sessions with Carey while they were working on \"Always Be My Baby\". Instead of remaining in the studio until the song was finished, they worked from 9:00 am to 5:30 pm, at which time Mottola would end their session to take Carey to dinner, regardless of the progress they had made. Dupri admitted that he did not quite like \"Always Be My Baby\" upon completing it, fearing listeners would not care for the song. Carey and Dupri collaborated on at least four songs for \"Daydream\", but \"Always Be My Baby\" was one of only two that were included on the final album. Dupri has expressed some regret that \"Always Be My Baby\" wasn't selected as its parent album's first or second single, explaining, \"I didn't feel like I had accomplished too much of anything ... the fact that I didn't get the first or second single...even with two songs that I did [on Daydream], I felt like I didn't really do what I was supposed to do\". He has described the song as arguably \"one of my biggest least-known works\", despite its popularity and success. Dupri said the record ultimately made him rich and successful by establishing him as Columbia's number-one producer by producing a"}, "descending_order": ["35280112", "7180710", "25788953", "1843395", "9559805"], "permutation_1": ["9559805", "35280112", "7180710", "25788953", "1843395"], "permutation_2": ["9559805", "25788953", "1843395", "7180710", "35280112"], "permutation_3": ["25788953", "7180710", "35280112", "9559805", "1843395"]}
{"id": "2hop__24395_87168", "docs_added": {"606848": "Catholic Church\nChristian church based in Rome\nThe Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.28 to 1.41\u00a0billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2024. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions and has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilization. The church consists of 24 \"sui iuris\" (autonomous) churches, including the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, which comprise almost 3,500 dioceses and eparchies around the world, each overseen by one or more bishops. The pope, who is the bishop of Rome, is the chief pastor of the church. \nThe core beliefs of Catholicism are found in the Nicene Creed. The Catholic Church teaches that it is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church founded by Jesus Christ in his Great Commission, that its bishops are the successors of Christ's apostles, and that the pope is the successor to Saint Peter, upon whom primacy was conferred by Jesus Christ. It maintains that it practises the original Christian faith taught by the apostles, preserving the faith infallibly through scripture and sacred tradition as authentically interpreted through the magisterium of the church. The Roman Rite and others of the Latin Church, the Eastern Catholic liturgies, and communities and societies such as mendicant orders, enclosed monastic orders, third orders and voluntary charitable lay associations reflect a variety of theological and spiritual emphases in the church.\nOf its seven sacraments, the Eucharist is the principal one, celebrated liturgically in the Mass. The church teaches that through consecration by a priest, the sacrificial bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. The Virgin Mary is venerated as the Perpetual Virgin, Mother of God, and Queen of Heaven; she is honoured in dogmas and devotions. Catholic social teaching emphasizes voluntary support for the sick, the poor, and the afflicted through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. The Catholic Church operates tens of thousands of Catholic schools, universities and colleges, hospitals, and orphanages around the world, and is the largest non-government provider of education and health care in the world. Among its other social services are numerous charitable and humanitarian organizations.\nThe Catholic Church has profoundly influenced Western philosophy, culture, art, literature, music, law, and science. Catholics live all over the world through missions, immigration, diaspora, and conversions. Since the 20th century, the majority have resided in the Global South, partially due to secularization in Europe and North America. The Catholic Church shared communion with the Eastern Orthodox Church until the East\u2013West Schism in 1054, disputing particularly the authority of the pope. Before the Council of Ephesus in AD 431, the Church of the East also shared in this communion, as did the Oriental Orthodox Churches before the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451; all separated primarily over differences in Christology. The Eastern Catholic Churches, which have a combined membership of approximately 18 million, represent a body of Eastern Christians who returned or remained in communion with the pope during or following these schisms due to a variety of historical circumstances. In the 16th century, the Reformation led to the formation of separate, Protestant groups. From the late 20th century, the Catholic Church has been criticized for its teachings on sexuality, its doctrine against ordaining women, and its handling of sexual abuse cases involving clergy.\nThe Diocese of Rome, known as the Holy See, is the central governing authority of the church. The administrative body of the Holy See, the Roman Curia, has its principal offices in Vatican City, which is a small, independent city-state and enclave within the city of Rome, of which the pope is head of state and absolute elective monarch.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nName.\n\"Catholic\" (from ) was first used to describe the church in the early 2nd century. The first known use of the phrase \"the catholic church\" () occurred in the letter written about 110 AD from Saint Ignatius of Antioch to the Smyrnaeans, which read: \"Wheresoever the bishop shall appear, there let the people be, even as where Jesus may be, there is the universal [katholike] Church.\" In the \"Catechetical Lectures\" (c.\u2009350) of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, the name \"Catholic Church\" was used to distinguish it from other groups that also called themselves \"the church\". The \"Catholic\" notion was further stressed in the edict \"De fide Catolica\" issued 380 by Theodosius I, the last emperor to rule over both the eastern and the western halves of the Roman Empire, when establishing the state church of the Roman Empire.\nSince the East\u2013West Schism of 1054, the Eastern Orthodox Church has taken the adjective \"Orthodox\" as its distinctive epithet; its official name continues to be the Orthodox Catholic Church. The Latin Church was described as \"Catholic\", with that description also denominating those in communion with the Holy See after the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, when those who ceased to be in communion became known as Protestants.\nWhile the \"Roman Church\" has been used to describe the pope's Diocese of Rome since the Fall of the Western Roman Empire and into the Early Middle Ages (6th\u201310th century), \"Roman Catholic Church\" has been applied to the whole church in the English language since the Protestant Reformation in the late 16th century. Further, some will refer to the Latin Church as \"Roman Catholic\" in distinction from the Eastern Catholic churches. \"Roman Catholic\" has occasionally appeared in documents produced by the Holy See, and has been used by certain national episcopal conferences and local dioceses.\nThe name \"Catholic Church\" for the whole church is used in the \"Catechism of the Catholic Church\" (1990) and the Code of Canon Law (1983). \"Catholic Church\" is also used in the documents of the Second Vatican Council (1962\u20131965), the First Vatican Council (1869\u20131870), the Council of Trent (1545\u20131563), and numerous other official documents.\nHistory.\nApostolic era and papacy.\nThe New Testament, in particular the Gospels, records Jesus' activities and teaching, his appointment of the Twelve Apostles and his Great Commission of the apostles, instructing them to continue his work. The book Acts of Apostles, tells of the founding of the Christian church and the spread of its message to the Roman Empire. The Catholic Church teaches that its public ministry began on Pentecost, occurring fifty days following the date Christ is believed to have resurrected. At Pentecost, the apostles are believed to have received the Holy Spirit, preparing them for their mission in leading the church. The Catholic Church teaches that the college of bishops, led by the bishop of Rome are the successors to the Apostles.\nIn the account of the Confession of Peter found in the Gospel of Matthew, Christ designates Peter as the \"rock\" upon which Christ's church will be built. The Catholic Church considers the bishop of Rome, the pope, to be the successor to Saint Peter. Some scholars state Peter was the first bishop of Rome. Others say that the institution of the papacy is not dependent on the idea that Peter was bishop of Rome or even on his ever having been in Rome. Many scholars hold that a church structure of plural presbyters/bishops persisted in Rome until the mid-2nd century, when the structure of a single bishop and plural presbyters was adopted, and that later writers retrospectively applied the term \"bishop of Rome\" to the most prominent members of the clergy in the earlier period and also to Peter himself. On this basis Bart D. Ehrman,as well as protestant scholars Oscar Cullmann and Henry Chadwick, question whether there was a formal link between Peter and the modern papacy. Raymond E. Brown also says that it is anachronistic to speak of Peter in terms of local bishop of Rome, but that Christians of that period would have looked on Peter as having \"roles that would contribute in an essential way to the development of the role of the papacy in the subsequent church\". These roles, Brown says, \"contributed enormously to seeing the bishop of Rome, the bishop of the city where Peter died and where Paul witnessed the truth of Christ, as the successor of Peter in care for the church universal\".\nAntiquity and Roman Empire.\nConditions in the Roman Empire facilitated the spread of new ideas. The empire's network of roads and waterways facilitated travel, and the \"Pax Romana\" made travelling safe. The empire encouraged the spread of a common culture with Greek roots, which allowed ideas to be more easily expressed and understood.\nUnlike most religions in the Roman Empire, however, Christianity required its adherents to renounce all other gods, a practice adopted from Judaism (see Idolatry). The Christians' refusal to join pagan celebrations meant they were unable to participate in much of public life, which caused non-Christians\u2014including government authorities\u2014to fear that the Christians were angering the gods and thereby threatening the peace and prosperity of the Empire. The resulting persecutions were a defining feature of Christian self-understanding until Christianity was legalized in the 4th century.\nIn 313, Emperor Constantine I's Edict of Milan legalized Christianity, and in 330 Constantine moved the imperial capital to Constantinople, modern Istanbul, Turkey. In 380 the Edict of Thessalonica made Nicene Christianity the state church of the Roman Empire, a position that within the diminishing territory of the Byzantine Empire would persist until the empire itself ended in the fall of Constantinople in 1453, while elsewhere the church was independent of the empire, as became particularly clear with the East\u2013West Schism. During the period of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, five primary sees emerged, an arrangement formalized in the mid-6th century by Emperor Justinian I as the pentarchy of Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria. In 451 the Council of Chalcedon, in a canon of disputed validity, elevated the see of Constantinople to a position \"second in eminence and power to the bishop of Rome\". From c.\u2009350\u00a0\u2013 c.\u2009500, the bishops, or popes, of Rome, steadily increased in authority through their consistent intervening in support of orthodox leaders in theological disputes, which encouraged appeals to them. Emperor Justinian, who in the areas under his control definitively established a form of caesaropapism, in which \"he had the right and duty of regulating by his laws the minutest details of worship and discipline, and also of dictating the theological opinions to be held in the Church\", re-established imperial power over Rome and other parts of the West, initiating the period termed the Byzantine Papacy (537\u2013752), during which the bishops of Rome, or popes, required approval from the emperor in Constantinople or from his representative in Ravenna for consecration, and most were selected by the emperor from his Greek-speaking subjects, resulting in a \"melting pot\" of Western and Eastern Christian traditions in art as well as liturgy.\nMost of the Germanic tribes who in the following centuries invaded the Roman Empire had adopted Christianity in its Arian form, which the Council of Nicaea declared heretical. The resulting religious discord between Germanic rulers and Catholic subjects was avoided when, in 497, Clovis I, the Frankish ruler, converted to orthodox Catholicism, allying himself with the papacy and the monasteries. The Visigoths in Spain followed his lead in 589, and the Lombards in Italy in the course of the 7th century.\nWestern Christianity, particularly through its monasteries, was a major factor in preserving classical civilization, with its art (see Illuminated manuscript) and literacy. Through his Rule, Benedict of Nursia (c.\u2009480\u2013543), one of the founders of Western monasticism, exerted an enormous influence on European culture through the appropriation of the monastic spiritual heritage of the early Catholic Church and, with the spread of the Benedictine tradition, through the preservation and transmission of ancient culture. During this period, monastic Ireland became a centre of learning and early Irish missionaries such as Columbanus and Columba spread Christianity and established monasteries across continental Europe.\nMiddle Ages and Renaissance.\nThe Catholic Church was the dominant influence on Western civilization from Late Antiquity to the dawn of the modern age. It was the primary sponsor of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Mannerist and Baroque styles in art, architecture and music. Renaissance figures such as Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Tintoretto, Titian, Bernini and Caravaggio are examples of the numerous visual artists sponsored by the church. Historian Paul Legutko of Stanford University said the Catholic Church is \"at the center of the development of the values, ideas, science, laws, and institutions which constitute what we call Western civilization\".\nIn Western Christendom, the first universities in Europe were established by monks. Beginning in the 11th century, several older cathedral schools became universities, such as the University of Oxford, University of Paris, and University of Bologna. Higher education before then had been the domain of Christian cathedral schools or monastic schools, led by monks and nuns. Evidence of such schools dates back to the 6th century\u00a0CE. These new universities expanded the curriculum to include academic programs for clerics, lawyers, civil servants, and physicians. The university is generally regarded as an institution that has its origin in the Medieval Christian setting.\nThe massive Islamic invasions of the mid-7th century began a long struggle between Christianity and Islam throughout the Mediterranean Basin. The Byzantine Empire soon lost the lands of the eastern patriarchates of Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch and was reduced to that of Constantinople, the empire's capital. As a result of Islamic domination of the Mediterranean, the Frankish state, centred away from that sea, was able to evolve as the dominant power that shaped the Western Europe of the Middle Ages. The battles of Toulouse and Tours halted the Islamic advance in the West and the failed siege of Constantinople halted it in the East. Two or three decades later, in 751, the Byzantine Empire lost to the Lombards the city of Ravenna from which it governed the small fragments of Italy, including Rome, that acknowledged its sovereignty. The fall of Ravenna meant that confirmation by a no longer existent exarch was not asked for during the election in 752 of Pope Stephen II and that the papacy was forced to look elsewhere for a civil power to protect it. In 754, at the urgent request of Pope Stephen, the Frankish king Pepin the Short conquered the Lombards. He then gifted the lands of the former exarchate to the pope, thus initiating the Papal States. Rome and the Byzantine East would delve into further conflict during the Photian schism of the 860s, when Photius criticized the Latin west of adding of the \"filioque\" clause after being excommunicated by Nicholas I. Though the schism was reconciled, unresolved issues would lead to further division.\nIn the 11th century, the efforts of Hildebrand of Sovana led to the creation of the College of Cardinals to elect new popes, starting with Pope Alexander II in the papal election of 1061. When Alexander II died, Hildebrand was elected to succeed him, as Pope Gregory VII. The basic election system of the College of Cardinals which Gregory VII helped establish has continued to function into the 21st century. Pope Gregory VII further initiated the Gregorian Reforms regarding the independence of the clergy from secular authority. This led to the Investiture Controversy between the church and the Holy Roman Emperors, over which had the authority to appoint bishops and popes.\nIn 1095, Byzantine emperor Alexius I appealed to Pope Urban II for help against renewed Muslim invasions in the Byzantine\u2013Seljuk wars, which caused Urban to launch the First Crusade aimed at aiding the Byzantine Empire and returning the Holy Land to Christian control. In the 11th century, strained relations between the primarily Greek church and the Latin Church separated them in the East\u2013West Schism, partially due to conflicts over papal authority. The Fourth Crusade and the sacking of Constantinople by renegade crusaders proved the final breach. In this age great gothic cathedrals in France were an expression of popular pride in the Christian faith.\nIn the early 13th century mendicant orders were founded by Francis of Assisi and Dominic de Guzm\u00e1n. The \"studia conventualia\" and \"studia generalia\" of the mendicant orders played a large role in the transformation of church-sponsored cathedral schools and palace schools, such as that of Charlemagne at Aachen, into the prominent universities of Europe. Scholastic theologians and philosophers such as the Dominican priest Thomas Aquinas studied and taught at these studia. Aquinas' \"Summa Theologica\" was an intellectual milestone in its synthesis of the legacy of ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle with the content of Christian revelation.\nA growing sense of church-state conflicts marked the 14th century. To escape instability in Rome, Clement V in 1309 became the first of seven popes to reside in the fortified city of Avignon in southern France during a period known as the Avignon Papacy. The Avignon Papacy ended in 1376 when the pope returned to Rome, but was followed in 1378 by the 38-year-long Western Schism, with claimants to the papacy in Rome, Avignon and (after 1409) Pisa. The matter was largely resolved in 1414\u20131418 at the Council of Constance, with the claimants in Rome and Pisa agreeing to resign and the third claimant excommunicated by the cardinals, who held a new election naming Martin V pope.\nIn 1438, the Council of Florence convened, which featured a strong dialogue focussed on understanding the theological differences between the East and West, with the hope of reuniting the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Several eastern churches reunited, forming the majority of the Eastern Catholic Churches.\nAge of Discovery and Counter-Reformation.\nThe Age of Discovery beginning in the 15th century saw the expansion of Western Europe's political and cultural influence worldwide. Because of the rise in power overseas of strongly Catholic nations of Spain and Portugal (as well as France), Catholicism was spread to the Americas, Asia and Oceania by explorers, conquistadors, and missionaries, as well as by the conversion of people who lived in these societies to the Catholic faith. Pope Alexander VI had awarded sovereignty rights over most of the newly discovered lands to Spain and Portugal (later confirmed by the Treaty of Tordesillas) and the ensuing \"patronato\" system allowed state authorities, not the Vatican, to control all clerical appointments in the new colonies. In 1521 the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan made the first Catholic converts in the Philippines. Elsewhere, Portuguese missionaries under the Spanish Jesuit Francis Xavier evangelized in India, China, and Japan. The French colonization of the Americas beginning in the 16th century established a Catholic Francophone population and forbade non-Catholics to settle in Quebec.\nIn 1415, Jan Hus was burned at the stake for heresy, but his reform efforts encouraged Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar in modern-day Germany, who sent his \"Ninety-five Theses\" to several bishops in 1517. His theses protested key points of Catholic doctrine as well as the sale of indulgences, and along with the Leipzig Debate this led to his excommunication in 1521. In Switzerland, Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin and other Protestant Reformers further criticized Catholic teachings. These challenges developed into the Reformation, which gave birth to the great majority of Protestant denominations and also crypto-Protestantism within the Catholic Church. Meanwhile, Henry VIII petitioned Pope Clement VII for a declaration of nullity concerning his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. When this was denied, he had the Acts of Supremacy passed to make himself Supreme Head of the Church of England, spurring the English Reformation and the eventual development of Anglicanism.\nThe Reformation contributed to clashes between the Protestant Schmalkaldic League and the Catholic Emperor Charles V and his allies. The first nine-year war ended in 1555 with the Peace of Augsburg but continued tensions produced a far graver conflict\u2014the Thirty Years' War\u2014which broke out in 1618. In France, a series of conflicts termed the French Wars of Religion was fought from 1562 to 1598 between the Huguenots (French Calvinists) and the forces of the French Catholic League, which were backed and funded by a series of popes. This ended under Pope Clement VIII, who hesitantly accepted King Henry IV's 1598 Edict of Nantes granting civil and religious toleration to French Protestants.\nThe Council of Trent (1545\u20131563) became the driving force behind the Counter-Reformation in response to the Protestant movement. Doctrinally, it reaffirmed central Catholic teachings such as transubstantiation and the requirement for love and hope as well as faith to attain salvation. In subsequent centuries, Catholicism spread widely across the world, in part through missionaries and imperialism, although its hold on European populations declined due to the growth of religious scepticism during and after the Enlightenment.\nEnlightenment and modern period.\nFrom the 17th century onward, the Enlightenment questioned the power and influence of the Catholic Church over Western society. In the 18th century, writers such as Voltaire and the \"Encyclop\u00e9distes\" wrote biting critiques of both religion and the Catholic Church. One target of their criticism was the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes by King Louis XIV of France, which ended a century-long policy of religious toleration of Protestant Huguenots. As the papacy resisted pushes for Gallicanism, the French Revolution of 1789 shifted power to the state, caused the destruction of churches, the establishment of a Cult of Reason, and the martyrdom of nuns during the \"Reign of Terror\". In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte's General Louis-Alexandre Berthier invaded the Italian Peninsula, imprisoning Pope Pius VI, who died in captivity. Napoleon later re-established the Catholic Church in France through the Concordat of 1801. The end of the Napoleonic Wars brought Catholic revival and the return of the Papal States.\nIn 1854, Pope Pius IX, with the support of the overwhelming majority of Catholic bishops, whom he had consulted from 1851 to 1853, proclaimed the Immaculate Conception as a dogma in the Catholic Church. In 1870, the First Vatican Council affirmed the doctrine of papal infallibility when exercised in specifically defined pronouncements, striking a blow to the rival position of conciliarism. Controversy over this and other issues resulted in a breakaway movement called the Old Catholic Church,\nThe Italian unification of the 1860s incorporated the Papal States, including Rome itself from 1870, into the Kingdom of Italy, thus ending the papacy's temporal power. In response, Pope Pius IX excommunicated King Victor Emmanuel II, refused payment for the land, and rejected the Italian Law of Guarantees, which granted him special privileges. To avoid placing himself in visible subjection to the Italian authorities, he remained a \"prisoner in the Vatican\". This stand-off, which was spoken of as the \"Roman Question\", was resolved by the 1929 Lateran Treaties, whereby the Holy See acknowledged Italian sovereignty over the former Papal States in return for payment and Italy's recognition of papal sovereignty over Vatican City as a new sovereign and independent state.\nCatholic missionaries generally supported, and sought to facilitate, the European imperial powers' conquest of Africa during the late nineteenth century. According to the historian of religion Adrian Hastings, Catholic missionaries were generally unwilling to defend African rights or encourage Africans to see themselves as equals to Europeans, in contrast to Protestant missionaries, who were more willing to oppose colonial injustices.\n20th century.\nDuring the 20th century, the church's global reach continued to grow, despite the rise of anti-Catholic authoritarian regimes and the collapse of European Empires, accompanied by a general decline in religious observance in the West. Under Popes Benedict XV, and Pius XII, the Holy See sought to maintain public neutrality through the World Wars, acting as peace broker and delivering aid to the victims of the conflicts. In the 1960s, Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council, which ushered in radical change to church ritual and practice, and in the later 20th century, the long reign of Pope John Paul II contributed to the fall of communism in Europe, and a new public and international role for the papacy.\nFrom the late 20th century, the Catholic Church has been criticized for its doctrines on sexuality, its inability to ordain women, and its handling of sexual abuse cases.\nPope Pius X (1903\u20131914) renewed the independence of papal office by abolishing the veto of Catholic powers in papal elections, and his successors Benedict XV (1914\u20131922) and Pius XI (1922\u20131939) concluded the modern independence of the Vatican State within Italy. Benedict XV was elected at the outbreak of the First World War. He attempted to mediate between the powers and established a Vatican relief office, to assist victims of the war and reunite families. The interwar Pope Pius XI modernized the papacy, appointing 40 indigenous bishops and concluding fifteen concordats, including the Lateran Treaty with Italy which founded the Vatican City State.\nHis successor Pope Pius XII led the Catholic Church through the Second World War and early Cold War. Like his predecessors, Pius XII sought to publicly maintain Vatican neutrality in the War and established aid networks to help victims, but he secretly assisted the anti-Hitler resistance and shared intelligence with the Allies. His first encyclical \"Summi Pontificatus\" (1939) expressed dismay at the 1939 Invasion of Poland and reiterated Catholic teaching against racism. He expressed concern against race killings on Vatican Radio, and intervened diplomatically to attempt to block Nazi deportations of Jews in various countries from 1942 to 1944. However, the Pope's insistence on public neutrality and diplomatic language has become a source of much criticism and debate. Nevertheless, in every country under German occupation, priests played a major part in rescuing Jews. Israeli historian Pinchas Lapide estimated that Catholic rescue of Jews amounted to somewhere between 700,000 and 860,000 people.\nThe Nazi persecution of the Catholic Church was at its most intense in Poland, and Catholic resistance to Nazism took various forms. Some 2,579 Catholic clergy were sent to the Priest Barracks of Dachau Concentration Camp, including 400 Germans. Thousands of priests, nuns and brothers were imprisoned, taken to a concentration camp, tortured and murdered, including Saints Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein. Catholics fought on both sides in the conflict. Catholic clergy played a leading role in the government of the fascist Slovak State, which collaborated with the Nazis, copied their anti-Semitic policies, and helped them carry out the Holocaust in Slovakia. Jozef Tiso, the President of the Slovak State and a Catholic priest, supported his government's deportation of Slovakian Jews to extermination camps. The Vatican protested against these Jewish deportations in Slovakia and in other Nazi puppet regimes including Vichy France, Croatia, Bulgaria, Italy and Hungary.\nAround 1943, Adolf Hitler planned the kidnapping of the Pope and his internment in Germany. He gave SS General Wolff a corresponding order to prepare for the action. While Pope Pius XII has been credited with helping to save hundreds of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, the church has also been accused of having encouraged centuries of antisemitism by its teachings and not doing enough to stop Nazi atrocities. Many Nazi criminals escaped overseas after the Second World War, also because they had powerful supporters from the Vatican. The judgment of Pius XII is made more difficult by the sources, because the church archives for his tenure as nuncio, cardinal secretary of state and pope are in part closed or not yet processed.\nThe Second Vatican Council (1962\u201365) introduced the most significant changes to Catholic practices since the Council of Trent, four centuries before. Initiated by Pope John XXIII, this ecumenical council modernized the practices of the Catholic Church, allowing the Mass to be said in the vernacular (local language) and encouraging \"fully conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations\". It intended to engage the church more closely with the present world (\"aggiornamento\"), which was described by its advocates as an \"opening of the windows\". In addition to changes in the liturgy, it led to changes to the church's approach to ecumenism, and a call to improved relations with non-Christian religions, especially Judaism, in its document \"Nostra aetate\".\nThe council, however, generated significant controversy in implementing its reforms: proponents of the \"Spirit of Vatican II\" such as Swiss theologian Hans K\u00fcng said that Vatican II had \"not gone far enough\" to change church policies. Traditionalist Catholics, such as Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, however, strongly criticized the council, arguing that its liturgical reforms led \"to the destruction of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the sacraments\", among other issues. The teaching on the morality of contraception also came under scrutiny; after a series of disagreements, \"Humanae vitae\" upheld the church's prohibition of all forms of contraception.\nIn 1978, Pope John Paul II, formerly Archbishop of Krak\u00f3w in the Polish People's Republic, became the first non-Italian pope in 455 years. His 26 1/2-year pontificate was one of the longest in history and was credited with hastening the fall of communism in Europe. John Paul II sought to evangelize an increasingly secular world. He travelled more than any other pope, visiting 129 countries, and used television and radio as means of spreading the church's teachings. He also emphasized the dignity of work and natural rights of labourers to have fair wages and safe conditions in \"Laborem exercens\". He emphasized several church teachings, including moral exhortations against abortion, euthanasia, and against widespread use of the death penalty, in \"Evangelium Vitae\".\n21st century.\nPope Benedict XVI, elected in 2005, was known for upholding traditional Christian values against secularization, and for increasing use of the Tridentine Mass as found in the Roman Missal of 1962, which he titled the \"Extraordinary Form\". Citing the frailties of advanced age, Benedict resigned in 2013, becoming the first pope to do so in nearly 600 years.\nPope Francis, the current pope of the Catholic Church, became in 2013 the first pope from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere, and the first Pope from outside Europe since the eighth-century Gregory III. Francis has made efforts to further close Catholicism's estrangement with the Eastern churches. His installation was attended by Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the first time since the Great Schism of 1054 that the Eastern Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople has attended a papal installation, while he also met Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, head of the largest Eastern Orthodox church, in 2016; this was reported as the first such high-level meeting between the two churches since the Great Schism of 1054. In 2017 during a visit in Egypt, Pope Francis reestablished mutual recognition of baptism with the Coptic Orthodox Church.\nOrganization.\nThe Catholic Church follows an episcopal polity, led by bishops who have received the sacrament of Holy Orders who are given formal jurisdictions of governance within the church. There are three levels of clergy: the episcopate, composed of bishops who hold jurisdiction over a geographic area called a diocese or eparchy; the presbyterate, composed of priests ordained by bishops and who work in local dioceses or religious orders; and the diaconate, composed of deacons who assist bishops and priests in a variety of ministerial roles. Ultimately leading the entire Catholic Church is the bishop of Rome, known as the pope (), whose jurisdiction is called the Holy See ( in Latin). In parallel to the diocesan structure are a variety of religious institutes that function autonomously, often subject only to the authority of the pope, though sometimes subject to the local bishop. Most religious institutes only have male or female members but some have both. Additionally, lay members aid many liturgical functions during worship services. The Catholic Church has been described as the oldest multinational organization in the world.\nHoly See, papacy, Roman Curia, and College of Cardinals.\nThe hierarchy of the Catholic Church is headed by the pope, currently Pope Francis, who was elected on 13 March 2013 by a papal conclave. The office of the pope is known as the \"papacy\". The Catholic Church holds that Christ instituted the papacy upon giving the keys of Heaven to Saint Peter. His ecclesiastical jurisdiction is called the Holy See, or the Apostolic See (meaning the see of the apostle Peter). Directly serving the pope is the Roman Curia, the central governing body that administers the day-to-day business of the Catholic Church.\nThe pope is also sovereign of Vatican City, a small city-state entirely enclaved within the city of Rome, which is an entity distinct from the Holy See. It is as head of the Holy See, not as head of Vatican City State, that the pope receives ambassadors of states and sends them his own diplomatic representatives. The Holy See also confers orders, decorations and medals, such as the orders of chivalry originating from the Middle Ages.\nWhile the famous Saint Peter's Basilica is located in Vatican City, above the traditional site of Saint Peter's tomb, the papal cathedral for the Diocese of Rome is the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran, located within the city of Rome, though enjoying extraterritorial privileges accredited to the Holy See.\nThe position of cardinal is a rank of honour bestowed by popes on certain clerics, such as leaders within the Roman Curia, bishops serving in major cities and distinguished theologians. For advice and assistance in governing, the pope may turn to the College of Cardinals.\nFollowing the death or resignation of a pope, members of the College of Cardinals who are under age 80 act as an electoral college, meeting in a papal conclave to elect a successor. Although the conclave may elect any male Catholic as pope, since 1389 only cardinals have been elected.\nCanon law.\nCatholic canon law () is the system of laws and legal principles made and enforced by the hierarchical authorities of the Catholic Church to regulate its external organization and government and to order and direct the activities of Catholics toward the mission of the church. The canon law of the Latin Church was the first modern Western legal system, and is the oldest continuously functioning legal system in the West, while the distinctive traditions of Eastern Catholic canon law govern the 23 Eastern Catholic particular churches \"sui iuris\".\nPositive ecclesiastical laws, based directly or indirectly upon immutable divine law or natural law, derive formal authority in the case of universal laws from promulgation by the supreme legislator\u2014the Supreme Pontiff\u2014who possesses the totality of legislative, executive and judicial power in his person, while particular laws derive formal authority from promulgation by a legislator inferior to the supreme legislator, whether an ordinary or a delegated legislator. The actual subject material of the canons is not just doctrinal or moral in nature, but all-encompassing of the human condition. It has all the ordinary elements of a mature legal system: laws, courts, lawyers, judges, a fully articulated legal code for the Latin Church as well as a code for the Eastern Catholic Churches, principles of legal interpretation, and coercive penalties.\nCanon law concerns the Catholic Church's life and organization and is distinct from civil law. In its own field it gives force to civil law only by specific enactment in matters such as the guardianship of minors. Similarly, civil law may give force in its field to canon law, but only by specific enactment, as with regard to canonical marriages. Currently, the 1983 Code of Canon Law is in effect for the Latin Church. The distinct 1990 \"Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches\" (\"CCEO\", after the Latin initials) applies to the autonomous Eastern Catholic Churches.\nLatin and Eastern churches.\nIn the first thousand years of Catholic history, different varieties of Christianity developed in the Western and Eastern Christian areas of Europe, Asia and Africa. Though most Eastern-tradition churches are no longer in communion with the Catholic Church after the Great Schism of 1054 (as well as the earlier Nestorian Schism and ), 23 autonomous particular churches of eastern traditions participate in the Catholic communion, also known as \"churches \"sui iuris\"\" (\"). The largest and most well known is the Latin Church, the only Western-tradition church, with more than 1\u00a0billion members worldwide. Relatively small in terms of adherents compared to the Latin Church, are the 23 self-governing Eastern Catholic Churches with a combined membership of 17.3\u00a0million as of 2010[ [update]].\nThe Latin Church is governed by the pope and diocesan bishops directly appointed by him. The pope exercises a direct patriarchal role over the Latin Church, which is considered to form the original and still major part of Western Christianity, a heritage of certain beliefs and customs originating in Europe and northwestern Africa, some of which are inherited by many Christian denominations that trace their origins to the Protestant Reformation.\nThe Eastern Catholic Churches follow the traditions and spirituality of Eastern Christianity and are churches that have always remained in full communion with the Catholic Church or who have chosen to re-enter full communion in the centuries following the East\u2013West Schism or earlier divisions. These churches are communities of Catholic Christians whose forms of worship reflect distinct historical and cultural influences rather than differences in doctrine. The pope's recognition of Eastern Catholic Churches, though, has caused controversy in ecumenical relations with the Eastern Orthodox and other eastern churches. Historically, pressure to conform to the norms of the Western Christianity practised by the majority Latin Church led to a degree of encroachment (Liturgical Latinisation) on some of the Eastern Catholic traditions. The Second Vatican Council document, \"Orientalium Ecclesiarum\", built on previous reforms to reaffirm the right of Eastern Catholics to maintain their distinct liturgical practices.\nA church \"sui iuris\" is defined in the \"Code of Canons for the Eastern Churches\" as a \"group of Christian faithful united by a hierarchy\" that is recognized by the pope in his capacity as the supreme authority on matters of doctrine within the church. The Eastern Catholic Churches are in full communion with the pope, but have governance structures and liturgical traditions separate from that of the Latin Church. While the Latin Church's canons do not explicitly use the term, it is tacitly recognized as equivalent.\nSome Eastern Catholic churches are governed by a patriarch who is elected by the synod of the bishops of that church, others are headed by a major archbishop, others are under a metropolitan, and others are organized as individual eparchies. Each church has authority over the particulars of its internal organization, liturgical rites, liturgical calendar and other aspects of its spirituality, subject only to the authority of the pope. The Roman Curia has a specific department, the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, to maintain relations with them. The pope does not generally appoint bishops or clergy in the Eastern Catholic Churches, deferring to their internal governance structures, but may intervene if he feels it necessary.\nDioceses, parishes, organizations, and institutes.\nIndividual countries, regions, and major cities are served by particular churches known as dioceses in the Latin Church, or eparchies in the Eastern Catholic Churches, each of which are overseen by a bishop. As of 2021[ [update]], the Catholic Church has 3,171 dioceses globally. The bishops in a particular country are members of a national or regional episcopal conference.\nDioceses are divided into parishes, each with one or more priests, deacons, or lay ecclesial ministers. Parishes are responsible for the day to day celebration of the sacraments and pastoral care of the laity. As of 2016[ [update]], there are 221,700 parishes worldwide.\nIn the Latin Church, Catholic men may serve as deacons or priests by receiving sacramental ordination. Men and women may serve as extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, as readers (lectors), or as altar servers. Historically, boys and men have only been permitted to serve as altar servers; however, since the 1990s, girls and women have also been permitted.\nCatholics may enter into consecrated life either on an individual basis, as a hermit or consecrated virgin, or by joining an institute of consecrated life (a religious institute or a secular institute) in which to take vows confirming their desire to follow the three evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty and obedience. Examples of institutes of consecrated life are the Benedictines, the Carmelites, the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Missionaries of Charity, the Legionaries of Christ and the Sisters of Mercy. \n\"Religious institutes\" is a modern term encompassing both \"religious orders\" and \"religious congregations\", which were once distinguished in canon law. The terms \"religious order\" and \"religious institute\" tend to be used as synonyms colloquially.\nBy means of Catholic charities and beyond, the Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of education and health care in the world.\nMembership.\nAs of 2020, Catholicism is the second-largest religious body in the world after Sunni Islam. Catholics represent about half of all Christians. According to the World Christian Database, there are 1.278 billion Catholics globally, as of 2024. According to the \"Annuario Pontificio\", church membership, defined as baptized Catholics, was 1.406 billion at the end of 2023, which was 17.4% of the world population:\nBrazil has the largest Catholic population in the world, followed by Mexico, the Philippines, and the United States.\nGeographic distribution of Catholics worldwide continues to shift, with 20.0% in Africa, 47.8% in the Americas, 11.0% in Asia, 20.4% in Europe, and 0.8% in Oceania.\nCatholic ministers include ordained clergy, lay ecclesial ministers, missionaries, and catechists. Also as of the end of 2023, there were 463,859 ordained clergy, including 5,430 bishops, 406,996 priests (diocesan and religious), and 51,433 deacons (permanent). Non-ordained ministers, as of October 2024, included 2,883,049 catechists and 413,561 lay missionaries.\nCatholics who have committed to religious or consecrated life instead of marriage or single celibacy, as a state of life or relational vocation, include 49,414 male religious (as of 2022) and 589,423 women religious (as of 2023). These are not ordained, nor generally considered ministers unless also engaged in one of the lay minister categories above.\nDoctrine.\nCatholic doctrine has developed over the centuries, reflecting direct teachings of early Christians, formal definitions of heretical and orthodox beliefs by ecumenical councils and in papal bulls, and theological debate by scholars. The church believes that it is continually guided by the Holy Spirit as it discerns new theological issues and is protected infallibly from falling into doctrinal error when a firm decision on an issue is reached.\nIt teaches that revelation has one common source, God, and two distinct modes of transmission: Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, and that these are authentically interpreted by the Magisterium. Sacred Scripture consists of the 73 books of the Catholic Bible, consisting of 46 Old Testament and 27 New Testament writings. Sacred Tradition consists of those teachings believed by the church to have been handed down since the time of the Apostles. Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition are collectively known as the \"deposit of faith\" ( in Latin). These are in turn interpreted by the Magisterium (from , Latin for \"teacher\"), the church's teaching authority, which is exercised by the pope and the College of Bishops in union with the pope, the Bishop of Rome. Catholic doctrine is authoritatively summarized in the \"Catechism of the Catholic Church\", published by the Holy See.\nNature of God.\nThe Catholic Church holds that there is one eternal God, who exists as a \"perichoresis\" (\"mutual indwelling\") of three \"hypostases\", or \"persons\": God the Father; God the Son; and God the Holy Spirit (also called the Holy Ghost), which together are called the \"Holy Trinity\".\nCatholics believe that Jesus Christ is the \"Second Person\" of the Trinity, God the Son. In an event known as the Incarnation, through the power of the Holy Spirit, God became united with human nature through the conception of Christ in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Christ, therefore, is understood as being both fully divine and fully human, including possessing a human soul. It is taught that Christ's mission on earth included giving people his teachings and providing his example for them to follow as recorded in the four Gospels. Jesus is believed to have remained sinless while on earth, and to have allowed himself to be unjustly executed by crucifixion, as a sacrifice of himself to reconcile humanity to God; this reconciliation is known as the Paschal Mystery. The Greek term \"Christ\" and the Hebrew \"Messiah\" both mean \"anointed one\", referring to the Christian belief that Jesus' death and resurrection are the fulfilment of the Old Testament's messianic prophecies.\nThe Catholic Church teaches dogmatically that \"the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, not as from two principles but as from one single principle\". It holds that the Father, as the \"principle without principle\", is the first origin of the Spirit, but also that he, as Father of the only Son, is with the Son the single principle from which the Spirit proceeds. This belief is expressed in the clause which was added to the Latin version of the Nicene Creed of 381 but not included in the Greek versions of the creed used in Eastern Christianity.\nNature of the church.\nThe Catholic Church teaches that it is the \"one true church\", \"the universal sacrament of salvation for the human race\", and \"the one true religion\". According to the \"Catechism\", the Catholic Church is further described in the Nicene Creed as the \"one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church\". These are collectively known as the Four Marks of the Church. The church teaches that its founder is Jesus Christ. The New Testament records several events considered integral to the establishment of the Catholic Church, including Jesus' activities and teaching and his appointment of the apostles as witnesses to his ministry, suffering, and resurrection. The Great Commission, after his resurrection, instructed the apostles to continue his work. The coming of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, in an event known as Pentecost, is seen as the beginning of the public ministry of the Catholic Church. The church teaches that all duly consecrated bishops have a lineal succession from the apostles of Christ, known as apostolic succession. In particular, the Bishop of Rome (the pope) is considered the successor to the apostle Simon Peter, a position from which he derives his supremacy over the church.\nCatholic belief holds that the church \"is the continuing presence of Jesus on earth\" and that it alone possesses the full means of salvation. Through the passion (suffering) of Christ leading to his crucifixion as described in the Gospels, it is said Christ made himself an oblation to God the Father to reconcile humanity to God; the Resurrection of Jesus makes him the firstborn from the dead, the first among many brethren. By reconciling with God and following Christ's words and deeds, an individual can enter the Kingdom of God. The church sees its liturgy and sacraments as perpetuating the graces achieved through Christ's sacrifice to strengthen a person's relationship with Christ and aid in overcoming sin.\nFinal judgement.\nThe Catholic Church teaches that, immediately after death, the soul of each person will receive a particular judgement from God, based on their sins and their relationship to Christ. This teaching also attests to another day when Christ will sit in universal judgement of all mankind. This final judgement, according to the church's teaching, will bring an end to human history and mark the beginning of both a new and better heaven and earth ruled by God in righteousness.\nDepending on the judgement rendered following death, it is believed that a soul may enter one of three states of the afterlife:\nWhile the Catholic Church teaches that it alone possesses the full means of salvation, it also acknowledges that the Holy Spirit can make use of Christian communities separated from itself to \"impel towards Catholic unity\" and \"tend and lead toward the Catholic Church\", and thus bring people to salvation, because these separated communities contain some elements of proper doctrine, albeit admixed with errors. It teaches that anyone who is saved is saved through the Catholic Church but that people can be saved outside of the ordinary means known as baptism of desire, and by pre-baptismal martyrdom, known as baptism of blood, as well as when conditions of invincible ignorance are present, although invincible ignorance in itself is not a means of salvation.\nSaints and devotions.\nA saint (also historically known as a hallow) is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of holiness or likeness or closeness to God, while canonization is the act by which a Christian church declares that a person who has died was a saint, upon which declaration the person is included in the \"canon\", or list, of recognized saints. The first persons honoured as saints were the martyrs. Pious legends of their deaths were considered affirmations of the truth of their faith in Christ. By the fourth century, however, \"confessors\"\u2014people who had confessed their faith not by dying but by suffering\u2014began to be venerated publicly.\nIn the Catholic Church, both in Latin and Eastern Catholic churches, the act of canonization is reserved to the Apostolic See and occurs at the conclusion of a long process requiring extensive proof that the candidate for canonization lived and died in such an exemplary and holy way that he is worthy to be recognized as a saint. The church's official recognition of sanctity implies that the person is now in Heaven and that he may be publicly invoked and mentioned officially in the liturgy of the church, including in the Litany of the Saints. Canonization allows universal veneration of the saint in the liturgy of the Roman Rite; for permission to venerate merely locally, only beatification is needed.\nDevotions are \"external practices of piety\" which are not part of the official liturgy of the Catholic Church but are part of the popular spiritual practices of Catholics. These include various practices regarding the veneration of the saints, especially veneration of the Virgin Mary. Other devotional practices include the Stations of the Cross, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Holy Face of Jesus, the various scapulars, novenas to various saints, pilgrimages and devotions to the Blessed Sacrament, and the veneration of saintly images such as the \"santos\". The bishops at the Second Vatican Council reminded Catholics that \"devotions should be so drawn up that they harmonize with the liturgical seasons, accord with the sacred liturgy, are in some fashion derived from it, and lead the people to it, since, in fact, the liturgy by its very nature far surpasses any of them.\"\nVirgin Mary.\nCatholic Mariology deals with the dogmas and teachings concerning the life of Mary, mother of Jesus, as well as the veneration of Mary by the faithful. Mary is held in special regard, declared the Mother of God (), and believed as dogma to have remained a virgin throughout her life. Further teachings include the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception (her own conception without the stain of original sin) and the Assumption of Mary (that her body was assumed directly into heaven at the end of her life). Both of these doctrines were defined as infallible dogma, by Pope Pius IX in 1854 and Pope Pius XII in 1950 respectively, but only after consulting with the Catholic bishops throughout the world to ascertain that this is a Catholic belief. In the Eastern Catholic churches, however, they continue to celebrate the feast of the Assumption under the name of the Dormition of the Mother of God on the same date. The teaching that Mary died before being assumed significantly precedes the idea that she did not. St John Damascene wrote that \"St Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem, at the Council of Chalcedon (451), made known to the Emperor Marcian and Pulcheria, who wished to possess the body of the Mother of God, that Mary died in the presence of all the Apostles, but that her tomb, when opened, upon the request of St Thomas, was found empty; wherefrom the Apostles concluded that the body was taken up to Heaven.\"\nDevotions to Mary are part of Catholic piety but are distinct from the worship of God. Practices include prayers and Marian art, music, and architecture. Several liturgical Marian feasts are celebrated throughout the Church Year and she is honoured with many titles such as Queen of Heaven. Pope Paul VI called her Mother of the Church because, by giving birth to Christ, she is considered to be the spiritual mother to each member of the Body of Christ. Because of her influential role in the life of Jesus, prayers and devotions such as the Hail Mary, the Rosary, the Salve Regina and the Memorare are common Catholic practices. Pilgrimage to the sites of several Marian apparitions affirmed by the church, such as Lourdes, F\u00e1tima, and Guadalupe, are also popular Catholic devotions.\nSacraments.\nThe Catholic Church teaches that it was entrusted with seven sacraments that were instituted by Christ. The number and nature of the sacraments were defined by several ecumenical councils, most recently the Council of Trent. These are Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance, Anointing of the Sick (formerly called Extreme Unction, one of the \"Last Rites\"), Holy Orders and Holy Matrimony. Sacraments are visible rituals that Catholics see as signs of God's presence and effective channels of God's grace to all those who receive them with the proper disposition (\"ex opere operato\"). The \"Catechism of the Catholic Church\" categorizes the sacraments into three groups, the \"sacraments of Christian initiation\", \"sacraments of healing\" and \"sacraments at the service of communion and the mission of the faithful\". These groups broadly reflect the stages of people's natural and spiritual lives which each sacrament is intended to serve.\nThe liturgies of the sacraments are central to the church's mission. According to the \"Catechism\":\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />In the liturgy of the New Covenant every liturgical action, especially the celebration of the Eucharist and the sacraments, is an encounter between Christ and the Church. The liturgical assembly derives its unity from the \"communion of the Holy Spirit\" who gathers the children of God into the one Body of Christ. This assembly transcends racial, cultural, social\u2014indeed, all human affinities.\nAccording to church doctrine, the sacraments of the church require the proper form, matter, and intent to be validly celebrated. In addition, the Canon Laws for both the Latin Church and the Eastern Catholic Churches govern who may licitly celebrate certain sacraments, as well as strict rules about who may receive the sacraments. Notably, because the church teaches that Christ is present in the Eucharist, those who are conscious of being in a state of mortal sin are forbidden to receive the sacrament until they have received absolution through the sacrament of Reconciliation (Penance). Catholics are normally obliged to abstain from eating for at least an hour before receiving the sacrament. Non-Catholics are ordinarily prohibited from receiving the Eucharist as well.\nCatholics, even if they were in danger of death and unable to approach a Catholic minister, may not ask for the sacraments of the Eucharist, penance or anointing of the sick from someone, such as a Protestant minister, who is not known to be validly ordained in line with Catholic teaching on ordination. Likewise, even in grave and pressing need, Catholic ministers may not administer these sacraments to those who do not manifest Catholic faith in the sacrament. In relation to the churches of Eastern Christianity not in communion with the Holy See, the Catholic Church is less restrictive, declaring that \"a certain \"communion in sacris\", and so in the Eucharist, given suitable circumstances and the approval of Church authority, is not merely possible but is encouraged.\"\nSacraments of initiation.\nBaptism.\nAs viewed by the Catholic Church, Baptism is the first of three sacraments of initiation as a Christian. It washes away all sins, both original sin and personal actual sins. It makes a person a member of the church. As a gratuitous gift of God that requires no merit on the part of the person who is baptized, it is conferred even on children, who, though they have no personal sins, need it on account of original sin. If a new-born child is in a danger of death, anyone\u2014be it a doctor, a nurse, or a parent\u2014may baptize the child. Baptism marks a person permanently and cannot be repeated. The Catholic Church recognizes as valid baptisms conferred even by people who are not Catholics or Christians, provided that they intend to baptize (\"to do what the Church does when she baptizes\") and that they use the Trinitarian baptismal formula.\nConfirmation.\nThe Catholic Church sees the sacrament of confirmation as required to complete the grace given in baptism. When adults are baptized, confirmation is normally given immediately afterwards, a practice followed even with newly baptized infants in the Eastern Catholic Churches. In the West confirmation of children is delayed until they are old enough to understand or at the bishop's discretion. In Western Christianity, particularly Catholicism, the sacrament is called \"confirmation\", because it confirms and strengthens the grace of baptism; in the Eastern Churches, it is called \"chrismation\", because the essential rite is the anointing of the person with chrism, a mixture of olive oil and some perfumed substance, usually balsam, blessed by a bishop. Those who receive confirmation must be in a state of grace, which for those who have reached the age of reason means that they should first be cleansed spiritually by the sacrament of Penance; they should also have the intention of receiving the sacrament, and be prepared to show in their lives that they are Christians.\nEucharist.\nFor Catholics, the Eucharist is the sacrament which completes Christian initiation. It is described as \"the source and summit of the Christian life\". The ceremony in which a Catholic first receives the Eucharist is known as First Communion.\nThe Eucharistic celebration, also called the Mass or Divine liturgy, includes prayers and scriptural readings, as well as an offering of bread and wine, which are brought to the altar and consecrated by the priest to become the body and the blood of Jesus Christ, a change called transubstantiation. The words of consecration reflect the words spoken by Jesus during the Last Supper, where Christ offered his body and blood to his Apostles the night before his crucifixion. The sacrament re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, and perpetuates it. Christ's death and resurrection give grace through the sacrament that unites the faithful with Christ and one another, remits venial sin, and aids against committing moral sin (though mortal sin itself is forgiven through the sacrament of penance).\nSacraments of healing.\nThe two sacraments of healing are the Sacrament of Penance and Anointing of the Sick.\nPenance.\nThe Sacrament of Penance (also called Reconciliation, Forgiveness, Confession, and Conversion) exists for the conversion of those who, after baptism, separate themselves from Christ by sin. Essential to this sacrament are acts both by the sinner (examination of conscience, contrition with a determination not to sin again, confession to a priest, and performance of some act to repair the damage caused by sin) and by the priest (determination of the act of reparation to be performed and absolution). Serious sins (mortal sins) should be confessed at least once a year and always before receiving Holy Communion, while confession of venial sins also is recommended. The priest is bound under the severest penalties to maintain the \"seal of confession\", absolute secrecy about any sins revealed to him in confession.\nAnointing of the sick.\nWhile chrism is used only for the three sacraments that cannot be repeated, a different oil is used by a priest or bishop to bless a Catholic who, because of illness or old age, has begun to be in danger of death. This sacrament, known as Anointing of the Sick, is believed to give comfort, peace, courage and, if the sick person is unable to make a confession, even forgiveness of sins.\nThe sacrament is also referred to as \"Unction\", and in the past as \"Extreme Unction\", and it is one of the three sacraments that constitute the last rites, together with Penance and Viaticum (Eucharist).\nSacraments at the service of communion.\nAccording to the Catechism, there are two sacraments of communion directed towards the salvation of others: priesthood and marriage. Within the general vocation to be a Christian, these two sacraments \"consecrate to specific mission or vocation among the people of God. Men receive the holy orders to feed the Church by the word and grace. Spouses marry so that their love may be fortified to fulfil duties of their state\".\nHoly Orders.\nThe sacrament of Holy Orders consecrates and deputes some Christians to serve the whole body as members of three degrees or orders: episcopate (bishops), presbyterate (priests) and diaconate (deacons). The church has defined rules on who may be ordained into the clergy. In the Latin Church, the priesthood is generally restricted to celibate men, and the episcopate is always restricted to celibate men. Men who are already married may be ordained in certain Eastern Catholic churches in most countries, and the personal ordinariates and may become deacons even in the Latin Church (see Clerical marriage). But after becoming a Catholic priest, a man may not marry (see Clerical celibacy) unless he is formally laicized.\nAll clergy, whether deacons, priests or bishops, may preach, teach, baptize, witness marriages and conduct funeral liturgies. Only bishops and priests can administer the sacraments of the Eucharist, Reconciliation (Penance) and Anointing of the Sick. Only bishops can administer the sacrament of Holy Orders, which ordains someone into the clergy.\nMatrimony.\nThe Catholic Church teaches that marriage is a social and spiritual bond between a man and a woman, ordered towards the good of the spouses and procreation of children; according to Catholic teachings on sexual morality, it is the only appropriate context for sexual activity. A Catholic marriage, or any marriage between baptized individuals of any Christian denomination, is viewed as a sacrament. A sacramental marriage, once consummated, cannot be dissolved except by death. The church recognizes certain conditions, such as freedom of consent, as required for any marriage to be valid; In addition, the church sets specific rules and norms, known as canonical form, that Catholics must follow.\nThe church does not recognize divorce as ending a valid marriage and allows state-recognized divorce only as a means of protecting the property and well-being of the spouses and any children. However, consideration of particular cases by the competent ecclesiastical tribunal can lead to declaration of the invalidity of a marriage, a declaration usually referred to as an annulment. Remarriage following a divorce is not permitted unless the prior marriage was declared invalid.\nLiturgy.\nAmong the 24 autonomous (\"sui iuris\") churches, numerous liturgical and other traditions exist, called rites, which reflect historical and cultural diversity rather than differences in belief. In the definition of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, \"a rite is the liturgical, theological, spiritual, and disciplinary patrimony, culture and circumstances of history of a distinct people, by which its own manner of living the faith is manifested in each Church \"sui iuris\"\".\nThe liturgy of the sacrament of the Eucharist, called the Mass in the West and Divine Liturgy or other names in the East, is the principal liturgy of the Catholic Church. This is because it is considered the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ himself. Its most widely used form is that of the Roman Rite as promulgated by Paul VI in 1969 (see Missale Romanum) and revised by Pope John Paul II in 2002 (see Liturgiam Authenticam). In certain circumstances, the 1962 form of the Roman Rite remains authorized in the Latin Church. Eastern Catholic Churches have their own rites. The liturgies of the Eucharist and the other sacraments vary from rite to rite, reflecting different theological emphases.\nWestern rites.\nThe Roman Rite is the most common rite of worship used by the Catholic Church, with the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite form of the Mass. Its use is found worldwide, originating in Rome and spreading throughout Europe, influencing and eventually supplanting local rites. The present ordinary form of Mass in the Roman Rite, found in the post-1969 editions of the Roman Missal, is usually celebrated in the local vernacular language, using an officially approved translation from the original text in Latin. An outline of its major liturgical elements can be found in the sidebar.\nIn 2007, Pope Benedict XVI affirmed the licitness of continued use of the 1962 Roman Missal as an \"extraordinary form\" (\"forma extraordinaria\") of the Roman Rite, speaking of it also as an \"usus antiquior\" (\"older use\"), and issuing new more permissive norms for its employment. An instruction issued four years later spoke of the two forms or usages of the Roman Rite approved by the pope as the ordinary form and the extraordinary form (\"the \"forma ordinaria\"\" and \"the \"forma extraordinaria\"\").\nThe 1962 edition of the Roman Missal, published a few months before the Second Vatican Council opened, was the last that presented the Mass as standardized in 1570 by Pope Pius V at the request of the Council of Trent and that is therefore known as the Tridentine Mass. Pope Pius V's Roman Missal was subjected to minor revisions by Pope Clement VIII in 1604, Pope Urban VIII in 1634, Pope Pius X in 1911, Pope Pius XII in 1955, and Pope John XXIII in 1962. Each successive edition was the ordinary form of the Roman Rite Mass until superseded by a later edition. When the 1962 edition was superseded by that of Paul VI, promulgated in 1969, its continued use at first required permission from bishops; but Pope Benedict XVI's 2007 motu proprio \"Summorum Pontificum\" allowed free use of it for Mass celebrated without a congregation and authorized parish priests to permit, under certain conditions, its use even at public Masses. Except for the scriptural readings, which Pope Benedict allowed to be proclaimed in the vernacular language, it is celebrated exclusively in liturgical Latin. These permissions were largely removed by Pope Francis in 2021, who issued the \"motu proprio\" \"Traditionis custodes\" to emphasize the Ordinary Form as promulgated by Popes Paul VI and John Paul II.\nSince 2014, clergy in the small personal ordinariates set up for groups of former Anglicans under the terms of the 2009 document \"Anglicanorum Coetibus\" are permitted to use a variation of the Roman Rite called \"Divine Worship\" or, less formally, \"Ordinariate Use\", which incorporates elements of the Anglican liturgy and traditions, an accommodation protested by Anglican leaders.\nIn the Archdiocese of Milan, with around five million Catholics the largest in Europe, Mass is celebrated according to the Ambrosian Rite. Other Latin Church rites include the Mozarabic and those of some religious institutes. These liturgical rites have an antiquity of at least 200 years before 1570, the date of Pope Pius V's \"Quo primum\", and were thus allowed to continue.\nEastern rites.\nThe Eastern Catholic Churches share common patrimony and liturgical rites as their counterparts, including Eastern Orthodox and other Eastern Christian churches who are no longer in communion with the Holy See. These include churches that historically developed in Russia, Caucasus, the Balkans, North Eastern Africa, India and the Middle East. The Eastern Catholic Churches are groups of faithful who have either never been out of communion with the Holy See or who have restored communion with it at the cost of breaking communion with their associates of the same tradition.\nThe liturgical rites of the Eastern Catholic Churches include the Byzantine Rite (in its Antiochian, Greek and Slavonic recensions), the Alexandrian Rite, the West Syrian Rite, the Armenian Rite, and the East Syriac Rite. Eastern Catholic Churches have the autonomy to set the particulars of their liturgical forms and worship, within certain limits to protect the \"accurate observance\" of their liturgical tradition. In the past some of the rites used by the Eastern Catholic Churches were subject to a degree of liturgical Latinization. However, in recent years Eastern Catholic Churches have returned to traditional Eastern practices in accord with the Vatican II decree \"Orientalium Ecclesiarum\". Each church has its own liturgical calendar.\nSocial and cultural issues.\nCatholic social teaching.\nCatholic social teaching, reflecting the concern Jesus showed for the impoverished, places a heavy emphasis on the corporal works of mercy and the spiritual works of mercy, namely the support and concern for the sick, the poor and the afflicted. Church teaching calls for a preferential option for the poor while canon law prescribes that \"The Christian faithful are also obliged to promote social justice and, mindful of the precept of the Lord, to assist the poor.\" Its foundations are widely considered to have been laid by Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical letter \"Rerum novarum\" which upholds the rights and dignity of labour and the right of workers to form unions.\nCatholic teaching regarding sexuality calls for a practice of chastity, with a focus on maintaining the spiritual and bodily integrity of the human person. Marriage is considered the only appropriate context for sexual activity. Church teachings about sexuality have become an issue of increasing controversy, especially after the close of the Second Vatican Council, due to changing cultural attitudes in the Western world described as the sexual revolution.\nThe church has also addressed stewardship of the natural environment, and its relationship to other social and theological teachings. In the document , dated 24 May 2015, Pope Francis critiques consumerism and irresponsible development, and laments environmental degradation and global warming. The pope expressed concern that the warming of the planet is a symptom of a greater problem: the developed world's indifference to the destruction of the planet as humans pursue short-term economic gains.\nSocial services.\nThe Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of education and medical services in the world. In 2010, the Catholic Church's Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers said that the church manages 26% of health care facilities in the world, including hospitals, clinics, orphanages, pharmacies and centres for those with leprosy.\nThe church has always been involved in education, since the founding of the first universities of Europe. It runs and sponsors thousands of primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities throughout the world and operates the world's largest non-governmental school system.\nReligious institutes for women have played a particularly prominent role in the provision of health and education services, as with orders such as the Sisters of Mercy, Little Sisters of the Poor, the Missionaries of Charity, the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul. The Catholic nun Mother Teresa of Calcutta, India, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her humanitarian work among India's poor. Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo won the same award in 1996 for \"work towards a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor\".\nThe church is also actively engaged in international aid and development through organizations such as Catholic Relief Services, Caritas Internationalis, Aid to the Church in Need, refugee advocacy groups such as the Jesuit Refugee Service and community aid groups such as the Saint Vincent de Paul Society.\nSexual morality.\nThe Catholic Church calls all members to practise chastity according to their state in life. Chastity includes temperance, self-mastery, personal and cultural growth, and divine grace. It requires refraining from lust, masturbation, fornication, pornography, prostitution and rape. Chastity for those who are not married requires living in continence, abstaining from sexual activity; those who are married are called to conjugal chastity.\nIn the church's teaching, sexual activity is reserved to married couples, whether in a sacramental marriage among Christians or in a natural marriage where one or both spouses are unbaptized. Even in romantic relationships, particularly engagement to marriage, partners are called to practise continence, in order to test mutual respect and fidelity. Chastity in marriage requires in particular conjugal fidelity and protecting the fecundity of marriage. The couple must foster trust and honesty as well as spiritual and physical intimacy. Sexual activity must always be open to the possibility of life; the church calls this the procreative significance. It must likewise always bring a couple together in love; the church calls this the unitive significance.\nContraception and certain other sexual practices are not permitted, although natural family planning methods are permitted to provide healthy spacing between births, or to postpone children for a just reason. Pope Francis said in 2015 that he is worried that the church has grown \"obsessed\" with issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and contraception, and for prioritizing moral doctrines over helping the poor and marginalized.\nHomosexuality.\nThe Catholic Church also teaches that \"homosexual acts\" are \"contrary to the natural law\", \"acts of grave depravity\" and \"under no circumstances can they be approved\", but that persons experiencing homosexual tendencies must be accorded respect and dignity. According to the \"Catechism of the Catholic Church\",\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided...\nHomosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.\nThis part of the \"Catechism\" was quoted by Pope Francis in a 2013 press interview in which he remarked, when asked about an individual:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I think that when you encounter a person like this [the individual he was asked about], you must make a distinction between the fact of a person being gay from the fact of being a lobby, because lobbies, all are not good. That is bad. If a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has good will, well who am I to judge them?\nThis remark and others made in the same interview were seen as a change in the tone, but not in the substance of the teaching of the church, which includes opposition to same-sex marriage. Certain dissenting Catholic groups oppose the position of the Catholic Church and seek to change it.\nDivorce and declarations of nullity.\nCanon law makes no provision for divorce between baptized individuals, as a valid, consummated sacramental marriage is considered to be a lifelong bond. However, a declaration of nullity may be granted when the proof is produced that essential conditions for contracting a valid marriage were absent from the beginning\u2014in other words, that the marriage was not valid due to some impediment. A declaration of nullity, commonly called an annulment, is a judgement on the part of an ecclesiastical tribunal determining that a marriage was invalidly attempted. In addition, marriages among unbaptized individuals may be dissolved with papal permission under certain situations, such as a desire to marry a Catholic, under Pauline or Petrine privilege. An attempt at remarriage following divorce without a declaration of nullity places \"the remarried spouse ... in a situation of public and permanent adultery\". An innocent spouse who lives in continence following divorce, or couples who live in continence following a civil divorce for a grave cause, do not sin.\nWorldwide, diocesan tribunals completed over 49000 cases for nullity of marriage in 2006. Over the past 30 years about 55 to 70% of annulments have occurred in the United States. The growth in annulments has been substantial; in the United States, 27,000 marriages were annulled in 2006, compared to 338 in 1968. However, approximately 200,000 married Catholics in the United States divorce each year; 10\u00a0million total as of 2006[ [update]]. Divorce is increasing in some predominantly Catholic countries in Europe. In some predominantly Catholic countries, it is only in recent years that divorce was introduced (Italy (1970), Portugal (1975), Brazil (1977), Spain (1981), Ireland (1996), Chile (2004) and Malta (2011)), while the Philippines and the Vatican City have no procedure for divorce (The Philippines does, however, allow divorce for Muslims.).\nContraception and abortion.\nThe church teaches that sexual intercourse should only take place between a man and woman who are married to each other, and should be without the use of birth control or contraception. In his encyclical \"Humanae vitae\" (1968), Pope Paul VI firmly rejected all contraception, thus contradicting dissenters in the church that saw the birth control pill as an ethically justifiable method of contraception, though he permitted the regulation of births by means of natural family planning. This teaching was continued especially by John Paul II in his encyclical \"\", where he clarified the church's position on contraception, abortion and euthanasia by condemning them as part of a \"culture of death\" and calling instead for a \"culture of life\".\nMany Western Catholics have voiced significant disagreement with the church's teaching on contraception. Overturning the church's teaching on this point features high on progressive agendas. Catholics for Choice, a political lobbyist group that is not associated with the Catholic Church, stated in 1998 that 96% of U.S. Catholic women had used contraceptives at some point in their lives and that 72% of Catholics believed that one could be a good Catholic without obeying the church's teaching on birth control. Use of natural family planning methods among United States Catholics purportedly is low, although the number cannot be known with certainty. As Catholic health providers are among the largest providers of services to patients with HIV/AIDS worldwide, there is significant controversy within and outside the church regarding the use of condoms as a means of limiting new infections, as condom use ordinarily constitutes prohibited contraceptive use.\nSimilarly, the Catholic Church opposes artificial insemination regardless of whether it is homologous (from the husband) or heterologous (from a donor) and in vitro fertilization (IVF), saying that the artificial process replaces the love and conjugal act between a husband and wife. In addition, it opposes IVF because it might cause disposal of embryos; Catholics believe an embryo is an individual with a soul who must be treated as such. For this reason, the church also opposes abortion.\nThe Catholic Church oppose all forms of abortion procedures whose direct purpose is to destroy a zygote, blastocyst, embryo or fetus, since it holds that \"human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person \u2013 among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life\". However, the Church does recognize as morally legitimate certain acts which indirectly result in the death of the fetus. The 1983 \"Code of Canon Law\" imposes automatic (\"latae sententiae\") excommunication on Latin Catholics who actually procure an abortion, if they fulfill the conditions for being subject to such a sanction.\nDue to the anti-abortion stance, some Catholics oppose receiving vaccines derived from fetal cells obtained via abortion. On 21 December 2020, and regarding COVID-19 vaccination, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith emitted a document stating that \"it is morally acceptable to receive Covid-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production process\" when no alternative vaccine is available, since \"the moral duty to avoid such passive material cooperation is not obligatory if there is a grave danger, such as the otherwise uncontainable spread of a serious pathological agent.\" The document states that receiving the vaccine does not constitute endorsement of the practice of abortion, and that \"the morality of vaccination depends not only on the duty to protect one's own health, but also on the duty to pursue the common good.\" The document cautions further:<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nDeath penalty and euthanasia.\nThe Catholic Church is committed to the worldwide abolition of the death penalty in any circumstance. The current \"Catechism of the Catholic Church\" teaches that \"in the light of the Gospel\" the death penalty is \"inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person\" and that the Catholic Church \"works with determination for its abolition worldwide.\" In his 2020 encyclical \"Fratelli tutti\", Francis repeated that the death penalty is \"inadmissible\" and that \"there can be no stepping back from this position\". On 9 January 2022, Pope Francis stated in his annual speech to Vatican ambassadors: \"The death penalty cannot be employed for a purported state justice, since it does not constitute a deterrent nor render justice to victims, but only fuels the thirst for vengeance\".\nThere is controversy about whether the Catholic Church considers the death penalty intrinsically evil. American Archbishop Jos\u00e9 Horacio G\u00f3mez and Catholic philosopher Edward Feser argue that this is a matter of prudential judgement and that the church does not teach this as a \"de fide\" statement; others, such as Cardinals Charles Maung Bo and Rino Fisichella, state that it does.\nThe Catholic Church opposes active euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide on the grounds that life is a gift from God and should not be prematurely shortened. However, the church allows dying people to refuse extraordinary treatments that would minimally prolong life without hope of recovery.\nHoly orders and women.\nWomen and men religious engage in a variety of occupations such as contemplative prayer, teaching, providing health care, and working as missionaries. While Holy Orders are reserved for men, Catholic women have played diverse roles in the life of the church, with religious institutes providing a formal space for their participation and convents providing spaces for their self-government, prayer and influence through many centuries. Religious sisters and nuns have been extensively involved in developing and running the church's worldwide health and education service networks.\nEfforts in support of the ordination of women to the priesthood led to several rulings by the Roman Curia or popes against the proposal, as in \"Declaration on the Question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood\" (1976), \"Mulieris Dignitatem\" (1988) and \"Ordinatio sacerdotalis\" (1994). According to the latest ruling, found in \"Ordinatio sacerdotalis\", Pope John Paul II affirmed that the Catholic Church \"does not consider herself authorised to admit women to priestly ordination\". In defiance of these rulings, opposition groups such as Roman Catholic Womenpriests have performed ceremonies they affirm as sacramental ordinations (with, reputedly, an ordaining male Catholic bishop in the first few instances) which, according to canon law, are both illicit and invalid and considered mere \"simulations\" of the sacrament of ordination. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith responded by issuing a statement clarifying that any Catholic bishops involved in ordination ceremonies for women, as well as the women themselves if they were Catholic, would automatically receive the penalty of excommunication (\"latae sententiae\", literally \"with the sentence already applied\", i.e. automatically), citing canon 1378 of canon law and other church laws.\nSexual abuse cases.\nFrom the 1990s, the issue of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy and other church members has become the subject of civil litigation, criminal prosecution, media coverage and public debate in countries around the world. The Catholic Church has been criticized for the way it handled abuse complaints when it became known that many bishops and various officials in the Church hierarchy had protected accused priests, transferring them to other assignments elsewhere, where they continued to commit sex crimes.\nIn response to the scandals, formal procedures have been established to help prevent abuse, encourage the reporting of any abuse that occurs and to handle such reports promptly, although groups representing victims have disputed their effectiveness. In 2014, Pope Francis instituted the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors for the safeguarding of minors.<ref name=\"hspo.b0199/00444.2014.03.22\"></ref>\nReferences.\nNOTE: \"CCC\" stands for \"Catechism of the Catholic Church\". The number following \"CCC\" is the paragraph number, of which there are 2865. The numbers cited in the \"Compendium of the CCC\" are question numbers, of which there are 598. Canon law citations from the 1990 \"Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches\" are labelled \"\"CCEO\", Canon xxx\", to distinguish from canons of the 1983 \"Code of Canon Law\", which are labelled \"Canon xxx\".\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>", "3979": "Baptists\nDenomination of Protestant Christianity\nBaptists are a denomination of Protestant Christianity distinguished by baptizing only professing Christian believers (believer's baptism) and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul competency (the responsibility and accountability of every person before God), \"sola fide\" (salvation by faith alone), \"sola scriptura\" (the Bible is the sole infallible authority, as the rule of faith and practice) and congregationalist church government. Baptists recognize generally two sacraments: baptism and communion.\nDiverse from their beginning, those identifying as Baptists today may differ widely from one another in what they believe, how they worship, their attitudes toward other Christians, and their understanding of what is important in Christian discipleship. Baptist missionaries have spread various Baptist churches to every continent. The largest Baptist communion of churches is the Baptist World Alliance, and there are many different groupings of Baptist churches and Baptist congregations.\nHistorians trace the Baptists to the Puritan Nonconformism, more specifically, to the congregation led by John Smyth exiled to Amsterdam in 1609. In accordance with their reading of the New Testament, they rejected paedobaptism and instituted baptism only of professing believers. The Baptists spread across England, where the General Baptists considered Christ's atonement to extend to all people, while the Particular Baptists believed that it extended only to the elect. Thomas Helwys formulated a distinctively Baptist request that the church and the state be kept separate in matters of law, so that individuals might have freedom of religion. Helwys died in prison as a consequence of the religious conflict with English Dissenters under James I.\nOrigins.\nBaptist historian Bruce Gourley outlines four main views of Baptist origins:\nEnglish separatist view.\nModern Baptist churches trace their history to the English Separatist movement in the 17th century, over a century after the foundation of the Church of England during the Protestant Reformation. This view of Baptist origins has the most historical support and is the most widely accepted. Adherents to this position consider the influence of Anabaptists upon early Baptists to be minimal. It was a time of considerable political and religious turmoil. Both individuals and churches were willing to give up their theological roots if they became convinced that a more biblical \"truth\" had been discovered.\nDuring the Reformation, the Church of England (Anglicans) separated from the Roman Catholic Church. There were some Christians who were not content with the achievements of the mainstream Protestant Reformation. There also were Christians who were disappointed that the Church of England had not made corrections of what some considered to be errors and abuses. Of those most critical of the church's direction, some chose to stay and try to make constructive changes from within the Anglican Church. They became known as \"Puritans\" and are described by Gourley as cousins of the English Separatists. Others decided they must leave the established church because of their dissatisfaction and became known as the Separatists.\nIn 1579, Faustus Socinus founded the Unitarian Polish Brethren in Poland-Lithuania, which was a tolerant country. The Unitarians taught baptism by immersion. After their expulsion from the Commonwealth in 1658, many of them fled to the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, the Unitarians introduced immersion baptism to the Dutch Mennonites.\nBaptist churches have their origins in a movement started by John Smyth and Thomas Helwys in Amsterdam. Because they shared beliefs with the Congregationalists, they went into exile in 1607 with other believers who held the same positions. They believe that the Bible is to be the only guide and that the believer's baptism is what the scriptures require. In 1609, the year considered to be the foundation of the movement, they baptized believers and founded the first Baptist church.\nIn 1609, while still there, Smyth wrote a tract titled \"The Character of the Beast\". In it he expressed two propositions: first, infants are not to be baptized; and second, \"Antichristians converted are to be admitted into the true Church by baptism.\" Hence, his conviction was that a scriptural church should consist only of regenerate believers who have been baptized on a confession of faith. He rejected the Separatist movement's doctrine of infant baptism. \nShortly thereafter, Smyth left the group. Ultimately, Smyth became committed to believers' baptism as the only biblical baptism. He was convinced on the basis of his interpretation of Scripture that infants would not be damned should they die in infancy. Smyth, convinced that his self-baptism was invalid, applied with the Mennonites for membership. He died while waiting for membership, and some of his congregation became Mennonites. Helwys and others kept their baptism and commitments that would originate the Baptist Tradition. The modern Baptist denomination is an outgrowth of this movement. Baptists rejected the name Anabaptist when they were called that by opponents in derision. McBeth writes that as late as the 18th century, many Baptists referred to themselves as \"the Christians commonly\u2014though \"falsely\"\u2014called Anabaptists.\"\nHelwys took over the leadership, leading the church back to England in 1611, and he published the first Baptist confession of faith \"A Declaration of Faith of English People\" in 1611. He founded the first General Baptist Church in Spitalfields, east London, in 1612.\nAnother milestone in the early development of Baptist doctrine was in 1638 with John Spilsbury, a Calvinist minister who helped to promote the strict practice of believer's baptism by immersion (as opposed to affusion or aspersion). According to Tom Nettles, professor of historical theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, \"Spilsbury's cogent arguments for a gathered, disciplined congregation of believers baptized by immersion as constituting the New Testament church gave expression to and built on insights that had emerged within separatism, advanced in the life of John Smyth and the suffering congregation of Thomas Helwys, and matured in Particular Baptists.\"\nAnabaptist influence view.\nA minority view is that early 17th century Baptists were influenced by (but not directly connected to) continental Anabaptists. According to this view, the General Baptists shared similarities with Dutch Waterlander Mennonites (one of many Anabaptist groups) including believer's baptism only, religious liberty, separation of church and state, and Arminian views of salvation, predestination and original sin. \nIt is certain that the early Baptist church led by Smyth had contacts with the Anabaptists; however it is debated if these influences found their way into the English General Baptists. Representatives of this theory include A.C. Underwood and William R. Estep. Gourley writes that among some contemporary Baptist scholars who emphasize the faith of the community over soul liberty, the Anabaptist influence theory is making a comeback. This view was also taught by the Reformed historian Philip Schaff.\nHowever, the relations between Baptists and Anabaptists were early strained. In 1624, the five existing Baptist churches of London issued a condemnation of the Anabaptists. Furthermore, the original group associated with Smyth (popularly believed to be the first Baptists) broke with the Waterlander Mennonite Anabaptists after a brief period of association in the Netherlands.\nPerpetuity and succession view.\nTraditional Baptist historians write from the perspective that Baptists had existed since the time of Christ. Proponents of the Baptist successionist or perpetuity view consider the Baptist movement to have existed independently from Roman Catholicism and prior to the Protestant Reformation. This view has been characterized as \"apologetic and polemical\" and \"without consideration of a critical, scientific methodology\".\nThe perpetuity view is often identified with \"The Trail of Blood\", a booklet of five lectures by James Milton Carroll published in 1931. Other Baptist writers who advocate the successionist theory of Baptist origins are John T. Christian and Thomas Crosby. This view was held by English Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon as well as Jesse Mercer, the namesake of Mercer University. In 1898 William Whitsitt was pressured to resign his presidency of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for denying Baptist successionism.\nBaptist origins in the United Kingdom.\nIn 1612 Helwys established a Baptist congregation in London, consisting of congregants from Smyth's church. A number of other Baptist churches sprang up, and they became known as the General Baptists. The Particular Baptists were established when a group of Calvinist Separatists adopted believers' Baptism. The Particular Baptists consisted of seven churches by 1644 and had created a confession of faith called the First London Confession of Faith.\nBaptist origins in North America.\nBoth Roger Williams and John Clarke are variously credited as founding the earliest Baptist church in North America. In 1639 Williams established a Baptist church in Providence, Rhode Island, and Clarke began a Baptist church in Newport, Rhode Island. According to a Baptist historian who has researched the matter extensively, \"There is much debate over the centuries as to whether the Providence or Newport church deserved the place of 'first' Baptist congregation in America. Exact records for both congregations are lacking.\"\nThe First Great Awakening energized the Baptist movement, and the Baptist community experienced spectacular growth. Baptists became the largest Christian community in many southern states, including among the enslaved Black population.\nBaptist missionary work in Canada began in the British colony of Nova Scotia (present day Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) in the 1760s. The first official record of a Baptist church in Canada was Horton Baptist Church (now Wolfville) in Wolfville, Nova Scotia on 29 October 1778. The church was established with the assistance of the New Light evangelist Henry Alline. Many of Alline's followers, after his death, converted and strengthened the Baptist presence in the Atlantic region. Two major groups of Baptists formed the basis of the churches in the Maritimes. These were referred to as Regular Baptist (Calvinistic in their doctrine) and Free Will Baptists (Arminian in their doctrine).\nIn May 1845, the Baptist congregations in the United States split over slavery and missions. The Home Mission Society prevented slaveholders from being appointed as missionaries. The split created the Southern Baptist Convention, while the northern congregations formed their own umbrella organization now called the American Baptist Churches USA (ABC-USA). In 2015, Baptists in the U.S. number 50 million people and constitute roughly one-third of American Protestants.\nBaptist origins in Ukraine.\nThe Baptist churches in Ukraine were preceded by the German Anabaptist and Mennonite communities, who had been living in southern Ukraine since the 16th century, and who practiced adult believer's baptism. The first Baptist baptism (adult baptism by full immersion) in Ukraine took place in 1864 on the river Inhul in the Yelizavetgrad region (now Kropyvnytskyi region), in a German settlement. In 1867, the first Baptist communities were organized in that area. From there, the Baptist movement spread across the south of Ukraine and then to other regions as well. \nOne of the first Baptist communities was registered in Kyiv in 1907, and in 1908 the First All-Russian Convention of Baptists was held there, as Ukraine was still controlled by the Russian Empire. The All-Russian Union of Baptists was established in Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipro) in southern Ukraine. At the end of the 19th century, there were between 100,000 and 300,000 Baptists in Ukraine. An independent All-Ukrainian Baptist Union of Ukraine was established during the brief period of Ukraine's independence in early 20th-century and once again after the fall of the Soviet Union, the largest of which is currently known as the Evangelical Baptist Union of Ukraine.\nBaptist churches.\nSome Baptist church congregations choose to be independent of larger church organizations (Independent Baptist). Other Baptist churches choose to be part of an international or national Baptist Christian denomination or association while still adhering to a congregationalist polity. This cooperative relationship allows the development of common organizations, for mission and societal purposes, such as humanitarian aid, schools, theological institutes and hospitals. \nThe majority of Baptist churches are part of national denominations (or 'associations' or 'cooperative groups'), as well as the Baptist World Alliance (BWA), formed in 1905 by 24 Baptist denominations from various countries. The BWA's goals include caring for the needy, leading in world evangelism and defending human rights and religious freedom.\nMissionary organizations.\nMissionary organizations favored the development of the movement on all continents. The BMS World Mission was founded in 1792 at Kettering, England. In United States, International Ministries was founded in 1814, and the International Mission Board was founded in 1845.\nMembership.\nMembership policies vary due to the autonomy of churches, but generally an individual becomes a member of a church through believer's baptism (which is a public profession of faith in Jesus, followed by immersion baptism). Most Baptists do not believe that baptism is a requirement for salvation but rather a public expression of inner repentance and faith. In general, Baptist churches do not have a stated age restriction on membership, but believer's baptism requires that an individual be able to freely and earnestly profess their faith.\nIn 2010, an estimated 100 million Christians identified as Baptist or belonging to a Baptist-type church. In 2020, according to the researcher S\u00e9bastien Fath of the CNRS, the Baptist movement has around 170 million believers in the world. According to a census released in 2024, the BWA includes 266 participating fellowships in 134 countries, with 178,000 churches and 51 million baptized members. These statistics may not be fully representative, however, since some churches in the United States have dual or triple national Baptist affiliation, causing a church and its members to be counted possibly by more than one Baptist association, if these associations are members of the BWA.\nAmong the censuses carried out by individual Baptist associations in 2023, those which claimed the most members on each continent were:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Table alignment/tables.css\" />\nBeliefs.\nSince the early days of the Baptist movement, various associations have adopted common confessions of faith as the basis for cooperative work among churches. Each church has a particular confession of faith and a common confession of faith if it is a member of an association of churches. Some historically significant Baptist doctrinal documents include the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, 1742 Philadelphia Baptist Confession, the 1833 New Hampshire Baptist Confession of Faith, and written church covenants which some individual Baptist churches adopt as a statement of their faith and beliefs.\nBaptist theology shares many doctrines with evangelical theology. It is based on believers' Church doctrine. Baptists, like other Christians, are defined by school of thought\u2014some of it common to all orthodox and evangelical groups, and a portion of it distinctive to Baptists. Through the years, different Baptist groups have issued confessions of faith\u2014without considering them to be \"creeds\"\u2014to express their particular doctrinal distinctions in comparison to other Christians as well as in comparison to other Baptists. Baptist denominations are traditionally seen as belonging to two parties, General Baptists who uphold Arminian theology, and Particular Baptists who uphold Reformed theology (Calvinism). During the holiness movement, some General Baptists accepted the teaching of a second work of grace and formed denominations that emphasized this belief, such as the Ohio Valley Association of the Christian Baptist Churches of God and the Holiness Baptist Association. Most Baptists are evangelical in doctrine, but their beliefs may vary due to the congregational governance system that gives autonomy to individual local Baptist churches. Historically, Baptists have played a key role in encouraging religious freedom and the doctrine of separation of church and state.\nShared doctrines would include beliefs about one God; the virgin birth of Jesus; miracles; substitutionary atonement for sins through the death, burial, and bodily resurrection of Jesus; the Trinity; the need for salvation (through belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, his death and resurrection); grace; the Kingdom of God; last things (eschatology) (Jesus Christ will return personally and visibly in glory to Earth; the dead will be raised; and Christ will judge everyone in righteousness); and evangelism and missions.\nMost Baptists hold that no church or ecclesiastical organization has inherent authority over a Baptist church. Churches can properly relate to each other under this polity only through voluntary cooperation, never by any sort of coercion. Furthermore, this Baptist polity calls for freedom from governmental control. Exceptions to this local form of local governance include a few churches that submit to the leadership of a body of elders, as well as the Episcopal Baptists who have an Episcopal system.\nBaptists generally believe in the literal Second Coming of Christ. Beliefs among Baptists regarding the \"end times\" include amillennialism, both dispensational and historic premillennialism, with views such as postmillennialism and preterism receiving some support.\nSome additional distinctive Baptist principles held by many Baptists:\nBeliefs that vary among Baptists.\nSince there is no hierarchical authority and each Baptist church is autonomous, there is no official set of Baptist theological beliefs. These differences exist among associations and even among churches within the associations. Some doctrinal issues on which there is widespread difference among Baptists are:\nExcommunication may be used as a last resort by some denominations and churches for members who do not want to repent of beliefs or behavior at odds with the confession of faith of the community. When an entire congregation is excluded, it is often called disfellowship.\nTypes of Baptists.\nGeneral Baptists.\nGeneral Baptists are Baptists who hold to the view of unlimited atonement, believing that God died for every human being and not just the elect. These Baptists are generally closer to Arminian theology, and the Free Will Baptists belong to this grouping.\nThe General Baptists also emerged from English Separatists, who contended that the Church of England was a false church, from which one should separate from completely.\nParticular Baptists.\nThe Particular Baptists or Reformed Baptists are Baptists who hold to the Calvinistic view of salvation. Depending on the denomination, Calvinistic Baptists adhere to varying degrees of Reformed theology, ranging from simply embracing the Five Points of Calvinism, to accepting a modified form of federalism; all Calvinistic Baptists reject the classical Reformed teaching on infant baptism. While the Reformed Baptist confessions affirm views of the nature of baptism similar to those of the classical Reformed, they reject infants as the proper subjects of baptism.\nIn distinction to the General Baptists who emphasized separation from the Church of England, the Particular Baptists sought more ecumenism.\nMissionary Baptists.\nThe Missionary Baptists were a group of Baptists that came from the missionary controversy in the United States, where the Missionary Baptists supported the usage of missionaries.\nPrimitive Baptists.\nPrimitive Baptists are a type of Baptists who adhere to some type of Calvinistic beliefs, who came out of the controversy among Baptists on the use of mission boards, tract societies and temperamence societies. Primitive Baptists reject some elements of classical Reformed theology, such as infant baptism, and avoid the term \"Calvinist\". They are still Calvinist in the sense of holding strongly to the Five Points of Calvinism and they explicitly reject Arminianism. They are also characterized by \"intense conservatism\".\nIndependent Baptists.\nIndependent Baptists are Baptists who arose from local Baptist congregations whose members were concerned about the doctrines of theological liberalism in national Baptist conventions. Independent Baptists are primarily fundamentalist, and although they may differ on multiple issues such as soteriology, dress standards, music, the practice of communion among others, they are homogenous on issues such as opposition to homosexuality, ordination of women, the charismatic movement, evolution and abortion.\nNew Independent Baptists.\nDuring the 21st century, the New Independent Fundamental Baptist movement was founded out of the Independent Baptist movement by Steven Anderson. However, this movement has been heavily criticized by Independent Baptists due to many doctrinal differences. Some former New IFB pastors have also charged the association of being a cult.\nSeventh Day Baptists.\nSeventh Day Baptists are Baptists who practice Sabbatarianism. However, it is not certain when Seventh Day Baptists took denominational form, and they do not claim an unbroken succession of church organization from before the Reformation.\nLandmark Baptists.\nLandmark Baptists are a Baptist movement which originated in the 19th century in United States, with leaders such as J. R. Graves, J. M. Pendleton and A. C. Dayton, although they denied being a new movement, but a continuation of the old-fashioned Baptists. Landmark Baptists believe that the term \"church\" should be reserved for Baptist churches exclusively, arguing that groups such as Methodists or Presbyterians are not churches at all, but only religious societies. They believe that Baptists share an unbroken line of succession from the early church.\nWorship.\nIn Baptist churches, worship service is part of the life of the church and includes praise, worship, of prayers to God, a sermon based on the Bible, offering, and periodically the Lord's Supper. Some churches have services with traditional Christian music, others with contemporary Christian music, and some offer both in separate services. In many churches, there are services adapted for children, even teenagers. Prayer meetings are also held during the week.\nThe architecture is generally sober, and the Latin cross is one of the only spiritual symbols that can usually be seen on the building of a Baptist church and that identifies the place where it belongs.\nEducation.\nBaptist churches established elementary and secondary schools, Bible colleges, colleges and universities as early as the 1680s in England, before continuing in various countries. In 2006, the International Association of Baptist Colleges and Universities was founded in the United States. In 2023, it had 42 member universities.\nSexuality.\nMany churches promote virginity pledges to young Baptist Christians, who are invited to engage in a public ceremony of sexual abstinence until Christian marriage. This pact is often symbolized by a purity ring. Programs like True Love Waits, founded in 1993 by the Southern Baptist Convention have been developed to support the commitments.\nMost Baptist associations around the world believe only in marriage between a man and a woman. Some Baptist associations do not have official beliefs about marriage in a confession of faith and invoke congregationalism to leave the choice to each church to decide. This is the case of American Baptist Churches USA, Progressive National Baptist Convention (USA), Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (USA), National Baptist Convention, USA and the Baptist Union of Great Britain. Some Baptist associations support same-sex marriage. This is the case of the Alliance of Baptists (USA), the Canadian Association for Baptist Freedoms, the Alian\u00e7a de Batistas do Brasil, the Fraternidad de Iglesias Bautistas de Cuba, and the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists (international).\nControversies.\nBaptists have faced many controversies in their 400-year history, controversies of the level of crises. Baptist historian Walter Shurden says the word \"crisis\" comes from the Greek word meaning 'to decide.' Shurden writes that contrary to the presumed negative view of crises, some controversies that reach a crisis level may actually be \"positive and highly productive.\" He claims that even schism, though never ideal, has often produced positive results. In his opinion, crises among Baptists each have become decision moments that shaped their future.\nMissions crisis.\nEarly in the 19th century, the rise of the modern missions movement, and the backlash against it, led to widespread and bitter controversy among the American Baptists. During this era, the American Baptists were split between missionary and anti-missionary. A substantial secession of Baptists went into the movement led by Alexander Campbell to return to a more fundamental church.\nSlavery crisis.\nUnited States.\nLeading up to the American Civil War, Baptists became embroiled in the controversy over slavery in the United States. Whereas in the First Great Awakening, Methodist and Baptist preachers had opposed slavery and urged manumission, over the decades they made more of an accommodation with the institution. They worked with slaveholders in the South to urge a paternalistic institution. Both denominations made direct appeals to slaves and free Blacks for conversion. The Baptists particularly allowed them active roles in congregations. By the mid-19th century, northern Baptists tended to oppose slavery. As tensions increased, in 1844 the Home Mission Society refused to appoint a slaveholder as a missionary who had been proposed by Georgia. It noted that missionaries could not take servants with them, and also that the board did not want to appear to condone slavery.\nIn 1845, a group of churches in favor of slavery and in disagreement with the abolitionism of the Triennial Convention (now American Baptist Churches USA) left to form the Southern Baptist Convention. They believed that the Bible sanctions slavery, and that it was acceptable for Christians to own slaves. They believed slavery was a human institution which Baptist teaching could make less harsh. By this time, many planters were part of Baptist congregations, and some of the denomination's prominent preachers, such as Basil Manly Sr., president of the University of Alabama, were also planters who owned slaves.\nAs early as the late 18th century, Black Baptists began to organize separate churches, associations and mission agencies. Blacks set up some independent Baptist congregations in the South before the Civil War. White Baptist associations maintained some oversight of these churches.\nIn the postwar years, freedmen quickly left the white congregations and associations, setting up their own churches. In 1866, the Consolidated American Baptist Convention, formed from Black Baptists of the South and West, helped southern associations set up Black state conventions, which they did in Alabama, Arkansas, Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky. In 1880, Black state conventions united in the national Foreign Mission Convention to support Black Baptist missionary work. Two other national Black conventions were formed, and in 1895 they united as the National Baptist Convention. This organization later went through its own changes, spinning off other conventions. It is the largest Black religious organization and the second-largest Baptist organization in the world. Baptists are numerically most dominant in the Southeast. In 2007, the Pew Research Center's Religious Landscape Survey found that 45% of all African Americans identify with Baptist denominations, with the vast majority of those being within the historically Black tradition.\nIn the American South, the interpretation of the Civil War, abolition of slavery and postwar period has differed sharply by race since those years. Americans have often interpreted great events in religious terms. Historian Wilson Fallin contrasts the interpretation of Civil War and Reconstruction in White versus Black memory by analyzing Baptist sermons documented in Alabama. They quickly organized their own congregations and developed their own regional and state associations and, by the end of the 19th century, a national convention.\nWhite preachers in Alabama after Reconstruction expressed the view that:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />God had chastised them and given them a special mission \u2013 to maintain orthodoxy, strict biblicism, personal piety, and \"traditional\" race relations. Slavery, they insisted, had not been sinful. Rather, emancipation was a historical tragedy and the end of Reconstruction was a clear sign of God's favor.\nBlack preachers interpreted the Civil War, Emancipation and Reconstruction as \"God's gift of freedom.\" They had a gospel of liberation, having long identified with the Book of Exodus from slavery in the Old Testament. They took opportunities to exercise their independence, to worship in their own way, to affirm their worth and dignity, and to proclaim the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Most of all, they quickly formed their own churches, associations, and conventions to operate freely without white supervision. These institutions offered self-help and racial uplift, a place to develop and use leadership, and places for proclamation of the gospel of liberation. As a result, Black preachers said that God would protect and help him and God's people; God would be their rock in a stormy land.\nThe Southern Baptist Convention supported white supremacy and its results: disenfranchising most Blacks and many poor whites at the turn of the 20th century by raising barriers to voter registration, and passage of racial segregation laws that enforced the system of Jim Crow. Its members largely resisted the civil rights movement in the South, which sought to enforce their constitutional rights for public access and voting; and enforcement of midcentury federal civil rights laws.\nIn 1995, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution that recognized the failure of their ancestors to protect the civil rights of African Americans. More than 20,000 Southern Baptists registered for the meeting in Atlanta. The resolution declared that messengers, as SBC delegates are called, \"unwaveringly denounce racism, in all its forms, as deplorable sin\" and \"lament and repudiate historic acts of evil such as slavery from which we continue to reap a bitter harvest.\" It offered an apology to all African Americans for \"condoning and/or perpetuating individual and systemic racism in our lifetime\" and repentance for \"racism of which we have been guilty, whether consciously or unconsciously.\" Although Southern Baptists have condemned racism in the past, this was the first time the convention, predominantly White since the Reconstruction era, had specifically addressed the issue of slavery.\nThe statement sought forgiveness \"from our African-American brothers and sisters\" and pledged to \"eradicate racism in all its forms from Southern Baptist life and ministry.\" In 1995, about 500,000 members of the 15.6-million-member denomination were African Americans and another 300,000 were ethnic minorities. The resolution marked the denomination's first formal acknowledgment that racism played a role in its founding.\nCaribbean islands.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" /> A healthy Church kills error, and tears evil in pieces! Not so very long ago our nation tolerated slavery in our colonies. Philanthropists endeavored to destroy slavery, but when was it utterly abolished? It was when Wilberforce roused the Church of God, and when the Church of God addressed herself to the conflict\u2014then she tore the evil thing to pieces! \u2013 C.H. Spurgeon an outspoken British Baptist opponent of slavery in 'The Best War Cry' (1883)\nElsewhere in the Americas, in the Caribbean in particular, Baptist missionaries and members took an active role in the anti-slavery movement. In Jamaica, for example, William Knibb, a prominent British Baptist missionary, worked toward the emancipation of slaves in the British West Indies (which took place in full in 1838). Knibb supported the creation of \"Free Villages\" and sought funding from English Baptists to buy land for freedmen to cultivate; the Free Villages were envisioned as rural communities to be centered around a Baptist church where emancipated slaves could farm their own land. Thomas Burchell, missionary minister in Montego Bay, was active in this movement, gaining funds from Baptists in England to buy land for what became known as Burchell Free Village.\nPrior to emancipation, Baptist deacon Samuel Sharpe, who served with Burchell, organized a general strike of slaves seeking better conditions. It developed into a major rebellion of as many as 60,000 slaves, which became known as the Christmas Rebellion or the Baptist War. It was put down by government troops within two weeks. During and after the rebellion, an estimated 200 slaves were killed outright, with more than 300 judicially executed later by prosecution in the courts, sometimes for minor offenses.\nBaptists were active after emancipation in promoting the education of former slaves; for example, Jamaica's Calabar High School, named after the port of Calabar in Nigeria, was founded by Baptist missionaries. At the same time, during and after slavery, slaves and free Blacks formed their own Spiritual Baptist movements\u2014breakaway spiritual movements which theology often expressed resistance to oppression.\nLandmark crisis.\nSouthern Baptist Landmarkism sought to reset the ecclesiastical separation which had characterized the old Baptist churches, in an era when inter-denominational union meetings were the order of the day. James Robinson Graves was an influential Baptist of the 19th century and the primary leader of this movement. While some Landmarkers eventually separated from the Southern Baptist Convention, the movement continued to influence the Convention into the 20th and 21st centuries.\nModernist crisis.\nThe rise of theological modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries also greatly affected Baptists. The Landmark movement has been described as a reaction among Southern Baptists in the United States against incipient modernism. In England, Charles Spurgeon fought against modernistic views of the Scripture in the Downgrade Controversy and severed his church from the Baptist Union as a result.\nThe Northern Baptist Convention in the United States had internal conflict over modernism in the early 20th century, ultimately embracing it. Two new conservative associations of congregations that separated from the convention were founded as a result: the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches in 1933 and the Conservative Baptist Association of America in 1947.\nFollowing similar conflicts over modernism, the Southern Baptist Convention adhered to conservative theology as its official position. In the late 20th century, Southern Baptists who disagreed with this direction founded two new groups: the liberal Alliance of Baptists in 1987 and the more moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in 1991. Originally both schisms continued to identify as Southern Baptist, but over time they \"became permanent new families of Baptists.\"\nCriticism.\nIn his 1963 book, \"Strength to Love\", Baptist pastor Martin Luther King Jr. criticized some Baptist churches for their anti-intellectualism, especially because of the lack of theological training among pastors.\nIn 2018, Baptist theologian Russell D. Moore criticized some Baptists in the United States for their moralism emphasizing strongly the condemnation of certain personal sins, but silent on the social injustices that afflict entire populations, such as racism. In 2020, the North American Baptist Fellowship, a region of the Baptist World Alliance, officially made a commitment to social justice and spoke out against institutionalized discrimination in the American justice system. In 2022, the Baptist World Alliance adopted a resolution encouraging Baptist churches and associations that have historically contributed to the sin of slavery to engage in restorative justice.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["3979", "606848"], "permutation_1": ["606848", "3979"], "permutation_2": ["3979", "606848"], "permutation_3": ["3979", "606848"]}
{"id": "2hop__49676_55369", "docs_added": {"9597": "Enola Gay\nUS Army Air Forces Boeing B-29 airplane that dropped the first atomic bomb\nThe Enola Gay () is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets. On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb in warfare. The bomb, code-named \"Little Boy\", was targeted at the city of Hiroshima, Japan, and destroyed about three-quarters of the city. \"Enola Gay\" participated in the second nuclear attack as the weather reconnaissance aircraft for the primary target of Kokura. Clouds and drifting smoke resulted in Nagasaki, a secondary target, being bombed instead.\nAfter the war, the \"Enola Gay\" returned to the United States, where it was operated from Roswell Army Air Field, New Mexico. In May 1946, it was flown to Kwajalein for the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests in the Pacific, but was not chosen to make the test drop at Bikini Atoll. Later that year, it was transferred to the Smithsonian Institution and spent many years parked at air bases exposed to the weather and souvenir hunters, before its 1961 disassembly and storage at a Smithsonian facility in Suitland, Maryland.\nIn the 1980s, veterans groups engaged in a call for the Smithsonian to put the aircraft on display, leading to an acrimonious debate about exhibiting the aircraft without a proper historical context. The cockpit and nose section of the aircraft were exhibited at the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) on the National Mall, for the bombing's 50th anniversary in 1995, amid controversy. Since 2003, the entire restored B-29 has been on display at NASM's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. The last survivor of its crew, Theodore Van Kirk, died on 28 July 2014 at the age of 93.\nWorld War II.\nEarly history.\nThe \"Enola Gay\" (Model number B-29-45-MO, Serial number 44-86292, Victor number 82) was built by the Glenn L. Martin Company (later part of Lockheed Martin) at its bomber plant in Bellevue, Nebraska, located at Offutt Field, now Offutt Air Force Base. The bomber was one of the first fifteen B-29s built to the \"Silverplate\" specification\u2014 of 65 eventually completed during and after World War II\u2014giving them the primary ability to function as nuclear \"weapon delivery\" aircraft. These modifications included an extensively modified bomb bay with pneumatic doors and British bomb attachment and release systems, reversible pitch propellers that gave more braking power on landing, improved engines with fuel injection and better cooling, and the removal of protective armor and gun turrets.\n\"Enola Gay\" was personally selected by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets Jr., the commander of the 509th Composite Group, on 9 May 1945, while still on the assembly line. The aircraft was accepted by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) on 18 May 1945 and assigned to the 393d Bombardment Squadron, Heavy, 509th Composite Group. Crew B-9, commanded by Captain Robert A. Lewis, took delivery of the bomber and flew it from Omaha to the 509th base at Wendover Army Air Field, Utah, on 14 June 1945.\nThirteen days later, the aircraft left Wendover for Guam, where it received a bomb-bay modification, and flew to North Field, Tinian, on 6 July. It was initially given the Victor (squadron-assigned identification) number 12, but on 1 August, was given the circle R tail markings of the 6th Bombardment Group as a security measure and had its Victor number changed to 82 to avoid misidentification with actual 6th Bombardment Group aircraft. During July, the bomber made eight practice or training flights and flew two missions, on 24 and 26 July, to drop pumpkin bombs on industrial targets at Kobe and Nagoya. \"Enola Gay\" was used on 31 July on a rehearsal flight for the actual mission.\nThe partially assembled Little Boy gun-type fission weapon L-11, weighing , was contained inside a wooden crate that was secured to the deck of the . Unlike the six uranium-235 target discs, which were later flown to Tinian on three separate aircraft arriving 28 and 29 July, the assembled projectile with the nine uranium-235 rings installed was shipped in a single lead-lined steel container weighing that was locked to brackets welded to the deck of Captain Charles B. McVay III's quarters. Both the L-11 and projectile were dropped off at Tinian on 26 July 1945.\nHiroshima mission.\nOn 5 August 1945, during preparation for the first atomic mission, Tibbets assumed command of the aircraft and named it after his mother, Enola Gay Tibbets, who, in turn, had been named for the heroine of a novel. When it came to selecting a name for the plane, Tibbets later recalled that: <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />...\u00a0my thoughts turned at this point to my courageous red-haired mother, whose quiet confidence had been a source of strength to me since boyhood, and particularly during the soul-searching period when I decided to give up a medical career to become a military pilot. At a time when Dad had thought I had lost my marbles, she had taken my side and said, \"I know you will be all right, son.\"\nIn the early morning hours, just prior to the 6 August mission, Tibbets had a young Army Air Forces maintenance man, Private Nelson Miller, paint the name just under the pilot's window. Regularly assigned aircraft commander Robert A. Lewis was unhappy to be displaced by Tibbets for this important mission and became furious when he arrived at the aircraft on the morning of 6 August to see it painted with the now-famous nose art.\nHiroshima was the primary target of the first nuclear bombing mission on 6 August, with Kokura and Nagasaki as alternative targets. \"Enola Gay\", piloted by Tibbets, took off from North Field, in the Northern Mariana Islands, about six hours' flight time from Japan, accompanied by two other B-29s, \"The Great Artiste\", carrying instrumentation, and a then-nameless aircraft later called \"Necessary Evil\", commanded by Captain George Marquardt, to take photographs. The director of the Manhattan Project, Major General Leslie R. Groves Jr., wanted the event recorded for posterity, so the takeoff was illuminated by floodlights. When he wanted to taxi, Tibbets leaned out the window to direct the bystanders out of the way. On request, he gave a friendly wave for the cameras.\nAfter leaving Tinian, the three aircraft made their way separately to Iwo Jima, where they rendezvoused at and set course for Japan. The aircraft arrived over the target in clear visibility at . Navy Captain William S. \"Deak\" Parsons of Project Alberta, who was in command of the mission, armed the bomb during the flight to minimize the risks during takeoff. His assistant, Second Lieutenant Morris R. Jeppson, removed the safety devices 30 minutes before reaching the target area.\nThe release at 08:15 (Hiroshima time) went as planned, and the Little Boy took 53 seconds to fall from the aircraft flying at to the predetermined detonation height about above the city. \"Enola Gay\" traveled before it felt the shock waves from the blast. Although buffeted by the shock, neither \"Enola Gay\" nor \"The Great Artiste\" was damaged.\nThe detonation created a blast equivalent to . The U-235 weapon was considered very inefficient, with only 1.7% of its fissile material reacting. The radius of total destruction was about , with resulting fires across . Americans estimated that of the city were destroyed. Japanese officials determined that 69% of Hiroshima's buildings were destroyed and another 6\u20137% damaged. Some 70,000\u201380,000 people, 30% of the city's population, were killed by the blast and resultant firestorm, and another 70,000 injured. Out of those killed, 20,000 were soldiers and 20,000 were Korean slave laborers.\n\"Enola Gay\" returned safely to its base on Tinian to great fanfare, touching down at 2:58 pm, after 12 hours 13 minutes. \"The Great Artiste\" and \"Necessary Evil\" followed at short intervals. Several hundred people, including journalists and photographers, had gathered to watch the planes return. Tibbets was the first to disembark and was presented with the Distinguished Service Cross on the spot.\nNagasaki mission.\nThe Hiroshima mission was followed by another atomic strike. Originally scheduled for 11 August, it was brought forward by two days to 9 August owing to a forecast of bad weather. This time, a nuclear bomb code-named \"Fat Man\" was carried by B-29 \"Bockscar\", piloted by Major Charles W. Sweeney. \"Enola Gay\", flown by Captain George Marquardt's Crew B-10, was the weather reconnaissance aircraft for Kokura, the primary target. \"Enola Gay\" reported clear skies over Kokura, but by the time \"Bockscar\" arrived, the city was obscured by smoke from fires from the conventional bombing of Yahata by 224 B-29s the day before. After three unsuccessful passes, \"Bockscar\" diverted to its secondary target, Nagasaki, where it dropped its bomb. In contrast to the Hiroshima mission, the Nagasaki mission has been described as tactically botched, although the mission did meet its objectives. The crew encountered a number of problems in execution and had very little fuel by the time they landed at the emergency backup landing site Yontan Airfield on Okinawa.\nCrews.\nHiroshima mission.\n\"Enola Gay\"'s crew on 6 August 1945 consisted of 12 men. The crew was:\nAsterisks denote regular crewmen of the \"Enola Gay\".\nOf mission commander Parsons, it was said: \"There is no one more responsible for getting this bomb out of the laboratory and into some form useful for combat operations than Captain Parsons, by his plain genius in the ordnance business.\"\nNagasaki mission.\nFor the Nagasaki mission, \"Enola Gay\" was flown by Crew B-10, normally assigned to \"Up An' Atom\":\nSource: Campbell, 2005, pp.\u00a0134, 191\u2013192.\nSubsequent history.\nOn 6 November 1945, Lewis flew the \"Enola Gay\" back to the United States, arriving at the 509th's new base at Roswell Army Air Field, New Mexico, on 8 November. On 29 April 1946, \"Enola Gay\" left Roswell as part of the Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific. It flew to Kwajalein Atoll on 1 May. It was not chosen to make the test drop at Bikini Atoll and left Kwajalein on 1 July, the date of the test, reaching Fairfield-Suisun Army Air Field, California, the next day.\nThe decision was made to preserve the \"Enola Gay\", and on 24 July 1946, the aircraft was flown to Davis\u2013Monthan Air Force Base, Tucson, Arizona, in preparation for storage. On 30 August 1946, the title to the aircraft was transferred to the Smithsonian Institution and the \"Enola Gay\" was removed from the USAAF inventory. From 1946 to 1961, the \"Enola Gay\" was put into temporary storage at a number of locations. It was at Davis-Monthan from 1 September 1946 until 3 July 1949, when it was flown to Orchard Place Air Field, Park Ridge, Illinois, by Tibbets for acceptance by the Smithsonian. It was moved to Pyote Air Force Base, Texas, on 12 January 1952, and then to Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, on 2 December 1953, because the Smithsonian had no storage space for the aircraft.\nIt was hoped that the Air Force would guard the plane, but, lacking hangar space, it was left outdoors on a remote part of the air base, exposed to the elements. Souvenir hunters broke in and removed parts. Insects and birds then gained access to the aircraft. Paul E. Garber of the Smithsonian Institution became concerned about the \"Enola Gay\"'s condition, and on 10 August 1960, Smithsonian staff began dismantling the aircraft. The components were transported to the Smithsonian storage facility at Suitland, Maryland, on 21 July 1961.\nThe \"Enola Gay\" remained at Suitland for many years. By the early 1980s, two veterans of the 509th, Don Rehl and his former navigator in the 509th, Frank B. Stewart, began lobbying for the aircraft to be restored and put on display. They enlisted Tibbets and Senator Barry Goldwater in their campaign. In 1983, Walter J. Boyne, a former B-52 pilot with the Strategic Air Command, became director of the National Air and Space Museum, and he made the \"Enola Gay\"'s restoration a priority. Looking at the aircraft, Tibbets recalled, was a \"sad meeting. [My] fond memories, and I don't mean the dropping of the bomb, were the numerous occasions I flew the airplane\u00a0... I pushed it very, very hard and it never failed me\u00a0... It was probably the most beautiful piece of machinery that any pilot ever flew.\"\nRestoration.\nRestoration of the bomber began on 5 December 1984, at the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration, and Storage Facility in Suitland-Silver Hill, Maryland. The propellers that were used on the bombing mission were later shipped to Texas A&M University. One of these propellers was trimmed to for use in the university's Oran W. Nicks Low Speed Wind Tunnel. The lightweight aluminum variable-pitch propeller is powered by a 1,250 kVA electric motor, providing a wind speed up to . Two engines were rebuilt at Garber and two at San Diego Air & Space Museum. Some parts and instruments had been removed and could not be located. Replacements were found or fabricated, and marked so that future curators could distinguish them from the original components.\nExhibition controversy.\nThe \"Enola Gay\" became the center of a controversy at the Smithsonian Institution when the museum planned to put its fuselage on public display in 1995 as part of an exhibit commemorating the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The exhibit, \"The Crossroads: The End of World War II, the Atomic Bomb and the Cold War,\" was drafted by the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum staff, and arranged around the restored \"Enola Gay\".\nCritics of the planned exhibit, especially those of the American Legion and the Air Force Association, charged that the exhibit focused too much attention on the Japanese casualties inflicted by the nuclear bomb, rather than on the motives for the bombing or the discussion of the bomb's role in ending the conflict with Japan. The exhibit brought to national attention many long-standing academic and political issues related to retrospective views of the bombings. After attempts to revise the exhibit to meet the satisfaction of competing interest groups, the exhibit was canceled on 30 January 1995. Martin O. Harwit, Director of the National Air and Space Museum, was compelled to resign over the controversy. He later reflected that\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The dispute was not simply about the atomic bomb. Rather, the dispute was sometimes a symbolic issue in a \"culture war\" in which many Americans lumped together the seeming decline of American power, the difficulties of the domestic economy, the threats in world trade and especially Japan's successes, the loss of domestic jobs, and even changes in American gender roles and shifts in the American family. To a number of Americans, the very people responsible for the script were the people who were changing America. The bomb, representing the end of World War II and suggesting the height of American power was to be celebrated. It was, in this judgment, a crucial symbol of America's \"good war\", one fought justly for noble purposes at a time when America was united. Those who in any way questioned the bomb's use were, in this emotional framework, the enemies of America.\nThe forward fuselage went on display on 28 June 1995. On 2 July 1995, three people were arrested for throwing ash and human blood on the aircraft's fuselage, following an earlier incident in which a protester had thrown red paint over the gallery's carpeting. The exhibition closed on 18 May 1998 and the fuselage was returned to the Garber Facility for final restoration.\nComplete restoration and display.\nIts restoration work began in 1984, and eventually required 300,000 staff hours. While the fuselage was on display, from 1995 to 1998, work continued on the remaining unrestored components. The aircraft was shipped in pieces to the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia from March\u2013June 2003, with the fuselage and wings reunited for the first time since 1960 on 10 April 2003 and assembly completed on 8 August 2003. The aircraft has been on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center since the museum annex opened on 15 December 2003. As a result of the earlier controversy, the signage around the aircraft provided only the same succinct technical data as is provided for other aircraft in the museum, without discussion of the controversial issues. It read:<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nBoeing's B-29 Superfortress was the most sophisticated propeller-driven bomber of World War II, and the first bomber to house its crew in pressurized compartments. Although designed to fight in the European theater, the B-29 found its niche on the other side of the globe. In the Pacific, B-29s delivered a variety of aerial weapons: conventional bombs, incendiary bombs, mines, and two nuclear weapons.\nOn 6 August 1945, this Martin-built B-29-45-MO dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, Bockscar (on display at the U.S. Air Force Museum near Dayton, Ohio) dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. \"Enola Gay\" flew as the advance weather reconnaissance aircraft that day. A third B-29, \"The Great Artiste\", flew as an observation aircraft on both missions.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"Transferred from the U.S. Air Force\"\nWingspan: \nLength:\nHeight: \nWeight, empty: \nWeight, gross: \nTop speed: \nEngines: 4 Wright R-3350-57 Cyclone turbo-supercharged radials, 2,200 hp \nCrew: 12 (Hiroshima mission) \nArmament: two .50 caliber machine guns \nOrdnance: Little Boy atomic bomb \nManufacturer: Martin Co., Omaha, Nebraska, 1945 \nA19500100000\nThe display of the \"Enola Gay\" without reference to the historical context of World War II, the Cold War, or the development and deployment of nuclear weapons aroused controversy. A petition from a group calling themselves the Committee for a National Discussion of Nuclear History and Current Policy bemoaned the display of \"Enola Gay\" as a technological achievement, which it described as an \"extraordinary callousness toward the victims, indifference to the deep divisions among American citizens about the propriety of these actions, and disregard for the feelings of most of the world's peoples\". It attracted signatures from notable figures including historian Gar Alperovitz, social critic Noam Chomsky, whistle blower Daniel Ellsberg, physicist Joseph Rotblat, writer Kurt Vonnegut, producer Norman Lear, actor Martin Sheen and filmmaker Oliver Stone.\nReferences.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "18597": "Little Boy\nAtomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima\nLittle Boy was a type of atomic bomb created by the United States as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II. The name is also often used to describe the specific bomb (L-11) used in the bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress \"Enola Gay\" on 6 August 1945, making it the first nuclear weapon used in warfare, and the second nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity nuclear test. It exploded with an energy of approximately and had an explosion radius of approximately which caused widespread death across the city. It was a gun-type fission weapon which used uranium that had been enriched in the isotope uranium-235 to power its explosive reaction. \nLittle Boy was developed by Lieutenant Commander Francis Birch's group at the Los Alamos Laboratory. It was the successor to a plutonium-fueled gun-type fission design, Thin Man, which was abandoned in 1944 after technical difficulties were discovered. Little Boy used a charge of nitrocellulose to fire a hollow cylinder (the \"bullet\") of highly enriched uranium through an artillery gun barrel into a solid cylinder (the \"target\") of the same material. The design was highly inefficient: the weapon used on Hiroshima contained of uranium, but less than a kilogram underwent nuclear fission. Unlike the implosion design developed for the Trinity test and the Fat Man bomb design that was used against Nagasaki, which required sophisticated coordination of shaped explosive charges, the simpler but inefficient gun-type design was considered almost certain to work, and was never tested prior to its use at Hiroshima.\nAfter the war, numerous components for additional Little Boy bombs were built. By 1950, at least five weapons were completed; all were retired by November 1950.\nNaming the bomb.\nThere are two primary accounts of how the first atomic bombs got their names. Los Alamos Laboratory and Project Alberta physicist Robert Serber stated, many decades after the fact, that he had named the first two atomic bomb designs during World War II based on their shapes: Thin Man and Fat Man. The \"Thin Man\" was a long, thin device, and its name came from the Dashiell Hammett detective novel and series of movies about \"The Thin Man\". The \"Fat Man\" was round and fat so it was named after Kasper Gutman, a rotund character in Hammett's 1930 novel \"The Maltese Falcon\", played by Sydney Greenstreet in the 1941 film version. Little Boy was named by others as an allusion to Thin Man since it was based on its design. It was also sometimes referred to as the \"Mark I\" nuclear bomb design, with \"Mark II\" referring to the abandoned Thin Man, and \"Mark III\" to the \"Fat Man.\"\nIn September 1945, another Project Alberta physicist, Norman F. Ramsey, stated in his brief \"History of Project A,\" that the early bomb ballistic test shapes designs were referred to as \"Thin Man\" and \"Fat Man\" by (unspecified) \"Air Force representatives\" for \"security reasons,\" so that their communications over telephones sounded \"as if they were modifying a plane to carry Roosevelt (the Thin Man) and Churchill (the Fat Man),\" as opposed to modifying the B-29s to carry the two atomic bomb shapes as part of Project Silverplate in late 1943.\nAnother explanation of the names, from a classified United States Air Force history of Project Silverplate from the 1950s, implies a possible reconciliation of the two versions: that the terms \"Thin Man\" and \"Fat Man\" were first developed by someone at or from Los Alamos (i.e., Serber), but were consciously adopted by the officers in Silverplate when they were adopting their own codenames for their own project (including \"Silverplate\"). As Silverplate involved modifying B-29s for a secret purpose, deliberately using codenames that would align with modifying vehicles for Roosevelt and Churchill would serve their needs well.\nDevelopment.\nEarly gun-type design work.\nBecause of its perceived simplicity, the gun-type nuclear weapon design was the first approach pursued by the scientists working on bomb design during the Manhattan Project. In 1942, it was not yet known which of the two fissile materials pathways being simultaneously pursued\u2014uranium-235 or plutonium-239\u2014would be successful, or if there were significant differences between the two fuels that would impact the design work. Coordination with British scientists in May 1942 convinced the American scientists, led by J. Robert Oppenheimer, that the atomic bomb would not be difficult to design and that the difficulty would lie only in the production of fuel. Calculations in mid-1942 by theoretical physicists working on the project reinforced the idea that an ordinary artillery gun barrel would be able to impart sufficient velocity to the fissile material projectile.\nSeveral different weapon designs, including autocatalytic assembly, a nascent version of implosion, and alternative gun designs (e.g., using high explosives as a propellent, or creating a \"double gun\" with two projectiles) were pursued in the early years of the project, while the facilities to manufacture fissile material were being constructed. The belief that the gun design would be an easy engineering task once fuel was available led to a sense of optimism at Los Alamos, although Oppenheimer established a small research group to study implosion as a fallback in early 1943. A full ordnance program for gun-design development was established by March 1943, with expertise provided by E.L. Rose, an experienced gun designer and engineer. Work was begun to study the properties of barrels, internal and external ballistics, and tampers of gun weapons. Oppenheimer led aspects of the effort, telling Rose that \"at the present time [May 1945] our estimates are so ill founded that I think it better for me to take responsibility for putting them forward.\" He soon delegated the work to Naval Captain William Sterling Parsons, who, along with Ed McMillan, Charles Critchfield, and Joseph Hirschfelder would be responsible for rendering the theory into practice.\nConcern that impurities in reactor-bred plutonium would make predetonation more likely meant that much of the gun-design work was focused on the plutonium gun. To achieve high projectile velocities, the plutonium gun was long with a narrow diameter (suggesting its codename as the Thin Man) which created considerable difficulty in its ballistics dropping from aircraft and fitting it into the bomb bay of a B-29.\nIn early 1944, Emilio G. Segr\u00e8 and his P-5 Group at Los Alamos received the first samples of plutonium produced from a nuclear reactor, the X-10 Graphite Reactor at Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Analyzing it, they discovered that the presence of the isotope plutonium-240 (Pu-240) raised the rate of spontaneous fission of the plutonium to an unacceptable amount. Previous analyses of plutonium had been made from samples created by cyclotrons and did not have as much of the contaminating isotope. If reactor-bred plutonium was used in a gun-type design, they concluded, it would predetonate, causing the weapon to destroy itself before achieving the conditions for a large-scale explosion.\nFrom Thin Man to Little Boy.\nAs a consequence of the discovery of the Pu-240 contamination problem, in July 1944 almost all research at Los Alamos was redirected to the implosion-type plutonium weapon, and the laboratory was entirely reorganized around the implosion problem. Work on the gun-type weapon continued under Person's Ordnance (O) Division, for use exclusively with highly enriched uranium as a fuel. All the design, development, and technical work at Los Alamos was consolidated under Lieutenant Commander Francis Birch's group.\nIn contrast to the plutonium implosion-type nuclear weapon and the plutonium gun-type fission weapon, the uranium gun-type weapon was much simpler to design. As a high-velocity gun was no longer required, the overall length of the gun barrel could be dramatically decreased, and this allowed the weapon to fit into a B-29 bomb bay without difficulty. Though not an optimal use of fissile material compared to the implosion design, it was seen as a nearly guaranteed weapon.\nThe design specifications were completed in February 1945, and contracts were let to build the components. Three different plants were used so that no one would have a copy of the complete design. The gun and breech were made by the Naval Gun Factory in Washington, D.C.; the target case and some other components by the Naval Ordnance Plant in Center Line, Michigan; and the tail fairing and mounting brackets by the Expert Tool and Die Company in Detroit, Michigan. The bomb, except for the uranium payload, was ready at the beginning of May 1945. Manhattan District Engineer Kenneth Nichols expected on 1 May 1945 to have enriched uranium \"for one weapon before August 1 and a second one sometime in December\", assuming the second weapon would be a gun type; designing an implosion bomb for enriched uranium was considered, and this would increase the production rate. The enriched uranium projectile was completed on 15 June, and the target was completed on 24 July. The target and bomb pre-assemblies (partly assembled bombs without the fissile components) left Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, California, on 16 July aboard the heavy cruiser , arriving on 26 July. The target inserts followed by air on 30 July.\nAlthough all of its components had been individually tested, no full test of a gun-type nuclear weapon occurred before the Little Boy was dropped over Hiroshima. The only test explosion of a nuclear weapon concept had been of an implosion-type device employing plutonium as its fissile material, which took place on 16 July 1945 at the Trinity nuclear test. There were several reasons for not testing a Little Boy type of device. Primarily, there was the issue of fissile material availability. K-25 at Clinton Engineer Works was designed to produce around 30 kilograms of enriched uranium per month, and the Little Boy design used over 60 kilograms per bomb. So testing the weapon would incur a considerable delay in use of the weapon. (By comparison, B Reactor at the Hanford Site was designed to produce around 20 kilograms of plutonium per month, and each Fat Man bomb used around 6 kilograms of material.) Because of the simplicity of the gun-type design, laboratory testing could establish that its parts worked correctly on their own: for example, dummy projectiles could be shot down the gun barrel to make sure they were \"seated\" correctly onto a dummy target. Absence of a full-scale test in the implosion-type design made it much more difficult to establish whether the necessary simultaneity of compression had been achieved. While there was at least one prominent scientist (Ernest O. Lawrence) who advocated for a full-scale test, by early 1945 Little Boy was regarded as nearly a sure thing and was expected to have a higher yield than the first-generation implosion bombs.\nThough Little Boy incorporated various safety mechanisms, an accidental detonation of a fully-assembled weapon was very possible. Should the bomber carrying the device crash, the hollow \"bullet\" could be driven into the \"target\" cylinder, possibly detonating the bomb from gravity alone (though tests suggested this was unlikely), but easily creating a critical mass that would release dangerous amounts of radiation. A crash of the B-29 and subsequent fire could trigger the explosives, causing the weapon to detonate. If immersed in water, the uranium components were subject to a neutron moderator effect, which would not cause an explosion but would release radioactive contamination. For this reason, pilots were advised to crash on land rather than at sea. Ultimately, Parsons opted to keep the explosives out of the Little Boy bomb until after the B-29 had taken off, to avoid the risk of a crash that could destroy or damage the military base from which the weapon was launched.\nDesign.\nThe Little Boy was in length, in diameter and weighed approximately . The design used the gun method to explosively force a hollow sub-critical mass of enriched uranium and a solid target cylinder together into a super-critical mass, initiating a nuclear chain reaction. This was accomplished by shooting one piece of the uranium onto the other by means of four cylindrical silk bags of cordite powder. This was a widely used smokeless propellant consisting of a mixture of 65 percent nitrocellulose, 30 percent nitroglycerine, 3 percent petroleum jelly, and 2 percent carbamite that was extruded into tubular granules. This gave it a high surface area and a rapid burning area, and could attain pressures of up to . Cordite for the wartime Little Boy was sourced from Canada; propellant for post-war Little Boys was obtained from the Picatinny Arsenal. The bomb contained of enriched uranium. Most was enriched to 89% but some was only 50% uranium-235, for an average enrichment of 80%. Less than a kilogram of uranium underwent nuclear fission, and of this mass only was transformed into several forms of energy, mostly kinetic energy, but also heat and radiation.\nAssembly details.\nInside the weapon, the uranium-235 material was divided into two parts, following the gun principle: the \"projectile\" and the \"target\". The projectile was a hollow cylinder with 60% of the total mass (). It consisted of a stack of nine uranium rings, each in diameter with a bore in the center, and a total length of , pressed together into the front end of a thin-walled projectile long. Filling in the remainder of the space behind these rings in the projectile was a tungsten carbide disc with a steel back. At ignition, the projectile slug was pushed along the , smooth-bore gun barrel. The slug \"insert\" was a 4-inch cylinder, 7 inches in length with a axial hole. The slug comprised 40% of the total fissile mass (). The insert was a stack of six washer-like uranium discs somewhat thicker than the projectile rings that were slid over a 1-inch rod. This rod then extended forward through the tungsten carbide plug, impact-absorbing anvil, and nose plug backstop, eventually protruding out of the front of the bomb casing. This entire target assembly was secured at both ends with locknuts.\nWhen the hollow-front projectile reached the target and slid over the target insert, the assembled super-critical mass of uranium would be completely surrounded by a tamper and neutron reflector of tungsten carbide and steel, both materials having a combined mass of . Neutron initiators inside the assembly were activated by the impact of the projectile into the target.\nCounter-intuitive design.\nThe material was split almost in half, with at one end a group of rings of highly enriched uranium with 40% of the supercritical mass, and at the other end another group of slightly larger rings with 60% of the supercritical mass, which was fired onto the smaller group, with four polonium-beryllium neutron initiators to make the supercritical mass explode.\nA hole in the center of the larger piece dispersed the mass and increased the surface area, allowing more fission neutrons to escape, thus preventing a premature chain reaction. But, for this larger, hollow piece to have minimal contact with the tungsten carbide tamper, it must be the projectile, since only the projectile's back end was in contact with the tamper prior to detonation. The rest of the tungsten carbide tamper surrounded the sub-critical mass target cylinder (called the \"insert\" by the designers) with air space between it and the insert. This arrangement packs the maximum amount of fissile material into a gun-assembly design.\nFor the first fifty years after 1945, every published description and drawing of the Little Boy mechanism assumed that a small, solid projectile was fired into the center of a larger, stationary target. However, critical mass considerations dictated that in Little Boy the more extensive, hollow piece would be the projectile. Hollow cylinders have higher critical masses than solid pieces of fissile material, because any neutrons encountered by or generated by the material are more likely to get scattered in the air than to continue a chain reaction. The larger piece would also avoid the effects of neutron reflection from the tungsten carbide tamper until it was fully joined with the rest of the fuel. Once joined and with its neutrons reflected, the assembled fissile core would comprise more than two critical masses of uranium-235. In 2004, John Coster-Mullen, a truck driver and model maker from Illinois who had studied every photograph and document on the Hiroshima bomb to make an accurate model, corrected earlier published accounts.\nFuze system.\nThe fuzing system was designed to trigger at the most destructive altitude, which calculations suggested was . It employed a three-stage interlock system:\nRehearsals.\nThe Little Boy pre-assemblies were designated L-1, L-2, L-3, L-4, L-5, L-6, L-7, and L-11. Of these, L-1, L-2, L-5, and L-6 were expended in test drops. The first drop test was conducted with L-1 on 23 July 1945. It was dropped over the sea near Tinian in order to test the radar altimeter by the B-29 later known as \"Big Stink\", piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, the commander of the 509th Composite Group. Two more drop tests over the sea were made on 24 and 25 July, using the L-2 and L-5 units in order to test all components. Tibbets was the pilot for both missions, but this time the bomber used was the one subsequently known as \"Jabit\". L-6 was used as a dress rehearsal on 29 July. The B-29 \"Next Objective\", piloted by Major Charles W. Sweeney, flew to Iwo Jima, where emergency procedures for loading the bomb onto a standby aircraft were practiced. This rehearsal was repeated on 31 July, but this time L-6 was reloaded onto a different B-29, \"Enola Gay\", piloted by Tibbets, and the bomb was test dropped near Tinian. L-11 was the assembly used for the Hiroshima bomb, and was fully assembled with its nuclear fuel by 31 July.\nBombing of Hiroshima.\nParsons, the \"Enola Gay\"'s weaponeer, was concerned about the possibility of an accidental detonation if the plane crashed on takeoff, so he decided not to load the four cordite powder bags into the gun breech until the aircraft was in flight. After takeoff, Parsons and his assistant, Second Lieutenant Morris R. Jeppson, made their way into the bomb bay along the narrow catwalk on the port side. Jeppson held a flashlight while Parsons disconnected the primer wires, removed the breech plug, inserted the powder bags, replaced the breech plug, and reconnected the wires. Before climbing to altitude on approach to the target, Jeppson switched the three safety plugs between the electrical connectors of the internal battery and the firing mechanism from green to red. The bomb was then fully armed. Jeppson monitored the bomb's circuits.\nThe bomb was dropped at approximately 08:15 (JST) on 6 August 1945. After falling for 44.4 seconds, the time and barometric triggers started the firing mechanism. The detonation happened at an altitude of . It was less powerful than the Fat Man, which was dropped on Nagasaki, but the damage and the number of victims at Hiroshima were much higher, as Hiroshima was on flat terrain, while the hypocenter of Nagasaki lay in a small valley. According to figures published in 1945, 66,000 people were killed as a direct result of the Hiroshima blast, and 69,000 were injured to varying degrees. Later estimates put the deaths as high as 140,000 people. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey estimated that out of 24,158 Imperial Japanese Army soldiers in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing, 6,789 were killed or missing as a result of the bombing.\nThe exact measurement of the explosive yield of the bomb was problematic since the weapon had never been tested. President Harry S. Truman officially announced that the yield was . This was based on Parsons's visual assessment that the blast was greater than what he had seen at the Trinity nuclear test. Since that had been estimated at , speech writers rounded up to 20 kilotons. Further discussion was then suppressed, for fear of lessening the impact of the bomb on the Japanese. Data had been collected by Luis Alvarez, Harold Agnew, and Lawrence H. Johnston on the instrument plane, \"The Great Artiste\", but this was not used to calculate the yield at the time. More rigorous estimates of the bomb yield and conventional bomb equivalent were made when more data was acquired following the end of the war. A 1985 study estimated the bomb's yield was around . \nPhysical effects.\nAfter being selected in April 1945, Hiroshima was spared conventional bombing to serve as a pristine target, where the effects of a nuclear bomb on an undamaged city could be observed. While damage could be studied later, the energy yield of the untested Little Boy design could be determined only at the moment of detonation, using instruments dropped by parachute from a plane flying in formation with the one that dropped the bomb. Radio-transmitted data from these instruments indicated a yield of about 15 kilotons.\nComparing this yield to the observed damage produced a rule of thumb called the lethal area rule. Approximately all the people inside the area where the shock wave carried such an overpressure or greater would be killed. At Hiroshima, that area was in diameter.\nThe damage came from three main effects: blast, fire, and radiation.\nBlast.\nThe blast from a nuclear bomb is the result of X-ray-heated air (the fireball) sending a shock wave or pressure wave in all directions, initially at a velocity greater than the speed of sound, analogous to thunder generated by lightning. Knowledge about urban blast destruction is based largely on studies of Little Boy at Hiroshima. Nagasaki buildings suffered similar damage at similar distances, but the Nagasaki bomb detonated from the city center over hilly terrain that was partially bare of buildings.\nIn Hiroshima, almost everything within of the point directly under the explosion was completely destroyed, except for about 50 heavily reinforced, earthquake-resistant concrete buildings, only the shells of which remained standing. Most were completely gutted, with their windows, doors, sashes, and frames ripped out. The perimeter of severe blast damage approximately followed the contour at .\nLater test explosions of nuclear weapons with houses and other test structures nearby confirmed the 5\u00a0psi overpressure threshold. Ordinary urban buildings experiencing it were crushed, toppled, or gutted by the force of air pressure. The picture at right shows the effects of a nuclear bomb-generated 5\u00a0psi pressure wave on a test structure in Nevada in 1953.\nA major effect of this kind of structural damage was that it created fuel for fires that were started simultaneously throughout the severe destruction region.\nFire.\nThe first effect of the explosion was blinding light, accompanied by radiant heat from the fireball. The Hiroshima fireball was in diameter, with a surface temperature of , about the same temperature as at the surface of the sun. Near ground zero, everything flammable burst into flame. One famous, anonymous Hiroshima victim, sitting on stone steps from the hypocenter, left a permanent shadow, having absorbed the fireball heat that permanently bleached the surrounding stone. Simultaneous fires were started throughout the blast-damaged area by fireball heat and by overturned stoves and furnaces, electrical shorts, etc. Twenty minutes after the detonation, these fires had merged into a firestorm, pulling in surface air from all directions to feed an inferno which consumed everything flammable.\nThe Hiroshima firestorm was roughly in diameter, corresponding closely to the severe blast-damage zone. (See the USSBS map, right.) Blast-damaged buildings provided fuel for the fire. Structural lumber and furniture were splintered and scattered about. Debris-choked roads obstructed firefighters. Broken gas pipes fueled the fire, and broken water pipes rendered hydrants useless. At Nagasaki, the fires failed to merge into a single firestorm, and the fire-damaged area was only one-quarter as great as at Hiroshima, due in part to a southwest wind that pushed the fires away from the city.\nAs the map shows, the Hiroshima firestorm jumped natural firebreaks (river channels), as well as prepared firebreaks. The spread of fire stopped only when it reached the edge of the blast-damaged area, encountering less available fuel. The Manhattan Project report on Hiroshima estimated that 60% of immediate deaths were caused by fire, but with the caveat that \"many persons near the center of explosion suffered fatal injuries from more than one of the bomb effects.\"\nRadiation.\nLocal fallout is dust and ash from a bomb crater, contaminated with radioactive fission products. It falls to earth downwind of the crater and can produce, with radiation alone, a lethal area much larger than that from blast and fire. With an air burst, the fission products rise into the stratosphere, where they dissipate and become part of the global environment. Because Little Boy was an air burst above the ground, there was no bomb crater and no local radioactive fallout.\nHowever, a burst of intense neutron and gamma radiation came directly from the fission of the uranium. Its lethal radius was approximately , covering about half of the firestorm area. An estimated 30% of immediate fatalities were people who received lethal doses of this direct radiation, but died in the firestorm before their radiation injuries would have become apparent. Over 6,000 people survived the blast and fire, but died of radiation injuries. Among injured survivors, 30% had radiation injuries from which they recovered, but with a lifelong increase in cancer risk. To date, no radiation-related evidence of heritable diseases has been observed among the survivors' children.\nAfter the surrender of Japan was finalized, Manhattan Project scientists began to immediately survey the city of Hiroshima to better understand the damage, and to communicate with Japanese physicians about radiation effects in particular. The collaboration became the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in 1946, a joint U.S.\u2013Japanese project to track radiation injuries among survivors. In 1975 its work was superseded by the Radiation Effects Research Foundation.\nIn 1962, scientists at Los Alamos created a mockup of Little Boy known as \"Project Ichiban\" in order to answer some of the unanswered questions about the exact radiation output of the bomb, which would be useful for setting benchmarks for interpreting the relationship between radiation exposure and later health outcomes. But it failed to clear up all the issues. In 1982, Los Alamos created a replica Little Boy from the original drawings and specifications. This was then tested with enriched uranium but in a safe configuration that would not cause a nuclear explosion. A hydraulic lift was used to move the projectile, and experiments were run to assess neutron emission.\nConventional weapon equivalent.\nAfter hostilities ended, a survey team from the Manhattan Project that included William Penney, Robert Serber, and George T. Reynolds was sent to Hiroshima to evaluate the effects of the blast. From evaluating the effects on objects and structures, Penney concluded that the yield was 12 \u00b1 1 kilotons. Later calculations based on charring pointed to a yield of 13 to 14 kilotons. In 1953, Frederick Reines calculated the yield as . Based on the Project Ichiban data, and the pressure-wave data from \"The Great Artiste\", the yield was estimated in the 1960s at 16.6 \u00b1 0.3 kilotons. A review conducted by a scientist at Los Alamos in 1985 concluded, on the basis of existing blast, thermal, and radiological data, and then-current models of weapons effects, that the best estimate of the yield was with an uncertainty of 20% (\u00b13 kt). By comparison, the best value for the Nagasaki bomb was evaluated as with an uncertainty of 10% (\u00b12 kt), the difference in uncertainty owing to having better data on the latter.\nTo put these numerical differences into context, it is necessary to know that the acute effects of nuclear detonations, especially the blast and thermal effects, do not scale linearly, but generally as a cubic root. Specifically, the distance of these effects scale as a function of the yield raised to an exponential power of <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1\u20443. So the range of the overpressure damage expected from a detonated 12 kiloton weapon with a height of burst at would be expected to be , whereas a 20 kiloton weapon would have the same range extend to , a difference of only . The areas affected for each would be and , respectively. As such, the practical differences in effects at these yield ranges are smaller than may at first appear, if one assumes that there is a linear relationship between yield and damage.\nAlthough Little Boy exploded with the energy equivalent of around 15 kilotons of TNT, in 1946 the Strategic Bombing Survey estimated that the same blast and fire effect could have been caused by 2.1 kilotons of conventional bombs distributed evenly over the same target area: \"220 B-29s carrying 1.2 kilotons of incendiary bombs, 400 tons of high-explosive bombs, and 500 tons of anti-personnel fragmentation bombs.\" Since the target was spread across a two-dimensional plane, the vertical component of a single spherical nuclear explosion was largely wasted. A cluster bomb pattern of smaller explosions would have been a more energy-efficient match to the target.\nPost-WWII.\nWhen the war ended, it was not expected that the inefficient Little Boy design would ever again be required, and many plans and diagrams were destroyed. However, by mid-1946 the Hanford Site reactors were suffering badly from the Wigner effect. Faced with the prospect of no more plutonium for new cores and no more polonium for the initiators for the cores that had already been produced, the Director of the Manhattan Project, Major General Leslie R. Groves, ordered that some Little Boys be prepared as an interim measure until a solution could be found. No Little Boy assemblies were available, and no comprehensive set of diagrams of the Little Boy could be found, although there were drawings of the various components, and stocks of spare parts.\nAt Sandia Base, three Army officers, Captains Albert Bethel, Richard Meyer, and Bobbie Griffin attempted to re-create the Little Boy. They were supervised by Harlow W. Russ, an expert on Little Boy who served with Project Alberta on Tinian, and was now leader of the Z-11 Group of the Los Alamos Laboratory's Z Division at Sandia. Gradually, they managed to locate the correct drawings and parts, and figured out how they went together. Eventually, they built six Little Boy assemblies. Although the casings, barrels, and components were tested, no enriched uranium was supplied for the bombs. By early 1947, the problem caused by the Wigner effect was on its way to solution, and the three officers were reassigned.\nThe Navy Bureau of Ordnance began in 1947 to produce 25 \"revised\" Little Boy mechanical assemblies for use by the nuclear-capable Lockheed P2V Neptune aircraft carrier aircraft (which could be launched from, but not land on, the \"Midway\"-class aircraft carriers). Components were produced by the Naval Ordnance Plants in Pocatello, Idaho, and Louisville, Kentucky. Enough fissionable material was available by 1948 to build ten projectiles and targets, although there were only enough initiators for six. However, no actual fissionable components were produced by the end of 1948, and only two outer casings were available. By the end of 1950, only five complete Little Boy assemblies had been built. All were retired by November 1950.\nThe Smithsonian Institution displayed a Little Boy (complete, except for enriched uranium), until 1986. The Department of Energy took the weapon from the museum to remove its inner components, so the bomb could not be stolen and detonated with fissile material. The government returned the emptied casing to the Smithsonian in 1993. Three other disarmed bombs are on display in the United States; another is at the Imperial War Museum in London.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["18597", "9597"], "permutation_1": ["18597", "9597"], "permutation_2": ["18597", "9597"], "permutation_3": ["9597", "18597"]}
{"id": "2hop__308998_159045", "docs_added": {"30556420": "Prophet Jonah (Michelangelo)\nFresco on the Sistine Chapel ceiling\nThe Prophet Jonah is one of the seven Old Testament prophets painted by the Italian High Renaissance master Michelangelo on the Sistine Chapel ceiling in the Vatican Palace of Vatican City.\nBetween 1508 and 1512, under the patronage of Pope Julius II, the artist Michelangelo painted the chapel's ceiling, a project that changed the course of Western art and is regarded as one of the major artistic accomplishments of human civilization. These frescoes portray various scenes from the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, including \"The Creation of Adam\", the life of Noah, and seven major and minor prophets, of whom one is Jonah.\nThis particular fresco is painted above the High Altar. Art historians generally interpret this prime position as being because the story of Jonah (who was swallowed for three days by a large fish before being miraculously restored) was seen as prefiguring that of Christ's death and resurrection.\n\"The Prophet Jonah\" is opposite the fresco of the prophet Zachariah.\nBehind the figure of Jonah, Michelangelo has painted a large fish (a tarpon), a reference to the fact that in the Book of Jonah, Jonah is swallowed by one.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21019": "Michelangelo\nItalian artist and architect (1475\u20131564)\nMichelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6March 1475\u00a0\u2013 18February 1564), known mononymously as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspired by models from classical antiquity and had a lasting influence on Western art. Michelangelo's creative abilities and mastery in a range of artistic arenas define him as an archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci. Given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences, Michelangelo is one of the best-documented artists of the 16th century. He was lauded by contemporary biographers as the most accomplished artist of his era.\nMichelangelo achieved fame early. Two of his best-known works, the \"Piet\u00e0\" and \"David\", were sculpted before the age of 30. Although he did not consider himself a painter, Michelangelo created two of the most influential frescoes in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and \"The Last Judgment\" on its altar wall. His design of the Laurentian Library pioneered Mannerist architecture. At the age of 71, he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peter's Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan so that the Western end was finished to his design, as was the dome, with some modification, after his death.\nMichelangelo was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive. Three biographies were published during his lifetime. One of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that Michelangelo's work transcended that of any artist living or dead, and was \"supreme in not one art alone but in all three\".\nIn his lifetime, Michelangelo was often called (\"the divine one\"). His contemporaries admired his \"terribilit\u00e0\"\u2014his ability to instill a sense of awe in viewers of his art. Attempts by subsequent artists to imitate the expressive physicality of Michelangelo's style contributed to the rise of Mannerism, a short-lived movement in Western art between the High Renaissance and the Baroque.\nLife.\nEarly life, 1475\u20131488.\nMichelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was born on 6 March 1475 in Caprese, known today as Caprese Michelangelo, a small town situated in Valtiberina, near Arezzo, Tuscany. For several generations, his family had been small-scale bankers in Florence; but the bank failed, and his father Ludovico briefly took a government post in Caprese. At the time of Michelangelo's birth, his father was the town's judicial administrator and \"podest\u00e0\" (local administrator) of Chiusi della Verna. Michelangelo's mother was Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena. The Buonarrotis claimed to descend from the Countess Matilde di Canossa\u2014a claim that remains unproven, but which Michelangelo believed.\nSeveral months after Michelangelo's birth, the family returned to Florence, where he was raised. During his mother's later prolonged illness, and after her death in 1481 (when he was six years old), Michelangelo lived with a nanny and her husband, a stonecutter, in the town of Settignano, where his father owned a marble quarry and a small farm. There the young boy gained his love for marble. As his biographer Giorgio Vasari quotes him:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nApprenticeships, 1488\u20131492.\nAs a young boy, Michelangelo was sent to the city of Florence to study grammar under the Humanist Francesco da Urbino. Michelangelo showed no interest in his schooling, preferring to copy paintings from churches and seek the company of other painters. Florence was at that time Italy's greatest centre of the arts and learning. Art was sponsored by the (the town council), the merchant guilds, and wealthy patrons such as the Medici and their banking associates. The Renaissance, a renewal of Classical scholarship and the arts, had its first flowering in Florence. In the early 15th century, the architect Filippo Brunelleschi, having studied the remains of Classical buildings in Rome, had created two churches, San Lorenzo's and Santo Spirito, which embodied the Classical precepts. The sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti had laboured for 50 years to create the north and east bronze doors of the Baptistry, which Michelangelo was to describe as \"The Gates of Paradise\". The exterior niches of the Church of Orsanmichele contained a gallery of works by the most acclaimed sculptors of Florence: Donatello, Ghiberti, Andrea del Verrocchio, and Nanni di Banco. The interiors of the older churches were covered with frescos (mostly in Late Medieval, but also in the Early Renaissance style), begun by Giotto and continued by Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel, both of whose works Michelangelo studied and copied in drawings.\nDuring Michelangelo's childhood, a team of painters had been called from Florence to the Vatican to decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel. Among them was Domenico Ghirlandaio, a master in fresco painting, perspective, figure drawing and portraiture who had the largest workshop in Florence. In 1488, at the age of 13, Michelangelo was apprenticed to Ghirlandaio. The next year, his father persuaded Ghirlandaio to pay Michelangelo as an artist, which was rare for someone that young. When in 1489, Lorenzo de' Medici, \"de facto\" ruler of Florence, asked Ghirlandaio for his two best pupils, Ghirlandaio sent Michelangelo and Francesco Granacci.\nFrom 1490 to 1492, Michelangelo attended the Platonic Academy, a Humanist academy founded by the Medicis. There, his work and outlook were influenced by many of the most prominent philosophers and writers of the day, including Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Poliziano. At this time, Michelangelo sculpted the reliefs \"Madonna of the Stairs\" and \"Battle of the Centaurs\", the latter based on a theme suggested by Poliziano and commissioned by Lorenzo de' Medici. Michelangelo worked for a time with the sculptor Bertoldo di Giovanni. When he was 17, another pupil, Pietro Torrigiano, struck him on the nose, causing the disfigurement that is conspicuous in the portraits of Michelangelo.\nBologna, Florence, and Rome, 1492\u20131499.\nLorenzo de' Medici's death on 8 April 1492 changed Michelangelo's circumstances. He left the security of the Medici court and returned to his father's house. In the following months he carved a polychrome wooden \"Crucifix\" (1493), as a gift to the prior of the Florentine church of Santo Spirito, which had allowed him to do some anatomical studies of the corpses from the church's hospital. This was the first of several instances during his career that Michelangelo studied anatomy by dissecting cadavers.\nBetween 1493 and 1494, Michelangelo bought a block of marble, and carved a larger-than-life statue of Hercules. On 20 January 1494, after heavy snowfalls, Lorenzo's heir, Piero de Medici, commissioned a statue made of snow, and Michelangelo again entered the court of the Medici. In the same year, the Medici were expelled from Florence as the result of the rise of Savonarola. Michelangelo left the city before the end of the political upheaval, moving to Venice and then to Bologna. In Bologna, he was commissioned to carve several of the last small figures for the completion of the Shrine of St. Dominic, in the church dedicated to that saint. At this time Michelangelo studied the robust reliefs carved by Jacopo della Quercia around the main portal of the Basilica of St Petronius, including the panel of \"The Creation of Eve\", the composition of which was to reappear on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Towards the end of 1495, the political situation in Florence was calmer; the city, previously under threat from the French, was no longer in danger as Charles VIII had suffered defeats. Michelangelo returned to Florence but received no commissions from the new city government under Savonarola. He returned to the employment of the Medici. During the half-year he spent in Florence, he worked on two small statues, a child \"St. John the Baptist\" and a sleeping \"Cupid\". According to Condivi, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, for whom Michelangelo had sculpted \"St. John the Baptist\", asked that Michelangelo \"fix it so that it looked as if it had been buried\" so he could \"send it to Rome\u00a0... pass [it off as] an ancient work and\u00a0... sell it much better.\" Both Lorenzo and Michelangelo were unwittingly cheated out of the real value of the piece by a middleman. Cardinal Raffaele Riario, to whom Lorenzo had sold it, discovered that it was a fraud, but was so impressed by the quality of the sculpture that he invited the artist to Rome. This apparent success in selling his sculpture abroad as well as the conservative Florentine situation may have encouraged Michelangelo to accept the prelate's invitation.\nMichelangelo arrived in Rome on 25 June 1496 at the age of 21. On 4 July of the same year, he began work on a commission for Cardinal Riario, an over-life-size statue of the Roman wine god \"Bacchus\". Upon completion, the work was rejected by the cardinal, and subsequently entered the collection of the banker Jacopo Galli, for his garden. In November 1497, the French ambassador to the Holy See, Cardinal Jean de Bilh\u00e8res-Lagraulas, commissioned him to carve a \"Piet\u00e0\", a sculpture showing the Virgin Mary grieving over the body of Jesus. The subject, which is not part of the Biblical narrative of the Crucifixion, was common in religious sculpture of medieval northern Europe and would have been very familiar to the Cardinal. The contract was agreed upon in August of the following year. Michelangelo was 24 at the time of its completion. It was soon to be regarded as one of the world's great masterpieces of sculpture, \"a revelation of all the potentialities and force of the art of sculpture\". Contemporary opinion was summarised by Vasari: \"It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh.\" Michelangelo's only work known to have been signed, his name on Mary's sash, it is now located in St Peter's Basilica.\nFlorence, 1499\u20131505.\nMichelangelo returned to Florence in 1499. The Republic was changing after the fall of its leader, anti-Renaissance priest Girolamo Savonarola, who was executed in 1498, and the rise of the \"gonfaloniere\" Piero Soderini. Michelangelo was asked by the consuls of the Guild of Wool to complete an unfinished project begun 40 years earlier by Agostino di Duccio: a colossal statue of Carrara marble portraying David as a symbol of Florentine freedom to be placed on the gable of Florence Cathedral. Michelangelo responded by completing his most famous work, the statue of \"David\", in 1504. The masterwork definitively established his prominence as a sculptor of extraordinary technical skill and strength of symbolic imagination. A team of consultants, including Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Filippino Lippi, Pietro Perugino, Lorenzo di Credi, Antonio and Giuliano da Sangallo, Andrea della Robbia, Cosimo Rosselli, Davide Ghirlandaio, Piero di Cosimo, Andrea Sansovino and Michelangelo's dear friend Granacci, was called together to decide upon its placement, ultimately the Piazza della Signoria, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. It now stands in the Academia while a replica occupies its place in the square. In the same period of placing the \"David\", Michelangelo may have been involved in creating the sculptural profile on Palazzo Vecchio's fa\u00e7ade known as the Importuno di Michelangelo. The hypothesis of Michelangelo's possible involvement in the creation of the profile is based on the strong resemblance of the latter to a profile drawn by the artist, datable to the beginning of the 16th century, now preserved in the Louvre.\nWith the completion of the \"David\" came another commission. In early 1504 Leonardo da Vinci had been commissioned to paint \"The Battle of Anghiari\" in the council chamber of the Palazzo Vecchio, depicting the battle between Florence and Milan in 1440. Michelangelo was then commissioned to paint the \"Battle of Cascina\". The two paintings are very different: Leonardo depicts soldiers fighting on horseback, while Michelangelo has soldiers being ambushed as they bathe in the river. Neither work was completed and both were lost forever when the chamber was refurbished. Both works were much admired, and copies remain of them, Leonardo's work having been copied by Rubens and Michelangelo's by Bastiano da Sangallo.\nAlso during this period, Michelangelo was commissioned by Angelo Doni to paint a \"Holy Family\" as a present for his wife, Maddalena Strozzi. It is known as the \"Doni Tondo\" and hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in its original magnificent frame, which Michelangelo may have designed. He also may have painted the Madonna and Child with John the Baptist, known as the \"Manchester Madonna\" and now in the National Gallery, London.\nTomb of Julius II, 1505\u20131545.\nIn 1505 Michelangelo was invited back to Rome by the newly elected Pope Julius II and commissioned to build the Pope's tomb, which was to include forty statues and be finished in five years. Under the patronage of the pope, Michelangelo experienced constant interruptions to his work on the tomb in order to accomplish numerous other tasks.\nThe commission for the tomb forced the artist to leave Florence with his planned \"Battle of Cascina\" painting unfinished. By this time, Michelangelo was established as an artist; both he and Julius II had hot tempers and soon argued. On 17 April 1506, Michelangelo left Rome in secret for Florence, remaining there until the Florentine government pressed him to return to the pope.\nAlthough Michelangelo worked on the tomb for 40 years, it was never finished to his satisfaction. It is located in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome and is most famous for the central figure of Moses, completed in 1516. Of the other statues intended for the tomb, two, known as the \"Rebellious Slave\" and the \"Dying Slave\", are now in the Louvre.\nSistine Chapel ceiling, 1508 \u20131512.\nDuring the same period, Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which took approximately four years to complete (1508\u20131512). According to Condivi's account, Bramante, who was working on the building of St. Peter's Basilica, resented Michelangelo's commission for the pope's tomb and convinced the pope to commission him in a medium with which he was unfamiliar, in order that he might fail at the task. Michelangelo was originally commissioned to paint the Twelve Apostles on the triangular pendentives that supported the ceiling, and to cover the central part of the ceiling with ornament. Michelangelo persuaded Pope Julius II to give him a free hand and proposed a different and more complex scheme, representing the Creation, the Fall of Man, the Promise of Salvation through the prophets, and the genealogy of Christ. The work is part of a larger scheme of decoration within the chapel that represents much of the doctrine of the Catholic Church.\nThe composition stretches over 500 square metres of ceiling and contains over 300 figures. At its centre are nine episodes from the Book of Genesis, divided into three groups: God's creation of the earth; God's creation of humankind and their fall from God's grace; and lastly, the state of humanity as represented by Noah and his family. On the pendentives supporting the ceiling are painted twelve men and women who prophesied the coming of Jesus, seven prophets of Israel, and five Sibyls, prophetic women of the Classical world. Among the most famous paintings on the ceiling are The Creation of Adam, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the Deluge, the Prophet Jeremiah, and the Cumaean Sibyl.\nFlorence under Medici popes, 1513 \u2013 early 1534.\nIn 1513, Pope Julius II died and was succeeded by Pope Leo X, the second son of Lorenzo de' Medici. From 1513 to 1516, Pope Leo was on good terms with Pope Julius's surviving relatives, so encouraged Michelangelo to continue work on Julius's tomb, but the families became enemies again in 1516 when Pope Leo tried to seize the Duchy of Urbino from Julius's nephew Francesco Maria I della Rovere. Pope Leo then had Michelangelo stop working on the tomb, and commissioned him to reconstruct the fa\u00e7ade of the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence and to adorn it with sculptures. He spent three years creating drawings and models for the fa\u00e7ade, as well as attempting to open a new marble quarry at Pietrasanta specifically for the project. In 1520, the work was abruptly cancelled by his financially strapped patrons before any real progress had been made. The basilica lacks a fa\u00e7ade to this day.\nIn 1520, the Medici came back to Michelangelo with another grand proposal, this time for a family funerary chapel in the Basilica of San Lorenzo. For posterity, this project, occupying the artist for much of the 1520s and 1530s, was more fully realised. Michelangelo used his own discretion to create the composition of the Medici Chapel, which houses the large tombs of two of the younger members of the Medici family, Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, and Lorenzo, his nephew. It also serves to commemorate their more famous predecessors, Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano, who are buried nearby. The tombs display statues of the two Medici and allegorical figures representing \"Night\" and \"Day\", and \"Dusk\" and \"Dawn\". The chapel also contains Michelangelo's \"Medici Madonna\". In 1976, a concealed corridor was discovered with drawings on the walls that related to the chapel itself.\nPope Leo X died in 1521 and was succeeded briefly by the austere Adrian VI, and then by his cousin Giulio Medici as Pope Clement VII. In 1524, Michelangelo received an architectural commission from the Medici pope for the Laurentian Library at San Lorenzo's Church. He designed both the interior of the library itself and its vestibule, a building utilising architectural forms with such dynamic effect that it is seen as the forerunner of Baroque architecture. It was left to assistants to interpret his plans and carry out construction. The library was not opened until 1571, and the vestibule remained incomplete until 1904.\nIn 1527, Florentine citizens, encouraged by the sack of Rome, threw out the Medici and restored the republic. A siege of the city ensued, and Michelangelo went to the aid of his beloved Florence by working on the city's fortifications from 1528 to 1529. The city fell in 1530, and the Medici were restored to power, with the young Alessandro Medici as the first Duke of Florence. Pope Clement, a Medici, sentenced Michelangelo to death. It is thought that Michelangelo hid for two months in a small chamber under the Medici chapels in the Basilica of San Lorenzo with light from just a tiny window, making many charcoal and chalk drawings which remained hidden until the room was rediscovered in 1975, and opened to small numbers of visitors in 2023. Michelangelo was eventually pardoned by the Medicis and the death sentence lifted, so that he could complete work on the Sistine Chapel and the Medici family tomb. He left Florence for Rome in 1534. Despite Michelangelo's support of the republic and resistance to the Medici rule, Pope Clement reinstated an allowance that he had previously granted the artist and made a new contract with him over the tomb of Pope Julius.\nRome, 1534\u20131546.\nIn Rome, Michelangelo lived near the church of Santa Maria di Loreto. It was at this time that he met the poet Vittoria Colonna, marchioness of Pescara, who was to become one of his closest friends until her death in 1547.\nShortly before his death in 1534, Pope Clement VII commissioned Michelangelo to paint a fresco of \"The Last Judgment\" on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. His successor, Pope Paul III, was instrumental in seeing that Michelangelo began and completed the project, which he laboured on from 1534 to October 1541. The fresco depicts the Second Coming of Christ and his Judgement of the souls. Michelangelo ignored the usual artistic conventions in portraying Jesus, showing him as a massive, muscular figure, youthful, beardless and naked. He is surrounded by saints, among whom Saint Bartholomew holds a drooping flayed skin, bearing the likeness of Michelangelo. The dead rise from their graves, to be consigned either to Heaven or to Hell.\nOnce completed, the depiction of Christ and the Virgin Mary naked was considered sacrilegious, and Cardinal Carafa and Monsignor Sernini (Mantua's ambassador) campaigned to have the fresco removed or censored, but the Pope resisted. At the Council of Trent, shortly before Michelangelo's death in 1564, it was decided to obscure the genitals and Daniele da Volterra, an apprentice of Michelangelo, was commissioned to make the alterations. An uncensored copy of the original, by Marcello Venusti, is in the Capodimonte Museum of Naples.\nMichelangelo worked on a number of architectural projects at this time. They included a design for the Capitoline Hill with its trapezoid piazza displaying the ancient bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius. He designed the upper floor of the Palazzo Farnese and the interior of the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, in which he transformed the vaulted interior of an Ancient Roman bathhouse. Other architectural works include San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, the Sforza Chapel (Capella Sforza) in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore and the Porta Pia.\nSt Peter's Basilica, 1546\u20131564.\nWhile still working on the \"Last Judgment\", Michelangelo received yet another commission for the Vatican. This was for the painting of two large frescos in the Cappella Paolina depicting significant events in the lives of the two most important saints of Rome, the \"Conversion of Saint Paul\" and the \"Crucifixion of Saint Peter\". Like the \"Last Judgment\", these two works are complex compositions containing a great number of figures. They were completed in 1550. In the same year, Giorgio Vasari published his \"Vita\", including a biography of Michelangelo.\nIn 1546, Michelangelo was appointed architect of St. Peter's Basilica, Rome. The process of replacing the Constantinian basilica of the 4th century had been underway for fifty years and in 1506 foundations had been laid to the plans of Bramante. Successive architects had worked on it, but little progress had been made. Michelangelo was persuaded to take over the project. He returned to the concepts of Bramante, and developed his ideas for a centrally planned church, strengthening the structure both physically and visually. The dome, not completed until after his death, has been called by Banister Fletcher, \"the greatest creation of the Renaissance\".\nAs construction was progressing on St Peter's, there was concern that Michelangelo would die before the dome was finished. However, once building commenced on the lower part of the dome, the supporting ring, the completion of the design was inevitable.\nPersonal life.\nFaith.\nMichelangelo was a devout Catholic whose faith deepened at the end of his life. Along with Raphael, he was enrolled in the Secular Franciscan Order.\nHis poetry includes the following closing lines from what is known as poem 285 (written in 1554): \"Neither painting nor sculpture will be able any longer to calm my soul, now turned toward that divine love that opened his arms on the cross to take us in.\"\nPersonal habits.\nMichelangelo was moderate in his personal life, and once told his apprentice, Ascanio Condivi: \"However rich I may have been, I have always lived like a poor man.\" Michelangelo's bank accounts and numerous deeds of purchase show that his net worth was about 50,000 gold ducats, more than many princes and dukes of his time. Condivi said he was indifferent to food and drink, eating \"more out of necessity than of pleasure\" and that he \"often slept in his clothes and\u00a0... boots.\" His biographer Paolo Giovio says, \"His nature was so rough and uncouth that his domestic habits were incredibly squalid, and deprived posterity of any pupils who might have followed him.\" This, however, may not have affected him, as he was by nature a solitary and melancholy person, , a man who \"withdrew himself from the company of men.\"\nRelationships and poetry.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nIt is impossible to know whether Michelangelo had any physical relationships. Understanding about his sexuality is rooted in his art, especially his poetry. He wrote more than three hundred sonnets and madrigals. About sixty are addressed to men \u2013 \"the first significant modern corpus of love poetry from one man to another\".\nThe longest sequence, displaying deep loving feeling, was written to the young Roman patrician Tommaso dei Cavalieri (c.\u20091509\u20131587), who was 23 years old when Michelangelo first met him in 1532, at the age of 57. In his \"Lives of the Artists\", Vasari observed: \"But infinitely more than any of the others he loved M. Tommaso de' Cavalieri, a Roman gentleman, for whom, being a young man and much inclined to these arts, [Michelangelo] made, to the end that he might learn to draw, many most superb drawings of divinely beautiful heads, designed in black and red chalk; and then he drew for him a Ganymede rapt to Heaven by Jove's Eagle, a Tityus with the Vulture devouring his heart, the Chariot of the Sun falling with Pha\u00ebthon into the Po, and a Bacchanal of children, which are all in themselves most rare things, and drawings the like of which have never been seen.\" Some scholars downplay the relationship between Michelangelo and Cavalieri as one of platonic friendship. The poems to Cavalieri make up the first large sequence of poems in any modern tongue addressed by one man to another; they predate by 50 years Shakespeare's sonnets to the fair youth:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nCavalieri replied: \"I swear to return your love. Never have I loved a man more than I love you, never have I wished for a friendship more than I wish for yours.\" Cavalieri remained devoted to Michelangelo until his death.\nIn 1542, Michelangelo met Cecchino dei Bracci who died only a year later, inspiring Michelangelo to write 48 funeral epigrams. Some of the objects of Michelangelo's affections, and subjects of his poetry, took advantage of him: the model Febo di Poggio asked for money in response to a love-poem, and a second model, Gherardo Perini, shamelessly stole from him.\nThe nature of the poetry has been a source of discomfort to later generations. Michelangelo's grandnephew, Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger, published the poems in 1623 with the gender of pronouns changed; he also removed words or in other instances insisted that Michelangelo's poems be read allegorically and philosophically, a judgment some modern scholars still repeat today. It was not until John Addington Symonds translated the poems into English in 1893 that the original genders were restored. Since then it has become more accepted that his poems should be understood at face value, that is, as indicating his personal feelings and a preference by him for young men over women. The Elizabeth Jennings translation, \"The Sonnets of Michelangelo\", is considered the standard version. \nLate in life, Michelangelo nurtured a friendship with the poet and noble widow Vittoria Colonna, whom he met in Rome in 1536 or 1538 and who was in her late forties at the time. They wrote sonnets for each other and were in regular contact until she died. These sonnets mostly deal with the spiritual issues that occupied them. Condivi, who in his biography was preoccupied with downplaying Michelangelo's attraction to men, alleged Michelangelo said his sole regret in life was that he did not kiss the widow's face in the same manner that he had her hand.\nFeuds with other artists.\nIn a letter from late 1542, Michelangelo blamed the tensions between Julius\u00a0II and him on the envy of Bramante and Raphael, saying of the latter, \"all he had in art, he got from me\". According to Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Michelangelo and Raphael met once: the former was alone, while the latter was accompanied by several others. Michelangelo commented that he thought he had encountered the chief of police with such an assemblage, and Raphael replied that he thought he had met an executioner, as they are wont to walk alone.\nWorks.\nMadonna and Child.\nThe \"Madonna of the Stairs\" is Michelangelo's earliest known work in marble. It is carved in shallow relief, a technique often employed by the master-sculptor of the early 15th century, Donatello, and others such as Desiderio da Settignano. While the Madonna is in profile, the easiest aspect for a shallow relief, the child displays a twisting motion that was to become characteristic of Michelangelo's work. The \"Taddei Tondo\" of 1502 shows the Christ Child frightened by a Bullfinch, a symbol of the Crucifixion. The lively form of the child was later adapted by Raphael in the \"Bridgewater Madonna\". The \"Madonna of Bruges\" was, at the time of its creation, unlike other such statues depicting the Virgin proudly presenting her son. Here, the Christ Child, restrained by his mother's clasping hand, is about to step off into the world. The \"Doni Tondo\", depicting the Holy Family, has elements of all three previous works: the frieze of figures in the background has the appearance of a low-relief, while the circular shape and dynamic forms echo the Taddeo Tondo. The twisting motion present in the \"Madonna of Bruges\" is accentuated in the painting. The painting heralds the forms, movement and colour that Michelangelo was to employ on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.\nMale figure.\nThe kneeling \"Angel\" is an early work, one of several that Michelangelo created as part of a large decorative scheme for the Arca di San Domenico in the church dedicated to that saint in Bologna. Several other artists had worked on the scheme, beginning with Nicola Pisano in the 13th century. In the late 15th century, the project was managed by Niccol\u00f2 dell'Arca. An angel holding a candlestick, by Niccol\u00f2, was already in place. Although the two angels form a pair, there is a great contrast between the two works, the one depicting a delicate child with flowing hair clothed in Gothic robes with deep folds, and Michelangelo's depicting a robust and muscular youth with eagle's wings, clad in a garment of Classical style. Everything about Michelangelo's \"Angel\" is dynamic. Michelangelo's \"Bacchus\" was a commission with a specified subject, the youthful God of Wine. The sculpture has all the traditional attributes, a vine wreath, a cup of wine and a fawn, but Michelangelo ingested an air of reality into the subject, depicting him with bleary eyes, a swollen bladder and a stance that suggests he is unsteady on his feet. While the work is plainly inspired by Classical sculpture, it is innovative for its rotating movement and strongly three-dimensional quality, which encourages the viewer to look at it from every angle.\nIn the so-called \"Dying Slave\", Michelangelo again utilised the figure with marked contrapposto to suggest a particular human state, in this case waking from sleep. With the \"Rebellious Slave\", it is one of two such earlier figures for the Tomb of Pope Julius II, now in the Louvre, that the sculptor brought to an almost finished state. These two works were to have a profound influence on later sculpture, through Rodin who studied them at the Louvre. The \"Atlas Slave\" is one of the later figures for Pope Julius' tomb. The works, known collectively as \"The Captives\", each show the figure struggling to free itself, as if from the bonds of the rock in which it is lodged. The works give a unique insight into the sculptural methods that Michelangelo employed and his way of revealing what he perceived within the rock.\nSistine Chapel ceiling.\nThe Sistine Chapel ceiling was painted between 1508 and 1512. The ceiling is a flattened barrel vault supported on twelve triangular pendentives that rise from between the windows of the chapel. The commission, as envisaged by Julius II, was to adorn the pendentives with figures of the twelve apostles. Michelangelo, who was reluctant to take the job, persuaded the Pope to give him a free hand in the composition. The resultant scheme of decoration awed his contemporaries and has inspired other artists ever since. The scheme is of nine panels illustrating episodes from the Book of Genesis, set in an architectonic frame. On the pendentives, Michelangelo replaced the proposed Apostles with Prophets and Sibyls who heralded the coming of the Messiah.\nMichelangelo began painting with the later episodes in the narrative, the pictures including locational details and groups of figures, the \"Drunkenness of Noah\" being the first of this group. In the later compositions, painted after the initial scaffolding had been removed, Michelangelo made the figures larger. One of the central images, \"The Creation of Adam\" is one of the best known and most reproduced works in the history of art. The final panel, showing the \"Separation of Light from Darkness\" is the broadest in style and was painted in a single day. As the model for the Creator, Michelangelo has depicted himself in the action of painting the ceiling.\nAs supporters to the smaller scenes, Michelangelo painted twenty youths who have variously been interpreted as angels, as muses, or simply as decoration. Michelangelo referred to them as \"ignudi\". The figure reproduced may be seen in context in the above image of the \"Separation of Light from Darkness\".\nIn the process of painting the ceiling, Michelangelo made studies for different figures, of which some, such as that for \"The Libyan Sibyl\" have survived, demonstrating the care taken by Michelangelo in details such as the hands and feet. The prophet Jeremiah, contemplating the downfall of Jerusalem, is a self-portrait.\nFigure compositions.\nMichelangelo's relief of the \"Battle of the Centaurs\", created while he was still a youth associated with the Medici Academy, is an unusually complex relief in that it shows a great number of figures involved in a vigorous struggle. Such a complex disarray of figures was rare in Florentine art, where it would usually only be found in images showing either the Massacre of the Innocents or the Torments of Hell. The relief treatment, in which some of the figures are boldly projecting, may indicate Michelangelo's familiarity with Roman sarcophagus reliefs from the collection of Lorenzo Medici, and similar marble panels created by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, and with the figurative compositions on Ghiberti's Baptistry Doors.\nThe composition of the \"Battle of Cascina\" is known in its entirety only from copies, as the original cartoon, according to Vasari, was so admired that it deteriorated and was eventually in pieces. It reflects the earlier relief in the energy and diversity of the figures, with many different postures, and many being viewed from the back, as they turn towards the approaching enemy and prepare for battle.\nIn \"The Last Judgment\" it is said that Michelangelo drew inspiration from a fresco by Melozzo da Forl\u00ec in Rome's Santi Apostoli. Melozzo had depicted figures from different angles, as if they were floating in the Heaven and seen from below. Melozzo's majestic figure of Christ, with windblown cloak, demonstrates a degree of foreshortening of the figure that had also been employed by Andrea Mantegna, but was not usual in the frescos of Florentine painters. In \"The Last Judgment\" Michelangelo had the opportunity to depict, on an unprecedented scale, figures in the action of either rising heavenward or falling and being dragged down.\nIn the two frescos of the Pauline Chapel, \"The Crucifixion of St. Peter\" and \"The Conversion of Saul\", Michelangelo has used the various groups of figures to convey a complex narrative. In the \"Crucifixion of Peter\" soldiers busy themselves about their assigned duty of digging a post hole and raising the cross while various people look on and discuss the events. A group of horrified women cluster in the foreground, while another group of Christians is led by a tall man to witness the events. In the right foreground, Michelangelo walks out of the painting with an expression of disillusionment.\nArchitecture.\nMichelangelo's architectural commissions included a number that were not realised, notably the fa\u00e7ade for Brunelleschi's Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, for which Michelangelo had a wooden model constructed, but which remains to this day unfinished rough brick. At the same church, Giulio de' Medici (later Pope Clement VII) commissioned him to design the Medici Chapel and the tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo Medici. Pope Clement also commissioned the Laurentian Library, for which Michelangelo also designed the extraordinary vestibule with columns recessed into niches, and a staircase that appears to spill out of the library like a flow of lava, according to Nikolaus Pevsner, \"...\u00a0revealing Mannerism in its most sublime architectural form\".\nIn 1546 Michelangelo produced the highly complex ovoid design for the pavement of the Campidoglio and began designing an upper storey for the Farnese Palace. In 1547 he took on the job of completing St Peter's Basilica, begun to a design by Bramante, and with several intermediate designs by several architects. Michelangelo returned to Bramante's design, retaining the basic form and concepts by simplifying and strengthening the design to create a more dynamic and unified whole. Although the late 16th-century engraving depicts the dome as having a hemispherical profile, the dome of Michelangelo's model is somewhat ovoid and the final product, as completed by Giacomo della Porta, is more so.\nFinal years.\nIn his old age, Michelangelo created a number of \"Piet\u00e0s\" in which he apparently reflects upon mortality. They are heralded by the \"Victory\", perhaps created for the tomb of Pope Julius II but left unfinished. In this group, the youthful victor overcomes an older hooded figure, with the features of Michelangelo. The \"Piet\u00e0 of Vittoria Colonna\" is a chalk drawing of a type described as \"presentation drawings\", as they might be given as a gift by an artist, and were not necessarily studies towards a painted work. In this image, Mary's upraised arms and hands are indicative of her prophetic role. The frontal aspect is reminiscent of Masaccio's fresco of the Holy Trinity in the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, Florence. In the \"Florentine Piet\u00e0\", Michelangelo again depicts himself, this time as the aged Nicodemus lowering the body of Jesus from the cross into the arms of Mary his mother and Mary Magdalene. Michelangelo smashed the left arm and leg of the figure of Jesus. His pupil Tiberio Calcagni repaired the arm and drilled a hole in which to fix a replacement leg which was not subsequently attached. He also worked on the figure of Mary Magdalene.\nThe last sculpture that Michelangelo worked on (six days before his death), the \"Rondanini Piet\u00e0,\" could never be completed because Michelangelo carved it away until there was insufficient stone. The legs and a detached arm remain from a previous stage of the work. As it remains, the sculpture has an abstract quality, in keeping with 20th-century concepts of sculpture.\nMichelangelo died in Rome on 18 February 1564, at the age of 88. His body was taken from Rome for interment at the Basilica of Santa Croce, fulfilling the maestro's last request to be buried in his beloved Florence. His heir Lionardo Buonarroti commissioned Vasari to design and build the \"Tomb of Michelangelo\", a monumental project that cost 770 scudi, and took over 14 years to complete. Marble for the tomb was supplied by Cosimo I de' Medici, Duke of Tuscany, who had also organized a state funeral to honour Michelangelo in Florence.\nLegacy.\nMichelangelo, with Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, is one of the three giants of the Florentine High Renaissance. Although their names are often cited together, Michelangelo was younger than Leonardo by 23 years, and eight years older than Raphael. Because of his reclusive nature, he had little to do with either artist and outlived both of them by more than 40 years. Michelangelo took few sculpture students. He employed Granacci, who was his fellow pupil at the Medici Academy, and became one of several assistants on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Michelangelo appears to have used assistants mainly for the more manual tasks of preparing surfaces and grinding colours. Despite this, his works were to have a great influence on painters, sculptors and architects for many generations to come.\nWhile Michelangelo's \"David\" is the most famous male nude of all time, some of his other works have had perhaps even greater impact on the course of art. The twisting forms and tensions of the \"Victory\", the \"Bruges Madonna\" and the \"Medici Madonna\" make them the heralds of the Mannerist art. The unfinished giants for the tomb of Pope Julius II had profound effect on sculptors such as Rodin and Henry Moore.\nMichelangelo's vestibule of the Laurentian Library was one of the earliest buildings to use classical forms in a plastic and expressive manner. This dynamic quality was later to find its major expression in his centrally planned St. Peter's, with its giant order, its rippling cornice and its upward-launching pointed dome. The dome of St. Peter's was to influence the building of churches for many centuries, including Sant'Andrea della Valle in Rome and St Paul's Cathedral, London, as well as the civic domes of public buildings and state capitals across the United States.\nArtists who were directly influenced by Michelangelo include Raphael, whose monumental treatment of the figure in the \"School of Athens\" and \"The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple\" owes much to Michelangelo, and whose fresco of \"Isaiah\" in Sant'Agostino closely imitates the older master's prophets. Other artists, such as Pontormo, drew on the writhing forms of the \"Last Judgment\" and the frescoes of the Cappella Paolina.\nThe Sistine Chapel ceiling was a work of unprecedented grandeur, both for its architectonic forms, to be imitated by many Baroque ceiling painters, and also for the wealth of its inventiveness in the study of figures. Vasari wrote:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["30556420", "21019"], "permutation_1": ["30556420", "21019"], "permutation_2": ["21019", "30556420"], "permutation_3": ["30556420", "21019"]}
{"id": "2hop__222162_386543", "docs_added": {"639500": "Romeo Void\nAmerican rock band\nRomeo Void was an American new wave/post punk band from San Francisco, California, formed in 1979. The band primarily consisted of saxophonist Benjamin Bossi, vocalist Debora Iyall, guitarist Peter Woods, and bassist Frank Zincavage. The band went through four drummers, starting with Jay Derrah and ending with Aaron Smith. The band released three albums, \"It's a Condition\", \"Benefactor\" and \"Instincts\", along with one EP. They are best known for the songs \"Never Say Never\" and \"A Girl in Trouble (Is a Temporary Thing)\"; the latter became a Top 40 pop single.\nThe band was started at the San Francisco Art Institute by Iyall and Zincavage. They released a single on the recently formed 415 Records before recording their debut album, which has been deemed a \"masterpiece of American post-punk\". The success of their second release, a four-song EP titled \"Never Say Never\" resulted in a distribution deal with Columbia Records. The band continued to release music and tour until they broke up in 1985. The members have reunited briefly over the years. Iyall has continued to pursue music as a side project. Iyall has garnered acclaim as a skilled lyricist who explores themes like sexuality and alienation from a female perspective with \"searing imagery\".\nHistory.\n1979: Formation.\nRomeo Void formed at the San Francisco Art Institute in February 1979. Vocalist Debora Iyall occasionally visited the Bay Area to see Patti Smith perform. She decided to pursue an art education after reading a fortune cookie. \"It was in the late '70s at the Indochina Friendship Booth at the annual Fourth of July streetfair in Eureka, California,\" she said. \"I got a fortune cookie that said 'Art is your fate, don't debate.' That next January, I was enrolled in an art school in San Francisco.\" She began frequenting the Mabuhay Gardens, a popular nightclub, to see local alternative rock groups like The Nuns, the Mutants, Crime, and the Avengers. She also formed the Mummers and Poppers, a punk parody band that covered 1960s tunes with guitarist Peter Woods, Charles Hagan and drummer Jay Derrah, . Iyall was originally hesitant to perform because she was overweight: \"After seeing Patti Smith, I still had it in my mind that you had to be skinny to be up there [on stage], but after going to the Mabuhay [...] you just do whatever you want, be whoever you want, just make it happen.\"\nBassist Frank Zincavage met Iyall at the SF Art Institute; the two hit it off and discussed putting a band together. They formed one with Woods and Derrah a few weeks later, drawing inspiration from the \"burgeoning local punk and post-punk scenes\". Iyall recruited Woods because she enjoyed playing with him in the Mommers and Poppers. \"[It] seemed only natural that we invite Peter Woods to join us [... He] played clean and was a natural on rhythm guitar.\" Romeo Void officially formed on Valentine's Day in 1979. According to Iyall, the name Romeo Void referred to \"a lack of romance\" and came to mind after they saw a local magazine with the headline \"Why single women can't get laid in San Francisco.\" The name \"means there are not romantic notions here \u2014 and there shouldn't be,\" Iyall told an interviewer: \"We are about reality, not the myths created by other artists.\"\nThe band practiced in Iyall's flat in the Mission District. It was decided that the group would embrace punk ideals despite the possibility that they become associated with the new wave movement. \"Even though I was going to the [Mabuhay Gardens] so much, I also had criticisms: Everyone was leaning against the wall wearing black,\" Iyall said. \"I guess we were considered new wave, but for me Romeo Void was a reaction against the regimentation of everyone having to be bleached blond and everything being about despair and no future, when I thought the do-it-yourself thing should encompass all the different kinds of emotions, and all the different colors. [...] I was proud of being American Indian, so I purposely never bleached my hair blond.\"\n1980\u20131982: \"It's a Condition\", \"Benefactor\", and mainstream success.\nThe band became busy playing shows at clubs and warehouses around San Francisco, and quickly became popular. Saxophonist Benjamin Bossi was added to the lineup as an \"accident\" when Iyall met him while he worked in the New York City Deli on Market Street in San Francisco. The group released their first single, \"White Sweater\", which consisted of the title track and a cover of Jerry Lordan's popular instrumental composition \"Apache\", in February 1981 on a recently founded local label called 415 Records. They worked on the recording of their debut album, \"It's a Condition\", with producer David Kahne. Before recording began, Derrah left the band and was replaced by John \"Stench\" Hanes, who had previously played with Pearl Harbor and the Explosions. Romeo Void's debut was critically acclaimed upon its release through 415 in July 1981, and introduced Romeo Void's \"unique blend of jazz, funk, rock and confrontational poetry\". AllMusic writer Stewart Mason later heralded it as one of the \"masterpieces of American post-punk\". Indie labels were enthusiastic with promotions and the band embarked on several nationwide tours. Eventually Hanes left the band, leaving Larry Carter to fill the drummer position.\nThe sudden surge in popularity was disorienting to Iyall. \"It was frightening: we played a college in Santa Barbara, and there were all these blond people crowding the stage, and I thought 'These are the people who hated me in high school!' When you grow up being 'outside' \u2013 because I wasn't white, and I was fat, and always a bit of a free thinker \u2013 it was strange. It was like, 'uh-oh, I must be doing something wrong \u2013 they like me!'\" Highly successful mainstream artists like Ann Wilson and Ric Ocasek were eager to meet the band. Ocasek extended an invitation to collaborate at his Syncro Sound recording studio in Boston. The recording sessions in Boston resulted in the \"Never Say Never\" EP in January 1982. The title track became (arguably) their best-known song and has remained synonymous with the band ever since. The song was also featured in the 1984 romantic teen drama \"Reckless\". Additionally, the success of the single directly led to 415 Records signing a deal with Columbia Records, which elevated the indie label's roster to major-label status. Romeo Void released their second album, entitled \"Benefactor\", in November 1982. The album appeared at No.\u00a0119 on the \"Billboard\" 200. \"Benefactor\" was noticeably more commercial sounding than previous endeavors; the music was made more danceable and swearing was removed on the song \"Never Say Never\". The different approach in the sound resulted in comparisons to Blondie, which AllMusic writer William Ruhlmann suggested was a deliberate attempt by Columbia. Iyall stated that there was more pressure to write sexually laced lyrics for \"Benefactor\": \"I do like to be provocative, and I definitely have access to my sexuality, and as a topic I find it ripe, but I wasn't ever going to be a sex-pot diva, so that was kind of odd.\" She also said there was pressure to produce more singles.\n1983\u2013present: \"Instincts\", break-up, and post-band endeavors.\nA third and final album was again helmed by David Kahne, which AllMusic writer Stewart Mason speculated was a \"reaction against the more commercial sound of \"Benefactor\". By this time, Carter had been replaced by veteran session drummer Aaron Smith. \"Instincts\" was released in October 1984, debuted at No.\u00a068 on the Billboard 200, and proved to be the band's best-selling album. It also launched their most successful single, \"A Girl in Trouble (Is a Temporary Thing),\" which broke the Billboard Top 40 and peaked at No.\u00a035. Critical reactions were positive. Despite being the band's most successful effort to date, Columbia pulled the band's promotional support while on a nationwide tour. \"The very next town we got to after they made that decision, there wasn't an A&R person there,\" said Iyall. \"[There] was no local person there, there were no interviews and in-stores arranged as they had been. All that just ground to a halt.\" The band returned to San Francisco and soon broke up. Constant touring has been cited by Iyall as the primary reason for the break-up. \"You get tired of each other, and you get intolerant of being uncomfortable and away from your family and your friends.\" According to a VH1 reunion episode, the issue of Iyall's weight was the reason for the label dropping them. In 2003, Iyall agreed with this claim: \"Howie sold us from 415 to Columbia Records, and they were like 'Who's this fat chick?' They decided that was as far as it was going to get, and pulled their support.\" \"Crawdaddy!\" writer Denise Sullivan stated that the label spoke to Iyall about losing weight, but she subsequently refused. In 2010, Iyall declined to discuss the issue, but added that she may not be taking full responsibility in the matter.\nIyall released a solo album entitled \"Strange Language\" with former band members Bossi and Smith in 1986. Afterward she pursued a career as an art teacher. The band reunited briefly for a live performance in 1993. In 2004, Romeo Void was featured on an episode of VH1's \"Bands Reunited\". Bossi had sustained too much hearing damage over the years and was unable to perform, although he did meet up with the band again and watched the reunion performance from an adjacent room. Iyall has continued to dabble in music related projects and events. \"I still like to sing and I still like to perform,\" she said. In 2003 she was involved in a musical project called Knife in Water. She began collaborating with Peter Dunne, who was known as Peter Bilt when he played guitar for Pearl Harbor and the Explosions. Iyall and Dunne performed at a support benefit for \"Crawdaddy!\" founder Paul Williams in June 2009, and performed at a concert honoring 415 Records later that September. They released an album entitled \"Stay Strong\" in 2010. \nDrummer Larry Carter died in August of 2021, from what is thought to be heart complications. Saxophonist Benjamin Bossi died of complications from Alzheimer's disease on December 13, 2022, at the age of 69.\nMusic.\nRomeo Void has generally been classified as a new wave or post-punk band. Some critics have noted dance elements in the music. According to Stewart Mason, writing for AllMusic, \"[The] band's muscular blend of Joy Division's atmospherics and the Gang of Four's rattling momentum, with Benjamin Bossi's splattering free jazz saxophone coloring everything, made Romeo Void one of the strongest of the American post-punk bands. The \"St. Petersburg Times\" wrote that they \"had no trouble creating a signature sound for [themselves with a] scratchy guitar, soulful sax, [and] tight, precise drums.\" \"The New York Times\" stated that they sounded like \"an art-school band, with its textural complexity [and] touches of jazz and funk\" Saxophone player Benjamin Bossi has been observed as the ingredient that \"set the band apart\" and showed a \"talent for both improvisation and arrangement.\" Alan Niester, writing for \"The Globe and Mail\", said that he weaved \"in and out [...] like a snake charmer\" and reminded him of Andy Mackay, a saxophonist who played with Roxy Music.\nLiam Lacey, also writing for \"The Globe and Mail\", described Iyall's voice as \"sultry [and] sexy\", while Mason called it \"powerful\". Her style has sometimes been compared to Chrissie Hynde, vocalist for the Pretenders. Richard Harrington of \"The Washington Post\" acknowledged the similarity, but also noted the influence of other singers in \"Never Say Never\" where Iyall mixed the \"aggressive bitchiness of [Hynde], the coy confrontational tactics of Patty Donahue of the Waitresses and the slack sensuality of Debbie Harry of the earliest Blondie.\" Iyall used to find the comparison annoying, but eventually warmed to it: \"When people said I sounded like her, I'd say, 'Oh yeah, thanks a lot.' But this year, I've fallen in love with \"Learning To Crawl\" so now I don't care if people want to make comparisons.\" After a live show in 1982, Niester contended that she was the weakest part of the group and had the \"vocal range of an automobile horn\". \"Billboard\" writer Kathy Gillis wrote after a concert two years later that Iyall exhibited a \"dramatic range that, while not extreme in either direction, was touching.\"\nPatti Smith had a great influence on Iyall. \"[She was] someone who was both a rock singer and a poet,\" she said. \"She combined things I was interested in. Plus, she wasn't a trumped-up sex symbol. She was herself on stage. That appealed to me. It looked like something I could do. You didn't have to look like all the other singers.\" Iyall was highly critical of the music of the day and found inspiration in other mediums. \"I hate rock and roll right now. It's turned into some new kind of stupid religion... I'd rather listen to Billie Holiday, maybe Tom Waits. Actually, I'll admit I like The Bangles \u2013 they have a great sound. But I'd just as soon read novels or paint pictures as listen to music. I love language \u2013 plain speech, used in an enigmatic, subliminal way; I'm not much tied to the literal.\"\nLyrics.\nIyall was observed by \"Mother Jones\" to be among a new group of female fronted rock bands that displayed a \"tough, wry, street-wise, [and] cynical\" attitude and sought to redefine the role of women in rock music. She developed a sizable following for her writing that covered topics like \"frustrated desire [and] sexually motivated rage\" from a female perspective. Critics praised her lyrics for their \"searing imagery\", \"seething poetics\", and \"darkly intelligent lyrics\" \"My approach was always that I had something to say, I had a point of view,\" Iyall said, commenting on her outspokeness. \"I remember seeing Penelope from the Avengers at the Mabuhay Gardens and thinking, I can do that. I have something to say.\"\nRomeo Void's best known song is \"Never Say Never\", which contains the famous line \"I might like you better if we slept together.\" AllMusic writer Heather Phares has argued that Iyall's \"teasing, existential musings [...] predated and predicted the aloof yet frank sexuality of early- and mid-'90s artists such as Elastica and Liz Phair\". Phares concluded that the song was \"a subversive, influential classic\" and \"one of new wave's most distinctive and innovative moments. \" The song has been covered by many artists, among them are Queens of the Stone Age, Amanda Blank and Xiu Xiu. The song \"A Girl in Trouble (Is a Temporary Thing)\", their highest-charting single, was reportedly written as a response to Michael Jackson's hit song \"Billie Jean\", but can also be seen as a tribute to women who have experienced traumatizing events. Iyall also wrote songs that touched on themes like social alienation (\"Undercover Kept\") and generation gaps (\"Chinatown\").\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3309694": "Never Say Never (Romeo Void song)\n\"Never Say Never\" is a 1982 song by the new wave band Romeo Void. One of their best-known songs, \"Never Say Never\" was a favorite on early MTV, featuring a black-and-white music video that spoofs Jean-Luc Godard's \"Breathless\". The song is driven by a throbbing, funky bassline and punctuated by jagged guitar and saxophone, incorporating post-punk influences. The song reached #17 on the Billboard Dance / Disco chart chart on the 27th of March, 1982.\nOriginally released on an EP through 415 Records, \"Never Say Never\" was re-recorded for the band's second album and major label debut, \"Benefactor\". The album version is more radio friendly, cutting the song's length almost in half and removing expletives.\nComposition.\nMusically, the song has been described as post-punk, new wave, dance-rock, and disco-punk.\nLegacy.\nThe song was featured in the 1984 film \"Reckless\" starring Aidan Quinn as a football star and renegade. Quinn's character takes over the school dance's DJ booth to play the single, much to the dismay of all his classmates. A dance sequence ensues with Quinn's character moshing about while a somewhat distraught Daryl Hannah tries to figure out how to dance with him.\nA small segment of the song was featured in a scene of the film \"\". It also was included in the 2013 film \"The Wolf of Wall Street\". In 2016, it was featured in the show \"Ash vs Evil Dead\" during a scene of the season two episode \"Trapped Inside\".\nThe song was also featured in \".\" It is heard in the game on the radio station Wave 103.\n\"Never Say Never\" (EP).\nNever Say Never is an EP by American new wave band Romeo Void, released in 1981. It was released on CD in 2006 by Wounded Bird Records, as four bonus tracks to their reissue of \"Benefactor\".\nTrack listing.\nAll tracks by Debora Iyall, Peter Woods, Frank Zincavage, Benjamin Bossi and Larry Carter.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "197318": "Never Say Die!\nNever Say Die! is the eighth studio album by English rock band Black Sabbath, released on 29 September 1978. It was the last studio album with the band's original line-up and the last studio album to feature original vocalist Ozzy Osbourne until the 2013 album \"13\". It was certified Gold in the U.S. on 7 November 1997 and as of November 2011 has sold 133,000 copies in the United States since the SoundScan era. The album received mixed reviews, with critics calling it \"unbalanced\" and insisting its energy was scattered in too many directions.\nRecording.\nAt the time of recording \"Never Say Die!\", Black Sabbath's members were struggling with heavy substance abuse. Before sessions began, vocalist Ozzy Osbourne temporarily left the band and was briefly replaced by Dave Walker, known for his work with Savoy Brown and Fleetwood Mac. According to guitarist Tony Iommi, although both parties likely wanted to reunite, no one communicated directly, leading to Walker's short-lived stint. The band even performed early material with him, including an early version of \u201cJunior\u2019s Eyes\u201d on the BBC show \"Look Hear\".\nOsbourne eventually returned, but refused to sing any of the material written during Walker\u2019s tenure. One of those songs, \u201cSwinging the Chain,\u201d was sung by drummer Bill Ward instead. Because the band was often writing songs during the day and recording them at night, they had little time for revisions, resulting in an album Iommi later described as lacking cohesion.\nOsbourne also declined to contribute vocals to \u201cBreakout,\u201d which remained instrumental. The lyrics to \u201cJunior\u2019s Eyes\u201d were revised to reflect the recent passing of Osbourne\u2019s father.\nPersonal issues further delayed the album\u2019s production. Osbourne later explained that his father\u2019s death led to a three-month hiatus for mourning and funeral arrangements. Although the band eventually regrouped in the studio, tensions lingered\u2014especially between Osbourne and Iommi\u2014and the sense of unity had faded.\nThe album was recorded at Sounds Interchange Studios in Toronto. Iommi recalled that the band chose the studio largely for tax reasons, but it proved ill-suited for their needs. To improve the studio\u2019s acoustics, they had to remove carpeting to create a more vibrant sound, which delayed progress due to the lack of better alternatives.\nIn a 2001 interview, Iommi recalled that the band rehearsed in a freezing cinema during the harsh Toronto winter and recorded sessions at night, adding further discomfort to an already strained process. Bassist Geezer Butler characterized the album as a patchwork effort. He noted that despite the album's defiant title, the band sensed it might be their final collaboration. During their 10th anniversary tour with Van Halen, Butler recalled feeling doubtful about the band's future despite public optimism.\nButler also expressed frustration over Osbourne\u2019s frequent rejection of his lyrics, revealing that last-minute rewrites became common late in their partnership. Iommi, in a 2004 retrospective, described a chaotic studio environment where the band was often too intoxicated to work effectively, with members contributing inconsistently and lacking focus.\nOsbourne, in a later interview, described the band as overwhelmed and dysfunctional, plagued by addiction and interpersonal conflict. He was ultimately dismissed from the group, describing the atmosphere as toxic and unsalvageable.\nDespite these challenges, Ward defended the album years later, suggesting the band did their best under the circumstances and even experimented creatively, particularly on tracks like \u201cJohnny Blade\u201d and \u201cAir Dance.\u201d Osbourne, however, criticized these jazz-influenced tracks in his memoir, particularly \u201cBreakout,\u201d which he found artistically incompatible with the band\u2019s identity.\nAlthough Ward performed vocals on \u201cSwinging the Chain,\u201d the lyrics were mistakenly credited to Butler when they were actually written by Ward himself.\nThe album\u2019s sleeve was designed by Storm Thorgerson\u2019s Hipgnosis, their second collaboration with the band following \"Technical Ecstasy\" (1976). The UK and US versions featured slight differences in background imagery, including faint silhouettes of British military pilots. The album\u2019s inner sleeve featured consistent artwork and credits but omitted lyrics. The cover aircraft resembles a North American T-6 Texan. An alternate design featuring masked doctors was rejected by the band but later used by Rainbow for their 1981 album \"Difficult to Cure\".\nRelease and critical reception.\nIn the UK the title track, released well ahead of the album as the band's first UK picture sleeve single, reached No. 21 in the chart and gave the band its first \"Top of the Pops\" appearances since 1970. In the UK the album reached No. 12, one place higher than its predecessor \"Technical Ecstasy\". In the US it peaked at number 69 on the \"Billboard\" Pop Album chart. In the UK, \"Hard Road\" was released as the second single from the album and reached the UK Top 40, 25,000 copies being pressed in a limited-edition purple-vinyl. There was no picture-sleeve release but a video for \"A Hard Road\" was made during the \"Never Say Die!\" Tour to promote the single. The song marks the first and last time guitarist Tony Iommi sings backing vocals. Iommi explains in his autobiography \"Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven & Hell with Black Sabbath\", that when he sang, bassist Geezer Butler couldn't keep a straight face.\nThe album received mostly negative reviews; according to Terry Staunton of \"Uncut\", \"even diehard fans among the music press [were] unsure of muddling excursions towards electronica ('Johnny Blade') and passages that veered worryingly close to jazz ('Air Dance', the curious horns in the instrumental 'Breakout'). More than one critic described the overall sound as 'murky'.\" It is not held in high esteem today, with AllMusic critic Eduardo Rivadavia referring to the album as \"unfocused\", saying it \"will hold little interest to the average heavy metal fan\". \"Rolling Stone\" says it was \"not a blaze of glory for the original foursome\" but added that it may be \"better than people might remember\". In his own \"Uncut\" piece, Staunton bemoaned the experiments, but believed that the \"few occasions where the stars align and ducks form an orderly row\" are \"worth celebrating\", singling out the title track for its power and \"Junior's Eyes\" for having a vitality and tension missing elsewhere. Rob Michaels of the \"Spin Alternative Record Guide\" (1995) writes that \"the rhythm section has a spry spring in its leaden step and the songs are tough and catchy.\" In 2013 Phil Alexander of \"Mojo\" referred to the album as \"disastrous\".\nSpeaking in October 1978 of the new album, Osbourne said, \"It's a combination of what we've all been through in the last 10 years. It's a very varied album. Like, we started out playing in blues clubs, because British blues \u2013 like John Mayall and early Fleetwood Mac \u2013 was the thing at the time. We were into a twelve-bar trip and early Ten Years After-style stuff. So it's part of that sort of trip. Then there's the heavy thing and the rock thing. It's not just steamhammer headbanging stuff all the way through\u00a0... We got rid of all our inner frustrations: what each of us individually wanted to put down over the years but couldn't because of the pressures of work. So we put a lot of painstaking hours into developing this album.\" However, Osbourne quickly soured on the LP, telling \"After Hours\" in a 1981 interview \"The last album I did with Sabbath was \"Never Say Die!\" and it was the worst piece of work that I've ever had anything to do with. I'm ashamed of that album. I think it's disgusting\". He went on to claim that the band flew to Toronto in January during sub-zero temperature \"purely because the Rolling Stones had recorded a live album there.\" In 2013, Osbourne told \"Mojo\", \"I'd go down to the studio and I heard what sounded like a jazz band playing. Is this really Black Sabbath? I'd just fuck off.\" Osbourne was fired by the band eight months later.\nWil Malone, who oversaw the jazz-inflected horns arrangements on the album, is a British music producer and arranger, who, besides working with Black Sabbath, went on to work with Iron Maiden, Todd Rundgren, The Verve, Massive Attack, and Depeche Mode. \nJon Elstar, who was recruited to play harmonica on \"Swinging the Chain,\" had also played on releases by R & B proto-punk band The Pretty Things, as well as appearing on reggae releases on Trojan Records label.\nDespite the negative reception, Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil cited \"Never Say Die!\" as one of his favourite Black Sabbath albums. Megadeth covered the title track for the 2000 tribute album \"Nativity In Black II\", with singer Dave Mustaine telling Nick Bowcott in 2008, \"The simplicity of Iommi's style makes this rhythm progression one of my all-time favorites: fast, classic English riff-stylings with a climactic arrangement.\" Andy LaRocque, guitarist for King Diamond, was influenced by the album in the making of the melodic guitar part of \"Sleepless Nights\", from the \"Conspiracy\" album.\nIn March 2017, Jon Hadusek of \"Consequence of Sound\" ranked \"Never Say Die!\" 10th out of 19 Black Sabbath studio albums. He called it \"straight-up pop rock, primed for heavy rotation\", but felt it had merits, complimenting Osbourne's confident vocals and Iommi's guitar for \"[not being] buried like it was on \"Technical Ecstasy\", and the rigid melodies force his playing to be concise and punchy.\" Among other similar lists, \"Kerrang!\" ranked it 15th, praising the choice of a punky opening track but panning the inclusion of a Ward-song sung and noting a lack of creative enthusiasm throughout. \"Ultimate Classic Rock\" ranked it 12th, praising the energetic title track, \"Johnny Blade\" and \"A Hard Road\", but believing they and the abundance of weaker songs \"paled next to the colossal metal anthems recorded just a few years earlier\". \"Classic Rock\" ranked it 10th, believing both it and \"Technical Ecstasy\" to be the band's most underrated albums. Also ranking it 10th, \"The Guardian\" comments that the album \"has a terrible reputation, but it's a quirky and enjoyable record, as long as you don't expect Sabbath Even Bloodier Sabbath. The title track has garage-band rawness; Air Dance is \u2013 dare one say it \u2013 oddly beautiful. It\u2019s hit and miss, but it\u2019s still better than almost everything from 1981 onwards.\"\nGeezer Butler told Metal Edge that \"Never Say Die!\" is easily the worst album that the band made. He explained, \"The reason for that is we tried to manage ourselves and produce the record ourselves. We wanted to do it on our own, but in truth, not one of us had a single clue about what to do. By that point, we were spending more time with lawyers and in court rather than being in the studio writing. It was just too much pressure on us, and the writing suffered.\"\nNever Say Die! Tour with Van Halen.\nBlack Sabbath's Never Say Die! Tour opened on 16 May 1978 in Sheffield with Van Halen as their opening act, who'd just scored a hit in the United States with a cover of The Kinks' \"You Really Got Me.\" Ward's drum tech Graham Wright and Osbourne's personal assistant David Tangye, who write extensively about the tour in their 2004 book \"How Black Was Our Sabbath\", reveal that relations between the bands got off to a shaky start at the 22 May show at the Apollo Theatre in Manchester. After Sabbath finished their soundcheck, Van Halen \"hit the stage and started to play Sabbath tunes. It was their way of paying tribute to the Sabs, but Tony Iommi was annoyed by it. He may have misinterpreted the gesture as a piss-take, which it certainly was not. Van Halen were in awe of Sabbath, and their lead guitarist, Eddie Van Halen, was a big fan of Tony. The unwitting faux pas was soon forgotten. The two bands came to get along very well together, and Alex Van Halen would often sit\u00a0... behind Bill's drum kit, watching and listening to him play onstage.\" On the U.S. leg of the tour, Van Halen's presence had a major influence on ticket sales since they were a much bigger draw at home than they were in the UK. Wright and Graham also recount two riots that occurred on the \"Never Say Die!\" tour, the first happening in Neunkirchen am Brand, Germany, in front of a hall crammed with \"thousands of extremely stoned, drunk and rowdy GIs\" when, three songs into a show, Iommi stalked off the stage because of a buzzing from his guitar stack. When the audience realised the band had quit the gig they wrecked the hall. Another riot ensued at the Municipal Auditorium in Nashville when Osbourne didn't show up and the band had to cancel; it later came to light that Osbourne had \"slept right round the clock, woken up, seen that it was six o'clock, and thinking that it was still the evening before, had got ready for the show. Even more incredibly, he'd been sleeping in the wrong room.\" A video from this period, professionally recorded on the UK tour at the Hammersmith Odeon in June 1978, can be seen on the Sanctuary Visual Entertainment DVD, also entitled \"Never Say Die\".\nSeveral US dates featured the Ramones as an opener, either in addition to, or in lieu of Van Halen. The NYC punk rock band was eager to expand their fanbase, and considered themselves to have more in common with the hard rock bands of 1978 than with a band like the Sex Pistols. In part due to one promoter billing the event as \u201cpunk vs. metal\u201d, Sabbath's audience responded to the opener with open hostility.\n\"Top of the Pops\" appearance.\nWith the success of the \"Never Say Die\" single, Black Sabbath was invited to perform on \"Top of the Pops\". The band twice appeared live in the studio, miming to a pre-recorded version of the song. One of these appearances was included on the official \"The Black Sabbath Story, Vol. 1\" video release. In his autobiography, Osbourne remembers the appearance fondly \"'cos we got to meet Bob Marley. I'll always remember the moment he came out of his dressing room \u2013 it was next to ours \u2013 and you literally couldn't see his head through the cloud of dope smoke. He was smoking the biggest, fattest joint I'd ever seen \u2013 and believe me, I'd seen a few. I kept thinking, He's gonna have to lip-synch, \"no one\" can do a live show when they're that high. But no \u2013 he did it live. Flawlessly, too.\" In his autobiography, Iommi reveals that because drummer Bill Ward had his hair in braids at the time, \"everybody thought he was taking the mickey out of Bob (Marley). It wasn't like that at all; it was just the way he happened to have his hair in those days.\"\nTrack listing.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nPersonnel.\nBlack Sabbath\nAdditional musicians\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18844727": "Never Shout Never\nAmerican rock band\nNever Shout Never (originally typeset as nevershoutnever! and NeverShoutNever!) is an American rock band formed in Joplin, Missouri, in 2007. Vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Christofer Drew began the band as a solo project before expanding it to a band, whose best-known lineup included himself, bassist Taylor MacFee, and drummer Hayden Kaiser. The band that accompanied Drew when it was a solo project were originally known as \"The Shout\". Never Shout Never released eight full-length albums and nine EPs.\nHistory.\n2007\u20132009: Formation and early career.\nChristofer Drew Ingle began making music under the alias nevershoutnever! in 2007, when he was 16 years old in his parents basement. His first exposure came through the internet, where he achieved success on Myspace before issuing the extended play, \"The Yippee EP\" on July 29, 2008, and selling 46,000 copies in the US. On July 30, 2008, he was featured on \"TRL\", where he performed his debut single \"Big City Dreams\". The single peaked at number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot Singles Sales chart. To support the EP, he went on tour in the US with Jamestown Story, Owl City, and Handshakes and Highfives during the summer of 2008. He toured with Hellogoodbye and Ace Enders in the fall of 2008.\nNeverShoutNever! released the lead single \"Trouble\" from his third EP, \"Me & My Uke\" on December 29, 2008. The song peaked at number five on the Hot Singles Sales chart. The song was later certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America in May 2012. In January 2009, \"Me & My Uke\" was officially released.\nNeverShoutNever! started touring with The Scene Aesthetic, The Honorary Title, and The Bigger Lights in late February 2009 and then toured with bands such as Forever the Sickest Kids, The Cab, and Mercy Mercedes, among others in spring 2009 as part of The Bamboozle Roadshow 2009. He played at both The Bamboozle Left 2009 and The Bamboozle 2009. In 2009, Never Shout Never won the mtvU Woodie Awards for Breaking Woodie.\n2009\u20132010: \"What Is Love\" and \"Harmony\".\nIt was announced on May 29, 2009, that Ingle had signed to Warner Bros. Records, ending a major-label bidding war. As part of the deal, Ingle runs and make releases on his own imprint label, Loveway Records. Ingle's alias became officially stylized as Never Shout Never. \"The Summer EP\" was Ingle"}, "descending_order": ["197318", "18844727", "639500", "3309694"], "permutation_1": ["639500", "197318", "3309694", "18844727"], "permutation_2": ["3309694", "197318", "18844727", "639500"], "permutation_3": ["3309694", "639500", "197318", "18844727"]}
{"id": "2hop__839040_80728", "docs_added": {"45666888": "Raghu Nandan Mandal\nIndian politician\nRaghunandan Mandal (4 February 1952 \u2013 3 January 2016) was an Indian politician who was a Member of Legislative Assembly from 17 Godda District in Jharkhand from BJP(Bharatiya Janata Party). Mandal overcame his Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) rival Sanjay Prasad Yadav by 34,486 votes. He was also elected as The Assembly committee member on environment and pollution control of jharkhand.\nEducation and background.\nHe graduated in 1971 with a BSc from Marwari College, Bhagalpur University. He was a businessman by profession and an agriculturalist. He was the director of Sumrit Mandal Company PVT LTD before entering politics.\nPersonal life.\nHe was born to Sumrit Mandal and Phulwati Devi. His father was also a Member of Legislative assembly from 17 Godda District in Jharkhand representing JMM (Jharkhand Mukti Morcha) during the period (1985\u20131995). He studied at Ranchi Vikas Vidyalaya. Mandal has been married to Sulochana Mandal since 30 January 1979. They have three children, two sons Amit and Sumit and a daughter named Puja. He died while being taken to a hospital in Jharkhand in 2016 after complaining of chest pains.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "197225": "Jharkhand\nState in eastern India\nJharkhand ( , ; lit.\u2009'the land of forests') is a state in eastern India. The state shares its border with the states of West Bengal to the east, Chhattisgarh to the west, Uttar Pradesh to the northwest, Bihar to the north and Odisha to the south. It is the 15th largest state by area, and the 14th largest by population. Hindi is the official language of the state. The city of Ranchi is its capital and Dumka its sub-capital. The state is known for its waterfalls, hills and holy places; Baidyanath Dham, Parasnath, Dewri and Rajrappa are major religious sites. Jharkhand is primarily rural, with about 24% of its population living in cities as of 2011.\nJharkhand suffers from what is sometimes termed a resource curse: it accounts for more than 40% of India's mineral production but 39.1% of its population is below the poverty line and 19.6% of children under five years of age are malnourished.\nEtymology.\nThe word \"\"Jhar\"\" means 'forest' and \"\"Khand\"\" means 'land' in various Indo-Aryan languages. Thus \"Jharkhand\" means \"forest land\".\nIn the ancient period, in the Mahabharata, the region was referred as Kark Khand due to location near Kark Rekha, that is, Tropic of Cancer. During the Medieval period, the region was known as \"Jharkhand\". According to Bhavishya Purana (1200 CE), Jharkhand was one of the seven Pundra desa. The name is first found on a 13th-century copper plate in Kendrapada, Odisha region from the reign of Narasimha Deva II of Eastern Ganga dynasty. Forest land from Baidhnath dham to Puri was known as Jharkhand. In Akbarnama, from Panchet in the east to Ratanpur to west, Rohtasgarh to the north and the frontier of Odisha to the south was known as Jharkhand.\nHistory.\nAncient period.\nThe region has been inhabited since the Mesolithic-Chalcolithic period, as shown by several ancient cave paintings. \nStone tools have been discovered from Chota Nagpur Plateau region which are from the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods. There are ancient cave paintings in Isko, Hazaribagh district which are from Meso-chalcolithic period (9000\u20135000 BCE). During 2nd millennium BCE the use of Copper tools spread in Chota Nagpur Plateau and these find complexes are known as the Copper Hoard Culture. In the Kabra-Kala mound at the confluence of the Son and North Koel rivers in Palamu district various antiquities and art objects have been found which are from the Neolithic to the medieval period and pot-sherds of Redware, black and red ware, black ware, black slipped ware and NBP ware are from Chalcolithic to the late medieval period. Several iron slags, microliths, and potsherds have been discovered from Singhbhum district that are from 1400 BCE according to carbon dating age. The region was ruled by many empires and dynasties including Nanda, Maurya and Gupta during ancient period.\nIn the Mahabharata, the region was referred as Kark Khand due to its location near Tropic of Cancer. During the age of Mahajanpadas around 500 BCE, Jharkhand state was a part of Magadha and Anga. In the Mauryan period, this region was ruled by a number of states, which were collectively known as the Atavika (forest) states. These states were subdued and were forced to accept the hegemony of the Maurya empire during Ashoka's reign (c.\u2009232 BCE). In the ancient site of Saridkel, burnt brick houses, red ware pottery, copper tools, coins and iron tools have been found which belong to the early centuries CE. Brahmi inscriptions have been found in Khunti district which are from the 3rd century BCE. Samudragupta, while marching through the present-day Chotanagpur region (North and South), directed the first attack against the kingdom of Dakshina Kosala in the Mahanadi valley.\nMedieval period.\nIn the 7th century, the Chinese traveller Xuanzang passed through the region. He described the kingdom as Karnasuvarna, with Shashanka as its ruler. To the north of Karn-Suberna was Magadha, Champa was in the east, Mahendra in the west, and Orissa in the south.\nDuring the medieval period, the region was governed by Nagvanshi, Pala, Khayaravala, Ramgarh Raj and Chero rulers. A Buddhist monastery has been found in Hazaribagh which was built during the Pala period in the 10th century. Bhim Karn was a Nagvanshi king during medieval period. He defeated the Raksel dynasty of Surguja when they invaded the region with cavalry.\nModern period.\nMughal influence reached Palamu during the reign of Emperor Akbar when it was conquered by Rajput Raja Mansingh in 1574. Several invasions took place during Mughal rule. During the reign of the Nagvanshi King Madhu Singh, Akbar's general invaded Khukhra. Also there was an invasion during the reign of Durjan Shah.\nKing Ram Shah ruled Navratangarh from 1640 to 1663. He built the Kapilnath Temple in 1643. He was succeeded by his son Raghunath Shah. Thakur Ani Nath Shahdeo built the Jagannath temple of Ranchi in 1691. The King Medini Ray ruled from 1658 to 1674 in Palamu. His rule extended to areas in South Gaya and Hazaribagh. He attacked Navratangarh and defeated the Nagvanshi Maharaja of Chhotanagpur. Chero rule in the Palamu region lasted until the 19th century until internal conflict between various factions weakened the Cheros and they were defeated by the East India Company. Later Palamu estates were sold by the British.\nDuring the 18th century, regions under the Kings of the Chero dynasty, Nagvanshi dynasty, Ramgarh and Kharagdiha became parts of territories of East India Company. Ramgarh Raj along with estates of other chiefs in the regions were permanently settled as Zamindari estates. The Kharagdiha Rajas were settled as Rajas of Raj Dhanwar in 1809, and the Kharagdiha gadis were separately settled as zamindari estates. Some of the notable Kharagdiha Zamindari estates were Koderma, Gadi Palganj and Ledo Gadi. The princely states in the Chota Nagpur Plateau came within the sphere of influence of the Maratha Empire, but they became tributary states of British East India Company as a result of the Anglo-Maratha Wars and became known as Chota Nagpur Tributary States.\nSubjugation, colonisation and imposition of taxes by the British East India Company resulted in spontaneous resistance from the local people. Chuar Rebellion, the first revolt against the British East India Company led by Jagannath Singh Patar in 1767 with the Bhumij tribals. The Bhumijes again revolted in 1769\u201371, led by their Sardar Ghatwals in Dhalbhum. In 1769, Raghunath Mahato also revolted against the British East India Company (EIC).\nIn 1771, the revolt against the landlords and the British government was led by Tilka Majhi, a Paharia leader in Rajmahal Hills. Soon after in 1779, the Bhumij tribes again rose in arms against the British rule in Manbhum, called the Chuar Rebellion. In 1807, the Oraons in Barway murdered their landlord from Srinagar. The Munda tribe rose in revolt in 1811 and 1813. Bakhtar Say and Mundal Singh, two landowners, fought against the British East India Company in 1812.\nThe Hos in Singhbhum revolted in 1820 and a Kol revolt occurred in 1832. Also in 1832 the Bhumijs revolted again against the British, this time under the leadership of Ganga Narayan Singh, known as the Bhumij Rebellion. During the 19th century, large numbers of santals from Manbhum, Hazaribagh, Midnapore were settled by British in Damin-i-koh to cultivate the land and generate revenue. But the Santal revolted against tax imposition.\nThe Santhal rebellion broke out in 1855 under the leadership of two brothers Sidhu and Kanhu. Later the British renamed it as Santal Pargana.\nThakur Vishwanath Shahdeo and Pandey Ganpat Rai rebelled against the British East India Company in the 1857 rebellion. In the Battle of Chatra, conflict took place between the rebels and the East India company. Tikait Umrao Singh, Sheikh Bhikhari, Nadir Ali and Jai Mangal Singh played pivotal role in the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The brothers Nilambar and Pitambar were chiefs of Bhogta clan of the Kharwar tribe who held ancestral jagirs with many Chero Jagirdars and led revolt against the British East India company.\nAfter the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the rule of the British East India Company was transferred to the Crown in the person of Queen Victoria, who, in 1876, was proclaimed Empress of India. The Cheros and Kharwars again rebelled against the British in 1882 but the attack was repulsed. Then Birsa Munda revolt, broke out in 1895 and lasted until 1900. The revolt though mainly concentrated in the Munda belt of Khunti, Tamar, Sarwada and Bandgaon.\nIn October 1905, the exercise of British influence over the predominantly Hindi-speaking states of Chang Bhakar, Jashpur, Koriya, Surguja, and Udaipur was transferred from the Bengal government to that of the Central Provinces, while the two Oriya-speaking states of Gangpur and Bonai were attached to the Orissa Tributary States, leaving only Kharsawan and Saraikela answerable to the Bengal governor.\nIn 1936, all nine states were transferred to the Eastern States Agency, the officials of which came under the direct authority of the Governor-General of India, rather than under that of any provinces.\nIn March 1940, the INC 53rd Session occurred under the presidency of Maulana Azad at Jhanda Chowk, Ramgarh, which is now Ramgarh Cantonment. Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, Rajendra Prasad, Sarojini Naidu, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Acharya J.B. Kripalani, Industrialist Jamnalal Bajaj and other great leaders of the Indian freedom movement attended the Ramgarh Session. Mahatma Gandhi also opened the Khadi and Village Industries Exhibition at Ramgarh.\nAt that time, under the leadership of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose a conference against Samjhauta was also completed. In Ramgarh, Subhas Chandra Bose was seen as president of the All India Forward Block and M. N. Roy was seen as leader of the Radical democratic party.\nPost Independence.\nAfter Indian independence in 1947, the rulers of many states chose to accede to the Dominion of India. Changbhakar, Jashpur, Koriya, Surguja and Udaipur after that became part of the state of Madhya Pradesh, but Gangpur and Bonai became part of the state of Orissa and Kharsawan and Saraikela became part of the state of Bihar. In 1928, a separate state was demanded by \"Unnati Samaj\", the political wing of the Christian Tribals Association, which submitted a memorandum to the Simon Commission to constitute a tribal state in eastern India. Prominent leaders like Jaipal Singh Munda and Ram Narayan Singh also demanded a separate state. In 1955, the Jharkhand Party, led by Jaipal Singh Munda, submitted a memorandum to the States Reorganization Commission for a separate Jharkhand state comprising the tribal area of South Bihar, but it was rejected because there were many languages, no link language in the region, tribals were in the minority, Hindustani was the majority language, and it risked adverse effect on the economy of Bihar.\nLater the Sadan people, the native various caste/non-tribal groups, also joined the movement for a separate state. In 1972, Binod Bihari Mahato, Shibu Soren and A. K. Roy founded Jharkhand Mukti Morcha. Nirmal Mahto founded the All Jharkhand Students Union. They led the movement for a separate state of Jharkhand. The Jharkhand coordination committee (JCC), consisting of Ram Dayal Munda, B. P. Keshri, Binod Bihari Mahato, Santosh Rana and Suraj Singh Besra started a new initiative and tried to coordinate between different parties. Keshri sent a memorandum to form Jharkhand state in 1988. The Jharkhand co-ordination committee was then led by Congress General Secretary Ram Ratan Ram, who urged Rajiv Gandhi to pay attention to the issue at hand. \nIn July 1988, the Bharatiya Janata party led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Lal Krishna Advani, and Murli Manohar Joshi decided to demand a separate state, Vanachal, comprising the forest region of South Bihar in Jamshedpur. Inder Singh Namdhari, Samresh Singh, and Rudra Pratap Sarangi were the leaders of the Vanachal movement. They organised several rallies to form a separate state.\nThe central government formed a committee on the Jharkhand matter in 1989. It stressed the need for greater allocation of development funds for the area. There was a provision for limited internal autonomy in the hill area of Assam. Other tribal areas were covered by the fifth schedule of the constitution. Chotanagpur and Santal Pargana development boards were constituted under the chairmanship of the then chief minister of Bihar under the provision of the fifth schedule in 1972. This failed to achieve the desired result. Jharkhand Mukti Morcha wanted more representation and the All Jharkhand Students Union was against it. Due to differences these parties broke away from each other. The All Jharkhand Students Union introduced elements of violence in the movement and called for a boycott of election while Jharkhand Mukti Morcha opposed this. The Jharkhand Area Autonomous Council bill passed in Bihar's legislative assembly in December 1994. The Jharkhand Area Autonomous Council were given responsibility for forty areas including agriculture, rural health, public work, public health and minerals. The council has power to recommend legislation to the Assembly through the state government and to frame bylaws and regulations.\nIn 1998, when the separate state movement was falling apart, Justice Lal Pingley Nath Shahdeo was leading the movement. In 1998, the Union government decided to send the bill concerning the formation of the state of Jharkhand to the Bihar Legislative Assembly to which Lalu Prasad Yadav had said that the state would be divided over his dead body. A total of 16 political parties including the Bharatiya Janata Party, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, the All Jharkhand Students Union, and the Congress came in one platform and formed the 'All Party Separate State Formation Committee' to start the movement. Shahdeo was elected as the convener of the committee. Voting on the Jharkhand Act was to be done on 21 September 1998 in the Bihar legislature. On that day the committee, under the leadership of Shahdeo called for Jharkhand Bandh and organised a protest march. Thousands of supporters of a separate state took to the streets led by Shahdeo. He was arrested and detained in a police station for hours along with many supporters.\nIn 1999 the Bharatiya Janata party promised to form a separate Vanachal state if they won the state election with a majority of votes. After the last Assembly election in the state resulted in a hung assembly, RJD's dependence on the Congress extended support on the precondition that RJD would not pose a hurdle to the passage of the Bihar reorganisation Bill. Finally, with the support from both RJD and Congress, the ruling coalition at the Centre led by the Bharatiya Janata Party which had made statehood its main poll plank in the region in successive polls earlier, cleared the Bihar reorganisation Bill in the monsoon session of the Parliament on 2 and 11 August in Loksabha and Rajyasabha. This paved the way for the creation of a separate Vanachal state comprising the Chota Nagpur Division and Santhal Pargana Division of South Bihar. NDA formed the government with Babulal Marandi as chief minister. Later the name of the state was changed from Vanachal to Jharkhand. Babulal Marandi took the oath of chief minister on 15 November 2000 on the anniversary of the birth of tribal leader Birsa Munda.\nJharkhand statehood.\nThe dynamics of resources and the politics of development still influence the socio-economic structures in Jharkhand, which was carved out of the relatively underdeveloped southern part of Bihar. According to the 1991 census, the state has a population of over 20 million out of which 28% is tribal while 12% of the people belong to scheduled castes. Jharkhand has 24 districts, 260 blocks, and 32,620 villages out of which only 45% have access to electricity while only 8,484 are connected by roads. Jharkhand is the leading producer of mineral wealth in the country after Chhattisgarh state, endowed as it is with a vast variety of minerals like iron ore, coal, copper ore, mica, bauxite, graphite, limestone, and uranium. Jharkhand is also known for its vast forest resources.\nNaxal insurgency.\nJharkhand has been at the centre of the Naxalite-Maoist insurgency. Since the uprising of the Naxalites in 1967, 6,000 people have been killed in fighting between the Naxalites and counter-insurgency operations by the police, and its paramilitary groups such as the Salwa Judum.\nDespite having a presence in almost 7.80% of India's geographical area (home to 5.50% of India's population), the state of Jharkhand is part of the \"Red Corridor\" comprising 92,000 square kilometres, where the highest concentration of the groups estimated 20,000 combatants fight. Part of this is due to the fact that the state harbours an abundance of natural resources, while its people live in abject poverty and destitution. The impoverished state provides ample recruits for communist insurgents, who argue that they are fighting on behalf of the landless poor and tribals that see few benefits from the resource extractions. As the federal government holds a monopoly on sub-surface resources in the state, the tribal population is prevented from staking any claim on the resources extracted from their land. In response, the insurgents have recently begun a campaign of targeting infrastructure related to the extraction of resources vital for Indian energy needs, such as coal.\nOn 5 March 2007, Sunil Mahato, a member of the national parliament, was shot dead by Naxalite rebels near Kishanpur while watching a football match on the Hindu festival of Holi. His widow, Suman Mahato, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha candidate, won the Jamshedpur Lok Sabha by-election in September 2007 and served in parliament until 2009.\nGeography.\nJharkhand is located in the eastern part of India and is enclosed by West Bengal to the eastern side, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh to the western side, Bihar to the northern part and Odisha to the southern part.\nJharkhand envelops a geographical area of . Much of Jharkhand lies on the Chota Nagpur Plateau. Many rivers pass through the Chota Nagpur plateau. They are: Damodar, North Koel, Barakar, South Koel, Sankh and Subarnarekha rivers. The higher watersheds of these rivers stretch out within the Jharkhand state. Much of the Jharkhand state is still enclosed by forest. Forests sustain the population of elephants and tigers.\nClimate.\nClimate of Jharkhand varies from Humid subtropical in the north to tropical wet and dry in the south-east. The main seasons are summer, rainy, autumn, winter and spring. The summer lasts from mid-April to mid-June. May, the hottest month, characterised by daily high temperatures around and low temperatures around . The southwest monsoon, from mid-June to October, brings nearly all the state's annual rainfall, which ranges from about in the west-central part of the state to more than in the southwest. Nearly half of the annual precipitation falls in July and August. The winter season lasts from November to February. The temperatures in Ranchi in December usually vary from . Spring season lasts from mid-February to mid-April.\nMain Rivers.\nFor the list of dams built across these revere refer to \nFlora and Fauna.\nJharkhand has a rich variety of flora and fauna. The wildlife sanctuaries, national parks and zoological gardens in the state present a panorama of this variety. There are several wildlife sanctuaries and national park in the state, including Hazaribag Wildlife Sanctuary, Dalma Wildlife Sanctuary, Koderma Wildlife Sanctuary, Lawalong Wildlife Sanctuary, Palkot Wildlife Sanctuary, Mahuadanr Wolf Sanctuary, Palamu Tiger Reserve and Betla National Park. Palamu Tiger Reserve reserve is abode to hundreds of species of flora and fauna, as indicated within brackets: mammals (39), snakes (8), lizards (4), fish (6), insects (21), birds (170), seed bearing plants and trees (97), shrubs and herbs (46), climbers, parasites and semi-parasites (25), and grasses and bamboos (17). \nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nAccording to the 2011 Indian Census, Jharkhand has a population of 32.96\u00a0million, consisting of 16.93\u00a0million males and 16.03\u00a0million females. The sex ratio is 947 females to 1,000 males. The literacy rate of the state was 67.63% with Ranchi district being most educated at 77.13% compared to rural Pakur district being least at 50.17%. In social demographics, Jharkhand's Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes populations are 3,985,644 (12.08%) and 8,646,189 (26.21%), respectively. Nationally, they rank 14th and 6th, comprising 1.98% and 8.29% of the total population within these social groups. They are predominantly concentrated in south-western district Simdega (78.23%), Khunti (77.77%), Gumla (72.11%), Paschim Singhbhum (71.1%), Latehar (66.85%), and in Lohardaga district (60.21%).\nLanguages.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nJharkhand is linguistically diverse, with speakers of Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, and Austroasiatic languages. Hindi is the official language and is spoken as the link language by the people of the state, although different regional languages exist. Some of which, including Nagpuri, Khortha, Kurmali, Magahi and Bhojpuri are categorised as 'Hindi languages' in the Indian census 2011. Jharkhand has accorded additional official language status to Angika, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Bhumij, Ho, Kharia, Kurukh, Khortha, Kurmali, Magahi, Maithili, Mundari, Nagpuri, Odia, Santali and Urdu.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nAs per the 2011 census, Hinduism is the majority religion in the state at 67.8%, followed by Islam at 14.5% and Christianity at 4.3%. Other religions, primarily Sarnaism, claim to be 12.8% of the population.\nHindus form the majority in 19 out of the 24 districts of the Jharkhand. Christianity forms majority in Simdega district (51.04%). Sarna forms majority in Lohardaga (51.01%), West Singhbhum (62.29%) and plurality in Gumla (44.62%) and Khunti (45.37%). Muslims have the highest presence in Pakur district and Sahebganj district of Jharkhand forming 35% and 34% of the population, respectively.\nGovernment and administration.\nThe constitutional head of the government of Jharkhand is the governor, who is appointed by the president of India. The real executive power rests with the chief minister and the cabinet. The political party or the coalition of political parties having a majority in the Legislative Assembly forms the government.\nThe head of the bureaucracy of the state is the chief secretary. Under this position, is a hierarchy of officials drawn from the Indian Administrative Service, Indian Police Service, Indian Forest Service and different wings of the state civil services.\nThe judiciary is headed by the chief justice. Jharkhand has a High Court which has been functioning since 2000. \nAll the branches of the government are located in the state capital, Ranchi.\nAdministrative districts.\nThe state was formed with 18 districts that were formerly part of south Bihar. Some of these districts were reorganised to form 6 new districts, namely, Latehar, Saraikela Kharsawan, Jamtara, Pakur, Khunti and Ramgarh. At present, the state has 5 Divisions and 24 Districts. One interesting thing about Jharkhand is that all its districts, except Lohardaga and Khunti, share a border with a neighbouring state.\nMajor cities.\nLargest Cities in Jharkhand<templatestyles src=\"Nobold/styles.css\"/>\nEconomy.\nThe gross domestic product of Jharkhand is estimated at () in 2020\u201321. The per capita GDP of Jharkhand in 2018\u201319 was .\nJharkhand has several towns and innumerable villages with civic amenities. Urbanization ratio is 24.1%. Jharkhand also has immense mineral resources: minerals ranging from (ranking in the country within bracket) from iron ore (4th), coal (3rd), copper ore (1st), mica (1st), bauxite (3rd), manganese, limestone, china clay, fire clay, graphite (8th), kainite (1st), chromite (2nd), asbestos (1st), thorium (3rd), sillimanite, uranium (Jaduguda mines, Narwa Pahar) (1st) and even gold (Rakha Mines) (6th) and silver and several other minerals. Large deposits of coal and iron ore support concentration of industry, in centres like Jamshedpur, Dhanbad, Bokaro and Ranchi. Tata Steel, a \"NSE NIFTY 500\" conglomerate has its corporate office and main plant in Tatanagar, Jharkhand. It reported a gross income of \u20b9. 204,910 million for 2005. NTPC will start coal production from its captive mine in state in 2011\u201312, for which the company will be investing about Rs 18\u00a0billion.\nIn February 2006, the government of Jharkhand established the Jharkhand Silk Textile and Handicraft Development Corporation (Jharcraft), which promotes local sericulture and weaving and the wider marketing of these products.\nAgriculture is another major economic sector. Farmers in Jharkhand produce several crops such as rice, wheat, maize, pulses, potatoes, and vegetables such as tomato, carrots, cabbage, brinjal, pumpkin, and papaya. Other important industries include the cottage industry and IT.\nCulture.\nCuisine.\nStaple foods of Jharkhand are rice, dal, roti, vegetables, and tubers. Spices are sparingly used in cuisine. Famous dishes include Chhilka Roti, Malpua, Pitha, Dhooska, Arsa roti, Dudhauri, and Panipuri (Gupchup). Rugra and Putoo is a type of edible mushroom that is grown extensively in Jharkhand and harvested during the rainy months. It has a hardened, white, edible shell and a softer dark coloured centre. Bamboo shoot are a versatile ingredient used in many culinary traditions, particularly in Jharkhand cuisine. They can be boiled, steamed, stir-fried, or pickled, making them a popular addition to dishes such as soups, curries, and salads. Bamboo shoots are known for their ability to absorb the flavours of the ingredients they are cooked with, enhancing the overall taste of the dishes. The leaves of Munga (Moringa oleifera) and Koinar (Bauhinia variegata) trees are used as a leafy vegetable or Saag.\nLocal alcoholic drinks include rice beer, originally known as Handi or Handia, named after the vessel, handi (earthen pot), used to make it. Handia is culturally associated with natives, i.e., Sadans and Tribals; this drink is consumed by both men and women on social occasions like marriage and festivals. Another common liquor is called \"Mahua daru\", made from flowers of the Mahua tree (Madhuca longifolia).\nFolk music and dance.\nThere are several folk dances in Jharkhand such as: Jhumair, Mardani Jhumar, Janani Jhumar, Domkach, Vinsariya, Jhumta, Fagua, Angnai, Paiki, Chhau, Firkal, Mundari, and Santali dance.\nFestivals.\nMajor festivals of Jharkhand are Sarhul, Baha Parab, Karam Parab, Mage Parab, Sohrai, Bandna, Tusu festival, Makar Sankranti, Nawakhani, Durga Puja, Jitiya, Manasa Puja, Rath Yatra, Saraswati Puja, Diwali, Holi, Phagua and the Sendra festival.\nPaintings.\nSohrai and Khovar painting is a mural art form practised by women. Sohrai painting is traditionally done at the Sohrai harvest festival, while Khovar painting is done at weddings.\nTattoo.\nThe tattoo making tradition of Godna is an essential part of local tradition.\nCinema.\nJharkhand produces many films in regional and Tribal languages including Nagpuri, Khortha, Santali, Ho, and Kurukh. The film industry in the state of Jharkhand is known as Jhollywood.\nMedia.\nThere are some television channels, newspapers, and radio stations which operate in Jharkhand. DD Jharkhand is an important channel in Jharkhand. All India Radio operates from Ranchi.\nHindustan, Dainik Jagran, Sokal Sokal, Prabhat Khabar, and Ranchi Express are some of the Hindi newspapers and The Hindu, The Times of India, Hindustan Times, Navbharat Times, The Pioneer, and The Telegraph are some English newspapers in Jharkhand.\nTransport.\nRoadways.\nJharkhand has extensive network of National Highways and State Highways. There is of paved National Highways in the state as of 2016. The National highways present in the state are numbered 18, 19, 20, 22, 33, 39, 43, 114A, 118, 133, 133A, 133B, 139, 143, 143A, 143AG, 143D, 143H, 218, 220, 320, 320D, 320G, 333, 333A, 343, 419 and 522. The Golden Quadrilateral network of Delhi \u2013 Kolkata route runs through Jharkhand notably at Dhanbad.\nPorts.\nJharkhand is landlocked state but has numerous rivers and waterways. A multi-modal port has been planned at Sahebganj where river Ganges flows. The project is estimated to cost \u20b965,000 million and phase-1 is estimated to be completed by 2019.\nRailways.\nJharkhand is very well connected by railways. The state has numerous railway stations and railway junctions. Dhanbad Junction is the largest railway station in the state which is connected to almost all big cities of India. Hilly regions of state are equipped with tunnels that form essential organ of railways.\nEducation.\nAs per the 2011 census conducted by Government of India the official literacy rate for the state was 66.41% (male: 76.84%; female: 55.42%) with nine districts above the average literacy rate:\nSince the formation of the new state, the Jharkhand Education Project Council (JEPC) has been implementing four projects to spread elementary education: DPEP, SSA, NPEGEL, and KGBV. The state has been moving towards the goal of universal elementary education but the target of 100% enrolment and retention of children in schools has not yet been attained. Jharkhand has made primary education so accessible that 95% of children of ages 6\u201311 are enrolled in school, as opposed to 56% in 1993\u201394; this will likely improve literacy a great deal.\nSchools.\nThe medium of instruction in schools is Hindi/English with English/Hindi/Sanskrit/Bengali/Odia as second language. After 10 years of schooling, students can join two years of Intermediate course (or +2 courses) in Arts, Science and Commerce. This is followed by three years of degree courses (graduation) or four years of Engineering/Agriculture/Medicine degree.\nThe school system comprises various private and public schools. The government schools are abundant. Few notable schools are: St. Thomas School, Ranchi, Sainik School Tilaiya, Loyola School, Jamshedpur, Delhi Public School, Bokaro, Delhi Public School, Ranchi, Bishop Westcott Boys' School, Ramakrishna Mission Vidyapith, Deoghar, De Nobili School and St. Xavier's School, Hazaribagh.\nIn 2009 Franz Gastler established Yuwa School a NGO in Hutup village in Ranchi district with helps of friends to use football as a platform to combat child marriage, illiteracy and human trafficking in rural India. In 2019, It won the Laureus Sport for Good Award.\nPublic Health.\nBecause of its mild climate, Jharkhand, particularly its capital Ranchi, has been a health resort. As far back as 1918, facilities were set up for treatment of mentally challenged.\nEuropean Mental Hospital was established along with Indian Mental Hospital. Today they are called Central Institute of Psychiatry and Ranchi Institute of Neuro-psychiatry and Allied Sciences respectively.\nIn certain areas of Jharkhand, poverty and consequent malnutrition have given rise to diseases like tuberculosis (TB). In fact, TB has assumed epidemic proportions in certain areas of the state. For management and treatment of such TB, Itki TB Sanatorium, Ranchi, established in 1928 has been doing work as a premier institute for clinical and programmatic management of TB. The Itki TB Sanatorium is well equipped and accredited by the Indian government for quality assurance and Culture and Drug Sensitivity Testing for M.TB. It provides free of cost treatment for TB as well as drug-resistant TB. Likewise, in the field of treatment of cancer, Tata Main Hospital, Jamshedpur, is rendering pioneering work. In the same way, Bokaro General Hospital equipped with modern facilities for the treatment of cancer and heart-related problems with the capacity of 1100 beds one of the largest in eastern India.\nAlthough several public and private health facilities are available in the state, overall infrastructure for dispensing health related services require improvements. An exception is the Tata Motors Hospital which is an example of an ISO 14001 and 18001 certified hospital with DNB teaching facilities.\nRanchi, the capital, has witnessed a sharp growth in the number of hospitals.\nFluoride in groundwater presents a public health problem in Jharkhand. A recent survey led by the Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi in collaboration with UNICEF in the northwest districts of Palamau and Garhwa found fluoride levels above the drinking WHO drinking water guidelines. Excessive amounts of fluoride in drinking water can lead to dental fluorosis, prevalent bone fractures, and skeletal fluorosis, an irreversible disabling condition. Some work has focused on combating fluorosis through increased calcium intake by consuming local plants. Researchers at Princeton University and the Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi are currently investigating defluoridation options, while performing an epidemiological survey to assess the extent of fluoride linked health problems and the impact of future interventions.\nAlmost 80% of Jharkhand's people are farmers, although it contains 40% of India's mineral reserves it has some of India's poorest people, in Summer 2009 the state was threatened by drought, with people criticising the government for not providing food aid or assistance.\nSports.\nJRD TATA Sports Complex, Jamshedpur hosts football matches of Indian Super League and is the home of ISL based football club Jamshedpur FC.\nCricket, hockey, and football are common games in Jharkhand. Players like Jaipal Singh, a former Indian hockey captain and Olympian and Manohar Topno currently play for the Indian Hockey team. Jaipal Singh was the captain of the hockey team that won the first gold medal for India in the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam. Mahendra Singh Dhoni who was the captain of Indian cricket team and led the Indian cricket team to ICC Cricket World Cup glory on 2 April 2011, ending a 28-year wait to repeat the feat achieved by former Indian captain Kapil Dev in 1983 at Lord's, England is from here.\nOther notable cricketers from Jharkhand are Varun Aaron, Shahbaz Nadeem, and Saurabh Tiwary. He was one of the key batsmen in the Indian team that won the 2008 U/19 Cricket World Cup in Malaysia. Other sportspeople include Deepika Kumari, a young archer who won gold medal in the 2010 Commonwealth games in the women's individual recurve event. Nikki Pradhan currently a member of the national hockey team. Pradhan was the first female hockey player from Jharkhand to represent India in the Olympics.\nAn International Cricket stadium with an indoor stadium and a practice ground has been constructed. This international stadium has hosted an International match between India and England on 19 January 2013. Apart from that, this stadium has hosted two IPL 6 matches for KKR and qualifier 2 of IPL 8 between CSK and RCB and Celebrity Cricket League Matches for Bhojpuri Dabanggs. A tennis academy, which was inaugurated by Sania Mirza and Shoaib Malik, also runs besides the cricket stadium. Ranchi is among six cities in Hockey India League to be played in January 2013. Ranchi franchise was bought by Patel-Uniexcel Group and the team named Ranchi Rhinos which is now being co-hosted by Mahendra Singh Dhoni and named as Ranchi Rays.\nTourism.\nJharkhand is known for its waterfalls, hills and holy places. Parasnath, Baidyanath Dham, Maa Dewri Temple and Chhinnamasta Temple are major religious places.\nTattapani Hot Water Spring is located 8\u00a0km from Latehar. The hot spring water come out from different places on the Sukari River bed. Rich in sulphur, the hot spring is believed to have medicinal properties and good for skin.\nItkhori is a holy place for Hindus, Buddhists and Jains. It is believed to be the place from where Gautama Buddha started his journey for Bodh Gaya. Many sculptures of Hindu, Jain and Buddhist art styles were found in 2018. Rankini Temple of Jadugora is famous in Jharkhand, as well as in Odisha, West Bengal and Bihar. There are several waterfalls in the state including Jonha Falls, Hundru Falls, Dassam Falls, Perwaghagh Falls and Panchghagh Falls. Netarhat is a hill station in the state.\nThere are several wildlife sanctuaries and national park in Jharkhand including Betla National Park and Dalma Wildlife Sanctuary, which are major attraction for tourists.\nState Museum Hotwar and Tribal Research Institute and Museum showcase various cultural heritage and tribal culture of Jharkhand.\nReferences.\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nGovernment\nGeneral information"}, "descending_order": ["45666888", "197225"], "permutation_1": ["45666888", "197225"], "permutation_2": ["45666888", "197225"], "permutation_3": ["45666888", "197225"]}
{"id": "2hop__753565_276103", "docs_added": {"134350": "North Kingstown, Rhode Island\nNorth Kingstown is a town in Washington County, Rhode Island, United States, and is part of the Providence metropolitan area. The population was 27,732 in the 2020 census. North Kingstown is home to the birthplace of American portraitist Gilbert Stuart, who was born in the village of Saunderstown. Within the town is Quonset Point, location of the former Naval Air Station Quonset Point, known for the invention of the Quonset hut, as well as the historic village of Wickford.\nHistory.\nThe area was first settled by Roger Williams and Richard Smith who set up trading posts near Wickford where Smith's Castle is today. The town of Kings Towne was founded in 1674, by the colonial government, and included the present day towns of North Kingstown, South Kingstown, Exeter, and Narragansett. In 1723, Kings Towne was split into two parts, North Kingstown and South Kingstown, with North Kingstown, having the earliest settlements, retaining the 1674 establishment date. In 1742, the town of Exeter was taken from the western part of North Kingstown.\nOn September 17, 2024, the National Park Service announced that North Kingstown was named a World War II Heritage City.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of which is land and (25.28%) is water. It is bordered on the east by Narragansett Bay.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nAs of the 2020 census, there were 27,732 people and 11,338 households in the town. The population density was . There were 12,189 housing units in the town. The racial makeup of the town was 89.59% White, 1.27% African American, 0.57% American Indian/Alaska Native, 1.90% Asian, 1.19% from some other race other races, and 5.42% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 3.65% of the population.\nThere were 11,338 households, out of which 28.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 54.7% were married couples living together, 23.6% had a female householder with no spouse present and 14.2% had a male householder with no spouse present. 11.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 4.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.42 and the average family size was 2.98.\nIn the town, the population was spread out, with 18.4% under the age of 18, 9.5% from 18 to 24, 22.6% from 25 to 44, 28.1% from 45 to 64, and 21.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 44 years.\nThe median income for a household in the town was $120,565, and the median income for a family was $144,898. The per capita income for the town was $61,280. About 6.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 9.1% of those under age 18 and 6.6% of those age 65 or over.\nTransportation.\nWickford Junction is a terminus station on the Providence/Stoughton Line of the MBTA Commuter Rail, providing weekday train service to Providence Station and Boston's South Station. At 63 miles from Boston, it is the most distant station in the MBTA's 135-station commuter-rail network, and the only one in its most expensive fare zone.\nRIPTA also services in the town inbound to Providence and outbound to Narragansett or Newport.\nNorth Kingstown is also served by a passenger ferry connecting to the island of Martha's Vineyard.\nEducation.\nNorth Kingstown School Department is the municipal school district. It operates North Kingstown High School.\nOther National Historic Places in North Kingstown.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>", "3301604": "Wickford, Rhode Island\nVillage in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, US\nWickford is a small village in the town of North Kingstown, Rhode Island, United States, which is named after Wickford in Essex, England. Wickford is located on the western side of Narragansett Bay, just about a 20-minute drive across two bridges from Newport, Rhode Island. The village is built around one of the most well-protected natural harbors on the eastern seaboard, and features one of the largest collections of 18th century dwellings to be found anywhere in the Northeast. Today, the majority of the village's historic homes and buildings (most in private hands) remain largely intact upon their original foundations.\nHistory.\nWickford is generally said to have been settled around 1637, when theologian and Rhode Island state founder Roger Williams bought a parcel of land from sachem Canonicus and established a trading post there. Prior to European contact, the lands in and around Wickford had long served as dwelling, fishing, and hunting grounds to the Narragansett people, who were one of New England's more powerful and prominent tribes at the time when Williams found his way to their shores.\nRichard Smith established a trading post on Narragansett Bay near the mouth of Cocumscussoc Brook at about the same time as Williams' purchase. He was a Puritan from Gloucester, England who had originally settled in the Plymouth Colony's town of Taunton. In 1637, he built what appears to have been a rather grand, gabled house on the site, which Williams described in his letters as the first English house in the area. This house was also heavily fortified, and thus became known as \"Smith's Castle\".\nDuring 1651, Smith purchased Roger Williams' trading post, and continued expanding his holdings over the years, building what came to be called the \"Cocumscussoc Plantation\". His plantation became a center of social, religious, and political life in the area. During King Philip's War, the only incident of an individual being hanged, drawn, and quartered for treason on American soil took place at Smith's Castle in 1676. Joshua Tefft was executed by this method, an English colonist accused of having fought on the side of the Narragansetts during the Great Swamp Fight.\nDuring King Philip's War, many of the homes were destroyed that had been built during this brief period of expansion. One of the homes that went was Smith's Castle, which was burned to the ground in 1676. Two years later, Richard Smith Jr. built a new home on the old foundation, retaining the name \"Smith's Castle\". This structure remains standing today and is one of the area's most visited historic sites.\nFollowing King Philip's War, Wickford grew steadily as a port and shipbuilding center. To this day, the waterfront remains very active. Captain Lodowick Updike developed much of the early village between 1709\u20131715 after inheriting the land in 1692 from his grandfather Richard Smith, owner of Smith's Castle and the surrounding lands. The village was often interchangeably called \"Updike's New Town\" or \"Wickford\" in honor of the English home town of the wife of Governor John Winthrop of Connecticut. In 1707, the Old Narragansett Church was founded in downtown Wickford, and survives as the oldest Episcopal church building in the northeastern United States. The British military attempted to raid Wickford during the American Revolution in 1776, but the \"Wickford gun\" was used to thwart the invading British expedition, a single cannon commissioned by the General Assembly for the town to defend itself. Later, the gun was taken to Point Judith, despite local Tories' attempts to disarm the weapon. There it was used to force a British ship to surrender its crew. The prisoners were removed to Providence.\nIn the 1800s, the Washington Academy was established as a crucial institution to meet the growing need for public education. Founded in North Kingstown, with contributions from leaders in Providence and Newport, this academy aimed to train young men as educators. Samuel Elam, a prominent businessman from New York and Newport, served as its first president. He maintained a summer estate near the small mill village of Annaquatucket in North Kingstown.\nThe prosperity of Wickford began to decline when it was bypassed by the Providence and Stonington Railroad in the late 1830s. Additionally, a shipping dispute with Providence, fueled by exorbitant wharfage prices set by waterfront property owners, deterred major trading companies like Brown & Ives from utilizing Wickford.\nThe revitalization of Wickford commenced with the construction of the Sea View Trolley Line about two decades later. Wealthy Narragansett casino owners, eager to facilitate access to their resorts and beaches, largely funded this initiative, following the success of the Newport Line.\nNotable residents.\nIn 1755, painter Gilbert Stuart was born in Saunderstown, a village to the south of Wickford, in a snuff-mill that still stands and is open to the public in season. Other famous residents have included novelist Owen Wister, who for decades summered in a home just to the south of the village. Wickford was also home to Paule Stetson Loring, artist for \"Yachting\" magazine and other publications, and longtime editorial page cartoonist for \"The Providence Journal\". A popular urban legend maintains that novelist John Updike hailed originally from Wickford\u2014but this is not the case. Updike was born and raised in Pennsylvania. Updike did, however, use Wickford as the model for the fictional village of Eastwick in his novel, \"The Witches of Eastwick\" (Knopf: 1984). (Nevertheless, a branch of the Updike, or Op Den Dyck, family was among the first settling families of Wickford; the original village was at one time called \"Updike's Newtown\". The descendants of Richard Smith and Lodowick Updike intermarried and the Updikes were residents of Smith's Castle in the colonial era.) Christian leader Joshua V. Himes grew up in Wickford.\nWickford Art Festival.\nThe Wickford Art Festival\u2014held in July of every year since 1962 and hosted by the Wickford Art Association\u2014is one of the leading such events on the eastern seaboard, attracting hundreds of prominent artists and thousands of spectators from across the country and around the world.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1092886": "Wickford\nTown and civil parish in Essex, England\nWickford is a town and civil parish in the south of the English county of Essex, with a population of 33,486. Located approximately 30 miles (50\u00a0km) east of London, it is within the Borough of Basildon along with the original town of Basildon, Billericay, Laindon and Pitsea. \nWickford has a main high street which includes a wide range of shops. It also has a swimming pool, library, open-air market and a community centre within the vicinity of the town centre.\nHistory.\nWickford has a history going back over two thousand years. There is evidence that the area itself was inhabited in prehistoric times probably by a tribe of Britons called Trinovantes. There was a Roman military marching camp on the Beauchamps Farm site, which was succeeded by a Roman villa. This is now the site of Beauchamps High School. This area on higher ground was the historic core of Wickford, the site of the manor house and the parish church of St Catherine's. Over time, the commercial centre of Wickford has migrated westwards towards the modern High Street on the other side of the River Crouch.\nThe place name 'Wickford' is first attested in a Saxon charter of 995, where it appears as \"Wicford\"; it appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as \"Wincfort\". The name means 'ford by a wych elm or ford by a dairy-farm'.\nBefore the 20th century, Wickford was an agricultural village. At the time of the Domesday Survey, six land-holders were recorded. Historically, there have been only two considerable estates in Wickford: the manor of Wickford Hall and the manor of Stilemans. Robert Wikeford or de Wickford (c.1320\u201390), Archbishop of Dublin, was born in Wickford and his family are thought to have been Lords of the Manor of Wickford Hall.\nGovernance.\nWickford was an ancient parish in the county of Essex and, from 1894, had a parish council. In 1934, the parish council was abolished when the town became part of Billericay Urban District. The civil parish was re-created on 1 April 2022. The first town councillors took office following an uncontested election in May 2022, and the council held its first meeting on 16 May 2022 at the Wick Community Centre.\nAmerican relations.\nThe village of Wickford in Rhode Island, United States, is believed to have been named after this town.\nWickford was also the English birthplace of Elizabeth Reade (1615\u201372), the second wife of John Winthrop the Younger (1606\u201376), Governor of Connecticut; she was also a step-daughter of Hugh Peter (1598\u20131660), a prominent supporter of the Parliamentary cause during the English Civil War.\nNaturism.\nWickford became the birthplace of Naturism in the United Kingdom; in 1924, the English Gymnosophist Society was formed and had its home in the town.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, the edge of the town was hit by a German doodlebug and, on 6 December 1944, a V-2 rocket fell in Branksome Avenue, about a mile west of the town centre. Around the town, in amongst the hedgerows and fields, there are numerous pillboxes constructed as a part of British anti-invasion preparations.\n1958 flood.\nIn 1958, Wickford town centre was hit by a flood which made national news headlines. The most striking image of the flood was a double-decker bus, left stranded at Halls Corner overnight, partly submerged by the floodwater. A second flood, in 1960, meant that changes were made to the course of the River Crouch; this included turning the river into a concrete channel through the centre of the town, although this may be removed in the coming years, depending on the scale of the Wickford Masterplan (see below).\nGeography.\nFor the most part, Wickford is flat and above sea level. The highest point, on the outskirts of the town, is above sea level. The River Crouch flows through the town, from the west to the east. The River Wick flows into the River Crouch from the south.\nThe built-up area of Wickford extends into the neighbouring parishes of Runwell to the north and Shotgate to the east. \nWick Country Park.\nThe Wick Country Park comprises of former agricultural land, with over 2\u00a0km (1 1/4 miles) of easy access trails around the site. The trails leads visitors past old hedgerows, the lake, ponds, World War II pillboxes and recent woodland plantings; bridges and boardwalks allow the trails to continue over the North Benfleet brook.\nTransport.\nRailway.\nWickford railway station is situated on the Shenfield to Southend Line, which provides services between London Liverpool Street and Southend Victoria. A journey to London takes approximately 40 minutes.\nIn addition, the Crouch Valley line has services between Wickford and Southminster.\nGreater Anglia manages the station and operates all of its passenger services.\nBuses.\nBus services in Wickford are operated primarily by First Essex, but also by Stephensons of Essex and NIBS Buses. \nRoutes include:\nRoads.\nThe town can be reached easily via the A127, which connects east London and Southend-on-Sea, and by the A130 from Chelmsford.\nMedia.\nLocal TV coverage is provided by BBC London and ITV London which is received from the Crystal Palace TV transmitter. BBC East and ITV Anglia can also be received from the Sudbury TV transmitter. \nLocal radio stations are on BBC Essex on 95.3 FM, Heart East on 96.3 FM, and Gateway 97.8, a community based radio station which broadcast from Basildon on 97.8 FM. \nThe town is served by the local newspaper, Southend Echo.\nThe Master Plan.\nThe Wickford Masterplan was first unveiled at the Wickford Community Centre in December 2004 and published in November 2005 by DTZ Pieda Consulting, at a budget of \u00a3125\u00a0million, and many of the developments are currently in progress. At the heart of the proposals is the redevelopment of the High Street, which will be redesigned to be the town's premier meeting place. The Masterplan would create new public spaces, enhance the retail environment through the renewal of retail floor space and bring the market into the street scene, promoting urban living above shops and on the existing market site.\nAdjacent to the River Crouch, a number of high quality residential developments promoted as the \"Town Centre Riverside Living\" complex would revitalise the riverside as a public asset and promotion of new eating and drinking opportunities. In addition, a new residential development to the west of Market Avenue will be constructed.\nPromoting the station entrances on both sides of the railway line as key gateways to Wickford are also key areas of the plan, which would enhance transport interchange facilities and bring forward the car park site on Station Road for development as a new multi-storey car park and mixed-use development. As of present only the northern side of the station facing The Broadway is easily accessible, with the southern London-bound track only accessible from the outside though a small out-of-way footpath from Market Avenue as a courteous entrance for wheelchair-using passengers.\nPublic and health services would be improved under the scheme, with the re-organisation of existing health, library and community services into a new 'iconic' building to the east of Market Avenue as an integrated community service facility.\nThe Eastern Extension would create a better presence and new linkages to the east of the town centre by redeveloping the car park into a multi-storey development with residential and live-work uses and a new housing scheme to the east of Wickford Bypass. The Southern Gateway area, which surrounds London Road and the southern end of the High Street, are also planned to undergo a transition with a strong leisure and recreational theme, building on existing eating and drinking facilities and incorporating compatible residential uses.\nOverall 650 apartments are planned to be built as part of the Masterplan as officially stated by councillor Tony Ball, although other sources opposed to the project claim this figure is closer to 735.\nOpposition.\nThe Masterplan has met with resistance with many residents of Wickford, mainly due to overall cost, and also the fear from some older residents that raising the level of the river could see repeats of the floods in 1958 and 1960.\nThere have also been criticism over the number of developments being constructed, which some say threaten to overdevelop and cause environmental and aesthetic damage to the town centre whilst providing minimal improvements to public services; one such group is the Wickford Action Group who has campaigned against many of the revisions made prior to the public approval of the plan.\nProgress.\nConstruction began in earnest in February 2007, which saw the demolition of many of the buildings in Lower Southend Road to make way for a new residential area. As of December 2009 this development has been partially completed (Riverside Place phase 1 + Riverside Court), however the compulsory purchase order of the post sorting office has been withdrawn leaving the fate of Riverside Place Phase 2 in doubt.\nAs of April 2010, the whole of the Masterplan project is facing serious delays and construction has halted due to the global financial crisis. In May 2009 the construction company Bradgate Developments released a statement assuring residents the project was still on track.\nProposed super-max prison.\nPlans to build a prison capable of accommodating up to 1,500 inmates on land formerly of the Runwell Hospital mental institute were scrapped. The land is now a housing estate.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4073331": "Wickford Junction station\nRailway station in North Kingstown, RI\nWickford Junction station is a commuter rail station located in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, United States. It is the southern terminus of the MBTA Commuter Rail Providence/Stoughton Line and serves as a park and ride location for commuters to Providence and Boston. The station consists of a single high-level side platform on a stub-end siding next to the Northeast Corridor mainline.\nThe first station at the site opened in 1844. In 1870, the Newport and Wickford Railroad and Steamboat Company was opened from the station to Wickford Landing, where it connected with steamships to Newport, Rhode Island. The station was rebuilt in 1871, expanded in 1887, and rebuilt again around 1890 after a fire. Branch service ended in 1925, but the station remained open until 1981. A new station and parking garage opened on the same site on April 23, 2012, as part of the South County Commuter Rail project, which also included the new T. F. Green Airport station.\nHistory.\nFormer station.\nIn 1844, seven years after the Rhode Island section of the New York, Providence and Boston Railroad opened, a small station was placed at Wickford. The Newport and Wickford Railroad and Steamboat Company opened in 1870 as a branch from the mainline to Wickford Landing, where wealthy riders would board steamships to the resorts and summer homes of Newport, Rhode Island. A new station named Wickford Junction was built in 1871 at a cost of $8,000; a $3,500 addition was added sixteen years later. The station burned and was replaced by a smaller structure around 1890. Passenger service on the branch ended in 1925, though some mainline service continued to stop.\nThe station building was torn down in 1969 as rail service declined, leaving just the stone foundation, which was later filled with gravel. The pedestrian overpass was moved in 1971 to Route 128 station, where it remained until Route 128 station was rebuilt in 2000. The station, by then just bare platforms, was served by a single New London-Providence round trip (cut to Westerly-Providence by Penn Central on November 22, 1971). The commuter train was discontinued on June 3, 1977. Amtrak's New Haven-Boston \"Beacon Hill\" began service on April 30, 1978, including a stop at Wickford Junction. The \"Beacon Hill\" was discontinued on October 1, 1981.\nThe Wickford Landing branch's right-of-way is still extant, as are the remains of a turntable about north of Ten Rod Road. The state is considering building a bikeway along the right-of-way to connect the Wickford town center with the Wickford Junction development and station.\nModern station.\nAfter \"Beacon Hill\" service ended in 1981, some residents proposed a new station and the restoration of service. Bob Coie, a local builder, had bought a strip of land along the tracks in 1959 and acquired a large parcel along their west side in 1982. In 1985, he convinced the town to upzone the land for commercial use with the intention of eventually building a \"pre-planned business district\" and commuter rail station there. A state study of rail corridors was completed in 1994 and the Northeast Corridor was designated as the highest-priority line for commuter service to Providence. An addendum in 1995, assuming a quick start to operations, projected that daily ridership from Wickford would be 2,869 in 2000 and 3,386 in 2020. An operations plan was released in 2001, and environmental assessment was completed in 2003.\nBy November 2006, the station and associated track work was expected to cost $43.7 million, of which $24.99 million would be Federal Transit Administration New Starts funding. The station received a total of $59 million in federal funds, including the $24.99 million from New Starts and $4.35 million in stimulus funds. In late 2009, the State of Rhode Island spent $3.2 million to purchase of land for the station and parking garage, with hopes that it could be in service in 2011.\nGround was broken for the new station on August 18, 2010. Primary construction work on the station platform and garage was completed on time and under budget in December 2011, and a test train was run to the station in March 2012. The station opened on April 23, 2012. A major part of the modern station is the four-story parking garage, which was modeled after the nearby Lafayette Mill. The garage includes an indoor waiting room\u2014rare in the MBTA system\u2014and a small coffee/snack shop. An -tall bronze sculpture celebrating the history of rail service at Wickford Junction was completed in October 2015.\nRidership.\nRidership at Wickford Junction has been far below projections, some of which had assumed that transit-oriented development would be constructed at the station. Daily boardings were projected to reach 3,544 in 2025 according to the 1995 analysis. This was reduced to 1,669 by 2020 in the 2003 Environmental Assessment, but raised again to 3,386 by 2020 in a 2005 analysis.\nInitial ridership in May 2012 was 130 inbound riders per day, of whom 80 percent rode to Providence and 20 percent to Boston. Ridership increased to 150 riders per day by early June and to 175 daily by February 2014.\nRidership averaged 292 daily boardings in the first quarter of 2017. For the second half of 2017, the state offered free intrastate rides in an attempt to promote the under-utilized T.F. Green Airport and Wickford Junction stations. The six-month promotion was expected to cost about $102,000. Ridership increased by 50% within the first month of the promotion. However, a 2018 count totalled only 235 daily boardings.\nAs of 2017[ [update]] the station only has weekday service, but planners hope to add weekend service eventually. Previous official discussions about adding weekend service to T. F. Green Airport and Wickford Junction took place in 2014.\nBus operations and consolidation.\nWickford Junction's drop-off lane also serves as a busway, which RIPTA bus route 66 URI/Galilee briefly served before it was rerouted to a park-and-ride closer to Route 2. In January 2013, RIDOT began planning to sell the park-and-ride property and reroute the 66 and the new 65X Wakefield Express to Wickford Junction on all trips; however, the plan was held up by concerns about eliminating free parking in the lot in favor of the paid garage. In July 2015, the agency renewed plans to sell the park-and-ride lot for an estimated $1.9 million and reroute the buses, but similar concerns were voiced at a public meeting. A judge blocked RIDOT's sale plan in July 2017 over concerns that the family of the original property owners (from whom it was taken by eminent domain in the 1930s) may have had the right to buy back the property.\nIn August 2015, RIDOT announced that it would be taking over operations and maintenance at Wickford Junction from a private contractor. The savings from the change\u2014estimated at $340,000 annually\u2014were to be used to increase frequencies on the 65X route. At the same time, RIDOT began a two-week, $372,500 project to allow bus operations to be shifted to the station, which involved constructing a bus depot next to the garage and a new access driveway from Route 102.\nOnly several days of \"preliminary work\" were completed by August 31 when Coie's company, owner of the adjacent shopping plaza, filed a lawsuit against RIDOT. The suit alleged that the changes would reduce traffic to the shopping center and cause a safety issue. RIDOT answered the claim, saying that the 2009 land deal gave the agency exclusive rights to the transit facility land. The state settled the lawsuit with the company in November 2015 by agreeing to pay $750,000 by July 2016. Effective December 7, 2015, all 65X and 66 trips were rerouted to Wickford Junction, with the garage now open 24/7. The restrooms and waiting room had full hours beginning in January 2016.\nRail operations.\nThe station opened on April 23, 2012, with ten trains in each direction on weekdays. Two off-peak trains ran only as far as Providence, while the other eight\u2014including five rush hour trains\u2014ran to Boston. Travel time is approximately 35 minutes to Providence and 100 minutes to Boston.\nThe station is located on a siding which connects to the southbound mainline track of the Northeast Corridor at Stony interlocking, north of the station. The siding allows Amtrak trains to pass while a commuter train is stopped at the station and laying over. Wickford Junction station is located at milepost 165.8 on the Northeast Corridor, from Providence and from Boston.\nThe 2014 \"State Rail Plan\" recommended the implementation of shuttle service between Wickford Junction and Providence via T.F. Green Airport with half-hour headways. The service, which could be operated with multiple units rather than conventional locomotive-hauled commuter trains, was expected to increase ridership at Wickford to as much as 3,400 riders per day.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3558499": "Wickford railway station\nRailway station in Essex, England\nWickford railway station is a junction stop on the Shenfield to Southend Line and also the western terminus of the Crouch Valley Line in the east of England, serving the town of Wickford in the Basildon district of Essex. It is down the line from London Liverpool Street and is situated between Billericay to the west and, to the east, Rayleigh on the Southend Line and Battlesbridge on the Crouch Valley Line. The Engineer's Line Reference for the line is SSV, the station's three-letter station code is WIC.\nMost Southend services connect to the Great Eastern Main Line at Shenfield for northbound connections. Peak-time trains to/from Southminster also run through to London. Wickford station, and all trains serving it, are currently operated by Greater Anglia.\nHistory.\nThe line from Shenfield to Wickford, along with the station, were opened for goods on 19 November 1888 and for passengers on 1 January 1889 by the Great Eastern Railway. \nThe station was previously called Wickford Junction, when the Crouch Valley route to Southminster also included a branch to Maldon West and more agricultural traffic passed through the station.\nAt the London end of the station, there once was a goods yard and turntable for steam locomotives; it was closed in 1954. A couple of sidings remain here for storing engineering vehicles or failed trains, but much of the railway land here is now in use as a car park for passengers. The line from Wickford to Southend Victoria was converted from semaphore signalling to 3-aspect, automatic and semi-automatic, colour light signals on 26 June 1938. At the same time, the signal boxes at Fanton, Rayleigh, and Rochford were decommissioned. \nThe Shenfield to Southend Victoria line was electrified using 1.5 kV DC overhead line electrification on 31 December 1956. This was changed to 6.25 kV AC in November 1960 and to 25 kV AC on 25 January 1979. Platforms 1 and 4 were electrified when the Southminster branch was electrified on 12 May 1986.\nThe signal box that was formerly located at the end of platforms 3 and 4, before the bridge crossing Wickford High Street, was demolished in the early 1990s following the introduction of new signalling controlled from Liverpool Street. The upper floor of the original Great Eastern Railway station buildings on platforms 1 and 2 were destroyed by fire in the late 1990s; however, the ground floor (including the ticket office, waiting room and staff accommodation) was saved and remained in use until 2021.\nIn 2020, Greater Anglia submitted plans to demolish the station building so that platform 1 could be extended for the new longer trains. It was demolished in 2021. The extended platform was opened on 26 June 2021.\nDescription.\nWickford station comprises four platforms:\nServices.\nAll services at Wickford are operated by Greater Anglia. The typical off-peak service in trains per hour is:\nAdditional services operate during peak hours.\nOn Sundays, services between London and Southend are reduced to 2 tph and services to Southminster are reduced to hourly.\n! Preceding station\n! colspan=\"3\" | National Rail\n! Following station\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "72978748": "Newport and Wickford Railroad and Steamboat Company\nRailroad in Rhode Island (1871\u20131909)\nThe Newport and Wickford Railroad and Steamboat Company was a railroad and steamboat operator in Rhode Island. It was first chartered in 1862 as the Wickford Branch Railroad, and intended to connect Wickford Junction station to downtown Wickford, Rhode Island, by rail, and Wickford to Newport, Rhode Island, by steamboat. The company changed its name to the Wickford Railroad in 1864, before adopting its final name in 1870. Construction was completed in 1871, when the railroad began hauling both passengers and freight with a single locomotive and two railroad cars. Steamboats were purchased to connect to Newport. The railroad operated under the control of the New York, Providence and Boston Railroad, but maintained its own corporate identity until a 1909 takeover by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. Passenger trains and the steamboat service were both ended in October 1925, and the final half a mile to Wickford Landing was abandoned in 1938. The rest of the line was abandoned by the New Haven in 1962.\nHistory.\nFormation and construction.\nThe New York, Providence and Boston Railroad (known as the Stonington Line) was the first railroad to be built in southern Rhode Island, completed in 1837. The company planned to route their line directly through the coastal village of Wickford, but surveyors were chased out of town by local farmers armed with guns. As a result, the Stonington Line avoided Wickford, passing by west. By the 1860s, Wickford residents had come to regret rejecting the railroad, and therefore decided to form their own company to connect Wickford to the Stonington Line.\nThe railroad would also connect to Wickford's port, where steamboats could be run to Newport, Rhode Island, a popular summer destination for wealthy New York City residents. At the time, the connection between trains from New York"}, "descending_order": ["1092886", "3301604", "4073331", "3558499", "72978748", "134350"], "permutation_1": ["1092886", "72978748", "3558499", "4073331", "134350", "3301604"], "permutation_2": ["1092886", "72978748", "4073331", "3558499", "134350", "3301604"], "permutation_3": ["3301604", "72978748", "1092886", "134350", "4073331", "3558499"]}
{"id": "2hop__175168_110222", "docs_added": {"5695377": "The Painter's Studio\nPainting by Gustave Courbet\nThe Painter's Studio (; in full, \"The Painter's Studio: A real allegory summing up seven years of my artistic and moral life\") is an 1855 oil-on-canvas painting by Gustave Courbet. It is located in the Mus\u00e9e d'Orsay in Paris, France.\nCourbet painted \"The Painter's Studio\" in Ornans, France in 1855. \"The world comes to be painted at my studio,\" said Courbet of the Realist work. The figures in the painting are allegorical representations of various influences on Courbet's artistic life. On the left are human figures from all levels of society. In the center, Courbet works on a landscape, while turned away from a nude model who is a symbol of Academic art. On the right are friends and associates of Courbet, mainly elite Parisian society figures, including Charles Baudelaire, Champfleury, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and Courbet's most prominent patron, Alfred Bruyas.\nThe 1855 Paris World Fair's jury accepted eleven of Courbet's works for the Exposition Universelle, but \"The Painter's Studio\" was not among them. In an act of self promotion and defiance, Courbet, with the help of Alfred Bruyas, opened his own exhibition (The Pavilion of Realism) close to the official exposition; this was a forerunner of the various Salon des Refus\u00e9s. Very little praise was forthcoming, and Eug\u00e8ne Delacroix was one of the few painters who supported the work. Of the painting, Courbet stated that \"The Painter's Studio\" \"represents society at its best, its worst, and its average.\"\nDescription.\nThe painting was produced during Courbet's involvement with Realism in art in the mid-19th century. Due to the short amount of time Courbet had to paint it, many original plans for the work had to be discarded. The most noticeable example of this is in the background of the painting. On the back wall of the studio in the painting, Courbet planned to paint replications of other works of his. He ran out of time to paint these in their entirety, so he then covered them up with a reddish-brown preparation color, leaving the partially-finished paintings still relatively visible.\nLeft side.\nThe left side of the painting depicts people of everyday life in France. The Jewish man and the Irishwoman were seen on a trip Courbet took to London in 1848, according to a letter Courbet wrote to Champfleury describing what the painting would look like. There is also a \"lay figure\"/\"crucified figure\" directly to the left of Courbet's easel. This figure appears contorted and potentially mangled. Art historians Benedict Nicolson and Georges Riat both interpret this figure as a symbol of the \"death\" of the art of the Royal Academy of Art in France.\nCenter.\nThe center of the painting depicts Courbet painting a landscape, a nude female figure, a young boy, and a white cat. On his canvas, Courbet paints the Loue River valley. This valley in the Franche-Comt\u00e9 region of France is a tribute to Courbet's homeland of Ornans, France. The female figure is based on an 1854 photograph by J.\u00a0V. de Villeneuve and has been interpreted as a representation of the art of the Academy or as Courbet's Muse for Realism.\nRight side.\nThe right side of the painting depicts a large number of Paris \"\u00e9lites\", including friends of the artist. These are figures who played a role in the development of Courbet's career as an artist, or who inspired him in some way. Portrayals included on this side of the painting include Alfred Bruyas (a patron of Courbet's), Champfleury, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Charles Baudelaire, and a wealthy pair of art collectors, among other prominent society figures. A majority of these portraits were copied from previous portraits or from photographs, since the painting was entirely made in Ornans but the subjects on this side of the painting resided in Paris. For example, the portrait of Charles Baudelaire was directly copied from Courbet's 1847 portrait of the writer. Courbet was in written correspondence with Champfleury in regards to this painting (from which much of the interpretation of \"The Painter's Studio\" is derived) and requested a photograph of Proudhon, the philosopher and anarchist, so that he could be included in the painting. It is the photograph Courbet received from Champfleury on which Proudhon's portrait is based.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "209274": "Gustave Courbet\nFrench realist painter (1819\u20131877)\nJean D\u00e9sir\u00e9 Gustave Courbet ( ; ; ; 10 June 1819 \u2013 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and the Romanticism of the previous generation of visual artists. His independence set an example that was important to later artists, such as the Impressionists and the Cubists. Courbet occupies an important place in 19th-century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social statements through his work.\nCourbet's paintings of the late 1840s and early 1850s brought him his first recognition. They challenged convention by depicting unidealized peasants and workers, often on a grand scale traditionally reserved for paintings of religious or historical subjects. Courbet's subsequent paintings were mostly of a less overtly political character: landscapes, seascapes, hunting scenes, nudes, and still lifes. Courbet was imprisoned for six months in 1871 for his involvement with the Paris Commune and lived in exile in Switzerland from 1873 until his death four years later.\nBiography.\nGustave Courbet was born in 1819 to R\u00e9gis and Sylvie Oudot Courbet in Ornans (department of Doubs). Anti-monarchical feelings prevailed in the household. (His maternal grandfather fought in the French Revolution.) Courbet's sisters, Zo\u00e9, Z\u00e9lie, and Juliette were his first models for drawing and painting. After moving to Paris he often returned home to Ornans to hunt, fish, and find inspiration.\nCourbet went to Paris in 1839 and worked at the studio of Steuben and Hesse. An independent spirit, he soon left, preferring to develop his own style by studying the paintings of Spanish, Flemish and French masters in the Louvre, and painting copies of their work.\nCourbet's first works were an \"Odalisque\" inspired by the writing of Victor Hugo and a \"L\u00e9lia\" illustrating George Sand, but he soon abandoned literary influences, choosing instead to base his paintings on observed reality. Among his paintings of the early 1840s are several self-portraits, Romantic in conception, in which the artist portrayed himself in various roles. These include \"Self-Portrait with Black Dog\" (c.\u20091842\u201344, accepted for exhibition at the 1844 Paris Salon), the theatrical \"Self-Portrait\" which is also known as \"Desperate Man\" (c.\u20091843\u201345), \"Lovers in the Countryside\" (1844, Mus\u00e9e des Beaux-Arts, Lyon), \"The Sculptor\" (1845), \"The Wounded Man\" (1844\u201354, Mus\u00e9e d'Orsay, Paris), \"The Cellist, Self-Portrait\" (1847, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, shown at the 1848 Salon), and \"Man with a Pipe\" (1848\u201349, Mus\u00e9e Fabre, Montpellier).\nTrips to the Netherlands and Belgium in 1846\u201347 strengthened Courbet's belief that painters should portray the life around them, as Rembrandt, Hals and other Dutch masters had. By 1848, he had gained supporters among the younger critics, the Neo-romantics and Realists, notably Champfleury.\nCourbet achieved his first Salon success in 1849 with his painting \"After Dinner at Ornans\". The work, reminiscent of Chardin and Le Nain, earned Courbet a gold medal and was purchased by the state. The gold medal meant that his works would no longer require jury approval for exhibition at the Salon\u2014an exemption Courbet enjoyed until 1857 (when the rule changed).\nIn 1849\u201350, Courbet painted \"The Stone Breakers\" (destroyed in the Allied Bombing of Dresden in 1945), which Proudhon admired as an icon of peasant life; it has been called \"the first of his great works\". The painting was inspired by a scene Courbet witnessed on the roadside. He later explained to Champfleury and the writer Francis Wey: \"It is not often that one encounters so complete an expression of poverty and so, right then and there I got the idea for a painting. I told them to come to my studio the next morning.\"\nRealism.\nCourbet's work belonged neither to the predominant Romantic nor Neoclassical schools. History painting, which the Paris Salon esteemed as a painter's highest calling, did not interest him, for he believed that \"the artists of one century [are] basically incapable of reproducing the aspect of a past or future century ...\" Instead, he maintained that the only possible source for living art is the artist's own experience. He and Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Millet would find inspiration painting the life of peasants and workers.\nCourbet painted figurative compositions, landscapes, seascapes, and still lifes. He courted controversy by addressing social issues in his work, and by painting subjects that were considered vulgar, such as the rural bourgeoisie, peasants, and working conditions of the poor. His work, along with that of Honor\u00e9 Daumier and Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Millet, became known as \"Realism\". For Courbet realism dealt not with the perfection of line and form, but entailed spontaneous and rough handling of paint, suggesting direct observation by the artist while portraying the irregularities in nature. He depicted the harshness of life, and in doing so challenged contemporary academic ideas of art. One of the distinctive features of Courbet's Realism was his lifelong attachment to his native province, the Franche-Comt\u00e9, and of his birthplace, Ornans.\n\"The Stone Breakers\".\nConsidered to be the first of Courbet's great works, \"The Stone Breakers\" of 1849 is an example of social realism that caused a sensation when it was first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1850. The work was based on two men, one young and one old, whom Courbet discovered engaged in backbreaking labor on the side of the road when he returned to Ornans for an eight-month visit in October 1848. On his inspiration, Courbet told his friends and art critics Francis Wey and Jules Champfleury, \"It is not often that one encounters so complete an expression of poverty and so, right then and there I got the idea for a painting.\"\nWhile other artists had depicted the plight of the rural poor, Courbet's peasants are not idealized like those in works such as Breton's 1854 painting, \"The Gleaners\".\nDuring World War II, from 13 to 15 February 1945, the Allies continuously bombed the city of Dresden, Germany. German troops hastily loaded artworks from Dresden's galleries and museums onto trucks. \"The Stone Breakers\" was destroyed, along with 153 other paintings, when a transport vehicle moving the pictures to the K\u00f6nigstein Fortress, near Dresden, was bombed by Allied forces.\n\"A Burial at Ornans\".\nThe Salon of 1850\u20131851 found him triumphant with \"The Stone Breakers\", the \"Peasants of Flagey\" and \"A Burial at Ornans\". The \"Burial\", one of Courbet's most important works, records the funeral of his grand uncle which he attended in September 1848. People who attended the funeral were the models for the painting. Previously, models had been used as actors in historical narratives, but in \"Burial\" Courbet said he \"painted the very people who had been present at the interment, all the townspeople\". The result is a realistic presentation of them and life in Ornans.\nThe vast painting, measuring , drew both praise and fierce denunciations from critics and the public, in part because it upset convention by depicting a prosaic ritual on a scale which would previously have been reserved for a religious or royal subject.\nAccording to art historian Sarah Faunce, \"In Paris, the \"Burial\" was judged as a work that had thrust itself into the grand tradition of history painting, like an upstart in dirty boots crashing a genteel party, and in terms of that tradition it was, of course, found wanting.\" The painting lacks the sentimental rhetoric that was expected in a genre work: Courbet's mourners make no theatrical gestures of grief, and their faces seemed more caricatured than ennobled. The critics accused Courbet of a deliberate pursuit of ugliness.\nEventually, the public grew more interested in the new Realist approach, and the lavish, decadent fantasy of Romanticism lost popularity. Courbet well understood the importance of the painting, and said of it, \"\"Burial at Ornans\" was in reality the burial of romanticism.\"\nCourbet became a celebrity and was spoken of as a genius, a \"terrible socialist\" and a \"savage\". He actively encouraged the public's perception of him as an unschooled peasant, while his ambition, his bold pronouncements to journalists, and his insistence on depicting his own life in his art gave him a reputation for unbridled vanity.\nCourbet associated his ideas of realism in art with political anarchism, and, having gained an audience, he promoted political ideas by writing politically motivated essays and dissertations. His familiar visage was the object of frequent caricature in the popular French press.\nIn 1850, Courbet wrote to a friend:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nDuring the 1850s, Courbet painted numerous figurative works using common folk and friends as his subjects, such as \"Village Damsels\" (1852), \"The Wrestlers\" (1853), \"The Bathers\" (1853), \"The Sleeping Spinner\" (1853), and \"The Wheat Sifters\" (1854).\n\"The Artist's Studio\".\nIn 1855, Courbet submitted fourteen paintings for exhibition at the \"Exposition Universelle\". Three were rejected for lack of space, including \"A Burial at Ornans\" and his other monumental canvas \"The Artist's Studio\". Refusing to be denied, Courbet took matters into his own hands. He displayed forty of his paintings, including \"The Artist's Studio\", in his gallery called \"The Pavilion of Realism\" (Pavillon du R\u00e9alisme) which was a temporary structure that he erected next door to the official Salon-like \"Exposition Universelle\".\nThe work is an allegory of Courbet's life as a painter, seen as a heroic venture, in which he is flanked by friends and admirers on the right, and challenges and opposition to the left. Friends on the right include the art critics Champfleury, and Charles Baudelaire, and art collector Alfred Bruyas. On the left are figures (priest, prostitute, grave digger, merchant, and others) who represent what Courbet described in a letter to Champfleury as \"the other world of trivial life, the people, misery, poverty, wealth, the exploited and the exploiters, the people who live off death.\"\nIn the foreground of the left-hand side is a man with dogs, who was not mentioned in Courbet's letter to Champfleury. X-rays show he was painted later, but his role in the painting is important: he is an allegory of the then-current French Emperor, Napoleon III, identified by his famous hunting dogs and iconic twirled mustache. By placing him on the left, Courbet publicly shows his disdain for the emperor and depicts him as a criminal, suggesting that his \"ownership\" of France is an illegal one.\nAlthough artists like Eug\u00e8ne Delacroix were ardent champions of his effort, the public went to the show mostly out of curiosity and to deride him. Attendance and sales were disappointing, but Courbet's status as a hero to the French avant-garde became assured. He was admired by the American James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and he became an inspiration to the younger generation of French artists including \u00c9douard Manet and the Impressionist painters. \"The Artist's Studio\" was recognized as a masterpiece by Delacroix, Baudelaire, and Champfleury, if not by the public.\nSeascapes.\nWhile Courbet's seascapes, painted during his many visits to the northern coast of France in the late 1860s, were decidedly less controversial than his salon submissions, they furthered his contributions (willing or otherwise) to realism with their emphasis on both the beauty and danger of the natural world. There is a distinct range in the tones of this period with \"The Calm Sea\" (1869) depicting the serenity of the receded tide, and \"The Sailboat\" (c. 1869) showing a sailboat wrestling with violent tides.\nRealist manifesto.\nCourbet wrote a Realist manifesto for the introduction to the catalogue of this independent, personal exhibition, echoing the tone of the period's political manifestos. In it, he asserts his goal as an artist is \"to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my epoch according to my own estimation.\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The title of Realist was thrust upon me just as the title of Romantic was imposed upon the men of 1830. Titles have never given a true idea of things: if it were otherwise, the works would be unnecessary.\nWithout expanding on the greater or lesser accuracy of a name that nobody, I should hope, can really be expected to understand, I will limit myself to a few words of elucidation in order to cut short the misunderstandings.\nI have studied the art of the ancients and the art of the moderns, avoiding any preconceived system and without prejudice. I no longer wanted to imitate the one than to copy the other; nor, furthermore, was it my intention to attain the trivial goal of \"art for art's sake\". No! I simply wanted to draw forth, from a complete acquaintance with tradition, the reasoned and independent consciousness of my own individuality.\nTo know in order to do, that was my idea. To be in a position to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my time, according to my own estimation; to be not only a painter but a man as well; in short, to create living art \u2013 this is my goal. (Gustave Courbet, 1855)\nNotoriety.\nIn the Salon of 1857, Courbet showed six paintings. These included \"Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine (Summer)\", depicting two prostitutes under a tree, as well as the first of many hunting scenes Courbet was to paint during the remainder of his life: \"Hind at Bay in the Snow\" and \"The Quarry\".\n\"Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine\", painted in 1856, provoked a scandal. Art critics accustomed to conventional, \"timeless\" nude women in landscapes were shocked by Courbet's depiction of modern women casually displaying their undergarments.\nBy exhibiting sensational works alongside hunting scenes, of the sort that had brought popular success to the English painter Edwin Landseer, Courbet guaranteed himself \"both notoriety and sales\". \nDuring the 1860s, Courbet painted a series of increasingly erotic works such as \"Femme nue couch\u00e9e\", culminating in \"The Origin of the World (L'Origine du monde)\" (1866), which depicts female genitalia and was not publicly exhibited until 1988, and \"Sleep\" (1866), featuring two women in bed. The latter painting became the subject of a police report when it was exhibited by a picture dealer in 1872.\nUntil about 1861, Napol\u00e9on's regime had exhibited authoritarian characteristics, using press censorship to prevent the spread of opposition, manipulating elections, and depriving Parliament of the right to free debate or any real power. In the 1860s, however, Napol\u00e9on III made more concessions to placate his liberal opponents. This change began by allowing free debates in Parliament and public reports of parliamentary debates. Press censorship, too, was relaxed and culminated in the appointment of the Liberal \u00c9mile Ollivier, previously a leader of the opposition to Napol\u00e9on's regime, as the \"de facto\" Prime Minister in 1870. As a sign of appeasement to the Liberals who admired Courbet, Napoleon III nominated him to the Legion of Honour in 1870. His refusal of the cross of the Legion of Honour angered those in power but made him immensely popular with those who opposed the prevailing regime.\nCourbet and the Paris Commune.\nOn 4 September 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, Courbet made a proposal that later came back to haunt him. He wrote a letter to the Government of National Defense, proposing that the column in the Place Vend\u00f4me, erected by Napoleon I to honour the victories of the French Army, be taken down. He wrote:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />In as much as the Vend\u00f4me Column is a monument devoid of all artistic value, tending to perpetuate by its expression the ideas of war and conquest of the past imperial dynasty, which are reproved by a republican nation's sentiment, citizen Courbet expresses the wish that the National Defense government will authorize him to disassemble this column.\" Courbet proposed that the Column be moved to a more appropriate place, such as the Hotel des Invalides, a military hospital. He also wrote an open letter addressed to the German Army and to German artists, proposing that German and French cannons should be melted down and crowned with a liberty cap, and made into a new monument on Place Vend\u00f4me, dedicated to the federation of the German and French people. The Government of National Defense did nothing about his suggestion to tear down the column, but it was not forgotten.\nOn 18 March, in the aftermath of the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, a revolutionary government called the Paris Commune briefly took power in the city. Courbet played an active part and organized a Federation of Artists, which held its first meeting on 5 April in the Grand Amphitheater of the School of Medicine. Some three hundred to four hundred painters, sculptors, architects, and decorators attended. There were some famous names on the list of members, including Andr\u00e9 Gill, Honor\u00e9 Daumier, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Eug\u00e8ne Pottier, Jules Dalou, and \u00c9douard Manet. Manet was not in Paris during the Commune and did not attend, and Corot, who was seventy-five years old, stayed in a country house and his studio during the Commune, not taking part in the political events.\nCourbet chaired the meeting and proposed that the Louvre and the Mus\u00e9e du Luxembourg, the two major art museums of Paris, closed during the uprising, be reopened as soon as possible and that the traditional annual exhibit called the Salon be held as in years past, but with radical differences. He proposed that the Salon should be free of any government interference or rewards to preferred artists; no medals or government commissions would be given. Furthermore, he called for the abolition of the most famous state institutions of French art; the \u00c9cole des Beaux-Arts, the French Academy in Rome, the French School at Athens, and the Fine Arts section of the Institute of France.\nOn 12 April, the Executive Committee of the Commune gave Courbet, though he was not yet officially a member of the Commune, the assignment of opening the museums and organizing the Salon. They issued the following decree at the same meeting: \"The Column of the Place Vend\u00f4me will be demolished.\" On 16 April, special elections were held to replace more moderate members of the Commune who had resigned their seats, and Courbet was elected as a delegate for the 6th arrondissement of Paris. He was given the title of Delegate of Fine Arts, and on 21 April he was also made a member of the Commission on Education. At the meeting of the Commission on 27 April, the minutes reported that Courbet requested the demolition of the Vend\u00f4me column be carried out and that the column would be replaced by an allegorical figure representing the taking of power of the Commune on 18 March.\nNonetheless, Courbet was a dissident by nature, and he was soon in opposition with the majority of the Commune members on some of its measures. He was one of a minority of Commune Members who opposed the creation of a Committee on Public Safety, modeled on the committee of the same name which carried out the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.\nCourbet opposed the Commune on another more serious matter: the arrest of his friend Gustave Chaudey, a prominent socialist, magistrate, and journalist, whose portrait Courbet had painted. The popular Commune newspaper, \"Le P\u00e8re Duchesne\", accused Chaudey, when he was briefly deputy mayor of the 9th arrondissement before the Commune was formed, of ordering soldiers to fire on a crowd that had surrounded the H\u00f4tel de Ville. Courbet's opposition was of no use; on 23 May 1871, in the final days of the Commune, Chaudey was shot by a Commune firing squad. According to some sources Courbet resigned from the Commune in protest.\nOn 13 May, on the proposal of Courbet, the Paris house of Adolphe Thiers, the chief executive of the French government, was demolished, and his art collection confiscated. Courbet proposed that the confiscated art be given to the Louvre and other museums, but the director of the Louvre refused to accept it. On 16 May, just nine days before the fall of the Commune, in a large ceremony with military bands and photographers, the Vend\u00f4me column was pulled down and broke into pieces. Some witnesses said Courbet was there, others denied it. The following day, the Federation of Artists debated dismissing directors of the Louvre and of the Luxembourg museums, suspected by some in the Commune of having secret contacts with the French government, and appointed new heads of the museums.\nAccording to one legend, Courbet defended the Louvre and other museums against \"looting mobs\", but there are no records of any such attacks on the museums. The only real threat to the Louvre came during \"Bloody Week\", 21\u201328 May 1871, when a unit of Communards, led by a Commune general, Jules Bergeret, set fire to the Tuileries Palace, next to the Louvre. The fire spread to the library of the Louvre, which was destroyed, but the efforts of museum curators and firemen saved the art gallery.\nAfter the final suppression of the Commune by the French army on 28 May, Courbet went into hiding in the apartments of different friends. He was arrested on 7 June. At his trial before a military tribunal on 14 August, Courbet argued that he had only joined the Commune to pacify it and that he had wanted to move the Vend\u00f4me Column, not destroy it. He said he had only belonged to the Commune for a short period, and rarely attended its meetings. He was convicted, but given a lighter sentence than other Commune leaders: six months in prison and a fine of five hundred francs. Serving part of his sentence in the Sainte-P\u00e9lagie Prison in Paris, he was allowed an easel and paints, but he could not have models pose for him. He did a famous series of still-life paintings of flowers and fruit during his confinement.\nExile and death.\nCourbet completed his prison sentence on 2 March 1872, but his problems caused by the destruction of the Vend\u00f4me Column were still not over. In 1873, the newly elected president of the Republic, Patrice de MacMahon, announced plans to rebuild the column, with the cost to be paid by Courbet. Unable to pay, Courbet went into a self-imposed exile in Switzerland to avoid bankruptcy. In the following years, he participated in Swiss regional and national exhibitions. Surveilled by the Swiss intelligence service, he enjoyed in the small Swiss art world the reputation as head of the \"realist school\" and inspired younger artists such as Auguste Baud-Bovy and Ferdinand Hodler.\nImportant works from this period include several paintings of trout, \"hooked and bleeding from the gills\", that have been interpreted as allegorical self-portraits of the exiled artist. In his final years, Courbet painted landscapes, including several scenes of water mysteriously emerging from the depths of the earth in the Jura Mountains of the France\u2013Switzerland border. Courbet also worked on sculpture during his exile. Previously, in the early 1860s, he had produced a few sculptures, one of which \u2013 the \"Fisherman of Chavots\" (1862) \u2013 he donated to Ornans for a public fountain, but it was removed after Courbet's arrest.\nIn May 1877, the state set the final cost of reconstructing the Vend\u00f4me Column at 323,000 francs for Courbet to repay in annual installments of 10,000 francs for the next 33 years. On 31 December 1877, a day before the first installment was due, Courbet died, aged 58, in La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland, of a liver disease aggravated by heavy drinking.\nLegacy.\nCourbet was admired by many younger artists. Claude Monet included a portrait of Courbet in his own version of \"Le D\u00e9jeuner sur l'herbe\" from 1865\u20131866 (Mus\u00e9e d'Orsay, Paris). Courbet's particular kind of realism influenced many artists to follow, notably among them the German painters of the Leibl circle, James McNeill Whistler, and Paul C\u00e9zanne. Courbet's influence can also be seen in the work of Edward Hopper, whose \"Bridge in Paris\" (1906) and \"Approaching a City\" (1946) have been described as Freudian echoes of Courbet's \"The Source of the Loue\" and \"The Origin of the World\". His pupils included Henri Fantin-Latour, Hector Hanoteau and Olaf Isaachsen.\nCourbet once wrote this in a letter:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I have always lived in freedom; let me end my life free; when I am dead let this be said of me: 'He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any r\u00e9gime except the r\u00e9gime of liberty.'\nCourbet and Cubism.\nTwo 19th-century artists prepared the way for the emergence of Cubism in the 20th century: Courbet and C\u00e9zanne. C\u00e9zanne's contributions are well-known. Courbet's importance was announced by Guillaume Apollinaire, poet-spokesperson for the Cubists. Writing in \"Les Peintres Cubistes, M\u00e9ditations Esth\u00e9tiques\" (1913) he declared, \"Courbet is the father of the new painters.\" Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes often portrayed Courbet as the father of all modern art.\nBoth artists sought to transcend the conventional methods of rendering nature; C\u00e9zanne through a dialectical method revealing the process of seeing, Courbet by his materialism. The Cubists would combine these two approaches in developing a revolution in art.\nOn a formal level, Courbet wished to convey the physical characteristics of what he was painting: its density, weight, and texture. Art critic John Berger said: \"No painter before Courbet was ever able to emphasize so uncompromisingly the density and weight of what he was painting.\" This emphasis on material reality endowed his subjects with dignity. Berger observed that the Cubist painters \"were at great pains to establish the physical presence of what they were representing. And in this, they are the heirs of Courbet.\"\nNazi-looted art.\nDuring the Third Reich (1933\u20131945) Jewish art collectors throughout Europe had their property seized as part of the Holocaust. Many artworks created by Courbet were looted by Nazis and their agents during this period and have only recently been reclaimed by the families of the previous owners.\nCourbet's \"La Falaise d'Etretat\" was owned by the Jewish collector Marc Wolfson and his wife Erna, who both were murdered in Auschwitz. After disappearing during the Nazi occupation of France, it reappeared years later at the mus\u00e9e d'Orsay.\nThe great Hungarian Jewish collector Baron Mor Lipot Herzog owned several Courbet artworks, including \"Le Chateau de Blonay (Neige)\" (c.\u20091875, \"The Chateau of Blonay (Snow)\", now at the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts), and Courbet's most infamous work \u2014 (\"The Origin of the World\"). His was looted by Nazis and many are still missing.\nGustav Courbet's paintings \"Village Girl With Goat\", \"The Father\", and \"Landscape With Rocks\" were discovered in the Gurlitt Trove of art stashed in Munich. It is not known to whom they belonged.\nJosephine Weinmann and her family, who were German Jews, had owned \"Le Grand Pont\" before they were forced to flee. The Nazi militant Herbert Schaefer acquired it and loaned it to the Yale University Art Gallery, against whom the Weinmanns filed a claim.\nThe French \"Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume (Cultural Plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg)\" has 41 entries for Courbet.\nIn March 2023, a museum at the University of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom, returned a painting \"La Ronde Enfantine\" by Gustave Courbet, which was stolen in 1941 by the Nazis in Paris. The canvas belonged to a Jewish member of the Resistance. The Spoliation Advisory Panel, a body created in 2000 by the British government, concluded on 28 March \"that the painting was stolen by the Nazi occupation forces because Robert Bing was Jewish\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\nMonographs on the art and life of Courbet have been written by Estignard (Paris, 1874), D'Ideville (Paris, 1878), Silvestre in \"Les artistes fran\u00e7ais\" (Paris, 1878), Isham in Van Dyke's \"Modern French Masters\" (New York, 1896), Meier-Graefe, \"Corot and Courbet\" (Leipzig, 1905), Cazier (Paris, 1906), Riat (Paris, 1906), Muther (Berlin, 1906), Robin (Paris, 1909), Benedite (Paris, 1911) and Laz\u00e1r B\u00e9la (Paris, 1911). Consult also Muther, \"History of Modern Painting\", volume ii (London, 1896, 1907); Patoux, \"Courbet\" in \"Les artistes c\u00e9l\u00e8bres\" and \"La v\u00e9rit\u00e9 sur Courbet\" (Paris, 1879); Le Men, \"Courbet\" (New York, 2008).", "99704": "John Mark Painter\nAmerican songwriter\nJohn Mark Painter (born c. October 6 1967) is an American multi-instrumental musician, composer and arranger. He is best known for his role, with his wife, singer Fleming McWilliams, in the rock duo Fleming and John.\nPainter grew up in Miami, and began playing trumpet, saxophone, bass, guitar and piano by age 11.\nPainter met McWilliams while attending Belmont College in Nashville, and immediately began collaborating on songs. While pursuing a record contract, Painter began playing studio sessions for artists like Indigo Girls, Nanci Griffith and Jewel.\nFleming and John released its first album, \"Delusions of Grandeur\", in 1995 for independent label R.E.X. Records, then Universal Records. Their second album, \"The Way We Are\" in 1999 notably showcased Painter's skills as arranger and as instrumentalist on a panoply of uncommon instruments.\nPainter continues to work heavily in the Nashville area as a studio musician, performing on albums by Carolyn Arends"}, "descending_order": ["99704", "5695377", "209274"], "permutation_1": ["99704", "209274", "5695377"], "permutation_2": ["5695377", "209274", "99704"], "permutation_3": ["99704", "5695377", "209274"]}
{"id": "2hop__78229_93263", "docs_added": {"623737": "Cristiano Ronaldo\nPortuguese footballer (born 1985)\nCristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro (; born 5 February 1985) is a Portuguese professional footballer who plays as a forward for and captains both Saudi Pro League club Al Nassr and the Portugal national team. Nicknamed CR7, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, and has won numerous individual accolades throughout his professional footballing career, including five Ballon d'Or awards, a record three UEFA Men's Player of the Year Awards, four European Golden Shoes, and was named five times the world's best player by FIFA. He has won 33 trophies in his career, including seven league titles, five UEFA Champions Leagues and the UEFA European Championship. Ronaldo holds the records for most goals (140) and assists (42) in the Champions League, goals (14) and assists (8) in the European Championship, and most international appearances (219) and international goals (136). He is one of the few players to have made over 1,200 professional career appearances, the most by an outfield player, and has scored over 900 official senior career goals for club and country, making him the top goalscorer of all time.\nRonaldo began his senior career with Sporting CP, before signing with Manchester United in 2003, winning the FA Cup in his first season. He went on to become a star player at United, as they won three consecutive Premier League titles, the Champions League and the FIFA Club World Cup; his 2007-08 season earned him his first Ballon d'Or, aged 23. Ronaldo was the subject of the then-most expensive association football transfer when he signed for Real Madrid in 2009 in a transfer worth \u20ac94\u00a0million (\u00a380\u00a0million). He was integral to Madrid becoming a dominant force again, as they won four Champions Leagues from 2014 to 2018, including \"La D\u00e9cima\". He won back-to-back Ballon d'Or awards in 2013 and 2014, and again in 2016 and 2017, and was runner-up three times behind Lionel Messi, his perceived career rival. He also became the club's all-time top goalscorer and finished as the Champions League's top scorer for six consecutive seasons between 2012 and 2018. With Madrid, Ronaldo's additional titles include two La Liga titles, including a record-breaking title win in 2011-12, and two Copas del Rey. In 2018, following issues with the Madrid hierarchy, Ronaldo made a surprise transfer to Juventus in a transfer worth an initial \u20ac100\u00a0million (\u00a388\u00a0million). He won several trophies in Italy, including two Serie A titles and a Coppa Italia, and broke several records for Juventus. He returned to United in 2021; despite a collectively disappointing season, Ronaldo's individual performances earned him being included in the PFA Team of the Year at 37 years old. His contract was terminated in 2022 due to a fall out with the newly appointed manager, and in 2023 he signed for Al Nassr, a move that has since been widely credited for revolutionising football in Saudi Arabia.\nRonaldo made his international debut for Portugal in 2003 at the age of 18 and has earned more than 200 caps, making him history's most-capped male player. Ronaldo has played in eleven major tournaments and scored in ten; he scored his first international goal at Euro 2004, where he helped Portugal reach the final and subsequently made the team of the tournament. In the 2006 FIFA World Cup, his first World Cup, he was a focal part to Portugal ultimately finishing in fourth place. He assumed captaincy of the national team in July 2008 ahead of Euro 2008; four years later, at Euro 2012, he was named to the team of the tournament. In 2015, Ronaldo was named the best Portuguese player of all time by the Portuguese Football Federation. The following year, he led Portugal to their first major tournament title at Euro 2016, being named in the team of the tournament for the third time and receiving the Silver Boot as the second-highest goalscorer of the tournament. This achievement saw him receive his fourth Ballon d'Or. In 2018, Ronaldo had his most prolific World Cup campaign and was voted in the Fan Dream Team. He led his country to victory in the inaugural UEFA Nations League in 2019, receiving the top scorer award in the finals, and also received the Golden Boot as top scorer of Euro 2020. In the 2022 World Cup, he became the first player to score at five World Cups.\nOne of the world's most marketable and famous athletes, Ronaldo was ranked the world's highest-paid athlete by \"Forbes\" in 2016, 2017, 2023, and 2024 and the world's most famous athlete by ESPN from 2016 to 2019. He is the first footballer and the third sportsman to earn US$1 billion in his career. \"Time\" included him on their list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2014. Ronaldo is the most popular sportsperson on social media: he counts over 1\u00a0billion total followers across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram, making him the first person to achieve that feat. Ronaldo was named in the UEFA Ultimate Team of the Year in 2015, the All-time UEFA Euro XI in 2016, and the Ballon d'Or Dream Team in 2020. In recognition of his record-breaking goalscoring success, he received special awards for Outstanding Career Achievement by FIFA in 2021 and Champions League All-Time Top Scorer by UEFA in 2024.<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nEarly life.\nCristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro was born on 5 February 1985 in the S\u00e3o Pedro parish of Funchal, the capital of the Portuguese island of Madeira, and grew up in the nearby parish of Santo Ant\u00f3nio. He is the fourth and youngest child of Maria Dolores dos Santos Viveiros Aveiro, who worked as a cook in the hospitality industry and a cleaning woman, and Jos\u00e9 Dinis Aveiro, a municipal gardener at the \"Junta de Freguesia\" of Santo Ant\u00f3nio and part-time kit man for football club Andorinha. His great-grandmother on his father's side, Isabel da Piedade, an African woman, was born in the island of S\u00e3o Vicente, in what was then Portuguese Cape Verde, and moved to Madeira Island at 16. He has one older brother, Hugo, and two older sisters, Elma and Liliana C\u00e1tia \"K\u00e1tia\". He was named after actor and U.S. President Ronald Reagan, whom his father was a fan of. His mother revealed that she wanted to abort him due to poverty, his father's alcoholism, and having too many children already, but her doctor refused to perform the procedure. Ronaldo grew up in an impoverished Catholic home, sharing a room with all his siblings.\nAs a child, Ronaldo played for Andorinha from 1992 to 1995, where his father was the kit man, and later spent two years with Nacional. In 1997, aged 12, he went on a three-day trial with Sporting CP, who signed him for a fee of \u00a31,500. He subsequently moved from Madeira to Lisbon to join Sporting CP's youth system. By age 14, while struggling with his school duties and responsibilities in Escola EB2 de Telheiras, his school in the Telheiras area of Lisbon, Ronaldo believed he had the ability to play semi-professionally and agreed with his mother and his tutor at Sporting CP, Leonel Pontes, to cease his education to focus entirely on football. With a troubled life as a student, and although living in Lisbon area away from his Madeiran family, he did not complete schooling beyond the 6th grade. While popular with other students at school, he had been expelled after throwing a chair at his teacher, who he said had \"disrespected\" him. One year later, he was diagnosed with tachycardia, a condition that could have forced him to give up playing football. Ronaldo underwent heart surgery where a laser was used to cauterise multiple cardiac pathways into one, altering his resting heart rate. He was discharged from the hospital hours after the procedure and resumed training a few days later. In 2021, Cristiano Ronaldo's mother, Dolores Aveiro, stated in an interview for Sporting CP's official television channel (Sporting TV) that her son would be a bricklayer if he had not become a professional football player.\nGrowing up, Ronaldo idolised the Brazilian footballers Ronaldinho and Ronaldo Naz\u00e1rio, and has described them as leaving \"a beautiful history in football\".\nClub career.\nSporting CP.\nAfter impressing in Sporting's youth teams, he was promoted to the main team by first-team manager L\u00e1szl\u00f3 B\u00f6l\u00f6ni. At age 17, on 14 August 2002, he played his first official match for the first team, in a UEFA Champions League qualifying round at Jos\u00e9 Alvalade Stadium against Inter Milan, and his Primeira Liga debut, took place a month later against Braga, and on 7 October, he scored two goals against Moreirense in their 3\u20130 win. Over the course of the 2002\u201303 season, his representatives suggested the player to Liverpool manager G\u00e9rard Houllier and Barcelona president Joan Laporta. Manager Ars\u00e8ne Wenger, who was interested in signing Ronaldo, met with him at Arsenal's stadium in November to discuss a possible transfer.\nManchester United manager Alex Ferguson was determined to acquire Ronaldo on a permanent move urgently, after Sporting defeated United 3\u20131 at the inauguration of the Est\u00e1dio Jos\u00e9 Alvalade on 6 August 2003. Initially, United had planned to sign Ronaldo and loan him back to Sporting for a year. Having been impressed by him, the United players urged Ferguson to sign him. After the game, Ferguson said Ronaldo was \"one of the most exciting young players\" he had ever seen.\nManchester United.\n2003\u20132007: Development and breakthrough.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"There have been a few players described as 'the new George Best' over the years, but this is the first time it's been a compliment to me.\"\n\u2014Former Manchester United player George Best hails the 18-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo in 2003.\nOn 12 August 2003, less than a week after the friendly that impressed Ferguson, Manchester United signed Ronaldo for \u00a312\u00a0million, an England record for a teenager. This also made him the first Portuguese player to sign for the club.\nAlthough he requested the number 28, his number at Sporting, he received the squad number 7 shirt, which had previously been worn by such United players as George Best, Eric Cantona and David Beckham. Wearing the number 7 became an extra source of motivation for Ronaldo. A key element in his development during his time in England proved to be Ferguson, of whom he later said: \"He's been my father in sport, one of the most important and influential factors in my career.\"\nRonaldo made his debut as a substitute in a 4\u20130 home win over Bolton Wanderers in the Premier League on 16 August 2003. His performance earned praise from Best, who hailed it as \"undoubtedly the most exciting debut\" he had ever seen. Ronaldo scored his first goal for Manchester United with a free-kick in a 3\u20130 win over Portsmouth on 1 November. On 15 May 2004, in a victory against Aston Villa, Ronaldo scored the opening goal and later received the first red card of his career. Ronaldo ended his first season in English football with a trophy, scoring the opening goal in United's 3\u20130 win over Millwall in the 2004 FA Cup Final. BBC pundit Alan Hansen described him as the star of the final. The British press had been critical of Ronaldo during the season for his \"elaborate\" step-overs in trying to beat opponents, but teammate Gary Neville said he was \"not a show pony, but the real thing\", and predicted he would become a world-class player.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"He has got the tricks and party pieces, we know that, but they're not much good unless there is something at the end of it all. We still have to remember, of course, that the lad is only 19 years of age. Considering that, you have to say he has got massive talent. His feet are mesmerising at times, and if he can couple that with some consistently good crossing, the future looks frightening.\"\n\u2014Former BBC pundit Alan Hansen commenting on Ronaldo after his first season.\nAt the start of 2005, Ronaldo played two of his best matches of the 2004\u201305 season, producing a goal and an assist against Aston Villa and scoring twice against rivals Arsenal. Ronaldo won his second trophy in English football, the Football League Cup, after scoring the third goal in United's 4\u20130 final win over Wigan Athletic.\nDuring his third season in England, Ronaldo was involved in several incidents. Ronaldo clashed with a teammate, striker Ruud van Nistelrooy, who took offence at the winger's showboating style of play. Following the 2006 FIFA World Cup, in which he was involved in an incident where club teammate Wayne Rooney was sent off, Ronaldo publicly asked for a transfer, lamenting the lack of support he felt he had received from the club over the incident. United denied the possibility of him leaving the club. Although his World Cup altercation with Rooney resulted in Ronaldo being booed throughout the 2006\u201307 season, it proved to be his break-out year, as he broke the 20-goal barrier for the first time and won his first Premier League title.\n2007\u20132009: Collective and individual success and Ballon d'Or.\nIn the 2006\u201307 season, he amassed a host of personal awards for the season, winning the Professional Footballers' Association's Player's Player, Fans' Player, Young Player of the Year awards, and the Football Writers' Association's Footballer of the Year award, becoming the first player to win all four main PFA and FWA honours. Ronaldo was named runner-up to Kak\u00e1 for the 2007 Ballon d'Or, and came third, behind Kak\u00e1 and Lionel Messi, in the running for the 2007 FIFA World Player of the Year award.\nRonaldo scored his first hat-trick for United in a 6\u20130 win against Newcastle United on 12 January 2008. His 31 league goals earned him the Premier League Golden Boot, as well as the European Golden Shoe, which made him the first winger to win the latter award. He additionally received the PFA Players' Player of the Year and FWA Footballer of the Year awards for the second consecutive season. United reached the final against Chelsea\nin Moscow on 21 May, where, despite his opening goal being negated by an equaliser and his penalty kick being saved in the shoot-out, United emerged victorious, winning 6\u20135 on penalties after a 1\u20131 draw at the end of 120 minutes. As the Champions League top scorer, Ronaldo was named the UEFA Club Footballer of the Year. With his 2008 Ballon d'Or and 2008 FIFA World Player of the Year, Ronaldo became United's first Ballon d'Or winner since Best in 1968, and the first Premier League player to be named the FIFA World Player of the Year.\nShortly after, Ronaldo was linked to a move to Real Madrid, United filed a tampering complaint with governing body FIFA over Madrid's alleged pursuit of their player, but they declined to take action. and he remained at United for another year. \nHis match-winning goal in the second leg against Porto, a 40-yard strike, earned him the inaugural FIFA Pusk\u00e1s Award, presented by FIFA in recognition of the best goal of the year; he later called it the best goal he had ever scored. United advanced to the final in Rome, where he made little impact in United's 2\u20130 defeat to Barcelona.\nReal Madrid.\n2009\u20132015: World record transfer and consecutive Ballon d'Or wins.\nIn 2009, Ronaldo transferred to Real Madrid for a then world record \u00a380\u00a0million. At least 80,000 fans attended his presentation at the Santiago Bernab\u00e9u, surpassing the 25-year record of 75,000 fans who had welcomed Diego Maradona at Napoli. Ronaldo said, \"This is the completion of my boyhood dream, to be a Real Madrid player.\"\nRonaldo made his La Liga debut against Deportivo La Coru\u00f1a on 29 August, scoring a penalty in a 3\u20132 home win. He scored in each of his first four league games, the first Madrid player to do so. His first Champions League goals for the club followed with two free kicks in the first group match against Z\u00fcrich. His strong start to the season was interrupted when he suffered an ankle injury in October while on international duty, which kept him sidelined for seven weeks. Despite scoring 33 goals in all competitions and contributing to Real Madrid's 96 points in La Liga, his first season with Madrid ended trophyless.\nFollowing Ra\u00fal's departure, Ronaldo was given No. 7 for the 2010\u201311 season and scored 53 goals, helping Madrid win the Copa del Rey, scoring the winning goal against rivals Barcelona in the \"El Cl\u00e1sico\", his first trophy with Madrid. He also became the first player in La Liga to score 40 goals. In addition to the Pichichi Trophy, Ronaldo won the European Golden Shoe for a second time, becoming the first player to win the award in different leagues.\nThe following season saw Ronaldo score 60 goals across all competitions, leading Madrid to their first league title in four years with a record 100 points and his runner-up finish to Lionel Messi in the 2011 FIFA Ballon d'Or. He scored his 100th league goal for Madrid in a 5\u20131 win over Real Sociedad on 24 March 2012, breaking the previous club record held by Ferenc Pusk\u00e1s. In the 2012\u201313 season, he scored his first hat-trick in the Champions League in a 4\u20131 win over Ajax. Four days later, he became the first player to score in six successive \"Cl\u00e1sicos\" when he hit a brace in a 2\u20132 draw at Camp Nou. His performances again saw Ronaldo voted second in the running for the 2012 FIFA Ballon d'Or, behind four-time winner Messi.\nFollowing the 2012\u201313 winter break, Ronaldo captained Madrid for the first time in an official match, scoring twice to lift 10-man Madrid to a 4\u20133 win over Sociedad on 6 January. He subsequently became the first non-Spanish player in 60 years to captain Madrid in \"El Clasico\" on 30 January, a match which also marked his 500th club appearance.\nIn 2013\u201314 season, Ronaldo was joined at the club by winger Gareth Bale and together with striker Karim Benzema, they formed an attacking trio popularly dubbed \"BBC\", an acronym of Bale, Benzema and Cristiano, and a play on the name of the British public service broadcaster, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). He continued prolific scoring, with 69 goals in 2013, winning the 2013 FIFA Ballon d'Or, and the FIFA World Player of the Year award, for the first time in his career.\nConcurrently with his individual achievements, Ronaldo enjoyed his greatest team success in Spain to date, as he helped Madrid win \"La D\u00e9cima\", their tenth European Cup, scoring a penalty in the 120th minute of the 4\u20131 final win over city rivals Atl\u00e9tico Madrid, becoming the first player to score in two European Cup finals for two different winning teams. As the competition's top goalscorer for the third time, with a record 17 goals, he was named the UEFA Best Player in Europe. Ronaldo scored 31 goals in 30 league games, which earned him the Pichichi and the European Golden Shoe, along with Liverpool's Luis Su\u00e1rez On 4 May, Ronaldo scored a back-heeled volley in the closing moments of the match against Valencia, voted goal of the season by the Liga Nacional de F\u00fatbol Profesional (LFP), giving him the Best Player in La Liga award.\nDuring the 2014\u201315 season, Ronaldo set a new personal best of 61 goals, and after winning the 2014 FIFA Club World Cup, Ronaldo received the 2014 Ballon d'Or, joining Johan Cruyff, Michel Platini and Marco van Basten as a three-time recipient. Madrid finished in second place in La Liga and exited at the semi-final stage in the Champions League. With 10 goals, he finished as top scorer for a third consecutive season, alongside Messi and Neymar. On 5 April, he scored five goals in a game for the first time in his career, including an eight-minute hat-trick, in a 9\u20131 rout of Granada. His 300th goal for his club followed three days later in a 2\u20130 win against Rayo Vallecano. He finished the season with 48 goals, winning a second consecutive Pichichi and the European Golden Shoe for a record fourth time.\n2015\u20132018: All-time Madrid top scorer and Fifth Ballon d'Or.\nCristiano Ronaldo became Real Madrid's all-time top scorer on 12 September 2015 against Espanyol, netting 230 goals in 203 matches, surpassing the previous record holder, Ra\u00fal. Ronaldo also became the all-time top scorer in the Champions League with a hat-trick in the first group match against Shakhtar Donetsk, having finished the previous season level with Messi on 77 goals. Two goals against Malm\u00f6 FF in a 2\u20130 away win on 30 September saw him reach the milestone of 500 career goals for club and country. He won the 2016 Ballon d'Or, his fourth, and the inaugural 2016 The Best FIFA Men's Player, a revival of the former FIFA World Player of the Year, largely owing to his success with Portugal in winning Euro 2016.\nIn the 2016\u201317 UEFA Champions League quarter-finals against Bayern in April, Ronaldo scored both goals in a 2\u20131 away win which saw him make history by becoming the first player to reach 100 goals in UEFA club competition. On 17 May, Ronaldo overtook Jimmy Greaves as the all-time top scorer in the top five European leagues, scoring twice against Celta de Vigo. He finished the season with 42 goals in all competitions as he helped Madrid to win their first La Liga title since 2012. In the Champions League Final, Ronaldo scored two goals in a 4\u20131 victory over Juventus to take him to 12 goals for the season, making him the competition's top goalscorer for the fifth straight season (sixth overall), as well as the first player to score in three finals in the Champions League era; the second goal was the 600th of his senior career. Madrid also became the first team to win back-to-back finals in the Champions League era.\nOn 23 October, his performances throughout 2017 saw him awarded The Best FIFA Men's Player award for the second consecutive year. A day later, Ronaldo won the 2017 Ballon d'Or, receiving his fifth-time award on the Eiffel Tower in Paris. On 3 April 2018, Ronaldo scored the first two goals in a 3\u20130 away win against Juventus in the quarter-finals of the 2017\u201318 UEFA Champions League, with his second goal being an acrobatic bicycle kick. Described as a \"PlayStation goal\" by Juventus defender Andrea Barzagli, with Ronaldo's foot approximately off the ground, it garnered him a standing ovation from the opposing fans in the stadium as well as a plethora of plaudits from peers, pundits and coaches. In the final on 26 May, Madrid defeated Liverpool 3\u20131, winning Ronaldo his fifth Champions League title, the first player to do so. He finished as the top scorer of the tournament for the sixth consecutive season with 15 goals. After the final, Ronaldo referred to his time with Madrid in the past tense, sparking speculation that he could leave the club.\nJuventus.\nRonaldo joined Juventus in 2018 for \u20ac100\u00a0million, the transfer was the highest ever for a player over 30 years old and the highest paid by an Italian club. Upon signing, Ronaldo cited his need for a new challenge as his rationale for departing Madrid, but later attributed the transfer to the lack of support he felt was shown by club president Florentino P\u00e9rez.\n2018\u20132020: Consecutive Serie A titles.\nOn 18 August, Ronaldo made his debut in a 3\u20132 away win against Chievo Verona. On 19 September, in his first Champions League match for Juve, he was sent off against Valencia, his first red card in 154 Champions League appearances. In the reverse (home) leg against Valencia, Cristiano won 100 Champions League matches, becoming the first ever player to do so.\nRonaldo won his first trophy with the club on 16 January 2019, the 2018 Supercoppa Italiana, after he scored the only goal from a header against AC Milan. On 10 February, Ronaldo scored in a 3\u20130 win over Sassuolo, the ninth consecutive away game in which he had scored in the league, equalling Giuseppe Signori's single season Serie A record of most consecutive away games with at least one goal. On 12 March, Ronaldo scored a hat-trick in a 3\u20130 home win against Atl\u00e9tico in the second leg of the Champions League round of 16, helping Juventus overcome a two-goal deficit to reach the quarter-finals. On 20 April, Ronaldo played in the \"scudetto\" clinching game against Fiorentina, as Juventus won their eighth successive title after a 2\u20131 home win, thereby becoming the first player to win league titles in England, Spain and Italy. With 21 goals and eight assists, Ronaldo won the league award for Most Valuable Player.\nOn 1 October, he reached several milestones in Juventus's 3\u20130 Champions League group stage win over Bayer Leverkusen including breaking Iker Casillas' record for most Champions League wins of all time. On 18 December, Ronaldo leapt to a height of , higher than the crossbar, to head the winning goal in a 2\u20131 away win against Sampdoria. He scored his first Serie A hat-trick on 6 January 2020, in a 4\u20130 home win against Cagliari and became only the second player to score hat-tricks in the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A. On 22 February, Ronaldo scored for a record-equalling 11th consecutive league game, alongside Gabriel Batistuta and Fabio Quagliarella, in what was his 1,000th senior professional game, a 2\u20131 away win against SPAL. On 22 June, he scored a penalty in a 2\u20130 away win over Bologna, overtaking Rui Costa to become the highest scoring Portuguese player in Serie A history. On 20 July, Ronaldo scored twice in a 2\u20131 home win over Lazio; his first goal was his 50th in Serie A. He became the first player in history to reach 50 goals in the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A, and becoming the second player after Edin D\u017eeko to score 50 goals in three of Europe's top five major leagues. Moreover, he became the oldest player, at the age of 35 years and 166 days, to score over 30 goals in one of the five top European leagues since Ronnie Rooke with Arsenal in 1948. On 26 July, Ronaldo scored the opening goal in a 2\u20130 home win over Sampdoria as Juventus were crowned Serie A champions for a ninth consecutive time. On 7 August, Ronaldo scored a brace in a 2\u20131 home win against Lyon in the second leg of the Champions League round of 16, which saw him finish the season with 37 goals in all competitions; the tally allowed him to break Borel's club record of 36 goals in a single season.\n2020\u20132021: 100 Juve goals, \"Capocannoniere\", and departure.\nRonaldo played his 100th match in all competitions for Juventus on 13 December, scoring two penalties in a 3\u20131 away win over Genoa in the league to bring his goal tally to 79. On 2 March 2021, he scored a goal in a 3\u20130 win over Spezia in his 600th league match, to become the first player to score at least 20 goals in 12 consecutive seasons in the top five leagues of Europe. On 12 May, Ronaldo scored a goal in a 3\u20131 away win over Sassuolo to reach his 100th goal for Juventus in all competitions on his 131st appearance, becoming the fastest Juventus player to achieve the feat. With Juventus's victory in the 2021 Coppa Italia Final on 19 May, Ronaldo became the first player in history to win every major domestic trophy in England, Spain and Italy. Ronaldo ended the season with 29 league goals, winning the \"Capocannoniere\" award for highest goalscorer and becoming the first footballer to finish as top scorer in the English, Spanish and Italian leagues.\nThe start of the following season came amid reports Ronaldo would depart the club before the closure of the transfer window, despite Ronaldo and his agent Jorge Mendes reaching a verbal agreement with Manchester City over personal terms, but the club pulled out of the deal, and later it was confirmed that City's rivals Manchester United, Ronaldo's former club, were in advanced talks to sign him, while former manager Alex Ferguson and several ex-teammates had been in contact to persuade him to re-sign for United.\nReturn to Manchester United.\nOn 27 August 2021, Manchester United announced they had reached an agreement with Juventus to re-sign Ronaldo, subject to agreement of personal terms, visa and medical. Ronaldo was given the number 7 shirt after Edinson Cavani agreed to switch to 21. The first 24 hours of Ronaldo's shirt sales was reported to have broken the all-time record following a transfer, overtaking Messi after his move to Paris Saint-Germain.\nOn 11 September, Ronaldo made his second debut at Old Trafford, scoring the opening two goals in a 4\u20131 league victory against Newcastle United. On 29 September, he scored a last-minute winner in United's 2\u20131 victory at home to Villarreal in the Champions League, and overtook Iker Casillas as the player with the most appearances in the competition. Ronaldo proved to be crucial in the next Champions League fixtures, scoring various last minute goals to help United qualify for the round of 16 as group winners. On 2 December, Ronaldo netted two goals in a 3\u20132 home league win against Arsenal, which saw him surpass 800 career goals. Struggles ensued, with a fractured relationship with his teammates and interim manager, continuing for two months, until he scored in United's 2\u20130 win at home versus Brighton & Hove Albion on 15 February 2022, his first in the new year. He finished the season with 24 goals in all competitions being named in the Premier League Team of the Year and the winner of United's Sir Matt Busby Player of the Year award, but United finished in a disappointing sixth place and qualified for the UEFA Europa League; as a result, Ronaldo went trophyless for the first time since 2010.\nAfter growing dissatisfaction with the direction of United on and off the field, Ronaldo desired to leave to join a club competing in the Champions League, but a move failed to materialise, with various European clubs refusing a transfer, due to his age, overall cost of a transfer and high wage demands. Shortly after, he fell out with manager Erik ten Hag who used him as a substitute, leading United to terminate his contract on 22 November, following an interview with Piers Morgan, where Ronaldo said that he felt \"betrayed\" by Ten Hag and criticised the management of the club.\nAl Nassr.\nOn 30 December 2022, Saudi club Al-Nassr reached an agreement for Ronaldo to join the club, signing a contract until 2025. Ronaldo received the highest football salary ever, at \u20ac200 million per year, including a guaranteed football salary of \u20ac90 million, with commercial and sponsorship deals bringing his total annual salary to \u20ac200 million.\nHe made his debut for Al Nassr on 22 January 2023, as club captain, playing the full 90 minutes of a 1\u20130 win over Al-Ettifaq, and scored his first goal in a 2\u20132 draw against Al-Fateh by converting a last-minute penalty. On 9 February, Ronaldo scored all four goals in a 4\u20130 win over Al Wehda, his first goal of the match being his 500th career league goal. According to the BBC, Ronaldo's transfer to Al-Nassr led a \"revolution\" in Asian football, with many players from other leagues, particularly those in Europe, transferring to Saudi Pro League clubs for the 2023\u201324 season.\nIn the final of the Arab Club Champions Cup on 12 August, Ronaldo scored both goals as they defeated rivals Al-Hilal 2\u20131 after extra time. Ronaldo scored six goals in the competition. At the close of the year, Ronaldo scored 54 goals in all competitions for Al-Nassr and Portugal, making him the outright top scorer in 2023, reaching the same goalscoring record as in 2016. On 27 May 2024, in Al Nassr's home fixture against Al-Ittihad, Ronaldo scored his 34th and 35th league goals of the campaign, surpassing Abderrazak Hamdallah's record for the most goals scored in a single Saudi Pro League season. He also became the first footballer to finish as top scorer in four different leagues, the English, Spanish, Italian and Saudi leagues. On 31 May, in a 5\u20134 penalty shoot-out defeat to Al-Hilal in the 2024 King Cup final following a 1\u20131 draw after extra-time (in which he scored his side's second spot kick), he equalled Rog\u00e9rio Ceni's record for most top-level matches by a male professional footballer (1,225).\nInternational career.\nAt the age of 18, Ronaldo made his debut for Portugal as a substitute against Kazakhstan on 20 August 2003. At UEFA Euro 2004, he scored his first international goal in a 2\u20131 group stage loss to Greece in his eighth international appearance. Despite Portugal losing to Greece again in the final, Ronaldo made the team of the tournament, with two assists and two goals. In the 2006 FIFA World Cup, at the age of 21 years and 132 days, Ronaldo became the youngest ever goalscorer for Portugal at a World Cup finals. Portugal reached the semi-finals, where Portugal lost to France, with Ronaldo being booed during their defeat, due to an incident that occurred in the quarter-finals against England. FIFA's Technical Study Group overlooked him for the tournament's Best Young Player award and handed it to Germany's Lukas Podolski, citing his behaviour as a factor in the decision.\nOn 6 February 2007, Cristiano captained Portugal for the first time in a friendly against Brazil. He wore the number 7 shirt ahead of UEFA Euro 2008. Despite scoring eight goals in qualifications, the second-highest tally, he scored just one goal in the finals, netting the second goal of Portugal's 3\u20131 win in the group stage game against the Czech Republic. Portugal were eliminated in the quarter-finals after a 3\u20132 loss to Germany.\nRonaldo failed to score in 2010 World Cup qualifying. He scored only one goal in the 2010 World Cup finals; despite this, he was named man of the match in all three group stage matches, against Ivory Coast, North Korea and Brazil. His only goal of the tournament came in their 7\u20130 demolishing of North Korea, which was his first international goal in 16 months. Two years later, in UEFA Euro 2012, Ronaldo was joint top scorer with three goals, enough for him to be included in the team of the tournament. During qualification for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, Ronaldo scored eight goals. Despite this, Portugal did not qualify directly; Ronaldo scored all four goals against Sweden in the play-off to qualify. At the tournament in Brazil, Ronaldo assisted a last-minute 2\u20132 equaliser against the United States, and scored an 80th-minute winner in a 2\u20131 win over Ghana.\nIn 2016, Ronaldo led Portugal to their first-ever trophy at the UEFA Euro 2016, although he was subbed off in the 25th minute in the final against hosts France. He received the Silver Boot as the second-highest goalscorer, which gave him his fourth Ballon d'Or later that year. With the win, Portugal qualified and made its only appearance in the FIFA Confederations Cup held in Russia, where they finished in third place, with Ronaldo being named man of the match in all three of Portugal's group stage matches.\nIn the 2018 World Cup, Ronaldo became the oldest player to score a hat-trick in a World Cup match, in a 3\u20133 draw against Spain. The following match, Ronaldo scored the only goal in a 1\u20130 win against Morocco, breaking Pusk\u00e1s' record as the highest European goalscorer of all time, with 85 international goals. For his performances in the tournament, Ronaldo was named in the World Cup Dream Team.\nRonaldo led Portugal to victory in the inaugural UEFA Nations League in 2019, receiving the top scorer award in the finals, and received the Golden Boot as top scorer of Euro 2020. Ronaldo also became the first player to score at five European Championships. On 23 June 2021, Ronaldo scored two goals in the Euro 2020 match against France, breaking the men's goalscoring record previously held by Ali Daei.\nOn 9 October, he scored the opening goal in a 3\u20130 friendly win over Qatar at the Est\u00e1dio Algarve; with his 181st international appearance, he also overtook Sergio Ramos's record for the most international caps received by a European player. In the following match against Luxembourg on 12 October, also played at the Est\u00e1dio Algarve, Ronaldo scored a hat-trick in a 5\u20130 win for Portugal, thus becoming the first player to score 10 hat-tricks in men's international football.\nIn the 2022 World Cup, on 24 November, Ronaldo became the first player to score at five World Cups, netting a penalty against Ghana. Following a dispute with manager Fernando Santos, after their last group game against South Korea, he was dropped from the starting line-up for Portugal's last 16 match, marking the first time since Euro 2008 that he had not started a game for Portugal in a major international tournament, and the first time Portugal had started a knockout game without Ronaldo in the starting line-up at an international tournament since Euro 2000.\nOn 23 March 2023, Ronaldo scored a brace against Liechtenstein as he earned his 197th overall cap to become the most capped male footballer of all time. On 20 June, Ronaldo made his 200th appearance for his national team, scoring the only goal of an away win over Iceland, in the Euro qualifiers, as he became the first player in the history of men's international football to make 200 appearances for his country. On 16 October, Portugal secured first place in their qualifying group, following a 5\u20130 away victory over Bosnia and Herzegovina, with Ronaldo scoring twice. The landmark goals saw him score in more than 100 goals in each of the last three decades (2000s, 2010s, 2020s).\nWith his start in Portugal's UEFA Euro 2024 opener against the Czech Republic, Ronaldo became the first player to feature in six European Championships, having previously been the first player to appear in five. Later that year, on 5 September, he scored his 900th career goal in a 2\u20131 victory over Croatia in the UEFA Nations League.\nPlayer profile.\nStyle of play.\nA versatile attacker, Ronaldo is capable of playing on either wing as well as through the centre of the pitch, and, while ostensibly right-footed, is very strong with both feet. Tactically, Ronaldo has undergone several evolutions throughout his career. While at Sporting and during his first season at Manchester United, he was typically deployed as a traditional winger on the right side of midfield, where he regularly looked to deliver crosses into the penalty area. In this position, he was able to use his pace and acceleration, agility and technical skills to take on opponents in one-on-one situations. Ronaldo became noted for his dribbling and flair, often displaying an array of tricks and feints, such as the step overs and so-called 'chops' that became his trademark; he has also been known to use the flip-flap.\nHis strength and jumping ability, combined with his elevation, heading accuracy and height of , give him an edge in winning aerial duels. These attributes allow him to function as a target-man and make him an aerial goal threat in the penalty area; consequently, many of his goals have been headers. Ronaldo holds the record for the highest recorded jump in football history, measuring , which he achieved during a match against Manchester United while playing for Real Madrid in the round of 16 of the UEFA Champions League in 2013. Allied with his increased stamina and work-rate, his goalscoring ability improved drastically on the left wing where he was given the positional freedom to move into the centre to finish attacks. He has also increasingly played a creative role for his team, often dropping deep to pick up the ball, participate in the build-up of plays and create chances for his teammates, courtesy of his vision and passing ability.\nIn his final seasons at United, Ronaldo played an even more attacking and central role, functioning both as a striker and as a supporting forward, or even as an attacking midfielder on occasion. He developed into a prolific goalscorer, capable of finishing well both inside the penalty area and from distance with an accurate and powerful shot, courtesy of his striking ability. An accurate penalty kick taker, he also became a set piece specialist, renowned for his powerful, bending free kicks. When taking free kicks, Ronaldo is known for using the \"knuckleball\" technique, which was developed by Juninho Pernambucano. He also adopts a trademark stance before striking the ball, which involves him standing with his legs far apart. Regarding Ronaldo's unique style of taking free kicks, former United assistant manager Mike Phelan commented: \"People used to put the ball down, walk away, run up and hit it. He brought in a more dynamic showmanship. He places the ball down, the concentration level is high, he takes his certain amount of steps back so that his standing foot is in the perfect place to hit the ball in the sweet spot. He is the ultimate showman. He has that slight arrogance. When he pulls those shorts up and shows his thighs, he is saying 'All eyes on me' and this is going in. He understands the marketing side of it. The way he struts up and places it; the world is watching him.\"\nAt Real Madrid, Ronaldo continued to play a more offensive role, while his creative and defensive duties became more limited, although not entirely diminished. Initially deployed as a centre forward by managers Manuel Pellegrini and Jos\u00e9 Mourinho, he was later moved back onto the left wing, though in a free tactical role; this position allowed him to drift into the centre at will to get onto the end of crosses and score, or draw out defenders with his movement off the ball and leave space for teammates to exploit. Madrid's counter-attacking style of play also allowed him to become a more efficient and consistent player, as evidenced by his record-breaking goalscoring feats. While he mainly drew praise in the media for his prolific goalscoring, Ronaldo also demonstrated his ability as an effective creator in this role. This unique role has been described by pundits as that of a \"false\", \"attacking\", or \"goalscoring winger\", as Ronaldo effectively almost functioned as a striker at times with his central runs into the penalty area, despite actually playing on the left flank. From 2013 onwards, under manager Carlo Ancelotti, he effectively adapted his style to the physical effects of ageing with increasingly reduced off-the-ball movement and general involvement, completing fewer dribbles and passes per game, and instead focusing on short-distance creating and goalscoring. Since 2017, Ronaldo adapted his style of play yet again to become more of a free-roaming centre forward under manager Zinedine Zidane, a role in which he continued to excel and maintain a prolific goalscoring record; in this position, he earned praise in the media for his intelligent movement both on and off the ball, positional sense, link-up play and finishing, as well as his ability to lose or anticipate his markers, find space in the box and score from few touches or opportunities.\nIn his first season at Juventus, Ronaldo continued to play in a variety of different attacking roles under manager Massimiliano Allegri, depending on whom he was partnered with. While he had occupied an increasingly offensive role in his final years at Real Madrid, at times he functioned in a free role at Juventus, either as a lone striker or in his trademark role on the left wing, in a 4\u20132\u20133\u20131 or 4\u20133\u20133 formation, in which he often switched positions with Mario Mand\u017euki\u0107. In this role, he was also given licence to drop deep or even out wide onto the right flank to receive the ball, and be more involved in the build-up of plays; as such, aside from scoring goals himself, he began to take on opponents and create chances for other players with greater frequency than he had in his final seasons with Real Madrid. Off the ball, he was also capable of creating space for teammates with his movement and attacking runs into the box, or finishing off chances with his head or feet by getting onto the end of his teammates' crosses. On occasion he also played in an attacking partnership alongside Mand\u017euki\u0107 in a 4\u20133\u20131\u20132, 4\u20134\u20132, or 3\u20135\u20132 formation. He continued to play a similar role in his second season with the club under manager Maurizio Sarri.\nReception and image.\nRonaldo is widely regarded as one of the two best players of his generation, alongside Argentina forward Lionel Messi. Winning his first Ballon d'Or in 2008 by a record-high vote count at age 23, over the next decade Ronaldo has often featured in debates concerning who is the greatest player in history. Acclaimed for his prolific and consistent goal-scoring, he is considered a decisive player who is also a game changer, especially in important and high-pressured situations. In a 2018 article for \"Bleacher Report\", former NBA star Steve Nash compared Ronaldo to Michael Jordan: \"On the pitch, [Ronaldo's] learned how to make his play\u2014less explosive in individual movements\u2014more successful for the team, and in that, I see the greatness of Jordan.\" In the same article, Ronaldo was ranked first in the ranking of the 50 most influential people in sports culture for 2018.<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"In the six years we had him, you just saw his game grow all the time, and he was a fantastic player. Now you see the complete player. His decision-making, his maturity, his experience, plus all the great skills he has got, they all make him the complete player.\"\n \u2014Former manager Alex Ferguson, January 2013\nRonaldo is noted for his work ethic, elite body conditioning and dedication to improvement on the training pitch, as well being regarded as a natural leader. On his longevity and \"extraordinary commitment to physical preparation\", Adam Bate of Sky Sports said: \"Dedication is a huge part of staying at the top and Ronaldo's focus is perhaps unparalleled within the game.\" While stating they were stylistically different players who shared an equal desire to score goals, former Brazil international Ronaldo praised Cristiano's approach to training, arguing that \"there are so few players who take care of their body like he does. I trained because I had to, he does it because he loves it.\" His drive and determination to succeed are fuelled by a desire to be talked about alongside other greats such as Pel\u00e9 and Diego Maradona once retiring. He is credited, along with his compatriot, coach Jos\u00e9 Mourinho, with inspiring changing fortunes of Portuguese football in and . At times, he has been criticised for simulating when tackled. He was also occasionally criticised early in his career by manager Alex Ferguson, teammates and the media for being a selfish or overly flamboyant player. Jonathan Wilson of \"The Guardian\" opined that Ronaldo had made Juventus, who he joined aged 33 in 2018, weaker, due to \"his relative immobility\" in his mid-30s, even if his personal goal-scoring output remained high.\nDuring his career, Ronaldo has also been described as having an \"arrogant image\" on the pitch, with Ronaldo stating that he had become a \"victim\" because of how he was portrayed in the media. He is often seen moaning, gesticulating and scowling while trying to inspire his team to victory, with Ronaldo insisting that his competitive nature should not be mistaken for arrogance. His managers, teammates and various journalists have said that this reputation has caused an unfair image of him.\nGoal celebrations.\nRonaldo has adopted several goal celebrations throughout his career, including one particular celebration which gained widespread coverage in the media, when he squatted and stared directly into a camera on the sidelines of the pitch with his hand on his chin. After scoring a goal, he usually celebrates with a \"storming jump\" and \"turn\", before \"landing in spread-eagled fashion\" into his \"signature power stance\", while usually simultaneously exclaiming \"S\u00ed\" (Spanish and Italian for \"yes\"). This trademark celebration has been dubbed the \"Siu\" or siuuu in the media. It has also been known as \"suiii\", \"siiuuu\", \"siii\" or \"Right Here Right Now\", formally the Cristiano Ronaldo celebration. Since Ronaldo first performed the gesture in 2013, it has been widely imitated by athletes and personalities both in and outside of football when celebrating scoring in respective sports or a significant achievement, and is widely regarded as the most iconic association football celebration of all time.\nThe gesture was first performed by Ronaldo on 7 August, during the 2013 International Champions Cup Final between Real Madrid and Chelsea. Ronaldo gave Madrid a 2\u20131 lead with a free kick when he headed in a cross from Isco, helping Madrid beat Chelsea 3\u20131 to claim the International Champions Cup and celebrating with his first \"Siuuu\". During an interview after the match against Chelsea when he first performed the gesture, Ronaldo explained he scored the goal and \"it just felt natural\" and \"didn't know where it came from\". He started doing it more often and when the supporters see it they are reminded of him.\nThe phrase \"siu\" is derived from Portuguese \"sim\", meaning \"yes\". This was confirmed by Ronaldo in an interview in 2023, almost a decade since he first performed it. Ronaldo explained that the phrase \"Siuuu\" simply means yes, but \"meaning it very strongly\".\nRivalry with Lionel Messi.\nBoth Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have scored in multiple UEFA Champions League finals, have regularly broken the 50-goal barrier in a single season, and are the two leading goal scorers in history. Sports journalists and pundits regularly weigh the individual merits of both players in an attempt to argue who they believe is the best player in modern football or in the history of the game. It has been compared to several sports rivalries, among them the Muhammad Ali\u2013Joe Frazier rivalry in boxing, the Borg\u2013McEnroe rivalry in tennis and the Senna\u2013Prost rivalry from Formula One motor racing. Some commentators choose to analyse the differing physiques and playing styles of the two. Part of the debate revolves around the contrasting personalities of the two players, as Ronaldo is sometimes depicted as an arrogant and theatrical showoff, while Messi is portrayed as a shy, humble character.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"It's part of my life now. People are bound to compare us. He tries to do his best for his club and for his national team, as I do, and there is a degree of rivalry with both of us trying to do the best for the teams we represent.\"\n\u2014Ronaldo commenting on his rivalry with Messi.\nIn a 2012 interview, Ronaldo commented on the rivalry, saying: \"I think we push each other sometimes in the competition, this is why the competition is so high.\" Alex Ferguson, Ronaldo's manager during his time at Manchester United, opined: \"I don't think the rivalry against each other bothers them. I think they have their own personal pride in terms of wanting to be the best.\" Messi himself denied any rivalry, saying that it was \"only the media, the press, who wants us to be at loggerheads but I've never fought with Cristiano.\" Responding to the claims that he and Messi do not get on well on a personal level, Ronaldo commented: \"We don't have a relationship outside the world of football, just as we don't with a lot of other players.\" Ronaldo added that in years to come he hopes they can laugh about it together, stating: \"We have to look on this rivalry with a positive spirit, because it's a good thing.\" Representing archrivals Barcelona and Real Madrid, the two players faced each other at least twice every season in the world's biggest club game, \"El Cl\u00e1sico\", which is among the world's most viewed annual sporting events.\nIn a debate at Oxford Union in October 2013, when asked whether FIFA president Sepp Blatter preferred Messi or Ronaldo, Blatter paid tribute to the work ethic of the Argentine before taking a swipe at Ronaldo, claiming \"one of them has more expenses for the hairdresser than the other.\" Real Madrid demanded and promptly received a full apology. In response to Blatter's \"commander\" on the pitch comment, Ronaldo issued his own riposte with a mock-salute celebration after scoring a penalty against Sevilla. In August 2019, Ronaldo and Messi were interviewed while sat next to each other prior to the announcement of the UEFA Men's Player of the Year, with Ronaldo stating: \"I pushed him and he pushed me as well. So it's good to be part of the history of football.\"\nAfter Messi led Argentina to victory in the 2022 FIFA World Cup, a number of football critics, commentators and players have opined that Messi settled the debate between the two players. In September 2023, Ronaldo declared that his rivalry with Messi was over and \"gone\", after 36 official fixtures and 15 years of \"sharing the stage\".\nIn popular culture.\nPopularity and online following.\nRonaldo was named in the 2014 Time 100, \"Time\"'s annual list of the most influential people in the world. ESPN named Ronaldo the world's most famous athlete in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. Demand for a replica Ronaldo shirt has been high throughout his career. In 2008, Ronaldo's number 7 Manchester United shirt was the best-selling Premier League sports product. In 2015, Ronaldo's number 7 Real Madrid shirt was the second best-selling worldwide, after Messi's number 10 Barcelona shirt. In 2018, within 24 hours of his number 7 Juventus shirt being released, over 520,000 had been sold, with $62.4\u00a0million generated in one day.\nRonaldo has established a strong online presence. The most popular sportsperson on social media, he counted over 500\u00a0million total followers across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram by February 2021, making him the first person to pass half a billion followers. The most-followed person on Facebook (171\u00a0million), most-followed on Instagram (650\u00a0million) and most-followed sportsperson on Twitter (115\u00a0million), his sponsors earned $936\u00a0million in media value across his accounts between June 2016 and June 2017. After announcing the creation of his YouTube channel, UR Cristiano on 21 August 2024, it became the fastest to reach the 1 million subscribers milestone, doing so in 90 minutes. The channel also became the fastest to reach 5, 10, 20, 30 and 50 million subscribers. It also became the most subscribed channel in Portugal, surpassing the Portuguese Nick Jr. Computer security company McAfee produced a 2012 report ranking footballers by the probability of an internet search for their name leading to an unsafe website, with Ronaldo's name first on the list.\nWealth and sponsorships.\nWith earnings of \u20ac720\u00a0million (\u00a3615\u00a0million) from 2010 to 2019, Ronaldo was ranked second in \"Forbes\" list of the decade's highest-paid athletes, behind boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. \"Forbes\" twice ranked Ronaldo first on its list of the world's highest-paid football players; his combined income from salaries, bonuses and endorsements was $73\u00a0million in 2013\u201314 and $79\u00a0million in 2014\u201315. The latter earnings saw him listed behind only Mayweather on the magazine's list of The World's Highest-Paid Athletes. In 2016, he became the first footballer to top the \"Forbes\" list of highest-earning athletes, with a total income of $88\u00a0million from his salary and endorsements in 2015\u201316. He topped the list for the second straight year with earnings of $93\u00a0million in 2016\u201317. He is the first footballer and only the third sportsman to earn $1 billion in their career.\nRonaldo is one of the world's most marketable sportsmen: \"SportsPro\" rated him the fifth most marketable athlete in 2012 and eighth most marketable athlete in 2013. Sports market research company Repucom named Ronaldo the most marketable and most recognised football player in the world in May 2014. Since his reputation grew at Manchester United, Ronaldo has signed many sponsorship deals for consumer products, including sportswear, football boots; since November 2012, Ronaldo has worn the Nike Mercurial Vapor personalised CR7 edition, soft drinks, clothing, automotive lubricants, financial services, electronics, and video games. Ronaldo featured as the cover star of \"FIFA\" video game \"FIFA 18\" and was heavily involved in the game's promotion. His \"Sii\" goal celebration features in the \"FIFA\" series, accompanied with his own voiceover. He was also the face of \"Pro Evolution Soccer\", appearing on the covers of the 2008, 2012 and 2013 editions of the game.\nPhilanthropy.\nRonaldo has made contributions to various charitable causes throughout his career. Television footage of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami showed an eight-year-old boy survivor named Martunis wearing a Portuguese football shirt who was stranded for 19 days after his family was killed. Following this, Ronaldo visited Aceh, Indonesia, to raise funds for rehabilitation and reconstruction. After accepting undisclosed damages from a libel case against \"The Sun\" newspaper in 2008, Ronaldo donated the damages to a charity in Madeira. In 2009, Ronaldo donated \u00a3100,000 to the hospital that saved his mother's life in Madeira following her battle with cancer, so that they could build a cancer centre on the island. In support of the victims of the 2010 Madeira flood, Ronaldo pledged to play in a charity match in Madeira between Primeira Liga club Porto and players from Madeiran-based clubs Mar\u00edtimo and Nacional.\nIn 2012, Ronaldo and his agent paid for specialist treatment for a nine-year-old Canarian boy with apparently terminal cancer. In December 2012, Ronaldo joined FIFA's \"11 for Health\" programme to raise awareness among kids of how to steer clear of conditions including drug addiction, HIV, malaria, and obesity. In January 2013, Ronaldo became Save the Children's new Global Artist Ambassador, in which he hopes to help fight child hunger and obesity. In March 2013, Ronaldo agreed to be the ambassador for The Mangrove Care Forum in Indonesia, an organisation aiming to raise awareness of mangrove conservation.\nRonaldo was named the world's most charitable sportsperson in 2015 after donating \u00a35\u00a0million to the relief effort after the earthquake in Nepal which killed over 8,000 people. In June 2016, Ronaldo donated the entirety of his \u20ac600,000 Champions League bonus after Real Madrid won the competition. In August of the same year, Ronaldo launched CR7Selfie, a selfie app for charity to help Save the Children that lets participants take a selfie with him in one of several different outfits and poses.\nEponyms and honours.\nIn 2007, C.D. Nacional renamed its youth campus Cristiano Ronaldo Campus Futebol (Cristiano Ronaldo Football Campus). In December 2013, Ronaldo opened a museum, Museu CR7, in his hometown of Funchal, Madeira, to house trophies and memorabilia; the museum is an official sponsor of the local football team Uni\u00e3o da Madeira. At a ceremony held at the Bel\u00e9m Palace in January 2014, President of Portugal An\u00edbal Cavaco Silva raised Ronaldo to the rank of Grand Officer of the Order of Prince Henry \"to distinguish an athlete of world renown who has been a symbol of Portugal globally, contributing to the international projection of the country and setting an example of tenacity for future generations.\" In June 2015, astronomers led by David Sobral from Lisbon and Leiden discovered a galaxy which they named Cosmos Redshift 7 (CR7) in tribute to Ronaldo.\nOn 23 July 2016, following Portugal's triumph at Euro 2016, Madeira Airport in Funchal was renamed as Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport. The name change was subject to much debate locally by some politicians and citizens, who even started a petition against the move, an action criticised by President of Madeira Miguel Albuquerque. On 21 September 2020, the Sporting CP's football academy in Alcochete, until then called \"Academia Sporting\", was renamed \"Academia Cristiano Ronaldo\". In 2023, the Lisbon City Council approved awarding him, at the proposal of its president, Carlos Moedas, the Medal of Honor of the City, because he is \"a great Lisboner, in the sense of the passion he has for the city\".\nPublic art.\nIn June 2010, during the build-up to the World Cup, Ronaldo became the fourth footballer (after Steven Gerrard, Pel\u00e9, and David Beckham) to be represented as a waxwork at Madame Tussauds London. Another waxwork of him was presented at the Madrid Wax Museum in December 2013. A bronze statue of Ronaldo, designed by artist Ricardo Madeira Veloso, was unveiled in Funchal on 21 December 2014.\nThe unveiling of the rebranded Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport took place on 29 March 2017, which included a bust of his head being presented. The bust and the name change were controversial, with the lack of the bust's likeness to Ronaldo being ridiculed by comedians, including \"Saturday Night Live\", A year later, sports website Bleacher Report commissioned sculptor Emanuel Santos to create another bust; however, this bust was never used and a new one was made by a Spanish sculptor, shown to the public on 15 June 2018.\nBusiness ventures.\nRonaldo opened a fashion boutique under the name \"CR7\" (his initials and shirt number) on the island of Madeira in 2006 and opened a second in Lisbon in 2008. In partnership with Scandinavian manufacturer JBS Textile Group and the New York fashion designer Richard Chai, Ronaldo co-designed a range of underwear and sock line, released in November 2013. He expanded his \"CR7\" fashion brand by launching a line of premium shirts and shoes in July 2014. In September 2015, Ronaldo released his own fragrance, \"Legacy\", in a partnership with Eden Parfums. Since 26 October 2023, the new owners of Medialivre (\"Correio da Manh\u00e3\", \"Record\" and \"Jornal de Neg\u00f3cios\" publisher) are a group of investors that include Cristiano Ronaldo through Portuguese company Express\u00e3o Livre. In December 2011, he launched an iPhone game called \"Heads Up with Cristiano\", created by developer RockLive, and in December 2013, he launched \"Viva Ronaldo\", a dedicated social networking website and app.\nMedia.\nRonaldo's autobiography, titled \"Moments\", was published in 2007. His sponsor Castrol produced the television film \"Ronaldo: Tested to the Limit\", in which he was physically and mentally tested in several areas; his physical performance was subject to scrutiny by world media upon the film's release in September 2011. ', a documentary narrated by actor Benedict Cumberbatch, was released via Vimeo in June 2014. A documentary film directed by Anthony Wonke about his life and career, titled \"Ronaldo\", was released on 9 November 2015. He appears as a playable character in the 2025 fighting game '.\nPersonal life.\nFamily, children, and relationships.\nRonaldo has five living children. He first became a father to a son, who was born on 17 June 2010 in the United States. He has full custody of the child and has not publicly revealed the identity of the mother per an agreement with her. In January 2015, Ronaldo's five-year relationship with Russian model Irina Shayk ended.\nRonaldo became a father to twins, born on 8 June 2017 in the United States via surrogacy. He is currently in a relationship with Argentine-born Spanish model Georgina Rodr\u00edguez, who gave birth to a daughter on 12 November 2017. The couple expected another set of twins in 2022. The male twin died during childbirth while the female twin survived.\nRonaldo's father, Jos\u00e9, died of an alcoholism-related liver condition at age 52 in September 2005 when Ronaldo was 20.\nIn January 2023, after Ronaldo moved to Saudi Arabia with his family having been signed by Saudi Pro League side Al Nassr, the rulers of the Kingdom made Ronaldo an exception to the rule that unmarried couples are not allowed to live together in Saudi Arabia. An unnamed Saudi lawyer told Spanish news agency EFE that \"the laws of the Kingdom still prohibit cohabitation without a marriage contract\", but Saudi authorities have begun to \"turn a blind eye and stop prosecuting anyone, even though these laws are applied when there is a problem or a crime\".\nRonaldo is of (one-eighth) Cape Verdean descent through his great-grandmother. He is a Catholic.\nAfter her son achieved legendary status in world football, Cristiano Ronaldo's mother, Dolores Aveiro, became a popular personality in Portugal to such an extent that advertising campaigns for well-known brands in the country, such as Maggi, MultiOpticas and Pingo Doce, have featured her in commercials.\nHealth.\nRonaldo has said that he does not drink alcohol, and he received libel damages over a \"Daily Mirror\" article that reported him drinking heavily in a nightclub while recovering from an injury in July 2008. He also does not have any tattoos as he regularly donates blood and bone marrow.\nLegal issues.\nIn July 2017, Ronaldo was charged with fraudulently evading almost \u20ac15\u00a0million in tax between 2011 and 2014, a claim he denied at the time. In June 2018, Ronaldo was given a two-year suspended jail sentence and fined \u20ac18.8\u00a0million, later reduced to \u20ac16.8\u00a0million after reaching a deal with Spanish authorities. The sentence can be served under probation, without any jail time, so long as he does not re-offend.\nRonaldo and another man were investigated by the British Crown Prosecution Service after a 2005 rape allegation was brought forward by two women. Within days, the two women withdrew their allegation and Scotland Yard later issued a statement declaring there was not enough evidence for a prosecution.\nIn April 2017, it was reported that Ronaldo was being investigated by the Las Vegas Police Department for an allegation by a woman that he had raped her in 2009. Documents, confirmed by Ronaldo's lawyers, state that Ronaldo paid a woman US$375,000 in a non-disclosure settlement. Ronaldo and his lawyers issued a lengthy statement denying all accusations, describing them as an \"intentional defamation campaign\" with parts significantly \"altered and/or completely fabricated\", a claim which \"Der Spiegel\" categorically denied. In July 2019, Las Vegas prosecutors said they would not charge Ronaldo over allegations of rape; the statement added: \"Based upon a review of information at this time, the allegations of sexual assault against Cristiano Ronaldo cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.\" The same woman, in September 2018, filed a civil lawsuit in Nevada accusing Ronaldo of rape. \"The Daily Mirror\", citing court documents, reported in 2021 that the woman sought \u00a356\u00a0million in damages from Ronaldo. In October 2021, federal magistrate judge Daniel Albregts recommended that the lawsuit be dismissed, citing that the woman's lawyer, Leslie Stovall, \"acted in bad faith by asking for, receiving, and using Football Leaks documents to prosecute\" the case, despite the documents containing \"privileged communications\" between Ronaldo and his lawyers. Additionally, Albregts stated that no evidence was found of Ronaldo's lawyers having \"intimidated [the woman] or impeded law enforcement\" during the 2010 settlement with her. In June 2022, the woman's rape lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice in the United States District Court for the District of Nevada, as district judge Jennifer A. Dorsey ruled that Stovall's repeated use of \"cyber-hacked attorney\u2013client privileged documents\" were actions representing \"abuses and flagrant circumvention of the proper litigation process\".\n \"As of match played 14 March 2025\"\nCareer statistics.\nClub.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\n \"As of match played 23 March 2025\"\nInternational.\nNotes\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nHonours.\nSporting CP\nManchester United\nReal Madrid\nJuventus\nAl Nassr\nPortugal\nIndividual\nOrders\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "52088909": "List of most-followed Instagram accounts\nThis page shows the 50 accounts with the most followers on the social media platform Instagram, with each amount rounded down to the nearest million followers. The most-followed account is Instagram's own account. The most-followed person is Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo.\nList.\n<templatestyles src=\"template:sticky header/styles.css\"/><templatestyles src=\"Template:Table alignment/tables.css\" /><templatestyles src=\"Template:Static row numbers/styles.css\" /><templatestyles src=\"Template:Sort under/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["623737", "52088909"], "permutation_1": ["52088909", "623737"], "permutation_2": ["52088909", "623737"], "permutation_3": ["623737", "52088909"]}
{"id": "2hop__46304_83854", "docs_added": {"34421": "Zaire\nCountry in Central Africa (1971\u20131997)\nZaire, officially the Republic of Zaire, was the name of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1971 to 18 May 1997. Located in Central Africa, it was, by area, the third-largest country in Africa after Sudan and Algeria, and the 11th-largest country in the world from 1965 to 1997. With a population of over 23 million, Zaire was the most populous Francophone country in Africa. Zaire was strategically important to the West during the Cold War, particularly the U.S., as a counterbalance to Soviet influence in Africa. The U.S. and its allies supported the Mobutu regime (1965\u20131997) with military and economic aid to prevent the spread of communism.\nThe country was a one-party totalitarian military dictatorship, run by Mobutu Sese Seko and his Popular Movement of the Revolution. Zaire was established following Mobutu's seizure of power in a military coup in 1965, after five years of political upheaval following independence from Belgium known as the Congo Crisis. Zaire had a strongly centralist constitution, and foreign assets were nationalized. The period is sometimes referred to as the Second Congolese Republic.\nA wider campaign of , ridding the country of the influences from the colonial era of the Belgian Congo, was also launched under Mobutu's direction. Weakened by the termination of American support after the end of the Cold War, Mobutu was forced to declare a new republic in 1990 to cope with demands for change. By the time of its downfall, Zaire was characterised by widespread cronyism, corruption and economic mismanagement.\nZaire collapsed in the 1990s, amid the destabilization of the eastern parts of the country in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide and growing ethnic violence. In 1996, , the head of the AFDL militia, led a popular rebellion against Mobutu. With rebel forces making gains westward, Mobutu fled the country, leaving Kabila's forces in charge. In 1997, the country's name was restored to the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Mobutu died less than four months later while in exile in Morocco.\nEtymology.\nThe country's name, , was derived from the name of the Congo River, sometimes called in Portuguese, which in turn was derived from the Kikongo ('river that swallows rivers'). The use of \"Congo\" seems to have replaced \"Zaire\" gradually in English usage during the 18th century and \"Congo\" was the preferred English name in 19th-century literature, although references to \"Zahir\" or \"Zaire\" as the name used by the local population (i.e. derived from Portuguese usage) remained common.\nHistory.\nMobutu.\nIn 1965, as in 1960, the division of power in Congo-L\u00e9opoldville (a former Belgian colony) between President and Parliament led to a stalemate and threatened the country's stability. Joseph-D\u00e9sir\u00e9 Mobutu again seized power. Unlike the first time, however, Mobutu assumed the presidency, rather than remaining behind the scenes. From 1965, Mobutu dominated the political life of the country, restructuring the state on more than one occasion, and claiming the title of \"Father of the Nation\". He announced the renaming of the country as the Republic of Zaire on 27 October 1971.\nWhen, under the authenticit\u00e9 policy of the early 1970s, Zairians were obliged to adopt \"authentic\" African names rather than European monikers. Mobutu dropped Joseph-D\u00e9sir\u00e9 and officially changed his name to \"Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga\", or, more commonly, Mobutu S\u00e9s\u00e9 Seko, roughly meaning \"the all-conquering warrior, who goes from triumph to triumph\".\nIn retrospective justification of his 1965 seizure of power, Mobutu later summed up the record of the First Republic as one of \"chaos, disorder, negligence, and incompetence\". Rejection of the legacy of the First Republic went far beyond rhetoric. In the first two years of its existence, the new regime turned to the urgent tasks of political reconstruction and consolidation. Creating a new basis of legitimacy for the state, in the form of a single party, came next in Mobutu's order of priority.\nA third imperative was to expand the reach of the state in the social and political realms, a process that began in 1970 and culminated in the adoption of a new constitution in 1974. By 1976, however, this effort had begun to generate its own inner contradictions, thus paving the way for the resurrection of a Bula Matari (\"the breaker of rocks\") system of repression and brutality.\nConstitutional changes.\nBy 1967, Mobutu had consolidated his rule and proceeded to give the country a new constitution and a single party. The new constitution was submitted to popular referendum in June 1967 and approved by 98 per cent of those voting. It provided that executive powers be centralised in the president, who was to be head of state, head of government, commander in chief of the armed forces and the police, and in charge of foreign policy.\nBut the most far-reaching change was the creation of the Popular Movement of the Revolution (Mouvement Populaire de la R\u00e9volution\u2014MPR) on 17 April 1967, marking the emergence of \"the nation politically organised\". Rather than government institutions being the emanation of the state, the state was henceforth defined as the emanation of the party. Thus, in October 1967, party and administrative responsibilities were merged into a single framework, thereby automatically extending the role of the party to all administrative organs at the central and provincial levels, as well as to the trade unions, youth movements, and student organisations.\nThree years after changing the country's name to Zaire, Mobutu promulgated a new constitution that consolidated his hold on the country. Every five years (seven years after 1978), the MPR elected a president who was simultaneously nominated as the only candidate for president of the republic; he was confirmed in office via a referendum. Under this system, Mobutu was reelected in 1977 and 1984 by implausibly high margins, claiming a unanimous or near-unanimous \"yes\" vote. The MPR was defined as the country's \"single institution,\" and its president was vested with \"plentitude of power exercise.\" Every five years, a single list of MPR candidates was returned to the National Assembly, with official figures showing near-unanimous support. All citizens of Zaire automatically became members of the MPR at birth. For all intents and purposes, this gave the president of the MPR\u2014Mobutu\u2014complete political control over the country.\nTotalitarian expansion.\nTranslating the concept of \"the nation politically organised\" into reality implied a major expansion of state control of civil society. It meant, to begin with, the incorporation of youth groups and worker organisations into the matrix of the MPR. In July 1967, the Political Bureau announced the creation of the Youth of the Popular Revolutionary Movement (Jeunesse du Mouvement Populaire de la R\u00e9volution\u2014JMPR), following the launching a month earlier of the National Union of Zairian Workers (Union Nationale des Travailleurs Za\u00efrois\u2014UNTZA), which brought together into a single organisational framework three preexisting trade unions.\nOstensibly, the aim of the merger, in the terms of the Manifesto of N'Sele, was to transform the role of trade unions from \"being merely a force of confrontation\" into \"an organ of support for government policy\", thus providing \"a communication link between the working class and the state\". Similarly, the JMPR was to act as a major link between the student population and the state. In reality, the government was attempting to bring under its control those sectors where opposition to the regime might be centred. By appointing key labour and youth leaders to the MPR Political Bureau, the regime hoped to harness syndical and student forces to the machinery of the state. Nevertheless, as has been pointed out by numerous observers, there is little evidence that co-optation succeeded in mobilising support for the regime beyond the most superficial level.\nThe trend toward co-optation of key social sectors continued in subsequent years. Women's associations were eventually brought under the control of the party, as was the press, and in December 1971 Mobutu proceeded to emasculate the power of the churches. From then on, only three churches were recognised: the Church of Christ in Zaire (L'\u00c9glise du Christ au Za\u00efre), the Kimbanguist Church, and the Roman Catholic Church.\nNationalisation of the universities of Kinshasa and Kisangani, coupled with Mobutu's insistence on banning all Christian names and establishing JMPR sections in all seminaries, soon brought the Roman Catholic Church and the state into conflict. Not until 1975, and after considerable pressure from the Vatican, did the regime agree to tone down its attacks on the Roman Catholic Church and return some of its control of the school system to the church. Meanwhile, in line with a December 1971 law, which allowed the state to dissolve \"any church or sect that compromises or threatens to compromise public order\", scores of unrecognised religious sects were dissolved and their leaders jailed.\nMobutu was careful also to suppress all institutions that could mobilise ethnic loyalties. Avowedly opposed to ethnicity as a basis for political alignment, he outlawed such ethnic associations as the Association of Lulua Brothers (Association des Lulua Fr\u00e8res), which had been organised in Kasai in 1953 in reaction to the growing political and economic influence in Kasai of the rival Luba people, and Liboke lya Bangala (literally, \"a bundle of Bangala\"), an association formed in the 1950s to represent the interests of Lingala speakers in large cities. It helped Mobutu that his ethnic affiliation was blurred in the public mind. Nevertheless, as dissatisfaction arose, ethnic tensions surfaced again.\nCentralisation of power.\nRunning parallel to the efforts of the state to control all autonomous sources of power, important administrative reforms were introduced in 1967 and 1973 to strengthen the hand of the central authorities in the provinces. The central objective of the 1967 reform was to abolish provincial governments and replace them with state functionaries appointed by Kinshasa. The principle of centralisation was further extended to districts and territories, each headed by administrators appointed by the central government.\nThe only units of government that still retained a fair measure of autonomy\u2014but not for long\u2014were the so-called local collectivities, i.e. chiefdoms and sectors (the latter incorporating several chiefdoms). The unitary, centralised state system thus legislated into existence bore a striking resemblance to its colonial antecedent, except that from July 1972 provinces were called regions.\nWith the January 1973 reform, another major step was taken in the direction of further centralisation. The aim, in essence, was to operate a complete fusion of political and administrative hierarchies by making the head of each administrative unit the president of the local party committee. Furthermore, another consequence of the reform was to severely curtail the power of traditional authorities at the local level. Hereditary claims to authority would no longer be recognised; instead, all chiefs were to be appointed and controlled by the state via the administrative hierarchy. By then, the process of centralisation had theoretically eliminated all preexisting centres of local autonomy.\nThe analogy with the colonial state becomes even more compelling when coupled with the introduction in 1973 of \"obligatory civic work\" (locally known as \"Salongo\" after the Lingala term for work), in the form of one afternoon a week of compulsory labor on agricultural and development projects. Officially described as a revolutionary attempt to return to the values of communalism and solidarity inherent in the traditional society, Salongo was intended to mobilise the population into the performance of collective work \"with enthusiasm and without constraint\".\nIn reality, the conspicuous lack of popular enthusiasm for Salongo led to widespread resistance and foot dragging (causing many local administrators to look the other way). Although failure to comply carried penalties of one month to six months in jail, by the late 1970s most Zairians shirked their Salongo obligations. By resuscitating one of the most bitterly resented features of the colonial state, obligatory civic work contributed in no small way to the erosion of legitimacy suffered by the Mobutist state.\nGrowing conflict.\nIn 1977 and 1978, Katangan rebels based in Angola launched two invasions, Shaba I and Shaba II, into the Katanga Province (renamed \"Shaba\" in 1972). The rebels were driven out with military assistance from the Western Bloc, particularly from the Safari Club.\nThe Battle of Kolwezi, fought in May 1978, resulted in an airborne operation in an aim of rescuing Zairian, Belgian and French miners held as hostages by pro-Communist Katangan guerrillas.\nPope John Paul II made a papal trip to Zaire on 2 May 1980, on the centenary of Catholic evangelization. During his tour, he greeted over a million people, making him the first pontiff to visit Africa as a \"messenger of peace\". He left Zaire four days later on 6 May shortly after 9 people were trampled to death trying to attend mass.\nIn 1981, despite slow progress, Zaire launched an economic reform to revive its economy in order to keep up its rescheduled payment on the country's tremendous debt of $4.4 billion, which had recorded a small rate of economic growth in the last three quarters of 1980.\nDuring the 1980s, Zaire remained a one-party state. Although Mobutu maintained control during this period, opposition parties, most notably the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (Union pour la D\u00e9mocratie et le Progr\u00e8s Social\u2014UDPS), were active. Mobutu's attempts to quell these groups drew significant international criticism.\nAs the Cold War came to a close, internal and external pressures on Mobutu increased. In late 1989 and early 1990, Mobutu was weakened by a series of domestic protests, by heightened international criticism of his regime's human rights practices, by a faltering economy, and by government corruption, most notably his massive embezzlement of government funds for personal use. In June 1989, Mobutu visited Washington, D.C., where he was the first African head of state to be invited for a state meeting with newly elected U.S. President George H. W. Bush.\nIn May 1990, Mobutu agreed to the principle of a multi-party system with elections and a constitution. As details of a reform package were delayed, soldiers began looting Kinshasa in September 1991 to protest their unpaid wages. Two thousand French and Belgian troops, some of whom were flown in on U.S. Air Force planes, arrived to evacuate the 20,000 endangered foreign nationals in Kinshasa.\nIn 1992, after previous similar attempts, the long-promised Sovereign National Conference was staged, encompassing over 2,000 representatives from various political parties. The conference gave itself a legislative mandate and elected Archbishop Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya as its chairman, along with \u00c9tienne Tshisekedi wa Mulumba, leader of the UDPS, as prime minister. By the end of the year Mobutu had created a rival government with its own prime minister. The ensuing stalemate produced a compromise merger of the two governments into the High Council of Republic\u2013Parliament of Transition (HCR\u2013PT) in 1994, with Mobutu as head of state and Kengo wa Dondo as prime minister. Although presidential and legislative elections were scheduled repeatedly over the next 2 years, they never took place.\nFirst Congo War and demise of Zaire.\nBy 1996, tensions from the neighbouring Rwandan Civil War and genocide had spilled over to Zaire (see History of Rwanda). Rwandan Hutu militia forces (Interahamwe), who had fled Rwanda following the ascension of an RPF-led government, had been using Hutu refugee camps in eastern Zaire as bases for incursion against Rwanda. These Hutu militia forces soon allied with the Zairian armed forces (FAZ) to launch a campaign against Congolese ethnic Tutsis in eastern Zaire, known as the Banyamulenge. In turn, these Zairian Tutsis formed a militia to defend themselves against attacks. When the Zairian government began to escalate its massacres in November 1996, the Tutsi militias erupted in rebellion against Mobutu, triggering the First Congo War.\nThe Tutsi militia was soon joined by various opposition groups and supported by several countries, including Rwanda and Uganda. This coalition, led by Laurent-D\u00e9sir\u00e9 Kabila, became known as the Alliance des Forces D\u00e9mocratiques pour la Lib\u00e9ration du Congo-Za\u00efre (AFDL). The AFDL, now seeking the broader goal of ousting Mobutu, made significant military gains in early 1997, and by the middle of 1997 had almost completely overrun the country. The only thing that seemed to slow the AFDL forces down was the country's ramshackle infrastructure; irregularly used dirt paths and river ports were all that connected some areas to the outside world. Following failed peace talks between Mobutu and Kabila, Mobutu fled into exile in Morocco on 17 May. Kabila named himself president, consolidated power around himself and the AFDL, and marched unopposed into Kinshasa three days later. On 21 May, Kabila officially reverted the name of the country to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.\nLegacy.\nAfter the collapse of Zaire, its legacy was claimed and partially continued by various factions which emerged from Mobutu's former supporter and loyalist network. These factions were headed by former \"barons\" of the regime as well as Mobutu's family members, and included political parties such as the Union of Mobutist Democrats and the MPR-\"Fait priv\u00e9\". Several of these groups continued to use Zaire's symbols and invoke its traditions. In 2024, opposition politician Christian Malanga led a coup attempt against the Congolese government in the name of his self-proclaimed \"New Zaire\", raising the old flag of Zaire in Kinshasa. The coup attempt was defeated, and Malanga was killed.\nGovernment and politics.\nThe country was governed by the Popular Movement of the Revolution as a one-party state as the only legally permitted party in the country, though the Congo had effectively been a one-party state since the MPR's formation. Despite the constitution nominally allowing for the existence of two parties, the MPR was the only party that was allowed to nominate a candidate for the 1 November 1970 presidential election. Mobutu was confirmed in office by an implausible margin of over 10,131,000 votes against only 157 who voted \"no.\" At parliamentary elections held two weeks later, voters were presented with a single MPR list that was approved with over 99 per cent support.\nThe president served as the head of state of Za\u00efre whose role was to appoint and dismiss cabinet members and determine their areas of responsibility. The ministers, as heads of their respective departments, were to execute the programs and decisions of the president. The president also was to have the power to appoint and dismiss the governors of the provinces and the judges of all courts, including those of the Supreme Court of Justice.\nThe bicameral parliament was replaced by a unicameral legislative body called the Legislative Council. Governors of provinces were no longer elected by provincial assemblies but appointed by the central government. The president had the power to issue autonomous regulations on matters other than those pertaining to the domain of law, without prejudice to other provisions of the constitution. Under certain conditions, the president was empowered to govern by executive order, which carried the force of law.\nMobutism.\nThe doctrinal foundation was disclosed shortly after its birth, in the form of the Manifesto of N'sele, which was issued from the president's rural residence at N'sele, 60\u00a0km further up the Congo River from Kinshasa. In May 1967, it was made public. Nationalism, revolution, and authenticity were identified as the major themes of what came to be known as \"Mobutism\".\nNationalism implied the achievement of economic and political independence. Revolution, described as a \"truly national revolution, essentially pragmatic\", meant \"the repudiation of both capitalism and communism\". Thus, \"neither right nor left\" became one of the legitimising slogans of the regime, along with \"authenticity\".\nIn the 1970s and 1980s, Mobutu's government relied on a selected pool of technocrats, often referred to as the \"nomenklatura\", from which the Head of State drew, and periodically rotated, competent individuals. They comprised the Executive Council and led the full spectrum of Ministries, Departments or, as governmental terminology shifted, Commissariats. Among these individuals were internationally respected appointees such as Djamboleka Lona Okitongono who was named Secretary of Finance, under Citizen Namwisi (Minister of Finance), and later became President of OGEDEP, the National Debt Management Office.\nDjamboleka became Governor of the Bank of Zaire in the final stage of Mobutu's government. His progress was fairly typical of the rotational pattern established by Mobutu, who retained the most sensitive ministerial portfolios (such as Defense) for himself.\nAdministrative divisions.\nZaire was divided into 8 regions with its capital Kinshasa. In 1988, the province of Kivu was split into three regions. They were renamed into provinces in 1997.\nEconomy.\nThe za\u00efre was introduced to replace the franc as the new national currency. 100 makuta (singular likuta) equaled one za\u00efre. The likuta was also divided into 100 sengi. However this unit was worth very little, so the smallest coin was for 10 sengi. The currency and the cities named above had actually already been renamed between 1966 and 1971.\nWhile the country began to stabilize after Mobutu took control, the economic situation began to decline, and by 1979, the purchasing power was only 4% of that in 1960. Starting in 1976 the IMF provided stabilizing loans to his regime. Much of this money was embezzled by Mobutu and his circle.\nAccording to the 1982 report by the IMF's envoy Erwin Blumenthal, it was \"alarmingly clear that the corruptive system in Zaire with all its wicked and ugly manifestations, its mismanagement and fraud will destroy all endeavors of international institutions, of friendly governments, and of the commercial banks towards recovery and rehabilitation of Zaire's economy\". Blumenthal stated that there was \"no chance\" that creditors would ever recover their loans. Yet the IMF and the World Bank continued to lend money that was either embezzled, stolen, or \"wasted on elephant projects\". \"Structural adjustment programmes\" implemented as a condition of IMF loans cut support for health care, education, and infrastructure.\nCulture.\nThe concept of authenticity was derived from the MPR's professed doctrine of \"authentic Zairian nationalism and condemnation of regionalism and tribalism\". Mobutu defined it as being conscious of one's own personality and one's own values and of being at home in one's culture. In line with the dictates of authenticity, the name of the country was changed to the Republic of Zaire on 27 October 1971, and that of the armed forces to Zairian Armed Forces (Forces Arm\u00e9es Za\u00efroises\u2014FAZ).\nThis decision was curious, given that the name \"Congo\", which referred both to the river Congo and to the mediaeval Kongo Empire, was fundamentally authentic to pre-colonial African roots, while \"Zaire\" is in fact a Portuguese corruption of another African word, \"Nzadi\" (\"river\", by Nzadi o Nzere, \"the river that swallows all the other rivers\", another name of the Congo river). General Mobutu became Mobutu S\u00e9s\u00e9 Seko and forced all his citizens to adopt African names and many cities were also renamed.\nSome of the conversions are as follows:\nIn addition, the adoption of Zairian, as opposed to Western or Christian, names in 1972 and the abandonment of Western dress in favour of the wearing of the abacost were subsequently promoted as expressions of authenticity.\nMobutu used the concept of authenticity as a means of vindicating his own brand of leadership. As he himself stated, \"in our African tradition there are never two chiefs\u00a0... That is why we Congolese, in the desire to conform to the traditions of our continent, have resolved to group all the energies of the citizens of our country under the banner of a single national party.\"\nCritics of the regime were quick to point out the shortcomings of Mobutism as a legitimising formula, in particular its self-serving qualities and inherent vagueness; nonetheless, the MPR's ideological training centre, the Makanda Kabobi Institute, took seriously its assigned task of propagating through the land \"the teachings of the Founder-President, which must be given and interpreted in the same fashion throughout the country\". Members of the MPR Political Bureau, meanwhile, were entrusted with the responsibility of serving as \"the repositories and guarantors of Mobutism\".\nQuite aside from the merits or weaknesses of Mobutism, the MPR drew much of its legitimacy from the model of the overarching mass parties that had come into existence in Africa in the 1960s, a model which had also been a source of inspiration for the MNC-Lumumba. It was this Lumumbist heritage which the MPR tried to appropriate in its effort to mobilise the Zairian masses behind its founder-president. Intimately tied up with the doctrine of Mobutism was the vision of an all-encompassing single party reaching out to all sectors of the nation.\nStandards and abbreviations.\nZaire's top-level domain was \".zr\". It has since changed to \".cd\".\nZaire's IOC code was ZAI, which the nation's athletes used at the Olympic Games and other international sporting events like the All-Africa Games. It has since changed to COD.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nWorks cited.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading and external links.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "8022": "History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo\nThe earliest known human settlements in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been dated back to the Middle Stone Age, approximately 90,000 years ago. The first real states, such as the Kongo, the Lunda, the Luba and Kuba, appeared south of the equatorial forest on the savannah from the 14th century onwards.\nThe Kingdom of Kongo controlled much of western and central Africa including what is now the western portion of the DR Congo between the 14th and the early 19th centuries. At its peak it had many as 500,000 people, and its capital was known as Mbanza-Kongo (south of Matadi, in modern-day Angola). In the late 15th century, Portuguese sailors arrived in the Kingdom of Kongo, and this led to a period of great prosperity and consolidation, with the king's power being founded on Portuguese trade. King Afonso I (1506\u20131543) had raids carried out on neighboring districts in response to Portuguese requests for slaves. After his death, the kingdom underwent a deep crisis.\nThe Atlantic slave trade occurred from approximately 1500 to 1850, with the entire west coast of Africa targeted, but the region around the mouth of the Congo suffered the most intensive enslavement. Over a strip of coastline about long, about 4 million people were enslaved and sent across the Atlantic to sugar plantations in Brazil, the US and the Caribbean. From 1780 onwards, there was a higher demand for slaves in the US which led to more people being enslaved. By 1780, more than 15,000 people were shipped annually from the Loango Coast, north of the Congo.\nIn 1870, explorer Henry Morton Stanley arrived in and explored what is now the DR Congo. Belgian colonization of DR Congo began in 1879 when King Leopold II started sending out agents to establish state posts along the banks of the Congo River, from its mouth upstream to the north, gradually enabling him to claim sovereignty over what would become the Congo Free State in 1885. However, control of such a huge area took decades to achieve. Many outposts were built to extend the power of the state over such a vast territory. In 1885, the Force Publique was set up, a colonial army with white officers and black soldiers. In 1886, Leopold made Camille Jansen the first Belgian governor-general of Congo. Over the late 19th century, various Christian (including Catholic and Protestant) missionaries arrived intending to convert the local population. A railway between Matadi and Stanley Pool was built in the 1890s. Reports of widespread murder, torture, and other abuses in the rubber plantations led to international and Belgian outrage and the Belgian government transferred control of the region from Leopold II and established the Belgian Congo in 1908.\nFollowing unrest, Belgium granted Congo independence in 1960. However, the Congo remained unstable, leading to the Congo Crisis, where the regional governments of Katanga and South Kasai attempted to gain independence with Belgian support. Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba tried to suppress secession with the aid of the Soviet Union as part of the Cold War, causing the United States to support a coup led by Colonel Joseph Mobutu. Lumumba was handed over to the Katangan government and executed in 1961. The secessionist movements were later defeated by the Congolese government as were the Soviet-backed Simba rebels. Following the end of the Congo Crisis in 1965, Joseph Kasa-Vubu was deposed and Mobutu seized complete power of the country and then renamed it Zaire. He sought to Africanize the country, changing his own name to Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga, and demanded that African citizens change their Western names to traditional African names. Mobutu sought to repress any opposition to his rule, which he successfully did throughout the 1980s. However, with his regime weakened in the 1990s, Mobutu was forced to agree to a power-sharing government with the opposition party. Mobutu remained the head of state and promised elections within the next two years that never took place.\nDuring the First Congo War, Rwanda invaded Zaire, in which Mobutu lost his power during this process. In 1997, Laurent-D\u00e9sir\u00e9 Kabila took power and renamed the country the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Afterwards, the Second Congo War broke out, resulting in a regional war in which many different African nations took part and in which millions of people were killed or displaced. Laurent-D\u00e9sir\u00e9 Kabila was assassinated by his own bodyguard in 2001, and his son, Joseph, succeeded him and was later elected president by the Congolese government in 2006. Joseph Kabila quickly sought peace. Foreign soldiers remained in the Congo for a few years and a power-sharing government between Joseph Kabila and the opposition party was set up. Joseph Kabila later resumed complete control over the Congo and was re-elected in a disputed election in 2011. In 2018, F\u00e9lix Tshisekedi was elected president; in the first peaceful transfer of power since independence.\nEarly history.\nThe area now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo was populated as early as 90,000 years ago, as shown by the 1988 discovery of the Semliki harpoon at Katanda, one of the oldest barbed harpoons ever found, which is believed to have been used to catch giant river catfish.\nBy the 13th century there were three main confederations of states in the western Congo Basin. In the east were the Seven Kingdoms of Kongo dia Nlaza, considered to be the oldest and most powerful, which likely included Nsundi, Mbata, Mpangu, and possibly Kundi and Okanga. South of these was Mpemba which stretched from modern-day Angola to the Congo River. It included various kingdoms such as Mpemba Kasi and Vunda. To its west across the Congo River was a confederation of three small states; Vungu (its leader), Kakongo, and Ngoyo.\nThe Kingdom of Kongo existed from the 14th to the early 19th century. Until the arrival of the Portuguese it was the dominant force in the region along with the Kingdom of Luba, the Kingdom of Lunda, the Mongo people and the Anziku Kingdom.\nColonial rule.\nCongo Free State (1885\u20131908).\nThe Congo Free State was a privately controlled by Leopold II of Belgium through the \"Association Internationale africaine\", a non-governmental organization. Leopold was the sole shareholder and chairman. The state included the entire area of the present the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Under Leopold II, the Congo Free State became one of the most infamous international scandals of the turn of the twentieth century. The report of the British Consul Roger Casement led to the arrest and punishment of white officials who had been responsible for cold-blooded killings during a rubber-collecting expedition in 1900, including a Belgian national who caused the shooting of at least 122 Congolese natives. Estimates of the total death toll vary considerably. The first census was only done in 1924, so it is even more difficult to quantify the population loss of the period. Roger Casement's famous 1904 report estimated ten million people. According to Casement's report, indiscriminate \"war\", starvation, reduction of births and Tropical diseases caused the country's depopulation. European and U.S. press agencies exposed the conditions in the Congo Free State to the public in 1900. By 1908 public and diplomatic pressure had led Leopold II to annex the Congo as the Belgian Congo colony.\nBelgian Congo (1908\u201360).\nOn 15 November 1908 King Leopold II of Belgium formally relinquished personal control of the Congo Free State. The renamed Belgian Congo was put under the direct administration of the Belgian government and its Ministry of Colonies.\nBelgian rule in the Congo was based around the \"colonial trinity\" (\"trinit\u00e9 colonial\") of state, missionary and private company interests. The privileging of Belgian commercial interests meant that large amounts of capital flowed into the Congo and that individual regions became specialized. The interests of the government and private enterprise became closely tied; the state helped companies break strikes and remove other barriers imposed by the indigenous population. The country was split into nesting, hierarchically organized administrative subdivisions, and run uniformly according to a set \"native policy\" (\"politique indig\u00e8ne\")\u2014in contrast to the British and the French, who generally favored the system of indirect rule whereby traditional leaders were retained in positions of authority under colonial oversight. There was also a high degree of racial segregation. Large numbers of white immigrants who moved to the Congo after the end of World War II came from across the social spectrum, but were nonetheless always treated as superior to blacks.\nDuring the 1940s and 1950s, the Congo experienced an unprecedented level of urbanization and the colonial administration began various development programs aimed at making the territory into a \"model colony\". Notable advances were made in treating diseases such as African trypanosomiasis. One of the results of these measures was the development of a new middle class of Europeanised African \"\u00e9volu\u00e9s\" in the cities. By the 1950s the Congo had a wage labor force twice as large as that in any other African colony. The Congo's rich natural resources, including uranium\u2014much of the uranium used by the U.S. nuclear programme during World War II was Congolese\u2014led to substantial interest in the region from both the Soviet Union and the United States as the Cold War developed.\nRise in Congolese political activity.\nDuring the latter stages of World War II a new social stratum emerged in the Congo, known as the \"\u00e9volu\u00e9\"s. Forming an African middle class in the colony, they held skilled positions (such as clerks and nurses) made available by the economic boom. While there were no universal criteria for determining \"\u00e9volu\u00e9 status\", it was generally accepted that one would have \"a good knowledge of French, adhere to Christianity, and have some form of post-primary education.\" Early on in their history, \"\u00e9volu\u00e9\"s sought to use their unique status to earn special privileges in the Congo. Since opportunities for upward mobility through the colonial structure were limited, the \"\u00e9volu\u00e9\" class institutionally manifested itself in elite clubs through which they could enjoy trivial privileges that made them feel distinct from the Congolese \"masses\". Additional groups, such as labor unions, alumni associations, and ethnic syndicates, provided other Congolese the means of organization. Among the most important of these was the Alliance des Bakongo (ABAKO), representing the Kongo people of the Lower Congo. However, they were restricted in their actions by the administration. While white settlers were consulted in the appointment of certain officials, the Congolese had no means of expressing their beliefs through the governing structures. Though native chiefs held legal authority in some jurisdictions, in practice they were used by the administration to further its own policies.\nUp into the 1950s, most \"\u00e9volu\u00e9\"s were concerned only with social inequalities and their treatment by the Belgians. Questions of self-government were not considered until 1954 when ABAKO requested that the administration consider a list of suggested candidates for a L\u00e9opoldville municipal post. That year the association was taken over by Joseph Kasa-Vubu, and under his leadership, it became increasingly hostile to the colonial authority and sought autonomy for the Kongo regions in the Lower Congo. In 1956 a group of Congolese intellectuals under the tutelage of several European academics issued a manifesto calling for a transition to independence over the course of 30 years. The ABAKO quickly responded with a demand for \"immediate independence\". The Belgian government was not prepared to grant the Congo independence and even when it started realizing the necessity of a plan for decolonization in 1957, it was assumed that such a process would be solidly controlled by Belgium. In December 1957 the colonial administration instituted reforms that permitted municipal elections and the formation of political parties. Some Belgian parties attempted to establish branches in the colony, but these were largely ignored by the population in favour of Congolese-initiated groups. Nationalism fermented in 1958 as more \"\u00e9volu\u00e9\"s began interacting with others outside of their own locales and started discussing the future structures of a post-colonial Congolese state. Nevertheless, most political mobilisation occurred along tribal and regional divisions. In Katanga, various tribal groups came together to form the Conf\u00e9d\u00e9ration des associations tribales du Katanga (CONAKAT) under the leadership of Godefroid Munongo and Mo\u00efse Tshombe. Hostile to immigrant peoples, it advocated provincial autonomy and close ties with Belgium. Most of its support was rooted in individual chiefs, businessmen, and European settlers of southern Katanga. It was opposed by Jason Sendwe's Association G\u00e9n\u00e9rale des Baluba du Katanga (BALUBAKAT).\nIn October 1958 a group of L\u00e9opoldville \"\u00e9volu\u00e9s\" including Patrice Lumumba, Cyrille Adoula and Joseph Il\u00e9o established the Mouvement National Congolais (MNC). Diverse in membership, the party sought to peacefully achieve Congolese independence, promote the political education of the populace, and eliminate regionalism. The MNC drew most of its membership from the residents of the eastern city of Stanleyville, where Lumumba was well known, and from the population of the Kasai Province, where efforts were directed by a Muluba businessman, Albert Kalonji. Belgian officials appreciated its moderate and anti-separatist stance and allowed Lumumba to attend the All-African Peoples' Conference in Accra, Ghana, in December 1958 (Kasa-Vubu was informed that the documents necessary for his travel to the event were not in order and was not permitted to go). Lumumba was deeply impressed by the Pan-Africanist ideals of Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah and returned to the Congo with a more radical party programme. He reported on his trip during a widely attended rally in L\u00e9opoldville and demanded the country's \"genuine\" independence.\nFearing that they were being overshadowed by Lumumba and the MNC, Kasa-Vubu and the ABAKO leadership announced that they would be hosting their own rally in the capital on 4 January 1959. The municipal government (under Belgian domination) was given short notice, and communicated that only a \"private meeting\" would be authorised. On the scheduled day of the rally the ABAKO leadership told the crowd that had gathered that the event was postponed and that they should disperse. The mass was infuriated and instead began hurling stones at the police and pillaging European property, initiating three days of violent and destructive riots. The Force Publique, the colonial army, was called into service and suppressed the revolt with considerable brutality. In wake of the riots Kasa-Vubu and his lieutenants were arrested. Unlike earlier expressions of discontent, the grievances were conveyed primarily by uneducated urban residents, not \"\u00e9volu\u00e9\"s. Popular opinion in Belgium was one of extreme shock and surprise. An investigative commission found the riots to be the culmination of racial discrimination, overcrowding, unemployment, and wishes for more political self-determination. On 13 January the administration announced several reforms, and the Belgian King, Baudouin, declared that independence would be granted to the Congo in the future.\nMeanwhile, discontent surfaced among the MNC leadership, who were bothered by Lumumba's domination over the party's politics. Relations between Lumumba and Kalonji also grew tense, as the former was upset with how the latter was transforming the Kasai branch into an exclusively Luba group and antagonising other tribes. This culminated into the split of the party into the MNC-Lumumba/MNC-L under Lumumba and the MNC-Kalonji/MNC-K under Kalonji and Il\u00e9o. The latter began advocating federalism. Adoula left the organisation. Alone to lead his own faction and facing competition from ABAKO, Lumumba became increasingly insistent in his demands for independence. Following an October riot in Stanleyville he was arrested. Nevertheless, the influence of himself and the MNC-L continued to grow rapidly. The party advocated for a strong unitary state, nationalism, and the termination of Belgian rule and began forming alliances with regional groups, such as the Kivu-based Centre du Regroupement Africain (CEREA). Though the Belgians supported a unitary system over the federal models suggested by ABAKO and CONAKAT, they and more moderate Congolese were unnerved by Lumumba's increasingly extremist attitudes. With the implicit support of the colonial administration, the moderates formed the Parti National du Progr\u00e8s (PNP) under the leadership of Paul Bolya and Albert Delvaux. It advocated centralisation, respect for traditional elements, and close ties with Belgium. In southern L\u00e9opoldville Province, a socialist-federalist party, the Parti Solidaire Africain (PSA) was founded. Antoine Gizenga served as its president, and Cl\u00e9ophas Kamitatu was in charge of the L\u00e9opoldville Province chapter.\nIndependence and the Congo Crisis (1960\u201365).\nFollowing the riots in Leopoldville (4\u20137 January 1959) and in Stanleyville (31 October 1959), the Belgians realised they could not maintain control of such a vast country in the face of rising demands for independence. Belgian and Congolese political leaders held a Round Table Conference in Brussels beginning on 18 January 1960.\nAt the end of the conference, on 27 January 1960, it was announced that elections would be held in the Congo on 22 May 1960, and full independence granted on 30 June 1960. The elections produced the nationalist Patrice Lumumba as prime minister, and Joseph Kasavubu as president.\nOn independence the country adopted the name \"Republic of the Congo\" (R\u00e9publique du Congo). The French colony of Middle Congo (Moyen Congo) also chose the name Republic of the Congo upon its independence, so the two countries were more commonly known as Congo-L\u00e9opoldville and Congo-Brazzaville, after their capital cities.\nIn 1960, the country was very unstable\u2014regional tribal leaders held far more power than the central government\u2014and with the departure of the Belgian administrators, almost no skilled bureaucrats remained in the country. The first Congolese graduated from university only in 1956, and very few in the new nation had any idea how to manage a country of such size.\nOn 5 July 1960, a military mutiny by Congolese soldiers against their European officers broke out in the capital and rampant looting began. On 11 July 1960 the richest province of the country, Katanga, seceded under Moise Tshombe. The United Nations sent 20,000 peacekeepers to protect Europeans in the country and try to restore order. Western paramilitaries and mercenaries, often hired by mining companies to protect their interests, also began to pour into the country. In this period Congo's second richest province, Kasai, also announced its independence on 8 August 1960.\nAfter trying to get help from the United States and the United Nations, Prime Minister Lumumba turned to the USSR for assistance. Nikita Khrushchev agreed to help, offering advanced weaponry and technical advisors. The United States viewed the Soviet presence as an attempt to take advantage of the situation and gain a proxy state in sub-Saharan Africa. UN forces were ordered to block any shipments of arms into the country. The United States also looked for a way to replace Lumumba as leader. President Kasavubu had clashed with Prime Minister Lumumba and advocated an alliance with the West rather than the Soviets. The U.S. sent weapons and CIA personnel to aid forces allied with Kasavubu and combat the Soviet presence.\nOn 23 August, the Congolese armed forces invaded South Kasai and perpetrated massacres against the Luba people. Lumumba was dismissed from office on 5 September 1960 by Kasavubu who publicly blamed him for the massacres in South Kasai and for involving Soviets in the country. On 14 September 1960, with CIA support, Colonel Joseph Mobutu overthrew the government and arrested Lumumba. A technocratic government, the College of Commissioners-General, was established.\nOn 17 January 1961 Mobutu sent Lumumba to \u00c9lisabethville (now Lubumbashi), capital of Katanga. In full view of the press he was beaten and forced to eat copies of his own speeches. For three weeks afterward, he was not seen or heard from. Then Katangan radio announced implausibly that he had escaped and been killed by villagers. It was soon clear that in fact he had been tortured and killed along with two others shortly after his arrival. In 2001, a Belgian inquiry established that he had been shot by Katangan gendarmes in the presence of Belgian officers, under Katangan command. Lumumba was beaten, placed in front of a firing squad with two allies, cut up, buried, dug up and what remained was dissolved in acid.\nIn Stanleyville, those loyal to the deposed Lumumba set up a rival government under Antoine Gizenga which lasted from 31 March 1961 until it was reintegrated on 5 August 1961. After some reverses, UN and Congolese government forces succeeded in recapturing the breakaway provinces of South Kasai on 30 December 1961, and Katanga on 15 January 1963.\nBeginning in 1964, in the east of the country, Soviet and Cuban backed rebels called the Simbas rose up, taking a significant amount of territory and proclaiming a communist \"People's Republic of the Congo\" in Stanleyville. As the Congolese government was reclaiming territory from the Simbas, the rebels resorted to taking the local white population hostage. Belgian and American forces pushed the Simbas out of Stanleyville in November 1964 during a hostage rescue operation. Congolese government forces, supported by European mercenaries, fully defeated the Simba rebels by November 1965. The Simba rebels executed 20,000 Congolese and 392 Western hostages, including 268 Belgians, during the rebellion. Tens of thousands of people were killed in total during the suppression of the Simbas.\nZaire (1965\u20131997).\nUnrest and rebellion plagued the government until November 1965, when Lieutenant General Joseph-D\u00e9sir\u00e9 Mobutu, by then commander in chief of the national army, seized control of the country and declared himself president for the next five years. Mobutu quickly consolidated his power, despite the Stanleyville mutinies of 1966 and 1967, and was elected unopposed as president in a sham election in 1970 for a seven-year term.\nEmbarking on a campaign of cultural awareness, President Mobutu renamed the country the \"Republic of Zaire\" in 1971 and required citizens to adopt African names and drop their French-language ones. The name comes from Portuguese, adapted from the Kongo word \"nzere\" or \"nzadi\" (\"river that swallows all rivers\"). Among other changes, Leopoldville became Kinshasa and Katanga Shaba.\nRelative peace and stability prevailed until 1977 and 1978 when Katangan Front for Congolese National Liberation rebels, based in the Angolan People's Republic, launched the Shaba I and II invasions into the southeast Shaba region. These rebels were driven out with the aid of French and Belgian paratroopers plus Moroccan troops. An Inter-African Force remained in the region for some time afterwards.\nZaire remained a one-party state in the 1980s. Although Mobutu successfully maintained control during this period, opposition parties, most notably the Union pour la D\u00e9mocratie et le Progr\u00e8s Social (UDPS), were active. Mobutu's attempts to quell these groups drew significant international criticism.\nAs the Cold War came to a close, internal and external pressures on Mobutu increased. In late 1989 and early 1990, Mobutu was weakened by a series of domestic protests, by heightened international criticism of his regime's human rights practices, by a faltering economy, and by government corruption, most notably his own massive embezzlement of government funds for personal use.\nIn April 1990, Mobutu declared the Third Republic, agreeing to a limited multi-party system with free elections and a constitution. As details of the reforms were delayed, soldiers in September 1991 began looting Kinshasa to protest their unpaid wages. Two thousand French and Belgian troops, some of whom were flown in on U.S. Air Force planes, arrived to evacuate the 20,000 endangered foreign nationals in Kinshasa.\nIn 1992, after previous similar attempts, the long-promised Sovereign National Conference was staged, encompassing over 2,000 representatives from various political parties. The conference gave itself a legislative mandate and elected Archbishop Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya as its chairman, along with \u00c9tienne Tshisekedi, leader of the UDPS, as prime minister. By the end of the year Mobutu had created a rival government with its own prime minister. The ensuing stalemate produced a compromise merger of the two governments into the High Council of Republic-Parliament of Transition (HCR-PT) in 1994, with Mobutu as head of state and Kengo Wa Dondo as prime minister. Although presidential and legislative elections were scheduled repeatedly over the next two years, they never took place.\nCivil wars (1996\u20132003).\nFirst Congo War (1996\u201397).\nBy 1996, tensions from the war and genocide in neighboring Rwanda had spilled over into Zaire. Rwandan Hutu militia forces (Interahamwe) who had fled Rwanda following the ascension of a Tutsi-led government had been using Hutu refugee camps in eastern Zaire as bases for incursions into Rwanda. In October 1996\nRwandan forces attacked refugee camps in the Ruzizi Plain near the intersection of the Congolese, Rwandan and Burundi borders meet, scattering refugees. They took Uvira, then Bukavu, Goma and Mugunga.\nHutu militia forces soon allied with the Zairian armed forces (FAZ) to launch a campaign against Congolese ethnic Tutsis in eastern Zaire. In turn, these Tutsis formed a militia to defend themselves against attacks. When the Zairian government began to escalate the massacres in November 1996, Tutsi militias erupted in rebellion against Mobutu.\nThe Tutsi militia was soon joined by various opposition groups and supported by several countries, including Rwanda and Uganda. This coalition, led by Laurent-Desire Kabila, became known as the Alliance des Forces D\u00e9mocratiques pour la Lib\u00e9ration du Congo-Za\u00efre (AFDL). The AFDL, now seeking the broader goal of ousting Mobutu, made significant military gains in early 1997. Various Zairean politicians who had unsuccessfully opposed the dictatorship of Mobutu for many years now saw an opportunity for them in the invasion of Zaire by two of the region's strongest military forces. Following failed peace talks between Mobutu and Kabila in May 1997, Mobutu left the country on 16 May. The AFDL entered Kinshasa unopposed a day later, and Kabila named himself president, reverting the name of the country to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He marched into Kinshasa on 20 May and consolidated power around himself and the AFDL.\nIn September 1997, Mobutu died in exile in Morocco.\nSecond Congo War (1998\u20132003).\nKabila demonstrated little ability to manage the problems of his country, and lost his allies. To counterbalance the power and influence of Rwanda in DRC, Ugandan troops created another rebel movement called the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), led by the Congolese warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba. They attacked in August 1998, backed by Rwandan and Ugandan troops. Soon afterwards, Angola, Namibia, and Zimbabwe became involved militarily in the Congo, with Angola and Zimbabwe supporting the government. While the six African governments involved in the war signed a ceasefire accord in Lusaka in July 1999, the Congolese rebels did not and the ceasefire broke down within months.\nKabila was assassinated in 2001 by a bodyguard called Rashidi Kasereka, 18, who was then shot dead, according to Justice Minister Mwenze Kongolo. Another account of the assassination says that the real killer escaped.\nKabila was succeeded by his son, Joseph. Upon taking office, Kabila called for multilateral peace talks to end the war. Kabila partly succeeded when a further peace deal was brokered between him, Uganda, and Rwanda leading to the apparent withdrawal of foreign troops.\nCurrently, the Ugandans and the MLC still hold a wide section of the north of the country; Rwandan forces and its front, the Rassemblement Congolais pour la D\u00e9mocratie (RCD) control a large section of the east; and government forces or their allies hold the west and south of the country. There were reports that the conflict is being prolonged as a cover for extensive looting of the substantial natural resources in the country, including diamonds, copper, zinc, and coltan. The conflict was reignited in January 2002 by ethnic clashes in the northeast and both Uganda and Rwanda then halted their withdrawal and sent in more troops. Talks between Kabila and the rebel leaders, held in Sun City, lasted a full six weeks, beginning in April 2002. In June, they signed a peace accord under which Kabila would share power with former rebels. By June 2003, all foreign armies except those of Rwanda had pulled out of Congo.\nFew people in the Congo have been unaffected by the conflict. A survey conducted in 2009 by the ICRC and Ipsos shows that three-quarters (76%) of the people interviewed have been affected in some way\u2013either personally or due to the wider consequences of armed conflict.\nThe response of the international community has been incommensurate with the scale of the disaster resulting from the war in the Congo. Its support for political and diplomatic efforts to end the war has been relatively consistent, but it has taken no effective steps to abide by repeated pledges to demand accountability for the war crimes and crimes against humanity that were routinely committed in Congo. \nThe United Nations Security Council and the U.N. Secretary-General have frequently denounced human rights abuses and the humanitarian disaster that the war unleashed on the local population, but have shown little will to tackle the responsibility of occupying powers for the atrocities taking place in areas under their control, areas where the worst violence in the country took place. In particular Rwanda and Uganda have escaped any significant sanction for their role.\nJoseph Kabila period.\nTransitional government (2003\u20132006).\nDR Congo had a transitional government in July 2003 until the election was over. A constitution was approved by voters and on 30 July 2006 the Congo held its first multi-party elections since independence in 1960. Joseph Kabila took 45% of the votes and his opponent Jean-Pierre Bemba 20%. That was the origin of a fight between the two parties from 20 to 22 August 2006 in the streets of the capital, Kinshasa. Sixteen people died before policemen and MONUC took control of the city. A new election was held on 29 October 2006, which Kabila won with 70% of the vote. Bemba has decried election \"irregularities\". On 6 December 2006 Joseph Kabila was sworn in as president.\nKabila overstays his term.\nIn December 2011, Joseph Kabila was re-elected for a second term as president. After the results were announced on 9 December, there was violent unrest in Kinshasa and Mbuji-Mayi, where official tallies showed that a strong majority had voted for the opposition candidate \u00c9tienne Tshisekedi. Official observers from the Carter Center reported that returns from almost 2,000 polling stations in areas where support for Tshisekedi was strong had been lost and not included in the official results. They described the election as lacking credibility. On 20 December, Kabila was sworn in for a second term, promising to invest in infrastructure and public services. However, Tshisekedi maintained that the result of the election was illegitimate and said that he intended also to \"swear himself in\" as president.\nOn 19 January 2015 protests led by students at the University of Kinshasa broke out. The protests began following the announcement of a proposed law that would allow Kabila to remain in power until a national census can be conducted (elections had been planned for 2016). By Wednesday 21 January clashes between police and protesters had claimed at least 42 lives (although the government claimed only 15 people had been killed).\nSimilarly, in September 2016, violent protests were met with brutal force by the police and Republican Guard soldiers. Opposition groups claim 80 dead, including the Students' Union leader. From Monday 19 September Kinshasa residents, as well as residents elsewhere in Congo, were mostly confined to their homes. Police arrested anyone remotely connected to the opposition as well as innocent onlookers. Government propaganda, on television, and actions of covert government groups in the streets, acted against opposition as well as foreigners. The president's mandate was due to end on 19 December 2016, but no plans were made to elect a replacement at that time and this caused further protests.\nF\u00e9lix Tshisekedi Presidency (2019\u2013present).\nOn 30 December 2018 the presidential election to determine the successor to Kabila was held. On 10 January 2019, the electoral commission announced opposition candidate F\u00e9lix Tshisekedi as the winner of the vote. He was officially sworn in as president on 24 January 2019. in the ceremony of taking of the office F\u00e9lix Tshisekedi appointed Vital Kamerhe as his chief of staff. In June 2020, chief of staff Vital Kamerhe was found guilty of embezzling public funds and he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. However, Kamerhe was released in December 2021.\nThe political allies of former president Joseph Kabila, who stepped down in January 2019, maintained control of key ministries, the legislature, judiciary and security services. However, President Felix Tshisekedi succeeded to strengthen his hold on power. In a series of moves, he won over more legislators, gaining the support of almost 400 out of 500 members of the National Assembly. The pro-Kabila speakers of both houses of parliament were forced out. In April 2021, the new government was formed without the supporters of Kabila. President Felix Tshisekedi succeeded to oust the last remaining elements of his government who were loyal to former leader Joseph Kabila. In January 2021, DRC's President F\u00e9lix Tshisekedi pardoned all those convicted in the murder of Laurent-D\u00e9sir\u00e9 Kabila in 2001. Colonel Eddy Kapend and his co-defendants, who have been incarcerated for 15 years, were released.\nAfter the 2023 presidential election, Tshisekedi had a clear lead in his run for a second term. On 31 December 2023, officials said that President Felix Tshisekedi had been re-elected with 73% of the vote. Nine opposition candidates signed a declaration rejecting the election and called for a rerun.\nContinued conflicts.\nThe inability of the state and the world's largest United Nations peacekeeping force to provide security throughout the vast country has led to the emergence of up to 120 armed groups by 2018, perhaps the largest number in the world. Armed groups are often accused of being proxies or being supported by regional governments interested in Eastern Congo's vast mineral wealth. Some argue that much of the lack of security by the national army is strategic on the part of the government, who let the army profit from illegal logging and mining operations in return for loyalty. Different rebel groups often target civilians by ethnicity and militias often become oriented around ethnic local militias known as \"Mai-Mai\".\nConflict in Kivu (2004\u2013present).\nTutsi led insurgency.\nLaurent Nkunda with other soldiers from RCD-Goma who were integrated into the army defected and called themselves the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP). Starting in 2004, CNDP, believed to be backed by Rwanda as a way to tackle the Hutu group Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), rebelled against the government, claiming to protect the Banyamulenge (Congolese Tutsis). In 2009, after a deal between the DRC and Rwanda, Rwandan troops entered the DRC and arrested Nkunda and were allowed to pursue FDLR militants. The CNDP signed a peace treaty with the government where its soldiers would be integrated into the national army.\nIn April 2012, the leader of the CNDP, Bosco Ntaganda and troops loyal to him mutinied, claiming a violation of the peace treaty and formed a rebel group, the March 23 Movement (M23), which was believed to be backed by Rwanda. On 20 November 2012, M23 took control of Goma, a provincial capital with a population of one million people. The UN authorized the Force Intervention Brigade (FIB), which was the first UN peacekeeping force with a mandate to neutralize opposition rather than a defensive mandate, and the FIB quickly defeated M23. The FIB was then to fight the FDLR but were hampered by the efforts of the Congolese government, who some believe tolerate the FDLR as a counterweight to Rwandan interests. Since 2017, fighters from M23, most of whom had fled into Uganda and Rwanda (both were believed to have supported them), started crossing back into DRC with the rising crisis over Kabila's extension of his term limit.\nAfter rising insecurity, President Tshisekedi declared a \"state of siege\" or state of emergency in North Kivu, as well as Ituri province, in the first such declaration since the country's independence. The military and police took over positions from civilian authorities and some saw it as a powerplay since the civilian officials were part of the opposition to the President. A similar declaration was avoided for South Kivu, in a move believed to avoid antagonizing armed groups with ties to regional powers such as Rwanda.\nMai Mai insurgencies.\nEthnic conflict in Kivu has often involved the Congolese Tutsis known as Banyamulenge, a cattle herding group of Rwandan origin derided as outsiders, and other ethnic groups who consider themselves indigenous. Additionally, neighboring Burundi and Rwanda, who have a thorny relationship, are accused of being involved, with Rwanda accused of training Burundi rebels who have joined with Mai Mai against the Banyamulenge and the Banyamulenge is accused of harboring the RNC, a Rwandan opposition group supported by Burundi. In June 2017, the group was formed called the National Coalition of the People for the Sovereignty of Congo (CNPSC) or Alliance of Article 64, a reference to Article 64 of the constitution, which says the people have an obligation to fight the efforts of those who seek to take power by force, in reference to President Kabila. It is one of three alliances of various Mai-Mai militias and is led by Bembe warlord William Yakutumba whose Mai-Mai Yakutumba is the largest component of the CNPSC and has had friction with the Congolese Tutsis. was formed and even briefly capturing a few strategic towns. In May 2019, Banyamulenge fighters killed a Banyindu traditional chief, Kawaza Nyakwana. Later in 2019, a coalition of militias from the Bembe, Bafuliru and Banyindu are estimated to have burnt more than 100, mostly Banyamulenge, villages and stole tens of thousands of cattle from the largely cattle-herding Banyamulenge. About 200,000 people fled their homes.\nClashes between Hutu militias and militias of other ethnic groups has also been prominent. In 2012, the Congolese army in its attempt to crush the Rwandan backed and Tutsi-dominated CNDP and M23 rebels, empowered and used Hutu groups such as the FDLR and a Hutu dominated Ma\u00ef Ma\u00ef Nyatura as proxies in its fight. The Nyatura and FDLR even arbitrarily executed up to 264 mostly Tembo civilians in 2012. In 2015, the army then launched an offensive against the FDLR militia. The FDLR and Nyatura were accused of killing Nande people and of burning their houses. The Nande-dominate UPDI militia, a Nande militia called Mai-Mai Mazembe and a militia dominated by Nyanga people, the \"Nduma Defense of Congo\" (NDC), also called Ma\u00ef-Ma\u00ef Sheka and led by G\u00e9d\u00e9on Kyungu Mutanga, are accused of attacking Hutus. In North Kivu, in 2017, an alliance of Mai-Mai groups called the National Movement of Revolutionaries (MNR) began attacks in June 2017 includes Nande Mai-Mai leaders from groups such as Corps du Christ and Mai-Mai Mazembe. Another alliance of Mai-Mai groups is CMC which brings together Hutu militia Nyatura and are active along the border between North Kivu and South Kivu. In September 2019, the army declared it had killed Sylvestre Mudacumura, head of the FDLR, and in November that year the army declared it had killed Juvenal Musabimana, who had led a splinter group of the FDLR.\nAllied Democratic Forces insurgency.\nThe Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) has been waging an insurgency in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and is blamed for the Beni massacre in 2016. While the Congolese army maintains that the ADF is an Islamist insurgency, most observers feel that they are only a criminal group interested in gold mining and logging. In March 2021, the United States claimed that the ADF was linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant as part of the Islamic State's Central Africa Province. By 2021, the ADF was considered the deadliest of the many armed groups in the east of the country.\nConflict in Katanga.\nIn Northern Katanga Province starting in 2013, the Pygmy Batwa people, whom the Luba people often exploit and allegedly enslave, rose up into militias, such as the \"Perci\" militia, and attacked Luba villages. A Luba militia known as \"Elements\" or \"Elema\" attacked back, notably killing at least 30 people in the \"Vumilia 1\" displaced people camp in April 2015. Since the start of the conflict, hundreds have been killed and tens of thousands have been displaced from their homes. The weapons used in the conflict are often arrows and axes, rather than guns.\nElema also began fighting the government mainly with machetes, bows and arrows in Congo's Haut Katanga and Tanganyika provinces. The government forces fought alongside a tribe known as the Abatembo and targeting civilians of the Luba and the Tabwa tribes who were believed to be sympathetic to the Elema.\nConflict in Kasai.\nIn the Kasa\u00ef-Central province, starting in 2016, the largely Luba Kamwina Nsapu militia led by Kamwina Nsapu attacked state institutions. The leader was killed by authorities in August 2016 and the militia reportedly took revenge by attacking civilians. By June 2017, more than 3,300 people had been killed and 20 villages have been completely destroyed, half of them by government troops. The militia has expanded to the neighboring Kasai-Oriental area, Kasa\u00ef and Lomami.\nThe UN discovered dozens of mass graves. There was an ethnic nature to the conflict with the rebels being mostly Luba and Lulua and have selectively killed non-Luba people while the government allied militia, the Bana Mura, constituting people from the Chokwe, Pende, and Tetela, have committed ethnically motivated attacks against the Luba and Lulua.\nConflict in Ituri.\nThe Ituri conflict in the Ituri region of the north-eastern DRC involved fighting between the agriculturalist Lendu and pastoralist Hema ethnic groups, who together made up around 40% of Ituri's population, with other groups including the Ndo-Okebo and the Nyali. During Belgian rule, the Hema were given privileged positions over the Lendu while long time leader Mobutu Sese Seko also favored the Hema. While \"Ituri conflict\" often refers to the major fighting from 1999 to 2003, fighting has existed before and continues since that time. During the Second Congolese Civil War, Ituri was considered the most violent region. An agricultural and religious group from the Lendu people known as the \"Cooperative for the Development of Congo\" or CODECO allegedly reemerged as a militia in 2017 and began attacking the Hema as well as the Alur people to control the resources in the region, with the Ndo-Okebo and the Nyali also involved in the violence. After disagreements over negotiating with the government and the killing of CODECO's leader, Ngudjolo Duduko Justin, in March 2020, the group splintered and violence spread into new areas. In late 2020, CODECO briefly held the capital of the province, Bunia, but retreated. In June 2019, attacks by CODECO led to 240 people being killed and more than 300,000 people fleeing.\nThe Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), mostly active in North and South Kivu has also been involved in Ituri province. President Tshisekedi declared a \"state of siege\" or state of emergency in the province in May 2021 to tackle ADF. However, ADF killed 57 civilians in one attack in the same month in one of its deadliest single attacks. 30 people were massacred in September 2021 by the ADF. The President is accused of promoting former rebel leaders and generals accused of war crimes to be in charge of the province.\nConflict in the Northwest.\nDongo Conflict.\nIn October 2009 a conflict started in Dongo, Sud-Ubangi District where clashes had broken out over access to fishing ponds.\nYumbi Massacre (2018).\nNearly 900 people were killed between 16 and 17 December 2018 around Yumbi, a few weeks before the Presidential election, when mostly those of the Batende tribe massacred mostly those of the Banunu tribe. About 16,000 fled to neighboring Republic of the Congo. It was alleged that it was a carefully planned massacre, involving elements of the national military.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["34421", "8022"], "permutation_1": ["34421", "8022"], "permutation_2": ["34421", "8022"], "permutation_3": ["34421", "8022"]}
{"id": "2hop__554846_77478", "docs_added": {"11518114": "Glynn Griffing\nAmerican football player (born 1940)\nWilburn Glynn Griffing (born December 1, 1940) is an American former professional football player who was a quarterback for one season with the New York Giants in the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Ole Miss Rebels and was selected in the fourth round of the 1962 NFL draft. Griffing was also selected in the 14th round of the 1962 AFL draft by the Houston Oilers.", "21757": "New York Giants\nNational Football League franchise in East Rutherford, New Jersey\nThe New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) East division. The team plays its home games at MetLife Stadium (which it shares with the New York Jets) at the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey, west of New York City. The Giants are headquartered and practice at the Quest Diagnostics Training Center, also in the Meadowlands.\nThe Giants were one of five teams that joined the NFL in 1925, and they are the only one of that group still existing, as well as the league's longest-established team in the Northeastern United States. The team ranks third among all NFL franchises with eight NFL championship titles: four in the pre\u2013Super Bowl era (1927, 1934, 1938, 1956) and four since the advent of the Super Bowl (XXI (1986), XXV (1990), XLII (2007), and XLVI (2011)), along with more championship appearances than any other team, with 19 overall appearances. Their championship tally is surpassed only by the Green Bay Packers (13) and the Chicago Bears (9). Throughout their history, the Giants have featured 29 Hall of Fame players, including NFL Most Valuable Player (MVP) award winners Mel Hein, Frank Gifford, Y. A. Tittle, and Lawrence Taylor.\nTo distinguish themselves from the professional baseball team of the same name, the football team was incorporated as the \"New York National League Football Company, Inc.\" in 1929 and then changed to \"New York Football Giants, Inc.\" in 1937. While the baseball team moved to San Francisco after the 1957 season, the football team continues to legally use it as its corporate name, which the team is often referred to by fans and sportscasters alike. The team has also acquired several nicknames, including \"Big Blue\", the \"G-Men\", and the \"Jints\", an intentionally mangled contraction seen frequently in the \"New York Post\" and \"New York Daily News\", originating from the baseball team when they were based in New York. In addition, the team as a whole is occasionally referred to as the \"Big Blue Wrecking Crew\", even though this moniker primarily and originally refers to the Giants defensive unit during the 1980s and early-1990s.\nThe team's heated rivalry with the Philadelphia Eagles is the oldest of the NFC East rivalries, dating back to 1933, and has been called the best rivalry in the NFL in the 21st century.\nHistory.\nMara family era (1925\u20131990).\nOn August 1, 1925, Timothy Mara and Will Gibson were granted a franchise by the NFL for their newly organized team in New York City \u2014 the New York Football Giants. Cost of the franchise was $2,500.\nThe Giants played their first game as an exhibition against All New Britain (which was not an NFL team) in New Britain, Connecticut, on October 4. They defeated New Britain 26\u20130 in front of a crowd of 10,000. \nThe New York Giants' first NFL game was a week later, on October 11, 1925, at the Cycledrome in Providence, Rhode Island, in a 0 to 14 loss to the Providence Steam Roller. The Giants were successful in their first season, finishing in fourth place in a 20-team league with an 8\u20134-0 record. \nEarl Potteiger years (1927\u20131928).\nNFL champions (1927).\nIn its third season, the team finished with the best record in the league at 11\u20131\u20131 and was awarded the NFL title. After a disappointing fourth season (1928) owner Tim Mara bought the entire squad of the Detroit Wolverines, principally to acquire star quarterback Benny Friedman, and merged the two teams under the Giants name.\nIn 1930, there were still many who questioned the quality of the professional game, claiming the college \"amateurs\" played with more intensity than professionals. In December 1930, the Giants played a team of Notre Dame All Stars at the Polo Grounds to raise money for the unemployed of New York City. It was also an opportunity to establish the skill and prestige of the pro game. Knute Rockne reassembled his Four Horsemen along with the stars of his 1924 Championship squad and told them to score early, then defend. Rockne, like much of the public, thought little of pro football and expected an easy win. But from the beginning it was a one-way contest, with Friedman running for two Giant touchdowns and Hap Moran passing for another. Notre Dame failed to score. When it was all over, Coach Rockne told his team, \"That was the greatest football machine I ever saw. I am glad none of you got hurt.\" The game raised $100,000 for the homeless, and is often credited with establishing the legitimacy of the professional game for those who were critical. It also was the last game the legendary Rockne ever coached; he was killed in an airplane crash on March 31, 1931.\nSteve Owen years (1931\u20131953).\nIn a 16-year span from 1931 to 1947, the Giants qualified to play in the NFL championship game 8 times, winning twice. During this period the Giants were led by Hall of Fame coach Steve Owen, and Hall of Fame players Mel Hein, Red Badgro, and Tuffy Leemans. In 1933 the Giants faced the Chicago Bears in the championship game and were defeated 23\u201321.\nNFL champions (1934).\nThe famous \"Sneakers Game\" was played in this era where the Giants defeated the Chicago Bears on an icy field in the 1934 NFL Championship Game, while wearing sneakers for better traction. The team would return to the championship game the following year but would fall to the Detroit Lions 26\u20137.\nNFL champions (1938).\nThe Giants captured their third NFL championship in 1938 with a 23\u201317 win over the Green Bay Packers. Both teams returned to the championship game the following year in 1939, with the Packers shutting out the Giants 27\u20130.\nThe period also featured the 1944 Giants, which are ranked as the #1 defensive team in NFL history, \"...a truly awesome unit\". They gave up only 7.5 points per game (a record that still stands) and shut out five of their 10 opponents, though they lost 14\u20137 to the Green Bay Packers in the 1944 NFL Championship Game. The Giants played the Detroit Lions to a scoreless tie on November 7, 1943. To this day, no NFL game played since then has ended in a scoreless tie. The Giants were particularly successful from the latter half of the 1930s until the United States entry into World War II.\nJim Lee Howell years (1954\u20131960).\nNFL champions (1956).\nThe Giants won their next championship in 1956, the first year the team began playing at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx borough of New York City. Aided by a number of future Pro Football Hall of Fame players such as running back Frank Gifford, linebacker Sam Huff, and offensive tackle Roosevelt Brown, as well as all-pro running back Alex Webster. The Giants' 1956 championship team not only included players who would eventually find their way to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but a Hall of Fame coaching staff, as well. Head coach Jim Lee Howell's staff had Vince Lombardi coaching the offense and Tom Landry coaching the defense. From 1958 to 1963, the Giants played in the NFL Championship Game five times, but failed to win. Most significantly, the Giants played the Colts in the 1958 NFL Championship Game, which is considered a event in the history of the NFL. The game, which the Giants lost in overtime 23\u201317, is often called \"The Greatest Game Ever Played\" and is considered one of the most important events in furthering the NFL's popularity. The following year, they lost the championship to the Colts again, giving up a 9\u20137 fourth-quarter lead en route to a 31\u201316 loss.\nAllie Sherman years (1961\u20131968).\nBoth the 1961 and 1962 championship game matched the Giants up against the Green Bay Packers, with the Giants losing both 37\u20130 and 16\u20137 respectively. In 1963, led by league MVP quarterback Y. A. Tittle, who threw a then-NFL record 36 touchdown passes, the Giants advanced to the NFL Championship Game, where they lost to the Bears 14\u201310 for their third consecutive championship loss, as well as their fifth loss in the title game in 6 years.\nFrom 1964 to 1978, the Giants registered only two winning seasons and no playoff appearances. With players, such as Tittle and Gifford approaching their mid 30s, the team declined rapidly, finishing 2\u201310\u20132 in 1964. They rebounded with a 7\u20137 record in 1965, before compiling a league-worst 1\u201312\u20131 record, and allowing more than 500 points on defense in 1966. During the 1969 preseason, the Giants lost their first meeting with the New York Jets, 37\u201314, in front of 70,874 fans at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut. Following the game, Wellington Mara fired coach Allie Sherman, and replaced him with former Giants fullback Alex Webster.\nIn 1967, the team acquired quarterback Fran Tarkenton from the Minnesota Vikings. Despite having several respectable seasons with Tarkenton at quarterback, including a 7\u20137 finish in 1967 and 9\u20135 in 1970, the Giants traded him back to the Vikings after a 4\u201310 finish in 1971. Tarkenton would go on to lead the Vikings to three Super Bowls and earn a place in the Hall of Fame, while the Giants suffered through one of the worst stretches in their history, winning only 23 games from 1973 to 1979. Before the 1976 season, the Giants tried to revive a weak offense by replacing retired RB Ron Johnson with future Hall of Fame fullback Larry Csonka, but Csonka was often injured and ineffective during his 3 years in New York. The 1977 season featured a roster which included three rookie quarterbacks.\nThe Giants were allowed to play their home games at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut in 1973 and 1974, and at Shea Stadium (home of the Mets and Jets) in Queens, New York in 1975, due to the renovation of Yankee Stadium. They finally moved into their own dedicated state-of-the-art stadium in 1976, when they moved into Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, New Jersey, located 5 miles west of New York City. One of the low points during this period was the play known as the \"Miracle at the Meadowlands\", which occurred in 1978. With the Giants trying to kill the clock and secure a win against the Philadelphia Eagles, offensive coordinator, Bob Gibson, chose to call a running play. This resulted in \"The Fumble\" by QB Joe Pisarcik that was returned for a game-winning touchdown by the Eagles' Herman Edwards.\nThe Giants' front office operations were complicated by a long-standing feud between Wellington Mara and his nephew, Tim Mara. Jack Mara had died in 1965, leaving his share of the club to his son Tim. Wellington and Tim's personal styles and their visions for the club clashed, and eventually they stopped talking to each other. NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle intervened and appointed a neutral general manager, George Young, allowing the club to operate more smoothly. The feud became moot on February 20, 1991, when Tim Mara sold his shares in the club to Preston Robert Tisch.\nIn 1979, the Giants began the steps that would, in time, return them to the pinnacle of the NFL. These included the drafting of quarterback Phil Simms in 1979, and linebacker Lawrence Taylor in 1981. In 1981, Taylor won the NFL's Defensive Rookie of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year awards and the Giants made the playoffs for the first time since 1963. One of the few bright spots during this time was the team's excellent linebackers, who were known as the Crunch Bunch. After the strike-shortened 1982 season, in which they finished 4\u20135, head coach Ray Perkins resigned to succeed the legendary Bear Bryant as head coach at the University of Alabama. In a change that would prove crucial in the coming years, he was replaced by the team's defensive coordinator, Bill Parcells.\nBill Parcells years (1983\u20131990).\nIn 1983, Bill Parcells was promoted to head coach from defensive coordinator. One of his first moves was to change his starting quarterback, sitting the injury-prone and struggling Phil Simms (who had missed the entire 1982 season with an injury) and electing instead to go with Scott Brunner, who had gone 4\u20135 as the starter in place of Simms in the strike-shortened previous season. Parcells went as far as to demote Simms to the third-string position, promoting Jeff Rutledge over Simms to be Brunner's backup. Parcells later said the move was a mistake and one he \"nearly paid for dearly\" as the team finished with a 3\u201312\u20131 record and his job security was called into question.\nIn the off-season the Giants released Brunner and named Simms the starter. The move paid off as the team won nine games and returned to the playoffs. After beating the Los Angeles Rams in the wild-card round, the Giants prepared for a showdown against the top-seeded San Francisco 49ers. The 49ers defeated the Giants 21\u201310 in the divisional round.\nSuper Bowl XXI champions (1986).\nAfter 9\u20137 and 10\u20136 finishes in 1984 and 1985 respectively, the Giants compiled a 14\u20132 record in 1986 led by league MVP and Defensive Player of the Year Lawrence Taylor and the Big Blue Wrecking Crew defense. As of 2023, this is the Giants' best regular season record since the NFL began playing 16-game seasons in 1978. After clinching the top seed in the NFC, the Giants defeated the 49ers 49\u20133 in the divisional round of the NFC playoffs and the Redskins 17\u20130 in the NFC championship game, advancing to their first Super Bowl, Super Bowl XXI, against the Denver Broncos at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Led by MVP Simms who completed 22 of 25 passes for a Super Bowl record 88% completion percentage, they defeated the Broncos 39\u201320, to win their first championship since 1956. In addition to Phil Simms and Lawrence Taylor, the team was led during this period by head coach Bill Parcells, tight end Mark Bavaro, running back Joe Morris, and Hall of Fame linebacker Harry Carson.\nThe Giants struggled to a 6\u20139 record in the strike-marred 1987 season, due largely to a decline in the running game, as Morris managed only 658 yards behind an injury-riddled offensive line. The early portion of the 1988 season was marred by a scandal involving Lawrence Taylor. Taylor had abused cocaine and was suspended for the first four games of the season for his second violation of the league's substance-abuse policy. Despite the controversy, the Giants finished 10\u20136, and Taylor recorded 15.5 sacks after his return from the suspension; however, the team missed the playoffs in their last game of the season. They surged to a 12\u20134 record in 1989, but lost to the Los Angeles Rams in their opening playoff game when Flipper Anderson caught a 47-yard touchdown pass to give the Rams a 19\u201313 overtime win.\nSuper Bowl XXV champions (1990).\nIn 1990, the Giants went 13\u20133 and, at the time, set an NFL record for fewest turnovers in a season (14). They defeated the San Francisco 49ers, who were attempting to win the Super Bowl for an unprecedented third straight year, 15\u201313 at San Francisco and then defeated the Buffalo Bills 20\u201319 in Super Bowl XXV.\nMara and Tisch era (1991\u2013present).\nFollowing the 1990 season, Parcells resigned as head coach and was replaced by the team's offensive-line coach Ray Handley. Handley served as coach for two disappointing seasons (1991 and 1992), which saw the Giants fall from Super Bowl champions to an 8\u20138 record in 1991 and a 6\u201310 record in 1992. He was fired following the 1992 season, and replaced by former Denver Broncos' coach Dan Reeves. In the early 1990s, Simms and Taylor, two of the stars of the 1980s, played out the last seasons of their careers with steadily declining production. The Giants experienced a resurgent season with Reeves at the helm in 1993 however, and Simms and Taylor ended their careers as members of a playoff team.\nThe Giants initially struggled in the post Simms/Taylor era. After starting 3\u20137 in 1994, the Giants won their final six games to finish 9\u20137 but missed the playoffs. Quarterback Dave Brown received heavy criticism throughout the season. Brown performed poorly the following two seasons, and the Giants struggled to 5\u201311 and 6\u201310 records. Reeves was fired following the 1996 season.\nJim Fassel years (1997\u20132003).\nIn 1997, the Giants named Jim Fassel, who had spent the previous season as offensive coordinator of the Arizona Cardinals, as their 16th head coach. Fassel named Danny Kanell the team's starting quarterback. The Giants finished the 1997 season with a record of 10\u20135\u20131 and qualified for the playoffs for the first time in four years. However, they lost in the wild-card round to the Vikings at home. The following year, the Giants began the season 4\u20138 before rallying to finish the season 8\u20138. One of the notable games of that season was a win over the eventual Super Bowl champion Denver Broncos in week 15, giving the Broncos their first loss of the season after starting 13\u20130.\nBefore the 1999 season, the Giants signed ex-Carolina Panthers quarterback Kerry Collins. Collins was the first-ever draft choice of the expansion Carolina Panthers in 1995 and led the Panthers to the NFC Championship game in his second season. However, problems with alcohol, conflicts with his teammates, and questions about his character led to his release from the Panthers. The Giants finished the season with a 7\u20139 record, Fassel's first losing season as head coach.\nIn 2000, the Giants were looking to make the playoffs for the first time in three seasons. The Giants started the season 7\u20132, but suffered back-to-back home losses to St. Louis and Detroit to make their record 7\u20134 and call their playoff prospects into question. At a press conference following the Giants' loss to Detroit, Fassel guaranteed that \"this team is going to the playoffs\". The Giants responded, winning the rest of their regular season games to finish the season 12\u20134 and clinch the top seed in the NFC. In the divisional round, the Giants beat the Philadelphia Eagles 20\u201310 at home to qualify for the NFC Championship Game, in which they defeated the Minnesota Vikings 41\u20130. They advanced to play the Baltimore Ravens in Super Bowl XXXV. Though the Giants went into halftime down only 10\u20130, the Ravens dominated the second half. Their defense harassed Kerry Collins all game long, resulting in Collins completing only 15 of 39 passes for 112\u00a0yards and 4 interceptions. The Ravens won the game 34\u20137.\nAfter a disappointing 7\u20139 record in 2001, the Giants finished the 2002 season with a record of 10\u20136, qualifying for the playoffs as a wild card. This set up a meeting with the San Francisco 49ers in Candlestick Park in the wild-card round. The Giants built up a sizable lead throughout the game and led 38\u201314 with 4:27 left in the third quarter. However, San Francisco rallied to win the game by one point, with the final score of 39\u201338.\nAfter a dismal 2003 season in which the Giants finished with a 4\u201312 record, Jim Fassel was released by the Giants. His head coaching record with the Giants during this time was 58\u201353\u20131.\nTom Coughlin years (2004\u20132015).\nIn 2004, three years after their last Super Bowl appearance, Fassel was replaced by Tom Coughlin. Although Collins had several solid seasons as the Giants quarterback, he experienced his share of struggles. In 2004, the Giants completed a draft day trade for University of Mississippi quarterback Eli Manning. Manning became the team's starting quarterback in the middle of the 2004 season, taking over for Kurt Warner. During the three-year period from 2004 to 2006, Tom Coughlin's Giants compiled a 25\u201323 regular season record and two appearances in the wild-card round \u2014 both losses (to the Carolina Panthers in 2005 and to the Philadelphia Eagles in 2006.) and spawned intense media scrutiny concerning the direction of the team. During this period in their history, standout players included defensive end Michael Strahan, who set the NFL single season record in sacks in 2001, and running back Tiki Barber, who set a team record for rushing yards in a season in 2005. Barber retired at the end of the 2006 season.\nSuper Bowl XLII champions (2007).\nGoing into 2007, the Giants had made the playoffs in back-to-back seasons. In 2007, the Giants became the third NFL franchise to win at least 600 games when they defeated the Atlanta Falcons 31\u201310 on \"Monday Night Football\". For the 2007 season, the NFL scheduled the Giants' road game against the Miami Dolphins on October 28 in London's Wembley Stadium; this was the first NFL regular season game to be played outside of North America. The Giants defeated the Dolphins, 13\u201310. The Giants finished 10\u20136 and became NFC Champions after defeating the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Dallas Cowboys, and Green Bay Packers in the NFC Playoffs. They set a record for most consecutive road wins in a single season with 10 (a streak which ended with a loss to the Cleveland Browns during week 6 of the 2008 season).\nThe Patriots (18\u20130) entered the Super Bowl undefeated and were 12-point favorites going into game weekend. The Giants defeated the Patriots 17\u201314 in Super Bowl XLII, aided by the famous \"Manning to Tyree\" pass. On this famous play, Manning escaped the grip of several Patriots defensive linemen, stepped up in the pocket, and heaved the ball down the middle of the field to a double-covered David Tyree. With Rodney Harrison, a Patriots defensive back, all over Tyree, David managed to hold on to the ball by holding it on his helmet until he fell to the ground. This catch set up a Manning to Plaxico Burress touchdown pass in the back of the end zone to put the Giants in the lead. It was the third biggest upset by betting line in Super Bowl history (the Baltimore Colts were favored by 17 over the New York Jets in Super Bowl III, and the St. Louis Rams were favored by 14 over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXVI). Co-owner John Mara described it as \"the greatest victory in the history of this franchise, without question\".\nThe Giants began the 2008 season with a record of 11\u20131 but lost three of their last four regular season games partially due to a self-inflicted gunshot wound to wide receiver Plaxico Burress. However, the Giants still won the NFC East with a record of 12\u20134, and clinched the number one seed in the NFC after beating the Carolina Panthers for home-field advantage and a first-round bye. In the divisional round of the playoffs, the Giants lost 23\u201311 to the Philadelphia Eagles at home.\nIn 2009, the Giants opened a new training complex, the Timex Performance Center, also located in the Meadowlands. After starting 5\u20130 in the 2009 season, New York lost to the likewise undefeated New Orleans Saints at the Louisiana Superdome 48\u201327, beginning a four-game losing streak, in which they lost to the Arizona Cardinals 24\u201317, the San Diego Chargers 21\u201320 and the Philadelphia Eagles 40\u201317. The streak was broken with a 34\u201331 overtime victory against the Atlanta Falcons. On Thanksgiving night, they lost to the Denver Broncos 26\u20136. The Giants next beat the division-leading Dallas Cowboys. A week later, with a record of 7\u20135, they lost to the Philadelphia Eagles, 45\u201338. On December 27, the Giants lost to the Carolina Panthers 41\u20139 in their final game at Giants Stadium and were eliminated from playoff eligibility. The Giants finished the season 8\u20138.\nFollowing the season, the Giants fired first-year defensive coordinator Bill Sheridan, and replaced him with the former Buffalo Bills interim head coach, Perry Fewell. The Giants defense finished 13th overall under Sheridan, giving up 324.9 yards per game, and the final two losses of the season against Carolina and Minnesota, in which the Giants gave up 85 points, ultimately led to the firing.\nIn 2010, the Giants moved from Giants Stadium into MetLife Stadium, then known as the \"New Meadowlands Stadium\". They won against the Carolina Panthers in the first game at New Meadowlands Stadium but then lost to the Indianapolis Colts in the second \"Manning Bowl\", so-called due to Eli Manning's brother Peyton playing for the Colts. The Giants dropped one game to the Tennessee Titans before going on a five-game winning streak, beating the Chicago Bears, Houston Texans, Detroit Lions, Dallas Cowboys, and Seattle Seahawks. Before long, the Giants were 6\u20132 but lost two straight to division foes: to the Cowboys 33\u201320 at home, and to the Philadelphia Eagles on the road, putting the Giants in second place in the NFC East at 6\u20134. In first place was the Eagles, but at December 19 the two teams tied at 8\u20134, setting up a match for first place. The Giants were at home and led 24\u20133 over the Eagles at halftime. The score was 31\u201310 with 5:40 left in the game, but Michael Vick led the Eagles to three touchdown drives to tie the game up at 31 with 40 seconds left. After a Giants three-and-out, Matt Dodge punted the ball to DeSean Jackson, who returned it for a touchdown, concluding the Giants' epic collapse. The next game, the Giants lost to the eventual Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers 45\u201317, and at 9\u20136, they faced the Redskins. They had to win and have the Packers lose in order to get into the playoffs. The Giants won 17\u201314, but the Packers beat the Bears 10\u20133, so the Giants missed out on the playoffs again, ending a collapse in which the Giants went 4\u20134 in their last eight games.\nSuper Bowl XLVI champions (2011).\nDuring the 2011 preseason, the Giants lost Kevin Boss, Steve Smith, Rich Seubert, Keith Bulluck, Derek Hagan, and Pro Bowl center Shaun O'Hara to free agency. However, the season also saw the emergence of second-year wide receiver Victor Cruz and second-year tight end Jake Ballard. The Giants opened their season with a 28\u201314 loss to the Washington Redskins at FedEx Field on the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. However, the Giants secured a 6\u20132 record by the midpoint of the season, including road victories over the Philadelphia Eagles and the New England Patriots. The latter victory ended the Patriots' NFL record home-game winning streak, after a touchdown pass from Manning to Jake Ballard with 15 seconds left in the game.\nHowever, the Giants then suffered a four-game losing streak, including road losses against the resurgent San Francisco 49ers and the New Orleans Saints and home losses to the Eagles and the then-undefeated Green Bay Packers, to make their record 6\u20136 entering December. The Giants broke their losing streak with a tightly contested 37\u201334 road victory over the Cowboys on December 11 with Jason Pierre-Paul blocking a last second field goal attempt, but lost at home to the Washington Redskins the following week to make their record 7\u20137 with a Christmas Eve showdown against their crosstown rival New York Jets the following week. The Giants won, 29\u201314, and knocked the Eagles out of playoff contention, to set up a Week 17 home game against the Cowboys in which the winner would clinch the NFC East while the loser would be eliminated from playoff contention. The game was flexed into Sunday Night Football. The Giants defeated the Cowboys, 31\u201314 and clinched the NFC East title and the fourth seed in the playoffs. Wide receiver Victor Cruz finished the regular season with 1,536 receiving yards, breaking the Giants franchise record previously held by Amani Toomer.\nOn January 8, 2012, in the first round of the playoffs, the Giants defeated the Atlanta Falcons 24\u20132. After giving up an early safety in the first half, quarterback Eli Manning threw for three consecutive touchdowns. Running backs Ahmad Bradshaw and Brandon Jacobs combined for 172 yards rushing, a season-high for the Giants. With the victory, the Giants advanced to the second round against the top-ranked Green Bay Packers 37\u201320.\nOn January 15, 2012, the Giants defeated the Green Bay Packers 37\u201320. Eli Manning threw for 330 yards and 3 touchdowns, two of which to wide receiver Hakeem Nicks. This earned the Giants a spot in the NFC Championship Game on January 22, 2012, against the San Francisco 49ers. They won this game 20\u201317, in overtime, with Tynes scoring the winning field goal as he did four years earlier in the same game against the Packers.\nThe New York Giants won Super Bowl XLVI against the New England Patriots with a score of 21\u201317. The winning touchdown was preceded by a 38-yard reception by receiver Mario Manningham. As in Super Bowl XLII, Eli Manning was Super Bowl MVP, defeating the Patriots for a second time in the Super Bowl.\nAhmad Bradshaw scored the game-winning touchdown by falling into the end zone. The Patriots were allowing Bradshaw to get the touchdown so they would get the ball with some time remaining. When Eli Manning handed the ball to Bradshaw, he told him not to score. Bradshaw was about to fall down at the 1-yard line but his momentum carried him in, thus the \"reluctant touchdown.\"\nAs was the case in each of their four previous Super Bowl appearances, the Giants trailed at halftime. They are the only team in NFL history to have more than two second half, come-from-behind, Super Bowl victories (4). The Pittsburgh Steelers, who accomplished the feat in Super Bowl X and Super Bowl XIV, are the only other team to do it more than once.\nThe Giants began the 2012 season with a home loss to the Dallas Cowboys, but rebounded to finish October with a 6\u20132 record and on a four-game winning streak that included a 26\u20133 road victory against the eventual NFC champion San Francisco 49ers. Following the arrival of Hurricane Sandy in the Northeastern United States, the Giants lost back-to-back games against the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Cincinnati Bengals to fall to 6\u20134. Despite impressive blowout home victories over the Green Bay Packers, New Orleans Saints and Philadelphia Eagles, the Giants finished the season 9\u20137 and out of the playoffs. Quarterback Eli Manning, defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul, wide receiver Victor Cruz, and guard Chris Snee represented the Giants at the Pro Bowl.\nThe 2013 season began with hope that the Giants could become the first team to play in the Super Bowl in their home stadium, as MetLife Stadium was scheduled to host Super Bowl XLVIII that February. However, the Giants' playoff hopes took a massive hit when they lost the first six games of the season. They rebounded to win the next four games in a row to improve to 4\u20136, but lost a critical home game to the Dallas Cowboys on a last-minute field goal. They finished the season 7\u20139 and with a losing record for the first time since 2004. The Giants drafted rookie wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. in the 2014 NFL draft, who would later go on to win the AP Offensive Rookie of the Year award. However, the Giants missed the playoffs for a third straight season, finishing with a 6\u201310 record. The 2015 season was another disappointing campaign, as the Giants showcased a struggling defense and several late-game collapses. The Giants finished the season with a 6\u201310 record and missed the playoffs.\n2016\u2013present.\nOn January 14, 2016, the Giants announced that Ben McAdoo would become the team's head coach. He replaced Tom Coughlin, who had resigned the previous week. The Giants turned it around in 2016 with an 11\u20135 record, ending their five-year playoff drought. The Giants later lost to the Green Bay Packers 38\u201313 in the wild-card round.\nAfter having high expectations due to their 11\u20135 record in 2016, the Giants had an unexpected 0\u20135 start to the 2017 season, before pulling a massive upset versus the Denver Broncos at Sports Authority Field at Mile High for their first win of the season. However, during the Week 5 game against the Los Angeles Chargers, Odell Beckham Jr. fractured his ankle, an injury that ended his season. During the same game, the Giants also lost wide receivers Brandon Marshall and Dwayne Harris to season-ending injuries. The season was also marred by the suspensions of Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and Janoris Jenkins. The Giants finished the 2017 season with a 3\u201313 record, the second-worst in the league. This was also the first time since 1983 in which the Giants finished the regular season with three or less wins, and their worst record since the 16-game season was adopted in the NFL.\nThe season was also highlighted the controversial benching of longtime quarterback Eli Manning in Week 13, and the high-profile firings of head coach Ben McAdoo and general manager Jerry Reese, who were the first mid-season staff firings since the 1976 Giants' season. Manning was eventually renamed the starter in Week 14. Subsequently, the disastrous season led to the team being awarded the second overall pick in the 2018 NFL draft, which they utilized to select Saquon Barkley from Penn State. Despite Barkley's selection, several questions pertained into the following season around the team's offensive line and long-term future at quarterback.\nThe 2018 season began with Pat Shurmur being hired as the new head coach. Despite starting 1\u20137 for the second consecutive year, the Giants managed to marginally improve on their 3\u201313 campaign by finishing the season 5\u201311 in a 30\u201327 overtime win against the Chicago Bears. After defeating the Washington Redskins in Week 14, the Giants became the first team in NFL history to win 100 regular season games against an opponent. However, this ensured last place in the NFC East for the second straight year, marking the first time they were division rock bottom in back-to-back years since 1977 and 1978. The season was also highlighted by blown fourth-quarter leads which was similar to their 2015 team, where the Giants were in 12 one-possession games, and lost 8 of those by 7 points or less. Following the season's end, the team was placed to select sixth overall in the 2019 NFL draft. Barkley impressed in his rookie season, breaking several NFL and Giants team records for a rookie, including having the most receptions by a running back (91), most rushing touchdowns (11), most rushing yards (1,307), and most touchdowns in a season (15). He was also selected to the 2019 Pro Bowl, alongside teammates Olivier Vernon, Landon Collins, and Aldrick Rosas in addition to winning offensive rookie of the year honors.\nThe team used their sixth overall pick in the 2019 NFL Draft on Duke quarterback Daniel Jones. The Giants went 4\u201312 in the 2019 season. After the 2019 season, the Giants' longtime quarterback, Eli Manning, retired after spending 16 seasons with the organization, while the team finished the season with a 4\u201312 record. Following the season, Shurmur was fired as head coach. Prior to the 2020 season, the Giants hired Joe Judge as head coach. At the start of the 2020 season, Daniel Jones took over as starting quarterback as the Giants finished 6\u201310, while tight end Evan Engram and cornerback James Bradberry were named to the 2021 Pro Bowl as reserves.\nIn the 2021 season the Giants failed to improve on their 2020 record by finishing 4\u201313. Then after the season, general manager Dave Gettleman retired and head coach Joe Judge was fired. During the season the squad's starting quarterback Daniel Jones sprained his neck and was temporarily replaced in the lineup by Mike Glennon and then Jake Fromm.\nOn January 21, 2022, the team hired Joe Schoen as the team's general manager, and on January 28, hired Brian Daboll as the team's new head coach. The 2022 season showed a much improved record, with the Giants finishing 9\u20137\u20131. On January 1, 2023, the Giants clinched a playoff berth for the first time since the 2016 season. On January 15, the Giants defeated the Minnesota Vikings 31\u201324 in the wild-card round, winning their first postseason game since their victory at Super Bowl XLVI in 2012. The Giants proceeded to lose the next game to the eventual NFC champion Philadelphia Eagles 38\u20137 in the divisional round.\nIn the 2023 season, the Giants regressed on their successful 2022 season, finishing 6\u201311. Daniel Jones was injured several times in the season and was placed on injured reserve after tearing his ACL in week 9. He was temporarily replaced in the lineup by Tyrod Taylor and Tommy DeVito.\nChampionships.\nThe Giants have won a total of eight league championships: 1927, 1934, 1938, 1956, 1986, 1990, 2007 and 2011. The first four of those championships came in the pre-Super Bowl era. New York's eight championships put them third among all active and defunct NFL teams, trailing only the Green Bay Packers (13) and the Chicago Bears (9).\nNFL championships (pre-Super Bowl era).\nBefore the Super Bowl was instituted, the Giants won four officially recognized NFL championships.\nSuper Bowl championships.\nThe Giants have won four Super Bowls, tied with Green Bay for the fifth most behind Dallas, San Francisco (both with 5), and New England and Pittsburgh (6 each).\nNFC championships.\nThe Giants have won five NFC Championship Games, including two in overtime in 2007 and 2011.\nLogos and uniforms.\nWith nearly 100 years of team history, the Giants have used numerous uniforms and logos, while maintaining a consistent identity. The Giants' logos include several incarnations of a giant quarterback preparing to throw a football, a lowercase \"ny\", and stylized versions of the team nickname.\nGiants' jerseys are traditionally blue or red (or white with blue or red accents), and their pants alternate between white and gray. Currently, the Giants wear home jerseys that are solid blue with white block numbering, white pants with five thin blue/gray/red/gray/blue stripes on the pant legs, and solid blue socks. For this they gained their most renowned nickname, \"Big Blue\". For road uniforms, they wear a white jersey with red block numbering and red \"Northwestern\" stripes on the sleeves, gray pants with three thin non-contiguous red/blue/red stripes on the pant legs, and solid red socks. The Giants' current helmet is metallic blue with white block numbers, which are frontally mounted and base mounted on either side of a red stripe running down the center or frontally mounted and base mounted on the red center stripe itself. The Giants, along with the Pittsburgh Steelers, are one of only two teams in the NFL to have the players' uniform numbers on both the front and back of the helmets. The helmet is adorned on both sides with the stylized white lower case \"ny\" logo and features a gray facemask. The home uniforms are generally similar to the design used from 1966 to 1974, but with some slight elements from the 1956\u20131961 uniforms. The road uniforms are essentially a modernization of the design used from 1956 to 1961. Additionally, the Giants had a third jersey until the 2009 season, which recalled the Giants' solid red home jerseys from the early 1950s: a solid red alternate with white block numbers. These jerseys were used a total of four times, but have since been retired. They were used once in 2004 against the Philadelphia Eagles and in three consecutive years \u2013 2005, 2006, and 2007 \u2013 against the Dallas Cowboys.\nOwnerships, financial history and fan base.\nThe Giants have had a long and, at times, turbulent financial history. The team was founded by Tim Mara with an investment of US$500 in 1925 and became one of the first teams in the then five-year-old NFL. To differentiate themselves from the baseball team of the same name, they took the name \"New York Football Giants\", which they still use as their legal corporate name.\nAlthough the Giants were successful on the field in their initial seasons, their financial status was a different story. Overshadowed by baseball, boxing, and college football, professional football was not a popular sport in 1925. The Giants were in dire financial straits until the 11th game of the season when Red Grange and the Chicago Bears came to town, attracting over 73,000 fans. This gave the Giants a much needed influx of revenue, and perhaps altered the history of the franchise. The following year, Grange and his agent formed a rival league and stationed a competing team, led by Grange, in New York. Though the Giants lost $50,000 that season, the rival league folded and was subsumed into the NFL. Following the 1930 season, Mara transferred ownership of the team over to his two sons to insulate the team from creditors, and by 1946, he had given over complete control of the team to them. Jack, the older son, controlled the business aspects, while Wellington controlled the on-field operations. After their initial struggles the Giants financial status stabilized, and they led the league in attendance several times in the 1930s and 1940s.\nBy the early 1960s, the Giants had firmly established themselves as one of the league's biggest attractions. However, rather than continuing to receive their higher share of the league television revenue, the Mara sons pushed for equal sharing of revenue for the benefit of the entire league. Revenue sharing is still practiced in the NFL today, and is credited with strengthening the league. After their struggles in the latter half of the 1960s and the entire 1970s, the Giants hired an outsider, George Young, to run the football operations for the first time in franchise history. The Giants' on-field product and business aspects improved rapidly following the move.\nIn 1991, Tim Mara, grandson of the founder, was struggling with cancer and sold his half of the team to Bob Tisch for a reported $80 million. This marked the first time in franchise history the team had not been solely owned by the Mara family. In 2005, Wellington Mara, who had been with the team since its inception in 1925 when he worked as a ball boy, died at the age of 89. His death was followed two weeks later by the death of Tisch. In 2015, Wellington's widow and Giants co-owner Ann died due to complications from a head injury suffered in a fall. She was 85 years old.\nIn 2010, MetLife Stadium opened, replacing Giants Stadium. The new stadium is a 50/50 partnership between the Giants and Jets, and while the stadium is owned by the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority on paper, the two teams jointly built the stadium using private funds, and administer it jointly through New Meadowlands Stadium Corporation. The Giants had previously planned a $300 million renovation to the Meadowlands, before deciding in favor of the new stadium which was originally estimated to cost approximately $600 million, before rising to an estimated cost of one billion dollars. One advantage gained by owning the stadium is that the teams saved considerable money in tax payments. The teams leased the land from the state at a cost of $6.3 million per year. The state paid for all utilities, including the $30 million needed to install them.\nThe Giants are owned and operated by John Mara and Steve Tisch. \"Forbes\" magazine estimated the value of the team in 2012 to be $1.3 billion. This ranks the New York Giants as the fourth most valuable franchise in the NFL and the ninth most valuable professional sports franchise in the world. The value has steadily increased from $288 million in 1998, to their current value. The magazine estimated their revenue in 2006 at $182 million, of which $46 million came from gate receipts. Operating income was $26.9 million, and player salary was $102 million. Current major sponsors include Gatorade, Anheuser Busch, Toyota, and Verizon Wireless. Recent former sponsors include Miller Brewing and North Fork Bank. Luxury suites, retail and game day concessions at the new stadium are provisioned and operated by global hospitality giant Delaware North. The team's average ticket price is $72.\nThe Giants draw their fans from the New York metropolitan area. Since their move to New Jersey in 1976, fans from each state have claimed the team as their own. In January 1987, shortly before the team won Super Bowl XXI, then New York City mayor Ed Koch labeled the team \"foreigners\" and said they were not entitled to a ticker-tape parade in New York City. On February 5, 2008, the city, under mayor Michael Bloomberg, threw a ticker tape parade in honor of the Giants' Super Bowl XLII victory at the Canyon of Heroes in lower Manhattan. New York City held another ticker tape parade on February 7, 2012, in honor of the Giants' Super Bowl XLVI victory. According to a team spokesman, in 2001, 52 percent of the Giants' season ticket-holders lived in New Jersey. Most of the remaining ticket holders lived in New York State with some coming from other states. The Giants also draw fans from the Canadian province of Quebec mostly due to the province sharing a significant international border with New York State \u2014 New York City is only five to six hours away from Montreal by car.\nThrough the lean years of the 1960s and 1970s the Giants, in spite of a 17-year-long playoff drought, still accumulated a 20-year-long waiting list for season tickets. It has been estimated that the Giants have a waiting list of 135,000 people, the largest of any North American professional sports franchise.\nRivalries.\nDivisional.\nPhiladelphia Eagles.\nThe rivalry between the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Eagles is one of the oldest in the NFL, dating back to 1933. The two teams have frequently fought for playoff contention, NFC East titles, and respect. While the Giants had the edge this rivalry early on in its history, the series began to even after the 1980s, with the Eagles going 22\u201321 against New York through the 1990s and 2000s. Philadelphia then dominated New York in the 2010s with a 16\u20134 record to claim their first lead in the series. The Eagles lead the all-time series 94\u201389\u20132 as of the 2023 season. The two teams have met five times in the postseason, with the Giants winning two games to the Eagles three. Three of those four playoff meetings were held in the 2000s decade. New York City and Philadelphia have a strong geographic rivalry, as seen in other professional sports such as the Mets\u2013Phillies rivalry in Major League Baseball, and the Flyers\u2013Rangers, Flyers\u2013Islanders and Devils\u2013Flyers rivalries in the National Hockey League.\nWashington Commanders.\nThe Giants have an old and storied rivalry with the Washington Commanders, dating back to 1932. While this rivalry is typically given less significance than the rivalries with the Eagles and Cowboys, there have been periods of great competition between the two. In the 1980s the Giants and Redskins, as they were then known, clashed as both struggled against each other for division titles and even Super Bowl Championships. Most notable among these is the 1986 NFC Championship game in which the Giants defeated the Redskins 17\u20130 to earn their first ever trip to the Super Bowl. Wellington Mara always felt this was the Giants oldest and truest rival, and after passing away in 2005, the Giants honored their longtime owner by defeating the Redskins 36\u20130 at home. The Giants lead this series 107\u201370\u20134 as of the 2023 season. The Giants 107 wins against the Washington Redskins are the most wins for one team against one opponent in NFL history.\nDallas Cowboys.\nThe Giants have maintained a fierce divisional rivalry with the Dallas Cowboys since the Cowboys first began play in 1960. The two teams have a combined nine Super Bowl victories between them, and have played many games in which the NFC East title was at stake. The rivalry is unique among professional sports as it is the only divisional rivalry between sports teams from New York City and Dallas, partially due to the large distance between the two cities. The Cowboys lead the regular season series 75\u201347\u20132, while the Giants hold the lone playoff victory between the two teams, held at the conclusion of the 2007 season.\nConference.\nSan Francisco 49ers.\nDespite never being in the same division, the Giants and San Francisco 49ers have developed a heated rivalry over the years. The two teams have met eight times in the playoffs (including two NFC Championship Games, both won by New York) since 1982, which is the most of any two teams in that span. In the overall series the 49ers lead 22\u201321, while the postseason series are also tied 4\u20134. Five of the eight times the Giants and 49ers have played in the postseason, the winner of their game has gone on to win the Super Bowl.\nInter Conference.\nNew York Jets.\nThe Giants and New York Jets for many years had the only intracity rivalry in the NFL, made even more unusual by sharing a stadium. They have met annually in the preseason since 1969. Since 2011, this meeting has been known as the \"MetLife Bowl\", after the naming sponsor of the teams' stadium. Regular season matchups between the teams occur once every four years, as they follow the NFL scheduling formula for interconference games. Since the two teams play each other so infrequently in the regular season, some, including players on both teams, have questioned whether the Giants and Jets have a real rivalry. A memorable regular season game was in 1988, when the Giants faced off against the Jets in the last game of the season, needing a victory to make the playoffs. The Jets played spoiler, however, beating the Giants 27\u201321 and ruining the latter's playoff hopes. A different scenario unfolded during the penultimate regular season game of 2011 as the \"visiting\" Giants defeated the Jets 29\u201314. The victory simultaneously helped eliminate the Jets from playoff contention and propel the Giants to their own playoff run and eventual win in Super Bowl XLVI. The Giants lead the overall regular season series 8\u20137.\nNew England Patriots.\nThe Giants and New England Patriots rarely played each other given they were on opposite conferences, but the rivalry gained notoriety in the late 2000s thanks to some close contests and memorable moments between Tom Brady and Eli Manning. In the 2007 season, the Patriots defeated the Giants 38\u201335 to clinch a perfect 16\u20130 regular season, but could not finish a perfect 19\u20130 season in Super Bowl XLII following a 17\u201314 defeat. That game featured the now-iconic Helmet Catch from David Tyree. The Giants also defeated the Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI, a 21\u201317 victory. As of the 2023 season, the all-time series is tied 7\u20137.\nHistoric.\nChicago Bears.\nThe Giants and Chicago Bears squared off in six NFL championship games, more than any common matchup in either the NFL championship game or Super Bowl. Though the Bears won four of the six championship games, one of the Giants' two championship victories included the Sneakers Game that took place in the 1934 NFL Championship Game. The two teams also met in the 1985 and 1990 playoffs, splitting each meeting en route to a Super Bowl championship (Bears in Super Bowl XX, Giants in Super Bowl XXV). The Bears lead the all-time series 36\u201324\u20132, including a 5\u20133 postseason record.\nGreen Bay Packers.\nThe Giants\u2013Packers rivalry is a National Football League (NFL) rivalry between the New York Giants and the Green Bay Packers. The two teams have played since 1970 in the National Football Conference, and they play each other in the regular season either every three years or depending on its NFC division placement, and in the postseason, The Packers lead the all-time series 34\u201328\u20132 and postseason series 5\u20133.\nPlayers.\nPro Football Hall of Famers.\nIn the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Giants boast the second-most enshrined members with 29. Tim Mara, Mel Hein, Pete Henry, Cal Hubbard and Jim Thorpe were a part of the original class of inductees in 1963, while defensive end Michael Strahan, the most recent Giant inducted, was a part of the Class of 2014. Numerous members, including Larry Csonka, Ray Flaherty, Joe Guyon, Pete Henry, Arnie Herber, Cal Hubbard, Tom Landry, Don Maynard, Hugh McElhenny, Jim Thorpe, and Kurt Warner were at one time associated with the New York Giants, but they were inducted largely based on their careers with other teams.\nRing of Honor.\nThe New York Giants unveiled their own Ring of Honor on October 3, 2010, during halftime of their . John Mara had long wished to create a Giants Ring of Honor and Hall of Fame to honor Giants who helped the franchise achieve each of their championships, and the building of MetLife Stadium resulted in the realization of that ambition. The organization had an inaugural induction class of 30 including players, coaches, owners and executives that have had a great impact on the organization. While the entire list of inductees was not revealed until the actual induction, the organization did confirm about a week before the ceremony that Phil Simms, Bill Parcells, Michael Strahan, Tiki Barber, Frank Gifford and Pete Gogolak would all be inducted.\nTop 100 greatest Giants of all-time.\nIn celebration of the Giants 100th season, the team announced the top 100 players in franchise history.\nNFL MVP award winners.\nThe Giants have had six players win NFL MVP in franchise history.\nSuper Bowl MVP award winners.\nThe Giants have had three players win Super Bowl MVP in franchise history.\nFirst-round draft picks.\nThe Giants have had the number one overall pick in the NFL Draft two times in their history.\nCoaches.\nThe Giants have had 22 head coaches serve in the capacity.\nMedia, radio and television.\nAs of 2010, the Giants' flagship radio station is WFAN, with games simulcast on WFAN-FM as of November 2012. Since WFAN also has the rights to carry baseball, as they currently are the flagship station for the New York Yankees and previously served the same role for the New York Mets, early season Giants games come into conflict; since 2019, WFAN has split the coverage across both of its dial positions, with the Giants carried on 660 AM and the Yankees on 101.9 FM. Prior to that, the Giants' games would air on one of WFAN's designated overflow stations.\nBob Papa on play-by-play and Carl Banks on color commentary are the Giants' radio broadcast team, with Howard Cross as the sideline reporter. When Papa is unavailable to call games Chris Carrino, WFAN's lead broadcaster for the Brooklyn Nets, substitutes for him. Games are carried over the New York Giants Radio Network over various stations in New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut.\nPreseason telecasts not seen nationally air in the area on WNBC, with WWOR-TV serving as an overflow station for when WNBC is airing other programming such as the Summer Olympic Games. Papa and Banks call these games on television, with studio host Paul Dottino as Papa's substitute.\nWPIX-TV or WABC-TV will also air any Giants broadcast that is carried exclusively by ESPN, as per the local carriage rules (WABC-TV's corporate parent, The Walt Disney Company, holds an 80% majority ownership stake in ESPN, and has a right of first refusal for these telecasts). Thursday Night Football broadcasts, which are streamed on Amazon Prime Video, are simulcast on WNYW.\nThe Giants' public address announcer at MetLife Stadium is Gordon Deal. Deal replaced Jim Hall, who for years was Bob Sheppard's substitute at Yankee Stadium due to their very similar voices. Hall took over the Giants PA job after Sheppard elected to leave the position in 2005 to focus solely on his Yankee Stadium duties.\nPast.\nWFAN has produced the Giants' radio broadcasts since 1995, but has not always aired them on the station. For 1995, then-Giants flagship WOR continued to carry the games as they had for the previous two seasons. In 1996 the games were simulcast on WFAN and WOR, which caused some conflict as at the time, WFAN was the radio flagship of the New York Jets as well. To remedy the situation, beginning the next year WFAN moved the Giants' radio broadcasts to the FM dial and sister station WNEW-FM, where they remained until the end of the 1999 season. In 2000 WFAN lost the Jets' radio contract to WABC and the Giants moved back to WFAN where they have been ever since.\nThe Giants' longtime radio home was WNEW, where games aired from the mid-1950s until 1993 when the station was bought by Bloomberg L.P. and changed its format. Marty Glickman teamed with Al DeRogatis for a long stretch beginning in the early 1960s on WNEW. Chip Cipolla and later Sam Huff joined Glickman after DeRogatis left to join Curt Gowdy on NBC. After the WNEW split, games began airing on WOR. Glickman moved to the crosstown Jets in 1973 and was succeeded by Marv Albert. Jim Gordon succeeded Albert in 1977, beginning an 18-year tenure as the Giants' play-by-play voice. Meanwhile, Dick Lynch took over as color analyst in 1976 and continued in that role through 2007, with his last game being Super Bowl XLII, and retired following the season due to his advancing leukemia, which took his life in September 2008.\nEventually Gordon and Lynch were joined by Karl Nelson, a former lineman for the Giants. Gordon and Nelson were fired after the 1994 season, after which Papa took over the play-by-play (after being studio host) and led a two-man booth with Lynch. Dave Jennings joined the broadcast team in 2002 following his firing by the Jets, with whom he had worked since his 1987 retirement from the NFL. Jennings was moved to the pregame show after the 2006 season and was replaced by Carl Banks, leaving broadcasting altogether in 2008 due to his ongoing battle with Parkinson's disease that he lost in 2013.\nAfter WFAN began airing games Richard Neer served as pregame and postgame host. He was replaced by Sid Rosenberg, who was in turn fired by the station due to troubles and replaced by Chris Carlin. Carlin left in 2008 to focus full-time on his duties as SNY studio host and Rutgers athletics radio voice and was replaced by WWOR sports reporter and former WFAN host Russ Salzberg, who cohosted with Roman Oben after Jennings left. WEPN Giants beat reporter Paul Dottino was hired by WFAN to host the pregame show for 2009 and continues to be a part of the program. As of the 2020 season, Lance Medow is the host for the pregame show as well as halftime and postgame, with former Giants punter Jeff Feagles as analyst.\nThe Giants were carried on the DuMont Network, then CBS in the early TV days of the NFL, when home games were blacked out within a 75-mile radius of New York City. Chris Schenkel was their play-by-play announcer in that early era when each team was assigned its own network voice on its regional telecasts. At the time, there were few if any true national telecasts until the NFL championship game, which was carried by NBC. Schenkel was joined by Jim McKay, later Johnny Lujack through the 1950s and the early 1960s. As Giants players retired to the broadcast booth in the early and 1960s, first Pat Summerall, then Frank Gifford took the color analyst slot next to Schenkel. As the 1970 merger of the NFL and AFL approached, CBS moved to a more generic announcer approach and Schenkel was off the broadcasts.\nGiants regular season Sunday telecasts moved to Fox when that network took over NFC telecasts in 1994 and are carried locally by WNYW.\nWCBS-TV and WPIX were previously home to Giants preseason telecasts in the 1990s, with WPIX serving as the Giants' (and Jets') long-time preseason home. After the NFC rights were lost by CBS, the Giants followed the conference's broadcast rights to WNYW. WWOR became the Giants' flagship TV station in the late 1990s, and stayed so up until WNBC took over rights in 2005.\nWhen the Giants first moved to WNYW, Mike Breen was their preseason play-by-play man. Sam Rosen was the television voice for some time afterward, except for two years when Curt Menefee (then of WNYW) was the voice. When the games moved to WWOR, Rosen regained the position and held it until 2004. Former Giant receiver Phil McConkey became the early season analyst after his retirement and stayed in the booth for many years.\nNotes and references.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nclass=\"wikitable succession-box noprint\" style=\"margin:0.5em auto; font-size:small;clear:both;\""}, "descending_order": ["11518114", "21757"], "permutation_1": ["21757", "11518114"], "permutation_2": ["21757", "11518114"], "permutation_3": ["11518114", "21757"]}
{"id": "2hop__234432_127008", "docs_added": {"6493743": "Out of My Mind (Duran Duran song)\n\"Out of My Mind\" is the 28th single by English rock band Duran Duran. The song is part of their ninth album, \"Medazzaland\" (1997), but was released as a single from the soundtrack to the 1997 Val Kilmer film \"The Saint\".\nThe single peaked at #21 on UK Singles Chart in May, at #6 in Israel and at #5 in Italy.\nMusic video.\nThe accompanying music video for \"Out of My Mind\" was filmed by director Dean Karr in February, at the historic Krumlov Castle in the city of \u010cesk\u00fd Krumlov, in the Czech Republic. It featured many special effects, including the use of sophisticated prosthetic makeup to age singer Simon Le Bon over the course of the video.\nB-sides, bonus tracks and remixes.\n\"Out of My Mind\" featured the two B-sides \"Sinner or Saint\" (written specifically for the movie) and \"Silva Halo\", an album track from \"Medazzaland\".\nThere were a multitude of remixes done for the track, mostly by the Perfecto crew (Paul Oakenfold and Steve Osborne). During 1997\u20132001 live performances, the band chose to perform the darker and more rock-oriented Perfecto version rather than the album version.\nFormats and track listings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nPersonnel.\nDuran Duran\nAdditional musicians\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "148703": "Duran Duran\nEnglish pop rock band\nDuran Duran () are an English pop rock band formed in Birmingham in 1978 by singer Stephen Duffy, keyboardist Nick Rhodes and guitarist/bassist John Taylor. After several early changes, the band's line-up settled in May 1980 as Rhodes, Taylor, singer Simon Le Bon, guitarist Andy Taylor and drummer Roger Taylor. \nEmerging as members of the New Romantic scene, Duran Duran were innovators of the music video and a leading band in the MTV-driven Second British Invasion of the US in the 1980s. By 1984, the band had achieved levels of fame similar to Beatlemania. The band's first major hit was \"Girls on Film\" (1981), from their self-titled debut album, the popularity of which was enhanced by a controversial music video. The band's breakthrough second album was \"Rio\" (1982), a worldwide hit. The songs \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Rio\" featured cinematic music videos directed by Australian film maker Russell Mulcahy and became two of their biggest hits. Their third album, \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\", became their only UK number one album and featured the US and UK number one single \"The Reflex\". In 1985, the band topped the US charts with the single \"A View to a Kill\" from the soundtrack of the James Bond film of the same title.\nAndy Taylor and Roger Taylor both left the band before the recording of their fourth album, \"Notorious\" (1986), which yielded the top ten title track. Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor initially continued as a core trio, before adding drummer Sterling Campbell and former Frank Zappa and Missing Persons guitarist Warren Cuccurullo as full-time members in 1989, though Campbell departed in 1991. The band spent the late 1980s and early 1990s releasing albums and singles to only moderate success. Their comeback album, 1993's \"Duran Duran\" (commonly called \"The Wedding Album\"), featured two top ten worldwide hits \"Ordinary World\" and \"Come Undone\". John Taylor left the band in 1997, though four years later, in 2001, a full reunion of the classic 1980\u20131985 line-up of Le Bon, Rhodes and all three Taylors took place, which led to a number of highly successful concert tours and the 2004 album \"Astronaut\", which reached number three in the UK and top 40 in numerous other countries. The album's lead single \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\" was an international dance hit, and reached number five in the UK. Andy Taylor left again in 2006, and the band have released five additional albums, with the most recent being \"Danse Macabre\" in 2023.\nAccording to \"Billboard\", Duran Duran have sold over 100 million records. They achieved 30 top 40 singles in the UK Singles Chart (14 of them top 10) and 21 top 40 singles in the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100. The band have won numerous awards throughout their career: two Brit Awards including the 2004 award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, two Grammy Awards, an MTV Video Music Award for Lifetime Achievement and a Video Visionary Award from the MTV Europe Music Awards. They were also awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The band were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.\nHistory.\n1978\u20131980: Formation and early years.\nJohn Taylor and Nick Rhodes formed Duran Duran in 1978 in Birmingham, England, with Taylor's art school friend Stephen Duffy, naming their band after \"Dr. Durand Durand\", Milo O'Shea's character from the science fiction film \"Barbarella\" (1968), the day after the film was broadcast on BBC on 20 October 1978. The three of them (Taylor on guitar and vocals, Rhodes on synthesizer and tapes, Duffy on vocals and bass) played their first gig on 5 April 1979 at the Birmingham Polytechnic. Soon after, they were joined by Simon Colley on clarinet and bass. John (then going by his first name Nigel) was the guitarist at this point. After a few gigs, including a performance at Barbarella's in Birmingham opening for the band Fashion, Duffy and Colley left the band in June 1979.\nTaylor and Rhodes then recruited lead vocalist Andy Wickett (formerly frontman of \"TV Eye\") and decided that they needed a live drummer. They hired Roger Taylor, a former member of various local bands (most recently \"The Scent Organs\" who also played at Barbarella's), while John Taylor switched to bass guitar. In September 1979, this incarnation of the band recorded a four-track demo including an early version of \"Girls on Film\" co-written by Andy Wickett. Soon afterwards Alan Curtis was recruited as lead guitarist. After a few gigs with this line-up Wickett left the band in late 1979.\nWickett was replaced by Roger Taylor's friend and former singer of \"The Scent Organs\" Jeff Thomas. In early 1980, they became the resident band at the city's Rum Runner nightclub. They were doing jobs at the club and began rehearsing and regularly playing at the venue. Curtis was unhappy with the Rum Runner club scene and left the band to form Dif Juz with his brother. Thomas was fired shortly after following disagreements and repeated arguments. The three remaining members started to look for a new lead vocalist and guitarist. The owners of the club, brothers Paul and Michael Berrow, became the band's management, paying them to work as doormen, disc jockeys (DJs) and barmen when they were not rehearsing, and also formed the Tritec Music company.\nIn April 1980, guitarist Andy Taylor came from Newcastle upon Tyne to audition after responding to an advertisement in \"Melody Maker\". Andy already had a lot of experience from playing with cover bands for years and although he came from a totally different rock music background his versatile playing style was seen as a perfect complement to the band. In May 1980, London vocalist and drama student Simon Le Bon was recommended to the band by an ex-girlfriend who worked at the Rum Runner. The band were immediately impressed by Le Bon and soon completed their first composition with the new line-up, \"Sound of Thunder\", featuring lyrics by Le Bon. Duran Duran's first performance with the lineup of Le Bon, Rhodes and the three Taylors was on 16\u00a0July 1980 at the Rum Runner.\nDuran Duran spent the next months writing, developing and demoing their songs and performed in clubs around Birmingham and London. In September 1980 they had written all of what would become their debut album. Touring as an opening act for Hazel O'Connor, the band attracted critical attention, resulting in a bidding war between the record companies EMI and Phonogram. \"A certain patriotism\" toward the label of the Beatles led them to sign with EMI in December. A week later, the first article about Duran Duran in a national magazine appeared in \"Sounds\". The members of Duran Duran had noticed that Betty Page (pen name for Beverley Glick) was writing about a new movement called New Romantic that would fit the band perfectly and invited her to meet them at the Rum Runner.\nShortly after signing the recording contract with EMI, Duran Duran went to London to record their debut album with producer Colin Thurston, and initial plans for an independent release of the songs \"Planet Earth\" and \"Is There Anyone Out There?\" on the Tritec Music label were scrapped.\n1981\u20131982: Self-titled debut, \"Rio\" and Second British Invasion.\nThe band's debut album, \"Duran Duran\", was released on the EMI label in June 1981. The first single, \"Planet Earth\", had reached the United Kingdom's top 20 at number 12 in February. A follow-up, \"Careless Memories\", released in April, stalled at number 37. The third single, \"Girls on Film\", was released in July and went to number 5 in the UK. The video, featuring topless women mud wrestling, pillow fighting and stylised depictions of other sexual fetishes, was made with directing duo Godley & Creme in August. The video was filmed just two weeks after MTV was launched in the United States. The band expected the \"Girls on Film\" video to be played in the newer nightclubs that had video screens or on pay TV channels like the Playboy Channel. Kevin Godley explained the thinking behind it:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />We were very explicitly told by Duran Duran's management to make a very sensational and erotic piece that would be for clubs, where it would get shown uncensored just to make people take notice and talk about it.\nThe video was heavily edited for MTV. The album peaked in the UK top twenty at number three. Later in 1981 the band embarked on their first United States club tour followed by more dates in Germany and the UK. This second tour of Britain coincided with a wave of riots sparked by unemployment and racial tension, including those of Moss Side and Toxteth. The band played Birmingham the day after the Handsworth riots. The band also began writing and demoing songs for a new album. In November 1981, they released a new single, the disco-influenced \"My Own Way\", that reached number 14 in the UK, followed in early 1982 by the recording of their second album at AIR Studios in London.\nIn May 1982, Duran Duran released their second album, \"Rio\", which entered the UK Albums Chart at number four and peaked at number two the following week. The band scored three UK top 10 hits on the singles chart from the album with \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" at number five in June, \"Save a Prayer\" at number two in September and the title song \"Rio\" at number nine in December, while the earlier top 20 hit \"My Own Way\" was included in a re-recorded version on the album.\nWith the album Duran Duran also began to achieve worldwide recognition. A headlining tour of Australia, Japan and the US was followed by a stint supporting Blondie during that band's final American tour. Diana, Princess of Wales declared Duran Duran her favourite band, and the band were dubbed \"the Fab Five\" by the British press, comparing them to the Beatles whose nickname was the Fab Four.\nAt first, the \"Rio\" album did not do well in the United States. EMI in the UK had promoted Duran Duran as a New Romantic band, but the New Romantic movement was barely known in the US, and EMI's American subsidiary Capitol Records was at a loss about how to sell them. After \"Carnival\" (an EP of \"Rio\"'s dance remixes) became popular with DJs in the fall, the band arranged to have most of the album remixed by David Kershenbaum. In June 1982, Duran Duran appeared for the first time on American television, performing \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Rio\" on \"Dancin' on Air\", the forerunner to the national hit show \"Dance Party USA\".\nNow promoted as a dance album, \"Rio\" was re-released in the US in November and began to climb the American charts six months after its European success. MTV placed \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and several other Duran Duran videos into heavy rotation, pushing the single and album into the US top twenty in early 1983. The ballad \"Save a Prayer\" also did well. \"The band was a natural for music television,\" noted \"Rolling Stone\". \"They may be the first rock group to ride in on a video wave.\" The album ultimately peaked at number six in the US and remained on the charts there for 129 weeks. In 2003, \"Rio\" was listed at number 65 in the \"NME\"'s list of the 100 Greatest Albums of All Time.\nDuran Duran were among the earliest bands to work on their own remixes. Before the days of digital synthesizer and easy audio sampling, they created multi-layered arrangements of their singles, sometimes recording entirely different extended performances of the songs in the studio. These \"night versions\" were generally available only on vinyl as b-sides to 45 rpm singles or on 12-inch club singles until the release of the compilation \"\" in 1998.\n1983\u20131985: The \"Fab Five\", Side projects and Live Aid.\nThe band began 1983 at the Palladium in New York playing the MTV New Year's Eve Rock n' Roll Ball with \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" still climbing the charts in the US, and the American reissue of the \"Rio\" single to follow in March. To satisfy America's appetite for their music, the band re-released their eponymous first album in the US in the middle of the year with the addition of the new single \"Is There Something I Should Know?\". Upon its release, this song entered the chart at number one in the UK (a rarity then and their first chart-topper in their home country) and reached number five on the American charts. During the promotion of this album, Rhodes and Le Bon were MTV guest VJs for a show, during which artist and admirer Andy Warhol dropped by to greet them. \"Our first gigs in the United States were crazy and culty\", Rhodes said later, \"But when we came back after 'Hungry' was a hit, it was mayhem. It was Beatlemania. We were doing a signing of the 'Girls on Film' video at a store in Times Square. We couldn't get out of the store. The cops sealed off the streets.\" Also in 1983, Rhodes produced the UK number one and US number five hit \"Too Shy\" for English band Kajagoogoo and Andy Taylor became the first member of Duran Duran to get married.\nThe band spent the next year as tax exiles, writing songs at a ch\u00e2teau in France where \"The Tube\" with Jools Holland filmed a documentary with the band in May 1983 before they flew to Montserrat and then Sydney to record and mix their third album. During the summer, they returned to the UK to perform two concerts, the first on 20 July in front of the Prince and Princess of Wales at the Dominion Theatre, and the second, a charity concert at Aston Villa's home ground. The band were under pressure to follow up the success of \"Rio\", and the recording process took over six months as different band members went through bouts of perfectionism and insecurity. A newly decadent lifestyle and substance abuse issues for some members added complications. In the documentary film \"Extraordinary World\", filmed a decade later, Rhodes described the effect on their sound as \"barely controlled hysteria, scratching beneath the surface\".\nThe new album, \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" (1983), included the late 1983 hit \"Union of the Snake\" (with the soprano saxophone solo by Andy Hamilton). With \"Hungry Like the Wolf\", \"Rio\", \"Save a Prayer\" and \"Is There Something I Should Know?\", Duran Duran now had five US Top Twenty hits from three different albums in a single year. The band made music headlines by deciding to release the \"Union of the Snake\" video to MTV a full week before the single was released to radio. They followed up with \"New Moon on Monday\", which reached number nine in the UK. Their next single \"The Reflex\", taken from \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" and given a significant remix overhaul by Nile Rodgers of Chic fame, became their first number one hit in the United States. \"The Reflex\" was also their second and final UK number one and was successful in numerous other countries around the world.\nThe band embarked on a global tour that continued throughout the first four months of 1984 including their first major stadium dates in America. A film crew led by director Russell Mulcahy followed the band closely, leading to the documentary film \"Sing Blue Silver\" and the accompanying concert film \"Arena\". The live album \"Arena\" was also recorded during the tour and was released with the new single \"The Wild Boys\", which went to number two on both sides of the Atlantic. In February 1984, the band appeared on the cover of \"Rolling Stone\" magazine and won two Grammy Awards in the brand-new Long Form and Short Form music video categories. Meanwhile, \"Save a Prayer\" gained momentum in North America, and a special US remix of the song became a single in January 1985. It peaked at number 16 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 in March. A live version of the song was used for the single's B-side, taken from the concert video footage for \"Arena\" / \"As the Lights Go Down\".\nDuring this period, all of the band members became heartthrobs for many of their young teenage fans. After the tour, Roger Taylor was married in Naples, Italy, and Rhodes wed in London, wearing a pink velvet tuxedo and top hat. At the end of 1984, the group featured on the Band Aid benefit single \"Do They Know It's Christmas?\" along with other popular British and Irish musical acts. Le Bon sang fourth on the song, after Paul Young, Boy George and George Michael sing their lines.\nEven with Duran Duran on hold, band members were soon anxious to record new music, leading to a supposedly temporary split into two side projects. John Taylor and Andy Taylor wanted to break away from the Duran Duran sound and pursue hard rock material; they collaborated with lead vocalist Robert Palmer and Chic's drummer Tony Thompson to form the rock/funk supergroup the Power Station, releasing two top 10 singles. Le Bon and Rhodes wanted to further explore Duran Duran's atmospheric aspect and formed Arcadia, releasing one album (\"So Red the Rose\") and an accompanying single (\"Election Day\"). Contributors to that album included guitarist Masami Tsuchiya, bassist Mark Egan, percussionist David Van Tieghem, drummer Steve Jordan, Sting, Herbie Hancock and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. Roger Taylor was a drummer for Arcadia as well as contributing percussion to the Power Station album. According to Rhodes, the two side projects \"were commercial suicide... But we've always been good at that.\" The band regrouped to contribute \"A View to a Kill\" to the 1985 James Bond film of the same name. This single was the first Bond theme to go to number one on the US charts, and was at the time the joint highest-placed Bond theme on the UK chart where it reached number two. It was the last single the band recorded as the original five-piece for close to twenty years.\nAs a follow-up to the Christmas 1984 Band Aid single, Duran Duran performed in front of 90,000 people (and an estimated 1.5\u00a0billion TV viewers) at the Live Aid charity concert at John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 13 July 1985 while their Bond song held the top spot on the American charts. It was not intended to be a farewell performance\u2014the band planned only to take a break after four years of non-stop touring and public appearances\u2014but the original five did not play live together again until July 2003. During their Live Aid set, Le Bon inadvertently hit an off-key falsetto note in the chorus of \"A View to a Kill\", an error that was trumpeted by numerous media outlets as \"The Bum Note Heard Round the World\" (in contrast to Freddie Mercury's \"Note Heard Round the World\" at the Wembley Stadium Live Aid show). Le Bon later described the moment as the most embarrassing of his career.\n1986\u20131989: Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor trio.\nAfter releasing three studio albums and one live album in five years, each accompanied by heavy media promotion and lengthy concert tours, the band lost two of its core members to fatigue and tension in 1986. After Live Aid and Arcadia, Roger Taylor left the band and retired to the English countryside, suffering from exhaustion.\nAndy Taylor led the remaining members to believe he would return to work on a new Duran Duran album, even as he was signing a solo recording contract in Los Angeles with MCA Records, eventually releasing a solo album in 1986 called \"Thunder\". The band resorted to legal measures to get him into the studio but after numerous delays they let him go at last. He played on only a few songs on the next album, including \"A Matter of Feeling\", whilst the disagreements were being settled.\nWithout a guitarist or a drummer, Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor had producer (and former Chic guitarist) Nile Rodgers play a few tracks on guitar, and hired Steve Ferrone to play drums while they searched for replacements. In September 1986, Warren Cuccurullo (formerly of Missing Persons and Frank Zappa's band) was hired as a session guitarist. With Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor, he recorded the rest of the \"Notorious\" album, which was released in October 1986. The black-and-white documentary film \"Three to Get Ready\" chronicled the recording of the album, legal tensions, and preparations for the tour.\nAlthough the song \"Notorious\" was a US and UK top ten hit, the album was a relative failure globally, reaching number 16 in the UK and spending one week in the top 50 album chart. The band found they had lost much of the momentum and hysteria they had left behind in 1985. In the three years between the release of \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" and \"Notorious\", many of their teenage fans had grown up and the music was funkier, more mature, and less \"pop\", given the added experience of their work on Arcadia and Power Station and with other musicians. \"Skin Trade\" and \"Meet El Presidente\", the two subsequent singles, made the charts but fared poorly compared to the band's earlier successes. Finally in late 1987, Sterling Campbell was hired as a session drummer.\nSubsequently, Duran Duran struggled to escape the teen idol image and gain respect among critics with more complex music. The new serious image was not accepted at first and their popularity began to wane. \"Rolling Stone\" said, \"In their search for musical maturity, the surviving Durans have lost a good deal of their identity.\" In contrast the \"New York Times\" said, \"Duran Duran's newfound disillusionment may mark a step toward maturity...they managed to catch a trend on the upswing, perhaps \"Notorious\" suggests that for late 1980s grit and pessimism is coming into style.\" Another factor was the band's dismissal of early managers, the Berrow brothers. There was no announcement of the reasons for the decision, but disagreements over money, and the brothers' involvement in Le Bon's yachting adventures (they were co-owners of \"Drum\") were thought to have played a part. Whatever the reason, Duran Duran switched managers frequently and undertook periods of self-management in the later stages of their career. In addition, EMI fired its president and went through a major corporate restructuring that summer and seemed to have lost interest in promoting the band. According to Rhodes the band needed to break up in order to come back together stronger.\nThe next album \"Big Thing\" (1988) yielded the singles \"I Don't Want Your Love\" (number four in the US), and \"All She Wants Is\" (the last top ten hit in the UK until 1993). The record was experimental, mixing influences from house music and raves with Duran's atmospheric synth-pop and the creative guitar work of Cuccurullo (now a full band member), as well as more mature lyrics.\n1989\u20131991: Five again, \"Decade\" and \"Liberty\".\nBy the end of 1989 and at the start of the 1990s, the popularity of synth-pop was fading and losing fans to other momentum-gaining music genres at the time, such as hip hop, techno and alternative rock. After touring for the album finished, the band regained a five-man membership as Cuccurullo and Campbell were made full members of Duran Duran.\nThe compilation album \"Decade\" was released late in 1989, along with the megamix single \"Burning the Ground\", which consisted of woven snippets of the band's hits from the previous ten years, created and produced with John Jones, who began working with the band after the release of \"Big Thing\". The single came and went with little fanfare, but the album became another major seller for the band. The 1990 release \"Liberty\" (a retreat from the experimentation of \"Big Thing\") failed to capitalise on any regained momentum. The album entered the UK album chart in the top ten, but faded away quickly. The singles \"Violence of Summer (Love's Taking Over)\" and \"Serious\" were only mildly successful. For the first time, Duran Duran did not tour in support of an album, performing on only a handful of club dates and TV shows. Campbell left the band early in 1991, going on to work with Soul Asylum and David Bowie. The quartet of Le Bon, Rhodes, John Taylor and Cuccurullo would remain intact for six more years.\n1992\u20131996: Quartet line-up and a brief comeback.\nIn 1993, the band released a second self-titled album: this \"Duran Duran\" album is known as \"The Wedding Album\" (for Nick Egan's cover art featuring the wedding photos of the band members' parents) to distinguish it from the 1981 release, and was produced and recorded with John Jones. The release of this first \"comeback\" album was delayed, with then manager at Left Bank, Tommy Manzi, later telling HitQuarters that this was due to industry resistance to the revival of the band, who he said would rather focus on \"the next hip band\". Listener demand for leaked single \"Ordinary World\" forced it onto radio playlists months earlier than planned; it reached number three on the US chart and number six in the UK and won a prestigious Ivor Novello Award for song writing.\n\"Come Undone\", primarily written by Cuccurullo, with lyrics by Le Bon, made number seven in the US and number 13 in the UK. Both the band and the record label seemed to be caught by surprise by the album's critical and commercial success (number four in the UK, number seven in the US). John Taylor had been considering leaving the band but changed his mind. The band's largest tour ever, which included stops in the Middle East, the then recently de-embargoed South Africa, and South America, was halted after seven months when Le Bon suffered from strained vocal cords. After six weeks' recuperation, the band performed intermittently for another five months, including appearances in Israel, Thailand, and Indonesia.\nIn 1995, the band released the cover album \"Thank You\". Songs from \"Thank You\" included covers of Lou Reed's \"Perfect Day\" and Melle Mel's \"White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)\" (with backing vocals from the original artists). The album also marked the temporary return of former drummer Roger Taylor, who joined the band in studio to play drums on \"Watching the Detectives\" and \"Perfect Day\" (as well as a cover of \"Jeepster\" by T. Rex that did not appear on the album). In a video interview provided with the album's electronic press kit, Reed said he considered Duran Duran's version the best cover ever done of one of his songs, and they received praise from Robert Plant and Jimmy Page for their cover of Led Zeppelin's \"Thank You\".\n1997\u20132000: John Taylor's departure and second trio.\nAfter the promo tour for \"Thank You\" was completed, John Taylor co-founded the B5 Records label, recorded a solo album, founded and toured with the supergroup Neurotic Outsiders, and reunited the Power Station, though the project proceeded without him when he had to withdraw to deal with his divorce. Finally, after struggling for months to record the next album, \"Medazzaland\", in January 1997, John Taylor announced at the DuranCon fan convention that he was leaving the band \"for good\". His departure reduced the band to two long time members (Le Bon and Rhodes) and Cuccurullo, who decided to continue recording under the name Duran Duran.\nFreed from some internal writing conflicts, the band returned to the studio to rewrite and re-record many of the songs on \"Medazzaland\" (John Taylor's work remains on only four tracks). The album marked a return to the layered experimentation of \"Big Thing\", with intricate guitar textures and processed vocals. The track \"Out of My Mind\" was used as the theme song for the film \"The Saint\" (1997), but the only true single to be released in the United States was the quirky \"Electric Barbarella\", which is one of the first singles ever to be sold online. The music video for this single, featuring a sexy robot purchased and played with by band members, had to be censored before airing on MTV, but there was little of the controversy that had surrounded \"Girls on Film\". \"Electric Barbarella\" peaked at number 52 in the US in October 1997. Although \"Medazzaland\" was released in the US in October 1997, the album was never released in the UK. \"Electric Barbarella\" was later released in the UK as a single from the 1998 \"Greatest\" compilation album and peaked at number 23 on the UK chart in January 1999. The group played a set at the Princess Diana Tribute Concert on 27 June 1998 by special request of her family.\nDuran Duran parted ways with Capitol/EMI in 1999, although the label has since used Duran Duran's back catalogue to release several compilations of remixes and rare vinyl-only B-sides. The band then signed what was intended to be a three-album contract with Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records, but it lasted only through the poorly received 2000 album \"Pop Trash\". This slow-paced and heavy album seemed out-of-keeping with earlier band material. Rhodes' intricate production and Cuccurullo's songwriting and experimentation with guitar sounds and time signatures were not enough to hook the public, and the album did not perform well. The dreamy single \"Someone Else Not Me\" lasted barely two weeks on the radio, although its video was noted as the first to be produced entirely with Flash animation. While supporting \"Medazzaland\" and \"Pop Trash\", Duran Duran toured with bassist Wes Wehmiller and drummer Joe Travers.\n2001\u20132005: Reunion.\nIn 2000, Le Bon approached John Taylor with a proposal to reform Duran Duran's classic line-up. They agreed to part company with Cuccurullo after completing the \"Pop Trash\" tour. Cuccurullo then announced on his website that he was leaving Duran Duran to resume work with his 1980s band Missing Persons. This announcement was confirmed the next day by Duran Duran's website, followed a day later by the news that John, Roger and Andy had rejoined. To fulfill contractual obligations, Cuccurullo played three Duran Duran concerts in Japan in June 2001, ending his tenure in the band.\nThroughout 2001, 2002 and 2003, the band worked on writing new material, initially renting a house in Saint-Tropez where audio engineer Mark Tinley built a recording studio for their first serious writing session. They then returned to London to do some self-financed work with various producers (including old friend Nile Rodgers) and search for a new record deal. It proved difficult to find a record label willing to gamble on the band's comeback, so Duran Duran went on tour to prove the drawing power of the reunited band. The response of the fans and the media exceeded expectations. The band played a handful of 25th-anniversary dates across 2003, starting with two arena dates in Tokyo filled to capacity. Tickets sold out for each show within minutes, and celebrities turned out \"en masse\" for reunion dates. Amongst these were a number of shows at smaller venues that the band had played on both sides of the pond when they first got together in the early 1980s. In August, the band were booked as presenters at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, only to be surprised with a Lifetime Achievement Award. They also received a Lifetime Achievement award from \"Q\" magazine in October, and the equivalent Outstanding Contribution award at the BRIT Awards in February 2004.\nThe pace picked up with a sold-out tour of America, Australia and New Zealand. The band played a full concert at a private tailgate party at Super Bowl XXXVIII, their performance of \"The Wild Boys\" broadcast to millions during the pre-game show. A remix of the new track \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\" was released on many TV shows in February while magazines hailed (the modern \"Fab Five\") Duran Duran as one of the greatest bands of all time. Duran Duran then celebrated their homecoming to the UK with fourteen stadium dates in April 2004, including five sold-out nights at Wembley Arena. The British press, traditionally hostile to the band, accorded the shows some very warm reviews. Duran Duran brought along band Goldfrapp and the Scissor Sisters as alternating opening acts for this tour. The last two shows were filmed, resulting in the concert DVD \"Duran Duran: Live from London\" which was released in November.\nFinally, with more than thirty-five songs completed, the band signed a two-album contract with Epic Records in June, and completed the new album, now titled \"Astronaut\". The album was released in October 2004 and entered the UK charts at number three and the US charts at number 17. The first single was \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\", which reached number one on the \"Billboard\" US Dance chart in November and peaked at number five on the UK Singles Chart, Duran Duran's highest chart position since \"A View to a Kill\" in 1985. A second single, \"What Happens Tomorrow\", debuted at No.\u00a011 on the UK chart in February. A 5.1 mix of \"Astronaut\" was created by Jeremy Wheatley for the dual-disc release of \"Astronaut\". The CD side contains the album as-is and the DVD side contains the 5.1 mix of the album in DVD Audio format along with some DVD footage and videos.\nAfter a world tour in early 2005, Duran Duran were presented with the PRS Outstanding Contribution to British Music at the 2005 Ivor Novello Awards. Later that summer, the band headlined the massive Live 8 concert, Rome on 2 July 2005 in the Circus Maximus.\n2006\u20132008: \"Red Carpet Massacre\" and Andy Taylor's second departure.\nIn early 2006, Duran Duran covered John Lennon's song \"Instant Karma!\" for the \"Make Some Noise\" campaign sponsored by Amnesty International. Their version later appeared on \"\" as an iTunes exclusive bonus track. They also performed at two high-profile events\u00a0\u2013 the Nobel Prize Awards and the 2006 Winter Olympics. After a couple of weeks of songwriting in Northern California, the band began working with producer Michael Patterson in London, and continued intermittently for the next several months. At one point, they reported having had fifteen tracks nearly complete for an album tentatively titled \"Reportage\", but no further news emerged from the band for months afterward. In September, the band held meetings in New York City with Justin Timberlake and producer Timbaland with an eye to a potential collaboration and were soon reported to have completed three songs with the producer, including a song with Justin Timberlake.\nOn 25 October 2006, Duran Duran parted company with Andy Taylor once again. In an official announcement on their website, the band stated that an \"unworkable gulf\" had developed between them and Taylor and that \"we can no longer effectively function together\". It was noted by Andy Taylor in his book \"Wild Boy\" that tensions had arisen between the group's management and himself, and he was also diagnosed with clinical depression connected with the death of his father. Dom Brown, who had previously toured with the band, again took over guitar duties and has been performing with them since. After Taylor's departure, the band scrapped the \"Reportage\" album. They wrote and recorded a new album titled \"Red Carpet Massacre\" (2007), which included the Timbaland tracks. Dom Brown is the featured guitarist on the album.\nIn July 2007, the band performed twice at Wembley Stadium. Their first appearance at the stadium was the Concert for Diana which celebrated the life of Princess Diana almost 10 years after her death. The band performed \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\", \"The Wild Boys\" and \"Rio\". Their second appearance was at Live Earth concert, London. On 25 September, the Timberlake collaboration \"Falling Down\" was released as a download single on iTunes, and the band announced that they would play nine shows at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway to launch the \"Red Carpet Massacre\" album. The album launch was later extended to incorporate a show in London on 3 December 2007 and one in Dublin on 5 December 2007.\nIn May 2008, they toured the US leg of their 2008 world tour and were supported by the British band Your Vegas. In June 2008, they played the Louvre in Paris in a fundraising effort that contributed to the restoration of a Louis XV drawing room. Guests dined, privately viewed some of the museum's artworks, then attended a performance by the band in the I.M. Pei-designed Pyramid du Louvre. The group's performance marked a first for the 18th-century museum which had never before allowed a rock concert to occur anywhere within the grounds or buildings and another groundbreaker for Duran Duran.\nOn 2 July 2008, in Paris, Mark Ronson performed a unique live set with Duran Duran for an exclusive, invitation-only performance. Together, they showcased specially re-worked versions of some of Duran Duran's classic hits re-created by Ronson, along with tracks from \"Red Carpet Massacre\". Le Bon also performed songs from Ronson's latest album, \"Version\" (2007), as one of Ronson's featured guest vocalists. Unlike the band's previous album \"Astronaut\" (2004), \"Red Carpet Massacre\" sold poorly and received mixed responses from the music press. In 2008, \"Rio\" was included in the \"Classic Albums\" series.\n2009\u20132012: \"All You Need Is Now\".\nThe band departed from Epic Records in 2009, after releasing just two albums. In early 2010, it was revealed that the band would be contributing a cover of \"Boys Keep Swinging\" to a tribute/charity record for David Bowie called \"\" from which all profits go to War Child. Other contributing artists included Carla Bruni, Devendra Banhart, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, and Warpaint. The album was released on 14 September 2010 on Manimal Vinyl Records. A limited edition split 7-inch single with Duran Duran and Carla Bruni was also released on Manimal Vinyl in December 2010.\nOn 21 December 2010, Duran Duran's thirteenth album, titled \"All You Need Is Now\", produced by the Grammy Award-winning Mark Ronson and mixed by Spike Stent, was released exclusively on iTunes and hit the number one spot on download charts in 15 countries (including the UK). The first single from the record, title track \"All You Need Is Now\", was free to download worldwide on 8 December 2010 exclusively in iTunes. Guitarist and songwriter Dom Brown co-wrote all but two songs on the album.\nOn 25 February 2011, while in Milan, Duran Duran received a Style Icons of the 20th Century Award and a key to the city, presented by the city's mayor Letizia Moratti.\nIn March 2011 the band embarked on a world tour in support of the album. After a warm-up show in London, the tour officially began 16 March 2011 in Austin, Texas. On 23 March, the band performed live at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles as the start of the second season of \"\". The concert was directed by David Lynch and live-streamed on YouTube. The band was joined onstage by Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, Beth Ditto of Gossip, and Kelis. On 17 April 2011, Duran Duran performed at the Coachella Music Festival located at Empire Polo Grounds, in Indio, California. In May 2011, Le Bon contracted laryngitis leading to either cancellation or rescheduling of most of the European dates for the \"All You Need Is Now\" World Tour.\nOn 27 July 2012, Duran Duran headlined the London Summer Olympics 2012 Opening Ceremony celebration in Hyde Park. They represented England, along with Snow Patrol for Northern Ireland, Stereophonics for Wales, and Paolo Nutini for Scotland. At the end of August 2012, with one week left of their 18-month world tour, the band were forced to cancel the rest of the North American leg of the tour as Nick Rhodes had become ill with a viral infection.\n2013\u20132018: \"Paper Gods\".\nOn 4 March 2013, the band returned to the studio to work on their fourteenth album, and continued during the week beginning 23 September. They reconvened 13 to 18 December. On 31 December 2013, the band posted a mixtape curated by John Taylor as a New Year's \"thank you\" to their fans. On 10 February 2014, John Taylor and Roger Taylor worked with the Voce Chamber Choir and London Youth Chamber Choir on vocals for use on some Duran Duran tracks. Then former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante worked with the band on the new album.\nOn 11 September 2015, the album \"Paper Gods\" was released. The single \"Pressure Off\" was also released the same week, first via Microsoft's Xbox Music. The song subsequently appeared on Google Play Music. The album debuted at number 10 on the \"Billboard\" 200, the band's highest debut in 22 years. The album also reached number two in Italy, number four in the Netherlands, and number five in the UK. In 2016, the artist MNDR stood in for Rhodes during part of the third leg of the Paper Gods tour in the United States, while he returned to the UK in order to attend to an urgent family matter. Rhodes was quoted as saying, \"I will be back as soon as I can but know, in the meantime, that I am leaving both the band and fans in great hands, with the fabulous MNDR.\" Also, several remixes of their song \"Last Night in the City\" were released in digital form in that year.\nIn December 2016, the original five-piece lineup lost a case in the British High Court after they attempted to reclaim the U.S. copyright on their first three albums from Gloucester Place Music, part of EMI Music Publishing. Rhodes commented, \"We signed a publishing agreement as unsuspecting teenagers, over three decades ago, when just starting out and when we knew no better... if left untested, this judgment sets a very bad precedent for all songwriters of our era.\" In March 2020, Duran Duran signed with the Warner/Chappell Music publisher, covering their post-1986 catalogue. The band spent 2017 touring the American continent and playing a handful of festival dates in Europe and Asia.\n2019\u20132022: \"Future Past\" and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction.\nIn 2019, Duran Duran were working on a new album with Ronson, Erol Alkan and Giorgio Moroder handling production duties, and Graham Coxon and Lykke Li being confirmed as collaborators. Rhodes described the content and sound of a possible first single to be \"very different for us.\" Initially planned for release in 2020, the recording of the album was put on hold in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On 8 January 2021, a cover of \"Five Years\" by David Bowie was released for the fifth anniversary of his death. On 13 January 2021, \"Rolling Stone\" included the album at number 50 on their \"54 Most Anticipated Albums of 2021\" list. Le Bon said that the album is \"quite naked, raw. The grass is slightly sharp and twinkly rather than smooth,\" and is \"groovy (and) modern and very honest. The lyrics are quite something.\u201d On 18 May, the album title was announced as \"Future Past\".\nOn 19 May, the first single from the album \"Invisible\" was released along with a music video, and features Coxon as a guitarist and co-writer. On 9 July, the band premiered a second song from the album titled \"Give It All Up\" on NBC's \"Today\" show. On 5 August, Duran Duran released the album's second single \"More Joy!\", featuring further collaboration with Coxon, Erol Alkan and also Japanese rock band Chai. On 12 August, the band appeared on \"The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon\" performing \"Invisible\". On 31 August, Duran Duran released the album's third single \"Anniversary\", followed by the fourth single, \"Tonight United\", on 24 September. On 14 and 15 September, the band played two sold-out gigs at Birmingham's O2 Institute. That was the first time they played live since their last live gig in 2019. Along with their hit songs, they performed three tracks from \"Future Past\"\u2014\"Invisible\", \"Anniversary\" and \"Tonight United\". The band headlined the Isle of Wight festival on 19 September.\nOn 22 October 2021, \"Future Past\" was released. The album entered the UK Album Chart at number three, the band's highest peak since 2004's \"Astronaut\". This also earned the band the distinction of having UK Top 5 albums in each of the five decades they had been releasing music (1980s\u20132020s). On 22 January 2022, Duran Duran played on \"Austin City Limits\". In June 2022, Duran Duran performed at the Platinum Party at the Palace. In July 2022, the band returned to the city of their origin, Birmingham to headline the opening ceremony of Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games playing to a capacity Alexander Stadium.\nIn 2022, the band topped the fan vote (over 1 million preferences) for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the class of 2022, and in May of that year were announced as one of the seven inductees in the \"Performer\" category. \nOn 11 July 2022, Duran Duran headlined a concert in Hyde Park, London, to more than 80,000 adoring fans, as part of the 2022 BST concert series.\nThe ceremony at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was held on 5 November 2022, where Robert Downey Jr. inducted the band. John Taylor, Roger Taylor, Rhodes and Le Bon each attended the induction ceremony and performed \"Girls on Film\", \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Ordinary World\" along with longtime touring guitarist Dom Brown. During the acceptance speech, Simon Le Bon read from a letter written by Andy Taylor, who was absent from the ceremony, that revealed he has been privately fighting stage IV metastatic prostate cancer for the past four years and was \"massively disappointed\" he couldn't attend.\n2023\u2013present: \"Danse Macabre\".\nOn 20 March 2023, Duran Duran took to their Instagram to announce they are working on a new musical project, set for release in late 2023. The work will feature a collaboration with former band members Andy Taylor and Warren Cuccurullo. The project, \"Danse Macabre\", was released on 27 October. A Halloween-themed album, it features new songs, reworkings of older material and several covers.\nThe first single \u2013 the title track \"Danse Macabre\" \u2013 was released on 30 August 2023. The second single, \"Black Moonlight\", followed on 21 September.\nOn 13 September 2024, the band released a new reworking of their 1983 single \"New Moon on Monday\" titled \"New Moon (Dark Phase)\", ahead of a planned deluxe reissue of \"Danse Macabre\". The single features contributions from Andy Taylor.\nIn 2025, Carlo Conti announced that Duran Duran would be special guests of Sanremo Music Festival in the third night. They perform with Victoria De Angelis.\nInfluences.\nAlthough they began their career as \"a group of art school, experimental, post punk rockers,\" the band's quick rise to stardom, polished good looks and embrace of the teen press almost guaranteed disfavour from music critics. During the 1980s, Duran Duran were considered the quintessential manufactured, throw-away pop group. However, according to the \"Sunday Herald\", \"To describe them, as some have, as the first boy band, misrepresents their appeal. Their weapons were never just their looks, but self-penned songs.\" Moby said of the band in his blog in 2003: \"...\u00a0they were cursed by what we can call the 'Bee Gees' curse, which is: 'write amazing songs, sell tons of records, and consequently incur the wrath or disinterest of the rock obsessed critical establishment.'\"\nInfluences on Duran Duran included David Bowie, Roxy Music, the Beatles and the Doors; the electronic music of John Foxx's Ultravox, Kraftwerk, the Yellow Magic Orchestra and Giorgio Moroder; glam rock and American rock such as T. Rex, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and Sparks; British punk and post-punk bands such as the Clash, Sex Pistols and Siouxsie and the Banshees; and the disco/funk band Chic. Duran Duran were also influenced by contemporary synth-pop groups, with records by Japan, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and the Human League becoming fixtures in Rhodes's 1980 DJ sets at the Rum Runner club. Andy Taylor was a fan of the rock band AC/DC, \"...all these different influences were coming into the studio. Somehow, it had its own life. It became very unique in itself. It was influenced by a lot of different people\", Roger Taylor said in a 2012 interview.\nSeveral of the band's contemporaries including the Bangles, Elton John, Kylie Minogue, Paul Young and even the Monkees, have named themselves fans of the band's music. Le Bon described the group as \"the band to dance to when the bomb drops\". Successors like Barenaked Ladies, Beck, Jonathan Davis of Korn, the Bravery, Gwen Stefani and Pink have all cited Duran Duran as a key band in their formative years. Justin Timberlake is a fan of the band and presented them with the Outstanding Contribution award at the 2004 Brit Awards. The most recent crop of performers to name Duran Duran as an influence include Dido, Franz Ferdinand, Panic! at the Disco, Goldfrapp and Brandon Flowers of the Killers, who said, \"Nick Rhodes is an absolute hero of mine\u2014their records still sound fresh, which is no mean feat as far as synths are concerned.\"\nRhodes has directly lent his production techniques to Kajagoogoo's debut album \"White Feathers\" (1983) and its number one single \"Too Shy\", and to the Dandy Warhols' fourth album \"Welcome to the Monkey House\" (2003). The band's music has been used by several hip hop artists, most notably the Notorious B.I.G., who sampled Duran Duran's 1986 single \"Notorious\". Numerous bands have covered their music on record and in concert.\nVideos.\nThe MTV cable channel and the band were launched at about the same time, and each had a hand in propelling the other to greater heights. MTV needed showcase videos with charismatic performers. Les Garland, senior executive vice-president at MTV, said \"I remember our director of talent and artist relations came running in and said, \"You have got to see this video that's come in\". Duran Duran were getting zero radio airplay at the time, and MTV wanted to try to break new music. \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" was the greatest video I'd ever seen\". The band's video work was influential in several ways. First, Duran Duran filmed in exotic locales like Sri Lanka and Antigua, creating memorable images that were radically different from the then-common low budget \"band-playing-on-a-stage\" videos. Second, rather than simply playing their instruments, the band participated in mini-storylines (often taking inspiration from contemporary movies: \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" riffs on 1981's \"Raiders of the Lost Ark\", \"The Wild Boys\" on 1981's \"Mad Max 2\"), etc. While videos were already headed in this direction, Duran Duran led the trend with a style, featuring quick editing, arresting graphic design, and surreal-to-nonsensical image inserts, that drew attention from commentators and spawned a wealth of imitators.\nDuran Duran were among the first bands to have their videos shot with a professional movie camera on 35mm film, rather than on videotape, making them look superior to many of the quickly shot videos which had been MTV staples until then. MTV provided Duran Duran with access to American radio markets that were unfriendly to British music, new wave music, or \"anything with synthesisers\". Because MTV was not available everywhere in the United States at first, it was easy to see a pattern: where MTV went, listener demand for Duran Duran, Tears for Fears, Def Leppard and other European bands with interesting videos went through the roof. The band's sun-drenched videos for \"Rio\", \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Save a Prayer\", and the surreal \"Is There Something I Should Know?\" were filmed by future movie director Russell Mulcahy, who made eleven videos for the band. Duran Duran have always sought out innovative directors and techniques, even in their later years when MTV gave them little airplay. In addition to Mulcahy, they have had videos filmed by influential photographers Dean Chamberlain and Ellen von Unwerth, Chinese director Chen Kaige, documentary filmmaker Julien Temple, and the Polish Brothers, among others. According to Rhodes, \"Video is to us like stereo was to Pink Floyd.\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"The British won out here, hands down. Next to the prosaic, foursquare appearance of the American bands, such acts as Duran Duran seemed like caviar. MTV opened up a whole new world that could not be fully apprehended over the radio. The visual angle played to the arty conceits of Britain's young style barons, suggesting something more exotic than the viewer was likely to find in the old hometown. The big Duran Duran hits, \"Girls on Film\" and \"Hungry Like the Wolf\", were MTV favorites three months before radio began to pick up on them. And via MTV, Duran Duran and their like have engendered an outpouring of good old-fashioned hysteria among teenage girls.\"\nIn 1984, Duran Duran introduced video technology into their live stadium shows by being among the first acts to provide video screens above the stage. They have recorded concerts using IMAX and 360-degree panoramic \"immersive video\" cameras, with 10.2 channel audio. In 2000, they experimented with augmented reality technology, which allowed three-dimensional computer-generated images to appear on stage with the band. They appeared on several century-end video countdowns: The MTV \"100 Greatest Videos Ever Made\" featured \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" at No.\u00a011 and \"Girls on Film\" at No.\u00a068, and the \"VH1: 100 Greatest Videos\" listed \"Hungry\" at No.\u00a031 and \"Rio\" at No.\u00a060. MTV named \"Hungry\" the 15th of their most played videos of all time.\nThe band has released several video compilations, starting with the self-titled \"video album\" \"Duran Duran\" (1983), for which they won a Grammy Award, up to the 2004 two-disc DVD release \"Greatest\", which included alternative versions of several popular videos as Easter eggs. In addition to \"Greatest\", the documentary \"Sing Blue Silver\", and the concert film \"Arena\" (both from 1984) were released on DVD in 2004. \"Live from London\", a concert video from one of their sold-out 2004 reunion shows at Wembley Arena, was released in the fall of 2005.\nOther video collections, concert films, and documentaries remain available only on videotape, and Duran Duran have not yet released a collection which includes all their videos. The band has said that a huge amount of unreleased concert and documentary footage has been filmed over the years, which they hope can be edited and released in some form in the near future. The video for \"Falling Down\" was released in October 2007. The Nick Egan-directed video for the lead single and title track from \"All You Need Is Now\" was premiered via Yahoo Music on 20 December 2010. The second video from \"All You Need Is Now\", \"Girl Panic\", was released on 8 November 2011. It features some of the world's most famous supermodels, such as Yasmin Le Bon, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Eva Herzigov\u00e1 and Helena Christensen, playing the band. The video was directed by Jonas Akerlund, and during the filming, an editorial was made for \"Harper's Bazaar\" magazine.\nVisual style.\nFrom the beginning of their career, all the members had a keen sense of visual style. They worked with stylist Perry Haines and fashion designers such as Kahn & Bell and Antony Price to build a sharp and elegant image, soon outgrowing the ruffles and sashes of the pirate-flavoured early New Romantic look that had been popularised by Adam Ant during 1980\u201381. They have continued to present fashion as part of their package throughout their career. In the 1990s they worked with Vivienne Westwood and in the 2000s with Giorgio Armani. The band retained creative control of their visual presentation having worked closely with graphic designer Malcolm Garrett and many others over the years to create album covers, tour programs and other materials.\nTeen and music magazines in the UK latched onto their good looks quickly, and the USA soon followed. It was a rare month in the early 1980s when there was not at least one picture of the band members in teen magazines such as \"Smash Hits\" or \"Tiger Beat\". John Taylor once remarked that the band was \"like a box of Quality Street [chocolates]; everyone is someone's favourite\" Duran Duran later came to regret this early pin-up exposure, but at the time it helped attract national attention. In an interview with \"Rock Fever Superstars\" magazine in early 1988, John Taylor stated:\nWe used to be a very chi-chi name to drop in '79, but then the Fab Five hype started and something went wrong. Something went really wrong. That wasn't what I wanted. [...] Not that I didn't like being screamed at. At one point I really did\".\nDiscography.\nStudio albums\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nTours.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nExplanatory notes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["6493743", "148703"], "permutation_1": ["148703", "6493743"], "permutation_2": ["6493743", "148703"], "permutation_3": ["6493743", "148703"]}
{"id": "2hop__132015_91253", "docs_added": {"14536060": "Borealis quadrangle\nQuadrangle on Mercury\nThe Borealis quadrangle is a quadrangle on Mercury surrounding the north pole down to 65\u00b0 latitude. It was mapped in its entirety by the \"MESSENGER\" spacecraft, which orbited the planet from 2008 to 2015, excluding areas of permanent shadow near the north pole. Only approximately 25% of the quadrangle was imaged by the \"Mariner 10\" spacecraft during its flybys in 1974 and 1975. The quadrangle is now called H-1.\nIt contains the Goethe Basin, whose diameter of at least makes it the sixth-largest impact basin observed on Mariner 10 images(Murray and others, 1974; Boyce and Grolier, 1977; Strom, 1977). The west half of the mapped area (between long 100\u00b0 and 190\u00b0\u00a0W.) is dominated by older craters and by intercrater plains material that lies between and within them. Younger crater materials, intermediate plains material, and small patches of smooth plains material are superposed on all other units. The crater Verdi, in diameter, is the largest of the younger craters. Its extensive ejecta blanket and secondary crater field are superposed on plains materials and older craters.\nThe east half of the mapped area (between long 0\u00b0 and 100\u00b0\u00a0W.) is characterized by smooth plains material (Murray and others, 1974). This unit covers vast expanses of Borealis Planitia, a depression about in diameter that has an irregular arcuate west boundary. This depression is located over the site(s) of one or several old impact structures (Boyce and Grolier, 1977).\nAdjacent quadrangles to the south of Borealis are Victoria quadrangle (0\u00b0 to 90\u00b0\u00a0W), Shakespeare quadrangle (90\u00b0 to 180\u00b0\u00a0W), Raditladi quadrangle (180\u00b0 to 270\u00b0\u00a0W), and Hokusai quadrangle (270\u00b0 to 0\u00b0\u00a0W). It is opposite the Bach quadrangle at the south pole.\n\"Mariner 10\" images.\nIn the Borealis region, \"Mariner 10\" images are available for only the western hemisphere, from long 0\u00b0 to about long 190\u00b0\u00a0W. Mercury was in darkness beyond long 190\u00b0\u00a0W. on March 29, 1974, when the first \"Mariner 10\" flyby acquired the most useful photographs of the region. Most of the photographs used for geologic mapping were acquired by the departing spacecraft during the first pass (Mercury I). The Mercury II encounter provided no usable images of the map area; two low-oblique photographs suitable for geologic mapping were acquired during the third flyby on March 17, 1975. No stereoscopic photographic pairs are available for the Borealis region.\nBecause the terminator was a few degrees away from the 0\u00b0-180\u00b0 meridian at the time of the first encounter, photographs of the region were acquired under a wide range of lighting conditions. These conditions and the large obliquity of the photographs hampered geologic interpretation of surface materials in the map area, as they did in the Kuiper (De Hon and others, 1981), Victoria (McGill and King, 1983), and Shakespeare (Guest and Greeley, 1983) quadrangles to the south.\nClimate.\nMercury's equatorial plane is inclined less than 2\u00b0 to its orbital plane (Klaasen, 1976; Murray and others, 1981, p.\u00a028); its rotation period of 58.64 terrestrial days is in two-thirds resonance with its orbital period of 87.97 terrestrial days (Colombo, 1965; Colombo and Shapiro, 1966). The resulting lag and orbital eccentricity create a variation of mean temperature not only with latitude, as on the Earth, but also with longitude. However, because of Mercury's relatively slow rotational period, diurnal variations in temperature probably greatly exceed mean-temperature variations along latitude and longitude, even in the high latitudes. Its pronounced orbital eccentricity (0.2563) causes the apparent solar intensity at Mercury to vary by more than a factor of 2 throughout a Mercurian year, corresponding to about a 20 percent change in equilibrium temperature. Further, conservation of orbital angular momentum and spin-orbit coupling cause considerable variation in the length of daylight. Dawns and sunsets are prolonged by the long transit time of the Mercurian horizon across the solar disk, so that daylight is lengthened and nighttime reduced by several terrestrial days at sunset and vice versa at sunrise (Robert Wildey, U.S. Geological Survey, oral commun., 1982). Despite these considerations and despite the daily range in surface temperatures of several hundred kelvins, the subsurface temperature in the polar regions always remains well below freezing (Murray, 1975).\nStratigraphy.\nWithin the Borealis region, three widespread plains units are recognized largely by their obvious differences in crater density, which is closely related to relative age (Soderblom and Boyce, 1972). From most heavily cratered (oldest) to least cratered (youngest), these units are intercrater plains material, intermediate plains material, and smooth plains material. Visual identification is confirmed and refined by actual crater counts. If one uses the lunar surface as a frame of reference, the crater density of Mercurian plains in the Borealis region is bracketed by that of the lunar uplands, the most heavily cratered lunar surface, and that of Oceanus Procellarum, a moderately cratered lunar mare surface. The curve for the lunar uplands was derived from crater counts in the region northwest of crater Tsiolkovskiy, between crater Mendeleev and Mare Smithii. The curve for the southeastern part of Oceanus Procellarum was obtained in an area centered near lat 2\u00b000' N. and long 31\u00b000'W., south of the crater Kunowsky. Ocean Procellarum has long been considered close to the \"average lunar mare\" (Hartmann, 1966, 1967); its crater density is intermediate between those of the heavily cratered Mare Tranquillitatis and the lightly cratered Mare Serenitatis.\nMaterial of Borealis Planitia was not included in the smooth plains count because images of the area were blurred by spacecraft motion, and so reliable crater counts could not be obtained. However, smooth plains south of lat 65\u00b0 N. in the Shakespeare quadrangle, in the crater Strindberg and in Suisei Planitia, are included in these counts. The plains materials that lie outside Borealis Planitia are distributed in irregular belts, which are subparallel to the terminator and to one another. Eastward from long 190\u00b0\u00a0W., the following belt pattern is observed: intercrater plains material, intermediate plains material, and again intercrater plains material. All three belts extend southward into the Shakespeare quadrangle (Guest and Greeley, 1983).\nDistinguishing one type of plains material from another by variations in roughness and crater density is highly dependent on the resolution and lighting conditions of individual Mariner frames (Schaber and McCauley, 1980). This constraint is well documented for the Moon (Masursky and others, 1978, p.\u00a080\u201381) and for Mars (Boyce and others, 1976). In the Borealis region, where intercrater and intermediate plains materials were imaged at an increasingly low sun angle close to the terminator, the number of observable small craters increase with decreasing distance from the terminator and concomitantly decreasing sun angle. This discrepancy in the apparent abundance of craters occurs only for craters that have small diameters and can be obviated by counting only craters larger than in diameter.\nOlder plains materials.\nThe intercrater plains material is the oldest recognizable map unit in the Borealis region. It lies between large craters from about long 155\u00b0 to long 190\u00b0\u00a0W., and it also occurs between clusters of closely packed and overlapping large craters west of crater Gauguin and south and southeast of crater Mansart. The unit was described originally by Trask and Guest, who considered it to be the most widespread unit on Mercury; Strom reported that this material covers one-third of the surface viewed by Mariner 10. The principal morphologic characteristic of the intercrater plains material is the high density of superposed craters 5 to 10\u00a0km in diameter, which are commonly shallow and elongate; probably they are secondary craters derived from nearby large primary craters that are superposed on the unit. As one group, the large craters and associated intercrater plains form some of the heavily cratered terrain defined by Trask and Guest.\nThe relative age and nature of intercrater plains material are as uncertain in the Borealis region as they are elsewhere on Mercury. Strom noted the similarity in surficial morphologies between mercurian intercrater plains and pre-Imbrian pitted plains south-southwest of Mare Nectaris on the Moon (Wilhelms and McCauley, 1971; Scott, 1972). The pits in the lunar pre-Imbrian pitted plains are similar to the small secondaries that pepper the surface of Mercurian intercrater plains material. On the Moon, pre-Imbrian pitted plains material embays the Janssen Formation (Scott, 1972), whose base is defined as the base of the Nectarian System (Stuart-Alexander and Wilhelms, 1975). However, the crater density of the intercrater plains material in the Borealis region matches that of an area on the far side of the Moon, in the region northwest of crater Tsiolkovskiy bounded by crater Mendeleev and Mare Smithii. This area is dominated by pre-Nectarian unmantled terra and pre-Nectarian and Nectarian craters (Wilhelms and El- Baz, 1977). The similarity in crater density of intercrater plains material on Mercury and of pre-Nectarian terrain on the Moon is geologically significant, inasmuch as it shows that the oldest recognizable surfaces on both Mercury and the Moon went through similar stages of crustal cratering, but not necessarily at the same absolute geologic time. Differences in crater density as well as embayment relations in the Borealis region show that the intercrater plains material and the smoother intermediate plains material are younger than many craters in the area northeast of crater Turgenev, and older than smooth plains material in Borealis Planitia.\nThe relative age of intercrater plains material has a bearing on its origin. If very old, intercrater plains material may consist of anorthosite derived from a magma ocean such as may have existed on the Moon (Wood and others, 1970). If emplaced during later stages of mercurian evolution, it may consist of basin ejecta or lava flows. However, planetwide, the morphologic evidence for an impact origin rather than a volcanic one is not compelling. Whether or not either hypothesis is eventually substantiated, the emplacement of intercrater plains material likely began during an early stage of intense accretionary bombardment (Guest and O\u2019Donnell, 1977) and lasted until the time of formation of intermediate plains material.\nThis general conclusion seems to be supported in the Borealis region by the relative scarcity of craters between 30\u00a0km and 60\u00a0km in diameter. This scarcity may indicate resurfacing by crater overlap and blanketing by crater ejecta or resurfacing by lava flows. Craters \u226560\u00a0km in diameter on Mercury also are relatively scarce compared to similar craters in the lunar uplands northwest of crater Tsiolkovskiy. The reduced density of large craters and basins on Mercury relative to the Moon could be either a function of different crater-population rates on these bodies or an effect of different crustal histories (Schaber and others, 1977).\nIntermediate plains material has a roughness and crater density transitional between intercrater plains material and smooth plains material. In the Borealis region, the unit occurs in a rather extensive belt that extends from the Shakespeare quadrangle into Borealis north and northeast of Suisei Planitia. Intermediate plains material was first recognized and mapped in the Tolstoj quadrangle (Schaber and McCauley, 1980), where it primarily occurs on the floors of craters. It was identified there by a lower crater density than that of intercrater plains material and by \"a lower incidence of small bright-halo craters than are found on the smooth plains material\" (Schaber and McCauley, 1980). Both characteristics are also typical of intermediate plains material in the Borealis region.\nBasin materials.\nGoethe Basin is a large circular depression that measures approximately in diameter from rim crest to rim crest. Goethe is bounded on its north and east sides by a gently sloping wall and discontinuous, low, hummocky rim material that may consist of ejecta deposits. These materials are similar to those occurring around the Caloris Basin in the Tolstoj quadrangle (Schaber and McCauley, 1980). On its west side, Goethe is bounded by at least three subparallel ridges or tilted blocks, which are separated by narrow troughs partly filled with smooth plains material. Hilly and hummocky remnants resembling basin deposits and ejecta protrude above the gently sloping basin wall. They extend southwest and north of the basin beyond a much subdued, low, barely perceptible rim crest for a distance of one-half to one-third of the basin radius. Goethe is older than the smooth plains material by which its wall, rim crest, and most of its ejecta were partly buried. The Goethe impact basin may be older than some intercrater plains material and large craters nearby. It is also much older than the Caloris Basin. (McCauley and others, 1981).\nSeveral additional impact structures within and to the south of the Borealis region display sufficient structural detail to be called basins, even though their diameters are less than the arbitrarily chosen 200\u00a0km lower limit adopted by Murray and others (1974) for mercurian basins. The largest and oldest of these is Botticelli, a crater in diameter centered at lat 64\u00b0N., long 110\u00b0W. Only the northernmost parts of the crater\u2019s rim and interior lie within the mapped area, but the ghost remnant of an inner ring now flooded by smooth plains material is recognized (FDS 148) farther south in the Shakespeare quadrangle. Turgenev, in diameter, is large enough to be a central-peak basin (Wood and Head, 1976), even though the peak ring probably has been concealed under smooth plains material. The rims of both Botticelli and Turgenev are covered with densely packed craters, most of which resemble the secondary craters that typically occur on intercrater plains material. Therefore, Botticelli and Turgenev are at least as old as intercrater plains material and may be equivalent in age to the Goethe impact basin. A similar argument can be advanced for the age of the Monteverdi Basin, 130\u00a0km in diameter, centered at lat 64\u00b0\u00a0N., long 77\u00b0\u00a0W. in the Victoria quadrangle. The younger craters J\u00f3kai and Verdi, which have prominent central peaks and ghostlike discontinuous inner rings, probably qualify as central-peak basins (Wood and Head, 1976). Both structures are considerably younger than the Caloris Basin.\nNo material similar to either the lineated or the secondary-crater facies of the Van Eyck Formation, the most distinctive and distant unit of the Caloris Group (McCauley and others, 1981), can be unambiguously identified in the Borealis region. A few rounded hills or knobs, too small to be mapped, are present; they are morphologically similar to blocks of the Odin Formation surrounding the Caloris Basin in the Shakespeare quadrangle (Guest and Greeley, 1983), and to features of the Alpes Formation around the Imbrium Basin on the Moon. Two of the most striking of these knobs are possibly long and across; they rise above smooth plains material that fills a much degraded, unmapped, irregular crater at 69\u00b0\u00a0N., 157\u00b0\u00a0W. (FDS 088). These knobs are about northeast of Caloris Montes and may represent Caloris Basin ejecta. Alternatively, they may be associated with crater Verdi ejecta or with lineated and secondary-crater ejecta that flare southeastward from an unnamed crater north of and adjacent to the crater Nizami. Another morphologic feature that may be related to the Caloris Basin event consists of grooves on intercrater plains material and on the southwest-facing walls of craters such as Mansart. These grooves are as much as several kilometers long and several hundred meters wide. The direction of elongation of many small secondary craters also suggests an origin related to the Caloris event.\nYounger plains material.\nSmooth plains material (unit ps) forms the vast expanses of Borealis and Suisei Planitiae, as well as most basin and crater floors. It is the most extensive stratigraphic unit in the Borealis region, covering 30 percent of the mapped area. The surface of the smooth plains material is rather sparsely cratered compared to that of the intercrater plains material. Wrinkle ridges are common. Both the floor of the Goethe Basin and the younger craters (now observed as buried craters) superposed on it are mantled by smooth plains material; the unit also fills ghost and flooded craters that are common on both Borealis and Suisei Planitiae and resemble the lunar crater Archimedes. The enormous volume of smooth plains material that must underlie Borealis Planitia in order to bury pre-existing topography, as well as the presence of the material in basin and crater floors, suggest that the smooth plains material was emplaced in a fluidized state as volcanic lava flows (Murray and others, 1974). Even though flow fronts cannot be unambiguously mapped on Borealis Planitia, further evidence of the unit's volcanic origin is supplied by its overlap onto intercrater plains material, best observed along the west edge of Borealis Planitia (FDS 85, 152, 153, 156, and 160). The various types of plains material recognized on Mercury exhibit little tonal contrast. The albedo of smooth plains material is higher than that of lunar mare material (Hapke and others, 1975). The similarity in albedo between mercurian smooth plains material and lunar light plains material led Wilhelms to extend the analogy to composition: he suggested that both units consist of impact ejecta similar to the lunar Cayley Formation sampled by Apollo 16. Wilhelms even hypothesized that the source basin for material of the extensive plains of Borealis Planitia \"could well be lurking in the darkness beyond the terminator.\" A fuller discussion of the problem is given by Strom.\nCrater materials.\nIn the Borealis region, craters are mapped according to the fivefold classification proposed by McCauley and others (1981), which determines Mercurian crater ages on the basis of crater diameter and morphologic degradation. Craters less than about in diameter are not mapped. All basins between and in diameter (including those that have central peaks and peak rings) are mapped as craters. Criteria used to determine impact structures are morphologic crater components such as rays, secondary rays, hummocky rims, various facies of crater ejecta, crater geometry and structure, or a combination of these.\nNo rayed craters \u2265 in diameter were observed in the mapped area, but many moderately bright and diffuse rays extend across smooth plains material or occur as halos around very small craters in Borealis Planitia. A train of northeast-trending discontinuous rays, which extends across Borealis Planitia as far as the Goethe Basin, may radiate from small unnamed and unmapped rayed craters near the south edge of the map area. The relative scarcity of small bright-halo craters on intermediate plains material, perhaps due to unique physical properties of this material, was first noted in the Tolstoj quadrangle (Schaber and McCauley, 1980); this scarcity is also characteristic of the unit in the Borealis region.\nThe reduced ballistic range on Mercury compared to the Moon is caused by Mercury's stronger gravitational field (McCauley and others, 1981). This phenomenon, which results in a reduced dispersion of ejecta and secondary craters, is best observed within the Borealis region around craters Verdi and Depr\u00e9z. Slight differences between mercurian and lunar crater morphologies are unrelated to differences in the Mercurian and lunar gravitational fields (Cintala and others, 1977; Malin and Dzurisin, 1977, 1978;). Instead, the morphologic components of crater interiors and the abundance of central peaks and terraces on both bodies seem to be related to the physical properties of the target material (Cintala and others, 1977; Smith and Hartnell, 1978). The clusters of closely packed and overlapping large craters west of crater Gauguin and east of crater Mansart, together with nearby isolated craters and surrounding material, were mapped by Trask and Guest as heavily cratered terrain. According to them, many of the small craters superposed on the intercrater areas may be secondaries from the large craters. They also noted that the interiors of these large craters are filled with material that is less cratered, smoother, and therefore younger than the intercrater plains material.\nTwo types of ghost craters occur in the Borealis region; both are nearly obliterated by smooth plains material. In one type found along the northwest border of Suisei Planitia (Guest and Greeley, 1983), only the uppermost parts of walls and rims protrude above smooth plains material. Ghost craters of this type display rounded rim crests that are densely cratered with secondaries, a feature typical of the rough surface of intercrater plains material. These craters are floored by smooth plains material and are therefore older than it; a similar relation occurs on the Moon, where the crater Archimedes is seen to be older than the mare material it contains. Another type of ghost crater, common in Borealis Planitia, is recognized only by an irregular or thin outline of a rim crest under a thin mantle of smooth plains material; the buried rim crest is shown on the map. The polygonal ghost crater centered at lat 82.5\u00b0\u00a0N., long 100\u00b0\u00a0W., northwest of Depr\u00e9z, is a transitional form between these two types. Polar darkening is generally lacking on Mercury (Hapke, 1977), but darkening in restricted areas may be due to vapor-phase deposition accompanying micrometeorite impacts (Hapke, 1977). In the Borealis region, surface darkening affects some crater floors, and low-albedo areas are mapped in both intermediate plains and smooth plains materials. The low-albedo plains are marginal to the borders of Borealis and Suisei Planitiae, which suggests that darkening may be due to internal volatile materials escaping along the fractured margins of unrecognized buried or very degraded basins.\nStructure.\nOne of the major differences between the mercurian and lunar surfaces is \"the widespread distribution [on Mercury] of lobate scarps which appear to be thrust or reverse faults resulting from a period of crustal compression...\" These scarps are unique structural landforms that were noted soon after the acquisition of Mariner 10 photographs. Murray and others (1974) described them as having a sinuous outline, a slightly lobate front, and a length of more than 500\u00a0km. A more detailed description is given by Strom and others. Dzurisin (1978) classified these scarps, differentiating between intercrater and intracrater scarps (a scheme adopted in mapping the Borealis region) in an attempt to understand the tectonic and volcanic history of Mercury. Melosh (1977) and Melosh and Dzurisin (1978) proposed a planetary grid composed of conjugate northeastand northwest-trending shear fractures formed by the stresses of tidal despinning early in mercurian history. They thought that these fractures were later modified, and predicted that east-trending normal faults caused by tensional stresses would be found in the polar regions. In a later report, Pechmann and Melosh (1979, p.\u00a0243) stated that \"the NE and NW trends become nearly N-S in the polar regions.\"\nThe northwest-trending component of the postulated global grid of fractures is markedly absent in the Borealis region. Northeast-trending scarps and troughs are conspicuous, however, across intercrater plains material and in crater fill (smooth plains material) between the 155\u00b0 and 185\u00b0 meridians, and from crater Van Dijck northward to crater Purcell and beyond. The scarps tend to be straight in intercrater plains material, but become notably lobate in crater fill (for example, within Saikaku). This set of northeast-trending scarps and troughs, and another set of north-trending scarps and troughs within and north of crater Van Dijck, probably follow zones of structural weakness in the mercurian crust. Ancient fractures that were reactivated by later impacts may have first provided the conduits for crater fill (smooth plains material) and later been propagated upward through the fill. That these ridges, scarps, and troughs are parts of a global grid of fractures cannot be stated conclusively because of their proximity to the terminator and the lack of photographic coverage beyond the 190\u00b0 meridian. Some scarps probably were formed by normal faulting of the smooth plains material that covers some crater floors, as in the Kuiper quadrangle (Scott and others, 1980). We cannot, however, determine whether most lineaments are internal or are parts of a faulted and lineated facies associated with a nearby but unphotographed impact basin. Melosh (1977) predicted that normal east-trending faults would form in high Mercurian latitudes as a result of slight crustal shortening. His predicted faults may be represented by a generally east-northeast-trending scarp and a lineament that cut across intermediate plains material and the crater J\u00f3kai between the 125\u00b0 and 155\u00b0 meridians. The north pole is too close to the terminator to detect the presence or absence of a \"polygonal arrangement without preferred orientation,\" as predicted by Melosh and Dzurisin (1978, p.\u00a0233).\nArcuate and radial lineaments that might result from tectonic adjustments of the Mercurian crust, following excavation of very large multiring impact basins such as the one postulated under Borealis Planitia (Boyce and Grolier, 1977), were not unambiguously identified in the Borealis region. On one hand, some ridges on the surface of the smooth plains material in Borealis Planitia may be of structural (internal) origin; this type of ridge elsewhere on Mercury has been ascribed to compression and a slight shortening of the crust (Melosh, 1977; Melosh and Dzurisin, 1978). On the other hand, the wrinklelike sinuous ridge along the northeast border of the Goethe Basin, together with the outward-facing concentric scarps along its periphery, may represent the fronts of lava flows that are associated with the development of a structural moat between the basin fill and the wall. The latter interpretation supports the view that impact craters and basins on Mercury, as on the Moon (Schultz, 1977) and Mars, \"have played a dominant role in controlling the surface expression of igneous activity\" (Schultz and Glicken, 1979, p.\u00a08033). Slow, long-lasting isostatic adjustment of the basin floor may have continued well after the emplacement of the basin fill, a structural situation similar to that of crater Posidonius on the Moon (Schaber and others, 1977, Schultz, 1977).\nIn Borealis Planitia, however, most of the ridges are of external origin. They appear either to outline the rim crests of subjacent ghost craters that are lightly mantled by smooth plains material or to be lava flow fronts. The map shows the rim crests of 20 ghost craters, ranging in diameter from 40 to 160\u00a0km, that are buried under the smooth plains material of Borealis Planitia, which material is coextensive with the fill covering the floor of the Goethe Basin. In addition, ejecta from the crater Depr\u00e9z extend more than 40\u00a0km eastward beyond a circular scarp that may represent the rim crest of a buried crater 170\u00a0km in diameter (FDS 156, 160) or, more likely, the front of lava flows. The size and density of these ghost craters suggest that, prior to emplacement of smooth plains material, the original heavily cratered surface of Borealis Planitia\u2014which may have been the cratered floor of a very large multiring impact basin\u2014and the cratered floor of the Goethe Basin were similar in composition and age to the intercrater plains material of the highlands to the west. Many scarps in Borealis Planitia are subconcentric to the rim of the Goethe Basin and have steeper slopes that face away from it, suggesting that they represent the fronts of lava flows that resurfaced extensive areas of heavily cratered terrain (intercrater or older plains material).\nGeologic history.\nFive periods were postulated by Murray and others (1975) to constitute the history of Mercury\u2019s surface: (1) accretion and differentiation; (2) terminal bombardment; (3) formation of the Caloris Basin; (4) flooding of that basin and other areas; and (5) light cratering on the smooth plains. Only the periods following accretion are directly interpretable within the Borealis region.\nIntercrater plains material, which may be a reworked and mixed aggregate of impact and volcanic deposits, was emplaced over a long period that extended past the creation of the Goethe Basin and many smaller basins and craters. The scarps and troughs that trend across intercrater plains material may indicate an early compressional episode that followed even earlier expansion and differentiation of the crust. The size and density of ghost craters that are detectable under the smooth plains material in the interior of the Goethe Basin are indicative of an original basin floor much modified by cratering and emplacement of intercrater materials prior to the emplacement of intermediate and smooth plains materials. This interpretation implies, therefore, that the formation of the Goethe Basin predated or occurred soon after the emplacement of intercrater plains material had begun. The relative similarity in albedo of the Mercurian plains, whether formed of intercrater, intermediate, or smooth plains materials, also suggests a similarity in chemical composition and possibly in mode of emplacement of plains materials. The high crater density of intercrater and intermediate plains materials makes it likely, however, that the original rock types of these two units (whether basalt, impact melt, or impact breccia) were modified considerably by further brecciation following emplacement.\nGoethe Basin is considerably older than the Caloris Basin. Emplacement of the smooth plains material of Borealis Planitia during several or many episodes resulted in resurfacing and smoothing of the original material of the Goethe Basin and its surroundings for hundreds of kilometers.\nThe mercurian surface reached its present configuration several billion years ago (Solomon, 1978). It has been only slightly altered since by impact craters, which are ubiquitously superposed on all other deposits. Generalized summaries of the history of Mercury have been given by Guest and O\u2019Donnell (1977), Davies and others, and Strom.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "19694": "Mercury (planet)\nFirst planet from the Sun\nMercury is the first planet from the Sun and the smallest in the Solar System. In English, it is named after the ancient Roman god (Mercury), god of commerce and communication, and the messenger of the gods. Mercury is classified as a terrestrial planet, with roughly the same surface gravity as Mars. The surface of Mercury is heavily cratered, as a result of countless impact events that have accumulated over billions of years. Its largest crater, Caloris Planitia, has a diameter of , which is about one-third the diameter of the planet (). Similarly to the Earth's Moon, Mercury's surface displays an expansive rupes system generated from thrust faults and bright ray systems formed by impact event remnants.\nMercury's sidereal year (88.0 Earth days) and sidereal day (58.65 Earth days) are in a 3:2 ratio. This relationship is called spin\u2013orbit resonance, and \"sidereal\" here means \"relative to the stars\". Consequently, one solar day (sunrise to sunrise) on Mercury lasts for around 176 Earth days: twice the planet's sidereal year. This means that one side of Mercury will remain in sunlight for one Mercurian year of 88 Earth days; while during the next orbit, that side will be in darkness all the time until the next sunrise after another 88 Earth days.\nCombined with its high orbital eccentricity, the planet's surface has widely varying sunlight intensity and temperature, with the equatorial regions ranging from at night to during sunlight. Due to the very small axial tilt, the planet's poles are permanently shadowed. This strongly suggests that water ice could be present in the craters. Above the planet's surface is an extremely tenuous exosphere and a faint magnetic field that is strong enough to deflect solar winds. Mercury has no natural satellites.\nAs of the early 2020s, many broad details of Mercury's geological history are still under investigation or pending data from space probes. Like other planets in the Solar System, Mercury was formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago. Its mantle is highly homogeneous, which suggests that Mercury had a magma ocean early in its history, like the Moon. According to current models, Mercury may have a solid silicate crust and mantle overlying a solid outer core, a deeper liquid core layer, and a solid inner core. There are many competing hypotheses about Mercury's origins and development, some of which incorporate collision with planetesimals and rock vaporization.\nNomenclature.\nHistorically, humans knew Mercury by different names depending on whether it was an evening star or a morning star. By about 350 BC, the ancient Greeks had realized the two stars were one. They knew the planet as , meaning \"twinkling\", and , for its fleeting motion, a name that is retained in modern [[Greek language|Greek]] ( ). The Romans named the planet after the swift-footed Roman messenger god, [[Mercury (mythology)|Mercury]] (Latin ), whom they equated with the Greek Hermes, because it moves across the sky faster than any other planet, though some associated the planet with [[Apollo]] instead, as detailed by [[Pliny the Elder]]. The [[astronomical symbol]] for Mercury is a stylized version of Hermes' [[caduceus]]; a [[Christian cross]] was added in the 16th century:[[File:Mercury symbol (fixed width).svg|16px|\u263f]].\nPhysical characteristics.\n[[File:Terrestrial planet size comparisons-2.jpg|thumb|upright=1.4|Mercury to scale among the [[Inner Solar System]] [[planetary-mass object]]s beside the Sun, arranged by the order of their orbits outward from the Sun (from left: Mercury, [[Venus]],\n[[Earth]], the [[Moon]], [[Mars]] and [[Ceres (dwarf planet)|Ceres]])]]\nMercury is one of four [[terrestrial planet]]s in the [[Solar System]], which means it is a rocky body like Earth. It is the smallest planet in the Solar System, with an [[equator]]ial [[radius]] of . Mercury is also [[list of Solar System objects by radius|smaller]]\u2014albeit more massive\u2014than the largest [[natural satellite]]s in the Solar System, [[Ganymede (moon)|Ganymede]] and [[Titan (moon)|Titan]]. Mercury consists of approximately 70% metallic and 30% [[silicate]] material.\nInternal structure.\n[[File:Mercury with magnetic field.svg|left|thumb|upright=1.6|Mercury's internal structure and magnetic field]]\nMercury appears to have a solid silicate [[Crust (geology)|crust]] and mantle overlying a solid, metallic outer core layer, a deeper liquid core layer, and a solid inner core. The composition of the iron-rich core remains uncertain, but it likely contains nickel, silicon and perhaps sulfur and carbon, plus trace amounts of other elements. The planet's density is the second highest in the Solar System at 5.427\u00a0g/cm3, only slightly less than Earth's density of 5.515\u00a0g/cm3. If the effect of [[gravitational compression]] were to be factored out from both planets, the materials of which Mercury is made would be denser than those of Earth, with an uncompressed density of 5.3\u00a0g/cm3 versus Earth's 4.4\u00a0g/cm3. Mercury's density can be used to infer details of its inner structure. Although Earth's high density results appreciably from gravitational compression, particularly at the [[planetary core|core]], Mercury is much smaller and its inner regions are not as compressed. Therefore, for it to have such a high density, its core must be large and rich in iron.\nThe radius of Mercury's core is estimated to be , based on interior models constrained to be consistent with a [[moment of inertia factor]] of . Hence, Mercury's core occupies about 57% of its volume; for Earth this proportion is 17%. Research published in 2007 suggests that Mercury has a molten core. The mantle-crust layer is in total thick. Projections differ as to the size of the crust specifically; data from the \"Mariner 10\" and \"MESSENGER\" probes suggests a thickness of , whereas an [[Airy isostacy]] model suggests a thickness of . One distinctive feature of Mercury's surface is the presence of numerous narrow ridges, extending up to several hundred kilometers in length. It is thought that these were formed as Mercury's core and mantle cooled and contracted at a time when the crust had already solidified.\nMercury's core has a higher iron content than that of any other planet in the Solar System, and several theories have been proposed to explain this. The most widely accepted theory is that Mercury originally had a metal\u2013silicate ratio similar to common [[chondrite]] meteorites, thought to be typical of the Solar System's rocky matter, and a mass approximately 2.25 times its current mass. Early in the Solar System's history, Mercury may have been struck by a [[planetesimal]] of approximately <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1\u20446 Mercury's mass and several thousand kilometers across. The impact would have stripped away much of the original crust and mantle, leaving the core behind as a relatively major component. A similar process, known as the [[giant impact hypothesis]], has been proposed to explain the formation of Earth's Moon.\nAlternatively, Mercury may have formed from the [[solar nebula]] before the Sun's energy output had stabilized. It would initially have had twice its present mass, but as the [[protostar|protosun]] contracted, temperatures near Mercury could have been between 2,500 and 3,500\u00a0K and possibly even as high as 10,000\u00a0K. Much of Mercury's surface rock could have been vaporized at such temperatures, forming an atmosphere of \"rock vapor\" that could have been carried away by the [[solar wind]]. A third hypothesis proposes that the solar nebula caused [[drag (physics)|drag]] on the particles from which Mercury was [[Accretion (astrophysics)|accreting]], which meant that lighter particles were lost from the accreting material and not gathered by Mercury.\nEach hypothesis predicts a different surface composition, and two space missions have been tasked with making observations of this composition. The first \"[[MESSENGER]]\", which ended in 2015, found higher-than-expected potassium and sulfur levels on the surface, suggesting that the giant impact hypothesis and vaporization of the crust and mantle did not occur because said potassium and sulfur would have been driven off by the extreme heat of these events. \"[[BepiColombo]]\", which will arrive at Mercury in 2025, will make observations to test these hypotheses. The findings so far would seem to favor the third hypothesis; however, further analysis of the data is needed.\nSurface geology.\nMercury's surface is similar in appearance to that of the Moon, showing extensive [[Lunar mare|mare]]-like plains and heavy cratering, indicating that it has been geologically inactive for billions of years. It is more [[heterogeneous]] than the surface of [[Mars]] or the Moon, both of which contain significant stretches of similar geology, such as [[Lunar mare|maria]] and plateaus. [[Albedo]] features are areas of markedly different reflectivity, which include impact craters, the resulting ejecta, and [[ray system]]s. Larger albedo features correspond to higher reflectivity plains. Mercury has \"[[wrinkle-ridge]]s\" (dorsa), Moon-like [[highland]]s, mountains (montes), plains (planitiae), escarpments (rupes), and valleys ([[Vallis (planetary geology)|valles]]).\n[[File:Unmasking the Secrets of Mercury.jpg|thumb|left|[[MESSENGER#Scientific instruments|MASCS]] spectrum scan of Mercury's surface by \"MESSENGER\"]]\nThe planet's mantle is chemically heterogeneous, suggesting the planet went through a [[magma ocean]] phase early in its history. Crystallization of minerals and convective overturn resulted in a layered, chemically heterogeneous crust with large-scale variations in chemical composition observed on the surface. The crust is low in iron but high in sulfur, resulting from the stronger early [[Chemical reduction|chemically reducing]] conditions than is found on other terrestrial planets. The surface is dominated by iron-poor [[pyroxene]] and [[olivine]], as represented by [[enstatite]] and [[forsterite]], respectively, along with sodium-rich [[plagioclase]] and minerals of mixed magnesium, calcium, and iron-sulfide. The less reflective regions of the crust are high in carbon, most likely in the form of graphite.\nNames for features on Mercury come from a variety of sources and are set according to the [[IAU]] [[planetary nomenclature]] system. Names coming from people are limited to the deceased. Craters are named for artists, musicians, painters, and authors who have made outstanding or fundamental contributions to their field. Ridges, or dorsa, are named for scientists who have contributed to the study of Mercury. Depressions or [[fossa (geology)|fossae]] are named for works of architecture. Montes are named for the word \"hot\" in a variety of languages. [[Plain]]s or planitiae are named for [[Mercury (god)|Mercury]] in various languages. [[Escarpment]]s or [[rup\u0113s]] are named for ships of scientific expeditions. Valleys or valles are named for abandoned cities, towns, or settlements of antiquity.\nImpact basins and craters.\n[[File:PIA19421-Mercury-Craters-MunchSanderPoe-20150416.jpg|thumb|left|Enhanced-color image of craters [[Munch (crater)|Munch]] (left), [[Sander (crater)|Sander]] (center), and [[Poe (crater)|Poe]] (right) amid volcanic plains (orange) near [[Caloris Basin]]]]\nMercury was heavily bombarded by comets and [[asteroid]]s during and shortly following its formation 4.6 billion years ago, as well as during a possibly separate subsequent episode called the [[Late Heavy Bombardment]] that ended 3.8 billion years ago. Mercury received impacts over its entire surface during this period of intense crater formation, facilitated by the lack of any [[atmosphere]] to slow impactors down. During this time Mercury was [[volcano|volcanically]] active; basins were filled by [[magma]], producing smooth plains similar to the maria found on the Moon. One of the most unusual craters is [[Apollodorus (crater)|Apollodorus]], or \"the Spider\", which hosts a series of radiating troughs extending outwards from its impact site.\n[[Craters on Mercury]] range in diameter from small bowl-shaped cavities to [[multi-ringed impact basin]]s hundreds of kilometers across. They appear in all states of degradation, from relatively fresh rayed craters to highly degraded crater remnants. Mercurian craters differ subtly from lunar craters in that the area blanketed by their ejecta is much smaller, a consequence of Mercury's stronger surface gravity. According to [[International Astronomical Union]] rules, each new crater must be named after an artist who was famous for more than fifty years, and dead for more than three years, before the date the crater is named.\nThe largest known crater is [[Caloris Planitia]], or Caloris Basin, with a diameter of . The impact that created the Caloris Basin was so powerful that it caused [[lava]] eruptions and left a concentric mountainous ring ~ tall surrounding the [[impact crater]]. The floor of the Caloris Basin is filled by a geologically distinct flat plain, broken up by ridges and fractures in a roughly polygonal pattern. It is not clear whether they were volcanic lava flows induced by the impact or a large sheet of impact melt.\nAt the [[antipodes|antipode]] of the Caloris Basin is a large region of unusual, hilly terrain known as the \"Weird Terrain\". One hypothesis for its origin is that shock waves generated during the Caloris impact traveled around Mercury, converging at the basin's antipode (180 degrees away). The resulting high stresses fractured the surface. Alternatively, it has been suggested that this terrain formed as a result of the convergence of ejecta at this basin's antipode.\n[[File:EW1027346412Gnomap.png|thumb|Tolstoj basin is along the bottom of this image of Mercury's limb]]\nOverall, 46 impact basins have been identified. A notable basin is the -wide, multi-ring [[Tolstoj Basin]] that has an ejecta blanket extending up to from its rim and a floor that has been filled by smooth plains materials. [[Beethoven Basin]] has a similar-sized ejecta blanket and a -diameter rim. Like the Moon, the surface of Mercury has likely incurred the effects of [[space weathering]] processes, including solar wind and [[micrometeorite]] impacts.\nPlains.\nThere are two geologically distinct plains regions on Mercury. Gently rolling, hilly [[Inter-crater plains on Mercury|plains in the regions between craters]] are Mercury's oldest visible surfaces, predating the heavily cratered terrain. These inter-crater plains appear to have obliterated many earlier craters, and show a general paucity of smaller craters below about in diameter.\nSmooth plains are widespread flat areas that fill depressions of various sizes and bear a strong resemblance to lunar maria. Unlike lunar maria, the smooth plains of Mercury have the same albedo as the older inter-crater plains. Despite a lack of unequivocally volcanic characteristics, the localization and rounded, lobate shape of these plains strongly support volcanic origins. All the smooth plains of Mercury formed significantly later than the Caloris basin, as evidenced by appreciably smaller crater densities than on the Caloris ejecta blanket.\nCompressional features.\nAn unusual feature of Mercury's surface is the numerous compression folds, or [[rupes]], that crisscross the plains. These exist on the Moon, but are much more prominent on Mercury. As Mercury's interior cooled, it contracted and its surface began to deform, creating [[wrinkle ridge]]s and [[lobate scarp]]s associated with [[thrust fault]]s. The scarps can reach lengths of and heights of . These compressional features can be seen on top of other features, such as craters and smooth plains, indicating they are more recent. Mapping of the features has suggested a total shrinkage of Mercury's radius in the range of ~. Most activity along the major thrust systems probably ended about 3.6\u20133.7\u00a0billion years ago. Small-scale thrust fault scarps have been found, tens of meters in height and with lengths in the range of a few kilometers, that appear to be less than 50 million years old, indicating that compression of the interior and consequent surface geological activity continue to the present.\nVolcanism.\n[[File:Picasso crater.png|thumb|[[Picasso (crater)|Picasso crater]]\u2014the large arc-shaped pit located on the eastern side of its floor is postulated to have formed when subsurface magma subsided or drained, causing the surface to collapse into the resulting void.]]\nThere is evidence for [[pyroclastic flow]]s on Mercury from low-profile [[shield volcano]]es. Fifty-one pyroclastic deposits have been identified, where 90% of them are found within impact craters. A study of the degradation state of the impact craters that host pyroclastic deposits suggests that pyroclastic activity occurred on Mercury over a prolonged interval.\nA \"rimless depression\" inside the southwest rim of the Caloris Basin consists of at least nine overlapping volcanic vents, each individually up to in diameter. It is thus a \"[[compound volcano]]\". The vent floors are at least below their brinks and they bear a closer resemblance to volcanic craters sculpted by explosive eruptions or modified by collapse into void spaces created by magma withdrawal back down into a conduit. Scientists could not quantify the age of the volcanic complex system but reported that it could be on the order of a billion years.\nSurface conditions and exosphere.\n[[File:North pole of Mercury -- NASA.jpg|thumb|Composite of the north pole of Mercury, where NASA confirmed the discovery of a large volume of water ice, in permanently dark craters that are found there.]]\nThe surface temperature of Mercury ranges from . It never rises above 180\u00a0K at the poles, due to the absence of an atmosphere and a steep temperature gradient between the equator and the poles. At [[perihelion]], the equatorial [[subsolar point]] is located at latitude 0\u00b0W or 180\u00b0W, and it climbs to a temperature of about . During [[aphelion]], this occurs at 90\u00b0 or 270\u00b0W and reaches only . On the dark side of the planet, temperatures average . The intensity of [[sunlight]] on Mercury's surface ranges between 4.59 and 10.61 times the [[solar constant]] (1,370 W\u00b7m\u22122).\nAlthough daylight temperatures at the surface of Mercury are generally extremely high, observations strongly suggest that ice (frozen water) exists on Mercury. The floors of deep craters at the poles are never exposed to direct sunlight, and temperatures there remain below 102\u00a0K, far lower than the global average. This creates a [[Cold trap (astronomy)|cold trap]] where ice can accumulate. Water ice strongly reflects [[radar]], and observations by the 70-meter [[Goldstone Solar System Radar]] and the [[Very Large Array|VLA]] in the early 1990s revealed that there are patches of high radar [[Reflection (physics)|reflection]] near the poles. Although ice was not the only possible cause of these reflective regions, astronomers thought it to be the most likely explanation. The presence of [[ice|water ice]] was confirmed using \"MESSENGER\" images of craters at the north pole.\nThe icy crater regions are estimated to contain about 1014\u20131015\u00a0kg of ice, and may be covered by a layer of [[regolith]] that inhibits [[Sublimation (phase transition)|sublimation]]. By comparison, the [[Antarctica|Antarctic]] ice sheet on Earth has a mass of about 4\u00d71018\u00a0kg, and Mars's south polar cap contains about 1016\u00a0kg of water. The origin of the ice on Mercury is not yet known, but the two most likely sources are from [[outgassing]] of water from the planet's interior and deposition by impacts of comets.\nMercury is too small and hot for its [[gravity]] to retain any significant [[atmosphere]] over long periods of time; it does have a tenuous surface-bounded [[exosphere]] at a surface pressure of less than approximately 0.5\u00a0nPa (0.005 picobars). It includes [[hydrogen]], [[helium]], [[oxygen]], [[sodium]], [[calcium]], [[potassium]], [[magnesium]], [[silicon]], and [[hydroxide]], among others. This exosphere is not stable\u2014atoms are continuously lost and replenished from a variety of sources. [[Hydrogen atom]]s and [[helium atom]]s probably come from the solar wind, [[diffusion|diffusing]] into Mercury's [[magnetosphere]] before later escaping back into space. The [[radioactive decay]] of elements within Mercury's crust is another source of helium, as well as sodium and potassium. Water vapor is present, released by a combination of processes such as comets striking its surface, [[sputtering]] creating water out of hydrogen from the solar wind and oxygen from rock, and sublimation from reservoirs of water ice in the permanently shadowed polar craters. The detection of high amounts of water-related ions like O+, OH\u2212, and [[hydronium|H3O+]] was a surprise. Because of the quantities of these ions that were detected in Mercury's space environment, scientists surmise that these molecules were blasted from the surface or exosphere by the solar wind.\nSodium, potassium, and calcium were discovered in the atmosphere during the 1980s\u20131990s, and are thought to result primarily from the vaporization of surface rock struck by micrometeorite impacts including presently from [[Comet Encke]]. In 2008, magnesium was discovered by \"MESSENGER\". Studies indicate that, at times, sodium emissions are localized at points that correspond to the planet's magnetic poles. This would indicate an interaction between the magnetosphere and the planet's surface.\nAccording to NASA, Mercury is not a suitable planet for Earth-like life. It has a [[exosphere|surface boundary exosphere]] instead of a layered atmosphere, extreme temperatures, and high solar radiation. It is unlikely that any living beings can withstand those conditions. Some parts of the subsurface of Mercury may have been [[Planetary habitability|habitable]], and perhaps [[life form]]s, albeit likely primitive [[microorganism]]s, may have existed on the planet.\nMagnetic field and magnetosphere.\n[[File:Mercury Magnetic Field NASA.jpg|thumb|Graph showing relative strength of Mercury's magnetic field]]\nDespite its small size and slow 59-day-long rotation, Mercury has a significant, and apparently global, [[magnetic field]]. According to measurements taken by \"Mariner 10\", it is about 1.1% the strength of [[Earth's magnetic field|Earth's]]. The magnetic-field strength at Mercury's equator is about 300 [[Tesla (unit)|nT]]. Like that of Earth, Mercury's magnetic field is [[dipolar]] and nearly aligned with the planet's spin axis (10\u00b0 dipolar tilt, compared to 11\u00b0 for Earth). Measurements from both the \"Mariner 10\" and \"MESSENGER\" space probes have indicated that the strength and shape of the magnetic field are stable.\nIt is likely that this magnetic field is generated by a [[Dynamo theory|dynamo]] effect, in a manner similar to the magnetic field of Earth. This dynamo effect would result from the circulation of the planet's iron-rich liquid core. Particularly strong [[tidal heating]] effects caused by the planet's high orbital eccentricity would serve to keep part of the core in the liquid state necessary for this dynamo effect.\nMercury's magnetic field is strong enough to deflect the solar wind around the planet, creating a magnetosphere. The planet's magnetosphere, though small enough to fit within Earth, is strong enough to trap solar wind [[plasma (physics)|plasma]]. This contributes to the space weathering of the planet's surface. Observations taken by the \"Mariner 10\" spacecraft detected this low energy plasma in the magnetosphere of the planet's nightside. Bursts of energetic particles in the planet's magnetotail indicate a dynamic quality to the planet's magnetosphere.\nDuring its second flyby of the planet on October 6, 2008, \"MESSENGER\" discovered that Mercury's magnetic field can be extremely \"leaky\". The spacecraft encountered magnetic \"tornadoes\"\u2014twisted bundles of magnetic fields connecting the planetary magnetic field to interplanetary space\u2014that were up to 800 km wide or a third of the radius of the planet. These twisted magnetic flux tubes, technically known as [[flux transfer event]]s, form open windows in the planet's magnetic shield through which the solar wind may enter and directly impact Mercury's surface via [[magnetic reconnection]]. This also occurs in Earth's magnetic field. The \"MESSENGER\" observations showed the reconnection rate was ten times higher at Mercury, but its proximity to the Sun only accounts for about a third of the reconnection rate observed by \"MESSENGER\".\nOrbit, rotation, and longitude.\nMercury has the most [[Orbital eccentricity|eccentric]] orbit of all the planets in the Solar System; its eccentricity is 0.21 with its distance from the Sun ranging from . It takes 87.969 Earth days to complete an orbit. The diagram illustrates the effects of the eccentricity, showing Mercury's orbit overlaid with a circular orbit having the same [[semi-major axis]]. Mercury's higher velocity when it is near perihelion is clear from the greater distance it covers in each 5-day interval. In the diagram, the varying distance of Mercury to the Sun is represented by the size of the planet, which is inversely proportional to Mercury's distance from the Sun.\nThis varying distance to the Sun leads to Mercury's surface being flexed by [[tidal bulge]]s raised by the [[Sun]] that are about 17 times stronger than the Moon's on Earth. Combined with a 3:2 [[#Spin-orbit resonance|spin\u2013orbit resonance]] of the planet's rotation around its axis, it also results in complex variations of the surface temperature. The resonance makes a single [[solar day]] (the length between two [[meridian (astronomy)|meridian]] transits of the Sun) on Mercury last exactly two Mercury years, or about 176 Earth days.\nMercury's orbit is inclined by 7 degrees to the plane of Earth's orbit (the [[ecliptic]]), the largest of all eight known solar planets. As a result, [[transits of Mercury]] across the face of the Sun can only occur when the planet is crossing the plane of the ecliptic at the time it lies between Earth and the Sun, which is in May or November. This occurs about every seven years on average.\nMercury's [[axial tilt]] is almost zero, with the best measured value as low as 0.027 degrees. This is significantly smaller than that of [[Jupiter]], which has the second smallest axial tilt of all planets at 3.1 degrees. This means that to an observer at Mercury's poles, the center of the Sun never rises more than 2.1 [[arcminutes]] above the horizon. By comparison, the [[angular size]] of the Sun as seen from Mercury ranges from <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1+1\u20444 to 2 degrees across.\nAt certain points on Mercury's surface, an observer would be able to see the Sun peek up a little more than two-thirds of the way over the horizon, then reverse and set before rising again, all within the same [[Extraterrestrial skies#Mercury|Mercurian day]]. This is because approximately four Earth days before perihelion, Mercury's angular [[orbital speed|orbital velocity]] equals its angular [[rotational velocity]] so that the Sun's [[improper motion|apparent motion]] ceases; closer to perihelion, Mercury's angular orbital velocity then exceeds the angular rotational velocity. Thus, to a hypothetical observer on Mercury, the Sun appears to move in a [[apparent retrograde motion|retrograde]] direction. Four Earth days after perihelion, the Sun's normal apparent motion resumes. A similar effect would have occurred if Mercury had been in synchronous rotation: the alternating gain and loss of rotation over a revolution would have caused a libration of 23.65\u00b0 in longitude.\nFor the same reason, there are two points on Mercury's equator, 180 degrees apart in [[longitude]], at either of which, around perihelion in alternate Mercurian years (once a Mercurian day), the Sun passes overhead, then reverses its apparent motion and passes overhead again, then reverses a second time and passes overhead a third time, taking a total of about 16 Earth-days for this entire process. In the other alternate Mercurian years, the same thing happens at the other of these two points. The amplitude of the retrograde motion is small, so the overall effect is that, for two or three weeks, the Sun is almost stationary overhead, and is at its most brilliant because Mercury is at perihelion, its closest to the Sun. This prolonged exposure to the Sun at its brightest makes these two points the hottest places on Mercury. Maximum temperature occurs when the Sun is at an angle of about 25 degrees past noon due to [[Diurnal temperature variation#Temperature lag|diurnal temperature lag]], at 0.4 Mercury days and 0.8 Mercury years past sunrise. Conversely, there are two other points on the equator, 90 degrees of longitude apart from the first ones, where the Sun passes overhead only when the planet is at aphelion in alternate years, when the apparent motion of the Sun in Mercury's sky is relatively rapid. These points, which are the ones on the equator where the apparent retrograde motion of the Sun happens when it is crossing the horizon as described in the preceding paragraph, receive much less solar heat than the first ones described above.\nMercury attains an inferior conjunction (nearest approach to Earth) every 116 Earth days on average, but this interval can range from 105 days to 129 days due to the planet's eccentric orbit. Mercury can come as near as to Earth, and that is slowly declining: The next approach to within is in 2679, and to within in 4487, but it will not be closer to Earth than until 28,622. Its period of retrograde motion as seen from Earth can vary from 8 to 15 days on either side of an inferior conjunction. This large range arises from the planet's high orbital eccentricity. Essentially, because Mercury is closest to the Sun, when taking an average over time, Mercury is most often the closest planet to the Earth, and\u2014in that measure\u2014it is the closest planet to each of the other planets in the Solar System.\nLongitude convention.\nThe longitude convention for Mercury puts the zero of longitude at one of the two hottest points on the surface, as described above. However, when this area was first visited, by \"Mariner 10\", this zero meridian was in darkness, so it was impossible to select a feature on the surface to define the exact position of the meridian. Therefore, a small crater further west was chosen, called [[Hun Kal]], which provides the exact reference point for measuring longitude. The center of Hun Kal defines the 20\u00b0\u00a0west meridian. A 1970 International Astronomical Union resolution suggests that longitudes be measured positively in the westerly direction on Mercury. The two hottest places on the equator are therefore at longitudes 0\u00b0\u00a0W and 180\u00b0\u00a0W, and the coolest points on the equator are at longitudes 90\u00b0\u00a0W and 270\u00b0\u00a0W. However, the \"MESSENGER\" project uses an east-positive convention.\nSpin-orbit resonance.\n[[File:Mercury's orbital resonance.svg|thumb|After one orbit, Mercury has rotated 1.5 times, so after two complete orbits the same hemisphere is again illuminated.]]\nFor many years it was thought that Mercury was synchronously [[tidally locked]] with the Sun, [[rotating]] once for each orbit and always keeping the same face directed towards the Sun, in the same way that the same side of the Moon always faces Earth. Radar observations in 1965 proved that the planet has a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance, rotating three times for every two revolutions around the Sun. The eccentricity of Mercury's orbit makes this resonance stable\u2014at perihelion, when the solar tide is strongest, the Sun is nearly stationary in Mercury's sky.\nThe 3:2 resonant tidal locking is stabilized by the variance of the tidal force along Mercury's eccentric orbit, acting on a permanent dipole component of Mercury's mass distribution. In a circular orbit there is no such variance, so the only resonance stabilized in such an orbit is at 1:1 (e.g., Earth\u2013Moon), when the tidal force, stretching a body along the \"center-body\" line, exerts a torque that aligns the body's axis of least inertia (the \"longest\" axis, and the axis of the aforementioned dipole) to always point at the center. However, with noticeable eccentricity, like that of Mercury's orbit, the tidal force has a maximum at perihelion and therefore stabilizes resonances, like 3:2, ensuring that the planet points its axis of least inertia roughly at the Sun when passing through perihelion.\nThe original reason astronomers thought it was synchronously locked was that, whenever Mercury was best placed for observation, it was always nearly at the same point in its 3:2 resonance, hence showing the same face. This is because, coincidentally, Mercury's rotation period is almost exactly half of its synodic period with respect to Earth. Due to Mercury's 3:2 spin-orbit resonance, a solar day lasts about 176 Earth days. A [[sidereal day]] (the period of rotation) lasts about 58.7 Earth days.\nSimulations indicate that the orbital eccentricity of Mercury varies [[chaos theory|chaotically]] from nearly zero (circular) to more than 0.45 over millions of years due to [[Perturbation (astronomy)|perturbations]] from the other planets. This was thought to explain Mercury's 3:2 spin-orbit resonance (rather than the more usual 1:1), because this state is more likely to arise during a period of high eccentricity. However, accurate modeling based on a realistic model of tidal response has demonstrated that Mercury was captured into the 3:2 spin-orbit state at a very early stage of its history, within 20 (more likely, 10) million years after its formation.\nNumerical simulations show that a future [[Secular resonance|secular]] [[Orbital resonance|orbital resonant]] interaction with the perihelion of Jupiter may cause the eccentricity of Mercury's orbit to increase to the point where there is a 1% chance that the orbit will be destabilized in the next five billion years. If this happens, Mercury may fall into the Sun, collide with Venus, be ejected from the Solar System, or even disrupt the rest of the inner Solar System.\nAdvance of perihelion.\n[[File:Drehung der Apsidenlinie light.svg|right|thumb|[[Apsidal precession]] of Mercury's orbit]]\nIn 1859, the French mathematician and astronomer [[Urbain Le Verrier]] reported that the slow [[precession]] of Mercury's orbit around the Sun could not be completely explained by [[Newtonian mechanics]] and perturbations by the known planets. He suggested, among possible explanations, that another planet (or perhaps instead a series of smaller \"corpuscules\") might exist in an orbit even closer to the Sun than that of Mercury, to account for this perturbation. Other explanations considered included a slight oblateness of the Sun. The success of the search for [[Neptune]] based on its perturbations of the orbit of [[Uranus]] led astronomers to place faith in this possible explanation, and the hypothetical planet was named [[Vulcan (hypothetical planet)|Vulcan]], but no such planet was ever found.\nThe observed [[perihelion precession]] of Mercury is 5,600 [[arcseconds]] (1.5556\u00b0) per century relative to Earth, or per century relative to the inertial [[International Celestial Reference Frame|ICRF]]. Newtonian mechanics, taking into account all the effects from the other planets and including 0.0254 arcseconds per century due to the oblateness of the Sun, predicts a precession of 5,557 arcseconds (1.5436\u00b0) per century relative to Earth, or per century relative to ICRF. In the early 20th century, [[Albert Einstein]]'s [[general theory of relativity]] provided the explanation for the observed precession, by formalizing gravitation as being mediated by the curvature of spacetime. The effect is small: just per century (or 0.43 arcsecond per year, or 0.1035 arcsecond per orbital period) for Mercury; it therefore requires a little over 12.5 million orbits, or 3 million years, for a full excess turn. Similar, but much smaller, effects exist for other Solar System bodies: 8.6247 arcseconds per century for Venus, 3.8387 for Earth, 1.351 for Mars, and 10.05 for [[1566 Icarus]].\nObservation.\n[[File:Mercury.jpg|thumb|Image mosaic by \"Mariner 10\", 1974]]\nMercury's [[apparent magnitude]] is calculated to vary between \u22122.48 (brighter than [[Sirius]]) around [[superior conjunction]] and +7.25 (below the limit of naked-eye visibility) around [[inferior conjunction]]. The mean apparent magnitude is 0.23 while the standard deviation of 1.78 is the largest of any planet. The mean apparent magnitude at superior conjunction is \u22121.89 while that at inferior conjunction is +5.93. Observation of Mercury is complicated by its proximity to the Sun, as it is lost in the Sun's glare for much of the time. Mercury can be observed for only a brief period during either morning or evening twilight.\nGround-based telescope observations of Mercury reveal only an illuminated partial disk with limited detail. The [[Hubble Space Telescope]] cannot observe Mercury at all, due to safety procedures that prevent its pointing too close to the Sun. Because the shift of 0.15 revolutions of Earth in a Mercurian year makes up a seven-Mercurian-year cycle (0.15 \u00d7 7 \u2248 1.0), in the seventh Mercurian year, Mercury follows almost exactly (earlier by 7 days) the sequence of phenomena it showed seven Mercurian years before.\nLike the Moon and Venus, Mercury exhibits [[Lunar phase|phases]] as seen from Earth. It is \"new\" at [[inferior conjunction]] and \"full\" at superior conjunction. The planet is rendered invisible from Earth on both of these occasions because of its being obscured by the Sun, except at its new phase during a transit. Mercury is technically brightest as seen from Earth when it is at a full phase. Although Mercury is farthest from Earth when it is full, the greater illuminated area that is visible and the [[opposition effect|opposition brightness surge]] more than compensates for the distance. The opposite is true for Venus, which appears brightest when it is a [[crescent]], because it is much closer to Earth than when [[gibbous]].\n[[File:PIA19247-Mercury-NPolarRegion-Messenger20150316.jpg|thumb|left|False-color map showing the maximum temperatures of the north polar region]]\n[[File:Mercury Venus Moon over San Jose 08 Jan 2024.png|thumb|right|Mercury (lower left) as seen from [[San Jose, California]] with Venus and the Moon.]]\nMercury is best observed at the first and last quarter, although they are phases of lesser brightness. The first and last quarter phases occur at greatest [[elongation (astronomy)|elongation]] east and west of the Sun, respectively. At both of these times, Mercury's separation from the Sun ranges anywhere from 17.9\u00b0 at perihelion to 27.8\u00b0 at aphelion. At greatest \"western\" elongation, Mercury rises at its earliest before sunrise, and at greatest \"eastern\" elongation, it sets at its latest after sunset.\n[[File:PIA19422-Mercury-CarnegieRupes-MDIS-MLA-20150416.jpg|thumb|right|False-color image of [[Carnegie Rupes]], a tectonic landform\u2014high terrain (red); low (blue).]]\nMercury is more often and easily visible from the [[Southern Hemisphere]] than from the [[Northern Hemisphere|Northern]]. This is because Mercury's maximum western elongation occurs only during early autumn in the Southern Hemisphere, whereas its greatest eastern elongation happens only during late winter in the Southern Hemisphere. In both of these cases, the angle at which the planet's orbit intersects the horizon is maximized, allowing it to rise several hours before sunrise in the former instance and not set until several hours after sundown in the latter from southern mid-latitudes, such as Argentina and South Africa.\nAn alternate method for viewing Mercury involves observing the planet with a [[telescope]] during daylight hours when conditions are clear, ideally when it is at its greatest elongation. This allows the planet to be found easily, even when using telescopes with apertures. However, great care must be taken to obstruct the Sun from sight because of the extreme risk for eye damage. This method bypasses the limitation of twilight observing when the ecliptic is located at a low elevation (e.g. on autumn evenings). The planet is higher in the sky and less atmospheric effects affect the view of the planet. Mercury can be viewed as close as 4\u00b0 to the Sun near superior conjunction when it is almost at its brightest.\nMercury can, like several other planets and the brightest stars, be seen during a total [[solar eclipse]].\nObservation history.\nAncient astronomers.\n[[File:Mercury-bonatti.png|thumb|Mercury, from \"Liber astronomiae\", 1550]]\nThe earliest known recorded observations of Mercury are from the [[MUL.APIN]] tablets. These observations were most likely made by an [[Assyria]]n astronomer around the 14th century BC. The [[cuneiform]] name used to designate Mercury on the MUL.APIN tablets is transcribed as UDU.IDIM.GU\\U4.UD (\"the jumping planet\"). [[Babylonian astronomy|Babylonian records]] of Mercury date back to the 1st millennium BC. The [[Babylonia]]ns called the planet [[Nabu]] after the messenger to the gods in [[Babylonian mythology|their mythology]].\nThe [[Greeks in Egypt|Greco]]-[[Ancient Egypt|Egyptian]] astronomer [[Ptolemy]] wrote about the possibility of planetary transits across the face of the Sun in his work \"Planetary Hypotheses\". He suggested that no transits had been observed either because planets such as Mercury were too small to see, or because transits were too infrequent.\n[[File:Shatir500.jpg|thumb|left|[[Ibn al-Shatir]]'s model for the appearances of Mercury, showing the multiplication of [[epicycles]] using the [[Tusi couple]], thus eliminating the Ptolemaic eccentrics and [[equant]].]]\nIn [[ancient China]], Mercury was known as \"the Hour Star\" (\"Chen-xing\" ). It was associated with the direction north and the phase of water in the [[Five Phases]] system of metaphysics. Modern [[Chinese culture|Chinese]], [[Korean culture|Korean]], [[Japanese culture|Japanese]] and [[Vietnamese culture|Vietnamese]] cultures refer to the planet literally as the \"water star\" (), based on the [[Five elements (Chinese philosophy)|Five elements]]. [[Hindu mythology]] used the name [[Budha]] for Mercury, and this god was thought to preside over Wednesday. The god [[Odin]] (or Woden) of [[Germanic paganism]] was associated with the planet Mercury and Wednesday. The [[Maya civilization|Maya]] may have represented Mercury as an owl (or possibly four owls; two for the morning aspect and two for the evening) that served as a messenger to the [[underworld]]. Mercury was sometimes known as [[Stilbon (mythology)|Stilbon]] ([[Greek language|Greek]]: \u03a3\u03c4\u03af\u03bb\u03b2\u03c9\u03bd) meaning 'the shining, glittering'.\nIn [[medieval Islamic astronomy]], the [[Al-Andalus|Andalusian]] astronomer [[Ab\u016b Ish\u0101q Ibr\u0101h\u012bm al-Zarq\u0101l\u012b]] in the 11th century described the [[deferent]] of Mercury's [[geocentric orbit]] as being oval, like an egg or a [[Pine nut|pignon]], although this insight did not influence his astronomical theory or his astronomical calculations. In the 12th century, [[Ibn Bajjah]] observed \"two planets as black spots on the face of the Sun\", which was later suggested as the transit of Mercury and/or Venus by the [[Maragheh observatory|Maragha]] astronomer [[Qotb al-Din Shirazi]] in the 13th century. Most such medieval reports of transits were later taken as observations of [[sunspot]]s.\nIn India, the [[Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics|Kerala school]] astronomer [[Nilakantha Somayaji]] in the 15th century developed a partially heliocentric planetary model in which Mercury orbits the Sun, which in turn orbits Earth, similar to the [[Tychonic system]] later proposed by [[Tycho Brahe]] in the late 16th century.\nGround-based telescopic research.\nThe first telescopic observations of Mercury were made by [[Thomas Harriot]] and [[Galileo]] from 1610. In 1612, [[Simon Marius]] observed the brightness of Mercury varied with the planet's orbital position and concluded it had phases \"in the same way as Venus and the Moon\". In 1631, [[Pierre Gassendi]] made the first telescopic observations of the transit of a planet across the Sun when he saw a transit of Mercury predicted by [[Johannes Kepler]]. In 1639, [[Giovanni Zupi]] used a telescope to discover that the planet had orbital phases similar to Venus and the Moon. The observation demonstrated conclusively that Mercury orbited the Sun.\nA rare event in astronomy is the passage of one planet in front of another ([[occultation]]), as seen from Earth. Mercury and Venus occult each other every few centuries, and the event of May 28, 1737, is the only one historically observed, having been seen by [[John Bevis]] at the [[Royal Greenwich Observatory]]. The next occultation of Mercury by Venus will be on December 3, 2133.\nThe difficulties inherent in observing Mercury meant that it was far less studied than the other planets. In 1800, [[Johann Schr\u00f6ter]] made observations of surface features, claiming to have observed mountains. [[Friedrich Bessel]] used Schr\u00f6ter's drawings to erroneously estimate the rotation period as 24 hours and an axial tilt of 70\u00b0. In the 1880s, [[Giovanni Schiaparelli]] mapped the planet more accurately, and suggested that Mercury's rotational period was 88 days, the same as its orbital period due to tidal locking. This phenomenon is known as [[synchronous rotation]]. The effort to map the surface of Mercury was continued by [[Eugenios Antoniadi]], who published a book in 1934 that included both maps and his own observations. Many of the planet's surface features, particularly the [[List of albedo features on Mercury|albedo features]], take their names from Antoniadi's map.\nIn June 1962, Soviet scientists at the [[Institute of Radio-engineering and Electronics]] of the [[USSR Academy of Sciences]], led by [[Vladimir Kotelnikov]], became the first to bounce a radar signal off Mercury and receive it, starting radar observations of the planet. Three years later, radar observations by Americans [[Gordon H. Pettengill]] and Rolf B. Dyce, using the [[Arecibo radio telescope]] in [[Puerto Rico]], showed conclusively that the planet's rotational period was about 59 days. The theory that Mercury's rotation was synchronous had become widely held, and it was a surprise to astronomers when these radio observations were announced. If Mercury were tidally locked, its dark face would be extremely cold, but measurements of radio emission revealed that it was much hotter than expected. Astronomers were reluctant to drop the synchronous rotation theory and proposed alternative mechanisms such as powerful heat-distributing winds to explain the observations.\nIn 1965, Italian astronomer [[Giuseppe Colombo]] noted that the rotation value was about two-thirds of Mercury's orbital period, and proposed that the planet's orbital and rotational periods were locked into a 3:2 rather than a 1:1 resonance. Data from \"Mariner 10\" subsequently confirmed this view. This means that Schiaparelli's and Antoniadi's maps were not \"wrong\". Instead, the astronomers saw the same features during every \"second\" orbit and recorded them, but disregarded those seen in the meantime, when Mercury's other face was toward the Sun, because the orbital geometry meant that these observations were made under poor viewing conditions.\nGround-based optical observations did not shed much further light on Mercury, but radio astronomers using interferometry at microwave wavelengths, a technique that enables removal of the solar radiation, were able to discern physical and chemical characteristics of the subsurface layers to a depth of several meters. Not until the first space probe flew past Mercury did many of its most fundamental morphological properties become known. Moreover, technological advances have led to improved ground-based observations. In 2000, high-resolution [[lucky imaging]] observations were conducted by the [[Mount Wilson Observatory]] Hale telescope. They provided the first views that resolved surface features on the parts of Mercury that were not imaged in the \"Mariner 10\" mission. Most of the planet has been mapped by the Arecibo radar telescope, with resolution, including polar deposits in shadowed craters of what may be water ice.\nResearch with space probes.\n[[File:MESSENGER Assembly.jpg|thumb|left|\"MESSENGER\" being prepared for launch]]\n[[File:PIA18389-MarsCuriosityRover-MercuryTransitsSun-20140603.gif|thumb|Mercury transiting the [[Sun]] as viewed by the Mars rover [[Curiosity (rover)|\"Curiosity\"]] (June 3, 2014).]]\nReaching Mercury from Earth poses significant technical challenges, because it orbits so much closer to the Sun than Earth. A Mercury-bound spacecraft launched from Earth must travel over into the Sun's gravitational [[potential well]]. Mercury has an [[orbital speed]] of , whereas Earth's orbital speed is . Therefore, the spacecraft must make a larger change in [[velocity]] ([[delta-v]]) to get to Mercury and then enter orbit, as compared to the delta-v required for, say, [[Exploration of Mars|Mars planetary missions]].\nThe [[potential energy]] liberated by moving down the Sun's potential well becomes [[kinetic energy]], requiring a delta-v change to do anything other than pass by Mercury. Some portion of this [[delta-v budget]] can be provided from a [[gravity assist]] during one or more fly-bys of Venus. To land safely or enter a stable orbit the spacecraft would rely entirely on rocket motors. [[Aerobraking]] is ruled out because Mercury has a negligible atmosphere. A trip to Mercury requires more rocket fuel than that required to [[escape velocity|escape]] the Solar System completely. As a result, only three space probes have visited it so far. A proposed alternative approach would use a [[solar sail]] to attain a Mercury-synchronous orbit around the Sun.\n\"Mariner 10\".\n[[File:Mariner 10.jpg|thumb|\"Mariner 10\", the first probe to visit Mercury]]\nThe first spacecraft to visit Mercury was NASA's \"Mariner 10\" (1974\u20131975). The spacecraft used the gravity of Venus to adjust its orbital velocity so that it could approach Mercury, making it both the first spacecraft to use this gravitational \"slingshot\" effect and the first NASA mission to visit multiple planets. \"Mariner 10\" provided the first close-up images of Mercury's surface, which immediately showed its heavily cratered nature, and revealed many other types of geological features, such as the giant scarps that were later ascribed to the effect of the planet shrinking slightly as its iron core cools. Unfortunately, the same face of the planet was lit at each of \"Mariner 10\"'s close approaches. This made close observation of both sides of the planet impossible, and resulted in the mapping of less than 45% of the planet's surface.\nThe spacecraft made three close approaches to Mercury, the closest of which took it to within of the surface. At the first close approach, instruments detected a magnetic field, to the great surprise of planetary geologists\u2014Mercury's rotation was expected to be much too slow to generate a significant [[dynamo]] effect. The second close approach was primarily used for imaging, but at the third approach, extensive magnetic data were obtained. The data revealed that the planet's magnetic field is much like Earth's, which deflects the solar wind around the planet. For many years after the \"Mariner 10\" encounters, the origin of Mercury's magnetic field remained the subject of several competing theories.\nOn March 24, 1975, just eight days after its final close approach, \"Mariner 10\" ran out of fuel. Because its orbit could no longer be accurately controlled, mission controllers instructed the probe to shut down. \"Mariner 10\" is thought to be still orbiting the Sun, passing close to Mercury every few months.\n\"MESSENGER\".\n[[File:Details of MESSENGER's Impact Location.jpg|thumb|Estimated details of the impact of \"MESSENGER\" on April 30, 2015]]\nA second NASA mission to Mercury, named \"MESSENGER\" (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging), was launched on August 3, 2004. It made a fly-by of Earth in August 2005, and of Venus in October 2006 and June 2007 to place it onto the correct trajectory to reach an orbit around Mercury. A first fly-by of Mercury occurred on January 14, 2008, a second on October 6, 2008, and a third on September 29, 2009. Most of the hemisphere not imaged by \"Mariner 10\" was mapped during these fly-bys. The probe successfully entered an elliptical orbit around the planet on March 18, 2011. The first orbital image of Mercury was obtained on March 29, 2011. The probe finished a one-year mapping mission, and then entered a one-year extended mission into 2013. In addition to continued observations and mapping of Mercury, \"MESSENGER\" observed the 2012 [[solar maximum]].\n[[File:MercuryTopo.png|thumb|right|Topography of Mercury based on MDIS (Mercury Dual Imaging System) data]] The mission was designed to clear up six key issues: Mercury's high density, its geological history, the nature of its magnetic field, the structure of its core, whether it has ice at its poles, and where its tenuous atmosphere comes from. To this end, the probe carried imaging devices that gathered much-higher-resolution images of much more of Mercury than \"Mariner 10\", assorted [[spectrometer]]s to determine the abundances of elements in the crust, and [[magnetometer]]s and devices to measure velocities of charged particles. Measurements of changes in the probe's orbital velocity were expected to be used to infer details of the planet's interior structure. \"MESSENGER\"'s final maneuver was on April 24, 2015, and it crashed into Mercury's surface on April 30, 2015. The spacecraft's impact with Mercury occurred at 3:26:01\u00a0p.m. [[Eastern Time Zone|EDT]] on April 30, 2015, leaving a crater estimated to be in diameter.\n\"BepiColombo\".\nThe [[European Space Agency]] and the [[Japanese Space Agency]] developed and launched a joint mission called \"BepiColombo\", which will orbit Mercury with two probes: one to map the planet and the other to study its magnetosphere. Launched on October 20, 2018, \"BepiColombo\" is expected to reach Mercury in 2025. It will release a magnetometer probe into an elliptical orbit, then chemical rockets will fire to deposit the mapper probe into a circular orbit. Both probes will operate for one terrestrial year. The mapper probe carries an array of spectrometers similar to those on \"MESSENGER\", and will study the planet at many different wavelengths including [[infrared]], [[ultraviolet]], [[X-ray]] and [[gamma ray]]. \"BepiColombo\" conducted the first of its six planned Mercury flybys on October 1, 2021, and the sixth was completed on January 9, 2025. The spacecraft will enter the planet's orbit in 2026.\n\"Perseverance\" rover.\nOn March 5, 2024, NASA released images of transits of the moon [[Deimos (moon)|Deimos]], the moon [[Phobos (moon)|Phobos]] and the planet Mercury as viewed by the \"Perseverance\" rover on the planet Mars.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n[[Category:Mercury (planet)| ]]\n[[Category:Planets of the Solar System]]\n[[Category:Terrestrial planets]]\n[[Category:Astronomical objects known since antiquity]]\n[[Category:Solar System]]"}, "descending_order": ["14536060", "19694"], "permutation_1": ["14536060", "19694"], "permutation_2": ["14536060", "19694"], "permutation_3": ["19694", "14536060"]}
{"id": "2hop__763556_851569", "docs_added": {"107615": "Compton, California\nCity in California, United States\nCompton is a city located in the Gateway Cities region of southern Los Angeles County, California, United States, situated south of downtown Los Angeles. Compton is one of the oldest cities in the county, and on May 11, 1888, was the eighth city in Los Angeles County to incorporate. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total population of 95,740. It is known as the \"Hub City\" due to its alleged geographic centrality in Los Angeles County, though it is actually near the southern end of the county. Neighborhoods in Compton include Sunny Cove, Leland, downtown Compton, and Richland Farms.\nHistory.\nThe Tongva inhabited the Los Angeles Basin.\nThe Spanish Empire had expanded into this area when the Viceroy of New Spain commissioned Juan Rodr\u00edguez Cabrillo to explore the Pacific Ocean in 1542\u20131543. In 1767, the area became part of the Province of the Californias (), and the area was explored by the Portol\u00e1 expedition in 1769\u20131770. In 1784, the Spanish Crown deeded Rancho San Pedro, a tract of over , to soldier Juan Jos\u00e9 Dom\u00ednguez. Dom\u00ednguez's descendants partitioned the land amongst family members, sold parcels to newly arriving settlers, and relinquished some when validating their legal claim with the Mexican government at in 1828, and with the United States government through a patent validating in 1858. The Dom\u00ednguez family name is still applied throughout the area, including the Dominguez Rancho Adobe historical landmark, in the unincorporated community of Rancho Dominguez, located between the cities of Compton, Long Beach and Carson. The tree that marked the original northern boundary of the rancho still stands at the corner of Poppy and Short streets.\nIn 1867, Griffith Dickenson Compton led a group of 30 pioneers to the area. These families had traveled by wagon train south from Stockton, California, in search of ways to earn a living other than the rapid exhaustion of gold fields. Originally named Gibsonville, after one of the tract owners, it was later called Comptonville. However, to avoid confusion with the Camptonville located in Yuba County, the name was shortened to Compton. Compton's earliest settlers were faced with terrible hardships as they farmed the land in bleak weather to get by with just the barest subsistence. The weather continued to be harsh, rainy and cold, and fuel was difficult to find. To gather firewood it was necessary to travel to mountains close to Pasadena. The round trip took almost a week. Many in the Compton party wanted to relocate to a friendlier climate and settle down, but as there were two general stores within traveling distance\u2014one in the pueblo of Los Angeles, the other in Wilmington\u2014they eventually decided to stay put.\nBy 1887, the settlers realized it was time to make improvements to the local government. A series of town meetings were held to discuss incorporation of their little town. Griffith D. Compton donated his land to incorporate and create the city of Compton in 1889, but he did stipulate that a certain acreage be zoned solely for agriculture and named Richland Farms. In January 1888, a petition supporting the incorporation of Compton was forwarded to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, who in turn forwarded the petition to the State Legislature. On May 11, 1888, the city of Compton was incorporated with a population of 5000 people. The first City Council meeting was held on May 14, 1888.\nIn 1890, a series of votes were held by the residents of Compton, with the aim of shedding significant portions of the city. By the end of the year, Compton was down to only eighty acres of land, with five remaining voters residing within that territory. Due to the limited number of people able to fill positions within the city government, Compton effectively ceased to exist as a functioning city. By 1906, lawyers Emmett Wilson and E.T. Sherer filed suits to nullify the 1890 elections, which in turn restored Compton to a size of 600 acres. Compton was reborn, with elections held to fill open positions.\nThe ample residential lots of Richland Farms gave residents enough space to raise a family, and food to feed them, along with building a barn, and caring for livestock. The farms attracted the black families who had begun migrating from the rural South in the 1950s, and there they found their 'home away from home'. Compton could not support large-scale agricultural business, but it did give the residents the opportunity to work the land for their families.\nThe 1920s saw the opening of the Compton Airport. Compton Junior College was founded and city officials moved to a new City Hall on Alameda Street. On March 10, 1933, a destructive earthquake caused many casualties: schools were destroyed and there was major damage to the central business district. While it would eventually be home to a large black population, in 1930 there was only one black resident.\nFrom the 1920s through the early 1940s, the Compton area was home to a sizable Japanese American population, a large proportion of whom were farmers. Shortly after President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, Compton residents of Japanese descent were forcibly removed from their homes and interned for the duration of World War II. Most were initially detained at the Santa Anita Assembly Center; they were later transferred to and incarcerated at Manzanar and other internment centers, called \"Relocation Centers.\"\nIn the 1950s, middle-class black families began moving into the area, mostly on the west side. Compton grew quickly throughout the decade. This is partially due to its proximity to Watts, where there was an established black population. The eastern side of the city was predominantly white until the 1970s. Despite being located in the middle of a major metropolitan area, thanks to the legacy of Griffith D. Compton, there still remains one small pocket of agriculture from its earliest years.\nDuring the 1950s and 1960s, after the Supreme Court declared all racially exclusive housing covenants (title deeds) unconstitutional in the case \"Shelley v. Kraemer\", the first black families moved to the area. Compton's growing black population was still largely ignored and neglected by the city's elected officials. Centennial High School was finally built to accommodate a burgeoning student population. A black man first ran for City Council in 1958, and the first black councilman was elected in 1961.\nIn 1969, Douglas Dollarhide became the mayor, the first black man elected mayor of any metropolitan city in California. Two African Americans and one Mexican-American were also elected to the local school board. Four years later, in 1973, Doris A. Davis defeated Dollarhide's bid for re-election to become the first female black mayor of a metropolitan American city. By the early 1970s, the city had one of the largest concentrations of African Americans in the country, at over sixty five percent. In 2013, Aja Brown, age 31, became the city's youngest mayor to date; she was re-elected in 2017.\nFor many years, Compton was a much sought-after suburb for the black middle class of Los Angeles. This past affluence is reflected in the area's appearance: Compton's streets are lined with relatively spacious and attractive single family houses. However, several factors have contributed to Compton's gradual decline. One of the most significant factors was a steady erosion of its tax base, something that was already sparse due to limited commercial properties. In later years, there were middle-class whites who fled to the newly incorporated cities of Artesia, Bellflower, Cerritos, Paramount and Norwalk in the late 1950s. These nearby cities remained largely white early on, despite integration. This white middle class flight accelerated following the 1965 Watts Riots and the 1992 Los Angeles riots.\nBy the late 1960s, middle-class and upper-middle-class African Americans found other areas to be more attractive to them. Some were unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County such as Ladera Heights, View Park and Windsor Hills, and others were cities such as Inglewood and Carson. Carson was particularly significant, because it had successfully thwarted attempts at annexation by neighboring Compton. The city opted instead for incorporation in 1968; notably, its black population was actually more affluent than its white population. As a newer city, it also offered more favorable tax rates and lower crime.\nGeography and climate.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau's 2020 data, the city has a total area of . of it is land and of it (1.03%) is water.\nCompton is bordered by the unincorporated Willowbrook on the north and northwest, the unincorporated West Compton on the west, the city of Carson on the southwest, the unincorporated Rancho Dominguez on the south, the city of Long Beach on the southeast, the city of Paramount and the unincorporated East Compton on the east, and by the city of Lynwood on the northeast.\nEast Compton.\nEast Compton, also known as East Rancho Dominguez, is a mostly industrial unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP). The population was 15,135 according to the 2010 Census. East Rancho Dominguez is an accepted city name according to the USPS, and shares the 90221 ZIP Code with Compton. Its sphere of influence is the city of Compton, which has tried to annex East Rancho Dominguez, but business and property owners in the area have opposed the annexation. \nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nCompton first appeared as a city in the 1870 U.S. Census. \n2020 census.\nThe U.S. Census Bureau, Population Estimates Program (PEP), updated annually, reported that the City of Compton has a population of 91,988 as of its 2022 estimate. The following household information is based on 5-year census estimates between 2018 and 2022:\nNo Compton households reported speaking a non-English language at home as their primary shared language. This does not consider the potential multilingual nature of households, but only the primary self-reported language spoken by all members of the household. 83.1% of the residents of Compton are U.S. citizens.\n2010.\nThe 2010 United States census reported that Compton had a population of 96,455. The population density was . The racial makeup of Compton was 31,688 (32.9%) Black; 24,942 (25.9%) White, (0.8% Non-Hispanic White); 655 (0.7%) Native American; 292 (0.3%) Asian; 718 (0.7%) Pacific Islander; 34,914 (36.2%) from other races; and 3,246 (3.4%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 62,669 persons (65.0%).\nThe Census reported that 95,700 people (99.2% of the population) lived in households, 643 (0.7%) lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 112 (0.1%) were institutionalized.\nThere were 23,062 households, out of which 13,376 (58.0%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 10,536 (45.7%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 6,373 (27.6%) had a female householder with no husband present, 2,354 (10.2%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 1,725 (7.5%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 158 (0.7%) same-sex married couples or partnerships. 2,979 households (12.9%) were made up of individuals, and 1,224 (5.3%) had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 4.15. There were 19,263 families (83.5% of all households); the average family size was 4.41.\nThe age distribution of the population was as follows: 31,945 people (33.1%) under the age of 18, 11,901 people (12.3%) aged 18 to 24, 26,573 people (27.5%) aged 25 to 44, 18,838 people (19.5%) aged 45 to 64, and 7,198 people (7.5%) who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 28.0 years. For every 100 females, there were 94.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 90.7 males.\nThere were 24,523 housing units at an average density of , of which 12,726 (55.2%) were owner-occupied, and 10,336 (44.8%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 2.9%; the rental vacancy rate was 5.9%. 53,525 people (55.5% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 42,175 people (43.7%) lived in rental housing units.\nDuring 2009\u20132013, Compton has a median household income of $42,953, with 26.3% of the population living below the federal poverty line.\nCrime.\nFollowing the Watts riots in 1965, crime in Compton rose sharply. Although the city was largely exempt from the destruction of the 1965 riot, it prompted middle-class residents to flee over the next few years. By 1969, it had the highest crime rate in the state of California.\nIn \"Black, Brown, and White: Stories Straight Outta Compton\", Lynne Isbell and two friends from other ethnic backgrounds have written about their lives growing up in Compton during the 1960s and early 1970s. They tell how Compton changed from a mostly white town to a mostly black one and became known as \"the Murder Capital of the United States\".\nCompton's violent reputation reached the national spotlight in the late 1980s with the rise of local gangsta rap groups Compton's Most Wanted and N.W.A, the latter of whom released the album \"Straight Outta Compton\" in 1989. The city became notorious for gang violence, primarily caused by the Bloods and Crips. After years of decline in crime, Compton's murder rate skyrocketed in 2004 with racial conflicts between Blacks and Latinos.\n2005 was the city's deadliest year on record when the city murder rate reached 72 killings with a total population of 90,000 residents. The spike was the highest since 1991, when the city had more than 100,000 residents. The rise in homicides frightened residents who had long lived with high levels of gang violence but had seen a downturn in violent crime in recent years.\nIn 2013, the homicide rate was 36.8 per 100,000 residents, a decrease from the mid-2000s peak. Guns are used in the vast majority of homicides in Compton. Between 2000 and 2016, 91.5% were killed with guns compared to the national average of 67.7%. In 2015, there was a record low of 15 homicides while the homicide rate in the rest of the US increased. In recent years, homicides have increased while remaining well below the 1980s and 90s, with 32 in 2021.\nThe neighborhood lost residents with the worsening safety problems and, after the 1992 riots in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, many African Americans left the city.\nAlthough \"U.S. News & World Report\" did not list Compton in the 2011 \"11 Most Dangerous Cities\" for overall crime rates in the United States, the \"CQ Press\", using data from the FBI's annual report of crime statistics \"Crime in the United States 2010,\" which ranked Compton as having the eighth highest crime rate in the country.\nCompton experienced a drop in homicide in the late 1990s and 2000s. Crime has stabilized overall since the 2010s. The decrease in homicides has been attributed to various factors, including changing demographics, faster response times by police (reducing shots fired) and better medical care (increasing survival rates). Aja Brown, mayor elected in 2013, helped to settle turf wars between the gangs, which has further reduced the homicide rate.\nMexican and Central American immigrants have increasingly replaced African Americans who moved to safer cities.\n\"Gifts for Guns\".\nThe Los Angeles Sheriff's Department began the annual \"Gifts for Guns\" program within that same year where the citizens of Compton were given the option to turn in firearms and receive a $50\u2013$100 check for various goods in an effort to combat gun violence. People have turned in about 7,000 guns over the last few years, KABC-TV reported. The program's success has prompted the LASD to expand the program countywide.\nHomelessness.\nIn 2022, Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority's Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count counted 644 homeless individuals in Compton.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nMapping L.A..\nMexican was the most common ancestry according to the 2000 census. Mexico and El Salvador were the most common foreign places of birth in 2000.\nEconomy.\nIn 1994, Compton was designated as an \"Entrepreneurial Hot Spot\" by Cognetics, Inc., an independent economic research firm. Compton made the national list for best places to start and grow a business, and ranked #2 in Los Angeles County out of a field of 88 cities. The city's Planning and Economic Development department provides a business assistance program consisting of a comprehensive mix of resources to small business owners and entrepreneurs. The grocery chains Ralphs and Food 4 Less, subsidiaries of Kroger, are headquartered in Compton. Gelson's Market, a subsidiary of Arden Group, Inc., a holding company, is also based there.\nCompton is surrounded by multiple freeways that provide access to destinations throughout the region. The Long Beach and Los Angeles Ports are less than 20 minutes from downtown Compton, providing access to international destinations for customers and suppliers. The Alameda Corridor, a passageway for 25% of all U.S. waterborne international trade, runs directly through Compton from north to south.\nThe City of Compton's Parks and Recreation Department operates and maintains a total of 16 playgrounds for a combined of active park space. Facilities include six community centers, seven neighborhood parks, two walking parks, two competition-size swimming pools, three regulation size gymnasiums, a skate park, Jackie Robinson Baseball Stadium, Nine-Hole Par 3 Golf Course, and the two-story Douglas F. Dollarhide Community Center.\nArts and culture.\nSome episodes of the sitcom \"The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air\" took place in Compton because Will Smith's friend, DJ Jazzy Jeff, lived there. Many rap artists' careers started in Compton, including N.W.A (Eazy-E, MC Ren, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, DJ Yella), Coolio, DJ Quik, 2nd II None, Hi-C, Tweedy Bird Loc, The Game, Kendrick Lamar, YG, Vince Staples, Roddy Ricch, and Compton's Most Wanted. In their lyrics, they rap about the streets and their lives in Compton and the areas nearby. Steve Lacy and Blues musician Keb' Mo' are also from Compton.\nCompton has been referred to on numerous occasions in gang affiliation, gangsta rap and g-funk songs, especially in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, and so has attained an association not only with gang violence and crime, but with hip hop music as well. The city is known as the home of many famous rappers. The Compton Swap Meet is featured prominently in the remix version of the 1995 #1 song California Love.<br>\n<br>Championed by the Compton Entertainment Chamber of Commerce, the city of Compton honored Musical Entertainer rapper Eazy-E, with a symbolic street in his stage name. On November 22, 2023, the 100 block of Auto Drive South, which runs off Alameda Street and into the Gateway Towne Center shopping plaza was renamed to Eazy Street. It is also a reference to a song of the same name.<br>\n<br>Eazy-E grew into the music industry as part the N.W.A group that spawned hip hop icons, such as Easy-E, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Mc Ren, DJ Yella and many others. In 1989, N.W.A released the colossal hit song Straight Outta Compton, which is the incontestable communicable global catchphrase for the City of Compton. [Eric Lynn Wright, was born September 7, 1964, in Compton, and passed away March 26, 1995.]\nMany NBA players attended high school in the city as well. Arron Afflalo attended Centennial High School; DeMar DeRozan attended Compton High School; and Tayshaun Prince, Tyson Chandler, Brandon Jennings, Cedric Ceballos and the late Dennis Johnson attended Dominguez High. Actor/comedian Paul Rodriguez Sr. also attended Dominguez High.\nAlthough an inner suburb of Los Angeles, Compton has seen an increase of middle-class residents in the last few years, due to its affordable housing. With the influx of immigrants and the demographic shift in ethnic population, it was after the 2000 U.S. Census that Latinos were recognized as the majority.\nCompton has evolved into a younger population; the median age of people living in Compton was 25 at the time of the census survey in 2010; the United States average at the time was 35.3.\nCompton is home to the Compton Cricket Club, the only all American-born exhibition cricket team. Its founder, Ted Hayes, said, \"The aim of playing cricket is to teach people how to respect themselves and respect authority so they stop killing each other.\" Tam's Burgers has been seen as a symbol of the city.\nHistorical landmarks.\nAngeles Abbey Memorial Park contains examples of Byzantine, Moorish and Spanish architectural styles. The cemetery was built in 1923 and survived the 1933 Long Beach earthquake.\nCompton Airport opened on May 10, 1924. Located on Alondra Boulevard, the airport offers flight training, has accommodations for more than 200 planes, and is home to several aviation clubs.\nThe Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial sits in a plaza surrounded by the Civic Center, Compton Court House, Compton City Hall, and Compton Public Library.\nThe Eagle Tree is a natural boundary marker of Rancho San Pedro dating to 1858. It contains a historic marker and plaque placed by the Daughters of the Golden West in 1947.\nThe 'Heritage House' was built in 1869 and is a California Historical Landmark, and a Los Angeles County Historic Landmark. The oldest house in Compton, it was restored as a tribute to early settlers. It is an important landmark of Compton's rich history. At the corner of Myrrh and Willowbrook near the Civic Center Plaza, the Heritage House is a rustic-looking home that will eventually have a museum detailing early life in Compton. For now it shows the stark difference between the simple life of the 19th century and the fast-paced urban environment of the 21st. The oldest tree in Compton was the Eagle Tree, which marked the boundary of Rancho San Pedro. It fell in 2022.\nWoodlawn Memorial Park contains the graves of 17 American Civil War veterans.\nGovernment.\nMunicipal government.\nAfter Lionel Cade, an accountant, assumed the mayor's office in 1977, one of the first orders of business was to conduct an audit of the city's finances. It was discovered that the city was $2 million in debt. The administration was able to eliminate the huge deficit in one year by making cuts in every department. It also aggressively sought federal funding to help pay for essential services, which was at least partially effective. However, with the passage of the property tax cutting initiative Proposition 13 by California voters, Compton was one of the cities hardest hit, since it had already eliminated most of the excess from its budget.\nCorruption.\nCivic corruption has also been a widespread problem in Compton. \nIn 2000, the Compton Police Department was disbanded amidst controversy and charges of corruption. The police department claims it was disbanded after investigations of gang activity led to then-Compton Mayor Omar Bradley. Once this became public, the mayor charged it was the police who were themselves corrupt, and he disbanded the police department. Omar Bradley has since faced serious corruption charges. \nEric J. Perrodin, the city's former mayor, was investigated in 2007 by the California State Bar for threatening to violate a local newspaper's First Amendment rights after the paper printed an investigative report relative to a contract granted to one of Perrodin's associates. Following the report, Perrodin threatened to yank the city's advertising contract with the paper. A Times review of city records shows Perrodin was absent from city board and commission meetings nearly two-thirds of the time between July 2009 and July 2010.\nCurrent recall efforts are a direct response from residents of the accusations of corruption of the city's mayor and council. Some of the accusations involve the issuing of city contracts to personal donors and friends. One particular accusation involved the trash and recycling contract of the city to Pacific Coast Waste and Recycling LLC in 2007.\nNotices of intent to circulate recall petitions against four Compton city officials are expected to be filed in August 2010, by a group of citizens who claim corruption in Compton is being ignored by the same authorities who were shocked by the recent salary controversy in the city of Bell.\nCompton had discharged its city manager, in 2010, the second time in three years. \"The Los Angeles Times\" says the City Council voted in a closed meeting, September 9, 2010, to fire Charles Evans. \"The Times\" says council members refused to discuss the reasons for their decision. Evans took office in 2007, after the dismissal of previous City Manager Barbara Kilroy. City Controller Willie Norfleet will take over until a permanent manager can be named.\nIn July 2021, U.S. Representative Maxine Waters called for a Department of Justice inquiry into whether a deputy gang called the Executioners was operating out of the Compton station of the LASD.\nState and federal representation.\nIn the state legislature, Compton is in the Senate District, represented by Democrat Laura Richardson, and in the Assembly District, represented by Democrat Mike Gipson.\nIn the U.S. House of Representatives, Compton is in California's congressional district, represented by Democrat Maxine Waters.\nEducation.\nThe city is served by Compton Unified School District. All of Compton is in CUSD, except for a small sliver of land in the Paramount Unified School District. The CUSD district is a participant of the FOCUS program conducted by the University of California, Irvine. The goals of the program are to improve mathematics and science achievement by uniting the efforts of mathematics, science, education and research library faculty and staff with educators of the school district.\nThe CUSD provides public education for grades K\u201312. The district operates 24 elementary schools, eight middle schools, three high schools, and one adult school, which also serves as an alternative school. The district maintains five alternative learning schools.\nThe four high schools of the CUSD are Centennial High School, Compton Early College High School, Dominguez High School, and Compton High School.\nThe city is also served by Compton College, which offers community college courses for those planning to enter a four-year degree program, as well as those seeking further education in specific trade fields.\nThe Compton Library offers adult, children's and Spanish language materials; reference services; a Literacy Center and a Homework Center; public computers with Internet access and word processing capabilities; public typewriters; and a bilingual story time every Saturday at 12:00 noon.\nOccidental's Center for Food and Justice and its Compton Farm-to-School project were featured in a segment of \"Life and Times\", a half-hour news program on PBS member television station KCET in Los Angeles.\nBarack Obama Charter School is a kindergarten through sixth grade public charter school.\nInfrastructure.\nThe Los Angeles County Department of Health Services operates the South Health Center in Watts, Los Angeles, serving Compton.\nThe United States Postal Service operates the Compton Post Office at 701 South Santa Fe Avenue, the Hub City Post Office at 101 South Willowbrook Avenue, and the Fashion Square Post Office at 2100 North Long Beach Boulevard. \nLaw enforcement.\nThe Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department operates the Compton Station in Compton. When the LASD replaced the Compton Police Department in 2000, they increased patrol service hours from 127,410 to 141,692. Compton Station is centrally located in the Los Angeles area. The station is easily accessible from the Century Freeway (I-105) to the north, the Gardena Freeway (SR-91) to the south, the Harbor Freeway (I-110) to the west, and the Long Beach Freeway (I-710) to the east. Diane Walker, a 30-year veteran of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, was promoted to the rank of captain by Sheriff Lee Baca, and is now commander of Compton Station. There is also a LASD substation located in the Gateway Town Center.\nTransportation.\nFour freeways are within or near the city's boundaries and provide access to destinations throughout the region. Interstate 710 runs through the eastern boundary, State Route 91 runs through the southern boundary. Interstate 105 runs slightly along the north of the city, and Interstate 110 along to the west.\nThe Metro A Line (formerly the Blue Line) light rail runs north\u2013south through Compton. Compton station is in the heart of the city, adjacent to the Renaissance Shopping Center. Artesia station serves the southern part of the city. The A Line connects Compton to downtown Los Angeles and downtown Long Beach.\nThere is also a Compton Renaissance Transit System that serves the area.\nCompton/Woodley Airport is a small general aviation airport located in the city. The airport lies within busy airspace, as it is situated within a few miles of both Los Angeles International Airport and Long Beach Airport.\nGreyhound Lines operates the Compton station.\nCollectively, these multifaceted transportation links lend justification to the city's familiar nickname of \"the Hub City.\"\nFrom 1902 to 1961, Compton was served by the Pacific Electric Long Beach Line.\nSister cities.\nOn January 19, 2010, the Compton City Council passed a resolution creating a sister cities program, to be managed as a chapter of the Compton Chamber of Commerce. The city has established partnerships:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "40714998": "Aja Brown\nAmerican politician\nAja Lena Brown (n\u00e9e Clinkscale; born April 17, 1982) is an American politician who was the mayor of Compton, California from 2013 to 2021. She won the election by defeating both incumbent mayor Eric J. Perrodin and former mayor Omar Bradley.\nEarly life.\nBrown was born Aja Lena Clinkscale in Altadena, California, to a single mother, Brenda Jackson, who worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech. Her parents divorced when she was young. She has a fraternal twin brother, Jonathan Clinkscale, who played football at the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison. Brown's mother grew up in East Compton.\nIn 2000, Brown graduated from John Muir High School in Pasadena, CA.\nIn 2004, Brown graduated from University of Southern California, where she received a full academic scholarship, with a bachelor's degree in policy, planning & development that included public policy, urban planning and development. In 2005, she earned a Master of Urban Planning, which included urban planning with a concentration in economic development. The subject of her master's thesis was an analysis of the 2004 failed development of a Walmart supercenter in Inglewood.\nCareer.\nIn 2004, while attending USC, Brown began working for the City of Gardena, California as an Economic Development Analyst.\nIn 2006, Brown began working for the City of Inglewood, California as an Urban Planner. In 2007, she served a term as a Planning Commissioner for the City of Pasadena, then resigned in 2009 to join Compton's Redevelopment Agency as a Redevelopment Project Manager, focusing her efforts on revitalizing the emergent City of Compton. She was responsible for creating community benefits legislation, initiating community-led downtown revitalization action committees, overseeing the Agency's urban planning and economic development initiatives. Brown also created and implemented Compton's Apprentice Program designed to create jobs for local residents on city-funded or assisted capital improvement projects.\nIn 2011, Brown co-founded the Urban Vision Community Development Corporation, a non-profit organization in Compton dedicated to community economic and youth development. Brown has also developed several re-branding programs that have achieved success in various cities, and she was awarded the \"Best 2012 Communicator Design Award\" for her \"Yes!\" campaign for the City of Compton. She has been instrumental in marketing Compton's buyer's program for first-time home buyers, as well as programs to attract expertise in land use and transportation.\n2013\u20132021: Compton mayor.\n2012 mayoral election.\nHaving worked as a city employee for Compton, Brown decided in October 2012 to introduce what she called her \"New Vision for Compton\". A newcomer to politics, she defeated 12 candidates, including former mayor Omar Bradley and the incumbent mayor Eric J. Perrodin, to become the youngest mayor of Compton at age 31 and the 8th consecutive African-American elected as mayor.\n12-point strategy plan.\nMayor Brown has launched a \"12-point plan\" designed to strategically advance the city of Compton. During Brown's tenure as a city employee, she recognized that the essential components needed to foster a healthy, thriving city were either outdated or non-existent. Addressing existing problems on multiple fronts, including youth development, infrastructure, working with educational coalitions and economic development, she says she has made her \"12-Point Plan\" accessible for the residents to follow along with the progress of the city.\nDecrease in violence and crime.\nIn 2014, Brown began reaching out to Compton Bloods and Crips gang leaders through former members to negotiate peace. She uses conflict mitigation instead of heavy policing. Since the gangs started regular meetings, violent activity and crime was reduced by about 65 percent compared to the all-time high some 25 years ago.\nCongressional run.\nIn 2018, she announced a run for the United States House of Representatives in California's 44th congressional district, against incumbent Nanette Barrag\u00e1n. Brown ended her campaign due to her pregnancy with her first child.\nCompton Pledge guaranteed income.\nIn 2021, the city began distributing monthly universal basic income payments to a \u201cpre-verified\u201d pool of low-income residents, in a two-year donor-funded program initiated by Brown, gauged for a maximum of 800 recipients, at which point it will be one of the larger among 25 U.S. cities exploring this approach to community economics.\nPersonal life.\nBrown is married to Van Brown, a Petrochemical Safety Manager, whom she met and began dating in high school. Van Brown is a former University of Southern California football player. Brown and her husband moved to Compton in 2009. She and her husband are members of Faith Inspirational Missionary Baptist Church, where they work in community outreach programs. She gave birth to her first daughter in 2018.\nIn 1973, nine years before Brown's birth, her maternal grandmother, Lena Young, a nurse, was raped and murdered in a home invasion in Compton that remains unsolved.\nBrown's first name comes from the Steely Dan song, \"Aja\", the title track of the 1977 record, \"Aja,\" because it was a favorite of Brown's mother.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["40714998", "107615"], "permutation_1": ["40714998", "107615"], "permutation_2": ["107615", "40714998"], "permutation_3": ["107615", "40714998"]}
{"id": "2hop__795406_134984", "docs_added": {"273777": "John Cassavetes\nAmerican filmmaker and actor (1929\u20131989)\nJohn Nicholas Cassavetes (December 9, 1929 \u2013 February 3, 1989) was an American filmmaker and actor. He began as an actor in film and television before helping to pioneer modern American independent cinema as a writer and director, often self-financing, producing, and distributing his own films. He received nominations for three Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and an Emmy Award.\nAfter studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Cassavetes started his career in television acting in numerous network dramas. From 1959 to 1960 he played the title role in the NBC detective series \"Johnny Staccato\". He acted in notable films, such as Martin Ritt's film noir \"Edge of the City\" (1957), Robert Aldrich's war film \"The Dirty Dozen\" (1967), Roman Polanski's horror film \"Rosemary's Baby\" (1968) and Elaine May's crime drama \"Mikey and Nicky\" (1976). For \"The Dirty Dozen\", he earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.\nAs a director, Cassavetes became known for a string of critically acclaimed independent dramas including \"Shadows\" (1959), \"Faces\" (1968), \"Husbands\" (1970), \"A Woman Under the Influence\" (1974), \"Opening Night\" (1977), and \"Love Streams\" (1984). His films employed an actor-centered approach which prioritized raw character relationships and \"small feelings\" while rejecting traditional Hollywood storytelling, method acting, and stylization. His films became associated with an improvisational aesthetic and a cin\u00e9ma v\u00e9rit\u00e9 feel. He received Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay (\"Faces\") and Best Director (\"A Woman Under the Influence\").\nHe frequently collaborated with American actress Gena Rowlands (to whom he was married from 1954 until his death in 1989) and friends Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara, and Seymour Cassel. Many of his films were shot and edited in his and Rowlands' own Los Angeles home. \nHe and Rowlands had a son named Nick and two daughters, named Alexandra and Zoe, all of whom followed them into acting and filmmaking.\nEarly life and education.\nJohn Nicholas Cassavetes was born in New York City on December 9, 1929, the son of Greek-American actress Katherine Cassavetes (n\u00e9e Demetriou), who was later featured in some of his films, and Greek immigrant Nicholas John Cassavetes. His early years were spent with his family in Greece; when he returned to New York at the age of seven, he spoke no English. He was then raised on Long Island, where he attended Paul D. Schreiber Senior High School (then known as Port Washington High School) from 1945 to 1947 and participated in \"Port Weekly\" (the school paper), \"Red Domino\" (interclass play), football, and the \"Port Light\" (yearbook).\nCassavetes attended Blair Academy in New Jersey and spent a semester at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont, but was expelled due to his failing grades. He spent a few weeks hitchhiking to Florida and then transferred to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, encouraged by recently enrolled friends who told him the school was \"packed with girls\". He graduated in 1950 and met his future wife Gena Rowlands at her audition to enter the Academy in 1953. They were married four months later in 1954. He continued acting in the theater, took small parts in films, and began working on television in anthology series such as \"Alcoa Theatre\".\nCareer.\nActing workshop.\nBy 1956, Cassavetes had begun teaching an alternative to method acting in his own workshop\u2014co-founded with friend Burt Lane in New York City\u2014in which performance would be based on character creation rather than back-story or narrative requirements. Cassavetes particularly scorned Lee Strasberg's Method-based Actors Studio, and the Cassavetes-Lane approach held that acting should be an expression of creative joy rather than the \"moody, broody anguish\" associated with Strasberg's teaching.\nShortly after opening the workshop, Cassavetes was invited to audition at the Actors Studio, and he and Lane devised a prank: they claimed to be performing a scene from a recent stage production but in fact improvised a performance on the spot, fooling an impressed Strasberg. Cassavetes then fabricated a story about his financial troubles, prompting Strasberg to offer him a full scholarship to the Studio; Cassavetes immediately rejected it, feeling that Strasberg did not know anything about acting if he had been so easily fooled by the two ruses.\nAn improvisation exercise in the workshop inspired the idea for his writing and directorial debut, \"Shadows\" (1959; first version 1957). Cassavetes raised the funds for the production from friends and family, as well as listeners to Jean Shepherd's late-night radio talk-show \"Night People\". His stated purpose was to make a film about modest-income \u201clittle people\u201d, unlike Hollywood studio productions, which focused on stories about wealthy people. Cassavetes was unable to gain American distribution of \"Shadows\", but it won the Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival. European distributors later released the movie in the United States as an import. Although the box-office returns of \"Shadows\" in the United States were slight, it did gain attention from the Hollywood studios.\nTelevision and acting jobs.\nCassavetes played bit-parts in B pictures and in television serials, until gaining notoriety in 1955 as a vicious killer in \"The Night Holds Terror,\" and as a juvenile delinquent in the live TV drama \"Crime in the Streets\". Cassavetes would repeat this performance credited as an \u201cintroducing\u201d lead in the 1956 film version, which also included another future director, Mark Rydell, as his gang mate. His first starring role in a feature film was \"Edge of the City\" (1957), which co-starred Sidney Poitier. He was briefly under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and co-starred with Robert Taylor in the western \"Saddle the Wind\", written by Rod Serling. In the late 1950s, Cassavetes guest-starred in Beverly Garland's groundbreaking crime drama, \"Decoy\", about a New York City woman police undercover detective. Thereafter, he played Johnny Staccato, the title character in a television series about a jazz pianist who also worked as a private detective. In total he directed five episodes of the series, which also features a guest appearance by his wife Gena Rowlands. It was broadcast on NBC between September 1959 and March 1960, and then acquired by ABC; although critically acclaimed, the series was cancelled in September 1960. Cassavetes would appear on the NBC interview program, \"Here's Hollywood\".\n1960s.\nIn 1961 Cassavetes signed a seven-year deal with Paramount. Cassavetes directed two movies for Hollywood in the early 1960s: \"Too Late Blues\" (1961); \"A Child Is Waiting (1963)\" starring Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland. He starred in the CBS western series \"Rawhide\" in the episode \"Incident Near Gloomy River\" (1961). In the 1963\u20131964 season he was cast in the ABC medical drama about psychiatry, \"Breaking Point\". In 1964, he again co-starred with his wife, this time in an episode of \"The Alfred Hitchcock Hour\" anthology program, and in 1965, he appeared on ABC's western series, \"The Legend of Jesse James\". In the same year, he also guest-starred in the World War II series \"Combat!\", in the episode \"S.I.W.\", and as the insane nuclear scientist Everett Lang in \"Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea\", season 2, episode \"The Peacemaker\".\nWith payment for his work on television, as well as a handful of film acting jobs, he was able to relocate to California and to make his subsequent films independent of any studio, as \"Shadows\" had been made. The films in which he acted with this intention include Don Siegel's \"The Killers\" (1964), the motorcycle gang movie \"Devil's Angels\" (1967), \"The Dirty Dozen\" (1967), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, the Guy Woodhouse lead (originally intended for Robert Redford) in Roman Polanski's \"Rosemary's Baby\" (1968), and \"The Fury\" (1978). Cassavetes portrayed the murderer in a 1972 episode of the TV crime series \"Columbo\", titled \"\u00c9tude in Black\". Cassavetes and series star Peter Falk had previously starred together in the 1969 mob action thriller \"Machine Gun McCain\". The two later starred in Elaine May's film \"Mikey and Nicky\" (1976).\n\"Faces\" (1968) was the second film to be both directed and independently financed by Cassavetes. The film starred his wife Gena Rowlands\u2014whom he had married during his struggling actor days\u2014John Marley, Seymour Cassel and Val Avery, as well as several first-time actors, such as lead actress Lynn Carlin and industry fringies like Vince Barbi. It depicts the slow disintegration of a contemporary marriage. The film reportedly took three years to make, and was made largely in the Cassavetes home. \"Faces\" was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress. Around this time, Cassavetes formed \"Faces International\" as a distribution company to handle all of his films.\n1970s.\nIn 1970, Cassavetes directed and acted in \"Husbands\", with actors Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara. They played a trio of married men on a spree in New York and London after the funeral of one of their best friends. Cassavetes stated that this was a personal film for him; his elder brother had died at the age of 30.\n\"Minnie and Moskowitz\" (1971), about two unlikely lovers, featured Rowlands and Cassel. \"A Woman Under the Influence\" (1974) stars Rowlands as an increasingly troubled housewife. Rowlands received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, while Cassavetes was nominated for Best Director. In \"The Killing of a Chinese Bookie\" (1976), Gazzara plays a small-time strip-club owner with an out-of-control gambling habit, pressured by mobsters to commit a murder to pay off his debt.\nIn \"Opening Night\" (1977), Rowlands plays the lead alongside Cassavetes; the film also stars Gazzara and Joan Blondell. Rowlands portrays an aging film star named Myrtle Gordon, who is working in the theater and suffering a personal crisis. Alone and unloved by her colleagues, afraid of aging and always removed from others due to her stardom, she succumbs to alcohol and hallucinations after witnessing a young fan accidentally die. Ultimately, Gordon fights through it all, delivering the performance of her life in a play. Rowlands won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 28th Berlin International Film Festival for her performance.\n1980s.\nCassavetes directed the film \"Gloria\" (1980), featuring Rowlands as a Mob moll who tries to protect an orphan boy whom the Mob wants to kill, which earned her another Best Actress nomination. In 1982, Cassavetes starred in Paul Mazursky's \"Tempest,\" which co-starred Rowlands, Susan Sarandon, Molly Ringwald, Ra\u00fal Juli\u00e1 and Vittorio Gassman.\nCassavetes penned the stage play \"Knives\", the earliest version of which he allowed to be published in the 1978 premiere issue of \"On Stage\", the quarterly magazine of the American Community Theatre Association, a division of the American Theatre Association. The play was produced and directed as one of his \"Three Plays of Love and Hate\" at Hollywood, California's Center Theater in 1981. The trio of plays included versions of Canadian playwright Ted Allan's \"The Third Day Comes\" and \"Love Streams,\" the latter of which served as the blueprint for Cassavetes' 1984 film of the same name.\nCassavetes made the Cannon Films-financed \"Love Streams\" (1984), which featured him as an aging playboy who suffers the overbearing affection of his recently divorced sister. It was entered into the 34th Berlin International Film Festival where it won the Golden Bear. The film is often considered Cassavetes' \"last film\" in that it brought together many aspects of his previous films. He despised the film \"Big Trouble\" (1986), which he took over during filming from Andrew Bergman, who wrote the original screenplay. Cassavetes came to refer to the film as \"The aptly titled 'Big Trouble,'\" since the studio vetoed many of his decisions for the film and eventually edited most of it in a way with which Cassavetes disagreed.\nIn January 1987, Cassavetes was facing health problems, but he wrote the three-act play \"Woman of Mystery\" and brought it to the stage in May and June at the Court Theatre, Los Angeles.\nCassavetes worked during the last year of his life to produce a last film that was to be titled \"She's Delovely\". He was in talks with Sean Penn to star, though legal and financial hurdles proved insurmountable and the project was forgotten about until after Cassavetes' death, when his son Nick finally directed it as \"She's So Lovely\" (1997).\nFilmmaking style.\nCassavetes spent the majority of his directing career working 'off the grid' and in a communal atmosphere \"unfettered by the commercial concerns of Hollywood.\" His films aim to capture \"small feelings\" often repressed by Hollywood filmmaking, emphasizing intimate character examination and relationships rather than plot, backstory, or stylization. He often presented difficult characters whose behaviors were not easily understood, rejecting simplistic psychological or narrative explanations for their actions. Cassavetes also disregarded the \"impressionistic cinematography, linear editing, and star-centred scene making\" fashionable in Hollywood and art films. Often unable to interest Hollywood studios in financing his work, Cassavetes typically worked with small but dedicated crew of friends and technicians. He said: \"The hardest thing for a film-maker, or a person like me, is to find people \u2026 who really want to do something.\"\nCassavetes worked to create a comfortable and informal environment where actors could freely experiment with their performances and go beyond acting clich\u00e9s or \"programmed behaviors.\" He dismissed Method acting as \"more a form of psychotherapy than of acting\" which resulted in sentimental cliches and self-indulgent emotion. Instead, he held that acting should be an expression of creative joy and exuberance, with emphasis put on the character's creation of \"masks\" in the process of interacting with other people. Cassavetes also said that he strove \"to put [actors] in a position where they may make asses of themselves without feeling they're revealing things that will eventually be used against them.\" He frequently filmed scenes in long, uninterrupted takes, explaining that:The drama of the scenes comes naturally from the real passage of time lived by the actors [...] The camera isn't content to just follow the characters' words and actions. I focus in on specific gestures and mannerisms. It's from focusing on these little things\u2014the moods, silences, pauses, or anxious moments\u2014that the form arises.\nCassavetes also rejected the dominance of the director's singular vision, instead believing each character must be the actor's \"individual creation\" and refusing to explain the characters to his actors in any significant detail. He claimed that \"stylistic unity drains the humanity out of a text [...] The stories of many different and potentially inarticulate people are more interesting than a contrived narrative that exists only in one articulate man's imagination.\" The manner in which Cassavetes employed improvisation is frequently misunderstood: with the exception of the original version of \"Shadows\", his films were tightly scripted. However, he allowed actors to interpret characters in their own way, and often rewrote scripts based on the results of rehearsals and performances. He explained that \"I believe in improvising on the basis of the written word and not on undisciplined creativity.\"\nCassavetes worked with jazz musicians Charles Mingus and Shafi Hadi to provide the score for \"Shadows\". Mingus's friend, Diane Dorr-Dorynek, described Cassavetes' approach to film-making in jazz terms:\nThe script formed the skeleton around which the actors might change or ad lib lines according to their response to the situation at the moment, so that each performance was slightly different. A jazz musician works in this way, using a given musical skeleton and creating out of it, building a musical whole related to a particular moment by listening to and interacting with his fellow musicians. Jazz musicians working with actors could conceivably provide audiences with some of the most moving and alive theater they have ever experienced.\nWhen asked by Andr\u00e9 S. Labarthe during the making of \"Faces\" whether he had the desire to make a musical film, Cassavetes responded he wanted to make only one musical, Dostoyevsky's \"Crime and Punishment\". Cassavetes was passionate about a wide range of music, from jazz to classical to rock, saying \"I like all music. It makes you feel like living. Silence is death.\"\nCassavetes worked with composer Bo Harwood from 1970 to 1984 on six films in several different capacities, even though Harwood had initially only signed on to do \"a little editing\" for \"Husbands\", and \"a little sound editing\" for \"Minnie and Moskowitz\". Harwood composed poignant music for Cassavetes' following three films, and was also credited as \"Sound\" for two of them. During these projects Harwood wrote several songs, some with Cassavetes contributing lyrics and rudimentary tunes. During his work with Cassavetes, Harwood claimed the notoriously unpredictable director preferred to use the \"scratch track\" version of his compositions, rather than to let Harwood refine and re-record them with an orchestra. Some of these scratch tracks were recorded in Cassavetes' office, with piano or guitar, as demos, and then eventually ended up in the final film. While this matched the raw, unpolished feel that marks most of Cassavetes' films, Harwood was sometimes surprised and embarrassed.\nThe relationship between Harwood and Cassavetes ended amicably. When asked by documentarian Michael Ventura during the making of Cassavetes' last film \"Love Streams\", what he had learned from working with Cassavetes, Harwood replied:\nI learned a lot through John. I've done a lot of editing for him. Picture editing, sound editing, music editing, shot sound, composed score, and I've learned a lot about integrity ... I think you know what I mean. You know, thirty years from now, I can say I rode with Billy the Kid.\nPersonal life.\nMarriage.\nCassavetes was married to American actress Gena Rowlands from 1954 until his death in 1989. Many of his films were shot and edited in his and Rowlands' own Los Angeles home. He and Rowlands had a son named Nick and two daughters named Alexandra and Zoe, all of whom followed them into acting and filmmaking.\nDeath.\nA long-time alcoholic, Cassavetes died in Los Angeles from complications of cirrhosis at the age of 59 on February 3, 1989. He is buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park cemetery in Los Angeles.\nAt the time of his death, Cassavetes had amassed a collection of more than 40 unproduced screenplays, as well as a novel, \"Husbands\". He also left three unproduced plays: \"Sweet Talk\", \"Entrances and Exits\", and \"Begin the Beguine\", the last of which, in German translation, was co-produced by Needcompany of Belgium and Burgtheater of Vienna, and premiered on stage at Vienna's Akademietheater in 2014.\nLegacy and reception.\nCassavetes is the subject of several biographies. \"Cassavetes on Cassavetes\" is a collection of interviews collected or conducted by Boston University film scholar Ray Carney, in which the filmmaker recalled his experiences, influences, and outlook on the film industry. In the 2005 Hollywood issue of \"Vanity Fair\", one article features a tribute to Cassavetes by three members of his stock company, Rowlands, Gazzara, and Falk.\nMany of Cassavetes' films are owned by Faces Distribution, a company overseen by Gena Rowlands and Julian Schlossberg, distributed by Jumer Films (Schlossberg's own company), with additional sales and distribution by Janus Films. In September 2004, The Criterion Collection produced a Region 1 DVD box set of his five independent films: \"Shadows\", \"Faces\", \"A Woman Under the Influence\", \"The Killing of a Chinese Bookie\" and \"Opening Night\". Also featured in the set is a documentary about the life and works of Cassavetes, \"A Constant Forge\", a booklet featuring critical assessments of the director's work and tributes by old friends. Criterion released a Blu-ray version of the set in October 2013. In 2005, a box set of the same films was released in Region 2 by Optimum Releasing. The Optimum DVD of \"Shadows\" has a voice-over commentary by Seymour Cassel. Then, in 2014, the Faces/Jumer library became the property of Shout! Factory, which acquired the films' holding parent company, Westchester Films.\nCassavetes' son Nick followed in his father's footsteps as an actor and director, adapting the \"She's Delovely\" screenplay his father had written into the 1997 film \"She's So Lovely\", which starred Sean Penn, as John Cassavetes had wanted. Alexandra Cassavetes directed the documentary \"\" in 2004, and in 2006 served as 2nd Unit Director on her brother Nick's film, \"Alpha Dog\". Cassavetes' younger daughter Zoe wrote and directed the 2007 film \"Broken English\", featuring Rowlands and Parker Posey.\n\"The New Yorker\" wrote that Cassavetes \"may be the most influential American director of the last half century\"\u2014this in announcing that all the films he directed, plus others he acted in, were being screened in a retrospective tribute at the Brooklyn Academy of Music throughout July 2013. AllMovie called Cassavetes \"an iconoclastic maverick\".\nThe Independent Spirit Awards named one of their categories after Cassavetes, the Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award. A one-person show about John Cassavetes titled \"Independent\" premiered at Essential Theatre in Atlanta in August 2017. The play was written by John D. Babcock III and starred actor Dan Triandiflou as Cassavetes. The song \"What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?\" by the band Le Tigre is about misogynistic themes within John Cassavetes' films and whether they can still be praised after those themes are identified. The song \"Cassavetes\" by the band Fugazi parallels John Cassavetes' independence from the film industry with the band's own independence from the record industry. In concert, singer Guy Picciotto introduced it as \"a song about making your own road.\"\nFilmography.\nAs director\nAwards and nominations.\nAs a filmmaker, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for \"Faces\" (1968) and the Academy Award for Best Director for \"A Woman Under the Influence\" (1974). The Independent Spirit Awards named the John Cassavetes Award in his honor.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "76341": "Shadows (1959 film)\n1959 film by John Cassavetes\nShadows is a 1959 American independent drama film directed by John Cassavetes about race relations during the Beat Generation years in New York City. The film stars Ben Carruthers, Lelia Goldoni, and Hugh Hurd as three black siblings, though only one of them is dark-skinned enough to be considered African American. The film was initially shot in 1957 and shown in 1958, but a poor reception prompted Cassavetes to rework it in 1959. Promoted as a completely improvisational film, it was intensively rehearsed in 1957, and in 1959 it was fully scripted.\nThe film depicts two weeks in the lives of three siblings on the margins of society: two brothers who are struggling jazz musicians and their light-skinned younger sister who goes through three relationships, one with an older white writer, one with a shallow white lover, and finally one with a gentle young black admirer.\nFilm scholars consider \"Shadows\" a milestone of American independent cinema. In 1960, the film won the Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival.\nIn 1993, \"Shadows\" was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being \"culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant\". \nPlot.\nLight-skinned Ben, diffident and awkward, wants to be a jazz trumpeter, but spends most of his time drinking in Manhattan bars and trying to pick up girls with two fellow-idlers, Dennis and Tom. He is supported by his darker-skinned brother Hugh, a jazz singer who is unable to find much work because of his old-fashioned vocal style. Hugh's career is managed by Rupert.\nBen and Hugh live with their fair-skinned younger sister Lelia, who wants to be an artist. Recently, she has been under the wing of an older boyfriend, the intellectual David, who encourages her to write and attempts to be helpfully critical of her efforts. At a party, Lelia abandons David for a younger man, Tony, who coaxes her back to his apartment. Tony professes his love for Lelia, and, despite her apparent apprehension, he takes her virginity. Afterward, she is filled with ambivalence and regret about Tony and about her first sexual encounter, but they agree to continue dating. Seeing her home, he is shocked to discover that her family is black. Sensing his racial animosity, Hugh kicks Tony out of the apartment, as he does not want his sister dating a perceived bigot.\nHugh has some guests over, and a friend urges Lelia to flirt with a gentlemanly black man named Davey. She is distant and contrary, but she and Davey arrange to go on a date. When Davey comes to pick Lelia up, she makes him wait for hours while she gets ready. As they are walking out the door, Tony arrives. He is disappointed to see her already dating another man, and she exits past him without a word. Hugh and Tony nearly come to blows, but Ben intervenes and listens to an apologetic message that he promises to relay to Lelia, though, after Tony leaves, Ben laughs at Tony with Hugh and Rupert. Lelia and Davey go dancing, and she continues to be rude, but softens after Davey asserts himself.\nAt the train station, Rupert informs Hugh that one of the two bookings of Hugh's upcoming tour has been canceled. He vents his frustration about their state of affairs, and, for once, it is Hugh who says some encouraging words to lift Rupert's spirits, instead of the other way around. Smiling, the friends get on the train for a week's billing in Chicago.\nBen, Dennis, and Tom drunkenly clown around with some girls in a bar. When the girls' tough male dates come out of the bathroom, tensions flare, and the two sides take their argument outside, where Ben, Dennis and Tom are badly beaten up. Over a drink, Ben tells his friends that he is tired of their way of living. Tom heads home, and, while Dennis goes to buy some cigarettes, Ben wanders off alone down the nighttime New York City streets.\nProduction.\nThe idea for the film came from a classroom exercise. With acting coach Burt Lane (later the father of Diane Lane), Cassavetes was conducting classes for aspiring actors at the off-Broadway Variety Arts Theatre in Manhattan's Union Square neighborhood. The classes, listed as \"The Cassavetes-Lane Drama Workshop\", were Cassavetes' attempt to counter method acting, which was ascendant in New York theatre and film. A particular exercise became the core of the film: A young African-American woman who was very light-skinned dated a young white man, but he was repulsed when he discovered she had a black brother. Cassavetes determined to put the scene on film, so he began looking for funding. While ostensibly promoting the film \"Edge of the City\" on Jean Shepherd's \"Night People\" radio show on WOR in February 1957, Cassavetes said he could make a better film than could director Martin Ritt. He pitched the drama workshop idea to Shepherd's radio audience. Cassavetes was surprised when listeners sent about $2,000 to start the project. Money also came from Cassavetes' friends, including Hedda Hopper, William Wyler, Joshua Logan, Robert Rossen, Jos\u00e9 Quintero, and Cassavetes' agent Charlie Feldman. Cassavetes hired German cinematographer Erich Kollmar as cameraman, the only crew member except Cassavetes with any experience in film.\nUsing student actors from the Cassavetes-Lane Drama Workshop, shooting started in February 1957 in a largely improvised form. Cassavetes composed an outline for the film, but not a script. Cassavetes and assistant director/producer Maurice McEndree gave detailed instructions to the actors, constraining the situation to guide the story, with the words and the movements improvised by the actors. Cassavetes intended the story to evolve from the characters rather than vice versa. Three initial weeks of work was thrown out, the first week because of technical problems with quality, and the next two weeks because Cassavetes felt that the actors were talking too much. After they had developed their characters to the point at which they could portray emotion in silence, the actors improvised with more clarity and with a level of truth that Cassavetes found revealing. He was a demanding director who required a critical romantic scene to be performed more than 50 times before he was satisfied with the results. About 30 hours of film was exposed during several months of off-and-on shooting.\nFilming took place in various locations, including inside the apartment that Cassavetes shared with his wife Gena Rowlands, and on the streets of New York. Using a 16\u00a0mm camera borrowed from Shirley Clarke, and monochrome film stock, Kollmar was forced to shoot scenes in which the actors could move in any direction they wished, making for unpredictable zoom and focus requirements. No filming permits were obtained, so the cast and crew were necessarily ready to pack quickly and leave a location. The lighting was a general wash rather than specific effects. The microphone was placed by Jay Crecco (who was also an actor in the film), and dialogue was recorded to tape with street noises intruding. Even though Cassavetes said \"print it!\" after he was satisfied with a scene, there was nobody on the crew keeping track of the film takes, so all of the exposed film had to be printed. The editing of the film was made much more difficult by the lack of notes taken during shooting, and by the sound recorded \"wild\" on tape, not synchronized with the film. The microphone failed to pick up some of the dialogue, requiring lip-readers to watch the footage and write down what had been said so that the actors could re-record their dialogue. Editors Len Appelson, Maurice McEndree and Wray Bevins began work while shooting was still under way, editing the film in an office next door to the Variety Arts Theatre, the office that is seen hosting a rock 'n roll party in the film. Primary photography was finished by mid-May 1957, with of film exposed, but the editing took more than a year. Cassavetes was not available during much of this time; starting in June, he was on location working as an actor first in \"Saddle the Wind\", then in \"Virgin Island\" (both 1958). At the end of 1957, the editors moved to a professional editing suite to complete the task.\nCassavetes intended to have the jazz music of Charles Mingus on the soundtrack, but Mingus composed a number of songs that could stand on their own rather than impressionistic film music to follow the story. Three hours of Mingus and his band were recorded, and much of this material was placed in the first version of \"Shadows\", screened in 1958, but almost all of it was removed during the 1959 reworking of the film. Two of Mingus' compositions for the film were subsequently included on the 1959 album \"\".\n1958 screening.\nThe film was finished late in 1958, printed onto 16\u00a0mm stock, and three free screenings were announced by Shepherd on his radio show. Cassavetes overestimated the audience; only about 100 people showed up for each of the midnight showings at Manhattan's Paris Theater, which could hold almost 600 people. At the first showing, there were initial problems with the sound, which were remedied. Some of the audience members were friends and colleagues of Cassavetes; he later said that 90% of them disliked the film. A number of people walked out before the film ended, including Burt Lane, who had coached most of the cast. Assistant cameraman Al Ruban told Cassavetes that the film was \"okay in a kind of naive way\". Cassavetes' father told him it was a \"pure\" film, not a good film. Cassavetes thought it was \"totally intellectual\" and thus \"less than human\". The poor reception made him decide that the film should be radically reworked.\nHowever, avant-garde film critic Jonas Mekas highly praised the film, writing in the January 1959 issue of \"Film Culture\" that \"Shadows\" \"presents contemporary reality in a fresh and unconventional manner... The improvisation, spontaneity, and free inspiration that are almost entirely lost in most films from an excess of professionalism are fully used in this film.\" The magazine, founded by Mekas and his brother, bestowed upon \"Shadows\" its first \"Independent Film Award\". Mekas then arranged to have the film shown six more times at the Young Men's Hebrew Association.\n1959 reworking.\nCassavetes shot new scenes in 1959 using a script that he co-wrote with Robert Alan Aurthur. The racial prejudice angle was reduced, and the three main characters were given more complications, as well as more time exploring their connectedness. With financing from Nikos Papatakis and others, Cassavetes reassembled the required members of the cast and crew. Half to two-thirds of the original footage was replaced, which angered those whose work was diminished. A 16\u00a0mm print was struck, and the new version was shown on November 11, 1959, at Amos Vogel's avant-garde Cinema 16, on a double bill with the 30-minute beat poetry film \"Pull My Daisy\".\nThe first version was an ensemble performance, while the second version put more emphasis on Lelia. The revelation that she was African-American came much earlier in the second version. The first version had more of a conventional narrative, but its pace was slow in sections. It also contained a number of technical flaws, such as lip-sync errors. Lelia's date with Tony was greatly altered: in the first version, she only talks with him, but in the second version, she loses her virginity to him. The first version had more scenes of Ben and his friends hanging around Times Square. Actor Anthony Ray, the son of famous director Nicholas Ray, had top billing in the first version, playing the part of Lelia's date Tony, but in the second version, this billing was reduced to reflect his diminished screen time. His character was given greater dignity in the second version.\nA major difference between the two versions was that Mingus' music was featured more in the first version, but the music was incongruously paired with the visuals, according to film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum. For the second version, Cassavetes replaced almost all of the Mingus recordings. For example, he removed a section in which a muted trumpet replaces the speech of character Tony on the phone, the sound mocking him. Another removed part involves the Mingus band shouting out a snatch of the gospel song \"Leaning on the Everlasting Arms\" during a scene in which Ben and his friends are recovering from a brutal fight. The first version also uses two Frank Sinatra songs that are not in the second version because Cassavetes could not obtain the rights. Mingus's saxophonist Shafi Hadi, previously known as Curtis Porter, provided most of the second version's soundtrack, expanding on a short passage that Mingus had written. Hadi was directed in his improvisation by Cassavetes, who acted out all the parts for him in the recording studio.\nAnother difference between the versions is that Ben's statement \"I've learned a lesson\" comes at the end of the second version, conveying to the viewer that Ben will improve himself after receiving such a cruel beating. This brings a sense of moral closure to the film. In the first version, the fight and Ben's statement appear halfway through the film, following which he is shown doing the same things again, having failed to learn his lesson. Thus, Ben is portrayed as unlikely ever to change his ways in the first version.\nReception.\nIn his December 1959 manifesto \"A Call for a New Generation of Film Makers\", Mekas said that \"Shadows\" was the start of a new movement that would inspire independent filmmakers, energize the flagging avant-garde film scene, and triumph over the commercial Hollywood film industry. Even so, he was upset that the film had been reworked. In January 1960, he wrote in his movie-review column in \"The Village Voice\" that the 1959 version was commercialized, \"just another Hollywood film\", and that everything he had praised in the first version had been \"completely destroyed\". Later in his life, he said that the first version should have never been remade, but that the second version was a better indication of the direction in which Cassavetes was going as a filmmaker.\n\"Shadows\" was given the Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival. Cassavetes obtained distribution through British Lion in 1961.\nLegacy.\nThe film was shocking to American audiences in the late 1950s and early 1960s because it turned the \"concept of race upside down\". Two of the principal actors portraying African-Americans were not actually black: Goldoni was born in the U.S. to Sicilian parents, fully European in heritage, and Carruthers was only one-sixteenth black. Carruthers used a sunlamp to darken his skin during the 1957 shooting of the film, but in 1959 for the new scenes, he abandoned this effort. Carruthers and Goldoni were married in 1960, but quickly divorced.\nAfter \"Shadows\" was honored by the Venice Film Festival, the international publicity helped it become the first American film to see success outside of the Hollywood system. It joined \"Pull My Daisy\" and Shirley Clarke's \"The Connection\" to establish a new wave of American independent films.\nIn 1994, film critic Leonard Maltin said the film \"was considered a watershed in the birth of American independent cinema\".\n2003 rediscovery.\nThe second version of the film, the result of the reshooting and reworking Cassavetes did in 1959, is the one that Cassavetes considered to be the final product, and he refused to show the 1958 version. In time, he lost track of the first version's only print, and for decades it was believed to have been lost or destroyed. In the 1980s, Cassavetes said he may have donated the film to a school far away. In fact, the 16\u00a0mm print of the first version had been left on a New York City subway train, taken to the subway's lost-and-found department, and then purchased by a second-hand-goods shop owner as part of a box of unclaimed items. The shop owner saw \"Shadows\" scratched into the leader on the first reel, but he did not recognize the film's name. The shop eventually went out of business, and the owner retired. The reels of film were stored in an attic in Florida, and, in November 2003, they were given by the shop owner's daughter to film professor Ray Carney, who had been searching for the print of the first version of \"Shadows\" since the 1980s. A digital copy was shown at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in late January 2004. Since then, few people have seen this version, as Rowlands and the Cassavetes estate have been involved in a legal dispute regarding Carney's use of the film.\nReferences.\nNotes\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading"}, "descending_order": ["76341", "273777"], "permutation_1": ["76341", "273777"], "permutation_2": ["76341", "273777"], "permutation_3": ["273777", "76341"]}
{"id": "2hop__79744_159536", "docs_added": {"6281193": "List of Real Madrid CF records and statistics\nReal Madrid Club de F\u00fatbol is a Spanish professional association football club based in Madrid. The club was formed in 1902 as \"Madrid Football Club\", and played its first competitive match on 13 May 1902, when it entered the semi-final of the Campeonato de Copa de S.M. Alfonso XIII. Real Madrid currently plays in the Spanish top-tier La Liga, having become one of the founding members of that league in 1929, and is one of three clubs, the others being Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao, to have never been relegated from the league. They have also been involved in European football ever since they became the first Spanish club to enter the European Cup in 1955, except for the 1977\u201378 and 1996\u201397 seasons.\nThis list encompasses the major honours won by Real Madrid and records set by the club, their managers and their players. The player records section includes details of the club's leading goalscorers and those who have made most appearances in first team competitions. It also records notable achievements by Real Madrid players on the international stage, and the highest transfer fees paid and received by the club.\nThe club currently holds the record for the most European Cup / UEFA Champions League triumphs, with 15, and the most La Liga titles, with 36. Additionally, Real has won the Copa del Rey 20 times, the Supercopa de Espa\u00f1a 13 times, the Copa de la Liga once, the Copa Eva Duarte once, the UEFA Cup twice, the European/UEFA Super Cup six times, the Intercontinental Cup three times, the FIFA Intercontinental Cup one time, the FIFA Club World Cup five times, the Latin Cup twice and Copa Iberoamericana once. Powered by its fifteen European Cups, Real Madrid have a distinction of being the most successful club in terms of international titles, having amassed 35 pieces of silverware, more than any other team in the world. On the domestic front, its 71 titles rank second to Barcelona. The club's record appearance maker is Ra\u00fal, who made 741 appearances from 1994 to 2010; the club's record goalscorer is Portuguese forward Cristiano Ronaldo, who scored 450 goals in 438 appearances through all competitions from 2009 to 2018.\nPlayers.\nAppearances.\nMost appearances.\n\"Competitive, professional matches only. Including substitutes. Players in italics are still active outside the club.\"\n\"As of 1 April 2025.\"\nGoalscorers.\nMost goals.\n\"Competitive, professional matches only. Total appearances are shown in parentheses. Players in italics are still active outside the club.\"\n\"As of 4 June 2023.\"\nIn a single season.\nThis table lists players who have scored more than 40 goals in a single season. Ordered by goals scored and by season.\nAssists.\nMost assists.\nNotes: The criteria for an assist to be awarded may vary according to the source, the following stats is based on the assists criteria according to Opta, where assists are not counted for balls that are deflected or rebounded off opposing players and have clearly affected the trajectory of the ball and its arrival to the recipient (the goal scorer). Assists are also not counted for penalty kicks, direct goals from corners or free kicks, or own goals. These statistics include assists in all official matches from 1902 to the present day. This information is gathered according to official sources, reports, and reliable records in club, association, and press archives. At least 100 assists.\nWins.\nMost matches wins.\n\"Competitive, professional matches only. Including substitutes. Players in italics are still active outside the club.\"\n\"As of 29 March 2025.\"\nTransfers.\nHighest transfer fees paid.\nReal Madrid's record signing is Jude Bellingham. Bellingham signed for the club from Borussia Dortmund for a total of \u00a388.5 million in June 2023, according to media reports.\nHighest transfer fees received.\nCristiano Ronaldo's transfer to Juventus in 2018 remains the club's record sale. Ronaldo was also their record transfer at the time of his move to Madrid in 2009.\nManagers.\nAppearances.\n\"Competitive, professional matches only. Bold indicates manager is still active at club level. As of 1 April 2025.\"\nMost wins.\n\"Competitive, professional matches only. Bold indicates manager is still active at club level. As of 29 March 2025.\"\nHonours.\nUnofficial.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nIn 2017, Real Madrid received the Nine Values Cup, an award of the international children's social programme Football for Friendship.\nAwards.\nPlayers Awards.\nBallon d'Or (1956\u2013).\nThe following players have won the Ballon d'Or while playing for Real Madrid:\nFIFA World Player of the Year (1991\u20132009).\nThe following players have won the FIFA World Player of the Year award while playing for Real Madrid:\nThe Best FIFA Men's Player (2016\u2013).\nThe following players have won The Best FIFA Men's Player while playing for Real Madrid:\nEuropean Golden Shoe.\nThe following players have won the European Golden Shoe while playing for Real Madrid:\nUEFA Club Footballer of the Year (1998\u20132010).\nThe following players have won the UEFA Club Footballer of the Year award while playing for Real Madrid:\nUEFA Best Player in Europe Award (2011\u2013).\nThe following players have won the UEFA Best Player in Europe Award while playing for Real Madrid:\nPichichi winners.\nThe following Real Madrid players have won the Pichichi Trophy:\nZamora winners.\nThe following Real Madrid players have won the Ricardo Zamora Trophy:\nManagers awards.\nFIFA World Coach of the Year / The Best FIFA Football Coach.\nThe following managers have won the FIFA World Coach of the Year / The Best FIFA Football Coach while managing Real Madrid:\nIFFHS World's Best Club Coach winners.\nThe following managers have won the IFFHS World's Best Club Coach while managing Real Madrid:\nJohan Cruyff Trophy (2024\u2013).\nThe following managers have won the Men's Johan Cruyff Trophy while managing Real Madrid:\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "623737": "Cristiano Ronaldo\nPortuguese footballer (born 1985)\nCristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro (; born 5 February 1985) is a Portuguese professional footballer who plays as a forward for and captains both Saudi Pro League club Al Nassr and the Portugal national team. Nicknamed CR7, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, and has won numerous individual accolades throughout his professional footballing career, including five Ballon d'Or awards, a record three UEFA Men's Player of the Year Awards, four European Golden Shoes, and was named five times the world's best player by FIFA. He has won 33 trophies in his career, including seven league titles, five UEFA Champions Leagues and the UEFA European Championship. Ronaldo holds the records for most goals (140) and assists (42) in the Champions League, goals (14) and assists (8) in the European Championship, and most international appearances (219) and international goals (136). He is one of the few players to have made over 1,200 professional career appearances, the most by an outfield player, and has scored over 900 official senior career goals for club and country, making him the top goalscorer of all time.\nRonaldo began his senior career with Sporting CP, before signing with Manchester United in 2003, winning the FA Cup in his first season. He went on to become a star player at United, as they won three consecutive Premier League titles, the Champions League and the FIFA Club World Cup; his 2007-08 season earned him his first Ballon d'Or, aged 23. Ronaldo was the subject of the then-most expensive association football transfer when he signed for Real Madrid in 2009 in a transfer worth \u20ac94\u00a0million (\u00a380\u00a0million). He was integral to Madrid becoming a dominant force again, as they won four Champions Leagues from 2014 to 2018, including \"La D\u00e9cima\". He won back-to-back Ballon d'Or awards in 2013 and 2014, and again in 2016 and 2017, and was runner-up three times behind Lionel Messi, his perceived career rival. He also became the club's all-time top goalscorer and finished as the Champions League's top scorer for six consecutive seasons between 2012 and 2018. With Madrid, Ronaldo's additional titles include two La Liga titles, including a record-breaking title win in 2011-12, and two Copas del Rey. In 2018, following issues with the Madrid hierarchy, Ronaldo made a surprise transfer to Juventus in a transfer worth an initial \u20ac100\u00a0million (\u00a388\u00a0million). He won several trophies in Italy, including two Serie A titles and a Coppa Italia, and broke several records for Juventus. He returned to United in 2021; despite a collectively disappointing season, Ronaldo's individual performances earned him being included in the PFA Team of the Year at 37 years old. His contract was terminated in 2022 due to a fall out with the newly appointed manager, and in 2023 he signed for Al Nassr, a move that has since been widely credited for revolutionising football in Saudi Arabia.\nRonaldo made his international debut for Portugal in 2003 at the age of 18 and has earned more than 200 caps, making him history's most-capped male player. Ronaldo has played in eleven major tournaments and scored in ten; he scored his first international goal at Euro 2004, where he helped Portugal reach the final and subsequently made the team of the tournament. In the 2006 FIFA World Cup, his first World Cup, he was a focal part to Portugal ultimately finishing in fourth place. He assumed captaincy of the national team in July 2008 ahead of Euro 2008; four years later, at Euro 2012, he was named to the team of the tournament. In 2015, Ronaldo was named the best Portuguese player of all time by the Portuguese Football Federation. The following year, he led Portugal to their first major tournament title at Euro 2016, being named in the team of the tournament for the third time and receiving the Silver Boot as the second-highest goalscorer of the tournament. This achievement saw him receive his fourth Ballon d'Or. In 2018, Ronaldo had his most prolific World Cup campaign and was voted in the Fan Dream Team. He led his country to victory in the inaugural UEFA Nations League in 2019, receiving the top scorer award in the finals, and also received the Golden Boot as top scorer of Euro 2020. In the 2022 World Cup, he became the first player to score at five World Cups.\nOne of the world's most marketable and famous athletes, Ronaldo was ranked the world's highest-paid athlete by \"Forbes\" in 2016, 2017, 2023, and 2024 and the world's most famous athlete by ESPN from 2016 to 2019. He is the first footballer and the third sportsman to earn US$1 billion in his career. \"Time\" included him on their list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2014. Ronaldo is the most popular sportsperson on social media: he counts over 1\u00a0billion total followers across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram, making him the first person to achieve that feat. Ronaldo was named in the UEFA Ultimate Team of the Year in 2015, the All-time UEFA Euro XI in 2016, and the Ballon d'Or Dream Team in 2020. In recognition of his record-breaking goalscoring success, he received special awards for Outstanding Career Achievement by FIFA in 2021 and Champions League All-Time Top Scorer by UEFA in 2024.<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nEarly life.\nCristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro was born on 5 February 1985 in the S\u00e3o Pedro parish of Funchal, the capital of the Portuguese island of Madeira, and grew up in the nearby parish of Santo Ant\u00f3nio. He is the fourth and youngest child of Maria Dolores dos Santos Viveiros Aveiro, who worked as a cook in the hospitality industry and a cleaning woman, and Jos\u00e9 Dinis Aveiro, a municipal gardener at the \"Junta de Freguesia\" of Santo Ant\u00f3nio and part-time kit man for football club Andorinha. His great-grandmother on his father's side, Isabel da Piedade, an African woman, was born in the island of S\u00e3o Vicente, in what was then Portuguese Cape Verde, and moved to Madeira Island at 16. He has one older brother, Hugo, and two older sisters, Elma and Liliana C\u00e1tia \"K\u00e1tia\". He was named after actor and U.S. President Ronald Reagan, whom his father was a fan of. His mother revealed that she wanted to abort him due to poverty, his father's alcoholism, and having too many children already, but her doctor refused to perform the procedure. Ronaldo grew up in an impoverished Catholic home, sharing a room with all his siblings.\nAs a child, Ronaldo played for Andorinha from 1992 to 1995, where his father was the kit man, and later spent two years with Nacional. In 1997, aged 12, he went on a three-day trial with Sporting CP, who signed him for a fee of \u00a31,500. He subsequently moved from Madeira to Lisbon to join Sporting CP's youth system. By age 14, while struggling with his school duties and responsibilities in Escola EB2 de Telheiras, his school in the Telheiras area of Lisbon, Ronaldo believed he had the ability to play semi-professionally and agreed with his mother and his tutor at Sporting CP, Leonel Pontes, to cease his education to focus entirely on football. With a troubled life as a student, and although living in Lisbon area away from his Madeiran family, he did not complete schooling beyond the 6th grade. While popular with other students at school, he had been expelled after throwing a chair at his teacher, who he said had \"disrespected\" him. One year later, he was diagnosed with tachycardia, a condition that could have forced him to give up playing football. Ronaldo underwent heart surgery where a laser was used to cauterise multiple cardiac pathways into one, altering his resting heart rate. He was discharged from the hospital hours after the procedure and resumed training a few days later. In 2021, Cristiano Ronaldo's mother, Dolores Aveiro, stated in an interview for Sporting CP's official television channel (Sporting TV) that her son would be a bricklayer if he had not become a professional football player.\nGrowing up, Ronaldo idolised the Brazilian footballers Ronaldinho and Ronaldo Naz\u00e1rio, and has described them as leaving \"a beautiful history in football\".\nClub career.\nSporting CP.\nAfter impressing in Sporting's youth teams, he was promoted to the main team by first-team manager L\u00e1szl\u00f3 B\u00f6l\u00f6ni. At age 17, on 14 August 2002, he played his first official match for the first team, in a UEFA Champions League qualifying round at Jos\u00e9 Alvalade Stadium against Inter Milan, and his Primeira Liga debut, took place a month later against Braga, and on 7 October, he scored two goals against Moreirense in their 3\u20130 win. Over the course of the 2002\u201303 season, his representatives suggested the player to Liverpool manager G\u00e9rard Houllier and Barcelona president Joan Laporta. Manager Ars\u00e8ne Wenger, who was interested in signing Ronaldo, met with him at Arsenal's stadium in November to discuss a possible transfer.\nManchester United manager Alex Ferguson was determined to acquire Ronaldo on a permanent move urgently, after Sporting defeated United 3\u20131 at the inauguration of the Est\u00e1dio Jos\u00e9 Alvalade on 6 August 2003. Initially, United had planned to sign Ronaldo and loan him back to Sporting for a year. Having been impressed by him, the United players urged Ferguson to sign him. After the game, Ferguson said Ronaldo was \"one of the most exciting young players\" he had ever seen.\nManchester United.\n2003\u20132007: Development and breakthrough.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"There have been a few players described as 'the new George Best' over the years, but this is the first time it's been a compliment to me.\"\n\u2014Former Manchester United player George Best hails the 18-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo in 2003.\nOn 12 August 2003, less than a week after the friendly that impressed Ferguson, Manchester United signed Ronaldo for \u00a312\u00a0million, an England record for a teenager. This also made him the first Portuguese player to sign for the club.\nAlthough he requested the number 28, his number at Sporting, he received the squad number 7 shirt, which had previously been worn by such United players as George Best, Eric Cantona and David Beckham. Wearing the number 7 became an extra source of motivation for Ronaldo. A key element in his development during his time in England proved to be Ferguson, of whom he later said: \"He's been my father in sport, one of the most important and influential factors in my career.\"\nRonaldo made his debut as a substitute in a 4\u20130 home win over Bolton Wanderers in the Premier League on 16 August 2003. His performance earned praise from Best, who hailed it as \"undoubtedly the most exciting debut\" he had ever seen. Ronaldo scored his first goal for Manchester United with a free-kick in a 3\u20130 win over Portsmouth on 1 November. On 15 May 2004, in a victory against Aston Villa, Ronaldo scored the opening goal and later received the first red card of his career. Ronaldo ended his first season in English football with a trophy, scoring the opening goal in United's 3\u20130 win over Millwall in the 2004 FA Cup Final. BBC pundit Alan Hansen described him as the star of the final. The British press had been critical of Ronaldo during the season for his \"elaborate\" step-overs in trying to beat opponents, but teammate Gary Neville said he was \"not a show pony, but the real thing\", and predicted he would become a world-class player.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"He has got the tricks and party pieces, we know that, but they're not much good unless there is something at the end of it all. We still have to remember, of course, that the lad is only 19 years of age. Considering that, you have to say he has got massive talent. His feet are mesmerising at times, and if he can couple that with some consistently good crossing, the future looks frightening.\"\n\u2014Former BBC pundit Alan Hansen commenting on Ronaldo after his first season.\nAt the start of 2005, Ronaldo played two of his best matches of the 2004\u201305 season, producing a goal and an assist against Aston Villa and scoring twice against rivals Arsenal. Ronaldo won his second trophy in English football, the Football League Cup, after scoring the third goal in United's 4\u20130 final win over Wigan Athletic.\nDuring his third season in England, Ronaldo was involved in several incidents. Ronaldo clashed with a teammate, striker Ruud van Nistelrooy, who took offence at the winger's showboating style of play. Following the 2006 FIFA World Cup, in which he was involved in an incident where club teammate Wayne Rooney was sent off, Ronaldo publicly asked for a transfer, lamenting the lack of support he felt he had received from the club over the incident. United denied the possibility of him leaving the club. Although his World Cup altercation with Rooney resulted in Ronaldo being booed throughout the 2006\u201307 season, it proved to be his break-out year, as he broke the 20-goal barrier for the first time and won his first Premier League title.\n2007\u20132009: Collective and individual success and Ballon d'Or.\nIn the 2006\u201307 season, he amassed a host of personal awards for the season, winning the Professional Footballers' Association's Player's Player, Fans' Player, Young Player of the Year awards, and the Football Writers' Association's Footballer of the Year award, becoming the first player to win all four main PFA and FWA honours. Ronaldo was named runner-up to Kak\u00e1 for the 2007 Ballon d'Or, and came third, behind Kak\u00e1 and Lionel Messi, in the running for the 2007 FIFA World Player of the Year award.\nRonaldo scored his first hat-trick for United in a 6\u20130 win against Newcastle United on 12 January 2008. His 31 league goals earned him the Premier League Golden Boot, as well as the European Golden Shoe, which made him the first winger to win the latter award. He additionally received the PFA Players' Player of the Year and FWA Footballer of the Year awards for the second consecutive season. United reached the final against Chelsea\nin Moscow on 21 May, where, despite his opening goal being negated by an equaliser and his penalty kick being saved in the shoot-out, United emerged victorious, winning 6\u20135 on penalties after a 1\u20131 draw at the end of 120 minutes. As the Champions League top scorer, Ronaldo was named the UEFA Club Footballer of the Year. With his 2008 Ballon d'Or and 2008 FIFA World Player of the Year, Ronaldo became United's first Ballon d'Or winner since Best in 1968, and the first Premier League player to be named the FIFA World Player of the Year.\nShortly after, Ronaldo was linked to a move to Real Madrid, United filed a tampering complaint with governing body FIFA over Madrid's alleged pursuit of their player, but they declined to take action. and he remained at United for another year. \nHis match-winning goal in the second leg against Porto, a 40-yard strike, earned him the inaugural FIFA Pusk\u00e1s Award, presented by FIFA in recognition of the best goal of the year; he later called it the best goal he had ever scored. United advanced to the final in Rome, where he made little impact in United's 2\u20130 defeat to Barcelona.\nReal Madrid.\n2009\u20132015: World record transfer and consecutive Ballon d'Or wins.\nIn 2009, Ronaldo transferred to Real Madrid for a then world record \u00a380\u00a0million. At least 80,000 fans attended his presentation at the Santiago Bernab\u00e9u, surpassing the 25-year record of 75,000 fans who had welcomed Diego Maradona at Napoli. Ronaldo said, \"This is the completion of my boyhood dream, to be a Real Madrid player.\"\nRonaldo made his La Liga debut against Deportivo La Coru\u00f1a on 29 August, scoring a penalty in a 3\u20132 home win. He scored in each of his first four league games, the first Madrid player to do so. His first Champions League goals for the club followed with two free kicks in the first group match against Z\u00fcrich. His strong start to the season was interrupted when he suffered an ankle injury in October while on international duty, which kept him sidelined for seven weeks. Despite scoring 33 goals in all competitions and contributing to Real Madrid's 96 points in La Liga, his first season with Madrid ended trophyless.\nFollowing Ra\u00fal's departure, Ronaldo was given No. 7 for the 2010\u201311 season and scored 53 goals, helping Madrid win the Copa del Rey, scoring the winning goal against rivals Barcelona in the \"El Cl\u00e1sico\", his first trophy with Madrid. He also became the first player in La Liga to score 40 goals. In addition to the Pichichi Trophy, Ronaldo won the European Golden Shoe for a second time, becoming the first player to win the award in different leagues.\nThe following season saw Ronaldo score 60 goals across all competitions, leading Madrid to their first league title in four years with a record 100 points and his runner-up finish to Lionel Messi in the 2011 FIFA Ballon d'Or. He scored his 100th league goal for Madrid in a 5\u20131 win over Real Sociedad on 24 March 2012, breaking the previous club record held by Ferenc Pusk\u00e1s. In the 2012\u201313 season, he scored his first hat-trick in the Champions League in a 4\u20131 win over Ajax. Four days later, he became the first player to score in six successive \"Cl\u00e1sicos\" when he hit a brace in a 2\u20132 draw at Camp Nou. His performances again saw Ronaldo voted second in the running for the 2012 FIFA Ballon d'Or, behind four-time winner Messi.\nFollowing the 2012\u201313 winter break, Ronaldo captained Madrid for the first time in an official match, scoring twice to lift 10-man Madrid to a 4\u20133 win over Sociedad on 6 January. He subsequently became the first non-Spanish player in 60 years to captain Madrid in \"El Clasico\" on 30 January, a match which also marked his 500th club appearance.\nIn 2013\u201314 season, Ronaldo was joined at the club by winger Gareth Bale and together with striker Karim Benzema, they formed an attacking trio popularly dubbed \"BBC\", an acronym of Bale, Benzema and Cristiano, and a play on the name of the British public service broadcaster, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). He continued prolific scoring, with 69 goals in 2013, winning the 2013 FIFA Ballon d'Or, and the FIFA World Player of the Year award, for the first time in his career.\nConcurrently with his individual achievements, Ronaldo enjoyed his greatest team success in Spain to date, as he helped Madrid win \"La D\u00e9cima\", their tenth European Cup, scoring a penalty in the 120th minute of the 4\u20131 final win over city rivals Atl\u00e9tico Madrid, becoming the first player to score in two European Cup finals for two different winning teams. As the competition's top goalscorer for the third time, with a record 17 goals, he was named the UEFA Best Player in Europe. Ronaldo scored 31 goals in 30 league games, which earned him the Pichichi and the European Golden Shoe, along with Liverpool's Luis Su\u00e1rez On 4 May, Ronaldo scored a back-heeled volley in the closing moments of the match against Valencia, voted goal of the season by the Liga Nacional de F\u00fatbol Profesional (LFP), giving him the Best Player in La Liga award.\nDuring the 2014\u201315 season, Ronaldo set a new personal best of 61 goals, and after winning the 2014 FIFA Club World Cup, Ronaldo received the 2014 Ballon d'Or, joining Johan Cruyff, Michel Platini and Marco van Basten as a three-time recipient. Madrid finished in second place in La Liga and exited at the semi-final stage in the Champions League. With 10 goals, he finished as top scorer for a third consecutive season, alongside Messi and Neymar. On 5 April, he scored five goals in a game for the first time in his career, including an eight-minute hat-trick, in a 9\u20131 rout of Granada. His 300th goal for his club followed three days later in a 2\u20130 win against Rayo Vallecano. He finished the season with 48 goals, winning a second consecutive Pichichi and the European Golden Shoe for a record fourth time.\n2015\u20132018: All-time Madrid top scorer and Fifth Ballon d'Or.\nCristiano Ronaldo became Real Madrid's all-time top scorer on 12 September 2015 against Espanyol, netting 230 goals in 203 matches, surpassing the previous record holder, Ra\u00fal. Ronaldo also became the all-time top scorer in the Champions League with a hat-trick in the first group match against Shakhtar Donetsk, having finished the previous season level with Messi on 77 goals. Two goals against Malm\u00f6 FF in a 2\u20130 away win on 30 September saw him reach the milestone of 500 career goals for club and country. He won the 2016 Ballon d'Or, his fourth, and the inaugural 2016 The Best FIFA Men's Player, a revival of the former FIFA World Player of the Year, largely owing to his success with Portugal in winning Euro 2016.\nIn the 2016\u201317 UEFA Champions League quarter-finals against Bayern in April, Ronaldo scored both goals in a 2\u20131 away win which saw him make history by becoming the first player to reach 100 goals in UEFA club competition. On 17 May, Ronaldo overtook Jimmy Greaves as the all-time top scorer in the top five European leagues, scoring twice against Celta de Vigo. He finished the season with 42 goals in all competitions as he helped Madrid to win their first La Liga title since 2012. In the Champions League Final, Ronaldo scored two goals in a 4\u20131 victory over Juventus to take him to 12 goals for the season, making him the competition's top goalscorer for the fifth straight season (sixth overall), as well as the first player to score in three finals in the Champions League era; the second goal was the 600th of his senior career. Madrid also became the first team to win back-to-back finals in the Champions League era.\nOn 23 October, his performances throughout 2017 saw him awarded The Best FIFA Men's Player award for the second consecutive year. A day later, Ronaldo won the 2017 Ballon d'Or, receiving his fifth-time award on the Eiffel Tower in Paris. On 3 April 2018, Ronaldo scored the first two goals in a 3\u20130 away win against Juventus in the quarter-finals of the 2017\u201318 UEFA Champions League, with his second goal being an acrobatic bicycle kick. Described as a \"PlayStation goal\" by Juventus defender Andrea Barzagli, with Ronaldo's foot approximately off the ground, it garnered him a standing ovation from the opposing fans in the stadium as well as a plethora of plaudits from peers, pundits and coaches. In the final on 26 May, Madrid defeated Liverpool 3\u20131, winning Ronaldo his fifth Champions League title, the first player to do so. He finished as the top scorer of the tournament for the sixth consecutive season with 15 goals. After the final, Ronaldo referred to his time with Madrid in the past tense, sparking speculation that he could leave the club.\nJuventus.\nRonaldo joined Juventus in 2018 for \u20ac100\u00a0million, the transfer was the highest ever for a player over 30 years old and the highest paid by an Italian club. Upon signing, Ronaldo cited his need for a new challenge as his rationale for departing Madrid, but later attributed the transfer to the lack of support he felt was shown by club president Florentino P\u00e9rez.\n2018\u20132020: Consecutive Serie A titles.\nOn 18 August, Ronaldo made his debut in a 3\u20132 away win against Chievo Verona. On 19 September, in his first Champions League match for Juve, he was sent off against Valencia, his first red card in 154 Champions League appearances. In the reverse (home) leg against Valencia, Cristiano won 100 Champions League matches, becoming the first ever player to do so.\nRonaldo won his first trophy with the club on 16 January 2019, the 2018 Supercoppa Italiana, after he scored the only goal from a header against AC Milan. On 10 February, Ronaldo scored in a 3\u20130 win over Sassuolo, the ninth consecutive away game in which he had scored in the league, equalling Giuseppe Signori's single season Serie A record of most consecutive away games with at least one goal. On 12 March, Ronaldo scored a hat-trick in a 3\u20130 home win against Atl\u00e9tico in the second leg of the Champions League round of 16, helping Juventus overcome a two-goal deficit to reach the quarter-finals. On 20 April, Ronaldo played in the \"scudetto\" clinching game against Fiorentina, as Juventus won their eighth successive title after a 2\u20131 home win, thereby becoming the first player to win league titles in England, Spain and Italy. With 21 goals and eight assists, Ronaldo won the league award for Most Valuable Player.\nOn 1 October, he reached several milestones in Juventus's 3\u20130 Champions League group stage win over Bayer Leverkusen including breaking Iker Casillas' record for most Champions League wins of all time. On 18 December, Ronaldo leapt to a height of , higher than the crossbar, to head the winning goal in a 2\u20131 away win against Sampdoria. He scored his first Serie A hat-trick on 6 January 2020, in a 4\u20130 home win against Cagliari and became only the second player to score hat-tricks in the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A. On 22 February, Ronaldo scored for a record-equalling 11th consecutive league game, alongside Gabriel Batistuta and Fabio Quagliarella, in what was his 1,000th senior professional game, a 2\u20131 away win against SPAL. On 22 June, he scored a penalty in a 2\u20130 away win over Bologna, overtaking Rui Costa to become the highest scoring Portuguese player in Serie A history. On 20 July, Ronaldo scored twice in a 2\u20131 home win over Lazio; his first goal was his 50th in Serie A. He became the first player in history to reach 50 goals in the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A, and becoming the second player after Edin D\u017eeko to score 50 goals in three of Europe's top five major leagues. Moreover, he became the oldest player, at the age of 35 years and 166 days, to score over 30 goals in one of the five top European leagues since Ronnie Rooke with Arsenal in 1948. On 26 July, Ronaldo scored the opening goal in a 2\u20130 home win over Sampdoria as Juventus were crowned Serie A champions for a ninth consecutive time. On 7 August, Ronaldo scored a brace in a 2\u20131 home win against Lyon in the second leg of the Champions League round of 16, which saw him finish the season with 37 goals in all competitions; the tally allowed him to break Borel's club record of 36 goals in a single season.\n2020\u20132021: 100 Juve goals, \"Capocannoniere\", and departure.\nRonaldo played his 100th match in all competitions for Juventus on 13 December, scoring two penalties in a 3\u20131 away win over Genoa in the league to bring his goal tally to 79. On 2 March 2021, he scored a goal in a 3\u20130 win over Spezia in his 600th league match, to become the first player to score at least 20 goals in 12 consecutive seasons in the top five leagues of Europe. On 12 May, Ronaldo scored a goal in a 3\u20131 away win over Sassuolo to reach his 100th goal for Juventus in all competitions on his 131st appearance, becoming the fastest Juventus player to achieve the feat. With Juventus's victory in the 2021 Coppa Italia Final on 19 May, Ronaldo became the first player in history to win every major domestic trophy in England, Spain and Italy. Ronaldo ended the season with 29 league goals, winning the \"Capocannoniere\" award for highest goalscorer and becoming the first footballer to finish as top scorer in the English, Spanish and Italian leagues.\nThe start of the following season came amid reports Ronaldo would depart the club before the closure of the transfer window, despite Ronaldo and his agent Jorge Mendes reaching a verbal agreement with Manchester City over personal terms, but the club pulled out of the deal, and later it was confirmed that City's rivals Manchester United, Ronaldo's former club, were in advanced talks to sign him, while former manager Alex Ferguson and several ex-teammates had been in contact to persuade him to re-sign for United.\nReturn to Manchester United.\nOn 27 August 2021, Manchester United announced they had reached an agreement with Juventus to re-sign Ronaldo, subject to agreement of personal terms, visa and medical. Ronaldo was given the number 7 shirt after Edinson Cavani agreed to switch to 21. The first 24 hours of Ronaldo's shirt sales was reported to have broken the all-time record following a transfer, overtaking Messi after his move to Paris Saint-Germain.\nOn 11 September, Ronaldo made his second debut at Old Trafford, scoring the opening two goals in a 4\u20131 league victory against Newcastle United. On 29 September, he scored a last-minute winner in United's 2\u20131 victory at home to Villarreal in the Champions League, and overtook Iker Casillas as the player with the most appearances in the competition. Ronaldo proved to be crucial in the next Champions League fixtures, scoring various last minute goals to help United qualify for the round of 16 as group winners. On 2 December, Ronaldo netted two goals in a 3\u20132 home league win against Arsenal, which saw him surpass 800 career goals. Struggles ensued, with a fractured relationship with his teammates and interim manager, continuing for two months, until he scored in United's 2\u20130 win at home versus Brighton & Hove Albion on 15 February 2022, his first in the new year. He finished the season with 24 goals in all competitions being named in the Premier League Team of the Year and the winner of United's Sir Matt Busby Player of the Year award, but United finished in a disappointing sixth place and qualified for the UEFA Europa League; as a result, Ronaldo went trophyless for the first time since 2010.\nAfter growing dissatisfaction with the direction of United on and off the field, Ronaldo desired to leave to join a club competing in the Champions League, but a move failed to materialise, with various European clubs refusing a transfer, due to his age, overall cost of a transfer and high wage demands. Shortly after, he fell out with manager Erik ten Hag who used him as a substitute, leading United to terminate his contract on 22 November, following an interview with Piers Morgan, where Ronaldo said that he felt \"betrayed\" by Ten Hag and criticised the management of the club.\nAl Nassr.\nOn 30 December 2022, Saudi club Al-Nassr reached an agreement for Ronaldo to join the club, signing a contract until 2025. Ronaldo received the highest football salary ever, at \u20ac200 million per year, including a guaranteed football salary of \u20ac90 million, with commercial and sponsorship deals bringing his total annual salary to \u20ac200 million.\nHe made his debut for Al Nassr on 22 January 2023, as club captain, playing the full 90 minutes of a 1\u20130 win over Al-Ettifaq, and scored his first goal in a 2\u20132 draw against Al-Fateh by converting a last-minute penalty. On 9 February, Ronaldo scored all four goals in a 4\u20130 win over Al Wehda, his first goal of the match being his 500th career league goal. According to the BBC, Ronaldo's transfer to Al-Nassr led a \"revolution\" in Asian football, with many players from other leagues, particularly those in Europe, transferring to Saudi Pro League clubs for the 2023\u201324 season.\nIn the final of the Arab Club Champions Cup on 12 August, Ronaldo scored both goals as they defeated rivals Al-Hilal 2\u20131 after extra time. Ronaldo scored six goals in the competition. At the close of the year, Ronaldo scored 54 goals in all competitions for Al-Nassr and Portugal, making him the outright top scorer in 2023, reaching the same goalscoring record as in 2016. On 27 May 2024, in Al Nassr's home fixture against Al-Ittihad, Ronaldo scored his 34th and 35th league goals of the campaign, surpassing Abderrazak Hamdallah's record for the most goals scored in a single Saudi Pro League season. He also became the first footballer to finish as top scorer in four different leagues, the English, Spanish, Italian and Saudi leagues. On 31 May, in a 5\u20134 penalty shoot-out defeat to Al-Hilal in the 2024 King Cup final following a 1\u20131 draw after extra-time (in which he scored his side's second spot kick), he equalled Rog\u00e9rio Ceni's record for most top-level matches by a male professional footballer (1,225).\nInternational career.\nAt the age of 18, Ronaldo made his debut for Portugal as a substitute against Kazakhstan on 20 August 2003. At UEFA Euro 2004, he scored his first international goal in a 2\u20131 group stage loss to Greece in his eighth international appearance. Despite Portugal losing to Greece again in the final, Ronaldo made the team of the tournament, with two assists and two goals. In the 2006 FIFA World Cup, at the age of 21 years and 132 days, Ronaldo became the youngest ever goalscorer for Portugal at a World Cup finals. Portugal reached the semi-finals, where Portugal lost to France, with Ronaldo being booed during their defeat, due to an incident that occurred in the quarter-finals against England. FIFA's Technical Study Group overlooked him for the tournament's Best Young Player award and handed it to Germany's Lukas Podolski, citing his behaviour as a factor in the decision.\nOn 6 February 2007, Cristiano captained Portugal for the first time in a friendly against Brazil. He wore the number 7 shirt ahead of UEFA Euro 2008. Despite scoring eight goals in qualifications, the second-highest tally, he scored just one goal in the finals, netting the second goal of Portugal's 3\u20131 win in the group stage game against the Czech Republic. Portugal were eliminated in the quarter-finals after a 3\u20132 loss to Germany.\nRonaldo failed to score in 2010 World Cup qualifying. He scored only one goal in the 2010 World Cup finals; despite this, he was named man of the match in all three group stage matches, against Ivory Coast, North Korea and Brazil. His only goal of the tournament came in their 7\u20130 demolishing of North Korea, which was his first international goal in 16 months. Two years later, in UEFA Euro 2012, Ronaldo was joint top scorer with three goals, enough for him to be included in the team of the tournament. During qualification for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, Ronaldo scored eight goals. Despite this, Portugal did not qualify directly; Ronaldo scored all four goals against Sweden in the play-off to qualify. At the tournament in Brazil, Ronaldo assisted a last-minute 2\u20132 equaliser against the United States, and scored an 80th-minute winner in a 2\u20131 win over Ghana.\nIn 2016, Ronaldo led Portugal to their first-ever trophy at the UEFA Euro 2016, although he was subbed off in the 25th minute in the final against hosts France. He received the Silver Boot as the second-highest goalscorer, which gave him his fourth Ballon d'Or later that year. With the win, Portugal qualified and made its only appearance in the FIFA Confederations Cup held in Russia, where they finished in third place, with Ronaldo being named man of the match in all three of Portugal's group stage matches.\nIn the 2018 World Cup, Ronaldo became the oldest player to score a hat-trick in a World Cup match, in a 3\u20133 draw against Spain. The following match, Ronaldo scored the only goal in a 1\u20130 win against Morocco, breaking Pusk\u00e1s' record as the highest European goalscorer of all time, with 85 international goals. For his performances in the tournament, Ronaldo was named in the World Cup Dream Team.\nRonaldo led Portugal to victory in the inaugural UEFA Nations League in 2019, receiving the top scorer award in the finals, and received the Golden Boot as top scorer of Euro 2020. Ronaldo also became the first player to score at five European Championships. On 23 June 2021, Ronaldo scored two goals in the Euro 2020 match against France, breaking the men's goalscoring record previously held by Ali Daei.\nOn 9 October, he scored the opening goal in a 3\u20130 friendly win over Qatar at the Est\u00e1dio Algarve; with his 181st international appearance, he also overtook Sergio Ramos's record for the most international caps received by a European player. In the following match against Luxembourg on 12 October, also played at the Est\u00e1dio Algarve, Ronaldo scored a hat-trick in a 5\u20130 win for Portugal, thus becoming the first player to score 10 hat-tricks in men's international football.\nIn the 2022 World Cup, on 24 November, Ronaldo became the first player to score at five World Cups, netting a penalty against Ghana. Following a dispute with manager Fernando Santos, after their last group game against South Korea, he was dropped from the starting line-up for Portugal's last 16 match, marking the first time since Euro 2008 that he had not started a game for Portugal in a major international tournament, and the first time Portugal had started a knockout game without Ronaldo in the starting line-up at an international tournament since Euro 2000.\nOn 23 March 2023, Ronaldo scored a brace against Liechtenstein as he earned his 197th overall cap to become the most capped male footballer of all time. On 20 June, Ronaldo made his 200th appearance for his national team, scoring the only goal of an away win over Iceland, in the Euro qualifiers, as he became the first player in the history of men's international football to make 200 appearances for his country. On 16 October, Portugal secured first place in their qualifying group, following a 5\u20130 away victory over Bosnia and Herzegovina, with Ronaldo scoring twice. The landmark goals saw him score in more than 100 goals in each of the last three decades (2000s, 2010s, 2020s).\nWith his start in Portugal's UEFA Euro 2024 opener against the Czech Republic, Ronaldo became the first player to feature in six European Championships, having previously been the first player to appear in five. Later that year, on 5 September, he scored his 900th career goal in a 2\u20131 victory over Croatia in the UEFA Nations League.\nPlayer profile.\nStyle of play.\nA versatile attacker, Ronaldo is capable of playing on either wing as well as through the centre of the pitch, and, while ostensibly right-footed, is very strong with both feet. Tactically, Ronaldo has undergone several evolutions throughout his career. While at Sporting and during his first season at Manchester United, he was typically deployed as a traditional winger on the right side of midfield, where he regularly looked to deliver crosses into the penalty area. In this position, he was able to use his pace and acceleration, agility and technical skills to take on opponents in one-on-one situations. Ronaldo became noted for his dribbling and flair, often displaying an array of tricks and feints, such as the step overs and so-called 'chops' that became his trademark; he has also been known to use the flip-flap.\nHis strength and jumping ability, combined with his elevation, heading accuracy and height of , give him an edge in winning aerial duels. These attributes allow him to function as a target-man and make him an aerial goal threat in the penalty area; consequently, many of his goals have been headers. Ronaldo holds the record for the highest recorded jump in football history, measuring , which he achieved during a match against Manchester United while playing for Real Madrid in the round of 16 of the UEFA Champions League in 2013. Allied with his increased stamina and work-rate, his goalscoring ability improved drastically on the left wing where he was given the positional freedom to move into the centre to finish attacks. He has also increasingly played a creative role for his team, often dropping deep to pick up the ball, participate in the build-up of plays and create chances for his teammates, courtesy of his vision and passing ability.\nIn his final seasons at United, Ronaldo played an even more attacking and central role, functioning both as a striker and as a supporting forward, or even as an attacking midfielder on occasion. He developed into a prolific goalscorer, capable of finishing well both inside the penalty area and from distance with an accurate and powerful shot, courtesy of his striking ability. An accurate penalty kick taker, he also became a set piece specialist, renowned for his powerful, bending free kicks. When taking free kicks, Ronaldo is known for using the \"knuckleball\" technique, which was developed by Juninho Pernambucano. He also adopts a trademark stance before striking the ball, which involves him standing with his legs far apart. Regarding Ronaldo's unique style of taking free kicks, former United assistant manager Mike Phelan commented: \"People used to put the ball down, walk away, run up and hit it. He brought in a more dynamic showmanship. He places the ball down, the concentration level is high, he takes his certain amount of steps back so that his standing foot is in the perfect place to hit the ball in the sweet spot. He is the ultimate showman. He has that slight arrogance. When he pulls those shorts up and shows his thighs, he is saying 'All eyes on me' and this is going in. He understands the marketing side of it. The way he struts up and places it; the world is watching him.\"\nAt Real Madrid, Ronaldo continued to play a more offensive role, while his creative and defensive duties became more limited, although not entirely diminished. Initially deployed as a centre forward by managers Manuel Pellegrini and Jos\u00e9 Mourinho, he was later moved back onto the left wing, though in a free tactical role; this position allowed him to drift into the centre at will to get onto the end of crosses and score, or draw out defenders with his movement off the ball and leave space for teammates to exploit. Madrid's counter-attacking style of play also allowed him to become a more efficient and consistent player, as evidenced by his record-breaking goalscoring feats. While he mainly drew praise in the media for his prolific goalscoring, Ronaldo also demonstrated his ability as an effective creator in this role. This unique role has been described by pundits as that of a \"false\", \"attacking\", or \"goalscoring winger\", as Ronaldo effectively almost functioned as a striker at times with his central runs into the penalty area, despite actually playing on the left flank. From 2013 onwards, under manager Carlo Ancelotti, he effectively adapted his style to the physical effects of ageing with increasingly reduced off-the-ball movement and general involvement, completing fewer dribbles and passes per game, and instead focusing on short-distance creating and goalscoring. Since 2017, Ronaldo adapted his style of play yet again to become more of a free-roaming centre forward under manager Zinedine Zidane, a role in which he continued to excel and maintain a prolific goalscoring record; in this position, he earned praise in the media for his intelligent movement both on and off the ball, positional sense, link-up play and finishing, as well as his ability to lose or anticipate his markers, find space in the box and score from few touches or opportunities.\nIn his first season at Juventus, Ronaldo continued to play in a variety of different attacking roles under manager Massimiliano Allegri, depending on whom he was partnered with. While he had occupied an increasingly offensive role in his final years at Real Madrid, at times he functioned in a free role at Juventus, either as a lone striker or in his trademark role on the left wing, in a 4\u20132\u20133\u20131 or 4\u20133\u20133 formation, in which he often switched positions with Mario Mand\u017euki\u0107. In this role, he was also given licence to drop deep or even out wide onto the right flank to receive the ball, and be more involved in the build-up of plays; as such, aside from scoring goals himself, he began to take on opponents and create chances for other players with greater frequency than he had in his final seasons with Real Madrid. Off the ball, he was also capable of creating space for teammates with his movement and attacking runs into the box, or finishing off chances with his head or feet by getting onto the end of his teammates' crosses. On occasion he also played in an attacking partnership alongside Mand\u017euki\u0107 in a 4\u20133\u20131\u20132, 4\u20134\u20132, or 3\u20135\u20132 formation. He continued to play a similar role in his second season with the club under manager Maurizio Sarri.\nReception and image.\nRonaldo is widely regarded as one of the two best players of his generation, alongside Argentina forward Lionel Messi. Winning his first Ballon d'Or in 2008 by a record-high vote count at age 23, over the next decade Ronaldo has often featured in debates concerning who is the greatest player in history. Acclaimed for his prolific and consistent goal-scoring, he is considered a decisive player who is also a game changer, especially in important and high-pressured situations. In a 2018 article for \"Bleacher Report\", former NBA star Steve Nash compared Ronaldo to Michael Jordan: \"On the pitch, [Ronaldo's] learned how to make his play\u2014less explosive in individual movements\u2014more successful for the team, and in that, I see the greatness of Jordan.\" In the same article, Ronaldo was ranked first in the ranking of the 50 most influential people in sports culture for 2018.<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"In the six years we had him, you just saw his game grow all the time, and he was a fantastic player. Now you see the complete player. His decision-making, his maturity, his experience, plus all the great skills he has got, they all make him the complete player.\"\n \u2014Former manager Alex Ferguson, January 2013\nRonaldo is noted for his work ethic, elite body conditioning and dedication to improvement on the training pitch, as well being regarded as a natural leader. On his longevity and \"extraordinary commitment to physical preparation\", Adam Bate of Sky Sports said: \"Dedication is a huge part of staying at the top and Ronaldo's focus is perhaps unparalleled within the game.\" While stating they were stylistically different players who shared an equal desire to score goals, former Brazil international Ronaldo praised Cristiano's approach to training, arguing that \"there are so few players who take care of their body like he does. I trained because I had to, he does it because he loves it.\" His drive and determination to succeed are fuelled by a desire to be talked about alongside other greats such as Pel\u00e9 and Diego Maradona once retiring. He is credited, along with his compatriot, coach Jos\u00e9 Mourinho, with inspiring changing fortunes of Portuguese football in and . At times, he has been criticised for simulating when tackled. He was also occasionally criticised early in his career by manager Alex Ferguson, teammates and the media for being a selfish or overly flamboyant player. Jonathan Wilson of \"The Guardian\" opined that Ronaldo had made Juventus, who he joined aged 33 in 2018, weaker, due to \"his relative immobility\" in his mid-30s, even if his personal goal-scoring output remained high.\nDuring his career, Ronaldo has also been described as having an \"arrogant image\" on the pitch, with Ronaldo stating that he had become a \"victim\" because of how he was portrayed in the media. He is often seen moaning, gesticulating and scowling while trying to inspire his team to victory, with Ronaldo insisting that his competitive nature should not be mistaken for arrogance. His managers, teammates and various journalists have said that this reputation has caused an unfair image of him.\nGoal celebrations.\nRonaldo has adopted several goal celebrations throughout his career, including one particular celebration which gained widespread coverage in the media, when he squatted and stared directly into a camera on the sidelines of the pitch with his hand on his chin. After scoring a goal, he usually celebrates with a \"storming jump\" and \"turn\", before \"landing in spread-eagled fashion\" into his \"signature power stance\", while usually simultaneously exclaiming \"S\u00ed\" (Spanish and Italian for \"yes\"). This trademark celebration has been dubbed the \"Siu\" or siuuu in the media. It has also been known as \"suiii\", \"siiuuu\", \"siii\" or \"Right Here Right Now\", formally the Cristiano Ronaldo celebration. Since Ronaldo first performed the gesture in 2013, it has been widely imitated by athletes and personalities both in and outside of football when celebrating scoring in respective sports or a significant achievement, and is widely regarded as the most iconic association football celebration of all time.\nThe gesture was first performed by Ronaldo on 7 August, during the 2013 International Champions Cup Final between Real Madrid and Chelsea. Ronaldo gave Madrid a 2\u20131 lead with a free kick when he headed in a cross from Isco, helping Madrid beat Chelsea 3\u20131 to claim the International Champions Cup and celebrating with his first \"Siuuu\". During an interview after the match against Chelsea when he first performed the gesture, Ronaldo explained he scored the goal and \"it just felt natural\" and \"didn't know where it came from\". He started doing it more often and when the supporters see it they are reminded of him.\nThe phrase \"siu\" is derived from Portuguese \"sim\", meaning \"yes\". This was confirmed by Ronaldo in an interview in 2023, almost a decade since he first performed it. Ronaldo explained that the phrase \"Siuuu\" simply means yes, but \"meaning it very strongly\".\nRivalry with Lionel Messi.\nBoth Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have scored in multiple UEFA Champions League finals, have regularly broken the 50-goal barrier in a single season, and are the two leading goal scorers in history. Sports journalists and pundits regularly weigh the individual merits of both players in an attempt to argue who they believe is the best player in modern football or in the history of the game. It has been compared to several sports rivalries, among them the Muhammad Ali\u2013Joe Frazier rivalry in boxing, the Borg\u2013McEnroe rivalry in tennis and the Senna\u2013Prost rivalry from Formula One motor racing. Some commentators choose to analyse the differing physiques and playing styles of the two. Part of the debate revolves around the contrasting personalities of the two players, as Ronaldo is sometimes depicted as an arrogant and theatrical showoff, while Messi is portrayed as a shy, humble character.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"It's part of my life now. People are bound to compare us. He tries to do his best for his club and for his national team, as I do, and there is a degree of rivalry with both of us trying to do the best for the teams we represent.\"\n\u2014Ronaldo commenting on his rivalry with Messi.\nIn a 2012 interview, Ronaldo commented on the rivalry, saying: \"I think we push each other sometimes in the competition, this is why the competition is so high.\" Alex Ferguson, Ronaldo's manager during his time at Manchester United, opined: \"I don't think the rivalry against each other bothers them. I think they have their own personal pride in terms of wanting to be the best.\" Messi himself denied any rivalry, saying that it was \"only the media, the press, who wants us to be at loggerheads but I've never fought with Cristiano.\" Responding to the claims that he and Messi do not get on well on a personal level, Ronaldo commented: \"We don't have a relationship outside the world of football, just as we don't with a lot of other players.\" Ronaldo added that in years to come he hopes they can laugh about it together, stating: \"We have to look on this rivalry with a positive spirit, because it's a good thing.\" Representing archrivals Barcelona and Real Madrid, the two players faced each other at least twice every season in the world's biggest club game, \"El Cl\u00e1sico\", which is among the world's most viewed annual sporting events.\nIn a debate at Oxford Union in October 2013, when asked whether FIFA president Sepp Blatter preferred Messi or Ronaldo, Blatter paid tribute to the work ethic of the Argentine before taking a swipe at Ronaldo, claiming \"one of them has more expenses for the hairdresser than the other.\" Real Madrid demanded and promptly received a full apology. In response to Blatter's \"commander\" on the pitch comment, Ronaldo issued his own riposte with a mock-salute celebration after scoring a penalty against Sevilla. In August 2019, Ronaldo and Messi were interviewed while sat next to each other prior to the announcement of the UEFA Men's Player of the Year, with Ronaldo stating: \"I pushed him and he pushed me as well. So it's good to be part of the history of football.\"\nAfter Messi led Argentina to victory in the 2022 FIFA World Cup, a number of football critics, commentators and players have opined that Messi settled the debate between the two players. In September 2023, Ronaldo declared that his rivalry with Messi was over and \"gone\", after 36 official fixtures and 15 years of \"sharing the stage\".\nIn popular culture.\nPopularity and online following.\nRonaldo was named in the 2014 Time 100, \"Time\"'s annual list of the most influential people in the world. ESPN named Ronaldo the world's most famous athlete in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. Demand for a replica Ronaldo shirt has been high throughout his career. In 2008, Ronaldo's number 7 Manchester United shirt was the best-selling Premier League sports product. In 2015, Ronaldo's number 7 Real Madrid shirt was the second best-selling worldwide, after Messi's number 10 Barcelona shirt. In 2018, within 24 hours of his number 7 Juventus shirt being released, over 520,000 had been sold, with $62.4\u00a0million generated in one day.\nRonaldo has established a strong online presence. The most popular sportsperson on social media, he counted over 500\u00a0million total followers across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram by February 2021, making him the first person to pass half a billion followers. The most-followed person on Facebook (171\u00a0million), most-followed on Instagram (650\u00a0million) and most-followed sportsperson on Twitter (115\u00a0million), his sponsors earned $936\u00a0million in media value across his accounts between June 2016 and June 2017. After announcing the creation of his YouTube channel, UR Cristiano on 21 August 2024, it became the fastest to reach the 1 million subscribers milestone, doing so in 90 minutes. The channel also became the fastest to reach 5, 10, 20, 30 and 50 million subscribers. It also became the most subscribed channel in Portugal, surpassing the Portuguese Nick Jr. Computer security company McAfee produced a 2012 report ranking footballers by the probability of an internet search for their name leading to an unsafe website, with Ronaldo's name first on the list.\nWealth and sponsorships.\nWith earnings of \u20ac720\u00a0million (\u00a3615\u00a0million) from 2010 to 2019, Ronaldo was ranked second in \"Forbes\" list of the decade's highest-paid athletes, behind boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. \"Forbes\" twice ranked Ronaldo first on its list of the world's highest-paid football players; his combined income from salaries, bonuses and endorsements was $73\u00a0million in 2013\u201314 and $79\u00a0million in 2014\u201315. The latter earnings saw him listed behind only Mayweather on the magazine's list of The World's Highest-Paid Athletes. In 2016, he became the first footballer to top the \"Forbes\" list of highest-earning athletes, with a total income of $88\u00a0million from his salary and endorsements in 2015\u201316. He topped the list for the second straight year with earnings of $93\u00a0million in 2016\u201317. He is the first footballer and only the third sportsman to earn $1 billion in their career.\nRonaldo is one of the world's most marketable sportsmen: \"SportsPro\" rated him the fifth most marketable athlete in 2012 and eighth most marketable athlete in 2013. Sports market research company Repucom named Ronaldo the most marketable and most recognised football player in the world in May 2014. Since his reputation grew at Manchester United, Ronaldo has signed many sponsorship deals for consumer products, including sportswear, football boots; since November 2012, Ronaldo has worn the Nike Mercurial Vapor personalised CR7 edition, soft drinks, clothing, automotive lubricants, financial services, electronics, and video games. Ronaldo featured as the cover star of \"FIFA\" video game \"FIFA 18\" and was heavily involved in the game's promotion. His \"Sii\" goal celebration features in the \"FIFA\" series, accompanied with his own voiceover. He was also the face of \"Pro Evolution Soccer\", appearing on the covers of the 2008, 2012 and 2013 editions of the game.\nPhilanthropy.\nRonaldo has made contributions to various charitable causes throughout his career. Television footage of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami showed an eight-year-old boy survivor named Martunis wearing a Portuguese football shirt who was stranded for 19 days after his family was killed. Following this, Ronaldo visited Aceh, Indonesia, to raise funds for rehabilitation and reconstruction. After accepting undisclosed damages from a libel case against \"The Sun\" newspaper in 2008, Ronaldo donated the damages to a charity in Madeira. In 2009, Ronaldo donated \u00a3100,000 to the hospital that saved his mother's life in Madeira following her battle with cancer, so that they could build a cancer centre on the island. In support of the victims of the 2010 Madeira flood, Ronaldo pledged to play in a charity match in Madeira between Primeira Liga club Porto and players from Madeiran-based clubs Mar\u00edtimo and Nacional.\nIn 2012, Ronaldo and his agent paid for specialist treatment for a nine-year-old Canarian boy with apparently terminal cancer. In December 2012, Ronaldo joined FIFA's \"11 for Health\" programme to raise awareness among kids of how to steer clear of conditions including drug addiction, HIV, malaria, and obesity. In January 2013, Ronaldo became Save the Children's new Global Artist Ambassador, in which he hopes to help fight child hunger and obesity. In March 2013, Ronaldo agreed to be the ambassador for The Mangrove Care Forum in Indonesia, an organisation aiming to raise awareness of mangrove conservation.\nRonaldo was named the world's most charitable sportsperson in 2015 after donating \u00a35\u00a0million to the relief effort after the earthquake in Nepal which killed over 8,000 people. In June 2016, Ronaldo donated the entirety of his \u20ac600,000 Champions League bonus after Real Madrid won the competition. In August of the same year, Ronaldo launched CR7Selfie, a selfie app for charity to help Save the Children that lets participants take a selfie with him in one of several different outfits and poses.\nEponyms and honours.\nIn 2007, C.D. Nacional renamed its youth campus Cristiano Ronaldo Campus Futebol (Cristiano Ronaldo Football Campus). In December 2013, Ronaldo opened a museum, Museu CR7, in his hometown of Funchal, Madeira, to house trophies and memorabilia; the museum is an official sponsor of the local football team Uni\u00e3o da Madeira. At a ceremony held at the Bel\u00e9m Palace in January 2014, President of Portugal An\u00edbal Cavaco Silva raised Ronaldo to the rank of Grand Officer of the Order of Prince Henry \"to distinguish an athlete of world renown who has been a symbol of Portugal globally, contributing to the international projection of the country and setting an example of tenacity for future generations.\" In June 2015, astronomers led by David Sobral from Lisbon and Leiden discovered a galaxy which they named Cosmos Redshift 7 (CR7) in tribute to Ronaldo.\nOn 23 July 2016, following Portugal's triumph at Euro 2016, Madeira Airport in Funchal was renamed as Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport. The name change was subject to much debate locally by some politicians and citizens, who even started a petition against the move, an action criticised by President of Madeira Miguel Albuquerque. On 21 September 2020, the Sporting CP's football academy in Alcochete, until then called \"Academia Sporting\", was renamed \"Academia Cristiano Ronaldo\". In 2023, the Lisbon City Council approved awarding him, at the proposal of its president, Carlos Moedas, the Medal of Honor of the City, because he is \"a great Lisboner, in the sense of the passion he has for the city\".\nPublic art.\nIn June 2010, during the build-up to the World Cup, Ronaldo became the fourth footballer (after Steven Gerrard, Pel\u00e9, and David Beckham) to be represented as a waxwork at Madame Tussauds London. Another waxwork of him was presented at the Madrid Wax Museum in December 2013. A bronze statue of Ronaldo, designed by artist Ricardo Madeira Veloso, was unveiled in Funchal on 21 December 2014.\nThe unveiling of the rebranded Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport took place on 29 March 2017, which included a bust of his head being presented. The bust and the name change were controversial, with the lack of the bust's likeness to Ronaldo being ridiculed by comedians, including \"Saturday Night Live\", A year later, sports website Bleacher Report commissioned sculptor Emanuel Santos to create another bust; however, this bust was never used and a new one was made by a Spanish sculptor, shown to the public on 15 June 2018.\nBusiness ventures.\nRonaldo opened a fashion boutique under the name \"CR7\" (his initials and shirt number) on the island of Madeira in 2006 and opened a second in Lisbon in 2008. In partnership with Scandinavian manufacturer JBS Textile Group and the New York fashion designer Richard Chai, Ronaldo co-designed a range of underwear and sock line, released in November 2013. He expanded his \"CR7\" fashion brand by launching a line of premium shirts and shoes in July 2014. In September 2015, Ronaldo released his own fragrance, \"Legacy\", in a partnership with Eden Parfums. Since 26 October 2023, the new owners of Medialivre (\"Correio da Manh\u00e3\", \"Record\" and \"Jornal de Neg\u00f3cios\" publisher) are a group of investors that include Cristiano Ronaldo through Portuguese company Express\u00e3o Livre. In December 2011, he launched an iPhone game called \"Heads Up with Cristiano\", created by developer RockLive, and in December 2013, he launched \"Viva Ronaldo\", a dedicated social networking website and app.\nMedia.\nRonaldo's autobiography, titled \"Moments\", was published in 2007. His sponsor Castrol produced the television film \"Ronaldo: Tested to the Limit\", in which he was physically and mentally tested in several areas; his physical performance was subject to scrutiny by world media upon the film's release in September 2011. ', a documentary narrated by actor Benedict Cumberbatch, was released via Vimeo in June 2014. A documentary film directed by Anthony Wonke about his life and career, titled \"Ronaldo\", was released on 9 November 2015. He appears as a playable character in the 2025 fighting game '.\nPersonal life.\nFamily, children, and relationships.\nRonaldo has five living children. He first became a father to a son, who was born on 17 June 2010 in the United States. He has full custody of the child and has not publicly revealed the identity of the mother per an agreement with her. In January 2015, Ronaldo's five-year relationship with Russian model Irina Shayk ended.\nRonaldo became a father to twins, born on 8 June 2017 in the United States via surrogacy. He is currently in a relationship with Argentine-born Spanish model Georgina Rodr\u00edguez, who gave birth to a daughter on 12 November 2017. The couple expected another set of twins in 2022. The male twin died during childbirth while the female twin survived.\nRonaldo's father, Jos\u00e9, died of an alcoholism-related liver condition at age 52 in September 2005 when Ronaldo was 20.\nIn January 2023, after Ronaldo moved to Saudi Arabia with his family having been signed by Saudi Pro League side Al Nassr, the rulers of the Kingdom made Ronaldo an exception to the rule that unmarried couples are not allowed to live together in Saudi Arabia. An unnamed Saudi lawyer told Spanish news agency EFE that \"the laws of the Kingdom still prohibit cohabitation without a marriage contract\", but Saudi authorities have begun to \"turn a blind eye and stop prosecuting anyone, even though these laws are applied when there is a problem or a crime\".\nRonaldo is of (one-eighth) Cape Verdean descent through his great-grandmother. He is a Catholic.\nAfter her son achieved legendary status in world football, Cristiano Ronaldo's mother, Dolores Aveiro, became a popular personality in Portugal to such an extent that advertising campaigns for well-known brands in the country, such as Maggi, MultiOpticas and Pingo Doce, have featured her in commercials.\nHealth.\nRonaldo has said that he does not drink alcohol, and he received libel damages over a \"Daily Mirror\" article that reported him drinking heavily in a nightclub while recovering from an injury in July 2008. He also does not have any tattoos as he regularly donates blood and bone marrow.\nLegal issues.\nIn July 2017, Ronaldo was charged with fraudulently evading almost \u20ac15\u00a0million in tax between 2011 and 2014, a claim he denied at the time. In June 2018, Ronaldo was given a two-year suspended jail sentence and fined \u20ac18.8\u00a0million, later reduced to \u20ac16.8\u00a0million after reaching a deal with Spanish authorities. The sentence can be served under probation, without any jail time, so long as he does not re-offend.\nRonaldo and another man were investigated by the British Crown Prosecution Service after a 2005 rape allegation was brought forward by two women. Within days, the two women withdrew their allegation and Scotland Yard later issued a statement declaring there was not enough evidence for a prosecution.\nIn April 2017, it was reported that Ronaldo was being investigated by the Las Vegas Police Department for an allegation by a woman that he had raped her in 2009. Documents, confirmed by Ronaldo's lawyers, state that Ronaldo paid a woman US$375,000 in a non-disclosure settlement. Ronaldo and his lawyers issued a lengthy statement denying all accusations, describing them as an \"intentional defamation campaign\" with parts significantly \"altered and/or completely fabricated\", a claim which \"Der Spiegel\" categorically denied. In July 2019, Las Vegas prosecutors said they would not charge Ronaldo over allegations of rape; the statement added: \"Based upon a review of information at this time, the allegations of sexual assault against Cristiano Ronaldo cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.\" The same woman, in September 2018, filed a civil lawsuit in Nevada accusing Ronaldo of rape. \"The Daily Mirror\", citing court documents, reported in 2021 that the woman sought \u00a356\u00a0million in damages from Ronaldo. In October 2021, federal magistrate judge Daniel Albregts recommended that the lawsuit be dismissed, citing that the woman's lawyer, Leslie Stovall, \"acted in bad faith by asking for, receiving, and using Football Leaks documents to prosecute\" the case, despite the documents containing \"privileged communications\" between Ronaldo and his lawyers. Additionally, Albregts stated that no evidence was found of Ronaldo's lawyers having \"intimidated [the woman] or impeded law enforcement\" during the 2010 settlement with her. In June 2022, the woman's rape lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice in the United States District Court for the District of Nevada, as district judge Jennifer A. Dorsey ruled that Stovall's repeated use of \"cyber-hacked attorney\u2013client privileged documents\" were actions representing \"abuses and flagrant circumvention of the proper litigation process\".\n \"As of match played 14 March 2025\"\nCareer statistics.\nClub.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\n \"As of match played 23 March 2025\"\nInternational.\nNotes\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nHonours.\nSporting CP\nManchester United\nReal Madrid\nJuventus\nAl Nassr\nPortugal\nIndividual\nOrders\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["6281193", "623737"], "permutation_1": ["6281193", "623737"], "permutation_2": ["6281193", "623737"], "permutation_3": ["6281193", "623737"]}
{"id": "2hop__200030_159106", "docs_added": {"5559121": "Kapar\nTown in Klang District, Selangor, Malaysia\nKapar (Chinese: \u52a0\u57d4) is a town in Klang District, Selangor, Malaysia. It is 17 km (\u224811 miles) from Klang city via federal route 5.\nThe Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Power Station is located not far from the town. The Kapar River which flows nearby the town centre empties into the Straits of Malacca.\nEtymology.\nAccording to linguist Asmah Haji Omar, the name \"Kapar\" originated from the name of the Kampar kabupaten in Sumatra, Indonesia. According to her, it is also related to the name of the town Kampar found in the state of Perak, and also to the Iban expression which refers to a \"foreigner\" or \"outsider\".", "3607937": "Malaysia\nCountry in Southeast Asia\nMalaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. A federal constitutional monarchy, it consists of 13 states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions: Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo's East Malaysia. Peninsular Malaysia shares a land and maritime border with Thailand and maritime borders with Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia. East Malaysia shares land borders with Brunei and Indonesia, as well as a maritime border with the Philippines and Vietnam. Kuala Lumpur is the national capital, the country's largest city, and the seat of the legislative branch of the federal government.\nPutrajaya is the federal administrative capital, which represents the seat of both the executive branch (the Cabinet, federal ministries, and federal agencies) and the judicial branch of the federal government. With a population of over 34 million, the country is the world's 42nd-most populous country. Malaysia is tropical and is one of 17 megadiverse countries; it is home to numerous endemic species. Tanjung Piai in the Malaysian state of Johor is the southernmost point of continental Eurasia.\nThe country has its origins in the Malay kingdoms, which, from the 18th century on, became subject to the British Empire, along with the British Straits Settlements protectorate. During World War II, British Malaya, along with other nearby British and American colonies, was occupied by the Empire of Japan. Following three years of occupation, Peninsular Malaysia was briefly unified as the Malayan Union in 1946 until 1948 when it was restructured as the Federation of Malaya. The country achieved independence on 31 August 1957. On 16 September 1963, independent Malaya united with the then British crown colonies of North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore to become Malaysia. In August 1965, Singapore was expelled from the federation and became a separate, independent country.\nThe country is multiethnic and multicultural, which has a significant effect on its politics. About half the population is ethnically Malay, with minorities of Chinese, Indians, and indigenous peoples. The official language is Malaysian Malay, a standard form of the Malay language. English remains an active second language. It is also home to 111 living indigenous languages. While recognising Islam as the official religion, the constitution grants freedom of religion to non-Muslims. The government is modelled on the Westminster parliamentary system, and the legal system is based on common law. The head of state is an elected monarch, chosen from among the nine state sultans every five years. The head of government is the prime minister.\nThe country's economy has traditionally been driven by its natural resources but is expanding into commerce, tourism, and medical tourism. The country has a newly industrialised market economy, which is relatively open and state-oriented. The country is a founding member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the East Asia Summit (EAS), and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and a member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the Commonwealth, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).\nEtymology.\nThe name \"Malaysia\" is a combination of the word \"Malays\" and the Latin-Greek suffix \"-ia\"/-\u03af\u03b1 which can be translated as 'land of the Malays'. Similar-sounding variants have also appeared in accounts older than the 11th century, as toponyms for areas in Sumatra or referring to a larger region around the Strait of Malacca. The Sanskrit text \"Vayu Purana\", thought to have been in existence since the first millennium CE, mentioned a land named 'Malayadvipa' which was identified by certain scholars as the modern Malay Peninsula. Other notable accounts are by Ptolemy's 2nd-century \"Geographia\" that used the name \"Malayu Kulon\" for the west coast of Golden Chersonese, and the 7th-century Yijing's account of \"Malayu\".\nAt some point, the Melayu Kingdom took its name from the \"Sungai Melayu\". \"Melayu\" then became associated with Srivijaya, and remained associated with various parts of Sumatra, especially Palembang, where the founder of the Malacca Sultanate is thought to have come from. It is only thought to have developed into an ethnonym as Malacca became a regional power in the 15th century. Islamisation established an ethnoreligious identity in Malacca, with the term \"Melayu\" beginning to appear as interchangeable with \"Melakans\". It may have specifically referred to local Malay speakers who were loyal to the Malaccan Sultan. The initial Portuguese use of reflected this, referring only to the ruling people of Malacca. The prominence of traders from Malacca led \"Melayu\" to be associated with Muslim traders, and from there became associated with the wider cultural and linguistic group. Malacca and later Johor claimed they were the centre of Malay culture, a position supported by the British which led to the term \"Malay\" becoming more usually linked to the Malay peninsula rather than Sumatra.\nBefore the onset of European colonisation, the Malay Peninsula was known natively as \"Tanah Melayu\" ('Malay Land'). Under a racial classification created by a German scholar Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, the natives of maritime Southeast Asia were grouped into a single category, the Malay race. Following the expedition of French navigator Jules Dumont d'Urville to Oceania in 1826, he later proposed the terms of \"Malaysia\", \"Micronesia\" and \"Melanesia\" to the \"Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 de G\u00e9ographie\" in 1831, distinguishing these Pacific cultures and island groups from the existing term \"Polynesia\". Dumont d'Urville described Malaysia as \"an area commonly known as the East Indies\". In 1850, the English ethnologist George Samuel Windsor Earl, writing in the \"Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia\", proposed naming the islands of Southeast Asia as \"Melayunesia\" or \"Indunesia\", favouring the former. The name Malaysia gained some use to label what is now the Malay Archipelago. In modern terminology, \"Malay\" remains the name of an ethnoreligious group of Austronesian people predominantly inhabiting the Malay Peninsula and portions of the adjacent islands of Southeast Asia, including the east coast of Sumatra, the coast of Borneo, and smaller islands that lie between these areas.\nThe state that gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1957 took the name \"the Federation of Malaya\", chosen in preference to other potential names such as \"Malaysia\" and \"Langkasuka\", after the historic kingdom located at the upper section of the Malay Peninsula in the first millennium CE. Nonetheless, the name \"Malaysia\" was adopted in 1963 when the existing states of the Federation of Malaya, plus Singapore, North Borneo and Sarawak formed a new federation. One theory posits the name was chosen so that \"si\" represented the inclusion of Singapore, North Borneo, and Sarawak to Malaya in 1963. Politicians in the Philippines contemplated renaming their state Malaysia before the modern country took the name.\nHistory.\nEvidence of modern human habitation in Malaysia dates back 40,000\u00a0years. In the Malay Peninsula, the first inhabitants are thought to be Negritos. Areas of Malaysia participated in the Maritime Jade Road between 2000 BC to 1000 AD. Traders and settlers from India and China arrived as early as the first century AD, establishing trading ports and coastal towns in the second and third centuries. Their presence resulted in strong Indian and Chinese influences on the local cultures, and the people of the Malay Peninsula adopted the religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. Sanskrit inscriptions appear as early as the fourth or fifth century. The Kingdom of Langkasuka arose around the second century in the northern area of the Malay Peninsula, lasting until about the 15th century. Between the 7th and 13th centuries, much of the southern Malay Peninsula was part of the maritime Srivijayan empire. By the 13th and the 14th century, the Majapahit empire had successfully wrested control over most of the peninsula and the Malay Archipelago from Srivijaya. In the early 15th century, Parameswara, a runaway king of the former Kingdom of Singapura linked to the old Srivijayan court, founded the Malacca Sultanate. The spread of Islam increased following Parameswara's conversion to that religion. Malacca was an important commercial centre during this time, attracting trade from around the region.\nIn 1511, Malacca was conquered by Portugal, after which it was taken by the Dutch in 1641. In 1786, the British Empire established a presence in Malaya, when the Sultan of Kedah leased Penang Island to the British East India Company. The British obtained the town of Singapore in 1819, and in 1824 took control of Malacca following the Anglo-Dutch Treaty. By 1826, the British directly controlled Penang, Malacca, Singapore, and the island of Labuan, which they established as the crown colony of the Straits Settlements. By the 20th century, the states of Pahang, Selangor, Perak, and Negeri Sembilan, known together as the Federated Malay States, had British residents appointed to advise the Malay rulers, to whom the rulers were bound to defer by treaty. The remaining five states on the peninsula, known as the Unfederated Malay States, while not directly under British rule, also accepted British advisers around the turn of the 20th century. Development on the peninsula and Borneo were generally separate until the 19th century. Under British rule the immigration of Chinese and Indians to serve as labourers was encouraged. The area that is now Sabah came under British control as North Borneo when both the Sultan of Brunei and the Sultan of Sulu transferred their respective territorial rights of ownership, between 1877 and 1878. In 1842, Sarawak was ceded by the Sultan of Brunei to James Brooke, whose successors ruled as the White Rajahs over an independent kingdom until 1946, when it became a crown colony.\nIn the Second World War, the Japanese Army invaded and occupied Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore for over three years. During this time, ethnic tensions were raised and nationalism grew. Popular support for independence increased after Malaya was reconquered by Allied forces. Post-war British plans to unite the administration of Malaya under a single crown colony called the Malayan Union met with strong opposition from the Malays, who opposed the weakening of the Malay rulers and the granting of citizenship to the ethnic Chinese. The Malayan Union, established in 1946, and consisting of all the British possessions in the Malay Peninsula except for Singapore, was quickly dissolved and replaced on 1 February 1948 by the Federation of Malaya, which restored the autonomy of the rulers of the Malay states under British protection.\nDuring this time, the mostly ethnically Chinese rebels under the leadership of the Malayan Communist Party launched guerrilla operations designed to force the British out of Malaya. The Malayan Emergency (1948\u20131960) involved a long anti-insurgency campaign by Commonwealth troops in Malaya. On 31 August 1957, Malaya became an independent member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Subsequently, a comprehensive plan was devised to unite Malaya with the crown colonies of North Borneo (known as Sabah upon joining), Sarawak, and Singapore. The envisioned federation was originally intended to take place on 31 August 1963, to coincide with the commemoration of Malayan independence. However, due to the necessity of conducting a survey on the level of support for the federation in Sabah and Sarawak by the United Nations, as requested by opponents of the federation such as Indonesia's Sukarno and the Sarawak United Peoples' Party, the date of the federation was postponed until 16 September 1963.\nThe federation brought heightened tensions including a conflict with Indonesia as well as continual conflicts against the Communists in Borneo and the Malay Peninsula, which escalated to the Sarawak Communist Insurgency and Second Malayan Emergency together with several other issues such as the cross-border attacks into Sabah by Moro pirates from the southern islands of the Philippines, Singapore being expelled from the Federation in 1965, and racial strife. This strife culminated in the 13 May race riots in 1969. After the riots, the controversial New Economic Policy was launched by Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak, trying to increase the share of the economy held by the \"bumiputera\". Under Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad there was a period of rapid economic growth and urbanization beginning in the 1980s. The economy shifted from being agriculturally based to one based on manufacturing and industry. Numerous mega-projects were completed, such as the Petronas Towers, the North\u2013South Expressway, the Multimedia Super Corridor, and the new federal administrative capital of Putrajaya.\nIn the late 1990s, the Asian financial crisis impacted the country, nearly causing their currency, stock, and property markets to crash; however, they later recovered. The 1MDB scandal was a major global corruption scandal that implicated then-Prime Minister Najib Razak in 2015. The scandal contributed to the first change in the ruling political party since independence in the 2018 general election. In the 2020s, the country was gripped by a political crisis that coincided with health and economic crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This was then followed by an earlier general election in November 2022, which resulted in the first hung parliament in the nation's history. On 24 November 2022, Anwar Ibrahim was sworn in as the 10th Prime Minister of Malaysia, leading a grand coalition government.\nGovernment and politics.\nMalaysia is a federal constitutional elective monarchy and the only federal country in Southeast Asia. The system of government is closely modelled on the Westminster parliamentary system, a legacy of British rule. The head of state is the King, whose official title is the Yang\u00a0di-Pertuan\u00a0Agong. The King is elected to a five-year term by and from among the nine hereditary rulers of the Malay states. The other four states, which have titular Governors, do not participate in the selection. By informal agreement the position is rotated among the nine, and has been held by Ibrahim Iskandar of Johor since 31 January 2024. The King's role has been largely ceremonial since changes to the constitution in 1994, picking ministers and members of the upper house.\nLegislative power is divided between federal and state legislatures. The bicameral federal parliament consists of the lower house, the House of Representatives and the upper house, the Senate. The 222-member House of Representatives is elected for a maximum term of five years from single-member constituencies. All 70 senators sit for three-year terms; 26 are elected by the 13 state assemblies, and the remaining 44 are appointed by the King upon the Prime Minister's recommendation. The parliament follows a multi-party system and the government is elected through a first-past-the-post system. Parliamentary elections are held at least once every five years. Before 2018, only registered voters aged 21 and above could vote for the members of the House of Representatives and, in most of the states, for the state legislative chamber. Voting is not mandatory. In July 2019, a bill to lower the voting age to 18 years old was officially passed.\nExecutive power is vested in the Cabinet, led by the Prime Minister. The prime minister must be a member of the House of Representatives, who in the opinion of His Majesty the King, commands the support of a majority of members. The Cabinet is chosen from members of both houses of Parliament. The Prime Minister is both the head of cabinet and the head of government. As a result of the 2018 general election Malaysia was governed by the Pakatan Harapan (PH) political alliance, although Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad resigned amid a political crisis in 2020. In March 2020, the Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition formed under Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, before Muhyiddin lost majority support and was replaced by deputy Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob, a veteran politician from the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), in August 2021. As a result of the 2022 Malaysian general election, a hung parliament was elected. Anwar Ibrahim of the PH coalition was appointed as the new Prime Minister to lead the coalition government of PH, Barisan Nasional, Gabungan Parti Sarawak, Gabungan Rakyat Sabah and several other political parties and independents. Meanwhile, PN, the only political coalition not in the coalition government became the Opposition.\nMalaysia's legal system is based on common law. Although the judiciary is theoretically independent, its independence has been called into question and the appointment of judges lacks accountability and transparency. The highest court in the judicial system is the Federal Court, followed by the Court of Appeal and two high courts, one for Peninsular Malaysia and one for East Malaysia. Malaysia also has a special court to hear cases brought by or against royalty.\nRace is a significant force in politics. Affirmative actions such as the New Economic Policy and the National Development Policy which superseded it, were implemented to advance the standing of the \"bumiputera\", consisting of Malays and the indigenous tribes who are considered the original inhabitants of Malaysia, over non-\"bumiputera\" such as Malaysian Chinese and Malaysian Indians. These policies provide preferential treatment to \"bumiputera\" in employment, education, scholarships, business, and access to cheaper housing and assisted savings. However, it has generated greater interethnic resentment. There is ongoing debate over whether the laws and society of Malaysia should reflect Islamism or secularism. Islamic criminal laws passed by the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party with the support of UMNO state assemblymen in the state legislative assembly of Kelantan have been unenforced by the federal government on the basis that criminal laws are the responsibility of the federal government.\nAfter UMNO lost power at the 2018 Malaysian general election, Malaysia's ranking increased by 9 places in the 2019 Democracy Index to 43rd compared to the previous year and is classified as a 'flawed democracy'. Malaysia's ranking in the 2020 Press Freedom Index increased by 22 places to 101st compared to the previous year, making it one of two countries in Southeast Asia without a 'Difficult situation' or 'Very Serious situation' with regards to press freedom. However, it fell 18 places the following year due to the policies of the PN government.\nMalaysia is marked at 48th and 62nd place according to the 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index, indicating above-average levels of corruption. Freedom House noted Malaysia as \"partly free\" in its 2018 survey. A lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice alleged that at least $3.5 billion involving former prime minister Najib Razak had been stolen from Malaysia's 1MDB state-owned fund, known as the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal.\nAdministrative divisions.\nMalaysia is a federation of 13 states and three federal territories. Out of these, eleven states and two federal territories are in Peninsular Malaysia, whereas the other two states and one federal territory comprise East Malaysia.\nThe country has three tiers of government \u2013 federal, state and local. Governance of the states is divided between the federal and the state governments, with different powers reserved for each, and the federal government has direct administration of the federal territories. Each state has a unicameral State Legislative Assembly whose members are elected from single-member constituencies. State governments are led by Chief Ministers, who are state assembly members from the majority party in the assembly. In each of the states with a hereditary ruler, the Chief Minister is normally required to be a Malay, appointed by the ruler upon the recommendation of the Prime Minister. Until 2018, state elections were held concurrently with the general election by convention, except for those in Sarawak. Following the 2020\u20132022 political crisis, only Pahang, Perak and Perlis opted to conduct their state elections simultaneously with the general elections.\nPositioned below the federal and state governments, local governments represent the lowest tier of governance in Malaysia. As of 2024[ [update]], Malaysia is divided between 19 cities, 40 municipalities, 91 district-level councils, and four statutory agencies. While the federal constitution assigns local authorities to the exclusive jurisdiction of state governments, in practice, the federal Ministry of Housing and Local Government oversees the regulation of local laws and policies. Mayors (or presidents for municipal and district councils) and councillors are appointed by the respective state governments, or in the case of the federal territories, by the federal government.\nFederal laws assign land matters, including the delineation of districts, to the purview of state governments. Except Perlis and the federal territories, each state is divided into districts, which are further subdivided into mukims. In Sabah and Sarawak, districts are grouped into divisions. In contrast to local governments that manage municipal administration and infrastructure development, districts are solely utilised for land taxation.\nThe 13 states are based on historical Malay kingdoms, and 9 of the 11 Peninsular states, known as the Malay states, retain their royal families. The King is elected by and from the nine rulers to serve a five-year term. This King appoints governors serving a four-year term for the states without monarchies, after consultations with the chief minister of that state. Each state has its written constitution. Sabah and Sarawak have considerably more autonomy than the other states, most notably having separate immigration policies and controls, and unique residency status. Federal intervention in state affairs, lack of development, and disputes over oil royalties have occasionally led to statements about secession from leaders in several states such as Penang, Johor, Kelantan, Sabah and Sarawak, although these have not been followed up and no serious independence movements exist.\nA list of thirteen states and each state capital (in parentheses):\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nForeign relations and military.\nA founding member of ASEAN and OIC, the country participates in many international organisations such as the United Nations (U.N.), APEC, the D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation, and NAM. It has chaired ASEAN, OIC, and NAM in the past. A former British colony, it is also a member of the Commonwealth. Kuala Lumpur was the site of the first EAS in 2005.\nMalaysia's foreign policy is officially based on the principle of neutrality and maintaining peaceful relations with all countries, regardless of their political system. The government attaches a high priority to the security and stability of Southeast Asia, and seeks to further develop relations with other countries in the region. Historically the government has tried to portray Malaysia as a progressive Islamic nation while strengthening relations with other Islamic states. A strong tenet of Malaysia's policy is national sovereignty and right of a country to control its domestic affairs. Malaysia signed the U.N. treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.\nThe Spratly Islands are disputed by many states in the area, and a large portion of the South China Sea is claimed by China. Unlike its neighbours of Vietnam and the Philippines, Malaysia historically avoided conflicts with China. However, after the encroachment of Chinese ships in Malaysian territorial waters, and breach of airspace by their military aircraft, Malaysia has become active in condemning China. Brunei and Malaysia in 2009 announced an end to claims of each other's land, and committed to resolve issues related to their maritime borders. The Philippines has a dormant claim to the eastern part of Sabah. Singapore's land reclamation has caused tensions, and minor maritime and land border disputes exist with Indonesia.\nThe Malaysian Armed Forces has three branches: the Malaysian Army, Royal Malaysian Navy and the Royal Malaysian Air Force. There is no conscription, and the required age for voluntary military service is 18. The military uses 1.5% of the country's GDP, and employs 1.23% of Malaysia's manpower. Malaysian peacekeeping forces of MALBATT have contributed to many U.N. peacekeeping missions, such as in Congo, Iran\u2013Iraq, Namibia, Cambodia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Somalia, Kosovo, East Timor, and Lebanon.\nThe Five Power Defence Arrangements is a regional security initiative that has been in place for almost 40 years. It involves joint military exercises held among Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Joint exercises and war games have also been held with Brunei, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States. Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam have agreed to host joint security force exercises to secure their maritime border and tackle issues such as illegal immigration, piracy, and smuggling. Previously there were fears that extremist militant activities in the Muslim areas of the southern Philippines and southern Thailand would spill over into Malaysia. Because of this, Malaysia began to increase its border security.\nHuman rights.\nHomosexuality is illegal in Malaysia, and authorities have imposed punishments such as caning and imprisonment. Human trafficking and sex trafficking in Malaysia are significant problems. There have also been cases of vigilante executions and beatings against LGBT individuals in Malaysia. The illegality of homosexuality in Malaysia has also been the forefront of Anwar Ibrahim's sodomy trials, which Anwar has called politically motivated, a characterization supported by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, along with Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch.\nThe death penalty is in use for serious crimes such as murder, terrorism, drug trafficking, and kidnapping, but in June 2022, Malaysian law minister Wan Junaidi pledged to abolish capital punishment and replace it with other punishments at the discretion of the court.\nGeography.\nMalaysia is the 66th largest country by total land area, with a total area of . It has land borders with Thailand in West Malaysia, and Indonesia and Brunei in East Malaysia. It is linked to Singapore by a narrow causeway and a bridge. The country also has maritime boundaries with Vietnam and the Philippines. The land borders are defined in large part by geological features such as the Perlis River, the Golok River and the Pagalayan Canal, whilst some of the maritime boundaries are the subject of ongoing contention. Brunei forms what is almost an enclave in Malaysia, with the state of Sarawak dividing it into two parts. Malaysia is the only country with territory on both the Asian mainland and the Malay archipelago. The Strait of Malacca, lying between Sumatra and Peninsular Malaysia, is one of the most important thoroughfares in global commerce, carrying 40 percent of the world's trade.\nThe two parts of Malaysia, separated from each other by the South China Sea, share a largely similar landscape in that both Peninsular and East Malaysia feature coastal plains rising to hills and mountains. Peninsular Malaysia, containing 40 per cent of Malaysia's land area, extends from north to south, and its maximum width is . It is divided between its east and west coasts by the Titiwangsa Mountains, rising to a peak elevation of at Mount Korbu, part of a series of mountain ranges running down the centre of the peninsula. These mountains are heavily forested, and mainly composed of granite and other igneous rocks. Much of it has been eroded, creating a karst landscape. The range is the origin of some of Peninsular Malaysia's river systems. The coastal plains surrounding the peninsula reach a maximum width of , and the peninsula's coastline is nearly long, although harbours are only available on the western side.\nEast Malaysia, on the island of Borneo, has a coastline of . It is divided between coastal regions, hills and valleys, and a mountainous interior. The Crocker Range extends northwards from Sarawak, dividing the state of Sabah. It is the location of the high Mount Kinabalu, the tallest mountain in Malaysia. Mount Kinabalu is located in the Kinabalu National Park, which is protected as one of the four UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Malaysia. The highest mountain ranges form the border between Malaysia and Indonesia. Sarawak contains the Mulu Caves, the largest cave system in the world, in the Gunung Mulu National Park which is also a World Heritage Site. The largest river in Malaysia is the Rajang.\nAround these two halves of Malaysia are numerous islands, the largest of which is Banggi. The local climate is equatorial and characterised by the annual southwest (April to October) and northeast (October to February) monsoons. The temperature is moderated by the presence of the surrounding oceans. Humidity is usually high, and the average annual rainfall is . The climates of the Peninsula and the East differ, as the climate on the peninsula is directly affected by wind from the mainland, as opposed to the more maritime weather of the East. Local climates can be divided into three regions, highland, lowland, and coastal. Climate change will cause sea level rise and increased rainfall, increasing flood risks and leading to droughts.\nBiodiversity and conservation.\nMalaysia signed the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity on 12 June 1993, and became a party to the convention on 24 June 1994. It has subsequently produced a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, which was received by the convention on 16 April 1998. The country is megadiverse with a high number of species and high levels of endemism. It is estimated to contain 20\u00a0per\u00a0cent of the world's animal species. High levels of endemism are found on the diverse forests of Borneo's mountains, as species are isolated from each other by lowland forest.\nThere are about 210 mammal species in the country. Over 620 species of birds have been recorded in Peninsular Malaysia, with many endemic to the mountains there. A high number of endemic bird species are also found in Malaysian Borneo. 250 reptile species have been recorded in the country, with about 150 species of snakes and 80 species of lizards. There are about 150 species of frogs, and thousands of insect species. The Exclusive economic zone of Malaysia is and 1.5 times larger than its land area. It is mainly in the South China Sea. Some of its waters are in the Coral Triangle, a biodiversity hotspot. The waters around Sipadan island are the most biodiverse in the world. Bordering East Malaysia, the Sulu Sea is a biodiversity hotspot, with around 600 coral species and 1200 fish species. The unique biodiversity of Malaysian Caves always attracts lovers of ecotourism from all over the world.\nNearly 4,000 species of fungi, including lichen-forming species have been recorded from Malaysia. Of the two fungal groups with the largest number of species in Malaysia, the Ascomycota and their asexual states have been surveyed in some habitats (decaying wood, marine, and freshwater ecosystems, as parasites of some plants, and as agents of biodegradation), but have not been or have been only poorly surveyed in other habitats (as endobionts, in soils, on dung, as human and animal pathogens); the Basidiomycota are only partly surveyed: bracket fungi, and mushrooms and toadstools have been studied, but Malaysian rust and smut fungi remain very poorly known. Without a doubt, many more fungal species in Malaysia are yet to be recorded, and it is likely that many of those, when found, will be new to science.\nAbout two\u00a0thirds of Malaysia was covered in forest as of 2007, with some forests believed to be 130\u00a0million years old. The forests are dominated by dipterocarps. Lowland forest covers areas below , and formerly East Malaysia was covered in such rainforest, which is supported by its hot wet climate. There are around 14,500 species of flowering plants and trees. Besides rainforests, there are over of mangroves in Malaysia, and a large amount of peat forest. At higher altitudes, oaks, chestnuts, and rhododendrons replace dipterocarps. There are an estimated 8,500 species of vascular plants in Peninsular Malaysia, with another 15,000 in the East. The forests of East Malaysia are estimated to be the habitat of around 2,000 tree species, and are one of the most biodiverse areas in the world, with 240 different species of trees every hectare. These forests host many members of the Rafflesia genus, the largest flowers in the world, with a maximum diameter of .\nLogging, along with cultivation practices, has devastated tree cover, causing severe environmental degradation in the country. Over 80\u00a0per\u00a0cent of Sarawak's rainforest has been logged. Floods in East Malaysia have been worsened by the loss of trees, and over 60\u00a0per\u00a0cent of the peninsula's forests have been cleared. With current rates of deforestation, mainly for the palm oil industry, the forests are predicted to be extinct by 2020. Deforestation is a major problem for animals, fungi and plants, having caused species such as \"Begonia eiromischa\" to go extinct. Most remaining forest is found inside reserves and national parks. Habitat destruction has proved a threat for marine life. Illegal fishing is another major threat, with fishing methods such as dynamite fishing and poisoning depleting marine ecosystems. Leatherback turtle numbers have dropped 98\u00a0per\u00a0cent since the 1950s. Hunting has also been an issue for some animals, with overconsumption and the use of animal parts for profit endangering many animals, from marine life to tigers. Marine life is also detrimentally affected by uncontrolled tourism.\nThe Malaysian government aims to balance economic growth with environmental protection, but has been accused of favouring big business over the environment. Some state governments are now trying to counter the environmental impact and pollution created by deforestation; and the federal government is trying to cut logging by 10\u00a0per\u00a0cent each year. A total of 28 national parks have been established, 23 in East Malaysia and five in the peninsula. Tourism has been limited in biodiverse areas such as Sipadan island. Wildlife trafficking is a large issue, and the Malaysian government has held talks with the governments of Brunei and Indonesia to standardise anti-trafficking laws.\nEconomy.\nMalaysia is a relatively open state-oriented and newly industrialised market economy. It has the world's 36th-largest economy by nominal GDP and the 31st-largest by PPP. In 2017, the large service sector contributed to 53.6% of total GDP, the industrial sector 37.6%, and the small agricultural sector roughly 8.8%. Malaysia has a low official unemployment rate of 3.4% as of 2024. Its foreign exchange reserves are the world's 24th-largest. It has a labour force of about 15 million, which is the world's 34th-largest. Malaysia's large automotive industry ranks as the world's 22nd-largest by production.\nMalaysia is the world's 23rd-largest exporter and 25th-largest importer. However, economic inequalities exist between different ethnic groups. The Chinese make up about one-quarter of the population, but account for 70 per cent of the country's market capitalisation. Chinese businesses in Malaysia are part of the larger bamboo network, a network of overseas Chinese businesses in the Southeast Asian market sharing common family and cultural ties.\nInternational trade, facilitated by the shipping route in adjacent Strait of Malacca, and manufacturing are the key sectors. Malaysia is an exporter of natural and agricultural resources, and petroleum is a major export. Malaysia has once been the largest producer of tin, rubber and palm oil in the world. Manufacturing has a large influence in the country's economy, although Malaysia's economic structure has been moving away from it. Malaysia remains one of the world's largest producers of palm oil.\nTourism is the third-largest contributor to Malaysia's GDP, after the manufacturing and commodities sectors. In 2019, the sector contributed about 15.9 percent to the total GDP. According to the World Tourism Organization, Malaysia was the fourteenth-most visited country in the world, and the fourth-most visited country in Asia in 2019, with over 26.1 million visits. Malaysia was ranked 38th in the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report 2019. Its international tourism receipts in 2019 amounted to $19.8 billion.\nThe country has developed into a centre of Islamic banking and has the highest number of female workers in that industry. Knowledge-based services are also expanding. In 2020, Malaysia exported high-tech products worth $92.1 billion, the second-highest in ASEAN, after Singapore. Malaysia was ranked 33rd in the Global Innovation Index in 2024, and 32nd in the Global Competitiveness Report in 2022.\nInfrastructure.\nRailway transport in Malaysia is state-run, and spans some . As of 2016[ [update]], Malaysia has the world's 26th-largest road network, with some of roads. Malaysia's inland waterways are the world's 22nd-longest, and total . Among Malaysia's 114 airports, among which the busiest is Kuala Lumpur International Airport located south of Kuala Lumpur in Sepang District, which is also the twelfth-busiest airport in Asia. Among the 7 federal ports, the major one is Port Klang, which is the thirteenth-busiest container port. Malaysia's flag carrier is Malaysia Airlines, providing international and domestic air services.\nMalaysia's telecommunications network is second only to Singapore's in Southeast Asia, with 4.7\u00a0million fixed-line subscribers and more than 30\u00a0million cellular subscribers. There are 200 industrial parks along with specialised parks such as Technology Park Malaysia and Kulim Hi-Tech Park. Fresh water is available to over 95% of the population, with ground water accounting for 90% of the freshwater resources. Although rural areas have been the focus of great development, they still lag behind areas such as the West Coast of Peninsular Malaysia. The telecommunication network, although strong in urban areas, is less available to the rural population.\nMalaysia's energy infrastructure sector is largely dominated by Tenaga Nasional, the largest electric utility company in Southeast Asia. Customers in Peninsular Malaysia are connected to electricity through the National Grid. The other two electric utility companies in the country are Sarawak Energy and Sabah Electricity. In 2013, Malaysia's total power generation capacity was over 29,728 megawatts. Total electricity generation was 140,985.01 GWh and total electricity consumption was 116,087.51 GWh. Energy production in Malaysia is largely based on oil and natural gas, owing to Malaysia's oil and natural gas reserves, which are the fourth largest in the Asia-Pacific region.\nDemographics.\nAccording to the Malaysian Department of Statistics, the country's population was 32,447,385 in 2020, making it the 42nd most populated country. According to a 2012 estimate, the population is increasing by 1.54 percent per year. Malaysia has an average population density of 96 people per km2, ranking it 116th in the world for population density. People within the 15\u201364 age group constitute 69.5 percent of the total population; the 0\u201314 age group corresponds to 24.5 percent; while senior citizens aged 65 years or older make up 6.0 percent. In 1960, when the first official census was recorded in Malaysia, the population was 8.11\u00a0million. 91.8 percent of the population are Malaysian citizens.\nMalaysian citizens are divided along local ethnic lines, with 69.7 percent considered \"bumiputera\". The largest group of bumiputera are Malays, who are defined in the constitution as Muslims who practise Malay customs and culture. They play a dominant role politically. Bumiputera status is also accorded to the non-Malay indigenous groups of Sabah and Sarawak: which includes Dayaks (Iban, Bidayuh, Orang Ulu), Kadazan-Dusun, Melanau, Bajau and others. Non-Malay bumiputeras make up more than half of Sarawak's population and over two-thirds of Sabah's population. There are also indigenous or aboriginal groups in much smaller numbers on the peninsular, where they are collectively known as the Orang Asli. Laws over who gets bumiputera status vary between states.\nThere are also two other non-Bumiputera local ethnic groups. 22.8 percent of the population are Malaysian Chinese, while 6.8 percent are Malaysian Indian. The local Chinese have historically been more dominant in the business community. Local Indians are mostly of Tamil descent. Malaysian citizenship is not automatically granted to those born in Malaysia, but is granted to a child born of two Malaysian parents outside Malaysia. Dual citizenship is not permitted. Citizenship in the states of Sabah and Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo are distinct from citizenship in Peninsular Malaysia for immigration purposes. Every citizen is issued a biometric smart chip identity card known as \"MyKad\" at the age of 12 and must carry the card at all times.\nThe population is concentrated on Peninsular Malaysia, where 20\u00a0million out of approximately 28\u00a0million Malaysians live. 70 per cent of the population is urban. Due to the rise in labour-intensive industries, the country is estimated to have over 3\u00a0million migrant workers; about 10 per cent of the population. Sabah-based NGOs estimate that out of the 3\u00a0million that make up the population of Sabah, 2\u00a0million are illegal immigrants. Malaysia hosts a population of refugees and asylum seekers numbering approximately 171,500. Of this population, approximately 79,000 are from Burma, 72,400 from the Philippines, and 17,700 from Indonesia. Malaysian officials are reported to have turned deportees directly over to human smugglers in 2007, and Malaysia employs RELA, a volunteer militia with a history of controversies, to enforce its immigration law.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nReligion.\nThe constitution grants freedom of religion, while establishing Islam as the \"religion of the Federation\". According to the Population and Housing Census 2020 figures, ethnicity and religious beliefs correlate highly. Approximately 63.5% of the population practise Islam, 18.7% practise Buddhism, 9.1% Christianity, 6.1% Hinduism and 1.3% practise Confucianism, Taoism and other traditional Chinese religions. 2.7% declared no religion or practised other religions or did not provide any information. The states of Sarawak, Penang and the federal territory of Kuala Lumpur have non-Muslim majorities.\nSunni Islam of the Shafi'i school of jurisprudence is the dominant branch of Islam in Malaysia, while 18% are nondenominational Muslims. The Malaysian constitution strictly defines what makes a \"Malay\", defining Malays as those who are Muslim, speak Malay regularly, practise Malay customs, and lived in or have ancestors from Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore. Statistics from the 2010 Census indicate that 83.6% of the Chinese population identify as Buddhist, with significant numbers of adherents following Taoism (3.4%) and Christianity (11.1%), along with small Muslim populations in areas like Penang. The majority of the Indian population follows Hinduism (86.2%), with a significant minority identifying as Christians (6.0%) or Muslims (4.1%). Christianity is the predominant religion of the non-Malay \"bumiputera\" community (46.5%), while 40.4% identify as Muslims.\nMuslims are obliged to follow the decisions of Syariah Courts (i.e. Shariah courts) in matters concerning their religion. The Islamic judges are expected to follow the Shafi'i legal school of Islam, which is the main \"madh'hab\" of Malaysia. The jurisdiction of Syariah courts is limited to Muslims in matters such as marriage, inheritance, divorce, apostasy, religious conversion, custody and limited Islamic criminal law. No other criminal or civil offences are under the jurisdiction of the Syariah courts, which have a similar hierarchy to the civil courts. The civil courts do not hear matters related to Islamic practices.\nLanguages.\nThe official and national language of Malaysia is Malaysian Malay, a standardised form of the Malay language. The previous official terminology was (lit.\u2009'Malaysian language') but now government policy uses (Malay language) to refer to the official language and both terms remain in use. The National Language Act 1967 specifies the Latin (Rumi) script as the official script of the national language, but does not prohibit the use of the traditional Jawi script.\nEnglish remains an active second language, with its use allowed for some official purposes under the National Language Act of 1967. In Sarawak, English is an official state language alongside Malay. Historically, English was the de facto administrative language; Malay became predominant after the 1969 race riots (13 May incident). Malaysian English, also known as Malaysian Standard English, is a form of English derived from British English. Malaysian English is widely used in business, along with Manglish, which is a colloquial form of English with heavy Malay, Chinese, and Tamil influences. The government discourages the use of non-standard Malay but has no power to issue compounds or fines to those who use what is perceived as improper Malay on their advertisements.\nMany other languages are used in Malaysia, which contains speakers of 137 living languages. Peninsular Malaysia contains speakers of 41 of these languages. The native tribes of East Malaysia have their own languages which are related to, but easily distinguishable from, Malay. Iban is the main tribal language in Sarawak while Dusunic and Kadazan languages are spoken by the natives in Sabah. Chinese Malaysians predominantly speak Chinese dialects from the southern part of China. The more common Chinese varieties in the country are Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, and so on. The Tamil language is used predominantly by the majority of Malaysian Indians. A small number of Malaysians have European ancestry and speak creole languages, such as the Portuguese-based Malaccan Creoles, and the Spanish-based Chavacano language.\nHealth.\nMalaysia operates an efficient and widespread two-tier healthcare system, consisting of a universal healthcare system and a co-existing private healthcare system; provided by highly subsidized healthcare through its extensive network of public hospitals and clinics. The Ministry of Health is the main provider of healthcare services to the country's population. Malaysia's healthcare system is considered to be among the most developed in Asia, which contributes to its thriving medical tourism industry.\nMalaysia spent 3.83% of its GDP on healthcare in 2019. In 2020, the overall life expectancy in Malaysia at birth was 76 years (74 years for males and 78 years for females), and it had an infant mortality rate of 7 deaths per 1000 births. Malaysia had a total fertility rate of 2.0 in 2020, which is just below the replacement level of 2.1. In 2020, the country's crude birth rate was 16 per 1000 people, and the crude death rate was 5 per 1000 people.\nIn 2021, the principal cause of death among Malaysian adults was coronary artery disease, representing 17% of the medically certified deaths in 2020\u2014being followed by pneumonia; which accounted for 11% of the deaths. Transport accidents are considered a major health hazard, as Malaysia, relative to its population, has one of the highest traffic fatality rates in the world. Smoking is also considered a major health issue across the country.\nEducation.\nThe education system of Malaysia features a non-compulsory kindergarten education followed by six years of compulsory primary education and five years of optional secondary education. Schools in the primary education system are divided into two categories: national primary schools, which teach in Malay (i.e.:Sekolah Kebangsaan Sungai Binjai, SK Bukit Tiu), and vernacular schools, which teach in Chinese or Tamil (i.e.:SJK(C) Pin Hwa 2, SJK(T) Bandar Mentakab). Secondary education (i.e.:SMK Sura, Kajang High School) is conducted for five years. In the final year of secondary education, students sit for the Malaysian Certificate of Education examination. Since the introduction of the matriculation programme in 1999, students who completed the 12-month programme in matriculation colleges can enroll in local universities. However, in the matriculation system, only 10 percent of places are open to non-\"bumiputera\" students.\nCulture.\nMalaysia has a multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multilingual society. Substantial influence exists from Chinese and Indian culture, dating back to when foreign trade began. Other cultural influences include the Persian, Arabic, and British cultures. Due to the structure of the government, coupled with the social contract theory, there has been minimal cultural assimilation of ethnic minorities. Some cultural disputes exist between Malaysia and neighbouring countries, notably Indonesia.\nIn 1971, the government created a \"National Cultural Policy\", defining Malaysian culture. It stated that Malaysian culture must be based on the culture of the indigenous peoples of Malaysia, that it may incorporate suitable elements from other cultures, and that Islam must play a part in it. It also promoted the Malay language above others. This government intervention into culture has caused resentment among non-Malays who feel their cultural freedom was lessened. Both Chinese and Indian associations have submitted memorandums to the government, accusing it of formulating an undemocratic culture policy.\nFine arts.\nTraditional Malaysian art was mainly centred on the areas of carving, weaving, and silversmithing. Traditional art ranges from handwoven baskets from rural areas to the silverwork of the Malay courts. Common artworks included ornamental kris, beetle nut sets, and woven batik and songket fabrics. Indigenous East Malaysians are known for their wooden masks. Each ethnic group have distinct performing arts, with little overlap between them. However, Malay art does show some North Indian influence due to the historical influence of India.\nTraditional Malay music and performing arts appear to have originated in the Kelantan-Pattani region with influences from India, China, Thailand, and Indonesia. The music is based around percussion instruments, the most important of which is the gendang (drum). There are at least 14 types of traditional drums. Drums and other traditional percussion instruments and are often made from natural materials. Music is traditionally used for storytelling, celebrating life-cycle events, and occasions such as a harvest. It was once used as a form of long-distance communication. In East Malaysia, gong-based musical ensembles such as agung and kulintang are commonly used in ceremonies such as funerals and weddings. These ensembles are also common in neighbouring regions such as in Mindanao in the Philippines, Kalimantan in Indonesia and Brunei.\nMalaysia has a strong oral tradition that has existed since before the arrival of writing and continues today. Each of the Malay Sultanates created their own literary tradition, influenced by pre-existing oral stories and by the stories that came with Islam. The first Malay literature was in the Arabic script. The earliest known Malay writing is on the Terengganu stone, made in 1303. Chinese and Indian literature became common as the number of speakers increased in Malaysia, and locally produced works based on languages from those areas began to be produced in the 19th century. English has also become a common literary language. In 1971, the government took the step of defining the literature of different languages. Literature written in Malay was called \"the national literature of Malaysia\", literature in other \"bumiputera\" languages was called \"regional literature\", while literature in other languages was called \"sectional literature\". Malay poetry is highly developed, and uses many forms. The \"Hikayat\" form is popular, and the \"pantun\" has spread from Malay to other languages.\nCuisine.\nMalaysia's cuisine reflects the multi-ethnic makeup of its population. Many cultures from within the country and from surrounding regions have greatly influenced the cuisine. Much of the influence comes from the Malay, Chinese, Indian, Thai, Javanese, and Sumatran cultures, largely due to the country being part of the ancient spice route. The cuisine is very similar to that of Singapore and Brunei, and also bears resemblance to Filipino cuisine. The different states have varied dishes, and often the food in Malaysia is different from the original dishes.\nSometimes food not found in its original culture is assimilated into another; for example, Chinese restaurants in Malaysia often serve Malay dishes. Food from one culture is sometimes also cooked using styles taken from another culture, For example, \"sambal belacan\" (shrimp paste) are commonly used as ingredients by Chinese restaurants to create the stir fried water spinach (\"kangkung belacan\"). This means that although much of Malaysian food can be traced back to a certain culture, they have their own identity. Rice is a staple food and an important constituent of the country's culture. Chili is commonly found in local cuisine, although this does not necessarily make them spicy.\nMedia.\nMalaysia's main newspapers are owned by the government and political parties in the ruling coalition, although some major opposition parties also have their own, which are openly sold alongside regular newspapers. A divide exists between the media in the two halves of the country. Peninsular-based media gives a low priority to news from the East and often treats the eastern states as colonies of the peninsula. As a result of this, the East Malaysia region of Sarawak launched TV Sarawak as internet streaming beginning in 2014, and as TV station on 10 October 2020 to overcome the low priority and coverage of Peninsular-based media and to solidify the representation of East Malaysia. The media have been blamed for increasing tension between Indonesia and Malaysia, and giving Malaysians a bad image of Indonesians. The country has Malay, English, Chinese, and Tamil daily newspapers. Kadazandusun and Bajau news are available only via TV broadcast Berita RTM. Written Kadazan news was once included in publications such as The Borneo Post, the Borneo Mail, the Daily Express, and the New Sabah Times, but publication has ceased with the newspaper or as a section.\nFreedom of the press is limited, with numerous restrictions on publishing rights and information dissemination. The government has previously tried to crack down on opposition papers before elections. In 2007, a government agency issued a directive to all private television and radio stations to refrain from broadcasting speeches made by opposition leaders, a move condemned by politicians from the opposition Democratic Action Party. Sabah, where all tabloids but one are independent of government control, has the freest press in Malaysia. Laws such as the Printing Presses and Publications Act have also been cited as curtailing freedom of expression.\nHolidays and festivals.\nMalaysians observe several holidays and festivities throughout the year. Some are federally gazetted public holidays and some are observed by individual states. Other festivals are observed by particular ethnic or religious groups, and the main holiday of each major group has been declared a public holiday. The most observed national holiday is \"Hari Merdeka\" (Independence Day) on 31 August, commemorating the independence of the Federation of Malaya in 1957. Malaysia Day on 16 September commemorates federation in 1963. Other notable national holidays are Labour Day (1 May) and the King's birthday (first week of June).\nMuslim holidays are prominent as Islam is the state religion; \"Hari Raya Puasa\" (also called \"Hari Raya Aidilfitri\", Malay for Eid al-Fitr), \"Hari Raya Haji\" (also called \"Hari Raya Aidiladha\", Malay for Eid al-Adha), \"Maulidur Rasul\" (birthday of the Prophet), and others being observed. Malaysian Chinese celebrate festivals such as Chinese New Year and others relating to traditional Chinese beliefs. Wesak Day is observed and celebrated by Buddhists. Hindus in Malaysia celebrate \"Deepavali\", the festival of lights, while \"Thaipusam\" is a religious rite which sees pilgrims from all over the country converge at the Batu Caves. Malaysia's Christian community celebrates most of the holidays observed by Christians elsewhere, most notably Christmas and Easter. In addition to this, the Dayak community in Sarawak celebrate a harvest festival known as \"Gawai\", and the Kadazandusun community celebrate \"Kaamatan\". Despite most festivals being identified with a particular ethnic or religious group, celebrations are universal. In a custom known as \"open house\" Malaysians participate in the celebrations of others, often visiting the houses of those who identify with the festival.\nSports.\nPopular sports in Malaysia include association football, badminton, field hockey, bowls, tennis, squash, martial arts, horse riding, sailing, and skate boarding. Football is the most popular sport in Malaysia. Badminton matches also attract thousands of spectators, and since 1948 Malaysia has been one of four countries to hold the Thomas Cup, the world team championship trophy of men's badminton. The Malaysian Lawn Bowls Federation was registered in 1997. Squash was brought to the country by members of the British army, with the first competition being held in 1939. The Squash Racquets Association of Malaysia was created on 25 June 1972. The men's national field hockey team ranked 10th in the world as of June\u00a02022[ [update]]. The 3rd Hockey World Cup was hosted at Merdeka Stadium in Kuala Lumpur, as well as the 10th cup. The country also has its own Formula One track \u2013 the Sepang International Circuit, with the first Malaysian Grand Prix held in 1999. Traditional sports include Silat Melayu, the most common style of martial arts practised by ethnic Malays.\nThe Federation of Malaya Olympic Council was formed in 1953, and received recognition by the IOC in 1954. It first participated in the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games. The council was renamed the Olympic Council of Malaysia in 1964, and has participated in all but one Olympic games since its inception. The largest number of athletes ever sent to the Olympics was 57 to the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Besides the Olympic Games, Malaysia also participates in the Paralympic Games. Malaysia has competed at the Commonwealth Games since 1950 as Malaya, and 1966 as Malaysia, and the games were hosted in Kuala Lumpur in 1998.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["5559121", "3607937"], "permutation_1": ["3607937", "5559121"], "permutation_2": ["3607937", "5559121"], "permutation_3": ["3607937", "5559121"]}
{"id": "3hop1__3157_3356_68918", "docs_added": {"191890": "American Idol\nAmerican singing competition\nAmerican Idol is an American singing competition television series created by Simon Fuller, produced by Fremantle North America and 19 Entertainment, and distributed by Fremantle North America. It aired on Fox from June 11, 2002, to April 7, 2016, for 15 seasons. It was on hiatus for two years until March 11, 2018, when a revival of the series began airing on ABC.\nIt started as an addition to the \"Idol\" format that was based on \"Pop Idol\" from British television, in which the programme's first series, which was won by Will Young, ended over four months before the show began, as it later became one of the most successful shows in the history of American television. The concept of the series involves discovering recording stars from unsigned singing talents, with the winner determined by American viewers using phones, Internet platforms, and SMS text voting. The winners of the first twenty-two seasons, as chosen by viewers, are Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Hicks, Jordin Sparks, David Cook, Kris Allen, Lee DeWyze, Scotty McCreery, Phillip Phillips, Candice Glover, Caleb Johnson, Nick Fradiani, Trent Harmon, Maddie Poppe, Laine Hardy, Just Sam, Chayce Beckham, Noah Thompson, Iam Tongi, and Abi Carter.\n\"American Idol\" employs a select panel of judges who critique the contestants' performances. The original judges, for seasons one through eight, were record producer and music manager Randy Jackson, singer and choreographer Paula Abdul, and music executive and manager Simon Cowell. The judging panel for the last three seasons on Fox consisted of singers Keith Urban, Jennifer Lopez, and Harry Connick Jr. Season sixteen brought three new judges: singers Luke Bryan, Katy Perry, and Lionel Richie. Beginning in the twenty-third season, Underwood replaced Perry, alongside returning judges Bryan and Richie. The show has been hosted by television presenter Ryan Seacrest throughout its run, apart from the show's inaugural season when comedian Brian Dunkleman joined Seacrest as co-host.\nThe success of \"American Idol\" has been described as \"unparalleled in broadcasting history\". A rival TV executive said the series was \"the most impactful show in the history of television\". It became a recognized springboard for launching the career of many artists as bona fide stars. According to \"Billboard\" magazine, in its first ten years, \"\"Idol\" has spawned 345 \"Billboard\" chart-toppers and a platoon of pop idols, including Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Chris Daughtry, Fantasia, Ruben Studdard, Jennifer Hudson, Clay Aiken, Adam Lambert, and Jordin Sparks while remaining a TV ratings juggernaut.\" For an unprecedented eight consecutive years, from the 2003\u201304 television season through the 2010\u201311 season, either its performance show or result show was ranked number one in U.S. television ratings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\n\"American Idol\" was based on the British show \"Pop Idol\" created by Simon Fuller, which was in turn inspired by the New Zealand television singing competition \"Popstars\". Television producer Nigel Lythgoe saw a version in Australia and helped bring it over to Britain. Fuller was inspired by the idea from \"Popstars\" of employing a panel of judges to select singers in audition. He then added other elements, including telephone voting by the viewing public (which at the time was already in use in shows, such as the \"Eurovision Song Contest\"), the drama of backstories, and real-life soap opera unfolding in real time. \"Pop Idol\" debuted in Britain in 2001 with Lythgoe as showrunner\u200d\u2014\u200cthe executive producer and production leader\u200d\u2014\u200cand Simon Cowell as one of the judges, and was successful with the viewing public.\nIn 2001, Fuller, Cowell, and TV producer Simon Jones attempted to sell the \"Pop Idol\" format to the United States, but the idea was initially met with poor responses from all the television networks including UPN and Fox. However, Rupert Murdoch, head of Fox's parent company, was later persuaded to buy the series by his daughter, Elisabeth, who had seen the British show. Although Fox's executives wanted to change the format, Murdoch insisted that it should remain the same as the British one. One change was nevertheless made due to the presence of multiple time zones in the United States that made it impractical for the country to vote in the same time period, an additional half-hour results show was therefore added the day following the performance show. The show was renamed \"\" and debuted in the summer of 2002. Cowell was initially offered the job of showrunner but turned down the offer; Lythgoe then took over that position. Much to the surprise of Cowell and Fox, it became one of the biggest shows of the summer. With its successful launch in the summer, the show was then moved to January and expanded. The show grew into a phenomenon largely due to its personal engagement with the contestants by prompting the viewers to vote, and the presence of the acid-tongued Cowell as a judge. By 2004, it had become the most-watched show on American television, a position it then held for seven consecutive seasons until 2011.\nHowever, after a few years of sharp declining ratings starting in 2012, with rating falls of over 20% each season, the fifteenth season would be its last on Fox, ending its run in April 2016. In May 2017, ABC acquired the rights to the series and the program returned for the 2017\u201318 television season. The first season of the revived series, or the sixteenth season overall, started airing in March 2018. Seven seasons have been aired on ABC as of May 2024.\nJudges and hosts.\nJudges.\nThe show had originally planned on having four judges following the \"Pop Idol\" format; however, only three judges had been found by the time of the audition round in the first season, namely Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell. A fourth judge, radio DJ Stryker, was originally chosen but he dropped out citing \"image concerns.\" In the second season, New York radio personality Angie Martinez had been hired as a fourth judge but withdrew after only a few days of auditions, due to being uncomfortable with giving out criticism. The show decided to continue with the three judges format until the eighth season. All three original judges stayed on the judging panel for eight seasons.\nIn the eighth season, Latin Grammy Award-nominated singer-songwriter and record producer Kara DioGuardi was added as a fourth judge. Abdul left the show in 2009, after the eighth season, as a result of failing to agree to terms with the show producers. Emmy Award-winning talk show host Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul for the ninth season, but left in 2010 after just one season. DioGuardi was let go from \"American Idol\" in 2010 after two seasons, as producers favored a return to the three-person judges panel previously used prior to DioGuardi's appearance on the show. Cowell also left the show in 2010 to introduce the American version of his show \"The X Factor\" in 2011. Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth.\nJennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined the judging panel in the tenth season, but both left in 2012 after two seasons. Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. They were replaced by three new judges, Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj, and Keith Urban, who joined Jackson in the twelfth season. However, both Carey and Minaj left after one season. Jackson also departed the judges table after twelve seasons, but would return as the in-house mentor for the thirteenth season in 2014, after which he left the show permanently.\nUrban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. After a one-season hiatus, Lopez returned to \"American Idol\" for the thirteenth season, and was joined by former mentor Harry Connick Jr. After this, Lopez, Urban, and Connick Jr. remained on the show until its cancellation after the fifteenth season in 2016.\nWhen the show was revived by ABC in 2018, Katy Perry, Luke Bryan, and Lionel Richie were selected as judges, marking the sixteenth season of \"Idol\". Bryan and Richie have remained on the show since, while Perry left the show in May 2024 after seven seasons. On July 31, 2024, published reports announced former \"Idol\" winner Carrie Underwood as Perry's replacement, joining Bryan and Richie for the twenty-third season.\nGuest judges may occasionally be introduced. In the second season, guest judges such as Richie and Gladys Knight were used, and in the third season, Donna Summer, Quentin Tarantino, Gloria Estefan, and some of the mentors also joined as judges to critique the performances in the final rounds. Guest judges were sporadically used during the audition rounds: Gene Simmons, LL Cool J, Brandy, Mark McGrath, and Kenny Loggins in the fourth season; Carole Bayer Sager, Jewel, and Olivia Newton-John in the sixth season; Shania Twain, Neil Patrick Harris, Avril Lavigne, Mary J. Blige, Joe Jonas, Kristin Chenoweth, Victoria Beckham, and Perry in the ninth season (substituting in the vacant chair, before DeGeneres was hired); and Adam Lambert filled in for Urban at one audition location during the fourteenth season. In the ABC version, two instances occurred during the live shows: Abdul filled in for Bryan on one episode of the nineteenth season, while Alanis Morissette and Ed Sheeran filled in for Perry and Richie on an episode of the twenty-first season.\nHosts.\nThe first season was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman, following the format of \"Pop Idol\" of using two presenters. Dunkleman quit thereafter, resulting in Seacrest becoming the sole emcee starting with the second season in 2003.\nSeacrest has remained as sole host of \"American Idol\" ever since, with the exception of the two-year hiatus between 2016 and 2018 as well as April 8, 2019, during the seventeenth season, when Bobby Bones subbed for Seacrest after the latter fell ill. Dunkleman did, however, return for the initial in 2016 as a guest.\nCast timeline.\nAnnotations\nSelection process.\nIn a series of steps, the show selected the eventual winner out of many tens of thousands of contestants.\nContestant eligibility.\nThe eligible age-range for contestants is fifteen to twenty-eight years old. The initial age limit was sixteen to twenty-four in the first three seasons, but the upper limit was raised to twenty-eight in the fourth season, and the lower limit was reduced to fifteen in the tenth season. The contestants have to be legal U.S. residents, can not have advanced to particular stages of the competition in previous seasons, and must not have held a current recording or talent representation contract by the semi-final stage (in previous years by the audition stage).\nInitial auditions.\nFor the first eighteen seasons, contestants went through at least three sets of cuts. The first was a brief audition with a few other contestants in front of selectors which may include one of the show's producers. Although auditions can exceed 10,000 in each city, only a few hundred of these made it past the preliminary round of auditions. Successful contestants then sing in front of producers, where more may be cut. Only then can they proceed to audition in front of the judges, which is the only audition stage shown on television. Those selected by the judges are sent to Hollywood. Between 10 and 60 people in each city may make it to Hollywood (the average total is between 150 and 200).\nFrom the nineteenth season onwards, contestants request a Zoom interview and audition remotely for the show's producers. If the audition goes well, they will then invite the contestants to audition in front of the judges, in one of the audition cities.\nHollywood week.\nOnce in Hollywood, the contestants perform individually or in groups in a series of rounds. Until the tenth season, there were usually three rounds of eliminations in Hollywood. In the first round the contestants emerged in groups but performed individually. For the next round, the contestants put themselves in small groups and performed a song together. In the final round, the contestants performed solo with a song of their choice a cappella or accompanied by a band\u200d\u2014\u200cdepending on the season. In the second and third seasons, contestants were also asked to write original lyrics or melody in an additional round after the first round. In the seventh season, the group round was eliminated and contestants may, after a first solo performance and on judges approval, skip a second solo round and move directly to the final Hollywood round. In the twelfth season, the executive producers split up the females and males and chose the members to form the groups in the group round.\nIn the tenth and eleventh seasons, a further round was added in Las Vegas, where the contestants performed in groups based on a theme, followed by one final solo round to determine the semi-finalists. At the end of this stage of the competition, 24 to 36 contestants were selected to move on to the semi-final stage. In the twelfth season the Las Vegas round became a Sudden Death round, where the judges had to choose five guys and five girls each night (four nights) to make the top twenty. In the thirteenth season, the Las Vegas round was eliminated and a new round called \"Hollywood or Home\" was added, where if the judges were uncertain about some contestants, those contestants were required to perform soon after landing in Los Angeles, and those who failed to impress were sent back home before they reached Hollywood. In the fourteenth season, the \"Hollywood or Home\" round was dropped, and a Showcase round was added, where the contestants performed at the House of Blues or auditorium for the judges and a live audience, and these performances determine who makes into the Top 24. In the seventeenth and eighteenth seasons, the showcase round took place in Hawaii. From the nineteenth season onward, a showstopper round was used.\nAudience voting.\nFrom the semi-finals onward, the fate of the contestants is decided by public vote. During the contestant's performance as well as the recap at the end, a toll-free telephone number for each contestant was displayed on the screen. For a two-hour period after the episode ends (up to four hours for the finale) in each US time zone, viewers may call or send a text message to their preferred contestant's telephone number, and each call or text message was registered as a vote for that contestant. Viewers were allowed to vote as many times as they can within the two-hour voting window. However, the show reserves the right to discard votes by power dialers. One or more of the least popular contestants may be eliminated in successive weeks until a winner emerges. Over 110\u00a0million votes were cast in the first season, and by the tenth season the seasonal total had increased to nearly 750 million. Voting via text messaging was made available in the second season when AT&T Wireless joined as a sponsor of the show, and 7.5\u00a0million text messages were sent to \"American Idol\" that season. The number of text messages rapidly increased, reaching 178\u00a0million texts by the eighth season. Online voting was offered for the first time in the tenth season. The votes are counted and verified by Telescope Inc.\nSemi-finals.\nIn the first three seasons, the semi-finalists were split into different groups to perform individually in their respective night. In the first season, there were three groups of ten, with the top three contestants from each group making the finals. In the second and third seasons, there were four groups of eight, and the top two of each selected. These seasons also featured a wildcard round, where contestants who failed to qualify were given another chance. In the first season, only one wildcard contestant was chosen by the judges, giving a total of ten finalists. In the second and third seasons, each of the three judges championed one contestant with the public advancing a fourth into the finals, making 12 finalists in all.\nFrom the fourth through seventh and ninth seasons, the twenty-four semi-finalists were divided by gender in order to ensure an equal gender division in the top twelve. The men and women sang separately on consecutive nights, and the bottom two in each groups were eliminated each week until only six of each remained to form the top twelve.\nThe wildcard round returned in the eighth season, wherein there were three groups of twelve, with three contestants moving forward \u2013 the highest male, the highest female, and the next highest-placed singer \u2013 for each night, and four wildcards were chosen by the judges to produce a final 13. Starting in tenth season, the girls and boys perform on separate nights. In the tenth and eleventh seasons, five of each gender were chosen, and three wildcards were chosen by the judges to form a final 13. In the twelfth season, the top twenty semifinalists were split into gender groups, with five of each gender advancing to form the final 10. In the thirteenth season, there were thirty semifinalists, but only twenty semifinalists (ten for each gender) were chosen by the judges to perform on the live shows, with five in each gender based on the vote and three wildcards chosen by the judges composing the final 13. In the fourteenth season, the top 24 performed at The Fillmore Detroit, starting with the 12 males on one night and then the 12 females on the next night. The following week, the same order went for the top 16, with four males eliminated, followed by four females based on the vote. Then, on the first night of finals, a similar sequence from the thirteenth season was used to determine the final 12, with five of each gender based on the vote and two wildcards chosen by the judges. In the fifteenth season, the top 24 performed at Cathedral of Saint Vibiana in Los Angeles and were split into two groups of twelve and performed twice, one being a solo performance and one being a duet with a former Idol contestant. In each group, the judges chose 7 contestants to advance to the top 14 where the judges chose 4 to advance to the top 10 and remaining 6 contestants were chosen based on the vote. In the sixteenth season, the top 24 performed at the Academy in the Heart of LA, and the show repeated the process from the previous season. However, instead of Idol alumnus as duet partners, superstar celebrity singers were used as the duet partners. In the seventeenth season, the same process was repeated again. However, instead of a top 24, it's a top 20, the contestants performed at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, and performed solos in one episode, and performed the duets in two episodes. In the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the top 20 performed at their homes, and based on the vote, half of the top 20 would advance to the top 10, and the other half would be eliminated. However, a wild card was given to one of the bottom 10 to save them from elimination. In the nineteenth season, the show used a combination of the process from the sixteenth and fourteenth seasons. In the twentieth season, the show repeated the process from the previous season, but they used a top 20 instead of a top 16, and there were no all star duets. In the twenty-first season, the same process was repeated, but they started with a top 26 instead of a top 24. In the twenty-second season, the show repeated the process from the twentieth season.\nFinals.\nThe finals are broadcast in primetime from Los Angeles, in front of a live studio audience (except the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic). From 2002 to 2019 and from 2021 to 2022, the venue was CBS Television City. Starting in 2023, it changed to Red Studios. The finals lasted eight weeks in the first season. From the second to ninth and fourteenth seasons, the finals lasted eleven weeks. The tenth and eleventh seasons lasted for twelve weeks, while the twelfth season lasted for ten weeks. In the thirteenth season, the finals lasted thirteen weeks. The finals lasted seven weeks in the fifteenth season, and six weeks in the sixteenth season. Each finalist performs songs based on a weekly theme which may be a musical genre such as Motown, disco, or big band, songs by artists such as Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley or The Beatles, or more general themes such as \"Billboard\" number-one hits or songs from the contestant's year of birth. Contestants usually worked with a celebrity mentor related to the theme. From the tenth to twelfth seasons, Jimmy Iovine was brought in as a mentor for the season. Initially the contestants sang one song each week, but this was increased to two songs from top four or five onwards, then three songs for the top two or three.\nThe most popular contestants are usually not revealed in the results show. Instead, typically the three contestants (two in later rounds) who received the lowest number of votes was called to the center of the stage. One of these three was usually sent to safety; however the two remaining were not necessarily the bottom two. The contestant with the fewest votes was then revealed and eliminated from the competition. A montage of the eliminated contestant's time on the show was played and they gave their final performance (from the fourteenth season onward, the montage and the final performance were dropped). However, in the sixth season, during the series' first ever Idol Gives Back episode, no contestant was eliminated, but on the following week, two were sent home. Moreover, from the eighth to the fourteenth seasons, and the seventeenth season onward, the judges may overturn viewers' decision with a \"Judges' Save\" if they unanimously agreed to. \"The save\" could only be used once, and only up through the Top 5. In the eighth to tenth and fourteenth seasons, a double elimination then took place in the week following the activation of the save, but in the eleventh and thirteenth seasons, a regular single elimination took place. The save was not activated in the twelfth season and consequently, a non-elimination took place in the week after its expiration with the votes then carrying over into the following week.\nThe \"Fan Save\" was introduced in the fourteenth season. During the finals, viewers were given a five-minute window to vote for the contestants in danger of elimination by using their Twitter account to decide which contestant will move on to the next show, starting with the Top 8.\nSeason finale.\nDuring the original run of \"American Idol\" on Fox, the finale week consisted of a one-hour long final performance night and a two-hour last episode of the season that culminates in revealing the winner, both of which are broadcast live in the U.S. Eastern and Central time zones. For the first, third through sixth and fourteenth through fifteenth seasons it was broadcast from the Dolby Theatre, which has an audience capacity of approximately 3,400. The second-season finale took place at the Gibson Amphitheatre, which had an audience capacity of over 6,000. In the seventh through thirteenth seasons, the venue was at the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live, which holds an audience of over 7,000. Since the show's reboot on ABC, the venue remains the same throughout the entire show (excluding auditions), but was still two episodes in the sixteenth season, and then stretched to a single three-hour season finale that is annually aired live simultaneously in all U.S. territories, starting with the seventeenth season. The eighteenth-season finale was conducted virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nRewards for winner and finalists.\nThe winner usually receives a record deal with a major label, which may be for up to six albums, and secures a management contract with \"American Idol\"-affiliated 19 Management (which has the right of first refusal to sign all contestants), as well as various lucrative contracts. All winners prior to the ninth season reportedly earned at least $1\u00a0million in their first year as winner. At first the contract came with a $250,000-plus advance, but dropped to about $62,500 over the Fox years. All the runners-up of the first ten seasons, as well as some of other finalists, had also received record deals with major labels. However, starting in the eleventh season, the runner-up may only be guaranteed a single-only deal. BMG/Sony (first through ninth seasons), UMG (tenth through fifteenth seasons), and Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records (sixteenth through eighteenth seasons) had the right of first refusal to sign contestants for three months after the season's finale. In the fourteenth and fifteenth seasons, the winner was signed with Big Machine Records. Prominent music mogul Clive Davis also produced some of the selected contestants' albums, such as Kelly Clarkson, Clay Aiken, Fantasia Barrino and Diana DeGarmo. All top 10 (11 in the tenth and twelfth seasons, 5 in the fourteenth season, and 7 in the sixteenth season) finalists earn the privilege of going on a tour, where the participants may each earn a six-figure sum.\nSeason synopses.\nEach season premieres with the audition round, taking place in different cities. The audition episodes typically feature a mix of potential finalists, interesting characters and woefully inadequate contestants. Each successful contestant receives a golden or platinum ticket to proceed on to the next round in Hollywood. Based on their performances during the Hollywood round (Las Vegas round from the tenth through twelfth seasons), 24 to 36 contestants are selected by the judges to participate in the semifinals. From the semifinals onward the contestants perform their songs live, with the judges making their critiques after each performance. The contestants are voted for by the viewing public, and the outcome of the public votes is then revealed during a results segment. The results segment feature group performances by the contestants as well as guest performers. The Top-three results also features homecoming events for the Top 3 finalists. The season reaches its climax in a two-hour results finale show, where the winner of the season is revealed.\nWith the exception of the first two seasons, the contestants in the semifinals onward perform in front of a studio audience. They perform with a full band in the finals. The current musical director is Kris Pooley, who has been with the show since the sixteenth season. In previous seasons, the \"American Idol\" band was led by Rickey Minor (fourth through ninth and thirteenth through fifteenth seasons) and Ray Chew (tenth through twelfth seasons). Assistance has also been given by vocal coaches and song arrangers, such as Michael Orland and Debra Byrd to contestants behind the scene. Starting with the seventh season, contestants may perform with a musical instrument from the Hollywood rounds onward. In later seasons, the contestants were allowed to perform with a musical instrument in the auditions. During the first nine seasons, performances were usually aired live on Tuesday nights, followed by the results shows on Wednesdays, but moved to Wednesdays and Thursdays from the tenth through thirteenth seasons, with the tenth, eleventh and thirteenth-season finales aired on Tuesday and Wednesday. From the fourteenth season onward, there were no separate results shows. On the fourteenth season, the show aired on Wednesday nights, and on the fifteenth season, Thursday nights. Since the sixteenth season, the show has been airing on Sundays and Mondays.\n2002\u20132016: Fox.\nSeason 1 (2002).\nThe first season of \"American Idol\" debuted as a summer replacement show in June 2002 on the Fox network. It was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell served as judges.\nIn the audition rounds, 121 contestants were selected from around 10,000 who attended the auditions. These were cut to 30 for the semifinal, with ten going on to the finals. One semifinalist, Delano Cagnolatti, was disqualified for lying to evade the show's age limit. One of the early favorites, Tamyra Gray, was eliminated at the top four, the first of several such shock eliminations that were to be repeated in later seasons. Christina Christian was hospitalized before the top six result show due to chest pains and palpitations, and she was eliminated while she was in the hospital. Jim Verraros was the first openly gay contestant on the show; his sexual orientation was revealed on his blog, however it was removed during the competition after a request from the show producers over concerns that it might be unfairly influencing votes.\nThe final showdown was between Justin Guarini, one of the early favorites, and Kelly Clarkson. Clarkson was not initially thought of as a contender, but impressed the judges with some good performances in the final rounds, such as her performance of Aretha Franklin's \"Natural Woman\", and Betty Hutton's \"Stuff Like That There\", and eventually won the crown on September 4, 2002.\nIn what was to become a tradition, Clarkson performed the coronation song during the finale, and released the song immediately after the season ended. The single, \"A Moment Like This\", went on to break a 38-year-old record held by The Beatles for the biggest leap to number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. Guarini did not release any song immediately after the show and remains the only runner-up not to do so. Both Clarkson and Guarini made a musical film, \"From Justin to Kelly\", which was released in 2003 but was widely panned. Clarkson has since become one of the most successful \"Idol\" contestants internationally, with worldwide album sales of more than 25\u00a0million.\nStarting September 30, 2006, this season was repackaged as \"\"American Idol Rewind\"\" and syndicated directly to stations in the U.S.\nSeason 2 (2003).\nFollowing the success of the first season, the second season was moved up to air in January 2003. The number of episodes increased, as did the show's budget and the charge for commercial spots. Dunkleman left the show, leaving Ryan Seacrest as the lone host. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Kristin Adams was a correspondent for this season.\nCorey Clark was disqualified during the finals for having an undisclosed police record; however, he later alleged that he and Paula Abdul had an affair while on the show and that this contributed to his expulsion. Clark also claimed that Abdul gave him preferential treatment on the show due to their affair. The allegations were dismissed by Fox after an independent investigation. Two semi-finalists were also disqualified that year \u2013 Jaered Andrews for an arrest on an assault charge, and Frenchie Davis for having previously modeled for an adult website.\nThe season finale drew more than 38 million viewers, marking \"Idol\"'s biggest audience ever for a single episode. Ruben Studdard emerged as the winner, beating Clay Aiken by a small margin. Out of a total of 24 million votes, Studdard finished just 134,000 votes ahead of Aiken. This slim margin of victory was controversial due to the large number of calls that failed to get through. In an interview prior to the fifth season, executive producer Nigel Lythgoe indicated that Aiken had led the fan voting from the wildcard week onward until the finale.\nBoth finalists found success after the show, but Aiken out-performed Studdard's coronation song \"Flying Without Wings\" with his single release from the show \"This Is the Night\", as well as in their subsequent album releases. The fourth-place finisher Josh Gracin also enjoyed some success as a country singer.\nSeason 3 (2004).\nThe third season premiered on January 19, 2004. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. One of the most talked-about contestants during the audition process was William Hung whose off-key rendition of Ricky Martin's \"She Bangs\" received widespread attention. His exposure on \"Idol\" landed him a record deal and surprisingly he became the third bestselling singer from that season.\nMuch media attention on the season had been focused on the three black singers, Fantasia Barrino, LaToya London, and Jennifer Hudson, dubbed the Three Divas. All three unexpectedly landed on the bottom three on the top seven result show, with Hudson controversially eliminated. Elton John, who was one of the mentors that season, called the results of the votes \"incredibly racist\". The prolonged stays of John Stevens and Jasmine Trias in the finals, despite negative comments from the judges, had aroused resentment, so much so that John Stevens reportedly received a death threat, which he dismissed as a joke 'blown out of proportion'.\nThe performance of \"Summertime\" by Barrino, later known simply as \"Fantasia\", at Top 8 was widely praised, and Simon Cowell considered it as his favorite \"Idol\" moment in the nine seasons he was on the show. Fantasia and Diana DeGarmo were the last two finalists, and Fantasia was crowned as the winner. Fantasia released as her coronation single \"I Believe\", a song co-written by the first season finalist Tamyra Gray, and DeGarmo released \"Dreams\".\nSeason 4 (2005).\nThe fourth season premiered on January 18, 2005. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This was the first full season of the series to be aired in high definition; the finale of the third season was also aired in high definition. The number of those attending the auditions by now had increased to over 100,000 from the 10,000 of the first season. The age limit was raised to 28 in this season, and among those who benefited from this new rule were Constantine Maroulis and Bo Bice, the two rockers of the show.\nThe top 12 finalists originally included Mario Vazquez, but he dropped out citing 'personal reasons' and was replaced by Nikko Smith. Later, an employee of Fremantle Media, which produces the show, sued the company for wrongful termination, claiming that he was dismissed after complaining about lewd behavior by Vazquez toward him during the show.\nDuring the top 11 week, due to a mix-up with the contestants' telephone number, voting was repeated on what was normally the result night, with the result reveal postponed until the following night.\nIn May 2005, Underwood was announced the winner, with Bice the runner-up. Both Underwood and Bice released the coronation song \"Inside Your Heaven\", with Underwood's version of the song making her the first country artist ever to debut at number-one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart. As of 2015, Underwood has become the most successful \"Idol\" contestant in the U.S., selling 16 million albums in the country, while selling a total of 65 million records worldwide.\nSeason 5 (2006).\nThe fifth season began on January 17, 2006. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. It remains the highest-rated season in the show's run so far. Two of the more prominent contestants during the Hollywood round were the Brittenum twins who were later disqualified for identity theft.\nChris Daughtry's performance of Fuel's \"Hemorrhage (In My Hands)\" on the show was widely praised and led to an invitation to join the band as Fuel's new lead singer, an invitation he declined. His performance of Live's version of \"I Walk the Line\" was well received by the judges but later criticized in some quarters for not crediting the arrangement to Live. He was eliminated at the top four in a shocking result.\nOn May 30, 2006, Taylor Hicks was named \"American Idol\", with Katharine McPhee the runner-up. \"Do I Make You Proud\" was released as Hicks' first single and McPhee's was \"My Destiny\".\nDespite being eliminated earlier in the season, Chris Daughtry (as lead of the band Daughtry) became the most successful recording artist from this season. Other contestants, such as Hicks, McPhee, Bucky Covington, Mandisa, Kellie Pickler, and Elliott Yamin have had varying levels of success.\nSeason 6 (2007).\nThe sixth season began on Tuesday, January 16, 2007. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The premiere drew a massive audience of 37.3\u00a0million viewers, peaking in the last half hour with more than 41\u00a0million viewers.\nTeenager Sanjaya Malakar was the season's most talked-about contestant for his unusual hairdo, and for managing to survive elimination for many weeks due in part to the weblog Vote for the Worst and satellite radio personality Howard Stern, who both encouraged fans to vote for him. However, on the Top 7 results, Sanjaya was voted off.\nThis season saw the first \"Idol Gives Back\" telethon-inspired event, which raised more than $76\u00a0million in corporate and viewer donations. No contestant was eliminated that week, but two (Phil Stacey and Chris Richardson) were eliminated the next.\nIn the May 23 season finale, Jordin Sparks was declared the winner with the runner-up being Blake Lewis. Sparks has had some success as a recording artist post-\"Idol\".\nThis season also saw the launch of the \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest which allows fans to vote for the \"coronation song\". Thousands of recordings of original songs were submitted by songwriters, and 20 entries selected for the public vote. The winning song, \"This Is My Now\", was performed by both finalists during the finale and released by Sparks on May 24, 2007.\nSeason 7 (2008).\nThe seventh season premiered on January 15, 2008, for a two-day, four-hour premiere. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The media focused on the professional status of the seventh season contestants, the so-called 'ringers', many of whom, including Kristy Lee Cook, Brooke White, Michael Johns, and in particular Carly Smithson, had prior recording contracts. Contestant David Hernandez also attracted some attention due to his past employment as a stripper.\nFor the finals, \"American Idol\" debuted a new state-of-the-art set and stage on March 11, 2008, along with a new on-air look. David Cook's performance of \"Billie Jean\" on top-ten night was lauded by the judges, but provoked controversy when they apparently mistook the Chris Cornell arrangement to be David Cook's own even though the performance was introduced as Cornell's version. Cornell himself said he was 'flattered' and praised David Cook's performance. David Cook was taken to the hospital after the top-nine performance show due to heart palpitations and high blood pressure.\nDavid Archuleta's performance of John Lennon's \"Imagine\" was considered by many as one of the best of the season. Jennifer Lopez, who was brought in as a judge in the tenth season, called it a beautiful song-moment that she will never forget. Jason Castro's semi-final performance of \"Hallelujah\" also received considerable attention, and it propelled Jeff Buckley's version of the song to the top of the \"Billboard\" digital song chart. This was the first season in which contestants' recordings were released onto iTunes after their performances, and although sales information was not released so as not to prejudice the contest, leaked information indicated that contestants' songs frequently reached the top of iTunes sales charts.\n\"Idol Gives Back\" returned on April 9, 2008, and raised $64\u00a0million for charity.\nThe finalists were Cook and Archuleta. David Cook was announced the winner on May 21, 2008, the first rocker to win the show. Both Cook and Archuleta had some success as recording artists with both selling over a million albums in the U.S.\nThe \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest was also held this season. From ten of the most popular submissions, each of the final two contestants chose a song to perform, although neither of their selections was used as the \"coronation song\". The winning song, \"The Time of My Life\", was recorded by David Cook and released on May 22, 2008.\nSeason 8 (2009).\nThe eighth season premiered on January 13, 2009. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This season featured the first major change to the judging panel; a fourth judge, Kara DioGuardi, was introduced. Mike Darnell, the president of alternative programming for Fox, stated that the season would focus more on the contestants' personal life.\nThis was also the first season without executive producer Nigel Lythgoe who left to focus on the international versions of his show \"So You Think You Can Dance\". The Hollywood round was moved to the Kodak Theatre for 2009 and was also extended to two weeks. \"Idol Gives Back\" was canceled for this season due to the global recession at the time.\nThere were 13 finalists this season, but two were eliminated in the first result show of the finals. A new feature introduced was the \"Judges' Save\", and Matt Giraud was saved from elimination at the top seven by the judges when he received the fewest votes. The next week, Lil Rounds and Anoop Desai were eliminated.\nThe two finalists were Kris Allen and Adam Lambert, both of whom had previously landed in the bottom three at the top five. Allen won the contest in the most controversial voting result since the second season. It was claimed, and then later retracted, that 38\u00a0million of the 100\u00a0million votes cast on the night came from Allen's home state of Arkansas alone, and that AT&T employees unfairly influenced the votes by giving lessons on power-texting at viewing parties in Arkansas.\nBoth Allen and Lambert released the coronation song, \"No Boundaries\" which was co-written by DioGuardi. This is the first season in which the winner failed to achieve gold album status.\nSeason 9 (2010).\nThe ninth season premiered on January 12, 2010. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Kara DioGuardi, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Paula Abdul left the show and Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul at the start of Hollywood Week. One of the most prominent auditioners this season was General Larry Platt whose performance of \"Pants on the Ground\" became a viral hit song.\nCrystal Bowersox, who has Type-I diabetes, fell ill due to diabetic ketoacidosis on the morning of the girls performance night for the top 20 week and was hospitalized. The schedule was rearranged so the boys performed first and she could perform the following night instead; she later revealed that Ken Warwick, the show producer, wanted to disqualify her but she begged to be allowed to stay on the show.\nMichael Lynche was the lowest vote getter at top nine and was given the Judges' Save. The next week Katie Stevens and Andrew Garcia were eliminated. That week, Adam Lambert was invited back to be a mentor, the first \"Idol\" alum to do so. \"Idol Gives Back\" returned this season on April 21, 2010, and raised $45 million.\nA special tribute to Simon Cowell was presented in the finale for his final season with the show. Many figures from the show's past, including Paula Abdul, made an appearance.\nThe final two contestants were Lee DeWyze and Bowersox. DeWyze was declared the winner during the May 26 finale. No new song was used as coronation song this year; instead, the two finalists each released a cover song \u2013 DeWyze chose U2's \"Beautiful Day\", and Bowersox chose Patty Griffin's \"Up to the Mountain\". This is the first season where neither finalist achieved significant album sales.\nSeason 10 (2011).\nThe tenth season premiered on January 19, 2011. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Many changes were introduced this season, from the format to the personnel of the show. Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined Randy Jackson as judges following the departures of Simon Cowell (who left to launch the American version of \"The X Factor\"), Kara DioGuardi (whose contract was not renewed) and Ellen DeGeneres, who left the show on her own accord.\nRandy Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth. Nigel Lythgoe returned as executive producer. Jimmy Iovine, chairman of the Interscope Geffen A&M label group, the new partner of \"American Idol\", acted as the in-house mentor in place of weekly guest mentors, although in later episodes special guest mentors such as Beyonc\u00e9, will.i.am and Lady Gaga were brought in.\nThe tenth season is the first to include online auditions where contestants could submit a 40-second video audition via Myspace. Karen Rodriguez was one such auditioner and reached the final rounds.\nOne of the more prominent contestants this year was Chris Medina, whose story of caring for his brain-damaged fianc\u00e9e received widespread coverage. Medina was cut in the Top 40 round. Casey Abrams, who suffers from ulcerative colitis, was hospitalized twice and missed the Top 13 result show. The judges used their one save on Abrams on the Top 11, and as a result this was the first season that 11 finalists went on tour instead of 10. In the following week, Naima Adedapo and Thia Megia were both eliminated.\nPia Toscano, one of the presumed favorites to advance far in the season, was unexpectedly eliminated on April 7, 2011, finishing in ninth place. Her elimination drew criticisms from some former \"Idol\" contestants, as well as actor Tom Hanks. After \"Idol\", Jennifer Lopez helped guide her career.\nThe two finalists in 2011 were Lauren Alaina and Scotty McCreery, both teenage country singers. McCreery won the competition on May 25, being the youngest male winner and the fourth male in a row to win \"American Idol\". McCreery released his first single, \"I Love You This Big\", as his coronation song, and Alaina released \"Like My Mother Does\". McCreery's debut album, \"Clear as Day\", became the first debut album by an \"Idol\" winner to reach No. 1 on the US \"Billboard\" 200 since Ruben Studdard's \"Soulful\" in 2003, and he became the youngest male artist to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200.\nSeason 11 (2012).\nThe eleventh season premiered on January 18, 2012. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez, and Randy Jackson returned as judges. One more finalist would join the Top 24 making it the Top 25, which was later revealed to be Jermaine Jones. However, on March 14, Jones was disqualified in 12th place for concealing arrests and outstanding warrants. Jones denied the accusation that he concealed his arrests.\nFinalist Phillip Phillips suffered from kidney pain and was taken to the hospital before the Top 13 results show, and later received medical procedure to alleviate a blockage caused by kidney stones. He was reported to have eight surgeries during his Idol run, and had considered quitting the show due to the pain. He underwent surgery to remove the stones and reconstruct his kidney soon after the season had finished.\nJessica Sanchez received the fewest votes during the Top 7 week, and the judges decided to use their \"save\" option on her, making her the first female recipient of the save. The following week, unlike previous seasons, Colton Dixon was the only contestant sent home. Sanchez later made the final two, the first season where a recipient of the save reached the finale.\nPhillips became the winner, beating Sanchez. During the finale, fifth season finalist Ace Young proposed marriage to third season runner-up Diana DeGarmo on stage \u2013 which she accepted.\nPhillips released \"Home\" as his coronation song, while Sanchez released \"Change Nothing\". Phillips' \"Home\" has since become the best selling of all coronation songs, with over 5 million copies sold.\nSeason 12 (2013).\nThe twelfth season premiered on January 16, 2013. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Judges Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler left the show after two seasons. Randy Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. This season's judging panel consisted of Randy Jackson, along with Mariah Carey, Keith Urban and Nicki Minaj.\nThis was the first season since the ninth season to have four judges on the panel. The pre-season buzz and the early episodes of the show were dominated by the feud between the judges Minaj and Carey after a video of their dispute was leaked to TMZ.\nThe top 10 contestants started with five males and five females, however, the males were eliminated consecutively in the first five weeks, with Lazaro Arbos the last male to be eliminated. For the first time in the show's history, the top 5 contestants were all female. It was also the first time that the judges' \"save\" was not used, the top four contestants were therefore given an extra week to perform again with their votes carried over with no elimination in the first week.\n23-year-old Candice Glover won the season with Kree Harrison taking the runner-up spot. Glover became the first female to win \"American Idol\" since Jordin Sparks, who won the show in 2007. Glover released \"I Am Beautiful\" as a single while Harrison released \"All Cried Out\" immediately after the show. Glover sold poorly with her debut album, and this is also the first season that the runner-up was not signed by a music label.\nTowards the end of the season, Randy Jackson, the last remaining of the original judges, announced he would no longer serve as a judge to pursue other business ventures. Both judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj also decided to leave after one season to focus on their music careers.\nSeason 13 (2014).\nThe thirteenth season premiered on January 15, 2014. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Keith Urban returned as a judge. Urban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. Randy Jackson returned, though Jackson moved from the judging panel to the role of in-mentor. Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj left the panel after one season. Former judge Jennifer Lopez and former mentor Harry Connick, Jr. joined Urban on the panel. Connick Jr. served as a mentor for \"Idol\" in 2010 and 2012. Also, Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick were replaced as executive producers by Per Blankens, Jesse Ignjatovic and Evan Pragger. Bill DeRonde replaced Warwick as a director of the audition episodes, while Louis J. Horvitz replaced Gregg Gelfand as a director of the show.\nThis was the first season where the contestants were permitted to perform in the final rounds songs they wrote themselves. In the Top 8, Sam Woolf received the fewest votes, but he was saved from elimination by the judges. The 500th episode of the series was the Top 3 performance night.\nCaleb Johnson was named the winner of the season, with Jena Irene as the runner-up. Johnson released \"As Long as You Love Me\" as his coronation single while Irene released \"We Are One\".\nSeason 14 (2015).\nThe fourteenth season premiered on January 7, 2015. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban and Harry Connick, Jr. returned for their respective fourth, third and second seasons as judges. Eighth season runner-up Adam Lambert filled in for Urban during the New York City auditions. Randy Jackson did not return as the in-house mentor and left the show permanently. Scott Borchetta replaced Jackson as the mentor.\nChanges this season include only airing one episode a week during the final ten. Coca-Cola ended their longtime sponsorship of the show and Ford Motor Company maintained a reduced role. The winner of the season also received a recording contract with Big Machine Records.\nNick Fradiani won the season, defeating Clark Beckham. Fradiani became the first winner from the Northeast region. Fradiani released \"Beautiful Life\" as his coronation single while Beckham released \"Champion\". Jax, the third place finalist, also released a single called \"Forcefield\".\nSeason 15 (2016).\nFox announced on May 11, 2015, that the fifteenth season would be the final season of \"American Idol\"; as such, the season was expected to have an additional focus on the program's alumni. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, with Harry Connick Jr., Keith Urban, and Jennifer Lopez all returning as judges. The fifteenth season premiered on January 6, 2016. The season was shortened by four weeks compared to previous years. During the finale episode, President Barack Obama praised the millions of young people that voted for contestants and pitched that they vote in the upcoming election. The farewell season concluded on April 7, 2016. Seacrest signed off by saying: \"And one more time\u2014this is so tough\u2014we say to you from Hollywood, goodnight America\", and then he added, \"for now.\"\nTrent Harmon won the season against runner-up La'Porsha Renae. Harmon released \"Falling\" co-written by Keith Urban as his coronation song. Renae's \"Battles\", third-place finisher Dalton Rapattoni's \"Strike A Match\" and fourth-place finisher MacKenzie Bourg's \"Roses\" were also released as singles.\n2018\u2013present: ABC revival.\nIn early 2017, \"Variety\" reported that Fremantle Media was in talks to revive the show for NBC or for its original network, Fox. A dispute between Fremantle and Core Media Group derailed these plans. In May 2017, ABC was making a bid to revive the program. ABC acquired the rights to the series, and \"American Idol\" returned for the 2017\u201318 television season.\nSeason 16 (2018).\nIn July 2017, it was announced that Ryan Seacrest would return as host, and by September 2017 it was revealed that Katy Perry, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie would serve as judges. The sixteenth season premiered on March 11, 2018. This was the first season of \"American Idol\" to air on ABC. The season was again shortened compared to the previous season to twelve weeks, with multiple elimination in the final rounds. Unlike previous seasons where only two finalists remained in the final episode, three finalists performed in the finale. On May 21, 2018, the season concluded with Maddie Poppe crowned the winner, beating Caleb Lee Hutchinson as runner-up and Gabby Barrett in third place. Her winning song was \"Going, Going, Gone\". Caleb Lee Hutchinson released \"Johnny Cash Heart\" as a single, while Gabby Barrett's song was \"Rivers Deep\".\nSeason 17 (2019).\nABC renewed the revival series for another season. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. The seventeenth season premiered on March 3, 2019. For the finale, the show no longer features separate performance and result shows. On May 19, 2019, the season concluded with three finalists, with Madison VanDenburg eliminated in third place after performing two songs, and the final two performing their last song. For the first time, there were no separate performance and grand finale shows this season. Laine Hardy was crowned the winner and Alejandro Aranda runner-up. Hardy released a single, \"Flame\", immediately after the win, but Aranda did not. However, Aranda later released a song he performed in the finale, \"Tonight\", under the name Scarypoolparty on June 28, 2019.\nSeason 18 (2020).\nOn May 13, 2019, the series was renewed for an eighteenth season and it premiered on February 16, 2020. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. For the first time, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, from the top 20 to the finale, the contestants performed in their own homes, while Ryan Seacrest hosted the show remotely in his own home in Los Angeles with the judges also in their respective homes. The season was also further truncated, with the top 5 performing in the finale. Each finalist also performed only two songs for the finale. On May 17, the season concluded, with Just Sam crowned as the winner, with Arthur Gunn finishing as the runner-up. \"Rise Up\", the song Just Sam performed for their audition and reprised on the finale, was released as their debut song.\nSeason 19 (2021).\nOn May 15, 2020, ABC renewed the series for a nineteenth season and it premiered on February 14, 2021. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. Later in October, it was announced that Bobby Bones will return as mentor. On May 23, the season concluded, with Chayce Beckham crowned the winner, with Willie Spence finishing as the runner-up. \"23\", the song Chayce Beckham wrote and performed for Top 4, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 20 (2022).\nOn May 13, 2021, ABC renewed the series for a twentieth season and it premiered on February 27, 2022. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On December 31, it was announced that Bones would not be returning as a mentor. On May 22, the season concluded, with Noah Thompson crowned as the winner, with HunterGirl finishing as the runner-up. \"One Day Tonight\", the song Noah Thompson performed for the Grand Finale, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 21 (2023).\nOn May 13, 2022, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-first season and it premiered on February 19, 2023. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On May 21, the season concluded, with Iam Tongi crowned as the winner, with Megan Danielle finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 22 (2024).\nOn May 16, 2023, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-second season and it premiered on February 18, 2024. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. In February 2024, Perry announced that the season would be her last. On May 20, the season concluded, with Abi Carter crowned as the winner, with Will Moseley finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 23 (2025).\nOn May 10, 2024, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-third season; it was also announced the network was in-talks with \"high-profile stars\" to replace the outgoing Perry. On July 31, 2024, it was announced Seacrest would return as host, with Bryan and Richie returning as judges; Underwood was named as Perry's successor. The season premiered on March 9, 2025.\nReception.\nU.S. television ratings.\nSeasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of \"American Idol\". It holds the distinction of having the longest winning streak in the Nielsen annual television ratings; it became the highest-rated of all television programs in the United States overall for an unprecedented seven consecutive years, or eight consecutive (and total) years when either its performance or result show was ranked number one overall.\n\"Each U.S. network television season starts in late September and ends in late May, which coincides with the completion of May sweeps.\"\n\"American Idol\" premiered in June 2002 and became the surprise summer hit show of 2002. The first show drew 9.9\u00a0million viewers, giving Fox the best viewing figure for the 8.30\u00a0pm spot in over a year. The audience steadily grew, and by finale night, the audience had averaged 23\u00a0million, with more than 40\u00a0million watching some part of that show. That episode was placed third amongst all age groups, but more importantly it led in the 18\u201349 demographic, the age group most valued by advertisers.\nThe growth continued into the next season, starting with a season premiere of 26.5 million. The season attracted an average of 21.7\u00a0million viewers, and was placed second overall amongst the 18\u201349 age group. The finale night when Ruben Studdard won over Clay Aiken was also the highest-rated ever \"American Idol\" episode at 38.1\u00a0million for the final hour. By the third season, the show had become the top show in the 18\u201349 demographic<ref name=\"realitytvworld_5/24/2007\"></ref> a position it has held for all subsequent years up to and including the tenth season, and its competition stages ranked first in the nationwide overall ratings. By the fourth season, \"American Idol\" had become the most-watched series amongst all viewers on American TV for the first time, with an average viewership of 26.8\u00a0million. The show reached its peak in the fifth season with numbers averaging 30.6\u00a0million per episode, and this season remains the highest-rated of the series.\nThe sixth season premiered with the series' highest-rated debut episode and a few of its succeeding episodes rank among the most-watched episodes of \"American Idol.\" During this time, many television executives begun to regard the show as a programming force unlike any seen before, as its consistent dominance of up to two hours two or three nights a week exceeded the 30- or 60-minute reach of previous hits such as NBC's \"The Cosby Show\". The show was dubbed \"the Death Star\", and competing networks often rearranged their schedules in order to minimize losses. However, the sixth season also showed a steady decline in viewership over the course of the season. The season finale saw a drop in ratings of 16% from the previous year. The sixth season was the first season wherein the average results show rated higher than the competition stages (unlike in the previous seasons), and became the second-highest-rated of the series after the preceding season.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the seventh season. The premiere was down 11% among total viewers, and the results show in which Kristy Lee Cook was eliminated delivered its lowest-rated Wednesday show among the 18\u201334 demo since the first season in 2002. However, the ratings rebounded for the seventh-season finale with the excitement over the battle of the Davids, and improved over the sixth season as the series' third most watched finale. The strong finish of season seven also helped Fox become the most watched TV network in the country for the first time since its inception, a first ever in American television history for a non-Big Three major broadcast network. Overall ratings for the season were down 10% from the sixth season, which is in line with the fall in viewership across all networks due in part to the 2007\u20132008 Writers Guild of America strike.\nThe declining trend however continued into the eighth season, as total viewers numbers fell by 5\u201310% for early episodes compared to the seventh season, and by 9% for the finale. In the ninth season, \"Idol\"'s six-year extended streak of perfection in the ratings was broken, when NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics on February 17 beat \"Idol\" in the same time slot with 30.1\u00a0million viewers over \"Idol\"'s 18.4\u00a0million. Nevertheless, \"American Idol\" overall finished its ninth season as the most watched TV series for the sixth year running, breaking the previous record of five consecutive seasons achieved by CBS' \"All in the Family\" and NBC's \"The Cosby Show\".\nIn the tenth season, the total viewer numbers for the first week of shows fell 12\u201313%, and by up to 23% in the 18\u201349 demo compared to the ninth season. Later episodes, however, retained viewers better, and the season ended on a high with a significant increase in viewership for the finale \u2013 up 12% for the adults 18\u201349 demographic and a 21% increase in total viewers from the ninth-season finale. While the overall viewer number has increased this season, its viewer demographics have continued to age year on year \u2013 the median age this season was 47.2 compared to a median age of 32.1 in its first season. The demographics also became \"whiter\" over time and less diverse. Nevertheless, in the 2010\u201311 television season, Fox maintained its lead on over other networks with its seventh consecutive season of victory overall in the 18\u201349 demographic ratings in the United States.\nThe eleventh season, however, suffered a steep drop in ratings, a drop attributed by some to the arrival of new shows such as \"The Voice\" and \"The X Factor\". The ratings for the first two episodes of the eleventh season fell 16\u201321% in overall viewer numbers and 24\u201327% in the 18/49 demo, while the season finale fell 27% in total viewer number and 30% in the 18\u201349 demo. The average viewership for the season fell below 20 million viewers the first time since 2003, a drop of 23% in total viewers and 30% in the 18/49 demo. For the first time in eight years, \"American Idol\" lost the leading position in both the total viewers number and the 18/49 demo, coming in second to \"NBC Sunday Night Football\", although the strengths of \"Idol\" in its second year in the Wednesday-Thursday primetime slots helped Fox achieve the longest period of 18\u201349 demographic victory in the Nielsen ratings, standing at 8 straight years from 2004 to 2012.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the twelfth season, which saw the show hitting a number of series low in the 18\u201349 demo. The finale had 7.2 million fewer viewers than the previous season, and saw a drop of 44% in the 18\u201349 demo. The season viewers averaged at 13.3 million, a drop of 24% from the previous season. The thirteenth season suffered a huge decline in the 18\u201349 demographic, a drop of 28% from the twelfth season, and \"American Idol\" lost its Top 10 position in the Nielsen ratings by the end of the 2013\u201314 television season for the first time since its entry to the rankings in 2003 as a result, and never regained its Top 10 position by the series' end in 2016.\nThe continuing decline influenced further changes for the fourteenth season, including the loss of Coca-Cola as the show's major sponsor, and a decision to only broadcast one, two-hour show per week during the top 12 rounds (with results from the previous week integrated into the performance show, rather than having a separate results show). On May 11, 2015, prior to the fourteenth-season finale, Fox announced that the fifteenth season of \"American Idol\" would be its last. Despite these changes, the show's ratings would decline more sharply. The fourteenth-season finale was the lowest-rated finale ever, with an average of only 8.03 million viewers watching the finale. The show's ratings, however, rebounded in its final season and ended its run in 2016 as Fox's first-ever program to conclude its run without dropping from the Nielsen Top 30 most-watched television shows in each of its seasons.\nFor the revived series on ABC, the ratings were lower but remained stable compared to previous seasons on Fox. The finale of the seventeenth season was slightly more watched than the sixteenth.\nCritical reception.\nEarly reviews were mixed in their assessment. Ken Tucker of \"Entertainment Weekly\" considered that \"As TV, \"American Idol\" is crazily entertaining; as music, it's dust-mote inconsequential\". Others, however, thought that \"the most striking aspect of the series was the genuine talent it revealed\". It was also described as a \"sadistic musical bake-off\", and \"a romp in humiliation\". Other aspects of the show have attracted criticisms. The product placement in the show in particular was noted, and some critics were harsh about what they perceived as its blatant commercial calculations \u2013 Karla Peterson of \"The San Diego Union-Tribune\" charged that \"American Idol\" is \"a conniving multimedia monster\" that has \"absorbed the sin of our debauched culture and spit them out in a lump of reconstituted evil\". The decision to send the first season winner to sing the national anthem at the Lincoln Memorial on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks in 2002 was also poorly received by many. Lisa de Moraes of \"The Washington Post\" noted sarcastically that \"The terrorists have won\" and, with a sideswipe at the show's commercialism and voting process, that the decision as to who \"gets to turn this important site into just another cog in the 'Great \"American Idol\" Marketing Mandala' is in the hands of the millions of girls who have made \"American Idol\" a hit. Them and a handful of phone-redialer geeks who have been clocking up to 10,000 calls each week for their contestant of choice (but who, according to Fox, are in absolutely no way skewing the outcome).\"\nSome of the later writers about the show were more positive, Michael Slezak, again of \"Entertainment Weekly\", thought that \"for all its bloated, synthetic, product-shilling, money-making trappings, \"Idol\" provides a once-a-year chance for the average American to combat the evils of today's music business.\" Singer Sheryl Crow, who was later to act as a mentor on the show, however took the view that the show \"undermines art in every way and promotes commercialism\". Pop music critic Ann Powers nevertheless suggested that Idol has \"reshaped the American songbook\", \"led us toward a new way of viewing ourselves in relationship to mainstream popular culture\", and connects \"the classic Hollywood dream to the multicentered popular culture of the future.\" Others focused on the personalities in the show; Ramin Setoodeh of \"Newsweek\" accused judge Simon Cowell's cruel critiques in the show of helping to establish in the wider world a culture of meanness, that \"Simon Cowell has dragged the rest of us in the mud with him.\" Some such as singer John Mayer disparaged the contestants, suggesting that those who appeared on \"Idol\" are not real artists with self-respect.\nSome in the entertainment industry were critical of the star-making aspect of the show. Usher, a mentor on the show, bemoaning the loss of the \"true art form of music\", thought that shows like \"American Idol\" made it seem \"so easy that everyone can do it, and that it can happen overnight\", and that \"television is a lie\". Musician Michael Feinstein, while acknowledging that the show had uncovered promising performers, said that \"American Idol\" \"isn't really about music. It's about all the bad aspects of the music business \u2013 the arrogance of commerce, this sense of 'I know what will make this person a star; artists themselves don't know.' \" That \"American Idol\" is seen to be a fast track to success for its contestants has been a cause of resentment for some in the industry. LeAnn Rimes, commenting on Carrie Underwood winning Best Female Artist in Country Music Awards over Faith Hill in 2006, said that \"Carrie has not paid her dues long enough to fully deserve that award\". It is a common theme that has been echoed by many others. Elton John, who had appeared as a mentor in the show but turned down an offer to be a judge on \"American Idol\", commenting on talent shows in general, said that \"there have been some good acts but the only way to sustain a career is to pay your dues in small clubs\". \"American Idol\" revolutionized American pop culture and the pop idol process and has provided an opportunity for many to bypass the small club scene and allow a much larger audience to participate in and select the next potential chart topping performer.\nThe success of the show's alumni, however, has led to a more positive assessment of the show, and the show was described as having \"proven it has a valid way to pick talent and a proven way to sell records\". While the industry is divided on the show success, its impact is felt particularly strongly in the country music format. According to a CMT exec, reflecting on the success of Idol alumni in the country genre, \"if you want to try and get famous fast by going to a cattle call audition on TV, Idol reasonably remains the first choice for anyone\", and that country music and Idol \"go together well\".\n\"American Idol\" was nominated for the Emmy's Outstanding Reality Competition Program for nine years but never won. Director Bruce Gower won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Series in 2009, and the show won a Creative Arts Emmys each in 2007 and 2008, three in 2009, and two in 2011, as well as a Governor's Award in 2007 for its Idol Gives Back edition. It won the People's Choice Award, which honors the popular culture of the previous year as voted by the public, for favorite competition/reality show in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2012. It won the first Critics' Choice Television Award in 2011 for Best Reality Competition.\nIn 2013, TV Guide ranked the series No. 48 on its list of the 60 Best Series of All Time.\nGeographical, ethnic, and gender bias.\nThroughout the series, twelve of the seventeen \"Idol\" winners, including its first five, had come from the Southern United States. A large number of other finalists during the series' run have also hailed from the American South, including Clay Aiken, Kellie Pickler, and Chris Daughtry, who are all from North Carolina. In 2012, an analysis of the 131 contestants who have appeared in the finals of all seasons of the show up to that point found that 48% have some connection to the Southern United States.\nThe show itself was popular in the Southern United States, with households in the Southeastern United States 10% more likely to watch \"American Idol\" during the eighth season in 2009, and those in the East Central region, such as Kentucky, were 16 percent more likely to tune into the series. Data from Nielsen SoundScan, a music-sales tracking service, showed that of the 47\u00a0million CDs sold by \"Idol\" contestants through January 2010, 85 percent were by contestants with ties to the American South.\nTheories given for the success of Southerners on \"Idol\" have been: more versatility with musical genres, as the Southern U.S. is home to several music genre scenes; not having as many opportunities to break into the pop music business; text-voting due to the South having the highest percentage of cell-phone only households; and the strong heritage of music and singing, which is notable in the Bible Belt, where it is in church that many people get their start in public singing. Others also suggest that the Southern character of these contestants appeal to the South, as well as local pride. According to fifth season winner Taylor Hicks, who is from the state of Alabama, \"People in the South have a lot of pride ... So, they're adamant about supporting the contestants who do well from their state or region.\"\nFor five consecutive seasons, starting in the seventh season, the title was given to a white male who plays the guitar \u2013 a trend that \"Idol\" pundits call the \"White guy with guitar\" or \"WGWG\" factor. Just hours before the eleventh-season finale, where Phillip Phillips was named the winner, Richard Rushfield, author of the book \"American Idol: The Untold Story\", said, \"You have this alliance between young girls and grandmas and they see it, not necessarily as a contest to create a pop star competing on the contemporary radio, but as ... who's the nicest guy in a popularity contest\", he says, \"And that has led to this dynasty of four, and possibly now five, consecutive, affable, very nice, good-looking white boys.\"\nStart order bias.\nSome fans call the final performance of the night the \"pimp spot\" because it usually receives a big boost in votes, due to the recency effect. By performing first, a performer may benefit from the primacy effect, but any other early performance may be stifled. The second performance spot is sometimes called the \"un-pimp spot\" because it is the least beneficial.\nControversy.\nThe show was criticized in earlier seasons over the onerous contract contestants had to sign that gave excessive control to 19 Entertainment over their future careers and handed a large part of their future earnings to the management.\nIndividual contestants have generated controversy in this competition for their past actions or for being 'ringers' planted by the producers. A number of contestants have been disqualified for various reasons, such as for having an existing contract or undisclosed criminal record, although the show has also been accused of a double standard for disqualifying some but not others.\nVoting results have been a consistent source of controversy. The mechanism of voting has aroused considerable criticism, most notably in the second season when Ruben Studdard beat Clay Aiken in a close vote, and in the eighth season, when the massive increase in text votes fueled the texting controversy. Concerns about power voting have been expressed from the first season. Since 2004, votes also have been affected to a limited degree by online communities such as DialIdol and Vote for the Worst.\nCultural impact.\nTelevision.\nThe enormous success of the show and the revenue it generated were transformative for the Fox Broadcasting Company. \"American Idol\" and other shows such as \"Survivor\" and \"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?\" were credited for expanding reality television programming in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s, and \"Idol\" became the most watched non-scripted primetime television series, which it remained for almost a decade, from 2003 to 2012, breaking records on U.S. television (dominated by drama shows and sitcoms in the preceding decades). On several occasions, notably in 2003 and 2008, \"American Idol\" overtook the Academy Awards as the most-watched non-sports entertainment event on U.S. television, marking the most recent time as of 2025 that a live regular non-sports primetime series has garnered such viewership in the country.\nThe show pushed Fox to become the number one U.S. TV network in overall viewers in 2008 and among adults aged 18\u201349, the key demographic coveted by advertisers, for an unprecedented eight consecutive years from 2005 to 2012. Its success also helped lift the ratings of other shows that were scheduled around it such as \"House\" and \"Bones\", and \"Idol\", for years, was Fox's strongest platform primetime television program for promoting eventual hit shows of the 2010s (of the same network) such as \"Glee\", \"New Girl\" and \"Empire\". The show, its creator Simon Fuller claimed, \"saved Fox\".\nThe show's massive success in the mid-2000s to early 2010s spawned a number of imitating singing-competition shows, such as \"Rock Star\", \"Nashville Star\", \"The Voice\", \"Rising Star\", \"The Sing-Off\", and \"The X Factor\". The number of imitative singing shows on American television had reached 17 by 2016. Its format also served as a blueprint for non-singing TV shows such as \"Dancing with the Stars\" and \"So You Think You Can Dance\", most of which contribute to the current highly competitive reality TV landscape on American television.\nMusic.\nAs one of the most successful shows on U.S. television history, \"American Idol\" has had a strong impact not just on television, but also in the wider world of entertainment. It helped create a number of highly successful recording artists, such as Kelly Clarkson, Daughtry and Carrie Underwood, as well as others of varying notability. The alumni of the show's original run scored 13 Grammy Award wins out of 54 Grammy nominations up to its end in 2016, with Underwood and Clarkson receiving 10 wins combined.\nVarious \"American Idol\" alumni had success on various record charts around the world; in the U.S. they had achieved 345 number ones on the \"Billboard\" charts in its first 10 years, and 458 by its last year of broadcast in 2016, with 100 achieved by Kelly Clarkson alone. According to Fred Bronson, author of books on the Billboard charts, no other entity has ever created as many hit-making artists and bestselling albums and singles. In 2007, \"American Idol\" alums accounted for 2.1% of all music sales. Its alumni have a massive impact on radio; in 2007, \"American Idol\" had become \"a dominant force in radio\" according to Rich Meyer, president of the radio station monitoring research company Mediabase. By 2010, four winners each had more than a million radio spins, with Kelly Clarkson leading the field with over four million spins.\nAt the end of the show's original run on Fox in 2016, \"Idol\"'s contestants have sold more than 60 million albums in the U.S. and more than 100 million records globally, more than 175 of which are certified platinum or gold. Its participants have generated more than 450 Billboard No. 1 hits and sold more than 260 million digital downloads.\nFilm and theater.\nThe impact of \"American Idol\" was also strongly felt in musical theater, where many of \"Idol\" alumni have forged successful careers. The striking effect of former \"American Idol\" contestants on Broadway has been noted and commented on. The casting of a popular \"Idol\" contestant can lead to significantly increased ticket sales. Other alumni have gone on to work in television and films, the most notable being Jennifer Hudson who, on the recommendation of the \"Idol\" vocal coach Debra Byrd, won a role in \"Dreamgirls\" and eventually went on to win an Academy Award for her performance. She later became the show's first and only alumnus ever to win the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). In all, as of 2025, \"American Idol\" finalists resulted to 5 Grammy Award winners (Clarkson, Barrino, Hudson, Underwood and Mandisa), 2 Emmy Award winners (Clarkson and Hudson), and an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Tony Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Critics' Choice Award winner (Hudson).\nIn 2007, a musical based on the show, \"\", played off-Broadway. The musical closed after its official opening night.\nRevenue and commercial ventures.\nThe dominance of \"American Idol\" in the ratings had made it the most profitable show in U.S. TV for many years. The show was estimated to generate $900\u00a0million for the year 2004 through sales of TV ads, albums, merchandise and concert tickets. By the seventh season, the show was estimated to earn around $900\u00a0million from its ad revenue alone, not including ancillary sponsorship deals and other income. One estimate puts the total TV revenue for the first eight seasons of \"American Idol\" at $6.4\u00a0billion. Sponsors that bought fully integrated packages can expect a variety of promotions of their products on the show, such as product placement, adverts and product promotion integrated into the show, and various promotional opportunities. Other off-air promotional partners pay for the rights to feature \"Idol\" branding on their packaging, products and marketing programs. \"American Idol\" also partnered with Disney in its theme park attraction The American Idol Experience.\nAdvertising revenue.\n\"American Idol\" became the most expensive series on broadcast networks for advertisers starting the fourth season, and by the next season, it had broken the record in advertising rate for a regularly scheduled prime-time network series, selling over $700,000 for a 30-seconds slot, and reaching up to $1.3\u00a0million for the finale. Its ad prices reached a peak in the seventh season at $737,000. Estimated revenue more than doubled from $404\u00a0million in the third season to $870\u00a0million in the sixth season. While that declined from the eighth season onwards, it still earned significantly more than its nearest competitor, with advertising revenue topping $800\u00a0million annually the next few seasons. However, the sharp drop in ratings in the eleventh season also resulted in a sharp drop in advertising rate for the twelfth season, and the show lost its leading position as the costliest show for advertisers. By 2014, ad revenue from had fallen to $427 million where a 30-second spot went for less than $300,000. For the relaunched \"Idol\" on ABC, it has been reported that a 30-second spot may cost between $120,000 and $160,000.\nMedia sponsorship.\nFord Motor Company and Coca-Cola were two of the first sponsors of \"American Idol\" in its first season. The sponsorship deal cost around $10\u00a0million in the first season, rising to $35\u00a0million by the seventh season, and between $50 and $60 million in the tenth season. The third major sponsor AT&T Wireless joined in the second season but ended after the twelfth season, and Coca-Cola officially ended its sponsorship after the thirteenth season amidst the declining ratings of \"Idol\" in the mid-2010s. iTunes sponsored the show since the seventh season.\n\"American Idol\" prominent display of its sponsors' logo and products had been noted since the early seasons. By the sixth season, \"Idol\" showed 4,349 product placements according to Nielsen Media Research. The branded entertainment integration proved beneficial to its advertisers \u2013 promotion of AT&T text-messaging as a means to vote successfully introduced the technology into the wider culture, and Coca-Cola has seen its equity increased during the show.\nCoca-Cola's archrival PepsiCo declined to sponsor \"American Idol\" at the show's start. What the \"Los Angeles Times\" later called \"missing one of the biggest marketing opportunities in a generation\" contributed to Pepsi losing market share, by 2010 falling to third place from second in the United States. PepsiCo sponsored the American version of Cowell's \"The X Factor\" in hopes of not repeating its \"Idol\" mistake until its cancellation.\nFor the revived series on ABC, Macy's and Johnson & Johnson's Zyrtec signed on as the major sponsors of the show.\nAmerican Idol tour.\nThe top ten (eleven in the tenth season, five in the fourteenth season, and seven in the sixteenth season) toured at the end of every season except for the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons. In the twelfth season tour a semi-finalist who won a sing-off was also added to the tour. Kellogg's Pop-Tarts was the sponsor for the first seven seasons, and Guitar Hero was added for the seventh season tour. M&M's Pretzel Chocolate Candies was a sponsor of the ninth season tour. The fifth season tour was the most successful tour with gross of over $35\u00a0million. However no concert tour was organized in the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons, the only seasons not to have an associated tour. The sixteenth season tour featured the band In Real Life as an opener on select dates.\n\"Idol Gives Back\".\n\"Idol Gives Back\" was a special charity event started in season six featuring performances by celebrities and various fund-raising initiatives. This event was also held in seasons seven and nine and has raised nearly $185\u00a0million in total.\nMusic releases.\n\"American Idol\" has traditionally released studio recordings of contestants' performances as well as the winner's coronation single for sale. For the first five seasons, the recordings were released as a compilation album at the end of the season. All five of these albums reached the top ten in Billboard 200 which made \"American Idol\" the most successful soundtrack franchise of any motion picture or television program. Starting late in the fifth season, individual performances were released during the season as digital downloads, initially from the \"American Idol\" official website only. In the seventh season the live performances and studio recordings were made available during the season from iTunes when it joined as a sponsor. In the tenth season the weekly studio recordings were also released as compilation digital album straight after performance night.\n19 Recordings, a recording label owned by 19 Entertainment, currently hold the rights to phonographic material recorded by all the contestants. 19 Recordings originally partnered with Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) to promote and distribute the recordings through its labels RCA Records, Arista Records, J Records, and Jive Records. From 2005\u20132007, BMG partnered with Sony Music Entertainment to form a joint venture known as Sony BMG Music Entertainment. From 2008 to 2010, following their acquisition of BMG, Sony Music handled the distribution of \"American Idol\"'s music. In 2010, UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records replaced Sony as the music label for \"American Idol\".\nTie-ins.\n\"American Idol\" video games\nTheme park attraction.\nOn February 14, 2009, The Walt Disney Company debuted \"The American Idol Experience\" at its Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. In this live production, co-produced by 19 Entertainment, park guests chose from a list of songs and auditioned privately for Disney cast members. Those selected then performed on a stage in a 1000-seat theater replicating the \"Idol\" set. Three judges, whose mannerisms and style mimicked those of the real \"Idol\" judges, critiqued the performances. Audience members then voted for their favorite performer. There were several preliminary-round shows during the day that culminated in a \"finals\" show in the evening where one of the winners of the previous rounds that day was selected as the overall winner. The winner of the finals show received a \"Dream Ticket\" that granted them front-of-the-line privileges at any future \"American Idol\" audition. The attraction closed on August 30, 2014.\nOther broadcasts.\n\"American Idol\" is broadcast to over 100 nations worldwide. In most nations these are not live broadcasts and may be tape delayed by several days or weeks, except for other season finales that are aired live in several countries simulcast with the U.S. broadcast on Fox (2002\u20132016) and ABC (since 2018). In Canada, the first thirteen seasons of American Idol were aired live countrywide by CTV and/or CTV Two, in simulcast with Fox. CTV dropped \"Idol\" after its thirteenth season and in August 2014, Yes TV announced that it had picked up Canadian rights to \"American Idol\" beginning in its 2015 season. In 2017, it was announced the show would return to CTV Two for its sixteenth season. Since season nineteen, the show started airing on Citytv. In Slovakia, American Idol was broadcast on Jednotka.\nIn Latin America, the show is broadcast and subtitled by Sony Entertainment Television. In Southeast Asia, it is broadcast by Sony Channel every Monday and Tuesday nine or ten hours after since its revival. In Philippines, it is aired every Thursday and Friday nine or ten hours after its United States telecast; from 2004 to 2007 on ABC; 2008\u201311 on QTV, then GMA News TV; 2012\u201316, 2018\u201319 on ETC; and since 2024 on TV5. In Indonesia, it was aired on RCTI in the 2002 to 2003 season with the Indonesian subtitles, before Indonesian Idol was held in the 2004, aired after each episode ended, and in the 2011 to 2013 season it was broadcast by B-Channel (now RTV). In Australia, it aired a few hours after the U.S. telecast. It was aired on Network Ten from 2002 to 2008 and then again in 2013. Between 2008 and 2012 it aired on Fox8 and the thirteenth and fourteenth seasons (2014\u201315) it aired on digital channel, Eleven, a sister channel to Network Ten. Its final season (2016) aired on Fox8 hours after the original U.S. broadcast. The show enjoyed a lot of popularity in Australia throughout the 2000s before declining in the ratings. In the United Kingdom, episodes were aired one day after the U.S. broadcast on digital channel ITV2. In the twelfth season, the episodes aired on 5*. It was also aired in Ireland on TV3 two days after the telecast. In Brazil and Israel, the show airs two days after its original broadcast, and broadcast live during the season finale. In the instances where the airing is delayed, the shows may sometimes be combined into one episode to summarize the results. In Italy, the twelfth season was broadcast by La3. In Singapore, The show was broadcast on Mediacorp Channel 5 for the ninth and tenth seasons.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21650": "North Carolina\nU.S. state\nNorth Carolina ( ) is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia to the southwest, and Tennessee to the west. The state is the 28th-largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. Along with South Carolina, it makes up the Carolinas region of the East Coast. At the 2020 census, the state had a population of 10,439,388. Raleigh is the state's capital and Charlotte is its most populous city. The Charlotte metropolitan area, with an estimated population of 2,805,115 in 2023, is the most populous metropolitan area in North Carolina, the 22nd-most populous in the United States, and the largest banking center in the nation after New York City. The Research Triangle, with an estimated population of 2,368,947 in 2023, is the second-most populous combined metropolitan area in the state, 31st-most populous in the United States, and is home to the largest research park in the United States, Research Triangle Park.\nThe earliest evidence of human occupation in North Carolina dates back 10,000 years, found at the Hardaway Site. North Carolina was inhabited by Carolina Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Siouan speaking tribes of Native Americans prior to the arrival of Europeans. King Charles II granted eight lord proprietors a colony they named Carolina after the king and which was established in 1670 with the first permanent settlement at Charles Town (Charleston). Because of the difficulty of governing the entire colony from Charles Town, the colony was eventually divided and North Carolina was established as a royal colony in 1729 and was one of the Thirteen Colonies. The Halifax Resolves resolution adopted by North Carolina on April 12, 1776, was the first formal call for independence from Great Britain among the American Colonies during the American Revolution.\nOn November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the United States Constitution. In the run-up to the American Civil War, North Carolina reluctantly declared its secession from the Union on May 20, 1861, becoming the tenth of eleven states to join the Confederate States of America. Following the Civil War, the state was restored to the Union on July 4, 1868. On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully piloted the world's first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina's Outer Banks. North Carolina often uses the slogan \"First in Flight\" on state license plates to commemorate this achievement, alongside a newer alternative design bearing the slogan \"First in Freedom\" in reference to the Mecklenburg Declaration and Halifax Resolves.\nNorth Carolina is defined by a wide range of elevations and landscapes. From west to east, North Carolina's elevation descends from the Appalachian Mountains to the Piedmont and Atlantic coastal plain. North Carolina's Mount Mitchell at is the highest point in North America east of the Mississippi River. Most of the state falls in the humid subtropical climate zone; however, the western, mountainous part of the state has a subtropical highland climate.\nHistory.\nNative Americans, lost colony, and permanent settlement.\nNorth Carolina was inhabited for at least 10,000 years by succeeding prehistoric Indigenous cultures. The Hardaway Site saw major periods of occupation dating to 10,000 years BCE. Before 200 AD, people were building earthwork platform mounds for ceremonial and religious purposes. Succeeding peoples, including those of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture, established by 1000 AD in the Piedmont and mountain region, continued to build this style of mounds. In contrast to some of the larger centers of the classic Mississippian culture in the area that became known as the western Carolinas, northeastern Georgia, and southeastern Tennessee, most of the larger towns had only one central platform mound. Smaller settlements had none, but were close to more prominent towns. This area became known as the homelands of the historic Cherokee people, who are believed to have migrated over time from the Great Lakes area.\nIn the 500\u2013700 years preceding European contact, the Mississippian culture built elaborate cities and maintained far-flung regional trading networks. Its largest city was Cahokia, which had numerous mounds for different purposes, a highly stratified society, and was located in present-day southwestern Illinois near the Mississippi River. Starting in 1540, the Native polities of the Mississippian culture fell apart and reformed as new groups, such as the Catawba, due to a series of destabilizing events known as the \"Mississippian shatter zone\". Introduction of colonial trading arrangements and hostile native groups from the north such as the Westo Indians hastened changes in an already tenuous regional hierarchy. As described by anthropologist Robbie Ethridge, the Mississippian shatter zone was a time of great instability in what is now the American South, caused by the instability of Mississippian chiefdoms, high mortality from new Eurasian diseases, conversion to an agricultural society and the accompanying population increase, and the emergence of Native \"militaristic slaving societies\".\nHistorically documented tribes in the North Carolina region include the Carolina Algonquian-speaking tribes of the coastal areas, such as the Chowanoc, Roanoke, Pamlico, Machapunga, and Coree, who were the first encountered by the English; the Iroquoian-speaking Meherrin, Cherokee, and Tuscarora of the interior; and Southeastern Siouan-speaking tribes, such as the Cheraw, Waxhaw, Saponi, Waccamaw, Cape Fear Indians, and Catawba of the Piedmont.\nIn the late 16th century, the first Spanish explorers traveling inland recorded meeting Mississippian culture people at Joara, a regional chiefdom near what later developed as Morganton. Records of Hernando de Soto attested to his meeting with them in 1540. In 1567, Captain Juan Pardo led an expedition to claim the area for the Spanish colony and to establish another route to reach silver mines in Mexico. Pardo made a winter base at Joara, which he renamed \"Cuenca\". His expedition built Fort San Juan and left a contingent of 30 Spaniards there, while Pardo traveled further. His forces built and garrisoned five other forts. He returned by a different route to Santa Elena on Parris Island, South Carolina, then a center of Spanish Florida. In the spring of 1568, natives killed all but seventy four of the Spaniards and burned the six forts in the interior, including Fort San Juan. Although the Spanish never returned to the interior, this effort marked the first European attempt at colonization of the interior of what became the United States. A 16th-century journal by Pardo's scribe Bandera, and archaeological findings since 1986 at Joara, have confirmed the settlement.\nAnglo-European settlement.\nIn 1584, Elizabeth I granted a charter to Sir Walter Raleigh, for whom the state capital is named, for land in present-day North Carolina (then part of the territory of Virginia). It was the second American territory that the English attempted to colonize. Raleigh established two colonies on the coast in the late 1580s, but both failed. The colony established in 1587 saw 118 colonists 'disappear' when John White was unable to return from a supply run during battles with the Spanish Armada. The fate of the \"Lost Colony\" of Roanoke Island remains one of the most widely debated mysteries of American history. Two native Chieftains, Manteo and Wanchese, of which the former helped the colonists and the latter was distrustful, had involvement in the colony and even accompanied Raleigh to England on a previous voyage in 1585. Manteo was also the first Indigenous North American to be baptized by English settlers. Upon White's return in 1590, neither native nor Englishman were to be found. Popular theory holds that the colonists either traveled away with or assimilated into local native culture. Virginia Dare, the first English person to be born in North America, was born on Roanoke Island on August 18, 1587; the surrounding Dare County is named for her.\nAs early as 1650, settlers from the Virginia colony had moved into the Albemarle Sound region. By 1663, King Charles\u00a0II of England granted a charter to start a new colony on the North American continent; this would generally establish North Carolina's borders. He named it \"Carolina\" in honor of his father, CharlesI. By 1665, a second charter was issued to attempt to resolve territorial questions. This charter rewarded the Lords Proprietors, eight Englishmen to whom King Charles II granted joint ownership of a tract of land in the state. All of these men either had remained loyal to the Crown or aided Charles's restoration to the English throne after Cromwell. In 1712, owing to disputes over governance, the Carolina colony split into North Carolina and South Carolina. North Carolina became a crown colony in 1729.\nMost of the English colonists had arrived as indentured servants, hiring themselves out as laborers for a fixed period to pay for their passage. In the early years the line between indentured servants and African slaves or laborers was fluid. Some Africans were allowed to earn their freedom before slavery became a lifelong status. Most of the free colored families formed in North Carolina before the Revolution were descended from unions or marriages between free whites and enslaved or free Africans or African-Americans. If the mothers were free, their children were born free. Many had migrated or were descendants of migrants from colonial Virginia. As the flow of indentured laborers to the colony decreased with improving economic conditions in Great Britain, planters imported more slaves, and the state's legal delineations between free and slave status tightened, effectively hardening the latter into a racial caste. Conditions for both slaves and workers worsened as the ranks of the former eclipsed the latter and expansion of farming operations into former Indigenous territories lowered prices. Unable to establish deep water ports such as at Charles Town and Norfolk, the economy's growth and prosperity was thus based on cheap labor and slave plantation systems, devoted primarily to the production of tobacco, then later cotton and textiles.\nIn 1738\u20131739, smallpox caused high fatalities among the Native Americans, who had no immunity to the new disease (it had become endemic over centuries in Europe). According to the historian Russell Thornton, \"The 1738 epidemic was said to have killed one-half of the Cherokee, with other tribes of the area suffering equally.\"\nColonial period.\nAfter the Spanish in the 16th century, the first permanent European settlers of North Carolina were English colonists who migrated south from Virginia. Virginia had grown rapidly and land was less available. Nathaniel Batts was documented as one of the first of these Virginian migrants. He settled south of the Chowan River and east of the Great Dismal Swamp in 1655. By 1663, this northeastern area of the Province of Carolina, known as the Albemarle Settlements, was undergoing full-scale English settlement. During the same period, the English monarch CharlesII gave provincial land grants to the Lords Proprietors, the group of noblemen who had helped restore him to the throne in 1660. These grants were predicated on an agreement that the Lords would use their influence to bring in colonists and establish ports of trade. This new Province of Carolina was named in honor and memory of his father, CharlesI (Latin: \"Carolus\").\nLacking a viable coastal port city due to geography, towns grew at a slower pace and remained small. By the late 17th century, Carolina was essentially two colonies, one centered in the Albemarle region in the north and the other located in the south around Charleston. In 1705 South Carolinian John Lawson purchased land on the Pamlico River and laid out Bath, North Carolina's first town. After returning to England, he published the book A New Voyage to Carolina, which became a travelogue and a marketing piece to encourage new colonists to Carolina. Lawson encouraged Baron Christoph Von Graffenried, the leader of a group of Swiss and German Protestants, to immigrate to Carolina. Von Graffenried purchased land between the Neuse and the Trent Rivers and established the town of New Bern. After an attack on New Bern in which hundreds were killed or injured, Lawson was caught then executed by Tuscarora Indians. A large revolt happened in the state in 1711, known as Cary's Rebellion. In 1712, North Carolina became a separate colony, and in 1729 it became a royal colony, with the exception of the Earl Granville holdings.\nIn June 1718, \"Queen Anne's Revenge\", the flagship of pirate Blackbeard, ran aground at Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina, in present-day Carteret County. After the grounding, her crew and supplies were transferred to smaller ships. In November 1718, after appealing to the governor of North Carolina, who promised safe-haven and a pardon, Blackbeard was killed in an ambush by troops from Virginia. In 1996, Intersal, Inc., a private maritime research firm, discovered the remains of a vessel likely to be the \"Queen Anne's Revenge\", which was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.\nNorth Carolina became one of the Thirteen Colonies and with the territory of South Carolina was originally known as the Province of North Carolina. The northern and southern parts of the original province separated in 1712, with North Carolina becoming a royal colony in 1729. Originally settled by small farmers, sometimes having a few slaves, who were oriented toward subsistence agriculture, the colony lacked large cities or towns. Pirates menaced the coastal settlements, but by 1718 piracy in the Carolinas was on the decline. Growth was strong in the middle of the 18th century, as the economy attracted Scots-Irish, Quaker, English and German immigrants. A majority of the North Carolina colonists generally supported the American Revolution, although there were some Loyalists. Loyalists in North Carolina were fewer in number than in some other colonies such as Georgia, South Carolina, Delaware, and New York.\nDuring colonial times, Edenton served as the state capital beginning in 1722, followed by New Bern becoming the capital in 1766. Construction of Tryon Palace, which served as the residence and offices of the provincial governor William Tryon, began in 1767 and was completed in 1771. In 1788, Raleigh was chosen as the site of the new capital, as its central location protected it from coastal attacks. Officially established in 1792 as both county seat and state capital, the city was named after Sir Walter Raleigh, sponsor of Roanoke, the \"lost colony\" on Roanoke Island. The population of the colony more than quadrupled from 52,000 in 1740 to 270,000 in 1780 from high immigration from Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, plus immigrants from abroad.\nNorth Carolina did not have any printer or print shops until 1749, when the North Carolina Assembly commissioned James Davis from Williamsburg Virginia to act as their official printer. Before this time the laws and legal journals of North Carolina were handwritten and were kept in a largely disorganized manner, prompting the hiring of Davis. Davis settled in New Bern, married, and in 1755 was appointed by Benjamin Franklin as North Carolina's first postmaster. In October of that year the North Carolina Assembly awarded Davis a contract to carry mail between Wilmington, North Carolina and Suffolk, Virginia. He was also active in North Carolina politics as a member of the Assembly and later as the Sheriff. Davis also founded and printed the \"North-Carolina Gazette\", North Carolina's first newspaper, printed in his printing house in New Bern.\nDifferences in the settlement patterns of eastern and western North Carolina, or the Atlantic coastal plain and uplands, affected the political, economic, and social life of the state from the 18th until the 20th century. Eastern North Carolina was settled chiefly by immigrants from rural England and Gaelic speakers from the Scottish Highlands. The Piedmont upcountry and western mountain region of North Carolina was settled chiefly by Scots-Irish, English, and German Protestants, the so-called \"cohee\". Arriving during the mid-to-late 18th century, the Scots-Irish, people of Scottish descent who migrated to and then emigrated from what is today Northern Ireland, were the largest non-English immigrant group before the Revolution; English indentured servants were overwhelmingly the largest immigrant group before the Revolution.\nRevolutionary War.\nDuring the American Revolutionary War, the English and Gaelic speaking Highland Scots of eastern North Carolina tended to remain loyal to the British Crown, because of longstanding business and personal connections with Great Britain. The English, Welsh, Scots-Irish, and German settlers of western North Carolina tended to favor American independence from Britain. British loyalists dubbed the Mecklenburg County area to be 'a hornet's nest' of radicals, birthing the name of the future Charlotte NBA team. On April 12, 1776, the colony became the first to instruct its delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence from the British Crown, through the Halifax Resolves passed by the North Carolina Provincial Congress. The date of this event is memorialized on the state flag and state seal. Throughout the Revolutionary War, fierce guerrilla warfare erupted between bands of pro-independence and pro-British colonists. In some cases the war was also an excuse to settle private grudges and rivalries.\nNorth Carolina had around 7,800 Patriots join the Continental Army under General George Washington; and an additional 10,000 served in local militia units under such leaders as General Nathanael Greene. There was some military action, especially in 1780\u201381. Many Carolinian frontiersmen had moved west over the mountains, into the Washington District (later known as Tennessee), but in 1789, following the Revolution, the state was persuaded to relinquish its claim to the western lands. It ceded them to the national government so the Northwest Territory could be organized and managed nationally.\nA major American victory in the war took place at King's Mountain along the North Carolina\u2013South Carolina border; on October 7, 1780, a force of 1,000 Patriots from western North Carolina (including what is today the state of Tennessee) and southwest Virginia overwhelmed a force of some 1,000 British troops led by Major Patrick Ferguson. Most of the soldiers fighting for the British side in this battle were Carolinians who had remained loyal to the Crown (they were called \"Tories\" or Loyalists). The American victory at King's Mountain gave the advantage to colonists who favored American independence, and it prevented the British Army from recruiting new soldiers from the Tories.\nThe road to Yorktown and America's independence from Great Britain led through North Carolina. As the British Army moved north from victories in Charleston and Camden, South Carolina, the Southern Division of the Continental Army and local militia prepared to meet them. Following General Daniel Morgan's victory over the British Cavalry Commander Banastre Tarleton at the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781, southern commander Nathanael Greene led British Lord Charles Cornwallis across the heartland of North Carolina, and away from the latter's base of supply in Charleston, South Carolina. This campaign is known as \"The Race to the Dan\" or \"The Race for the River\".\nIn the Battle of Cowan's Ford, Cornwallis met resistance along the banks of the Catawba River at Cowan's Ford on February 1, 1781, in an attempt to engage General Morgan's forces during a tactical withdrawal. Morgan had moved to the northern part of the state to combine with General Greene's newly recruited forces. Generals Greene and Cornwallis finally met at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in present-day Greensboro on March 15, 1781. Although the British troops held the field at the end of the battle, their casualties at the hands of the numerically superior Continental Army were crippling. Following this \"Pyrrhic victory\", Cornwallis chose to move to the Virginia coastline to get reinforcements, and to allow the Royal Navy to protect his battered army. This decision would result in Cornwallis' eventual defeat at Yorktown, Virginia, later in 1781. The Patriots' victory there guaranteed American independence. On November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the twelfth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.\nAntebellum period.\nAfter 1800, cotton and tobacco became important export crops. The eastern half of the state, especially the Coastal Plain region, developed a slave society based on a plantation system and slave labor. Planters owning large estates wielded significant political and socio-economic power in antebellum North Carolina. They placed their interests above those of the generally non-slave-holding yeoman farmers of North Carolina. While slaveholding was slightly less concentrated compared to some other Southern states, according to the 1860 census, more than 330,000 people, or 33% of the population out of 992,622 people in total, were enslaved African Americans. They lived and worked chiefly on plantations in the Piedmont and Coastal Plain regions of the state. In addition, 30,463 free people of color lived in the state. They were also mainly concentrated in the eastern coastal plain, especially at port cities such as Wilmington and New Bern, where a variety of jobs were available. Most were descendants from free African Americans who had migrated along with neighbors from Virginia during the 18th century. The majority were the descendants of unions in the working classes between white women, indentured servants or free, and African men, indentured, slave or free.\nAfter the American Revolution, Quakers and Mennonites worked to persuade slaveholders to free their slaves. Some were inspired by their efforts and the language of the Revolution to arrange for manumission of their slaves. The number of free people of color rose markedly in the first couple of decades after the Revolution. Many free people of color migrated to the frontier, along with their European-American neighbors, where the social system was looser. By 1810, nearly three percent of the free population consisted of free people of color, who numbered slightly more than 10,000. The western areas of North Carolina were mainly white families of European descent, especially Scotch-Irish, who operated small subsistence farms. In the early national period, the state became a center of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy, with a strong Whig presence, especially in the western part of the state. After Nat Turner's slave uprising in 1831, North Carolina and other southern states reduced the rights of free blacks. In 1835, the legislature withdrew their right to vote.\nIn mid-century, the state's rural and commercial areas were connected by the construction of a wooden plank road, known as a \"farmer's railroad\", from Fayetteville in the east to Bethania (northwest of Winston-Salem). On October 25, 1836, construction began on the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad to connect the port city of Wilmington with the state capital of Raleigh. In 1840, the state capitol building in Raleigh was completed, and still stands today.\nIn 1849, the North Carolina Railroad was created by act of the legislature to extend that railroad west to Greensboro, High Point, and Charlotte. During the Civil War, the Wilmington-to-Raleigh stretch of the railroad was vital to the Confederate war effort; supplies shipped into Wilmington were moved by rail through Raleigh to the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.\nAmerican Civil War.\nIn 1860, North Carolina was a slave state, in which one-third of the state's total population were African-American slaves. The state did not vote to join the Confederacy until President Abraham Lincoln called on it to invade its sister state, South Carolina, becoming the last or penultimate state to officially join the Confederacy. The title of \"last to join the Confederacy\" has been disputed; although Tennessee's informal secession on May 7, 1861, preceded North Carolina's official secession on May 20, the Tennessee legislature did not formally vote to secede until June 8, 1861.\nAround 125,000 troops from North Carolina served in the Confederate Army, and about 15,000 North Carolina troops (both black and white) served in Union Army regiments, including those who left the state to join Union regiments elsewhere. Over 30,000 North Carolina troops died from combat or disease during the war. Elected in 1862, Governor Zebulon Baird Vance tried to maintain state autonomy against Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Richmond. The state government was reluctant to support the demands of the national government in Richmond, and the state was the scene of only small battles. In 1865, Durham County saw the largest single surrender of Confederate soldiers at Bennett Place, when Joseph E. Johnston surrendered the Army of Tennessee and all remaining Confederate forces still active in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, totalling 89,270 soldiers.\nConfederate troops from all parts of North Carolina served in virtually all the major battles of the Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederacy's most famous army. The largest battle fought in North Carolina was at Bentonville, which was a futile attempt by Confederate General Joseph Johnston to slow Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's advance through the Carolinas in the spring of 1865. In April 1865, after losing the Battle of Morrisville, Johnston surrendered to Sherman at Bennett Place, in what is today Durham. North Carolina's port city of Wilmington, was the last Confederate port to fall to the Union, in February 1865, after the Union won the nearby Second Battle of Fort Fisher, its major defense downriver.\nThe first Confederate soldier to be killed in the Civil War was Private Henry Wyatt from North Carolina, in the Battle of Big Bethel in June 1861. At the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, the 26th North Carolina Regiment participated in Pickett/Pettigrew's Charge and advanced the farthest into Union lines of any Confederate regiment. During the Battle of Chickamauga, the 58th North Carolina Regiment advanced farther than any other regiment on Snodgrass Hill to push back the remaining Union forces from the battlefield. At Appomattox Court House in Virginia in April 1865, the 75th North Carolina Regiment, a cavalry unit, fired the last shots of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the Civil War. The phrase \"First at Bethel, Farthest at Gettysburg and Chickamauga, and Last at Appomattox\", later became used through much of the early 20th century.\nAfter secession, some North Carolinians refused to support the Confederacy. Some of the yeoman farmers chiefly in the state's mountains and western Piedmont region remained neutral during the Civil War, with others covertly supporting the Union cause during the conflict. Approximately 15,000 North Carolinians (both black and white) from across the state enlisted in the Union Army. Numerous slaves also escaped to Union lines, where they became essentially free.\nReconstruction era through late 19th century.\nFollowing the collapse of the Confederacy in 1865, North Carolina, along with other former Confederate States (except Tennessee), was put under direct control by the U.S. military and was relieved of its constitutional government and representation within the United States Congress in what is now referred to as the Reconstruction era. To earn back its rights, the state had to make concessions to Washington, one of which was ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment. Congressional Republicans during Reconstruction, commonly referred to as \"radical Republicans\", constantly pushed for new constitutions for each of the Southern states that emphasized equal rights for African-Americans. In 1868, a constitutional convention restored the state government of North Carolina. Though the Fifteenth Amendment was also adopted that same year, it remained in most cases ineffective for almost a century, not to mention paramilitary groups and their lynching with impunity.\nThe elections in April 1868 following the constitutional convention led to a narrow victory for a Republican-dominated government, with 19 African-Americans holding positions in the North Carolina State Legislature. In attempt to put the reforms into effect, the new Republican Governor William W. Holden declared martial law on any county allegedly not complying with law and order using the passage of the Shoffner Act.\nA Republican Party coalition of black freedmen, northern carpetbaggers and local scalawags controlled state government for three years. The white conservative Democrats regained control of the state legislature in 1870, in part by Ku Klux Klan violence and terrorism at the polls, to suppress black voting. Republicans were elected to the governorship until 1876, when the Red Shirts, a paramilitary organization that arose in 1874 and was allied with the Democratic Party, helped suppress black voting. More than 150 black Americans were murdered in electoral violence in 1876.\nPost\u2013Civil War-debt cycles pushed people to switch from subsistence agriculture to commodity agriculture. Among this time the notorious Crop-Lien system developed and was financially difficult on landless whites and blacks, due to high amounts of usury. Also due to the push for commodity agriculture, the free range was ended. Prior to this time people fenced in their crops and had their livestock feeding on the free range areas. After the ending of the free range people now fenced their animals and had their crops in the open.\nDemocrats were elected to the legislature and governor's office, but the Populists attracted voters displeased with them. In 1896 a biracial, Populist-Republican Fusionist coalition gained the governor's office and passed laws that would extend the voting franchise to blacks and poor whites. The Democrats regained control of the legislature in 1896 and passed laws to impose Jim Crow and racial segregation of public facilities. Voters of North Carolina's 2nd congressional district elected a total of four African-American congressmen through these years of the late 19th century.\nPolitical tensions ran so high a small group of white Democrats in 1898 planned to take over the Wilmington government if their candidates were not elected. In the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, white Democrats led around 2,000 of their supporters that attacked the black newspaper and neighborhood, killed an estimated 60 to 300 people, and ran off the white Republican mayor and aldermen. They installed their own people and elected Alfred M. Waddell as mayor, in the only successful coup d'\u00e9tat in United States history.\nIn 1899, the state legislature passed a new constitution, with requirements for poll taxes and literacy tests for voter registration which disenfranchised most black Americans in the state. Exclusion from voting had wide effects: it meant black Americans could not serve on juries or in any local office. After a decade of white supremacy, many people forgot North Carolina had ever had thriving middle-class black Americans. Black citizens had no political voice in the state until after the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed to enforce their constitutional rights. It was not until 1992 that another African American was elected as a U.S. Representative from North Carolina.\nEarly through mid-20th century.\nAfter the reconstruction era, North Carolina had become a one-party state, dominated by the Democratic Party. The state mainly continued with an economy based on tobacco, cotton textiles and commodity agriculture. Large towns and cities remained in few numbers. However, a major industrial base emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century, in the counties of the Piedmont Triad, based on cotton mills established at the fall line. Railroads were built to connect the new industrializing cities.\nThe state was the site of the first successful controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air flight, by the Wright brothers, near Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903.\nIn the first half of the 20th century, many African Americans left the state to go North for better opportunities, in the Great Migration. Their departure changed the demographic characteristics of many areas.\nNorth Carolina was hard hit by the Great Depression, but the New Deal programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt for cotton and tobacco significantly helped the farmers. After World War\u00a0II, the state's economy grew rapidly, highlighted by the growth of such cities as Charlotte, Raleigh, and Durham in the Piedmont region.\nResearch Triangle Park, established in 1959, serves as the largest research park in the United States. Formed near Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, the Research Triangle metro is a major area of universities and advanced scientific and technical research.\nThe Greensboro sit-ins in 1960 played a crucial role in the Civil Rights Movement to bring full equality to American blacks. By the late 1960s, spurred in part by the increasingly leftward tilt of national Democrats, conservative whites began to vote for Republican national candidates and gradually for more Republicans locally.\nLate 20th century to present.\nSince the 1970s, North Carolina has seen steady increases in population growth. This growth has largely occurred in metropolitan areas located within the Piedmont Crescent, in places such as Charlotte, Concord, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Durham and Raleigh. The Charlotte metropolitan area has experienced large growth mainly due to its finance, banking, and tech industries.\nBy the 1990s, Charlotte had become a major regional and national banking center. Towards Raleigh, North Carolina State, Duke University, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, have helped the Research Triangle area attract an educated workforce and develop more jobs.\nIn 1988, North Carolina gained its first professional sports franchise, the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The hornets team name stems from the American Revolutionary War, when British General Cornwallis described Charlotte as a \"hornet's nest of rebellion\". The Carolina Panthers of the National Football League (NFL) became based in Charlotte as well, with their first season being in 1995. The Carolina Hurricanes of the National Hockey League (NHL) moved to Raleigh in 1997, with their colors being the same as the NC State Wolfpack, who are also located in Raleigh.\nBy the late 20th century and into the early 21st century, economic industries such as technology, pharmaceuticals, banking, food processing, vehicle parts, and tourism started to emerge as North Carolina's main economic drivers. This marked a shift from the state's former main industries of tobacco, textiles, and furniture. Factors that played a role in this shift were globalization, the state's higher education system, national banking, the transformation of agriculture, and new companies moving to the state.\nGeography.\nNorth Carolina is bordered by South Carolina on the south, Georgia on the southwest, Tennessee on the west, Virginia on the north, and the Atlantic Ocean on the east. The United States Census Bureau places North Carolina in the South Atlantic division of the southern region. It has a total area of , of which is land and (9.66%) is water.\nNorth Carolina consists of three main geographic regions: the Atlantic coastal plain, occupying the eastern portion of the state; the central Piedmont region, and the mountain region in the west, which is part of the Appalachian Mountains. The coastal plain consists of more specifically defined areas known as the Outer Banks, a string of sandy, narrow barrier islands separated from the mainland by sounds or inlets, including Albemarle Sound and Pamlico Sound, the native home of the venus flytrap, and the inner coastal plain, where longleaf pine trees are native.\nSo many ships have been lost off Cape Hatteras that the area is known as the \"Graveyard of the Atlantic\"; more than a thousand ships have sunk in these waters since records began in 1526. The most famous of these is the \"Queen Anne's Revenge\" (flagship of the pirate Blackbeard), which went aground in Beaufort Inlet in 1718.\nThe coastal plain transitions to the Piedmont region along the Atlantic Seaboard fall line, the elevation at which waterfalls first appear on streams and rivers. The Piedmont region of central North Carolina is the state's most populous region, containing the six largest cities in the state by population. It consists of gently rolling countryside frequently broken by hills or low mountain ridges. Small, isolated, and deeply eroded mountain ranges and peaks are located in the Piedmont, including the Sauratown Mountains, Pilot Mountain, the Uwharrie Mountains, Crowder's Mountain, King's Pinnacle, the Brushy Mountains, and the South Mountains. The Piedmont ranges from about in elevation in the east to about in the west.\nThe western section of the state is part of the Blue Ridge Mountains of the larger Appalachian Mountain range. Among the subranges of the Blue Ridge Mountains located in the state are the Great Smoky Mountains and the Black Mountains. The Black Mountains are the highest in the eastern United States, and culminate in Mount Mitchell at , the highest point east of the Mississippi River.\nNorth Carolina has 17 major river basins. The five basins west of the Blue Ridge Mountains flow to the Gulf of Mexico, while the remainder flow to the Atlantic Ocean. Of the 17 basins, 11 originate within the state of North Carolina, but only four are contained entirely within the state's border\u2014the Cape Fear, the Neuse, the White Oak, and the Tar\u2013Pamlico basin.\nClimate.\nElevation above sea level is most responsible for temperature change across the state, with the mountainous regions being coolest year-round. The climate is also influenced by the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf Stream, especially in the coastal plain. These influences tend to cause warmer winter temperatures along the coast, where temperatures only occasionally drop below the freezing point at night. The coastal plain averages around of snow or ice annually, and in many years, there may be no snow or ice at all.\nThe Atlantic Ocean exerts less influence on the climate of the Piedmont region, which has hotter summers and colder winters than along the coast, though winters are still mild.\nNorth Carolina experiences severe weather both in summer and in winter, with summer bringing threat of hurricanes, tropical storms, heavy rain, and flooding. Destructive hurricanes that have hit North Carolina include Hurricane Fran, Hurricane Florence, Hurricane Floyd, Hurricane Hugo, and Hurricane Hazel, the latter being the strongest storm ever to make landfall in the state, as a Category4 in 1954. Hurricane Isabel ranks as the most destructive of the 21st century.\nNorth Carolina averages fewer than 20 tornadoes per year, many of them produced by hurricanes or tropical storms along the coastal plain. Tornadoes from thunderstorms are a risk, especially in the eastern part of the state. The western Piedmont is often protected by the mountains, which tend to break up storms as they cross over; the storms will often re-form farther east. A phenomenon known as \"cold-air damming\" often occurs in the northwestern part of the state, which can weaken storms but can also lead to major ice events in winter.\nIn April 2011, the worst tornado outbreak in North Carolina's history occurred. Thirty confirmed tornadoes touched down, mainly in the Eastern Piedmont and Sandhills, killing at least 24 people. In September 2019 Hurricane Dorian hit the area.\nParks and recreation.\nNorth Carolina provides a large range of recreational activities, from swimming at the beach to skiing in the mountains. North Carolina offers fall colors, freshwater and saltwater fishing, hunting, birdwatching, agritourism, ATV trails, ballooning, rock climbing, biking, hiking, skiing, boating and sailing, camping, canoeing, caving (spelunking), gardens, and arboretums. North Carolina has theme parks, aquariums, museums, historic sites, lighthouses, elegant theaters, concert halls, and fine dining.\nNorth Carolinians enjoy outdoor recreation using numerous local bike paths, 34 state parks, and 14 national parks. National Park Service units include the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, the Blue Ridge Parkway, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Cape Lookout National Seashore, Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site at Flat Rock, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site at Manteo, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Great Smoky Mountains Railroad, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park in Greensboro, Moores Creek National Battlefield near Currie in Pender County, the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, Old Salem National Historic Site in Winston-Salem, the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, and Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills.\nNational Forests include Uwharrie National Forest in central North Carolina, Croatan National Forest in Eastern North Carolina, Pisgah National Forest in the western mountains, and Nantahala National Forest in the southwestern part of the state.\nMajor cities.\nIn 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau released the 2023 population estimates for municipalities in North Carolina. Charlotte has the largest population, while Raleigh has the second-largest population in North Carolina.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nMost populous counties.\nAfter the 2020 census, Wake County\u2014with a population of 1,129,410\u2014became the most populous county in the state, overtaking Mecklenburg County\u2014with a population of 1,115,482\u2014by a margin of about 14,000. Both counties are still the only to have populations over one million in North Carolina and the Carolinas region.\nStatistical areas.\nNorth Carolina has four major combined statistical areas (CSA) with a population over 1\u00a0million (as of 2023):\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nThe United States Census Bureau determined the population of North Carolina was 10,439,388 at the 2020 census. Based on numbers in 2012 of the people residing in North Carolina 58.5% were born there; 33.1% were born in another state; 1.0% were born in Puerto Rico, U.S. island areas, or born abroad to American parent(s); and 7.4% were foreign-born.\nAccording to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 9,382 homeless people in North Carolina.\nThe top countries of origin for North Carolina's immigrants were Mexico, India, Honduras, China and El Salvador, as of 2018[ [update]].\nRace and ethnicity.\nAt the 2010 census, the racial composition of North Carolina was: White: 68.5% (65.3% non-Hispanic white, 3.2% White Hispanic), Black or African American: 21.5%, Latin and Hispanic American of any race: 8.4%, some other race: 4.3%, Multiracial American: 2.2%, Asian American: 2.2%, and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander: 1%. In 2020, North Carolina like much of the U.S. experienced a decline in its non-Hispanic white population; at the 2020 census, non-Hispanic whites were 62.2%, Blacks or African Americans 20.5%, American Indian and Alaska Natives 1.2%, Asians 3.3%, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders 0.1%, people from other race 5.9%, and multiracial Americans 6.8%.\nThe majority of the Black American population is concentrated in the urban areas and northeastern part of the state.\nNorth Carolina's Hispanic population has grown rapidly. The Hispanic population more than doubled in size between 1990 and 2000. Many of North Carolina's Hispanic residents are of Mexican descent. Many of North Carolina's newer Latino residents came from Mexico largely to work in agriculture, manufacturing, or on one of North Carolina's military installations.\nThe most common ancestries in North Carolina are African-American, American, German, English, and Irish.\nNorth Carolina has the eighth-largest Native American population in the country. The state is home to eight Native American tribes and four urban Native American organizations.\nLanguages.\nNorth Carolina is home to a spectrum of different dialects of Southern American English and Appalachian English.\nIn 2010, 89.66% (7,750,904) of North Carolina residents age five and older spoke English at home as a primary language, while 6.93% (598,756) spoke Spanish, 0.32% (27,310) French, 0.27% (23,204) German, and Chinese (which includes Mandarin) was spoken as a main language by 0.27% (23,072) of the population five and older. In total, 10.34% (893,735) of North Carolina's population age five and older spoke a mother language other than English. In 2019, 87.7% of the population aged 5 and older spoke English and 12.3% spoke another language. The most common non-English language was Spanish at the 2019 American Community Survey.\nReligion.\nNorth Carolina residents since the colonial era have historically been overwhelmingly Protestant\u2014first Anglican, then Baptist and Methodist. In 2010, the Southern Baptist Convention was the single largest Christian denomination, with 4,241 churches and 1,513,000 members. The second largest in 2024 was the Roman Catholic Church which is organised into two dioceses. In the west is the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte which includes Charlotte and has 530,000 members in 196 parishes. In the east is the Diocese of Raleigh with a total of 80 parishes and nearly 500,000 Catholics. The third largest was the United Methodist Church, with 660,000 members and 1,923 churches. The fourth largest was the Presbyterian Church (USA), with 186,000 members and 710 congregations; this denomination was brought by Scots-Irish immigrants who settled the backcountry in the colonial era. In 2020, the Southern Baptists remained the largest with 1,324,747 adherents, though Methodists and others were collectively overtaken by non/interdenominational Protestants numbering 1,053,564.\nIn 1845, the Baptists split into regional associations of the Northern United States and Southern U.S., over the issue of slavery. These new associations were the Northern Baptist Convention (today the American Baptist Churches USA) and Southern Baptist Convention. By the late 19th century, the largest Protestant denomination in North Carolina were Baptists. After emancipation, black Baptists quickly set up their own independent congregations in North Carolina and other states of the South, as they wanted to be free of white supervision. Black Baptists developed their own state and national associations, such as the National Baptist Convention. Other primarily African American Baptist conventions which grew in the state since the 20th century were the Progressive National Baptist Convention and Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship.\nMethodists (the second largest group among North Carolinian Protestants) were divided along racial lines in the United Methodist Church and African Methodist Episcopal Church. The Methodist tradition tends to be strong in the northern Piedmont, especially in populous Guilford County. Other prominent Protestant groups in North Carolina as of the Pew Research Center's 2014 study were non/interdenominational Protestants and Pentecostalism. The Assemblies of God and Church of God in Christ are the largest Pentecostal denominations operating in the state, while notable minorities include Oneness Pentecostals primarily affiliated with the United Pentecostal Church International.\nThe state also has a special history with the Moravian Church, as settlers of this faith (largely of German origin) settled in the Winston-Salem area in the 18th and 19th centuries. Historically Scots-Irish have had a strong presence in Charlotte and in Scotland County.\nA wide variety of non-Christian faiths are practiced by other residents in the state, including: Judaism, Islam, Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed, Buddhism, and Hinduism. The rapid influx of Northerners and immigrants from Latin America is steadily increasing ethnic and religious diversity within the state. The number of Roman Catholics and Jews in the state has increased, along with general religious diversity as a whole. There are also a substantial number of Quakers in Guilford County and northeastern North Carolina. Many universities and colleges in the state have been founded on religious traditions, and some currently maintain that affiliation, including:\nThe state also has several major seminaries, including the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, and the Hood Theological Seminary (AME Zion) in Salisbury.\nEconomy.\nNorth Carolina's 2018 total gross state product was $496 billion. Based on American Community Survey 2010\u20132014 data, North Carolina's median household income was $46,693. It ranked forty-first out of fifty states plus the District of Columbia for median household income. North Carolina had the fourteenth highest poverty rate in the nation at 17.6%, with 13% of families that were below the poverty line.\nThe state has a very diverse economy because of its great availability of hydroelectric power, its pleasant climate, and its wide variety of soils. The state ranks third among the South Atlantic states in population, but leads the region in industry and agriculture. North Carolina leads the nation in the production of tobacco.\nCharlotte, the state's largest city, is a major textile and trade center. According to a Forbes article written in 2013, employment in the \"Old North State\" has gained many different industry sectors. Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) industries in the area surrounding North Carolina's capital have grown 17.9 percent since 2001. Raleigh ranked the third best city for technology in 2020 due to the state's growing technology sector. In 2010, North Carolina's total gross state product was $424.9 billion, while the state debt in November 2012, according to one source, totaled $2.4 billion, while according to another, was in 2012 $57.8 billion. In 2011, the civilian labor force was at around 4.5 million with employment near 4.1 million.\nNorth Carolina is the leading U.S. state in production of flue-cured tobacco and sweet potatoes, and comes second in the farming of pigs and hogs, trout, and turkeys. In the three most recent USDA surveys (2002, 2007, 2012), North Carolina also ranked second in the production of Christmas trees.\nNorth Carolina has 15 metropolitan areas, and in 2010 was chosen as the third-best state for business by Forbes Magazine, and the second-best state by chief executive officer Magazine. Since 2000, there has been a clear division in the economic growth of North Carolina's urban and rural areas. While North Carolina's urban areas have enjoyed a prosperous economy with steady job growth, low unemployment, and rising wages, many of the state's rural counties have suffered from job loss, rising levels of poverty, and population loss as their manufacturing base has declined. According to one estimate, one-half of North Carolina's 100 counties have lost population since 2010, primarily due to the poor economy in many of North Carolina's rural areas. However, the population of the state's urban areas is steadily increasing.\nArts and culture.\nNorth Carolina has traditions in art, music, and cuisine. The nonprofit arts and culture industry generates $1.2billion in direct economic activity in North Carolina, supporting more than 43,600 full-time equivalent jobs and generating $119million in revenue for local governments and the state of North Carolina. North Carolina established the North Carolina Museum of Art as the first major museum collection in the country to be formed by state legislation and funding and continues to bring millions into the NC economy.\nOne of the more famous arts communities in the state is Seagrove, the handmade-pottery capital of the U.S., where artisans create handcrafted pottery inspired by the same traditions that began in this community more than two hundred years ago.\nMusic.\nNorth Carolina boasts a large number of noteworthy jazz musicians, some among the most important in the history of the genre. These include: John Coltrane, (Hamlet, High Point); Thelonious Monk (Rocky Mount); Billy Taylor (Greenville); Woody Shaw (Laurinburg); Lou Donaldson (Durham); Max Roach (Newland); Tal Farlow (Greensboro); Albert, Jimmy and Percy Heath (Wilmington); Nina Simone (Tryon); and Billy Strayhorn (Hillsborough).\nNorth Carolina is also famous for its tradition of old-time music, and many recordings were made in the early 20th century by folk-song collector Bascom Lamar Lunsford. Musicians such as the North Carolina Ramblers helped solidify the sound of country music in the late 1920s, while the influential bluegrass musician Doc Watson also hailed from North Carolina. Both North and South Carolina are hotbeds for traditional rural blues, especially the style known as the Piedmont blues.\nBen Folds Five originated in Winston-Salem, and Ben Folds still records and resides in Chapel Hill.\nThe British band Pink Floyd is named, in part, after Chapel Hill bluesman Floyd Council.\nThe Research Triangle area has long been a well-known center for folk, rock, metal, jazz and punk. James Taylor grew up around Chapel Hill, and his 1968 song \"Carolina in My Mind\" has been called an unofficial anthem for the state. Other famous musicians from North Carolina include J. Cole, DaBaby, 9th Wonder, Shirley Caesar, Roberta Flack, Clyde McPhatter, Nnenna Freelon, Link Wray, Warren Haynes, Jimmy Herring, Michael Houser, Eric Church, Future Islands, Randy Travis, Ryan Adams, Ronnie Milsap, Anthony Hamilton, The Avett Brothers, Charlie Daniels, and Luke Combs.\nMetal and punk acts such as Corrosion of Conformity, Between the Buried and Me, and Nightmare Sonata are native to North Carolina.\nEDM producer Porter Robinson hails from Chapel Hill.\nNorth Carolina is the home of more \"American Idol\" finalists than any other state: Clay Aiken (season two), Fantasia Barrino (season three), Chris Daughtry (season five), Kellie Pickler (season five), Bucky Covington (season five), Anoop Desai (season eight), Scotty McCreery (season ten), and Caleb Johnson (season thirteen). North Carolina also has the most \"American Idol\" winners with Barrino, McCreery, and Johnson.\nIn the mountains, the Brevard Music Center hosts choral, operatic, orchestral, and solo performances during its annual summer schedule.\nNorth Carolina has five professional opera companies: Opera Carolina in Charlotte, NC Opera in Raleigh, Greensboro Opera in Greensboro, Piedmont Opera in Winston-Salem, and Asheville Lyric Opera in Asheville. Academic conservatories and universities also produce fully staged operas, such as the A. J. Fletcher Opera Institute of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, the Department of Music of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and UNC Greensboro.\nAmong others, there are three high-level symphonic orchestras: NC Symphony in Raleigh, Charlotte Symphony, and Winston-Salem Symphony. The NC Symphony holds the North Carolina Master Chorale. The Carolina Ballet is headquartered in Raleigh, and there is also the Charlotte Ballet.\nThe state boasts three performing arts centers: DPAC in Durham, Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts in Raleigh, and the Blumenthal Performing Art Centers in Charlotte. They feature concerts, operas, recitals, and traveling Broadway musicals.\nShopping.\nNorth Carolina has a variety of shopping choices. SouthPark Mall in Charlotte is the largest and most upscale mall in the Carolinas, featuring multiple luxury tenants with their sole location in the state. Other major malls in Charlotte include Northlake Mall and Carolina Place Mall in nearby suburb Pineville. Other major malls throughout the state include Hanes Mall in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, The Thruway Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Crabtree Valley Mall, North Hills Mall, and Triangle Town Center in Raleigh; Friendly Center and Four Seasons Town Centre in Greensboro; Oak Hollow Mall in High Point; Concord Mills in Concord; Valley Hills Mall in Hickory; Cross Creek Mall in Fayetteville; and The Streets at Southpoint in Durham and Independence Mall in Wilmington, North Carolina, and Tanger Outlets in Charlotte, Nags Head, Blowing Rock, and Mebane, North Carolina.\nCuisine and agriculture.\nA culinary staple of North Carolina is pork barbecue. There are strong regional differences and rivalries over the sauces and methods used in making the barbecue. The common trend across Western North Carolina is the use of premium grade Boston butt. Western North Carolina pork barbecue uses a tomato-based sauce, and only the pork shoulder (dark meat) is used. Western North Carolina barbecue is commonly referred to as Lexington barbecue after the Piedmont Triad town of Lexington, home of the Lexington Barbecue Festival, which attracts more than 100,000 visitors each October. Eastern North Carolina pork barbecue uses a vinegar-and-red-pepper-based sauce and the \"whole hog\" is cooked, thus integrating both white and dark meat.\nKrispy Kreme, an international chain of doughnut stores, was started in North Carolina; the company's headquarters are in Winston-Salem. Pepsi-Cola was first produced in 1898 in New Bern. A regional soft drink, Cheerwine, was created and is still based in the city of Salisbury. Despite its name, the hot sauce Texas Pete was created in North Carolina; its headquarters are also in Winston-Salem. The Hardee's fast-food chain was started in Rocky Mount. Another fast-food chain, Bojangles', was started in Charlotte, and has its corporate headquarters there. A popular North Carolina restaurant chain is Golden Corral. Started in 1973, the chain was founded in Fayetteville, with headquarters located in Raleigh. Popular pickle brand Mount Olive Pickle Company was founded in Mount Olive in 1926. Fast casual burger chain Hwy 55 Burgers, Shakes & Fries also makes its home in Mount Olive. Cook Out, a popular fast-food chain featuring burgers, hot dogs, and milkshakes in a wide variety of flavors, was founded in Greensboro in 1989 and has begun expanding outside North Carolina. In 2013 \"Southern Living\" named Durham\u2013Chapel Hill the South's \"Tastiest City\".\nOver the last decade, North Carolina has become a cultural epicenter and haven for internationally prize-winning wine (Noni Bacca Winery), internationally prized cheeses (Ashe County), \"L'institut International aux Arts Gastronomiques: Conquerront Les Yanks les Truffes, January 15, 2010\" international hub for truffles (Garland Truffles), and beer making, as tobacco land has been converted to grape orchards while state laws regulating alcohol by volume (ABV) in beer allowed a jump from six to fifteen percent. The Yadkin Valley in particular has become a strengthening market for grape production, while Asheville recently won the recognition of being named \"Beer City USA\". Asheville boasts the largest number of breweries per capita of any city in the United States. Recognized and marketed brands of beer in North Carolina include Highland Brewing, Duck Rabbit Brewery, Mother Earth Brewery, Weeping Radish Brewery, Big Boss Brewing, Foothills Brewing, Carolina Brewing Company, Lonerider Brewing, and White Rabbit Brewing Company.\nNorth Carolina has large grazing areas for beef and dairy cattle. Truck farms can be found in North Carolina. A truck farm is a small farm where fruits and vegetables are grown to be sold at local markets. The state's shipping, commercial fishing, and lumber industries are important to its economy. Service industries, including education, health care, private research, and retail trade, are also important. Research Triangle Park, a large industrial complex located in the Raleigh-Durham area, is one of the major centers in the country for electronics and medical research.\nTobacco was one of the first major industries to develop after the Civil War. Many farmers grew some tobacco, and the invention of the cigarette made the product especially popular. Winston-Salem is the birthplace of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR), founded by R. J. Reynolds in 1874 as one of sixteen tobacco companies in the town. By 1914 it was selling 425 million packs of Camels a year. Today it is the second-largest tobacco company in the U.S. (behind Altria Group). RJR is an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Reynolds American Inc., which in turn is 42% owned by British American Tobacco.\nShips named for the state.\nSeveral ships have been named after the state, most famously in the Pacific Ocean theater of World War\u00a0II. Now decommissioned, she is part of the USS \"North Carolina\" Battleship Memorial in Wilmington. Another , a nuclear attack submarine, was commissioned in Wilmington on May 3, 2008.\nState parks.\nThe state maintains a group of protected areas known as the North Carolina State Park System, which is managed by the North Carolina Division of Parks & Recreation (NCDPR), an agency of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (NCDNCR).\nArmed forces installations.\nFort Bragg, near Fayetteville and Southern Pines, is a large and comprehensive military base and is the headquarters of the XVIII Airborne Corps, 82nd Airborne Division, and the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. Serving as the air wing for Fort Bragg is Pope Field, also located near Fayetteville.\nLocated in Jacksonville, Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, combined with nearby bases Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Cherry Point, MCAS New River, Camp Geiger, Camp Johnson, Stone Bay and Courthouse Bay, makes up the largest concentration of Marines and sailors in the world. MCAS Cherry Point is home of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing. Located in Goldsboro, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base is home of the 4th Fighter Wing and 916th Air Refueling Wing. One of the busiest air stations in the United States Coast Guard is located at the Coast Guard Air Station in Elizabeth City. Also stationed in North Carolina is the Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point in Southport.\nOn January 24, 1961, a B-52G broke up in midair and crashed after suffering a severe fuel loss, near Goldsboro, dropping two nuclear bombs in the process without detonation. In 2013, it was revealed that three safety mechanisms on one bomb had failed, leaving just one low-voltage switch preventing detonation.\nTourism.\nCharlotte is the most-visited city in the state, attracting 28.3million visitors in 2018. Area attractions include Carolina Panthers NFL football team and Charlotte Hornets basketball team, Carowinds amusement park, Catawba Two Kings Casino (in nearby Kings Mountain), Charlotte Motor Speedway, U.S. National Whitewater Center, Discovery Place, Great Wolf Lodge, Sea Life Aquarium, Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, Billy Graham Library, Carolinas Aviation Museum, Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, Levine Museum of the New South, McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Mint Museum, and the NASCAR Hall of Fame.\nEvery year the Appalachian Mountains attract several million tourists to the western part of the state, including the historic Biltmore Estate. The scenic Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smoky Mountains National Park are the two most visited national park and unit in the United States with more than 25million visitors in 2013. The City of Asheville is consistently voted as one of the top places to visit and live in the United States, known for its rich art deco architecture, mountain scenery and outdoor activities.\nIn Raleigh, many tourists visit the capital, African American Cultural Complex, Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh, Gregg Museum of Art & Design at NCSU, Haywood Hall House & Gardens, Marbles Kids Museum, North Carolina Museum of Art, North Carolina Museum of History, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, Raleigh City Museum, J. C. Raulston Arboretum, Joel Lane House, Mordecai House, Montfort Hall, and the Pope House Museum. The Carolina Hurricanes NHL hockey team is also located in the city.\nIn the Conover\u2013Hickory area, attractions include Hickory Motor Speedway, RockBarn Golf and Spa, home of the Greater Hickory Classic at Rock Barn; Catawba County Firefighters Museum, the SALT Block, and Valley Hills Mall.\nThe Piedmont Triad, or center of the state, is home to Krispy Kreme, Mayberry, Texas Pete, the Lexington Barbecue Festival, and Moravian cookies. The internationally acclaimed North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro attracts visitors to its animals, plants, and a 57-piece art collection along of shaded pathways in the world's largest-land-area natural-habitat park. Seagrove, in the central portion of the state, attracts many tourists along Pottery Highway (NC Hwy 705). MerleFest in Wilkesboro attracts more than 80,000 people to its four-day music festival; and Wet 'n Wild Emerald Pointe water park in Greensboro is another attraction.\nThe Outer Banks and surrounding beaches attract millions of people to the Atlantic beaches every year.\nThe mainland northeastern part of the state, having recently adopted the name the Inner Banks, is also known as the Albemarle Region, for the Albemarle Settlements, some of the first settlements on North Carolina's portion of the Atlantic Coastal Plain. The region's historic sites are connected by the Historic Albemarle Tour.\nTransportation.\nTransportation systems in North Carolina consist of air, water, road, rail, and public transportation including intercity rail via Amtrak and light rail in Charlotte. North Carolina has the second-largest state highway system in the country as well as the largest ferry system on the East Coast.\nNorth Carolina's airports serve destinations throughout the United States and international destinations in Canada, Europe, Central America, and the Caribbean. In July 2022, Charlotte Douglas International Airport, which serves as the second busiest hub for American Airlines, ranked as the 11th busiest airport in the United States with Raleigh-Durham International Airport, a focus-city for Delta Air Lines and formerly a hub for American Airlines and Midway Airlines, ranked as the 37th busiest airport in the United States.\nNorth Carolina has a growing passenger rail system with Amtrak serving most major cities. Charlotte is also home to North Carolina's only light rail system known as LYNX.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nElementary and secondary public schools are overseen by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. The North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction is the secretary of the North Carolina State Board of Education, but the board, rather than the superintendent, holds most of the legal authority for making public education policy. In 2009, the board's chairman also became the \"chief executive officer\" for the state's school system. North Carolina has 115 public school systems, each of which is overseen by a local school board. A county may have one or more systems within it. The largest school systems in North Carolina are the Wake County Public School System, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Guilford County Schools, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, and Cumberland County Schools. In total there are 2,425 public schools in the state, including over 200 charter schools. North Carolina Schools were segregated until the \"Brown v. Board of Education\" trial and the release of the Pearsall Plan.\nPreviously the SAT was the dominant university entrance examination students took. In 2004 76% of NC high school students took the SAT. In 2012 state law changed which required 11th grade students to take the ACT. The SAT testing rate fell to 46% in 2019. Because students now can take that test for free, the ACT became the dominant university entrance examination. This also caused SAT average scores to rise, as in 1996 North Carolina was 48th nationally in SAT scores, but the profile of students taking the SAT has gotten smaller.\nColleges and universities.\nIn 1795, North Carolina opened the first public university in the United States\u2014the University of North Carolina (now named the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). More than 200 years later, the University of North Carolina System encompasses 16 public universities, which are Appalachian State University, East Carolina University, Elizabeth City State University, Fayetteville State University, North Carolina A&T State University, North Carolina Central University, North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Asheville, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Western Carolina University, and Winston-Salem State University, and one public, boarding high school, the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. Along with its public universities, North Carolina has 58 public community colleges in its community college system. The largest university in North Carolina is currently North Carolina State University, with more than 34,000 students.\nNorth Carolina is also home to many well-known private colleges and universities, including Barton College, Belmont Abbey College (the only Catholic college in the Carolinas), Campbell University, Davidson College, Duke University, Elon University, Guilford College, High Point University, Laurel University, Lees-McRae College, Lenoir-Rhyne University (the only Lutheran university in North Carolina), Livingstone College, Meredith College, Methodist University, Montreat College, North Carolina Wesleyan University, Pfeiffer University, Salem College, Shaw University (the first historically black college or university in the South), University of Mount Olive, Wake Forest University, William Peace University, and Wingate University.\nNorth Carolina is also home to the oldest and largest folk school in the United States, the John C. Campbell Folk School.\nHealth.\nThe residents of North Carolina have a lower life expectancy than the U.S. national average of life expectancy. According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, in 2014, males in North Carolina lived an average of 75.4 years compared to the national average of 76.7 years. Females in North Carolina lived an average of 80.2 years compared to the national average of 81.5 years. Male life expectancy in North Carolina between 1980 and 2014 increased by an average of 6.9 years, slightly higher than the male national average of a 6.7-year increase. Life expectancy for females in North Carolina between 1980 and 2014 increased by 3.2 years, lower than the female national average of a 3.9-year increase.\nUsing 2017\u20132019 data, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation calculated that life expectancy for North Carolina counties ranged from 71.4 years for Swain County to 82.3 years for Orange County. Life expectancy for the state was 78.1 years. The Foundation estimated that life expectancy for the United States as a whole in 2021 was 79.2 years.\nMedia.\nEarly newspapers were established in the eastern part of North Carolina in the mid-18th century. The Fayetteville Observer, established in 1816, is the oldest newspaper still in publication in North Carolina. The Wilmington Star-News, established 1867, is the oldest continuously running newspaper. As of January 1, 2020, there were approximately 240 North Carolina newspapers in publication in the state of North Carolina.\nThe News and Observer was founded in 1871 and is the largest in circulation in the state. In 2006, The Charlotte Observer was acquired by the company, it is the second largest circulating news paper in the state.\nGovernment and politics.\nThe government of North Carolina is divided into three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. These consist of the Council of State (led by the Governor), the bicameral legislature (called the General Assembly), and the state court system (headed by the North Carolina Supreme Court). The state constitution delineates the structure and function of the state government. Most municipalities in North Carolina operate under council\u2013manager governments.\nNorth Carolina's party loyalties have undergone a series of important shifts in the last few years: While the 2010 midterms saw Tarheel voters elect a bicameral Republican majority legislature for the first time in more than a century, North Carolina has also become a Southern swing state in presidential races. Since Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter's comfortable victory in the state in 1976, the state had consistently leaned Republican in presidential elections until Democrat Barack Obama narrowly won the state in 2008. In the 1990s, Democrat Bill Clinton came within a point of winning the state in 1992 and also only narrowly lost the state in 1996. In 2000, Republican George W. Bush easily won the state by more than 13 points.\nBy 2008, demographic shifts, population growth, and increased liberalization in densely populated areas such as the Research Triangle, Charlotte, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Fayetteville, and Asheville, propelled Barack Obama to victory in North Carolina, the first Democrat to win the state since 1976. In 2012, North Carolina was again considered a competitive swing state, with the Democrats even holding their 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. However, Republican Mitt Romney ultimately eked out a two-point win in North Carolina, the only 2012 swing state Obama lost, and one of only two states (along with Indiana) to flip from Obama in 2008 to the GOP in 2012. Furthermore, Republican Donald Trump carried the state in 2016, 2020, and 2024.\nIn 2012, the state elected a Republican governor (Pat McCrory) and lieutenant governor (Dan Forest) for the first time in more than two decades, while also giving the Republicans veto-proof majorities in both the State House of Representatives and the State Senate. Several U.S. House of Representatives seats flipped control in 2012, with the Republicans holding nine seats to the Democrats' four. In the 2014 midterm elections, Republican David Rouzer won the state's 7th congressional district seat, increasing the congressional delegation party split to 10\u20133 in favor of the GOP, a split they retained in subsequent elections until 2020, when it narrowed to 8\u20135 in favor of the GOP. In 2016, despite Donald Trump winning the state, North Carolina voters elected Democrat Roy Cooper as governor, in part due to an unpopular law passed by former governor Pat McCrory known as HB2. Cooper went on to win re-election in 2020, despite Donald Trump narrowly winning the state again against Joe Biden.\nAs a result of the 2020 census, North Carolina gained another seat in the 118th United States Congress, for a total of 14. After the 2024 elections, the state was represented by 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats.\nIn a 2020 study, North Carolina was ranked as the 23rd easiest state for citizens to vote in.\nGerrymandering.\nThe state has been sued for racially gerrymandering the districts, which resulted in minority voting power being diluted in some areas, resulting in skewed representation. In 2000, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina ruled that the 12th congressional district was an illegal racial gerrymander. This was again appealed, now as \"Easley v. Cromartie\". The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Eastern District of North Carolina in 2001 and ruled that the 12th district boundaries were not racially based but was a partisan gerrymander. They said this was a political question that the courts should not rule upon.\nIn 2015, federal courts again ordered redistricting. Two lawsuits challenging the state congressional district map were led by \"two dozen voters, the state Democratic Party, the state chapter of the League of Women Voters, and the interest group Common Cause\". They contend that the redistricting resulted in deliberate under-representation of a substantial portion of voters. This case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in March 2019, which also heard a related partisan gerrymandering case from Maryland.\nOn February 4, 2022, the North Carolina Supreme Court struck down the congressional and state legislative district maps drawn by the GOP-controlled General Assembly on terms of partisan gerrymandering in a 4\u20133 ruling. Later that month, a panel of three former judges chosen by the Wake County Superior Court drew and approved a remedial congressional map after the new map proposed by the General Assembly was struck down by the North Carolina Supreme Court. Though, the state legislative maps proposed by the General Assembly were allowed to be used. The General Assembly would then redraw all three maps for the 2024 elections in the state.\nOn April 28, 2023, the North Carolina Supreme Court\u2014after Republicans gained a majority in the court following the 2022 judicial elections\u2014overturned the same ruling in a 5\u20132 decision, which cleared the way for gerrymandering in the next redistricting cycle. New maps were approved by the General Assembly on October 25, 2023. All three new maps heavily favor the GOP, with allegations of racial bias made against the maps as well.\nIn November 2023, a lawsuit was filed against the North Carolina Senate district map\u2014specifically the 1st and 2nd Senate districts\u2014in the Eastern District of North Carolina, arguing the map violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In December 2023, two lawsuits were filed in the Middle District of North Carolina, with the first challenging the 1st, 6th, 12th, and 14th congressional districts in the map, and the second, challenging multiple specific districts in all three maps, as racial gerrymanders. Both lawsuits were consolidated together in March 2024.\nOn January 26, 2024\u2014regarding the lawsuit currently in the Eastern District of North Carolina\u2014a preliminary injunction to block the current North Carolina Senate district map was denied, citing the \"Purcell\" principle. The ruling was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which upheld the lower court's decision on March 28, 2024. The lawsuit will continue in the district court, but no ruling will be made until after the 2024 elections.\nSports.\nNorth Carolina is home to four major league sports franchises: the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League, the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association, and Charlotte FC of Major League Soccer are based in Charlotte, while the Raleigh-based Carolina Hurricanes play in the National Hockey League. The Panthers and Hurricanes are the only two major professional sports teams that have the same geographical designation while playing in different metropolitan areas. The Hurricanes are the only major professional team from North Carolina to have won a league championship, having captured the Stanley Cup in 2006. North Carolina is also home to two other top-level professional teams \u2014 the Charlotte Hounds of Major League Lacrosse and the North Carolina Courage of the National Women's Soccer League.\nWhile North Carolina has no Major League Baseball team, it does have numerous Minor League Baseball teams, with the highest level of play coming from the Triple-A Charlotte Knights and Durham Bulls. Additionally, North Carolina has minor league teams in other team sports including soccer and ice hockey, most notably North Carolina FC and the Charlotte Checkers, both of which play in the second tier of their respective sports.\nIn addition to professional team sports, North Carolina has a strong affiliation with NASCAR and stock-car racing, with Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord hosting two Cup Series races every year. Charlotte also hosts the NASCAR Hall of Fame, while Concord is the home of several top-flight racing teams, including Hendrick Motorsports, Roush Fenway Racing, GMS Racing, Stewart-Haas Racing, and Chip Ganassi Racing. Numerous other tracks around North Carolina host races from low-tier NASCAR circuits as well.\nGolf is a popular summertime leisure activity, and North Carolina has hosted several important professional golf tournaments. Pinehurst Resort in Pinehurst has hosted a PGA Championship, Ryder Cup, two U.S. Opens, and one U.S. Women's Open. The Wells Fargo Championship is a regular stop on the PGA Tour and is held at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, and Quail Hollow has also played host to the PGA Championship. The Wyndham Championship is played annually in Greensboro at Sedgefield Country Club.\nCollege sports are also popular in North Carolina, with 18 schools competing at the Division I level. The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is headquartered in Greensboro, and both the ACC Football Championship Game (Charlotte) and the ACC men's basketball tournament (Greensboro) were most recently held in North Carolina. Additionally, the city of Charlotte is home to the National Junior College Athletics Association's (NJCAA) headquarters. College basketball is very popular in North Carolina, buoyed by the Tobacco Road rivalries between ACC members North Carolina, Duke, North Carolina State, and Wake Forest. The ACC Championship Game and the Duke's Mayo Bowl are held annually in Charlotte's Bank of America Stadium, featuring teams from the ACC and the Southeastern Conference. Additionally, the state has hosted the NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four on two occasions, in Greensboro in 1974 and in Charlotte in 1994.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["191890", "21650"], "permutation_1": ["191890", "21650"], "permutation_2": ["191890", "21650"], "permutation_3": ["191890", "21650"]}
{"id": "2hop__445895_53028", "docs_added": {"74643": "Pinellas County, Florida\nCounty in Florida, United States\nPinellas County (, ) is located on the west central coast of the U.S. state of Florida. As of the 2020 census, the population was 959,107, making it the seventh-most populous county in the state. It is also the most densely populated county in Florida, with 1,326 residents per square kilometre. The county is part of the Tampa\u2013St. Petersburg\u2013Clearwater Metropolitan Statistical Area. Clearwater is the county seat. St. Petersburg is the largest city in the county, as well as the largest city in Florida that is not a county seat.\nHistory.\nPre-European settlement.\nWhen Europeans first reached the Pinellas peninsula, the Tampa Bay area was inhabited by people of the Safety Harbor culture. The Safety Harbor culture area was divided into chiefdoms. One documented chiefdom in what is now Pinellas County was that of the Tocobaga, who occupied a town and large temple mound, the Safety Harbor site, overlooking the bay in what is now Safety Harbor. The modern site is protected and can be visited as part of the county's Philippe Park.\nSpanish and British Florida.\nDuring the early 16th century Spanish explorers discovered and slowly began exploring Florida, including Tampa Bay. In 1528 P\u00e1nfilo de Narv\u00e1ez landed in Pinellas, and 10 years later Hernando de Soto is thought to have explored the Tampa Bay area. By the early 18th century the Tocobaga had been virtually annihilated, having fallen victim to European diseases from which they had no immunity, as well as European conflicts. Later Spanish explorers named the area \"Punta Pi\u00f1al\" (Spanish for \"Point of Pines\" or \"Piney Point\"). After trading hands multiple times between the British and the Spanish, Spain finally ceded Florida to the United States in 1821, and in 1823 the U.S. Army established Fort Brooke (later Tampa).\nSettlement of West Hillsborough.\nIn 1834 much of west central Florida, including the Pinellas peninsula (then known simply as \"West Hillsborough\"), was organized as Hillsborough County. The very next year Odet Philippe, a French Huguenot from Charleston, South Carolina became the first permanent, non-native resident of the peninsula when he established a plantation near the site of the Tocobaga village in Safety Harbor. It was Philippe who first introduced both citrus culture and cigar-making to Florida.\nAround the same time, the United States Army began construction of Fort Harrison, named after William Henry Harrison, as a rest post for soldiers from nearby Fort Brooke during the Second Seminole War. The new fort was located on a bluff overlooking Clear Water Harbor, which later became part of an early 20th-century residential development (now historic district) called Harbor Oaks. University of South Florida archaeologists excavated the site in 1977 after Alfred C. Wyllie discovered an underground ammunition bunker while digging a swimming pool on his estate. Clearwater would later become the first organized community on the peninsula as well as the site of its first post office.\nThe Armed Occupation Act, passed in 1842, encouraged further settlement of Pinellas, like all of Florida, by offering 160 acres (0.65\u00a0km2) to anyone who would bear arms and cultivate the land. Pioneer families like the Booths, the Coachmans, the Marstons, and the McMullens established homesteads in the area in the years following, planting more citrus groves and raising cattle. During the American Civil War, many residents fought for the Confederate States of America. Brothers James and Daniel McMullen were members of the Confederate Cow Cavalry, driving Florida cattle to Georgia and the Carolinas to help sustain the war effort. John W. Marston served in the 9th Florida Regiment as a part of the Appomattox Campaign. Many other residents served in other capacities. Otherwise the peninsula had virtually no significance during the war, and the war largely passed the area by.\nOn September 27, 1848, a strong hurricane struck the West Coast of Florida. It separated the barrier island on the coast and created a waterway known today as John's Pass. John Levique, along with Joseph Silva, was the one who discovered it and named it after himself and is now a federally owned canal.\nTarpon Springs became West Hillsborough's first incorporated city in 1887, and in 1888 the Orange Belt Railway was extended into the southern portion of the peninsula. Railroad owner Peter Demens named the town that grew near the railroad's terminus St. Petersburg in honor of his hometown. The town would incorporate in 1892. Other major towns in the county incorporated during this time were Clearwater (1891), Dunedin (1899), and Largo (1905).\nConstruction of Fort De Soto, on Mullet Key facing the mouth of Tampa Bay, was begun in 1898 during the Spanish\u2013American War to protect Tampa Bay from potential invading forces. The fort, a subpost of Fort Dade on adjacent Egmont Key (which lies in the mouth of Tampa Bay), was equipped with artillery and mortar batteries.\nBirth of Pinellas County.\nEven into the early years of the 20th century, West Hillsborough had no paved roads, and transportation posed a major challenge. A trip to the county seat, across the bay in Tampa, was generally an overnight affair and the automobiles that existed on the peninsula at that time would frequently become bogged down in the muck after rainstorms. Angry at what was perceived as neglect by the county government, residents of Pinellas began a push to secede from Hillsborough. They succeeded, and on January 1, 1912, Pinellas County came into being. The peninsula, along with a small part of the mainland were incorporated into the new county.\nLand boom and prohibition.\nAviation history was made in St. Petersburg on January 1, 1914, when Tony Jannus made the world's first scheduled commercial airline flight with the St. Petersburg\u2013Tampa Airboat Line from St. Petersburg to Tampa. The popular open-air St. Petersburg concert venue Jannus Live (formerly known as Jannus Landing) memorializes the flight.\nThe early 1920s saw the beginning of a land boom in much of Florida, including Pinellas. During this period municipalities issued a large number of bonds to keep pace with the needed infrastructure, such as roads and bridges. The travel time to Tampa was cut in half\u2014from \u2014by the opening of the Gandy Bridge in 1924, along the same route Jannus' airline used. It was the longest automobile toll bridge in the world at the time.\nProhibition was unpopular in the area and the peninsula's inlets and islands were used by rum-runners bringing in liquor from Cuba. Others distilled moonshine in the county's still plentiful woods.\nGreat Depression and World War II.\nAs was the case in much of Florida, the Great Depression came early to Pinellas with the collapse of the real estate boom in 1926. Local economies came into severe difficulties, and by 1930, St. Petersburg defaulted on its bonds. Only after World War II would significant growth return to the area. During the war, the area's tourist industry collapsed, but thousands of recruits came to the area when the U.S. military decided to use the area for training. Area hotels became barracks. The Vinoy Park Hotel was used as an Army training school. The area's women and girls participated in the war effort as well. Hundreds of girls from the area's most prominent families formed a group called the Bomb-a-Dears, holding dances, socializing with recruits, and selling war bonds. After the war many of these same soldiers remembered their wartime experience in Pinellas well, and returned as tourists or residents.\nRecent history.\nWith the end of the Second World War, Pinellas would enter another period of rapid growth and development. In 1954 the original span of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge was opened, replacing earlier ferry service. By 1957 Clearwater was America's fastest growing city.\nTragedy struck on May 9, 1980, when the southbound span of the original Sunshine Skyway Bridge was struck by the freighter MV \"Summit Venture\" during a storm, sending over of the bridge plummeting into Tampa Bay. The collision caused seven personal vehicles and a Greyhound bus to fall into the water, killing 35 people. The new bridge opened in 1987 and has since been listed as number 3 of the \"Top 10 Bridges\" in the World by the Travel Channel.\nThe county operates a living history museum called Heritage Village containing more than 28 historic structures, some dating back to the 19th century, where visitors can experience what life was once like in Pinellas.\nPinellas County celebrated 100 years of existence on January 1, 2012.\nGeography.\nAccording to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and (55.0%) is water. It is the second-smallest county in Florida by land area, larger than only Union County. Pinellas forms a peninsula bounded on the west by the Gulf of Mexico and on the south and east by Tampa Bay. It is long and wide at its broadest point, with of coastline.\nPhysical geography.\nElevation in the county ranges from mean sea level to its highest natural point of near the intersection of SR 580 and Countryside Blvd. in Clearwater. Due to its small size and high population, by the early 21st century Pinellas County has been mostly built out, with very little developable land left available. The county has maintained a fairly large system of parks and preserves that provide residents and visitors retreat from the city and a glimpse of the peninsula's original state.\nGeologically, Pinellas is underlain by a series of limestone formations, the Hawthorne limestone and the Tampa limestone. The limestone is porous and stores a large quantity of water. The Hawthorne formation forms a prominent ridge down the spine of the county, from east of Dunedin, south to the Walsingham area and east towards St. Petersburg.\nThe 35 miles of beaches and dunes which make up the county's 11 barrier islands provide habitat for coastal species, serve as critical storm protection for the inland communities, and form the basis of the area's thriving tourism industry. The islands are dynamic, with wave action building some islands further up, eroding others, and forming entirely new islands over time. Though hurricanes are infrequent on this part of Florida's coast, they have had a major impact on the islands, with the Hurricane of 1848 forming John's Pass between Madeira Beach and Treasure Island, a hurricane in 1921 creating Hurricane Pass and cleaving Hog Island into Honeymoon and Caladesi Islands, and 1985's Hurricane Elena sealing Dunedin Pass to join Caladesi with Clearwater Beach.\nBetween the barrier islands and the peninsula are several bodies of water, through which traverses a section of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. From north to south they are: St. Joseph Sound between the islands and Dunedin, Clearwater Harbor between Clearwater and Clearwater Beach, and Boca Ciega Bay in the southern third of the county. Connecting Clearwater Harbor to Boca Ciega Bay is a thin, approximately stretch of water known as The Narrows, which runs next to the town of Indian Shores.\nExtending from northeastern Boca Ciega Bay, Long Bayou separates Seminole from St. Petersburg near Bay Pines. Long Bayou once extended significantly farther up the peninsula until the northern portion was sealed off to create Lake Seminole. Extending further still from Long Bayou, the Cross Bayou Canal traverses the peninsula, crossing Pinellas Park in a northeasterly direction before emptying into Tampa Bay on the northwest side of St. Pete\u2013Clearwater International Airport.\nCounty parks and preserves.\nSource:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nOther protected areas.\nBoyd Hill Nature Preserve: A park on the shores of Lake Maggiore in south St. Petersburg, operated by the city and featuring a nature center, bird-of-prey aviary, and over three miles of trails through a variety of ecosystems.\nAdjacent counties.\nHillsborough County extends along the shipping channel towards Egmont Key and into the Gulf of Mexico, separating Pinellas County from Manatee County.\nEcosystems.\nPlant life.\nSeveral natural communities exist within the county, including areas of freshwater wetlands (dominated by bald cypresses and ferns), coastal mangrove swamps, sporadic hardwood hammocks (dominated by laurel oaks and live oaks, cabbage palms, and southern magnolias), low-lying, poorly drained pine flatwoods (dominated by longleaf pines and saw palmettos), and well-drained, upland sandhills (dominated by longleaf pines and turkey oaks) and sand pine scrub (dominated by sand pines, saw palmettos, and various oaks). Offshore ecosystems include the Tampa Bay estuary and numerous gulf seagrass beds. The county also maintains several artificial reefs.\nAnimal life.\nNumerous bird species can be sighted in Pinellas, either as permanent residents or during the winter migration, including wading birds like great blue herons, egrets, white ibises and roseate spoonbills, aquatic birds like brown pelicans, white pelicans, and cormorants, numerous species of shorebirds, and very-common birds like seagulls and passerines like the blue jay, mockingbird, and crow. Ospreys are a commonly seen bird-of-prey, with other birds of prey like turkey vultures, red tailed hawks, great horned owls, screech owls, barn owls, and bald eagles, among others, seen as well.\nGopher tortoises are found in many areas, the burrows they dig making them a keystone species. Coyotes, though often associated with the American West, are native-to and can be found in Pinellas. White-tailed deer, wild turkeys, bobcats, otters, and alligators can be found in the county as well.\nSea turtles nest on the shores or Pinellas' barrier islands and have been threatened by development. Offshore, dolphins, sharks, and manatees are numerous as well, while closer inshore stingrays are a common sight, leading those in-the-know to do the \"stingray shuffle\" (shuffling up the sand to scare nearby stingrays off) when entering gulf waters. Species of fish commonly caught in the waters surrounding the county include spotted seatrout, red drum or redfish, snook, pompano, sheepshead, Spanish mackerel, grouper, mullet, flounder, kingfish, and tarpon.\nInvasive species.\nLike much of Florida, Pinellas County is home to several invasive species that propagate easily outside their (and their natural predators') native range. Examples of commonly seen invasives include Brazilian pepper, water hyacinth, Australian pine, melaleuca and air potato. These species are considered serious pests, and varying methods have been tried to eradicate them. Examples of invasive animals include the wild boar, which poses significant health and agricultural problems in Florida and can sometimes be found in Pinellas, and the monk parakeet, small flocks of which can sometimes be seen in flight or building nests on electrical poles or telecommunications towers. There is also a large flock of feral peacocks residing in St. Petersburg's Jungle Terrace, Jungle Prada and Disston Heights neighborhoods.\nPinellas gained some national attention as the home of the \"Mystery Monkey of Tampa Bay\", a non-native, feral rhesus macaque that had been on the loose for approximately three years in the south of the county. No one was sure where the monkey came from, and a Facebook page set up for the monkey had over 84,000 likes (as of October 2012). The monkey was the subject of a sketch on the March 11, 2010, episode of \"the Colbert Report\". As of February 2012, the monkey had apparently taken up semi-permanent residence behind a family's home at an undisclosed location in St. Petersburg, according to the \"Tampa Bay Times\". Efforts to capture the monkey were reignited after it reportedly bit a woman living near where it had taken up residence, and the monkey was captured in late October 2012 and eventually was sent to live at Dade City's Wild Things, a zoo north of Tampa.\nClimate.\nPinellas, like the rest of the Tampa Bay area, has a humid subtropical climate, resulting in warm, humid summers with frequent thunderstorms, and drier winters. Pinellas County's geographic position- lying on a peninsula between Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico introduces large amounts of humidity into the atmosphere and serves to moderate temperatures. The geography of the peninsula also causes some variance in the county's average temperatures. St. Petersburg, further south on the peninsula, tends to have warmer daily average lows (by about 3 degrees) than areas such as Dunedin and Palm Harbor further north, though daily highs are very close. The north of the county also has fewer overall days of rain, but higher total annual precipitation when measured in inches, the county's south being prone to shorter, more frequent thunderstorms especially in the late summer.\nFreezing temperatures occur only every 2\u20133 years, with freezing precipitation occurring extremely rarely. Springs are usually short, mild, and dry, with occasional late-season cold fronts. Summertime weather is very consistent, with highs in the low 90s \u00b0F (around 32\u00a0\u00b0C), lows in the mid-70s \u00b0F (around 24\u00a0\u00b0C), accompanied by high humidity and an almost daily chance of afternoon thundershowers. The area experiences significant rainfall during its summer months (approximately May through October), with nearly two-thirds of annual precipitation falling between the months of June and September. The area is occasionally affected by tropical storms and hurricanes, but has not suffered a direct hit since 1921. Fall, like spring, is usually mild and dry, with the hurricane season extending through November and sometimes affecting the area.\nMany portions of south Pinellas, especially near the bay and gulf, have tropical microclimates. Tropical trees such as coconut palms and royal palms and fruit trees like mangoes grow very well in these microclimates.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nList of cities by population.\nThe following is a list of all cities, towns, and census-designated places in Pinellas County, Florida.\nSource: 2010 Florida Census of Population and Housing\n2020 census.\nAs of the 2020 United States census, there were 959,107 people, 413,239 households, and 232,884 families residing in the county.\n2010 census.\nU.S. Census Bureau 2010 Ethnic/Race Demographics:\nIn 2010, 6.5% of the population considered themselves to be of only American ancestry (regardless of race or ethnicity.)\nThere were 415,876 households, out of which 19.89% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 40.33% were married couples living together, 11.86% had a female householder with no husband present, and 43.67% were non-families. 35.42% of all households were made up of individuals, and 15.14% (4.53% male and 10.61% female) had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.16 and the average family size was 2.79.\nThe age distribution is 17.8% under the age of 18, 7.3% from 18 to 24, 23.0% from 25 to 44, 30.8% from 45 to 64, and 21.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 46.3 years. For every 100 females there were 92.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 89.8 males.\nThe median income for a household in the county was $45,258, and the median income for a family was $58,335. Males had a median income of $41,537 versus $35,003 for females. The per capita income for the county was $28,742. About 8.1% of families and 12.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 17.7% of those under age 18 and 9.0% of those aged 65 or over.\nIn 2010, 11.2% of the county's population was foreign born, with 50.3% being naturalized American citizens. Of foreign-born residents, 33.6% were born in Europe, 32.1% were born in Latin America, 20.9% born in Asia, 9.8% in North America, 3.0% born in Africa, and 0.6% were born in Oceania.\n2000 census.\nAs of 2000, there were 921,482 people, 414,968 households, and 243,171 families residing in the county. The population density was 1,271/km2 (3,292/sq\u00a0mi), making it the most densely populated county in Florida. There were 481,573 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the county was 85.85% White (82.8% were Non-Hispanic White,) 8.96% Black or African American, 0.30% Native American, 2.06% Asian, 0.05% Pacific Islander, 1.14% from other races, and 1.64% from two or more races. 4.64% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.\nThere were 414,968 households, out of which 22.10% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 44.80% were married couples living together, 10.50% had a female householder with no husband present, and 41.40% were non-families. 34.10% of all households were made up of individuals, and 15.50% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.17 and the average family size was 2.77.\nIn the county, the population was spread out, with 19.30% under the age of 18, 6.40% from 18 to 24, 27.30% from 25 to 44, 24.50% from 45 to 64, and 22.50% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 43 years. For every 100 females there were 91.00 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.80 males.\nIn 2000, 87.8% of persons age 25 or above were high school graduates, slightly above Florida's average of 84.9% for Florida. 26.7% of persons age 25 or above held a bachelor's degree or higher, also slightly higher than Florida's rate of 25.6%.\nThe median income for a household in the county was $37,111, and the median income for a family was $46,925. Males had a median income of $32,264 versus $26,281 for females. The per capita income for the county was $23,497. About 6.70% of families and 10.00% of the population were below the poverty line, including 13.90% of those under age 18 and 8.20% of those age 65 or over.\nIn 2000, as Florida's 6th and the nation's 53rd most populous county, Pinellas has a population greater than that of the individual states of Wyoming, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, and Vermont, as well as the District of Columbia. With a population density (as of the 2000 census) of 3292 inhabitants/mi2, Pinellas County is by far the most densely populated county in the state, more than double that of Broward County, the next most densely populated.\nLanguages.\nAs of 2010, 87.17% of all residents spoke English as their first language, while 5.56% spoke Spanish, 0.78% Vietnamese, 0.70% French, 0.65% Greek, 0.56% German, and 0.52% of the population spoke Serbo-Croatian as their mother language. In total, 12.83% of the population spoke languages other than English as their primary language.\nGovernment.\nThe Board of County Commissioners governs all unincorporated areas of the county under the state's constitution, with the power to adopt ordinances, approve the county budget, set millages, and provide services. The county's municipalities, while governing their own affairs, may call upon the county for specialized services. The county administrator, appointed by and reporting to the Board, oversees most of the day-to-day operations of the county.\nAs of 2023, The members of the Board are as follows:\nThe county's government website won a \"Sunny Award\" from Sunshine Review in 2010 for its proactive disclosure of government data.\nPolitics.\nIn national politics, Pinellas County, was one of the first areas of Florida to break from the Solid South and elect Republicans to public office. Riding on the coattails of Herbert Hoover's victory in the 1928 election, Albert R. Welsh was elected to the Florida Senate and Kenneth W. Kerr to the Florida House of Representatives. In that same election, Gladstone R. Beattie, became the Pinellas County Sheriff and first Republican sheriff in Florida since Reconstruction, and Harry R. Hewitt became the Pinellas County Judge and the first Republican county judge in Florida. In 1951, Pinellas was the first county to send a majority-Republican delegation to the Florida House of Representatives in the twentieth-century.\nFrom 1948 to 1988, it went Republican in every presidential election except Lyndon Johnson's 44-state landslide of 1964. However, for the last quarter-century, as part of the I-4 Corridor stretching from Tampa Bay to Orlando, Florida, it has been a powerful swing county in one of the nation's most critical swing states. Voter registration is almost tied, with Republicans having a small plurality of registered voters. It is closely divided between predominantly liberal St. Petersburg and its predominantly suburban and conservative north and beaches. Due in part to the more populated southern portion around St. Petersburg, it has supported a Democrat for president in all but three elections since 1992. The brand of Republicanism in Pinellas County has traditionally been a moderate one, so the county has become friendlier to Democrats as a result of the national GOP having shifted right.\nIn 2000, Al Gore became the first Democrat to win a majority of the county's vote since 1964, and only the second since Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 2004, Pinellas County swung the other way when George W. Bush carried the county by a narrow plurality of 49.56% (225,686 votes), with John Kerry following closely behind with 49.51% (225,460 votes)\u2014a margin of just 226 votes. In the 2012 Presidential Election, Barack Obama won Pinellas with 52% of the vote (239,104 votes) to Mitt Romney's 46.5% (213,258 votes), slightly narrower than Obama's 2008 election results in Pinellas of 53% (248,299 votes) to John McCain's 45% (210,066 votes). Republican victories in the county since Bush in 1988 have been narrow pluralities. The exception to this is Donald Trump in 2024, who won the county with nearly 52% of the vote.\nThe county is considered a bellwether politically.\nIn the 2012 U.S. Senate election, Pinellas voters helped re-elect U.S. Senator Bill Nelson over challenger Connie Mack IV with 59% of the vote, greater than his statewide average of 55%. In the 2010 U.S. Senate election, Pinellas was one of only four Florida counties won by outgoing Republican Governor Charlie Crist, a St. Petersburg native, who won 42% of Pinellas voters running as an Independent in a three-way race with Republican nominee (and eventual winner) Marco Rubio and former Democratic U.S. Representative Kendrick Meek, who won 37% and 16.8% of the Pinellas vote, respectively. Statewide, Rubio won almost 49% of the vote to Crist's 29.7% and Meek's 20% in a highly polarized election that would witness Crist depart from the Republican Party and eventually become a Democrat.\nIn the House of Representatives, most of Pinellas is represented by Republican Anna Paulina Luna of the 13th district. Most of the city of St. Petersburg, including the most Democratic parts of Pinellas, is represented by Democrat Kathy Castor of the 14th district, which spans the Tampa Bay. The way this map has been drawn has been considered an example of a pro-Republican gerrymander, given the previous Democratic lean of the 13th.\nIn state politics, portions of Pinellas are represented in the Florida Senate by Democratic State Senator Darryl Rouson (District 16) and Republican State Senators Nick DiCeglie (District 18) and Ed Hooper (District 21). In the Florida House parts of the county are represented by Republicans Adam Anderson (District 57-Palm Harbor, Tarpon Springs), Kimberly Berfield (District 58-Clearwater), Berny Jacques (District 59-Largo), and Linda Chaney (District 59), as well as Democrat Lindsay Cross (District 60- Pinellas Park). Portions of St. Pete are also included in District 62, represented by Michele Rayner-Goolsby.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nThe entire county is served by the Pinellas County School District. The current superintendent is Kevin Hendrick. The district, the nation's 24th largest, comprises 143 schools, including 72 elementary schools, 18 middle schools, two K\u20138 schools, 17 high schools, and 35 additional facilities including ESE, adult ed, career/technical, and charters. The district also operates the K\u201312 Pinellas Virtual School (PVS). Among the many notable magnet programs in the district are three International Baccalaureate (IB) programs, at St. Petersburg High School, Palm Harbor University High School, and Largo High School, Project Lead the Way's (PLTW) engineering program at East Lake High School, the Center for Advanced Technologies (CAT) at Lakewood High School, the Pinellas County Center for the Arts (PCCA) at Gibbs High School, four middle school Centers for Gifted Studies, at Thurgood Marshall Fundamental, Morgan Fitzgerald, John Hopkins and Dunedin Highland Middle Schools, and Florida's only Fundamental High School, at Osceola High School.\nThe county is also home to many private schools, including Admiral Farragut Academy, Canterbury School, Calvary Christian, Clearwater Central Catholic, Keswick Christian School, Shorecrest Preparatory School, Indian Rocks Christian School and St. Petersburg Catholic High School, among others.\nColleges and universities.\nPinellas County is home several institutions of higher learning, including Eckerd College, the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, Nova Southeastern University, the multi-campus St. Petersburg College, the Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, and the main campus of Schiller International University in Largo, after previously being located in Dunedin.\nLibraries.\nThe Pinellas Public Library Cooperative (PPLC) has 14 member libraries:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nThe Pinellas Public Library Cooperative was established by referendum in March 1989 to serve the unincorporated areas of Pinellas County. The original Interlocal Agreement, which described the legal basis, leadership and operations of the Cooperative, was signed by sixteen cities, the taxing district of Palm Harbor, and the County in 1989. In 1994, the City of Clearwater applied for and became a member of the Cooperative, which made all existing public libraries in the county members of the first countywide public library cooperative in Florida. The Pinellas Talking Book Library is administered through the Pinellas Public Library Cooperative. It serves county residents who are unable to read standard print material due to visual, physical or learning disabilities whether permanent or temporary. It provides free access to recorded, Braille, and Large print materials as well as a collection of descriptive videos. These materials are sent to members through postage free mail.\nEconomy.\nHistorical economic strengths.\nAgriculture was the single most important industry in Pinellas until the early 20th century, with much of the best land devoted to citrus production. Cattle ranching was another major industry. In 1885 the American Medical Society declared the Pinellas peninsula the \"healthiest spot on earth\", which helped spur the growth of the tourist industry.\nEconomy today.\nAnchored by the urban markets of Clearwater and St. Petersburg, Pinellas has the second largest base of manufacturing employment in Florida.\nPinellas has diverse, yet symbiotic, industry clusters, including aviation/aerospace, defense/national security, medical technologies, business and financial services, and information technology.\nFortune 500 technology manufacturers Jabil Circuit and Tech Data and a Fortune 500 financial company Raymond James Financial are headquartered in the Gateway area in and adjacent to Pinellas. Other large companies include HSN, Nielsen, and Valpak.\nService industries such as healthcare, business services and education account for more than 200,000 jobs in the county, generating almost $19 billion in revenue. Other major sectors include retail, with close to 100,000 employees in jobs such as food service, bars, and retail sales generating $12 billion for the local economy in 2010, and industries related to finance, insurance and real estate with approximately 44,000 workers generating $8.5 billion in sales.\nCulture.\nPerforming arts venues.\nThe Florida Orchestra splits its performances between Ruth Eckerd Hall, the Mahaffey Theater, and the Straz Center for the Performing Arts in Tampa. Clearwater Jazz Holiday held every October in Coachman Park in downtown Clearwater; in its 32nd year.\nOther points of interest.\nLong established communities, particularly Old Northeast in St. Petersburg, Pass-a-Grille in St. Pete Beach, Harbor Oaks in Clearwater, and old Tarpon Springs contain notable historic architecture.\nThe area has embraced farmer's markets, with St. Petersburg's Saturday Morning Market drawing large crowds, and other markets located weekly in several other parts of the county also seeing a growth in popularity.\nDowntowns in St. Petersburg and Dunedin, and many of the beaches, especially Clearwater Beach, all attract a vibrant nightlife.\nIn addition to the above-mentioned Heritage Village in Largo, a number of small local history museums operate within the county: the St. Petersburg Museum of History on the downtown St. Petersburg waterfront, the Gulf Beaches Historical Museum in Pass-a-Grille, the Dunedin History Museum in Dunedin, the Palm Harbor Museum in Palm Harbor, and the Historic Depot Museum in Tarpon Springs all provide visitors a glimpse of the area's history.\nTwo botanical gardens are located within the county: the Florida Botanical Gardens, a part of the Pinewood Cultural Park in Largo, and Sunken Gardens, a former tourist attraction located in and now run by the City of St. Petersburg.\nIndian Shores is home to the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary, currently the largest non-profit wild bird hospital in the United States and considered one of the top avian rehabilitation centers in the world. A variety of species can be found at the sanctuary, which is open 365 days a year and is free to the public.\nOn Clearwater Beach is the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, a non-profit dedicated to the rescue, rehabilitation and release of injured marine animals and public education. CMA's best-known permanent resident, is Winter, a bottlenose dolphin who was rescued in December 2005 after having her tail caught in a crab trap. Her injuries caused the loss of her tail; CMA successfully fitted Winter with a prosthetic tail which brought worldwide attention to the facility. Winter was the subject of the 2011 film \"Dolphin Tale\", shot partially on location at CMA.\nOn the south end of Anclote Key, off of Tarpon Springs, is the Anclote Key Light, a lighthouse built in 1887. The light is Pinellas County's only functioning lighthouse, and one of only two in the Tampa Bay area. The light was deactivated in 1984, but by 2003 had been restored and as of 2013 continues to be in use. The island forms Anclote Key Preserve State Park and is accessible only by private boat.\nDunedin is home to the Dunedin Brewery, Florida's oldest microbrewery.\nSports and recreation.\nSports teams.\nThe Tampa Bay area is home to three major professional sports teams and a number of minor-league and college teams. Regardless of the specific city where they play their games, all of the professional teams claim \"Tampa Bay\" in their name to signify that they represent the entire area.\nProfessionally, baseball's Tampa Bay Rays play at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, while football's Tampa Bay Buccaneers and hockey's Tampa Bay Lightning both play in nearby Tampa.\nTwo MLB teams come to Pinellas for spring training: the Philadelphia Phillies play at BayCare Ballpark in Clearwater while the Toronto Blue Jays play at TD Ballpark in Dunedin. Additionally, Minor League Baseball affiliates of those teams play at their spring training ballparks; the Clearwater Threshers play at BayCare Ballpark and the Dunedin Blue Jays play at TD Ballpark.\nThe Tampa Bay Rowdies of the USL Championship play at Al Lang Stadium in St. Petersburg\nThe Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg is held every spring on the downtown St. Petersburg waterfront.\nThe PGA Tour plays its Valspar Championship annually in March on the Copperhead Course at the Innisbrook Golf Resort in Palm Harbor.\nRecreational areas.\nOther popular fishing locations include Pier 60 on Clearwater Beach and the Gulf and Bay Piers at Fort De Soto Park, as well as countless spots along the bridges and passes of the area, among many others.\nPinellas County's coastal geography, with a long system of barrier islands on the Gulf and small-to-large mangrove islands dotting the waters on all sides, provides for an extensive series of blueways that are enjoyed by kayakers of all ability levels. The county also maintains a series of artificial reefs in the Gulf which are popular spots for fishing and scuba diving\nThe county's two largest freshwater lakes, Lake Tarpon (accessible through Chestnut and Anderson parks) and Lake Seminole (accessible through Lake Seminole Park), are popular for water skiing, jet-skiing, and sailing, as well as for fishing and kayaking.\nBoth the North Beach of Fort De Soto Park (2005) and Caladesi Island (2008) have been named by Dr. Beach as America's Top Beach.\nMedia.\nPinellas County, as a part of the Tampa Bay area (the nation's 14th largest television market), is served by fourteen local broadcast television stations, as well as a variety of cable-only local stations. More than 70 FM and AM stations compete for listenership in what is the nation's 19th largest radio market.\nMajor daily newspapers serving Pinellas are the \"Tampa Bay Times\", known as the \"St. Petersburg Times\" from 1884 to 2011 and first in circulation and readership, and \"The Tampa Tribune\". The \"Times\" also distributes a free daily (Monday-Friday) tabloid called \"tbt*\" in the most heavily populated areas of the county. \"Creative Loafing Tampa\" is the main alternative weekly.\nTransportation.\nRailroads.\nThe CSX railroad company operates the Clearwater Subdivision in Pinellas County, made up of segments of branch lines of the former Atlantic Coast Line Railroad and the Seaboard Air Line Railroad. Beginning in Tampa, the line has daily freight rail traffic through Oldsmar, Safety Harbor, Clearwater, Largo, Pinellas Park, and into St. Petersburg. Regularly-scheduled passenger rail services in Pinellas County ended on February 1, 1984, when Amtrak discontinued its rail operations in the county, and the last passenger rail service in the county of any kind, a series of special excursion runs between Tarpon Springs and Dunedin, occurred on March 8, 1987. CSX owned the last remaining trackage in downtown St. Petersburg until March 2008 when it, along with the remaining trackage south of Central Avenue and east of 34th Street South, began to be dismantled. That right-of-way, as well as the right-of-way of several other former CSX railroad lines in the county beginning in the 1990s, was converted into a section of the Pinellas Trail.\nAs of 2012, proposals were being developed by community leaders for a light rail system which would connect the regional core cities of Clearwater, St. Petersburg, and Tampa. The proposal, which has won the backing of the Clearwater and St. Petersburg City Councils would rely on a 1% sales tax and would have to go before voters for approval.\nMass transit.\nThe Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority (PSTA) operates 205 buses and trolleys servicing 37 routes across the county, with major stops at all commercial centers. Along the Gulf Beaches, PTSA operates the Suncoast Beach Trolley. PTSA also offers two express routes to downtown Tampa via the Howard Frankland and Gandy Bridges, connecting with Tampa's HartLine, and connects with Pasco's PCPT in Tarpon Springs to continue service in that county. The system's two main bus terminals are located in downtown Clearwater and downtown St. Petersburg. During fiscal year 2005\u201306, PSTA transported 11,400,484 passengers. Additionally, the city of St. Pete operates a rapid bus service, the \"SunRunner\", from downtown St. Pete to St. Pete Beach.\nEmergency management.\nFire departments.\nSource:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nEmergency Medical Services.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nLaw enforcement agencies.\nThe Pinellas County Sheriff's Office (PCSO) was founded in 1912 at the founding of the county. The Sheriff's Office absorbed the County Patrol in 1960. As of 2022[ [update]] the sheriff is Bob Gualtieri.\nThe office provides law enforcement services in the county. These municipalities contract to the Sheriff's Office for patrol services:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nMany cities in the county have their own city police departments:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nHospitals.\nThere are several hospitals in Pinellas and the surrounding counties.\nCommunities.\nCities.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nTowns.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCensus-designated places.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nOther unincorporated communities.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nIn popular culture.\nMovies filmed or set in Pinellas County include:\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "35818695": "Bear Creek, Florida\nBear Creek is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Pinellas County, Florida, United States. The population was 1,948 at the 2010 census.\nGeography.\nBear Creek is located at (27.7560, -82.73712). It is bordered by the cities of South Pasadena to the west, St. Petersburg to the north, and Gulfport to the east. Boca Ciega Bay is to the south.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of , of which is land and (5.81%) is water.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["35818695", "74643"], "permutation_1": ["35818695", "74643"], "permutation_2": ["74643", "35818695"], "permutation_3": ["74643", "35818695"]}
{"id": "2hop__224113_44326", "docs_added": {"2162784": "Tyler Mane\nCanadian professional wrestler\nDaryl Karolat (born December 8, 1966) is a Canadian actor and retired professional wrestler, better known by the name Tyler Mane. He is known for playing supervillain Sabretooth in \"X-Men\" (2000), \"\" (2006), and \"Deadpool & Wolverine\" (2024), Ajax in \"Troy\" (2004), slasher villain Michael Myers in \"Halloween\" (2007) and \"Halloween II\" (2009), supervillain Blackstar in the Netflix series \"Jupiter's Legacy\" (2021) and supervillain Richard Frank / Torminox in the Max series \"Doom Patrol\" (2022\u20132023).\nProfessional wrestling career.\nBorn and raised in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan he graduated from City Park Collegiate Institute.\nAs a teenager, Karolat travelled to Calgary, where he trained briefly with Stu Hart. He later began training with Red Bastien in 1986, and completed further training with Mando Guerrero. Mane began his career in 1986 under the name \"Skywalker Nitron\" in his native Canada. In 1987 he wrestled as Sky High Lee in Pacific Northwest Wrestling (Portland), billed from California.\nIn 1987, he wrestled in South Africa, which resulted in an invitation to wrestle for Joint Promotions in the United Kingdom, where he arrived in November. Billed as \"'Sky' Walker\" he appeared in one match on ITV, a disqualification loss to Pat Roach. His furious reaction to the referee's decision was later incorporated into the standalone wrestling show's title sequence.\nThe following year, he toured New Japan Pro-Wrestling as \"Gully Gaspar\", alongside Billy and Barry as a bunch of hockey-masked pirates managed by KY Wakamatsu. He could also be seen in WCW occasionally as the bodyguard of the tag team Doom along with Woman late in 1989, specifically Starrcade 1989.\nIn 1990, Karolat began wrestling in Puerto Rico and toured with All Japan Pro Wrestling, where he participated in the World's Strongest Tag Determination League. He then joined the Mexican promotion Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre.\nIn 1993, he signed with World Championship Wrestling, under the name \"Big Sky\" and teamed with Vinnie Vegas. After Vegas left WCW to become Diesel in the WWF, Mane was left in limbo and left WCW by the end of the year. In 1994, he joined Herb Abrams' Universal Wrestling Federation and became the only UWF MGM Grand Champion, defeating Steve Ray to win the vacant title. After Abrams' death and eventual dissolving of the UWF in 1996, Mane retired.\nFilm and television career.\nIn 1992, during his time within Mexico with Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre, Mane made his film debut in \"Luchadores de las Estrellas\" playing the villain of the movie, El Vampiro Interespacial. While part of WCW, he auditioned for and received a part in the television series \"Smokey and the Bandit\".\nAfter retiring from wrestling, he appeared in numerous films, including \"X-Men\" as Sabretooth, \"How to Make a Monster\" as Hardcore, \"Joe Dirt\", \"The Scorpion King\", \"Troy\" as Ajax, \"Hercules\" as Antaeus, and \"The Devil's Rejects\" in the uncredited role of Rufus. The role of Sabretooth was initially intended for Kevin Nash (Mane's former wrestling tag team partner) but was awarded to Mane due to Nash's scheduling conflicts.\nIn 2007, he played Michael Myers in Rob Zombie's remake of \"Halloween\". After winning the role, he noted that he consecutively watched seven of the eight \"Halloween\" films (excluding the because Michael Myers does not appear apart from in an ad for the first movie) to better understand his character. He is the tallest actor (6' 8\") to portray the character.[] In 2009, he reprised the role again in \"Rob Zombie's H2\", being only the second actor to play Michael Myers more than once, and the first actor to play the role in consecutive films.\nIn 2010, he and his wife launched their own production company: Mane Entertainment. Their first feature, \"Compound Fracture\", was released in 2013.\nIn 2016, Tyler co-starred in Fuzz on the Lens Productions comedy/fantasy film \"Abnormal Attraction\", reuniting with Malcolm McDowell (\"Halloween\"), Leslie Easterbrook (\"Compound Fracture\") and his wife Renae Geerlings.\nIn 2019 Mane co-starred in the comedy \"Playing with Fire\" alongside fellow professional wrestler John Cena.\nOn June 28, 2024, it was revealed Mane would reprise his role as Sabretooth in Marvel Studios' \"Deadpool & Wolverine\".\nPersonal life.\nMane was previously married to Jean Goertz from 1988 to 2003. He married actress Renae Geerlings in 2007.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2063141": "The Devil's Rejects\n2005 film by Rob Zombie\nThe Devil's Rejects is a 2005 American black comedy horror film written, produced and directed by Rob Zombie. It is the second film in the \"Firefly\" film series, serving as a sequel to Zombie's 2003 film \"House of 1000 Corpses\", and followed by its own sequel in 2019, \"3 From Hell\". The film is centered on the three fugitive members of the psychopathic antagonist family from the previous film, acting as the film's villainous protagonists, with Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, and Zombie's wife Sheri Moon Zombie reprising their roles, and Leslie Easterbrook replacing Karen Black as the matriarch.\n\"The Devil's Rejects\" was released on July 22, 2005, to minor commercial success, and mixed reviews, although it was generally considered an improvement over its predecessor. It was the final film to feature Matthew McGrory before his death the same year, although he did have a posthumous cameo in 2017's \"The Evil Within\", which had been filmed in 2002, and the film's DVD release was dedicated to his \"loving memory\".\nPlot.\nOn May 18, 1978, Texas Sheriff John Quincey Wydell and a large posse of state troopers issue a search and destroy mission on the Firefly family, who are responsible for over 75 homicides and disappearances over the past several years. The family arm themselves and fire on the officers. Rufus is killed, and Mother Firefly is taken into custody while Otis and Baby escape. They steal a car, kill the driver, and go to Kahiki Palms, a run-down motel.\nAt the motel, Otis and Baby take a musical group called Banjo and Sullivan hostage in their room, and Otis shoots the roadie when he returns. Meanwhile, Baby's father, Captain Spaulding, decides to rendezvous with Baby and Otis. His truck runs out of gas on the way, and he frightens a boy and assaults the boy's mother before stealing her car. Back at the motel, Otis rapes Roy Sullivan's wife, Gloria, and demands Adam Banjo and Roy come with him on an errand. Otis drives his two prisoners to a place where he buried weapons. While walking to the location, the two prisoners attack Otis, but Otis bludgeons Roy and cuts off Adam's face. \nAt the motel, Adam's wife, Wendy, tries to escape through the bathroom window. When Gloria attempts to rebel, Baby kills her. Wendy runs out of the motel but is caught by Captain Spaulding, who knocks her unconscious. Otis returns, and all three leave the motel together in the band's van. The motel maid comes to clean the room and discovers the murder scene. The maid enters the bathroom, where she sees \"The Devil's Rejects\" written on the wall in blood; she is startled by Wendy, who is accidentally killed when she runs out to the highway to seek help while she is in shock. \nWydell calls a pair of amoral bounty hunters\u2014the \"Unholy Two\"\u2014Rondo and Billy Ray, to help him find the Fireflys. While investigating, they discover an associate of Spaulding's named Charlie Altamont. Wydell begins to lose his sanity when Mother Firefly reveals that she murdered his brother. After having a dream in which his brother commands him to avenge his death, Wydell stabs Mother Firefly to death. The surviving Fireflys gather at a brothel owned by Charlie, where he offers them shelter from the police.\nAfter he leaves the brothel, Wydell threatens Charlie to give up the Fireflys. With the help of the \"Unholy Two\", the sheriff takes the family back to the Firefly house, where Wydell tortures them, using similar methods they used on their victims. He nails Otis' hands to his chair and staples crime-scene photographs to Otis's and Baby's stomachs, then he beats and shocks Captain Spaulding and Otis with a cattle prod and taunts Baby about the death of her mother.\nWydell sets the house on fire and leaves Otis and Spaulding to burn, but he lets Baby loose outside so he can hunt her for sport. Charlie returns to save the Firefly family, but Wydell kills him. Baby gets shot in the calf of her left leg, brutally horse-whipped, and then strangled by Wydell. Tiny suddenly arrives and intervenes, breaking Wydell's neck and saving the Firefly family. Otis, Baby, and Spaulding escape in Charlie's 1972 Cadillac Eldorado and leave behind Tiny, who walks back into the burning house. The trio drives, badly injured. As Otis drives down the road with Baby and Spaulding asleep in the back seat, he notices a police barricade ahead of them. Realizing that they will not make it out alive, he wakes Baby and Spaulding and hands them each a gun. They speed toward the barricade, guns blazing as the police return fire, fading to black.\nCast.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nProduction.\nWhen Rob Zombie wrote \"House of 1000 Corpses\" (2003), he had a \"vague idea for a story\" about the brother of the sheriff that the Firefly clan killed coming back for revenge. After Lions Gate Entertainment made back all of their money on the first day of \"Corpses\"' theatrical release, they wanted Zombie to make another film and he started to seriously think about a new story. With \"Rejects\", Zombie has said that he wanted to make it \"more horrific\" and the characters less cartoonish than in \"Corpses\", and that he wanted \"to make something that was almost like a violent western. Sort of like a road movie.\" He has also cited films like \"Bonnie and Clyde\" (1967), \"The Wild Bunch\" (1969), \"Badlands\" (1973) and \"The Texas Chain Saw Massacre\" (1974) as influences on \"Rejects\". When he approached William Forsythe about doing the film, he told the actor that the inspiration for how to portray his character came from actors like Lee Marvin and Robert Shaw. Sheri Moon Zombie does not see the film as a sequel: \"It's more like some of the characters from \"House of 1000 Corpses\" came on over, and now they're the Devil's Rejects.\"\nZombie hired Phil Parmet, who had shot the documentary \"Harlan County, USA\" (1976), because he wanted to adopt a hand-held camera/documentary look. Principal photography was emotionally draining for some of the actors. Moon Zombie remembers a scene she had to do with Forsythe that required her to cry. The scene took two to three hours to film and affected her so much that she did not come into work for two days afterward.\nThe film went through the MPAA eight times earning an NC-17 rating every time until the last one. According to Zombie, the censors had a problem with the overall tone of the film. Specifically, censors did not like the motel scene between Bill Moseley and Priscilla Barnes, forcing Zombie to cut two minutes of it for the theatrical release. However, this footage was restored in the unrated DVD release.\nSoundtrack.\nZombie, who is also a musician, decided to go with more southern rock to create the mood of the film. The film's soundtrack itself was notable as being one of the first to be released on DualDisc, with the DVD side featuring a making-of featurette for the film and a photo gallery.\nIn 2019, Zombie announced that Waxwork Records would release the soundtrack on vinyl along with the two other Zombie films in the trilogy, \"House of 1,000 Corpses\" and \"3 from Hell\" (2019). The record included an essay written by director Rob Zombie and a 12x12\" booklet that contained behind the scenes photographs.\nReception.\nBox office.\n\"The Devil's Rejects\" was released by Lions Gate Films on July 22, 2005, in 1,757 theaters and grossed USD$7.1 million on its opening weekend, recouping its roughly $7 million budget. It grossed $17 million in North America and $2.3 million internationally for a total of $19.4 million.\nCritical response.\nThe film received mixed reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 54% rating based on 135 reviews, with an average rating of 5.8/10. The site's consensus reads: \"Zombie has improved as a filmmaker since \"House of 1000 Corpses\" and will please fans of the genre, but beware\u2014the horror is nasty, relentless and sadistic.\" On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 53 out of 100 based on reviews from 32 critics, indicating \"mixed or average reviews\".\nCritic Roger Ebert enjoyed the film and gave it three out of four stars. He wrote, \"There is actually some good writing and acting going on here, if you can step back from the [violent] material enough to see it.\" Later, in his 2006 review for the horror film \"The Hills Have Eyes\", Ebert referenced \"The Devil's Rejects\", writing, \"I received some appalled feedback when I praised Rob Zombie's \"The Devil's Rejects\", but I admired two things about it [that were absent from \"The Hills Have Eyes\"]: (1) It desired to entertain and not merely to sicken, and (2) its depraved killers were individuals with personalities, histories and motives.\" In his review for \"Rolling Stone\", Peter Travers gave \"The Devil's Rejects\" three out of four stars and wrote, \"Let's hear it for the Southern-fried soundtrack, from Buck Owens' 'Satan's Got to Get Along Without Me' to Lynyrd Skynyrd's 'Free Bird', playing over the blood-soaked finale, which manages to wed \"The Wild Bunch\" to \"Thelma & Louise\".\" Richard Roeper gave the film \"thumbs up\" for being successful at its goal to be the \"sickest, the most twisted, the most deranged movie\" at that point of the year (2005).\nIn her review for \"The New York Times\", Dana Stevens wrote that the film \"is a \"trompe-l'\u0153il\" experiment in deliberately retro film-making. It looks sensational, but there is a curious emptiness at its core.\" \"Entertainment Weekly\" gave the film a \"C+\" rating and wrote, \"Zombie's characters are, to put it mildly, undeveloped.\" Robert K. Elder, of the \"Chicago Tribune\", disliked the film, writing \"[D]espite decades of soaking in bloody classics such as the original \"Texas Chainsaw Massacre\" and \"I Spit on Your Grave\", Zombie didn't absorb any of the underlying social tension or heart in those films. He's no collage artist of influences, like Quentin Tarantino, crafting his movie from childhood influences. \"Rejects\" plays more like a junkyard of homages, strewn together and lost among inept cops, gaping plot holes and buzzard-ready dialog.\"\nHorror author Stephen King rated \"The Devil's Rejects\" the 9th best film of 2005 and wrote, \"No redeeming social merit, perfect '70s C-grade picture cheesy glow; this must be what Quentin Tarantino meant when he did those silly \"Kill Bill\" pictures.\"\nJames Berardinelli was very negative giving \"The Devil's Rejects\" half a star (out of a possible four stars) and called it a \"vile, reprehensible movie\", saying the action was \"more formula than plot\". He described the dialogue as \"a pastiche (at least I think that's the intention) of the kind of bloodthirsty, overripe lines found\" in a genre of films from the 1970s about \"outcasts who defy society by destroying it\". He was extremely critical of the acting, directing, and the production values, with an ending that was \"a cataclysmic misfire\", and overall was not \"engaging cinema\".\nIn 2015, Taste of Cinema ranked the film 23rd among the \"30 Great Psychopath Movies That Are Worth Your Time\".\nSequel.\nIn January 2018, it was rumored that a sequel, \"3 from Hell\", was in production. Rob Zombie confirmed this via Instagram in March 2018, sharing a photo from the director's seat. A teaser trailer for \"3 from Hell\" was released in June 2019, and the film opened on September 16, 2019.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3623103": "Halloween (2007 film)\nFilm by Rob Zombie\nHalloween is a 2007 American slasher film written, directed, and produced by Rob Zombie. It is a remake of John Carpenter's 1978 horror film of the same name and the ninth installment in the \"Halloween\" franchise. The film stars Malcolm McDowell, Sheri Moon Zombie, Tyler Mane, Scout Taylor-Compton, Brad Dourif, Danielle Harris, and William Forsythe. The \"reimagining\" follows Michael Myers who murdered his family as a child and becomes institutionalized at an asylum, before breaking out and stalking Laurie Strode and her friends on Halloween night.\nWorking from Carpenter's advice to \"make [the film] his own\", Zombie chose to develop the film as both an origin story and a remake, allowing for more original content than simply re-filming the same scenes.\n\"Halloween\" was released in the United States on August 31, 2007, by the Weinstein Company, under their Dimension Films banner, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The film received generally negative reviews from critics, but grossed over $80 million worldwide against a production budget of $15 million. A sequel, \"Halloween II\", was released in 2009.\nPlot.\nOn Halloween in Haddonfield, Illinois, having already exhibited signs of psychopathic tendencies, ten-year-old Michael Myers murders school bully Wesley Rhoades, his older sister Judith, her boyfriend Steve Haley, and his mother's abusive boyfriend Ronnie White out of revenge. He only spares his infant sister, Angel. After one of the longest trials in the state's history, Michael is found guilty of first-degree murder and sent to Smith's Grove Sanitarium under the care of child psychologist Dr. Samuel Loomis.\nMichael initially cooperates with Loomis, and his mother Deborah, who he dearly loves the most, visits him regularly. Over the following year, Michael becomes dissociative, fixating on papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 masks and withdrawing from the people around him, even his mother. When Michael kills a nurse as Deborah is leaving from one of her visits, she is unable to handle the situation and commits suicide.\nFor the next 15 years, Michael continues making his masks and not speaking to people. Loomis, having continued to treat Michael over the years, attempts to move forward with his life and closes Michael's case. Later, Michael escapes from Smith's Grove, killing the guards and hospital staff in the process. He then kills a truck driver for his clothes and makes his way back to Haddonfield. On Halloween, Michael arrives at his now-abandoned childhood home, where he recovers the kitchen knife and Halloween mask he stored under the floorboards the night he killed his sister.\nLaurie Strode and her friends Annie Brackett and Lynda Van Der Klok prepare for Halloween. Throughout the day, Laurie witnesses Michael watching her from a distance. Later that night, Lynda meets up with her boyfriend Bob Simms at Michael's abandoned home. Michael appears, murders them, and then heads to the Strode home. There, while Laurie is babysitting Tommy Doyle, he murders her parents, Mason and Cynthia. Dr. Loomis, having been alerted of Michael's escape, arrives in Haddonfield looking for Michael. After obtaining a handgun, Loomis attempts to warn Sheriff Leigh Brackett that Michael has returned to Haddonfield. Loomis and Brackett head to the Strode home, with Brackett explaining along the way that Laurie is really Michael's baby sister, having been adopted by the Strodes following their mother's suicide.\nAfter convincing Laurie to babysit Lindsey Wallace while spending time with her boyfriend Paul, Annie is attacked by Michael after he kills Paul at the Wallace residence. Bringing Lindsey home, Laurie finds Annie badly injured on the floor but still alive and calls for help. Michael attacks Laurie and chases her back to the Doyle residence. Loomis and Brackett hear the call over the radio and head toward the Wallace residence. Michael kidnaps Laurie and takes her back to their old home. He tries to show Laurie that she is his sister, presenting a picture of them with their mother. Unable to understand, Laurie stabs Michael before escaping the house. Michael chases after her, but Loomis arrives and shoots him three times.\nRecovering, Michael recaptures Laurie and heads back to the house. Loomis intervenes, but Michael subdues him by gouging at his eyes. Laurie takes the gun and runs upstairs, but Michael corners her on a balcony and charges her head-on, knocking both of them over the railing. Laurie awakens on top of an unconscious Michael. Laurie aims the gun at Michael, with Michael's hand grabbing her wrist just as the gun is fired. Laurie drops the gun and starts screaming maniacally.\nCast.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>* Malcolm McDowell as Dr. Samuel Loomis\nProduction.\nAfter the release of \"\" (2002), there were various ideas on how to proceed with a ninth installment. After the release of \"Freddy vs. Jason\" in 2003, Dimension Films attempted to produce a crossover with the \"Hellraiser\" franchise featuring Pinhead and the Cenobites. One of the pitches involved a young Michael Myers opening the Lament Configuration and being possessed with Samhain fleeing from Hell, providing the source of his murderousness and invincibility; the remainder of the film would have involved the Cenobites pursuing him. An earlier pitch from the late 90s from Dave Parker was rejected by Dimension, as they believed \"Freddy vs. Jason\" would bomb at the box office. According to Doug Bradley, Clive Barker agreed to write a script while John Carpenter was being considered to direct. Bradley said that Barker \"wasn't interested in a mano-a-mano confrontation. He was interested in finding the places where the \"Hellraiser\" and \"Halloween\" landscapes might have crossed over\" and that he envisioned Michael Myers as \"a sadomasochistic sexual pervert and serial killer which would be enough to pique Pinhead's interest.\" The project was ultimately cancelled after 52 percent of respondents to an online poll disapproved of the project and Moustapha Akkad was not interested.\nAkkad continued to try to develop a sequel. Josh Stolberg, who also unsuccessfully proposed a \"Hellraiser\" crossover with Bobby Florsheim, pitched \"Halloween: Bad Blood\", which would have brought back Jamie Lloyd. A 2004 script from screenwriting duo Jim Keeble and Dudi Appleton, titled \"Halloween: Retribution\", would have begun with Michael killing Busta Rhymes's character Freddie Harris and involved Laurie Strode's son John Tate and Sheriff Leigh Brackett plotting to kill Michael Myers in revenge for her death in the previous film; the film would have ended with Tate drowning Michael in a frozen lake but implying that he would take his place as a murderous killer. Also in 2004, a script from Matt Veene, entitled \"Halloween: Asylum\", had Michael Myers breaking free from death row. Another prospective screenplay written by Jake Wade Wall was \"Halloween: The Missing Years\", which would have been a prequel centered around Michael Myers returning to Smith's Grove Sanitarium in the early 1980s during the events of ' (1982), with flashbacks revealing details about his childhood at the asylum after murdering his sister in the 1960s. At the same time Moustapha Akkad and his son Malek were working on a story revolving around Dr. Wynn from ' (1995). Development on a direct sequel suddenly halted when Moustapha Akkad was killed in the 2005 Amman hotel bombings while attending a wedding in Jordan, and his son Malek decided to take the series in a different direction.\nOn June 4, 2006, Dimension Films announced that Rob Zombie would be creating the next installment in the \"Halloween\" film series. The plan was for Zombie to hold many positions in the production; he would write, direct, produce, and serve as music supervisor. Bob Weinstein approached him about making the film. Zombie, who was a fan of the original \"Halloween\", jumped at the chance to make a \"Halloween\" film for Dimension Studios. Before Dimension went public with the news, Zombie felt obligated to inform Carpenter, out of respect, of the plans to remake his film. Carpenter's request was for Zombie to \"make it his own\". During a June 16, 2006, interview, Zombie announced that his film would combine the elements of prequel and remake with the original concept, and insisted that there would be considerable original content in the new film as opposed to mere rehashed material. The BBC reported that the new film would disregard the numerous sequels that followed \"Halloween\".\nZombie's intention was to reinvent Michael Myers because he felt the character, along with Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and Pinhead, had become more familiar to audiences, and as a result, less scary. The idea behind the new film was to delve deeper into Michael's backstory and add \"new life\" to the character. Michael's mask would be given its own story to provide an explanation as to why he wears it, instead of having the character simply steal a random mask from a hardware store as in the original film. Zombie explained that he wanted Michael to be true to what a psychopath really is, and wanted the mask to be a way for Michael to hide. He also wanted the young Michael to have charisma, which would be projected onto the adult Michael. In addition, he decided that Michael's motives for returning to Haddonfield would be more ambiguous, explaining, \"[W]as he trying to kill Laurie, or just find her because he loves her?\" Michael speaks as a child during the beginning of the film, but while in Smith's Grove he stops talking completely. Zombie originally planned to have the adult Michael speak to Laurie in the film's finale, simply saying his childhood nickname for her, \"Boo\". Zombie explained that this version was not used because he was afraid having the character talk at that point would demystify him too much, and because the act of Michael handing Laurie the photograph of them together was enough.\nMoreover, Michael would not be able to drive in the new film, unlike his 1978 counterpart who stole Loomis' car so that he could drive back to Haddonfield. The Dr. Loomis character was also to be more intertwined with that of Michael; Zombie reasoned that the character's role in the original was \"showing up merely to say something dramatic\". Although Zombie added more history to the Michael Myers character, hence creating more original content for the film, he chose to keep the character's trademark mask and Carpenter's theme song intact for his version (despite an apparent misinterpretation in an interview suggesting the theme would be ditched). Production officially began on January 29, 2007. Shortly before production began, Zombie reported that he had seen the first production of Michael's signature mask and commented, \"It looks perfect, exactly like the original. Not since 1978 has The Shape looked so good\". Filming occurred in the same neighborhood that Carpenter used for the original \"Halloween\".\nOn December 19, 2006, Zombie announced to \"Bloody Disgusting\" that Daeg Faerch would play the part of ten-year-old Michael Myers. On December 22, 2006, Malcolm McDowell was officially announced to be playing Dr. Loomis. McDowell stated that he wanted a tremendous ego in Loomis, who is out to get a new book from the ordeal. On December 24, 2006, Zombie announced that Tyler Mane, who had previously worked with Zombie on \"The Devil's Rejects\" (2005), would portray the adult Michael Myers. Mane stated that it was very difficult to act only with his eyes. After winning the role, he noted that he consecutively watched seven of the eight \"Halloween\" films (excluding the third because Michael Myers does not appear) to better understand his character. Scout Taylor-Compton endured a long audition process, but as director Zombie explains, \"Scout was my first choice. There was just something about her; she had a genuine quality. She didn't seem actor-y.\" She was one of the final people to be cast for a lead role after Faerch, Mane, McDowell, Forsythe, and Harris. Heather Bowen, a fan who won a contest for a walk-on cameo appearance in 2005 when it was still intended to be a sequel, played a news reporter who covered Michael's arrest, but her scene was cut from the film and does not appear in the deleted scenes. In the film's original ending, Loomis is successful in convincing Michael to let go of Laurie as he is surrounded by police officers, telling Michael he \"did the right thing\". Despite Loomis' protests, however, Michael is killed shortly afterwards in a hail of gunfire, and the film ends with Loomis looking down sadly at his former patient's corpse.\nRelease.\nApproximately four days before the theatrical release of the film, a workprint version of \"Halloween\" appeared online and was circulated around various BitTorrent sites. Upon hearing of the leaked copy, Zombie stated that whatever version had been leaked was an older version of the film, unlike what was about to be released in theaters. The leak of Zombie's workprint led to speculation that the film's box office success could be damaged, as director Eli Roth attributed the financial failure of his film that released earlier the same year, \"\", to the leaking of a workprint version. Dark Horizons webmaster Garth Franklin noted that watching the workprint allows a viewer to see what was changed after test screenings of the film in June 2007. For example, one particular scene\u2014the rape of one of the Smith's Grove female inmates\u2014was replaced in the final version. \"Halloween\" was officially released on August 31, 2007, to 3,472 theaters in North America, giving it the widest release of any of the previous \"Halloween films\".\nReception.\nBox office.\nOn its opening day, \"Halloween\" grossed $10,896,610, and immediately surpassed the opening weekend grosses for \"Halloween II\" (1981) at $7,446,508, \"Season of the Witch\" at $6,333,259, ' (1988) at $6,831,250, ' (1989) at $5,093,428, and \"The Curse of Michael Myers\" at $7,308,529. From September 1\u20132, \"Halloween\" earned $8,554,661 and $6,911,096, respectively, for a 3-day opening weekend total of $26,362,367. The film would earn an additional $4,229,392 on Labor Day for a 4-day holiday weekend gross of $30,591,759, making it the highest ever for that holiday. As a result, the 2007 film would immediately surpass the total box office gross for \"Halloween II\" (1981) at $25,533,818, \"Halloween III\" (1982) at $14,400,000, \"Halloween 4\" (1988) at $17,768,757, \"Halloween 5\" (1989) at $11,642,254, \"The Curse of Michael Myers\" (1995) at $15,116,634, and \"Halloween: Resurrection\" with $30,354,442.\nFollowing its first Friday after its opening weekend, \"Halloween\" saw a 71.6% drop in attendance, earning $3,093,679. The film, which earned the #1 spot at the box office in its opening weekend, earned only $9,513,770 in its second weekend\u2014a 63.9% decrease\u2014but still claimed the #2 spot at the box office just behind \"\". The film continued to appear in the weekend top ten going into its third weekend, when it earned $4,867,522 to take sixth place. It was not until the film's fourth weekend that it fell out of the top ten and into twelfth place with $2,189,266. \"Halloween\" would fail to regain a top ten spot at the box office for the remainder of its theatrical run.\nThanks to its opening weekend of $30.5 million, the film broke the box-office record for the Labor Day weekend, surpassing the record set in 2005 by \"Transporter 2\" with $20.1 million. It remained the top Labor Day weekend grosser until the release of \"Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings\" in 2021. \"Halloween\" was also the 8th highest-grossing R-rated film of 2007, and finished out the year in 44th place for domestic box office gross. With its $58 million box office gross, \"Halloween\" was the second highest-grossing film among the recent slasher remakes, taken over by \"A Nightmare on Elm Street\" (2010) with $63 million. However, it is third in the list which consists of \"When a Stranger Calls\" (2006) at $47.8 million, \"Black Christmas\" (2006) at $16.3 million, \"Prom Night\" (2008) at $43.8 million, \"My Bloody Valentine 3D\" (2009) with $51.4 million, and \"Friday the 13th\" (2009) leading the group with $60 million. \"Halloween\" is also ranked eleventh overall when comparing it to all of the horror remakes, as well as eighth place for all slasher films in general, in unadjusted dollars.\nIn addition to the film's North American box office, it opened alongside \"Michael Clayton\" and \"Mr. Woodcock\" in foreign markets on the weekend of September 29, 2007. \"Halloween\" led the trio with a total of $1.3 million in 372 theaters \u2013 \"Michael Clayton\" and \"Mr. Woodcock\" took in $1.2 million from 295 screens and $1 million from 238 screens, respectively. By November 1, 2007, \"Halloween\" had taken in"}, "descending_order": ["3623103", "2063141", "2162784"], "permutation_1": ["3623103", "2063141", "2162784"], "permutation_2": ["2063141", "3623103", "2162784"], "permutation_3": ["2063141", "2162784", "3623103"]}
{"id": "2hop__765636_99808", "docs_added": {"8950138": "Luahoko\nLuahoko is an island in Tonga. It is located within the Ha'apai Group in the centre of the country, to northeast of the national capital of Nuku\u02bbalofa.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "30158": "Tonga\nCountry in the South Pacific\nTonga ( , ; ), officially the Kingdom of Tonga (), is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania. The country has 171 islands - of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in the southern Pacific Ocean. As of 2021,[ [update]] according to Johnson's Tribune, Tonga has a population of 104,494, 70% of whom reside on the main island, Tongatapu. The country stretches approximately north-south. It is surrounded by Fiji and Wallis and Futuna (France) to the northwest, Samoa to the northeast, New Caledonia (France) and Vanuatu to the west, Niue (the nearest foreign territory) to the east and Kermadec (New Zealand) to the southwest. Tonga is about from New Zealand's North Island.\nTonga was first inhabited roughly 2,500 years ago by the Lapita civilization, Polynesian settlers who gradually evolved a distinct and strong ethnic identity, language, and culture as the Tongan people. They quickly established a powerful footing across the South Pacific, and this period of Tongan expansionism and colonization is known as the Tu\u02bbi Tonga Empire. From the rule of the first Tongan king, \u02bbAho\u02bbeitu, Tonga grew into a regional power. It was a thalassocracy that conquered and controlled unprecedented swathes of the Pacific, from parts of the Solomon Islands and the whole of New Caledonia and Fiji in the west to Samoa and Niue and even as far as parts of modern-day French Polynesia in the east. Tu\u02bbi Tonga became renowned for its economic, ethnic, and cultural influence over the Pacific, which remained strong even after the Samoan revolution of the 13th century and Europeans' discovery of the islands in 1616.\nFrom 1900 to 1970, Tonga had British protected-state status. The United Kingdom looked after Tonga's foreign affairs under a Treaty of Friendship, but Tonga never relinquished its sovereignty to any foreign power. In 2010, Tonga took a decisive step away from its traditional absolute monarchy and became a semi-constitutional monarchy, after legislative reforms paved the way for its first partial representative elections.\nTonga is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the United Nations, the Pacific Islands Forum, and the Alliance of Small Island States.\nEtymology.\nIn many Polynesian languages, including Tongan, the word (), comes from , which means 'southwards', and the archipelago is so named because it is the southernmost group among the island groups of western Polynesia. The word is cognate to the Hawaiian word meaning 'leeward', which is the origin of the name for the Kona District in Hawai\u02bbi.\nTonga became known in the West as the \"Friendly Islands\" because of the congenial reception accorded to Captain James Cook on his first visit in 1773. He arrived at the time of the annual festival, which centres on the donation of the First Fruits to the Tu\u02bbi Tonga (the islands' monarch), so he received an invitation to the festivities. Ironically, according to the writer William Mariner, the political leaders actually wanted to kill Cook during the gathering, but did not go through with it because they could not agree on a plan of action for accomplishing it.\nHistory.\nAccording to Tongan mythology, the demigod Maui drew up a group of islands from the ocean, first appearing Tongatapu, the Ha'apai Islands and Vava'u, integrating into what became modern-day Tonga.\nAn Austronesian-speaking group linked to what archaeologists call the Lapita culture covered from Island Melanesia to Samoa, and then on to inhabit Tonga sometime between 1500 and 1000\u00a0BC. Scholars still debate exactly when Tonga was first settled, but thorium dating confirms that settlers had arrived in the earliest known inhabited town, Nukuleka, by 888 BC, \u00b1 8 years. Tonga's precontact history was shared via oral history, which was passed down from generation to generation.\nBy the 12th century, Tongans and the Tongan monarch, the Tu\u02bbi Tonga, had acquired a reputation across the central Pacific\u00a0\u2013 from Niue, Samoa, Rotuma, Wallis and Futuna, New Caledonia to Tikopia, leading some historians to speak of a Tu\u02bbi Tonga Empire having existed during that period. Civil wars are known to have occurred in Tonga in the 15th and 17th centuries.\nThe Tongan people first encountered Europeans in 1616, when the Dutch vessel \"Eendracht\", captained by Willem Schouten, made a short visit to the islands for the purpose of engaging in trade. Later, other Dutch explorers arrived, including Jacob Le Maire (who visited the northern island of Niuatoputapu); and Abel Tasman (who visited Tongatapu and Ha\u02bbapai) in 1643. Later noteworthy European visitors included James Cook, of the British Royal Navy, in 1773, 1774, and 1777; Spanish Navy explorers Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa in 1781; Alessandro Malaspina in 1793; the first London missionaries in 1797; and a Wesleyan Methodist minister, Reverend Walter Lawry, in 1822.\nWhaling vessels were among the earliest regular Western visitors. The first of these on record is the \"Ann and Hope\", which was reported to have been seen among the islands of Tonga in June 1799. The last known whaling visitor was the \"Albatross\" in 1899. That ship arrived in Tonga seeking a resupply of water, food, and wood. The islands most regularly visited by Westerners were Ata, 'Eua, Ha'apai, Tongatapu, and Vava'u. Sometimes, Tongan men were recruited to serve as crewmen on these vessels.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition visited Tonga in 1840.\nIn 1845, an ambitious young Tongan warrior, strategist, and orator named T\u0101ufa\u02bb\u0101hau united Tonga into a kingdom. He held the chiefly title of Tu\u02bbi Kanokupolu, but had been baptised by Methodist missionaries with the name \"Siaosi\" (\"George\") in 1831. In 1875, with the help of missionary Shirley Waldemar Baker, he declared Tonga a constitutional monarchy, formally adopted the Western royal style, emancipated the \"serfs\", enshrined a code of law, land tenure, and freedom of the press, and limited the power of the chiefs.\nTonga became a protected state under a Treaty of Friendship with Britain on 18 May 1900, when European settlers and rival Tongan chiefs unsuccessfully tried to oust the man who had succeeded T\u0101ufa\u02bb\u0101hau as king. The treaty posted no higher permanent representative on Tonga than a British consul (1901\u20131970). Under the protection of Britain, Tonga maintained its sovereignty and remained the only Pacific nation to retain its monarchical government. The Tongan monarchy follows an uninterrupted succession of hereditary rulers from one family.\nThe 1918 flu pandemic, brought to Tonga by a ship from New Zealand, killed 1,800 Tongans, a mortality rate of about 8%.\nThe Treaty of Friendship and Tonga's protection status ended in 1970 under arrangements that had been established by Tonga's Queen Salote Tupou III before her death in 1965. Owing to its British ties, Tonga joined the Commonwealth in 1970 (atypically as a country that had its own monarch, rather than having the United Kingdom's monarch, along with Malaysia, Brunei, Lesotho, and Eswatini). Tonga became a member of the United Nations in September 1999. While exposed to colonial pressures, Tonga has always governed itself, which makes it unique in the Pacific.\nIn January 2022, the Hunga Tonga\u2013Hunga Ha\u02bbapai volcano, north of the main island of Tongatapu, erupted, causing a tsunami which inundated parts of the archipelago, including the capital Nuku\u02bbalofa. The eruption affected the kingdom heavily, cutting off most communications and killing four people in Tonga. In Peru, two women drowned due to abnormal tsunami waves. It took around five weeks to repair a submarine fiber optic cable used in the Tonga Cable System for internet and telephone connectivity.\nPolitics.\nTonga is a constitutional monarchy. It is the only extant indigenous monarchy in the Pacific islands (see also Hawai\u02bbi). Reverence for the monarch replaces that held in earlier centuries for the sacred paramount chief, the Tu\u02bbi Tonga. Criticism of the monarch is held to be contrary to Tongan culture and etiquette. Tonga provides for its citizens a free and mandatory education for all, secondary education with only nominal fees, and foreign-funded scholarships for postsecondary education.\nThe pro-democracy movement in Tonga promotes reforms, including better representation in the Parliament for the majority of commoners, and better accountability in matters of state. An overthrow of the monarchy is not part of the movement, and the institution of monarchy continues to hold popular support, even while reforms are advocated. Until recently, the governance issue was generally ignored by the leaders of other countries, but major aid donors and neighbours New Zealand and Australia are now expressing concerns about some Tongan government actions.\nFollowing the precedents of Queen S\u0101lote and the counsel of numerous international advisors, the government of Tonga under King T\u0101ufa\u02bb\u0101hau Tupou IV (reigned 1965\u20132006) monetised the economy, internationalised the medical and education systems, and enabled access by commoners to increasing forms of material wealth (houses, cars, and other commodities), education, and overseas travel.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tonga, with a maximum penalty of 10 years' imprisonment, but the law is not enforced. Tongans have universal access to a national health care system. The Constitution of Tonga protects land ownership; land cannot be sold to foreigners (although it may be leased).\nPolitical culture.\nKing T\u0101ufa\u02bb\u0101hau Tupou IV and his government made some problematic economic decisions and were accused by democracy activists, including former prime minister \u02bbAkilisi P\u014dhiva, of wasting millions of dollars on unwise investments. The problems have mostly been driven by attempts to increase national revenue through a variety of schemes \u2013 considering making Tonga a nuclear waste disposal site (an idea floated in the mid 1990s by the current crown prince), and selling Tongan Protected Persons Passports (which eventually forced Tonga to naturalise the purchasers, sparking ethnicity-based concerns within Tonga).\nSchemes also included the registering of foreign ships (which proved to be engaged in illegal activities, including shipments for al-Qaeda), claiming geo-orbital satellite slots (the revenue from which seems to belong to the Princess Royal, not the state), holding a long-term charter on an unusable Boeing 757 that was sidelined in Auckland Airport, leading to the collapse of Royal Tongan Airlines, and approving a factory for exporting cigarettes to China (against the advice of Tongan medical officials and decades of health-promotion messaging).\nThe king proved vulnerable to speculators with big promises and lost reportedly US$26\u00a0million to Jesse Bogdonoff, a financial adviser who called himself the king's court jester. The police imprisoned pro-democracy leaders, and the government repeatedly confiscated the newspaper \"The Tongan Times\" (printed in New Zealand and sold in Tonga) because the editor had been vocally critical of the king's mistakes. Notably, the \"Kele\u02bba\", produced specifically to critique the government and printed in Tonga by pro-democracy leader \u02bbAkilisi P\u014dhiva, was not banned during that time. P\u014dhiva, however, had been subjected to harassment in the form of barratry (frequent lawsuits).\nIn mid-2003, the government passed a radical constitutional amendment to \"Tonganize\" the press, by licensing and limiting freedom of the press, so as to protect the image of the monarchy. The amendment was defended by the government and by royalists on the basis of traditional cultural values. Licensure criteria include 80% ownership by Tongans living in the country. As of \u00a02004[ [update]], those papers denied licenses under the new act included the \"Taimi \u02bbo Tonga\" (\"Tongan Times\"), the \"Kele\u02bba,\" and the \"Matangi Tonga\"\u00a0\u2013 while those permitted licenses were uniformly church-based or pro-government.\nThe bill was opposed in a several-thousand-strong protest march in the capital, a call by the Tu\u02bbi Pelehake (a prince, nephew of the king and elected member of parliament) for Australia and other nations to pressure the Tongan government to democratise the electoral system, and a legal writ calling for a judicial investigation of the bill. The latter was supported by some 160 signatures, including seven of the nine elected \"People's Representatives\".\nThe then-Crown Prince Tupouto\u02bba and Pilolevu, the Princess Royal, remained generally silent on the issue. In total, the changes threatened to destabilise the polity, fragment support for the status quo, and place further pressure on the monarchy.\nIn 2005, the government spent several weeks negotiating with striking civil-service workers before reaching a settlement. The civil unrest that ensued was not limited to Tonga; protests outside the King's New Zealand residence made headlines.\nPrime Minister Prince \u02bbAho\u02bbeitu \u02bbUnuaki\u02bbotonga Tuku\u02bbaho (Lavaka Ata \u02bbUluk\u0101lala) (now King Tupou VI) resigned suddenly on 11 February 2006 and also gave up his other cabinet portfolios. The elected minister of labour, Feleti Sevele, replaced him in the interim.\nOn 5 July 2006, a driver in Menlo Park, California, caused the deaths of Prince Tu\u02bbipelehake \u02bbUluvalu, his wife, and their driver. Tu\u02bbipelehake, 55, was the cochairman of the constitutional reform commission and a nephew of the king.\nThe public expected some changes when George Tupou V succeeded his father in September 2006. On 16 November 2006, rioting broke out in the capital city of Nuku\u02bbalofa when it seemed that the parliament would adjourn for the year without having made any advances in increasing democracy in government. Pro-democracy activists burned and looted shops, offices, and government buildings. As a result, more than 60% of the downtown area was destroyed and as many as six\u00a0people died. The disturbances were ended by action from Tongan Security Forces and troops from New Zealand-led Joint Task Force.\nOn 29 July 2008, the Palace announced that King George Tupou V would relinquish much of his power and would surrender his role in day-to-day governmental affairs to the Prime Minister. The royal chamberlain said that this was being done to prepare the monarchy for 2010, when most of the first parliament would be elected, and added: \"The Sovereign of the only Polynesian kingdom ... is voluntarily surrendering his powers to meet the democratic aspirations of many of his people.\" The previous week, the government said the king had sold state assets that had contributed to much of the royal family's wealth.\nOn 15 March 2012, King George Tupou V contracted pneumonia and was brought to Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong. He was later diagnosed with leukaemia. His health deteriorated significantly shortly thereafter, and he died at 3:15\u00a0pm on 18 March 2012. He was succeeded by his brother Tupou VI, who was crowned on 4 July 2015.\nForeign relations.\nTonga's foreign policy as of January 2009[ [update]] was described by Matangi Tonga as \"Look East\"\u00a0\u2013 specifically, as establishing closer diplomatic and economic relations with Asia (which actually lies to the north-west of the Pacific kingdom). As of 2021, China has attained great influence in Tonga, financing infrastructure projects, including a new royal palace and holding two thirds of the country's foreign debt.\nTonga retains cordial relations with the United States. Although it remains on good terms with the United Kingdom, the two countries do not maintain particularly close relations. The United Kingdom closed its High Commission in Tonga in 2006, although it was re-established in January 2020 after a 14-year absence. Tonga's relations with Oceania's regional powers, Australia and New Zealand, are good.\nTonga maintains strong regional ties in the Pacific. It is a full member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission, the South Pacific Tourism Organisation, the Pacific Regional Environment Programme, and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community.\nIn 2023, the governments of Tonga and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the \"rapid and just transition\" to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law, including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nMilitary.\nThe Tongan government supported the American \"coalition of the willing\" action in Iraq and deployed more than 40 soldiers (as part of an American force) in late 2004. The contingent returned home on 17 December 2004. In 2007, a second contingent went to Iraq, and two more were sent during 2008 as part of continued support for the coalition. Tongan involvement concluded at the end of 2008 with no reported loss of life.\nIn 2010, Brigadier General Tau\u02bbaika \u02bbUta\u02bbatu, commander of the Tonga Defence Services, signed an agreement in London committing a minimum of 200 troops to co-operate with Britain's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. The task was completed in April 2014, and the UK presented Operational Service Medals to each of the soldiers involved during a parade held in Tonga.\nTonga has contributed troops and police to the Bougainville conflict in Papua-New Guinea and to the Australian-led RAMSI force in the Solomon Islands.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTonga is subdivided into five administrative divisions: \u02bbEua, Ha\u02bbapai, Niuas, Tongatapu, and Vava\u02bbu.\nGeography.\nLocated in Oceania, Tonga is an archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean, directly south of Samoa and about two-thirds of the way from Hawai'i to New Zealand. Its 171 islands, 45 of them inhabited, are divided into three main groups \u2013 Vava'u, Ha'apai, and Tongatapu \u2013 and cover an -long north\u2013south line.\nThe largest island, Tongatapu, on which the capital city of Nuku\u02bbalofa is located, covers . Geologically, the Tongan islands are of two types: most have a limestone base formed from uplifted coral formations; others consist of limestone overlaying a volcanic base.\nClimate.\nTonga has a tropical rainforest climate (\"Af\") with a distinct warm period (December\u2013April), during which the temperatures rise above , and a cooler period (May\u2013November), with temperatures rarely rising above . The temperature and rainfall range from and on Tongatapu in the south to and on the more northerly islands closer to the Equator.\nThe average wettest period is around March, with on average . The average daily humidity is 80%. The highest temperature recorded in Tonga was on 11 February 1979 in Vava'u. The coldest temperature recorded in Tonga was on 8 September 1994 in Fua'amotu. Temperatures of or lower are usually measured in the dry season and are more frequent in southern Tonga than in the northern islands. The tropical cyclone season currently runs from 1 November to 30 April, though tropical cyclones can form and affect Tonga outside of the season. According to the WorldRiskReport 2021, Tonga ranks third among the countries with the highest disaster risk worldwide \u2013 mainly due to the country's exposure to multiple natural hazards.\nEcology.\nTonga contains the Tongan tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nIn Tonga, dating back to Tongan legend, flying bats are considered sacred and are the property of the monarchy. Thus, they are protected and cannot be harmed or hunted. As a result, flying fox bats have thrived in many of the islands of Tonga.\nThe bird life of Tonga includes a total of 73 species, of which two are endemic, the Tongan whistler and the Tongan megapode. Five species have been introduced by humans, and eight are rare or accidental. Seven species are globally threatened.\nEconomy.\nTonga's economy is characterised by a large nonmonetary sector and a heavy dependence on remittances from the half of the country's population who live abroad (chiefly in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States). The royal family and the nobles dominate and largely own the monetary sector of the economy \u2013 particularly the telecommunications and satellite services. Tonga was named the sixth-most corrupt country in the world by \"Forbes\" magazine in 2008.\nTonga was ranked the 165th-safest investment destination in the world in the March 2011 \"Euromoney\" Country Risk rankings.\nThe manufacturing sector consists of handicrafts and a few other very small-scale industries, which contribute only about 5% of GDP. Commercial business activities also are inconspicuous, and to a large extent, are dominated by the same large trading companies found throughout the South Pacific. In September 1974, the country's first commercial trading bank, the Bank of Tonga, opened.\nTonga's development plans emphasise a growing private sector, upgrading agricultural productivity, revitalising the squash and vanilla-bean industries, developing tourism, and improving communications and transport. Substantial progress has been made, but much work remains to be done. A small, growing construction sector is developing in response to the inflow of aid money and remittances from Tongans abroad. In recognition of such a crucial contribution, the government has created a new department in the Prime Minister's Office with the purpose of catering for the needs of Tongans living abroad. In 2007, the Tongan Parliament amended citizenship laws to allow Tongans to hold dual citizenship.\nThe tourist industry is relatively undeveloped. The government recognises that tourism can play a major role in economic development, and efforts are being made to increase this source of revenue. Cruise ships often stop in Vava\u02bbu, with a reputation for its whale watching, game fishing, surfing, beaches, and is increasingly becoming a major player in the South Pacific tourism market.\nTonga's postage stamps, featuring colourful and often unusual designs (including heart-shaped and banana-shaped stamps), are popular with philatelists.\nIn 2005, the country became eligible to become a member of the World Trade Organization. After an initial voluntary delay, Tonga became a full member of the WTO on 27 July 2007.\nThe Tonga Chamber of Commerce and Industry, incorporated in 1996, endeavours to represent the interests of its members, private sector businesses, and to promote economic growth in the Kingdom.\nTonga is home to some 106,000 people. More than double that number live overseas, mainly in the US, New Zealand, and Australia. Remittances from the overseas population have been declining since the onset of the 2008 global economic crisis. The tourism industry is improving, but remains modest at under 90,000 tourists per year.\nAgriculture.\nIn Tonga, agriculture and forestry (together with fisheries) provide the majority of employment, foreign exchange earnings, and food. Rural Tongans rely on both plantation and subsistence agriculture. Plants grown for both market cash crops and home use include bananas, coconuts, coffee beans, vanilla beans, and root crops such as cassava, sweet potato, and taro. As of 2001[ [update]], two-thirds of agricultural land was in root crops.\nThe processing of coconuts into copra and desiccated (dried) coconut was once the only significant industry, and only commercial export. Deteriorating prices on the world market and lack of replanting brought this once vibrant industry, as in most island nations of the South Pacific, to a complete standstill.\nSwine and poultry are the major types of livestock. Horses are kept for draft purposes, primarily by farmers working their\" \u02bbapi \u02bbuta\" (a plot of bushland). More cattle are being raised, and beef imports are declining.\nThe traditional feudal land ownership system meant that farmers had no incentive to invest in planting long-term tree crops on land they did not own. In the late 20th century, kava and vanilla from larger plantations became the main agricultural exports, together with squash. The export of squash to Japan, beginning in 1987, once brought relief to Tonga's struggling economy, but local farmers became increasingly wary of the Japanese market due to price fluctuations, and the huge financial risks involved.\nEnergy.\nEnergy in Tonga mostly comes from imported diesel. Energy consumption in Tonga is projected to reach around 66 gigawatt hours by 2020. The country aimed to reach 50% of renewable energy by 2020. In 2019, Tonga announced the construction of a 6-megawatt solar farm on Tongatapu. The plant will be the second-largest solar plant in the Pacific upon completion.\nIn view of the decreasing reliability of fossil-fuel electricity generation, its increasing costs, and negative environmental side effects, renewable energy solutions have attracted the government's attention. Together with IRENA, Tonga has planned a renewable energy based strategy to power the main and outer islands. The strategy focuses on solar home systems that turn individual households into small power plants. It calls for the involvement of local operators, finance institutions, and technicians to provide sustainable business models and strategies to ensure the effective operation, management, and maintenance once the systems are installed.\nThe Pacific Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency was established in Tonga in 2016 to advise the private sector on related policy matters, provide capacity development and promote business investment. The centre facilitates a financial mechanism offering competitive grants for start-ups to spur the adoption of renewable energy by the business sector. The centre is part of the Global Network of Regional Sustainable Energy Centres and SIDS DOCK framework designed to attract international investment in the renewable energy sector.\nWith the assistance of IRENA, Tonga has developed the 2010\u20132020 Tonga Energy Road Map, which aims for a 50% reduction of diesel importation. This was to be accomplished through a range of appropriate renewable technologies, including wind and solar, as well as innovative efficiencies. As of 2018, Tonga was generating 10% of its electricity from renewable sources.\nDemographics.\nOver 70% of the inhabitants live on its main island, Tongatapu. Although an increasing number of Tongans have moved into the only urban and commercial centre, Nuku\u02bbalofa, where European and indigenous cultural and living patterns have blended, village life and kinship ties remain influential throughout the country. Despite emigration, Tonga grew in population from about 32,000 in the 1930s to more than 90,000 by 1976.\nEthnic groups.\nAccording to the government portal, Tongans, Polynesian by ethnicity with a mixture of Melanesian, represent more than 98% of the inhabitants. About 1.5% are mixed Tongans and the rest are European (the majority are British), mixed European, and other Pacific Islanders. In 2001, about 3,000 to 4,000 Chinese lived there, comprising 3 to 4% of the total Tongan population. The 2006 Nuku\u02bbalofa riots mainly targeted Chinese-owned businesses, leading to the emigration of several hundred Chinese so that only about 300 remain.\nLanguages.\nTongan is the official language, along with English. Tongan is a Polynesian language of the Tongic branch so is closely related to other languages of the Tongic branch, those being: Niuean and Niuafo\u02bbouan. Tongan is more distantly related to other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, Samoan, M\u0101ori, and Tahitian, among others.\nReligion.\nTonga does not have an official state religion. The Constitution of Tonga (Revised 1998) provides for freedom of religion.\nIn 1928, Queen Salote Tupou III, who was a member of the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga, established the Free Wesleyan Church as the state religion of Tonga. The chief pastor of the Free Wesleyan Church serves as the representative of the people of Tonga and of the church at the coronation of a king or queen of Tonga, where he anoints and crowns the monarch. In opposition to the establishment of the Free Wesleyan Church as a state religion, the Church of Tonga separated from the Free Wesleyan Church in 1928.\nIslam in Tonga is a small minority religion in the country. Muslims in Tonga belong to Sunni denomination. Al-Khadeejah Mosque is a prominent mosque in Tonga.\nEveryday life is heavily influenced by Polynesian traditions and by the Christian faith; for example, all commerce and entertainment activities cease on Sunday, from the beginning of the day at midnight, to the end of the day at midnight. The constitution declares the Sabbath sacred forever. The official figures from the latest government census as of 2011[ [update]] show that 90% of the population are affiliated with a Christian church or sect, with the four major church affiliations in the kingdom:\nThe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent missionaries in 1891 to visit King Siaosi (George) Tupo, where they obtained permission to preach.\nHealth.\nBy some published surveys, Tonga has one of the highest obesity rates in the world. World Health Organization data published in 2014 indicate that Tonga stands fourth overall in terms of countries listed by mean body mass index data. In 2011, 90% of the adult population were considered overweight using NIH interpretation of body mass index (BMI) data, with more than 60% of those obese. 70% of Tongan females aged 15\u201385 are obese. Tonga and Nauru have the world's highest overweight and obese populations.\nIn late October 2021, Tonga reported its first case of COVID-19 based on a New Zealand air passenger's positive test.\nEducation.\nPrimary education between ages 6 and 14 is compulsory and free in state schools. Mission schools provide about 8% of the primary and 90% of the secondary level of education. State schools make up for the rest. Higher education includes teacher training, nursing, and medical training, a small private university, a woman's business college, and a number of private agricultural schools. Most levels of higher education are pursued overseas.\nTongans enjoy a relatively high level of education, with a 98.9% literacy rate, and higher education up to and including medical and graduate degrees (pursued mostly overseas). They hold the body of academic knowledge created by their scholars in high esteem and the Kuk\u016b Kaunaka Collection, which comprises every doctoral and master's dissertation written by any Tongan in any country is archived by Seu'ula Johansson-Fua at the Institute for Education in Tonga.\nEmigration.\nContemporary Tongans often have strong ties to overseas lands. Many Tongans have emigrated to Australia, New Zealand, or the United States to seek employment and a higher standard of living.\nIn 2018, 82,389 Tongans lived in New Zealand. As of 2000, 36,840 Tongans were living in the US. More than 8,000 Tongans live in Australia. The Tongan diaspora retains close ties to relatives at home, and a significant portion of Tonga's income derives from remittances to family members (often aged) who prefer to remain in Tonga.\nCulture.\nHumans have lived in Tonga for nearly 3,000 years since settlement in late Lapita times. Before the arrival of European explorers in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Tongans had frequent contacts with their nearest Oceanic neighbours, Fiji and Niue. In the 19th century, with the arrival of Western traders and missionaries, Tongan culture changed, especially in religion. As of 2013[ [update]], almost 98% of residents profess Christianity. The people discarded some old beliefs and habits and adopted others.\nFahu.\nFahu is a form of social organization practiced by the people of Tonga, built upon a relationship between a person and their father\u2019s sister and paternal cousins. There are a few key superiorities in the social structure of fahu:\nPrior to Western contact, the inner dynamics between the chiefly kinship groups were governed by this social convention. Although fahu rights do not hold the same political strength and implications they historically did, they remain, to a notable degree, a part of the contemporary social practices in Tonga.\nSocio-environmental impact of fahu.\nSimilar social structures to fahu have been cited as significantly beneficial for human adaptation to environmental threats, especially those situated in hurricane-prone regions such as Tonga. The benefit stems from the fahu's ability to provide a network and capacity to allow for relocation or people and resources during environmental events, such as hurricanes or droughts.\nHowever, there have been environmental consequences of note due to the fahu structure, or rather, a disturbance of the structure. In the 1980s, Tonga saw a severe depletion of its sandalwood tree due a disruption of the fahu social hierarchy, which was incited by market demand for the resource. This led to heightened local competition and eventually an overharvest of the tree. Nearly all of the sandalwood resources were depleted over the span of two years.\nSport.\nRugby union.\nRugby union is the national sport, and the national team (\u02bbIkale Tahi, or Sea Eagles) has performed quite well on the international stage. Tonga has competed in six Rugby World Cups since 1987. The 2007 and 2011 Rugby World Cups were Tonga's most successful to date, both winning two out of four matches and in a running chance for the quarterfinals. In the 2007 Rugby World Cup, Tonga won its first two matches, against the USA 25\u201315, and Samoa 19\u201315. They came very close to upsetting the eventual winners of the 2007 tournament, the South African Springboks, losing 30\u201325. A defeat by England, 36\u201320 in their last pool game ended their hopes of making the knockout stages. Nevertheless, by picking up third place in their pool games behind South Africa and England, Tonga earned automatic qualification for the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. In Pool A of the 2011 Rugby World Cup, Tonga beat both Japan 31\u201318 and 5th ranked eventual finalist France 19\u201314 in the latter pool stages. However, a previous heavy defeat by the All Blacks at the tournament's opener (41\u201310) and a subsequent tight defeat by Canada (25\u201320) meant that Tonga lost out to France (who also lost to NZ) for the quarter finals due to 2 bonus points and a points difference of 46.\nTonga's best result before 2007 came in 1995, when they beat C\u00f4te d'Ivoire 29\u201311, and 1999 when they beat Italy 28\u201325 (although with only 14 men they lost heavily to England, 101\u201310). Tonga perform the Ikale Tahi war dance or Sipi Tau (a form of Kailao) before all their matches. Tonga used to compete in the Pacific Tri-Nations against Samoa and Fiji, which has now been replaced by the World Rugby Pacific Nations Cup, which now involves Japan, Canada, and the United States. At club level, there are the Datec Cup Provincial Championship and the Pacific Rugby Cup. Rugby union is governed by the Tonga Rugby Football Union, which was a member of the Pacific Islands Rugby Alliance and contributed to the Pacific Islanders rugby union team, before they were disbanded in 2009.\nMany players of Tongan descent \u2013 e.g., Jonah Lomu, Israel Folau, Viliami \"William\" \u02bbOfahengaue, Malakai Fekitoa, Ben Afeaki, Charles Piutau, Frank Halai, Sekope Kepu, George Smith, Wycliff Palu, Sitaleki Timani, Salesi Ma'afu, Anthony and Saia Fainga'a, Mark Gerrard, Cooper Vuna, Doug Howlett, Toutai Kefu and Tatafu Polota-Nau \u2013 have played for either the All Blacks or the Wallabies. British and Irish Lion and Welsh international player Taulupe \"Toby\" Faletau is Tongan born and the son of Tongan international Kuli Faletau. Taulupe's cousins and England international players Billy and Mako Vunipola (who is also a British and Irish Lion), are sons of former Tonga rugby captain Fe'ao Vunipola. Rugby is popular among the nation's schools, and students from schools such as Tonga College and Tupou College are regularly offered scholarships in New Zealand, Australia and Japan.\nRugby league.\nRugby league has gained some success. Tonga made their first appearance at a Rugby League World Cup in the 1995 edition where they went out in the first stage but narrowly lost to New Zealand. They have since appeared in each subsequent Rugby League World Cup tournament. In the 2008 Rugby League World Cup Tonga recorded wins against Ireland and Scotland. Just before the 2017 World Cup, various high-profile players, led by Jason Taumalolo and Andrew Fifita, defected from their tier one nations to represent their nation of heritage. This led to them defeating New Zealand in Hamilton at Waikato Stadium on 11 November at that tournament. The national team has since also recorded victories against Great Britain and the world number one Australia. In addition to the success of the national team, many players of Tongan descent make it big in the Australian National Rugby League competition. These include Jason Taumalolo, Israel Folau, Tyson Frizell, Tevita Pangai Junior, Konrad Hurrell, David Fusitua, Tuimoala Lolohea, Sio Siua Taukeiaho, Jorge Taufua, William Hopoate, Andrew Fifita, Ben Murdoch-Masila, Felise Kaufusi, Willie Mason, Manu Vatuvei, Brent Kite, Fuifui Moimoi, Willie Tonga, Anthony Tupou, Antonio Kaufusi, Michael Jennings, Tony Williams, Feleti Mateo. Subsequently, some Tongan rugby league players have established successful careers in the Super League such as Antonio Kaufusi.\nOlympics.\nAside from rugby, Tonga has also produced athletes who have competed at both the Summer and Winter Olympics. Tonga's only Olympic medal came from the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, where Paea Wolfgramm won silver in super heavyweight boxing. One athlete, Pita Taufatofua, attended the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.\nAmerican football.\nSeveral Tongans have been football players in the National Football League, including Tuineau Alipate, Sione Takitaki, Spencer Folau, Lakei Heimuli, Steve Kaufusi, Ma'ake Kemoeatu, Deuce Lutui, Siupeli Malamala, Tim Manoa, Stan Mataele, Vili Maumau, Alfred Pupunu, Vai Sikahema, Star Lotulelei, Vita Vea, Talanoa Hufanga, Peter Tuipulotu, Marlon Tuipulotu, and Tuli Tuipulotu.\nContemporary Tongan art.\nThere has been a huge surge of contemporary Tongan artists in the past decade, the majority based in New Zealand. Tanya Edwards works with ngatu (bark cloths), Benjamin Work, Telly Tuita, and Sione Mon\u016b are widely exhibited internationally, S\u0113misi Fetokai Potauaine built a five-storey Tongan sculpture in central Christchurch. In 2023, Bergman Gallery hosted \"Tukufakaholo, Tongan Contemporary\" in Auckland, New Zealand, featuring eight Tongan artists.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["8950138", "30158"], "permutation_1": ["30158", "8950138"], "permutation_2": ["8950138", "30158"], "permutation_3": ["8950138", "30158"]}
{"id": "2hop__150255_698136", "docs_added": {"24510481": "Owen Wister Review\nAmerican literary magazine\nThe Owen Wister Review is the University of Wyoming's annual art and literature magazine produced through the Student Media department, which publishes creative non-fiction, poetry, fiction, and art. The editorial staff is made up entirely of undergraduate and graduate students. The journal was established in 1978 and named for Owen Wister, who set the first modern western novel, \"The Virginian\", not far from Laramie, in the town of Medicine Bow.\nIn 2008 and again in 2009, the magazine was awarded a Magazine Pacemaker Award by the Associated College Press.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "535684": "University of Wyoming\nPublic university in Laramie, Wyoming, US\nThe University of Wyoming (UW) is a public land-grant research university in Laramie, Wyoming, United States. It was founded in March 1886, four years before the territory was admitted as the 44th state, and opened in September 1887. The University of Wyoming's location is written into the state's constitution. The university also offers outreach education in communities throughout Wyoming and online.\nThe University of Wyoming consists of seven colleges: agriculture and natural resources, arts and sciences, business, education, engineering and applied sciences, health sciences, and law. The university offers over 120 undergraduate, graduate, and certificate programs including Doctor of Pharmacy and Juris Doctor. It is classified among \"R1: Doctoral Universities \u2013 Very High research activity\".\nIn addition to on-campus classes in Laramie, the university's Outreach School offers more than 41\u00a0degree, certificate and endorsement programs to distance learners across the state and beyond. These programs are delivered through the use of technology, such as online and video conferencing classes. The Outreach School has nine regional centers in the state, with several on community college campuses, to give Wyoming residents access to a university education without relocating to Laramie.\nCampus.\nOld Main.\nOn September 27, 1886, the cornerstone of Old Main was laid, marking the beginning of the University of Wyoming. The stone is inscribed \"Domi Habuit Unde Disceret\", which is often translated, \"He need not go away from home for instruction.\" The following year, the first class of 42 men and women began their college education. For the next decade, the building housed classrooms, a library, and administration offices.\nThe style of Old Main set a precedent for all future university buildings. The main stone is rough-cut sandstone from a quarry east of Laramie, and the trim stone is smooth Potsdam Sandstone from a quarry near Rawlins. Old Main was supposed to be a monumental structure, and it was designed to be symmetrical, with a prominent central spire as the focal point. The building was also meant to reflect the character of Wyoming, and the rough stone and smooth trim represented the progressing frontier. The design of Old Main had a lasting effect on university structures, most visible in the use of a sandstone fa\u00e7ade on nearly every building.\nIn 1916, the university removed the central spire because of structural concerns. The size of auditorium was reduced during a 1936 renovation. In 1949, the university thoroughly remodeled the building and completely removed the auditorium and exterior stairs. At that time, it officially became known as Old Main, and the name was carved above the east entrance. Old Main houses university administration, including the president's office and the boardroom where the trustees often meet.\nPrexy's Pasture.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nIn order to preserve the natural and open beauty of that portion of the University of Wyoming campus commonly known and referred to as \"Prexy's Pasture\", no structures, other than ornamental improvements, or buildings of any kind or type shall be located or constructed upon [that] portion of the campus ...\nWyoming Legislature Statute\nPrexy's Pasture is a large grassy area located within a ring of classroom and administrative buildings and serves as the center mall of the campus. The name is attributed to an obscure rule that the university president, or \"prexy\", is given exclusive use of the area for livestock grazing. During the administration of Arthur G. Crane, the name \"Prexy's Pasture\" was formally declared. Prexy's, as it is often called today, is also known for the unique pattern formed by concrete pathways that students and faculty use to cross it.\nWhen the University of Wyoming first opened its doors in 1887, Prexy's Pasture was nothing more than an actual pasture covered in native grasses. The football team played their games there until 1922, when Corbett Field opened at the southeast corner of campus. Over time, as the needs of the university have changed, the area has been altered and redesigned. The original design was established in 1924, and in 1949, the area was landscaped with blue spruce and mugo pine. In February 1965, the board of trustees decided to construct the new science center on the west side of Prexy's Pasture. The board president, Harold F. Newton, who was concerned about the location, leaked the decision to the local press. The uproar that followed caused the board to decide on a new location for the science center and resulted in a new state statute making it necessary for any new structure built on the pasture to receive legislative approval. The statue known as \"University of Wyoming Family\" was installed in 1983 by UW professor Robert Russin in anticipation of the centennial celebration.\nIn the summer of 2004, Prexy's Pasture was remodeled as the first step in a two-part redesign project. The first step involved removing the asphalt roadway that circled the pasture and replacing it with concrete walkways to make the area a walking campus, as recommended by the 1966 and 1991 campus master plans. The grassy area was also increased, and new lampposts were installed for better lighting. The second phase of the project involved the construction of a plaza at each corner, featuring trees and rocks styled after the rocky outcrops of nearby Vedauwoo. Two of the plazas, Simpson Plaza and Cheney Plaza, have been completed.\nIn 2015, several exhibits from the exhibition \"Sculpture: A Wyoming Invitational\" were featured along the exterior walkway. In addition to its primary use by students travelling to and from classes or socializing, the area is host to campus barbecues and fall welcome events.\nWyoming Union.\nIn September 1937, the university obtained a Public Works Administration loan during the Great Depression for $149,250 for construction of a student union. On March 3, 1938, ground was broken and construction began on what would become the Wyoming Union. Many students were involved in the construction, and twenty-five students were trained to be stone-cutters.\nFrom the beginning, the union housed an assortment of student needs and activities. The formal and informal social needs were met by including a ballroom, banquet room, lounges, and game rooms. It also contained offices for student government, committees, organizations, and publications, to help meet the political and organizational needs of the student population. Lastly, a student store, post office, and bookstore completed the design.\nThe original design has been modified several times to accommodate changing needs and a growing student population. The first addition was completed in January 1960. This section, added to the northeast of the original structure, expanded the ballroom, made a lounge area and senate chambers adjacent to the ballroom, created the main lobby and breezeway, and provided a larger food area called The Gardens. In 1973, an addition to the north was completed to make a food court, add more space for the bookstore, and create additional offices. Also, parts of the original building were remodeled to create the Campus Activities Center, an art gallery, and a ticket outlet. In 2000, the Wyoming Union underwent extensive renovation. The $12\u00a0million project moved the food court to the main level, expanded the bookstore to the lower level, and revitalized the look and feel of the interior.\nRoss Hall.\nRoss Hall was built in 1959 and first used as a women's dormitory. In 1975, Ross Hall was converted to academic offices. It is located on the south side of Prexy's Pasture and is named after Nellie Tayloe Ross, Wyoming's and the nation's first woman governor, elected in 1924. There is a brass plaque relief of Nellie Ross in Ross Hall. She was married to William B. Ross, the 12th governor of Wyoming, who died in office. In 2000, on Ross Hall's fourth floor, the university installed the \"Wyoming Press Association's Newspaper Hall of Fame\" wall photos. In 2014, the Rendezvous Cafe open in the lobby.\nHalf Acre Gym.\nThe Half Acre Gym facility was constructed in 1925 to house the National Guard Armory of Laramie, as well as the athletic programs, until the field house opened in 1951. In order to fund this project, the university received a $100,000 gift from the Wyoming State Legislature, designated to be used for new buildings, such as a library, the gymnasium and armory, a power plant, an engineering building, and an expansion of the Hoyt Hall dormitory. The original structure occupied half an acre (), hence the name \"Half Acre Gym\". It was one of the largest facilities of its type at the time.\nThe building has undergone several renovations to increase its size and structural safety. In 2012, the university announced a $27 million renovation to begin in the Spring of 2013 and be completed by the Fall of 2014. Groathouse Construction, a local construction management firm, carried out the project in two phases to allow maximum use of the facility while it was under construction. Phase One would consist of the demolition and recreation of the east portion of the building. Phase Two would include the reopening of the east portion and the closure and construction of the west portion, which is the historical section of the building. Throughout the renovation, the university hoped to keep and incorporate as much of the historical structure and facade as possible.\nThe improvements included elevators, added classrooms, a space for athletic training, new racquetball courts, a climbing wall for Bouldering, a dance studio, a jogging/walking track, and new locker rooms with access to the pool.\nCoe Library.\nThe original library at the University of Wyoming consisted of 300 books and was located in Old Main. In 1923, the library was moved to the new Aven Nelson Memorial Building. With the 1950s came a larger student population and a greater push for America to excel academically. These factors contributed to the decision by the board of trustees that it was necessary to construct a new library. However, in 1951, the state legislature rejected the funding request.\nWilliam Robertson Coe, a financier and philanthropist, came to the aid of president Humphrey in 1954 by contributing $750,000 in securities to the university. The trustees called the grant \"one of the most outstanding contributions that has ever been made to the perpetuation of the American heritage\" and assured Coe that the building would be \"appropriately named\". In 1955, the state legislature matched the Coe grant for an overall amount of $1.5\u00a0million.\nLaramie architects Eliot and Clinton Hitchcock, whose father had designed the Aven Nelson Memorial Building, teamed up with the Porter and Porter firm in Cheyenne to design the new library. Their modular design was popular at the time and they intended to make the space very functional. The layout provided room for over 500,000 books and seating for at least 900 students. In May 1956, one year after the death of Coe, ground was broken and construction began on the building. The William Robertson Coe Library was finished in time for the Fall 1958 semester. In 1979, the stack tower was completed. This structure, designed by Kellogg and Kellogg of Cheyenne and Rock Springs, Wyoming, almost doubled the shelf space of the original Coe Library.\nThe most recent renovation of the library was completed in the fall of 2009 and officially dedicated on November 19, 2009. Hinthorne Mott Architects designed the new wing, referred to as Coe East, which added to the library. The addition was part of a larger, $50\u00a0million project to modernize the library by integrating technology and information. The renovation created an additional 20 group study rooms, space for 180 computer terminals, and features art by James Surls.\nClassroom Building.\nThe Classroom Building, dedicated in 1971 at a cost of $1.75\u00a0million, was designed to be a general purpose building for the university. The placement and unique design by the local architects W. Eliot and Clinton A. Hitchcock makes it the focal point of the George Duke Humphrey Science Center. The building also contains four interior mosaics, designed by University of Wyoming art professors James Boyle, Joseph Deaderick, Richard Evans, and Victor Flach, that represent the quadrant of Wyoming they face. Each mosaic is over \nIn 2007, after a two-year, $14.7\u00a0million renovation project, the Classroom Building reopened. The goal of the renovation was to incorporate new technology and redesign the seating better to meet the needs of students who carry laptops and backpacks. The building was also retrofitted with air conditioning. The unique characteristics of the original building, such as the circular design and mosaics, were maintained.\nBerry Biodiversity Conservation Center.\nThe Berry Biodiversity Conservation Center was added to the University of Wyoming campus in January 2012. This building, which focuses on the study of biodiversity, is dedicated to Robert and Carol Berry, who gifted it to the University. The cost of the building was $15 million. It has three floors and 40,000 square feet with labs and an auditorium. The Berry Center is home to both the vertebrate museum and the Wyoming Natural Diversity Database (WNDD). There is also an ecology lab, a stable isotope facility, and a program in ecology. The building also faculty offices, a teaching lab, display areas, public meeting areas, and a garden on the roof.\nHousing.\nThe university has four residence halls and four apartment complexes. The four residence halls, Orr, White (the second tallest building in Wyoming), Downey, and McIntyre, are connected together via the Washakie Dining Center, which contains the main dining hall and other student services. These residence halls house primarily freshmen. All incoming freshmen are expected to live in the residence halls during their first year, with some exceptions.\nEach of the residence halls is named after an influential administrator or faculty member. Downey Hall is an eight-story dormitory located southwest of the Washakie Dining Center and is named after June Downey. Located west of the Washakie Dining Center is White Hall, a dormitory named after Laura Amanda White. At twelve stories and 146\u00a0feet, White Hall is the second tallest building in the state of Wyoming, two feet shorter than the Wyoming Financial Center in Cheyenne. McIntyre Hall, named after Clara Frances McIntyre, is located east of the Washakie Dining Center. This twelve-story building underwent extensive renovations in 2004 and 2005. Just northeast of McIntyre Hall is the eight-story Orr Hall, named after Harriet Knight Orr. From 2005 to 2006, Orr Hall also underwent extensive renovations to modernize its living space.\nThe University Apartments are located east of War Memorial Stadium. They are available on a first-come, first-serve basis to all University of Wyoming students above freshman standing. There are apartment units in a variety of layouts in the River Village, Bison Run, Landmark, and Spanish Walk apartment complexes.\nTwo new residence halls, North and South Halls, and dining center are under construction east of Half Acre Gymnasium. Construction is expected to be completed in 2026. This is the former location of Wyoming Hall and a pay by the hour parking lot.\nMuseums.\nAmerican Heritage Center.\nThe American Heritage Center, located in the Centennial Complex, is an extensive repository of manuscripts, photographs, artworks, movies, audio recordings, and other items. It is one of the largest non-governmental archives west of the Mississippi River. Officially established in 1945, it now contains over of historic documents and materials. It is also home to the Toppan Library, which contains over 50,000 rare books. Because of its size, the AHC has many collecting areas. It features Wyoming and Western history from the early nineteenth to the twenty-first century; women's suffrage; transportation history, including railroad history (especially the transcontinental railroad) as well as aviation; and mineral, coal, and oil extraction. It has extensive entertainment collections in theater, radio and television, film, music, Hollywood (from Jack Benny and Barbara Stanwyck to Stan Lee), politics and journalism, authors, composers, and artists.\nUniversity of Wyoming Art Museum.\nThe University of Wyoming Art Museum is also located in the Centennial Complex on East Willet Drive. The museum's collections include art in many media from around the world, including: European and American paintings, prints, sculpture and drawings; 18th and 19th century Japanese Ukiyo-e prints; 15th through 19th century Persian and Indian miniature paintings; 20th century Haitian art; 20th century Japanese netsuke; 20th century and contemporary photography; and Rapa Nui, African, and Native American artifacts. Artists in the collection include Thomas Hart Benton, Ralston Crawford, Jun Kaneko, Hung Liu, Aristide Maillol, Joan Mir\u00f3, Richard Misrach, Robert Rauschenberg and Paul Signac. The museum also hosts changing exhibits of art from around the world. The Centennial Complex was designed by Antoine Predock and opened in 1993.\nIn collaboration with the College of Law, the museum conducts research and instruction on the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) and legal issues surrounding the repatriation of human remains.\nUniversity of Wyoming Geological Museum.\nThe University of Wyoming's Geological Museum houses a collection of fossils and minerals with special focus on the history of Wyoming. When the University of Wyoming was founded, the museum was essentially the small personal collection of Professor J.D. Conley. In 1893, Wilbur Knight, who was hired as a professor of mining and geology, took over as the museum curator. The museum moved to the Hall of Science in 1902 and continued to expand. By the time the collection was moved to its current location in 1956, Knight's son Samuel Howell Knight had made the university's Geology Department well known around the country. Samuel Howell Knight acquired many of the exhibits and paintings that are still on display, including the copper Tyrannosaurus at the entrance, the initial mounting of the Apatosaurus skeleton centerpiece, and the terracotta Stegosaurus and Triceratops panels.\nOne of the most famous exhibits at the museum is the Allosaurus known as \"Big Al\". It was featured in the BBC documentary \"The Ballad of Big Al.\" The University of Wyoming Geological Museum has also received coverage from \"National Geographic\", CNN, \"Earth Magazine\", Walter Cronkite, and \"NBC Nightly News\" with Tom Brokaw, and it has been shown on many dinosaur programs. On June 30, 2009, the museum was closed to meet state budget cuts. Following this controversial decision, an endowment fund was set up to support the museum. After substantial infrastructure upgrades, the museum reopened to the public on January 12, 2013 and resumed its regular hours with free admission. Some exhibits, like the Late Cretaceous display, have been completed, while others are still under renovation.\nUniversity of Wyoming Anthropology Museum.\nThe University of Wyoming Anthropology Museum is operated by the Anthropology Department and is located in the Anthropology Building at 12th and Lewis Streets. Exhibits are spread throughout three floors of the building. Displays include early humans, the Colby Mammoth Site, Vore Buffalo Jump, and other Wyoming archaeology sites.\nUniversity of Wyoming Insect Museum.\nThe University of Wyoming Insect Museum is a research museum located in the Agriculture Building. Displays include mounted insects, a small zoo with living insects, and an interactive discovery cabinet.\nAcademics.\nThe University of Wyoming comprises the following colleges and schools:\nThe College of Agriculture and Natural Resources offers teaching, research labs and field environments, and an indoor livestock teaching arena.\nThe College of Arts and Sciences offers more than 50 majors, 60 minors, and seven interdisciplinary programs. Geology, Archaeology, Botany, and Geography programs take advantage of Wyoming's unique environment, while International Studies, Sociology, and Political Science provide global context. A&S emphasizes field study, internships, and individual research projects, and has exchange programs and study abroad. In 2010, the university announced that it had received its largest estate gift ever, from the artist Neltje Doubleday Kings, known as Neltje, consisting of her ranches, art collection, and other holdings. When realized, the gif created the UW Neltje Center for the Visual and Literary Arts, combining programs of three of the university's departments: creative writing, arts, and the art museum.\nThe College of Business is accredited at the undergraduate and graduate levels by AACSB. More than 100 business scholarships are awarded annually.\nThe College of Education comprises two schools: the School of Counseling, Leadership, Advocacy, and Design; and the School of Teacher Education. Both certificates and programs that lead to initial certification or endorsements by Wyoming's Professional Teaching Standards Board (PTSB) are offered for pre-service teachers. Partnerships with Wyoming public schools provide for hands-on experience in real classrooms, and the on-campus, K-9 lab school provides a model of teaching and learning. The Counselor Education Training Clinic within the college offers free services for individuals, couples, families, adults, adolescents, and children. Services are provided by advanced graduate students under qualified clinical supervision.\nOffering 12 programs of study, the College of Engineering and Applied Science provides also undergraduate research opportunities, an International Engineering Program, and Earth Systems Science.\nThe Enhanced Oil Recovery Institute (EORI) was formed regarding the implementation of Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) techniques in Wyoming. The mission of EORI is \"to promote the recovery of Wyoming's 'stranded' oil.\" The Institute assists Wyoming operators with EOR projects by applying existing technologies and creating new knowledge when necessary, maximize the economic potential, minimize the risk of EOR projects, facilitate the testing, evaluation, and documentation of EOR recommendations in the real world settings, and transfer the information to Wyoming producers by forming partnerships and conducting workshops and conferences. The School of Energy Resources (SER) at the University of Wyoming was created in 2006 to enhance the university's energy-related education, research, and outreach. SER showcases the many energy research projects at UW and bridges academics and industry.\nThe University of Wyoming's Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources (ENR) advances the understanding and resolution of environmental and natural resource challenges through education, dissemination of information, and collaborative decision-making support. Its academic programs emphasize interdisciplinary learning, providing students with applied learning experiences that prepare them to consider multiple perspectives to address natural resource issues. The Ruckelshaus Institute produces reports and convenes events on natural resource issues. The school offers courses in negotiation, facilitation, and media relations for natural resource professionals. The Biodiversity Institute provides research, education, and outreach to support biodiversity conservation and management. In 2016, the university announced that the Haub School would become a full academic college beginning in the 2017 academic year.\nThe College of Health Sciences offers programs in pharmacy, nursing, social work, kinesiology, communication disorders, and dental hygiene, and students have the opportunity to receive pre-professional advising.\nThe College of Law was founded in 1920 and has been accredited by the American Bar Association since 1923. Its location in the Rocky Mountain West has provided a direct connection to regional and global issues in environmental, natural resources, and energy law. The alumni includes many state and federal judges, governors, senators and a former ambassador, and offers eight clinical and practicum programs providing students with hands-on experience in the Brimmer Legal Education Center.\nIn May 2017, the university began working to change the Honors Program to the Honors College and search for an Honors College Dean from within the university faculty.\nOutreach.\nThe mission of the University of Wyoming's Outreach School is to extend the University of Wyoming to the state and the world, and bring the world to Wyoming. It has several divisions. Outreach Credit Programs, in partnership with the university's colleges and departments, delivers both in and outside the state more than 41 degrees, programs, and certificates, both online or through \"blended\" learning technologies such as audio conferencing, video conferencing, and correspondence study. As of Spring 2014, Outreach School students accounted for 23.6% of enrollments at the University of Wyoming. \nThere are nine Outreach Regional Centers in Wyoming, each with an Academic Coordinator and staff provide student support services. The University of Wyoming at Casper is a partnership between the University of Wyoming and Casper College and offers a small, residential campus experience. Students at UW-Casper can pursue bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees, as well as certificates and endorsements. The International Programs Office supports both international students and faculty and provides a number of different international study opportunities. \nWyoming Public Media operates three radio services that cover 90% of Wyoming, as well as an online service and NPR news service. Outreach Technology Services, including UWTV, provides technological access to students enrolled in distance courses, as well as those at UW-Casper. Additionally, the Outreach School administers Summer Session, J-Term, and Saturday University.\nStudent life.\nThe university's Campus Sustainability Committee (CSC) advises all departments and programs on sustainability matters and oversees the university's efforts and progress toward reducing its carbon footprint. All new campus buildings are required to meet LEED silver certification of the U.S. Green Building Council. UW president Tom Buchanan signed the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment in 2007. For their advances on university sustainability, UW scored a \"C\" on the College Sustainability Report Card of the Sustainable Endowments Institute.\nNearly all fraternities and sororities are located on campus in private or university-owned houses. \nThe Outdoor Program offers many activities for outdoor enthusiasts. The program was established in 1997. Students go on single, multiday, and week-long excursions like rock climbing, white water rafting, ice climbing, snowshoeing, backcountry skiing, and mountain biking.\nAthletics.\nUniversity of Wyoming athletics teams are named the Cowboys and Cowgirls. Their official song is \"Ragtime Cowboy Joe\". Wyoming competes at the NCAA Division I level (FBS-Football Bowl Subdivision for football) as a member of the Mountain West Conference.\nUW offers 17 NCAA-sanctioned sports\u2013nine women's sports and eight men's sports. Wyoming's nine NCAA sports for women are basketball, cross country, golf, soccer, swimming and diving, tennis, indoor track & field, outdoor track and field, and volleyball. UW's eight NCAA sports for men are basketball, cross country, football, golf, swimming and diving, indoor track and field, outdoor track and field, and wrestling.\nThe \"Black 14\".\nIn 1969, the UW football team was undefeated in mid-October and ranked sixteenth in the AP poll. Head coach Lloyd Eaton kicked 14 Black players off the team for wanting to protest what they considered the racist policies within Brigham Young University (BYU) and the LDS Church before the annual conference game against BYU in Laramie on October 18. After the Cowboys went 1\u20139 the following year, the school decided to remove him. In 2019, the school publicly apologized for this incident, and invited all living players back to campus to be honored.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "286841": "Owen Wister\nAmerican writer (1860\u20131938)\nOwen Wister (July 14, 1860\u00a0\u2013 July 21, 1938) was an American writer and historian, considered the \"father\" of western fiction. He is best remembered for writing \"The Virginian\" and a biography of Ulysses S. Grant.\nBiography.\nEarly life.\nOwen Wister was born on July 14, 1860, in Germantown, a neighborhood in the northwestern part of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, Owen Jones Wister, was a wealthy physician raised at Grumblethorpe in Germantown. He was a distant cousin of Sally Wister through his descent from John Wister (born Johannes W\u00fcster) (1708\u20131789), brother of Caspar Wistar. His mother, Sarah Butler Wister, was the daughter of Fanny Kemble, a British actress, and Pierce Mease Butler. Pierce Mease Butler, heir to a fabulous fortune, was a notorious profligate, gambler, and slaveowner. In 1906 Wister wrote a novel, \"Lady Baltimore\", glorifying plantation life. His friend and Harvard classmate, Theodore Roosevelt, wrote to him criticizing the Southern bias of the novel.\nEducation.\nWister briefly attended schools in Switzerland and Britain, and later studied at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire and Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was a member of the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, and a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon (Alpha chapter). Wister was also a member of the Porcellian Club, through which he became lifelong friends with future 26th President Theodore Roosevelt. As a senior Wister wrote the Hasty Pudding's then most successful show, \"Dido and Aeneas\", whose proceeds aided in the construction of their theater. Wister graduated from Harvard in 1882.\nAt first he aspired to a career in music and spent two years studying at a Paris conservatory. Thereafter, he worked briefly in a bank in New York before studying law; he graduated from Harvard Law School in 1888. Following this, he practiced with a Philadelphia firm but was never truly interested in that career. He was interested in politics, however, and was a staunch supporter of U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt.\nHarvard's Board of Overseers had Theodore Roosevelt as a member in 1916 and Owen Wister as a member in 1918.\nIn the 1930s, Wister opposed President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal.\nWriting career.\nWister began his literary work in 1882, publishing \"The New Swiss Family Robinson\", a parody of the 1812 novel \"The Swiss Family Robinson\". It was so well received that Mark Twain wrote a letter to Wister praising it.\nWister had spent several summers in the American West, making his first trip to the Territory of Wyoming in 1885, planning to shoot big game, fish trout, meet the Indians, and spend nights in the wild. Like his friend Teddy Roosevelt, Wister was fascinated with the culture, lore and terrain of the region. He was \"...struck with wonder and delight, had the eye to see and the talent to portray the life unfolding in America. After six journeys [into the dying 'wild west'] for pleasure, he gave up the profession of law...\", and became the writer he is better known as. On an 1893 visit to Yellowstone National Park, Wister met the western artist Frederic Remington, who remained a lifelong friend.\nWhen he started writing, Wister naturally inclined towards fiction set on the western frontier. His most famous work remains the 1902 novel \"The Virginian\", a complex mixture of persons, places and events dramatized from experience, word of mouth, and his own imagination\u00a0\u2013 ultimately creating the archetypal cowboy, who is a natural aristocrat, set against a highly mythologized version of the Johnson County War, and taking the side of the large landowners. This is widely regarded as being the first cowboy novel, though many modern scholars argue that this distinction belongs to Emma Ghent Curtis's \"The Administratrix,\" published over ten years earlier. \"The Virginian\" was reprinted fourteen times in eight months. It stands as one of the top 50 best-selling works of fiction and is considered by Hollywood experts to be the basis for the modern fictional cowboy portrayed in literature, film, and television.\nIn 1904 Wister collaborated with Kirke La Shelle on a successful stage adaptation of \"The Virginian\" that featured Dustin Farnum in the title role. Farnum reprised the role ten years later in Cecil B. DeMille's film adaptation of the play.\nWister was a member of several literary societies, a member of The Franklin Inn Club, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the Board of Overseers of Harvard University. He was also an elected member of the American Philosophical Society.\nPersonal life.\nIn 1898, Wister married Mary Channing, his second cousin. The couple had six children. Mary died during childbirth in 1913. Their daughter, Mary Channing Wister, married artist Andrew Dasburg in 1933.\nDeath.\nIn 1938, Wister died at his home in Saunderstown, Rhode Island. He is buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia.\nLegacy.\nIn 1976, Wister was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.\nSince 1978, University of Wyoming Student Publications has published the literary and arts magazine \"Owen Wister Review\". The magazine was published bi-annually until 1996 and became an annual publication in the spring of 1997.\nMount Wister, just within the western boundary of the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, is named for him.\nNear a house that Wister built near La Mesa, California, but never occupied due to his wife's death, is a street called Wister Drive. In the same neighborhood are Virginian Lane and Molly Woods Avenue (named for a character in \"The Virginian\"). All of those streets were named by Wister himself.\nThe most popular legend of the Lady Baltimore cake is that Alicia Rhett Mayberry, a Southern belle, baked and served the cake to Wister in Charleston, South Carolina. Wister was said to have been so enamored with the cake that he used it as the namesake of his novel, \"Lady Baltimore\".\nBibliography.\nShort stories.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nWorks inspired by \"The Virginian\".\nMany movie industry historians will agree that most, if not all, westerns can be claimed to contain influences from \"The Virginian\". It is nearly universally accepted that the \"Hollywood cowboy\" was, and still is, based on this book.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "62818409": "SS Owen Wister\nLiberty ship of WWII\nSS \"Owen Wister\" was a Liberty ship built in the United States during World War II. She was named after Owen Wister, an American writer and historian, considered the \"father\" of western fiction. He is best remembered for writing The Virginian and a biography of Ulysses S. Grant.\nConstruction.\n\"Owen Wister\" was laid down on 2 November 1943, under a Maritime Commission (MARCOM) contract, MC hull 1216, by the St. Johns River Shipbuilding Company, Jacksonville, Florida; she was sponsored by Mrs. William L. Marshall, the wife of Gulf Coast Regional construction auditor for MARCOM, and was launched on 14 December 1943.\nHistory.\nShe was allocated to William J. Rountree Company, on 24 December 1943. On 22 July 1949, she was laid up in the National Defense Reserve Fleet, Astoria, Oregon. On 28 June 1954, she was withdrawn from the fleet to be loaded with grain under the \"Grain Program 1954\", she returned loaded on 17 July 1954. On 3 November 1956, she was withdrawn to be unload, she returned on empty 9 November 1956. She was sold for scrapping, 8 December 1964, to Zidell Explorations, Inc., for $156,006.66, which included her"}, "descending_order": ["24510481", "286841", "62818409", "535684"], "permutation_1": ["286841", "62818409", "24510481", "535684"], "permutation_2": ["24510481", "286841", "535684", "62818409"], "permutation_3": ["24510481", "62818409", "535684", "286841"]}
{"id": "2hop__812310_761060", "docs_added": {"18552162": "Altan (album)\nAltan is the second (studio) album by Frankie Kennedy and Mair\u00e9ad N\u00ed Mhaonaigh (future founders of the Irish band Altan), originally released in 1987 by Green Linnet Records. The musicians appearing on this album are substantially those that became the early incarnation of the band Altan. The band later (retroactively) called \"Altan\" their debut album.\nCredits.\nTracks 1,2,5,6,7,9,11,12,13 arranged by Kennedy, N\u00ed Mhaonaigh, Kelly, Curran.\nTracks 3,4,8,10 arranged by Kennedy, N\u00ed Mhaonaigh, Kelly, Curran, Lunny.\nAll tracks are traditionals, except the following:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3677192": "Frankie Kennedy\nFrankie Kennedy (30 September 1955 \u2013 19 September 1994) was a flute and tin whistle player born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was also the co-founder of the band Altan, formed with his wife Mair\u00e9ad N\u00ed Mhaonaigh. The popular \"Frankie Kennedy Winter Music School\" was founded in 1994 in his honour.\nBiography.\nEarly life.\nHe had three sisters and one brother.\nKennedy's uncle was married to the daughter of Robert Cinnamond, a singer from Glenavy, County Antrim, who was a frequent visitor in his family home.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />His memory of [Cinnamond] was as a gentle soul singing \"Dobbin's Flowery Vale\", a version that Frankie plays. And he had all those northern versions of songs. Frankie used to say, \"really I have no tradition,\" but he had a connection with the tradition which he didn't know himself.\nKennedy became interested in Irish traditional music when he was 18 years old, through the music of Horslips, Planxty, The Chieftains, and The Boys of the Lough. He learned his Irish as a young man in Belfast's Cumann Chluain \u00c1rd and travelled frequently to Donegal to perform at local sessions in Gweedore with Mair\u00e9ad N\u00ed Mhaonaigh.\nMarriage.\nWhen Kennedy was eighteen he took a sixth form summer trip to the Gaeltacht of Gweedore in County Donegal. He went to a session one evening and there met a fifteen-year-old fiddle player named Mair\u00e9ad, daughter of the session's leader Proinsias \u00d3 Maonaigh. They were attracted to each other, and he wrote to her regularly after leaving Donegal.\nHe was advised by a friend that he should learn an instrument if he intended to court Mair\u00e9ad, and so he got a whistle and taught himself to play. Later he learned the flute, a somewhat louder instrument, so that he could hear himself in sessions. His love for Mair\u00e9ad coupled with perfectionist tendencies turned him into a well-respected flute player.\nKennedy and Mair\u00e9ad N\u00ed Mhaonaigh married in 1981.\nForming Altan.\nThe new couple continued to play at sessions in Donegal, and this formed the basis for their musical partnership. They made their recording debut on Albert Fry's eponymous record in 1979 and later formed a short-lived group called Ragairne which also included Gear\u00f3id \u00d3 Maonaigh, N\u00ed Mhaonaigh's brother, on guitar, and was rejoined in 1981 by singer Eithne N\u00ed Bhraon\u00e1in, later known as Enya.\nJoined by bouzouki player Ciar\u00e1n Curran and Eithne N\u00ed Bhraon\u00e1in, now known as Enya, on synthesizer, Kennedy and Mair\u00e9ad N\u00ed Mhaonaigh released a recording entitled \"Ceol Aduaidh\" on Gael-Linn records in 1983.\nAt the time, Kennedy and N\u00ed Mhaonaigh were earning their living by teaching at St. Oliver Plunkett National School in Malahide, north County Dublin. But live performances in 1984 and 1985, particularly in the United States, convinced them that there was an audience for \"no-compromise traditional music played with heart and drive,\" and they were persuaded to give up teaching.\nDuring this time, the group added guitarist Mark Kelly and released in 1987 a record called \"Altan\", named after a lake in Donegal, although the name Altan wasn't used for the band on that release. But the band's musical momentum was building rapidly, and they would release three records in three years as Altan between 1989 and 1991. \"Altan\" was produced by D\u00f3nal Lunny, who subsequently appeared as either a producer or guest musician on every Altan album which followed.\nLater life and death.\nKennedy was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, a vicious form of cancer, in 1992. Despite his illness Kennedy continued to tour and record with Altan. The band released \"Island Angel\" in 1993, and continued to tour through 1994, the year of his death. Although Kennedy had experienced 18 months in remission, the cancer returned \"full blast\" afterwards. He died on 19 September at the age of 38 in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast.\nKennedy is buried in Gweedore, County Donegal.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The flute-player Frankie Kennedy, of the traditional group Altan, was buried yesterday after a concelebrated Mass in Derrybeg Church, Gaoth Dobhair, Co. Donegal, attended by hundreds of musicians from Ireland, Britain, the Continent and North America. The prayers were led by Father Gary Hastings in a Mass sung by members of Cor Chuil Aodha, led by Peadar O Riada. Raidio na Gaeltachta broadcast the Mass live, with overlays of the flute-player's music. Matt Molloy of the Chieftains led the communion with a slow air; Altan members Daithi Sproule, Paul Kelly, Dermot Byrne, Ciaran Curran and Ciaran Tourish blended with mazurkas from fiddler Johnny Doherty, and Paddy Glackin and Donal Lunny concluded on fiddle and synthesizer playing \"Paddy's Rambles in the Park\". With his flute on the coffin, Frankie Kennedy was saluted by Altan's playing of his own reel, \"Harvest Storm\".\nAltan, in accordance with Kennedy's wishes, continued to record and perform after his death.\nLegacy.\nFlute style.\nKennedy was widely considered to be a master of the simple system flute. \"Simple system\" flutes are so named because they do not use a metal key system as complex as the Boehm system found on the Western concert flute; for the majority of notes played on the instrument the player covers the tone holes directly with his or her fingers rather than using a metal key. Simple system flutes are predominant in Irish traditional music.\nKennedy learned to play the flute in his birth city of Belfast, as part of a musical community which produced a number of well-known flute players, including Hammy Hamilton, Gary Hastings, Gerry O'Donnell, Desi Wilkinson, and Sam Murray.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />It was a good time to be learning the flute there, because everybody had their own style. There wasn't anyone copying the next person \u2013 they ware all seeking music from the likes of Roger Sherlock, Cathal McConnell and Conal \u00d3 Gr\u00e1da, or going down the country. He just threw himself into the music. Frankie was also a huge rock and roll fan \u2013 Rory Gallagher, Van Morrison. He never played any of it. \u2013 he just loved going to hear different types of music.\nKennedy's style was characterised first and foremost by the music he played; most of the tunes originated from County Donegal, and his flute style corresponded well with the characteristic Donegal fiddle tradition. His recorded legacy is almost exclusively with his wife and Altan, although he did perform on Clannad's album \"Banba\".\nHis playing was smooth and somewhat less heavily ornamented than that of other popular Irish flute players like Matt Molloy. But like Molloy, the use of flattened \"blue notes\" for expressive purposes \"was a strong feature of Frankie Kennedy's playing with Altan.\"\nKennedy played flutes made by Chris Wilkes and Patrick Olwell.\nFrankie Kennedy Winter School.\nEstablished in December 1994 in remembrance of Kennedy and with the intention of keeping both his memory and the music of County Donegal alive, the Frankie Kennedy Winter School (Scoil Gheimhridh Frankie Kennedy in Irish gaelic) was an annual series of classes which was held for almost two decades in Gaoth Dobhair (Gweedore), County Donegal until the last edition occurred in December 2013\u2013January 2014. In 2004 the school released a CD compilation of solo Irish flute played by a \"who's who\" of contemporary masters of the instrument, called \"An Ghaoth Aduaidh/The North Wind\", in honour of Kennedy. Kennedy's mother Agnes still attends the festival annually and is close to Mair\u00e9ad's family.\nMemorial.\nSt. Oliver Plunkett School, where Kennedy and Mair\u00e9ad taught, planted a tree in their Garden of Peace in memory of Kennedy. The school's staff and pupils planted a Wild Pear, used to make flutes, in his honour. A plaque was also created, with the following inscription:\nOn the day of the planting ceremony over 400 of the school pupils, many past pupils and staff members put on a very special day-long marathon festival of music, song and dance. There was a three fold purpose. We wished to honour Frankie. We wished to celebrate his life in the way he enjoyed most, showing the joy and happiness that we can get from music, song and dance. Thirdly we wanted to raise funds for cancer research and the Hospice Foundation. We achieved our aims and had a marvellous day in the process. Mairead and Altan's Dermot and Ciaran came and played for huge audience who had gathered. It was at once a very poignant though terribly happy day.\nTributes.\nDozens of songs have been written and recorded about Kennedy, including the following:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "904507": "Altan (band)\nIrish folk music band\nAltan are an Irish folk music band formed in County Donegal in 1987 by lead vocalist Mair\u00e9ad N\u00ed Mhaonaigh and her husband Frankie Kennedy. The group were primarily influenced by traditional Irish language songs from Donegal and have sold over a million records.\nThe group were the first traditional Irish group to be signed to a major label when they signed with Virgin Records in 1994. The group has collaborated with Dolly Parton, Enya, The Chieftains, Bonnie Raitt, Alison Krauss, and many others.\nOrigin.\nAs an 18-year-old young student and musician from Belfast, Frankie Kennedy used to travel to Gweedore, County Donegal on his summer holidays, learning Irish and playing traditional Irish music on Irish flute and tin whistle. There he met native 14-year-old Irish-speaker and musician Mair\u00e9ad N\u00ed Mhaonaigh, the daughter of musician Proinsias \u00d3 Maonaigh from Gweedore and the two fell in love with each other but N\u00ed Mhaonaigh being very young, an innocent friendship began. When she was 15, she was allowed to go to dances under her brother Gear\u00f3id \u00d3 Maonaigh's watchful eye, and gradually Frankie Kennedy and Mair\u00e9ad N\u00ed Mhaonaigh became a couple. They both took jobs as trainee teachers at St. Patrick's College in Dublin. In 1979, the two musicians made their recording debut as accompanists for the well-known Belfast singer and Gaelic enthusiast Albert Fry on his self-titled debut album. (In total, N\u00ed Mhaonaigh and Kennedy would feature on the first three albums of Albert Fry.) Two years later, in 1981, N\u00ed Mhaonaigh and Kennedy graduated from college and married when Mair\u00e9ad was 21.\nHistory.\nPre-Altan years: N\u00ed Mhaonaigh & Kennedy.\nKennedy and N\u00ed Mhaonaigh had moved to Dublin and were both teaching at St. Oliver Plunkett primary school in Malahide. At the time, they were also playing music in the folk clubs around Dublin. N\u00ed Mhaonaigh had learned the Donegal style of fiddle-playing from her father. However, Donegal music was little known outside of the county at the time. Kennedy's repertoire included a number of obscure northern flute tunes drawn from his travels in County Tyrone and County Fermanagh.\nIn the early 1980s, N\u00ed Mhaonaigh formed a (short-lived) band named Ragairne with Kennedy, Gear\u00f3id \u00d3 Maonaigh (Mair\u00e9ad's brother) and a then unknown musician from Gweedore, Eithne N\u00ed Bhraon\u00e1in, later known as Enya. People became interested in their repertoire of Donegal tunes. The group's members contributed to Mair\u00e9ad and Frankie's debut album, \"Ceol Aduaidh\" (which means \"Music of the North\"), produced by Nicky Ryan and released in 1983 by Gael-Linn Records. The album is a collection of Gaelic songs and Ulster jigs and reels.\nAfter the release of their first album, Kennedy and N\u00ed Mhaonaigh were invited to America, and they quickly realised there was a market there. They then took a career break from teaching, which ultimately became permanent.\nThe two started to tour with two additional members Ciar\u00e1n Curran (on bouzouki) and Mark Kelly (on guitar), performing their first ever live concert as a four-member ensemble on 1 June 1985 at St. John's Church in Listowel, County Kerry, Ireland, this line-up \u2013 with no name yet \u2013 being the core of the future Altan band.\nInspired by the success of their debut effort, they began to work on a new group of ballads and jigs from the North. The result was the album \"Altan\", released in 1987 on the Green Linnet Records label, named after a lake which sits in the shadow of Errigal near Gweedore, County Donegal. In the Irish language, \"altan\" also means \"stream\". The album features many of the musicians who would later join the band.\n1987\u20131994: \"Horse with a Heart\", \"The Red Crow\", \"Harvest Storm\", \"Island Angel\".\nShortly after the release in 1987 of \"Altan\", their second studio album, N\u00ed Mhaonaigh and Kennedy named their ensemble \"Altan\" after the name of the album, the band's line-up remaining unchanged as a quartet including Kennedy on flute, N\u00ed Mhaonaigh on fiddle and vocals, Ciar\u00e1n Curran on bouzouki and Mark Kelly on guitar. Later on, Dublin's Paul O'Shaughnessy joined the band on fiddle, participating in the first three Green Linnet recordings (1989\u20131992).\nIn 1989, Altan released their debut album, \"Horse with a Heart\".\nIn 1990, Altan released \"The Red Crow\", which became the first of three Altan albums to win the \"Celtic/British Isles Album of the Year\" award from the National Association of Independent Record Distributors and Manufactures (NAIRD).\nIn 1992, Ciar\u00e1n Tourish on fiddle & whistle and D\u00e1ith\u00ed Sproule on guitar joined the band for the \"Harvest Storm\" recording. With the arrival of D\u00e1ith\u00ed Sproule, Mark and D\u00e1ith\u00ed shared the role of guitarist, Mark touring with the band in Europe and D\u00e1ith\u00ed in the United States. In June 1992, Frankie Kennedy learned he had Ewing's sarcoma, a type of cancer that attacks bone structure. He endured surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy simultaneously continuing his work with Altan.\nIn 1993, the band released \"Island Angel\". \"Billboard\" cited \"Island Angel\" as the fourth-best-selling album of world music in 1994. In 1994, they were asked by US President Bill Clinton to perform at the White House on Saint Patrick's Day, and they played for him again on his visit to Ireland in 1998. Also, the President of Ireland Mary McAleese requested they accompany her on several State visits.\n1994\u20132000: Kennedy's death, major label, \"Blackwater\", \"Runaway Sunday\".\nWhile battling with cancer, Frankie Kennedy continued to steer the band to international recognition, negotiating with Virgin Records UK to sign the band. Frankie Kennedy died on 19 September 1994. After a period of mourning, the band resumed their touring as requested by Kennedy himself before he died. They became the first traditional group to be signed to a major label when they signed with Virgin Records.\nDermot Byrne, who had previously guested on accordion on two Altan recordings \"The Red Crow\" (1990) and \"Island Angel\" (1993), officially joined the band in 1994. The recording line-up became Mair\u00e9ad N\u00ed Mhaonaigh (vocals, fiddle), Ciar\u00e1n Tourish (fiddle), Mark Kelly (guitar), Ciar\u00e1n Curran (bouzouki), D\u00e1ith\u00ed Sproule (guitar) and Dermot Byrne (accordion) and remained unchanged until Dermot Byrne's departure in 2013.\nIn 1995, Green Linnet Records released Altan's first greatest-hits package titled \"The First Ten Years\".\nIn April 1996, Altan released \"Blackwater\", their first album on Virgin Records.\nIn July 1997, Altan released their next album, \"Runaway Sunday\", which featured their version of \"Gleannt\u00e1in Ghlas' Ghaoth Dobhair\", a song written by Mair\u00e9ad's father and a favourite at all their live shows.\n2000\u20132009: \"Another Sky\", \"The Blue Idol\", hiatus.\nIn 2000, the group released \"Another Sky\", their first album on the Narada label.\nIn 2002, \"The Blue Idol\" featured the vocals of American singer Dolly Parton, who became close friends with the group after she invited them to play on her 2001 album \"Little Sparrow\". The album garnered them the award for \"Best Group\" at the BBC \"Radio 2 Folk Awards\".\nIn 2002, Altan, along with other artists signed to Green Linnet such as Cherish the Ladies, sued for unpaid royalties. Most artists were paid and most claims were settled in 2006 as Compass Records (who would later sign Altan) bought the company.\nIn 2003, they released another greatest hits compilation CD called \"The Best of Altan: The Songs\".\nIn 2005, they released \"Local Ground\" which met with positive reviews.\nAltan then went on hiatus. Some members released their debut solo album: Ciar\u00e1n Tourish released \"Down The Line\" (2005), D\u00e1ith\u00ed Sproule released \"The Crow in the Sun\" (2007) and Mair\u00e9ad N\u00ed Mhaonaigh released \"Imeall\" (2009).\n2009\u20132011: 25th anniversary.\nIn April 2009, Mair\u00e9ad N\u00ed Mhaonaigh announced that the band would be going into the studio in early May 2009 to record a new Altan album with the RT\u00c9 Concert Orchestra just after a show on 7 May 2009 in Pornichet, France (near Saint-Nazaire).\nIn July 2009, N\u00ed Mhaonaigh announced that Altan would also release their first DVD as the video recording of a concert on 14 August 2009 in the National Concert Hall (NCH), Dublin, Ireland (again with the RT\u00c9 Concert Orchestra).\nTo commemorate their 25th anniversary, Altan released \"25th Anniversary Celebration\", a compilation album of studio re-recordings of previous material (plus one brand new song) with the contribution of the RT\u00c9 Concert Orchestra. It was made available in January 2010 in Japan (where it had its launch in December 2009 during Altan's Winter 2009/2010 Japanese tour), in February 2010 in Ireland and the UK and in March 2010 in North America.\nAfter a few European dates in January, February and April 2010 and an extensive 18-date (March to April) tour of the United States, Altan launched on 23 April 2010 in Dublin, Ireland their 14-date \"25th Anniversary\" tour of Ireland which would run from April to June. During Summer 2010, Altan took part in a few European festivals. A 10-date tour of UK and Ireland took place in September 2010.\n2011\u20132014: \"Gleann Nimhe \u2013 The Poison Glen\" and touring.\nFrom April 2011 to January 2012, Altan recorded a new studio album titled \"Gleann Nimhe \u2013 The Poison Glen\".\nAfter celebrating the launch of the 18th Frankie Kennedy Winter School programme on 29 November 2011 by performing a show taking place during the Liffey Banks Sessions at The Grand Social, Dublin, Ireland, Altan celebrated the New Year 2012, then forthcoming release of their new studio album \"Gleann Nimhe \u2013 The Poison Glen\" on the occasion of their performance on 1 January 2012 at Scoil Gheimhridh Frankie Kennedy, Ionad Cois Locha, Gweedore, County Donegal, Ireland during which they played some new tracks from it.\nExactly seven years after \"Local Ground\", Altan released \"Gleann Nimhe \u2013 The Poison Glen\", their new studio album of original material, on Compass Records in the US on 28 February 2012, in Europe & Australia on 8 March 2012, in Ireland on 9 March 2012 and in the UK on 12 March 2012. Started in April 2011, the recording took place in famous sound engineer & bass player Billy Robinson's Steeples Studios in Ramelton, Ireland and ended in early January 2012.\nThe album features \"An Gheal\u00f3g\", a song composed by Martin Tourish who would later join the band replacing Dermot Byrne, temporarily starting from the Autumn 2013 (mostly) German tour and permanently since Dermot Byrne's departure from the band in early 2014.\n2014\u20132017: \"The Widening Gyre\" and touring.\nOn 3 June 2014, on their Twitter page and the Pledge Music website, Altan announced that they were working on a new studio album to be recorded in Nashville, Tennessee. The band had started rehearsing potential material for the album with the intention to perform some of these new pieces at various concerts over the summer.\nWhile on a 5-show US tour in July\u2013August 2014, the band \u2013 Mair\u00e9ad N\u00ed Mhaonaigh, Ciar\u00e1n Tourish, Ciar\u00e1n Curran, Da\u00edth\u00ed Sproule, Mark Kelly and Martin Tourish (replacing Dermot Byrne) \u2013 began recording their new album in Nashville, Tennessee.\nIn October 2014, Altan confirmed that their new album was being mixed and that they \"hope[d] to have it [released] in the Spring of 2015\", and that it would contain \"loads of surprises\".\nOn 5 November 2014, Altan published a snippet of a new track titled \"White Birds\" which was recorded with an undisclosed musical guest.\nIn late November 2014, Altan announced the names of some guest musicians who they collaborated with: Eddi Reader on vocals, Jerry Douglas (from Union Station and Transatlantic Sessions) on Dobro, Alison Brown, Bruce Molsky, Mike McGoldrick, Natalie Haas, Jim Higgins and Darol Anger.\nOn 5 December 2014, Altan took part in the Great British Folk Festival in Skegness, Lincolnshire, UK. During the show, Ciar\u00e1n Tourish announced that they \"have a new album almost finished [which] has been mastered\" and about which they \"can do any more with it [for] it's done\" just before the band went into playing a new medley (taken from it) entitled \"The Tin Key / Sam Kelly's Jig / The Gravediggers\".\nOn 19 December 2014, Altan revealed the names of the final guests having participated in the recording of the new album: Mary Chapin Carpenter, Todd Phillips, Garry West, Julee Glaub Weems, Kenny Malone and Stuart Duncan and offered (for listening and downloading) a (very) short audio excerpt (18 seconds) of one new instrumental titled \"Buffalo Gals\".\nIn January 2015, Mair\u00e9ad N\u00ed Mhaonaigh explained why Altan called on Pledge Music's services in order to produce the new studio album and thanked all the pledgers for helping Altan with the fundraising campaign and for bringing it to completion (reaching, at that time, 101% of goal): \"The music business is a changing world for professional musicians as ourselves. We depend more on live concerts to make our living. We can no longer depend on big record company funding to get our music out there, we have to do it ourselves. Now with your help we have funded our latest album which we are really happy with.\" She also stated that Altan have licensed the new album to Compass Records in the US, that Gary West of Compass co-produced it and that after 30 years recording studio albums, Altan \"have taken a new approach with this one.\" The Altan Pledge Music pre-order page announced that all exclusive pre-orders would be fulfilled by 17 February 2015.\nThe band later announced that the new album would be released in Ireland on 20 February 2015, in the UK on 23 February 2015 and in the US on 24 February 2015, and would be titled \"The Widening Gyre\", taken from \"The Second Coming\", a poem by W. B. Yeats, the first Irishman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. Mair\u00e9ad N\u00ed Mhaonaigh revealed the album's cover artwork, by artist friend \u00c9da\u00edn O'Donnell, who previously designed the \"Gleann Nimhe \u2013 The Poison Glen\" cover.\nOn 26 January 2015, Altan's official website published a presentation of their new studio album entitled anew \"The Widening Gyre\" giving many details about the new album: the new musical direction taken by the band, the album recording process and the participation of numerous guest musicians as well as the titles of some of the new tracks. The very same day, on their \"Widening Gyre\" iTunes page, Altan revealed the titles of the 14 tracks from their new studio album and released them for sale.\nOn 27 January 2015, on their \"Widening Gyre\" Compass Records page, Altan made available short snippets of their new tracks.\nOn 22 February 2015 in Charleston, WV (at Culture Center Theater, Mountain Stage Radio), Altan embarked on an extensive 25-date Winter/Spring North American tour which ended on 3 April 2015 in Greeley, Colorado (at the Union Colony Civic Center) visiting the Canada only twice: on 18 March 2015 in St. Albert, Alberta (at the Arden Theatre) and on 19 March 2015 in North Vancouver, BC (at the Centennial Theatre Centre).\nAlmost a year after the beginning of their extensive 25-date Winter/Spring 2015 North American tour, Altan embarked on 19 February 2016 in Northampton, Massachusetts in another extensive North American tour (but exclusively visiting the US), their 25-date Winter/Spring 2016 US tour which ended on 25 March 2016 in Spokane, Washington. An extensive (18-date) Spring 2016 UK tour followed in April and May 2016, including one Scotland leg and two England legs from 8 April in Hindhead, Surrey to 7 May 2016 in Stornoway, Scotland, including a London show at Kings Place on 9 April 2016.\nAltan celebrated their 30th anniversary year with a Winter tour of Europe in January 2017, visiting The Netherlands, Ireland, Scotland and France within this month. On this tour, the core of the band (made of Mair\u00e9ad N\u00ed Mhaonaigh, Ciar\u00e1n Curran, Ciar\u00e1n Tourish, Mark Kelly, Martin Tourish) is joined with a newcomer, John Joe Kelly on bodhr\u00e1n. Altan have also announced for 2017 a 17-date US Winter tour in February and March 2017.\nAfter more than 25 years as a band member (he had joined Altan in September 1991 for the \"Harvest Storm\" recording sessions), Ciar\u00e1n Tourish (fiddle, backing vocals) left the band (for personal reasons) after the show Altan performed on 29 July 2017 in Lyon, France, at Les Nuits de Fourvi\u00e8re Festival. He was not replaced until fiddle player Clare Friel joined the band, at first as a guest musician for the Autumn 2022 and Spring 2023 US tours, then as a permanent member in July 2023.\n2017\u20132024: \"The Gap of Dreams\" and touring.\nOn 23 February 2018, Altan embarked on a new (one-month) North-American tour.\nOn 2 March 2018, Altan released their new studio album entitled \"The Gap of Dreams\" which they had recorded in November 2017.\nOn 15 March 2020, Altan announced that their ongoing US Spring Tour 2020 had come to a halt because of the coronavirus situation and that they had been advised to return to Ireland as soon as possible. Altan's booking agency was due to reschedule all 9 remaining (15\u201329 March 2020) concerts for the following Autumn 2020 or next Spring 2021 but the pandemic prevented it. Nevertheless, it appears that Altan performed their last two scheduled shows in Ireland on 18 April 2020 at Copper Coast TradFest in Dunhill, County Waterford and on 24 April 2020 at Club Ceol Aislann in Kilcar, County Donegal. Besides, Altan's bus tour with Hammond Tours scheduled for 12\u201319 September 2020 might have happened as well.\nAfter a unique 2021 show on 26 November 2021 at \u00c1islann Chill Chartha, Kilcar, Co. Donegal and their annual week residence at Scoil Gheimhridh Ghaoth Dobhair, Ghaoth Dobhair (also Co. Donegal) from 27 December 2021 to 1 January 2022, Altan resumed touring in March 2022, performing 3 shows in London and 3 shows in France this month, and another 6 shows in Ireland from March to October.\nTwo extensive (23-date) US Autumn and (15-date) US Spring tours ensued, respectively in October\u2013November 2022 and March 2023 (after a unique show in Ireland on 3 February 2023 at Seamus Heaney HomePlace, Bellaghy, Magherafelt, County Londonderry). These new US dates marked Altan's first shows in the US in two and a half years (since the aborted US Spring Tour in March 2020).\nSince then, Altan embarked on a 4-show tour of Ireland in the Spring and Summer of 2023 and performed 2 shows in France: on 1 April 2023 at La Coursive (sc\u00e8ne nationale), La Rochelle, Nouvelle-Aquitaine and with l'Orchestre National de Bretagne on 9 August 2023 at the Lorient Interceltic Festival, Lorient, Brittany.\nBorn in Glasgow with her family roots firmly entrenched in the Donegal Gaeltacht (Derrynamansher), fiddle player Clare Friel permanently joined Altan in July 2023. She is the first female member to join the band since Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh since the band's start. A former Gradaim Cheoil Young Musician of the Year winner, Clare Friel is from The (Anna, Sheila and Clare) Friel Sisters and from .\n2024\u2013present: new album \"Donegal\" and touring.\nOn 24 January 2024, Altan performed at the Glasgow Celtic Connections with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the Scottish fiddle female quartet RANT.\" A 5-date tour of Ireland ensued: starting on 26 January in Dublin at Temple Bar Tradfest, it included concerts on 1 February with the RT\u00c9 Concert Orchestra in Kildare at the C. Kildare St. Brigid's Cathedral and on 2 February in Galway at the Town Hall Theatre. It is due to include a performance on 23 February at the Belfast Winter Tradfest and to end on 3 March 2024 in Killarney at the Gathering Traditional Irish Music Festival. Altan is due to embark on a 15-date US tour on 8 March 2024 in Sacramento at Sofia Tsakopoulos Center, due to end on 27 March 2024 in Chicago at the Old Town School of Folk Music.\nOn 7 February 2024, it was officially announced the upcoming release on 1 March 2024 on Compass Records of Altan's new studio album entitled \"Donegal\". This is their first studio album to be released in 6 years. The announcement reads: \"\"Donegal\" captures the essence of the region which has inspired Altan since the band's inception and further cements Altan's legacy as one of the great cultural treasures of Ireland.\"\nBand members.\nRecording line-up.\nSince the arrival of accordionist Dermot Byrne in 1994, the band recording line-up has remained unchanged until his definitive departure from the band some time in 2013 and his lasting replacement since then by Martin Tourish (Ciar\u00e1n Tourish's cousin). Incidentally, Martin Tourish wrote (but didn't record) the song \"An Gheal\u00f3g\" from the 2012 Altan studio album \"Gleann Nimhe \u2013 The Poison Glen\".\nSince July 2023, the band recording line-up has become:\nTouring line-up.\nBased on the recording line-up, the band touring line-up may differ at times:\nLegacy.\nFor almost two decades (from December 1994 to January 2014), a winter school of music called Scoil Gheimhridh Frankie Kennedy (The Frankie Kennedy Winter Music School) was held each year in Gaoth Dobhair (Gweedore), County Donegal in honour of co-founder Frankie Kennedy.\nNi Mhaonaigh is regarded as one of the great female singers of Ireland, standing alongside Mary Black, Moya Brennan and Sin\u00e9ad O'Connor.\nDiscography.\nAltan albums.\nCompilations.\nVarious artists live compilations featuring Altan\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "10250607": "\u00c7etin Altan\nTurkish politician\n\u00c7etin Altan (22 June 1927 \u2013 22 October 2015) was a Turkish writer, journalist, and a member of parliament. He was considered one of the finest"}, "descending_order": ["904507", "10250607", "18552162", "3677192"], "permutation_1": ["904507", "10250607", "3677192", "18552162"], "permutation_2": ["3677192", "904507", "10250607", "18552162"], "permutation_3": ["3677192", "904507", "10250607", "18552162"]}
{"id": "2hop__510585_535604", "docs_added": {"138367": "Madison, West Virginia\nMadison is a city and former coal town in Boone County, West Virginia, United States. The population was 2,911 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Boone County.\nHistory.\nMadison was first established as Boone Court House. The town was renamed \"circa\" 1865, presumably for James Madison, the fourth president of the United States. Other theories hold that it was named for lawyer James Madison Laidley or for William Madison Peyton, a pioneer coal operator, who was a leader in the movement which resulted in the formation of Boone County and for whom Peytona on Big Coal River was also named. Madison was incorporated in 1906.\nThe first courthouse at Madison, a log structure, was burned by Union troops early in the Civil War. The second courthouse, made of local brick, served until 1913, and a frame building was used by county officials for the next several years. The present Boone County Courthouse, occupied in 1921, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nMadison is the \"Gateway to the Coalfields,\" as it is located on a principal route through the southern coalfields. It occupied a strategic place during the Mine Wars. Miners twice rallied at the town ballpark in August 1921, to consider whether to continue their march to neighboring Logan and Mingo counties. Thousands of armed marchers passed through the town and surrounding region on their way to and from the fighting at Blair Mountain, which is located up Spruce Fork from Madison.\nIn addition to the Boone County Courthouse, the Madison National Bank building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nThe WV Coal Festival has taken place in Madison each June since 1994.\nGeography.\nMadison is located at (38.061816, -81.818216). The Little Coal River is formed at Madison by the confluence of its Spruce Fork and its Pond Fork.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and is water.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nAs of the census of 2010, there were 3,076 people, 1,299 households, and 881 families living in the city. The population density was . There were 1,428 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 96.3% White, 2.3% African American, 0.4% Asian, 0.7% from other races, and 0.4% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.9% of the population.\nThere were 1,299 households, of which 29.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 51.7% were married couples living together, 11.5% had a female householder with no husband present, 4.6% had a male householder with no wife present, and 32.2% were non-families. 28.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 12.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.36 and the average family size was 2.86.\nThe median age in the city was 42.1 years. 21.2% of residents were under the age of 18; 7.8% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 24.6% were from 25 to 44; 30.4% were from 45 to 64; and 16% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 48.2% male and 51.8% female.\n2000 census.\nAs of the census of 2000, there were 2,677 people, 1,191 households, and 783 families living in the city. The population density was 479.1 people per square mile (184.9/km2). There were 1,319 housing units at an average density of 236.1 per square mile (91.1/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 94.81% White, 4.18% African American, 0.04% Native American, 0.41% Asian, 0.07% from other races, and 0.49% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.26% of the population.\nThere were 1,191 households, out of which 25.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 50.9% were married couples living together, 12.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 34.2% were non-families. 31.7% of all households were made up of individuals, and 12.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.24 and the average family size was 2.79.\nIn the city, the population was spread out, with 20.7% under the age of 18, 7.2% from 18 to 24, 24.5% from 25 to 44, 30.1% from 45 to 64, and 17.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 44 years. For every 100 females, there were 84.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 81.5 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $29,911, and the median income for a family was $37,232. Males had a median income of $31,389 versus $23,160 for females. The per capita income for the city was $18,309. About 18.2% of families and 21.4% of the population were below the poverty line, including 31.8% of those under age 18 and 11.7% of those age 65 or over.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "13335203": "Leonard S. Echols\nAmerican politician (1871\u20131946)\nLeonard Sidney Echols (October 30, 1871 \u2013 May 9, 1946) was an American politician who represented West Virginia in the United States House of Representatives from 1919 to 1923.\nEchols was born in Madison, West Virginia. He attended public school. He graduated from the commercial department of the University of Kentucky at Lexington in 1894, from the Concord State Normal School, Athens, West Virginia in 1898, and from the law department of the Southern Normal University, Huntingdon, Tennessee in 1900. After all his formal education, he was admitted to the bar in 1900 and commenced practice in Point Pleasant, West Virginia in 1903.\nEchols was the prosecuting attorney of Mason County, West Virginia in 1904\u201309 and assistant state tax commissioner for West Virginia in 1909\u201319. He was elected as a Republican to the Sixty-sixth and Sixty-seventh Congresses (March 4, 1919 \u2013 March 3, 1923). While in Congress, he served as chairman of the Committee on Expenditures in the Department of Navy (Sixty-sixth and Sixty-seventh Congresses). He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1922 to the Sixty-eighth Congress and for election in 1924 to the Sixty-ninth Congress.\nAfter leaving Congress, Echols served as a member of the committee on appeals and review of the United States Treasury Department from May 1, 1923, to September 15, 1924. He was a delegate to the Republican State convention in 1924, and the postmaster at Charleston, West Virginia 1925-1928. He resumed the practice of law and served as Referee in Bankruptcy and as special master in the United States District Court, Charleston, West Virginia. He died in Charleston, West Virginia in 1946 and was buried in Sunset Memorial Park, South Charleston, West Virginia.\nExternal links.\n<br>", "38990330": "Odis Echols\nAmerican politician\nOdis Leonard Echols, Jr. (May 28, 1930 \u2013 March 28, 2013) was an American politician, songwriter, radio broadcaster, and lobbyist.\nBorn in Clovis, New Mexico, Echols graduated from Texas Tech University, Echols and his father were radio broadcasters. Echols served in the New Mexico State Senate 1966\u201377. He died in Albuquerque, New Mexico.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "6324107": "John Echols\nAmerican politician\nJohn Echols (March 20, 1823 \u2013 May 24, 1896) was a general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.\nEarly and family life.\nJohn Echols was born in Lynchburg, Virginia. He joined the Virginia Military Institute in 1840 and resigned in the next year; being made an honorary graduate in 1843. He received further education at Washington College and at Harvard College. A tall imposing man, standing 6 feet 4\u00a0inches tall, Echols quickly became a leader among his peers.\nEchols married twice. His first wife was a sister of Senator Allen T. Caperton (also of what became West Virginia). After she died, he married Mrs. Mary Helen Cochran Reid, a widow from New York City.\nEarly legal and political career.\nOn becoming a lawyer in 1843 he settled in Union, Monroe County (now West Virginia). Echols represented Monroe County in the Virginia House of Delegates 1852\u20131853 and in the Virginia Secession Convention of 1861.\nConfederate service.\nBoth Echols and Allen T. Caperton voted for Virginia's secession from the United States on April 17, 1861 at the Richmond convention. When the secession ordinance was put to public vote on May 23 Monroe County voted 1,085 to 79 in favor of secession. Echols offered his service to Virginia. He gathered a group of volunteers and was commissioned as a lieutenant colonel. On May 6, 1861, General Robert E. Lee ordered Lieutenant Colonel Echols to call out and muster in volunteer forces, not to exceed two regiments, to rendezvous these men at Staunton for Joseph E. Johnston's fledgling army.\nEchols was then assigned command of the 27th Virginia Infantry, leading the regiment in the fighting at the First Battle of Manassas under Stonewall Jackson. He was soon promoted to colonel, serving in the Valley Campaign. He was severely wounded at the First Battle of Kernstown on March 23, disabling him for several weeks. Echols was promoted to brigadier general on April 16, 1862 during his convalescence.\nLater in the year, he was assigned to command a brigade of the army of Western Virginia. He participated as a brigade commander in William W. Loring's Kanawha Valley Campaign of 1862 and the occupation of the Kanawha Valley in September. After Loring withdrew to the mountains, Echols replaced him in command of the Department of Western Virginia. He promptly reoccupied Charleston, but was forced to retreat by a superior enemy force.\nEchols resigned his departmental command in the fall of 1862, and, during the following summer, served upon the three-man court of inquiry held in Richmond to investigate the cause of the fall of Vicksburg. Later in the year, he commanded the Confederate forces in the Battle of Droop Mountain, stubbornly resisting a series of Federal attacks. In May 1864, he commanded John C. Breckinridge's right wing at the Battle of New Market in the Shenandoah Valley.\nGeneral Robert E. Lee recalled Echols' Brigade to rejoin the Army of Northern Virginia near Cold Harbor during the Siege of Petersburg. On August 22, 1864, he was given charge of the District of Southwestern Virginia, and on March 29, 1865, Echols was assigned command of the western department of Virginia, relieving General Breckinridge, who had joined the staff of President Jefferson Davis. On April 2, Echols, with nearly 7,000 men, began a hasty march to unite with Lee.\nHe reached Christiansburg, Virginia, on April 10, where he received a telegram announcing Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. At a solemn council of war, Echols decided to march to unite with Johnston's army, and Echols led two brigades southward towards North Carolina. Subsequently, he accompanied President Davis to Augusta, Georgia.\nPostwar career.\nMonroe County had been included in the new state of West Virginia without its consent and the new state government would not allow ex-Confederates to practice law.\n After the war, Echols resumed the practice of law in Staunton. He helped select the members of the Committee of Nine, a group of state leaders who worked to ensure that the state be readmitted into the Union and former Confederates could once again hold political office.\nEchols returned to the Virginia House of Delegates 1878\u20131881, representing Staunton and Augusta County. While there, he sided with the Funders against the Readjusters, which briefly reunited Republicans and liberal Democrats, and tried to allocate some of Virginia's massive wartime debt to West Virginia and had supported Reconstruction.\nHe rebuilt his fortune and became President of the Staunton National Valley Bank. When the hastily agglomerated Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwestern Railroad went bankrupt, he became its Receiver and General Manager. He lived in Kentucky the last ten years of his life as he managed the railroad's affairs.\nDeath and legacy.\nHe died at Oakdene the residence of his son, Edward Echols (later lieutenant governor of Virginia), at Staunton, where he is buried in Thornrose Cemetery. The General Echols House located in Union, Monroe County, West Virginia, is significant for its association with John Echols, A Brigadier General in the army of the Confederate States of America. The house possesses additional distinction as one of Monroe County's oldest and best preserved examples of Greek Revival architecture.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "43455972": "Fate Echols\nAmerican football player (1939\u20132002)\nFate Leonard Echols (June 29, 1939 \u2013 October 10, 2002) was an American professional football tackle who played two seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals of the National Football League (NFL). He was selected by the Cardinals in the first round of the 1962 NFL draft after playing college football at Northwestern University.\nEarly life.\nFate Leonard Echols was born on June 29, 1939, in Union Springs, Alabama. He played high school football Washington High School in South Bend, Indiana as a lineman. He was named all-league during his junior and senior seasons. Echols was a team captain in 1957. He was inducted into the school's athletic hall of fame in 2013.\nCollege career.\nEchols was a member of the Northwestern Wildcats of Northwestern University from 1958 to 1961 and was a two-year starter. As a senior in 1961, he earned Associated Press second-team All-Big Ten Conference and United Press International first-team All-Big Ten honors. He was invited to the East\u2013West Shrine Game after his senior season. In December 1961, he visited a hospital for sick children with the rest of the Shrine game players.\nProfessional career.\nIn December 1961, Echols was selected by the St. Louis Cardinals in the first round, with the sixth overall pick, of the 1962 NFL draft and by the New York Titans in the third round, with the 21st overall pick, of the 1962 AFL draft. He signed with the Cardinals on December 8, 1961. He was released on September 12, 1962, but late re-signed. Echols then played in five games during the 1962 season before being placed on injured reserve. He appeared in three games, starting one, for the Cardinals in 1963 before being released on October 8, 1963.\nEchols signed with the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles on October 14, 1963. He was released on October 24, 1963, without appearing in a game.\nEchols was signed by the Washington Redskins of the NFL on June 10, 1966. He was released on August 10, 1966.\nEchols signed with the Cincinnati Bengals of the AFL in 1968. He was later released on July 29, 1968.\nPersonal life.\nEchols died on October 10, 2002, in Springfield, Illinois.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21809495": "Robert L. Echols\nAmerican judge (born 1941)\nRobert Lynn Echols (born January 13, 1941) is a former United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee.\nEarly life, education and military service.\nBorn in Memphis, Tennessee, Echols received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Southwestern College (now Rhodes College) in Memphis in 1962 and a Juris Doctor from the University of Tennessee College of Law in 1964. He was in the United States Army in 1966. He served for 35 years in both the United States Army Reserves and the Army National Guard retiring as a brigadier general in 2001. His last assignment in the military was commander of the 30th Troop Command of the Tennessee Army National Guard.\nCareer.\nEchols was a law clerk to Judge Marion S. Boyd of the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee from 1965 to 1966. He was a legislative assistant for Congressman Dan Kuykendall in the United States House of Representatives from 1967 to 1969. He was in private practice in Nashville, Tennessee from 1969 to 1992, serving as a night commissioner for Davidson County, Tennessee from 1974 to 1975.\nOn October 22, 1991, Echols was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to a new seat on the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee created by 104 Stat. 5089. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 13, 1992, and received his commission on March 18, 1992. He served as Chief Judge from 1998 to 2005, assuming senior status on March 1, 2007, and retiring fully from the bench on July 31, 2010.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "96786": "Echols County, Georgia\nCounty in Georgia, United States\nEchols County () is a county located in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Georgia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,697. The county seat is Statenville. Since 2008, Statenville is a disincorporated municipality. Echols and Webster counties are the only two counties in Georgia to currently have no incorporated municipalities. The county was established in 1858 and named in honor of Robert Milner Echols (1798\u20131847).\nEchols County is part of the Valdosta, GA metropolitan statistical area.\nHistory.\nOn December 13, 1858, the Georgia General Assembly passed a bill establishing Echols County from a south-eastern section of Lowndes County and a south-western section Clinch County. The original borders of the county were a line from the mouth of the Suwanoochee Creek directly south to the state line, then along the state line, then north to the junction of Grand Bay Creek and Mud Swamp, then up the course of Grand Bay Creek to Carter's Ford, then a direct line to where Cow's Creek enters the Alapaha River, then up the creek to Griffins' Mill, then a direct line to Jack's Fort on Suwanoochee Creek, and then down Suwanoochee Creek to its mouth. With the exception of some minor adjustments of the border Echols shares with Lowndes and the loss of a thin strip to Florida following \"Florida v. Georgia\", the borders of Echols County has changed little since its establishment. Statenville was declared the county seat in 1859.\nAt the time of the 1860 census, Echols County had a white population of 1,177, with 314 slaves, and no free people of color.\nEchols County became notable as it has served as a place of banishment for many of Georgia's criminals. As the Georgia State Constitution forbids banishment beyond the borders of the state, officials instead ban the offender from 158 of Georgia's 159 counties, with Echols remaining as their only option. Few criminals have been documented as actually moving to Echols. This is because almost all banished criminals choose to leave the state instead of moving to Echols County.\nBanishment, including 158-county banishment, has repeatedly been upheld by Georgia courts. The first case when banishment was upheld was in the 1974 case \"State v Collett\", when the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the banishment of a drug dealer from seven counties. The most recent time banishment was upheld, in 2011, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled it was constitutional to banish David Nathan Thompson (a mentally ill man who was convicted of firing a gun into a home, although no one was injured) from all but one county in Georgia.\nGeography.\nAccording to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and (1.4%) is water. The county contains a notable swamp, Whitehead Bay.\nThe western half of Echols County is located in the Alapaha River sub-basin of the Suwannee River basin. The eastern half of the county, from well east of Statenville to just west of Fargo, is located in the Upper Suwannee River sub-basin of the same Suwannee River basin.\nMajor highways.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nAs of the 2020 United States census, there were 3,697 people, 1,561 households, and 1,097 families residing in the county.\nEducation.\nEchols County School District, the only school district in the county, operates public schools.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "61209168": "Jon Echols\nAmerican politician\nJon Echols (born December 3, 1979) is an American politician who served in the Oklahoma House of Representatives representing the 90th district from 2012 to 2024. He was the Majority Floor Leader.\nEarly life, education, and career.\nJohn Echols grew up in Oklahoma City. His mother was an attorney and special education teacher, while his father, David Echols, is an attorney and a member of the Oklahoma City Community College Board of Regenets. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a bachelor's degree in political science and from Oklahoma City University School of Law with a Juris Doctor.\nEchols co-foundered Turn Key Health Clinics in 2009 and is the company's president. Echols has said that \"he works for the company\u2019s CEO mostly outside of Oklahoma to minimize perceived conflicts of interest.\" He also worked for the law firm Crowe and Dunlevy.\nOklahoma House of Representatives.\nEchols ran for the 90th district of the Oklahoma House of Representatives in 2012 to succeed Charles Key. He won the election and was reelected until he was term limited in 2024. From 2016 to 2024, he served as the majority floor leader of the house and he holds the record for longest serving majority leader.\nTenure.\nEchols received the 2015 Distinguished Service Award for Higher Education from the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education and the Council of College and University Presidents. He would go on to receive the award in 2020 and 2021 as well.\nIn 2016, Echols asked Sheriff Vic Regalado's office to change a bid requirement on a medical contract for the Tulsa County jail so his company, Turn Key Health Clinic, could bid. Echols said he asked for the change so that in-county companies would have a fair opportunity to make bids. \nIn 2023, Echols was the House author on Senate Bill 840 (co-authored by Sen. Greg McCortney, R-Ada), a bill that \"deals with name, image, likeness \u2014 the new endorsements phenomenon known as NIL.\" Echols marked it as \"high-priority.\"\nIn October 2023, Echols voiced support for Israel in the 2023 Israel\u2013Hamas war, calling Hamas a terrorist organization and saying that Israel is in its rights to \"wipe\" Hamas out, but pointing out that Hamas is \"not our Muslim brothers and sisters\"and differentiating between Hamas and Palestinian civilians in Gaza.\nIn 2024, Echols introduced House Bill 4156, a state immigration law creating the crime of \"impermissible occupation.\" Attorney General Gentner Drummond helped draft the bill. \n2026 attorney general campaign.\nOn February 26, 2025, Echols officially launched a campaign for Attorney General of Oklahoma.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "26054313": "Robert Milner Echols\nAmerican politician\nRobert Milner Echols (1798\u20131847) was an American politician and soldier.\nBorn near Washington, Georgia, March 18, 1798, Echols was raised in Walton County near Walnut Grove. He was a member of the Georgia General Assembly from 1824 to 1829, and the Georgia State Senate from 1830 to 1844, including six (non-consecutive) years as that body's president. In a race for the United States House of Representatives, Echols lost to his opponent, Gen. Howell Cobb, by only two votes. He was a major general in the Georgia Militia, 11th Division, in 1833.\nEchols served as a brigadier general in the U.S. Army during the Mexican\u2013American War, and was fatally injured in a fall from his horse while on dress parade at National Bridge, Mexico, December 3, 1847. Several years after his death, the General Assembly passed an appropriation to have his remains relocated to his home in Walton County, where he was interred with full military honors.\nEchols County, Georgia, is named in his honor.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "15269999": "Edward Echols\nAmerican politician\nEdward Echols (September 2, 1849 \u2013 December 19, 1914) was a U.S. political figure from the Commonwealth of Virginia. Echols held office as the 18th Lieutenant Governor of Virginia from 1898 to 1902.\nEdward Echols was born in Monroe County (now in West Virginia). There is some confusion over his birth year, but he is listed in the 1850 census as being one year old in September 1850. He and his family moved to Staunton, Virginia, after the Civil War. He also served for six years in the Virginia House of Delegates and for a total of twelve years in the Senate of Virginia. His father, John Echols, was a brigadier general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. Echols served as the National Valley Bank's third president from 1905 to 1915.\nHis house at Staunton, known as Oakdene, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nclass=\"wikitable succession-box noprint\" style=\"margin:0.5em auto; font-size:small;clear:both;\"", "4868993": "Johnny Echols\nAmerican songwriter and guitarist\nJohn Marshall Echols (; born February 21, 1947) is an American songwriter and guitarist, who was a co-founder and the lead guitar player of the psychedelic rock band Love.\nEarly life and career.\nJohnny Echols was born in Memphis, Tennessee. He moved with his family to Los Angeles, California, in the late 1950s, and re-established a childhood friendship with Arthur Lee, who had also moved to the city from Memphis a few years earlier; their respective families were friends. Echols began playing guitar as a child, and in his teens played in bands with Billy Preston, Marilyn McCoo, Clarence McDonald and others. Echols and Lee both attended Dorsey High School, and decided to form a band. The band became \"Arthur Lee and the L.A.G.'s\" (an allusion to Booker T. and the M.G.'s) before splitting up. Lee and Echols then formed The American Four, later re-named The Grass Roots, and finally re-named Love in 1965. Echols also worked as a studio musician alongside Glen Campbell and others.\nCareer with Love.\nEchols contributed as lead guitarist and writer to Love's first three albums: \"Love,\" on which he is credited as co-writer of three songs; \"Da Capo,\" credited as co-writer of the side-long improvised track \"Revelation\" and \"Forever Changes\", often cited as one of the greatest rock albums of its time. \"Forever Changes\" comprised songs written by Lee and by fellow band member Bryan MacLean. The record company, Elektra Records, would only release a single rather than a double album, and songs written by Echols for a possible companion album, tentatively titled \"Gethsemane\", were never recorded by the band. In 1968, the band split up: they were performing less frequently; sales of \"Forever Changes\" were disappointing; there were personal disagreements among the band members; MacLean was considering a solo contract with Elektra; and most of the band members, including Echols and his housemate, bassist Ken Forssi, had become heroin users. However, rumors that Echols and Forssi robbed donut shops to support their habit are unfounded.\nLater activities.\nEchols moved to New York City, where he gave up drugs, worked as a studio musician with Miles Davis and others, and taught guitar. He moved to Arizona in the 1980s. Occasional attempts by Lee and others to reconstitute Love did not bear fruit until 2003, when Echols joined Lee and his backing band, Baby Lemonade, onstage in Los Angeles. Echols toured with the band in 2004 and 2005, though the 2005 European tour was without Arthur, who cancelled at the last minute due, they were to find out later, to the cancer that he died from. After Lee's death in 2006, Echols continued to perform with Baby Lemonade, billed as \"Love Revisited\" (2016) or \"The Love Band featuring Johnny Echols\" (2019).\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "33312611": "M. Patton Echols\nAmerican politician\nMarion Patton \"Pat\" Echols Jr. (October 1, 1925 \u2013 July 26, 2012) was an attorney in northern Virginia who served briefly as the only Republican to represent Arlington County in the Virginia Senate. He was also an unsuccessful candidate for Attorney General of Virginia in 1973.\nEarly life.\nEchols was the son of Colonel Marion Patton Echols and Nancy Patterson McArthur. He was born October 1, 1925, in Honolulu in the U.S. territory of Hawaii. He married the former Susanne Stokes in 1956 and they raised two sons and two daughters in Arlington. They later divorced, and Echols married Beth McLaren in 2005.\nPolitical career.\nIn 1963, Echols switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party and was one of three Republican candidates for the three House of Delegates seats allocated to Arlington and elected countywide, at-large. He came in fifth with 9,139 votes.\nIn February 1969, longtime Virginia State Senator Charles R. Fenwick who represented the 9th District died. In the snap special election in March, Echols was elected as a Republican over the expected victor C. Harrison Mann. He served the balance of Fenwick's term. However, as a result of the decennial redistricting and creation of single-member districts in 1971, his old numbered district was moved to Richmond and he ran in the 31st District. Echols then lost to Democratic delegate Clive Duval, who would win re-election many times.\nRepublicans tapped Echols in 1973 for the \"unenviable task\" of running against popular incumbent Virginia Attorney General Andy Miller, and Miller won in a landslide.\nLater years.\nEchols practiced law for many years in Arlington and resided in McLean, Virginia. He died on July 26, 2012, and a memorial service was held at Grace Episcopal Church in Alexandria. He was buried at the University of Virginia Cemetery in Charlottesville.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "29460233": "Tim Echols\nAmerican politician\nTim G. Echols (born November 1, 1960) is an elected official originally from Clayton County, Georgia, who was elected to the Athens-area seat on the Georgia Public Service Commission as a Republican in 2010. Echols unsuccessfully attempted to be appointed to the United States Senate in 2019. Echols currently serves as vice-chairman of the commission.\nPolitical career.\nEchols created the national non-profit, TeenPact, that now operates in 49 states.\nEchols served on Governor Sonny Perdue's office of Children and Families for 5 years. He was treasurer and spokesperson for U.S. representative Paul Broun. In 2009, Echols was campaign manager and senior policy advisor for Republican gubernatorial candidate John Oxendine, who lost the Republican primary to Nathan Deal. In 2010, Echols won against Democratic candidate Keith Moffett in a race to become the Athens-area public service commissioner, after first defeating fellow Republicans Jeff May and Joey Brush in the primary, and then John Douglas in the primary run-off.\nIn December 2016, Echols won re-election to another"}, "descending_order": ["13335203", "38990330", "6324107", "43455972", "21809495", "96786", "61209168", "26054313", "15269999", "4868993", "33312611", "29460233", "138367"], "permutation_1": ["43455972", "29460233", "6324107", "38990330", "138367", "15269999", "96786", "33312611", "26054313", "13335203", "21809495", "4868993", "61209168"], "permutation_2": ["21809495", "43455972", "29460233", "13335203", "38990330", "96786", "138367", "33312611", "61209168", "15269999", "6324107", "26054313", "4868993"], "permutation_3": ["29460233", "21809495", "33312611", "15269999", "38990330", "4868993", "138367", "6324107", "61209168", "96786", "26054313", "13335203", "43455972"]}
{"id": "2hop__76169_93848", "docs_added": {"13468303": "Origination Clause\nClause of the United States Constitution\nThe Origination Clause, sometimes called the Revenue Clause, is Article I, Section 7, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution. The clause says that all bills for raising revenue must start in the U.S. House of Representatives, but the U.S. Senate may propose or concur with amendments, as in the case of other bills.\nThe Origination Clause stemmed from a British parliamentary practice that all money bills must have their first reading and any other initial readings in the House of Commons before they are sent to the House of Lords. The practice was intended to ensure that the power of the purse is possessed by the legislative body most responsive to the people, but the British practice was modified in America by allowing the Senate to amend these bills.\nThis clause was part of the Great Compromise between small and large states. The large states were unhappy with the lopsided power of small states in the Senate and so the Origination Clause theoretically offsets the unrepresentative nature of the Senate by compensating the large states for allowing equal voting rights to senators from small states.\nText.\nThe clause reads as follows:\nAll Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.\nBackground.\nThe U.S. Constitution was written in 1787 and adopted in 1789. Several state constitutions followed British practice by providing that \"money bills\" must start in the more representative branch of the state legislature.\nVesting the power of origination in the House of Representatives was part of the Great Compromise in which the framers also agreed to allow equality in the Senate, regardless of a state's population, and to allow representation in the House based on a state's population. The framers adopted the Great Compromise on July 16, 1787. The draft clause then stated that \"all bills for raising or appropriating money... shall originate in the [representative house], and shall not be altered or amended by the [other house]. ... \"\nThe Origination Clause was modified later in 1787 to reduce the House's power by allowing the Senate to amend revenue bills and by removing appropriation bills from the scope of the clause (the House and Senate have disagreed on the latter point). However, a proposal was defeated that would have reduced the House's power even more by changing \"bills for raising revenue\" to \"bills for raising money for the purpose of revenue.\" James Madison explained:\nIn many acts, particularly in the regulations of trade, the object would be twofold. The raising of revenue would be one of them. How could it be determined which was the primary or predominant one; or whether it was necessary that revenue shd: be the sole object, in exclusion even of other incidental effects.\nRegarding the decision to allow Senate amendments, some of the reasoning was given by Theophilus Parsons during the convention in Massachusetts that ratified the Constitution. He said that otherwise, \"representatives might tack any foreign matter to a money-bill, and compel the Senate to concur or lose the supplies.\" Madison believed that the difference between a permissible Senate amendment and an impermissible Senate amendment would \"turn on the degree of connection between the matter & object of the bill and the alteration or amendment offered to it.\"\nThe Continental Congress then had a rule: \"No new motion or proposition shall be admitted under color of amendment as a substitute for a question or proposition under debate until it is postponed or disagreed to.\" At the Virginia convention to ratify the Constitution, the delegate William Grayson was concerned that a substitute amendment could have the same effect as an origination: \"the Senate could strike out every word of the bill except the word whereas, or any other introductory word, and might substitute new words of their own.\" Grayson was not convinced by Madison's argument that \"the first part of the clause is sufficiently expressed to exclude all doubts\" about where the origination must occur.\nIn its final form, the Origination Clause was a major selling point for the ratification of the Constitution. James Madison, who supported the final version during and after the 1787 Convention, wrote the following in Federalist 58 while the debate over ratification raged:\nThe house of representatives can not only refuse, but they alone can propose the supplies requisite for the support of government. They in a word hold the purse; that powerful instrument by which we behold, in the history of the British constitution, an infant and humble representation of the people, gradually enlarging the sphere of its activity and importance, and finally reducing, as far as it seems to have wished, all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches of the government. This power over the purse, may in fact be regarded as the most compleat and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.\nThe clause resonated with a citizenry opposed to taxation without representation.\nDevelopments since 1789.\nMany scholars have written about the Origination Clause. Among the most widely influential was Joseph Story, who wrote in 1833 that the clause refers only to bills that levy taxes:\n[The clause] has been confined to bills to levy taxes in the strict sense of the words, and has not been understood to extend to bills for other purposes, which may incidentally create revenue. No one supposes, that a bill to sell any of the public lands, or to sell public stock, is a bill to raise revenue, in the sense of the constitution. Much less would a bill be so deemed, which merely regulated the value of foreign or domestic coins, or authorized a discharge of insolvent debtors upon assignments of their estates to the United States, giving a priority of payment to the United States in cases of insolvency, although all of them might incidentally bring, revenue into the treasury.\nThe U.S. Supreme Court has decided several cases involving this clause, and all of those challenges to federal statutes failed. For example, in the 1911 case of \"Flint v. Stone Tracy Company\", the Court held, \"The amendment was germane to the subject-matter of the bill and not beyond the power of the Senate to propose.\" However, the plaintiffs in one lower court decision succeeded in striking down a federal statute on Origination Clause grounds. The Supreme Court stated in the 1990 case of \"United States v. Munoz-Flores\":\nBoth parties agree that \"revenue bills are those that levy taxes in the strict sense of the word, and are not bills for other purposes which may incidentally create revenue.\" Twin City Bank v. Nebeker, 167 U. S. 196, 202 (1897) (citing 1 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution \u00a7 880, pp. 610\u2013611 (3d ed. 1858)). The Court has interpreted this general rule to mean that a statute that creates a particular governmental program and that raises revenue to support that program, as opposed to a statute that raises revenue to support Government generally, is not a \"Bil[l] for raising Revenue\" within the meaning of the Origination Clause.\nWhat this means exactly is disputed. According to one scholar, a statute is outside the scope of the Origination Clause if it \"imposes an exaction not to raise revenue, but to enforce a statute passed under the Commerce Clause or other enumerated power.\" However, according to another scholar, even exactions imposed only under the taxing powers of Congress are outside the scope of the Origination Clause if Congress \"earmarks revenues to fund a program it creates.\" Regarding the latter view, Justice John Paul Stevens suggested in 1990 that its tendency was to \"convert the Origination Clause into a formal accounting requirement... \"\nA bill that lowers taxes instead of raises taxes may still be a bill for raising revenue, according to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Assuming that a bill is for raising revenue, a further ambiguity in the clause involves how far the Senate's right to amend extends. According to law professor Jack Balkin, the Senate may take a House-originated revenue bill and \"substitute a different bill on a different subject.\" On the other hand, law professor Randy Barnett wrote, \"The Supreme Court has never approved the 'strike-and-replace' procedure... \"\nNot only the House of Representatives but also the Senate and the judiciary have sometimes tried to guard the role of the House with regard to origination of revenue bills. For example, as early as 1789, the Senate deemed itself helpless to pass a law levying a tax. As mentioned, a federal court in 1915 struck down legislation contrary to the clause. The U.S. Supreme Court has expressed willingness to address such issues, according to its 1990 opinion by Justice Thurgood Marshall in \"Munoz-Flores\":\nA law passed in violation of the Origination Clause would thus be no more immune from judicial scrutiny because it was passed by both Houses and signed by the President than would be a law passed in violation of the First Amendment.\nIn 2012, the joint dissent in the U.S. Supreme Court case \"National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius\" mentioned that \"the Constitution requires tax increases to originate in the House of Representatives\" per the Origination Clause, though that issue was not addressed by the majority opinion. In 2014, \"Sissel v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services\", a challenge to the Affordable Care Act brought by the Pacific Legal Foundation based upon the clause was rejected by a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and that court later declined a request to put the matter before all of its judges (\"en banc\") over a lengthy dissent authored by Judge Brett Kavanaugh.\nIn 2013, during the United States federal government shutdown of 2013 and the United States debt-ceiling crisis of 2013, the Republican-led House of Representatives could not agree on or pass an originating resolution to end the government crisis, as had been agreed, and so the Democratic-led Senate used Bill H.R. 2775 to resolve the impasse by using the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2014, an insignificant bill that had originated in the House, which the Senate amended all the tax and appropriation measures to satisfy the formal requirements of the Originating Clause.", "19468510": "United States House of Representatives\nLower house of the US Congress\nThe United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Article One of the U.S. Constitution to pass or defeat federal legislation, known as bills. Those that are also passed by the Senate are sent to the president for signature or veto. The House's exclusive powers include initiating all revenue bills, impeaching federal officers, and electing the president if no candidate receives a majority of votes in the Electoral College.\nMembers of the House serve a fixed term of two years, with each seat up for election before the start of the next Congress. Special elections also occur when a seat is vacated early enough. The House's composition was established by Article One of the United States Constitution. The House is composed of representatives who, pursuant to the Uniform Congressional District Act, sit in single member congressional districts allocated to each state on the basis of population as measured by the United States census, with each district having at least a single representative, provided that that state is entitled to them. Since its inception in 1789, all representatives have been directly elected. Although suffrage was initially limited, it gradually widened, particularly after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment and the civil rights movement. \nSince 1913, the number of voting representatives has been at 435 pursuant to the Apportionment Act of 1911. The Reapportionment Act of 1929 capped the size of the House at 435. However, the number was temporarily increased from 1959 until 1963 to 437 following the admissions of Alaska and Hawaii to the Union.\nIn addition, five non-voting delegates represent the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories of Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. A non-voting resident commissioner, serving a four-year term, represents the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. As of the 2020 census, the largest delegation was California, with 52 representatives. Six states have only one representative apiece: Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming.\nThe House meets in the south wing of the United States Capitol. The rules of the House generally address a two-party system, with a majority party in government, and a minority party in opposition. The presiding officer is the speaker of the House, who is elected by the members thereof. Other floor leaders are chosen by the Democratic Caucus or the Republican Conference, depending on whichever party has the most voting members.\nHistory.\n18th century.\nUnder the Articles of Confederation, the Congress of the Confederation was a unicameral body with equal representation for each state, which meant that any state could veto most actions. \nAfter eight years of a more limited confederal government under the Articles, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and other Founding Fathers initiated the Constitutional Convention, which convened in Philadelphia from May 25 to September 17, 1787, and received the Confederation Congress's sanction to \"amend the Articles of Confederation\". All states except Rhode Island agreed to send delegates.\nCongress's structure was a contentious issue among the founders during the convention. Edmund Randolph's Virginia Plan called for bicameral legislature with proportional representation in the House and equal state representation in the Senate.\nThe House is commonly referred to as the lower house and the Senate the upper house, although the United States Constitution does not use that terminology. Both houses' approval is necessary for the passage of legislation. The Virginia Plan drew the support of delegates from several large states, including Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and called for representation based on population. The smaller states, however, favored the New Jersey Plan, which called for a unicameral Congress with equal representation for the states.\nThe Convention ultimately reached the Connecticut Compromise or Great Compromise, under which the House of Representatives would provide representation proportional to each state's population, and the Senate would provide equal representation amongst the states. In 1788, the Constitution was ratified, and it was implemented on March 4, 1789. \nLess than a month later, on April 1, 1789, the U.S. House convened for the first time in New York City, which was then the nation's capital. In 1790, the capital was moved back to Philadelphia, and the House met there from 1790 until 1800 when construction of the new national capitol in Washington, D.C. was completed.\n19th century.\nDuring the first half of the 19th century, the House was frequently in conflict with the U.S. Senate over regionally divisive issues, including slavery. The North was much more populous than the South, and therefore dominated the House of Representatives. However, the North held no such advantage in the Senate, where the equal representation of states prevailed.\nRegional conflict was most pronounced over the issue of slavery. One example of a provision repeatedly supported by the House but blocked by the Senate was the Wilmot Proviso, which sought to ban slavery in the land gained during the Mexican\u2013American War. Conflict over slavery and other issues persisted until the Civil War (1861\u20131865), which began soon after several southern states attempted to secede from the Union. The Civil War culminated in the South's defeat and in the abolition of slavery. Since all southern senators except Andrew Johnson resigned their seats at the beginning of the war, the Senate did not hold the balance of power between North and South during the war.\nDuring the Reconstruction that followed, the Republican Party held large majorities, which many Americans associated with the Union's victory in the Civil War and the ending of slavery. The Reconstruction period ended in about 1877; the ensuing era, known as the Gilded Age, was marked by sharp political divisions in the electorate. The Democratic Party and Republican Party each held majorities in the House at various times.\nThe late 19th and early 20th centuries also saw a dramatic increase in the power of the speaker of the House. The rise of the speaker's influence began in the 1890s, during the tenure of Republican Thomas Brackett Reed. \"Czar Reed\", as he was nicknamed, attempted to put into effect his view that \"The best system is to have one party govern and the other party watch.\" The leadership structure of the House also developed during approximately the same period, with the positions of majority leader and minority leader being created in 1899. While the minority leader was the head of the minority party, the majority leader remained subordinate to the speaker.\n20th century.\nThe speakership reached its zenith during the term of Republican Joseph Gurney Cannon, from 1903 to 1911. The speaker's powers included chairmanship of the influential Rules Committee and the ability to appoint members of other House committees. However, these powers were curtailed in the \"Revolution of 1910\" because of the efforts of Democrats and dissatisfied Republicans who opposed Cannon's heavy-handed tactics.\nThe Democratic Party dominated the House of Representatives during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration between 1933 and 1945, often winning over two-thirds of the seats. Both Democrats and Republicans were in power at various times during the next decade. The Democratic Party maintained control of the House from 1955 until 1995. In the mid-1970s, members passed major reforms that strengthened the power of subscommittees at the expense of committee chairs and allowed party leaders to nominate committee chairs. These actions were taken to undermine the seniority system, and to reduce the ability of a small number of senior members to obstruct legislation they did not favor. There was also a shift from the 1990s to greater control of the legislative program by the majority party; the power of party leaders (especially the speaker) grew considerably. \nAccording to historian Julian E. Zelizer, the majority Democrats minimized the number of staff positions available to the minority Republicans, kept them out of decision-making, and gerrymandered their home districts. Republican Newt Gingrich argued American democracy was being ruined by the Democrats' tactics and that the GOP had to destroy the system before it could be saved. Cooperation in governance, says Zelizer, would have to be put aside until they deposed Speaker Wright and regained power. Gingrich brought an ethics complaint which led to Wright's resignation in 1989. Gingrich gained support from the media and good government forces in his crusade to persuade Americans that the system was, in Gingrich's words, \"morally, intellectually and spiritually corrupt\". Gingrich followed Wright's successor, Democrat Tom Foley, as speaker after the Republican Revolution of 1994 gave his party control of the House.\nGingrich attempted to pass a major legislative program, the Contract with America and made major reforms of the House, notably reducing the tenure of committee chairs to three two-year terms. Many elements of the Contract did not pass Congress, were vetoed by President Bill Clinton, or were substantially altered in negotiations with Clinton. After Republicans held control in the 1996 election, however, Clinton and the Gingrich-led House agreed on the first balanced federal budget in decades, along with a substantial tax cut.\n21st century.\nRepublicans held on to the House until 2006, when the Democrats won control and Nancy Pelosi was subsequently elected by the House as the first female speaker. \nRepublicans retook the House in 2010 elections with the largest shift of political power between the parties since the 1938 elections. Republicans held the House until Democrats retook it in the 2018 elections, which became the largest shift of power to the Democrats since the 1970s. In the 2022 elections, Republicans took back control of the House, winning a slim majority.\nIn November 2024, House speaker Mike Johnson announced that the House would have women-only spaces following the election of Sarah McBride\nMembership, qualifications, and apportionment.\nApportionments.\nUnder Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, seats in the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states by population, as determined by the census conducted every ten years. Each state is entitled to at least one representative, however small its population.\nThe only constitutional rule relating to the size of the House states: \"The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative.\" Congress regularly increased the size of the House to account for population growth until it fixed the number of voting House members at 435 in 1911. In 1959, upon the admission of Alaska and Hawaii, the number was temporarily increased to 437 (seating one representative from each of those states without changing existing apportionment), and returned to 435 four years later, after the reapportionment consequent to the 1960 census.\nThe Constitution does not provide for the representation of the District of Columbia or of territories. The District of Columbia and the territories of Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are each represented by one non-voting delegate. Puerto Rico elects a resident commissioner, but other than having a four-year term, the resident commissioner's role is identical to the delegates from the other territories. The five delegates and resident commissioner may participate in debates; before 2011, they were also allowed to vote in committees and the Committee of the Whole when their votes would not be decisive.\nRedistricting.\nStates entitled to more than one representative are divided into single-member districts. This has been a federal statutory requirement since 1967 pursuant to the act titled An Act For the relief of Doctor Ricardo Vallejo Samala and to provide for congressional redistricting. Before that law, general ticket representation was used by some states.\nStates typically redraw district boundaries after each census, though they may do so at other times, such as the 2003 Texas redistricting. Each state determines its own district boundaries, either through legislation or through non-partisan panels. Malapportionment is unconstitutional and districts must be approximately equal in population (see \"Wesberry v. Sanders\"). Additionally, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits redistricting plans that are intended to, or have the effect of, discriminating against racial or language minority voters. Aside from malapportionment and discrimination against racial or language minorities, federal courts have allowed state legislatures to engage in gerrymandering to benefit political parties or incumbents. In a 1984 case, \"Davis v. Bandemer\", the Supreme Court held that gerrymandered districts could be struck down based on the Equal Protection Clause, but the Court did not articulate a standard for when districts are impermissibly gerrymandered. However, the Court overruled Davis in 2004 in \"Vieth v. Jubelirer\", and Court precedent holds gerrymandering to be a political question. According to calculations made by Burt Neuborne using criteria set forth by the American Political Science Association, only about 40 seats, less than 10% of the House membership, are chosen through a genuinely contested electoral process, given partisan gerrymandering.\nQualifications.\nArticle I, Section 2 of the Constitution sets three qualifications for representatives. Each representative must: (1) be at least twenty-five (25) years old; (2) have been a citizen of the United States for the past seven years; and (3) be (at the time of the election) an inhabitant of the state they represent. Members are not required to live in the districts they represent, but they traditionally do. The age and citizenship qualifications for representatives are less than those for senators. The constitutional requirements of Article I, Section 2 for election to Congress are the maximum requirements that can be imposed on a candidate. Therefore, Article I, Section 5, which permits each House to be the judge of the qualifications of its own members does not permit either House to establish additional qualifications. Likewise, a state could not establish additional qualifications. William C. C. Claiborne served in the House below the minimum age of 25.\nDisqualification: under the Fourteenth Amendment, a federal or state officer who takes the requisite oath to support the Constitution, but later engages in rebellion or aids the enemies of the United States, is disqualified from becoming a representative. This post\u2013Civil War provision was intended to prevent those who sided with the Confederacy from serving. However, disqualified individuals may serve if they gain the consent of two-thirds of both houses of Congress.\nElections.\nElections for representatives are held in every even-numbered year, on Election Day the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Pursuant to the Uniform Congressional District Act, representatives must be elected from single-member districts. After a census is taken (in a year ending in 0), the year ending in 2 is the first year in which elections for U.S. House districts are based on that census (with the Congress based on those districts starting its term on the following January 3). As there is no legislation at the federal level mandating one particular system for elections to the House, systems are set at the state level. As of 2022, first-past-the-post or plurality voting is used in 46 states, electing 412 representatives, ranked-choice or instant-runoff voting in two states (Alaska and Maine), electing 3 representatives, and two-round system in two states (Georgia and Louisiana), electing 20 representatives. Elected representatives serve a two-year term, with no term limit.\nIn most states, major party candidates for each district are nominated in partisan primary elections, typically held in spring to late summer. In some states, the Republican and Democratic parties choose their candidates for each district in their political conventions in spring or early summer, which often use unanimous voice votes to reflect either confidence in the incumbent or the result of bargaining in earlier private discussions. Exceptions can result in so-called floor fights\u2014convention votes by delegates, with outcomes that can be hard to predict. Especially if a convention is closely divided, a losing candidate may contend further by meeting the conditions for a primary election. The courts generally do not consider ballot access rules for independent and third party candidates to be additional qualifications for holding office and no federal statutes regulate ballot access. As a result, the process to gain ballot access varies greatly from state to state, and in the case of a third party in the United States may be affected by results of previous years' elections.\nIn 1967, Congress passed the Uniform Congressional District Act, which requires all representatives to be elected from single-member-districts. Following the \"Wesberry v. Sanders\" decision, Congress was motivated by fears that courts would impose at-large plurality districts on states that did not redistrict to comply with the new mandates for districts roughly equal in population, and Congress also sought to prevent attempts by southern states to use such voting systems to dilute the vote of racial minorities. Several states have used multi-member districts in the past, although only two states (Hawaii and New Mexico) used multi-member districts in 1967. Louisiana is unique in that it holds an all-party primary election on the general Election Day with a subsequent runoff election between the top two finishers (regardless of party) if no candidate received a majority in the primary. The states of Washington and California use a similar (though not identical) system to that used by Louisiana.\nSeats vacated during a term are filled through special elections, unless the vacancy occurs closer to the next general election date than a pre-established deadline. The term of a member chosen in a special election usually begins the next day, or as soon as the results are certified.\nNon-voting delegates.\nHistorically, many territories have sent non-voting delegates to the House. While their role has fluctuated over the years, today they have many of the same privileges as voting members, have a voice in committees, and can introduce bills on the floor, but cannot vote on the ultimate passage of bills. Presently, the District of Columbia and the five inhabited U.S. territories each elect a delegate. A seventh delegate, representing the Cherokee Nation, has been formally proposed but has not yet been seated. An eighth delegate, representing the Choctaw Nation is guaranteed by treaty but has not yet been proposed. Additionally, some territories may choose to also elect shadow representatives, though these are not official members of the House and are separate individuals from their official delegates.\nTerms.\nRepresentatives and delegates serve for two-year terms, while a resident commissioner (a kind of delegate) serves for four years. A term starts on January 3 following the election in November. The U.S. Constitution requires that vacancies in the House be filled with a special election. The term of the replacement member expires on the date that the original member's would have expired.\nThe Constitution permits the House to expel a member with a two-thirds vote. In the history of the United States, only six members have been expelled from the House; in 1861, three were removed for supporting the Confederate states' secession: Democrats John Bullock Clark of Missouri, John William Reid of Missouri, and Henry Cornelius Burnett of Kentucky. Democrat Michael Myers of Pennsylvania was expelled after his criminal conviction for accepting bribes in 1980, Democrat James Traficant of Ohio was expelled in 2002 following his conviction for corruption, and Republican George Santos was expelled in 2023 after he was implicated in fraud by both a federal indictment and a House Ethics Committee investigation.\nThe House also has the power to formally censure or reprimand its members; censure or reprimand of a member requires only a simple majority, and does not remove that member from office.\nComparison to the Senate.\nAs a check on the regional, popular, and rapidly changing politics of the House, the Senate has several distinct powers. For example, the \"advice and consent\" powers (such as the power to approve treaties and confirm members of the Cabinet) are a sole Senate privilege. The House, however, has the exclusive power to initiate bills for raising revenue, to impeach officials, and to choose the president if a presidential candidate fails to get a majority of the Electoral College votes. Both House and Senate confirmation is now required to fill a vacancy if the vice presidency is vacant, according to the provisions of the Twenty-fifth Amendment. The Senate and House are further differentiated by term lengths and the number of districts represented: the Senate has longer terms of six years, fewer members (currently one hundred, two for each state), and (in all but seven delegations) larger constituencies per member.\nSalary and benefits.\nSalaries.\nSince December 2014, the annual salary of each representative is $174,000, the same as it is for each member of the Senate. The speaker of the House and the majority and minority leaders earn more: $223,500 for the speaker and $193,400 for their party leaders (the same as Senate leaders). A cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) increase takes effect annually unless Congress votes not to accept it. Congress sets members' salaries; however, the Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits a change in salary (but not COLA) from taking effect until after the next election of the whole House. Representatives are eligible for retirement benefits after serving for five years. Outside pay is limited to 15% of congressional pay, and certain types of income involving a fiduciary responsibility or personal endorsement are prohibited. Salaries are not for life, only during active term.\nTitles.\nRepresentatives use the prefix \"The Honorable\" before their names. A member of the House is referred to as a \"representative\", \"congressman\", or \"congresswoman\".\nRepresentatives are usually identified in the media and other sources by party and state, and sometimes by congressional district, or a major city or community within their district. For example, Democratic representative Nancy Pelosi, who represents California's 11th congressional district within San Francisco, may be identified as \"D\u2013California\", \"D\u2013California\u201311\" or \"D\u2013San Francisco\".\n\"Member of congress\" is occasionally abbreviated as either \"MOC\" or \"MC\" (similar to MP). However, the abbreviation \"Rep.\" for Representative is more common, as it avoids confusion as to whether they are a member of the House or the Senate.\nPension.\nAll members of Congress are automatically enrolled in the Federal Employees Retirement System, a pension system also used for federal civil servants, except the formula for calculating Congress members' pension results in a 70% higher pension than other federal employees based on the first 20 years of service. They become eligible to receive benefits after five years of service (two and one-half terms in the House). The FERS is composed of three elements:\nMembers of Congress may retire with full benefits at age 62 after five years of service, at age 50 after 20 years of service, and at any age after 25 years of service. With an average age of 58, the US House of Representatives is older than comparable chambers in Russia and the other G7 nations.\nTax deductions.\nMembers of Congress are permitted to deduct up to $3,000 of living expenses per year incurred while living away from their district or home state.\nHealth benefits.\nBefore 2014, members of Congress and their staff had access to essentially the same health benefits as federal civil servants; they could voluntarily enroll in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), an employer-sponsored health insurance program, and were eligible to participate in other programs, such as the Federal Flexible Spending Account Program (FSAFEDS).\nHowever, Section 1312(d)(3)(D) of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) provided that the only health plans that the federal government can make available to members of Congress and certain congressional staff are those created under the ACA or offered through a health care exchange. The Office of Personnel Management promulgated a final rule to comply with Section 1312(d)(3)(D). Under the rule, effective January 1, 2014, members and designated staff are no longer able to purchase FEHBP plans as active employees. However, if members enroll in a health plan offered through a Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) exchange, they remain eligible for an employer contribution toward coverage, and members and designated staff eligible for retirement may enroll in a FEHBP plan upon retirement.\nThe ACA and the final rule do not affect members' or staffers' eligibility for Medicare benefits. The ACA and the final rule also do not affect members' and staffers' eligibility for other health benefits related to federal employment, so members and staff are eligible to participate in FSAFEDS (which has three options within the program), the Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program, and the Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program.\nThe Office of the Attending Physician at the U.S. Capitol provides members with health care for an annual fee. The attending physician provides routine exams, consultations, and certain diagnostics, and may write prescriptions (although the office does not dispense them). The office does not provide vision or dental care.\nMembers (but not their dependents, and not former members) may also receive medical and emergency dental care at military treatment facilities. There is no charge for outpatient care if it is provided in the National Capital Region, but members are billed at full reimbursement rates (set by the Department of Defense) for inpatient care. (Outside the National Capital Region, charges are at full reimbursement rates for both inpatient and outpatient care).\nPersonnel, mail and office expenses.\nHouse members are eligible for a Member's Representational Allowance (MRA) to support them in their official and representational duties to their district. The MRA is calculated based on three components: one for personnel, one for official office expenses and one for official or franked mail. The personnel allowance is the same for all members; the office and mail allowances vary based on the members' district's distance from Washington, D.C., the cost of office space in the member's district, and the number of non-business addresses in their district. These three components are used to calculate a single MRA that can fund any expense\u2014even though each component is calculated individually, the franking allowance can be used to pay for personnel expenses if the member so chooses. In 2011 this allowance averaged $1.4\u00a0million per member, and ranged from $1.35 to $1.67\u00a0million.\nThe Personnel allowance was $944,671 per member in 2010. Each member may employ no more than 18 permanent employees. Members' employees' salary is capped at $168,411 as of 2009.\nTravel allowance.\nBefore being sworn into office, each member-elect and one staffer can be paid for one round trip between their home in their congressional district and Washington, D.C., for organization caucuses. Members are allowed \"a sum for travel based on the following formula: 64 times the rate per mile ... multiplied by the mileage between Washington, DC, and the furthest point in a Member's district, plus 10%.\" As of January 2012[ [update]] the rate ranges from based on distance ranges between D.C. and the member's district.\nOfficers.\nMember officials.\nThe party with a majority of seats in the House is known as the majority party. The next-largest party is the minority party. The speaker, committee chairs, and some other officials are generally from the majority party; they have counterparts (for instance, the \"ranking members\" of committees) in the minority party.\nThe Constitution provides that the House may choose its own speaker. Although not explicitly required by the Constitution, every speaker has been a member of the House. The Constitution does not specify the duties and powers of the speaker, which are instead regulated by the rules and customs of the House. Speakers have a role both as a leader of the House and the leader of their party (which need not be the majority party; theoretically, a member of the minority party could be elected as speaker with the support of a fraction of members of the majority party). Under the Presidential Succession Act (1947), the speaker is second in the line of presidential succession after the vice president.\nThe speaker is the presiding officer of the House but does not preside over every debate. Instead, they delegate the responsibility of presiding to other members in most cases. The presiding officer sits in a chair in the front of the House chamber. The powers of the presiding officer are extensive; one important power is that of controlling the order in which members of the House speak. No member may make a speech or a motion unless they have first been recognized by the presiding officer. Moreover, the presiding officer may rule on a \"point of order\" (a member's objection that a rule has been breached); the decision is subject to appeal to the whole House.\nSpeakers serve as chairs of their party's steering committee, which is responsible for assigning party members to other House committees. The speaker chooses the chairs of standing committees, appoints most of the members of the Rules Committee, appoints all members of conference committees, and determines which committees consider bills.\nEach party elects a floor leader, who is known as the majority leader or minority leader. The minority leader heads their party in the House, and the majority leader is their party's second-highest-ranking official, behind the speaker. Party leaders decide what legislation members of their party should either support or oppose.\nEach party also elects a Whip, who works to ensure that the party's members vote as the party leadership desires. The majority whip in the House of Representatives is Tom Emmer, who is a member of the Republican Party. The minority whip is Katherine Clark, who is a member of the Democratic Party. The whip is supported by chief deputy whips\nAfter the whips, the next ranking official in the House party's leadership is the party conference chair (styled as the Republican conference chair and Democratic caucus chair).\nAfter the conference chair, there are differences between each party's subsequent leadership ranks. After the Democratic caucus chair is the campaign committee chair (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee), then the co-chairs of the Steering Committee. For the Republicans it is the chair of the House Republican Policy Committee, followed by the campaign committee chairman (styled as the National Republican Congressional Committee).\nThe chairs of House committees, particularly influential standing committees such as Appropriations, Ways and Means, and Rules, are powerful but not officially part of the House leadership hierarchy. Until the post of majority leader was created, the chair of Ways and Means was the \"de facto\" majority leader.\nLeadership and partisanship.\nWhen the presidency and Senate are controlled by a different party from the one controlling the House, the speaker can become the \"de facto\" \"leader of the opposition\". Some notable examples include Tip O'Neill in the 1980s, Newt Gingrich in the 1990s, John Boehner in the early 2010s, and Nancy Pelosi in the late 2000s and again in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Since the speaker is a partisan officer with substantial power to control the business of the House, the position is often used for partisan advantage.\nIn the instance when the presidency and both Houses of Congress are controlled by one party, the speaker normally takes a low profile and defers to the president. For that situation the House minority leader can play the role of a \"de facto\" \"leader of the opposition\", often more so than the Senate minority leader, due to the more partisan nature of the House and the greater role of leadership.\nNon-member officials.\nThe House is also served by several officials who are not members. The House's chief such officer is the clerk, who maintains public records, prepares documents, and oversees junior officials, including pages until the discontinuation of House pages in 2011. The clerk also presides over the House at the beginning of each new Congress pending the election of a speaker. Another officer is the chief administrative officer, responsible for the day-to-day administrative support to the House of Representatives. This includes everything from payroll to foodservice.\nThe position of chief administrative officer (CAO) was created by the 104th Congress following the 1994 mid-term elections, replacing the positions of doorkeeper and director of non-legislative and financial services (created by the previous congress to administer the non-partisan functions of the House). The CAO also assumed some of the responsibilities of the House Information Services, which previously had been controlled directly by the Committee on House Administration, then headed by Representative Charlie Rose of North Carolina, along with the House \"Folding Room\".\nThe chaplain leads the House in prayer at the opening of the day. The sergeant at arms is the House's chief law enforcement officer and maintains order and security on House premises. Finally, routine police work is handled by the United States Capitol Police, which is supervised by the Capitol Police Board, a body to which the sergeant at arms belongs, and chairs in even-numbered years.\nProcedure.\nDaily procedures.\nLike the Senate, the House of Representatives meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. At one end of the chamber of the House is a rostrum from which the speaker, Speaker pro tempore, or (when in Committee of the Whole House) the chair presides. The lower tiers of the rostrum are used by clerks and other officials. A table in front of the rostrum is used by the official reporters. Members' seats are arranged in the chamber in a semicircular pattern facing the rostrum and are divided by a wide central aisle. By tradition, Democrats sit on the left of the center aisle, while Republicans sit on the right, facing the presiding officer's chair. Sittings are normally held on weekdays; meetings on Saturdays and Sundays are rare. Sittings of the House are generally open to the public; visitors must obtain a House Gallery pass from a congressional office. Sittings are broadcast live on television and have been streamed live on C-SPAN since March 19, 1979, and on \"HouseLive\", the official streaming service operated by the Clerk, since the early 2010s.\nThe procedure of the House depends not only on the rules, but also on a variety of customs, precedents, and traditions. In many cases, the House waives some of its stricter rules (including time limits on debates) by unanimous consent. A member may block a unanimous consent agreement, but objections are rare. The presiding officer, the speaker of the House enforces the rules of the House, and may warn members who deviate from them. The speaker uses a gavel to maintain order. Legislation to be considered by the House is placed in a box called the hopper.\nIn one of its first resolutions, the U.S. House of Representatives established the Office of the Sergeant at Arms. In an American tradition adopted from English custom in 1789 by the first speaker of the House, Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania, the Mace of the United States House of Representatives is used to open all sessions of the House. It is also used during the inaugural ceremonies for all presidents of the United States. For daily sessions of the House, the sergeant at arms carries the mace ahead of the speaker in procession to the rostrum. It is placed on a green marble pedestal to the speaker's right. When the House is in committee, the mace is moved to a pedestal next to the desk of the Sergeant at Arms.\nThe Constitution provides that a majority of the House constitutes a quorum to do business. Under the rules and customs of the House, a quorum is always assumed present unless a quorum call explicitly demonstrates otherwise. House rules prevent a member from making a point of order that a quorum is not present unless a question is being voted on. The presiding officer does not accept a point of order of no quorum during general debate, or when a question is not before the House.\nDuring debates, a member may speak only if called upon by the presiding officer. The presiding officer decides which members to recognize, and can therefore control the course of debate. All speeches must be addressed to the presiding officer, using the words \"Mr. Speaker\" or \"Madam Speaker\". Only the presiding officer may be directly addressed in speeches; other members must be referred to in the third person. In most cases, members do not refer to each other only by name, but also by state, using forms such as \"the gentleman from Virginia\", \"the distinguished gentlewoman from California\", or \"my distinguished friend from Alabama\".\nThere are 448 permanent seats on the House Floor and four tables, two on each side. These tables are occupied by members of the committee that have brought a bill to the floor for consideration and by the party leadership. Members address the House from microphones at any table or \"the well\", the area immediately in front of the rostrum.\nPassage of legislation.\nUnder the U.S. Constitution, the House of Representatives determines the rules according to which it passes legislation. Any of the rules can be changed with each new Congress, but in practice each new session amends a standing set of rules built up over the history of the body in an early resolution published for public inspection. Before legislation reaches the floor of the House, the Rules Committee normally passes a rule to govern debate on that measure (which then must be passed by the full House before it becomes effective). For instance, the committee determines if amendments to the bill are permitted. An \"open rule\" permits all germane amendments, but a \"closed rule\" restricts or even prohibits amendment. Debate on a bill is generally restricted to one hour, equally divided between the majority and minority parties. Each side is led during the debate by a \"floor manager\", who allocates debate time to members who wish to speak. On contentious matters, many members may wish to speak; thus, a member may receive as little as one minute, or even thirty seconds, to make their point.\nWhen debate concludes, the motion is put to a vote. In many cases, the House votes by voice vote; the presiding officer puts the question, and members respond either \"yea!\" or \"aye!\" (in favor of the motion) or \"nay!\" or \"no!\" (against the motion). The presiding officer then announces the result of the voice vote. A member may, however, challenge the presiding officer's assessment and \"request the yeas and nays\" or \"request a recorded vote\". The request may be granted only if it is seconded by one-fifth of the members present. Traditionally, however, members of Congress second requests for recorded votes as a matter of courtesy. Some votes are always recorded, such as those on the annual budget.\nA recorded vote may be taken in one of three different ways. One is electronically. Members use a personal identification card to record their votes at 46 voting stations in the chamber. Votes are usually held in this way. A second mode of recorded vote is by teller. Members hand in colored cards to indicate their votes: green for \"yea\", red for \"nay\", and orange for \"present\" (i.e., to abstain). Teller votes are normally held only when electronic voting breaks down. Finally, the House may conduct a roll call vote. The Clerk reads the list of members of the House, each of whom announces their vote when their name is called. This procedure is only used rarely (and usually for ceremonial occasions, such as for the election of a speaker) because of the time consumed by calling over four hundred names.\nVoting traditionally lasts for, at most, fifteen minutes, but it may be extended if the leadership needs to \"whip\" more members into alignment. The 2003 vote on the prescription drug benefit was open for three hours, from 3:00 to 6:00\u00a0a.m., to receive four additional votes, three of which were necessary to pass the legislation. The 2005 vote on the Central American Free Trade Agreement was open for one hour, from 11:00\u00a0p.m. to midnight. An October 2005 vote on facilitating refinery construction was kept open for forty minutes.\nPresiding officers may vote like other members. They may not, however, vote twice in the event of a tie; rather, a tie vote defeats the motion.\nCommittees and caucuses.\nThe House uses committees and their subcommittees for a variety of purposes, including the review of bills and the oversight of the executive branch. The appointment of committee members is formally made by the whole House, but the choice of members is actually made by the political parties. Generally, each party honors the preferences of individual members, giving priority on the basis of seniority. Historically, membership on committees has been in rough proportion to the party's strength in the House, with two exceptions: on the Rules Committee, the majority party fills nine of the thirteen seats; and on the Ethics Committee, each party has an equal number of seats. However, when party control in the House is closely divided, extra seats on committees are sometimes allocated to the majority party. In the 109th Congress, for example, the Republicans controlled about 53% of the House, but had 54% of the Appropriations Committee members, 55% of the members on the Energy and Commerce Committee, and 58% of the members on the Judiciary Committee.\nThe largest committee of the House is the Committee of the Whole, which, as its name suggests, consists of all members of the House. The Committee meets in the House chamber; it may consider and amend bills, but may not grant them final passage. Generally, the debate procedures of the Committee of the Whole are more flexible than those of the House itself. One advantage of the Committee of the Whole is its ability to include otherwise non-voting members of Congress.\nMost committee work is performed by twenty standing committees, each of which has jurisdiction over a specific set of issues, such as Agriculture or Foreign Affairs. Each standing committee considers, amends, and reports bills that fall under its jurisdiction. Committees have extensive powers with regard to bills; they may block legislation from reaching the floor of the House. Standing committees also oversee the departments and agencies of the executive branch. In discharging their duties, standing committees have the power to hold hearings and to subpoena witnesses and evidence.\nThe House also has one permanent committee that is not a standing committee, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and occasionally may establish temporary or advisory committees, such as the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. This latter committee, created in the 110th Congress and reauthorized for the 111th, has no jurisdiction over legislation and must be chartered anew at the start of every Congress. The House also appoints members to serve on joint committees, which include members of the Senate and House. Some joint committees oversee independent government bodies; for instance, the Joint Committee on the Library oversees the Library of Congress. Other joint committees serve to make advisory reports; for example, there exists a Joint Committee on Taxation. Bills and nominees are not referred to joint committees. Hence, the power of joint committees is considerably lower than those of standing committees.\nEach House committee and subcommittee is led by a chairman (always a member of the majority party). From 1910 to the 1970s, committee chairs were powerful. Woodrow Wilson in his classic study, suggested:Power is nowhere concentrated; it is rather deliberately and of set policy scattered amongst many small chiefs. It is divided up, as it were, into forty-seven seigniories, in each of which a Standing Committee is the court-baron and its chairman lord-proprietor. These petty barons, some of them not a little powerful, but none of them within the reach of the full powers of rule, may at will exercise almost despotic sway within their own shires, and may sometimes threaten to convulse even the realm itself.\nFrom 1910 to 1975 committee and subcommittee chairmanship was determined purely by seniority; members of Congress sometimes had to wait 30 years to get one, but their chairship was independent of party leadership. The rules were changed in 1975 to permit party caucuses to elect chairs, shifting power upward to the party leaders. In 1995, Republicans under Newt Gingrich set a limit of three two-year terms for committee chairs. The chairman's powers are extensive; he controls the committee/subcommittee agenda, and may prevent the committee from dealing with a bill. The senior member of the minority party is known as the Ranking Member. In some committees like Appropriations, partisan disputes are few.\nLegislative functions.\nMost bills may be introduced in either House of Congress. However, the Constitution states, \"All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.\" Because of the Origination Clause, the Senate cannot initiate bills imposing taxes. This provision barring the Senate from introducing revenue bills is based on the practice of the British Parliament, in which only the House of Commons may originate such measures. Furthermore, congressional tradition holds that the House of Representatives originates appropriation bills.\nAlthough it cannot originate revenue bills, the Senate retains the power to amend or reject them. Woodrow Wilson wrote the following about appropriations bills:\n[T]he constitutional prerogative of the House has been held to apply to all the general appropriations bills, and the Senate's right to amend these has been allowed the widest possible scope. The upper house may add to them what it pleases; may go altogether outside of their original provisions and tack to them entirely new features of legislation, altering not only the amounts but even the objects of expenditure, and making out of the materials sent them by the popular chamber measures of an almost totally new character.\nThe approval of the Senate and the House of Representatives is required for a bill to become law. Both Houses must pass the same version of the bill; if there are differences, they may be resolved by a conference committee, which includes members of both bodies. For the stages through which bills pass in the Senate, see Act of Congress.\nThe president may veto a bill passed by the House and Senate. If they do, the bill does not become law unless each House, by a two-thirds vote, votes to override the veto.\nChecks and balances.\nThe Constitution provides that the Senate's \"advice and consent\" is necessary for the president to make appointments and to ratify treaties. Thus, with its potential to frustrate presidential appointments, the Senate is more powerful than the House.\nThe Constitution empowers the House of Representatives to impeach federal officials for \"Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors\" and empowers the Senate to try such impeachments. The House may approve \"articles of impeachment\" by a simple majority vote; however, a two-thirds vote is required for conviction in the Senate. A convicted official is automatically removed from office and may be disqualified from holding future office under the United States. No further punishment is permitted during the impeachment proceedings; however, the party may face criminal penalties in a normal court of law.\nIn U.S. history, the House of Representatives has impeached seventeen officials, seven who were convicted. Another, Richard Nixon, resigned after the House Judiciary Committee passed articles of impeachment but before a formal impeachment vote by the full House. Only three U.S. presidents have ever been impeached: Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump in 2019 and in 2021. The trials of Johnson, Clinton, and Trump all ended in acquittal; in Johnson's case, the Senate fell one vote short of the two-thirds majority required for conviction.\nUnder the Twelfth Amendment, the House has the power to elect the president if no presidential candidate receives a majority of votes in the Electoral College. The Twelfth Amendment requires the House to choose from the three candidates with the highest numbers of electoral votes. The Constitution provides that \"the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote\". It is rare for no presidential candidate to receive a majority of electoral votes. In U.S. history, the House has only had to choose a president twice. In the 1800 election, which was held before adoption of the Twelfth Amendment, it elected Thomas Jefferson over Aaron Burr. In the 1824 election, it elected John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson and William H. Crawford. If no vice presidential candidate receives a majority of the electoral votes, the Senate elects the vice president from the two candidates with the highest numbers of electoral votes.\nLatest election results and party standings.\nAs of \u00a01, 2025[ [update]]\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources and further reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nSurveys.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["19468510", "13468303"], "permutation_1": ["13468303", "19468510"], "permutation_2": ["13468303", "19468510"], "permutation_3": ["13468303", "19468510"]}
{"id": "2hop__448957_36090", "docs_added": {"11978423": "Lafanga\nLafanga or Lafaga is an islet of Nukufetau, Tuvalu. The traditional history of Nukufetau recalls that in order to protect the atoll from raiders from Tonga, Fialua, an Aliki (chief), was given Lafanga, which is the largest of the eastern islets of Nukufetau. Fialua would attack raiders with his club and bury the bodies at a place called Temata.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11978423", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["11978423", "30227"], "permutation_2": ["11978423", "30227"], "permutation_3": ["11978423", "30227"]}
{"id": "2hop__739243_159106", "docs_added": {"30257876": "Mintu\nMintu (also known as Rumah Bol or Rumah Bel) is a settlement in Sarawak, Malaysia. It lies approximately east-south-east of the state capital Kuching.\nNeighbouring settlements include:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3607937": "Malaysia\nCountry in Southeast Asia\nMalaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. A federal constitutional monarchy, it consists of 13 states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions: Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo's East Malaysia. Peninsular Malaysia shares a land and maritime border with Thailand and maritime borders with Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia. East Malaysia shares land borders with Brunei and Indonesia, as well as a maritime border with the Philippines and Vietnam. Kuala Lumpur is the national capital, the country's largest city, and the seat of the legislative branch of the federal government.\nPutrajaya is the federal administrative capital, which represents the seat of both the executive branch (the Cabinet, federal ministries, and federal agencies) and the judicial branch of the federal government. With a population of over 34 million, the country is the world's 42nd-most populous country. Malaysia is tropical and is one of 17 megadiverse countries; it is home to numerous endemic species. Tanjung Piai in the Malaysian state of Johor is the southernmost point of continental Eurasia.\nThe country has its origins in the Malay kingdoms, which, from the 18th century on, became subject to the British Empire, along with the British Straits Settlements protectorate. During World War II, British Malaya, along with other nearby British and American colonies, was occupied by the Empire of Japan. Following three years of occupation, Peninsular Malaysia was briefly unified as the Malayan Union in 1946 until 1948 when it was restructured as the Federation of Malaya. The country achieved independence on 31 August 1957. On 16 September 1963, independent Malaya united with the then British crown colonies of North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore to become Malaysia. In August 1965, Singapore was expelled from the federation and became a separate, independent country.\nThe country is multiethnic and multicultural, which has a significant effect on its politics. About half the population is ethnically Malay, with minorities of Chinese, Indians, and indigenous peoples. The official language is Malaysian Malay, a standard form of the Malay language. English remains an active second language. It is also home to 111 living indigenous languages. While recognising Islam as the official religion, the constitution grants freedom of religion to non-Muslims. The government is modelled on the Westminster parliamentary system, and the legal system is based on common law. The head of state is an elected monarch, chosen from among the nine state sultans every five years. The head of government is the prime minister.\nThe country's economy has traditionally been driven by its natural resources but is expanding into commerce, tourism, and medical tourism. The country has a newly industrialised market economy, which is relatively open and state-oriented. The country is a founding member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the East Asia Summit (EAS), and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and a member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the Commonwealth, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).\nEtymology.\nThe name \"Malaysia\" is a combination of the word \"Malays\" and the Latin-Greek suffix \"-ia\"/-\u03af\u03b1 which can be translated as 'land of the Malays'. Similar-sounding variants have also appeared in accounts older than the 11th century, as toponyms for areas in Sumatra or referring to a larger region around the Strait of Malacca. The Sanskrit text \"Vayu Purana\", thought to have been in existence since the first millennium CE, mentioned a land named 'Malayadvipa' which was identified by certain scholars as the modern Malay Peninsula. Other notable accounts are by Ptolemy's 2nd-century \"Geographia\" that used the name \"Malayu Kulon\" for the west coast of Golden Chersonese, and the 7th-century Yijing's account of \"Malayu\".\nAt some point, the Melayu Kingdom took its name from the \"Sungai Melayu\". \"Melayu\" then became associated with Srivijaya, and remained associated with various parts of Sumatra, especially Palembang, where the founder of the Malacca Sultanate is thought to have come from. It is only thought to have developed into an ethnonym as Malacca became a regional power in the 15th century. Islamisation established an ethnoreligious identity in Malacca, with the term \"Melayu\" beginning to appear as interchangeable with \"Melakans\". It may have specifically referred to local Malay speakers who were loyal to the Malaccan Sultan. The initial Portuguese use of reflected this, referring only to the ruling people of Malacca. The prominence of traders from Malacca led \"Melayu\" to be associated with Muslim traders, and from there became associated with the wider cultural and linguistic group. Malacca and later Johor claimed they were the centre of Malay culture, a position supported by the British which led to the term \"Malay\" becoming more usually linked to the Malay peninsula rather than Sumatra.\nBefore the onset of European colonisation, the Malay Peninsula was known natively as \"Tanah Melayu\" ('Malay Land'). Under a racial classification created by a German scholar Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, the natives of maritime Southeast Asia were grouped into a single category, the Malay race. Following the expedition of French navigator Jules Dumont d'Urville to Oceania in 1826, he later proposed the terms of \"Malaysia\", \"Micronesia\" and \"Melanesia\" to the \"Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 de G\u00e9ographie\" in 1831, distinguishing these Pacific cultures and island groups from the existing term \"Polynesia\". Dumont d'Urville described Malaysia as \"an area commonly known as the East Indies\". In 1850, the English ethnologist George Samuel Windsor Earl, writing in the \"Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia\", proposed naming the islands of Southeast Asia as \"Melayunesia\" or \"Indunesia\", favouring the former. The name Malaysia gained some use to label what is now the Malay Archipelago. In modern terminology, \"Malay\" remains the name of an ethnoreligious group of Austronesian people predominantly inhabiting the Malay Peninsula and portions of the adjacent islands of Southeast Asia, including the east coast of Sumatra, the coast of Borneo, and smaller islands that lie between these areas.\nThe state that gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1957 took the name \"the Federation of Malaya\", chosen in preference to other potential names such as \"Malaysia\" and \"Langkasuka\", after the historic kingdom located at the upper section of the Malay Peninsula in the first millennium CE. Nonetheless, the name \"Malaysia\" was adopted in 1963 when the existing states of the Federation of Malaya, plus Singapore, North Borneo and Sarawak formed a new federation. One theory posits the name was chosen so that \"si\" represented the inclusion of Singapore, North Borneo, and Sarawak to Malaya in 1963. Politicians in the Philippines contemplated renaming their state Malaysia before the modern country took the name.\nHistory.\nEvidence of modern human habitation in Malaysia dates back 40,000\u00a0years. In the Malay Peninsula, the first inhabitants are thought to be Negritos. Areas of Malaysia participated in the Maritime Jade Road between 2000 BC to 1000 AD. Traders and settlers from India and China arrived as early as the first century AD, establishing trading ports and coastal towns in the second and third centuries. Their presence resulted in strong Indian and Chinese influences on the local cultures, and the people of the Malay Peninsula adopted the religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. Sanskrit inscriptions appear as early as the fourth or fifth century. The Kingdom of Langkasuka arose around the second century in the northern area of the Malay Peninsula, lasting until about the 15th century. Between the 7th and 13th centuries, much of the southern Malay Peninsula was part of the maritime Srivijayan empire. By the 13th and the 14th century, the Majapahit empire had successfully wrested control over most of the peninsula and the Malay Archipelago from Srivijaya. In the early 15th century, Parameswara, a runaway king of the former Kingdom of Singapura linked to the old Srivijayan court, founded the Malacca Sultanate. The spread of Islam increased following Parameswara's conversion to that religion. Malacca was an important commercial centre during this time, attracting trade from around the region.\nIn 1511, Malacca was conquered by Portugal, after which it was taken by the Dutch in 1641. In 1786, the British Empire established a presence in Malaya, when the Sultan of Kedah leased Penang Island to the British East India Company. The British obtained the town of Singapore in 1819, and in 1824 took control of Malacca following the Anglo-Dutch Treaty. By 1826, the British directly controlled Penang, Malacca, Singapore, and the island of Labuan, which they established as the crown colony of the Straits Settlements. By the 20th century, the states of Pahang, Selangor, Perak, and Negeri Sembilan, known together as the Federated Malay States, had British residents appointed to advise the Malay rulers, to whom the rulers were bound to defer by treaty. The remaining five states on the peninsula, known as the Unfederated Malay States, while not directly under British rule, also accepted British advisers around the turn of the 20th century. Development on the peninsula and Borneo were generally separate until the 19th century. Under British rule the immigration of Chinese and Indians to serve as labourers was encouraged. The area that is now Sabah came under British control as North Borneo when both the Sultan of Brunei and the Sultan of Sulu transferred their respective territorial rights of ownership, between 1877 and 1878. In 1842, Sarawak was ceded by the Sultan of Brunei to James Brooke, whose successors ruled as the White Rajahs over an independent kingdom until 1946, when it became a crown colony.\nIn the Second World War, the Japanese Army invaded and occupied Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore for over three years. During this time, ethnic tensions were raised and nationalism grew. Popular support for independence increased after Malaya was reconquered by Allied forces. Post-war British plans to unite the administration of Malaya under a single crown colony called the Malayan Union met with strong opposition from the Malays, who opposed the weakening of the Malay rulers and the granting of citizenship to the ethnic Chinese. The Malayan Union, established in 1946, and consisting of all the British possessions in the Malay Peninsula except for Singapore, was quickly dissolved and replaced on 1 February 1948 by the Federation of Malaya, which restored the autonomy of the rulers of the Malay states under British protection.\nDuring this time, the mostly ethnically Chinese rebels under the leadership of the Malayan Communist Party launched guerrilla operations designed to force the British out of Malaya. The Malayan Emergency (1948\u20131960) involved a long anti-insurgency campaign by Commonwealth troops in Malaya. On 31 August 1957, Malaya became an independent member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Subsequently, a comprehensive plan was devised to unite Malaya with the crown colonies of North Borneo (known as Sabah upon joining), Sarawak, and Singapore. The envisioned federation was originally intended to take place on 31 August 1963, to coincide with the commemoration of Malayan independence. However, due to the necessity of conducting a survey on the level of support for the federation in Sabah and Sarawak by the United Nations, as requested by opponents of the federation such as Indonesia's Sukarno and the Sarawak United Peoples' Party, the date of the federation was postponed until 16 September 1963.\nThe federation brought heightened tensions including a conflict with Indonesia as well as continual conflicts against the Communists in Borneo and the Malay Peninsula, which escalated to the Sarawak Communist Insurgency and Second Malayan Emergency together with several other issues such as the cross-border attacks into Sabah by Moro pirates from the southern islands of the Philippines, Singapore being expelled from the Federation in 1965, and racial strife. This strife culminated in the 13 May race riots in 1969. After the riots, the controversial New Economic Policy was launched by Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak, trying to increase the share of the economy held by the \"bumiputera\". Under Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad there was a period of rapid economic growth and urbanization beginning in the 1980s. The economy shifted from being agriculturally based to one based on manufacturing and industry. Numerous mega-projects were completed, such as the Petronas Towers, the North\u2013South Expressway, the Multimedia Super Corridor, and the new federal administrative capital of Putrajaya.\nIn the late 1990s, the Asian financial crisis impacted the country, nearly causing their currency, stock, and property markets to crash; however, they later recovered. The 1MDB scandal was a major global corruption scandal that implicated then-Prime Minister Najib Razak in 2015. The scandal contributed to the first change in the ruling political party since independence in the 2018 general election. In the 2020s, the country was gripped by a political crisis that coincided with health and economic crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This was then followed by an earlier general election in November 2022, which resulted in the first hung parliament in the nation's history. On 24 November 2022, Anwar Ibrahim was sworn in as the 10th Prime Minister of Malaysia, leading a grand coalition government.\nGovernment and politics.\nMalaysia is a federal constitutional elective monarchy and the only federal country in Southeast Asia. The system of government is closely modelled on the Westminster parliamentary system, a legacy of British rule. The head of state is the King, whose official title is the Yang\u00a0di-Pertuan\u00a0Agong. The King is elected to a five-year term by and from among the nine hereditary rulers of the Malay states. The other four states, which have titular Governors, do not participate in the selection. By informal agreement the position is rotated among the nine, and has been held by Ibrahim Iskandar of Johor since 31 January 2024. The King's role has been largely ceremonial since changes to the constitution in 1994, picking ministers and members of the upper house.\nLegislative power is divided between federal and state legislatures. The bicameral federal parliament consists of the lower house, the House of Representatives and the upper house, the Senate. The 222-member House of Representatives is elected for a maximum term of five years from single-member constituencies. All 70 senators sit for three-year terms; 26 are elected by the 13 state assemblies, and the remaining 44 are appointed by the King upon the Prime Minister's recommendation. The parliament follows a multi-party system and the government is elected through a first-past-the-post system. Parliamentary elections are held at least once every five years. Before 2018, only registered voters aged 21 and above could vote for the members of the House of Representatives and, in most of the states, for the state legislative chamber. Voting is not mandatory. In July 2019, a bill to lower the voting age to 18 years old was officially passed.\nExecutive power is vested in the Cabinet, led by the Prime Minister. The prime minister must be a member of the House of Representatives, who in the opinion of His Majesty the King, commands the support of a majority of members. The Cabinet is chosen from members of both houses of Parliament. The Prime Minister is both the head of cabinet and the head of government. As a result of the 2018 general election Malaysia was governed by the Pakatan Harapan (PH) political alliance, although Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad resigned amid a political crisis in 2020. In March 2020, the Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition formed under Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, before Muhyiddin lost majority support and was replaced by deputy Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob, a veteran politician from the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), in August 2021. As a result of the 2022 Malaysian general election, a hung parliament was elected. Anwar Ibrahim of the PH coalition was appointed as the new Prime Minister to lead the coalition government of PH, Barisan Nasional, Gabungan Parti Sarawak, Gabungan Rakyat Sabah and several other political parties and independents. Meanwhile, PN, the only political coalition not in the coalition government became the Opposition.\nMalaysia's legal system is based on common law. Although the judiciary is theoretically independent, its independence has been called into question and the appointment of judges lacks accountability and transparency. The highest court in the judicial system is the Federal Court, followed by the Court of Appeal and two high courts, one for Peninsular Malaysia and one for East Malaysia. Malaysia also has a special court to hear cases brought by or against royalty.\nRace is a significant force in politics. Affirmative actions such as the New Economic Policy and the National Development Policy which superseded it, were implemented to advance the standing of the \"bumiputera\", consisting of Malays and the indigenous tribes who are considered the original inhabitants of Malaysia, over non-\"bumiputera\" such as Malaysian Chinese and Malaysian Indians. These policies provide preferential treatment to \"bumiputera\" in employment, education, scholarships, business, and access to cheaper housing and assisted savings. However, it has generated greater interethnic resentment. There is ongoing debate over whether the laws and society of Malaysia should reflect Islamism or secularism. Islamic criminal laws passed by the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party with the support of UMNO state assemblymen in the state legislative assembly of Kelantan have been unenforced by the federal government on the basis that criminal laws are the responsibility of the federal government.\nAfter UMNO lost power at the 2018 Malaysian general election, Malaysia's ranking increased by 9 places in the 2019 Democracy Index to 43rd compared to the previous year and is classified as a 'flawed democracy'. Malaysia's ranking in the 2020 Press Freedom Index increased by 22 places to 101st compared to the previous year, making it one of two countries in Southeast Asia without a 'Difficult situation' or 'Very Serious situation' with regards to press freedom. However, it fell 18 places the following year due to the policies of the PN government.\nMalaysia is marked at 48th and 62nd place according to the 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index, indicating above-average levels of corruption. Freedom House noted Malaysia as \"partly free\" in its 2018 survey. A lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice alleged that at least $3.5 billion involving former prime minister Najib Razak had been stolen from Malaysia's 1MDB state-owned fund, known as the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal.\nAdministrative divisions.\nMalaysia is a federation of 13 states and three federal territories. Out of these, eleven states and two federal territories are in Peninsular Malaysia, whereas the other two states and one federal territory comprise East Malaysia.\nThe country has three tiers of government \u2013 federal, state and local. Governance of the states is divided between the federal and the state governments, with different powers reserved for each, and the federal government has direct administration of the federal territories. Each state has a unicameral State Legislative Assembly whose members are elected from single-member constituencies. State governments are led by Chief Ministers, who are state assembly members from the majority party in the assembly. In each of the states with a hereditary ruler, the Chief Minister is normally required to be a Malay, appointed by the ruler upon the recommendation of the Prime Minister. Until 2018, state elections were held concurrently with the general election by convention, except for those in Sarawak. Following the 2020\u20132022 political crisis, only Pahang, Perak and Perlis opted to conduct their state elections simultaneously with the general elections.\nPositioned below the federal and state governments, local governments represent the lowest tier of governance in Malaysia. As of 2024[ [update]], Malaysia is divided between 19 cities, 40 municipalities, 91 district-level councils, and four statutory agencies. While the federal constitution assigns local authorities to the exclusive jurisdiction of state governments, in practice, the federal Ministry of Housing and Local Government oversees the regulation of local laws and policies. Mayors (or presidents for municipal and district councils) and councillors are appointed by the respective state governments, or in the case of the federal territories, by the federal government.\nFederal laws assign land matters, including the delineation of districts, to the purview of state governments. Except Perlis and the federal territories, each state is divided into districts, which are further subdivided into mukims. In Sabah and Sarawak, districts are grouped into divisions. In contrast to local governments that manage municipal administration and infrastructure development, districts are solely utilised for land taxation.\nThe 13 states are based on historical Malay kingdoms, and 9 of the 11 Peninsular states, known as the Malay states, retain their royal families. The King is elected by and from the nine rulers to serve a five-year term. This King appoints governors serving a four-year term for the states without monarchies, after consultations with the chief minister of that state. Each state has its written constitution. Sabah and Sarawak have considerably more autonomy than the other states, most notably having separate immigration policies and controls, and unique residency status. Federal intervention in state affairs, lack of development, and disputes over oil royalties have occasionally led to statements about secession from leaders in several states such as Penang, Johor, Kelantan, Sabah and Sarawak, although these have not been followed up and no serious independence movements exist.\nA list of thirteen states and each state capital (in parentheses):\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nForeign relations and military.\nA founding member of ASEAN and OIC, the country participates in many international organisations such as the United Nations (U.N.), APEC, the D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation, and NAM. It has chaired ASEAN, OIC, and NAM in the past. A former British colony, it is also a member of the Commonwealth. Kuala Lumpur was the site of the first EAS in 2005.\nMalaysia's foreign policy is officially based on the principle of neutrality and maintaining peaceful relations with all countries, regardless of their political system. The government attaches a high priority to the security and stability of Southeast Asia, and seeks to further develop relations with other countries in the region. Historically the government has tried to portray Malaysia as a progressive Islamic nation while strengthening relations with other Islamic states. A strong tenet of Malaysia's policy is national sovereignty and right of a country to control its domestic affairs. Malaysia signed the U.N. treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.\nThe Spratly Islands are disputed by many states in the area, and a large portion of the South China Sea is claimed by China. Unlike its neighbours of Vietnam and the Philippines, Malaysia historically avoided conflicts with China. However, after the encroachment of Chinese ships in Malaysian territorial waters, and breach of airspace by their military aircraft, Malaysia has become active in condemning China. Brunei and Malaysia in 2009 announced an end to claims of each other's land, and committed to resolve issues related to their maritime borders. The Philippines has a dormant claim to the eastern part of Sabah. Singapore's land reclamation has caused tensions, and minor maritime and land border disputes exist with Indonesia.\nThe Malaysian Armed Forces has three branches: the Malaysian Army, Royal Malaysian Navy and the Royal Malaysian Air Force. There is no conscription, and the required age for voluntary military service is 18. The military uses 1.5% of the country's GDP, and employs 1.23% of Malaysia's manpower. Malaysian peacekeeping forces of MALBATT have contributed to many U.N. peacekeeping missions, such as in Congo, Iran\u2013Iraq, Namibia, Cambodia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Somalia, Kosovo, East Timor, and Lebanon.\nThe Five Power Defence Arrangements is a regional security initiative that has been in place for almost 40 years. It involves joint military exercises held among Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Joint exercises and war games have also been held with Brunei, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States. Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam have agreed to host joint security force exercises to secure their maritime border and tackle issues such as illegal immigration, piracy, and smuggling. Previously there were fears that extremist militant activities in the Muslim areas of the southern Philippines and southern Thailand would spill over into Malaysia. Because of this, Malaysia began to increase its border security.\nHuman rights.\nHomosexuality is illegal in Malaysia, and authorities have imposed punishments such as caning and imprisonment. Human trafficking and sex trafficking in Malaysia are significant problems. There have also been cases of vigilante executions and beatings against LGBT individuals in Malaysia. The illegality of homosexuality in Malaysia has also been the forefront of Anwar Ibrahim's sodomy trials, which Anwar has called politically motivated, a characterization supported by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, along with Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch.\nThe death penalty is in use for serious crimes such as murder, terrorism, drug trafficking, and kidnapping, but in June 2022, Malaysian law minister Wan Junaidi pledged to abolish capital punishment and replace it with other punishments at the discretion of the court.\nGeography.\nMalaysia is the 66th largest country by total land area, with a total area of . It has land borders with Thailand in West Malaysia, and Indonesia and Brunei in East Malaysia. It is linked to Singapore by a narrow causeway and a bridge. The country also has maritime boundaries with Vietnam and the Philippines. The land borders are defined in large part by geological features such as the Perlis River, the Golok River and the Pagalayan Canal, whilst some of the maritime boundaries are the subject of ongoing contention. Brunei forms what is almost an enclave in Malaysia, with the state of Sarawak dividing it into two parts. Malaysia is the only country with territory on both the Asian mainland and the Malay archipelago. The Strait of Malacca, lying between Sumatra and Peninsular Malaysia, is one of the most important thoroughfares in global commerce, carrying 40 percent of the world's trade.\nThe two parts of Malaysia, separated from each other by the South China Sea, share a largely similar landscape in that both Peninsular and East Malaysia feature coastal plains rising to hills and mountains. Peninsular Malaysia, containing 40 per cent of Malaysia's land area, extends from north to south, and its maximum width is . It is divided between its east and west coasts by the Titiwangsa Mountains, rising to a peak elevation of at Mount Korbu, part of a series of mountain ranges running down the centre of the peninsula. These mountains are heavily forested, and mainly composed of granite and other igneous rocks. Much of it has been eroded, creating a karst landscape. The range is the origin of some of Peninsular Malaysia's river systems. The coastal plains surrounding the peninsula reach a maximum width of , and the peninsula's coastline is nearly long, although harbours are only available on the western side.\nEast Malaysia, on the island of Borneo, has a coastline of . It is divided between coastal regions, hills and valleys, and a mountainous interior. The Crocker Range extends northwards from Sarawak, dividing the state of Sabah. It is the location of the high Mount Kinabalu, the tallest mountain in Malaysia. Mount Kinabalu is located in the Kinabalu National Park, which is protected as one of the four UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Malaysia. The highest mountain ranges form the border between Malaysia and Indonesia. Sarawak contains the Mulu Caves, the largest cave system in the world, in the Gunung Mulu National Park which is also a World Heritage Site. The largest river in Malaysia is the Rajang.\nAround these two halves of Malaysia are numerous islands, the largest of which is Banggi. The local climate is equatorial and characterised by the annual southwest (April to October) and northeast (October to February) monsoons. The temperature is moderated by the presence of the surrounding oceans. Humidity is usually high, and the average annual rainfall is . The climates of the Peninsula and the East differ, as the climate on the peninsula is directly affected by wind from the mainland, as opposed to the more maritime weather of the East. Local climates can be divided into three regions, highland, lowland, and coastal. Climate change will cause sea level rise and increased rainfall, increasing flood risks and leading to droughts.\nBiodiversity and conservation.\nMalaysia signed the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity on 12 June 1993, and became a party to the convention on 24 June 1994. It has subsequently produced a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, which was received by the convention on 16 April 1998. The country is megadiverse with a high number of species and high levels of endemism. It is estimated to contain 20\u00a0per\u00a0cent of the world's animal species. High levels of endemism are found on the diverse forests of Borneo's mountains, as species are isolated from each other by lowland forest.\nThere are about 210 mammal species in the country. Over 620 species of birds have been recorded in Peninsular Malaysia, with many endemic to the mountains there. A high number of endemic bird species are also found in Malaysian Borneo. 250 reptile species have been recorded in the country, with about 150 species of snakes and 80 species of lizards. There are about 150 species of frogs, and thousands of insect species. The Exclusive economic zone of Malaysia is and 1.5 times larger than its land area. It is mainly in the South China Sea. Some of its waters are in the Coral Triangle, a biodiversity hotspot. The waters around Sipadan island are the most biodiverse in the world. Bordering East Malaysia, the Sulu Sea is a biodiversity hotspot, with around 600 coral species and 1200 fish species. The unique biodiversity of Malaysian Caves always attracts lovers of ecotourism from all over the world.\nNearly 4,000 species of fungi, including lichen-forming species have been recorded from Malaysia. Of the two fungal groups with the largest number of species in Malaysia, the Ascomycota and their asexual states have been surveyed in some habitats (decaying wood, marine, and freshwater ecosystems, as parasites of some plants, and as agents of biodegradation), but have not been or have been only poorly surveyed in other habitats (as endobionts, in soils, on dung, as human and animal pathogens); the Basidiomycota are only partly surveyed: bracket fungi, and mushrooms and toadstools have been studied, but Malaysian rust and smut fungi remain very poorly known. Without a doubt, many more fungal species in Malaysia are yet to be recorded, and it is likely that many of those, when found, will be new to science.\nAbout two\u00a0thirds of Malaysia was covered in forest as of 2007, with some forests believed to be 130\u00a0million years old. The forests are dominated by dipterocarps. Lowland forest covers areas below , and formerly East Malaysia was covered in such rainforest, which is supported by its hot wet climate. There are around 14,500 species of flowering plants and trees. Besides rainforests, there are over of mangroves in Malaysia, and a large amount of peat forest. At higher altitudes, oaks, chestnuts, and rhododendrons replace dipterocarps. There are an estimated 8,500 species of vascular plants in Peninsular Malaysia, with another 15,000 in the East. The forests of East Malaysia are estimated to be the habitat of around 2,000 tree species, and are one of the most biodiverse areas in the world, with 240 different species of trees every hectare. These forests host many members of the Rafflesia genus, the largest flowers in the world, with a maximum diameter of .\nLogging, along with cultivation practices, has devastated tree cover, causing severe environmental degradation in the country. Over 80\u00a0per\u00a0cent of Sarawak's rainforest has been logged. Floods in East Malaysia have been worsened by the loss of trees, and over 60\u00a0per\u00a0cent of the peninsula's forests have been cleared. With current rates of deforestation, mainly for the palm oil industry, the forests are predicted to be extinct by 2020. Deforestation is a major problem for animals, fungi and plants, having caused species such as \"Begonia eiromischa\" to go extinct. Most remaining forest is found inside reserves and national parks. Habitat destruction has proved a threat for marine life. Illegal fishing is another major threat, with fishing methods such as dynamite fishing and poisoning depleting marine ecosystems. Leatherback turtle numbers have dropped 98\u00a0per\u00a0cent since the 1950s. Hunting has also been an issue for some animals, with overconsumption and the use of animal parts for profit endangering many animals, from marine life to tigers. Marine life is also detrimentally affected by uncontrolled tourism.\nThe Malaysian government aims to balance economic growth with environmental protection, but has been accused of favouring big business over the environment. Some state governments are now trying to counter the environmental impact and pollution created by deforestation; and the federal government is trying to cut logging by 10\u00a0per\u00a0cent each year. A total of 28 national parks have been established, 23 in East Malaysia and five in the peninsula. Tourism has been limited in biodiverse areas such as Sipadan island. Wildlife trafficking is a large issue, and the Malaysian government has held talks with the governments of Brunei and Indonesia to standardise anti-trafficking laws.\nEconomy.\nMalaysia is a relatively open state-oriented and newly industrialised market economy. It has the world's 36th-largest economy by nominal GDP and the 31st-largest by PPP. In 2017, the large service sector contributed to 53.6% of total GDP, the industrial sector 37.6%, and the small agricultural sector roughly 8.8%. Malaysia has a low official unemployment rate of 3.4% as of 2024. Its foreign exchange reserves are the world's 24th-largest. It has a labour force of about 15 million, which is the world's 34th-largest. Malaysia's large automotive industry ranks as the world's 22nd-largest by production.\nMalaysia is the world's 23rd-largest exporter and 25th-largest importer. However, economic inequalities exist between different ethnic groups. The Chinese make up about one-quarter of the population, but account for 70 per cent of the country's market capitalisation. Chinese businesses in Malaysia are part of the larger bamboo network, a network of overseas Chinese businesses in the Southeast Asian market sharing common family and cultural ties.\nInternational trade, facilitated by the shipping route in adjacent Strait of Malacca, and manufacturing are the key sectors. Malaysia is an exporter of natural and agricultural resources, and petroleum is a major export. Malaysia has once been the largest producer of tin, rubber and palm oil in the world. Manufacturing has a large influence in the country's economy, although Malaysia's economic structure has been moving away from it. Malaysia remains one of the world's largest producers of palm oil.\nTourism is the third-largest contributor to Malaysia's GDP, after the manufacturing and commodities sectors. In 2019, the sector contributed about 15.9 percent to the total GDP. According to the World Tourism Organization, Malaysia was the fourteenth-most visited country in the world, and the fourth-most visited country in Asia in 2019, with over 26.1 million visits. Malaysia was ranked 38th in the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report 2019. Its international tourism receipts in 2019 amounted to $19.8 billion.\nThe country has developed into a centre of Islamic banking and has the highest number of female workers in that industry. Knowledge-based services are also expanding. In 2020, Malaysia exported high-tech products worth $92.1 billion, the second-highest in ASEAN, after Singapore. Malaysia was ranked 33rd in the Global Innovation Index in 2024, and 32nd in the Global Competitiveness Report in 2022.\nInfrastructure.\nRailway transport in Malaysia is state-run, and spans some . As of 2016[ [update]], Malaysia has the world's 26th-largest road network, with some of roads. Malaysia's inland waterways are the world's 22nd-longest, and total . Among Malaysia's 114 airports, among which the busiest is Kuala Lumpur International Airport located south of Kuala Lumpur in Sepang District, which is also the twelfth-busiest airport in Asia. Among the 7 federal ports, the major one is Port Klang, which is the thirteenth-busiest container port. Malaysia's flag carrier is Malaysia Airlines, providing international and domestic air services.\nMalaysia's telecommunications network is second only to Singapore's in Southeast Asia, with 4.7\u00a0million fixed-line subscribers and more than 30\u00a0million cellular subscribers. There are 200 industrial parks along with specialised parks such as Technology Park Malaysia and Kulim Hi-Tech Park. Fresh water is available to over 95% of the population, with ground water accounting for 90% of the freshwater resources. Although rural areas have been the focus of great development, they still lag behind areas such as the West Coast of Peninsular Malaysia. The telecommunication network, although strong in urban areas, is less available to the rural population.\nMalaysia's energy infrastructure sector is largely dominated by Tenaga Nasional, the largest electric utility company in Southeast Asia. Customers in Peninsular Malaysia are connected to electricity through the National Grid. The other two electric utility companies in the country are Sarawak Energy and Sabah Electricity. In 2013, Malaysia's total power generation capacity was over 29,728 megawatts. Total electricity generation was 140,985.01 GWh and total electricity consumption was 116,087.51 GWh. Energy production in Malaysia is largely based on oil and natural gas, owing to Malaysia's oil and natural gas reserves, which are the fourth largest in the Asia-Pacific region.\nDemographics.\nAccording to the Malaysian Department of Statistics, the country's population was 32,447,385 in 2020, making it the 42nd most populated country. According to a 2012 estimate, the population is increasing by 1.54 percent per year. Malaysia has an average population density of 96 people per km2, ranking it 116th in the world for population density. People within the 15\u201364 age group constitute 69.5 percent of the total population; the 0\u201314 age group corresponds to 24.5 percent; while senior citizens aged 65 years or older make up 6.0 percent. In 1960, when the first official census was recorded in Malaysia, the population was 8.11\u00a0million. 91.8 percent of the population are Malaysian citizens.\nMalaysian citizens are divided along local ethnic lines, with 69.7 percent considered \"bumiputera\". The largest group of bumiputera are Malays, who are defined in the constitution as Muslims who practise Malay customs and culture. They play a dominant role politically. Bumiputera status is also accorded to the non-Malay indigenous groups of Sabah and Sarawak: which includes Dayaks (Iban, Bidayuh, Orang Ulu), Kadazan-Dusun, Melanau, Bajau and others. Non-Malay bumiputeras make up more than half of Sarawak's population and over two-thirds of Sabah's population. There are also indigenous or aboriginal groups in much smaller numbers on the peninsular, where they are collectively known as the Orang Asli. Laws over who gets bumiputera status vary between states.\nThere are also two other non-Bumiputera local ethnic groups. 22.8 percent of the population are Malaysian Chinese, while 6.8 percent are Malaysian Indian. The local Chinese have historically been more dominant in the business community. Local Indians are mostly of Tamil descent. Malaysian citizenship is not automatically granted to those born in Malaysia, but is granted to a child born of two Malaysian parents outside Malaysia. Dual citizenship is not permitted. Citizenship in the states of Sabah and Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo are distinct from citizenship in Peninsular Malaysia for immigration purposes. Every citizen is issued a biometric smart chip identity card known as \"MyKad\" at the age of 12 and must carry the card at all times.\nThe population is concentrated on Peninsular Malaysia, where 20\u00a0million out of approximately 28\u00a0million Malaysians live. 70 per cent of the population is urban. Due to the rise in labour-intensive industries, the country is estimated to have over 3\u00a0million migrant workers; about 10 per cent of the population. Sabah-based NGOs estimate that out of the 3\u00a0million that make up the population of Sabah, 2\u00a0million are illegal immigrants. Malaysia hosts a population of refugees and asylum seekers numbering approximately 171,500. Of this population, approximately 79,000 are from Burma, 72,400 from the Philippines, and 17,700 from Indonesia. Malaysian officials are reported to have turned deportees directly over to human smugglers in 2007, and Malaysia employs RELA, a volunteer militia with a history of controversies, to enforce its immigration law.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nReligion.\nThe constitution grants freedom of religion, while establishing Islam as the \"religion of the Federation\". According to the Population and Housing Census 2020 figures, ethnicity and religious beliefs correlate highly. Approximately 63.5% of the population practise Islam, 18.7% practise Buddhism, 9.1% Christianity, 6.1% Hinduism and 1.3% practise Confucianism, Taoism and other traditional Chinese religions. 2.7% declared no religion or practised other religions or did not provide any information. The states of Sarawak, Penang and the federal territory of Kuala Lumpur have non-Muslim majorities.\nSunni Islam of the Shafi'i school of jurisprudence is the dominant branch of Islam in Malaysia, while 18% are nondenominational Muslims. The Malaysian constitution strictly defines what makes a \"Malay\", defining Malays as those who are Muslim, speak Malay regularly, practise Malay customs, and lived in or have ancestors from Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore. Statistics from the 2010 Census indicate that 83.6% of the Chinese population identify as Buddhist, with significant numbers of adherents following Taoism (3.4%) and Christianity (11.1%), along with small Muslim populations in areas like Penang. The majority of the Indian population follows Hinduism (86.2%), with a significant minority identifying as Christians (6.0%) or Muslims (4.1%). Christianity is the predominant religion of the non-Malay \"bumiputera\" community (46.5%), while 40.4% identify as Muslims.\nMuslims are obliged to follow the decisions of Syariah Courts (i.e. Shariah courts) in matters concerning their religion. The Islamic judges are expected to follow the Shafi'i legal school of Islam, which is the main \"madh'hab\" of Malaysia. The jurisdiction of Syariah courts is limited to Muslims in matters such as marriage, inheritance, divorce, apostasy, religious conversion, custody and limited Islamic criminal law. No other criminal or civil offences are under the jurisdiction of the Syariah courts, which have a similar hierarchy to the civil courts. The civil courts do not hear matters related to Islamic practices.\nLanguages.\nThe official and national language of Malaysia is Malaysian Malay, a standardised form of the Malay language. The previous official terminology was (lit.\u2009'Malaysian language') but now government policy uses (Malay language) to refer to the official language and both terms remain in use. The National Language Act 1967 specifies the Latin (Rumi) script as the official script of the national language, but does not prohibit the use of the traditional Jawi script.\nEnglish remains an active second language, with its use allowed for some official purposes under the National Language Act of 1967. In Sarawak, English is an official state language alongside Malay. Historically, English was the de facto administrative language; Malay became predominant after the 1969 race riots (13 May incident). Malaysian English, also known as Malaysian Standard English, is a form of English derived from British English. Malaysian English is widely used in business, along with Manglish, which is a colloquial form of English with heavy Malay, Chinese, and Tamil influences. The government discourages the use of non-standard Malay but has no power to issue compounds or fines to those who use what is perceived as improper Malay on their advertisements.\nMany other languages are used in Malaysia, which contains speakers of 137 living languages. Peninsular Malaysia contains speakers of 41 of these languages. The native tribes of East Malaysia have their own languages which are related to, but easily distinguishable from, Malay. Iban is the main tribal language in Sarawak while Dusunic and Kadazan languages are spoken by the natives in Sabah. Chinese Malaysians predominantly speak Chinese dialects from the southern part of China. The more common Chinese varieties in the country are Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, and so on. The Tamil language is used predominantly by the majority of Malaysian Indians. A small number of Malaysians have European ancestry and speak creole languages, such as the Portuguese-based Malaccan Creoles, and the Spanish-based Chavacano language.\nHealth.\nMalaysia operates an efficient and widespread two-tier healthcare system, consisting of a universal healthcare system and a co-existing private healthcare system; provided by highly subsidized healthcare through its extensive network of public hospitals and clinics. The Ministry of Health is the main provider of healthcare services to the country's population. Malaysia's healthcare system is considered to be among the most developed in Asia, which contributes to its thriving medical tourism industry.\nMalaysia spent 3.83% of its GDP on healthcare in 2019. In 2020, the overall life expectancy in Malaysia at birth was 76 years (74 years for males and 78 years for females), and it had an infant mortality rate of 7 deaths per 1000 births. Malaysia had a total fertility rate of 2.0 in 2020, which is just below the replacement level of 2.1. In 2020, the country's crude birth rate was 16 per 1000 people, and the crude death rate was 5 per 1000 people.\nIn 2021, the principal cause of death among Malaysian adults was coronary artery disease, representing 17% of the medically certified deaths in 2020\u2014being followed by pneumonia; which accounted for 11% of the deaths. Transport accidents are considered a major health hazard, as Malaysia, relative to its population, has one of the highest traffic fatality rates in the world. Smoking is also considered a major health issue across the country.\nEducation.\nThe education system of Malaysia features a non-compulsory kindergarten education followed by six years of compulsory primary education and five years of optional secondary education. Schools in the primary education system are divided into two categories: national primary schools, which teach in Malay (i.e.:Sekolah Kebangsaan Sungai Binjai, SK Bukit Tiu), and vernacular schools, which teach in Chinese or Tamil (i.e.:SJK(C) Pin Hwa 2, SJK(T) Bandar Mentakab). Secondary education (i.e.:SMK Sura, Kajang High School) is conducted for five years. In the final year of secondary education, students sit for the Malaysian Certificate of Education examination. Since the introduction of the matriculation programme in 1999, students who completed the 12-month programme in matriculation colleges can enroll in local universities. However, in the matriculation system, only 10 percent of places are open to non-\"bumiputera\" students.\nCulture.\nMalaysia has a multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multilingual society. Substantial influence exists from Chinese and Indian culture, dating back to when foreign trade began. Other cultural influences include the Persian, Arabic, and British cultures. Due to the structure of the government, coupled with the social contract theory, there has been minimal cultural assimilation of ethnic minorities. Some cultural disputes exist between Malaysia and neighbouring countries, notably Indonesia.\nIn 1971, the government created a \"National Cultural Policy\", defining Malaysian culture. It stated that Malaysian culture must be based on the culture of the indigenous peoples of Malaysia, that it may incorporate suitable elements from other cultures, and that Islam must play a part in it. It also promoted the Malay language above others. This government intervention into culture has caused resentment among non-Malays who feel their cultural freedom was lessened. Both Chinese and Indian associations have submitted memorandums to the government, accusing it of formulating an undemocratic culture policy.\nFine arts.\nTraditional Malaysian art was mainly centred on the areas of carving, weaving, and silversmithing. Traditional art ranges from handwoven baskets from rural areas to the silverwork of the Malay courts. Common artworks included ornamental kris, beetle nut sets, and woven batik and songket fabrics. Indigenous East Malaysians are known for their wooden masks. Each ethnic group have distinct performing arts, with little overlap between them. However, Malay art does show some North Indian influence due to the historical influence of India.\nTraditional Malay music and performing arts appear to have originated in the Kelantan-Pattani region with influences from India, China, Thailand, and Indonesia. The music is based around percussion instruments, the most important of which is the gendang (drum). There are at least 14 types of traditional drums. Drums and other traditional percussion instruments and are often made from natural materials. Music is traditionally used for storytelling, celebrating life-cycle events, and occasions such as a harvest. It was once used as a form of long-distance communication. In East Malaysia, gong-based musical ensembles such as agung and kulintang are commonly used in ceremonies such as funerals and weddings. These ensembles are also common in neighbouring regions such as in Mindanao in the Philippines, Kalimantan in Indonesia and Brunei.\nMalaysia has a strong oral tradition that has existed since before the arrival of writing and continues today. Each of the Malay Sultanates created their own literary tradition, influenced by pre-existing oral stories and by the stories that came with Islam. The first Malay literature was in the Arabic script. The earliest known Malay writing is on the Terengganu stone, made in 1303. Chinese and Indian literature became common as the number of speakers increased in Malaysia, and locally produced works based on languages from those areas began to be produced in the 19th century. English has also become a common literary language. In 1971, the government took the step of defining the literature of different languages. Literature written in Malay was called \"the national literature of Malaysia\", literature in other \"bumiputera\" languages was called \"regional literature\", while literature in other languages was called \"sectional literature\". Malay poetry is highly developed, and uses many forms. The \"Hikayat\" form is popular, and the \"pantun\" has spread from Malay to other languages.\nCuisine.\nMalaysia's cuisine reflects the multi-ethnic makeup of its population. Many cultures from within the country and from surrounding regions have greatly influenced the cuisine. Much of the influence comes from the Malay, Chinese, Indian, Thai, Javanese, and Sumatran cultures, largely due to the country being part of the ancient spice route. The cuisine is very similar to that of Singapore and Brunei, and also bears resemblance to Filipino cuisine. The different states have varied dishes, and often the food in Malaysia is different from the original dishes.\nSometimes food not found in its original culture is assimilated into another; for example, Chinese restaurants in Malaysia often serve Malay dishes. Food from one culture is sometimes also cooked using styles taken from another culture, For example, \"sambal belacan\" (shrimp paste) are commonly used as ingredients by Chinese restaurants to create the stir fried water spinach (\"kangkung belacan\"). This means that although much of Malaysian food can be traced back to a certain culture, they have their own identity. Rice is a staple food and an important constituent of the country's culture. Chili is commonly found in local cuisine, although this does not necessarily make them spicy.\nMedia.\nMalaysia's main newspapers are owned by the government and political parties in the ruling coalition, although some major opposition parties also have their own, which are openly sold alongside regular newspapers. A divide exists between the media in the two halves of the country. Peninsular-based media gives a low priority to news from the East and often treats the eastern states as colonies of the peninsula. As a result of this, the East Malaysia region of Sarawak launched TV Sarawak as internet streaming beginning in 2014, and as TV station on 10 October 2020 to overcome the low priority and coverage of Peninsular-based media and to solidify the representation of East Malaysia. The media have been blamed for increasing tension between Indonesia and Malaysia, and giving Malaysians a bad image of Indonesians. The country has Malay, English, Chinese, and Tamil daily newspapers. Kadazandusun and Bajau news are available only via TV broadcast Berita RTM. Written Kadazan news was once included in publications such as The Borneo Post, the Borneo Mail, the Daily Express, and the New Sabah Times, but publication has ceased with the newspaper or as a section.\nFreedom of the press is limited, with numerous restrictions on publishing rights and information dissemination. The government has previously tried to crack down on opposition papers before elections. In 2007, a government agency issued a directive to all private television and radio stations to refrain from broadcasting speeches made by opposition leaders, a move condemned by politicians from the opposition Democratic Action Party. Sabah, where all tabloids but one are independent of government control, has the freest press in Malaysia. Laws such as the Printing Presses and Publications Act have also been cited as curtailing freedom of expression.\nHolidays and festivals.\nMalaysians observe several holidays and festivities throughout the year. Some are federally gazetted public holidays and some are observed by individual states. Other festivals are observed by particular ethnic or religious groups, and the main holiday of each major group has been declared a public holiday. The most observed national holiday is \"Hari Merdeka\" (Independence Day) on 31 August, commemorating the independence of the Federation of Malaya in 1957. Malaysia Day on 16 September commemorates federation in 1963. Other notable national holidays are Labour Day (1 May) and the King's birthday (first week of June).\nMuslim holidays are prominent as Islam is the state religion; \"Hari Raya Puasa\" (also called \"Hari Raya Aidilfitri\", Malay for Eid al-Fitr), \"Hari Raya Haji\" (also called \"Hari Raya Aidiladha\", Malay for Eid al-Adha), \"Maulidur Rasul\" (birthday of the Prophet), and others being observed. Malaysian Chinese celebrate festivals such as Chinese New Year and others relating to traditional Chinese beliefs. Wesak Day is observed and celebrated by Buddhists. Hindus in Malaysia celebrate \"Deepavali\", the festival of lights, while \"Thaipusam\" is a religious rite which sees pilgrims from all over the country converge at the Batu Caves. Malaysia's Christian community celebrates most of the holidays observed by Christians elsewhere, most notably Christmas and Easter. In addition to this, the Dayak community in Sarawak celebrate a harvest festival known as \"Gawai\", and the Kadazandusun community celebrate \"Kaamatan\". Despite most festivals being identified with a particular ethnic or religious group, celebrations are universal. In a custom known as \"open house\" Malaysians participate in the celebrations of others, often visiting the houses of those who identify with the festival.\nSports.\nPopular sports in Malaysia include association football, badminton, field hockey, bowls, tennis, squash, martial arts, horse riding, sailing, and skate boarding. Football is the most popular sport in Malaysia. Badminton matches also attract thousands of spectators, and since 1948 Malaysia has been one of four countries to hold the Thomas Cup, the world team championship trophy of men's badminton. The Malaysian Lawn Bowls Federation was registered in 1997. Squash was brought to the country by members of the British army, with the first competition being held in 1939. The Squash Racquets Association of Malaysia was created on 25 June 1972. The men's national field hockey team ranked 10th in the world as of June\u00a02022[ [update]]. The 3rd Hockey World Cup was hosted at Merdeka Stadium in Kuala Lumpur, as well as the 10th cup. The country also has its own Formula One track \u2013 the Sepang International Circuit, with the first Malaysian Grand Prix held in 1999. Traditional sports include Silat Melayu, the most common style of martial arts practised by ethnic Malays.\nThe Federation of Malaya Olympic Council was formed in 1953, and received recognition by the IOC in 1954. It first participated in the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games. The council was renamed the Olympic Council of Malaysia in 1964, and has participated in all but one Olympic games since its inception. The largest number of athletes ever sent to the Olympics was 57 to the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Besides the Olympic Games, Malaysia also participates in the Paralympic Games. Malaysia has competed at the Commonwealth Games since 1950 as Malaya, and 1966 as Malaysia, and the games were hosted in Kuala Lumpur in 1998.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["30257876", "3607937"], "permutation_1": ["30257876", "3607937"], "permutation_2": ["3607937", "30257876"], "permutation_3": ["30257876", "3607937"]}
{"id": "2hop__141869_135045", "docs_added": {"473752": "Sophie Ellis-Bextor\nBritish singer (born 1979)\nSophie Michelle Ellis-Bextor (born 10 April 1979) is an English singer and songwriter. She first came to prominence in the late 1990s as the lead vocalist of the indie rock band Theaudience. After the group disbanded, Ellis-Bextor went solo and achieved success beginning in the early 2000s. Her music is mainstream pop and dance with influences of disco, nu-disco, and 1980s electronic music.\nIn 2000, Ellis-Bextor collaborated with Italian DJ Spiller on \"Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)\", which reached number one in the United Kingdom and in 2015 became the UK's biggest-selling vinyl single of the millennium so far. Her debut solo studio album, \"Read My Lips\", was released in 2001 and peaked at number two on the UK Albums Chart. It was certified double platinum by the BPI, and sold 1.5 million copies worldwide. Three of its four singles\u2014the Cher cover \"Take Me Home\", \"Murder on the Dancefloor\", and double A-side \"Get Over You\" / \"Move This Mountain\"\u2014reached top three in the UK. Its follow-up \"Shoot from the Hip\" (2003) reached number 19 in the UK and spawned two top ten singles, \"Mixed Up World\" and \"I Won't Change You\".\nEllis-Bextor's third studio album, \"Trip the Light Fantastic\" (2007), peaked at number seven in the UK and its lead single \"Catch You\" reached the top ten. Her fourth studio album, \"Make a Scene\" (2011), and its third single \"Bittersweet\" achieved top 40 positions in the UK. Her fifth studio album, \"Wanderlust\" (2014), peaked at number four. In 2016, she released a Latin-inspired sixth studio album, \"Familia\", to critical acclaim.\nEarly life.\nSophie Michelle Ellis-Bextor was born on 10 April 1979 in Hounslow, London to Janet Ellis, who was a presenter on BBC's children's television programmes \"Blue Peter\" and \"Jigsaw\", and Robin Bextor, a film producer and director. They separated when she was four. As a child, Ellis-Bextor occasionally appeared on \"Blue Peter\" alongside her mother, who co-presented the programme.\nShe attended St Stephen's School, Twickenham and later the independent Godolphin and Latymer School in Hammersmith. Among her earliest public performances were some with the W11 Opera children's opera beginning at age 13, and she is now a patron of the organisation.\nEllis-Bextor has said, \"I didn't see myself as a good-looking girl and that was good, because I didn't rely on it.(...) I've now found lots of like-minded weirdos, so it's OK.\"\nCareer.\n1996\u20131999: Theaudience.\nEllis-Bextor began her professional musical career in 1996 while singing lead vocals in indie band Theaudience. The band released four singles, including the UK Top 40 hits \"I Know Enough (I Don't Get Enough)\" and \"A Pessimist Is Never Disappointed\", and one self-titled album (\"theaudience\" (1998)). Videos for the band's singles were directed by her father, Robin Bextor. While in Theaudience, readers of \"Melody Maker\" voted Ellis-Bextor number five in a poll of 'most sexy people in rock'.\nThe band split in 1999 after demos for a planned second album were rejected by their label Mercury Records, who then dropped the band. Ellis-Bextor recorded a duet with Manic Street Preachers \u2014 \"Black Holes for the Young\" \u2014 as a B-side for their 1998 single \"The Everlasting\", and in 1999, made an appearance on the Departure Lounge album \"Out of Here\".\n2000\u20132006: \"Read My Lips\" and \"Shoot from the Hip\".\nAfter Theaudience split, Ellis-Bextor collaborated with Italian DJ Spiller, in 2000, adding vocals to his track \"Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)\". It entered the UK charts at number one, just beating former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham on her first solo track. \"Groovejet\" won several awards: No.\u00a01, Pop Top\u00a020; No.\u00a01, ILR; No.\u00a01, Radio\u00a01; No.\u00a08, top dance track of 2000 and single of the year in \"Melody Maker\". In the \"Metro\" newspaper, it received ninth place in the contest for the Greatest No.\u00a01 of all time. In 2000, it was a finalist in \"The Record of the Year\". In that same year, it won the awards for Best Single and Best Ibiza Tune at the Ericsson Muzik Awards.\nIn 2001, Ellis-Bextor released her d\u00e9but album, \"Read My Lips\". It reached number two on the UK charts and spawned four top-twenty hit singles. Her rework of Cher's \"Take Me Home\" reached number two, as did \"Murder on the Dancefloor\", which became Ellis-Bextor's biggest single and was on charts for twenty-three weeks. \"Murder on the Dancefloor\" became Europe's most played song of 2002. In 2002, \"Read My Lips\" was re-released with two new songs (and a live version of \"Groovejet\") and Ellis-Bextor won the Recording Artist Award at that year's Showbusiness Awards. Her third single, \"Get Over You / Move This Mountain\", was released in June 2002 and reached number three. The fourth single, \"Music Gets the Best of Me\", rose to number fourteen in December. At the beginning of 2002, Ellis-Bextor was nominated for the \"British Female Solo Artist\" BRIT Award, going on to be nominated for a further two consecutive years.\nHer second album, \"Shoot from the Hip\", was released in October 2003 and yielded two further top-ten singles, \"Mixed Up World\" and \"I Won't Change You\". The album reached number 19 on the UK charts and was certified silver by the BPI for shipments of 60,000. Ellis-Bextor described the album as \"more emotionally direct\" and \"a little more left-of-centre at times\" than \"Read My Lips\"\u2014\"It has more of a live feel [...] It's still a pop album\u2014with elements of disco, indie and rock.\" She opted to step back from promotion of the album after becoming pregnant.\nIn 2005, Ellis-Bextor was featured on the Busface single \"Circles (Just My Good Time)\" under the alias Mademoiselle E.B.\n2007\u20132011: \"Trip the Light Fantastic\" and \"Make a Scene\".\n\"Trip the Light Fantastic\", Ellis-Bextor's third album, was released in May 2007 and reached number seven in the UK. The album produced three singles: \"Catch You\" (number 8 in the UK), \"Me and My Imagination\" (number 23), and \"Today the Sun's on Us\" (number 64). The song \"If I Can't Dance\" was announced as a single but later retracted.\nEllis-Bextor supported George Michael on his UK tour leg in June 2007. Her own UK tour, the Trip the Light Fantastic Tour, was due to start in August 2007, but it was postponed after Ellis-Bextor was invited to be the \"special guest\" on Take That's Beautiful World Tour, which commenced in October 2007. She stated that her tour would be rescheduled for March 2008, with all tickets purchased being valid for the rescheduled concerts. The tour was never rescheduled and Ellis-Bextor has refused to discuss the issue in interviews. In October 2008, she sang at the Keep the Promise Rally in Trafalgar Square to end Child Poverty.\nIn June 2009, Ellis-Bextor was featured on the Freemasons single \"Heartbreak (Make Me a Dancer)\", which reached number 13 in the UK. In July, she performed alongside girl groups the Saturdays and Girls Can't Catch at the iTunes Festival, held at the Roundhouse in London. A recording of her performance was released, \"\", which was the singer's first extended play. \"Bittersweet\" (co-written by Freemasons and Hannah Robinson), the first single from Ellis-Bextor's fourth album, was released in May 2010 and reached 25 on the UK Singles Chart. Ellis-Bextor's collaboration with DJ Armin van Buuren, \"Not Giving Up on Love\", was released as a single in August 2010 in Europe. Also in 2010, she was featured on the Junior Caldera single \"Can't Fight This Feeling\".\nThe singer's fourth album, \"Make a Scene\", was released in June 2011 following a year-long delay during which she left her label Universal Music Group to establish her own label, EBGBs. She said that her decision to leave Universal was spurred on by the departure of the head of Fascination Records, the sub-label to which she was signed following the release of \"Bittersweet\". She described \"Make a Scene\" as \"very much [a dance album]\u2014more so than any of my other albums.\" She said she was planning an \"album that's really different [...] but I think this album [\"Make a Scene\"] is a good way to bow out of the dance sound for now. I think it's finishing on a high.\" She supported Pet Shop Boys on the UK leg of their Pandemonium Tour in July 2010. She worked with Calvin Harris, Richard X, Dimitri Tikovoi, Hannah Robinson, Metronomy, and Liam Howe from the Sneaker Pimps. \"Off & On\" preceded the release of the album in continental Europe and Russia, where the album was released by Universal Music Russia. The single \"Starlight\" was released in the UK ahead of the album in May 2011.\nEllis-Bextor supported synth-pop band Erasure on their Total Pop! Forest tour of woodland locations in the UK in June 2011. She resumed touring internationally in 2011, playing venues such as Jakarta's SoulNation festival, as well as returning to Australia by performing in Sydney and Melbourne. She collaborated with French DJ Bob Sinclar on a track titled \"F__ with You\" (released in November 2011); it was included on his album \"Disco Crash\" and was a huge club hit in Continental Europe. Ellis-Bextor's collaboration with French DJ Mathieu Bouthier, \"Beautiful\", was released in July 2012 in France.\n2012\u20132014: \"Wanderlust\" and collaborations.\nIn May 2011, she revealed that she had begun work on her fifth album. Beginning in 2012, Ellis-Bextor worked with British singer and producer Ed Harcourt on a \"more concept driven record\", and possibly having as few as eight tracks. Her performance at a London charity gala in November 2012 including a new song, \"Young Blood\"; a demo of the song was released in March 2013 as a complimentary digital download from her website, as a thank you gift to her fans. Also in 2013, she performed outdoors at Old Republic Square in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Ellis-Bextor confirmed completion of the album in May and revealed its title, \"Wanderlust\", and cover art in October.\n\"Young Blood\" was released as the lead single from \"Wanderlust\" in November 2013, peaking at number three on the UK Indie Chart and at number 34 on the UK Singles Chart. The album was released in January 2014 and peaked at number four on the UK Albums Chart and at number one on the UK Independent Albums Chart. \"Wanderlust\" also debuted inside the Scottish Top 10 Albums Chart. Ellis-Bextor performed a headline sold-out show to support \"Wanderlust\"'s release in January 2014 at Bush Hall, London, and also performed at Union Chapel, London in April. Ellis-Bextor then announced a 10-date UK tour, which finished in Glasgow in April 2014.\nEllis-Bextor collaborated with Gu\u00e9na LG and Amir Afargan on the track \"Back 2 Paradise\", which was released in June 2014. The single was the number-one \"breakout\" in October 2014 on the US \"Billboard\" Dance/Club Chart, later reaching number 25 on the Dance/Club Chart. Ellis-Bextor then featured on the song \"Only Child\", produced by electronic music project DedRekoning, which was released in September 2014. The track was remixed by Paul Oakenfold, Roddy Reynaert and Pearson and Hirst.\n2015\u20132019: \"Familia\" and \"The Song Diaries\".\nIn January 2015, Ellis-Bextor said that she had begun working on her sixth studio album, once again with Ed Harcourt. In January 2016, Ellis-Bextor posted an image on Instagram captioned \"Last song written. Next stop \u2013 rehearsals! \"#album6 #whatthehellshouldicallit\".\" She also posted a YouTube video of the making of the album.\nAccording to Ellis-Bextor, the album, titled \"Familia\", was inspired by a recent visit to North America, particularly Mexico. \"Familia\" is the Spanish word for \"family\" (a tattoo Ellis-Bextor wears in her arm since her first child's birth) and Ellis-Bextor described the album's sound as closer to that of her earlier albums. She explained that she \"wanted something with a Spanish or Italian feel\" and that it continued some stories from \"Wanderlust\". \"Familia\" was released in September 2016 and reached number 12 on the UK Albums Chart. It spawned four singles, but none of them made it into any major chart. After taking time off for the birth of her child in late 2015, she resumed touring in 2017, mostly at small venues in the UK.\nIn November 2017, she announced via Facebook a selection of her greatest hits reworked with an orchestra. In February 2018, she announced the album's title, \"The Song Diaries\", and pointed out that it would consist of re-recorded tracks spanning her career from theaudience to \"Familia\"'s \"Wild Forever\", plus a new track. The album's artwork was drawn by David Downtown. \"The Song Diaries\" first single \"Love Is You\", a disco track originally performed by Carol Williams, which is sampled on her early hit \"Groovejet\", was released in August 2018. \"The Song Diaries\" was released in March 2019 and peaked at number 14 in the UK.\n2020\u20132023: \"Songs from the Kitchen Disco\".\nIn 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in the UK, Ellis-Bextor performed live weekly \"Kitchen Disco\" concerts featuring herself and her family, streamed live from their kitchen on Instagram. Beginning 24 June 2020, Ellis-Bextor started a weekly podcast titled \"Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor\" on which she interviews working mothers. Guests have included Fearne Cotton, Caitlin Moran, Myleene Klass, R\u00f3isin Murphy, and her own mother Janet Ellis.\nOn 16 July 2020, Ellis-Bextor announced the greatest hits album \"Songs from the Kitchen Disco\". The album was preceded by the release of a single, \"Crying at the Discoteque\", a cover version of the Alcazar song, which she had performed during her lockdown concerts in September 2020. She performed the single on \"The Graham Norton Show\" on New Year's Eve. In March 2022, she embarked on her \"Songs from the Kitchen Disco\" tour of the U.K. In July 2022, the singer revealed a new single, \"Hypnotized\", a collaboration with electronic artist Wuh Oh. \nA live album was released in November 2022 entitled \"Kitchen Disco \u2013 Live at the London Palladium\".\n2023\u2013present: \"Hana\", resurgence, and eighth album.\nIn January 2023, Ellis-Bextor collaborated with Japanese/Australian duo Rhyme So on a cover of the Malcolm McLaren track \"Deep in Vogue\". On 8 February 2023, Ellis-Bextor revealed a new track, \"Breaking the Circle\", the lead single from her seventh studio album, \"Hana\", which was released on 2 June 2023. The title of the album was taken from the Japanese word for \"blossom\" or \"flower\". Ellis-Bextor said the album was inspired by a trip to Japan, taken before the COVID-19 pandemic began. Ellis-Bextor said of the album: \"Because I hadn't been before, I had lots of ideas about what [Japan] might be like. The [album's] soundscape is like someone's idea of what a place might be like before they get there. That trip also became significant in a wider sense because it was the last bit of travel I did before everything shut down.\" \"Hana\" marks the third collaboration with producer/musician Ed Harcourt. Ellis-Bextor said \"There are themes of optimism, new starts, adventures and reflections...This is our third record together after Wanderlust and Familia. The first songs written were really inspired by the upcoming trip to Japan. In the end, the album ended up being inspired by that trip and so much more.\"\nIn June 2023, Ellis-Bextor appeared on \"Grilled!\", a podcast by the Staff Canteen, where she was interviewed by Aaron Middleton and the Staff Canteen's Cara Houchen. During the podcast, Ellis-Bextor discussed her book, her favourite London restaurants, and the similarities between music and food. In July 2023, it was announced that Ellis-Bextor will collaborate with film composer David Arnold and lyricist Don Black for the track to Channel 4 and Universal Pictures film, \"Mog's Christmas\", based upon the children's book series by Judith Kerr. The track, titled \"As Long As I Belong\", is about \"the importance of belonging\". Ellis-Bextor also collaborated with Robbie Williams and his electronic music project 'Lufthaus' on the track \"Immortal\", which is taken off of the group's debut album, \"\"Visions, Volume 1\".\" The album was released on 6 October 2023.\nEllis-Bextor's \"Murder on the Dancefloor\" was featured in the last scene of the 2023 film \"Saltburn\". As a result, the song re-entered the UK singles chart, peaking at number two and garnered its most-ever global streams on Spotify, receiving more than 1.4 million streams on New Year's Eve. It also gave Ellis-Bextor her first ever US singles chart entry, reaching #51. As well as this, 2024 became Ellis-Bextor's most successful year in terms of performances, playing more shows than she had ever before \u2013 a total of 110 in the calendar year.\nOn 1 February 2024, it was revealed that Ellis-Bextor will be performing at \"Valley Fest 2024\" in Chew Magna in August 2024. The same month, Ellis-Bextor announced her first-ever North American headlining tour, scheduled for May and June 2024. The initial seven-date tour included stops in San Francisco, San Diego, Washington D.C., Boston, Philadelphia, New York City, and Toronto. In June 2024, she announced a second North American tour leg for September given the first leg's success, adding shows in Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver.\nFollowing the resurgence of \"Murder on the Dancefloor\", Ellis-Bextor reportedly signed with Universal Music Group and began working on her eighth studio album. Her first major-label single in 14 years, \"Freedom of the Night\", was released under Decca Records on October 18, 2024. On 25 October 2024, it was announced that Ellis-Bextor's forthcoming eighth studio album would be released in the summer of 2025. She released the single \"Relentless Love\u201d on 28 March 2025.\nOther projects.\nIn 2001 Ellis-Bextor auditioned for the 2001 film \"Moulin Rouge!\" for the character Satine. In 2007, she appeared at Christmas in the \"Robbie the Reindeer\" episode \"Close Encounters of the Herd Kind\". She was depicted as a female alien at the closure of the story singing the song \"Supersonic\", the last track on her third solo studio album \"Trip the Light Fantastic\". In November of the same year, she also launched the npower Greener Schools Programme, which aims to give schools in the UK a \"green makeover\" by providing free energy audits, implementing tailor-made energy efficiency measures to reduce their carbon footprint, and educating children on how to be greener. She launched Capital Radio's Capital 95.8 \"Lights Out London\" campaign, which asks Londoners to switch off their lights for one hour in a bid to save 750 MWh and send a message to the world on the importance of climate change.\nIn 2008 she featured in the short musical film \"The Town that Boars Me\" by photographer Ben Charles Edwards. The film also features Jodie Harsh, Kelly Osbourne and Zandra Rhodes. The film was produced by Glass Loves and Shoot to Kill Productions and was set to d\u00e9but at the Portobello Film Festival. The same year she fronted a campaign for The Children's Society encouraging people to log onto the \"Hundreds and Thousands of Childhood Memories\" website to donate their favourite childhood memory. In May 2008 she was hired by cosmetics brand Rimmel to be one of their new faces. A song of hers, \"Sophia Loren\", was featured in one of the Rimmel London television adverts for the line \"Sexy Curves\". She appeared as an advocate for Verdi on BBC World News classical music programme \"Visionaries\". She was a contestant in the eleventh series of the televised dance competition \"Strictly Come Dancing\" in late 2013. She was partnered with Brendan Cole and reached the final, placing fourth.\nIn September 2014 the Pretty Polly hosiery company announced that Ellis-Bextor was their latest \"face and legs\", and would be designing and modelling for them. In March 2019 Ellis-Bextor appeared as an extra in \"Game of Thrones\", Season 8, Episode 3 \"The Long Night\". In July 2020 she started a podcast called \"Spinning Plates\" which focuses on mothers and their careers. In the same year she competed in the second series of \"The Masked Singer\" as Alien. She was the first celebrity to be unmasked.\nIn 2021, Ellis-Bextor wrote the memoir \"Music, Men, Motherhood and Me\".\nIt was announced in October 2021 that she would make an appearance in the Australian soap opera \"Neighbours\" in 2022, during a storyline set in London. On the morning of 16 November 2021 Ellis-Bextor embarked upon a 24-hour \"Kitchen Disco Danceathon\", in aid of Children in Need. She raised over \u00a31,000,000 for the cause. In December 2022, Ellis-Bextor partnered with Vodafone to unveil its Pro II Broadband during a special Christmas concert in London.\nIn October 2023 Ellis-Bextor was a guest celebrity judge in the episode \"Club Bangers\" of the British reality television series \"RuPaul's Drag Race UK\" broadcast on BBC Three.\nOn 3 August 2024, Ellis-Bextor opened the set for Brighton Pride's Fabuloso concert in Preston Park. She played a number of her hits including \"Take Me Home\", \"Murder on the Dancefloor\" and \"Get Over You\".\nPersonal life.\nEllis-Bextor met her future husband, the Feeling bassist Richard Jones, when he auditioned for her tour band in 2002. Jones has said, \"Something kind of smacked us in the face. The chemistry was incredible\u2014it was like nothing I've ever experienced.\" Their first child was born two months early, only eight months after the start of their relationship. Fourteen months later, in 2005, the couple married. They have five children, all sons.\nEllis-Bextor suffered from pre-eclampsia (the onset of high blood pressure) during her first two pregnancies, resulting in both deliveries being premature. She is an ambassador for Borne, a medical research charity looking into the causes of premature birth. She is also an ambassador for the children's charity Lumos which promotes an end to the institutionalisation of children worldwide.\nIn the 2019 European Parliament election, Ellis-Bextor endorsed Change UK. Her father, Robin Bextor, was a candidate for the South East Region. \nDiscography.\nStudio albums\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "5882395": "Catch You\n2007 single by Sophie Ellis-Bextor\n\"Catch You\" is a song by the British recording artist Sophie Ellis-Bextor for her third album, \"Trip the Light Fantastic\" (2007). It was written by Cathy Dennis, Rhys Barker and Greg Kurstin and produced by Kurstin. It was released as the album's first single on 19 February 2007. \"Catch You\" is a pop rock song and talks about Bextor chasing the guy that she wants.\nIt received mostly positive reviews from music critics, who commended the infusion of rock guitars and electronic beats, while calling it a strident and very good song. A music video was directed by Sophie Muller and it shows Sophie chasing a guy in Venice. The song performed moderately on the charts, reaching number 8 on the UK Singles Chart, peaking inside the top twenty on the Italian and Russian Singles Chart and inside the top fifty on the other countries.\nBackground and composition.\nThe single was first announced on New Year's Eve 2006, where Ellis-Bextor performed the song on the BBC's \"New Year Live\" show. \"Catch You\" was written by Cathy Dennis and co-written by Greg Kurstin and Rhys Barker and produced by Greg Kurstin. It is a pop rock song and combines guitars, zingy keyboards, nu wave angular guitars with a nagging pop melody. The lyrics concern Sophie possibly bugging various parts of her love interest's flat (mailbox, \"easy chair\", flatscreen), in the hope that she will \"catch him\".\nCritical reception.\nK. Ross Hoffman of Allmusic commented, \"She sounds dramatically reinvigorated here, with a notable infusion of rock guitars and often a forceful, even menacing, electro edge to the productions, evident right out the gate in this strident, barnstorming first single.\" Nick Levine of Digital Spy called it \"a turbo-charged stalker-pop.\" Emily MacKay of Yahoo! Music called it \"a merciless first strike, a crisp, laser-cut, feather-light puff of dance-floor ephemera sprinkled with disco 'pow!'s, its '70s synth-Chinoiserie chorus given an icy aloofness by Sophie's plummy delivery.\" Stuart Waterman of Popjustice commented: \"It is both a very good song and an excellent advertisement for romantic lunacy. It sounds not unlike what would happen if the Sugababes kidnapped Avril Lavigne and bullied her into playing guitar on one of their more 'upbeat' numbers.\"\nTalia Kraines of BBC Music wrote that the song \"gave us a grittier Sophie.\" Stuart McCaighy of This Is Fake DIY gave the song a mixed review, commenting \"It was perhaps a touch one-dimensional, too 'of the moment' for a lead single; its chorus dragged rather than ignited.\" However, Kitty Empire of The Observer expressed: \"It's a rubberised stab of bunny-boiler club-pop, which deserved to chart higher than number 8.\"\nChart performance.\nWhen the song was released, its immediate competition included Kelis's single \"Lil Star\", The Fray's \"How to Save a Life\", Take That's \"Shine\", Justin Timberlake's \"What Goes Around... Comes Around\" and Mika's \"Grace Kelly\". \"Catch You\" peaked at No. 8 on the UK Singles Chart. The single also peaked at No. 33 on the ARIA Singles Chart and at No. 7 on the ARIA Dance Chart. The song also reached the B-list of Radio 1's official playlist and the A-list of BBC Radio 2's official playlist. The song stayed in the UK Top 40 for two months and went to sell 148,000 copies.\nMusic video.\nThe music video was subsequently filmed in Venice by Sophie Muller, and was released on 13 January 2007. The video has been compared to the movie \"Don't Look Now\".\nTrack listings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCredits and personnel.\nCredits are adapted from the liner notes of \"Trip the Light Fantastic\".\nStudio\nPersonnel\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "71400052": "Catch Me in the Air\n\"Catch Me in the Air\" is a song by Japanese singer Rina Sawayama from her second studio album, \"Hold the Girl\" (2022). It was released through Dirty Hit on 27 June 2022 as the second single from the album.\nBackground and release.\n\"Catch Me in the Air\" was debuted at SWG3 in Glasgow, Scotland in November 2021 during Sawayama's debut album tour as a teaser for her yet-to-be-announced second album. \nThe album, \"Hold the Girl\", was announced in May 2022, with a release date of 2 September 2022. The lead single, \"This Hell\", was followed by \"Catch Me in the Air\" in June 2022. In an interview with Zane Lowe, Sawayama noted that \"Catch Me in the Air\" was inspired by the music of Gwen Stefani.\nComposition.\n\"Catch Me in the Air\" is a \"light and frothy\" pop-rock song with a chorus that was described as having a \"bouncy melody\". The aforementioned chorus faces a key change, added for a \"lifting\" effect. The song is a tribute to her mother, who raised Sawayama as a single parent. It was written during the pandemic.\nWhen Sawayama debuted the song during the Sawayama tour at Glasgow's SWG3, she told the crowd: \u201cI wrote this song because, in these unprecedented times, I am touring my first record at the same time as finishing my second record. I thought that the first record was really personal \u2013 and it was \u2013 but this new record is even more personal. This song, I wrote it about my mum, who is a single mum. You know how intense that relationship is \u2013 they feel like a sister or a brother. I felt throughout my life that my mum and I have caught each other when we\u2019re falling.\u201d \nCritical reception.\nTyler Golsen of \"Far Out\" gave \"Catch Me in the Air\" a score of six out of ten, noting that the track was not \"up to the genre-bending peaks that Sawayama is normally capable of\", though he noted that the song was difficult \"not to enjoy\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "23256249": "Gonna Catch You\n\"Gonna Catch You\" is a song by American Hi-NRG singer Lonnie Gordon, written and produced by Italian group Black Box. First released around Europe in April 1991, it became the singer's second top 40 hit in the UK. It would also be Gordon's last release with her UK label, Supreme Records, which folded soon after. Months later, the single was featured in the 1991 film \"Cool as Ice\". SBK Records signed Gordon and released the single in the US, making it her debut solo single in her homeland. It became the first of three number one dance singles in a row for Gordon in the US. The single also made the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, peaking at #79, and was Gordon's only hit on the soul singles chart peaking at #30.\nCritical reception.\nLarry Flick from \"Billboard\" wrote that \"this pop/house slammer, which was written and produced by the Black Box posse, is a fine intro to radio programmers here. Gordon delivers a swaggering, finger-snappin' vocal that should easily broaden her growing legion of fans.\" Pan-European magazine \"Music & Media\" commented, \"The chorus is so catchy, that the title must come true. The saxophones give the pop/dance song a very energetic feel. A feast for dance programmers.\" Miranda Sawyer from \"Smash Hits\" compared the song to Jo Boxers, adding, \"The record's all the better for the \"Boxer Beat\" or whatever it is and, indeed, is a work of cheesy genius that has you bouncing gloriously for about one and a half minute till it severely starts getting on your wick.\"\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "12492337": "Catch the Catch\nCatch the Catch is the debut album by pop singer C. C. Catch, released on April 28, 1986. The album consists of Euro disco and synthpop songs. It includes the major top 10 European pop hits \"I Can Lose My Heart Tonight\", \"'Cause You Are Young\" and \"Strangers by Night\".\nCredits.\nArranged by, music by, lyrics by, produced by \u2013 Dieter Bohlen \nArt direction [art direction & concept], artwork [front cover] \u2013 M. Vormstein \nArtwork [back cover] \u2013 Herbert W. Hesselmann \nDesign \u2013 Ariola-Studios\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "38128011": "Toby Slater\nBritish singer-songwriter (1979\u20132021)\nTobias Lewis Slater (14 August 1979 \u2013 13 December 2021) was an English singer-songwriter and musician, best known as the lead singer for the 1990s indie pop band Catch, who released two singles in the UK and an album in Indonesia. Slater also recorded and released music as a solo artist and with the band Kunta Kinte, who were renamed Tough Love.\nCareer.\n1995\u20131999: Catch.\nCatch were descended from Brattish, Slater's first band, formed in 1994/95, which also included Ben Etchells. Brattish rehearsed the Catch material extensively, paid for by interested A&R men, but never gigged. This period is briefly mentioned in John Niven's satirical book \"Kill Your Friends\". Slater also was a driving-force behind the Romo movement, DJing at Soho's Arcadia at L'Equippe Anglais and Madame Jojo's in the autumn/winter of 1995. Melody Maker reported that an eleven track demo tape of Brattish, featuring a heavily synth/electro sound, was circulating among an elite handful at Arcadia/Club Skinny at the time.\n\"Bingo\" was Catch's biggest hit, which resulted in the band appearing on \"Top of the Pops\", \"Light Lunch\", \"The Paul Ross Show\" (performing three songs live), \"The Jack Docherty Show\" and various Saturday morning UK TV shows. \"Bingo\" was also being shown on the \"ITV Chart Show\" when ITN interrupted programming to report on the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997. Slater also presented some shows on MTV around this time. An album was quickly released in Thailand and Indonesia due to the band's popularity there, with the band securing a number one radio single in Thailand. But the album was never released in the UK due to Slater being unhappy with it at the time. The band visited Jakarta for a promotional tour and performed acoustically for fans.\nDespite finding success in the Far East, the band achieved one top 30 and one top 50 hit"}, "descending_order": ["71400052", "23256249", "12492337", "38128011", "5882395", "473752"], "permutation_1": ["71400052", "23256249", "38128011", "473752", "12492337", "5882395"], "permutation_2": ["12492337", "473752", "71400052", "23256249", "38128011", "5882395"], "permutation_3": ["71400052", "473752", "38128011", "23256249", "12492337", "5882395"]}
{"id": "2hop__81839_159536", "docs_added": {"623737": "Cristiano Ronaldo\nPortuguese footballer (born 1985)\nCristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro (; born 5 February 1985) is a Portuguese professional footballer who plays as a forward for and captains both Saudi Pro League club Al Nassr and the Portugal national team. Nicknamed CR7, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, and has won numerous individual accolades throughout his professional footballing career, including five Ballon d'Or awards, a record three UEFA Men's Player of the Year Awards, four European Golden Shoes, and was named five times the world's best player by FIFA. He has won 33 trophies in his career, including seven league titles, five UEFA Champions Leagues and the UEFA European Championship. Ronaldo holds the records for most goals (140) and assists (42) in the Champions League, goals (14) and assists (8) in the European Championship, and most international appearances (219) and international goals (136). He is one of the few players to have made over 1,200 professional career appearances, the most by an outfield player, and has scored over 900 official senior career goals for club and country, making him the top goalscorer of all time.\nRonaldo began his senior career with Sporting CP, before signing with Manchester United in 2003, winning the FA Cup in his first season. He went on to become a star player at United, as they won three consecutive Premier League titles, the Champions League and the FIFA Club World Cup; his 2007-08 season earned him his first Ballon d'Or, aged 23. Ronaldo was the subject of the then-most expensive association football transfer when he signed for Real Madrid in 2009 in a transfer worth \u20ac94\u00a0million (\u00a380\u00a0million). He was integral to Madrid becoming a dominant force again, as they won four Champions Leagues from 2014 to 2018, including \"La D\u00e9cima\". He won back-to-back Ballon d'Or awards in 2013 and 2014, and again in 2016 and 2017, and was runner-up three times behind Lionel Messi, his perceived career rival. He also became the club's all-time top goalscorer and finished as the Champions League's top scorer for six consecutive seasons between 2012 and 2018. With Madrid, Ronaldo's additional titles include two La Liga titles, including a record-breaking title win in 2011-12, and two Copas del Rey. In 2018, following issues with the Madrid hierarchy, Ronaldo made a surprise transfer to Juventus in a transfer worth an initial \u20ac100\u00a0million (\u00a388\u00a0million). He won several trophies in Italy, including two Serie A titles and a Coppa Italia, and broke several records for Juventus. He returned to United in 2021; despite a collectively disappointing season, Ronaldo's individual performances earned him being included in the PFA Team of the Year at 37 years old. His contract was terminated in 2022 due to a fall out with the newly appointed manager, and in 2023 he signed for Al Nassr, a move that has since been widely credited for revolutionising football in Saudi Arabia.\nRonaldo made his international debut for Portugal in 2003 at the age of 18 and has earned more than 200 caps, making him history's most-capped male player. Ronaldo has played in eleven major tournaments and scored in ten; he scored his first international goal at Euro 2004, where he helped Portugal reach the final and subsequently made the team of the tournament. In the 2006 FIFA World Cup, his first World Cup, he was a focal part to Portugal ultimately finishing in fourth place. He assumed captaincy of the national team in July 2008 ahead of Euro 2008; four years later, at Euro 2012, he was named to the team of the tournament. In 2015, Ronaldo was named the best Portuguese player of all time by the Portuguese Football Federation. The following year, he led Portugal to their first major tournament title at Euro 2016, being named in the team of the tournament for the third time and receiving the Silver Boot as the second-highest goalscorer of the tournament. This achievement saw him receive his fourth Ballon d'Or. In 2018, Ronaldo had his most prolific World Cup campaign and was voted in the Fan Dream Team. He led his country to victory in the inaugural UEFA Nations League in 2019, receiving the top scorer award in the finals, and also received the Golden Boot as top scorer of Euro 2020. In the 2022 World Cup, he became the first player to score at five World Cups.\nOne of the world's most marketable and famous athletes, Ronaldo was ranked the world's highest-paid athlete by \"Forbes\" in 2016, 2017, 2023, and 2024 and the world's most famous athlete by ESPN from 2016 to 2019. He is the first footballer and the third sportsman to earn US$1 billion in his career. \"Time\" included him on their list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2014. Ronaldo is the most popular sportsperson on social media: he counts over 1\u00a0billion total followers across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram, making him the first person to achieve that feat. Ronaldo was named in the UEFA Ultimate Team of the Year in 2015, the All-time UEFA Euro XI in 2016, and the Ballon d'Or Dream Team in 2020. In recognition of his record-breaking goalscoring success, he received special awards for Outstanding Career Achievement by FIFA in 2021 and Champions League All-Time Top Scorer by UEFA in 2024.<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nEarly life.\nCristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro was born on 5 February 1985 in the S\u00e3o Pedro parish of Funchal, the capital of the Portuguese island of Madeira, and grew up in the nearby parish of Santo Ant\u00f3nio. He is the fourth and youngest child of Maria Dolores dos Santos Viveiros Aveiro, who worked as a cook in the hospitality industry and a cleaning woman, and Jos\u00e9 Dinis Aveiro, a municipal gardener at the \"Junta de Freguesia\" of Santo Ant\u00f3nio and part-time kit man for football club Andorinha. His great-grandmother on his father's side, Isabel da Piedade, an African woman, was born in the island of S\u00e3o Vicente, in what was then Portuguese Cape Verde, and moved to Madeira Island at 16. He has one older brother, Hugo, and two older sisters, Elma and Liliana C\u00e1tia \"K\u00e1tia\". He was named after actor and U.S. President Ronald Reagan, whom his father was a fan of. His mother revealed that she wanted to abort him due to poverty, his father's alcoholism, and having too many children already, but her doctor refused to perform the procedure. Ronaldo grew up in an impoverished Catholic home, sharing a room with all his siblings.\nAs a child, Ronaldo played for Andorinha from 1992 to 1995, where his father was the kit man, and later spent two years with Nacional. In 1997, aged 12, he went on a three-day trial with Sporting CP, who signed him for a fee of \u00a31,500. He subsequently moved from Madeira to Lisbon to join Sporting CP's youth system. By age 14, while struggling with his school duties and responsibilities in Escola EB2 de Telheiras, his school in the Telheiras area of Lisbon, Ronaldo believed he had the ability to play semi-professionally and agreed with his mother and his tutor at Sporting CP, Leonel Pontes, to cease his education to focus entirely on football. With a troubled life as a student, and although living in Lisbon area away from his Madeiran family, he did not complete schooling beyond the 6th grade. While popular with other students at school, he had been expelled after throwing a chair at his teacher, who he said had \"disrespected\" him. One year later, he was diagnosed with tachycardia, a condition that could have forced him to give up playing football. Ronaldo underwent heart surgery where a laser was used to cauterise multiple cardiac pathways into one, altering his resting heart rate. He was discharged from the hospital hours after the procedure and resumed training a few days later. In 2021, Cristiano Ronaldo's mother, Dolores Aveiro, stated in an interview for Sporting CP's official television channel (Sporting TV) that her son would be a bricklayer if he had not become a professional football player.\nGrowing up, Ronaldo idolised the Brazilian footballers Ronaldinho and Ronaldo Naz\u00e1rio, and has described them as leaving \"a beautiful history in football\".\nClub career.\nSporting CP.\nAfter impressing in Sporting's youth teams, he was promoted to the main team by first-team manager L\u00e1szl\u00f3 B\u00f6l\u00f6ni. At age 17, on 14 August 2002, he played his first official match for the first team, in a UEFA Champions League qualifying round at Jos\u00e9 Alvalade Stadium against Inter Milan, and his Primeira Liga debut, took place a month later against Braga, and on 7 October, he scored two goals against Moreirense in their 3\u20130 win. Over the course of the 2002\u201303 season, his representatives suggested the player to Liverpool manager G\u00e9rard Houllier and Barcelona president Joan Laporta. Manager Ars\u00e8ne Wenger, who was interested in signing Ronaldo, met with him at Arsenal's stadium in November to discuss a possible transfer.\nManchester United manager Alex Ferguson was determined to acquire Ronaldo on a permanent move urgently, after Sporting defeated United 3\u20131 at the inauguration of the Est\u00e1dio Jos\u00e9 Alvalade on 6 August 2003. Initially, United had planned to sign Ronaldo and loan him back to Sporting for a year. Having been impressed by him, the United players urged Ferguson to sign him. After the game, Ferguson said Ronaldo was \"one of the most exciting young players\" he had ever seen.\nManchester United.\n2003\u20132007: Development and breakthrough.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"There have been a few players described as 'the new George Best' over the years, but this is the first time it's been a compliment to me.\"\n\u2014Former Manchester United player George Best hails the 18-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo in 2003.\nOn 12 August 2003, less than a week after the friendly that impressed Ferguson, Manchester United signed Ronaldo for \u00a312\u00a0million, an England record for a teenager. This also made him the first Portuguese player to sign for the club.\nAlthough he requested the number 28, his number at Sporting, he received the squad number 7 shirt, which had previously been worn by such United players as George Best, Eric Cantona and David Beckham. Wearing the number 7 became an extra source of motivation for Ronaldo. A key element in his development during his time in England proved to be Ferguson, of whom he later said: \"He's been my father in sport, one of the most important and influential factors in my career.\"\nRonaldo made his debut as a substitute in a 4\u20130 home win over Bolton Wanderers in the Premier League on 16 August 2003. His performance earned praise from Best, who hailed it as \"undoubtedly the most exciting debut\" he had ever seen. Ronaldo scored his first goal for Manchester United with a free-kick in a 3\u20130 win over Portsmouth on 1 November. On 15 May 2004, in a victory against Aston Villa, Ronaldo scored the opening goal and later received the first red card of his career. Ronaldo ended his first season in English football with a trophy, scoring the opening goal in United's 3\u20130 win over Millwall in the 2004 FA Cup Final. BBC pundit Alan Hansen described him as the star of the final. The British press had been critical of Ronaldo during the season for his \"elaborate\" step-overs in trying to beat opponents, but teammate Gary Neville said he was \"not a show pony, but the real thing\", and predicted he would become a world-class player.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"He has got the tricks and party pieces, we know that, but they're not much good unless there is something at the end of it all. We still have to remember, of course, that the lad is only 19 years of age. Considering that, you have to say he has got massive talent. His feet are mesmerising at times, and if he can couple that with some consistently good crossing, the future looks frightening.\"\n\u2014Former BBC pundit Alan Hansen commenting on Ronaldo after his first season.\nAt the start of 2005, Ronaldo played two of his best matches of the 2004\u201305 season, producing a goal and an assist against Aston Villa and scoring twice against rivals Arsenal. Ronaldo won his second trophy in English football, the Football League Cup, after scoring the third goal in United's 4\u20130 final win over Wigan Athletic.\nDuring his third season in England, Ronaldo was involved in several incidents. Ronaldo clashed with a teammate, striker Ruud van Nistelrooy, who took offence at the winger's showboating style of play. Following the 2006 FIFA World Cup, in which he was involved in an incident where club teammate Wayne Rooney was sent off, Ronaldo publicly asked for a transfer, lamenting the lack of support he felt he had received from the club over the incident. United denied the possibility of him leaving the club. Although his World Cup altercation with Rooney resulted in Ronaldo being booed throughout the 2006\u201307 season, it proved to be his break-out year, as he broke the 20-goal barrier for the first time and won his first Premier League title.\n2007\u20132009: Collective and individual success and Ballon d'Or.\nIn the 2006\u201307 season, he amassed a host of personal awards for the season, winning the Professional Footballers' Association's Player's Player, Fans' Player, Young Player of the Year awards, and the Football Writers' Association's Footballer of the Year award, becoming the first player to win all four main PFA and FWA honours. Ronaldo was named runner-up to Kak\u00e1 for the 2007 Ballon d'Or, and came third, behind Kak\u00e1 and Lionel Messi, in the running for the 2007 FIFA World Player of the Year award.\nRonaldo scored his first hat-trick for United in a 6\u20130 win against Newcastle United on 12 January 2008. His 31 league goals earned him the Premier League Golden Boot, as well as the European Golden Shoe, which made him the first winger to win the latter award. He additionally received the PFA Players' Player of the Year and FWA Footballer of the Year awards for the second consecutive season. United reached the final against Chelsea\nin Moscow on 21 May, where, despite his opening goal being negated by an equaliser and his penalty kick being saved in the shoot-out, United emerged victorious, winning 6\u20135 on penalties after a 1\u20131 draw at the end of 120 minutes. As the Champions League top scorer, Ronaldo was named the UEFA Club Footballer of the Year. With his 2008 Ballon d'Or and 2008 FIFA World Player of the Year, Ronaldo became United's first Ballon d'Or winner since Best in 1968, and the first Premier League player to be named the FIFA World Player of the Year.\nShortly after, Ronaldo was linked to a move to Real Madrid, United filed a tampering complaint with governing body FIFA over Madrid's alleged pursuit of their player, but they declined to take action. and he remained at United for another year. \nHis match-winning goal in the second leg against Porto, a 40-yard strike, earned him the inaugural FIFA Pusk\u00e1s Award, presented by FIFA in recognition of the best goal of the year; he later called it the best goal he had ever scored. United advanced to the final in Rome, where he made little impact in United's 2\u20130 defeat to Barcelona.\nReal Madrid.\n2009\u20132015: World record transfer and consecutive Ballon d'Or wins.\nIn 2009, Ronaldo transferred to Real Madrid for a then world record \u00a380\u00a0million. At least 80,000 fans attended his presentation at the Santiago Bernab\u00e9u, surpassing the 25-year record of 75,000 fans who had welcomed Diego Maradona at Napoli. Ronaldo said, \"This is the completion of my boyhood dream, to be a Real Madrid player.\"\nRonaldo made his La Liga debut against Deportivo La Coru\u00f1a on 29 August, scoring a penalty in a 3\u20132 home win. He scored in each of his first four league games, the first Madrid player to do so. His first Champions League goals for the club followed with two free kicks in the first group match against Z\u00fcrich. His strong start to the season was interrupted when he suffered an ankle injury in October while on international duty, which kept him sidelined for seven weeks. Despite scoring 33 goals in all competitions and contributing to Real Madrid's 96 points in La Liga, his first season with Madrid ended trophyless.\nFollowing Ra\u00fal's departure, Ronaldo was given No. 7 for the 2010\u201311 season and scored 53 goals, helping Madrid win the Copa del Rey, scoring the winning goal against rivals Barcelona in the \"El Cl\u00e1sico\", his first trophy with Madrid. He also became the first player in La Liga to score 40 goals. In addition to the Pichichi Trophy, Ronaldo won the European Golden Shoe for a second time, becoming the first player to win the award in different leagues.\nThe following season saw Ronaldo score 60 goals across all competitions, leading Madrid to their first league title in four years with a record 100 points and his runner-up finish to Lionel Messi in the 2011 FIFA Ballon d'Or. He scored his 100th league goal for Madrid in a 5\u20131 win over Real Sociedad on 24 March 2012, breaking the previous club record held by Ferenc Pusk\u00e1s. In the 2012\u201313 season, he scored his first hat-trick in the Champions League in a 4\u20131 win over Ajax. Four days later, he became the first player to score in six successive \"Cl\u00e1sicos\" when he hit a brace in a 2\u20132 draw at Camp Nou. His performances again saw Ronaldo voted second in the running for the 2012 FIFA Ballon d'Or, behind four-time winner Messi.\nFollowing the 2012\u201313 winter break, Ronaldo captained Madrid for the first time in an official match, scoring twice to lift 10-man Madrid to a 4\u20133 win over Sociedad on 6 January. He subsequently became the first non-Spanish player in 60 years to captain Madrid in \"El Clasico\" on 30 January, a match which also marked his 500th club appearance.\nIn 2013\u201314 season, Ronaldo was joined at the club by winger Gareth Bale and together with striker Karim Benzema, they formed an attacking trio popularly dubbed \"BBC\", an acronym of Bale, Benzema and Cristiano, and a play on the name of the British public service broadcaster, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). He continued prolific scoring, with 69 goals in 2013, winning the 2013 FIFA Ballon d'Or, and the FIFA World Player of the Year award, for the first time in his career.\nConcurrently with his individual achievements, Ronaldo enjoyed his greatest team success in Spain to date, as he helped Madrid win \"La D\u00e9cima\", their tenth European Cup, scoring a penalty in the 120th minute of the 4\u20131 final win over city rivals Atl\u00e9tico Madrid, becoming the first player to score in two European Cup finals for two different winning teams. As the competition's top goalscorer for the third time, with a record 17 goals, he was named the UEFA Best Player in Europe. Ronaldo scored 31 goals in 30 league games, which earned him the Pichichi and the European Golden Shoe, along with Liverpool's Luis Su\u00e1rez On 4 May, Ronaldo scored a back-heeled volley in the closing moments of the match against Valencia, voted goal of the season by the Liga Nacional de F\u00fatbol Profesional (LFP), giving him the Best Player in La Liga award.\nDuring the 2014\u201315 season, Ronaldo set a new personal best of 61 goals, and after winning the 2014 FIFA Club World Cup, Ronaldo received the 2014 Ballon d'Or, joining Johan Cruyff, Michel Platini and Marco van Basten as a three-time recipient. Madrid finished in second place in La Liga and exited at the semi-final stage in the Champions League. With 10 goals, he finished as top scorer for a third consecutive season, alongside Messi and Neymar. On 5 April, he scored five goals in a game for the first time in his career, including an eight-minute hat-trick, in a 9\u20131 rout of Granada. His 300th goal for his club followed three days later in a 2\u20130 win against Rayo Vallecano. He finished the season with 48 goals, winning a second consecutive Pichichi and the European Golden Shoe for a record fourth time.\n2015\u20132018: All-time Madrid top scorer and Fifth Ballon d'Or.\nCristiano Ronaldo became Real Madrid's all-time top scorer on 12 September 2015 against Espanyol, netting 230 goals in 203 matches, surpassing the previous record holder, Ra\u00fal. Ronaldo also became the all-time top scorer in the Champions League with a hat-trick in the first group match against Shakhtar Donetsk, having finished the previous season level with Messi on 77 goals. Two goals against Malm\u00f6 FF in a 2\u20130 away win on 30 September saw him reach the milestone of 500 career goals for club and country. He won the 2016 Ballon d'Or, his fourth, and the inaugural 2016 The Best FIFA Men's Player, a revival of the former FIFA World Player of the Year, largely owing to his success with Portugal in winning Euro 2016.\nIn the 2016\u201317 UEFA Champions League quarter-finals against Bayern in April, Ronaldo scored both goals in a 2\u20131 away win which saw him make history by becoming the first player to reach 100 goals in UEFA club competition. On 17 May, Ronaldo overtook Jimmy Greaves as the all-time top scorer in the top five European leagues, scoring twice against Celta de Vigo. He finished the season with 42 goals in all competitions as he helped Madrid to win their first La Liga title since 2012. In the Champions League Final, Ronaldo scored two goals in a 4\u20131 victory over Juventus to take him to 12 goals for the season, making him the competition's top goalscorer for the fifth straight season (sixth overall), as well as the first player to score in three finals in the Champions League era; the second goal was the 600th of his senior career. Madrid also became the first team to win back-to-back finals in the Champions League era.\nOn 23 October, his performances throughout 2017 saw him awarded The Best FIFA Men's Player award for the second consecutive year. A day later, Ronaldo won the 2017 Ballon d'Or, receiving his fifth-time award on the Eiffel Tower in Paris. On 3 April 2018, Ronaldo scored the first two goals in a 3\u20130 away win against Juventus in the quarter-finals of the 2017\u201318 UEFA Champions League, with his second goal being an acrobatic bicycle kick. Described as a \"PlayStation goal\" by Juventus defender Andrea Barzagli, with Ronaldo's foot approximately off the ground, it garnered him a standing ovation from the opposing fans in the stadium as well as a plethora of plaudits from peers, pundits and coaches. In the final on 26 May, Madrid defeated Liverpool 3\u20131, winning Ronaldo his fifth Champions League title, the first player to do so. He finished as the top scorer of the tournament for the sixth consecutive season with 15 goals. After the final, Ronaldo referred to his time with Madrid in the past tense, sparking speculation that he could leave the club.\nJuventus.\nRonaldo joined Juventus in 2018 for \u20ac100\u00a0million, the transfer was the highest ever for a player over 30 years old and the highest paid by an Italian club. Upon signing, Ronaldo cited his need for a new challenge as his rationale for departing Madrid, but later attributed the transfer to the lack of support he felt was shown by club president Florentino P\u00e9rez.\n2018\u20132020: Consecutive Serie A titles.\nOn 18 August, Ronaldo made his debut in a 3\u20132 away win against Chievo Verona. On 19 September, in his first Champions League match for Juve, he was sent off against Valencia, his first red card in 154 Champions League appearances. In the reverse (home) leg against Valencia, Cristiano won 100 Champions League matches, becoming the first ever player to do so.\nRonaldo won his first trophy with the club on 16 January 2019, the 2018 Supercoppa Italiana, after he scored the only goal from a header against AC Milan. On 10 February, Ronaldo scored in a 3\u20130 win over Sassuolo, the ninth consecutive away game in which he had scored in the league, equalling Giuseppe Signori's single season Serie A record of most consecutive away games with at least one goal. On 12 March, Ronaldo scored a hat-trick in a 3\u20130 home win against Atl\u00e9tico in the second leg of the Champions League round of 16, helping Juventus overcome a two-goal deficit to reach the quarter-finals. On 20 April, Ronaldo played in the \"scudetto\" clinching game against Fiorentina, as Juventus won their eighth successive title after a 2\u20131 home win, thereby becoming the first player to win league titles in England, Spain and Italy. With 21 goals and eight assists, Ronaldo won the league award for Most Valuable Player.\nOn 1 October, he reached several milestones in Juventus's 3\u20130 Champions League group stage win over Bayer Leverkusen including breaking Iker Casillas' record for most Champions League wins of all time. On 18 December, Ronaldo leapt to a height of , higher than the crossbar, to head the winning goal in a 2\u20131 away win against Sampdoria. He scored his first Serie A hat-trick on 6 January 2020, in a 4\u20130 home win against Cagliari and became only the second player to score hat-tricks in the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A. On 22 February, Ronaldo scored for a record-equalling 11th consecutive league game, alongside Gabriel Batistuta and Fabio Quagliarella, in what was his 1,000th senior professional game, a 2\u20131 away win against SPAL. On 22 June, he scored a penalty in a 2\u20130 away win over Bologna, overtaking Rui Costa to become the highest scoring Portuguese player in Serie A history. On 20 July, Ronaldo scored twice in a 2\u20131 home win over Lazio; his first goal was his 50th in Serie A. He became the first player in history to reach 50 goals in the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A, and becoming the second player after Edin D\u017eeko to score 50 goals in three of Europe's top five major leagues. Moreover, he became the oldest player, at the age of 35 years and 166 days, to score over 30 goals in one of the five top European leagues since Ronnie Rooke with Arsenal in 1948. On 26 July, Ronaldo scored the opening goal in a 2\u20130 home win over Sampdoria as Juventus were crowned Serie A champions for a ninth consecutive time. On 7 August, Ronaldo scored a brace in a 2\u20131 home win against Lyon in the second leg of the Champions League round of 16, which saw him finish the season with 37 goals in all competitions; the tally allowed him to break Borel's club record of 36 goals in a single season.\n2020\u20132021: 100 Juve goals, \"Capocannoniere\", and departure.\nRonaldo played his 100th match in all competitions for Juventus on 13 December, scoring two penalties in a 3\u20131 away win over Genoa in the league to bring his goal tally to 79. On 2 March 2021, he scored a goal in a 3\u20130 win over Spezia in his 600th league match, to become the first player to score at least 20 goals in 12 consecutive seasons in the top five leagues of Europe. On 12 May, Ronaldo scored a goal in a 3\u20131 away win over Sassuolo to reach his 100th goal for Juventus in all competitions on his 131st appearance, becoming the fastest Juventus player to achieve the feat. With Juventus's victory in the 2021 Coppa Italia Final on 19 May, Ronaldo became the first player in history to win every major domestic trophy in England, Spain and Italy. Ronaldo ended the season with 29 league goals, winning the \"Capocannoniere\" award for highest goalscorer and becoming the first footballer to finish as top scorer in the English, Spanish and Italian leagues.\nThe start of the following season came amid reports Ronaldo would depart the club before the closure of the transfer window, despite Ronaldo and his agent Jorge Mendes reaching a verbal agreement with Manchester City over personal terms, but the club pulled out of the deal, and later it was confirmed that City's rivals Manchester United, Ronaldo's former club, were in advanced talks to sign him, while former manager Alex Ferguson and several ex-teammates had been in contact to persuade him to re-sign for United.\nReturn to Manchester United.\nOn 27 August 2021, Manchester United announced they had reached an agreement with Juventus to re-sign Ronaldo, subject to agreement of personal terms, visa and medical. Ronaldo was given the number 7 shirt after Edinson Cavani agreed to switch to 21. The first 24 hours of Ronaldo's shirt sales was reported to have broken the all-time record following a transfer, overtaking Messi after his move to Paris Saint-Germain.\nOn 11 September, Ronaldo made his second debut at Old Trafford, scoring the opening two goals in a 4\u20131 league victory against Newcastle United. On 29 September, he scored a last-minute winner in United's 2\u20131 victory at home to Villarreal in the Champions League, and overtook Iker Casillas as the player with the most appearances in the competition. Ronaldo proved to be crucial in the next Champions League fixtures, scoring various last minute goals to help United qualify for the round of 16 as group winners. On 2 December, Ronaldo netted two goals in a 3\u20132 home league win against Arsenal, which saw him surpass 800 career goals. Struggles ensued, with a fractured relationship with his teammates and interim manager, continuing for two months, until he scored in United's 2\u20130 win at home versus Brighton & Hove Albion on 15 February 2022, his first in the new year. He finished the season with 24 goals in all competitions being named in the Premier League Team of the Year and the winner of United's Sir Matt Busby Player of the Year award, but United finished in a disappointing sixth place and qualified for the UEFA Europa League; as a result, Ronaldo went trophyless for the first time since 2010.\nAfter growing dissatisfaction with the direction of United on and off the field, Ronaldo desired to leave to join a club competing in the Champions League, but a move failed to materialise, with various European clubs refusing a transfer, due to his age, overall cost of a transfer and high wage demands. Shortly after, he fell out with manager Erik ten Hag who used him as a substitute, leading United to terminate his contract on 22 November, following an interview with Piers Morgan, where Ronaldo said that he felt \"betrayed\" by Ten Hag and criticised the management of the club.\nAl Nassr.\nOn 30 December 2022, Saudi club Al-Nassr reached an agreement for Ronaldo to join the club, signing a contract until 2025. Ronaldo received the highest football salary ever, at \u20ac200 million per year, including a guaranteed football salary of \u20ac90 million, with commercial and sponsorship deals bringing his total annual salary to \u20ac200 million.\nHe made his debut for Al Nassr on 22 January 2023, as club captain, playing the full 90 minutes of a 1\u20130 win over Al-Ettifaq, and scored his first goal in a 2\u20132 draw against Al-Fateh by converting a last-minute penalty. On 9 February, Ronaldo scored all four goals in a 4\u20130 win over Al Wehda, his first goal of the match being his 500th career league goal. According to the BBC, Ronaldo's transfer to Al-Nassr led a \"revolution\" in Asian football, with many players from other leagues, particularly those in Europe, transferring to Saudi Pro League clubs for the 2023\u201324 season.\nIn the final of the Arab Club Champions Cup on 12 August, Ronaldo scored both goals as they defeated rivals Al-Hilal 2\u20131 after extra time. Ronaldo scored six goals in the competition. At the close of the year, Ronaldo scored 54 goals in all competitions for Al-Nassr and Portugal, making him the outright top scorer in 2023, reaching the same goalscoring record as in 2016. On 27 May 2024, in Al Nassr's home fixture against Al-Ittihad, Ronaldo scored his 34th and 35th league goals of the campaign, surpassing Abderrazak Hamdallah's record for the most goals scored in a single Saudi Pro League season. He also became the first footballer to finish as top scorer in four different leagues, the English, Spanish, Italian and Saudi leagues. On 31 May, in a 5\u20134 penalty shoot-out defeat to Al-Hilal in the 2024 King Cup final following a 1\u20131 draw after extra-time (in which he scored his side's second spot kick), he equalled Rog\u00e9rio Ceni's record for most top-level matches by a male professional footballer (1,225).\nInternational career.\nAt the age of 18, Ronaldo made his debut for Portugal as a substitute against Kazakhstan on 20 August 2003. At UEFA Euro 2004, he scored his first international goal in a 2\u20131 group stage loss to Greece in his eighth international appearance. Despite Portugal losing to Greece again in the final, Ronaldo made the team of the tournament, with two assists and two goals. In the 2006 FIFA World Cup, at the age of 21 years and 132 days, Ronaldo became the youngest ever goalscorer for Portugal at a World Cup finals. Portugal reached the semi-finals, where Portugal lost to France, with Ronaldo being booed during their defeat, due to an incident that occurred in the quarter-finals against England. FIFA's Technical Study Group overlooked him for the tournament's Best Young Player award and handed it to Germany's Lukas Podolski, citing his behaviour as a factor in the decision.\nOn 6 February 2007, Cristiano captained Portugal for the first time in a friendly against Brazil. He wore the number 7 shirt ahead of UEFA Euro 2008. Despite scoring eight goals in qualifications, the second-highest tally, he scored just one goal in the finals, netting the second goal of Portugal's 3\u20131 win in the group stage game against the Czech Republic. Portugal were eliminated in the quarter-finals after a 3\u20132 loss to Germany.\nRonaldo failed to score in 2010 World Cup qualifying. He scored only one goal in the 2010 World Cup finals; despite this, he was named man of the match in all three group stage matches, against Ivory Coast, North Korea and Brazil. His only goal of the tournament came in their 7\u20130 demolishing of North Korea, which was his first international goal in 16 months. Two years later, in UEFA Euro 2012, Ronaldo was joint top scorer with three goals, enough for him to be included in the team of the tournament. During qualification for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, Ronaldo scored eight goals. Despite this, Portugal did not qualify directly; Ronaldo scored all four goals against Sweden in the play-off to qualify. At the tournament in Brazil, Ronaldo assisted a last-minute 2\u20132 equaliser against the United States, and scored an 80th-minute winner in a 2\u20131 win over Ghana.\nIn 2016, Ronaldo led Portugal to their first-ever trophy at the UEFA Euro 2016, although he was subbed off in the 25th minute in the final against hosts France. He received the Silver Boot as the second-highest goalscorer, which gave him his fourth Ballon d'Or later that year. With the win, Portugal qualified and made its only appearance in the FIFA Confederations Cup held in Russia, where they finished in third place, with Ronaldo being named man of the match in all three of Portugal's group stage matches.\nIn the 2018 World Cup, Ronaldo became the oldest player to score a hat-trick in a World Cup match, in a 3\u20133 draw against Spain. The following match, Ronaldo scored the only goal in a 1\u20130 win against Morocco, breaking Pusk\u00e1s' record as the highest European goalscorer of all time, with 85 international goals. For his performances in the tournament, Ronaldo was named in the World Cup Dream Team.\nRonaldo led Portugal to victory in the inaugural UEFA Nations League in 2019, receiving the top scorer award in the finals, and received the Golden Boot as top scorer of Euro 2020. Ronaldo also became the first player to score at five European Championships. On 23 June 2021, Ronaldo scored two goals in the Euro 2020 match against France, breaking the men's goalscoring record previously held by Ali Daei.\nOn 9 October, he scored the opening goal in a 3\u20130 friendly win over Qatar at the Est\u00e1dio Algarve; with his 181st international appearance, he also overtook Sergio Ramos's record for the most international caps received by a European player. In the following match against Luxembourg on 12 October, also played at the Est\u00e1dio Algarve, Ronaldo scored a hat-trick in a 5\u20130 win for Portugal, thus becoming the first player to score 10 hat-tricks in men's international football.\nIn the 2022 World Cup, on 24 November, Ronaldo became the first player to score at five World Cups, netting a penalty against Ghana. Following a dispute with manager Fernando Santos, after their last group game against South Korea, he was dropped from the starting line-up for Portugal's last 16 match, marking the first time since Euro 2008 that he had not started a game for Portugal in a major international tournament, and the first time Portugal had started a knockout game without Ronaldo in the starting line-up at an international tournament since Euro 2000.\nOn 23 March 2023, Ronaldo scored a brace against Liechtenstein as he earned his 197th overall cap to become the most capped male footballer of all time. On 20 June, Ronaldo made his 200th appearance for his national team, scoring the only goal of an away win over Iceland, in the Euro qualifiers, as he became the first player in the history of men's international football to make 200 appearances for his country. On 16 October, Portugal secured first place in their qualifying group, following a 5\u20130 away victory over Bosnia and Herzegovina, with Ronaldo scoring twice. The landmark goals saw him score in more than 100 goals in each of the last three decades (2000s, 2010s, 2020s).\nWith his start in Portugal's UEFA Euro 2024 opener against the Czech Republic, Ronaldo became the first player to feature in six European Championships, having previously been the first player to appear in five. Later that year, on 5 September, he scored his 900th career goal in a 2\u20131 victory over Croatia in the UEFA Nations League.\nPlayer profile.\nStyle of play.\nA versatile attacker, Ronaldo is capable of playing on either wing as well as through the centre of the pitch, and, while ostensibly right-footed, is very strong with both feet. Tactically, Ronaldo has undergone several evolutions throughout his career. While at Sporting and during his first season at Manchester United, he was typically deployed as a traditional winger on the right side of midfield, where he regularly looked to deliver crosses into the penalty area. In this position, he was able to use his pace and acceleration, agility and technical skills to take on opponents in one-on-one situations. Ronaldo became noted for his dribbling and flair, often displaying an array of tricks and feints, such as the step overs and so-called 'chops' that became his trademark; he has also been known to use the flip-flap.\nHis strength and jumping ability, combined with his elevation, heading accuracy and height of , give him an edge in winning aerial duels. These attributes allow him to function as a target-man and make him an aerial goal threat in the penalty area; consequently, many of his goals have been headers. Ronaldo holds the record for the highest recorded jump in football history, measuring , which he achieved during a match against Manchester United while playing for Real Madrid in the round of 16 of the UEFA Champions League in 2013. Allied with his increased stamina and work-rate, his goalscoring ability improved drastically on the left wing where he was given the positional freedom to move into the centre to finish attacks. He has also increasingly played a creative role for his team, often dropping deep to pick up the ball, participate in the build-up of plays and create chances for his teammates, courtesy of his vision and passing ability.\nIn his final seasons at United, Ronaldo played an even more attacking and central role, functioning both as a striker and as a supporting forward, or even as an attacking midfielder on occasion. He developed into a prolific goalscorer, capable of finishing well both inside the penalty area and from distance with an accurate and powerful shot, courtesy of his striking ability. An accurate penalty kick taker, he also became a set piece specialist, renowned for his powerful, bending free kicks. When taking free kicks, Ronaldo is known for using the \"knuckleball\" technique, which was developed by Juninho Pernambucano. He also adopts a trademark stance before striking the ball, which involves him standing with his legs far apart. Regarding Ronaldo's unique style of taking free kicks, former United assistant manager Mike Phelan commented: \"People used to put the ball down, walk away, run up and hit it. He brought in a more dynamic showmanship. He places the ball down, the concentration level is high, he takes his certain amount of steps back so that his standing foot is in the perfect place to hit the ball in the sweet spot. He is the ultimate showman. He has that slight arrogance. When he pulls those shorts up and shows his thighs, he is saying 'All eyes on me' and this is going in. He understands the marketing side of it. The way he struts up and places it; the world is watching him.\"\nAt Real Madrid, Ronaldo continued to play a more offensive role, while his creative and defensive duties became more limited, although not entirely diminished. Initially deployed as a centre forward by managers Manuel Pellegrini and Jos\u00e9 Mourinho, he was later moved back onto the left wing, though in a free tactical role; this position allowed him to drift into the centre at will to get onto the end of crosses and score, or draw out defenders with his movement off the ball and leave space for teammates to exploit. Madrid's counter-attacking style of play also allowed him to become a more efficient and consistent player, as evidenced by his record-breaking goalscoring feats. While he mainly drew praise in the media for his prolific goalscoring, Ronaldo also demonstrated his ability as an effective creator in this role. This unique role has been described by pundits as that of a \"false\", \"attacking\", or \"goalscoring winger\", as Ronaldo effectively almost functioned as a striker at times with his central runs into the penalty area, despite actually playing on the left flank. From 2013 onwards, under manager Carlo Ancelotti, he effectively adapted his style to the physical effects of ageing with increasingly reduced off-the-ball movement and general involvement, completing fewer dribbles and passes per game, and instead focusing on short-distance creating and goalscoring. Since 2017, Ronaldo adapted his style of play yet again to become more of a free-roaming centre forward under manager Zinedine Zidane, a role in which he continued to excel and maintain a prolific goalscoring record; in this position, he earned praise in the media for his intelligent movement both on and off the ball, positional sense, link-up play and finishing, as well as his ability to lose or anticipate his markers, find space in the box and score from few touches or opportunities.\nIn his first season at Juventus, Ronaldo continued to play in a variety of different attacking roles under manager Massimiliano Allegri, depending on whom he was partnered with. While he had occupied an increasingly offensive role in his final years at Real Madrid, at times he functioned in a free role at Juventus, either as a lone striker or in his trademark role on the left wing, in a 4\u20132\u20133\u20131 or 4\u20133\u20133 formation, in which he often switched positions with Mario Mand\u017euki\u0107. In this role, he was also given licence to drop deep or even out wide onto the right flank to receive the ball, and be more involved in the build-up of plays; as such, aside from scoring goals himself, he began to take on opponents and create chances for other players with greater frequency than he had in his final seasons with Real Madrid. Off the ball, he was also capable of creating space for teammates with his movement and attacking runs into the box, or finishing off chances with his head or feet by getting onto the end of his teammates' crosses. On occasion he also played in an attacking partnership alongside Mand\u017euki\u0107 in a 4\u20133\u20131\u20132, 4\u20134\u20132, or 3\u20135\u20132 formation. He continued to play a similar role in his second season with the club under manager Maurizio Sarri.\nReception and image.\nRonaldo is widely regarded as one of the two best players of his generation, alongside Argentina forward Lionel Messi. Winning his first Ballon d'Or in 2008 by a record-high vote count at age 23, over the next decade Ronaldo has often featured in debates concerning who is the greatest player in history. Acclaimed for his prolific and consistent goal-scoring, he is considered a decisive player who is also a game changer, especially in important and high-pressured situations. In a 2018 article for \"Bleacher Report\", former NBA star Steve Nash compared Ronaldo to Michael Jordan: \"On the pitch, [Ronaldo's] learned how to make his play\u2014less explosive in individual movements\u2014more successful for the team, and in that, I see the greatness of Jordan.\" In the same article, Ronaldo was ranked first in the ranking of the 50 most influential people in sports culture for 2018.<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"In the six years we had him, you just saw his game grow all the time, and he was a fantastic player. Now you see the complete player. His decision-making, his maturity, his experience, plus all the great skills he has got, they all make him the complete player.\"\n \u2014Former manager Alex Ferguson, January 2013\nRonaldo is noted for his work ethic, elite body conditioning and dedication to improvement on the training pitch, as well being regarded as a natural leader. On his longevity and \"extraordinary commitment to physical preparation\", Adam Bate of Sky Sports said: \"Dedication is a huge part of staying at the top and Ronaldo's focus is perhaps unparalleled within the game.\" While stating they were stylistically different players who shared an equal desire to score goals, former Brazil international Ronaldo praised Cristiano's approach to training, arguing that \"there are so few players who take care of their body like he does. I trained because I had to, he does it because he loves it.\" His drive and determination to succeed are fuelled by a desire to be talked about alongside other greats such as Pel\u00e9 and Diego Maradona once retiring. He is credited, along with his compatriot, coach Jos\u00e9 Mourinho, with inspiring changing fortunes of Portuguese football in and . At times, he has been criticised for simulating when tackled. He was also occasionally criticised early in his career by manager Alex Ferguson, teammates and the media for being a selfish or overly flamboyant player. Jonathan Wilson of \"The Guardian\" opined that Ronaldo had made Juventus, who he joined aged 33 in 2018, weaker, due to \"his relative immobility\" in his mid-30s, even if his personal goal-scoring output remained high.\nDuring his career, Ronaldo has also been described as having an \"arrogant image\" on the pitch, with Ronaldo stating that he had become a \"victim\" because of how he was portrayed in the media. He is often seen moaning, gesticulating and scowling while trying to inspire his team to victory, with Ronaldo insisting that his competitive nature should not be mistaken for arrogance. His managers, teammates and various journalists have said that this reputation has caused an unfair image of him.\nGoal celebrations.\nRonaldo has adopted several goal celebrations throughout his career, including one particular celebration which gained widespread coverage in the media, when he squatted and stared directly into a camera on the sidelines of the pitch with his hand on his chin. After scoring a goal, he usually celebrates with a \"storming jump\" and \"turn\", before \"landing in spread-eagled fashion\" into his \"signature power stance\", while usually simultaneously exclaiming \"S\u00ed\" (Spanish and Italian for \"yes\"). This trademark celebration has been dubbed the \"Siu\" or siuuu in the media. It has also been known as \"suiii\", \"siiuuu\", \"siii\" or \"Right Here Right Now\", formally the Cristiano Ronaldo celebration. Since Ronaldo first performed the gesture in 2013, it has been widely imitated by athletes and personalities both in and outside of football when celebrating scoring in respective sports or a significant achievement, and is widely regarded as the most iconic association football celebration of all time.\nThe gesture was first performed by Ronaldo on 7 August, during the 2013 International Champions Cup Final between Real Madrid and Chelsea. Ronaldo gave Madrid a 2\u20131 lead with a free kick when he headed in a cross from Isco, helping Madrid beat Chelsea 3\u20131 to claim the International Champions Cup and celebrating with his first \"Siuuu\". During an interview after the match against Chelsea when he first performed the gesture, Ronaldo explained he scored the goal and \"it just felt natural\" and \"didn't know where it came from\". He started doing it more often and when the supporters see it they are reminded of him.\nThe phrase \"siu\" is derived from Portuguese \"sim\", meaning \"yes\". This was confirmed by Ronaldo in an interview in 2023, almost a decade since he first performed it. Ronaldo explained that the phrase \"Siuuu\" simply means yes, but \"meaning it very strongly\".\nRivalry with Lionel Messi.\nBoth Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have scored in multiple UEFA Champions League finals, have regularly broken the 50-goal barrier in a single season, and are the two leading goal scorers in history. Sports journalists and pundits regularly weigh the individual merits of both players in an attempt to argue who they believe is the best player in modern football or in the history of the game. It has been compared to several sports rivalries, among them the Muhammad Ali\u2013Joe Frazier rivalry in boxing, the Borg\u2013McEnroe rivalry in tennis and the Senna\u2013Prost rivalry from Formula One motor racing. Some commentators choose to analyse the differing physiques and playing styles of the two. Part of the debate revolves around the contrasting personalities of the two players, as Ronaldo is sometimes depicted as an arrogant and theatrical showoff, while Messi is portrayed as a shy, humble character.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"It's part of my life now. People are bound to compare us. He tries to do his best for his club and for his national team, as I do, and there is a degree of rivalry with both of us trying to do the best for the teams we represent.\"\n\u2014Ronaldo commenting on his rivalry with Messi.\nIn a 2012 interview, Ronaldo commented on the rivalry, saying: \"I think we push each other sometimes in the competition, this is why the competition is so high.\" Alex Ferguson, Ronaldo's manager during his time at Manchester United, opined: \"I don't think the rivalry against each other bothers them. I think they have their own personal pride in terms of wanting to be the best.\" Messi himself denied any rivalry, saying that it was \"only the media, the press, who wants us to be at loggerheads but I've never fought with Cristiano.\" Responding to the claims that he and Messi do not get on well on a personal level, Ronaldo commented: \"We don't have a relationship outside the world of football, just as we don't with a lot of other players.\" Ronaldo added that in years to come he hopes they can laugh about it together, stating: \"We have to look on this rivalry with a positive spirit, because it's a good thing.\" Representing archrivals Barcelona and Real Madrid, the two players faced each other at least twice every season in the world's biggest club game, \"El Cl\u00e1sico\", which is among the world's most viewed annual sporting events.\nIn a debate at Oxford Union in October 2013, when asked whether FIFA president Sepp Blatter preferred Messi or Ronaldo, Blatter paid tribute to the work ethic of the Argentine before taking a swipe at Ronaldo, claiming \"one of them has more expenses for the hairdresser than the other.\" Real Madrid demanded and promptly received a full apology. In response to Blatter's \"commander\" on the pitch comment, Ronaldo issued his own riposte with a mock-salute celebration after scoring a penalty against Sevilla. In August 2019, Ronaldo and Messi were interviewed while sat next to each other prior to the announcement of the UEFA Men's Player of the Year, with Ronaldo stating: \"I pushed him and he pushed me as well. So it's good to be part of the history of football.\"\nAfter Messi led Argentina to victory in the 2022 FIFA World Cup, a number of football critics, commentators and players have opined that Messi settled the debate between the two players. In September 2023, Ronaldo declared that his rivalry with Messi was over and \"gone\", after 36 official fixtures and 15 years of \"sharing the stage\".\nIn popular culture.\nPopularity and online following.\nRonaldo was named in the 2014 Time 100, \"Time\"'s annual list of the most influential people in the world. ESPN named Ronaldo the world's most famous athlete in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. Demand for a replica Ronaldo shirt has been high throughout his career. In 2008, Ronaldo's number 7 Manchester United shirt was the best-selling Premier League sports product. In 2015, Ronaldo's number 7 Real Madrid shirt was the second best-selling worldwide, after Messi's number 10 Barcelona shirt. In 2018, within 24 hours of his number 7 Juventus shirt being released, over 520,000 had been sold, with $62.4\u00a0million generated in one day.\nRonaldo has established a strong online presence. The most popular sportsperson on social media, he counted over 500\u00a0million total followers across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram by February 2021, making him the first person to pass half a billion followers. The most-followed person on Facebook (171\u00a0million), most-followed on Instagram (650\u00a0million) and most-followed sportsperson on Twitter (115\u00a0million), his sponsors earned $936\u00a0million in media value across his accounts between June 2016 and June 2017. After announcing the creation of his YouTube channel, UR Cristiano on 21 August 2024, it became the fastest to reach the 1 million subscribers milestone, doing so in 90 minutes. The channel also became the fastest to reach 5, 10, 20, 30 and 50 million subscribers. It also became the most subscribed channel in Portugal, surpassing the Portuguese Nick Jr. Computer security company McAfee produced a 2012 report ranking footballers by the probability of an internet search for their name leading to an unsafe website, with Ronaldo's name first on the list.\nWealth and sponsorships.\nWith earnings of \u20ac720\u00a0million (\u00a3615\u00a0million) from 2010 to 2019, Ronaldo was ranked second in \"Forbes\" list of the decade's highest-paid athletes, behind boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. \"Forbes\" twice ranked Ronaldo first on its list of the world's highest-paid football players; his combined income from salaries, bonuses and endorsements was $73\u00a0million in 2013\u201314 and $79\u00a0million in 2014\u201315. The latter earnings saw him listed behind only Mayweather on the magazine's list of The World's Highest-Paid Athletes. In 2016, he became the first footballer to top the \"Forbes\" list of highest-earning athletes, with a total income of $88\u00a0million from his salary and endorsements in 2015\u201316. He topped the list for the second straight year with earnings of $93\u00a0million in 2016\u201317. He is the first footballer and only the third sportsman to earn $1 billion in their career.\nRonaldo is one of the world's most marketable sportsmen: \"SportsPro\" rated him the fifth most marketable athlete in 2012 and eighth most marketable athlete in 2013. Sports market research company Repucom named Ronaldo the most marketable and most recognised football player in the world in May 2014. Since his reputation grew at Manchester United, Ronaldo has signed many sponsorship deals for consumer products, including sportswear, football boots; since November 2012, Ronaldo has worn the Nike Mercurial Vapor personalised CR7 edition, soft drinks, clothing, automotive lubricants, financial services, electronics, and video games. Ronaldo featured as the cover star of \"FIFA\" video game \"FIFA 18\" and was heavily involved in the game's promotion. His \"Sii\" goal celebration features in the \"FIFA\" series, accompanied with his own voiceover. He was also the face of \"Pro Evolution Soccer\", appearing on the covers of the 2008, 2012 and 2013 editions of the game.\nPhilanthropy.\nRonaldo has made contributions to various charitable causes throughout his career. Television footage of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami showed an eight-year-old boy survivor named Martunis wearing a Portuguese football shirt who was stranded for 19 days after his family was killed. Following this, Ronaldo visited Aceh, Indonesia, to raise funds for rehabilitation and reconstruction. After accepting undisclosed damages from a libel case against \"The Sun\" newspaper in 2008, Ronaldo donated the damages to a charity in Madeira. In 2009, Ronaldo donated \u00a3100,000 to the hospital that saved his mother's life in Madeira following her battle with cancer, so that they could build a cancer centre on the island. In support of the victims of the 2010 Madeira flood, Ronaldo pledged to play in a charity match in Madeira between Primeira Liga club Porto and players from Madeiran-based clubs Mar\u00edtimo and Nacional.\nIn 2012, Ronaldo and his agent paid for specialist treatment for a nine-year-old Canarian boy with apparently terminal cancer. In December 2012, Ronaldo joined FIFA's \"11 for Health\" programme to raise awareness among kids of how to steer clear of conditions including drug addiction, HIV, malaria, and obesity. In January 2013, Ronaldo became Save the Children's new Global Artist Ambassador, in which he hopes to help fight child hunger and obesity. In March 2013, Ronaldo agreed to be the ambassador for The Mangrove Care Forum in Indonesia, an organisation aiming to raise awareness of mangrove conservation.\nRonaldo was named the world's most charitable sportsperson in 2015 after donating \u00a35\u00a0million to the relief effort after the earthquake in Nepal which killed over 8,000 people. In June 2016, Ronaldo donated the entirety of his \u20ac600,000 Champions League bonus after Real Madrid won the competition. In August of the same year, Ronaldo launched CR7Selfie, a selfie app for charity to help Save the Children that lets participants take a selfie with him in one of several different outfits and poses.\nEponyms and honours.\nIn 2007, C.D. Nacional renamed its youth campus Cristiano Ronaldo Campus Futebol (Cristiano Ronaldo Football Campus). In December 2013, Ronaldo opened a museum, Museu CR7, in his hometown of Funchal, Madeira, to house trophies and memorabilia; the museum is an official sponsor of the local football team Uni\u00e3o da Madeira. At a ceremony held at the Bel\u00e9m Palace in January 2014, President of Portugal An\u00edbal Cavaco Silva raised Ronaldo to the rank of Grand Officer of the Order of Prince Henry \"to distinguish an athlete of world renown who has been a symbol of Portugal globally, contributing to the international projection of the country and setting an example of tenacity for future generations.\" In June 2015, astronomers led by David Sobral from Lisbon and Leiden discovered a galaxy which they named Cosmos Redshift 7 (CR7) in tribute to Ronaldo.\nOn 23 July 2016, following Portugal's triumph at Euro 2016, Madeira Airport in Funchal was renamed as Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport. The name change was subject to much debate locally by some politicians and citizens, who even started a petition against the move, an action criticised by President of Madeira Miguel Albuquerque. On 21 September 2020, the Sporting CP's football academy in Alcochete, until then called \"Academia Sporting\", was renamed \"Academia Cristiano Ronaldo\". In 2023, the Lisbon City Council approved awarding him, at the proposal of its president, Carlos Moedas, the Medal of Honor of the City, because he is \"a great Lisboner, in the sense of the passion he has for the city\".\nPublic art.\nIn June 2010, during the build-up to the World Cup, Ronaldo became the fourth footballer (after Steven Gerrard, Pel\u00e9, and David Beckham) to be represented as a waxwork at Madame Tussauds London. Another waxwork of him was presented at the Madrid Wax Museum in December 2013. A bronze statue of Ronaldo, designed by artist Ricardo Madeira Veloso, was unveiled in Funchal on 21 December 2014.\nThe unveiling of the rebranded Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport took place on 29 March 2017, which included a bust of his head being presented. The bust and the name change were controversial, with the lack of the bust's likeness to Ronaldo being ridiculed by comedians, including \"Saturday Night Live\", A year later, sports website Bleacher Report commissioned sculptor Emanuel Santos to create another bust; however, this bust was never used and a new one was made by a Spanish sculptor, shown to the public on 15 June 2018.\nBusiness ventures.\nRonaldo opened a fashion boutique under the name \"CR7\" (his initials and shirt number) on the island of Madeira in 2006 and opened a second in Lisbon in 2008. In partnership with Scandinavian manufacturer JBS Textile Group and the New York fashion designer Richard Chai, Ronaldo co-designed a range of underwear and sock line, released in November 2013. He expanded his \"CR7\" fashion brand by launching a line of premium shirts and shoes in July 2014. In September 2015, Ronaldo released his own fragrance, \"Legacy\", in a partnership with Eden Parfums. Since 26 October 2023, the new owners of Medialivre (\"Correio da Manh\u00e3\", \"Record\" and \"Jornal de Neg\u00f3cios\" publisher) are a group of investors that include Cristiano Ronaldo through Portuguese company Express\u00e3o Livre. In December 2011, he launched an iPhone game called \"Heads Up with Cristiano\", created by developer RockLive, and in December 2013, he launched \"Viva Ronaldo\", a dedicated social networking website and app.\nMedia.\nRonaldo's autobiography, titled \"Moments\", was published in 2007. His sponsor Castrol produced the television film \"Ronaldo: Tested to the Limit\", in which he was physically and mentally tested in several areas; his physical performance was subject to scrutiny by world media upon the film's release in September 2011. ', a documentary narrated by actor Benedict Cumberbatch, was released via Vimeo in June 2014. A documentary film directed by Anthony Wonke about his life and career, titled \"Ronaldo\", was released on 9 November 2015. He appears as a playable character in the 2025 fighting game '.\nPersonal life.\nFamily, children, and relationships.\nRonaldo has five living children. He first became a father to a son, who was born on 17 June 2010 in the United States. He has full custody of the child and has not publicly revealed the identity of the mother per an agreement with her. In January 2015, Ronaldo's five-year relationship with Russian model Irina Shayk ended.\nRonaldo became a father to twins, born on 8 June 2017 in the United States via surrogacy. He is currently in a relationship with Argentine-born Spanish model Georgina Rodr\u00edguez, who gave birth to a daughter on 12 November 2017. The couple expected another set of twins in 2022. The male twin died during childbirth while the female twin survived.\nRonaldo's father, Jos\u00e9, died of an alcoholism-related liver condition at age 52 in September 2005 when Ronaldo was 20.\nIn January 2023, after Ronaldo moved to Saudi Arabia with his family having been signed by Saudi Pro League side Al Nassr, the rulers of the Kingdom made Ronaldo an exception to the rule that unmarried couples are not allowed to live together in Saudi Arabia. An unnamed Saudi lawyer told Spanish news agency EFE that \"the laws of the Kingdom still prohibit cohabitation without a marriage contract\", but Saudi authorities have begun to \"turn a blind eye and stop prosecuting anyone, even though these laws are applied when there is a problem or a crime\".\nRonaldo is of (one-eighth) Cape Verdean descent through his great-grandmother. He is a Catholic.\nAfter her son achieved legendary status in world football, Cristiano Ronaldo's mother, Dolores Aveiro, became a popular personality in Portugal to such an extent that advertising campaigns for well-known brands in the country, such as Maggi, MultiOpticas and Pingo Doce, have featured her in commercials.\nHealth.\nRonaldo has said that he does not drink alcohol, and he received libel damages over a \"Daily Mirror\" article that reported him drinking heavily in a nightclub while recovering from an injury in July 2008. He also does not have any tattoos as he regularly donates blood and bone marrow.\nLegal issues.\nIn July 2017, Ronaldo was charged with fraudulently evading almost \u20ac15\u00a0million in tax between 2011 and 2014, a claim he denied at the time. In June 2018, Ronaldo was given a two-year suspended jail sentence and fined \u20ac18.8\u00a0million, later reduced to \u20ac16.8\u00a0million after reaching a deal with Spanish authorities. The sentence can be served under probation, without any jail time, so long as he does not re-offend.\nRonaldo and another man were investigated by the British Crown Prosecution Service after a 2005 rape allegation was brought forward by two women. Within days, the two women withdrew their allegation and Scotland Yard later issued a statement declaring there was not enough evidence for a prosecution.\nIn April 2017, it was reported that Ronaldo was being investigated by the Las Vegas Police Department for an allegation by a woman that he had raped her in 2009. Documents, confirmed by Ronaldo's lawyers, state that Ronaldo paid a woman US$375,000 in a non-disclosure settlement. Ronaldo and his lawyers issued a lengthy statement denying all accusations, describing them as an \"intentional defamation campaign\" with parts significantly \"altered and/or completely fabricated\", a claim which \"Der Spiegel\" categorically denied. In July 2019, Las Vegas prosecutors said they would not charge Ronaldo over allegations of rape; the statement added: \"Based upon a review of information at this time, the allegations of sexual assault against Cristiano Ronaldo cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.\" The same woman, in September 2018, filed a civil lawsuit in Nevada accusing Ronaldo of rape. \"The Daily Mirror\", citing court documents, reported in 2021 that the woman sought \u00a356\u00a0million in damages from Ronaldo. In October 2021, federal magistrate judge Daniel Albregts recommended that the lawsuit be dismissed, citing that the woman's lawyer, Leslie Stovall, \"acted in bad faith by asking for, receiving, and using Football Leaks documents to prosecute\" the case, despite the documents containing \"privileged communications\" between Ronaldo and his lawyers. Additionally, Albregts stated that no evidence was found of Ronaldo's lawyers having \"intimidated [the woman] or impeded law enforcement\" during the 2010 settlement with her. In June 2022, the woman's rape lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice in the United States District Court for the District of Nevada, as district judge Jennifer A. Dorsey ruled that Stovall's repeated use of \"cyber-hacked attorney\u2013client privileged documents\" were actions representing \"abuses and flagrant circumvention of the proper litigation process\".\n \"As of match played 14 March 2025\"\nCareer statistics.\nClub.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\n \"As of match played 23 March 2025\"\nInternational.\nNotes\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nHonours.\nSporting CP\nManchester United\nReal Madrid\nJuventus\nAl Nassr\nPortugal\nIndividual\nOrders\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "52088909": "List of most-followed Instagram accounts\nThis page shows the 50 accounts with the most followers on the social media platform Instagram, with each amount rounded down to the nearest million followers. The most-followed account is Instagram's own account. The most-followed person is Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo.\nList.\n<templatestyles src=\"template:sticky header/styles.css\"/><templatestyles src=\"Template:Table alignment/tables.css\" /><templatestyles src=\"Template:Static row numbers/styles.css\" /><templatestyles src=\"Template:Sort under/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["52088909", "623737"], "permutation_1": ["623737", "52088909"], "permutation_2": ["52088909", "623737"], "permutation_3": ["52088909", "623737"]}
{"id": "2hop__80070_89752", "docs_added": {"21531764": "New England\nRegion in the Northeastern United States\nNew England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick to the northeast and Quebec to the north. The Gulf of Maine and Atlantic Ocean are to the east and southeast, and Long Island Sound is to the southwest. Boston is New England's largest city and the capital of Massachusetts. Greater Boston is the largest metropolitan area, with nearly a third of New England's population; this area includes Worcester, Massachusetts, the second-largest city in New England; Manchester, New Hampshire, the largest city in New Hampshire; and Providence, Rhode Island, the capital of and largest city in Rhode Island. \nIn 1620, the Pilgrims established Plymouth Colony, the second successful settlement in British America after the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia, founded in 1607. Ten years later, Puritans established Massachusetts Bay Colony north of Plymouth Colony. Over the next 126 years, people in the region fought in four French and Indian Wars until the English colonists and their Iroquois allies defeated the French and their Algonquian allies.\nIn the late 18th century, political leaders from the New England colonies initiated resistance to Britain's taxes without the consent of the colonists. Residents of Rhode Island captured and burned a British ship which was enforcing unpopular trade restrictions, and residents of Boston threw British tea into the harbor. Britain responded with a series of punitive laws stripping Massachusetts of self-government which the colonists called the \"Intolerable Acts\". These confrontations led to the first battles of the American Revolutionary War in 1775 and the expulsion of the British authorities from the region in spring 1776. The region played a prominent role in the movement to abolish slavery in the United States, and it was the first region of the U.S. transformed by the Industrial Revolution, initially centered on the Blackstone and Merrimack river valleys.\nThe physical geography of New England is diverse. Southeastern New England is covered by a narrow coastal plain, while the western and northern regions are dominated by the rolling hills and worn-down peaks of the northern end of the Appalachian Mountains. The Atlantic fall line lies close to the coast, which enabled numerous cities to take advantage of water power along the many rivers, such as the Connecticut River, which bisects the region from north to south.\nEach state is generally subdivided into small municipalities known as towns, many of which are governed by town meetings. Unincorporated areas are practically nonexistent outside of Maine and Vermont, and village-style governments common in other areas are limited to Vermont and Connecticut. New England is one of the U.S. Census Bureau's nine regional divisions and the only multi-state region with clear and consistent boundaries. It maintains a strong sense of cultural identity, although the terms of this identity are often contrasted, combining Puritanism with liberalism, agrarian life with industry, and isolation with immigration.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nThe earliest known inhabitants of New England were American Indians who spoke a variety of the Eastern Algonquian languages. Prominent tribes included the Abenakis, Mi'kmaq, Penobscot, Pequots, Mohegans, Narragansetts, Nipmucs, Pocumtucks, and Wampanoags. Prior to the arrival of European colonists, the Western Abenakis inhabited what is now New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont, as well as parts of Quebec and western Maine. Their principal town was Norridgewock in today's Maine.\nThe Penobscots lived along the Penobscot River in Maine. The Narragansetts and smaller tribes under their sovereignty lived in Rhode Island, west of Narragansett Bay, including Block Island. The Wampanoags occupied southeastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. The Pocumtucks lived in Western Massachusetts, and the Mohegan and Pequot tribes lived in Connecticut. The Connecticut River Valley linked numerous tribes culturally, linguistically, and politically.\nAs early as 1600\u00a0CE, French, Dutch, and English traders began exploring the New World, trading metal, glass, and cloth for local beaver pelts.\nColonial period.\nOn April 10, 1606, King James I of England issued a charter for the Virginia Company, which consisted of the London Company and the Plymouth Company. These two privately funded ventures were intended to claim land for England, to conduct trade, and to return a profit. In 1620, the Pilgrims arrived on the \"Mayflower\" and established Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, beginning the history of permanent European colonization in New England.\nIn 1616, English explorer John Smith named the region \"New England\". The name was officially sanctioned on November 3, 1620, when the charter of the Virginia Company of Plymouth was replaced by a royal charter for the Plymouth Council for New England, a joint-stock company established to colonize and govern the region. The Pilgrims wrote and signed the Mayflower Compact before leaving the ship, and it became their first governing document. The Massachusetts Bay Colony came to dominate the area and was established by royal charter in 1629 with its major town and port of Boston established in 1630.\nMassachusetts Puritans began to establish themselves in Connecticut as early as 1633. Roger Williams was banished from Massachusetts for theological reasons; he led a group south where they founded Providence Plantations, which grew into the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in 1636. At this time, Vermont was uncolonized, and the territories of New Hampshire and Maine were claimed and governed by Massachusetts. As the region grew, it received many immigrants from Europe due to its religious tolerance and economy.\nFrench and Indian Wars.\nRelationships alternated between peace and armed skirmishes between colonists and local Native American tribes, the bloodiest of which was the Pequot War in 1637 which resulted in the Mystic massacre. On May 19, 1643, the colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, New Haven, and Connecticut joined in a loose compact called the New England Confederation (officially \"The United Colonies of New England\"). The confederation was designed largely to coordinate mutual defense, and it gained some importance during King Philip's War which pitted the colonists and their Indian allies against a widespread Indian uprising from June 1675 through April 1678, resulting in killings and massacres on both sides. In the aftermath of settler-Native conflicts, hundreds of captive Indians were sold into slavery. Up until 1700, Native Americans comprised a majority of the non-white labor force in colonial New England.\nDuring the next 74 years, there were six colonial wars that took place primarily between New England and New France, during which New England was allied with the Iroquois Confederacy and New France was allied with the Wabanaki Confederacy. Mainland Nova Scotia came under the control of New England after the Siege of Port Royal (1710), but both New Brunswick and most of Maine remained contested territory between New England and New France. The British eventually defeated the French in 1763, opening the Connecticut River Valley for British settlement into western New Hampshire and Vermont.\nThe New England Colonies were settled primarily by farmers who became relatively self-sufficient. Later, New England's economy began to focus on crafts and trade, aided by the Puritan work ethic, in contrast to the Southern colonies which focused on agricultural production while importing finished goods from England.\nDominion of New England.\nBy 1686, King James II had become concerned about the increasingly independent ways of the colonies, including their self-governing charters, their open flouting of the Navigation Acts, and their growing military power. He therefore established the Dominion of New England, an administrative union including all of the New England colonies. In 1688, the former Dutch colonies of New York, East New Jersey, and West New Jersey were added to the dominion. The union was imposed from the outside and contrary to the rooted democratic tradition of the colonies, and it was highly unpopular among the colonists.\nThe dominion significantly modified the charters of the colonies, including the appointment of royal governors to nearly all of them. There was an uneasy tension among the royal governors, their officers, and the elected governing bodies of the colonies. The governors wanted unlimited authority, and the different layers of locally elected officials would often resist them. In most cases, the local town governments continued operating as self-governing bodies, just as they had before the appointment of the governors.\nAfter the Glorious Revolution, in 1689, Bostonians overthrew the royal governor, Sir Edmund Andros. During a popular and bloodless uprising, they seized dominion officials and adherents to the Church of England. These tensions eventually culminated in the American Revolution, boiling over with the outbreak of the War of American Independence in 1775. The first battles of which were fought in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, leading to the Siege of Boston by continental troops. In March 1776, British forces were compelled to retreat from Boston.\nNew England in the new nation.\nAfter the dissolution of the Dominion of New England, the colonies of New England ceased to function as a unified political unit but remained a defined cultural region. There were often disputes over territorial jurisdiction, leading to land exchanges such as those regarding the Equivalent Lands and New Hampshire Grants.\nBy 1784, all of the states in the region had taken steps towards the abolition of slavery, with Vermont and Massachusetts introducing total abolition in 1777 and 1783, respectively. The nickname \"Yankeeland\" was sometimes used to denote the New England area, especially among Southerners and the British.\nVermont was admitted to statehood in 1791 after settling a dispute with New York. The territory of Maine had been a part of Massachusetts, but it was granted statehood on March 15, 1820, as part of the Missouri Compromise. Today, New England is defined as the six states of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.\nNew England's economic growth relied heavily on trade with the British Empire, and the region's merchants and politicians strongly opposed trade restrictions. As the United States and the United Kingdom fought the War of 1812, New England Federalists organized the Hartford Convention in the winter of 1814 to discuss the region's grievances concerning the war, and to propose changes to the United States Constitution to protect the region's interests and maintain its political power. Radical delegates within the convention proposed the region's secession from the United States, but they were outnumbered by moderates who opposed the idea.\nPolitically, the region often disagreed with the rest of the country. Massachusetts and Connecticut were among the last refuges of the Federalist Party, and New England became the strongest bastion of the new Whig Party when the Second Party System began in the 1830s. The Whigs were usually dominant throughout New England, except in the more Democratic Maine and New Hampshire.\nIndustrial Revolution.\nNew England was key to the Industrial Revolution in the United States. The Blackstone Valley running through Massachusetts and Rhode Island has been called the birthplace of America's industrial revolution. In 1787, the first cotton mill in America was founded in the North Shore seaport of Beverly, Massachusetts as the Beverly Cotton Manufactory. The Manufactory was also considered the largest cotton mill of its time. Technological developments and achievements from the Manufactory led to the development of more advanced cotton mills, including Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Towns such as Lawrence, Massachusetts, Lowell, Massachusetts, Woonsocket, Rhode Island, and Lewiston, Maine became centers of the textile industry following the innovations at Slater Mill and the Beverly Cotton Manufactory.\nThe Connecticut River Valley became a crucible for industrial innovation, particularly the Springfield Armory, pioneering such advances as interchangeable parts and the assembly line which influenced manufacturing processes all around the world. From early in the nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth, the region surrounding Springfield, Massachusetts and Hartford, Connecticut served as the United States' epicenter for advanced manufacturing, drawing skilled workers from all over the world.\nThe rapid growth of textile manufacturing in New England between 1815 and 1860 caused a shortage of workers. Recruiters were hired by mill agents to bring young women and children from the countryside to work in the factories. Between 1830 and 1860, thousands of farm girls moved from rural areas where there was no paid employment to work in the nearby mills, such as the Lowell Mill Girls. As the textile industry grew, immigration also grew. By the 1850s, immigrants began working in the mills, especially French Canadians and Irish.\nNew England as a whole was the most industrialized part of the United States. By 1850, the region accounted for well over a quarter of all manufacturing value in the country and over a third of its industrial workforce. It was also the most literate and most educated region in the country.\nPolitical and demographic shift.\nDuring the same period, New England and areas settled by New Englanders (upstate New York, Ohio's Western Reserve, and the upper midwestern states of Michigan and Wisconsin) were the center of the strongest abolitionist and anti-slavery movements in the United States, coinciding with the Protestant Great Awakening in the region. Abolitionists who demanded immediate emancipation had their base in the region, such as William Lloyd Garrison, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Wendell Phillips. So too did anti-slavery politicians who wanted to limit the growth of slavery, such as John Quincy Adams, Charles Sumner, and John P. Hale. The anti-slavery Republican Party was formed in the 1850s, and all of New England became strongly Republican, including areas that had previously been strongholds for both the Whig and the Democratic parties. New England remained solidly Republican until Catholics began to mobilize behind the Democrats, especially in 1928. This led to the end of \"Yankee Republicanism\" and began New England's relatively swift transition into a consistently Democratic stronghold in national elections.\nThe flow of immigrants continued at a steady pace from the 1840s until cut off by World War I. The largest numbers came from Ireland and Britain before 1890, and after that from Quebec, Italy, and Southern Europe. The immigrants filled the ranks of factory workers, craftsmen, and unskilled laborers. The Irish and Italians assumed a larger and larger role in the Democratic Party in the cities and statewide, while the rural areas remained Republican.\nThe Great Depression and post-World War II changes.\nThe Great Depression in the United States of the 1930s hit the region hard, with high unemployment in the industrial cities. The Boston Stock Exchange rivaled the New York Stock Exchange in 1930. The Democrats appealed to factory workers and especially Catholics, pulling them into the New Deal coalition and making the once-Republican region into one that was closely divided. However, the enormous spending on munitions, ships, electronics, and uniforms during World War II caused a burst of prosperity in every sector.\nThe region lost most of its factories starting with the loss of textiles in the 1930s and getting worse after 1960. The New England economy was radically transformed after World War II. The factory economy practically disappeared. Once-bustling New England communities fell into economic decay following the flight of the region's industrial base. The textile mills one by one went out of business from the 1920s to the 1970s. For example, the Crompton Company went bankrupt in 1984 after 178 years in business, costing the jobs of 2,450 workers in five states. The major reasons were cheap imports, the strong dollar, declining exports, and a failure to diversify. The shoe industry subsequently left the region as well.\nWhat remains is very high technology manufacturing, such as jet engines, nuclear submarines, pharmaceuticals, robotics, scientific instruments, and medical devices. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology invented the format for university-industry relations in high tech fields and spawned many software and hardware firms, some of which grew rapidly. By the 21st century, the region had become famous for its leadership roles in the fields of education, medicine, medical research, high-technology, finance, and tourism.\nSome industrial areas were slow in adjusting to the new service economy. In 2000, New England had two of the ten poorest cities in the U.S. (by percentage living below the poverty line): the state capitals of Providence, Rhode Island and Hartford, Connecticut. They were no longer in the bottom ten by 2010; Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire remain among the ten wealthiest states in the United States in terms of median household income and per capita income.\nGeography.\nThe states of New England have a combined area, including water surfaces, of , making the region slightly larger than the state of Washington and slightly smaller than Great Britain. Maine alone constitutes nearly one-half of the total area of New England, yet is only the 39th-largest state, slightly smaller than Indiana. The remaining states are among the smallest in the U.S., including the smallest state\u2014Rhode Island.\nThe areas of the states (including water area) are:\nGeology.\nNew England's long rolling hills, mountains, and jagged coastline are glacial landforms resulting from the retreat of ice sheets approximately 18,000 years ago, during the last glacial period.\nNew England is geologically a part of the New England province, an exotic terrane region consisting of the Appalachian Mountains, the New England highlands and the seaboard lowlands. The Appalachian Mountains roughly follow the border between New England and New York. The Berkshires in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and the Green Mountains in Vermont, as well as the Taconic Mountains, form a spine of Precambrian rock.\nThe Appalachians extend northwards into New Hampshire as the White Mountains, and then into Maine and Canada. Mount Washington in New Hampshire is the highest peak in the Northeast, although it is not among the ten highest peaks in the eastern United States. It is the site of the second highest recorded wind speed on Earth, and has the reputation of having the world's most severe weather.\nThe coast of the region, extending from southwestern Connecticut to northeastern Maine, is dotted with lakes, hills, marshes and wetlands, and sandy beaches. Important valleys in the region include the Champlain Valley, the Connecticut River Valley and the Merrimack Valley. The longest river is the Connecticut River, which flows from northeastern New Hampshire for , emptying into Long Island Sound, roughly bisecting the region. Lake Champlain, which forms part of the border between Vermont and New York, is the largest lake in the region, followed by Moosehead Lake in Maine and Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire.\nClimate.\nThe climate of New England varies greatly across its span from northern Maine to southern Connecticut:\nMaine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and western Massachusetts have a humid continental climate (Dfb in K\u00f6ppen climate classification). In this region the winters are long and cold, and heavy snow is common (most locations receive of snow annually in this region). The summer's months are moderately warm, though summer is rather short and rainfall is spread through the year.\nIn central and eastern Massachusetts, northern Rhode Island, and northern Connecticut, the same humid continental prevails (Dfa), though summers are warm to hot, winters are shorter, and there is less snowfall (especially in the coastal areas where it is often warmer).\nSouthern and coastal Connecticut is the broad transition zone from the cold continental climates of the north to the milder subtropical climates to the south. The frost free season is greater than 180 days across far southern/coastal Connecticut, coastal Rhode Island, and the islands (Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard). Winters also tend to be much sunnier in southern Connecticut and southern Rhode Island compared to the rest of New England.\nBiodiversity.\nNew England contains forested ecosystems with a variety of terrestrial vertebrates. Land-use patterns and land disturbance, such as the dramatic increase in land clearing for agriculture in the mid eighteenth century to nineteenth century, greatly altered the ecosystem and resulted in extinctions, local extirpations, and recolonizations.\nAccording to an analysis of USDA Forest Service data, tree species diversity increases from north to south at about two to three species per degree in latitude. In addition, taller trees are associated with higher tree species diversity, and tree height is a better predictor than general forest age or biomass. Due to an increasing the amount of nitrogen in the soil from climate change, the red maple is becoming one of the most abundant trees in the region, and outcompeting other maples such as the sugar maple.\nLargest cities.\nThe most populous cities as of the 2020 U.S. Census were (metropolitan areas in parentheses):\nDuring the 20th century, urban expansion in regions surrounding New York City has become an important economic influence on neighboring Connecticut, parts of which belong to the New York metropolitan area. The U.S. Census Bureau groups Fairfield, New Haven and Litchfield counties in western Connecticut together with New York City and other parts of New York and New Jersey as a combined statistical area.\nMetropolitan areas and capitals.\nMetropolitan areas.\nThe following are metropolitan statistical areas as defined by the United States Census Bureau.\nDemographics.\nIn 2020, New England had a population of 15,116,205, a growth of 4.6% from 2010. Massachusetts is the most populous state with 7,029,917 residents, while Vermont is the least populous state with 643,077 residents. Boston is by far the region's most populous city and metropolitan area.\nAlthough a great disparity exists between New England's northern and southern portions, the region's average population density is 234.93 inhabitants/sq mi (90.7/km2). New England has a significantly higher population density than that of the U.S. as a whole (79.56/sq mi), or even just the contiguous 48 states (94.48/sq mi). Three-quarters of the population of New England, and most of the major cities, are in southern New England\u2014the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island\u2014where the combined population density is 786.83/sq mi (2000 census). In northern New England\u2014the states of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont\u2014the combined population density is 63.56/sq mi (2000 census).\nAccording to the 2006\u201308 American Community Survey, 48.7% of New Englanders were male and 51.3% were female. Approximately 22.4% of the population were under 18 years of age; 13.5% were over 65 years of age. The six states of New England have the lowest birth rate in the U.S.\nWhite Americans make up the majority of New England's population at 73.4% of the total population, Hispanic and Latino Americans are New England's largest minority, and they are the second-largest group in the region behind non-Hispanic European Americans. As of 2014, Hispanics and Latinos of any race made up 10.2% of New England's population. Connecticut had the highest proportion at 13.9%, while Vermont had the lowest at 1.3%. There were nearly 1.5 million Hispanic and Latino individuals reported in New England in 2014.\nPuerto Ricans were the most numerous of the Hispanic and Latino subgroups. Over 660,000 Puerto Ricans lived in New England in 2014, forming 4.5% of the population. The Dominican population is over 200,000, and the Mexican and Guatemalan populations are each over 100,000. Americans of Cuban descent are scant in number; there were roughly 26,000 Cuban Americans in the region in 2014. People of all other Hispanic and Latino ancestries, including Salvadoran, Colombian and Bolivian, formed 2.5% of New England's population and numbered over 361,000 combined.\nAccording to the 2014 American Community Survey, the top ten largest reported European ancestries were the following: Irish: 19.2% (2.8 million); English (includes \"American\" ancestry): 16.7% (2.4 million); Italian: 13.6% (2.0 million); French and French Canadian: 13.1% (1.9 million); German: 7.4% (1.1 million); Polish: 4.9% (roughly 715,000); Portuguese: 3.2% (467,000); Scottish: 2.5% (370,000); Russian: 1.4% (206,000); and Greek: 1.0% (152,000).\nEnglish is, by far, the most common language spoken at home. Approximately 81.3% of all residents (11.3 million people) over the age of five spoke only English at home. Roughly 1,085,000 people (7.8% of the population) spoke Spanish at home, and roughly 970,000 people (7.0% of the population) spoke other Indo-European languages at home. Over 403,000 people (2.9% of the population) spoke an Asian or Pacific Island language at home. Slightly fewer (about 1%) spoke French at home, although this figure is above 20% in northern New England, which borders francophone Qu\u00e9bec. Roughly 99,000 people (0.7% of the population) spoke languages other than these at home.\nAs of 2014, approximately 87% of New England's inhabitants were born in the U.S., while over 12% were foreign-born. Of foreign-born residents, 35.8% were born in Latin America, 28.6% were born in Asia, 22.9% were born in Europe, and 8.5% were born in Africa.\nSouthern New England forms an integral part of the BosWash megalopolis, a conglomeration of urban centers that spans from Boston to Washington, D.C. The region includes three of the four most densely populated states in the U.S.; only New Jersey has a higher population density than the states of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.\nGreater Boston, which includes parts of southern New Hampshire, has a total population of approximately 4.8 million, while over half the population of New England falls inside Boston's Combined Statistical Area of over 8.2 million.\nEconomy.\nSeveral factors combine to make the New England economy unique. The region is distant from the geographic center of the country, and it is a relatively small region but densely populated. It historically has been an important center of industry and manufacturing and a supplier of natural resource products, such as granite, lobster, and codfish. The service industry is important, including tourism, education, financial and insurance services, and architectural, building and construction services. The U.S. Department of Commerce has called the New England economy a microcosm for the entire U.S. economy.\nThe region underwent a long period of deindustrialization in the first half of the 20th century, as traditional manufacturing companies relocated to the Midwest, with textile and furniture manufacturing migrating to the South. In the late-20th century, an increasing portion of the regional economy included high technology, military defense industry, finance and insurance services, and education and health services. As of 2018, the GDP of New England was $1.1 trillion.\nNew England exports food products ranging from fish to lobster, cranberries, potatoes, and maple syrup. About half of the region's exports consist of industrial and commercial machinery, such as computers and electronic and electrical equipment. Granite is quarried at Barre, Vermont, guns made at Springfield, Massachusetts, Exeter, New Hampshire and Saco, Maine, submarines at Groton, Connecticut, surface naval vessels at Bath, Maine, and hand tools at Turners Falls, Massachusetts.\nUrban centers.\nIn 2017, Boston was ranked as having the ninth-most competitive financial center in the world and the fourth-most competitive in the United States. Boston-based Fidelity Investments helped popularize the mutual fund in the 1980s and has made Boston one of the top financial centers in the United States. The city is home to the headquarters of Santander Bank and a center for venture capital firms. State Street Corporation specializes in asset management and custody services and is based in the city.\nBoston is also a printing and publishing center. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is headquartered there, along with Bedford-St. Martin's and Beacon Press. The city is also home to the Hynes Convention Center in the Back Bay and the Seaport Hotel and Seaport World Trade Center and Boston Convention and Exhibition Center on the South Boston waterfront.\nThe General Electric Corporation announced its decision to move the company's global headquarters to the Boston Seaport District from Fairfield, Connecticut, in 2016, citing factors including Boston's preeminence in the realm of higher education. The city also holds the headquarters to several major athletic and footwear companies, including Converse, New Balance and Reebok. Rockport, Puma and Wolverine World Wide have headquarters or regional offices just outside the city.\nHartford is the historic international center of the insurance industry, with companies such as Aetna, Conning & Company, The Hartford, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, The Phoenix Companies and Hartford Steam Boiler based in the city, and The Travelers Companies and Lincoln National Corporation have major operations in the city. It is also home to the corporate headquarters of U.S. Fire Arms Mfg. Co., United Technologies, and Virtus Investment Partners.\nFairfield County, Connecticut, has a large concentration of investment management firms in the area, most notably Bridgewater Associates (one of the world's largest hedge fund companies), Aladdin Capital Management and Point72 Asset Management. Moreover, many international banks have their North American headquarters in Fairfield County, such as NatWest Group and UBS.\nAgriculture.\nAgriculture is limited by the area's rocky soil, cool climate, and small area. Some New England states, however, are ranked highly among U.S. states for particular areas of production. Maine is ranked ninth for aquaculture, and has abundant potato fields in its northeast part. Vermont is fifteenth for dairy products, and Connecticut and Massachusetts seventh and eleventh for tobacco, respectively. Cranberries are grown in Massachusetts' Cape Cod-Southcoast-South Shore area, and blueberries in Maine.\nEnergy.\nThe region is mostly energy-efficient compared to the U.S. at large, with every state but Maine ranking within the ten most energy-efficient states; every state in New England also ranks within the ten most expensive states for electricity prices. Wind power, mainly from offshore sources, is expected to gain market share in the 2020s.\nEmployment.\nAs of January 2017, employment is stronger in New England than in the rest of the United States. During the Great Recession, unemployment rates ballooned across New England as elsewhere; however, in the years that followed, these rates declined steadily, with New Hampshire and Massachusetts having the lowest unemployment rates in the country, respectively. The most extreme swing was in Rhode Island, which had an unemployment rate above 10% following the recession, but which saw this rate decline by over 6% in six years.\nAs of December 2016, the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) with the lowest unemployment rate, 2.1%, was Burlington-South Burlington, Vermont; the MSA with the highest rate, 4.9%, was Waterbury, Connecticut.\nOverall tax burden.\nIn 2023, three of the six New England states were among the top ten states in the country in terms of taxes paid per taxpayer, while one was among the top five least. The rankings being #3 Maine (11.14%), #4 Vermont (10.28%), #5 Connecticut (9.83%), #11 Rhode Island (9.07%), #20 Massachusetts (8.48%), and #48 New Hampshire (6.14%). While overall tax burden varies widely, all six states sport exceptionally high property taxes with five of the six states being within the nationwide top 10. The rankings being #1 Maine (5.33%), #2 Vermont (4.98%), #3 New Hampshire (4.94%), #6 Connecticut (4.24%), #7 Rhode Island (4.17%), and #13 Massachusetts (3.42%).\nGovernment.\nTown meetings.\nNew England town meetings were derived from meetings held by church elders, and are still an integral part of government in many New England towns. At such meetings, any citizen of the town may discuss issues with other members of the community and vote on them. This is the strongest example of direct democracy in the U.S. today, and the strong democratic tradition was even apparent in the early 19th century, when Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in \"Democracy in America\":\nBy contrast, James Madison wrote in \"Federalist No. 55\" that, regardless of the assembly, \"passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.\" The use and effectiveness of town meetings is still discussed by scholars, as well as the possible application of the format to other regions and countries.\nElections.\nState and national elected officials in New England recently have been elected mainly from the Democratic Party. The region is generally considered to be the most liberal in the United States, with more New Englanders identifying as liberals than Americans elsewhere. In 2010, four of six of the New England states were polled as the most liberal in the United States.\nAs of 2021, five of the six states of New England have voted for every Democratic presidential nominee since 1992. In that time, New Hampshire has voted for Democratic nominees in every presidential election except 2000, when George W. Bush narrowly won the state. 2020 was a particularly strong year for Democratic nominee Joe Biden in New England, winning 61.2% of the total vote in the six states, the highest percentage for Democrats since the landslide election of 1964. As of the 117th Congress, all members of the U.S. House of Representatives from New England are members of the Democratic Party, and all but one of its senators caucus with the Democrats. Two of those senators, although caucusing with Democrats, are the only independents currently serving in Congress: Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, representing Vermont, and Angus King, an Independent representing Maine.\nIn the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama carried all six New England states by 9 percentage points or more. He carried every county in New England except for Piscataquis County, Maine, which he lost by 4% to Senator John McCain (R-AZ). Pursuant to the reapportionment following the 2010 census, New England collectively has 33 electoral votes.\nThe following table presents the vote percentage for the popular-vote winner for each New England state, New England as a whole, and the United States as a whole, in each presidential election from 1900 to 2020, with the vote percentage for the Republican candidate shaded in red and the vote percentage for the Democratic candidate shaded in blue:\nPolitical party strength.\nJudging purely by party registration rather than voting patterns, New England today is one of the most Democratic regions in the U.S. According to Gallup, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont are \"solidly Democratic\", Maine \"leans Democratic\", and New Hampshire is a swing state. Though New England is today considered a Democratic Party stronghold, much of the region was staunchly Republican before the mid-twentieth century. This changed in the late 20th century, in large part due to demographic shifts and the Republican Party's adoption of socially conservative platforms as part of its strategic shift towards the South. For example, Vermont voted Republican in every presidential election from 1856 through 1988 with the exception of 1964, and has voted Democratic every election since. Maine and Vermont were the only two states in the nation to vote against Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt all four times he ran for president. Republicans in New England are today considered by both liberals and conservatives to be more moderate (socially liberal) compared to Republicans in other parts of the U.S.\nNew Hampshire primary.\nHistorically, the New Hampshire primary has been the first in a series of nationwide political party primary elections held in the United States every four years. Held in the state of New Hampshire, it usually marks the beginning of the U.S. presidential election process. Even though few delegates are chosen from New Hampshire, the primary has always been pivotal to both New England and American politics. One college in particular, Saint Anselm College, has been home to numerous national presidential debates and visits by candidates to its campus.\nEducation.\nColleges and universities.\nNew England contains some of the oldest and most renowned institutions of higher learning in the United States and the world. Harvard College was the first such institution, founded in 1636 at Cambridge, Massachusetts, to train preachers. Yale University was founded in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, in 1701, and awarded the nation's first doctoral (PhD) degree in 1861. Yale moved to New Haven, Connecticut, in 1718, where it has remained to the present day.\nBrown University was the first college in the nation to accept students of all religious affiliations, and is the seventh oldest U.S. institution of higher learning. It was founded in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1764. Dartmouth College was founded five years later in Hanover, New Hampshire, with the mission of educating the local American Indian population as well as English youth. The University of Vermont, the fifth oldest university in New England, was founded in 1791, the same year that Vermont joined the Union.\nIn addition to four out of eight Ivy League schools, New England contains the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the bulk of educational institutions that are identified as the \"Little Ivies\", four of the original Seven Sisters, one of the eight original Public Ivies, the Colleges of Worcester Consortium in central Massachusetts, and the Five Colleges consortium in western Massachusetts. The University of Maine, the University of New Hampshire, the University of Connecticut, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the University of Rhode Island, and the University of Vermont are the flagship state universities in the region.\nPrivate and independent secondary schools.\nAt the pre-college level, New England is home to a number of American independent schools (also known as private schools). The concept of the elite \"New England prep school\" (preparatory school) and the \"preppy\" lifestyle is an iconic part of the region's image. \nSee the list of private schools for each state:, , , , , .\nPublic education.\nNew England is home to some of the oldest public schools in the nation and was the first region in the United States to implement universal compulsory schooling. Boston Latin School is the oldest public school in America and was attended by several signatories of the Declaration of Independence. Hartford Public High School is the second oldest operating high school in the U.S.\nAs of 2005, the National Education Association ranked Connecticut as having the highest-paid teachers in the country. Massachusetts and Rhode Island ranked eighth and ninth, respectively.\nNew Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont have cooperated in developing a New England Common Assessment Program test under the No Child Left Behind guidelines. These states can compare the resultant scores with each other.\nAcademic journals and press.\nThere are several academic journals and publishing companies in the region, including \"The New England Journal of Medicine\", Harvard University Press and Yale University Press. Some of its institutions lead the open access alternative to conventional academic publication, including MIT, the University of Connecticut, and the University of Maine. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston publishes the \"New England Economic Review\".\nCulture.\nNew England has a shared heritage and culture primarily shaped by waves of immigration from Europe. In contrast to other American regions, many of New England's earliest Puritan settlers came from eastern England, contributing to New England's distinctive accents, foods, customs, and social structures. Within modern New England a cultural divide exists between urban New Englanders living along the densely populated coastline, and rural New Englanders in western Massachusetts, northwestern and northeastern Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, where population density is low. There is also a substantial divide between Connecticut and the other states of the region, owing to the former's close cultural and economic ties with the New York metropolitan area.\nReligion.\nToday, New England is the least religious region of the U.S. In 2009, less than half of those polled in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont claimed that religion was an important part of their daily lives. Connecticut and Rhode Island are among the ten least religious states, where 55% and 53% of those polled (respectively) claimed that it was important. According to the American Religious Identification Survey, 34% of Vermonters claimed to have no religion; nearly one out of every four New Englanders identifies as having no religion, more than in any other part of the U.S. New England had one of the highest percentages of Catholics in the U.S. This number declined from 50% in 1990 to 36% in 2008.\nCultural roots.\nMany of the first European colonists of New England had a maritime orientation toward whaling (first noted about 1650) and fishing, in addition to farming. New England has developed a distinct cuisine, dialect, architecture, and government. New England cuisine has a reputation for its emphasis on seafood and dairy; clam chowder, lobster, and other products of the sea are among some of the region's most popular foods.\nNew England has largely preserved its regional character, especially in its historic places. The region has become more ethnically diverse, having seen waves of immigration from Ireland, Quebec, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Poland, Scandinavia, Asia, Latin America, Africa, other parts of the U.S., and elsewhere. The enduring European influence can be seen in the region in the use of traffic rotaries; the bilingual French and English towns of northern Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire; the unique, often non-rhotic traditional coastal dialect akin to the southeastern half of England; and the region's heavy prevalence of English town- and county-names. These repeat from state to state, primarily due to settlers throughout the region having named their new towns after their old ones. For example, the town of North Yarmouth, Maine, was named by settlers from Yarmouth, Massachusetts, which was in turn named for Great Yarmouth (still locally called Yarmouth) in England. Every New England state has a town named Warren (a French-English noble family of wealthy settlers), and each except Rhode Island has a city/town named Franklin and Washington (constitutional founding fathers), Andover, Bridgewater, Chester, Manchester, Plymouth, and Windsor (these six were towns in England). Every state except Connecticut has a Lincoln and has a Richmond. Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine each contain a Franklin County.\nCuisine.\nNew England maintains a distinct cuisine and food culture. Early foods in the region were influenced by Native American and English cuisines. The early colonists often adapted their original cuisine to fit with the available foods of the region. New England staples reflect the convergence of American Indian and Pilgrim cuisine, such as johnnycakes, succotash, cornbread and various seafood recipes. The Wabanaki tribal nations made nut milk.\nNew England also has a distinct food language. A few of the unique regional terms include \"grinders\" for submarine sandwiches and \"frappes\" for thick milkshakes, referred to as \"Cabinets\" in Rhode Island. Other foods native to the region include steak tips (marinated sirloin steak), bulkie rolls, maple syrup, cranberry recipes and clam chowder.\nA type of India pale ale known as New England India Pale Ale (NEIPA) was developed in Vermont in the 2010s. Other regional beverages include Moxie, one of the first mass-produced soft drinks in the United States, introduced in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1876; it remains popular in New England, particularly in Maine. Coffee milk is associated with Rhode Island as the official state drink.\nPortuguese cuisine is an important element in the annual Feast of the Blessed Sacrament in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the largest ethnic heritage festival in New England.\nAccents and dialects.\nThere are several American English dialects spoken in the region, most famously the Boston accent, which is native to the northeastern coastal regions of New England. The most identifiable features of the Boston accent are believed to have originated from England's Received Pronunciation, which shares features such as the broad A and dropping the final R. Another source was 17th century speech in East Anglia and Lincolnshire, where many of the Puritan immigrants had originated. The East Anglian \"whine\" developed into the Yankee \"twang\". Boston accents were most strongly associated at one point with the so-called \"Eastern Establishment\" and Boston's upper class, although today the accent is predominantly associated with blue-collar natives, as exemplified by movies such as \"Good Will Hunting\" and \"The Departed\". The Boston accent and those accents closely related to it cover eastern Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine.\nSome Rhode Islanders speak with a non-rhotic accent that many compare to a \"Brooklyn\" accent or a cross between a New York and Boston accent, where \"water\" becomes \"wata\". Many Rhode Islanders distinguish the \"aw\" sound , as one might hear in New Jersey; e.g., the word \"coffee\" is pronounced . This type of accent was brought to the region by early settlers from eastern England in the Puritan migration in the mid-seventeenth century.\nSocial activities and music.\nAcadian and Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois culture are included in music and dance in much of rural New England, particularly Maine. Contra dancing and country square dancing are popular throughout New England, usually backed by live Irish, Acadian or other folk music. Fife and drum corps are common, especially in southern New England and more specifically Connecticut, with music of mostly Celtic, English, and local origin.\nNew England leads the U.S. in ice cream consumption per capita.\nCandlepin bowling is essentially confined to New England, where it was invented in the 19th century.\nNew England was an important center of American classical music for some time. The First New England School of composers was active between 1770 and 1820, and the Second New England School about a century later. Prominent modernist composers also come from the region, including Charles Ives and John Adams. Boston is the site of the New England Conservatory, Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.\nIn popular music, the region has produced Donna Summer, JoJo, New Edition, Bobby Brown, Bel Biv Devoe, Passion Pit, MGMT, Meghan Trainor, New Kids on the Block, Rachel Platten and John Mayer. In rock music, the region has produced Rob Zombie, Aerosmith, Extreme, the Modern Lovers, Phish, the Pixies, the Cars, the J. Geils Band, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Grace Potter, GG Allin, the Dresden Dolls, Dinosaur Jr., the Dropkick Murphys and Boston. Quincy, Massachusetts, native Dick Dale helped popularize surf rock. Hip hop acts hailing from New England include Gang Starr, Apathy, Mr. Lif and Akrobatik.\nMedia.\nThe leading U.S. cable TV sports broadcaster ESPN is headquartered in Bristol, Connecticut. New England has several regional cable networks, including New England Cable News (NECN) and the New England Sports Network (NESN). New England Cable News is the largest regional 24-hour cable news network in the U.S., broadcasting to more than 3.2 million homes in all of the New England states. Its studios are located in Newton, Massachusetts, outside of Boston, and it maintains bureaus in Manchester, New Hampshire; Hartford, Connecticut; Worcester, Massachusetts; Portland, Maine; and Burlington, Vermont. In Connecticut's Litchfield, Fairfield, and New Haven counties, it also broadcasts New York based news programs\u2014this is due in part to the immense influence New York has on this region's economy and culture, and also to give Connecticut broadcasters the ability to compete with overlapping media coverage from New York-area broadcasters.\nNESN broadcasts the Boston Red Sox baseball and Boston Bruins hockey throughout the region, save for Fairfield County, Connecticut. Connecticut also receives the YES Network, which broadcasts the games of the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Nets as well as SportsNet New York (SNY), which broadcasts New York Mets games.\nNBC Sports Boston broadcasts the games of the Boston Celtics, New England Revolution and Boston Cannons to all of New England except Fairfield County.\nWhile most New England cities have daily newspapers, \"The Boston Globe\" and \"The New York Times\" are distributed widely throughout the region. Major newspapers also include \"The Providence Journal\", \"Portland Press Herald\", and \"Hartford Courant\", the oldest continuously published newspaper in the U.S.\nComedy.\nNew Englanders are well represented in American comedy. Writers for \"The Simpsons\" and late-night television programs often come by way of \"The Harvard Lampoon\". A number of \"Saturday Night Live\" (SNL) cast members have roots in New England, from Adam Sandler to Amy Poehler, who also starred in the NBC television series \"Parks and Recreation\". Seth MacFarlane, the creator of \"Family Guy\", is from Connecticut, with the show taking place in a fictional town called Quahog, Rhode Island. Former \"Daily Show\" correspondents John Hodgman, Rob Corddry and Steve Carell are from Massachusetts. Carell was also involved in film and the American adaptation of \"The Office\" (alongside fellow Massachusetts natives Mindy Kaling, B. J. Novak, and John Krasinski), which features Dunder-Mifflin branches set in Stamford, Connecticut, and Nashua, New Hampshire.\nLate-night television hosts Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien have roots in the Boston area. Notable stand-up comedians are also from the region, including Bill Burr, Steve Sweeney, Steven Wright, Sarah Silverman, Lisa Lampanelli, Denis Leary, Lenny Clarke, Patrice O'Neal and Louis CK. \"SNL\" cast member Seth Meyers once attributed the region's imprint on American humor to its \"sort of wry New England sense of pointing out anyone who's trying to make a big deal of himself\", with \"The Boston Globe\" suggesting that irony and sarcasm are its trademarks, as well as Irish influences.\nLiterature.\nNew Englanders have made significant contributions to literature. The first printing press in America was set up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by Stephen Daye in the 17th century. Writers in New England produced many works on religious subjects, particularly on Puritan theology and poetry during colonial times and on Enlightenment ideas during the American Revolution. The literature of New England has had an enduring influence on American literature in general, with themes that are emblematic of the larger concerns of American letters, such as religion, race, the individual versus society, social repression and nature.\n19th century New England was a center for progressive ideals, and many abolitionist and transcendentalist tracts were produced. Leading transcendentalists were from New England, such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Frederic Henry Hedge. Hartford, Connecticut resident Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel \"Uncle Tom's Cabin\" was an influential book in the spread of abolitionist ideas and is said to have \"laid the groundwork for the Civil War\". Other prominent New England novelists include John Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Louisa May Alcott, Sarah Orne Jewett, H. P. Lovecraft, Annie Proulx, Stephen King, Jack Kerouac, George V. Higgins, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.\nBoston was the center of the American publishing industry for some years, largely on the strength of its local writers and before it was overtaken by New York in the middle of the nineteenth century. Boston remains the home of publishers Houghton Mifflin and Pearson Education, and it was the longtime home of literary magazine \"The Atlantic Monthly\". Merriam-Webster is based in Springfield, Massachusetts. \"Yankee\" is a magazine for New Englanders based in Dublin, New Hampshire.\nMany New Englander poets have also been preeminent in American poetry. Prominent poets include Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, David Lindsay-Abaire, Annie Proulx, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Amy Lowell, John Cheever, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz, E. E. Cummings, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Robert P. T. Coffin and Richard Wilbur. Robert Frost who was described as an \"artistic institution\" frequently wrote about rural New England life. The Confessional poetry movement features prominent New England writers including Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath.\nFilm, television, and acting.\nNew England has a rich history in filmmaking dating back to the dawn of the motion picture era at the turn of the 20th century, sometimes dubbed Hollywood East by film critics. A theater at 547 Washington Street in Boston was the second location to debut a picture projected by the Vitascope, and shortly thereafter several novels were being adapted for the screen and set in New England, including \"The Scarlet Letter\" and \"The House of Seven Gables\". The New England region continued to churn out films at a pace above the national average for the duration of the 20th century, including blockbuster hits such as \"Jaws\", \"Good Will Hunting\" and \"The Departed\", all of which won Academy Awards. The New England area became known for a number of themes that recurred in films made during this era, including the development of yankee characters, smalltown life contrasted with city values, seafaring tales, family secrets and haunted New England. These themes are rooted in centuries of New England culture and are complemented by the region's diverse natural landscape and architecture, from the Atlantic Ocean and brilliant fall foliage to church steeples and skyscrapers.\nSince the turn of the millennium, Boston and the greater New England region have been home to the production of numerous films and television series, thanks in part to tax incentive programs put in place by local governments to attract filmmakers to the region.\nNotable actors and actresses that have come from the New England area include Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Chris Evans, Ryan O'Neal, Amy Poehler, Elizabeth Banks, Steve Carell, Ruth Gordon, John Krasinski, Edward Norton, Mark Wahlberg and Matthew Perry. Many films and television series have been produced in and set in New England.\nMuseums, historical societies, and libraries.\nThere are many museums located throughout New England, especially in the Greater Boston area. These museums include privately held collections as well as public institutions. Most notable of these museums are the Museum of Fine Arts, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Worcester Art Museum, and the Peabody Essex Museum. The oldest public museum in continuous operation in the United States is the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts, which opened in 1824.\nThe Boston Public Library is the largest public library in the region with over 8 million materials in its collection. The largest academic research library in the world is the Harvard Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The W. E. B. Du Bois Library of the University of Massachusetts Amherst is the tallest academic library in the world.\nThere are also many historical societies in the region. Historic New England operates museums and historic sites in the name of historical preservation. Many properties belonging to HNE include preserved house museums of prominent figures in New England and American history. Other societies include the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Essex Institute, the American Antiquarian Society, and The Bostonian Society. The Massachusetts Historical Society, founded in 1791, is the oldest operating in the United States. Many cities and towns across New England operate their own historical societies focused on historical preservation of local sites and the recording of local history.\nSports.\nNew England has a strong heritage of athletics, and many internationally popular sports were invented and codified in the region, including basketball, volleyball, and American football.\nFootball is the most popular sport in the region and was developed by Walter Camp in New Haven, Connecticut, in the 1870s and 1880s. The New England Patriots are based in Foxborough, Massachusetts, and are the most popular professional sports team in New England. The Patriots have won six Super Bowl championships and are one of the most winning teams in the National Football League. There are also high-profile collegiate and high school football rivalries in New England. These games are most often played on Thanksgiving Day and are some of the oldest sports rivalries in the United States. The high school rivalry between Wellesley High School and Needham High School in Massachusetts is considered to be the nation's oldest football rivalry, having started in 1882.\nBefore the advent of modern rules of baseball, a different form was played called the Massachusetts Game. This version of baseball was an early rival of the Knickerbocker Rules of New York and was played throughout New England. In 1869, there were 59 teams throughout the region which played according to the Massachusetts rules. The New York rules gradually became more popular throughout the United States, and professional and semi-professional clubs began to appear. Early teams included the Providence Grays, the Worcester Worcesters and the Hartford Dark Blues; these did not last long, but other teams grew to renown, such as the Boston Braves and the Boston Red Sox. Fenway Park was built in 1912 and is the oldest ballpark still in use in Major League Baseball. The Red Sox have won the World Series nine times, tied for third-most among all MLB teams. Other professional baseball teams in the region include the Hartford Yard Goats, New Hampshire Fisher Cats, Vermont Lake Monsters, Portland Sea Dogs, Bridgeport Bluefish, New Britain Bees and the Worcester Red Sox.\nBasketball was developed in Springfield, Massachusetts, by James Naismith in 1891. Naismith was attempting to create a game which could be played indoors so that athletes could keep fit during New England winters. The Boston Celtics were founded in 1946 and are the most successful NBA team, winning 18 titles. The Celtics' NBA G League team, the Maine Celtics, is based in Portland, Maine. The Women's National Basketball Association's Connecticut Sun is based in Uncasville, Connecticut. The UConn Huskies women's basketball team is the most successful women's collegiate team in the nation, winning 11 NCAA Division I titles, and the UConn Huskies men's basketball team has won six titles, tied for third-most in the nation. The Basketball Hall of Fame is located in Springfield, Massachusetts.\nWinter sports are extremely popular and have a long history in the region, including alpine skiing, snowboarding, and Nordic skiing. Ice hockey is also a popular sport. The Boston Bruins were founded in 1924 as an Original Six team, and they have a historic rivalry with the Montreal Canadiens. The Bruins play in the TD Garden, a venue that they share with the Boston Celtics. The Boston Fleet of the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL) plays at Tsongas Center. College hockey is also a popular spectator sport, with Boston's annual Beanpot tournament between Northeastern University, Boston University, Harvard University and Boston College. Other hockey teams include the Maine Mariners, Providence Bruins, Springfield Thunderbirds, Worcester Railers, Bridgeport Sound Tigers and the Hartford Wolf Pack. The region's largest ice hockey and skating facility is the New England Sports Center in Marlborough, Massachusetts, home to the Skating Club of Boston, one of the oldest ice skating clubs in the United States.\nVolleyball was invented in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in 1895 by William G. Morgan. Morgan was an instructor at a YMCA and wanted to create an indoor game for his athletes. The game was based on badminton and was spread as a sport through YMCA facilities. The international Volleyball Hall of Fame is located in Holyoke.\nRowing, sailing, and yacht racing are also popular events in New England. The Head of the Charles race is held on the Charles River in October every year and attracts over 10,000 athletes and over 200,000 spectators each year. Sailing regattas include the Newport Bermuda Race, the Marblehead to Halifax Ocean Race, and the Single-Handed Trans-Atlantic Race. The \"New York Times\" considers the Newport and Marblehead races to be among the most prestigious in the world.\nThe Boston Marathon is run on Patriots' Day every year and was first run in 1897. It is a World Marathon Major and is operated by the Boston Athletic Association. The race route goes from Hopkinton, Massachusetts, through Greater Boston, finishing at Copley Square in Boston. The race offers far less prize money than many other marathons, but its difficulty and long history make it one of the world's most prestigious marathons. It is New England's largest sporting event with nearly 500,000 spectators each year.\nNew England is represented in the top level of American professional soccer by the New England Revolution, an inaugural team of the Major League Soccer founded in 1994 and playing in Gillette Stadium which it shares with the New England Patriots. The Revolution have won a U.S. Open Cup and a SuperLiga Championship, and they have appeared in five MLS finals. In the USL Championship, the second division on the American soccer pyramid, New England is represented by Hartford Athletic which was founded in 2019 and plays its games at Dillon Stadium, and Rhode Island FC, which began play in 2024.\nThe International Tennis Hall of Fame is in Newport, Rhode Island.\nTransportation.\nEach of the New England states has its own Department of Transportation which plans and develops systems for transport, though some transportation authorities operate across state and municipal lines. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) oversees public transportation in the Greater Boston area. It is the largest such agency and operates throughout eastern Massachusetts and into Rhode Island. The MBTA oversees the oldest subway system (the Tremont Street subway) and the second most-used light rail line (the Green Line) in the United States, as well as one of five remaining trolleybus systems nationwide. Coastal Connecticut makes use of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York due to the connection of that region to New York's economy. The MTA operates the Metro-North Railroad in coordination with the Connecticut Department of Transportation. CTrail is a division of the Connecticut Department of Transportation which operates the Shore Line East along its southern coast, terminating in Old Saybrook and New London. It also operates the Hartford Line, leading south to New Haven and north to Springfield. Commuter rail service is provided north of Springfield to Greenfield, Massachusetts, as part of the \"Valley Flyer\" Amtrak route.\nAmtrak provides interstate rail service throughout New England. Boston is the northern terminus of the Northeast Corridor. The \"Vermonter\" connects Vermont to Massachusetts and Connecticut, while the \"Downeaster\" links Maine to Boston. The long-distance \"Lake Shore Limited\" train has two eastern termini after splitting in Albany, one of which is Boston. This provides rail service on the former Boston and Albany Railroad which runs between its namesake cities. The rest of the \"Lake Shore Limited\" continues to New York City.\nBus transportation is available in most urban areas and is governed by regional and local authorities. The Pioneer Valley Transit Authority and the MetroWest Regional Transit Authority are examples of public bus transportation which support more suburban and rural communities.\nSouth Station in Boston is a major center for bus, rail, and light rail lines. Major interstate highways traversing the region include I-95, I-93, I-91, I-89, I-84, and I-90 (the Massachusetts Turnpike). Logan Airport is the busiest transportation hub in the region in terms of number of passengers and total cargo, opened in 1923 and located in East Boston and Winthrop, Massachusetts. It is a hub for Cape Air and Delta Air Lines, and a focus city for JetBlue. It is the 16th busiest airport in the United States. Other airports in the region include Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport, Bradley International Airport, Rhode Island T. F. Green International Airport, Manchester\u2013Boston Regional Airport, and Portland International Jetport.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nPolitical\nHistorical\nMaps\nCulture", "165026": "The Handmaid's Tale\n1985 novel by Margaret Atwood\nThe Handmaid's Tale is a futuristic dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood published in 1985. It is set in a near-future New England in a patriarchal, totalitarian theonomic state known as the Republic of Gilead, which has overthrown the United States government. Offred is the central character and narrator and one of the \"Handmaids\": women who are forcibly assigned to produce children for the \"Commanders\", who are the ruling class in Gilead.\nThe novel explores themes of powerless women in a patriarchal society, loss of female agency and individuality, suppression of reproductive rights, and the various means by which women resist and try to gain individuality and independence. The title echoes the component parts of Geoffrey Chaucer's \"The Canterbury Tales\", which is a series of connected stories (such as \"The Merchant's Tale\" and \"The Parson's Tale\"). It also alludes to the tradition of fairy tales where the central character tells her story.\n\"The Handmaid's Tale\" won the 1985 Governor General's Award and the first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987; it was also nominated for the 1986 Nebula Award, the 1986 Booker Prize, and the 1987 Prometheus Award. In 2022, \"The Handmaid's Tale\" was included on the \"Big Jubilee Read\" list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II. The book has been adapted into a 1990 film, a 2000 opera, a 2017 television series, and other media. A sequel novel, \"The Testaments\", was published in 2019.\nPlot summary.\nAfter staging an attack killing the president of the United States and most of Congress, a radical political group called the \"Sons of Jacob\" uses theonomic ideology to launch a revolution. The Constitution is suspended, newspapers are censored, and the United States of America is reformed into a military dictatorship known as the Republic of Gilead. The new regime quickly consolidates its power, overtaking all other religious groups, including Christian denominations.\nThe regime reorganizes society using a peculiar interpretation of some Old Testament ideas, and a new militarized, hierarchical model of social and religious fanaticism among its newly created social classes. One of the most significant changes is the limitation of women's rights. Women become the lowest-ranking class and are not allowed to own money or property, or to read and write. Most significantly, women are deprived of control over their own reproductive functions. Though the regime controls most of the country, various rebel groups remain active.\nThe story is told in first-person narration by a woman named Offred, a criminal guilty of trying to escape to Canada with a forged passport alongside her husband and five-year-old daughter; she is also considered an adulterer for being married to a divorced man. Her marriage was forcibly dissolved, and her daughter was taken from her. Instead of being sentenced under the Republic of Gilead's draconian criminal justice system, Offred accepted training to become a \"Handmaid\" at the Rachel and Leah Centre, an alternative only available to fertile women: environmental pollution and radiation have drastically affected fertility, and she is one of the few remaining women who can conceive. She has been assigned to produce children for the \"Commanders\", the ruling class of men, and is made a Handmaid, a role based on the biblical story of Rachel and her handmaid Bilhah. \nWomen are classed socially and follow a strict dress code, ranked highest to lowest: the Commanders' Wives in sky blue, their unmarried daughters in white, the Handmaids in red with highly visible large white bonnets, the Aunts (who train and indoctrinate the Handmaids) in brown, the Marthas (cooks and maids, possibly unmarried sterile women past child-bearing years) in green, Econowives (the wives of lower-ranking men who handle everything in the domestic sphere) in blue, red and green stripes, and widows in black.\nOffred details her life starting with her third assignment as a Handmaid to a Commander. Interspersing narratives of her present-day experiences are flashbacks of her life before and during the beginning of the revolution, including her failed escape, indoctrination by the Aunts, and her friend Moira's escape from the indoctrination facility. At her new home, she is treated poorly by the Commander's wife, Serena Joy, a former Christian media personality who supported women's domesticity and subordinate role well before Gilead was established.\nTo Offred's surprise, the Commander asks to see her outside of the \"Ceremony\", ritualized rape conducted during the Handmaids' likely fertile period each month, with the wives present, intended to result in conception. His request to see her in the library is illegal in Gilead, but they meet nevertheless. They mostly play \"Scrabble\" and Offred is allowed to ask favors of him, such as information or material items. He asks Offred to kiss him as if she meant it and tells her about his strained relationship with his wife. Finally, he gives her lingerie and takes her to a covert, government-run brothel using Jezebels, women forced into sanctioned sex slavery. Offred unexpectedly encounters an emotionally-broken Moira there, who tells her that those found breaking the law are sent to the \"Colonies\" to clean up toxic waste or are allowed to work as Jezebels as punishment.\nIn the days between her visits to the Commander, Offred also learns her shopping partner, a woman called Ofglen, is with the Mayday resistance, an underground network working to overthrow Gilead's government. Not knowing of Offred's criminal acts with her husband, Serena begins to suspect that he is infertile, so she arranges for Offred to have sex with Nick, the Commander's personal servant, who had attempted to talk to her before and shown interest. Serena offers Offred information about her daughter in exchange. She later brings her a photograph of Offred's daughter which leaves Offred feeling dejected believing she has been erased from her daughter's life.\nAfter their initial sexual encounter, Offred and Nick begin to meet on their own initiative as well; she discovers that she enjoys these intimate moments despite memories of her husband, and shares potentially dangerous information about her past with him. Offred later tells Nick that she thinks she is pregnant.\nOffred hears from a new walking partner that Ofglen has disappeared (reported as a suicide). She contemplates suicide when Serena finds evidence of the illegal relationship with the Commander. Shortly afterward, men arrive at the house wearing uniforms of the secret police, known as the Eyes of God or simply \"Eyes\", to take her away. As she is led to a waiting van, Nick tells her to trust him and go with the men. Offred is unsure if Nick or the men are Eyes or secretly members of Mayday, or if they are here to capture her or aid in her escape; she ultimately enters the van. Her future is left uncertain while Serena and the Commander are left bereft in their house, each thinking about the repercussions of Offred's capture on their lives.\nThe novel concludes with a metafictional epilogue, described as a partial transcript of an international historical association conference taking place in the year 2195. The male keynote speaker explains that Offred's narrative was originally recorded on a set of audio cassettes, a technology roughly 200 years out of date at that time, and later transcribed by historians. The speaker appears to be very dismissive of the misogyny of Gilead and interprets the story's title as a sexist joke. He also comments on the difficulty of authenticating the account, due to how few records have survived from the early years of Gilead's existence, and speculates on the eventual fates of Offred and her acquaintances.\nBackground.\nFitting with her statements that \"The Handmaid's Tale\" is a work of speculative fiction, not science fiction, Atwood's novel offers a satirical view of various social, political, and religious trends of the United States in the 1980s. Her motivation for writing the novel was her belief that in the 1980s, the religious right was discussing what they would do with/to women if they took power, including the Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition, and the Ronald Reagan administration. Atwood questions what would happen if these trends, and especially \"casually held attitudes about women\" were taken to their logical end.\nAtwood argues that all of the scenarios offered in \"The Handmaid's Tale\" have actually occurred in real life\u2014in an interview she gave regarding her later novel \"Oryx and Crake\", Atwood maintains that \"As with \"The Handmaid's Tale\", I didn't put in anything that we haven't already done, we're not already doing, we're seriously trying to do, coupled with trends that are already in progress... So all of those things are real, and therefore the amount of pure invention is close to nil.\" Atwood was known to carry around newspaper clippings to her various interviews to support her fiction's basis in reality. Atwood has explained that \"The Handmaid's Tale\" is a response to those who say the oppressive, totalitarian, and religious governments that have taken hold in other countries throughout the years \"can't happen here\"\u2014but in this work, she has tried to show how such a takeover might play out.\nAtwood was also inspired by the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1978\u201379 that saw a theocracy established that drastically reduced the rights of women and imposed a strict dress code on Iranian women, very much like that of Gilead. In \"The Handmaid's Tale\", a reference is made to the Islamic Republic of Iran in the form of the history book \"Iran and Gilead: Two Late Twentieth Century Monotheocracies\" mentioned in the endnotes describing the historians' convention in 2195. Atwood's picture of a society ruled by men who professed high moral principles, but are in fact self-interested and selfish was inspired by observing Canadian politicians in action, especially in her hometown of Toronto, who frequently profess in a very sanctimonious manner to be acting from the highest principles of morality while in reality the opposite is the case.\nDuring the Second World War, Canadian women took on jobs in the place of men serving in the military that they were expected to yield to men once the war was over. After 1945, not all women wanted to return to their traditional roles as housewives and mothers, leading to a male backlash. Atwood was born in 1939, and while growing up in the 1950s she saw first-hand the complaints against women who continued to work after 1945 and of women who unhappily gave up their jobs, which she incorporated into her novel. The way in which the narrator is forced into becoming an unhappy housewife after she loses her job, in common with all the other women of Gilead, was inspired by Atwood's memories of the 1950s.\nAtwood's inspiration for the Republic of Gilead came from her study of early American Puritans while at Harvard, which she attended on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. Atwood argues that the modern view of the Puritans\u2014that they came to America to flee religious persecution in England and set up a religiously tolerant society\u2014is misleading, and that instead, these Puritan leaders wanted to establish a monolithic theonomy where religious dissent would not be tolerated.\nAtwood has a personal connection to the Puritans, and she dedicates the novel to her own ancestor Mary Webster, who was accused of witchcraft in Puritan New England but survived her hanging. Due to the totalitarian nature of Gileadean society, Atwood, in creating the setting, drew from the \"utopian idealism\" present in 20th-century r\u00e9gimes, such as Cambodia and Romania, as well as earlier New England Puritanism. Atwood has argued that a coup, such as the one depicted in \"The Handmaid's Tale\", would misuse religion in order to achieve its own ends.\nAtwood, in regards to those leading Gilead, further stated:\nI don't consider these people to be Christians because they do not have at the core of their behaviour and ideologies what I, in my feeble Canadian way, would consider to be the core of Christianity ... and that would be not only love your neighbours but love your enemies. That would also be \"I was sick and you visited me not\" and such and such ...And that would include also concern for the environment, because you can't love your neighbour or even your enemy, unless you love your neighbour's oxygen, food, and water. You can't love your neighbour or your enemy if you're presuming policies that are going to cause those people to die. ... Of course faith can be a force for good and often has been. So faith is a force for good particularly when people are feeling beleaguered and in need of hope. So you can have bad iterations and you can also have the iteration in which people have got too much power and then start abusing it. But that is human behaviour, so you can't lay it down to religion. You can find the same in any power situation, such as politics or ideologies that purport to be atheist. Need I mention the former Soviet Union? So it is not a question of religion making people behave badly. It is a question of human beings getting power and then wanting more of it.\nIn the same vein, Atwood also declared that \"In the real world today, some religious groups are leading movements for the protection of vulnerable groups, including women.\" Atwood draws connections between the ways in which Gilead's leaders maintain their power and other examples of actual totalitarian governments. In her interviews, Atwood offers up Afghanistan as an example of a religious theocracy forcing women out of the public sphere and into their homes, as in Gilead.\nThe \"state-sanctioned murder of dissidents\" was inspired by the Philippines under President Ferdinand Marcos, and the last General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party Nicolae Ceau\u0219escu's obsession with increasing the birth rate (Decree 770) led to the strict policing of pregnant women and the outlawing of birth control and abortion. However, Atwood clearly explains that many of these actions were not just present in other cultures and countries, \"but within Western society, and within the 'Christian' tradition itself\".\nThe Republic of Gilead struggles with infertility, making Offred's services as a Handmaid vital to producing children and thus reproducing the society. Handmaids themselves are \"untouchable\", but their ability to signify status is equated to that of slaves or servants throughout history. Atwood connects their concerns with infertility to real-life problems our world faces, such as radiation, chemical pollution, and sexually transmitted disease (HIV/AIDS is specifically mentioned in the \"Historical Notes\" section at the end of the novel, which was a relatively new disease at the time of Atwood's writing whose long-term impact was still unknown). Atwood's strong stance on environmental issues and their negative consequences for our society has presented itself in other works such as her \"MaddAddam\" trilogy, and refers back to her growing up with biologists and her own scientific curiosity.\nCharacters.\nOffred.\nOffred is the protagonist and narrator who takes the readers through life in Gilead. She was labelled a \"wanton woman\" when Gilead was established because she had married a man who was divorced. All divorces were nullified by the new government, meaning her husband was now considered still married to his first wife, making Offred an adulteress. In trying to escape Gilead, she was separated from her husband and daughter.\nShe is part of the first generation of Gilead's women, those who remember pre-Gilead times. Proved fertile, she is considered an important commodity and has been placed as a \"Handmaid\" in the home of \"the Commander\" and his wife Serena Joy, to bear a child for them (Serena Joy is believed to be infertile). Readers are able to see Offred's resistance to the Republic of Gilead on the inside through her thoughts.\nSometimes Offred has thoughts most readers would disagree with, such as the Ceremony not being rape because she agreed to be a Handmaid, despite the implication that she had no real choice (the alternative may have been execution, or hard labour cleaning nuclear waste). This may be a belief she has adapted to lessen her mental strain, or may be due to brainwashing during her Handmaid training.\nOffred is a slave name that describes her function: she is \"of Fred\" (i.e., she belongs to Fred \u2013 presumed to be the name of the Commander \u2013 and is considered a concubine). In the novel, Offred says that she is \"not\" a concubine, but a tool; a \"two-legged womb\". The Handmaids' names say nothing about who the women really are; their only identity is as the Commander's property. \"Offred\" is also a pun on the word \"offered\", as in \"offered as a sacrifice\", and \"of red\" because the red dress assigned for the Handmaids in Gilead.\nIn Atwood's original novel, Offred's real name is never revealed. In Volker Schl\u00f6ndorff's 1990 film adaptation Offred was given the real name Kate, while the television series gave her the real name June.\nThe women in training to be Handmaids whisper names across their beds at night. The names are \"Alma. Janine. Dolores. Moira. June\", and all are later accounted for except June. In addition, one of the Aunts tells the Handmaids-in-training to stop \"mooning and June-ing\". From this and other references, some readers have inferred that her birth name could be \"June\". Academic Madonne Miner suggests that \"June\" is a pseudonym. As \"Mayday\" is the name of the Gilead resistance, June could be an invention by the protagonist. The Nunavut conference covered in the epilogue takes place in June.\nWhen the Hulu TV series chose to state outright that Offred's real name is June, Atwood wrote that it was not her original intention to imply that Offred's real name is June \"but it fits, so readers are welcome to it if they wish\". The revelation of Offred's real name serves only to humanize her in the presence of the other Handmaids.\nCommander.\nThe Commander says that he was a scientist and was previously involved in something similar to market research before Gilead's inception. Later, it is hypothesized, but not confirmed, that he might have been one of the architects of the Republic and its laws. Presumably, his first name is \"Fred\", though that, too, may be a pseudonym. He engages in forbidden intellectual pursuits with Offred, such as playing \"Scrabble\", and introduces her to a secret club that serves as a brothel for high-ranking officers.\nHe shows his softer side to Offred during their covert meetings and confesses to being \"misunderstood\" by his wife. Offred learns that the Commander carried on a similar relationship with his previous Handmaid, who later killed herself when his wife found out.\nIn the epilogue, Professor Pieixoto speculates that one of two figures, both instrumental in the establishment of Gilead, may have been the Commander, based on the name \"Fred\". It is his belief that the Commander was a man named Frederick R. Waterford who was killed in a purge shortly after Offred was taken away, charged with harbouring an enemy agent.\nSerena Joy.\nSerena Joy is a former televangelist and the Commander's Wife in the fundamentalist theonomy. Her real name is Pam and she is fond of gardening and knitting. The state took away her power and public recognition, and she tries to hide her past as a television figure. Offred identifies Serena Joy by recalling seeing her on TV when she was a little girl early on Saturday mornings while waiting for the cartoons to air.\nBelieved to be sterile (although the suggestion is made that the Commander is sterile, Gileadean laws attribute sterility only to women), she is forced to accept that he has use of a Handmaid. She resents having to take part in \"The Ceremony\", a monthly fertility ritual. She strikes a deal with Offred to arrange for her to have sex with Nick in order to become pregnant. According to Professor Pieixoto in the epilogue, \"Serena Joy\" or \"Pam\" are pseudonyms. The character's real name is implied to be Thelma.\nOfglen.\nOfglen is a neighbour of Offred's and a fellow Handmaid. She is partnered with Offred to do the daily shopping. Handmaids are never alone and are expected to police each other's behaviour. Ofglen is a secret member of the Mayday resistance. In contrast to Offred, she is daring. She knocks out a Mayday spy who is to be tortured and killed in order to save him the pain of a violent death. Offred is told that when Ofglen vanishes, it is because she has committed suicide before the government can take her into custody due to her membership in the resistance, possibly to avoid giving away any information.\nA new Handmaid, also called Ofglen, takes Ofglen's place, and is assigned as Offred's shopping partner. She threatens Offred against any thought of resistance. However, she breaks protocol by telling her what happened to the previous Ofglen.\nNick.\nNick is the Commander's chauffeur, who lives above the garage. Right from the start, Nick comes across as a daring character as he smokes and tries to engage with Offred, both forbidden activities. By Serena Joy's arrangement, he and Offred start a sexual relationship to increase her chance of getting pregnant. If she were unable to bear the Commander a child, she would be declared sterile and shipped to the ecological wastelands of the Colonies. Offred begins to develop feelings for him. Nick is an ambiguous character, and Offred does not know if he is a party loyalist or part of the resistance, though he identifies himself as the latter. The epilogue suggests that he really was part of the resistance, and aided Offred in escaping the Commander's house.\nMoira.\nMoira has been a close friend of Offred's since college. In the novel, their relationship represents a female friendship that the Republic of Gilead tries to block. A lesbian, she has resisted the homophobia of Gileadean society. Moira is taken to be a Handmaid soon after Offred. She finds the life of a Handmaid unbearably oppressive and risks engaging with the guards just to defy the system. She escapes by stealing an Aunt's pass and clothes, but Offred later finds her working as a prostitute in a party-run brothel. She was caught and chose the brothel rather than to be sent to the Colonies. Moira exemplifies defiance against Gilead by rejecting every value that is forced onto the citizens.\nLuke.\nLuke was Offred's husband before the formation of Gilead. He was married when he first started a relationship with Offred and divorced his first wife to marry her. Under Gilead, all divorces were retroactively nullified, resulting in Offred being considered an adulteress and their daughter illegitimate. Offred was forced to become a Handmaid and her daughter was given to a loyalist family. Since their attempt to escape to Canada, Offred has heard nothing of Luke. She wavers between believing him dead or imprisoned.\nProfessor Pieixoto.\nPieixoto is the \"co-discoverer [with Professor Knotly Wade] of Offred's tapes\". In his presentation at an academic conference set in 2195, he talks about \"the 'Problems of Authentication in Reference to \"The Handmaid's Tale\"'\". Pieixoto is the person who is retelling Offred's story, and so makes the narration even more unreliable than it was originally.\nAunt Lydia.\nAunt Lydia appears in flashbacks where her instructions frequently haunt Offred. Aunt Lydia works at the 'Red Center' where women receive instructions for a life as a Handmaid. Throughout the narrative, Aunt Lydia's pithy pronouncements on the code of conduct for the Handmaids shed light on the philosophy of subjugation of women practised in Gilead. Aunt Lydia appears to be a true believer of Gilead's religious philosophy and seems to take her job as a genuine calling.\nIn the sequel \"The Testaments\", however, Aunt Lydia is revealed to have been aiding anti-Gilead resistance networks. Her actions in releasing internal information to selected contacts instigates an internal purge that demolishes Gilead's ability to function and restores the United States. She also writes an autobiography of her life, which she hides in a copy of Cardinal John Henry Newman's \"Apologia Pro Vita Sua\" in the restricted section of the Ardua Hall library.\nCora.\nA Martha (female domestic servants are called Marthas) who works at the Commander's house because she is infertile. She hopes that Offred will get pregnant as she desires to help raise a child. She is friendly towards Offred and even covers up for her when she finds her lying on the floor one morning\u2014a suspicious occurrence by Gilead's standards, worthy of being reported.\nRita.\nRita is a Martha at the Commander's house. Her job is cooking and housekeeping and she is one of the members of the \"household\". At the start of the novel, Rita has a contempt for Offred and though she is responsible for keeping Offred well fed, she believes a Handmaid should prefer going to the Colonies over working as a sexual slave.\nSetting.\nThe novel is set in an indeterminate dystopian future, speculated to be around the year 2005, with a fundamentalist theonomy ruling the territory of what had been the United States but is now the Republic of Gilead. The fertility rates in Gilead have diminished due to environmental toxicity and fertile women are a valuable commodity owned and enslaved by the powerful elite. Individuals are segregated by categories and dressed according to their social functions. Complex dress codes play a key role in imposing social control within the new society and serve to distinguish people by sex, occupation, and caste.\nThe action takes place in what once was the Harvard Square neighbourhood of Cambridge, Massachusetts; Atwood studied at Radcliffe College, located in this area. As a researcher, Atwood spent a lot of time in the Widener Library at Harvard which in the novel serves as a setting for the headquarters of the Gilead Secret Service.\nGilead society.\nReligion.\nBruce Miller, the creator and executive producer of \"The Handmaid's Tale\" television serial, declared with regard to Atwood's book, as well as his series, that Gilead is \"a society that's based kind of in a perverse misreading of Old Testament laws and codes\". The author explains that Gilead tries to embody the \"utopian idealism\" present in 20th-century regimes, as well as earlier New England Puritanism. Both Atwood and Miller stated that the people running Gilead are \"not genuinely Christian\".\nThe group running Gilead, according to Atwood, is \"not really interested in religion; they're interested in power\". In her prayers to God, Offred reflects on Gilead and prays \"I don't believe for an instant that what's going on out there is what You meant... I suppose I should say I forgive whoever did this, and whatever they're doing now. I'll try, but it isn't easy.\" Margaret Atwood, writing on this, says that \"Offred herself has a private version of the Lord's Prayer and refuses to believe that this regime has been mandated by a just and merciful God.\"\nChristian churches that do not support the actions of the Sons of Jacob are systematically demolished, and the people living in Gilead are never seen attending church. Christian denominations, including Quakers, Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Roman Catholics, are specifically named as enemies of the Sons of Jacob. Nuns who refuse conversion are considered \"unwomen\" and banished to the Colonies, owing to their reluctance to marry and refusal (or inability) to bear children. Priests unwilling to convert are executed and hanged from the Wall. Atwood pits Quaker Christians against the regime by having them help the oppressed, something she feels they would do in reality: \"The Quakers have gone underground, and are running an escape route to Canada, as\u2014I suspect\u2014they would.\"\nJews are named an exception and classified Sons of Jacob. Offred observes that Jews refusing to convert are allowed to emigrate from Gilead to Israel, and most choose to leave. However, in the epilogue, Professor Pieixoto reveals that many of the emigrating Jews ended up being dumped into the sea while on the ships ostensibly tasked with transporting them to Israel, due to privatization of the \"repatriation program\" and capitalists' effort to maximize profits. Offred mentions that many Jews who chose to stay were caught secretly practising Judaism and executed.\nFertile women whose social function is to bear children for infertile wives. Handmaids dress in ankle-length red dresses, white caps, and heavy boots. In summer, they change into lighter-weight (but still ankle-length) dresses and slatted shoes. When in public, in winter, they wear ankle-length red cloaks, red gloves, and heavy white bonnets, which they call \"wings\". The sides of the bonnets stick out like wings, blocking their peripheral vision and shielding their faces from view. Handmaids are women of proven fertility who have broken the law. The law includes both gender crimes, such as lesbianism, and religious crimes, such as adultery (redefined to include sexual relationships with divorced partners since divorce is no longer legal). The Republic of Gilead justifies the use of the Handmaids for procreation by referring to two biblical stories: Genesis 30:1\u201313 and Genesis 16:1\u20134. In the first story, Jacob's infertile wife Rachel offers up her handmaid Bilhah to be a surrogate mother on her behalf, and then her sister Leah does the same with her own handmaid Zilpah (even though Leah has already given Jacob many sons). In the other story, which appears earlier in Genesis but is cited less frequently, Abraham has sex with his wife's handmaid, Hagar. Handmaids are assigned to Commanders and live in their houses. When unassigned, they live at training centres. Handmaids who successfully bear children continue to live at their Commander's house until their children are weaned, at which point they are sent to a new assignment to a new Commander. Those who produce children will never be declared \"unwomen\" or sent to the Colonies, even if they never have another baby.\nWomen.\nThe division of labour among the women generates some resentment. Marthas, Wives and Econowives perceive Handmaids as promiscuous and are taught to scorn them. Offred mourns that the women of the various groups have lost their ability to empathize with each other.\nThe Ceremony.\n\"The Ceremony\" is a non-marital sexual act sanctioned for reproduction. The ritual requires the Handmaid to lie on her back between the legs of the Wife during the sex act as if they were one person. The Wife has to invite the Handmaid to share her power this way; many Wives consider this both humiliating and offensive. Offred describes the ceremony:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />My red skirt is hitched up to my waist, though no higher. Below it the Commander is fucking. What he is fucking is the lower part of my body. I do not say making love, because this is not what he's doing. Copulating too would be inaccurate because it would imply two people and only one is involved. Nor does rape cover it: nothing is going on here that I haven't signed up for.\nReception.\nCritical reception.\n\"The Handmaid's Tale\" received critical acclaim, helping to cement Atwood's status as a prominent writer of the 20th century. Not only was the book deemed well-written and compelling, but Atwood's work was notable for sparking intense debates both in and out of academia. Atwood maintains that the Republic of Gilead is only an extrapolation of trends already seen in the United States at the time of her writing, a view supported by other scholars studying \"The Handmaid's Tale\". Many have placed \"The Handmaid's Tale\" in the same category of dystopian fiction as \"Nineteen Eighty-Four\" and \"Brave New World\", a categorization that Atwood has accepted and reiterated in many articles and interviews.\nEven today, many reviewers hold that Atwood's novel remains as foreboding and powerful as ever, largely because of its basis in historical fact. Yet when her book was first published in 1985, not all reviewers were convinced of the \"cautionary tale\" Atwood presented. For example, Mary McCarthy's 1986 \"New York Times\" review argued that \"The Handmaid's Tale\" lacked the \"surprised recognition\" necessary for readers to see \"our present selves in a distorting mirror, of what we may be turning into if current trends are allowed to continue\".\nGenre classification.\n\"The Handmaid's Tale\" is a feminist dystopian novel, combining the characteristics of dystopian fiction: \"a genre that projects an imaginary society that differs from the author's own, first, by being significantly worse in important respects and second by being worse \"because\" it attempts to reify some utopian ideal\", with the feminist utopian ideal which: \"sees men or masculine systems as the major cause of social and political problems (e.g. war), and presents women as not only at least the equals of men but also as the sole arbiters of their reproductive functions\".\n\"The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction\" notes that dystopian images are almost invariably images of future society, \"pointing fearfully at the way the world is supposedly going in order to provide urgent propaganda for a change in direction\". Atwood's stated intent was indeed to dramatize potential consequences of current trends.\nIn 1985, reviewers hailed the book as a \"feminist \"1984\"\", citing similarities between the totalitarian regimes under which both protagonists live, and \"the distinctively modern sense of nightmare come true, the initial paralyzed powerlessness of the victim unable to act\". Scholarly studies have expanded on the place of \"The Handmaid's Tale\" in the dystopian and feminist traditions.\nThe classification of utopian and dystopian fiction as a sub-genre of the collective term, speculative fiction, alongside science fiction, fantasy, and horror is a relatively recent convention. Dystopian novels have long been discussed as a type of science fiction; however, with publication of \"The Handmaid's Tale\", Atwood distinguished the terms science fiction and speculative fiction quite intentionally. In interviews and essays, she has discussed why, observing:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I like to make a distinction between science fiction proper and speculative fiction. For me, the science fiction label belongs on books with things in them that we can't yet do, such as going through a wormhole in space to another universe; and speculative fiction means a work that employs the means already to hand, such as DNA identification and credit cards, and that takes place on Planet Earth. But the terms are fluid.\nAtwood acknowledges that others may use the terms interchangeably, but she notes her interest in this type of work is to explore themes in ways that \"realistic fiction\" cannot do.\nAmong a few science fiction aficionados, however, Atwood's comments were considered petty and contemptuous. (The term speculative fiction was indeed employed that way by certain New Wave writers in the 1960s and early 1970s to express their dissatisfaction with traditional or establishment science fiction.) Hugo-winning science fiction critic David Langford observed in a column: \"\"The Handmaid's Tale\" won the very first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987. She's been trying to live this down ever since.\"\nReception in schools.\nAtwood's novels, and especially her works of speculative fiction, \"The Handmaid's Tale\" and \"Oryx and Crake\", are frequently offered as examples for the final, open-ended question on the American Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition exam each year. As such, her books are often assigned in high-school classrooms to students taking this Advanced Placement course, despite the mature themes the work presents. Atwood herself has expressed surprise that her books are being assigned to high-school audiences, largely due to her own censored education in the 1950s, but she has assured readers that this increased attention from high-school students has not altered the material she has chosen to write about since.\nCensorship in the United States.\nThe American Library Association lists \"The Handmaid's Tale\" as number 37 on the \"100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990\u20132000\". In 2019, \"The Handmaid's Tale\" is still listed as the seventh-most challenged book because of profanity, vulgarity, and sexual overtones. Atwood participated in discussing \"The Handmaid's Tale\" as the subject of an ALA discussion series titled \"One Book, One Conference\".\nIn May 2022, Atwood announced that, in a joint project undertaken with Penguin Random House, an \"unburnable\" copy of the book would be produced and auctioned off, the project intended to \"stand as a powerful symbol against censorship\". On 7 June 2022, the unique, \"unburnable\" copy was sold through Sotheby's in New York for $130,000.\nThe book has been banned in school libraries in Florida, Missouri, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.\nIn higher education.\nIn institutions of higher education, professors have found \"The Handmaid's Tale\" to be useful, largely because of its historical and religious basis and Atwood's captivating delivery. The novel's teaching points include: introducing politics and the social sciences to students in a more concrete way; demonstrating the importance of reading to our freedom, both intellectual and political; and acknowledging the \"most insidious and violent manifestations of power in Western history\" in a compelling manner.\nThe chapter entitled \"Historical Notes\" at the end of the novel also represents a warning to academics who run the risk of misreading and misunderstanding historical texts, pointing to the satirized Professor Pieixoto as an example of a male scholar who has taken over and overpowered Offred's narrative with his own interpretation.\nAcademic reception.\nFeminist analysis.\nMuch of the discussion about \"The Handmaid's Tale\" has centred on its categorization as feminist literature. Atwood does not see the Republic of Gilead as a purely feminist dystopia, as not all men have greater rights than women. Instead, this society presents a typical dictatorship: \"shaped like a pyramid, with the powerful of both sexes at the apex, the men generally outranking the women at the same level; then descending levels of power and status with men and women in each, all the way down to the bottom, where the unmarried men must serve in the ranks before being awarded an Econowife\".\nEconowives are women expected to carry out child-bearing, domestic duties, and traditional companionship; they are married to men that don't belong to the elite. When asked about whether her book was feminist, Atwood stated that the presence of women and what happens to them are important to the structure and theme of the book. This aisle of feminism, by default, would make a lot of books feminist.\u00a0However, she is adamant in her stance that her book did not represent the brand of feminism that victimizes or strips women of moral choice.\nAtwood has argued that while some of the observations that informed the content of \"The Handmaid's Tale\" may be feminist, her novel is not meant to say \"one thing to one person\" or serve as a political message\u2014instead, \"The Handmaid's Tale\" is \"a study of power, and how it operates and how it deforms or shapes the people who are living within that kind of regime\".\nSome scholars have offered a feminist interpretation, connecting Atwood's use of religious fundamentalism in the pages of \"The Handmaid's Tale\" to a condemnation of its presence in current American society. Atwood goes on to describe her book as not a critique of religion, but a critique of the \"use\" of religion as a \"front for tyranny\". Others have argued that \"The Handmaid's Tale\" critiques typical notions of feminism, as Atwood's novel appears to subvert the traditional \"women helping women\" ideals of the movement and turns toward the possibility of \"the matriarchal network ... and a new form of misogyny: women's hatred of women\".\nScholars have analyzed and made connections to patriarchal oppression in \"The Handmaid's Tale\" and oppression of women today. Aisha Matthews tackles the effects of institutional structures that oppress woman and womanhood and connects those to the themes present in \"The Handmaid's Tale\". She first asserts that structures and social frameworks, such as the patriarchy and societal role of traditional Christian values, are inherently detrimental to the liberation of womanhood. She then makes the connection to the relationship between Offred, Serena Joy, and the Commander, explaining that through this \"perversion of traditional marriage, the Biblical story of Rachel, Jacob, and Bilhah is taken too literally\". Their relationship and other similar relationships in \"The Handmaid's Tale\" mirror the effects of patriarchal standards of womanliness.\nIn the world of \"The Handmaid's Tale\", the sexes are strictly divided. Gilead's society values white women's reproductive commodities over those of other ethnicities. Women are categorized \"hierarchically according to class status and reproductive capacity\" as well as \"metonymically colour-coded according to their function and their labour\". The Commander expresses his personal opinion that women are considered inferior to men, as the men are in a position where they have power to control society.\nWomen are segregated by clothing, as are men. With rare exceptions, men wear military or paramilitary uniforms. All classes of men and women are defined by the colours they wear, drawing on colour symbolism and psychology. All lower-status individuals are regulated by this dress code. All \"non-persons\" are banished to the \"Colonies\". Sterile, unmarried women are considered to be non-persons. Both men and women sent there wear grey dresses.\nThe women, particularly the Handmaids, are stripped of their individual identities as they lack formal names, taking on their assigned Commander's first name in most cases.\nSterile women, the unmarried, some widows, feminists, lesbians, nuns, and politically dissident women: all women who are incapable of social integration within the Republic's strict gender divisions. Gilead exiles Unwomen to \"the Colonies\", areas both of agricultural production and deadly pollution. Joining them are Handmaids who fail to bear a child after three two-year assignments.\nJezebels are women who are forced to become prostitutes and entertainers. They are available only to the Commanders and to their guests. Offred portrays Jezebels as attractive and educated; they may be unsuitable as Handmaids due to temperament. They have been sterilized, a surgery that is forbidden to other women. They operate in unofficial but state-sanctioned brothels, unknown to most women.\nJezebels, whose title comes from Jezebel in the Bible, dress in the remnants of sexualized costumes from \"the time before\", such as cheerleaders' costumes, school uniforms, and Playboy Bunny costumes. Jezebels can wear make-up, drink alcohol and socialize with men, but are tightly controlled by the Aunts. When they pass their sexual prime or their looks fade, they are discarded without any precision as to whether they are killed or sent to the Colonies.\nPhilosophical analysis.\nMany elements of Gilead recall details from Plato's \"Republic\". Gilead's social hierarchy of commanders, guardians, Marthas and handmaids, for example, has similarities to Plato's social hierarchy of philosopher-guardians, auxiliary-guardians and producers. Both societies are also home to a state-based eugenics program, and see gymnasiums used as educational spaces in which women are socialized into new gender roles. The powers that be in Gilead legitimize their rule through the extensive use of propaganda, much as Plato's rulers ensure co-operation on the part of the public by propagating a noble lie.\nAccording to philosopher Andy Lamey, rather than straightforward allusions, the similarities to Plato are combined with features that differ, at times dramatically, from Plato's original. As Lamey writes, \"the result is that Atwood's dystopia deliberately calls to mind a distorted version of Platonism, one that differs in ways large and small from the original.\" In the case of gymnasiums, for example, in Plato they see women socialized into roles that make them the equal of men, while in Gilead they are where handmaids are first taught their duties.\nVernon Proven\u00e7al has suggested that the novel is a satire of Platonism. Lamey, however, argues that this interpretation cannot explain why the book contains distorted references to philosophies beyond Platonism. Two such references are evident in mottos that handmaids are forced to repeat during their training. \"Pen is envy\" is a corrupt rendering of Freud's notion of penis envy, while \"From each according to her ability; to each according to his needs\" is a garbled version of Marx's slogan \"from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.\" Lamey argues that such allusions, rather than satirizing the philosophies in question, see Gilead employ a practice frequently used by actual dictatorships, that of seeking to bolster their prestige and legitimacy by twisting ideas already in circulation to suit their own ends.\nRace analysis.\nAfrican Americans, the main non-White ethnic group in this society, are called the Children of Ham. A state TV broadcast mentions they have been relocated \"en masse\" to \"National Homelands\" in North Dakota, which are suggestive of the apartheid-era homelands (Bantustans) set up by South Africa or forced death marches. Ana Cottle characterized \"The Handmaid's Tale\" as \"White feminism\", noting that Atwood does away with Black people in a few lines by relocating the \"Children of Ham\" while borrowing heavily from the African-American experience and applying it to White women, specifically Gilead's explicit anti-literacy laws, which was borrowed from real life anti-literacy campaigns in the United States, alongside the removal of surnames among handmaids, an ode to how enslaved Africans were not given last names until Emancipation.\nIt is implied that a total genocide has been committed against Native Americans living in territories under the rule of Gilead. Jews were given a choice between converting to the state religion or being \"repatriated\" to Israel. Converts who were subsequently discovered with any symbolic representations or artifacts of Judaism were executed, and the repatriation scheme was privatized, with the result that many Jews died en route to Israel.\nSequel.\nIn November 2018, Atwood announced the sequel, titled \"The Testaments\", which was published in September 2019. The novel is set fifteen years after Offred's final scene, with the testaments of three female narrators from Gilead.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>"}, "descending_order": ["165026", "21531764"], "permutation_1": ["165026", "21531764"], "permutation_2": ["165026", "21531764"], "permutation_3": ["165026", "21531764"]}
{"id": "2hop__380106_62776", "docs_added": {"3382": "Britney Spears\nAmerican singer (born 1981)\nBritney Jean Spears (born December 2, 1981) is an American singer. Often referred to as the \"Princess of Pop\", she has sold over 150 million records worldwide, making her one of the world's best-selling music artists. An influential figure in popular music, Spears became the best-selling teenage artist of all time, credited with the revival of teen pop during the late 1990s and early 2000s.\nSpears was born in McComb, Mississippi. After appearing in the television shows \"Star Search\" and \"The Mickey Mouse Club\", Spears signed with Jive Records in 1997 at age 15. Her first two studio albums, \"...Baby One More Time\" (1999) and \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" (2000), are among the best-selling albums of all time. She adopted a more mature and provocative style for her albums \"Britney\" (2001) and \"In the Zone\" (2003). Spears was the executive producer of her fifth studio album, \"Blackout\" (2007), often referred to as her best work. She returned to the top of the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200 chart with the albums \"Circus\" (2008) and \"Femme Fatale\" (2011), and embarked on a four-year concert residency, (2013\u20132017), to promote her next two albums, \"Britney Jean\" (2013) and \"Glory\" (2016). Spears' catalog of high-charting singles includes \"...Baby One More Time\", \"Oops!... I Did It Again\", \"I'm a Slave 4 U\", \"Toxic\", \"Gimme More\", \"Womanizer\", \"3\", \"Hold It Against Me\", and \"Scream & Shout\".\nSpears' life, including her high-profile relationships and personal struggles during the 2000s, received widespread media coverage. In 2008, she was involuntarily placed in a conservatorship following a highly publicized breakdown. In 2019, her legal battle over her conservatorship led to the establishment of the #FreeBritney movement and a release of the documentary \"Framing Britney Spears\" (2021). The conservatorship was terminated in 2021, following her public testimony in which she accused her management team and family of abuse. Spears' 2023 memoir, \"The Woman in Me\", reached number one on \"The New York Times\" Best Seller list in its first week of release. Her other ventures include starring in the film \"Crossroads\" (2002) and launching numerous products, with her 2005 fragrance Fantasy with Elizabeth Arden, Inc. generating over $1.5 billion in sales.\nIn the United States, Spears is the fourth best-selling female album artist of the Nielsen SoundScan era, as well as the best-selling female album artist of the 2000s. Her accolades include a Grammy Award, 15 Guinness World Records, six MTV Video Music Awards, seven \"Billboard\" Music Awards (including the Millennium Award), the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. \"Billboard\" ranked her sixth on their list of the Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century. \"...Baby One More Time\" was named the greatest debut single of all time by \"Rolling Stone\" in 2020. \"Forbes\" listed Spears as the world's highest-paid female musician in 2001 and 2012. By 2012, she had topped Yahoo!'s list of most searched celebrities seven times in twelve years. \"Time\" named Spears one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2021, placing first in the reader poll.\nLife and career.\n1981\u20131997: Early life, family, and career beginnings.\nBritney Jean Spears was born on December 2, 1981, in McComb, Mississippi, the second child of James \"Jamie\" Parnell Spears and Lynne Irene Bridges. Her maternal grandmother, Lillian Portell, was English and born in London, and one of Spears' maternal great-grandfathers was Maltese. Her siblings are Bryan James Spears and Jamie Lynn Spears.\nBorn in the Bible Belt, where socially conservative evangelical Protestantism is a particularly strong religious influence, she was baptized as a Southern Baptist and sang in a church choir as a child. As an adult, she has studied Kabbalist teachings. On August 5, 2021, Spears announced that she had converted to Catholicism. Her mother, sister, and nieces Maddie Aldridge and Ivey Joan Watson, are also Catholic. However, on September 5, 2022, after Spears' ex-husband, Kevin Federline, and youngest son did an interview defending her father's actions during her conservatorship, she stated: \"I don't believe in God anymore because of the way my children and my family have treated me. There is nothing to believe in anymore. I'm an atheist y'all\".\nAt age three, Spears began attending dance lessons in her hometown of Kentwood, Louisiana, and was selected to perform as a solo artist at the annual recital. Aged five she made her local stage debut, singing \"What Child Is This?\" at her kindergarten graduation. During her childhood, she also had gymnastics and voice lessons and won many state-level competitions and children's talent shows. In gymnastics, Spears attended B\u00e9la K\u00e1rolyi's training camp. She said of her ambition as a child, \"I was in my own world,\u00a0... I found out what I'm supposed to do at an early age\".\nWhen Spears was eight, she and her mother Lynne traveled to Atlanta, Georgia, to audition for the 1990s revival of \"The Mickey Mouse Club\". Casting director Matt Casella rejected her as too young, but introduced her to Nancy Carson, a New York City talent agent. Carson was impressed with Spears' singing and suggested enrolling her at the Professional Performing Arts School.\nSpears was hired for her first professional role as the understudy for the lead role of Tina Denmark in the off-Broadway musical \"Ruthless!\" She also appeared as a contestant on the popular television show \"Star Search\" and was cast in a number of commercials. In December 1992, she was cast in \"The All-New Mickey Mouse Club\". Other fellow cast members included Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, Ryan Gosling, Keri Russell, and JC Chasez. After the show was canceled in 1994, she returned to Mississippi and enrolled at McComb's Parklane Academy. Although she made friends with most of her classmates, she compared the school to \"the opening scene in \"Clueless\" with all the cliques.\u00a0... I was so bored. I was the point guard on the basketball team. I had my boyfriend, and I went to homecoming and Christmas formal. But I wanted more.\"\nIn June 1997, Spears was in talks with manager Lou Pearlman to join the female pop group Innosense. Lynne asked family friend and entertainment lawyer Larry Rudolph for his opinion and submitted a tape of Spears singing over a Whitney Houston karaoke song along with some pictures. Rudolph decided that he wanted to pitch her to record labels, for which she needed a professional demo made. He sent Spears an unused song of Toni Braxton; she rehearsed for a week and recorded her vocals in a studio. Spears traveled to New York with the demo and met with executives from four labels, returning to Kentwood the same day. Three of the labels rejected her, saying that audiences wanted pop bands such as the Backstreet Boys and the Spice Girls, and \"there wasn't going to be another Madonna, another Debbie Gibson, or another Tiffany.\"\nTwo weeks later, executives from Jive Records returned calls to Rudolph. Senior vice president of A&R Jeff Fenster said about Spears' audition that \"it's very rare to hear someone that age who can deliver emotional content and commercial appeal\u00a0... For any artist, the motivation\u2014the 'eye of the tiger'\u2014is extremely important. And Britney had that.\" Spears sang Houston's \"I Have Nothing\" (1992) for the executives, and was subsequently signed to the label. They assigned her to work with producer Eric Foster White for a month; he reportedly shaped her voice from \"lower and less poppy\" delivery to \"distinctively, unmistakably Britney\". After hearing the recorded material, president Clive Calder ordered a full album. Spears had originally envisioned \"Sheryl Crow music, but younger; more adult contemporary\". She felt secure with her label's appointment of producers, since \"It made more sense to go pop, because I can dance to it\u2014it's more me.\" She flew to Cheiron Studios in Stockholm, Sweden, where half of the album was recorded from March to April 1998, with producers Max Martin, Denniz Pop, and Rami Yacoub, among others.\n1998\u20132000: \"...Baby One More Time\" and \"Oops!... I Did It Again\".\nAfter Spears returned to the United States, she embarked on a shopping mall promotional tour, titled L'Oreal Hair Zone Mall Tour, to promote her upcoming debut album. Her show was a four-song set and she was accompanied by two back-up dancers. Her first concert tour followed, as an opening act for NSYNC. Her debut studio album, \"...Baby One More Time\", was released on January 12, 1999. It debuted at number one on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200 and was certified two-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America after a month. Worldwide, the album topped the charts in fifteen countries and sold over 10 million copies in a year. It became the biggest-selling album ever by a teenage artist.\n\"...Baby One More Time\" was released as the lead single from the album on September 29, 1998. Originally, Jive Records wanted the associated music video to be animated; however, Spears rejected this idea, and suggested the final concept of a Catholic schoolgirl. The single peaked at number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, topping the chart for two consecutive weeks in January\u2013February 1999. It sold more than 10 million copies, making it one of the best-selling singles of all time. \"...Baby One More Time\" later received a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. The title track also topped the singles chart for two weeks in the United Kingdom, and became the fastest-selling single ever by a female artist, shipping over 460,000 copies. It would later become the 25th-most successful song of all time in British chart history. Spears is the youngest female artist to have a million seller in the UK. The album's third single, \"(You Drive Me) Crazy\", became a top-ten hit worldwide and further propelled the success of the \"...Baby One More Time\" album. The album has sold 30 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. It is the best-selling debut album by any artist.\nOn June 28, 1999, Spears began her first headlining ...Baby One More Time Tour in North America, which was positively received by critics. It also generated some controversy due to her racy outfits. An extension of the tour, titled (You Drive Me) Crazy Tour, followed in March 2000. Spears premiered songs from her upcoming second album during the show.\n\"Oops!... I Did It Again\", Spears' second studio album, was released in May 2000. It debuted at number one in the US, selling 1.3 million copies, breaking the Nielsen SoundScan record for the highest debut sales by any solo artist. It has sold over 20 million copies worldwide to date, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. Rob Sheffield of \"Rolling Stone\" said that \"the great thing about \"Oops!\"\u00a0\u2013 under the cheese surface, Britney's demand for satisfaction is complex, fierce and downright scary, making her a true child of rock & roll tradition.\" The album's lead single, \"Oops!... I Did It Again\", peaked at the top of the charts in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and many other European nations, while the second single, \"Lucky\", peaked at number one in Austria, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland. The album as well as the title track received Grammy nominations for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, respectively.\nThe same year, Spears embarked on the Oops!... I Did It Again Tour, which grossed $40.5 million; she also released her first book, \"Britney Spears' Heart to Heart\", co-written with her mother. On September 7, 2000, Spears performed at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards. Halfway through the performance, she ripped off her black suit to reveal a sequined flesh-colored bodysuit, followed by heavy dance routine. It is noted by critics as the moment that Spears showed signs of becoming a more provocative performer. Amidst media speculation, Spears confirmed she was dating NSYNC member Justin Timberlake. Spears and Timberlake both graduated from high school via distance learning from the University of Nebraska High School. She also bought a home in Destin, Florida. In her 2023 memoir, Spears revealed that she had an abortion in late 2000 while dating Timberlake after he said they were not prepared for parenthood. Spears called the abortion \"one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.\"\n2001\u20132002: \"Britney\" and \"Crossroads\".\nIn January 2001, Spears hosted the 28th Annual American Music Awards, starred at Rock in Rio alongside NSYNC, and performed as a special guest in the Super Bowl XXXV halftime show headlined by Aerosmith and NSYNC. In February 2001, she signed a $7\u20138 million promotional deal with Pepsi, and released another book co-written with her mother, \"A Mother's Gift\". Her third studio album, \"Britney\", was released in November 2001, with a funkier sound inspired by hip hop artists such as Jay-Z and the Neptunes. \"Britney\" debuted at number one in the \"Billboard\" 200 and reached top five positions in Australia, the United Kingdom, and mainland Europe, and has sold 10 million copies worldwide.\nStephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic called \"Britney\" \"the record where she strives to deepen her persona, making it more adult while still recognizably Britney.\u00a0... It does sound like the work of a star who has now found and refined her voice, resulting in her best record yet.\" It was nominated for the Grammy awards for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for \"Overprotected\", and in 2007 it was named one of the best albums of the preceding 25 years by \"Entertainment Weekly\". The lead single, \"I'm a Slave 4 U\", became a top-ten hit in several countries.\nSpears' performance of the single at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards featured a caged tiger (wrangled by Bhagavan Antle) and a large albino python draped over her shoulders. It was harshly received by animal rights organization PETA, who claimed the animals were mistreated and scrapped plans for an anti-fur billboard that was to feature Spears. Jocelyn Vena of MTV News summarized Spears' performance at the ceremony, saying, \"draping herself in a white python and slithering around a steamy garden setting \u2013 surrounded by dancers in zebra and tiger outfits \u2013 Spears created one of the most striking visuals in the 27-year history of the show.\"\nTo support the album, Spears embarked on the Dream Within a Dream Tour. The show was critically praised for its technical innovations, the \"pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance\" being a water screen that pumped two tons of water into the stage. The tour grossed $53.3 million, becoming the second highest-grossing tour of 2002 by a female artist, behind Cher's . Her career success was highlighted by \"Forbes\" in 2002, as Spears was ranked the world's most powerful celebrity. Spears also landed her first starring role in \"Crossroads\", released in February 2002. Although the film was largely panned, critics praised Spears' acting. The film was a box office success, grossing over $61.1 million worldwide on a $12 million budget.\nIn June 2002, Spears opened her first restaurant, Nyla, in New York City, but terminated her relationship in November due to mismanagement and \"management's failure to keep her fully apprised\". In July 2002, Spears announced she would take a six-month break from her career; however, she went back into the studio in November to record her new album. Spears' relationship with Justin Timberlake ended after three years. In November 2002, Timberlake released the song \"Cry Me a River\" as the second single from his solo debut album. The music video featured a Spears look-alike and fueled the rumors that she had been engaging in an affair, fueled by further rumors of possible relationships involving Timberlake's choreographer Wade Robson and Limp Bizkit's frontman Fred Durst. Spears had initially denied the allegations of a possible affair involving Durst, despite the two being spotted together on multiple occasions; even claiming the two had a friendly connection. In 2023, she admitted to engaging in an affair with Robson. As a response, Spears wrote the ballad \"Everytime\" with her backing vocalist and friend Annet Artani.\n2003\u20132005: \"In the Zone\" and first two marriages.\nIn August 2003, Spears opened the MTV Video Music Awards with Christina Aguilera, performing \"Like a Virgin\". Halfway through they were joined by Madonna, whom they both kissed. The incident was highly publicized. In 2008, MTV listed the performance as the number-one opening moment in the history of MTV Video Music Awards, while \"Blender\" cited it as one of the 25 sexiest music moments on television history.\nSpears released her fourth studio album, \"In the Zone\", in November 2003. She assumed more creative control by writing and co-producing most of the material. \"Vibe\" called it \"a supremely confident dance record that also illustrates Spears' development as a songwriter\". NPR named it one of the most important recordings of the decade, writing that \"the decade's history of impeccably crafted pop is written on her body of work\". \"In the Zone\" sold over 609,000 copies during its first week of availability in the United States, debuting at the top of the charts, making Spears the first female artist in the SoundScan era to have her first four studio albums to debut at number one. It also debuted at the top of the charts in France and the top ten in Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands. The album produced four singles: \"Me Against the Music\", a collaboration with Madonna; \"Toxic\"\u2014which won Spears her first Grammy for Best Dance Recording; \"Everytime\", and \"Outrageous\".\nIn January 2004, Spears married her childhood friend <templatestyles src=\"Template:Visible anchor/styles.css\" />Jason Allen Alexander at A Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada. The marriage was annulled 55 hours later, following a petition to the court that stated that Spears \"lacked understanding of her actions\".\nIn March 2004, Spears embarked on the Onyx Hotel Tour in support of \"In the Zone\". The tour was canceled in June 2004, when she fell and injured her left knee during the music video shoot for \"Outrageous\". She underwent arthroscopic surgery and wore a thigh brace for six weeks, followed by eight to twelve weeks of rehabilitation. That year, Spears became involved in the Kabbalah Centre through her friendship with Madonna.\nIn July 2004, Spears became engaged to dancer Kevin Federline, whom she had met three months earlier. The romance was the subject of intense media attention, since Federline had recently broken up with actress Shar Jackson, who was still pregnant with their second child at the time. The stages of their relationship were chronicled in Spears' first reality show \"\", which premiered on May 17, 2005, on UPN. Spears later referred to the show in a 2013 interview as \"probably the worst thing I've done in my career\". They held a wedding ceremony on September 18, 2004, but were not legally married until three weeks later on October 6 due to a delay finalizing the couple's prenuptial agreement.\nShortly after, she released her first perfume, Curious, with Elizabeth Arden, which broke the company's first-week gross for a perfume. In October 2004, Spears took a career break to start a family. ', her first greatest hits compilation album, was released in November 2004. Spears' cover version of Bobby Brown's \"My Prerogative\" was released as the lead single from the album, reaching the top of the charts in Finland, Ireland, Italy, and Norway. The second single, \"Do Somethin'\", was a top ten hit in Australia, the United Kingdom, and other countries of mainland Europe. In August 2005, Spears released \"Someday (I Will Understand)\", which was dedicated to her first child, a son named Sean Preston, who was born the following month. In November 2005, she released her first remix compilation, ', which consists of 11 remixes.\n2006\u20132007: Personal struggles and \"Blackout\".\nIn February 2006, pictures surfaced of Spears driving with her son, Sean, on her lap instead of in a car seat. Child advocates were horrified by the photos of her holding the wheel with one hand and Sean with the other. Spears claimed that the situation happened because of a frightening encounter with paparazzi, and that it was a mistake on her part. The following month, she guest-starred on the \"Will & Grace\" episode \"Buy, Buy Baby\" as closeted lesbian Amber-Louise. She announced she no longer studied Kabbalah in May 2006, explaining, \"my baby is my religion\". Spears posed nude for the August 2006 cover of \"Harper's Bazaar\"; the photograph was compared to Demi Moore's August 1991 \"Vanity Fair\" cover. In September 2006, she gave birth to her second son, Jayden James. In November 2006, Spears filed for divorce from Federline, citing irreconcilable differences. Their divorce was finalized in July 2007, when the two reached a global settlement and agreed to share joint custody of their sons.\nSpears' maternal aunt Sandra Bridges Covington, with whom she had been very close, died of ovarian cancer in January 2007. In February, Spears stayed in a drug rehabilitation facility in Antigua for less than a day. The following night, she shaved her head with electric clippers at a hair salon in Tarzana, Los Angeles. She admitted herself to other treatment facilities during the following weeks. In May 2007, she produced a series of promotional concerts at House of Blues venues, titled The M+M's Tour. In October 2007, Spears lost physical custody of her sons to Federline. The reasons of the court ruling were not revealed to the public. Spears was also sued by Louis Vuitton over her 2005 music video \"Do Somethin'\" for upholstering her Hummer interior in counterfeit Louis Vuitton cherry blossom fabric, which resulted in the video being banned on European TV stations.\nIn October 2007, Spears released her fifth studio album, \"Blackout\". The album debuted atop the charts in Canada and Ireland, at number two in the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200, France, Japan, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, and the top ten in Australia, South Korea, New Zealand, and many European nations. In the United States, it was Spears' first album not to debut at number one, although, she did become the only female artist to have her first five studio albums debut at the two top slots of the chart. The album received positive reviews from critics and had sold 3.1 million copies worldwide by the end of 2008. \"Blackout\" won Album of the Year at the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards and was listed as the fifth Best Pop Album of the Decade by \"The Times\".\nSpears performed the lead single, \"Gimme More\", at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards. The performance was widely panned by critics. Despite the criticism, the single enjoyed worldwide success, peaking at number one in Canada and within the top ten in almost every country it charted. The second single, \"Piece of Me\", reached the top of the charts in Ireland and reached the top five in Australia, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The third single, \"Break the Ice\", was released the following year, and respectively reached numbers seven and nine in Ireland and Canada. In December 2007, Spears began a relationship with paparazzo Adnan Ghalib.\n2008\u20132010: Conservatorship and \"Circus\".\nIn January 2008, Spears refused to relinquish custody of her sons to Federline's representatives. She was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after police that had arrived at her house noted she appeared to be under the influence of an unidentified substance. The following day, Spears' visitation rights were suspended at an emergency court hearing, and Federline was given sole physical and legal custody of their sons. She was committed to the psychiatric ward of Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and put on 5150 involuntary psychiatric hold under California state law. The court placed her under a conservatorship led by her father, Jamie Spears, and attorney Andrew Wallet, giving them complete control of her assets. She was released five days later.\nThe following month, Spears guest-starred on the \"How I Met Your Mother\" episode \"Ten Sessions\" as receptionist Abby. She received positive reviews for her performance, as well as bringing the series its highest ratings ever. In July 2008, Spears regained some visitation rights after coming to an agreement with Federline and his counsel. In September 2008, Spears opened the MTV Video Music Awards with a pre-taped comedy sketch with Jonah Hill and an introduction speech. She won Best Female Video, Best Pop Video, and Video of the Year for \"Piece of Me\". A 60-minute introspective documentary, \"\", was produced to chronicle Spears' return to the recording industry. Directed by Phil Griffin, \"For the Record\" was shot in Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and New York City during the third quarter of 2008. The documentary was broadcast on MTV to 5.6 million viewers for the two airings on the premiere night. It was the highest rating in its Sunday night timeslot and in the network's history. \nIn December 2008, Spears' sixth studio album, \"Circus\", was released. It received positive reviews from critics and debuted at number one in Canada, Czech Republic, and the United States, and within the top ten in many European nations. In the United States, Spears became the youngest female artist to have five albums debut at number one, earning a place in \"Guinness World Records\". She also became the only act in the SoundScan era to have four albums debut with 500,000 or more copies sold. The album was one of the fastest-selling albums of the year, and has sold 4 million copies worldwide. Its lead single, \"Womanizer\", became Spears' first chart-topper on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 since \"...Baby One More Time\". The single also topped the charts in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Norway, and Sweden. It was also nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording.\nIn January 2009, Spears and her father obtained a restraining order against her former manager Sam Lutfi, ex-boyfriend Adnan Ghalib, and attorney Jon Eardley, all of whom had been accused of conspiring to gain control of Spears' affairs. Spears embarked on The Circus Starring Britney Spears tour in March 2009. With a gross of U.S. $131.8 million, it became the fifth highest-grossing tour of the year. In November 2009, Spears released her second greatest hits album, \"The Singles Collection\". The album's lead and only single, \"3\", became her third number-one single in the U.S.\nIn May 2010, Spears' representatives confirmed she was dating her agent, Jason Trawick, and that they had decided to end their professional relationship to focus on their personal relationship. Spears designed a limited edition clothing line for Candie's, which was released in stores in July 2010. In September 2010, she made a cameo appearance on a Spears-themed tribute episode of the television series \"Glee\", titled \"Britney/Brittany\"; the episode drew the highest Nielsen rating\u00a0\u2013 up to that point in the series's run\u00a0\u2013 in the 18\u201349 demographic.\n2011\u20132012: \"Femme Fatale\" and \"The X Factor\".\nIn March 2011, Spears released her seventh studio album, \"Femme Fatale\". The album peaked at number one in the United States, Canada, and Australia, and within the top ten on nearly every other chart. Its peak in the United States tied Spears with Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson for the third-most number ones among women. \"Femme Fatale\" has been certified platinum by the RIAA and as of February 2014, it had sold 2.4 million copies worldwide.\nThe album's lead single, \"Hold It Against Me\", debuted atop the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, becoming Spears' fourth number-one single on the chart and making her the second artist in history to have two consecutive singles debut at number one, after Mariah Carey. The second single, \"Till the World Ends\", peaked at number three on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 in May, while the third single, \"I Wanna Go\", reached number seven in August. \"Femme Fatale\" became Spears' first album in which three of its songs reached the top ten of the chart. The fourth and final single \"Criminal\" was released in September 2011. The music video sparked controversy when British politicians criticized Spears for using replica guns while filming the video in a London area that had been badly affected by the 2011 England riots. Spears' management briefly responded, stating, \"The video is a fantasy story featuring Britney's boyfriend, Jason Trawick, which literally plays out the lyrics of a song written three years before the riots ever happened.\" In April 2011, Spears appeared in a remix of Rihanna's song \"S&M\". It reached number one in the US later that month, giving Spears her fifth number one on the chart. On \"Billboard\"'s 2011 Year-End list, Spears was ranked number fourteen on the Artists of the Year, thirty-two on \"Billboard\" 200 artists, and ten on \"Billboard\" Hot 100 artists. Spears co-wrote \"Whiplash\", a song from the album \"When the Sun Goes Down\" (2011) by Selena Gomez & the Scene.\nIn June 2011, Spears embarked on her Femme Fatale Tour. The first ten dates of the tour grossed $6.2 million, landing the fifty-fifth spot on \"Pollstar\"'s Top 100 North American Tours list for the half-way point of the year. The tour ended on December 10, 2011, in Puerto Rico, after 79 performances. A DVD of the tour was released in November 2011. In August 2011, Spears received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards. The next month, she released her second remix album, \"\". In December 2011, Spears became engaged to her long-time boyfriend Jason Trawick, who had formerly been her agent. Trawick was legally granted a role as co-conservator, alongside her father, in April 2012.\nIn May 2012, Spears was hired to replace Paula Abdul as a judge for the second season of the USA show of \"The X Factor\", joining Simon Cowell, L.A. Reid, and fellow new judge Demi Lovato, who replaced Nicole Scherzinger. With a reported salary of $15 million, she became the highest-paid judge on a singing competition series in television history. However, Katy Perry broke her record in 2018 after Perry was signed for a $25-million salary to serve as a judge on ABC's revival of \"American Idol\". Spears mentored the Teens category; her final act, Carly Rose Sonenclar, was named the runner-up of the season. Spears did not return for the show's third season and was replaced by Paulina Rubio.\nSpears appeared on the song \"Scream & Shout\" with will.i.am, which was released as the third single from his fourth studio album, \"#willpower\" (2013). The song later became Spears' sixth number-one single on the UK Singles Chart and peaked at number three on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. \"Scream & Shout\" was among the best-selling songs of 2012 and 2013 with denoting sales of over 8.1 million worldwide, the accompanying music video was the third most-viewed video in 2013 on Vevo despite the video being released in 2012. In December 2012, \"Forbes\" named her music's top-earning woman of 2012, with estimated earnings of $58 million.\n2013\u20132015: \"Britney Jean\" and Britney: Piece of Me.\nSpears began work on her eighth studio album, \"Britney Jean\", in December 2012, and enlisted will.i.am as its executive producer in May 2013. In January 2013, Spears and Jason Trawick ended their engagement. Trawick was also removed as Spears' co-conservator, restoring her father as the sole conservator. Following the breakup, she began dating David Lucado in March; the couple split in August 2014. During the production of \"Britney Jean\", Spears recorded the song \"Ooh La La\" for the soundtrack of \"The Smurfs 2\", which was released in June 2013.\nOn September 17, 2013, she appeared on \"Good Morning America\" to announce her two-year concert residency at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, titled . It began on December 27, 2013, and included a total of 100 shows throughout 2014 and 2015. During the same appearance, Spears announced that \"Britney Jean\" would be released on December 3, 2013, in the United States. It was released through RCA Records due to the disbandment of Jive Records in 2011, which had formed the joint RCA/Jive Label Group (initially known as BMG Label Group) between 2007 and 2011.\n\"Britney Jean\" became Spears' final project under her original recording contract with Jive, which had guaranteed the release of eight studio albums. The record received a low amount of promotion and had little commercial impact, reportedly due to time conflicts involving preparations for Britney: Piece of Me. Upon its release, the record debuted at number four on the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200 with first-week sales of 107,000 copies, becoming her lowest-peaking and lowest-selling album in the United States. \"Britney Jean\" debuted at number 34 on the UK Albums Chart, selling 12,959 copies in its first week. In doing so, it became Spears' lowest-charting and lowest-selling album in the country.\n\"Work Bitch\" was released as the lead single from \"Britney Jean\" in September 2013. It debuted and peaked at number 12 on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100 marking Spears' 31st entry on the chart and the fifth highest debut of her career on the chart, and her seventh in the top 20. It also marked Spears' 19th top 20 entry and overall her 23rd top 40 single. The song marked Spears' highest sales debut since her 2011 number-one single \"Hold It Against Me\". \"Work Bitch\" debuted and peaked at number seven on the UK Singles Chart. The song also peaked within the top ten of the charts in Brazil, Canada, France, Italy, Mexico, and Spain.\nThe second single, \"Perfume\", premiered in November 2013. It debuted and peaked at number 76 on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100. In October 2013, she was featured as a guest vocalist on the song \"SMS (Bangerz)\" by Miley Cyrus, from the latter's fourth studio album, \"Bangerz\" (2013). On January 8, 2014, Spears won Favorite Pop Artist at the 40th People's Choice Awards at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. In August 2014, Spears confirmed she had renewed her contract with RCA and that she was writing and recording new music for her next album.\nSpears announced via Twitter in August 2014 that she would be releasing an intimate apparel line called \"The Intimate Britney Spears\". It was available to be purchased beginning on September 9, 2014, in the United States and Canada through Spears' Intimate Collection website. It was later available on September 25 for purchase in Europe. The company now ships to over 200 countries including Australia and New Zealand. On September 25, 2014, Spears confirmed on \"Good Morning Britain\" that she extended her contract to perform her Britney: Piece of Me concert residency at Planet Hollywood Las Vegas for two additional years. Spears began dating television producer Charlie Ebersol in October 2014. The pair were split in June 2015.\nOn May 14, 2015, Spears released a single, \"Pretty Girls\", with Iggy Azalea. It reached number 29 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and charted moderately in international territories. Spears and Azalea performed the track live at the 2015 \"Billboard\" Music Awards from The AXIS, the home of Spears' residency, to positive critical response. \"Entertainment Weekly\" praised the performance, noting \"Spears gave one of her most energetic televised performances in years.\"\nOn June 16, 2015, Giorgio Moroder released the album \"D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu\", which featured Spears on \"Tom's Diner\". The song was released as the fourth single from the album on October 9, 2015. In an interview, Moroder praised Spears' vocals and said she \"sounds so good that you would hardly recognize her\". At the 2015 Teen Choice Awards, Spears received the Candie's Style Icon Award, her ninth Teen Choice Award. In November 2015, Spears guest-starred as a fictionalized version of herself on the CW series \"Jane the Virgin\". On the show, she danced to \"Toxic\" with Gina Rodriguez's character.\n2016\u20132018: \"Glory\", continued residency, and the Piece of Me Tour.\nIn November 2015, Spears confirmed via social media that she had begun recording her ninth studio album. On March 1, 2016, \"V\" announced that Spears would appear on the cover of its 100th issue, dated March 8, 2016, in addition to revealing three different covers shot by photographer Mario Testino for the milestone publication. The \"V\" editor-in-chief, Stephen Gan, said Spears was selected because of her status as an icon in the industry, and asked: \"Who in our world did not grow up listening to her music?\" In May 2016, Spears launched a casual role-play gaming application, \"\". The app, created by Glu Mobile, was made available through both iOS and Google Play.\nOn May 22, 2016, Spears performed a medley of her past singles at the 2016 \"Billboard\" Music Awards. In addition to opening the show, Spears was honored with the \"Billboard\" Millennium Award. On July 15, 2016, Spears released the lead single, \"Make Me\", from her ninth studio album, featuring guest vocals from American rapper G-Eazy. The album, \"Glory\", was formally released on August 26, 2016. On August 16, 2016, MTV and Spears announced that she would perform at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards. The performance marked Spears' first time returning to the VMA stage after her widely panned performance of \"Gimme More\" at the 2007 show nine years earlier. Along with \"Make Me\", Spears and G-Eazy also performed the latter's hit song \"Me, Myself & I\".\nSpears appeared on the cover of \"Marie Claire\" UK for the October 2016 issue. In the publication, Spears revealed that she had suffered from crippling anxiety in the past, and that motherhood played a major role in helping her overcome it. \"My boys don't care if everything isn't perfect. They don't judge me\", Spears said in the issue. In November 2016, during an interview with Las Vegas Blog, Spears confirmed she had already begun work on her next album, stating: \"I'm not sure what I want the next album to sound like.\u00a0... I just know that I'm excited to get into the studio again and actually have already been back recording.\" In the same month, she released a remix version of \"Slumber Party\" as the second single from \"Glory\", featuring Tinashe.\nShe began dating \"Slumber Party\"'s music video co-star Sam Asghari after the two met on set. In January 2017, Spears received four wins out of four nominations at the 43rd People's Choice Awards, including Favorite Pop Artist, Female Artist, Social Media Celebrity, as well as Comedic Collaboration for a skit with Ellen DeGeneres for \"The Ellen DeGeneres Show\". In March 2017, Spears announced that her residency concert would be performed abroad as a world tour, , with dates in select Asian cities. In April 2017, the Israeli Labor Party announced that it would reschedule its July primary election to avoid conflict with Spears' sold-out Tel Aviv concert, citing traffic, and security concerns.\nSpears' manager Larry Rudolph also announced the residency would not be extended following her contract expiration with Caesars Entertainment at the end of 2017. On April 29, 2017, Spears became the first recipient of the Icon Award at the 2017 Radio Disney Music Awards. On November 4, 2017, Spears attended the grand opening of the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation Britney Spears Campus in Las Vegas. Later that month, \"Forbes\" announced that Spears was the 8th highest earning female musician, earning $34 million in 2017. On December 31, 2017, Spears performed the final show of Britney: Piece of Me. The final performance reportedly brought in $1.172 million, setting a new box office record for a single show in Las Vegas, and breaking the record previously held by Jennifer Lopez. Performances of \"Toxic\" and \"Work Bitch\" were recorded on earlier dates and aired on ABC's \"Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve\" to a record audience of 25.6 million.\nIn January 2018, Spears released her 24th perfume with Elizabeth Arden, Sunset Fantasy, and announced the Piece of Me Tour which took place in July 2018 in North America and Europe. Tickets were sold out within minutes for major cities, and additional dates were added to meet the demand. Pitbull was the supporting act for the European leg. The tour ranked at 86 and 30 on \"Pollstar\"'s 2018 Year-End Top 100 Tours chart both in North America and worldwide, respectively. In total, the tour grossed $54.3 million with 260,531 tickets sold and was the sixth highest-grossing female tour of 2018, and was the United Kingdom's second best-selling female tour of 2018.\nOn March 20, 2018, Spears was announced as part of a campaign for French luxury fashion house Kenzo. The company said it aimed to shake up the 'jungle' world of fashion with Spears' 'La Collection Memento No. 2' campaign. On April 12, 2018, Spears was honored with the 2018 GLAAD Vanguard Award at the GLAAD Media Awards for her role in \"accelerating acceptance for the LGBTQ community\". On April 27, 2018, Epic Rights announced a new partnership with Spears to debut her own fashion line in 2019, which would include clothing, fitness apparel, accessories, and electronics.\nIn July 2018, Spears released her first unisex fragrance, Prerogative. On October 18, 2018, Spears announced her second Las Vegas residency show, Britney: Domination, which was set to launch at Park MGM's Park Theatre on February 13, 2019. Spears was slated to make $507,000 per show, which would have made her the highest paid act on the Las Vegas Strip. On October 21, 2018, Spears performed at the Formula One Grand Prix in Austin, the final performance of her Piece of Me Tour.\n2019\u20132021: Conservatorship dispute, #FreeBritney, and abuse allegations.\nOn January 4, 2019, Spears announced an indefinite hiatus and the cancellation of her Las Vegas residency after her father, Jamie, suffered a near-fatal colon rupture. In March 2019, Andrew Wallet resigned as co-conservator of her estate after 11 years. Spears entered a psychiatric facility amidst stress from her father's illness that same month. The following month, a fan podcast, \"Britney's Gram\", released a voicemail message from a source who claimed to be a former member of Spears' legal team. They alleged that Jamie had canceled the residency due to Spears' refusal to take her medication, that he had been holding her in the facility against her will since January 2019 after she violated a no-driving rule, and that her conservatorship was supposed to have ended in 2009. The allegations gave rise to a movement to terminate the conservatorship, #FreeBritney, which received support from celebrities including singers Cher, Paris Hilton, and Miley Cyrus, and the nonprofit organization American Civil Liberties Union. On April 22, 2019, fans protested outside the West Hollywood City Hall and demanded Spears' release. Spears said \"all [was] well\" two days later and left the facility later that month.\nIn a May 2019 hearing, Judge Brenda Penny ordered a professional evaluation of the conservatorship. In September, Spears' ex-husband Federline obtained a restraining order against Britney's father, Jamie, following an alleged physical altercation between Jamie and one of her sons. Spears' longtime care manager, Jodi Montgomery, temporarily replaced Jamie as her conservator that same month, which also saw a hearing where no decisions about the arrangement were reached. An interactive pop-up museum dedicated to Spears, dubbed \"The Zone\", opened in Los Angeles in February 2020, though it was later suspended in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. She released \"Glory\"'s Japanese-exclusive bonus track, \"Mood Ring\" as a single, and debuted a new cover of the album to streaming and digital platforms worldwide in May 2020. In August, Jamie called the #FreeBritney movement \"a joke\" and its organizers \"conspiracy theorists\".\nOn August 17, 2020, Spears' court-appointed lawyer, Samuel D. Ingham III, submitted a court filing that documented Spears' desire to have her conservatorship altered to reflect her wishes as well as lifestyle, to instate Montgomery as her permanent conservator, and to replace Jamie with a fiduciary as conservator of her estate. Four days later, Penny extended the established arrangement until February 2021. In November 2020, Penny approved Bessemer Trust as co-conservator of Spears' estate alongside Jamie. The following month, Spears released a new deluxe edition of \"Glory\", which includes \"Mood Ring\" and new songs \"Swimming in the Stars\" and \"Matches\".\nA documentary about Spears' career and conservatorship, \"Framing Britney Spears\", premiered on FX in February 2021. Spears later revealed that she had seen parts of the documentary, stating that she felt humiliated by the perception of her that was presented and that she \"cried for two weeks\" following the initial broadcast. The following month, Ingham filed a petition to permanently replace Jamie with Montgomery as the conservator of Spears' person, citing a 2014 order that determined that Spears did not have the capacity to consent to medical treatment of any form.\nOn June 22, 2021, shortly before Spears was set to speak to the court, \"The New York Times\" obtained confidential court documents stating that Spears had pushed for years to end her conservatorship. Spears spoke to the court on June 23, calling the conservatorship \"abusive\". She said she had lied by \"telling the whole world I'm OK and I'm happy\", and that she was traumatized and angry. The court statement received widespread media coverage and generated over 1 million shares on Twitter, over 500,000 messages using the tag #FreeBritney, and more than 150,000 messages with a new hashtag referencing the court appearance, #BritneySpeaks.\nOn July 1, Bessemer Trust asked the judge to allow them to withdraw from the conservatorship, saying that they had been misled and had entered into the arrangement on the understanding that the conservatorship was voluntary. The same day, senators Elizabeth Warren and Bob Casey Jr. called on federal agencies to increase oversight of the country's conservatorship systems. Spears' manager of 25 years, Larry Rudolph, resigned on July 6 due to her \"intention to officially retire\" and on that same day, it was reported that Ingham planned to file documents to the court asking to be dismissed. In a July 14 hearing, Judge Penny approved the resignations of Bessemer Trust and Ingham. The court also approved of Spears' request to hire attorney Mathew S. Rosengart to represent her. Rosengart informed the court that he would be working to terminate the conservatorship. Later that day, Spears publicly endorsed the #FreeBritney movement for the first time, using the hashtag in a caption on an Instagram post. She mentioned feeling \"blessed\" after earning \"real representation\", referring to Judge Penny's decision to allow her to choose her own counsel.\nOn July 26, Rosengart filed a petition seeking to remove Jamie as conservator of Spears' estate and to replace him with Jason Rubin, a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) at Certified Strategies Inc. in Woodland Hills, California. On August 12, Jamie agreed to step down as conservator at some future date, with his lawyers stating that he wanted \"an orderly transition to a new conservator\". On September 7, Jamie filed a petition to end the conservatorship. Five days later, Spears announced her engagement to her longtime boyfriend, Sam Asghari, through an Instagram post. On September 29, Judge Penny suspended Jamie as conservator of Spears' estate, with accountant John Zabel replacing him on a temporary basis. On November 12, Judge Penny terminated the conservatorship.\n2022\u2013present: Third marriage, \"The Woman in Me\", and retirement from singing.\nIn April 2022, she announced her pregnancy with Asghari's child, which ended in a miscarriage the following month. The couple married on June 9 at her home in Thousand Oaks, Los Angeles. None of Spears' immediate family (including her parents, sister, and brother) were invited; her two sons did not attend. Spears' first husband, Jason Alexander, attempted to crash the wedding by breaking into her home, armed with a knife, but was arrested. Spears had a three-year restraining order against him. On August 26, Spears and English musician Elton John released the duet \"Hold Me Closer\", a remake of John's 1972 single \"Tiny Dancer\". It was Spears' first musical release since the termination of her conservatorship. \"Hold Me Closer\" debuted at number six on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100, becoming her 14th top-ten single and her highest-charting song in the chart since \"Scream & Shout\" (2012). It debuted at number three on the UK Singles Chart, earning Spears her 24th top-ten.\nSince the termination of her conservatorship, Spears' personal life, social media presence, and overall well-being have been subject to renewed media interest and fan speculation, giving rise to conspiracy theories. On January 24, 2023, deputies from the Ventura County Sheriff's Office performed a welfare check at Spears' residence after receiving several calls from fans who were concerned after she deleted her Instagram account. A spokesperson for the Sheriff's Department stated that Spears \"was safe and in no danger\". Spears addressed the incident on her Twitter account, asking fans to respect her privacy. Spears and the rapper will.i.am released their single, \"Mind Your Business\", on July 21, 2023. On August 16, it was announced Spears and Asghari separated after 14 months of marriage. On May 1, 2024, they reached a divorce settlement. The following day, the judge signed off on the settlement and the couple were divorced on December 2, 2024. In September 2023, an additional welfare check was initiated when Spears posted an Instagram video of herself dancing with knives. Her security team assured the attending officer that there was no immediate threat to her safety, and the officer departed. Spears also clarified that the knives were not real.\nIn February 2022, Spears signed a $15 million book deal for a memoir in one of the biggest book deals of all time. The memoir, \"The Woman in Me,\" was released on October 24, 2023. It details her rise to fame, public media events, her conservatorship, and her newfound freedom. In the United States, it sold 1.1 million copies, while worldwide it sold 2.4 million copies in print sales during its first week of release.\nIn January 2024, reports circulated that Charli XCX and Julia Michaels had been asked to write songs for Spears, and \"Rolling Stone\" reported that \"management and A&R are trying to get her excited for the music\". Spears denied the reports, saying she would never return to the music industry. However, she also said that she had written more than 20 songs for other artists in the previous two years. In May 2024, Charli XCX confirmed in an interview that she was indeed asked to write for Spears, for which she traveled to Malibu, but that she did not know if Spears was a part of the process explaining that \"the team were present... But she didn't record it. She obviously didn't.\"\nArtistry.\nInfluences.\nSpears has cited Madonna, Janet Jackson, and Whitney Houston as major influences, her \"three favorite artists\" as a child, whom she would \"sing along to\u00a0... day and night in [her] living room\"; Houston's \"I Have Nothing\" was the song she auditioned to that landed her record deal with Jive Records. Spears also named Mariah Carey as \"one of the main reasons I started singing\". Throughout her career, Spears has drawn frequent comparisons to Madonna and Jackson in particular, in terms of vocals, choreography, and stage presence. According to Spears: \"I know when I was younger, I looked up to people\u00a0... like, you know, Janet Jackson and Madonna. And they were major inspirations for me. But I also had my own identity and I knew who I was.\"\nIn the 2002 book \"Madonnastyle\" by Carol Clerk, she is quoted saying: \"I have been a huge fan of Madonna since I was a little girl. She's the person that I've really looked up to. I would really, really like to be a legend like Madonna.\" Spears cited \"That's the Way Love Goes\" as the inspiration for her song \"Touch of My Hand\" from her album \"In the Zone\", saying \"I like to compare it to 'That's the Way Love Goes,' kind of a Janet Jackson thing.\" She also said her song \"Just Luv Me\" from her \"Glory\" album also reminded her of \"That's the Way Love Goes\".\nAfter meeting Spears face to face, Janet Jackson stated: \"she said to me, 'I'm such a big fan; I really admire you.' That's so flattering. Everyone gets inspiration from some place. And it's awesome to see someone else coming up who's dancing and singing, and seeing how all these kids relate to her. A lot of people put it down, but what she does is a positive thing.\" Madonna said of Spears in the documentary \"\": \"I admire her talent as an artist\u00a0... There are aspects about her that I recognize in myself when I first started out in my career\". Spears has also named Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Sheryl Crow, Otis Redding, Shania Twain, Brandy, Beyonc\u00e9, Natalie Imbruglia, Cher, and Prince as inspirations, and younger artists such as Selena Gomez and Ariana Grande.\nMusical style.\nSpears is described as a pop artist and generally explores the genre in the form of Following her debut, she was credited with influencing the revival of teen pop in the late 1990s. Rob Sheffield of \"Rolling Stone\" wrote: \"Spears carries on the classic archetype of the rock & roll teen queen, the dungaree doll, the angel baby who just has to make a scene.\" In a review of \"...Baby One More Time\", Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic described her music as a \"blend of infectious, rap-inflected dance-pop and smooth balladry\". \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" saw Spears working with several R&B producers to create \"a combination of bubblegum, urban soul, and raga\". Her third studio album, \"Britney\", derived from the teen pop niche \"[r]hythmically and melodically\", but was described as \"sharper, tougher than what came before\", incorporating genres such as R&B, disco, and funk.\nSpears has explored and heavily incorporated the genres of electropop and dance music in her records, as well as influences of urban and hip hop, which are most present on \"In the Zone\" and \"Blackout\". \"In the Zone\" also experiments with Euro trance, reggae, and Middle Eastern music. \"Femme Fatale\" and \"Britney Jean\" were also heavily influenced by electronic music genres. Spears' ninth studio album, \"Glory\", is more eclectic and experimental than her previous released work. She commented that it \"took a lot of time\u00a0... it's really different\u00a0... there are like two or three songs that go in the direction of more urban that I've wanted to do for a long time now, and I just haven't really done that.\"\n\"...Baby One More Time\" and \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" address themes such as love and relationships from a teenager's point of view. Following the massive commercial success of her first two studio albums, Spears' team and producers wanted to maintain the formula that took her to the top of the charts. Spears, however, was no longer satisfied with the sound and themes covered on her records. She co-wrote five songs and choose each track's producer on her third studio album, \"Britney\", which lyrics address the subjects of reaching adulthood, sexuality, and self-discovery. Sex, dancing, freedom, and love continued to be Spears' music main subjects on her subsequent albums. Her fifth studio effort, \"Blackout\", also addresses issues such as fame and media scrutiny, including on the song \"Piece of Me\".\nSpears' music has also been noted for some catchphrases. The opening in her debut single \"...Baby One More Time\", \"Oh, baby baby\" is considered to be one of her signature lines and has been parodied in the media by various artists such as Nicole Scherzinger and Ariana Grande. It has been used in variating forms throughout her music, such as simply, \"baby\" and \"oh baby\", as well as the \"Blackout\" track, \"Ooh Ooh Baby\". On the initial development of \"...Baby One More Time\", Barry Weiss noted Spears' inception of the catchphrase from her strange ad-libbing during the recording of the song. He commented further, \"We thought it was really weird at first. It was strange. It was not the way Max wrote it. But it worked! We thought it could be a really good opening salvo for her.\" The opening line in \"Gimme More\", \"It's Britney, bitch\" has become another signature phrase. An early review of \"Blackout\" suggested the phrase was \"simply laughable\". Amy Roberts of \"Bustle\" called it \"an indelible cultural turning point, transforming a frenetic, floundering moment in the superstar's career to one of strength and empowerment\".\nVoice.\nSpears is a soprano. Other sources state that she possesses a contralto vocal range. Prior to her breakthrough success, she is described as having sung \"much deeper than her highly recognizable trademark voice of today\", with Eric Foster White, who worked with Spears on her debut album, \"...Baby One More Time\", being cited as \"[shaping] her voice over the course of a month\" upon being signed to Jive Records \"to where it is today\u2014distinctively, unmistakably Britney\". Rami Yacoub, who co-produced Spears' debut album with lyricist Max Martin, commented, \"I know from Denniz Pop and Max's previous productions, when we do songs, there's kind of a nasal thing. With N' Sync and the Backstreet Boys, we had to push for that mid-nasal voice. When Britney did that, she got this kind of raspy, sexy voice.\"\nGuy Blackman of \"The Age\" wrote that \"[t]he thing about Spears, though, is that her biggest songs, no matter how committee-created or impossibly polished, have always been convincing because of her delivery, her commitment and her presence.\u00a0... Spears expresses perfectly the conflicting urges of adolescence, the tension between chastity and sexual experience, between hedonism and responsibility, between confidence and vulnerability.\" Producer William Orbit, who worked with Spears on her album \"Britney Jean\", stated regarding her vocals: \"[Britney] didn't get so big just because [she] put on great shows; [she] got to be that way because [her voice is] unique: you hear two words and you know who is singing\".\nSpears has also been criticized for her reliance on Auto-Tune and her vocals being \"over-processed\" on records. Erlewine criticized Spears' singing abilities in a review of her \"Blackout\" album, stating: \"Never the greatest vocalist, her thin squawk could be dismissed early in her career as an adolescent learning the ropes, but nearly a decade later her singing hasn't gotten any better, even if the studio tools to masquerade her weaknesses have.\" Joan Anderman of \"The Boston Globe\" remarked that \"Spears sounds robotic, nearly inhuman, on her records, so processed is her voice by digital pitch-shifters and synthesizers.\"\nKayla Upadhyaya of \"The Michigan Daily\" has provided a different point of view, stating: \"Auto-tuned and over-processed vocals define [Spears]'s voice as an artist, and in her music, auto-tune isn't so much a gimmick as it is an instrument used to highlight, contort and make a statement.\" Adam Markovitz of \"Entertainment Weekly\" opines that \"Spears is no technical singer, that's for sure. But backed by Martin and Dr. Luke's wall of sound, her vocals melt into a mix of babytalk coo and coital panting that is, in its own overprocessed way, just as iconic and propulsive as Michael Jackson's yips or Eminem's snarls.\"\nStage performances and videos.\nSpears is known for her stage performances, particularly the elaborate dance routines which incorporate \"belly-dancing and tempered erotic moves\" that are credited with influencing \"dance-heavy acts\" such as Danity Kane and the Pussycat Dolls. \"Rolling Stone\" readers voted Spears their second-favorite dancing musician. Spears is described as being much more shy than her stage persona suggests. She said that performing is \"a boost to [her] confidence. It's like an alter-ego type thing. Something clicks and I go and turn into this different person. I think it's kind of a gift to be able to do that.\" Her 2000, 2001, and 2003 MTV Video Music Awards performances were lauded, while her 2007 presentation was widely panned by critics, as she \"teetered through her dance steps and mouthed only occasional words\". \"Billboard\" called her 2016 \"comeback\" performance at the show \"an effective, but not entirely glorious, bid to regain pop superstardom\".\nAfter her knee injuries and personal problems, Spears' \"showmanship\" and dance abilities came under criticism. Serge F. Kovaleski of \"The New York Times\" watched her in 2016 and stated: \"Once a fluid, natural dancer, Ms. Spears can appear stiff, even robotic, today, relying on flailing arms and flashy sets.\" \"Las Vegas Sun\"'s Robin Leach seemed more impressed over Spears' efforts on the concert by saying that she delivered a \"flawless performance\" on the residency's opening night.\nIt has been widely reported that Spears lip-syncs during live performances, which often prompts criticism from music critics and concert goers. Some, however, claimed that, although she \"got plenty of digital support\", she \"doesn't merely lip-sync\" during her live shows. In 2016, Sabrina Weiss of Refinery29 referred to her lip-syncing as a \"well-known fact that's not even taboo anymore.\" Noting on the prevalence of lip-syncing, the \"Los Angeles Daily News\" opined: \"In the context of a Britney Spears concert, does it really matter?\u00a0... you [just] go for the somewhat-ridiculous spectacle of it all\". Spears herself has commented on the topic, arguing: \"Because I'm dancing so much, I do have a little bit of playback, but there's a mixture of my voice and the playback.\u00a0... It really pisses me off because I'm busting my ass out there and singing at the same time and nobody ever gives me credit for it\".\nIn 2012, VH1 ranked Spears as the fourth Greatest Woman of the Video Era, while \"Billboard\" ranked her as the eight Greatest Music Video Artist of All Time in 2020, explaining: \"The storylines, the dancing, the \"outfits\". Right from the start, the pop princess established the lengths of her creativity with some of the most memorable videos of the last three decades.\" She has been retroactively noted as the pioneer for her early career videography. She conceptualized the \"iconic Catholic schoolgirl and cheerleader motif\" in the \"...Baby One More Time\" video, rejecting the animation video idea. She also made the \"Oops!... I Did It Again\" video \"dance-centric rather than space-centric as her producers suggested\". She also used her dancer's intuition to help select the beats for each track.\nPublic image.\nUpon launching her music career with \"...Baby One More Time\", Spears was labeled a teen idol, and \"Rolling Stone\" described her as \"the latest model of a classic product: the unneurotic pop star who performs her duties with vaudevillian pluck and spokesmodel charm.\" The April 1999 cover of \"Rolling Stone\" pictured a 17-year-old Spears reclining on a bed, wearing an exposed bra and hot pants while cradling a Teletubby in one arm. The American Family Association (AFA) decried the image as \"a disturbing mix of childhood innocence and adult sexuality\" and called on \"God-loving Americans to boycott stores selling Britney's albums\". Spears addressed the outcry, commenting: \"What's the big deal? I have strong morals.\u00a0... I'd do it again. I thought the pictures were fine. And I was tired of being compared to Debbie Gibson and all of this bubblegum pop all the time.\" Shortly before this, Spears had announced publicly she would remain abstinent until marriage.\nAn early criticism of Spears dismissed her as \"the product of a Swedish songwriting factory that had no real hand in either her music or her persona\". \"Vox\" editor Constance Grady wrote this was perpetuated from the fact that Spears debuted in the late 1990s, when music was dominated by rockism, that prizes \"so-called authenticity and grittiness of rock above all else\". Spears' \"slick, breezy pop was an affront to rockist sensibilities, and claiming that Spears was fake was an easy way to dismiss her.\" Ron Levy for \"Rolling Stone\" noted that \"I have to tell you, if the record company could have created more than one Britney Spears, they would have done it, and they tried!\"\n\"Billboard\" opined that, by the time Spears released her second album, \"Oops!... I Did It Again\", \"There was a shift occurring in both the music and her public image: She was sharper, sexier and singing about more grown-up fare, setting the stage for 2001's \"Britney\", which shed her innocent skin and ushered her into adulthood.\" \"Britney\"'s lead single, \"I'm a Slave 4 U\", and its music video were also credited for distancing her from her previous \"wholesome bubblegum star\" image. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic remarked, \"If 2001's \"Britney\" was a transitional album, capturing Spears at the point when she wasn't a girl and not yet a woman, its 2003 follow-up, \"In the Zone\", is where she has finally completed that journey and turned into Britney, the Adult Woman.\" Erlewine likened Spears to fellow singer Christina Aguilera, explaining that both equated \"maturity with transparent sexuality and the pounding sounds of nightclubs\". Brittany Spanos of \"LA Weekly\" stated that Spears \"set the bar for the 'adulthood' transition teen pop stars often struggle with\".\nSpears' erratic behavior and personal problems during 2006\u20132008 were highly publicized and affected both her career and public image. Erlewine writes that \"each new disaster [was] stripping away any residual sexiness in her public image\". In a 2008 article, \"Rolling Stone\"'s Vanessa Grigoriadis described her much-publicized personal issues as \"the most public downfall of any star in history\". Spears later received favorable media attention; \"Billboard\" wrote that her appearance at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards \"was a picture of professionalism and poise\" after her \"disastrous\" performance the previous year, while \"Business Insider\" ran an article on how she had \"lost control of her life\u00a0... and then made an incredible career comeback\". In 2017, Spears said: \"I think I had to give myself more breaks through my career and take responsibility for my mental health.\u00a0... I wrote back then, that I was lost and didn't know what to do with myself. I was trying to please everyone around me because that's who I am deep inside. There are moments where I look back and think: 'What the hell was I thinking?'\"\nIn September 2002, Spears was placed at number eight on VH1's 100 Sexiest Artists list. She was placed at number one on \"FHM\"'s 100 Sexiest Women in the World list in 2004, and, in December 2012, \"Complex\" ranked her 12th on its 100 Hottest Female Singers of All Time list. Remarking upon her perceived image as a sex symbol, Spears stated: \"When I'm on stage, that's my time to do my thing and go there and be that \u2014 and it's fun. It's exhilarating just to be something that you're not. And people tend to believe it.\" In 2003, \"People\" cited her as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People.\nSpears is recognized as a gay icon and received the 2018 GLAAD Vanguard Award at the GLAAD Media Awards for her role in \"accelerating acceptance for the LGBTQ community\". She addressed the \"unwavering loyalty\" and \"lack of judgment\" of her LGBTQ fans in \"Billboard\"'s Love Letters to the LGBTQ Community. She said: \"Your stories are what inspire me, bring me joy, and make me and my sons strive to be better people.\" Manuel Betancourt of \"Vice\" wrote about the \"queer adoration\", especially of gay men, on Spears, and said that \"Where other gay icons exude self-possession, Spears' fragile resilience has made her an even more fascinating role model, closer to Judy Garland than to Lady Gaga\u00a0... she's a glittering mirror ball, a fractured reflection of those men on the dance floor back onto themselves.\" \"HuffPost\"'s Ben Appel attributed Spears' status as a gay icon to her \"oh-so-innocent/not that innocent\" Monroe-like sensuality, her sweet, almost saccharine nature, her beyond basic but addictive pop songs, her dance moves, her phoenix-out-of-the-fire comeback from a series of mental health crises, and her unmistakable tenderness. \"Britney is camp. She is a fashion plate. A doll. Britney is a drag queen.\"\nSince her early years in the public eye, Spears has been a tabloid fixture and a paparazzi target. According to \"Vanity Fair\", photos of Spears sold for a combined value of $100 million in 2007. Harvey Levin, the founder of \"TMZ\", said in an interview, \"Britney is gold. She is crack to our readers. Her life is a complete train-wreck, and I thank God for her every day.\" Steve Huey of AllMusic remarked that \"among female singers of [Spears'] era\u00a0... her celebrity star power was rivaled only by Jennifer Lopez.\" 'Britney Spears' was Yahoo!'s most popular search term between 2005 and 2008, and has been in a total of seven different years. Spears was named as Most Searched Person in the \"Guinness World Records\" book edition 2007 and 2009. She was later named as the most searched person of the decade 2000\u20132009.\nAs a public figure, Spears \"has never been known to her fans as a politically active, committed\u2014or even aware\u2014entertainer.\" In a 2003 interview with Tucker Carlson, she commented on President George W. Bush and the Iraq War, saying that \"we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes\u00a0... and be faithful in what happens\". Michael Moore included the footage of Spears' answer in his \"anti-Bush\" documentary \"Fahrenheit 9/11\", which, according to \"The Washington Times\"'s James Frazier, presented her \"as an example of a naive American blindly trusting a dishonest commander in chief\" and fueled the \"urban legend\" of a \"conservative\" Spears. Frazier also said that \"the few positions she has taken can hardly be considered conservative\", such as supporting same-sex marriage. In 2016, Spears posted pictures of a meeting with Hillary Clinton on social media. She described Clinton as \"an inspiration and [a] beautiful voice for women around the world\".\nIn December 2017, Spears publicly showed support for the DREAM Act in the wake of the announcement that Donald Trump would end the DACA policy, which previously granted undocumented immigrants who came to the country as minors a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation. She posted a photo of herself on social media wearing a black T-shirt that reads \"We Are All Dreamers\" in white letters. The caption read, \"Tell Congress to pass the #DreamAct\".\nOn September 15, 2021, Spears was named one of the 100 most influential people of 2021 by \"Time.\" A few days before the editors's list was released, Spears was put at the top of the readers voting list of which personalities should be included on the annual \"Time\" 100 list. Deemed an icon of 2021, editors highlighted the impact of her fight against her conservatorship as well as of the #FreeBritney movement. In October 2021, Spears thanked her fans and the #FreeBritney movement for \"freeing me from my conservatorship\". Britney Spears was also named most famous celebrity from Louisiana according to a study done by Baton Rouge.\nLegacy.\nReferred to as the \"Princess of Pop\", Spears was credited as one of the \"driving force[s] behind the return of teen pop in the late 1990s\". \"Rolling Stone\"'s Stacy Lambe explained that she \"help[ed] to usher in a new era for the genre that had gone dormant in the decade that followed New Kids on the Block.\u00a0... Spears would lead an army of pop stars\u00a0... built on slick Max Martin productions, plenty of sexual innuendo and dance-heavy performances. [She became] one of the most successful artists of all time\u2014and a cautionary tale for a generation, whether they paid attention or not.\" In a 2021 article for \"Time\", Maura Johnston opined that \"Spears' legacy as a pop artist is complex, made up of dazzling musical heights and music-business-borne lows\". Johnston also commented: \"While Spears' catalog is part of the canon that defines the first 20 years of this millennium, one hopes that her public struggles, and the strength she's shown while enduring them, will lead to her cementing her true legacy: Reshaping the machine that turns those songs into cultural touchstones.\"\n\"Glamour\" contributor Christopher Rosa described her as \"one of pop music's defining voices.\u00a0... When she emerged onto the scene in 1998 with \"...Baby One More Time\", the world hadn't seen a performer like her. Not since Madonna had a female artist affected the genre so profoundly.\" \"Billboard\"'s Robert Kelly observed that Spears' \"sexy and coy\" vocals on her debut single \"...Baby One More Time\" \"kicked off a new era of pop vocal stylings that would influence countless artists to come\". In 2020, \"Rolling Stone\" ranked the song at number one on a list of the 100 Greatest Debut Singles of All Time and Rob Sheffield described it as \"One of those pop manifestos that announces a new sound, a new era, a new century. But most of all, a new star\u00a0... With \"...Baby One More Time\", [Spears] changed the sound of pop forever: It's Britney, bitch. Nothing was ever the same.\"\nSpears was at the forefront of the female teen pop explosion starting in 1999 and extending through the 2000s, leading the pack of Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, and Mandy Moore. All of these performers had been developing material in 1998, but the market changed dramatically in December 1998 when Spears' single and video were charting highly. RCA Records quickly signed Aguilera and released her debut single to capitalize on Spears' success, producing her debut hit single \"Genie in a Bottle\". Simpson consciously modeled her persona as more mature than Spears; her \"I Wanna Love You Forever\" charted in September 1999, and her album \"Sweet Kisses\" followed shortly after. Moore's first single, \"Candy\", hit the airwaves a month before Simpson's single, but it did not perform as well on the charts; Moore was often seen as less accomplished than Spears and the others, coming in fourth of the \"pop princesses\". Fueling media stories about their competition for first place, Spears and Aguilera traded barbs but also compliments through the 2000s.\nAlim Kheraj of \"Dazed\" called Spears \"one of pop's most important pioneers\". After eighteen years as a performer, \"Billboard\" described her as having \"earned her title as one of pop's reigning queens. Since her early days as a Mouseketeer, [Spears] has pushed the boundaries of 21st century sounds, paving the way for a generation of artists to shamelessly embrace glossy pop and redefine how one can accrue consistent success in the music industry.\" \"Entertainment Weekly\"'s Adam Markovitz described Spears as \"an American institution, as deeply sacred and messed up as pro wrestling or the filibuster.\" In 2012, she was ranked as the fourth VH1's 50 Greatest Women of the Video Era show list. VH1 also cited her among its choices on the 100 Greatest Women in Music in 2012 and the 200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons in 2003. In 2020, \"Billboard\" ranked her eight on its 100 Greatest Music Video Artists of all-time list. In October 2024, \"Billboard\" placed Spears at number six on their Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century list.\nSpears and her work have influenced various artists including Katy Perry, Meghan Trainor, Demi Lovato, Kelly Key, Kristinia DeBarge, Little Boots, Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, Marina Diamandis, the Weeknd, Tegan and Sara, Pixie Lott, Grimes, Selena Gomez, Hailee Steinfeld, Pabllo Vittar, Tinashe, Victoria Justice, Cassie, Leah Wellbaum of Slothrust, the Saturdays, Normani, Miley Cyrus, Cheryl, Lana Del Rey, Ava Max, Sam Smith, and Rina Sawayama. During the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, Lady Gaga said that Spears \"taught us all how to be fearless, and the industry wouldn't be the same without her.\" Gaga has also cited Spears as an influence, calling her \"the most provocative performer of my time\".\nBefore Spears joined \"The X Factor\", Simon Cowell explained that he is \"fascinated by [Britney]. The fact that she's one of the most talked about \u2013 not just pop stars \u2013 but people in the world today, means that you've got this star power.\u00a0... She's still hot, she's still having hit records and she's still controversial, there's a reason for that.\" Marina Diamandis named Spears as the main influence behind her album \"Electra Heart\". Lana Del Rey said that the music video for \"Toxic\" inspires her. Porcelain Black describes her music as a \"love child\" of Spears and Marilyn Manson. Rita Ora's 2019 music video for \"Only Want You\" was inspired by Spears' \"Everytime\" music video, and said in a stories from Instagram, \"Hey @britneyspears this was for you because I love you so. Pay homage to the ones who inspire! #icon.\"\nSpears has been credited with redefining Las Vegas residencies as a retirement place for musicians. Her debut concert residency was described as \"the natural evolution of Celine Dion's powerhourse Vegas residency, a still-charting star of another generation redefining the role of Strip headliner.\" \"Forbes\" named Spears the sixth-highest-earning female musician of 2015.\" She is credited with influencing and paving the way for other artists's residencies such as Jennifer Lopez's , Bruno Mars's Bruno Mars at Park MGM, and Backstreet Boys' . The arrival of Spears \"saw the pop promoters finally tap into the younger crowd arriving in town for a good time\".\nSpears' much-publicized personal problems and her subsequent career comeback have inspired some artists. Gwyneth Paltrow's character in the 2010 film \"Country Strong\" was inspired by Spears' treatment by the media. According to film director Shana Fest, \"that's where this movie came from. I mean, I was seeing what was happening in the media to Britney Spears. I think it's tragic how we treat people who give us so much, and we love to see them knocked down to build them back up again, to knock them down again.\" Nicki Minaj has cited Spears' comeback after her much-publicized personal issues as an inspiration. Spears' hounding by paparazzi and personal problems also inspired Barry Manilow's album \"15 Minutes\". Manilow said: \"She couldn't have a life without them pulling up next to her car and following her and driving her crazy to the point where, that was around the time she shaved off her hair.\u00a0... We all looked at it in horror\u00a0... So it seemed like a thing to be writing an album about.\" Bebo Norman wrote a song about Spears, called \"Britney\", which was inspired by \"culture's make-or-break treatment of celebrities\".\nIn 2008, \"Salon\" published an article titled \"The Britney Economy\" describing how Spears is a driving force in music and fashion, stimulating consumer purchases and media coverage. Magazines, paparazzi, and record labels make millions of dollars, and Spears profits to a lesser degree. Along with Alicia Silverstone, Christy Turlington, and Naomi Campbell, Spears has been credited with introducing the navel piercing to mainstream culture.\nAchievements.\nSpears' awards and accolades include a Grammy Award; 15 Guinness World Records; six MTV Video Music Awards, including the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award; seven \"Billboard\" Music Awards, including the Millennium Award; the inaugural Radio Disney Icon Award; the GLAAD Media Award's Vanguard Award; and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.\nSpears is listed by the \"Guinness World Records\" as having the \"Best-selling album by a teenage solo artist\" for her debut studio album, \"...Baby One More Time\", which sold over 13 million copies in the United States. Melissa Ruggieri of the \"Richmond Times-Dispatch\" reported: \"She's also marked for being the best-selling teenage artist. Before she turned 20 in 2001, Spears had sold over 37 million albums worldwide\".\nAs of 2023[ [update]], according to the \"Evening Standard\", Spears has sold over 150 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time. She also sold more than 70 million records in United States, including 36.9 million digital singles and 33.6 million digital albums. Spears is further recognized as the best-selling female albums artist of the 2000s in the United States, as well as the fifth overall. In December 2009, \"Billboard\" ranked Spears the 8th Artist of the 2000s decade in the United States. She is one of the few artists in history to have had a number-one single and a number-one studio album in the US during each of the three decades of her career. With \"3\" in 2009 and \"Hold It Against Me\" in 2011, she became the second artist after Mariah Carey in the Hot 100's history to debut at number one with two or more songs. In 2016, Spears ranked at number twenty on \"Billboard\"'s Greatest Of All Time Top Dance Club Artists list.\nOther ventures.\nProduct and endorsements.\nIn 2000, Spears released a limited edition of sunglasses titled Shades of Britney. In 2001, she signed a deal with shoe company Skechers, and a $7\u20138 million promotional deal with Pepsi, their biggest entertainment deal at the time. Aside from numerous commercials with the latter during that year, she also appeared in a 2004 Pepsi television commercial in the theme of \"Gladiators\" with singers Beyonc\u00e9, Pink, and Enrique Iglesias. On June 19, 2002, she released her first multi-platform video game, \"Britney's Dance Beat\", which received positive reviews.\nIn March 2009, Spears was announced as the new face of clothing brand Candie's. Dari Marder, chief marketing officer for the brand, said: \"Everybody loves a comeback and nobody's doing it better than Britney. She's just poised for even greater success.\" In 2010, Spears designed a limited edition line for the brand, which was released in stores in July 2010. In 2011, she teamed up with Sony, Make Up For Ever, and Plenty of Fish to release her music video for \"Hold It Against Me\", earning her $500,000 for the product placement.\nSpears also teamed up with Hasbro in 2012 to release an exclusive version of \"Twister Dance\", which includes a remix of \"Till the World Ends\". She was also featured on a commercial, which was directed by Ray Kay, to promote the game. Spears was also featured on the commercial of \"Twister Dance Rave\", and the game included a Twister remix of \"Circus\". In March 2018, it was revealed that Spears would be the face of Kenzo, a contemporary French luxury clothing house.\nSpears' range of commercial deals and products also includes beauty care products and perfumes. She released her first perfume with Elizabeth Arden, Curious in 2004, which broke the company's first-week gross for a perfume. By 2009, she had released seven more perfumes including Fantasy. In 2010, Spears released her eighth fragrance, Radiance.\nIn 2011, Radiance was reissued as a new perfume titled Cosmic Radiance. Worldwide, Spears sold over one million bottles in the first five years, with gross receipts of $1.5 billion. In 2016, Spears contacted Glu Mobile to create her own role-playing game, \"\". The app officially launched in May 2016 and is compatible with iOS and Android. On June 17, 2016, Spears announced the release of her twentieth fragrance, Private Show. As of January\u00a02018[ [update]], Spears has released 24 fragrances through Elizabeth Arden.\nPhilanthropy.\nSpears founded The Britney Spears Foundation, a charitable entity set up to help children in need. The philosophy behind the Foundation was that music and entertainment has a healing quality that can benefit children. The Foundation also supported the annual Britney Spears Camp for the Performing Arts, where campers had the opportunity to explore and develop their talents. In April 2002, through the efforts of Spears and The Britney Spears Foundation, a grant of $1 million was made to the Twin Towers Fund to support the children of uniformed service heroes affected by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, including New York City Fire Department and its Emergency Medical Services Command, the New York City Police Department, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the New York State Office of court Administration and other government offices. However, it was reported in 2008 that the Foundation had a deficit of $200,000. After Spears went through conservatorship, her father and lawyer Andrew Wallet zeroed out the effort, leading to its closure in 2011.\nOn October 30, 2001, Spears, alongside Bono and other popular recording artists under the name \"Artists Against AIDS Worldwide\", released an album consisting of multiple versions of Marvin Gaye's \"What's Going On\", intending to benefit AIDS programs in Africa and other impoverished regions. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Spears donated $350,000 to Music Rising. Spears has also helped several charities during her career, including Madonna's Kabbalah-based Spirituality for Kids, cancer charity Gilda's Club Worldwide, Promises Foundation, and United Way, with the latter two focused on giving families from various disadvantaged situations new hope and stable foundations for the future.\nOn October 24, 2015, Spears donated $120,000 to the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation. In addition, $1 of each ticket sale for her Las Vegas residency, Britney: Piece of Me, was donated to the nonprofit organization. Spears also fundraised for the charity through social media, in addition to selling limited edition merchandise, with all proceeds going to the NCCF. On October 27, 2016, Spears partnered with Zappos and XCYCLE to host the \"Britney Spears Piece of Me Charity Ride\" in Boca Park, Las Vegas to raise additional money toward her goal of $1 million for the NCCF, with $450,000 having already been raised from Spears' ticket sales and merchandise. Participants were entered for a chance to win a spin class with Spears herself. The event ultimately went on to raise $553,130. The fundraising ultimately led to the development of the NCCF Britney Spears Campus in Las Vegas, which saw its grand opening on November 4, 2017. Spears also regularly participates in Spirit Day to combat bullying of LGBTQ youth and bullying.\nIn March 2020, Spears was participating in the #DoYourPartChallenge, which entails helping people with anything they might need during the COVID-19 pandemic. She told fans to send her messages on Instagram if they need supportive words during the coronavirus pandemic, with Spears picking three fans. In February 2024, Spears partnered with New York City dessert shop Glace, to create the \"Britney Br\u00fbl\u00e9e\" dessert, with a portion of the proceeds from its sales being donated to The Trevor Project.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBook sources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "12998062": "Gimme More\n2007 single by Britney Spears\n\"Gimme More\" is a song by American singer Britney Spears from her fifth studio album, \"Blackout\" (2007). It was released on August 31, 2007, by Jive Records, as the lead single from the album. \"Gimme More\" was recorded in 2006 during Spears' second pregnancy and was one of the first solo productions by Danja. The song opens with an intro in which Spears utters the phrase, \"It's Britney, bitch.\" Musically, \"Gimme More\" is a song with elements from dance-pop, electropop and EDM using breathy vocals. The track closes with a speak-sing outro by Danja.\nThe song received critical acclaim and peaked at number three on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100, becoming Spears' second highest-peaking single at the time. It also peaked at the top of the charts in Canada, also charting with top-five positions in 14 countries. The accompanying music video, which premiered on October 5, 2007, portrays Spears as a stripper and features a break from Spears's highly choreographed music videos. The video received mixed to negative reviews from critics, who panned Spears's pole dancing as well as the lack of storyline. An alternative cut was leaked on July 18, 2011.\nSpears first performed \"Gimme More\" at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards on September 9, 2007, wearing a black, jewel-encrusted bikini. The performance was panned by many critics, who commented extensively on her singing, dancing and wardrobe, with one deeming it as \"one of the worst to grace the MTV Awards\". On September 10, 2007, Cara Cunningham (then known as Chris Crocker) uploaded a video on YouTube in response to the criticism titled \"Leave Britney Alone!\", which made her an Internet celebrity and attracted attention from the media. Spears has also performed \"Gimme More\" at the Femme Fatale Tour (2011) and (2013\u20132017). \"Gimme More\" has been covered and sampled by many artists, including Miley Cyrus, Sia, will.i.am, and Mari\u00e9 Digby.\nBackground.\n\"Gimme More\" was co-written by Jim Beanz, Marcella \"Ms. Lago\" Araica, Nate \"Danja\" Hills and Keri Hilson, and was also produced by Danja. Spears started working with Danja in July 2006. He explained that the creative process was not difficult at first since he was \"left to do pretty much whatever I wanted to\", and \"if she felt it, she was gonna ride with it. If she didn't, you'd see it in her face.\" Hilson said that she wrote the song with Spears in mind after Danja played her the instrumental, adding, \"I just started singing, 'Give me, Give me,' and added a little more in and just having fun and messing around really.\" Spears began recording the track in Las Vegas in August 2006, while she was seven months pregnant with her second child, Jayden James. Recording continued at Spears' house in Los Angeles, California, three weeks after she gave birth. Hilson commented that \"She gave 150 percent...I don't know any other mother that would do that.\" In an interview with Rhapsody, Danja commented that he added a speak-sing outro to \"stake [his] claim\", since \"Gimme More\" was one of his first solo productions. \"There's a lot riding on my future, because people think I'm around because of Tim and they don't really know what I'm capable of\", he said. The song was mixed by Ms. Lago at Chalice Recording Studios in Los Angeles. Background vocals were provided by Hilson and Beanz. \"Gimme More\" was released as the album's lead single and premiered on New York City-based radio station Z100's web site. A remix featuring rapper Lil' Kim (titled the \"Kimme More\" remix) was also made available for digital download.\nComposition.\n\"Gimme More\" is a song incorporating elements from dance-pop, electropop, EDM, and pop. It is set in a moderate dance groove at a tempo of 113 beats per minute, with Spears vocal range spanning from F\u266f3 to C6. The song was composed in the key of F\u266f minor, though the key of the final recording is sharp by a quarter tone. The melody incorporates \"low electronic lines\" whereas the beat has been described by Bill Lamb of About.com as \"disco-ish\". Nick Levine of Digital Spy compared Spears's vocals to those of her single \"I'm a Slave 4 U\" (2001). Lamb described them as \"teasing...backed by moaning and heavy breathing\" reminiscent of Donna Summer's \"Love to Love You Baby\" (1975). Sal Cinquemani of \"Slant Magazine\" felt the song was reminiscent of Sabrina's \"Boys (Summertime Love)\" (1987).\n\"Gimme More\" is constructed in the common verse-chorus form. The song opens with a spoken intro in which Spears says the line \"It's Britney, bitch\". The chorus consists of the repetition of the hookline \"Gimme gimme\", that ends with a constantly pitch-shifted \"More\". The song closes with a speak-sing outro by Danja in which he says the lines \"Bet you didn't see this one coming / The Incredible Lago, the legendary Ms. Britney Spears / and the unstoppable Danja\".\nCritical reception.\n\"Gimme More\" garnered universal acclaim from music critics. Dennis Lim of \"Blender\" named the song one of the highlights of the album, calling it \"hypnotic pole-dance pop\". Alexis Petridis of \"The Guardian\" called the song \"futuristic and thrilling\". Nick Levine of \"Digital Spy\" said that \"somehow, out of personal chaos, pop greatness has emerged. [Danja] melds tack-sharp beats and a deliciously scuzzy bassline to create a dancefloor throb that feels devilishly sexy\". While reviewing \"The Singles Collection\", Evan Sawdey of \"PopMatters\" called \"Gimme More\" \"the best dance track she has done since 'Toxic'\". Kelefa Sanneh of \"The New York Times\" said the track set the mood for \"Blackout\", adding that \"the electronic beats and bass lines are as thick as Ms. Spears's voice is thin...she delivers almost nothing but slithery come-ons and defiant invitations to nightclub decadence\". \"New Musical Express\" compared Spears's vocals to \"a sex addict's cry for help\". Stephen Thomas Erlewine of \"AllMusic\" said some of the songs of \"Blackout\", \"really show off the skills of the producers\", exemplifying \"Gimme More\", \"Radar\", \"Break the Ice\", \"Heaven on Earth\" and \"Hot as Ice\".\nBill Lamb of About.com gave the song three and a half stars and commented, \"It does seem that Britney's bump-and-grind singing style that we first heard 8 years ago on '...Baby One More Time' is still intact, and the 'It's Britney, bitch' announcement that opens the song implies a significant amount of fire remains. The opening alone bumps the song's rating up by half a star\". Blogger Roger Friedman of Fox News dubbed the line as \"cocky and fun\". Eric R. Danton of \"The Hartford Courant\" wrote, \"The comedy starts right away, when she plays the role of your drunk friend calling at 3 a.m., slurring, 'It's Britney, bitch'\". Mike Schiller of \"PopMatters\" called the opening line \"real value...kind of hilarious\" and added that the \"inserted \"more\" syllables in the chorus only add to the feel that this is a genetically engineered sort of dancefloor banger\". Popjustice named \"Gimme More\" the tenth best song of 2007. \"The StarPhoenix\" listed it as the second most infectious song of the year.\nChart performance.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nIt didn't bother me until nine months down the line. I was like, 'I wish she could've really nailed that [VMA] performance 'cause that really would have set it off.' It was still top five [on the \"Billboard\"] Hot 100...It definitely weighed on me. At one particular point last year, I felt like, 'Man, I did all this work, and it ain't pop like it's supposed to pop.' I was down for a little bit...You could put your all into the music, and it's some executive decision that ruined it...Every producer, songwriter or arranger on that record did their thing. The record label did their thing. That was just something uncontrollable on her part.\n\u2014Danja talking about the commercial performance of \"Gimme More\" not meeting his expectations.\nOn September 22, 2007, \"Gimme More\" debuted at number 85 on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100. On October 13, 2007, the song peaked at number three on the chart. The same week, it also peaked at number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot Digital Songs, due to digital sales of 179,000 downloads. It became her fifth top ten hit in the Hot 100, as well as her highest peaking since \"...Baby One More Time\". On February 13, 2008, the single was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) selling 1,000,000 copies. On December 15, 2007, it peaked at number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot Dance Club Songs. As of July 2016, \"Gimme More\" has sold 1,840,000 digital downloads in the United States. It is her seventh best-selling digital single in the country. In Canada, the song debuted at number 53 on September 22, 2007. On October 13, 2007, it peaked at number one and climbed from number 42, becoming the chart's \"Greatest Gainer\". It was certified two times platinum by the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) for sales of 160,000 copies.\nIn Australia, the single debuted at number three on the Australian Singles Chart on October 15, 2007. It received a gold certification by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) for shipments over 35,000 units. In New Zealand, it debuted at number 24 on October 1, 2007. The following week, it peaked at number 15. \"Gimme More\" was also successful in Europe, peaking at number two in the European Hot 100 Singles. In the United Kingdom, \"Gimme More\" debuted and peaked at number three on October 21, 2007 (for the week ending date October 27, 2007). According to the Official Charts Company, \"Gimme More\" has sold 596,000 copies there, as of August 2022. It also reached the top five in Belgium, Czech Republic, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Norway and Sweden and peaking inside the top ten in Austria and Finland.\nMusic video.\nBackground.\nThe music video for \"Gimme More\" was filmed on July 19, 2007, at a warehouse in downtown Los Angeles, California, with additional scenes later being filmed on August 7, 2007, in the same location. It was directed by Jake Sarfaty, who was handpicked by Spears. According to \"People\", the production was Spears's \"concept and vision\". Despite this, according to Mikal Sky, who worked as the makeup artist for the video, Spears \"sabotaged the director by refusing to perform and follow the script\" for unknown reasons. During filming, Spears was spotted wearing a short black dress, black boots and a black hat. On September 13, 2007, it was reported by \"The New York Times\" that the music video was being \"tweaked with input from her advisers\" since \"[the] gritty, stripper-themed clip...may jolt fans who are more accustomed to the slick, tightly choreographed videos that made her an MTV staple\". The music video premiered exclusively in the iTunes Store on October 5, 2007, and in all other outlets, including \"TRL\" on October 8, 2007, and on BET's \"106 & Park\" on October 10, 2007.\nSynopsis and reception.\nThe video begins with a blonde Spears sitting and laughing in a bar with two female friends, but stops to look at a brunette Spears calling out to her on a small stage in front of them, wearing a leather vest, a studded belt, panties and fishnet stockings while sporting a tattoo on her biceps. She dances erotically around a pole and up against a mirror. Throughout the video, she continues to dance and flip her hair while special effects lights flash around her as the camera moves slightly in and out of focus to the beat of the song. The video's light systems change from black and white with aura-like blue and pink hues to full-blown color. Around the middle of the video, she is joined by two alter egos of her female friends, who also dance around the pole. The blonde Spears and her friends, while watching the dancing, later draw their attention to an attractive man sitting with his friends at a table across the bar.\nThe music video received mixed to negative reviews from critics. Michael Slezak of \"Entertainment Weekly\" said \"The moral of the story is, if you're going to build an entire video around a stripper pole, then you better work said pole like a nine-to-five. Drop it like it's hot...Alas, in the case of \"Gimme More,\" I've seen sexier pole work during an afternoon of fly-fishing\". Andrei Harmsworth of \"Metro\" commented \"To her credit, the video is slightly less disappointing than her mimed performance of the track at the Video Music Awards last month but it is still smeared with the same smutty hallmarks\". \"Dose\" said the video \"sucks less than you think\" and added \"Spears appears lucid, sometimes happy, and awards-worthy editing makes her appear to be standing upright competently throughout\". Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine said the lighting effects and digital body enhancement of the video \"indicate a predilection toward maintaining an image that no longer reflects reality. It doesn't point to an artist who refuses to evolve, but rather one who doesn't know how\u2014or isn't being allowed to.\" \"IGN\" writer Sketch Longwood called it one of Spears' hottest videos, adding that she \"proves to be quite skilled in the art of teasingly slinking around.\" While reviewing the alternate version of the video in July 2011, Becky Bain of \"Idolator\" stated that \"Spears's last few videos \u2014 particularly the joyfully silly clip for 'I Wanna Go' \u2014 more than makeup for the travesty that was the pop star's video for 'Gimme More'... The stripper concept was a poor choice, the barely-there outfits were ill-fitting, the 'choreography' was a joke, the editing was sloppy.\" Spears later wrote of the music video in her memoir \"The Woman in Me\" that it was, \"by far the worst video I\u2019ve ever shot in my life. I don\u2019t like it at all\u2014it\u2019s so tacky. It looks like we only spent three thousand dollars to shoot it.\"\nThe video was spoofed by Eminem on his music video of \"We Made You\".\nAn alternative version of the video leaked online on July 18, 2011, and included new scenes, which featured Spears strutting down the street in a black outfit and laying down in a zebra-print bed with a cat. The scenes of blonde Spears were cut. Becky Bain of \"Idolator\" said that \"Neither the deleted nor added parts add or subtract anything from the experience. This video was kind of doomed no matter how it was edited together.\"\nLive performances.\nMTV Video Music Awards.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n Kicking off the show Sunday night with her new single, 'Gimme More,' Spears looked bleary and unprepared \u2013 much like her recent tabloid exploits on the streets of Los Angeles. She lazily walked through her dance moves with little enthusiasm. It appeared she had forgotten the entire art of lip-synching; and, perhaps most unforgivable given her once taut frame, she looked embarrassingly out of shape. Even the celebrity-studded audience seemed bewildered. 50 Cent looked at Spears with a confused expression; Diddy, her new best friend, was expressionless. Some comeback.\n \u2014Nekesa Mumbi Moody, Associated Press.\nAfter days of media speculation, it was confirmed on September 6, 2007, that Spears would open the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards at the Pearl Theatre in the Palms Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, on September 9, 2007. It was also announced that she was going to perform \"Gimme More\", with a magic act from illusionist Criss Angel in some parts of the performance. However, the bit is thought to have been rejected by the show's organizers at the last minute. Jesse Ignjatovic, the executive producer of the 2007 VMAs, contacted Spears since she wanted to start the show in \"a very big and dramatic way\", and was confident that Spears would deliver and set the tone for the rest of the night. She also said Spears was excited after she was approached by MTV to perform.\nOn September 7, 2007, Spears started rehearsing at the Pearl Theater. An exclusive video from the rehearsal was posted on MTV.com the following day. The performance began with a close-up of the back of Spears's head, and continued with Spears turning to the camera and lip synching the first lines of Elvis Presley's 1958 song \"Trouble\": \"If you're lookin' for trouble, you came to the right place / If you're lookin' for trouble, look right in my face.\" \"Gimme More\" began, and the camera panned out to reveal Spears wearing a black, jewel-encrusted bikini and black boots. She was accompanied by male and female dancers dressed in black outfits. Several pole dancers danced in smaller stages around the audience. The backdrop videos featured images of chandeliers floating and silhouettes of women, which were compared by Gil Kaufman of MTV to the gun barrel and the title sequence of the \"James Bond\" series. At the end of the performance, Spears smiled and thanked the audience before leaving the stage.\nThe performance was universally panned by critics. Jeff Leeds of \"The New York Times\" said that \"no one was prepared for Sunday night's fiasco, in which a listless Ms. Spears teetered through her dance steps and mouthed only occasional words in a wan attempt to lip-synch her new single\". Vinay Menon of the \"Toronto Star\" commented Spears \"looked hopelessly dazed. She was wearing the expression of somebody who had been deposited at the Palms Casino Resort by a tornado, one that promptly twisted away, taking her clothing and sense of purpose...[She was] lumbering, in slow motion, as if somebody had poured cement into her streetwalker boots\". David Willis of BBC stated her performance would \"go down in the history books as being one of the worst to grace the MTV Awards\". \nThe day after the performance, American blogger Cara Cunningham (formerly Chris Crocker) posted a video on \nYouTube titled \"Leave Britney alone!\", in which she cried and defended Spears's performance, explaining that she did not want her to spiral out of control like Anna Nicole Smith, who had died in February 2007. Within the first 24 hours of its posting, the video accumulated over 2 million views. \"Leave Britney alone!\" turned Cunningham an internet celebrity, and was featured on television shows such as \"The View\" and \"The Tonight Show with Jay Leno\". It was also parodied by dozens of other YouTube users, most famously by actor Seth Green. An editor for YouTube said \"the melodramatic two-minute clip made Crocker an instant YouTube star\" and named it one of the top videos of 2007. \"Wired\" named it the top video of 2007.\nOther.\nDuring Spears's 2009 concert tour The Circus Starring Britney Spears, the LAZRtag Remix of \"Gimme More\" was used in a martial arts-inspired interlude between the first and second act. On March 25, 2011, Spears performed a special show at Rain Nightclub in Las Vegas. The setlist of the show consisted of three songs from her seventh studio album, \"Femme Fatale\", including \"Hold It Against Me\", \"Big Fat Bass\" and \"Till the World Ends\". During the performance of \"Big Fat Bass\", Spears wore a latex bodysuit and elements of \"3\", \"Gimme More\" and \"I'm a Slave 4 U\" were also included. On March 27, 2011, \"Big Fat Bass\" was also performed at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium that aired on \"Good Morning America\" on March 29, 2011, and the same day, Spears performed the set at \"Jimmy Kimmel Live!\".\nSpears also performed \"Gimme More\" at 2011's Femme Fatale Tour. After the performance of \"If U Seek Amy\", a video interlude in which a stalker talked about femme fatales in history saw the beginning of the third section. Spears returned to the stage wearing a golden bikini and made her entrance in a boat whose individual parts were wheeled by dancers in Egyptian costumes. Matt Kivel of \"Variety\" said, \"the crowd reacted wildly to all of it: screaming out the chorus to 'I'm a Slave 4 U,' pulsating along to the twitch of 'Gimme More' and going absolutely ballistic for the brief, two-verse rendition of '...Baby One More Time.'\" Craig S. Semon of \"Telegram & Gazette\" called it the most over the top number of the show, adding \"She delivered the banal, brain-numbing chorus...while her dancers (looking like extras from 'Stargate') paraded around in Egyptian garb and basked in the glow of pyrotechnic sparks.\" Spears also performed the song at her residency show, (2013\u20132017).\nCover versions, samples and media appearances.\n\"Gimme More\" has been covered by many artists and a great number of amateurs. In late 2007, American singer-songwriter Mari\u00e9 Digby posted an acoustic cover of \"Gimme More\" along with a cover of Rihanna's \"Umbrella\" in her YouTube account. Both became hits, with \"Gimme More\" gaining more than 300,000 views in two weeks. Shortly after, Digby became the eighth most subscribed-to artist on YouTube. She joked about the situation saying, \"I could have done a karaoke video to ['Gimme More'], but I just had my stripper pole taken out the other day from my living room, and it just wouldn't have been the same\". The same year, Australian pop singer Sia released an acoustic version of the song. Swedish metal band Machinae Supremacy covered the song on their third studio album \"Overworld\", released on February 13, 2008. Matthieu De Ronde of \"Archaic Magazine\" commented \"[it is] one of the most unexpected covers of all time...this track has been given a somewhat comical but enjoyable makeover, but who said that metal couldn't be fun?\". American singer-songwriter Christopher Dallman played a cover of the song during many of his concerts in 2007. Two years later, he showed his version to his producer Rachel Alina, who prompted him to release an EP of Spears's covers. The EP, titled \"Sad Britney\", was released on November 9, 2009, and also contained covers of \"Radar\", \"Toxic\" and \"...Baby One More Time\". It became Dallman's first record to chart on iTunes. He also released a music video for \"Gimme More\", which was criticized by Spears's fans who thought Dallman was making fun of her. He explained, \"There have been a few folks who have misinterpreted what I was doing and thought that I was somehow making fun of her, which really isn't the case. I have such a place in my heart for Britney\". American singer Slayyyter released an unauthorized remix of the song on April 25, 2020.\n\"Gimme More\" has been sampled in many songs, including Girl Talk's \"Give Me a Beat\" (2008) and Charles Hamilton's \"Devil in a Light Pink Dress\" (2009). In the episode \"Michael Scott Paper Company\" of the television series \"The Office\", the character of Michael Scott is driving his convertible listening to Lady Gaga's \"Just Dance\" (2008). When he stops the car, he looks into the camera and says \"It's Britney, bitch\", mistaking Gaga for Spears. During an episode of the television series \"Kath & Kim\", the character of Brett Craig screams the catch phrase before starting a fight in a bar. During a skit in a 2008 episode of \"The Ellen DeGeneres Show\", in which Ellen DeGeneres and Spears sang Christmas carols through a neighborhood, DeGeneres said the catch phrase when knocking on a door. \"It's Britney, bitch\" was also included in a video backdrop during the performance of \"Human Nature\" (1995) in Madonna's 2008\u201309 Sticky & Sweet Tour. In the video, Spears was trapped in an elevator and tried to get out. At the end of the performance, the doors opened to reveal Spears saying the catch phrase. On November 6, 2008, in the Los Angeles show at Dodger Stadium, Spears joined Madonna onstage halfway through the performance. In 2012, \"Gimme More\" was covered on \"Glee\" during its second Britney Spears tribute episode. \"Britney 2.0\" features \"Gimme More\" which is performed by Heather Morris and heavily parodies Spears's infamous 2007 MTV Music Video Awards performance. Spears and will.i.am's single \"Scream & Shout\" samples the phrase \"Britney, bitch!\". Rapper Jay-Z sampled the line \"It's Britney, bitch!\" in \"BBC\", a song on his 2013 album \"Magna Carta Holy Grail\". The song appears in the 2019 American crime drama film \"Hustlers\" and appears as part of the track list for \"Just Dance 2024 Edition\". The song also appeared as a soundtrack on Grand Theft Auto V on the radio station Non Stop Pop FM.\nTrack listings.\nAustralian CD single\nEuropean CD single\nRemix EP\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["12998062", "3382"], "permutation_1": ["12998062", "3382"], "permutation_2": ["3382", "12998062"], "permutation_3": ["12998062", "3382"]}
{"id": "2hop__501811_36180", "docs_added": {"11977595": "Avalau\nIsland in Funafuti atoll, Tuvalu\nAvalau is an islet within the atoll of Funafuti, Tuvalu. Charles Hedley described Avalau in 1896 \"this islet is said to possess a spring of fresh water\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11977595", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["11977595", "30227"], "permutation_2": ["11977595", "30227"], "permutation_3": ["30227", "11977595"]}
{"id": "2hop__613374_3089", "docs_added": {"191890": "American Idol\nAmerican singing competition\nAmerican Idol is an American singing competition television series created by Simon Fuller, produced by Fremantle North America and 19 Entertainment, and distributed by Fremantle North America. It aired on Fox from June 11, 2002, to April 7, 2016, for 15 seasons. It was on hiatus for two years until March 11, 2018, when a revival of the series began airing on ABC.\nIt started as an addition to the \"Idol\" format that was based on \"Pop Idol\" from British television, in which the programme's first series, which was won by Will Young, ended over four months before the show began, as it later became one of the most successful shows in the history of American television. The concept of the series involves discovering recording stars from unsigned singing talents, with the winner determined by American viewers using phones, Internet platforms, and SMS text voting. The winners of the first twenty-two seasons, as chosen by viewers, are Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Hicks, Jordin Sparks, David Cook, Kris Allen, Lee DeWyze, Scotty McCreery, Phillip Phillips, Candice Glover, Caleb Johnson, Nick Fradiani, Trent Harmon, Maddie Poppe, Laine Hardy, Just Sam, Chayce Beckham, Noah Thompson, Iam Tongi, and Abi Carter.\n\"American Idol\" employs a select panel of judges who critique the contestants' performances. The original judges, for seasons one through eight, were record producer and music manager Randy Jackson, singer and choreographer Paula Abdul, and music executive and manager Simon Cowell. The judging panel for the last three seasons on Fox consisted of singers Keith Urban, Jennifer Lopez, and Harry Connick Jr. Season sixteen brought three new judges: singers Luke Bryan, Katy Perry, and Lionel Richie. Beginning in the twenty-third season, Underwood replaced Perry, alongside returning judges Bryan and Richie. The show has been hosted by television presenter Ryan Seacrest throughout its run, apart from the show's inaugural season when comedian Brian Dunkleman joined Seacrest as co-host.\nThe success of \"American Idol\" has been described as \"unparalleled in broadcasting history\". A rival TV executive said the series was \"the most impactful show in the history of television\". It became a recognized springboard for launching the career of many artists as bona fide stars. According to \"Billboard\" magazine, in its first ten years, \"\"Idol\" has spawned 345 \"Billboard\" chart-toppers and a platoon of pop idols, including Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Chris Daughtry, Fantasia, Ruben Studdard, Jennifer Hudson, Clay Aiken, Adam Lambert, and Jordin Sparks while remaining a TV ratings juggernaut.\" For an unprecedented eight consecutive years, from the 2003\u201304 television season through the 2010\u201311 season, either its performance show or result show was ranked number one in U.S. television ratings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\n\"American Idol\" was based on the British show \"Pop Idol\" created by Simon Fuller, which was in turn inspired by the New Zealand television singing competition \"Popstars\". Television producer Nigel Lythgoe saw a version in Australia and helped bring it over to Britain. Fuller was inspired by the idea from \"Popstars\" of employing a panel of judges to select singers in audition. He then added other elements, including telephone voting by the viewing public (which at the time was already in use in shows, such as the \"Eurovision Song Contest\"), the drama of backstories, and real-life soap opera unfolding in real time. \"Pop Idol\" debuted in Britain in 2001 with Lythgoe as showrunner\u200d\u2014\u200cthe executive producer and production leader\u200d\u2014\u200cand Simon Cowell as one of the judges, and was successful with the viewing public.\nIn 2001, Fuller, Cowell, and TV producer Simon Jones attempted to sell the \"Pop Idol\" format to the United States, but the idea was initially met with poor responses from all the television networks including UPN and Fox. However, Rupert Murdoch, head of Fox's parent company, was later persuaded to buy the series by his daughter, Elisabeth, who had seen the British show. Although Fox's executives wanted to change the format, Murdoch insisted that it should remain the same as the British one. One change was nevertheless made due to the presence of multiple time zones in the United States that made it impractical for the country to vote in the same time period, an additional half-hour results show was therefore added the day following the performance show. The show was renamed \"\" and debuted in the summer of 2002. Cowell was initially offered the job of showrunner but turned down the offer; Lythgoe then took over that position. Much to the surprise of Cowell and Fox, it became one of the biggest shows of the summer. With its successful launch in the summer, the show was then moved to January and expanded. The show grew into a phenomenon largely due to its personal engagement with the contestants by prompting the viewers to vote, and the presence of the acid-tongued Cowell as a judge. By 2004, it had become the most-watched show on American television, a position it then held for seven consecutive seasons until 2011.\nHowever, after a few years of sharp declining ratings starting in 2012, with rating falls of over 20% each season, the fifteenth season would be its last on Fox, ending its run in April 2016. In May 2017, ABC acquired the rights to the series and the program returned for the 2017\u201318 television season. The first season of the revived series, or the sixteenth season overall, started airing in March 2018. Seven seasons have been aired on ABC as of May 2024.\nJudges and hosts.\nJudges.\nThe show had originally planned on having four judges following the \"Pop Idol\" format; however, only three judges had been found by the time of the audition round in the first season, namely Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell. A fourth judge, radio DJ Stryker, was originally chosen but he dropped out citing \"image concerns.\" In the second season, New York radio personality Angie Martinez had been hired as a fourth judge but withdrew after only a few days of auditions, due to being uncomfortable with giving out criticism. The show decided to continue with the three judges format until the eighth season. All three original judges stayed on the judging panel for eight seasons.\nIn the eighth season, Latin Grammy Award-nominated singer-songwriter and record producer Kara DioGuardi was added as a fourth judge. Abdul left the show in 2009, after the eighth season, as a result of failing to agree to terms with the show producers. Emmy Award-winning talk show host Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul for the ninth season, but left in 2010 after just one season. DioGuardi was let go from \"American Idol\" in 2010 after two seasons, as producers favored a return to the three-person judges panel previously used prior to DioGuardi's appearance on the show. Cowell also left the show in 2010 to introduce the American version of his show \"The X Factor\" in 2011. Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth.\nJennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined the judging panel in the tenth season, but both left in 2012 after two seasons. Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. They were replaced by three new judges, Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj, and Keith Urban, who joined Jackson in the twelfth season. However, both Carey and Minaj left after one season. Jackson also departed the judges table after twelve seasons, but would return as the in-house mentor for the thirteenth season in 2014, after which he left the show permanently.\nUrban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. After a one-season hiatus, Lopez returned to \"American Idol\" for the thirteenth season, and was joined by former mentor Harry Connick Jr. After this, Lopez, Urban, and Connick Jr. remained on the show until its cancellation after the fifteenth season in 2016.\nWhen the show was revived by ABC in 2018, Katy Perry, Luke Bryan, and Lionel Richie were selected as judges, marking the sixteenth season of \"Idol\". Bryan and Richie have remained on the show since, while Perry left the show in May 2024 after seven seasons. On July 31, 2024, published reports announced former \"Idol\" winner Carrie Underwood as Perry's replacement, joining Bryan and Richie for the twenty-third season.\nGuest judges may occasionally be introduced. In the second season, guest judges such as Richie and Gladys Knight were used, and in the third season, Donna Summer, Quentin Tarantino, Gloria Estefan, and some of the mentors also joined as judges to critique the performances in the final rounds. Guest judges were sporadically used during the audition rounds: Gene Simmons, LL Cool J, Brandy, Mark McGrath, and Kenny Loggins in the fourth season; Carole Bayer Sager, Jewel, and Olivia Newton-John in the sixth season; Shania Twain, Neil Patrick Harris, Avril Lavigne, Mary J. Blige, Joe Jonas, Kristin Chenoweth, Victoria Beckham, and Perry in the ninth season (substituting in the vacant chair, before DeGeneres was hired); and Adam Lambert filled in for Urban at one audition location during the fourteenth season. In the ABC version, two instances occurred during the live shows: Abdul filled in for Bryan on one episode of the nineteenth season, while Alanis Morissette and Ed Sheeran filled in for Perry and Richie on an episode of the twenty-first season.\nHosts.\nThe first season was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman, following the format of \"Pop Idol\" of using two presenters. Dunkleman quit thereafter, resulting in Seacrest becoming the sole emcee starting with the second season in 2003.\nSeacrest has remained as sole host of \"American Idol\" ever since, with the exception of the two-year hiatus between 2016 and 2018 as well as April 8, 2019, during the seventeenth season, when Bobby Bones subbed for Seacrest after the latter fell ill. Dunkleman did, however, return for the initial in 2016 as a guest.\nCast timeline.\nAnnotations\nSelection process.\nIn a series of steps, the show selected the eventual winner out of many tens of thousands of contestants.\nContestant eligibility.\nThe eligible age-range for contestants is fifteen to twenty-eight years old. The initial age limit was sixteen to twenty-four in the first three seasons, but the upper limit was raised to twenty-eight in the fourth season, and the lower limit was reduced to fifteen in the tenth season. The contestants have to be legal U.S. residents, can not have advanced to particular stages of the competition in previous seasons, and must not have held a current recording or talent representation contract by the semi-final stage (in previous years by the audition stage).\nInitial auditions.\nFor the first eighteen seasons, contestants went through at least three sets of cuts. The first was a brief audition with a few other contestants in front of selectors which may include one of the show's producers. Although auditions can exceed 10,000 in each city, only a few hundred of these made it past the preliminary round of auditions. Successful contestants then sing in front of producers, where more may be cut. Only then can they proceed to audition in front of the judges, which is the only audition stage shown on television. Those selected by the judges are sent to Hollywood. Between 10 and 60 people in each city may make it to Hollywood (the average total is between 150 and 200).\nFrom the nineteenth season onwards, contestants request a Zoom interview and audition remotely for the show's producers. If the audition goes well, they will then invite the contestants to audition in front of the judges, in one of the audition cities.\nHollywood week.\nOnce in Hollywood, the contestants perform individually or in groups in a series of rounds. Until the tenth season, there were usually three rounds of eliminations in Hollywood. In the first round the contestants emerged in groups but performed individually. For the next round, the contestants put themselves in small groups and performed a song together. In the final round, the contestants performed solo with a song of their choice a cappella or accompanied by a band\u200d\u2014\u200cdepending on the season. In the second and third seasons, contestants were also asked to write original lyrics or melody in an additional round after the first round. In the seventh season, the group round was eliminated and contestants may, after a first solo performance and on judges approval, skip a second solo round and move directly to the final Hollywood round. In the twelfth season, the executive producers split up the females and males and chose the members to form the groups in the group round.\nIn the tenth and eleventh seasons, a further round was added in Las Vegas, where the contestants performed in groups based on a theme, followed by one final solo round to determine the semi-finalists. At the end of this stage of the competition, 24 to 36 contestants were selected to move on to the semi-final stage. In the twelfth season the Las Vegas round became a Sudden Death round, where the judges had to choose five guys and five girls each night (four nights) to make the top twenty. In the thirteenth season, the Las Vegas round was eliminated and a new round called \"Hollywood or Home\" was added, where if the judges were uncertain about some contestants, those contestants were required to perform soon after landing in Los Angeles, and those who failed to impress were sent back home before they reached Hollywood. In the fourteenth season, the \"Hollywood or Home\" round was dropped, and a Showcase round was added, where the contestants performed at the House of Blues or auditorium for the judges and a live audience, and these performances determine who makes into the Top 24. In the seventeenth and eighteenth seasons, the showcase round took place in Hawaii. From the nineteenth season onward, a showstopper round was used.\nAudience voting.\nFrom the semi-finals onward, the fate of the contestants is decided by public vote. During the contestant's performance as well as the recap at the end, a toll-free telephone number for each contestant was displayed on the screen. For a two-hour period after the episode ends (up to four hours for the finale) in each US time zone, viewers may call or send a text message to their preferred contestant's telephone number, and each call or text message was registered as a vote for that contestant. Viewers were allowed to vote as many times as they can within the two-hour voting window. However, the show reserves the right to discard votes by power dialers. One or more of the least popular contestants may be eliminated in successive weeks until a winner emerges. Over 110\u00a0million votes were cast in the first season, and by the tenth season the seasonal total had increased to nearly 750 million. Voting via text messaging was made available in the second season when AT&T Wireless joined as a sponsor of the show, and 7.5\u00a0million text messages were sent to \"American Idol\" that season. The number of text messages rapidly increased, reaching 178\u00a0million texts by the eighth season. Online voting was offered for the first time in the tenth season. The votes are counted and verified by Telescope Inc.\nSemi-finals.\nIn the first three seasons, the semi-finalists were split into different groups to perform individually in their respective night. In the first season, there were three groups of ten, with the top three contestants from each group making the finals. In the second and third seasons, there were four groups of eight, and the top two of each selected. These seasons also featured a wildcard round, where contestants who failed to qualify were given another chance. In the first season, only one wildcard contestant was chosen by the judges, giving a total of ten finalists. In the second and third seasons, each of the three judges championed one contestant with the public advancing a fourth into the finals, making 12 finalists in all.\nFrom the fourth through seventh and ninth seasons, the twenty-four semi-finalists were divided by gender in order to ensure an equal gender division in the top twelve. The men and women sang separately on consecutive nights, and the bottom two in each groups were eliminated each week until only six of each remained to form the top twelve.\nThe wildcard round returned in the eighth season, wherein there were three groups of twelve, with three contestants moving forward \u2013 the highest male, the highest female, and the next highest-placed singer \u2013 for each night, and four wildcards were chosen by the judges to produce a final 13. Starting in tenth season, the girls and boys perform on separate nights. In the tenth and eleventh seasons, five of each gender were chosen, and three wildcards were chosen by the judges to form a final 13. In the twelfth season, the top twenty semifinalists were split into gender groups, with five of each gender advancing to form the final 10. In the thirteenth season, there were thirty semifinalists, but only twenty semifinalists (ten for each gender) were chosen by the judges to perform on the live shows, with five in each gender based on the vote and three wildcards chosen by the judges composing the final 13. In the fourteenth season, the top 24 performed at The Fillmore Detroit, starting with the 12 males on one night and then the 12 females on the next night. The following week, the same order went for the top 16, with four males eliminated, followed by four females based on the vote. Then, on the first night of finals, a similar sequence from the thirteenth season was used to determine the final 12, with five of each gender based on the vote and two wildcards chosen by the judges. In the fifteenth season, the top 24 performed at Cathedral of Saint Vibiana in Los Angeles and were split into two groups of twelve and performed twice, one being a solo performance and one being a duet with a former Idol contestant. In each group, the judges chose 7 contestants to advance to the top 14 where the judges chose 4 to advance to the top 10 and remaining 6 contestants were chosen based on the vote. In the sixteenth season, the top 24 performed at the Academy in the Heart of LA, and the show repeated the process from the previous season. However, instead of Idol alumnus as duet partners, superstar celebrity singers were used as the duet partners. In the seventeenth season, the same process was repeated again. However, instead of a top 24, it's a top 20, the contestants performed at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, and performed solos in one episode, and performed the duets in two episodes. In the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the top 20 performed at their homes, and based on the vote, half of the top 20 would advance to the top 10, and the other half would be eliminated. However, a wild card was given to one of the bottom 10 to save them from elimination. In the nineteenth season, the show used a combination of the process from the sixteenth and fourteenth seasons. In the twentieth season, the show repeated the process from the previous season, but they used a top 20 instead of a top 16, and there were no all star duets. In the twenty-first season, the same process was repeated, but they started with a top 26 instead of a top 24. In the twenty-second season, the show repeated the process from the twentieth season.\nFinals.\nThe finals are broadcast in primetime from Los Angeles, in front of a live studio audience (except the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic). From 2002 to 2019 and from 2021 to 2022, the venue was CBS Television City. Starting in 2023, it changed to Red Studios. The finals lasted eight weeks in the first season. From the second to ninth and fourteenth seasons, the finals lasted eleven weeks. The tenth and eleventh seasons lasted for twelve weeks, while the twelfth season lasted for ten weeks. In the thirteenth season, the finals lasted thirteen weeks. The finals lasted seven weeks in the fifteenth season, and six weeks in the sixteenth season. Each finalist performs songs based on a weekly theme which may be a musical genre such as Motown, disco, or big band, songs by artists such as Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley or The Beatles, or more general themes such as \"Billboard\" number-one hits or songs from the contestant's year of birth. Contestants usually worked with a celebrity mentor related to the theme. From the tenth to twelfth seasons, Jimmy Iovine was brought in as a mentor for the season. Initially the contestants sang one song each week, but this was increased to two songs from top four or five onwards, then three songs for the top two or three.\nThe most popular contestants are usually not revealed in the results show. Instead, typically the three contestants (two in later rounds) who received the lowest number of votes was called to the center of the stage. One of these three was usually sent to safety; however the two remaining were not necessarily the bottom two. The contestant with the fewest votes was then revealed and eliminated from the competition. A montage of the eliminated contestant's time on the show was played and they gave their final performance (from the fourteenth season onward, the montage and the final performance were dropped). However, in the sixth season, during the series' first ever Idol Gives Back episode, no contestant was eliminated, but on the following week, two were sent home. Moreover, from the eighth to the fourteenth seasons, and the seventeenth season onward, the judges may overturn viewers' decision with a \"Judges' Save\" if they unanimously agreed to. \"The save\" could only be used once, and only up through the Top 5. In the eighth to tenth and fourteenth seasons, a double elimination then took place in the week following the activation of the save, but in the eleventh and thirteenth seasons, a regular single elimination took place. The save was not activated in the twelfth season and consequently, a non-elimination took place in the week after its expiration with the votes then carrying over into the following week.\nThe \"Fan Save\" was introduced in the fourteenth season. During the finals, viewers were given a five-minute window to vote for the contestants in danger of elimination by using their Twitter account to decide which contestant will move on to the next show, starting with the Top 8.\nSeason finale.\nDuring the original run of \"American Idol\" on Fox, the finale week consisted of a one-hour long final performance night and a two-hour last episode of the season that culminates in revealing the winner, both of which are broadcast live in the U.S. Eastern and Central time zones. For the first, third through sixth and fourteenth through fifteenth seasons it was broadcast from the Dolby Theatre, which has an audience capacity of approximately 3,400. The second-season finale took place at the Gibson Amphitheatre, which had an audience capacity of over 6,000. In the seventh through thirteenth seasons, the venue was at the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live, which holds an audience of over 7,000. Since the show's reboot on ABC, the venue remains the same throughout the entire show (excluding auditions), but was still two episodes in the sixteenth season, and then stretched to a single three-hour season finale that is annually aired live simultaneously in all U.S. territories, starting with the seventeenth season. The eighteenth-season finale was conducted virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nRewards for winner and finalists.\nThe winner usually receives a record deal with a major label, which may be for up to six albums, and secures a management contract with \"American Idol\"-affiliated 19 Management (which has the right of first refusal to sign all contestants), as well as various lucrative contracts. All winners prior to the ninth season reportedly earned at least $1\u00a0million in their first year as winner. At first the contract came with a $250,000-plus advance, but dropped to about $62,500 over the Fox years. All the runners-up of the first ten seasons, as well as some of other finalists, had also received record deals with major labels. However, starting in the eleventh season, the runner-up may only be guaranteed a single-only deal. BMG/Sony (first through ninth seasons), UMG (tenth through fifteenth seasons), and Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records (sixteenth through eighteenth seasons) had the right of first refusal to sign contestants for three months after the season's finale. In the fourteenth and fifteenth seasons, the winner was signed with Big Machine Records. Prominent music mogul Clive Davis also produced some of the selected contestants' albums, such as Kelly Clarkson, Clay Aiken, Fantasia Barrino and Diana DeGarmo. All top 10 (11 in the tenth and twelfth seasons, 5 in the fourteenth season, and 7 in the sixteenth season) finalists earn the privilege of going on a tour, where the participants may each earn a six-figure sum.\nSeason synopses.\nEach season premieres with the audition round, taking place in different cities. The audition episodes typically feature a mix of potential finalists, interesting characters and woefully inadequate contestants. Each successful contestant receives a golden or platinum ticket to proceed on to the next round in Hollywood. Based on their performances during the Hollywood round (Las Vegas round from the tenth through twelfth seasons), 24 to 36 contestants are selected by the judges to participate in the semifinals. From the semifinals onward the contestants perform their songs live, with the judges making their critiques after each performance. The contestants are voted for by the viewing public, and the outcome of the public votes is then revealed during a results segment. The results segment feature group performances by the contestants as well as guest performers. The Top-three results also features homecoming events for the Top 3 finalists. The season reaches its climax in a two-hour results finale show, where the winner of the season is revealed.\nWith the exception of the first two seasons, the contestants in the semifinals onward perform in front of a studio audience. They perform with a full band in the finals. The current musical director is Kris Pooley, who has been with the show since the sixteenth season. In previous seasons, the \"American Idol\" band was led by Rickey Minor (fourth through ninth and thirteenth through fifteenth seasons) and Ray Chew (tenth through twelfth seasons). Assistance has also been given by vocal coaches and song arrangers, such as Michael Orland and Debra Byrd to contestants behind the scene. Starting with the seventh season, contestants may perform with a musical instrument from the Hollywood rounds onward. In later seasons, the contestants were allowed to perform with a musical instrument in the auditions. During the first nine seasons, performances were usually aired live on Tuesday nights, followed by the results shows on Wednesdays, but moved to Wednesdays and Thursdays from the tenth through thirteenth seasons, with the tenth, eleventh and thirteenth-season finales aired on Tuesday and Wednesday. From the fourteenth season onward, there were no separate results shows. On the fourteenth season, the show aired on Wednesday nights, and on the fifteenth season, Thursday nights. Since the sixteenth season, the show has been airing on Sundays and Mondays.\n2002\u20132016: Fox.\nSeason 1 (2002).\nThe first season of \"American Idol\" debuted as a summer replacement show in June 2002 on the Fox network. It was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell served as judges.\nIn the audition rounds, 121 contestants were selected from around 10,000 who attended the auditions. These were cut to 30 for the semifinal, with ten going on to the finals. One semifinalist, Delano Cagnolatti, was disqualified for lying to evade the show's age limit. One of the early favorites, Tamyra Gray, was eliminated at the top four, the first of several such shock eliminations that were to be repeated in later seasons. Christina Christian was hospitalized before the top six result show due to chest pains and palpitations, and she was eliminated while she was in the hospital. Jim Verraros was the first openly gay contestant on the show; his sexual orientation was revealed on his blog, however it was removed during the competition after a request from the show producers over concerns that it might be unfairly influencing votes.\nThe final showdown was between Justin Guarini, one of the early favorites, and Kelly Clarkson. Clarkson was not initially thought of as a contender, but impressed the judges with some good performances in the final rounds, such as her performance of Aretha Franklin's \"Natural Woman\", and Betty Hutton's \"Stuff Like That There\", and eventually won the crown on September 4, 2002.\nIn what was to become a tradition, Clarkson performed the coronation song during the finale, and released the song immediately after the season ended. The single, \"A Moment Like This\", went on to break a 38-year-old record held by The Beatles for the biggest leap to number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. Guarini did not release any song immediately after the show and remains the only runner-up not to do so. Both Clarkson and Guarini made a musical film, \"From Justin to Kelly\", which was released in 2003 but was widely panned. Clarkson has since become one of the most successful \"Idol\" contestants internationally, with worldwide album sales of more than 25\u00a0million.\nStarting September 30, 2006, this season was repackaged as \"\"American Idol Rewind\"\" and syndicated directly to stations in the U.S.\nSeason 2 (2003).\nFollowing the success of the first season, the second season was moved up to air in January 2003. The number of episodes increased, as did the show's budget and the charge for commercial spots. Dunkleman left the show, leaving Ryan Seacrest as the lone host. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Kristin Adams was a correspondent for this season.\nCorey Clark was disqualified during the finals for having an undisclosed police record; however, he later alleged that he and Paula Abdul had an affair while on the show and that this contributed to his expulsion. Clark also claimed that Abdul gave him preferential treatment on the show due to their affair. The allegations were dismissed by Fox after an independent investigation. Two semi-finalists were also disqualified that year \u2013 Jaered Andrews for an arrest on an assault charge, and Frenchie Davis for having previously modeled for an adult website.\nThe season finale drew more than 38 million viewers, marking \"Idol\"'s biggest audience ever for a single episode. Ruben Studdard emerged as the winner, beating Clay Aiken by a small margin. Out of a total of 24 million votes, Studdard finished just 134,000 votes ahead of Aiken. This slim margin of victory was controversial due to the large number of calls that failed to get through. In an interview prior to the fifth season, executive producer Nigel Lythgoe indicated that Aiken had led the fan voting from the wildcard week onward until the finale.\nBoth finalists found success after the show, but Aiken out-performed Studdard's coronation song \"Flying Without Wings\" with his single release from the show \"This Is the Night\", as well as in their subsequent album releases. The fourth-place finisher Josh Gracin also enjoyed some success as a country singer.\nSeason 3 (2004).\nThe third season premiered on January 19, 2004. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. One of the most talked-about contestants during the audition process was William Hung whose off-key rendition of Ricky Martin's \"She Bangs\" received widespread attention. His exposure on \"Idol\" landed him a record deal and surprisingly he became the third bestselling singer from that season.\nMuch media attention on the season had been focused on the three black singers, Fantasia Barrino, LaToya London, and Jennifer Hudson, dubbed the Three Divas. All three unexpectedly landed on the bottom three on the top seven result show, with Hudson controversially eliminated. Elton John, who was one of the mentors that season, called the results of the votes \"incredibly racist\". The prolonged stays of John Stevens and Jasmine Trias in the finals, despite negative comments from the judges, had aroused resentment, so much so that John Stevens reportedly received a death threat, which he dismissed as a joke 'blown out of proportion'.\nThe performance of \"Summertime\" by Barrino, later known simply as \"Fantasia\", at Top 8 was widely praised, and Simon Cowell considered it as his favorite \"Idol\" moment in the nine seasons he was on the show. Fantasia and Diana DeGarmo were the last two finalists, and Fantasia was crowned as the winner. Fantasia released as her coronation single \"I Believe\", a song co-written by the first season finalist Tamyra Gray, and DeGarmo released \"Dreams\".\nSeason 4 (2005).\nThe fourth season premiered on January 18, 2005. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This was the first full season of the series to be aired in high definition; the finale of the third season was also aired in high definition. The number of those attending the auditions by now had increased to over 100,000 from the 10,000 of the first season. The age limit was raised to 28 in this season, and among those who benefited from this new rule were Constantine Maroulis and Bo Bice, the two rockers of the show.\nThe top 12 finalists originally included Mario Vazquez, but he dropped out citing 'personal reasons' and was replaced by Nikko Smith. Later, an employee of Fremantle Media, which produces the show, sued the company for wrongful termination, claiming that he was dismissed after complaining about lewd behavior by Vazquez toward him during the show.\nDuring the top 11 week, due to a mix-up with the contestants' telephone number, voting was repeated on what was normally the result night, with the result reveal postponed until the following night.\nIn May 2005, Underwood was announced the winner, with Bice the runner-up. Both Underwood and Bice released the coronation song \"Inside Your Heaven\", with Underwood's version of the song making her the first country artist ever to debut at number-one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart. As of 2015, Underwood has become the most successful \"Idol\" contestant in the U.S., selling 16 million albums in the country, while selling a total of 65 million records worldwide.\nSeason 5 (2006).\nThe fifth season began on January 17, 2006. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. It remains the highest-rated season in the show's run so far. Two of the more prominent contestants during the Hollywood round were the Brittenum twins who were later disqualified for identity theft.\nChris Daughtry's performance of Fuel's \"Hemorrhage (In My Hands)\" on the show was widely praised and led to an invitation to join the band as Fuel's new lead singer, an invitation he declined. His performance of Live's version of \"I Walk the Line\" was well received by the judges but later criticized in some quarters for not crediting the arrangement to Live. He was eliminated at the top four in a shocking result.\nOn May 30, 2006, Taylor Hicks was named \"American Idol\", with Katharine McPhee the runner-up. \"Do I Make You Proud\" was released as Hicks' first single and McPhee's was \"My Destiny\".\nDespite being eliminated earlier in the season, Chris Daughtry (as lead of the band Daughtry) became the most successful recording artist from this season. Other contestants, such as Hicks, McPhee, Bucky Covington, Mandisa, Kellie Pickler, and Elliott Yamin have had varying levels of success.\nSeason 6 (2007).\nThe sixth season began on Tuesday, January 16, 2007. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The premiere drew a massive audience of 37.3\u00a0million viewers, peaking in the last half hour with more than 41\u00a0million viewers.\nTeenager Sanjaya Malakar was the season's most talked-about contestant for his unusual hairdo, and for managing to survive elimination for many weeks due in part to the weblog Vote for the Worst and satellite radio personality Howard Stern, who both encouraged fans to vote for him. However, on the Top 7 results, Sanjaya was voted off.\nThis season saw the first \"Idol Gives Back\" telethon-inspired event, which raised more than $76\u00a0million in corporate and viewer donations. No contestant was eliminated that week, but two (Phil Stacey and Chris Richardson) were eliminated the next.\nIn the May 23 season finale, Jordin Sparks was declared the winner with the runner-up being Blake Lewis. Sparks has had some success as a recording artist post-\"Idol\".\nThis season also saw the launch of the \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest which allows fans to vote for the \"coronation song\". Thousands of recordings of original songs were submitted by songwriters, and 20 entries selected for the public vote. The winning song, \"This Is My Now\", was performed by both finalists during the finale and released by Sparks on May 24, 2007.\nSeason 7 (2008).\nThe seventh season premiered on January 15, 2008, for a two-day, four-hour premiere. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The media focused on the professional status of the seventh season contestants, the so-called 'ringers', many of whom, including Kristy Lee Cook, Brooke White, Michael Johns, and in particular Carly Smithson, had prior recording contracts. Contestant David Hernandez also attracted some attention due to his past employment as a stripper.\nFor the finals, \"American Idol\" debuted a new state-of-the-art set and stage on March 11, 2008, along with a new on-air look. David Cook's performance of \"Billie Jean\" on top-ten night was lauded by the judges, but provoked controversy when they apparently mistook the Chris Cornell arrangement to be David Cook's own even though the performance was introduced as Cornell's version. Cornell himself said he was 'flattered' and praised David Cook's performance. David Cook was taken to the hospital after the top-nine performance show due to heart palpitations and high blood pressure.\nDavid Archuleta's performance of John Lennon's \"Imagine\" was considered by many as one of the best of the season. Jennifer Lopez, who was brought in as a judge in the tenth season, called it a beautiful song-moment that she will never forget. Jason Castro's semi-final performance of \"Hallelujah\" also received considerable attention, and it propelled Jeff Buckley's version of the song to the top of the \"Billboard\" digital song chart. This was the first season in which contestants' recordings were released onto iTunes after their performances, and although sales information was not released so as not to prejudice the contest, leaked information indicated that contestants' songs frequently reached the top of iTunes sales charts.\n\"Idol Gives Back\" returned on April 9, 2008, and raised $64\u00a0million for charity.\nThe finalists were Cook and Archuleta. David Cook was announced the winner on May 21, 2008, the first rocker to win the show. Both Cook and Archuleta had some success as recording artists with both selling over a million albums in the U.S.\nThe \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest was also held this season. From ten of the most popular submissions, each of the final two contestants chose a song to perform, although neither of their selections was used as the \"coronation song\". The winning song, \"The Time of My Life\", was recorded by David Cook and released on May 22, 2008.\nSeason 8 (2009).\nThe eighth season premiered on January 13, 2009. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This season featured the first major change to the judging panel; a fourth judge, Kara DioGuardi, was introduced. Mike Darnell, the president of alternative programming for Fox, stated that the season would focus more on the contestants' personal life.\nThis was also the first season without executive producer Nigel Lythgoe who left to focus on the international versions of his show \"So You Think You Can Dance\". The Hollywood round was moved to the Kodak Theatre for 2009 and was also extended to two weeks. \"Idol Gives Back\" was canceled for this season due to the global recession at the time.\nThere were 13 finalists this season, but two were eliminated in the first result show of the finals. A new feature introduced was the \"Judges' Save\", and Matt Giraud was saved from elimination at the top seven by the judges when he received the fewest votes. The next week, Lil Rounds and Anoop Desai were eliminated.\nThe two finalists were Kris Allen and Adam Lambert, both of whom had previously landed in the bottom three at the top five. Allen won the contest in the most controversial voting result since the second season. It was claimed, and then later retracted, that 38\u00a0million of the 100\u00a0million votes cast on the night came from Allen's home state of Arkansas alone, and that AT&T employees unfairly influenced the votes by giving lessons on power-texting at viewing parties in Arkansas.\nBoth Allen and Lambert released the coronation song, \"No Boundaries\" which was co-written by DioGuardi. This is the first season in which the winner failed to achieve gold album status.\nSeason 9 (2010).\nThe ninth season premiered on January 12, 2010. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Kara DioGuardi, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Paula Abdul left the show and Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul at the start of Hollywood Week. One of the most prominent auditioners this season was General Larry Platt whose performance of \"Pants on the Ground\" became a viral hit song.\nCrystal Bowersox, who has Type-I diabetes, fell ill due to diabetic ketoacidosis on the morning of the girls performance night for the top 20 week and was hospitalized. The schedule was rearranged so the boys performed first and she could perform the following night instead; she later revealed that Ken Warwick, the show producer, wanted to disqualify her but she begged to be allowed to stay on the show.\nMichael Lynche was the lowest vote getter at top nine and was given the Judges' Save. The next week Katie Stevens and Andrew Garcia were eliminated. That week, Adam Lambert was invited back to be a mentor, the first \"Idol\" alum to do so. \"Idol Gives Back\" returned this season on April 21, 2010, and raised $45 million.\nA special tribute to Simon Cowell was presented in the finale for his final season with the show. Many figures from the show's past, including Paula Abdul, made an appearance.\nThe final two contestants were Lee DeWyze and Bowersox. DeWyze was declared the winner during the May 26 finale. No new song was used as coronation song this year; instead, the two finalists each released a cover song \u2013 DeWyze chose U2's \"Beautiful Day\", and Bowersox chose Patty Griffin's \"Up to the Mountain\". This is the first season where neither finalist achieved significant album sales.\nSeason 10 (2011).\nThe tenth season premiered on January 19, 2011. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Many changes were introduced this season, from the format to the personnel of the show. Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined Randy Jackson as judges following the departures of Simon Cowell (who left to launch the American version of \"The X Factor\"), Kara DioGuardi (whose contract was not renewed) and Ellen DeGeneres, who left the show on her own accord.\nRandy Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth. Nigel Lythgoe returned as executive producer. Jimmy Iovine, chairman of the Interscope Geffen A&M label group, the new partner of \"American Idol\", acted as the in-house mentor in place of weekly guest mentors, although in later episodes special guest mentors such as Beyonc\u00e9, will.i.am and Lady Gaga were brought in.\nThe tenth season is the first to include online auditions where contestants could submit a 40-second video audition via Myspace. Karen Rodriguez was one such auditioner and reached the final rounds.\nOne of the more prominent contestants this year was Chris Medina, whose story of caring for his brain-damaged fianc\u00e9e received widespread coverage. Medina was cut in the Top 40 round. Casey Abrams, who suffers from ulcerative colitis, was hospitalized twice and missed the Top 13 result show. The judges used their one save on Abrams on the Top 11, and as a result this was the first season that 11 finalists went on tour instead of 10. In the following week, Naima Adedapo and Thia Megia were both eliminated.\nPia Toscano, one of the presumed favorites to advance far in the season, was unexpectedly eliminated on April 7, 2011, finishing in ninth place. Her elimination drew criticisms from some former \"Idol\" contestants, as well as actor Tom Hanks. After \"Idol\", Jennifer Lopez helped guide her career.\nThe two finalists in 2011 were Lauren Alaina and Scotty McCreery, both teenage country singers. McCreery won the competition on May 25, being the youngest male winner and the fourth male in a row to win \"American Idol\". McCreery released his first single, \"I Love You This Big\", as his coronation song, and Alaina released \"Like My Mother Does\". McCreery's debut album, \"Clear as Day\", became the first debut album by an \"Idol\" winner to reach No. 1 on the US \"Billboard\" 200 since Ruben Studdard's \"Soulful\" in 2003, and he became the youngest male artist to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200.\nSeason 11 (2012).\nThe eleventh season premiered on January 18, 2012. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez, and Randy Jackson returned as judges. One more finalist would join the Top 24 making it the Top 25, which was later revealed to be Jermaine Jones. However, on March 14, Jones was disqualified in 12th place for concealing arrests and outstanding warrants. Jones denied the accusation that he concealed his arrests.\nFinalist Phillip Phillips suffered from kidney pain and was taken to the hospital before the Top 13 results show, and later received medical procedure to alleviate a blockage caused by kidney stones. He was reported to have eight surgeries during his Idol run, and had considered quitting the show due to the pain. He underwent surgery to remove the stones and reconstruct his kidney soon after the season had finished.\nJessica Sanchez received the fewest votes during the Top 7 week, and the judges decided to use their \"save\" option on her, making her the first female recipient of the save. The following week, unlike previous seasons, Colton Dixon was the only contestant sent home. Sanchez later made the final two, the first season where a recipient of the save reached the finale.\nPhillips became the winner, beating Sanchez. During the finale, fifth season finalist Ace Young proposed marriage to third season runner-up Diana DeGarmo on stage \u2013 which she accepted.\nPhillips released \"Home\" as his coronation song, while Sanchez released \"Change Nothing\". Phillips' \"Home\" has since become the best selling of all coronation songs, with over 5 million copies sold.\nSeason 12 (2013).\nThe twelfth season premiered on January 16, 2013. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Judges Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler left the show after two seasons. Randy Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. This season's judging panel consisted of Randy Jackson, along with Mariah Carey, Keith Urban and Nicki Minaj.\nThis was the first season since the ninth season to have four judges on the panel. The pre-season buzz and the early episodes of the show were dominated by the feud between the judges Minaj and Carey after a video of their dispute was leaked to TMZ.\nThe top 10 contestants started with five males and five females, however, the males were eliminated consecutively in the first five weeks, with Lazaro Arbos the last male to be eliminated. For the first time in the show's history, the top 5 contestants were all female. It was also the first time that the judges' \"save\" was not used, the top four contestants were therefore given an extra week to perform again with their votes carried over with no elimination in the first week.\n23-year-old Candice Glover won the season with Kree Harrison taking the runner-up spot. Glover became the first female to win \"American Idol\" since Jordin Sparks, who won the show in 2007. Glover released \"I Am Beautiful\" as a single while Harrison released \"All Cried Out\" immediately after the show. Glover sold poorly with her debut album, and this is also the first season that the runner-up was not signed by a music label.\nTowards the end of the season, Randy Jackson, the last remaining of the original judges, announced he would no longer serve as a judge to pursue other business ventures. Both judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj also decided to leave after one season to focus on their music careers.\nSeason 13 (2014).\nThe thirteenth season premiered on January 15, 2014. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Keith Urban returned as a judge. Urban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. Randy Jackson returned, though Jackson moved from the judging panel to the role of in-mentor. Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj left the panel after one season. Former judge Jennifer Lopez and former mentor Harry Connick, Jr. joined Urban on the panel. Connick Jr. served as a mentor for \"Idol\" in 2010 and 2012. Also, Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick were replaced as executive producers by Per Blankens, Jesse Ignjatovic and Evan Pragger. Bill DeRonde replaced Warwick as a director of the audition episodes, while Louis J. Horvitz replaced Gregg Gelfand as a director of the show.\nThis was the first season where the contestants were permitted to perform in the final rounds songs they wrote themselves. In the Top 8, Sam Woolf received the fewest votes, but he was saved from elimination by the judges. The 500th episode of the series was the Top 3 performance night.\nCaleb Johnson was named the winner of the season, with Jena Irene as the runner-up. Johnson released \"As Long as You Love Me\" as his coronation single while Irene released \"We Are One\".\nSeason 14 (2015).\nThe fourteenth season premiered on January 7, 2015. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban and Harry Connick, Jr. returned for their respective fourth, third and second seasons as judges. Eighth season runner-up Adam Lambert filled in for Urban during the New York City auditions. Randy Jackson did not return as the in-house mentor and left the show permanently. Scott Borchetta replaced Jackson as the mentor.\nChanges this season include only airing one episode a week during the final ten. Coca-Cola ended their longtime sponsorship of the show and Ford Motor Company maintained a reduced role. The winner of the season also received a recording contract with Big Machine Records.\nNick Fradiani won the season, defeating Clark Beckham. Fradiani became the first winner from the Northeast region. Fradiani released \"Beautiful Life\" as his coronation single while Beckham released \"Champion\". Jax, the third place finalist, also released a single called \"Forcefield\".\nSeason 15 (2016).\nFox announced on May 11, 2015, that the fifteenth season would be the final season of \"American Idol\"; as such, the season was expected to have an additional focus on the program's alumni. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, with Harry Connick Jr., Keith Urban, and Jennifer Lopez all returning as judges. The fifteenth season premiered on January 6, 2016. The season was shortened by four weeks compared to previous years. During the finale episode, President Barack Obama praised the millions of young people that voted for contestants and pitched that they vote in the upcoming election. The farewell season concluded on April 7, 2016. Seacrest signed off by saying: \"And one more time\u2014this is so tough\u2014we say to you from Hollywood, goodnight America\", and then he added, \"for now.\"\nTrent Harmon won the season against runner-up La'Porsha Renae. Harmon released \"Falling\" co-written by Keith Urban as his coronation song. Renae's \"Battles\", third-place finisher Dalton Rapattoni's \"Strike A Match\" and fourth-place finisher MacKenzie Bourg's \"Roses\" were also released as singles.\n2018\u2013present: ABC revival.\nIn early 2017, \"Variety\" reported that Fremantle Media was in talks to revive the show for NBC or for its original network, Fox. A dispute between Fremantle and Core Media Group derailed these plans. In May 2017, ABC was making a bid to revive the program. ABC acquired the rights to the series, and \"American Idol\" returned for the 2017\u201318 television season.\nSeason 16 (2018).\nIn July 2017, it was announced that Ryan Seacrest would return as host, and by September 2017 it was revealed that Katy Perry, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie would serve as judges. The sixteenth season premiered on March 11, 2018. This was the first season of \"American Idol\" to air on ABC. The season was again shortened compared to the previous season to twelve weeks, with multiple elimination in the final rounds. Unlike previous seasons where only two finalists remained in the final episode, three finalists performed in the finale. On May 21, 2018, the season concluded with Maddie Poppe crowned the winner, beating Caleb Lee Hutchinson as runner-up and Gabby Barrett in third place. Her winning song was \"Going, Going, Gone\". Caleb Lee Hutchinson released \"Johnny Cash Heart\" as a single, while Gabby Barrett's song was \"Rivers Deep\".\nSeason 17 (2019).\nABC renewed the revival series for another season. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. The seventeenth season premiered on March 3, 2019. For the finale, the show no longer features separate performance and result shows. On May 19, 2019, the season concluded with three finalists, with Madison VanDenburg eliminated in third place after performing two songs, and the final two performing their last song. For the first time, there were no separate performance and grand finale shows this season. Laine Hardy was crowned the winner and Alejandro Aranda runner-up. Hardy released a single, \"Flame\", immediately after the win, but Aranda did not. However, Aranda later released a song he performed in the finale, \"Tonight\", under the name Scarypoolparty on June 28, 2019.\nSeason 18 (2020).\nOn May 13, 2019, the series was renewed for an eighteenth season and it premiered on February 16, 2020. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. For the first time, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, from the top 20 to the finale, the contestants performed in their own homes, while Ryan Seacrest hosted the show remotely in his own home in Los Angeles with the judges also in their respective homes. The season was also further truncated, with the top 5 performing in the finale. Each finalist also performed only two songs for the finale. On May 17, the season concluded, with Just Sam crowned as the winner, with Arthur Gunn finishing as the runner-up. \"Rise Up\", the song Just Sam performed for their audition and reprised on the finale, was released as their debut song.\nSeason 19 (2021).\nOn May 15, 2020, ABC renewed the series for a nineteenth season and it premiered on February 14, 2021. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. Later in October, it was announced that Bobby Bones will return as mentor. On May 23, the season concluded, with Chayce Beckham crowned the winner, with Willie Spence finishing as the runner-up. \"23\", the song Chayce Beckham wrote and performed for Top 4, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 20 (2022).\nOn May 13, 2021, ABC renewed the series for a twentieth season and it premiered on February 27, 2022. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On December 31, it was announced that Bones would not be returning as a mentor. On May 22, the season concluded, with Noah Thompson crowned as the winner, with HunterGirl finishing as the runner-up. \"One Day Tonight\", the song Noah Thompson performed for the Grand Finale, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 21 (2023).\nOn May 13, 2022, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-first season and it premiered on February 19, 2023. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On May 21, the season concluded, with Iam Tongi crowned as the winner, with Megan Danielle finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 22 (2024).\nOn May 16, 2023, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-second season and it premiered on February 18, 2024. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. In February 2024, Perry announced that the season would be her last. On May 20, the season concluded, with Abi Carter crowned as the winner, with Will Moseley finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 23 (2025).\nOn May 10, 2024, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-third season; it was also announced the network was in-talks with \"high-profile stars\" to replace the outgoing Perry. On July 31, 2024, it was announced Seacrest would return as host, with Bryan and Richie returning as judges; Underwood was named as Perry's successor. The season premiered on March 9, 2025.\nReception.\nU.S. television ratings.\nSeasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of \"American Idol\". It holds the distinction of having the longest winning streak in the Nielsen annual television ratings; it became the highest-rated of all television programs in the United States overall for an unprecedented seven consecutive years, or eight consecutive (and total) years when either its performance or result show was ranked number one overall.\n\"Each U.S. network television season starts in late September and ends in late May, which coincides with the completion of May sweeps.\"\n\"American Idol\" premiered in June 2002 and became the surprise summer hit show of 2002. The first show drew 9.9\u00a0million viewers, giving Fox the best viewing figure for the 8.30\u00a0pm spot in over a year. The audience steadily grew, and by finale night, the audience had averaged 23\u00a0million, with more than 40\u00a0million watching some part of that show. That episode was placed third amongst all age groups, but more importantly it led in the 18\u201349 demographic, the age group most valued by advertisers.\nThe growth continued into the next season, starting with a season premiere of 26.5 million. The season attracted an average of 21.7\u00a0million viewers, and was placed second overall amongst the 18\u201349 age group. The finale night when Ruben Studdard won over Clay Aiken was also the highest-rated ever \"American Idol\" episode at 38.1\u00a0million for the final hour. By the third season, the show had become the top show in the 18\u201349 demographic<ref name=\"realitytvworld_5/24/2007\"></ref> a position it has held for all subsequent years up to and including the tenth season, and its competition stages ranked first in the nationwide overall ratings. By the fourth season, \"American Idol\" had become the most-watched series amongst all viewers on American TV for the first time, with an average viewership of 26.8\u00a0million. The show reached its peak in the fifth season with numbers averaging 30.6\u00a0million per episode, and this season remains the highest-rated of the series.\nThe sixth season premiered with the series' highest-rated debut episode and a few of its succeeding episodes rank among the most-watched episodes of \"American Idol.\" During this time, many television executives begun to regard the show as a programming force unlike any seen before, as its consistent dominance of up to two hours two or three nights a week exceeded the 30- or 60-minute reach of previous hits such as NBC's \"The Cosby Show\". The show was dubbed \"the Death Star\", and competing networks often rearranged their schedules in order to minimize losses. However, the sixth season also showed a steady decline in viewership over the course of the season. The season finale saw a drop in ratings of 16% from the previous year. The sixth season was the first season wherein the average results show rated higher than the competition stages (unlike in the previous seasons), and became the second-highest-rated of the series after the preceding season.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the seventh season. The premiere was down 11% among total viewers, and the results show in which Kristy Lee Cook was eliminated delivered its lowest-rated Wednesday show among the 18\u201334 demo since the first season in 2002. However, the ratings rebounded for the seventh-season finale with the excitement over the battle of the Davids, and improved over the sixth season as the series' third most watched finale. The strong finish of season seven also helped Fox become the most watched TV network in the country for the first time since its inception, a first ever in American television history for a non-Big Three major broadcast network. Overall ratings for the season were down 10% from the sixth season, which is in line with the fall in viewership across all networks due in part to the 2007\u20132008 Writers Guild of America strike.\nThe declining trend however continued into the eighth season, as total viewers numbers fell by 5\u201310% for early episodes compared to the seventh season, and by 9% for the finale. In the ninth season, \"Idol\"'s six-year extended streak of perfection in the ratings was broken, when NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics on February 17 beat \"Idol\" in the same time slot with 30.1\u00a0million viewers over \"Idol\"'s 18.4\u00a0million. Nevertheless, \"American Idol\" overall finished its ninth season as the most watched TV series for the sixth year running, breaking the previous record of five consecutive seasons achieved by CBS' \"All in the Family\" and NBC's \"The Cosby Show\".\nIn the tenth season, the total viewer numbers for the first week of shows fell 12\u201313%, and by up to 23% in the 18\u201349 demo compared to the ninth season. Later episodes, however, retained viewers better, and the season ended on a high with a significant increase in viewership for the finale \u2013 up 12% for the adults 18\u201349 demographic and a 21% increase in total viewers from the ninth-season finale. While the overall viewer number has increased this season, its viewer demographics have continued to age year on year \u2013 the median age this season was 47.2 compared to a median age of 32.1 in its first season. The demographics also became \"whiter\" over time and less diverse. Nevertheless, in the 2010\u201311 television season, Fox maintained its lead on over other networks with its seventh consecutive season of victory overall in the 18\u201349 demographic ratings in the United States.\nThe eleventh season, however, suffered a steep drop in ratings, a drop attributed by some to the arrival of new shows such as \"The Voice\" and \"The X Factor\". The ratings for the first two episodes of the eleventh season fell 16\u201321% in overall viewer numbers and 24\u201327% in the 18/49 demo, while the season finale fell 27% in total viewer number and 30% in the 18\u201349 demo. The average viewership for the season fell below 20 million viewers the first time since 2003, a drop of 23% in total viewers and 30% in the 18/49 demo. For the first time in eight years, \"American Idol\" lost the leading position in both the total viewers number and the 18/49 demo, coming in second to \"NBC Sunday Night Football\", although the strengths of \"Idol\" in its second year in the Wednesday-Thursday primetime slots helped Fox achieve the longest period of 18\u201349 demographic victory in the Nielsen ratings, standing at 8 straight years from 2004 to 2012.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the twelfth season, which saw the show hitting a number of series low in the 18\u201349 demo. The finale had 7.2 million fewer viewers than the previous season, and saw a drop of 44% in the 18\u201349 demo. The season viewers averaged at 13.3 million, a drop of 24% from the previous season. The thirteenth season suffered a huge decline in the 18\u201349 demographic, a drop of 28% from the twelfth season, and \"American Idol\" lost its Top 10 position in the Nielsen ratings by the end of the 2013\u201314 television season for the first time since its entry to the rankings in 2003 as a result, and never regained its Top 10 position by the series' end in 2016.\nThe continuing decline influenced further changes for the fourteenth season, including the loss of Coca-Cola as the show's major sponsor, and a decision to only broadcast one, two-hour show per week during the top 12 rounds (with results from the previous week integrated into the performance show, rather than having a separate results show). On May 11, 2015, prior to the fourteenth-season finale, Fox announced that the fifteenth season of \"American Idol\" would be its last. Despite these changes, the show's ratings would decline more sharply. The fourteenth-season finale was the lowest-rated finale ever, with an average of only 8.03 million viewers watching the finale. The show's ratings, however, rebounded in its final season and ended its run in 2016 as Fox's first-ever program to conclude its run without dropping from the Nielsen Top 30 most-watched television shows in each of its seasons.\nFor the revived series on ABC, the ratings were lower but remained stable compared to previous seasons on Fox. The finale of the seventeenth season was slightly more watched than the sixteenth.\nCritical reception.\nEarly reviews were mixed in their assessment. Ken Tucker of \"Entertainment Weekly\" considered that \"As TV, \"American Idol\" is crazily entertaining; as music, it's dust-mote inconsequential\". Others, however, thought that \"the most striking aspect of the series was the genuine talent it revealed\". It was also described as a \"sadistic musical bake-off\", and \"a romp in humiliation\". Other aspects of the show have attracted criticisms. The product placement in the show in particular was noted, and some critics were harsh about what they perceived as its blatant commercial calculations \u2013 Karla Peterson of \"The San Diego Union-Tribune\" charged that \"American Idol\" is \"a conniving multimedia monster\" that has \"absorbed the sin of our debauched culture and spit them out in a lump of reconstituted evil\". The decision to send the first season winner to sing the national anthem at the Lincoln Memorial on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks in 2002 was also poorly received by many. Lisa de Moraes of \"The Washington Post\" noted sarcastically that \"The terrorists have won\" and, with a sideswipe at the show's commercialism and voting process, that the decision as to who \"gets to turn this important site into just another cog in the 'Great \"American Idol\" Marketing Mandala' is in the hands of the millions of girls who have made \"American Idol\" a hit. Them and a handful of phone-redialer geeks who have been clocking up to 10,000 calls each week for their contestant of choice (but who, according to Fox, are in absolutely no way skewing the outcome).\"\nSome of the later writers about the show were more positive, Michael Slezak, again of \"Entertainment Weekly\", thought that \"for all its bloated, synthetic, product-shilling, money-making trappings, \"Idol\" provides a once-a-year chance for the average American to combat the evils of today's music business.\" Singer Sheryl Crow, who was later to act as a mentor on the show, however took the view that the show \"undermines art in every way and promotes commercialism\". Pop music critic Ann Powers nevertheless suggested that Idol has \"reshaped the American songbook\", \"led us toward a new way of viewing ourselves in relationship to mainstream popular culture\", and connects \"the classic Hollywood dream to the multicentered popular culture of the future.\" Others focused on the personalities in the show; Ramin Setoodeh of \"Newsweek\" accused judge Simon Cowell's cruel critiques in the show of helping to establish in the wider world a culture of meanness, that \"Simon Cowell has dragged the rest of us in the mud with him.\" Some such as singer John Mayer disparaged the contestants, suggesting that those who appeared on \"Idol\" are not real artists with self-respect.\nSome in the entertainment industry were critical of the star-making aspect of the show. Usher, a mentor on the show, bemoaning the loss of the \"true art form of music\", thought that shows like \"American Idol\" made it seem \"so easy that everyone can do it, and that it can happen overnight\", and that \"television is a lie\". Musician Michael Feinstein, while acknowledging that the show had uncovered promising performers, said that \"American Idol\" \"isn't really about music. It's about all the bad aspects of the music business \u2013 the arrogance of commerce, this sense of 'I know what will make this person a star; artists themselves don't know.' \" That \"American Idol\" is seen to be a fast track to success for its contestants has been a cause of resentment for some in the industry. LeAnn Rimes, commenting on Carrie Underwood winning Best Female Artist in Country Music Awards over Faith Hill in 2006, said that \"Carrie has not paid her dues long enough to fully deserve that award\". It is a common theme that has been echoed by many others. Elton John, who had appeared as a mentor in the show but turned down an offer to be a judge on \"American Idol\", commenting on talent shows in general, said that \"there have been some good acts but the only way to sustain a career is to pay your dues in small clubs\". \"American Idol\" revolutionized American pop culture and the pop idol process and has provided an opportunity for many to bypass the small club scene and allow a much larger audience to participate in and select the next potential chart topping performer.\nThe success of the show's alumni, however, has led to a more positive assessment of the show, and the show was described as having \"proven it has a valid way to pick talent and a proven way to sell records\". While the industry is divided on the show success, its impact is felt particularly strongly in the country music format. According to a CMT exec, reflecting on the success of Idol alumni in the country genre, \"if you want to try and get famous fast by going to a cattle call audition on TV, Idol reasonably remains the first choice for anyone\", and that country music and Idol \"go together well\".\n\"American Idol\" was nominated for the Emmy's Outstanding Reality Competition Program for nine years but never won. Director Bruce Gower won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Series in 2009, and the show won a Creative Arts Emmys each in 2007 and 2008, three in 2009, and two in 2011, as well as a Governor's Award in 2007 for its Idol Gives Back edition. It won the People's Choice Award, which honors the popular culture of the previous year as voted by the public, for favorite competition/reality show in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2012. It won the first Critics' Choice Television Award in 2011 for Best Reality Competition.\nIn 2013, TV Guide ranked the series No. 48 on its list of the 60 Best Series of All Time.\nGeographical, ethnic, and gender bias.\nThroughout the series, twelve of the seventeen \"Idol\" winners, including its first five, had come from the Southern United States. A large number of other finalists during the series' run have also hailed from the American South, including Clay Aiken, Kellie Pickler, and Chris Daughtry, who are all from North Carolina. In 2012, an analysis of the 131 contestants who have appeared in the finals of all seasons of the show up to that point found that 48% have some connection to the Southern United States.\nThe show itself was popular in the Southern United States, with households in the Southeastern United States 10% more likely to watch \"American Idol\" during the eighth season in 2009, and those in the East Central region, such as Kentucky, were 16 percent more likely to tune into the series. Data from Nielsen SoundScan, a music-sales tracking service, showed that of the 47\u00a0million CDs sold by \"Idol\" contestants through January 2010, 85 percent were by contestants with ties to the American South.\nTheories given for the success of Southerners on \"Idol\" have been: more versatility with musical genres, as the Southern U.S. is home to several music genre scenes; not having as many opportunities to break into the pop music business; text-voting due to the South having the highest percentage of cell-phone only households; and the strong heritage of music and singing, which is notable in the Bible Belt, where it is in church that many people get their start in public singing. Others also suggest that the Southern character of these contestants appeal to the South, as well as local pride. According to fifth season winner Taylor Hicks, who is from the state of Alabama, \"People in the South have a lot of pride ... So, they're adamant about supporting the contestants who do well from their state or region.\"\nFor five consecutive seasons, starting in the seventh season, the title was given to a white male who plays the guitar \u2013 a trend that \"Idol\" pundits call the \"White guy with guitar\" or \"WGWG\" factor. Just hours before the eleventh-season finale, where Phillip Phillips was named the winner, Richard Rushfield, author of the book \"American Idol: The Untold Story\", said, \"You have this alliance between young girls and grandmas and they see it, not necessarily as a contest to create a pop star competing on the contemporary radio, but as ... who's the nicest guy in a popularity contest\", he says, \"And that has led to this dynasty of four, and possibly now five, consecutive, affable, very nice, good-looking white boys.\"\nStart order bias.\nSome fans call the final performance of the night the \"pimp spot\" because it usually receives a big boost in votes, due to the recency effect. By performing first, a performer may benefit from the primacy effect, but any other early performance may be stifled. The second performance spot is sometimes called the \"un-pimp spot\" because it is the least beneficial.\nControversy.\nThe show was criticized in earlier seasons over the onerous contract contestants had to sign that gave excessive control to 19 Entertainment over their future careers and handed a large part of their future earnings to the management.\nIndividual contestants have generated controversy in this competition for their past actions or for being 'ringers' planted by the producers. A number of contestants have been disqualified for various reasons, such as for having an existing contract or undisclosed criminal record, although the show has also been accused of a double standard for disqualifying some but not others.\nVoting results have been a consistent source of controversy. The mechanism of voting has aroused considerable criticism, most notably in the second season when Ruben Studdard beat Clay Aiken in a close vote, and in the eighth season, when the massive increase in text votes fueled the texting controversy. Concerns about power voting have been expressed from the first season. Since 2004, votes also have been affected to a limited degree by online communities such as DialIdol and Vote for the Worst.\nCultural impact.\nTelevision.\nThe enormous success of the show and the revenue it generated were transformative for the Fox Broadcasting Company. \"American Idol\" and other shows such as \"Survivor\" and \"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?\" were credited for expanding reality television programming in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s, and \"Idol\" became the most watched non-scripted primetime television series, which it remained for almost a decade, from 2003 to 2012, breaking records on U.S. television (dominated by drama shows and sitcoms in the preceding decades). On several occasions, notably in 2003 and 2008, \"American Idol\" overtook the Academy Awards as the most-watched non-sports entertainment event on U.S. television, marking the most recent time as of 2025 that a live regular non-sports primetime series has garnered such viewership in the country.\nThe show pushed Fox to become the number one U.S. TV network in overall viewers in 2008 and among adults aged 18\u201349, the key demographic coveted by advertisers, for an unprecedented eight consecutive years from 2005 to 2012. Its success also helped lift the ratings of other shows that were scheduled around it such as \"House\" and \"Bones\", and \"Idol\", for years, was Fox's strongest platform primetime television program for promoting eventual hit shows of the 2010s (of the same network) such as \"Glee\", \"New Girl\" and \"Empire\". The show, its creator Simon Fuller claimed, \"saved Fox\".\nThe show's massive success in the mid-2000s to early 2010s spawned a number of imitating singing-competition shows, such as \"Rock Star\", \"Nashville Star\", \"The Voice\", \"Rising Star\", \"The Sing-Off\", and \"The X Factor\". The number of imitative singing shows on American television had reached 17 by 2016. Its format also served as a blueprint for non-singing TV shows such as \"Dancing with the Stars\" and \"So You Think You Can Dance\", most of which contribute to the current highly competitive reality TV landscape on American television.\nMusic.\nAs one of the most successful shows on U.S. television history, \"American Idol\" has had a strong impact not just on television, but also in the wider world of entertainment. It helped create a number of highly successful recording artists, such as Kelly Clarkson, Daughtry and Carrie Underwood, as well as others of varying notability. The alumni of the show's original run scored 13 Grammy Award wins out of 54 Grammy nominations up to its end in 2016, with Underwood and Clarkson receiving 10 wins combined.\nVarious \"American Idol\" alumni had success on various record charts around the world; in the U.S. they had achieved 345 number ones on the \"Billboard\" charts in its first 10 years, and 458 by its last year of broadcast in 2016, with 100 achieved by Kelly Clarkson alone. According to Fred Bronson, author of books on the Billboard charts, no other entity has ever created as many hit-making artists and bestselling albums and singles. In 2007, \"American Idol\" alums accounted for 2.1% of all music sales. Its alumni have a massive impact on radio; in 2007, \"American Idol\" had become \"a dominant force in radio\" according to Rich Meyer, president of the radio station monitoring research company Mediabase. By 2010, four winners each had more than a million radio spins, with Kelly Clarkson leading the field with over four million spins.\nAt the end of the show's original run on Fox in 2016, \"Idol\"'s contestants have sold more than 60 million albums in the U.S. and more than 100 million records globally, more than 175 of which are certified platinum or gold. Its participants have generated more than 450 Billboard No. 1 hits and sold more than 260 million digital downloads.\nFilm and theater.\nThe impact of \"American Idol\" was also strongly felt in musical theater, where many of \"Idol\" alumni have forged successful careers. The striking effect of former \"American Idol\" contestants on Broadway has been noted and commented on. The casting of a popular \"Idol\" contestant can lead to significantly increased ticket sales. Other alumni have gone on to work in television and films, the most notable being Jennifer Hudson who, on the recommendation of the \"Idol\" vocal coach Debra Byrd, won a role in \"Dreamgirls\" and eventually went on to win an Academy Award for her performance. She later became the show's first and only alumnus ever to win the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). In all, as of 2025, \"American Idol\" finalists resulted to 5 Grammy Award winners (Clarkson, Barrino, Hudson, Underwood and Mandisa), 2 Emmy Award winners (Clarkson and Hudson), and an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Tony Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Critics' Choice Award winner (Hudson).\nIn 2007, a musical based on the show, \"\", played off-Broadway. The musical closed after its official opening night.\nRevenue and commercial ventures.\nThe dominance of \"American Idol\" in the ratings had made it the most profitable show in U.S. TV for many years. The show was estimated to generate $900\u00a0million for the year 2004 through sales of TV ads, albums, merchandise and concert tickets. By the seventh season, the show was estimated to earn around $900\u00a0million from its ad revenue alone, not including ancillary sponsorship deals and other income. One estimate puts the total TV revenue for the first eight seasons of \"American Idol\" at $6.4\u00a0billion. Sponsors that bought fully integrated packages can expect a variety of promotions of their products on the show, such as product placement, adverts and product promotion integrated into the show, and various promotional opportunities. Other off-air promotional partners pay for the rights to feature \"Idol\" branding on their packaging, products and marketing programs. \"American Idol\" also partnered with Disney in its theme park attraction The American Idol Experience.\nAdvertising revenue.\n\"American Idol\" became the most expensive series on broadcast networks for advertisers starting the fourth season, and by the next season, it had broken the record in advertising rate for a regularly scheduled prime-time network series, selling over $700,000 for a 30-seconds slot, and reaching up to $1.3\u00a0million for the finale. Its ad prices reached a peak in the seventh season at $737,000. Estimated revenue more than doubled from $404\u00a0million in the third season to $870\u00a0million in the sixth season. While that declined from the eighth season onwards, it still earned significantly more than its nearest competitor, with advertising revenue topping $800\u00a0million annually the next few seasons. However, the sharp drop in ratings in the eleventh season also resulted in a sharp drop in advertising rate for the twelfth season, and the show lost its leading position as the costliest show for advertisers. By 2014, ad revenue from had fallen to $427 million where a 30-second spot went for less than $300,000. For the relaunched \"Idol\" on ABC, it has been reported that a 30-second spot may cost between $120,000 and $160,000.\nMedia sponsorship.\nFord Motor Company and Coca-Cola were two of the first sponsors of \"American Idol\" in its first season. The sponsorship deal cost around $10\u00a0million in the first season, rising to $35\u00a0million by the seventh season, and between $50 and $60 million in the tenth season. The third major sponsor AT&T Wireless joined in the second season but ended after the twelfth season, and Coca-Cola officially ended its sponsorship after the thirteenth season amidst the declining ratings of \"Idol\" in the mid-2010s. iTunes sponsored the show since the seventh season.\n\"American Idol\" prominent display of its sponsors' logo and products had been noted since the early seasons. By the sixth season, \"Idol\" showed 4,349 product placements according to Nielsen Media Research. The branded entertainment integration proved beneficial to its advertisers \u2013 promotion of AT&T text-messaging as a means to vote successfully introduced the technology into the wider culture, and Coca-Cola has seen its equity increased during the show.\nCoca-Cola's archrival PepsiCo declined to sponsor \"American Idol\" at the show's start. What the \"Los Angeles Times\" later called \"missing one of the biggest marketing opportunities in a generation\" contributed to Pepsi losing market share, by 2010 falling to third place from second in the United States. PepsiCo sponsored the American version of Cowell's \"The X Factor\" in hopes of not repeating its \"Idol\" mistake until its cancellation.\nFor the revived series on ABC, Macy's and Johnson & Johnson's Zyrtec signed on as the major sponsors of the show.\nAmerican Idol tour.\nThe top ten (eleven in the tenth season, five in the fourteenth season, and seven in the sixteenth season) toured at the end of every season except for the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons. In the twelfth season tour a semi-finalist who won a sing-off was also added to the tour. Kellogg's Pop-Tarts was the sponsor for the first seven seasons, and Guitar Hero was added for the seventh season tour. M&M's Pretzel Chocolate Candies was a sponsor of the ninth season tour. The fifth season tour was the most successful tour with gross of over $35\u00a0million. However no concert tour was organized in the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons, the only seasons not to have an associated tour. The sixteenth season tour featured the band In Real Life as an opener on select dates.\n\"Idol Gives Back\".\n\"Idol Gives Back\" was a special charity event started in season six featuring performances by celebrities and various fund-raising initiatives. This event was also held in seasons seven and nine and has raised nearly $185\u00a0million in total.\nMusic releases.\n\"American Idol\" has traditionally released studio recordings of contestants' performances as well as the winner's coronation single for sale. For the first five seasons, the recordings were released as a compilation album at the end of the season. All five of these albums reached the top ten in Billboard 200 which made \"American Idol\" the most successful soundtrack franchise of any motion picture or television program. Starting late in the fifth season, individual performances were released during the season as digital downloads, initially from the \"American Idol\" official website only. In the seventh season the live performances and studio recordings were made available during the season from iTunes when it joined as a sponsor. In the tenth season the weekly studio recordings were also released as compilation digital album straight after performance night.\n19 Recordings, a recording label owned by 19 Entertainment, currently hold the rights to phonographic material recorded by all the contestants. 19 Recordings originally partnered with Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) to promote and distribute the recordings through its labels RCA Records, Arista Records, J Records, and Jive Records. From 2005\u20132007, BMG partnered with Sony Music Entertainment to form a joint venture known as Sony BMG Music Entertainment. From 2008 to 2010, following their acquisition of BMG, Sony Music handled the distribution of \"American Idol\"'s music. In 2010, UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records replaced Sony as the music label for \"American Idol\".\nTie-ins.\n\"American Idol\" video games\nTheme park attraction.\nOn February 14, 2009, The Walt Disney Company debuted \"The American Idol Experience\" at its Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. In this live production, co-produced by 19 Entertainment, park guests chose from a list of songs and auditioned privately for Disney cast members. Those selected then performed on a stage in a 1000-seat theater replicating the \"Idol\" set. Three judges, whose mannerisms and style mimicked those of the real \"Idol\" judges, critiqued the performances. Audience members then voted for their favorite performer. There were several preliminary-round shows during the day that culminated in a \"finals\" show in the evening where one of the winners of the previous rounds that day was selected as the overall winner. The winner of the finals show received a \"Dream Ticket\" that granted them front-of-the-line privileges at any future \"American Idol\" audition. The attraction closed on August 30, 2014.\nOther broadcasts.\n\"American Idol\" is broadcast to over 100 nations worldwide. In most nations these are not live broadcasts and may be tape delayed by several days or weeks, except for other season finales that are aired live in several countries simulcast with the U.S. broadcast on Fox (2002\u20132016) and ABC (since 2018). In Canada, the first thirteen seasons of American Idol were aired live countrywide by CTV and/or CTV Two, in simulcast with Fox. CTV dropped \"Idol\" after its thirteenth season and in August 2014, Yes TV announced that it had picked up Canadian rights to \"American Idol\" beginning in its 2015 season. In 2017, it was announced the show would return to CTV Two for its sixteenth season. Since season nineteen, the show started airing on Citytv. In Slovakia, American Idol was broadcast on Jednotka.\nIn Latin America, the show is broadcast and subtitled by Sony Entertainment Television. In Southeast Asia, it is broadcast by Sony Channel every Monday and Tuesday nine or ten hours after since its revival. In Philippines, it is aired every Thursday and Friday nine or ten hours after its United States telecast; from 2004 to 2007 on ABC; 2008\u201311 on QTV, then GMA News TV; 2012\u201316, 2018\u201319 on ETC; and since 2024 on TV5. In Indonesia, it was aired on RCTI in the 2002 to 2003 season with the Indonesian subtitles, before Indonesian Idol was held in the 2004, aired after each episode ended, and in the 2011 to 2013 season it was broadcast by B-Channel (now RTV). In Australia, it aired a few hours after the U.S. telecast. It was aired on Network Ten from 2002 to 2008 and then again in 2013. Between 2008 and 2012 it aired on Fox8 and the thirteenth and fourteenth seasons (2014\u201315) it aired on digital channel, Eleven, a sister channel to Network Ten. Its final season (2016) aired on Fox8 hours after the original U.S. broadcast. The show enjoyed a lot of popularity in Australia throughout the 2000s before declining in the ratings. In the United Kingdom, episodes were aired one day after the U.S. broadcast on digital channel ITV2. In the twelfth season, the episodes aired on 5*. It was also aired in Ireland on TV3 two days after the telecast. In Brazil and Israel, the show airs two days after its original broadcast, and broadcast live during the season finale. In the instances where the airing is delayed, the shows may sometimes be combined into one episode to summarize the results. In Italy, the twelfth season was broadcast by La3. In Singapore, The show was broadcast on Mediacorp Channel 5 for the ninth and tenth seasons.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1680590": "Breakaway (Kelly Clarkson song)\n2004 song by Kelly Clarkson\n\"Breakaway\" is a power ballad song recorded by American singer Kelly Clarkson. The song, written by Matthew Gerrard, Bridget Benenate, and Avril Lavigne, was originally intended for Lavigne's debut studio album, \"Let Go\" (2002). After being deemed unsuitable for the album, it was passed to Clarkson to be recorded as a soundtrack for the film \"\" (2004). Clarkson, who was finishing her second studio album at that time, recorded \"Breakaway\" to tide her fans over until the first single from her new album was released. However, the song's success prompted its inclusion on Clarkson's second album, while the record label decided to name the album after the song. \"Breakaway\" was first released as the first single from on July 19, 2004. In May 2006, \"Breakaway\" was reissued as the fifth and final single from the album of the same name.\n\"Breakaway\" received positive reviews from music critics, who could relate to the song's message and simple lyrics. It incorporates acoustic guitars and airy drums which are interspersed with Clarkson's controlled voice. The lyrics narrate Clarkson's journey as a girl growing up in a small town who follows her dream for self-improvement. \"Breakaway\" was a commercial success outside of the United States, where it peaked within the top 20 of multiple European countries, and in the top 10 in Australia, Belgium, Hungary, and the Netherlands. In the United States, the song peaked at number six on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart and became her third top ten song in the chart. It also topped the US Adult Contemporary for twenty-one non-consecutive weeks, a record for female artists that is now shared between herself, Celine Dion's \"A New Day Has Come\" and Adele's \"Hello\".\nDirected by Dave Meyers, the accompanying music video for \"Breakaway\" portrays Clarkson as a young girl from a small town who follows her dream and becomes an international star. It also contained scenes interspersed from \"The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement\". Clarkson acted out most of the lyrics in the music video because she felt that the song was autobiographical. Critics responded positively to the music video for being faithful to the central theme shared by the song, the film, and Clarkson's personal biography. Clarkson performed the song in a series of live appearances such as television shows \"Saturday Night Live\", \"The Oprah Winfrey Show\" and \"The Tonight Show with Jay Leno\". She has performed the song in her concert tours, including the Stronger Tour. \"Breakaway\" has also been covered by many contestants from reality television singing competitions, notably Katie Stevens, a contestant in the ninth season of \"American Idol\", as well as an English pop quartet Belle Amie, who finished eleventh in the seventh season of \"The X Factor\".\nBackground and release.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"As it turned out, it wasn't quite right for Avril's album, so we pitched it to Kelly Clarkson. It all worked out great. Kelly sounds great singing it, and it was a big hit for us.\"\n\u2014 Matthew Gerrard on \"Breakaway\"'s success.\n\"Breakaway\" was originally written by Avril Lavigne, Bridget Benenate and Matthew Gerrard. According to Benenate, the song was written in 2001 when she was working with Gerrard for Lavigne's first album, \"Let Go\". Benenate explained that Lavigne came to her to write the song, saying:\nAvril talked about her life and what things were important to her \u2013 she was the inspiration for the song. Matthew began creating the melody and track, and I started working on the lyrics. I remember staying in bed for three days, writing 25 versions of the lyric. I love being in bed and writing lyrics, and having my dog Jet and my kitty Dash on the bed. Anyway, we finally finished the lyric, then we completed the demo.\nAfter the production of the song was deemed unsuitable for Lavigne's album, the song was passed to several artists including Samantha Moore before finally being recorded by Kelly Clarkson. Benenate also added that it was Mitchell Leib, the President of Music and Soundtracks for Walt Disney Pictures and Television/Buena Vista Music Group, who secured \"Breakaway\" as one of the soundtracks of \"\". In an interview with MTV, Clarkson said that she recorded \"Breakaway\" to tide fans over until September that year before she released the first single from her second album. Nevertheless, the song's huge success prompted its inclusion on the album, which Clarkson decided to name \"Breakaway\". Clarkson expressed that \"Breakaway\" was different from everything she has done, saying that it \"is a simple song, and I think that its simplicity is what's beautiful about it. Whenever writers or producers come to work with me, they take advantage of the fact that I can really belt it out. What's cool about 'Breakaway' is that it doesn't take advantage of that. The song just uses the simplicity of my voice.\" The song was officially released to radio stations on July 19, 2004, as the first single of . Lavigne's original demo of the song leaked onto the internet nearly a decade later in April 2014. A brand new recording was officially released as part of the 20th anniversary re-release of her debut album on June 3, 2022.\nComposition.\n\"Breakaway\" is a folk-pop song with a length of three minutes and 57 seconds. It is composed in the key of C major, with a tempo of 160 beats per minute. T.U. Dawood of \"Dawn\" lauded the song for being the best track on the album, writing \"\"Breakaway\" is an enchanting single that will have you humming along to its infectious, gentle chorus and the inspiring lyrics.\" It has a chord progression of C\u2013G\u2013Am7-F(9) and Clarkson's vocal range in the song spans two octaves from the low note of G3 to the note of D5. Sam Lansky of PopCrush.com thought that Clarkson's vocal floated over strummed guitars and airy drums, a combination which elevated the inspirational message of the song. Dave Donelly of Sputnikmusic noted that \"Breakaway\" successfully contrasted typical acoustic verse with a soaring pop chorus which was interspersed by Clarkson's controlled but powerful voice.\nLyrically, the song is about growing up and moving on in life. Natalie Nichols of \"The Baltimore Sun\" considered \"Breakaway\" as Clarkson's anthem which is about a small-town girl going for her dreams. Clarkson admitted that she could relate to the song, saying:\nIt describes how I got into the business, verbatim. I did grow up in a small town, I wanted to get out, I felt like there was something... not better for me, but something different for me. I didn't feel like I fit in at school. Whether you are a DJ, or if you work with computers, or if you're a teacher, everyone has that point where they feel, 'I'm bored and this isn't what I wanted to do with my life.'\nReception.\nCritical response.\nWhile reviewing the album, Shirley Shipin of \"Rolling Stone\" opined that \"Breakaway\" was the highlight of the album where Clarkson sounded \"more Avril than Ashlee\". Rhonda Lynn of Florida Entertainment Scene praised the acoustic guitar in the song which is instrumental in holding the whole structure together. Tammy La Gorce of Amazon.com thought that the song would not wear out due to its \"rock-friendly thumps, dips, and rolls.\" In a different perspective, Joan Anderman of \"Boston.com\" remarked that \"Breakaway\" is not new or exciting-sounding but he admitted that the \"hit single accomplishes the rare feat of being thoroughly middle-of-the-road without sacrificing grace or intelligence\". Chuck Taylor of \"Billboard\" felt that the song was a weak choice as a single compared to Clarkson's previous hits, writing \"'Breakaway' sounds more like an Irish folk song propped up with pop production than the anthemic material with which Clarkson has won over legions of fans.\" Kathi Kamen Goldmark of Disney Family.com felt that the song was tedious, simultaneously dull and so emotionally overwrought that it almost sounds like a parody of itself. Michael Wood of \"The Village Voice\" described the song as \"a swoony acoustic folk-pop that Goo Goo Doll Johnny Rzeznik would trade his hair gel for\". Jill Salama of Oprah.com listed \"Breakaway\" as one of her nine favourite \"Idol\" singles of all time, writing \"There is nothing that gets us more than a song about a girl going out on her own. Making a wish, making a change and, of course, breaking away. But seriously, this song is more than just a high school graduation anthem.\"\nBill Lamb of About.com ranked \"Breakaway\" at number four in his list of Top 10 Kelly Clarkson songs. The song received a nomination in the category of Song of the Year: Adult Hit Radio at the 2005 Radio Music Awards but lost to Green Day's \"Boulevard of Broken Dreams\". It was one of the recipients of BDSCertified Spin Awards in November 2004 with 100,000 spins accumulated throughout the year. On March 5, 2013, \"Billboard\" ranked the song at number five in its list of Top 100 American Idol Hits of All Time. Additionally, it also appeared at number four of Clarkson's Top 15 Biggest \"Billboard\" Hot 100 hits through the week ending April 29, 2017.\nChart performance.\nOn the week ending August 28, 2004, \"Breakaway\" debuted at number 60 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. On its tenth week, the song jumped from number 12 to number 10 to become Clarkson's third Top 10 song in the chart, following \"A Moment Like This\" and \"Miss Independent\". It peaked at number six on the week ending November 20, 2004. The song spent 46 weeks in \"Billboard\" Hot 100, a feat that was later achieved by its immediate successor, \"Since U Been Gone\". It was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on February 5, 2005. \"Breakaway\" also debuted at number 37 on the US Pop Songs on the week dated August 21, 2004. Three months later, it peaked at number two on the week ending November 13, 2004, and was held off the top spot by Nelly featuring Tim McGraw's \"Over and Over\". The song entered \"Billboard\" Adult Pop Songs at number 36 on the week dated August 21, 2004, before peaking at number two on the week ending February 12, 2005.\n\"Breakaway\" also made an appearance on the US Adult Contemporary at number 30 on the week ending September 18, 2004. The song fell out of the chart after its debut, before re-entering the chart at the same position of number 30 in its second week. Six months later, \"Breakaway\" topped \"Billboard\" Adult Contemporary, dethroning Los Lonely Boys' \"Heaven\" on the week ending March 12, 2005. The song spent 20 consecutive weeks at number one on the chart before being dethroned by Michael Bubl\u00e9's \"Home\". However, the song returned to top the \"Billboard\" Adult Contemporary for the 21st week on the week ending August 6, 2005. With this achievement, \"Breakaway\" tied the record with Celine Dion's \"A New Day Has Come\" as the longest-running Adult Contemporary chart-topper by a female artist. \"Breakaway\" is also the longest-running chart-topper to come from a film in \"Billboard\" Adult Contemporary history, surpassing the nineteen-week record held jointly by Phil Collins's \"You'll Be in My Heart\" from \"Tarzan\" and Celine Dion's \"Because You Loved Me\" from \"Up Close & Personal\". It remains as Clarkson's longest-running number one in her career. As of September 2017, \"Breakaway\" has sold 2,128,000 paid digital downloads.\nInternationally, \"Breakaway\" was a commercial success. In Australia, \"Breakaway\" debuted at number 14 on the week ending September 26, 2004, before peaking at number 10, three weeks later. It was certified gold by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) for shipments of over 35,000 units. In New Zealand, \"Breakaway\" entered the New Zealand Singles Chart at number 19 on the week ending October 18, 2004. Six weeks later, the song ascended to a new peak of number 12. On July 8, 2006, the song debuted and peaked at number 22 in the United Kingdom. In Ireland, it debuted and peaked at number 12 on the week ending June 29, 2006. Elsewhere in Europe, \"Breakaway\" peaked at number six in Belgium, number eight in Austria, as well as number nine in the Netherlands.\nMusic video.\nThe accompanying music video for \"Breakaway\" was directed by Dave Meyers, which was shot in two days from July 10 to 11, 2004. In the video, the younger version of Clarkson was played by Lindsey Krueger. According to Meyers, working with Clarkson was a pleasant experience because he felt she was good and honest, although he had initial doubts in the beginning. He explained, \"I was a little worried, her coming off 'American Idol,' it inherently feels manufactured and I didn't know how much of it was true artistry. But when I met her, she really does have a good, solid vibe. It was an honor to bring some of that out of her.\" Since the song is autobiographical, Clarkson decided to act out most of the lyrics in the video. Meyers also realized that the song was featured in \"The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement\" and he struggled to find a way to address the film-footage in the music video, saying \"Since it's a movie tie-in, the idea stems from trying to figure out a new way of addressing the film-footage requirement they put on you, so we came up with the idea of her attending the premiere, which is very much something she will do in real life.\"\nThe video begins with the younger version of Clarkson sitting at the back seat of a station wagon. Singing the first verse, she witnesses a depressing scene of her brother quarreling with her sister who are scolded by their mother. She slowly clasps both her hands before the video shifts to the present day where Clarkson is seen arriving on the red carpet with her publicist for the world premiere of \"The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement\". After posing for the photographers, she enters the cinema and watches the film. The next scene switches back to the younger Clarkson who is sitting and looking around her neighborhood at her house's rooftop as a plane is seen flying across the sky. The video switches back to the older Clarkson who is now watching the aforementioned film in her laptop inside the plane as it goes through a mild turbulence. Clarkson is also seen reminiscing about her past job as a worker in a movie theater, singing with her co-workers. The next scene shows Clarkson singing with her band in a backyard party which is shown alternately with scenes from the film, as well as a montage of her family and co-workers waving away from her. In the final scene, the younger Clarkson is shown praying by her bedside.\nThe video was uploaded to MTV's website on August 9, 2004. The video reached number five on the AOL Music Top Video chart in September 2004, with 740,176 streams. Johnni Macke of E! deemed the early 2000s as Clarkson's \"music video prime\". She opined that the video was a great Cinderella story, writing \"\"Breakaway\" shows the story of a young tomboy girl dealing with her insane family and what she grows up into...AKA a popstar named Kelly Clarkson.\" Kate Aurthur of \"The New York Times\" praised the music video for successfully illustrating the message of a girl following her own dream, which is a central theme shared by the song, the movie and Clarkson's biography. She also lauded the director of the video, Dave Meyers, for his ability to use Clarkson's evolution as an element to overshadow the distracting clips from \"The Princess Diaries: Royal Engagement\" despite noticing that the use of visual metaphors in the music video was overwrought.\nLive performances.\nClarkson first performed \"Breakaway\" on \"The Tonight Show with Jay Leno\" in August 2004. In February 2005, she performed \"Breakaway\" as well as \"Since U Been Gone\" on \"Saturday Night Live\". On September 23, 2005, she appeared on \"The Oprah Winfrey Show\" and performed \"Breakaway\" as well as \"Because of You\". While touring at the Palace Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio during her Breakaway World Tour, Clarkson performed \"Breakaway\" while signing several autographs for her fans near the stage to purposely let the crowd belt out the chorus. \"Breakaway\" was also included in the setlist of Clarkson's 2009 All I Ever Wanted Tour where she performed the song in Hammerstein Ballroom without any dancers, acrobatics, moving set pieces and no special effects. Caryn Ganz noted that Clarkson belted the ballad song effortlessly by walking back and forth across the stage with her right hand on the mic and her left resting on her chest. Jim Cantiello of MTV opined that Clarkson's \"low chest-voice cooed the verses of 'Breakaway'\" and complimented the singer's vocal prowess throughout the concert. On April 3, 2012, Clarkson performed \"Breakaway\" as an encore to her Stronger Tour at Nokia Theatre L.A. Live, Los Angeles, where she told the audience that people started supporting her because of the song.\nIn 2019, Avril Lavigne performed the song for the first time live at select venues during her Head Above Water Tour.\nCover versions and use in media.\n\"Breakaway\" has also been covered by contestants from reality television singing competitions. Katie Stevens covered the song on the ninth season of \"American Idol\". Despite listening to the judges' comments to sing a contemporary song, her rendition was criticized by the judges; Randy Jackson thought the note was too big for Stevens while Ellen DeGeneres felt Stevens did not sell the lyrics. Kara DioGuardi said, \"I don't think you know who you are yet as an artist\", an opinion agreed by Simon Cowell. Jim Cantiello of MTV noted that Stevens' performance of the song was her weakest performance in the show, stating \"Unfortunately, her uneven vocals on 'Breakaway' exposed her youthful inexperience.\" The same opinion was echoed by Eric Ditzian of MTV who opined that Stevens failed to resonate her youthful energy favouring the song choice.\n\"Breakaway\" was performed by Julie Zorrilla in the semi-finals on the tenth season of \"American Idol.\" Samantha Stephens of \"The Republican\" felt Zorrilla's performance was mediocre. Gil Kaufman of MTV remarked that Zorrilla's voice was shaky, and it lacked personality. After landing in the bottom two, Belle Amie, an English pop quartet contestant on the seventh season of \"The X Factor\", decided to perform \"Breakaway\" as their survival song. Nevertheless, they were eliminated in the episode. The song was also performed by Megan Hilty on the episode titled \"Understudy\" of the American television series \"Smash\", which aired on April 7, 2012. Matt Tucker of KSiteTV.com thought the performance was \"lovely\", describing it as one of the things that stood out in the episode. The song was covered by Jenna Ushkowitz, Kevin McHale and Darren Criss, on the 97th episode, \"Frenemies\", of the musical series \"Glee\", which aired on February 25, 2014. For the thirteenth season of \"American Idol\", the song is used as the sendoff song when a contestant is voted off. The contestant who is voted off, their cover of the song is played during the goodbye montage video package. It was also used in \"The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants\" trailer and in the thirtieth season of Brazilian soap opera \"Malha\u00e7\u00e3o\". The song was also featured on the 2020 episode \"The Son\" on the television show \"Little America.\"\nIn 2022, singer-songwriter Avril Lavigne, who originally co-wrote the song for her debut studio album, \"Let Go\", released her version of the song for the expanded edition of said album to commemorate the 20th anniversary since its release. The lyrics included the original word 'snow' which Kelly Clarkson had changed to 'rain' to fit her perspective.\nCredits and personnel.\nCredits are adapted from the liner notes of \"Breakaway\".\nRecording\nPersonnel\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["1680590", "191890"], "permutation_1": ["1680590", "191890"], "permutation_2": ["191890", "1680590"], "permutation_3": ["1680590", "191890"]}
{"id": "2hop__764465_126539", "docs_added": {"43510821": "Em Toda Parte\nEm Toda Parte (Portuguese for \"All Around\") is the second studio album by Brazilian psychedelic rock band Violeta de Outono, released on June 18, 1989, by Ariola Records. It was also their last release before they entered a hiatus period in 1993 that would last until 1995. Beginning with this album, Violeta de Outono abandons their post-punk influences and gradually shift towards a more progressive-influenced sonority.\n\"Terra Distante\" would be re-recorded for their next studio album, \"Mulher na Montanha\", while \"Dan\u00e7a\" would appear on \"Ilhas\".\nIt was re-released in 2007 by Voiceprint Records, containing two bonus tracks.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "43360336": "Violeta de Outono\nBrazilian progressive rock band\nVioleta de Outono (Portuguese for Autumn Violet) is a Brazilian psychedelic/progressive rock band from S\u00e3o Paulo. Heavily influenced by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Gong, they were originally a post-punk band with some psychedelic elements intertwined, but would gradually drop their post-punk influences and add more prog elements to their sonority as time went by.\nThe band underwent numerous changes in its line-up since its inception; the only founding member remaining today is vocalist/guitarist Fabio Golfetti.\nHistory.\nFabio Golfetti founded Violeta de Outono in 1985 alongside Cl\u00e1udio Souza; both had just parted ways with pioneering New Romantic band Zero. They would later be joined by Angelo Pastorello, and with this line-up they released a demo tape, \"Memories\", in the same year. The tape got the attention of independent record label Wop-Bop Records, that released their first recording, the extended play \"Reflexos da Noite\", in 1986.\nIn 1987, Violeta de Outono's eponymous debut was released through RCA Records. It was very well-received; particular praise went to their cover of The Beatles' song \"Tomorrow Never Knows\".\nIn 1988 they released a four-track EP called \"The Early Years\", containing cover versions of The Rolling Stones' \"Citadel\", Pink Floyd's \"Interstellar Overdrive\", The Beatles' \"Within You Without You\" and Gong's \"Blues for Findlay\". Those recordings trace to as far as 1985\u20131986. In the next year, their second studio album, \"Em Toda Parte\", was released by Ariola Records. Beginning with this album, Violeta de Outono would drop their previous post-punk instrumentation, heading towards a more progressive and experimental vein.\nIn 1990, Cl\u00e1udio Souza left the band, and was replaced by Cl\u00e1udio Fontes (Souza would return to the band in 1993 though). From 1993 to 1995, Violeta de Outono entered a short hiatus period; they returned to active with a live album, \"Eclipse\", and their third full-length, \"Mulher na Montanha\", that began to be recorded in 1995 but would be released only in 1999. In 2000, they would release their second live album, \"Live at Rio ArtRock Festival '97\", a recording of their performance at the in Rio de Janeiro in 1997. (A DVD containing the footage of their performance at the festival would be released 15 years later.) During Violeta de Outono's hiatus, Golfetti released three albums with The Invisible Opera Company of Tibet (Tropical Version Brazil), a side project he formed in 1988; however, the project was not as successful and memorable as Violeta de Outono itself and would come to an end in 1995, only to return in 2010.\nAlso in 2000, Violeta de Outono changed its line-up almost completely, with Gregor Izidro replacing Cl\u00e1udio Souza and Sandro Garcia replacing Pastorello. However, they would return for the recording of the band's fourth studio album in 2003, \"Ilhas\", that was released in 2005.\n\"Violeta de Outono & Orquestra\", their first video release, came out in 2006, recorded during a performance in S\u00e3o Paulo two years prior, with the special participation of the USP Symphonic Orchestra. In the same year, Pastorello left the band and was replaced by Gabriel Costa, while new member Fernando Cardoso assumed the position of keyboardist. With this line-up they released their fifth full-length album (and seventh studio release overall), \"Volume 7\", in 2007.\nIn 2009, Cl\u00e1udio Souza left Violeta de Outono for the third time, but beforehand they recorded another video release, \"\", in which they covered songs by Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett live, and also played their first studio album in its entirety in a show which took place in the Theatro Municipal in S\u00e3o Paulo. Souza was replaced by Fred Barley \u2013 however, Barley left the band in 2011 in order to join O Ter\u00e7o, and was replaced by Jos\u00e9 Luiz Dinola (former A Chave do Sol member); Violeta de Outono's line-up remains unchanged ever since.\nTheir sixth full-length album, \"Espectro\", was released in 2012.\nOn September 19, 2016, the band announced that they began work on their seventh studio album, \"Spaces\", which was eventually released on October 14, 2016.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "22635686": "Artaud (album)\nArtaud (; commonly pronounced by Hispanophones) is the third and final studio album credited to Argentine rock band Pescado Rabioso, released in October 1973 on Talent-Microf\u00f3n. It is essentially the second solo album by singer-songwriter Luis Alberto Spinetta, who used the group's name despite their disbandment earlier that year.\nThe album is named after and dedicated to French poet Antonin Artaud, and was conceived as a reaction to his writings. The album's original packaging is famous for its odd shape, which the record label initially resisted. Spinetta presented Artaud with two morning shows at the Teatro Astral on Avenida Corrientes, accompanied only by his acoustic guitar. Each audience member received a copy of Spinetta's manifesto \"Rock: M\u00fasica dura, la suicidada por la sociedad\", in which he presented his vision of the countercultural Argentine rock movement.\nIt is considered Spinetta's masterpiece and one of the most influential albums in Spanish-language rock music. It has been selected as the greatest album in the history of Argentine rock on several occasions, most notably \"Rolling Stone Argentina\"'s The 100 Greatest Albums of National Rock in 2007.\nBackground and recording.\nAfter the 1970 dissolution of Almendra\u2014a foundational band of the burgeouing Argentine rock movement along with Manal and Los Gatos\u2014three new groups emerged as its former members sought to create new projects. Edelmiro Molinari formed Color Humano, Rodolfo Garc\u00eda and Edelmiro Molinari created Aquelarre, and Luis Alberto Spinetta put together Pescado Rabioso along with drummer Black Amaya and bass guitarist Osvaldo Frascino. The short-lived Pescado Rabioso was a conscious shift from Spinetta's previous acoustic and melodic music, favoring a more violent, \"electric, raw and powerful style\" influenced by his new friendships within the \"heavier\" rock scene of Buenos Aires, which included acts such as Pappo's Blues, Manal and Tanguito. Spinetta himself referred to it as his \"punk moment\". The project experienced various line-up changes (a characteristic of almost every local rock band during that time) and released two studio albums\u2014\"Desatorment\u00e1ndonos\" (1972) and \"Pescado 2\" (1973)\u2014 before disbanding. By the time \"Pescado 2\" was released in March 1973, the band had already split up. Amaya told Cr\u00edtica Digital in 2009 that David Leb\u00f3n and Carlos Cutaia left Pescado Rabioso to pursue their solo careers and that they communicated their disbandment to Spinetta in the Planeta theatre, which he took as a great offense. He also claimed to have been the last member to leave the band and to have rehearsed for \"Artaud\". One of the reasons was that Oscar L\u00f3pez, their manager at the time, wanted Leb\u00f3n to become the lead singer and guitarist and for Spinetta to play bass. According to Spinetta, his fellow band members did not share the more \"lyrical\" vision that he was developing, and wanted to change the style of the band into rock and roll and blues. Both Amaya and Cutaia have said that they wished to play something \"more bluesy\", with the latter explaining that they wanted Leb\u00f3n to participate more as a composer and get away from Spinetta's more complex compositions. However, Leb\u00f3n and L\u00f3pez have denied that there was a plan to turn Pescado Rabioso into a blues band. Spinetta told Eduardo Berti in 1988: \nI experienced that as a great paradox: Pescado Rabioso was me, and I could have had those musicians like others; I wanted to play my songs, express how I felt, and it seemed like a deformity to start to make rock and blues songs as if it were the time of Manal. At that time there was still that mania to play rhythm & blues, but shortly after David [Leb\u00f3n] released his solo album and it was not only in that style. After all, he was as lyrical as I was.\nIn Ezequiel Abalos' 1995 book \"Historias del rock de ac\u00e1\", Amaya recalled: \"He felt abandoned because he wanted to continue playing with the band, as he was left alone and it was still pending to record another album with Microf\u00f3n, he recorded \"Artaud\" with the songs he had for Pescado Rabioso. When I heard the album, I wanted to [die].\" As a result, Spinetta enlisted his brother Gustavo and former Almendra members Emilio del Guercio and Rodolfo Garc\u00eda to play in the album. Spinetta explained to Berti that he decided to release the album under Pescado Rabioso's name because he felt using his own would be \"too pompous\", and \"to prove to the former members of the group that Pescado Rabioso was [him].\" The use of the band's name has also been described as a contractual obligation. \"Artaud\" was recorded at studio Phonalex in the \"barrio\" of Belgrano, a few blocks from the Spinetta house. Journalist Miguel Grinberg described the sessions as \"a very private ceremony\". According to Rodolfo Garc\u00eda, the songs were \"practically made in the studio\" and recorded in few takes. He stated that in \"Supercher\u00eda\" and \"Las habladur\u00edas del mundo\", \"the concept with which the tracks were created was similar: to play them with absolute freedom [and] the biggest swing of which we capable\". Spinetta composed and recorded almost the entire album with a Harptone acoustic guitar that he called \"the Standel\". Lyricist Roberto Mouro has claimed that Spinetta used a Hagstr\u00f6m electric guitar in \"Todas las hojas son del viento\", while journalist Juan Carlos Diez recalled that the musician told him that he recorded the whole album with a mahogany-colored acoustic Gibson guitar. \"Artaud\" was produced by publisher Jorge \u00c1lvarez for his label Microf\u00f3n, a subsidiary of record company Talent. \u00c1lvarez had founded Microf\u00f3n after the 1970 closure of his company Mandioca, the first independent record label of Argentine rock. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the circulation of Artaud's bibliography intensified and \u00c1lvarez played an important role in this process by publishing an anthology of the poet in 1968.\nThe creation of the album was deeply influenced by changes in the musician's personal life. Twenty-three-year-old Spinetta considered that it was time to settle down and stay away from the excesses, so he decided to return to his parents' house in Belgrano. During that time, he was beginning a relationship with Patricia Salazar, with whom he would remain for over twenty-five years and have four children. His brother Gustavo Spinetta stated in 2009 that the music and lyrics in \"Artaud\" were the result of the \"climate of much love\" in which Luis Alberto and Salazar lived.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n If we remember that in 1968 Los Abuelos de la Nada practically imposed the \"porte\u00f1o\" version of psychedelic pop with \"Diana divaga\" and that in 1973 Luis Alberto Spinetta released \"Artaud\"\u2014perhaps the pinnacle of Argentine rocker avant-garde\u2014it is hard to accept that it was a mere temporary coincidence. There was in those years a correlate between the political and social turbulence of the country and the growth of a music that, apparently, did not seem to be too attentive or interested in the revolutionary utopia, at least as the guerrilla organizations imagined it.\n\u2014 Sergio Pujol, 2015.\nWriters often analyze \"Artaud\" in relation to the convulsive sociopolitical context of Argentina in 1973, with the fall of the military dictatorship, H\u00e9ctor Jos\u00e9 C\u00e1mpora's electoral win and the news of Per\u00f3n's return bringing \"a hope of liberty in the midst of oppression.\" This short period under C\u00e1mpora's rule is known as the \"Camporist Spring\" (Spanish: \"primavera camporista\") and was characterized by a new sense of liberation and optimism among young people. Discussing the social context in which Spinetta produced \"Artaud\", Grinberg told Rolling Stone: \"At that time we were all Peronists. After the results of H\u00e9ctor Campora's triumph were known, I remember that there was a spirit of total liberation fervor. Suddenly a truck full of people passed by Teatro General San Mart\u00edn and I see a hanging Luis hugging a bunch of young people.\" In the summer of 1973, underground art and press grew in dimension, with parks and alternative magazines being their means of communication. Spinetta took part in Sunday youth gatherings that Miguel Grinberg organized in Parque Centenario through his radio program \"El son progresivo\", where people formed groups dedicated to \"rock nacional\", poetry, theater, psychology and plastic arts; and edited a magazine made collectively every Sunday. Some of the other musicians that went to Parque Centenario included Emilio Del Guercio, Rodolfo Garc\u00eda, Gustavo Spinetta, Miguel Abuelo and, \"without integrating so much\", Ra\u00fal Porchetto and Le\u00f3n Gieco. These meetings, which managed to gather 500 people, have been described by Rock.com.ar as \"a true experiment of community integration, [with] debates taking place between the people of the park and the occasional passers-by.\" According to Del Guercio, they \"were concerned to know what was going to be the place of art and culture in the society to come, how the personal transformation of each one and the understanding of the other could modify society\"; according to Schanton, \"Artaud\" is the \"offspring of that total liberty\".\nConcept.\n\"Artaud\" has been described as \"the most literary record of \"rock nacional\"\", along with Vox Dei's 1971 album \"La Biblia\". Writer Juan Pablo Bertazza considered that the album \"reaches the closest and most fertile and visceral point that there can be between music and poetry, or better: between music and literature.\" Spinetta was an avid reader and literature was a fundamental influence throughout his career; such as Julio Cort\u00e1zar in Almendra, Carlos Castaneda in Spinetta Jade and Carl Jung and Chinese philosophy in Invisible. At the time of \"Artaud\"'s composition, the \"po\u00e8tes maudits\" and surrealist literature were a great influence on him. In addition to Antonin Artaud, Spinetta read other French poets such as Arthur Rimbaud, Ren\u00e9 Daumal, Charles Baudelaire, Jean Cocteau, Andr\u00e9 Breton and Comte de Lautr\u00e9amont.\nSpinetta discovered Artaud through Jorge Pistocchi, a journalist and artist. In a November 1972 Pescado Rabioso interview for \"Gente\" magazine, Spinetta discussed his affinity with poetry and described Rimbaud as \"a rock guy a hundred years ago\", as he \"developed in a way to express his inner sensuality and to express his own energy in a luminous way\". He also mentioned Artaud in the same manner, stating that he: \"lived the life of a rocker, like Hendrix... The vibes that Artaud threw for other men to understand were thinking, you see, thinking and thinking, really thinking about what it is that happens. Musically, that's Hendrix, for example.\" Artaud's influence has been linked to the \"iconoclast and libertarian spirit\" of the album.\nSpinetta was particularly influenced by his essays \"Heliogabalus; or, the Crowned Anarchist\" (French: \"\"H\u00e9liogabale ou l'anarchiste couronn\u00e9\") and \"Van Gogh, The Man Suicided by Society\" (French: \"Van Gogh le suicid\u00e9 de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9\"\"). He envisioned the album as an \"antidote\" to the nihilistic message and \"contagion of pain\" conveyed in Artaud's work. Spinetta told author Eduardo Berti in 1988: \"Whoever has read him can not escape a quota of desperation. To him the answer of man is madness; to [John] Lennon it is love. I believe more in the encounter of perfection and happiness through the suppression of pain than through madness and suffering. I believe that only if we worry about healing the soul we will avoid social distortions and fascist behavior, unjust doctrines and totalitarianism, absurd policies and deplorable wars. The only way to raise the weight is with love.\"\nComposition.\nThe album has been described as \"a monumental piece of psychedelic and pastoral folk\". Writing for Gibson's website in 2011, Kiko Jones described the album's sound: \"Showing influences of progressive rock and touches of psychedelia alongside his singer-songwriter feel, Spinetta skillfully manages to create in \"Artaud\" a kind of musical bridge between the rock current of the late 60s and the beginning of the 70s.\" Likewise, American music journalist Richie Unterberger noted: \"If it's something of a progressive/psychedelic record, it has more to do with the juxtaposition of late-'60s and early-'70s styles on display than it has to do with the music itself.\" Germ\u00e1n Arrascaeta of \"La Voz del Interior\" described the album's content in 2015 as \"abrasive psychedelia\". \"Artaud\" has been linked to a period of \"reflexive psychedelia\" in Argentine rock during the 1970s, evident in the lyrics of Molinari, Pappo and Vox Dei's Nacho Smilari. Gustavo Spinetta told journalist Oscar Jalil in 2013: \"We were crazy about Neil Young's \"Harvest\" which has a very homemade fluency. Somehow I felt like I was playing that music.\" Music journalist Claudio Kleiman felt that John Lennon's 1970 album \"John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band\" was an antecedent of \"Artaud\" because of its \"emotional and musical nudity\", while also noting similarities in their \"stripped instrumentation\" and the fact that both Spinetta and Lennon chose to record with a few old friends.\nThe album was produced at a time when there was a rivalry within Argentine rock, between those who played acoustic music and those who favored an electric, \"heavier\" style. In this sense, it is considered that \"Artaud\" managed to unite these two opposite movements.\nWriting for Chilean newspaper \"La Tercera\" in 2017, Alejandro Jofr\u00e9 felt that Spinetta uses his voice as another instrument.\nThe album's \"complex\" songs denoted a marked harmonic incorporation of jazz in Spinetta's music, prefiguring its central influence in the following years. While he incorporated even more jazz influences with Invisible, a band he formed as \"Artaud\" was being released, Spinetta completely immersed himself in jazz rock with the 1977 album \"A 18' del sol\", inaugurating a \"jazz period\" in his discography that alienated fans and lasted until the mid 1980s.\nSpinetta reflected in 2008 that the album \"represents a very interesting return to the creative source of songs within [him]\" and that it established the possibility of deconstructing his previous work with Pescado Rabioso to \"keep growing\". Umberto P\u00e9rez of Spanish magazine Efe Eme felt that Spinetta \"returned to the source to break it\", as he \"invoked the acoustic and free spirit of Almendra to capture one of the most intimate moments of his life\".\nSide one.\n\"Todas la hojas son del viento\".\nPerhaps the \"most accessible moment\" on \"Artaud\", opener \"Todas las hojas son del viento\" (English: \"All Leaves Belong to the Wind\") is a folk rock ballad with a predominantly acoustic sound, although it contains an electric guitar solo at the end. Spinetta's acoustic guitar moves through the musical notes G, F and D, with an irregular phrasing that was characteristic of his music. It has been described as \"perhaps \"Artaud\"'s most accessible moment\". Pedro Ogrodnik C. of Colombian magazine \"Rockaxis\" noted the simplicity and \"warm climate\" of the short track, and felt it was very reminiscent of Sui Generis' work. It is a well-known Spinetta classic.\nThe song's lyrics deal with parenting from a countercultural perspective, although Spinetta had yet to be a father. Instead, he was inspired by the pregnancy of his former girlfriend, Cristina Bustamante, who was pregnant by another man. He had \"sealed the relationship\" with Bustamante in \"Blues de Cris\", a track included in Pescado Rabioso's 1972 debut album, but they remained in contact. Spinetta wrote the song after she told him that she had doubts about continuing with her pregnancy, which she eventually carried through with. He told Berti: \"I wrote 'Todas las hojas son del viento' because at that moment she was like a leaf in the wind, having to decide such a thing.\" Pablo Schanton compared the song to Graham Nash's \"Teach Your Children\" and Pink Floyd, as it \"provides light instructions for rockers who mature and form families, and must face paternity while being antipaternal.\"\n\"Cementerio Club\".\nWalter Gazzo of MDZ Online described \"Cementerio Club\" (\"Cemetery Club\") as \"a track in blues rock fashion, very electric and sharp, that contains enigmatic and depressive lyrics\". Jazz influences have been noted, particularly for \"the harmonic choice, in a minor scale, as well as the enhancement of weak times\".\nSpinetta described its lyrics as a \"controlled irony\", intended to convey the coldness of a woman who has left him; with lines such as \"How sad and lonely I will be in this cemetery/ How hot will be without you in the summer\" (Spanish: \"Qu\u00e9 s\u00f3lo y triste voy a estar en este cementerio/Qu\u00e9 calor har\u00e1 sin vos en el verano\") and \"Hey, baby tell me, where do you see something in me you don't detest?\" (Spanish: \"Oye, dime nena, \u00bfad\u00f3nde ves, ahora algo en m\u00ed, que no detestes?\").\n\"Por\".\nWritten alongside partner Patricia Salazar, the lyrics of \"Por\" (Spanish preposition \"through\", also \"by\" and \"for\") are one of the most atypical in Spinetta's career, consisting of forty seven loose nouns chosen to fit the pre-existing melodic lines. For instance, the poem begins: \"Tree, leaf, jump, light, approximation, furniture, wool, taste, foot, tea, sea, gas, look\" (Spanish: \"\u00c1rbol, hoja, salto, luz, aproximaci\u00f3n, mueble, lana, gusto, pie, t\u00e9, mar, gas, mirada\"). The technique has been compared to concrete poetry and the Dadaist exquisite corpse.\nIn addition to choosing the words to fit the song, the duo also did so because of their meaning. Spinetta explained: \"['Por' was an exercise on] how I could make the song say a word and at the same time be telling a narrative, so to speak. Although that is not exactly what I was looking for, to narrate something, but to have the words go with the music and talk [about something].\" The track has been described as a \"maximum disarticulation of the poetic discourse\", a \"rupture of the syntagma\" and \"perhaps [Spinetta's] most radicalized and surrealist song.\" When asked if the words responded to a hidden logic, Spinetta replied: \"It is kind of a surreal logic. [...] Since the music was already written, it was all a matter of the words entering right into the metric.'\"Gesticulador\"' ('gesticulator'), for example, is set to fit in.\"\nRegarding the song's lyrics, Pablo Schanton of \"Rolling Stone Argentina\" reflected: \"There is a rediscovery of the poetic dimension of words that can only be achieved by freeing them from the sentence.\" \"La Tercera\"'s Alejandro Jofr\u00e9 felt that \"Por\" \"proves that Spinetta was a free and modern creator.\"\n\"Supercher\u00eda\".\nSpinetta leaves his acoustic vein in \"Supercher\u00eda\" (a variation of Spanish \"s\"uperstici\u00f3n\"\", English: \"superstition\" \"quackery\", particularly practiced on or by the ignorant) \"trickery\"), a song that according to journalist Walter Gazzo, would \"fit very well\" in Pescado Rabioso's previous albums. He described it as a \"typical\" rock track that features \"rhythmic and climatic cuts\" that bring it closer to jazz. \"Rockaxis\"'s Pedro Ogrodnik C. felt that \"Supercher\u00eda\" possessed \"an air more typical of Almendra\" due to the participation of Emilio Del Guercio and Rodolfo Garc\u00eda. The song has at least three different sections that are linked together. It starts with a waltz-like, triple meter cadence, with Spinetta singing the lyric \"Superstition\" (Spanish: \"Superstici\u00f3n\") and a kind of scatting.\n\"La sed verdadera\".\n\"La sed verdadera\" (English: \"The True Thirst\") has been considered \"one of the most inspired, intimate, and personal tracks that Luis ever recorded.\" Spinetta opens the song: \"I know well you've heard about me/And today we meet here/But peace/In me you'll never find it/If it's not in you/In me you'll never find it\" (Spanish: \"\"S\u00e9 muy bien que has o\u00eddo hablar de m\u00ed\"/\"Y hoy nos vemos aqu\u00ed\"/\"Pero la paz\"/\"En m\u00ed nunca la encontrar\u00e1s\"/\"Si no es en vos\"/\"En m\u00ed nunca la encontrar\u00e1s\"\").\nSpinetta stated that the song's lyrics are about the \"intimacy\" and \"immensity\" of being. The \"true thirst\" of the title refers to what Spinetta described as the urge \"to cover, recognize and make the universe familiar\". He explained:\nNot only man is made of the universe because the molecules are created in the universe, which is incumbent on the Earth and all the planets, but also, having his star soul is what makes the being speak of its inner immensity. That is to say, not only because of the biological, critical sense, but because of its poetic and abyssal nature.\nThe song seems to explore or tap into feelings of metaphysical angst related to being vs nothingness:\n\"Around your living room or outside of it you're not there/But there's someone else who's there/And it's not me/I'm only talking to you from here/He must be/The music that you've never made\" (Spanish: \"Por tu living o fuera de all\u00ed no est\u00e1s/Pero hay otro que est\u00e1/Y yo no soy/Yo s\u00f3lo te hablo desde aqu\u00ed/\u00c9l debe ser/La m\u00fasica que nunca hiciste\")\nand later concludes:\n\"The lights leaping in the distance/aren't waiting for you to go and turn them off\" (Spanish: \"Las luces que saltan a lo lejos/No esperan que vayas a apagarlas\")\nSide two.\n\"Cantata de puentes amarillos\".\nThe acoustic 9-minute \"Cantata de puentes amarillos\" (English: \"Cantata of yellow bridges\") is the album's centerpiece and \"most impactful\" song. It once again only features Spinetta and his guitar, who put the song together in the recording studio by superimposing voices and guitars that he recorded himself. It has been described as a combination of English progressive folk with Argentine folk music.\nOrganized as a suite, the song goes through five distinct sections that Spinetta referred to as \"modules\". In this sense, it is considered a \"similar exploration\" to his previous composition \"Crist\u00e1lida\", included in Pescado Rabioso's \"Pescado 2\". Spinetta noted that \"while the modules of 'Crist\u00e1lida' are repeated in a rotating way, those of 'Cantata' are different from each other.\" CONICET's Jorge Monteleone described the song in 2010: \"the voice of Spinetta is articulated solitarily in unexpected harmonic resolutions of the acoustic guitar and alternates rhythms where the images and the enunciative registers [...] overlap in modules, different from each other.\" He considered \"Cantata de puentes amarillos\" to be a \"pulverization of the pop song\", linking it to \"Crist\u00e1lida\" and the Beatles' \"A Day in the Life\" (from \"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band\"). Santiago Giordano of \"La Voz del Interior\" felt that in the track, \"Spinetta overcomes the formal schemes of the \"canci\u00f3n\" genre.\"\n\"Cantata de puentes amarillos\" is the song in which the influence of Artaud's writings are most evident. Due to his reading of Artaud's \"Van Gogh, The Man Suicided by Society\", Spinetta came into contact with van Gogh's letters to his brother Theo and incorporated several images from them into the song's lyrics. For example, the \"yellow bridges\" (Spanish: \"puentes amarillos\") are presumedly inspired by \"Langlois Bridge at Arles\", his only painting featuring a yellow bridge. Furthermore, van Gogh's painting \"Road with Cypress and Star\" is referenced in the lyrics: \"Those shadows on the blue road/Where have they gone?/I compare them with cypresses I've only seen in dreams\" (Spanish: \"\"Aquellas sombras del camino azul\"/\"\u00bfD\u00f3nde est\u00e1n?\"/\"Yo las comparo con cipreses que vi\" s\"olo en sue\u00f1os\"\"). In one of his letters, van Gogh reflects on the suffering of a caged bird that has food and health, but still longs to be free like the other birds. This inspired Spinetta's lyrics: \"Look at the bird, he dies in his cage\" (Spanish: \"Mira el p\u00e1jaro, se muere en su jaula\").\n\"Bajan\".\n\"Bajan\" has been considered Spinetta's most Beatlesque song since the Almendra years. It is perhaps the most optimistic song on the record, referring to the passage of time from the place of youth with lyrics such as \"I have time to know whether/what I dream will end in something\" (Spanish: \"Tengo tiempo para saber/Si lo que sue\u00f1o concluye en algo\"). Spinetta once again refers to nature, with images like \"the old oak\", \"the day that sits to die\", \"the night that clouds endlessly\", and the sun and the moon as two ideal faces of the human.\" Kleiman felt that the final lines \"And besides/You are the sun/Gently as well/You can be the moon\" (Spanish: \"Y adem\u00e1s/Vos sos el sol/Despacio tambi\u00e9n/Pod\u00e9s ser la luna\") have a \"clear connection with hippie utopia, still present both in Luis' mind and in the dreams of his generation.\"\n\"A Starosta, el idiota\".\n(English \"To Starosta, the Idiot\") In the final verses of the song, Spinetta sings \"The idiot/I can't help him any longer/He'll burn/staring at the sun\" (Spanish: \"El idiota/ya nada puedo hacer por \u00e9l\"/\"\u00e9l se quemar\u00e1/mirando al sol\"). Daniel Mecca and Martina Nudelman of \"Clar\u00edn\" felt that these lyrics \"pose, as a synthesis, the root of the poetic concept of Spinetta: to not remain fixed in one place.\" In the psychedelic interlude, towards the end a small portion of the recording of \"She loves you\" by The Beatles can be heard.\n\"Las habladur\u00edas del mundo\".\nRichie Unterberger described it as \"a taut Latin-flavored rocker vaguely reminiscent of early Santana\". Sergio Ariza L\u00e1zaro of Diariocr\u00edtico.com felt the track sounded like Almendra's second album. The title means \"The chit-chat of the world\" (\"habladur\u00edas\": lit. \"sayings\", \"chit chat\", \"gossip\", \"rumors\") and part of the lyrics say \"I see, I see/words are never the best/to avoid going naked (\"Veo, veo las palabras nunca son/lo mejor para no/andar desnudos\") with \"V\"eo, veo\"\" (lit. \"I see, I see\") being also the name of a traditional children's guessing game. The chorus states \"I'm no longer tied to any dream/The chit chat of the world can't trap me any longer\" (\"No estoy atado a ning\u00fan sue\u00f1o ya/Las habladur\u00edas del mundo/no pueden atraparme\")\nRelease and promotion.\n\"Artaud\" was released in October 1973 on Talent-Microf\u00f3n. \"Todas las hojas son del viento\" was released alongside B-side \"Supercher\u00eda\" as the album's only promotional single that same year. Despite the novelty of its cover art, the label did not give \"Artaud\" any special promotional campaign and the album shared its October 1973 advertisement along with nine other titles, among them Leb\u00f3n's debut, \"Color Humano 3\", \"Confesiones de invierno\" and Aquelarre's \"Brumas\". Journalist and friend Miguel Grinberg helped promote the concert presentation of \"Artaud\" by interviewing Spinetta on Radio Municipal and by printing posters and banners. Upon release, a reviewer for specialized magazine \"Pelo\" praised the album as \"the freest and most beautiful long play that I heard in a long time.\" In its following issue, the magazine stated: \"If he wanted, Spinetta could develop a large part of his wealth of creative material as a soloist. He again demonstrated it magically in \"Artaud\".\"\nSpinetta presented \"Artaud\" with two morning shows at the Teatro Astral on Avenida Corrientes, one of the few and most emblematic venues where Argentine rock artists could perform during the early 1970s. Despite the sustained growth that the \"rock nacional\" movement had been experiencing, venues were made available sporadically and only in the morning or late night hours, as the genre had yet to \"reach the necessary status to deserve the central schedules.\" In addition to Spinetta as a soloist and alongside Pescado Rabioso and later Invisible, other acts that performed at Teatro Astral during those years include Manal, Moris, Color Humano, Sui G\u00e9neris and Crucis.\nOne of the Teatro Astral presentations took place before the album was released and the other some time later, although the exact dates are disputed. After the advent of the Internet, bootleg recordings of the shows have appeared on YouTube and blogs dedicated to Spinetta, becoming some of the artist's most celebrated unofficial releases. Of the two recordings that circulate on the Internet, only that of October 28, 1973, is the"}, "descending_order": ["43510821", "22635686", "43360336"], "permutation_1": ["22635686", "43510821", "43360336"], "permutation_2": ["43510821", "43360336", "22635686"], "permutation_3": ["43510821", "22635686", "43360336"]}
{"id": "2hop__825300_99606", "docs_added": {"30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "11978512": "Luasamotu\nIslet in Vaitupu atoll, Tuvalu\nLuasamotu is an uninhabited islet of Vaitupu, Tuvalu. Luasamotu on the reef off the eastern part of Vaitupu known as Matangi.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11978512", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["11978512", "30227"], "permutation_2": ["30227", "11978512"], "permutation_3": ["30227", "11978512"]}
{"id": "2hop__775806_125776", "docs_added": {"33163": "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart\nComposer (1756\u20131791)\nWolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 \u2013 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age resulted in more than 800 works representing virtually every Western classical genre of his time. Many of these compositions are acknowledged as pinnacles of the symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral repertoires. Mozart is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music, with his music admired for its \"melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture\".\nBorn in Salzburg, Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. At age five, he was already competent on keyboard and violin, had begun to compose, and performed before European royalty. His father took him on a grand tour of Europe and then three trips to Italy. At 17, he was a musician at the Salzburg court but grew restless and travelled in search of a better position. Mozart's search for employment led to positions in Paris, Mannheim, Munich, and again in Salzburg, during which he wrote his five violin concertos, Sinfonia Concertante, and Concerto for Flute and Harp, as well as sacred pieces and masses, the motet\u00a0\"Exsultate Jubilate\", and the opera \"Idomeneo,\" among other works.\nWhile visiting Vienna in 1781, Mozart was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He stayed in Vienna, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During Mozart's early years in Vienna, he produced several notable works, such as the opera \"Die Entf\u00fchrung aus dem Serail\", the \"Great Mass in C minor\", the \"Haydn\" Quartets and a number of symphonies. Throughout his Vienna years, Mozart composed over a dozen piano concertos, many considered some of his greatest achievements. In the final years of his life, Mozart wrote many of his best-known works, including his last three symphonies, culminating in the \"Jupiter\" Symphony, the serenade \"Eine kleine Nachtmusik\", his Clarinet Concerto, the operas \"The Marriage of Figaro\", \"Don Giovanni\", \"Cos\u00ec fan tutte\" and \"The Magic Flute\" and his Requiem. The Requiem was largely unfinished at the time of his death at age 35, the circumstances of which are uncertain and much mythologised.\nLife and career.\nEarly life.\nFamily and childhood.\nWolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on 27 January 1756 to Leopold Mozart and Anna Maria, n\u00e9e Pertl, at Getreidegasse 9 in Salzburg. Salzburg was the capital of the Archbishopric of Salzburg, an ecclesiastic principality in the Holy Roman Empire (today in Austria). He was the youngest of seven children, five of whom died in infancy. His elder sister was Maria Anna Mozart, nicknamed \"Nannerl\". Mozart was baptised the day after his birth, at St. Rupert's Cathedral in Salzburg. The baptismal record gives his name in Latinised form, as \"Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart\". He generally called himself \"Wolfgang Amad\u00e8 Mozart\" as an adult, but his name had many variants.\nLeopold Mozart, a native of Augsburg, then an Imperial Free City in the Holy Roman Empire, was a minor composer and an experienced teacher. In 1743, he was appointed as the fourth violinist in the musical establishment of Count Leopold Anton von Firmian, the ruling Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. Four years later, he married Anna Maria in Salzburg. Leopold became the orchestra's deputy Kapellmeister in 1763. During the year of his son's birth, Leopold published a violin textbook, \"Versuch einer gr\u00fcndlichen Violinschule\", which achieved success.\nWhen Nannerl was seven, she began keyboard lessons with her father, while her three-year-old brother looked on. Years later, after her brother's death, she reminisced:\nHe often spent much time at the clavier, picking out thirds, which he was ever striking, and his pleasure showed that it sounded good... In the fourth year of his age his father, for a game as it were, began to teach him a few minuets and pieces at the clavier... He could play it faultlessly and with the greatest delicacy, and keeping exactly in time... At the age of five, he was already composing little pieces, which he played to his father who wrote them down.\nThese early pieces, K. 1\u20135, were recorded in the \"Nannerl Notenbuch\". There is some scholarly debate about whether Mozart was four or five years old when he created his first musical compositions, though there is little doubt that Mozart composed his first three pieces of music within a few weeks of each other: K. 1a, 1b, and 1c.\nIn his early years, Wolfgang's father was his only teacher. Along with music, he taught his children languages and academic subjects. Biographer Solomon notes that, while Leopold was a devoted teacher to his children, there is evidence that Mozart was keen to progress beyond what he was taught. His first ink-spattered composition and his precocious efforts with the violin were of his initiative and came as a surprise to Leopold, who eventually gave up composing when his son's musical talents became evident.\n1762\u201373: Travel.\nWhile Wolfgang was young, his family made several European journeys in which he and Nannerl performed as child prodigies. These began with an exhibition in 1762 at the court of Prince-elector Maximilian III of Bavaria in Munich, and at the Imperial Courts in Vienna and Prague. A long concert tour followed, spanning three and a half years, taking the family to the courts of Munich, Mannheim, Paris, London, Dover, The Hague, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Mechelen and again to Paris, and back home via Z\u00fcrich, Donaueschingen, and Munich. During this trip, Wolfgang met many musicians and acquainted himself with the works of other composers. A particularly significant influence was Johann Christian Bach, whom he visited in London in 1764 and 1765. When he was eight years old, Mozart wrote his first symphony, most of which was probably transcribed by his father.\nThe family trips were often challenging, and travel conditions were primitive. They had to wait for invitations and reimbursement from the nobility, and they endured long, near-fatal illnesses far from home: first Leopold (London, summer 1764), then both children (The Hague, autumn 1765). The family again went to Vienna in late 1767 and remained there until December 1768.\nAfter one year in Salzburg, Leopold and Wolfgang set off for Italy, leaving Anna Maria and Nannerl at home. This tour lasted from December 1769 to March 1771. As with earlier journeys, Leopold wanted to display his son's abilities as a performer and a rapidly maturing composer. Wolfgang met Josef Myslive\u010dek and Giovanni Battista Martini in Bologna and was accepted as a member of the famous Accademia Filarmonica. There exists a myth, according to which, while in Rome, he heard Gregorio Allegri's \"Miserere\" twice in performance in the Sistine Chapel. Allegedly, he subsequently wrote it out from memory, thus producing the \"first unauthorised copy of this closely guarded property of the Vatican\". However, both the origin and plausibility of this account are disputed.\nIn Milan, Mozart wrote the opera \"Mitridate, re di Ponto\" (1770), which was performed with success. This led to further opera commissions. He returned with his father twice to Milan (August\u2013December 1771; October 1772\u00a0\u2013 March 1773) for the composition and premieres of \"Ascanio in Alba\" (1771) and \"Lucio Silla\" (1772). Leopold hoped these visits would result in a professional appointment for his son, and indeed ruling Archduke Ferdinand contemplated hiring Mozart, but owing to his mother Empress Maria Theresa's reluctance to employ \"useless people\", the matter was dropped and Leopold's hopes were never realised. Toward the end of the journey, Mozart wrote the solo motet \"Exsultate, jubilate\", K.165.\n1773\u201377: Employment at the Salzburg court.\nAfter finally returning with his father from Italy on 13 March 1773, Mozart was employed as a court musician by the ruler of Salzburg, Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. The composer had many friends and admirers in Salzburg and had the opportunity to work in many genres, including symphonies, sonatas, string quartets, masses, serenades, and a few minor operas. Between April and December 1775, Mozart developed an enthusiasm for violin concertos, producing a series of five (the only ones he ever wrote), which steadily increased in their musical sophistication. The last three\u2014K.\u00a0216, K.\u00a0218, K.\u00a0219\u2014are now staples of the repertoire. In 1776, he turned his efforts to piano concertos, culminating in the E\u266d concerto K.\u00a0271 of early 1777, considered by critics to be a breakthrough work.\nDespite these artistic successes, Mozart grew increasingly discontented with Salzburg and redoubled his efforts to find a position elsewhere. One reason was his low salary, 150 florins a year; Mozart longed to compose operas, and Salzburg provided only rare occasions for these. The situation worsened in 1775 when the court theatre was closed, especially since the other theatre in Salzburg was primarily reserved for visiting troupes.\nTwo long expeditions in search of work interrupted this long Salzburg stay. Mozart and his father visited Vienna from 14 July to 26 September 1773, and Munich from 6December 1774 to March 1775. Neither visit was successful, though the Munich journey resulted in a popular success with the premiere of Mozart's opera \"La finta giardiniera\".\n1777\u201378: Journey to Paris.\nIn August 1777, Mozart resigned his position at Salzburg and on 23 September ventured out once more in search of employment, with visits to Augsburg, Mannheim, Paris, and Munich.\nMozart became acquainted with members of the famous orchestra in Mannheim, the best in Europe at the time. He also fell in love with Aloysia Weber, one of four daughters of a musical family. There were prospects of employment in Mannheim, but they came to nothing, and Mozart left for Paris on 14 March 1778 to continue his search. One of his letters from Paris hints at a possible post as an organist at Versailles, but Mozart was not interested in such an appointment. He fell into debt and took to pawning valuables. The nadir of the visit occurred when Mozart's mother was taken ill and died on 3July 1778. There had been delays in calling a doctor\u2014probably, according to Halliwell, because of a lack of funds. Mozart stayed with Melchior Grimm at Marquise d'\u00c9pinay's residence, 5 rue de la Chauss\u00e9e-d'Antin.\nWhile Mozart was in Paris, his father was pursuing opportunities of employment for him in Salzburg. With the support of the local nobility, Mozart was offered a post as court organist and concertmaster. The annual salary was 450 florins, but he was reluctant to accept. By that time, relations between Grimm and Mozart had cooled, and Mozart moved out. After leaving Paris in September 1778 for Strasbourg, he lingered in Mannheim and Munich, still hoping to obtain an appointment outside Salzburg. In Munich, he again encountered Aloysia, now a very successful singer, but she was no longer interested in him. Mozart finally returned to Salzburg on 15 January 1779 and took up his new appointment, but his discontent with Salzburg remained undiminished.\nAmong the better-known works which Mozart wrote on the Paris journey are the A minor piano sonata, K.\u00a0310/300d, the \"Paris\" Symphony (No.\u00a031), which were performed in Paris on 12 and 18 June 1778; and the Concerto for Flute and Harp in C major, K. 299/297c.\nVienna.\n1781: Departure.\nIn January 1781, Mozart's opera \"Idomeneo\" premiered with \"considerable success\" in Munich. The following March, Mozart was summoned to Vienna, where his employer, Archbishop Colloredo, was attending the celebrations for the accession of Joseph II to the Austrian throne. For Colloredo, this was simply a matter of wanting his musical servant to be at hand (Mozart indeed was required to dine in Colloredo's establishment with the valets and cooks). He planned a bigger career as he continued in the archbishop's service; for example, he wrote to his father:\nMy main goal right now is to meet the emperor in some agreeable fashion, I am absolutely determined he should get to know me. I would be so happy if I could whip through my opera for him and then play a fugue or two, for that's what he likes.\nMozart did indeed soon meet the Emperor, who eventually was to support his career substantially with commissions and a part-time position.\nIn the same letter to his father just quoted, Mozart outlined his plans to participate as a soloist in the concerts of the \"Tonk\u00fcnstler-Societ\u00e4t\", a prominent benefit concert series; this plan as well came to pass after the local nobility prevailed on Colloredo to drop his opposition.\nColloredo's wish to prevent Mozart from performing outside his establishment was in other cases carried through, raising the composer's anger; one example was a chance to perform before the Emperor at Countess Thun's for a fee equal to half of his yearly Salzburg salary.\nThe quarrel with the archbishop came to a head in May: Mozart attempted to resign and was refused. The following month, permission was granted, but in a grossly insulting way: the composer was dismissed literally \"with a kick in the arse\", administered by the archbishop's steward, Count Arco. Mozart decided to settle in Vienna as a freelance performer and composer.\nThe quarrel with Colloredo was more difficult for Mozart because his father sided against him. Hoping fervently that he would obediently follow Colloredo back to Salzburg, Mozart's father exchanged intense letters with his son, urging him to be reconciled with their employer. Mozart passionately defended his intention to pursue an independent career in Vienna. The debate ended when Mozart was dismissed by the archbishop, freeing himself both of his employer and of his father's demands to return. Solomon characterizes Mozart's resignation as a \"revolutionary step\" that significantly altered the course of his life.\nEarly years.\nMozart's new career in Vienna began well. He often performed as a pianist, notably in a competition before the Emperor with Muzio Clementi on 24 December 1781, and he soon \"had established himself as the finest keyboard player in Vienna\". He also prospered as a composer, and in 1782 completed the opera \"Die Entf\u00fchrung aus dem Serail\" (\"The Abduction from the Seraglio\"), which premiered on 16 July 1782 and achieved considerable success. The work was soon being performed \"throughout German-speaking Europe\", and thoroughly established Mozart's reputation as a composer.\nNear the height of his quarrels with Colloredo, Mozart moved in with the Weber family, who had moved to Vienna from Mannheim. The family's father, Fridolin, had died, and the Webers were now taking in lodgers to make ends meet.\nMarriage and children.\nAfter failing to win the hand of Aloysia Weber, who was now married to the actor and artist Joseph Lange, Mozart's interest shifted to the third daughter of the family, Constanze.\nThe courtship did not go entirely smoothly; surviving correspondence indicates that Mozart and Constanze briefly broke up in April 1782, over an episode involving jealousy (Constanze had permitted another young man to measure her calves in a parlour game). Mozart also faced a very difficult task getting permission for the marriage from his father, Leopold.\nThe marriage took place in an atmosphere of crisis. Daniel Heartz suggests that eventually, Constanze moved in with Mozart, which would have placed her in disgrace by the mores of the time. Mozart wrote to Leopold on 31 July 1782, \"All the good and well-intentioned advice you have sent fails to address the case of a man who has already gone so far with a maiden. Further postponement is out of the question.\" Heartz relates, \"Constanze's sister Sophie had tearfully declared that her mother would send the police after Constanze if she did not return home [presumably from Mozart's apartment].\" On 4 August, Mozart wrote to Baroness von Waldst\u00e4tten, asking: \"Can the police here enter anyone's house in this way? Perhaps it is only a ruse of Madame Weber to get her daughter back. If not, I know no better remedy than to marry Constanze tomorrow morning or if possible today.\"\nThe couple were finally married on 4August 1782 in St. Stephen's Cathedral, the day before his father's consenting letter arrived in the mail. In the marriage contract, Constanze \"assigns to her bridegroom five hundred gulden which ... the latter has promised to augment with one thousand gulden\", with the total \"to pass to the survivor\". Further, all joint acquisitions during the marriage were to remain the common property of both. \nThe couple had six children, of whom only two survived infancy:\n1782\u201387.\nIn 1782 and 1783, Mozart became intimately acquainted with the work of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel as a result of the influence of Gottfried van Swieten, who owned many manuscripts of the Baroque masters. Mozart's study of these scores inspired compositions in the Baroque style and later influenced his musical language, for example in fugal passages in \"Die Zauberfl\u00f6te\" (\"The Magic Flute\") and the finale of Symphony No.\u00a041.\nIn 1783, Mozart and his wife visited his family in Salzburg. His father and sister were cordially polite to Constanze, but the visit prompted the composition of one of Mozart's great liturgical pieces, the Mass in C minor. Though not completed, it was premiered in Salzburg, with Constanze singing a solo part.\nMozart met Joseph Haydn in Vienna around 1784, and the two composers became friends. When Haydn visited Vienna, they sometimes played together in an impromptu string quartet. Mozart's six quartets dedicated to Haydn (K.\u00a0387, K.\u00a0421, K.\u00a0428, K.\u00a0458, K.\u00a0464, and K.\u00a0465) date from the period 1782 to 1785, and are judged to be a response to Haydn's Opus 33 set from 1781. Haydn wrote, \"posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years\" and in 1785 told Mozart's father: \"I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition.\"\nFrom 1782 to 1785 Mozart mounted concerts with himself as a soloist, presenting three or four new piano concertos in each season. Since space in the theatres was scarce, he booked unconventional venues: a large room in the Trattnerhof apartment building, and the ballroom of the Mehlgrube restaurant. The concerts were very popular, and his concertos premiered there are still firm fixtures in the repertoire. Solomon writes that during this period, Mozart created \"a harmonious connection between an eager composer-performer and a delighted audience, which was given the opportunity of witnessing the transformation and perfection of a major musical genre\".\nWith substantial returns from his concerts and elsewhere, Mozart and his wife adopted a more luxurious lifestyle. They moved to an expensive apartment, with a yearly rent of 460 florins. Mozart bought a fine fortepiano from Anton Walter for about 900 florins, and a billiard table for about 300. The Mozarts sent their son Karl Thomas to an expensive boarding school and kept servants. During this period Mozart saved little of his income.\nOn 14 December 1784, Mozart became a Freemason, admitted to the lodge Zur Wohlt\u00e4tigkeit (\"Beneficence\"). Freemasonry played an essential role in the remainder of Mozart's life: he attended meetings, a number of his friends were Masons, and on various occasions, he composed Masonic music, e.g. the Maurerische Trauermusik.\n1786\u201387: Return to opera.\nDespite the great success of \"Die Entf\u00fchrung aus dem Serail\", Mozart did little operatic writing for the next four years, producing only two unfinished works and the one-act \"Der Schauspieldirektor\". He focused instead on his career as a piano soloist and writer of concertos. Around the end of 1785, Mozart moved away from keyboard writing and began his famous operatic collaboration with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. The year 1786 saw the successful premiere of \"Le nozze di Figaro\" in Vienna. Its reception in Prague later in the year was even warmer, and this led to a second collaboration with Da Ponte: the opera \"Don Giovanni\", which premiered in October 1787 to acclaim in Prague, but less success in Vienna during 1788. The two are among Mozart's most famous works and are mainstays of operatic repertoire today, though at their premieres their musical complexity caused difficulty both for listeners and for performers. These developments were not witnessed by Mozart's father, who had died on 28 May 1787.\nIn December 1787, Mozart finally obtained a steady post under aristocratic patronage. Emperor Joseph II appointed him as his \"chamber composer\", a post that had fallen vacant the previous month on the death of Gluck. It was a part-time appointment, paying just 800 florins per year, and required Mozart only to compose dances for the annual balls in the Redoutensaal (see \"Mozart and dance\"). This modest income became important to Mozart when hard times arrived. Court records show that Joseph aimed to keep the esteemed composer from leaving Vienna in pursuit of better prospects.\nIn 1787, the young Ludwig van Beethoven spent several weeks in Vienna, hoping to study with Mozart. No reliable records survive to indicate whether the two composers ever met.\nLater years.\n1788\u201390.\nToward the end of the decade, Mozart's circumstances worsened. Around 1786, he ceased to appear frequently in public concerts, and his income shrank. This was a difficult time for musicians in Vienna because of the Austro-Turkish War: both the general level of prosperity and the ability of the aristocracy to support music had declined. According to Solomon, in 1788, Mozart saw a 66% decline in his income compared to his best years in 1781.\nBy mid-1788, Mozart and his family had moved from central Vienna to the suburb of Alsergrund. Although it has been suggested that Mozart aimed to reduce his rental expenses by moving to a suburb, as he wrote in his letter to Michael von Puchberg, Mozart had not reduced his expenses but merely increased the housing space at his disposal. Mozart began to borrow money, most often from his friend and fellow mason Puchberg; \"a pitiful sequence of letters pleading for loans\" survives. Maynard Solomon and others have suggested that Mozart was suffering from depression, and it seems his musical output slowed. Major works of the period include the last three symphonies (Nos.\u00a039, 40, and 41, all from 1788), and the last of the three Da Ponte operas, \"Cos\u00ec fan tutte\", premiered in 1790.\nAround this time, Mozart made some long journeys hoping to improve his fortunes, visiting Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin in the spring of 1789, and Frankfurt, Mannheim, and other German cities in 1790.\n1791.\nMozart's last year was, until his final illness struck, a time of high productivity\u2014and by some accounts, one of personal recovery. He composed a great deal, including some of his most admired works: the opera \"The Magic Flute\"; the final piano concerto (K.\u00a0595 in B\u266d); the Clarinet Concerto K.\u00a0622; the last in his series of string quintets (K.\u00a0614 in E\u266d); the motet Ave verum corpus K.\u00a0618; and the unfinished Requiem K.\u00a0626.\nMozart's financial situation, a source of anxiety in 1790, finally began to improve. Although the evidence is inconclusive, it appears that wealthy patrons in Hungary and Amsterdam pledged annuities to Mozart in return for the occasional composition. He is thought to have benefited from the sale of dance music written in his role as Imperial chamber composer. Mozart no longer borrowed large sums from Puchberg and began to pay off his debts.\nHe experienced great satisfaction in the public success of some of his works, notably \"The Magic Flute\" (which was performed several times in the short period between its premiere and Mozart's death) and the Little Masonic Cantata K.\u00a0623, premiered on 17 November 1791.\nFinal illness and death.\nMozart fell ill while in Prague for the premiere, on 6September 1791, of his opera \"La clemenza di Tito\", which was written in that same year on commission for Emperor Leopold II's coronation festivities. He continued his professional functions for some time and conducted the premiere of \"The Magic Flute\" on 30 September. His health deteriorated on 20 November, at which point he became bedridden, suffering from swelling, pain, and vomiting.\nMozart was nursed in his final days by his wife and her youngest sister and was attended by the family doctor, Thomas Franz Closset. He was mentally occupied with the task of finishing his Requiem, but the evidence that he dictated passages to his student Franz Xaver S\u00fcssmayr is minimal.\nMozart died in his home on at 12:55 am. The \"New Grove\" describes his funeral:\nMozart was interred in a common grave, in accordance with contemporary Viennese custom, at the St. Marx Cemetery outside the city on 7December. If, as later reports say, no mourners attended, that too is consistent with Viennese burial customs at the time; later Otto Jahn (1856) wrote that Salieri, S\u00fcssmayr, van Swieten and two other musicians were present. The tale of a storm and snow is false; the day was calm and mild.\nThe expression \"common grave\" refers to neither a communal grave nor a pauper's grave, but an individual grave for a member of the common people (i.e., not the aristocracy). Common graves were subject to excavation after ten years; the graves of aristocrats were not.\nThe cause of Mozart's death is not known with certainty. The official record of \"hitziges Frieselfieber\" (\"severe miliary fever\", referring to a rash that looks like millet seeds) is more a symptomatic description than a diagnosis. Researchers have suggested more than a hundred causes of death, including acute rheumatic fever, streptococcal infection, trichinosis, influenza, mercury poisoning, and a rare kidney ailment.\nMozart's modest funeral did not reflect his standing with the public as a composer; memorial services and concerts in Vienna and Prague were well attended. Indeed, in the period immediately after his death, his reputation rose substantially. Solomon describes an \"unprecedented wave of enthusiasm\" for his work; biographies were written first by Schlichtegroll, Niemetschek, and Nissen, and publishers vied to produce complete editions of his works.\nAppearance and character.\nMozart's physical appearance was described by tenor Michael Kelly in his \"Reminiscences\": \"a remarkably small man, very thin and pale, with a profusion of fine, fair hair of which he was rather vain\". His early biographer Niemetschek wrote, \"there was nothing special about [his] physique... He was small and his countenance, except for his large intense eyes, gave no signs of his genius.\" His facial complexion was pitted, a reminder of his childhood case of smallpox. Of his voice, his wife later wrote that it \"was a tenor, rather soft in speaking and delicate in singing, but when anything excited him, or it became necessary to exert it, it was both powerful and energetic.\"\nHe loved elegant clothing. Kelly remembered him at a rehearsal: \"[He] was on the stage with his crimson pelisse and gold-laced cocked hat, giving the time of the music to the orchestra.\" Based on paintings that researchers were able to find of Mozart, he seemed to wear a white wig for most of his formal occasions\u2014researchers of the Salzburg Mozarteum declared that only one of his fourteen portraits they had found showed him without his wig.\nMozart usually worked long and hard, finishing compositions at a tremendous pace as deadlines approached. He often made sketches and drafts; unlike Beethoven's, these are mostly not preserved, as his wife sought to destroy them after his death.\nMozart lived at the centre of the Viennese musical world and knew a significant number and variety of people: fellow musicians, theatrical performers, fellow Salzburgers, and aristocrats, including some acquaintance with Emperor Joseph II. Solomon considers his three closest friends to have been Gottfried von Jacquin, Count August Hatzfeld, and Sigmund Barisani; others included his elder colleague Joseph Haydn, singers Franz Xaver Gerl and Benedikt Schack, and the horn player Joseph Leutgeb. Leutgeb and Mozart carried on a kind of friendly mockery, often with Leutgeb as the butt of Mozart's practical jokes.\nHe enjoyed billiards, dancing, and kept pets, including a canary, a starling, a dog, and a horse for recreational riding. He had a startling fondness for scatological humour, which is preserved in his surviving letters, notably those written to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart around 1777\u20131778, and in his correspondence with his sister and parents. Mozart also wrote scatological music, a series of canons that he sang with his friends. He had an ear for languages, and having travelled all over Europe as a boy, was fluent in Latin, Italian, and French in addition to his native Salzburg dialect of German. He possibly also understood and spoke some English, having jokingly written \"You are an ass\" after his 19-year-old student Thomas Attwood made a thoughtless mistake on his exercise papers.\nMozart was raised a Catholic and remained a devout member of the Church throughout his life. He embraced the teachings of Freemasonry in 1784.\nWorks, musical style, and innovations.\nStyle.\nMozart's music, like Haydn's, stands as an archetype of the Classical style. At the time he began composing, European music was dominated by the \"style galant\", a reaction against the highly evolved intricacy of the Baroque. Progressively, and in large part at the hands of Mozart himself, the contrapuntal complexities of the late Baroque emerged once more, moderated and disciplined by new forms, and adapted to a new aesthetic and social milieu. Mozart was a versatile composer, and wrote in every major genre, including symphony, opera, the solo concerto, chamber music including string quartet and string quintet, and the piano sonata. These forms were not new, but Mozart advanced their technical sophistication and emotional reach. He almost single-handedly developed and popularised the Classical piano concerto. He wrote a great deal of religious music, including large-scale masses, as well as dances, divertimenti, serenades, and other forms of light entertainment.\nThe central traits of the Classical style are all present in Mozart's music. Clarity, balance, and transparency are the hallmarks of his work, but simplistic notions of its delicacy mask the exceptional power of his finest masterpieces, such as the Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K.\u00a0491; the Symphony No.\u00a040 in G minor, K.\u00a0550; and the opera \"Don Giovanni\". Charles Rosen makes the point forcefully:\nIt is only through recognising the violence and sensuality at the centre of Mozart's work that we can make a start towards a comprehension of his structures and an insight into his magnificence. In a paradoxical way, Schumann's superficial characterisation of the G minor Symphony can help us to see Mozart's daemon more steadily. In all of Mozart's supreme expressions of suffering and terror, there is something shockingly voluptuous.\nDuring his last decade, Mozart frequently exploited chromatic harmony. A notable instance is his \"String Quartet in C major\", K.\u00a0465 (1785), whose introduction abounds in chromatic suspensions, giving rise to the work's nickname, the \"Dissonance\" quartet.\nMozart had a gift for absorbing and adapting the valuable features of others' music. His travels helped in the forging of a unique compositional language. In London as a child, he met J.\u00a0C. Bach and heard his music. In Paris, Mannheim, and Vienna he met with other compositional influences, as well as the avant-garde capabilities of the Mannheim orchestra. In Italy, he encountered the Italian overture and opera buffa, both of which deeply affected the evolution of his practice. In London and Italy, the galant style was in the ascendent: simple, light music with a mania for cadencing; an emphasis on tonic, dominant, and subdominant to the exclusion of other harmonies; symmetrical phrases; and clearly articulated partitions in the overall form of movements. Some of Mozart's early symphonies are Italian overtures, with three movements running into each other; many are homotonal (all three movements having the same key signature, with the slow middle movement being in the relative minor). Others mimic the works of J.\u00a0C. Bach, and others show the simple rounded binary forms turned out by Viennese composers.\nAs Mozart matured, he progressively incorporated more features adapted from the Baroque. For example, the Symphony No.\u00a029 in A major K.\u00a0201 has a contrapuntal main theme in its first movement, and experimentation with irregular phrase lengths. Some of his quartets from 1773 have fugal finales, probably influenced by Haydn, who had included three such finales in his recently published Opus\u00a020 set. The influence of the \"Sturm und Drang\" (\"Storm and Stress\") period in music, with its brief foreshadowing of the Romantic era, is evident in the music of both composers at that time. Mozart's Symphony No.\u00a025 in G minor K.\u00a0183 is another excellent example.\nMozart would sometimes switch his focus between operas and instrumental music. He produced operas in each of the prevailing styles: opera buffa, such as \"Le nozze di Figaro\", \"Don Giovanni\", and \"Cos\u00ec fan tutte\"; opera seria, such as \"Idomeneo\"; and Singspiel, of which \"Die Zauberfl\u00f6te\" is the most famous example by any composer. In his later operas, he employed subtle changes in instrumentation, orchestral texture, and tone colour, for emotional depth and to mark dramatic shifts. Here, his advances in opera and instrumental composing interacted: his increasingly sophisticated use of the orchestra in the symphonies and concertos influenced his operatic orchestration, and his developing subtlety in using the orchestra to psychological effect in his operas was in turn reflected in his later non-operatic compositions.\nK\u00f6chel catalogue.\nFor unambiguous identification of works by Mozart, a \"K\u00f6chel catalogue number\" is used. This is a unique number assigned, in regular chronological order, to every one of his known works. A work is referenced by the abbreviation \"K.\" or \"KV\" followed by this number. The first edition of the catalogue was completed in 1862 by Ludwig von K\u00f6chel. It has since been repeatedly updated, as scholarly research improves knowledge of the dates and authenticity of individual works.\nInstruments.\nAlthough some of Mozart's early pieces were written for harpsichord, he also became acquainted in his early years with fortepianos made by Regensburg builder Franz Jakob Sp\u00e4th. Later when Mozart was visiting Augsburg, he was impressed by Stein fortepianos and shared this in a letter to his father. On 22 October 1777, Mozart had premiered his triple-piano concerto, K. 242, on instruments provided by Stein. The Augsburg Cathedral organist Demmler was playing the first, Mozart the second and Stein the third part. In 1783, when living in Vienna he purchased an instrument by Walter. Leopold Mozart confirmed the attachment which Mozart had with his Walter fortepiano: \"It is impossible to describe the hustle and bustle. Your brother's pianoforte has been moved at least twelve times from his house to the theatre or to someone else's house.\"\nInfluence.\nHis most famous pupil was Johann Nepomuk Hummel, a transitional figure between the Classical and Romantic eras whom the Mozarts took into their Vienna home for two years as a child. More important is the influence Mozart had on composers of later generations. Ever since the surge in his reputation after his death, studying his scores has been a standard part of a classical musician's training.\nLudwig van Beethoven, Mozart's junior by fifteen years, was deeply influenced by his work, with which he was acquainted as a teenager. He is thought to have performed Mozart's operas while playing in the court orchestra at Bonn and travelled to Vienna in 1787 hoping to study with the older composer. Some of have direct models in comparable works by Mozart, and he wrote cadenzas (WoO\u00a058) to Mozart's D minor piano concerto K.\u00a0466.\nComposers have paid homage to Mozart by writing sets of variations on his themes. Beethoven wrote four such sets (Op.\u00a066, WoO\u00a028, WoO\u00a040, WoO\u00a046). Others include Fernando Sor's Introduction and Variations on a Theme by Mozart (1821), Mikhail Glinka's Variations on a Theme from Mozart's Opera \"The Magic Flute\" (1822), Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin's Variations on \"L\u00e0 ci darem la mano\" from \"Don Giovanni\" (1827), and Max Reger's Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart (1914), based on the variation theme in the piano sonata K.\u00a0331. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who revered Mozart, wrote his Orchestral Suite No.\u00a04 in G, \"Mozartiana\" (1887), as a tribute to him.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nFurther reading.\n\"See for an extensive bibliography\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nExternal links.\nDigitized documents\nSheet music", "426151": "Symphony No. 41 (Mozart)\nLast symphony (1788) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart\nWolfgang Amadeus Mozart completed his Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551, on 10 August 1788. The longest and last symphony that he composed, it is regarded by many critics as among the greatest symphonies in classical music. The work is nicknamed the \"Jupiter\" Symphony, probably coined by the impresario Johann Peter Salomon.\nThe autograph manuscript of the symphony is preserved in the Berlin State Library.\nInstrumentation.\nThe symphony is scored for flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns in C and F, 2 trumpets in C, timpani in C and G, and strings.\nComposition and premiere.\nSymphony No.\u00a041 is the last of a set of three that Mozart composed in rapid succession during the summer of 1788. No.\u00a039 was completed on 26\u00a0June and No.\u00a040 on 25\u00a0July. Nikolaus Harnoncourt argues that Mozart composed the three symphonies as a unified work, pointing, among other things, to the fact that the Symphony No.\u00a041, as the final work, has no introduction (unlike No.\u00a039) but has a grand finale.\nAround the same time as he composed the three symphonies, Mozart was writing his piano trios in E major (K.\u00a0542) and C major (K.\u00a0548), his piano sonata No.\u00a016 in C (K.\u00a0545)\u2014the so-called \"Sonata facile\", and a violin sonatina (K. 547).\nIt is not known for certain whether Symphony No.\u00a041 was ever performed in the composer's lifetime. According to Otto Erich Deutsch, Mozart was preparing to hold a series of \"Concerts in the Casino\" around this time in a new casino in the Spiegelgasse owned by Philipp Otto. Mozart even sent a pair of tickets for this series to his friend Michael Puchberg. Historians have not determined whether the concert series was held or was cancelled for lack of interest. However, the new symphony in C was performed at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig in 1789\u2014at least according to its concert program.\nMovements.\nThe four movements are arranged in the traditional symphonic form of the Classical era:\nThe symphony typically has a duration of about 33 minutes.\nI. Allegro vivace.\nThe sonata form first movement's main theme begins with contrasting motifs: a threefold tutti outburst on the fundamental tone (respectively, by an ascending motion leading in a triplet from the dominant tone underneath to the fundamental one), followed by a more lyrical response.\n<score sound>\n\\new Staff \\with { instrumentName = #\"Fl.\"} \\relative c\" {\n \\key c \\major\n \\set Score.tempoHideNote = ##t\n \\tempo \"Allegro vivace\" 4 = 140\n \\time 4/4\n \\set Staff.midiInstrument = \"flute\"\n c'4\\f r8 \\times 2/3 { g16( a b } c4) r8 \\times 2/3 { g16( a b } |\n c4) r r2 | R1 | R1 |\n g4\\f r8 \\times 2/3 { d16( e fis } g4) r8 \\times 2/3 { d16( e fis } |\n g4) r4 r2 | R1 | R1 |\n c4 c8. c16 c4 c |\n a4 a8. a16 a4 a |\n b4 b8. b16 b4 b |\n\\new Staff \\with { instrumentName = #\"Vl. 1 \"} \\relative c\" {\n \\key c \\major\n \\time 4/4\n \\set Staff.midiInstrument = \"violin\"\n c,4\\f r8 \\times 2/3 { g16( a b } c4) r8 \\times 2/3 { g16( a b } |\n c4) r r r8 c'-.\\p |\n c4.( b8 d4. c8) |\n g'2( f4) r |\n <g, g,>4\\f r8 \\times 2/3 { d16( e fis } g4) r8 \\times 2/3 { d16( e fis } |\n g4) r r r8 d'-.\\p |\n d4.( c8 g'4. f!8) |\n a2( g4) r |\n <g, e' c'>\\f r8 g32^\"Vl. 2\"( f e d c4) <g' e' c' > |\n <f c' a'> r8 c'32^\"Vl. 2\"( bes a g f4) <a f'> |\n r8 d\"32^\"Vl. 2\"( c b! a g4) <d b' g'> |\n\u00bb\n</score>\nThis exchange is heard twice and then followed by an extended series of fanfares. What follows is a transitional passage where the two contrasting motifs are expanded and developed. From there, the second theme group begins with a lyrical section in G major which ends suspended on a seventh chord and is followed by a stormy section in C minor. Following a full stop, the expositional coda begins which quotes Mozart's insertion aria \"Un bacio di mano\", K.\u00a0541 and then ends the exposition on a series of fanfares.\nThe development begins with a modulation from G major to E\u266d major where the insertion-aria theme is then repeated and extensively developed. A false recapitulation then occurs where the movement's opening theme returns but softly and in F major. The first theme group's final flourishes then are extensively developed against a chromatically falling bass followed by a restatement of the end of the insertion aria then leading to C major for the true recapitulation. With the exception of the usual key transpositions and some expansion of the minor key sections, the recapitulation proceeds in a regular fashion.\n<score sound>\nII. Andante cantabile.\n\\relative c\" {\n \\key f \\major\n \\time 3/4\n \\set Staff.midiInstrument = \"string ensemble 2\"\n \\tempo \"Andante cantabile\"\n \\tempo 4 = 70\n f,8.\\p^\\markup { \\italic {con sordini}} (c16) a'4.. g32 (f\n e8) r8 bes'8-.\\f r8 r4\n g8.\\p (c,16) bes'4.. (a32 g\n f8) r8 c'8-.\\f r8 r4\n f8.\\p (c16) a'8. (\\tuplet 3/2 {g32 f e} g16 f e d)\n c8 (b bes4 a)\n</score>\nThe second movement, also in sonata form, is a sarabande of the French type in F major (the subdominant key of C major) similar to those found in the keyboard suites of J.S. Bach. This is the only symphonic slow movement of Mozart's to bear the indication \"cantabile.\" The opening melody, played by muted violins, is never allowed to conclude without interruption. After a development section, the recapitulation begins in the subdominant key of B\u266d major, though a secondary development section disrupts the recapitulation with rhythmic figures before the return to F.\n<score sound>\nIII. Menuetto: Allegretto \u2013 Trio.\n\\relative c\" {\n \\key c \\major\n \\time 3/4\n \\set Staff.midiInstrument = \"string ensemble 1\"\n \\tempo \"Menuetto: Allegretto\"\n \\tempo 4 = 130\n g'2\\p (fis4 f! e d c8) r8 b8-. r8 c-. r8\n e2 (d8) r8\n a'2 (g4 fis f e d8) r8 c8-. r8 d-. r8\n f2 (e8) r8\n d'2\\f (cis4 c!8) r8 a-. r8 fis-. r8\n d'2 (cis4 c!8) r8 a-. r8 fis-. r8\n d'-. r8 d-. r8 d-. r8\n e2 c8 (a)\n c2 a8 (fis)\n g4 r4 r4 \\bar \":|.\"\n</score>\nThe third movement, a \"menuetto\" marked \"allegretto\" is similar to a L\u00e4ndler, a popular Austrian folk dance form. Midway through the movement, there is a chromatic progression in which sparse imitative textures are presented by the woodwinds (bars 43\u201351) before the full orchestra returns. In the trio section of the movement, the four-note figure that will form the main theme of the last movement appears prominently (bars 68\u201371), but on the seventh degree of the scale rather than the first, and in a minor key rather than a major, giving it a very different character.\n<score sound>\nIV. Molto allegro.\n\\relative c\" {\n \\key c \\major\n \\time 2/2\n \\set Staff.midiInstrument = \"string ensemble 2\"\n \\tempo \"Molto allegro\"\n \\tempo 4 = 210\n c1\\p ( d f e)\n r4 a4-. a-. a-.\n g2. (f16 e d c)\n f4-. f-. e-. e-.\n cis8 (d e d) c (b a g)\n c1-.\\f d-. f-. e-.\n r4 a4-. a-. a-.\n a2. (g16 f e d c4)\n</score>\nFinally, a distinctive characteristic of this symphony is the five-voice quintuple fugato (representing the five major themes) at the end of the fourth movement. But there are fugal sections throughout the movement either by developing one specific theme or by combining two or more themes together, as seen in the interplay between the woodwinds. The main theme consists of four notes:\nFour additional themes are heard in the symphony's finale (which is in sonata form) and all five motifs are combined in the fugal coda.\nIn an article about the \"Jupiter\" Symphony, Sir George Grove wrote that \"it is for the finale that Mozart has reserved all the resources of his science, and all the power, which no one seems to have possessed to the same degree with himself, of concealing that science, and making it the vehicle for music as pleasing as it is learned. Nowhere has he achieved more\". Of the piece as a whole, he wrote that \"It is the greatest orchestral work of the world which preceded the French Revolution\".\nThe four-note theme is a common plainchant motif which can be traced back at least as far as Thomas Aquinas's \"Pange lingua gloriosi corporis mysterium\" from the 13th century. It was very popular with Mozart. It makes a brief appearance as early as his Symphony No.\u00a01 in 1764. Later, he used it in the Credo of an early \"Missa Brevis\" in F major, the first movement of his Symphony No.\u00a033 and trio of the minuet of this symphony. It also appears in the first movement of the violin sonata K481 as the basis for the development section.\nScholars are certain Mozart studied Michael Haydn's Symphony No.\u00a028 in C major, which also has a fugato in its finale and whose coda he very closely paraphrases for his own coda. Charles Sherman speculates that Mozart also studied Michael Haydn's Symphony No.\u00a023 in D major because he \"often requested his father Leopold to send him the latest fugue that Haydn had written\". The Michael Haydn Symphony No. 39, written only a few weeks before Mozart's, also has a fugato in the finale, the theme of which begins with two whole notes. Sherman has pointed out other similarities between the two almost perfectly contemporaneous works. The four-note motif is also the main theme of the contrapuntal finale of Michael's elder brother Joseph's Symphony No.\u00a013 in D major (1764).\nOrigin of the nickname.\nAccording to Franz Mozart, Wolfgang's younger son, the symphony was given the name \"Jupiter\" by Johann Peter Salomon, who had settled in London in around 1781. The name has also been attributed to Johann Baptist Cramer, an English music publisher. Reportedly, from the first chords, Mozart's Symphony No. 41 reminded Cramer of Jupiter and his thunderbolts.\n\"The Times\" of Thursday, May 8, 1817, carries an advertisement for a concert to be given in the Hanover Square Rooms on \"Friday next, May 9\" to include \"Grand Sinfonie (Jupiter), Mozart\". \"The Morning Post\" of Tuesday, June 3, 1817, carries an advertisement for printed music that includes: \"The celebrated movement from Mozart's sympathy [sic], called 'Jupiter', arranged as a Duet, by J. Wilkins, 4s. [4 shillings]\".\nResponses and reception.\nIn a phrase ascribed to musicologist Elaine Sisman in her book \"Mozart: The 'Jupiter' Symphony\", most responses ranged \"from admiring to adulatory, a gamut from A to A\".\nAs summarized below, the symphony garnered approbation from critics, theorists, composers, and biographers and came to be viewed as a canonized masterwork known for its fugue and its overall structure that exuded clarity.\nFirst recording.\nThe first known recording of the \"Jupiter\" Symphony is from around the beginning of World War I, issued by the Victor Talking Machine Company in its black label series, making it one of the first symphonies to be recorded using the acoustic recording technology.\nThe record labels list the Victor Concert Orchestra as the performers; they omit the conductor, who according to company ledgers was Walter B. Rogers.\nThe music was heavily abridged and issued on two records: 10-inch 17707 and 12-inch 35430. Victor published two widely separated takes of each of the first two movements under the same catalogue numbers. The distribution, recording dates, and approximate timings were as follows (data from corresponding matrix pages in the Discography of American Historical Recordings as indicated and physical copies of the records):\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources"}, "descending_order": ["426151", "33163"], "permutation_1": ["426151", "33163"], "permutation_2": ["426151", "33163"], "permutation_3": ["33163", "426151"]}
{"id": "2hop__128896_402482", "docs_added": {"12347383": "WPWT\nWPWT (870 AM) is a classic country music formatted broadcast radio station licensed to Colonial Heights, Tennessee, serving the Tri-Cities, VA/TN area. WPWT is owned and operated by Kenneth Clyde Hill.\nHistory.\nThis station signed on the air in 1984. Prior to its sign-on, it had been assigned the call letters WIKV by the FCC. Since these calls were deemed by constructing supervisor Dave Murray (husband of Martha Murray, the original licensee) to be too close to the calls of a prominent FM in the market, WIKQ, the calls were changed, to WPRQ. All this transpired before the station ever officially hit the air.\nThe original power was 5,000 watts. This was increased later to 10,000 watts. The signal, which shares the clear channel of 870\u00a0kHz with Class-A 50,000-watt WWL in New Orleans, was licensed as daytime-only, which it remains today.\nThe original format was contemporary Christian hit music. Other formats have followed, including news/talk and religious talk. In the late 1980s/early 1990s, the station was dark (silent) for a time, but was sold and returned to the air. Its current owner, Kenneth Clyde Hill, owns other stations as well.\nThe transmitter was originally a single tower near Warrior's Path State Park in Colonial Heights, Tennessee, which is south of Kingsport, Tennessee. It remains there today.\nThe original studio was in a residence, in Colonial Heights, Tennessee, which was owned by Dave and Martha Murray.\nIn November 2017, WPWT rebranded as \"96.3 The Possum\" (simulcasting on FM translators W242CQ 96.3 Colonial Heights and W264BY 100.7 Kingsport).\nManagement.\nDr. Kenneth C. Hill is the owner of WPWT and sister stations WHCB and WHGG.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "135376": "Colonial Heights, Tennessee\nColonial Heights is a census-designated place (CDP) in Sullivan County, Tennessee, United States. It is located within the city of Kingsport.\nThe population was 3,055 at the 2020 census down from 6,934 at the 2010 census, due to annexation by the city of Kingsport.\nIt is part of the Kingsport-Bristol-Bristol, TN-VA Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is a component of the Johnson City-Kingsport-Bristol, TN-VA Combined Statistical Area, commonly known as the \"Tri-Cities\" region.\nGeography.\nColonial Heights is located at (36.477769, -82.505278).\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of , of which, of it is land and of it (4.15%) is water.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2020 census.\nAs of the 2020 United States census, there were 3,055 people, 1,318 households, and 956 families residing in the CDP.\n2000 census.\nAs of the census of 2000, there were 7,067 people, 2,811 households, and 2,217 families residing in the CDP. The population density was . There were 2,936 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the CDP was 97.59% White, 0.88% African American, 0.16% Native American, 0.67% Asian, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 0.20% from other races, and 0.48% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.72% of the population.\nThere were 2,811 households, out of which 31.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 68.9% were married couples living together, 7.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 21.1% were non-families. 18.7% of all households were made up of individuals, and 7.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.51 and the average family size was 2.86.\nIn the CDP, the population was spread out, with 23.1% under the age of 18, 5.8% from 18 to 24, 27.8% from 25 to 44, 28.5% from 45 to 64, and 14.8% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 41 years. For every 100 females, there were 94.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 91.7 males.\nThe median income for a household in the CDP was $48,145, and the median income for a family was $53,651. Males had a median income of $41,604 versus $25,045 for females. The per capita income for the CDP was $26,210. About 4.8% of families and 6.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 8.4% of those under age 18 and 4.2% of those age 65 or over.", "1050203": "WKDU\nWKDU (91.7 FM) is a non-commercial educational radio station licensed to serve Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is owned by Drexel University and operated by Drexel students, with several alumni among its on-air staff. It is the only free-format non-commercial FM station in Philadelphia. Its transmitter is located atop Van Rensselaer Hall, a dormitory on the Drexel campus, in the University City section of Philadelphia. Its studio is in the basement of the Creese Student Center. WKDU was the 2010 and 2011 CMJ Station of the Year.\nHistory.\nStarting as carrier current station WMAX in 1958 (and later WXDT), WKDU began FM broadcasting on Saturday, July 17, 1971. In 1981, its power rating was raised from 10 watts to 110 watts, and in 1996, to 800 watts. WKDU originally shared time on its frequency with WPWT, a station established in the 1950s by Philadelphia Wireless Technical Institute. WPWT ceased operations in the late 1980s, allowing WKDU to extend its broadcast day to 24 hours on February 26, 1990. Previously, WKDU signed off between the hours of 2 PM to 10 PM.\nWKDU gained Black listeners in the 1970s due to \"The Black Experience in Music\", a group of Black students who called themselves \"communicators\", rather than DJs, as they educated the Black communities in Drexel and Philadelphia about their cultural happenings. \"The Black Experience\" began in 1971 and responsible for much of the station's programming through the 1980s. As of 2025, \"The Black Experience\" is still running weekly.\nProgramming.\nWKDU's musical format is free-form, meaning that playlists are dictated by the taste of the on-air DJs. In 1984, a progressive requirement was created and implemented to the Free Format music programming policy by then Music Director, Ginny McCracken. Each DJ can play whatever they want but at least 1/3 of their music must be a \"new release\".\nWKDU is known for its annual Electronic Music Marathon, an event that raises money for charities in the Philadelphia area. The Electronic Music Marathon ran from 1997\u20132007, then returned in Fall 2014 after a seven-year hiatus.\nThe WKDU Reggae Marathon has been held annually since 1984, during the Memorial Day Weekend. This special program includes not just reggae, but other similar Caribbean genres, such as Soca.\nA notable show on WKDU was \"Sounds of Jerusalem\" which ran from 1978 through 1994.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "38772514": "Watson, West Virginia\nWatson is an unincorporated community in Marion County, West Virginia, United States. Its post office is closed.\nThe community was named after Joseph Watson, the original owner of the town site.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "16337389": "Ron Joseph\nAmerican television producer (born 1941)\nRon Joseph (June 11, 1941, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - April 24, 2022) was an American television producer known for his dance shows. On his shows, he was usually referred to as RJ.\nEarly life.\nRon Joseph began his broadcasting career in 1950 on \"Ghost Riders\", a Philadelphia children's show on WCAU. Four years later, in 1954, Joseph was a panel member on \"Radio Rangers\", a dramatic series on WCAU-AM. It aired on Sunday mornings and was hosted by Phil Sheridan.\nIn 1955, as a teenager, RJ published and edited a local newspaper, \"The Upper Darby Tower\", in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.\nTV and radio career.\nThe next year (1956), Ron began as a regular teenage dancer on the locally-aired \"Bandstand\", hosted by Bob Horn and carried over WFIL.\nWhen Dick Clark took over the show, RJ stayed on as a regular. A year later, when \"Bandstand\" went national (as \"American Bandstand\"), Ron continued as a steady dancer and became the only regular to have a dance show of his own, like Clark.\nRon played Ramon Montenegro in an episode of Mama\u2019s Family ~ they entered & won a dance contest.\nIn 1960, Ron Joseph graduated from Upper Darby High and it was about that time that he joined the staff of WEEZ Radio (then licensed to Chester, Pennsylvania). He did a nightly top 40 music show on the station. For a time, he was a paid staff member.\nIn the meantime, there was a new TV station in town, WPCA-TV, Channel 17 in Philadelphia. Station owner Rev. Percy Crawford offered RJ his first television show, \"Spotlight on America\". At that time, regular TV receivers couldn't pick up channels 14 and higher without attaching an UHF converter to the set.\nRJ went to the same church as Philadelphia's legendary TV newsman, John Facenda, who would quite often pass along broadcast tips to RJ after the 11:15 morning mass at St. Bernadette's in Drexel Hill.\nBy 1966, RJ opened an \"under twenty-one\" discotheque on the University of Pennsylvania's campus at 40th and Walnut Streets. He also started another club, \"Groove\" at Broad and Locust where WIFI, 92.5 on the FM dial broadcast live. WIFI, at that time, was owned by Mel Gollub and was licensed to Norristown, Pennsylvania.\nThat same year, Ron began his own TV dance party on Philadelphia's WIBF-TV, Channel 29, and WPHL-TV, channel 17. He created his own version of a teen disco on television and syndicated his television show independently to such cities as Newark/New York City's WBTB-TV 68, KEMO-TV 20 and KTSF-TV 26 in San Francisco, KBSC-TV 52 in Los Angeles, KSCI-TV 18 in Hollywood and KFTY-TV 50 in Santa Rosa, California.\nIn 1982, Ron Joseph was broadcasting over XPRS, a Mexican radio station serving Los Angeles. The outlet had 50,000 watts and blanketed the sixteen western states, plus parts of Canada and a large part of Mexico.\nThen RJ had another TV program, \"Teen Scene Magazine\", which was carried in the Philadelphia area over WRBV-TV, Channel 65 (now Univision affiliate WUVP), a station licensed to Vineland, NJ. The show also aired over KFTY-TV, Channel 50 in Santa Rosa, California.\nIn 1985, RJ returned to radio on the Philadelphia Wireless Institute's station, WPWT-FM. At this same time, Ron created \"Beach Party USA\" which originated from Hunts Pier in Wildwood, NJ. The program aired over Wilmington's Channel 61, WTGI (now WPPX, iON).\nThe next year, RJ traveled to Europe for a new teenage motion picture, \"Gemini Twin Stars\", starring Gene Patrick as McGinty, who was \"discovered\" by RJ at his teen club on South Street in Center City Philadelphia.\nIn 1990, RJ pioneered a new field, low-powered television (LPTV). He was the moving force behind W07CB-TV, Philadelphia, which aired old TV shows like \"The Lone Ranger\", \"The Cisco Kid\", RJ's old dance shows and a telephone talk show. 1992 also saw Ron starting \"Open Mike\" over Channel 53 in Atlantic City over WWAC-TV.\nIn 1993, he opened low-power television station, W05AX-TV in Wildwood/Cape May and four years later, in 1997, WELL-TV, Channel 8 in Willow Grove.\nIn 1998, RJ began a disco \"block party\" Sunday afternoons on WNJC Radio and Friday evenings in 2000 at Cruisin' 92.1, WVLT. He has syndicated \"Disco USA\" to independent stations across the nation including KECG-FM in Oakland, California serving San Francisco, a city RJ has become obsessed with over the years. His TV dance show, \"The Nostalgia Dance Party\", continues to air in that market.\nRon Joseph was inducted into the Philadelphia Broadcast Pioneers in 2003.\nRJ briefly hosted a Saturday-afternoon talk show on WNWR called \"Something To Say With RJ\", from May 2006 to July 2007.\nTV projects.\nIn 2007, Ron Joseph appeared in the motion picture \"Fabulous\", the life story of Charlie Gracie, and in 2008, \"The Wages of Spin\", which chronicles the Philadelphia music scene from 1952 to 1963. The film primarily focuses on Dick Clark.", "108186": "Watsonville, California\nCity in California, United States\nWatsonville is a city in Santa Cruz County, California, in the Monterey Bay Area of the Central Coast of California. The population was 52,590 at the 2020 census. Predominantly Latino and Democratic, Watsonville is a self-designated sanctuary city.\nHistory.\nWatsonville's land was first inhabited by an Ohlone nation of Indigenous Californians. This tribe settled along the Pajaro Dunes since the land was fertile and useful for the cultivation of their plants and animals.\nSpanish era.\nIn 1769, the Portol\u00e1 expedition, the first Europeans to explore the area, arrived from the south, where soldiers described a big bird they saw near a large river. The story survived in the river's name, \"Rio del Pajaro\" (River of the Bird).\nThe Portol\u00e1 expedition continued north through the area, camping at one of the lakes north of town for five nights, on October 10\u201314, 1769. Many of the expedition's soldiers had scurvy, so progress was slow. While the sick recuperated, scouts led by Sergeant Ortega looked for the best way forward. On the fifth day, Franciscan missionary Juan Crespi, traveling with the expedition, wrote in his diary, \"This afternoon the explorers returned. The sergeant reported that he had gone ahead twelve leagues without getting any information of the harbor that we are looking for, and that he went to the foot of a high, white mountain range.\"\nDuring the October March 10, the explorers first saw the Coast redwood tree (Spanish: \"palo colorado\"). A bronze plaque at Pinto Lake (now a city park) commemorates the event. On October 15, the expedition continued to the northwest past today's community of Freedom, camping that night at Corralitos Lagoon.\nThe area became part of the Spanish colonial province of Las Californias, and in 1804 the northern part was split off to form Alta California. The area's pasture lands were assigned to the Spanish mission to the south, in Carmel.\nMexican era.\nWhen Mexico gained independence, it took possession of \"Alta California\". The Spanish missions were secularized in the 1830s, and the future Watsonville area became Rancho Bolsa del Pajaro, a land grant made to Sebastian Rodr\u00edguez in 1837. Under Mexico's more liberal land-ownership laws, immigration to the area from Europe and the U.S. increased.\nIn 1833, Governor Jos\u00e9 Figueroa granted Rancho San Andr\u00e9s to Jos\u00e9 Joaqu\u00edn Castro, who came to California as part of the 1776 Anza Expedition and later became patriarch of a locally prominent Californio family. His son, Juan Jos\u00e9 Castro, built the Castro Adobe, the only two-story hacienda in the area at the time. Today, the adobe is owned by California State Parks and is undergoing restoration to serve as the Rancho San Andr\u00e9s Castro Adobe State Historic Park.\nPost-Conquest era.\nFollowing the American Conquest of California and the ratification of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, the region began to receive large waves of migrants, mainly Americans from the East Coast and Europeans.\nJohn H. Watson and D. S. Gregory laid out the town in 1852. The community was incorporated as the Town of Watsonville on or about March 30, 1868, named after Watson. It became the City of Watsonville about 1889. Voters adopted a charter in 1903.\nModern era.\nFrom 1904 to 1913, the Watsonville Railway and Navigation Company operated an interurban railway to Port Watsonville on Monterey Bay, where it connected with an overnight produce packet boat to San Francisco.\nThe Watsonville riots was a race riot that occurred in January 1930. The riots were preceded by efforts of a local justice of the peace, D.W. Rohrback to stoke anti-Filipino sentiments. Filipino American farmworkers, then-U.S. nationals, were attacked by White Americans, including the killing of Fermin Tobera. In May 2023, the Monterey County Board of Supervisors issued an apology for the riot in form of a resolution during Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.\nMaggie Sue Earthquake of 2024.\nThe Maggie Sue Earthquake with a magnitude of 4.5, a shallow depth of 7 kilometers, and an epicenter of approximately 3 kilometers West of Moss Landing struck on September 29, 2024 at 2:47 AM local time. The Maggie Sue Earthquake had a high intensity rating with impacts especially strong throughout the Moss Landing, Aromas, and Watsonville areas, with intense shaking felt throughout Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties as far south as Salinas and Monterey.\nWatonsville's present city charter was adopted on February 16, 1960.\nIn 1985, cannery workers in Watsonville went on strike for 18 months to protest a decrease in their wages and benefits. In the end, they won a new contract. The movement was led by primarily Latina women, and was noted as a historic labor rights win for the Mexicano/Chicano community.\nGeography.\nWatsonville is in the Monterey Bay area, at the southern end of Santa Cruz County.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of , of which is land and is water.\nWatsonville has habitat areas that support the endangered species Santa Cruz Tarweed on the California coastal prairie ecosystem. Population has grown considerably since 1980, requiring preparation of a number of Environmental Impact Reports, with resultant development removing certain lands of the city from productive natural habitat.\nMost of the coastal land adjacent to Watsonville is part of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Another protected natural resource is the Watsonville wetlands, a system of fresh water sloughs with open water and native vegetation that extend from the city to the ocean. The slough system is only one of a few remaining wetland areas of its kind in the California Coastal Region. Not only are the wetlands home to approximately nine species of fish and over 200 species of waterfowl, raptors and songbirds; they are also a vital stop on the Pacific Flyway for thousands of migrating birds. In 1990, private and municipal organizations worked together to stop development and protect this resource. The Watsonville Wetlands Watch was established at that time with the task of restoring and protecting the slough's natural habit.\nClimate.\nThe National Weather Service cooperative station at the Watsonville Waterworks reports cool, relatively wet winters and mild, dry summers. Fog and low overcast is common in the night and morning, especially in the summer, when warmer air from inland areas mixes with the cool, moist air near Monterey Bay. Its K\u00f6ppen classification is cool-summer mediterranean climate.\nJanuary, normally the coldest month, has an average maximum of and an average minimum of . September, normally the warmest month, has an average maximum of and an average minimum of . There are an average of 4.9 days annually with highs of or higher and an average of 13.5 days annually with lows of or lower. Cool nights are common in the summer, due to the influence of chilly Monterey Bay. The record high temperature from the late 20th century onward was on October 2, 1980. (An earlier June day has been recorded as .) The record low temperature from the late 20th century onward was on December 22, 1990, though a low was previously recorded.\nAverage annual rainfall is , with measurable precipitation falling on an average of 61 days each year. The wettest year on record was 1983, with , and the driest was 1976, with . The most rainfall in one month was in February 1998. The most rainfall in 24 hours was on February 14, 2000. Although significant snowfall occurs several times a year on the higher mountains nearby, measurable snowfall is a rarity along Monterey Bay. On February 26, 2011, there was slight snowfall in Watsonville, but there was so little snow that it could not be measured.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2010.\nThe 2010 United States Census reported that Watsonville had a population of 51,199. The population density was . The racial makeup of Watsonville was 22,399 (43.7%) White, 358 (0.7%) African American, 629 (1.2%) Native American, 1,664 (3.3%) Asian, 40 (0.1%) Pacific Islander, 23,844 (46.6%) from other races, and 2,265 (4.4%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 41,656 persons (81.4%).\nThe Census reported that 50,671 people (99.0% of the population) lived in households, 322 (0.6%) lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 206 (0.4%) were institutionalized.\nThere were 13,528 households, out of which 7,130 (52.7%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 7,231 (53.5%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 2,375 (17.6%) had a female householder with no husband present, 903 (6.7%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 890 (6.6%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 107 (0.8%) same-sex married couples or partnerships. 2,466 households (18.2%) were made up of individuals, and 1,213 (9.0%) had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.75. There were 10,509 families (77.7% of all households); the average family size was 4.17.\nThe population was spread out, with 16,111 people (31.5%) under the age of 18, 6,001 people (11.7%) aged 18 to 24, 14,834 people (29.0%) aged 25 to 44, 10,014 people (19.6%) aged 45 to 64, and 4,239 people (8.3%) who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 29.2 years. For every 100 females, there were 99.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 98.2 males.\nThere were 14,089 housing units at an average density of , of which 5,957 (44.0%) were owner-occupied, and 7,571 (56.0%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 1.9%; the rental vacancy rate was 2.5%. 21,365 people (41.7% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 29,306 people (57.2%) lived in rental housing units.\nAs reported by the 2007-2011 American Community Survey, the median income for a household in the city was $46,073, and the median income for a family was $49,550. Male full-time year-round workers had a median income of $31,758 versus $31,155 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,407. About 18.6% of families and 20.4% of the population were below the poverty line, including 27.6% of those under age 18 and 15.6% of those age 65 or over. Therefore, although the median household income did rise significantly between 2000 and 2010 (unadjusted for inflation), the percentage of city residents experiencing poverty rose at a faster rate.\n2000.\nAs of the census of 2000, there were 44,265 people, 11,381 households, and 8,865 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 11,695 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 43.00% White, 0.75% African American, 1.74% Native American, 3.29% Asian, 0.12% Pacific Islander, 45.92% from other races, and 5.18% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 75.12% of the population, with the majority of these being of Mexican origin.\nWatsonville also has an Asian-American presence consisting of Chinese, Japanese and Filipinos despite the fact that the percentage of city residents of Asian descent has dropped since 1960. The Chinese, Japanese and Filipinos had residential sections and opened many businesses to serve their customer base in town during the mid 20th century. The history of East Asians in Watsonville dates back to the late 19th century and are involved in the local agricultural industry. It is presumed that as a result of Japanese-American internment during WWII, local farm companies began to attract Mexican migrant labor to the area in higher numbers and the town's racial-ethnic composition became more Hispanic in the 1980s and 1990s. There was also medium-sized Sikh population in Watsonville during the late 1990s to early 2000s that were involved mostly in the trucking industry, but most have moved away to the Central Valley for cheaper housing.\nThere were 11,381 households, out of which 49.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 56.3% were married couples living together, 16.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 22.1% were non-families. 17.6% of all households were made up of individuals, and 9.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.84 and the average family size was 4.26.\nIn the city, the population was spread out, with 34.0% under the age of 18, 11.8% from 18 to 24, 30.5% from 25 to 44, 15.1% from 45 to 64, and 8.6% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 27 years. For every 100 females, there were 101.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 100.4 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $37,617, and the median income for a family was $40,293. Males had a median income of $26,701 versus $22,225 for females. The per capita income for the city was $13,205. About 15.4% of families and 19.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 23.8% of those under age 18 and 8.8% of those age 65 or over.\nEconomy.\nWatsonville's main industries are construction, agriculture and manufacturing. Some of the largest companies headquartered in Watsonville are Monterey Mushrooms, Driscoll's, Martinelli's, Nordic Naturals, Graniterock, Granite Construction, West Marine, California Giant, A&I Transport Inc. and Orion Telescopes & Binoculars.\nWatsonville is known for producing crops and goods in the agricultural business along the Northern Pacific Coast. Its economy depends on its agro-business market and on distributing crops to different parts of the world. Crops fundamental to the economy include strawberries, cauliflower, broccoli, lettuce, natural plants, and raspberries. Companies such as Driscoll's and California Giant spend around $280 million every year to processing and transport fresh food to cities in the area, such as San Jose, Castroville, and Santa Cruz, where the numbers of these fruits and vegetables do not meet the demand. The city ranks among the most important U.S. farming cities for its agro-business market.\nWatsonville is the nation's 21st-largest city in which Latino workers are 75% of the total population.\nTop employers.\nAccording to the City of Watsonville's 2019 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the city's top employers are:\nParks and recreation.\nWatsonville maintains 28 parks, including a skate park, indoor soccer field, lake with boat rentals and RV camping, BBQ areas, handball courts, an art gallery, tennis courts, and volleyball courts. It also provides a wide variety of recreational opportunities, including hiking, boating, sports, bird-watching, and beach access.\nWatsonville Wetlands.\nThere are hiking trails throughout the city, and a nature center provides an intimate view of The Watsonville Wetlands.\nPajaro River.\nThere are several trailheads in the city that provide access to the Pajaro River and its tributaries via The Pajaro River Levee Trail Park. The levee trails are a popular spot for walking, running, and biking. In 2010, the City of Watsonville received a $424,000 grant to create a public access point to the Pajaro River for canoes and kayaks, including a parking lot, trail and public restroom.\nPinto Lake.\nThe city operates one of two parks at Pinto Lake, which includes a small watercraft launch ramp, group picnic areas, an RV park, a baseball field, volleyball, children's playground, boat rentals, fishing, and bird watching. Because Pinto Lake often turns a thick green due to different types of algae, the city prohibits the eating of fish caught in Pinto Lake. The second park at Pinto Lake is operated by the County of Santa Cruz and includes nature trails, disc golf, sports fields, and the UC Master Gardeners of Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties's Demonstration Garden.\nPajaro Dunes.\nThe Pajaro Dunes area of Watsonville attracts tourists to its high-end beachfront condos and timeshares.\nCulture.\nWatsonville is home to the annual Strawberry Festival, which includes a wide variety of strawberry-based foods, live music, vendors, and rides.\nNear the end of every summer, the Santa Cruz County Fair draws visitors from across and outside the county to its attractions, including rides, food, art exhibits, flower exhibits, pony rides, petting zoos, dog shows, and live music performances.\nThe Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds host a number of other events, including car races at the Ocean Speedway, dog training programs, wedding receptions, the annual Santa Cruz County Science Fair, and the Scottish Renaissance Festival. The fairgrounds also host concerts and trade shows. Notable past performers include Whitesnake, Dio, and Joan Jett.\nGovernment.\nWatsonville uses the council\u2013manager government model. The city is divided into seven districts, each of which elects a representative to the city council. The mayor is not elected; the office rotates annually in December. As of 2023[ [update]], the mayor is Vanessa Quiroz-Carter.\nWatsonville became a sanctuary city on April 11, 2017.\nWatsonville's overall crime index is 24.1% lower than Santa Cruz's, 15.4% lower than Salinas's, and 38.4% higher than Gilroy's.\nState and federal representation.\nIn the California State Legislature, Watsonville is in the Senate District, represented by Democrat John Laird, and the Assembly District, represented by Democrat Dawn Addis.\nIn the United States House of Representatives, Watsonville is in California's congressional district, represented by Democrat Jimmy Panetta.\nEducation.\nWatsonville's public schools fall under the jurisdiction of the Pajaro Valley Unified School District, which has an enrollment of about 18,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grades. Local high schools include Watsonville High School and Pajaro Valley High School.\nCabrillo College operates a branch campus in Watsonville.\nMost charter schools in Watsonville are under the jurisdiction of the Pajaro Valley Unified School District. They include Diamond Technology Institute, Alianza Charter School, Linscott Charter School, Pacific Coast Charter School, Watsonville Charter School of the Arts, and Ceiba College Preparatory Academy, with the exception of Watsonville Prep School, a proposed TK-8 charter school operated which is operated by Navigator Schools.\nPrivate schools in the city include Green Valley Christian School, Moreland Notre Dame, Monte Vista Christian, Mount Madonna School, Potter's House Community Christian School, St. Francis Central Coast Catholic High School, and Salesian Elementary and Junior High Schools.\nMedia.\nWatsonville and the surrounding area is served by the local newspaper, \"The Pajaronian\". KQET operates in Watsonville as a simulcast of the Bay Areas's KQ"}, "descending_order": ["12347383", "1050203", "38772514", "16337389", "108186", "135376"], "permutation_1": ["16337389", "38772514", "135376", "1050203", "108186", "12347383"], "permutation_2": ["16337389", "12347383", "38772514", "1050203", "108186", "135376"], "permutation_3": ["108186", "38772514", "1050203", "16337389", "135376", "12347383"]}
{"id": "2hop__155940_51888", "docs_added": {"20611428": "Southern Ocean\nOcean around Antarctica\nThe Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, comprises the southernmost waters of the world ocean, generally taken to be south of 60\u00b0\u00a0S latitude and encircling Antarctica. With a size of , it is the second-smallest of the five principal oceanic divisions, smaller than the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans, and larger than the Arctic Ocean. \nThe maximum depth of the Southern Ocean, using the definition that it lies south of 60th parallel, was surveyed by the Five Deeps Expedition in early February 2019. The expedition's multibeam sonar team identified the deepest point at 60\u00b0 28' 46\"S, 025\u00b0 32' 32\"W, with a depth of . The expedition leader and chief submersible pilot Victor Vescovo, has proposed naming this deepest point the \"Factorian Deep\", based on the name of the crewed submersible \"DSV Limiting Factor\", in which he successfully visited the bottom for the first time on February 3, 2019.\nBy way of his voyages in the 1770s, James Cook proved that waters encompassed the southern latitudes of the globe. Yet, geographers have often disagreed on whether the Southern Ocean should be defined as a body of water bound by the seasonally fluctuating Antarctic Convergence \u2014 an oceanic zone where cold, northward flowing waters from the Antarctic mix with warmer Subantarctic waters \u2014 or not defined at all, with its waters instead treated as the southern limits of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) finally settled the debate after the full importance of Southern Ocean overturning circulation had been ascertained, and the term \"Southern Ocean\" now defines the body of water which lies south of the northern limit of that circulation. \nThe Southern Ocean overturning circulation is important because it makes up the second half of the global thermohaline circulation, after the better known Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). Much like AMOC, it has also been substantially affected by climate change, in ways that have increased ocean stratification, and which may also result in the circulation substantially slowing or even passing a tipping point and collapsing outright. The latter would have adverse impacts on global weather and the function of marine ecosystems here, unfolding over centuries. The ongoing warming is already changing marine ecosystems here.\nDefinition and term use.\nBorders and names for oceans and seas were internationally agreed when the International Hydrographic Bureau, the precursor to the IHO, convened the First International Conference on 24 July 1919. The IHO then published these in its \"Limits of Oceans and Seas\", the first edition being 1928. Since the first edition, the limits of the Southern Ocean have moved progressively southward; since 1953, it has been omitted from the official publication and left to local hydrographic offices to determine their own limits.\nThe IHO included the ocean and its definition as the waters south of the 60th parallel south in its 2000 revisions, but this has not been formally adopted, due to continuing impasses about some of the content, such as the naming dispute over the Sea of Japan. The 2000 IHO definition was circulated as a draft edition in 2002, and is used by some within the IHO and other organizations, such as the \"CIA World Factbook\" and Merriam-Webster.\nThe Australian Government regards the Southern Ocean as lying immediately south of Australia (see <templatestyles src=\"Crossreference/styles.css\" />).\nThe National Geographic Society recognized the ocean officially in June 2021. Prior to this, it depicted it in a typeface different from the other world oceans; instead, it showed the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans extending to Antarctica on both its print and online maps. Map publishers using the term Southern Ocean on their maps include Hema Maps and GeoNova.\nPre-20th century.\n\"Southern Ocean\" is an obsolete name for the Pacific Ocean or South Pacific, coined by the Spanish explorer Vasco N\u00fa\u00f1ez de Balboa, the first European to discover the Pacific, who approached it from the north in Panama. The \"South Seas\" is a less archaic synonym. A 1745 British Act of Parliament established a prize for discovering a Northwest Passage to \"the Western and Southern Ocean of \"America\"\".\nAuthors using \"Southern Ocean\" to name the waters encircling the unknown southern polar regions used varying limits. James Cook's account of his second voyage implies New Caledonia borders it. Peacock's 1795 \"Geographical Dictionary\" said it lay \"to the southward of America and Africa\"; John Payne in 1796 used 40 degrees as the northern limit; the 1827 \"Edinburgh Gazetteer\" used 50 degrees. The \"Family Magazine\" in 1835 divided the \"Great Southern Ocean\" into the \"Southern Ocean\" and the \"Antarctick [\"sic\"] Ocean\" along the Antarctic Circle, with the northern limit of the Southern Ocean being lines joining Cape Horn, the Cape of Good Hope, Van Diemen's Land and the south of New Zealand.\nThe United Kingdom's \"South Australia Act 1834\" described the waters forming the southern limit of the new province of South Australia as \"the Southern Ocean\". The Colony of Victoria's \"Legislative Council Act 1881\" delimited part of the division of Bairnsdale as \"along the New South Wales boundary to the Southern ocean\".\n1928 delineation.\nIn the 1928 first edition of \"Limits of Oceans and Seas\", the Southern Ocean was delineated by land-based limits: Antarctica to the south, and South America, Africa, Australia, and Broughton Island, New Zealand to the north.\nThe detailed land-limits used were from Cape Horn in Chile eastward to Cape Agulhas in Africa, then further eastward to the southern coast of mainland Australia to Cape Leeuwin, Western Australia. From Cape Leeuwin, the limit then followed eastward along the coast of mainland Australia to Cape Otway, Victoria, then southward across Bass Strait to Cape Wickham, King Island, along the west coast of King Island, then the remainder of the way south across Bass Strait to Cape Grim, Tasmania.\nThe limit then followed the west coast of Tasmania southward to the South East Cape and then went eastward to Broughton Island, New Zealand, before returning to Cape Horn.\n1937 delineation.\nThe northern limits of the Southern Ocean were moved southward in the IHO's 1937 second edition of the \"Limits of Oceans and Seas\". From this edition, much of the ocean's northern limit ceased to abut land masses.\nIn the second edition, the Southern Ocean then extended from Antarctica northward to latitude 40\u00b0S between Cape Agulhas in Africa (long. 20\u00b0E) and Cape Leeuwin in Western Australia (long. 115\u00b0E), and extended to latitude 55\u00b0S between Auckland Island of New Zealand (165 or 166\u00b0E east) and Cape Horn in South America (67\u00b0W).\nAs is discussed in more detail below, prior to the 2002 edition the limits of oceans explicitly excluded the seas lying within each of them. The Great Australian Bight was unnamed in the 1928 edition, and delineated as shown in the figure above in the 1937 edition. It therefore encompassed former Southern Ocean waters\u2014as designated in 1928\u2014but was technically not inside any of the three adjacent oceans by 1937.\nIn the 2002 draft edition, the IHO have designated \"seas\" as subdivisions within \"oceans\", so the Bight would have still been within the Southern Ocean in 1937 if the 2002 convention were in place then. To perform direct comparisons of current and former limits of oceans it is necessary to consider, or at least be aware of, how the 2002 change in IHO terminology for \"seas\" can affect the comparison.\n1953 delineation.\nThe Southern Ocean did not appear in the 1953 third edition of \"Limits of Oceans and Seas\", a note in the publication read:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nInstead, in the IHO 1953 publication, the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans were extended southward, the Indian and Pacific Oceans (which had not previously touched pre 1953, as per the first and second editions) now abutted at the meridian of South East Cape, and the southern limits of the Great Australian Bight and the Tasman Sea were moved northward.\n2002 draft delineation.\nThe IHO readdressed the question of the Southern Ocean in a survey in 2000. Of its 68 member nations, 28 responded, and all responding members except Argentina agreed to redefine the ocean, reflecting the importance placed by oceanographers on ocean currents. The proposal for the name \"Southern Ocean\" won 18 votes, beating the alternative \"Antarctic Ocean\". Half of the votes supported a definition of the ocean's northern limit at the 60th parallel south\u2014with no land interruptions at this latitude\u2014with the other 14\u00a0votes cast for other definitions, mostly the 50th parallel south, but a few for as far north as the 35th parallel south. Notably, the Southern Ocean Observing System collates data from latitudes higher than 40 degrees south.\nA draft fourth edition of \"Limits of Oceans and Seas\" was circulated to IHO member states in August 2002 (sometimes referred to as the \"2000 edition\" as it summarized the progress to 2000). It has yet to be published due to 'areas of concern' by several countries relating to various naming issues around the world \u2013 primarily the Sea of Japan naming dispute \u2013 and there have been various changes: 60 seas were given new names, and even the name of the publication was changed. A reservation had also been lodged by Australia regarding the Southern Ocean limits. Effectively, the third edition\u2014which did not delineate the Southern Ocean leaving delineation to local hydrographic offices\u2014has yet to be superseded.\nDespite this, the fourth edition definition has partial \"de facto\" usage by many nations, scientists, and organisations such as the U.S. (the \"CIA World Factbook\" uses \"Southern Ocean\", but none of the other new sea names within the \"Southern Ocean\", such as the \"Cosmonauts Sea\") and Merriam-Webster, scientists and nations\u00a0\u2013 and even by some within the IHO. Some nations' hydrographic offices have defined their own boundaries; the United Kingdom used the 55th parallel south for example. Other organisations favour more northerly limits for the Southern Ocean. For example, \"Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica\" describes the Southern Ocean as extending as far north as South America, and confers great significance on the Antarctic Convergence, yet its description of the Indian Ocean contradicts this, describing the Indian Ocean as extending south to Antarctica.\nOther sources, such as the National Geographic Society, show the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans as extending to Antarctica on its maps, although articles on the National Geographic web site have begun to reference the Southern Ocean.\nA radical shift from past IHO practices (1928\u20131953) was also seen in the 2002 draft edition when the IHO delineated \"seas\" as subdivisions within the boundaries of \"oceans\". While the IHO are often considered the authority for such conventions, the shift brought them into line with the practices of other publications (e.g. the CIA \"World Fact Book\") which already adopted the principle that seas are contained within oceans. This difference in practice is markedly seen for the Pacific Ocean in the adjacent figure. Thus, for example, previously the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand was not regarded by the IHO as part of the Pacific, but as of the 2002 draft edition it is.\nThe new delineation of seas as subdivisions of oceans has avoided the need to interrupt the northern boundary of the Southern Ocean where intersected by Drake Passage which includes all of the waters from South America to the Antarctic coast, nor interrupt it for the Scotia Sea, which also extends below the 60th parallel south. The new delineation of seas has also meant that the long-time named seas around Antarctica, excluded from the 1953 edition (the 1953 map did not even extend that far south), are automatically part of the Southern Ocean.\nAustralian standpoint.\nIn Australia, cartographical authorities define the Southern Ocean as including the entire body of water between Antarctica and the south coasts of Australia and New Zealand, and up to 60\u00b0S elsewhere. Coastal maps of Tasmania and South Australia label the sea areas as \"Southern Ocean\" and Cape Leeuwin in Western Australia is described as the point where the Indian and Southern Oceans meet.\nHistory of exploration.\nUnknown southern land.\nExploration of the Southern Ocean was inspired by a belief in the existence of a \"Terra Australis\" \u2013 a vast continent in the far south of the globe to \"balance\" the northern lands of Eurasia and North Africa \u2013 which had existed since the times of Ptolemy. The rounding of the Cape of Good Hope in 1487 by Bartolomeu Dias first brought explorers within touch of the Antarctic cold, and proved that there was an ocean separating Africa from any Antarctic land that might exist. Ferdinand Magellan, who passed through the Strait of Magellan in 1520, assumed that the islands of Tierra del Fuego to the south were an extension of this unknown southern land. In 1564, Abraham Ortelius published his first map, \"Typus Orbis Terrarum\", an eight-leaved wall map of the world, on which he identified the \"Regio Patalis\" with \"Locach\" as a northward extension of the \"Terra Australis\", reaching as far as New Guinea.\nEuropean geographers continued to connect the coast of Tierra del Fuego with the coast of New Guinea on their globes, and allowing their imaginations to run riot in the vast unknown spaces of the south Atlantic, south Indian and Pacific oceans they sketched the outlines of the \"Terra Australis Incognita\" (\"Unknown Southern Land\"), a vast continent stretching in parts into the tropics. The search for this great south land was a leading motive of explorers in the 16th and the early part of the 17th centuries.\nThe Spaniard Gabriel de Castilla, who claimed having sighted \"snow-covered mountains\" beyond the 64\u00b0 S in 1603, is recognized as the first explorer that discovered the continent of Antarctica, although he was ignored in his time.\nIn 1606, Pedro Fern\u00e1ndez de Quir\u00f3s took possession for the king of Spain all of the lands he had discovered in Australia del Espiritu Santo (the New Hebrides) and those he would discover \"even to the Pole\".\nFrancis Drake, like Spanish explorers before him, had speculated that there might be an open channel south of Tierra del Fuego. When Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire discovered the southern extremity of Tierra del Fuego and named it Cape Horn in 1615, they proved that the Tierra del Fuego archipelago was of small extent and not connected to the southern land, as previously thought. Subsequently, in 1642, Abel Tasman showed that even New Holland (Australia) was separated by sea from any continuous southern continent.\nSouth of the Antarctic Convergence.\nThe visit to South Georgia by Anthony de la Roch\u00e9 in 1675 was the first-ever discovery of land south of the Antarctic Convergence, i.e. in the Southern Ocean/Antarctic. Soon after the voyage cartographers started to depict \"Roch\u00e9 Island\", honouring the discoverer. James Cook was aware of la Roch\u00e9's discovery when surveying and mapping the island in 1775.\nEdmond Halley's voyage in for magnetic investigations in the South Atlantic met the pack ice in 52\u00b0\u00a0S in January 1700, but that latitude (he reached off the north coast of South Georgia) was his farthest south. A determined effort on the part of the French naval officer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier to discover the \"South Land\" \u2013 described by a half legendary \"sieur de Gonneyville\" \u2013 resulted in the discovery of Bouvet Island in 54\u00b010\u2032\u00a0S, and in the navigation of 48\u00b0 of longitude of ice-cumbered sea nearly in 55\u00b0\u00a0S in 1730.\nIn 1771, Yves Joseph Kerguelen sailed from France with instructions to proceed south from Mauritius in search of \"a very large continent\". He lighted upon a land in 50\u00b0\u00a0S which he called South France, and believed to be the central mass of the southern continent. He was sent out again to complete the exploration of the new land, and found it to be only an inhospitable island which he renamed the Isle of Desolation, but which was ultimately named after him.\nSouth of the Antarctic Circle.\nThe obsession of the undiscovered continent culminated in the brain of Alexander Dalrymple, the brilliant and erratic hydrographer who was nominated by the Royal Society to command the Transit of Venus expedition to Tahiti in 1769. The command of the expedition was given by the admiralty to Captain James Cook. Sailing in 1772 with \"Resolution\", a vessel of 462 tons under his own command and \"Adventure\" of 336 tons under Captain Tobias Furneaux, Cook first searched in vain for Bouvet Island, then sailed for 20 degrees of longitude to the westward in latitude 58\u00b0\u00a0S, and then 30\u00b0 eastward for the most part south of 60\u00b0\u00a0S, a lower southern latitude than had ever been voluntarily entered before by any vessel. On 17 January 1773 the Antarctic Circle was crossed for the first time in history and the two ships reached 67\u00b0 15' S by 39\u00b0 35' E, where their course was stopped by ice.\nCook then turned northward to look for French Southern and Antarctic Lands, of the discovery of which he had received news at Cape Town, but from the rough determination of his longitude by Kerguelen, Cook reached the assigned latitude 10\u00b0 too far east and did not see it. He turned south again and was stopped by ice in 61\u00b0 52\u2032 S by 95\u00b0\u00a0E and continued eastward nearly on the parallel of 60\u00b0\u00a0S to 147\u00b0\u00a0E. On 16 March, the approaching winter drove him northward for rest to New Zealand and the tropical islands of the Pacific. In November 1773, Cook left New Zealand, having parted company with the \"Adventure\", and reached 60\u00b0\u00a0S by 177\u00b0\u00a0W, whence he sailed eastward keeping as far south as the floating ice allowed. The Antarctic Circle was crossed on 20 December and Cook remained south of it for three days, compelled after reaching 67\u00b0 31\u2032 S to stand north again in 135\u00b0\u00a0W.\nA long detour to 47\u00b0 50\u2032 S served to show that there was no land connection between New Zealand and Tierra del Fuego. Turning south again, Cook crossed the Antarctic Circle for the third time at 109\u00b0 30\u2032 W before his progress was once again blocked by ice four days later at 71\u00b0 10\u2032 S by 106\u00b0 54\u2032 W. This point, reached on 30 January 1774, was the farthest south attained in the 18th century. With a great detour to the east, almost to the coast of South America, the expedition regained Tahiti for refreshment. In November 1774, Cook started from New Zealand and crossed the South Pacific without sighting land between 53\u00b0 and 57\u00b0\u00a0S to Tierra del Fuego; then, passing Cape Horn on 29 December, he rediscovered Roch\u00e9 Island renaming it Isle of Georgia, and discovered the South Sandwich Islands (named \"Sandwich Land\" by him), the only ice-clad land he had seen, before crossing the South Atlantic to the Cape of Good Hope between 55\u00b0 and 60\u00b0. He thereby laid open the way for future Antarctic exploration by exploding the myth of a habitable southern continent. Cook's most southerly discovery of land lay on the temperate side of the 60th parallel, and he convinced himself that if land lay farther south it was practically inaccessible and without economic value.\nVoyagers rounding Cape Horn frequently met with contrary winds and were driven southward into snowy skies and ice-encumbered seas; but so far as can be ascertained none of them before 1770 reached the Antarctic Circle, or knew it, if they did.\nIn a voyage from 1822 to 1824, James Weddell commanded the 160-ton brig \"Jane\", accompanied by his second ship \"Beaufoy\" captained by Matthew Brisbane. Together they sailed to the South Orkneys where sealing proved disappointing. They turned south in the hope of finding a better sealing ground. The season was unusually mild and tranquil, and on 20 February 1823 the two ships reached latitude 74\u00b015'\u00a0S and longitude 34\u00b016'45\u2033\u00a0W the southernmost position any ship had ever reached up to that time. A few icebergs were sighted but there was still no sight of land, leading Weddell to theorize that the sea continued as far as the South Pole. Another two days' sailing would have brought him to Coat's Land (to the east of the Weddell Sea) but Weddell decided to turn back.\nFirst sighting of land.\nThe first land south of the parallel 60\u00b0 south latitude was discovered by the Englishman William Smith, who sighted Livingston Island on 19 February 1819. A few months later Smith returned to explore the other islands of the South Shetlands archipelago, landed on King George Island, and claimed the new territories for Britain.\nIn the meantime, the Spanish Navy ship \"San Telmo\" sank in September 1819 when trying to cross Cape Horn. Parts of her wreckage were found months later by sealers on the north coast of Livingston Island (South Shetlands). It is unknown if some survivor managed to be the first to set foot on these Antarctic islands.\nThe first confirmed sighting of mainland Antarctica cannot be accurately attributed to one single person. It can be narrowed down to three individuals. According to various sources, three men all sighted the ice shelf or the continent within days or months of each other: Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, a captain in the Russian Imperial Navy; Edward Bransfield, a captain in the Royal Navy; and Nathaniel Palmer, an American sailor out of Stonington, Connecticut. It is certain that the expedition, led by von Bellingshausen and Lazarev on the ships \"Vostok\" and \"Mirny\", reached a point within from Princess Martha Coast and recorded the sight of an ice shelf at that became known as the Fimbul Ice Shelf. On 30\u00a0January 1820, Bransfield sighted Trinity Peninsula, the northernmost point of the Antarctic mainland, while Palmer sighted the mainland in the area south of Trinity Peninsula in November 1820. Von Bellingshausen's expedition also discovered Peter I Island and Alexander I Island, the first islands to be discovered south of the circle.\nAntarctic expeditions.\nIn December 1839, as part of the United States Exploring Expedition of 1838\u201342 conducted by the United States Navy (sometimes called \"the Wilkes Expedition\"), an expedition sailed from Sydney, Australia, on the sloops-of-war and , the brig , the full-rigged ship , and two schooners and . They sailed into the Antarctic Ocean, as it was then known, and reported the discovery \"of an Antarctic continent west of the Balleny Islands\" on 25 January 1840. That part of Antarctica was later named \"Wilkes Land\", a name it maintains to this day.\nExplorer James Clark Ross passed through what is now known as the Ross Sea and discovered Ross Island (both of which were named for him) in 1841. He sailed along a huge wall of ice that was later named the Ross Ice Shelf. Mount Erebus and Mount Terror are named after two ships from his expedition: and .\nThe Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914, led by Ernest Shackleton, set out to cross the continent via the pole, but their ship, , was trapped and crushed by pack ice before they even landed. The expedition members survived after an epic journey on sledges over pack ice to Elephant Island. Then Shackleton and five others crossed the Southern Ocean, in an open boat called \"James Caird\", and then trekked over South Georgia to raise the alarm at the whaling station Grytviken.\nIn 1946, US Navy Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd and more than 4,700 military personnel visited the Antarctic in an expedition called Operation Highjump. Reported to the public as a scientific mission, the details were kept secret and it may have actually been a training or testing mission for the military. The expedition was, in both military or scientific planning terms, put together very quickly. The group contained an unusually high amount of military equipment, including an aircraft carrier, submarines, military support ships, assault troops and military vehicles. The expedition was planned to last for eight months but was unexpectedly terminated after only two months. With the exception of some eccentric entries in Admiral Byrd's diaries, no real explanation for the early termination has ever been officially given.\nCaptain Finn Ronne, Byrd's executive officer, returned to Antarctica with his own expedition in 1947\u20131948, with Navy support, three planes, and dogs. He disproved the notion that the continent was divided in two and established that East and West Antarctica was one single continent, i.e. that the Weddell Sea and the Ross Sea are not connected. The expedition explored and mapped large parts of Palmer Land and the Weddell Sea coastline, and identified the Ronne Ice Shelf, named by him for his wife Jackie Ronne. He covered by ski and dog sled \u2013 more than any other explorer in history. The Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition discovered and mapped the last unknown coastline in the world and was the first Antarctic expedition to ever include women.\nPost-Atlantic Treaty.\nThe Antarctic Treaty was signed on 1 December 1959 and came into force on 23 June 1961. Among other provisions, this treaty limits military activity in the Antarctic to the support of scientific research.\nThe first person to sail single-handed to Antarctica was the New Zealander David Henry Lewis, in 1972, in a steel sloop \"Ice Bird\".\nA baby, named Emilio Marcos de Palma, was born near Hope Bay on 7 January 1978, becoming the first baby born on the continent. He also was born further south than anyone in history.\nThe was a cruise ship operated by the Swedish explorer Lars-Eric Lindblad. Observers point to \"Explorer\"'s 1969 expeditionary cruise to Antarctica as the frontrunner for today's sea-based tourism in that region. \"Explorer\" was the first cruise ship used specifically to sail the icy waters of the Antarctic Ocean and the first to sink there when she struck an unidentified submerged object on 23 November 2007, reported to be ice, which caused a gash in the hull. \"Explorer\" was abandoned in the early hours of 23 November 2007 after taking on water near the South Shetland Islands in the Southern Ocean, an area which is usually stormy but was calm at the time. \"Explorer\" was confirmed by the Chilean Navy to have sunk at approximately position: 62\u00b0 24\u2032 South, 57\u00b0 16\u2032 West, in roughly 600\u00a0m of water.\nBritish engineer Richard Jenkins designed an unmanned saildrone that completed the first autonomous circumnavigation of the Southern Ocean on 3 August 2019 after 196 days at sea.\nThe first completely human-powered expedition on the Southern Ocean was accomplished on 25 December 2019 by a team of rowers comprising captain Fiann Paul (Iceland), first mate Colin O'Brady (US), Andrew Towne (US), Cameron Bellamy (South Africa), Jamie Douglas-Hamilton (UK) and John Petersen (US).\nGeography.\nThe Southern Ocean, geologically the youngest of the oceans, was formed when Antarctica and South America moved apart, opening the Drake Passage, roughly 30 million years ago. The separation of the continents allowed the formation of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.\nWith a northern limit at 60\u00b0S, the Southern Ocean differs from the other oceans in that its largest boundary, the northern boundary, does not abut a landmass (as it did with the first edition of \"Limits of Oceans and Seas\"). Instead, the northern limit is with the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans.\nOne reason for considering it as a separate ocean stems from the fact that much of the water of the Southern Ocean differs from the water in the other oceans. Water gets transported around the Southern Ocean fairly rapidly because of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current which circulates around Antarctica. Water in the Southern Ocean south of, for example, New Zealand, resembles the water in the Southern Ocean south of South America more closely than it resembles the water in the Pacific Ocean.\nThe Southern Ocean has typical depths of between over most of its extent with only limited areas of shallow water. The Southern Ocean's greatest depth of occurs at the southern end of the South Sandwich Trench, at 60\u00b000'S, 024\u00b0W. The Antarctic continental shelf appears generally narrow and unusually deep, its edge lying at depths up to , compared to a global mean of .\nEquinox to equinox in line with the sun's seasonal influence, the Antarctic ice pack fluctuates from an average minimum of in March to about in September, more than a sevenfold increase in area.\nSubdivisions.\nSubdivisions of oceans are geographical features such as \"seas\", \"straits\", \"bays\", \"channels\", and \"gulfs\". There are many sudivisions of the Southern Ocean defined in the never-approved 2002 draft fourth edition of the IHO publication \"Limits of Oceans and Seas\". In clockwise order these include (with sector):\nA number of these such as the 2002 Russian-proposed \"Cosmonauts Sea\", \"Cooperation Sea\", and \"Somov (mid-1950s Russian polar explorer) Sea\" are not included in the 1953 IHO document which remains currently in force, because they received their names largely originated from 1962 onward. Leading geographic authorities and atlases do not use these latter three names, including the 2014 10th edition World Atlas from the United States' National Geographic Society and the 2014 12th edition of the British Times Atlas of the World, but Soviet and Russian-issued maps do.\nBiggest seas.\nTop large seas:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNatural resources.\nThe Southern Ocean probably contains large, and possibly giant, oil and gas fields on the continental margin. Placer deposits, accumulation of valuable minerals such as gold, formed by gravity separation during sedimentary processes are also expected to exist in the Southern Ocean.\nManganese nodules are expected to exist in the Southern Ocean. Manganese nodules are rock concretions on the sea bottom formed of concentric layers of iron and manganese hydroxides around a core. The core may be microscopically small and is sometimes completely transformed into manganese minerals by crystallization. Interest in the potential exploitation of polymetallic nodules generated a great deal of activity among prospective mining consortia in the 1960s and 1970s.\nThe icebergs that form each year around in the Southern Ocean hold enough fresh water to meet the needs of every person on Earth for several months. For several decades there have been proposals, none yet to be feasible or successful, to tow Southern Ocean icebergs to more arid northern regions (such as Australia) where they can be harvested.\nNatural hazards.\nIcebergs can occur at any time of year throughout the ocean. Some may have drafts up to several hundred meters; smaller icebergs, iceberg fragments and sea-ice (generally 0.5 to 1\u00a0m thick) also pose problems for ships. The deep continental shelf has a floor of glacial deposits varying widely over short distances.\nSailors know latitudes from 40 to 70 degrees south as the \"Roaring Forties\", \"Furious Fifties\" and \"Shrieking Sixties\" due to high winds and large waves that form as winds blow around the entire globe unimpeded by any land-mass. Icebergs, especially in May to October, make the area even more dangerous. The remoteness of the region makes sources of search and rescue scarce.\nPhysical oceanography.\nAntarctic Circumpolar Current and Antarctic Convergence.\nWhile the Southern is the second smallest ocean it contains the unique and highly energetic Antarctic Circumpolar Current which moves perpetually eastward \u2013 chasing and joining itself, and at in length \u2013 it comprises the world's longest ocean current, transporting of water \u2013 100 times the flow of all the world's rivers.\nSeveral processes operate along the coast of Antarctica to produce, in the Southern Ocean, types of water masses not produced elsewhere in the oceans of the Southern Hemisphere. One of these is the Antarctic Bottom Water, a very cold, highly saline, dense water that forms under sea ice. Another is Circumpolar Deep Water, a mixture of Antarctic Bottom Water and North Atlantic Deep Water.\nAssociated with the Circumpolar Current is the Antarctic Convergence encircling Antarctica, where cold northward-flowing Antarctic waters meet the relatively warmer waters of the subantarctic, Antarctic waters predominantly sink beneath subantarctic waters, while associated zones of mixing and upwelling create a zone very high in nutrients. These nurture high levels of phytoplankton with associated copepods and Antarctic krill, and resultant foodchains supporting fish, whales, seals, penguins, albatrosses and a wealth of other species.\nThe Antarctic Convergence is considered to be the best natural definition of the northern extent of the Southern Ocean.\nUpwelling.\nLarge-scale upwelling is found in the Southern Ocean. Strong westerly (eastward) winds blow around Antarctica, driving a significant flow of water northward. This is actually a type of coastal upwelling. Since there are no continents in a band of open latitudes between South America and the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, some of this water is drawn up from great depths. In many numerical models and observational syntheses, the Southern Ocean upwelling represents the primary means by which deep dense water is brought to the surface. Shallower, wind-driven upwelling is also found off the west coasts of North and South America, northwest and southwest Africa, and southwest and southeast Australia, all associated with oceanic subtropical high pressure circulations.\nRoss and Weddell gyres.\nThe Ross Gyre and Weddell Gyre are two gyres that exist within the Southern Ocean. The gyres are located in the Ross Sea and Weddell Sea respectively, and both rotate clockwise. The gyres are formed by interactions between the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and the Antarctic Continental Shelf.\nSea ice has been noted to persist in the central area of the Ross Gyre. There is some evidence that global warming has resulted in some decrease of the salinity of the waters of the Ross Gyre since the 1950s.\nDue to the Coriolis effect acting to the left in the Southern Hemisphere and the resulting Ekman transport away from the centres of the Weddell Gyre, these regions are very productive due to upwelling of cold, nutrient rich water.\nObservation.\nObservation of the Southern Ocean is coordinated through the Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS). This provides access to meta data for a significant proportion of the data collected in the regions over the past decades including hydrographic measurements and ocean currents. The data provision is set up to emphasize records that are related to Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs) for the ocean region south of 40\u00b0S.\nClimate.\nSea temperatures vary from about \u22122 to 10\u00a0\u00b0C (28 to 50\u00a0\u00b0F). Cyclonic storms travel eastward around the continent and frequently become intense because of the temperature contrast between ice and open ocean. The ocean from about latitude 40 south to the Antarctic Circle has the strongest average winds found anywhere on Earth. In winter the ocean freezes outward to 65 degrees south latitude in the Pacific sector and 55 degrees south latitude in the Atlantic sector, lowering surface temperatures well below 0 degrees Celsius. At some coastal points, persistent intense drainage winds from the interior keep the shoreline ice-free throughout the winter.\nBiodiversity.\nAnimals.\nA variety of marine animals exist and rely, directly or indirectly, on the phytoplankton in the Southern Ocean. Antarctic sea life includes penguins, blue whales, orcas, colossal squids and fur seals. The emperor penguin is the only penguin that breeds during the winter in Antarctica, while the Ad\u00e9lie penguin breeds farther south than any other penguin. The rockhopper penguin has distinctive feathers around the eyes, giving the appearance of elaborate eyelashes. King penguins, chinstrap penguins, and gentoo penguins also breed in the Antarctic.\nThe Antarctic fur seal was very heavily hunted in the 18th and 19th centuries for its pelt by sealers from the United States and the United Kingdom. The Weddell seal, a \"true seal\", is named after Sir James Weddell, commander of British sealing expeditions in the Weddell Sea. Antarctic krill, which congregates in large schools, is the keystone species of the ecosystem of the Southern Ocean, and is an important food organism for whales, seals, leopard seals, fur seals, squid, icefish, penguins, albatrosses and many other birds.\nThe benthic communities of the seafloor are diverse and dense, with up to 155,000 animals found in . As the seafloor environment is very similar all around the Antarctic, hundreds of species can be found all the way around the mainland, which is a uniquely wide distribution for such a large community. Deep-sea gigantism is common among these animals.\nA census of sea life carried out during the International Polar Year and which involved some 500 researchers was released in 2010. The research is part of the global Census of Marine Life (CoML) and has disclosed some remarkable findings. More than 235 marine organisms live in both polar regions, having bridged the gap of . Large animals such as some cetaceans and birds make the round trip annually. More surprising are small forms of life such as mudworms, sea cucumbers and free-swimming snails found in both polar oceans. Various factors may aid in their distribution \u2013 fairly uniform temperatures of the deep ocean at the poles and the equator which differ by no more than , and the major current systems or marine conveyor belt which transport egg and larva stages. Among smaller marine animals generally assumed to be the same in the Antarctica and the Arctic, more detailed studies of each population have often\u2014but not always\u2014revealed differences, showing that they are closely related cryptic species rather than a single bipolar species.\nBirds.\nThe rocky shores of mainland Antarctica and its offshore islands provide nesting space for over 100 million birds every spring. These nesters include species of albatrosses, petrels, skuas, gulls and terns. The insectivorous South Georgia pipit is endemic to South Georgia and some smaller surrounding islands. Freshwater ducks inhabit South Georgia and the Kerguelen Islands.\nThe flightless penguins are all located in the Southern Hemisphere, with the greatest concentration located on and around Antarctica. Four of the 18 penguin species live and breed on the mainland and its close offshore islands. Another four species live on the subantarctic islands. Emperor penguins have four overlapping layers of feathers, keeping them warm. They are the only Antarctic animal to breed during the winter.\nFish.\nThere are relatively few fish species in few families in the Southern Ocean. The most species-rich family are the snailfish (Liparidae), followed by the cod icefish (Nototheniidae) and eelpout (Zoarcidae). Together the snailfish, eelpouts and notothenioids (which includes cod icefish and several other families) account for almost <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />9\u204410 of the more than 320 described fish species of the Southern Ocean (tens of undescribed species also occur in the region, especially among the snailfish). Southern Ocean snailfish are generally found in deep waters, while the icefish also occur in shallower waters.\nIcefish.\nCod icefish (Nototheniidae), as well as several other families, are part of the Notothenioidei suborder, collectively sometimes referred to as icefish. The suborder contains many species with antifreeze proteins in their blood and tissue, allowing them to live in water that is around or slightly below . Antifreeze proteins are also known from Southern Ocean snailfish.\nThe crocodile icefish (family Channichthyidae), also known as white-blooded fish, are only found in the Southern Ocean. They lack hemoglobin in their blood, resulting in their blood being colourless. One Channichthyidae species, the mackerel icefish (\"Champsocephalus gunnari\"), was once the most common fish in coastal waters less than deep, but was overfished in the 1970s and 1980s. Schools of icefish spend the day at the seafloor and the night higher in the water column eating plankton and smaller fish.\nThere are two species from the genus \"Dissostichus\", the Antarctic toothfish (\"Dissostichus mawsoni\") and the Patagonian toothfish (\"Dissostichus eleginoides\"). These two species live on the seafloor deep, and can grow to around long weighing up to , living up to 45 years. The Antarctic toothfish lives close to the Antarctic mainland, whereas the Patagonian toothfish lives in the relatively warmer subantarctic waters. Toothfish are commercially fished, and overfishing has reduced toothfish populations.\nAnother abundant fish group is the genus \"Notothenia\", which like the Antarctic toothfish have antifreeze in their bodies.\nAn unusual species of icefish is the Antarctic silverfish (\"Pleuragramma antarcticum\"), which is the only truly pelagic fish in the waters near Antarctica.\nMammals.\nSeven pinniped species inhabit Antarctica. The largest, the elephant seal (\"Mirounga leonina\"), can reach up to , while females of the smallest, the Antarctic fur seal (\"Arctophoca gazella\"), reach only . These two species live north of the sea ice, and breed in harems on beaches. The other four species can live on the sea ice. Crabeater seals (\"Lobodon carcinophagus\") and Weddell seals (\"Leptonychotes weddellii\") form breeding colonies, whereas leopard seals (\"Hydrurga leptonyx\") and Ross seals (\"Ommatophoca rossii\") live solitary lives. Although these species hunt underwater, they breed on land or ice and spend a great deal of time there, as they have no terrestrial predators.\nThe four species that inhabit sea ice are thought to make up 50% of the total biomass of the world's seals. Crabeater seals have a population of around 15 million, making them one of the most numerous large animals on the planet. The New Zealand sea lion (\"Phocarctos hookeri\"), one of the rarest and most localised pinnipeds, breeds almost exclusively on the subantarctic Auckland Islands, although historically it had a wider range. Out of all permanent mammalian residents, the Weddell seals live the furthest south.\nThere are 10 cetacean species found in the Southern Ocean: six baleen whales, and four toothed whales. The largest of these, the blue whale (\"Balaenoptera musculus\"), grows to long weighing 84 tonnes. Many of these species are migratory, and travel to tropical waters during the Antarctic winter.\nInvertebrates.\nArthropods.\nFive species of krill, small free-swimming crustaceans, have been found in the Southern Ocean. The Antarctic krill (\"Euphausia superba\") is one of the most abundant animal species on earth, with a biomass of around 500 million tonnes. Each individual is long and weighs over . The swarms that form can stretch for kilometres, with up to 30,000 individuals per , turning the water red. Swarms usually remain in deep water during the day, ascending during the night to feed on plankton. Many larger animals depend on krill for their own survival. During the winter when food is scarce, adult Antarctic krill can revert to a smaller juvenile stage, using their own body as nutrition.\nMany benthic crustaceans have a non-seasonal breeding cycle, and some raise their young in a brood pouch. \"Glyptonotus antarcticus\" is an unusually large benthic isopod, reaching in length weighing . Amphipods are abundant in soft sediments, eating a range of items, from algae to other animals. The amphipods are highly diverse with more than 600 recognized species found south of the Antarctic Convergence and there are indications that many undescribed species remain. Among these are several \"giants\", such as the iconic epimeriids that are up to long.\nSlow moving sea spiders are common, sometimes growing as large as a human hand. They feed on the corals, sponges, and bryozoans that litter the seabed.\nMolluscs, urchins, squid and sponges.\nMany aquatic molluscs are present in Antarctica. Bivalves such as \"Adamussium colbecki\" move around on the seafloor, while others such as \"Laternula elliptica\" live in burrows filtering the water above.\nThere are around 70 cephalopod species in the Southern Ocean, the largest of which is the colossal squid (\"Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni\"), which at up to is among the largest invertebrate in the world. Squid makes up most of the diet of some animals, such as grey-headed albatrosses and sperm whales, and the warty squid (\"Moroteuthis ingens\") is one of the subantarctic's most preyed upon species by vertebrates.\nThe sea urchin genus \"Abatus\" burrow through the sediment eating the nutrients they find in it. Two species of salps are common in Antarctic waters: \"Salpa thompsoni\" and \"Ihlea racovitzai\". \"Salpa thompsoni\" is found in ice-free areas, whereas \"Ihlea racovitzai\" is found in the high-latitude areas near ice. Due to their low nutritional value, they are normally only eaten by fish, with larger animals such as birds and marine mammals only eating them when other food is scarce.\nAntarctic sponges are long-lived and sensitive to environmental changes due to the specificity of the symbiotic microbial communities within them. As a result, they function as indicators of environmental health.\nEnvironment.\nIncreased solar ultraviolet radiation resulting from the Antarctic ozone hole has reduced marine primary productivity (phytoplankton) by as much as 15% and has started damaging the DNA of some fish. Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, especially the landing of an estimated five to six times more Patagonian toothfish than the regulated fishery, likely affects the sustainability of the stock. Long-line fishing for toothfish causes a high incidence of seabird mortality.\nInternational agreements.\nAll international agreements regarding the world's oceans apply to the Southern Ocean. It is also subject to several regional agreements:\nThe Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) prohibits commercial whaling south of 40 degrees south (south of 60 degrees south between 50 degrees and 130 degrees west). Japan regularly does not recognize this provision, because the sanctuary violates IWC charter. Since the scope of the sanctuary is limited to commercial whaling, in regard to its whaling permit and whaling for scientific research, a Japanese fleet carried out an annual whale-hunt in the region. On 31 March 2014, the International Court of Justice ruled that Japan's whaling program, which Japan has long claimed is for scientific purposes, was a cloak for commercial whaling, and no further permits would be granted.\nThe \"Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals\" is part of the \"Antarctic Treaty System\". It was signed at the conclusion of a multilateral conference in London on 11 February 1972.\nThe \"Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources\" is part of the \"Antarctic Treaty System\". It entered into force on 7 April 1982 with a goal to preserve marine life and environmental integrity in and near Antarctica. It was established largely due to concerns that an increase in krill catches in the Southern Ocean could seriously impact populations of other marine life which are dependent upon krill for food.\nMany nations prohibit the exploration for and the exploitation of mineral resources south of the fluctuating Antarctic Convergence, which lies in the middle of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and serves as the dividing line between the very cold polar surface waters to the south and the warmer waters to the north. The Antarctic Treaty covers the portion of the globe south of 60 degrees south; it prohibits new claims to Antarctica.\nThe \"Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources\" applies to the area south of 60\u00b0 South latitude as well as the areas further north up to the limit of the Antarctic Convergence.\nEconomy.\nBetween 1 July 1998 and 30 June 1999, fisheries landed , of which 85% consisted of krill and 14% of Patagonian toothfish. International agreements came into force in late 1999 to reduce illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, which in the 1998\u201399 season landed five to six times more Patagonian toothfish than the regulated fishery.\nPorts and harbors.\nMajor operational ports include: Rothera Station, Palmer Station, Villa Las Estrellas, Esperanza Base, Mawson Station, McMurdo Station, and offshore anchorages in Antarctica.\nFew ports or harbors exist on the southern (Antarctic) coast of the Southern Ocean, since ice conditions limit use of most shores to short periods in midsummer; even then some require icebreaker escort for access. Most Antarctic ports are operated by government research stations and, except in an emergency, remain closed to commercial or private vessels; vessels in any port south of 60 degrees south are subject to inspection by Antarctic Treaty observers.\nThe Southern Ocean's southernmost port operates at McMurdo Station at . Winter Quarters Bay forms a small harbor, on the southern tip of Ross Island where a floating ice pier makes port operations possible in summer. Operation Deep Freeze personnel constructed the first ice pier at McMurdo in 1973.\nBased on the original 1928 IHO delineation of the Southern Ocean (and the 1937 delineation if the Great Australian Bight is considered integral), Australian ports and harbors between Cape Leeuwin and Cape Otway on the Australian mainland and along the west coast of Tasmania would also be identified as ports and harbors existing in the Southern Ocean. These would include the larger ports and harbors of Albany, Thevenard, Port Lincoln, Whyalla, Port Augusta, Port Adelaide, Portland, Warrnambool, and Macquarie Harbour.\nEven though organizers of several yacht races define their routes as involving the Southern Ocean, the actual routes don't enter the actual geographical boundaries of the Southern Ocean. The routes involve instead South Atlantic, South Pacific and Indian Ocean.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1668108": "Murray Mouth\nMurray Mouth is the point at which the River Murray meets the Southern Ocean. The Murray Mouth's location is changeable. Historical records show that the channel out to sea moves along the sand dunes over time. At times of greater river flow and rough seas, the two bodies of water would erode the sand dunes to create a new channel leaving the old one to silt and disappear.\nDescription.\nThe mouth of the Murray River is about south east of Goolwa and about south-south-east of the Adelaide city centre in the gazetted localities of Coorong and Goolwa South. The mouth is an opening in the coastal dune system which separates the river system from the ocean and which extends from near Goolwa in a south-easterly direction along the continental coastline for about . The mouth divides the dune system into two peninsulas. The peninsula on the west side is Sir Richard Peninsula which terminates at the mouth with a point named Pullen Spit. The peninsula on the east side is Younghusband Peninsula which terminates at the mouth with a point known in some sources as Sleepy Hollow.\nWater flows throughout the mouth from two directions. Firstly, the flow from the west passes along a passage known as the Goolwa Channel which is bounded by Hindmarsh Island to its north side. Secondly, the flow from the east passes along a passage known as the Coorong Channel. The Coorong Channel itself is fed by the Mundoo Channel which passes between Hindmarsh Island and Mundoo Island to the north, and by the Tauwitchere Channel to the east.\nNatural history.\nFrom the Pleistocene about 2.5 million years ago, the Murray River terminated in a freshwater lake called Lake Bungunnia which included the area now occupied by the South Australia/New South Wales border. The lake drained less than a million years ago, creating the current course. It was suggested that the Murray may have taken a different course to the ocean, via Burra, South Australia and emptied into the Spencer Gulf, before being 'defeated' by the rise of the Mt Lofty Ranges. This has been studied by analysing the uplift date of the Mt Lofty Ranges and other geological data and found that this was not likely to be the case.\nHistory.\nEuropean discovery and use.\nDuring expeditions in 1829\u201330, Charles Sturt explored the Murray and its westward-flowing tributaries, finding that the mouth of the Murray was barely navigable to shipping. During the later 19th century with the discovery of gold, and the development of sheep and wheat farming along the Murray and its tributaries, the river became a major thoroughfare for the carriage of goods and produce. During the peak period of Murray River commerce (roughly 1855 to 1920) and before the development of rail and road transport, the Murray Mouth with its complex and unpredictable interaction between shallow, shifting and variable currents and the open sea, presented a major impediment to traffic between Adelaide and the Murray settlements, and many vessels foundered or were wrecked there.\nWater flow.\nRiver Murray water is used by farmers for irrigation in four of Australia's states, as well as supplying water to most towns along the river, and many further away through various pipelines. It has been widely accepted that too much water is being extracted; however business and political concerns make it difficult to remedy the problem. A visible symptom of the over-extraction of river water is the closing of the Murray Mouth.\nFrom October 2002 until 2010 dredging machines operated at the Murray Mouth.\nBetween 2002 and 2006, two machines operated moving sand from the channel to maintain a minimal flow from the sea and into the Coorong's lagoon system. Without the 24-hour dredging, the mouth was at risk of becoming silted and closing, cutting the supply of fresh seawater into the Coorong, which would then warm up, stagnate and die.\nIn mid-2006 the dredging was scaled back as a result of the improved conditions at the mouth. Now only one dredging machine operates, and permission was granted to one commercial operator to navigate the channel between Goolwa and the Coorong, passing the mouth. This operation finished in 2010.\nDredging was scheduled to resume in January 2015.\nDredging continues at a cost between $3m to $6m annually.\nProtected area status and other arrangements.\nAustralian government.\nThe Murray Mouth is immediately adjoined on its northern and eastern sides by the boundary of the Coorong and Lakes Alexandrina and Albert Wetland Ramsar site.\nSouth Australian government.\nThe Murray Mouth is located within a special purpose area within the Encounter Marine Park and is immediately adjoined on its northern and eastern sides by the boundary of the Coorong National Park.\nNon-statutory arrangements.\nThe Murray Mouth is adjoined on its northern and eastern sides by the boundary of the Coorong Important Bird Area which is an area considered by Birdlife International to be a place of \u2018international significance for the conservation of birds and other biodiversity.\u2019\nCitations and references.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["1668108", "20611428"], "permutation_1": ["20611428", "1668108"], "permutation_2": ["20611428", "1668108"], "permutation_3": ["20611428", "1668108"]}
{"id": "2hop__446648_125776", "docs_added": {"33163": "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart\nComposer (1756\u20131791)\nWolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 \u2013 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age resulted in more than 800 works representing virtually every Western classical genre of his time. Many of these compositions are acknowledged as pinnacles of the symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral repertoires. Mozart is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music, with his music admired for its \"melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture\".\nBorn in Salzburg, Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. At age five, he was already competent on keyboard and violin, had begun to compose, and performed before European royalty. His father took him on a grand tour of Europe and then three trips to Italy. At 17, he was a musician at the Salzburg court but grew restless and travelled in search of a better position. Mozart's search for employment led to positions in Paris, Mannheim, Munich, and again in Salzburg, during which he wrote his five violin concertos, Sinfonia Concertante, and Concerto for Flute and Harp, as well as sacred pieces and masses, the motet\u00a0\"Exsultate Jubilate\", and the opera \"Idomeneo,\" among other works.\nWhile visiting Vienna in 1781, Mozart was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He stayed in Vienna, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During Mozart's early years in Vienna, he produced several notable works, such as the opera \"Die Entf\u00fchrung aus dem Serail\", the \"Great Mass in C minor\", the \"Haydn\" Quartets and a number of symphonies. Throughout his Vienna years, Mozart composed over a dozen piano concertos, many considered some of his greatest achievements. In the final years of his life, Mozart wrote many of his best-known works, including his last three symphonies, culminating in the \"Jupiter\" Symphony, the serenade \"Eine kleine Nachtmusik\", his Clarinet Concerto, the operas \"The Marriage of Figaro\", \"Don Giovanni\", \"Cos\u00ec fan tutte\" and \"The Magic Flute\" and his Requiem. The Requiem was largely unfinished at the time of his death at age 35, the circumstances of which are uncertain and much mythologised.\nLife and career.\nEarly life.\nFamily and childhood.\nWolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on 27 January 1756 to Leopold Mozart and Anna Maria, n\u00e9e Pertl, at Getreidegasse 9 in Salzburg. Salzburg was the capital of the Archbishopric of Salzburg, an ecclesiastic principality in the Holy Roman Empire (today in Austria). He was the youngest of seven children, five of whom died in infancy. His elder sister was Maria Anna Mozart, nicknamed \"Nannerl\". Mozart was baptised the day after his birth, at St. Rupert's Cathedral in Salzburg. The baptismal record gives his name in Latinised form, as \"Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart\". He generally called himself \"Wolfgang Amad\u00e8 Mozart\" as an adult, but his name had many variants.\nLeopold Mozart, a native of Augsburg, then an Imperial Free City in the Holy Roman Empire, was a minor composer and an experienced teacher. In 1743, he was appointed as the fourth violinist in the musical establishment of Count Leopold Anton von Firmian, the ruling Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. Four years later, he married Anna Maria in Salzburg. Leopold became the orchestra's deputy Kapellmeister in 1763. During the year of his son's birth, Leopold published a violin textbook, \"Versuch einer gr\u00fcndlichen Violinschule\", which achieved success.\nWhen Nannerl was seven, she began keyboard lessons with her father, while her three-year-old brother looked on. Years later, after her brother's death, she reminisced:\nHe often spent much time at the clavier, picking out thirds, which he was ever striking, and his pleasure showed that it sounded good... In the fourth year of his age his father, for a game as it were, began to teach him a few minuets and pieces at the clavier... He could play it faultlessly and with the greatest delicacy, and keeping exactly in time... At the age of five, he was already composing little pieces, which he played to his father who wrote them down.\nThese early pieces, K. 1\u20135, were recorded in the \"Nannerl Notenbuch\". There is some scholarly debate about whether Mozart was four or five years old when he created his first musical compositions, though there is little doubt that Mozart composed his first three pieces of music within a few weeks of each other: K. 1a, 1b, and 1c.\nIn his early years, Wolfgang's father was his only teacher. Along with music, he taught his children languages and academic subjects. Biographer Solomon notes that, while Leopold was a devoted teacher to his children, there is evidence that Mozart was keen to progress beyond what he was taught. His first ink-spattered composition and his precocious efforts with the violin were of his initiative and came as a surprise to Leopold, who eventually gave up composing when his son's musical talents became evident.\n1762\u201373: Travel.\nWhile Wolfgang was young, his family made several European journeys in which he and Nannerl performed as child prodigies. These began with an exhibition in 1762 at the court of Prince-elector Maximilian III of Bavaria in Munich, and at the Imperial Courts in Vienna and Prague. A long concert tour followed, spanning three and a half years, taking the family to the courts of Munich, Mannheim, Paris, London, Dover, The Hague, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Mechelen and again to Paris, and back home via Z\u00fcrich, Donaueschingen, and Munich. During this trip, Wolfgang met many musicians and acquainted himself with the works of other composers. A particularly significant influence was Johann Christian Bach, whom he visited in London in 1764 and 1765. When he was eight years old, Mozart wrote his first symphony, most of which was probably transcribed by his father.\nThe family trips were often challenging, and travel conditions were primitive. They had to wait for invitations and reimbursement from the nobility, and they endured long, near-fatal illnesses far from home: first Leopold (London, summer 1764), then both children (The Hague, autumn 1765). The family again went to Vienna in late 1767 and remained there until December 1768.\nAfter one year in Salzburg, Leopold and Wolfgang set off for Italy, leaving Anna Maria and Nannerl at home. This tour lasted from December 1769 to March 1771. As with earlier journeys, Leopold wanted to display his son's abilities as a performer and a rapidly maturing composer. Wolfgang met Josef Myslive\u010dek and Giovanni Battista Martini in Bologna and was accepted as a member of the famous Accademia Filarmonica. There exists a myth, according to which, while in Rome, he heard Gregorio Allegri's \"Miserere\" twice in performance in the Sistine Chapel. Allegedly, he subsequently wrote it out from memory, thus producing the \"first unauthorised copy of this closely guarded property of the Vatican\". However, both the origin and plausibility of this account are disputed.\nIn Milan, Mozart wrote the opera \"Mitridate, re di Ponto\" (1770), which was performed with success. This led to further opera commissions. He returned with his father twice to Milan (August\u2013December 1771; October 1772\u00a0\u2013 March 1773) for the composition and premieres of \"Ascanio in Alba\" (1771) and \"Lucio Silla\" (1772). Leopold hoped these visits would result in a professional appointment for his son, and indeed ruling Archduke Ferdinand contemplated hiring Mozart, but owing to his mother Empress Maria Theresa's reluctance to employ \"useless people\", the matter was dropped and Leopold's hopes were never realised. Toward the end of the journey, Mozart wrote the solo motet \"Exsultate, jubilate\", K.165.\n1773\u201377: Employment at the Salzburg court.\nAfter finally returning with his father from Italy on 13 March 1773, Mozart was employed as a court musician by the ruler of Salzburg, Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. The composer had many friends and admirers in Salzburg and had the opportunity to work in many genres, including symphonies, sonatas, string quartets, masses, serenades, and a few minor operas. Between April and December 1775, Mozart developed an enthusiasm for violin concertos, producing a series of five (the only ones he ever wrote), which steadily increased in their musical sophistication. The last three\u2014K.\u00a0216, K.\u00a0218, K.\u00a0219\u2014are now staples of the repertoire. In 1776, he turned his efforts to piano concertos, culminating in the E\u266d concerto K.\u00a0271 of early 1777, considered by critics to be a breakthrough work.\nDespite these artistic successes, Mozart grew increasingly discontented with Salzburg and redoubled his efforts to find a position elsewhere. One reason was his low salary, 150 florins a year; Mozart longed to compose operas, and Salzburg provided only rare occasions for these. The situation worsened in 1775 when the court theatre was closed, especially since the other theatre in Salzburg was primarily reserved for visiting troupes.\nTwo long expeditions in search of work interrupted this long Salzburg stay. Mozart and his father visited Vienna from 14 July to 26 September 1773, and Munich from 6December 1774 to March 1775. Neither visit was successful, though the Munich journey resulted in a popular success with the premiere of Mozart's opera \"La finta giardiniera\".\n1777\u201378: Journey to Paris.\nIn August 1777, Mozart resigned his position at Salzburg and on 23 September ventured out once more in search of employment, with visits to Augsburg, Mannheim, Paris, and Munich.\nMozart became acquainted with members of the famous orchestra in Mannheim, the best in Europe at the time. He also fell in love with Aloysia Weber, one of four daughters of a musical family. There were prospects of employment in Mannheim, but they came to nothing, and Mozart left for Paris on 14 March 1778 to continue his search. One of his letters from Paris hints at a possible post as an organist at Versailles, but Mozart was not interested in such an appointment. He fell into debt and took to pawning valuables. The nadir of the visit occurred when Mozart's mother was taken ill and died on 3July 1778. There had been delays in calling a doctor\u2014probably, according to Halliwell, because of a lack of funds. Mozart stayed with Melchior Grimm at Marquise d'\u00c9pinay's residence, 5 rue de la Chauss\u00e9e-d'Antin.\nWhile Mozart was in Paris, his father was pursuing opportunities of employment for him in Salzburg. With the support of the local nobility, Mozart was offered a post as court organist and concertmaster. The annual salary was 450 florins, but he was reluctant to accept. By that time, relations between Grimm and Mozart had cooled, and Mozart moved out. After leaving Paris in September 1778 for Strasbourg, he lingered in Mannheim and Munich, still hoping to obtain an appointment outside Salzburg. In Munich, he again encountered Aloysia, now a very successful singer, but she was no longer interested in him. Mozart finally returned to Salzburg on 15 January 1779 and took up his new appointment, but his discontent with Salzburg remained undiminished.\nAmong the better-known works which Mozart wrote on the Paris journey are the A minor piano sonata, K.\u00a0310/300d, the \"Paris\" Symphony (No.\u00a031), which were performed in Paris on 12 and 18 June 1778; and the Concerto for Flute and Harp in C major, K. 299/297c.\nVienna.\n1781: Departure.\nIn January 1781, Mozart's opera \"Idomeneo\" premiered with \"considerable success\" in Munich. The following March, Mozart was summoned to Vienna, where his employer, Archbishop Colloredo, was attending the celebrations for the accession of Joseph II to the Austrian throne. For Colloredo, this was simply a matter of wanting his musical servant to be at hand (Mozart indeed was required to dine in Colloredo's establishment with the valets and cooks). He planned a bigger career as he continued in the archbishop's service; for example, he wrote to his father:\nMy main goal right now is to meet the emperor in some agreeable fashion, I am absolutely determined he should get to know me. I would be so happy if I could whip through my opera for him and then play a fugue or two, for that's what he likes.\nMozart did indeed soon meet the Emperor, who eventually was to support his career substantially with commissions and a part-time position.\nIn the same letter to his father just quoted, Mozart outlined his plans to participate as a soloist in the concerts of the \"Tonk\u00fcnstler-Societ\u00e4t\", a prominent benefit concert series; this plan as well came to pass after the local nobility prevailed on Colloredo to drop his opposition.\nColloredo's wish to prevent Mozart from performing outside his establishment was in other cases carried through, raising the composer's anger; one example was a chance to perform before the Emperor at Countess Thun's for a fee equal to half of his yearly Salzburg salary.\nThe quarrel with the archbishop came to a head in May: Mozart attempted to resign and was refused. The following month, permission was granted, but in a grossly insulting way: the composer was dismissed literally \"with a kick in the arse\", administered by the archbishop's steward, Count Arco. Mozart decided to settle in Vienna as a freelance performer and composer.\nThe quarrel with Colloredo was more difficult for Mozart because his father sided against him. Hoping fervently that he would obediently follow Colloredo back to Salzburg, Mozart's father exchanged intense letters with his son, urging him to be reconciled with their employer. Mozart passionately defended his intention to pursue an independent career in Vienna. The debate ended when Mozart was dismissed by the archbishop, freeing himself both of his employer and of his father's demands to return. Solomon characterizes Mozart's resignation as a \"revolutionary step\" that significantly altered the course of his life.\nEarly years.\nMozart's new career in Vienna began well. He often performed as a pianist, notably in a competition before the Emperor with Muzio Clementi on 24 December 1781, and he soon \"had established himself as the finest keyboard player in Vienna\". He also prospered as a composer, and in 1782 completed the opera \"Die Entf\u00fchrung aus dem Serail\" (\"The Abduction from the Seraglio\"), which premiered on 16 July 1782 and achieved considerable success. The work was soon being performed \"throughout German-speaking Europe\", and thoroughly established Mozart's reputation as a composer.\nNear the height of his quarrels with Colloredo, Mozart moved in with the Weber family, who had moved to Vienna from Mannheim. The family's father, Fridolin, had died, and the Webers were now taking in lodgers to make ends meet.\nMarriage and children.\nAfter failing to win the hand of Aloysia Weber, who was now married to the actor and artist Joseph Lange, Mozart's interest shifted to the third daughter of the family, Constanze.\nThe courtship did not go entirely smoothly; surviving correspondence indicates that Mozart and Constanze briefly broke up in April 1782, over an episode involving jealousy (Constanze had permitted another young man to measure her calves in a parlour game). Mozart also faced a very difficult task getting permission for the marriage from his father, Leopold.\nThe marriage took place in an atmosphere of crisis. Daniel Heartz suggests that eventually, Constanze moved in with Mozart, which would have placed her in disgrace by the mores of the time. Mozart wrote to Leopold on 31 July 1782, \"All the good and well-intentioned advice you have sent fails to address the case of a man who has already gone so far with a maiden. Further postponement is out of the question.\" Heartz relates, \"Constanze's sister Sophie had tearfully declared that her mother would send the police after Constanze if she did not return home [presumably from Mozart's apartment].\" On 4 August, Mozart wrote to Baroness von Waldst\u00e4tten, asking: \"Can the police here enter anyone's house in this way? Perhaps it is only a ruse of Madame Weber to get her daughter back. If not, I know no better remedy than to marry Constanze tomorrow morning or if possible today.\"\nThe couple were finally married on 4August 1782 in St. Stephen's Cathedral, the day before his father's consenting letter arrived in the mail. In the marriage contract, Constanze \"assigns to her bridegroom five hundred gulden which ... the latter has promised to augment with one thousand gulden\", with the total \"to pass to the survivor\". Further, all joint acquisitions during the marriage were to remain the common property of both. \nThe couple had six children, of whom only two survived infancy:\n1782\u201387.\nIn 1782 and 1783, Mozart became intimately acquainted with the work of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel as a result of the influence of Gottfried van Swieten, who owned many manuscripts of the Baroque masters. Mozart's study of these scores inspired compositions in the Baroque style and later influenced his musical language, for example in fugal passages in \"Die Zauberfl\u00f6te\" (\"The Magic Flute\") and the finale of Symphony No.\u00a041.\nIn 1783, Mozart and his wife visited his family in Salzburg. His father and sister were cordially polite to Constanze, but the visit prompted the composition of one of Mozart's great liturgical pieces, the Mass in C minor. Though not completed, it was premiered in Salzburg, with Constanze singing a solo part.\nMozart met Joseph Haydn in Vienna around 1784, and the two composers became friends. When Haydn visited Vienna, they sometimes played together in an impromptu string quartet. Mozart's six quartets dedicated to Haydn (K.\u00a0387, K.\u00a0421, K.\u00a0428, K.\u00a0458, K.\u00a0464, and K.\u00a0465) date from the period 1782 to 1785, and are judged to be a response to Haydn's Opus 33 set from 1781. Haydn wrote, \"posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years\" and in 1785 told Mozart's father: \"I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition.\"\nFrom 1782 to 1785 Mozart mounted concerts with himself as a soloist, presenting three or four new piano concertos in each season. Since space in the theatres was scarce, he booked unconventional venues: a large room in the Trattnerhof apartment building, and the ballroom of the Mehlgrube restaurant. The concerts were very popular, and his concertos premiered there are still firm fixtures in the repertoire. Solomon writes that during this period, Mozart created \"a harmonious connection between an eager composer-performer and a delighted audience, which was given the opportunity of witnessing the transformation and perfection of a major musical genre\".\nWith substantial returns from his concerts and elsewhere, Mozart and his wife adopted a more luxurious lifestyle. They moved to an expensive apartment, with a yearly rent of 460 florins. Mozart bought a fine fortepiano from Anton Walter for about 900 florins, and a billiard table for about 300. The Mozarts sent their son Karl Thomas to an expensive boarding school and kept servants. During this period Mozart saved little of his income.\nOn 14 December 1784, Mozart became a Freemason, admitted to the lodge Zur Wohlt\u00e4tigkeit (\"Beneficence\"). Freemasonry played an essential role in the remainder of Mozart's life: he attended meetings, a number of his friends were Masons, and on various occasions, he composed Masonic music, e.g. the Maurerische Trauermusik.\n1786\u201387: Return to opera.\nDespite the great success of \"Die Entf\u00fchrung aus dem Serail\", Mozart did little operatic writing for the next four years, producing only two unfinished works and the one-act \"Der Schauspieldirektor\". He focused instead on his career as a piano soloist and writer of concertos. Around the end of 1785, Mozart moved away from keyboard writing and began his famous operatic collaboration with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. The year 1786 saw the successful premiere of \"Le nozze di Figaro\" in Vienna. Its reception in Prague later in the year was even warmer, and this led to a second collaboration with Da Ponte: the opera \"Don Giovanni\", which premiered in October 1787 to acclaim in Prague, but less success in Vienna during 1788. The two are among Mozart's most famous works and are mainstays of operatic repertoire today, though at their premieres their musical complexity caused difficulty both for listeners and for performers. These developments were not witnessed by Mozart's father, who had died on 28 May 1787.\nIn December 1787, Mozart finally obtained a steady post under aristocratic patronage. Emperor Joseph II appointed him as his \"chamber composer\", a post that had fallen vacant the previous month on the death of Gluck. It was a part-time appointment, paying just 800 florins per year, and required Mozart only to compose dances for the annual balls in the Redoutensaal (see \"Mozart and dance\"). This modest income became important to Mozart when hard times arrived. Court records show that Joseph aimed to keep the esteemed composer from leaving Vienna in pursuit of better prospects.\nIn 1787, the young Ludwig van Beethoven spent several weeks in Vienna, hoping to study with Mozart. No reliable records survive to indicate whether the two composers ever met.\nLater years.\n1788\u201390.\nToward the end of the decade, Mozart's circumstances worsened. Around 1786, he ceased to appear frequently in public concerts, and his income shrank. This was a difficult time for musicians in Vienna because of the Austro-Turkish War: both the general level of prosperity and the ability of the aristocracy to support music had declined. According to Solomon, in 1788, Mozart saw a 66% decline in his income compared to his best years in 1781.\nBy mid-1788, Mozart and his family had moved from central Vienna to the suburb of Alsergrund. Although it has been suggested that Mozart aimed to reduce his rental expenses by moving to a suburb, as he wrote in his letter to Michael von Puchberg, Mozart had not reduced his expenses but merely increased the housing space at his disposal. Mozart began to borrow money, most often from his friend and fellow mason Puchberg; \"a pitiful sequence of letters pleading for loans\" survives. Maynard Solomon and others have suggested that Mozart was suffering from depression, and it seems his musical output slowed. Major works of the period include the last three symphonies (Nos.\u00a039, 40, and 41, all from 1788), and the last of the three Da Ponte operas, \"Cos\u00ec fan tutte\", premiered in 1790.\nAround this time, Mozart made some long journeys hoping to improve his fortunes, visiting Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin in the spring of 1789, and Frankfurt, Mannheim, and other German cities in 1790.\n1791.\nMozart's last year was, until his final illness struck, a time of high productivity\u2014and by some accounts, one of personal recovery. He composed a great deal, including some of his most admired works: the opera \"The Magic Flute\"; the final piano concerto (K.\u00a0595 in B\u266d); the Clarinet Concerto K.\u00a0622; the last in his series of string quintets (K.\u00a0614 in E\u266d); the motet Ave verum corpus K.\u00a0618; and the unfinished Requiem K.\u00a0626.\nMozart's financial situation, a source of anxiety in 1790, finally began to improve. Although the evidence is inconclusive, it appears that wealthy patrons in Hungary and Amsterdam pledged annuities to Mozart in return for the occasional composition. He is thought to have benefited from the sale of dance music written in his role as Imperial chamber composer. Mozart no longer borrowed large sums from Puchberg and began to pay off his debts.\nHe experienced great satisfaction in the public success of some of his works, notably \"The Magic Flute\" (which was performed several times in the short period between its premiere and Mozart's death) and the Little Masonic Cantata K.\u00a0623, premiered on 17 November 1791.\nFinal illness and death.\nMozart fell ill while in Prague for the premiere, on 6September 1791, of his opera \"La clemenza di Tito\", which was written in that same year on commission for Emperor Leopold II's coronation festivities. He continued his professional functions for some time and conducted the premiere of \"The Magic Flute\" on 30 September. His health deteriorated on 20 November, at which point he became bedridden, suffering from swelling, pain, and vomiting.\nMozart was nursed in his final days by his wife and her youngest sister and was attended by the family doctor, Thomas Franz Closset. He was mentally occupied with the task of finishing his Requiem, but the evidence that he dictated passages to his student Franz Xaver S\u00fcssmayr is minimal.\nMozart died in his home on at 12:55 am. The \"New Grove\" describes his funeral:\nMozart was interred in a common grave, in accordance with contemporary Viennese custom, at the St. Marx Cemetery outside the city on 7December. If, as later reports say, no mourners attended, that too is consistent with Viennese burial customs at the time; later Otto Jahn (1856) wrote that Salieri, S\u00fcssmayr, van Swieten and two other musicians were present. The tale of a storm and snow is false; the day was calm and mild.\nThe expression \"common grave\" refers to neither a communal grave nor a pauper's grave, but an individual grave for a member of the common people (i.e., not the aristocracy). Common graves were subject to excavation after ten years; the graves of aristocrats were not.\nThe cause of Mozart's death is not known with certainty. The official record of \"hitziges Frieselfieber\" (\"severe miliary fever\", referring to a rash that looks like millet seeds) is more a symptomatic description than a diagnosis. Researchers have suggested more than a hundred causes of death, including acute rheumatic fever, streptococcal infection, trichinosis, influenza, mercury poisoning, and a rare kidney ailment.\nMozart's modest funeral did not reflect his standing with the public as a composer; memorial services and concerts in Vienna and Prague were well attended. Indeed, in the period immediately after his death, his reputation rose substantially. Solomon describes an \"unprecedented wave of enthusiasm\" for his work; biographies were written first by Schlichtegroll, Niemetschek, and Nissen, and publishers vied to produce complete editions of his works.\nAppearance and character.\nMozart's physical appearance was described by tenor Michael Kelly in his \"Reminiscences\": \"a remarkably small man, very thin and pale, with a profusion of fine, fair hair of which he was rather vain\". His early biographer Niemetschek wrote, \"there was nothing special about [his] physique... He was small and his countenance, except for his large intense eyes, gave no signs of his genius.\" His facial complexion was pitted, a reminder of his childhood case of smallpox. Of his voice, his wife later wrote that it \"was a tenor, rather soft in speaking and delicate in singing, but when anything excited him, or it became necessary to exert it, it was both powerful and energetic.\"\nHe loved elegant clothing. Kelly remembered him at a rehearsal: \"[He] was on the stage with his crimson pelisse and gold-laced cocked hat, giving the time of the music to the orchestra.\" Based on paintings that researchers were able to find of Mozart, he seemed to wear a white wig for most of his formal occasions\u2014researchers of the Salzburg Mozarteum declared that only one of his fourteen portraits they had found showed him without his wig.\nMozart usually worked long and hard, finishing compositions at a tremendous pace as deadlines approached. He often made sketches and drafts; unlike Beethoven's, these are mostly not preserved, as his wife sought to destroy them after his death.\nMozart lived at the centre of the Viennese musical world and knew a significant number and variety of people: fellow musicians, theatrical performers, fellow Salzburgers, and aristocrats, including some acquaintance with Emperor Joseph II. Solomon considers his three closest friends to have been Gottfried von Jacquin, Count August Hatzfeld, and Sigmund Barisani; others included his elder colleague Joseph Haydn, singers Franz Xaver Gerl and Benedikt Schack, and the horn player Joseph Leutgeb. Leutgeb and Mozart carried on a kind of friendly mockery, often with Leutgeb as the butt of Mozart's practical jokes.\nHe enjoyed billiards, dancing, and kept pets, including a canary, a starling, a dog, and a horse for recreational riding. He had a startling fondness for scatological humour, which is preserved in his surviving letters, notably those written to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart around 1777\u20131778, and in his correspondence with his sister and parents. Mozart also wrote scatological music, a series of canons that he sang with his friends. He had an ear for languages, and having travelled all over Europe as a boy, was fluent in Latin, Italian, and French in addition to his native Salzburg dialect of German. He possibly also understood and spoke some English, having jokingly written \"You are an ass\" after his 19-year-old student Thomas Attwood made a thoughtless mistake on his exercise papers.\nMozart was raised a Catholic and remained a devout member of the Church throughout his life. He embraced the teachings of Freemasonry in 1784.\nWorks, musical style, and innovations.\nStyle.\nMozart's music, like Haydn's, stands as an archetype of the Classical style. At the time he began composing, European music was dominated by the \"style galant\", a reaction against the highly evolved intricacy of the Baroque. Progressively, and in large part at the hands of Mozart himself, the contrapuntal complexities of the late Baroque emerged once more, moderated and disciplined by new forms, and adapted to a new aesthetic and social milieu. Mozart was a versatile composer, and wrote in every major genre, including symphony, opera, the solo concerto, chamber music including string quartet and string quintet, and the piano sonata. These forms were not new, but Mozart advanced their technical sophistication and emotional reach. He almost single-handedly developed and popularised the Classical piano concerto. He wrote a great deal of religious music, including large-scale masses, as well as dances, divertimenti, serenades, and other forms of light entertainment.\nThe central traits of the Classical style are all present in Mozart's music. Clarity, balance, and transparency are the hallmarks of his work, but simplistic notions of its delicacy mask the exceptional power of his finest masterpieces, such as the Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K.\u00a0491; the Symphony No.\u00a040 in G minor, K.\u00a0550; and the opera \"Don Giovanni\". Charles Rosen makes the point forcefully:\nIt is only through recognising the violence and sensuality at the centre of Mozart's work that we can make a start towards a comprehension of his structures and an insight into his magnificence. In a paradoxical way, Schumann's superficial characterisation of the G minor Symphony can help us to see Mozart's daemon more steadily. In all of Mozart's supreme expressions of suffering and terror, there is something shockingly voluptuous.\nDuring his last decade, Mozart frequently exploited chromatic harmony. A notable instance is his \"String Quartet in C major\", K.\u00a0465 (1785), whose introduction abounds in chromatic suspensions, giving rise to the work's nickname, the \"Dissonance\" quartet.\nMozart had a gift for absorbing and adapting the valuable features of others' music. His travels helped in the forging of a unique compositional language. In London as a child, he met J.\u00a0C. Bach and heard his music. In Paris, Mannheim, and Vienna he met with other compositional influences, as well as the avant-garde capabilities of the Mannheim orchestra. In Italy, he encountered the Italian overture and opera buffa, both of which deeply affected the evolution of his practice. In London and Italy, the galant style was in the ascendent: simple, light music with a mania for cadencing; an emphasis on tonic, dominant, and subdominant to the exclusion of other harmonies; symmetrical phrases; and clearly articulated partitions in the overall form of movements. Some of Mozart's early symphonies are Italian overtures, with three movements running into each other; many are homotonal (all three movements having the same key signature, with the slow middle movement being in the relative minor). Others mimic the works of J.\u00a0C. Bach, and others show the simple rounded binary forms turned out by Viennese composers.\nAs Mozart matured, he progressively incorporated more features adapted from the Baroque. For example, the Symphony No.\u00a029 in A major K.\u00a0201 has a contrapuntal main theme in its first movement, and experimentation with irregular phrase lengths. Some of his quartets from 1773 have fugal finales, probably influenced by Haydn, who had included three such finales in his recently published Opus\u00a020 set. The influence of the \"Sturm und Drang\" (\"Storm and Stress\") period in music, with its brief foreshadowing of the Romantic era, is evident in the music of both composers at that time. Mozart's Symphony No.\u00a025 in G minor K.\u00a0183 is another excellent example.\nMozart would sometimes switch his focus between operas and instrumental music. He produced operas in each of the prevailing styles: opera buffa, such as \"Le nozze di Figaro\", \"Don Giovanni\", and \"Cos\u00ec fan tutte\"; opera seria, such as \"Idomeneo\"; and Singspiel, of which \"Die Zauberfl\u00f6te\" is the most famous example by any composer. In his later operas, he employed subtle changes in instrumentation, orchestral texture, and tone colour, for emotional depth and to mark dramatic shifts. Here, his advances in opera and instrumental composing interacted: his increasingly sophisticated use of the orchestra in the symphonies and concertos influenced his operatic orchestration, and his developing subtlety in using the orchestra to psychological effect in his operas was in turn reflected in his later non-operatic compositions.\nK\u00f6chel catalogue.\nFor unambiguous identification of works by Mozart, a \"K\u00f6chel catalogue number\" is used. This is a unique number assigned, in regular chronological order, to every one of his known works. A work is referenced by the abbreviation \"K.\" or \"KV\" followed by this number. The first edition of the catalogue was completed in 1862 by Ludwig von K\u00f6chel. It has since been repeatedly updated, as scholarly research improves knowledge of the dates and authenticity of individual works.\nInstruments.\nAlthough some of Mozart's early pieces were written for harpsichord, he also became acquainted in his early years with fortepianos made by Regensburg builder Franz Jakob Sp\u00e4th. Later when Mozart was visiting Augsburg, he was impressed by Stein fortepianos and shared this in a letter to his father. On 22 October 1777, Mozart had premiered his triple-piano concerto, K. 242, on instruments provided by Stein. The Augsburg Cathedral organist Demmler was playing the first, Mozart the second and Stein the third part. In 1783, when living in Vienna he purchased an instrument by Walter. Leopold Mozart confirmed the attachment which Mozart had with his Walter fortepiano: \"It is impossible to describe the hustle and bustle. Your brother's pianoforte has been moved at least twelve times from his house to the theatre or to someone else's house.\"\nInfluence.\nHis most famous pupil was Johann Nepomuk Hummel, a transitional figure between the Classical and Romantic eras whom the Mozarts took into their Vienna home for two years as a child. More important is the influence Mozart had on composers of later generations. Ever since the surge in his reputation after his death, studying his scores has been a standard part of a classical musician's training.\nLudwig van Beethoven, Mozart's junior by fifteen years, was deeply influenced by his work, with which he was acquainted as a teenager. He is thought to have performed Mozart's operas while playing in the court orchestra at Bonn and travelled to Vienna in 1787 hoping to study with the older composer. Some of have direct models in comparable works by Mozart, and he wrote cadenzas (WoO\u00a058) to Mozart's D minor piano concerto K.\u00a0466.\nComposers have paid homage to Mozart by writing sets of variations on his themes. Beethoven wrote four such sets (Op.\u00a066, WoO\u00a028, WoO\u00a040, WoO\u00a046). Others include Fernando Sor's Introduction and Variations on a Theme by Mozart (1821), Mikhail Glinka's Variations on a Theme from Mozart's Opera \"The Magic Flute\" (1822), Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin's Variations on \"L\u00e0 ci darem la mano\" from \"Don Giovanni\" (1827), and Max Reger's Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart (1914), based on the variation theme in the piano sonata K.\u00a0331. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who revered Mozart, wrote his Orchestral Suite No.\u00a04 in G, \"Mozartiana\" (1887), as a tribute to him.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nFurther reading.\n\"See for an extensive bibliography\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nExternal links.\nDigitized documents\nSheet music", "5846489": "Ad\u00e9la\u00efde Concerto\nViolin concerto misattributed to W. A. Mozart\nThe Ad\u00e9la\u00efde Concerto is the nickname of a violin concerto in D major attributed to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and given the catalogue number K. Anh. 294a in the third edition of the standard K\u00f6chel catalogue of Mozart's works. Unknown until the 20th century, this concerto was later discovered to be a spurious work by Marius Casadesus. It was given a new number in the sixth edition of the K\u00f6chel catalogue, K. Anh.C 14.05, as part of the Anhang C designated for spurious or doubtful works which have been attributed to Mozart at some time.\nBackground.\nFirst published in 1933 in a version for violin and piano, the concerto was said by Casadesus, the \"editor\", to have been arranged from a manuscript by the ten-year-old Mozart, with a title page containing a dedication to Madame Ad\u00e9la\u00efde, the fourth daughter of King Louis XV. Conveniently enough, this alleged manuscript was never accessible to later researchers such as Alfred Einstein and Friedrich Blume, but Casadesus described it, according to Blume, as \"an autograph manuscript in two staves, of which the upper stave carries the solo part and the lower carries the bass.\" In what was surely a nose-tweak at those fooled by this imposture, Casadesus also reported that \"The upper stave is notated in D, the lower in E\". Since the violin is not a transposing instrument, there would have been no obvious technical reason for the upper staff to be written in a different key from the lower staff, especially for what sounds more like a short score than a completed score.\nDespite the lack of provenance, Blume was thoroughly taken in by the concerto, although Einstein professed himself skeptical. The latter referred to it as \"a piece of mystification \"a la Kreisler\"\". (Fritz Kreisler, the famed violinist, had written several pieces in the styles of composers such as Gaetano Pugnani, Giuseppe Tartini, and Antonio Vivaldi which he had originally passed off as compositions by these older masters.)\nMany others expressed similar doubts, but only in 1977 during a copyright dispute did Casadesus admit his authorship of this alleged \"Mozart\" work.\nThe \"Ad\u00e9la\u00efde Concerto\" is sometimes erroneously credited to Marius' brother Henri Casadesus, perhaps because of many other spurious musical pieces he and other members of the Casadesus family composed in the names of Johann Christian Bach, George Frideric Handel, and other composers.\n<score sound=1>\nStructure.\n\\relative c' {\n \\key d \\major\n \\tempo \"Allegro\"\n d2.\\f d16(e fis g) | a8.(fis16) a8.(fis16) d'4 r | b8.(ais16) b8.(cis16) d4. b8 | a8.(d16) a8.(d16) a4 r\n</score>\nThe concerto has three movements:\nReferences.\nNotes\nReferences\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources"}, "descending_order": ["5846489", "33163"], "permutation_1": ["33163", "5846489"], "permutation_2": ["5846489", "33163"], "permutation_3": ["5846489", "33163"]}
{"id": "2hop__128637_397470", "docs_added": {"7296106": "WRHI\nWRHI is a news/talk radio station in Rock Hill, South Carolina. It broadcasts on AM frequency 1340\u00a0kHz with a simulcast on 100.1 FM (via translator W261CY) and is under ownership of OTS Media Group. Its studios and transmitter are both located separately in Rock Hill. In addition to WRHI, OTS Media owns WRHM-FM 107.1, WVSZ-FM 107.3, FM 94.3, FM 104.1, and CN2 & CN2Xtra Television (seen on Comporium Cable Channels 102 and 103)\nAwards.\nWRHI is a nine-time winner of the South Carolina Broadcasters Association Radio Station of the Year award. Since 2000, WRHI has been honored with over 200 \"Star Awards\" from the South Carolina Broadcasters Association, becoming the most honored station in South Carolina History. With its nine Station of the Year awards, WRHI has been named Statewide Radio Station of the Year more than any other Radio Station.\nAffiliations.\nThroughout the day, WRHI carries Fox News Radio at the top of every hour and local news and weather. Local news is gathered by the local news staff and television partner WSOC-TV.\nStaff.\nAllan Miller, a 2009 South Carolina Broadcaster's Association Hall of Fame inductee, serves as Co-Owner. Manning Kimmel, a 2014 South Carolina Broadcaster's Association Masters Award winner, serves as Co-Owner. Chris Miller, 13-Time South Carolina Statewide Sportscaster of the Year, serves as company Vice President. Steven Stone serves as Operations Manager. Noreen Ruff is traffic director and office manager. Bonita Perry is executive assistant. Lucas McFadden, Tyler Cupp, Ashley Lang, and Alex Greenawalt serve as the Morning Show team the Award winning \"Palmetto Mornings\". Catherine Madden serves as a broadcast marketing executive and special events coordinator. Rovenia Miller serves as a broadcast marketing executive. Sheilah Kimmel serves as Straight Talk producer. Jackson Taylor and Charlie Derek serve as production talent. Matt Hiers serves as a broadcast engineer.\nSports.\nWRHI is the radio home of Winthrop University men's basketball. The station also carries Clemson University and University of South Carolina football and basketball games and coaches' call-in shows. Selected Coastal Carolina University football games are carried as well.\nWRHI also carries Rock Hill High School, Northwestern High School, and South Pointe High School football and basketball games as well as Fort Mill High School, Clover High School, Lancaster High School, Nation Ford, and York High School football games. WRHI annually puts on major area promotions including: The Great Easter Egg Classic, Toys For Happiness, Prom Pledge, and Boo-HaHa. Since 2017, WRHI, in conjunction with Rock Hill School District Three, has presented the Football City USA Kickoff. This annual event features a season opening three-game slate featuring Rock Hill's three high schools versus teams from around the Carolinas. The event is played annually on the Friday before the beginning of the High School Football season.", "134715": "Rock Hill, South Carolina\nRock Hill is the most populous city in York County, South Carolina, United States, and the 5th-most populous city in the state. It is also the 4th-most populous city of the Charlotte metropolitan area, behind Charlotte, Concord, and Gastonia (all located in North Carolina). As of the 2020 census, the city's population was 74,372.\nThe city is located approximately south of Charlotte and approximately north of Columbia.\nRock Hill offers scenic riverfront views along the Catawba River and is home to numerous nature trails, restaurants, and thirty-one parks which are used for both national and local events. Its historic downtown consist of twelve contiguous buildings built as early as 1840 offering dining and retail options. The city is also home to three colleges, including Winthrop University, a public liberal arts university founded in 1886 which enrolls nearly 6,000 students annually.\nHistory.\nFounding.\nAlthough some European settlers had already arrived in the Rock Hill area in the 1830s and 1840s, Rock Hill did not become an actual town until the Charlotte and South Carolina Railroad Company made the decision to send a rail line through the area. Originally, the railroad had hoped to build a station in the nearby village of Ebenezerville which was squarely between Charlotte, North Carolina and Columbia, South Carolina. When approached, however, the locals in Ebenezerville refused to have the railroad run through their village since they considered it dirty and noisy. Instead, engineers and surveyors decided to run the line two miles away by a local landmark. According to some, the engineers marked the spot on the map and named it \"rocky hill.\"26\nSome of Rock Hill's early founding families\u2014the White family, the Black family, and the Moores\u2014believed that having a rail depot so close to them would be advantageous, so they decided to give the Columbia and Charlotte Railroad the right of way through their properties. As they were the three largest landowners in the area, this settled the matter. George Pendleton White contracted with the railroad to build a section of the line. Construction began in 1848. The first passenger train arrived on March 23, 1852. A few weeks later, on April 17, 1852, the first Rock Hill Post Office opened.\nNow that Rock Hill had a name, a railroad station, and a post office, it began to draw more settlers to the area. Captain J. H. McGinnis built a small general store near the station in 1849 or 1850 to provide supplies for the construction and railroad workers. Templeton Black, who had leased the land to McGinnis, decided to devote some of his other adjacent land to building a larger town. He hired a local surveyor, Squire John Roddey, to organize a main street. Black sold his first plot of land along that street to Ira Ferguson for $125 a few weeks before the post office opened; other businessmen bought plots quickly after that.28\nRock Hill Academy, the first school in Rock Hill, opened in September 1854. Despite its official name, most residents referred to it as the Pine Grove Academy after the pine grove it was located in. Ann Hutchinson White, wife of George White, donated the land to the school after her husband's death. The school had 60 male pupils in 1856; a school for girls was later opened in the same place.28\nPrior to 1857, the \"Indian Land Chronicle\" was Rock Hill's first newspaper. It was renamed \"The Rock Hill Chronicle\" in 1860.33 Prior to 1860, Rock Hill had at least two doctors.33\nAmerican Civil War.\nShortly before the American Civil War began, a census had been taken of the population in York County where Rock Hill is located. Half of the district's 21,800 residents were enslaved people, integral to local cotton production. The 4,379 white males in the county formed fourteen infantry companies; some of the men joined cavalry or artillery units instead. By the end of the war, 805 of these men had died, and hundreds more were wounded. Men from Rock Hill and York County were involved in many of the major Civil War battles.35\nDue to its position on the railroad, Rock Hill became a transfer point for Confederate soldiers and supplies moving to and from the front. Since there was no local hospital, townspeople nursed sick and wounded soldiers in their homes. Refugees fleeing the coastal blockade or General Sherman's troops, also came to Rock Hill.39\nBeginning in the spring of 1862, local area farmers switched from cotton to corn in order to produce more food.39 Records show that prices in Rock Hill changed frequently during the war, reflecting both shortages and the inflation of the Confederate paper money.41\nConfederate General P. G. T. Beauregard set up a temporary headquarters in Rock Hill on February 21, 1865.41 He ordered the roads to Charlotte blocked to try to prevent General Sherman from reaching the city; Sherman ultimately went in a different direction.\nWhen General Lee surrendered at the Appomattox Court House, it was actually a future Rock Hill resident who was responsible for waving the white flag. Captain Robert Moorman Sims, a farmer from Lancaster County, was sent by General James Longstreet to inform Union troops that the Confederate troops wanted a truce.42\nPost-Civil War.\nThe Civil War changed the social, economic, and political situation in Rock Hill tremendously, as it did elsewhere in the South. Rock Hill grew as a town, taking in war refugees, widows and their families, and the return of the men who had left to fight in the war.58 The formerly wealthy elite sold off their land to stay afloat financially. Town life would begin to become more important than rural life.\nMost of the merchants in Rock Hill around 1870 were former Confederate soldiers; many were entrepreneurs who were new to town, trying to start over.59 In 1870, even the largest stores in Rock Hill were only one story tall, and there were no sidewalks along the roads. The first drug store in Rock Hill opened in the 1870s.61 A locally contentious bordello was built in 1881 and introduced the town's first paved sidewalk.61\nIncorporation.\nThe town was not officially incorporated until 1870, on the third try.\nThe first attempt to get Rock Hill incorporated was made in 1855. A petition, signed by major landholders and businessmen from the Rock Hill area, was presented to the General Assembly on October 19, 1855.29 No action on the matter was taken by the General Assembly.\nThe second attempt was in 1868. In their petition, the townspeople claimed that Rock Hill had over 300 residents, \"eleven stores, two churches, two bars, two hotels, two carriage shops, three blacksmith shops, three shoe shops, one tannery, one cabinet shop, and elementary schools for white girls and boys.\" The petition was signed by 48 men, most relative newcomers to Rock Hill, with only a few members of the old, established, landed families. The larger landholders opposed incorporation because of the taxes it would bring. They filed a counter-proposal which claimed that there were only 100 residents, many of them temporary.63 The situation was a strong indication of the changes Rock Hill experienced as it transitioned from mostly farms to a business community. Ultimately, the state legislature did not act on either petition and Rock Hill was still not incorporated.\nThe third, successful petition was made in 1869, only one year after 1868's failed petition. This time there were 57 signers in favor of incorporation, with only seven opponents. The opponents collectively owned 80% of the land that would be incorporated into Rock Hill if the petition was successful. They were unsuccessful at preventing incorporation this time; Rock Hill was officially incorporated on February 26, 1870.64\nCivil rights movement.\nRock Hill was the setting for two significant events in the civil rights movement. In February 1961, nine African-American men went to jail at the York County prison farm after staging a sit-in at a segregated McCrory's lunch counter in downtown Rock Hill. The current location is now known as \"Kounter\" which has the names of the activists engraved. Their offense was reported to be \"refusing to stop singing hymns during their morning devotions.\" The event gained nationwide attention as the men followed an untried strategy called \"jail, no bail.\" Rejecting bail was a way to lessen the huge financial burden which civil rights groups were facing as the sit-in movement spread across the South. As their actions gained widespread national news coverage, the tactic was adopted by other civil rights groups. The men became known as the Friendship Nine because eight of the nine men were students at Rock Hill's Friendship Junior College.\nLater in 1961, Rock Hill was the first stop in the Deep South for a group of 13 Freedom Riders, who boarded buses in Washington, DC, and headed South to test the 1960 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court outlawing racial segregation in all interstate public facilities. When the civil rights leader John Lewis and another black man stepped off the bus at Rock Hill, they were beaten by a white mob that was uncontrolled by police. The event drew national attention.\nIn 2002, Lewis, by then a US Congressman from Georgia, returned to Rock Hill, where he had been invited as a speaker at Winthrop University and was given the key to the city. On January 21, 2008, Rep. Lewis returned to Rock Hill again and spoke at the city's Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance. Mayor Doug Echols officially apologized to him on the city's behalf for the Freedom Riders' treatment in the city.\n20th century to present.\nRock Hill experienced steady growth in the twentieth century. The city boundary expanded far beyond its original limits. Four unincorporated communities of York County were annexed into the city including Boyd Hill in the late 1940s, Ebenezer and Mexico in the 1960s, and Oakdale in the 1980s.\nRock Hill celebrated its centennial in 1952 and its sesquicentennial in 2002.\nRock Hill hosted the 2017 UCI BMX World Championships at the Rock Hill BMX Supercross Track in Riverwalk with an estimated direct economic impact of $19.2 million.\nOn April 7, 2021, former NFL player Phillip Adams shot and killed six people, including two children, at a house in Rock Hill. He committed suicide the next day.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and (0.36%) is water.\nRock Hill is located along the Catawba River in the north-central section of the Piedmont of South Carolina, south of the city of Charlotte in North Carolina. The city sits at an elevation of around above sea level. It is located approximately from the Atlantic Ocean and from the Blue Ridge Mountains. The northern limits of the city reside along Lake Wylie, a large man-made reservoir.\nNeighborhoods.\nRock Hill consists of numerous neighborhoods, some of which were independent towns and communities at one time that were later annexed into Rock Hill city limits.\nNatural disasters.\nFour notable major natural disasters have struck the city since 1926.\n1926 Rock Hill tornado.\nOn November 26, 1926, a destructive tornado struck downtown Rock Hill. It was the day after Thanksgiving, late in the season for such a violent storm. The \"black as ink twister\" took less than 10 minutes to change the face of the business section. The storm touched down in western York County, and entered Rock Hill from the west. Once in the town, the twister cut a path about three blocks wide, leaving 60 homes heavily damaged, the hospital roof removed, and cars flipped or crushed. By the end, the total damage for the whole town was $150,000. The tornado was responsible for one death and 12 injuries within Rock Hill.\nHurricane Hugo.\nHurricane Hugo struck the city on the morning of September 22, 1989. The storm ripped through the city with sustained winds over , toppling massive oak and pine trees. Schools were closed for weeks because of widespread damage to roads and facilities. The total damage cost for the entire state of South Carolina was around $4.2 billion. The storm was a category 3 when it entered the county and was a category 2 as it left the county.\nThe \"Great Carolina Snowstorm\" of 2004.\nA complex series of low pressure systems moved across South Carolina from February 25\u201327 of 2004. Starting as a mix of snow and sleet, the storm became all snow as the low pulled off the Carolina coast. Cold arctic air settled over the Carolinas and dumped of snow, with lightning, gusty winds, and some areas getting up to . Sustained winds over across Rock Hill knocked out power, resulting in schools' closing for a week. It was the worst overall blizzard to hit the area.\n2011 Rock Hill Tornado.\nDuring the Tornado outbreak of November 14\u201316, 2011, a deadly EF-2 tornado struck about south and southwest of Rock Hill that travelled for after touchdown. The storm, which left a wide path of destruction and had wind speeds of up to , left 3 people dead, caused 5 injuries, and 7-8 damaged homes. This event caused the first ever tornado related deaths to be recorded in York Country history.\nClimate.\nRock Hill has a humid subtropical climate with four distinct seasons, characterized by hot humid summers and cool dry winters. The city itself is part of the USDA hardiness zone 7b with yearly minimum low temperature extremes between , typically occurring in the month of January. Precipitation does not vary greatly between seasons, but is highly dependent on moisture supplied from the Gulf of Mexico. July is the hottest month, with an average high temperature of and an average low temperature of . The coldest month of the year is January, when the average high temperature is and the average low temperature is . The warmest temperature ever recorded in the city was in 1983 and tied in 2007. The coldest temperature ever recorded in the city was in 1985.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2020 census.\nAs of the 2020 census, there were 74,372 people, 32,341 households, and 18,379 families residing in the city.\n2010 census.\nAt the 2010 census, there were 66,154 people and 16,059 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 29,159 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 54.6% White, 38.3% Black, 1.7% Asian, 0.5% Native American, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 2.7% from other races, and 2.1% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 5.7% of the population.\nThere were 25,966 households, out of which 29.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 38.1% were married couples living together, 18.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 38.2% were non-families. 30.3% of all households were made up of individuals, and 8.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.43 and the average family size was 3.04.\nIn the city, the population was spread out, w ith 24.4% under the age of 18, 14.7% from 18 to 24, 28.5% from 25 to 44, 22.0% from 45 to 64, and 10.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 31.9 years. For every 100 females, there were 85.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 80.3 males.\nEconomy.\nRock Hill's economy was once dominated by the textile industry, and the restructuring of that industry in moving jobs overseas caused a decline in the local economy at one time. Over the past decade, Rock Hill has transitioned to a relatively strong manufacturing workforce.\nOther major companies in Rock Hill with headquarters or North American headquarters include Hyosung, Comporium Communications, 3D Systems, and Atlas Copco.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $37,336, and the median income for a family was $45,697. Males had a median income of $32,156 versus $24,181 for females. The per capita income for the city was $18,929. About 9.7% of families and 14.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 16.2% of those under age 18 and 12.0% of those age 65 or over. The unemployment rate of the city was 8.7 percent and 11,874 of the 71,459 residents lived and worked in the city with a daytime population change of +5,208 as of March 2011. The city is transitioning to a retail and manufacturing economy, and has been working to attract national and global companies.\nRock Hill Galleria is a regional shopping mall founded in 1991. Rock Hill Mall (1968\u2013c.\u20091993, demolished 2006), and Town Center Mall (1975\u20131993) are former major shopping centers inside the city.\nArts and culture.\nRock Hill's Historic Old Town area is home to many of the city's historic buildings, art galleries, history museums, and cultural events.\nVisual and performing arts.\nRock Hill has a vibrant visual arts and performing arts scene that is primarily sustained by its local artists and arts nonprofit organizations.\nLibrary.\nRock Hill has a public library, a branch of the York County Library.\nMusic.\nRock Hill is home to indie rock band Elonzo.\nSports.\nRock Hill has nicknamed itself \"Football City USA\" because of its prolific production of NFL players. The city claims to produce more NFL players per capita than any city in the United States. In 2019, Rock Hill was selected as the site for the Carolina Panthers' training facility. In 2022, the deal was called off.\nRock Hill hosts two national championships, the United States Disc Golf Championship at Winthrop University, and the US Youth Soccer National Championships at Manchester Meadows Soccer Complex.\nRock Hill hosted the 2015 IQA World Cup, making it the second consecutive year South Carolina hosted the Quidditch World Cup.\nRock Hill hosted the 2017 UCI BMX World Championships in July 2017 at the Riverwalk mixed-use community along the Catawba River.\nCollegiate sports include the Winthrop University Eagles, a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I team.\nThe Rock Hill Cardinals, from 1963 to 1968, were a Western Carolinas League baseball team affiliated with the St. Louis Cardinals.\nParks and recreation.\nParks include in the city:\nGovernment.\nThe city operates under a Council-Manager form of government. The governing body is composed of a mayor and six members. The mayor is determined through a nonpartisan, at-large election for a four-year term of office while council members are chosen through nonpartisan, single-member district elections. Council members are elected to staggered four-year terms of office. The city council is a legislative body, establishing policies with recommendations from the city administrator. The city manager acts as the chief administrator of the council's policies implemented through the administrative control of city departments given to him by ordinance. John Gettys is mayor; his term began January 2018.\nEducation.\nK\u201312.\nPublic education in Rock Hill is administered by York County School District 3. The district operates twenty-seven schools in the city, including nineteen elementary schools, five middle schools, and three high schools. The district has a student enrollment of around 25,000.\nPrivate schools.\nA variety of religious schools serve the city of Rock Hill, including St. Anne's Catholic School and Westminster Catawba. The city is also home to two Charter schools: York Preparatory Academy, and Legion Collegiate Academy.\nHigher education.\nThere are three colleges in Rock Hill.\nThe most prominent institution is Winthrop University, founded in 1886 as a women's college. It is a thriving, public, co-ed four-year comprehensive university with an annual enrollment of about 6,000 students.\nClinton College is an HBCU founded by the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in 1894. Initially a two-year institution, the liberal arts college added four-year degree programs in 2013 in addition to the associate degree programs.\nYork Technical College opened in Rock Hill in 1964. This two-year community college offers associate degrees and provides continuing education for approximately 9,000 area residents annually and is growing each year.\nMedia.\nRock Hill is home to a daily newspaper, \"The Herald,\" which covers the area. Rock Hill is home to a free daily online newspaper, the YoCoNews that covers all of York and Lancaster counties. Magazines include \"Rock Hill Magazine\" and \"YC (York County) Magazine\" (which covers the entire county).\nOTS Media Group owns and operates WRHI (News/Sports, 100.1 FM and 1340 AM), WRHM-FM (Country/Sports FM 107.1) and WRHM-FM HD2/W281BE/W232AX (Contemporary Christian, FM 94.3 & 104.1). There are also WAVO (Religious, 1150 AM), NPR affiliate WNSC-FM (88.9 FM), Southside Baptist Church of Rock Hill Christian broadcast station, WRHJ-LP (93.1 FM) and York Technical College campus radio station WYTX-LP (98.5.FM) .\nRock Hill has several television stations: PBS affiliate WNSC-TV (Channel 30), CN2, a daily cable news program produced by Comporium Communications for York, Chester, and Lancaster counties; MyNetworkTV station WMYT-TV Channel 55, is licensed to Rock Hill, but serves the entire Charlotte market, while their studios are shared with sister station WJZY-TV in unincorporated Mecklenburg County, NC.\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nHighway.\nFrom locations across the country, Rock Hill is most easily accessible by interstate highway.\nAir.\nRock Hill has two local airports. The Rock Hill/York County Airport is a municipal airport for the city of Rock Hill and serves non-commercial flights. The airport is located minutes from Rock Hill's Central business district. Also called Bryant Field, it was named for Robert E. Bryant, an aviator with two international records and an inductee in the South Carolina Aviation Hall of Fame (The name is no longer used for the airport because of confusion with Bryant Field (airport)). It is owned and operated by the City of Rock Hill, but York County is also represented on the Airport Commission.\nThe other local airport, the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, is one of the busiest airports in the United States and is located 20 miles north of Rock Hill in Charlotte, North Carolina.\nPublic transportation.\nRock Hill has one regional transit system, The Charlotte Area Transit System that offers express bus service from downtown Rock Hill to Uptown Charlotte.\nRock Hill currently offers My Ride, an electric bus transit service\nBike.\nRock Hill is considered to be a bicycle-friendly town with numerous bike routes located throughout the city. There are also designated bike lanes located along major roads such as Eden Terrace and Oakland Avenue.\nNotable people.\nNational Football League players.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1409734": "WRHM\nRadio station in Lancaster\u2013Rock Hill, South Carolina\nWRHM (107.1 FM) is the flagship station of Interstate 107, the branding of two country music format stations in Rock Hill, South Carolina (107.1 WRHM) and Chesterfield, South Carolina (107.3 FM WVSZ).\nAbout.\nOfficially licensed to Lancaster, South Carolina, Interstate 107 broadcasts from the WRHI/WRHM studios at 142 North Confederate Ave. near Downtown Rock Hill. WRHM is a country music formatted station, but also airs University of South Carolina football, basketball, and baseball, as well as NFL and college basketball games from Westwood One. Interstate 107 also carries NASCAR races from the Motor Racing Network and the Performance Racing Network.\nWRHM operates at a relatively modest 2,400 watts from a somewhat short (by modern broadcasting standards) tower on the northern tip of Lancaster County. Despite this, WRHM provides at least secondary coverage to the southern portion of the Charlotte metro area, including much of Charlotte proper. This is because its transmitter is located near the North Carolina line. It thus provides much of the Charlotte area with a second option for Westwood One sports programming when Charlotte's WFNZ-FM is unable to air it due to programming conflicts. Additionally, it provides most of the South Carolina side of the Charlotte area with a clear signal for NASCAR, since Charlotte's WEND provides only secondary coverage to most of this area.\nSimulcast.\nWRHM programming is also simulcast on WVSZ, licensed to Chesterfield, South Carolina. WVSZ's main studio is that of WCRE AM in Cheraw, South Carolina.\nHD channel.\nThe HD2 channel airs a Contemporary Christian format known as \"The Bridge.\" It is relayed on translator W281BE.\nHistory.\nWRHM was called WLCM-FM and WPAJ when it was in Lancaster, and the format was soft adult contemporary. The station aired Atlanta Braves baseball.", "18386972": "WHIR\nWHIR (1230 AM) is a News Talk Information\u2013formatted radio station licensed to Danville, Kentucky, United States. The station is currently owned by Hometown Broadcasting of Danville Inc. as part of a triopoly with Harrodsburg\u2013licensed country music station WHBN (1420 AM) and Lancaster\u2013licensed hot adult contemporary station WRNZ (105.1 FM). WHIR's transmitter and studio facilities for all three stations are located on Shakertown Road (KY\u00a033) north of Danville. WHIR features \"The Joe Mathis Show\" which can be heard Monday through Friday from 6-9 am. Sean Hannity, Dave Ramsey, and other nationwide syndicated shows are also carried, along with area and local sporting events.\nHistory.\nWHIR went on-the-air in 1947 under the stewardship of W.T. Isaac and David B. Highbaugh. In 1959, the station was sold to a group of businessmen from Lexington, Kentucky. Ten years later, the station aired a Top 40 contemporary hit radio format when a companion FM station signed-on (107.1 FM, now Wilmore\u2013licensed WLAI).\nIn 1987, WHIR and now-WMGE were purchased by WHAS talent Wayne Perkey, joined later in ownership by WAKY alum Johnny Randolph. In 1995, WHIR/WMGE were sold to Hometown Broadcasters of Lancaster, owner of WRNZ.\nProgramming.\nWHIR airs a hybrid of locally\u2013sourced and syndicated programming. Outsourced programs include \"Kentucky Sports Radio\" from WLAP in Lexington, \"The Sean Hannity Show\" from Premiere Networks, and \"The Ramsey Show\". Locally, the station broadcasts high school football games from Danville High School in the fall. WHIR also maintains affiliations with the Motor Racing Network and Performance Racing Network for NASCAR races.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4637513": "WGNS\nWGNS (1450 AM) is a radio station based in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, United States. The call letters are an acronym representing the phrase, \"Good Neighbor Station\". The station covers Murfreesboro, Tennessee proper as well as the surrounding counties. WGNS also operated class A television station WETV-CD channel 11, which simulcast the audio from WGNS and local talk programming until the cancellation of its license on August 3, 2021. The station also has one FM translator at 101.9 FM and another at 100.5 FM, which are both licensed to Murfreesboro.\nHistory.\nEarly years.\nWGNS was founded by Cecil Elrod, Jr. The station signed on the air at 10:00\u00a0p.m. Central time on December 31, 1946, with the first full day of broadcast taking place at WGNS on January 1, 1947. The first program broadcast on the station was an introductory program entitled \"This is WGNS\", followed by a New Year\u2019s program from the Mutual Broadcasting System. Their first sports program was the broadcast of the 1947 Cotton Bowl that originated from Dallas, Texas. Throughout its history, the station never changed its callsign or its frequency. \nWGNS has been carrying high school football and basketball games, as well as Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders sporting events, since 1947.\nThe 1980s and 90s.\nIn 1981, WGNS began broadcasting Atlanta Braves baseball broadcasts provided by the Atlanta Braves Radio Network. Bart Walker purchased the station in 1984, and he has owned the station ever since.\nWGNS was broadcasting a rock n\u2019 roll format until 1990, but news and sports also occupied the program schedule. MTSU Sports was dropped in favor of University of Tennessee Volunteers football and basketball during the 1990s. WGNS switched to a news/talk format in 1990.\n2000s.\nThe station's original self-supporting tower, which was 328 feet (100 m) tall and dated back to the World War II-era, was destroyed during a severe thunderstorm on April 15, 2001. The tower was rebuilt by July 14, 2001, and is the tallest structure of any kind in Murfreesboro.\nMTSU sports returned to the station in 2005.\nOn the morning of March 1, 2007, WGNS began simulcasting its signal over two FM translators, W270AF at 101.9\u00a0MHz and W263AI at 100.5\u00a0MHz. WGNS was the first AM radio station in the United States to broadcast with this new type of FM translator. WRHI in Rock Hill, South Carolina became the second AM broadcaster in the nation to begin this service. Their first broadcast was on the next day (March 2, 2007).\n2020s.\nIn November 2021, it was announced that WGNS will be moving one of its FM translators to Smyrna, TN. On January 1, 2022, WGNS expanded its coverage to north Rutherford County with 100.5\u00a0MHz broadcasting in the city of Smyrna while 101.9 FM and 1450 AM remained broadcasting in Murfreesboro.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "7373246": "WRHV\nWRHV (88.7 FM) is a classical music-formatted radio station licensed to Poughkeepsie, New York and serving the Mid-Hudson Valley of New York state. The station is owned by WMHT Educational Telecommunications and is a satellite of Schenectady's WMHT-FM. WRHV transmits from the main Illinois Mountain tower in the town of Lloyd, New York.\nWRHV, which signed on in November 1989 as WMHX-FM (sharing the calls of WMHT's secondary television station for the first year of its existence), is involved in one of the few remaining timeshare arrangements on radio in the United States. The 88.7 frequency is shared between WRHV and SUNY New Paltz-owned WFNP. Currently, WRHV is on the air at the following times from September 1 to December 1, and February 1 to May 1:\nWhen SUNY New Paltz is either not in session, in exams, or in start-of-semester preparation, WRHV is heard around the clock. Nevertheless, the timeshare arrangement has had its critics on both sides and as a result WFNP-FM has proposed a move to 98.9\u00a0MHz where its programming would be heard full-time with WRHV becoming the sole occupant of the 88.7\u00a0MHz frequency.", "44023823": "W281BE\nW281BE, known as 104.1 the Bridge, is a Contemporary Christian radio station licensed to Fort Mill, South Carolina,"}, "descending_order": ["7296106", "1409734", "134715", "18386972", "4637513", "7373246", "44023823"], "permutation_1": ["7296106", "44023823", "4637513", "134715", "1409734", "7373246", "18386972"], "permutation_2": ["18386972", "4637513", "134715", "1409734", "44023823", "7296106", "7373246"], "permutation_3": ["7373246", "134715", "4637513", "7296106", "44023823", "18386972", "1409734"]}
{"id": "2hop__498836_120034", "docs_added": {"606043": "Diet of Speyer\nDiet of Speyer or Diet of Spires refers to any of the sessions of the imperial diets of the Holy Roman Empire, of which 50 took place between 838 and 1570 in the city of Speyer (Spires), now in Germany. The most famous sessions occurred in 1526 and 1529.\nAn incomplete lists of Diets of Speyer includes:\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Dmbox/styles.css\" />\nIndex of articles associated with the same name\nThis includes a list of related items that share the same name (or similar names). <br> If an [ internal link] incorrectly led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.", "13277": "Holy Roman Empire\nEuropean political entity (800\u20131806)\nThe Holy Roman Empire, also known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation after 1512, was a polity in Central and Western Europe, usually headed by the Holy Roman Emperor. It developed in the Early Middle Ages, and lasted for a millennium until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars.\nOn 25 December 800, Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne Roman emperor, reviving the title more than three centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476. The title lapsed in 924, but was revived in 962 when Otto\u00a0I was crowned emperor by Pope John XII, as Charlemagne's and the Carolingian Empire's successor. From 962 until the 12th century, the empire was one of the most powerful monarchies in Europe. It depended on cooperation between emperor and vassals; this was disturbed during the Salian period. The empire reached the apex of territorial expansion and power under the House of Hohenstaufen in the mid-13th century, but overextension led to a partial collapse. The imperial office was traditionally elective by the mostly German prince-electors. In theory and diplomacy, the emperors were considered the first among equals of all of Europe's Catholic monarchs.\nA process of Imperial Reform in the late 15th and early 16th centuries transformed the empire, creating a set of institutions which endured until its final demise in the 19th century. On 6 August 1806, Emperor Francis II abdicated and formally dissolved the empire following the creation by French emperor Napoleon of the Confederation of the Rhine from German client states loyal to France.\nName and general perception.\nSince Charlemagne, the realm was merely referred to as the \"Roman Empire\". The term (\"holy\", in the sense of \"consecrated\") in connection with the medieval Roman Empire was used beginning in 1157 under Frederick I Barbarossa (\"Holy Empire\"): the term was added to reflect Frederick's ambition to dominate Italy and the Papacy. The form \"Holy Roman Empire\" is attested from 1254 onward.\nThe exact term \"Holy Roman Empire\" was not used until the 13th century, before which the empire was referred to variously as (\"the whole kingdom\", as opposed to the regional kingdoms), (\"Christian empire\"), or (\"Roman empire\"), but the Emperor's legitimacy always rested on the concept of , that he held supreme power inherited from the ancient emperors of Rome.\nIn a decree following the Diet of Cologne in 1512, the name was changed to the \"Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation\" (, ), a form first used in a document in 1474. The adoption of this new name coincided with the loss of imperial territories in Italy and Burgundy to the south and west by the late 15th century, but also to emphasize the new importance of the German Imperial Estates in ruling the Empire due to the Imperial Reform. The Hungarian denomination \"German Roman Empire\" () is the shortening of this.\nBy the end of the 18th century, the term \"Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation\" fell out of official use. Contradicting the traditional view concerning that designation, Hermann Weisert has argued in a study on imperial titulature that, despite the claims of many textbooks, the name \"Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation\" never had an official status and points out that documents were thirty times as likely to omit the national suffix as include it.\nIn a famous assessment of the name, the political philosopher Voltaire remarked sardonically: \"This body which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.\"\nIn the modern period, the Empire was often informally called the \"German Empire\" () or \"Roman-German Empire\" (). After its dissolution through the end of the German Empire, it was often called \"the old Empire\" (). Beginning in 1923, early twentieth-century German nationalists and Nazi Party propaganda would identify the Holy Roman Empire as the \"First\" Reich (, meaning empire), with the German Empire as the \"Second\" Reich and what would eventually become Nazi Germany as the \"Third\" Reich.\nDavid S. Bachrach opines that the Ottonian kings actually built their empire on the back of military and bureaucratic apparatuses as well as the cultural legacy they inherited from the Carolingians, who ultimately inherited these from the Late Roman Empire. He argues that the Ottonian empire was hardly an archaic kingdom of primitive Germans, maintained by personal relationships only and driven by the desire of the magnates to plunder and divide the rewards among themselves but instead, notable for their abilities to amass sophisticated economic, administrative, educational and cultural resources that they used to serve their enormous war machine.\nUntil the end of the 15th century, the empire was in theory composed of three major blocs \u2013 Italy, Germany and Burgundy. Later territorially only the Kingdom of Germany and Bohemia remained, with the Burgundian territories lost to France. Although the Italian territories were formally part of the empire, the territories were ignored in the Imperial Reform and splintered into numerous de facto independent territorial entities. The status of Italy in particular varied throughout the 16th to 18th centuries. Some territories like Piedmont-Savoy became increasingly independent, while others became more dependent due to the extinction of their ruling noble houses causing these territories to often fall under the dominions of the Habsburgs and their cadet branches. Barring the loss of Franche-Comt\u00e9 in 1678, the external borders of the Empire did not change noticeably from the Peace of Westphalia \u2013 which acknowledged the exclusion of Switzerland and the Northern Netherlands, and the French protectorate over Alsace \u2013 to the dissolution of the Empire. At the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, most of the Holy Roman Empire was included in the German Confederation, with the main exceptions being the Italian states.\nHistory.\nEarly Middle Ages.\nCarolingian Empire.\nAs Roman power in Gaul declined during the 5th century, local Germanic tribes assumed control. In the late 5th and early 6th centuries, the Merovingians, under Clovis I and his successors, consolidated Frankish tribes and extended hegemony over others to gain control of northern Gaul and the middle Rhine river valley region. By the middle of the 8th century, the Merovingians were reduced to figureheads, and the Carolingians, led by Charles Martel, became the rulers. In 751, Martel's son Pepin became King of the Franks, and later gained the sanction of the Pope. The Carolingians would maintain a close alliance with the Papacy.\nIn 768, Pepin's son Charlemagne became King of the Franks and began an extensive expansion of the realm. He eventually incorporated the territories of present-day France, Germany, northern Italy, the Low Countries and beyond, linking the Frankish kingdom with Papal lands.\nAlthough antagonism about the expense of Byzantine domination had long persisted within Italy, a political rupture was set in motion in earnest in 726 by the iconoclasm of Emperor Leo III the Isaurian, in what Pope Gregory II saw as the latest in a series of imperial heresies. In 797, the Eastern Roman Emperor Constantine VI was removed from the throne by his mother, Empress Irene, who declared herself sole ruler. As the Latin Church only regarded a male Roman emperor as the head of Christendom, Pope Leo III sought a new candidate for the dignity, excluding consultation with the patriarch of Constantinople.\nCharlemagne's good service to the Church in his defense of Papal possessions against the Lombards made him the ideal candidate. On Christmas Day of 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor, restoring the title in the West for the first time in over three centuries. This can be seen as symbolic of the papacy turning away from the declining Byzantine Empire toward the new power of Carolingian Francia. Charlemagne adopted the formula (\"renewal of the Roman Empire\"). In 802, Irene was overthrown and exiled by Nikephoros I and henceforth there were two Roman emperors.\nAfter Charlemagne died in 814, the imperial crown passed to his son, Louis the Pious. Upon Louis' death in 840, it passed to his son Lothair, who had been his co-ruler. By this point the territory of Charlemagne was divided into several territories (\"cf\". Treaty of Verdun, Treaty of Pr\u00fcm, Treaty of Meerssen and Treaty of Ribemont), and over the course of the later 9th century the title of emperor was disputed by the Carolingian rulers of the Western Frankish Kingdom or West Francia and the Eastern Frankish Kingdom or East Francia, with first the western king (Charles the Bald) and then the eastern (Charles the Fat), who briefly reunited the Empire, attaining the prize. In the 9th century, Charlemagne and his successors promoted the intellectual revival, known as the Carolingian Renaissance. Some, like Mortimer Chambers, opine that the Carolingian Renaissance made possible the subsequent renaissances (even though by the early 10th century, the revival already diminished).\nAfter the death of Charles the Fat in 888, the Carolingian Empire broke apart, and was never restored. According to Regino of Pr\u00fcm, the parts of the realm \"spewed forth kinglets\", and each part elected a kinglet \"from its own bowels\". The last such emperor was Berengar I of Italy, who died in 924.\nPost-Carolingian Eastern Frankish Kingdom.\nAround 900, East Francia's autonomous stem duchies (Franconia, Bavaria, Swabia, Saxony, and Lotharingia) reemerged. After the Carolingian king Louis the Child died without issue in 911, East Francia did not turn to the Carolingian ruler of West Francia to take over the realm but instead elected one of the dukes, Conrad of Franconia, as . On his deathbed, Conrad yielded the crown to his main rival, Henry the Fowler of Saxony (r.\u2009919\u00a0\u2013\u00a0936), who was elected king at the Diet of Fritzlar in 919. Henry reached a truce with the raiding Magyars, and in 933 he won a first victory against them in the Battle of Riade.\nHenry died in 936, but his descendants, the Liudolfing (or Ottonian) dynasty, would continue to rule the Eastern kingdom or the Kingdom of Germany for roughly a century. Upon Henry the Fowler's death, Otto, his son and designated successor, was elected king in Aachen in 936. He overcame a series of revolts from a younger brother and from several dukes. After that, the king managed to control the appointment of dukes and often also employed bishops in administrative affairs. He replaced leaders of most of the major East Frankish duchies with his own relatives. At the same time, he was careful to prevent members of his own family from making infringements on his royal prerogatives.\nFormation of the Holy Roman Empire.\nIn 951, Otto came to the aid of Queen Adelaide of Italy, defeating her enemies, marrying her, and taking control over Italy. In 955, Otto won a decisive victory over the Magyars in the Battle of Lechfeld. In 962, Otto was crowned emperor by Pope John XII, thus intertwining the affairs of the German kingdom with those of Italy and the Papacy. Otto's coronation as emperor marked the German kings as successors to the empire of Charlemagne, which through the concept of , also made them consider themselves as successors to Ancient Rome. The flowering of arts beginning with Otto the Great's reign is known as the Ottonian Renaissance, centered in Germany but also happening in Northern Italy and France.\nOtto created the imperial church system, often called \"Ottonian church system of the Reich\", which tied the great imperial churches and their representatives to imperial service, thus providing \"a stable and long-lasting framework for Germany\". During the Ottonian era, imperial women played a prominent role in political and ecclesiastic affairs, often combining their functions as religious leader and advisor, regent or co-ruler, notably Matilda of Ringelheim, Eadgyth, Adelaide of Italy, Theophanu, and Matilda of Quedlinburg.\nIn 963, Otto deposed John XII and chose Leo VIII as the new pope (although John XII and Leo VIII both claimed the papacy until 964, when John XII died). This also renewed the conflict with the Byzantine emperor, especially after Otto's son Otto II (r.\u2009967\u00a0\u2013\u00a0983) adopted the designation . Still, Otto II formed marital ties with the east when he married the Byzantine princess Theophanu. Their son, Otto III, came to the throne only three years old, and was subjected to a power struggle and series of regencies until his age of majority in 994. Up to that time, he remained in Germany, while a deposed duke, Crescentius II, ruled over Rome and part of Italy, ostensibly in his stead.\nIn 996 Otto III appointed his cousin Gregory V the first German pope. A foreign pope and foreign papal officers were seen with suspicion by Roman nobles, who were led by Crescentius II to revolt. Otto III's former mentor Antipope John XVI briefly held Rome, until the Holy Roman emperor seized the city.\nOtto died young in 1002, and was succeeded by his cousin Henry II, who focused on Germany.\nOtto III's (and his mentor Pope Sylvester's) diplomatic activities coincided with and facilitated the Christianization and the spread of Latin culture in different parts of Europe. They coopted a new group of nations (Slavic) into the framework of Europe, with their empire functioning, as some remark, as a \"Byzantine-like presidency over a family of nations, centred on pope and emperor in Rome\". This has proved a lasting achievement. Otto's early death though made his reign \"the tale of largely unrealized potential\".\nHenry II died in 1024 and Conrad II, first of the Salian dynasty, was elected king only after some debate among dukes and nobles. This group eventually developed into the college of electors.\nThe Holy Roman Empire eventually came to be composed of four kingdoms:\nHigh Middle Ages.\nInvestiture Controversy.\nKings often employed bishops in administrative affairs and often determined who would be appointed to ecclesiastical offices. In the wake of the Cluniac Reforms, this involvement was increasingly seen as inappropriate by the Papacy. The reform-minded Pope Gregory VII was determined to oppose such practices, which led to the Investiture Controversy with King Henry IV (r.\u20091056\u00a0\u2013\u00a01106, crowned emperor in 1084).\nHenry IV repudiated the pope's interference and persuaded his bishops to excommunicate the pope, whom he famously addressed by his birth name \"Hildebrand\" rather than his papal name \"Gregory\". The pope, in turn, excommunicated the king, declared him deposed, and dissolved the oaths of loyalty made to Henry. The king found himself with almost no political support and was forced to make the famous Walk to Canossa in 1077, by which he achieved a lifting of the excommunication at the price of humiliation. Meanwhile, the German princes had elected another king, Rudolf of Swabia.\nHenry managed to defeat Rudolf, but was subsequently confronted with more uprisings, renewed excommunication, and even the rebellion of his sons. After his death, his second son, Henry V, reached an agreement with the Pope and the bishops in the 1122 Concordat of Worms. The political power of the Empire was maintained, but the conflict had demonstrated the limits of the ruler's power, especially in regard to the Church, and it robbed the king of the sacral status he had previously enjoyed. The pope and the German princes had surfaced as major players in the political system of the Holy Roman Empire.\nOstsiedlung.\nAs the result of Ostsiedlung, less populated regions of Central Europe (i.e. sparsely populated border areas in present-day Poland and Czechia) received a significant number of German speakers. Silesia became part of the Holy Roman Empire as the result of the local Piast dukes' push for autonomy from the Polish Crown. From the late 12th century, the Duchy of Pomerania was under the suzerainty of the Holy Roman Empire and the conquests of the Teutonic Order made that region German-speaking.\nHohenstaufen dynasty.\nWhen the Salian dynasty ended with Henry V's death in 1125, the princes chose not to elect the next of kin, but rather Lothair III, the moderately powerful but already old duke of Saxony. When he died in 1137, the princes again aimed to check royal power; accordingly they did not elect Lothair's favoured heir, his son-in-law, Henry the Proud of the Welf family, but Conrad III of the Hohenstaufen family, the grandson of Emperor Henry IV and nephew of Emperor Henry V. This led to over a century of strife between the two houses. Conrad ousted the Welfs from their possessions, but after his death in 1152, his nephew Frederick Barbarossa succeeded him and made peace with the Welfs, restoring his cousin Henry the Lion to his \u2013 albeit diminished \u2013 possessions.\nThe Hohenstaufen rulers increasingly lent land to \"ministeriales\", formerly non-free servicemen, who Frederick hoped would be more reliable than dukes. Initially used mainly for war services, this new class of people would form the basis for the later knights, another basis of imperial power. A further important constitutional move at Roncaglia was the establishment of a new peace mechanism for the entire empire, the Landfrieden, with the first imperial one being issued in 1103 under Henry IV at Mainz. This was an attempt to abolish private feuds, between the many dukes and other people, and to tie the emperor's subordinates to a legal system of jurisdiction and public prosecution of criminal acts\u00a0\u2013 a predecessor of the modern concept of rule of law. Another new concept of the time was the systematic founding of new cities by the emperor and by the local dukes. These were partly a result of the explosion in population; they also concentrated economic power at strategic locations. Before this, cities had only existed in the form of old Roman foundations or older bishoprics. Cities that were founded in the 12th century include Freiburg, possibly the economic model for many later cities, and Munich.\nFrederick Barbarossa was crowned emperor in 1155. He emphasized the \"Romanness\" of the empire, partly in an attempt to justify the power of the emperor independent of the (now strengthened) pope. An imperial assembly at the fields of Roncaglia in 1158 reclaimed imperial rights in reference to Justinian I's Corpus Juris Civilis. Imperial rights had been referred to as \"regalia\" since the Investiture Controversy but were enumerated for the first time at Roncaglia. This comprehensive list included public roads, tariffs, coining, collecting punitive fees, and the seating and unseating of office-holders. These rights were now explicitly rooted in Roman law, a far-reaching constitutional act.\nFrederick's policies were primarily directed at Italy, where he clashed with the free-minded cities of the north, especially the Duchy of Milan. He also embroiled himself in another conflict with the Papacy by supporting a candidate elected by a minority against Pope Alexander III (1159\u20131181). Frederick supported a succession of antipopes before finally making peace with Alexander in 1177. In Germany, the emperor had repeatedly protected Henry the Lion against complaints by rival princes or cities (especially in the cases of Munich and L\u00fcbeck). Henry gave only lackluster support to Frederick's policies, and, in a critical situation during the Italian wars, Henry refused the emperor's plea for military support. After returning to Germany, an embittered Frederick opened proceedings against the duke, resulting in a public ban and the confiscation of all Henry's territories. In 1190, Frederick participated in the Third Crusade, dying in the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia.\nDuring the Hohenstaufen period, German princes facilitated a successful, peaceful eastward settlement of lands that were uninhabited or inhabited sparsely by West Slavs. German-speaking farmers, traders, and craftsmen from the western part of the Empire, both Christians and Jews, moved into these areas. The gradual Germanization of these lands was a complex phenomenon that should not be interpreted in the biased terms of 19th-century nationalism. The eastward settlement expanded the influence of the empire to include Pomerania and Silesia, as did the intermarriage of the local, still mostly Slavic, rulers with German spouses. The Teutonic Knights were invited to Prussia by Duke Konrad of Masovia to Christianize the Prussians in 1226. The monastic state of the Teutonic Order () and its later German successor state of the Duchy of Prussia was never part of the Holy Roman Empire.\nUnder the son and successor of Frederick Barbarossa, Henry VI, the Hohenstaufen dynasty reached its apex, with the addition of the Norman kingdom of Sicily through the marriage of Henry VI and Constance of Sicily. Bohemia and Poland were under feudal dependence, while Cyprus and Lesser Armenia also paid homage. The Iberian-Moroccan caliph accepted his claims over the suzerainty over Tunis and Tripolitania and paid tribute. Fearing the power of Henry, the most powerful monarch in Europe since Charlemagne, the other European kings formed an alliance. But Henry broke this coalition by blackmailing English king Richard the Lionheart. The Byzantine emperor worried that Henry would turn his Crusade plan against his empire, and began to collect the \"alamanikon\" to prepare against the expected invasion. Henry also had plans for turning the Empire into a hereditary monarchy, although this met with opposition from some of the princes and the pope. The emperor suddenly died in 1197, leading to the partial collapse of his empire. As his son, Frederick II, though already elected king, was still a small child and living in Sicily, German princes chose to elect an adult king, resulting in the dual election of Frederick Barbarossa's youngest son Philip of Swabia and Henry the Lion's son Otto of Brunswick, who competed for the crown. After Philip was murdered in a private squabble in 1208, Otto prevailed for a while, until he began to also claim Sicily.\nPope Innocent III, who feared the threat posed by a union of the empire and Sicily, was now supported by Frederick II, who marched to Germany and defeated Otto. After his victory, Frederick did not act upon his promise to keep the two realms separate. Though he had made his son Henry king of Sicily before marching on Germany, he still reserved real political power for himself. This continued after Frederick was crowned emperor in 1220. Fearing Frederick's concentration of power, the pope finally excommunicated him. Another point of contention was the Crusade, which Frederick had promised but repeatedly postponed. Now, although excommunicated, Frederick led the Sixth Crusade in 1228, which ended in negotiations and a temporary restoration of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.\nFor his many-sided activities, prestige, and dynamic personality Frederick II has been called the greatest of all the medieval German emperors. In the Kingdom of Sicily and much of Italy, Frederick built upon the work of his Norman predecessors and forged an early absolutist state bound together by an efficient secular bureaucracy. Despite his imperial prestige and power, Frederick II's rule was a major turning point toward the partitioning of central rule in the Empire. Since his political focus was south of the Alps, he was mostly absent from Germany and issued far-reaching privileges to Germany's secular and ecclesiastical princes to ensure their cooperation. In the 1220 , Frederick gave up a number of \"regalia\" in favour of the bishops, among them tariffs, coining, and the right to build fortification. The 1232 mostly extended these privileges to secular territories. Although many of these privileges had existed earlier, they were now granted globally, and once and for all, to allow the German princes to maintain order north of the Alps while Frederick concentrated on Italy. The 1232 document marked the first time that the German dukes were called , owners of their lands, a remarkable change in terminology as well. the affirmed a division of labor between the emperor and the princes and laid much groundwork for the development of particularism in Germany. Even so, from 1232 the vassals of the emperor had a veto over imperial legislative decisions and any new law established by the emperor had to be approved by the princes.\nThese provisions not withstanding, royal power in Germany remained strong under Frederick and by the 1240s the crown was still rich in fiscal resources, land holdings, retinues, and all other rights, revenues, and jurisdictions. Frederick II used the political loyalty and practical jurisdictions granted to the higher German aristocracy to impose peace, order, and justice upon Germany. The jurisdictional autarky of the German princes was favoured by the crown itself in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the interests of order and local peace. The inevitable result was the territorial particularism of churchmen, lay princes, and interstitial cities. However, Frederick was a ruler of vast territories and \"could not be everywhere at once\". The transference of jurisdiction was a practical solution to secure the further support of the German princes and, moreover, was a process which had already been underway even under Henry VI and Frederick Barbarossa. It is unlikely that a particularly \"strong ruler\" such as Frederick II would have even pragmatically agreed to legislation that was truly concessionary rather than cooperative, neither would the princes have insisted on such. The Mainz Landfriede or , decreed at the Imperial Diet of 1235, became one of the basic laws of the empire and provided that the princes should share the burden of local government in Germany. The authority of the crown was not in question, rather its practical allocation in such a wide region which lacked a general administrative apparatus. Far from a broad diminution of royal power, the Mainz Landfriede was a constitutional recalibration based on the culmination of multi-decade political realities and a testament to Frederick II's considerable political strength, his increased prestige during the early 1230s, and sheer overpowering might that he succeeded in securing the princes' support and rebound them to Hohenstaufen power.\nKingdom of Bohemia.\nThe Kingdom of Bohemia was a significant regional power during the Middle Ages. In 1212, King Ottokar I (bearing the title \"king\" since 1198) extracted a Golden Bull of Sicily (a formal edict) from Emperor Frederick II, confirming the royal title for Ottokar and his descendants, and the Duchy of Bohemia was raised to a kingdom. Bohemia's political and financial obligations to the Empire were gradually reduced. Charles IV set Prague to be the seat of the Holy Roman emperor.\nInterregnum.\nAfter the death of Frederick II in 1250, Conrad IV, Frederick's son (died 1254), enjoyed a strong position having defeated his papal-backed rival anti-king, William of Holland (died 1256). However, Conrad's death was followed by the Interregnum, during which no king could achieve universal recognition, allowing the princes to consolidate their holdings and become even more independent as rulers. After 1257, the crown was contested between Richard of Cornwall, who was supported by the Guelph party, and Alfonso X of Castile, who was recognized by the Hohenstaufen party but never set foot on German soil. After Richard's death in 1273, Rudolf I of Germany, a minor pro-Hohenstaufen count, was elected. He was the first of the Habsburgs to hold a royal title, but he was never crowned emperor. After Rudolf's death in 1291, Adolf and Albert were two further weak kings who were never crowned emperor.\nAlbert was assassinated in 1308. Almost immediately, King Philip IV of France began aggressively seeking support for his brother, Charles of Valois, to be elected the next king of the Romans. Philip thought he had the backing of the French Pope, Clement V (established at Avignon in 1309), and that his prospects of bringing the empire into the orbit of the French royal house were good. He lavishly spread French money in the hope of bribing the German electors. Although Charles of Valois had the backing of pro-French Henry, Archbishop of Cologne, many were not keen to see an expansion of French power, least of all Clement V. The principal rival to Charles appeared to be Count Palatine Rudolf II.\nBut the electors, the great territorial magnates who had lived without a crowned emperor for decades, were unhappy with both Charles and Rudolf. Instead Count Henry of Luxembourg, with the aid of his brother, Archbishop Baldwin of Trier, was elected as Henry VII with six votes at Frankfurt on 27 November 1308. Though a vassal of King Philip, Henry was bound by few national ties, and thus suitable as a compromise candidate. Henry VII was crowned king at Aachen on 6 January 1309, and emperor by Pope Clement V on 29 June 1312 in Rome, ending the interregnum.\nChanges in political structure.\nDuring the 13th century, a general structural change in how land was administered prepared the shift of political power toward the rising bourgeoisie at the expense of the aristocratic feudalism that would characterize the Late Middle Ages. The rise of the cities and the emergence of the new burgher class eroded the societal, legal and economic order of feudalism.\nPeasants were increasingly required to pay tribute to their landlords. The concept of property began to replace more ancient forms of jurisdiction, although they were still very much tied together. In the territories (not at the level of the Empire), power became increasingly bundled: whoever owned the land had jurisdiction, from which other powers derived. Jurisdiction at the time did not include legislation, which was virtually nonexistent until well into the 15th century. Court practice heavily relied on traditional customs or rules described as customary.\nDuring this time, territories began to transform into the predecessors of modern states. The process varied greatly among the various lands and was most advanced in those territories that were almost identical to the lands of the old Germanic tribes, \"e.g.\", Bavaria. It was slower in those scattered territories that were founded through imperial privileges.\nIn the 12th century the Hanseatic League established itself as a commercial and defensive alliance of the merchant guilds of towns and cities in the empire and all over northern and central Europe. It dominated marine trade in the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and along the connected navigable rivers. Each of the affiliated cities retained the legal system of its sovereign and, with the exception of the Free imperial cities, had only a limited degree of political autonomy. By the late 14th century, the powerful league enforced its interests with military means, if necessary. This culminated in a war with the sovereign Kingdom of Denmark from 1361 to 1370. The league declined after 1450.\nLate Middle Ages.\nRise of the territories after the Hohenstaufens.\nThe difficulties in electing the king eventually led to the emergence of a fixed college of prince-electors (\"Kurf\u00fcrsten\"), whose composition and procedures were set forth in the Golden Bull of 1356, issued by Charles IV (reigned 1355\u20131378, King of the Romans since 1346), which remained valid until 1806. This development probably best symbolizes the emerging duality between emperor and realm (\"Kaiser und Reich\"), which were no longer considered identical. The Golden Bull also set forth the system for election of the Holy Roman Emperor. The emperor now was to be elected by a majority rather than by consent of all seven electors. For electors the title became hereditary, and they were given the right to mint coins and to exercise jurisdiction. Also it was recommended that their sons learn the imperial languages \u2013 German, Latin, Italian, and Czech. The decision by Charles IV is the subject of debates: on one hand, it helped to restore peace in the lands of the Empire, that had been engulfed in civil conflicts after the end of the Hohenstaufen era; on the other hand, the \"blow to central authority was unmistakable\". Thomas Brady Jr. opines that Charles IV's intention was to end contested royal elections (from the Luxembourghs' perspective, they also had the advantage that the King of Bohemia had a permanent and preeminent status as one of the Electors himself). At the same time, he built up Bohemia as the Luxembourghs' core land of the Empire and their dynastic base. His reign in Bohemia is often considered the land's Golden Age. According to Brady Jr. though, under all the glitter, one problem arose: the government showed an inability to deal with the German immigrant waves into Bohemia, thus leading to religious tensions and persecutions. The imperial project of the Luxembourgh halted under Charles's son Wenceslaus (reigned 1378\u20131419 as King of Bohemia, 1376\u20131400 as King of the Romans), who also faced opposition from 150 local baronial families.\nThe shift in power away from the emperor is also revealed in the way the post-Hohenstaufen kings attempted to sustain their power. Earlier, the Empire's strength (and finances) greatly relied on the Empire's own lands, the so-called \"Reichsgut\", which always belonged to the king of the day and included many Imperial Cities. After the 13th century, the relevance of the \"Reichsgut\" faded, even though some parts of it did remain until the Empire's end in 1806. Instead, the \"Reichsgut\" was increasingly pawned to local dukes, sometimes to raise money for the Empire, but more frequently to reward faithful duty or as an attempt to establish control over the dukes. The direct governance of the \"Reichsgut\" no longer matched the needs of either the king or the dukes.\nThe kings beginning with Rudolf I of Germany increasingly relied on the lands of their respective dynasties to support their power. In contrast with the \"Reichsgut\", which was mostly scattered and difficult to administer, these territories were relatively compact and thus easier to control. In 1282, Rudolf I thus lent Austria and Styria to his own sons. In 1312, Henry VII of the House of Luxembourg was crowned as the first Holy Roman Emperor since Frederick II. After him all kings and emperors relied on the lands of their own family (\"Hausmacht\"): Louis IV of Wittelsbach (king 1314, emperor 1328\u20131347) relied on his lands in Bavaria; Charles IV of Luxembourg, the grandson of Henry VII, drew strength from his own lands in Bohemia. It was thus increasingly in the king's own interest to strengthen the power of the territories, since the king profited from such a benefit in his own lands as well.\nImperial Reform.\nThe \"constitution\" of the Empire still remained largely unsettled at the beginning of the 15th century. Feuds often happened between local rulers. The \"robber baron\" (\"Raubritter\") became a social factor.\nSimultaneously, the Catholic Church experienced crises of its own, with wide-reaching effects in the Empire. The conflict between several papal claimants (two anti-popes and the \"legitimate\" Pope) ended only with the Council of Constance (1414\u20131418); after 1419 the Papacy directed much of its energy to suppressing the Hussites. The medieval idea of unifying all Christendom into a single political entity, with the Church and the Empire as its leading institutions, began to decline.\nWith these drastic changes, much discussion emerged in the 15th century about the Empire itself. Rules from the past no longer adequately described the structure of the time, and a reinforcement of earlier \"Landfrieden\" was urgently needed.\nThe vision for a simultaneous reform of the Empire and the Church on a central level began with Sigismund (reigned 1433\u20131437, King of the Romans since 1411), who, according to historian Thomas Brady Jr., \"possessed a breadth of vision and a sense of grandeur unseen in a German monarch since the thirteenth century\". But external difficulties, self-inflicted mistakes and the extinction of the Luxembourg male line made this vision unfulfilled.\nFrederick III was the first Habsburg to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor, in 1452. He had been very careful regarding the reform movement in the empire. For most of his reign, he considered reform as a threat to his imperial prerogatives. He avoided direct confrontations, which might lead to humiliation if the princes refused to give way. After 1440, the reform of the Empire and Church was sustained and led by local and regional powers, particularly the territorial princes. In his last years, he felt more pressure on taking action from a higher level. Berthold von Henneberg, the Archbishop of Mainz, who spoke on behalf of reform-minded princes (who wanted to reform the Empire without strengthening the imperial hand), capitalized on Frederick's desire to secure the imperial election for his son Maximilian. Thus, in his last years, he presided over the initial phase of Imperial Reform, which would mainly unfold under Maximilian. Maximilian himself was more open to reform, although naturally he also wanted to preserve and enhance imperial prerogatives. After Frederick retired to Linz in 1488, as a compromise, Maximilian acted as mediator between the princes and his father. When he attained sole rule after Frederick's death, he would continue this policy of brokerage, acting as the impartial judge between options suggested by the princes.\nCreation of institutions.\nMajor measures for the Reform were launched at the 1495 Reichstag at Worms. A new organ was introduced, the \"Reichskammergericht\", that was to be largely independent from the Emperor. A new tax was launched to finance it, the \"Gemeine Pfennig\", although this would only be collected under Charles V and Ferdinand I, and not fully.\nTo create a rival for the \"Reichskammergericht\", Maximilian established the \"Reichshofrat\" in 1497, which had its seat in Vienna. During Maximilian's reign, this council was not popular though. In the long run, the two Courts functioned in parallel, sometimes overlapping.\nIn 1500, Maximilian agreed to establish an organ called the \"Reichsregiment\" (central imperial government, consisting of twenty members including the Electors, with the Emperor or his representative as its chairman), first organized in 1501 in Nuremberg. But Maximilian resented the new organization, while the Estates failed to support it. The new organ proved politically weak, and its power returned to Maximilian in 1502.\nThe most important governmental changes targeted the heart of the regime: the chancery. Early in Maximilian's reign, the Court Chancery at Innsbruck competed with the Imperial Chancery (which was under the elector-archbishop of Mainz, the senior Imperial chancellor). By referring the political matters in Tyrol, Austria as well as Imperial problems to the Court Chancery, Maximilian gradually centralized its authority. The two chanceries became combined in 1502. In 1496, the emperor created a general treasury (\"Hofkammer\") in Innsbruck, which became responsible for all the hereditary lands. The chamber of accounts (\"Raitkammer\") at Vienna was made subordinate to this body. Under Paul von Liechtenstein, the \"Hofkammer\" was entrusted with not only hereditary lands' affairs, but Maximilian's affairs as the German king too.\nReception of Roman law.\nAt the 1495 Diet of Worms, the Reception of Roman Law was accelerated and formalized. The Roman Law was made binding in German courts, except in the case it was contrary to local statutes. In practice, it became the basic law throughout Germany, displacing Germanic local law to a large extent, although Germanic law was still operative at the lower courts. Other than the desire to achieve legal unity and other factors, the adoption also highlighted the continuity between the Ancient Roman empire and the Holy Roman Empire. To realize his resolve to reform and unify the legal system, the emperor frequently intervened personally in matters of local legal matters, overriding local charters and customs. This practice was often met with irony and scorn from local councils, who wanted to protect local codes.\nThe legal reform seriously weakened the ancient Vehmic court (\"Vehmgericht\", or Secret Tribunal of Westphalia, traditionally held to be instituted by Charlemagne but this theory is now considered unlikely), although it would not be abolished completely until 1811 (when it was abolished under the order of J\u00e9r\u00f4me Bonaparte).\nNational political culture.\nMaximilian and Charles V (despite the fact both emperors were internationalists personally) were the first who mobilized the rhetoric of the Nation, firmly identified with the Reich by the contemporary humanists. With encouragement from Maximilian and his humanists, iconic spiritual figures were reintroduced or became notable. The humanists rediscovered the work \"Germania\", written by Tacitus. According to Peter H. Wilson, the female figure of Germania was reinvented by the emperor as the virtuous pacific Mother of Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Whaley further suggests that, despite the later religious divide, \"patriotic motifs developed during Maximilian's reign, both by Maximilian himself and by the humanist writers who responded to him, formed the core of a national political culture.\"\nMaximilian's reign also witnessed the gradual emergence of the German common language, with the notable roles of the imperial chancery and the chancery of the Wettin Elector Frederick the Wise. The development of the printing industry together with the emergence of the postal system (the first modern one in the world), initiated by Maximilian himself with contribution from Frederick III and Charles the Bold, led to a revolution in communication and allowed ideas to spread. Unlike the situation in more centralized countries, the decentralized nature of the Empire made censorship difficult.\nTerence McIntosh comments that the expansionist, aggressive policy pursued by Maximilian I and Charles V at the inception of the early modern German nation (although not to further the aims specific to the German nation per se), relying on German manpower as well as utilizing fearsome Landsknechte and mercenaries, would affect the way neighbours viewed the German polity, although in the longue dur\u00e9e, Germany tended to be at peace.\nImperial power.\nMaximilian was \"the first Holy Roman Emperor in 250 years who ruled as well as reigned\". In the early 1500s, he was true master of the Empire, although his power weakened during the last decade before his death. Whaley notes that, despite struggles, what emerged at the end of Maximilian's rule was a strengthened monarchy and not an oligarchy of princes. Benjamin Curtis opines that while Maximilian was not able to fully create a common government for his lands (although the chancellery and court council were able to coordinate affairs across the realms), he strengthened key administrative functions in Austria and created central offices to deal with financial, political and judicial matters \u2013 these offices replaced the feudal system and became representative of a more modern system that was administered by professionalized officials. After two decades of reforms, the emperor retained his position as first among equals, while the empire gained common institutions through which the emperor shared power with the estates.\nBy the early 16th century, the Habsburg rulers had become the most powerful in Europe, but their strength relied on their composite monarchy as a whole, and not only the Holy Roman Empire (see also: Empire of Charles V). Maximilian had seriously considered combining the Burgundian lands (inherited from his wife Mary of Burgundy) with his Austrian lands to form a powerful core (while also extending toward the east). After the unexpected addition of Spain to the Habsburg Empire, at one point he intended to leave Austria (raised to a kingdom) to his younger grandson Ferdinand. His elder grandson Charles V later gave Spain and most of the Burgundian lands to his son Philip II of Spain, the founder of the Spanish branch, and the Habsburg hereditary lands to his brother Ferdinand, the founder of the Austrian branch.\nIn France and England, from the 13th century onward, stationary royal residences had begun to develop into capital cities that grew rapidly and developed corresponding infrastructure: the \"Palais de la Cit\u00e9\" and the \"Palace of Westminster\" became the respective main residences. This was not possible in the Holy Roman Empire because no real hereditary monarchy emerged, but rather the tradition of elective monarchy prevailed \"(see: Imperial election)\" which, in the High Middle Ages, led to kings of very different regional origins being elected \"(List of royal and imperial elections in the Holy Roman Empire)\". If they wanted to control the empire and its rebellious regional rulers, they could not limit themselves to their home region and their private palaces. As a result, kings and emperors continued to travel around the empire well into modern times, using their temporary residences \"(Kaiserpfalz)\" as transit stations for their \"itinerant courts\". From the late Middle Ages onward, the weakly fortified \"pfalzen\" were replaced by imperial castles. It was only King Ferdinand I, the younger brother of the then Emperor Charles V, who moved his main residence to the Vienna Hofburg in the middle of the 16th century, where most of the following Habsburg emperors subsequently resided. Vienna did not become the capital of the empire, just of a Habsburg hereditary state (the Archduchy of Austria). The emperors continued to travel to their elections and coronations at Frankfurt and Aachen, to the Imperial Diets at different places and to other occasions. The Perpetual Diet of Regensburg was based in Regensburg from 1663 to 1806. Rudolf II resided in Prague, the Wittelsbach emperor Charles VII in Munich. A German capital in the true sense only existed in the Second German Empire from 1871, when the Kaiser, Reichstag and Reichskanzler resided in Berlin.\nEarly capitalism.\nWhile particularism prevented the centralization of the Empire, it gave rise to early developments of capitalism. In Italian and Hanseatic cities like Genoa and Pisa, Hamburg and L\u00fcbeck, warrior-merchants appeared and pioneered raiding-and-trading maritime empires. These practices declined before 1500, but they managed to spread to the maritime periphery in Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands and England, where they \"provoked emulation in grander, oceanic scale\". William Thompson agrees with M.N. Pearson that this distinctively European phenomenon happened because in the Italian and Hanseatic cities which lacked resources and were \"small in size and population\", the rulers (whose social status was not much higher than the merchants) had to pay attention to trade. Thus the warrior-merchants gained the state's coercive powers, which they could not gain in Mughal or other Asian realms \u2013 whose rulers had few incentives to help the merchant class, as they controlled considerable resources and their revenue was land-bound.\nIn the 1450s, the economic development in Southern Germany gave rise to banking empires, cartels and monopolies in cities such as Ulm, Regensburg, and Augsburg. Augsburg in particular, associated with the reputation of the Fugger, Welser and Baumgartner families, is considered the capital city of early capitalism. Augsburg benefitted majorly from the establishment and expansion of the Kaiserliche Reichspost in the late 15th and early 16th century. Even when the Habsburg empire began to extend to other parts of Europe, Maximilian's loyalty to Augsburg, where he conducted a lot of his endeavours, meant that the imperial city became \"the dominant centre of early capitalism\" of the 16th century, and \"the location of the most important post office within the Holy Roman Empire\". From Maximilian's time, as the \"terminuses of the first transcontinental post lines\" began to shift from Innsbruck to Venice and from Brussels to Antwerp, in these cities, the communication system and the news market started to converge. As the Fuggers as well as other trading companies based their most important branches in these cities, these traders gained access to these systems as well. The 1557, 1575 and 1607 bankruptcies of the Spanish branch of the Habsburgs though damaged the Fuggers substantially. Moreover, \"Discovery of water routes to India and the New World shifted the focus of European economic development from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic \u2013 emphasis shifted from Venice and Genoa to Lisbon and Antwerp. Eventually American mineral developments reduced the importance of Hungarian and Tyrolean mineral wealth. The nexus of the European continent remained landlocked until the time of expedient land conveyances in the form of primarily rail and canal systems, which were limited in growth potential; in the new continent, on the other hand, there were ports in abundance to release the plentiful goods obtained from those new lands.\" The economic pinnacles achieved in Germany in the period between 1450 and 1550 would not be seen again until the end of the 19th century.\nIn the Netherlands part of the empire, financial centres evolved together with markets of commodities. Topographical development in the 15th century made Antwerp a port city. Boosted by the privileges it received as a loyal city after the Flemish revolts against Maximilian, it became the leading seaport city in Northern Europe and served as \"the conduit for a remarkable 40% of world trade\". Conflicts with the Habsburg-Spanish government in 1576 and 1585 though made merchants relocate to Amsterdam, which eventually replaced it as the leading port city.\nReformation and Renaissance.\nIn 1516, Ferdinand II of Aragon, grandfather of the future Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, died. Charles initiated his reign in Castile and Aragon, a union which evolved into Spain, in conjunction with his mother Joanna of Castile.\nIn 1519, already reigning as \"Carlos I\" in Spain, Charles took up the imperial title as \"Karl V\". The Holy Roman Empire would end up going to a more junior branch of the Habsburgs in the person of Charles's brother Ferdinand, while the senior branch continued to rule in Spain and the Burgundian inheritance in the person of Charles's son, Philip II of Spain. Many factors contribute to this result. For James D. Tracy, it was the polycentric character of the European civilization that made it hard to maintain \"a dynasty whose territories bestrode the continent from the Low Countries to Sicily and from Spain to Hungary\u00a0\u2013 not to mention Spain's overseas possessions\". Others point out the religious tensions, fiscal problems and obstruction from external forces including France and the Ottomans. On a more personal level, Charles failed to persuade the German princes to support his son Philip, whose \"awkward and withdrawn character and lack of German language skills doomed this enterprise to failure\".\nBefore Charles's reign in the Holy Roman Empire began, in 1517, Martin Luther launched what would later be known as the Reformation. The empire then became divided along religious lines, with the north, the east, and many of the major cities \u2013 Strasbourg, Frankfurt, and Nuremberg \u2013 becoming Protestant while the southern and western regions largely remained Catholic.\nAt the beginning of Charles's reign, another \"Reichsregiment\" was set up again (1522), although Charles declared that he would only tolerate it in his absence and its chairman had to be a representative of his. Charles V was absent in Germany from 1521 to 1530. Similar to the one set up in the early 1500s, the \"Reichsregiment\" failed to create a federal authority independent of the emperor, due to the unsteady participation and differences between princes. Charles V defeated the Protestant princes in 1547 in the Schmalkaldic War, but the momentum was lost and the Protestant estates were able to survive politically despite military defeat. In the 1555 Peace of Augsburg, Charles V, through his brother Ferdinand, officially recognized the right of rulers to choose Catholicism or Lutheranism (Zwinglians, Calvinists and radicals were not included). In 1555, Paul IV was elected pope and took the side of France, whereupon an exhausted Charles finally gave up his hopes of a world Christian empire.\nBaroque period.\nGermany would enjoy relative peace for the next six decades. On the eastern front, the Turks continued to loom large as a threat, although war would mean further compromises with the Protestant princes, and so the Emperor sought to avoid it. In the west, the Rhineland increasingly fell under French influence. After the Dutch revolt against Spain erupted, the Empire remained neutral, allowing the Netherlands to depart the empire in 1581. A side effect was the Cologne War, which ravaged much of the upper Rhine. Emperor Ferdinand III formally accepted Dutch neutrality in 1653, a decision ratified by the Reichstag in 1728.\nAfter Ferdinand died in 1564, his son Maximilian II became Emperor, and like his father accepted the existence of Protestantism and the need for occasional compromise with it. Maximilian was succeeded in 1576 by Rudolf II, who preferred classical Greek philosophy to Christianity and lived an isolated existence in Bohemia. He became afraid to act when the Catholic Church was forcibly reasserting control in Austria and Hungary, and the Protestant princes became upset over this.\nImperial power sharply deteriorated by the time of Rudolf's death in 1612. When Bohemians rebelled against the Emperor, the immediate result was the series of conflicts known as the Thirty Years' War (1618\u20131648), which devastated the empire. Foreign powers, including France and Sweden, intervened in the conflict and strengthened those fighting the Imperial power, but also seized considerable territory for themselves. Accordingly, the empire could never return to its former glory, leading Voltaire to make his infamous quip that the Holy Roman Empire was \"neither Holy nor Roman nor an Empire.\"\nStill, its actual end did not come for two centuries. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the Thirty Years' War allowed Calvinism, but Anabaptists, Arminians and other Protestant communities would still lack any support and continue to be persecuted well until the end of the empire. The Habsburg emperors focused on consolidating their own estates in Austria and elsewhere.\nAt the Battle of Vienna (1683), the Army of the Holy Roman Empire, led by the Polish King John III Sobieski, decisively defeated a large Turkish army, stopping the western Ottoman advance and leading to the eventual dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire in Europe. The army was one third forces of the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth and two thirds forces of the Holy Roman Empire.\nModern period.\nPrussia and Austria.\nBy the rise of Louis XIV, the Habsburgs were chiefly dependent on their hereditary lands to counter the rise of Prussia, which possessed territories inside the Empire. Throughout the 18th century, the Habsburgs were embroiled in various European conflicts, such as the War of the Spanish Succession (1701\u20131714), the War of the Polish Succession (1733\u20131735), and the War of the Austrian Succession (1740\u20131748). The German dualism between Austria and Prussia dominated the empire's history after 1740.\nFrench Revolutionary Wars and final dissolution.\nFrom 1792 onward, revolutionary France was at war with various parts of the Empire intermittently.\nThe German mediatization was the series of mediatizations and secularizations that occurred between 1795 and 1814, during the latter part of the era of the French Revolution and then the Napoleonic Era. \"Mediatization\" was the process of annexing the lands of one imperial estate to another, often leaving the annexed some rights. For example, the estates of the Imperial Knights were formally mediatized in 1806, having been seized by the great territorial states in 1803 in the so-called \"Rittersturm\". \"Secularization\" was the abolition of the temporal power of an ecclesiastical ruler such as a bishop or an abbot and the annexation of the secularized territory to a secular territory.\nThe empire was dissolved on 6 August 1806, when the last Holy Roman Emperor Francis II (from 1804, Emperor Francis I of Austria) abdicated, following a military defeat by the French under Napoleon at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805 (see Treaty of Pressburg). Napoleon reorganized much of the Empire into the Confederation of the Rhine, a French satellite. Francis' House of Habsburg-Lorraine survived the demise of the empire, continuing to reign as Emperors of Austria and Kings of Hungary until the Habsburg empire's final dissolution in 1918 in the aftermath of World War I.\nThe Napoleonic Confederation of the Rhine was replaced by a new union, the German Confederation in 1815, following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. It lasted until 1866 when Prussia founded the North German Confederation, a forerunner of the German Empire which united the German-speaking territories outside of Austria and Switzerland under Prussian leadership in 1871. This state developed into modern Germany.\nThe abdication indicated that the Kaiser no longer felt capable of fulfilling his duties as head of the Reich, and so declared:\n\"\"That we consider the tie that has bound us to the body politic of the German Reich to be broken, that we have expired the office and dignity of the head of the Reich through the unification of the confederated Rhenish estates and that we are thereby relieved of all the duties we have assumed towards the German Reich Consider counted, and lay down the imperial crown worn by the same until now and conducted imperial government, as is hereby done.\"\"\nThe only princely member states of the Holy Roman Empire that have preserved their status as monarchies until today are the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the Principality of Liechtenstein. The only Free Imperial Cities still existing as states within Germany are Hamburg and Bremen. All other historic member states of the Holy Roman Empire were either dissolved or have adopted republican systems of government.\nDemographics.\nPopulation.\nOverall population figures for the Holy Roman Empire are extremely vague and vary widely. The empire of Charlemagne may have had as many as 20 million people. Given the political fragmentation of the later Empire, there were no central agencies that could compile such figures. Nevertheless, it is believed the demographic disaster of the Thirty Years' War meant that the population of the Empire in the early 17th century was similar to what it was in the early 18th century; by one estimate, the Empire did not exceed 1618 levels of population until 1750.\nIn the early 17th century, the electors held under their rule the following number of Imperial subjects:\nWhile not electors, the Spanish Habsburgs had the second highest number of subjects within the Empire after the Austrian Habsburgs, with over 3 million in the early 17th century in the Burgundian Circle and Duchy of Milan.\nPeter Wilson estimates the Empire's population at 20 million in 1700, plus 5 million in Imperial Italy, a total of around 25 million. By 1800 he estimates the Empire's population at 29 million (excluding Italy), with another 12.6 million held by under Austrian and Prussian dominion outside of the Empire.\nAccording to a contemporary estimate of the Austrian War Archives for the first decade of the 18th century, the Empire\u00a0\u2013 including Bohemia and the Spanish Netherlands\u00a0\u2013 had a population of close to 28\u00a0million with a breakdown as follows:\nGerman demographic historians have traditionally worked on estimates of the population of the Holy Roman Empire based on assumed population within the frontiers of Germany in 1871 or 1914. More recent estimates use less outdated criteria, but they remain guesswork. One estimate based on the frontiers of Germany in 1870 gives a population of some 15\u201317\u00a0million around 1600, declined to 10\u201313\u00a0million around 1650 (following the Thirty Years' War). Other historians who work on estimates of the population of the early modern Empire suggest the population declined from 20\u00a0million to some 16\u201317\u00a0million by 1650.\nA credible estimate for 1800 gives 27\u201328\u00a0million inhabitants for the Empire (which at this point had already lost the remaining Low Countries, Italy, and the Left Bank of the Rhine in the 1797 Treaty of Campo Fornio) with an overall breakdown as follows:\nThere are also numerous estimates for the Italian states that were formally part of the Empire:\nLargest cities.\nLargest cities or towns of the Empire by year:\nReligion.\nCatholicism constituted the single official religion of the Empire until 1555; the Holy Roman Emperor was always Catholic.\nLutheranism was officially recognized in the Peace of Augsburg of 1555, and Calvinism in the Peace of Westphalia of 1648. Those two constituted the only officially recognized Protestant denominations, while various other Protestant confessions such as Anabaptism, Arminianism, etc. coexisted illegally within the Empire. Anabaptism came in a variety of denominations, including Mennonites, Schwarzenau Brethren, Hutterites, the Amish, and multiple other groups.\nFollowing the Peace of Augsburg, the official religion of a territory was determined by the principle according to which a ruler's religion determined that of his subjects. The Peace of Westphalia abrogated that principle by stipulating that the official religion of a territory was to be what it had been on 1 January 1624, considered to have been a \"normal year\". Henceforth, the conversion of a ruler to another faith did not entail the conversion of his subjects.\nIn addition, all Protestant subjects of a Catholic ruler and vice versa were guaranteed the rights that they had enjoyed on that date. While the adherents of a territory's official religion enjoyed the right of public worship, the others were allowed the right of private worship (in chapels without either spires or bells). In theory, no one was to be discriminated against or excluded from commerce, trade, craft or public burial on grounds of religion. For the first time, the permanent nature of the division between the Christian churches of the empire was more or less assumed.\nA Jewish minority existed in the Holy Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Emperors claimed the right of protection and taxation of all the Jews of the empire, but there were also large-scale massacres of Jews, especially at the time of the First Crusade and during the wars of religion in the 16th century.\nInstitutions.\nThe Holy Roman Empire was neither a centralized state nor a nation-state. Instead, it was divided into dozens \u2013 eventually hundreds \u2013 of individual entities governed by kings, dukes, counts, bishops, abbots, and other rulers, collectively known as princes. There were also some areas ruled directly by the Emperor.\nFrom the High Middle Ages onwards, the Holy Roman Empire was marked by an uneasy coexistence with the princes of the local territories who were struggling to take power away from it. To a greater extent than in other medieval kingdoms such as France and England, the emperors were unable to gain much control over the lands that they formally owned. Instead, to secure their own position from the threat of being deposed, emperors were forced to grant more and more autonomy to local rulers, both nobles and bishops. This process began in the 11th century with the Investiture Controversy and was more or less concluded with the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. Several Emperors attempted to reverse this steady dilution of their authority but were thwarted both by the papacy and by the princes of the Empire.\nImperial estates.\nThe number of territories represented in the Imperial Diet was considerable, numbering about 300 at the time of the Peace of Westphalia. Many of these \"Kleinstaaten\" (\"little states\") covered no more than a few square miles, or included several non-contiguous pieces, so the Empire was often called a (\"patchwork carpet\").\nAn entity was considered a (imperial estate) if, according to feudal law, it had no authority above it except the Holy Roman Emperor himself. The imperial estates comprised:\nA sum total of 1,500 Imperial estates has been reckoned. For a list of in 1792, see List of Imperial Diet participants (1792).\nThe most powerful lords of the later empire were the Austrian Habsburgs, who ruled of land within the Empire in the first half of the 17th century, mostly in modern-day Austria and Czechia. At the same time the lands ruled by the electors of Saxony, Bavaria, and Brandenburg (prior to the acquisition of Prussia) were all close to ; the Duke of Brunswick-L\u00fcneburg (later the Elector of Hanover) had a territory around the same size. These were the largest of the German realms. The Elector of the Palatinate had significantly less at , and the ecclesiastical Electorates of Mainz, Cologne, and Trier were much smaller, with around . Just larger than them, with roughly , were the Duchy of W\u00fcrttemberg, the Landgraviate of Hessen-Kassel, and the Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. They were roughly matched in size by the prince-bishoprics of Salzburg and M\u00fcnster. The majority of the other German territories, including the other prince-bishoprics, were under , the smallest being those of the Imperial Knights; around 1790 the Knights consisted of 350 families ruling a total of only collectively. Imperial Italy was less fragmented politically, most of it c.\u20091600 being divided between Savoy (Savoy, Piedmont, Nice, Aosta), the Grand Duchy of Tuscany (Tuscany, bar Lucca), the Republic of Genoa (Liguria, Corisca), the duchies of Modena-Reggio and Parma-Piacenza (Emilia), and the Spanish Duchy of Milan (most of Lombardy), each with between half a million and one and a half million people. The Low Countries were also more coherent than Germany, being entirely under the dominion of the Spanish Netherlands as part of the Burgundian Circle, at least nominally.\nIn 1792, 21 families (8 electors and 13 princely families) held 81 percent of the Empire's territory, plus all electoral and 56 of the 100 princely votes. These 21 families held 25 territories (some families had cadet branches e.g. the Bavarian and Palatinate Wittelsbachs), by far the largest being Austria and Prussia. Another 16.4 percent of the Empire was split between 151 ecclesiastical and secular lords, generally lacking princely status, with the majority of that 16.4 percent being held by a tenth of the lords. The remaining 2.6 percent of the Empire was split between 51 disconnected imperial cities and 400 families of Imperial Knights.\nKing of the Romans.\nA prospective Emperor first had to be elected King of the Romans. German kings had been elected since the 9th century; at that point they were chosen by the leaders of the five most important tribes (the Salian Franks of Lorraine, Ripuarian Franks of Franconia, Saxons, Bavarians, and Swabians). In the Holy Roman Empire, the main dukes and bishops of the kingdom elected the King of the Romans.\nThe imperial throne was transferred by election, but Emperors often ensured their own sons were elected during their lifetimes, enabling them to keep the crown for their families. This only changed after the end of the Salian dynasty in the 12th century.\nIn 1356, Emperor Charles IV issued the Golden Bull, which limited the electors to seven: the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the Duke of Saxony, the Margrave of Brandenburg, and the archbishops of Cologne, Mainz, and Trier. During the Thirty Years' War, the Duke of Bavaria was given the right to vote as the eighth elector, and the Duke of Brunswick-L\u00fcneburg (colloquially, Hanover) was granted a ninth electorate; additionally, the Napoleonic Wars resulted in several electorates being reallocated, but these new electors never voted before the Empire's dissolution. A candidate for election would be expected to offer concessions of land or money to the electors in order to secure their vote.\nAfter being elected, the King of the Romans could theoretically claim the title of \"Emperor\" only after being crowned by the Pope. In many cases, this took several years while the King was held up by other tasks: frequently he first had to resolve conflicts in rebellious northern Italy or was quarreling with the Pope himself. Later Emperors dispensed with the papal coronation altogether, being content with the styling \"Emperor-Elect\": the last Emperor to be crowned by the Pope was Charles V in 1530.\nThe Emperor had to be male and of noble blood. No law required him to be a Catholic, but as the majority of the Electors adhered to this faith, no Protestant was ever elected. Whether and to what degree he had to be German was disputed among the Electors, contemporary experts in constitutional law, and the public. During the Middle Ages, some Kings and Emperors were not of German origin, but since the Renaissance, German heritage was regarded as vital for a candidate in order to be eligible for imperial office.\nImperial Diet.\nThe Imperial Diet ( or ) was not a legislative body as is understood today, as its members envisioned it to be more like a central forum, where it was more important to negotiate than to decide. The Diet was theoretically superior to the emperor himself. It was divided into three classes. The first class, the Council of Electors, consisted of the electors, or the princes who could vote for King of the Romans. The second class, the Council of Princes, consisted of the other princes. The Council of Princes was divided into two \"benches\", one for secular rulers and one for ecclesiastical ones. Higher-ranking princes had individual votes, while lower-ranking princes were grouped into \"colleges\" by geography. Each college had one vote.\nThe third class was the Council of Imperial Cities, which was divided into two colleges: Swabia and the Rhine. The Council of Imperial Cities was not fully equal with the others; it could not vote on several matters such as the admission of new territories. The representation of the Free Cities at the Diet had become common since the late Middle Ages. Nevertheless, their participation was formally acknowledged only as late as 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia ending the Thirty Years' War.\nImperial Aulic Chancellery.\nThe Imperial Aulic Chancellery () was the main \"Aulic\" (Courtly) Chancellery of the Holy Roman Empire. It was formed in 1559, by emperor Ferdinand I, and existed until the dissolution of the Empire in 1806. During that period, it was headed by the Imperial Archchancellor (), a honorary post traditionally reserved for the Archbishops of Mainz. In practice, it was run by the Imperial Vicechancellor (), who was appointed among notable statesmen and administrators in imperial service.\nImperial courts.\nThe Empire also had two courts: the \"Reichshofrat\" (also known in English as the Aulic Council) at the court of the King/Emperor, and the \"Reichskammergericht\" (Imperial Chamber Court), established with the Imperial Reform of 1495 by Maximilian I. The Reichskammergericht and the Aulic Council were the two highest judicial instances in the Old Empire. The Imperial Chamber court's composition was determined by both the Holy Roman Emperor and the subject states of the Empire. Within this court, the Emperor appointed the chief justice, always a highborn aristocrat, several divisional chief judges, and some of the other puisne judges.\nThe Aulic Council held standing over many judicial disputes of state, both in concurrence with the Imperial Chamber court and exclusively on their own. The provinces Imperial Chamber Court extended to breaches of the public peace, cases of arbitrary distraint or imprisonment, pleas which concerned the treasury, violations of the Emperor's decrees or the laws passed by the Imperial Diet, disputes about property between immediate tenants of the Empire or the subjects of different rulers, and finally suits against immediate tenants of the Empire, with the exception of criminal charges and matters relating to imperial fiefs, which went to the Aulic Council. The Aulic Council even allowed the emperors the means to depose rulers who did not live up to expectations.\nImperial circles.\nAs part of the Imperial Reform, six Imperial circles were established in 1500; four more were established in 1512. These were regional groupings of most (though not all) of the various states of the Empire for the purposes of defense, imperial taxation, supervision of coining, peace-keeping functions, and public security. Each circle had its own parliament, known as a \"Kreistag\" (\"Circle Diet\"), and one or more directors, who coordinated the affairs of the circle. Not all imperial territories were included within the imperial circles, even after 1512; the Lands of the Bohemian Crown were excluded, as were Switzerland, the imperial fiefs in northern Italy, the lands of the Imperial Knights, and certain other small territories like the Lordship of Jever.\nArmy.\nThe Army of the Holy Roman Empire (, or ; ) was created in 1422 and as a result of the Napoleonic Wars came to an end even before the Empire. It should not be confused with the Imperial Army () of the Emperor.\nDespite appearances to the contrary, the Army of the Empire did not constitute a permanent standing army that was always at the ready to fight for the Empire. When there was danger, an Army of the Empire was mustered from among the elements constituting it, in order to conduct an imperial military campaign or . In practice, the imperial troops often had local allegiances stronger than their loyalty to the Emperor.\nAdministrative centres.\nThroughout the first half of its history the Holy Roman Empire was reigned over by a travelling court. Kings and emperors toured between the numerous Kaiserpfalzes (Imperial palaces), usually resided for several weeks or months and furnished local legal matters, law and administration. Most rulers maintained one or a number of favourites Imperial palace sites, where they would advance development and spent most of their time: Charlemagne (Aachen from 794), Otto I (Magdeburg, from 955), Frederick II (Palermo 1220\u20131254), Wittelsbacher (Munich 1328\u20131347 and 1744\u20131745), Habsburger (Prague 1355\u20131437 and 1576\u20131611; and Vienna 1438\u20131576, 1611\u20131740 and 1745\u20131806).\nThis practice eventually ended during the 16th century, as the emperors of the Habsburg dynasty chose Vienna and Prague and the Wittelsbach rulers chose Munich as their permanent residences (Maximilian I's \"true home\" was still \"the stirrup, the overnight rest and the saddle\", although Innsbruck was probably his most important base; Charles V was also a nomadic emperor). Vienna became Imperial capital during the 1550s under Ferdinand I (reigned 1556\u20131564). Except for a period under Rudolf II (reigned 1570\u20131612) who moved to Prague, Vienna kept its primacy under his successors. Before that, certain sites served only as the individual residence for a particular sovereign. A number of cities held official status, where the Imperial Estates would summon at Imperial Diets, the deliberative assembly of the empire.\nThe Imperial Diet (\"Reichstag\") resided variously in Paderborn, Bad Lippspringe, Ingelheim am Rhein, Diedenhofen (now Thionville), Aachen, Worms, Forchheim, Trebur, Fritzlar, Ravenna, Quedlinburg, Dortmund, Verona, Minden, Mainz, Frankfurt am Main, Merseburg, Goslar, W\u00fcrzburg, Bamberg, Schw\u00e4bisch Hall, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Quierzy-sur-Oise, Speyer, Gelnhausen, Erfurt, Eger (now Cheb), Esslingen, Lindau, Freiburg, Cologne, Konstanz and Trier before it was moved permanently to Regensburg.\nUntil the 15th century the elected emperor was crowned and anointed by the Pope in Rome, among some exceptions in Ravenna, Bologna and Reims. Since 1508 (emperor Maximilian I) Imperial elections took place in Frankfurt am Main, Augsburg, Rhens, Cologne or Regensburg.\nIn December 1497 the Aulic Council (\"Reichshofrat\") was established in Vienna.\nIn 1495 the \"Reichskammergericht\" was established, which variously resided in Worms, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Regensburg, Speyer and Esslingen before it was moved permanently to Wetzlar.\nForeign relations.\nThe Habsburg royal family had its own diplomats to represent its interests. The larger principalities in the Holy Roman Empire, beginning around 1648, also did the same. The Holy Roman Empire did not have its own dedicated ministry of foreign affairs and therefore the Imperial Diet had no control over these diplomats; occasionally the Diet criticised them.\nWhen Regensburg served as the site of the Diet, France and, in the late 1700s, Russia, had diplomatic representatives there. The kings of Denmark, Great Britain, and Sweden had land holdings in Germany and so had representation in the Diet itself. The Netherlands also had envoys in Regensburg. Regensburg was the place where envoys met as it was where representatives of the Diet could be reached.\nImperial families and dynasties.\nSome constituencies of the Holy Roman Empire had additional royal or imperial territories that were, sometimes from the outset, outside the jurisdiction of the Holy Roman Empire. Henry VI, inheriting both German aspirations for imperial sovereignty and the Norman Sicilian kings' dream of hegemony in the Mediterranean, had ambitious design for a world empire. Boettcher remarks that marriage policy also played an important role here, \"The marital policy of the Staufer ranged from Iberia to Russia, from Scandinavia to Sicily, from England to Byzantium and to the crusader states in the East. Henry was already casting his eyes beyond Africa and Greece, to Asia Minor and Syria and of course on Jerusalem.\" His annexation of Sicily changed the strategic balance in the Italian peninsula. The emperor, who wanted to make all his lands hereditary, also asserted that papal fiefs were imperial fiefs. On his death at the age of 31 though, he was unable to pass his powerful position to his son, Frederick II, who had only been elected King of the Romans. The union between Sicily and the Empire thus remained personal union. Frederick II became King of Sicily in 1225 through marriage to Isabella II (or Yolande) of Jerusalem and regained Bethlehem and Nazareth for the Christian side through negotiation with Al-Kamil. The Hohenstaufen dream of world empire ended with Frederick's death in 1250 though.\nIn its earlier days, the Empire provided the principal medium for Christianity to infiltrate the pagans' realms in the North and the East (Scandinavians, Magyars, Slavic people etc.). By the Reform era, the Empire, in its nature, was defensive and not aggressive, desiring of both internal peace and security against invading forces, a fact that even warlike princes such as Maximilian I appreciated. In the Early Modern age, the association with the Church (the Church Universal for the Luxemburgs, and the Catholic Church for the Habsburgs) as well as the emperor's responsibility for the defence of Central Europe remained a reality though. Even the trigger for the conception of the Imperial Reform under Sigismund was the idea of helping the Church to put its house in order.\nTraditionally, German dynasties had exploited the potential of the imperial title to bring Eastern Europe into the fold, in addition to their lands north and south of the Alps. Marriage and inheritance strategies, following by (usually defensive) warfare, played a great role both for the Luxemburgs and the Habsburgs. It was under Sigismund of the Luxemburg, who married Mary, Queen regnal and the rightful heir of Hungary and later consolidated his power with the marriage to the capable and well-connected noblewoman Barbara of Cilli, that the emperor's personal empire expanded to a kingdom outside the boundary of the Holy Roman Empire: Hungary. This last monarch of the Luxemburg dynasty (who wore four royal crowns) had managed to gain an empire almost comparable in scale to the later Habsburg empire, although at the same time they lost the Kingdom of Burgundy and control over Italian territories. The Luxemburgs' focus on the East, especially Hungary, allowed the new Burgundian rulers from the Valois dynasty to foster discontent among German princes. Thus, the Habsburgs were forced to refocus their attention on the West. Frederick III's cousin and predecessor, Albert II of Germany (who was Sigismund's son-in-law and heir through his marriage with Elizabeth of Luxembourg) had managed to combine the crowns of Germany, Hungary, Bohemia and Croatia under his rule, but he died young.\nDuring his rule, Maximilian I had a double focus on both the East and the West. The successful expansion (with the notable role of marriage policy) under Maximilian bolstered his position in the Empire, and also created more pressure for an imperial reform, so that they could get more resources and coordinated help from the German territories to defend their realms and counter hostile powers such as France. Ever since he became King of the Romans in 1486, the Empire provided essential help for his activities in Burgundian Netherlands as well as dealings with Bohemia, Hungary and other eastern polities. In the reigns of his grandsons, Croatia and the remaining rump of the Hungarian kingdom chose Ferdinand as their ruler after he managed to rescue Silesia and Bohemia from Hungary's fate against the Ottoman. Simms notes that their choice was a contractual one, tying Ferdinand's rulership in these kingdoms and territories to his election as King of the Romans and his ability to defend Central Europe. In turn, the Habsburgs' imperial rule also \"depended on holding these additional extensive lands as independent sources of wealth and prestige.\"\nThe later Austrian Habsburgs from Ferdinand I were careful to maintain a distinction between their dynastic empire and the Holy Roman Empire. Peter Wilson argues that the institutions and structures developed by the Imperial Reform mostly served German lands and, although the Habsburg monarchy \"remained closely entwined with the Empire\", the Habsburgs deliberately refrained from including their other territories in its framework. \"Instead, they developed their own institutions to manage what was, effectively, a parallel dynastic-territorial empire and which gave them an overwhelming superiority of resources, in turn allowing them to retain an almost unbroken grip on the imperial title over the next three centuries.\" Ferdinand had an interest in keeping Bohemia separate from imperial jurisdiction and making the connection between Bohemia and the Empire looser (Bohemia did not have to pay taxes to the Empire). As he refused the rights of an Imperial Elector as King of Bohemia (which provided him with half of his revenue), he was able to give Bohemia (as well as associated territories such as Upper and Lower Alsatia, Silesia and Moravia) the same privileged status as Austria, therefore affirming his superior position in the Empire. The Habsburgs also tried to mobilize imperial aid for Hungary (which, throughout the 16th century, cost the dynasty more money in defence expenditure than the total revenue it yielded).\nSince 1542, Charles V and Ferdinand had been able to collect the Common Penny tax, or \"T\u00fcrkenhilfe\" (Turkish aid), designed to protect the Empire against the Ottomans or France. But as Hungary, unlike Bohemia, was not part of the Empire, the imperial aid for Hungary depended on political factors. The obligation was only in effect if Vienna or the Empire were threatened. Wilson notes that, \"In the early 1520s the Reichstag hesitated to vote aid for Hungary's King Louis II, because it regarded him as a foreign prince. This changed once Hungary passed to the Habsburgs on Louis' death in battle in 1526 and the main objective of imperial taxation across the next 90 years was to subsidize the cost of defending the Hungarian frontier against the Ottomans. The bulk of the weaponry and other military materiel was supplied by firms based in the Empire and financed by German banks. The same is true of the troops who eventually evicted the Ottomans from Hungary between 1683 and 1699. The imperial law code of 1532 was used in parts of Hungary until the mid-17th century, but otherwise Hungary had its own legal system and did not import Austrian ones. Hungarian nobles resisted the use of Germanic titles like Graf for count until 1606, and very few acquired the personal status of imperial prince.\"\nResponding to the opinion that the Habsburg's dynastic concerns were damaging to the Holy Roman Empire, Whaley writes that, \"There was no fundamental incompatibility between dynasticism and participation in the empire, either for the Habsburgs or for the Saxons or others.\" Imperial marriage strategies had double-edged effects for the Holy Roman Empire though. The Spanish connection was an example: while it provided a powerful partner in the defence of Christendom against the Ottomans, it allowed Charles V to transfer the Burgundian Netherlands, Franche-Comte as well as other imperial fiefs such as Milan to his son Philip II's Spanish Empire.\nOther than the imperial families, other German princes possessed foreign lands as well, and foreign rulers could also acquire imperial fiefs and thus become imperial princes. This phenomenon contributed to the fragmentation of sovereignty, in which imperial vassals remained semi-sovereign, while strengthening the interconnections (and chances of mutual interference) between the Kingdom of Germany and the Empire in general with other kingdoms such as Denmark and Sweden, who accepted the status of imperial vassals on behalf of their German possessions (which were subjected to imperial laws). The two Scandinanvian monarchies honoured the obligations to come to the aid of the Empire in the wars of 17th and early 18th centuries. They also imported German princely families as rulers, although in both cases, this did not produce direct unions. Denmark consistently tried to take advantage of its influence in imperial institutions to gain new imperial fiefs along the Elbe, although these attempts generally did not succeed.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["13277", "606043"], "permutation_1": ["606043", "13277"], "permutation_2": ["13277", "606043"], "permutation_3": ["606043", "13277"]}
{"id": "2hop__30878_90450", "docs_added": {"26810748": "Iowa\nU.S. State\nIowa ( ) is a state in the upper Midwestern region of the United States. It borders the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west; Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to the east and southeast, Missouri to the south, Nebraska to the west, South Dakota to the northwest, and Minnesota to the north.\nIowa is the 26th largest in total area and the 31st most populous of the 50 U.S. states, with a population of 3.19 million. The state's capital, most populous city, and largest metropolitan area fully located within the state is Des Moines. A portion of the larger Omaha, Nebraska, metropolitan area extends into three counties of southwest Iowa. Other metropolitan statistical areas in Iowa include Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, Waterloo-Cedar Falls, Ames, Dubuque, Sioux City, and the Iowa portion of the Quad Cities. Iowa is home to 940 small towns, though its population is increasingly urbanized as small communities and rural areas decline in population.\nDuring the 18th and early 19th centuries, Iowa was a part of French Louisiana and Spanish Louisiana; its state flag is patterned after the flag of France. After the Louisiana Purchase, pioneers laid the foundation for an agriculture-based economy in the heart of the Corn Belt. In the latter half of the 20th century, Iowa's agricultural economy began to transition to a diversified economy of advanced manufacturing, processing, financial services, information technology, biotechnology, and green energy production. \nPolitically, Iowa is notable for the Iowa Caucuses, an influential event in national politics, as well as its high levels of voter turnout and foundational leadership in civil rights including early adoption or support of black suffrage, women's rights, and same-sex marriage. Iowa's standard of living is ranked among the best states and it performs highly on metrics such as governance, education, infrastructure, and safety.\nEtymology.\nLike many other states, Iowa takes its name from its predecessor, Iowa Territory, whose name in turn is derived from the Iowa River, and ultimately from the ethnonym of the indigenous Ioway people.\nThe Ioway are a Chiwere-speaking Siouan Nation, who were once part of the Ho-Chunk Confederation that inhabited the area now corresponding to several Midwest states. The Ioway were one of the many Native American nations whose territory comprised the future state of Iowa before the time of European colonization.\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nWhen Indigenous peoples of the Americas first arrived in what is now Iowa more than 13,000 years ago, they were hunters and gatherers living in a Pleistocene glacial landscape. By the time European explorers and traders visited Iowa, Native Americans were largely settled farmers with complex economic, social, and political systems. This transformation happened gradually. During the Archaic period (10,500 to 2,800 years ago), Native Americans adapted to local environments and ecosystems, slowly becoming more sedentary as populations increased.\nMore than 3,000 years ago, during the Late Archaic period, Native Americans in Iowa began utilizing domesticated plants. The subsequent Woodland period saw an increased reliance on agriculture and social complexity, with increased use of mounds, ceramics, and specialized subsistence. During the Late Prehistoric period (beginning about AD 900) increased use of maize and social changes led to social flourishing and nucleated settlements.\nThe arrival of European trade goods and diseases in the Protohistoric period led to dramatic population shifts and economic and social upheaval, with the arrival of new tribes and early European explorers and traders. There were numerous native American tribes living in Iowa at the time of early European exploration. Tribes which were probably descendants of the prehistoric Oneota include the Dakota, Ho-Chunk, Ioway, and Otoe. Tribes which arrived in Iowa in the late prehistoric or protohistoric periods include the Illiniwek, Meskwaki, Omaha, and Sauk.\nEarly colonization and trade, 1673\u20131808.\nThe first known European explorers to document Iowa were Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet who traveled the Mississippi River in 1673 documenting several Indigenous villages on the Iowa side. The area of Iowa was claimed for France and remained a French territory until 1763. The French, before their impending defeat in the French and Indian War, transferred ownership to their ally, Spain. Spain practiced very loose control over the Iowa region, granting trading licenses to French and British traders, who established trading posts along the Mississippi and Des Moines Rivers.\nIowa was part of a territory known as \"La Louisiane\" or Louisiana, and European traders were interested in lead and furs obtained by Indigenous people. The Sauk and Meskwaki effectively controlled trade on the Mississippi in the late 18th century and early 19th century. Among the early traders on the Mississippi were Julien Dubuque, Robert de la Salle, and Paul Marin. Along the Missouri River at least five French and English trading houses were built before 1808. In 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte took control of Louisiana from Spain in a treaty.\nAfter the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, Congress divided the Louisiana Purchase into two parts\u2014the Territory of Orleans and the District of Louisiana, with present-day Iowa falling in the latter. The Indiana Territory, created in 1800, exercised jurisdiction over this portion of the District; William Henry Harrison was its first governor. Much of Iowa was mapped by Zebulon Pike in 1805, but it was not until the construction of Fort Madison in 1808 that the U.S. established tenuous military control over the region.\nWar of 1812 and unstable U.S. control.\nFort Madison was built to control trade and establish U.S. dominance over the Upper Mississippi, but it was poorly designed and disliked by the Sauk and Meskwaki, many of whom allied with the British, who had not abandoned claims to the territory. Fort Madison was defeated by British-supported Indigenous people in 1813 during the War of 1812, and Fort Shelby in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, also fell to the British. Black Hawk took part in the siege of Fort Madison. Another small military outpost was established along the Mississippi River in present-day Bellevue. This poorly situated stockade was similarly attacked by hundreds of Indigenous people in 1813, but was successfully defended and later abandoned until settlers returned to the area in the mid-1830s.\nAfter the war, the U.S. re-established control of the region through the construction of Fort Armstrong, Fort Snelling in Minnesota, and Fort Atkinson in Nebraska.\nIndian removal, 1814\u20131832.\nThe United States encouraged settlement of the east side of the Mississippi and removal of Indians to the west. A disputed 1804 treaty between Quashquame and William Henry Harrison (then governor of the Indiana Territory) that surrendered much of Illinois to the U.S. enraged many Sauk and led to the 1832 Black Hawk War.\nThe Sauk and Meskwaki were forced to sell some of their land in the Mississippi Valley to the U.S. in 1832 in the Black Hawk Purchase Treaty and sold their remaining land in Iowa in 1842, most of them moving to a reservation in Kansas. In 1837, some the Potawatomi from Illinois were resettled in Iowa, while many Meskwaki later returned to Iowa and settled near Tama, Iowa; the Meskwaki Settlement remains to this day. In 1856 the Iowa Legislature passed an unprecedented act allowing the Meskwaki to purchase the land. However, in contrast to the unprecedented act of the Iowa Legislature, the United States Federal Government, through the use of Treaties, forced the Ho-Chunk from Iowa in 1848, and forced the Dakota from Iowa by 1858. Western Iowa around modern Council Bluffs was used as an Indian Reservation for members of the Council of Three Fires.\nU.S. settlement and statehood, 1832\u20131860.\nThe first American settlers officially moved to Iowa in June 1833. Primarily, they were families from Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana, Kentucky, and Virginia who settled along the western banks of the Mississippi River, founding the modern day cities of Dubuque and Bellevue near the site of Julien Dubuque's 1785\u20131810 lead mining operation. On July 4, 1838, the U.S. Congress established the Territory of Iowa. President Martin Van Buren appointed Robert Lucas governor of the territory, which at the time had 22 counties and a population of 23,242.\nAlmost immediately after achieving territorial status, a clamor arose for statehood. On December 28, 1846, Iowa became the 29th state in the Union when President James K. Polk signed Iowa's admission bill into law. Once admitted to the Union, the state's boundary issues resolved, and most of its land purchased from Natives, Iowa set its direction to development and organized campaigns for settlers and investors, boasting the young frontier state's rich farmlands, fine citizens, free and open society, and good government.\nIowa has a long tradition of state and county fairs. The first and second Iowa State Fairs were held in the more developed eastern part of the state at Fairfield. The first fair was held October 25\u201327, 1854, at a cost of around $323. Thereafter, the fair moved to locations closer to the center of the state and in 1886 found a permanent home in Des Moines. The State Fair has been held annually since then, except for a few exceptions: 1898 due to the Spanish\u2013American War and the World's Fair being held in nearby Omaha, Nebraska; from 1942 to 1945, due to World War II, as the fairgrounds were being used as an army supply depot; and in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.\nCivil War, 1861\u20131865.\nIowa supported the Union during the Civil War, voting heavily for Abraham Lincoln, though there was an antiwar \"Copperhead\" movement in the state, caused partially by a drop in crop prices caused by the war. There were no battles in the state, although the Battle of Athens, Missouri, 1861, was fought just across the Des Moines River from Croton, Iowa, and shots from the battle landed in Iowa. Iowa sent large supplies of food to the armies and the eastern cities.\nMuch of Iowa's support for the Union can be attributed to Samuel J. Kirkwood, its first wartime governor. Of a total population of 675,000, about 116,000 men were subjected to military duty. Iowa contributed proportionately more soldiers to Civil War military service than did any other state, north or south, sending more than 75,000 volunteers to the armed forces, over one-sixth of whom were killed before the Confederates surrendered at Appomattox.\nMost fought in the great campaigns in the Mississippi Valley and in the South. Iowa troops fought at Wilson's Creek in Missouri, Pea Ridge in Arkansas, Forts Henry and Donelson, Shiloh, Chattanooga, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, and Rossville Gap as well as Vicksburg, Iuka, and Corinth. They served with the Army of the Potomac in Virginia and fought under Union General Philip Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley. Many died and were buried at Andersonville. They marched on General Nathaniel Banks' ill-starred expedition to the Red River. Twenty-seven Iowans have been awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest military decoration awarded by the United States government, which was first awarded in the Civil War.\nIowa had several brigadier generals and four major generals\u2014Grenville Mellen Dodge, Samuel R. Curtis, Francis J. Herron, and Frederick Steele\u2014and saw many of its generals go on to state and national prominence following the war.\nAgricultural expansion, 1865\u20131930.\nFollowing the Civil War, Iowa's population continued to grow dramatically, from 674,913 people in 1860 to 1,624,615 in 1880. The American Civil War briefly brought higher profits.\nIn 1917, the United States entered World War I and farmers as well as all Iowans experienced a wartime economy. For farmers, the change was significant. Since the beginning of the war in 1914, Iowa farmers had experienced economic prosperity, which lasted until the end of the war. In the economic sector, Iowa also has undergone considerable change. Beginning with the first industries developed in the 1830s, which were mainly for processing materials grown in the area, Iowa has experienced a gradual increase in the number of business and manufacturing operations.\nDepression, World War II and manufacturing, 1930\u20131985.\nThe transition from an agricultural economy to a mixed economy happened slowly. The Great Depression and World War II accelerated the shift away from smallholder farming to larger farms, and began a trend of urbanization. The period after World War II witnessed a particular increase in manufacturing operations.\nIn 1975, Governor Robert D. Ray petitioned President Ford to allow Iowa to accept and resettle Tai Dam refugees fleeing the Indochina War. An exception was required for this resettlement as State Dept policy at the time forbid resettlement of large groups of refugees in concentrated communities; an exception was ultimately granted and 1200 Tai Dam were resettled in Iowa. Since then Iowa has accepted thousands of refugees from Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Bhutan, and Burma.\nThe farm crisis of the 1980s caused a major recession in Iowa, causing poverty not seen since the Depression. The crisis spurred a major, decade-long population decline.\nReemergence as a mixed economy, 1985\u2013present.\nAfter bottoming out in the 1980s, Iowa's economy began to reduce its dependence on agriculture. By the early 21st century, it was characterized by a mix of manufacturing, biotechnology, finance and insurance services, and government services. The population of Iowa has increased at a slower rate than the U.S. as a whole since at least the 1900 census, though Iowa now has a predominantly urban population. The Iowa Economic Development Authority, created in 2011 has replaced the Iowa Department of Economic Development and its annual reports are a source of economic information.\nGeography.\nBoundaries.\nIowa is bordered by the Mississippi River on the east along with the Missouri River and the Big Sioux River on the west. The northern boundary is a line along 43 degrees, 30 minutes north latitude. The southern border is the Des Moines River and a not-quite-straight line along approximately 40 degrees 35 minutes north, as decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in \"Missouri v. Iowa\" (1849) after a standoff between Missouri and Iowa known as the Honey War.\nIowa is the only state whose east and west borders are formed almost entirely by rivers. Carter Lake, Iowa, is the only city in the state located west of the Missouri River.\nIowa has 99 counties, but 100 county seats because Lee County has two. The state capital, Des Moines, is in Polk County.\nGeology and terrain.\nIowa's bedrock geology generally decreases in age from east to west. In northwest Iowa, Cretaceous bedrock can be 74\u00a0million years old; in eastern Iowa Cambrian bedrock dates to c. 500\u00a0million years ago. The oldest radiometrically dated bedrock in the state is the 2.9 billion year old Otter Creek Layered Mafic Complex. Precambrian rock is exposed only in the northwest of the state.\nIowa can be divided into eight landforms based on glaciation, soils, topography, and river drainage. Loess hills lie along the western border of the state, some of which are several hundred feet thick. Northeast Iowa along the Upper Mississippi River is part of the Driftless Area, consisting of steep hills and valleys which appear as mountainous.\nSeveral natural lakes exist, most notably Spirit Lake, West Okoboji Lake, and East Okoboji Lake in northwest Iowa (\"see Iowa Great Lakes\"). To the east lies Clear Lake. Man-made lakes include Lake Odessa, Saylorville Lake, Lake Red Rock, Coralville Lake, Lake MacBride, and Rathbun Lake. Before European settlement, 4 to 6\u00a0million acres of the state was covered with wetlands, about 95% of these wetlands have been drained.\nEcology and environment.\nIowa's natural vegetation is tallgrass prairie and savanna in upland areas, with dense forest and wetlands in flood plains and protected river valleys, and pothole wetlands in northern prairie areas. Most of Iowa is used for agriculture; crops cover 60% of the state, grasslands (mostly pasture and hay with some prairie and wetland) cover 30%, and forests cover 7%; urban areas and water cover another 1% each.\nThe southern part of Iowa is categorized as the Central forest-grasslands transition ecoregion. The Northern, drier part of Iowa is categorized as part of the Central tall grasslands.\nThere is a dearth of natural areas in Iowa; less than 1% of the tallgrass prairie that once covered most of Iowa remains intact; only about 5% of the state's prairie pothole wetlands remain, and most of the original forest has been lost. As of 2005[ [update]] Iowa ranked 49th of U.S. states in public land holdings. Threatened or endangered animals in Iowa include the interior least tern, piping plover, Indiana bat, pallid sturgeon, the Iowa Pleistocene land snail, Higgins' eye pearly mussel, and the Topeka shiner. Endangered or threatened plants include western prairie fringed orchid, eastern prairie fringed orchid, Mead's milkweed, prairie bush clover, and northern wild monkshood.\nThe explosion in the number of high-density livestock facilities in Iowa has led to increased rural water contamination and a decline in air quality.\nOther factors negatively affecting Iowa's environment include the extensive use of older coal-fired power plants, fertilizer and pesticide runoff from crop production, and diminishment of the Jordan Aquifer.\nThe 2020\u20132023 North American drought has affected Iowa particularly: As of January 2024, Iowa was in its 187th consecutive week of at least moderate drought, the longest stretch since the 1950s. 96% of areas are affected by drought.\nClimate.\nIowa has a humid continental climate throughout the state (K\u00f6ppen climate classification \"Dfa\") with extremes of both heat and cold. The average annual temperature at Des Moines is ; for some locations in the north, such as Mason City, the figure is about , while Keokuk, on the Mississippi River, averages . Snowfall is common, with Des Moines getting about 26 days of snowfall a year, and other places, such as Shenandoah getting about 11 days of snowfall in a year.\nSpring ushers in the beginning of the severe weather season. As of 2008, Iowa averaged about 50 days of thunderstorm activity per year. As of 2015, the 30-year annual average of tornadoes in Iowa was 47. In 2008, twelve people were killed by tornadoes in Iowa, making it the deadliest year since 1968 and also the second most tornadoes in a year with 105, matching the total from 2001.\nIowa summers are known for heat and humidity, with daytime temperatures sometimes near and occasionally exceeding . Average winters in the state have been known to drop well below freezing, even dropping below . As of 2018, Iowa's all-time hottest temperature of was recorded at Keokuk on July 20, 1934, during a nationwide heat wave; as of 2014, the all-time lowest temperature of was recorded in Washta on January 12, 1912.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Sort under/styles.css\" />\nPrecipitation.\nIowa has had a relatively smooth gradient of varying precipitation across the state; from 1961 to 1990, areas in the southeast of the state received an average of over of rain annually, and the northwest of the state receiving less than . The pattern of precipitation across Iowa is seasonal with more rain falling in the summer months. Virtually statewide, the driest month is January or February, and the wettest month is June owing to frequent showers and thunderstorms some of which produce hail, damaging winds or tornadoes. In Des Moines, roughly in the center of the state, over two-thirds of the of rain falls from April through September, and about half the average annual precipitation falls from May through August peaking in June.\nSettlements.\nIowa's population is more urban than rural, with 61 percent living in urban areas in 2000, a trend that began in the early 20th century. Urban counties in Iowa grew 8.5% from 2000 to 2008, while rural counties declined by 4.2%. The shift from rural to urban has caused population increases in more urbanized counties such as Dallas, Johnson, Linn, Polk, and Scott, at the expense of more rural counties.\nIowa, in common with other Midwestern states (especially Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota), is feeling the brunt of rural flight, although Iowa has been gaining population since approximately 1990. Some smaller communities, such as Denison and Storm Lake, have mitigated this population loss through gains in immigrant laborers.\nAnother demographic problem for Iowa is the brain drain, in which educated young adults leave the state in search of better prospects in higher education or employment. During the 1990s, Iowa had the second highest exodus rate for single, educated young adults, second only to North Dakota.\nDemographics.\nPopulation.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nThe United States Census Bureau determined the population of Iowa was 3,190,369 on April 1, 2020, a 4.73% increase since the 2010 United States census.\nOf the residents of Iowa, 70.8% were born in Iowa, 23.6% were born in a different U.S. state, 0.6% were born in Puerto Rico, U.S. Island areas, or born abroad to American parent(s), and 5% were foreign born.\nImmigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 29,386 people, while migration within the country produced a net loss of 41,140 people. 6.5% of Iowa's population were reported as under the age of five, 22.6% under 18, and 14.7% were 65 or older. Males made up approximately 49.6% of the population. The population density of the state is 52.7 people per square mile. As of the 2010 census, the center of population of Iowa is in Marshall County, near Melbourne. The top countries of origin for Iowa's immigrants in 2018 were Mexico, India, Vietnam, China and Thailand.\nGermans are the largest ethnic group in Iowa. Other major ethnic groups in Iowa include Irish and English. There are also Dutch communities in state. The Dutch can be found in Pella, in the centre of the state, and in Orange City, in the northwest. There is a Norwegian community in Decorah in northeast Iowa; and there is Czech and Slovak communities in both Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. Smaller numbers of Greeks and Italians are scattered in Iowa's metropolitan areas. The majority of Hispanics in Iowa are Mexican. African Americans, who constitute around 2% of Iowa's population, didn't live in the state in any appreciable numbers until the early 20th century. Many blacks worked in the coal-mining industry of southern Iowa. Others blacks migrated to Waterloo, Davenport, and Des Moines, where the black population remained substantial in the early 21st century. The African-American population in Des Moines experienced a significant increase with the establishment of the Colored Officers Training Camp at Fort Des Moines in 1917. Following the conclusion of World War I in 1918, numerous African-American families made the decision to remain in Des Moines. This marked the inception of a thriving community that eventually became a residence for numerous African-American leaders. There is one federally recognized tribe in Iowa, the Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa, and in 2020, 14,486 identified as being Native American alone, and 41,472 did in combination with one or more other races.\nAs of the 2010 census, the population of Iowa was 3,046,355. The gender makeup of the state was 49.5% male and 50.5% female. 23.9% of the population were under the age of 18; 61.2% were between the ages of 18 and 64; and 14.9% were 65 years of age or older.\nAccording to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 2,419 homeless people in Iowa.\nAccording to the 2016 American Community Survey, 5.6% of Iowa's population were of Hispanic or Latino origin (of any race): Mexican (4.3%), Puerto Rican (0.2%), Cuban (0.1%), and other Hispanic or Latino origin (1.0%). The five largest ancestry groups were: German (35.1%), Irish (13.5%), English (8.2%), American (5.8%), and Norwegian (5.0%).\nBirth data.\n\"Note: Births in table don't add up, because Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race, giving a higher overall number.\"\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nA 2014 survey by Pew Research Center found 60% of Iowans are Protestant, while 18% are Catholic, and 1% are of non-Christian religions. 21% responded with non-religious, and 1% did not answer. A survey from the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) in 2010 found that the largest Protestant denominations were the United Methodist Church with 235,190 adherents and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America with 229,557. The largest non-Protestant religion was Catholicism with 503,080 adherents. The state has a great number of Calvinist denominations. The Presbyterian Church (USA) had almost 290 congregations and 51,380 members followed by the Reformed Church in America with 80 churches and 40,000 members, and the United Church of Christ had 180 churches and 39,000 members. According to the 2020 Public Religion Research Institute's study, 26% of the population were irreligious.\nThe study \"Religious Congregations & Membership: 2000\" found in the southernmost two tiers of Iowa counties and in other counties in the center of the state, the largest religious group was the United Methodist Church; in the northeast part of the state, including Dubuque and Linn counties (where Cedar Rapids is located), the Catholic Church was the largest; and in ten counties, including three in the northern tier, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America was the largest. The study also found rapid growth in Evangelical Christian denominations. Dubuque is home to the Archdiocese of Dubuque, which serves as the ecclesiastical province for all three other dioceses in the state and for all the Catholics in the entire state of Iowa.\nHistorically, religious sects and orders who desired to live apart from the rest of society established themselves in Iowa, such as the Amish and Mennonite near Kalona and in other parts of eastern Iowa such as Davis County and Buchanan County. Other religious sects and orders living apart include Quakers around West Branch and Le Grand, German Pietists who founded the Amana Colonies, followers of Transcendental Meditation who founded Maharishi Vedic City, and Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance monks and nuns at the New Melleray and Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbeys near Dubuque.\nBy 1878, approximately 1000 Jewish people lived in Iowa, many of whom were immigrants from Poland and Germany. As of 2016[ [update]] about 6,000 Jews live in Iowa, with about 3,000 of them in Des Moines.\nLanguage.\nEnglish is the most common language in Iowa, being the sole language spoken by 91.1% of the population. Less common languages include sign language and indigenous languages. About 2.5% of the general population use sign language as of 2017, while indigenous languages are spoken by about 0.5% of the population. William Labov and colleagues, in the monumental \"Atlas of North American English\" found the English spoken in Iowa divides into multiple linguistic regions. Natives of northern Iowa\u2014including Sioux City, Fort Dodge, and the Waterloo region\u2014tend to speak the dialect linguists call North Central American English, which is also found in North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Natives of central and southern Iowa\u2014including such cities as Council Bluffs, Davenport, Des Moines, and Iowa City\u2014tend to speak the North Midland dialect also found in eastern Nebraska, central Illinois, and central Indiana. Natives of East-Central Iowa\u2014including cities such as Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, and Clinton tend to speak with the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, a dialect that extends from this area and east across the Great Lakes Region.\nAfter English, Spanish is the second-most-common language spoken in Iowa, with 120,000 people in Iowa of Hispanic or Latino origin and 47,000 people born in Latin America. The third-most-common language is German, spoken by 17,000 people in Iowa; two notable German dialects used in Iowa include Amana German spoken around the Amana Colonies, and Pennsylvania German, spoken among the Amish in Iowa. The Babel Proclamation of 1918 banned the speaking of German in public. Around Pella, residents of Dutch descent once spoke the Pella Dutch dialect.\nCulture.\nAttractions.\nIowa hosts RAGBRAI, the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, which is a bike across the state river-to-river that attracts thousands of bicyclists and support personnel. It has crossed the state on various routes each year since 1973. Iowa is home to more than 70 wineries, and hosts five regional wine tasting trails. Many Iowa communities hold farmers' markets during warmer months; these are typically weekly events, but larger cities can host multiple markets.\nCentral Iowa.\nDes Moines is the largest city and metropolitan area in Iowa and the state's political and economic center. It is home to the Iowa State Capitol, the State Historical Society of Iowa Museum, Drake University, Des Moines Art Center, Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden, Principal Riverwalk, the Iowa State Fair, Terrace Hill, and the World Food Prize. Nearby attractions include Adventureland and Prairie Meadows Racetrack Casino in Altoona, Living History Farms in Urbandale, Trainland USA in Colfax, and the Iowa Speedway and Valle Drive-In in Newton.\nAmes is the home of Iowa State University, the Iowa State Center, and Reiman Gardens.\nBoone hosts the biennial Farm Progress Show and is home to the Mamie Doud Eisenhower museum, the Boone and Scenic Valley Railroad, and Ledges State Park.\nThe Meskwaki Settlement west of Tama is the only Native American settlement in Iowa and is host to a large annual Pow-wow.\nMadison County is known for its covered bridges. Also in Madison County is the John Wayne Birthplace Museum is in Winterset.\nOther communities with vibrant historic downtown areas include Newton, Indianola, Pella, Knoxville, Marshalltown, Perry, and Story City.\nEastern Iowa.\nIowa City is home to the University of Iowa, which includes the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the Old Capitol building. Because of the extraordinary history in the teaching and sponsoring of creative writing that emanated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and related programs, Iowa City was the first American city designated by the United Nations as a \"City of Literature\" in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.\nThe Herbert Hoover National Historic Site and Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum are in West Branch.\nThe Amana Colonies are a group of settlements of German Pietists comprising seven villages listed as National Historic Landmarks.\nThe Cedar Rapids Museum of Art has collections of paintings by Grant Wood and Marvin Cone. Cedar Rapids is also home to the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library and Iowa's only National Trust for Historic Preservation Site, Brucemore mansion.\nDavenport boasts the Figge Art Museum, River Music Experience, Putnam Museum, Davenport Skybridge, Quad City Symphony Orchestra, Ballet Quad Cities, and plays host to the annual Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival, and the Quad City Air Show, which is the largest airshow in the state.\nOther communities with vibrant historic downtown areas include West Liberty, Fairfield, Burlington, Mount Pleasant, Fort Madison, LeClaire, Mount Vernon, Ottumwa, Washington, and Wilton.\nAlong Interstate 80 near Walcott lies the world's largest truck stop, Iowa 80.\nWestern Iowa.\nSome of the most dramatic scenery in Iowa is found in the unique Loess Hills which are found along Iowa's western border.\nSioux City is the largest city in western Iowa and is found on the convergence of the Missouri, Floyd, and Big Sioux Rivers. The Sioux City Metropolitan Area encompasses areas in three states: Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota. Sioux City boasts a revitalized downtown and includes attractions such as the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, Sergeant Floyd Monument, Sergeant Floyd River Museum, the Tyson Events Center, Southern Hills Mall, the Orpheum Theater, and more. The historic downtown area is also filled with multiple restaurants, bars, and other entertainment venues. Sioux City is home to two higher education institutions, Morningside College and Briar Cliff University. Le Mars is in the northeastern part of the Sioux City Metropolitan Area and is the self-proclaimed \"Ice Cream Capital of the World\". Le Mars is home to Wells Enterprises, one of the largest ice cream manufacturers in the world. Attractions in Le Mars include the Wells Visitor Center and Ice Cream Parlor, Archie's Wayside (steak house), Bob's Drive Inn, Tonsfeldt Round Barn, Plymouth County Fairgrounds, Plymouth County Museum, and Plymouth County Courthouse. Le Mars hosts multiple ice cream-themed community events each year.\nCouncil Bluffs, part of the Omaha, Nebraska Metropolitan Area and a hub of southwest Iowa sits at the base of the Loess Hills National Scenic Byway. With three casino resorts, the city also includes such cultural attractions as the Western Hills Trails Center, Union Pacific Railroad Museum, the Grenville M. Dodge House, the Ruth Anne Dodge Memorial, and the Lewis and Clark Monument, with clear views of the Downtown Omaha skyline found throughout the city. The Sanford Museum and Planetarium in Cherokee, the Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend, the Museum of Danish America in Elk Horn, and the Fort Museum and Frontier Village in Fort Dodge are other regional destinations.\nThe Iowa Great Lakes is made up of multiple small towns, such as Spirit Lake, Arnolds Park, Milford, and Okoboji. Multiple resorts and other tourist attractions are found in and around these towns surrounding the popular lakes. Arnolds Park, one of the oldest amusement parks in the country, is located on Lake Okoboji in Arnolds Park.\nEvery year in early May, the city of Orange City holds the annual Tulip Festival, a celebration of the strong Dutch heritage in the region.\nNorthwest Iowa is home to some of the largest concentrations of wind turbine farms in the world. Other western communities with vibrant historic downtown areas include Storm Lake, Spencer, Glenwood, Carroll, Harlan, Atlantic, Red Oak, Denison, Creston, Mount Ayr, Sac City, and Walnut.\nNortheast and Northern Iowa.\nThe Driftless Area of northeast Iowa has many steep hills and deep valleys, checkered with forest and terraced fields. Effigy Mounds National Monument in Allamakee and Clayton Counties has the largest assemblage of animal-shaped prehistoric mounds in the world.\nWaterloo is home of the Grout Museum and Lost Island Theme Park and is headquarters of the Silos & Smokestacks National Heritage Area. Cedar Falls is home of the University of Northern Iowa.\nDubuque is a regional tourist destination with attractions such as the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium and the Port of Dubuque.\nDyersville is home to the famed \"Field of Dreams\" baseball diamond. Maquoketa Caves State Park, near Maquoketa, contains more caves than any other state park.\nFort Atkinson State Preserve in Fort Atkinson has the remains of an original 1840s Dragoon fortification.\nFort Dodge is home of The Fort historical museum and the Blanden Art Museum, and host Frontiers Days which celebrate the town history.\nOther communities with vibrant historic downtown areas include Decorah, McGregor, Mason City, Elkader, Bellevue, Guttenberg, Algona, Spillville, Charles City, and Independence.\nArts.\nThe Clint Eastwood movie \"The Bridges of Madison County\", based on the popular novel of the same name, took place and was filmed in Madison County. \"What's Eating Gilbert Grape\", based on the Peter Hedges novel of the same name, is set in the fictional Iowa town of Endora. Hedges was born in West Des Moines.\nDes Moines is home to members of the heavy metal band Slipknot. The state is mentioned in the band's songs, and the album \"Iowa\" is named after the state.\nSports.\nThe state has four major college teams playing in NCAA Division I for all sports. In football, Iowa State University and the University of Iowa compete in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), whereas the University of Northern Iowa and Drake University compete in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). Although Iowa has no professional major league sports teams, Iowa has minor league sports teams in baseball, basketball, hockey, and other sports. This variety helped bolster the Iowa sports betting industry, which has recorded over $10 billion in sports wagers, generating over $50 million for the state as of November 2024.\nThe following table shows the Iowa sports teams with average attendance over 8,000. All the following teams are NCAA Division I football, basketball, or wrestling teams:\nCollege sports.\nThe state has four NCAA Division I college teams. Two have football teams that play in the top level of college football, the Football Bowl Subdivision: the University of Iowa Hawkeyes play in the Big Ten Conference and the Iowa State University Cyclones compete in the Big 12 Conference. The two intrastate rivals compete annually for the Cy-Hawk Trophy as part of the Iowa Corn Cy-Hawk Series.\nIn wrestling, the Iowa Hawkeyes and Iowa State Cyclones have won a combined total of over 30 team NCAA Division I titles. The Northern Iowa and Cornell College wrestling teams have also each won one NCAA Division I wrestling team title.\nTwo other Division I schools play football in the second level of college football, the Football Championship Subdivision. The University of Northern Iowa Panthers play at the Missouri Valley Conference and Missouri Valley Football Conference (despite the similar names, the conferences are administratively separate), whereas the Drake University Bulldogs play in the Missouri Valley Conference in most sports and Pioneer League for football.\nBaseball.\nDes Moines is home to the Iowa Cubs, a Triple-A Minor League Baseball team of the International League and affiliate of the Chicago Cubs. Iowa has two High-A minor league teams in the Midwest League: the Cedar Rapids Kernels (Minnesota Twins) and the Quad Cities River Bandits (Kansas City Royals). The Sioux City Explorers are part of the American Association of Professional Baseball.\nIce hockey.\nDes Moines is home to the Iowa Wild, who are affiliated with the Minnesota Wild and are members of the American Hockey League. Coralville has an ECHL team called the Iowa Heartlanders that started playing in the 2021\u201322 season. The Heartlanders are also an affiliate of the Minnesota Wild.\nThe United States Hockey League has five teams in Iowa: the Cedar Rapids RoughRiders, Sioux City Musketeers, Waterloo Black Hawks, Des Moines Buccaneers, and the Dubuque Fighting Saints. The North Iowa Bulls of the North American Hockey League (NAHL) and the Mason City Toros of the North American 3 Hockey League (NA3HL) both play in Mason City.\nOther sports.\nIowa has two professional basketball teams. The Iowa Wolves, an NBA G League team that plays in Des Moines, is owned and affiliated with the Minnesota Timberwolves of the NBA. The Sioux City Hornets play in the American Basketball Association.\nIowa has three professional football teams. The Sioux City Bandits play in the Champions Indoor Football league. The Iowa Barnstormers play in the Indoor Football League at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines. The Cedar Rapids Titans play in the Indoor Football League at the U.S. Cellular Center.\nThe Iowa Speedway oval track in Newton has hosted auto racing championships such as the IndyCar Series, NASCAR Xfinity Series and NASCAR Truck Series since 2006. Also, the Knoxville Raceway dirt track hosts the Knoxville Nationals, one of the classic sprint car racing events.\nThe John Deere Classic is a PGA Tour golf event held in the Quad Cities since 1971. The Principal Charity Classic is a Champions Tour event since 2001. The Des Moines Golf and Country Club hosted the 1999 U.S. Senior Open and the 2017 Solheim Cup.\nEconomy.\nCNBC's list of \"Top States for Business in 2010\" has recognized Iowa as the sixth best state in the nation. Scored in 10 individual categories, Iowa was ranked first when it came to the \"Cost of Doing Business\"; this includes all taxes, utility costs, and other costs associated with doing business. Iowa was also ranked 10th in \"Economy\", 12th in \"Business Friendliness\", 16th in \"Education\", 17th in both \"Cost of Living\" and \"Quality of Life\", 20th in \"Workforce\", 29th in \"Technology and Innovation\", 32nd in \"Transportation\" and the lowest ranking was 36th in \"Access to Capital\".\nWhile Iowa is often viewed as a farming state, agriculture is a relatively small portion of the state's diversified economy, with manufacturing, biotechnology, finance and insurance services, and government services contributing substantially to Iowa's economy. This economic diversity has helped Iowa weather the late 2000s recession better than most states, with unemployment substantially lower than the rest of the nation.\nIf the economy is measured by gross domestic product, in 2005 Iowa's GDP was about $124\u00a0billion. If measured by gross state product, for 2005 it was $113.5\u00a0billion. Its per capita income for 2006 was $23,340. On July 2, 2009, Standard & Poor's rated Iowa's credit as AAA (the highest of its credit ratings, held by only 11 U.S. state governments).\nAs of September 2021, the state's unemployment rate is 4.0%.\nManufacturing.\nManufacturing is the largest sector of Iowa's economy, with $20.8\u00a0billion (21%) of Iowa's 2003 gross state product. Major manufacturing sectors include food processing, heavy machinery, and agricultural chemicals. Sixteen percent of Iowa's workforce is dedicated to manufacturing. Food processing is the largest component of manufacturing. Besides processed food, industrial outputs include machinery, electric equipment, chemical products, publishing, and primary metals. Companies with direct or indirect processing facilities in Iowa include ConAgra Foods, Wells Blue Bunny, Barilla, Heinz, Tone's Spices, General Mills, and Quaker Oats. Meatpacker Tyson Foods has 11 locations, second only to its headquarter state Arkansas.\nMajor non-food manufacturing firms with production facilities in Iowa include 3M, Arconic, Amana Corporation, Emerson Electric, The HON Company, SSAB, John Deere, Lennox Manufacturing, Pella Corporation, Procter & Gamble, Vermeer Company, and Winnebago Industries.\nAgriculture.\nIndustrial-scale, commodity agriculture predominates in much of the state. Iowa's main conventional agricultural commodities are hogs, with about 22.6 million hogs in 8,000 facilities large enough to require manure management plans in March 2018, outnumbering Iowans by more than 7 to 1, corn, soybeans, oats, cattle, eggs, and dairy products. Iowa is the nation's largest producer of ethanol and corn and some years is the largest grower of soybeans. In 2008, the 92,600 farms in Iowa produced 19% of the nation's corn, 17% of the soybeans, 30% of the hogs, and 14% of the eggs.\nAs of 2009[ [update]] major Iowa agricultural product processors included Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Inc., Diamond V Mills, and Quaker Oats.\nDuring the 21st century Iowa has seen growth in the organic farming sector. Iowa ranks fifth in the nation in total number of organic farms. In 2016, there were about 732 organic farms in the state, an increase of about 5% from the previous year, and 103,136 organic acres, an increase of 9,429 from the previous year. Iowa has also seen an increase in demand for local, sustainably-grown food. Northeast Iowa, part of the Driftless Area, has led the state in development of its regional food system and grows and consumes more local food than any other region in Iowa.\nIowa's Driftless Region is also home to the nationally recognized Seed Savers Exchange, a non-profit seed bank housed at an 890-acre heritage farm near Decorah, in the northeast corner of the state. The largest nongovernmental seed bank of its kind in the United States, Seed Savers Exchange safeguards more than 20,000 varieties of rare, heirloom seeds.\nAs of 2007, the direct production and sale of conventional agricultural commodities contributed only about 3.5% of Iowa's gross state product. In 2002 the impact of the indirect role of agriculture in Iowa's economy, including agriculture-affiliated business, was calculated at 16.4% in terms of value added and 24.3% in terms of total output. This was lower than the economic impact of non-farm manufacturing, which accounted for 22.4% of total value added and 26.5% of total output.\nHealth insurance.\nAs of 2014, there were 16 organizations offering health insurance products in Iowa, per the State of Iowa Insurance Division.\nIowa was fourth out of ten states with the biggest drop in competition levels of health insurance between 2010 and 2011, per the 2013 annual report on the level of competition in the health insurance industry by the American Medical Association using 2011 data from HealthLeaders-Interstudy, the most comprehensive source of data on enrollment in health maintenance organization (HMO), preferred provider organization (PPO), point-of-service (POS) and consumer-driven health care plans.\nAccording to the AMA annual report from 2007 Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield had provided 71% of the state's health insurance.\nThe Iowa Insurance Division \"Annual report to the Iowa Governor and the Iowa Legislature\" from November 2014 looked at the 95% of health insurers by premium, which are 10 companies. It found Wellmark Inc. to dominate the three health insurance markets it examined (individual, small group and large group) at 52\u201367%. Wellmark HealthPlan of Iowa and Wellmark Inc had the highest risk-based capital percentages of all 10 providers at 1158% and 1132%, respectively. Rising RBC is an indication of profits.\nOther sectors.\nIowa has a strong financial and insurance sector, with approximately 6,100 firms, including AEGON, Nationwide Group, Aviva USA, Farm Bureau Financial Services, GreatAmerica Financial Services, Voya Financial, Marsh Affinity Group, MetLife, Principal Financial Group, Principal Capital Management, Wells Fargo, and Greenstate Credit Union (formerly University of Iowa Community Credit Union).\nIowa is host to at least two business incubators, Iowa State University Research Park and the BioVentures Center at the University of Iowa. The Research Park hosts about 50 companies, among them NewLink Genetics, which develops cancer immunotherapeutics, and the U.S. animal health division of Boehringer Ingelheim, Vetmedica.\nEthanol production consumes about a third of Iowa's corn production, and renewable fuels account for eight percent of the state's gross domestic product. A total of 39 ethanol plants produced of fuel in 2009.\nRenewable energy has become a major economic force in northern and western Iowa, with wind turbine electrical generation increasing exponentially since 1990. In 2019, wind power in Iowa accounted for 42% of electrical energy produced, and 10,201 megawatts of generating capacity had been installed at the end of the year. Iowa ranked first of U.S. states in percentage of total power generated by wind and second in wind generating capacity behind Texas. Major producers of turbines and components in Iowa include Acciona Energy of West Branch, TPI Composites of Newton, and Siemens Energy of Fort Madison.\nIn 2016, Iowa was the headquarters for three of the top 2,000 companies for revenue. They include Principal Financial, Rockwell Collins, and American Equity Investment. Iowa is also headquarters to other companies including Hy-Vee, Pella Corporation, Workiva, Vermeer Company, Kum & Go gas stations, Von Maur, Pioneer Hi-Bred, and Fareway.\nGambling in the state is a major section of the Iowa tourism industry.\nTaxation.\nTax is collected by the Iowa Department of Revenue.\nIowa imposes taxes on net state income of individuals, estates, and trusts. There are nine income tax brackets, ranging from 0.36% to 8.98%, as well as four corporate income tax brackets ranging from 6%to 12%, giving Iowa the country's highest marginal corporate tax rate. The state sales tax rate is 6%, with non-prepared food having no tax. Iowa has one local option sales tax that may be imposed by counties after an election. Property tax is levied on the taxable value of real property. Iowa has more than 2,000 taxing authorities. Most property is taxed by more than one taxing authority. The tax rate differs in each locality and is a composite of county, city or rural township, school district and special levies. Iowa allows its residents to deduct their federal income taxes from their state income taxes.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nIowa was one of the leading states in the high school movement, and continues to be among the top educational performers today.\nThe four-year graduation rate for high schoolers was 91.3% in 2017. Iowa's schools are credited with the highest graduation rate in the nation as of 2019. Iowa has 333 school districts, 1,329 school buildings and has the 14th lowest student-to-teacher ratio of 14.2. Teacher pay is ranked 22nd, with the average salary being $55,647.\nAs of 2015[ [update]] transportation spending is a significant part of the budgets of rural school districts as many are geographically large and must transport students across vast distances. This reduces the amount of money spent on other aspects of the districts.\nThe state's oldest functioning school building is located in Bellevue in the historic Jackson County Courthouse which has been in continuous use as a school since 1848.\nColleges and universities.\nThe Iowa Board of Regents is composed of nine citizen volunteers appointed by the governor to provide policymaking, coordination, and oversight of the state's three public universities, two special K\u201312 schools, and affiliated centers.\nThe special K\u201312 schools include the Iowa School for the Deaf in Council Bluffs and the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School in Vinton. Both Iowa State University and The University of Iowa are research universities with The University of Iowa also being a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. In addition to the three state universities, Iowa has multiple private colleges and universities.\nTransportation.\nInterstate highways.\nIowa has four primary interstate highways. Interstate\u00a029 (I-29) travels along the state's western edge through Council Bluffs and Sioux City. I-35 travels from the Missouri state line to the Minnesota state line through the state's center, including Des Moines. I-74 begins at I-80 just northeast of Davenport. I-80 travels from the Nebraska state line to the Illinois state line through the center of the state, including Council Bluffs, Des Moines, Iowa City, and the Quad Cities. I-380 is an auxiliary Interstate Highway, which travels from I-80 near Iowa City through Cedar Rapids ending in Waterloo and is part of the Avenue of the Saints highway. Iowa is among the few jurisdictions where municipalities install speed cameras on interstate highways providing a substantial revenue source from out of state drivers.\nAirports with scheduled flights.\nIowa is served by several regional airports including the Des Moines International Airport, the Eastern Iowa Airport, in Cedar Rapids, Quad City International Airport, in Moline, Illinois, and Eppley Airfield, in Omaha, Nebraska. Smaller airports in the state include the Council Bluffs Municipal Airport, Davenport Municipal Airport (Iowa), Dubuque Regional Airport, Fort Dodge Regional Airport, Mason City Municipal Airport, Sioux Gateway Airport, Southeast Iowa Regional Airport, and Waterloo Regional Airport.\nRailroads.\nAmtrak's \"California Zephyr\" serves southern Iowa with stops in Burlington, Mount Pleasant, Ottumwa, Osceola, and Creston along its route between Chicago and Emeryville, California. Fort Madison is served by Amtrak's \"Southwest Chief\", running between Chicago and Los Angeles. Both provide daily service through the state.\nPublic Transit.\nIowa is served by a number of local transit providers including Bettendorf Transit, Cambus, Cedar Rapids Transit, Clinton Municipal Transit Administration, Coralville Transit, Cyride, Davenport Citibus, Des Moines Area Regional Transit, Iowa City Transit, The Jule, Mason City Transit, MET Transit, Omaha Metro Transit, Ottumwa Transit Authority, Quad Cities MetroLINK and Sioux City Transit.\nIntercity bus service in the state is provided by Burlington Trailways, Greyhound Lines, and Jefferson Lines.\nLaw and government.\nState.\nAs of 2022[ [update]], the 43rd and current governor of Iowa is Kim Reynolds (R). Other statewide elected officials are:\nThe Code of Iowa contains Iowa's statutory laws. It is periodically updated by the Iowa Legislative Service Bureau, with a new edition published in odd-numbered years and a supplement published in even-numbered years.\nIowa is an alcohol monopoly or alcoholic beverage control state.\nNational.\nThe two U.S. senators:\nThe four U.S. representatives:\nAfter the 2010 United States census and the resulting redistricting, Iowa lost one seat in Congress, falling to four seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Incumbent U.S. representatives Leonard Boswell (D) and Tom Latham (R) ran against each other in 2012 in the third congressional district which had new boundaries; Latham won and retired after the 2014 elections. King represented the old fifth congressional district.\nPolitical parties.\nIn Iowa, the term \"political party\" refers to political organizations which have received two percent or more of the votes cast for president or governor in the \"last preceding general election\". Iowa recognizes three political parties\u2014the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, and the Libertarian Party. The Libertarian Party obtained official political party status in 2017 as a result of presidential candidate Gary Johnson receiving 3.8% of the Iowa vote in the 2016 general election. Third parties, officially termed \"nonparty political organizations\", can appear on the ballot as well. Four of these have had candidates on the ballot in Iowa since 2004 for various positions: the Constitution Party, the Green Party, the Pirate Party, and the Socialist Workers Party.\nVoter trends.\nAs a result of the 2010 elections, each party controlled one house of the Iowa General Assembly: the House had a Republican majority, while the Senate had a Democratic majority. As a result of the 2016 elections, Republicans gained control of the Senate. Incumbent Democratic governor Chet Culver was defeated in 2010 by Republican Terry Branstad, who had served as governor from 1983 to 1999. On December 14, 2015, Branstad became the longest serving governor in U.S. history, serving (at that time) 20 years, 11 months, and 3days; eclipsing George Clinton, who served 21 years until 1804. Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds succeeded him on May 24, 2017, following Branstad's appointment as U.S. Ambassador to China.\nIn previous eras, Democratic and Republican parties had a balance in state politics and federal representation. By 2024, the two became dominated by the Republican Party. Factors include younger people leaving for more urbanized, more Democratic-leaning states, as well as homogenization of rural voters in the Midwest and in other regions.\nPresidential caucus.\nThe state gets considerable attention every four years because the Iowa caucus, gatherings of voters to select delegates to the state conventions, is the first presidential caucus in the country. The caucuses, held in January or February of the election year, involve people gathering in homes or public places and choosing their candidates, rather than casting secret ballots as is done in a presidential primary election.\nAlong with the New Hampshire primary the following week, Iowa's caucuses have become the starting points for choosing the two major-party candidates for president. The national and international media give Iowa and New Hampshire extensive attention, which gives Iowa voters leverage. In 2007 presidential campaign spending was the seventh highest in the country.\nCivil rights.\nIn a 2020 study, Iowa was ranked as the 24th easiest state for citizens to vote in.\nRacial equality.\nIn the 19th century Iowa was among the earliest states to enact prohibitions against race discrimination, especially in education, but was slow to achieve full integration in the 20th century. In the first decision of the Iowa Supreme Court\u2014\"In Re the Matter of Ralph\", decided July 1839\u2014the Court rejected slavery in a decision that found a slave named Ralph became free when he stepped on Iowa soil, 26 years before the end of the Civil War. The state did away with racial barriers to marriage in 1851, more than 100 years before the U.S. Supreme Court would ban miscegenation statutes nationwide.\nThe Iowa Supreme Court decided \"Clark v. The board of directors\" in 1868, ruling that racially segregated \"separate but equal\" schools had no place in Iowa, 85 years before \"Brown v. Board of Education\". By 1875, a number of additional court rulings effectively ended segregation in Iowa schools. Social and housing discrimination continued against Blacks at state universities until the 1950s. The Court heard \"Coger v. The North Western Union Packet Co.\" in 1873, ruling against racial discrimination in public accommodations 91 years before the U.S. Supreme Court reached the same decision.\nIn 1884, the Iowa Civil Rights Act apparently outlawed discrimination by businesses, reading: \"All persons within this state shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, restaurants, chophouses, eating houses, lunch counters, and all other places where refreshments are served, public conveyances, barber shops, bathhouses, theaters, and all other places of amusement.\" However, the courts chose to narrowly apply this act, allowing de facto discrimination to continue. Racial discrimination at public businesses was not deemed illegal until 1949, when the court ruled in \"State of Iowa v. Katz\" that businesses had to serve customers regardless of race; the case began when Edna Griffin was denied service at a Des Moines drugstore. Full racial civil rights were codified under the Iowa Civil Rights Act of 1965.\nWomen's rights.\nAs with racial equality, Iowa was a vanguard in women's rights in the mid-19th century, but did not allow women the right to vote until the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified in 1920, Iowa legislature being one of the ratifying votes. In 1847, the University of Iowa became the first public university in the U.S. to admit men and women on an equal basis. In 1869, Iowa became the first state in the union to admit women to the practice of law, with the Court ruling women may not be denied the right to practice law in Iowa and admitting Arabella A. Mansfield to the practice of law. Several attempts to grant full voting rights to Iowa women were defeated between 1870 and 1919. In 1894 women were given \"partial suffrage\", which allowed them to vote on issues, but not for candidates. It was not until the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment that women had full suffrage in Iowa. Although Iowa supported the Federal Equal Rights Amendment, in 1980 and 1992 Iowa voters rejected an Equal Rights Amendment to the state constitution. Iowa added the word \"women\" to the Iowa Constitution in 1998. After the amendment, it reads: \"All men and women are, by nature, free and equal, and have certain inalienable rights\u2014among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety and happiness.\"\nIn May 2018 Iowa signed into law one of the country's most restrictive abortion bans: the requirement that a doctor cannot perform an abortion if they can detect a fetal heartbeat, which in many cases would restrict abortions pregnancies less than six weeks old. It was struck down in January 2019, when an Iowa state judge ruled that the \"fetal heartbeat\" law was unconstitutional.\nLGBT rights.\nThe state's law criminalizing same-sex sexual activity was repealed in June 1976, 27 years before \"Lawrence v. Texas\". In 2007, the Iowa Legislature added \"sexual orientation\" and \"gender identity\" to the protected classes listed in the Iowa Civil Rights Act.\nOn April 3, 2009, the Iowa Supreme Court decided \"Varnum v. Brien\", holding in a unanimous decision, the state's law forbidding same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. This made Iowa the third state in the U.S. and first in the Midwest to permit same-sex marriage.\nSister jurisdictions.\nIowa has ten official partner jurisdictions:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "5122699": "John Kerry\nAmerican politician and diplomat (born 1943)\nJohn Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician, and diplomat who served as the 68th United States secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 in the administration of Barack Obama. A member of the Forbes family and of the Democratic Party, he previously represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1985 to 2013 and later served as the first U.S. special presidential envoy for climate from 2021 to 2024. Kerry was the Democratic nominee for president of the United States in the 2004 election, narrowly losing to then-incumbent president George W. Bush.\nKerry grew up in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. In 1966, after graduating from Yale University, he enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve, ultimately attaining the rank of lieutenant. During the Vietnam War, Kerry served a brief tour in South Vietnam. While commanding a Swift boat, he sustained three wounds in combat with the Viet Cong, for which he earned three Purple Heart medals. Kerry was also awarded the Silver Star Medal and the Bronze Star Medal for conduct in separate military engagements. After completing his active military service, Kerry returned to the United States and became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. He gained national recognition as an anti-war activist, serving as a spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization. Kerry testified in the Fulbright Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where he described the United States government's policy in Vietnam as the cause of war crimes.\nIn 1972, Kerry entered electoral politics as a Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives in Massachusetts's 5th congressional district, losing to Republican Paul W. Cronin in the general election. He subsequently worked as a radio talk show host and as the executive director of an advocacy organization while attending law school. After a period in private legal practice, he was elected the 66th lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1982. In 1984, Kerry was elected to the United States Senate. In 2004, Kerry won the Democratic presidential nomination alongside Senator John Edwards. He lost the Electoral College and the popular vote by slim margins, winning 251 electors to Bush's 286 and 48.3% of the popular vote to Bush's 50.7%.\nIn January 2013, Kerry was nominated by President Obama to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and was subsequently confirmed by his Senate colleagues. He was U.S. secretary of state throughout the second term of the Obama administration from 2013 to 2017. During his tenure, he initiated the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks and negotiated agreements restricting the nuclear program of Iran, including the 2013 Joint Plan of Action and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In 2015, Kerry signed the Paris Agreement on climate change on behalf of the United States.\nIn January 2021, Kerry returned to government, becoming the first person to hold the position of U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, under President Joe Biden. On March 6, Kerry left this position to work on Biden's 2024 presidential campaign. Kerry was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Biden in May 2024.\nEarly life and education (1943\u20131966).\nJohn Forbes Kerry was born on December 11, 1943, at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado. He is the second of four children born to Richard John Kerry, a U.S. diplomat and lawyer, and Rosemary Forbes, a nurse and social activist. His father was raised Catholic (John's paternal grandparents were Austro-Hungarian Jewish immigrants who converted to Catholicism) and his mother was Episcopalian. He was raised with an elder sister Margaret, a younger sister Diana, and a younger brother Cameron. The children were raised in their father's Catholic faith, and John served as an altar boy.\nKerry was originally considered a military brat, until his father was discharged from the Army Air Corps in 1944. Kerry lived in Groton, Massachusetts his first year and Millis, Massachusetts afterwards before moving to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. at age seven, when his father took a position in the Department of the Navy's Office of General Counsel and soon became a diplomat in the State Department's Bureau of United Nations Affairs.\nAs members of the Forbes and Dudley\u2013Winthrop families, his maternal extended family enjoyed great wealth. Kerry's parents themselves were considered upper-middle class. They turned to his wealthy great-aunt, Clara Winthrop, who paid for his attendance at elite boarding schools, such as Institut Montana Zugerberg, in Zug, Switzerland. Through his maternal ancestry, Kerry also descends from Rev. James McGregor who was among the first 500 Scots-Irish immigrants to Boston Harbor in the 18th century.\nAt the age of ten, Kerry's father took a position as the U.S. Attorney for Berlin. When Kerry was twelve, he crossed into the Soviet Occupation Zone to visit Hitler's bunker and ride through the Brandenburg Gate. \nIn 1957, his father was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway, and Kerry was sent back to the United States to attend boarding school. He first attended the Fessenden School in Newton, Massachusetts, and later St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, where he learned skills in public speaking and began developing an interest in politics. Kerry founded the John Winant Society at St. Paul's to debate the issues of the day; the Society still exists there. In 1960, while at St. Paul's, he played bass in a minor rock band called The Electras with six of his classmates. The band had about five hundred copies of one album printed in 1961, which they sold some of at dances at the school; it was made available on streaming platforms many years later.\nIn 1962, Kerry attended Yale University, majoring in political science and residing in Jonathan Edwards College. By that year, his parents returned to Groton. While at Yale, Kerry briefly dated Janet Auchincloss, the younger half-sister of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Through Auchincloss, Kerry was invited to a day of sailing with then-President John F. Kennedy and his family.\nKerry played on the varsity Yale Bulldogs men's soccer team, earning his only letter in his senior year. He also played freshman and junior varsity hockey and, in his senior year, junior varsity lacrosse. In addition, he was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity and took flying lessons.\nIn his sophomore year, Kerry became the chairman of the Liberal Party of the Yale Political Union, and a year later he served as president of the union. Amongst his influential teachers in this period was Professor H. Bradford Westerfield, who was himself a former president of the Political Union. His involvement with the Political Union gave him an opportunity to be involved with important issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and the New Frontier program. He also became a member of Skull and Bones Society, and traveled to Switzerland through AIESEC Yale.\nUnder the guidance of the speaking coach and history professor Rollin G. Osterweis, Kerry won many debates against other college students from across the nation. In March 1965, as the Vietnam War escalated, he won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that was critical of U.S. foreign policy. In the speech he said, \"It is the spectre of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism and thus, it is self-defeating.\"\nKerry graduated from Yale with a bachelor of arts degree in 1966. Overall, he had below-average grades, graduating with a cumulative average of 76 over his four years. His freshman-year average was a 71, but he improved to an 81 average for his senior year. He never received an \"A\" during his time at Yale; his highest grade was an 89.\nMilitary service (1966\u20131970).\nDuty on USS \"Gridley\".\nOn February 18, 1966, Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserve. He began his active duty military service on August 19, 1966. After completing 16 weeks of Officer Candidate School at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island, Kerry received his officer's commission on December 16, 1966. During the 2004 election, Kerry posted his military records at his website, and permitted reporters to inspect his medical records. In 2005, Kerry released his military and medical records to the representatives of three news organizations, but has not authorized full public access to those records.\nDuring his tour on the guided missile frigate , Kerry requested duty in South Vietnam, listing as his first preference a position as the commander of a Fast Patrol Craft (PCF), also known as a \"Swift boat\". These boats have aluminum hulls and have little or no armor, but are heavily armed and rely on speed. \"I didn't really want to get involved in the war,\" Kerry said in a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. \"When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing.\" However, his second choice of billet was on a river patrol boat, or \"PBR\", which at the time was serving a more dangerous duty on the rivers of Vietnam.\nMilitary honors.\nDuring the night of December 2 and early morning of December 3, 1968, Kerry was in charge of a small boat operating near a peninsula north of Cam Ranh Bay together with a Swift boat (PCF-60). According to Kerry and the two crewmen who accompanied him that night, Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis, they surprised a group of Vietnamese men unloading sampans at a river crossing, who began running and failed to obey an order to stop. As the men fled, Kerry and his crew opened fire on the sampans and destroyed them, then rapidly left. During this encounter, Kerry received a shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow. It was for this injury that Kerry received his first Purple Heart Medal.\nKerry received his second Purple Heart for a wound received in action on the B\u1ed3 \u0110\u1ec1 River on February 20, 1969. The plan had been for the Swift boats to be accompanied by support helicopters. On the way up the Bo De, however, the helicopters were attacked. As the Swift boats reached the C\u1eeda L\u1edbn River, Kerry's boat was hit by a B-40 rocket (rocket propelled grenade round), and a piece of shrapnel hit Kerry's left leg, wounding him. Thereafter, enemy fire ceased and his boat reached the Gulf of Thailand safely. Kerry continues to have shrapnel embedded in his left thigh because the doctors that first treated him decided to remove the damaged tissue and close the wound with sutures rather than make a wide opening to remove the shrapnel. Although wounded like several others earlier that day, Kerry did not lose any time off from duty.\nSilver Star.\nEight days later, on February 28, 1969, came the events for which Kerry was awarded his Silver Star Medal. On this occasion, Kerry was in tactical command of his Swift boat and two other Swift boats during a combat operation. Their mission on the Duong Keo River included bringing an underwater demolition team and dozens of South Vietnamese Marines to destroy enemy sampans, structures and bunkers as described in the story \"The Death Of PCF 43\". Running into heavy small arms fire from the river banks, Kerry \"directed the units to turn to the beach and charge the Viet Cong positions\" and he \"expertly directed\" his boat's fire causing the enemy to flee while at the same time coordinating the insertion of the ninety South Vietnamese troops (according to the original medal citation signed by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt). Moving a short distance upstream, Kerry's boat was the target of a B-40 rocket round; Kerry charged the enemy positions and as his boat hove to and beached, a Viet Cong (\"VC\") insurgent armed with a rocket launcher emerged from a spider hole and ran. While the boat's gunner opened fire, wounding the VC in the leg, and while the other boats approached and offered cover fire, Kerry jumped from the boat to pursue the VC insurgent, subsequently killing him and capturing his loaded rocket launcher.\nKerry's commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander George Elliott, stated to Douglas Brinkley in 2003 that he did not know whether to court-martial Kerry for beaching the boat without orders or give him a medal for saving the crew. Elliott recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, and Zumwalt flew into An Thoi to personally award medals to Kerry and the rest of the sailors involved in the mission. The Navy's account of Kerry's actions is presented in the original signed by Zumwalt. The engagement was documented in an after-action report, a press release written on March 1, 1969, and a historical summary dated March 17, 1969.\nBronze Star.\nOn March 13, 1969, on the B\u00e1i H\u00e1p River, Kerry was in charge of one of five Swift boats that were returning to their base after performing an Operation Sealords mission to transport South Vietnamese troops from the garrison at C\u00e1i N\u01b0\u1edbc and MIKE Force advisors for a raid on a Vietcong camp located on the Rach Dong Cung canal. Earlier in the day, Kerry received a slight shrapnel wound in the buttocks from blowing up a rice bunker. Debarking some but not all of the passengers at a small village, the boats approached a fishing weir; one group of boats went around to the left of the weir, hugging the shore, and a group with Kerry's PCF-94 boat went around to the right, along the shoreline. A mine was detonated directly beneath the lead boat, PCF-3, as it crossed the weir to the left, lifting PCF-3 \"about 2\u20133 ft out of water\".\nJames Rassmann, a Green Beret advisor who was aboard Kerry's PCF-94, was knocked overboard when, according to witnesses and the documentation of the event, a mine or rocket exploded close to the boat. According to the documentation for the event, Kerry's arm was injured when he was thrown against a bulkhead during the explosion. PCF 94 returned to the scene and Kerry rescued Rassmann who was receiving sniper fire from the water. Kerry received the Bronze Star Medal with Combat \"V\" for \"heroic achievement\", for his actions during this incident; he also received his third Purple Heart.\nReturn from Vietnam.\nAfter Kerry's third qualifying wound, he was entitled per Navy regulations to reassignment away from combat duties. Kerry's preferred choice for reassignment was as a military aide in Boston, New York City or Washington, D.C. On April 11, 1969, he reported to the Brooklyn-based Atlantic Military Sea Transportation Service, where he would remain on active duty for the following year as a personal aide to an officer, Rear Admiral Walter Schlech. On January 1, 1970, Kerry was temporarily promoted to full lieutenant. Kerry had agreed to an extension of his active duty obligation from December 1969 to August 1970 in order to perform Swift Boat duty. John Kerry was on active duty in the United States Navy from August 1966 until January 1970. He continued to serve in the Naval Reserve until February 1978.\n\"Swiftboating\" controversy.\nWith the continuing controversy that had surrounded the military service of George W. Bush since the 2000 presidential election (when he was accused of having used his father's political influence to gain entrance to the Texas Air National Guard, thereby protecting himself from conscription into the United States Army, and possible service in the Vietnam War), John Kerry's contrasting status as a decorated Vietnam War veteran posed a problem for Bush's re-election campaign, which Republicans sought to counter by calling Kerry's war record into question. As the presidential campaign of 2004 developed, approximately 250 members of a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT, later renamed Swift Vets and POWs for Truth) opposed Kerry's campaign. The group held press conferences, ran ads and endorsed a book questioning Kerry's service record and his military awards. The group included several members of Kerry's unit, such as Larry Thurlow, who commanded a swift boat alongside of Kerry's, and Stephen Gardner, who served on Kerry's boat. The campaign inspired the widely used political pejorative '\"swiftboating,\" to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. Most of Kerry's former crewmates have stated that SBVT's allegations are false.\nAnti-war activism (1970\u20131971).\nAfter returning to the United States, Kerry moved to Waltham, Massachusetts and joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Then numbering about 20,000, VVAW was considered by some (including the administration of President Richard Nixon) to be an effective, if controversial, component of the antiwar movement. Kerry participated in the \"Winter Soldier Investigation\" conducted by VVAW of U.S. atrocities in Vietnam, and he appears in a film by that name that documents the investigation. According to Nixon Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, \"I didn't approve of what he did, but I understood the protesters quite well\", and he declined two requests from the Navy to court martial Reserve Lieutenant Kerry over his antiwar activity.\nOn April 22, 1971, Kerry appeared before a U.S. Senate committee hearing on proposals relating to ending the war. The day after this testimony, Kerry participated in a demonstration with thousands of other veterans in which he and other Vietnam War veterans threw their medals and service ribbons over a fence erected at the front steps of the United States Capitol building to dramatize their opposition to the war. Jack Smith, a Marine, read a statement explaining why the veterans were returning their military awards to the government. For more than two hours, almost 1,000 angry veterans tossed their medals, ribbons, hats, jackets, and military papers over the fence. Each veteran gave his or her name, hometown, branch of service and a statement. Kerry threw some of his own decorations and awards as well as some given to him by other veterans to throw. As Kerry threw his decorations over the fence, his statement was: \"I'm not doing this for any violent reasons, but for peace and justice, and to try and make this country wake up once and for all.\"\nKerry was arrested on May 30, 1971, during a VVAW march to honor American POWs held captive by North Vietnam. The march was planned as a multi-day event from Concord to Boston, and while in Lexington, participants tried to camp on the village green. At 2:30a.m., local and state police arrested 441 demonstrators, including Kerry, for trespassing. All were given the Miranda Warning and were hauled away on school buses to spend the night at the Lexington Public Works Garage. Kerry and the other protesters later paid a $5 fine, and were released. The mass arrests caused a community backlash and ended up giving positive coverage to the VVAW.\nEarly political career (1972\u20131985).\n1972 congressional election.\nIn 1970, Kerry had considered running for Congress in the Democratic primary against hawkish Democrat Philip J. Philbin of Massachusetts's 3rd congressional district, but deferred in favor of Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest and anti-war activist, who went on to defeat Philbin. In February 1972, Kerry's wife bought a house in Worcester, with Kerry intending to run against the 4th district's aging thirteen-term incumbent Democrat, Harold Donohue. The couple never moved in. After Republican Congressman F. Bradford Morse of the neighboring 5th district announced his retirement and then resignation to become Under-Secretary-General for Political and General Assembly Affairs at the United Nations, the couple instead rented an apartment in Lowell, so that Kerry could run to succeed him.\nIncluding Kerry, the Democratic primary race had 10 candidates, including attorney Paul J. Sheehy, State Representative Anthony R. DiFruscia, John J. Desmond and Robert B. Kennedy. Kerry ran a \"very expensive, sophisticated campaign\", financed by out-of-state backers and supported by many young volunteers. DiFruscia's campaign headquarters shared the same building as Kerry's. On the eve of the September 19 primary, police found Kerry's younger brother Cameron and campaign field director Thomas J. Vallely, breaking into where the building's telephone lines were located. They were arrested and charged with \"breaking and entering with the intent to commit grand larceny\", but the charges were dropped a year later. DiFruscia alleged that the two were trying to disrupt his get-out-the vote efforts. Vallely and Cameron Kerry maintained that they were only checking their own telephone lines because they had received an anonymous call warning that the Kerry lines would be cut.\nDespite the arrests, Kerry won the primary with 20,771 votes (27.56%). Sheehy came second with 15,641 votes (20.75%), followed by DiFruscia with 12,222 votes (16.22%), Desmond with 10,213 votes (13.55%) and Kennedy with 5,632 votes (7.47%). The remaining 10,891 votes were split amongst the other five candidates, with 1970 nominee Richard Williams coming last with just 1,706 votes (2.26%).\nIn the general election, Kerry was initially favored to defeat the Republican candidate, former State Representative Paul W. Cronin, and conservative Democrat Roger P. Durkin, who ran as an Independent. A week after the primary, one poll put Kerry 26-points ahead of Cronin. His campaign called for a national health insurance system, discounted prescription drugs for the unemployed, a jobs program to clean up the Merrimack River and rent controls in Lowell and Lawrence. A major obstacle, however, was the district's leading newspaper, the conservative \"The Sun\". The paper editorialized against him. It also ran critical news stories about his out-of-state contributions and his \"carpetbagging\", because he had only moved into the district in April. Subsequently, released \"Watergate\" Oval Office tape recordings of the Nixon White House showed that defeating Kerry's candidacy had attracted the personal attention of President Nixon. Kerry himself asserts that Nixon sent operatives to Lowell to help derail his campaign.\nThe race was the most expensive for Congress in the country that year and four days before the general election, Durkin withdrew and endorsed Cronin, hoping to see Kerry defeated. The week before, a poll had put Kerry 10 points ahead of Cronin, with Durkin at 13%. In the final days of the campaign, Kerry sensed that it was \"slipping away\" and Cronin emerged victorious by 110,970 votes (53.45%) to Kerry's 92,847 (44.72%). After his defeat, Kerry lamented in a letter to supporters that \"for two solid weeks, [\"The Sun\"] called me un-American, New Left antiwar agitator, unpatriotic, and labeled me every other 'un-' and 'anti-' that they could find. It's hard to believe that one newspaper could be so powerful, but they were.\" He later felt that his failure to respond directly to \"The Sun\"'s attacks cost him the race.\nLaw career.\nAfter Kerry's 1972 defeat, he and his wife bought a house in the Belvidere section of Lowell, Massachusetts, entering a decade which his brother Cameron later called \"the years in exile\". He spent some time working as a fundraiser for the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE), an international humanitarian organization. In September 1973, he entered Boston College Law School. While studying, Kerry worked as a talk radio host on WBZ and, in July 1974, was named executive director of Mass Action, a Massachusetts advocacy association.\nKerry received his juris doctor (J.D.) from Boston College in 1976. While in law school he had been a student prosecutor in the office of the District Attorney of Middlesex County, John J. Droney. After passing the bar exam and being admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1976, he went to work in that office as a full-time prosecutor and moved to Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.\nIn January 1977, Droney promoted him to First Assistant District Attorney, essentially making Kerry his campaign and media surrogate because Droney was afflicted with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease). As First Assistant, Kerry tried cases, which included winning convictions in a high-profile rape case and a murder. He also played a role in administering the office, including initiating the creation of special white-collar and organized crime units, creating programs to address the problems of rape and other crime victims and witnesses, and managing trial calendars to reflect case priorities. In 1978, Kerry launched a criminal investigation against Senator Edward Brooke, regarding \"misstatements\" in his first divorce trial. The inquiry ended with no charges being brought after investigators and prosecutors determined that Brooke's misstatements were pertinent to the case, but were not material enough to have affected the outcome.\nDroney's health was poor and Kerry had decided to run for his position in the 1978 election should Droney drop out. However, Droney was re-elected and his health improved; he went on to re-assume many of the duties that he had delegated to Kerry. Kerry thus decided to leave, departing in 1979 with assistant DA Roanne Sragow to set up their own law firm. Kerry also worked as a commentator for WCVB-TV and co-founded a bakery, Kilvert & Forbes Ltd., with businessman and former Kennedy aide K. Dun Gifford.\nLieutenant Governor of Massachusetts.\nIn the 1982 Massachusetts gubernatorial election, Lieutenant Governor Thomas P. O'Neill III declined to seek a third term, instead deciding to run for governor of Massachusetts. Kerry declared his candidacy, entering the primary election alongside Massachusetts Secretary of Environmental Affairs Evelyn Murphy, State Senator Samuel Rotondi, State Representative Lou Nickinello, and Lois Pines.\nKerry won the nomination with 325,890 votes (29%) to Murphy's 286,378 (25.48%), Rotondi's 228,086 (20.29%), Nickinello's 150,829 (13.42%) and Pines' 132,734 (11.81%). In the concurrent gubernatorial primary, former Governor Michael Dukakis defeated O'Neill and incumbent Governor Edward J. King. The Dukakis and Kerry ticket defeated the Republican ticket of John W. Sears and Leon Lombardi in the general election by 1,219,109 votes (61.92%) to 749,679 (38.08%).\nAs Lieutenant Governor, Kerry led meetings of the Massachusetts Governor's Council. Dukakis also delegated other tasks to Kerry, including serving as the state's liaison to the Federal government of the United States. He was also active on environmental issues, including combating acid rain.\n1984 U.S. Senate election.\nThe junior U.S. senator from Massachusetts, Paul Tsongas, announced in 1984 that he would be stepping down for health reasons. Kerry ran, and as in his 1982 race for Lieutenant Governor, he did not receive the endorsement of the party regulars at the state Democratic convention. Congressman James Shannon, a favorite of House Speaker Tip O'Neill, was the early favorite to win the nomination, and he \"won broad establishment support and led in early polling\". Again as in 1982, however, Kerry prevailed in a close primary.\nIn his general election campaign, Kerry promised to mix liberalism with tight budget controls. He defeated Republican Ray Shamie despite a nationwide landslide for the re-election of Republican President Ronald Reagan, for whom Massachusetts voted by a narrow margin. In his victory speech, Kerry asserted that his win meant that the people of Massachusetts \"emphatically reject the politics of selfishness and the notion that women must be treated as second-class citizens\".\nTsongas resigned on January 2, 1985, one day before the end of his term. Dukakis appointed Kerry to fill the vacancy, giving him seniority over other new senators who were sworn in on January 3, the scheduled start of their new terms.\nU.S. Senate (1985\u20132013).\nIran\u2013Contra hearings.\nOn April 18, 1985, a few months after taking his Senate seat, Kerry and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa traveled to Nicaragua and met the country's president, Daniel Ortega. Although Ortega had won internationally certified elections, the trip was criticized because Ortega and his leftist Sandinista government had strong ties to Cuba and the USSR and were accused of human rights abuses. The Sandinista government was opposed by the right-wing CIA-backed rebels known as the Contras. While in Nicaragua, Kerry and Harkin talked to people on both sides of the conflict. Through the senators, Ortega offered a cease-fire agreement in exchange for the U.S. dropping support of the Contras. The offer was denounced by the Reagan administration as a \"propaganda initiative\" designed to influence a House vote on a $14million Contra aid package, but Kerry said \"I am willing... to take the risk in the effort to put to test the good faith of the Sandinistas.\" The House voted down the Contra aid, but Ortega flew to Moscow to accept a $200million loan the next day, which in part prompted the House to pass a larger $27million aid package six weeks later.\nMeanwhile, Kerry's staff began their own investigations and, on October 14, issued a report that exposed illegal activities on the part of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who had set up a private network involving the National Security Council and the CIA to deliver military equipment to right-wing Nicaraguan rebels (Contras). In effect, North and certain members of the President's administration were accused by Kerry's report of illegally funding and supplying armed militants without the authorization of Congress. Kerry's staff investigation, based on a year-long inquiry and interviews with fifty unnamed sources, is said to raise \"serious questions about whether the United States has abided by the law in its handling of the contras over the past three years\".\nThe Kerry Committee report found that \"the Contra drug links included... payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies.\" The U.S. State Department paid over $806,000 to known drug traffickers to carry humanitarian assistance to the Contras. Kerry's findings provoked little reaction in the media and official Washington.\nThe Kerry report was a precursor to the Iran\u2013Contra affair. On May 4, 1989, North was convicted of charges relating to the Iran/Contra controversy, including three felonies. On September 16, 1991, however, North's convictions were overturned on appeal.\nGeorge H. W. Bush administration.\nOn November 15, 1988, at a businessmen's breakfast in East Lynn, Massachusetts, Kerry made a joke about then-President-elect George H. W. Bush and his running mate, saying \"if Bush is shot, the Secret Service has orders to shoot Dan Quayle.\" He apologized the following day.\nDuring their investigation of General Manuel Noriega, the \"de facto\" ruler of Panama, Kerry's staff found reason to believe that the Pakistan-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) had facilitated Noriega's drug trafficking and money laundering. This led to a separate inquiry into BCCI, and as a result, banking regulators shut down BCCI in 1991. In December 1992, Kerry and Senator Hank Brown, a Republican from Colorado, released \"The BCCI Affair\", a report on the BCCI scandal. The report showed that the bank was crooked and was working with terrorists, including Abu Nidal. It blasted the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, the Customs Service, the Federal Reserve Bank, as well as influential lobbyists and the CIA.\nKerry was criticized by some Democrats for having pursued his own party members, including former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, although Republicans said he should have pressed against some Democrats even harder. The BCCI scandal was later turned over to the Manhattan District Attorney's office.\nPrecursors to presidential bid.\nIn 1996, Kerry faced a difficult re-election fight against Governor William Weld, a popular Republican incumbent who had been re-elected in 1994 with 71% of the vote. The race was covered nationwide as one of the most closely watched Senate races that year. Kerry and Weld held several debates and negotiated a campaign spending cap of $6.9million at Kerry's Beacon Hill townhouse. Both candidates spent more than the cap, with each camp accusing the other of being first to break the agreement. During the campaign, Kerry spoke briefly at the 1996 Democratic National Convention. Kerry won re-election with 52 percent to Weld's 45 percent.\nIn the 2000 presidential election, Kerry found himself close to being chosen as the vice presidential running mate.\nA release from the presidential campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Al Gore listed Kerry on the short list to be selected as the vice-presidential nominee, along with North Carolina Senator John Edwards, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt, New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. Gore ultimately chose Lieberman.\n\"You get stuck in Iraq\" controversy.\nOn October 30, 2006, Kerry was a headline speaker at a campaign rally being held for Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. Speaking to an audience composed mainly of college students, Kerry said, \"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.\"\nThe day after he made the remark, leaders from both sides of the political spectrum criticized Kerry's remarks, which he said were a botched joke. Republicans including President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain and then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, said that Kerry's comments were insulting to American military forces fighting in Iraq. Democratic Representative Harold Ford Jr. called on Kerry to apologize.\nKerry initially stated: \"I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy\". Kerry also responded to criticism from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.\nKerry said that he had intended the remark as a jab at President Bush, and described the remarks as a \"botched joke\", having inadvertently left out the key word \"us\" (which would have been, \"If you don't, you get \"us\" stuck in Iraq\"), as well as leaving the phrase \"just ask President Bush\" off of the end of the sentence. In Kerry's prepared remarks, which he released during the ensuing media frenzy, the corresponding line was \"...you end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush\". He also said that from the context of the speech which, prior to the \"stuck in Iraq\" line, made several specific references to Bush and elements of his biography, that Kerry was referring to President Bush and not American troops in general.\nAfter two days of media coverage, citing a desire not to be a diversion, Kerry apologized to those who took offense at what he called the misinterpretation of his comment.\nAfghanistan and Pakistan.\nA \"Washington Post\" report in May 2011 stated that Kerry \"has emerged in the past few years as an important envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan during times of crisis\", as he undertook another trip to the two countries. The killing of Osama bin Laden \"has generated perhaps the most important crossroads yet\", the report continued, as the senator spoke at a press conference and prepared to fly from Kabul to Pakistan. Among matters discussed during the May visit to Pakistan, under the general rubric of \"recalibrating\" the bilateral relationship, Kerry sought and retrieved from the Pakistanis the tail-section of the U.S. helicopter which had had to be abandoned at Abbottabad during the bin Laden strike. In 2013, Kerry met with Pakistan's army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to discuss the peace process with the Taliban in Afghanistan.\nVoting record.\nOverall.\nMost analyses place Kerry's voting record on the left within the Senate Democratic caucus. During the 2004 presidential election he was portrayed as a staunch liberal by conservative groups and the Bush campaign, who often noted that in 2003 Kerry was rated the top Senate liberal by \"National Journal\". However, that rating was based only upon voting on legislation within that past year. In fact, in terms of career voting records, the \"National Journal\" found that Kerry is the 11th most liberal member of the Senate. Most analyses find that Kerry is at least slightly more liberal than the typical Democratic Senator. Kerry has stated that he opposes privatizing Social Security, supports abortion rights for adult women and minors, supports same-sex marriage, opposes capital punishment except for terrorists, supports most gun control laws, and is generally a supporter of trade agreements. In some of these, as in the case of abortion, Kerry distinguishes his personal views as in line with his Catholic faith, but believes that separation of church and state demands that he not legislate his religious beliefs upon those who do not share those beliefs. Kerry supported the North American Free Trade Agreement and Most Favored Nation status for China, but opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement.\nIn July 1997, Kerry joined his Senate colleagues in voting against ratification of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming without greenhouse gas emissions limits on nations deemed developing, including India and China. Since then, Kerry has attacked President Bush, charging him with opposition to international efforts to combat global warming.\nOn October 1, 2008, Kerry voted for Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, also known as the TARP bailout.\nIraq.\nIn the lead up to the Iraq War, Kerry said on October 9, 2002; \"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.\" Bush relied on that resolution in ordering the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Kerry also gave a January 23, 2003, speech to Georgetown University saying \"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator; leading an oppressive regime he presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.\" Kerry did, however, warn that the administration should exhaust its diplomatic avenues before launching war: \"Mr. President, do not rush to war, take the time to build the coalition, because it's not winning the war that's hard, it's winning the peace that's hard.\"\nAfter the invasion of Iraq, when no weapons of mass destruction were found, Kerry strongly criticized Bush, contending that he had misled the country: \"When the President of the United States looks at you and tells you something, there should be some trust.\"\nLibya.\nIn 2011, Kerry supported American military action in Libya.\nLeadership.\nKerry chaired the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs from 1991 to 1993. The committee's report, which Kerry endorsed, stated there was \"no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia\". In 1994 the Senate passed a resolution, sponsored by Kerry and fellow Vietnam veteran John McCain, that called for an end to the existing trade embargo against Vietnam; it was intended to pave the way for normalization. In 1995, President Bill Clinton normalized diplomatic relations with the country of Vietnam.\nKerry was the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 1987 to 1989. He was reelected to the Senate in 1990, 1996 (after winning re-election against the then-Governor of Massachusetts Republican William Weld), 2002, and 2008. In January 2009, Kerry replaced Joe Biden as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.\nAs a role model for campus leaders across the nation and strong advocate for global development, Kerry was honored by the Millennium Campus Network (MCN) as a Global Generation Award winner in 2011.\nCommittee assignments.\nDuring his tenure, Kerry served on four Senate committees and nine subcommittees:\nSeniority.\nFrom the beginning of the 113th United States Congress until his resignation, Kerry ranked as the 7th most senior U.S. Senator. Due to the longevity of Ted Kennedy's service, Kerry was the most senior \"junior Senator\" in the 111th United States Congress. On Tuesday, August 25, 2009, Kerry became the senior senator from Massachusetts following Ted Kennedy's death.\nSponsorship of legislation.\nAreas of concern in the bills Kerry introduced into the Senate included small business concerns, education, terrorism, veterans' and POW/MIA issues, and marine resource protection. A full list of Kerry's sponsored legislation was available on his Senate web site.\nDuring his Senate career, Kerry was primary sponsor of the following bills (excluding resolutions and amendments sponsored). This table does not count bills which Kerry co-sponsored.\nA chronological list of various bills and resolutions sponsored by Kerry follows.\n2004 presidential campaign.\nIn the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries, John Kerry defeated several Democratic rivals, including Sen. John Edwards (D-North Carolina), former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and retired Army General Wesley Clark. His victory in the Iowa caucuses is widely believed to be the tipping point where Kerry revived his sagging campaign in New Hampshire and the February 3, 2004, primary states like Arizona, South Carolina and New Mexico. Kerry then went on to win landslide victories in Nevada and Wisconsin. Kerry thus won the Democratic nomination to run for President of the United States against incumbent George W. Bush. On July 6, 2004, he announced his selection of John Edwards as his running mate. Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who was Kerry's 2004 campaign adviser, wrote an article in \"Time\" magazine claiming that after the election, Kerry had said that he wished he had never picked Edwards, and that the two have since stopped speaking to each other. In a subsequent appearance on ABC's \"This Week\", Kerry refused to respond to Shrum's allegation, calling it a \"ridiculous waste of time\".\nDuring his bid to be elected president in 2004, Kerry frequently criticized President George W. Bush for starting the Iraq War. While Kerry had initially voted in support of authorizing President Bush to use force in dealing with Saddam Hussein, he voted against an $87billion supplemental appropriations bill to pay for the subsequent war. His statement on March 16, 2004, \"I actually did vote for the $87billion before I voted against it\", helped the Bush campaign to paint him as a flip-flopper and has been cited as contributing to Kerry's defeat.\nOn November 3, 2004, Kerry conceded the race. Kerry won 59.03 million votes, or 48.3 percent of the popular vote; Bush won 62.04 million votes, or 50.7 percent of the popular vote. Kerry carried states with a total of 252 electoral votes. One Kerry elector voted for Kerry's running mate, Edwards, so in the final tally Kerry had 251 electoral votes to Bush's 286. He was the first Democrat since Michael Dukakis in 1988 to lose the popular vote in a presidential election, and until Kamala Harris's loss in 2024, he was the most recent Democrat to do so.\nSubsequent presidential-election activities.\nImmediately after the 2004 election, some Democrats mentioned Kerry as a possible contender for the 2008 Democratic nomination. His brother had said such a campaign was \"conceivable\", and Kerry himself reportedly said at a farewell party for his 2004 campaign staff, \"There's always another four years\".\nKerry established a separate political action committee, Keeping America's Promise, which declared as its mandate \"A Democratic Congress will restore accountability to Washington and help change a disastrous course in Iraq\", and raised money and channeled contributions to Democratic candidates in state and federal races. Through Keeping America's Promise in 2005, Kerry raised over $5.5million for other Democrats up and down the ballot. Through his campaign account and his political action committee, the Kerry campaign operation generated more than $10million for various party committees and 179 candidates for the U.S. House, Senate, state and local offices in 42 states focusing on the midterm elections during the 2006 election cycle. \"Cumulatively, John Kerry has done as much if not more than any other individual senator\", Hassan Nemazee, the national finance chairman of the DSCC said.\nOn January 10, 2008, Kerry endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama for president. He was mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate for Senator Obama, although fellow Senator Joe Biden was eventually chosen. After Biden's acceptance of the vice presidential nomination, speculation arose that John Kerry would be a candidate for Secretary of State in the Obama administration. However, Senator Hillary Clinton was offered the position.\nDuring the 2012 Obama reelection campaign, Kerry participated in one-on-one debate prep with the president, impersonating the Republican candidate Mitt Romney.\nSecretary of State (2013\u20132017).\nNomination and confirmation.\nOn December 15, 2012, several news outlets reported that President Barack Obama would nominate Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, after Susan Rice, widely seen as Obama's preferred choice, withdrew her name from consideration citing a politicized confirmation process following criticism of her response to the 2012 Benghazi attack. On December 21, Obama proposed the nomination, which received positive commentary. His confirmation hearing took place on January 24, 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the same panel where he first testified in 1971. The committee unanimously voted to approve him on January 29, 2013, and the same day the full Senate confirmed him on a vote of 94\u20133. In a letter to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Kerry announced his resignation from the Senate effective February 1.\nTenure.\nKerry was sworn in as Secretary of State on February 1, 2013.\nWhile serving as the Secretary of State, Kerry spoke in the French language on several occasions in his official capacity.\nAfter six months of rigorous diplomacy within the Middle East, Kerry was able to have Israeli and Palestinian negotiators agree to start the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks. Senior U.S. officials stated the two sides were able to meet on July 30, 2013, at the State Department without American mediators following a dinner the previous evening hosted by Kerry.\nOn September 27, 2013, he met with the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the P5+1 and Iran summit, which eventually led to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. It was the highest-level direct contact between the United States and Iran in the last six years, and made him the first U.S. Secretary of State to have met with his Iranian counterpart since 1979 Iranian Revolution.\nIn the State Department, Kerry quickly earned a reputation \"for being aloof, keeping to himself, and not bothering to read staff memos\". Career State Department officials complained that power became too centralized under Kerry's leadership, which slowed department operations when Kerry was on frequent overseas trips. Others in State described Kerry as having \"a kind of diplomatic attention deficit disorder\" as he shifted from topic to topic instead of focusing on long-term strategy. When asked whether he was traveling too much, he responded, \"Hell no. I'm not slowing down.\" Despite Kerry's early achievements, morale at State was lower than under Hillary Clinton, according to department employees. However, after Kerry's first six months in the State Department, a Gallup poll found he had high approval ratings among Americans as Secretary of State. After a year, another poll showed Kerry's favorability continued to rise. Less than two years into Kerry's term, the Foreign Policy Magazine's 2014 Ivory Tower survey of international relations scholars asked, \"Who was the most effective U.S. Secretary of State in the past 50 years?\"; John Kerry and Lawrence Eagleburger tied for 11th place out of the 15 confirmed Secretaries of State in that period.\nIn January 2014, having met with Vatican Secretary of State Archbishop Pietro Parolin, Kerry said: \"We touched on just about every major issue that we are both working on, that are issues of concern to all of us. First of all, we talked at great length about Syria, and I was particularly appreciative for the Archbishop's raising this issue, and equally grateful for the Holy Father's comments\u00a0\u2013 the Pope's comments yesterday regarding his support for the GenevaII process. We welcome that support. It is very important to have broad support, and I know that the Pope is particularly concerned about the massive numbers of displaced human beings and the violence that has taken over 130,000 lives.\"\nKerry expressed support for Israel's right to defend itself during the 2014 Israel\u2013Gaza conflict.\nKerry said the United States supported the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen because Saudi Arabia, an ally, was threatened \"very directly\" by the takeover of neighboring Yemen by the Houthis, but noted that the United States would not reflexively support Saudi Arabia's proxy wars against Iran.\nOn December 28, 2016, soon after United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 passed 14\u20130 with the U.S. abstaining, Kerry joined the rest of the U.N. Security Council in strongly criticizing Israel's settlement policies in a speech. His speech and criticisms met negative reactions from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while UK Prime Minister Theresa May distanced the UK from Kerry's strongly worded speech in what appeared to be an attempt to build bridges with the incoming Trump administration. Kerry's speech received positive reactions from Arab nations, but some criticized his remarks as too little, too late from the outgoing administration.\nSyria.\nFollowing the August 21, 2013, chemical weapons attack on the Ghouta suburbs of Damascus attributed to Syrian government forces, Kerry became a leading advocate for the use of military force against the Syrian government for what he called \"a despot's brutal and flagrant use of chemical weapons\".\nOn September 9, in response to a reporter's question about whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could avert a military strike, Kerry said \"He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that. But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done, obviously.\" This unscripted remark initiated a process that would lead to Syria agreeing to relinquish and destroy its chemical weapons arsenal, as Russia treated Kerry's statement as a serious proposal. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia would work \"immediately\" to convince Syria relinquish and destroy its large chemical weapons arsenal. Syria quickly welcomed this proposal and on September 14, the UN formally accepted Syria's application to join the convention banning chemical weapons, and separately, the U.S. and Russia agreed on a plan to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons by the middle of 2014, leading Kerry to declare on July 20, 2014: \"we struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out\". On September 28, the UN Security Council passed a resolution ordering the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons and condemning the August 21 Ghouta attack.\nLatin America.\nIn a speech before the Organization of American States in November 2013, Kerry remarked that the era of the Monroe Doctrine was over. He went on to explain, \"The relationship that we seek and that we have worked hard to foster is not about a United States declaration about how and when it will intervene in the affairs of other American states. It's about all of our countries viewing one another as equals, sharing responsibilities, cooperating on security issues, and adhering not to doctrine, but to the decisions that we make as partners to advance the values and the interests that we share.\"\nEnvironmentalism.\nIn April 2016, he signed the Paris Climate Accords at the United Nations in New York.\nOn November 11, 2016, Kerry became the first Secretary of State and highest-ranking U.S. official to date to visit Antarctica. Kerry spent two days on the continent meeting with researchers and staying overnight at McMurdo Station.\nIn 1994, Kerry led opposition to continued funding for the Integral Fast Reactor, which resulted in the end of funding for the project. However, in light of increasing concerns regarding climate change, in 2017 Kerry reversed his position on nuclear power, saying \"Given this challenge we face today, and given the progress of fourth generation nuclear: go for it. No other alternative, zero emissions.\"\nGlobal Connect initiative.\nIn September 2015, the U.S. Department of State unveiled a new initiative called \"Global Connect\" which sought to provide internet access to more than 1.5 billion people around the world within five years. In 2016, in partnership with OPIC, Kerry announced an investment of $171million to enable \"a low-cost and rapidly scalable wireless broadband network in India\". OPIC's financing is aimed at helping its Indian Partner, Tikona Digital Networks, to provide Internet through wireless technology.\nOut of government (2017\u20132021).\nKerry retired from his diplomatic work following the end of the Obama administration on January 20, 2017. He did not attend Donald Trump's inauguration on that day, and the following day took part in the 2017 Women's March in Washington, D.C.\nKerry has taken a strong stand against Trump policies and joined in filing a brief arguing against Trump's executive order banning entry of persons from seven Muslim countries. In November 2018, in a \"Guardian Live\" conversation with Andrew Rawnsley, sponsored by \"The Guardian\" at London's Central Hall, Kerry discussed several issues which have developed further since his tenure as Secretary of State, including migration into Europe and climate change.\nOn December 5, 2019, Kerry endorsed Joe Biden's bid for the Democratic nomination for president, saying \"He'll be ready on day one to put back together the country and the world that Donald Trump has broken apart\" and asserting that \"Joe will defeat Donald Trump next November. He's the candidate with the wisdom and standing to fix what Trump has broken, to restore our place in the world, and improve the lives of working people here at home.\"\nFollowing retirement from government service, Kerry signed an agreement with Simon & Schuster for publishing his planned memoirs, dealing with his life and career in government. In September 2018, he published \"Every Day Is Extra\".\nLeaked audiotape.\nOn April 25, 2021, \"The New York Times\" published content from a leaked audiotape of a three-hour taped conversation between economist Saeed Leylaz and Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. The taped conversation was connected to an oral history project, known as \"In the Islamic Republic the military field rules\", which documents the work of Iran's current administration. The tape was obtained by the London-based news channel Iran International.\nIn the tape, which the \"Times\" referred to as \"extraordinary\", Zarif reveals that then-Secretary of State Kerry told him that Israel attacked Iranian assets in Syria, \"at least 200 times\". Although the tape has not been verified, the spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry did not deny its validity.\nNineteen Republican senators signed a letter asking President Biden to investigate Zarif's claim. On April 27, 2021, Republicans called on Kerry to resign from the Biden administration's National Security Council. In a tweet, Kerry denied Zarif's account, writing, \"I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false. This never happened \u2014 either when I was Secretary of State or since.\"\nSpecial Presidential Envoy for Climate (2021\u20132024).\nOn November 23, 2020, President-elect Joe Biden's transition team announced that Kerry would be taking a full-time position in the administration, serving as a special envoy for climate; in this role he will be a principal on the National Security Council. Kerry assumed office on January 20, 2021, following Biden's inauguration.\nClimate cooperation with China.\nIn July 2023, John Kerry visited China for advance climate cooperation. The main achievement of the visit was some progress in the fields of: \"methane reduction commitments; reducing China's reliance on coal; China's objections to trade restrictions on solar panel and battery components; and climate finance.\" This was obtained despite many currently existing obstacles to cooperation. The visit was made in the middle of the 2023 Asia heat wave that set a new record of in Sanbu, Xinjiang, China, which Kerry mentioned in particular.\nClimate cooperation with India.\nAt the end of July 2023, John Kerry visited India. Among others he declared, the US will be committed to the target of delivering 100 billion dollars for climate action to low income countries and no future US president can retreat from climate commitment. He criticized Donald Trump for leaving the Paris agreement before.\nClimate cooperation with countries in the Middle East.\nIn June 2023, Kerry made visits to Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. In Israel, he emphasized the need for climate legislation to reach climate targets and reached an agreement about the renewal of \"Memorandum of understanding between Israel and the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Israel is one of the few developed countries which have still not approved a climate law and lags behind other OECD countries in climate action. Israeli environmental protection minister Idit Silman said that Israel intended to go to COP28 \"with an ambitious and applicable climate law and put the State of Israel on the same level as the developed countries of the OECD.\"\nDeparture.\nOn January 13, 2024, at least three sources close to Kerry revealed that he would step down as U.S. climate envoy by the upcoming spring. He told the \"Financial Times\" he planned to stay active in the climate finance space. He officially resigned from his position on March 6, 2024.\nPersonal and family life.\nAncestry.\nKerry's paternal ancestors came from the Fr\u00e4nkel family, which owned a textile factory in Neustadt, Upper Silesia (now Prudnik, Poland), founded by Samuel Fr\u00e4nkel. The Fr\u00e4nkels originated from Hotzenplotz, Austria (now Osoblaha, Czech Republic) and Z\u00fclz, Prussia (now Bia\u0142a Prudnicka, Poland). Kerry's paternal great-grandmother, Mathilda Fr\u00e4nkel, was born in Oberglogau (now G\u0142og\u00f3wek, near Prudnik) and married Benedikt Kohn from Bennisch (now Horn\u00ed Bene\u0161ov). His grandparents, shoe businessman Frederick A. \"Fred\" Kerry and musician Ida L\u00f6we, immigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the U.S. Fred, his wife, and his brother converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1901, and changed their names from Kohn to Kerry. Ida was of remote ancestry of Rabbi Sinai Loew of Worms, brother of Judah Loew ben Bezalel. Fred and Ida Kerry emigrated to the United States in 1905, living at first in Chicago and eventually moving to Brookline, Massachusetts, by 1915. According to \"The New York Times\", \"[the] brother and sister of John Kerry's paternal grandmother, Otto and Jenni Lowe, died in concentration camps\". Kerry's Jewish ancestry was publicly revealed during his 2004 presidential campaign; he has stated that he was unaware of it until a reporter informed him of it in 2003.\nKerry's maternal ancestors were of Scottish and English descent, and his maternal grandparents were James Grant Forbes II of the Forbes family and Margaret Tyndal Winthrop of the Dudley\u2013Winthrop family. Margaret's paternal grandfather Robert Charles Winthrop served as the 22nd Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Robert's father was Governor Thomas Lindall Winthrop. Thomas' father John Still Winthrop was a great-great-grandson of Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop and great-grandson of Governor Thomas Dudley. Through his mother, Kerry is a first cousin once removed of French politician Brice Lalonde.\nMarriages and children.\nKerry was married to Julia Thorne in 1970, and they had two daughters together: documentary filmmaker Alexandra Kerry (born September 5, 1973) and physician Vanessa Kerry (born December 31, 1976).\nAlexandra was born days before Kerry began law school. In 1982, Julia asked Kerry for a separation while she was suffering from severe depression. They were divorced on July 25, 1988, and the marriage was formally annulled in 1997. \"After 14 years as a political wife, I associated politics only with anger, fear and loneliness\", she wrote in \"A Change of Heart\", her book about depression. Thorne later married Richard Charlesworth, an architect, and moved to Bozeman, Montana, where she became active in local environmental groups such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Thorne supported Kerry's 2004 presidential run. She died of cancer on April 27, 2006.\nKerry and his second wife\u2014Portuguese-born businesswoman and philanthropist Teresa Heinz, the widow of Kerry's late Pennsylvania Republican Senate colleague John Heinz\u2014were introduced to each other by Heinz at an Earth Day rally in 1990. Early the following year, Senator Heinz was killed in a plane crash near Lower Merion. Teresa has three sons from her marriage to Heinz, Henry John IV, Andr\u00e9, and Christopher. Heinz and Kerry were married on May 26, 1995, in Nantucket, Massachusetts.\nNet worth.\nThe \"Forbes 400\" survey estimated in 2004 that Teresa Heinz Kerry had a net worth of $750million. However, estimates have frequently varied, ranging from around $165million to as high as $3.2billion, according to a study in the \"Los Angeles Times\". Regardless of which figure is correct, Kerry was the wealthiest U.S. Senator while serving in the Senate. Independent of Heinz, Kerry is wealthy in his own right, and is the beneficiary of at least four trusts inherited from Forbes family relatives, including his mother, Rosemary Forbes Kerry, who died in 2002. \"Forbes\" magazine (named for the Forbes family of publishers, unrelated to Kerry) estimated that if elected, and if Heinz family assets were included, Kerry would have been the third-richest U.S. president in history, when adjusted for inflation. This assessment was based on Heinz's and Kerry's combined assets, but the couple signed a prenuptial agreement that keeps their assets separate. Kerry's financial disclosure form for 2011 put his personal assets in the range of $230,000,000 to $320,000,000, including the assets of his spouse and any dependent children. This included slightly more than $3,000,000 worth of H. J. Heinz Company assets, which increased in value by over $600,000 in 2013 when Berkshire Hathaway announced their intention to purchase the company.\nIn April 2017, Kerry purchased an 18-acre property on the northwest corner of Martha's Vineyard overlooking Vineyard Sound in the town of Chilmark, Massachusetts. The property is located in Seven Gates Farm and according to property records, cost $11.75million for the seven bedroom home.\nReligious beliefs.\nKerry is a Roman Catholic, and is said to have carried a religious rosary, a prayer book, and a St. Christopher medal (the patron saint of travelers) when he campaigned. Discussing his faith, Kerry said: \"I thought of being a priest. I was very religious while at school in Switzerland. I was an altar boy and prayed all the time. I was very centered around the Mass and the church.\" He also said that the Letters of Paul (Apostle Paul) moved him the most, stating that they taught him to \"not feel sorry for myself\".\nKerry told \"Christianity Today\" in October 2004:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I'm a Catholic and I practice, but at the same time I have an open-mindedness to many other expressions of spirituality that come through different religions... I've spent some time reading and thinking about religion and trying to study it, and I've arrived at not so much a sense of the differences, but a sense of the similarities in so many ways.\nHe said that he believed that the Torah, the Quran, and the Bible all share a fundamental story which connects with readers.\nHealth.\nIn 2003, Kerry was diagnosed with and successfully treated for prostate cancer. On May 31, 2015, Kerry broke his right leg in a biking accident in Scionzier, France, and was flown to Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital for recovery. MGH Hip and Knee Replacement Orthopaedic Surgeon Dr. Dennis Burke, who had met Kerry in France and had accompanied him in the plane from France to Boston, set Kerry's right leg on Tuesday, June 2, in a four-hour operation.\nAthletics and sailing.\nIn addition to the sports he played at Yale, Kerry is described by \"Sports Illustrated\", among others, as an \"avid cyclist\", primarily riding on a road bike. Prior to his presidential bid, Kerry had participated in several long-distance rides. During his many campaigns, he was reported to have visited bicycle stores in both his home state and elsewhere. His staff requested recumbent stationary bikes for his hotel rooms. He has also been a snowboarder, windsurfer, and sailor.\nThe \"Boston Herald\" reported on July 23, 2010, that Kerry commissioned construction on a new $7million yacht (a Friendship 75) in New Zealand and moored it in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where the Friendship yacht company is based. The article claimed this allowed him to avoid paying Massachusetts taxes on the property including approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $500. On July 27, Kerry stated he would voluntarily pay $500,000 in Massachusetts taxes on his yacht.\nHonors.\nJohn Kerry was awarded:\nHonorary degrees.\nJohn Kerry has received several honorary degrees in recognition of his service to the United States, These include:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["5122699", "26810748"], "permutation_1": ["26810748", "5122699"], "permutation_2": ["5122699", "26810748"], "permutation_3": ["26810748", "5122699"]}
{"id": "2hop__96774_94210", "docs_added": {"45302593": "Portrait of Bia de' Medici\nPainting by Bronzino\nThe Portrait of Bia de' Medici is a tempera on wood painting by the Italian Mannerist painter Agnolo Bronzino, dating to around 1542 and now in the Uffizi in Florence. For a long time it was displayed in the Tribuna at the heart of the museum, but since 2012 it has been moved to the \"sale rosse\" of the Nuovi Uffizi. A second portrait, by Pontormo, has also been argued to show Bia de' Medici, but this identification is disputed.\nDescription.\nAfter her death, many art historians believe her father commissioned a posthumous painting of his illegitimate daughter by Agnolo Bronzino, which often is regarded as one of his finest works. The work is and was painted in tempera on wood. The painting is on display in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence.\nBronzino shows the child half-length and sitting on a chair, similar to the pose in his \"Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi\" \u2013 a rigid official pose offset by some hints of hand movement, as if the character was about to get up, along with an intense but emotionless gaze straight at the viewer. The face is lit and highlighted by the blue background, whilst the cold light and absence of any strong chiaroscuro effect accentuates the smoothness of the subject's complexion and idealises her features.\nBia has her hair parted in the middle of her forehead and a falling bob, with two carefully tied braids framing the face. She wears pearl earrings, a gold chain with a pendant or medallion with her father's profile on it, emphasizing her bond with her father. The medallions portrait of her father is modeled after a portrait of Cosimo by Pontormo and then made into a medallion by Domenico di Poli. The appearance of the medallion in the portrait helped to identify the subject as a daughter of Cosimo.\nShe also wears a sumptuous dress, made of blue satin with puffy sleeves, produced in the silk factories Cosimo was setting up in Florence at the time. With her right hand she is fiddling with the end or tassel of a golden chain or belt around her waist.\nThe portrait would have hung in the family's private rooms as a reminder to them of the dead child and an inspiration and guide on the path to salvation. As art historian Gabrielle Langdon argues, Bronzino painted the child with a halo effect, in \"light-emitting white satin and pearls\" as a metaphor for both her purported name \"Bianca,\" which means \"white\" and her childish innocence. \"Like (Petrarch's) 'Laura,' the posthumous \"Bia\" is a riveting emanation from Heaven who bestows purifying grace on the beholder,\" Langdon wrote in the 2004 collection \"The Cultural World of Eleanora Di Toledo\".\nIdentification.\nUntil 1893 it was thought to represent Maria de' Medici, the younger legitimate sister of Bia and that the name \"Bia\" was a contraction or nickname of Maria. This was until the Italian painter, restorer and art historian Cosimo Conti found archival evidence for the existence for a daughter of Cosimos by the name of Bia.\nSome other researchers like Maike Vogt-L\u00fcerssen however argues the viewpoint held previously that the portrait actually depicts Bia's younger, legitimate half sister, Maria de' Medici. Vogt-L\u00fcerssen says in an article in \"Medicea \u2013 Rivista interdisciplinare di studi medicei\" that the subject of the portrait was identified as Maria until the 1950s and the pearls depicted in the portrait were a common symbol of the Medicis, often worn by legitimate female members of the house. Such pearl necklaces were a common fashionable accessory for women of the Italian nobility.\nVogt-L\u00fcerssen believes that the child depicted in a famous portrait by Pontormo with Maria Salviati is actually Bia, her eldest granddaughter, because group portraits in that era depicted family members with close blood relationships and Salviati's two younger granddaughters, Maria and Isabella, were too young at Salviati's death to be the 5- or 6-year-old girl in the portrait.\nOther equally credible identifications for the child in the Pontormo painting have also been put forth, such as Giulia de' Medici, the daughter of Cosimo de Medicis predecessor. After her father Alessandro de' Medicis assassination his daughter was put in the care of Maria Salviati.\nInfluence.\nRegardless of which Medici daughter it depicts, the painting has continued to inspire modern artists. American sculptor Joseph Cornell's 1948 sculpture \"Medici Princess\" incorporates Bronzino's portrait of the girl. The sculpture, one of a series depicting members of the Medici family, shows an enameled reproduction of Bronzino's portrait in a dark wooden box, behind a blurred, deep blue glass pane. On either side of the main portrait are smaller vignette reproductions of the same portrait, behind glass as well. Below the girl's image, in a pull-out drawer, are a feather and a floor plan of the palace in Florence that was once her home. The sculpture, which is owned by a private collector, was on display during a recent retrospective of Cornell's work originating with the Smithsonian American Art Museum.\nIsabella de Borchgrave recreated Bia de Medici in paper.\nThe portrait of Bia has also been recreated (wearing a scuba diving mask) by the street artist Blub in Lerici and Ravenna.\nBia de' Medici.\nBia de' Medici, (c.\u20091536 \u2013 1 March 1542) was the illegitimate daughter of Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, born before his first marriage.\nThe identity of Bia's mother is not known, but Cosimo I was likely no older than sixteen when he fathered her. According to Edgcumbe Staley's \"The Tragedies of the Medici\", some stories said the girl's mother was a village girl from Trebbio, where the Medicis had built one of their first villas, while others said she was a gentlewoman from Florence. Only Cosimo I and the girl's paternal grandmother, Maria Salviati, knew the identity of the girl's mother, but Salviati refused to reveal it, though she did acknowledge Bia was the daughter of Cosimo.\nStaley wrote that the little girl was called La Bia, short for \"Bambina\" (\"little girl\" or \"baby\"). The name might also have been short for Bianca or perhaps a classical name, deriving from Pallas' daughter. Staley wrote that her father's new wife, Eleonora di Toledo, refused to tolerate her presence in the palace after their marriage, so Cosimo sent her off to the Villa di Castello, her paternal grandmother's chief residence north of Florence. However, other more reliable reports indicate that her stepmother \"brought her up very lovingly.\" Her paternal grandmother supervised the nurseries for all of the children of Cosimo I. All of them, not only Cosimo's illegitimate daughter, spent most of their time at the Villa di Castello and were raised by nurses, with minimal day-to-day contact with their parents, though both Cosimo and Eleonora heard reports of their progress and offered directions for their education, their living arrangements, and the clothing they wore. Bia shared her nursery with Giulia de' Medici, the illegitimate daughter of Alessandro de' Medici, Duke of Florence, who was close to her in age. She grew into a high-spirited, loving little girl who kept her grandmother and nurses entertained with her antics. Bia's father adored his first-born child, and her paternal grandmother, Maria Salviati, said the little girl \"was the comfort of our court, being so very affectionate.\"\nBoth Bia and her cousin Giulia contracted a fast-moving fever in February 1542, from which Giulia recovered but Bia did not. Cosimo I received almost daily reports of Bia's worsening condition from his mother, Maria Salviati. The child grew weaker between 25 February and 28 February and finally died on 1 March 1542. She was buried in the Medici family crypt in San Lorenzo.\nWhen her legitimate half-sister Isabella de' Medici was born six months after her death, her father rejoiced to have another daughter. Contemporaries who might normally have consoled him on his wife's failure to present him with a second son instead congratulated him on her birth, knowing how he had grieved for the loss of Bia. \"(I) congratulate you on the beautiful baby girl God has conceded to you in recompense for the one he has taken to join him in paradise,\" wrote Paolo Giovio after the birth of Isabella. A comparison of portraits of Bia and Isabella reveal that, had she lived past early childhood, Bia likely would have closely resembled her half-sister Isabella, who shared her reddish-blonde hair, brown eyes, and dainty features.\nPontormo painting.\nIn a portrait by Pontormo, the child's identification, according to the Walters Art Museum and scholarship sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities is likely to be Giulia de' Medici. However, Maike Vogt-L\u00fcerssen argues in an article in \"Medicea \u2013 Rivista interdisciplinare di studi medicei\" that the child in the portrait with Maria Salviati is actually Salviati's granddaughter Bia de' Medici. She believes that the child does not resemble the known portrait of an adult Giulia de' Medici and that the relationship between Maria Salviati and Giulia was not close enough to have warranted a portrait. Most group portraits were of family members with close blood ties.\nSome art historians once identified the child as a young Cosimo I de' Medici, but it is now generally accepted to be Giulia. The child in the portrait appears to be a little girl, rather than a boy, and her expression is anxious. Maria Salviati, who is dressed soberly as befitted a widow, is seen sheltering the vulnerable child against her side. Art historian Gabrielle Langdon argues that the girl's demeanor in the portrait is different than would have been expected for the child Cosimo, whose family anticipated his role as a strong leader from his earliest days. It would have been to Cosimo I's advantage to commission a portrait depicting his mother as an exemplary widow, affectionately bringing up the orphaned daughter of Cosimo I's predecessor. The child's full lips, round nose, and curly reddish hair also bear little resemblance to known portraits of Cosimo as a child, though they do to portraits of the young Alessandro. Other girls of about the right age who were at court during this period also do not resemble the child in the portrait. The portrait might be one of the first in Renaissance-era Europe of a girl of presumed African and European ancestry. This painting is in the permanent collection of The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland.\nThe portrait has also been identified with other women, such as Isabella or Maria.", "45854": "Uffizi\nArt museum in Florence, Italy\nThe Uffizi Gallery ( ; , ) is a prominent art museum located adjacent to the Piazza della Signoria in the Historic Centre of Florence in the region of Tuscany, Italy. One of the most important Italian museums and the most visited, it is also one of the largest and best-known in the world and holds a collection of priceless works, particularly from the period of the Italian Renaissance.\nAfter the ruling House of Medici died out, their art collections were given to the city of Florence under the famous \"Patto di famiglia\" negotiated by Anna Maria Luisa, the last Medici heiress. The Uffizi is one of the first modern museums. The gallery had been open to visitors by request since the sixteenth century, and in 1769 it was officially opened to the public, formally becoming a museum in 1865.\nHistory.\nThe building of the Uffizi complex was begun by Giorgio Vasari in 1560 for Cosimo I de' Medici as a means to consolidate his administrative control of the various committees, agencies, and guilds established in Florence's Republican past so as to accommodate them all in one place, hence the name , \"offices\". The construction was later continued by Alfonso Parigi and Bernardo Buontalenti; it was completed in 1581. The top floor was made into a gallery for the family and their guests and included their collection of Roman sculptures.\nThe \"cortile\" (internal courtyard) is so long, narrow, and open to the Arno at its far end through a Doric screen that articulates the space without blocking it, that architectural historians treat it as the first regularized streetscape of Europe. Vasari, a painter, and architect as well, emphasized its perspective length by adorning it with the matching facades' continuous roof cornices, and unbroken cornices between storeys, as well as the three continuous steps on which the museum fronts stand. The niches in the piers that alternate with columns of the Loggiato are filled with sculptures of famous artists in the 19th century.\nThe Uffizi brought together under one roof the administrative offices and the Archivio di Stato, the state archive. The project was intended to display prime artworks of the Medici collections on the piano nobile; the plan was carried out by his son, Grand Duke Francesco I. He commissioned the architect Buontalenti to design the Tribuna degli Uffizi that would display a series of masterpieces in one room, including jewels; it became a highly influential attraction of a Grand Tour. The octagonal room was completed in 1584.\nOver the years, more sections of the building were recruited to exhibit paintings and sculptures collected or commissioned by the Medici. For many years, 45 to 50 rooms were used to display paintings from the 13th to 18th century.\nModern times.\nBecause of its vast collection, some of the Uffizi's works have in the past been transferred to other museums in Florence\u2014for example, some famous statues to the Bargello. A project was finished in 2006 to expand the museum's exhibition space some 6,000 metres2 (64,000\u00a0ft2) to almost 13,000 metres2 (139,000\u00a0ft2), allowing public viewing of many artworks that had usually been in storage.\nThe Nuovi Uffizi (New Uffizi) renovation project which started in 1989 was progressing well from 2015 to 2017. It was intended to modernize all of the halls and more than double the display space. A new exit was also planned and the lighting, air conditioning and security systems were updated. During construction, the museum remained open, although rooms were closed as necessary with the artwork temporarily moved to another location. For example, the Botticelli rooms and two others with early Renaissance paintings were closed for 15 months but reopened in October 2016.\nOver two million visitors visited the Uffizi in 2016, making it the most visited art gallery in Italy. At peak periods (particularly in July), waiting times for entry can be up to five hours. Advance tickets can be bought online, to significantly reduce the waiting time. In 2018 a revised ticketing system was introduced to reduce queuing times to just minutes.\nDue to the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum was closed for 150 days in 2020, and attendance plunged by 72 percent to 659,043. Nonetheless, the Uffizi was twenty-seventh in the list of most-visited art museums in the world in 2020. Works from the Uffizi gallery collection are now available for remote viewing on Google Arts and Culture. The museum reopened in May 2021 following a renovation that included an addition of 14 new rooms and a display of additional 129 artworks, with the museum attempting to give more voice to historically under-represented groups including women and people of color.\nIncidents.\nOn 27 May 1993, the Sicilian Mafia carried out a car bomb explosion in Via dei Georgofili which damaged parts of the palace and killed five people. The blast destroyed five pieces of art and damaged another 30. Some of the paintings were fully protected by bulletproof glass. The most severe damage was to the Niobe room and classical sculptures and neoclassical interior, which have since been restored, although its frescoes were damaged beyond repair.\nOn 22 July 2022, members of the climate activist group Ultima Generazione (Last Generation) glued themselves to the glass protecting Sandro Botticelli's \"Primavera\" demanding an end to fossil fuel usage. The painting was undamaged.\nOn 13 February 2024, members of Ultima Generazione glued images of flooding in Tuscany in 2023 to the glass protecting Sandro Botticelli's \"Birth of Venus\" in protest over the Italian government's inaction on climate change. The painting was undamaged and the images were removed.\nKey works.\nThe collection also contains some ancient sculptures, such as the \"Arrotino\", the \"Two Wrestlers\", \"Venus de' Medici\", and the \"Bust of Severus Giovanni\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "32787384": "Portrait of Ippolito de' Medici\nPainting by Titian\nThe Portrait of Ippolito de' Medici is an oil on canvas portrait of Ippolito de' Medici by Titian, from 1532\u20131533. It is held now in the Palazzo Pitti, in Florence. He appears dressed in a Hungarian outfit.\nHistory and description.\nIppolito de' Medici, son of Giuliano de' Medici, Duke of Nemours, and nephew of Pope Clement VII, was appointed a cardinal at the age of 18, but as he matured he realized that he was more inclined to war than to Church affairs. This is evident in the current portrait that Titian painted of him in 1533, possibly in Bologna, as reported by Giorgio Vasari, or in Venice, as a source found in 2000 would testify.\nThe protagonist appears dressed as a Hungarian horseman, in memory of his exploits in Vienna during the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1529 and during the liberation of Hungary, when he was in command of four thousand musketeers. From Vasari it is also known that Ippolito had a second and smaller portrait of himself made by Titian, in armor, which didn't survive.\nAgainst a dark background, the extraordinary accords of dark reds, purples and amaranths highlight the perfectly illuminated face, where the expression of Ippolito seems to have something of confidence and cruelty, suitable for a young leader. With a warlike attitude, he holds the baton of command, while his left hand rests on the hilt of his sword.\nThe portrait was used as a model for various printed reproductions. Since 1716 it has been registered at Pitti, where it passed through various rooms before arriving at the Mars room, where it still hangs.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "73966921": "Sagrestia Nuova\nChapel in San Lorenzo, Florence, Italy\nThe Sagrestia Nuova, also known as the New Sacristy and the Medici Chapel, is a mausoleum that stands as a testament to the grandeur and artistic vision of the Medici family. Constructed in 1520, the mausoleum was designed by the Italian artist and architect Michelangelo. Situated adjacent to the Basilica di San Lorenzo in Florence, Italy, the Sagrestia Nuova forms an integral part of the museum complex known as the Medici Chapels.\nHistory.\nBackground.\nThe death of two scions of the Medici family, Giuliano de' Medici, Duke of Nemours (in 1516), and Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino (in 1519), had deeply embittered Pope Leo X, the brother of Giuliano and uncle of Lorenzo, who wanted to ensure that they obtained a princely burial. It was also suggested by their cousin Cardinal Giulio de' Medici (later Pope Clement VII), commissioning Michelangelo's project for the fa\u00e7ade for Basilica di San Lorenzo, engaging the artist in a new project for the basilica. The church had been the burial place of the Medici family for a century, but at the time there were no spaces available in which to create a new monumental complex: the historic family chapel, the Old Sacristy, designed by Filippo Brunelleschi and Donatello, was a composition of sober and measured balance, to which no other decoration could be added without compromising the whole. The crypt, where some family members are buried, did not satisfy the clients' wishes for splendor and celebration. Not even for Lorenzo de' Medici and his brother Giuliano de' Medici had a worthy burial been prepared. There was a need to create a new environment as a resting place for the two \"dukes\" (or \"captains\") and the two \"magnificents\".\nDesign.\nMichelangelo was chosen for the construction, allowing him to recover from the impasse on the fa\u00e7ade project, the contract for which was definitively terminated in March 1520. The exact contracting document for the Medici Chapel is not known, but from other documents and letters it is clear that in March work on a new chapel had been started.\nDuring the design phase, Michelangelo thought of various solutions before choosing the version implemented. The question was how to arrange the four sepulchres in relation to the available space, with the altar and the entrance. The first idea was for tombs placed at the corners leaning against the walls (March 1520), but on 23 October 1520 Michelangelo presented Cardinal Giulio with a project with an aedicula in the center containing the tombs. A drawing was provided on 21 December 1520. The artist therefore abandoned the scheme of the tombs in the center, opting to arrange them against the walls and studying variants with single or double burials, until he arrived at a defined project with single tombs for the dukes in the side walls and double ones for the magnificents on the wall opposite the altar. Only those of the dukes were finally completed. In 1521 Pope Leo died and work was interrupted.\nSecond stage.\nWith the election of Clement VII in 1523, in December of that year the artist returned to the works at San Lorenzo. It was thought to house the tombs of Pope Leo and, at the time, of Clement VII in the Sacristy, but the idea was soon abandoned in favor of the choir of San Lorenzo. In the end, however, both were buried in Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome.\nIn the spring of 1524, Michelangelo was working on the clay models for the sculptures and in the autumn the marbles arrived from Carrara. Between 1525 and 1527 at least four statues were completed (including the \"Night\" and the \"Dawn\") and four others were already defined with the models.\nIn 1526, the first tomb was walled up, that of Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino. On 17 June, the artist sent a letter to Rome in which he wrote: \"I work as hard as I can, and in fifteen days I'll get the other captain started, then I'll be left, of matters of importance, only and four figures. The four figures on the cassoni, the four figures on the ground, which are Rivers, and two captains and Our Lady going to the tomb at the head, are the figures I would like to make with my own hand: and of these there are six begun, and the courage is enough for me to do them in the right time and partly do the others that don't matter so much\". It is therefore understood that in addition to the extant sculptures, four river allegories were also envisaged (the rivers of Hades, or perhaps the rivers under Medici rule) lying at the foot of the tombs; the only surviving work that relates to these is the model of the \"River God\" in the collection of the Casa Buonarroti.\nInterrupting and resuming jobs.\nWith the heavy blow received by Pope Clement during the Sack of Rome in 1527, the city of Florence rebelled against the Medici rule, driving out the little loved duke Alessandro de' Medici. Michelangelo, despite being linked to the Medici by working relationships since his youth, blatantly sided with the republican faction, actively participating, as person in charge of the fortifications, in the defense measures against the siege of the city in 1529\u20131530. When the Florentines were defeated Michelangelo fled the city, but was declared a rebel and presented himself voluntarily to avoid more serious punitive measures. Clement VII's pardon was not long in coming, provided that the artist immediately resume work in San Lorenzo where, in addition to the Sacristy, the project for a monumental Laurentian Library had been added five years earlier. It is clear how the pope was moved by the awareness of his not being able to renounce the only artist capable of giving shape to the dreams of glory of his dynasty, despite his ingratitude towards and betrayal of the Medici.\nIn April 1531, work resumed on the Sacristy and by the summer two more statues had to be completed and a third started. It is also known that the Portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, was executed between 1531 and 1534, while the Portrait of Giuliano de' Medici, Duke of Nemours, was given to Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli in 1533 for finishing. In that same period the artist was preparing two allegorical statues, the \"Heaven\" and the \"Earth\", which were to have been sculpted by Niccol\u00f2 Tribolo and placed in the niches on the sides of Giuliano's tomb; these however remained empty. Two more evidently had to be planned for the tomb of Lorenzo.\nThe Florentine works by now proceeded ever more slowly because in those same years Michelangelo was also working, in addition to the library, on the tomb of Julius II, for which he was preparing the \"Slaves\". Michelangelo, not happy with the city's political climate, took the opportunity to take new assignments in Rome and left Florence, in 1534, never setting foot there again.\nIn 1559, on the initiative of Cosimo I de' Medici, the chapel was arranged according to the project by Giorgio Vasari. Although an entire wall with the tomb of the \"Magnificent\" was missing and the river deities, statues, stuccoes and frescoes required by the contract had yet to be created, the Sacristy was considered completed.\nArchitecture.\nLantern.\nThe lantern at the top of the dome is made out of marble and has an \"...unusual polyhedron mounted on the peak of the conical roof\".\nThe lantern holding up the orb helps to accentuate the height and size of the chapel, which is fairly small. The lantern is slightly less than seven meters tall and \"...is equal to the height of the dome it surmounts\". The lantern metaphorically expresses the themes of death and resurrection; it is where the soul could escape and go from \"...death to the afterlife\".\nSculptures.\nEmbedded in the two side walls are the monumental tombs of Giuliano de' Medici, Duke of Nemours, and Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino. Initially up to five sculptures per tomb were to be carved, but the number was ultimately reduced to three. For the funerary monuments on both sides of the chapel, Michelangelo created the \"Allegories of Time\", which symbolize the triumph of the Medici family over the passage of time. The four Allegories are placed above the sepulchres, at the feet of the dukes. The elliptical line on which they rest is an invention by Michelangelo that anticipates the curves of the Baroque, as in the staircase of the Laurentian Library. For the tomb of Giuliano de' Medici, he chose the \"Day\" and the \"Night\" for that of Lorenzo the \"Dusk\" (or \"Twilight\") and the \"Dawn\". The four Rivers, never executed, were also intended to recall the permanent and unstoppable flow of time.\nAll the Allegories are characterized by stretching and twisting and appear \"unfinished\" in some parts. Particularly beautiful are the emblematic position of the \"Day\", turned from the back which shows only the mysterious expression of the eyes in a barely sketched face, or the body of the \"Night\" which perfectly represents abandonment during sleep. In the Renaissance, especially in environments influenced by the Florentine Neoplatonism of Marsilio Ficino, the \"Night\" rediscovers its attributes of Primordial Mother and is associated with the figure of Leda. The position of the goddess, with her head bowed, expresses the kinship of the \"Night\" with the melancholic temperament. The owl and the poppies are symbols of \"Death\" and \"Sleep\", the twin sons of \"Night\". According to the doctrines of Orphism and Pythagoreanism, Leda and the \"Night\" are the personification of a double theory of death, according to which joy and pain coincide.\nAs for the portraits of the dukes, Michelangelo sculpted them seated in two niches above their respective tombs, facing each other, both dressed as Roman leaders. These sculptures, with attention to the smallest details, are idealized and do not reproduce real features, but nonetheless have a strong psychological character (Giuliano sitting in a proud posture with the baton of command is more haughtier and decisive, while Lorenzo, in a thoughtful pose, is more melancholic and meditative). A popular tradition tells that someone criticized the lack of resemblance of the portrait to the true features of Giuliano; Michelangelo, aware that his work would be handed down over time, replied that in ten centuries no one would be able to notice. Giuliano personifies active life, one of the two roads that lead to God. His scepter alludes to royal power, characteristic of those born under the sign of Jupiter. The coins are a symbol of magnanimity and indicate that the active man loves to \"expend\" himself in action. Lorenzo, known by the name \"pensive\", represents the contemplative attitude. The shadowed face recalls the \"facies nigra\" of Saturn, protector of melancholics. The forefinger on the mouth traces the saturnine motif of silence. The reclining arm is an iconographic tope of the melancholy mood. The closed casket resting on a leg is an allusion to parsimony, a typical quality of saturnine temperaments.\nSide tombs.\nIn a statement in the biography of Michelangelo that was published in 1553 by his disciple, Ascanio Condivi, and largely was based on Michelangelo's own recollections, Condivi gives the following description of the sculptures on the two Medici tombs: \"The statues are four in number, placed in a sacristy... the sarcophagi are placed before the side walls, and on the lids of each there recline two big figures, larger than life, to wit, a man and a woman; they signify Day and Night and, in conjunction, Time which devours all things\u2026 And in order to signify Time he planned to make a mouse, having left a bit of marble upon the work (which [plan] he subsequently did not carry out because he was prevented by circumstances), because this little animal ceaselessly gnaws and consumes just as time devours everything\u201d.\n\"Night\".\nNight is a sculpture in marble (155x150 cm, maximum length 194\u00a0cm diagonally) by Michelangelo Buonarroti. Dating from 1526 to 1531, it is part of the decoration of the New Sacristy and part of an allegory of the four parts of a day. It is situated on the left of the sarcophagus of the tomb of Giuliano di Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Nemours.\nAlong with his \"Dawn\", Michelangelo drew from the ancient \"Sleeping Ariadne\" for his sculpture's pose.\nIn his poem \"L'Id\u00e9al\" from \"Les Fleurs du Mal\", French Romantic poet Charles Baudelaire references the statue:\n\"Ou bien toi, grande Nuit, fille de Michel-Ange\",\n\"Qui tors paisiblement dans une pose \u00e9trange\"\n\"Tes appas fa\u00e7onn\u00e9s aux bouches des Titans\"!\nOr you, great Night, daughter of Michelangelo,\nWho calmly contort, reclining in a strange pose\nYour charms molded by the mouths of Titans!\nIn his Life of Michelangelo, Giorgio Vasari quotes an epigram by Giovanni Strozzi, written, perhaps in 1544, in praise of Michelangelo's \"Night\":\n\"La Notte che tu vedi in s\u00ec dolci atti\"\n\"dormire, fu da un Angelo scolpita\"\n\"in questo sasso e, perch\u00e9 dorme, ha vita\":\n\"destala, se nol credi, e parleratti\".\nNight, whom you see sleeping in such sweet attitudes\nwas carved in this stone by an Angel\nand although she sleeps, she has life:\nwake her, if you don't believe it, and she will speak to you.\nMichelangelo responded in 1545\u201346 with another epigram, entitled \"Risposta del Buonarroto\" (\"Buonarroto's response\"). Speaking in the voice of the statue, it may contain a scathing critique of Cosimo I de' Medici's governance, according to Kenneth Gross:\n\"Caro m'\u00e8 'l sonno, e pi\u00f9 l'esser di sasso\",\n\"mentre che 'l danno e la vergogna dura\";\n\"non veder, non sentir m'\u00e8 gran ventura\";\n\"per\u00f2 non mi destar, deh, parla basso\".\nMy sleep is dear to me, and more dear this being of stone,\nas long as the agony and shame last.\nNot to see, not to hear [or feel] is for me the best fortune.;\nSo do not wake me! Speak softly.\n\"Dawn\".\nDawn is a sculpture by Michelangelo, executed for the chapel. It is 6 feet and 8 inches in length. Along with his \"Night\", Michelangelo drew from the ancient \"Sleeping Ariadne\" for his sculpture's pose. This was in turn influential on Benvenuto Cellini's \"Diana of Fontainebleau\".\n\"Dusk\".\nDusk is a marble sculpture by Michelangelo, datable to 1524\u20131534. It is paired with \"Dawn\" on the tomb of Lorenzo II de' Medici. \nAmong the various iconographic meanings proposed, the statue is seen as an emblem of the phlegmatic temperament or of the elements of water or earth. Michelangelo's study for \"Dusk\" is known for exemplifying his style of striking, unfinished drawings.\nTomb of Lorenzo the Magnificent and Giuliano de' Medici.\nThe main wall of the chapel is unfinished. Against it is the sepulchre with the mortal remains of Lorenzo the Magnificent (died in 1492) and his brother Giuliano (killed during the Pazzi Conspiracy in 1478), surmounted by three sculptures. In the center is Michelangelo's statue of \"Madonna and Child\" (known as the \"Medici Madonna\"), completed in 1521. The Madonna is flanked by the two patron saints of the Medici family: on the right \"Saint Cosmas\", executed by the Florentine sculptor Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli in 1537, and on the left \"Saint Damian\", by the sculptor and architect Raffaello da Montelupo in 1531, who began working with Michelangelo on the Sagrestia Nuova at an early age. Cosmas and Damian, who were physicians (\"medici\"), hold their doctor's boxes of salves and nostrums. \"Saint Cosmas\" is also attributed to Montelupo, together with Montorsoli, another assistant to Michelangelo, after a model by the master.\nThe three statues were later placed by Giorgio Vasari on a simple marble chest housing the remains of Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano de' Medici, for whom there was never the time to build a larger monumental tomb.\nGraffiti.\nOn the walls of the scarsella is a series of graffitied figures and architectural motifs, referring to Michelangelo's assistants. 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{"id": "2hop__5991_68737", "docs_added": {"5884": "Charles Dickens\nEnglish novelist and social critic (1812\u20131870)\nCharles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 \u2013 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.\nBorn in Portsmouth, Dickens left school at age 12 to work in a boot-blacking factory when his father John was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. After three years, he returned to school before beginning his literary career as a journalist. Dickens edited a weekly journal for 20 years; wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and nonfiction articles; lectured and performed readings extensively; was a tireless letter writer; and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education and other social reforms.\nDickens's literary success began with the 1836 serial publication of \"The Pickwick Papers\", a publishing phenomenon\u2014thanks largely to the introduction of the character Sam Weller in the fourth episode\u2014that sparked \"Pickwick\" merchandise and spin-offs. Within a few years, Dickens had become an international literary celebrity, famous for his humour, satire and keen observation of character and society. His novels, most of them published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication. Cliffhanger endings in his serial publications kept readers in suspense. The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience's reaction, and he often modified his plot and character development based on such feedback. For example, when his wife's chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in \"David Copperfield\" seemed to reflect her own disabilities, Dickens improved the character with positive features. His plots were carefully constructed and he often wove elements from topical events into his narratives. Masses of the illiterate poor would individually pay a halfpenny to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of readers.\nHis 1843 novella \"A Christmas Carol\" remains especially popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every creative medium. \"Oliver Twist\" and \"Great Expectations\" are also frequently adapted and, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London. His 1853 novel \"Bleak House\", a satire on the judicial system, helped support a reformist movement that culminated in the 1870s legal reform in England. \"A Tale of Two Cities\" (set in London and Paris) is regarded as his best-known work of historical fiction. The most famous celebrity of his era, he undertook, in response to public demand, a series of public reading tours in the later part of his career. The term \"Dickensian\" is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social or working conditions, or comically repulsive characters.\nEarly life.\nCharles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812 at 1 Mile End Terrace (now 393 Commercial Road), Landport in Portsea Island (Portsmouth), Hampshire, the second of eight children of Elizabeth Dickens (n\u00e9e Barrow; 1789\u20131863) and John Dickens (1785\u20131851). His father was a clerk in the Royal Navy Pay Office and was temporarily stationed in the district. He asked Christopher Huffam, rigger in the Royal Navy and head of an established firm, to act as godfather to Charles. Huffam is thought to be the inspiration for Paul Dombey, the owner of a shipping company in Dickens's novel \"Dombey and Son\" (1848).\nIn January 1815, John Dickens was called back to London, and the family moved to Norfolk Street, Fitzrovia. When Charles was four, they relocated to Sheerness and thence to Chatham, Kent, where he spent his formative years until the age of 11. His early life seems to have been idyllic, though he thought himself a \"very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy\".\nCharles spent time outdoors, but also read voraciously, including the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding, as well as \"Robinson Crusoe\" and \"Gil Blas\". He read and re-read \"The Arabian Nights\" and the Collected Farces of Elizabeth Inchbald. Aged seven, he first saw Joseph Grimaldi\u2014the father of modern clowning\u2014perform at the Star Theatre in Rochester, Kent. He later imitated Grimaldi's clowning on several occasions, and would also edit the \"Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi\". He retained poignant memories of childhood, helped by an excellent memory of people and events, which he used in his writing. His father's brief work as a clerk in the Navy Pay Office afforded him a few years of private education, first at a dame school and then at a school run by William Giles, a dissenter, in Chatham.\nThis period came to an end in June 1822, when John Dickens was recalled to Navy Pay Office headquarters at Somerset House and the family (except for Charles, who stayed behind to finish his final term at school) moved to Camden Town in London. The family had left Kent amidst rapidly mounting debts and, living beyond his means, John Dickens was forced by his creditors into the Marshalsea debtors' prison in Southwark, London in 1824. His wife and youngest children joined him there, as was the practice at the time. Charles, then 12 years old, boarded with Elizabeth Roylance, a family friend, at 112 College Place, Camden Town. Mrs Roylance was \"a reduced impoverished old lady, long known to our family\", whom Dickens later immortalised, \"with a few alterations and embellishments\", as \"Mrs Pipchin\" in \"Dombey and Son\". Later, he lived in a back-attic in the house of an agent for the Insolvent Court, Archibald Russell, \"a fat, good-natured, kind old gentleman ... with a quiet old wife\" and lame son, in Lant Street in Southwark. They provided the inspiration for the Garlands in \"The Old Curiosity Shop\".\nOn Sundays\u2014with his sister Frances, free from her studies at the Royal Academy of Music\u2014he spent the day at the Marshalsea. Dickens later used the prison as a setting in \"Little Dorrit\". To pay for his board and to help his family, Dickens was forced to leave school and work ten-hour days at Warren's Blacking Warehouse, on Hungerford Stairs, near the present Charing Cross railway station, where he earned six shillings a week pasting labels on pots of boot blacking. The strenuous and often harsh working conditions made a lasting impression on Dickens and later influenced his fiction and essays, becoming the foundation of his interest in the reform of socio-economic and labour conditions, the rigours of which he believed were unfairly borne by the poor. He later wrote that he wondered \"how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age\". As he recalled to John Forster (from \"Life of Charles Dickens\"):\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The blacking-warehouse was the last house on the left-hand side of the way, at old Hungerford Stairs. It was a crazy, tumble-down old house, abutting of course on the river, and literally overrun with rats. Its wainscoted rooms, and its rotten floors and staircase, and the old grey rats swarming down in the cellars, and the sound of their squeaking and scuffling coming up the stairs at all times, and the dirt and decay of the place, rise up visibly before me, as if I were there again. The counting-house was on the first floor, looking over the coal-barges and the river. There was a recess in it, in which I was to sit and work. My work was to cover the pots of paste-blacking; first with a piece of oil-paper, and then with a piece of blue paper; to tie them round with a string; and then to clip the paper close and neat, all round, until it looked as smart as a pot of ointment from an apothecary's shop. When a certain number of grosses of pots had attained this pitch of perfection, I was to paste on each a printed label, and then go on again with more pots. Two or three other boys were kept at similar duty down-stairs on similar wages. One of them came up, in a ragged apron and a paper cap, on the first Monday morning, to show me the trick of using the string and tying the knot. His name was Bob Fagin; and I took the liberty of using his name, long afterwards, in Oliver Twist.\nWhen the warehouse was moved to Chandos Street in the smart, busy district of Covent Garden, the boys worked in a room in which the window gave onto the street. Small audiences gathered and watched them at work\u2014in Dickens's biographer Simon Callow's estimation, the public display was \"a new refinement added to his misery\".\nA few months after his imprisonment, John Dickens's mother, Elizabeth Dickens, died and bequeathed him \u00a3450. On the expectation of this legacy, Dickens was released from prison. Under the Insolvent Debtors Act, Dickens arranged for payment of his creditors, and he and his family left the Marshalsea, for the home of Mrs Roylance.\nCharles's mother, Elizabeth Dickens, did not immediately support his removal from the boot-blacking warehouse. This influenced Dickens's view that a father should rule the family and a mother find her proper sphere inside the home: \"I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent back.\" His mother's failure to request his return was a factor in his dissatisfied attitude towards women.\nRighteous indignation stemming from his own situation and the conditions under which working-class people lived became major themes of his works, and it was this unhappy period in his youth to which he alluded in his favourite, and most autobiographical, novel, \"David Copperfield\": \"I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to heaven!\"\nDickens was eventually sent to the Wellington House Academy in Camden Town, where he remained until March 1827, having spent about two years there. He did not consider it to be a good school: \"Much of the haphazard, desultory teaching, poor discipline punctuated by the headmaster's sadistic brutality, the seedy ushers and general run-down atmosphere, are embodied in Mr Creakle's Establishment in \"David Copperfield\".\"\nDickens worked at the law office of Ellis and Blackmore, attorneys, of Holborn Court, Gray's Inn, as a junior clerk from May 1827 to November 1828. He was a gifted mimic and impersonated those around him: clients, lawyers and clerks. Captivated with London's theatre scene, he went to theatres obsessively: he claimed that for at least three years he went to the theatre every day. His favourite actor was Charles Mathews and Dickens learnt his \"monopolylogues\" (farces in which Mathews played every character) by heart. Then, having learned Gurney's system of shorthand in his spare time, he left to become a freelance reporter. A distant relative, Thomas Charlton, was a freelance reporter at Doctors' Commons and Dickens was able to share his box there to report the legal proceedings for nearly four years.\nIn 1830, Dickens met his first love, Maria Beadnell, thought to have been the model for the character Dora in \"David Copperfield\". Maria's parents disapproved of the courtship and ended the relationship by sending her to school in Paris.\nCareer.\nJournalism and writing.\nIn 1832, at the age of 20, Dickens was energetic and increasingly self-confident. He enjoyed mimicry and popular entertainment, lacked a clear, specific sense of what he wanted to become, and yet knew he wanted fame. Drawn to the theatre\u2014he became an early member of the Garrick Club\u2014he landed an acting audition at Covent Garden, where the manager George Bartley and the actor Charles Kemble were to see him. Dickens prepared meticulously and decided to imitate the comedian Charles Mathews, but ultimately he missed the audition because of a cold. Before another opportunity arose, he had set out on his career as a writer.\nIn 1833, Dickens submitted his first story, \"A Dinner at Poplar Walk\", to the London periodical \"Monthly Magazine\". His uncle William Barrow offered him a job on \"The Mirror of Parliament\" and he worked in the House of Commons for the first time early in 1832. He rented rooms at Furnival's Inn and worked as a political journalist, reporting on Parliamentary debates, and he travelled across Britain to cover election campaigns for the \"Morning Chronicle\".\nHis journalism, in the form of sketches in periodicals, formed his first collection of pieces, published in 1836: \"Sketches by Boz\"\u2014Boz being a family nickname he employed as a pseudonym for some years. Dickens apparently adopted it from the nickname 'Moses', which he had given to his youngest brother Augustus Dickens, after a character in Oliver Goldsmith's \"The Vicar of Wakefield\". When pronounced by anyone with a head cold, \"Moses\" became \"Boses\"\u2014later shortened to \"Boz\". Dickens's own name was considered \"queer\" by a contemporary critic, who wrote in 1849: \"Mr Dickens, as if in revenge for his own queer name, does bestow still queerer ones upon his fictitious creations.\" Dickens contributed to and edited journals throughout his literary career. In January 1835, the \"Morning Chronicle\" launched an evening edition, under the editorship of the \"Chronicle\"'s music critic, George Hogarth. Hogarth invited him to contribute \"Street Sketches\" and Dickens became a regular visitor to his Fulham house\u2014excited by Hogarth's friendship with Walter Scott (whom Dickens greatly admired) and enjoying the company of Hogarth's three daughters: Georgina, Mary and 19-year-old Catherine.\nDickens made rapid progress both professionally and socially. He began a friendship with William Harrison Ainsworth, the author of the highwayman novel \"Rookwood\" (1834), whose bachelor salon in Harrow Road had become the meeting place for a set that included Daniel Maclise, Benjamin Disraeli, Edward Bulwer-Lytton and George Cruikshank. All these became his friends and collaborators, with the exception of Disraeli, and he met his first publisher, John Macrone, at the house. The success of \"Sketches by Boz\" led to a proposal from publishers Chapman and Hall for Dickens to supply text to match Robert Seymour's engraved illustrations in a monthly letterpress. Seymour committed suicide after the second instalment and Dickens, who wanted to write a connected series of sketches, hired \"Phiz\" to provide the engravings (which were reduced from four to two per instalment) for the story. The resulting story became \"The Pickwick Papers\" and, although the first few episodes were not successful, the introduction of the Cockney character Sam Weller in the fourth episode (the first to be illustrated by Phiz) marked a sharp climb in its popularity. The final instalment sold 40,000 copies. On the impact of the character, \"The Paris Review\" stated, \"arguably the most historic bump in English publishing is the Sam Weller Bump.\" A publishing phenomenon, John Sutherland, Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London, called \"The Pickwick Papers\" \"[t]he most important single novel of the Victorian era\". The unprecedented success led to numerous spin-offs and merchandise including \"Pickwick\" cigars, playing cards, china figurines, Sam Weller puzzles, Weller boot polish and joke books.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The Sam Weller Bump testifies not merely to Dickens's comic genius but to his acumen as an \"authorpreneur\", a portmanteau he inhabited long before \"The Economist\" took it up. For a writer who made his reputation crusading against the squalor of the Industrial Revolution, Dickens was a creature of capitalism; he used everything from the powerful new printing presses to the enhanced advertising revenues to the expansion of railroads to sell more books. Dickens ensured that his books were available in cheap bindings for the lower orders as well as in morocco-and-gilt for people of quality; his ideal readership included everyone from the pickpockets who read \"Oliver Twist\" to Queen Victoria, who found it \"exceedingly interesting\".\nOn its impact on mass culture, Nicholas Dames in \"The Atlantic\" writes, \"'Literature' is not a big enough category for \"Pickwick\". It defined its own, a new one that we have learned to call 'entertainment'.\" In November 1836, Dickens accepted the position of editor of \"Bentley's Miscellany\", a position he held for three years, until he fell out with the owner. In 1836, as he finished the last instalments of \"The Pickwick Papers\", he began writing the beginning instalments of \"Oliver Twist\"\u2014writing as many as 90 pages a month\u2014while continuing work on \"Bentley's\" and also writing four plays, the production of which he oversaw. \"Oliver Twist\", published in 1838, became one of Dickens's better known stories and was the first Victorian novel with a child protagonist.\nOn 2 April 1836, after a one-year engagement, and between episodes two and three of \"The Pickwick Papers\", Dickens married Catherine Thomson Hogarth (1815\u20131879), the daughter of George Hogarth, editor of the \"Evening Chronicle\". They were married in St Luke's Church, Chelsea, London. After a brief honeymoon in Chalk in Kent, the couple returned to lodgings at Furnival's Inn. The first of their ten children, Charles, was born in January 1837 and a few months later the family set up home in Bloomsbury at 48 Doughty Street, London (on which Charles had a three-year lease at \u00a380 a year) from 25 March 1837 until December 1839. Dickens's younger brother Frederick and Catherine's 17-year-old sister Mary Hogarth moved in with them. Dickens became very attached to Mary, and she died in his arms after a brief illness in 1837. Unusually for Dickens, as a consequence of his shock, he stopped working, and he and Catherine stayed at a little farm on Hampstead Heath for a fortnight. Dickens idealised Mary; the character he fashioned after her, Rose Maylie, he found he could not now kill, as he had planned, in his fiction, and, according to Ackroyd, he drew on memories of her for his later descriptions of Little Nell and Florence Dombey. His grief was so great that he was unable to meet the deadline for the June instalment of \"The Pickwick Papers\" and had to cancel the \"Oliver Twist\" instalment that month as well. The time in Hampstead was the occasion for a growing bond between Dickens and John Forster to develop; Forster soon became his unofficial business manager and the first to read his work.\nHis success as a novelist continued. The young Queen Victoria read both \"Oliver Twist\" and \"The Pickwick Papers\", staying up until midnight to discuss them. \"Nicholas Nickleby\" (1838\u201339), \"The Old Curiosity Shop\" (1840\u201341) and, finally, his first historical novel, \"Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty\", as part of the \"Master Humphrey's Clock\" series (1840\u201341), were all published in monthly instalments before being made into books. Dickens biographer Peter Ackroyd has called \"Barnaby Rudge\" \"one of Dickens's most neglected, but most rewarding, novels\". The poet Edgar Allan Poe read \"Barnaby Rudge\", and the talking raven that featured in the novel inspired in part Poe's 1845 poem \"The Raven\".\nIn the midst of all his activity during this period, there was discontent with his publishers and John Macrone was bought off, while Richard Bentley signed over all his rights in \"Oliver Twist\". Other signs of a certain restlessness and discontent emerged; in Broadstairs he flirted with Eleanor Picken, the young fianc\u00e9e of his solicitor's best friend and one night grabbed her and ran with her down to the sea. He declared they were both to drown there in the \"sad sea waves\". She finally got free, and afterwards kept her distance. In June 1841, he precipitously set out on a two-month tour of Scotland and then, in September 1841, telegraphed Forster that he had decided to go to America. His weekly periodical \"Master Humphrey's Clock\" ended, though Dickens was still keen on the idea of the weekly magazine, an appreciation that had begun with his childhood reading of Samuel Johnson's \"The Idler\" and the 18th-century magazines \"Tatler\" and \"The Spectator\".\nDickens was perturbed by the return to power of the Tories, whom he described as \"people whom, politically, I despise and abhor.\" He had been tempted to stand for the Liberals in Reading, but decided against it due to financial straits. He wrote three anti-Tory verse satires (\"The Fine Old English Gentleman\", \"The Quack Doctor's Proclamation\", and \"Subjects for Painters\") which were published in \"The Examiner\".\nFirst visit to the United States.\nOn 22 January 1842, Dickens and his wife arrived in Boston, Massachusetts, aboard the RMS \"Britannia\" during their first trip to the United States and Canada. At this time Georgina Hogarth, another sister of Catherine, joined the Dickens household, now living at Devonshire Terrace, Marylebone to care for the young family they had left behind. She remained with them as housekeeper, organiser, adviser and friend until Dickens's death in 1870. Dickens modelled the character of Agnes Wickfield after Georgina and Mary.\nHe described his impressions in a travelogue, \"American Notes for General Circulation\". In \"Notes\", Dickens includes a powerful condemnation of slavery which he had attacked as early as \"The Pickwick Papers\", correlating the emancipation of the poor in England with the abolition of slavery abroad citing newspaper accounts of runaway slaves disfigured by their masters. In spite of the abolitionist sentiments gleaned from his trip to America, some modern commentators have pointed out inconsistencies in Dickens's views on racial inequality. For instance, he has been criticised for his subsequent acquiescence in Governor Eyre's harsh crackdown during the 1860s Morant Bay rebellion in Jamaica and his failure to join other British progressives in condemning it. From Richmond, Virginia, Dickens returned to Washington, D.C., and started a trek westward, with brief pauses in Cincinnati and Louisville, to St. Louis, Missouri. While there, he expressed a desire to see an American prairie before returning east. A group of 13 men then set out with Dickens to visit Looking Glass Prairie, a trip 30 miles into Illinois.\nDuring his American visit, Dickens spent a month in New York City, giving lectures, raising the question of international copyright laws and the pirating of his work in America. He persuaded a group of 25 writers, headed by Washington Irving, to sign a petition for him to take to Congress, but the press were generally hostile to this, saying that he should be grateful for his popularity and that it was mercenary to complain about his work being pirated.\nThe popularity he gained caused a shift in his self-perception according to critic Kate Flint, who writes that he \"found himself a cultural commodity, and its circulation had passed out his control\", causing him to become interested in and delve into themes of public and personal personas in the next novels. She writes that he assumed a role of \"influential commentator\", publicly and in his fiction, evident in his next few books. His trip to the US ended with a trip to Canada\u2014Niagara Falls, Toronto, Kingston and Montreal\u2014where he appeared on stage in light comedies.\nReturn to England.\nSoon after his return to England, Dickens began work on the first of his Christmas stories, \"A Christmas Carol\", written in 1843, which was followed by \"The Chimes\" in 1844 and \"The Cricket on the Hearth\" in 1845. Of these, \"A Christmas Carol\" was most popular and, tapping into an old tradition, did much to promote a renewed enthusiasm for the joys of Christmas in Britain and America. The seeds for the story became planted in Dickens's mind during a trip to Manchester to witness the conditions of the manufacturing workers there. This, along with scenes he had recently witnessed at the Field Lane Ragged School, caused Dickens to resolve to \"strike a sledge hammer blow\" for the poor. As the idea for the story took shape and the writing began in earnest, Dickens became engrossed in the book. He later wrote that as the tale unfolded he \"wept and laughed, and wept again\" as he \"walked about the black streets of London fifteen or twenty miles many a night when all sober folks had gone to bed\".\nBetween 1843 and 1844, \"Martin Chuzzlewit\", the last of his picaresque novels, was serialised. It includes the character of Sarah Gamp, a nurse who is dissolute, sloppy and generally drunk, and also features one of the first literary private detective characters, Mr Nadgett. After living briefly in Italy (1844), Dickens travelled to Switzerland (1846), where he began work on \"Dombey and Son\" (1846\u201348).\nAt about this time, he was made aware of a large embezzlement at the firm where his brother, Augustus, worked (John Chapman & Co). It had been carried out by Thomas Powell, a clerk, who was on friendly terms with Dickens and who had acted as mentor to Augustus when he started work. Powell was also an author and poet and knew many of the famous writers of the day. After further fraudulent activities, Powell fled to New York and published a book called \"The Living Authors of England\" with a chapter on Charles Dickens, who was not amused by what Powell had written. One item that seemed to have annoyed him was the assertion that he had based the character of Paul Dombey (\"Dombey and Son\") on Thomas Chapman, one of the principal partners at John Chapman & Co. Dickens immediately sent a letter to Lewis Gaylord Clark, editor of the New York literary magazine \"The Knickerbocker\", saying that Powell was a forger and thief. Clark published the letter in the \"New-York Tribune\" and several other papers picked up on the story. Powell began proceedings to sue these publications and Clark was arrested. Dickens, realising that he had acted in haste, contacted John Chapman & Co to seek written confirmation of Powell's guilt. Dickens did receive a reply confirming Powell's embezzlement, but once the directors realised this information might have to be produced in court, they refused to make further disclosures. Owing to the difficulties of providing evidence in America to support his accusations, Dickens eventually made a private settlement with Powell out of court.\nPhilanthropy.\nAngela Burdett Coutts, heir to the Coutts banking fortune, approached Dickens in May 1846 about setting up a home for the redemption of fallen women of the working class. Coutts envisioned a home that would replace the punitive regimes of existing institutions with a reformative environment conducive to education and proficiency in domestic household chores. After initially resisting, Dickens eventually founded the home, named Urania Cottage, in the Lime Grove area of Shepherd's Bush, which he managed for ten years, setting the house rules, reviewing the accounts and interviewing prospective residents. Emigration and marriage were central to Dickens's agenda for the women on leaving Urania Cottage, from which it is estimated that about 100 women graduated between 1847 and 1859.\nReligious views.\nAs a young man, Dickens expressed a distaste for certain aspects of organised religion. In 1836, in a pamphlet titled \"Sunday Under Three Heads\", he defended the people's right to pleasure, opposing a plan to prohibit games on Sundays. \"Look into your churches\u2014diminished congregations and scanty attendance. People have grown sullen and obstinate, and are becoming disgusted with the faith which condemns them to such a day as this, once in every seven. They display their feeling by staying away [from church]. Turn into the streets [on a Sunday] and mark the rigid gloom that reigns over everything around.\"\nDickens honoured the figure of Jesus Christ. He is regarded as a professing Christian. His son, Henry Fielding Dickens, described him as someone who \"possessed deep religious convictions\". In the early 1840s, he had shown an interest in Unitarian Christianity and Robert Browning remarked that \"Mr Dickens is an enlightened Unitarian.\" Professor Gary Colledge has written that he \"never strayed from his attachment to popular lay Anglicanism\". Dickens authored a work called \"The Life of Our Lord\" (1846), a book about the life of Christ, written with the purpose of sharing his faith with his children and family. In a scene from \"David Copperfield\", Dickens echoed Geoffrey Chaucer's use of from \"Troilus and Criseyde\" (Dickens held a copy in his library), with G. K. Chesterton writing, \"among the great English authors, Chaucer and Dickens have the most in common.\"\nDickens disapproved of Roman Catholicism and 19th-century evangelicalism, seeing both as extremes of Christianity and likely to limit personal expression, and was critical of what he saw as the hypocrisy of religious institutions and philosophies like spiritualism, all of which he considered deviations from the true spirit of Christianity, as shown in the book he wrote for his family in 1846. While Dickens advocated equal rights for Catholics in England, he strongly disliked how individual civil liberties were often threatened in countries where Catholicism predominated and referred to the Catholic Church as \"that curse upon the world.\" Dickens also rejected the Evangelical conviction that the Bible was the infallible word of God. His ideas on Biblical interpretation were similar to the Liberal Anglican Arthur Penrhyn Stanley's doctrine of \"progressive revelation\". Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky referred to Dickens as \"that great Christian writer\".\nMiddle years.\nIn December 1845, Dickens took up the editorship of the London-based \"Daily News\", a liberal paper through which Dickens hoped to advocate, in his own words, \"the Principles of Progress and Improvement, of Education and Civil and Religious Liberty and Equal Legislation.\" Among the other contributors Dickens chose to write for the paper were the radical economist Thomas Hodgskin and the social reformer Douglas William Jerrold, who frequently attacked the Corn Laws. Dickens lasted only ten weeks on the job before resigning due to a combination of exhaustion and frustration with one of the paper's co-owners.\nA Francophile, Dickens often holidayed in France and, in a speech delivered in Paris in 1846 in French, called the French \"the first people in the universe\". During his visit to Paris, Dickens met the French literati Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Eug\u00e8ne Scribe, Th\u00e9ophile Gautier, Fran\u00e7ois-Ren\u00e9 de Chateaubriand and Eug\u00e8ne Sue. In early 1849, Dickens started to write \"David Copperfield\". It was published between 1849 and 1850. In Dickens's biography, \"Life of Charles Dickens\" (1872), John Forster wrote of \"David Copperfield\", \"underneath the fiction lay something of the author's life\". It was Dickens's personal favourite among his novels, as he wrote in the preface to the 1867 edition. His collection of letters, of which more than 14,000 are known, covered a wide range of subject-matter. Letters during this period included a correspondence with Mary Tyler, dated 6 November 1849, on the comedic merits of Punch and Judy, a puppet show dominated by the anarchic clowning of Mr. Punch, and his review of the Great Exhibition, the first in a series of world's fairs, which he attended at Hyde Park, London in 1851.\nIn November 1851, Dickens moved into Tavistock House where he wrote \"Bleak House\" (1852\u201353), \"Hard Times\" (1854) and \"Little Dorrit\" (1855\u201357). A work of Gothic fiction depicting London as a murky city swathed in fog, \"Bleak House\" is credited with introducing urban fog to the novel, which would become a frequent characteristic of urban Gothic literature and film. Reflecting the public enthusiasm for dinosaurs that first developed in Victorian England, the opening of \"Bleak House\" contains an early mention of dinosaurs in literature: \"it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill\".\nWhile at Tavistock Dickens indulged in amateur theatricals, and he worked closely with the novelist and playwright Wilkie Collins. In 1856, his income from writing allowed him to buy Gads Hill Place in Higham, Kent. As a child, Dickens had walked past the house and dreamed of living in it. The area was also the scene of some of the events of Shakespeare's \"Henry IV, Part 1\" and this literary connection pleased him.\nDuring this time Dickens was also the publisher, editor and a major contributor to the journals \"Household Words\" (1850\u20131859) and \"All the Year Round\" (1858\u20131870), with both titles deriving from a Shakespearean quotation. The journals contained a mix of fiction and non-fiction, and dealt with aspects in the culture. For example, the latter included Dickens' assessment of Madame Tussauds, a wax museum established in Baker Street in 1835, which he called \"something more than an exhibition, it is an institution.\" In 1854, at the behest of Sir John Franklin's widow Lady Jane, Dickens viciously attacked Arctic explorer John Rae in \"Household Words\" for his report to the Admiralty, based on interviews with local Inuit, that the members of Franklin's lost expedition had resorted to cannibalism. These attacks would later be expanded on his 1856 play \"The Frozen Deep\", which satirises Rae and the Inuit. Twentieth-century archaeology work in King William Island later confirmed that the members of the Franklin expedition resorted to cannibalism.\nIn 1855, when Dickens's good friend and Liberal MP Austen Henry Layard formed an Administrative Reform Association to demand significant reforms of Parliament, Dickens joined and volunteered his resources in support of Layard's cause. With the exception of Lord John Russell, who was the only leading politician in whom Dickens had any faith and to whom he later dedicated \"A Tale of Two Cities\", Dickens believed that the political aristocracy and their incompetence were the death of England. When he and Layard were accused of fomenting class conflict, Dickens replied that the classes were already in opposition and the fault was with the aristocratic class. Dickens used his pulpit in \"Household Words\" to champion the Reform Association. He also commented on foreign affairs, declaring his support for Giuseppe Garibaldi and Giuseppe Mazzini, helping raise funds for their campaigns and stating that \"a united Italy would be of vast importance to the peace of the world, and would be a rock in Louis Napoleon's way,\" and that \"I feel for Italy almost as if I were an Italian born.\" Dickens also published dozens of writings in \"Household Words\" supporting vaccination, including multiple laudations for vaccine pioneer Edward Jenner.\nFollowing the Indian Mutiny of 1857, Dickens joined in the widespread criticism of the East India Company for its role in the event, but reserved his fury for Indians, wishing that he was the commander-in-chief in India so that he would be able to \"do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested.\"\nIn 1857, Dickens hired professional actresses for \"The Frozen Deep\", which he and his prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Wilkie Collins had written. Dickens fell in love with one of the actresses, Ellen Ternan, and this passion was to last the rest of his life. In 1858, when Dickens was 45 and Ternan 18, divorce would have been scandalous for someone of his fame. After publicly accusing Catherine of not loving their children and suffering from \"a mental disorder\"\u2014statements that disgusted his contemporaries, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning\u2014Dickens attempted to have Catherine institutionalised. When his scheme failed, they separated. Catherine left, never to see her husband again, taking with her one child. Her sister Georgina, who stayed at Gads Hill, raised the other children.\nDuring this period, whilst pondering a project to give public readings for his own profit, Dickens was approached through a charitable appeal by Great Ormond Street Hospital to help it survive its first major financial crisis. His \"Drooping Buds\" essay in \"Household Words\" earlier on 3 April 1852 was considered by the hospital's founders to have been the catalyst for the hospital's success. Dickens, whose philanthropy was well-known, was asked by his friend, the hospital's founder Charles West, to preside over the appeal, and he threw himself into the task, heart and soul. Dickens's public readings secured sufficient funds for an endowment to put the hospital on a sound financial footing; one reading on 9 February 1858 alone raised \u00a33,000.\nAfter separating from Catherine, Dickens undertook a series of popular and remunerative reading tours which, together with his journalism, were to absorb most of his creative energies for the next decade, in which he was to write only two novels. His first reading tour, lasting from April 1858 to February 1859, consisted of 129 appearances in 49 towns throughout England, Scotland and Ireland. Dickens's continued fascination with the theatrical world was written into the theatre scenes in \"Nicholas Nickleby\", and he found an outlet in public readings. In 1866, he undertook a series of public readings in England and Scotland, with more the following year in England and Ireland.\nOther works soon followed, including \"A Tale of Two Cities\" (1859) and \"Great Expectations\" (1861), which were resounding successes. Set in London and Paris, \"A Tale of Two Cities\" is his best-known work of historical fiction and includes the famous opening sentence \"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.\" It is regularly touted as one of the best-selling novels of all time. Themes in \"Great Expectations\" include wealth and poverty, love and rejection, and the eventual triumph of good over evil.\nIn early September 1860, in a field behind Gads Hill, Dickens made a bonfire of most of his correspondence; he spared only letters on business matters. Since Ellen Ternan also destroyed all of his letters to her, the extent of the affair between the two remains speculative. In the 1930s, Thomas Wright recounted that Ternan had unburdened herself to a Canon Benham and gave currency to rumours they had been lovers. Dickens's daughter, Kate Perugini, stated that the two had a son who died in infancy to biographer Gladys Storey in an interview before the former's death in 1929. Storey published her account in \"Dickens and Daughter\", though no contemporary evidence was given. On his death, Dickens settled an annuity on Ternan which made her financially independent. Claire Tomalin's book \"The Invisible Woman\" argues that Ternan lived with Dickens secretly for the last 13 years of his life. The book was turned into a play, \"Little Nell\", by Simon Gray, and a 2013 film. During the same period, Dickens furthered his interest in the paranormal, becoming one of the early members of The Ghost Club in London. In Christmas Eve of 1862, a theatrical production of his novella, \"The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain\", saw the first public demonstration of \"Pepper's ghost\"\u2014a method of projecting the illusion of a ghost into a theatre (named after its developer John Henry Pepper)\u2014which caused a sensation among those in attendance at the Regent Street theatre.\nIn June 1862, he was offered \u00a310,000 for a reading tour of Australia. He was enthusiastic, and even planned a travel book, \"The Uncommercial Traveller Upside Down\", but ultimately decided against the tour. Two of his sons, Alfred D'Orsay Tennyson Dickens and Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, migrated to Australia, Edward becoming a member of the Parliament of New South Wales as Member for Wilcannia between 1889 and 1894.\nLater life.\nOn 9 June 1865, while returning from Paris with Ellen Ternan, Dickens was involved in the Staplehurst rail crash in Kent. The train's first seven carriages plunged off a cast iron bridge that was under repair and ten passengers were killed. The only first-class carriage to remain on the track\u2014which was left hanging precariously off the bridge\u2014was the one in which Dickens was travelling. For three hours before rescuers arrived, Dickens tended and comforted the wounded and the dying with a flask of brandy and a hat refreshed with water. Before leaving, he remembered the unfinished manuscript for \"Our Mutual Friend\", and he returned to his carriage to retrieve it.\nDickens later used the experience of the crash as material for his short ghost story, \"The Signal-Man\", in which the central character has a premonition of his own death in a rail crash. He also based the story on several previous rail accidents, such as the Clayton Tunnel rail crash in Sussex of 1861. Dickens managed to avoid an appearance at the inquest to avoid disclosing that he had been travelling with Ternan and her mother, which would have caused a scandal. After the crash, Dickens was nervous when travelling by train and would use alternative means when available. In 1868 he wrote, \"I have sudden vague rushes of terror, even when riding in a hansom cab, which are perfectly unreasonable but quite insurmountable.\" Dickens's son, Henry, recalled, \"I have seen him sometimes in a railway carriage when there was a slight jolt. When this happened he was almost in a state of panic and gripped the seat with both hands.\"\nSecond visit to the United States.\nWhile he contemplated a second visit to the United States, the outbreak of the Civil War in America in 1861 delayed his plans. On 9 November 1867, over two years after the war, Dickens set sail from Liverpool for his second American reading tour. Landing in Boston, he devoted the rest of the month to a round of dinners with such notables as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his American publisher, James T. Fields. In early December, the readings began. He performed 76 readings, netting \u00a319,000, from December 1867 to April 1868. Dickens shuttled between Boston and New York, where he gave 22 readings at Steinway Hall. Although he had started to suffer from what he called the \"true American catarrh\", he kept to a schedule that would have challenged a much younger man, even managing to squeeze in some sleighing in Central Park.\nDuring his travels, he saw a change in the people and the circumstances of America. His final appearance was at a banquet the American Press held in his honour at Delmonico's on 18 April, when he promised never to denounce America again. By the end of the tour Dickens could hardly manage solid food, subsisting on champagne and eggs beaten in sherry. On 23 April he boarded the Cunard liner to return to Britain, barely escaping a federal tax lien against the proceeds of his lecture tour.\nFarewell readings.\nIn 1868\u201369, Dickens gave a series of \"farewell readings\" in England, Scotland and Ireland, beginning on 6 October. He managed, of a contracted 100 readings, to give 75 in the provinces, with a further 12 in London. As he pressed on he was affected by giddiness and fits of paralysis. He had a stroke on 18 April 1869 in Chester. He collapsed on 22 April 1869, at Preston, Lancashire; on doctor's advice, the tour was cancelled. After further provincial readings were cancelled, he began work on his final novel, \"The Mystery of Edwin Drood\". Described as a \"dark and gothic\" tale, his unfinished novel focuses on Drood's uncle, John Jasper, a drug-addicted choirmaster. It was fashionable in the 1860s to 'do the slums' and, in company, Dickens visited opium dens in Shadwell in the East End of London, where he witnessed an elderly addict called \"Laskar Sal\", who formed the model for \"Opium Sal\" in \"Edwin Drood\".\nAfter Dickens regained enough strength, he arranged, with medical approval, for a final series of readings to partly make up to his sponsors what they had lost due to his illness. There were 12 performances, on 11 January to 15 March 1870; the last at 8:00pm at St. James's Hall, London. Though in grave health by then, he read \"A Christmas Carol\" and \"The Trial from Pickwick\". On 2 May, he made his last public appearance at a Royal Academy banquet in the presence of the Prince and Princess of Wales, paying a special tribute on the death of his friend, illustrator Daniel Maclise.\nDeath.\nOn 8 June 1870, Dickens had another stroke at his home after a full day's work on \"Edwin Drood\". He never regained consciousness. The next day, he died at Gads Hill Place. Biographer Claire Tomalin has suggested Dickens was actually in Peckham when he had had the stroke and his mistress Ellen Ternan and her maids had him taken back to Gads Hill so that the public would not know the truth about their relationship. Contrary to his wish to be buried at Rochester Cathedral \"in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner\", he was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. A printed epitaph circulated at the time of the funeral reads:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />To the Memory of Charles Dickens (England's most popular author) who died at his residence, Higham, near Rochester, Kent, 9\u00a0June 1870, aged 58 years. He was a sympathiser with the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world.\nA letter from Dickens to the Clerk of the Privy Council in March indicates he had been offered and accepted a baronetcy, which was not gazetted before his death. His last words were \"On the ground\" in response to his sister-in-law Georgina's request that he lie down. On Sunday, 19 June 1870, five days after Dickens was buried in the Abbey, Dean Arthur Penrhyn Stanley delivered a memorial elegy, lauding \"the genial and loving humorist whom we now mourn\", for showing by his own example \"that even in dealing with the darkest scenes and the most degraded characters, genius could still be clean, and mirth could be innocent\". Pointing to the fresh flowers that adorned the novelist's grave, Stanley assured those present that \"the spot would thenceforth be a sacred one with both the New World and the Old, as that of the representative of literature, not of this island only, but of all who speak our English tongue.\"\nIn his will, drafted more than a year before his death, Dickens left the care of his \u00a380,000 estate (\u00a3 in 2023) to his long-time colleague John Forster and his \"best and truest friend\" Georgina Hogarth who, along with Dickens's two sons, also received a tax-free sum of \u00a38,000 (equivalent to \u00a3 in 2023). He confirmed his wife Catherine's annual allowance \nof \u00a3600 (\u00a3 in 2023). He bequeathed \u00a319 19s (\u00a3 in 2023) to each servant in his employment at the time of his death.\nLiterary style.\nDickens's approach to the novel is influenced by various things, including the picaresque novel tradition, melodrama and the novel of sensibility. According to Ackroyd, other than these, perhaps the most important literary influence on him was derived from the fables of \"The Arabian Nights\". Satire and irony are central to the picaresque novel. Comedy is also an aspect of the British picaresque novel tradition of Laurence Sterne, Henry Fielding and Tobias Smollett. Fielding's \"Tom Jones\" was a major influence on the 19th-century novelist including Dickens, who read it in his youth and named a son Henry Fielding Dickens after him. Influenced by Gothic fiction\u2014a literary genre that began with \"The Castle of Otranto\" (1764) by Horace Walpole\u2014Dickens incorporated Gothic imagery, settings and plot devices in his works. Victorian gothic moved from castles and abbeys into contemporary urban environments: in particular London, such as Dickens's \"Oliver Twist\" and \"Bleak House\". The jilted bride Miss Havisham from \"Great Expectations\" is one of Dickens's best-known gothic creations; living in a ruined mansion, her bridal gown effectively doubles as her funeral shroud.\nNo other writer had such a profound influence on Dickens as William Shakespeare. On Dickens's veneration of Shakespeare, Alfred Harbage wrote in \"A Kind of Power: The Shakespeare-Dickens Analogy\" (1975) that \"No one is better qualified to recognise literary genius than a literary genius\". Regarding Shakespeare as \"the great master\" whose plays \"were an unspeakable source of delight\", Dickens's lifelong affinity with the playwright included seeing theatrical productions of his plays in London and putting on amateur dramatics with friends in his early years. In 1838, Dickens travelled to Stratford-upon-Avon and visited the house in which Shakespeare was born, leaving his autograph in the visitors' book. Dickens would draw on this experience in his next work, \"Nicholas Nickleby\" (1838\u201339), expressing the strength of feeling experienced by visitors to Shakespeare's birthplace: the character Mrs Wititterly states, \"I don't know how it is, but after you've seen the place and written your name in the little book, somehow or other you seem to be inspired; it kindles up quite a fire within one.\"\nDickens's writing style is marked by a profuse linguistic creativity. Satire, flourishing in his gift for caricature, is his forte. An early reviewer compared him to the artist and social critic Hogarth for his keen practical sense of the ludicrous side of life, though his acclaimed mastery of varieties of class idiom may in fact mirror the conventions of contemporary popular theatre. Dickens worked intensively on developing arresting names for his characters that would reverberate with associations for his readers and assist the development of motifs in the storyline, giving what one critic calls an \"allegorical impetus\" to the novels' meanings. To cite one of numerous examples, the name Mr Murdstone in \"David Copperfield\" conjures up twin allusions to murder and stony coldness. His literary style is also a mixture of fantasy and realism. His satires of British aristocratic snobbery\u2014he calls one character the \"Noble Refrigerator\"\u2014are often popular. Comparing orphans to stocks and shares, people to tug boats or dinner-party guests to furniture are just some of Dickens's acclaimed flights of fancy. On his ability to elicit a response from his works, English screenwriter Sarah Phelps writes, \"He knew how to work an audience and how to get them laughing their heads off one minute or on the edge of their seats and holding their breath the next. The other thing about Dickens is that he loved telling stories and he loved his characters, even those horrible, mean-spirited ones.\"\nThe author worked closely with his illustrators, supplying them with a summary of the work at the outset and thus ensuring that his characters and settings were exactly how he envisioned them. He briefed the illustrator on plans for each month's instalment so that work could begin before he wrote them. Marcus Stone, illustrator of \"Our Mutual Friend\", recalled that the author was always \"ready to describe down to the minutest details the personal characteristics, and\u00a0... life-history of the creations of his fancy\". Dickens employs Cockney English in many of his works, denoting working-class Londoners. Cockney grammar appears in terms such as ain't, and consonants in words are frequently omitted, as in 'ere (here) and wot (what). An example of this usage is in \"Oliver Twist\". The Artful Dodger uses cockney slang which is juxtaposed with Oliver's 'proper' English, when the Dodger repeats Oliver saying \"seven\" with \"sivin\".\nCharacters.\nDickens's biographer Claire Tomalin regards him as the greatest creator of character in English fiction after Shakespeare.\nDickensian characters are amongst the most memorable in English literature, especially so because of their typically whimsical names. The likes of Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Jacob Marley and Bob Cratchit (\"A Christmas Carol\"); Oliver Twist, The Artful Dodger, Fagin and Bill Sikes (\"Oliver Twist\"); Pip, Miss Havisham, Estella and Abel Magwitch (\"Great Expectations\"); Sydney Carton, Charles Darnay and Madame Defarge (\"A Tale of Two Cities\"); David Copperfield, Uriah Heep and Mr Micawber (\"David Copperfield\"); Daniel Quilp and Nell Trent (\"The Old Curiosity Shop\"), Samuel Pickwick and Sam Weller (\"The Pickwick Papers\"); and Wackford Squeers (\"Nicholas Nickleby\") are so well known as to be part and parcel of popular culture, and in some cases have passed into ordinary language: a \"scrooge\", for example, is a miser or someone who dislikes Christmas festivity.\nHis characters were often so memorable that they took on a life of their own outside his books. \"Gamp\" became a slang expression for an umbrella from the character Mrs Gamp, and \"Pickwickian\", \"Pecksniffian\" and \"Gradgrind\" all entered dictionaries due to Dickens's original portraits of such characters who were, respectively, quixotic, hypocritical and vapidly factual. The character that made Dickens famous, Sam Weller became known for his Wellerisms\u2014one-liners that turn proverbs on their heads. Many were drawn from real life: Mrs Nickleby is based on his mother, although she did not recognise herself in the portrait, just as Mr Micawber is constructed from aspects of his father's 'rhetorical exuberance'; Harold Skimpole in \"Bleak House\" is based on James Henry Leigh Hunt; his wife's dwarfish chiropodist recognised herself in Miss Mowcher in \"David Copperfield\". Perhaps Dickens's impressions on his meeting with Hans Christian Andersen informed the delineation of Uriah Heep (a term synonymous with sycophant).\nVirginia Woolf maintained that \"we remodel our psychological geography when we read Dickens\" as he produces \"characters who exist not in detail, not accurately or exactly, but abundantly in a cluster of wild yet extraordinarily revealing remarks\". T. S. Eliot wrote that Dickens \"excelled in character; in the creation of characters of greater intensity than human beings\". One \"character\" vividly drawn throughout his novels is London itself. Dickens described London as a magic lantern, inspiring the places and people in many of his novels. From the coaching inns on the outskirts of the city to the lower reaches of the Thames, all aspects of the capital\u2014Dickens's London\u2014are described over the course of his body of work. Walking the streets (particularly around London) formed an integral part of his writing life, stoking his creativity. Dickens was known to regularly walk at least a dozen miles (19\u00a0km) per day, and once wrote, \"If I couldn't walk fast and far, I should just explode and perish.\"\nAutobiographical elements.\nAuthors frequently draw their portraits of characters from people they have known in real life. \"David Copperfield\" is regarded by many as a veiled autobiography of Dickens. The scenes of interminable court cases and legal arguments in \"Bleak House\" reflect Dickens's experiences as a law clerk and court reporter, and in particular his direct experience of the law's procedural delay during 1844 when he sued publishers in Chancery for breach of copyright. Dickens's father was sent to prison for debt, and this became a common theme in many of his books, with the detailed depiction of life in the Marshalsea prison in \"Little Dorrit\" resulting from Dickens's own experiences of the institution. Lucy Stroughill, a childhood sweetheart, may have affected several of Dickens's portraits of girls such as Little Em'ly in \"David Copperfield\" and Lucie Manette in \"A Tale of Two Cities\".\nDickens may have drawn on his childhood experiences, but he was also ashamed of them and would not reveal that this was where he gathered his realistic accounts of squalor. Very few knew the details of his early life until six years after his death, when John Forster published a biography on which Dickens had collaborated. Though Skimpole brutally sends up Leigh Hunt, some critics have detected in his portrait features of Dickens's own character, which he sought to exorcise by self-parody.\nEpisodic writing.\nA pioneer of the serial publication of narrative fiction, Dickens wrote most of his major novels in monthly or weekly instalments in journals such as \"Master Humphrey's Clock\" and \"Household Words\", later reprinted in book form. These instalments made the stories affordable and accessible, with the audience more evenly distributed across income levels than before. His instalment format inspired a narrative that he would explore and develop throughout his career, and the regular cliffhangers made each new episode widely anticipated. When \"The Old Curiosity Shop\" was being serialised, American fans waited at the docks in New York harbour, shouting out to the crew of an incoming British ship, \"Is little Nell dead?\" Dickens was able to incorporate this episodic writing style but still end up with a coherent novel at the end. He wrote, \"The thing has to be planned for presentation in these fragments, and yet for afterwards fusing together as an uninterrupted whole.\"\nAnother important impact of Dickens's episodic writing style resulted from his exposure to the opinions of his readers and friends. His friend Forster had a significant hand in reviewing his drafts, an influence that went beyond matters of punctuation; he toned down melodramatic and sensationalist exaggerations, cut long passages (such as the episode of Quilp's drowning in \"The Old Curiosity Shop\"), and made suggestions about plot and character. It was he who suggested that Charley Bates should be redeemed in \"Oliver Twist\". Dickens had not thought of killing Little Nell and it was Forster who advised him to entertain this possibility as necessary to his conception of the heroine. When in 1863 Jewish English reader Eliza Davis wrote to rebuke him for having \"encouraged a vile prejudice against the despised Hebrew\" with the character of Fagin in \"Oliver Twist\", Dickens halted the second printing of the novel and made some changes to the original 1837 text. He also created a group of sympathetic Jewish characters in his next novel, \"Our Mutual Friend\", published 1864\u20131865.\nAt the helm in popularising cliffhangers and serial publications in Victorian literature, Dickens's influence can also be seen in television soap operas and film series, with \"The Guardian\" stating that \"the DNA of Dickens's busy, episodic storytelling, delivered in instalments and rife with cliffhangers and diversions, is traceable in everything.\" His serialisation of his novels also drew comments from other writers. In Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson's novel \"The Wrecker\", Captain Nares, investigating an abandoned ship, remarked: \"See! They were writing up the log,\" said Nares, pointing to the ink-bottle. \"Caught napping, as usual. I wonder if there ever was a captain yet that lost a ship with his log-book up to date? He generally has about a month to fill up on a clean break, like Charles Dickens and his serial novels.\"\nSocial commentary.\nDickens's novels were, among other things, works of social commentary. Simon Callow states, \"From the moment he started to write, he spoke for the people, and the people loved him for it.\" He was a fierce critic of the poverty and social stratification of Victorian society. In a New York address, he expressed his belief that \"Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen\". Dickens's second novel, \"Oliver Twist\" (1839), shocked readers with its images of poverty and crime: it challenged middle class polemics about criminals, making impossible any pretence to ignorance about what poverty entailed. Today, \"Dickensian\" is a term applied to insanitary social conditions or grim institutions akin to those denounced by Dickens in his work, with Oxford professor Peter Conrad writing, \"Dickens, like Banksy, writes blackly prophetic graffiti on the wall.\"\nAt a time when Britain was the major economic and political power of the world, Dickens highlighted the life of the forgotten poor and disadvantaged within society. Through his journalism he campaigned on specific issues\u2014such as sanitation and the workhouse\u2014but his fiction probably demonstrated its greatest prowess in changing public opinion in regard to class inequalities. He often depicted the exploitation and oppression of the poor and condemned the public officials and institutions that not only allowed such abuses to exist, but flourished as a result. His most strident indictment of this condition is in \"Hard Times\" (1854), Dickens's only novel-length treatment of the industrial working class. In this work, he uses vitriol and satire to illustrate how this marginalised social stratum was termed \"Hands\" by the factory owners; that is, not really \"people\" but rather only appendages of the machines they operated. His writings inspired others, in particular journalists and political figures, to address such problems of class oppression. For example, the prison scenes in \"The Pickwick Papers\" are claimed to have been influential in having the Fleet Prison shut down. Karl Marx asserted that Dickens \"issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together\". George Bernard Shaw even remarked that \"Great Expectations\" was more seditious than Marx's \"Das Kapital\". The exceptional popularity of Dickens's novels, even those with socially oppositional themes (\"Bleak House\", 1853; \"Little Dorrit\", 1857; \"Our Mutual Friend\", 1865), not only underscored his ability to create compelling storylines and unforgettable characters, but also ensured that the Victorian public confronted issues of social justice that had commonly been ignored. \"Bleak House\", a satire of protracted legal cases with \"Jarndyce and Jarndyce\"\u2014a fictional long-running Chancery case which has been cited by courts as a symbol of a legal case that interminably drags on\u2014the central plot of the novel, helped support a judicial reform movement that culminated in the enactment of legal reform in England in the 1870s.\nIt has been argued that his technique of flooding his narratives with an 'unruly superfluity of material' that, in the gradual d\u00e9nouement, yields up an unsuspected order, influenced the organisation of Charles Darwin's \"On the Origin of Species\".\nLiterary techniques.\nDickens is often described as using idealised characters and highly sentimental scenes to contrast with his caricatures and the ugly social truths he reveals. The story of Nell Trent in \"The Old Curiosity Shop\" (1841) was received as extremely moving by contemporary readers but viewed as ludicrously sentimental by Oscar Wilde. \"One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell\", he said in a famous remark, \"without dissolving into tears ... of laughter.\" G. K. Chesterton stated, \"It is not the death of little Nell, but the life of little Nell, that I object to\", arguing that the maudlin effect of his description of her life owed much to the gregarious nature of Dickens's grief, his \"despotic\" use of people's feelings to move them to tears in works like this.\nThe question as to whether Dickens belongs to the tradition of the sentimental novel is debatable. Valerie Purton, in her book \"Dickens and the Sentimental Tradition\", sees him continuing aspects of this tradition, and argues that his \"sentimental scenes and characters [are] as crucial to the overall power of the novels as his darker or comic figures and scenes\", and that \"\"Dombey and Son\" is [ ... ] Dickens's greatest triumph in the sentimentalist tradition\". The \"Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica\" online comments that, despite \"patches of emotional excess\", such as the reported death of Tiny Tim in \"A Christmas Carol\" (1843), \"Dickens cannot really be termed a sentimental novelist\".\nIn \"Oliver Twist\", Dickens provides readers with an idealised portrait of a boy so inherently and unrealistically good that his values are never subverted by either brutal orphanages or coerced involvement in a gang of young pickpockets. While later novels also centre on idealised characters (Esther Summerson in \"Bleak House\" and Amy Dorrit in \"Little Dorrit\"), this idealism serves only to highlight Dickens's goal of poignant social commentary. Dickens's fiction, reflecting what he believed to be true of his own life, makes frequent use of coincidence, either for comic effect or to emphasise the idea of providence. For example, Oliver Twist turns out to be the lost nephew of the upper-class family that rescues him from the dangers of the pickpocket group. Such coincidences are a staple of 18th-century picaresque novels, such as Henry Fielding's \"Tom Jones,\" which Dickens enjoyed reading as a youth.\nReputation.\nDickens was the most popular novelist of his time, and remains one of the best-known and most-read of English authors. His works have never gone out of print, and have been adapted continually for the screen since the invention of cinema, with at least 200 motion pictures and TV adaptations based on Dickens's works documented. Many of his works were adapted for the stage during his own lifetime\u2014early productions included \"The Haunted Man\" which was performed in the West End's Adelphi Theatre in 1848\u2014and, as early as 1901, the British silent film \"Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost\" was made by Walter R. Booth. Contemporaries such as publisher Edward Lloyd cashed in on Dickens's popularity with cheap imitations of his novels, resulting in his own popular 'penny dreadfuls'.\nDickens created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest British novelist of the Victorian era. From the beginning of his career in the 1830s, his achievements in English literature were compared to those of Shakespeare. Dickens's literary reputation, however, began to decline with the publication of \"Bleak House\" in 1852\u201353. Philip Collins calls \"Bleak House\" \"a crucial item in the history of Dickens's reputation. Reviewers and literary figures during the 1850s, 1860s and 1870s, saw a 'drear decline' in Dickens, from a writer of 'bright sunny comedy ... to dark and serious social' commentary\". \"The Spectator\" called \"Bleak House\" \"a heavy book to read through at once ... dull and wearisome as a serial\"; Richard Simpson, in \"The Rambler\", characterised \"Hard Times\" as \"this dreary framework\"; \"Fraser's Magazine\" thought \"Little Dorrit\" \"decidedly the worst of his novels\". All the same, despite these \"increasing reservations amongst reviewers and the chattering classes, 'the public never deserted its favourite'\". Dickens's popular reputation remained unchanged, sales continued to rise, and \"Household Words\" and later \"All the Year Round\" were highly successful.\nAs his career progressed, Dickens's fame and the demand for his public readings were unparalleled. In 1868, \"The Times\" wrote, \"Amid all the variety of 'readings', those of Mr Charles Dickens stand alone.\" A Dickens biographer, Edgar Johnson, wrote: \"It was [always] more than a reading; it was an extraordinary exhibition of acting that seized upon its auditors with a mesmeric possession.\" Author David Lodge called him the \"first writer to be an object of unrelenting public interest and adulation\". Juliet John backed the claim for Dickens \"to be called the first self-made global media star of the age of mass culture\". The word \"celebrity\" first appeared in the \"Oxford English Dictionary\" in 1851, and the BBC states \"Charles Dickens was one of the first figures to be called one\". Comparing his reception at public readings to those of a contemporary pop star\u2014the BBC compared his reception in the US to The Beatles\u2014\"The Guardian\" states, \"People sometimes fainted at his shows. His performances even saw the rise of that modern phenomenon, the 'speculator' or ticket tout (scalpers)\u2014the ones in New York City escaped detection by borrowing respectable-looking hats from the waiters in nearby restaurants.\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"Dickens's vocal impersonations of his own characters gave this truth a theatrical form: the public reading tour. No other Victorian could match him for celebrity, earnings, and sheer vocal artistry. The Victorians craved the author's multiple voices: between 1853 and his death in 1870, Dickens performed about 470 times.\"\n\u2014Peter Garratt in \"The Guardian\" on Dickens's fame and the demand for his public readings\nAmong fellow writers, there was a range of opinions on Dickens. Poet laureate, William Wordsworth (1770\u20131850), thought him a \"very talkative, vulgar young person\", adding he had not read a line of his work, while novelist George Meredith (1828\u20131909), found Dickens \"intellectually lacking\". In 1888, Leslie Stephen commented in the \"Dictionary of National Biography\" that \"if literary fame could be safely measured by popularity with the half-educated, Dickens must claim the highest position among English novelists\". Anthony Trollope's \"Autobiography\" famously declared Thackeray, not Dickens, to be the greatest novelist of the age. However, both Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky were admirers. Dostoyevsky commented: \"We understand Dickens in Russia, I am convinced, almost as well as the English, perhaps even with all the nuances. It may well be that we love him no less than his compatriots do. And yet how original is Dickens, and how very English!\" Tolstoy referred to \"David Copperfield\" as his favourite book, and he later adopted the novel as \"a model for his own autobiographical reflections\". French writer Jules Verne called Dickens his favourite writer, writing his novels \"stand alone, dwarfing all others by their amazing power and felicity of expression\". Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh was inspired by Dickens's novels in several of his paintings, such as \"Vincent's Chair\", and in an 1889 letter to his sister stated that reading Dickens, especially \"A Christmas Carol\", was one of the things that was keeping him from committing suicide. Oscar Wilde generally disparaged his depiction of character, while admiring his gift for caricature. Henry James denied him a premier position, calling him \"the greatest of superficial novelists\": Dickens failed to endow his characters with psychological depth, and the novels, \"loose baggy monsters\", betrayed a \"cavalier organisation\". Joseph Conrad described his own childhood in bleak Dickensian terms, noting he had \"an intense and unreasoning affection\" for \"Bleak House\" dating back to his boyhood. The novel influenced his own gloomy portrait of London in \"The Secret Agent\" (1907). Virginia Woolf had a love-hate relationship with Dickens, finding his novels \"mesmerizing\" while reproving him for his sentimentalism and a commonplace style.\nAround 1940\u201341, the attitude of the literary critics began to warm towards Dickens\u2014led by George Orwell in \"Inside the Whale and Other Essays\" (March 1940), Edmund Wilson in \"The Wound and the Bow\" (1941) and Humphry House in \"Dickens and His World\". However, even in 1948, F. R. Leavis, in \"The Great Tradition\", asserted that \"the adult mind doesn't as a rule find in Dickens a challenge to an unusual and sustained seriousness\"; Dickens was indeed a great genius, \"but the genius was that of a great entertainer\", though he later changed his opinion with \"Dickens the Novelist\" (1970, with Q. D. (Queenie) Leavis): \"Our purpose\", they wrote, \"is to enforce as unanswerably as possible the conviction that Dickens was one of the greatest of creative writers\". In 1944, Soviet film director and film theorist Sergei Eisenstein wrote an essay on Dickens's influence on cinema, such as cross-cutting\u2014where two stories run alongside each other, as seen in novels such as \"Oliver Twist\".\nIn the 1950s, \"a substantial reassessment and re-editing of the works began, and critics found his finest artistry and greatest depth to be in the later novels: \"Bleak House\", \"Little Dorrit\" and \"Great Expectations\"\u2014and (less unanimously) in \"Hard Times\" and \"Our Mutual Friend\"\". Dickens was among the favourite authors of Roald Dahl; the best-selling children's author would include three of Dickens's novels among those read by the title character in his 1988 novel \"Matilda\". In 2005, Paul McCartney, an avid reader of Dickens, named \"Nicholas Nickleby\" his favourite novel. On Dickens he states, \"I like the world that he takes me to. I like his words; I like the language\", adding, \"A lot of my stuff\u2014it's kind of Dickensian.\" Screenwriter Jonathan Nolan's screenplay for \"The Dark Knight Rises\" (2012) was inspired by \"A Tale of Two Cities\", with Nolan calling the depiction of Paris in the novel \"one of the most harrowing portraits of a relatable, recognisable civilisation that completely folded to pieces\". On 7 February 2012, the 200th anniversary of Dickens's birth, Philip Womack wrote in \"The Telegraph\": \"Today there is no escaping Charles Dickens. Not that there has ever been much chance of that before. He has a deep, peculiar hold upon us\".\nLegacy.\nMuseums and festivals celebrating Dickens's life and works exist in many places with which Dickens was associated. These include the Charles Dickens Museum in London, the historic home where he wrote \"Oliver Twist\", \"The Pickwick Papers\" and \"Nicholas Nickleby\"; and the Charles Dickens' Birthplace Museum in Portsmouth, the house in which he was born. The original manuscripts of many of his novels, as well as printers' proofs, first editions and illustrations from the collection of Dickens's friend John Forster are held at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Dickens's will stipulated that no memorial be erected in his honour; nonetheless, a life-size bronze statue of Dickens entitled \"Dickens and Little Nell\", cast in 1890 by Francis Edwin Elwell, stands in Clark Park in the Spruce Hill neighbourhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Another life-size statue of Dickens is located at Centennial Park in Sydney, Australia. In 1960 a bas-relief sculpture of Dickens, notably featuring characters from his books, was commissioned from sculptor Estcourt J Clack to adorn the office building built on the site of his former home at 1 Devonshire Terrace, London. In 2014, a life-size statue was unveiled near his birthplace in Portsmouth on the 202nd anniversary of his birth; this was supported by his great-great-grandsons, Ian and Gerald Dickens.\n\"A Christmas Carol\" is most probably his best-known story, with frequent new adaptations. It is also the most-filmed of Dickens's stories, with many versions dating from the early years of cinema. According to the historian Ronald Hutton, the current state of the observance of Christmas is largely the result of a mid-Victorian revival of the holiday spearheaded by \"A Christmas Carol\". Dickens catalysed the emerging Christmas as a family-centred festival of generosity, in contrast to the dwindling community-based and church-centred observations, as new middle-class expectations arose. Its archetypal figures (Scrooge, Tiny Tim, the Christmas ghosts) entered into Western cultural consciousness. \"Merry Christmas\", a prominent phrase from the tale, was popularised following the appearance of the story. The term Scrooge became a synonym for miser, and his exclamation \"Bah! Humbug!'\", a dismissal of the festive spirit, likewise gained currency as an idiom. The Victorian era novelist William Makepeace Thackeray called the book \"a national benefit, and to every man and woman who reads it a personal kindness\".\nDickens was commemorated on the \u00a310 note issued by the Bank of England that circulated between 1992 and 2003. His portrait appeared on the reverse of the note accompanied by a scene from \"The Pickwick Papers\". The Charles Dickens School is a high school in Broadstairs, Kent. A theme park, Dickens World, was open in Chatham from 2007 to 2016. To celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth in 2012, the Museum of London held the UK's first major exhibition on the author in 40 years. In 2002, Dickens was number 41 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. American literary critic Harold Bloom placed Dickens among the . In the 2003 UK survey The Big Read carried out by the BBC, five of Dickens's books were named in the Top 100.\nActors who have portrayed Dickens on screen include Anthony Hopkins, Derek Jacobi, Simon Callow, Dan Stevens and Ralph Fiennes, the latter playing the author in \"The Invisible Woman\" (2013) which depicts Dickens's alleged secret love affair with Ellen Ternan which lasted for thirteen years until his death in 1870.\nDickens and his publications have appeared on a number of postage stamps in countries including: the United Kingdom (1970, 1993, 2011 and 2012 issued by the Royal Mail\u2014their 2012 collection marked the bicentenary of Dickens's birth), the Soviet Union (1962), Antigua, Barbuda, Botswana, Cameroon, Dubai, Fujairah, St Lucia and Turks and Caicos Islands (1970), St Vincent (1987), Nevis (2007), Alderney, Gibraltar, Jersey and Pitcairn Islands (2012), Austria (2013) and Mozambique (2014). In 1976, a crater on the planet Mercury was named in his honour.\nIn November 2018 it was reported that a previously lost portrait of a 31-year-old Dickens, by Margaret Gillies, had been found in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Gillies was an early supporter of women's suffrage and had painted the portrait in late 1843 when Dickens, aged 31, wrote \"A Christmas Carol\". It was exhibited, to acclaim, at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1844. The Charles Dickens Museum is reported to have paid \u00a3180,000 for the portrait.\nWorks.\nDickens published 15 major novels, several novellas, a large number of short stories (including a number of Christmas-themed stories), a handful of plays, and several non-fiction books.\nNovels and novellas.\nDickens's novels and novellas were initially published in weekly and monthly magazines, the novels in serial format, then reprinted in standard book formats.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "24578": "Pub\nEstablishment that serves alcoholic drinks\nA pub (short for public house) is in several countries a drinking establishment licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term first appeared in England in the late 17th century, to differentiate private houses from those open to the public as alehouses, taverns and inns. Today, there is no strict definition, but the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) states a pub has four characteristics:\nThe history of pubs can be traced to taverns in Roman Britain, and through Anglo-Saxon alehouses, but it was not until the early 19th century that pubs, as they are today, first began to appear. The model also became popular in countries and regions of British influence, where pubs are often still considered to be an important aspect of their culture. In many places, especially in villages, pubs are the focal point of local communities. In his 17th-century diary, Samuel Pepys described the pub as \"the heart of England\". Pubs have been established in other countries in modern times.\nAlthough the drinks traditionally served include draught beer and cider, most also sell wine, spirits, tea, coffee, and soft drinks. Many pubs offer meals and snacks, and those considered to be gastro-pubs serve food in a manner akin to a restaurant.\nA licence is required to operate a pub; the licensee is known as the landlord or landlady, or the publican. Often colloquially referred to as their \"local\" by regular customers, pubs are typically chosen for their proximity to home or work, good food, social atmosphere, the presence of friends and acquaintances, and the availability of pub games such as darts, pool, or snooker. Pubs often screen sporting events, such as rugby, cricket and football. The pub quiz was established in the UK in the 1970s.\nHistory.\nOrigins.\nAle was a native British drink before the arrival of the Roman Empire in the first century, but it was with the construction of the Roman road network that the first pubs, called \"tabernae\" (the origin of modern English \"tavern\"), began to appear.\nAfter the departure of Roman authority in the fifth century and the fall of the Romano-British kingdoms, the Anglo-Saxons established alehouses that may have grown out of domestic dwellings, first attested in the 10th century. These alehouses quickly evolved into meeting houses for folk to socially congregate, gossip and arrange mutual help within their communities. The Wantage law code of \u00c6thelred the Unready prescribes fines for breaching the peace at meetings held in alehouses.\nA traveller in the early Middle Ages could obtain overnight accommodation in monasteries, but later a demand for hostelries grew with the popularity of pilgrimages and travel. The Hostellers of London were granted guild status in 1446, and in 1514 the guild became the Worshipful Company of Innholders. A survey in 1577 of drinking establishment in England and Wales for taxation purposes recorded 14,202 alehouses, 1,631 inns, and 329 taverns, representing one pub for every 187 people.\nInns.\nInns are buildings where travellers can seek lodging and, usually, food and drink. They are typically located in the country or along a highway. In Europe, they possibly first sprang up when the Romans built a system of roads two millennia ago. Some inns in Europe are several centuries old. In addition to providing for the needs of travellers, inns traditionally acted as community gathering places.\nIn Europe, it is the provision of accommodation, if anything, that now distinguishes inns from taverns, alehouses and pubs. The latter tend to provide alcohol (and, in the UK, soft drinks and often food), but less commonly accommodation. Inns tend to be older and grander establishments: historically they provided not only food and lodging, but also stabling and fodder for travellers' horses, and on some roads fresh horses for the mail coach.\nFamous London inns include the George, Southwark and the Tabard. There is, however, no longer a formal distinction between an inn and other kinds of establishment. Many pubs use \"Inn\" in their name, either because they are long established former coaching inns, or to summon up a particular kind of image, or in many cases simply as a pun on the word \"in\".\nThe original services of an inn are now also available at other establishments. Hotels, lodges, and motels focus more on lodging customers than on other services but usually provide meals. Pubs are primarily alcohol-serving establishments. Restaurants and taverns serve food and drink. In North America, the lodging aspect of the word \"inn\" lives on in hotel brand names like Holiday Inn, and in some state laws that refer to lodging operators as innkeepers.\nThe Inns of Court and Inns of Chancery in London started as ordinary inns where barristers met to do business, but became institutions of the legal profession in England and Wales.\nAdvent of the modern pub.\nPubs as we know them today first appeared in the 19th century. Before this time alehouses were largely indistinguishable from private houses and the poor standard of rural roads meant that, away from the larger towns, the only beer available was often brewed by the publican himself. With the arrival of the Industrial Revolution, many areas of the United Kingdom were transformed by a surge in industrial activity and rapid population growth. There was huge demand for beer and for venues where the public could engage in social interaction, but there was also intense competition for customers.\nGin houses and palaces became increasingly popular, while the Beerhouse Act 1830 caused a proliferation of beerhouses. By the mid-19th century, pubs were widely purpose-built, and could incorporate architectural features that distinguished them from private houses to make them stand out from the competition. Many existing public houses were also redeveloped at this time, borrowing features from other building types and gradually developing the characteristics that make pubs instantly recognisable today. In particular, and contrary to the intentions of the Beerhouse Act, many drew inspiration from the gin houses and palaces.\nBar counters had been an early adoption, but ornate mirrors, etched glass, polished brass fittings and lavishly tiled surfaces were all features that had first made their appearance in gin houses. Innovations such as the introduction of hand pumps (or beer engines) allowed more people to be served, faster, while technological advances in the brewing industry and improved transportation links made it possible for breweries to deliver beer far from where it was brewed.\nTied house system.\nThe latter half of the 19th century saw increased competition within the brewing industry and, in an attempt to secure markets for their own products, breweries began rapidly buying local pubs and directly employing publicans to run them. Although some tied houses had existed in larger British towns since the 17th century, this represented a fundamental shift in the way that many pubs were operated and the period is now widely regarded as the birth of the tied house system.\nDecreasing numbers of free houses and difficulties in obtaining new licences meant a continual expansion of their tied estates was the only feasible way for breweries to generate new trade. By the end of the century more than 90 per cent of public houses in England were owned by breweries, and the only practical way brewers could now grow their tied estates was to turn on each other. Buy-outs and amalgamations became commonplace, and by the end of the 1980s there were only six large brewers left in the UK, collectively known as the Big Six; Allied, Bass, Courage, Grand Metropolitan, Scottish & Newcastle and Whitbread.\nIn an attempt to increase the number of free houses, by forcing the big breweries to sell their tied houses, the Government introduced the Beer Orders in 1989. The result, however, was that the Big Six melted away into other sectors; selling their brewing assets and spinning off their tied houses, largely into the hands of branded pub chains, called pubcos. As these were not brewers, they were not governed by the Beer Orders and tens of thousands of pubs remain tied, much in the same way that they had been previously. In reality, government interference did very little to improve Britain's tied house system and all its large breweries are now in the hands of foreign or multi-national companies.\nDecline in Britain.\nThe number of pubs in the UK has declined year on year at least since 1982. Various reasons are put forward for this, such as the failure of some establishments to keep up with customer requirements. Others claim the smoking ban of 2007, intense competition from gastro-pubs, the availability of cheap alcohol in supermarkets or the general economic climate are either to blame, or are factors in the decline. Changes in demographics may be an additional factor. In 2015 the rate of pub closures came under the scrutiny of Parliament in the UK, with a promise of legislation to improve relations between owners and tenants. The Lost Pubs Project listed 42,519 closed English pubs on 6 August 2023, with photographs of over 29,000. In the fifteen years to 2017 a quarter of London's pubs had closed. The closures have been ascribed to factors such as changing tastes and a rise in the cost of beer due to tax increases. Some London boroughs where there has been an increase in British Muslim population\u2014Islam forbids alcohol to its adherents\u2014have seen a high amount of closures.\nThe industry suffered a major decline from 2020, due to reduced trade during the Covid pandemic, followed by the wave of inflation that increased prices. By June 2022, pub numbers in England and Wales had fallen to a record low of 39,970, a loss of 7,000 in 10 years. Pubs also found it difficult to hire enough staff, with 142,000 jobs unfilled in the accommodation and food services sector by 2023. Figures published in 2023 showed that the rate of pub loss, equivalent to two closures a day, was increasing and that 39,404 pubs in England and Wales remained open at the end of June.\nLicensing laws.\nThere was regulation of public drinking spaces in England from at least the 15th century. In 1496, under, Henry VII, an act was passed, \"against vagabonds and beggers\" (11 Hen. VII c2), that included a clause empowering two justices of the peace, \"to rejecte and put awey comen ale-selling in tounes and places where they shall think convenyent, and to take suertie of the keepers of ale-houses in their gode behavyng by the discrecion of the seid justices, and in the same to be avysed and aggreed at the tyme of their sessions.\"\nThe Beerhouse Act of 1830 is widely considered to be a milestone in the history of public houses. Gin was popularised in England in the late 17th century, largely because it provided an alternative to French brandy at a time of political and religious conflict between Britain and France. Because of its cheapness, gin became popular with the poor, eventually leading to a period of drunkenness and lawlessness, known as the Gin Craze.\nIn the early 19th century, encouraged by a reduction of duties, gin consumption again began to rise and gin houses and gin palaces (an evolution of gin shops) began to spread from London to most towns and cities in Britain. Alarmed at the prospect of a return to the Gin Craze, the government attempted to counter the threat, and encourage the consumption of a more wholesome beverage, by introducing the Beerhouse Act of 1830. The Act introduced a new lower, and largely deregulated, tier of premises called \"the beerhouse\".\nUnder the act any householder, upon payment of two guineas (roughly equal in value to \u00a3 today), was permitted to brew and sell beer or cider in their own home. Beerhouses were not allowed to open on Sundays, or sell spirits and fortified wines; any beerhouse discovered to be breaking these rules was closed down and the owner heavily fined.\nWithin eight years 46,000 new beerhouses opened and, because operating costs were so low, huge profits were often made. The combination of increasing competition and high profits eventually led to what has been described as a golden age of pub building when many landlords extended or redeveloped their properties, adopting many features modern pubs still have.\nAuthorities attempted to check the growth from 1869 by introducing magisterial control and new licensing laws. These aimed to make it harder to obtain a licence, and control drunkenness, prostitution, and other undesirable conduct on licensed premises.\nIn the United Kingdom, restrictions were tightened considerably following the advent of the First World War. The Defence of the Realm Act, along with introducing rationing and censorship of the press, restricted pubs' opening hours to 12 noon\u20132:30\u00a0pm and 6:30\u00a0pm\u20139:30\u00a0pm. Opening for the full licensed hours was compulsory, and closing time was equally firmly enforced by the police. There was also a special case established under the State Management Scheme where the brewery and licensed premises were bought and run by the state, most notably in Carlisle.\nLock-in.\nA \"lock-in\" is when a pub owner allows patrons to continue drinking in the pub after the legal closing time, on the theory that once the doors are locked, it becomes a private party rather than a pub. Patrons may put money behind the bar before official closing time, and redeem their drinks during the lock-in so no drinks are technically sold after closing time. The origin of the British lock-in was a reaction to 1915 changes in the licensing laws in England and Wales, which curtailed opening hours to stop factory workers from turning up drunk and harming the war effort. From then until the start of the 21st century, UK licensing laws changed very little, retaining these comparatively early closing times. The tradition of the lock-in therefore remained. Since the implementation of the Licensing Act 2003, premises in England and Wales may apply to extend their opening hours beyond 11\u00a0pm, allowing round-the-clock drinking and removing much of the need for lock-ins. Since the smoking ban, some establishments operated a lock-in during which the remaining patrons could smoke without repercussions but, unlike drinking lock-ins, allowing smoking in a pub was still a prosecutable offence.\nSmoking bans.\nConcerns about the effects of cigarette smoke inhalation first surfaced in the 1950s and ultimately led many countries to ban or restrict smoking in specific settings, such as pubs and restaurants. Early in 2004, Ireland became the first country in the world to ban smoking in all enclosed public areas. Scotland was the first UK nation to introduce a ban on indoor smoking in March 2006, followed by the rest of the UK in 2007. Australia introduced a similar ban in 2006 and now has some of the world's toughest anti-smoking laws, with some territories having also banned smoking in outside public areas.\nSome publicans raised concerns, prior to the implementation of restrictions, that a smoking ban would have a negative impact on sales. The impact of the ban was mixed, with some pubs suffering declining sales, and others seeing an increase, particularly in food sales.\nArchitecture.\nSaloon or lounge.\nBy the end of the 18th century, a new room in the pub was established: the saloon. Beer establishments had always provided entertainment of some sort\u2014singing, gaming or sport. Balls Pond Road in Islington was named after an establishment run by a Mr. Ball that had a duck pond at the rear, where drinkers could, for a fee, go out and take a potshot at the ducks. More common, however, was a card room or a billiards room. The saloon was a room where, for an admission fee or a higher price of drinks, singing, dancing, drama, or comedy was performed and drinks would be served at the table. From this came the popular music hall form of entertainment\u2014a show consisting of a variety of acts.\nA most famous London saloon was the Grecian Saloon in the Eagle, City Road, referenced by name in the 18th-century nursery rhyme: \"Up and down the City Road / In and out the Eagle / That's the way the money goes / Pop goes the weasel.\" This meant that the customer had spent all his money at the Eagle, and needed to pawn his \"weasel\" to get some more. The meaning of the \"weasel\" is unclear but the two most likely definitions are: a flat iron used for finishing clothing; or rhyming slang for a coat (\"weasel and stoat\").\nA few pubs have stage performances such as serious drama, stand-up comedy, musical bands, cabaret or striptease; however, juke boxes, karaoke and other forms of pre-recorded music have otherwise replaced the musical tradition of a piano or guitar and singing.\nPublic bar.\nThe public bar, or tap room, was where the working class were expected to congregate and drink. It had unfurnished floorboards, sometimes covered with sawdust to absorb the spitting and spillages (known as \"spit and sawdust\"), bare bench seats and stools. Drinks were generally lower-quality beers and liquors. Public bars were seen as exclusive areas for only men; strictly enforced social etiquettes barred women from entering public bars (some pubs did not lift this rule until the 1980s). In the Manchester area, the public bar was known as the \"vault\", other rooms being the lounge and snug as usual elsewhere. The vault was a men-only bar, meant for working men in their dirty working clothes.\nThis style was in marked contrast to the adjacent saloon or lounge bar which, by the early 20th century, was where male or accompanied female middle-class drinkers would drink. It had carpeted floors, upholstered seats, and a wider selection of better quality drinks that cost a penny or two more than those served in the public bar.\nBy the mid-20th century, the standard of the public bar had generally improved. Many were built between the world wars as part of the \"improved\" pub movement and as \"roadhouse\" inns\u2014with large car parks to attract passing trade. Pub patrons only had to choose between economy and exclusivity (or youth and age: a jukebox or dartboard). By the 1970s, divisions between saloons and public bars were being phased out, usually by the removal of the dividing wall or partition. While the names of saloon and public bar may still be seen on the doors of pubs, the prices (and often the standard of furnishings and decoration) are the same throughout the premises. Most present day pubs now comprise one large room, although with the advent of gastropubs, some establishments have returned to maintaining distinct rooms or areas.\nSnug.\nThe \"snug\" was a small private room or area, typically with access to the bar and a frosted glass window above head height. Customers in the snug paid a higher price for beer and nobody could look in and see the drinkers. Not only did wealthy visitors use these rooms, but also patrons who preferred not to be seen in the public bar. Ladies often enjoyed a private drink in the snug in a time when many frowned on women visiting a pub. The local police officer might nip in for a quiet pint, the parish priest for his evening whisky, or lovers for a rendezvous.\nThe Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) has surveyed the 50,000 pubs in Britain and it believes that there are very few pubs that still have classic snugs. These are on a historic interiors list in order that they can be preserved.\nCounter.\nThe pub took the concept of the bar counter to serve the beer from gin palaces in the 18th century. Until that time beer establishments used to bring the beer out to the table or benches, as remains the practice in (for example) beer gardens and some other drinking establishments in Germany. A bar might be provided for the manager or publican to do paperwork while keeping an eye on his or her customers, and the term \"bar\" applied to the publican's office where one was built, but beer would be tapped directly from a cask or barrel on a table, or kept in a separate taproom and brought out in jugs.\nWhen purpose built Victorian pubs were built after the Beerhouse Act 1830, the main room was the public room with a large serving bar copied from the gin houses, the idea being to serve the maximum number of people in the shortest possible time. The other, more private, rooms had no serving bar\u2014they had the beer brought to them from the public bar. A number of pubs in the Midlands or the North still retain this set up, though now customers fetch the drinks themselves from the taproom or public bar. One of these is the Vine, known locally as the Bull and Bladder, in Brierley Hill near Birmingham, another the Cock at Broom, Bedfordshire a series of small rooms served drinks and food by waiting staff. By the early 1970s there was a tendency to change to one large drinking room as breweries were eager to invest in interior design and theming.\nIsambard Kingdom Brunel, the British engineer and railway builder, introduced the idea of a circular bar into the Swindon station pub in order that customers were served quickly and did not delay his trains. These island bars became popular as they also allowed staff to serve customers in several different rooms surrounding the bar.\nBeer engine.\nA \"beer engine\" is a device for pumping beer, originally manually operated and typically used to dispense beer from a cask or container in a pub's basement or cellar.\nThe first beer pump known in England is believed to have been invented by John Lofting, a Dutch-born, London-based inventor, manufacturer, and merchant, in the late 1680s or early 1690s. The London Gazette of 17 March 1691 published a patent in favour of John Lofting for a fire engine, but remarked upon and recommended another invention of his, for a beer pump:\n\"Whereas their Majesties [i.e., William III of England and Mary II of England] have been Graciously Pleased to grant Letters patent to John Lofting of London Merchant for a New Invented Engine for Extinguishing Fires which said Engine have found every great encouragement. The said Patentee hath also projected a Very Useful Engine for starting of beer and other liquors which will deliver from 20 to 30 barrels an hour which are completely fixed with Brass Joints and Screws at Reasonable Rates. Any Person that hath occasion for the said Engines may apply themselves to the Patentee at his house near St Thomas Apostle London or to Mr. Nicholas Wall at the Workshoppe near Saddlers Wells at Islington or to Mr. William Tillcar, Turner, his agent at his house in Woodtree next door to the Sun Tavern London.\"\nA further engine was invented in the late 18th century by the locksmith and hydraulic engineer Joseph Bramah (1748\u20131814).\nStrictly the term refers to the pump itself, which is normally manually operated, though electrically powered and gas powered pumps are occasionally used. When manually powered, the term \"handpump\" is often used to refer to both the pump and the associated handle.\nCompanies.\nIn the 18th century, after the development of the large London Porter breweries, a trend grew for pubs to become \"tied houses\" that only sold beer from a single brewery. (A pub not 'tied' in this way was called a free house.) The usual arrangement for a tied house was that the brewery owned the pub but rented it out to a private individual (landlord) who ran it as a separate business (even though contracted to buy the beer from the brewery). Another common arrangement was (and is) for the landlord to own the premises (whether freehold or leasehold) independently of the brewer, but then to take a mortgage loan from a brewery, either to finance the purchase of the pub initially, or to refurbish it, and be required as a term of the loan to observe the solus tie.\nIn the late 20th century, breweries increasingly ran their pubs directly, using managers rather than tenants. Most such breweries, such as the regional brewery Shepherd Neame in Kent and Young's and Fuller's in London, control hundreds of pubs in a particular region of the UK, while a few, such as Greene King, are spread nationally. The landlord of a tied pub may be an employee of the brewery\u2014in which case, they are a manager of a managed house\u2014or a self-employed tenant under a lease agreement with a brewery that obligates (trade tie) them to purchase only that brewery's beer. The beer selection is mainly limited to beers brewed by that particular company. The Beer Orders, passed in 1989, were aimed at getting tied houses to offer at least one alternative beer, known as a guest beer, from another brewery. This law has now been repealed but while in force it dramatically altered the industry. Some pubs still offer a regularly changing selection of guest beers.\nOrganisations such as Wetherspoons, Punch Taverns and O'Neill's were formed in the UK in the wake of the Beer Orders. A PubCo is a company involved in the retailing but not the manufacture of beverages, while a Pub chain may be run either by a PubCo or by a brewery. In 2016, a number of the largest PubCo's were regulated, and tied tenants in England and Wales got new statutory rights to go free of tie or to have disputes heard by the Pubs Code Adjudicator.\nPubs within a chain usually have items in common\u2014such as fittings, promotions, ambience, and food and drink menu. A pub chain positions itself in the marketplace for a target clientele. One company may run several pub chains aimed at different segments of the market. Pubs for use in a chain are bought and sold in large units, often from regional breweries that then close down. Newly acquired pubs are often renamed by the new owners, and many people resent the loss of traditional names, especially if their favourite regional beer disappears at the same time.\nIn 2009 about half of Britain's pubs were owned by large pub companies.\nBrewery tap.\nA brewery tap, also called a brewpub or taproom, is the nearest outlet for a brewery's beers. It is usually a room or bar in the brewery itself, although the name may be applied to a nearby pub.\nTypes.\nA pub has no strict definition, but CAMRA states that a pub has four characteristics:\nTogether these characteristics differentiate pubs from restaurants and hotel bars, although some pubs also serve as restaurants or hotels.\nGastropub.\nA gastropub is a hybrid pub and restaurant, notable for serving good quality beer, wine and food. The name is a portmanteau of \"gastronomy\" and \"public house\", and was coined in 1991 when David Eyre and Mike Belben took over the Eagle pub in Clerkenwell, London. The concept of a restaurant in a pub reinvigorated both pub culture and British dining, though it has also attracted criticism for potentially removing the character of traditional pubs.\nIn 2011, \"The Good Food Guide\" suggested that the term has become irrelevant such is its commonality these days.\nCountry pub.\nA \"country pub\" is simply a rural drinking establishment, though the term has acquired a romantic image typically of thatched roofs and whitewashed stone walls. As with urban pubs, the country pub can function as a social and recreational centre, providing opportunities for people to meet, exchange news, and cooperate on local charitable events. However, that culture of functioning as a social centre for a village and rural community started to diminish in the latter part of the 20th century, as many country pubs either closed down, or were converted to restaurants or gastropubs. Those country pubs located on main routes may once have been coaching inns, providing accommodation or refreshment for travellers before the advent of motorised transport.\nRoadhouse.\nThe term roadhouse was originally applied to a coaching inn, but with the advent of popular travel by motor car in the 1920s and 1930s in the United Kingdom, a new type of roadhouse emerged, often located on the newly constructed arterial roads and bypasses. They were large establishments offering meals and refreshment and accommodation to motorists and parties travelling by charabanc. The largest roadhouses boasted facilities such as tennis courts and swimming pools. Their popularity ended with the outbreak of the Second World War when recreational road travel became impossible, and the advent of post-war drunk driving legislation prevented their full recovery. Many of these establishments are now operated as pub restaurants or fast food outlets.\nTheme pub.\nA theme pub is a pub that aligns itself to a specific culture, style or activity; often with the intention of attracting a niche clientele. Many are decorated and furnished accordingly, with the theme sometimes dictating the style of food or drink on offer too. Examples of theme pubs include sports bars, rock pubs, biker bars, Goth pubs, strip clubs, karaoke bars and Irish pubs.\nMicropubs.\nIn Britain, a micropub is a very small, modern, one-room pub founded on principles set up by Martyn Hillier, the creator of the first micropub, the Butchers Arms in Herne, Kent, in 2005. Micropubs are \"based upon good ale and lively banter\", commonly with a strong focus on local cask ale. It became easier to start a small pub after the passing of the 2003 Licensing Act, which became effective in 2005.\nOther.\nA \"nolo\" or \"no lo\" pub serves only non-alcoholic and low-alcoholic beverages. A temperance bar serves no alcohol at all.\nPub signs.\nIn 1393, King Richard II of England compelled landlords to erect signs outside their premises. The legislation stated \"Whosoever shall brew ale in the town with intention of selling it must hang out a sign, otherwise he shall forfeit his ale.\" This law was to make alehouses easily visible to passing inspectors, borough ale tasters, who would decide the quality of the ale they provided. William Shakespeare's father, John Shakespeare, was one such inspector.\nAnother important factor was that during the Middle Ages a large proportion of the population were illiterate and so pictures on a sign were more useful than words as a means of identifying a public house. For this reason there was often no reason to write the establishment's name on the sign and inns opened without a formal written name, the name being derived later from the illustration on the pub's sign.\nThe earliest signs were often not painted but consisted, for example, of paraphernalia connected with the brewing process such as bunches of hops or brewing implements, which were suspended above the door of the pub. In some cases local nicknames, farming terms and puns were used. Local events were often commemorated in pub signs. Simple natural or religious symbols such as suns, stars and crosses were incorporated into pub signs, sometimes adapted to incorporate elements of the heraldry (e.g., the coat of arms) of the local lords who owned the lands upon which the pub stood. Some pubs have Latin inscriptions.\nOther subjects that lent themselves to visual depiction included the name of battles (e.g. Trafalgar), explorers, local notables, discoveries, sporting heroes and members of the royal family. Some pub signs are in the form of a pictorial pun or rebus. For example, a pub in Crowborough, East Sussex called \"The Crow and Gate\" had for some years an image of a crow with gates as wings. A \"British Path\u00e9 News \" film of 1956 shows artist Michael Farrar-Bell at work producing inn signs.\nMost British pubs still have decorated signs hanging over their doors, and these retain their original function of enabling the identification of the pub. Today's pub signs almost always bear the name of the pub, both in words and in pictorial representation. The more remote country pubs often have stand-alone signs directing potential customers to their door.\nNames.\nPub names are used to identify and differentiate each pub. Modern names are sometimes a marketing ploy or attempt to create \"brand awareness\", frequently using a comic theme thought to be memorable, \"Slug and Lettuce\" for a pub chain being an example. Interesting origins are not confined to old or traditional names, however. Names and their origins can be broken up into a relatively small number of categories.\nAs many pubs are centuries old, many of their early customers were unable to read, and pictorial signs could be readily recognised when lettering and words could not be read.\nPubs often have traditional names. A common name is the \"Marquis of Granby\". These pubs were named after John Manners, Marquess of Granby, who was the son of John Manners, 3rd Duke of Rutland and a general in the 18th-century British Army. He showed a great concern for the welfare of his men, and on their retirement, provided funds for many of them to establish taverns, which were subsequently named after him. All pubs granted their licence in 1780 were called the Royal George, after King George III, and the twentieth anniversary of his coronation.\nSome names for pubs that seem absurd or whimsical have come from corruptions of old slogans or phrases, such as the Bag o'Nails (Bacchanals), the Goat and Compasses (God Encompasseth Us), the Cat and the Fiddle (\"Chaton Fid\u00e8le\": Faithful Kitten) and the Bull and Bush, which purportedly celebrates the victory of Henry VIII at \"Boulogne Bouche\" or Boulogne-sur-Mer Harbour.\nEntertainment.\nTraditional games are played in pubs, ranging from the well-known darts, skittles, dominoes, cards and bar billiards, to the more obscure Aunt Sally, nine men's morris quoits, and ringing the bull. In the UK betting is legally limited to certain games such as cribbage or dominoes, played for small stakes. In recent decades the game of pool (both the British and American versions) has increased in popularity as well as other table based games such as snooker or table football becoming common.\nIncreasingly, more modern games such as video games and slot machines are provided. Pubs hold special events, from tournaments of the aforementioned games to karaoke nights to pub quizzes. Some play pop music and hip-hop (dance bar), or show football and rugby union on big screen televisions (sports bar). Shove ha'penny and Bat and trap were also popular in pubs south of London.\nSome pubs in the UK also have football teams composed of regular customers. Many of these teams are in leagues that play matches on Sundays, hence the term \"Sunday League Football\". Bowling is found in association with pubs in some parts of the country and the local team plays matches against teams invited from elsewhere on the pub's bowling green.\nPubs may be venues for pub songs and live music. During the 1970s pubs provided an outlet for a number of bands, such as Kilburn and the High Roads, Dr. Feelgood and the Kursaal Flyers, who formed a musical genre called pub rock that was a precursor to punk music.\nFood.\nSome pubs have a long tradition of serving food, dating back to their historic usage as inns and hotels where travellers would stay.\nMany pubs were drinking establishments, and little emphasis was placed on the serving of food, other than sandwiches and \"bar snacks\", such as pork scratchings, pickled eggs, salted crisps and peanuts. These all helped to increase beer sales. In South East England (especially London) it was common until recent times for vendors of cockles, whelks, mussels, and other shellfish to sell them during the evening and at closing time. Many mobile shellfish stalls would set up near pubs, a practice that continues in London's East End. Otherwise, pickled cockles and mussels may be offered by the pub in jars or packets.\nStarting in the 1950s, some British pubs would offer \"a pie and a pint\", with hot individual steak and ale pies made easily on the premises by the proprietor's wife during the lunchtime opening hours. The ploughman's lunch became popular in the late 1960s, as did the convenient \"chicken in a basket\", a portion of roast chicken with chips, served on a napkin in a wicker basket.\nFamily chain pubs that serve food in the evening gained popularity in the 1970s, and included Berni Inn and Beefeater.\nQuality dropped but variety increased with the introduction of microwave ovens and frozen food. \"Pub grub\" expanded to include British food items such as steak and ale pie, shepherd's pie, fish and chips, bangers and mash, Sunday roast, ploughman's lunch, chicken tikka masala, and pasties. In addition, dishes such as burgers, chicken wings, lasagne and chilli con carne are often served. Some pubs offer elaborate hot and cold snacks free to customers at Sunday lunchtimes, to prevent them getting hungry and leaving for their lunch at home.\nSince the 1990s, food has become a more important part of a pub's trade, and today most pubs serve lunches and dinners at the table in addition to (or instead of) snacks consumed at the bar. They may have a separate dining room. Some pubs serve meals to a higher standard, to match good restaurant standards; these are sometimes termed gastropubs.\nListed.\nCAMRA maintains a \"National Inventory\" of historical notability and of architecturally and decoratively notable pubs. The National Trust owns thirty-six public houses of historic interest including the George Inn, Southwark, London and the Crown Liquor Saloon, Belfast, Northern Ireland.\nRecords.\nHighest and remotest.\nThe highest pub in the United Kingdom is the Tan Hill Inn, North Yorkshire, at above sea level. The remotest pub on the British mainland is the Old Forge in the village of Inverie, Lochaber, Scotland. There is no road access and it may only be reached by an walk over mountains, or a sea crossing.\nSmallest.\nContenders for the smallest public house in the UK include:\nThe list includes a small number of parlour pubs, one of which is the Sun Inn in Leintwardine, Herefordshire.\nThe smallest public house in Wales is claimed by Y Goron Fach (the Little Crown) in Denbigh, with a single bar of .\nLargest.\nThe largest pub in the UK is the Royal Victoria Pavilion, in Ramsgate, Kent. The venue was previously a casino and before that a theatre.\nOldest.\nA number of pubs claim to be the oldest surviving establishment in the United Kingdom, although in several cases original buildings have been demolished and replaced on the same site. Others are ancient buildings that were used for purposes other than as a pub previously in their history. Some notable claims include:\nLongest and shortest name.\nThe town of Stalybridge in Greater Manchester is thought to have the pubs with both the longest and shortest names in the United Kingdom \u2013 The Old Thirteenth Cheshire Astley Volunteer Rifleman Corps Inn and the Q Inn, both operating as of 2019[ [update]] (the Rifleman reopening in new premises, moving from Astley Street to premises two doors away from the Q Inn in Market Street in 2019, after being closed for three years). The original Rifleman building retains a pub sign, and a blue plaque from 1995 recording the recognition of the name in the Guinness Book of Records.\nCultural associations.\nInns and taverns feature throughout English literature and poetry, from the Tabard Inn in Chaucer's \"Canterbury Tales\" onwards.\nThe highwayman Dick Turpin used the Swan Inn at Woughton-on-the-Green in Buckinghamshire as his base. Jamaica Inn near Bolventor in Cornwall gave its name to a 1936 novel by Daphne du Maurier and a 1939 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. In the 1920s John Fothergill (1876\u20131957) was the innkeeper of the Spread Eagle in Thame, Berkshire, and published his autobiography: \"An Innkeeper's Diary\" (London: Chatto & Windus, 1931). During his idiosyncratic occupancy many famous people came to stay, such as H. G. Wells. United States president George W. Bush fulfilled his lifetime ambition of visiting a 'genuine British pub' during his November 2003 state visit to the UK when he had lunch and a pint of non-alcoholic lager (Bush being a teetotaler) with British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the Dun Cow pub in Sedgefield, County Durham, in Blair's home constituency. There were approximately 53,500 public houses in 2009 in the United Kingdom. This number has been declining every year, so that nearly half of the smaller villages no longer have a local pub.\nLondon.\nMany of London's pubs are known to have been used by famous people, but in some cases, such as the association between Samuel Johnson and Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, this is speculative, based on little more than the fact that the person is known to have lived nearby. However, Charles Dickens is known to have visited the Cheshire Cheese, the Prospect of Whitby, Ye Olde Cock Tavern and many others. Samuel Pepys is also associated with the Prospect of Whitby and the Cock Tavern.\nThe Fitzroy Tavern is a pub situated at 16 Charlotte Street in the Fitzrovia district, to which it gives its name. It became famous (or according to others, infamous) during a period spanning the 1920s to the mid-1950s as a meeting place for many of London's artists, intellectuals and bohemians such as Dylan Thomas, Augustus John, and George Orwell. Several establishments in Soho, London, have associations with well-known, post-war literary and artistic figures, including the Pillars of Hercules, the Colony Room and the Coach and Horses. The Canonbury Tavern, Canonbury, was the prototype for Orwell's ideal English pub, \"The Moon Under Water\".\nThe Red Lion in Whitehall is close to the Palace of Westminster and is consequently used by political journalists and Members of Parliament (MPs). The pub is equipped with a Division bell that summons MPs back to the chamber when they are required to take part in a vote. The Punch Bowl, Mayfair was at one time jointly owned by Madonna and Guy Ritchie. The Coleherne public house in Earls Court was a well-known gay pub from the 1950s. It attracted many well-known patrons, such as Freddie Mercury, Kenny Everett and Rudolph Nureyev. It was used by the serial-killer Colin Ireland to pick up victims.\nJack Straw's Castle was a pub named after Jack Straw, one of the three leaders of Peasants' Revolt, the pub was active since the 14th century until its destruction by the Blitz during the Second World War.\nIn 1966 the Blind Beggar in Whitechapel became infamous as the scene of a murder committed by gangster Ronnie Kray. The Ten Bells is associated with several of the victims of Jack the Ripper. In 1955, Ruth Ellis, the last woman executed in the United Kingdom, shot David Blakely as he emerged from the Magdala in South Hill Park, Hampstead, the bullet holes can still be seen in the walls outside. It is said that Vladimir Lenin and a young Joseph Stalin met in the Crown and Anchor pub (now known as the Crown Tavern) on Clerkenwell Green when the latter was visiting London in 1903.\nThe Angel, Islington was formerly a coaching inn, the first on the Great North Road, the main route northwards out of London, where Thomas Paine is believed to have written much of \"Rights of Man\" (1791). It was mentioned by Charles Dickens, became a Lyons Corner House, and is now a Co-operative Bank.\nOxford and Cambridge.\nThe Eagle and Child and the Lamb and Flag, Oxford, were regular meeting places of the Inklings, a writers' group that included J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. The Eagle in Cambridge is where Francis Crick interrupted patrons' lunchtime on 28 February 1953 to announce that he and James Watson had \"discovered the secret of life\" after they had come up with their proposal for the structure of DNA. The anecdote is related in Watson's book \"The Double Helix\". and commemorated with a blue plaque on the outside wall.\nOutside Great Britain.\nAlthough \"British\" pubs found outside of Britain and its former colonies are often themed bars owing little to the original British pub, a number of \"true\" pubs may be found around the world.\nIn Scandinavia, especially Denmark, a number of pubs that eschew \"theming\" have opened. They instead focus on providing carefully conditioned beer, often independent of any particular brewery or chain, in an environment not unfamiliar to a British pub-goer. Some import British cask ale, rather than beer in kegs, to provide the full British real ale experience to their customers. This newly established Danish interest in British cask beer and the British pub tradition is reflected by the fact that some 56 British cask beers were available at the 2008 European Beer Festival in Copenhagen, which was attended by more than 20,000 people.\nIn Ireland, pubs are known for their atmosphere or \"craic\". In Irish, a pub is referred to as \"teach t\u00e1bhairne\" (\"tavernhouse\") or \"teach \u00f3il\" (\"drinkinghouse\"). Live music, either sessions of traditional Irish music or varieties of modern popular music, is frequently featured in the pubs of Ireland. Pubs in Northern Ireland are largely identical to their counterparts in the Republic of Ireland except for the lack of spirit grocers. A side effect of the Troubles was that the lack of a tourist industry meant that a higher proportion of traditional bars have survived the wholesale refitting of Irish pub interiors in the \"English style\" in the 1950s and 1960s. New Zealand sports a number of Irish pubs.\nPubs have a long history in Canada, with some still operating after 200 years, like the Olde Angel Inn in Niagara-on-the-Lake. An \"English-looking\" pub trend started in the 1990s, built into existing storefronts, often run by corporate pub firms. Most universities in Canada have campus pubs that are central to student life\u2014serving food and drink as well as hosting social events. Often these pubs are run by the student's union and at some universities, a budget is reserved for course pub nights. The gastropub concept has caught on, as traditional British influences are to be found in many Canadian dishes. Aside from pubs, the term \"bar\" can refer to themed drinking establishments, sports bars, or cocktail bars, or to the physical counter in a pub. Tavern was previously a popular term, though it has become somewhat antiquated.\nIn South Africa pubs and taverns have had a particularly long and notable presence in the city of Cape Town. Prior to the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, Cape Town was a major trading port between Europe and Asia and hosted a very large number of drinking establishments earning the city the moniker \"Tavern of the Seas\". The oldest currently operating pub in South Africa, and one of the last drinking establishments left from the \"Tavern of the Seas\" era, is the Perseverance Tavern opened in 1808.\nIn fiction.\nPubs are a common setting for fictional works, including novels, stories, films, video games, and other works. In many cases, authors and other creators develop imaginary pubs for their works, some of which have become notable fictional places. Notable fictional pubs include The Admiral Benbow Inn in the \"Treasure Island\" pirate story, the Garrison in the 1920s crime TV drama \"Peaky Blinders\", the Golden Perch, the Prancing Pony, and the Green Dragon in the high fantasy novel \"The Lord of the Rings\", the Leaky Cauldron and the Hog's Head in the \"Harry Potter\" fantasy series, Moe's Tavern, a working-class venue in \"The Simpsons\", and the Oak and Crosier in the video game \".\"\nThe major soap operas on British television each feature a fictional pub, and these pubs have become household names in Britain. The Rovers Return is the pub in \"Coronation Street\", the British soap broadcast on ITV. The Queen Vic (short for the Queen Victoria) is the pub in \"EastEnders\", the major soap on BBC One and the Woolpack in ITV's \"Emmerdale\". The sets of each of the three major television soap operas have been visited by some of the members of the royal family, including Queen Elizabeth II. The centrepiece of each visit was a trip into the Rovers, the Queen Vic, or the Woolpack to be offered a drink.\nThe Bull in the BBC Radio 4 soap opera \"The Archers\" is an important meeting point.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["24578", "5884"], "permutation_1": ["24578", "5884"], "permutation_2": ["5884", "24578"], "permutation_3": ["24578", "5884"]}
{"id": "2hop__37715_99606", "docs_added": {"30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "25814008": "Protestantism\nMajor branch of Christianity\nProtestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes justification of sinners through faith alone, the teaching that salvation comes by unmerited divine grace, the priesthood of all believers, and the Bible as the sole infallible source of authority for Christian faith and practice. The five \"solae\" summarize the basic theological beliefs of mainstream Protestantism.\nProtestants follow the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began in the 16th century with the goal of reforming the Catholic Church from perceived errors, abuses, and discrepancies. The Reformation began in the Holy Roman Empire in 1517, when Martin Luther published his \"Ninety-five Theses\" as a reaction against abuses in the sale of indulgences by the Catholic Church, which purported to offer the remission of the temporal punishment of sins to their purchasers. The term, however, derives from the letter of protestation from German Lutheran princes in 1529 against an edict of the Diet of Speyer condemning the teachings of Martin Luther as heretical. In the 16th century, Lutheranism spread from Germany into Denmark\u2013Norway, Sweden, Finland, Livonia, and Iceland. Calvinist churches spread in Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Scotland, Switzerland, France, Poland and Lithuania, led by Protestant Reformers such as John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli and John Knox. The political separation of the Church of England from the Catholic Church under King Henry VIII began Anglicanism, bringing England and Wales into this broad Reformation movement, under the leadership of reformer Thomas Cranmer, whose work forged Anglican doctrine and identity.\nProtestantism is diverse, being divided into various denominations on the basis of theology and ecclesiology, not forming a single structure as with the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy or Oriental Orthodoxy. Protestants adhere to the concept of an invisible church, in contrast to the Catholic, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, the Assyrian Church of the East, and the Ancient Church of the East, which all understand themselves as the one and only original church\u2014the \"one true church\"\u2014founded by Jesus Christ (though certain Protestant denominations, including historic Lutheranism, hold to this position). Some denominations do have a worldwide scope and distribution of church membership, while others are confined to a single country. A majority of Protestants are members of a handful of Protestant denominational families; Adventists, Anabaptists, Anglicans/Episcopalians, Baptists, Calvinist/Reformed, Lutherans, Methodists, Moravians, Pentecostals, Plymouth Brethren, Presbyterians, and Quakers. Nondenominational, charismatic and independent churches are also on the rise, having recently expanded rapidly throughout much of the world, and constitute a significant part of Protestantism. These various movements, collectively labeled \"popular Protestantism\" by scholars such as Peter L. Berger, have been called one of the contemporary world's most dynamic religious movements. There are currently more than 1.18 billion Protestants worldwide.<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nTerminology.\nProtestant.\nSix princes of the Holy Roman Empire and rulers of fourteen Imperial Free Cities, who issued a protest (or dissent) against the edict of the Diet of Speyer (1529), were the first individuals to be called Protestants. The edict reversed concessions made to the Lutherans with the approval of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V three years earlier. The term \"protestant\", though initially purely political in nature, later acquired a broader sense, referring to a member of any Western church which subscribed to the main Protestant principles. A Protestant is an adherent of any of those Christian bodies that separated from the Church of Rome during the Reformation, or of any group descended from them.\nDuring the Reformation, the term \"protestant\" was hardly used outside of German politics. People who were involved in the religious movement used the word \"evangelical\" (). For further details, see the section below. Gradually, \"protestant\" became a general term, meaning any adherent of the Reformation in the German-speaking area. It was ultimately somewhat taken up by Lutherans, even though Martin Luther himself insisted on \"Christian\" or \"evangelical\" as the only acceptable names for individuals who professed faith in Christ. French and Swiss Protestants instead preferred the word \"reformed\" (), which became a popular, neutral, and alternative name for Calvinists.\nEvangelical.\nThe word \"evangelical\" (), which refers to the gospel, was widely used for those involved in the religious movement in the German-speaking area beginning in 1517. \"Evangelical\" is still preferred among some of the historical Protestant denominations in the Lutheran, Calvinist, and United (Lutheran and Reformed) Protestant traditions in Europe, and those with strong ties to them. Above all the term is used by Protestant bodies in the German-speaking area, such as the Protestant Church in Germany. Thus, the German word ' means Protestant, while the German ', refers to churches shaped by Evangelicalism. The English word \"evangelical\" usually refers to evangelical Protestant churches, and therefore to a certain part of Protestantism rather than to Protestantism as a whole. The English word traces its roots back to the Puritans in England, where Evangelicalism originated, and then was brought to the United States.\nMartin Luther always disliked the term \"Lutheran\", preferring the term \"evangelical\", which was derived from \"euangelion\", a Greek word meaning \"good news\", i.e. \"gospel\". The followers of John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, and other theologians linked to the Reformed tradition also began to use that term. To distinguish the two evangelical groups, others began to refer to the two groups as \"Evangelical Lutheran\" and \"Evangelical Reformed\". The word also pertains in the same way to some other mainline groups, for example \"Evangelical Methodist\". As time passed by, the word \"evangelical\" was dropped. Lutherans themselves began to use the term \"Lutheran\" in the middle of the 16th century, in order to distinguish themselves from other groups such as the Philippists and Calvinists.\nReformational.\nThe German word ', which roughly translates to English as \"reformational\" or \"reforming\", is used as an alternative for ' in German, and is different from English \"reformed\" (), which refers to churches shaped by ideas of John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, and other Reformed theologians. Derived from the word \"Reformation\", the term emerged around the same time as \"Evangelical\" (1517) and \"Protestant\" (1529).\nTheology.\nMain principles.\nMany experts have proposed criteria to determine whether a Christian denomination should be considered part of Protestantism. A common consensus approved by most of them is that if a Christian denomination is to be considered Protestant, it must acknowledge the following three fundamental principles of Protestantism.\nScripture alone.\nThe belief, emphasized by Luther, in the Bible as the highest source of authority for the church. The early churches of the Reformation believed in a critical, yet serious, reading of scripture and holding the Bible as a source of authority higher than that of church tradition. The many abuses that had occurred in the Western Church before the Protestant Reformation led the Reformers to reject much of its tradition. In the early 20th century, a less critical reading of the Bible developed in the United States\u2014leading to a \"fundamentalist\" reading of Scripture. Christian fundamentalists read the Bible as the \"inerrant, infallible\" Word of God, as do the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran churches, but interpret it in a literalist fashion without using the historical-critical method. Methodists and Anglicans differ from Lutherans and the Reformed on this doctrine as they teach \"prima scriptura\", which holds that Scripture is the primary source for Christian doctrine, but that \"tradition, experience, and reason\" can nurture the Christian religion as long as they are in harmony with the Bible (Protestant canon).\n\"Biblical Christianity\" focused on a deep study of the Bible is characteristic of most Protestants as opposed to \"Church Christianity\", focused on performing rituals and good works, represented by Catholic and Orthodox traditions. However, Quakers, Pentecostalists and Spiritual Christians emphasize the Holy Spirit and personal closeness to God.\nJustification by faith alone.\nThe belief that believers are justified, or pardoned for sin, solely on condition of faith in Christ rather than a combination of faith and good works. For Protestants, good works are a necessary consequence rather than cause of justification. However, while justification is by faith alone, there is the position that faith is not \"nuda fides\". John Calvin explained that \"it is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone: just as it is the heat alone of the sun which warms the earth, and yet in the sun it is not alone.\" Lutheran and Reformed Christians differ from Methodists in their understanding of this doctrine.\nUniversal priesthood of believers.\nThe universal priesthood of believers implies the right and duty of the Christian laity not only to read the Bible in the vernacular, but also to take part in the government and all the public affairs of the Church. It is opposed to the hierarchical system which puts the essence and authority of the Church in an exclusive priesthood, and which makes ordained priests the necessary mediators between God and the people. It is distinguished from the concept of the priesthood of all believers, which did not grant individuals the right to interpret the Bible apart from the Christian community at large because universal priesthood opened the door to such a possibility. There are scholars who cite that this doctrine tends to subsume all distinctions in the church under a single spiritual entity. Calvin referred to the universal priesthood as an expression of the relation between the believer and his God, including the freedom of a Christian to come to God through Christ without human mediation. He also maintained that this principle recognizes Christ as prophet, priest, and king and that his priesthood is shared with his people.\nTrinity.\nProtestants who adhere to the Nicene Creed believe in three persons (God the Father, God the Son, and the God the Holy Spirit) as one God.\nMovements that emerged around the time of the Protestant Reformation, but are not a part of Protestantism (e.g. Unitarianism), reject the Trinity. This often serves as a reason for exclusion of the Unitarian Universalism, Oneness Pentecostalism, and other movements from Protestantism by various observers. Unitarianism continues to have a presence mainly in Transylvania, England, and the United States.\nFive solae.\nThe Five ' are five Latin phrases (or slogans) that emerged during the Protestant Reformation and summarize the reformers' basic differences in theological beliefs in opposition to the teaching of the Catholic Church of the day. The Latin word ' means \"alone\", \"only\", or \"single\".\nThe use of the phrases as summaries of teaching emerged over time during the Reformation, based on the overarching Lutheran and Reformed principle of \"\" (by scripture alone). This idea contains the four main doctrines on the Bible: that its teaching is needed for salvation (necessity); that all the doctrine necessary for salvation comes from the Bible alone (sufficiency); that everything taught in the Bible is correct (inerrancy); and that, by the Holy Spirit overcoming sin, believers may read and understand truth from the Bible itself, though understanding is difficult, so the means used to guide individual believers to the true teaching is often mutual discussion within the church (clarity).\nThe necessity and inerrancy were well-established ideas, garnering little criticism, though they later came under debate from outside during the Enlightenment. The most contentious idea at the time though was the notion that anyone could simply pick up the Bible and learn enough to gain salvation. Though the reformers were concerned with ecclesiology (the doctrine of how the church as a body works), they had a different understanding of the process in which truths in scripture were applied to life of believers, compared to the Catholics' idea that certain people within the church, or ideas that were old enough, had a special status in giving understanding of the text.\nThe second main principle, ' (by faith alone), states that faith in Christ is sufficient alone for eternal salvation and justification. Though argued from scripture, and hence logically consequent to ', this is the guiding principle of the work of Luther and the later reformers. Because ' placed the Bible as the only source of teaching, ' epitomizes the main thrust of the teaching the reformers wanted to get back to, namely the direct, close, personal connection between Christ and the believer, hence the reformers' contention that their work was Christocentric.\nThe other solas, as statements, emerged later, but the thinking they represent was also part of the early Reformation.\n The Protestants characterize the dogma concerning the Pope as Christ's representative head of the Church on earth, the concept of works made meritorious by Christ, and the Catholic idea of a treasury of the merits of Christ and his saints, as a denial that Christ is the \"only\" mediator between God and man. Catholics, on the other hand, maintained the traditional understanding of Judaism on these questions, and appealed to the universal consensus of Christian tradition.\n Protestants perceived Catholic salvation to be dependent upon the grace of God and the merits of one's own works. The reformers posited that salvation is a gift of God (i.e., God's act of free grace), dispensed by the Holy Spirit owing to the redemptive work of Jesus Christ alone. Consequently, they argued that a sinner is not accepted by God on account of the change wrought in the believer by God's grace, and that the believer is accepted without regard for the merit of his works, for no one \"deserves\" salvation.\n All glory is due to God alone since salvation is accomplished solely through his will and action\u2014not only the gift of the all-sufficient atonement of Jesus on the cross but also the gift of faith in that atonement, created in the heart of the believer by the Holy Spirit. The reformers believed that human beings\u2014even saints canonized by the Catholic Church, the popes, and the ecclesiastical hierarchy\u2014are not worthy of the glory.\nChrist's presence in the Eucharist.\nThe Protestant movement began to diverge into several distinct branches in the mid-to-late 16th century. One of the central points of divergence was controversy over the Eucharist. Early Protestants rejected the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation, which teaches that the bread and wine used in the sacrificial rite of the Mass lose their natural substance by being transformed into the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. They disagreed with one another concerning the presence of Christ and his body and blood in Holy Communion.\nOther beliefs.\nProtestants reject the Catholic doctrine of papal supremacy, and have variant views on the number of sacraments, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and matters of ecclesiastical polity and apostolic succession.\nHistory.\nPre-Reformation.\nMany of the individual ideas that were taken up by various reformers had historical pre-cursors; however, calling them \"proto-reformers\" is controversial, as often their theology also had components that are not associated with later Protestants, or that were asserted by some Protestants but denied by others, or that were only superficially similar.\nOne of the earliest persons to be praised as a Protestant forerunner is Jovinian, who lived in the fourth century AD. He attacked monasticism, ascetism and believed that a saved believer can never be overcome by Satan.\nIn the 9th century, the theologian Gottschalk of Orbais was condemned for heresy by the Catholic Church. Gottschalk believed that the salvation of Jesus was limited and that his redemption was only for the elect. The theology of Gottschalk anticipated the Protestant reformation. Ratramnus also defended the theology of Gottschalk and denied the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist; his writings also influenced the later Protestant reformation. Claudius of Turin in the 9th century also held Protestant ideas, such as faith alone and rejection of the supremacy of Peter.\nIn the late 1130s, Arnold of Brescia, an Italian canon regular became one of the first theologians to attempt to reform the Catholic Church. After his death, his teachings on apostolic poverty gained currency among Arnoldists, and later more widely among Waldensians and the Spiritual Franciscans, though no written word of his has survived the official condemnation. In the early 1170s, Peter Waldo founded the Waldensians. He advocated an interpretation of the Gospel that led to conflicts with the Catholic Church. By 1215, the Waldensians were declared heretical and subject to persecution. Despite that, the movement continues to exist to this day in Italy, as a part of the wider Reformed tradition.\nIn the 1370s, Oxford theologian and priest John Wycliffe\u2014later dubbed the \"Morning Star of Reformation\"\u2014started his activity as an English reformer. He rejected papal authority over secular power (in that any person in mortal sin lost their authority and should be resisted: a priest with possessions, such as a pope, was in such grave sin), may have translated the Bible into vernacular English, and preached anticlerical and biblically centred reforms. His rejection of a real divine presence in the elements of the Eucharist foreshadowed Huldrych Zwingli's similar ideas in the 16th century. Wycliffe's admirers came to be known as \"Lollards\".\nBeginning in the first decade of the 15th century, Jan Hus\u2014a Catholic priest, Czech reformist and professor\u2014influenced by John Wycliffe's writings, founded the Hussite movement. He strongly advocated his reformist Bohemian religious denomination. He was excommunicated and burned at the stake in Constance, Bishopric of Constance, in 1415 by secular authorities for unrepentant and persistent heresy. After his execution, a revolt erupted. Hussites defeated five continuous crusades proclaimed against them by the Pope.\nLater theological disputes caused a split within the Hussite movement. Utraquists maintained that both the bread and the wine should be administered to the people during the Eucharist. Another major faction were the Taborites, who opposed the Utraquists in the Battle of Lipany during the Hussite Wars. There were two separate parties among the Hussites: moderate and radical movements. Other smaller regional Hussite branches in Bohemia included Adamites, Orebites, Orphans, and Praguers.\nThe Hussite Wars concluded with the victory of Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, his Catholic allies and moderate Hussites and the defeat of the radical Hussites. Tensions arose as the Thirty Years' War reached Bohemia in 1620. Both moderate and radical Hussitism was increasingly persecuted by Catholics and Holy Roman Emperor's armies.\nIn the 14th century, a German mysticist group called the Gottesfreunde criticized the Catholic church and its corruption. Many of their leaders were executed for attacking the Catholic church and they believed that God's judgement would soon come upon the church. The Gottesfreunde were a democratic lay movement and forerunner of the Reformation and put heavy stress of holiness and piety,\nStarting in 1475, an Italian Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola was calling for a Christian renewal. Later on, Martin Luther himself read some of the friar's writings and praised him as a martyr and forerunner whose ideas on faith and grace anticipated Luther's own doctrine of justification by faith alone.\nSome of Hus' followers founded the Unitas Fratrum\u2014\"Unity of the Brethren\"\u2014which was renewed under the leadership of Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf in Herrnhut, Saxony, in 1722 after its almost total destruction in the Thirty Years' War and the Counterreformation (\"Catholic Reformation\"). Today, it is usually referred to in English as the Moravian Church and in German as the Herrnhuter Br\u00fcdergemeine.\nIn the 15th century, three German theologians anticipated the reformation: Wessel Gansfort, Johann Ruchat von Wesel, and Johannes von Goch. They held ideas such as predestination, sola scriptura, and the church invisible, and denied the Catholic view on justification and the authority of the Pope, also questioning monasticism.\nWessel Gansfort also denied transubstantiation and anticipated the Lutheran view of justification by faith alone.\nReformation proper.\nThe Protestant Reformation began as an attempt to reform the Catholic Church.\nOn 31 October 1517, known as All Hallows' Eve, Martin Luther allegedly nailed his Ninety-five Theses, also known as the Disputation on the Power of Indulgences, on the door of the All Saints' Church in Wittenberg, Germany, detailing doctrinal and practical abuses of the Catholic Church, especially the selling of indulgences. The theses debated and criticized many aspects of the Church and the papacy, including the practice of purgatory, particular judgment, and the authority of the pope. Luther would later write works against the Catholic devotion to Virgin Mary, the intercession of and devotion to the saints, mandatory clerical celibacy, monasticism, the authority of the pope, the ecclesiastical law, censure and excommunication, the role of secular rulers in religious matters, the relationship between Christianity and the law, good works, and the sacraments.\nThe Reformation was a triumph of literacy and the new printing press invented by Johannes Gutenberg. Luther's translation of the Bible into German was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy, and stimulated as well the printing and distribution of religious books and pamphlets. From 1517 onward, religious pamphlets flooded much of Europe.\nFollowing the excommunication of Luther and condemnation of the Reformation by the Pope, the work and writings of John Calvin were influential in establishing a loose consensus among various groups in Switzerland, Scotland, Hungary, Germany and elsewhere. After the expulsion of its Bishop in 1526, and the unsuccessful attempts of the Bern reformer William Farel, Calvin was asked to use the organizational skill he had gathered as a student of law to discipline the city of Geneva. His \"Ordinances of 1541\" involved a collaboration of Church affairs with the city council and consistory to bring morality to all areas of life. After the establishment of the Geneva academy in 1559, Geneva became the unofficial capital of the Protestant movement, providing refuge for Protestant exiles from all over Europe and educating them as Calvinist missionaries. The faith continued to spread after Calvin's death in 1563.\nProtestantism also spread from the German lands into France, where the Protestants were nicknamed Huguenots (a term of somewhat inexplicable origin). Calvin continued to take an interest in the French religious affairs from his base in Geneva. He regularly trained pastors to lead congregations there. Despite heavy persecution, the Reformed tradition made steady progress across large sections of the nation, appealing to people alienated by the obduracy and the complacency of the Catholic establishment. French Protestantism came to acquire a distinctly political character, made all the more obvious by the conversions of nobles during the 1550s. This established the preconditions for a series of conflicts, known as the French Wars of Religion. The civil wars gained impetus with the sudden death of Henry II of France in 1559. Atrocity and outrage became the defining characteristics of the time, illustrated at their most intense in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of August 1572, when the Catholic party annihilated between 30,000 and 100,000 Huguenots across France. The wars only concluded when Henry IV of France issued the Edict of Nantes, promising official toleration of the Protestant minority, but under highly restricted conditions. Catholicism remained the official state religion, and the fortunes of French Protestants gradually declined over the next century, culminating in Louis XIV's Edict of Fontainebleau which revoked the Edict of Nantes and made Catholicism the sole legal religion once again. In response to the Edict of Fontainebleau, Frederick William I, Elector of Brandenburg declared the Edict of Potsdam, giving free passage to Huguenot refugees. In the late 17th century, many Huguenots fled to England, the Netherlands, Prussia, Switzerland, and the English and Dutch overseas colonies. A significant community in France remained in the C\u00e9vennes region.\nParallel to events in Germany, a movement began in Switzerland under the leadership of Huldrych Zwingli. Zwingli was a scholar and preacher, who in 1518 moved to Zurich. Although the two movements agreed on many issues of theology, some unresolved differences kept them separate. A long-standing resentment between the German states and the Swiss Confederation led to heated debate over how much Zwingli owed his ideas to Lutheranism. The German Prince Philip of Hesse saw potential in creating an alliance between Zwingli and Luther. A meeting was held in his castle in 1529, now known as the Colloquy of Marburg, which has become infamous for its failure. The two men could not come to any agreement due to their disputation over one key doctrine.\nIn 1534, King Henry VIII put an end to all papal jurisdiction in England, after the Pope failed to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (due to political considerations involving the Holy Roman Emperor); this opened the door to reformational ideas. Reformers in the Church of England alternated between sympathies for ancient Catholic tradition and more Reformed principles, gradually developing into a tradition considered a middle way (\"\") between the Catholic and Protestant traditions. The English Reformation followed a particular course. The different character of the English Reformation came primarily from the fact that it was driven initially by the political necessities of Henry VIII. King Henry decided to remove the Church of England from the authority of Rome. In 1534, the Act of Supremacy recognized Henry as \"the only Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England\". Between 1535 and 1540, under Thomas Cromwell, the policy known as the Dissolution of the Monasteries was put into effect. Following a brief Catholic restoration during the reign of Mary I, a loose consensus developed during the reign of Elizabeth I. The Elizabethan Religious Settlement largely formed Anglicanism into a distinctive church tradition. The compromise was uneasy and was capable of veering between extreme Calvinism on the one hand and Catholicism on the other. It was relatively successful until the Puritan Revolution or English Civil War in the 17th century.\nThe success of the Counterreformation (\"Catholic Reformation\") on the Continent and the growth of a Puritan party dedicated to further Protestant reform polarized the Elizabethan Age. The early Puritan movement was a movement for reform in the Church of England whose proponents desired for the Church of England to resemble more closely the Protestant churches of Europe, especially that of Geneva. The later Puritan movement, often referred to as dissenters and nonconformists, eventually led to the formation of various Reformed denominations.\nThe Scottish Reformation of 1560 decisively shaped the Church of Scotland. The Reformation in Scotland culminated ecclesiastically in the establishment of a church along Reformed lines, and politically in the triumph of English influence over that of France. John Knox is regarded as the leader of the Scottish Reformation. The Scottish Reformation Parliament of 1560 repudiated the pope's authority by the Papal Jurisdiction Act 1560, forbade the celebration of the Mass and approved a Protestant Confession of Faith. It was made possible by a revolution against French hegemony under the regime of the regent Mary of Guise, who had governed Scotland in the name of her absent daughter.\nSome of the most important activists of the Protestant Reformation included Jacobus Arminius, Theodore Beza, Martin Bucer, Andreas von Carlstadt, Heinrich Bullinger, Balthasar Hubmaier, Thomas Cranmer, William Farel, Thomas M\u00fcntzer, Laurentius Petri, Olaus Petri, Philipp Melanchthon, Menno Simons, Louis de Berquin, Primo\u017e Trubar and John Smyth.\nIn the course of this religious upheaval, the German Peasants' War of 1524\u201325 swept through the Bavarian, Thuringian and Swabian principalities. After the Eighty Years' War in the Low Countries and the French Wars of Religion, the confessional division of the states of the Holy Roman Empire eventually erupted in the Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648. It devastated much of Germany, killing between 25% and 40% of its population. The main tenets of the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War, were:\nPost-Reformation.\nThe Great Awakenings were periods of rapid and dramatic religious revival in Anglo-American religious history.\nThe First Great Awakening was an evangelical and revitalization movement that swept through Protestant Europe and British America, especially the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American Protestantism. It resulted from powerful preaching that gave listeners a sense of deep personal revelation of their need of salvation by Jesus Christ. Pulling away from ritual, ceremony, sacramentalism and hierarchy, it made Christianity intensely personal to the average person by fostering a deep sense of spiritual conviction and redemption, and by encouraging introspection and a commitment to a new standard of personal morality.\nThe Second Great Awakening began around 1790. It gained momentum by 1800. After 1820, membership rose rapidly among Baptist and Methodist congregations, whose preachers led the movement. It was past its peak by the late 1840s. It has been described as a reaction against skepticism, deism, and rationalism, although why those forces became pressing enough at the time to spark revivals is not fully understood. It enrolled millions of new members in existing evangelical denominations and led to the formation of new denominations.\nThe Third Great Awakening refers to a hypothetical historical period that was marked by religious activism in American history and spans the late 1850s to the early 20th century. It affected pietistic Protestant denominations and had a strong element of social activism. It gathered strength from the postmillennial belief that the Second Coming of Christ would occur after mankind had reformed the entire earth. It was affiliated with the Social Gospel Movement, which applied Christianity to social issues and gained its force from the Awakening, as did the worldwide missionary movement. New groupings emerged, such as the Holiness, Nazarene, and Christian Science movements.\nThe Fourth Great Awakening was a Christian religious awakening that some scholars\u2014most notably, Robert Fogel\u2014say took place in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, while others look at the era following World War II. The terminology is controversial. Thus, the idea of a Fourth Great Awakening itself has not been generally accepted.\nIn 1814, Le R\u00e9veil swept through Calvinist regions in Switzerland and France.\nIn 1904, a Protestant revival in Wales had a tremendous impact on the local population. A part of British modernization, it drew many people to churches, especially Methodist and Baptist ones.\nA noteworthy development in 20th-century Protestant Christianity was the rise of the modern Pentecostal movement. Sprung from Methodist and Wesleyan roots, it arose out of meetings at an urban mission on Azusa Street in Los Angeles. From there it spread around the world, carried by those who experienced what they believed to be miraculous moves of God there. These Pentecost-like manifestations have steadily been in evidence throughout history, such as seen in the two Great Awakenings. Pentecostalism, which in turn birthed the Charismatic movement within already established denominations, continues to be an important force in Western Christianity.\nIn the United States and elsewhere in the world, there has been a marked rise in the evangelical wing of Protestant denominations, especially those that are more exclusively evangelical, and a corresponding decline in the mainstream liberal churches. In the post\u2013World War I era, Liberal Christianity was on the rise, and a considerable number of seminaries held and taught from a liberal perspective as well. In the post\u2013World War II era, the trend began to swing back towards the conservative camp in America's seminaries and church structures.\nIn Europe, there has been a general move away from religious observance and belief in Christian teachings and a move towards secularism. The Enlightenment is largely responsible for the spread of secularism. Some scholars debate the link between Protestantism and the rise of secularism, and take as argument the wide-ranging freedom in Protestant-majority countries. However, the sole example of France demonstrates that even in Catholic-majority countries, the overwhelming impact of the Enlightenment has brought even stronger secularism and freedom of thought five centuries later. It is more reliable to consider that the Reformation influenced the critical thinkers of the subsequent centuries, providing intellectual, religious, and philosophical ground on which future philosophers could extend their criticism of the church, of its theological, philosophical, social assumptions of the time. One should be reminded though that initial philosophers of the Enlightenment were defending a Christian conception of the world, but it was developed together with a fierce and decisive criticism of the Church, its politics, its ethics, its worldview, its scientific and cultural assumptions, leading to the devaluation of all forms of institutionalized Christianity, which extended over the centuries.\nRadical Reformation.\nUnlike mainstream Lutheran, Calvinist and Zwinglian movements, the Radical Reformation, which had no state sponsorship, generally abandoned the idea of the \"Church visible\" as distinct from the \"Church invisible\". It was a rational extension of the state-approved Protestant dissent, which took the value of independence from constituted authority a step further, arguing the same for the civic realm. The Radical Reformation was non-mainstream, though in parts of Germany, Switzerland and Austria, a majority would sympathize with the Radical Reformation despite the intense persecution it faced from both Catholics and Magisterial Protestants.\nThe early Anabaptists believed that their reformation must purify not only theology but also the actual lives of Christians, especially their political and social relationships. Therefore, the church should not be supported by the state, neither by tithes and taxes, nor by the use of the sword; Christianity was a matter of individual conviction, which could not be forced on anyone, but rather required a personal decision for it. Protestant ecclesial leaders such as Hubmaier and Hofmann preached the invalidity of infant baptism, advocating baptism as following conversion (\"believer's baptism\") instead. This was not a doctrine new to the reformers, but was taught by earlier groups, such as the Albigenses in 1147. Though most of the Radical Reformers were Anabaptist, some did not identify themselves with the mainstream Anabaptist tradition. Thomas M\u00fcntzer was involved in the German Peasants' War. Andreas Karlstadt disagreed theologically with Huldrych Zwingli and Martin Luther, teaching nonviolence and refusing to baptize infants while not rebaptizing adult believers. Kaspar Schwenkfeld and Sebastian Franck were influenced by German mysticism and spiritualism.\nIn the view of many associated with the Radical Reformation, the Magisterial Reformation had not gone far enough. Radical Reformer, Andreas von Bodenstein Karlstadt, for example, referred to the Lutheran theologians at Wittenberg as the \"new papists\". Since the term \"magister\" also means \"teacher\", the Magisterial Reformation is also characterized by an emphasis on the authority of a teacher. This is made evident in the prominence of Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli as leaders of the reform movements in their respective areas of ministry. Because of their authority, they were often criticized by Radical Reformers as being too much like the Roman Popes. A more political side of the Radical Reformation can be seen in the thought and practice of Hans Hut, although typically Anabaptism has been associated with pacifism.\nAnabaptism in shape of its various diversification such as the Amish, Mennonites and Hutterites came out of the Radical Reformation. Later in history, Schwarzenau Brethren, and the Apostolic Christian Church would emerge in Anabaptist circles.\nDenominations.\nProtestants refer to specific groupings of congregations or churches that share in common foundational doctrines and the name of their groups as denominations. The term denomination (national body) is to be distinguished from branch (denominational family; tradition), communion (international body) and congregation (church). An example (this is no universal way to classify Protestant churches, as these may sometimes vary broadly in their structures) to show the difference:\nBranch/denominational family/tradition: Methodism\nCommunion/international body: World Methodist Council\nDenomination/national body: United Methodist Church\nCongregation/church: First United Methodist Church (Paintsville, Kentucky)\nProtestants reject the Catholic Church's doctrine that it is the one true church, with some teaching belief in the \"invisible church\", which consists of all who profess faith in Jesus Christ. The Lutheran Church traditionally sees itself as the \"main trunk of the historical Christian Tree\" founded by Christ and the Apostles, holding that during the Reformation, the Church of Rome fell away. Individual denominations also have formed over very subtle theological differences. Other denominations are simply regional or ethnic expressions of the same beliefs. Because the five solas are the main tenets of the Protestant faith, non-denominational groups and organizations are also considered Protestant.\nVarious ecumenical movements have attempted cooperation or reorganization of the various divided Protestant denominations, according to various models of union, but divisions continue to outpace unions, as there is no overarching authority to which any of the churches owe allegiance, which can authoritatively define the faith. Most denominations share common beliefs in the major aspects of the Christian faith while differing in many secondary doctrines, although what is major and what is secondary is a matter of idiosyncratic belief.\nSeveral countries have established their national churches, linking the ecclesiastical structure with the state. Jurisdictions where a Protestant denomination has been established as a state religion include several Nordic countries; Denmark (including Greenland), the Faroe Islands (its church being independent since 2007), Iceland and Norway have established Evangelical Lutheran churches. Tuvalu has the only established church in Reformed tradition in the world, while Tonga\u2014in the Methodist tradition.\nThe Church of England is the officially established religious institution in England, and also the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion.\nIn 1869, Finland was the first Nordic country to disestablish its Evangelical Lutheran church by introducing the Church Act. Although the church still maintains a special relationship with the state, it is not described as a state religion in the Finnish Constitution or other laws passed by the Finnish Parliament. In 2000, Sweden was the second Nordic country to do so.\nUnited and uniting churches.\nUnited and uniting churches are churches formed from the merger or other form of union of two or more different Protestant denominations.\nHistorically, unions of Protestant churches were enforced by the state, usually in order to have a stricter control over the religious sphere of its people, but also for other organizational reasons. As modern Christian ecumenism progresses, unions between various Protestant traditions are becoming more and more common, resulting in a growing number of united and uniting churches. Some of the recent major examples are the Church of North India (1970), United Protestant Church of France (2013), and the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (2004). As mainline Protestantism shrinks in Europe and North America due to the rise of secularism or in areas where Christianity is a minority religion as with the Indian subcontinent, Reformed, Anglican, and Lutheran denominations merge, often creating large nationwide denominations. The phenomenon is much less common among evangelical, nondenominational and charismatic churches as new ones arise and plenty of them remain independent of each other.\nWhat is perhaps the oldest official united church is found in Germany, where the Protestant Church in Germany is a federation of Lutheran, United (Prussian Union), and Reformed churches, a union dating back to 1817. The first of the series of unions was at a synod in Idstein to form the Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau in August 1817, commemorated in naming the church of Idstein Unionskirche one hundred years later.\nAround the world, each united or uniting church comprises a different mix of predecessor Protestant denominations. Trends are visible, however, as most united and uniting churches have one or more predecessors with heritage in the Reformed tradition and many are members of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.\nMajor branches.\nProtestants can be differentiated according to how they have been influenced by important movements since the Reformation, today regarded as branches. Some of these movements have a common lineage, sometimes directly spawning individual denominations. Due to the earlier stated multitude of denominations, this section discusses only the largest denominational families, or branches, widely considered to be a part of Protestantism. These are, in alphabetical order: Adventist, Anglican, Baptist, Calvinist (Reformed), Hussite, Lutheran, Methodist, Pentecostal, Plymouth Brethren and Quaker. A small but historically significant Anabaptist branch is also discussed.\nThe chart below shows the mutual relations and historical origins of the main Protestant denominational families, or their parts. Due to factors such as Counterreformation (\"Catholic Reformation\") and the legal principle of \"Cuius regio, eius religio\", many people lived as Nicodemites, where their professed religious affiliations were more or less at odds with the movement they sympathized with. As a result, the boundaries between the denominations do not separate as cleanly as this chart indicates. When a population was suppressed or persecuted into feigning an adherence to the dominant faith, over the generations they continued to influence the church they outwardly adhered to.\nBecause Calvinism was not specifically recognized in the Holy Roman Empire until the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, many Calvinists lived as Crypto-Calvinists. Due to Counterreformation (\"Catholic Reformation\") related suppressions in Catholic lands during the 16th through 19th centuries, many Protestants lived as Crypto-Protestants. Meanwhile, in Protestant areas, Catholics sometimes lived as crypto-papists, although in continental Europe emigration was more feasible so this was less common.\nAdventism.\nAdventism began in the 19th century in the context of the Second Great Awakening revival in the United States. The name refers to belief in the imminent Second Coming (or \"Second Advent\") of Jesus Christ. William Miller started the Adventist movement in the 1830s. His followers became known as Millerites.\nAlthough the Adventist churches hold much in common, their theologies differ on whether the intermediate state is unconscious sleep or consciousness, whether the ultimate punishment of the wicked is annihilation or eternal torment, the nature of immortality, whether or not the wicked are resurrected after the millennium, and whether the sanctuary of Daniel 8 refers to the one in heaven or one on earth. The movement has encouraged the examination of the whole Bible, leading Seventh-day Adventists and some smaller Adventist groups to observe the Sabbath. The General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists has compiled that church's core beliefs in the 28 Fundamental Beliefs (1980 and 2005), which use Biblical references as justification.\nIn 2010, Adventism claimed some 22\u00a0million believers scattered in various independent churches. The largest church within the movement\u2014the Seventh-day Adventist Church\u2014has more than 18\u00a0million members.\nAnabaptism.\nAnabaptism traces its origins to the Radical Reformation. Anabaptists believe in delaying baptism until the candidate confesses his or her faith. Although some consider this movement to be an offshoot of Protestantism, others see it as a distinct one. The Amish, Hutterites, and Mennonites are direct descendants of the movement. Schwarzenau Brethren, Bruderhof, and the Apostolic Christian Church are considered later developments among the Anabaptists.\nThe name \"Anabaptist\", meaning \"one who baptizes again\", was given to them by their persecutors in reference to the practice of re-baptizing converts who already had been baptized as infants. Anabaptists required that baptismal candidates be able to make their own confessions of faith and so rejected baptism of infants. The early members of this movement did not accept the name \"Anabaptist\", claiming that since infant baptism was unscriptural and null and void, the baptizing of believers was not a re-baptism but in fact their first real baptism. As a result of their views on the nature of baptism and other issues, Anabaptists were heavily persecuted during the 16th century and into the 17th by both Magisterial Protestants and Catholics. While most Anabaptists adhered to a literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount, which precluded taking oaths, participating in military actions, and participating in civil government, some who practiced re-baptism felt otherwise. They were thus technically Anabaptists, even though conservative Amish, Mennonites, and Hutterites and some historians tend to consider them as outside of true Anabaptism. Anabaptist reformers of the Radical Reformation are divided into Radical and the so-called Second Front. Some important Radical Reformation theologians were John of Leiden, Thomas M\u00fcntzer, Kaspar Schwenkfeld, Sebastian Franck, Menno Simons. Second Front Reformers included Hans Denck, Conrad Grebel, Balthasar Hubmaier and Felix Manz. Many Anabaptists today still use the \"Ausbund\", which is the oldest hymnal still in continuous use.\nAnglicanism.\nAnglicanism consists of the Church of England and churches which are historically tied to it or hold similar beliefs, worship practices and church structures. The word \"Anglican\" originates in \"\", a medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246 that means the \"English Church\". There is no single \"Anglican Church\" with universal juridical authority, since each national or regional church has full autonomy. As the name suggests, the communion is an association of churches in full communion with the archbishop of Canterbury. The great majority of Anglicans are members of churches which are part of the international Anglican Communion, which has 85\u00a0million adherents.\nThe Church of England declared its independence from the Catholic Church at the time of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement. Many of the new Anglican formularies of the mid-16th century corresponded closely to those of contemporary Reformed tradition. These reforms were understood by one of those most responsible for them, the then archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, as navigating a middle way between two of the emerging Protestant traditions, namely Lutheranism and Calvinism. By the end of the century, the retention in Anglicanism of many traditional liturgical forms and of the episcopate was already seen as unacceptable by those promoting the most developed Protestant principles.\nUnique to Anglicanism is the \"Book of Common Prayer\", the collection of services that worshippers in most Anglican churches used for centuries. While it has since undergone many revisions and Anglican churches in different countries have developed other service books, the Book of Common Prayer is still acknowledged as one of the ties that bind the Anglican Communion together.\nBaptists.\nBaptists subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers (believer's baptism, as opposed to infant baptism), and that it must be done by complete immersion (as opposed to affusion or sprinkling). Other tenets of Baptist churches include soul competency (liberty), salvation through faith alone, Scripture alone as the rule of faith and practice, and the autonomy of the local congregation. Baptists recognize two ministerial offices, pastors and deacons. Baptist churches are widely considered to be Protestant churches, though some Baptists disavow this identity.\nDiverse from their beginning, those identifying as Baptists today differ widely from one another in what they believe, how they worship, their attitudes toward other Christians, and their understanding of what is important in Christian discipleship.\nHistorians trace the earliest church labeled \"Baptist\" back to 1609 in Amsterdam, with English Separatist John Smyth as its pastor. In accordance with his reading of the New Testament, he rejected baptism of infants and instituted baptism only of believing adults. Baptist practice spread to England, where the General Baptists considered Christ's atonement to extend to all people, while the Particular Baptists believed that it extended only to the elect. In 1638, Roger Williams established the first Baptist congregation in the North American colonies. In the mid-18th century, the First Great Awakening increased Baptist growth in both New England and the South. The Second Great Awakening in the South in the early 19th century increased church membership, as did the preachers' lessening of support for abolition and manumission of slavery, which had been part of the 18th-century teachings. Baptist missionaries have spread their church to every continent.\nThe Baptist World Alliance reports more than 41\u00a0million members in more than 150,000 congregations. In 2002, there were over 100\u00a0million Baptists and Baptistic group members worldwide and over 33\u00a0million in North America. The largest Baptist association is the Southern Baptist Convention, with the membership of associated churches totaling more than 14\u00a0million.\nCalvinism.\nCalvinism, also called the Reformed tradition, was advanced by several theologians such as Martin Bucer, Heinrich Bullinger, Peter Martyr Vermigli, and Huldrych Zwingli, but this branch of Christianity bears the name of the French reformer John Calvin because of his prominent influence on it and because of his role in the confessional and ecclesiastical debates throughout the 16th century.\nThis term also currently refers to the doctrines and practices of the Reformed churches of which Calvin was an early leader. Less commonly, it can refer to the individual teaching of Calvin himself. The particulars of Calvinist theology may be stated in a number of ways. Perhaps the best known summary is contained in the five points of Calvinism, though these points identify the Calvinist view on soteriology rather than summarizing the system as a whole. Broadly speaking, Calvinism stresses the sovereignty or rule of God in all things\u2014in salvation but also in all of life. This concept is seen clearly in the doctrines of predestination and total depravity.\nThe biggest Reformed association is the World Communion of Reformed Churches with more than 80\u00a0million members in 211 member denominations around the world. There are more conservative Reformed federations like the World Reformed Fellowship and the International Conference of Reformed Churches, as well as independent churches.\nHussites.\nHussitism follows the teachings of Czech reformer Jan Hus, who became the best-known representative of the Bohemian Reformation and one of the forerunners of the Protestant Reformation. An early hymnal was the hand-written \"Jistebnice hymn book\". This predominantly religious movement was propelled by social issues and strengthened Czech national awareness. Among present-day Christians, Hussite traditions are represented in the Moravian Church, Unity of the Brethren and the Czechoslovak Hussite Church.\nLutheranism.\nLutheranism identifies with the theology of Martin Luther, a German monk and priest, ecclesiastical reformer, and theologian.\nLutheranism advocates a doctrine of justification \"by grace alone through faith alone on the basis of Scripture alone\", the doctrine that scripture is the final authority on all matters of faith, rejecting the assertion made by Catholic leaders at the Council of Trent that authority comes from both Scriptures and Tradition. In addition, Lutherans accept the teachings of the first four ecumenical councils of the undivided Christian Church.\nUnlike the Reformed tradition, Lutherans retain many of the liturgical practices and sacramental teachings of the pre-Reformation Church with an emphasis on the Eucharist, or Lord's Supper. Lutheran theology differs from Reformed theology in Christology, the purpose of God's Law, divine grace, the concept of perseverance of the saints, and predestination.\nToday, Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism. With approximately 80\u00a0million adherents, it constitutes the third most common Protestant confession after historically Pentecostal denominations and Anglicanism. The Lutheran World Federation, the largest global communion of Lutheran churches represents over 72\u00a0million people. Both of these figures miscount Lutherans worldwide as many members of more generically Protestant LWF member church bodies do not self-identify as Lutheran or attend congregations that self-identify as Lutheran. Additionally, there are other international organizations such as the Global Confessional and Missional Lutheran Forum, International Lutheran Council and the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference, as well as Lutheran denominations that are not necessarily a member of an international organization.\nMethodism.\nMethodism identifies principally with the theology of John Wesley\u2014an Anglican priest and evangelist. This evangelical movement originated as a revival within the 18th-century Church of England and became a separate Church following Wesley's death. Because of vigorous missionary activity, the movement spread throughout the British Empire, the United States, and beyond, today claiming approximately 80\u00a0million adherents worldwide. Originally it appealed especially to laborers and slaves.\nSoteriologically, most Methodists are Arminian, emphasizing that Christ accomplished salvation for every human being, and that humans must exercise an act of the will to receive it (as opposed to the traditional Calvinist doctrine of monergism). Methodism is traditionally low church in liturgy, although this varies greatly between individual congregations; the Wesleys themselves greatly valued the Anglican liturgy and tradition. Methodism is known for its rich musical tradition; John Wesley's brother, Charles, was instrumental in writing much of the hymnody of the Methodist Church, and many other eminent hymn writers come from the Methodist tradition.\nThe Holiness movement refers to a set of practices surrounding the doctrine of Christian perfection that emerged within 19th-century Methodism, along with a number of evangelical denominations and parachurch organizations (such as camp meetings). There are an estimated 12\u00a0million adherents in denominations aligned with the Wesleyan-holiness movement. The Free Methodist Church, the Salvation Army and the Wesleyan Methodist Church are notable examples, while other adherents of the Holiness Movement remained within mainline Methodism, e.g. the United Methodist Church.\nPentecostalism.\nPentecostalism is a movement that places special emphasis on a direct personal experience of God through the baptism with the Holy Spirit. The term \"Pentecostal\" is derived from Pentecost, the Greek name for the Jewish Feast of Weeks. For Christians, this event commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the followers of Jesus Christ, as described in the second chapter of the Book of Acts.\nThis branch of Protestantism is distinguished by belief in the baptism with the Holy Spirit as an experience separate from conversion that enables a Christian to live a life empowered by and filled with the Holy Spirit. This empowerment includes the use of spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues and divine healing\u2014two other defining characteristics of Pentecostalism. Because of their commitment to biblical authority, spiritual gifts, and the miraculous, Pentecostals tend to see their movement as reflecting the same kind of spiritual power and teachings that were found in the Apostolic Age of the early church. For this reason, some Pentecostals also use the term \"Apostolic\" or \"Full Gospel\" to describe their movement.\nPentecostalism eventually spawned hundreds of new denominations, including large groups such as the Assemblies of God and the Church of God in Christ, both in the United States and elsewhere. There are over 279\u00a0million Pentecostals worldwide, and the movement is growing in many parts of the world, especially the global South. Since the 1960s, Pentecostalism has increasingly gained acceptance from other Christian traditions, and Pentecostal beliefs concerning Spirit baptism and spiritual gifts have been embraced by non-Pentecostal Christians in Protestant and Catholic churches through the Charismatic Movement. Together, Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity numbers over 500\u00a0million adherents.\nPlymouth Brethren.\nThe Plymouth Brethren are a conservative, low church, evangelical denomination, whose history can be traced to Dublin, Ireland, in the late 1820s, originating from Anglicanism. Among other beliefs, the group emphasizes \"\". Brethren generally see themselves not as a denomination, but as a network, or even as a collection of overlapping networks, of like-minded independent churches. Although the group refused for many years to take any denominational name to itself\u2014a stance that some of them still maintain\u2014the title \"The Brethren\", is one that many of their number are comfortable with in that the Bible designates all believers as \"brethren\".\nQuakerism.\nQuakers, or Friends, are members of a family of religious movements collectively known as the Religious Society of Friends. The central unifying doctrine of these movements is the priesthood of all believers. Many Friends view themselves as members of a Christian denomination. They include those with evangelical, holiness, liberal, and traditional conservative Quaker understandings of Christianity. Unlike many other groups that emerged within Christianity, the Religious Society of Friends has actively tried to avoid creeds and hierarchical structures.\nOther Protestants.\nThere are many other Protestant denominations that do not fit neatly into the mentioned branches, and are far smaller in membership. Some groups of individuals who hold basic Protestant tenets identify themselves simply as \"Christians\" or \"born-again Christians\". They typically distance themselves from the confessionalism or creedalism of other Christian communities by calling themselves \"non-denominational\" or \"evangelical\". Often founded by individual pastors, they have little affiliation with historic denominations.<ref name=\"Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life / U.S. Religious Landscape Survey\"></ref>\nAlthough Unitarianism developed from the Protestant Reformation, it is excluded from Protestantism due to its Nontrinitarian theological nature. Unitarianism has been popular in the region of Transylvania within today's Romania, England, and the United States. It originated almost simultaneously in Transylvania and the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth.\nSpiritual Christianity is the group of Russian movements (Doukhobors and others), so-called folk Protestants. Their origins are varied: some were influenced by western Protestants, others from disgust of the behavior of official Orthodox priests.\nMessianic Judaism is a movement of the Jews and non-Jews, which arose in the 1960s within Evangelical Protestantism and absorbed elements of the messianic traditions in Judaism.\nInterdenominational movements.\nThere are also Christian movements which cross denominational lines and even branches, and cannot be classified on the same level previously mentioned forms. Evangelicalism is a prominent example. Some of those movements are active exclusively within Protestantism, some are Christian-wide. Transdenominational movements are sometimes capable of affecting parts of the Catholic Church, such as does it the Charismatic Movement, which aims to incorporate beliefs and practices similar to Pentecostals into the various branches of Christianity. Neo-charismatic churches are sometimes regarded as a subgroup of the Charismatic Movement. Both are put under a common label of Charismatic Christianity (so-called \"Renewalists\"), along with Pentecostals. Nondenominational churches and various house churches often adopt, or are akin to one of these movements.\nMegachurches are usually influenced by interdenominational movements. Globally, these large congregations are a significant development in Protestant Christianity. In the United States, the phenomenon has more than quadrupled in the past two decades. It has since spread worldwide.\nThe chart below shows the mutual relations and historical origins of the main interdenominational movements and other developments within Protestantism.\nEvangelicalism.\nEvangelicalism, or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide, transdenominational movement which maintains that the essence of the gospel consists in the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ's atonement.\nEvangelicals are Christians who believe in the centrality of the conversion or \"born again\" experience in receiving salvation, believe in the authority of the Bible as God's revelation to humanity and have a strong commitment to evangelism or sharing the Christian message.\nIt gained great momentum in the 18th and 19th centuries with the emergence of Methodism and the Great Awakenings in Britain and North America. The origins of Evangelicalism are usually traced back to the English Methodist movement, Nicolaus Zinzendorf, the Moravian Church, Lutheran pietism, Presbyterianism and Puritanism. Among leaders and major figures of the Evangelical Protestant movement were John Wesley, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Billy Graham, Harold John Ockenga, John Stott and Martyn Lloyd-Jones.\nThere are an estimated 285,480,000 Evangelicals, corresponding to 13% of the Christian population and 4% of the total world population. The Americas, Africa and Asia are home to the majority of Evangelicals. The United States has the largest concentration of Evangelicals. Evangelicalism is gaining popularity both in and outside the English-speaking world, especially in Latin America and the developing world.\nCharismatic movement.\nThe Charismatic movement is the international trend of historically mainstream congregations adopting beliefs and practices similar to Pentecostals. Fundamental to the movement is the use of spiritual gifts. Among Protestants, the movement began around 1960.\nIn the United States, Episcopalian Dennis Bennett is sometimes cited as one of the charismatic movement's seminal influence. In the United Kingdom, Colin Urquhart, Michael Harper, David Watson and others were in the vanguard of similar developments. The Massey conference in New Zealand, 1964 was attended by several Anglicans, including the Rev. Ray Muller, who went on to invite Bennett to New Zealand in 1966, and played a leading role in developing and promoting the \"Life in the Spirit\" seminars. Other Charismatic movement leaders in New Zealand include Bill Subritzky.\nLarry Christenson, a Lutheran theologian based in San Pedro, California, did much in the 1960s and 1970s to interpret the charismatic movement for Lutherans. A very large annual conference regarding that matter was held in Minneapolis. Charismatic Lutheran congregations in Minnesota became especially large and influential; especially \"Hosanna!\" in Lakeville, and North Heights in St. Paul. The next generation of Lutheran charismatics cluster around the Alliance of Renewal Churches. There is considerable charismatic activity among young Lutheran leaders in California centered around an annual gathering at Robinwood Church in Huntington Beach. Richard A. Jensen's \"Touched by the Spirit\" published in 1974, played a major role of the Lutheran understanding to the charismatic movement.\nIn Congregational and Presbyterian churches which profess a traditionally Calvinist or Reformed theology there are differing views regarding present-day continuation or cessation of the gifts (\"\") of the Spirit. Generally, however, Reformed charismatics distance themselves from renewal movements with tendencies which could be perceived as overemotional, such as Word of Faith, Toronto Blessing, Brownsville Revival and Lakeland Revival. Prominent Reformed charismatic denominations are the Sovereign Grace Churches and the Every Nation Churches in the US, in Great Britain there is the Newfrontiers churches and movement, which leading figure is Terry Virgo.\nA minority of Seventh-day Adventists today are charismatic. They are strongly associated with those holding more \"progressive\" Adventist beliefs. In the early decades of the church charismatic or ecstatic phenomena were commonplace.\nNeo-charismatic churches.\nNeo-charismatic churches are a category of churches in the Christian Renewal movement. Neo-charismatics include the Third Wave, but are broader. Now more numerous than Pentecostals (first wave) and charismatics (second wave) combined, owing to the remarkable growth of postdenominational and independent charismatic groups.\nNeo-charismatics believe in and stress the post-Biblical availability of gifts of the Holy Spirit, including glossolalia, healing, and prophecy. They practice laying on of hands and seek the \"infilling\" of the Holy Spirit. However, a specific experience of baptism with the Holy Spirit may not be requisite for experiencing such gifts. No single form, governmental structure, or style of church service characterizes all neo-charismatic services and churches.\nSome nineteen thousand denominations, with approximately 295\u00a0million individual adherents, are identified as neo-charismatic.\nProtestant offshoots.\nArminianism.\nArminianism is based on theological ideas of the Dutch Reformed theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560\u20131609) and his historic supporters known as Remonstrants. His teachings held to the five solae of the Reformation, but they were distinct from particular teachings of Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin, and other Protestant Reformers. Jacobus Arminius was a student of Theodore Beza at the Theological University of Geneva. Arminianism is known to some as a soteriological diversification of Calvinism. However, to others, Arminianism is a reclamation of early Church theological consensus. Dutch Arminianism was originally articulated in the Remonstrance (1610), a theological statement signed by 45 ministers and submitted to the States General of the Netherlands. Many Christian denominations have been influenced by Arminian views on the will of man being freed by grace prior to regeneration, notably the Baptists in the 16th century, the Methodists in the 18th century and the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the 19th century.\nThe original beliefs of Jacobus Arminius himself are commonly defined as Arminianism, but more broadly, the term may embrace the teachings of Hugo Grotius, John Wesley, and others as well. Classical Arminianism and Wesleyan Arminianism are the two main schools of thought. Wesleyan Arminianism is often identical with Methodism. The two systems of Calvinism and Arminianism share both history and many doctrines, and the history of Christian theology. However, because of their differences over the doctrines of divine predestination and election, many people view these schools of thought as opposed to each other. In short, the difference can be seen ultimately by whether God allows His desire to save all to be resisted by an individual's will (in the Arminian doctrine) or if God's grace is irresistible and limited to only some (in Calvinism). Some Calvinists assert that the Arminian perspective presents a synergistic system of Salvation and therefore is not only by grace, while Arminians firmly reject this conclusion. Many consider the theological differences to be crucial differences in doctrine, while others find them to be relatively minor.\nPietism.\nPietism was an influential movement within Lutheranism that combined the 17th-century Lutheran principles with the Reformed emphasis on individual piety and living a vigorous Christian life.\nIt began in the late 17th century, reached its zenith in the mid-18th century, and declined through the 19th century, and had almost vanished in America by the end of the 20th century. While declining as an identifiable Lutheran group, some of its theological tenets influenced Protestantism generally, inspiring the Anglican priest John Wesley to begin the Methodist movement and Alexander Mack to begin the Brethren movement under an influence of Anabaptists.\nThough Pietism shares an emphasis on personal behavior with the Puritan movement, and the two are often confused, there are important differences, particularly in the concept of the role of religion in government.\nPuritanism, English dissenters and nonconformists.\nThe Puritans were a group of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries, which sought to purify the Church of England of what they considered to be Catholic practices, maintaining that the church was only partially reformed. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some of the returning clergy exiled under Mary I shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England.\nPuritans were blocked from changing the established church from within, and were severely restricted in England by laws controlling the practice of religion. Their beliefs, however, were transported by the emigration of congregations to the Netherlands (and later to New England), and by evangelical clergy to Ireland (and later into Wales), and were spread into lay society and parts of the educational system, particularly certain colleges of the University of Cambridge. The first Protestant sermon delivered in England was in Cambridge, with the pulpit that this sermon was delivered from surviving to today. They took on distinctive beliefs about clerical dress and in opposition to the episcopal system, particularly after the 1619 conclusions of the Synod of Dort they were resisted by the English bishops. They largely adopted Sabbatarianism in the 17th century, and were influenced by millennialism.\nThey formed, and identified with various religious groups advocating greater purity of worship and doctrine, as well as personal and group piety. Puritans adopted a Reformed theology, but they also took note of radical criticisms of Zwingli in Zurich and Calvin in Geneva. In church polity, some advocated for separation from all other Christians, in favor of autonomous gathered churches. These separatist and independent strands of Puritanism became prominent in the 1640s. Although the English Civil War (which expanded into the Wars of the Three Kingdoms) began over a contest for political power between the King of England and the House of Commons, it divided the country along religious lines as episcopalians within the Church of England sided with the Crown and Presbyterians and Independents supported \"Parliament\" (after the defeat of the Royalists, the House of Lords as well as the Monarch were removed from the political structure of the state to create the Commonwealth). The supporters of a Presbyterian polity in the Westminster Assembly were unable to forge a new English national church, and the Parliamentary New Model Army, which was made up primarily of Independents, under Oliver Cromwell first purged Parliament, then abolished it and established The Protectorate.\nEngland's trans-Atlantic colonies in the war followed varying paths depending on their internal demographics. In the older colonies, which included Virginia (1607) and its offshoot Bermuda (1612), as well as Barbados and Antigua in the West Indies (collectively the targets in 1650 of An Act for prohibiting Trade with the Barbadoes, Virginia, Bermuda and Antego), Episcopalians remained the dominant church faction and the colonies remained Royalist 'til conquered or compelled to accept the new political order. In Bermuda, with control of the local government and the \"army\" (nine infantry companies of Militia plus coastal artillery), the Royalists forced Parliament-backing religious Independents into exile to settle the Bahamas as the Eleutheran Adventurers.\nEpiscopalian was re-established following the Restoration. A century later, non-conforming Protestants, along with the Protestant refugees from continental Europe, were to be among the primary instigators of the war of secession that led to the founding of the United States of America.\nNeo-orthodoxy and paleo-orthodoxy.\nA non-fundamentalist rejection of liberal Christianity along the lines of the Christian existentialism of S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard, who attacked the Hegelian state churches of his day for \"dead orthodoxy\", neo-orthodoxy is associated primarily with Karl Barth, J\u00fcrgen Moltmann, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Neo-orthodoxy sought to counter-act the tendency of liberal theology to make theological accommodations to modern scientific perspectives. Sometimes called \"crisis theology\", in the existentialist sense of the word crisis, also sometimes called \"neo-evangelicalism\", which uses the sense of \"evangelical\" pertaining to continental European Protestants rather than American evangelicalism. \"Evangelical\" was the originally preferred label used by Lutherans and Calvinists, but it was replaced by the names some Catholics used to label a heresy with the name of its founder.\nPaleo-orthodoxy is a movement similar in some respects to neo-evangelicalism but emphasizing the ancient Christian consensus of the undivided church of the first millennium AD, including in particular the early creeds and church councils as a means of properly understanding the scriptures. This movement is cross-denominational. A prominent theologian in this group is Thomas Oden, a Methodist.\nChristian fundamentalism.\nIn reaction to liberal Bible critique, fundamentalism arose in the 20th century, primarily in the United States, among those denominations most affected by Evangelicalism. Fundamentalist theology tends to stress Biblical inerrancy and Biblical literalism.\nToward the end of the 20th century, some have tended to confuse evangelicalism and fundamentalism; however, the labels represent very distinct differences of approach that both groups are diligent to maintain, although because of fundamentalism's dramatically smaller size it often gets classified simply as an ultra-conservative branch of evangelicalism.\nModernism and liberalism.\nModernism and liberalism do not constitute rigorous and well-defined schools of theology, but are rather an inclination by some writers and teachers to integrate Christian thought into the spirit of the Age of Enlightenment. New understandings of history and the natural sciences of the day led directly to new approaches to theology. Its opposition to the fundamentalist teaching resulted in religious debates, such as the Fundamentalist\u2013Modernist Controversy within the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America in the 1920s.\nProtestant culture.\nAlthough the Reformation was a religious movement, it also had a strong impact on all other aspects of life, including marriage and family, education, the humanities and sciences, the political and social order, the economy, and the arts. Protestant churches reject the idea of a celibate priesthood and thus allow their clergy to marry. Many of their families contributed to the development of intellectual elites in their countries. Since about 1950, women have entered the ministry in most Protestant churches, and some have assumed leading positions (e.g. bishops).\nProtestantism has promoted economic growth and entrepreneurship, especially in the period after the Scientific and the Industrial Revolution. Scholars have identified a positive correlation between the rise of Protestantism and human capital formation, work ethic, economic development, the rise of early experimental science, and the development of the state system.\nAs the Reformers wanted all members of the church to be able to read the Bible, education on all levels was strongly encouraged. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the literacy rate in England was about 60 percent, in Scotland 65 percent, and in Sweden 80 percent. Colleges and universities were founded. For example, the Puritans who established Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1628 founded Harvard College only eight years later. About a dozen other colleges followed in the 18th century, including Yale (1701). Pennsylvania also became a center of learning.\nMembers of mainline Protestant denominations have played leadership roles in many aspects of American life, including politics, business, science, the arts, and education. They founded most of the country's leading institutes of higher education.\nThought and work ethic.\nThe Protestant concept of God and man allows believers to use all their God-given faculties, including the power of reason. That means that they are allowed to explore God's creation and, according to Genesis 2:15, make use of it in a responsible and sustainable way. Thus a cultural climate was created that greatly enhanced the development of the humanities and the sciences. Another consequence of the Protestant understanding of man is that the believers, in gratitude for their election and redemption in Christ, are to follow God's commandments. Industry, frugality, calling, discipline, and a strong sense of responsibility are at the heart of their moral code. In particular, Calvin rejected luxury. Therefore, craftsmen, industrialists, and other businessmen were able to reinvest the greater part of their profits in the most efficient machinery and the most modern production methods that were based on progress in the sciences and technology. As a result, productivity grew, which led to increased profits and enabled employers to pay higher wages. In this way, the economy, the sciences, and technology reinforced each other. The chance to participate in the economic success of technological inventions was a strong incentive to both inventors and investors. The Protestant work ethic was an important force behind the unplanned and uncoordinated mass action that influenced the development of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. This idea is also known as the \"Protestant ethic thesis\".\nHowever, eminent historian Fernand Braudel (d. 1985), a leader of the important Annales School wrote, \"all historians have opposed this tenuous theory [the Protestant Ethic], although they have not managed to be rid of it once and for all. Yet it is clearly false. The northern countries took over the place that earlier had been so long and brilliantly been occupied by the old capitalist centers of the Mediterranean. They invented nothing, either in technology or business management.\" Social scientist Rodney Stark moreover comments that \"during their critical period of economic development, these northern centers of capitalism were Catholic, not Protestant\u2014the Reformation still lay well into the future\", while British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper (d. 2003) said, \"The idea that large-scale industrial capitalism was ideologically impossible before the Reformation is exploded by the simple fact that it existed.\"\nIn a factor analysis of the latest wave of World Values Survey data, Arno Tausch (Corvinus University of Budapest) found that Protestantism emerges to be very close to combining religion and the traditions of liberalism. The Global Value Development Index, calculated by Tausch, relies on the World Values Survey dimensions such as trust in the state of law, no support for shadow economy, postmaterial activism, support for democracy, a non-acceptance of violence, xenophobia and racism, trust in transnational capital and Universities, confidence in the market economy, supporting gender justice, and engaging in environmental activism, etc.\nEpiscopalians and Presbyterians, as well as other WASPs, tend to be considerably wealthier and better educated (having graduate and post-graduate degrees per capita) than most other religious groups in United States, and are disproportionately represented in the upper reaches of American business, law and politics, especially the Republican Party. Numbers of the most wealthy and affluent American families as the Vanderbilts, the Astors, Rockefellers, Du Ponts, Roosevelts, Forbes, Fords, Whitneys, Mellons, the Morgans and Harrimans are Mainline Protestant families.\nScience.\nProtestantism has had an important influence on science. According to the Merton Thesis, there was a positive correlation between the rise of English Puritanism and German Pietism on the one hand and early experimental science on the other. The Merton Thesis has two separate parts: Firstly, it presents a theory that science changes due to an accumulation of observations and improvement in experimental technique and methodology; secondly, it puts forward the argument that the popularity of science in 17th-century England and the religious demography of the Royal Society (English scientists of that time were predominantly Puritans or other Protestants) can be explained by a correlation between Protestantism and the scientific values. Merton focused on English Puritanism and German Pietism as having been responsible for the development of the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries. He explained that the connection between religious affiliation and interest in science was the result of a significant synergy between the ascetic Protestant values and those of modern science. Protestant values encouraged scientific research by allowing science to identify God's influence on the world\u2014his creation\u2014and thus providing a religious justification for scientific research.\nAccording to \"Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States\" by Harriet Zuckerman, a review of American Nobel Prizes awarded between 1901 and 1972, 72% of American Nobel Prize laureates identified a Protestant background. Overall, 84% of all the Nobel Prizes awarded to Americans in Chemistry, 60% in Medicine, and 59% in Physics between 1901 and 1972 were won by Protestants.\nAccording to \"100 Years of Nobel Prize (2005)\", a review of Nobel Prizes awarded between 1901 and 2000, 65% of Nobel Prize Laureates, have identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference (423 prizes). While 32% have identified with Protestantism in its various forms (208 prizes), although Protestants are 12% to 13% of the world's population.\nGovernment.\nDuring the Middle Ages, the Church and the worldly authorities were closely related. Martin Luther separated the religious and the worldly realms in principle (doctrine of the two kingdoms). The believers were obliged to use reason to govern the worldly sphere in an orderly and peaceful way. Luther's doctrine of the priesthood of all believers upgraded the role of laymen in the church considerably. The members of a congregation had the right to elect a minister and, if necessary, to vote for his dismissal (Treatise \"On the right and authority of a Christian assembly or congregation to judge all doctrines and to call, install and dismiss teachers, as testified in Scripture\"; 1523). Calvin strengthened this basically democratic approach by including elected laymen (church elders, presbyters) in his representative church government. The Huguenots added regional synods and a national synod, whose members were elected by the congregations, to Calvin's system of church self-government. This system was taken over by the other reformed churches and was adopted by some Lutherans beginning with those in J\u00fclich-Cleves-Berg during the 17th century.\nPolitically, Calvin favored a mixture of aristocracy and democracy. He appreciated the advantages of democracy: \"It is an invaluable gift, if God allows a people to freely elect its own authorities and overlords.\" Calvin also thought that earthly rulers lose their divine right and must be put down when they rise up against God. To further protect the rights of ordinary people, Calvin suggested separating political powers in a system of checks and balances (separation of powers). Thus he and his followers resisted political absolutism and paved the way for the rise of modern democracy. Besides England, the Netherlands were, under Calvinist leadership, the freest country in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It granted asylum to philosophers like Baruch Spinoza and Pierre Bayle. Hugo Grotius was able to teach his natural-law theory and a relatively liberal interpretation of the Bible.\nConsistent with Calvin's political ideas, Protestants created both the English and the American democracies. In seventeenth-century England, the most important persons and events in this process were the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell, John Milton, John Locke, the Glorious Revolution, the English Bill of Rights, and the Act of Settlement. Later, the British took their democratic ideals to their colonies, e.g. Australia, New Zealand, and India. In North America, Plymouth Colony (Pilgrim Fathers; 1620) and Massachusetts Bay Colony (1628) practised democratic self-rule and separation of powers. These Congregationalists were convinced that the democratic form of government was the will of God. The Mayflower Compact was a social contract.\nRights and liberty.\nProtestants also took the initiative in advocating for religious freedom. Freedom of conscience had a high priority on the theological, philosophical, and political agendas since Luther refused to recant his beliefs before the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire at Worms (1521). In his view, faith was a free work of the Holy Spirit and could, therefore, not be forced on a person. The persecuted Anabaptists and Huguenots demanded freedom of conscience, and they practiced separation of church and state. In the early seventeenth century, Baptists like John Smyth and Thomas Helwys published tracts in defense of religious freedom. Their thinking influenced John Milton and John Locke's stance on tolerance. Under the leadership of Baptist Roger Williams, Congregationalist Thomas Hooker, and Quaker William Penn, respectively, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania combined democratic constitutions with freedom of religion. These colonies became safe havens for persecuted religious minorities, including Jews.\nThe United States Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, and the American Bill of Rights with its fundamental human rights made this tradition permanent by giving it a legal and political framework. The great majority of American Protestants, both clergy and laity, strongly supported the independence movement. All major Protestant churches were represented in the First and Second Continental Congresses. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the American democracy became a model for numerous other countries and regions throughout the world (e.g., Latin America, Japan, and Germany). The strongest link between the American and French Revolutions was Marquis de Lafayette, an ardent supporter of the American constitutional principles. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was mainly based on Lafayette's draft of this document. The Declaration by United Nations and Universal Declaration of Human Rights also echo the American constitutional tradition.\nDemocracy, social-contract theory, separation of powers, religious freedom, separation of church and state\u2014these achievements of the Reformation and early Protestantism were elaborated on and popularized by Age of Enlightenment thinkers. Some of the philosophers of the English, Scottish, German, and Swiss Enlightenment\u2014Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, John Toland, David Hume, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Christian Wolff, Immanuel Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau\u2014had Protestant backgrounds. For example, John Locke, whose political thought was based on \"a set of Protestant Christian assumptions\", derived the equality of all humans, including the equality of the genders (\"Adam and Eve\"), from Genesis 1, 26\u201328. As all persons were created equally free, all governments needed \"the consent of the governed\".\nAlso, other human rights were advocated for by some Protestants. For example, torture was abolished in Prussia in 1740, slavery in Britain in 1834 and in the United States in 1865 (William Wilberforce, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham Lincoln\u2014against Southern Protestants). Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf were among the first thinkers who made significant contributions to international law. The Geneva Convention, an important part of humanitarian international law, was largely the work of Henry Dunant, a reformed pietist. He also founded the Red Cross.\nSocial teaching.\nProtestants have founded hospitals, homes for disabled or elderly people, educational institutions, organizations that give aid to developing countries, and other social welfare agencies. In the nineteenth century, throughout the Anglo-American world, numerous dedicated members of all Protestant denominations were active in social reform movements such as the abolition of slavery, prison reforms, and woman suffrage. As an answer to the \"social question\" of the nineteenth century, Germany under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck introduced insurance programs that led the way to the welfare state (health insurance, accident insurance, disability insurance, old-age pensions). To Bismarck this was \"practical Christianity\". These programs, too, were copied by many other nations, particularly in the Western world.\nThe Young Men's Christian Association was founded by Congregationalist George Williams, aimed at empowering young people.\nArts.\nThe arts have been strongly inspired by Protestant beliefs.\nMartin Luther, Paul Gerhardt, George Wither, Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, William Cowper, and other authors and composers created well-known church hymns.\nMusicians like Heinrich Sch\u00fctz, Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Henry Purcell, Johannes Brahms, Philipp Nicolai and Felix Mendelssohn composed great works of music.\nProminent painters with Protestant background were, for example, Albrecht D\u00fcrer, Hans Holbein the Younger, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger, Rembrandt, and Vincent van Gogh.\nWorld literature was enriched by the works of Edmund Spenser, John Milton, John Bunyan, John Donne, John Dryden, Daniel Defoe, William Wordsworth, Jonathan Swift, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edgar Allan Poe, Matthew Arnold, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Theodor Fontane, Washington Irving, Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, Emily Bront\u00eb, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thomas Stearns Eliot, John Galsworthy, Thomas Mann, William Faulkner, John Updike, and many others.\nCatholic responses.\nThe view of the Catholic Church is that Protestant denominations cannot be considered churches but rather that they are \"ecclesial communities\" or \"specific faith-believing communities\" because their ordinances and doctrines are not historically the same as the Catholic sacraments and dogmas, and the Protestant communities have no sacramental ministerial priesthood and therefore lack true apostolic succession. According to Bishop Hilarion (Alfeyev) the Eastern Orthodox Church shares the same view on the subject.\nContrary to how the Protestant Reformers were often characterized, the concept of a \"catholic\" or universal Church was not brushed aside during the Protestant Reformation. On the contrary, the visible unity of the \"catholic\" or \"universal church\" was seen by the Protestant reformers as an important and essential doctrine of the Reformation. The Magisterial reformers, such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Huldrych Zwingli, believed that they were reforming the Catholic Church, which they viewed as having become corrupted. Each of them took very seriously the charges of schism and innovation, denying these charges and maintaining that it was the Catholic Church that had left them. The Protestant Reformers formed a new and radically different theological opinion on ecclesiology, that the visible Church is \"catholic\" (lower-case \"c\") rather than \"Catholic\" (upper-case \"C\"). Accordingly, there is not an indefinite number of parochial, congregational or national churches, constituting, as it were, so many ecclesiastical individualities, but one great spiritual republic of which these various organizations form a part, although they each have very different opinions. This was markedly far-removed from the traditional and historic Catholic understanding that the Catholic Church was the one true Church of Christ.\nYet, in the Protestant understanding, the \"visible church\" is not a genus, so to speak, with so many species under it. In order to justify their departure from the Catholic Church, Protestants often posited a new argument, saying that there was no real visible Church with divine authority, only a \"spiritual, invisible, and hidden church\"\u2014this notion began in the early days of the Protestant Reformation.\nWherever the Magisterial Reformation, which received support from the ruling authorities, took place, the result was a reformed national Protestant church envisioned to be a part of the whole \"invisible church\", but disagreeing, in certain important points of doctrine and doctrine-linked practice, with what had until then been considered the normative reference point on such matters, namely the Papacy and central authority of the Catholic Church. The Reformed churches thus believed in some form of Catholicity, founded on their doctrines of the five solas and a visible ecclesiastical organization based on the 14th- and 15th-century Conciliar movement, rejecting the papacy and papal infallibility in favor of ecumenical councils, but rejecting the latest ecumenical council, the Council of Trent. Religious unity therefore became not one of doctrine and identity but one of invisible character, wherein the unity was one of faith in Jesus Christ, not common identity, doctrine, belief, and collaborative action.\nThere are Protestants, especially of the Reformed tradition, that either reject or downplay the designation \"Protestant\" because of the negative idea that the word invokes in addition to its primary meaning, preferring the designation \"Reformed\", \"Evangelical\" or even \"Reformed Catholic\" expressive of what they call a \"Reformed Catholicity\" and defending their arguments from the traditional Protestant confessions.\nEcumenism.\nThe ecumenical movement has had an influence on mainline churches, beginning at least in 1910 with the Edinburgh Missionary Conference. Its origins lay in the recognition of the need for cooperation on the mission field in Africa, Asia and Oceania. Since 1948, the World Council of Churches has been influential, but ineffective in creating a united church. There are also ecumenical bodies at regional, national and local levels across the globe; but schisms still far outnumber unifications. One, but not the only expression of the ecumenical movement, has been the move to form united churches, such as the Church of South India, the Church of North India, the US-based United Church of Christ, the United Church of Canada, the Uniting Church in Australia and the United Church of Christ in the Philippines which have rapidly declining memberships. There has been a strong engagement of Orthodox churches in the ecumenical movement, though the reaction of individual Orthodox theologians has ranged from tentative approval of the aim of Christian unity to outright condemnation of the perceived effect of watering down Orthodox doctrine.\nA Protestant baptism is held to be valid by the Catholic Church if given with the trinitarian formula and with the intent to baptize. However, as the ordination of Protestant ministers is not recognized due to the lack of apostolic succession and the disunity from Catholic Church, all other sacraments (except marriage) performed by Protestant denominations and ministers are not recognized as valid. Therefore, Protestants desiring full communion with the Catholic Church are not re-baptized (although they are confirmed) and Protestant ministers who become Catholics may be ordained to the priesthood after a period of study.\nIn 1999, the representatives of Lutheran World Federation and Catholic Church signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, apparently resolving the conflict over the nature of justification which was at the root of the Protestant Reformation, although Confessional Lutherans reject this statement. This is understandable, since there is no compelling authority within them. On 18 July 2006, delegates to the World Methodist Conference voted unanimously to adopt the Joint Declaration.\nSpread and demographics.\n \nThere are more than 1.18 billion Protestants worldwide, among approximately 2.6\u00a0billion Christians. In 2010, a total of more than 800\u00a0million included 300\u00a0million in Sub-Saharan Africa, 260\u00a0million in the Americas, 140\u00a0million in the Asia-Pacific region, 100\u00a0million in Europe and 2\u00a0million in Middle East-North Africa. Protestants account for nearly forty percent of Christians worldwide, and are more than one tenth of the total human population. Various estimates put the percentage of Protestants in relation to the total number of world's Christians at 33%, 36%, 36.7%, and 40%, while in relation to the world's population at 11.6% and 13%.\nIn European countries which were most profoundly influenced by the Reformation, Protestantism still remains the most practiced religion. These include the Nordic countries and the United Kingdom. In other historical Protestant strongholds such as Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Latvia, and Estonia, it remains one of the most popular religions. Although what is now the Czech Republic was the site of one of the most significant pre-reformation movements, there is only a small Protestant population today; mainly due to historical reasons like persecution of Protestants by the Catholic Habsburgs, restrictions during the Communist rule, and also the ongoing secularization. Over the last several decades, religious practice has been declining as secularization has increased. According to a 2019 study about Religiosity in the European Union in 2019 by Eurobarometer, Protestants made up 9% of the EU population. According to Pew Research Center, Protestants constituted nearly one fifth (or 18%) of the continent's Christian population in 2010. Clarke and Beyer estimate that Protestants constituted 15% of all Europeans in 2009, while Noll claims that fewer than 12% of them lived in Europe in 2010.\nChanges in worldwide Protestantism over the last century have been significant. Since 1900, Protestantism has spread rapidly in Africa, Asia, Oceania and Latin America. That caused Protestantism to be called a primarily non-Western religion. Much of the growth has occurred after World War II, when decolonization of Africa and abolition of various restrictions against Protestants in Latin American countries occurred. According to one source, Protestants constituted respectively 2.5%, 2%, 0.5% of Latin Americans, Africans and Asians. In 2000, percentage of Protestants on mentioned continents was 17%, more than 27% and 6%, respectively. According to Mark A. Noll, 79% of Anglicans lived in the United Kingdom in 1910, while most of the remainder was found in the United States and across the British Commonwealth. By 2010, 59% of Anglicans were found in Africa. In 2010, more Protestants lived in India than in the UK or Germany, while Protestants in Brazil were as numerous as those in the UK and Germany combined. Almost as many lived in each of Nigeria and China as in all of Europe. China is home to world's largest Protestant minority.\nProtestantism is growing in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania, while declining in Anglo America and Europe, with some exceptions such as France, where it was driven underground from the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes until shortly before the French Revolution, but its adherents are now claimed to be stable in number or even growing slightly. According to some, Russia is another country to see a Protestant revival.\nIn 2010, the largest Protestant denominational families were historically Pentecostal denominations (11%), Anglican (11%), Lutheran (10%), Baptist (9%), United and uniting churches (unions of different denominations) (7%), Presbyterian or Reformed (7%), Methodist (3%), Adventist (3%), Congregationalist (1%), Brethren (1%), The Salvation Army (<1%) and Moravian (<1%). Other denominations accounted for 38% of Protestants.\nThe United States is home to approximately 20% of the world's Protestants. According to a 2012 study, the Protestant share of U.S. population was 48%, marking the first time in which it was not the religion of the majority of the country. The decline is attributed mainly to the dropping membership of the Mainline Protestant churches, while Evangelical Protestant and Black churches are stable or continue to grow.\nBy 2050, Protestants are projected to form to slightly more than half of the world's total Christian population. According to other experts such as Hans J. Hillerbrand, Protestants will be as numerous as Catholics.\nAccording to Peter L. Berger, popular Protestantism is the most dynamic religious movement in the contemporary world, alongside resurgent Islam.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\nGeneral\nSpecial"}, "descending_order": ["25814008", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["25814008", "30227"], "permutation_2": ["30227", "25814008"], "permutation_3": ["30227", "25814008"]}
{"id": "2hop__157766_22384", "docs_added": {"26748": "Switzerland\nCountry in Central Europe\nSwitzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is geographically divided among the Swiss Plateau, the Alps and the Jura; the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory, whereas most of the country's nearly 9 million people are concentrated on the plateau, which hosts its largest cities and economic centres, including Zurich, Geneva, and Lausanne. \nSwitzerland is a federal republic composed of 26 cantons, with federal authorities based in Bern. It has four main linguistic and cultural regions: German, French, Italian and Romansh. Although most Swiss are German-speaking, national identity is fairly cohesive, being rooted in a common historical background, shared values such as federalism and direct democracy, and Alpine symbolism. Swiss identity transcends language, ethnicity, and religion, leading to Switzerland being described as a (\"nation of volition\") rather than a nation state.\nSwitzerland originates from the Old Swiss Confederacy established in the Late Middle Ages as a defensive and commercial alliance; the Federal Charter of 1291 is considered the country's founding document. The confederation steadily expanded and consolidated despite external threats and internal political and religious strife. Swiss independence from the Holy Roman Empire was formally recognised in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The confederation was among the first and few republics of the early modern period, and the only one besides San Marino to survive the Napoleonic Wars. \nSwitzerland remained a network of self-governing states until 1798, when revolutionary France invaded and imposed the centralist Helvetic Republic. Napoleon abolished the republic in 1803 and reinstated a confederation. Following the Napoleonic Wars, Switzerland restored its pre-revolutionary system, but by 1830 faced growing division and conflict between liberal and conservative movements; this culminated in a new constitution in 1848 that established the current federal system and enshrined principles such as individual rights, separation of powers, and parliamentary bicameralism. \nSwitzerland has maintained a policy of armed neutrality since the 16th century and has not fought an international war since 1815. It joined the United Nations only in 2002 but pursues an active foreign policy that includes frequent involvement in peace building and global governance. Switzerland is the birthplace of the Red Cross and hosts the headquarters or offices of most major international institutions, including the WTO, the WHO, the ILO, FIFA, the WEF, and the UN. It is a founding member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) but not part of the European Union (EU), the European Economic Area, or the eurozone; however, it participates in the European single market and the Schengen Area. \nSwitzerland is among the world's most developed countries, with the highest nominal wealth per adult and the eighth-highest gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. It performs highly on several international metrics, including economic competitiveness, democratic governance, and press freedom. Zurich, Geneva and Basel rank among the highest in quality of life, albeit with some of the highest costs of living. Switzerland holds an international reputation for its established banking sector and for its specialized industries in watchmaking and chocolate production.\nEtymology.\nThe English name \"Switzerland\" is a portmanteau of \"Switzer\", an obsolete term for a Swiss person which was in use during the 16th to 19th centuries, and \"land\". The English adjective \"Swiss\" is a loanword from French ', also in use since the 16th century. The name \"Switzer\" is from the Alemannic ', in origin an inhabitant of \"Schwyz\" and its associated territory, one of the cantons which formed the nucleus of the Old Swiss Confederacy. The Swiss began to adopt the name for themselves after the Swabian War of 1499, used alongside the term for \"Confederates\", (literally: \"comrades by oath\"), used since the 14th century. The data code for Switzerland, CH, is derived from Latin (\"Helvetic Confederation\").\nThe toponym \"Schwyz\" itself was first attested in 972, as Old High German ', perhaps related to ' 'to burn' (cf. Old Norse 'to singe, burn'), referring to the area of forest that was burned and cleared to build. The name was extended to the area dominated by the canton, and after the Swabian War of 1499 gradually came to be used for the entire Confederation. The Swiss German name of the country, ', is homophonous to that of the canton and the settlement, but distinguished by the use of the definite article (' for the Confederation, but simply \"\" for the canton and the town). The long [i\u02d0] of Swiss German is historically and still often today spelled \u27e8y\u27e9 rather than \u27e8ii\u27e9, preserving the original identity of the two names even in writing.\nThe Latin name was neologised and introduced gradually after the formation of the federal state in 1848, harking back to the Napoleonic Helvetic Republic. It appeared on coins from 1879, inscribed on the Federal Palace in 1902 and after 1948 used in the official seal (e.g., the ISO banking code \"CHF\" for the Swiss franc, the Swiss postage stamps ('HELVETIA') and the country top-level domain \".ch\", are both taken from the state's Latin name). is derived from the \"Helvetii\", a Gaulish tribe living on the Swiss Plateau before the Roman era.\n\"Helvetia\" appeared as a national personification of the Swiss confederacy in the 17th century in a 1672 play by Johann Caspar Weissenbach.\nHistory.\nThe state of Switzerland took its present form with the adoption of the Swiss Federal Constitution in 1848. Switzerland's precursors established a defensive alliance in 1291, forming a loose confederation that persisted for centuries.\nBeginnings.\nThe oldest traces of hominid existence in Switzerland date to about 150,000 years ago. The oldest known farming settlements in Switzerland, which were found at G\u00e4chlingen, date to around 5300 BC.\nThe earliest known tribes formed the Hallstatt and La T\u00e8ne cultures, named after the archaeological site of La T\u00e8ne on the north side of Lake Neuch\u00e2tel. La T\u00e8ne culture developed and flourished during the late Iron Age from around 450 BC, possibly influenced by Greek and Etruscan civilisations. One of the most prominent La T\u00e8ne tribes were the Helvetii, who primarily occupied the Swiss Plateau, alongside the Rhaetians in the eastern regions. Facing pressures from Germanic tribes, in 58 BC, the Helvetii, influenced by Orgetorix, a wealthy aristocrat, decided to abandon the Swiss Plateau for better opportunities in western Gallia. After Orgetorix's mysterious death, the tribe continued their migration but was decisively defeated by Julius Caesar's armies at the Battle of Bibracte, in present-day eastern France. Following their defeat, the Helvetii were forced by Caesar to return to their original lands, where they were subjected to stringent restrictions on their autonomy and movements. In 15 BC, Tiberius (later the second Roman emperor) and his brother Drusus conquered the Alps, integrating them into the Roman Empire. The area occupied by the Helvetii first became part of Rome's Gallia Belgica province and then of its Germania Superior province. The eastern portion of modern Switzerland was integrated into the Roman province of Raetia. Sometime around the start of the Common Era, the Romans maintained a large camp called Vindonissa, now a ruin at the confluence of the Aare and Reuss rivers, near the town of Windisch.\nThe first and second century AD was an age of prosperity on the Swiss Plateau. Towns such as Aventicum, Iulia Equestris and Augusta Raurica reached a remarkable size, while hundreds of agricultural estates (Villae rusticae) were established in the countryside.\nAround 260 AD, the fall of the Agri Decumates territory north of the Rhine transformed today's Switzerland into a frontier land of the Empire. Repeated raids by the Alamanni tribes provoked the ruin of the Roman towns and economy, forcing the population to shelter near Roman fortresses, like the Castrum Rauracense near Augusta Raurica. The Empire built another line of defence at the north border (the so-called Donau-Iller-Rhine-Limes). At the end of the fourth century, the increased Germanic pressure forced the Romans to abandon the linear defence concept. The Swiss Plateau was finally open to Germanic tribes.\nIn the Early Middle Ages, from the end of the fourth century, the western extent of modern-day Switzerland was part of the territory of the Kings of the Burgundians, who introduced the French language to the area. The Alemanni settled the Swiss Plateau in the fifth century and the valleys of the Alps in the eighth century, forming Alemannia. Modern-day Switzerland was then divided between the kingdoms of Alemannia and Burgundy. The entire region became part of the expanding Frankish Empire in the sixth century, following Clovis I's victory over the Alemanni at Tolbiac in 504 AD, and later Frankish domination of the Burgundians.\nThroughout the rest of the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries, Swiss regions continued under Frankish hegemony (Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties) but after its extension under Charlemagne, the Frankish Empire was divided by the Treaty of Verdun in 843. The territories of present-day Switzerland became divided into Middle Francia and East Francia until they were reunified under the Holy Roman Empire around 1000\u00a0AD.\nIn the 10th century, as the rule of the Carolingians waned, Magyars destroyed Basel in 917 and St. Gallen in 926. In response, Henry the Fowler, the then ruler of East Francia, decreed the fortification of key settlements to defend against these invasions. Large villages and towns, including strategic locations like Zurich and St.Gallen, were fortified. This initiative led to the development of what were essentially early urban strongholds and city governments in Eastern Switzerland.\nBy 1200, the Swiss Plateau comprised the dominions of the houses of Savoy, Z\u00e4hringer, Habsburg, and Kyburg. Some regions (Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, later known as ) were accorded the Imperial immediacy to grant the empire direct control over the mountain passes. With the extinction of its male line in 1263, the Kyburg dynasty fell in AD 1264. The Habsburgs under King Rudolph I (Holy Roman Emperor in 1273) laid claim to the Kyburg lands and annexed them, extending their territory to the eastern Swiss Plateau.\nOld Swiss Confederacy.\nThe Old Swiss Confederacy was an alliance among the valley communities of the central Alps. The Confederacy was governed by nobles and patricians of various cantons who facilitated management of common interests and ensured peace on mountain trade routes. The Federal Charter of 1291 is considered the confederacy's founding document, even though similar alliances likely existed decades earlier. The document was agreed among the rural communes of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden.\nBy 1353, the three original cantons had joined with the cantons of Glarus and Zug and the Lucerne, Zurich and Bern city-states to form the \"Old Confederacy\" of eight states that obtained through the end of the 15th century. The expansion led to increased power and wealth for the confederation. By 1460, the confederates controlled most of the territory south and west of the Rhine to the Alps and the Jura mountains, and the University of Basel was founded (with a faculty of medicine) establishing a tradition of chemical and medical research. This increased after victories against the Habsburgs (Battle of Sempach, Battle of N\u00e4fels), over Charles the Bold of Burgundy during the 1470s, and the success of the Swiss mercenaries. The Swiss victory in the Swabian War against the Swabian League of Emperor Maximilian I in 1499 amounted to \"de facto\" independence within the Holy Roman Empire. In 1501, Basel and Schaffhausen joined the Old Swiss Confederacy.\nThe Confederacy acquired a reputation of invincibility during these earlier wars, but expansion of the confederation suffered a setback in 1515 with the Swiss defeat in the Battle of Marignano. This ended the so-called \"heroic\" epoch of Swiss history. The success of Zwingli's Reformation in some cantons led to inter-cantonal religious conflicts in 1529 and 1531 (Wars of Kappel). It was not until more than one hundred years after these internal wars that, in 1648, under the Peace of Westphalia, European countries recognised Switzerland's independence from the Holy Roman Empire and its neutrality.\nDuring the Early Modern period of Swiss history, the growing authoritarianism of the patriciate families combined with a financial crisis in the wake of the Thirty Years' War led to the Swiss peasant war of 1653. In the background to this struggle, the conflict between Catholic and Protestant cantons persisted, erupting in further violence at the First War of Villmergen, in 1656, and the Toggenburg War (or Second War of Villmergen), in 1712.\nNapoleonic era.\nIn 1798, the revolutionary French government invaded Switzerland and imposed a new unified constitution. This centralised the government of the country, effectively abolishing the cantons: moreover, M\u00fclhausen left Switzerland and the Valtellina valley became part of the Cisalpine Republic. The new regime, known as the Helvetic Republic, was highly unpopular. An invading foreign army had imposed and destroyed centuries of tradition, making Switzerland nothing more than a French satellite state. The fierce French suppression of the Nidwalden Revolt in September 1798 was an example of the oppressive presence of the French Army and the local population's resistance to the occupation.\nWhen war broke out between France and its rivals, Russian and Austrian forces invaded Switzerland. The Swiss refused to fight alongside the French in the name of the Helvetic Republic. In 1803 Napoleon organised a meeting of the leading Swiss politicians from both sides in Paris. The Act of Mediation was the result, which largely restored Swiss autonomy and introduced a Confederation of 19 cantons. Henceforth, much of Swiss politics would concern balancing the cantons' tradition of self-rule with the need for a central government.\nIn 1815, the Congress of Vienna fully re-established Swiss independence, and the European powers recognised permanent Swiss neutrality. Swiss troops served foreign governments until 1860 when they fought in the siege of Gaeta. The treaty allowed Switzerland to increase its territory, with the admission of the cantons of Valais, Neuch\u00e2tel and Geneva. Switzerland's borders saw only minor adjustments thereafter.\nFederal state.\nThe restoration of power to the patriciate was only temporary. After a period of unrest with repeated violent clashes, such as the Z\u00fcriputsch of 1839, civil war (the \"Sonderbundskrieg\") broke out in 1847 when some Catholic cantons tried to set up a separate alliance (the \"Sonderbund\"). The war lasted less than a month, causing fewer than 100 casualties, most of which were through friendly fire. The Sonderbundskrieg had a significant impact on the psychology and society of Switzerland.\nThe war convinced most Swiss of the need for unity and strength. Swiss from all strata of society, whether Catholic or Protestant, from the liberal or conservative current, realised that the cantons would profit more from merging their economic and religious interests.\nThus, while the rest of Europe saw revolutionary uprisings, the Swiss drew up a constitution that provided for a federal layout, much of it inspired by the American example. This constitution provided central authority while leaving the cantons the right to self-government on local issues. Giving credit to those who favoured the power of the cantons (the Sonderbund Kantone), the national assembly was divided between an upper house (the Council of States, two representatives per canton) and a lower house (the National Council, with representatives elected from across the country). Referendums were made mandatory for any amendments. This new constitution ended the legal power of nobility in Switzerland.\nA single system of weights and measures was introduced, and in 1850 the Swiss franc became the Swiss single currency, complemented by the WIR franc in 1934. Article 11 of the constitution forbade sending troops to serve abroad, marking the end of foreign service. It came with the expectation of serving the Holy See, and the Swiss were still obliged to serve Francis II of the Two Sicilies with Swiss Guards present at the siege of Gaeta in 1860.\nAn important clause of the constitution was that it could be entirely rewritten, if necessary, thus enabling it to evolve as a whole rather than being modified one amendment at a time.\nThis need soon proved itself when the rise in population and the Industrial Revolution that followed led to calls to modify the constitution accordingly. The population rejected an early draft in 1872, but modifications led to its acceptance in 1874. It introduced the facultative referendum for laws at the federal level. It also established federal responsibility for defence, trade, and legal matters.\nIn 1891, the constitution was revised with uncommonly strong elements of direct democracy, which remain unique today.\nModern history.\nSwitzerland was not invaded during either of the world wars. During World War I, Switzerland was home to the revolutionary and founder of the Soviet Union Vladimir Illych Ulyanov (Vladimir Lenin) who remained there until 1917. Swiss neutrality was seriously questioned by the short-lived Grimm\u2013Hoffmann affair in 1917. In 1920, Switzerland joined the League of Nations, which was based in Geneva, after it was exempted from military requirements.\nDuring World War II, detailed invasion plans were drawn up by the Germans, but Switzerland was never attacked. Switzerland was able to remain independent through a combination of military deterrence, concessions to Germany, and good fortune, as larger events during the war intervened. General Henri Guisan, appointed the commander-in-chief for the duration of the war ordered a general mobilisation of the armed forces. The Swiss military strategy changed from static defence at the borders to organised long-term attrition and withdrawal to strong, well-stockpiled positions high in the Alps, known as the Reduit. Switzerland was an important base for espionage by both sides and often mediated communications between the Axis and Allied powers.\nSwitzerland's trade was blockaded by both the Allies and the Axis. Economic cooperation and extension of credit to Nazi Germany varied according to the perceived likelihood of invasion and the availability of other trading partners. Concessions reached a peak after a crucial rail link through Vichy France was severed in 1942, leaving Switzerland (together with Liechtenstein) entirely isolated from the wider world by Axis-controlled territory. Over the course of the war, Switzerland interned over 300,000 refugees aided by the International Red Cross, based in Geneva. Strict immigration and asylum policies and the financial relationships with Nazi Germany raised controversy, only at the end of the 20th century.\nDuring the war, the Swiss Air Force engaged aircraft of both sides, shooting down 11 intruding Luftwaffe planes in May and June 1940, then forcing down other intruders after a change of policy following threats from Germany. Over 100 Allied bombers and their crews were interned. Between 1940 and 1945, Switzerland was bombed by the Allies, causing fatalities and property damage. Among the cities and towns bombed were Basel, Brusio, Chiasso, Cornol, Geneva, Koblenz, Niederweningen, Rafz, Renens, Samedan, Schaffhausen, Stein am Rhein, T\u00e4gerwilen, Thayngen, Vals, and Zurich. Allied forces maintained that the bombings, which violated the 96th Article of War, resulted from navigation errors, equipment failure, weather conditions, and pilot errors. The Swiss expressed fear and concern that the bombings were intended to put pressure on Switzerland to end economic cooperation and neutrality with Nazi Germany. Court-martial proceedings took place in England. The US paid SFR 62M for reparations.\nSwitzerland's attitude towards refugees was complicated and controversial; over the course of the war, it admitted as many as 300,000 refugees while refusing tens of thousands more, including Jews persecuted by the Nazis.\nAfter the war, the Swiss government exported credits through the charitable fund known as the and donated to the Marshall Plan to help Europe's recovery, efforts that ultimately benefited the Swiss economy.\nDuring the Cold War, Swiss authorities considered the construction of a Swiss nuclear bomb. Leading nuclear physicists at the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich such as Paul Scherrer made this a realistic possibility. In 1988, the Paul Scherrer Institute was founded in his name to explore the therapeutic uses of neutron scattering technologies. Financial problems with the defence budget and ethical considerations prevented the substantial funds from being allocated, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 was seen as a valid alternative. Plans for building nuclear weapons were dropped by 1988. Switzerland joined the Council of Europe in 1963.\nSwitzerland was the last Western republic (the Principality of Liechtenstein followed in 1984) to grant women the right to vote. Some Swiss cantons approved this in 1959, while at the federal level, it was achieved in 1971 and, after resistance, in the last canton Appenzell Innerrhoden (one of only two remaining \"Landsgemeinde\", along with Glarus) in 1990. After obtaining suffrage at the federal level, women quickly rose in political significance. The first woman on the seven-member Federal Council executive was Elisabeth Kopp, who served from 1984 to 1989, and the first female president was Ruth Dreifuss in 1999.\nIn 1979 areas from the canton of Bern attained independence from the Bernese, forming the new canton of Jura. On 18 April 1999, the Swiss population and the cantons voted in favour of a completely revised federal constitution.\nIn 2002 Switzerland became a full member of the United Nations, leaving Vatican City as the last widely recognised state without full UN membership. Switzerland is a founding member of the EFTA but not the European Economic Area (EEA). An application for membership in the European Union was sent in May 1992, but did not advance since rejecting the EEA in December 1992 when Switzerland conducted a referendum on the EEA. Several referendums on the EU issue ensued; due to opposition from the citizens, the membership application was withdrawn. Nonetheless, Swiss law is gradually changing to conform with that of the EU, and the government signed bilateral agreements with the European Union. Switzerland, together with Liechtenstein, has been surrounded by the EU since Austria's entry in 1995. On 5 June 2005, Swiss voters agreed by a 55% majority to join the Schengen treaty, a result that EU commentators regarded as a sign of support. In September 2020, a referendum calling for a vote to end the pact that allowed a free movement of people from the European Union was introduced by the Swiss People's Party (SVP). However, voters rejected the attempt to retake control of immigration, defeating the motion by a roughly 63%\u201337% margin.\nOn 9 February 2014, 50.3% of Swiss voters approved a ballot initiative launched by the Swiss People's Party (SVP/UDC) to restrict immigration. This initiative was mostly backed by rural (57.6% approval) and suburban groups (51.2% approval), and isolated towns (51.3% approval) as well as by a strong majority (69.2% approval) in Ticino, while metropolitan centres (58.5% rejection) and the French-speaking part (58.5% rejection) rejected it. In December 2016, a political compromise with the EU was attained that eliminated quotas on EU citizens, but still allowed favourable treatment of Swiss-based job applicants. On 27 September 2020, 62% of Swiss voters rejected the anti-free movement referendum by SVP.\nGeography.\nExtending across the north and south side of the Alps in west-central Europe, Switzerland encompasses diverse landscapes and climates across its .\nSwitzerland lies between latitudes 45\u00b0 and 48\u00b0 N, and longitudes 5\u00b0 and 11\u00b0 E. It contains three basic topographical areas: the Swiss Alps to the south, the Swiss Plateau or Central Plateau, and the Jura mountains on the west. The Alps are a mountain range running across the central and south of the country, constituting about 60% of the country's area. The majority of the population live on the Swiss Plateau. The Swiss Alps host many glaciers, covering . From these originate the headwaters of several major rivers, such as the Rhine, Inn, Ticino and Rh\u00f4ne, which flow in the four cardinal directions, spreading across Europe. The hydrographic network includes several of the largest bodies of fresh water in Central and Western Europe, among which are Lake Geneva (Lac L\u00e9man in French), Lake Constance (Bodensee in German) and Lake Maggiore. Switzerland has more than 1500 lakes and contains 6% of Europe's freshwater stock. Lakes and glaciers cover about 6% of the national territory. Lake Geneva is the largest lake and is shared with France. The Rh\u00f4ne is both the main source and outflow of Lake Geneva. Lake Constance is the second largest and, like Lake Geneva, an intermediate step by the Rhine at the border with Austria and Germany. While the Rh\u00f4ne flows into the Mediterranean Sea at the French Camargue region and the Rhine flows into the North Sea at Rotterdam, about apart, both springs are only about apart in the Swiss Alps. 90% of Switzerland's 65,000-kilometre-long network of rivers and streams have been straightened, dammed, canalized or channeled underground, in an effort to prevent natural disasters such as flooding, landslides, and avalanches. 80% of all Swiss drinking water comes from groundwater sources.\nForty-eight mountains are or higher in height. At , Monte Rosa is the highest, although the Matterhorn () is the best known. Both are located within the Pennine Alps in the canton of Valais, on the border with Italy. The section of the Bernese Alps above the deep glacial Lauterbrunnen valley, containing 72 waterfalls, is well known for the Jungfrau () Eiger and M\u00f6nch peaks, and its many picturesque valleys. In the southeast the long Engadin Valley, encompassing St. Moritz, is also well known; the highest peak in the neighbouring Bernina Alps is Piz Bernina ().\nThe Swiss Plateau has greater open and hilly landscapes, partly forested, partly open pastures, usually with grazing herds or vegetable and fruit fields, but it is still hilly. Large lakes and the biggest Swiss cities are found there.\nSwitzerland contains two small enclaves: B\u00fcsingen belongs to Germany, while Campione d'Italia belongs to Italy. Switzerland has no exclaves.\nClimate.\nThe Swiss climate is generally temperate, but can vary greatly across localities, from glacial conditions on the mountaintops to the near-Mediterranean climate at Switzerland's southern tip. Some valley areas in the southern part of Switzerland offer cold-hardy palm trees. Summers tend to be warm and humid at times with periodic rainfall, ideal for pastures/grazing. The less humid winters in the mountains may see weeks-long intervals of stable conditions. At the same time, the lower lands tend to suffer from inversion during such periods, hiding the sun.\nA weather phenomenon known as the f\u00f6hn (with an identical effect to the chinook wind) can occur any time and is characterised by an unexpectedly warm wind, bringing low relative humidity air to the north of the Alps during rainfall periods on the south-facing slopes. This works both ways across the alps but is more efficient if blowing from the south due to the steeper step for oncoming wind. Valleys running south to north trigger the best effect. The driest conditions persist in all inner alpine valleys that receive less rain because arriving clouds lose a lot of their moisture content while crossing the mountains before reaching these areas. Large alpine areas such as Graub\u00fcnden remain drier than pre-alpine areas, and as in the main valley of the Valais, wine grapes are grown there.\nThe wettest conditions persist in the high Alps and in the Ticino canton, which has much sun yet heavy bursts of rain from time to time. Precipitation tends to be spread moderately throughout the year, with a peak in summer. Autumn is the driest season, winter receives less precipitation than summer, yet the weather patterns in Switzerland are not in a stable climate system. They can vary from year to year with no strict and predictable periods.\nEnvironment.\nSwitzerland contains two terrestrial ecoregions: Western European broadleaf forests and Alps conifer and mixed forests.\nSwitzerland's many small valleys separated by high mountains often host unique ecologies. The mountainous regions themselves offer a rich range of plants not found at other altitudes. The climatic, geological and topographical conditions of the alpine region make for a fragile ecosystem that is particularly sensitive to climate change. According to the 2014 Environmental Performance Index, Switzerland ranks first among 132 nations in safeguarding the environment, due to its high scores on environmental public health, its heavy reliance on renewable sources of energy (hydropower and geothermal energy), and its level of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2020 it was ranked third out of 180 countries. The country pledged to cut GHG emissions by 50% by 2030 compared to the level of 1990 and plans to reach zero emissions by 2050.\nHowever, access to biocapacity in Switzerland is far lower than the world average. In 2016, Switzerland had 1.0 hectares of biocapacity per person within its territory, 40 per cent less than world average of 1.6. In contrast, in 2016, Swiss consumption required 4.6 hectares of biocapacity \u2013 their ecological footprint, 4.6 times as much as Swiss territory can support. The remainder comes from other countries and the shared resources (such as the atmosphere impacted by greenhouse gas emissions). Switzerland had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 3.53/10, ranking it 150th globally out of 172 countries.\nSwitzerland ranked 9th in the Environmental Performance Index for 2024. It scored well in parameters including air pollution, sanitation and drinking water, waste management, and climate change mitigation.\nUrbanisation.\nAbout 85% of the population live in urban areas. Switzerland went from a largely rural country to an urban one from 1930 to 2000. After 1935 urban development claimed as much of the Swiss landscape as it did during the prior 2,000 years. Urban sprawl affects the plateau, the Jura and the Alpine foothills, raising concerns about land use. During the 21st century, population growth in urban areas is higher than in the countryside.\nSwitzerland has a dense network of complementary large, medium and small towns. The plateau is densely populated with about 400 people per km2 and the landscape shows uninterrupted signs of human presence. The weight of the largest metropolitan areas \u2013 Zurich, Geneva\u2013Lausanne, Basel and Bern \u2013 tend to increase. The importance of these urban areas is greater than their population suggests. These urban centers are recognised for their high quality of life.\nThe average population density in 2019 was . In the largest canton by area, Graub\u00fcnden, lying entirely in the Alps, population density falls to . In the canton of Zurich, with its large urban capital, the density is .\nGovernment and politics.\nThe Federal Constitution adopted in 1848 is the legal foundation of Switzerland's federal state. It is regularly modified by referendum and has been completely revised twice, in 1874 and 1999. The constitution outlines rights of individuals and citizen participation in public affairs, divides the powers between the confederation and the cantons and defines federal jurisdiction and authority. Three main bodies govern on the federal level: the Federal Assembly (legislative), the Federal Council (executive) and the federal courts (judicial).\nFederal Assembly.\nThe Federal Assembly is the parliament of Switzerland. It consists of two houses: The Council of States has 46 members, two from each canton and one from each half-canton. The National Council has 200 members, apportioned to reflect the population of each canton, and elected by proportional representation within each canton. Members of both houses serve for four years and work part-time (\"Milizsystem\"). When both houses are in joint session, they are known collectively as the Federal Assembly. Through optional referendums, citizens may challenge any law passed by parliament.\nFederal Council.\nThe Federal Council is the Swiss executive. It leads the federal administration and serves as a collective head of state. It is a collegial body of seven members, elected to four-year terms by the Federal Assembly, which oversees the council. Each member leads a department of the federal government. Each year, one member of the Council is elected President of the Confederation by the Assembly, with the presidency traditionally rotating between members. The President chairs and represents the government, but has no additional powers and remains the head of their department.\nThe government has been a coalition of the four major political parties since 1959, each party having a number of seats that roughly reflects its share of the electorate and representation in the federal parliament. This distribution is called the \"magic formula\". Since 2003, the seven seats in the Federal Council have been distributed as follows:\nSupreme Court.\nThe function of the Federal Supreme Court is to hear appeals against rulings of cantonal or federal courts. The judges are elected by the Federal Assembly for six-year terms.\nDirect democracy.\nDirect democracy and federalism are hallmarks of the Swiss political system defined in the Swiss constitution. The Swiss people are subject to three legal jurisdictions: the municipal, cantonal and federal levels. At the federal level, popular rights include the right to submit a federal initiative and a referendum, both of which may overturn parliamentary decisions.\nThere are three types of federal referendum in Switzerland: \nThe Federal Council and the Federal Assembly can supplement a popular initiative with a counterproposal. Voters must then indicate their preference if both proposals are accepted. \nCantons.\nThe Swiss Confederation consists of 26 cantons. The cantons are federated states, with permanent constitutional status and a high degree of independence relative to the subnational divisions of most countries. Under the Federal Constitution, all 26 cantons are equal in status, except that six (referred to often as the half-cantons) are represented by one councillor instead of two in the Council of States and have only half a cantonal vote with respect to the required cantonal majority in referendums on constitutional amendments. Each canton has its own constitution and its own parliament, government, police and courts. However, considerable differences define the individual cantons, particularly in terms of population and geographical area. Their populations vary between 16,003 (Appenzell Innerrhoden) and 1,487,969 (Zurich), and their area between (Basel-Stadt) and (Grisons).\nMunicipalities.\nAs of 2018 the cantons comprised 2,222 municipalities.\nFederal City.\nUntil 1848, the loosely coupled Confederation did not have a central political organisation. Issues thought to affect the whole Confederation were the subject of periodic meetings in various locations.\nIn 1848, the federal constitution provided that details concerning federal institutions, such as their locations, should be addressed by the Federal Assembly (BV 1848 Art. 108). Thus on 28 November 1848, the Federal Assembly voted in the majority to locate the seat of government in Bern and, as a prototypical federal compromise, to assign other federal institutions, such as the Federal Polytechnical School (1854, the later ETH) to Zurich, and other institutions to Lucerne, such as the later SUVA (1912) and the Federal Insurance Court (1917). Other federal institutions were subsequently attributed to Lausanne (Federal Supreme Court in 1872, and EPFL in 1969), Bellinzona (Federal Criminal Court, 2004), and St. Gallen (Federal Administrative Court and Federal Patent Court, 2012).\nThe 1999 Constitution does not mention a Federal City and the Federal Council has yet to address the matter. Thus no city in Switzerland has the \"official\" status either of capital or of Federal City. Nevertheless, Bern is commonly referred to as \"Federal City\" (, , ).\nForeign relations and international institutions.\nTraditionally, Switzerland avoids alliances that might entail military, political, or direct economic action and has been neutral since the end of its expansion in 1515. Its policy of neutrality was internationally recognised at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Swiss neutrality has been questioned at times. In 2002 Switzerland became a full member of the United Nations. It was the first state to join it by referendum. Switzerland maintains diplomatic relations with almost all countries and historically has served as an intermediary between other states. Switzerland is not a member of the European Union; the Swiss people have consistently rejected membership since the early 1990s. However, Switzerland does participate in the Schengen Area.\nMany international institutions have headquarters in Switzerland, in part because of its policy of neutrality. Geneva is the birthplace of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the Geneva Conventions and, since 2006, hosts the United Nations Human Rights Council. Even though Switzerland is one of the most recent countries to join the United Nations, the Palace of Nations in Geneva is the second biggest centre for the United Nations after the headquarters in New York. Switzerland was a founding member and hosted the League of Nations.\nApart from the United Nations headquarters, the Swiss Confederation is host to many UN agencies, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and about 200 other international organisations, including the World Trade Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization. The annual meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos bring together business and political leaders from Switzerland and foreign countries to discuss important issues. The headquarters of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) moved to Basel in 1930.\nMany sports federations and organisations are located in the country, including the International Handball Federation in Basel, the International Basketball Federation in Geneva, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) in Nyon, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) and the International Ice Hockey Federation both in Zurich, the International Cycling Union in Aigle, and the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne.\nSwitzerland became a member of the United Nations Security Council for the 2023\u20132024 period. According to the 2024 Global Peace Index, Switzerland is the 6th most peaceful country in the world.\nSwitzerland and the European Union.\nAlthough not a member, Switzerland maintains relationships with the EU and European countries through bilateral agreements. The Swiss have brought their economic practices largely into conformity with those of the EU, in an effort to compete internationally. EU membership faces considerable negative popular sentiment. It is opposed by the conservative SVP party, the largest party in the National Council, and not advocated by several other political parties. The membership application was formally withdrawn in 2016. The western French-speaking areas and the urban regions of the rest of the country tend to be more pro-EU, but do not form a significant share of the population.\nAn Integration Office operates under the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Economic Affairs. Seven bilateral agreements liberalised trade ties, taking effect in 2001. This first series of bilateral agreements included the free movement of persons. A second series of agreements covering nine areas was signed in 2004, including the Schengen Treaty and the Dublin Convention.\nIn 2006, a referendum approved 1 billion francs of supportive investment in Southern and Central European countries in support of positive ties to the EU as a whole. A further referendum will be needed to approve 300 million francs to support Romania and Bulgaria and their recent admission.\nThe Swiss have faced EU and international pressure to reduce banking secrecy and raise tax rates to parity with the EU. Preparatory discussions involved four areas: the electricity market, participation in project Galileo, cooperating with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and certificates of origin for food products.\nSwitzerland is a member of the Schengen passport-free zone. Land border checkpoints monitor goods movements, but not people.\nMilitary.\nThe Swiss Armed Forces, including the Land Forces and the Air Force, are composed mostly of conscripts, male citizens aged from 20 to 34 (in exceptional cases up to 50) years. Being a landlocked country, Switzerland has no navy; however, on lakes bordering neighbouring countries, armed boats patrol. Swiss citizens are prohibited from serving in foreign armies, except for the Swiss Guards of the Vatican, or if they are dual citizens of a foreign country and reside there.\nThe Swiss militia system stipulates that soldiers keep their army-issued equipment, including fully automatic personal weapons, at home. Women can serve voluntarily. Men usually receive military conscription orders for training at the age of 18. About two-thirds of young Swiss are found suitable for service; for the others, various forms of alternative service are available. Annually, approximately 20,000 persons are trained in recruit centres for 18 to 21 weeks. The reform \"Army XXI\" was adopted by popular vote in 2003, replacing \"Army 95\", reducing the rolls from 400,000 to about 200,000. Of those, 120,000 are active in periodic Army training, and 80,000 are non-training reserves.\nThe newest reform of the military, (WEA; English: Further development of the Army), started in 2018 and was expected to reduce the number of army personnel to 100,000 by the end of 2022.\nOverall, three general mobilisations have been declared to ensure the integrity and neutrality of Switzerland. The first mobilisation was held in response to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870\u201371; while the second was in response to the First World War outbreak in August 1914; the third mobilisation took place in September 1939 in response to the German attack on Poland.\nBecause of its neutrality policy, the Swiss army does not take part in armed conflicts in other countries but joins some peacekeeping missions. Since 2000 the armed force department has maintained the Onyx intelligence gathering system to monitor satellite communications.\nGun politics in Switzerland are unique in Europe in that 2\u20133.5\u00a0million guns are in the hands of civilians, giving the nation an estimate of 28\u201341 guns per 100 people. As per the Small Arms Survey, only 324,484 guns are owned by the military. Only 143,372 are in the hands of soldiers. However, ammunition is no longer issued.\nEconomy and labour law.\nSwitzerland has a stable, prosperous and high-tech economy. It is the world's wealthiest country per capita in multiple rankings. The country ranks as one of the least corrupt countries in the world, while its banking sector is rated as \"one of the most corrupt in the world\". It has the world's twentieth largest economy by nominal GDP and the thirty-eighth largest by purchasing power parity. As of 2021, it is the thirteenth largest exporter, and the fifth largest per capita. Zurich and Geneva are regarded as global cities, ranked as Alpha and Beta respectively. Basel is the capital of Switzerland's pharmaceutical industry, hosting Novartis, Roche, and many other players. It is one of the world's most important centres for the life sciences industry.\nSwitzerland had the second-highest global rating in the Index of Economic Freedom 2023, while also providing significant public services. On a per capita basis, nominal GDP is higher than those of the larger Western and Central European economies and Japan, while adjusted for purchasing power, Switzerland ranked 11th in 2017, fifth in 2018, and ninth in 2020.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nThe 2016 World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report ranked Switzerland's economy as the world's most competitive; as of 2019, it ranks fifth globally. The European Union labeled it Europe's most innovative country. Switzerland has been ranked the most innovative country in the Global Innovation Index in 2024, as it had done in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019. It ranked 20th of 189 countries in the Ease of Doing Business Index. Switzerland's slow growth in the 1990s and the early 2000s increased support for economic reforms and harmonisation with the European Union. In 2020, IMD placed Switzerland first in attracting skilled workers.\nFor much of the 20th century, Switzerland was the wealthiest country in Europe by a considerable margin (per capita GDP). Switzerland has one of the world's largest account balances as a percentage of GDP. In 2018, the canton of Basel-City had the highest GDP per capita, ahead of Zug and Geneva. According to Credit Suisse, only about 37% of residents own their own homes, one of the lowest rates of home ownership in Europe. Housing and food price levels were 171% and 145% of the EU-25 index in 2007, compared to 113% and 104% in Germany.\nSwitzerland is home to several large multinational corporations. The largest by revenue are Glencore, Gunvor, Nestl\u00e9, Mediterranean Shipping Company, Novartis, Hoffmann-La Roche, ABB, Mercuria Energy Group and Adecco. Also, notable are UBS, Zurich Insurance, Richemont, Credit Suisse, Barry Callebaut, Swiss Re, Rolex, Tetra Pak, Swatch Group and Swiss International Air Lines.\nSwitzerland's most important economic sector is manufacturing. Manufactured products include specialty chemicals, health and pharmaceutical goods, scientific and precision measuring instruments and musical instruments. The largest exported goods are chemicals (34% of exported goods), machines/electronics (20.9%), and precision instruments/watches (16.9%). The service sector \u2013 especially banking and insurance, commodities trading, tourism, and international organisations \u2013 is another important industry for Switzerland. Exported services amount to a third of exports.\nAgricultural protectionism\u2014a rare exception to Switzerland's free trade policies\u2014contributes to high food prices. Product market liberalisation is lagging behind many EU countries according to the OECD. Apart from agriculture, economic and trade barriers between the European Union and Switzerland are minimal, and Switzerland has free trade agreements with many countries. Switzerland is a member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).\nSwitzerland is considered as the \"land of Cooperatives\" with the ten largest cooperative companies accounting for more than 11% of GDP in 2018. They include Migros and Coop, the two largest retail companies in Switzerland.\nTaxation and government spending.\nSwitzerland is a tax haven. The private sector economy dominates. It features low tax rates; tax revenue to GDP ratio is one of the smallest of developed countries. The Swiss Federal budget reached 62.8 billion Swiss francs in 2010, 11.35% of GDP; however, canton and municipality budgets are not counted as part of the federal budget. Total government spending is closer to 33.8% of GDP. The main sources of income for the federal government are the value-added tax (33% of tax revenue) and the direct federal tax (29%). The main areas of expenditure are in social welfare and finance/taxes. The expenditures of the Swiss Confederation have been growing from 7% of GDP in 1960 to 9.7% in 1990 and 10.7% in 2010. While the social welfare and finance sectors and tax grew from 35% in 1990 to 48.2% in 2010, a significant reduction of expenditures has been occurring in agriculture and national defence; from 26.5% to 12.4% (estimation for the year 2015).\nLabour force.\nSlightly more than 5 million people work in Switzerland; about 25% of employees belonged to a trade union in 2004. Switzerland has a more flexible labor market than neighbouring countries and the unemployment rate is consistently low. The unemployment rate increased from 1.7% in June 2000 to 4.4% in December 2009. It then decreased to 3.2% in 2014 and held steady for several years, before further dropping to 2.5% in 2018 and 2.3% in 2019; in 2023 it had reached a 20-year low of 2%. Population growth (from net immigration) reached 0.52% of population in 2004, increased in the following years before falling to 0.54% again in 2017. The foreign citizen population was 28.9% in 2015, about the same as in Australia.\nIn 2016, the median monthly gross income in Switzerland was 6,502 francs per month (equivalent to US$6,597 per month). After rent, taxes and pension contributions, plus spending on goods and services, the average household has about 15% of its gross income left for savings. Though 61% of the population made less than the mean income, income inequality is relatively low with a Gini coefficient of 29.7, placing Switzerland among the top 20 countries. In 2015, the richest 1% owned 35% of the wealth. Wealth inequality increased through 2019.\nAbout 8.2% of the population live below the national poverty line, defined in Switzerland as earning less than CHF3,990 per month for a household of two adults and two children, and a further 15% are at risk of poverty. Single-parent families, those with no post-compulsory education and those out of work are among the most likely to live below the poverty line. Although work is considered a way out of poverty, some 4.3% are considered working poor. One in ten jobs in Switzerland is considered low-paid; roughly 12% of Swiss workers hold such jobs, many of them women and foreigners.\nEducation and science.\nEducation in Switzerland is diverse, because the constitution of Switzerland delegates the operation for the school system to the cantons. Public and private schools are available, including many private international schools.\nPrimary education.\nThe minimum age for primary school is about six years, but most cantons provide a free \"children's school\" starting at age four or five. Primary school continues until grade four, five or six, depending on the school. Traditionally, the first foreign language in school was one of the other Swiss languages, although in 2000, English was elevated in a few cantons. At the end of primary school or at the beginning of secondary school, pupils are assigned according to their capacities into one of several sections (often three). The fastest learners are taught advanced classes to prepare for further studies and the matura, while other students receive an education adapted to their needs.\nTertiary education.\nSwitzerland hosts 12 universities, ten of which are maintained at cantonal level and usually offer non-technical subjects. It ranked 87th on the 2019 Academic Ranking of World Universities. The largest is the University of Zurich with nearly 25,000 students. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) and the University of Zurich are listed 20th and 54th respectively, on the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities.\nThe federal government sponsors two institutes: the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) in Zurich, founded in 1855 and the (EPFL) in Lausanne, founded in 1969, formerly associated with the University of Lausanne.\nEight of the world's ten best hotel schools are located in Switzerland. In addition, various universities of applied sciences are available. In business and management studies, the University of St. Gallen, (HSG) is ranked 329th in the world according to QS World University Rankings and the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), was ranked first in open programmes worldwide\".\" Switzerland has the second highest rate (almost 18% in 2003) of foreign students in tertiary education, after Australia (slightly over 18%).\nThe Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, located in Geneva, is continental Europe's oldest graduate school of international and development studies. It is widely held to be one of its most prestigious.\nScience.\nSwitzerland is among the countries with the highest number of Nobel laureates, both in total and per capita; of the 28 Swiss nationals who have won the Nobel Prize, 23 were recognised in the sciences. Among the most famous is Albert Einstein, who became a Swiss citizen in 1901 and developed his theory of special relativity in Bern. Among the Nobel laureates born or nautralised in Switzerland are Vladimir Prelog, Heinrich Rohrer, Richard Ernst, Edmond Fischer, Rolf Zinkernagel, Kurt W\u00fcthrich and Jacques Dubochet. Over 100 laureates across all fields have a relationship to Switzerland. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded nine times to organisations headquartered in Switzerland.\nGeneva and the nearby French department of Ain co-host the world's largest laboratory, CERN, dedicated to particle physics research. Another important research centre is the Paul Scherrer Institute, which conducts multi-disciplinary research in the natural and engineering sciences. \nNotable Swiss inventions include lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), diazepam (Valium), Velcro, and the scanning tunnelling microscope (which earned inventors Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics. Auguste Piccard became the first person to enter the Stratosphere with his pressurised hydrogen ballon, while his son Jacques Piccard became one of the first people to explore the deepest known part of the world's ocean (along with American Don Walsh).\nThe Swiss Space Office has been involved in various space technologies and programmes. It was one of the 10 founders of the European Space Agency in 1975 and is the seventh largest contributor to the ESA budget. In the private sector, several companies participate in the space industry, such as Oerlikon Space and Maxon Motors.\nEnergy.\nElectricity generated in Switzerland is 56% from hydroelectricity and 39% from nuclear power, producing negligible CO2. On 18 May 2003, two anti-nuclear referendums were defeated: \"Moratorium Plus\", aimed at forbidding the building of new nuclear power plants (41.6% supported), and Electricity Without Nuclear (33.7% supported) after a moratorium expired in 2000. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, in 2011 the government announced plans to end the use of nuclear energy in the following 20 to 30 years. In November 2016, Swiss voters rejected a Green Party referendum to accelerate the phaseout of nuclear power (45.8% supported). The Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) is responsible for energy supply and energy use within the Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC). The agency supports the 2000-watt society initiative to cut the nation's energy use by more than half by 2050.\nTransport.\nThe densest rail network in Europe spans and carried 614 million passengers in 2023. In 2015, each Swiss resident travelled on average by rail, more than any other European country. Virtually 100% of the network is electrified. 60% of the network is operated by the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB\u00a0CFF\u00a0FFS). Besides the second largest standard gauge railway company, BLS AG, two railways companies operate on narrow gauge networks: the Rhaetian Railway (RhB) in Graub\u00fcnden, which includes some World Heritage lines, and the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn (MGB), which co-operates with RhB the Glacier Express between Zermatt and St. Moritz/Davos. Switzerland operates the world's longest and deepest railway tunnel and the first flat, low-level route through the Alps, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the largest part of the New Railway Link through the Alps (NRLA) project.\nSwitzerland has a publicly managed, toll-free road network financed by highway permits as well as vehicle and petrol taxes. The Swiss autobahn/autoroute system requires the annual purchase of a vignette (toll sticker)\u2014for 40 Swiss francs\u2014to use its roadways, including passenger cars and trucks. The Swiss autobahn/autoroute network stretches for and has one of the highest motorway densities in the world.\nZurich Airport is Switzerland's largest international flight gateway; it handled 22.8\u00a0million passengers in 2012. The other international airports are Geneva Airport (13.9\u00a0million passengers in 2012), EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg (located in France), Bern Airport, Lugano Airport, St. Gallen-Altenrhein Airport and Sion Airport. Swiss International Air Lines is the flag carrier. Its main hub is Zurich, but it is legally domiciled in Basel.\nEnvironment.\nSwitzerland has one of the best environmental records among developed nations. It is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol. With Mexico and South Korea, it forms the Environmental Integrity Group (EIG).\nThe country is active in recycling and anti-littering programs and is one of the world's top recyclers, recovering 66% to 96% of recyclable materials, varying across the country. The 2014 Global Green Economy Index placed Switzerland among the top 10 green economies.\nSwitzerland has an economic system for garbage disposal, which is based mostly on recycling and energy-producing incinerators. As in other European countries, the illegal disposal of garbage is heavily fined. In almost all Swiss municipalities, mandatory stickers or dedicated garbage bags allow the identification of disposable garbage.\nDemographics.\nIn common with other developed countries, the Swiss population increased rapidly during the industrial era, quadrupling between 1800 and 1990, and it has continued to grow.\nThe population is about 9 million (2023 est.). Population growth is projected to continue to 2035, due mostly to immigration. Like most of Europe, Switzerland faces an ageing population, with a fertility rate close to replacement level. Switzerland has one of the world's oldest populations, with an average age of 44.5 years.\nAccording to the World Factbook, ethnic groups in Switzerland are as follows: Swiss 69.2%, German 4.2%, Italian 3.2%, Portuguese 2.5%, French 2.1%, Kosovan 1.1%, Turkish 1%, other 16.7% (2020 est). The Council of Europe figures suggest a population of around 30,000 Romani people in the country.\nImmigration.\nIn 2023, resident foreigners made up 26.3% of Switzerland's population. Most of these (83%) were from European countries. Italy provided the largest single group of foreigners, providing 14.7% of total foreign population, followed closely by Germany (14.0%), Portugal (11.7%), France (6.6%), Kosovo (5.1%), Spain (3.9%), Turkey (3.1%), North Macedonia (3.1%), Serbia (2.8%), Austria (2.0%), United Kingdom (1.9%), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1.3%) and Croatia (1.3%). Immigrants from Sri Lanka (1.3%), most of them former Tamil refugees, were the largest group of Asian origin (7.9%).\n2021 figures show that 39.5% (compared to 34.7% in 2012) of the permanent resident population aged 15 or over (around 2.89\u00a0million), had an immigrant background. 38% of the population with an immigrant background (1.1\u00a0million) held Swiss citizenship.\nIn the 2000s, domestic and international institutions expressed concern about what was perceived as an increase in xenophobia. In reply to one critical report, the Federal Council noted that \"racism unfortunately is present in Switzerland\", but stated that the high proportion of foreign citizens in the country, as well as the generally successful integration of foreigners, underlined Switzerland's openness. A follow-up study conducted in 2018 reported that 59% considered racism a serious problem in Switzerland. The proportion of the population that claimed to have been targeted by racial discrimination increased from 10% in 2014 to almost 17% in 2018, according to the Federal Statistical Office.\nLargest cities.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nLanguages.\nSwitzerland has four national languages: mainly German (spoken natively by 62.8% of the population in 2016); French (22.9%) spoken natively in the west; and Italian (8.2%) spoken natively in the south. The fourth national language, Romansh (0.5%), is a Romance language spoken locally in the southeastern trilingual canton of Grisons, and is designated by Article 4 of the Federal Constitution as a national language along with German, French, and Italian. In Article 70 it is mentioned as an official language if the authorities communicate with persons who speak Romansh. However, federal laws and other official acts do not need to be decreed in Romansh.\nIn 2016, the languages most spoken at home among permanent residents aged 15 and older were Swiss German (59.4%), French (23.5%), Standard German (10.6%), and Italian (8.5%). Other languages spoken at home included English (5.0%), Portuguese (3.8%), Albanian (3.0%), Spanish (2.6%) and Serbian and Croatian (2.5%). 6.9% reported speaking another language at home. In 2014 almost two-thirds (64.4%) of the permanent resident population indicated speaking more than one language regularly.\nThe federal government is obliged to communicate in the official languages, and in the federal parliament simultaneous translation is provided from and into German, French and Italian.\nAside from the official forms of their respective languages, the four linguistic regions of Switzerland also have local dialectal forms. The role played by dialects in each linguistic region varies dramatically: in German-speaking regions, Swiss German dialects have become more prevalent since the second half of the 20th century, especially in the media, and are used as an everyday language for many, while the Swiss variety of Standard German is almost always used instead of dialect for written communication (cf. diglossic usage of a language). Conversely, in the French-speaking regions, local Franco-Proven\u00e7al dialects have almost disappeared (only 6.3% of the population of Valais, 3.9% of Fribourg, and 3.1% of Jura still spoke dialects at the end of the 20th century), while in the Italian-speaking regions, the use of Lombard dialects is mostly limited to family settings and casual conversation.\nThe principal official languages have terms not used outside of Switzerland, known as Helvetisms. German Helvetisms are, roughly speaking, a large group of words typical of Swiss Standard German that do not appear in Standard German, nor in other German dialects. These include terms from Switzerland's surrounding language cultures (German \"Billett\" from French), from similar terms in another language (Italian \"azione\" used not only as \"act\" but also as \"discount\" from German \"Aktion\"). Swiss French, while generally close to the French of France, also contains some Helvetisms. The most frequent characteristics of Helvetisms are in vocabulary, phrases, and pronunciation, although certain Helvetisms denote themselves as special in syntax and orthography. Duden, the comprehensive German dictionary, contains about 3000 Helvetisms. Current French dictionaries, such as the Petit Larousse, include several hundred Helvetisms; notably, Swiss French uses different terms than that of France for the numbers 70 (\"septante\") and 90 (\"nonante\") and often 80 (\"huitante\") as well.\nLearning one of the other national languages is compulsory for all Swiss pupils, hence many Swiss are supposed to be at least bilingual, especially those belonging to linguistic minority groups. Because the largest part of Switzerland is German-speaking, many French, Italian, and Romansh speakers migrating to the rest of Switzerland and the children of those non-German-speaking Swiss born within the rest of Switzerland speak German. While learning one of the other national languages at school is important, most Swiss learn English to communicate with Swiss speakers of other languages, as it is perceived as a neutral means of communication. English often functions as the de facto lingua franca.\nHealth.\nSwiss residents are required to buy health insurance from private insurance companies, which in turn are required to accept every applicant. While the cost of the system is among the highest, its health outcomes compare well with other European countries; patients have been reported as in general, highly satisfied with it. In 2012, life expectancy at birth was 80.4 years for men and 84.7 years for women \u2013 the world's highest. However, spending on health at 11.4% of GDP (2010) is on par with Germany and France (11.6%) and other European countries, but notably less than the US (17.6%). From 1990, costs steadily increased.\nIt is estimated that one out of six Swiss persons suffers from mental illness.\nAccording to a survey conducted by Addiction Switzerland, fourteen per cent of men and 6.5% of women between 20 and 24 reported consuming cannabis in the past 30 days in 2020, and 4 Swiss cities were listed among the top 10 European cities for cocaine use as measured in wastewater, down from 5 in 2018.\nCulture.\nSwiss culture is characterised by diversity, which is reflected in diverse traditional customs. A region may be in some ways culturally connected to the neighbouring country that shares its language, all rooted in western European culture. The linguistically isolated Romansh culture in Graub\u00fcnden in eastern Switzerland constitutes an exception. It survives only in the upper valleys of the Rhine and the Inn and strives to maintain its rare linguistic tradition.\nSwitzerland is home to notable contributors to literature, art, architecture, music and sciences. In addition, the country attracted creatives during times of unrest or war. Some 1000 museums are found in the country.\nAmong the most important cultural performances held annually are the Pal\u00e9o Festival, Lucerne Festival, the Montreux Jazz Festival, the Locarno International Film Festival and Art Basel.\nAlpine symbolism played an essential role in shaping Swiss history and the Swiss national identity. Many alpine areas and ski resorts attract visitors for winter sports as well as hiking and mountain biking in summer. The quieter seasons are spring and autumn. A traditional pastoral culture predominates in many areas, and small farms are omnipresent in rural areas. Folk art is nurtured in organisations across the country. Switzerland most directly in appears in music, dance, poetry, wood carving, and embroidery. The alphorn, a trumpet-like musical instrument made of wood has joined yodeling and the accordion as epitomes of traditional Swiss music.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nChristianity is the predominant religion according to national surveys of Swiss Federal Statistical Office (about 67% of resident population in 2016\u20132018 and 75% of Swiss citizens), divided between the Catholic Church (35.8% of the population), the Swiss Reformed Church (23.8%), further Protestant churches (2.2%), Eastern Orthodoxy (2.5%), and other Christian denominations (2.2%).\nSwitzerland has no official state religion, though most of the cantons (except Geneva and Neuch\u00e2tel) recognise official churches, either the Catholic Church or the Swiss Reformed Church. These churches, and in some cantons the Old Catholic Church and Jewish congregations, are financed by official taxation of members. In 2020, the Roman Catholic Church had 3,048,475 registered and church tax paying members (corresponding to 35.2% of the total population), while the Swiss Reformed Church had 2,015,816 members (23.3% of the total population).\n26.3% of Swiss permanent residents are not affiliated with a religious community.\nAs of 2020, according to a national survey conducted by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, Christian minority communities included Neo-Pietism (0.5%), Pentecostalism (0.4%, mostly incorporated in the Schweizer Pfingstmission), Apostolic communities (0.3%), other Protestant denominations (1.1%, including Methodism), the Old Catholic Church (0.1%), other Christian denominations (0.3%). Non-Christian religions are Islam (5.3%), Hinduism (0.6%), Buddhism (0.5%), Judaism (0.25%) and others (0.4%).\nHistorically, the country was about evenly balanced between Catholic and Protestant, in a complex patchwork. During the Reformation Switzerland became home to many reformers. Geneva converted to Protestantism in 1536, just before John Calvin arrived. In 1541, he founded the \"Republic of Geneva\" on his own ideals. It became known internationally as the \"Protestant Rome\" and housed such reformers as Theodore Beza, William Farel or Pierre Viret. Zurich became another reform stronghold around the same time, with Huldrych Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger taking the lead. Anabaptists Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel also operated there. They were later joined by the fleeing Peter Martyr Vermigli and Hans Denck. Other centres included Basel (Andreas Karlstadt and Johannes Oecolampadius), Bern (Berchtold Haller and Niklaus Manuel), and St. Gallen (Joachim Vadian). One canton, Appenzell, was officially divided into Catholic and Protestant sections in 1597. The larger cities and their cantons (Bern, Geneva, Lausanne, Zurich and Basel) used to be predominantly Protestant. Central Switzerland, the Valais, the Ticino, Appenzell Innerrhodes, the Jura, and Fribourg are traditionally Catholic.\nThe Swiss Constitution of 1848, under the recent impression of the clashes of Catholic vs Protestant cantons that culminated in the Sonderbundskrieg, consciously defines a consociational state, allowing the peaceful co-existence of Catholics and Protestants. A 1980 initiative calling for the complete separation of church and state was rejected by 78.9% of the voters. Some traditionally Protestant cantons and cities nowadays have a slight Catholic majority, because since about 1970 a steadily growing minority were not affiliated with any religious body (21.4% in Switzerland, 2012) especially in traditionally Protestant regions, such as Basel-City (42%), canton of Neuch\u00e2tel (38%), canton of Geneva (35%), canton of Vaud (26%), or Zurich city (city: >25%; canton: 23%).\nLiterature.\nThe earliest forms of literature were in German, reflecting the language's early predominance. In the 18th century, French became fashionable in Bern and elsewhere, while the influence of the French-speaking allies and subject lands increased.\nAmong the classic authors of Swiss literature are Jeremias Gotthelf (1797\u20131854) and Gottfried Keller (1819\u20131890); later writers are Max Frisch (1911\u20131991) and Friedrich D\u00fcrrenmatt (1921\u20131990), whose (\"\") was released as a Hollywood film in 2001, starring Jack Nicholson.\nFamous French-speaking writers were Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712\u20131778) and Germaine de Sta\u00ebl (1766\u20131817). More recent authors include Charles Ferdinand Ramuz (1878\u20131947), whose novels describe the lives of peasants and mountain dwellers, set in a harsh environment, and Blaise Cendrars (born Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Sauser, 1887\u20131961). Italian and Romansh-speaking authors also contributed to the Swiss literary landscape, generally in proportion to their number.\nProbably the most famous Swiss literary creation, \"Heidi\", the story of an orphan girl who lives with her grandfather in the Alps, is one of the most popular children's books and has come to be a symbol of Switzerland. Her creator, Johanna Spyri (1827\u20131901), wrote a number of books on similar themes.\nMedia.\nFreedom of the press and the right to free expression is guaranteed in the constitution. The Swiss News Agency (SNA) broadcasts information in three of the four national languages\u2014on politics, economics, society and culture. The SNA supplies almost all Swiss media and foreign media with its reporting.\nIn Switzerland, the most influential newspapers include the German-language and \"Neue Z\u00fcrcher Zeitung\", as well as the French-language \"Le Temps\". Additionally, almost every city has at least one local newspaper published in the predominant local language.\nThe government exerts greater control over broadcast media than print media, especially due to financing and licensing. The Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, whose name was recently changed to SRG SSR, is charged with the production and distribution of radio and television content. SRG SSR studios are distributed across the various language regions. Radio content is produced in six central and four regional studios while video media are produced in Geneva, Zurich, Basel, and Lugano. An extensive cable network allows most Swiss to access content from neighbouring countries.\nSports.\nSkiing, snowboarding and mountaineering are among the most popular sports, reflecting the nature of the country Winter sports are practised by natives and visitors. The bobsleigh was invented in St. Moritz. The first world ski championships were held in M\u00fcrren (1931) and St. Moritz (1934). The latter town hosted the second Winter Olympic Games in 1928 and the fifth edition in 1948. Among its most successful skiers and world champions are Pirmin Zurbriggen and Didier Cuche.\nThe most prominently watched sports in Switzerland are football and ice hockey.\nThe headquarters of the international football's and ice hockey's governing bodies, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) and International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) are located in Zurich. Many other headquarters of international sports federations are located in Switzerland. For example, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), IOC's Olympic Museum and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) are located in Lausanne.\nSwitzerland hosted the 1954 FIFA World Cup and was the joint host, with Austria, of the UEFA Euro 2008 tournament. The Swiss Super League is the nation's professional football club league. Europe's highest football pitch, at above sea level, is located in Switzerland, the \"Ottmar Hitzfeld Stadium\".\nMany Swiss follow ice hockey and support one of the 12 teams of the National League, which is the most attended league in Europe. In 2009, Switzerland hosted the IIHF World Championship for the tenth time. It also became World Vice-Champion in 2013 and 2018. Its numerous lakes make Switzerland an attractive sailing destination. The largest, Lake Geneva, is the home of the sailing team Alinghi which was the first European team to win the America's Cup in 2003 and which successfully defended the title in 2007.\nSwiss tennis player Roger Federer is widely regarded as among the sport's greatest players. He won 20 Grand Slam tournaments overall including a record 8 Wimbledon titles. He won six ATP Finals. He was ranked no. 1 in the ATP rankings for a record 237 consecutive weeks. He ended 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009 ranked no. 1. Fellow Swiss players Martina Hingis and Stan Wawrinka also won multiple Grand Slam titles. Switzerland won the Davis Cup title in 2014.\nMotorsport racecourses and events were banned in Switzerland following the 1955 Le Mans disaster with exceptions for events such as hillclimbing. The country continued to produce successful racing drivers such as Clay Regazzoni, S\u00e9bastien Buemi, Jo Siffert, Dominique Aegerter, successful World Touring Car Championship driver Alain Menu, 2014 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Marcel F\u00e4ssler and 2015 24 Hours N\u00fcrburgring winner Nico M\u00fcller. Switzerland also won the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport in 2007\u201308 with driver Neel Jani. Swiss motorcycle racer Thomas L\u00fcthi won the 2005 MotoGP World Championship in the 125cc category. In June 2007 the Swiss National Council, one house of the Federal Assembly of Switzerland, voted to overturn the ban, however the other house, the Swiss Council of States rejected the change and the ban remains in place.\nTraditional sports include Swiss wrestling or , a tradition from the rural central cantons and considered the national sport by some. Hornussen is another indigenous Swiss sport, which is like a cross between baseball and golf. is the Swiss variant of stone put, a competition in throwing a heavy stone. Practised only among the alpine population since prehistoric times, it is recorded to have taken place in Basel in the 13th century. It is central to the Unspunnenfest, first held in 1805, with its symbol the 83.5 stone named .\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine is multifaceted. While dishes such as fondue, raclette or r\u00f6sti are omnipresent, each region developed its gastronomy according to the varieties of climate and language, for example, , engl.: sliced meat Zurich style. Traditional Swiss cuisine uses ingredients similar to those in other European countries, as well as unique dairy products and cheeses such as Gruy\u00e8re or Emmental, produced in the valleys of Gruy\u00e8res and Emmental. The number of fine-dining establishments is high, particularly in western Switzerland.\nChocolate has been made in Switzerland since the 18th century. Its reputation grew at the end of the 19th century with the invention of modern techniques such as conching and tempering, which enabled higher quality. Another breakthrough was the invention of solid milk chocolate in 1875 by Daniel Peter. The Swiss are the world's largest chocolate consumers.\nThe most popular alcoholic drink is wine. Switzerland is notable for its variety of grape varieties, reflecting the large variations in terroirs. Swiss wine is produced mainly in Valais, Vaud (Lavaux), Geneva and Ticino, with a small majority of white wines. Vineyards have been cultivated in Switzerland since the Roman era, even though traces of a more ancient origin can be found. The most widespread varieties are the Chasselas (called Fendant in Valais) and Pinot Noir. Merlot is the main variety produced in Ticino.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "11107": "Food and Agriculture Organization\nSpecialised agency of the United Nations\nThe Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger and improve nutrition and food security. Its Latin motto, , translates to \"let there be bread\". It was founded on 16 October 1945.\nThe FAO comprises 195 members, including 194 countries and the European Union. Its headquarters is in Rome, Italy, and it maintains regional and field offices worldwide, operating in over 130 countries. It helps governments and development agencies coordinate their activities to improve and develop agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and land and water resources. It also conducts research, provides technical assistance to projects, operates educational and training programs, and collects agricultural output, production, and development data.\nThe FAO is governed by a biennial conference representing each member country and the European Union, which elects a 49-member executive council. The director-general, as of 2019 Qu Dongyu of China, serves as the chief administrative officer. Various committees govern matters such as finance, programs, agriculture, and fisheries. \nHistory.\nThe idea of an international organization for food and agriculture emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century, advanced primarily by Polish-born American agriculturalist and activist David Lubin. In May\u2013June 1905, an international conference was held in Rome, Italy, which led to the creation of the International Institute of Agriculture (IIA) by the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III.\nThe IIA was the first intergovernmental organization to deal with the problems and challenges of agriculture on a global scale. It worked primarily to collect, compile, and publish data on agriculture, ranging from output statistics to a catalog of crop diseases. Among its achievements was the publication of the first agricultural census in 1930.\nWorld War II effectively ended the IIA. During the war, in 1943, United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt called a League of Nations Conference on Food and Agriculture, which brought representatives from forty-four governments to The Omni Homestead Resort in Hot Springs, Virginia, from 18 May to 3 June to attend the Hot Springs Conference. The main impetus for the conference was the British-born Australian economist Frank L. McDougall, who since 1935 had advocated for an international forum to address hunger and malnutrition.\nThe Conference ended with a commitment to establish a permanent organization for food and agriculture, which was achieved on 16 October 1945 in Quebec City, Canada, following the Constitution of the Food and Agriculture Organization. The first session of the FAO Conference began the same day in the Ch\u00e2teau Frontenac in Quebec City and ended on 1 November 1945. This was led by Sir John Boyd Orr where his work on ending world hunger and creation of FAO resulted in him winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1949.\nAfter the war, the IIA was officially dissolved by resolution of its Permanent Committee on 27 February 1948. Its functions, facilities, and mandate were then transferred to the newly established FAO, which maintained its headquarters in Rome.\nThe FAO's initial functions supported agricultural and nutrition research and provided technical assistance to member countries to boost production in agriculture, fishery, and forestry. Beginning in the 1960s, it focused on efforts to develop high-yield strains of grain, eliminate protein deficiency, promote rural employment, and increase agricultural exports. The FAO recognized the decrease of these resources as an urgent problem in 1961 and created a joint collaboration with the International Biological Program (IBP) in 1967. To that end, it joined the UN General Assembly in creating the UN World Food Programme, the largest humanitarian organization addressing hunger and promoting food security.\nThe FAO launched what would become the FAO Money and Medals Programme (MMP) in 1968. FAO issued collector art medals in various series to bring attention to FAO's goals and missions. This program was responsible for over a hundred medal designs issued to the collecting public. A thirtieth anniversary medal of the MMP was issued in 1998.\nIn 1974, in response to famine in Africa, the FAO convened the first World Food Summit to address widespread hunger, malnutrition, and food insecurity. The meeting resulted in a proclamation that \"every man, woman, and child has the inalienable right to be free from hunger and malnutrition to develop their physical and mental faculties\" and a global commitment to eradicate these issues within a decade. A subsequent summit in 1996 addressed the shortcomings in achieving this goal while establishing a strategic plan for eliminating hunger and malnutrition into the 21st century.\nEvery year, FAO publishes a number of major 'State of the World' reports related to food, agriculture, forestry, fisheries and natural resources.\nStructure and finance.\nIn 1951, the FAO's headquarters were moved from Washington, D.C., United States, to Rome, Italy. The agency is directed by the Conference of Member Nations, which meets every two years to review the work carried out by the organization and to Work and Budget for the next two-year period. The conference elects a council of 49 member states (serve three-year rotating terms) that acts as an interim governing body, and the director-general, who heads the agency.\nThe FAO is composed of eight departments: Agriculture and Consumer Protection, Climate, Biodiversity, Land and Water Department, Economic and Social Development, Fisheries and Aquaculture, Forestry, Corporate Services and Technical Cooperation and Programme Management.\nBeginning in 1994, the FAO underwent the most significant restructuring since its founding, to decentralize operations, streamline procedures and reduce costs. As a result, savings of about US$50 million, \u20ac43 million a year were realized.\nBudget.\nThe FAO's Regular Programme budget is funded by its members, through contributions set at the FAO Conference. This budget covers core technical work, cooperation and partnerships including the Technical Cooperation Programme, knowledge exchange, policy and advocacy, direction and administration, governance and security.\nThe total FAO Budget planned for 2018\u20132019 is US$1,005.6 million. The voluntary contributions provided by members and other partners support mechanical and emergency (including rehabilitation) assistance to governments for clearly defined purposes linked to the results framework, as well as direct support to FAO's core work. The voluntary contributions are expected to reach approximately US$1.6 billion in 2016\u20132017.\nThis overall budget covers core technical work, cooperation and partnerships, leading to Food and Agriculture Outcomes at 71 percent; Core Functions at 11 percent; the Country Office Network \u2013 5 percent; Capital and Security Expenditure \u2013 2 percent; Administration \u2013 6 percent; and Technical and Cooperation Program \u2013 5 percent.\nOffices.\nFAO Headquarters.\nThe world headquarters is located in Rome, in the former seat of the Department of Italian East Africa. One of the most notable features of the building was the Axum Obelisk which stood in front of the agency seat, although just outside the territory allocated to the FAO by the Italian Government. It was taken from Ethiopia by Benito Mussolini's troops in 1937 as war booty and returned on 18 April 2005.\nPartnership and Liaison Offices.\nPartnership and Liaison Offices provide for stronger country participation in the FAO's work and programmes at national, sub-regional, regional, and inter-regional levels, and enhanced cooperation through unilateral trust fund projects and South\u2013South cooperation.\nPriority work areas.\nFAO has outlined the following priorities in its fight against hunger.\nTwo fundamental areas of work \u2013 gender and governance \u2013 are fully integrated in the above strategic objective action plans.\nProgrammes and achievements.\n\"Codex Alimentarius\".\nFAO and the World Health Organization created the Codex Alimentarius Commission in 1961 to develop food standards, guidelines, and texts such as codes of practice under the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Programme. The programme's main aims are protecting consumer health, ensuring fair trade, and promoting co-ordination of all food standards work undertaken by intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations.\nWorld Food Summit.\nIn 1996, FAO organized the World Food Summit, attended by 112 Heads or Deputy Heads of State and Government. The Summit concluded with the signing of the Rome Declaration, which established the goal of halving the number of people who suffer from hunger by 2015. At the same time, 1,200 civil society organizations (CSOs) from 80 countries participated in an NGO forum. The forum was critical of the growing industrialization of agriculture and called upon governments \u2013 and FAO \u2013 to do more to protect the 'Right to Food' for the poor.\nTeleFood.\nIn 1997, FAO launched TeleFood, a campaign of concerts, sporting events, and other activities to harness the power of media, celebrities, and concerned citizens to help fight hunger. Since its start, the campaign has generated close to US$28 million, \u20ac15 million in donations. Money raised through TeleFood pays for small, sustainable projects that help small-scale farmers produce more food for their families and communities.\nThe projects provide tangible resources, such as fishing equipment, seeds, and agricultural implements. They vary enormously, from helping families raise pigs in Venezuela through creating school gardens in Cape Verde and Mauritania or providing school lunches in Uganda and teaching children to grow food to raising fish in a leper community in India.\nFAO Goodwill Ambassadors.\nThe FAO Goodwill Ambassadors Programme was initiated in 1999. It was created to increase public awareness and disseminate information about issues related to food security and hunger in the world.\nRight to Food Guidelines.\nIn 2004 the Right to Food Guidelines were adopted which offer guidance to states on how to implement their obligations on the right to food.\nResponse to food crisis.\nIn December 2007, FAO launched its Initiative on soaring food prices to help small producers raise their output and earn more. Under the initiative, FAO contributed to the work of the UN High-Level Task Force on the Global Food Crisis, which produced the Comprehensive Framework for Action. FAO has carried out projects in over 25 countries and inter-agency missions in nearly 60, scaled up its monitoring through the Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture, provided policy advice to governments while supporting their efforts to increase food production, and advocated for more investment in agriculture as well as provided funding to distribute and multiply quality seeds in Haiti, which has significantly increased food production, thereby providing cheaper food.\nFAO\u2013EU partnership.\nIn May 2009, FAO and the European Union signed an initial aid package worth \u20ac125 million to support small farmers in countries hit hard by rising food prices. The aid package falls under the EU's \u20ac1 billion Food Facility, set up with the UN Secretary-General's High-Level Task Force on the Global Food Crisis and FAO to focus on programmes that will have a quick but lasting impact on food security. FAO is receiving around \u20ac200 million for work in 25 countries, of which \u20ac15.4 million goes to Zimbabwe.\nFood security programmes.\nThe Special Programme for Food Security is FAO's flagship initiative for reaching the goal of halving the number of hungry in the world by 2015 (currently estimated at close to 1 billion people) as part of its commitment to the Millennium Development Goals. Through projects in over 100 countries worldwide, the programme promotes effective, tangible solutions to eliminating hunger, undernourishment, and poverty. Currently, 102 countries are engaged in the programme, and of these, approximately 30 have begun shifting from pilot to national programmes. To maximize the impact of its work, FAO strongly promotes national ownership and local empowerment in the countries in which it operates.\nOnline campaign against hunger.\nThe 1billionhungry project became the EndingHunger campaign in April 2011. Spearheaded by FAO in partnership with other UN agencies and private nonprofit groups, the EndingHunger movement pushes the boundaries of conventional public advocacy. It builds on the success in 2010 of The 1billonhungry project and the subsequent chain of public events that led to the collection of over three million signatures on a global petition to end hunger (www.EndingHunger.org). The petition was originally presented to representatives of world governments at a ceremony in Rome on 30 November 2010.\nThe web and partnerships are two pivotal and dynamic aspects of EndingHunger. The campaign relies on the assistance of organizations and institutions that can facilitate the project's diffusion, by placing banners on their own websites or organizing events aimed to raise awareness of the project. In its 2011 season, the campaign expanded its multimedia content, pursued mutual visibility arrangements with partner organizations, and sharpened its focus on 14- to 25-year-olds, who were encouraged to understand their potential as a social movement to push for the end of hunger.\nMoreover, the EndingHunger project is a viral communication campaign, renewing and expanding its efforts to build the movement through Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. Those who sign the petition can spread the link of the EndingHunger website to their friends, via social media or mail, in order to gain awareness and signatures for the petition. The next interim objective is to grow the EndingHunger movement's Facebook community to 1 million members. As with the petition, the more people who get involved, the more powerful the message to governments: \"We are no longer willing to accept the fact that hundreds of millions live in chronic hunger.\" Groups and individuals can also decide on their own to organize an event about the project, simply by gathering friends, whistles, T-shirts and banners (whistles and T-shirts can be ordered, and petition sign sheets downloaded, on the endinghunger.org website) and thereby alert people about chronic hunger by using the yellow whistle.\nThe original 1billionhungry campaign borrowed as its slogan the line \"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!\", used by Peter Finch in the 1976 film, \"Network\". Meanwhile, the yellow whistle has been the campaign symbol from the start, from 1billionhungry to Ending Hunger. (The creative concept was provided by the McCann Erickson Italy Communication Agency.) It symbolizes the fact that we are \"blowing the whistle\" on the silent disaster of hunger. It is both a symbol and \u2013 at many live events taking place around the world \u2013 a physical means of expressing frustration and making some noise about the hunger situation.\nBoth The 1billionhungry and the EndingHunger campaigns have continued to attract UN Goodwill Ambassadors from the worlds of music and cinema, literature, sport, activism and government. Some of the well known individuals who have become involved include former Brazilian President Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva, former presidents of Chile Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet, actress Susan Sarandon, actors Jeremy Irons and Raul Bova, singers C\u00e9line Dion and Anggun, authors Isabelle Allende and Andrea Camilleri, musician Chucho Vald\u00e9s and Olympic track-and-field legend Carl Lewis.\nAgriculture.\nInternational Plant Protection Convention.\nFAO created the International Plant Protection Convention or IPPC in 1952. This international treaty organization works to prevent the international spread of pests and plant diseases in both cultivated and wild plants. Among its functions are the maintenance of lists of plant pests, tracking of pest outbreaks, and coordination of technical assistance between member nations. As of July 2018, 183 contracting parties have ratified the treaty.\nPlant Treaty (ITPGRFA).\nFAO is depositary of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, also called \"Plant Treaty\", \"Seed Treaty\" or \"ITPGRFA\", entered into force on 29 June 2004.\nAlliance Against Hunger and Malnutrition.\nThe Alliance Against Hunger and Malnutrition (AAHM) aims to address how countries and organizations can be more effective in advocating and carrying out actions to address hunger and malnutrition. As a global partnership, AAHM creates global connections between local, regional, national and international institutions that share the goals of fighting hunger and malnutrition. The organization works to address food security by enhancing resources and knowledge sharing and strengthening hunger activities within countries and across state lines at the regional and international levels.\nFollowing the World Food Summit, the Alliance was initially created in 2002 as the 'International Alliance Against Hunger (IAAH)' to strengthen and coordinate national efforts in the fight against hunger and malnutrition. The mission of the Alliance originates from the first and eighth UN Millennium Development Goals; reducing the number of people that suffer from hunger in half by 2015 (preceded by the \"Rome Declaration\" in 1996) and developing a global partnership for development. The Alliance was founded by the Rome-based food agencies \u2013 the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), UN World Food Programme (WFP), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), \u2013 and Bioversity International.\nAAHM connects top-down and bottom-up anti-hunger development initiatives, linking governments, UN organizations, and NGOs together in order to increase effectiveness through unity.\nIntegrated pest management.\nDuring the 1990s, FAO took a leading role in the promotion of integrated pest management for rice production in Asia. Hundreds of thousands of farmers were trained using an approach known as the Farmer Field School (FFS). Like many of the programmes managed by FAO, the funds for Farmer Field Schools came from bilateral Trust Funds, with Australia, Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland acting as the leading donors. FAO's efforts in this area have drawn praise from NGOs that have otherwise criticized much of the work of the organization.\nTrans-boundary pests and diseases.\nFAO established an \"Emergency Prevention System for Transboundary Animal and Plant Pests and Diseases\" in 1994, focusing on the control of diseases like rinderpest, foot-and-mouth disease and avian flu by helping governments coordinate their responses. One key element is the \"Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme\", which has advanced to a stage where large tracts of Asia and Africa have now been free of the cattle disease rinderpest for an extended period of time. Meanwhile, the \"<templatestyles src=\"Template:Visible anchor/styles.css\" />Desert Locust Information Service\" monitors the worldwide locust situation and keeps affected countries and donors informed of expected developments.\nGlobal Partnership Initiative for Plant Breeding Capacity Building.\nThe Global Partnership Initiative for Plant Breeding Capacity Building (GIPB) is a global partnership dedicated to increasing plant breeding capacity building. The mission of GIPB is to enhance the capacity of developing countries to improve crops for food security and sustainable development through better plant breeding and delivery systems. The ultimate goal is to ensure that a critical mass of plant breeders, leaders, managers and technicians, donors and partners are linked together through an effective global network.\nIncreasing capacity building for plant breeding in developing countries is critical for the achievement of meaningful results in poverty and hunger reduction and to reverse the current worrisome trends. Plant breeding is a well recognized science capable of widening the genetic and adaptability base of cropping systems, by combining conventional selection techniques and modern technologies. It is essential to face and prevent the recurrence of crises such as that\nof the soaring food prices and to respond to the increasing demands for crop based sources of energy.\nInvestment in agriculture.\nFAO's technical cooperation department hosts an Investment Centre that promotes greater investment in agriculture and rural development by helping developing countries identify and formulate sustainable agricultural policies, programmes and projects. It mobilizes funding from multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, regional development banks and international funds as well as FAO resources.\nGlobally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS).\nThe Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) Partnership Initiative was conceptualized and presented by Parviz Koohafkan the Task Manager of Chapter 10 of Agenda 21 in Food and Agricultural Organization of United Nations, FAO in 2002 during World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa. This UN Partnership Initiative aims to identify, support and safeguard Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems and their livelihoods, agricultural and associated biodiversity, landscapes, knowledge systems and cultures around the world. The GIAHS Partnership recognizes the crucial importance of the well-being of family farming communities in an integrated approach while directing activities towards sustainable agriculture and rural development.\nCommission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (CGRFA).\nThe Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, established in 1983, provides an intergovernmental forum that specifically addresses biological diversity for food and agriculture. Its main objective is to ensure the sustainable use and conservation of biodiversity for food and agriculture and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits derived from its use, for present and future generations.\nAnimal Genetic Resources.\nFAO has a unit focused on Animal Genetic Resources, which are defined as \"those animal species that are used, or may be used, for the production of food and agriculture, and the populations within each of them. These populations within each species can be classified as wild and feral populations, land-races and primary populations, standardized breeds, selected lines, varieties, strains and any conserved genetic material; all of which are currently categorized as Breeds.\" FAO assists countries in implementation of the Global Plan of Action for Animal Genetic Resources. FAO supports a variety of \"ex situ\" and \"in situ\" conservation strategies including cryoconservation of animal genetic resources.\nForestry.\nOne of FAO's strategic goals is the sustainable management of the world's forests. The \"Forestry Division\" works to balance social and environmental considerations with the economic needs of rural populations living in forest areas. FAO serves as a neutral forum for policy dialogue, as a reliable source of information on forests and trees and as a provider of expert technical assistance and advice to help countries develop and implement effective national forest programmes.\nFAO is both a global clearinghouse for information on forests and forest resources and a facilitator that helps building countries' local capacity to provide their own national forest data. In collaboration with member countries, FAO carries out periodic global assessments of forest resources, which are made available through reports, publications and the FAO's Web site. The \"Global Forest Resources Assessment\" provides comprehensive reporting on forests worldwide every five years. FRA 2020 is the most recent global assessment. The results, data and analyses are available online in different formats, including key findings, main report and country reports.\nEvery two years, FAO publishes the \"State of the World's Forests\", a major report covering current and emerging issues facing the forestry sector.\nSince 1947, FAO has published the FAO Yearbook of Forest Products, a compilation of statistical data on basic forest products from over 100 countries and territories of the world. It contains data on the volume of production; and the volume, value and direction of trade in forest products.\n\"Unasylva\", FAO's peer-reviewed journal on forestry, has been published in English, French and Spanish on a regular basis since 1947, the longest-running multilingual forestry journal in the world.\nThe FAO is an official sponsor of International Day of Forests, on 21 March each year, as proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly on 28 November 2012.\nEvery six years since 1926, FAO and a host member state hold the World Forestry Congress. It is a forum for the sharing of knowledge and experience regarding the conservation, management and use of the world's forests, and covers such issues as international dialogue, socio-economic and institutional aspects, and forest policies.\nThe Forestry Department is also organized geographically in several groups covering the whole world's forest ecosystems. One of them is the Silva Mediterranean work-group, covering the pan-Mediterranean region.\nTree Cities of the World.\nAt the World Forum on Urban Forests in October 2018, the FAO and the Arbor Day Foundation jointly launched the Tree Cities of the World programme. The aim of this programme is to celebrate and recognize cities and towns of all sizes throughout the world which have shown a commitment to maintaining their urban forests. From the end of 2019, any municipality which has responsibility for its trees was able to apply to join Tree Cities of the World. On 4 February 2020, 59 cities were announced as having achieved the designation of Tree City of the World. There were 27 in the United States, with the rest scattered across the world.\nFisheries.\nThe FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Department is defined through its vision and mission statements:\nThe work of the Fisheries and Aquaculture Department centers on the \"Sustainable management and use of fisheries and aquaculture resource\", embracing normative as well as operational activities, whether implemented from headquarters or from the field.\nThe FAO \"Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries\" was adopted in 1995.\nStatistics.\nESSG is an acronym for the Global Statistics Service, the major \"section\" of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization - Statistics Division. It is responsible for updating and disseminating the FAOSTAT report. This offers free and easy access to data for 245 countries and 35 regional areas from 1961 through the most recent year available. Enhanced features include browsing and analysis of data, an advanced interactive data download, and enhanced data exchange through web services.\nThe Land and Water Division maintains a database of global water statistics, Aquastat. The Fisheries and Aquaculture Division maintains a database of global Fisheries and Aquaculture statistics, FishStat.\nMembership.\nAs of 1 May 2020, the Organization has 194 Member Nations, one Member Organization, and two Associate Members.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nTaiwan (at the time representing China), withdrew from the FAO in 1951. in 1971, the People's Republic of China was recognized as the representative of China by the FAO and the withdrawal from part of Taiwan was not taken into account.\nThe only UN member state that is a non-member of the FAO is Liechtenstein.\nBoth UN observer states are also non-members of the FAO: the Holy See (Vatican City) and Palestine.\nSome countries may denote specific representatives to the FAO, for instance the United States Ambassador to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, who has ambassador rank and is also a part of the United States Mission to the UN Agencies in Rome.\nCriticism.\n1970s, 80s, 90s.\nThere has been public criticism of FAO for at least 30 years. Dissatisfaction with the organization's performance was among the reasons for the creation of two new organizations after the World Food Conference in 1974, namely the World Food Council and the International Fund for Agricultural Development; by the early eighties there was intense rivalry among these organizations. At the same time, the World Food Programme, which started as an experimental three-year programme under FAO, was growing in size and independence, with the Directors of FAO and WFP struggling for power.\nEarly in 1989, the organization came under attack from Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think tank, which described the FAO as becoming \"essentially irrelevant in combating hunger\" due to a \"bloated bureaucracy known for the mediocrity of its work and the inefficiency of its staff\", which had become politicized. In September of the same year, the journal \"Society\" published a series of articles about FAO that included a contribution from the Heritage Foundation and a response by FAO staff member, Richard Lydiker, who was later described by the Danish Minister for Agriculture (who had herself resigned from the organization) as \"FAO's chief spokesman for non-transparency\".\nIn 1990, the U.S. State Department expressed the view that \"The Food and Agriculture Organization has lagged behind other UN organizations in responding to US desires for improvements in program and budget processes to enhance value for money spent\".\nA year later, in 1991, \"The Ecologist\" magazine produced a special issue under the heading \"The UN Food and Agriculture Organization: Promoting World Hunger\". The magazine included articles that questioned FAO's policies and practices in forestry, fisheries, aquaculture, and pest control. The articles were written by experts such as Helena Norberg-Hodge, Vandana Shiva, Edward Goldsmith, Miguel A. Altieri and Barbara Dinham.\n2000s.\nThe 2002 Food Summit organized by FAO was considered to have been ineffectual and unproductive by the official participants. Social movements, farmers, fisherfolk, pastoralists, indigenous peoples, environmentalists, women's organizations, trade unions and NGOs expressed their \"collective disappointment in, and rejection of the official Declaration of the\u00a0... Summit\".\nIn 2004, FAO produced a controversial report called \"Agricultural Biotechnology: meeting the needs of the poor?\", which claimed that \"agricultural biotechnology has real potential as a new tool in the war on hunger\". In response to the report, more than 650 organizations from around the world signed an open letter in which they said \"FAO has broken its commitment to civil society and peasants' organisations\". The letter complained that organizations representing the interests of farmers had not been consulted, that FAO was siding with the biotechnology industry and, consequently, that the report \"raises serious questions about the independence and intellectual integrity of an important United Nations agency\". Jacques Diouf, the Director General of FAO at that time, responded immediately, stating that decisions on biotechnology must \"be taken at the international level by competent bodies\" (in other words, not by non-governmental organizations). He acknowledged, however, that \"biotechnology research is essentially driven by the world's top ten transnational corporations\" and \"the private sector protects its results with patents in order to earn from its investment and it concentrates on products that have no relevance to food in developing countries\".\nIn May 2006, a British newspaper published the resignation letter of Louise Fresco, one of eight Assistant Directors-General of FAO. In her letter, Fresco stated that \"the Organization has been unable to adapt to a new era\", that its \"contribution and reputation have declined steadily\" and \"its leadership has not proposed bold options to overcome this crisis\".\nThe 32nd Session of FAO's Committee on World Food Security in 2006, attended by 120 countries, was widely criticized by non-governmental organizations, but largely ignored by the mainstream media. Oxfam called for an end to the talk-fests while Via Campesina issued a statement that criticised FAO's policy of Food Security.\nOn 18 October 2007, the final report of an Independent External Evaluation of FAO was published. More than 400 pages in length, the evaluation was the first of its kind in the history of the Organization. It had been commissioned by decision of the 33rd Session of the FAO Conference in November 2005. The report concluded that \"The Organization is today in a financial and programme crisis\" but \"the problems affecting the Organization today can all be solved\". Among the problems noted by the IEE were: \"The Organization has been conservative and slow to adapt\"; \"FAO currently has a heavy and costly bureaucracy\", and \"The capacity of the Organization is declining and many of its core competencies are now imperilled\". Among the solutions offered were: \"A new Strategic Framework\", \"institutional culture change and reform of administrative and management systems\". In conclusion the IEE stated that, \"If FAO did not exist it would need to be invented\".\nThe official response from FAO came on 29 October 2007. It indicated that management supported the principal conclusion in the report of the IEE on the need for \"reform with growth\" so as to have an FAO \"fit for this century\". Meanwhile, hundreds of FAO staff signed a petition in support of the IEE recommendations, calling for \"a radical shift in management culture and spirit, depoliticization of appointments, restoration of trust between staff and management, [and] setting strategic priorities of the organization\".\nIn May 2008, while talking about the ongoing world food crisis, President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal expressed the opinion that FAO was \"a waste of money\" and that \"we must scrap it\". Wade said that FAO was itself largely to blame for the price rises, and that the organization's work was duplicated by other bodies that operated more efficiently, like the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development. However, this criticism may have had more to do with personal animosity between the President and the Director-General, himself a Senegalese, particularly in light of the significant differences in the work carried out by the two organizations.\nIn June 2008, the FAO sponsored the High-Level Conference on World Food Security. The summit was notable for the lack of agreement over the issue of biofuels. The response to the summit among non-governmental organizations was mixed, with Oxfam stating that \"the summit in Rome was an important first step in tackling the food crisis but greater action is now needed\", while Maryam Rahmanian of Iran's Centre for Sustainable Development said \"We are dismayed and disgusted to see the food crisis used to further the policies that have led us to the food crisis in the first place\". As with previous food summits, civil society organizations held a parallel meeting and issued their own declaration to \"reject the corporate industrial and energy-intensive model of production and consumption that is the basis of continuing crises.\"\nIn November 2008, a Special Conference of FAO member countries agreed a US$42.6 million (\u20ac38.6 million), three-year Immediate Plan of Action for \"reform with growth\", as recommended by the IEE. Under the plan US$21.8 million would be spent on overhauling the financial procedures, hierarchies and human resources management.\n2010s.\nFrom 2013, an English-language newspaper based in Rome, \"The Italian Insider\", made several allegations of nepotism and corruption within FAO and reported on poor management-staff relations. In June 2018, FAO and four of its officials took the paper and its editor, John Philips, to court alleging defamation, using a law dating back to the fascist era in Italy. Reporters Without Borders condemned \"the disproportionate nature of the defamation proceedings\", for which the newspaper was liable for a fine of up to Euros 100,000 and the editor at least three years in prison. The case was adjourned until January 2019, when it was further adjourned until May 2019. The January hearing was considered by the British satirical magazine \"Private Eye\" to have been \"one of the more surreal courtroom scenes in modern times\", involving dispute as to the meaning of an English slang word used by the \"Insider\".\nIn 2016/17 FAO was heavily criticized for recruiting Nadine Heredia Alarc\u00f3n de Humala, wife of the former president of Peru, Ollanta Humala, to a senior position, at a time when she was being investigated by Peru following corruption allegations. Critics included Transparency International.\nAt the end of April 2017, FAO staff unions addressed the organization's Governing Council to complain about the practice of issuing short-term contracts that \"exploit employees without providing job security, social security and paid leave\". Other complaints included the increasing centralization of management processes, despite claims that FAO was being decentralized, and the failure to follow United Nations recommendations regarding increasing the retirement age. The staff representative also complained about the high percentage of unfilled positions, increasing the workload for others who were under pressure to deliver more with less. She also noted that contacts between Management and the staff bodies were becoming less and less frequent.\n2020s.\nAn investigation by the German public broadcaster ARD shows that the Chinese leadership of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation FAO has tailored it to Chinese interests since Qu Dongyu took office in 2019. According to the report, the acting director-general has instrumentalized the FAO in Beijing's interests: It is about deliveries of pesticides banned in Europe, the majority of which come from the Chinese agrochemical company Syngenta, UN projects in line with China's \"Belt and Road Initiative\" as well as questionable investment projects.\nFAO renewal.\nThe FAO Conference in November 2007 unanimously welcomed the IEE report and established a Conference Committee for the Follow-up to the Independent External Evaluation of FAO (CoC-IEE) to be chaired by the Independent Chairperson of Council, and open to full participation by all Members. The CoC-IEE was charged to review the IEE report and its recommendations and develop an Immediate Plan of Action (IPA) for their implementation.\nA comprehensive programme of organizational reform and culture change began in 2008 after the release of an Independent External Evaluation. Headquarters restructuring and delegation of decision making created a flatter more responsive structure and reduced costs. Modernizing and streamlining of administrative and operational processes took place. Improved internal teamwork and closer external partnerships coupled with upgrading of IT infrastructure and greater autonomy of FAO's decentralized offices now allows the Organization to respond quickly where needs are greatest. As FAO is primarily a knowledge based organization, investing in human resources is a top priority. Capacity building including a leadership programme, employee rotation and a new junior professional programme were established. Individual performance management, an ethics and ombudsman officer and an independent office of evaluation were designed to improve performance through learning and strengthened oversight.\nIn January 2012, the Director-General Jos\u00e9 Graziano da Silva acted upon the commitment made during his campaign to bring the FAO reform to a successful and anticipated completion. In addition, the new Director-General shifted the focus of the reform process to realization of its benefits and mainstreaming the reform into the work of the Organization.\nIn July 2020, the FAO Council approved a series of measures proposed by its Director-General Qu Dongyu to modernize the organisation and make it more efficient and effective. An important element within the approved measures is the adoption \"of a more flexible organizational structure, aimed at ensuring agility, optimal cross-sectoral collaboration and better responses to emerging needs and priorities\".\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11107", "26748"], "permutation_1": ["11107", "26748"], "permutation_2": ["11107", "26748"], "permutation_3": ["26748", "11107"]}
{"id": "2hop__37715_36170", "docs_added": {"30227": "Tuvalu\nCountry in Oceania\nTuvalu ( ) is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to the Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.\nTuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5\u00b0 and 10\u00b0 south and between the longitude of 176\u00b0 and 180\u00b0. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2017 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,645, making it the second-least populous country in the world, behind Vatican City. Tuvalu's total land area is .\nThe first inhabitants of Tuvalu were Polynesians arriving as part of the migration of Polynesians into the Pacific that began about three thousand years ago. Long before European contact with the Pacific islands, Polynesians frequently voyaged by canoe between the islands. Polynesian navigation skills enabled them to make elaborately planned journeys in either double-hulled sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Scholars believe that the Polynesians spread out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan atolls, which then served as a stepping stone for further migration into the Polynesian outliers in Melanesia and Micronesia.\nIn 1568, Spanish explorer and cartographer \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a became the first European known to sail through the archipelago, sighting the island of Nui during an expedition he was making in search of Terra Australis. The island of Funafuti, currently serving as the capital, was named Ellice's Island in 1819. Later, the whole group was named Ellice Islands by English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. In the late 19th century, Great Britain claimed control over the Ellice Islands, designating them as within their sphere of influence. Between 9 and 16 October 1892, Captain Herbert Gibson of declared each of the Ellice Islands a British protectorate. Britain assigned a resident commissioner to administer the Ellice Islands as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT). From 1916 to 1975, they were managed as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.\nA referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a result, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony legally ceased to exist on 1 October 1975; on 1 January 1976, the old administration was officially separated, and two separate British colonies, Kiribati and Tuvalu, were formed. On 1 October 1978, Tuvalu became fully independent as a sovereign state within the Commonwealth, and is a constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as King of Tuvalu. On 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nThe islands do not have a significant amount of soil, so the country relies heavily on imports and fishing for food. Licensing fishing permits to international companies, grants and aid projects, and remittances to their families from Tuvaluan seafarers who work on cargo ships are important parts of the economy. Because it is a low-lying island nation, Tuvalu is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change. It is active in international climate negotiations as part of the Alliance of Small Island States.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nThe origins of the people of Tuvalu are addressed in the theories regarding the migration into the Pacific that began about 3,000 years ago. During pre-European-contact times, there was frequent canoe voyaging between the nearer islands including Samoa and Tonga. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited. This explains the origin of the name, Tuvalu, which means \"eight standing together\" in Tuvaluan (compare to \"*walu\" meaning \"eight\" in Proto-Austronesian). Possible evidence of human-made fires in the Caves of Nanumanga suggests humans may have occupied the islands for thousands of years.\nAn important creation myth in the islands of Tuvalu is the story of \"te Pusi mo te Ali\" (the Eel and the Flounder), who are said to have created the islands of Tuvalu. \"Te Ali\" (the flounder) is believed to be the origin of the flat atolls of Tuvalu and \"te Pusi\" (the eel) is the model for the coconut palms that are important in the lives of Tuvaluans. The stories of the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu, the founding ancestor is described as being from Samoa, whereas on Nanumea, the founding ancestor is described as being from Tonga.\nEarly contacts with other cultures.\nTuvalu was first sighted by Europeans on 16 January 1568, during the voyage of \u00c1lvaro de Menda\u00f1a from Spain, who sailed past Nui and charted it as \"Isla de Jes\u00fas\" (Spanish for \"Island of Jesus\") because the previous day was the feast of the Holy Name. Menda\u00f1a made contact with the islanders but was unable to land. During Menda\u00f1a's second voyage across the Pacific, he passed Niulakita on 29 August 1595, which he named \"La Solitaria\".\nCaptain John Byron passed through the islands of Tuvalu in 1764, during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of the . He charted the atolls as \"Lagoon Islands\". The first recorded sighting of Nanumea by Europeans was by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la R\u00faa who sailed past it on 5 May 1781 as captain of the frigate \"La Princesa\", when attempting a southern crossing of the Pacific from the Philippines to New Spain. He charted Nanumea as \"San Augustin\". Keith S. Chambers and Doug Munro (1980) identified Niutao as the island that Mourelle also sailed past on 5 May 1781, thus solving what Europeans had called \"The Mystery of Gran Cocal\". Mourelle's map and journal named the island \"El Gran Cocal\" ('The Great Coconut Plantation'); however, the latitude and longitude was uncertain. Longitude could be reckoned only crudely at the time, as accurate chronometers did not become available until the late 18th century.\nIn 1809, Captain Patterson in the brig \"Elizabeth\" sighted Nanumea while passing through the northern Tuvalu waters on a trading voyage from Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia to China.\nIn May 1819, Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of New York, captain of the armed brigantine or privateer \"Rebecca\", sailing under British colours, passed through the southern Tuvaluan waters. De Peyster sighted Nukufetau, and Funafuti which he named Ellice's Island after an English politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the \"Rebecca\"'s cargo. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay.\nIn 1820, the Russian explorer Mikhail Lazarev visited Nukufetau as commander of the \"Mirny\". Louis-Isidore Duperrey, captain of \"La Coquille\", sailed past Nanumanga in May 1824 during a circumnavigation of the Earth (1822\u20131825). A Dutch expedition by the frigate \"Maria Reigersberg\" under captain Koerzen, and the corvette \"Pollux\" under captain C. Eeg, found Nui on the morning of 14 June 1825 and named the main island (Fenua Tapu) as \"Nederlandsch Eiland\".\nWhalers began roving the Pacific, although they visited Tuvalu only infrequently because of the difficulties of landing on the atolls. The American Captain George Barrett of the Nantucket whaler \"Independence II\" has been identified as the first whaler to hunt the waters around Tuvalu. He bartered coconuts from the people of Nukulaelae in November 1821, and also visited Niulakita. He established a shore camp on Sakalua islet of Nukufetau, where coal was used to melt down the whale blubber.\nChristianity came to Tuvalu in 1861 when Elekana, a deacon of a Congregational church in Manihiki, Cook Islands, became caught in a storm and drifted for eight weeks before landing at Nukulaelae on 10 May 1861. Elekana began preaching Christianity. He was trained at Malua Theological College, a London Missionary Society (LMS) school in Samoa, before beginning his work in establishing the Church of Tuvalu. In 1865, the Rev. Archibald Wright Murray of the LMS, a Protestant congregationalist missionary society, arrived as the first European missionary; he also evangelised among the inhabitants of Tuvalu. By 1878 Protestantism was considered well established, as there were preachers on each island. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the ministers of what became the Church of Tuvalu (\"Te Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu\") were predominantly Samoans, who influenced the development of the Tuvaluan language and the music of Tuvalu.\nFor less than a year between 1862 and 1863, Peruvian ships engaged in the so-called \"blackbirding\" trade, by which they recruited or impressed workers, combed the smaller islands of Polynesia from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific to Tuvalu and the southern atolls of the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati). They sought recruits to fill the extreme labour shortage in Peru. On Funafuti and Nukulaelae, the resident traders facilitated the recruiting of the islanders by the \"blackbirders\". The Rev. Archibald Wright Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 170 people were taken from Funafuti and about 250 were taken from Nukulaelae, as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.\nThe islands came into Britain's sphere of influence in the late 19th century, when each of the Ellice Islands was declared a British protectorate by Captain Herbert Gibson of , between 9 and 16 October 1892.\nTrading firms and traders.\nTrading companies became active in Tuvalu in the mid-19th century; the trading companies engaged white (palagi) traders who lived on the islands. John (also known as Jack) O'Brien was the first European to settle in Tuvalu; he became a trader on Funafuti in the 1850s. He married Salai, the daughter of the paramount chief of Funafuti. Louis Becke, who later found success as a writer, was a trader on Nanumanga from April 1880 until the trading station was destroyed later that year in a cyclone. He then became a trader on Nukufetau.\nIn 1892, Captain Edward Davis of reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); Jack O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Emile Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). During this time, the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies. Some islands would have competing traders, while dryer islands might only have a single trader.\nIn the 1890s, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies; they moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to instead becoming a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship visited an island. After the high point in the 1880s, the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined; the last of them were Fred Whibley on Niutao, Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau, and Martin Kleis on Nui. By 1909 there were no more resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although Whibley, Restieaux and Kleis remained in the islands until their deaths.\nScientific expeditions and travellers.\nThe United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes visited Funafuti, Nukufetau, and Vaitupu in 1841. During this expedition, engraver and illustrator Alfred Thomas Agate recorded the dress and tattoo patterns of the men of Nukufetau.\nIn 1885 or 1886, the New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew visited Funafuti and Nui.\nIn 1890, Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson and her son Lloyd Osbourne sailed on the \"Janet Nicoll\", a trading steamer owned by Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand, which operated between Sydney and Auckland and into the central Pacific. The \"Janet Nicoll\" visited three of the Ellice Islands; while Fanny records that they made landfall at Funafuti, Niutao and Nanumea, Jane Resture suggests that it was more likely they landed at Nukufetau rather than Funafuti, as Fanny describes meeting Alfred Restieaux and his wife Litia; however they had been living on Nukufetau since the 1880s. An account of this voyage was written by Fanny Stevenson and published under the title \"The Cruise of the Janet Nichol\", together with photographs taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.\nIn 1894, Count Rudolf Festetics de Tolna, his wife Eila (\"n\u00e9e\" Haggin) and her daughter Blanche Haggin visited Funafuti aboard the yacht \"Le Tolna\". The Count spent several days photographing men and women on Funafuti.\nThe boreholes on Funafuti, at the site now called \"Darwin's Drill\", are the result of drilling conducted by the Royal Society of London for the purpose of investigating the formation of coral reefs to determine whether traces of shallow water organisms could be found at depth in the coral of Pacific atolls. This investigation followed the work on \"The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs\" conducted by Charles Darwin in the Pacific. Drilling occurred in 1896, 1897 and 1898. Professor Edgeworth David of the University of Sydney was a member of the 1896 \"Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society\", under Professor William Sollas and led the expedition in 1897. Photographers on these trips recorded people, communities, and scenes at Funafuti.\nCharles Hedley, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, accompanied the 1896 expedition, and during his stay on Funafuti he collected invertebrate and ethnological objects. The descriptions of these were published in \"Memoir III of the Australian Museum Sydney\" between 1896 and 1900. Hedley also wrote the \"General Account of the Atoll of Funafuti\", \"The Ethnology of Funafuti\", and \"The Mollusca of Funafuti\". Edgar Waite was also part of the 1896 expedition and published \"The mammals, reptiles, and fishes of Funafuti\". William Rainbow described the spiders and insects collected at Funafuti in \"The insect fauna of Funafuti\".\nHarry Clifford Fassett, captain's clerk and photographer, recorded people, communities and scenes at Funafuti in 1900 during a visit of USFC \"Albatross\" when the United States Fish Commission was investigating the formation of coral reefs on Pacific atolls.\nColonial administration.\nThe Ellice Islands were administered as a British Protectorate from 1892 to 1916, as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), by a Resident Commissioner based in the Gilbert Islands. The administration of the BWPT ended in 1916, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established, which existed until October 1975.\nSecond World War.\nDuring the Second World War, as a British colony the Ellice Islands were aligned with the Allies. Early in the war, the Japanese invaded and occupied Makin, Tarawa and other islands in what is now Kiribati. The United States Marine Corps landed on Funafuti on 2 October 1942, and on Nanumea and Nukufetau in August 1943. Funafuti was used as a base to prepare for the subsequent seaborne attacks on the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) that were occupied by Japanese forces.\nThe islanders assisted the American forces to build airfields on Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukufetau and to unload supplies from ships. On Funafuti, the islanders shifted to the smaller islets so as to allow the American forces to build the airfield and Naval Base Funafuti on Fongafale. A Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) built a seaplane ramp on the lagoon side of Fongafale islet, for seaplane operations by both short- and long-range seaplanes, and a compacted coral runway was also constructed on Fongafale, with runways also constructed to create Nanumea Airfield and Nukufetau Airfield. USN Patrol Torpedo Boats (PTs) and seaplanes were based at Naval Base Funafuti from 2 November 1942 to 11 May 1944.\nThe atolls of Tuvalu acted as staging posts during the preparation for the Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin that commenced on 20 November 1943, which were part of the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\". After the war, the military airfield on Funafuti was developed into Funafuti International Airport.\nPost-World War II \u2013 transition to independence.\nThe formation of the United Nations after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence, the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.\nIn 1974, the ministerial government was introduced to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony through a change to the Constitution. In that year a general election was held, and a referendum was held in 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate Crown Colony with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976, when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.\nIn 1976, Tuvalu adopted the Tuvaluan dollar, whose currency circulates alongside the Australian dollar, which was previously adopted in 1966.\nElections to the House of Assembly of the British Colony of Tuvalu were held on 27 August 1977, with Toaripi Lauti being appointed chief minister in the House of Assembly of the Colony of Tuvalu on 1 October 1977. The House of Assembly was dissolved in July 1978, with the government of Toaripi Lauti continuing as a caretaker government until the 1981 elections were held.\nIndependence.\nToaripi Lauti became the first prime minister on 1 October 1978, when Tuvalu became an independent state. That date is also celebrated as the country's Independence Day and is a public holiday.\nOn 26 October 1982, Queen Elizabeth II made a special royal tour to Tuvalu.\nOn 5 September 2000, Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations.\nOn 15 November 2022, amidst sea level rises, Tuvalu announced plans as the first country in the world to build a self-digital replica in the metaverse in order to preserve its cultural heritage.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union treaty with Australia. In the Tuvaluan language, \"Falepili\" describes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. The Treaty addresses climate change and security, with security threats encompassing major natural disasters, health pandemics and traditional security threats. The implementation of the Treaty will involve Australia increasing its contribution to the Tuvalu Trust Fund and the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Australia will also provide a pathway for 280 citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nGeography and environment.\nGeography.\nTuvalu is a volcanic archipelago, and consists of three reef islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Niulakita) and six true atolls (Funafuti, Nanumea, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu). Its small, scattered group of low-lying atolls have poor soil and a total land area of only about making it the fourth smallest country in the world. The highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita; however the low-lying atolls and reef islands of Tuvalu are susceptible to seawater flooding during cyclones and storms. The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has risen at 3.9\u00a0mm per year, which is approximately twice the global average. However, over four decades, there had been a net increase in land area of the islets of (2.9%), although the changes are not uniform, with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. A 2018 report stated that the rising sea levels are identified as creating an increased transfer of wave energy across reef surfaces, which shifts sand, resulting in accretion to island shorelines. The Tuvalu Prime Minister objected to the report's implication that there were \"alternate\" strategies for Islanders to adapt to rising sea levels, and criticised it for neglecting issues such as saltwater intrusion into groundwater tables as a result of sea level rise.\nFunafuti is the largest atoll, and comprises numerous islets around a central lagoon that is approximately (N\u2013S) by (W-E), centred on 179\u00b07'E and 8\u00b030'S. On the atolls, an annular reef rim surrounds the lagoon with seven natural reef channels. Surveys were carried out in May 2010 of the reef habitats of Nanumea, Nukulaelae and Funafuti; a total of 317 fish species were recorded during this \"Tuvalu Marine Life\" study. The surveys identified 66 species that had not previously been recorded in Tuvalu, which brings the total number of identified species to 607. Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covers an oceanic area of approximately 900,000\u00a0km2.\nTuvalu signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992, and ratified it in December 2002. The predominant vegetation type on the islands of Tuvalu is the cultivated coconut woodland, which covers 43% of the land. The native broadleaf forest is limited to 4.1% of the vegetation types. Tuvalu contains the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests terrestrial ecoregion.\nEnvironmental pressures.\nThe eastern shoreline of Funafuti Lagoon on Fongafale was modified during World War II when the airfield (now Funafuti International Airport) was constructed. The coral base of the atoll was used as fill to create the runway. The resulting borrow pits impacted the fresh-water aquifer. In the low-lying areas of Funafuti, the sea water can be seen bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools with each high tide. In 2014, the Tuvalu Borrow Pits Remediation (BPR) project was approved so that 10 borrow pits would be filled with sand from the lagoon, leaving Tafua Pond, which is a natural pond. The New Zealand Government funded the BPR project. The project was carried out in 2015, with 365,000 sqm of sand being dredged from the lagoon to fill the holes and improve living conditions on the island. This project increased the usable land space on Fongafale by eight per cent.\nDuring World War II, several piers were also constructed on Fongafale in the Funafuti Lagoon; beach areas were filled and deep-water access channels were excavated. These alterations to the reef and shoreline resulted in changes to wave patterns, with less sand accumulating to form the beaches, compared to former times. Attempts to stabilise the shoreline did not achieve the desired effect. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced, which is part of the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project. Sand was dredged from the lagoon to construct a platform on Fongafale islet that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The platform starts from the northern boundary of the Queen Elizabeth Park (QEP) reclamation area and extends to the northern Tausoa Beach Groyne and the Catalina Ramp Harbour.\nThe reefs at Funafuti suffered damage during the El Ni\u00f1o events that occurred between 1998 and 2001, with an average of 70% of the Staghorn (\"Acropora spp.\") corals becoming bleached as a consequence of the increase in ocean temperatures. A reef restoration project has investigated reef restoration techniques; and researchers from Japan have investigated rebuilding the coral reefs through the introduction of foraminifera. The project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency is designed to increase the resilience of the Tuvalu coast against sea level rise, through ecosystem rehabilitation and regeneration and through support for sand production.\nThe rising population has resulted in an increased demand on fish stocks, which are under stress, although the creation of the Funafuti Conservation Area has provided a fishing exclusion area to help sustain the fish population across the Funafuti lagoon. Population pressure on the resources of Funafuti, and inadequate sanitation systems, have resulted in pollution. The Waste Operations and Services Act of 2009 provides the legal framework for waste management and pollution control projects funded by the European Union directed at organic waste composting in eco-sanitation systems. The Environment Protection (Litter and Waste Control) Regulation 2013 is intended to improve the management of the importation of non-biodegradable materials. Plastic waste is a problem in Tuvalu, for much imported food and other commodities are supplied in plastic containers or packaging.\nIn 2023 the governments of Tuvalu and other islands vulnerable to climate change (Fiji, Niue, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) launched the \"Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific\", calling for the phase out fossil fuels and the 'rapid and just transition' to renewable energy and strengthening environmental law including introducing the crime of ecocide.\nClimate.\nTuvalu experiences two distinct seasons, a wet season from November to April and a dry season from May to October. Westerly gales and heavy rain are the predominant weather conditions from November to April, the period that is known as \"Tau-o-lalo\", with tropical temperatures moderated by easterly winds from May to October.\nTuvalu experiences the effects of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a, which is caused by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial and central Pacific. El Ni\u00f1o effects increase the chances of tropical storms and cyclones, while La Ni\u00f1an effects increase the chances of drought. Typically the islands of Tuvalu receive between of rainfall per month. The central Pacific Ocean experiences changes from periods of La Ni\u00f1a to periods of El Ni\u00f1o.\nImpact of climate change.\nAs low-lying islands lacking a surrounding shallow shelf, the communities of Tuvalu are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and undissipated storms. At its highest, Tuvalu is only above sea level. Tuvaluan leaders have been concerned about the effects of rising sea levels. It is estimated that a sea level rise of in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable. A study published in 2018 estimated the change in land area of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, indicating that 75% of the islands had grown in area, with an overall increase of more than 2%. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu at the time, responded to the research by stating that Tuvalu is not expanding and has gained no additional habitable land. Sopoaga has also said that evacuating the islands is the last resort.\nWhether there are measurable changes in the sea level relative to the islands of Tuvalu is a contentious issue. There were problems associated with the pre-1993 sea level records from Funafuti which resulted in improvements in the recording technology to provide more reliable data for analysis. The degree of uncertainty as to estimates of sea level change relative to the islands of Tuvalu was reflected in the conclusions made in 2002 from the available data. The uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data from this tide gauge resulted in a modern Aquatrak acoustic gauge being installed in 1993 by the Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF) as part of the AusAID-sponsored South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project. The 2011 report of the \"Pacific Climate Change Science Program\" published by the Australian Government, concludes: \"The sea-level rise near Tuvalu measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about per year.\"\nTuvalu has adopted a national plan of action as the observable transformations over the last ten to fifteen years show Tuvaluans that there have been changes to the sea levels. These include sea water bubbling up through the porous coral rock to form pools at high tide and the flooding of low-lying areas including the airport during spring tides and king tides.\nIn November 2022, Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, proclaimed that in response to rising sea levels and the perceived failures by the outside world to combat global warming, the country would be uploading a virtual version of itself to the metaverse in an effort to preserve its history and culture.\nThe major concerns about climate change has led to the launching and development of the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). These adaptation measures are needed to decrease the amount and volume of the negative effects from climate change. NAPA has selected seven adaptation projects with all different themes. These are: coastal, agricultural, water, health, fisheries (two different projects) and disaster. For example, a \"target\" of one of these projects, like the project \"coastal\", is \"increasing resilience of coastal areas and settlement to climate change\". And for the project \"water\" it is \"adaptation to frequent water shortages through increasing household water capacity, water collection accessories, and water conservation techniques\".\nThe Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) was launched in 2017 for the purpose on enhancing the resilience of the islands of Tuvalu to meet the challenges resulting from higher sea levels. Tuvalu was the first country in the Pacific to access climate finance from Green Climate Fund, with the support of the UNDP. In December 2022, work on the Funafuti reclamation project commenced. The project is to dredge sand from the lagoon to construct a platform on Funafuti that is meters long and meters wide, giving a total area of approximately 7.8 ha. (19.27 acres), which is designed to remain above sea level rise and the reach of storm waves beyond the year 2100. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) also provided funding for the TCAP. Further projects that are part of TCAP are capital works on the outer islands of Nanumea and Nanumaga aimed at reducing exposure to coastal damage resulting from storms.\nCyclones and king tides.\nCyclones.\nBecause of the low elevation, the islands that make up this country are vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones and by the threat of current and future sea level rise. A warning system, which uses the Iridium satellite network, was introduced in 2016 to allow outlying islands to be better prepared for natural disasters.\nThe highest elevation is above sea level on Niulakita. Tuvalu thus has the second-lowest maximum elevation of any country (after the Maldives). The highest elevations are typically in narrow storm dunes on the ocean side of the islands which are prone to overtopping in tropical cyclones, as occurred with Cyclone Bebe, which was a very early-season storm that passed through the Tuvaluan atolls in October 1972. Cyclone Bebe submerged Funafuti, eliminating 95% of structures on the island, with 6 people lost in the cyclone. Sources of drinking water were contaminated as a result of the system's storm surge and the flooding of the sources of fresh water.\nGeorge Westbrook, a trader on Funafuti, recorded a cyclone that struck Funafuti on 23\u201324 December 1883. A cyclone struck Nukulaelae on 17\u201318 March 1886.\nA cyclone caused severe damage to the islands in 1894.\nTuvalu experienced an average of three cyclones per decade between the 1940s and 1970s; however, eight occurred in the 1980s. The impact of individual cyclones is subject to variables including the force of the winds and also whether a cyclone coincides with high tides. Funafuti's Tepuka Vili Vili islet was devastated by Cyclone Meli in 1979, with all its vegetation and most of its sand swept away during the cyclone. Along with a tropical depression that affected the islands a few days later, Severe Tropical Cyclone Ofa had a major impact on Tuvalu with most islands reporting damage to vegetation and crops. Cyclone Gavin was first identified during 2 March 1997, and was the first of three tropical cyclones to affect Tuvalu during the 1996\u201397 cyclone season, with Cyclones Hina and Keli following later in the season.\nIn March 2015, the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of breaking over the reef of the outer islands, causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. A state of emergency was declared. On Nui, the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao and Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with from 60 to 100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility. Vasafua islet, part of the Funafuti Conservation Area, was severely damaged by Cyclone Pam. The coconut palms were washed away, leaving the islet as a sand bar.\nThe Tuvalu Government carried out assessments of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam to the islands and has provided medical aid, food as well as assistance for the cleaning-up of storm debris. Government and Non-Government Organisations provided assistance technical, funding and material support to Tuvalu to assist with recovery, including WHO, UNICEF EAPRO, UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, OCHA, World Bank, DFAT, New Zealand Red Cross & IFRC, Fiji National University and governments of New Zealand, Netherlands, UAE, Taiwan and the United States.\nDespite passing over to the south of the island nation, Cyclone Tino and its associated convergence zone impacted the whole of Tuvalu between January 16\u00a0- 19 of 2020.\nKing tides.\nTuvalu is also affected by perigean spring tide events which raise the sea level higher than a normal high tide. The highest peak tide recorded by the Tuvalu Meteorological Service is , on 24 February 2006 and again on 19 February 2015. As a result of the historical sea level rise, the king tide events lead to flooding of low-lying areas, which is compounded when sea levels are further raised by La Ni\u00f1a effects or local storms and waves.\nWater and sanitation.\nRainwater harvesting is the principal source of fresh water in Tuvalu. Nukufetau, Vaitupu and Nanumea are the only islands with sustainable groundwater supplies. The effectiveness of rainwater harvesting is diminished because of poor maintenance of roofs, gutters and pipes. Aid programmes of Australia and the European Union have been directed to improving the storage capacity on Funafuti and in the outer islands.\nReverse osmosis (R/O) desalination units supplement rainwater harvesting on Funafuti. The 65 m3 desalination plant operates at a real production level of around 40 m3 per day. R/O water is only intended to be produced when storage falls below 30%, however demand to replenish household storage supplies with tanker-delivered water means that the R/O desalination units are continually operating. Water is delivered at a cost of A$3.50 per m3. Cost of production and delivery has been estimated at A$6 per m3, with the difference subsidised by the government.\nIn July 2012, a United Nations Special Rapporteur called on the Tuvalu Government to develop a national water strategy to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In 2012, Tuvalu developed a National Water Resources Policy under the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Project and the Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change (PACC) Project, which are sponsored by the Global Environment Fund/SOPAC. Government water planning has established a target of between 50 and 100L of water per person per day accounting for drinking water, cleaning, community and cultural activities.\nTuvalu is working with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) to implement composting toilets and to improve the treatment of sewage sludge from septic tanks on Fongafale, for septic tanks are leaking into the freshwater lens in the sub-surface of the atoll as well as the ocean and lagoon. Composting toilets reduce water use by up to 30%.\nGovernment.\nParliamentary democracy.\nThe \"Constitution of Tuvalu\" states that it is \"the supreme law of Tuvalu\" and that \"all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution\"; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. On 5 September 2023, Tuvalu's parliament passed the Constitution of Tuvalu Act 2023, with the changes to the constitution came into effect on 1 October 2023.\nTuvalu is a parliamentary democracy and Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Tuvalu. Since the King resides in the United Kingdom, he is represented in Tuvalu by a governor general, whom he appoints upon the advice of the prime minister of Tuvalu. Referendums were carried out in 1986 and 2008 seeking to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic, but on both occasions the monarchy was retained.\nFrom 1974 (the creation of the British colony of Tuvalu) until independence, the legislative body of Tuvalu was called the \"House of the Assembly\" or \"Fale I Fono\". Following independence in October 1978, the House of the Assembly was renamed the Parliament of Tuvalu or \"Palamene o Tuvalu\". The place at which the parliament sits is called the \"Vaiaku maneapa\". The \"maneapa\" on each island is an open meeting place where the chiefs and elders deliberate and make decisions.\nThe unicameral Parliament has 16 members, with elections held every four years. The members of parliament select the Prime Minister (who is the head of government) and the Speaker of Parliament. The ministers that form the Cabinet are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. There are no formal political parties; election campaigns are largely based on personal/family ties and reputations.\nThe 2023 amendments to the Constitution recognise the Falekaupule as the traditional governing authorities of the islands of Tuvalu.\nThe Tuvalu National Library and Archives holds \"vital documentation on the cultural, social and political heritage of Tuvalu\", including surviving records from the colonial administration, as well as Tuvalu government archives.\nTuvalu is a state party to the following human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and; the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Tuvalu has commitments to ensuring human rights are respected under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).\nThe national strategy plan \"Te Kete - National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2021-2030\" sets out the development agenda of the Government of Tuvalu, which followed on from \"Te Kakeega III \u2013 National Strategy for Sustainable Development-2016-2020\" (TK III). The areas of development in these strategic plans include education; climate change; environment; migration and urbanisation.\nThe Tuvalu National Council for Women acts as an umbrella organisation for non-governmental women's rights groups throughout the country and works closely with the government.\nLegal system.\nThere are eight Island Courts and Lands Courts; appeals in relation to land disputes are made to the Lands Courts Appeal Panel. Appeals from the Island Courts and the Lands Courts Appeal Panel are made to the Magistrates Court, which has jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving up to $T10,000. The superior court is the High Court of Tuvalu as it has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and to hear appeals from the lower courts. Rulings of the High Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal of Tuvalu. From the Court of Appeal, there is a right of appeal to His Majesty in Council, i.e., the Privy Council in London.\nWith regard to the judiciary, \"the first female Island Court magistrate was appointed to the Island Court in Nanumea in the 1980s and another in Nukulaelae in the early 1990s.\" There were 7 female magistrates in the Island Courts of Tuvalu (as of 2007) in comparison \"to the past where only one woman magistrate served in the Magistrate Court of Tuvalu.\"\nThe Law of Tuvalu comprises the Acts voted into law by the Parliament of Tuvalu and statutory instruments that become law; certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom (during the time Tuvalu was either a British protectorate or British colony); the common law; and customary law (particularly in relation to the ownership of land). The land tenure system is largely based on \"kaitasi\" (extended family ownership).\nForeign relations.\nTuvalu participates in the work of the Pacific Community (SPC) and is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations. It has maintained a mission at the United Nations in New York City since 2000. Tuvalu became a member of the Asian Development Bank in 1993, and became a member of the World Bank in 2010.\nTuvalu maintains close relations with Fiji, New Zealand, Australia (which has maintained a High Commission in Tuvalu since 2018), Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has diplomatic relations with Taiwan; which maintains an embassy in Tuvalu and has a large assistance programme in the islands.\nA major international priority for Tuvalu in the UN, at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa and in other international fora, is promoting concern about global warming and the possible sea level rising. Tuvalu advocates ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2009, the islands stalled talks on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, fearing some other developing countries were not committing fully to binding deals on a reduction in carbon emissions. Their chief negotiator stated, \"Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.\"\nTuvalu participates in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that have concerns about their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. Under the Majuro Declaration, which was signed on 5 September 2013, Tuvalu has made a commitment to implement power generation of 100% renewable energy (between 2013 and 2020), which is proposed to be implemented using Solar PV (95% of demand) and biodiesel (5% of demand). The feasibility of wind power generation will be considered. Tuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).\nTuvalu is party to a treaty of friendship with the United States, signed soon after independence and ratified by the US Senate in 1983, under which the United States renounced prior territorial claims to four Tuvaluan islands (Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niulakita) under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.\nTuvalu participates in the operations of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). The Tuvaluan government, the US government, and the governments of other Pacific islands are parties to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT), which entered into force in 1988. Tuvalu is also a member of the Nauru Agreement which addresses the management of tuna purse seine fishing in the tropical western Pacific. The United States and the Pacific Islands countries have negotiated the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) to confirm access to the fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific for US tuna boats. Tuvalu and the other members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the United States have settled a tuna fishing deal for 2015; a longer-term deal will be negotiated. The treaty is an extension of the Nauru Agreement and provides for the US flagged purse seine vessels to fish 8,300 days in the region in return for a payment of US$90\u00a0million made up by tuna fishing industry and US-Government contributions. In 2015, Tuvalu refused to sell fishing days to certain nations and fleets that have blocked Tuvaluan initiatives to develop and sustain their own fishery. In 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources drew attention to Article 30 of the WCPF Convention, which describes the collective obligation of members to consider the disproportionate burden that management measures might place on small-island developing states.\nIn July 2013, Tuvalu signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Pacific Regional Trade and Development Facility, which Facility originated in 2006, in the context of negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Pacific ACP States and the European Union. The rationale for the creation of the Facility being to improve the delivery of aid to Pacific island countries in support of the Aid-for-Trade (AfT) requirements. The Pacific ACP States are the countries in the Pacific that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. On 31 May 2017 the first enhanced High Level Political Dialogue between Tuvalu and the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement was held in Funafuti.\nOn 18 February 2016, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Islands Development Forum Charter and formally joined the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). In June 2017, Tuvalu signed the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). Tuvalu ratified the PACER agreement in January 2022. The agreement is designed to reduce trade barriers between signatories of the agreement. Existing import tariffs will reduce to zero, and the agreement contemplates additional actions to reduce trade barriers, including harmonizing customs procedures and rules of origin, as well as eliminating restrictions to services trade, and improving labour mobility schemes between countries.\nDefence and law enforcement.\nTuvalu has no regular military forces, and spends no money on the military. Its national police force, the Tuvalu Police Force headquartered in Funafuti, includes a maritime surveillance unit, customs, prisons and immigration. Police officers wear British-style uniforms.\nFrom 1994 to 2019 Tuvalu policed its 200-kilometre exclusive economic zone with the Pacific-class patrol boat HMTSS \"Te Mataili\", provided by Australia. In 2019, Australia gifted a Guardian-class patrol boat as replacement. Named HMTSS \"Te Mataili II\", it is meant for use in maritime surveillance, fishery patrol and for search-and-rescue missions. (\"HMTSS\" stands for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvaluan State Ship\" or for \"His/Her Majesty's Tuvalu Surveillance Ship\".) \"Te Mataili II\" was severely damaged by cyclones. On 16 October 2024 Australia handed over a Guardian-class patrol boat to Tuvalu, which was named HMTSS \"Te Mataili III\">\nIn May 2023 the Government of Tuvalu signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sea Shepherd Global, which is based in the Netherlands, to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Tuvalu's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Sea Shepherd Global will provide the \"Allankay\", a motor vessel, to support Tuvalu's law enforcement activities. \"Allankay\" will accommodate officers from the Tuvalu Police Force, who have the authority to board, inspect, and arrest fishing vessels engaged in IUU activity in Tuvalu's EEZ.\nMale homosexuality is illegal in Tuvalu. Crime in Tuvalu is not a significant social problem due to an effective criminal justice system, also due to the influence of the \"Falekaupule\" (the traditional assembly of elders of each island) and the central role of religious institutions in the Tuvaluan community.\nAdministrative divisions.\nTuvalu consists of six atolls and three reef islands, each constituting a district of the country. The smallest, Niulakita, is administered as part of Niutao. The districts, their island counts, and their populations as of the 2017 census are as follows:\nEach island has its own high-chief (ulu-aliki), several sub-chiefs (alikis), and a community council (Falekaupule). The \"Falekaupule\", also known as \"te sina o fenua\" (grey-hairs of the land), is the traditional assembly of elders.\nThe ulu-aliki and aliki exercise informal authority at the local level, with the former chosen on the basis of ancestry. Since the passage of the Falekaupule Act in 1997, the powers and functions of the \"Falekaupule\" are shared with the \"pule o kaupule\", a village president elected on each atoll.\nTuvalu has defined for one town council (Funafuti) and seven island councils. Niulakita, which now has its own island council, is not listed, as it is administered as part of Niutao.\nSociety.\nDemographics.\nThe population at the 2002 census was 9,561, and the population at the 2017 census was 10,645. The most recent evaluation in 2020 puts the population at 11,342. The population of Tuvalu is primarily of Polynesian ethnicity, with approximately 5.6% of the population being Micronesians speaking Gilbertese, especially on Nui.\nLife expectancy for women in Tuvalu is 70.2 years and 65.6 years for men (2018 est.). The country's population growth rate is 0.86% (2018 est.). The net migration rate is estimated at \u22126.6 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.). The threat of global warming in Tuvalu is not yet a dominant motivation for migration as Tuvaluans appear to prefer to continue living on the islands for reasons of lifestyle, culture and identity.\nFrom 1947 to 1983, a number of Tuvaluans from Vaitupu migrated to Kioa, an island in Fiji. The settlers from Tuvalu were granted Fijian citizenship in 2005. In recent years, New Zealand and Australia have been the primary destinations for migration or seasonal work.\nIn 2014, attention was drawn to an appeal to the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal against the deportation of a Tuvaluan family on the basis that they were \"climate change refugees\", who would suffer hardship resulting from the environmental degradation of Tuvalu. However, the subsequent grant of residence permits to the family was made on grounds unrelated to the refugee claim. The family was successful in their appeal because, under the relevant immigration legislation, there were \"exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature\" that justified the grant of resident permits, for the family was integrated into New Zealand society with a sizeable extended family that had effectively relocated to New Zealand. Indeed, in 2013 a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable, as there was no persecution or serious harm related to any of the five stipulated Refugee Convention grounds. Permanent migration to Australia and New Zealand, such as for family reunification, requires compliance with the immigration legislation of those countries.\nNew Zealand announced the \"Pacific Access Category\" in 2001, which provided an annual quota of 75 work permits for Tuvaluans. The applicants register for the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballots; the primary criterion is that the principal applicant must have a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Tuvaluans also have access to seasonal employment in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand under the \"Recognised Seasonal Employer\" (RSE) Work Policy introduced in 2007 allowing for employment of up to 5,000 workers from Tuvalu and other Pacific islands. Tuvaluans can participate in the Australian \"Pacific Seasonal Worker Program\", which allows Pacific Islanders to obtain seasonal employment in the Australian agriculture industry, in particular, cotton and cane operations; fishing industry, in particular aquaculture; and with accommodation providers in the tourism industry.\nOn 10 November 2023, Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, a bilateral diplomatic relationship with Australia, under which Australia will provide a pathway for citizens of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia, to enable climate-related mobility for Tuvaluans.\nLanguages.\nThe Tuvaluan language and English are the national languages of Tuvalu. Tuvaluan is of the Ellicean group of Polynesian languages, distantly related to all other Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, M\u0101ori, Tahitian, Rapa Nui, Samoan and Tongan. It is most closely related to the languages spoken on the Polynesian outliers in Micronesia and northern and central Melanesia. The Tuvaluan language has borrowed from the Samoan language, as a consequence of Christian missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being predominantly Samoan.\nThe Tuvaluan language is spoken by virtually everyone, while a Micronesian language very similar to Gilbertese is spoken on Nui. English is also an official language but is not spoken in daily use. Parliament and official functions are conducted in the Tuvaluan language.\nThere are about 13,000 Tuvaluan speakers worldwide. Radio Tuvalu transmits Tuvaluan-language programming.\nReligion.\nThe Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu, which is part of the Calvinist tradition, is the state church of Tuvalu; although in practice this merely entitles it to \"the privilege of performing special services on major national events\". Its adherents comprise about 97% of the 10,837 (2012 census) inhabitants of the archipelago. The Constitution of Tuvalu guarantees freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice, the freedom to change religion, the right not to receive religious instruction at school or to attend religious ceremonies at school, and the right not to \"take an oath or make an affirmation that is contrary to his religion or belief\".\nOther Christian groups include the Catholic community served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, and the Seventh-day Adventist which has 2.8% of the population. According to its own estimates, the Tuvalu Brethren Church has about 500 members (i.e. 4.5% of the population).\nThe Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith is the largest minority religion and the largest non-Christian religion in Tuvalu. It constitutes 2.0% of the population. The Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds are present on Nanumea, and Funafuti. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community consists of about 50 members (0.4% of the population).\nThe introduction of Christianity ended the worship of ancestral spirits and other deities (animism), along with the power of the \"vaka-atua\" (the priests of the old religions). Laumua Kofe describes the objects of worship as varying from island to island, although ancestor worship was described by the Rev. Samuel James Whitmee in 1870 as being common practice.\nHealth.\nThe Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti is the only hospital in Tuvalu and the primary provider of medical services.\nSince the late 20th century, the biggest health problems in Tuvalu have been obesity-related. The leading cause of death has been heart disease, which is closely followed by diabetes and high blood pressure. In 2016 the majority of deaths resulted from cardiac diseases, with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, and cerebral-vascular disease among the other causes of death.\nEducation.\nEducation in Tuvalu is free and compulsory between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Each island has a primary school. Motufoua Secondary School is located on Vaitupu. Students board at the school during the school term, returning to their home islands each school vacation. Fetuvalu Secondary School, a day school operated by the Church of Tuvalu, is on Funafuti.\nFetuvalu offers the Cambridge syllabus. Motufoua offers the Fiji Junior Certificate (FJC) at year 10, Tuvaluan Certificate at Year 11 and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC) at Year 12, which is set by SPBEA, the Fiji-based exam board. Sixth form students who pass their PSSC go on to the Augmented Foundation Programme, funded by the Tuvalu government. This program is required for tertiary education programmes outside of Tuvalu and is available at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre in Funafuti.\nRequired attendance at school is 10 years for males and 11 years for females (2001). The adult literacy rate is 99.0% (2002). In 2010, there were 1,918 students who were taught by 109 teachers (98 certified and 11 uncertified). The teacher-pupil ratio for primary schools in Tuvalu is around 1:18 for all schools with the exception of Nauti School, which has a ratio of 1:27. Nauti School on Funafuti is the largest primary school in Tuvalu with more than 900 students (45 per cent of the total primary school enrolment). The pupil-teacher ratio for Tuvalu is low compared to the entire Pacific region (ratio of 1:29).\nCommunity Training Centres (CTCs) have been established within the primary schools on each atoll. They provide vocational training to students who do not progress beyond Class 8 because they failed the entry qualifications for secondary education. The CTCs offer training in basic carpentry, gardening and farming, sewing and cooking. At the end of their studies the graduates can apply to continue studies either at Motufoua Secondary School or the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI). Adults can also attend courses at the CTCs.\nFour tertiary institutions offer technical and vocational courses: Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute (TMTI), Tuvalu Atoll Science Technology Training Institute (TASTII), Australian Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and University of the South Pacific (USP) Extension Centre.\nThe Tuvaluan Employment Ordinance of 1966 sets the minimum age for paid employment at 14 years and prohibits children under the age of 15 from performing hazardous work.\nCulture.\nArchitecture.\nThe traditional buildings of Tuvalu used plants and trees from the native broadleaf forest, including timber from \"pouka\" (\"Hernandia peltata\"); \"ngia\" or \"ingia\" bush (\"Pemphis acidula\"); \"miro\" (\"Thespesia populnea\"); \"Tonga\" (\"Rhizophora mucronata\"); \"fau\" or \"fo fafini\", or woman's fibre tree (\"Hibiscus tiliaceus\"). Fibre is from coconut; \"ferra\", native fig (\"Ficus aspem\"); \"fala\", screw pine or \"Pandanus\". The buildings were constructed without nails, lashed together with plaited sennit rope handmade from dried coconut fibre.\nFollowing contact with Europeans, iron products were used including nails and corrugated roofing material. Modern buildings in Tuvalu are constructed from imported building materials, including imported timber and concrete.\nChurch and community buildings (\"maneapa\") are usually coated with white paint that is known as \"lase\", which is made by burning a large amount of dead coral with firewood. The whitish powder that is the result is mixed with water and painted on the buildings.\nArt.\nThe women of Tuvalu use cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. The artistic traditions of Tuvalu have traditionally been expressed in the design of clothing and traditional handicrafts such as the decoration of mats and fans. Crochet (\"kolose\") is one of the art forms practised by Tuvaluan women. The design of women's skirts (\"titi\"), tops (\"teuga saka\"), headbands, armbands, and wristbands, which continue to be used in performances of the traditional dance songs of Tuvalu, represents contemporary Tuvaluan art and design. The material culture of Tuvalu uses traditional design elements in artefacts used in everyday life such as the design of canoes and fish hooks made from traditional materials.\nIn 2015, an exhibition was held on Funafuti of the art of Tuvalu, with works that addressed climate change through the eyes of artists and the display of \"Kope ote olaga\" (possessions of life), a display of the various artefacts of Tuvalu culture.\nDance and music.\nThe traditional music of Tuvalu consists of a number of dances, including \"fakaseasea\", \"fakanau\" and \"fatele\". The \"fatele\", in its modern form, is performed at community events and to celebrate leaders and other prominent individuals, such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in September 2012. The Tuvaluan style can be described \"as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where contemporary and older styles co-exist\".\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine of Tuvalu is based on the staple of coconut and the many species of fish found in the ocean and lagoons of the atolls. Desserts made on the islands include coconut and coconut milk, rather than animal milk. The traditional foods eaten in Tuvalu are pulaka, taro, bananas, breadfruit and coconut. Tuvaluans also eat seafood, including coconut crab and fish from the lagoon and ocean. Flying fish are also caught as a source of food. Another traditional food source is seabirds (\"taketake\" or black noddy and \"akiaki\" or white tern), with pork being eaten mostly at \"fateles\" (or parties with dancing to celebrate events).\nPulaka is the main source for carbohydrates. Seafood provides protein. Bananas and breadfruit are supplemental crops. Coconut is used for its juice, to make other beverages (such as toddy) and to improve the taste of some dishes.\nA 1560-square-metre pond was built in 1996 on Vaitupu to sustain aquaculture in Tuvalu.\nFlying fish are also caught as a source of food; and as an exciting activity, using a boat, a butterfly net and a spotlight to attract the flying fish.\nHeritage.\nThe traditional community system still survives to a large extent on Tuvalu. Each family has its own task, or \"salanga\", to perform for the community, such as fishing, house building or defence. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children.\nMost islands have their own \"fusi\", community-owned shops similar to convenience stores, where canned foods and bags of rice can be purchased. Goods are cheaper, and fusis give better prices for their own produce.\nAnother important building is the \"falekaupule\" or \"maneapa\", the traditional island meeting hall, where important matters are discussed and which is also used for wedding celebrations and community activities such as a \"fatele\" involving music, singing and dancing. \"Falekaupule\" is also used as the name of the council of elders \u2013 the traditional decision-making body on each island. Under the Falekaupule Act, \"Falekaupule\" means \"traditional assembly in each island\u00a0... composed in accordance with the Aganu of each island\". \"Aganu\" means traditional customs and culture.\nTuvalu does not have any museums, however the creation of a Tuvalu National Cultural Centre and Museum is part of the government's strategic plan for 2018\u201324.\nTraditional single-outrigger canoe.\n\"Paopao\" (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing-canoe made from a single log), is the traditional single-outrigger canoe of Tuvalu, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea were reef-type or paddled canoes; that is, they were designed for carrying over the reef and being paddled, rather than being sailed. Outrigger canoes from Nui were constructed with an indirect type of outrigger attachment and the hull is double-ended, with no distinct bow and stern. These canoes were designed to be sailed over the Nui lagoon. The booms of the outrigger are longer than those found in other designs of canoes from the other islands. This made the Nui canoe more stable when used with a sail than the other designs.\nSport and leisure.\nA traditional sport played in Tuvalu is \"kilikiti\", which is similar to cricket. A popular sport specific to Tuvalu is \"Te ano\" (The ball), which is played with two round balls of diameter. \"Te ano\" is a traditional game that is similar to volleyball, in which the two hard balls made from pandanus leaves are volleyed at great speed with the team members trying to stop the ball hitting the ground. Traditional sports in the late 19th century were foot racing, lance throwing, quarterstaff fencing and wrestling, although the Christian missionaries disapproved of these activities.\nThe popular sports in Tuvalu include \"kilikiti\", \"Te ano\", association football, futsal, volleyball, handball, basketball and rugby sevens. Tuvalu has sports organisations for athletics, badminton, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, football, basketball, rugby union, weightlifting and powerlifting. At the 2013 Pacific Mini Games, Tuau Lapua Lapua won Tuvalu's first gold medal in an international competition in the weightlifting 62 kilogram male snatch. (He also won bronze in the clean and jerk, and obtained the silver medal overall for the combined event.) In 2015, Telupe Iosefa received the first gold medal won by Tuvalu at the Pacific Games in the powerlifting 120\u00a0kg male division.\nFootball in Tuvalu is played at club and national team level. The Tuvalu national football team trains at the Tuvalu Sports Ground in Funafuti and competes in the Pacific Games. The Tuvalu National Football Association is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and is seeking membership in FIFA. The Tuvalu national futsal team participates in the Oceanian Futsal Championship.\nA major sporting event is the \"Independence Day Sports Festival\" held annually on 1 October. The most important sports event within the country is arguably the Tuvalu Games, which are held yearly since 2008. Tuvalu first participated in the Pacific Games in 1978 and in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, when a weightlifter attended the games held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two table tennis players attended the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England; Tuvalu entered competitors in shooting, table tennis and weightlifting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia; three athletes participated in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, entering the discus, shot put and weightlifting events; and a team of 3 weightlifters and 2 table tennis players attended the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tuvaluan athletes have also participated in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint at the World Championships in Athletics from 2009.\nThe Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC) was recognised as a National Olympic Committee in July 2007. Tuvalu entered the Olympic Games for the first time at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, with a weightlifter and two athletes in the men's and women's 100 metres sprint. A team with athletes in the same events represented Tuvalu at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Etimoni Timuani was the sole representative of Tuvalu at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 100m event. Karalo Maibuca and Matie Stanley represented Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 100m events. Tuvalu sent a team to the 2023 Pacific Games. Tuvalu was represented in athletic events at the 2024 Summer Olympics by Karalo Maibuca in the men's 100 metres, and Temalini Manatoa in the women's 100 metres.\nEconomy and government services.\nEconomy.\nFrom 1996 to 2002, Tuvalu was one of the best-performing Pacific Island economies and achieved an average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6% per annum. Economic growth slowed after 2002, with GDP growth of 1.5% in 2008. Tuvalu was exposed to rapid rises in world prices of fuel and food in 2008, with the level of inflation peaking at 13.4%. Tuvalu has the smallest total GDP of any sovereign state in the world.\nTuvalu joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 24 June 2010. The IMP 2010 Report on Tuvalu estimates that Tuvalu experienced zero growth in its 2010 GDP, after the economy contracted by about 2% in 2009. On 5 August 2012, the executive board of the IMF concluded the Article IV consultation with Tuvalu, and assessed the economy of Tuvalu: \"A slow recovery is underway in Tuvalu, but there are important risks. GDP grew in 2011 for the first time since the global financial crisis, led by the private retail sector and education spending.\" The IMF 2014 Country Report noted that real GDP growth in Tuvalu had been volatile averaging only 1 per cent in the past decade. The 2014 Country Report describes economic growth prospects as generally positive as the result of large revenues from fishing licences, together with substantial foreign aid. In 2023, the IMF Article IV consultation with Tuvalu concluded that a successful vaccination strategy allowed Tuvalu to lift coronavirus disease (COVID) containment measures at the end of 2022. However, the economic cost of the pandemic was significant, with real gross domestic product growth falling from 13.8% in 2019 to -4.3 percent in 2020, although it recovered to 1.8% in 2021. Inflation rose to 11.5% in 2022, but inflation is project to fall to 2.8% by 2028.\nThe increase in inflation in 2022 was due to the rapid rise in the cost of food resulting from a drought that affected food production and from rising global food prices, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (food imports represent 19 percent of Tuvalu's GDP, while agriculture makes up for only 10 percent of GDP).\nThe government is the primary provider of medical services through Princess Margaret Hospital on Funafuti, which operates health clinics on the other islands. Banking services are provided by the National Bank of Tuvalu. Public sector workers make up about 65% of those formally employed. Remittances from Tuvaluans living in Australia and New Zealand, and remittances from Tuvaluan sailors employed on overseas ships are important sources of income for Tuvaluans. Approximately 15% of adult males work as seamen on foreign-flagged merchant ships. Agriculture in Tuvalu is focused on coconut trees and growing pulaka in large pits of composted soil below the water table. Tuvaluans are otherwise involved in traditional subsistence agriculture and fishing.\nTuvaluans are well known for their seafaring skills, with the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku motu (island), Funafuti, providing training to approximately 120 marine cadets each year so that they have the skills necessary for employment as seafarers on merchant shipping. The Tuvalu Overseas Seamen's Union (TOSU) is the only registered trade union in Tuvalu. It represents workers on foreign ships. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that 800 Tuvaluan men are trained, certified and active as seafarers. The ADB estimates that, at any one time, about 15% of the adult male population works abroad as seafarers. Job opportunities also exist as observers on tuna boats where the role is to monitor compliance with the boat's tuna fishing licence.\nGovernment revenues largely come from sales of fishing licences, income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund, and from the lease of its \".tv\" internet Top Level Domain (TLD). Tuvalu began deriving revenue from the commercialisation of its \".tv\" internet domain name, which was managed by Verisign until 2021. In 2023, an agreement between the government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy company, outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv unit. Tuvalu also generates income from postage stamps by the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau, and from the Tuvalu Ship Registry.\nThe Tuvalu Trust Fund (TTF) was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The TTF is a sovereign wealth fund that is owned by Tuvalu but is administered by an international board and the government of Tuvalu. When the performance of the TTF exceeds its operating target each year, excess funds are transferred to the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), and can be freely drawn upon by the Tuvaluan government to finance budgetary expenditures. In 2022, the value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund is approximately $190\u00a0million. In 2021 the market value of the TTF rose by 12 percent to its highest level on record (261 percent of GDP). However, the volatility in global equity markets in 2022 resulted in the TTF's value falling by 7 percent as compared to the end of 2021.\nFinancial support to Tuvalu is also provided by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Australia and New Zealand continue to contribute capital to the TTF, and provide other forms of development assistance.\nThe U.S. government is also a major revenue source for Tuvalu. In 1999, the payment from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty (SPTT) was about $9\u00a0million, with the value increasing in the following years. In May 2013, representatives from the United States and the Pacific Islands countries agreed to sign interim arrangement documents to extend the Multilateral Fisheries Treaty (which encompasses the South Pacific Tuna Treaty) for 18 months.\nThe United Nations designates Tuvalu as a least developed country (LDC) because of its limited potential for economic development, absence of exploitable resources and its small size and vulnerability to external economic and environmental shocks. Tuvalu participates in the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries (EIF), which was established in October 1997 under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. In 2013, Tuvalu deferred its graduation from least developed country (LDC) status to a developing country to 2015. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister in 2013, said that this deferral was necessary to maintain access by Tuvalu to the funds provided by the United Nations's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), as \"Once Tuvalu graduates to a developed country, it will not be considered for funding assistance for climate change adaptation programmes like NAPA, which only goes to LDCs\". Tuvalu had met targets so that Tuvalu was to graduate from LDC status. Enele Sopoaga wanted the United Nations to reconsider its criteria for graduation from LDC status as not enough weight is given to the environmental plight of small island states like Tuvalu in the application of the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI).\nTourism.\nDue to the country's remoteness, tourism is not significant. Visitors totalled 1,684 in 2010: 65% were on business, development officials or technical consultants, 20% were tourists (360 people), and 11% were expatriates returning to visit family. In 2016, the number of visitors had increased to 2,000.\nThe main island of Funafuti is the focus of travellers, since the only airport in Tuvalu is the Funafuti International Airport and Funafuti is the only island that has hotel facilities. However, there are no tour guides, tour operators or organised activities and no cruise ships visit. Ecotourism is a motivation of travellers to Tuvalu. The Funafuti Conservation Area consists of of ocean, reef, lagoon, channel and six uninhabited islets.\nThe outer atolls can be visited on the two passenger-cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Man\u00fa Folau\", which provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks. There is guesthouse accommodation on many of the outer islands.\nTelecommunications and media.\nThe Tuvalu Media Department of the Government of Tuvalu operates \"Radio Tuvalu\" which broadcasts from Funafuti. In 2011, the Japanese government provided financial support to construct a new AM broadcast studio. The installation of upgraded transmission equipment allows Radio Tuvalu to be heard on all nine islands of Tuvalu. The new AM radio transmitter on Funafuti replaced the FM radio service to the outer islands and freed up satellite bandwidth for mobile services. \"Fenui \u2013 news from Tuvalu\" is a free digital publication of the Tuvalu Media Department that is emailed to subscribers and operates a Facebook page, which publishes news about government activities and news about Tuvaluan events.\nCommunications in Tuvalu rely on satellite dishes for telephone, television, and internet access. The Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation (TTC) is a state-owned enterprise that provides fixed line telephone communications to subscribers on each island, mobile phone services on Funafuti, Vaitupu and Nukulaelae, and is a distributor of the Fiji Television service (Sky Pacific satellite television service).\nIn July 2020, the Government of Tuvalu signed a five-year agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites to supply Tuvalu with internet via sixty 1.2\u00a0metre VSAT satellite receivers. The agreement provided a combined data transfer capacity of 400 to 600\u00a0Mbit/s to schools, medical clinics, government agencies, small businesses, and 40 outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as Tuvaluan interisland ferries via three maritime antennae. A Ka band antenna was installed to provide the island's mobile phone network with trunking and backhaul services. By February 2022, Kacific and Agility Beyond Space (ABS) satellites provided the island with a combined capacity of 510\u00a0Mbit/s. \nThe average download of data per device is about 9\u00a0GB/user/month, with 95% of devices in use supporting 4G LTE service. Also, Tuvalu has 5,915 active broadband users (the largest base of users is on Funafuti), with dedicated satellite and hotspot users on the outer islands, each of which having three to five hotspots.\nTransport.\nThere are limited transport services in Tuvalu. There are about of roads. The streets of Funafuti were paved in mid-2002, but other roads are unpaved. Tuvalu does not have any railways.\nFunafuti is the only port, but there is a deep-water berth in the lagoon at Nukufetau. Landing passengers and cargo on some of the islands is difficult as the reef islands do not have a lagoon that shipping can enter or the atoll's lagoon does not have navigable channels. Landing on these islands involves passengers and cargo being transferred from ships to workboats for delivery to landing points on the islands. In May 2023 the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) approved the payment of AUD$21.4m (US$15m) for a AUD$120.6m (US$84.4m) Asian Development Bank (ADB) led fund to finance the construction of passenger and cargo facilities on Pacific Islands. The AIFFP funds, together with AUD$11m (US$7.2m) of in-kind contribution from the Government of Tuvalu, are allocated to complete a project at Niutao and to implement a project at Nui, to construct workboat harbors, including constructing a navigation channel, boat ramp, passenger terminal, cargo shed, as well as shoreline reclamation.\nThe merchant marine fleet consists of two passenger/cargo ships, \"Nivaga III\" and \"Manu Folau\", both of which were donated by Japan. They provide round-trip visits to the outer islands every three or four weeks, and travel between Suva, Fiji and Funafuti three or four times a year. \"Manu Folau\" is a 50-metre vessel. In 2015 \"Nivaga III\" replaced \"Nivaga II\", which had been in service in Tuvalu from 1989.\nIn 2020, the government of Tuvalu purchased a landing barge, which is intended to transport of dangerous goods and building material from the capital to the outer islands. The barge was named \"Moeiteava\". The government of Taiwan provided financial assistance.\nThe Tuvalu Fisheries Department operates two vessels for carrying out its activities within the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and outer islands. These are the 18-metre \"Manaui\" and 32-metre \"Tala Moana\". The vessels are used for fisheries research, deploying fish aggregating devices (FADs), visiting outer islands for monitoring and consultations, including to implement Tuvalu's National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to address climate change. The \"Manaui\" was procured through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1989 and is nearing the end of its life. In 2015, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided assistance to acquire \"Tala Moana\"; which is also used for Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) patrols. \"Tala Moana\" is a steel monohull oil rig supply vessel that is equipped with facilities for a team of about 15 people.\nThe only international airport in Tuvalu is Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services to Funafuti International Airport. Fiji Airways operates services three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) between Suva and Funafuti with ATR 72-600 aircraft, which has a capacity of 72 passengers. Beginning 18 March 2024, flights also operate on Mondays between Nadi and Funafuti.\nFilmography and bibliography.\nTuvalu doesn't have a movie or TV industry whatsoever, and foreign movies and TV shows (e.g. Hollywood movies) are commonly watched/dubbed in the country.\nThe first movie to be dubbed into Tuvaluan/seen a release in Tuvalu was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in January 1976 (38 years and 1 month after the film was first released and just 3 months after Tuvalu was formed). Since then, there have been thousands of movies, TV shows and cartoons that have been dubbed into Tuvaluan/released in Tuvalu. All animated movies (including all Disney animated movies (e.g. the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie) and adult animated movies) and children's TV shows (e.g. Animaniacs) are dubbed into Tuvaluan (though in almost all cases, songs are left in English or the original language of the movie or TV show with Tuvaluan subtitles, Moana and are the only animated movies to not have any songs left in English, instead, all the songs in both movies are dubbed into Tuvaluan), Adult animated TV shows such as South Park and The Simpsons are also dubbed into Tuvaluan as well. Almost all live-action movies and TV shows are also dubbed into Tuvaluan, as for documentaries, Tuvalu usually uses voice-over.\nFilmography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nDocumentary films about Tuvalu:\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nBiodiversity\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nCulture, customs and traditions\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistory\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" /> \nLanguage\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nMusic and dance\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "25814008": "Protestantism\nMajor branch of Christianity\nProtestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes justification of sinners through faith alone, the teaching that salvation comes by unmerited divine grace, the priesthood of all believers, and the Bible as the sole infallible source of authority for Christian faith and practice. The five \"solae\" summarize the basic theological beliefs of mainstream Protestantism.\nProtestants follow the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began in the 16th century with the goal of reforming the Catholic Church from perceived errors, abuses, and discrepancies. The Reformation began in the Holy Roman Empire in 1517, when Martin Luther published his \"Ninety-five Theses\" as a reaction against abuses in the sale of indulgences by the Catholic Church, which purported to offer the remission of the temporal punishment of sins to their purchasers. The term, however, derives from the letter of protestation from German Lutheran princes in 1529 against an edict of the Diet of Speyer condemning the teachings of Martin Luther as heretical. In the 16th century, Lutheranism spread from Germany into Denmark\u2013Norway, Sweden, Finland, Livonia, and Iceland. Calvinist churches spread in Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Scotland, Switzerland, France, Poland and Lithuania, led by Protestant Reformers such as John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli and John Knox. The political separation of the Church of England from the Catholic Church under King Henry VIII began Anglicanism, bringing England and Wales into this broad Reformation movement, under the leadership of reformer Thomas Cranmer, whose work forged Anglican doctrine and identity.\nProtestantism is diverse, being divided into various denominations on the basis of theology and ecclesiology, not forming a single structure as with the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy or Oriental Orthodoxy. Protestants adhere to the concept of an invisible church, in contrast to the Catholic, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, the Assyrian Church of the East, and the Ancient Church of the East, which all understand themselves as the one and only original church\u2014the \"one true church\"\u2014founded by Jesus Christ (though certain Protestant denominations, including historic Lutheranism, hold to this position). Some denominations do have a worldwide scope and distribution of church membership, while others are confined to a single country. A majority of Protestants are members of a handful of Protestant denominational families; Adventists, Anabaptists, Anglicans/Episcopalians, Baptists, Calvinist/Reformed, Lutherans, Methodists, Moravians, Pentecostals, Plymouth Brethren, Presbyterians, and Quakers. Nondenominational, charismatic and independent churches are also on the rise, having recently expanded rapidly throughout much of the world, and constitute a significant part of Protestantism. These various movements, collectively labeled \"popular Protestantism\" by scholars such as Peter L. Berger, have been called one of the contemporary world's most dynamic religious movements. There are currently more than 1.18 billion Protestants worldwide.<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nTerminology.\nProtestant.\nSix princes of the Holy Roman Empire and rulers of fourteen Imperial Free Cities, who issued a protest (or dissent) against the edict of the Diet of Speyer (1529), were the first individuals to be called Protestants. The edict reversed concessions made to the Lutherans with the approval of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V three years earlier. The term \"protestant\", though initially purely political in nature, later acquired a broader sense, referring to a member of any Western church which subscribed to the main Protestant principles. A Protestant is an adherent of any of those Christian bodies that separated from the Church of Rome during the Reformation, or of any group descended from them.\nDuring the Reformation, the term \"protestant\" was hardly used outside of German politics. People who were involved in the religious movement used the word \"evangelical\" (). For further details, see the section below. Gradually, \"protestant\" became a general term, meaning any adherent of the Reformation in the German-speaking area. It was ultimately somewhat taken up by Lutherans, even though Martin Luther himself insisted on \"Christian\" or \"evangelical\" as the only acceptable names for individuals who professed faith in Christ. French and Swiss Protestants instead preferred the word \"reformed\" (), which became a popular, neutral, and alternative name for Calvinists.\nEvangelical.\nThe word \"evangelical\" (), which refers to the gospel, was widely used for those involved in the religious movement in the German-speaking area beginning in 1517. \"Evangelical\" is still preferred among some of the historical Protestant denominations in the Lutheran, Calvinist, and United (Lutheran and Reformed) Protestant traditions in Europe, and those with strong ties to them. Above all the term is used by Protestant bodies in the German-speaking area, such as the Protestant Church in Germany. Thus, the German word ' means Protestant, while the German ', refers to churches shaped by Evangelicalism. The English word \"evangelical\" usually refers to evangelical Protestant churches, and therefore to a certain part of Protestantism rather than to Protestantism as a whole. The English word traces its roots back to the Puritans in England, where Evangelicalism originated, and then was brought to the United States.\nMartin Luther always disliked the term \"Lutheran\", preferring the term \"evangelical\", which was derived from \"euangelion\", a Greek word meaning \"good news\", i.e. \"gospel\". The followers of John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, and other theologians linked to the Reformed tradition also began to use that term. To distinguish the two evangelical groups, others began to refer to the two groups as \"Evangelical Lutheran\" and \"Evangelical Reformed\". The word also pertains in the same way to some other mainline groups, for example \"Evangelical Methodist\". As time passed by, the word \"evangelical\" was dropped. Lutherans themselves began to use the term \"Lutheran\" in the middle of the 16th century, in order to distinguish themselves from other groups such as the Philippists and Calvinists.\nReformational.\nThe German word ', which roughly translates to English as \"reformational\" or \"reforming\", is used as an alternative for ' in German, and is different from English \"reformed\" (), which refers to churches shaped by ideas of John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, and other Reformed theologians. Derived from the word \"Reformation\", the term emerged around the same time as \"Evangelical\" (1517) and \"Protestant\" (1529).\nTheology.\nMain principles.\nMany experts have proposed criteria to determine whether a Christian denomination should be considered part of Protestantism. A common consensus approved by most of them is that if a Christian denomination is to be considered Protestant, it must acknowledge the following three fundamental principles of Protestantism.\nScripture alone.\nThe belief, emphasized by Luther, in the Bible as the highest source of authority for the church. The early churches of the Reformation believed in a critical, yet serious, reading of scripture and holding the Bible as a source of authority higher than that of church tradition. The many abuses that had occurred in the Western Church before the Protestant Reformation led the Reformers to reject much of its tradition. In the early 20th century, a less critical reading of the Bible developed in the United States\u2014leading to a \"fundamentalist\" reading of Scripture. Christian fundamentalists read the Bible as the \"inerrant, infallible\" Word of God, as do the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran churches, but interpret it in a literalist fashion without using the historical-critical method. Methodists and Anglicans differ from Lutherans and the Reformed on this doctrine as they teach \"prima scriptura\", which holds that Scripture is the primary source for Christian doctrine, but that \"tradition, experience, and reason\" can nurture the Christian religion as long as they are in harmony with the Bible (Protestant canon).\n\"Biblical Christianity\" focused on a deep study of the Bible is characteristic of most Protestants as opposed to \"Church Christianity\", focused on performing rituals and good works, represented by Catholic and Orthodox traditions. However, Quakers, Pentecostalists and Spiritual Christians emphasize the Holy Spirit and personal closeness to God.\nJustification by faith alone.\nThe belief that believers are justified, or pardoned for sin, solely on condition of faith in Christ rather than a combination of faith and good works. For Protestants, good works are a necessary consequence rather than cause of justification. However, while justification is by faith alone, there is the position that faith is not \"nuda fides\". John Calvin explained that \"it is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone: just as it is the heat alone of the sun which warms the earth, and yet in the sun it is not alone.\" Lutheran and Reformed Christians differ from Methodists in their understanding of this doctrine.\nUniversal priesthood of believers.\nThe universal priesthood of believers implies the right and duty of the Christian laity not only to read the Bible in the vernacular, but also to take part in the government and all the public affairs of the Church. It is opposed to the hierarchical system which puts the essence and authority of the Church in an exclusive priesthood, and which makes ordained priests the necessary mediators between God and the people. It is distinguished from the concept of the priesthood of all believers, which did not grant individuals the right to interpret the Bible apart from the Christian community at large because universal priesthood opened the door to such a possibility. There are scholars who cite that this doctrine tends to subsume all distinctions in the church under a single spiritual entity. Calvin referred to the universal priesthood as an expression of the relation between the believer and his God, including the freedom of a Christian to come to God through Christ without human mediation. He also maintained that this principle recognizes Christ as prophet, priest, and king and that his priesthood is shared with his people.\nTrinity.\nProtestants who adhere to the Nicene Creed believe in three persons (God the Father, God the Son, and the God the Holy Spirit) as one God.\nMovements that emerged around the time of the Protestant Reformation, but are not a part of Protestantism (e.g. Unitarianism), reject the Trinity. This often serves as a reason for exclusion of the Unitarian Universalism, Oneness Pentecostalism, and other movements from Protestantism by various observers. Unitarianism continues to have a presence mainly in Transylvania, England, and the United States.\nFive solae.\nThe Five ' are five Latin phrases (or slogans) that emerged during the Protestant Reformation and summarize the reformers' basic differences in theological beliefs in opposition to the teaching of the Catholic Church of the day. The Latin word ' means \"alone\", \"only\", or \"single\".\nThe use of the phrases as summaries of teaching emerged over time during the Reformation, based on the overarching Lutheran and Reformed principle of \"\" (by scripture alone). This idea contains the four main doctrines on the Bible: that its teaching is needed for salvation (necessity); that all the doctrine necessary for salvation comes from the Bible alone (sufficiency); that everything taught in the Bible is correct (inerrancy); and that, by the Holy Spirit overcoming sin, believers may read and understand truth from the Bible itself, though understanding is difficult, so the means used to guide individual believers to the true teaching is often mutual discussion within the church (clarity).\nThe necessity and inerrancy were well-established ideas, garnering little criticism, though they later came under debate from outside during the Enlightenment. The most contentious idea at the time though was the notion that anyone could simply pick up the Bible and learn enough to gain salvation. Though the reformers were concerned with ecclesiology (the doctrine of how the church as a body works), they had a different understanding of the process in which truths in scripture were applied to life of believers, compared to the Catholics' idea that certain people within the church, or ideas that were old enough, had a special status in giving understanding of the text.\nThe second main principle, ' (by faith alone), states that faith in Christ is sufficient alone for eternal salvation and justification. Though argued from scripture, and hence logically consequent to ', this is the guiding principle of the work of Luther and the later reformers. Because ' placed the Bible as the only source of teaching, ' epitomizes the main thrust of the teaching the reformers wanted to get back to, namely the direct, close, personal connection between Christ and the believer, hence the reformers' contention that their work was Christocentric.\nThe other solas, as statements, emerged later, but the thinking they represent was also part of the early Reformation.\n The Protestants characterize the dogma concerning the Pope as Christ's representative head of the Church on earth, the concept of works made meritorious by Christ, and the Catholic idea of a treasury of the merits of Christ and his saints, as a denial that Christ is the \"only\" mediator between God and man. Catholics, on the other hand, maintained the traditional understanding of Judaism on these questions, and appealed to the universal consensus of Christian tradition.\n Protestants perceived Catholic salvation to be dependent upon the grace of God and the merits of one's own works. The reformers posited that salvation is a gift of God (i.e., God's act of free grace), dispensed by the Holy Spirit owing to the redemptive work of Jesus Christ alone. Consequently, they argued that a sinner is not accepted by God on account of the change wrought in the believer by God's grace, and that the believer is accepted without regard for the merit of his works, for no one \"deserves\" salvation.\n All glory is due to God alone since salvation is accomplished solely through his will and action\u2014not only the gift of the all-sufficient atonement of Jesus on the cross but also the gift of faith in that atonement, created in the heart of the believer by the Holy Spirit. The reformers believed that human beings\u2014even saints canonized by the Catholic Church, the popes, and the ecclesiastical hierarchy\u2014are not worthy of the glory.\nChrist's presence in the Eucharist.\nThe Protestant movement began to diverge into several distinct branches in the mid-to-late 16th century. One of the central points of divergence was controversy over the Eucharist. Early Protestants rejected the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation, which teaches that the bread and wine used in the sacrificial rite of the Mass lose their natural substance by being transformed into the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. They disagreed with one another concerning the presence of Christ and his body and blood in Holy Communion.\nOther beliefs.\nProtestants reject the Catholic doctrine of papal supremacy, and have variant views on the number of sacraments, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and matters of ecclesiastical polity and apostolic succession.\nHistory.\nPre-Reformation.\nMany of the individual ideas that were taken up by various reformers had historical pre-cursors; however, calling them \"proto-reformers\" is controversial, as often their theology also had components that are not associated with later Protestants, or that were asserted by some Protestants but denied by others, or that were only superficially similar.\nOne of the earliest persons to be praised as a Protestant forerunner is Jovinian, who lived in the fourth century AD. He attacked monasticism, ascetism and believed that a saved believer can never be overcome by Satan.\nIn the 9th century, the theologian Gottschalk of Orbais was condemned for heresy by the Catholic Church. Gottschalk believed that the salvation of Jesus was limited and that his redemption was only for the elect. The theology of Gottschalk anticipated the Protestant reformation. Ratramnus also defended the theology of Gottschalk and denied the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist; his writings also influenced the later Protestant reformation. Claudius of Turin in the 9th century also held Protestant ideas, such as faith alone and rejection of the supremacy of Peter.\nIn the late 1130s, Arnold of Brescia, an Italian canon regular became one of the first theologians to attempt to reform the Catholic Church. After his death, his teachings on apostolic poverty gained currency among Arnoldists, and later more widely among Waldensians and the Spiritual Franciscans, though no written word of his has survived the official condemnation. In the early 1170s, Peter Waldo founded the Waldensians. He advocated an interpretation of the Gospel that led to conflicts with the Catholic Church. By 1215, the Waldensians were declared heretical and subject to persecution. Despite that, the movement continues to exist to this day in Italy, as a part of the wider Reformed tradition.\nIn the 1370s, Oxford theologian and priest John Wycliffe\u2014later dubbed the \"Morning Star of Reformation\"\u2014started his activity as an English reformer. He rejected papal authority over secular power (in that any person in mortal sin lost their authority and should be resisted: a priest with possessions, such as a pope, was in such grave sin), may have translated the Bible into vernacular English, and preached anticlerical and biblically centred reforms. His rejection of a real divine presence in the elements of the Eucharist foreshadowed Huldrych Zwingli's similar ideas in the 16th century. Wycliffe's admirers came to be known as \"Lollards\".\nBeginning in the first decade of the 15th century, Jan Hus\u2014a Catholic priest, Czech reformist and professor\u2014influenced by John Wycliffe's writings, founded the Hussite movement. He strongly advocated his reformist Bohemian religious denomination. He was excommunicated and burned at the stake in Constance, Bishopric of Constance, in 1415 by secular authorities for unrepentant and persistent heresy. After his execution, a revolt erupted. Hussites defeated five continuous crusades proclaimed against them by the Pope.\nLater theological disputes caused a split within the Hussite movement. Utraquists maintained that both the bread and the wine should be administered to the people during the Eucharist. Another major faction were the Taborites, who opposed the Utraquists in the Battle of Lipany during the Hussite Wars. There were two separate parties among the Hussites: moderate and radical movements. Other smaller regional Hussite branches in Bohemia included Adamites, Orebites, Orphans, and Praguers.\nThe Hussite Wars concluded with the victory of Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, his Catholic allies and moderate Hussites and the defeat of the radical Hussites. Tensions arose as the Thirty Years' War reached Bohemia in 1620. Both moderate and radical Hussitism was increasingly persecuted by Catholics and Holy Roman Emperor's armies.\nIn the 14th century, a German mysticist group called the Gottesfreunde criticized the Catholic church and its corruption. Many of their leaders were executed for attacking the Catholic church and they believed that God's judgement would soon come upon the church. The Gottesfreunde were a democratic lay movement and forerunner of the Reformation and put heavy stress of holiness and piety,\nStarting in 1475, an Italian Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola was calling for a Christian renewal. Later on, Martin Luther himself read some of the friar's writings and praised him as a martyr and forerunner whose ideas on faith and grace anticipated Luther's own doctrine of justification by faith alone.\nSome of Hus' followers founded the Unitas Fratrum\u2014\"Unity of the Brethren\"\u2014which was renewed under the leadership of Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf in Herrnhut, Saxony, in 1722 after its almost total destruction in the Thirty Years' War and the Counterreformation (\"Catholic Reformation\"). Today, it is usually referred to in English as the Moravian Church and in German as the Herrnhuter Br\u00fcdergemeine.\nIn the 15th century, three German theologians anticipated the reformation: Wessel Gansfort, Johann Ruchat von Wesel, and Johannes von Goch. They held ideas such as predestination, sola scriptura, and the church invisible, and denied the Catholic view on justification and the authority of the Pope, also questioning monasticism.\nWessel Gansfort also denied transubstantiation and anticipated the Lutheran view of justification by faith alone.\nReformation proper.\nThe Protestant Reformation began as an attempt to reform the Catholic Church.\nOn 31 October 1517, known as All Hallows' Eve, Martin Luther allegedly nailed his Ninety-five Theses, also known as the Disputation on the Power of Indulgences, on the door of the All Saints' Church in Wittenberg, Germany, detailing doctrinal and practical abuses of the Catholic Church, especially the selling of indulgences. The theses debated and criticized many aspects of the Church and the papacy, including the practice of purgatory, particular judgment, and the authority of the pope. Luther would later write works against the Catholic devotion to Virgin Mary, the intercession of and devotion to the saints, mandatory clerical celibacy, monasticism, the authority of the pope, the ecclesiastical law, censure and excommunication, the role of secular rulers in religious matters, the relationship between Christianity and the law, good works, and the sacraments.\nThe Reformation was a triumph of literacy and the new printing press invented by Johannes Gutenberg. Luther's translation of the Bible into German was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy, and stimulated as well the printing and distribution of religious books and pamphlets. From 1517 onward, religious pamphlets flooded much of Europe.\nFollowing the excommunication of Luther and condemnation of the Reformation by the Pope, the work and writings of John Calvin were influential in establishing a loose consensus among various groups in Switzerland, Scotland, Hungary, Germany and elsewhere. After the expulsion of its Bishop in 1526, and the unsuccessful attempts of the Bern reformer William Farel, Calvin was asked to use the organizational skill he had gathered as a student of law to discipline the city of Geneva. His \"Ordinances of 1541\" involved a collaboration of Church affairs with the city council and consistory to bring morality to all areas of life. After the establishment of the Geneva academy in 1559, Geneva became the unofficial capital of the Protestant movement, providing refuge for Protestant exiles from all over Europe and educating them as Calvinist missionaries. The faith continued to spread after Calvin's death in 1563.\nProtestantism also spread from the German lands into France, where the Protestants were nicknamed Huguenots (a term of somewhat inexplicable origin). Calvin continued to take an interest in the French religious affairs from his base in Geneva. He regularly trained pastors to lead congregations there. Despite heavy persecution, the Reformed tradition made steady progress across large sections of the nation, appealing to people alienated by the obduracy and the complacency of the Catholic establishment. French Protestantism came to acquire a distinctly political character, made all the more obvious by the conversions of nobles during the 1550s. This established the preconditions for a series of conflicts, known as the French Wars of Religion. The civil wars gained impetus with the sudden death of Henry II of France in 1559. Atrocity and outrage became the defining characteristics of the time, illustrated at their most intense in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of August 1572, when the Catholic party annihilated between 30,000 and 100,000 Huguenots across France. The wars only concluded when Henry IV of France issued the Edict of Nantes, promising official toleration of the Protestant minority, but under highly restricted conditions. Catholicism remained the official state religion, and the fortunes of French Protestants gradually declined over the next century, culminating in Louis XIV's Edict of Fontainebleau which revoked the Edict of Nantes and made Catholicism the sole legal religion once again. In response to the Edict of Fontainebleau, Frederick William I, Elector of Brandenburg declared the Edict of Potsdam, giving free passage to Huguenot refugees. In the late 17th century, many Huguenots fled to England, the Netherlands, Prussia, Switzerland, and the English and Dutch overseas colonies. A significant community in France remained in the C\u00e9vennes region.\nParallel to events in Germany, a movement began in Switzerland under the leadership of Huldrych Zwingli. Zwingli was a scholar and preacher, who in 1518 moved to Zurich. Although the two movements agreed on many issues of theology, some unresolved differences kept them separate. A long-standing resentment between the German states and the Swiss Confederation led to heated debate over how much Zwingli owed his ideas to Lutheranism. The German Prince Philip of Hesse saw potential in creating an alliance between Zwingli and Luther. A meeting was held in his castle in 1529, now known as the Colloquy of Marburg, which has become infamous for its failure. The two men could not come to any agreement due to their disputation over one key doctrine.\nIn 1534, King Henry VIII put an end to all papal jurisdiction in England, after the Pope failed to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (due to political considerations involving the Holy Roman Emperor); this opened the door to reformational ideas. Reformers in the Church of England alternated between sympathies for ancient Catholic tradition and more Reformed principles, gradually developing into a tradition considered a middle way (\"\") between the Catholic and Protestant traditions. The English Reformation followed a particular course. The different character of the English Reformation came primarily from the fact that it was driven initially by the political necessities of Henry VIII. King Henry decided to remove the Church of England from the authority of Rome. In 1534, the Act of Supremacy recognized Henry as \"the only Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England\". Between 1535 and 1540, under Thomas Cromwell, the policy known as the Dissolution of the Monasteries was put into effect. Following a brief Catholic restoration during the reign of Mary I, a loose consensus developed during the reign of Elizabeth I. The Elizabethan Religious Settlement largely formed Anglicanism into a distinctive church tradition. The compromise was uneasy and was capable of veering between extreme Calvinism on the one hand and Catholicism on the other. It was relatively successful until the Puritan Revolution or English Civil War in the 17th century.\nThe success of the Counterreformation (\"Catholic Reformation\") on the Continent and the growth of a Puritan party dedicated to further Protestant reform polarized the Elizabethan Age. The early Puritan movement was a movement for reform in the Church of England whose proponents desired for the Church of England to resemble more closely the Protestant churches of Europe, especially that of Geneva. The later Puritan movement, often referred to as dissenters and nonconformists, eventually led to the formation of various Reformed denominations.\nThe Scottish Reformation of 1560 decisively shaped the Church of Scotland. The Reformation in Scotland culminated ecclesiastically in the establishment of a church along Reformed lines, and politically in the triumph of English influence over that of France. John Knox is regarded as the leader of the Scottish Reformation. The Scottish Reformation Parliament of 1560 repudiated the pope's authority by the Papal Jurisdiction Act 1560, forbade the celebration of the Mass and approved a Protestant Confession of Faith. It was made possible by a revolution against French hegemony under the regime of the regent Mary of Guise, who had governed Scotland in the name of her absent daughter.\nSome of the most important activists of the Protestant Reformation included Jacobus Arminius, Theodore Beza, Martin Bucer, Andreas von Carlstadt, Heinrich Bullinger, Balthasar Hubmaier, Thomas Cranmer, William Farel, Thomas M\u00fcntzer, Laurentius Petri, Olaus Petri, Philipp Melanchthon, Menno Simons, Louis de Berquin, Primo\u017e Trubar and John Smyth.\nIn the course of this religious upheaval, the German Peasants' War of 1524\u201325 swept through the Bavarian, Thuringian and Swabian principalities. After the Eighty Years' War in the Low Countries and the French Wars of Religion, the confessional division of the states of the Holy Roman Empire eventually erupted in the Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648. It devastated much of Germany, killing between 25% and 40% of its population. The main tenets of the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War, were:\nPost-Reformation.\nThe Great Awakenings were periods of rapid and dramatic religious revival in Anglo-American religious history.\nThe First Great Awakening was an evangelical and revitalization movement that swept through Protestant Europe and British America, especially the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American Protestantism. It resulted from powerful preaching that gave listeners a sense of deep personal revelation of their need of salvation by Jesus Christ. Pulling away from ritual, ceremony, sacramentalism and hierarchy, it made Christianity intensely personal to the average person by fostering a deep sense of spiritual conviction and redemption, and by encouraging introspection and a commitment to a new standard of personal morality.\nThe Second Great Awakening began around 1790. It gained momentum by 1800. After 1820, membership rose rapidly among Baptist and Methodist congregations, whose preachers led the movement. It was past its peak by the late 1840s. It has been described as a reaction against skepticism, deism, and rationalism, although why those forces became pressing enough at the time to spark revivals is not fully understood. It enrolled millions of new members in existing evangelical denominations and led to the formation of new denominations.\nThe Third Great Awakening refers to a hypothetical historical period that was marked by religious activism in American history and spans the late 1850s to the early 20th century. It affected pietistic Protestant denominations and had a strong element of social activism. It gathered strength from the postmillennial belief that the Second Coming of Christ would occur after mankind had reformed the entire earth. It was affiliated with the Social Gospel Movement, which applied Christianity to social issues and gained its force from the Awakening, as did the worldwide missionary movement. New groupings emerged, such as the Holiness, Nazarene, and Christian Science movements.\nThe Fourth Great Awakening was a Christian religious awakening that some scholars\u2014most notably, Robert Fogel\u2014say took place in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, while others look at the era following World War II. The terminology is controversial. Thus, the idea of a Fourth Great Awakening itself has not been generally accepted.\nIn 1814, Le R\u00e9veil swept through Calvinist regions in Switzerland and France.\nIn 1904, a Protestant revival in Wales had a tremendous impact on the local population. A part of British modernization, it drew many people to churches, especially Methodist and Baptist ones.\nA noteworthy development in 20th-century Protestant Christianity was the rise of the modern Pentecostal movement. Sprung from Methodist and Wesleyan roots, it arose out of meetings at an urban mission on Azusa Street in Los Angeles. From there it spread around the world, carried by those who experienced what they believed to be miraculous moves of God there. These Pentecost-like manifestations have steadily been in evidence throughout history, such as seen in the two Great Awakenings. Pentecostalism, which in turn birthed the Charismatic movement within already established denominations, continues to be an important force in Western Christianity.\nIn the United States and elsewhere in the world, there has been a marked rise in the evangelical wing of Protestant denominations, especially those that are more exclusively evangelical, and a corresponding decline in the mainstream liberal churches. In the post\u2013World War I era, Liberal Christianity was on the rise, and a considerable number of seminaries held and taught from a liberal perspective as well. In the post\u2013World War II era, the trend began to swing back towards the conservative camp in America's seminaries and church structures.\nIn Europe, there has been a general move away from religious observance and belief in Christian teachings and a move towards secularism. The Enlightenment is largely responsible for the spread of secularism. Some scholars debate the link between Protestantism and the rise of secularism, and take as argument the wide-ranging freedom in Protestant-majority countries. However, the sole example of France demonstrates that even in Catholic-majority countries, the overwhelming impact of the Enlightenment has brought even stronger secularism and freedom of thought five centuries later. It is more reliable to consider that the Reformation influenced the critical thinkers of the subsequent centuries, providing intellectual, religious, and philosophical ground on which future philosophers could extend their criticism of the church, of its theological, philosophical, social assumptions of the time. One should be reminded though that initial philosophers of the Enlightenment were defending a Christian conception of the world, but it was developed together with a fierce and decisive criticism of the Church, its politics, its ethics, its worldview, its scientific and cultural assumptions, leading to the devaluation of all forms of institutionalized Christianity, which extended over the centuries.\nRadical Reformation.\nUnlike mainstream Lutheran, Calvinist and Zwinglian movements, the Radical Reformation, which had no state sponsorship, generally abandoned the idea of the \"Church visible\" as distinct from the \"Church invisible\". It was a rational extension of the state-approved Protestant dissent, which took the value of independence from constituted authority a step further, arguing the same for the civic realm. The Radical Reformation was non-mainstream, though in parts of Germany, Switzerland and Austria, a majority would sympathize with the Radical Reformation despite the intense persecution it faced from both Catholics and Magisterial Protestants.\nThe early Anabaptists believed that their reformation must purify not only theology but also the actual lives of Christians, especially their political and social relationships. Therefore, the church should not be supported by the state, neither by tithes and taxes, nor by the use of the sword; Christianity was a matter of individual conviction, which could not be forced on anyone, but rather required a personal decision for it. Protestant ecclesial leaders such as Hubmaier and Hofmann preached the invalidity of infant baptism, advocating baptism as following conversion (\"believer's baptism\") instead. This was not a doctrine new to the reformers, but was taught by earlier groups, such as the Albigenses in 1147. Though most of the Radical Reformers were Anabaptist, some did not identify themselves with the mainstream Anabaptist tradition. Thomas M\u00fcntzer was involved in the German Peasants' War. Andreas Karlstadt disagreed theologically with Huldrych Zwingli and Martin Luther, teaching nonviolence and refusing to baptize infants while not rebaptizing adult believers. Kaspar Schwenkfeld and Sebastian Franck were influenced by German mysticism and spiritualism.\nIn the view of many associated with the Radical Reformation, the Magisterial Reformation had not gone far enough. Radical Reformer, Andreas von Bodenstein Karlstadt, for example, referred to the Lutheran theologians at Wittenberg as the \"new papists\". Since the term \"magister\" also means \"teacher\", the Magisterial Reformation is also characterized by an emphasis on the authority of a teacher. This is made evident in the prominence of Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli as leaders of the reform movements in their respective areas of ministry. Because of their authority, they were often criticized by Radical Reformers as being too much like the Roman Popes. A more political side of the Radical Reformation can be seen in the thought and practice of Hans Hut, although typically Anabaptism has been associated with pacifism.\nAnabaptism in shape of its various diversification such as the Amish, Mennonites and Hutterites came out of the Radical Reformation. Later in history, Schwarzenau Brethren, and the Apostolic Christian Church would emerge in Anabaptist circles.\nDenominations.\nProtestants refer to specific groupings of congregations or churches that share in common foundational doctrines and the name of their groups as denominations. The term denomination (national body) is to be distinguished from branch (denominational family; tradition), communion (international body) and congregation (church). An example (this is no universal way to classify Protestant churches, as these may sometimes vary broadly in their structures) to show the difference:\nBranch/denominational family/tradition: Methodism\nCommunion/international body: World Methodist Council\nDenomination/national body: United Methodist Church\nCongregation/church: First United Methodist Church (Paintsville, Kentucky)\nProtestants reject the Catholic Church's doctrine that it is the one true church, with some teaching belief in the \"invisible church\", which consists of all who profess faith in Jesus Christ. The Lutheran Church traditionally sees itself as the \"main trunk of the historical Christian Tree\" founded by Christ and the Apostles, holding that during the Reformation, the Church of Rome fell away. Individual denominations also have formed over very subtle theological differences. Other denominations are simply regional or ethnic expressions of the same beliefs. Because the five solas are the main tenets of the Protestant faith, non-denominational groups and organizations are also considered Protestant.\nVarious ecumenical movements have attempted cooperation or reorganization of the various divided Protestant denominations, according to various models of union, but divisions continue to outpace unions, as there is no overarching authority to which any of the churches owe allegiance, which can authoritatively define the faith. Most denominations share common beliefs in the major aspects of the Christian faith while differing in many secondary doctrines, although what is major and what is secondary is a matter of idiosyncratic belief.\nSeveral countries have established their national churches, linking the ecclesiastical structure with the state. Jurisdictions where a Protestant denomination has been established as a state religion include several Nordic countries; Denmark (including Greenland), the Faroe Islands (its church being independent since 2007), Iceland and Norway have established Evangelical Lutheran churches. Tuvalu has the only established church in Reformed tradition in the world, while Tonga\u2014in the Methodist tradition.\nThe Church of England is the officially established religious institution in England, and also the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion.\nIn 1869, Finland was the first Nordic country to disestablish its Evangelical Lutheran church by introducing the Church Act. Although the church still maintains a special relationship with the state, it is not described as a state religion in the Finnish Constitution or other laws passed by the Finnish Parliament. In 2000, Sweden was the second Nordic country to do so.\nUnited and uniting churches.\nUnited and uniting churches are churches formed from the merger or other form of union of two or more different Protestant denominations.\nHistorically, unions of Protestant churches were enforced by the state, usually in order to have a stricter control over the religious sphere of its people, but also for other organizational reasons. As modern Christian ecumenism progresses, unions between various Protestant traditions are becoming more and more common, resulting in a growing number of united and uniting churches. Some of the recent major examples are the Church of North India (1970), United Protestant Church of France (2013), and the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (2004). As mainline Protestantism shrinks in Europe and North America due to the rise of secularism or in areas where Christianity is a minority religion as with the Indian subcontinent, Reformed, Anglican, and Lutheran denominations merge, often creating large nationwide denominations. The phenomenon is much less common among evangelical, nondenominational and charismatic churches as new ones arise and plenty of them remain independent of each other.\nWhat is perhaps the oldest official united church is found in Germany, where the Protestant Church in Germany is a federation of Lutheran, United (Prussian Union), and Reformed churches, a union dating back to 1817. The first of the series of unions was at a synod in Idstein to form the Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau in August 1817, commemorated in naming the church of Idstein Unionskirche one hundred years later.\nAround the world, each united or uniting church comprises a different mix of predecessor Protestant denominations. Trends are visible, however, as most united and uniting churches have one or more predecessors with heritage in the Reformed tradition and many are members of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.\nMajor branches.\nProtestants can be differentiated according to how they have been influenced by important movements since the Reformation, today regarded as branches. Some of these movements have a common lineage, sometimes directly spawning individual denominations. Due to the earlier stated multitude of denominations, this section discusses only the largest denominational families, or branches, widely considered to be a part of Protestantism. These are, in alphabetical order: Adventist, Anglican, Baptist, Calvinist (Reformed), Hussite, Lutheran, Methodist, Pentecostal, Plymouth Brethren and Quaker. A small but historically significant Anabaptist branch is also discussed.\nThe chart below shows the mutual relations and historical origins of the main Protestant denominational families, or their parts. Due to factors such as Counterreformation (\"Catholic Reformation\") and the legal principle of \"Cuius regio, eius religio\", many people lived as Nicodemites, where their professed religious affiliations were more or less at odds with the movement they sympathized with. As a result, the boundaries between the denominations do not separate as cleanly as this chart indicates. When a population was suppressed or persecuted into feigning an adherence to the dominant faith, over the generations they continued to influence the church they outwardly adhered to.\nBecause Calvinism was not specifically recognized in the Holy Roman Empire until the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, many Calvinists lived as Crypto-Calvinists. Due to Counterreformation (\"Catholic Reformation\") related suppressions in Catholic lands during the 16th through 19th centuries, many Protestants lived as Crypto-Protestants. Meanwhile, in Protestant areas, Catholics sometimes lived as crypto-papists, although in continental Europe emigration was more feasible so this was less common.\nAdventism.\nAdventism began in the 19th century in the context of the Second Great Awakening revival in the United States. The name refers to belief in the imminent Second Coming (or \"Second Advent\") of Jesus Christ. William Miller started the Adventist movement in the 1830s. His followers became known as Millerites.\nAlthough the Adventist churches hold much in common, their theologies differ on whether the intermediate state is unconscious sleep or consciousness, whether the ultimate punishment of the wicked is annihilation or eternal torment, the nature of immortality, whether or not the wicked are resurrected after the millennium, and whether the sanctuary of Daniel 8 refers to the one in heaven or one on earth. The movement has encouraged the examination of the whole Bible, leading Seventh-day Adventists and some smaller Adventist groups to observe the Sabbath. The General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists has compiled that church's core beliefs in the 28 Fundamental Beliefs (1980 and 2005), which use Biblical references as justification.\nIn 2010, Adventism claimed some 22\u00a0million believers scattered in various independent churches. The largest church within the movement\u2014the Seventh-day Adventist Church\u2014has more than 18\u00a0million members.\nAnabaptism.\nAnabaptism traces its origins to the Radical Reformation. Anabaptists believe in delaying baptism until the candidate confesses his or her faith. Although some consider this movement to be an offshoot of Protestantism, others see it as a distinct one. The Amish, Hutterites, and Mennonites are direct descendants of the movement. Schwarzenau Brethren, Bruderhof, and the Apostolic Christian Church are considered later developments among the Anabaptists.\nThe name \"Anabaptist\", meaning \"one who baptizes again\", was given to them by their persecutors in reference to the practice of re-baptizing converts who already had been baptized as infants. Anabaptists required that baptismal candidates be able to make their own confessions of faith and so rejected baptism of infants. The early members of this movement did not accept the name \"Anabaptist\", claiming that since infant baptism was unscriptural and null and void, the baptizing of believers was not a re-baptism but in fact their first real baptism. As a result of their views on the nature of baptism and other issues, Anabaptists were heavily persecuted during the 16th century and into the 17th by both Magisterial Protestants and Catholics. While most Anabaptists adhered to a literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount, which precluded taking oaths, participating in military actions, and participating in civil government, some who practiced re-baptism felt otherwise. They were thus technically Anabaptists, even though conservative Amish, Mennonites, and Hutterites and some historians tend to consider them as outside of true Anabaptism. Anabaptist reformers of the Radical Reformation are divided into Radical and the so-called Second Front. Some important Radical Reformation theologians were John of Leiden, Thomas M\u00fcntzer, Kaspar Schwenkfeld, Sebastian Franck, Menno Simons. Second Front Reformers included Hans Denck, Conrad Grebel, Balthasar Hubmaier and Felix Manz. Many Anabaptists today still use the \"Ausbund\", which is the oldest hymnal still in continuous use.\nAnglicanism.\nAnglicanism consists of the Church of England and churches which are historically tied to it or hold similar beliefs, worship practices and church structures. The word \"Anglican\" originates in \"\", a medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246 that means the \"English Church\". There is no single \"Anglican Church\" with universal juridical authority, since each national or regional church has full autonomy. As the name suggests, the communion is an association of churches in full communion with the archbishop of Canterbury. The great majority of Anglicans are members of churches which are part of the international Anglican Communion, which has 85\u00a0million adherents.\nThe Church of England declared its independence from the Catholic Church at the time of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement. Many of the new Anglican formularies of the mid-16th century corresponded closely to those of contemporary Reformed tradition. These reforms were understood by one of those most responsible for them, the then archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, as navigating a middle way between two of the emerging Protestant traditions, namely Lutheranism and Calvinism. By the end of the century, the retention in Anglicanism of many traditional liturgical forms and of the episcopate was already seen as unacceptable by those promoting the most developed Protestant principles.\nUnique to Anglicanism is the \"Book of Common Prayer\", the collection of services that worshippers in most Anglican churches used for centuries. While it has since undergone many revisions and Anglican churches in different countries have developed other service books, the Book of Common Prayer is still acknowledged as one of the ties that bind the Anglican Communion together.\nBaptists.\nBaptists subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers (believer's baptism, as opposed to infant baptism), and that it must be done by complete immersion (as opposed to affusion or sprinkling). Other tenets of Baptist churches include soul competency (liberty), salvation through faith alone, Scripture alone as the rule of faith and practice, and the autonomy of the local congregation. Baptists recognize two ministerial offices, pastors and deacons. Baptist churches are widely considered to be Protestant churches, though some Baptists disavow this identity.\nDiverse from their beginning, those identifying as Baptists today differ widely from one another in what they believe, how they worship, their attitudes toward other Christians, and their understanding of what is important in Christian discipleship.\nHistorians trace the earliest church labeled \"Baptist\" back to 1609 in Amsterdam, with English Separatist John Smyth as its pastor. In accordance with his reading of the New Testament, he rejected baptism of infants and instituted baptism only of believing adults. Baptist practice spread to England, where the General Baptists considered Christ's atonement to extend to all people, while the Particular Baptists believed that it extended only to the elect. In 1638, Roger Williams established the first Baptist congregation in the North American colonies. In the mid-18th century, the First Great Awakening increased Baptist growth in both New England and the South. The Second Great Awakening in the South in the early 19th century increased church membership, as did the preachers' lessening of support for abolition and manumission of slavery, which had been part of the 18th-century teachings. Baptist missionaries have spread their church to every continent.\nThe Baptist World Alliance reports more than 41\u00a0million members in more than 150,000 congregations. In 2002, there were over 100\u00a0million Baptists and Baptistic group members worldwide and over 33\u00a0million in North America. The largest Baptist association is the Southern Baptist Convention, with the membership of associated churches totaling more than 14\u00a0million.\nCalvinism.\nCalvinism, also called the Reformed tradition, was advanced by several theologians such as Martin Bucer, Heinrich Bullinger, Peter Martyr Vermigli, and Huldrych Zwingli, but this branch of Christianity bears the name of the French reformer John Calvin because of his prominent influence on it and because of his role in the confessional and ecclesiastical debates throughout the 16th century.\nThis term also currently refers to the doctrines and practices of the Reformed churches of which Calvin was an early leader. Less commonly, it can refer to the individual teaching of Calvin himself. The particulars of Calvinist theology may be stated in a number of ways. Perhaps the best known summary is contained in the five points of Calvinism, though these points identify the Calvinist view on soteriology rather than summarizing the system as a whole. Broadly speaking, Calvinism stresses the sovereignty or rule of God in all things\u2014in salvation but also in all of life. This concept is seen clearly in the doctrines of predestination and total depravity.\nThe biggest Reformed association is the World Communion of Reformed Churches with more than 80\u00a0million members in 211 member denominations around the world. There are more conservative Reformed federations like the World Reformed Fellowship and the International Conference of Reformed Churches, as well as independent churches.\nHussites.\nHussitism follows the teachings of Czech reformer Jan Hus, who became the best-known representative of the Bohemian Reformation and one of the forerunners of the Protestant Reformation. An early hymnal was the hand-written \"Jistebnice hymn book\". This predominantly religious movement was propelled by social issues and strengthened Czech national awareness. Among present-day Christians, Hussite traditions are represented in the Moravian Church, Unity of the Brethren and the Czechoslovak Hussite Church.\nLutheranism.\nLutheranism identifies with the theology of Martin Luther, a German monk and priest, ecclesiastical reformer, and theologian.\nLutheranism advocates a doctrine of justification \"by grace alone through faith alone on the basis of Scripture alone\", the doctrine that scripture is the final authority on all matters of faith, rejecting the assertion made by Catholic leaders at the Council of Trent that authority comes from both Scriptures and Tradition. In addition, Lutherans accept the teachings of the first four ecumenical councils of the undivided Christian Church.\nUnlike the Reformed tradition, Lutherans retain many of the liturgical practices and sacramental teachings of the pre-Reformation Church with an emphasis on the Eucharist, or Lord's Supper. Lutheran theology differs from Reformed theology in Christology, the purpose of God's Law, divine grace, the concept of perseverance of the saints, and predestination.\nToday, Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism. With approximately 80\u00a0million adherents, it constitutes the third most common Protestant confession after historically Pentecostal denominations and Anglicanism. The Lutheran World Federation, the largest global communion of Lutheran churches represents over 72\u00a0million people. Both of these figures miscount Lutherans worldwide as many members of more generically Protestant LWF member church bodies do not self-identify as Lutheran or attend congregations that self-identify as Lutheran. Additionally, there are other international organizations such as the Global Confessional and Missional Lutheran Forum, International Lutheran Council and the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference, as well as Lutheran denominations that are not necessarily a member of an international organization.\nMethodism.\nMethodism identifies principally with the theology of John Wesley\u2014an Anglican priest and evangelist. This evangelical movement originated as a revival within the 18th-century Church of England and became a separate Church following Wesley's death. Because of vigorous missionary activity, the movement spread throughout the British Empire, the United States, and beyond, today claiming approximately 80\u00a0million adherents worldwide. Originally it appealed especially to laborers and slaves.\nSoteriologically, most Methodists are Arminian, emphasizing that Christ accomplished salvation for every human being, and that humans must exercise an act of the will to receive it (as opposed to the traditional Calvinist doctrine of monergism). Methodism is traditionally low church in liturgy, although this varies greatly between individual congregations; the Wesleys themselves greatly valued the Anglican liturgy and tradition. Methodism is known for its rich musical tradition; John Wesley's brother, Charles, was instrumental in writing much of the hymnody of the Methodist Church, and many other eminent hymn writers come from the Methodist tradition.\nThe Holiness movement refers to a set of practices surrounding the doctrine of Christian perfection that emerged within 19th-century Methodism, along with a number of evangelical denominations and parachurch organizations (such as camp meetings). There are an estimated 12\u00a0million adherents in denominations aligned with the Wesleyan-holiness movement. The Free Methodist Church, the Salvation Army and the Wesleyan Methodist Church are notable examples, while other adherents of the Holiness Movement remained within mainline Methodism, e.g. the United Methodist Church.\nPentecostalism.\nPentecostalism is a movement that places special emphasis on a direct personal experience of God through the baptism with the Holy Spirit. The term \"Pentecostal\" is derived from Pentecost, the Greek name for the Jewish Feast of Weeks. For Christians, this event commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the followers of Jesus Christ, as described in the second chapter of the Book of Acts.\nThis branch of Protestantism is distinguished by belief in the baptism with the Holy Spirit as an experience separate from conversion that enables a Christian to live a life empowered by and filled with the Holy Spirit. This empowerment includes the use of spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues and divine healing\u2014two other defining characteristics of Pentecostalism. Because of their commitment to biblical authority, spiritual gifts, and the miraculous, Pentecostals tend to see their movement as reflecting the same kind of spiritual power and teachings that were found in the Apostolic Age of the early church. For this reason, some Pentecostals also use the term \"Apostolic\" or \"Full Gospel\" to describe their movement.\nPentecostalism eventually spawned hundreds of new denominations, including large groups such as the Assemblies of God and the Church of God in Christ, both in the United States and elsewhere. There are over 279\u00a0million Pentecostals worldwide, and the movement is growing in many parts of the world, especially the global South. Since the 1960s, Pentecostalism has increasingly gained acceptance from other Christian traditions, and Pentecostal beliefs concerning Spirit baptism and spiritual gifts have been embraced by non-Pentecostal Christians in Protestant and Catholic churches through the Charismatic Movement. Together, Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity numbers over 500\u00a0million adherents.\nPlymouth Brethren.\nThe Plymouth Brethren are a conservative, low church, evangelical denomination, whose history can be traced to Dublin, Ireland, in the late 1820s, originating from Anglicanism. Among other beliefs, the group emphasizes \"\". Brethren generally see themselves not as a denomination, but as a network, or even as a collection of overlapping networks, of like-minded independent churches. Although the group refused for many years to take any denominational name to itself\u2014a stance that some of them still maintain\u2014the title \"The Brethren\", is one that many of their number are comfortable with in that the Bible designates all believers as \"brethren\".\nQuakerism.\nQuakers, or Friends, are members of a family of religious movements collectively known as the Religious Society of Friends. The central unifying doctrine of these movements is the priesthood of all believers. Many Friends view themselves as members of a Christian denomination. They include those with evangelical, holiness, liberal, and traditional conservative Quaker understandings of Christianity. Unlike many other groups that emerged within Christianity, the Religious Society of Friends has actively tried to avoid creeds and hierarchical structures.\nOther Protestants.\nThere are many other Protestant denominations that do not fit neatly into the mentioned branches, and are far smaller in membership. Some groups of individuals who hold basic Protestant tenets identify themselves simply as \"Christians\" or \"born-again Christians\". They typically distance themselves from the confessionalism or creedalism of other Christian communities by calling themselves \"non-denominational\" or \"evangelical\". Often founded by individual pastors, they have little affiliation with historic denominations.<ref name=\"Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life / U.S. Religious Landscape Survey\"></ref>\nAlthough Unitarianism developed from the Protestant Reformation, it is excluded from Protestantism due to its Nontrinitarian theological nature. Unitarianism has been popular in the region of Transylvania within today's Romania, England, and the United States. It originated almost simultaneously in Transylvania and the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth.\nSpiritual Christianity is the group of Russian movements (Doukhobors and others), so-called folk Protestants. Their origins are varied: some were influenced by western Protestants, others from disgust of the behavior of official Orthodox priests.\nMessianic Judaism is a movement of the Jews and non-Jews, which arose in the 1960s within Evangelical Protestantism and absorbed elements of the messianic traditions in Judaism.\nInterdenominational movements.\nThere are also Christian movements which cross denominational lines and even branches, and cannot be classified on the same level previously mentioned forms. Evangelicalism is a prominent example. Some of those movements are active exclusively within Protestantism, some are Christian-wide. Transdenominational movements are sometimes capable of affecting parts of the Catholic Church, such as does it the Charismatic Movement, which aims to incorporate beliefs and practices similar to Pentecostals into the various branches of Christianity. Neo-charismatic churches are sometimes regarded as a subgroup of the Charismatic Movement. Both are put under a common label of Charismatic Christianity (so-called \"Renewalists\"), along with Pentecostals. Nondenominational churches and various house churches often adopt, or are akin to one of these movements.\nMegachurches are usually influenced by interdenominational movements. Globally, these large congregations are a significant development in Protestant Christianity. In the United States, the phenomenon has more than quadrupled in the past two decades. It has since spread worldwide.\nThe chart below shows the mutual relations and historical origins of the main interdenominational movements and other developments within Protestantism.\nEvangelicalism.\nEvangelicalism, or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide, transdenominational movement which maintains that the essence of the gospel consists in the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ's atonement.\nEvangelicals are Christians who believe in the centrality of the conversion or \"born again\" experience in receiving salvation, believe in the authority of the Bible as God's revelation to humanity and have a strong commitment to evangelism or sharing the Christian message.\nIt gained great momentum in the 18th and 19th centuries with the emergence of Methodism and the Great Awakenings in Britain and North America. The origins of Evangelicalism are usually traced back to the English Methodist movement, Nicolaus Zinzendorf, the Moravian Church, Lutheran pietism, Presbyterianism and Puritanism. Among leaders and major figures of the Evangelical Protestant movement were John Wesley, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Billy Graham, Harold John Ockenga, John Stott and Martyn Lloyd-Jones.\nThere are an estimated 285,480,000 Evangelicals, corresponding to 13% of the Christian population and 4% of the total world population. The Americas, Africa and Asia are home to the majority of Evangelicals. The United States has the largest concentration of Evangelicals. Evangelicalism is gaining popularity both in and outside the English-speaking world, especially in Latin America and the developing world.\nCharismatic movement.\nThe Charismatic movement is the international trend of historically mainstream congregations adopting beliefs and practices similar to Pentecostals. Fundamental to the movement is the use of spiritual gifts. Among Protestants, the movement began around 1960.\nIn the United States, Episcopalian Dennis Bennett is sometimes cited as one of the charismatic movement's seminal influence. In the United Kingdom, Colin Urquhart, Michael Harper, David Watson and others were in the vanguard of similar developments. The Massey conference in New Zealand, 1964 was attended by several Anglicans, including the Rev. Ray Muller, who went on to invite Bennett to New Zealand in 1966, and played a leading role in developing and promoting the \"Life in the Spirit\" seminars. Other Charismatic movement leaders in New Zealand include Bill Subritzky.\nLarry Christenson, a Lutheran theologian based in San Pedro, California, did much in the 1960s and 1970s to interpret the charismatic movement for Lutherans. A very large annual conference regarding that matter was held in Minneapolis. Charismatic Lutheran congregations in Minnesota became especially large and influential; especially \"Hosanna!\" in Lakeville, and North Heights in St. Paul. The next generation of Lutheran charismatics cluster around the Alliance of Renewal Churches. There is considerable charismatic activity among young Lutheran leaders in California centered around an annual gathering at Robinwood Church in Huntington Beach. Richard A. Jensen's \"Touched by the Spirit\" published in 1974, played a major role of the Lutheran understanding to the charismatic movement.\nIn Congregational and Presbyterian churches which profess a traditionally Calvinist or Reformed theology there are differing views regarding present-day continuation or cessation of the gifts (\"\") of the Spirit. Generally, however, Reformed charismatics distance themselves from renewal movements with tendencies which could be perceived as overemotional, such as Word of Faith, Toronto Blessing, Brownsville Revival and Lakeland Revival. Prominent Reformed charismatic denominations are the Sovereign Grace Churches and the Every Nation Churches in the US, in Great Britain there is the Newfrontiers churches and movement, which leading figure is Terry Virgo.\nA minority of Seventh-day Adventists today are charismatic. They are strongly associated with those holding more \"progressive\" Adventist beliefs. In the early decades of the church charismatic or ecstatic phenomena were commonplace.\nNeo-charismatic churches.\nNeo-charismatic churches are a category of churches in the Christian Renewal movement. Neo-charismatics include the Third Wave, but are broader. Now more numerous than Pentecostals (first wave) and charismatics (second wave) combined, owing to the remarkable growth of postdenominational and independent charismatic groups.\nNeo-charismatics believe in and stress the post-Biblical availability of gifts of the Holy Spirit, including glossolalia, healing, and prophecy. They practice laying on of hands and seek the \"infilling\" of the Holy Spirit. However, a specific experience of baptism with the Holy Spirit may not be requisite for experiencing such gifts. No single form, governmental structure, or style of church service characterizes all neo-charismatic services and churches.\nSome nineteen thousand denominations, with approximately 295\u00a0million individual adherents, are identified as neo-charismatic.\nProtestant offshoots.\nArminianism.\nArminianism is based on theological ideas of the Dutch Reformed theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560\u20131609) and his historic supporters known as Remonstrants. His teachings held to the five solae of the Reformation, but they were distinct from particular teachings of Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin, and other Protestant Reformers. Jacobus Arminius was a student of Theodore Beza at the Theological University of Geneva. Arminianism is known to some as a soteriological diversification of Calvinism. However, to others, Arminianism is a reclamation of early Church theological consensus. Dutch Arminianism was originally articulated in the Remonstrance (1610), a theological statement signed by 45 ministers and submitted to the States General of the Netherlands. Many Christian denominations have been influenced by Arminian views on the will of man being freed by grace prior to regeneration, notably the Baptists in the 16th century, the Methodists in the 18th century and the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the 19th century.\nThe original beliefs of Jacobus Arminius himself are commonly defined as Arminianism, but more broadly, the term may embrace the teachings of Hugo Grotius, John Wesley, and others as well. Classical Arminianism and Wesleyan Arminianism are the two main schools of thought. Wesleyan Arminianism is often identical with Methodism. The two systems of Calvinism and Arminianism share both history and many doctrines, and the history of Christian theology. However, because of their differences over the doctrines of divine predestination and election, many people view these schools of thought as opposed to each other. In short, the difference can be seen ultimately by whether God allows His desire to save all to be resisted by an individual's will (in the Arminian doctrine) or if God's grace is irresistible and limited to only some (in Calvinism). Some Calvinists assert that the Arminian perspective presents a synergistic system of Salvation and therefore is not only by grace, while Arminians firmly reject this conclusion. Many consider the theological differences to be crucial differences in doctrine, while others find them to be relatively minor.\nPietism.\nPietism was an influential movement within Lutheranism that combined the 17th-century Lutheran principles with the Reformed emphasis on individual piety and living a vigorous Christian life.\nIt began in the late 17th century, reached its zenith in the mid-18th century, and declined through the 19th century, and had almost vanished in America by the end of the 20th century. While declining as an identifiable Lutheran group, some of its theological tenets influenced Protestantism generally, inspiring the Anglican priest John Wesley to begin the Methodist movement and Alexander Mack to begin the Brethren movement under an influence of Anabaptists.\nThough Pietism shares an emphasis on personal behavior with the Puritan movement, and the two are often confused, there are important differences, particularly in the concept of the role of religion in government.\nPuritanism, English dissenters and nonconformists.\nThe Puritans were a group of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries, which sought to purify the Church of England of what they considered to be Catholic practices, maintaining that the church was only partially reformed. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some of the returning clergy exiled under Mary I shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England.\nPuritans were blocked from changing the established church from within, and were severely restricted in England by laws controlling the practice of religion. Their beliefs, however, were transported by the emigration of congregations to the Netherlands (and later to New England), and by evangelical clergy to Ireland (and later into Wales), and were spread into lay society and parts of the educational system, particularly certain colleges of the University of Cambridge. The first Protestant sermon delivered in England was in Cambridge, with the pulpit that this sermon was delivered from surviving to today. They took on distinctive beliefs about clerical dress and in opposition to the episcopal system, particularly after the 1619 conclusions of the Synod of Dort they were resisted by the English bishops. They largely adopted Sabbatarianism in the 17th century, and were influenced by millennialism.\nThey formed, and identified with various religious groups advocating greater purity of worship and doctrine, as well as personal and group piety. Puritans adopted a Reformed theology, but they also took note of radical criticisms of Zwingli in Zurich and Calvin in Geneva. In church polity, some advocated for separation from all other Christians, in favor of autonomous gathered churches. These separatist and independent strands of Puritanism became prominent in the 1640s. Although the English Civil War (which expanded into the Wars of the Three Kingdoms) began over a contest for political power between the King of England and the House of Commons, it divided the country along religious lines as episcopalians within the Church of England sided with the Crown and Presbyterians and Independents supported \"Parliament\" (after the defeat of the Royalists, the House of Lords as well as the Monarch were removed from the political structure of the state to create the Commonwealth). The supporters of a Presbyterian polity in the Westminster Assembly were unable to forge a new English national church, and the Parliamentary New Model Army, which was made up primarily of Independents, under Oliver Cromwell first purged Parliament, then abolished it and established The Protectorate.\nEngland's trans-Atlantic colonies in the war followed varying paths depending on their internal demographics. In the older colonies, which included Virginia (1607) and its offshoot Bermuda (1612), as well as Barbados and Antigua in the West Indies (collectively the targets in 1650 of An Act for prohibiting Trade with the Barbadoes, Virginia, Bermuda and Antego), Episcopalians remained the dominant church faction and the colonies remained Royalist 'til conquered or compelled to accept the new political order. In Bermuda, with control of the local government and the \"army\" (nine infantry companies of Militia plus coastal artillery), the Royalists forced Parliament-backing religious Independents into exile to settle the Bahamas as the Eleutheran Adventurers.\nEpiscopalian was re-established following the Restoration. A century later, non-conforming Protestants, along with the Protestant refugees from continental Europe, were to be among the primary instigators of the war of secession that led to the founding of the United States of America.\nNeo-orthodoxy and paleo-orthodoxy.\nA non-fundamentalist rejection of liberal Christianity along the lines of the Christian existentialism of S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard, who attacked the Hegelian state churches of his day for \"dead orthodoxy\", neo-orthodoxy is associated primarily with Karl Barth, J\u00fcrgen Moltmann, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Neo-orthodoxy sought to counter-act the tendency of liberal theology to make theological accommodations to modern scientific perspectives. Sometimes called \"crisis theology\", in the existentialist sense of the word crisis, also sometimes called \"neo-evangelicalism\", which uses the sense of \"evangelical\" pertaining to continental European Protestants rather than American evangelicalism. \"Evangelical\" was the originally preferred label used by Lutherans and Calvinists, but it was replaced by the names some Catholics used to label a heresy with the name of its founder.\nPaleo-orthodoxy is a movement similar in some respects to neo-evangelicalism but emphasizing the ancient Christian consensus of the undivided church of the first millennium AD, including in particular the early creeds and church councils as a means of properly understanding the scriptures. This movement is cross-denominational. A prominent theologian in this group is Thomas Oden, a Methodist.\nChristian fundamentalism.\nIn reaction to liberal Bible critique, fundamentalism arose in the 20th century, primarily in the United States, among those denominations most affected by Evangelicalism. Fundamentalist theology tends to stress Biblical inerrancy and Biblical literalism.\nToward the end of the 20th century, some have tended to confuse evangelicalism and fundamentalism; however, the labels represent very distinct differences of approach that both groups are diligent to maintain, although because of fundamentalism's dramatically smaller size it often gets classified simply as an ultra-conservative branch of evangelicalism.\nModernism and liberalism.\nModernism and liberalism do not constitute rigorous and well-defined schools of theology, but are rather an inclination by some writers and teachers to integrate Christian thought into the spirit of the Age of Enlightenment. New understandings of history and the natural sciences of the day led directly to new approaches to theology. Its opposition to the fundamentalist teaching resulted in religious debates, such as the Fundamentalist\u2013Modernist Controversy within the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America in the 1920s.\nProtestant culture.\nAlthough the Reformation was a religious movement, it also had a strong impact on all other aspects of life, including marriage and family, education, the humanities and sciences, the political and social order, the economy, and the arts. Protestant churches reject the idea of a celibate priesthood and thus allow their clergy to marry. Many of their families contributed to the development of intellectual elites in their countries. Since about 1950, women have entered the ministry in most Protestant churches, and some have assumed leading positions (e.g. bishops).\nProtestantism has promoted economic growth and entrepreneurship, especially in the period after the Scientific and the Industrial Revolution. Scholars have identified a positive correlation between the rise of Protestantism and human capital formation, work ethic, economic development, the rise of early experimental science, and the development of the state system.\nAs the Reformers wanted all members of the church to be able to read the Bible, education on all levels was strongly encouraged. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the literacy rate in England was about 60 percent, in Scotland 65 percent, and in Sweden 80 percent. Colleges and universities were founded. For example, the Puritans who established Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1628 founded Harvard College only eight years later. About a dozen other colleges followed in the 18th century, including Yale (1701). Pennsylvania also became a center of learning.\nMembers of mainline Protestant denominations have played leadership roles in many aspects of American life, including politics, business, science, the arts, and education. They founded most of the country's leading institutes of higher education.\nThought and work ethic.\nThe Protestant concept of God and man allows believers to use all their God-given faculties, including the power of reason. That means that they are allowed to explore God's creation and, according to Genesis 2:15, make use of it in a responsible and sustainable way. Thus a cultural climate was created that greatly enhanced the development of the humanities and the sciences. Another consequence of the Protestant understanding of man is that the believers, in gratitude for their election and redemption in Christ, are to follow God's commandments. Industry, frugality, calling, discipline, and a strong sense of responsibility are at the heart of their moral code. In particular, Calvin rejected luxury. Therefore, craftsmen, industrialists, and other businessmen were able to reinvest the greater part of their profits in the most efficient machinery and the most modern production methods that were based on progress in the sciences and technology. As a result, productivity grew, which led to increased profits and enabled employers to pay higher wages. In this way, the economy, the sciences, and technology reinforced each other. The chance to participate in the economic success of technological inventions was a strong incentive to both inventors and investors. The Protestant work ethic was an important force behind the unplanned and uncoordinated mass action that influenced the development of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. This idea is also known as the \"Protestant ethic thesis\".\nHowever, eminent historian Fernand Braudel (d. 1985), a leader of the important Annales School wrote, \"all historians have opposed this tenuous theory [the Protestant Ethic], although they have not managed to be rid of it once and for all. Yet it is clearly false. The northern countries took over the place that earlier had been so long and brilliantly been occupied by the old capitalist centers of the Mediterranean. They invented nothing, either in technology or business management.\" Social scientist Rodney Stark moreover comments that \"during their critical period of economic development, these northern centers of capitalism were Catholic, not Protestant\u2014the Reformation still lay well into the future\", while British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper (d. 2003) said, \"The idea that large-scale industrial capitalism was ideologically impossible before the Reformation is exploded by the simple fact that it existed.\"\nIn a factor analysis of the latest wave of World Values Survey data, Arno Tausch (Corvinus University of Budapest) found that Protestantism emerges to be very close to combining religion and the traditions of liberalism. The Global Value Development Index, calculated by Tausch, relies on the World Values Survey dimensions such as trust in the state of law, no support for shadow economy, postmaterial activism, support for democracy, a non-acceptance of violence, xenophobia and racism, trust in transnational capital and Universities, confidence in the market economy, supporting gender justice, and engaging in environmental activism, etc.\nEpiscopalians and Presbyterians, as well as other WASPs, tend to be considerably wealthier and better educated (having graduate and post-graduate degrees per capita) than most other religious groups in United States, and are disproportionately represented in the upper reaches of American business, law and politics, especially the Republican Party. Numbers of the most wealthy and affluent American families as the Vanderbilts, the Astors, Rockefellers, Du Ponts, Roosevelts, Forbes, Fords, Whitneys, Mellons, the Morgans and Harrimans are Mainline Protestant families.\nScience.\nProtestantism has had an important influence on science. According to the Merton Thesis, there was a positive correlation between the rise of English Puritanism and German Pietism on the one hand and early experimental science on the other. The Merton Thesis has two separate parts: Firstly, it presents a theory that science changes due to an accumulation of observations and improvement in experimental technique and methodology; secondly, it puts forward the argument that the popularity of science in 17th-century England and the religious demography of the Royal Society (English scientists of that time were predominantly Puritans or other Protestants) can be explained by a correlation between Protestantism and the scientific values. Merton focused on English Puritanism and German Pietism as having been responsible for the development of the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries. He explained that the connection between religious affiliation and interest in science was the result of a significant synergy between the ascetic Protestant values and those of modern science. Protestant values encouraged scientific research by allowing science to identify God's influence on the world\u2014his creation\u2014and thus providing a religious justification for scientific research.\nAccording to \"Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States\" by Harriet Zuckerman, a review of American Nobel Prizes awarded between 1901 and 1972, 72% of American Nobel Prize laureates identified a Protestant background. Overall, 84% of all the Nobel Prizes awarded to Americans in Chemistry, 60% in Medicine, and 59% in Physics between 1901 and 1972 were won by Protestants.\nAccording to \"100 Years of Nobel Prize (2005)\", a review of Nobel Prizes awarded between 1901 and 2000, 65% of Nobel Prize Laureates, have identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference (423 prizes). While 32% have identified with Protestantism in its various forms (208 prizes), although Protestants are 12% to 13% of the world's population.\nGovernment.\nDuring the Middle Ages, the Church and the worldly authorities were closely related. Martin Luther separated the religious and the worldly realms in principle (doctrine of the two kingdoms). The believers were obliged to use reason to govern the worldly sphere in an orderly and peaceful way. Luther's doctrine of the priesthood of all believers upgraded the role of laymen in the church considerably. The members of a congregation had the right to elect a minister and, if necessary, to vote for his dismissal (Treatise \"On the right and authority of a Christian assembly or congregation to judge all doctrines and to call, install and dismiss teachers, as testified in Scripture\"; 1523). Calvin strengthened this basically democratic approach by including elected laymen (church elders, presbyters) in his representative church government. The Huguenots added regional synods and a national synod, whose members were elected by the congregations, to Calvin's system of church self-government. This system was taken over by the other reformed churches and was adopted by some Lutherans beginning with those in J\u00fclich-Cleves-Berg during the 17th century.\nPolitically, Calvin favored a mixture of aristocracy and democracy. He appreciated the advantages of democracy: \"It is an invaluable gift, if God allows a people to freely elect its own authorities and overlords.\" Calvin also thought that earthly rulers lose their divine right and must be put down when they rise up against God. To further protect the rights of ordinary people, Calvin suggested separating political powers in a system of checks and balances (separation of powers). Thus he and his followers resisted political absolutism and paved the way for the rise of modern democracy. Besides England, the Netherlands were, under Calvinist leadership, the freest country in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It granted asylum to philosophers like Baruch Spinoza and Pierre Bayle. Hugo Grotius was able to teach his natural-law theory and a relatively liberal interpretation of the Bible.\nConsistent with Calvin's political ideas, Protestants created both the English and the American democracies. In seventeenth-century England, the most important persons and events in this process were the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell, John Milton, John Locke, the Glorious Revolution, the English Bill of Rights, and the Act of Settlement. Later, the British took their democratic ideals to their colonies, e.g. Australia, New Zealand, and India. In North America, Plymouth Colony (Pilgrim Fathers; 1620) and Massachusetts Bay Colony (1628) practised democratic self-rule and separation of powers. These Congregationalists were convinced that the democratic form of government was the will of God. The Mayflower Compact was a social contract.\nRights and liberty.\nProtestants also took the initiative in advocating for religious freedom. Freedom of conscience had a high priority on the theological, philosophical, and political agendas since Luther refused to recant his beliefs before the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire at Worms (1521). In his view, faith was a free work of the Holy Spirit and could, therefore, not be forced on a person. The persecuted Anabaptists and Huguenots demanded freedom of conscience, and they practiced separation of church and state. In the early seventeenth century, Baptists like John Smyth and Thomas Helwys published tracts in defense of religious freedom. Their thinking influenced John Milton and John Locke's stance on tolerance. Under the leadership of Baptist Roger Williams, Congregationalist Thomas Hooker, and Quaker William Penn, respectively, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania combined democratic constitutions with freedom of religion. These colonies became safe havens for persecuted religious minorities, including Jews.\nThe United States Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, and the American Bill of Rights with its fundamental human rights made this tradition permanent by giving it a legal and political framework. The great majority of American Protestants, both clergy and laity, strongly supported the independence movement. All major Protestant churches were represented in the First and Second Continental Congresses. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the American democracy became a model for numerous other countries and regions throughout the world (e.g., Latin America, Japan, and Germany). The strongest link between the American and French Revolutions was Marquis de Lafayette, an ardent supporter of the American constitutional principles. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was mainly based on Lafayette's draft of this document. The Declaration by United Nations and Universal Declaration of Human Rights also echo the American constitutional tradition.\nDemocracy, social-contract theory, separation of powers, religious freedom, separation of church and state\u2014these achievements of the Reformation and early Protestantism were elaborated on and popularized by Age of Enlightenment thinkers. Some of the philosophers of the English, Scottish, German, and Swiss Enlightenment\u2014Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, John Toland, David Hume, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Christian Wolff, Immanuel Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau\u2014had Protestant backgrounds. For example, John Locke, whose political thought was based on \"a set of Protestant Christian assumptions\", derived the equality of all humans, including the equality of the genders (\"Adam and Eve\"), from Genesis 1, 26\u201328. As all persons were created equally free, all governments needed \"the consent of the governed\".\nAlso, other human rights were advocated for by some Protestants. For example, torture was abolished in Prussia in 1740, slavery in Britain in 1834 and in the United States in 1865 (William Wilberforce, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham Lincoln\u2014against Southern Protestants). Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf were among the first thinkers who made significant contributions to international law. The Geneva Convention, an important part of humanitarian international law, was largely the work of Henry Dunant, a reformed pietist. He also founded the Red Cross.\nSocial teaching.\nProtestants have founded hospitals, homes for disabled or elderly people, educational institutions, organizations that give aid to developing countries, and other social welfare agencies. In the nineteenth century, throughout the Anglo-American world, numerous dedicated members of all Protestant denominations were active in social reform movements such as the abolition of slavery, prison reforms, and woman suffrage. As an answer to the \"social question\" of the nineteenth century, Germany under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck introduced insurance programs that led the way to the welfare state (health insurance, accident insurance, disability insurance, old-age pensions). To Bismarck this was \"practical Christianity\". These programs, too, were copied by many other nations, particularly in the Western world.\nThe Young Men's Christian Association was founded by Congregationalist George Williams, aimed at empowering young people.\nArts.\nThe arts have been strongly inspired by Protestant beliefs.\nMartin Luther, Paul Gerhardt, George Wither, Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, William Cowper, and other authors and composers created well-known church hymns.\nMusicians like Heinrich Sch\u00fctz, Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Henry Purcell, Johannes Brahms, Philipp Nicolai and Felix Mendelssohn composed great works of music.\nProminent painters with Protestant background were, for example, Albrecht D\u00fcrer, Hans Holbein the Younger, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger, Rembrandt, and Vincent van Gogh.\nWorld literature was enriched by the works of Edmund Spenser, John Milton, John Bunyan, John Donne, John Dryden, Daniel Defoe, William Wordsworth, Jonathan Swift, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edgar Allan Poe, Matthew Arnold, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Theodor Fontane, Washington Irving, Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, Emily Bront\u00eb, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thomas Stearns Eliot, John Galsworthy, Thomas Mann, William Faulkner, John Updike, and many others.\nCatholic responses.\nThe view of the Catholic Church is that Protestant denominations cannot be considered churches but rather that they are \"ecclesial communities\" or \"specific faith-believing communities\" because their ordinances and doctrines are not historically the same as the Catholic sacraments and dogmas, and the Protestant communities have no sacramental ministerial priesthood and therefore lack true apostolic succession. According to Bishop Hilarion (Alfeyev) the Eastern Orthodox Church shares the same view on the subject.\nContrary to how the Protestant Reformers were often characterized, the concept of a \"catholic\" or universal Church was not brushed aside during the Protestant Reformation. On the contrary, the visible unity of the \"catholic\" or \"universal church\" was seen by the Protestant reformers as an important and essential doctrine of the Reformation. The Magisterial reformers, such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Huldrych Zwingli, believed that they were reforming the Catholic Church, which they viewed as having become corrupted. Each of them took very seriously the charges of schism and innovation, denying these charges and maintaining that it was the Catholic Church that had left them. The Protestant Reformers formed a new and radically different theological opinion on ecclesiology, that the visible Church is \"catholic\" (lower-case \"c\") rather than \"Catholic\" (upper-case \"C\"). Accordingly, there is not an indefinite number of parochial, congregational or national churches, constituting, as it were, so many ecclesiastical individualities, but one great spiritual republic of which these various organizations form a part, although they each have very different opinions. This was markedly far-removed from the traditional and historic Catholic understanding that the Catholic Church was the one true Church of Christ.\nYet, in the Protestant understanding, the \"visible church\" is not a genus, so to speak, with so many species under it. In order to justify their departure from the Catholic Church, Protestants often posited a new argument, saying that there was no real visible Church with divine authority, only a \"spiritual, invisible, and hidden church\"\u2014this notion began in the early days of the Protestant Reformation.\nWherever the Magisterial Reformation, which received support from the ruling authorities, took place, the result was a reformed national Protestant church envisioned to be a part of the whole \"invisible church\", but disagreeing, in certain important points of doctrine and doctrine-linked practice, with what had until then been considered the normative reference point on such matters, namely the Papacy and central authority of the Catholic Church. The Reformed churches thus believed in some form of Catholicity, founded on their doctrines of the five solas and a visible ecclesiastical organization based on the 14th- and 15th-century Conciliar movement, rejecting the papacy and papal infallibility in favor of ecumenical councils, but rejecting the latest ecumenical council, the Council of Trent. Religious unity therefore became not one of doctrine and identity but one of invisible character, wherein the unity was one of faith in Jesus Christ, not common identity, doctrine, belief, and collaborative action.\nThere are Protestants, especially of the Reformed tradition, that either reject or downplay the designation \"Protestant\" because of the negative idea that the word invokes in addition to its primary meaning, preferring the designation \"Reformed\", \"Evangelical\" or even \"Reformed Catholic\" expressive of what they call a \"Reformed Catholicity\" and defending their arguments from the traditional Protestant confessions.\nEcumenism.\nThe ecumenical movement has had an influence on mainline churches, beginning at least in 1910 with the Edinburgh Missionary Conference. Its origins lay in the recognition of the need for cooperation on the mission field in Africa, Asia and Oceania. Since 1948, the World Council of Churches has been influential, but ineffective in creating a united church. There are also ecumenical bodies at regional, national and local levels across the globe; but schisms still far outnumber unifications. One, but not the only expression of the ecumenical movement, has been the move to form united churches, such as the Church of South India, the Church of North India, the US-based United Church of Christ, the United Church of Canada, the Uniting Church in Australia and the United Church of Christ in the Philippines which have rapidly declining memberships. There has been a strong engagement of Orthodox churches in the ecumenical movement, though the reaction of individual Orthodox theologians has ranged from tentative approval of the aim of Christian unity to outright condemnation of the perceived effect of watering down Orthodox doctrine.\nA Protestant baptism is held to be valid by the Catholic Church if given with the trinitarian formula and with the intent to baptize. However, as the ordination of Protestant ministers is not recognized due to the lack of apostolic succession and the disunity from Catholic Church, all other sacraments (except marriage) performed by Protestant denominations and ministers are not recognized as valid. Therefore, Protestants desiring full communion with the Catholic Church are not re-baptized (although they are confirmed) and Protestant ministers who become Catholics may be ordained to the priesthood after a period of study.\nIn 1999, the representatives of Lutheran World Federation and Catholic Church signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, apparently resolving the conflict over the nature of justification which was at the root of the Protestant Reformation, although Confessional Lutherans reject this statement. This is understandable, since there is no compelling authority within them. On 18 July 2006, delegates to the World Methodist Conference voted unanimously to adopt the Joint Declaration.\nSpread and demographics.\n \nThere are more than 1.18 billion Protestants worldwide, among approximately 2.6\u00a0billion Christians. In 2010, a total of more than 800\u00a0million included 300\u00a0million in Sub-Saharan Africa, 260\u00a0million in the Americas, 140\u00a0million in the Asia-Pacific region, 100\u00a0million in Europe and 2\u00a0million in Middle East-North Africa. Protestants account for nearly forty percent of Christians worldwide, and are more than one tenth of the total human population. Various estimates put the percentage of Protestants in relation to the total number of world's Christians at 33%, 36%, 36.7%, and 40%, while in relation to the world's population at 11.6% and 13%.\nIn European countries which were most profoundly influenced by the Reformation, Protestantism still remains the most practiced religion. These include the Nordic countries and the United Kingdom. In other historical Protestant strongholds such as Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Latvia, and Estonia, it remains one of the most popular religions. Although what is now the Czech Republic was the site of one of the most significant pre-reformation movements, there is only a small Protestant population today; mainly due to historical reasons like persecution of Protestants by the Catholic Habsburgs, restrictions during the Communist rule, and also the ongoing secularization. Over the last several decades, religious practice has been declining as secularization has increased. According to a 2019 study about Religiosity in the European Union in 2019 by Eurobarometer, Protestants made up 9% of the EU population. According to Pew Research Center, Protestants constituted nearly one fifth (or 18%) of the continent's Christian population in 2010. Clarke and Beyer estimate that Protestants constituted 15% of all Europeans in 2009, while Noll claims that fewer than 12% of them lived in Europe in 2010.\nChanges in worldwide Protestantism over the last century have been significant. Since 1900, Protestantism has spread rapidly in Africa, Asia, Oceania and Latin America. That caused Protestantism to be called a primarily non-Western religion. Much of the growth has occurred after World War II, when decolonization of Africa and abolition of various restrictions against Protestants in Latin American countries occurred. According to one source, Protestants constituted respectively 2.5%, 2%, 0.5% of Latin Americans, Africans and Asians. In 2000, percentage of Protestants on mentioned continents was 17%, more than 27% and 6%, respectively. According to Mark A. Noll, 79% of Anglicans lived in the United Kingdom in 1910, while most of the remainder was found in the United States and across the British Commonwealth. By 2010, 59% of Anglicans were found in Africa. In 2010, more Protestants lived in India than in the UK or Germany, while Protestants in Brazil were as numerous as those in the UK and Germany combined. Almost as many lived in each of Nigeria and China as in all of Europe. China is home to world's largest Protestant minority.\nProtestantism is growing in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania, while declining in Anglo America and Europe, with some exceptions such as France, where it was driven underground from the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes until shortly before the French Revolution, but its adherents are now claimed to be stable in number or even growing slightly. According to some, Russia is another country to see a Protestant revival.\nIn 2010, the largest Protestant denominational families were historically Pentecostal denominations (11%), Anglican (11%), Lutheran (10%), Baptist (9%), United and uniting churches (unions of different denominations) (7%), Presbyterian or Reformed (7%), Methodist (3%), Adventist (3%), Congregationalist (1%), Brethren (1%), The Salvation Army (<1%) and Moravian (<1%). Other denominations accounted for 38% of Protestants.\nThe United States is home to approximately 20% of the world's Protestants. According to a 2012 study, the Protestant share of U.S. population was 48%, marking the first time in which it was not the religion of the majority of the country. The decline is attributed mainly to the dropping membership of the Mainline Protestant churches, while Evangelical Protestant and Black churches are stable or continue to grow.\nBy 2050, Protestants are projected to form to slightly more than half of the world's total Christian population. According to other experts such as Hans J. Hillerbrand, Protestants will be as numerous as Catholics.\nAccording to Peter L. Berger, popular Protestantism is the most dynamic religious movement in the contemporary world, alongside resurgent Islam.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\nGeneral\nSpecial"}, "descending_order": ["25814008", "30227"], "permutation_1": ["30227", "25814008"], "permutation_2": ["25814008", "30227"], "permutation_3": ["25814008", "30227"]}
{"id": "2hop__547977_125776", "docs_added": {"3494322": "Oboe Concerto (Mozart)\nConcerto for oboe and orchestra by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart\nWolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Oboe Concerto in C major, K. 314 (271k), was composed in the spring or summer of 1777, for the oboist Giuseppe Ferlendis (1755\u20131802) from Bergamo. In 1778, Mozart re-worked it as a concerto for flute in D\u00a0major. The concerto is a widely studied piece for both instruments and is one of the most important concertos in the oboe repertoire.\nMovements.\n<templatestyles src=\"Stack/styles.css\"/>\nAs with his Flute Concerto No. 1, the piece is orchestrated for a standard string section (violin I/II, viola and cello/double bass doubling the bass line), two oboes, and two horns in D/C. The first and last movements are in the home key of C\u00a0major, while the second movement is in the subdominant key of F\u00a0major.\nThe piece is divided into three movements:\nFlute Concerto No. 2.\nThe Flute Concerto No. 2 in D major, K.\u00a0314 (285d) is an adaptation of the original oboe concerto. Dutch flautist Ferdinand Dejean (1731\u20131797) commissioned Mozart for four flute quartets and three flute concerti, of which Mozart only completed three quartets and one new flute concerto. Instead of creating a new second concerto, Mozart rearranged the oboe concerto he had written a year earlier as the second flute concerto, although with substantial changes for it to fit with what the composer deemed flute-like. However, Dejean did not pay Mozart for this concerto because it was based on the oboe concerto.\nOrigin.\nIn the 1800s and early 1900s, the oboe concerto was presumed to be lost, while the flute concerto in D remained known. The oboe concerto was rediscovered by Bernhard Paumgartner in 1920, who found a handwritten set of parts in the Salzburg Mozarteum archives, and recognized the similarity with the flute concerto in D. Alfred Einstein, editor of the third edition of the K\u00f6chel catalogue (1937), noted that both a D\u00a0major and a C\u00a0major copy of the K.\u00a0314 concerto existed in the library of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. From this and also from Paumgartner's discovery, Einstein concluded that the concerto was originally for oboe. The priority of the oboe version is supported by Mozart's letters, as well as various evidence from the music itself. For example, according to Einstein in his \"Mozart: His Character, His Work\" and Paumgartner in his \"Mozart-Jahrbuch\", the violins in the D\u00a0major version never go below the A on the G string, suggesting that C\u00a0major was the original key and D\u00a0major was a transposition. For the same reason, the violas in the D major version never go below the D on the C string.\nNo autograph score has survived. The only known autograph fragment consists of nine measures discovered in 1971, partly duplicating the Oboe Concerto in C\u00a0major and partly proceeding with previously unknown material.\nSee also.\nThe first movement of Mozart's unfinished Oboe Concerto in F major, K.\u00a0293 (1778) has been completed by the Mozart scholar and pianist Robert D. Levin, and by the musicologist William Drabkin in 2015.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "33163": "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart\nComposer (1756\u20131791)\nWolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 \u2013 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age resulted in more than 800 works representing virtually every Western classical genre of his time. Many of these compositions are acknowledged as pinnacles of the symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral repertoires. Mozart is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music, with his music admired for its \"melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture\".\nBorn in Salzburg, Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. At age five, he was already competent on keyboard and violin, had begun to compose, and performed before European royalty. His father took him on a grand tour of Europe and then three trips to Italy. At 17, he was a musician at the Salzburg court but grew restless and travelled in search of a better position. Mozart's search for employment led to positions in Paris, Mannheim, Munich, and again in Salzburg, during which he wrote his five violin concertos, Sinfonia Concertante, and Concerto for Flute and Harp, as well as sacred pieces and masses, the motet\u00a0\"Exsultate Jubilate\", and the opera \"Idomeneo,\" among other works.\nWhile visiting Vienna in 1781, Mozart was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He stayed in Vienna, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During Mozart's early years in Vienna, he produced several notable works, such as the opera \"Die Entf\u00fchrung aus dem Serail\", the \"Great Mass in C minor\", the \"Haydn\" Quartets and a number of symphonies. Throughout his Vienna years, Mozart composed over a dozen piano concertos, many considered some of his greatest achievements. In the final years of his life, Mozart wrote many of his best-known works, including his last three symphonies, culminating in the \"Jupiter\" Symphony, the serenade \"Eine kleine Nachtmusik\", his Clarinet Concerto, the operas \"The Marriage of Figaro\", \"Don Giovanni\", \"Cos\u00ec fan tutte\" and \"The Magic Flute\" and his Requiem. The Requiem was largely unfinished at the time of his death at age 35, the circumstances of which are uncertain and much mythologised.\nLife and career.\nEarly life.\nFamily and childhood.\nWolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on 27 January 1756 to Leopold Mozart and Anna Maria, n\u00e9e Pertl, at Getreidegasse 9 in Salzburg. Salzburg was the capital of the Archbishopric of Salzburg, an ecclesiastic principality in the Holy Roman Empire (today in Austria). He was the youngest of seven children, five of whom died in infancy. His elder sister was Maria Anna Mozart, nicknamed \"Nannerl\". Mozart was baptised the day after his birth, at St. Rupert's Cathedral in Salzburg. The baptismal record gives his name in Latinised form, as \"Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart\". He generally called himself \"Wolfgang Amad\u00e8 Mozart\" as an adult, but his name had many variants.\nLeopold Mozart, a native of Augsburg, then an Imperial Free City in the Holy Roman Empire, was a minor composer and an experienced teacher. In 1743, he was appointed as the fourth violinist in the musical establishment of Count Leopold Anton von Firmian, the ruling Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. Four years later, he married Anna Maria in Salzburg. Leopold became the orchestra's deputy Kapellmeister in 1763. During the year of his son's birth, Leopold published a violin textbook, \"Versuch einer gr\u00fcndlichen Violinschule\", which achieved success.\nWhen Nannerl was seven, she began keyboard lessons with her father, while her three-year-old brother looked on. Years later, after her brother's death, she reminisced:\nHe often spent much time at the clavier, picking out thirds, which he was ever striking, and his pleasure showed that it sounded good... In the fourth year of his age his father, for a game as it were, began to teach him a few minuets and pieces at the clavier... He could play it faultlessly and with the greatest delicacy, and keeping exactly in time... At the age of five, he was already composing little pieces, which he played to his father who wrote them down.\nThese early pieces, K. 1\u20135, were recorded in the \"Nannerl Notenbuch\". There is some scholarly debate about whether Mozart was four or five years old when he created his first musical compositions, though there is little doubt that Mozart composed his first three pieces of music within a few weeks of each other: K. 1a, 1b, and 1c.\nIn his early years, Wolfgang's father was his only teacher. Along with music, he taught his children languages and academic subjects. Biographer Solomon notes that, while Leopold was a devoted teacher to his children, there is evidence that Mozart was keen to progress beyond what he was taught. His first ink-spattered composition and his precocious efforts with the violin were of his initiative and came as a surprise to Leopold, who eventually gave up composing when his son's musical talents became evident.\n1762\u201373: Travel.\nWhile Wolfgang was young, his family made several European journeys in which he and Nannerl performed as child prodigies. These began with an exhibition in 1762 at the court of Prince-elector Maximilian III of Bavaria in Munich, and at the Imperial Courts in Vienna and Prague. A long concert tour followed, spanning three and a half years, taking the family to the courts of Munich, Mannheim, Paris, London, Dover, The Hague, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Mechelen and again to Paris, and back home via Z\u00fcrich, Donaueschingen, and Munich. During this trip, Wolfgang met many musicians and acquainted himself with the works of other composers. A particularly significant influence was Johann Christian Bach, whom he visited in London in 1764 and 1765. When he was eight years old, Mozart wrote his first symphony, most of which was probably transcribed by his father.\nThe family trips were often challenging, and travel conditions were primitive. They had to wait for invitations and reimbursement from the nobility, and they endured long, near-fatal illnesses far from home: first Leopold (London, summer 1764), then both children (The Hague, autumn 1765). The family again went to Vienna in late 1767 and remained there until December 1768.\nAfter one year in Salzburg, Leopold and Wolfgang set off for Italy, leaving Anna Maria and Nannerl at home. This tour lasted from December 1769 to March 1771. As with earlier journeys, Leopold wanted to display his son's abilities as a performer and a rapidly maturing composer. Wolfgang met Josef Myslive\u010dek and Giovanni Battista Martini in Bologna and was accepted as a member of the famous Accademia Filarmonica. There exists a myth, according to which, while in Rome, he heard Gregorio Allegri's \"Miserere\" twice in performance in the Sistine Chapel. Allegedly, he subsequently wrote it out from memory, thus producing the \"first unauthorised copy of this closely guarded property of the Vatican\". However, both the origin and plausibility of this account are disputed.\nIn Milan, Mozart wrote the opera \"Mitridate, re di Ponto\" (1770), which was performed with success. This led to further opera commissions. He returned with his father twice to Milan (August\u2013December 1771; October 1772\u00a0\u2013 March 1773) for the composition and premieres of \"Ascanio in Alba\" (1771) and \"Lucio Silla\" (1772). Leopold hoped these visits would result in a professional appointment for his son, and indeed ruling Archduke Ferdinand contemplated hiring Mozart, but owing to his mother Empress Maria Theresa's reluctance to employ \"useless people\", the matter was dropped and Leopold's hopes were never realised. Toward the end of the journey, Mozart wrote the solo motet \"Exsultate, jubilate\", K.165.\n1773\u201377: Employment at the Salzburg court.\nAfter finally returning with his father from Italy on 13 March 1773, Mozart was employed as a court musician by the ruler of Salzburg, Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. The composer had many friends and admirers in Salzburg and had the opportunity to work in many genres, including symphonies, sonatas, string quartets, masses, serenades, and a few minor operas. Between April and December 1775, Mozart developed an enthusiasm for violin concertos, producing a series of five (the only ones he ever wrote), which steadily increased in their musical sophistication. The last three\u2014K.\u00a0216, K.\u00a0218, K.\u00a0219\u2014are now staples of the repertoire. In 1776, he turned his efforts to piano concertos, culminating in the E\u266d concerto K.\u00a0271 of early 1777, considered by critics to be a breakthrough work.\nDespite these artistic successes, Mozart grew increasingly discontented with Salzburg and redoubled his efforts to find a position elsewhere. One reason was his low salary, 150 florins a year; Mozart longed to compose operas, and Salzburg provided only rare occasions for these. The situation worsened in 1775 when the court theatre was closed, especially since the other theatre in Salzburg was primarily reserved for visiting troupes.\nTwo long expeditions in search of work interrupted this long Salzburg stay. Mozart and his father visited Vienna from 14 July to 26 September 1773, and Munich from 6December 1774 to March 1775. Neither visit was successful, though the Munich journey resulted in a popular success with the premiere of Mozart's opera \"La finta giardiniera\".\n1777\u201378: Journey to Paris.\nIn August 1777, Mozart resigned his position at Salzburg and on 23 September ventured out once more in search of employment, with visits to Augsburg, Mannheim, Paris, and Munich.\nMozart became acquainted with members of the famous orchestra in Mannheim, the best in Europe at the time. He also fell in love with Aloysia Weber, one of four daughters of a musical family. There were prospects of employment in Mannheim, but they came to nothing, and Mozart left for Paris on 14 March 1778 to continue his search. One of his letters from Paris hints at a possible post as an organist at Versailles, but Mozart was not interested in such an appointment. He fell into debt and took to pawning valuables. The nadir of the visit occurred when Mozart's mother was taken ill and died on 3July 1778. There had been delays in calling a doctor\u2014probably, according to Halliwell, because of a lack of funds. Mozart stayed with Melchior Grimm at Marquise d'\u00c9pinay's residence, 5 rue de la Chauss\u00e9e-d'Antin.\nWhile Mozart was in Paris, his father was pursuing opportunities of employment for him in Salzburg. With the support of the local nobility, Mozart was offered a post as court organist and concertmaster. The annual salary was 450 florins, but he was reluctant to accept. By that time, relations between Grimm and Mozart had cooled, and Mozart moved out. After leaving Paris in September 1778 for Strasbourg, he lingered in Mannheim and Munich, still hoping to obtain an appointment outside Salzburg. In Munich, he again encountered Aloysia, now a very successful singer, but she was no longer interested in him. Mozart finally returned to Salzburg on 15 January 1779 and took up his new appointment, but his discontent with Salzburg remained undiminished.\nAmong the better-known works which Mozart wrote on the Paris journey are the A minor piano sonata, K.\u00a0310/300d, the \"Paris\" Symphony (No.\u00a031), which were performed in Paris on 12 and 18 June 1778; and the Concerto for Flute and Harp in C major, K. 299/297c.\nVienna.\n1781: Departure.\nIn January 1781, Mozart's opera \"Idomeneo\" premiered with \"considerable success\" in Munich. The following March, Mozart was summoned to Vienna, where his employer, Archbishop Colloredo, was attending the celebrations for the accession of Joseph II to the Austrian throne. For Colloredo, this was simply a matter of wanting his musical servant to be at hand (Mozart indeed was required to dine in Colloredo's establishment with the valets and cooks). He planned a bigger career as he continued in the archbishop's service; for example, he wrote to his father:\nMy main goal right now is to meet the emperor in some agreeable fashion, I am absolutely determined he should get to know me. I would be so happy if I could whip through my opera for him and then play a fugue or two, for that's what he likes.\nMozart did indeed soon meet the Emperor, who eventually was to support his career substantially with commissions and a part-time position.\nIn the same letter to his father just quoted, Mozart outlined his plans to participate as a soloist in the concerts of the \"Tonk\u00fcnstler-Societ\u00e4t\", a prominent benefit concert series; this plan as well came to pass after the local nobility prevailed on Colloredo to drop his opposition.\nColloredo's wish to prevent Mozart from performing outside his establishment was in other cases carried through, raising the composer's anger; one example was a chance to perform before the Emperor at Countess Thun's for a fee equal to half of his yearly Salzburg salary.\nThe quarrel with the archbishop came to a head in May: Mozart attempted to resign and was refused. The following month, permission was granted, but in a grossly insulting way: the composer was dismissed literally \"with a kick in the arse\", administered by the archbishop's steward, Count Arco. Mozart decided to settle in Vienna as a freelance performer and composer.\nThe quarrel with Colloredo was more difficult for Mozart because his father sided against him. Hoping fervently that he would obediently follow Colloredo back to Salzburg, Mozart's father exchanged intense letters with his son, urging him to be reconciled with their employer. Mozart passionately defended his intention to pursue an independent career in Vienna. The debate ended when Mozart was dismissed by the archbishop, freeing himself both of his employer and of his father's demands to return. Solomon characterizes Mozart's resignation as a \"revolutionary step\" that significantly altered the course of his life.\nEarly years.\nMozart's new career in Vienna began well. He often performed as a pianist, notably in a competition before the Emperor with Muzio Clementi on 24 December 1781, and he soon \"had established himself as the finest keyboard player in Vienna\". He also prospered as a composer, and in 1782 completed the opera \"Die Entf\u00fchrung aus dem Serail\" (\"The Abduction from the Seraglio\"), which premiered on 16 July 1782 and achieved considerable success. The work was soon being performed \"throughout German-speaking Europe\", and thoroughly established Mozart's reputation as a composer.\nNear the height of his quarrels with Colloredo, Mozart moved in with the Weber family, who had moved to Vienna from Mannheim. The family's father, Fridolin, had died, and the Webers were now taking in lodgers to make ends meet.\nMarriage and children.\nAfter failing to win the hand of Aloysia Weber, who was now married to the actor and artist Joseph Lange, Mozart's interest shifted to the third daughter of the family, Constanze.\nThe courtship did not go entirely smoothly; surviving correspondence indicates that Mozart and Constanze briefly broke up in April 1782, over an episode involving jealousy (Constanze had permitted another young man to measure her calves in a parlour game). Mozart also faced a very difficult task getting permission for the marriage from his father, Leopold.\nThe marriage took place in an atmosphere of crisis. Daniel Heartz suggests that eventually, Constanze moved in with Mozart, which would have placed her in disgrace by the mores of the time. Mozart wrote to Leopold on 31 July 1782, \"All the good and well-intentioned advice you have sent fails to address the case of a man who has already gone so far with a maiden. Further postponement is out of the question.\" Heartz relates, \"Constanze's sister Sophie had tearfully declared that her mother would send the police after Constanze if she did not return home [presumably from Mozart's apartment].\" On 4 August, Mozart wrote to Baroness von Waldst\u00e4tten, asking: \"Can the police here enter anyone's house in this way? Perhaps it is only a ruse of Madame Weber to get her daughter back. If not, I know no better remedy than to marry Constanze tomorrow morning or if possible today.\"\nThe couple were finally married on 4August 1782 in St. Stephen's Cathedral, the day before his father's consenting letter arrived in the mail. In the marriage contract, Constanze \"assigns to her bridegroom five hundred gulden which ... the latter has promised to augment with one thousand gulden\", with the total \"to pass to the survivor\". Further, all joint acquisitions during the marriage were to remain the common property of both. \nThe couple had six children, of whom only two survived infancy:\n1782\u201387.\nIn 1782 and 1783, Mozart became intimately acquainted with the work of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel as a result of the influence of Gottfried van Swieten, who owned many manuscripts of the Baroque masters. Mozart's study of these scores inspired compositions in the Baroque style and later influenced his musical language, for example in fugal passages in \"Die Zauberfl\u00f6te\" (\"The Magic Flute\") and the finale of Symphony No.\u00a041.\nIn 1783, Mozart and his wife visited his family in Salzburg. His father and sister were cordially polite to Constanze, but the visit prompted the composition of one of Mozart's great liturgical pieces, the Mass in C minor. Though not completed, it was premiered in Salzburg, with Constanze singing a solo part.\nMozart met Joseph Haydn in Vienna around 1784, and the two composers became friends. When Haydn visited Vienna, they sometimes played together in an impromptu string quartet. Mozart's six quartets dedicated to Haydn (K.\u00a0387, K.\u00a0421, K.\u00a0428, K.\u00a0458, K.\u00a0464, and K.\u00a0465) date from the period 1782 to 1785, and are judged to be a response to Haydn's Opus 33 set from 1781. Haydn wrote, \"posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years\" and in 1785 told Mozart's father: \"I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition.\"\nFrom 1782 to 1785 Mozart mounted concerts with himself as a soloist, presenting three or four new piano concertos in each season. Since space in the theatres was scarce, he booked unconventional venues: a large room in the Trattnerhof apartment building, and the ballroom of the Mehlgrube restaurant. The concerts were very popular, and his concertos premiered there are still firm fixtures in the repertoire. Solomon writes that during this period, Mozart created \"a harmonious connection between an eager composer-performer and a delighted audience, which was given the opportunity of witnessing the transformation and perfection of a major musical genre\".\nWith substantial returns from his concerts and elsewhere, Mozart and his wife adopted a more luxurious lifestyle. They moved to an expensive apartment, with a yearly rent of 460 florins. Mozart bought a fine fortepiano from Anton Walter for about 900 florins, and a billiard table for about 300. The Mozarts sent their son Karl Thomas to an expensive boarding school and kept servants. During this period Mozart saved little of his income.\nOn 14 December 1784, Mozart became a Freemason, admitted to the lodge Zur Wohlt\u00e4tigkeit (\"Beneficence\"). Freemasonry played an essential role in the remainder of Mozart's life: he attended meetings, a number of his friends were Masons, and on various occasions, he composed Masonic music, e.g. the Maurerische Trauermusik.\n1786\u201387: Return to opera.\nDespite the great success of \"Die Entf\u00fchrung aus dem Serail\", Mozart did little operatic writing for the next four years, producing only two unfinished works and the one-act \"Der Schauspieldirektor\". He focused instead on his career as a piano soloist and writer of concertos. Around the end of 1785, Mozart moved away from keyboard writing and began his famous operatic collaboration with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. The year 1786 saw the successful premiere of \"Le nozze di Figaro\" in Vienna. Its reception in Prague later in the year was even warmer, and this led to a second collaboration with Da Ponte: the opera \"Don Giovanni\", which premiered in October 1787 to acclaim in Prague, but less success in Vienna during 1788. The two are among Mozart's most famous works and are mainstays of operatic repertoire today, though at their premieres their musical complexity caused difficulty both for listeners and for performers. These developments were not witnessed by Mozart's father, who had died on 28 May 1787.\nIn December 1787, Mozart finally obtained a steady post under aristocratic patronage. Emperor Joseph II appointed him as his \"chamber composer\", a post that had fallen vacant the previous month on the death of Gluck. It was a part-time appointment, paying just 800 florins per year, and required Mozart only to compose dances for the annual balls in the Redoutensaal (see \"Mozart and dance\"). This modest income became important to Mozart when hard times arrived. Court records show that Joseph aimed to keep the esteemed composer from leaving Vienna in pursuit of better prospects.\nIn 1787, the young Ludwig van Beethoven spent several weeks in Vienna, hoping to study with Mozart. No reliable records survive to indicate whether the two composers ever met.\nLater years.\n1788\u201390.\nToward the end of the decade, Mozart's circumstances worsened. Around 1786, he ceased to appear frequently in public concerts, and his income shrank. This was a difficult time for musicians in Vienna because of the Austro-Turkish War: both the general level of prosperity and the ability of the aristocracy to support music had declined. According to Solomon, in 1788, Mozart saw a 66% decline in his income compared to his best years in 1781.\nBy mid-1788, Mozart and his family had moved from central Vienna to the suburb of Alsergrund. Although it has been suggested that Mozart aimed to reduce his rental expenses by moving to a suburb, as he wrote in his letter to Michael von Puchberg, Mozart had not reduced his expenses but merely increased the housing space at his disposal. Mozart began to borrow money, most often from his friend and fellow mason Puchberg; \"a pitiful sequence of letters pleading for loans\" survives. Maynard Solomon and others have suggested that Mozart was suffering from depression, and it seems his musical output slowed. Major works of the period include the last three symphonies (Nos.\u00a039, 40, and 41, all from 1788), and the last of the three Da Ponte operas, \"Cos\u00ec fan tutte\", premiered in 1790.\nAround this time, Mozart made some long journeys hoping to improve his fortunes, visiting Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin in the spring of 1789, and Frankfurt, Mannheim, and other German cities in 1790.\n1791.\nMozart's last year was, until his final illness struck, a time of high productivity\u2014and by some accounts, one of personal recovery. He composed a great deal, including some of his most admired works: the opera \"The Magic Flute\"; the final piano concerto (K.\u00a0595 in B\u266d); the Clarinet Concerto K.\u00a0622; the last in his series of string quintets (K.\u00a0614 in E\u266d); the motet Ave verum corpus K.\u00a0618; and the unfinished Requiem K.\u00a0626.\nMozart's financial situation, a source of anxiety in 1790, finally began to improve. Although the evidence is inconclusive, it appears that wealthy patrons in Hungary and Amsterdam pledged annuities to Mozart in return for the occasional composition. He is thought to have benefited from the sale of dance music written in his role as Imperial chamber composer. Mozart no longer borrowed large sums from Puchberg and began to pay off his debts.\nHe experienced great satisfaction in the public success of some of his works, notably \"The Magic Flute\" (which was performed several times in the short period between its premiere and Mozart's death) and the Little Masonic Cantata K.\u00a0623, premiered on 17 November 1791.\nFinal illness and death.\nMozart fell ill while in Prague for the premiere, on 6September 1791, of his opera \"La clemenza di Tito\", which was written in that same year on commission for Emperor Leopold II's coronation festivities. He continued his professional functions for some time and conducted the premiere of \"The Magic Flute\" on 30 September. His health deteriorated on 20 November, at which point he became bedridden, suffering from swelling, pain, and vomiting.\nMozart was nursed in his final days by his wife and her youngest sister and was attended by the family doctor, Thomas Franz Closset. He was mentally occupied with the task of finishing his Requiem, but the evidence that he dictated passages to his student Franz Xaver S\u00fcssmayr is minimal.\nMozart died in his home on at 12:55 am. The \"New Grove\" describes his funeral:\nMozart was interred in a common grave, in accordance with contemporary Viennese custom, at the St. Marx Cemetery outside the city on 7December. If, as later reports say, no mourners attended, that too is consistent with Viennese burial customs at the time; later Otto Jahn (1856) wrote that Salieri, S\u00fcssmayr, van Swieten and two other musicians were present. The tale of a storm and snow is false; the day was calm and mild.\nThe expression \"common grave\" refers to neither a communal grave nor a pauper's grave, but an individual grave for a member of the common people (i.e., not the aristocracy). Common graves were subject to excavation after ten years; the graves of aristocrats were not.\nThe cause of Mozart's death is not known with certainty. The official record of \"hitziges Frieselfieber\" (\"severe miliary fever\", referring to a rash that looks like millet seeds) is more a symptomatic description than a diagnosis. Researchers have suggested more than a hundred causes of death, including acute rheumatic fever, streptococcal infection, trichinosis, influenza, mercury poisoning, and a rare kidney ailment.\nMozart's modest funeral did not reflect his standing with the public as a composer; memorial services and concerts in Vienna and Prague were well attended. Indeed, in the period immediately after his death, his reputation rose substantially. Solomon describes an \"unprecedented wave of enthusiasm\" for his work; biographies were written first by Schlichtegroll, Niemetschek, and Nissen, and publishers vied to produce complete editions of his works.\nAppearance and character.\nMozart's physical appearance was described by tenor Michael Kelly in his \"Reminiscences\": \"a remarkably small man, very thin and pale, with a profusion of fine, fair hair of which he was rather vain\". His early biographer Niemetschek wrote, \"there was nothing special about [his] physique... He was small and his countenance, except for his large intense eyes, gave no signs of his genius.\" His facial complexion was pitted, a reminder of his childhood case of smallpox. Of his voice, his wife later wrote that it \"was a tenor, rather soft in speaking and delicate in singing, but when anything excited him, or it became necessary to exert it, it was both powerful and energetic.\"\nHe loved elegant clothing. Kelly remembered him at a rehearsal: \"[He] was on the stage with his crimson pelisse and gold-laced cocked hat, giving the time of the music to the orchestra.\" Based on paintings that researchers were able to find of Mozart, he seemed to wear a white wig for most of his formal occasions\u2014researchers of the Salzburg Mozarteum declared that only one of his fourteen portraits they had found showed him without his wig.\nMozart usually worked long and hard, finishing compositions at a tremendous pace as deadlines approached. He often made sketches and drafts; unlike Beethoven's, these are mostly not preserved, as his wife sought to destroy them after his death.\nMozart lived at the centre of the Viennese musical world and knew a significant number and variety of people: fellow musicians, theatrical performers, fellow Salzburgers, and aristocrats, including some acquaintance with Emperor Joseph II. Solomon considers his three closest friends to have been Gottfried von Jacquin, Count August Hatzfeld, and Sigmund Barisani; others included his elder colleague Joseph Haydn, singers Franz Xaver Gerl and Benedikt Schack, and the horn player Joseph Leutgeb. Leutgeb and Mozart carried on a kind of friendly mockery, often with Leutgeb as the butt of Mozart's practical jokes.\nHe enjoyed billiards, dancing, and kept pets, including a canary, a starling, a dog, and a horse for recreational riding. He had a startling fondness for scatological humour, which is preserved in his surviving letters, notably those written to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart around 1777\u20131778, and in his correspondence with his sister and parents. Mozart also wrote scatological music, a series of canons that he sang with his friends. He had an ear for languages, and having travelled all over Europe as a boy, was fluent in Latin, Italian, and French in addition to his native Salzburg dialect of German. He possibly also understood and spoke some English, having jokingly written \"You are an ass\" after his 19-year-old student Thomas Attwood made a thoughtless mistake on his exercise papers.\nMozart was raised a Catholic and remained a devout member of the Church throughout his life. He embraced the teachings of Freemasonry in 1784.\nWorks, musical style, and innovations.\nStyle.\nMozart's music, like Haydn's, stands as an archetype of the Classical style. At the time he began composing, European music was dominated by the \"style galant\", a reaction against the highly evolved intricacy of the Baroque. Progressively, and in large part at the hands of Mozart himself, the contrapuntal complexities of the late Baroque emerged once more, moderated and disciplined by new forms, and adapted to a new aesthetic and social milieu. Mozart was a versatile composer, and wrote in every major genre, including symphony, opera, the solo concerto, chamber music including string quartet and string quintet, and the piano sonata. These forms were not new, but Mozart advanced their technical sophistication and emotional reach. He almost single-handedly developed and popularised the Classical piano concerto. He wrote a great deal of religious music, including large-scale masses, as well as dances, divertimenti, serenades, and other forms of light entertainment.\nThe central traits of the Classical style are all present in Mozart's music. Clarity, balance, and transparency are the hallmarks of his work, but simplistic notions of its delicacy mask the exceptional power of his finest masterpieces, such as the Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K.\u00a0491; the Symphony No.\u00a040 in G minor, K.\u00a0550; and the opera \"Don Giovanni\". Charles Rosen makes the point forcefully:\nIt is only through recognising the violence and sensuality at the centre of Mozart's work that we can make a start towards a comprehension of his structures and an insight into his magnificence. In a paradoxical way, Schumann's superficial characterisation of the G minor Symphony can help us to see Mozart's daemon more steadily. In all of Mozart's supreme expressions of suffering and terror, there is something shockingly voluptuous.\nDuring his last decade, Mozart frequently exploited chromatic harmony. A notable instance is his \"String Quartet in C major\", K.\u00a0465 (1785), whose introduction abounds in chromatic suspensions, giving rise to the work's nickname, the \"Dissonance\" quartet.\nMozart had a gift for absorbing and adapting the valuable features of others' music. His travels helped in the forging of a unique compositional language. In London as a child, he met J.\u00a0C. Bach and heard his music. In Paris, Mannheim, and Vienna he met with other compositional influences, as well as the avant-garde capabilities of the Mannheim orchestra. In Italy, he encountered the Italian overture and opera buffa, both of which deeply affected the evolution of his practice. In London and Italy, the galant style was in the ascendent: simple, light music with a mania for cadencing; an emphasis on tonic, dominant, and subdominant to the exclusion of other harmonies; symmetrical phrases; and clearly articulated partitions in the overall form of movements. Some of Mozart's early symphonies are Italian overtures, with three movements running into each other; many are homotonal (all three movements having the same key signature, with the slow middle movement being in the relative minor). Others mimic the works of J.\u00a0C. Bach, and others show the simple rounded binary forms turned out by Viennese composers.\nAs Mozart matured, he progressively incorporated more features adapted from the Baroque. For example, the Symphony No.\u00a029 in A major K.\u00a0201 has a contrapuntal main theme in its first movement, and experimentation with irregular phrase lengths. Some of his quartets from 1773 have fugal finales, probably influenced by Haydn, who had included three such finales in his recently published Opus\u00a020 set. The influence of the \"Sturm und Drang\" (\"Storm and Stress\") period in music, with its brief foreshadowing of the Romantic era, is evident in the music of both composers at that time. Mozart's Symphony No.\u00a025 in G minor K.\u00a0183 is another excellent example.\nMozart would sometimes switch his focus between operas and instrumental music. He produced operas in each of the prevailing styles: opera buffa, such as \"Le nozze di Figaro\", \"Don Giovanni\", and \"Cos\u00ec fan tutte\"; opera seria, such as \"Idomeneo\"; and Singspiel, of which \"Die Zauberfl\u00f6te\" is the most famous example by any composer. In his later operas, he employed subtle changes in instrumentation, orchestral texture, and tone colour, for emotional depth and to mark dramatic shifts. Here, his advances in opera and instrumental composing interacted: his increasingly sophisticated use of the orchestra in the symphonies and concertos influenced his operatic orchestration, and his developing subtlety in using the orchestra to psychological effect in his operas was in turn reflected in his later non-operatic compositions.\nK\u00f6chel catalogue.\nFor unambiguous identification of works by Mozart, a \"K\u00f6chel catalogue number\" is used. This is a unique number assigned, in regular chronological order, to every one of his known works. A work is referenced by the abbreviation \"K.\" or \"KV\" followed by this number. The first edition of the catalogue was completed in 1862 by Ludwig von K\u00f6chel. It has since been repeatedly updated, as scholarly research improves knowledge of the dates and authenticity of individual works.\nInstruments.\nAlthough some of Mozart's early pieces were written for harpsichord, he also became acquainted in his early years with fortepianos made by Regensburg builder Franz Jakob Sp\u00e4th. Later when Mozart was visiting Augsburg, he was impressed by Stein fortepianos and shared this in a letter to his father. On 22 October 1777, Mozart had premiered his triple-piano concerto, K. 242, on instruments provided by Stein. The Augsburg Cathedral organist Demmler was playing the first, Mozart the second and Stein the third part. In 1783, when living in Vienna he purchased an instrument by Walter. Leopold Mozart confirmed the attachment which Mozart had with his Walter fortepiano: \"It is impossible to describe the hustle and bustle. Your brother's pianoforte has been moved at least twelve times from his house to the theatre or to someone else's house.\"\nInfluence.\nHis most famous pupil was Johann Nepomuk Hummel, a transitional figure between the Classical and Romantic eras whom the Mozarts took into their Vienna home for two years as a child. More important is the influence Mozart had on composers of later generations. Ever since the surge in his reputation after his death, studying his scores has been a standard part of a classical musician's training.\nLudwig van Beethoven, Mozart's junior by fifteen years, was deeply influenced by his work, with which he was acquainted as a teenager. He is thought to have performed Mozart's operas while playing in the court orchestra at Bonn and travelled to Vienna in 1787 hoping to study with the older composer. Some of have direct models in comparable works by Mozart, and he wrote cadenzas (WoO\u00a058) to Mozart's D minor piano concerto K.\u00a0466.\nComposers have paid homage to Mozart by writing sets of variations on his themes. Beethoven wrote four such sets (Op.\u00a066, WoO\u00a028, WoO\u00a040, WoO\u00a046). Others include Fernando Sor's Introduction and Variations on a Theme by Mozart (1821), Mikhail Glinka's Variations on a Theme from Mozart's Opera \"The Magic Flute\" (1822), Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin's Variations on \"L\u00e0 ci darem la mano\" from \"Don Giovanni\" (1827), and Max Reger's Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart (1914), based on the variation theme in the piano sonata K.\u00a0331. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who revered Mozart, wrote his Orchestral Suite No.\u00a04 in G, \"Mozartiana\" (1887), as a tribute to him.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nFurther reading.\n\"See for an extensive bibliography\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nExternal links.\nDigitized documents\nSheet music"}, "descending_order": ["3494322", "33163"], "permutation_1": ["3494322", "33163"], "permutation_2": ["33163", "3494322"], "permutation_3": ["3494322", "33163"]}
{"id": "2hop__598897_136211", "docs_added": {"27208": "Saint Lucia\nCountry in the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean Sea\nSaint Lucia is an island country of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean. Part of the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, it is located north/northeast of the island of Saint Vincent, northwest of Barbados and south of Martinique. It covers a land area of with an estimated population of over 180,000 people as of 2018. The nation's capital and largest city is Castries.\nThe first proven inhabitants of the island, the Arawaks, are believed to have been the first to settle on the island in 200\u2013400 AD. In 800 AD, the island was taken over by the Kalinago. The French were the first European colonists to settle on the island, and they signed a treaty with the native Caribs in 1660. The English took control of the island in 1663. In ensuing years, England and France fought 14 times for control of the island; consequently control over this immensely valuable geopolitical position changed frequently. Eventually, the British took complete control in 1814, shortly after the victory over French Emperor Napoleon I. Because the island switched so often between British and French control, Saint Lucia was also known as the \"Helen of the West\" after the Greek mythological character, Helen of Troy.\nRepresentative government was introduced in 1924 with universal suffrage being established in 1951. From 1958 to 1962, the island was a member of the West Indies Federation. On 22 February 1979, Saint Lucia became an independent state, while remaining as a Commonwealth realm.\nSaint Lucia is a member of the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the World Trade Organization, CARICOM and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). It is also a member of .\nEtymology.\nSaint Lucia is named after Saint Lucy of Syracuse (AD 283 \u2013 304). Saint Lucia is one of two sovereign states in the world named after a female and is the only one named after a woman (Ireland is named after a goddess). Legend states that French sailors were shipwrecked on the island on 13 December, the feast day of St. Lucy, and therefore named the island in her honour. \nA globe in the Vatican from 1520 shows the island as Sancta Lucia, indicating that the island was instead named by early Spanish explorers. Saint Lucia was first known as \"Louanalao\" by the Arawak Indians in 200 AD, meaning \"Island of the Iguanas,\" and then as \"Hewanorra\", in 800 AD, meaning \"there where iguanas are found,\" when the Carib Indians arrived and assimilated their culture into Saint Lucia.\nHistory.\nPre-Columbian.\nThe first proven inhabitants of Saint Lucia were the Arawaks, though there may have been other native peoples prior to them. The Arawaks are believed to have come from northern South America, sometime around AD 200\u2013400, as there are numerous archaeological sites on the island where specimens of their pottery have been found.\nThe Kalinago (Island Caribs) arrived around AD 800, and seized control from the Arawaks by killing their men and assimilating the women into their own society. \nEarly European exploration and colonization.\nIt is possible that Christopher Columbus may have sighted the island during his fourth voyage in 1502, but he does not mention the island in his log. Juan de la Cosa noted the island on his map of 1500, calling it \"El Falcon\", and another island to the south \"Las Agujas\". A Spanish c\u00e9dula from 1511 mentions the island within the Spanish domain, and a globe in the Vatican made in 1520, shows the island as Sancta Lucia.\nIn the late 1550s, the French pirate Fran\u00e7ois le Clerc (known as \"Jambe de Bois\", due to his wooden leg) set up a camp on Pigeon Island, from where he attacked passing Spanish ships. In 1605, an English vessel called the \"Oliphe Blossome\" was blown off-course on its way to Guyana, and the 67 colonists started a settlement on Saint Lucia, after initially being welcomed by the Carib chief Anthonie. By 26 September 1605, only 19 survived following continued attacks by the Carib chief Augraumart, so the settlers fled the island. The English tried to settle the island again in 1638, but the Caribs continued to be hostile. Eventually, the French successfully claimed the island in 1650 and they signed a treaty with the Caribs in 1660. In 1664, Thomas Warner (son of Sir Thomas Warner, the governor of St Kitts) claimed Saint Lucia for England but the English fled again in 1666, with the French gaining full control of the island after the signing of the Treaty of Breda. Saint Lucia was made an official French crown colony in 1674, as a dependency of Martinique.\n18th and 19th centuries.\nAfter the slave-based sugar industry developed, both the British and the French found the island attractive. During the 18th century, the island changed ownership, or was declared neutral territory, a dozen times, although the French settlements remained and the island was a de facto French colony well into the eighteenth century.\nIn 1722, George I of Great Britain granted both Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent to the 2nd Duke of Montagu. Montague appointed Nathaniel Uring, a merchant sea captain and adventurer, as deputy-governor. Uring went to the islands with a group of seven ships, and established settlement at Petit Carenage. Unable to get enough support from British warships, he and the new colonists were quickly run off by the French.\nDuring the Seven Years' War, Britain occupied Saint Lucia for a year, but handed the island back to the French in 1763, under the Treaty of Paris. Like the English and Dutch on other islands, in 1765, the French began to develop the land for the cultivation of sugar cane as a commodity crop on large plantations. The British occupied the island again in 1778.\nFrom 1782 to 1803, control of the island switched multiple times. In January 1791, during the French Revolution, the National Assembly sent four \"commissaires\" to St Lucia to spread the revolutionary philosophy. By August 1791, slaves began to abandon their estates and Governor Jean-Joseph Sourbader de Gimat fled. In December 1792, Lt. Jean-Baptiste Raymond de Lacrosse arrived with revolutionary pamphlets, and the impoverished whites and free people of colour began to arm themselves as \"patriots\". On 1 February 1793, France declared war on England and Holland, and General Nicolas Xavier de Ricard took over as Governor. The National Convention abolished enslavement on 4 February 1794. On 1 April 1794, St. Lucia was captured by a British expeditionary force led by Vice Admiral John Jervis. Morne Fortune was renamed \"Fort Charlotte\". Soon, a combined force of French Revolutionary Army soldiers and maroons, \"L'Armee Fran\u00e7aise dans les Bois\", began to fight back, starting the First Brigand War.\nA short time later, the British invaded the island as a part of the war with France that had recently broken out. On 21 February 1795, French forces under the nominal control of Victor Hugues, defeated a battalion of British troops at Vieux Fort and Rabot. In 1796, Castries was burned as part of the conflict. Leading the 27th (Inniskilling) Regiment, General John Moore retook Fort Charlotte in 1796, after two days of bitter fighting. As an honour, the Fusiliers' regimental colour was displayed on the flagstaff of the captured fortress at Morne Fortune for an hour before being replaced by the Union Jack. Upon the capture of the fort, Moore's superior, Ralph Abercromby, departed the island and placed Moore in charge of the British garrison. Moore remained at this post until falling ill with yellow fever, leading to his return to Britain before 1798.\nIn 1803, the British regained control of the island. Many members of the \"L'Armee Fran\u00e7aise dans les Bois\" escaped into the thick rainforest where they evaded capture and established maroon communities.\nSlavery on the island continued for a short time, but anti-slavery sentiment was rising in Britain. The British stopped the import of slaves by anyone, white or coloured, when they abolished the slave trade in 1807.\nFrance and Great Britain continued to contest Saint Lucia until the British secured it in 1814, as part of the Treaty of Paris, ending the Napoleonic Wars. Thereafter, Saint Lucia was considered one of the British Windward Islands colonies.\nThe institution of slavery was abolished on the island in 1834, as it was throughout the British Empire. After abolition, all former slaves had to serve a four-year \"apprenticeship\", to accustom them to the idea of freedom. During that period, they worked for their former masters for at least three-quarters of the work week. Full freedom was duly granted by the British in 1838. By that time, people of African ethnicity greatly outnumbered those of ethnic European background. People of Carib descent also comprised a minority on the island.\n20th century.\nSaint Lucia's first representative government was introduced in 1924, with the first election taking place in 1925. Many Saint Lucians served during the Second World War, and the conflict visited the island directly during the Battle of the Caribbean, when a German U-boat attacked and sank two British ships in Castries harbour on 9 March 1942. The United States used the island as a military hub during the war, including setting up a secondary naval base in Gros Islet and using what is now the island's international airport as an air force base.\nUniversal suffrage was introduced in 1951 and elections were held the same year. In 1958, Saint Lucia joined the West Indies Federation, although the federation was dissolved just a few years later in 1962. In 1967, Saint Lucia became one of the six members of the West Indies Associated States, with internal self-government. Independence was peacefully gained in 1979 under Sir John Compton of United Workers Party, with the island remaining within the British Commonwealth, keeping then-Queen Elizabeth II as Monarch, represented locally by a Governor-General.\nPost-independence era.\nDespite leading the country to independence, Compton's initial term as prime minister lasted only a few months, being defeated by the Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) under Allan Louisy in the 1979 Saint Lucian general election. In 1980, Hurricane Allen struck the island, destroying much of its infrastructure and reducing economic growth. Compton returned to power after the 1982 Saint Lucian general election after much instability during the labour government's term. During Compton's second term as the island's leader, banana exports significantly increased and became the nation's main source of revenue. There were improvements to infrastructure, and education was expanded to rural areas. Saint Lucia was key to the US invasion of Grenada. During the 1990s and 2000s, the nation's economy began shifting from agriculture to tourism under the leadership of Kenny Anthony. The 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001 killed two Saint Lucians, and caused an economic slowdown, although moderate growth continued until the Great Recession. The recession, as well as the landfall of Hurricane Tomas in 2010, led to slow economic growth during the early 2010s, although the economy picked up during the later part of the decade and avoided contraction until 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic caused major economic issues globally.\nIn June 2016, the United Workers Party (UWP), led by Allen Michael Chastanet, won 11 of the 17 seats in the general election, ousting the St Lucia Labour Party (SLP) of the incumbent Prime Minister Kenny Anthony. However, Saint Lucia Labour Party won the next election in July 2021, meaning its leader Philip J Pierre became the ninth Prime Minister of Saint Lucia since independence.\nGeography.\nSaint Lucia has a total area of 617 square kilometers (238 sq mi). As a volcanic island, Saint Lucia is very mountainous, with its highest point being Mount Gimie, at above sea level. The Pitons, two mountainous volcanic plugs, form the island's most famous landmark. Saint Lucia is also home to the world's only drive-in volcano, the Sulphur Springs. There are a number of small islands off the coast, the largest of which are the Maria Islands, located in the south-east of the island.\nSaint Lucia lies at latitude 14\u00b0 N and longitude 61\u00b0 W. The population tends to be concentrated around the coast, with the interior more sparsely populated, due to the presence of dense forests. \nFlora and fauna.\nMany species are endemic to the island, including \"Anolis luciae\", a species of lizard, and \"Boa orophias\", a species of boid snake.\nEcoregions.\nSaint Lucia has five terrestrial ecoregions: Windward Islands moist forests, Leeward Islands dry forests, Windward Islands dry forests, Windward Islands xeric scrub, and Lesser Antilles mangroves. The country had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 6.17/10, ranking it 84th globally out of 172 countries.\nClimate.\nSaint Lucia has a tropical climate, specifically a tropical rainforest climate (Af), moderated by northeast trade winds, with a dry season from 1 December to 31 May, and a wet/rainy season from 1 June to 30 November.\nAverage daytime and nighttime temperatures are around , and respectively. Being fairly close to the equator, the island's temperature does not fluctuate much between winter and summer.\nGeology.\nThe geology of St. Lucia can be described as composing three main areas. The oldest, 16\u201318 Ma, volcanic rocks are exposed from Castries northward and consist of eroded basalt and andesite centres. The middle, central highlands, portion of the island consists of dissected andesite centres, 10.4 to 1 Mya, while the lower southwest portion of the island contains recent activity from the Soufriere Volcanic Centre (SVC). This SVC, centred about the Qualibou depression, contains pyroclastic flow deposits, lava flows, domes, block and ash flow deposits, and explosion craters. This depression's perimeter includes the town of Soufriere, Mount Tabac, Mt. Gimie, Morne Bonin, and Gros Piton. At in diameter, though the western portion is open towards the Grenada basin, the depression formed as recently as 100 kya. The depression is noted for its geothermal activity, especially at Sulphur Springs and Soufri\u00e8re Estates, a phreatic eruption in 1776, and recent seismic activity (2000\u20132001).\nEroded andesitic stratovolcanoes to the north east of the depression include Mt. Gimie, Piton St Esprit, and Mt. Grand Magazin, all greater than 1 Ma in age. Andesitic and dacite pyroclastic flows from these volcanoes are found at Morne Tabac dome (532 ka), Morne Bonin dome (273 kya), and Bellevue (264 kya). Avalanche deposits from the formation of the Qualibou depression are found offshore, and in the massive blocks of Rabot, Pleisance, and Coubaril. The dacitic domes of Petit Piton (109 kya) and Gros Piton (71 kya) were then extruded onto the depression floor accompanied by the Anse John (104 kya) and La Pointe (59.8 kya) pyroclastic flows. Later, pyroclastic flows include pumice-rich Belfond and Anse Noir (20 kya). Finally, the dacitic domes of Terre Blanche (15.3 kya) and Belfond (13.6 kya) formed within the depression.\nGovernment.\nLike most Caribbean countries, Saint Lucia is a unitary state with a parliamentary system. It is a Commonwealth realm and a constitutional monarchy, with the current monarch being Charles III, who is represented on the island by a governor-general, currently Errol Charles. The prime minister (currently Philip J. Pierre) is the head of government, the head of the cabinet, and is normally the leader of the largest party in the House of Assembly. The house has 17 seats, with each member being elected via a plurality of votes in their constituency. The upper chamber of Parliament is the Senate which has 11 appointed members, the majority of which are appointed by the prime minister.\nAdministrative divisions.\nSaint Lucia is made up of 10 districts. The districts were created and named by French colonials, and the British chose to keep the names in an anglicised form. The largest district in both size and population is Castries, where the nation's capital of the same name is located. The following are the 10 districts placed in alphabetical order:\nLaw and crime.\nSaint Lucia is a mixed jurisdiction, meaning that it has a legal system based in part on both the civil law and English common law. The Civil Code of St. Lucia of 1867 was based on the Quebec Civil Code of 1866, as supplemented by English common law-style legislation. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was Saint Lucia's final court of appeal until 2023, when a constitutional amendment transferred this to the Caribbean Court of Justice.\nSaint Lucia's homicide rate has hit record highs in recent years. There were 75 homicides in 2021, a 34.5% increase compared with 55 homicides in 2020. 2021 saw the island record the most homicides in its history, and also its highest murder rate in its history, at 40 murders per 100,000 people.\nForeign relations.\nSaint Lucia is a member of the Caribbean Community, OECS, the Organization of American States and La Francophonie. As a Commonwealth Realm, Saint Lucia has relatively friendly relations with United Kingdom and Canada. France is also a major ally, in part due to Saint Lucia's border with Martinique. The United States is the island's largest trading partner, and Saint Lucia was key to the US invasion of Grenada in 1983, and voted against condemning the invasion. Saint Lucia became the 152nd member of the United Nations on 18 September 1979.\nSaint Lucia does not have a military although the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force has a Special Service Unit (SSU) and a Coast Guard. The island signed the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2018.\nEconomy.\nSaint Lucia is a Small Island Developing State, a designation similar to a developing country with a few substantial differences due to Saint Lucia's island nature. The service sector is the largest sector of the economy, accounting for 86.9% of GDP in 2020, followed by industrial and agricultural sectors at 10.9% and 2.2%, respectively.\nSaint Lucia has been able to attract foreign business and investment due to its educated workforce and improvements in roads, communications, water supply, sewerage, and port facilities. Like most small islands, Tourism and offshore banking are Saint Lucia's main sources of revenue. Agriculture, specifically the banana industry, was previously the largest sector of the economy, although its importance has declined significantly. The island's manufacturing sector has been called the most diverse in the Eastern Caribbean, with goods such as plastic being produced on a large scale.\nSaint Lucia's currency is the Eastern Caribbean Dollar (EC$), a regional currency shared among members of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECU). The country's main trade partners are the US, UK, EU and other CARICOM countries.\nTourism.\nTourism is the largest contributor to Saint Lucia's economy. Tourist numbers tend to be more substantial during the dry season (January to April), often referred to as the tourist season. Saint Lucia's tropical weather, scenery, beaches and resorts have made it a popular tourist destination, with 1.29\u00a0million visitors arriving in 2019.\nSome of Saint Lucia's tourist attractions include the Sulphur Springs, the Botanical Gardens, Pigeon Island and The Pitons.\nAgriculture.\nThe agricultural sector was once the main contributor to Saint Lucia's economy. This was especially thanks to the exporting of bananas. However, its importance to the economy has declined significantly, in part due to increased competition from South American countries in the banana industry. Nevertheless, agriculture is still an important part of the country's economy, providing 7.9% of jobs and contributing to 2.2% of the GDP in 2021.\nAbout 18% of land is used for agricultural practices. Bananas remain the main agricultural product grown in Saint Lucia, as well as coconuts, cocoa beans, mangoes, avocados, vegetables, citrus fruits, and root crops such as yams and sweet potatoes.\nSaint Lucia also has a small livestock sector, which is dominated by poultry. The island is self-sufficient in egg production and production of poultry and pork has increased in recent years. Fishing has also been of considerable importance to the nation's economy.\nInfrastructure.\nSaint Lucia has a wide-ranging public bus network which covers most of the island. Busses are owned by private individuals, whilst the government is responsible for setting up routes and hubs. The road network covers most of the island, although some rural areas still lack access to proper roads.\nThe island has two airports, including one International airport. Cruising and yachting are very important to the country's economy, with the main sea port being located in Castries, while the main marina is located in Rodney Bay which is also home to the St. Lucia Yacht Club. Meanwhile, the nation's main oil refinery is located in Bexon.\nThe main source of electricity in Saint Lucia is oil through its sole power station, the Cul De Sac Power Station, although solar energy is also a major source. There have also been attempts to introduce geothermal and wind energy to the island.\nDemographics.\nA census is normally held in Saint Lucia every 10 years. In the 2010 census, Saint Lucia reported a population of 165,595 in 58,920 households. This was a 5.1% increase from the 157,490 recorded at the previous census in 2001. Ages 0\u201314 made up 24.1% of the population whilst those 65 and over made up 8.6%. Nearly 40% of the island's population lived in the District of Castries, where the nation's capital of the same name is located.\nSaint Lucia had a fertility rate of 1.4 children per woman in 2021, the lowest in the Americas. This is much lower than in 1990, when the birth rate was 3.4 children per woman, and significantly lower than in 1959, when the birth rate peaked at 6.98 children per woman. Most emigration from Saint Lucia is primarily to Anglophone countries, with the United Kingdom having almost 10,000 Saint Lucian-born citizens, and over 30,000 of Saint Lucian heritage. The United States is home to many Saint Lucians, especially areas such as Miami and New York City. Canada is also home to many Saint Lucians, and especially in the French-speaking province of Quebec in the city of Montr\u00e9al. The median age of Saint Lucians was 33.1 years in 2021.\nEthnic groups.\nSaint Lucia was originally populated by Amerindian peoples. However, European colonisation led to a significant drop in the indigenous populations. Most residents of the island were white planters, but African slaves and indentured servants brought by the Europeans eventually came to outnumber them. Because of this, Saint Lucia's population is predominantly of African and mixed descent. As of 2010, 85.3% of the population are black and 10.9% are of multiracial descent. Other groups include Indo-Caribbean persons (2.2%), whites (0.6%), and Indigenous Persons (0.6%). A small number of Kalinago live in the Choiseul region and in other towns on the western coast. There is also a small population of Lebanese and Syrians.\nLanguages.\nThe official language of Saint Lucia is English, though Saint Lucian French Creole (Kw\u00e9y\u00f2l) is widely spoken. Referred to colloquially as \"Patois\" (\"Patwa\"), it is spoken by a majority of the population. It is a dialect of Antillean Creole and is also related to Haitian Creole, though it nonetheless has a number of distinctive features from the latter. The Creole language developed during the early period of French colonisation and is derived chiefly from French and West African languages. There have been some attempts to make the language official, but they have not yet been successful.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nIn the 2010 census, a majority of Saint Lucians identified as Christians. This can be traced back to the nation's colonization by French and British settlers. Due to heavy French influence, most Christians on the island are Catholics, with 62.5% of the island's residents identifying as such. 24.5% of the island's residents identify as Protestants. In addition, 1.9% of the population identified as members of the Rastafari movement and 1.4% of the population practice Hinduism. The number of residents claiming no religion stood at 5.9% in 2010.\nThere is no state religion in Saint Lucia. The nation's constitution guarantees freedom of religion and prohibits forcing persons to take oath to any religion in which they do not follow. Religious groups are also guaranteed the freedom to establish places of education.\nEducation.\nMost primary and secondary schools in Saint Lucia are operated by the government. Education is free and compulsory for children aged five to fifteen. This includes seven years of primary school and three to five years of secondary school. In the last two years of secondary school, students are allowed to choose the subjects that they would like to do, in preparation for regional CSEC examinations. In 2020, public spending on education was at 3.6%.\nTertiary educational facilities on the island are normally private institutions. These include Monroe College and International American University. However, there are still a few public institutions, including the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College and the University of the West Indies.\nHealthcare.\nHealth services in Saint Lucia are split between the government and private institutions. The island is served by 2 public hospitals and multiple health centers, although most dental and vision services are private. Public expenditure on healthcare stood at 2.1% in 2019.\nIn 2021, life expectancy was at 71.1 years (67.8 for men and 74.7 for women). This was compared to 73.4 years in 2019. The drop in life expectancy was largely attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nCulture.\nThe culture of Saint Lucia has been influenced by African, East Indian, French, and English heritage. The main secondary language of the island is Saint Lucian Creole (Kw\u00e9y\u00f2l), a French-based creole spoken by most of the population. The island boasts the highest ratio of Nobel laureates produced with respect to the total population of any sovereign country in the world. Two winners have come from Saint Lucia: Sir Arthur Lewis, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1979, and the poet Derek Walcott, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.\nSaint Lucia has two flower festivals, the La Rose festival, celebrated on 30 August, and the La Marguerite festival, celebrated on 17 October. Every summer, the island hosts a carnival as a way to present the country's culture and music. Annually, there are normally many festivals, most of them being music related.\nMusic.\nSaint Lucian music is heavily influenced by elements of African music, especially rhythmically. The most popular music genres in Saint Lucia are calypso, soca, dancehall, reggae, zouk, and folk music. Dennery Segment, a genre influenced by Angolan Kuduro, Saint Lucian Solo music and Dancehall was developed on the island. The internationally renowned Saint Lucia Jazz Festival is held annually, and the festival is a major source of revenue for the country's economy.\nFood.\nSaint Lucian cuisine is a mix of African, European, Indian and Caribbean dishes. Some common dishes include macaroni pie, stewed chicken, rice and peas, roti (Indian flatbreads) and soups packed full with fresh locally produced vegetables. All mainstream meat and poultry are eaten in St. Lucia; meat and seafood are normally stewed and browned to create a rich gravy sometimes served over \"ground provisions\" (vegetables) or rice. Johnny Cakes (known as bakes) are also common, and are served with different sides, such as saltfish. The national dish of Saint Lucia is green figs and saltfish.\nSports.\nAs with most Caribbean islands, cricket is the most popular sport in Saint Lucia. The Windward Islands cricket team includes players from Saint Lucia and plays in the West Indies regional tournament. Daren Sammy became the first Saint Lucian to represent the West Indies on his debut in 2007, and was made captain in 2010. The Saint Lucia Kings is a T20 franchise playing in the Caribbean Premier League based in this said island nation. Sailing is also a major sport in Saint Lucia, with the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) race beginning in the Canary Islands and ending on the island. Other sports that are popular on the island include football, basketball, tennis, golf and volleyball. Karate and boxing have also seen increased popularity in recent years. \nJulien Alfred won the nation's first-ever Olympic medal, when she won the women's 100 meters event in 10.72 seconds at the 2024 Summer Olympics held in Paris, France.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "14955065": "La Tourney\nTown in Vieux Fort District, Saint Lucia\nLa Tourney is a town in Vieux Fort District in the island country of Saint Lucia. La Tourney is in the La Tourney/Cedar Heights section of Vieux Fort District, which has a population of 706. La Tourney is located on the southern coast of Saint Lucia, close to Hewanorra International Airport (). There is also a high Tourney Mountain nearby at .\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "30876866": "Hobby horse\nCostumed character\nIn folklore, a hobby horse is a costumed character that features in some traditional seasonal customs, processions and similar observances around the world. In England, they are particularly associated with May Day celebrations, mummers' plays and the Morris dance. \nEtymology.\nThe word \"hobby\" is glossed by the OED as \"a small or middle-sized horse; an ambling or pacing horse; a pony\". The word is attested in English from the 14th century, as Middle English \"hobyn\". Old French had or , whence Modern French and Italian . But the Old French term is apparently adopted from English rather than vice versa. OED connects it to \"the by-name \"Hobin\", \"Hobby\"\", a variant of \"Robin\"\" (compare the abbreviation \"Hob\" for \"Robert\"). This appears to have been a name customarily given to a cart-horse, as attested by White Kennett in his \"Parochial Antiquities\" (1695), who stated that \"Our ploughmen to some one of their cart-horses generally give the name of Hobin, the very word which Phil. Comines uses, Hist. VI. vii.\" Another familiar form of the same Christian name, \"Dobbin\", has also become a generic name for a cart-horse.\nSamuel Johnson, \"Dictionary of the English Language\", 1755, glosses: \"A strong, active horse, of a middle size, said to have been originally from Ireland; an ambling nag.\"\nHoblers or Hovellers were men who kept a light nag that they may give instant information of threatened invasion. (Old French, hober, to move up and down; our hobby, q.v.) In medieval times their duties were to reconnoitre, to carry intelligence, to harass stragglers, to act as spies, to intercept convoys, and to pursue fugitives. Henry Spelman (d.\u00a01641) derived the word from \"hobby\".\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Hobblers were another description of cavalry more lightly armed, and taken from the class of men rated at 15 pounds and upwards.\nThe Border horses, called hobblers or hobbies, were small and active, and trained to cross the most difficult and boggy country, \"and to get over where our footmen could scarce dare to follow\", according to George MacDonald Fraser, \"The Steel Bonnets, The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers\".\nTypes of hobby horse.\nHobby horses may be constructed in several different ways. The types most frequently found in the United Kingdom have been categorised as follows:\nNot all hobby horses fit into these categories, even within the UK. The famous May Day horses at Padstow and Minehead are large constructions, suspended at shoulder level, with only the performer's head emerging; they wear tall, pointed hats and their faces are masked. The Padstow horses have circular frames, with fairly small, snapping-jawed heads on long, straight necks; the Minehead horses are more boat-shaped, with pointed ends and, since about 1880, have had no heads, though they have long, trailing tails, about 2.2\u00a0m (7\u00a0ft) long.\nIn the South of France, in Belgium (the \"Ommegang de Termonde\") and elsewhere, large hobby horses are carried by multiple performers; their hollow frameworks are constructed in various ways. The \"Danse du Baiar\" at Esqui\u00e8ze the dancers wear a wooden horse head in their breasts when dancing.\nIn Indonesia, flat silhouettes of horses are suspended between the dancers' legs (see individual entries, below).\nCustoms.\nBritain.\nMay Day hobby horses.\nPadstow.\nThe most famous traditional British hobby horses are probably those of the May Day 'Obby 'Oss festival in Padstow, Cornwall. They are made from a circular framework, tightly covered with shiny black material, carried on the shoulders of a dancer whose face is hidden by a grotesque mask attached to a tall, pointed hat. A skirt (made from the same material) hangs down from the edge of the frame to around knee-height. There is a small, wooden, horse's head with snapping jaws, attached to a long, straight neck, with a long mane, which sticks out from the front of the frame. On the opposite side there is a small tail of horsehair.\nThere are two rival horses and their fiercely loyal bands of supporters at Padstow: the Old 'Oss is decorated with white and red, and its supporters wear red scarves to show their allegiance; the Blue Ribbon 'Oss (or \"Peace 'Oss\") is decorated with white and blue and its supporters follow suit. A \"Teaser\" waving a padded club dances in front of each 'Oss, accompanied, as they dance through the narrow streets, by a lively band of melodeons, accordions and drums playing Padstow's traditional May Song. The 'Osses sometimes capture young women beneath the skirt of the hobby horse; often they emerge smeared with black.\nChildren sometimes make \"Colt\" 'Osses and hold their own May Day parades.\nMinehead.\nAt Minehead in Somerset there are three rival hobby horses, the Original Sailor's Horse, the Traditional Sailor's Horse and the Town Horse. They appear on May Eve (called \"Show Night\"), on May Day morning (when they salute the sunrise at a crossroads on the outskirts of town), 2 May and 3 May (when a ceremony called"}, "descending_order": ["14955065", "30876866", "27208"], "permutation_1": ["30876866", "14955065", "27208"], "permutation_2": ["30876866", "27208", "14955065"], "permutation_3": ["14955065", "27208", "30876866"]}
{"id": "2hop__35105_41141", "docs_added": {"191429": "Muslim world\nMuslim-majority countries, states, districts, or towns\nThe terms Muslim world and Islamic world () commonly refer to the Islamic community, which is also known as the Ummah. This consists of all those who adhere to the religious beliefs, politics, and laws of Islam or to societies in which Islam is practiced. In a modern geopolitical sense, these terms refer to countries in which Islam is widespread, although there are no agreed criteria for inclusion. The term Muslim-majority countries is an alternative often used for the latter sense.\nThe history of the Muslim world spans about 1,400 years and includes a variety of socio-political developments, as well as advances in the arts, science, medicine, philosophy, law, economics and technology during the Islamic Golden Age. Muslims look for guidance to the Quran and believe in the prophetic mission of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, but disagreements on other matters have led to the appearance of different religious schools of thought and sects within Islam. The Islamic conquests, which culminated in the Caliphate being established across three continents (Asia, Africa, and Europe), enriched the Muslim world, achieving the economic preconditions for the emergence of this institution owing to the emphasis attached to Islamic teachings. In the modern era, most of the Muslim world came under European colonial domination. The nation states that emerged in the post-colonial era have adopted a variety of political and economic models, and they have been affected by secular as well as religious trends.\nAs of 2013[ [update]], the combined GDP (nominal) of 50 Muslim majority countries was US$5.7\u00a0trillion. As of 2016[ [update]], they contributed 8% of the world's total. In 2020, the Economy of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation which consists of 57 member states had a combined GDP(PPP) of US$ 24 trillion which is equal to about 18% of world's GDP or US$ 30 trillion with 5 OIC observer states which is equal to about 22% of the world's GDP. Some OIC member countries -Ivory Coast, Guyana, Gabon, Mozambique, Nigeria, Suriname, Togo and Uganda are not Muslim-majority.\nAs of 2020, 1.8 billion or more than 25% of the world population are Muslims. By the percentage of the total population in a region considering themselves Muslim, 91% in the Middle East-North Africa (MENA), 89% in Central Asia, 40% in Southeast Asia, 31% in South Asia, 30% in Sub-Saharan Africa, 25% in Asia, 1.4% in Oceania, 6% in Europe, and 1% in the Americas.\nMost Muslims are of one of two denominations: Sunni Islam (87\u201390%) and Shia (10\u201313%). However, other denominations exist in pockets, such as Ibadi (primarily in Oman). Muslims who do not belong to, do not self-identify with, or cannot be readily classified under one of the identifiable Islamic schools and branches are known as non-denominational Muslims. About 13% of Muslims live in Indonesia, the largest Muslim-majority country; % of Muslims live in South Asia, the largest population of Muslims in the world; % in the Middle East\u2013North Africa, where it is the dominant religion; and 15% in Sub-Saharan Africa and West Africa (primarily in Nigeria). Muslims are the overwhelming majority in Central Asia, the majority in the Caucasus, and widespread in Southeast Asia. India has the largest Muslim population outside Muslim-majority countries. Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, and Egypt are home to the world\u2019s second, fourth, sixth and seventh largest Muslim populations respectively. Sizeable Muslim communities are also found in the Americas, Russia, India, China, and Europe. Islam is the fastest-growing major religion in the world partially due to their high birth rate, according to the same study, religious switching has no impact on Muslim population, since the number of people who embrace Islam and those who leave Islam are roughly equal. China has the third largest Muslim population outside Muslim-majority countries, while Russia has the fifth largest Muslim population. Nigeria has the largest Muslim population in Africa, while Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in Asia.\nTerminology.\nThe term has been documented as early as 1912 to encompass the influence of perceived pan-Islamic propaganda. \"The Times\" described Pan-Islamism as a movement with power, importance, and cohesion born in Paris, where Turks, Arabs and Persians congregated. The correspondent's focus was on India: it would take too long to consider the progress made in various parts of the Muslim world. The article considered the position of the Amir, the effect of the Tripoli Campaign, Anglo-Russian action in Persia, and \"Afghan Ambitions\".\nIn a modern geopolitical sense, the terms 'Muslim world' and 'Islamic world' refer to countries in which Islam is widespread, although there are no agreed criteria for inclusion. Some scholars and commentators have criticised the term 'Muslim/Islamic world' and its derivative terms 'Muslim/Islamic country' as \"simplistic\" and \"binary\", since no state has a religiously homogeneous population (e.g. Egypt's citizens are c. 10% Christians), and in absolute numbers, there are sometimes fewer Muslims living in countries in which they make up the majority than in countries in which they form a minority. Moreover, the idea of a uniform Muslim world is imagined. Emerging in popular discourse in the nineteenth century, imperialists used the term to emphasize the civilizational differences between east and west. In opposition to colonization some Muslims started using the term in attempts at providing a unified front against western imperialism. Hence, the term 'Muslim-majority countries' is often preferred in literature.\nHistory.\nThe history of the Islamic faith as a religion and social institution begins with its inception around 610 CE, when the Islamic prophet Muhammad, a native of Mecca, is believed by Muslims to have received the first revelation of the Quran, and began to preach his message. In 622 CE, facing opposition in Mecca, he and his followers migrated to Yathrib (now Medina), where he was invited to establish a new constitution for the city under his leadership. This migration, called the Hijra, marks the first year of the Islamic calendar. By the time of his death, Muhammad had become the political and spiritual leader of Medina, Mecca, the surrounding region, and numerous other tribes in the Arabian Peninsula.\nAfter Muhammad died in 632, his successors (the Caliphs) continued to lead the Muslim community based on his teachings and guidelines of the Quran. The majority of Muslims consider the first four successors to be 'rightly guided' or Rashidun. The conquests of the Rashidun Caliphate helped to spread Islam beyond the Arabian Peninsula, stretching from northwest India, across Central Asia, the Near East, North Africa, southern Italy, and the Iberian Peninsula, to the Pyrenees. The Arab Muslims were unable to conquer the entire Christian Byzantine Empire in Asia Minor during the Arab\u2013Byzantine wars, however. The succeeding Umayyad Caliphate attempted two failed sieges of Constantinople in 674\u2013678 and 717\u2013718. Meanwhile, the Muslim community tore itself apart into the rivalling Sunni and Shia sects since the killing of caliph Uthman in 656, resulting in a succession crisis that has never been resolved. The following First, Second and Third Fitnas and finally the Abbasid Revolution (746\u2013750) also definitively destroyed the political unity of the Muslims, who have been inhabiting multiple states ever since. Ghaznavids' rule was succeeded by the Ghurid Empire of Muhammad of Ghor and Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad, whose reigns under the leadership of Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khalji extended until the Bengal, where South Asian Islamic missionaries achieved their greatest success in terms of dawah and number of converts to Islam. Qutb ud-Din Aibak conquered Delhi in 1206 and began the reign of the Delhi Sultanate, a successive series of dynasties that synthesized Indian civilization with the wider commercial and cultural networks of Africa and Eurasia, greatly increased demographic and economic growth in India and deterred Mongol incursion into the prosperous Indo-Gangetic Plain and enthroned one of the few female Muslim rulers, Razia Sultana.\nNotable major empires dominated by Muslims, such as those of the Abbasids, Fatimids, Almoravids, Gao Empire, Seljukids, largest contiguous Songhai Empire (15th-16th centuries) of Sahel, West Africa, southern North Africa and western Central Africa which dominated the centers of Islamic knowledge of Timbuktu, Djenne, Oualata and Gao, Ajuran, Adal and Warsangali in Somalia, Mughals in the Indian subcontinent (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, etc.), Safavids in Persia and Ottomans in Anatolia, Massina Empire, Sokoto Caliphate of northern Nigeria, Toucouleur Empire, were among the influential and distinguished powers in the world. 19th-century colonialism and 20th-century decolonisation have resulted in several independent Muslim-majority states around the world, with vastly differing attitudes towards and political influences granted to, or restricted for, Islam from country to country. These have revolved around the question of Islam's compatibility with other ideological concepts such as secularism, nationalism (especially Arab nationalism and Pan-Arabism, as opposed to Pan-Islamism), socialism (see also Arab socialism and socialism in Iran), democracy (see Islamic democracy), republicanism (see also Islamic republic), liberalism and progressivism, feminism, capitalism and more.\nGunpowder empires.\nScholars often use the term Age of the Islamic Gunpowders to describe period the Safavid, Ottoman and Mughal states. Each of these three empires had considerable military exploits using the newly developed firearms, especially cannon and small arms, to create their empires. They existed primarily between the fourteenth and the late seventeenth centuries. During the 17th\u201318th centuries, when the Indian subcontinent was ruled by Mughal Empire's sixth ruler Muhammad Auranzgeb through sharia and Islamic economics, India became the world's largest economy, valued 25% of world GDP.\nGreat Divergence.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"Why do the Christian nations, which were so weak in the past compared with Muslim nations begin to dominate so many lands in modern times and even defeat the once victorious Ottoman armies?\"...\"Because they have laws and rules invented by reason.\"\nIbrahim Muteferrika, \"Rational basis for the Politics of Nations\" (1731)\nThe Great Divergence was the reason why European colonial powers militarily defeated preexisting Oriental powers like the Mughal Empire, starting from the wealthy Bengal Subah, Tipu Sultan's Kingdom of Mysore, the Ottoman Empire and many smaller states in the pre-modern Greater Middle East, and initiated a period known as 'colonialism'.\nColonialism.\nBeginning with the 15th century, colonialism by European powers profoundly affected Muslim-majority societies in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Colonialism was often advanced by conflict with mercantile initiatives by colonial powers and caused tremendous social upheavals in Muslim-dominated societies.\nA number of Muslim-majority societies reacted to Western powers with zealotry and thus initiating the rise of Pan-Islamism; or affirmed more traditionalist and inclusive cultural ideals; and in rare cases adopted modernity that was ushered by the colonial powers.\nThe only Muslim-majority regions not to be colonized by the Europeans were Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, and Afghanistan. Turkey was one of the first colonial powers of the world with the Ottoman empire ruling several states for over 6 centuries.\nPostcolonial era.\nIn the 20th century, the end of the European colonial domination has led to creation of a number of nation states with significant Muslim populations. These states drew on Islamic traditions to varying degree and in various ways in organizing their legal, educational and economic systems. The Times first documented the term \"Muslim world\" in 1912 when describing Pan-Islamism as a movement with power importance and cohesion born in Paris where Turks, Arabs and Persians congregated. The article considered The position of the Amir; the effect of the Tripoli Campaign; Anglo-Russian action in Persia; and \"Afghan Ambitions\".\nA significant change in the Muslim world was the defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (1908\u20131922), to which the Ottoman officer and Turkish revolutionary statesman Mustafa Kemal Atat\u00fcrk had an instrumental role in ending and replacing it with the Republic of Turkey, a modern, secular democracy (see Abolition of the Ottoman sultanate). The secular values of Kemalist Turkey, which separated religion from the state with the abolition of the Caliphate in 1924, have sometimes been seen as the result of Western influence.\nIn the 21st century, after the September 11 attacks (2001) coordinated by the Wahhabi Islamist terrorist group Al-Qaeda against the United States, scholars considered the ramifications of seeking to understand Muslim experience through the framework of secular Enlightenment principles. Muhammad Atta, one of the 11 September hijackers, reportedly quoted from the Quran to allay his fears: \"Fight them, and God will chastise them at your hands/And degrade them, and He will help you/Against them, and bring healing to the breasts of a people who believe\", referring to the \"ummah\", the community of Muslim believers, and invoking the imagery of the early warriors of Islam who lead the faithful from the darkness of \"jahiliyyah\".\nBy Sayyid Qutb's definition of Islam, the faith is \"a complete divorce from jahiliyyah\". He complained that American churches served as centers of community social life that were \"very hard [to] distinguish from places of fun and amusement\". For Qutb, Western society was the modern \"jahliliyyah\". His understanding of the \"Muslim world\" and its \"social order\" was that, presented to the Western world as the result of practicing Islamic teachings, would impress \"by the beauty and charm of true Islamic ideology\". He argued that the values of the Enlightenment and its related precursor, the Scientific Revolution, \"denies or suspends God's sovereignty on earth\" and argued that strengthening \"Islamic character\"\nwas needed \"to abolish the negative influences of \"jahili\" life.\"\nIslam by country.\nAs the Muslim world came into contact with secular ideals, societies responded in different ways. Some Muslim-majority countries are secular. Azerbaijan became the first secular republic in the Muslim world, between 1918 and 1920, before it was incorporated into the Soviet Union. Turkey has been governed as a secular state since the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atat\u00fcrk. By contrast, the 1979 Iranian Revolution replaced a monarchial semi-secular regime with an Islamic republic led by the Ayatollah, Ruhollah Khomeini.\nSome countries have declared Islam as the official state religion. In those countries, the legal code is largely secular. Only personal status matters pertaining to inheritance and marriage are governed by Sharia law. In some places, Muslims implement Islamic law, called sharia in Arabic. The Islamic law exists in a number of variations, called schools of jurisprudence. The Amman Message, which was endorsed in 2005 by prominent Islamic scholars around the world, recognized four Sunni schools (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali), two Shia schools (Ja'fari, Zaidi), the Ibadi school, and the Zahiri school.\nGovernment and religion.\nIslamic states.\nEight Islamic states have adopted Islam as the ideological foundation of state and constitution.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nState religion.\nThe following nineteen Muslim-majority states have endorsed Islam as their state religion, and though they may guarantee freedom of religion for citizens, do not declare a separation of state and religion:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSecular states.\nTwenty-two Secular states in the Muslim world have declared separation between civil/government affairs and religion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nOthers.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nMuslim-minority states.\nAccording to the Pew Research Center in 2015 there were 50 Muslim-majority countries, which are shown in the Government and religion section above in the article. Apart from these, large Muslim populations exist in some countries where Muslims are a minority, and their Muslim communities are larger than many Muslim-majority nations:\nPolitics.\nDuring much of the 20th century, the Islamic identity and the dominance of Islam on political issues have arguably increased during the early 21st century. The fast-growing interests of the Western world in Islamic regions, international conflicts and globalization have changed the influence of Islam on the world in contemporary history.\nDemographics.\nMore than 24.1% of the world's population is Muslim, with an estimated total of approximately 1.9 billion. Muslims are the majority in 49 countries, they speak hundreds of languages and come from diverse ethnic backgrounds. The city of Karachi has the largest Muslim population in the world. \nGeography.\nBecause the terms 'Muslim world' and 'Islamic world' are disputed, since no country is homogeneously Muslim, and there is no way to determine at what point a Muslim minority in a country is to be considered 'significant' enough, there is no consensus on how to define the Muslim world geographically. The only rule of thumb for inclusion which has some support, is that countries need to have a Muslim population of more than 50%. \nIn 2010, 73% of the world's Muslim population lived in countries where Muslims are in the majority, while 27% of the world's Muslim population lived in countries where Muslims are in the minority. India's Muslim population is the world's largest Muslim-minority population in the world (11% of the world's Muslim population). Jones (2005) defines a \"large minority\" as being between 30% and 50%, which described nine countries in 2000, namely Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, North Macedonia, and Tanzania. As of 2024, however, Nigeria has become a Muslim-majority country.\nReligion.\nIslam.\nThe two main denominations of Islam are the Sunni and Shia sects. They differ primarily upon of how the life of the ummah (\"faithful\") should be governed, and the role of the imam. Sunnis believe that the true political successor of Muhammad according to the Sunnah should be selected based on \u064dShura (consultation), as was done at the Saqifah which selected Abu Bakr, Muhammad's father-in-law, to be Muhammad's political but not his religious successor. Shia, on the other hand, believe that Muhammad designated his son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib as his true political as well as religious successor.\nThe overwhelming majority of Muslims in the world, between 87 and 90%, are Sunni. Shias and other groups make up the rest, about 10\u201313% of overall Muslim population. The countries with the highest concentration of Shia populations are: Iran \u2013 89%, Azerbaijan \u2013 65%, Iraq \u2013 60%, Bahrain \u2013 60%, Yemen \u2013 35%, Turkey \u2013 10%, Lebanon \u2013 27%, Syria \u2013 13%, Afghanistan \u2013 10%, Pakistan \u2013 10%, and India \u2013 10%.\nNon-denominational Muslims make up a majority of the Muslims in seven countries (and a plurality in three others): Albania (65%), Kyrgyzstan (64%), Kosovo (58%), Indonesia (56%), Mali (55%), Bosnia and Herzegovina (54%), Uzbekistan (54%), Azerbaijan (45%), Russia (45%), and Nigeria (42%). They are found primarily in Central Asia. Kazakhstan has the largest number of non-denominational Muslims, who constitute about 74% of the population. Southeastern Europe also has a large number of non-denominational Muslims.\nThe Kharijite Muslims, who are less known, have their own stronghold in the country of Oman holding about 75% of the population.\nIslamic schools and branches.\nThe first centuries of Islam gave rise to three major sects: Sunnis, Shi'as and Kharijites. Each sect developed distinct jurisprudence schools (\"madhhab\") reflecting different methodologies of jurisprudence (\"fiqh\").\nThe major Sunni madhhabs are Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali.\nThe major Shi'a branches are Twelver (Imami), Ismaili (Sevener) and Zaidi (Fiver). Isma'ilism later split into Nizari Ismaili and Musta\u2019li Ismaili, and then Mustaali was divided into Hafizi and Taiyabi Ismailis. It also gave rise to the Qarmatian movement and the Druze faith, although Druzes do not identify as Muslims. Twelver Shiism developed Ja'fari jurisprudence whose branches are Akhbarism and Usulism, and other movements such as Alawites, Shaykism and Alevism.\nSimilarly, Kharijites were initially divided into five major branches: Sufris, Azariqa, Najdat, Adjarites and Ibadis.\nAmong these numerous branches, only Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali, Imamiyyah-Ja'fari-Usuli, Niz\u0101r\u012b Ism\u0101'\u012bl\u012b, Alevi, Zaydi, Ibadi, Zahiri, Alawite, Druze and Taiyabi communities have survived. In addition, new schools of thought and movements like Quranist Muslims and Ahmadi Muslims later emerged independently.\nOther religions.\nThere are sizeable non-Muslim minorities in many Muslim-majority countries, includes, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds, Druzes, Yazidis, Mandaeans, Yarsanis and Zoroastrians.\nThe Muslim world is home to some of the world's most ancient Christian communities, and some of the most important cities of the Christian world\u2014including three of its five great patriarchates (Alexandria, Antioch, and Constantinople). Scholars and intellectuals agree Christians have made significant contributions to Arab and Islamic civilization since the introduction of Islam, and they have had a significant impact contributing the culture of the Middle East and North Africa and other areas. Pew Research Center estimates indicate that in 2010, more than 64 million Christians lived in countries with Muslim majorities (excluding Nigeria). The Pew Forum study finds that Indonesia (21.1 million) has the largest Christian population in the Muslim world, followed by Egypt, Chad and Kazakhstan. While according to Adly A. Youssef and Martyn Thomas, in 2004, there were around 30 million Christians who lived in countries with Muslim majorities, with the largest Christian population number lived in Indonesia, followed by Egypt. Nigeria is divided almost evenly between Muslims and Christians, with more than 80 million Christians and Muslims.\nIn 2018, the Jewish Agency estimated that around 27,000 Jews live in Arab and Muslim countries. Jewish communities have existed across the Middle East and North Africa since the rise of Islam. Today, Jews residing in Muslim countries have been reduced to a small fraction of their former sizes, with the largest communities of Jews in Muslim countries exist in the non-Arab countries of Iran (9,500) and Turkey (14,500); both, however, are much smaller than they historically have been. Among Arab countries, the largest Jewish community now exists in Morocco with about 2,000 Jews and in Tunisia with about 1,000. The number of Druze worldwide is between 800,000 and one million, with the vast majority residing in the Levant (primarily in Syria and Lebanon).\nIn 2010, the Pew Forum study finds that Bangladesh (13.5 million), Indonesia (4 million), Pakistan (3.3 million) and Malaysia (1.7 million) has a sizeable Hindu minorities. Malaysia (5 million) has the largest Buddhist population in the Muslim world. Zoroastrians are the oldest remaining religious community in Iran. \nLiteracy and education.\nThe literacy rate in the Muslim world varies. Azerbaijan is in second place in the Index of Literacy of World Countries. Some members such as Iran, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan have over 97% literacy rates, whereas literacy rates are the lowest in Mali, Afghanistan, Chad and other parts of Africa. Several Muslim-majority countries, such as Turkey, Iran and Egypt have a high rate of citable scientific publications.\nIn 2015, the International Islamic News Agency reported that nearly 37% of the population of the Muslim world is unable to read or write, basing that figure on reports from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. In Egypt, the largest Muslim-majority Arab country, the youth female literacy rate exceeds that for males. Lower literacy rates are more prevalent in South Asian countries such as in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but are rapidly increasing. In the Eastern Middle East, Iran has a high level of youth literacy at 98%, but Iraq's youth literacy rate has sharply declined from 85% to 57% during the American-led war and subsequent occupation. Indonesia, the largest Muslim-majority country in the world, has a 99% youth literacy rate.\nA 2011 Pew Research Center showed that at the time about 36% of all Muslims had no formal schooling, with only 8% having graduate and post-graduate degrees.\nThe highest of years of schooling among Muslim-majority countries found in Uzbekistan (11.5), Kuwait (11.0) and Kazakhstan (10.7). In addition, the average of years of schooling in countries in which Muslims are the majority is 6.0 years of schooling, which lag behind the global average (7.7 years of schooling). In the youngest age (25\u201334) group surveyed, Young Muslims have the lowest average levels of education of any major religious group, with an average of 6.7 years of schooling, which lag behind the global average (8.6 years of schooling). The study found that Muslims have a significant amount of gender inequality in educational attainment, since Muslim women have an average of 4.9 years of schooling, compared to an average of 6.4 years of schooling among Muslim men.\nRefugees.\nAccording to the UNHCR, Muslim-majority countries hosted 18 million refugees by the end of 2010.\nSince then Muslim-majority countries have absorbed refugees from recent conflicts, including the uprising in Syria. In July 2013, the UN stated that the number of Syrian refugees had exceeded 1.8\u00a0million.\nIn Asia, an estimated 625,000 refugees from Rakhine, Myanmar, mostly Muslim, had crossed the border into Bangladesh since August 2017.\nCulture.\nThroughout history, Muslim cultures have been diverse ethnically, linguistically and regionally. According to M. M. Knight, this diversity includes diversity in beliefs, interpretations and practices and communities and interests. Knight says perception of Muslim world among non-Muslims is usually supported through introductory literature about Islam, mostly present a version as per scriptural view which would include some prescriptive literature and abstracts of history as per authors own point of views, to which even many Muslims might agree, but that necessarily would not reflect Islam as lived on the ground, 'in the experience of real human bodies'.\nClassical culture.\nThe term \"Islamic Golden Age\" has been attributed to a period in history during which science, economic development and cultural works in most of the Muslim-dominated world flourished. The age is traditionally understood to have begun during the reign of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (786\u2013809) with the inauguration of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, where scholars from various parts of the world sought to translate and gather all the known world's knowledge into Arabic, and to have ended with the collapse of the Abbasid caliphate due to Mongol invasions and the Siege of Baghdad in 1258. The Abbasids were influenced by the Quranic injunctions and hadiths, such as \"the ink of a scholar is more holy than the blood of a martyr,\" that stressed the value of knowledge. The major Islamic capital cities of Baghdad, Cairo, and C\u00f3rdoba became the main intellectual centers for science, philosophy, medicine, and education. During this period, the Muslim world was a collection of cultures; they drew together and advanced the knowledge gained from the ancient Greek, Roman, Persian, Chinese, Vedic, Egyptian, and Phoenician civilizations.\nCeramics.\nBetween the 8th and 18th centuries, the use of ceramic glaze was prevalent in Islamic art, usually assuming the form of elaborate pottery. Tin-opacified glazing was one of the earliest new technologies developed by the Islamic potters. The first Islamic opaque glazes can be found as blue-painted ware in Basra, dating to around the 8th century. Another contribution was the development of fritware, originating from 9th-century Iraq. Other centers for innovative ceramic pottery in the Old world included Fustat (from 975 to 1075), Damascus (from 1100 to around 1600) and Tabriz (from 1470 to 1550).\nLiterature.\nThe best known work of fiction from the Islamic world is \"One Thousand and One Nights\", a compilation of folk tales from Sanskrit, Persian, and later Arabian fables. The concept had been influenced by a pre-Islamic Persian prototype Hez\u0101r Afs\u0101n (Thousand Fables) that relied on particular Indian elements. It reached its final form by the 14th century; the number and type of tales have varied from one manuscript to another. This work has been very influential in the West since it was translated in the 18th century, first by Antoine Galland. Imitations were written, especially in France. Various characters from this epic have themselves become cultural icons in Western culture, such as Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor and Ali Baba.\nAn example of Arabic poetry and Persian poetry on romance is \"Layla and Majnun\", dating back to the Umayyad era in the 7th century. It is a tragic story of undying love. Ferdowsi's \"Shahnameh\", the national epic of Greater Iran, is a mythical and heroic retelling of Persian history. \"Amir Arsalan\" was also a popular mythical Persian story.\nIbn Tufayl (Abubacer) and Ibn al-Nafis were pioneers of the philosophical novel. Ibn Tufail wrote the first Arabic novel \"Hayy ibn Yaqdhan\" (\"Philosophus Autodidactus\") as a response to Al-Ghazali's \"The Incoherence of the Philosophers\", and then Ibn al-Nafis also wrote a novel \"Theologus Autodidactus\" as a response to Ibn Tufail's \"Philosophus Autodidactus\". Both of these narratives had protagonists (Hayy in \"Philosophus Autodidactus\" and Kamil in \"Theologus Autodidactus\") who were autodidactic feral children living in seclusion on a desert island, both being the earliest examples of a desert island story. However, while Hayy lives alone with animals on the desert island for the rest of the story in \"Philosophus Autodidactus\", the story of Kamil extends beyond the desert island setting in \"Theologus Autodidactus\", developing into the earliest known coming of age plot and eventually becoming the first example of a science fiction novel.\n\"Theologus Autodidactus\", written by the Arabian polymath Ibn al-Nafis (1213\u20131288), deals with various science fiction elements such as spontaneous generation, futurology, the end of the world and doomsday, resurrection, and the afterlife. Rather than giving supernatural or mythological explanations for these events, Ibn al-Nafis attempted to explain these plot elements using the scientific knowledge of biology, astronomy, cosmology and geology known in his time. Ibn al-Nafis' fiction explained Islamic religious teachings via science and Islamic philosophy. Translations of Ibn Tufail's \"Philosophus Autodidactus\" appeared in Latin (1671), English (1708), German, and Dutch. These European-language translations may have later inspired Daniel Defoe's \"Robinson Crusoe\" and Robert Boyle's \"The Aspiring Naturalist\".\nPhilosophy.\nOne of the common definitions for \"Islamic philosophy\" is \"the style of philosophy produced within the framework of Islamic culture.\" Islamic philosophy, in this definition is neither necessarily concerned with religious issues, nor is exclusively produced by Muslims. The Persian scholar Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (980\u20131037) had more than 450 books attributed to him. His writings were concerned with various subjects, most notably philosophy and medicine. His medical textbook \"The Canon of Medicine\" was used as the standard text in European universities for centuries. He also wrote \"The Book of Healing\", an influential scientific and philosophical encyclopedia.\nAnother figure from the Islamic Golden Age, Avicenna, also founded his own Avicennism school of philosophy, which was influential in both Islamic and Christian lands.\nYet another influential philosopher who had an influence on modern philosophy was Ibn Tufail. His philosophical novel, \"Hayy ibn Yaqdhan\", translated into Latin as \"Philosophus Autodidactus\" in 1671, developed the themes of empiricism, tabula rasa, nature versus nurture, condition of possibility, materialism, and Molyneux's problem. European scholars and writers influenced by this novel include John Locke, Gottfried Leibniz, Melchis\u00e9dech Th\u00e9venot, John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, George Keith, Robert Barclay, the Quakers, and Samuel Hartlib.\nIslamic philosophers continued making advances in philosophy through to the 17th century, when Mulla Sadra founded his school of Transcendent theosophy and developed the concept of existentialism.\nOther influential Muslim philosophers include Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), a pioneer of phenomenology and the philosophy of science and a critic of Aristotelian natural philosophy and Aristotle's concept of place (topos); Al-Biruni, a critic of Aristotelian natural philosophy; Ibn Tufail and Ibn al-Nafis, pioneers of the philosophical novel; Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi, founder of Illuminationist philosophy; Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, a critic of Aristotelian logic and a pioneer of inductive logic; and Ibn Khaldun, a pioneer in the philosophy of history.\nSciences.\nIbn al-Haytham is also regarded as the father of optics, especially for his empirical proof of the intromission theory of light. Jim Al-Khalili stated in 2009 that Ibn al-Haytham is 'often referred to as the \"world's first true scientist\".' al-Khwarzimi's invented the log base systems that are being used today, he also contributed theorems in trigonometry as well as limits. Recent studies show that it is very likely that the Medieval Muslim artists were aware of advanced decagonal quasicrystal geometry (discovered half a millennium later in the 1970s and 1980s in the West) and used it in intricate decorative tilework in the architecture.\nMuslim physicians contributed to the field of medicine, including the subjects of anatomy and physiology: such as in the 15th-century Persian work by Mansur ibn Muhammad ibn al-Faqih Ilyas entitled \"Tashrih al-badan\" (\"Anatomy of the body\") which contained comprehensive diagrams of the body's structural, nervous and circulatory systems; or in the work of the Egyptian physician Ibn al-Nafis, who proposed the theory of pulmonary circulation. Avicenna's \"The Canon of Medicine\" remained an authoritative medical textbook in Europe until the 18th century. Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (also known as \"Abulcasis\") contributed to the discipline of medical surgery with his \"Kitab al-Tasrif\" (\"Book of Concessions\"), a medical encyclopedia which was later translated to Latin and used in European and Muslim medical schools for centuries. Other medical advancements came in the fields of pharmacology and pharmacy.\nSome most famous scientists from the medieval Islamic world include J\u0101bir ibn Hayy\u0101n, al-Farabi, Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi, Ibn al-Haytham, Al-Biruni, Avicenna, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, and Ibn Khaldun.\nTechnology.\nIn technology, the Muslim world adopted papermaking from China. The knowledge of gunpowder was also transmitted from China via predominantly Islamic countries, where formulas for pure potassium nitrate were developed.\nAdvances were made in irrigation and farming, using new technology such as the windmill. Crops such as almonds and citrus fruit were brought to Europe through al-Andalus, and sugar cultivation was gradually adopted by the Europeans. Arab merchants dominated trade in the Indian Ocean until the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16th century. Hormuz was an important center for this trade. There was also a dense network of trade routes in the Mediterranean, along which Muslim-majority countries traded with each other and with European powers such as Venice, Genoa and Catalonia (see also: Indo-Mediterranean). The Silk Road crossing Central Asia passed through Islamic states between China and Europe. The emergence of major economic empires with technological resources after the conquests of Timur (Tamerlane) and the resurgence of the Timurid Renaissance include the Mali Empire and the Bengal Sultanate in particular, a major global trading nation in the world, described by the Europeans to be the \"richest country to trade with\".\nMuslim engineers in the Islamic world made a number of innovative industrial uses of hydropower, and early industrial uses of tidal power and wind power. The industrial uses of watermills in the Islamic world date back to the 7th century, while horizontal-wheeled and vertical-wheeled water mills were both in widespread use since at least the 9th century. A variety of industrial mills were being employed in the Islamic world, including early fulling mills, gristmills, paper mills, hullers, sawmills, ship mills, stamp mills, steel mills, sugar mills, tide mills and windmills. By the 11th century, every province throughout the Islamic world had these industrial mills in operation, from al-Andalus and North Africa to the Middle East and Central Asia. Muslim engineers also invented crankshafts and water turbines, employed gears in mills and water-raising machines, and pioneered the use of dams as a source of water power, used to provide additional power to watermills and water-raising machines. Such advances made it possible for industrial tasks that were previously driven by manual labour in ancient times to be mechanized and driven by machinery instead in the medieval Islamic world. The transfer of these technologies to medieval Europe had an influence on the Industrial Revolution, particularly from the proto-industrialised Mughal Bengal and Tipu Sultan's Kingdom, through the conquests of the East India Company.\nArts.\nThe term \"Islamic art and architecture\" denotes the works of art and architecture produced from the 7th century onwards by people who lived within the territory that was inhabited by culturally Islamic populations.\nAniconism.\nNo Islamic visual images or depictions of God are meant to exist because it is believed that such artistic depictions may lead to idolatry. Muslims describe God by the names and attributes that, according to Islam, he revealed to his creation. All but one sura of the Quran begins with the phrase \"In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful\". Images of Mohammed are likewise prohibited. Such aniconism and iconoclasm can also be found in Jewish and some Christian theology.\nArabesque.\nIslamic art frequently adopts the use of geometrical floral or vegetal designs in a repetition known as arabesque. Such designs are highly nonrepresentational, as Islam forbids representational depictions as found in pre-Islamic pagan religions. Despite this, there is a presence of depictional art in some Muslim societies, notably the miniature style made famous in Persia and under the Ottoman Empire which featured paintings of people and animals, and also depictions of Quranic stories and Islamic traditional narratives. Another reason why Islamic art is usually abstract is to symbolize the transcendence, indivisible and infinite nature of God, an objective achieved by arabesque. Islamic calligraphy is an omnipresent decoration in Islamic art, and is usually expressed in the form of Quranic verses. Two of the main scripts involved are the symbolic \"kufic\" and \"naskh\" scripts, which can be found adorning the walls and domes of mosques, the sides of minbars, and so on.\nDistinguishing motifs of Islamic architecture have always been ordered repetition, radiating structures, and rhythmic, metric patterns. In this respect, fractal geometry has been a key utility, especially for mosques and palaces. Other features employed as motifs include columns, piers and arches, organized and interwoven with alternating sequences of niches and colonnettes. The role of domes in Islamic architecture has been considerable. Its usage spans centuries, first appearing in 691 with the construction of the Dome of the Rock mosque, and recurring even up until the 17th century with the Taj Mahal. And as late as the 19th century, Islamic domes had been incorporated into European architecture.\nCalendar.\nTwo calendars are used all over the Muslim world. One is a lunar calendar that is most widely used among Muslims. The other one is a solar calendar officially used in Iran and Afghanistan.\nWomen.\nAccording to \"Riada Asimovic Akyol,\" while Muslim women's experiences differ a lot by location and personal situations such as family upbringing, class and education; the difference between culture and religions is often ignored by community and state leaders in many of the Muslim majority countries. The key issue in the Muslim world regarding gender issues is that religious texts constructed in highly patriarchal environments and based on biological essentialism are still valued highly in Islam, hence views emphasizing on men's superiority in unequal gender roles are widespread among many conservative Muslims (men and women). Orthodox Muslims often believe that rights and responsibilities of women in Islam are different from that of men and sacrosanct since assigned by the God. According to Asma Barlas, patriarchal behaviour among Muslims is based in an ideology which jumbles sexual and biological differences with gender dualisms and inequality. Modernist discourse of liberal progressive movements like Islamic feminism have been revisiting hermeneutics of feminism in Islam in terms of respect for Muslim women's lives and rights. \"Riada Asimovic Akyol\" further says that equality for Muslim women needs to be achieved through self-criticism.\nReferences.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4501": "Black Death\n1346\u20131353 pandemic in Eurasia and North Africa\nThe Black Death was a bubonic plague pandemic that occurred in Europe from 1346 to 1353. It was one of the most fatal pandemics in human history; as many as 50 million people perished, perhaps 50% of Europe's 14th century population. The disease is caused by the bacterium \"Yersinia pestis\" and spread by fleas and through the air. One of the most significant events in European history, the Black Death had far-reaching population, economic, and cultural impacts. It was the beginning of the second plague pandemic. The plague created religious, social and economic upheavals, with profound effects on the course of European history.\nThe origin of the Black Death is disputed. Genetic analysis suggests \"Yersinia pestis\" bacteria evolved approximately 7,000 years ago, at the beginning of the Neolithic, with flea-mediated strains emerging around 3,800 years ago during the late Bronze Age. The immediate territorial origins of the Black Death and its outbreak remain unclear, with some evidence pointing towards Central Asia, China, the Middle East, and Europe. The pandemic was reportedly first introduced to Europe during the siege of the Genoese trading port of Kaffa in Crimea by the Golden Horde army of Jani Beg in 1347. From Crimea, it was most likely carried by fleas living on the black rats that travelled on Genoese ships, spreading through the Mediterranean Basin and reaching North Africa, West Asia, and the rest of Europe via Constantinople, Sicily, and the Italian Peninsula. There is evidence that once it came ashore, the Black Death mainly spread from person-to-person as pneumonic plague, thus explaining the quick inland spread of the epidemic, which was faster than would be expected if the primary vector was rat fleas causing bubonic plague. In 2022, it was discovered that there was a sudden surge of deaths in what is today Kyrgyzstan from the Black Death in the late 1330s; when combined with genetic evidence, this implies that the initial spread may have been unrelated to the 14th century Mongol conquests previously postulated as the cause.\nThe Black Death was the second great natural disaster to strike Europe during the Late Middle Ages (the first one being the Great Famine of 1315\u20131317) and is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of the European population, as well as approximately 33% of the population of the Middle East. There were further outbreaks throughout the Late Middle Ages and, also due to other contributing factors (the crisis of the late Middle Ages), the European population did not regain its 14th century level until the 16th century. Outbreaks of the plague recurred around the world until the early 19th century.\nNames.\nEuropean writers contemporary with the plague described the disease in Latin as or ; ; . In English prior to the 18th century, the event was called the \"pestilence\" or \"great pestilence\", \"the plague\" or the \"great death\". Subsequent to the pandemic \"the \"furste moreyn\"\" (first murrain) or \"first pestilence\" was applied, to distinguish the mid-14th century phenomenon from other infectious diseases and epidemics of plague.\nThe 1347 pandemic plague was not referred to specifically as \"black\" in the time of occurrence in any European language, though the expression \"black death\" had occasionally been applied to fatal disease beforehand. \"Black death\" was not used to describe the plague pandemic in English until the 1750s; the term is first attested in 1755, where it translated . This expression as a proper name for the pandemic had been popularized by Swedish and Danish chroniclers in the 15th and early 16th centuries, and in the 16th and 17th centuries was transferred to other languages as a calque: , , and . Previously, most European languages had named the pandemic a variant or calque of the .\nThe phrase 'black death' \u2013 describing Death as black \u2013 is very old. Homer used it in the Odyssey to describe the monstrous Scylla, with her mouths \"full of black Death\" (). Seneca the Younger may have been the first to describe an epidemic as 'black death', () but only in reference to the acute lethality and dark prognosis of disease. The 12th\u201313th century French physician Gilles de Corbeil had already used \"\" to refer to a \"pestilential fever\" () in his work \"On the Signs and Symptoms of Diseases\" (). The phrase , was used in 1350 by Simon de Covino (or Couvin), a Belgian astronomer, in his poem \"On the Judgement of the Sun at a Feast of Saturn\" (), which attributes the plague to an astrological conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. His use of the phrase is not connected unambiguously with the plague pandemic of 1347 and appears to refer to the fatal outcome of disease.\nThe historian Elizabeth Penrose, writing under the pen-name \"Mrs Markham\", described the 14th-century outbreak as the \"black death\" in 1823. The historian Cardinal Francis Aidan Gasquet wrote about the Great Pestilence in 1893 and suggested that it had been \"some form of the ordinary Eastern or bubonic plague\". In 1908, Gasquet said use of the name ' for the 14th-century epidemic first appeared in a 1631 book on Danish history by J.\u00a0I. Pontanus: \"Commonly and from its effects, they called it the black death\" (').\nPrevious plague epidemics.\nResearch from 2017 suggests plague first infected humans in Europe and Asia in the Late Neolithic-Early Bronze Age. Research in 2018 found evidence of \"Yersinia pestis\" in an ancient Swedish tomb, which may have been associated with the \"Neolithic decline\" around 3000 BCE, in which European populations fell significantly. This \"Y. pestis\" may have been different from more modern types, with bubonic plague transmissible by fleas first known from Bronze Age remains near Samara.\nThe symptoms of bubonic plague are first attested in a fragment of Rufus of Ephesus preserved by Oribasius; these ancient medical authorities suggest bubonic plague had appeared in the Roman Empire before the reign of Trajan, six centuries before arriving at Pelusium in the reign of Justinian I. In 2013, researchers confirmed earlier speculation that the cause of the Plague of Justinian (541\u2013549 CE, with recurrences until 750) was \"Y\". \"pestis\". This is known as the first plague pandemic. In 610, the Chinese physician Chao Yuanfang described a \"malignant bubo\" \"coming in abruptly with high fever together with the appearance of a bundle of nodes beneath the tissue.\" The Chinese physician Sun Simo who died in 652 also mentioned a \"malignant bubo\" and plague that was common in Lingnan (Guangzhou). Ole J\u00f8rgen Benedictow believes that this indicates it was an offshoot of the first plague pandemic which made its way eastward to Chinese territory by around 600.\n14th-century plague.\nCauses.\nEarly theory.\nA report by the Medical Faculty of Paris stated that a conjunction of planets had caused \"a great pestilence in the air\" (miasma theory). Muslim religious scholars taught that the pandemic was a \"martyrdom and mercy\" from God, assuring the believer's place in paradise. For non-believers, it was a punishment. Some Muslim doctors cautioned against trying to prevent or treat a disease sent by God. Others adopted preventive measures and treatments for plague used by Europeans. These Muslim doctors also depended on the writings of the ancient Greeks.\nPredominant modern theory.\nDue to climate change in Asia, rodents began to flee the dried-out grasslands to more populated areas, spreading the disease. The plague disease, caused by the bacterium \"Yersinia pestis\", is enzootic (commonly present) in populations of fleas carried by ground rodents, including marmots, in various areas, including Central Asia, Kurdistan, West Asia, North India, Uganda, and the western United States.\n\"Y. pestis\" was discovered by Alexandre Yersin, a pupil of Louis Pasteur, during an epidemic of bubonic plague in Hong Kong in 1894; Yersin also proved this bacterium was present in rodents and suggested the rat was the main vehicle of transmission. The mechanism by which \"Y. pestis\" is usually transmitted was established in 1898 by Paul-Louis Simond and was found to involve the bites of fleas whose midguts had become obstructed by replicating \"Y. pestis\" several days after feeding on an infected host. This blockage starves the fleas, drives them to aggressive feeding behaviour, and causes them to try to clear the blockage via regurgitation, resulting in thousands of plague bacteria flushing into the feeding site and infecting the host. The bubonic plague mechanism was also dependent on two populations of rodents: one resistant to the disease, which act as hosts, keeping the disease endemic, and a second that lacks resistance. When the second population dies, the fleas move on to other hosts, including people, thus creating a human epidemic.\nDNA evidence.\nDefinitive confirmation of the role of \"Y. pestis\" arrived in 2010 with a publication in \"PLOS Pathogens\" by Haensch et al. They assessed the presence of DNA/RNA with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques for \"Y. pestis\" from the tooth sockets in human skeletons from mass graves in northern, central and southern Europe that were associated archaeologically with the Black Death and subsequent resurgences. The authors concluded that this new research, together with prior analyses from the south of France and Germany, \"ends the debate about the cause of the Black Death, and unambiguously demonstrates that \"Y. pestis\" was the causative agent of the epidemic plague that devastated Europe during the Middle Ages\". In 2011 these results were further confirmed with genetic evidence derived from Black Death victims in the East Smithfield burial site in England. Schuenemann et al. concluded in 2011 \"that the Black Death in medieval Europe was caused by a variant of \"Y. pestis\" that may no longer exist\".\nLater in 2011, Bos et al. reported in \"Nature\" the first draft genome of \"Y. pestis\" from plague victims from the same East Smithfield cemetery and indicated that the strain that caused the Black Death is ancestral to most modern strains of \"Y. pestis\".\nLater genomic papers have further confirmed the phylogenetic placement of the \"Y. pestis\" strain responsible for the Black Death as both the ancestor of later plague epidemics\u2014including the third plague pandemic\u2014and the descendant of the strain responsible for the Plague of Justinian. In addition, plague genomes from prehistory have been recovered.\nDNA taken from 25 skeletons from 14th-century London showed that plague is a strain of \"Y. pestis\" almost identical to that which hit Madagascar in 2013. Further DNA evidence also proves the role of \"Y. pestis\" and traces the source to the Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan.\nAlternative explanations.\nResearchers are hampered by a lack of reliable statistics from this period. Most work has been done on the spread of the disease in England, where estimates of overall population at the start of the plague vary by over 100%, as no census was undertaken in England between the time of publication of the Domesday Book of 1086 and the poll tax of the year 1377. Estimates of plague victims are usually extrapolated from figures for the clergy.\nMathematical modelling is used to match the spreading patterns and the means of transmission. In 2018 researchers suggested an alternative model in which \"\"the disease was spread from human fleas and body lice to other people\".\" The second model claims to better fit the trends of the plague's death toll, as the rat-flea-human hypothesis would have produced a delayed but very high spike in deaths, contradicting historical death data.\nLars Wall\u00f8e argued that these authors \"take it for granted that Simond's infection model, black rat \u2192 rat flea \u2192 human, which was developed to explain the spread of plague in India, is the only way an epidemic of \"Yersinia pestis\" infection could spread\". Similarly, Monica Green has argued that greater attention is needed to the range of (especially non-commensal) animals that might be involved in the transmission of plague.\nArchaeologist Barney Sloane has argued that there is insufficient evidence of the extinction of numerous rats in the archaeological record of the medieval waterfront in London, and that the disease spread too quickly to support the thesis that \"Y. pestis\" was spread from fleas on rats; he argues that transmission must have been person to person. This theory is supported by research in 2018 which suggested transmission was more likely by body lice and fleas during the second plague pandemic.\nSummary.\nAcademic debate continues, but no single alternative explanation for the plague's spread has achieved widespread acceptance. Many scholars arguing for \"Y. pestis\" as the major agent of the pandemic suggest that its extent and symptoms can be explained by a combination of bubonic plague with other diseases, including typhus, smallpox, and respiratory infections. In addition to the bubonic infection, others point to additional septicemic and pneumonic forms of plague, which lengthen the duration of outbreaks throughout the seasons and help account for its high mortality rate and additional recorded symptoms. In 2014, Public Health England announced the results of an examination of 25 bodies exhumed in the Clerkenwell area of London, as well as of wills registered in London during the period, which supported the pneumonic hypothesis. Currently, while osteoarcheologists have conclusively verified the presence of \"Y. pestis\" bacteria in burial sites across northern Europe through examination of bones and dental pulp, no other epidemic pathogen has been discovered to bolster the alternative explanations.\nTransmission.\nLack of hygiene.\nThe importance of hygiene was not recognized until the 19th century and the germ theory of disease. Until then streets were usually unhygienic, with live animals and human parasites facilitating the spread of transmissible disease.\nBy the early 14th century, so much filth had collected inside urban Europe that French and Italian cities were naming streets after human waste. In medieval Paris, several street names were inspired by merde, the French word for \"shit\". There were rue Merdeux, rue Merdelet, rue Merdusson, rue des Merdons and rue Merdiere\u2014as well as a rue du Pipi. Pigs, cattle, chickens, geese, goats and horses roamed the streets of medieval London and Paris.\nMedieval homeowners were supposed to police their housefronts, including removing animal dung, but most urbanites were careless. William E. Cosner, a resident of the London suburb of Farringdon Without, received a complaint alleging that \"men could not pass [by his house] for the stink [of] . . . horse dung and horse piss.\" One irate Londoner complained that the runoff from the local slaughterhouse had made his garden \"stinking and putrid\", while another charged that the blood from slain animals flooded nearby streets and lanes, \"making a foul corruption and abominable sight to all dwelling near.\" In much of medieval Europe, sanitation legislation consisted of an ordinance requiring homeowners to shout, \"Look out below!\" three times before dumping a full chamber pot into the street.\nEarly Christians considered bathing a temptation. With this danger in mind, St. Benedict declared, \"To those who are well, and especially to the young, bathing shall seldom be permitted.\" St. Agnes took the injunction to heart and died without ever bathing.\nTerritorial origins.\nAccording to a team of medical geneticists led by Mark Achtman, \"Yersinia pestis\" \"evolved in or near China\" over 2,600 years ago. Later research by a team led by Galina Eroshenko placed its origins more specifically in the Tian Shan mountains on the border between Kyrgyzstan and China. However more recent research notes that the previous sampling contained East Asian bias and that sampling since then has discovered strains of \"Y. pestis\" in the Caucasus region previously thought to be restricted to China. There is also no physical or specific textual evidence of the Black Death in 14th century China. As a result, China's place in the sequence of the plague's spread is still debated to this day. According to Charles Creighton, records of epidemics in 14th-century China suggest nothing more than typhus and major Chinese outbreaks of epidemic disease post-date the European epidemic by several years. The earliest Chinese descriptions of the bubonic plague do not appear until the 1640s.\nNestorian gravesites dating from 1338 to 1339 near Issyk-Kul have inscriptions referring to plague, which has led some historians and epidemiologists to think they mark the outbreak of the epidemic; this is supported by recent direct findings of \"Y. pestis\" DNA in teeth samples from graves in the area with inscriptions referring to \"pestilence\" as the cause of death. Epidemics killed an estimated 25\u00a0million across Asia during the fifteen\u00a0years before the Black Death reached Constantinople in 1347.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The evidence does not suggest, at least at present, that these mortality crises were caused by plague. Although some scholars, including McNeill and Cao, see the 1333 outbreak as a prelude to the outbreaks in Europe from the late 1340s to the early 1350s, scholars of the Yuan and Ming periods remain skeptical about such an interpretation. Nonetheless, the remarkably high mortality rates during the Datong mortality should discourage us from rejecting the possibility of localized/regional outbreaks of plague in different parts of China, albeit differing in scale from, and unrelated to, the pandemic mortality of the Black Death. What we lack is any indication of a plague pandemic that engulfed vast territories of the Yuan Empire and later moved into western Eurasia through Central Asia.\nAccording to John Norris, evidence from Issyk-Kul indicates a small sporadic outbreak characteristic of transmission from rodents to humans with no wide-scale impact. According to Achtman, the dating of the plague suggests that it was not carried along the Silk Road, and its widespread appearance in that region probably postdates the European outbreak. Additionally, the Silk Road had already been heavily disrupted before the spread of the Black Death; Western and Middle Eastern traders found it difficult to trade on the Silk Road by 1325 and impossible by 1340, making its role in the spread of plague less likely. There are no records of the symptoms of the Black Death from Mongol sources or writings from travelers east of the Black Sea prior to the Crimean outbreak in 1346.\nOthers still favor an origin in China. The theory of Chinese origin implicates the Silk Road, the disease possibly spreading alongside Mongol armies and traders, or possibly arriving via ship\u2014however, this theory is still contested. It is speculated that rats aboard Zheng He's ships in the 15th century may have carried the plague to Southeast Asia, India, and Africa.\nResearch on the Delhi Sultanate and the Yuan dynasty shows no evidence of any serious epidemic in fourteenth-century India and no specific evidence of plague in 14th-century China, suggesting that the Black Death may not have reached these regions. Ole Benedictow argues that since the first clear reports of the Black Death come from Kaffa, the Black Death most likely originated in the nearby plague focus on the northwestern shore of the Caspian Sea.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Demographic historians estimate that China's population fell by at least 15 per cent, and perhaps as much as a third, between 1340 and 1370. This population loss coincided with the Black Death that ravaged Europe and much of the Islamic world in 1347\u201352. However, there is a conspicuous lack of evidence for pandemic disease on the scale of the Black Death in China at this time. War and famine \u2013 and the diseases that typically accompanied them \u2013 probably were the main causes of mortality in the final decades of Mongol rule.\nMonica Green suggests that other parts of Eurasia outside the west do not contain the same evidence of the Black Death, because there were actually four strains of \"Yersinia pestis\" that became predominant in different parts of the world. Mongol records of illness such as food poisoning may have been referring to the Black Death. Another theory is that the plague originated near Europe and cycled through the Mediterranean, Northern Europe and Russia before making its way to China. Other historians, such as John Norris and Ole Benedictaw, believe the plague likely originated in Europe or the Middle East, and never reached China. Norris specifically argues for an origin in Kurdistan rather than Central Asia.\nEuropean outbreak.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n The seventh year after it began, it came to England and first began in the towns and ports joining on the seacoasts, in Dorsetshire, where, as in other counties, it made the country quite void of inhabitants so that there were almost none left alive.\n... But at length it came to Gloucester, yea even to Oxford and to London, and finally it spread over all England and so wasted the people that scarce the tenth person of any sort was left alive.\n Geoffrey the Baker, \"Chronicon Angliae\"\nPlague was reportedly first introduced to Europe via Genoese traders from their port city of Kaffa in the Crimea in 1347. During a protracted siege of the city in 1345\u20131346, the Mongol Golden Horde army of Jani Beg\u2014whose mainly Tatar troops were suffering from the disease\u2014catapulted infected corpses over the city walls of Kaffa to infect the inhabitants, though it is also likely that infected rats travelled across the siege lines to spread the epidemic to the inhabitants. As the disease took hold, Genoese traders fled across the Black Sea to Constantinople, where the disease first arrived in Europe in summer 1347.\nThe epidemic there killed the 13-year-old son of the Byzantine emperor, John VI Kantakouzenos, who wrote a description of the disease modelled on Thucydides's account of the 5th century BCE Plague of Athens, noting the spread of the Black Death by ship between maritime cities. Nicephorus Gregoras, while writing to Demetrios Kydones, described the rising death toll, the futility of medicine, and the panic of the citizens. The first outbreak in Constantinople lasted a year, but the disease recurred ten times before 1400.\nCarried by twelve Genoese galleys, plague arrived by ship in Sicily in October 1347; the disease spread rapidly all over the island. Galleys from Kaffa reached Genoa and Venice in January 1348, but it was the outbreak in Pisa a few weeks later that was the entry point into northern Italy. Towards the end of January, one of the galleys expelled from Italy arrived in Marseilles.\nFrom Italy, the disease spread northwest across Europe, striking France, Spain, Portugal, and England by June 1348, then spreading east and north through Germany, Scotland and Scandinavia from 1348 to 1350. It was introduced into Norway in 1349 when a ship landed at Ask\u00f8y, then spread to Bj\u00f8rgvin (modern Bergen). Finally, it spread to northern Russia in 1352 and reached Moscow in 1353. Plague was less common in parts of Europe with less-established trade relations, including the majority of the Basque Country, isolated parts of Belgium and the Netherlands, and isolated Alpine villages throughout the continent.\nAccording to some epidemiologists, periods of unfavorable weather decimated plague-infected rodent populations, forcing their fleas onto alternative hosts, inducing plague outbreaks which often peaked in the hot summers of the Mediterranean and during the cool autumn months of the southern Baltic region. Among many other culprits of plague contagiousness, pre-existing malnutrition weakened the immune response, contributing to an immense decline in European population.\nWest Asian and North African outbreak.\nThe disease struck various regions in the Middle East and North Africa during the pandemic, leading to serious depopulation and permanent change in both economic and social structures. \nBy autumn 1347, plague had reached Alexandria in Egypt, transmitted by sea from Constantinople via a single merchant ship carrying slaves. By late summer 1348, it reached Cairo, capital of the Mamluk Sultanate, cultural center of the Islamic world, and the largest city in the Mediterranean Basin; the Bahriyya child sultan an-Nasir Hasan fled and more than a third of the 600,000 residents died. The Nile was choked with corpses despite Cairo having a medieval hospital, the late 13th-century bimaristan of the Qalawun complex. The historian al-Maqrizi described the abundant work for grave-diggers and practitioners of funeral rites; plague recurred in Cairo more than fifty times over the following one and a half centuries.\nDuring 1347, the disease travelled eastward to Gaza by April; by July it had reached Damascus, and in October plague had broken out in Aleppo. That year, in the territory of modern Lebanon, Syria, Israel, and Palestine, the cities of Ascalon, Acre, Jerusalem, Sidon, and Homs were all infected. In 1348\u20131349, the disease reached Antioch. The city's residents fled to the north, but most of them ended up dying during the journey. Within two years, the plague had spread throughout the Islamic world, from Arabia across North Africa.\nThe pandemic spread westwards from Alexandria along the African coast, while in April 1348 Tunis was infected by ship from Sicily. Tunis was then under attack by an army from Morocco; this army dispersed in 1348 and brought the contagion with them to Morocco, whose epidemic may also have been seeded from the Islamic city of Almer\u00eda in al-Andalus.\nMecca became infected in 1348 by pilgrims performing the Hajj. In 1351 or 1352, the Rasulid sultan of the Yemen, al-Mujahid Ali, was released from Mamluk captivity in Egypt and carried plague with him on his return home. During 1349, records show the city of Mosul suffered a massive epidemic, and the city of Baghdad experienced a second round of the disease.\nSigns and symptoms.\nBubonic plague.\nSymptoms of the plague include fever of , headaches, painful aching joints, nausea and vomiting, and a general feeling of malaise. Left untreated, 80% of victims die within eight days.\nContemporary accounts of the pandemic are varied and often imprecise. The most commonly noted symptom was the appearance of buboes (or \"gavocciolos\") in the groin, neck and armpits, which oozed pus and bled when opened. Boccaccio's description:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />In men and women alike it first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumours in the groin or armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg\u00a0... From the two said parts of the body this deadly \"gavocciolo\" soon began to propagate and spread itself in all directions indifferently; after which the form of the malady began to change, black spots or livid making their appearance in many cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere, now few and large, now minute and numerous. As the \"gavocciolo\" had been and still was an infallible token of approaching death, such also were these spots on whomsoever they showed themselves.\nThis was followed by acute fever and vomiting of blood. Most people died two to seven days after initial infection. Freckle-like spots and rashes, which may have been caused by flea-bites, were identified as another potential sign of plague.\nPneumonic plague.\nLodewijk Heyligen, whose master Cardinal Giovanni Colonna died of plague in 1348, noted a distinct form of the disease, pneumonic plague, that infected the lungs and led to respiratory problems. Symptoms include fever, cough and blood-tinged sputum. As the disease progresses, sputum becomes free-flowing and bright red. Pneumonic plague has a mortality rate of 90\u201395%.\nSepticemic plague.\nSepticemic plague is the least common of the three forms, with an untreated mortality rate near 100%. Symptoms are high fevers and purple skin patches (purpura due to disseminated intravascular coagulation). In cases of pneumonic and particularly septicemic plague, the progress of the disease is so rapid that there would often be no time for the development of the enlarged lymph nodes that were noted as buboes.\nConsequences.\nDeaths.\nThere are no exact figures for the death toll; the rate varied widely by locality. Urban centers with higher populations suffered longer periods of abnormal mortality. Some estimate that it may have killed between 75,000,000 and 200,000,000 people in Eurasia.<ref name=\"ABC/Reuters\"></ref> A study published in 2022 of pollen samples across Europe from 1250 to 1450 was used to estimate changes in agricultural output before and after the Black Death. The authors found great variability in different regions, with evidence for high mortality in areas of Scandinavia, France, western Germany, Greece, and central Italy, but uninterrupted agricultural growth in central and eastern Europe, Iberia, and Ireland. The authors concluded that \"the pandemic was immensely destructive in some areas, but in others it had a far lighter touch ... [the study methodology] invalidates histories of the Black Death that assume Y. pestis was uniformly prevalent, or nearly so, across Europe and that the pandemic had a devastating demographic impact everywhere.\"\nThe Black Death killed, by various estimations, from 25 to 60% of Europe's population. Robert Gottfried writes that as early as 1351, \"agents for Pope Clement VI calculated the number of dead in Christian Europe at 23,840,000. With a preplague population of about 75 million, Clement's figure accounts for mortality of 31%-a rate about midway between the 50% mortality estimated for East Anglia, Tuscany, and parts of Scandinavia, and the less-than-15% morbidity for Bohemia and Galicia. And it is unerringly close to Froissart's claim that \"a third of the world died,\" a measurement probably drawn from St. John's figure of mortality from plague in the Book of Revelation, a favorite medieval source of information.\" Ole J. Benedictow proposes 60% mortality rate for Europe as a whole based on available data, with up to 80% based on poor nutritional conditions in the 14th century. According to medieval historian Philip Daileader, it is likely that over four years, 45\u201350% of the European population died of plague.\nThe overwhelming number of deaths in Europe sometimes made mass burials necessary, and some sites had hundreds or thousands of bodies. The mass burial sites that have been excavated have allowed archaeologists to continue interpreting and defining the biological, sociological, historical, and anthropological implications of the Black Death. The mortality rate of the Black Death in the 14th century was far greater than the worst 20th-century outbreaks of \"Y. pestis\" plague, which occurred in India and killed as much as 3% of the population of certain cities.\nIn 1348, the disease spread so rapidly that nearly a third of the European population perished before any physicians or government authorities had time to reflect upon its origins. In crowded cities, it was not uncommon for as much as 50% of the population to die. Half of Paris' population of 100,000 people died. In Italy, the population of Florence was reduced from between 110,000 and 120,000 inhabitants in 1338 to 50,000 in 1351. At least 60% of the population of Hamburg and Bremen perished, and a similar percentage of Londoners may have died from the disease as well, leaving a death toll of approximately 62,000 between 1346 and 1353. Florence's tax records suggest that 80% of the city's population died within four months in 1348. Before 1350, there were about 170,000 settlements in Germany, and this was reduced by nearly 40,000 by 1450. The disease bypassed some areas, with the most isolated areas being less vulnerable to contagion. Plague did not appear in Flanders until the turn of the 15th century, and the impact was less severe on the populations of Hainaut, Finland, northern Germany, and areas of Poland. Monks, nuns, and priests were especially hard-hit since they cared for people ill with the plague. The level of mortality in the rest of Eastern Europe was likely similar to that of Western Europe in the first outbreak, with descriptions suggesting a similar effect on Russian towns, and the cycles of plague in Russia being roughly equivalent.\nIn 1382, the physician to the Avignon Papacy, Raimundo Chalmel de Vinario (), observed the decreasing mortality rate of successive outbreaks of plague in 1347\u20131348, 1362, 1371 and 1382 in his treatise \"On Epidemics\" (). In the first outbreak, two thirds of the population contracted the illness and most patients died; in the next, half the population became ill but only some died; by the third, a tenth were affected and many survived; while by the fourth occurrence, only one in twenty people were sickened and most of them survived. By the 1380s in Europe, the plague predominantly affected children. Chalmel de Vinario recognised that bloodletting was ineffective (though he continued to prescribe bleeding for members of the Roman Curia, whom he disliked), and said that all true cases of plague were caused by astrological factors and were incurable; he was never able to effect a cure.\nThe populations of some Italian cities, notably Florence, did not regain their pre-14th century size until the 19th century. Italian chronicler Agnolo di Tura recorded his experience from Siena, where plague arrived in May 1348:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Father abandoned child, wife husband, one brother another; for this illness seemed to strike through the breath and sight. And so they died. And none could be found to bury the dead for money or friendship. Members of a household brought their dead to a ditch as best they could, without priest, without divine offices ... great pits were dug and piled deep with the multitude of dead. And they died by the hundreds both day and night ... And as soon as those ditches were filled more were dug ... And I, Agnolo di Tura ... buried my five children with my own hands. And there were also those who were so sparsely covered with earth that the dogs dragged them forth and devoured many bodies throughout the city. There was no one who wept for any death, for all awaited death. And so many died that all believed it was the end of the world.\nThe most widely accepted estimate for the Middle East, including Iraq, Iran, and Syria, during this time, is for a death toll of about a third of the population. The Black Death killed about 40% of Egypt's population. In Cairo, with a population numbering as many as 600,000, and possibly the largest city west of China, between one third and 40% of the inhabitants died within eight months. By the 18th century, the population of Cairo was halved from its numbers in 1347.\nEconomic.\nIt has been suggested that the Black Death, like other outbreaks through history, disproportionately affected the poorest people and those already in worse physical condition than the wealthier citizens. \nBut along with population decline from the pandemic, wages soared in response to a subsequent labour shortage. In some places rents collapsed (e.g., lettings \"used to bring in \u00a35, and now but \u00a31.\") \nHowever, many labourers, artisans, and craftsmen\u2014those living from money-wages alone\u2014suffered a reduction in real incomes owing to rampant inflation. Landowners were also pushed to substitute monetary rents for labour services in an effort to keep tenants. Taxes and tithes became difficult to collect, with living poor refusing to cover the share of the rich deceased, because many properties were empty and unfarmed, and because tax-collectors, where they could be employed, refused to go to plague spots. \nThe trade disruptions in the Mongol Empire caused by the Black Death was one of the reasons for its collapse.\nEnvironmental.\nA study performed by Thomas Van Hoof of the Utrecht University suggests that the innumerable deaths brought on by the pandemic cooled the climate by freeing up land and triggering reforestation. This may have led to the Little Ice Age.\nPersecutions.\nRenewed religious fervor and fanaticism increased in the wake of the Black Death. Some Europeans targeted \"various groups such as Jews, friars, foreigners, beggars, pilgrims\", lepers, and Romani, blaming them for the crisis. Lepers, and others with skin diseases such as acne or psoriasis, were killed throughout Europe.\nBecause 14th-century healers and governments were at a loss to explain or stop the disease, Europeans turned to astrological forces, earthquakes and the poisoning of wells by Jews as possible reasons for outbreaks. Many believed the epidemic was a punishment by God for their sins, and could be relieved by winning God's forgiveness.\nThere were many attacks against Jewish communities. In the Strasbourg massacre of February 1349, about 2,000 Jews were murdered. In August 1349, the Jewish communities in Mainz and Cologne were annihilated. By 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities had been destroyed. During this period many Jews relocated to Poland, where they received a welcome from King Casimir the Great.\nSocial.\nOne theory that has been advanced is that the Black Death's devastation of Florence, between 1348 and 1350, resulted in a shift in the world view of people in 14th-century Italy that ultimately led to the Renaissance. Italy was particularly badly hit by the pandemic, and the resulting familiarity with death may have caused thinkers to dwell more on their lives on Earth, rather than on spirituality and the afterlife. It has also been argued that the Black Death prompted a new wave of piety, manifested in the sponsorship of religious works of art.\nThis does not fully explain why the Renaissance occurred in Italy in the 14th century; the Renaissance's emergence was most likely the result of the complex interaction of the above factors, in combination with an influx of Greek scholars after the fall of the Byzantine Empire. As a result of the drastic reduction in the populace the value of the working class increased, and commoners came to enjoy more freedom. To answer the increased need for labour, workers travelled in search of the most favorable position economically.\nPrior to the emergence of the Black Death, the continent was considered a feudalistic society, composed of fiefs and city-states frequently managed by the Catholic Church. The pandemic completely restructured both religion and political forces; survivors began to turn to other forms of spirituality and the power dynamics of the fiefs and city-states crumbled. The survivors of the pandemic found not only that the prices of food were lower but also that lands were more abundant, and many of them inherited property from their dead relatives, and this probably contributed to the destabilization of feudalism.\nThe word \"quarantine\" has its roots in this period, though the practice of isolating people to prevent the spread of disease is older. In the city-state of Ragusa (modern Dubrovnik, Croatia), a thirty-day isolation period was implemented in 1377 for new arrivals to the city from plague-affected areas. The isolation period was later extended to forty days, and given the name \"quarantino\" from the Italian word for \"forty\".\nAll institutions were affected. Smaller monasteries and convents became unviable and closed. Up to half parish churches lost their priest, apart from the parishioners. Religious sensibilities changed:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"[...]looking back into the past, the history of the Church during the Middle Ages in England appears one continuous and stately progress. It is much nearer to the truth to say that in 1351 the whole ecclesiastical system was wholly disorganised, or, indeed, more than half ruined, and that everything had to be built up anew.[...] To secure the most necessary public ministrations of the rites of religion the most inadequately-prepared subjects had to be accepted, and even these could be obtained only in insufficient numbers.[...]The immediate effect on the people was a religious paralysis. Instead of turning men to God the scourge turned them to despair[...] In time the religious sense and feeling revived, but in many respects it took a new tone, and its manifestations ran in new channels[...]characterised by a devotional and more self-reflective cast than previously.[...]The new religious spirit found outward expression in the multitude of guilds which sprang into existence at this time, in the remarkable and almost, as it may seem to some, extravagant development of certain pious practices, in the singular spread of a more personal devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, to the Blessed Virgin, to the Five Wounds, to the Holy Name, and other such manifestations of a more tender or more familiar piety.[...]At the close of the fourteenth century and during the course of the fifteenth the supply of ornaments, furniture, plate, statues painted or in highly decked \"coats,\" with which the churches were literally encumbered as time went on, proved a striking contrast to the comparative simplicity which characterised former days, as witnessed by a comparison of inventories.[...]In fact, the fifteenth century witnessed the beginnings of a great middle-class movement, which can be distinctly traced to the effect of the great pestilence[...]\nRecurrences.\nSecond plague pandemic.\nThe plague repeatedly returned to haunt Europe and the Mediterranean throughout the 14th to 17th centuries. According to Jean-No\u00ebl Biraben, the plague was present somewhere in Europe in every year between 1346 and 1671 (although some researchers have cautions about the uncritical use of Biraben's data). The second pandemic was particularly widespread in the following years: 1360\u20131363; 1374; 1400; 1438\u20131439; 1456\u20131457; 1464\u20131466; 1481\u20131485; 1500\u20131503; 1518\u20131531; 1544\u20131548; 1563\u20131566; 1573\u20131588; 1596\u20131599; 1602\u20131611; 1623\u20131640; 1644\u20131654; and 1664\u20131667. Subsequent outbreaks, though severe, marked the plague's retreat from most of Europe (18th\u00a0century) and North Africa (19th\u00a0century).\nHistorian George Sussman argued that the plague had not occurred in East Africa until the 20th century. However, other sources suggest that the second pandemic did indeed reach sub-Saharan Africa.\nAccording to historian Geoffrey Parker, \"France alone lost almost a million people to the plague in the epidemic of 1628\u201331.\" In the first half of the 17th century, a plague killed some 1.7 million people in Italy. More than 1.25 million deaths resulted from the extreme incidence of plague in 17th-century Spain.\nThe Black Death ravaged much of the Islamic world. Plague could be found in the Islamic world almost every year between 1500 and 1850. Sometimes the outbreaks affected small areas, while other outbreaks affected multiple regions. Plague repeatedly struck the cities of North Africa. Algiers lost 30,000\u201350,000 inhabitants to it in 1620\u20131621, and again in 1654\u20131657, 1665, 1691, and 1740\u20131742. Cairo suffered more than fifty plague epidemics within 150 years from the plague's first appearance, with the final outbreak of the second pandemic there in the 1840s. Plague remained a major event in Ottoman society until the second quarter of the 19th century. Between 1701 and 1750, thirty-seven larger and smaller epidemics were recorded in Constantinople, and an additional thirty-one between 1751 and 1800. Baghdad has suffered severely from visitations of the plague, and sometimes two-thirds of its population died.\nThird plague pandemic.\nThe third plague pandemic (1855\u20131859) started in China in the mid-19th century, spreading to all inhabited continents and killing 10 million people in India alone. The investigation of the pathogen that caused the 19th-century plague was begun by teams of scientists who visited Hong Kong in 1894, among whom was the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin, for whom the pathogen was named.\nTwelve plague outbreaks in Australia between 1900 and 1925 resulted in over 1,000 deaths, chiefly in Sydney. This led to the establishment of a Public Health Department there which undertook some leading-edge research on plague transmission from rat fleas to humans via the bacillus \"Yersinia pestis\".\nThe first North American plague epidemic was the San Francisco plague of 1900\u20131904, followed by another outbreak in 1907\u20131908.\nModern-day.\nModern treatment methods include insecticides, the use of antibiotics, and a plague vaccine. It is feared that the plague bacterium could develop drug resistance and again become a major health threat. One case of a drug-resistant form of the bacterium was found in Madagascar in 1995. Another outbreak in Madagascar was reported in November 2014. In October 2017, the deadliest outbreak of the plague in modern times hit Madagascar, killing 170 people and infecting thousands.\nAn estimate of the case fatality rate for the modern plague, after the introduction of antibiotics, is 11%, although it may be higher in underdeveloped regions.\nFootnotes.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["4501", "191429"], "permutation_1": ["191429", "4501"], "permutation_2": ["191429", "4501"], "permutation_3": ["4501", "191429"]}
{"id": "2hop__618544_721739", "docs_added": {"122059": "Oak Park Heights, Minnesota\nCity in Minnesota, United States\nOak Park Heights is a city in Washington County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 4,849 at the 2020 census.\nHistory.\nFormerly called simply Oak Park, the city was platted in 1857. The 1932 Log Cabin restaurant and 1939 Stillwater Overlook are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of ; is land and is water.\nOak Park Heights is located adjacent to the city of Stillwater. Minnesota State Highways 5, 36 and 95 are three of the main routes in the community.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nAs of the census of 2010, there were 4,339 people, 1,842 households, and 980 families living in the city. The population density was . There were 2,039 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 89.8% White, 4.5% African American, 1.6% Native American, 2.0% Asian, 0.5% from other races, and 1.5% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 3.0% of the population.\nThere were 1,842 households, of which 23.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 40.7% were married couples living together, 8.5% had a female householder with no husband present, 4.1% had a male householder with no wife present, and 46.8% were non-families. 42.6% of all households were made up of individuals, and 24.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.06 and the average family size was 2.83.\nThe median age in the city was 44.9 years. 17.8% of residents were under the age of 18; 8% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 24.3% were from 25 to 44; 27% were from 45 to 64; and 23% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 52.1% male and 47.9% female.\n2000 census.\nAs of the census of 2000, there were 3,957 people, 1,528 households, and 921 families living in the city. The population density was . There were 1,581 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 91.03% White, 4.42% African American, 0.91% Native American, 1.29% Asian, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 0.63% from other races, and 1.69% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.10% of the population.\nThere were 1,528 households, out of which 30.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 45.7% were married couples living together, 10.1% had a female householder with no husband present, and 39.7% were non-families. 34.8% of all households were made up of individuals, and 16.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.26 and the average family size was 2.94.\nIn the city, the population was spread out, with 21.8% under the age of 18, 9.1% from 18 to 24, 34.4% from 25 to 44, 21.8% from 45 to 64, and 12.8% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females, there were 117.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 119.3 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $48,425, and the median income for a family was $69,485. Males had a median income of $46,558 versus $30,788 for females. The per capita income for the city was $23,293. About 2.1% of families and 3.4% of the population were below the poverty line, including 2.9% of those under age 18 and 6.2% of those age 65 or over.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4700811": "Stillwater Area High School\nStillwater Area High School (SAHS) is a public school located in Oak Park Heights, Minnesota, United States. It serves as the primary high school for the Stillwater Area Public School District (834), the oldest public school district in Minnesota.\nThe current campus was built in 1993 thanks to a 28 million dollar bond that was approved by the citizens of District 834. The previous location is now Stillwater Middle School. (SMS). Students from both SMS and Oakland Middle School attend Stillwater Area High School. \"Newsweek\" ranked the school #326 in their \"List of the 500 Top High Schools in America in 2015.\"\nStillwater was designed by the architecture firm ATS&R. In 2017, the school completed a $97 million dollar renovation, involving the construction of a new 9th grade wing, a new gym and Pony Activity Center (PAC).\nAthletics.\nThe 2016 boys' soccer team finished the season ranked fourth in the nation by \"USA Today\" on its final Super 25 Expert Rankings.\nImpostor.\nIn 2005, Stillwater Area High School was visited three times by somebody calling himself Caspian James Crichton-Stuart IV, the Fifth Duke of Cleveland and 27th in line for the British throne. He claimed he was seventeen years old and interested in attending the school. Student journalists from the school newspaper \"The Pony Express\" received national attention after uncovering the potential student was actually Joshua Adam Gardner, a 22 year old registered sex offender. The journalists who helped uncover the true identity of Gardner were interviewed on Fox News, CNN, Good Morning America, MSNBC, and participated in a number of radio and newspaper interviews.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "130516": "Stillwater, Oklahoma\nStillwater is the tenth-largest city in the U.S. state of Oklahoma, and the county seat of Payne County. It is located in north-central Oklahoma at the intersection of U.S. Route 177 and State Highway 51. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 48,394. The Stillwater Micropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 78,399 according to the 2012 census estimate. Stillwater was part of the first Oklahoma Land Run held on April 22, 1889, when the Unassigned Lands were opened for settlement and became the core of the new Oklahoma Territory. The city charter was adopted on August 24, 1889, and operates under a council-manager government system.\nStillwater has a diverse economy with a foundation in aerospace, agribusiness, biotechnology, optoelectronics, printing and publishing, and software and standard manufacturing. Stillwater is home to the main campus of Oklahoma State University (the city's largest employer) as well as Northern Oklahoma College \u2013 Stillwater, Meridian Technology Center, and the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education. The city is also home to the National Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum.\nHistory.\nThe north-central region of Oklahoma became part of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. In 1832, author and traveler Washington Irving provided the first recorded description of the area around Stillwater in his book \"A Tour on the Prairies\". He wrote of \"a glorious prairie spreading out beneath the golden beams of an autumnal sun. The deep and frequent traces of buffalo, showed it to be a one of their favorite grazing grounds.\"\nAccording to one legend, local Native American tribes\u2014Ponca, Kiowa, Osage, Pawnee\u2014called the creek \"Still Water\" because the water was always still. A second legend states that cattlemen driving herds from Texas to railways back east always found water \"still there\". A third legend holds that David L. Payne walked up to Stillwater Creek and said, \"This town should be named \"Still Water\"\". Members of the board thought he was crazy, but the name stuck.\nStillwater Creek received its official name in 1884 when William L. Couch established his \"boomer colony\" on its banks. While the creek itself was tranquil, the next few years saw turmoil as pioneers sought free, fertile land and soldiers held them off while complicated legal issues and land titles with Creek and Seminole tribes were hashed out. On April 22, 1889, the cannons fired signaling the first Land Run that opened up the Unassigned Lands of the Oklahoma Territory, which included Stillwater. By the end of the day, had been claimed and designated as Stillwater Township and a tent city with a population numbering 300 had sprung up on the prairie. The \"Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture\" simply says that the name officially became Stillwater only when the post office opened on May 28, 1889.\nOn Christmas Eve, 1890, the legislature of Oklahoma Territory passed a bill certifying Stillwater as the land grant college site. In 1894, Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College held a dedication of its first brick building, Assembly Building, later known as Old Central. Between 1889 and statehood, Stillwater grew. By statehood in 1907, downtown Stillwater was home to more than 50 buildings including several banks, churches, grocery stores, hotels, and department stores.\nThe first newspaper was the Stillwater Gazette; telephone and gas service arrived in 1899; and the Eastern Oklahoma Railroad arrived in 1900.\nAround this time, direct descendants of Johann Sebastian Bach began to reside in Stillwater, through his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and his illegitimate grandchild.\nThe population in 1917 was 3,000 and by World War II it had grown to more than 10,000. During the war, town leaders' aim was to convert Oklahoma A&M into a war training center. They succeeded in creating 12 training units that involved bringing nearly 40,000 service men and women to Stillwater. The WAVES (Women's Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) was the largest with 10,000 participants. Quonset huts were dotted across town and barracks occupied the site where Stillwater Medical Center and the CareerTech headquarters are now. This vast operation tided the city through the war and served as a base for a healthy economy in the postwar period. In 1952, the Industrial Foundation was established and its trustees worked to bring new industry to town: Moore Plant in 1966, Swan Hose in 1968, Mercury Marine in 1973, National Standard plant in 1988, World Color Press in 1974 and Armstrong World Industries, Inc. in 1988. The census of 2000, the population was 39,065; however, the population was adjusted to 46,156 in 2009.\nGovernment.\nThe City of Stillwater operates under a council\u2013manager government system, in which an elected city council is responsible for making policy, passing ordinances and approving the city's budget. The council appoints a city manager who implements the policies adopted by the council.\nThe city council meets the first and third Monday of the month in the Council Room at the Stillwater Municipal Building, 723 S. Lewis.\nStillwater does not have city council districts; instead, it has general elections every year. The mayor and councilors are elected to three-year or four-year terms with at least one of the five seats up for election in April every year. Any person elected to the office of mayor or council member after January 1, 2017, is eligible to serve no more than 12 years on the council. Years served do not need to be consecutive. The vice mayor is elected by the council members and acts as mayor during mayor's absence.\nAs of July 2022[ [update]], the city council consists of Mayor Will Joyce, Vice Mayor Alane Zannotti, and councilors Amy Dzialowski, Kevin Clark and Christie Hawkins.\nThe City of Stillwater employs approximately 500 people. The city encourages resident participation on the boards and committees, and applications are accepted year around. Commissions and authorities oversee city policies and services.\nStillwater's 2009 crime rate for serious crimes (UCR Part 1) was 3,657 per 100,000 residents compared to the 2009 national crime rate of 3,466 per crimes per 100,000 residents (FBI 2009 Crime in the United States). In 2009, Stillwater reported: 22 rapes, 15 robberies, 519 assaults, 308 burglaries, and 1,185 larcenies.\nStillwater is located in districts 33 and 34 of the Oklahoma State House of Representatives and is represented by Republican John Talley in the 33rd district and Democrat Trish Ranson in the 34th district; as of July 2022 In the Oklahoma State Senate, Stillwater is in the 21st district and is represented by Republican Tom Dugger.\nIn the United States House of Representatives, Stillwater is represented by Republican Frank Lucas, of the third district in Oklahoma. In the U.S. Senate, Stillwater is represented by Republicans James Lankford and Markwayne Mullin.\nGeography.\nStillwater is located north-northeast of downtown Oklahoma City and directly west of downtown Tulsa by road. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 28.3\u00a0square miles (73.3\u00a0km2), of which 27.9\u00a0square miles (72.1\u00a0km2) is land and 0.5\u00a0square mile (1.2\u00a0km2) (1.62%) is water.\nClimate.\nStillwater has a humid subtropical climate, and is located in the area popularly known as \"Tornado Alley\". During peak storm season in the spring, tornado watches and warnings are frequent, with sirens sounding to warn townsfolk to hurry to shelters when necessary. Summers are sunny, hot, and humid, with the temperature reaching or exceeding 100 (38\u00a0\u00b0C) ten times annually on average. Winters are generally sunny, mild, and dry, with an average January high temperature of and an average annual snowfall of .\nThe highest recorded temperature was on August 11, 1936, and the lowest recorded temperature was on February 10, 2011.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nAs of the census of 2010, there were 45,688 people, 17,941 households, and 7,920 families residing in the city. The population density was . The racial makeup of the city was 79.50% White, 4.71% African American, 3.93% Native American, 5.56% Asian, 0.06% Pacific Islander, 1.19% from other races, and 5.05% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 4.26% of the population.\nAs of the census of 2000, there were 15,604 households, out of which 20.8% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 36.1% were married couples living together, 7.7% had a female householder with no husband present, and 53.1% were non-families. 34.6% of all households were made up of individuals, and 6.9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.13 and the average family size was 2.81.\nIn the city, the population was spread out, with 15.2% under the age of 18, 38.2% from 18 to 24, 24.4% from 25 to 44, 13.6% from 45 to 64, and 8.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 24 years. For every 100 females, there were 102.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 102.4 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $25,432, and the median income for a family was $41,938. Males had a median income of $31,623 versus $22,312 for females. The per capita income for the city was $15,789. About 12.6% of families and 27.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 18.2% of those under age 18 and 8.9% of those age 65 or over.\nEconomy.\nStillwater is home to a diverse mix of business and industry, from manufacturing to advanced technology. Among its export industries are printing and publishing, floor covering, wire products, software, food and kindred products, and research. Stillwater has the following economic clusters: aerospace, agribusiness, biotechnology, optoelectronics, printing and publishing, software and standard manufacturing.\nOklahoma State University plays a significant part of Stillwater's overall economy with more than 20,000 students, 5,500 personnel and a focus on research and technology.\nAccording to the Chamber of Commerce webpage, \"Existing Industries\", top employers in Stillwater are as follows:\nStillwater has a number of distinct shopping and entertainment areas. Downtown Stillwater is a business improvement district with Main Street as its primary thoroughfare. It is bounded by Duncan Street to the west, Lowry Street to the east, and 4th Avenue to the north; it gradually narrows to 15th Avenue to the south.\nThe Strip on Washington Street features small shops, restaurants and live music. It is adjacent to Oklahoma State University where University Avenue and Washington Street intersect. A few blocks east is Campus Corner on Knoblock Street that features unique shops and restaurants, including the original home to Hideaway Pizza.\nEducation.\nOklahoma State University \u2013 Stillwater is located in Stillwater.\nIn 2003, Northern Oklahoma College added a campus in Stillwater. Applicants who do not meet Oklahoma State University admission requirements may attend the NOC-OSU Gateway Program held on the campus.\nStillwater is home to the Meridian Technology Center and also the state agency that oversees career technology schools in Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education.\nStillwater Public Schools is the city's only public school district. There are more than 5,400 students enrolled in the district. The district includes Highland Park, Richmond, Sangre Ridge, Skyline, Westwood and Will Rogers elementary schools; Stillwater High School; Lincoln Academy (Alternative Education); Stillwater Middle School; and Stillwater Junior High.\nLibraries.\nStillwater has been served by the Stillwater Public Library since 1922. In 1990, Stillwater voters passed a $4.98\u00a0million bond issue for the construction of a new public library at 1107 S. Duck. The Stillwater Public Library provides a core collections of more than 100,000\u00a0volumes and includes books, audio books, music CDs, DVDs, videos magazines and newspapers as well as technological services. The library is active in the community, holding events and programs, including free computer classes, children's storytimes, and scholarly databases with information on a variety of topics.\nThe Edmon Low Library at Oklahoma State University houses approximately 3\u00a0million volumes, 190,000\u00a0government documents, 70,000\u00a0electronic and print serials. Stillwater campus branch libraries include the Architecture Library, Curriculum Materials Library, Veterinary Medicine Library, Electronic Publishing Center and the Library Annex. It is a federal depository library.\nArts and culture.\nStillwater is known as the home of red dirt music, a mixture of folk, country, blues and rock. Notable red dirt artists from Stillwater include Cross Canadian Ragweed, Jason Boland and the Stragglers, the Red Dirt Rangers, The Great Divide, No Justice, Jenny Labow, the Jason Savory Band, and the father of red dirt music, Bob Childers.\nGarth Brooks, Other Lives, and The All-American Rejects launched their careers playing the local bars like Willie's Saloon, Tumbleweed Dance Hall, and Eskimo Joe's.\nEskimo Joe's collectable T-shirts have been spotted all around the globe.\nTumbleweed Dance Hall, home of the world-famous annual Calf Fry, was nominated for \"Dancehall of the Year\" award by the Academy of Country Music.\nLocated on The Strip on Washington Street, Willie's Saloon is a Stillwater landmark. It is known for launching the career of Garth Brooks after he was discovered there by Dallas entertainment attorney, Rod Phelps.\nStillwater hosts several performing arts series, including performances at the City of Stillwater Community Center, the Town and Gown Community Theater. OSU's Allied Arts holds performances in the Seretean Center and the Jerry L. Davis Studio Theatre on the OSU-Stillwater campus. The McKnight Center, a new state-of-the-art performing arts center on campus, is currently under construction.\nStillwater is served by several voluntary organizations dedicated to providing entertainment and cultural experiences: the Stillwater Community Singers, the Stillwater Community Band and Stillwater Jazz.\nAnnual festivals and events.\nStillwater is home to a number of annual festivals and community events held throughout the year. Residents also benefit from the many events and activities hosted by Oklahoma State University.\nSince 1920, Oklahoma State University has welcomed alumni to \"America\u2019s Greatest Homecoming Celebration.\" Each year, more than 70,000 alumni and friends return to campus for \"Walkaround\" and the Homecoming Parade.\nSpring kicks off with the Stillwater Public Education Foundation's \"A Taste of Stillwater\", a fundraiser held every March. Other events include the Tumbleweed Calf Fry, the Stillwater Home Builders Association's Home and Garden Show, the Remember the 10 Run, and the OSU Jazz Festival.\nSince 2012, Stillwater has hosted the annual Land Run 100, a 100-mile (161\u00a0km) bicycling endurance race around north-central Oklahoma.\nThe annual Red Dirt Film Festival is held every March. The independent film festival features screenings, panels, and workshops on the OSU campus.\nThe Stillwater Arts Festival is now in its third decade. The festival is a two-day, juried art show held in April that features live entertainment, artist demonstrations, and children's activities.\nThe Oklahoma Special Olympics\u2019 Annual Summer Games take place every May. It is the largest amateur sporting event in Oklahoma and the largest Special Olympics event in the United States.\nSince 2011, Stillwater has hosted the annual Bob Childers' Gypsy Cafe, a red dirt music festival. Benefits from the event go to the Red Dirt Relief Fund which supports Oklahoma musicians in crisis.\nIn the summer, there is the Krazy Daze Shopping Extravaganza and the Payne County Fair. On Independence Day, Stillwater hosts the annual Boomer Blast, a fireworks show at Boomer Lake Park.\nThe fall season begins Collegefest, OSU Student Government Association's Lights on Stillwater (a trade-show style event where students learn about local organizations, shops, restaurants, and services), and the Downtown Stillwater Car Show. The annual Downtown Stillwater Halloween Festival is held the Tuesday before Halloween and includes a costume contest.\nFor more than twenty years, the Eskimo Joe's Juke Joint Jog 5K and Fun Run (one mile race) have been held in the fall to benefit the Stillwater Area United Way.\nWinter is celebrated with the Downtown Parade of Lights and the Madrigal Dinner Concert on the OSU campus.\nPoints of interest.\nThe Sheerar Museum of Stillwater History is dedicated to collecting, preserving, and interpreting the history of Stillwater. The museum features exhibits on Stillwater and Payne County, including the first land run that opened Oklahoma Territory for settlement in 1889. The museum also offers a variety of temporary exhibits and programs.\nThe National Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum is also located in Stillwater. It is dedicated to preserving the heritage of the sport, celebrating achievements, and encouraging young athletes.\nThe Washington Irving Trail and Museum, located in a rural setting, celebrates the heritage of Payne County. It is named for American writer Washington Irving who used to camp in the area. The museum features items from the famous Oklahoma boomer, David L. Payne.\nIn October 2013, Oklahoma State University opened the OSU Museum of Art in the renovated Postal Plaza, a former WPA-built Federal Post Office in Downtown Stillwater. The university began collecting art in the 1930s, an endeavor initiated by the former head of the OSU Art Department, Doel Reed. The university also operates the Gardiner Art Gallery on campus in the Bartlett Center for the Visual Arts, home of the OSU Art Department. Exhibits in the gallery, which are open to the public, vary from student and faculty exhibits to national shows.\nThe Botanic Garden at Oklahoma State University covers more than with thousands of species of flowers, shrubs, grasses and trees. It features specialized gardens like butterfly and organic gardens, turf and nursery research centers, and a Centennial Grove. It also has a studio garden where OETA's show \"Oklahoma Gardening\" is filmed. The facility also has an authentic Japanese Tea Ceremony Garden.\nThe David L. Payne Memorial Monument, located in Boomer Lake Park, honors Oklahoma boomer, David L. Payne. In 1995, his body was exhumed and moved from Wellington, Kansas to this site. Payne County, Oklahoma, is named for him.\nThe International Friendship Garden is located at the City of Stillwater Community Center and was built in 1997 by the Kameoka Landscape Gardeners Association to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the sister city relationship between Stillwater and Kameoka, Japan. The gardeners shipped 22\u00a0tons of materials, tools, and supplies to Stillwater from Japan. Over a two-week period, they constructed a traditional Japanese garden. They also built a small tea garden at OSU's Oklahoma Botanical Garden and Arboretum. The International Friendship Garden was dedicated Sunday, July 26, 1998, with a delegation from Kameoka in attendance.\nThe Stillwater Public Library dedicated a bronze statue of Oklahoma historian and author Angie Debo on November 18, 2010. Created by local artist Phyllis Mantik, the statue depicts a young Debo sitting on a rock with several books by her side. Mantik chose to depict the historian as a young woman to illustrate that, at an early age, she chose the life of a scholar. To highlight Debo's importance to Oklahoma's Native American community, the base of the statue is surrounded by the seals of Oklahoma's 38 federally recognized Native American tribes.\n\"Payne County's Grandest Elm Tree\" is located in Stillwater. It has gained large attention from bystanders and neighbors of the attraction.\nThe Stillwater Farmers' Market operates April through October on Wednesdays and Saturdays.\nThe following Stillwater sites are listed on the National Register of Historic Places:\nMedia.\nStillwater's newspaper of record is the \"NewsPress\", owned by the Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc. The community is also served by the weekly \"Stillwater Journal\", owned and published by David and Lisa Sasser. \"The Daily O'Collegian\" has been published since 1895 as a daily paper by Oklahoma State University and is an affiliate of the College Media Network.\nStillwater is also home to several radio stations, including Stillwater Radio that broadcasts on four stations: KSPI 780 AM, 80s, 90s and 2000s Rock; KSPI 94.3 FM, 80s, 90s and 2000s Rock; KVRO 101.1 FM, classic hits and home of Stillwater High School sports; KGFY 105.5 FM, country music and the home of Perkins-Tryon High School sports (in nearby Perkins, Oklahoma), and OSU women's basketball, soccer, and softball; and KSPI 93.7 FM, adult contemporary, and the home of OSU football, baseball, men's basketball, and wrestling. KOSU 91.7 FM is owned by Oklahoma State University and is a National Public Radio station.\nWhite Peacock Publishing publishes \"Stillwater Living Magazine\", a full-color monthly magazine. \"Stillwater Scene\", published by Red Productions, is a monthly print and online magazine that focuses on local entertainment.\nStillwater TV is a government-access television station airing on Suddenlink Communications\u2019s channel 14. It broadcasts programming provided by the City of Stillwater, including live and rebroadcasts of Stillwater City Council and Planning Commission meetings.\nStillwater citizens were featured in the news for threatening fellow citizens attempting to enforce public safety regulations related to COVID-19 \"just three hours [after] the rule going into effect\".\nSports.\nStillwater is home to the Oklahoma State Cowboys and Cowgirls. Oklahoma State University teams have won 53 NCAA National Championships, the majority of which have been in wrestling. Men's programs include baseball, basketball, football, cross country, golf, wrestling, tennis, and track and field. Women's programs include basketball, cross country, equestrian, soccer, softball, tennis, and track and field.\nThe Oklahoma State Cowboys wrestling team is an NCAA Division I wrestling program and is one of five Big 12 Conference schools which participate in wrestling. The team has won 34 team national championships (plus an additional three which are unofficial) and 134 individual NCAA championships which are both NCAA records. Major sports facilities include Boone Pickens Stadium, Gallagher-Iba Arena, and O'Brate Stadium.\nStillwater High School is a 6A-2 school. The Pioneers compete in football, volleyball, softball, cross country, cheerleading, pom, wrestling, basketball, swimming, baseball, golf, tennis, and soccer.\nParks and outdoor attractions.\nThe City of Stillwater Parks and Recreation Department manages more than of parkland, including five ball complexes, ten tennis courts, two disc golf courses, four lakes, one swimming pool, 14\u00a0playgrounds, one skate and bmx bike ramp, special services centers, including the Multi Arts Center, Senior Activity Center, Community Center, Armory Gymnasium and Lakeside Golf Course.\nLake McMurtry, owned by the City of Stillwater, offers hiking and mountain-bike trails, back-to-nature camping and well-stocked reserves for fishing. Its convenience store and bait shop are open seasonal hours.\nCarl Blackwell Lake is owned by Oklahoma State University. It offers camping, boat rentals, covered pavilions, and a gift shop.\nStillwater is served by a number of paved and unpaved bicycle and walking trails for non-motorized forms of transit. The Kameoka Trail Corridor includes a three-mile (5\u00a0km) loop around Boomer Lake and additional disconnected segments throughout the city. The corridor begins north at Park View Estates and runs along West Boomer Creek toward Airport Road and Boomer Lake Park, circles the lake and cuts south to Stillwater High School, crosses McElroy and continues to Hall of Fame between Main and Perkins and crosses through Hoyt Grove Park.\nOther multi-use trails include an asphalt trail through Couch Park, a dirt nature trail around Sanborn Lake, bike and pedestrian trails at Lake McMurtry, and a one-mile (1.6\u00a0km) gravel screenings loop at the Oklahoma Technology & Research Park.\nFour golf courses are located in Stillwater:\nTransportation.\nMajor highways.\nStillwater has two highways running through it: Oklahoma State Highway 51, or 6th Avenue, runs east and west; and US-177, or Perkins Road, runs north and south. The city is also served by a spur that connects US-177 to the Cimarron Turnpike.\nAirport.\nStillwater Regional Airport (SWO) has served the city since 1917. American Airlines began service in August 2016 with two daily round trip flights to its largest hub at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. The flights are operated on behalf of American Airlines by their regional partner Envoy Air using the 50 seat Embraer-145 jet. Private jets also fly in and out of this airport.\nBus service.\nPublic transportation is provided by OSU-Stillwater Community Transit. Ten bus routes are operated within Stillwater's city limits and on the OSU campus.\nInfrastructure.\nUtilities.\nStillwater has been a community-owned electric utility since 1907. The electric utility, now part of the Stillwater Utilities Authority, provides electric, water, wastewater and solid waste management services. A portion of the Utility Authority's revenues help to support the City of Stillwater's fire and police departments, the parks and recreation system, and other city services. Water in Stillwater is drawn from Kaw Lake and pumped approximately to the treatment facility.\nHealth care.\nStillwater Medical Center is a 119-bed non-profit public trust facility. Services offered by the hospital include emergency, wound care, labor and delivery, surgery, radiology, rehabilitation, cancer care, and wellness.\nThe community is also served by the Stillwater Surgery Center, an outpatient surgery center, and the Stillwater Cancer Center, a physician-owned cancer treatment center. Residents who seek the full services of a teaching hospital must travel to the OSU Medical Center, about 60\u201370\u00a0minutes east in Tulsa.\nThe Payne County Health Department is also located in Stillwater and offers services such as WIC, consumer protection, health promotion, and chronic and acute disease services.\nSister cities.\nStillwater has been sister city to Kameoka since 1985. The State of Oklahoma and Kyoto Prefecture signed a sister state agreement in 1985 through the auspices of the governor's office. Kameoka requested a sister city in Oklahoma that was about one hour from the capital, agriculturally based, and home to a university. Stillwater was a perfect match. In 1985, the first delegation from Kameoka visited Stillwater, and in November of that same year a Stillwater delegation went to Kameoka. There, Mayors Calvin J. Anthony and Yoshihisa Taniguchi signed the Sister City Affiliation Agreement that officially established the sister cities relationship between the two cities.\nSince 1989, the Stillwater Middle School and Taisei Junior High School in Kameoka have participated in a sister school relationship, which features an active teacher-student exchange program. In 2016, the Stillwater High School based string quintet, Penta-Strings, played for the during the 30-year visit of the Kameoka delegation.\nIn popular culture.\nStillwater was featured in the CW television show \"Supernatural\" in Season 13, Episode 12 \"Various & Sundry Villains\". Protagonists Sam and Dean Winchester track a pair of witches to the city to try and recover a valuable spell book.\nIn the 2021 film \"Stillwater\" Matt Damon plays an oil rig worker from Oklahoma who goes to visit his daughter in prison in Marseilles, France, in the hope to bring her back home to Stillwater.\nStillwater served as the filming location for the crime-thriller \"All-American Murder\" starring Christopher Walken.\nStillwater appears in the disaster film \"Twisters\", released in 20"}, "descending_order": ["130516", "4700811", "122059"], "permutation_1": ["122059", "130516", "4700811"], "permutation_2": ["130516", "122059", "4700811"], "permutation_3": ["130516", "122059", "4700811"]}
{"id": "2hop__136633_44760", "docs_added": {"3679490": "McTeague\n1899 novel by Frank Norris\nMcTeague: A Story of San Francisco, otherwise known as simply McTeague, is a novel by Frank Norris, first published in 1899. It tells the story of a couple's courtship and marriage, and their subsequent descent into poverty and violence as the result of jealousy and greed. The book was the basis for the films \"McTeague\" (1916) and Erich von Stroheim's \"Greed\" (1924). It was also adapted as an opera by William Bolcom in 1992.\nPlot summary.\nMcTeague is a dentist of limited intellect from a poor miner's family who has opened a dentist shop on Polk Street in San Francisco (his first name is never revealed; other characters in the novel call him simply \"Mac.\"). His best friend, Marcus Schouler, brings his cousin, Trina Sieppe, whom he's courting, to McTeague's parlor for dental work. McTeague becomes infatuated with Trina while working on her teeth, and Marcus graciously steps aside. McTeague successfully woos Trina. Shortly after the two kissed and declared their love for each other, Trina discovered that she had won $5,000 (roughly $187,000 in 2024 values) from a lottery ticket. In the celebration, Trina's mother, Mrs. Sieppe, announces that McTeague and Trina are to marry. Marcus becomes jealous of McTeague and claims that he's been cheated out of money that would have been rightfully his if he had married Trina.\nThe marriage takes place, and Mrs. Sieppe and the rest of Trina's family move away from San Francisco, leaving her alone with McTeague. Trina is a thrifty wife; she refuses to touch the principal of her $5,000, which she invests with her uncle. She insists that she and McTeague must live on the earnings from McTeague's dental practice, the small income from the $5,000 investment, and the money she earns from carving small wooden figures of Noah's animals and his Ark for sale in her uncle's shop. Secretly, she accumulates penny-pinched savings in a locked trunk. Though the couple is happy, the friendship between Marcus and McTeague deteriorates. More than once, the two men come to blows; each time, McTeague's immense physical strength prevails, and eventually, he breaks Marcus's arm in a fight. When Marcus recovers, he goes south, intending to become a rancher; before he leaves, he visits McTeague, and he and McTeague part apparently as friends.\nA catastrophe strikes when McTeague is debarred from practicing dentistry by the authorities. It becomes clear that Marcus has taken revenge on Mac before leaving by informing City Hall that he has no license or academic degree. McTeague loses his practice, and the couple is forced to move into successively poorer quarters as Trina becomes more and more miserly. Their life together deteriorates, with McTeague escalating in his abuse until he steals all of Trina's domestic savings of $400 (roughly $15,000 in 2024 values) and abandons her. Meanwhile, Trina falls entirely under the spell of money and withdraws the principal of her prior winnings in gold from her uncle's firm so she can admire and handle the coins in her room, at one point spreading them over her bed and rolling around in them.\nWhen McTeague returns, destitute once more, Trina refuses to give him money, even for food. McTeague angrily beats her to death. He then takes the entire hoard of gold and heads to a mining community he had left years prior. Sensing pursuit, he makes his way south towards Mexico. Meanwhile, Marcus hears of the murder and joins the manhunt for McTeague, finally catching him in Death Valley. In the middle of the desert, Marcus and McTeague fight over McTeague's remaining water and Trina's $5,000. McTeague mortally wounds Marcus, but as he dies, Marcus handcuffs himself to McTeague. The final dramatic image of the novel is one of McTeague stranded, alone, and helpless. He's left with only the company of Marcus's corpse, to whom he's handcuffed, in the desolate, arid waste of Death Valley.\nBackground.\nFrank Norris wrote \"McTeague\" in the San Francisco of the 1890s, and much of the book uses the local detail of this setting. He began the novel when at the English Department of Harvard University in 1895, although the bulk of the work was written in 1897. McTeague's murder of Trina is believed to be based on the murder of Mrs Sarah Collins, who was killed in late 1893 by her husband after she refused to give him money. He was also greatly influenced by the realism and plotting of the novels of Emile Zola. In researching the terminology and practices of dentistry, Norris predominantly used Thomas Fillebrown's \"A Text-book of Operative Dentistry\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "49728": "San Francisco\nConsolidated city-county in California, United States\nSan Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, financial, and cultural center within Northern California, United States. With a population of 827,526 residents as of 2024, San Francisco is the fourth-most populous city in California and the 17th-most populous in the U.S.; with a land area of at the upper end of the San Francisco Peninsula, it is the fifth-most densely populated U.S. county. Among U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco is ranked first by per capita income and sixth by aggregate income as of 2023. San Francisco anchors the 13th-most populous metropolitan statistical area in the U.S., with almost 4.6 million residents in 2023. The larger San Jose\u2013San Francisco\u2013Oakland combined statistical area, the fifth-largest urban region in the U.S., had a 2023 estimated population of over nine million.\nPrior to European settlement, the modern city proper was inhabited by the Yelamu. On June 29, 1776, settlers from New Spain established the Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate, and the Mission San Francisco de As\u00eds a few miles away, both named for Francis of Assisi. The California gold rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. In 1856, San Francisco became a consolidated city-county. After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, it was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama\u2013Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, it was a major port of embarkation for naval service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, significant immigration, liberalizing attitudes, the rise of the beatnik and hippie countercultures, the sexual revolution, opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, and other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a center of liberal activism.\nSan Francisco and the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area are a global center of economic activity and the arts and sciences, spurred by leading universities, high-tech, healthcare, finance, insurance, real estate, and professional services sectors. As of 2020[ [update]], the metropolitan area, with 4.5 million residents, ranked 5th by GDP ($874 billion) and 2nd by GDP per capita ($131,082) across the OECD countries. In 2023, San Francisco proper had a GDP of $263.1 billion and a GDP per capita of $325,000. Despite an accelerating exodus of businesses from the downtown area of San Francisco, the city is still home to numerous companies inside and outside of technology, including Salesforce, Uber, Airbnb, OpenAI, Levi's, Gap, Dropbox, and Lyft.\nIn 2022, San Francisco had more than 1.7 million international visitors and approximately 20 million domestic ones. It is known for its steep rolling hills and eclectic mix of architecture across varied neighborhoods; its Chinatown and Mission districts; mild climate; and landmarks including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, and Alcatraz. The city is home to educational and cultural institutions such as the University of California, San Francisco, the University of San Francisco, San Francisco State University, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Legion of Honor (museum), the de Young Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Symphony, the San Francisco Ballet, the San Francisco Opera, the SFJAZZ Center, and the California Academy of Sciences. Two major league sports teams, the San Francisco Giants and the Golden State Warriors, play their home games within San Francisco proper. San Francisco International Airport (SFO) offers flights to over 125 destinations, while a light rail and bus network, in tandem with the BART and Caltrain systems, connects nearly every part of San Francisco with the wider region.\nEtymology.\nSan Francisco, which is Spanish for \"Saint Francis\", takes its name from Mission San Francisco de As\u00eds, which in turn was named after Saint Francis of Assisi. The mission received its name in 1776, when it was founded by the Spanish under the leadership of Padre Francisco Pal\u00f3u. The city has officially been known as San Francisco since 1847, when Washington Allon Bartlett, then serving as the city's alcalde, renamed it from Yerba Buena (Spanish for \"Good Herb\"), which had been the name of the first civilian in San Francisco. Earlier in San Francisco's history, the uninhabited area on the northeastern side of San Francisco was called , after the herb that was growing abundantly there. The name Yerba Buena continues to be used in locations in the city, such as on Yerba Buena Island.\nWhile people residing outside the San Francisco Bay Area use nicknames including \"Frisco\" and \"San Fran\", local residents generally refer to San Francisco as \"the City\" or \"SF\". The choice of nickname a person uses is a common way for locals to distinguish long-time residents from tourists and recent arrivals. The nicknames \"San Fran\" and \"Frisco\" are somewhat controversial among San Francisco residents.\nThe California Cantonese who came for the California Gold Rush named California and specifically San Francisco , , \"Gold Mountain\".\nWhen gold was discovered in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia, it was named \"New Gold Mountain\" (, ) and California and San Francisco as \"Old Gold Mountain\" (, ).\nHistory.\nIndigenous history.\nThe earliest archeological evidence of human habitation of the territory of San Francisco dates to 3000\u00a0BCE. The Yelamu group of the Ramaytush people resided in a few small villages when an overland Spanish exploration party arrived on November 2, 1769, the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay. The Ohlone name for San Francisco was \"Ahwaste\", meaning \"place at the bay\". The arrival of Spanish colonists, and the implementation of their Mission system, marked the beginning of the assimilation of the Ramaytush people, and the decline of their language and culture.\nSpanish era.\nThe Spanish Empire claimed San Francisco as part of Las Californias, a province of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The Spanish first arrived in what is now San Francisco on November 2, 1769, when the Portol\u00e1 expedition led by Don Gaspar de Portol\u00e1 and Juan Cresp\u00ed arrived at San Francisco Bay. Having noted the strategic benefits of the area due to its large natural harbor, the Spanish dispatched Pedro Fages in 1770 to find a more direct route to the San Francisco Peninsula from Monterey, which would become part of the El Camino Real route. By 1774, Juan Bautista de Anza had arrived to the area to select the sites for a mission and presidio. The first European maritime presence in San Francisco Bay occurred on August 5, 1775, when the Spanish ship \"San Carlos\", commanded by Juan Manuel de Ayala, became the first ship to anchor in the bay.\nSoon after, on March 28, 1776, Anza established the Presidio of San Francisco. On October 9, Mission San Francisco de As\u00eds, also known as Mission Dolores, was founded by Padre Francisco Pal\u00f3u. In 1794, the Presidio established the Castillo de San Joaqu\u00edn, a fortification on the southern side of the Golden Gate, which later came to be known as Fort Point.\nIn 1804, the province of Alta California was created, which included San Francisco. At its peak in 1810\u20131820, the average population at the Mission Dolores settlement was about 1,100 people.\nMexican era.\nIn 1821, the Californias were ceded to Mexico by Spain. The extensive California mission system gradually lost its influence during the period of Mexican rule, although it was not until 1833 that the missions would be secularized. Agricultural land became largely privatized as ranchos, as was occurring in other parts of California. Coastal trade increased, including a half-dozen barques from various Atlantic ports which regularly sailed in California waters.\nWith the enactment of the Mexican Secularization Act of 1833, the missions were made to divest themselves of their extensive landholdings and emancipate the indigenous people under their control. As part of the process of secularization, Governor Jos\u00e9 Figueroa opened up San Francisco to civilian settlement. Prior to secularization, the only settlements in San Francisco had been the military settlement at the Presidio and the religious settlement at Mission Dolores. In 1835, the Presidio garrison, commanded by Mariano Vallejo, relocated to the Presidio of Sonoma, which was regarded as needing a greater military presence due the proximity of the Russian settlement at Fort Ross. Only a small detachment remained at the Presidio of San Francisco. Mission Dolores sold most of its property in 1836, retaining only the church and related structures. \nIn 1833, Juana Briones de Miranda was granted a small rancho at El Pol\u00edn Spring, near the Presidio, founding the first non-indigenous civilian household in San Francisco. In 1834, the \"pueblo\" of Yerba Buena was founded. Yerba Buena Cove (named after a native herb) was already a favored anchorage spot and the new settlement and trading post was founded by its shores. Yerba Buena was located in what is now the city's Chinatown and Financial District and was centered on a plaza that is now Portsmouth Square. A land survey of Yerba Buena was made by the Swiss immigrant Jean Jacques Vioget as prelude to the city plan. \nFrancisco de Haro became the first alcalde of Yerba Buena. In 1835, the second alcalde, Jos\u00e9 Joaqu\u00edn Estudillo, approved the first land grant in Yerba Buena: to William Richardson. Yerba Buena began to attract American and European settlers; an 1842 census listed 21 residents (11%) born in the United States or Europe, as well as one Filipino merchant. \nFollowing the Bear Flag Revolt in Sonoma and the beginning of the U.S. Conquest of California, American forces from the \"USS Portsmouth\" under the command of John B. Montgomery captured Yerba Buena on July 9, 1846, with little resistance from the local Californio population, raising the American flag over Yerba Buena plaza (later renamed Portsmouth Square in commemoration of this event). \nFollowing the capture, U.S. forces appointed both Jos\u00e9 de Jes\u00fas No\u00e9 and Washington Allon Bartlett to serve as co-alcaldes (mayors), while the conquest continued on in the rest of California. On January 30, 1847, Mayor Bartlett ordained that the city should officially change its name from \"Yerba Buena\" to \"San Francisco\", as the former name was only locally recognized and the latter name was in use on international maps. There was also concern that a new town being planned by General Vallejo on the Carquinez Strait was to be called \"Francisca\", after the first name of his wife. After the name change to \"San Francisco\", the name of Vallejo's town was changed to Benicia, after his wife's middle name. Following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, Alta California was ceded from Mexico to the United States.\nPost-Conquest era.\nDespite its attractive location as a port and naval base, post-Conquest San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. Situated at the tip of a windswept peninsula without water or firewood, San Francisco lacked most of the basic facilities for a 19th-century settlement. Its 1847 population was said to be 459.\nThe California gold rush brought a flood of treasure seekers. Prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849. The promise of wealth was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons, and hotels; many were left to rot, and some were sunk to establish title to the underwater lot. By 1851, the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870, Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land. Buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings.\nCalifornia was quickly granted statehood in 1850, and the U.S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate and a fort on Alcatraz Island to secure San Francisco Bay. San Francisco County was one of the state's 18 original counties established at California statehood in 1850. Until 1856, San Francisco's city limits extended west to Divisadero Street and Castro Street, and south to 20th Street. In 1856, the California state government divided the county. A straight line was then drawn across the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula just north of San Bruno Mountain. Everything south of the line became the new San Mateo County while everything north of the line became the new consolidated City and County of San Francisco.\nThe California gold rush triggered a wave of entrepreneurial activity as individuals sought to capitalize on the newfound wealth. The discovery of silver deposits, notably the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further fueled rapid population growth and economic expansion.\nSan Francisco, as the gateway to the goldfields, experienced a surge in population and commercial activity. However, the influx of fortune seekers also brought challenges. Lawlessness was rampant, and the Barbary Coast district became synonymous with vice, attracting criminals, prostitutes, and illicit activities, including but not limited to prostitution, bootlegging, and gambling. The rapidly growing population, with its lawlessness, gambling and other vices, and the fact that there were no churches to be found, prompted missionaries like William Taylor to come to San Francisco where he began preaching in the streets, using an upright barrel as his pulpit. Taylor garnered enough generous donations from successful gold miners to build a church.\nOne of the most influential figures of this era was William Chapman Ralston. A shrewd banker and investor, Ralston amassed considerable wealth and influence in San Francisco. He gained control over a significant portion of the Comstock Lode's gold and silver mines, establishing a virtual monopoly. Using his incredible clout, Ralston was able to generate millions of dollars for San Francisco during its heady boom years. He founded the Bank of California, the first bank in the Western United States, and built the opulent Palace Hotel, a symbol of San Francisco's newfound prosperity and the largest hotel in the country at the time. His financial empire, however, collapsed in 1875 as a result of the Panic of 1873, triggering a major economic crisis in San Francisco.\nDevelopment of the Port of San Francisco and the establishment in 1869 of overland access to the eastern U.S. rail system via the newly completed Pacific Railroad (the construction of which the city only reluctantly helped support) helped make the Bay Area a center for trade. Catering to the needs and tastes of the growing population, Levi Strauss opened a dry goods business and Domingo Ghirardelli began manufacturing chocolate. Chinese immigrants made the city a polyglot culture, drawn to \"Old Gold Mountain\", creating the city's Chinatown quarter. By 1880, Chinese made up 9.3% of the population. \nThe first cable cars carried San Franciscans up Clay Street in 1873. The city's sea of Victorian houses began to take shape, and civic leaders campaigned for a spacious public park, resulting in plans for Golden Gate Park. San Franciscans built schools, churches, theaters, and all the hallmarks of civic life. The Presidio developed into the most important American military installation on the Pacific coast. By 1890, San Francisco's population approached 300,000, making it the eighth-largest city in the United States at the time. Around 1901, San Francisco was a major city known for its flamboyant style, stately hotels, ostentatious mansions on Nob Hill, and a thriving arts scene. The first North American plague epidemic was the San Francisco plague of 1900\u20131904.\n1906 earthquake and interwar era.\nAt 5:12\u00a0am on April 18, 1906, a major earthquake struck San Francisco and northern California. As buildings collapsed from the shaking, ruptured gas lines ignited fires that spread across the city and burned out of control for several days. With water mains out of service, the Presidio Artillery Corps attempted to contain the inferno by dynamiting blocks of buildings to create firebreaks. More than three-quarters of the city lay in ruins, including almost all of the downtown core. Contemporary accounts reported that 498 people died, though modern estimates put the number in the several thousands. More than half of the city's population of 400,000 was left homeless. Refugees settled temporarily in makeshift tent villages in Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, on the beaches, and elsewhere. Many fled permanently to the East Bay. Jack London is remembered for having famously eulogized the earthquake: \"Not in history has a modern imperial city been so completely destroyed. San Francisco is gone.\"\nRebuilding was rapid and performed on a grand scale. Rejecting calls to completely remake the street grid, San Franciscans opted for speed. Amadeo Giannini's Bank of Italy, later to become Bank of America, provided loans for many of those whose livelihoods had been devastated. The influential San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association or SPUR was founded in 1910 to address the quality of housing after the earthquake. The earthquake hastened development of western neighborhoods that survived the fire, including Pacific Heights, where many of the city's wealthy rebuilt their homes. In turn, the destroyed mansions of Nob Hill became grand hotels. City Hall rose again in the Beaux Arts style, and the city celebrated its rebirth at the Panama\u2013Pacific International Exposition in 1915.\nDuring this period, San Francisco built some of its most important infrastructure. Civil Engineer Michael O'Shaughnessy was hired by San Francisco Mayor James Rolph as chief engineer for the city in September 1912 to supervise the construction of the Twin Peaks Reservoir, the Stockton Street Tunnel, the Twin Peaks Tunnel, the San Francisco Municipal Railway, the Auxiliary Water Supply System, and new sewers. San Francisco's streetcar system was pushed to completion by O'Shaughnessy between 1915 and 1927. It was the O'Shaughnessy Dam, Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, and Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct that would have the largest effect on San Francisco. An abundant water supply enabled San Francisco to develop into the city it has become today.\nIn ensuing years, the city solidified its standing as a financial capital; in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, not a single San Francisco-based bank failed. Indeed, it was at the height of the Great Depression that San Francisco undertook two great civil engineering projects, simultaneously constructing the San Francisco\u2013Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, completing them in 1936 and 1937, respectively. It was in this period that the island of Alcatraz, a former military stockade, began its service as a federal maximum security prison, housing notorious inmates such as Al Capone, and Robert Franklin Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz. San Francisco later celebrated its regained grandeur with a World's fair, the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939\u201340, creating Treasure Island in the middle of the bay to house it.\nContemporary era.\nDuring World War II, the city-owned Sharp Park in Pacifica was used as an internment camp to detain Japanese Americans. Hunters Point Naval Shipyard became a hub of activity, and Fort Mason became the primary port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater of Operations. The explosion of jobs drew many people, especially African Americans from the South, to the area. After the end of the war, many military personnel returning from service abroad and civilians who had originally come to work decided to stay. The United Nations Charter creating the United Nations was drafted and signed in San Francisco in 1945 and, in 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco re-established peaceful relations between Japan and the Allied Powers.\nUrban planning projects in the 1950s and 1960s involved widespread destruction and redevelopment of west-side neighborhoods and the construction of new freeways, of which only a series of short segments were built before being halted by citizen-led opposition. The onset of containerization made San Francisco's small piers obsolete, and cargo activity moved to the larger Port of Oakland. The city began to lose industrial jobs and turned to tourism as the most important segment of its economy. The suburbs experienced rapid growth, and San Francisco underwent significant demographic change, as large segments of the white population left the city, supplanted by an increasing wave of immigration from Asia and Latin America. From 1950 to 1980, the city lost over 10 percent of its population.\nOver this period, San Francisco became a magnet for America's counterculture movement. Beat Generation writers fueled the San Francisco Renaissance and centered on the North Beach neighborhood in the 1950s. Hippies flocked to Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, reaching a peak with the 1967 Summer of Love. In 1974, the Zebra murders left at least 16 people dead. In the 1970s, the city became a center of the gay rights movement, with the emergence of The Castro as an urban gay village, the election of Harvey Milk to the Board of Supervisors, and his assassination, along with that of Mayor George Moscone, in 1978.\nBank of America, now based in Charlotte, North Carolina, was founded in San Francisco; the bank completed 555 California Street in 1969. The Transamerica Pyramid was completed in 1972, igniting a wave of \"Manhattanization\" that lasted until the late 1980s, a period of extensive high-rise development downtown. The 1980s also saw a dramatic increase in the number of homeless people in the city, an issue that remains today, despite many attempts to address it. \nThe 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused destruction and loss of life throughout the Bay Area. In San Francisco, the quake severely damaged structures in the Marina and South of Market districts and precipitated the demolition of the damaged Embarcadero Freeway and much of the damaged Central Freeway, allowing the city to reclaim The Embarcadero as its historic downtown waterfront and revitalizing the Hayes Valley neighborhood.\nThe three recent decades have seen booms driven by the internet industry. During the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, startup companies invigorated the San Francisco economy. Large numbers of entrepreneurs and computer application developers moved into the city, followed by marketing, design, and sales professionals, changing the social landscape as once poorer neighborhoods became increasingly gentrified. Demand for new housing and office space ignited a second wave of high-rise development, this time in the South of Market district. By 2000, the city's population reached new highs, surpassing the previous record set in 1950. When the bubble burst in 2001, many of these companies folded and their employees were laid off. Yet high technology and entrepreneurship remain mainstays of the San Francisco economy. By the mid-2000s (decade), the social media boom had begun, with San Francisco becoming a popular location for tech offices and a common place to live for people employed in Silicon Valley companies such as Apple and Google.\nThe early 2020s saw a reduction of tech companies' presence in Downtown San Francisco in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, increased popularity of working at home, and struggles with homelessness. Although some observers have raised the possibility that office vacancies and declining tax revenues could cause San Francisco to enter an economic doom loop, other sources have refuted this broad-based characterization of the city as a whole, asserting that the issues of concern are restricted primarily to the urban core of San Francisco. As of March 2024, Union Square was in \"sorry shape\" and had lost its traditional position as the Bay Area's regional shopping hub to Westfield Valley Fair in San Jose.\nThe Ferry Station Post Office Building, Armour & Co. Building, Atherton House, and YMCA Hotel are historic buildings among dozens of historical landmarks in the city, according to the National Register of Historic Places listings in San Francisco.\nGeography.\nSan Francisco is located on the West Coast of the United States, at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula and includes significant stretches of the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay within its boundaries. Several picturesque islands\u2014Alcatraz, Treasure Island and the adjacent Yerba Buena Island, and small portions of Alameda Island, Red Rock Island, and Angel Island\u2014are part of the city. Also included are the uninhabited Farallon Islands, offshore in the Pacific Ocean. The mainland within the city limits roughly forms a \"seven-by-seven-mile square\", a common local colloquialism referring to the city's shape, though its total area, including water, is nearly .\nThere are more than 50 hills within the city limits. Some neighborhoods are named after the hill on which they are situated, including Nob Hill, Potrero Hill, and Russian Hill. Near the geographic center of the city, southwest of the downtown area, are a series of less densely populated hills. Twin Peaks, a pair of hills forming one of the city's highest points, forms an overlook spot. San Francisco's tallest hill, Mount Davidson, is high and is capped with a tall cross built in 1934. Dominating this area is Sutro Tower, a large red and white radio and television transmission tower reaching 1,811\u00a0ft (552 m) above sea level.\nThe nearby San Andreas and Hayward Faults are responsible for much earthquake activity, although neither physically passes through the city itself. The San Andreas Fault caused the earthquakes in 1906 and 1989. Minor earthquakes occur on a regular basis. The threat of major earthquakes plays a large role in the city's infrastructure development. The city constructed an auxiliary water supply system and has repeatedly upgraded its building codes, requiring retrofits for older buildings and higher engineering standards for new construction. However, there are still thousands of smaller buildings that remain vulnerable to quake damage. USGS has released the California earthquake forecast which models earthquake occurrence in California.\nSan Francisco's shoreline has grown beyond its natural limits. Entire neighborhoods such as the Marina, Mission Bay, and Hunters Point, as well as large sections of the Embarcadero, sit on areas of landfill. Treasure Island was constructed from material dredged from the bay as well as material resulting from the excavation of the Yerba Buena Tunnel through Yerba Buena Island during the construction of the Bay Bridge. Such land tends to be unstable during earthquakes. The resulting soil liquefaction causes extensive damage to property built upon it, as was evidenced in the Marina district during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. A few natural lakes and creeks (Lake Merced, Mountain Lake, Pine Lake, Lobos Creek, El Polin Spring) are within parks and remain protected in what is essentially their original form, but most of the city's natural watercourses, such as Islais Creek and Mission Creek, have been partially or completely culverted and built over. Since the 1990s, however, the Public Utilities Commission has been studying proposals to daylight or restore some creeks.\nNeighborhoods.\nAn \"Historical Center of San Francisco\" monument,<ref name=\"sfG/rs/unP\"></ref> where the 1899\u20131906 City Hall was once located,<ref name=\"a&A/Csf\"></ref> is in United Nations Plaza, at \nThe earliest center of San Francisco is Portsmouth Square, in the northeast quadrant of the city anchored by Market Street and the waterfront. Here in the northeast quadrant, the Financial District is centered, with Union Square, the principal shopping and hotel district, and the Tenderloin nearby. Cable cars carry riders up steep inclines to the summit of Nob Hill, once the home of the city's business tycoons, and down to the waterfront tourist attractions of Fisherman's Wharf, and Pier 39, where many restaurants feature Dungeness crab from a still-active fishing industry. Also in this quadrant are Russian Hill, a residential neighborhood with the famously crooked Lombard Street; North Beach, the city's Little Italy and the former center of the Beat Generation; and Telegraph Hill, which features Coit Tower. Abutting Russian Hill and North Beach is San Francisco's Chinatown, the oldest Chinatown in North America. The South of Market, which was once San Francisco's industrial core, has seen significant redevelopment following the construction of Oracle Park and an infusion of startup companies. New skyscrapers, live-work lofts, and condominiums dot the area. Further development is taking place just to the south in Mission Bay area, a former railroad yard, which now has a second campus of the University of California, San Francisco and Chase Center, which opened in 2019 as the new home of the Golden State Warriors.\nWest of downtown, across Van Ness Avenue, lies the large Western Addition neighborhood, which became established with a large African American population after World War II. The Western Addition is usually divided into smaller neighborhoods including Hayes Valley, the Fillmore, and Japantown, which was once the largest Japantown in North America but suffered when its Japanese American residents were forcibly removed and interned during World War II. The Western Addition survived the 1906 earthquake with its Victorians largely intact, including the famous \"Painted Ladies\", standing alongside Alamo Square. To the south, near the geographic center of the city is Haight-Ashbury, famously associated with 1960s hippie culture.\nNorth of the Western Addition is Pacific Heights, an affluent neighborhood that features the homes built by wealthy San Franciscans in the wake of the 1906 earthquake. Directly north of Pacific Heights facing the waterfront is the Marina, a neighborhood popular with young professionals that was largely built on reclaimed land from the Bay.\nIn the southeast quadrant of the city is the Mission District\u2014populated in the 19th century by Californios and working-class immigrants from Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Scandinavia. In the 1910s, a wave of Central American immigrants settled in the Mission and, in the 1950s, immigrants from Mexico began to predominate. In recent years, gentrification has changed the demographics of parts of the Mission from Latino, to twenty-something professionals. Noe Valley to the southwest and Bernal Heights to the south are both increasingly popular among young families with children. East of the Mission is the Potrero Hill neighborhood, a mostly residential neighborhood that features sweeping views of downtown San Francisco. West of the Mission, the area historically known as Eureka Valley, now popularly called the Castro, was once a working-class Scandinavian and Irish area. It has become North America's first gay village, and is now the center of gay life in the city. Located near the city's southern border, the Excelsior District is one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in San Francisco. The Bayview-Hunters Point in the far southeast corner of the city is one of the poorest neighborhoods, though the area has been the focus of several revitalizing and urban renewal projects.\nThe West Side of the city remained largely undeveloped until the early 20th century, due to the region being isolated from downtown because of the rugged terrain of Twin Peaks, Mount Sutro and Mount Davidson. Vast sand dunes made up the costal plain with the uninhibited area being dubbed the Outside Lands. The creation of Golden Gate Park in 1870\u20131900 contributed to the area being developed. The construction of the Twin Peaks Tunnel in 1918 connected southwest neighborhoods to downtown via streetcar, hastening the development of West Portal, and nearby affluent Forest Hill and St. Francis Wood. Further west, stretching all the way to the Pacific Ocean and north to Golden Gate Park lies the vast Sunset District, a large middle-class area with a predominantly Asian population.\nThe northwestern quadrant of the city contains the Richmond, a mostly middle-class neighborhood north of Golden Gate Park, home to immigrants from other parts of Asia as well as many Russian and Ukrainian immigrants. Together, these areas are known as The Avenues.\nMany piers remained derelict for years until the demolition of the Embarcadero Freeway reopened the downtown waterfront, allowing for redevelopment. The centerpiece of the port, the Ferry Building, while still receiving commuter ferry traffic, has been restored and redeveloped as a gourmet marketplace.\nClimate.\nSan Francisco has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate (K\u00f6ppen: \"Csb\", Trewartha: Csll), characteristic of California's coast, with moist winters and dry summers. San Francisco's weather is strongly influenced by the cool currents of the Pacific Ocean on the west side of the city, and the water of San Francisco Bay to the north and east. This moderates temperature swings and produces a remarkably mild year-round climate with little seasonal temperature variation.\nAmong major U.S. cities, San Francisco has the coolest daily mean, maximum, and minimum temperatures for June, July, and August. During the summer, rising hot air in California's interior valleys creates a low-pressure area that draws winds from the North Pacific High through the Golden Gate, which creates the city's characteristic cool winds and fog. The fog is less pronounced in eastern neighborhoods and during the late summer and early fall. The year's warmest month, on average, is September, and on average, October is warmer than July, especially in daytime.\nTemperatures reach or exceed on an average of only 21 and 23\u00a0days a year at downtown and San Francisco International Airport (SFO), respectively. The dry period of May to October is mild to warm, with the normal monthly mean temperature peaking in September at . The rainy period of November to April is slightly cooler, with the normal monthly mean temperature reaching its lowest in January at . On average, there are 73 rainy days a year, and annual precipitation averages . Variation in precipitation from year to year is high. Above-average rain years are often associated with warm El Ni\u00f1o conditions in the Pacific while dry years often occur in cold water La Ni\u00f1a periods. In 2013 (a \"La Ni\u00f1a\" year), a record low of rainfall was recorded at downtown San Francisco, where records have been kept since 1849. Snowfall in the city is very rare, with only 10 measurable accumulations recorded since 1852, most recently in 1976 when up to fell on Twin Peaks.\nThe highest recorded temperature at the official National Weather Service downtown observation station was on September 1, 2017. During that hot spell, the warmest ever night of was also recorded. The lowest recorded temperature was on December 11, 1932.\nDuring an average year between 1991 and 2020, San Francisco recorded a warmest night at and a coldest day at . The coldest daytime high since the station's opening in 1945 was recorded in December 1972 at .\nAs a coastal city, San Francisco will be heavily affected by climate change. As of 2021[ [update]], sea levels are projected to rise by as much as , resulting in periodic flooding, rising groundwater levels, and lowland floods from more severe storms.\nSan Francisco falls under the USDA 10b Plant hardiness zone, though some areas, particularly downtown, border zone 11a.\nEcology.\nHistorically, tule elk were present in San Francisco County, based on archeological evidence of elk remains in at least five different Native American shellmounds: at Hunter's Point, Fort Mason, Stevenson Street, Market Street, and Yerba Buena. Perhaps the first historical observer record was from the De Anza Expedition on March 23, 1776. Herbert Eugene Bolton wrote about the expedition camp at Mountain Lake, near the southern end of today's Presidio: \"Round about were grazing deer, and scattered here and there were the antlers of large elk.\"\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nThe 2020 United States census showed San Francisco's population to be 873,965, an increase of 8.5% from the 2010 census. With roughly one-quarter the population density of Manhattan, San Francisco is the second-most densely populated large American city, behind only New York City among cities greater than 200,000 population, and the fifth-most densely populated U.S. county, following only four of the five New York City boroughs.\nSan Francisco is part of the five-county San Francisco\u2013Oakland\u2013Hayward, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area, a region of 4.7\u00a0million people (13th most populous in the U.S.), and has served as its traditional demographic focal point. It is also part of the greater 14-county San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area, whose population is over 9.6\u00a0million, making it the fifth-largest in the United States as of 2018[ [update]].\nRace, ethnicity, religion, and languages.\nAs of the 2020[ [update]] census, the racial makeup and population of San Francisco included: 361,382 Whites (41.3%), 296,505 Asians (33.9%), 46,725 African Americans (5.3%), 86,233 Multiracial Americans (9.9%), 6,475 Native Americans and Alaska Natives (0.7%), 3,476 Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders (0.4%) and 73,169 persons of other races (8.4%). There were 136,761 Hispanic or Latino residents of any race (15.6%).\nSan Francisco is a majority minority city, as non-Hispanic White residents comprise less than half of the population; in 1940 they formed 92.5% of the population.\nIn 2010, residents of Chinese ethnicity constituted the largest single ethnic minority group in San Francisco at 21% of the population; other large Asian groups include Filipinos (5%) and Vietnamese (2%), with Japanese, Koreans and many other Asian and Pacific Islander groups represented in the city. The population of Chinese ancestry is most heavily concentrated in Chinatown and the Sunset and Richmond Districts. Filipinos are most concentrated in SoMa and the Crocker-Amazon; the latter neighborhood shares a border with Daly City, which has one of the highest concentrations of Filipinos in North America. The Tenderloin District is home to a large portion of the city's Vietnamese population as well as businesses and restaurants, which is known as the city's Little Saigon.\nThe principal Hispanic groups in the city were those of Mexican (7%) and Salvadoran (2%) ancestry. The Hispanic population is most heavily concentrated in the Mission District, Tenderloin District, and Excelsior District. The city's percentage of Hispanic residents is less than half of that of the state.\nAfrican Americans constituted about 5% of San Francisco's population in 2020; their share of the city's population has been decreasing since the 1970s. The majority of the city's Black residents live in the neighborhoods of Bayview-Hunters Point, Visitacion Valley, and the Fillmore District. There are smaller Black communities in Diamond Heights, Glen Park, and Mission District.\nUnlike many other Western cities, San Francisco has a significant Irish American population. Drawn by the California Gold Rush, the Irish were one of the first major White immigrant groups to arrive in California, settling in the city of San Francisco. The Irish historically settled in Irish Hill, which was razed following World War II. Despite this, San Francisco is still one of only three counties in the entire Western United States whose White population is plurality (20.6%) Irish.\nThe city has long been home to a significant Jewish community; in 2018 Jewish Americans made up an estimated 10% (80,000) of the city's population. It the third-largest Jewish community in proportional terms in the United States, behind only those of New York City, and Los Angeles, respectively, and it is also relatively young compared to other major U.S. cities. The Jewish community resides throughout the city, but the Richmond District is home to an ethnic enclave of mostly Russian Jews. The Fillmore District was formerly a mostly Jewish neighborhood from the 1920s until the 1970s, when many of its Jewish residents moved to other neighborhoods of the city as well as the suburbs of nearby Marin County.\nAccording to a 2018 study by the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, Jews make up 10% (80,000) of the city's population, making Judaism the second-largest religion in San Francisco after Christianity. A prior 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, the largest religious groupings in San Francisco's metropolitan area are Christians (48%), followed by those of no religion (35%), Hindus (5%), Jews (3%), Buddhists (2%), Muslims (1%) and a variety of other religions have smaller followings. According to the same study by the Pew Research Center, about 20% of residents in the area are Protestant, and 25% professing Roman Catholic beliefs. Meanwhile, 10% of the residents in metropolitan San Francisco identify as agnostics, while 5% identify as atheists.\nAs of 2010[ [update]], 55% (411,728) of San Francisco residents spoke only English at home, while 19% (140,302) spoke a variety of Chinese (mostly Taishanese and Cantonese), 12% (88,147) Spanish, 3% (25,767) Tagalog, and 2% (14,017) Russian. In total, 45% (342,693) of San Francisco's population spoke a language at home other than English.\nEthnic clustering.\nSan Francisco has several prominent Chinese, Mexican, and Filipino neighborhoods including Chinatown and the Mission District. Research collected on the immigrant clusters in the city show that more than half of the Asian population in San Francisco is either Chinese-born (40.3%) or Philippine-born (13.1%), and of the Mexican population 21% were Mexican-born, meaning these are people who recently immigrated to the United States. Between the years of 1990 and 2000, the number of foreign-born residents increased from 33% to nearly 40%. During this same time period, the San Francisco metropolitan area received 850,000 immigrants, ranking third in the United States after Los Angeles and New York.\nEducation, households, and income.\nOf all major cities in the United States, San Francisco has the second-highest percentage of residents with a college degree, second only to Seattle. Over 44% of adults have a bachelor's or higher degree. San Francisco had the highest rate at 7,031 per square mile, or over 344,000 total graduates in the city's .\nSan Francisco has the highest estimated percentage of gay and lesbian individuals of any of the 50 largest U.S. cities, at 15%. San Francisco also has the highest percentage of same-sex households of any American county, with the Bay Area having a higher concentration than any other metropolitan area.\nSan Francisco ranks third of American cities in median household income with a 2007 value of $65,519. Median family income is $81,136. An emigration of middle-class families has left the city with a lower proportion of children than any other large American city, with the dog population cited as exceeding the child population of 115,000, in 2018. The city's poverty rate is 12%, lower than the national average.\nHomelessness has been a chronic problem for San Francisco since the early 1970s.\nThe city is believed to have the highest number of homeless inhabitants per capita of any major U.S. city.\nThere are 345,811 households in the city, out of which: 133,366 households (39%) were individuals, 109,437 (32%) were opposite-sex married couples, 63,577 (18%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 21,677 (6%) were unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 10,384 (3%) were same-sex married couples or partnerships. The average household size was 2.26; the average family size was 3.11. 452,986 people (56%) lived in rental housing units, and 327,985 people (41%) lived in owner-occupied housing units.\nThe median age of the city population is 38 years.\nSan Francisco declared itself a sanctuary city in 1989, and city officials strengthened the stance in 2013 with its 'Due Process for All' ordinance. The law declared local authorities could not hold immigrants for immigration offenses if they had no violent felonies on their records and did not currently face charges. The city issues a Resident ID Card regardless of the applicant's immigration status.\nHomelessness.\nHomelessness in San Francisco emerged as a major issue in the late 20th century and remains a growing problem in modern times.\n8,035 homeless people were counted in San Francisco's 2019 point-in-time street and shelter count. This was an increase of more than 17% over the 2017 count of 6,858 people. 5,180 of the people were living unsheltered on the streets and in parks. 26% of respondents in the 2019 count identified job loss as the primary cause of their homelessness, 18% cited alcohol or drug use, and 13% cited being evicted from their residence. \nThe city of San Francisco has been dramatically increasing its spending to service the growing population homelessness crisis: spending jumped by $241 million in 2016\u201317 to total $275 million, compared to a budget of just $34 million the previous year. In 2017\u201318 the budget for combatting homelessness stood at $305 million. In the 2019\u20132020 budget year, the city budgeted $368 million for homelessness services. In the proposed 2020\u20132021 budget the city budgeted $850 million for homelessness services.\nIn January 2018 a United Nations special rapporteur on homelessness, Leilani Farha, stated that she was \"completely shocked\" by San Francisco's homelessness crisis during a visit to the city. She compared the \"deplorable conditions\" of the homeless camps she witnessed on San Francisco's streets to those she had seen in Mumbai. In May 2020, San Francisco officially sanctioned homeless encampments.\nAccording to San Francisco's Point-in-Time (PIT) count, the homeless population in 2024 was approximately 8,323 individuals. Additionally, over 20,000 people in the city were seeking homeless services.\nCrime.\nSan Francisco's violent crime rate is low compared to other major cities, though many residents are still concerned about it.\nIn 2011, 50 murders were reported, which is 6.1 per 100,000 people. There were about 134 rapes, 3,142 robberies, and about 2,139 assaults. There were about 4,469 burglaries, 25,100 thefts, and 4,210 motor vehicle thefts. The Tenderloin area has the highest crime rate in San Francisco: 70% of the city's violent crimes, and around one-fourth of the city's murders, occur in this neighborhood. The Tenderloin also sees high rates of drug abuse, gang violence, and prostitution. Another area with high crime rates is the Bayview-Hunters Point area. In the first six months of 2015 there were 25 murders compared to 14 in the first six months of 2014. However, the murder rate is still much lower than in past decades. That rate, though, did rise again by the close of 2016. According to the San Francisco Police Department, there were 59 murders in the city in 2016, an annual total that marked a 13.5% increase in the number of homicides (52) from 2015. The city has also gained a reputation for car break-ins, with over 19,000 car break-ins occurring in 2021.\nDuring the first half of 2018, human feces on San Francisco sidewalks were the second-most-frequent complaint of city residents, with about 65 calls per day. The city has formed a \"poop patrol\" to attempt to combat the problem.\nSeveral street gangs have operated in the city over the decades, including MS-13, the Sure\u00f1os and Norte\u00f1os in the Mission District.\nAfrican-American street gangs familiar in other cities, including the Bloods, Crips, and their sets, have struggled to establish footholds in San Francisco, while police and prosecutors have been accused of liberally labeling young African-American males as gang members.\nCriminal gangs with shot callers in China, including Triad groups such as the Wo Hop To, were active in San Francisco in the 20th century. According to statistics released by SFPD in April 2024, the crime figures were down in the first 100 days of the year, namely in terms of robberies, burglaries and larceny. In the first half of 2024, San Francisco experienced a 32% decrease in overall crime compared to the previous year. Personal property theft saw a 41% reduction, and violent crimes, including gun-related incidents, decreased by 30%.\nEconomy.\nThe city has a diversified service economy, with employment spread across a wide range of professional services, including tourism, financial services, and high technology. In 2016, approximately 27% of workers were employed in professional business services; 14% in leisure and hospitality; 13% in government services; 12% in education and health care; 11% in trade, transportation, and utilities; and 8% in financial activities. In 2023, GDP in the five-county San Francisco metropolitan area grew 3.4% in real terms to $779\u00a0billion. Additionally, in 2023 the 14-county San Jose\u2013San Francisco\u2013Oakland combined statistical area had a GDP of $1.397\u00a0trillion, ranking 3rd among CSAs, and ahead of all but 15 countries. As of 2023[ [update]], San Francisco County ranked 11th by income per capita among U.S. counties, with a per capita personal income of $164,807. Marin County, directly to the north over the Golden Gate Bridge, and San Mateo County, directly to the south on the Peninsula, were the 7th and 9th highest-income counties respectively.\nThe legacy of the California gold rush turned San Francisco into the principal banking and finance center of the West Coast in the early twentieth century. Montgomery Street in the Financial District became known as the \"Wall Street of the West\", home to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and the site of the now-defunct Pacific Coast Stock Exchange. Bank of America, a pioneer in making banking services accessible to the middle class, was founded in San Francisco and in the 1960s, built the landmark modern skyscraper at 555 California Street for its corporate headquarters, since relocated to Charlotte, North Carolina. Many large financial institutions, multinational banks, and venture capital firms are based in or have regional headquarters in the city. With over 30 international financial institutions, six Fortune 500 companies, and a large supporting infrastructure of professional services\u2014including law, public relations, architecture and design\u2014San Francisco is designated as an Alpha(-) World City. The 2024 Global Financial Centres Index ranked San Francisco as the fifth-most competitive financial center in the world.\nBeginning in the 1990s, San Francisco's economy diversified away from finance and tourism towards the growing fields of high tech, biotechnology, and medical research. Technology jobs accounted for just 1 percent of San Francisco's economy in 1990, growing to 4 percent in 2010 and an estimated 8 percent by the end of 2013. San Francisco became a center of Internet start-up companies during the dot-com bubble of the 1990s and the subsequent social media boom of the late 2000s (decade). Since 2010, San Francisco proper has attracted an increasing share of venture capital investments as compared to nearby Silicon Valley, attracting 423 financings worth US$4.58\u00a0billion in 2013. In 2004, the city approved a payroll tax exemption for biotechnology companies to foster growth in the Mission Bay neighborhood, site of a second campus and hospital of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Mission Bay hosts the UCSF Medical Center, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, and Gladstone Institutes, as well as more than 40 private-sector life sciences companies.\nAccording to academic Rob Wilson, San Francisco is a global city, a status that pre-dated the city's popularity during the California gold rush. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to high office vacancy rates and the accelerating evacuation of many retail and tech businesses out of the downtown core of San Francisco. Attributed causes include a shift to remote work in the technology and professional services sectors, as well as high levels of homelessness, drug use, and crime in areas around downtown San Francisco, such as the Tenderloin and Mid-Market neighborhoods.\nThe top employer in San Francisco is the city government itself, employing 5.6% (35,000+ people) of the city's workforce, followed by UCSF with over 29,000 employees. The largest private-sector employer is Salesforce, with 11,953 employees, as of 2024[ [update]]. Small businesses with fewer than 10 employees and self-employed firms made up 85% of city establishments in 2006, and the number of San Franciscans employed by firms of more than 1,000 employees has fallen by half since 1977. The growth of national big box and formula retail chains into the city has been made intentionally difficult by political and civic consensus. In an effort to buoy small privately owned businesses in San Francisco and preserve the unique retail personality of the city, the Small Business Commission started a publicity campaign in 2004 to keep a larger share of retail dollars in the local economy, and the Board of Supervisors has used the planning code to limit the neighborhoods where formula retail establishments can set up shop, an effort affirmed by San Francisco voters. However, by 2016, San Francisco was rated low by small businesses in a Business Friendliness Survey.\nLike many U.S. cities, San Francisco once had a significant manufacturing sector employing nearly 60,000 workers in 1969, but nearly all production left for cheaper locations by the 1980s. As of 2014[ [update]], San Francisco has seen a small resurgence in manufacturing, with more than 4,000 manufacturing jobs across 500 companies, doubling since 2011. The city's largest manufacturing employer is Anchor Brewing Company, and the largest by revenue is Timbuk2.\nAs of the first quarter of 2022[ [update]], the median value of homes in San Francisco County was $1,297,030. It ranked third in the U.S. for counties with highest median home value, behind Nantucket, Massachusetts and San Mateo County, California.\nTechnology.\nSan Francisco became a hub for technology-driven economic growth during the internet boom of the 1990s, and still holds an important position in the world city network today. Intense redevelopment towards the \"new economy\" makes business more technologically minded. Between the years of 1999 and 2000, the job growth rate was 4.9%, creating over 50,000 jobs in technology firms and internet content production. However, the technology industry has become geographically dispersed.\nIn the second technological boom driven by social media in the mid-2000s, San Francisco became a location for companies such as Apple, Google, Ubisoft, Facebook, and Twitter (now known as X) to base their tech offices and for their employees to live.\nThe final wave of technology materialized as AI companies have either been founded in the city or moved there attracted to a large talent pool, proximity to venture capital, and serendipitous connections.\nThe Sunset Reservoir Solar Project, completed in 2010, installed 24,000 solar panels on the roof of the reservoir. The 5-megawatt plant more than tripled the city's 2-megawatt solar generation capacity when it opened in December 2010.\nTourism and conventions.\nTourism is one of San Francisco's most important private-sector industries, accounting for more than one out of seven jobs in the city. The city's frequent portrayal in music, film, and popular culture has made the city and its landmarks recognizable worldwide. In 2016, it attracted the fifth-highest number of foreign tourists of any city in the United States. More than 25\u00a0million visitors arrived in San Francisco in 2016, adding US$9.96\u00a0billion to the economy.\nWith a large hotel infrastructure and a major convention facility in the Moscone Center, San Francisco is a popular destination for annual conventions and conferences.\nSome of the most popular tourist attractions in San Francisco, as noted by the Travel Channel, include the Golden Gate Bridge and Alamo Square Park, home to the famous \"Painted Ladies\". Both of these locations were often used as landscape shots for the hit American television sitcom \"Full House\". There is also Lombard Street, known for its \"crookedness\" and extensive views. Tourists also visit Pier 39, which offers dining, shopping, entertainment, and views of the bay, sunbathing California sea lions, the Aquarium of the Bay, and the famous Alcatraz Island.\nSan Francisco also offers tourists varied nightlife in its neighborhoods.\nThe new Terminal Project at Pier 27 opened September 25, 2014, as a replacement for the old Pier 35.\nA heightened interest in conventioneering in San Francisco, marked by the establishment of convention centers such as Yerba Buena, acted as a feeder into the local tourist economy and resulted in an increase in the hotel industry: \"In 1959, the city had fewer than thirty-three hundred first-class hotel rooms; by 1970, the number was nine thousand; and by 1999, there were more than thirty thousand.\" The commodification of the Castro District has contributed to San Francisco's tourist economy.\nArts and culture.\n \nAlthough the Financial District, Union Square, and Fisherman's Wharf are well known around the world, San Francisco is also characterized by its numerous culturally rich streetscapes featuring mixed-use neighborhoods anchored around central commercial corridors to which residents and visitors alike can walk. Because of these characteristics, San Francisco is ranked the \"most walkable\" city in the United States by Walk Score. Many neighborhoods feature a mix of businesses, restaurants and venues that cater to the daily needs of local residents while also serving many visitors and tourists. Some neighborhoods are dotted with boutiques, caf\u00e9s and nightlife such as Union Street in Cow Hollow, 24th Street in Noe Valley, Valencia Street in the Mission, Grant Avenue in North Beach, and Irving Street in the Inner Sunset. This approach especially has influenced the continuing South of Market neighborhood redevelopment with businesses and neighborhood services rising alongside high-rise residences.\nSince the 1990s, the demand for skilled information technology workers from local startups and nearby Silicon Valley has attracted white-collar workers from all over the world and created a high standard of living in San Francisco. Many neighborhoods that were once blue-collar, middle, and lower class have been gentrifying, as many of the city's traditional business and industrial districts have experienced a renaissance driven by the redevelopment of the Embarcadero, including the neighborhoods South Beach and Mission Bay. The city's property values and household income have risen to among the highest in the nation, creating a large and upscale restaurant, retail, and entertainment scene. According to a 2014 quality of life survey of global cities, San Francisco has the highest quality of living of any U.S. city. However, due to the exceptionally high cost of living, many of the city's middle and lower-class families have been leaving the city for the outer suburbs of the Bay Area, or for California's Central Valley. By June 2, 2015, the median rent was reported to be as high as $4,225. The high cost of living is due in part to restrictive planning laws which limit new residential construction.\nThe international character that San Francisco has enjoyed since its founding is continued today by large numbers of immigrants from Asia and Latin America. With 39% of its residents born overseas, San Francisco has numerous neighborhoods filled with businesses and civic institutions catering to new arrivals. In particular, the arrival of many ethnic Chinese, which began to accelerate in the 1970s, has complemented the long-established community historically based in Chinatown throughout the city and has transformed the annual Chinese New Year Parade into the largest event of its kind on the West Coast.\nWith the arrival of the \"beat\" writers and artists of the 1950s and societal changes culminating in the Summer of Love in the Haight-Ashbury district during the 1960s, San Francisco became a center of liberal activism and of the counterculture that arose at that time. The Democrats and to a lesser extent the Green Party have dominated city politics since the late 1970s, after the last serious Republican challenger for city office lost the 1975 mayoral election by a narrow margin. San Francisco has not voted more than 20% for a Republican presidential or senatorial candidate since 1988. In 2007, the city expanded its Medicaid and other indigent medical programs into the Healthy San Francisco program, which subsidizes certain medical services for eligible residents.\nSince 1993, the San Francisco Department of Public Health has distributed 400,000 free syringes every month aimed at reducing HIV and other health risks for drug users, as well as providing disposal sites and services.\nSan Francisco also has had a very active environmental community. Starting with the founding of the Sierra Club in 1892 to the establishment of the non-profit Friends of the Urban Forest in 1981, San Francisco has been at the forefront of many global discussions regarding the environment. The 1980 San Francisco Recycling Program was one of the earliest curbside recycling programs. The city's GoSolarSF incentive promotes solar installations and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is rolling out the CleanPowerSF program to sell electricity from local renewable sources. SF Greasecycle is a program to recycle used cooking oil for conversion to biodiesel.\nLGBT.\nSan Francisco has long had an LGBT-friendly history. It was home to the first lesbian-rights organization in the United States, Daughters of Bilitis; the first openly gay person to run for public office in the United States, Jos\u00e9 Sarria; the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, Harvey Milk; the first openly lesbian judge appointed in the U.S., Mary C. Morgan; and the first transgender police commissioner, Theresa Sparks. The city's large gay population has created and sustained a politically and culturally active community over many decades, developing a powerful presence in San Francisco's civic life. Survey data released in 2015 by Gallup places the proportion of LGBT adults in the San Francisco metro area at 6.2%, which is the highest proportion of the 50 most populous metropolitan areas as measured by the polling organization.\nOne of the most popular destinations for gay tourists internationally, the city hosts San Francisco Pride, one of the largest and oldest pride parades. San Francisco Pride events have been held continuously since 1972. The events are themed and a new theme is created each year. In 2013, over 1.5\u00a0million people attended, around 500,000 more than the previous year. Pink Saturday is an annual street party held the Saturday before the pride parade, which coincides with the Dyke march.\nThe Folsom Street Fair (FSF) is an annual BDSM and leather subculture street fair that is held in September, endcapping San Francisco's \"Leather Pride Week\". It started in 1984 and is California's third-largest single-day, outdoor spectator event and the world's largest leather event and showcase for BDSM products and culture.\nPerforming arts.\nSan Francisco's War Memorial and Performing Arts Center hosts some of the most enduring performing arts companies in the country. The War Memorial Opera House houses the San Francisco Opera, the second-largest opera company in North America as well as the San Francisco Ballet, while the San Francisco Symphony plays in Davies Symphony Hall. Opened in 2013, the SFJAZZ Center hosts jazz performances year round.\nThe Fillmore is a music venue located in the Western Addition. It is the second incarnation of the historic venue that gained fame in the 1960s, housing the stage where now-famous musicians such as the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, and Jefferson Airplane first performed, fostering the San Francisco Sound. It closed its doors in 1971 with a final performance by Santana and reopened in 1994 with a show by the Smashing Pumpkins.\nSan Francisco has a large number of theaters and live performance venues. Local theater companies have been noted for risk taking and innovation. The Tony Award-winning non-profit American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) is a member of the national League of Resident Theatres. Other local winners of the Regional Theatre Tony Award include the San Francisco Mime Troupe.\nSan Francisco theaters frequently host pre-Broadway engagements and tryout runs, and some original San Francisco productions have later moved to Broadway.\nMuseums.\nThe San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) houses 20th century and contemporary works of art. It moved to its current building in the South of Market neighborhood in 1995 and attracted more than 600,000 visitors annually. SFMOMA closed for renovation and expansion in 2013. The museum reopened on May 14, 2016, with an addition, designed by Sn\u00f8hetta, that has doubled the museum's size.\nThe Palace of the Legion of Honor holds primarily European antiquities and works of art at its Lincoln Park building modeled after its Parisian namesake. The de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park features American decorative pieces and anthropological holdings from Africa, Oceania and the Americas, while Asian art is housed in the Asian Art Museum. Opposite the de Young stands the California Academy of Sciences, a natural history museum that also hosts the Morrison Planetarium and Steinhart Aquarium. Located on Pier 15 on the Embarcadero, the Exploratorium is an interactive science museum. The Contemporary Jewish Museum is a non-collecting institution that hosts a broad array of temporary exhibitions. On Nob Hill, the Cable Car Museum is a working museum featuring the cable car powerhouse, which drives the cables. Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts was founded in 1998 and is part of the California College of the Arts.\nSports.\nMajor League Baseball's San Francisco Giants have played in San Francisco since moving from New York in 1958. The Giants play at Oracle Park, which opened in 2000. The Giants won World Series titles in 2010, 2012, and in 2014. The Giants have boasted stars such as Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, and Barry Bonds (MLB's career home run leader). In 2012, San Francisco was ranked No. 1 in a study that examined which U.S. metro areas have produced the most Major Leaguers since 1920.\nThe San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League (NFL) began playing in 1946 as an All-America Football Conference (AAFC) league charter member, moved to the NFL in 1950 and into Candlestick Park in 1971. The team left San Francisco in 2014, moving approximately 50 miles south to Santa Clara, and began playing its home games at Levi's Stadium, Despite this, the 49ers are still branded as a San Francisco team, and when the team hosted Super Bowl 50 events were hosted in San Francisco such as the annual NFL Experience which was held at the Moscone Center and \"Super Bowl City\" which opened on January 30 at Justin Herman Plaza on The Embarcadero. The 49ers have won five Super Bowl titles between 1982 and 1995.\nThe NBA's Golden State Warriors have played in the San Francisco Bay Area since moving from Philadelphia in 1962. The Warriors played as the San Francisco Warriors, from 1962 to 1971, before being renamed the Golden State Warriors prior to the 1971\u20131972 season in an attempt to present the team as a representation of the whole state of California, which had already adopted \"The Golden State\" nickname. The Warriors' arena, Chase Center, is located in San Francisco. After winning two championships in Philadelphia, they have won five championships since moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, and made five consecutive NBA Finals from 2015 to 2019, winning three of them. They won again in 2022, the franchise's first championship while residing in San Francisco proper.\nAt the collegiate level, the San Francisco Dons compete in NCAA Division I. Bill Russell led the Dons basketball team to NCAA championships in 1955 and 1956. There is also the San Francisco State Gators, who compete in NCAA Division II. Oracle Park hosted the annual Fight Hunger Bowl college football game from 2002 through 2013 before it moved to Santa Clara.\nThere are a handful of lower-league soccer clubs in San Francisco playing mostly from April \u2013 June.\nThe Bay to Breakers footrace, held annually since 1912, is best known for colorful costumes and a celebratory community spirit. The San Francisco Marathon attracts more than 21,000 participants. The Escape from Alcatraz triathlon has, since 1980, attracted 2,000 top professional and amateur triathletes for its annual race. The Olympic Club, founded in 1860, is the oldest athletic club in the United States. Its private golf course has hosted the U.S. Open on five occasions. San Francisco hosted the 2013 America's Cup yacht racing competition.\nWith an ideal climate for outdoor activities, San Francisco has ample resources and opportunities for amateur and participatory sports and recreation. There are more than of bicycle paths, lanes and bike routes in the city.\nSan Francisco residents have often ranked among the fittest in the country. Golden Gate Park has miles of paved and unpaved running trails as well as a golf course and disc golf course.\nBoating, sailing, windsurfing and kitesurfing are among the popular activities on San Francisco Bay, and the city maintains a yacht harbor in the Marina District.\nSan Francisco also has had Esports teams, such as the Overwatch League's San Francisco Shock. Established in 2017, they won two back-to-back championship titles in 2019 and 2020.\nParks and recreation.\nSeveral of San Francisco's parks and nearly all of its beaches form part of the regional Golden Gate National Recreation Area, one of the most visited units of the National Park system in the United States with over 13\u00a0million visitors a year. Among the GGNRA's attractions within the city are Ocean Beach, which runs along the Pacific Ocean shoreline and is frequented by a surfing community, and Baker Beach, which is located in a cove west of the Golden Gate Bridge, as well as the California Academy of Sciences, a research institute and natural history museum.\nThe Presidio of San Francisco is the former 18th century Spanish military base, which today is one of the city's largest parks and home to numerous museums and institutions. Also within the Presidio is Crissy Field, a former airfield that was restored to its natural salt marsh ecosystem. The GGNRA also administers Fort Funston, Lands End, Fort Mason, and Alcatraz. The National Park Service separately administers the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park \u2013 a fleet of historic ships and waterfront property around Aquatic Park.\nThere are more than 220 parks maintained by the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department. The largest and best-known city park is Golden Gate Park, which stretches from the center of the city west to the Pacific Ocean. Once covered in native grasses and sand dunes, the park was conceived in the 1860s and was created by the extensive planting of thousands of non-native trees and plants. The large park is rich with cultural and natural attractions such as the Conservatory of Flowers, Japanese Tea Garden and San Francisco Botanical Garden. The Dahlia is the official flower of San Francisco. \nLake Merced is a fresh-water lake surrounded by parkland and near the San Francisco Zoo, a city-owned park that houses more than 250 animal species, many of which are endangered. The only park managed by the California State Park system located principally in San Francisco, Candlestick Point was the state's first urban recreation area.\nMost of San Francisco's islands are protected as parkland or nature reserves. Alcatraz Island, operated by the National Park Service, is open to the public. The Farallon Islands are protected wildlife refuges. The Seal Rocks are protected as part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Red Rock Island is the only privately owned island in San Francisco Bay, but is uninhabited. Yerba Buena Island is largely utilized by the military.\nSan Francisco is the first city in the U.S. to have a park within a 10-Minute Walk of every resident. It also ranks fifth in the U.S. for park access and quality in the 2018 ParkScore ranking of the top 100 park systems across the United States, according to the nonprofit Trust for Public Land.\nGovernment.\nThe mayor is also the county executive, and the county Board of Supervisors acts as the city council. The government of San Francisco is a charter city and is constituted of two co-equal branches: the executive branch is headed by the mayor and includes other citywide elected and appointed officials as well as the civil service; the 11-member Board of Supervisors, the legislative branch, is headed by a president and is responsible for passing laws and budgets, though San Franciscans also make use of direct ballot initiatives to pass legislation.\nBecause of its unique city-county status, the local government is able to exercise jurisdiction over certain property outside city limits. San Francisco International Airport, though located in San Mateo County, is owned and operated by the City and County of San Francisco. San Francisco's largest jail complex (County Jail No. 5) is located in San Mateo County, in an unincorporated area adjacent to San Bruno. San Francisco was also granted a perpetual leasehold over the Hetch Hetchy Valley and watershed in Yosemite National Park by the Raker Act in 1913.\nThe members of the Board of Supervisors are elected as representatives of specific districts within the city. Upon the death or resignation of the mayor, the President of the Board of Supervisors becomes acting mayor until the full Board elects an interim replacement for the remainder of the term. In 2011, Ed Lee was selected by the board to finish the term of Gavin Newsom, who resigned to take office as Lieutenant Governor of California. Lee (who won two elections to remain mayor) was temporarily replaced by San Francisco Board of Supervisors President London Breed after he died on December 12, 2017. Supervisor Mark Farrell was appointed by the Board of Supervisors to finish Lee's term on January 23, 2018.\nMost local offices in San Francisco are elected using ranked choice voting.\nSan Francisco serves as the regional hub for many arms of the federal bureaucracy, including the U.S. Court of Appeals, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the U.S. Mint. Until decommissioning in the early 1990s, the city had major military installations at the Presidio, Treasure Island, and Hunters Point\u2014a legacy still reflected in the annual celebration of Fleet Week. The State of California uses San Francisco as the home of the state supreme court and other state agencies. Foreign governments maintain more than seventy consulates in San Francisco.\nThe municipal budget for fiscal year 2015\u201316 was $8.99\u00a0billion, and is one of the largest city budgets in the United States. The City of San Francisco spends more per resident than any city other than Washington, D.C., over $10,000 in FY 2015\u20132016. The city employs around 27,000 workers.\nIn the California State Senate, San Francisco is in the Senate District, represented by Democrat Scott Wiener. In the California State Assembly, it is split between the Assembly District, represented by Democrat Matt Haney, and the Assembly District, represented by Democrat Catherine Stefani.\nIn the United States House of Representatives, San Francisco is split between two congressional districts. Most of the city is in the 11th District, represented by Nancy Pelosi (D\u2013San Francisco). A sliver in the southwest is part of the 15th District represented by Kevin Mullin (D\u2013South San Francisco).\nOne of San Francisco's most notable achievements is its ambitious zero-waste goal, which aims to divert 100% of waste from landfills by 2025. The city has already made significant strides, with widespread recycling and composting programs that encourage residents to minimize waste. San Francisco was one of the first U.S. cities to ban plastic bags and continues to lead in banning single-use plastics, setting a standard for cities across the country.\nEducation.\nColleges and universities.\nThe University of California, San Francisco is the sole campus of the University of California system entirely dedicated to graduate education in health and biomedical sciences. It is ranked among the top five medical schools in the United States and operates the UCSF Medical Center, which ranks as the number one hospital in California and the number 5 in the country. UCSF is a major local employer, second in size only to the city and county government. A Mission Bay campus was opened in 2003, complementing its original facility in Parnassus Heights. It contains research space and facilities to foster biotechnology and life sciences entrepreneurship and will double the size of UCSF's research enterprise. All in all, UCSF operates more than 20 facilities across San Francisco.\nThe University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, founded in Civic Center in 1878, is the oldest law school in California and claims more judges on the state bench than any other institution.\nSan Francisco's two University of California institutions have recently formed an official affiliation in the UCSF/UC Law SF Consortium on Law, Science & Health Policy.\nSan Francisco State University is part of the California State University system and is located near Lake Merced. The school has approximately 30,000 students and awards undergraduate, master's and doctoral degrees in more than 100 disciplines. The City College of San Francisco, with its main facility in the Ingleside district, is one of the largest two-year community colleges in the country. It has an enrollment of about 100,000 students and offers an extensive continuing education program.\nFounded in 1855, the University of San Francisco, a private Jesuit university located on Lone Mountain, is the oldest institution of higher education in San Francisco and one of the oldest universities established west of the Mississippi River. Golden Gate University is a private, nonsectarian university formed in 1901 and located in the Financial District.\nCalifornia Institute of Integral Studies, founded in 1968, offers graduate programs in its Schools of Professional Psychology & Health, and Consciousness and Transformation.\nWith an enrollment of 13,000 students, the Academy of Art University is the largest institute of art and design in the nation. The California College of the Arts, located north of Potrero Hill, has programs in architecture, fine arts, design, and writing. The San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the only independent music school on the West Coast, grants degrees in orchestral instruments, chamber music, composition, and conducting. The San Francisco Art Institute, founded in 1871 and the oldest art school west of the Mississippi, closed in 2022.\nThe California Culinary Academy had programs in the culinary arts, baking and pastry arts, and hospitality and restaurant management, and is now closed.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nPublic schools are run by the San Francisco Unified School District, which covers the entire city and county, as well as the California State Board of Education for some charter schools. Lowell High School, the oldest public high school in the U.S. west of the Mississippi, and the smaller School of the Arts High School are two of San Francisco's magnet schools at the secondary level. Public school students attend schools based on an assignment system rather than neighborhood proximity.\nJust under 30% of the city's school-age population attends one of San Francisco's more than 100 private or parochial schools, compared to a 10% rate nationwide. Nearly 40 of those schools are Catholic schools managed by the Archdiocese of San Francisco.\nSan Francisco has nearly 300 preschool programs primarily operated by Head Start, San Francisco Unified School District, private for-profit, private non-profit and family child care providers. All four-year-old children living in San Francisco are offered universal access to preschool.\nMedia.\nThe major daily newspaper in San Francisco is the \"San Francisco Chronicle\", which is currently Northern California's most widely circulated newspaper. The Chronicle is most famous for a former columnist, the late Herb Caen, whose daily musings attracted critical acclaim and represented the \"voice of San Francisco\". \"The San Francisco Examiner\", once the cornerstone of William Randolph Hearst's media empire and the home of Ambrose Bierce, declined in circulation over the years and now takes the form of a free daily tabloid, under new ownership.\n\"Sing Tao Daily\" claims to be the largest of several Chinese language dailies that serve the Bay Area. \"SF\u00a0Weekly\" is the city's alternative weekly newspaper. \"San Francisco\" and \"7x7\" are major glossy magazines about San Francisco. The national newsmagazine \"Mother Jones\" is also based in San Francisco. San Francisco is home to online-only media publications such as SFist, and \"AsianWeek\".\nThe San Francisco Bay Area is the sixth-largest television\u00a0market in the U.S. It is the fourth-largest radio market after that of New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.\nAll major U.S. television networks have affiliates serving the region, with most of them based in the city. CNN, MSNBC, BBC, Russia Today, and CCTV America also have regional news bureaus in San Francisco. Bloomberg West was launched in 2011 from a studio on the Embarcadero and CNBC broadcasts from One Market Plaza since 2015. ESPN uses the local ABC studio for their broadcasting. The regional sports network, Comcast SportsNet Bay Area and its sister station Comcast SportsNet California, are both located in San Francisco. The Pac-12 Network is also based in San Francisco.\nPublic broadcasting outlets include both a television station and a radio station, both broadcasting under the call letters KQED from a facility near the Potrero Hill neighborhood. KQED-FM is the most-listened-to National Public Radio affiliate in the country.\nKUSF is a student-run radio station by college students from the University of San Francisco. Another local broadcaster, KPOO, is an independent, African-American owned and operated noncommercial radio station established in 1971. CNET, founded 1994, and Salon.com, 1995, are based in San Francisco. Sutro Tower is an important broadcast tower located between Mount Sutro and the Twin Peaks, built in 1973 for KTVU, KRON, and KPIX.\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nPublic transportation.\nTransit is the most used form of transportation every day in San Francisco. Every weekday, more than 560,000 people travel on Muni's 69 bus routes and more than 140,000 customers ride the Muni Metro light rail system. 32% of San Francisco residents use public transportation for their daily commute to work, ranking it fourth in the United States and first on the West Coast. The San Francisco Municipal Railway, primarily known as Muni, is the primary public transit system of San Francisco. As of 2023, Muni is the eighth-largest transit system in the United States. The system operates a combined light rail and subway system, the Muni Metro, as well as large bus and trolley coach networks. Additionally, it runs a historic streetcar line, which runs on Market Street from Castro Street to Fisherman's Wharf. It also operates the famous cable cars, which have been designated as a National Historic Landmark and are a major tourist attraction.\nBay Area Rapid Transit (BART), a regional Rapid Transit system, connects San Francisco with the East Bay and San Jose through the underwater Transbay Tube. The line, which contains all except the Orange Line, runs under Market Street to Civic Center where it turns south to the Mission District, the southern part of the city, and through northern San Mateo County, to the San Francisco International Airport, and Millbrae. BART also shares stations with SFMTA Muni Metro under Market Street.\nAnother commuter rail system, Caltrain, runs from San Francisco along the San Francisco Peninsula to San Jose. Historically, trains operated by Southern Pacific Lines ran from San Francisco to Los Angeles, via Palo Alto and San Jose.\nAmtrak Thruway runs a shuttle bus from three locations in San Francisco to its station across the bay in Emeryville. Additionally, BART offers connections to San Francisco from Amtrak's stations in Emeryville, Oakland and Richmond, and Caltrain offers connections in San Jose and Santa Clara. Thruway service also runs south to San Luis Obispo with connection to the Pacific Surfliner.\nSan Francisco was an early adopter of carsharing in America. The non-profit City CarShare opened in 2001 and Zipcar closely followed.\nSan Francisco Bay Ferry operates from the Ferry Building and Pier 39 to points in Oakland, Alameda, Bay Farm Island, South San Francisco, Richmond, and north to Vallejo in Solano County. The Golden Gate Ferry is the other ferry operator with service between San Francisco and Marin County. SolTrans runs supplemental bus service between the Ferry Building and Vallejo.\nTo accommodate the large amount of San Francisco citizens who commute to the Silicon Valley daily, employers like Genentech, Google, and Apple have begun to provide private bus transportation for their employees, from San Francisco locations. These buses have quickly become a heated topic of debate within the city, as protesters claim they block bus lanes and delay public buses.\nFreeways and roads.\nIn 2014, only 41.3% of residents commuted by driving alone or carpooling in private vehicles in San Francisco, a decline from 48.6% in 2000. There are 1,088 miles of streets in San Francisco with 946 miles of these streets being surface streets, and 59 miles of freeways. Due to its unique geography, and the freeway revolts of the late 1950s,\nInterstate 80 begins at the approach to the Bay Bridge and is the only direct automobile link to the East Bay. U.S. Route 101 connects to the western terminus of Interstate 80 and provides access to the south of the city along San Francisco Bay toward Silicon Valley. Northward, the routing for U.S. 101 uses arterial streets to connect to the Golden Gate Bridge, the only direct automobile link to Marin County and the North Bay.\nAs part of the retrofitting of the Golden Gate Bridge and installation of a suicide barrier, starting in 2019 the railings on the west side of the pedestrian walkway were replaced with thinner, more flexible slats in order to improve the bridge's aerodynamic tolerance of high wind to . Starting in June 2020, reports were received of a loud hum produced by the new railing slats, heard across the city when a strong west wind was blowing.\nState Route 1 also enters San Francisco from the north via the Golden Gate Bridge and bisects the city as the 19th Avenue arterial thoroughfare, joining with Interstate 280 at the city's southern border. Interstate 280 continues south from San Francisco, and also turns to the east along the southern edge of the city, terminating just south of the Bay Bridge in the South of Market neighborhood. After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, city leaders demolished the Embarcadero Freeway and a portion of the Central Freeway, converting them into street-level boulevards.\nState Route 35 enters the city from the south as Skyline Boulevard and terminates at its intersection with Highway 1. State Route 82 enters San Francisco from the south as Mission Street, and terminates shortly thereafter at its junction with 280. The western terminus of the historic transcontinental Lincoln Highway, the first road across America, is in San Francisco's Lincoln Park.\nVision Zero.\nIn 2014, San Francisco committed to Vision Zero, with the goal of ending all traffic fatalities caused by motor vehicles within the city by 2024. San Francisco's Vision Zero plan calls for investing in engineering, enforcement, and education, and focusing on dangerous intersections. In 2013, 25 people were killed by car and truck drivers while walking and biking in the city and 9 car drivers and passengers were killed in collisions. In 2019, 42 people were killed in traffic collisions in San Francisco.\nAirports.\nThough located south of downtown in unincorporated San Mateo County, San Francisco International Airport (SFO) is under the jurisdiction of the City and County of San Francisco. SFO is a hub for United Airlines and Alaska Airlines. SFO is a major international gateway to Asia and Europe, with the largest international terminal in North America. In 2011, SFO was the eighth-busiest airport in the U.S. and the 22nd-busiest in the world, handling over 40.9\u00a0million passengers.\nLocated in the South Bay, the San Jose International Airport (SJC) is the second-busiest airport in the Bay Area, followed by Oakland International Airport, which is a popular, low-cost alternative to SFO.\nCycling and walking.\nCycling is a popular mode of transportation in San Francisco, with 75,000 residents commuting by bicycle each day. In recent years, the city has installed better cycling infrastructure such as protected bike lanes and parking racks. Bay Wheels, previously named Bay Area Bike Share at inception, launched in August 2013 with 700 bikes in downtown San Francisco, selected cities in the East Bay, and San Jose. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and Bay Area Air Quality Management District are responsible for the operation with management provided by Motivate. A major expansion started in 2017, along with a rebranding as Ford GoBike; the company received its current name in 2019.\nPedestrian traffic is also widespread. In 2015, Walk Score ranked San Francisco the second-most walkable city in the United States.\nSan Francisco has significantly higher rates of pedestrian and bicyclist traffic deaths than the United States on average. In 2013, 21 pedestrians were killed in vehicle collisions, the highest since 2001, which is 2.5 deaths per 100,000 population \u2013 70% higher than the national average of 1.5.\nCycling is becoming increasingly popular in the city. The 2010 Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) annual bicycle count showed the number of cyclists at 33 locations had increased 58% from the 2006 baseline counts. In 2008, the MTA estimated that about 128,000 trips were made by bicycle each day in the city, or 6% of total trips. As of 2019[ [update]], 2.6% of the city's streets have protected bike lanes, with 28 miles of protected bike lanes in the city. Since 2006, San Francisco has received a Bicycle Friendly Community status of \"Gold\" from the League of American Bicyclists. In 2022 a measure on the ballot passed to protect JFK drive in Golden Gate Park as a pedestrian and biking space with 59% of voters in favor.\nPublic safety.\nThe San Francisco Police Department was founded in 1849. The portions of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area located within the city, including the Presidio and Ocean Beach, are patrolled by the United States Park Police.\nThe San Francisco Fire Department provides both fire suppression and emergency medical services to the city.\nSister cities.\nSan Francisco participates in the Sister Cities program. A total of 41 consulates general and 23 honorary consulates have offices in the San Francisco Bay Area.\nIn January 1980, Mayor Dianne Feinstein signed a sister cities agreement with Shanghai during a visit to China.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["3679490", "49728"], "permutation_1": ["49728", "3679490"], "permutation_2": ["3679490", "49728"], "permutation_3": ["3679490", "49728"]}
{"id": "2hop__313849_80178", "docs_added": {"29550910": "My Worlds Acoustic\nMy Worlds Acoustic is the debut remix album by Canadian singer Justin Bieber. It was released on November 26, 2010 and was initially sold exclusively at Walmart retail stores and Sam's Club. The album features nine acoustic versions of songs from his debut extended play, \"My World\" (2009), and first album \"My World 2.0\" (2010), as well as a new song \"Pray\". The new versions of the songs were produced by Bieber's music director, Dan Kanter, his vocal producer Kuk Harrell, and also producer Rob Wells. Internationally, the set is included as a part of the compilation album, \"\" (2010), which included songs from the previous two releases. \"My Worlds Acoustic\" was released to iTunes, on February 8, 2011.\nAccording to Bieber, he wanted to release the album for the naysayers who critiqued his actual singing ability. The singer said that he wanted to have an acoustic album, to reflect the effect of production on his vocals. Although labeled as an acoustic album, the songs still include subtle usages of electronic sounds such as synthesizers. The album received generally favorable reviews from critics, however most critics were not satisfied that the album was not genuinely acoustic. In Canada, the song debuted at number five, and later peaked at number four on the Canadian Albums Chart and certified Platinum by the Canadian Recording Industry Association. \"My Worlds Acoustic\" debuted at number seven on the US \"Billboard\" 200, selling 115,000 copies in its first week, becoming Bieber's third consecutive top ten album.\nBackground and marketing.\nOn October 18, 2010, Bieber announced on his Twitter plans for an acoustic album in time for the holiday season, and that it would feature unplugged versions of his songs, as well as a new song. Days later, on October 24, 2010, he revealed that the album was set for release on November 26, 2010. In an interview with MTV News, Bieber said that the album was for the \"haters\" who say he cannot sing and saying his voice was auto-tuned, and that \"stripping it down and having it kind of really mellow and being able to hear my voice\" was his purpose. The singer said he wanted to do the acoustic set because the Electronic Music production sometimes \"drowns out your voice\" and \"takes away from the singer, over the synths and everything.\" According to Kyle Anderson of MTV News the album might not have been \"just another project\", but rather the purpose could be \"to prove that he has the skills to sustain a long and fulfilling career.\" In the same interview he confirmed that \"Baby\" and other \"My World 2.0\" songs were re-recorded, as well as a new song.\nIt was later confirmed that the song was an inspirational song entitled, \"Pray.\" According to Bieber, the song is a gift to his fans. The song's arrangement is set to reflect Bieber's music before he was discovered, but also includes instrumentation from a string quartet, congas, and a caj\u00f3n drum, the latter to represent Bieber's worldly travels, specifically to Africa. While Bieber was being interviewed by Ryan Seacrest on his radio show, Bieber talked about the song's initial writing stating that it was influenced by Michael Jackson, and he thought of Jackson's \"Man in the Mirror\" when writing the song. Vocally, Bieber's vocals are sung in a lower key compared to previous singles. Bieber plays guitar on the album, along with his guitarist and musical director Dan Kanter. The new versions of the other songs on the album were produced by Kanter, Bieber's vocal producer Kuk Harrell, and also producer Rob Wells.\nTo promote the album as well as draw interest for Bieber's then-upcoming 3D film, \"\", Bieber shot an alternate music video for the acoustic version of the song, \"Never Say Never.\" The video premiered during Game 3 of the 2010 World Series, and in the clip, the singer dons apparel from both teams. Bieber performed \"Pray\" for the first time at the 2010 American Music Awards. The performance opened with Bieber sitting playing the piano while singing. Midway through the performance Bieber arose from the piano and took center stage; he was accompanied by a choir singing background vocals. The performance was ended with Bieber kneeling singing the song's title, the performance was greeted by standing ovation from the audience. After originally being sold only at Walmart and Sam's Club first, the album was released on iTunes on February 11, 2011, accompanying the release of \"Justin Bieber: Never Say Never\", and preceding the release of \"Never Say Never \u2013 The Remixes\".\nCritical reception.\nLucy Jones of \"The Daily Telegraph\" said that \"with catchy choruses, soulful key changes and cute hooks laid bare, these are undeniably brilliant pop songs.\" Jones further commented that \"finger clicks, bongos and mellow guitars are a welcome change from the squealing synths and pounding beats favoured by Bieber and his peers,\" and that the album had the ability to connect with audiences beyond his demographic. Mikael Wood of \"Entertainment Weekly\" gave the album a \"B\u2212\" rating, stating that the album doesn't change Bieber's beloved \"kiddie-soul vocals\" calling it \"perfunctory\", but said that acoustic renditions such as \"Baby\", \"One Time\" and new song \"Pray\" deliver their \"saccharine payload.\" Thomas Conneron of \"Chicago Sun-Times\" said that \"calming down several of the pop tunes with slower tempos and patient singing\" was not bad and that slowing everything down made listeners hear how the singer's voice had matured.\nCalling it \"the sugariest acoustic album in history,\" Allison Stewart of \"The Washington Post\" said \"its arrangements and melodies \u2013 the best parts of any Bieber record - are stripped down but otherwise little changed, demonstrating just how great most of these songs were to begin with.\" Stewart also said that urban numbers such as \"Baby,\" \"survive their makeovers without a hitch.\" Andy Kellman of \"Allmusic\" gave the album 2 and a half out of 5 stars saying that the album was \"an enticement.\" Dan Savoie of \"Rockstar Weekly\" gave the album 4 out of 5 stars, saying that it is \"the perfect showcase for a talented young artist who's on his way to the Grammy Awards this year.\" Although she commented that the \"acoustic\" labeling was a bit misleading, Monica Hererra of \"Billboard\" said that the album \"succeeds\", calling songs like the live version of \"Favorite Girl\" the album's saving grace and \"truly acoustic.\" On the former, Herrera said, \"It's the one moment where you can hear all of the young artist's strengths falling in line-raw talent, maturing vocals and, of course, an all-too-valuable connection with his fans.\"\nCommercial performance.\nIn Canada, \"My Worlds Acoustic\" it debuted at number five on the Canadian Albums Chart, then rose to number four the following week. The album was subsequently certified Platinum by the Canadian Recording Industry Association the same month it was released, shifting over 80,000 units. The album debuted at number seven on the \"Billboard\" 200 with 115,000 copies sold in the first week released. \"My Worlds Acoustic\" became Bieber's second top ten album in a little over a year, following the extended play \"My World\" and debut studio album, \"My World 2.0\". After fluctuating on the chart for weeks, due to the album being available for digital download on iTunes, the album returned to the top ten of the \"Billboard\" on the week of February 26, 2011.\nTrack listing.\nNotes\nPersonnel.\nAdapted from \"My Worlds Acoustic\" liner notes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "27556895": "Never Say Never (Justin Bieber song)\n\"Never Say Never\" is a song by Canadian singer Justin Bieber. The song is used as the theme song for the 2010 film \"The Karate Kid\", and features a rap verse from its star, Jaden Smith. Originally a risque demo with sexual lyrics performed by Travis Garland, it was written and produced by The Messengers, and Omarr Rambert. However, Bieber was tapped to record the song for the film. He re-wrote the song with the original artists along with Smith and his vocal producer Kuk Harrell, to feature inspirational lyrics to foil the film's theme.\nThe song was released for digital download in the United States on June 8, 2010. The song was later included as an acoustic track on the remix album \"My Worlds Acoustic\" (2010) and both the acoustic and single versions were on the compilation album ' (2010). To promote Bieber's , the song was released as the lead and only single from Bieber's second remix album, '.\n\"Never Say Never\" peaked within the top twenty in Canada, Norway, and New Zealand, while reaching the top forty in Australia, as well as charting in other international markets. After it was re-released as the lead single and the only single from \"\u2013 The Remixes\", promoting his film, the single peaked at number eight on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, becoming Bieber's second top-ten single in the United States. Its accompanying music video, directed by Honey, features Smith and Bieber in a recording studio playing around and dancing, and is intercut with scenes from the film. He has notably performed the song on \"Today\" and on his My World Tour. Smith joined Bieber during the tour's stop at Madison Square Garden to perform the song for scenes in \"\".\nBackground.\nA demo of the song, \"Sexy Together\" was originally recorded by Travis Garland. Reportedly the song was re-written by its original writers Adam Messinger, Nasri, Omarr Rambert, and his vocal producer Kuk Harrell, while Smith added lines. Carina Adly MacKenzie of Zap2it preferred Bieber and Smith's version, commenting, \"No wonder Bieb skipped this version -- it's a total snoozer. You'd think that a song about dying would be more interesting than a song about little kids doing karate... but no.\" Bieber hinted at the collaboration by posting a promo photo of himself and Smith on his Twitter, and also posting that a video of his would premiere before \"Somebody to Love\", the second single from his studio album debut, \"My World 2.0\". The song was confirmed when the track listing for the soundtrack was revealed. It was released on iTunes in the United States on June 8, 2010.\nComposition.\n\"Never Say Never\" is a teen pop track which includes hip hop elements. According to the sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, \"Never Say Never\" is set in common time with a metronome of 96 beats per minute, which is described as \"steady, not too fast.\" It is composed in the key of A minor with vocals spanning from the low-note of G3 to the high-note of C6. The song follows in the chord progression of Am\u2013C\u2013G\u2013D Bieber provides lead vocals in the song while Smith provides the backing with rap interludes. The song is a \"motivational track,\" containing inspirational lyrics, such as Bieber singing about a life filled with adversity, through lines like, \"I never thought that I could walk through fire / I never thought that I could take the burn/ never had the strength to take it higher\". \"Idolator\" thought the song as a tween-friendly version of Eminem's \"Lose Yourself\". Smith's lines reference his father, and puns in the phrase, \"raised by the power of Will\". He also makes reference to his lineage by saying \"Born from two stars so the moon's where I land.\", as he is the son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, who are both Hollywood stars. Smith also makes references to Luke Skywalker and Kobe Bryant in his lines.\nCritical reception.\nShima Maya of AOL Radio Blog gave the song a positive review, calling it \"a burst of sexual energy\", and stating, \"Even on a soundtrack featuring the likes of Lady Gaga, John Mayer and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, this single...is sure to stand out as the film's flagship anthem.\" Toor also complimented Bieber's \"now-trademark silky-smooth voice.\" Monica Herrera of \"Billboard\" said that Smith's rapping skills could rival those of his former-rapper father. E! Online said \"And while some might insist that \"Parents Just Don't Understand\", we think Big Willy would totally be down with Jaden's rap.\" Maria-Mercedes Lara of Celebuzz said, \"don't make assumptions with the suspiciously nepotistic circumstances surrounding Jaden's appearance on Bieber's song: the kid is actually really good.\" Lara also commented that Bieber \"should be watching his back for Jaden's rising star.\" \"Tiger Beat\" said that they loved the song, and said it had a \"great beat.\"\nChart performance.\nOn the week ending June 17, 2011, the song debuted at number thirty-three on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, propelled by its debut at number seventeen on the Hot Digital Songs chart selling 76,000 copies. The song became Bieber's ninth consecutive top 40 release for a regular or digital single as a lead artist. In Canada on the Canadian Hot 100, the song debuted at eleven. The single debuted at forty-five on the Australian Singles Chart, and peaked at thirty-eight in its second week, while on the New Zealand Singles Chart, the song debuted and peaked at twenty. The Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (RIANZ) certified \"Never Say Never\" gold on June 5, 2011, denoting the sale of 7,500 copies. On the Norwegian Singles Chart, the song debuted at eighteen, and spent one week on the chart. Debuting at seventy-five on the Austrian Singles Chart, the following week it peaked at forty-six on the chart. On the Dutch Single Top 100, after spending four weeks on the chart, the song peaked at seventy. On the Tip charts in both Belgian regions, the song peaked at two and five.\nPromotion.\nThe accompanying clip for the single was directed by Honey. The music video takes place in a studio, and contains a heroic concept, featuring Bieber and Smith singing the song and playing around, intercut with scenes from the film. Bieber appears in a motorcycle jacket and high tops. Studio scenes include Bieber flexing karate moves, he and Smith dancing, jerkin', and eating Twizzlers. The scenes also show the two shadowboxing, as footage from the film shows Smith performing an \"array of fight moves.\" Near the end of the clip features Bieber giving a roundhouse kick.\nThe music video was posted at 22:11 UTC on May 27, 2010, and released to the public four days later.\nThe actual 'film' within the music video is directly taken from the footage of Karate Kid, which was shot entirely in Beijing and features Jackie Chan as \"Mr. Han\", a mentor figure who trains Smith throughout the film. The scenes include Smith looking at the CCTV Headquarters building, a shot of the Beijing street scene, an Air China Boeing 747-400 taking off and landing, and a training scene at the Great Wall of China. The basic storyline involves Smith's character vying for the affection of a Chinese girl and being rebuffed by a rival suitor. Smith eventually wins a fight against his rival and wins the affection of the girl. Both Wall Street Journal Online and E! Online noted the low-production value of the clip. Kyle Anderson of MTV News commended Bieber's latest \"attention-grabbing video,\" and jokingly stated, \"As a video that features fighting, it's a pretty strong entry, and it joins the list of great fight-centric videos below.\" An Idolator writer said that they were impressed with Smith's moves, and Bieber's \"spinning roundhouse.\" A writer for \"Tiger Beat\" said, \"The video is SO cute\u2013we love when Justin and Jaden get silly at the end!\"\nBieber performed the song on June 4, 2011, on the Today Show as part of a medley with \"Baby\", \"Somebody to Love\", and \"One Time\". The song is a part of his setlist during the My World Tour. Smith joined Bieber for the song on the August 31, 2010 date, along with Usher, Miley Cyrus, Ludacris, and Boyz II Men, to film scenes for his upcoming 3D concert film.\nTo promote his remix album, \"My Worlds Acoustic\" as well as draw interest for the upcoming film, Bieber shot a music video for the song. The video premiered during Game 3 of the 2010 World Series. In the video, Bieber stands on a baseball diamond and dons apparel from both teams in the Series, wearing a San Francisco Giants hat and Texas Rangers jacket Scenes in which Bieber sings on the diamond is intercut with players hitting the ball and hanging in the dugout, as well as Bieber playing a guitar. In an interview, Bieber said that the video was inspired by his love for sports.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nRadio and release history.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "43403247": "Never Say Never (Brandy album)\nNever Say Never is the second studio album by American singer Brandy. It was released on June 9, 1998, by Atlantic Records. Atlantic consulted David Foster, as well as producer Rodney \"Darkchild\" Jerkins and his team to work with Norwood on the record; Jerkins went on to craft the majority of the album and would evolve as Norwood's mentor and head producer on her succeeding projects.\nThe lyrical themes on the album include the singer's personal experiences with love, monogamy, media bias, and maturity. Influenced by Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston, Norwood wanted to present a more mature facet of herself with the album, incorporating a ballad-heavy style and an adult contemporary feel into her urban pop sound for the album.\nUpon its release, \"Never Say Never\" facilitated Norwood in becoming a viable recording artist with media-crossing appeal. It debuted at No. 3 on the US \"Billboard\" 200 chart, selling 160,000 copies in its first week, and peaked at No. 2 the following week, remaining within the chart's top 20 for 28 weeks. Six of the album's 16 songs were chosen as singles, including duet with Monica \"The Boy Is Mine\" and \"Have You Ever?\", which both topped the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100, as well as \"Top of the World\", which become an international hit.\n\"Never Say Never\" became Norwood's highest-selling and highest-charting album to date in most international markets, being certified quintuple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and selling over 16 million copies worldwide. It won numerous awards and accolades, including a Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals for \"The Boy Is Mine\". The album was supported by the Never Say Never World Tour (1999), which included sold-out shows in North America, Europe, & Asia.\nBackground and development.\nFollowing the release of her multi-platinum eponymous debut album (1994) and several equally successful soundtrack contributions such as \"Sittin' Up in My Room\" from \"Waiting to Exhale\" (1995) and \"Missing You\" from \"Set It Off\" (1996), Norwood took a lengthy musical break in which she graduated from high school, enrolled in college and established a flourishing acting career. In 1995, she was cast in the titular role in the UPN sitcom \"Moesha\", and in the following two years, she appeared opposite her idol Whitney Houston in the musical television film \"Cinderella\" (1997) and filmed the slasher film sequel \"I Still Know What You Did Last Summer\" (1998). While she enjoyed her acting profile accomplishments, Norwood felt that her transition had caused people to recognize her more as an actress than as a singer. At one point she even considered giving up singing to concentrate on acting due to the ever changing music industry and losing her passion for it.\nAccording to her, \"I think the music industry has changed so much... I don't know how to look at my first video... There was so much happening... And I'd rather go out with the first album, bang, and not have to come back and not be able to do the same thing again. Nevertheless, after \"Brandy\"'s commercial success, she was heavily pressured, stating: \"It's very important to me that my music connects with the general public.\nFor a while, she placed the recording of the album on the \"back burner\" because she was \"barely satisfied with the material that was presented to her. She found that many songs would not express what she wanted to tell at that point of her career. According to her, \"Many of the songs I heard were not 'me',\" the singer stated during a promotional interview with \"Jet\" in 1999, \"And If I can't feel it, then I won't sing it.\" Also, after \"Brandy\", she felt in a space of wanting to do something different, while exploring her voice and playing with different sounds. Elaborating on her desire for progression and a more mature sound, Norwood added, that \"I'm not the little girl I was when I made my first record. My voice is a strong instrument now; my vocals come from both my heart and my diaphragm. My heart because I matured in the four years since the last album; I'm more emotionally there.\" She also regained interest with music when she met then upcoming producer Rodney Jerkins and his production team. \"They really turned it around. When I met Rodney, his tracks were so mean, so unbelievable, and the writing that Sean and Jaffey did, they came to the table and they really brought a lot of the fill ins that I had inside of me out. They changed my whole perspective on the music thing. When I started to work with them, I wanted to go to the studio every day. I wanted to sing every day. I didn't want to act anymore after that\", says Norwood.\nRecording and production.\nProduction for the album dates back as early as May 1997, during this time MTV News reported that Norwood was \"taking up two recording studios in both New York and Los Angeles, and is working on what she hopes will be a fall release\". Producers that were slated to work on the album at that point were Sean \"Puffy\" Combs, Babyface, David Foster, and Keith Crouch. During the early recording stages she recorded a few songs with Puffy but didn't finish them due to their hectic schedules. The plan was for the pair to resume what they had started. According to her: \"I'm going to go back in the studio with him. I'm really excited to work with Puffy. I'm more nervous than excited because I'm like the biggest Puffy fan. The last time I worked with Puffy, I couldn't even sing right\". Norwood was also planning to record a song with Wyclef Jean, in which she expressed that she had heard that his track was \"so hot\" and she was \"ready to go in there and sing it, master it, get it done, and put it on the album\". Rapper and songwriter-producer Missy Elliott was also requested as a producer at one point.\nRecording for the album resumed in October 1997, with Norwood confirming that she was \"right in the middle\" of completing the album. She stated that the material was going to be \"sophisticated a little, a little sexy, a little edge, but I'm still gonna be innocent, you know, I still have to give 'em that America's sweetheart thing. I have to do that, can't never get rid of that\". The albums mature direction can be attributed to Norwood being influenced by Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, and Jewel. \"I look at all these other female artists that are coming out and who've done so well. I get to see what they're doin' with they self, you know, and the imaging and the songs, and I get to take bits and pieces from everybody and put it into my own style\", says Norwood.\nEventually, Rodney Jerkins jumped on board and the pair recorded \"The Boy Is Mine\"; the sixth track recorded for the album. Norwood stated that the song was not a friendship type of duet, \"you've seen friendship duets like Whitney, Cece and different duets. This is Brandy and Monica, like, they're, we're just gettin' it on\". Jerkins was brought in when Atlantic Records A&R Paris Davis called him to meet with Norwood at \"Georgia's\", a restaurant in Los Angeles. Accompanied by his brother Fred Jerkins III and songwriter LaShawn Daniels, he ended up completing five songs in five days with her, including \u201cLearn the Hard Way\u201d, \u201cHappy\u201d, \u201cPut That on Everything,\u201d and title track \u201cNever Say Never.\u201d Satisfied with their output, Atlantic Records secured a production deal with Jerkins's team and encouraged them to work on more material for the album. With Jerkins and his team producing the majority on the album, he was eventually promoted to executive producer on the album.\nJerkins and his circle worked excessively on the album, with typical sessions starting in the afternoon and lasting until the early morning hours. Despite the physical distance between the recording studios and Jerkins's native in New Jersey, he brought many of his family and friends to Los Angeles to help work on the album. His brother Fred quit his steady job working at Prudential Insurance Company to work with Norwood on \"Never Say Never\", while his sister Sybil received co-writing credits on the album. Drawing from their own experiences, many titles of \"Never Say Never\" were built on a clich\u00e9 book in the studio. With Jerkins being inspired by the singer/producer partnerships of Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis and Janet Jackson as well as the influence of DeVante Swing on Jodeci's sound, he envisioned a full body of work for Norwood's second album, telling: \"I wanted to make records where you fell in love with and heard the journey of the artists from beginning to end. The intro is just as important as the song, the outro is just as important. Once I got Brandy to believe in that vision, then we just locked in.\"\nApart from Jerkins and Darkchild crew, Norwood also worked with Canadian producer David Foster on the album. Lending a certain level of adult contemporary\u2013pop crossover credibility to the project, he would produce three songs on \"Never Say Never\", including \"Have You Ever?,\" written by his frequent collaborator Diane Warren, the Gordon Chambers-penned \"One Voice\" and \"(Everything I Do) I Do It for You,\" a cover version of Canadian singer Bryan Adams's 1991 song. Initially she was scared to record \"huge\" Pop ballads because she didn't know if she \"could pull it off\", however Foster showed her \"the insides of doing a pop ballad\". Norwood recorded songs multiple times if she wasn't satisfied with them. She stated: \"I'll do a song, and then go in my car and listen to someone's CD and if that sounds better than what I did, I'll have to go do it again. Like I listened to number 4 on Mariah's album, I said, \"Oh my God, I have to do the slow song again, it has to be just like this, it has to be this type of quality.\" Ultimately, she credits the chemistry with Jerkins and Foster for her musical growth: \"They brought out the best in me, the vocals I didn't know I had,\" she said. Aside from improving vocally, she further showed musical growth by co-writing and producing songs on the album.\nMusic and lyrics.\nThe album's opening track \"Angel in Disguise\" is a Rodney Jerkins-produced mid-tempo track that features backing vocals by fellow R&B singer Joe. It consists of a \"dribbling bass line\" that Chuck Taylor of \"Billboard\" compared to a \"dreamlike, moonlit night\". The harmonic background song, created using the so-called multi-track recording, was described as \"enchanting\" and \"seductive\". The lyrics of \"Angel in Disguise\" describe a protagonist who still loves her partner despite his infidelity, with Norwood quoted: \"An angel in disguise she was / But somehow you fell for her / Till she broke your heart that day / And left you in the rain / But still I love you\". Set as the album's lead single, \"The Boy Is Mine\" was originally intended to be a solo song for Brandy, but due to Monica's success at the time, it was conceived as a duet. Inspired by Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney's 1982 duet \"The Girl Is Mine\", the lyrics of the mid-tempo R&B track revolve around two women fighting over a man. \"Learn the Hard Way\" is the album's fourth track and shares similarities with the album's title track. The song's background revolves around Norwood telling a man \"it's a shame you had to learn the hard way\", and the lyrics quote: \"You did me wrong / You told me lies / Treated me bad / All of the time.\" The lyrics also show Norwood does not feel sympathy for him after all he's done. The Guy Roche-produced \"Almost Doesn't Count\" follows; its lyrics revolve around its writer Shelly Peiken's powerful but unfruitful on-again, off-again relationship she had with a man while in college. Peiken recalled her emotions during a writing session with Roche decades later when she \"dug up that laundry list of all the 'almosts' I felt we had, and we put it into the song.\" In a 2020 interview, she further elaborated about the lyrics: \"It was a relationship that was more in my head than in his, and I always felt like we almost got there, he almost said I love you, he almost broke up with the girlfriend he had the whole time. He almost faced his feelings but he never quite got there \u2013 maybe that was all in my head too. Maybe he never had any of those feelings, maybe it was all my imagination.\" Brandy performed the song in the 1999 television film \"Double Platinum\", starring Diana Ross and herself. The international single \"Top of the World\" is the album's sixth track. It is a collaboration with Mase and talks about Brandy as a popstar \"just trying to be her\" and not feeling like being in her own world.\nThe Darkchild-produced \"U Don't Know Me (Like U Used To)\", which is the album's seventh and final single, is noted for its remix version with Shaunta and Da Brat. The title track, also produced by Rodney Jerkins, is the eighth song of the album. \"Truthfully\", a ballad about a broken relationship, was written by former Boyz II Men member, singer-songwriter Marc Nelson. Recorded in a single take, it took Nelson five different sessions to get Norwood in the recording studio as she felt initially nervous about working with him. Main production on the song was helmed by Harvey Mason, Jr., who received his first major placement as a producer on \"Truthfully\". Mason was consulted by Jerkins after he had shopped around several tracks for record executives. The No. 1 single \"Have You Ever?\" is the album's tenth track. Brandy states that it was the first time she had been in the studio with a producer like David Foster, initially being nervous about recording the song. In the song's lyrics, Norwood sings about unrequited love with lyrics such as \"Have you finally found the one you've given your heart to / Only to find that one will not give their heart to you\". \"Put That on Everything\", a mid-tempo ballad, is the album's eleventh track. The album's twelfth track \"In the Car Interlude\" is actually a phone conversation in the car between Brandy, Rodney and Fred Jerkins. \"Happy\", an R&B up-tempo song, was the album's thirteenth track. It was also featured in \"Double Platinum\" and received positive reception from \"Rolling Stone\". It also served as the theme song of the 2002 MTV reality television series \"\". \"One Voice\", the fourteenth track, was the official UNICEF theme song during its 50th anniversary celebration. \"Entertainment Weekly\" describes her voice in the song as \"soft and smoky\" and as a \"gospel-fired ballad that finds her effortlessly raising the roof\". \"Tomorrow\", a nearly six-minutes-long ballad, is the fifteenth track and the album's longest song. The final song on the album is the Bryan Adams cover \"(Everything I Do) I Do It for You\".\nRelease and promotion.\n\"Never Say Never\" was released in the United States on June 9, 1998, by Atlantic Records; its double-disc limited edition was released exclusively in Australia on July 13, 1999. Promotion for \"Never Say Never\" began with Brandy's appearance on music magazine \"Vibe\"'s April 1998 cover, followed by a massive print campaign, including cover shoots for \"Teen People\" and \"Ebony\" as well as coverage in fanzines. The co-marketing venture between \"Vibe\" and Atlantic Records resulted in a number of joint projects, such as a \"Vibe\"\u2013Brandy website, a college marketing tour, and several retail and radio promotions. With television channel MTV, Brandy hosted the network's spring break shows in Jamaica on March 13\u201315.\nOn May 14, Brandy performed \"The Boy Is Mine\" for the first time, solo on \"The Tonight Show with Jay Leno\". In June, Brandy performed \"Top of the World\" alongside Mase at the 1998 MTV Movie Awards. On June 13, MTV aired a special in which Brandy presented a video countdown that consisted of her favorite music videos. The following day, MTV produced a 30-minute \"Ultra Sound\" segment special about her. On June 16, Brandy appeared on \"CBS This Morning\". On July 17, Brandy went on \"The View\" ; Three days later, she appeared on \"Live with Regis and Kathie Lee.\" On July 22, Brandy appeared on \"Late Night with Conan O'Brien\". On August 28, she made yet another appearance on \"The Tonight Show with Jay Leno\" ; this time performing \"Have You Ever\". On September 3, Brandy performed the remix version of \"Top of the World\" alongside rappers Big Pun and Fat Joe at the Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards. Also in September, Brandy and Monica performed \"The Boy Is Mine\" live for the first time together at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards. On September 26, Brandy performed at the Hip-Hop Unity Festival held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. On October 11, Brandy performed at the 1998 International Achievement in Arts Awards. Two days later she made an appearance on \"The Rosie O'Donnell Show\".\nOn January 11, 1999, Brandy and actress Melissa Joan Hart hosted the 1999 American Music Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. During the award ceremony, she performed her song \"Have You Ever?\". On January 31, Brandy and rapper LL Cool J hosted Miami radio station WEDR's Super Bowl concert, surrounding Super Bowl XXXIII. In March 1999, Brandy joined former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno at the National Museum of Women in the Arts to recognize six young women that were selected for the second annual Volunteerism Awards. On April 13, Brandy performed alongside Whitney Houston, Tina Turner, Cher, Chaka Khan, and Faith Hill, among others, at \"VH1 Divas Live '99\". By May 1999, Brandy had embarked on a world tour with shows in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Japan. Also in May, she performed \"Almost Doesn't Count\" on \"The Tonight Show with Jay Leno\" In June, Brandy returned to the US for the North American leg of her tour which was originally scheduled to run from June 18 to August 2. The tour was cut short because she had to film the then-upcoming fifth season of her UPN sitcom \"Moesha\". On September 8, 1999, she performed \"U Don't Know Me (Like U Used To)\", on \"The Tonight Show with Jay Leno\".\nIn retail, a Brandy standee was provided to merchants, while"}, "descending_order": ["29550910", "27556895", "43403247"], "permutation_1": ["27556895", "29550910", "43403247"], "permutation_2": ["27556895", "43403247", "29550910"], "permutation_3": ["29550910", "43403247", "27556895"]}
{"id": "2hop__13986_40169", "docs_added": {"16550": "John, King of England\nKing of England from 1199 to 1216\nJohn (24 December 1166\u00a0\u2013 19 October 1216) was King of England from 1199 until his death in 1216. He lost the Duchy of Normandy and most of his other French lands to King Philip II of France, resulting in the collapse of the Angevin Empire and contributing to the subsequent growth in power of the French Capetian dynasty during the 13th century. The baronial revolt at the end of John's reign led to the sealing of Magna Carta, a document considered a foundational milestone in the evolution of the constitution of the United Kingdom.\nJohn was the youngest son of King Henry II of England and Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine. He was nicknamed John Lackland () because, as a younger son, he was not expected to inherit significant lands. He became Henry's favourite child following the failed revolt of 1173\u20131174 by his brothers Henry the Young King, Richard, and Geoffrey against their father. John was appointed Lord of Ireland in 1177 and given lands in England and on the continent. During the reign of his brother Richard I, he unsuccessfully attempted a rebellion against Richard's royal administrators while the King was participating in the Third Crusade, but he was proclaimed king after Richard died in 1199. He came to an agreement with Philip II of France to recognise John's possession of the continental Angevin lands at the peace treaty of Le Goulet in 1200.\nWhen war with France broke out again in 1202, John achieved early victories, but shortages of military resources and his treatment of Norman, Breton, and Anjou nobles resulted in the collapse of his empire in northern France in 1204. He spent much of the next decade attempting to regain these lands, raising huge revenues, reforming his armed forces and rebuilding continental alliances. His judicial reforms had a lasting effect on the English common law system, as well as providing an additional source of revenue. His dispute with Pope Innocent III over the election of Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton led to the Papal interdict of 1208, in which church services were banned until 1214, as well as John's excommunication the following year, a dispute he finally settled in 1213. John's attempt to defeat Philip in 1214 failed because of the French victory over John's allies at the Battle of Bouvines. When he returned to England, John faced a rebellion by many of his barons, who were unhappy with his fiscal policies and his treatment of many of England's most powerful nobles. Magna Carta was drafted as a peace treaty between John and the barons, and agreed in 1215. However, neither side complied with its conditions and civil war broke out shortly afterwards, with the barons aided by Prince Louis of France. It soon descended into a stalemate. John died of dysentery contracted while on campaign in eastern England in late 1216; supporters of his son Henry III went on to achieve victory over Louis and the rebel barons the following year.\nContemporary chroniclers were mostly critical of John's performance as king, and his reign has since been the subject of significant debate and periodic revision by historians from the 16th century onwards. Historian Jim Bradbury has summarised the current historical opinion of John's positive qualities, observing that John is today usually considered a \"hard-working administrator, an able man, an able general\". Nonetheless, modern historians agree that he also had many faults as king, including what historian Ralph Turner describes as \"distasteful, even dangerous personality traits\", such as pettiness, spitefulness, and cruelty. These negative qualities provided extensive material for fiction writers in the Victorian era, and John remains a recurring character within Western popular culture, primarily as a villain in Robin Hood folklore.\nEarly life (1166\u20131189).\nChildhood and the Angevin inheritance.\nJohn was born on 24 December 1166. His father, King Henry II of England, had inherited significant territories along the Atlantic seaboard\u2014Anjou, Normandy and England\u2014and expanded his possessions by exercising his ducal claim over Brittany. John's mother was Eleanor, the powerful duchess of Aquitaine, who had a tenuous claim to Toulouse and Auvergne in southern France and was the former wife of King Louis VII of France. The territories of Henry and Eleanor formed the Angevin Empire, named after Henry's paternal title as Count of Anjou and, more specifically, its seat in Angers. The Empire, however, was inherently fragile: although all the lands owed allegiance to Henry, the disparate parts each had their own histories, traditions and governance structures. As one moved south through Anjou and Aquitaine, the extent of Henry's power in the provinces diminished considerably, scarcely resembling the modern concept of an empire at all. Some of the traditional ties between parts of the empire such as Normandy and England were slowly dissolving over time. The future of the empire upon Henry's eventual death was not secure: although the custom of primogeniture, under which an eldest son would inherit all his father's lands, was slowly becoming more widespread across Europe, it was less popular amongst the Norman kings of England. Most believed that Henry would divide the empire, giving each son a substantial portion, and hoping that his children would continue to work together as allies after his death. To complicate matters, much of the Angevin empire was held by Henry only as a vassal of the king of France of the rival line of the House of Capet. Henry had often allied himself with the Holy Roman Emperor against France, making the feudal relationship even more challenging.\nShortly after his birth, John was passed from Eleanor into the care of a wet nurse, a traditional practice for medieval noble families. Eleanor then left for Poitiers, the capital of Aquitaine, and sent John and his sister Joan north to Fontevrault Abbey. This may have been done with the aim of steering her youngest son, with no obvious inheritance, towards a future ecclesiastical career. Eleanor spent the next few years conspiring against Henry and neither parent played a part in John's very early life. John was probably, like his brothers, assigned a \"magister\" whilst he was at Fontevrault, a teacher charged with his early education and with managing the servants of his immediate household; he was later taught by Ranulf de Glanvill, a leading English administrator. John spent some time as a member of the household of his eldest living brother Henry the Young King, where he probably received instruction in hunting and military skills.\nJohn grew up to be around tall, relatively short, with a \"powerful, barrel-chested body\" and dark red hair; he looked to contemporaries like an inhabitant of Poitou. John enjoyed reading and, unusually for the period, built up a travelling library of books. He enjoyed gambling, in particular at backgammon, and was an enthusiastic hunter, even by medieval standards. He liked music, although not songs. John would become a \"connoisseur of jewels\", building up a large collection, and became famous for his opulent clothes and also, according to French chroniclers, for his fondness for bad wine. As John grew up, he became known for sometimes being \"genial, witty, generous and hospitable\"; at other moments, he could be jealous, over-sensitive and prone to fits of rage, \"biting and gnawing his fingers\" in anger.\nEarly life.\nDuring John's early years, Henry attempted to resolve the question of his succession. Henry the Young King had been crowned King of England in 1170, but was not given any formal powers by his father; he was also promised Normandy and Anjou as part of his future inheritance. His brother Richard was to be appointed the count of Poitou with control of Aquitaine, whilst his brother Geoffrey was to become the duke of Brittany. At this time it seemed unlikely that John would ever inherit substantial lands, and he was jokingly nicknamed \"Lackland\" by his father.\nHenry II wanted to secure the southern borders of Aquitaine and decided to betroth his youngest son to Alais, the daughter and heiress of Count Humbert III of Savoy. As part of this agreement John was promised the future inheritance of Savoy, Piedmont, Maurienne, and the other possessions of Count Humbert. For his part in the potential marriage alliance, Henry II transferred the castles of Chinon, Loudun and Mirebeau into John's name; as John was only five years old, his father would continue to control them for practical purposes. Henry the Young King was unimpressed by this; although he had yet to be granted control of any castles in his new kingdom, these were effectively his future property and had been given away without consultation. Alais made the trip over the Alps and joined Henry II's court, but she died before marrying John, which left the prince once again without an inheritance.\nIn 1173 John's elder brothers, backed by Eleanor, rose in revolt against Henry in the short-lived rebellion of 1173 to 1174. Growing irritated with his subordinate position to Henry II and increasingly worried that John might be given additional lands and castles at his expense, Henry the Young King travelled to Paris and allied himself with Louis VII. Eleanor, irritated by her husband's persistent interference in Aquitaine, encouraged Richard and Geoffrey to join their brother Henry in Paris. Henry II triumphed over the coalition of his sons, but was generous to them in the peace settlement agreed at Montlouis. Henry the Young King was allowed to travel widely in Europe with his own household of knights, Richard was given Aquitaine back, and Geoffrey was allowed to return to Brittany; only Eleanor was imprisoned for her role in the revolt.\nJohn had spent the conflict travelling alongside his father, and was given widespread possessions across the Angevin empire as part of the Montlouis settlement; from then onwards, most observers regarded John as Henry II's favourite child, although he was the furthest removed in terms of the royal succession. Henry II began to find more lands for John, mostly at various nobles' expense. In 1175 he appropriated the estates of the late Earl of Cornwall and gave them to John. The following year, Henry disinherited the sisters of Isabella of Gloucester, contrary to legal custom, and betrothed John to the now extremely wealthy Isabella. In 1177, at the Council of Oxford, Henry dismissed William FitzAldelm as the Lord of Ireland and replaced him with the ten-year-old John.\nHenry the Young King fought a short war with his brother Richard in 1183 over the status of England, Normandy and Aquitaine. Henry II moved in support of Richard, and Henry the Young King died from dysentery at the end of the campaign. With his primary heir dead, Henry rearranged the plans for the succession: Richard was to be made King of England, albeit without any actual power until the death of his father; Geoffrey would retain Brittany; and John would now become the Duke of Aquitaine in place of Richard. Richard refused to give up Aquitaine; Henry II was furious and ordered John, with help from Geoffrey, to march south and retake the duchy by force. The two attacked the capital of Poitiers, and Richard responded by attacking Brittany. The war ended in stalemate and a tense family reconciliation in England at the end of 1184.\nIn 1185 John made his first visit to Ireland, accompanied by 300 knights and a team of administrators. Henry had tried to have John officially proclaimed King of Ireland, but Pope Lucius III would not agree. John's first period of rule in Ireland was not a success. Ireland had only recently been conquered by Anglo-Norman forces, and tensions were still rife between Henry II, the new settlers and the existing inhabitants. John infamously offended the local Irish rulers by making fun of their unfashionable long beards, failed to make allies amongst the Anglo-Norman settlers, began to lose ground militarily against the Irish and finally returned to England later in the year, blaming the viceroy, Hugh de Lacy, for the fiasco.\nThe problems amongst John's wider family continued to grow. His elder brother Geoffrey died during a tournament in 1186, leaving a posthumous son, Arthur, and an elder daughter, Eleanor. Geoffrey's death brought John slightly closer to the throne of England. The uncertainty about what would happen after Henry's death continued to grow; Richard was keen to join a new crusade and remained concerned that whilst he was away Henry would appoint John his formal successor.\nRichard began discussions about a potential alliance with Philip II in Paris during 1187, and the next year Richard gave homage to Philip in exchange for support for a war against Henry. Richard and Philip fought a joint campaign against Henry, and by the summer of 1189 Henry made peace, promising Richard the succession. John initially remained loyal to his father, but changed sides once it appeared that Richard would win. Henry died shortly afterwards.\nRichard's reign (1189\u20131199).\nWhen Richard became king in September 1189, he had already declared his intention of joining the Third Crusade. He set about raising the huge sums of money required for this expedition through the sale of lands, titles and appointments, and attempted to ensure that he would not face a revolt while away from his empire. John was made Count of Mortain, was married to the wealthy Isabella of Gloucester, and was given valuable lands in Lancaster and the counties of Cornwall, Derby, Devon, Dorset, Nottingham and Somerset, all with the aim of buying his loyalty to Richard whilst the King was on crusade. Richard retained royal control of key castles in these counties, thereby preventing John from accumulating too much military and political power. The King named his four-year-old nephew Arthur as his heir. In return, John promised not to visit England for the next three years, thereby in theory giving Richard adequate time to conduct a successful crusade and return from the Levant without fear of John seizing power. Richard left political authority in England\u2014the post of justiciar\u2014jointly in the hands of Bishop Hugh de Puiset and William de Mandeville, 3rd Earl of Essex, and made William Longchamp, the Bishop of Ely, his chancellor. Mandeville immediately died, and Longchamp took over as joint justiciar with Puiset, which would prove a less than satisfactory partnership. Eleanor, the queen mother, convinced Richard to allow John into England in his absence.\nThe political situation in England rapidly began to deteriorate. Longchamp refused to work with Puiset and became unpopular with the English nobility and clergy. John exploited this unpopularity to set himself up as an alternative ruler with his own royal court, complete with his own justiciar, chancellor and other royal posts, and was happy to be portrayed as an alternative regent, and possibly the next king. Armed conflict broke out between John and Longchamp, and by October 1191 Longchamp was isolated in the Tower of London with John in control of the city of London, thanks to promises John had made to the citizens in return for recognition as Richard's heir presumptive. At this point Walter of Coutances, the Archbishop of Rouen, returned to England, having been sent by Richard to restore order. John's position was undermined by Walter's relative popularity and by the news that Richard had married whilst in Cyprus, which presented the possibility that Richard would have legitimate children and heirs.\nThe political turmoil continued. John began to explore an alliance with King Philip II of France, who had returned from the crusade in late 1191. John hoped to acquire Normandy, Anjou and the other lands in France held by Richard in exchange for allying himself with Philip. John was persuaded not to pursue an alliance by his mother. Longchamp, who had left England after Walter's intervention, now returned, and argued that he had been wrongly removed as justiciar. John intervened, suppressing Longchamp's claims in return for promises of support from the royal administration, including a reaffirmation of his position as heir to the throne. When Richard still did not return from the crusade, John began to assert that his brother was dead or otherwise permanently lost. Richard had in fact been captured shortly before Christmas 1192, while en route to England, by Duke Leopold V of Austria and was handed over to Emperor Henry VI, who held him for ransom. John seized the opportunity and went to Paris, where he formed an alliance with Philip. He agreed to set aside his wife, Isabella of Gloucester, and marry Philip's sister, Alys, in exchange for Philip's support. Fighting broke out in England between forces loyal to Richard and those being gathered by John. John's military position was weak and he agreed to a truce; in early 1194 the King finally returned to England, and John's remaining forces surrendered. John retreated to Normandy, where Richard finally found him later that year. Richard declared that John\u2014despite being 27 years old\u2014was merely \"a child who has had evil counsellors\" and forgave him, but removed his lands with the exception of Ireland.\nFor the remaining years of Richard's reign, John supported his brother on the continent, apparently loyally. Richard's policy on the continent was to attempt to regain through steady, limited campaigns the castles he had lost to Philip II whilst on crusade. He allied himself with the leaders of Flanders, Boulogne and the Holy Roman Empire to apply pressure on Philip from Germany. In 1195 John successfully conducted a sudden attack and siege of \u00c9vreux castle, and subsequently managed the defences of Normandy against Philip. The following year, John seized the town of Gamaches and led a raiding party within of Paris, capturing the Bishop of Beauvais. In return for this service, Richard withdrew his (ill-will) towards John, restored him to the county of Gloucestershire and made him again the Count of Mortain.\nEarly reign (1199\u20131204).\nAccession to the throne, 1199.\nAfter Richard's death on 6 April 1199 there were two potential claimants to the Angevin throne: John, whose claim rested on being the sole surviving son of Henry II, and young Arthur I of Brittany, who held a claim as the son of John's elder brother Geoffrey. Richard appears to have started to recognise John as his heir presumptive in the final years before his death, but the matter was not clear-cut and medieval law gave little guidance as to how the competing claims should be decided. With Norman law favouring John as the only surviving son of Henry II and Angevin law favouring Arthur as the only son of Henry's elder son, the matter rapidly became an open conflict. John was supported by the bulk of the English and Norman nobility and was crowned at Westminster Abbey, backed by his mother, Eleanor. Arthur was supported by the majority of the Breton, Maine and Anjou nobles and received the support of Philip II, who remained committed to breaking up the Angevin territories on the continent. With Arthur's army pressing up the Loire Valley towards Angers and Philip's forces moving down the valley towards Tours, John's continental empire was in danger of being cut in two.\nWarfare in Normandy at the time was shaped by the defensive potential of castles and the increasing costs of conducting campaigns. The Norman frontiers had limited natural defences but were heavily reinforced with castles, such as Ch\u00e2teau Gaillard, at strategic points, built and maintained at considerable expense. It was difficult for a commander to advance far into fresh territory without having secured his lines of communication by capturing these fortifications, which slowed the progress of any attack. Armies of the period could be formed from either feudal or mercenary forces. Feudal levies could be raised only for a fixed length of time before they returned home, forcing an end to a campaign; mercenary forces, often called Braban\u00e7ons after the Duchy of Brabant but actually recruited from across northern Europe, could operate all year long and provide a commander with more strategic options to pursue a campaign, but cost much more than equivalent feudal forces. As a result, commanders of the period were increasingly drawing on larger numbers of mercenaries.\nAfter his coronation, John moved south into France with military forces and adopted a defensive posture along the eastern and southern Normandy borders. Both sides paused for desultory negotiations before the war recommenced; John's position was now stronger, thanks to confirmation that the counts Baldwin IX of Flanders and Renaud of Boulogne had renewed the anti-French alliances they had previously agreed to with Richard. The powerful Anjou nobleman William des Roches was persuaded to switch sides from Arthur to John; suddenly the balance seemed to be tipping away from Philip and Arthur in favour of John. Neither side was keen to continue the conflict, and following a papal truce the two leaders met in January 1200 to negotiate possible terms for peace. From John's perspective, what then followed represented an opportunity to stabilise control over his continental possessions and produce a lasting peace with Philip in Paris. John and Philip negotiated the May 1200 Treaty of Le Goulet; by this treaty, Philip recognised John as the rightful heir to Richard in respect to his French possessions, temporarily abandoning the wider claims of his client, Arthur. John, in turn, abandoned Richard's former policy of containing Philip through alliances with Flanders and Boulogne, and accepted Philip's right as the legitimate feudal overlord of John's lands in France. John's policy earned him the disrespectful title of \"John Softsword\" from some English chroniclers, who contrasted his behaviour with his more aggressive brother, Richard.\nSecond marriage and consequences, 1200\u20131202.\nThe new peace would last only two years; war recommenced in the aftermath of John's decision in August 1200 to marry Isabella of Angoul\u00eame. In order to remarry, John first needed to abandon his wife Isabella, Countess of Gloucester; the King accomplished this by arguing that he had failed to get the necessary papal dispensation to marry the Countess in the first place\u2014as a cousin, John could not have legally wedded her without this. It remains unclear why John chose to marry Isabella of Angoul\u00eame. Contemporary chroniclers argued that John had fallen deeply in love with her, and John may have been motivated by desire for an apparently beautiful, if rather young, girl (Isabella of Angoul\u00eame was either 12 or 14 at the time of their marriage). On the other hand, the Angoumois lands that came with her were strategically vital to John: by marrying Isabella, John was acquiring a key land route between Poitou and Gascony, which significantly strengthened his grip on Aquitaine.\nIsabella of Angoul\u00eame, however, was already engaged to Hugh IX of Lusignan, an important member of a key Poitou noble family and brother of Raoul I, Count of Eu, who possessed lands along the sensitive eastern Normandy border. Just as John stood to benefit strategically from marrying Isabella, so the marriage threatened the interests of the Lusignans, whose own lands currently provided the key route for royal goods and troops across Aquitaine. Rather than negotiating some form of compensation, John treated Hugh \"with contempt\"; this resulted in a Lusignan uprising that was promptly crushed by John, who also intervened to suppress Raoul in Normandy.\nAlthough John was the Count of Poitou and therefore the rightful feudal lord over the Lusignans, they could legitimately appeal John's actions in France to his own feudal lord, Philip. Hugh did exactly this in 1201 and Philip summoned John to attend court in Paris in 1202, citing the Le Goulet treaty to strengthen his case. John was unwilling to weaken his authority in western France in this way. He argued that he need not attend Philip's court because of his special status as the Duke of Normandy, who was exempt by feudal tradition from being called to the French court. Philip argued that he was summoning John not as the Duke of Normandy, but as the Count of Poitou, which carried no such special status. When John still refused to come, Philip declared John in breach of his feudal responsibilities, reassigned all of John's lands that fell under the French crown to Arthur\u2014with the exception of Normandy, which he took back for himself\u2014and began a fresh war against John.\nLoss of Normandy, 1202\u20131204.\nJohn initially adopted a defensive posture similar to that of 1199: avoiding open battle and carefully defending his key castles. John's operations became more chaotic as the campaign progressed, and Philip began to make steady progress in the east. John became aware in July that Arthur's forces were threatening his mother, Eleanor, at Mirebeau Castle. Accompanied by William de Roches, his seneschal in Anjou, he swung his mercenary army rapidly south to protect her. His forces caught Arthur by surprise and captured the entire rebel leadership at the battle of Mirebeau. With his southern flank weakening, Philip was forced to withdraw in the east and turn south himself to contain John's army.\nJohn's position in France was considerably strengthened by the victory at Mirebeau, but John's treatment of his new prisoners and of his ally, William de Roches, quickly undermined these gains. De Roches was a powerful Anjou noble, but John largely ignored him, causing considerable offence, whilst the King kept the rebel leaders in such bad conditions that twenty-two of them died. At this time most of the regional nobility were closely linked through kinship, and this behaviour towards their relatives was regarded as unacceptable. William de Roches and others of John's regional allies in Anjou and Brittany deserted him in favour of Philip, and Brittany rose in revolt. John's financial situation was tenuous, once factors such as the comparative military costs of materiel and soldiers were taken into account. While Philip enjoyed a considerable, although not overwhelming, advantage of resources over John.\nFurther desertions of John's local allies at the beginning of 1203 steadily reduced his freedom to manoeuvre in the region. He attempted to convince Pope Innocent III to intervene in the conflict, but Innocent's efforts were unsuccessful. As the situation became worse for John, he appears to have decided to have Arthur killed, with the aim of removing a potential rival and to undermine the rebel forces in Brittany. Arthur had initially been imprisoned at Falaise and was then moved to Rouen. After this, Arthur's fate remains uncertain, but modern historians believe he was murdered by John. The annals of Margam Abbey suggest that \"John had captured Arthur and kept him alive in prison for some time in the castle of Rouen\u00a0... when John was drunk he slew Arthur with his own hand and tying a heavy stone to the body cast it into the Seine.\" Rumours of the manner of Arthur's death further reduced support for John across the region. Arthur's sister, Eleanor, who had also been captured at Mirebeau, was kept imprisoned by John for many years, albeit in relatively good conditions.\nIn late 1203, John attempted to relieve Ch\u00e2teau Gaillard, which although besieged by Philip was guarding the eastern flank of Normandy. John attempted a synchronised operation involving land-based and water-borne forces, considered by most historians today to have been imaginative in conception, but overly complex for forces of the period to have carried out successfully. John's relief operation was blocked by Philip's forces, and John turned back to Brittany in an attempt to draw Philip away from eastern Normandy. John successfully devastated much of Brittany, but did not deflect Philip's main thrust into the east of Normandy.\nOpinions vary amongst historians as to the military skill shown by John during this campaign, with most recent historians arguing that his performance was passable, although not impressive.\nJohn's situation began to deteriorate rapidly. The eastern border region of Normandy had been extensively cultivated by Philip and his predecessors for several years, whilst Angevin authority in the south had been undermined by Richard's giving away of various key castles some years before. His use of mercenaries in the central regions had rapidly eaten away his remaining support in this area too, which set the stage for a sudden collapse of Angevin power. John retreated back across the Channel in December, sending orders for the establishment of a fresh defensive line to the west of Chateau Gaillard. In March 1204, Gaillard fell. John's mother Eleanor died the following month. This was not just a personal blow for John, but threatened to unravel the widespread Angevin alliances across the far south of France. Philip moved south around the new defensive line and struck upwards at the heart of the Duchy, now facing little resistance. By August, Philip had taken Normandy and advanced south to occupy Anjou and Poitou as well. John's only remaining possession on the Continent was now the Duchy of Aquitaine.\nJohn as king.\nKingship and royal administration.\nThe nature of government under the Angevin monarchs was ill-defined and uncertain. John's predecessors had ruled using the principle of (\"force and will\"), taking executive and sometimes arbitrary decisions, often justified on the basis that a king was above the law. Both Henry II and Richard had argued that kings possessed a quality of \"divine majesty\"; John continued this trend and claimed an \"almost imperial status\" for himself as ruler. During the 12th century, there were contrary opinions expressed about the nature of kingship, and many contemporary writers believed that monarchs should rule in accordance with the custom and the law, and take counsel of the leading members of the realm. There was as yet no model for what should happen if a king refused to do so. Despite his claim to unique authority within England, John would sometimes justify his actions on the basis that he had taken council with the barons. Modern historians remain divided as to whether John had a case of \"royal schizophrenia\" in his approach to government, or if his actions merely reflected the complex model of Angevin kingship in the early 13th century.\nJohn inherited a sophisticated system of administration in England, with a range of royal agents answering to the Royal Household: the Chancery kept written records and communications; the Treasury and the Exchequer dealt with income and expenditure respectively; and various judges were deployed to deliver justice around the kingdom. Thanks to the efforts of men like Hubert Walter, this trend towards improved record keeping continued into his reign. Like previous kings, John managed a peripatetic court that travelled around the kingdom, dealing with both local and national matters as he went. John was very active in the administration of England and was involved in every aspect of government. In part he was following in the tradition of Henry I and Henry II, but by the 13th century the volume of administrative work had greatly increased, which put much more pressure on a king who wished to rule in this style. John was in England for much longer periods than his predecessors, which made his rule more personal than that of previous kings, particularly in previously ignored areas such as the north.\nThe administration of justice was of particular importance to John. Several new processes had been introduced to English law under Henry II, including \"novel disseisin\" and \"mort d'ancestor\". These processes meant the royal courts had a more significant role in local law cases, which had previously been dealt with only by regional or local lords. John increased the professionalism of local sergeants and bailiffs, and extended the system of coroners first introduced by Hubert Walter in 1194, creating a new class of borough coroners. The King worked extremely hard to ensure that this system operated well, through judges he had appointed, by fostering legal specialists and expertise, and by intervening in cases himself. He continued to try relatively minor cases, even during military crises. Viewed positively, Lewis Warren considers that John discharged \"his royal duty of providing justice\u00a0... with a zeal and a tirelessness to which the English common law is greatly endebted\". Seen more critically, John may have been motivated by the potential of the royal legal process to raise fees, rather than a desire to deliver simple justice; his legal system also applied only to free men, rather than to all of the population. Nonetheless, these changes were popular with many free tenants, who acquired a more reliable legal system that could bypass the barons, against whom such cases were often brought. John's reforms were less popular with the barons themselves, especially as they remained subject to arbitrary and frequently vindictive royal justice.\nEconomy.\nOne of John's principal challenges was acquiring the large sums of money needed for his proposed campaigns to reclaim Normandy. The Angevin kings had three main sources of income available to them, namely revenue from their personal lands, or \"demesne\"; money raised through their rights as a feudal lord; and revenue from taxation. Revenue from the royal demesne was inflexible and had been diminishing slowly since the Norman conquest. Matters were not helped by Richard's sale of many royal properties in 1189, and taxation played a much smaller role in royal income than in later centuries. English kings had widespread feudal rights which could be used to generate income, including the scutage system, in which feudal military service was avoided by a cash payment to the King. He derived income from fines, court fees and the sale of charters and other privileges. John intensified his efforts to maximise all possible sources of income, to the extent that he has been described as \"avaricious, miserly, extortionate and moneyminded\". He also used revenue generation as a way of exerting political control over the barons: debts owed to the crown by the King's favoured supporters might be forgiven; collection of those owed by enemies was more stringently enforced.\nThe result was a sequence of innovative but unpopular financial measures. John levied scutage payments eleven times in his seventeen years as king, as compared to eleven times in total during the reign of the preceding three monarchs. In many cases these were levied in the absence of any actual military campaign, which ran counter to the original idea that scutage was an alternative to actual military service. John maximised his right to demand relief payments when estates and castles were inherited, sometimes charging enormous sums, beyond barons' abilities to pay. Building on the successful sale of sheriff appointments in 1194, the King initiated a new round of appointments, with the new incumbents making back their investment through increased fines and penalties, particularly in the forests. Another innovation of Richard's, increased charges levied on widows who wished to remain single, was expanded under John. John continued to sell charters for new towns, including the planned town of Liverpool, and charters were sold for markets across the kingdom and in Gascony. The King introduced new taxes and extended existing ones. The Jews, who held a vulnerable position in medieval England, protected only by the King, were subject to huge taxes; \u00a344,000 was extracted from the community by the tallage of 1210; much of it was passed on to the Christian debtors of Jewish moneylenders. John created a new tax on income and movable goods in 1207\u2014effectively a version of a modern income tax\u2014that produced \u00a360,000; he created a new set of import and export duties payable directly to the Crown. He found that these measures enabled him to raise further resources through the confiscation of the lands of barons who could not pay or refused to pay.\nAt the start of John's reign there was a sudden change in prices, as bad harvests and high demand for food resulted in much higher prices for grain and animals. This inflationary pressure was to continue for the rest of the 13th century and had long-term economic consequences for England. The resulting social pressures were complicated by bursts of deflation that resulted from John's military campaigns. It was usual at the time for the King to collect taxes in silver, which was then re-minted into new coins; these coins would then be put in barrels and sent to royal castles around the country, to be used to hire mercenaries or to meet other costs. At those times when John was preparing for campaigns in Normandy, for example, huge quantities of silver had to be withdrawn from the economy and stored for months, which unintentionally resulted in periods during which silver coins were simply hard to come by, commercial credit difficult to acquire and deflationary pressure placed on the economy. The result was political unrest across the country. John attempted to address some of the problems with the English currency in 1204 and 1205 by carrying out a radical overhaul of the coinage, improving its quality and consistency.\nRoyal household and.\nJohn's royal household was based around several groups of followers. One group was the , his immediate friends and knights who travelled around the country with him. They also played an important role in organising and leading military campaigns. Another section of royal followers were the ; these were the senior officials and agents of the King and were essential to his day-to-day rule. Being a member of these inner circles brought huge advantages, as it was easier to gain favours from the King, file lawsuits, marry a wealthy heiress or have one's debts remitted. By the time of Henry II, these posts were increasingly being filled by \"new men\" from outside the normal ranks of the barons. This intensified under John's rule, with many lesser nobles arriving from the continent to take up positions at court; many were mercenary leaders from Poitou. These men included soldiers who would become infamous in England for their uncivilised behaviour, including Falkes de Breaut\u00e9, G\u00e9rard d'Ath\u00e9e, Engelard de Cigogn\u00e9, and Philip Marc. Many barons perceived the King's household as what Ralph Turner has characterised as a \"narrow clique enjoying royal favour at barons' expense\" staffed by men of lesser status.\nThis trend for the King to rely on his own men at the expense of the barons was exacerbated by the tradition of Angevin royal (\"anger and ill-will\") and John's own personality. From Henry II onwards, had come to describe the right of the King to express his anger and displeasure at particular barons or clergy, building on the Norman concept of \u2014royal ill-will. In the Norman period, suffering the King's ill-will meant difficulties in obtaining grants, honours or petitions; Henry II had infamously expressed his fury and ill-will towards Thomas Becket, which ultimately resulted in Becket's death. John now had the additional ability to \"cripple his vassals\" on a significant scale using his new economic and judicial measures, which made the threat of royal anger all the more serious.\nJohn was deeply suspicious of the barons, particularly those with sufficient power and wealth to potentially challenge him. Numerous barons were subjected to his , even including the famous knight William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke, normally held up as a model of utter loyalty. The most infamous case, which went beyond anything considered acceptable at the time, was that of the powerful William de Braose, 4th Lord of Bramber, who held lands in Ireland. De Braose was subjected to punitive demands for money, and when he refused to pay a huge sum of 40,000 marks (equivalent to \u00a326,666 at the time), his wife, Maud, and one of their sons were imprisoned by John, which resulted in their deaths. De Braose died in exile in 1211, and his grandsons remained in prison until 1218. John's suspicions and jealousies meant that he rarely enjoyed good relationships with even the leading loyalist barons.\nPersonal life.\nJohn's personal life greatly affected his reign. Contemporary chroniclers state that John was sinfully lustful and lacking in piety. It was common for kings and nobles of the period to keep mistresses, but chroniclers complained that John's mistresses were married noblewomen, which was considered unacceptable. John had at least five children with mistresses during his first marriage, and two of those mistresses are known to have been noblewomen. John's sexual behaviour after his second marriage is less clear, however. None of his known illegitimate children were born after he remarried, and there is no actual documentary proof of adultery after that point, although John certainly had female friends amongst the court throughout the period. The specific accusations made against John during the baronial revolts are now generally considered to have been invented for the purposes of justifying the revolt; nonetheless, most of John's contemporaries seem to have held a poor opinion of his sexual behaviour.\nThe character of John's relationship with his second wife, Isabella of Angoul\u00eame, is unclear. John married Isabella whilst she was relatively young\u2014her exact date of birth is uncertain, and estimates place her between at most 15 and more probably towards nine years old at the time of her marriage. Even by the standards of the time, she was married whilst very young. John did not provide a great deal of money for his wife's household and did not pass on much of the revenue from her lands, to the extent that historian Nicholas Vincent has described him as being \"downright mean\" towards Isabella. Vincent concluded that the marriage was not a particularly \"amicable\" one. Other aspects of their marriage suggest a closer, more positive relationship. Chroniclers recorded that John had a \"mad infatuation\" with Isabella, and certainly the King and Queen had conjugal relations between at least 1207 and 1215; they had five children. In contrast to Vincent, historian William Chester Jordan concludes that the pair were a \"companionable couple\" who had a successful marriage by the standards of the day.\nJohn's lack of religious conviction has been noted by contemporary chroniclers and later historians, with some suspecting that he was at best impious, or even atheistic, a very serious issue at the time. Contemporary chroniclers catalogued his various anti-religious habits at length, including his failure to take communion, his blasphemous remarks, and his witty but scandalous jokes about church doctrine, including jokes about the implausibility of the Resurrection of Jesus. They commented on the paucity of John's charitable donations to the Church. Historian Frank McLynn argues that John's early years at Fontevrault, combined with his relatively advanced education, may have turned him against the church. Other historians have been more cautious in interpreting this material, noting that chroniclers also reported his personal interest in the life of St Wulfstan and his friendships with several senior clerics, most especially with Hugh of Lincoln, who was later declared a saint. Financial records show a normal royal household engaged in the usual feasts and pious observances\u2014albeit with many records showing John's offerings to the poor to atone for routinely breaking church rules and guidance. The historian Lewis Warren has argued that the chronicler accounts were subject to considerable bias and the King was \"at least conventionally devout\", citing his pilgrimages and interest in religious scripture and commentaries.\nLater reign (1204\u20131214).\nContinental policy.\nDuring the remainder of his reign, John focused on trying to retake Normandy. The available evidence suggests that he did not regard the loss of the Duchy as a permanent shift in Capetian power. Strategically, John faced several challenges: England itself had to be secured against possible French invasion, the sea-routes to Bordeaux needed to be secured following the loss of the land route to Aquitaine, and his remaining possessions in Aquitaine needed to be secured following the death of his mother, Eleanor, in April 1204. John's preferred plan was to use Poitou as a base of operations, advance up the Loire Valley to threaten Paris, pin down the French forces and break Philip's internal lines of communication before landing a maritime force in the Duchy itself. Ideally, this plan would benefit from the opening of a second front on Philip's eastern frontiers with Flanders and Boulogne\u2014effectively a re-creation of Richard's old strategy of applying pressure from Germany. All of this would require a great deal of money and soldiers.\nJohn spent much of 1205 securing England against a potential French invasion. As an emergency measure, he recreated a version of Henry II's Assize of Arms of 1181, with each shire creating a structure to mobilise local levies. When the threat of invasion faded, John formed a large military force in England intended for Poitou, and a large fleet with soldiers under his own command intended for Normandy. To achieve this, John reformed the English feudal contribution to his campaigns, creating a more flexible system under which only one knight in ten would actually be mobilised, but would be financially supported by the other nine; knights would serve for an indefinite period. John built up a strong team of engineers for siege warfare and a substantial force of professional crossbowmen. The King was supported by a team of leading barons with military expertise, including William Longesp\u00e9e, 3rd Earl of Salisbury, William the Marshal, Roger de Lacy and, until he fell from favour, the marcher lord William de Braose.\nJohn had already begun to improve his Channel forces before the loss of Normandy and he rapidly built up further maritime capabilities after its collapse. Most of these ships were placed along the Cinque Ports, but Portsmouth was also enlarged. By the end of 1204 he had around 50 large galleys available; another 54 vessels were built between 1209 and 1212. William of Wrotham was appointed \"keeper of the galleys\", effectively John's chief admiral. Wrotham was responsible for fusing John's galleys, the ships of the Cinque Ports and pressed merchant vessels into a single operational fleet. John adopted recent improvements in ship design, including new large transport ships called \"buisses\" and removable forecastles for use in combat.\nBaronial unrest in England prevented the departure of the planned 1205 expedition, and only a smaller force under William Longesp\u00e9e deployed to Poitou. In 1206 John departed for Poitou himself, but was forced to divert south to counter a threat to Gascony from Alfonso VIII of Castile. After a successful campaign against Alfonso, John headed north again, taking the city of Angers. Philip moved south to meet John; the year's campaigning ended in stalemate and a two-year truce was made between the two rulers.\nDuring the truce of 1206\u20131208, John focused on building up his financial and military resources in preparation for another attempt to recapture Normandy. John used some of this money to pay for new alliances on Philip's eastern frontiers, where the growth in Capetian power was beginning to concern France's neighbours. By 1212 John had successfully concluded alliances with his nephew Otto IV of Germany, a contender for the crown of Holy Roman Emperor, as well as with the counts Renaud of Boulogne and Ferdinand of Flanders. The invasion plans for 1212 were postponed because of fresh English baronial unrest about service in Poitou. Philip seized the initiative in 1213, sending his elder son, Louis, to invade Flanders with the intention of next launching an invasion of England. John was forced to postpone his own invasion plans to counter this threat. He launched his new fleet to attack the French at the harbour of Damme. The attack was a success, destroying Philip's vessels and any chances of an invasion of England that year. John hoped to exploit this advantage by invading himself late in 1213, but baronial discontent again delayed his invasion plans until early 1214, in what was his final Continental campaign.\nScotland, Ireland and Wales.\nIn the late 12th and early 13th centuries the border and political relationship between England and Scotland was disputed, with the kings of Scotland claiming parts of what is now northern England. Henry II had forced William the Lion to swear fealty to him at the Treaty of Falaise in 1174. This had been rescinded by Richard I in exchange for financial compensation in 1189, but the relationship remained uneasy. John began his reign by reasserting his sovereignty over the disputed northern counties. He refused William's request for the earldom of Northumbria, but did not intervene in Scotland itself and focused on his continental problems. The two kings maintained a friendly relationship, meeting in 1206 and 1207, until it was rumoured in 1209 that William was intending to ally himself with Philip II of France. John invaded Scotland and forced William to sign the Treaty of Norham, which gave John control of William's daughters and required a payment of \u00a310,000. This effectively crippled William's power north of the border, and by 1212 John had to intervene militarily to support William against his internal rivals. John made no efforts to reinvigorate the Treaty of Falaise, though, and William and his son Alexander II of Scotland in turn remained independent kings, supported by, but not owing fealty to, John.\nJohn remained Lord of Ireland throughout his reign. He drew on the country for resources to fight his war with Philip on the continent. Conflict continued in Ireland between the Anglo-Norman settlers and the indigenous Irish chieftains, with John manipulating both groups to expand his wealth and power in the country. During Richard's rule, John had successfully increased the size of his lands in Ireland, and he continued this policy as king. In 1210 the King crossed into Ireland with a large army to crush a rebellion by the Anglo-Norman lords; he reasserted his control of the country and used a new charter to order compliance with English laws and customs in Ireland. John stopped short of trying to actively enforce this charter on the native Irish kingdoms, but historian David Carpenter suspects that he might have done so, had the baronial conflict in England not intervened. Simmering tensions remained with the native Irish leaders even after John left for England.\nRoyal power in Wales was unevenly applied, with the country divided between the marcher lords along the borders, royal territories in Pembrokeshire and the more independent native Welsh lords of North Wales. John took a close interest in Wales and knew the country well, visiting every year between 1204 and 1211 and marrying his illegitimate daughter, Joan, to the Welsh prince Llywelyn the Great. The King used the marcher lords and the native Welsh to increase his own territory and power, striking a sequence of increasingly precise deals backed by royal military power with the Welsh rulers. A major royal expedition to enforce these agreements occurred in 1211, after Llywelyn attempted to exploit the instability caused by the removal of William de Braose, through the Welsh uprising of 1211. John's invasion, striking into the Welsh heartlands, was a military success. Llywelyn came to terms that included an expansion of John's power across much of Wales, albeit only temporarily.\nDispute with the Pope and excommunication.\nWhen the Archbishop of Canterbury, Hubert Walter, died on 13 July 1205, John became involved in a dispute with Pope Innocent III that would lead to the King's excommunication. The Norman and Angevin kings had traditionally exercised a great deal of power over the church within their territories. From the 1040s onwards, however, successive popes had put forward a reforming message that emphasised the importance of the Church being \"governed more coherently and more hierarchically from the centre\" and established \"its own sphere of authority and jurisdiction, separate from and independent of that of the lay ruler\", in the words of historian Richard Huscroft. After the 1140s, these principles had been largely accepted within the English Church, albeit with an element of concern about centralising authority in Rome. These changes brought the customary rights of lay rulers such as John over ecclesiastical appointments into question. Pope Innocent was, according to historian Ralph Turner, an \"ambitious and aggressive\" religious leader, insistent on his rights and responsibilities within the church.\nJohn wanted John de Gray, the Bishop of Norwich and one of his own supporters, to be appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, but the cathedral chapter for Canterbury Cathedral claimed the exclusive right to elect the Archbishop. They favoured Reginald, the chapter's sub-prior. To complicate matters, the bishops of the province of Canterbury also claimed the right to appoint the next archbishop. The chapter secretly elected Reginald and he travelled to Rome to be confirmed; the bishops challenged the appointment and the matter was taken before Innocent. John forced the Canterbury chapter to change their support to John de Gray, and a messenger was sent to Rome to inform the papacy of the new decision. Innocent disavowed both Reginald and John de Gray, and instead appointed his own candidate, Stephen Langton. John refused Innocent's request that he consent to Langton's appointment, but the Pope consecrated Langton anyway in June 1207.\nJohn was incensed about what he perceived as an abrogation of his customary right as monarch to influence the election. He complained both about the choice of Langton as an individual, as John felt he was overly influenced by the Capetian court in Paris, and about the process as a whole. He barred Langton from entering England and seized the lands of the archbishopric and other papal possessions. Innocent set a commission in place to try to convince John to change his mind, but to no avail. Innocent then placed an interdict on England in March 1208, prohibiting clergy from conducting religious services, with the exception of baptisms for the young, and confessions and absolutions for the dying.\nJohn treated the interdict as \"the equivalent of a papal declaration of war\". He responded by attempting to punish Innocent personally and to drive a wedge between the English clergymen who might support John and those allying themselves firmly with the authorities in Rome. John seized the lands of the clergymen unwilling to conduct services, as well as estates linked to Innocent himself; he arrested the illicit concubines that many clerics kept during the period, releasing them only after the payment of fines; he seized the lands of members of the church who had fled England, and he promised protection for those willing to remain loyal to him. In many cases, individual institutions were able to negotiate terms for managing their own properties and keeping the produce of their estates. By 1209 the situation showed no signs of resolution, and Innocent threatened to excommunicate John if he did not acquiesce to Langton's appointment. When this threat failed, Innocent excommunicated the King in November 1209. Although theoretically a significant blow to John's legitimacy, this did not appear to worry the King greatly. Two of John's close allies, Emperor Otto IV and Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, had already suffered the same punishment themselves, and the significance of excommunication had been somewhat devalued. John simply tightened his existing measures and accrued significant sums from the income of vacant sees and abbeys. One 1213 estimate, for example, suggested the church had lost an estimated 100,000 marks (equivalent to ~\u00a367,000 at the time) to John. Official figures suggest that around 14% of the annual income from the English church was being appropriated by John.\nInnocent gave some dispensations as the crisis progressed. Monastic communities were allowed to celebrate Mass in private from 1209 onwards, and late in 1212 the Holy Viaticum for the dying was authorised. The rules on burials and lay access to churches appear to have been steadily circumvented, at least unofficially. Although the interdict was a burden to much of the population, it did not result in rebellion against John. By 1213, though, John was increasingly worried about the threat of a French invasion. Some contemporary chroniclers suggest that in January of that year, Philip II of France had been charged with deposing John on behalf of the papacy, although it appears that the Pope had merely prepared secret letters in case he needed to claim the credit if Philip successfully invaded England.\nUnder mounting political pressure, John finally negotiated terms for a reconciliation, and the papal terms for submission were accepted in the presence of the papal legate Pandulf Verraccio in May 1213 at the Templar Church at Dover. As part of the deal, John offered to surrender the Kingdom of England to the papacy for a feudal service of 1,000 marks (equivalent to ~\u00a3700 at the time) annually; 700 marks (~\u00a3500) for England and 300 marks (~\u00a3200) for Ireland, as well as compensation to the Church for any revenue lost during the crisis. The agreement was formalised in the , or Golden Bull. This resolution produced mixed responses. Although some chroniclers felt that John had been humiliated by the sequence of events, there was little public reaction. The Pope benefited from the resolution of his long-standing English problem, but John probably gained more, as Innocent became a firm supporter of John for the rest of his reign. Backing him in both domestic and continental policy issues. Innocent immediately turned against Philip, calling upon him to reject plans to invade England and to sue for peace. John paid some of the compensation money he had promised the Church, but he ceased making payments in late 1214, leaving two-thirds of the sum unpaid; Innocent appears to have conveniently forgotten this debt for the good of the wider relationship.\nFailure in France and the First Barons' War (1215\u20131216).\nTensions and discontent.\nTensions between John and the barons had been growing for several years, as demonstrated by the 1212 plot against the King. Many of the disaffected barons came from the north of England; that faction was often labelled by contemporaries and historians as \"the Northerners\". The northern barons rarely had any personal stake in the conflict in France, and many of them owed large sums of money to John; the revolt has been characterised as \"a rebellion of the king's debtors\". Many of John's military household joined the rebels, particularly amongst those that John had appointed to administrative roles across England; their local links and loyalties outweighed their personal loyalty to John. Tension also grew across North Wales, where opposition to the 1211 treaty between John and Llywelyn was turning into open conflict. For some the appointment of Peter des Roches as justiciar was an important factor, as he was considered an \"abrasive foreigner\" by many of the barons. The failure of John's French military campaign in 1214 was probably the final straw that precipitated the baronial uprising during John's final years as king; James Holt describes the path to civil war as \"direct, short and unavoidable\" following the defeat at Bouvines.\nFailure of the 1214 French campaign.\nIn 1214 John began his final campaign to reclaim Normandy from Philip. He was optimistic, as he had successfully built up alliances with Emperor Otto IV, Renaud of Boulogne and Ferdinand of Flanders; he was enjoying papal favour; and he had successfully built up substantial funds to pay for the deployment of his experienced army. Nonetheless, when John left for Poitou in February 1214, many barons refused to provide military service; mercenary knights had to fill the gaps. John's plan was to split Philip's forces by pushing north-east from Poitou towards Paris, whilst Otto, Renaud and Ferdinand, supported by William Longesp\u00e9e, marched south-west from Flanders.\nThe first part of the campaign went well, with John outmanoeuvring the forces under the command of Prince Louis and retaking the county of Anjou by the end of June. John besieged the castle of Roche-au-Moine, a key stronghold, forcing Louis to give battle against John's larger army. The local Angevin nobles refused to advance with John; left at something of a disadvantage, John retreated back to La Rochelle. Shortly afterwards, King Philip won the hard-fought battle of Bouvines in the north against Otto and John's other allies, bringing an end to John's hopes of retaking Normandy. A peace agreement was signed in which John returned Anjou to Philip and paid him compensation; the truce was intended to last for six years. John arrived back in England in October.\nPre-war tensions and Magna Carta.\nWithin a few months of John's return, rebel barons in the north and east of England were organising resistance to his rule. John held a council in London in January 1215 to discuss potential reforms and sponsored discussions in Oxford between his agents and the rebels during the spring. He appears to have been playing for time until Pope Innocent III could send letters giving him explicit papal support. This was particularly important for John, as a way of pressuring the barons but also as a way of controlling Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury. In the meantime, John began to recruit fresh mercenary forces from Poitou, although some were later sent back to avoid giving the impression that John was escalating the conflict. The King announced his intent to become a crusader, a move which gave him additional political protection under church law.\nLetters of support from the Pope arrived in April but by then the rebel barons had organised. They congregated at Northampton in May and renounced their feudal ties to John, appointing Robert fitz Walter as their military leader. This self-proclaimed \"Army of God\" marched on London, taking the capital as well as Lincoln and Exeter. John's efforts to appear moderate and conciliatory had been largely successful, but once the rebels held London they attracted a fresh wave of defectors from John's royalist faction. John instructed Langton to organise peace talks with the rebel barons.\nJohn met the rebel leaders at Runnymede, near Windsor Castle, on 15 June 1215. Langton's efforts at mediation created a charter capturing the proposed peace agreement; it was later renamed Magna Carta, or \"Great Charter\". The charter went beyond simply addressing specific baronial complaints, and formed a wider proposal for political reform, albeit one focusing on the rights of free men, not serfs and unfree labour. It promised the protection of church rights, protection from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, new taxation only with baronial consent and limitations on scutage and other feudal payments. A council of twenty-five barons would be created to monitor and ensure John's future adherence to the charter, whilst the rebel army would stand down and London would be surrendered to the King.\nNeither John nor the rebel barons seriously attempted to implement the peace accord. The rebel barons suspected that the proposed baronial council would be unacceptable to John and that he would challenge the legality of the charter; they packed the baronial council with their own hardliners and refused to demobilise their forces or surrender London as agreed. Despite his promises to the contrary, John appealed to Innocent for help, observing that the charter compromised the Pope's rights under the 1213 agreement that had appointed him John's feudal lord. Innocent obliged; he declared the charter \"not only shameful and demeaning, but illegal and unjust\" and excommunicated the rebel barons. The failure of the agreement led rapidly to the First Barons' War.\nWar with the barons.\nThe rebels made the first move in the war, seizing the strategic Rochester Castle, owned by Langton but left almost unguarded by the archbishop. John was well prepared for a conflict. He had stockpiled money to pay for mercenaries and ensured the support of the powerful marcher lords with their own feudal forces, such as William Marshal and Ranulf de Blondeville, 6th Earl of Chester. The rebels lacked the engineering expertise or heavy equipment necessary to assault the network of royal castles that cut off the northern rebel barons from those in the south. John's strategy was to isolate the rebel barons in London, protect his own supply lines to his key source of mercenaries in Flanders, prevent the French from landing in the south-east, and then win the war through slow attrition. John put off dealing with the badly deteriorating situation in North Wales, where Prince Llywelyn was leading a rebellion against the 1211 settlement.\nJohn's campaign started well. In November John retook Rochester Castle from rebel baron William d'Aubigny in a sophisticated assault. One chronicler had not seen \"a siege so hard pressed or so strongly resisted\", whilst historian Reginald Brown describes it as \"one of the greatest [siege] operations in England up to that time\". Having regained the south-east John split his forces, sending William Longesp\u00e9e to retake the north side of London and East Anglia, whilst John himself headed north via Nottingham to attack the estates of the northern barons. Both operations were successful and the majority of the remaining rebels were pinned down in London. In January 1216 John marched against Alexander II of Scotland, who had allied himself with the rebel cause. John took back Alexander's possessions in northern England in a rapid campaign and pushed up towards Edinburgh over a ten-day period.\nThe rebel barons responded by inviting Prince Louis of France to lead them: Louis had a claim to the English throne by virtue of his marriage to Blanche of Castile, a granddaughter of Henry II. Philip may have provided his son with private support but refused to openly support Louis, who was excommunicated by Innocent for taking part in the war against John. Louis' planned arrival in England presented a significant problem for John, as Louis would bring with him naval vessels and siege engines essential to the rebel cause. Once John contained Alexander in Scotland, he marched south to deal with the challenge of the coming invasion.\nLouis intended to land in the south of England in May 1216, and John assembled a naval force to intercept him. Unfortunately for John, his fleet was dispersed by bad storms and Louis landed unopposed in Kent. John hesitated and decided not to attack Louis immediately, either due to the risks of open battle or over concerns about the loyalty of his own men. Louis and the rebel barons advanced west and John retreated, spending the summer reorganising his defences across the rest of the kingdom. John saw several of his military household desert to the rebels, including his half-brother, William Longesp\u00e9e. By the end of the summer the rebels had regained the south-east of England and parts of the north.\nDeath.\nIn September 1216, John began a fresh, vigorous attack. He marched from the Cotswolds, feigned an offensive to relieve the besieged Windsor Castle, and attacked eastwards around London to Cambridge to separate the rebel-held areas of Lincolnshire and East Anglia. From there he travelled north to relieve the rebel siege at Lincoln and back east to Lynn, probably to order further supplies from the continent. In Lynn, John contracted dysentery, which would ultimately prove fatal. Meanwhile, Alexander II invaded northern England again, taking Carlisle in August and then marching south to give homage to Prince Louis for his English possessions; John narrowly missed intercepting Alexander along the way. Tensions between Louis and the English barons began to increase, prompting a wave of desertions, including William Marshal's son William and William Longesp\u00e9e, who both returned to John's faction.\nCrown Jewels.\nJohn returned west but is said to have lost much of his baggage train along the way. Roger of Wendover provides the most graphic account of this, suggesting that the King's belongings, including the English Crown Jewels, were lost as he crossed one of the tidal estuaries which empties into the Wash, being sucked in by quicksand and whirlpools. Accounts of the incident vary considerably between the various chroniclers and the exact location of the incident has never been confirmed; the losses may have involved only a few of his pack-horses. Modern historians assert that by October 1216 John faced a \"stalemate\", \"a military situation uncompromised by defeat\".\nJohn's illness grew worse and by the time he reached Newark Castle, Nottinghamshire, he was unable to travel any farther; he died on the night of 18/19 October. Numerous\u2014probably fictitious\u2014accounts circulated soon after his death that he had been killed by poisoned ale, poisoned plums or a \"surfeit of peaches\". His body was escorted south by a company of mercenaries and he was buried in Worcester Cathedral in front of the altar of St Wulfstan. A new sarcophagus with an effigy was made for him in 1232, in which his remains now rest.\nLegacy.\nIn the aftermath of John's death, William Marshal was declared the protector of the nine-year-old Henry III. The civil war continued until royalist victories at the battles of Lincoln and Dover in 1217. Louis gave up his claim to the English throne and signed the Treaty of Lambeth. The failed Magna Carta agreement was resuscitated by Marshal's administration and reissued in an edited form in 1217 as a basis for future government. Henry III continued his attempts to reclaim Normandy and Anjou until 1259, but John's continental losses and the consequent growth of Capetian power in the 13th century proved to mark a \"turning point in European history\".\nJohn's niece Eleanor would remain honorably treated due a princess, but according to his will, she would never be released from prison, for she might have a potential claim to the throne of Henry III.\nJohn's first wife, Isabella of Gloucester, was released from imprisonment in 1214; she remarried twice, and died in 1217. John's second wife, Isabella of Angoul\u00eame, left England for Angoul\u00eame soon after the King's death; she became a powerful regional leader, but largely abandoned the children that she had borne to John. Their eldest son, Henry III, ruled as King of England for the majority of the 13th century. Their other son, Richard of Cornwall, became a noted European leader and ultimately the King of the Romans in the Holy Roman Empire. Their daughter Joan became Queen of Scotland on her marriage to Alexander II. Another daughter, Isabella, was Holy Roman Empress as the wife of Emperor Frederick II. The youngest daughter, Eleanor, married William Marshal's son, also called William, and later the famous English rebel Simon de Montfort.\nBy various mistresses, John had eight, possibly nine, sons\u2014Richard, Oliver, John, Geoffrey, Henry, Osbert Gifford, Eudes, Bartholomew and probably Philip\u2014and two or three daughters\u2014Joan, Maud and probably Isabel. Of these, Joan became the most famous, marrying Prince Llywelyn the Great of Wales.\nHistoriography.\nHistorical interpretations of John have been subject to considerable change over the centuries. Medieval chroniclers provided the first contemporary, or near contemporary, histories of John's reign. One group of chroniclers wrote early in John's life, or around the time of his accession, including Richard of Devizes, William of Newburgh, Roger of Hoveden and Ralph de Diceto. These historians were generally unsympathetic to John's behaviour under Richard's rule, but slightly more positive towards the very earliest years of John's reign.\nReliable accounts of the middle and later parts of John's reign are more limited, with Gervase of Canterbury and Ralph of Coggeshall writing the main accounts; neither of them were positive about John's performance as king. Much of John's later, negative reputation was established by two chroniclers writing after his death, Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris, the latter claiming that John attempted conversion to Islam in exchange for military aid from the Almohad ruler Muhammad al-Nasir\u2014a story modern historians consider untrue.\nIn the 16th century, political and religious changes altered the attitude of historians towards John. Tudor historians were generally favourably inclined towards the King, focusing on his opposition to the Papacy and his promotion of the special rights and prerogatives of a king. Revisionist histories written by John Foxe, William Tyndale and Robert Barnes portrayed John as an early Protestant hero, and Foxe included the King in his \"Book of Martyrs\". John Speed's \"Historie of Great Britaine\" in 1632 praised John's \"great renown\" as a king; he blamed the bias of medieval chroniclers for the King's poor reputation.\nBy the Victorian period in the 19th century, historians were more inclined to draw on the judgements of the chroniclers and to focus on John's moral personality. Kate Norgate, for example, argued that John's downfall had been due not to his failure in war or strategy, but due to his \"almost superhuman wickedness\", whilst James Ramsay blamed John's family background and his cruel personality for his downfall. Historians in the \"Whiggish\" tradition, focusing on documents such as the Domesday Book and Magna Carta, trace a progressive and universalist course of political and economic development in England over the medieval period.\nThese historians were often inclined to see John's reign, and his signing of Magna Carta in particular, as a positive step in the constitutional development of England, despite the flaws of the King himself. Winston Churchill, for example, argued that \"[w]hen the long tally is added, it will be seen that the British nation and the English-speaking world owe far more to the vices of John than to the labours of virtuous sovereigns\".\nIn the 1940s, new interpretations of John's reign began to be published, based on research into documents dating to his reign, such as pipe rolls, charters, court documents and similar primary records. Notably, an essay by Vivian Galbraith in 1945 proposed a \"new approach\" to understanding the ruler. The use of recorded evidence was combined with an increased scepticism about two of the most colourful chroniclers of John's reign, Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris. In many cases, the detail provided by these chroniclers, both writing after John's death, was challenged by modern historians.\nInterpretations of Magna Carta and the role of the rebel barons in 1215 have been significantly revised: Although the charter's symbolic, constitutional value for later generations is unquestionable, in the context of John's reign, most historians now consider it a failed peace agreement between \"partisan\" factions. There has been increasing debate about the nature of John's Irish policies. Specialists in Irish medieval history, such as Sean Duffy, have challenged the conventional narrative established by Lewis Warren, suggesting that Ireland was less stable by 1216 than was previously supposed.\nMost historians today, including John's recent biographers Ralph Turner and Lewis Warren, argue that John was an unsuccessful monarch, but note that his failings were exaggerated by 12th- and 13th-century chroniclers. Jim Bradbury notes the current consensus that John was a \"hard-working administrator, an able man, an able general\", albeit, as Turner suggests, with \"distasteful, even dangerous personality traits\", including pettiness, spitefulness and cruelty. John Gillingham, author of a major biography of Richard I, follows this line too, although he considers John a less effective general than do Turner or Warren, and describes him \"one of the worst kings ever to rule England\".\nBradbury takes a moderate line, but suggests that in recent years modern historians have been overly lenient towards John's numerous faults. Popular historian Frank McLynn maintains a counter-revisionist perspective on John, arguing that the King's modern reputation amongst historians is \"bizarre\", and that, as a monarch, John \"fails almost all those [tests] that can be legitimately set\". According to C. Warren Hollister, \"The dramatic ambivalence of his personality, the passions that he stirred among his own contemporaries, the very magnitude of his failures, have made him an object of endless fascination to historians and biographers.\"\nPopular representations.\nPopular representations of John first began to emerge during the Tudor period, mirroring the revisionist histories of the time. The anonymous play \"The Troublesome Reign of King John\" portrayed the King as a \"proto-Protestant martyr\", similar to that shown in John Bale's morality play \"Kynge Johan\", in which John attempts to save England from the \"evil agents of the Roman Church\". By contrast, Shakespeare's \"King John\", a relatively anti-Catholic play that draws on \"The Troublesome Reign\" for its source material, offers a more \"balanced, dual view of a complex monarch as both a proto-Protestant victim of Rome's machinations and as a weak, selfishly motivated ruler\".\nAnthony Munday's play \"The Downfall and The Death of Robert Earl of Huntington\" portrays many of John's negative traits, but adopts a positive interpretation of the King's stand against the Roman Catholic Church, in line with the contemporary views of the Tudor monarchs. By the middle of the 17th century, plays such as Robert Davenport's \"King John and Matilda\", although based largely on the earlier Elizabethan works, were transferring the role of Protestant champion to the barons and focusing more on the tyrannical aspects of John's behaviour.\nNineteenth-century fictional depictions of John were heavily influenced by Sir Walter Scott's historical romance, \"Ivanhoe\", which presented \"an almost totally unfavourable picture\" of the King; the work drew on 19th-century histories of the period and on Shakespeare's play. Scott's work influenced the late-19th-century children's writer Howard Pyle's book \"The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood\", which in turn established John as the principal villain within the traditional Robin Hood narrative.\nDuring the 20th century, John was normally depicted in fictional books and films alongside Robin Hood. Sam De Grasse's role as John in the black-and-white 1922 film version shows John committing numerous atrocities and acts of torture. Claude Rains played John in the 1938 colour version alongside Errol Flynn, starting a trend for films to depict John as an \"effeminate\u00a0... arrogant and cowardly stay-at-home\". The character of John acts either to highlight the virtues of King Richard, or contrasts with the Sheriff of Nottingham, who is usually the \"swashbuckling villain\" opposing Robin.\nAn extreme version of this trend can be seen in the 1973 Disney cartoon version, for example, which depicts John, voiced by Peter Ustinov, as a \"cowardly, thumbsucking lion\". Popular works that depict John beyond the Robin Hood legends, such as James Goldman's play and later film, \"The Lion in Winter\", set in 1183, commonly present him as an \"effete weakling\", in this instance contrasted with the more masculine Henry II, or as a tyrant, as in A. A. Milne's poem for children, \"King John's Christmas\".\nIssue.\nJohn and Isabella of Angoul\u00eame had five children:\nJohn had several mistresses, including one named Suzanne. His known illegitimate children are:\nGenealogical table.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Hidden begin/styles.css\"/>Norman English and early Plantagenet monarchs and their relationship with rulers of Western Europe\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "21476352": "Normans\nEuropean ethnic group\nThe Normans (Norman: \"Normaunds\"; ; ) were a population arising in the medieval Duchy of Normandy from the intermingling between Norse Viking settlers and locals of West Francia. The Norse settlements in West Francia followed a series of raids on the French northern coast mainly from what is now Denmark, although some also sailed from Norway and Sweden. These settlements were finally legitimized when Rollo, a Scandinavian Viking leader, agreed to swear fealty to King Charles III of West Francia following the siege of Chartres in 911, leading to the formation of the \"County of Rouen\". This new fief, through kinship in the decades to come, would expand into what came to be known as the \"Duchy of Normandy\". The Norse settlers, whom the region as well as its inhabitants were named after, adopted the language, religion, social customs and martial doctrine of the West Franks but their offspring nonetheless retained many of their traits, notably their mercenary tendencies and their fervour for adventures. The intermixing between Norse folk and native West Franks in Normandy produced an ethnic and cultural \"Norman\" identity in the first half of the 10th century, an identity which continued to evolve over the centuries.\nThe Norman dynasty had a major political, cultural and military impact on medieval Europe and the Near East. The Normans were historically famed for their martial spirit, and eventually for their Catholic piety as adherents of the Catholic orthodoxy of the Romance community. The original Norse settlers adopted the Gallo-Romance language of the Frankish land they settled, with their Old Norman dialect becoming known as Norman, Normaund or Norman French, an important literary language which is still spoken today in parts of mainland Normandy (Cotentinais and Cauchois dialects) and the nearby Channel Islands (J\u00e8rriais and Guern\u00e9siais). The Duchy of Normandy, which arose from the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, was a great fief of medieval France. The Norman dukes exercised independent control of their holdings in Normandy, while at the same time being vassals owing fealty to the King of France, and under Richard I of Normandy (byname \"Richard sans Peur\", meaning \"Richard the Fearless\"), the duchy was forged into a cohesive and formidable principality in feudal tenure. \"Warfare and rivalry with the French was also important in shaping and sustaining Norman identity in Normandy In some ways the struggle with the French played for the Normans the role that the struggle with the Vikings had played for the English. At first, as Viking interlopers in a late-Frankish or French world, the Normans had to fight to prevent themselves from being thrown out as other bands of Vikings had been. Later, as they became settled and acculturated, the Normans had to continue to fight for territory and their political autonomy against various neighbours, the most important of whom, over the long term, were the kings of France. Periodic wars helped solidify and maintain the ethnic as well as political loyalties of the Norman people, and particularly the warrior class. Norman attitudes toward the French and other neighbours were complex. There was a strong streak of hostility towards their neighbours, and particularly towards the French, expressed in their works\"\nBetween 1066 and 1204, as a result of the Norman conquest of England, most of the kings of England were also dukes of Normandy. Gradually, an Anglo-Norman culture developed in the British Isles. In 1204, Philip II of France seized mainland Normandy by force of arms, having earlier declared the Duchy of Normandy to be forfeit to him. It remained a disputed territory until the Treaty of Paris of 1259, when the English sovereign ceded his claim to the Duchy, except for the Channel Islands. In the present day, the Channel Islands (the Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Bailiwick of Jersey) are considered to be officially the last remnants of the Duchy of Normandy, and are not part of the United Kingdom but are instead self-governing Crown Dependencies.\nThe Normans are noted both for their culture, such as their unique Romanesque architecture and musical traditions, and for their significant military accomplishments and innovations. Norman adventurers played a role in founding the Kingdom of Sicily under Roger II after conquering southern Italy and Malta from the Saracens and Byzantines, and an expedition on behalf of their duke, William the Conqueror, led to the Norman conquest of England at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Norman and Anglo-Norman forces contributed to the Iberian Reconquista from the early eleventh to the mid-thirteenth centuries.\nNorman cultural and military influence spread from these new European centres to the Crusader states of the Near East, where their prince Bohemond I founded the Principality of Antioch in the Levant, to Scotland and Wales in Great Britain, to Ireland, and to the coasts of north Africa and the Canary Islands. The legacy of the Normans persists today through the regional languages and dialects of France, England, Spain, Quebec and Sicily, and also through the various cultural, judicial, and political arrangements they introduced in their conquered territories.\nEtymology.\nThe English name \"Normans\" comes from the French words \"Normans\"/\"Normanz\", plural of \"Normant\", modern French \"normand\", which is itself borrowed from Old Low Franconian \"Nortmann\" \"Northman\" or directly from Old Norse \"Nor\u00f0ma\u00f0r\", Latinized variously as \"Nortmannus\", \"Normannus\", or \"Nordmannus\" (recorded in Medieval Latin, 9th century) to mean \"Norseman, Viking\".\nThe 11th century Benedictine monk and historian, Goffredo Malaterra, characterised the Normans thus:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Specially marked by cunning, despising their own inheritance in the hope of winning a greater, eager after both gain and dominion, given to imitation of all kinds, holding a certain mean between lavishness and greediness, that is, perhaps uniting, as they certainly did, these two seemingly opposite qualities. Their chief men were specially lavish through their desire of good report. They were, moreover, a race skillful in flattery, given to the study of eloquence, so that the very boys were orators, a race altogether unbridled unless held firmly down by the yoke of justice. They were enduring of toil, hunger, and cold whenever fortune laid it on them, given to hunting and hawking, delighting in the pleasure of horses, and of all the weapons and garb of war.\nSettling of Normandy.\nIn the course of the 10th century, the initially destructive incursions of Norse war bands going upstream into the rivers of France penetrated further into interior Europe, and evolved into more permanent encampments that included local French women and personal property. From 885 to 886, Odo of Paris (Eudes de Paris) succeeded in defending Paris against Viking raiders with his fighting skills, fortification of Paris and tactical shrewdness. In 911, Robert I of France, brother of Odo, again defeated another band of Viking warriors in Chartres with his well-trained horsemen. This victory paved the way for Rollo's baptism and settlement in Normandy. The Duchy of Normandy, which began in 911 as a fiefdom, was established by the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte between King Charles III (Charles the Simple) (879\u2013929, ruled 893\u2013929) of West Francia and the famed Viking ruler Rollo also known as Gaange Rolf (c.\u2009846\u2013c.\u2009929), from Scandinavia, and was situated in the former Frankish kingdom of Neustria. The treaty offered Rollo and his men the French coastal lands along the English Channel between the river Epte and the Atlantic Ocean coast in exchange for their protection against further Viking incursions. As well as promising to protect the area of Rouen from Viking invasion, Rollo swore not to invade further Frankish lands himself, accepted baptism and conversion to Christianity and swore fealty to King Charles III. Robert I of France stood as godfather during Rollo's baptism. He became the first Duke of Normandy and Count of Rouen. The area corresponded to the northern part of present-day Upper Normandy down to the river Seine, but the Duchy would eventually extend west beyond the Seine. The territory was roughly equivalent to the old province of Rouen, and reproduced the old Roman Empire's administrative structure of \"Gallia Lugdunensis II\" (part of the former \"Gallia Lugdunensis\" in Gaul).\nBefore Rollo's arrival, Normandy's populations did not differ from Picardy or the \u00cele-de-France, which were considered \"Frankish\". Earlier Viking settlers had begun arriving in the 880s, but were divided between colonies in the east (Roumois and Pays de Caux) around the low Seine valley and in the west in the Cotentin Peninsula, and were separated by traditional \"pagii\", where the population remained about the same with almost no foreign settlers. Rollo's contingents from Scandinavia who raided and ultimately settled Normandy and parts of the European Atlantic coast included Danes, Norwegians, Norse\u2013Gaels, Orkney Vikings, possibly Swedes, and Anglo-Danes from the English Danelaw territory which earlier came under Norse control in the late 9th century.\nThe descendants of Vikings replaced the Norse religion and Old Norse language with Catholicism (Christianity) and the Langue d'oil of the local people, descending from the Latin of the Romans. The Norman language (Norman French) was forged by the adoption of the indigenous \"langue d'o\u00efl\" branch of Romance by a Norse-speaking ruling class, and it developed into the French regional languages that survive today.\nThe new Norman rulers were culturally and ethnically distinct from the old French aristocracy, most of whom traced their lineage to the Franks of the Carolingian dynasty from the days of Charlemagne in the 9th century. By intermarrying with the local aristocracy and adopting the growing feudal doctrines of the rest of France, the Normans would progressively work these principles into a functional hierarchical system in their own duchy, and later export it to Norman dominated England.\nAs the proliferation of aristocratic families throughout the French kingdom limited the prospects of most heirs, young knights were encouraged to seek land and riches beyond their homeland, with Normandy becoming a major source of such adventurers. Many Normans of Italy, France and England eventually served as avid Crusaders soldiers under the Italo-Norman prince Bohemund I of Antioch and the Angevin-Norman king Richard the Lion-Heart, one of the more famous and illustrious Kings of England.\nConquests and military offensives.\nItaly.\nOpportunistic bands of Normans successfully established a foothold in southern Italy. Probably as the result of returning pilgrims' stories, the Normans entered southern Italy as warriors in 1017 at the latest. In 999, according to Amatus of Montecassino, Norman pilgrims returning from Jerusalem called in at the port of Salerno when a Muslim attack occurred. The Normans fought so valiantly that Prince Guaimar III begged them to stay, but they refused and instead offered to tell others back home of the Prince's request. William of Apulia tells that, in 1016, Norman pilgrims to the shrine of the Archangel Michael at Monte Gargano were met by Melus of Bari, a Lombard nobleman and rebel, who persuaded them to return with more warriors to help throw off the Byzantine rule, which they did.\nThe two most prominent Norman families to arrive in the Mediterranean were descendants of Tancred of Hauteville and the Drengot family.\nA group of Normans with at least five brothers from the Drengot family fought the Byzantines in Apulia under the command of Melus of Bari. Between 1016 and 1024, in a fragmented political context, the County of Ariano was founded by another group of Norman knights headed by Gilbert Buat\u00e8re and hired by Melus of Bari. Defeated at Cannae, Melus of Bari escaped to Bamberg, Germany, where he died in 1022. The county, which replaced the pre-existing chamberlainship, is considered to be the first political body established by the Normans in the south of Italy.\nThen Rainulf Drengot, from the same family, received the county of Aversa from Duke Sergius IV of Naples in 1030.\nThe Hauteville family achieved princely rank by proclaiming Prince Guaimar IV of Salerno \"Duke of Apulia and Calabria\". He promptly awarded their elected leader, William Iron Arm, with the title of count in his capital of Melfi. The Drengot family thereafter attained the principality of Capua, and Emperor Henry III legally ennobled the Hauteville leader, Drogo, as \"\"dux et magister Italiae comesque Normannorum totius Apuliae et Calabriae\" (\"Duke and Master of Italy and Count of the Normans of all Apulia and Calabria\"\") in 1047.\nFrom these bases, the Normans eventually captured Sicily and Malta from the Muslims, under the leadership of the famous Robert Guiscard, a Hauteville, and his younger brother Roger the Great Count. Roger's son, Roger II of Sicily, was crowned king in 1130 (exactly one century after Rainulf was \"crowned\" count) by Antipope Anacletus II. The Kingdom of Sicily lasted until 1194, when it was transferred to the House of Hohenstaufen through marriage. The Normans left their legacy in many castles, such as William Iron Arm's citadel at Squillace, and cathedrals, such as Roger II's Cappella Palatina at Palermo, which dot the landscape and give a distinct architectural flavor to accompany its unique history.\nInstitutionally, the Normans combined the administrative machinery of the Byzantines, Arabs, and Lombards with their own conceptions of feudal law and order to forge a unique government. Under this state, there was great religious freedom, and alongside the Norman nobles existed a meritocratic bureaucracy of Jews, Muslims and Christians, both Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. The Kingdom of Sicily thus became characterized by Norman, Byzantine, Greek, Arab, Lombard and \"native\" Sicilian populations living in harmony, and its Norman rulers fostered plans of establishing an empire that would have encompassed Fatimid Egypt as well as the crusader states in the Levant. One of the great geographical treatises of the Middle Ages, the \"\"Tabula Rogeriana\"\", was written by al-Idrisi for King Roger II of Sicily, and entitled \"\"Kitab Rudjdjar\" (\"The Book of Roger\"\").\nThe Iberian Peninsula.\nThe Normans began appearing in the military confrontations between Christians and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula since the early eleventh century. The first Norman who appears in the narrative sources was Roger I of Tosny who according to Ademar of Chabannes and the later Chronicle of St Pierre le Vif went to aid the Barcelonese in a series of raids against the Andalusi Muslims c.\u20091018. Later in the eleventh century, other Norman adventurers such as Robert Crispin and Walter Giffard participated in the probably papal organised siege of Barbastro of 1064. Even after the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the Normans continued to participate in ventures in the peninsula. After the Frankish conquest of the Holy Land during the First Crusade, the Normans began to be encouraged to participate in ventures of conquest in the northeast of the peninsula. The most significant example of this was the incursion of Rotrou II of Perche and Robert Burdet in the 1120s in the Ebro frontier. By 1129 Robert Burdet had been granted a semi-independent principality in the city of Tarragona by the then Archbishop of this see, Oleguer Bonestruga. Several others of Rotrou's Norman followers were rewarded with lands in the Ebro valley by King Alfonso I of Aragon for their services.\nWith the rising popularity of the sea route to the Holy Land, Norman and Anglo-Norman crusaders also started to be encouraged locally by Iberian prelates to participate in the Portuguese incursions into the western areas of the Peninsula. The first of these incursions occurred when a fleet of these Crusaders was invited by the Portuguese king Afonso I Henriques to conquer the city of Lisbon in 1142. Although this Siege of Lisbon (1142) was a failure it created a precedent for their involvement in Portugal. So in 1147 when another group of Norman and other groups of crusaders from Northern Europe arrived in Porto on their way to join the crusading forces of the Second Crusade, the Bishop of Porto and later Afonso Henriques according to \"De expugnatione Lyxbonensi\" convinced them to help with the siege of Lisbon. This time the city was captured and according to the arrangement agreed upon with the Portuguese monarch many of them settled in the newly sacked city. The following year the remainder of the crusading fleet, including a substantial number of Anglo-Normans, was invited by the count of Barcelona, Ramon Berenguer IV, to participate in the siege of Tortosa (1148). Again the Normans were rewarded with lands in the newly conquered frontier city.\nNorth Africa.\nBetween 1135 and 1160, the Norman Kingdom of Sicily conquered and kept as vassals several cities on the Ifriqiya coast, corresponding to Tunisia and parts of Algeria and Libya today.\nThey were lost to the Almohads.\nByzantium.\nSoon after the Normans began to enter Italy, they entered the Byzantine Empire and then Armenia, fighting against the Pechenegs, the Bulgarians, and especially the Seljuk Turks. Norman mercenaries were first encouraged to come to the south by the Lombards to act against the Byzantines, but they soon fought in Byzantine service in Sicily. They were prominent alongside Varangian and Lombard contingents in the Sicilian campaign of George Maniaces in 1038\u201340. There is debate whether the Normans in Greek service actually were from Norman Italy, and it now seems likely only a few came from there. It is also unknown how many of the \"Franks\", as the Byzantines called them, were Normans and not other Frenchmen.\nOne of the first Norman mercenaries to serve as a Byzantine general was Herv\u00e9 in the 1050s. By then, however, there were already Norman mercenaries serving as far away as Trebizond and Georgia. They were based at Malatya and Edessa, under the Byzantine duke of Antioch, Isaac Komnenos. In the 1060s, Robert Crispin led the Normans of Edessa against the Turks. Roussel de Bailleul even tried to carve out an independent state in Asia Minor with support from the local population in 1073, but he was stopped in 1075 by the Byzantine general and future emperor Alexius Komnenos.\nSome Normans joined Turkish forces to aid in the destruction of the Armenian vassal-states of Sassoun and Taron in far eastern Anatolia. Later, many took up service with the Armenian state further south in Cilicia and the Taurus Mountains. A Norman named Oursel led a force of \"Franks\" into the upper Euphrates valley in northern Syria. From 1073 to 1074, 8,000 of the 20,000 troops of the Armenian general Philaretus Brachamius were Normans\u2014formerly of Oursel\u2014led by Raimbaud. They even lent their ethnicity to the name of their castle: Afranji, meaning \"Franks\". The known trade between Amalfi and Antioch and between Bari and Tarsus may be related to the presence of Italo-Normans in those cities while Amalfi and Bari were under Norman rule in Italy.\nSeveral families of Byzantine Greece were of Norman mercenary origin during the period of the Comnenian Restoration, when Byzantine emperors were seeking out western European warriors. The Raoulii were descended from an Italo-Norman named Raoul, the Petraliphae were descended from a Pierre d'Aulps, and that group of Albanian clans known as the Maniakates were descended from Normans who served under George Maniaces in the Sicilian expedition of 1038.\nRobert Guiscard, another Norman adventurer previously elevated to the dignity of count of Apulia as the result of his military successes, ultimately drove the Byzantines out of southern Italy. Having obtained the consent of Pope Gregory VII and acting as his vassal, Robert continued his campaign conquering the Balkan peninsula as a foothold for western feudal lords and the Catholic Church. After allying himself with Croatia and the Catholic cities of Dalmatia, in 1081 he led an army of 30,000 men in 300 ships landing on the southern shores of Albania, capturing Valona, Kanina, Jericho (Orikumi), and reaching Butrint after numerous pillages. They joined the fleet that had previously conquered Corfu and attacked Dyrrachium from land and sea, devastating everything along the way. Under these harsh circumstances, the locals accepted the call of Emperor Alexios I Comnenos to join forces with the Byzantines against the Normans. The Byzantine forces could not take part in the ensuing battle because it had started before their arrival. Immediately before the battle, the Venetian fleet had secured a victory in the coast surrounding the city. Forced to retreat, Alexios ceded the city of Dyrrachium to the Count of the Tent (or Byzantine provincial administrators) mobilizing from Arbanon (i.e., \u1f10\u03be \u1f08\u03c1\u03b2\u03ac\u03bd\u03c9\u03bd \u1f41\u03c1\u03bc\u03c9\u03bc\u03ad\u03bd\u03c9 \u039a\u03bf\u03bc\u03b9\u03c3\u03ba\u03cc\u03c1\u03c4\u03b7; the term \"\u039a\u03bf\u03bc\u03b9\u03c3\u03ba\u03cc\u03c1\u03c4\u03b7\" is short for \u03ba\u03cc\u03bc\u03b7\u03c2 \u03c4\u03b7\u03c2 \u03ba\u03cc\u03c1\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2 meaning \"Count of the Tent\"). The city's garrison resisted until February 1082, when Dyrrachium was betrayed to the Normans by the Venetian and Amalfitan merchants who had settled there. The Normans were now free to penetrate into the hinterland; they took Ioannina and some minor cities in southwestern Macedonia and Thessaly before appearing at the gates of Thessalonica. Dissension among the high ranks coerced the Normans to retreat to Italy. They lost Dyrrachium, Valona, and Butrint in 1085, after the death of Robert.\nA few years after the First Crusade, in 1107, the Normans under the command of Bohemond, Robert's son, landed in Valona and besieged Dyrrachium using the most sophisticated military equipment of the time, but to no avail. Meanwhile, they occupied Petrela, the citadel of Mili at the banks of the river Deabolis, Gllavenica (Ballsh), Kanina and Jericho. This time, the Albanians sided with the Normans, dissatisfied by the heavy taxes the Byzantines had imposed upon them. With their help, the Normans secured the Arbanon passes and opened their way to Dibra. The lack of supplies, disease and Byzantine resistance forced Bohemond to retreat from his campaign and sign a peace treaty with the Byzantines in the city of Deabolis.\nThe further decline of Byzantine state-of-affairs paved the road to a third attack in 1185, when a large Norman army invaded Dyrrachium, owing to the betrayal of high Byzantine officials. Some time later, Dyrrachium\u2014one of the most important naval bases of the Adriatic\u2014fell again to Byzantine hands.\nEngland.\nThe Normans were in contact with England from an early date. Not only were their original Viking brethren still ravaging the English coasts, they occupied most of the important ports opposite England across the English Channel. This relationship eventually produced closer ties of blood through the marriage of Emma, sister of Duke Richard II of Normandy, and King Ethelred II of England. Because of this, Ethelred fled to Normandy in 1013, when he was forced from his kingdom by Sweyn Forkbeard. His stay in Normandy (until 1016) influenced him and his sons by Emma, who stayed in Normandy after Cnut the Great's conquest of the isle.\nWhen Edward the Confessor finally returned from his father's refuge in 1041, at the invitation of his half-brother Harthacnut, he brought with him a Norman-educated mind. He also brought many Norman counsellors and fighters, some of whom established an English cavalry force. This concept never really took root, but it is a typical example of Edward's attitude. He appointed Robert of Jumi\u00e8ges Archbishop of Canterbury and made Ralph the Timid Earl of Hereford.\nOn 14 October 1066, William the Conqueror gained a decisive victory at the Battle of Hastings, which led to the conquest of England three years later; this can be seen on the Bayeux tapestry. The invading Normans and their descendants largely replaced the Anglo-Saxons as the ruling class of England. The nobility of England were part of a single Norman culture and many had lands on both sides of the channel. Early Norman kings of England, as Dukes of Normandy, owed homage to the King of France for their land on the continent. They considered England to be their most important holding (it brought with it the title of King\u2014an important status symbol).\nEventually, the Normans merged with the natives, combining languages and traditions, so much so that Marjorie Chibnall says \"writers still referred to Normans and English; but the terms no longer meant the same as in the immediate aftermath of 1066.\" In the course of the Hundred Years' War, the Norman aristocracy often identified themselves as English. The Anglo-Norman language became distinct from the French spoken in Paris, something that was the subject of some humour by Geoffrey Chaucer. The Anglo-Norman language was eventually absorbed into the Anglo-Saxon language of their subjects (see Old English) and influenced it, helping (along with the Norse language of the earlier Anglo-Norse settlers and the Latin used by the church) in the development of Middle English, which, in turn, evolved into Modern English.\nIreland.\nThe Normans had a profound effect on Irish culture and history after their invasion at Bannow Bay in 1169. Initially, the Normans maintained a distinct culture and ethnicity. Yet, with time, they came to be subsumed into Irish culture to the point that it has been said that they became \"more Irish than the Irish themselves\". The Normans settled mostly in an area in the east of Ireland, later known as the Pale, and also built many fine castles and settlements, including Trim Castle and Dublin Castle. The cultures intermixed, borrowing from each other's language, culture and outlook. Norman surnames still exist today. Names such as \"French\", \"(De) Roche\", \"Devereux\", \"D'Arcy\" and \"Lacy\" are particularly common in the southeast of Ireland, especially in the southern part of County Wexford, where the first Norman settlements were established. Other Norman names, such as \"Furlong\", predominate there. Another common Norman-Irish name was Morell (Murrell), derived from the French Norman name \"Morel\". Names beginning with \"Fitz-\" (from the Norman for \"son\") usually indicate Norman ancestry. Hiberno-Norman surnames with the prefix \"Fitz-\" include \"Fitzgerald\", \"FitzGibbons\" (Gibbons) as well as \"Fitzmaurice\". Families bearing such surnames as \"Barry\" (\"de Barra\") and \"De B\u00farca\" (\"Burke\") are also of Norman extraction.\nScotland.\nOne of the claimants of the English throne opposing William the Conqueror, Edgar Atheling, eventually fled to Scotland. King Malcolm III of Scotland married Edgar's sister Margaret, and came into opposition to William who had already disputed Scotland's southern borders. William invaded Scotland in 1072, riding as far as Abernethy where he met up with his fleet of ships. Malcolm submitted, paid homage to William and surrendered his son Duncan as a hostage, beginning a series of arguments as to whether the Scottish Crown owed allegiance to the King of England.\nNormans went into Scotland, building castles and founding noble families that would provide some future kings, such as Robert the Bruce, as well as founding a considerable number of the Scottish clans. King David I of Scotland, whose elder brother Alexander I had married Sybilla of Normandy, was instrumental in introducing Normans and Norman culture to Scotland, part of the process some scholars call the \"Davidian Revolution\". Having spent time at the court of Henry I of England (married to David's sister Maud of Scotland), and needing them to wrestle the kingdom from his half-brother M\u00e1el Coluim mac Alaxandair, David had to reward many with lands. The process was continued under David's successors, most intensely of all under William the Lion. The Norman-derived feudal system was applied in varying degrees to most of Scotland. Scottish families of the names Bruce, Gray, Ramsay, Fraser, Rose, Ogilvie, Montgomery, Sinclair, Pollock, Burnard, Douglas and Gordon to name but a few, and including the later royal House of Stewart, can all be traced back to Norman ancestry.\nWales.\nEven before the Norman Conquest of England, the Normans had come into contact with Wales. Edward the Confessor had set up the aforementioned Ralph as Earl of Hereford and charged him with defending the Marches and warring with the Welsh. In these original ventures, the Normans failed to make any headway into Wales.\nAfter the Conquest, however, the Marches came completely under the dominance of William's most trusted Norman barons, including Bernard de Neufmarch\u00e9, Roger of Montgomery in Shropshire and Hugh Lupus in Cheshire. These Normans began a long period of slow conquest during which almost all of Wales was at some point subject to Norman interference. Norman words, such as \"baron\" (), first entered Welsh at that time.\nOn crusade.\nThe legendary religious zeal of the Normans was exercised in religious wars long before the First Crusade carved out a Norman principality in Antioch. They were major foreign combatants in the Reconquista in Iberia. In 1018, Roger de Tosny travelled to the Iberian Peninsula to carve out a state for himself from Moorish lands, but failed. In 1064, during the War of Barbastro, William of Montreuil, Roger Crispin and probably Walter Guiffard led an army under the papal banner which took a huge booty as they captured the city from its Andelusi rulers. Later a group of Normans led by certain William (some have suggested this was William the Carpenter) participated in the failed siege of Tudela of 1087.\nIn 1096, Crusaders passing by the siege of Amalfi were joined by Bohemond of Taranto and his nephew Tancred with an army of Italo-Normans. Bohemond was the \"de facto\" leader of the Crusade during its passage through Asia Minor. After the successful Siege of Antioch in 1097, Bohemond began carving out an independent principality around that city. Tancred was instrumental in the conquest of Jerusalem and he worked for the expansion of the Crusader kingdom in Transjordan and the region of Galilee..\nAfter the First Crusade to the Levant, the Normans continued with their involvement in Iberia as well as other areas of the Mediterranean. Among them was Rotrou of Perche and his followers Robert Burdet and William Giffard who joined multiple expeditions into the Ebro Valley to aid Alfonso I of Aragon in his campaigns of conquest. Robert Burdet managed to acquire the position of Alcide of Tudela by 1123 and later that of Prince of the city Tarragona in 1129.\nAnglo-Norman conquest of Cyprus.\nThe conquest of Cyprus by the Anglo-Norman forces of the Third Crusade opened a new chapter in the history of the island, which would be under Western European domination for the following 380 years. Although not part of a planned operation, the conquest had much more permanent results than initially expected.\nIn April 1191, Richard the Lion-hearted left Messina with a large fleet in order to reach Acre. But a storm dispersed the fleet. After some searching, it was discovered that the boat carrying his sister and his fianc\u00e9e Berengaria was anchored on the south coast of Cyprus, together with the wrecks of several other ships, including the treasure ship. Survivors of the wrecks had been taken prisoner by the island's despot Isaac Komnenos. On 1 May 1191, Richard's fleet arrived in the port of Limassol on Cyprus. He ordered Isaac to release the prisoners and the treasure. Isaac refused, so Richard landed his troops and took Limassol.\nVarious princes of the Holy Land arrived in Limassol at the same time, in particular Guy de Lusignan. All declared their support for Richard provided that he support Guy against his rival Conrad of Montferrat. The local barons abandoned Isaac, who considered making peace with Richard, joining him on the crusade, and offering his daughter in marriage to the person named by Richard. But Isaac changed his mind and tried to escape. Richard then proceeded to conquer the whole island, his troops being led by Guy de Lusignan. Isaac surrendered and was confined with silver chains, because Richard had promised that he would not place him in irons. By 1 June, Richard had conquered the whole island. His exploit was well publicized and contributed to his reputation; he also derived significant financial gains from the conquest of the island. Richard left for Acre on 5 June, with his allies. Before his departure, he named two of his Norman generals, Richard de Camville and Robert de Thornham, as governors of Cyprus.\nWhile in Limassol, Richard the Lion-Heart married Berengaria of Navarre, first-born daughter of King Sancho VI of Navarre. The wedding was held on 12 May 1191 at the Chapel of St. George and it was attended by Richard's sister Joan, whom he had brought from Sicily. The marriage was celebrated with great pomp and splendor. Among other grand ceremonies was a double coronation: Richard caused himself to be crowned King of Cyprus, and Berengaria Queen of England and Queen of Cyprus as well.\nThe rapid Anglo-Norman conquest proved more important than it seemed. The island occupied a key strategic position on the maritime lanes to the Holy Land, whose occupation by the Christians could not continue without support from the sea. Shortly after the conquest, Cyprus was sold to the Knights Templar and it was subsequently acquired, in 1192, by Guy de Lusignan and became a stable feudal kingdom. It was only in 1489 that the Venetians acquired full control of the island, which remained a Christian stronghold until the fall of Famagusta in 1571.\nCanary Islands.\nBetween 1402 and 1405, the expedition led by the Norman noble Jean de Bethencourt and the Poitevine Gadifer de la Salle conquered the Canarian islands of Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and El Hierro off the Atlantic coast of Africa. Their troops were gathered in Normandy, Gascony and were later reinforced by Castilian colonists.\nBethencourt took the title of King of the Canary Islands, as vassal to Henry III of Castile. In 1418, Jean's nephew Maciot de Bethencourt sold the rights to the islands to Enrique P\u00e9rez de Guzm\u00e1n, 2nd Count de Niebla.\nCulture.\nLanguage.\nWhen Norse Vikings from Scandinavia arrived in the then-province of Neustria and settled the land that became known as Normandy, they originally spoke Old Norse, a North Germanic language. Over time, they came to live among the local Gallo-Romance-speaking population, with the two communities converging to the point that the original Norsemen largely assimilated and adopted the local dialect of Old French while contributing some elements from the Old Norse language. This Norse-influenced dialect which then arose was known as Old Norman, and it is the ancestor of both the modern Norman language still spoken today in the Channel Islands and parts of mainland Normandy, as well as the historical Anglo-Norman language in England. Old Norman was also an important language of the Principality of Antioch during Crusader rule in the Levant.\nOld Norman and Anglo-Norman literature was quite extensive during the Middle Ages, with records existing from notable Norman poets such as Wace, who was born on the island of Jersey and raised in mainland Normandy.\nNorman law.\nThe customary law of Normandy was developed between the 10th and 13th centuries and survives today through the legal systems of Jersey and Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Norman customary law was transcribed in two customaries in Latin by two judges for use by them and their colleagues: These are the \"Tr\u00e8s ancien coutumier\" (\"Very ancient customary\"), authored between 1200 and 1245; and the \"Grand coutumier de Normandie\" (\"Great customary of Normandy\", originally \"Summa de legibus Normanniae in curia la\u00efcali\"), authored between 1235 and 1245.\nNorman law during the ducal period, between 1000 and 1144, blended local Frankish traditions, Carolingian legal structures, and Viking influences. This unique combination created a legal system distinct from both its Norse and Frankish predecessors. The Norse customs that were adopted emphasized community-based dispute resolution, honor, and reparation. The Carolingian legal principles that the Normans utilized were the written codes, administrative structure, and practices such as the use of oaths and ordeals. Lastly, the Normans wanted to preserve some of the existing customary practices in Normandy, particularly in rural areas, such as land ownership and inheritance, governance through local assemblies, and customary taxation and resource management.\nIn England, the Normans replaced the Anglo-Saxon landholding customs with a feudal system. Under this system, all land was held by the king, who granted it to nobles in exchange for military service and other obligations. The nobles, in turn, granted portions of their land to vassals, land holders for the king, which created a hierarchal structure of land tenure. The Domesday Book, written in 1086 formalized land ownership and feudal obligations in England, creating a legal framework form resolving disputes over property.\nLegal obligations under this feudal system included required military service to the land's respective lords. Failure to meet these duties often resulted in forfeiture of land or other penalties. The disputes over land and feudal obligations were resolved in feudal courts. These courts operated at various levels: local, manorial, or baronial - and reinforced the feudal hierarchy by emphasizing the lord's role as the arbiter of justice within his domain.\nArchitecture.\nNorman architecture typically stands out as a new stage in the architectural history of the regions they subdued. They spread a unique Romanesque idiom to England, Italy and Ireland, and the encastellation of these regions with keeps in their north French style fundamentally altered the military landscape. Their style was characterised by rounded arches, particularly over windows and doorways, and massive proportions.\nIn England, the period of Norman architecture immediately succeeds that of the Anglo-Saxon and precedes the Early Gothic. In southern Italy, the Normans incorporated elements of Islamic, Lombard, and Byzantine building techniques into their own, initiating a unique romanesque style known as Norman-Arab architecture within the Kingdom of Sicily and precedes the Early Gothic.\nVisual arts.\nIn the visual arts, the Normans did not have the rich and distinctive traditions of the cultures they conquered. However, in the early 11th century, the dukes began a programme of church reform, encouraging the Cluniac reform of monasteries and patronising intellectual pursuits, especially the proliferation of scriptoria and the reconstitution of a compilation of lost illuminated manuscripts. The church was utilised by the dukes as a unifying force for their disparate duchy. The chief monasteries taking part in this \"renaissance\" of Norman art and scholarship were Mont-Saint-Michel, F\u00e9camp, Jumi\u00e8ges, Bec, Saint-Ouen, Saint-Evroul, and Saint-Wandrille. These centres were in contact with the so-called \"Winchester school\", which channeled a pure Carolingian artistic tradition to Normandy. In the final decade of the 11th and first of the 12th century, Normandy experienced a golden age of illustrated manuscripts, but it was brief and the major scriptoria of Normandy ceased to function after the midpoint of the century.\nThe French Wars of Religion in the 16th century and the French Revolution in the 18th successively destroyed much of what existed in the way of the architectural and artistic remnant of this Norman creativity. The former, with their violence, caused the wanton destruction of many Norman edifices; the latter, with its assault on religion, caused the purposeful destruction of religious objects of any type, and its destabilisation of society resulted in rampant pillaging.\nBy far the most famous work of Norman art is the Bayeux Tapestry, which is not a tapestry but a work of embroidery. It was commissioned by Odo, the Bishop of Bayeux and first Earl of Kent, employing natives from Kent who were learned in the Nordic traditions imported in the previous half century by the Danish Vikings.\nIn Britain, Norman art primarily survives as stonework or metalwork, such as capitals and baptismal fonts. In southern Italy, however, Norman artwork survives plentifully in forms strongly influenced by its Greek, Lombard, and Arab forebears. Of the royal regalia preserved in Palermo, the crown is Germanic and Byzantine in style and the coronation cloak is of Arab craftsmanship with Arabic inscriptions. Many churches preserve sculptured fonts, capitals, and more importantly mosaics, which were common in Norman Italy and drew heavily on the Greek heritage. Lombard Salerno was a centre of ivorywork in the 11th century and this continued under Norman domination.\nMusic.\nNormandy was the site of several important developments in the history of classical music in the 11th century. F\u00e9camp Abbey and Saint-Evroul Abbey were centres of musical production and education. At F\u00e9camp, under two Italian abbots, William of Volpiano and John of Ravenna, the system of denoting notes by letters was developed and taught. It is still the most common form of pitch representation in English- and German-speaking countries today. Also at F\u00e9camp, the staff, around which neumes were oriented, was first developed and taught in the 11th century. Under the German abbot Isembard, La Trinit\u00e9-du-Mont became a centre of musical composition.\nAt Saint Evroul, a tradition of singing had developed and the choir achieved fame in Normandy. Under the Norman abbot Robert de Grantmesnil, several monks of Saint-Evroul fled to southern Italy, where they were patronised by Robert Guiscard and established a Latin monastery at Sant'Eufemia Lamezia. There they continued the tradition of singing.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["16550", "21476352"], "permutation_1": ["21476352", "16550"], "permutation_2": ["16550", "21476352"], "permutation_3": ["16550", "21476352"]}
{"id": "2hop__115615_120682", "docs_added": {"924105": "United States Railroad Administration\nWWI-era temporary railroad nationalization program\nThe United States Railroad Administration (USRA) was the name of the nationalized railroad system of the United States between December 28, 1917, and March 1, 1920. It was the largest American experiment with nationalization, and was undertaken against a background of war emergency following American entry into World War I. During its brief existence, the USRA made major investments in the United States railroad system, and introduced standardized locomotive and railroad car classes, known as USRA standard. After the end of World War I, while some in the United States advocated for continuing nationalization, ultimately the railroads were returned to their previous owners in early 1920.\nBackground.\nAlthough the carriers had made massive investments in the first years of the 20th century, there remained inadequacies in terminals, trackage, and rolling stock. Inflation struck the American economy, and when in 1906 Congress empowered the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to set maximum shipping rates, the rail firms had difficulty securing revenue sufficient to keep pace with rising costs. The ICC did allow some increases in rates, however. Ownership of the United States rail network was divided among 441 distinct corporations. Investors had overexpanded the nation's trackage, so by late 1915 fully one-sixth of the railroad trackage in the country belonged to roads in receivership (bankruptcy). The national railway investment of $17.5 billion, of which more than half was funded by debt, had an estimated worth of $16 billion.\nEuropean nations engaged in World War I ordered $3 billion of munitions from United States factories; and most of this production was routed through a few Atlantic port cities. Terminal facilities in these cities were not designed to handle the resulting volume of export tonnage, though German destruction of Allied cargo ships was ultimately a bigger problem. Thousands of loaded railroad cars were delayed awaiting transfer of their contents to ships; they were essentially used as warehouses. This resulted in a shortage of railroad cars to move normal freight traffic. The United States' declaration of war on April 6, 1917, increased rail congestion by requiring movement of soldiers from induction points through training facilities to embarkation points.\nThe railroad unions (commonly called \"brotherhoods\"), desiring shorter working days and better pay, threatened strike action in the second half of 1916. To avert a strike, President Woodrow Wilson secured Congressional passage of the Adamson Act, which set the eight-hour work day as the industry standard. When the Supreme Court ruled the law constitutional, the carriers had no choice but to comply.\nThe railroads attempted to coordinate their efforts to support the war by creating the Railroads' War Board, but private action ran into anti-trust and other regulatory barriers. Observers noted, for example, that sometimes competitive practices prevailed that were not in the best interests of efficient mobilization. Also, government departments sought priority for shipment made on their behalf, and congestion in freight yards, terminals, and port facilities became staggering.\nFinally, in December 1917 the ICC recommended federal control of the railroad industry to ensure efficient operation. The takeover measures were to go beyond simply easing the congestion and expediting the flow of goods; they were to bring all parties\u2014management, labor, investors, and shippers\u2014together in a harmonious whole working on behalf of the national interest. President Wilson issued an order for nationalization on December 26, 1917. This action had been authorized by the Army Appropriations Act of 1916. Federal control extended over the steam and electric railroads with their owned or controlled systems of coastwise and inland water transportation, terminals, terminal companies, terminal associations, sleeping and parlor cars, private cars, private car lines, elevators, warehouses, and telephone and telegraph lines.\nChanges and new equipment.\nChange happened swiftly. The railroads were organized into three divisions: East, West, and South. Uniform passenger ticketing was instituted, and competing services on different former railroads were cut back. Duplicate passenger services were reduced by eliminating more than 250 trains from eastern railroad schedules to allow increased numbers of freight trains to use crowded lines. Costly and employee-heavy sleeping car services were reduced and extra fares applied to discourage their use. Giving priority to coal trains reduced shortages of locomotive fuel. Ordering all empty box cars to be sent to wheat-producing areas improved the flow of food to European allies. USRA pooled all rolling stock, terminals, port facilities, and shops to reduce congestion in Chicago and New York City. All railroad companies serving those metropolitan areas were given trackage rights over all lines entering the area and equal access to terminal facilities. Available railroad rolling stock inventory of 61,000 locomotives, 2,250,000 freight cars, and 58,000 passenger cars were augmented by new production. Over 100,000 railroad cars and 1,930 steam locomotives were ordered at a cost of $380 million, all of new USRA standard designs. The new rolling stock consisted of up-to-date and standardized types, designed to be the best that could be produced to replace outdated equipment.\nBefore the new USRA standard locomotive types were built and released, locomotives that builders had on hand were issued to various railroads. 2-8-0 \"Consolidation\" locomotives built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works for transport and use in France were made available. Then 2-10-0 \"Decapod\" locomotives built for Imperial Russia by both ALCO and Baldwin, but stranded in the US by the Russian Revolution of 1917, were also made available to the railroads. The USRA leased these locomotives.\nProgression.\nOn March 21, 1918, the \"Railway Administration Act\" became law, and Wilson's 1917 nationalization order was affirmed. Wilson appointed his son-in-law, Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo, as Director General of the newly formed USRA.\nThe law guaranteed the return of the railroads to their former owners within 21 months of a peace treaty, and guaranteed that their properties would be handed back in at least as good a condition as when they were taken over. It also guaranteed compensation for the use of their assets at the average operational income of the railroads in the three years previous to nationalization. The act laid down in concrete terms that the nationalization would be only a temporary measure; before, it was not defined as necessarily so.\nWith the Armistice in November 1918, McAdoo resigned from his post, leaving Walker Hines as the Director General.\nWinding down.\nThere was support among labor unions for continuing the nationalization of the railroads after the war. However, this position was not supported by Wilson nor the public generally. Because the United States was not a party to the Treaty of Versailles ending the war in 1919, which would have been the legal basis for returning the railroads to private ownership under the Railway Administration Act, legislation was drafted to effect the return.\nCongress passed the Esch-Cummins Act (Railroad Transportation Act) in February 1920, which substantially increased the ICC's powers over the railroads, and the USRA's authority ended on March 1, 1920. The ICC was given powers to approve or reject railroad mergers, to set rates, to approve or reject abandonments of service, and additional oversight responsibilities. The government also made financial guarantees to the railroads after control was handed back to them, to ensure their financial survival after the restoration of control.\nAftermath.\nThe Esch-Cummins Act maintained and expanded a complete railroad regulatory system after the war. During the 1920s the railroads, with rates and routes set by the ICC, were facing increasing competition from other modes of transportation: trucking and airplanes. These competing modes were basically unregulated at the time, and received extensive financial assistance from the federal government. This competition contributed to the railroads' decline in the 1920s and beyond, and which was amplified in the 1930s during the Great Depression. \nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "3736850": "USRA 0-8-0\nClass of American two-cylinder 0-8-0 locomotives\nThe USRA 0-8-0 was a USRA standard class of steam locomotive designed under the control of the United States Railroad Administration, the nationalized railroad system in the United States during World War I. This was the standard heavy switcher locomotive of the USRA types, and had an wheel arrangement in the Whyte notation, or \"D\" in UIC classification.\nA total of 175 locomotives were built under USRA control; these were sent to the following railroads:\nAfter the dissolution of the USRA, an additional 1,200 copies of the USRA 0-8-0 were built for many railroads, There is a known survivor of this Type, Republic Steel Corp. #285, which is an ALCO (Richmond) product built in 1925. It is now preserved at the Kentucky Railway Museum in New Haven, Kentucky. It is unknown if any more USRA 0-8-0s of this type exist.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "1248950": "USRA standard\nThe USRA standard locomotives and railroad cars were designed by the United States Railroad Administration, the nationalized rail system of the United States during World War I. 1,870 steam locomotives and over 100,000 railroad cars were built to these designs during the USRA's tenure. The locomotive designs in particular were the nearest the American railroads and locomotive builders ever got to standard locomotive types, and after the USRA was dissolved in 1920 many of the designs were duplicated in number, 3,251 copies being constructed overall. The last steam locomotive built for a Class I railroad in the United States, an 0-8-0 built by the Norfolk and Western Railway in 1953, was a USRA design. A total of 97 railroads used USRA or USRA-derived locomotives.\nSteam locomotive types.\nThe USRA developed designs for 0-6-0 and 0-8-0 switcher locomotives, 2-6-6-2 and 2-8-8-2 Mallet locomotives, and both light and heavy versions of the 2-8-2, 2-10-2, 4-6-2, and 4-8-2 types. The light versions were designed with an axle load of 54,000\u00a0lb (24,500\u00a0kg) permitting usage on the vast majority of railroads, while the heavy versions were designed to a maximum axle load of 60,000\u00a0lb (27,200\u00a0kg) for lines with more heavily constructed track.\nThe U.S.R.A. also distributed 2-10-0 Decapods of Russian design to railroads under its control.\nUSRA 0-6-0.\n255 of the USRA 0-6-0 design were built, as well as many copies.\nUSRA 0-8-0.\n175 of the USRA 0-8-0 design were built, and it was copied extensively thereafter.\nUSRA Light 2-8-2 \"Mikado\".\n614 of the USRA Light Mikado type were constructed, making it the most populous USRA type.\nUSRA Heavy 2-8-2 \"Mikado\".\n233 of the USRA Heavy Mikados were built.\nUSRA Light 2-10-2 \"Santa Fe\".\n94 USRA Light Santa Fe locomotives were constructed.\nUSRA Heavy 2-10-2 \"Santa Fe\".\n175 USRA Heavy Santa Fe locomotives were built.\nUSRA Light 4-6-2 \"Pacific\".\n106 USRA Light Pacifics were constructed.\nUSRA Heavy 4-6-2 \"Pacific\".\n20 USRA Heavy Pacifics were built.\nUSRA Light 4-8-2 \"Mountain\".\n47 of the USRA Light Mountain type were built.\nUSRA Heavy 4-8-2 \"Mountain\".\n15 USRA Heavy Mountains were constructed.\n2-6-6-2.\n30 of the USRA 2-6-6-2 type were built.\n2-8-8-2.\n106 of the USRA 2-8-8-2 locomotives were constructed. The Norfolk and Western Railway, in particular, continued building this type after the USRA period, developing and modernising it over time, as its Class Y. A N&W Y6B was the last conventional freight-hauling steam locomotive built in the United States.\nFreight cars.\nAs part of the USRA, two common boxcar designs were developed: a single sheathed car and a double sheathed car. When the USRA boxcars were being designed there wasn't an industry consensus on which was better, so both were built. Freight car design was still in flux in the early part of the 20th century. As John White points out in \"The American Freight Car\", most cars were really composites, not completely wood or steel, and even after steel cars had become the norm, wood had its uses and advantages. Still, steel underframes had come to replace wood underframes, but as metallurgy improved, there were new designs developed that took advantage of the improved technology. USRA double sheathed boxcars had a fishbelly underframe while the USRA single sheathed cars did not. \nIn general, double sheathed boxcars are like girder bridges, so all the support needs to come from the frame. Those cars need a stronger frame, hence the fishbelly underframe. Single sheathed cars are like truss bridges, with the metal side bracing acting as the main structural support for the \"bridge.\" While some engineers did not trust the steel bracing to support a single sheathed car and ordered fishbelly frames for strength, others valued the savings in weight and ordered cars with simpler frames like the USRA SS design.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3735728": "USRA 0-6-0\nThe USRA 0-6-0 was a USRA standard class of steam locomotive designed under the control of the United States Railroad Administration, the nationalized railroad system in the United States during World War I. This was the standard light switcher locomotive of the USRA types, and was of 0-6-0 wheel arrangement in the Whyte notation, or \"C\" in UIC classification.\nA total of 255 locomotives were built under USRA control; these were sent to the following railroads:\nAfter the dissolution of the USRA, the Atlantic Coast Line, Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railway, Gulf, Mobile and Ohio Railroad and Texas and Pacific Railway ordered additional copies of the USRA 0-6-0 design, while the Missouri Pacific Railroad and the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway ordered only copies.\nPreservation.\nAs of 2022, three USRA 0-6-0 copies are known to be preserved. Two are from the Wheeling and Lake Erie: 3960, which is awaiting a cosmetic restoration at the Age of Steam Roundhouse in Sugarcreek, Ohio, and 3984, which is undergoing an operational restoration at the Lorain and West Virginia Railway in Wellington, Ohio, and it is currently known as Nickel Plate Road 384. The third is 63, built by Alco in 1940 for the Alabama State Docks Commission. It has been on public display at the Kokosing Gap Trail in Mount Vernon, Ohio since 2002. 63 is currently in the best cosmetic shape of the three, but unfortunately, there are no plans to further restore it or make it operational.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "1115483": "2-8-2\nLocomotive wheel arrangement\nUnder the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 2-8-2 represents the wheel arrangement of two leading wheels on one axle, usually in a leading truck, eight powered and coupled driving wheels on four axles and two trailing wheels on one axle, usually in a trailing truck. This configuration of steam locomotive is most often referred to as a Mikado, frequently shortened to Mike.\nIt was also at times referred to on some railroads in the United States as the McAdoo Mikado and, during World War II, the MacArthur.\nThe notation 2-8-2T indicates a tank locomotive of this wheel arrangement, the \"T\" suffix indicating a locomotive on which the water is carried in tanks mounted on the engine rather than in an attached tender.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nOverview.\nThe 2-8-2 wheel arrangement allowed the locomotive's firebox to be placed behind instead of above the driving wheels, thereby allowing a larger firebox that could be both wide and deep. This supported a greater rate of combustion and thus a greater capacity for steam generation, allowing for more power at higher speeds. Allied with the larger driving wheel diameter which was possible when they did not impinge on the firebox, it meant that the 2-8-2 was capable of higher speeds than a 2-8-0 with a heavy train. These locomotives did not suffer from the imbalance of reciprocating parts as much as did the 2-6-2 or the 2-10-2, because the center of gravity was between the second and third drivers instead of above the centre driver.\nThe first 2-8-2 locomotive was built in 1884. It was originally named \"Calumet\" by Angus Sinclair, in reference to the 2-8-2 engines built for the Chicago & Calumet Terminal Railway (C&CT). However, this name did not take hold.\nThe wheel arrangement name \"Mikado\" originated from a group of 2-8-2 locomotives that were built by Baldwin Locomotive Works for the gauge Nippon Railway of Japan in 1897. In the 19th century, the Emperor of Japan was often referred to as \"the Mikado\" in English. The Gilbert and Sullivan opera, \"The Mikado\", set in Japan, had premiered in 1885 and achieved great popularity in both Britain and America.\nThe 2-8-2 was one of the more common configurations in the first half of the 20th century, before dieselisation. Between 1917 and 1944, nearly 2,200 of this type were constructed by Baldwin, the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) and the Lima Locomotive Works, based on designs by the United States Railroad Administration (USRA). It was also known as the \"McAdoo Mikado\" in the United States, after William Gibbs McAdoo who was appointed as Director General of Railroads when the United States commenced hostilities during the latter part of the First World War and the USRA was established. Of all of the USRA designs, the Mikado proved to be the most popular. The total American production was about 14,000, of which 9,500 were for local customers and the rest exported.\n\"Mikado\" remained the type name until the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Seeking a more American name, \"MacArthur\", after General Douglas MacArthur, came into use to describe the locomotive type in the United States. After the war, the type name \"Mikado\" again became the most common for that locomotive type.\nUsage.\nLocomotives of this wheel arrangement saw service on all six populated continents. The 2-8-2 type was particularly popular in North America, but was also used extensively in Continental Europe and elsewhere.\nArgentina.\nbroad gauge.\nThe Buenos Aires and Pacific Railway bought eighteen 2-8-2T locomotives in three batches of six as their class 701 class. The first two batches came from North British Locomotive Company in 1908 and 1912, the third from Henschel & Son in 1913.\nThe BA&P also bought eight 2-8-2 tender locomotives from Beyer, Peacock & Company in 1928 as their 3001 class.\nThe Central Argentine Railway (FCCA) bought fifteen 2-8-2T locomotives as their class C7 in 1912; they were built by Robert Stephenson & Company with works numbers 3506 to 3520.\nThe FCCA also bought sixty 2-8-2 locomotives: twenty class CS8A from Beyer, Peacock & Company in 1926, and another twenty in 1928 from Robert Stephenson & Company. The final twenty to class CS9A were supplied by Vulcan Foundry in 1930. Both classes were cross-compound locomotives with one high-pressure cylinder with a bore of and one low-pressure cylinder with a bore of , with a stroke of . The earlier class had coupled wheels with a diameter of , whereas on the later class they were .\nStandard gauge.\nThe East Argentine Railway bought four 2-8-2 locomotives from Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1924. As class X they were numbered 70 to 74; they became General Urquiza Railway 701 to 704 in the 1948 nationalisation. Baldwin had classified them as 12-30-<templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1\u20444-E.\ngauge.\nThe Province of Buenos Aires Railway bought a single 2-8-2 locomotive from Hanomag of Germany in 1910. Numbered 251 and classified as class E, it was the only 2-8-2 on that railway's system.\nThe Central Northern Railway (FCCN) bought seven classes of 2-8-2 locomotives totalling 134 locomotives. The first 100 were all bought in 1911: Fifteen from Borsig (class C7, numbered 700\u2013714), 25 from Henschel & Sohn (class C8, 715\u2013739), 10 from Hanomag (class C9, 740\u2013749) and 50 from North British Locomotive (class C10, 750\u2013799). The next 25 came from Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1920; they were Baldwin class 12-30-<templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1\u20444-E, 55 to 79, FCCN class C11, numbered 7000\u20137024. The last nine new locomotives were built by Henschel between 1928 and 1930 (class C13, numbers 7025\u20137033, and class C13A, number 7034). In addition the FCCN rebuilt 20 4-8-0 locomotives of classes C6 and C7 into 2-8-2s between 1938 and 1940.\nThe C\u00f3rdoba Central Railway (FCCC) bought 31 locomotives in four classes. The first was a solitary locomotive, numbered 800, class C6A built by Alco's Brooks Works in 1910. It was nearly a decade before they bought any more with a dozen class C9A locomotives, numbered 1451 to 1462, coming from Montreal Locomotive Works, half in 1919 and half in 1920. MLW delivered another 15 Mikados later that same year; as class C10A they were numbered 1463 to 1477. FCCC's final three came from Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1925, they were Baldwin class 12-26-<templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1\u20444-E; FCCC numbered them 1501 to 1503, class C11A. When the FCCC was taken over by the FCCN in 1939, their new owner changed the classification by adding 20 to the FCCC's old classification; the locomotives kept their old numbers, except for FCCC 800 which became FCCN 1400.\ngauge.\nOn the Ferrocarriles Patag\u00f3nicos, 75 locomotives were bought in 1922. Fifty were built by Henschel & Sohn, numbered 101 to 150 and class 75H; 25 were built by Baldwin, numbered 1 to 25, class 75B with Baldwin classifying then as 12-18-<templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1\u20444-E.\nAustralia.\nOne of the world's first 2-8-2T designs was the South Maitland Railways 10 Class, first delivered in 1911, by Beyer-Peacock, and spasmodically continuing delivery until 1925, then totaling 14 in the class.\nThe requirement for locomotives that could be converted from to without major re-engineering led to the introduction of Mikado locomotives by the Victorian Railways (VR) in the 1920s. Whereas previous 2-8-0 Consolidation type locomotives featured long, narrow fireboxes between the frames that made gauge conversion impractical, the N class light lines and X class heavy goods locomotives both featured wide fireboxes positioned behind the coupled wheels and above the frames.\nThe South Australian Railways (SAR) employed four distinct classes of 2-8-2 locomotive, the locally designed 700 and 710 class, the 740 class that was originally built for China by Clyde Engineering and purchased by the SAR after the order was cancelled in the wake of the Chinese Communist Revolution, and the 750 class, a group of ten surplus VR N class locomotives.\nTo assist with the postwar rebuilding of Australian railways, American-designed Mikado locomotives were also introduced after the Second World War, such as the Baldwin-built New South Wales Government Railways (NSWGR) D59 class and the Queensland Rail (QR) AC16 class.\nA Mikado was also the last new class of mainline steam locomotive to be introduced in Australia, the V class heavy freight locomotive of the Western Australian Government Railways (WAGR) of 1955.\nAustria.\nThe 4-cylinder compound class 470, developed in 1914 by Karl G\u00f6lsdorf, was built for express trains on mountain lines. From 1927, some of these locomotives were rebuilt to two-cylinder superheated steam locomotives and designated class 670. They were reclassified to class 39 from 1938 and remained in service until 1957.\nBelgian Congo.\nIn 1917, 24 Mikado type steam locomotives were built for the Compagnie du chemin de fer du bas-Congo au Katanga (BCK), a new line from the Northern Rhodesian border to Port Francqui in the Belgian Congo. Since the line was just being completed at the time, the full complement of locomotives were not required immediately and four, possibly six, of them were temporarily leased to the South African Railways to alleviate a wartime shortage of locomotives. In South Africa, they were known as the Katanga Mikado. Six more of these engines were leased to the Beira and Mashonaland and Rhodesia Railways (BMR), which operated between Umtali in Southern Rhodesia and Beira in Mozambique. The locomotives were all forwarded to the Belgian Congo after the war, where they were numbered in the BCK range from 201 to 224.\nCanada.\nCanadian National (CN) operated a few Mikado locomotives:\nCanadian Pacific (CP) used Mikado locomotives for passenger and freight trains throughout Canada. Most worked in the Rocky Mountains, where the standard 4-6-2 Pacifics and 4-6-4 Hudsons could not provide enough traction to handle the steep mountain grades.\nThe Temiskaming & Northern Ontario (renamed Ontario Northland Railway in 1946) operated seventeen Mikados, all ordered from Canadian Locomotive Company in three batches, the first six in 1916, second batch of four in 1921, and the final seven in 1923 to 1925. They were scrapped between 1955 and 1957 when the Ontario Northland was completely dieselized, except for three wrecked and scrapped in the 1940s. The Temiskaming & Northern Ontario operated its Mikados on both freight and passenger service, and were fitted with smoke deflectors. In 1946 65 out of 199 Canadian Pacific N2 2-8-0's were rebuilt and converted to Class P1n 2-8-2's . However all were scrapped around 1955 and 1958 . No P1n 2-8-2's were preserved however CP no . 5468 is preserved\nCP's no. 5468, on display in Revelstoke, British Columbia. And CP's 5361 a Class P2e is preserved Depew New York.\nChina.\nSome local industries still actively use Mikados on freight service. The last regular Mikado passenger service was ended on 20 November 2015 in Baiyin. A few Chinese-made locomotives have found their way into the United States, including Class SY no. 3025, built in 1989, which operated as New Haven no. 3025, in honor of Class J1 no. 3001-3024, on the Valley Railroad in Connecticut. The locomotive now operates on the Belvidere & Delaware as no. 142. It is original to the New York, Susquehanna & Western Railway as no. 142. It and two other Chinese 2-8-2s are currently in the United States.\nFinland.\nFinland's sixteen gauge Class Pr1 were 2-8-2T passenger locomotives for use on local trains. They were nicknamed \"Paikku\", which means local. The Class Pr1 was operational from 1924 to 1972. Numbered 761 to 776, they were built by Hanomag in Germany and also by Finnish locomotive builders Tampella and Lokomo. The last one, no. 776, is preserved at the Finnish Railway Museum.\nThe Finnish Class Tr1 (or R1) tender locomotive was built by Tampella, Lokomo and German locomotive builders Arnold Jung from 1940 and remained in service until 1975. They were numbered from 1030 to 1096 and were nicknamed \"Risto\", after Finnish President Risto Ryti. 1030, 1033, 1037, 1047, 1051, 1055, 1057, 1060, 1067, 1071, 1074, 1077, 1082, 1087, 1088, 1092, 1093, 1094, 1095 and 1096 are preserved\nFrance.\nFrance used a fairly large number of 2-8-2s in both tender and tank configurations, designated 141 class from the French classification system of wheel arrangements.\nTender locomotives.\nOf the pre-nationalisation railway companies that existed before the formation of the SNCF, the Chemins de fer de Paris \u00e0 Lyon et \u00e0 la M\u00e9diterran\u00e9e (PLM) had the most Mikados. Their first twelve were initially numbered from 1001 to 1012 and later renumbered to 141.A.1 to 141.A.12. The PLM's second series, numbered from 1013 to 1129 and later renumbered 141.B.1 to 141.B.117, were built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in the United States. Their third and largest class was numbered from 141.C.1 to 141.C.680. Of these latter locomotives, those fitted with feedwater heaters bore the class letter D. The PLM also rebuilt forty-four 141.C and 141.D class locomotives to 141.E class. The SNCF modified the PLM numbers by adding the regional prefix digit \"5\".\nThe PLM's 141.A class Mikados were copied by the Chemins de fer du Nord, who had fifty, numbered from 4.1101 to 4.1150, which became 2-141.A.1 to 2-141.A.50 on the SNCF.\nThe Chemins de fer de l'\u00c9tat also had a class of 250 Mikados, numbered from 141-001 to 141-250. These later became the 141.B class on the SNCF and were renumbered 3-141.B.1 to 3-141.B.250. After modifications, the 141.B class locomotives became the 141.C class, as well as one 141.D class (no. 141.D.136) and one 141.E class (no. 141.E.113). No. 3-141.C.100 has been preserved and designated a Monument historique.\nThe most powerful French Mikado was the SNCF 141.P class. At about , these engines were among the most efficient steam locomotives in the world, thanks to their compound design. They could burn 30% less fuel and use 40% less water than their 141.R class counterparts, but could not compete when it came to reliability. Every locomotive of this 318-strong class has been scrapped.\nThe most numerous steam locomotive class France had, was the American and Canadian-built 141.R class. Of the 1,340 locomotives ordered, however, only 1,323 entered service since sixteen engines were lost at sea during a storm off the coast of Newfoundland while being shipped to France, while one more was lost in Marseille harbour. They were praised for being easy to maintain and proved to be very reliable, which may account for the fact that they remained in service until the very end of the steam era in 1975. Twelve of these locomotives have been preserved.\nTank locomotives.\nThe Chemins de fer d'Alsace et de Lorraine had a class of forty 2-8-2T locomotives, the T 14 class, later numbered SNCF 1-141.TA.501 to 1-141.TA.540. They were identical to Germany's Prussian T 14 class locomotive and were built between 1914 and 1918. (Also see )\nThe Chemins de fer de l'Est had two Mikado classes. The first was numbered from 4401 to 4512, later renumbered 141.401 to 141.512 and finally SNCF 1-141.TB.401 to 1-141.TB.512. The other was numbered from 141.701 to 141.742 and later SNCF 1-141.TC.701 to 1"}, "descending_order": ["3736850", "1248950", "3735728", "1115483", "924105"], "permutation_1": ["1115483", "924105", "1248950", "3735728", "3736850"], "permutation_2": ["3735728", "3736850", "1115483", "924105", "1248950"], "permutation_3": ["3736850", "924105", "1248950", "3735728", "1115483"]}
{"id": "2hop__693444_220151", "docs_added": {"1058787": "Erikson's stages of psychosocial development\nEight-stage model of psychoanalytic development\nErikson's stages of psychosocial development, as articulated in the second half of the 20th century by Erik Erikson in collaboration with Joan Erikson, is a comprehensive psychoanalytic theory that identifies a series of eight stages that a healthy developing individual should pass through from infancy to late adulthood.\nAccording to Erikson's theory the results from each stage, whether positive or negative, influence the results of succeeding stages. Erikson published a book called \"Childhood and Society\" in 1950 that highlighted his research on the eight stages of psychosocial development. Erikson was originally influenced by Sigmund Freud's psychosexual stages of development. He began by working with Freud's theories specifically, but as he began to dive deeper into biopsychosocial development and how other environmental factors affect human development, he soon progressed past Freud's theories and developed his own ideas. Erikson developed different substantial ways to create a theory about lifespan he theorized about the nature of personality development as it unfolds from birth through old age or death. He argued that the social experience was valuable throughout our life to each stage that can be recognizable by a conflict specifically as we encounter between the psychological needs and the surroundings of the social environment.\nErikson's stage theory characterizes an individual advancing through the eight life stages as a function of negotiating their biological and sociocultural forces. The two conflicting forces each have a psychosocial crisis which characterizes the eight stages. If an individual does indeed successfully reconcile these forces (favoring the first mentioned attribute in the crisis), they emerge from the stage with the corresponding virtue. For example, if an infant enters into the toddler stage (autonomy vs. shame and doubt) with more trust than mistrust, they carry the virtue of hope into the remaining life stages. The stage challenges that are not successfully overcome may be expected to return as problems in the future. However, mastery of a stage is not required to advance to the next stage. In one study, subjects showed significant development as a result of organized activities.\nPsychological periodization of stages of human development.\nHope: trust vs. mistrust (oral-sensory, infancy, under 1 year).\nThe first stage of Erik Erikson's theory centers around the infant's basic needs being met by the parents or caregiver and how this interaction leads to trust or mistrust. Trust as defined by Erikson is \"an essential trustfulness of others as well as a fundamental sense of one's own trustworthiness.\" The infant depends on the parents, especially the mother, for sustenance and comfort. Infants will often use methods such as pointing to indicate their interests or desires to their parents or caregivers. The child's relative understanding of the world and society comes from the parents and their interaction with the child. Children first learn to trust their parents or a caregiver. If the parents expose their child to warmth, security, and dependable affection, the infant's view of the world will be one of trust. As the child learns to trust the world around them, they also acquire the virtue of hope. Should parents fail to provide a secure environment and to meet the child's basic needs; a sense of mistrust will result. Development of mistrust can later lead to feelings of frustration, suspicion, withdrawal, and a lack of confidence.\nAccording to Erik Erikson, the major developmental task in infancy is to learn whether or not other people, especially primary caregivers, regularly satisfy basic needs. If caregivers are consistent sources of food, comfort, and affection, an infant learns trust \u2014 that others are dependable and reliable. If they are neglectful, or perhaps even abusive, the infant instead learns mistrust \u2014 that the world is an undependable, unpredictable, and possibly a dangerous place. Having some experience with mistrust allows the infant to gain an understanding of what constitutes dangerous situations later in life. However, infants and toddlers should not be subjected to prolonged situations of mistrust. This causes children to be ill adjusted later in life and see life with a cautious and careful outlook, which can be detrimental later in their life. In this stage, the child's most important needs are to feel safe, comforted, and well cared for.\nThis stage is where a child learns an attachment style to their caregiver. The attachment style the child develops can affect their relationships through the rest of their life. For example, if the infant is hungry, will it be fed? If their diaper got soiled, would anybody change it? If they're sad, will they be comforted? The infant's mind would tell if the world is a trustworthy place with trustworthy people. Infants need protection and support from the familiar adult; otherwise, they will most likely not survive. This concept was studied more by Bowlby and Ainsworth in their attachment theory which is consistent with Erikson's research.\nWill: autonomy vs. shame/doubt (muscular, toddlerhood, 1\u20132 years).\nAs the child gains control over eliminative functions and motor abilities, they begin to explore their surroundings. Parents still provide a strong base of security from which the child can venture out to assert their will. The parents' patience and encouragement help to foster autonomy in the child. During early childhood, the child will start to have learning tasks and skills that instill personal responsibility, which allows the children to make choices that could help them develop a sense of autonomy and confidence. Children at this age like to explore the world around them and they are constantly learning about their environment. Caution must be taken at this age while children may explore things that are dangerous to their health and safety.\nAt this age, children develop their first interests. For example, a child who enjoys music may like to play with the radio. Children who enjoy the outdoors may be interested in animals and plants. Highly restrictive parents are more likely to instill in the child a sense of doubt, and reluctance to try new and challenging opportunities. As the child gains increased muscular coordination and mobility, toddlers become capable of satisfying some of their own needs. They begin to feed themselves, wash and dress themselves, and use the bathroom.\nIf caregivers encourage self-sufficient behavior, toddlers will develop a sense of autonomy\u2014a sense of being able to handle many problems on their own. On the contrary, there is the possibility that the caregiver can demand too much too soon. This will likely lead the child to develop shame and doubt in their ability to handle problems. This shame and doubt could also come as a result of a caregiver ridiculing a child's early performance attempts. There is definitely a delicate balance to be had with autonomy. If the child receives too much autonomy, they have the potential to grow up with little concern for rules or regulations. This could also increase the likelihood of injury. Conversely, if the parents exert too much control over them, the child can grow up to be more rebellious and impulsive. The abilities of the child are limited.\nPurpose: initiative vs. guilt (locomotor-genital, early childhood, 3\u20136 years).\nInitiative adds to autonomy the quality of planning, undertaking, and attacking a task for the sake of just being active and on the move. The child is learning to master the world around them, learning basic skills and principles of physics. Things fall down, not up, round things roll. They learn how to zip and tie, count and speak with ease. At this stage, the child wants to begin and complete their own actions for a purpose. Guilt is a confusing new emotion. They may feel guilty over things that logically should not cause guilt. They may feel guilt when this initiative does not produce desired results.\nThe development of courage and independence are what set preschoolers, ages three to six years of age, apart from other age groups. Young children in this category face the psychological crisis of initiative versus guilt. This includes learning how to face complexities of planning and developing a sense of judgment. During this stage, the child learns to take initiative and prepares for leadership roles, and to achieve goals. Activities sought out by a child in this stage may include risk-taking behaviors, such as crossing a street alone or riding a bike without a helmet; both these examples involve self-limits. The child may also develop negative behaviors as they learn to take initiative. These negative behaviors, such as throwing objects, hitting, or yelling, can be a result of the child feeling frustrated after not being able to achieve a goal as planned.\nPreschoolers are increasingly able to accomplish tasks on their own and can explore new areas. With this growing independence comes many choices about activities to be pursued. Sometimes children take on projects they can readily accomplish, but at other times they undertake projects that are beyond their capabilities or that interfere with other people's plans and activities. If parents and preschool teachers encourage and support children's efforts, while also helping them make realistic and appropriate choices, children develop initiative\u2014independence in planning and undertaking activities. But if instead, adults discourage the pursuit of independent activities or dismiss them as silly and bothersome, children develop guilt about their needs and desires.\nCompetence: industry vs. inferiority (latency, late childhood, 7\u201310 years).\nThe aim of this stage is to bring a productive situation to completion which gradually supersedes the whims and wishes of play. The fundamentals of technology are developed. The failure to master trust, autonomy, and industrious skills may cause the child to doubt their future, leading to shame, guilt, and the experience of defeat and inferiority.\nThe child must deal with demands to learn new skills or risk a sense of inferiority, failure, and incompetence. In doing so, children are able to start contributing to society and making a difference in the world. They become more aware of themselves and how competent, or not, they are.\n\"Children at this age are becoming more aware of themselves as individuals.\" They work hard at \"being responsible, being good and doing it right.\" They are now more reasonable to share and cooperate. Allen and Marotz (2003) also list some perceptual cognitive developmental traits specific for this age group. Children grasp the concepts of space and time in more logical, practical ways. They gain a better understanding of cause and effect, and of calendar time. At this stage, children are eager to learn and accomplish more complex skills: reading, writing, telling time. They also get to form moral values, recognize cultural and individual differences and are able to manage most of their personal needs and grooming with minimal assistance. At this stage, children might express their independence by talking back and being disobedient and rebellious.\nErikson viewed the elementary school years as critical for the development of self-confidence. Ideally, elementary school provides many opportunities to achieve the recognition of teachers, parents and peers by producing things\u2014drawing pictures, solving addition problems, writing sentences, and so on. If children are encouraged to make and do things and are then praised for their accomplishments, they begin to demonstrate industry by being diligent, persevering at tasks until completed, and putting work before pleasure. If children are instead ridiculed or punished for their efforts or if they find they are incapable of meeting their teachers' and parents' expectations, they develop feelings of inferiority about their capabilities.\nChildren also begin to make relationships with others around them. Being social is especially important for this stage. It helps school aged children become either more or less confident about themselves and their abilities. Also, during this age, children also begin to migrate into their own social groups. Depending on the child's \"group\", the child will have more or less self confidence.\nAt this age, children start recognizing their special talents and continue to discover interests as their education improves. They may begin to choose to do more activities to pursue that interest, such as joining a sport if they know they have athletic ability, or joining the band if they are good at music. If not allowed to discover their own talents in their own time, they will develop a sense of lack of motivation, low self-esteem, and lethargy. They may become \"couch potatoes\" if they are not allowed to develop interests.\nFidelity: identity vs. role confusion (adolescence, 11\u201319 years).\nThe adolescent is newly concerned with how they appear to others. Superego identity is the accrued confidence that the outer sameness and continuity prepared in the future are matched by the sameness and continuity of one's meaning for oneself, as evidenced in the promise of a career. The ability to settle on a school or occupational identity is pleasant. In later stages of adolescence, the child develops a sense of sexual identity. Adolescents become curious about the roles they will play in the adult world as they transition from childhood to adulthood. Initially, they are apt to experience some role confusion\u2014mixed ideas and feelings about the specific ways in which they will fit into society\u2014and may experiment with a variety of behaviors and activities (e.g. tinkering with cars, baby-sitting for neighbors, affiliating with certain political or religious groups). Eventually, Erikson proposed, most adolescents achieve a sense of identity regarding who they are and where their lives are headed.\nThe teenager must achieve identity in occupation, gender roles, politics, and, in some cultures, religion. This is not always easy, however. The teenager must seek to find their place in this world and to find out how they can contribute to the world.\nErikson is credited with coining the term \"identity crisis\". He describes identity crisis as a critical part of development in which an adolescent or youth develops a sense of self. Identity crisis involves the integration of the physical self, personality, potential roles and occupations. It is influenced by culture and historical trends. This stage is necessary for the successful development of future stages. Each stage that came before and that follows has its own 'crisis', but even more so now, for this marks the transition from childhood to adulthood. This passage is necessary because \"Throughout infancy and childhood, a person forms many identifications. But the need for identity in youth is not met by these.\" This turning point in human development seems to be the reconciliation between 'the person one has come to be' and 'the person society expects one to become'. This emerging sense of self will be established by 'forging' past experiences with anticipations of the future. In relation to the eight life stages as a whole, the fifth stage corresponds to the crossroads:\nWhat is unique about the stage of Identity, is that it is a special sort of synthesis of earlier stages and a special sort of anticipation of later ones. Youth has a certain unique quality in a person's life; it is a bridge between childhood and adulthood. Youth is a time of radical change\u2014the great body changes accompanying puberty, the ability of the mind to search one's own intentions and the intentions of others, the suddenly sharpened awareness of the roles society has offered for later life.\nAdolescents \"are confronted by the need to re-establish boundaries for themselves and to do this in the face of an often potentially hostile world\". This is often challenging since commitments are being asked for before particular identity roles have formed. At this point, one is in a state of 'identity confusion', but society normally makes allowances for youth to \"find themselves\", and this state is called 'the moratorium':\nThe problem of adolescence is one of role confusion\u2014a reluctance to commit which may haunt a person into his mature years. Given the right conditions\u2014and Erikson believes these are essentially having enough space and time, a psychosocial moratorium, when a person can freely experiment and explore\u2014what may emerge is a firm sense of identity, an emotional and deep awareness of who they are.\nAs in other stages, bio-psycho-social forces are at work. No matter how one has been raised, one's personal ideologies are now chosen for oneself. Often, this leads to conflict with adults over religious and political orientations. Another area where teenagers are deciding for themselves is their career choice, and often parents want to have a decisive say in that role. If society is too insistent, the teenager will acquiesce to external wishes, effectively forcing him or her to \u2018foreclose' on experimentation and, therefore, true self-discovery. Once someone settles on a worldview and vocation, will they be able to integrate this aspect of self-definition into a diverse society? According to Erikson, when an adolescent has balanced both perspectives of \"What have I got?\" and \"What am I going to do with it?\" they have established their identity:\nDependent on this stage is the ego quality of \"fidelity\u2014the ability to sustain loyalties freely pledged in spite of the inevitable contradictions and confusions of value systems\". (Italics in original)\nLeaving past childhood and facing the unknown of adulthood is a component of adolescence. Another characteristic of this stage is moratorium which tends to end as adulthood begins. Given that the next stage (Intimacy) is often characterized by marriage, many are tempted to cap off the fifth stage at 20 years of age. However, these age ranges are actually quite fluid, especially for the achievement of identity, since it may take many years to become grounded, to identify the object of one's fidelity, to feel that one has \"come of age\". In the biographies \"Young Man Luther\" and \"Gandhi's Truth\", Erikson determined that their crises ended at ages 25 and 30, respectively:\nErikson does note that the time of Identity crisis for persons of genius is frequently prolonged. He further notes that in our industrial society, identity formation tends to be long, because it takes us so long to gain the skills needed for adulthood's tasks in our technological world. So\u2026 there is not exact time span in which to find oneself. It does not happen automatically at eighteen or at twenty-one. A \"very\" approximate rule of thumb for our society would put the end somewhere in one's twenties.\nLove: intimacy vs. isolation (early adulthood, 20\u201345 years).\nThe Intimacy versus Isolation conflict occurs following adolescence. At the start of this stage, identity versus role confusion is coming to an end, although it still lingers at the foundation of the stage. The stage doesn't always involve a romantic relationship but includes the strong bonds with others being formed. Young adults are still eager to blend their identities with those of their friends because they want to fit in. Erikson believes that people are sometimes isolated due to intimacy. People are afraid of rejections such as being turned down or their partners breaking up with them. Human beings are familiar with pain, and to some people, rejection is so painful that their egos cannot bear it. Erikson also argues that distantiation occurs with intimacy. Distantiation is the desire to isolate or destroy things that may be dangerous to one's own ideals or life. This can occur if a person has their intimate relationship invaded by outsiders.\nOnce people have established their identities, they are ready to make long-term commitments to others. They become capable of forming intimate, reciprocal relationships (e.g. through close friendships or marriage) and willingly make the sacrifices and compromises that such relationships require. Those in more advanced stages of identity development are often associated with greater success pertaining to intimacy formation. If people cannot form these intimate relationships\u2014perhaps because of their own needs\u2014then a sense of isolation may result, thereby arousing feelings of darkness and angst.\nErikson\u2019s documentation of his theory spends time considering intimacy between 2 people. The main conflict is whether an individual is willing to give themselves up to someone else. As suggested in the previous paragraphs, it seems that it could be very valuable for someone at this stage to let go of some of their fears in order to gain a solid relationship with another person. Erickson discusses the differences of his theory as compared to Freud\u2019s theory of psychosexual development. Freud tended to focus more on sexual gratification without deep personal relationships being involved. Erikson\u2019s proposal suggests that there is more to intimacy than sexual gratification. There is value in the deep bonds that can be shared between two people socially. Erikson, in his writing, does still discuss and see the value of sexual relations within a socially intimate relationship.\nCare: generativity vs. stagnation (middle adulthood, 45\u201364 years).\nGenerativity is the concern of guiding the next generation. Socially-valued work and disciplines are expressions of generativity.\nThe adult stage of generativity has broad application to family, relationships, work, and society. \"Generativity, then is primarily the concern in establishing and guiding the next generation... the concept is meant to include... productivity and creativity.\"\nDuring middle age, the primary developmental task is one of contributing to society and helping to guide future generations. When a person makes a contribution during this period, perhaps by raising a family or working toward the betterment of society, a sense of generativity\u2014a sense of productivity and accomplishment\u2014results. In contrast, a person who is self-centered and unable or unwilling to help society move forward develops a feeling of stagnation\u2014a dissatisfaction with the relative lack of productivity. People in this stage consider what they are leaving behind for their posterity and community, as they are coming closer to the end of their life. The virtue that is related with this stage is care. In contrary, the maladaptive virtue is rejectivity.\nAs shared in the quote above, productivity and creativity are announced as being related to generativity. Despite this relation, Erikson hopes that those two words don\u2019t take away from the main message. That message being that generativity is focusing on helping other people. Our society can sometimes hyperfixate on the idea that children need parents. Erikson shares and reinforces another view. Adults need children. The effort that is given to the children can help the adult become more mature. On top of that, as an adult is generative to youth, it can influence the children to return the favor when they grow up.\nCentral tasks of middle adulthood\n*Express love through more than sexual contacts.\n* Maintain healthy life patterns.\n* Develop a sense of unity with mate.\n* Help growing and grown children to be responsible adults.\n* Relinquish central role in lives of grown children.\n* Accept children's mates and friends.\n* Create a comfortable home.\n* Be proud of accomplishments of self and mate/spouse.\n* Reverse roles with aging parents.\n* Achieve mature, civic and social responsibility.\n* Adjust to physical changes of middle age.\n* Use leisure time creatively.\nWisdom: ego integrity vs. despair (late adulthood, 65 years and above).\nAs people grow older and become senior citizens, they tend to slow down their productivity and explore life as a retired person. Factors such as leisure activities and family involvement play a significant role in the life of a retiree and their adjustment to living without having to perform specific duties each day pertaining to their career. Even during this stage of adulthood, however, they are still developing. The association between aging and retirement can bring about a reappearance of bipolar tensions of earlier stages in Erikson's model, meaning that aspects of previous life stages can reactivate because of the onset of aging and retirement. Development at this stage also includes periods of reevaluation regarding life satisfaction, sustainment of active involvement, and developing a sense of health maintenance. Developmental conflicts may arise in this stage, but psychological growth in earlier stages can help significantly in resolving these conflicts.\nIt is during this time that they contemplate their accomplishments and evaluate the person that they have become. They are able to develop integrity if they see themselves as leading a successful life. Those that have developed integrity perceive that their lives have meaning. They tend to feel generally satisfied and accept themselves and others. As they near the end of their lives, they are more likely to be at peace about death. If they see their life as unproductive or feel that they did not accomplish their life goals, they become dissatisfied with life and develop despair. This can often lead to feelings of depression and hopelessness. They may also feel that life is unfair and be fearful of dying.\nDuring this time there may be a renewal in interest in many things. This is believed to occur because the individuals in this time of life strive to be autonomous. As their bodies and minds start to deteriorate, they want to find a sense of balance. They will cling to their autonomy so that they will not need to be reliant on others for everything. Erikson explains that it is also important for adults in this stage to maintain relationships with others of different ages in order to develop integrity.\nThe final developmental task is retrospection: people look back on their lives and accomplishments. Practices such as narrative therapy can help individuals reinterpret their minds pertaining to their past and allow them to focus on the brighter aspects of their lives. They develop feelings of contentment and integrity if they believe that they have led a happy and productive life. If they look back on a life of disappointments and unachieved goals, they may instead develop a sense of despair.\nThis stage can occur out of the sequence when an individual feels they are near the end of their life (such as when receiving a terminal disease diagnosis).\nWhen looking back on life, a person should hope to find both meaning and order. There are ways to alter or buoy one\u2019s perspective during this stage. Altering or buoying one\u2019s view could bring them closer to ego integrity. With that being said, it is better that a person has already carried out a life with meaning and order prior to beginning this stage.\nErikson ties this stage of development back into the first stage, trust vs mistrust. As shared by Erikson, the Webster dictionary once claimed that trust is \u201cthe assured reliance on another\u2019s integrity\u201d. One\u2019s integrity could influence someone else\u2019s trust. If a person at the end of their life fears death, then it could influence children to possibly fear life. If an adult is able to overcome any fears of death, then it can reinforce children to not be afraid of the life ahead of them.\nNinth stage.\nJoan Erikson, who married and collaborated with Erik Erikson, added a ninth stage in \"The Life Cycle Completed: Extended Version\". Living in the ninth stage, she wrote, \"old age in one's eighties and nineties brings with it new demands, reevaluations, and daily difficulties\". Addressing these new challenges requires \"designating a new ninth stage\". Erikson was ninety-three years old when she wrote about the ninth stage.\nJoan Erikson showed that all the eight stages \"are relevant and recurring in the ninth stage\". In the ninth stage, the psychosocial crises of the eight stages are faced again, but with the quotient order reversed. For example, in the first stage (infancy), the psychosocial crisis was \"Trust vs. Mistrust\" with Trust being the \"syntonic quotient\" and Mistrust being the \"dystonic\". Joan Erikson applies the earlier psychosocial crises to the ninth stage as follows:\n\"Basic Mistrust vs. Trust: Hope\"\nIn the ninth stage, \"elders are forced to mistrust their own capabilities\" because one's \"body inevitably weakens\". Yet, Joan Erikson asserts that \"while there is light, there is hope\" for a \"bright light and revelation\".\n\"Shame and Doubt vs. Autonomy: Will\"\nNinth stage elders face the \"shame of lost control\" and doubt \"their autonomy over their own bodies\". So it is that \"shame and doubt challenge cherished autonomy\".\n\"Inferiority vs. Industry: Competence\"\nIndustry as a \"driving force\" that elders once had is gone in the ninth stage. Being incompetent \"because of aging is belittling\" and makes elders \"like unhappy small children of great age\".\n\"Identity confusion vs. Identity: Fidelity\"\nElders experience confusion about their \"existential identity\" in the ninth stage and \"a real uncertainty about status and role\".\n\"Isolation vs. Intimacy: Love\"\nIn the ninth stage, the \"years of intimacy and love\" are often replaced by \"isolation and deprivation\". Relationships become \"overshadowed by new incapacities and dependencies\".\n\"Stagnation vs. Generativity: Care\"\nThe generativity in the seventh stage of \"work and family relationships\", if it goes satisfactorily, is \"a wonderful time to be alive\". In one's eighties and nineties, there is less energy for generativity or caretaking. Thus, \"a sense of stagnation may well take over\".\n\"Despair and Disgust vs. Integrity: Wisdom\"\nIntegrity imposes \"a serious demand on the senses of elders\". Wisdom requires capacities that ninth stage elders \"do not usually have\". The eighth stage includes retrospection that can evoke a \"degree of disgust and despair\". In the ninth stage, introspection is replaced by the attention demanded to one's \"loss of capacities and disintegration\".\nLiving in the ninth stage, Joan Erikson expressed confidence that the psychosocial crisis of the ninth stage can be met as in the first stage with the \"basic trust\" with which \"we are blessed\".\nDevelopment of post-Freudian theory.\nErikson was a student of Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmund Freud, whose psychoanalytic theory and psychosexual stages contributed to the basic outline of the eight stages, at least those concerned with childhood. Namely, the first four of Erikson's life stages correspond to Freud's oral, anal, phallic, and latency phases, respectively. Also, the fifth stage of adolescence is said to parallel the genital stage in psychosexual development:\nAlthough the first three phases are linked to those of the Freudian theory, it can be seen that they are conceived along very different lines. Emphasis is not so much on sexual modes and their consequences, but on the ego qualities which emerge from each of the stages. There is an attempt also to link the sequence of individual development to the broader context of society.\nErikson saw a dynamic at work throughout life, one that did not stop at adolescence. He also viewed the life stages as a cycle: the end of one generation was the beginning of the next. Seen in its social context, the life stages were linear for an individual but circular for societal development:\nIn Freud's view, development is largely complete by adolescence. In contrast, one of Freud's students, Erik Erikson (1902\u20131994) believed that development continues throughout life. Erikson took the foundation laid by Freud and extended it through adulthood and into late life.\nCriticism.\nOne major criticism of Erikson's theory of psychosocial development is that it primarily describes the development of European or American males. Erikson's theory may be questioned as to whether his stages must be regarded as sequential, and only occurring within the age ranges he suggests. There is debate as to whether people only search for identity during the adolescent years or if one stage needs to happen before other stages can be completed. However, Erikson states that each of these processes occur throughout the lifetime in one form or another, and he emphasizes these \"phases\" only because it is at these times that the conflicts become most prominent.\nMost empirical research into Erikson has related to his views on adolescence and attempts to establish identity. His theoretical approach was studied and supported, particularly regarding adolescence, by James E. Marcia. Marcia's work has distinguished different forms of identity, and there is some empirical evidence that those people who form the most coherent self-concept in adolescence are those who are most able to make intimate attachments in early adulthood. This supports the part of Eriksonian theory, that suggests that those best equipped to resolve the crisis of early adulthood are those who have most successfully resolved the crisis of adolescence.\nErikson attributed the development of the stages to the presence of specific tensions which may be present at any moment of a person's life. This causes another criticism of Erikson's theory of psychosocial development: that Erikson does not go into detail about what causes these stages of development or how they are resolved. There is little information stated about the experiences that result in how a person develops at each stage. Just as there are vague details about the causes of each theory that does not outline the necessary steps to resolve conflict in order to enter the next stage.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "31330012": "Young Man Luther\n1958 book by Erik H. Erikson\nYoung Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History is a 1958 book by the psychologist Erik Erikson. It was one of the first psychobiographies of a famous historical figure. Erikson found in Martin Luther a good model of his discovery of \"the identity crisis\". Erikson was sure he could explain Luther's spontaneous eruption, during a monastery choir practice, \"I am not!\"\nAccording to Erikson, Luther suffered through an environment that fomented crisis, and succeeded in a healthy resolution, thereby becoming more fulfilled than if the crisis had not been experienced. In the end Luther chose the obedient, provincial leadership path his father had wished for him, rather than the national fame he could have easily pursued after his celebrity and wealth, but only after Luther had disobeyed and suffered many years in an identity crisis.\nSummary.\nErikson believed that rebellion is most likely to manifest in the youth stage of life. He suggested that before the rebellion can occur intensely, young people must first have believed in the thing they are rebelling against. Luther was thirty-four, and he had believed desperately in the authority of the very church he was rebelling against, for failing to follow the Bible. The most vocal critic will have been the most devoted and attached.\nErikson's interpretation of Martin Luther's life is that \"great figures of history often spend years in a passive state. From a young age, they feel they will create a big stamp on the world, but unconsciously they wait for their particular truth to form itself in their minds, until they can make the most impact at the right time.\nErikson makes the point that Martin's standing up to a Holy Roman Church can only be understood in the context of his initial disobedience to his father. Luther was \"not\", Erikson suggests, rebellious or disobedient by nature, but having done it once, he was the reluctant \"expert\" who was not. He also observes that although Martin Luther made a theological point, the church was not particularly out of line with the times of the era, but it was simply Martin Luther's own personal, internal issues with himself, that manifested against the church, and by projection, a crisis of identity.\nErikson identifies a \"second birth\" with the identity crisis when it is successfully maneuvered. William James gave Erikson the idea that while \"once born\" people conform, \"en masse\", painlessly to the consensus reality of the age, \"twice born\" people get \"their\" direction by enduring an identity crisis of such tortuous magnitude that their souls are transformed and permanently fixed into a direction as such as a reformer role for that time for that society. In Martin's case it was a \"good son\" vs. \"good monk\" crisis that gave him direction to play the good reformer of the bad church for having more concern for filling their coffers at the expense of the very souls for whom it was their true calling and their spiritual leadership role to properly attend to by the word of the Bible, and not by the whim of the institution's temporal needs.\nReception.\nThe critic Frederick Crews called \"Young Man Luther\" \"one of the most challenging books that attempt a psychoanalytic understanding of historical problems.\" The historian Peter Gay called the book \"pioneering though severely flawed\", noting that it received a \"devastating review\" from the church historian Roland Bainton.\nThe author Richard Webster compared \"Young Man Luther\" to the classicist Norman O. Brown's \"Life Against Death\" (1959), observing that both works point to similarities between Luther's view of the human condition and psychoanalysis.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "30671839": "List of Luther characters\nThis is a list of fictional characters in the British psychological crime drama television series \"Luther\", its international remakes and .\nMain characters.\nJohn Luther.\nDetective Chief Inspector John Luther, portrayed by Idris Elba, works for the Metropolitan Police Service, in the Serious Crime Unit. He is a legendary figure on the force both for his dedication and his ingenious approaches to solving cases. However, the horrors of Luther's job have given rise to emotional demons which often put him at odds with colleagues and loved ones. Because of this, he constantly breaches protocol and uses unorthodox (and sometimes illegal) methods, such as breaking into properties without warrants to find clues or violently threatening suspects or witnesses. He is also given to belligerent fits of anger. Nevertheless, he is known to hate firearms, and he refuses to kill or directly cause the death of suspects.\nLuther studied English at University, where he met future spouse Zoe.\nLuther returns from leave to investigate the double murder of Alice Morgan's parents, and quickly realises that she committed the crime. However, Morgan's methodical destruction of evidence keeps Luther from conclusively proving her guilt. A peculiar relationship develops between Luther and Morgan, and Luther approaches her for help on occasion. Morgan insinuates herself into Luther's relationship with Zoe with the intention of helping their marriage, yet her means only further complicate Luther's personal problems.\nWhen Zoe is shot and killed by Luther's best friend, the corrupt Detective Chief Inspector Ian Reed, Luther \u2013 known for his violent temper \u2013 is blamed for the murder because Reed sets up the crime scene to implicate him. Luther subsequently becomes the focus of a citywide manhunt. Events transpire during which Alice kills Reed during a confrontation between him, on one side, and her, Luther, and Zoe's boyfriend Mark on the other, at a deserted Waterloo station. After providing proof that Reed murdered Zoe, Luther is allowed to return to the service, where he has now been assigned to the reorganised Serious and Serial Crime Unit, headed by DSU Schenck.\nAt the start of the second series, Luther has moved into an unmaintained flat at the Aylesbury Estate and shows suicidal tendencies. Luther also desires to leave the Met. He is approached by Caroline Jones, the wife of one of his former suspects, who asks him to locate her delinquent daughter, Jenny. When Luther tracks down Jenny and rescues her from a pornography shoot, the production's backers, Toby Kent and his grandmother, \"Baba\", violently pressure the inspector to hand her back. Rather than doing so, Luther strikes an illegal deal to provide them with information, in exchange for setting Jenny free. When Jenny kills Toby in self-defence, Luther manages to cover up her crime and"}, "descending_order": ["30671839", "31330012", "1058787"], "permutation_1": ["31330012", "30671839", "1058787"], "permutation_2": ["31330012", "1058787", "30671839"], "permutation_3": ["30671839", "31330012", "1058787"]}
{"id": "2hop__108160_159045", "docs_added": {"34093814": "Rebellious Slave\nSculpture by Michelangelo\nThe Rebellious Slave is a 2.15m high marble statue by Michelangelo, dated to 1513. It is now held in the Louvre in Paris.\nHistory.\nThe two \"slaves\" of the Louvre date to the second version of the tomb of Pope Julius II which was commissioned by the Pope's heirs, the Della Rovere in May 1513. Although the initial plans for a gigantic mausoleum were set aside, the work was still monumental, with a corridor richly decorated with sculpture and Michelangelo was immediately put in charge of the work. Among the first pieces completed were the two \"Prigioni\" (renamed the \"slaves\" only in the nineteenth century), destined for the lower part of the funerary monument, next to the pilasters which framed the niches containing the Victories. Their poses were determined by the needs of this architectural setting, so from the front they have great effect, but the side views received less care than usual.\nThe date of the two statues is confirmed by a letter of Michelangelo to Marcello dei Covi, in which he speaks of a viewing by Luca Signorelli in his Roman house, while he worked on \"a figure of marble, standing four cubits high, which has its hands behind its back\".\nAll the \"Prigioni\" produced in the studio of the artist were eliminated from the monument in its final version, completed in 1542. In 1546 Michelangelo gave the two works in the Louvre to Roberto Strozzi, for his generous hospitality in his Roman house during Michelangelo's periods of sickness in July 1544 and June 1546. When Strozzi was exiled to Lyon in April 1550 for his opposition to Cosimo I de' Medici, he had the two statues sent ahead. In April 1578 they were put on view in two niches in the courtyard of the castle of the constable of Montmorency at \u00c9couen, near Paris.\nIn 1632 they were sold by Henri II de Montmorency to Cardinal Richelieu, who had them sent to his Ch\u00e2teau in Poitou, where they were seen by Gianlorenzo Bernini who made an illustration of them, on his travels.\nIn 1749, the Duke of Richelieu had them taken to Paris and placed in the Pavillon de Hanovre. They were hidden in 1793, but when the widow of the last Marshal of Richelieu attempted to put them on sale, they became property of the government and joined the collection which is now in the Louvre.\nDescription and style.\nThe \"Rebellious Slave\" is portrayed trying to free himself from the fetters which hold his hands behind his back, contorting his torso and twisting his head. The impression given, which would have contributed to the spatial appearance of the monument, was that he was moving towards the viewer, with his raised shoulder and knee.\nThe iconographic significance of the two figures is probably linked to the motif of the Captive in Roman art; in fact Giorgio Vasari identified them as personifications of the provinces controlled by Julius II. For Ascanio Condivi, however, they symbolised the Arts taken prisoner after the death of pontif. The \"Rebellious Slave\" in particular might, speculatively, represent sculpture or architecture. Other meanings of a symbolic and philosophical nature have been suggested as well as some linked to Michelangelo's personal life and his \"torments\".\nFrom a stylistic point of view, they are based on ancient models, particularly Hellenistic sculpture, like the statue group of \"Laoco\u00f6n and His Sons\", discovered in 1506 and at that time in Michelangelo's possession, but also the sculptural friezes on the triumphal arches of Rome and depictions of Saint Sebastian.", "21019": "Michelangelo\nItalian artist and architect (1475\u20131564)\nMichelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6March 1475\u00a0\u2013 18February 1564), known mononymously as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspired by models from classical antiquity and had a lasting influence on Western art. Michelangelo's creative abilities and mastery in a range of artistic arenas define him as an archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci. Given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences, Michelangelo is one of the best-documented artists of the 16th century. He was lauded by contemporary biographers as the most accomplished artist of his era.\nMichelangelo achieved fame early. Two of his best-known works, the \"Piet\u00e0\" and \"David\", were sculpted before the age of 30. Although he did not consider himself a painter, Michelangelo created two of the most influential frescoes in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and \"The Last Judgment\" on its altar wall. His design of the Laurentian Library pioneered Mannerist architecture. At the age of 71, he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peter's Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan so that the Western end was finished to his design, as was the dome, with some modification, after his death.\nMichelangelo was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive. Three biographies were published during his lifetime. One of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that Michelangelo's work transcended that of any artist living or dead, and was \"supreme in not one art alone but in all three\".\nIn his lifetime, Michelangelo was often called (\"the divine one\"). His contemporaries admired his \"terribilit\u00e0\"\u2014his ability to instill a sense of awe in viewers of his art. Attempts by subsequent artists to imitate the expressive physicality of Michelangelo's style contributed to the rise of Mannerism, a short-lived movement in Western art between the High Renaissance and the Baroque.\nLife.\nEarly life, 1475\u20131488.\nMichelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was born on 6 March 1475 in Caprese, known today as Caprese Michelangelo, a small town situated in Valtiberina, near Arezzo, Tuscany. For several generations, his family had been small-scale bankers in Florence; but the bank failed, and his father Ludovico briefly took a government post in Caprese. At the time of Michelangelo's birth, his father was the town's judicial administrator and \"podest\u00e0\" (local administrator) of Chiusi della Verna. Michelangelo's mother was Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena. The Buonarrotis claimed to descend from the Countess Matilde di Canossa\u2014a claim that remains unproven, but which Michelangelo believed.\nSeveral months after Michelangelo's birth, the family returned to Florence, where he was raised. During his mother's later prolonged illness, and after her death in 1481 (when he was six years old), Michelangelo lived with a nanny and her husband, a stonecutter, in the town of Settignano, where his father owned a marble quarry and a small farm. There the young boy gained his love for marble. As his biographer Giorgio Vasari quotes him:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nApprenticeships, 1488\u20131492.\nAs a young boy, Michelangelo was sent to the city of Florence to study grammar under the Humanist Francesco da Urbino. Michelangelo showed no interest in his schooling, preferring to copy paintings from churches and seek the company of other painters. Florence was at that time Italy's greatest centre of the arts and learning. Art was sponsored by the (the town council), the merchant guilds, and wealthy patrons such as the Medici and their banking associates. The Renaissance, a renewal of Classical scholarship and the arts, had its first flowering in Florence. In the early 15th century, the architect Filippo Brunelleschi, having studied the remains of Classical buildings in Rome, had created two churches, San Lorenzo's and Santo Spirito, which embodied the Classical precepts. The sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti had laboured for 50 years to create the north and east bronze doors of the Baptistry, which Michelangelo was to describe as \"The Gates of Paradise\". The exterior niches of the Church of Orsanmichele contained a gallery of works by the most acclaimed sculptors of Florence: Donatello, Ghiberti, Andrea del Verrocchio, and Nanni di Banco. The interiors of the older churches were covered with frescos (mostly in Late Medieval, but also in the Early Renaissance style), begun by Giotto and continued by Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel, both of whose works Michelangelo studied and copied in drawings.\nDuring Michelangelo's childhood, a team of painters had been called from Florence to the Vatican to decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel. Among them was Domenico Ghirlandaio, a master in fresco painting, perspective, figure drawing and portraiture who had the largest workshop in Florence. In 1488, at the age of 13, Michelangelo was apprenticed to Ghirlandaio. The next year, his father persuaded Ghirlandaio to pay Michelangelo as an artist, which was rare for someone that young. When in 1489, Lorenzo de' Medici, \"de facto\" ruler of Florence, asked Ghirlandaio for his two best pupils, Ghirlandaio sent Michelangelo and Francesco Granacci.\nFrom 1490 to 1492, Michelangelo attended the Platonic Academy, a Humanist academy founded by the Medicis. There, his work and outlook were influenced by many of the most prominent philosophers and writers of the day, including Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Poliziano. At this time, Michelangelo sculpted the reliefs \"Madonna of the Stairs\" and \"Battle of the Centaurs\", the latter based on a theme suggested by Poliziano and commissioned by Lorenzo de' Medici. Michelangelo worked for a time with the sculptor Bertoldo di Giovanni. When he was 17, another pupil, Pietro Torrigiano, struck him on the nose, causing the disfigurement that is conspicuous in the portraits of Michelangelo.\nBologna, Florence, and Rome, 1492\u20131499.\nLorenzo de' Medici's death on 8 April 1492 changed Michelangelo's circumstances. He left the security of the Medici court and returned to his father's house. In the following months he carved a polychrome wooden \"Crucifix\" (1493), as a gift to the prior of the Florentine church of Santo Spirito, which had allowed him to do some anatomical studies of the corpses from the church's hospital. This was the first of several instances during his career that Michelangelo studied anatomy by dissecting cadavers.\nBetween 1493 and 1494, Michelangelo bought a block of marble, and carved a larger-than-life statue of Hercules. On 20 January 1494, after heavy snowfalls, Lorenzo's heir, Piero de Medici, commissioned a statue made of snow, and Michelangelo again entered the court of the Medici. In the same year, the Medici were expelled from Florence as the result of the rise of Savonarola. Michelangelo left the city before the end of the political upheaval, moving to Venice and then to Bologna. In Bologna, he was commissioned to carve several of the last small figures for the completion of the Shrine of St. Dominic, in the church dedicated to that saint. At this time Michelangelo studied the robust reliefs carved by Jacopo della Quercia around the main portal of the Basilica of St Petronius, including the panel of \"The Creation of Eve\", the composition of which was to reappear on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Towards the end of 1495, the political situation in Florence was calmer; the city, previously under threat from the French, was no longer in danger as Charles VIII had suffered defeats. Michelangelo returned to Florence but received no commissions from the new city government under Savonarola. He returned to the employment of the Medici. During the half-year he spent in Florence, he worked on two small statues, a child \"St. John the Baptist\" and a sleeping \"Cupid\". According to Condivi, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, for whom Michelangelo had sculpted \"St. John the Baptist\", asked that Michelangelo \"fix it so that it looked as if it had been buried\" so he could \"send it to Rome\u00a0... pass [it off as] an ancient work and\u00a0... sell it much better.\" Both Lorenzo and Michelangelo were unwittingly cheated out of the real value of the piece by a middleman. Cardinal Raffaele Riario, to whom Lorenzo had sold it, discovered that it was a fraud, but was so impressed by the quality of the sculpture that he invited the artist to Rome. This apparent success in selling his sculpture abroad as well as the conservative Florentine situation may have encouraged Michelangelo to accept the prelate's invitation.\nMichelangelo arrived in Rome on 25 June 1496 at the age of 21. On 4 July of the same year, he began work on a commission for Cardinal Riario, an over-life-size statue of the Roman wine god \"Bacchus\". Upon completion, the work was rejected by the cardinal, and subsequently entered the collection of the banker Jacopo Galli, for his garden. In November 1497, the French ambassador to the Holy See, Cardinal Jean de Bilh\u00e8res-Lagraulas, commissioned him to carve a \"Piet\u00e0\", a sculpture showing the Virgin Mary grieving over the body of Jesus. The subject, which is not part of the Biblical narrative of the Crucifixion, was common in religious sculpture of medieval northern Europe and would have been very familiar to the Cardinal. The contract was agreed upon in August of the following year. Michelangelo was 24 at the time of its completion. It was soon to be regarded as one of the world's great masterpieces of sculpture, \"a revelation of all the potentialities and force of the art of sculpture\". Contemporary opinion was summarised by Vasari: \"It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh.\" Michelangelo's only work known to have been signed, his name on Mary's sash, it is now located in St Peter's Basilica.\nFlorence, 1499\u20131505.\nMichelangelo returned to Florence in 1499. The Republic was changing after the fall of its leader, anti-Renaissance priest Girolamo Savonarola, who was executed in 1498, and the rise of the \"gonfaloniere\" Piero Soderini. Michelangelo was asked by the consuls of the Guild of Wool to complete an unfinished project begun 40 years earlier by Agostino di Duccio: a colossal statue of Carrara marble portraying David as a symbol of Florentine freedom to be placed on the gable of Florence Cathedral. Michelangelo responded by completing his most famous work, the statue of \"David\", in 1504. The masterwork definitively established his prominence as a sculptor of extraordinary technical skill and strength of symbolic imagination. A team of consultants, including Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Filippino Lippi, Pietro Perugino, Lorenzo di Credi, Antonio and Giuliano da Sangallo, Andrea della Robbia, Cosimo Rosselli, Davide Ghirlandaio, Piero di Cosimo, Andrea Sansovino and Michelangelo's dear friend Granacci, was called together to decide upon its placement, ultimately the Piazza della Signoria, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. It now stands in the Academia while a replica occupies its place in the square. In the same period of placing the \"David\", Michelangelo may have been involved in creating the sculptural profile on Palazzo Vecchio's fa\u00e7ade known as the Importuno di Michelangelo. The hypothesis of Michelangelo's possible involvement in the creation of the profile is based on the strong resemblance of the latter to a profile drawn by the artist, datable to the beginning of the 16th century, now preserved in the Louvre.\nWith the completion of the \"David\" came another commission. In early 1504 Leonardo da Vinci had been commissioned to paint \"The Battle of Anghiari\" in the council chamber of the Palazzo Vecchio, depicting the battle between Florence and Milan in 1440. Michelangelo was then commissioned to paint the \"Battle of Cascina\". The two paintings are very different: Leonardo depicts soldiers fighting on horseback, while Michelangelo has soldiers being ambushed as they bathe in the river. Neither work was completed and both were lost forever when the chamber was refurbished. Both works were much admired, and copies remain of them, Leonardo's work having been copied by Rubens and Michelangelo's by Bastiano da Sangallo.\nAlso during this period, Michelangelo was commissioned by Angelo Doni to paint a \"Holy Family\" as a present for his wife, Maddalena Strozzi. It is known as the \"Doni Tondo\" and hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in its original magnificent frame, which Michelangelo may have designed. He also may have painted the Madonna and Child with John the Baptist, known as the \"Manchester Madonna\" and now in the National Gallery, London.\nTomb of Julius II, 1505\u20131545.\nIn 1505 Michelangelo was invited back to Rome by the newly elected Pope Julius II and commissioned to build the Pope's tomb, which was to include forty statues and be finished in five years. Under the patronage of the pope, Michelangelo experienced constant interruptions to his work on the tomb in order to accomplish numerous other tasks.\nThe commission for the tomb forced the artist to leave Florence with his planned \"Battle of Cascina\" painting unfinished. By this time, Michelangelo was established as an artist; both he and Julius II had hot tempers and soon argued. On 17 April 1506, Michelangelo left Rome in secret for Florence, remaining there until the Florentine government pressed him to return to the pope.\nAlthough Michelangelo worked on the tomb for 40 years, it was never finished to his satisfaction. It is located in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome and is most famous for the central figure of Moses, completed in 1516. Of the other statues intended for the tomb, two, known as the \"Rebellious Slave\" and the \"Dying Slave\", are now in the Louvre.\nSistine Chapel ceiling, 1508 \u20131512.\nDuring the same period, Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which took approximately four years to complete (1508\u20131512). According to Condivi's account, Bramante, who was working on the building of St. Peter's Basilica, resented Michelangelo's commission for the pope's tomb and convinced the pope to commission him in a medium with which he was unfamiliar, in order that he might fail at the task. Michelangelo was originally commissioned to paint the Twelve Apostles on the triangular pendentives that supported the ceiling, and to cover the central part of the ceiling with ornament. Michelangelo persuaded Pope Julius II to give him a free hand and proposed a different and more complex scheme, representing the Creation, the Fall of Man, the Promise of Salvation through the prophets, and the genealogy of Christ. The work is part of a larger scheme of decoration within the chapel that represents much of the doctrine of the Catholic Church.\nThe composition stretches over 500 square metres of ceiling and contains over 300 figures. At its centre are nine episodes from the Book of Genesis, divided into three groups: God's creation of the earth; God's creation of humankind and their fall from God's grace; and lastly, the state of humanity as represented by Noah and his family. On the pendentives supporting the ceiling are painted twelve men and women who prophesied the coming of Jesus, seven prophets of Israel, and five Sibyls, prophetic women of the Classical world. Among the most famous paintings on the ceiling are The Creation of Adam, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the Deluge, the Prophet Jeremiah, and the Cumaean Sibyl.\nFlorence under Medici popes, 1513 \u2013 early 1534.\nIn 1513, Pope Julius II died and was succeeded by Pope Leo X, the second son of Lorenzo de' Medici. From 1513 to 1516, Pope Leo was on good terms with Pope Julius's surviving relatives, so encouraged Michelangelo to continue work on Julius's tomb, but the families became enemies again in 1516 when Pope Leo tried to seize the Duchy of Urbino from Julius's nephew Francesco Maria I della Rovere. Pope Leo then had Michelangelo stop working on the tomb, and commissioned him to reconstruct the fa\u00e7ade of the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence and to adorn it with sculptures. He spent three years creating drawings and models for the fa\u00e7ade, as well as attempting to open a new marble quarry at Pietrasanta specifically for the project. In 1520, the work was abruptly cancelled by his financially strapped patrons before any real progress had been made. The basilica lacks a fa\u00e7ade to this day.\nIn 1520, the Medici came back to Michelangelo with another grand proposal, this time for a family funerary chapel in the Basilica of San Lorenzo. For posterity, this project, occupying the artist for much of the 1520s and 1530s, was more fully realised. Michelangelo used his own discretion to create the composition of the Medici Chapel, which houses the large tombs of two of the younger members of the Medici family, Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, and Lorenzo, his nephew. It also serves to commemorate their more famous predecessors, Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano, who are buried nearby. The tombs display statues of the two Medici and allegorical figures representing \"Night\" and \"Day\", and \"Dusk\" and \"Dawn\". The chapel also contains Michelangelo's \"Medici Madonna\". In 1976, a concealed corridor was discovered with drawings on the walls that related to the chapel itself.\nPope Leo X died in 1521 and was succeeded briefly by the austere Adrian VI, and then by his cousin Giulio Medici as Pope Clement VII. In 1524, Michelangelo received an architectural commission from the Medici pope for the Laurentian Library at San Lorenzo's Church. He designed both the interior of the library itself and its vestibule, a building utilising architectural forms with such dynamic effect that it is seen as the forerunner of Baroque architecture. It was left to assistants to interpret his plans and carry out construction. The library was not opened until 1571, and the vestibule remained incomplete until 1904.\nIn 1527, Florentine citizens, encouraged by the sack of Rome, threw out the Medici and restored the republic. A siege of the city ensued, and Michelangelo went to the aid of his beloved Florence by working on the city's fortifications from 1528 to 1529. The city fell in 1530, and the Medici were restored to power, with the young Alessandro Medici as the first Duke of Florence. Pope Clement, a Medici, sentenced Michelangelo to death. It is thought that Michelangelo hid for two months in a small chamber under the Medici chapels in the Basilica of San Lorenzo with light from just a tiny window, making many charcoal and chalk drawings which remained hidden until the room was rediscovered in 1975, and opened to small numbers of visitors in 2023. Michelangelo was eventually pardoned by the Medicis and the death sentence lifted, so that he could complete work on the Sistine Chapel and the Medici family tomb. He left Florence for Rome in 1534. Despite Michelangelo's support of the republic and resistance to the Medici rule, Pope Clement reinstated an allowance that he had previously granted the artist and made a new contract with him over the tomb of Pope Julius.\nRome, 1534\u20131546.\nIn Rome, Michelangelo lived near the church of Santa Maria di Loreto. It was at this time that he met the poet Vittoria Colonna, marchioness of Pescara, who was to become one of his closest friends until her death in 1547.\nShortly before his death in 1534, Pope Clement VII commissioned Michelangelo to paint a fresco of \"The Last Judgment\" on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. His successor, Pope Paul III, was instrumental in seeing that Michelangelo began and completed the project, which he laboured on from 1534 to October 1541. The fresco depicts the Second Coming of Christ and his Judgement of the souls. Michelangelo ignored the usual artistic conventions in portraying Jesus, showing him as a massive, muscular figure, youthful, beardless and naked. He is surrounded by saints, among whom Saint Bartholomew holds a drooping flayed skin, bearing the likeness of Michelangelo. The dead rise from their graves, to be consigned either to Heaven or to Hell.\nOnce completed, the depiction of Christ and the Virgin Mary naked was considered sacrilegious, and Cardinal Carafa and Monsignor Sernini (Mantua's ambassador) campaigned to have the fresco removed or censored, but the Pope resisted. At the Council of Trent, shortly before Michelangelo's death in 1564, it was decided to obscure the genitals and Daniele da Volterra, an apprentice of Michelangelo, was commissioned to make the alterations. An uncensored copy of the original, by Marcello Venusti, is in the Capodimonte Museum of Naples.\nMichelangelo worked on a number of architectural projects at this time. They included a design for the Capitoline Hill with its trapezoid piazza displaying the ancient bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius. He designed the upper floor of the Palazzo Farnese and the interior of the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, in which he transformed the vaulted interior of an Ancient Roman bathhouse. Other architectural works include San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, the Sforza Chapel (Capella Sforza) in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore and the Porta Pia.\nSt Peter's Basilica, 1546\u20131564.\nWhile still working on the \"Last Judgment\", Michelangelo received yet another commission for the Vatican. This was for the painting of two large frescos in the Cappella Paolina depicting significant events in the lives of the two most important saints of Rome, the \"Conversion of Saint Paul\" and the \"Crucifixion of Saint Peter\". Like the \"Last Judgment\", these two works are complex compositions containing a great number of figures. They were completed in 1550. In the same year, Giorgio Vasari published his \"Vita\", including a biography of Michelangelo.\nIn 1546, Michelangelo was appointed architect of St. Peter's Basilica, Rome. The process of replacing the Constantinian basilica of the 4th century had been underway for fifty years and in 1506 foundations had been laid to the plans of Bramante. Successive architects had worked on it, but little progress had been made. Michelangelo was persuaded to take over the project. He returned to the concepts of Bramante, and developed his ideas for a centrally planned church, strengthening the structure both physically and visually. The dome, not completed until after his death, has been called by Banister Fletcher, \"the greatest creation of the Renaissance\".\nAs construction was progressing on St Peter's, there was concern that Michelangelo would die before the dome was finished. However, once building commenced on the lower part of the dome, the supporting ring, the completion of the design was inevitable.\nPersonal life.\nFaith.\nMichelangelo was a devout Catholic whose faith deepened at the end of his life. Along with Raphael, he was enrolled in the Secular Franciscan Order.\nHis poetry includes the following closing lines from what is known as poem 285 (written in 1554): \"Neither painting nor sculpture will be able any longer to calm my soul, now turned toward that divine love that opened his arms on the cross to take us in.\"\nPersonal habits.\nMichelangelo was moderate in his personal life, and once told his apprentice, Ascanio Condivi: \"However rich I may have been, I have always lived like a poor man.\" Michelangelo's bank accounts and numerous deeds of purchase show that his net worth was about 50,000 gold ducats, more than many princes and dukes of his time. Condivi said he was indifferent to food and drink, eating \"more out of necessity than of pleasure\" and that he \"often slept in his clothes and\u00a0... boots.\" His biographer Paolo Giovio says, \"His nature was so rough and uncouth that his domestic habits were incredibly squalid, and deprived posterity of any pupils who might have followed him.\" This, however, may not have affected him, as he was by nature a solitary and melancholy person, , a man who \"withdrew himself from the company of men.\"\nRelationships and poetry.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nIt is impossible to know whether Michelangelo had any physical relationships. Understanding about his sexuality is rooted in his art, especially his poetry. He wrote more than three hundred sonnets and madrigals. About sixty are addressed to men \u2013 \"the first significant modern corpus of love poetry from one man to another\".\nThe longest sequence, displaying deep loving feeling, was written to the young Roman patrician Tommaso dei Cavalieri (c.\u20091509\u20131587), who was 23 years old when Michelangelo first met him in 1532, at the age of 57. In his \"Lives of the Artists\", Vasari observed: \"But infinitely more than any of the others he loved M. Tommaso de' Cavalieri, a Roman gentleman, for whom, being a young man and much inclined to these arts, [Michelangelo] made, to the end that he might learn to draw, many most superb drawings of divinely beautiful heads, designed in black and red chalk; and then he drew for him a Ganymede rapt to Heaven by Jove's Eagle, a Tityus with the Vulture devouring his heart, the Chariot of the Sun falling with Pha\u00ebthon into the Po, and a Bacchanal of children, which are all in themselves most rare things, and drawings the like of which have never been seen.\" Some scholars downplay the relationship between Michelangelo and Cavalieri as one of platonic friendship. The poems to Cavalieri make up the first large sequence of poems in any modern tongue addressed by one man to another; they predate by 50 years Shakespeare's sonnets to the fair youth:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nCavalieri replied: \"I swear to return your love. Never have I loved a man more than I love you, never have I wished for a friendship more than I wish for yours.\" Cavalieri remained devoted to Michelangelo until his death.\nIn 1542, Michelangelo met Cecchino dei Bracci who died only a year later, inspiring Michelangelo to write 48 funeral epigrams. Some of the objects of Michelangelo's affections, and subjects of his poetry, took advantage of him: the model Febo di Poggio asked for money in response to a love-poem, and a second model, Gherardo Perini, shamelessly stole from him.\nThe nature of the poetry has been a source of discomfort to later generations. Michelangelo's grandnephew, Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger, published the poems in 1623 with the gender of pronouns changed; he also removed words or in other instances insisted that Michelangelo's poems be read allegorically and philosophically, a judgment some modern scholars still repeat today. It was not until John Addington Symonds translated the poems into English in 1893 that the original genders were restored. Since then it has become more accepted that his poems should be understood at face value, that is, as indicating his personal feelings and a preference by him for young men over women. The Elizabeth Jennings translation, \"The Sonnets of Michelangelo\", is considered the standard version. \nLate in life, Michelangelo nurtured a friendship with the poet and noble widow Vittoria Colonna, whom he met in Rome in 1536 or 1538 and who was in her late forties at the time. They wrote sonnets for each other and were in regular contact until she died. These sonnets mostly deal with the spiritual issues that occupied them. Condivi, who in his biography was preoccupied with downplaying Michelangelo's attraction to men, alleged Michelangelo said his sole regret in life was that he did not kiss the widow's face in the same manner that he had her hand.\nFeuds with other artists.\nIn a letter from late 1542, Michelangelo blamed the tensions between Julius\u00a0II and him on the envy of Bramante and Raphael, saying of the latter, \"all he had in art, he got from me\". According to Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Michelangelo and Raphael met once: the former was alone, while the latter was accompanied by several others. Michelangelo commented that he thought he had encountered the chief of police with such an assemblage, and Raphael replied that he thought he had met an executioner, as they are wont to walk alone.\nWorks.\nMadonna and Child.\nThe \"Madonna of the Stairs\" is Michelangelo's earliest known work in marble. It is carved in shallow relief, a technique often employed by the master-sculptor of the early 15th century, Donatello, and others such as Desiderio da Settignano. While the Madonna is in profile, the easiest aspect for a shallow relief, the child displays a twisting motion that was to become characteristic of Michelangelo's work. The \"Taddei Tondo\" of 1502 shows the Christ Child frightened by a Bullfinch, a symbol of the Crucifixion. The lively form of the child was later adapted by Raphael in the \"Bridgewater Madonna\". The \"Madonna of Bruges\" was, at the time of its creation, unlike other such statues depicting the Virgin proudly presenting her son. Here, the Christ Child, restrained by his mother's clasping hand, is about to step off into the world. The \"Doni Tondo\", depicting the Holy Family, has elements of all three previous works: the frieze of figures in the background has the appearance of a low-relief, while the circular shape and dynamic forms echo the Taddeo Tondo. The twisting motion present in the \"Madonna of Bruges\" is accentuated in the painting. The painting heralds the forms, movement and colour that Michelangelo was to employ on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.\nMale figure.\nThe kneeling \"Angel\" is an early work, one of several that Michelangelo created as part of a large decorative scheme for the Arca di San Domenico in the church dedicated to that saint in Bologna. Several other artists had worked on the scheme, beginning with Nicola Pisano in the 13th century. In the late 15th century, the project was managed by Niccol\u00f2 dell'Arca. An angel holding a candlestick, by Niccol\u00f2, was already in place. Although the two angels form a pair, there is a great contrast between the two works, the one depicting a delicate child with flowing hair clothed in Gothic robes with deep folds, and Michelangelo's depicting a robust and muscular youth with eagle's wings, clad in a garment of Classical style. Everything about Michelangelo's \"Angel\" is dynamic. Michelangelo's \"Bacchus\" was a commission with a specified subject, the youthful God of Wine. The sculpture has all the traditional attributes, a vine wreath, a cup of wine and a fawn, but Michelangelo ingested an air of reality into the subject, depicting him with bleary eyes, a swollen bladder and a stance that suggests he is unsteady on his feet. While the work is plainly inspired by Classical sculpture, it is innovative for its rotating movement and strongly three-dimensional quality, which encourages the viewer to look at it from every angle.\nIn the so-called \"Dying Slave\", Michelangelo again utilised the figure with marked contrapposto to suggest a particular human state, in this case waking from sleep. With the \"Rebellious Slave\", it is one of two such earlier figures for the Tomb of Pope Julius II, now in the Louvre, that the sculptor brought to an almost finished state. These two works were to have a profound influence on later sculpture, through Rodin who studied them at the Louvre. The \"Atlas Slave\" is one of the later figures for Pope Julius' tomb. The works, known collectively as \"The Captives\", each show the figure struggling to free itself, as if from the bonds of the rock in which it is lodged. The works give a unique insight into the sculptural methods that Michelangelo employed and his way of revealing what he perceived within the rock.\nSistine Chapel ceiling.\nThe Sistine Chapel ceiling was painted between 1508 and 1512. The ceiling is a flattened barrel vault supported on twelve triangular pendentives that rise from between the windows of the chapel. The commission, as envisaged by Julius II, was to adorn the pendentives with figures of the twelve apostles. Michelangelo, who was reluctant to take the job, persuaded the Pope to give him a free hand in the composition. The resultant scheme of decoration awed his contemporaries and has inspired other artists ever since. The scheme is of nine panels illustrating episodes from the Book of Genesis, set in an architectonic frame. On the pendentives, Michelangelo replaced the proposed Apostles with Prophets and Sibyls who heralded the coming of the Messiah.\nMichelangelo began painting with the later episodes in the narrative, the pictures including locational details and groups of figures, the \"Drunkenness of Noah\" being the first of this group. In the later compositions, painted after the initial scaffolding had been removed, Michelangelo made the figures larger. One of the central images, \"The Creation of Adam\" is one of the best known and most reproduced works in the history of art. The final panel, showing the \"Separation of Light from Darkness\" is the broadest in style and was painted in a single day. As the model for the Creator, Michelangelo has depicted himself in the action of painting the ceiling.\nAs supporters to the smaller scenes, Michelangelo painted twenty youths who have variously been interpreted as angels, as muses, or simply as decoration. Michelangelo referred to them as \"ignudi\". The figure reproduced may be seen in context in the above image of the \"Separation of Light from Darkness\".\nIn the process of painting the ceiling, Michelangelo made studies for different figures, of which some, such as that for \"The Libyan Sibyl\" have survived, demonstrating the care taken by Michelangelo in details such as the hands and feet. The prophet Jeremiah, contemplating the downfall of Jerusalem, is a self-portrait.\nFigure compositions.\nMichelangelo's relief of the \"Battle of the Centaurs\", created while he was still a youth associated with the Medici Academy, is an unusually complex relief in that it shows a great number of figures involved in a vigorous struggle. Such a complex disarray of figures was rare in Florentine art, where it would usually only be found in images showing either the Massacre of the Innocents or the Torments of Hell. The relief treatment, in which some of the figures are boldly projecting, may indicate Michelangelo's familiarity with Roman sarcophagus reliefs from the collection of Lorenzo Medici, and similar marble panels created by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, and with the figurative compositions on Ghiberti's Baptistry Doors.\nThe composition of the \"Battle of Cascina\" is known in its entirety only from copies, as the original cartoon, according to Vasari, was so admired that it deteriorated and was eventually in pieces. It reflects the earlier relief in the energy and diversity of the figures, with many different postures, and many being viewed from the back, as they turn towards the approaching enemy and prepare for battle.\nIn \"The Last Judgment\" it is said that Michelangelo drew inspiration from a fresco by Melozzo da Forl\u00ec in Rome's Santi Apostoli. Melozzo had depicted figures from different angles, as if they were floating in the Heaven and seen from below. Melozzo's majestic figure of Christ, with windblown cloak, demonstrates a degree of foreshortening of the figure that had also been employed by Andrea Mantegna, but was not usual in the frescos of Florentine painters. In \"The Last Judgment\" Michelangelo had the opportunity to depict, on an unprecedented scale, figures in the action of either rising heavenward or falling and being dragged down.\nIn the two frescos of the Pauline Chapel, \"The Crucifixion of St. Peter\" and \"The Conversion of Saul\", Michelangelo has used the various groups of figures to convey a complex narrative. In the \"Crucifixion of Peter\" soldiers busy themselves about their assigned duty of digging a post hole and raising the cross while various people look on and discuss the events. A group of horrified women cluster in the foreground, while another group of Christians is led by a tall man to witness the events. In the right foreground, Michelangelo walks out of the painting with an expression of disillusionment.\nArchitecture.\nMichelangelo's architectural commissions included a number that were not realised, notably the fa\u00e7ade for Brunelleschi's Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, for which Michelangelo had a wooden model constructed, but which remains to this day unfinished rough brick. At the same church, Giulio de' Medici (later Pope Clement VII) commissioned him to design the Medici Chapel and the tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo Medici. Pope Clement also commissioned the Laurentian Library, for which Michelangelo also designed the extraordinary vestibule with columns recessed into niches, and a staircase that appears to spill out of the library like a flow of lava, according to Nikolaus Pevsner, \"...\u00a0revealing Mannerism in its most sublime architectural form\".\nIn 1546 Michelangelo produced the highly complex ovoid design for the pavement of the Campidoglio and began designing an upper storey for the Farnese Palace. In 1547 he took on the job of completing St Peter's Basilica, begun to a design by Bramante, and with several intermediate designs by several architects. Michelangelo returned to Bramante's design, retaining the basic form and concepts by simplifying and strengthening the design to create a more dynamic and unified whole. Although the late 16th-century engraving depicts the dome as having a hemispherical profile, the dome of Michelangelo's model is somewhat ovoid and the final product, as completed by Giacomo della Porta, is more so.\nFinal years.\nIn his old age, Michelangelo created a number of \"Piet\u00e0s\" in which he apparently reflects upon mortality. They are heralded by the \"Victory\", perhaps created for the tomb of Pope Julius II but left unfinished. In this group, the youthful victor overcomes an older hooded figure, with the features of Michelangelo. The \"Piet\u00e0 of Vittoria Colonna\" is a chalk drawing of a type described as \"presentation drawings\", as they might be given as a gift by an artist, and were not necessarily studies towards a painted work. In this image, Mary's upraised arms and hands are indicative of her prophetic role. The frontal aspect is reminiscent of Masaccio's fresco of the Holy Trinity in the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, Florence. In the \"Florentine Piet\u00e0\", Michelangelo again depicts himself, this time as the aged Nicodemus lowering the body of Jesus from the cross into the arms of Mary his mother and Mary Magdalene. Michelangelo smashed the left arm and leg of the figure of Jesus. His pupil Tiberio Calcagni repaired the arm and drilled a hole in which to fix a replacement leg which was not subsequently attached. He also worked on the figure of Mary Magdalene.\nThe last sculpture that Michelangelo worked on (six days before his death), the \"Rondanini Piet\u00e0,\" could never be completed because Michelangelo carved it away until there was insufficient stone. The legs and a detached arm remain from a previous stage of the work. As it remains, the sculpture has an abstract quality, in keeping with 20th-century concepts of sculpture.\nMichelangelo died in Rome on 18 February 1564, at the age of 88. His body was taken from Rome for interment at the Basilica of Santa Croce, fulfilling the maestro's last request to be buried in his beloved Florence. His heir Lionardo Buonarroti commissioned Vasari to design and build the \"Tomb of Michelangelo\", a monumental project that cost 770 scudi, and took over 14 years to complete. Marble for the tomb was supplied by Cosimo I de' Medici, Duke of Tuscany, who had also organized a state funeral to honour Michelangelo in Florence.\nLegacy.\nMichelangelo, with Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, is one of the three giants of the Florentine High Renaissance. Although their names are often cited together, Michelangelo was younger than Leonardo by 23 years, and eight years older than Raphael. Because of his reclusive nature, he had little to do with either artist and outlived both of them by more than 40 years. Michelangelo took few sculpture students. He employed Granacci, who was his fellow pupil at the Medici Academy, and became one of several assistants on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Michelangelo appears to have used assistants mainly for the more manual tasks of preparing surfaces and grinding colours. Despite this, his works were to have a great influence on painters, sculptors and architects for many generations to come.\nWhile Michelangelo's \"David\" is the most famous male nude of all time, some of his other works have had perhaps even greater impact on the course of art. The twisting forms and tensions of the \"Victory\", the \"Bruges Madonna\" and the \"Medici Madonna\" make them the heralds of the Mannerist art. The unfinished giants for the tomb of Pope Julius II had profound effect on sculptors such as Rodin and Henry Moore.\nMichelangelo's vestibule of the Laurentian Library was one of the earliest buildings to use classical forms in a plastic and expressive manner. This dynamic quality was later to find its major expression in his centrally planned St. Peter's, with its giant order, its rippling cornice and its upward-launching pointed dome. The dome of St. Peter's was to influence the building of churches for many centuries, including Sant'Andrea della Valle in Rome and St Paul's Cathedral, London, as well as the civic domes of public buildings and state capitals across the United States.\nArtists who were directly influenced by Michelangelo include Raphael, whose monumental treatment of the figure in the \"School of Athens\" and \"The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple\" owes much to Michelangelo, and whose fresco of \"Isaiah\" in Sant'Agostino closely imitates the older master's prophets. Other artists, such as Pontormo, drew on the writhing forms of the \"Last Judgment\" and the frescoes of the Cappella Paolina.\nThe Sistine Chapel ceiling was a work of unprecedented grandeur, both for its architectonic forms, to be imitated by many Baroque ceiling painters, and also for the wealth of its inventiveness in the study of figures. Vasari wrote:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["34093814", "21019"], "permutation_1": ["34093814", "21019"], "permutation_2": ["21019", "34093814"], "permutation_3": ["21019", "34093814"]}
{"id": "2hop__54284_46224", "docs_added": {"1107288": "Song of Solomon (novel)\n1977 novel by Toni Morrison\nSong of Solomon is a 1977 novel by American author Toni Morrison, her third to be published. It follows the life of Macon \"Milkman\" Dead III, an :African-American man living in Michigan, from birth to adulthood.\nThis novel won the National Book Critics Circle Award, was chosen for Oprah Winfrey's popular book club, and was cited by the Swedish Academy in awarding Morrison the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1998, the Radcliffe Publishing Course named it the 25th best English-language novel of the 20th century.\nPlot.\nRobert Smith, an African-American insurance agent, jumps off a roof while trying to fly as a crowd of people gather to watch. The appearance of Smith on the roof causes a woman named Ruth Dead to go into labor. In the chaos that follows, the hospital admits her and she delivers her son, Macon Dead III\u2014the first African-American child born in the hospital. Macon Dead III grows up stifled, alienated, and disinterested in his home life in Southside. Ruth is still breastfeeding him when he is four years old. One of her husband's employees witnesses this and nicknames the boy \"Milkman\". \nMilkman's relationship with his family is strained, particularly towards his father. As Milkman enters his teens, his aunt Pilate, a bootlegger and conjure woman, becomes a central figure in his life. For Milkman, Pilate becomes the first glimpse into his family's past. When they were younger, Pilate and Macon Jr. found a cave filled with bags of gold, but did not take it for fear of reprisals. Milkman forms a sexual connection with his cousin Hagar, but later spurns her. Hagar becomes obsessed with him, attempting to kill him once a month, but never following through.\nMilkman mentions to his father, Macon, the heavy bag that hangs from the ceiling of Pilate's modest home. Pilate mentions that the bag contains her \"inheritance.\" Thinking it must be one of the bags of gold from the cave, Macon sends Milkman and his friend Guitar to steal the bag from Pilate. Milkman and Guitar succeed, but are arrested by the police after they discover the bag contains human bones. Macon and Pilate go to the police station to free the two young men.\nMilkman makes a journey south to Pennsylvania in search of the gold. After talking to several people, Milkman deduces that Pilate must have retrieved the gold and taken it to Virginia. Milkman stumbles across Shalimar, Virginia, by accident. While out hunting with older men from Shalimar, Milkman is attacked by Guitar, who has followed him to Virginia. Guitar is under the impression that Milkman has taken the gold, and thus wants revenge. Struggling, Milkman discharges his gun, scaring away Guitar.\nMilkman sees the children of the town playing and singing the \"Song of Solomon.\" Milkman remembers that Pilate sang a similar song, and realizes that the song is about his family. He heads back to Michigan to find Pilate.\nWhile Milkman is gone in Virginia, Hagar has sunk into a terrible depression from him having spurned her. Thinking that Milkman would want her if she fixes herself up, Hagar buys dresses, makeup, and a haircut. The effort amounts to little, and Hagar succumbs to her grief. A collection is taken up by the community to bury Hagar, and Pilate sings a mournful song at her granddaughter's funeral.\nMilkman thinks it only appropriate that Macon Dead Sr. be laid to rest in his ancestral home in Shalimar. Milkman finds Pilate at her home, and she knocks him unconscious for the grief that caused her granddaughter to die. When he comes to, Milkman convinces her to travel with him to Virginia and bury her father. They make the journey and bury Macon Dead Sr. overlooking the ravine. After placing the bones in the grave, Pilate is killed by a gunshot from Guitar that was intended for Milkman. The novel ends with Milkman leaping toward Guitar, thus learning to \"fly\".\nReception and legacy.\n\"Song of Solomon\", Morrison's third novel, was met with widespread acclaim, and Morrison earned the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 1978. Reynolds Price, reviewing the novel for \"The New York Times\", concluded: \"Toni Morrison has earned attention and praise. Few Americans know, and can say, more than she has in this wise and spacious novel.\"\nThe novel has faced several challenges and bans in schools throughout the U.S. since 1993.\nThe main character inspired the name of the band The Dead Milkmen, formed in 1983.\nIn 2015, Robert McCrum's chronological list of the 100 best novels written in English, which was published in \"The Guardian\" newspaper, named \"Song of Solomon\" at No. 89.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18859": "Michigan\nU.S. state\nMichigan ( ) is a peninsular state in the Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, Indiana and Illinois to the southwest, Ohio to the southeast, and the Canadian province of Ontario to the east, northeast and north. With a population of 10.14 million and an area of , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the largest by total area east of the Mississippi River. The state capital is Lansing, while its most populous city is Detroit. The Metro Detroit region in Southeast Michigan is among the nation's most populous and largest metropolitan economies. Other important metropolitan areas include Grand Rapids, Flint, Ann Arbor, Kalamazoo, the Tri-Cities, and Muskegon. \nMichigan consists of two peninsulas: the heavily forested Upper Peninsula (commonly called \"the U.P.\"), which juts eastward from northern Wisconsin, and the more populated Lower Peninsula, stretching north from Ohio and Indiana. The peninsulas are separated by the Straits of Mackinac, which connects Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, and are linked by the 5-mile-long Mackinac Bridge along Interstate 75. Bordering four of the five Great Lakes and Lake St. Clair, Michigan has the longest freshwater coastline of any U.S. political subdivision, measuring 3,288 miles. The state ranks second behind Alaska in water coverage by square miles and first in percentage, with approximately 42%, and it also contains 64,980 inland lakes and ponds.\nIn the 17th century, French explorers claimed the Great Lakes region for New France, though the area had largely been inhabited for thousands of years by Indigenous peoples such as the Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, and Wyandot. French settlers and M\u00e9tis established forts and settlements. Some people contend that the region\u2019s name is derived from the Ojibwe word \u14a5\u14ef\u1472\u14a5 (mishigami), meaning \"large water\" or \"large lake\". While others say that it comes from the Mishiiken Tribe of Mackinac Island, also called Michinemackinawgo by Ottawa historian Andrew Blackbird, whose surrounding lands were referred to as Mishiiken-imakinakom, later shortened to Michilimackinac. After France's defeat in the French and Indian War in 1762, the area came under British control and later the U.S. following the Treaty of Paris (1783), though control remained disputed with Indigenous tribes until treaties between 1795 and 1842. The area was part of the larger Northwest Territory; the Michigan Territory was organized in 1805. Michigan was admitted as the 26th state on January 26, 1837, entering as a free state and quickly developing into an industrial and trade hub that attracted European immigrants, particularly from Finland, Macedonia, and the Netherlands. In the 1930s, migration from Appalachia, the Middle East and the Great Migration of Black Southerners further shaped the state, especially in Metro Detroit.\nMichigan has a diversified economy with a gross state product of $711.481billion as of Q3 2024, ranking 14th among the 50 states. Although the state has developed a diverse economy, in the early 20th century it became widely known as the center of the U.S. automotive industry, which developed as a major national economic force. It is home to the country's three major automobile companies (whose headquarters are all in Metro Detroit). Once exploited for logging and mining, today the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula is important for tourism because of its abundance of natural resources. The Lower Peninsula is a center of manufacturing, forestry, agriculture, services, and high-tech industry.\nHistory.\nWhen the first European explorers arrived, the most populous tribes were the Algonquian peoples, which include the Anishinaabe groups of Ojibwe, Odaawaa/Odawa (Ottawa), and the Boodewaadamii/Bod\u00e9wadmi (Potawatomi). The three nations coexisted peacefully as part of a loose confederation called the Council of Three Fires. The Ojibwe, whose numbers are estimated to have been at least 35,000, were the largest.\nThe Ojibwe Indians (also known as Chippewa in the U.S.), an Anishinaabe tribe, were established in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and northern and central Michigan. Bands also inhabited Ontario and southern Manitoba, Canada; and northern Wisconsin, and northern and north-central Minnesota. The Ottawa Indians lived primarily south of the Straits of Mackinac in northern, western, and southern Michigan, but also in southern Ontario, northern Ohio, and eastern Wisconsin. The Potawatomi were in southern and western Michigan, in addition to northern and central Indiana, northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin, and southern Ontario. Other Algonquian tribes in Michigan, in the south and east, were the Mascouten, the Menominee, the Miami, the Sac (or Sauk), and the Meskwaki (Fox). The Wyandot were an Iroquoian-speaking people in this area; they were historically known as the Huron by the French, and were the historical adversaries of the Iroquois Confederation.\n17th century.\nFrench \"voyageurs\" and \"coureurs des bois\" explored and settled in Michigan in the 17th century. The first Europeans to reach what became Michigan were those of \u00c9tienne Br\u00fbl\u00e9's expedition in 1622. The first permanent European settlement was founded in 1668 on the site where P\u00e8re Jacques Marquette established Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, as a base for Catholic missions. Missionaries in 1671\u201375 founded outlying stations at Saint Ignace and Marquette. Jesuit missionaries were well received by the area's Indian populations, with few difficulties or hostilities. In 1679, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle built Fort Miami at present-day St. Joseph. In 1691, the French established a trading post and Fort St. Joseph along the St. Joseph River at the present-day city of Niles.\n18th century.\nIn 1701, French explorer and army officer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founded Fort Pontchartrain du D\u00e9troit or \"Fort Pontchartrain on-the-Strait\" on the strait, known as the Detroit River, between lakes Saint Clair and Erie. Cadillac had convinced King Louis XIV's chief minister, Louis Ph\u00e9lypeaux, Comte de Pontchartrain, that a permanent community there would strengthen French control over the upper Great Lakes and discourage British aspirations.\nThe hundred soldiers and workers who accompanied Cadillac built a fort enclosing one arpent (about , the equivalent of just under per side) and named it Fort Pontchartrain. Cadillac's wife, Marie Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Guyon, soon moved to Detroit, becoming one of the first European women to settle in what was considered the wilderness of Michigan. The town quickly became a major fur-trading and shipping post. The \"\u00c9glise de Saint-Anne\" (Catholic Church of Saint Anne) was founded the same year. While the original building does not survive, the congregation remains active. Cadillac later departed to serve as the French governor of Louisiana from 1710 to 1716. French attempts to consolidate the fur trade led to the Fox Wars, in which the Meskwaki (Fox) and their allies fought the French and their Native allies.\nAt the same time, the French strengthened Fort Michilimackinac at the Straits of Mackinac to better control their lucrative fur-trading empire. By the mid-18th century, the French also occupied forts at present-day Niles and Sault Ste. Marie, though most of the rest of the region remained unsettled by Europeans. France offered free land to attract families to Detroit, which grew to 800 people in 1765. It was the largest city between Montreal and New Orleans. French settlers also established small farms south of the Detroit River opposite the fort, near a Jesuit mission and Huron village.\nFrom 1660 until the end of French rule, Michigan was part of the Royal Province of New France. In 1760, Montreal fell to the British forces, ending the French and Indian War (1754\u20131763), the North American front of the Seven Years' War in Europe. Under the 1763 Treaty of Paris, Michigan and the rest of New France east of the Mississippi River were ceded by defeated France to Great Britain. After the Quebec Act was passed in 1774, Michigan became part of the British Province of Quebec. By 1778, Detroit's population reached 2,144 and it was the third-largest city in Quebec province.\nDuring the American Revolutionary War, Detroit was an important British supply center. Most of the inhabitants were French-Canadians or American Indians, many of whom had been allied with the French because of long trading ties. Because of imprecise cartography and unclear language defining the boundaries in the 1783 Treaty of Paris, the British retained control of Detroit and Michigan after the American Revolution. When Quebec split into Lower and Upper Canada in 1791, Michigan was part of Kent County, Upper Canada. It held its first democratic elections in August 1792 to send delegates to the new provincial parliament at Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake).\nUnder terms negotiated in the 1794 Jay Treaty, Britain withdrew from Detroit and Michilimackinac in 1796. It retained control of territory east and south of the Detroit River, which are now included in Ontario, Canada. Questions remained over the boundary for many years, and the United States did not have uncontested control of the Upper Peninsula and Drummond Island until 1818 and 1847, respectively.\n19th century.\nDuring the War of 1812, the United States forces at Fort Detroit surrendered Michigan Territory (effectively consisting of Detroit and the surrounding area) after a nearly bloodless siege in 1812. A U.S. attempt to retake Detroit resulted in a severe American defeat in the River Raisin Massacre. This battle, still ranked as the bloodiest ever fought in the state, had the highest number of American casualties of any battle of the war.\nMichigan was recaptured by the Americans in 1813 after the Battle of Lake Erie. They used Michigan as a base to launch an invasion of Canada, which culminated in the Battle of the Thames. But the more northern areas of Michigan were held by the British until the peace treaty restored the old boundaries. A number of forts, including Fort Wayne, were built by the United States in Michigan during the 19th century out of fears of renewed fighting with Britain.\nMichigan Territory governor and judges established the University of Michigan in 1817, as the Catholepistemiad, or the University of Michigania.\nThe population grew slowly until the opening in 1825 of the Erie Canal through the Mohawk Valley in New York, connecting the Great Lakes to the Hudson River and New York City. The new route attracted a large influx of settlers to the Michigan territory. They worked as farmers, lumbermen, shipbuilders, and merchants and shipped out grain, lumber, and iron ore. By the 1830s, Michigan had 30,000 residents, more than enough to apply and qualify for statehood.\nOn November 1, 1935, the U.S. Post Office issued a commemorative 3-cent stamp celebrating the 100th anniversary of Michigan statehood. Michigan's statehood, however, wasn't officially established until January 26, 1837, but since the campaign for statehood actually began in 1835, Michigan chose to hold its centennial celebration in 1935, the year the stamp was first issued.\nA constitutional convention of assent was held to lead the territory to statehood. In October 1835 the people approved the constitution of 1835, thereby forming a state government. Congressional recognition was delayed pending resolution of a boundary dispute with Ohio known as the Toledo War. Congress awarded the \"Toledo Strip\" to Ohio. Michigan received the western part of the Upper Peninsula as a concession and formally entered the Union as a free state on January 26, 1837. The Upper Peninsula proved to be a rich source of lumber, iron, and copper. Michigan led the nation in lumber production from the 1850s to the 1880s. Railroads became a major engine of growth from the 1850s onward, with Detroit the chief hub.\nA second wave of French-Canadian immigrants settled in Michigan during the late 19th to early 20th century, working in lumbering areas in counties on the Lake Huron side of the Lower Peninsula, such as the Saginaw Valley, Alpena, and Cheboygan counties, as well as throughout the Upper Peninsula, with large concentrations in Escanaba and the Keweenaw Peninsula. \nThe first statewide meeting of the Republican Party took place on July 6, 1854, in Jackson, Michigan, where the party adopted its platform. The state was predominantly Republican until the 1930s, reflecting the political continuity of migrants from across the Northern Tier of New England and New York. Michigan made a significant contribution to the Union in the American Civil War and sent more than forty regiments of volunteers to the federal armies.\nMichigan modernized and expanded its system of education in this period. The Michigan State Normal School, now Eastern Michigan University, was founded in 1849, for the training of teachers. It was the fourth oldest normal school in the United States and the first U.S. normal school outside New England. In 1899, the Michigan State Normal School became the first normal school in the nation to offer a four-year curriculum. Michigan Agricultural College (1855), now Michigan State University in East Lansing, was founded as the first agricultural college in the nation. Many private colleges were founded as well, and the smaller cities established high schools late in the century.\n20th\u201321st centuries.\nMichigan's economy underwent a transformation at the turn of the 20th century. Many individuals, including Ransom E. Olds, John and Horace Dodge, Henry Leland, David Dunbar Buick, Henry Joy, Charles King, and Henry Ford, provided the concentration of engineering know-how and technological enthusiasm to develop the automotive industry. Ford's development of the moving assembly line in Highland Park marked a new era in transportation. Like the steamship and railroad, mass production of automobiles was a far-reaching development. More than the forms of public transportation, the affordable automobile transformed private life. Automobile production became the major industry of Detroit and Michigan, and permanently altered the socioeconomic life of the United States and much of the world.\nWith the growth, the auto industry created jobs in Detroit that attracted immigrants from Europe and migrants from across the United States, including both blacks and whites from the rural South. By 1920, Detroit was the fourth-largest city in the U.S.. Residential housing was in short supply, and it took years for the market to catch up with the population boom. By the 1930s, so many immigrants had arrived that more than 30 languages were spoken in the public schools, and ethnic communities celebrated in annual heritage festivals. Over the years immigrants and migrants contributed greatly to Detroit's diverse urban culture, including popular music trends. The influential Motown Sound of the 1960s was led by a variety of individual singers and groups.\nGrand Rapids, the second-largest city in Michigan also became an important center of manufacturing. Since 1838, the city has been noted for its furniture industry. In the 21st century, it is home to five of the world's leading office furniture companies. Grand Rapids is home to a number of major companies including Steelcase, Amway, and Meijer. Grand Rapids is also an important center for GE Aviation Systems.\nMichigan held its first United States presidential primary election in 1910. With its rapid growth in industry, it was an important center of industry-wide union organizing, such as the rise of the United Auto Workers.\nIn 1920 WWJ (AM) in Detroit became the first radio station in the United States to regularly broadcast commercial programs. Throughout that decade, some of the country's largest and most ornate skyscrapers were built in the city. Particularly noteworthy are the Fisher Building, Cadillac Place, and the Guardian Building, each of which has been designated as a National Historic Landmark (NHL).\nIn 1927 a school bombing took place in Clinton County. The Bath School disaster resulted in the deaths of 38 schoolchildren and constitutes the deadliest mass murder in a school in U.S. history.\nMichigan converted much of its manufacturing to satisfy defense needs during World War II; it manufactured 10.9% of the United States military armaments produced during the war, ranking second (behind New York) among the 48 states.\nDetroit continued to expand through the 1950s, at one point doubling its population in a decade. After World War II, housing was developed in suburban areas outside city cores to meet demand for residences. The federal government subsidized the construction of interstate highways, which were intended to strengthen military access, but also allowed commuters and business traffic to travel the region more easily. Since 1960, modern advances in the auto industry have led to increased automation, high-tech industry, and increased suburban growth. Longstanding tensions in Detroit culminated in the Twelfth Street riot in July 1967.\nDuring the late 1970s and the early 1980s, increasing fuel costs and other factors made significantly more global competition and recession among families. Michigan lost a significant amount of population due to global competition and the dramatic unavailability of manufacturing jobs. Meanwhile, Michigan had increased use of technology, specifically when the IBM Personal Computer started selling in the state, in which became mostly used at work.\nMichigan became the leading auto-producing state in the U.S., with the industry primarily located throughout the Midwestern United States; Ontario, Canada; and the Southern United States. With almost ten million residents in 2010, Michigan is a large and influential state, ranking tenth in population among the fifty states. Detroit is the centrally located metropolitan area of the Great Lakes megalopolis and the second-largest metropolitan area in the U.S. (after Chicago) linking the Great Lakes system.\nThe Metro Detroit area in Southeast Michigan is the state's largest metropolitan area (roughly 50% of the population resides there) and the eleventh largest in the United States. The Grand Rapids metropolitan area in Western Michigan is the state's fastest-growing metro area, with more than 1.3 million residents as of 2006[ [update]].\nGeography.\nMichigan consists of two peninsulas separated by the Straits of Mackinac. The 45th parallel north runs through the state, marked by highway signs and the Polar-Equator Trail\u2014 along a line including Mission Point Light near Traverse City, the towns of Gaylord and Alpena in the Lower Peninsula and Menominee in the Upper Peninsula. With the exception of two tiny areas drained by the Mississippi River by way of the Wisconsin River in the Upper Peninsula and by way of the Kankakee-Illinois River in the Lower Peninsula, Michigan is drained by the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence watershed and is the only state with the majority of its land thus drained. No point in the state is more than from a natural water source or more than from a Great Lakes shoreline.\nThe Great Lakes that border Michigan from east to west are Lake Erie, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. The state is bounded on the south by the states of Ohio and Indiana, sharing land and water boundaries with both. Michigan's western boundaries are almost entirely water boundaries, from south to north, with Illinois and Wisconsin in Lake Michigan; then a land boundary with Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula, that is principally demarcated by the Menominee and Montreal Rivers; then water boundaries again, in Lake Superior, with Wisconsin and Minnesota to the west, capped around by the Canadian province of Ontario to the north and east.\nThe heavily forested Upper Peninsula is relatively mountainous in the west. The Porcupine Mountains, which are part of one of the oldest mountain chains in the world, rise to an altitude of almost above sea level and form the watershed between the streams flowing into Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. The surface on either side of this range is rugged. The state's highest point, in the Huron Mountains northwest of Marquette, is Mount Arvon at . The peninsula is as large as Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island combined but has fewer than 330,000 inhabitants. The people are sometimes called \"Yoopers\" (from \"U.P.'ers\"), and their speech (the \"Yooper dialect\") has been heavily influenced by the numerous Scandinavian and Canadian immigrants who settled the area during the lumbering and mining boom of the late 19th century.\nThe Lower Peninsula is shaped like a mitten and many residents hold up a hand to depict where they are from. It is long from north to south and from east to west and occupies nearly two-thirds of the state's land area. The surface of the peninsula is generally level, broken by conical hills and glacial moraines usually not more than a few hundred feet tall. It is divided by a low water divide running north and south. The larger portion of the state is on the west of this and gradually slopes toward Lake Michigan. The highest point in the Lower Peninsula is either Briar Hill at , or one of several points nearby in the vicinity of Cadillac. The lowest point is the surface of Lake Erie at .\nThe geographic orientation of Michigan's peninsulas makes for a long distance between the ends of the state. Ironwood, in the far western Upper Peninsula, lies by highway from Lambertville in the Lower Peninsula's southeastern corner. The geographic isolation of the Upper Peninsula from Michigan's political and population centers makes the region culturally and economically distinct. Frequent attempts to establish the Upper Peninsula as its own state have failed to gain traction. \nA feature of Michigan that gives it the distinct shape of a mitten is the Thumb, which projects into Lake Huron, forming Saginaw Bay. Other notable peninsulas of Michigan include the Keweenaw Peninsula, which projects northeasterly into Lake Superior from the Upper Peninsula and largely comprising Michigan's Copper Country region, and the Leelanau Peninsula, projecting from the Lower Peninsula into Lake Michigan, forming Michigan's \"little finger\".\nNumerous lakes and marshes mark both peninsulas, and the coast is much indented. Keweenaw Bay, Whitefish Bay, and the Big and Little Bays De Noc are the principal indentations on the Upper Peninsula. The Grand and Little Traverse, Thunder, and Saginaw bays indent the Lower Peninsula. Michigan has the second longest shoreline of any state\u2014, including of island shoreline.\nThe state has numerous large islands, the principal ones being the North Manitou and South Manitou, Beaver, and Fox groups in Lake Michigan; Isle Royale and Grande Isle in Lake Superior; Marquette, Bois Blanc, and Mackinac islands in Lake Huron; and Neebish, Sugar, and Drummond islands in St. Mary's River. Michigan has about 150 lighthouses, the most of any U.S. state. The first lighthouses in Michigan were built between 1818 and 1822. They were built to project light at night and to serve as a landmark during the day to safely guide the passenger ships and freighters traveling the Great Lakes (see: lighthouses in the United States).\nThe state's rivers are generally small, short and shallow, and few are navigable. The principal ones include the Detroit River, St. Marys River, and St. Clair River which connect the Great Lakes; the Au Sable, Cheboygan, and Saginaw, which flow into Lake Huron; the Ontonagon, and Tahquamenon, which flow into Lake Superior; and the St. Joseph, Kalamazoo, Grand, Muskegon, Manistee, and Escanaba, which flow into Lake Michigan. The state has 11,037 inland lakes\u2014totaling of inland water\u2014in addition to of Great Lakes waters. No point in Michigan is more than from an inland lake or more than from one of the Great Lakes.\nThe state is home to several areas maintained by the National Park Service including: Isle Royale National Park, in Lake Superior, about southeast of Thunder Bay, Ontario. Other national protected areas in the state include: Keweenaw National Historical Park, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Huron National Forest, Manistee National Forest, Hiawatha National Forest, Ottawa National Forest and Father Marquette National Memorial. The largest section of the North Country National Scenic Trail passes through Michigan.\nWith 78 state parks, 19 state recreation areas, and six state forests, Michigan has the largest state park and state forest system of any state.\nClimate.\nMichigan has a continental climate with two distinct regions. The southern and central parts of the Lower Peninsula (south of Saginaw Bay and from the Grand Rapids area southward) have a warmer climate (K\u00f6ppen climate classification \"Dfa\") with hot summers and cold winters. The northern part of the Lower Peninsula and the entire Upper Peninsula has a more severe climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Dfb\"), with warm, but shorter summers and longer, cold to very cold winters. Some parts of the state average high temperatures below freezing from December through February, and into early March in the far northern parts. During the winter through the middle of February, the state is frequently subjected to heavy lake-effect snow. The state averages from of precipitation annually; however, some areas in the northern lower peninsula and the upper peninsula average almost of snowfall per year. Michigan's highest recorded temperature is at Mio on July 13, 1936, and the coldest recorded temperature is at Vanderbilt on February 9, 1934.\nThe state averages 30 days of thunderstorm activity per year. These can be severe, especially in the southern part of the state. The state averages 17 tornadoes per year, which are more common in the state's extreme southern section. Portions of the southern border have been almost as vulnerable historically as states further west and in Tornado Alley. For this reason, many communities in the very southern portions of the state have tornado sirens to warn residents of approaching tornadoes. Farther north, in Central Michigan, Northern Michigan, and the Upper Peninsula, tornadoes are rare.\nGeology.\nThe geological formation of the state is greatly varied, with the Michigan Basin being the most major formation. Primary boulders are found over the entire surface of the Upper Peninsula (being principally of primitive origin), while Secondary deposits cover the entire Lower Peninsula. The Upper Peninsula exhibits Lower Silurian sandstones, limestones, copper and iron bearing rocks, corresponding to the Huronian system of Canada. The central portion of the Lower Peninsula contains coal measures and rocks of the Pennsylvanian period. Devonian and sub-Carboniferous deposits are scattered over the entire state.\nMichigan rarely experiences earthquakes, and those that it does experience are generally smaller ones that do not cause significant damage. A 4.6-magnitude earthquake struck in August 1947. More recently, a 4.2-magnitude earthquake occurred on Saturday, May 2, 2015, shortly after noon, about five miles south of Galesburg, Michigan (9 miles southeast of Kalamazoo) in central Michigan, about 140 miles west of Detroit, according to the Colorado-based U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center. No major damage or injuries were reported, according to then-Governor Rick Snyder's office.\nAdministrative divisions.\nState government is decentralized among three tiers\u2014statewide, county and township. Counties are administrative divisions of the state, and townships are administrative divisions of a county. Both of them exercise state government authority, localized to meet the particular needs of their jurisdictions, as provided by state law. There are 83 counties in Michigan.\nCities, state universities, and villages are vested with home rule powers of varying degrees. Home rule cities can generally do anything not prohibited by law. The fifteen state universities have broad power and can do anything within the parameters of their status as educational institutions that is not prohibited by the state constitution. Villages, by contrast, have limited home rule and are not completely autonomous from the county and township in which they are located.\nThere are two types of township in Michigan: \"general law\" township and \"charter\". Charter township status was created by the Legislature in 1947 and grants additional powers and stream-lined administration in order to provide greater protection against annexation by a city. As of April\u00a02001[ [update]], there were 127 charter townships in Michigan. In general, charter townships have many of the same powers as a city but without the same level of obligations. For example, a charter township can have its own fire department, water and sewer department, police department, and so on\u2014just like a city\u2014but it is not \"required\" to have those things, whereas cities \"must\" provide those services. Charter townships can opt to use county-wide services instead, such as deputies from the county sheriff's office instead of a home-based force of ordinance officers.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n<templatestyles src=\"Stack/styles.css\"/>\nSince 1800 U.S. census, Michigan has experienced relatively positive and stable population growth trends; beginning with a population of 3,757, the 2010 census recorded 9,883,635 residents. At the 2020 United States census, its population was 10,077,331, an increase of 2.03% since 2010's tabulation. According to the United States Census Bureau, it is the third-most populous state in the Midwest and its East North Central subregion, behind Ohio and Illinois.\nThe center of population of Michigan is in Shiawassee County, in the southeastern corner of the civil township of Bennington, which is northwest of the village of Morrice.\nAccording to the American Immigration Council in 2019, an estimated 6.8% of Michiganders were immigrants, while 3.8% were native-born U.S. citizens with at least one immigrant parent. Numbering approximately 678,255 according to the 2019 survey, the majority of Michigander immigrants came from Mexico (11.5%), India (11.3%), Iraq (7.5%), China (5.3%), and Canada (5.3%); the primary occupations of its immigrants were technology, agriculture, and healthcare. Among its immigrant cohort, there were 108,105 undocumented immigrants, making up 15.9% of the total immigrant population.\nAccording to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 8,206 homeless people in Michigan.\nRace and ethnicity.\nSince colonial European and American settlement, the majority of Michigan's population has been predominantly non-Hispanic or non-Latino white; Americans of European descent live throughout every county in the state, and most of Metro Detroit. Large European American groups include those of German, British, Irish, Polish and Belgian ancestry. Scandinavian and Finnish Americans have a notable presence in the Upper Peninsula. Western Michigan is known for its Dutch heritage, especially in Holland and metropolitan Grand Rapids.\nBlack and African Americans\u2014coming to Detroit and other northern cities in the Great Migration of the early 20th century\u2014have formed a majority of the population in Detroit and other cities including Flint and Benton Harbor. Since the 2021 census estimates\u2014while Detroit was still the largest city in Michigan with a majority black population\u2014it was no longer the largest black-majority city in the U.S., citing crime and higher-paying jobs given to whites.\nAs of 2007[ [update]], about 300,000 people in Southeastern Michigan trace their descent from the Middle East and Asia. Dearborn has a sizeable Arab American community, with many Assyrians, and Lebanese who immigrated for jobs in the auto industry in the 1920s, along with more recent Yemenis and Iraqis. As of 2007[ [update]], almost 8,000 Hmong people lived in the state of Michigan, about double their 1999 presence in the state. Most lived in northeastern Detroit, but they had been increasingly moving to Pontiac and Warren. By 2015, the number of Hmong in the Detroit city limits had significantly declined. Lansing hosts a statewide Hmong New Year Festival. The Hmong community also had a prominent portrayal in the 2008 film \"Gran Torino\", which was set in Detroit.\nAs of 2015[ [update]], 80% of Michigan's Japanese population lived in the counties of Macomb, Oakland, Washtenaw, and Wayne in the Detroit and Ann Arbor areas. As of April\u00a02013[ [update]], the largest Japanese national population is in Novi, with 2,666 Japanese residents, and the next largest populations are respectively in Ann Arbor, West Bloomfield Township, Farmington Hills, and Battle Creek. The state has 481 Japanese employment facilities providing 35,554 local jobs. 391 of them are in Southeast Michigan, providing 20,816 jobs, and the 90 in other regions in the state provide 14,738 jobs. The Japanese Direct Investment Survey of the Consulate-General of Japan, Detroit stated more than 2,208 additional Japanese residents were employed in the State of Michigan as of 2012[ [update]], than in 2011. During the 1990s, the Japanese population of Michigan experienced an increase, and many Japanese people with children moved to particular areas for their proximity to Japanese grocery stores and high-performing schools.\nLanguages.\nIn 2010, about 91.11% (8,507,947) of Michigan residents age five and older spoke only English at home, while 2.93% (273,981) spoke Spanish, 1.04% (97,559) Arabic, 0.44% (41,189) German, 0.36% (33,648) Chinese (which includes Mandarin), 0.31% (28,891) French, 0.29% (27,019) Polish, and Syriac languages (such as Modern Aramaic and Northeastern Neo-Aramaic) was spoken as a main language by 0.25% (23,420) of the population over the age of five. In total, 8.89% (830,281) of Michigan's population age five and older spoke a mother language other than English. Since 2021, 90.1% of residents aged five and older spoke only English at home, and Spanish was the second-most spoken language with 2.9% of the population speaking it.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nFollowing British and French colonization of the region surrounding Michigan, Christianity became the dominant religion, with Roman Catholicism historically being the largest single Christian group for the state. Until the 19th century, the Roman Catholic Church was the only organized religious group in Michigan, reflecting the territory's French colonial roots. Detroit's St. Anne's parish, established in 1701 by Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, is the second-oldest Roman Catholic parish in the United States. On March 8, 1833, the Holy See formally established a diocese in the Michigan territory, which included all of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas east of the Mississippi River. When Michigan became a state in 1837, the boundary of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Detroit was redrawn to coincide with that of the state; the other dioceses were later carved out from the Detroit Diocese but remain part of the Ecclesiastical Province of Detroit. Several Native American religions have been practiced in Michigan. \nIn 2020, there were 1,492,732 adherents of Roman Catholicism. There's also a significant Independent Catholic presence in Metro Detroit, including the Ecumenical Catholic Church of Christ established by Archbishop Karl Rodig; the see of this church operates in a former Roman Catholic parish church.\nWith the introduction of Protestantism to the state, it began to form the largest collective Christian group. In 2010, the Association of Religion Data Archives reported the largest Protestant denomination was the United Methodist Church with 228,521 adherents; followed by the Lutheran Church\u2013Missouri Synod with 219,618, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America with 120,598 adherents. The Christian Reformed Church in North America had almost 100,000 members and more than 230 congregations in Michigan. The Reformed Church in America had 76,000 members and 154 congregations in the state. By the 2020 study, non- and inter-denominational Protestant churches formed the largest Protestant group in Michigan, numbering 508,904. The Lutheran Church\u2013Missouri Synod grew to become the second-largest single Christian denomination, and United Methodists declined to being the third-largest. The Lutheran Protestant tradition was introduced by German and Scandinavian immigrants. Altogether, Baptists numbered 321,581 between the National Missionary Baptists, National Baptists, American Baptists, Southern Baptists, National Baptists of America, Progressive National Baptists, and Full Gospel Baptists; black Baptists formed the largest constituency. In West Michigan, Dutch immigrants fled from the specter of religious persecution and famine in the Netherlands around 1850 and settled in and around what is now Holland, Michigan, establishing a \"colony\" on American soil that fervently held onto Calvinist doctrine that established a significant presence of Reformed churches.\nIn the same 2010 survey, Jewish adherents in the state of Michigan were estimated at 44,382, and Muslims at 120,351. The first Jewish synagogue in the state was Temple Beth El, founded by twelve German Jewish families in Detroit in 1850. Islam was introduced by immigrants from the Near East during the 20th century. Michigan is home to the largest mosque in North America, the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn. Battle Creek, Michigan, is also the birthplace of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which was founded on May 21, 1863.\nEconomy.\nIn 2022, 3,939,076 people in Michigan were employed at 227,870 establishments, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.\nThe U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis estimated Michigan's Q3 2024 gross state product to be $711.481 billion, ranking 14th out of the 50 states. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of November\u00a02024[ [update]], the state's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was estimated at 4.8%.\nProducts and services include automobiles, food products, information technology, aerospace, military equipment, furniture, and mining of copper and iron ore. Michigan is the third-largest grower of Christmas trees with of land dedicated to Christmas tree farming in 2007. The beverage Vernors Ginger Ale was invented in Michigan in 1866, sharing the title of oldest soft drink with Hires Root Beer. Faygo was founded in Detroit on November 4, 1907. Two of the top four pizza chains were founded in Michigan and are headquartered there: Domino's Pizza by Tom Monaghan and Little Caesars Pizza by Mike Ilitch. Michigan became the 24th right-to-work state in the U.S. in 2012, however, in 2023 this law was repealed.\nSince 2009, GM, Ford and Chrysler have managed a significant reorganization of their benefit funds structure after a volatile stock market which followed the September 11 attacks and early 2000s recession impacted their respective U.S. pension and benefit funds (OPEB). General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler reached agreements with the United Auto Workers Union to transfer the liabilities for their respective health care and benefit funds to a 501(c)(9) Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (VEBA). Manufacturing in the state grew 6.6% from 2001 to 2006, but the high speculative price of oil became a factor for the U.S. auto industry during the economic crisis of 2008 impacting industry revenues. In 2009, GM and Chrysler emerged from Chapter 11 restructurings with financing provided in part by the U.S. and Canadian governments. GM began its initial public offering (IPO) of stock in 2010. For 2010, the Big Three domestic automakers have reported significant profits indicating the beginning of rebound.\nAs of 2002[ [update]], Michigan ranked fourth in the U.S. in high-tech employment with 568,000 high-tech workers, which includes 70,000 in the automotive industry. Michigan typically ranks third or fourth in overall research and development (R&D) expenditures in the United States. Its research and development, which includes automotive, comprises a higher percentage of the state's overall gross domestic product than for any other U.S. state. The state is an important source of engineering job opportunities. The domestic auto industry accounts directly and indirectly for one of every ten jobs in the U.S.\nMichigan was second in the U.S. in 2004 for new corporate facilities and expansions. From 1997 to 2004, Michigan was the only state to top the 10,000 mark for the number of major new developments; however, the effects of the late 2000s recession have slowed the state's economy. In 2008, Michigan placed third in a site selection survey among the states for luring new business which measured capital investment and new job creation per one million population. In August 2009, Michigan and Detroit's auto industry received $1.36 B in grants from the U.S. Department of Energy for the manufacture of electric vehicle technologies which is expected to generate 6,800 immediate jobs and employ 40,000 in the state by 2020. From 2007 to 2009, Michigan ranked 3rd in the U.S. for new corporate facilities and expansions.\nAs leading research institutions, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and Wayne State University are important partners in the state's economy and its University Research Corridor. Michigan's public universities attract more than $1.5 B in research and development grants each year. The National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory is at Michigan State University. Michigan's workforce is well-educated and highly skilled, making it attractive to companies. It has the third highest number of engineering graduates nationally.\nDetroit Metropolitan Airport is one of the nation's most recently expanded and modernized airports with six major runways, and large aircraft maintenance facilities capable of servicing and repairing a Boeing 747 and is a major hub for Delta Air Lines. Michigan's schools and colleges rank among the nation's best. The state has maintained its early commitment to public education. The state's infrastructure gives it a competitive edge; Michigan has 38 deep water ports. In 2007, Bank of America announced that it would commit $25\u00a0billion to community development in Michigan following its acquisition of LaSalle Bank in Troy.\nMichigan led the nation in job creation improvement in 2010.\nOn December 20, 2019, Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed a package of bills into law effectively legalizing online gambling activities in Michigan, which allowed commercial and tribal casinos to apply for internet gaming licenses.\nTaxation.\nMichigan's personal income tax is a flat rate of 4.25%. In addition, 22\u00a0cities impose income taxes; rates are set at 1% for residents and 0.5% for non-residents in all but four cities. Michigan's state sales tax is 6%, though items such as food and medication are exempted. Property taxes are assessed on the local level, but every property owner's local assessment contributes six mills (a rate of $6 per $1000 of property value) to the statutory State Education Tax. Property taxes are appealable to local boards of review and need the approval of the local electorate to exceed millage rates prescribed by state law and local charters. In 2011, the state repealed its business tax and replaced it with a 6% corporate income tax which substantially reduced taxes on business. Article IX of the Constitution of the State of Michigan also provides limitations on how much the state can tax.\nA 6% use tax is levied on goods purchased outside the state (that are brought in and used in state), at parity with the sales tax. The use tax applies to internet sales/purchases from outside Michigan and is equivalent to the sales tax.\nAgriculture.\nA wide variety of commodity crops, fruits, and vegetables are grown in Michigan, making it second only to California among US states in the diversity of its agriculture. The state has 54,800 farms utilizing of land which sold $6.49\u00a0billion worth of products in 2010. The most valuable agricultural product is milk. Leading crops include corn, soybeans, flowers, wheat, sugar beets, and potatoes. Livestock in the state included 78,000 sheep, a million cattle, a million hogs, and more than three million chickens. Livestock products accounted for 38% of the value of agricultural products while crops accounted for the majority.\nMichigan is a leading grower of fruit in the US, including blueberries, tart cherries, apples, grapes, and peaches. \nMichigan produces 70 percent of the country's cherries. Most of these cherries are Montmorency cherries.\nPlums, pears, and strawberries are also grown in Michigan. These fruits are mainly grown in West Michigan due to the moderating effect of Lake Michigan on the climate. There is also significant fruit production, especially cherries, but also grapes, apples, and other fruits, in northwest Michigan along Lake Michigan. Michigan produces wines, beers and a multitude of processed food products. Kellogg's cereal is based in Battle Creek, Michigan and processes many locally grown foods. Thornapple Valley, Ball Park Franks, Koegel Meat Company, and Hebrew National sausage companies are all based in Michigan.\nMichigan is home to very fertile land in the Saginaw Valley and Thumb areas. Products grown there include corn, sugar beets, navy beans, and soybeans. Sugar beet harvesting usually begins the first of October. It takes the sugar factories about five months to process the 3.7\u00a0million tons of sugarbeets into 485,000 tons of pure, white sugar. Michigan's largest sugar refiner, Michigan Sugar Company is the largest east of the Mississippi River and the fourth largest in the nation. Michigan sugar brand names are Pioneer Sugar and the newly incorporated Big Chief Sugar. Potatoes are grown in Northern Michigan, and corn is dominant in Central Michigan. Alfalfa, cucumbers, and asparagus are also grown.\nTourism.\nAs of 2011, Michigan's tourists spent $17.2 billion per year in the state, supporting 193,000 tourism jobs. Michigan's tourism website ranks among the busiest in the nation. Destinations draw vacationers, hunters, and nature enthusiasts from across the United States and Canada. Michigan is over 50% forest land, much of it quite remote. The forests, lakes and thousands of miles of beaches are top attractions. Event tourism draws large numbers to occasions like the Tulip Time Festival and the National Cherry Festival.\nIn 2006, the Michigan State Board of Education mandated all public schools in the state hold their first day of school after Labor Day, in accordance with the new post-Labor Day school law. A survey found 70% of all tourism business comes directly from Michigan residents, and the Michigan Hotel, Motel, & Resort Association claimed the shorter summer between school years cut into the annual tourism season. However, a bill introduced in 2023 would cancel this requirement, allowing individual districts to decide when their school year should begin.\nTourism in metropolitan Detroit draws visitors to leading attractions, especially The Henry Ford, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Detroit Zoo, and to sports in Detroit. Other museums include the Detroit Historical Museum, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, museums in the Cranbrook Educational Community, and the Arab American National Museum. The metro area offers four major casinos, MGM Grand Detroit, Hollywood Casino, Motor City, and Caesars Windsor in Windsor, Ontario, Canada; moreover, Detroit is the largest American city and metropolitan region to offer casino resorts.\nHunting and fishing are significant industries in the state. Charter boats are based in many Great Lakes cities to fish for salmon, trout, walleye, and perch. Michigan ranks first in the nation in licensed hunters (over one million) who contribute $2 billion annually to its economy. More than three-quarters of a million hunters participate in white-tailed deer season alone. Many school districts in rural areas of Michigan cancel school on the opening day of firearm deer season, because of attendance concerns.\nMichigan's Department of Natural Resources manages the largest dedicated state forest system in the nation. The forest products industry and recreational users contribute $12 billion and 200,000 associated jobs annually to the state's economy. Public hiking and hunting access has also been secured in extensive commercial forests. The state has the highest number of golf courses and registered snowmobiles in the nation.\nThe state has numerous historical markers, which can themselves become the center of a tour. The Great Lakes Circle Tour is a designated scenic road system connecting all of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River.\nWith its position in relation to the Great Lakes and the countless ships that have foundered over the many years they have been used as a transport route for people and bulk cargo, Michigan is a world-class scuba diving destination. The Michigan Underwater Preserves are 11 underwater areas where wrecks are protected for the benefit of sport divers.\nCulture.\nArts.\nMusic.\nMichigan music is known for three music trends: early punk rock, Motown/soul music and techno music. Michigan musicians include Tally Hall, Bill Haley & His Comets, the Supremes, the Marvelettes, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye \"The Prince of Soul\", Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Aretha Franklin, Mary Wells, Tommy James and the Shondells, ? and the Mysterians, Al Green, The Spinners, Grand Funk Railroad, the Stooges, the MC5, the Knack, Madonna \"The Queen of Pop\", Bob Seger, Jack Scott, Ray Parker Jr., Jackie Wilson, Aaliyah, Eminem, Babytron, Kid Rock, Jack White and Meg White (the White Stripes), Big Sean, Alice Cooper, Greta Van Fleet, Mustard Plug, and Del Shannon.\nPerformance arts.\nMajor theaters in Michigan include the Fox Theatre, Music Hall, Gem Theatre, Masonic Temple Theatre, the Detroit Opera House, Fisher Theatre, The Fillmore Detroit, Saint Andrew's Hall, Majestic Theater, and Orchestra Hall.\nThe Nederlander Organization, the largest controller of Broadway productions in New York City, originated in Detroit.\nSports.\nMichigan's major-league sports teams include: Detroit Tigers baseball team, Detroit Lions football team, Detroit Red Wings ice hockey team, and the Detroit Pistons men's basketball team. All of Michigan's major league teams play in the Metro Detroit area. The state also has a professional second-tier (USL Championship) soccer team in Detroit City FC, which plays its home games at Keyworth Stadium in Hamtramck, Michigan.\nThe Pistons played at Detroit's Cobo Arena until 1978 and at the Pontiac Silverdome until 1988 when they moved into The Palace of Auburn Hills. In 2017, the team moved to the newly built Little Caesars Arena in downtown Detroit. The Detroit Lions played at Tiger Stadium in Detroit until 1974, then moved to the Pontiac Silverdome where they played for 27 years between 1975 and 2002 before moving to Ford Field in Detroit in 2002. The Detroit Tigers played at Tiger Stadium (formerly known as Navin Field and Briggs Stadium) from 1912 to 1999. In 2000, they moved to Comerica Park. The Red Wings played at Olympia Stadium before moving to Joe Louis Arena in 1979. They later moved to Little Caesars Arena to join the Pistons as tenants in 2017. Professional hockey got its start in 1903 in Houghton, Michigan, when the Portage Lakers were formed.\nThe Michigan International Speedway is the site of NASCAR races and Detroit was formerly the site of a Formula One World Championship Grand Prix race. From 1959 to 1961, Detroit Dragway hosted the NHRA's U.S. Nationals. Michigan is home to one of the major canoeing marathons: the Au Sable River Canoe Marathon. The Port Huron to Mackinac Boat Race is also a favorite.\nTwenty-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams was born in Saginaw. The 2011 World Champion for Women's Artistic Gymnastics, Jordyn Wieber is from DeWitt. Wieber was also a member of the gold medal team at the London Olympics in 2012.\nCollegiate sports in Michigan are popular in addition to professional sports. The state's two largest athletic programs are the Michigan Wolverines and Michigan State Spartans. They compete in the NCAA Big Ten Conference for most sports. The Michigan High School Athletic Association features around 300,000 participants.\nEducation.\nMichigan's education system serves 1.6 million K-12 students in public schools. More than 124,000 students attend private schools and an uncounted number are homeschooled under certain legal requirements. The public school system had a $14.5 billion budget in 2008\u201309. From 2009 to 2019, over 200 private schools in Michigan closed, partly due to competition from charter schools. In 2022, \"U.S. News & World Report\" rated three Michigan high schools among the nation's 100 best: City High Middle School (18th), the International Academy of Macomb (21st), and the International Academy (52nd). Washtenaw International High School ranked 107th.\nThe University of Michigan is Michigan's oldest higher educational institution and among the oldest research universities in the nation. It was founded in 1817, 20 years before Michigan Territory achieved statehood. Kalamazoo College is the state's oldest private liberal arts college, founded in 1833 by a group of Baptist ministers as the Michigan and Huron Institute. From 1840 to 1850, the college operated as the Kalamazoo Branch of the University of Michigan. Methodist settlers in Spring Arbor Township founded Albion College in 1835. It is the state's second-oldest private liberal arts college.\nMichigan Technological University is the first post-secondary institution in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, founded in 1885 as the Michigan Mining School. Eastern Michigan University was founded in 1849 as the Michigan State Normal School for the training of teachers. It was the nation's fourth-oldest normal school and the first U.S. normal school outside New England. In 1899, the Michigan State Normal School became the nation's first normal school to offer a four-year curriculum. Michigan State University was founded in 1855 as the nation's first agricultural college.\nThe Carnegie Foundation classifies eight of the state's institutions (Michigan State University, Michigan Technological University, Eastern Michigan University, Wayne State University, Central Michigan University, Western Michigan University, Oakland University, University of Michigan) as research universities.\nThe state of Michigan has six MD-granting medical schools: Central Michigan University College of Medicine, University of Michigan Medical School, Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine, Wayne State University School of Medicine, and Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine. Additionally, Michigan is home to five American Bar Association accredited law schools: Michigan State University College of Law, Cooley Law School, University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, University of Michigan Law School, and Wayne State University Law School.\nInfrastructure.\nEnergy.\nIn 2020, Michigan consumed 113,740- gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electrical energy and produced 116,700 (GWh) of electrical energy.\nCoal power is Michigan's leading source of electricity, producing roughly half its supply or 53,100 GWh of electrical energy (12.6 GW total capacity) in 2020. Although Michigan has no active coal mines, coal is easily moved from other states by train and across the Great Lakes by lake freighters. The lower price of natural gas is leading to the closure of most coal plants, with Consumer Energy planning to close all of its remaining coal plants by 2025; DTE plans to retire 2100MW of coal power by 2023. The coal-fired Monroe Power Plant in Monroe, on the western shore of Lake Erie, is the nation's 11th-largest electric plant, with a net capacity of 3,400 MW.\nNuclear power is also a significant source of electrical power in Michigan, producing roughly one-quarter of the state's supply or 28,000-gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electrical energy (4.3 GW total capacity) in 2020. The three active nuclear power plants supply Michigan with about 26% of its electricity. Donald C. Cook Nuclear Plant, just north of Bridgman, is the state's largest nuclear power plant, with a net capacity of 2,213 MW. The Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station is the second-largest, with a net capacity of 1,150 MW. It is also one of the two nuclear power plants in the Detroit metropolitan area (within a 50-mile radius of Detroit's city center), about halfway between Detroit and Toledo, Ohio, the other being the Davis\u2013Besse Nuclear Power Station, in Ottawa County, Ohio. The Palisades Nuclear Power Plant, south of South Haven, closed in May 2022. The Big Rock Point Nuclear Power Plant, Michigan's first nuclear power plant and the nation's fifth, was decommissioned in 1997.\nUtility companies were required to generate at least 10% of their energy from renewable sources by 2015, under Public Act 295 of 2008. In 2016, the legislature set another mandate to reach at least 12.5% renewable energy by 2019 and 15% by end of year 2021, which all utilities subject to the law successfully met. By the end of 2022, Michigan had at least 6 GW of renewable generating capacity, and was projected to have at least 8 GW by the end of 2026. Wind energy accounted for 59% of all Michigan energy credits in 2021.\nTransportation.\nInternational crossings.\nMichigan has nine international road crossings with Ontario, Canada:\nThe Gordie Howe International Bridge, a second international bridge between Detroit and Windsor, is under construction. It is expected to be completed in 2024.\nRailroads.\nMichigan is served by four Class I railroads: the Canadian National Railway, the Canadian Pacific Railway, CSX Transportation, and the Norfolk Southern Railway. These are augmented by several dozen short line railroads. The vast majority of rail service in Michigan is devoted to freight, with Amtrak and various scenic railroads the exceptions.\nThree Amtrak passenger rail routes serve the state. The Pere Marquette from Chicago to Grand Rapids, the Blue Water from Chicago to Port Huron, and the Wolverine from Chicago to Pontiac. There are plans for commuter rail for Detroit and its suburbs (see SEMCOG Commuter Rail).\nAirports.\nDetroit Metropolitan Airport in the western suburb of Romulus, was in 2010 the 16th busiest airfield in North America measured by passenger traffic. The Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids is the next busiest airport in the state, served by eight airlines to 23 destinations. Flint Bishop International Airport is the third largest airport in the state, served by four airlines to several primary hubs. Other frequently trafficked airports include Cherry Capital Airport, in Traverse City; Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport, serving the Kalamazoo and Battle Creek region; Capital Region International Airport, located outside of Lansing; and MBS International Airport serving the Midland, Bay City and Saginaw tri-city region. Additionally, smaller regional and local airports are located throughout the state including on several islands.\nGovernment.\nState government.\nMichigan is governed as a republic, with three branches of government: the executive branch consisting of the Governor of Michigan and the other independently elected constitutional officers; the legislative branch consisting of the House of Representatives and Senate; and the judicial branch. The Michigan Constitution allows for the direct participation of the electorate by statutory initiative and referendum, recall, and constitutional initiative and referral (Article II, \u00a7 9, defined as \"the power to propose laws and to enact and reject laws, called the initiative, and the power to approve or reject laws enacted by the legislature, called the referendum. The power of initiative extends only to laws which the legislature may enact under this constitution\"). Lansing is the state capital and is home to all three branches of state government.\nThe governor and the other state constitutional officers serve four-year terms and may be re-elected only once. The current governor is Gretchen Whitmer. Michigan has two official Governor's Residences; one is in Lansing, and the other is on Mackinac Island. The other constitutionally elected executive officers are the lieutenant governor, who is elected on a joint ticket with the governor; the secretary of state; and the attorney general. The lieutenant governor presides over the Senate (voting only in case of a tie) and is also a member of the cabinet. The secretary of state is the chief elections officer and is charged with running many licensure programs including motor vehicles, all of which are done through the branch offices of the secretary of state.\nThe Michigan Legislature consists of a 38-member Senate and 110-member House of Representatives. Members of both houses of the legislature are elected through first past the post elections by single-member electoral districts of near-equal population that often have boundaries which coincide with county and municipal lines. Senators serve four-year terms concurrent to those of the governor, while representatives serve two-year terms. The Michigan State Capitol was dedicated in 1879 and has hosted the executive and legislative branches of the state ever since.\nThe Michigan judiciary consists of two courts with primary jurisdiction (the Circuit Courts and the District Courts), one intermediate level appellate court (the Michigan Court of Appeals), and the Michigan Supreme Court. There are several administrative courts and specialized courts. District courts are trial courts of limited jurisdiction, handling most traffic violations, small claims, misdemeanors, and civil suits where the amount contended is below $25,000. District courts are often responsible for handling the preliminary examination and for setting bail in felony cases. District court judges are elected to terms of six years. In a few locations, municipal courts have been retained to the exclusion of the establishment of district courts. There are 57 circuit courts in the State of Michigan, which have original jurisdiction over all civil suits where the amount contended in the case exceeds $25,000 and all criminal cases involving felonies. Circuit courts are also the only trial courts in the State of Michigan which possess the power to issue equitable remedies. Circuit courts have appellate jurisdiction from district and municipal courts, as well as from decisions and decrees of state agencies. Most counties have their own circuit court, but sparsely populated counties often share them. Circuit court judges are elected to terms of six years. State appellate court judges are elected to terms of six years, but vacancies are filled by an appointment by the governor. There are four divisions of the Court of Appeals in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Lansing, and Marquette. Cases are heard by the Court of Appeals by panels of three judges, who examine the application of the law and not the facts of the case unless there has been grievous error pertaining to questions of fact. The Michigan Supreme Court consists of seven members who are elected on non-partisan ballots for staggered eight-year terms. The Supreme Court has original jurisdiction only in narrow circumstances but holds appellate jurisdiction over the entire state judicial system.\nLaw.\nMichigan has had four constitutions, the first of which was ratified on October5 and 6, 1835. There were also constitutions from 1850 and 1908, in addition to the current constitution from 1963. The current document has a preamble, 11 articles, and one section consisting of a schedule and temporary provisions. Michigan, like every U.S. state except Louisiana, has a common law legal system.\nPolitics.\nHaving been a Democratic-leaning state at the presidential level since the 1990s, Michigan has evolved into a swing state after Donald Trump won the state in 2016. He then won it again in 2024, after losing it by a slim 2.8% to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. Governors since the 1970s have alternated between the Democrats and Republicans, and statewide offices including attorney general, secretary of state, and senator have been held by members of both parties in varying proportion. Additionally, from 1994 until 2022, the governor-elect had always come from the party opposite the presidency. Following the 2024 elections, control of Michigan Legislature is split, with the Democratic Party having a slim majority of two seats in the Senate while the Republican Party holds a 58 seat majority in the House. The state's congressional delegation is commonly split, with one party or the other typically holding a narrow majority; as of 2025 Republicans have a 7-6 majority.\nMichigan was the home of Gerald Ford, the 38th president of the United States. Born in Nebraska, he moved as an infant to Grand Rapids. The Gerald R. Ford Museum is in Grand Rapids, and the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library is on the campus of his alma mater, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.\nIn a 2020 study, Michigan was ranked as the 13th easiest state for citizens to vote in. In 2022, Michigan voters passed an amendment recognising abortion and contraceptive rights within the state's constitution.\nState symbols and nicknames.\nMichigan is traditionally known as \"The Wolverine State\", and the University of Michigan uses the wolverine as its mascot. The association is well and long established: for example, many Detroiters volunteered to fight during the American Civil War and George Armstrong Custer, who led the Michigan Brigade, called them the \"Wolverines\". The origins of this association are obscure; it may derive from a busy trade in wolverine furs in Sault Ste. Marie in the 18th century or may recall a disparagement intended to compare early settlers in Michigan with the vicious mammal. Wolverines are, however, extremely rare in Michigan. A sighting in February 2004 near Ubly was the first confirmed sighting in Michigan in 200 years. Another wolverine was found dead in 2010.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["1107288", "18859"], "permutation_1": ["18859", "1107288"], "permutation_2": ["18859", "1107288"], "permutation_3": ["18859", "1107288"]}
{"id": "2hop__829069_386543", "docs_added": {"4172108": "Benefactor (album)\nBenefactor is the second studio album by the American band Romeo Void, released in 1982. It was released on CD in 2006 by Wounded Bird Records, with their \"Never Say Never\" EP as four bonus tracks. The version of the song \"Never Say Never\" is a shorter, \"clean\" edit suitable for general radio broadcast.\nCritical reception.\n\"The New York Times\" wrote that \"too much of \"Benefactor\" suffers from Miss Iyall's artsy overwriting... And the feverishly clever arrangements can't quite disguise the band's lack of strong melodies.\" \"The Boston Phoenix\" opined that \"As scrambled as its material gets, \"Benefactor\" is saved by the struggle this band brings to their rock \u2018n\u2019 roll \u2014 their conviction that escape routes from lovelessness are worth fighting for, worth opening up for the audience.\"\nCharts.\nAlbum\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "639500": "Romeo Void\nAmerican rock band\nRomeo Void was an American new wave/post punk band from San Francisco, California, formed in 1979. The band primarily consisted of saxophonist Benjamin Bossi, vocalist Debora Iyall, guitarist Peter Woods, and bassist Frank Zincavage. The band went through four drummers, starting with Jay Derrah and ending with Aaron Smith. The band released three albums, \"It's a Condition\", \"Benefactor\" and \"Instincts\", along with one EP. They are best known for the songs \"Never Say Never\" and \"A Girl in Trouble (Is a Temporary Thing)\"; the latter became a Top 40 pop single.\nThe band was started at the San Francisco Art Institute by Iyall and Zincavage. They released a single on the recently formed 415 Records before recording their debut album, which has been deemed a \"masterpiece of American post-punk\". The success of their second release, a four-song EP titled \"Never Say Never\" resulted in a distribution deal with Columbia Records. The band continued to release music and tour until they broke up in 1985. The members have reunited briefly over the years. Iyall has continued to pursue music as a side project. Iyall has garnered acclaim as a skilled lyricist who explores themes like sexuality and alienation from a female perspective with \"searing imagery\".\nHistory.\n1979: Formation.\nRomeo Void formed at the San Francisco Art Institute in February 1979. Vocalist Debora Iyall occasionally visited the Bay Area to see Patti Smith perform. She decided to pursue an art education after reading a fortune cookie. \"It was in the late '70s at the Indochina Friendship Booth at the annual Fourth of July streetfair in Eureka, California,\" she said. \"I got a fortune cookie that said 'Art is your fate, don't debate.' That next January, I was enrolled in an art school in San Francisco.\" She began frequenting the Mabuhay Gardens, a popular nightclub, to see local alternative rock groups like The Nuns, the Mutants, Crime, and the Avengers. She also formed the Mummers and Poppers, a punk parody band that covered 1960s tunes with guitarist Peter Woods, Charles Hagan and drummer Jay Derrah, . Iyall was originally hesitant to perform because she was overweight: \"After seeing Patti Smith, I still had it in my mind that you had to be skinny to be up there [on stage], but after going to the Mabuhay [...] you just do whatever you want, be whoever you want, just make it happen.\"\nBassist Frank Zincavage met Iyall at the SF Art Institute; the two hit it off and discussed putting a band together. They formed one with Woods and Derrah a few weeks later, drawing inspiration from the \"burgeoning local punk and post-punk scenes\". Iyall recruited Woods because she enjoyed playing with him in the Mommers and Poppers. \"[It] seemed only natural that we invite Peter Woods to join us [... He] played clean and was a natural on rhythm guitar.\" Romeo Void officially formed on Valentine's Day in 1979. According to Iyall, the name Romeo Void referred to \"a lack of romance\" and came to mind after they saw a local magazine with the headline \"Why single women can't get laid in San Francisco.\" The name \"means there are not romantic notions here \u2014 and there shouldn't be,\" Iyall told an interviewer: \"We are about reality, not the myths created by other artists.\"\nThe band practiced in Iyall's flat in the Mission District. It was decided that the group would embrace punk ideals despite the possibility that they become associated with the new wave movement. \"Even though I was going to the [Mabuhay Gardens] so much, I also had criticisms: Everyone was leaning against the wall wearing black,\" Iyall said. \"I guess we were considered new wave, but for me Romeo Void was a reaction against the regimentation of everyone having to be bleached blond and everything being about despair and no future, when I thought the do-it-yourself thing should encompass all the different kinds of emotions, and all the different colors. [...] I was proud of being American Indian, so I purposely never bleached my hair blond.\"\n1980\u20131982: \"It's a Condition\", \"Benefactor\", and mainstream success.\nThe band became busy playing shows at clubs and warehouses around San Francisco, and quickly became popular. Saxophonist Benjamin Bossi was added to the lineup as an \"accident\" when Iyall met him while he worked in the New York City Deli on Market Street in San Francisco. The group released their first single, \"White Sweater\", which consisted of the title track and a cover of Jerry Lordan's popular instrumental composition \"Apache\", in February 1981 on a recently founded local label called 415 Records. They worked on the recording of their debut album, \"It's a Condition\", with producer David Kahne. Before recording began, Derrah left the band and was replaced by John \"Stench\" Hanes, who had previously played with Pearl Harbor and the Explosions. Romeo Void's debut was critically acclaimed upon its release through 415 in July 1981, and introduced Romeo Void's \"unique blend of jazz, funk, rock and confrontational poetry\". AllMusic writer Stewart Mason later heralded it as one of the \"masterpieces of American post-punk\". Indie labels were enthusiastic with promotions and the band embarked on several nationwide tours. Eventually Hanes left the band, leaving Larry Carter to fill the drummer position.\nThe sudden surge in popularity was disorienting to Iyall. \"It was frightening: we played a college in Santa Barbara, and there were all these blond people crowding the stage, and I thought 'These are the people who hated me in high school!' When you grow up being 'outside' \u2013 because I wasn't white, and I was fat, and always a bit of a free thinker \u2013 it was strange. It was like, 'uh-oh, I must be doing something wrong \u2013 they like me!'\" Highly successful mainstream artists like Ann Wilson and Ric Ocasek were eager to meet the band. Ocasek extended an invitation to collaborate at his Syncro Sound recording studio in Boston. The recording sessions in Boston resulted in the \"Never Say Never\" EP in January 1982. The title track became (arguably) their best-known song and has remained synonymous with the band ever since. The song was also featured in the 1984 romantic teen drama \"Reckless\". Additionally, the success of the single directly led to 415 Records signing a deal with Columbia Records, which elevated the indie label's roster to major-label status. Romeo Void released their second album, entitled \"Benefactor\", in November 1982. The album appeared at No.\u00a0119 on the \"Billboard\" 200. \"Benefactor\" was noticeably more commercial sounding than previous endeavors; the music was made more danceable and swearing was removed on the song \"Never Say Never\". The different approach in the sound resulted in comparisons to Blondie, which AllMusic writer William Ruhlmann suggested was a deliberate attempt by Columbia. Iyall stated that there was more pressure to write sexually laced lyrics for \"Benefactor\": \"I do like to be provocative, and I definitely have access to my sexuality, and as a topic I find it ripe, but I wasn't ever going to be a sex-pot diva, so that was kind of odd.\" She also said there was pressure to produce more singles.\n1983\u2013present: \"Instincts\", break-up, and post-band endeavors.\nA third and final album was again helmed by David Kahne, which AllMusic writer Stewart Mason speculated was a \"reaction against the more commercial sound of \"Benefactor\". By this time, Carter had been replaced by veteran session drummer Aaron Smith. \"Instincts\" was released in October 1984, debuted at No.\u00a068 on the Billboard 200, and proved to be the band's best-selling album. It also launched their most successful single, \"A Girl in Trouble (Is a Temporary Thing),\" which broke the Billboard Top 40 and peaked at No.\u00a035. Critical reactions were positive. Despite being the band's most successful effort to date, Columbia pulled the band's promotional support while on a nationwide tour. \"The very next town we got to after they made that decision, there wasn't an A&R person there,\" said Iyall. \"[There] was no local person there, there were no interviews and in-stores arranged as they had been. All that just ground to a halt.\" The band returned to San Francisco and soon broke up. Constant touring has been cited by Iyall as the primary reason for the break-up. \"You get tired of each other, and you get intolerant of being uncomfortable and away from your family and your friends.\" According to a VH1 reunion episode, the issue of Iyall's weight was the reason for the label dropping them. In 2003, Iyall agreed with this claim: \"Howie sold us from 415 to Columbia Records, and they were like 'Who's this fat chick?' They decided that was as far as it was going to get, and pulled their support.\" \"Crawdaddy!\" writer Denise Sullivan stated that the label spoke to Iyall about losing weight, but she subsequently refused. In 2010, Iyall declined to discuss the issue, but added that she may not be taking full responsibility in the matter.\nIyall released a solo album entitled \"Strange Language\" with former band members Bossi and Smith in 1986. Afterward she pursued a career as an art teacher. The band reunited briefly for a live performance in 1993. In 2004, Romeo Void was featured on an episode of VH1's \"Bands Reunited\". Bossi had sustained too much hearing damage over the years and was unable to perform, although he did meet up with the band again and watched the reunion performance from an adjacent room. Iyall has continued to dabble in music related projects and events. \"I still like to sing and I still like to perform,\" she said. In 2003 she was involved in a musical project called Knife in Water. She began collaborating with Peter Dunne, who was known as Peter Bilt when he played guitar for Pearl Harbor and the Explosions. Iyall and Dunne performed at a support benefit for \"Crawdaddy!\" founder Paul Williams in June 2009, and performed at a concert honoring 415 Records later that September. They released an album entitled \"Stay Strong\" in 2010. \nDrummer Larry Carter died in August of 2021, from what is thought to be heart complications. Saxophonist Benjamin Bossi died of complications from Alzheimer's disease on December 13, 2022, at the age of 69.\nMusic.\nRomeo Void has generally been classified as a new wave or post-punk band. Some critics have noted dance elements in the music. According to Stewart Mason, writing for AllMusic, \"[The] band's muscular blend of Joy Division's atmospherics and the Gang of Four's rattling momentum, with Benjamin Bossi's splattering free jazz saxophone coloring everything, made Romeo Void one of the strongest of the American post-punk bands. The \"St. Petersburg Times\" wrote that they \"had no trouble creating a signature sound for [themselves with a] scratchy guitar, soulful sax, [and] tight, precise drums.\" \"The New York Times\" stated that they sounded like \"an art-school band, with its textural complexity [and] touches of jazz and funk\" Saxophone player Benjamin Bossi has been observed as the ingredient that \"set the band apart\" and showed a \"talent for both improvisation and arrangement.\" Alan Niester, writing for \"The Globe and Mail\", said that he weaved \"in and out [...] like a snake charmer\" and reminded him of Andy Mackay, a saxophonist who played with Roxy Music.\nLiam Lacey, also writing for \"The Globe and Mail\", described Iyall's voice as \"sultry [and] sexy\", while Mason called it \"powerful\". Her style has sometimes been compared to Chrissie Hynde, vocalist for the Pretenders. Richard Harrington of \"The Washington Post\" acknowledged the similarity, but also noted the influence of other singers in \"Never Say Never\" where Iyall mixed the \"aggressive bitchiness of [Hynde], the coy confrontational tactics of Patty Donahue of the Waitresses and the slack sensuality of Debbie Harry of the earliest Blondie.\" Iyall used to find the comparison annoying, but eventually warmed to it: \"When people said I sounded like her, I'd say, 'Oh yeah, thanks a lot.' But this year, I've fallen in love with \"Learning To Crawl\" so now I don't care if people want to make comparisons.\" After a live show in 1982, Niester contended that she was the weakest part of the group and had the \"vocal range of an automobile horn\". \"Billboard\" writer Kathy Gillis wrote after a concert two years later that Iyall exhibited a \"dramatic range that, while not extreme in either direction, was touching.\"\nPatti Smith had a great influence on Iyall. \"[She was] someone who was both a rock singer and a poet,\" she said. \"She combined things I was interested in. Plus, she wasn't a trumped-up sex symbol. She was herself on stage. That appealed to me. It looked like something I could do. You didn't have to look like all the other singers.\" Iyall was highly critical of the music of the day and found inspiration in other mediums. \"I hate rock and roll right now. It's turned into some new kind of stupid religion... I'd rather listen to Billie Holiday, maybe Tom Waits. Actually, I'll admit I like The Bangles \u2013 they have a great sound. But I'd just as soon read novels or paint pictures as listen to music. I love language \u2013 plain speech, used in an enigmatic, subliminal way; I'm not much tied to the literal.\"\nLyrics.\nIyall was observed by \"Mother Jones\" to be among a new group of female fronted rock bands that displayed a \"tough, wry, street-wise, [and] cynical\" attitude and sought to redefine the role of women in rock music. She developed a sizable following for her writing that covered topics like \"frustrated desire [and] sexually motivated rage\" from a female perspective. Critics praised her lyrics for their \"searing imagery\", \"seething poetics\", and \"darkly intelligent lyrics\" \"My approach was always that I had something to say, I had a point of view,\" Iyall said, commenting on her outspokeness. \"I remember seeing Penelope from the Avengers at the Mabuhay Gardens and thinking, I can do that. I have something to say.\"\nRomeo Void's best known song is \"Never Say Never\", which contains the famous line \"I might like you better if we slept together.\" AllMusic writer Heather Phares has argued that Iyall's \"teasing, existential musings [...] predated and predicted the aloof yet frank sexuality of early- and mid-'90s artists such as Elastica and Liz Phair\". Phares concluded that the song was \"a subversive, influential classic\" and \"one of new wave's most distinctive and innovative moments. \" The song has been covered by many artists, among them are Queens of the Stone Age, Amanda Blank and Xiu Xiu. The song \"A Girl in Trouble (Is a Temporary Thing)\", their highest-charting single, was reportedly written as a response to Michael Jackson's hit song \"Billie Jean\", but can also be seen as a tribute to women who have experienced traumatizing events. Iyall also wrote songs that touched on themes like social alienation (\"Undercover Kept\") and generation gaps (\"Chinatown\").\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "34417401": "The Shivers (New York City)\nAmerican musical group\nThe Shivers is a musical group formed in 2001 in New York City, led by singer, primary songwriter and only consistent member Keith Zarriello. To date, the only other regular member of the band was Joanne Schornikow, who played keyboards and sang in the band at most performances between 2009 and 2012.\nHistory.\nThe Shivers' first record, \"The Shakes\", was recorded at Context Studios in Brooklyn. It was released independently and sold at shows, and is now out of print. Shortly thereafter, Erdos left the band, and Zarriello was left to continue on alone playing New York City clubs for the next few years, both solo and with a revolving cast of musicians.\nIn 2004, Zarriello was spotted by touring musician Red Hunter, who offered to take him on the road and release an album on his label/collective, Whiskey and Apples. The album, \"CHARADES\", released in October 2004 (produced by Zarriello and Brian \"Boots\" Factor) received little critical attention but began to develop The Shivers a following. The track \"Beauty\" has gone on, in subsequent years, to receive good reviews on sites such as \"Pitchfork\", who said Zarriello's voice carried a \"mesmerizing eroticism\", and was a subject of a column in \"The Guardian\" and \"Spin\".\nWhile Zarriello was living in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, he was contacted by a former high school classmate, Sheldon Roberts, who had discovered The Shivers' music through a friend and proposed releasing their next album on a label he and friends were forming, Outerborough Records. Zarriello agreed and took measures to return to the United States.\nFive-piece band: 2004\u20132008.\nBack in New York City, Zarriello started performing again and sending \"CHARADES\" to college radio stations around the country. At one station, Fordham University's WFUV, the album was discovered in the garbage can by young intern/DJ, Benham Jones, who reached out to Zarriello at a Tuesday night show at Arlene's Grocery. He offered Zarriello a gig at Fordham and the two became friends. Zarriello, now having his deal with Outerborough, gathered musicians and reached out to Jones to play bass. Jones agreed and helped the band record the album secretly overnight in the studios of WFUV. The album featured William Martina on cello, Matthew Jahn on guitar, Benham Jones on bass, and Alex Saltz and Danny Fischer on drums. Also featured on one track was visiting Australian pianist, Joanne Schornikow.\nThe album, \"Phone Calls\", released in early 2006. The Shivers continued as a five-piece, including Schornikow on piano and new drummer, Evan Pazner on drums. Schornikow, having an expiring visa, was forced to return to Australia. She was, however, sold on The Shivers, and begun plans to return to the US on an artist's visa with the primary goal of joining The Shivers. Zarriello and Schornikow kept in touch via the mail, sending each other packages and tapes. The five-piece band played the SXSW music festival in 2007.\nIn 2008, Zarriello decided to fund the production of the next Shivers album himself. Using money he had earned as a real estate agent, Zarriello hooked up with engineer Dan Hewitt and the band recorded the album \"Beaks To The Moon\" in four days at the now defunct LoHo Studios on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The album was released by the band via their own label in April 2008. Once again, the critics largely ignored the release with the growing independent critics/blogs, like \"Quiet Color\" championing it.\nAs a duo: 2008\u20132012.\nFrustrated by a lack of commercial success and what he felt was an unacceptable level of commitment to the band, Zarriello dismissed all the band members except Schornikow, and the two continued as a duo. The Shivers had been in talks with Hewitt about releasing a DIY record on his micro-indie, State Capital Records. The label and the band would split all costs and profits. The album, \"In The Morning\", was recorded on a 4-track tape recorder. It was the rawest, most analog/DIY album The Shivers had made since \"CHARADES\" and featured a more experimental duo sound. Again it did very little commercially and was primarily used as something to sell while on tour. The Shivers bought out Hewitt and now solely own the record.\nThe Shivers continued on as a duo doing national tours and short stints overseas, and decided to independently record an album. The band used their own funds from day jobs and donations from their following decided to record their next album at all analog studio, Analogue Catalogue outside of Manchester, England.\nThe album, \"More\", was recorded by Producer Julie McLarnon and assisted by Rob Ferrier in five days to 2\" inch tape. No computers were used. Tom Raysmith played drums. Semay Wu played cello and Jon Thorne played bass. Andrew Southern (bass) and Ryan Thornton (drums) were the rhythm section on the track \"Love Is In The Air\". The album was released in May 2011 on Silence Breaks Records (US). It was the most regularly released album The Shivers had to that time, and the first that included a proper public relations campaign. The album gained them some further recognition and a wider audience.\nMusician and label owner Johnny Lynch The Pictish Trail from Scotland had discovered \"In The Morning\" and decided to release \"More\" on his Fence Records in the UK in September 2011. The Shivers subsequently toured the UK in late fall of 2011 including performing a sold-out show in London and recording a session for the BBC Radio 1's Rob Da Bank show at Maida Vale Studios. Schornikow has also continued her own career alongside her work with the band, and undertook a small club tour of the U.K with New Yorker Scott Rudd in the summer of 2012.\n\"Forever Is A Word\": 2015\u2013present.\nThe Shivers latest album \"Forever Is A Word\" was self-released on February 14, 2015. The band is currently working on a new full-length album and playing shows around New York City.\nIn popular culture.\nIn May 2013, the song \"Beauty\" was sung by wedding guests at actor Aaron Paul's wedding. The band is featured in Matthew Bonifacio's film \"The Quitter\". The Shivers music appears in other films such as Short Term 12, The Benefactor and Horns.\nReferences.\nNotes\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1792456": "I Killed the Prom Queen\nAustralian metalcore band\nI Killed the Prom Queen were an Australian metalcore band from Adelaide, formed in 2001. They were prominent in the Australian live music scene and toured the US, Japan and Europe several times. They issued three studio albums: \"When Goodbye Means Forever...\" (2003), \"Music for the Recently Deceased\" (2006) and \"Beloved\" (2014). The latter two albums peaked at #27 and #6 on the ARIA Albums Chart respectively.\nThe band initially split up in April 2007 due to the inability to find a permanent vocalist. They reformed with vocalist Michael Crafter to play a farewell tour in mid-2008 and released a live album and DVD, \"Sleepless Nights and City Lights\", which peaked at #48 in Australia. In May 2011 the band reformed with new vocalist Jamie Hope and performed on the Destroy Music Tour. They subsequently released their third studio album Beloved in February 2014.\nHistory.\nFormation and \"Choose to Love, Live or Die\", Stacy's departure (2001\u20132002).\nI Killed the Prom Queen formed in Adelaide, South Australia in 2001, with the original line-up featuring Ben Engel on bass guitar, Simon O'Gorman on guitar, JJ Peters (Josef John W. Peters) on drums, Lee Stacy on vocals and Jona Weinhofen on guitar. Peters, Weinhofen and bass guitarist Leaton Rose had previously been members of the local band Cur. In 2000 Weinhofen left Cur to form The Fall of Troy with vocalist Michael Crafter, before later forming I Killed the Prom Queen.\nOriginally named The Rubik's Equation, then briefly Child Left Burning, Michael Crafter joined to share lead vocals and soon after Rose replaced Engel on bass guitar. The band's first performance was at the Dom Polski Centre in Adelaide, October 21, 2001. The band was influenced by late 1990s hardcore bands Poison the Well, Converge, Hatebreed, and Earth Crisis and Swedish melodic death metal groups like At the Gates, Soilwork and In Flames.\nIn late 2001 and early 2002, the group recorded the four-track \"Choose to Love, Live or Die\" EP, which was produced by Paul Degasperi and the band; with additional guitar supplied by Cain Kapetanakis. Five songs were recorded during the sessions, but a computer glitch caused the fifth to be erased. In 2002, it was issued by 618 Recordings, then re-released by Final Prayer Records and distributed by Missing Link Records. O'Gorman left after the release to join Day of Contempt and he was replaced by guitarist Kevin Cameron in late 2002. \"Choose to Love, Live or Die\" was the only release to include both Lee Stacey's vocals and the higher-pitched vocals by Crafter, as Stacy would depart from the band later that year. The tracks were later re-recorded for their third EP, \"Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You\" (2005).\nSplit CD with Parkway Drive and \"When Goodbye Means Forever\" (2003\u20132005).\nIn March 2003, Rose departed (he later joined The Hot Lies) and Sean Kennedy took his place. The new lineup then recorded the \"Homicide\" demo, which appeared on \"Blunt Magazine\"'s \"Harder Core than You\" compilation. While in Byron Bay Crafter saw the first performance by local metalcore band Parkway Drive and was so impressed that he invited the group to record a split CD with his band. In May, Final Prayer Records issued the \"\" split EP, with two tracks by I Killed the Prom Queen (\"Homicide Documentaries\" and \"Death Certificate for a Beauty Queen\") and two by Parkway Drive.\nIn September, the line-up of Cameron, Crafter, Kennedy, Peters and Weinhofen recorded their debut studio album \"When Goodbye Means Forever...\" for Sydney hardcore label Resist Records, which was released in December. It was produced by Dan Jones, Anj and the group. In early 2004, they toured Australia with Evergreen Terrace, Give Up the Ghost, and Boysetsfire. The album was released in the US by Eulogy Recordings in March, and extensive US touring followed. Crafter said that when entering Hawaii, \"Three of us got questioned. They were asking us what jails we had been in, what our parents did and what our parents thought of our tattoos\".\nThe band spent the coming months supporting Caliban, Evergreen Terrace, It Dies Today, Lamb of God, Silverstein, Bleeding Through, The Red Chord, Fear Before the March of Flames, Until the End, The Warriors, Between the Buried and Me, and On Broken Wings over four months. On March 7, 2005, the band released their third EP, \"Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You\". The recording featured reworked versions of the band's older songs and \"To Be Sleeping While Still Standing\". The latter track was written by The Fall of Troy (not to be confused with the US band of the same name), an earlier band including Crafter and Weinhofen, which only played two shows before breaking up.\n\"Music for the Recently Deceased\" (2005\u20132007).\nIn August 2005, I Killed the Prom Queen flew to Sweden to record their follow-up album, \"Music for the Recently Deceased\". By late 2005, they had completed recording the album but in January 2006 Crafter was fired. Instead of releasing the album as it was, they decided to recruit a new vocalist and replace Crafter's tracks. They recruited Ed Butcher from UK band The Hunt for Ida Wave. New lyrics were written by Cameron and Butcher, while some lyrics that the whole band had contributed during the Crafter sessions were retained. \"Music for the Recently Deceased\" was produced by Fredrik Nordstr\u00f6m, whose other credits included Dimmu Borgir, Darkest Hour, At the Gates and In Flames, and by Patrik J. Sten.\nThe album was released on 31 July 2006 by Stomp Entertainment and peaked in the top\u00a030 on the ARIA Albums Chart. The Australian tour in support of the album had over 50 concert dates in three months, from north Western Australia to the southern states and then along the east coast to Cairns. They followed with a support slot on a tour for US groups Killswitch Engage and Lamb of God. The Sydney show brought 3,500 patrons to Luna Park, where I Killed the Prom Queen also played at the annual Come Together Music Festival. Shortly afterward Metal Blade released the album in the US, coinciding with the group's appearance at the New England Metal and Hardcore Festival. Returning to Australia after their third tour of the US in three years, the group toured with The Haunted and Exodus and in December, before headlining the Metal for the Brain festival.\nBreak-up and Say Goodbye Tour (2007\u20132008).\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"At the time we were without a permanent vocalist and were in a strange place. Jona was offered the opportunity to join Bleeding Through and we didn't want to continue the band without him, so we decided to call it a day.\"\nJJ Peters in an interview in 2011.\nIn January 2007 Butcher left the band, which he attributed to \"personal reasons\". Weinhofen later stated that limited touring markets for the band at the time, and the accompanying financial issues, also put pressure on Butcher and the band during this period. After returning to the UK, Butcher fronted UK metalcore band Eternal Lord from 2007 to 2008. Tyrone Ross from Mourning Tide subsequently filled in as the vocalist for I Killed the Prom Queen for a Japanese tour. Colin Jeffs of Bendigo band Heavenslost and Aversions Crown then provided vocals on a European tour with Bleeding Through, All Shall Perish and Caliban.\nIn April 2007, I Killed the Prom Queen announced their breakup, citing both an inability to find a permanent vocalist and Weinhofen's decision to join Bleeding Through. Soon after a final Australian tour with Crafter on vocals was arranged for 2008.\nIn May 2008, Stomp re-issued \"Music For The Recently Deceased\" in a limited tour edition \u2013 of 5,000 hand-numbered copies \u2013 for the Say Goodbye Tour. The release included a cardboard slipcase, two live tracks and four tracks with Crafter's vocals taken from the original album recording. The group toured in May and June, with most of the 18 shows selling out. The support acts were Bring Me the Horizon, The Red Shore, The Ghost Inside and local acts from each city. A live album and DVD, \"Sleepless Nights and City Lights\", was recorded at their Adelaide performance; it was released on 22 November 2008 and peaked in the top\u00a050. I Killed the Prom Queen played what was meant to be their final show in Brisbane on 8 June 2008.\nHiatus (2008\u20132011).\nAfter the Say Goodbye tour Crafter formed Melbourne hardcore band Confession. He also previously did stints as the vocalist for Carpathian (2006\u20132007) and Bury Your Dead (2007). He also appeared as a contestant on reality TV show \"Big Brother\" in 2008.\nWeinhofen departed Bleeding Through in 2009 and joined Bring Me the Horizon the same year. He acted as Bring Me the Horizon's rhythm guitarist, keyboardist, programmer and backing vocalist until January 2013, at which point the band's manager notified him that the band had kicked him out. He also managed Australian deathcore act The Red Shore.\nKevin Cameron formed the progressive metalcore band In Trenches with vocalist Ben Coyte. He also acted as a touring musician for several other groups. Peters formed and fronted hardcore project Deez Nuts and was one half of the hip-hop duo Grips & Tonic, alongside New Zealand rapper Louie Knuxx. Kennedy played bass for Deez Nuts on Australian and international tours.\nReformation, \"Beloved\" and second hiatus (2011\u20132017).\nIn March 2011 I Killed the Prom Queen announced their reunion and an upcoming Australian tour in May with The Amity Affliction, Deez Nuts, and Of Mice & Men. Jamie Hope (Who was previously the vocalist of The Red Shore) joined the band as their new permanent vocalist. At the time, Weinhofen was not planning to leave Bring Me the Horizon and intended to remain in both groups. Likewise Peters continued his work with Deez Nuts.\nIn January 2012 Weinhofen confirmed that the band was writing their third studio album and said they were entering the studio at the end of the year with a tentative release date for the album in early 2013. However, in March 2013 the band announced on Facebook that the planned release date had been pushed back to early 2014.\nThe band played three UK dates in July. These three shows were around a similar time the band was planning to perform at the 2012 Sonisphere festival however, the festival was cancelled. After the cancellation, the band incorporated the UK shows into a 17-date European tour across eleven countries. Jona Weinhofen said touring in Europe was special for the band as they have a very strong fanbase there.\nOn 21 August 2012, I Killed the Prom Queen released new song \"Memento Vivere\" on YouTube. The accompanying live footage was taken from the recent European tour. The release was their first new song in six years, and the first song with Hope on vocals.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"JJ Peters is my oldest & closest friend in the entire world. We went to high school together, we'e played together in bands prior to IKTPQ and I believe we will continue to work together in the future. Its sad to think that he will no longer be a part of IKTPQ but I know he's going to continue to kill it with DN and anything else musical that he touches.\"\nJona Weinhofen on JJ Peters' departure from the band\nThe band supported Parkway Drive on the Australian and New Zealand legs of the \"Atlas Tour\" in December 2012. In January 2013, Weinhofen departed Bring Me The Horizon, and shortly after his departure he confirmed that Prom Queen would become a full-time band.\nOn 24 March 2013 the band announced on Facebook that JJ Peters had left the band amicably to focus on his other project Deez Nuts. He was replaced by Shane O'Brien, formerly of Confession and Buried In"}, "descending_order": ["4172108", "34417401", "1792456", "639500"], "permutation_1": ["4172108", "1792456", "639500", "34417401"], "permutation_2": ["34417401", "639500", "1792456", "4172108"], "permutation_3": ["1792456", "34417401", "4172108", "639500"]}
{"id": "2hop__846069_58115", "docs_added": {"29352479": "Felt Good on My Lips\n\"Felt Good on My Lips\" is a song written by Brett Beavers, Jim Beavers, Brett Warren and Brad Warren, and was recorded by American country music singer Tim McGraw. It was released in September 2010 as the first single from his compilation album \"Number One Hits\", and has since become McGraw's 24th Number One hit on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart. The song is also included on his 2012 release \"Emotional Traffic\".\nBackground and writing.\nSongwriter Brett Beavers wrote \"Felt Good on My Lips\" with his brother, Jim Beavers, as well as Brett Warren and Brad Warren (also known as The Warren Brothers). In an interview with The Boot, Jim said that Brett provided the idea of writing with The Warren Brothers, and Brett Warren based the song around a bass guitar riff that Jim played.\nCritical reception.\nStephen M. Deusner of Engine 145 gave the song a thumbs-down. He thought that the verses were well written and said that McGraw \"ably conveys the excitement of attraction\" on them, but criticized the chorus. Matt Bjorke of Roughstock gave it three and a half stars and thought that the chorus is \"catchy with repeatable lyrics and a progressive melody.\" Bjorke calls it one of McGraw's best single in the last couple of years. Kevin John Coyne of Country Universe gave it a C\u2212, saying that \"the production sank this record before the song had any chance to win me over. The whole thing has the vibe of a long-lost demo being spruced up for a posthumous cash-in.\" Coyne also states that McGraw's voice is so processed it is difficult to tell it is him singing.\nRelease.\n\"Felt Good on My Lips\" was released to radio in September 2010. It is included on a compilation album titled \"Number One Hits\", which comprises all of McGraw's number-one singles as well as \"Felt Good on My Lips\" and a remix of \"Indian Outlaw\".\nChart performance.\nThe song debuted at number 33 on the Hot Country Songs charts for the week ending October 9, 2010. It is the second-highest debuting single of his career, behind only \"Grown Men Don't Cry\", which entered the same chart at number 30. It reached Number 1 on the country chart for the week ending January 8, 2011, and stayed at that position for three consistent weeks. It also debuted at number 26 on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart for the week of November 20, 2010, number 36 on Canadian Hot 100 chart for the week of November 20, 2010 and number 30 on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Adult Contemporary chart for the week of February 19, 2011.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "525336": "Tim McGraw\nAmerican country singer and actor (born 1967)\nSamuel Timothy McGraw (born May 1, 1967) is an American country singer and actor. He has released 16 studio albums (11 for Curb Records, five for Big Machine Records and one for Arista Nashville). 10 of those albums have reached number one on the Top Country Albums charts, with his 1994 breakthrough album \"Not a Moment Too Soon\" being the top country album of 1994. In total, McGraw's albums have produced 65 singles, 25 of which have reached number one on the Hot Country Songs or Country Airplay charts.\nThree of these singles \u2013 \"It's Your Love\", \"Just to See You Smile\", and \"Live Like You Were Dying\" \u2013 were respectively the top country songs of 1997, 1998, and 2004 according to \"Billboard\" Year-End. He has also won three Grammy Awards, 14 Academy of Country Music awards, 11 Country Music Association (CMA) awards, 10 American Music Awards, and three People's Choice Awards. His Soul2Soul II Tour, which was done in partnership with his wife, Faith Hill, is one of the highest-grossing tours in country music history, and one of the top five among all genres of music. He has sold more than 80 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time.\nMcGraw has ventured into acting, with supporting roles in \"The Blind Side\", \"Friday Night Lights\", \"The Kingdom\", \"Tomorrowland\", \"Four Christmases\", flashback scenes in 2 episodes of \"Yellowstone\", and \"The Shack\" as well as lead roles in \"Flicka\" (2006), \"Country Strong\" (2010), and \"1883\" (2021). He was a minority owner of the Arena Football League's Nashville Kats. McGraw has been married to singer Faith Hill since 1996 and is the eldest son of former MLB pitcher Tug McGraw.\nEarly life and education.\nSamuel Timothy McGraw was born in Delhi, Louisiana, the only child of Elizabeth \"Betty\" Ann D'Agostino, a waitress from Jacksonville, Florida, and Frank Edwin \"Tug\" McGraw Jr., a pitcher for the minor league Jacksonville Suns and future star pitcher for the New York Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies. In 1966, D'Agostino was a student at Terry Parker High School. She lived in the same apartment building as Tug McGraw, who was playing baseball for Jacksonville. When she became pregnant with McGraw as a teen, D'Agostino's parents sent her to Louisiana to live with relatives. Through his father, McGraw has two half-brothers, Mark and Matthew, and a half-sister named Cari. He also has two younger half-sisters, Tracey and Sandra, through his mother's marriage to Horace Smith.\nMcGraw grew up believing Smith was his father, and used this stepfather's surname until meeting Tug. At age 11, McGraw discovered his birth certificate while searching in his mother's closet to look for a picture for a school project. Following the discovery, he learned from her who his biological father was and she took him to meet the elder McGraw for the first time. Tug McGraw denied the parentage for seven years until Tim was 18 years old. After that time, the two formed a relationship and remained close until the former baseball star died in 2004.\nAs a child, McGraw played competitive sports, including baseball, even before the knowledge of who his father was and his professional baseball career. McGraw was also a member of the FFA in high school. Following high school graduation, he attended Northeast Louisiana University on a baseball scholarship, where he was a pre-law major and pledged as a member of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. A knee injury sustained while playing baseball for the college prevented him from pursuing a professional career in sports.\nWhile in college, McGraw learned to play guitar and would frequently perform and sing for money. He has claimed his roommates often hid the guitar because he was so bad. McGraw followed his mother when she returned to Jacksonville, Florida, in 1987. After the move, he attended Florida Community College at Jacksonville for one term, and occasionally sat in with local bands. In 1989, on the day his hero Keith Whitley died, McGraw dropped out of college to head to Nashville and pursue a musical career.\nMusic career.\n1990s.\n\"Tim McGraw\".\nMcGraw came to the attention of Curb Records in 1990. After cutting a demo single, McGraw gave a copy to his father. A man who was friends with Curb Records executives heard the demo while driving with Tug one day and recommended that Curb contact the young singer. Several weeks later, he was able to play his tape for Curb executives, after which they signed him to a recording contract. McGraw made his debut with the single \"What Room Was the Holiday In\", which was released on March 29, 1991, and did not enter the \"Billboard\" Hot Country Songs chart upon its release. In a 2001 retrospective on McGraw's career in \"Billboard\", a former program director for Nashville station WSM-FM said that he added the song to the station's playlist because it showed \"undeniable promise\", while another former program director at WXTU in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, recalled that McGraw's debut single was \"terrible\" but that he booked the singer to make an appearance at the station due to his father's fame.\nTwo years later in April 1993, McGraw released his debut album \"Tim McGraw\", which was commercially unsuccessful and did not sell well. This is his only studio album not to achieve a music recording sales certification or to enter the Top Country Albums charts. Three more singles were released from \"Tim McGraw\": \"Welcome to the Club\", \"Memory Lane\", and \"Two Steppin' Mind\". None made country Top 40 and the album itself did not chart. Both \"Memory Lane\" and \"Tears in the Rain\", another cut from the album, were co-written by Joe Diffie. \"Memory Lane\" had originally appeared on Keith Palmer's self-titled 1991 debut album.\n\"Not a Moment Too Soon\".\nMcGraw's second album, entitled \"Not a Moment Too Soon\", was much more successful than his self-titled debut, and it was the best-selling country album of 1994. Its first single, \"Indian Outlaw\", sparked controversy, as critics argued that it presented Native Americans in a patronizing way. Some radio stations even chose not to play it. However, the controversy helped spur sales, and the song became McGraw's first Top 10 entry on the U.S. country charts after getting as high as number 8. The song also peaked at number 15 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100.\nThe album's second single, \"Don't Take the Girl\", became McGraw's first number one on the U.S. country charts, in addition to peaking at number 17 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. The song also \"helped cement his image as a ruggedly good-looking guy with a sensitive side.\" By year's end, the third single from the album, \"Down on the Farm\" peaked at number 2; after that, the album's fourth single, also its title track, became the singer's second number one song in early 1995. The fifth and final single \"Refried Dreams\" reached number 5. The album sold over 6 million copies, topping the \"Billboard\" 200 and Top Country Album charts. On the strength of this success, McGraw won Academy of Country Music awards for Album of the Year and Top New Male Vocalist in 1994. \"Billboard\" named \"Not a Moment Too Soon\" as the top country album of 1994 on Billboard Year-End.\n\"All I Want\".\nMcGraw's third studio album, \"All I Want\", was released in 1995. Just like its predecessor, this album debuted at No.\u00a01 on the country charts. The album even sold over 2 million copies in the United States and reached the Top 5 on the \"Billboard\" 200. The album's first single, \"I Like It, I Love It\", became McGraw's third number one on the American country charts and it also peaked at number 25 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. This song also eventually became the goal song for the Nashville Predators once they began their inaugural season and since then has been left unchanged. The album's next two singles, \"Can't Be Really Gone\" and \"All I Want Is a Life\" (its partial title track) both made the top 5 at numbers 2 and 5, respectively. The fourth single, \"She Never Lets It Go to Her Heart\", gave McGraw his fourth number one on the U.S. country charts in 1996. Finishing off the singles was \"Maybe We Should Just Sleep on It\", which peaked at number 4.\nIn 1996, McGraw headlined the most successful country tour of the year, The Spontaneous Combustion Tour, with Faith Hill as his supporting act. Hill broke off her engagement to her former producer Scott Hendricks so that she and McGraw could start dating each other; they then married on October 6, 1996.\n\"Everywhere\".\nThe singer's fourth album, \"Everywhere\" was released in 1997. It topped the country charts as well and reached No.\u00a02 on the \"Billboard\" 200, selling 4 million copies. The album spawned six singles. Four of those singles - \"It's Your Love\" (a duet with Faith Hill), the title track, \"Where the Green Grass Grows\", and \"Just to See You Smile\" - reached number one on the country charts. The Country Music Association awarded \"Everywhere\" its Album of the Year award for 1997. At the 40th Grammy Awards, \"It's Your Love\" received two Grammy Award nominations for Best Country Collaboration With Vocals and Best Country Song. Both \"It's Your Love\" and \"Just to See You Smile\" were the number one country songs of 1997 and 1998 according to \"Billboard\" Year-End charts; \"Just to See You Smile\" also set a record for the longest run on the country charts at the time, at 42 weeks. The album's other two singles, \"One of These Days\" and \"For a Little While\" both peaked at number 2.\n\"A Place in the Sun\".\nMcGraw's fifth album, \"A Place in the Sun\", continued his streak in 1999, debuting atop both the US country and pop album charts and selling 3 million copies. Over 251,000 of those copies were sold during its first week, making this the singer's first number 1 opener on the \"Billboard\" 200. It produced another four number one hits on the U.S. country charts with \"Please Remember Me\", \"Something Like That\", \"My Best Friend\", and \"My Next Thirty Years\". \"Some Things Never Change\" peaked at number 7 on the charts. McGraw also contributed a song for the Grammy-winning tribute album to Bob Wills entitled \"Ride With Bob\". A cover of \"Milk Cow Blues\", this song was recorded as a duet with Asleep at the Wheel, whom he had met while performing together at the George Strait Country Music Festival.\nMcGraw recorded two more duets with his wife in the late-1990s, both of which appeared on her albums. \"Just to Hear You Say That You Love Me\", from her multi-platinum-certified 1998 album \"Faith\", reached the Top 5 of the US country charts. Her follow-up album, 1999's \"Breathe\", featured \"Let's Make Love\", which won a Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Collaboration in 2000.\n2000s.\n\"Greatest Hits\".\nIn 2000, McGraw released his first \"Greatest Hits\" album, which topped the country albums charts for nine weeks and sold nearly 6 million copies, making this one of the biggest-selling albums in the modern country market. In the latter half of the year, he and Hill went out on the Soul2Soul Tour, playing to sellout crowds in 64 venues, including Madison Square Garden. The tour was one of the top tours of any genre in the U.S. It was also the leading country tour of 2000. While in Buffalo, New York, McGraw and Kenny Chesney became involved in a scuffle with police officers after Chesney attempted to ride a police horse. McGraw came to Chesney's aid after police officers nearby believed the horse was being stolen and tried to arrest him. The two were arrested and charged with assault but were later cleared. During a concert with the George Strait Country Music Festival several weeks later, Hill, dressed as a police officer, made an unscheduled appearance at the end of McGraw's set and led him off the stage.\n\"Set This Circus Down\".\nMcGraw's sixth studio album, \"Set This Circus Down\", was released in April 2001. It even spawned four number one hits on the country charts as well, this time with \"Grown Men Don't Cry\", \"Angry All the Time\" (with Faith Hill), \"The Cowboy in Me\", and \"Unbroken\". The singer provided harmony vocals for Jo Dee Messina's song \"Bring On the Rain\", which he also produced. That song topped the country charts. Hungry for more of his music, fans downloaded a version of his performance of the song \"Things Change\" from his appearance at the Country Music Association Awards Show. The song was played extensively on radio, becoming the first country song to appear on the charts from a fully downloaded version.\n\"Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors\".\nIn 2002, McGraw bucked country music traditions by recording his seventh studio album \"Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors\" with his tour band The Dancehall Doctors. Unlike rock music\u2014where it is commonplace for touring bands to provide the music on albums recorded by the artist they support, country albums are typically recorded with session musicians. McGraw chose to use his own touring band, in order to recognize their part in \nhis success, and to capture some of the feel of a real band.\nAll of the Dancehall Doctors have worked with McGraw since at least 1996. Their lineup includes:\nThe album debuted at No.\u00a02 on the country albums charts, Its fourth and fifth singles \"Real Good Man\" and \"Watch the Wind Blow By\" both climbed to number one on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot Country Songs chart. \"She's My Kind of Rain\" peaked at No.\u00a02 in 2003, and \"Red Rag Top\" reached number 5. The album also features a cover of Elton John's early-1970s classic \"Tiny Dancer,\" as well as duets with Kim Carnes on \"Comfort Me\" (a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks) and Don Henley and Timothy B. Schmit of the Eagles on \"Illegal.\" \"She's My Kind of Rain\" also received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Country Vocal Performance-Male at the 46th Grammy Awards.\n\"Live Like You Were Dying\".\nHis eighth album, 2004's \"Live Like You Were Dying\", continued the singer's record of commercial success. The album's first single and its title track was dedicated to his father Tug McGraw, who died of a brain tumor earlier in the year, was an ode to living life fully and in the moment. The second single \"Back When\" was a paean to an easy nostalgia. In December 2019, McGraw spoke on stage at the annual End Well Symposium about why he wrote \"Live Like You Were Dying\" and his struggles with caregiving for his dying father. \"Live Like You Were Dying\" spent seven non-consecutive weeks at No.\u00a01 on \"Billboard\" and went on to become the top country song of 2004 on the \"Billboard\" Year-End charts. It also became one of the most awarded records by winning ACM Single and Song of the Year, CMA Single and Song of the Year, and a Grammy. \"Back When\" went to number one on the country charts as well. The album produced three more singles with \"Drugs or Jesus\", \"Do You Want Fries with That\", and \"My Old Friend\". \"Drugs or Jesus\" became McGraw's first single since 1993 to not ever reach within the Top 10 on the U.S. country charts, while \"Do You Want Fries with That\" and \"My Old Friend\" peaked at numbers 5 and 6, respectively.\nIn late 2004, his unlikely duet with hip hop artist Nelly on \"Over and Over\" became a crossover hit, spending 10 weeks atop the top 40 chart. \"Over and Over\" brought McGraw a success he had never previously experienced on contemporary hit radio or R&B radio, and brought both artists success neither had previously experienced in the hot adult contemporary market. The song also spent a week at the top of the charts in the United Kingdom, becoming McGraw's first hit single in Britain and Nelly's third number one hit in the country after \"Dilemma\" and \"My Place\". \"Over and Over\" also reached the top of the charts in Australia, New Zealand, and the Republic of Ireland, and the top 10 in Austria, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Romania, and Switzerland.\nThroughout the 2005 NFL season, McGraw sang an alternate version of \"I Like It, I Love It\" every week during the season. The alternate lyrics, which changed each week, would make reference to plays during Sunday's games, and the song would be played alongside video highlights during halftime on \"Monday Night Football\". Later in the year, McGraw became a minority owner of the Arena Football League's Nashville Kats when majority owner Bud Adams (owner of the NFL's Tennessee Titans) was awarded the expansion franchise.\n\"Let It Go\".\nIn April 2006, McGraw and Hill began their 73-concert 55-city Soul2Soul II Tour, again to strong commercial acceptance. The tour grossed roughly $89 million and sold approximately 1.1 million tickets, making it the top-grossing tour in the history of country music. It was also named \"Major Tour of the Year\" by \"Pollstar\", beating out such heavyweights as Madonna and the Rolling Stones. In a special gesture, the couple donated all of the profits from their performance in New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina relief. McGraw, along with Kenny Chesney, contributed to a version of Tracy Lawrence's song \"Find Out Who Your Friends Are\", which can be found on Lawrence's album \"For the Love\". Although the official single version features only Lawrence's vocals, many stations have opted to play the version with McGraw and Chesney instead.\nMcGraw released his eleventh studio album, \"Let It Go\", on March 27, 2007. The album's first single, \"Last Dollar (Fly Away)\", peaked at number one on the Hot Country Songs chart. This marked McGraw's first No.\u00a01 single since \"Back When\" in late 2004. The album debuted at No.\u00a01 on both the \"Billboard\" 200 and Top Country Album charts, marking his fourth No.\u00a01 album on the 200 charts and his ninth overall. His daughters can be heard singing the chorus during the last few seconds of the song on the video. During the Academy of Country Music awards show on May 15, 2007, McGraw performed a song titled \"If You're Reading This\", which he co-wrote with The Warren Brothers. Several radio stations began to play the live recording of the song; as a result, it entered the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot Country Songs chart at No.\u00a035. McGraw also produced the debut album of country music duo Halfway to Hazard. The duo's first single, \"Daisy\", peaked at No.\u00a039 on the country charts in the summer of 2007. In the summer of 2007, McGraw and Hill toured together once again in the Soul2Soul 2007 tour.\nIn the edition of January 18, 2008 of the \"USA Today\" newspaper, McGraw was stated to be featured on the Def Leppard album \"Songs from the Sparkle Lounge\", having also co-written the first single, \"Nine Lives\", with Def Leppard band members Joe Elliott, Phil Collen, and Rick Savage. The unusual pairing goes back to 2006 when McGraw joined Def Leppard onstage for the song \"Pour Some Sugar On Me\", and then collaborated on the song \"Nine Lives\" afterward. The album was released on April 25, 2008. At the 2007 50th Annual Grammy Awards, McGraw received 5 nominations including Best Country Album (for \"Let It Go\"), Best Country Song (both for \"If You're Reading This\" and \"I Need You\"), Best Country Collaboration with Vocals (with \"I Need You\"), and Best Male Country Vocal Performance (with \"If You're Reading This\"). In May 2008, he hit the road with the Live Your Voice tour. The mainly-outdoor arena concert tour was his first solo outing in nearly three years. Also in May 2008, he debuted a new song in his follow-up to \"Let It Go\" at the Stagecoach Music Festival in Indio, California. In July 2008, the album's sixth single and its title track, \"Let It Go\", was released to country radio. Following that, a seventh single, \"Nothin' to Die For\", entered the Country charts at No.\u00a057 in late December. McGraw released his third greatest-hits package, \"Greatest Hits 3\" on October 7, 2008. The album features 12 tracks. McGraw was set to debut a new song at the 2009 ACM Awards, but then canceled his performance; he was replaced by Blake Shelton, who sang \"She Wouldn't Be Gone\".\n\"Southern Voice\".\nMcGraw's twelfth studio album, \"Southern Voice\", was released October 20, 2009, and led by the single \"It's A Business Doing Pleasure With You\", which was shipped to radio outlets in late June 2009.\n\"Southern Voice\" was argued to be McGraw's last album for Curb Records, following the dispute over releasing his third Greatest Hits collection back in October 2008 without his permission. McGraw did not approve of the release. On November 30, 2010, Curb Records released his fourth greatest hits compilation, \"Number One Hits\".\n2010s.\n\"Emotional Traffic\" and Curb Records lawsuit.\nOn January 2, 2011, McGraw announced plans for his Emotional Traffic Tour featuring opening acts Luke Bryan and The Band Perry.\nSirius XM announced on March 30, 2011, that they would be launching Tim McGraw radio, a commercial-free music channel devoted to McGraw's music, and featuring an in-depth interview with McGraw as well. As of fall 2010, McGraw had finished work on the album \"Emotional Traffic\", his last album with Curb Records. On May 13, 2011, Curb Records filed a breach-of-contract suit against McGraw. The label alleged that McGraw recorded tracks for his \"Emotional Traffic\" album too early prior to its delivery to the label. Several days later, McGraw filed a counter suit against the label seeking advance payment and recording-fund reimbursement, unspecified damages, and a jury trial. A trial was scheduled to begin in July 2012. In November 2011, a judge granted McGraw permission to record music for another label, ending his relationship with Curb Records that began in 1990. A few hours after the ruling, Curb released \"Better Than I Used to Be\", the first single from \"Emotional Traffic\". The album was released on January 24, 2012.\n\"Two Lanes of Freedom\".\nIn December 2011, McGraw released his first Christmas single, \"Christmas All Over the World\", on his own label StyleSonic Records. On May 21, 2012, however, he signed with Big Machine Records.\nMcGraw's debut album for Big Machine, entitled \"Two Lanes of Freedom\", was released on February 5, 2013. It debuted at number 2 on the charts by selling 108,000 copies. The album includes the singles \"Truck Yeah\", \"One of Those Nights\", \"Highway Don't Care\" (a duet with Taylor Swift which also features Keith Urban on lead guitar), and \"Southern Girl\". McGraw performed at the festival in London on March 16, 2013.\n\"Love Story\" and \"Sundown Heaven Town\".\nMcGraw released a single titled \"Lookin' for That Girl\" in January 2014 as the lead-off single to his second album for Big Machine. It was followed immediately by the announcement of the Sundown Heaven Town Tour. The album, titled \"Sundown Heaven Town\", was released on September 16, 2014. Four months into its run, \"Lookin' for That Girl\" was withdrawn as a single and replaced with \"Meanwhile, Back at Mama's\", which features backing vocals from Hill. \"Shotgun Rider\" became the album's third single and a number 1 Country Airplay hit by the end of 2014. Following it was \"Diamond Rings and Old Barstools\", a duet with Catherine Dunn. McGraw's eighth greatest hits album, \"Love Story\", is a compilation of his twelve biggest love songs and two previously unreleased recordings. It was released exclusively through Walmart on February 4, 2014, by Curb Records.\n\"Damn Country Music\".\nOn August 10, 2015, McGraw released a new single to digital retailers, titled \"Top of the World\", which was later released to radio on August 17, 2015, as the lead single to his third studio album for Big Machine Records. On September 17, McGraw announced that the album was titled \"Damn Country Music\", with a release date scheduled for November 6. The album's second single, \"Humble and Kind\", released to country radio on February 1, 2016, and went on to reach number 1 on the Billboard Hot Country charts. McGraw was selected as one of 30 artists to perform on \"Forever Country\", a mash-up track of Take Me Home, Country Roads, On the Road Again and I Will Always Love You which celebrates 50 years of the CMA Awards. The album's third single, \"How I'll Always Be\" released to country radio on July 11, 2016. It reached number 3 on the Country Airplay in January 2017.\n\"The Rest of Our Life\".\nOn October 4, 2016, during a show at the Ryman Auditorium, McGraw and Hill announced that they would be going back on the road together again on the . The tour began on April 7, 2017, in New Orleans and will continue into 2018, incorporating the festival held in the UK and Ireland throughout March 2018.\nBefore the commencement of the tour, it was reported that McGraw, alongside Hill, had signed a new deal with Sony Music Nashville. The signing also indicated the release of a duet album between the couple, and that multiple solo recordings would be produced. The new record label signing also preceded the release of \"Speak to a Girl\", the lead single from the duet album, \"The Rest of Our Life\", which was released on November 17, 2017. The release of the album coincided with the opening of an exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum titled \"Mississippi Woman, Louisiana Man\", which celebrates the careers of both McGraw and Hill.\nMcGraw released two major best-selling books in 2019, with the first co-written with \"Pulitzer Prize\" winner Jon Meacham which reached No. 2 on the New York Times Bestsellers list. Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music That Made a Nation. New York: Random House. 2019. . His second book, \"Grit and Grace\", also reached No. 2 on the New York Times Bestsellers list.\n2020s.\n\"Here on Earth\".\nIn February 2020, McGraw rejoined Big Machine Records, which he was previously signed to from 2011 to 2017. He released a new album, \"Here on Earth\", on August 21, 2020. The \"Here on Earth Tour\" was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In January 2021, McGraw released the single \"Undivided\" with Tyler Hubbard of Florida Georgia Line, which was included on a deluxe edition of \"Here on Earth\" released later that year. On October 9, 2021, McGraw confronted a heckler at a performance at the Nugget Events Center in Sparks, Nevada, after he forgot the words to his song \"Just to See You Smile.\" After removing the heckler, he explained that he had been filming a movie and had a lot on his mind, and asked for the audience's help in remembering the words.\n\"Standing Room Only\" and \"Poet's Resum\u00e9\".\nOn August 25, 2023, McGraw released his sixteenth studio album, \"Standing Room Only\". The title track was released as the album's lead single on March 10, 2023. It reached number 2 on the U.S. Country Airplay chart. Three months after releasing \"Standing Room Only\", McGraw surprise-released a six-track EP, \"Poet's Resum\u00e9\" on November 21, 2023.\nProduction career.\nMcGraw has occasionally served as a record producer in collaboration with Byron Gallimore, who has co-produced all of his albums. The two co-produced Jo Dee Messina's self-titled debut, as well as her next two albums, \"I'm Alright\" and \"Burn\". McGraw and Gallimore also produced the only album released by The Clark Family Experience in 2000, and Halfway to Hazard's 2007 self-titled debut album.\nActing career.\nMcGraw's first acting appearance came in a 1997 episode of \"The Jeff Foxworthy Show\", where he played Foxworthy's rival. In 2004, McGraw played a sheriff in Rick Schroder's independent release \"Black Cloud\". Later in the same year, McGraw received critical acclaim as the overbearing father of running back \"Donald Billingsley\" in the major studio Texas high school football drama \"Friday Night Lights\". The \"Dallas Observer\" said the role was \"played with unexpected ferocity by country singer Tim McGraw\". The movie went on to gross over $60 million worldwide at the box office, and sold millions in the DVD market. Most recently, it was named one of the Top 50 High School Movies of All Time (No.\u00a037) by \"Entertainment Weekly\".\nMcGraw's first lead role was in the 2006 film \"Flicka\", which was released in theaters October 20, 2006. In the remake of the classic book \"My Friend Flicka\", McGraw played the father, Rob, costarring with Alison Lohman and Maria Bello. The family-friendly movie debuted in the top 10 list and has grossed over $25 million at the box office. McGraw again achieved critical acclaim for his acting. Shortly before \"Flicka\" opened, McGraw received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His star is located at 6901 Hollywood Boulevard near stars honoring Julie Andrews, William Shatner, and the late Greta Garbo. One of his \"Flicka\" co-stars, Alison Lohman, attended the ceremony that included comments from Billy Bob Thornton, McGraw's co-star in the film \"Friday Night Lights\". In addition to acting in \"Flicka\", McGraw served as executive producer of the soundtrack album, which was released by his record label, StyleSonic Records, in association with Curb Records and Fox 2000 films. It featured the closing credit song \"My Little Girl\", one of the first two songs that McGraw recorded that he also co-wrote (the other being \"I've Got Friends That Do\", both of which were included on \"Greatest Hits Vol. 2\"). The song was nominated by the Broadcast Film Critics for \"Best Song\" in a film, and the movie was nominated in the category \"Best Family Film (Live Action)\". The movie proved to be another success in the DVD market, and has sold over a million copies, debuting at No.\u00a03 on the DVD sales chart.\nMcGraw also had a small part in the Michael Mann\u2013produced 2007 film \"The Kingdom\", reuniting him with \"Friday Night Lights\" director Peter Berg. McGraw played a bitter, angered widower whose wife was killed in the terrorist attack that is the centerpiece of the movie. On November 22, 2008, McGraw made his first appearance on \"Saturday Night Live\". He also played \"Dallas McVie\" in \"Four Christmases\". McGraw appeared in the 2009 film \"The Blind Side\" as Sean Tuohy, husband of Sandra Bullock's character, Leigh Anne Tuohy. \"The Blind Side\" is based on the true story of Michael Oher, a homeless African-American youngster from a broken home, taken in and adopted by the Tuohys, a well-to-do white family who help him fulfill his potential. He is among the stars of \"Dirty Girl\", a film that premiered on September 12, 2010, at the Toronto Film Festival, along with Juno Temple, Milla Jovovich, William H. Macy and Dwight Yoakam. Also in 2010, McGraw starred in \"Country Strong\" as James Canter, the husband and manager of the fictional country singer Kelly Canter (portrayed by Gwyneth Paltrow). In addition to his appearance in the film, McGraw's song \"Me and Tennessee\", a duet with Paltrow, was played during the closing credits and appears on the film's soundtrack. In 2015, McGraw appeared in Brad Bird's \"Tomorrowland\" as Eddie Newton, a NASA engineer, and Casey Newton's (played by Britt Robertson) father.\n\"1883\", a spinoff prequel to Taylor Sheridan's Yellowstone television series was released in late 2021 and stars McGraw, Faith Hill, and Sam Elliott.\nCharitable efforts.\nIn 1994, when McGraw first reached fame, he established the annual Swampstock event. It began as a charity softball game to raise money for hometown little league programs; the event now includes a celebrity softball game and a multi-artist concert that attracts over 11,000 fans per year. The combined events have funded new Little League parks and equipment, and have established college scholarship funds for students in the northeast Louisiana area.\nFrom 1996 to 1999, McGraw hosted an annual New Year's Eve concert in Nashville with special guests including Jeff Foxworthy, the Dixie Chicks, and Martina McBride. The 1997 show raised over $100,000 for the Country Music Foundation Hall of Fame and Museum. Beginning in 1999, McGraw would pick select cities on each tour, and the night before he was scheduled to perform, would choose a local club and host a quickly-organized show. This tour-within-a-tour became known as \"The Bread and Water Tour\", and all proceeds from the show would go to a charity from that community.\nMcGraw designed a charity T-shirt sold through Angelwear to benefit MusiCares. MusiCares supports musicians in times of need. His charity focuses particularly on health issues. The Tim McGraw Foundation raises funds to enhance the quality of life of children and adults with brain tumors. He supports the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center, the David Foster Foundation, which helps families of children in need of organ transplants, and Musicians on Call, which brings music to hospital patients' bedsides. He also performs during dinners and auctions to benefit children with disabilities. Hill and McGraw gave the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society $375,000 (the entire gate receipts from one of their concerts) to assist the families of 17 sailors following the terrorist attack on , the guided-missile destroyer that suffered significant damage in the Gulf of Aden, Yemen on October 12, 2000.\nIn the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina, McGraw who was raised in Mississippi, joined groups taking supplies to Gulfport, Mississippi. The two also hosted several charity concerts to benefit those who were displaced by the storm. Later in the year, the couple established the Neighbor's Keeper Foundation, which provides funding for community charities to assist with basic humanitarian services, in the event of a natural disaster, or for desperate personal circumstances.\nMcGraw is also a member of the American Red Cross National Celebrity Cabinet, to which various celebrities donate their time, skills, and fame, to help the Red Cross highlight important initiatives and response efforts.\nMcGraw has helped out with charity events held by Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre. The Brett Favre Fourward Foundation has featured McGraw performing concerts during dinners and auctions that benefit children with disabilities in Wisconsin and Mississippi. One instance is recorded on Favre's official website.\nOn July 12, 2007, it was made public that McGraw while in Grand Rapids, Michigan for a performance, donated $5,000 to Kailey Kozminski, the 3-year-old daughter of Officer Robert Kozminski, a Grand Rapids police officer who was killed on July 8, 2007, while responding to a domestic disturbance.\nIn April 2023, McGraw surprised rising country star Brandon Davis, whom he previously brought on tour with him in 2022, with a new guitar after all of his gear was stolen earlier in the month.\nPersonal politics.\nIn a 2006 interview with \"Esquire\" magazine, McGraw stated he would like to run for public office as a Democratic Party candidate, possibly for United States Senate or Governor of Tennessee\u2014his home state. In the same interview, he praised Bill Clinton.\nIn a 2008 interview with \"People\" magazine, McGraw referred to himself as a \"Blue Dog Democrat\" and stated that he and his family support Barack Obama.\nIn January 2021, McGraw performed on the \"Celebrating America\" inaugural special, a primetime virtual concert celebrating the inauguration of Joe Biden.\nPersonal life.\nMcGraw married fellow country singer Faith Hill in 1996, and they have three daughters. He and Hill own Goat Cay, which they unofficially named L'\u00eele d'Anges, a private island in the Bahamas.\nIn 2000, Kenny Chesney and McGraw became involved in a scuffle with police officers in Buffalo, New York, after Chesney was riding a State Police horse and refused to get off the horse. McGraw came to Chesney's aid after police officers nearby believed the horse was being stolen. The two were arrested and charged, Chesney for disorderly conduct and McGraw for assault, but were acquitted in 2001.\nMcGraw holds a private pilot license and owns a single-engine Cirrus SR22.\nIn 2015, \"Forbes\" estimated McGraw's annual income at $38 million.\nMcGraw is the godfather to the son of Garrett Hedlund and Emma Roberts. He and Hedlund became friends after co-starring in \"Friday Night Lights\" and \"Country Strong\".\nIn acknowledgment of his grandfather's Italian heritage, McGraw was honored by the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) in 2004, receiving the NIAF Special Achievement Award in Music during the Foundation's 29th Anniversary Gala.\nMcGraw's Bracco Italiano named Lepshi won Best of Breed at the 2023 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. The McGraw-Hill family also has two other Bracco Italianos, Caesar and Stromboli.\nTours.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["29352479", "525336"], "permutation_1": ["525336", "29352479"], "permutation_2": ["29352479", "525336"], "permutation_3": ["525336", "29352479"]}
{"id": "2hop__244481_127008", "docs_added": {"148703": "Duran Duran\nEnglish pop rock band\nDuran Duran () are an English pop rock band formed in Birmingham in 1978 by singer Stephen Duffy, keyboardist Nick Rhodes and guitarist/bassist John Taylor. After several early changes, the band's line-up settled in May 1980 as Rhodes, Taylor, singer Simon Le Bon, guitarist Andy Taylor and drummer Roger Taylor. \nEmerging as members of the New Romantic scene, Duran Duran were innovators of the music video and a leading band in the MTV-driven Second British Invasion of the US in the 1980s. By 1984, the band had achieved levels of fame similar to Beatlemania. The band's first major hit was \"Girls on Film\" (1981), from their self-titled debut album, the popularity of which was enhanced by a controversial music video. The band's breakthrough second album was \"Rio\" (1982), a worldwide hit. The songs \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Rio\" featured cinematic music videos directed by Australian film maker Russell Mulcahy and became two of their biggest hits. Their third album, \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\", became their only UK number one album and featured the US and UK number one single \"The Reflex\". In 1985, the band topped the US charts with the single \"A View to a Kill\" from the soundtrack of the James Bond film of the same title.\nAndy Taylor and Roger Taylor both left the band before the recording of their fourth album, \"Notorious\" (1986), which yielded the top ten title track. Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor initially continued as a core trio, before adding drummer Sterling Campbell and former Frank Zappa and Missing Persons guitarist Warren Cuccurullo as full-time members in 1989, though Campbell departed in 1991. The band spent the late 1980s and early 1990s releasing albums and singles to only moderate success. Their comeback album, 1993's \"Duran Duran\" (commonly called \"The Wedding Album\"), featured two top ten worldwide hits \"Ordinary World\" and \"Come Undone\". John Taylor left the band in 1997, though four years later, in 2001, a full reunion of the classic 1980\u20131985 line-up of Le Bon, Rhodes and all three Taylors took place, which led to a number of highly successful concert tours and the 2004 album \"Astronaut\", which reached number three in the UK and top 40 in numerous other countries. The album's lead single \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\" was an international dance hit, and reached number five in the UK. Andy Taylor left again in 2006, and the band have released five additional albums, with the most recent being \"Danse Macabre\" in 2023.\nAccording to \"Billboard\", Duran Duran have sold over 100 million records. They achieved 30 top 40 singles in the UK Singles Chart (14 of them top 10) and 21 top 40 singles in the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100. The band have won numerous awards throughout their career: two Brit Awards including the 2004 award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, two Grammy Awards, an MTV Video Music Award for Lifetime Achievement and a Video Visionary Award from the MTV Europe Music Awards. They were also awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The band were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.\nHistory.\n1978\u20131980: Formation and early years.\nJohn Taylor and Nick Rhodes formed Duran Duran in 1978 in Birmingham, England, with Taylor's art school friend Stephen Duffy, naming their band after \"Dr. Durand Durand\", Milo O'Shea's character from the science fiction film \"Barbarella\" (1968), the day after the film was broadcast on BBC on 20 October 1978. The three of them (Taylor on guitar and vocals, Rhodes on synthesizer and tapes, Duffy on vocals and bass) played their first gig on 5 April 1979 at the Birmingham Polytechnic. Soon after, they were joined by Simon Colley on clarinet and bass. John (then going by his first name Nigel) was the guitarist at this point. After a few gigs, including a performance at Barbarella's in Birmingham opening for the band Fashion, Duffy and Colley left the band in June 1979.\nTaylor and Rhodes then recruited lead vocalist Andy Wickett (formerly frontman of \"TV Eye\") and decided that they needed a live drummer. They hired Roger Taylor, a former member of various local bands (most recently \"The Scent Organs\" who also played at Barbarella's), while John Taylor switched to bass guitar. In September 1979, this incarnation of the band recorded a four-track demo including an early version of \"Girls on Film\" co-written by Andy Wickett. Soon afterwards Alan Curtis was recruited as lead guitarist. After a few gigs with this line-up Wickett left the band in late 1979.\nWickett was replaced by Roger Taylor's friend and former singer of \"The Scent Organs\" Jeff Thomas. In early 1980, they became the resident band at the city's Rum Runner nightclub. They were doing jobs at the club and began rehearsing and regularly playing at the venue. Curtis was unhappy with the Rum Runner club scene and left the band to form Dif Juz with his brother. Thomas was fired shortly after following disagreements and repeated arguments. The three remaining members started to look for a new lead vocalist and guitarist. The owners of the club, brothers Paul and Michael Berrow, became the band's management, paying them to work as doormen, disc jockeys (DJs) and barmen when they were not rehearsing, and also formed the Tritec Music company.\nIn April 1980, guitarist Andy Taylor came from Newcastle upon Tyne to audition after responding to an advertisement in \"Melody Maker\". Andy already had a lot of experience from playing with cover bands for years and although he came from a totally different rock music background his versatile playing style was seen as a perfect complement to the band. In May 1980, London vocalist and drama student Simon Le Bon was recommended to the band by an ex-girlfriend who worked at the Rum Runner. The band were immediately impressed by Le Bon and soon completed their first composition with the new line-up, \"Sound of Thunder\", featuring lyrics by Le Bon. Duran Duran's first performance with the lineup of Le Bon, Rhodes and the three Taylors was on 16\u00a0July 1980 at the Rum Runner.\nDuran Duran spent the next months writing, developing and demoing their songs and performed in clubs around Birmingham and London. In September 1980 they had written all of what would become their debut album. Touring as an opening act for Hazel O'Connor, the band attracted critical attention, resulting in a bidding war between the record companies EMI and Phonogram. \"A certain patriotism\" toward the label of the Beatles led them to sign with EMI in December. A week later, the first article about Duran Duran in a national magazine appeared in \"Sounds\". The members of Duran Duran had noticed that Betty Page (pen name for Beverley Glick) was writing about a new movement called New Romantic that would fit the band perfectly and invited her to meet them at the Rum Runner.\nShortly after signing the recording contract with EMI, Duran Duran went to London to record their debut album with producer Colin Thurston, and initial plans for an independent release of the songs \"Planet Earth\" and \"Is There Anyone Out There?\" on the Tritec Music label were scrapped.\n1981\u20131982: Self-titled debut, \"Rio\" and Second British Invasion.\nThe band's debut album, \"Duran Duran\", was released on the EMI label in June 1981. The first single, \"Planet Earth\", had reached the United Kingdom's top 20 at number 12 in February. A follow-up, \"Careless Memories\", released in April, stalled at number 37. The third single, \"Girls on Film\", was released in July and went to number 5 in the UK. The video, featuring topless women mud wrestling, pillow fighting and stylised depictions of other sexual fetishes, was made with directing duo Godley & Creme in August. The video was filmed just two weeks after MTV was launched in the United States. The band expected the \"Girls on Film\" video to be played in the newer nightclubs that had video screens or on pay TV channels like the Playboy Channel. Kevin Godley explained the thinking behind it:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />We were very explicitly told by Duran Duran's management to make a very sensational and erotic piece that would be for clubs, where it would get shown uncensored just to make people take notice and talk about it.\nThe video was heavily edited for MTV. The album peaked in the UK top twenty at number three. Later in 1981 the band embarked on their first United States club tour followed by more dates in Germany and the UK. This second tour of Britain coincided with a wave of riots sparked by unemployment and racial tension, including those of Moss Side and Toxteth. The band played Birmingham the day after the Handsworth riots. The band also began writing and demoing songs for a new album. In November 1981, they released a new single, the disco-influenced \"My Own Way\", that reached number 14 in the UK, followed in early 1982 by the recording of their second album at AIR Studios in London.\nIn May 1982, Duran Duran released their second album, \"Rio\", which entered the UK Albums Chart at number four and peaked at number two the following week. The band scored three UK top 10 hits on the singles chart from the album with \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" at number five in June, \"Save a Prayer\" at number two in September and the title song \"Rio\" at number nine in December, while the earlier top 20 hit \"My Own Way\" was included in a re-recorded version on the album.\nWith the album Duran Duran also began to achieve worldwide recognition. A headlining tour of Australia, Japan and the US was followed by a stint supporting Blondie during that band's final American tour. Diana, Princess of Wales declared Duran Duran her favourite band, and the band were dubbed \"the Fab Five\" by the British press, comparing them to the Beatles whose nickname was the Fab Four.\nAt first, the \"Rio\" album did not do well in the United States. EMI in the UK had promoted Duran Duran as a New Romantic band, but the New Romantic movement was barely known in the US, and EMI's American subsidiary Capitol Records was at a loss about how to sell them. After \"Carnival\" (an EP of \"Rio\"'s dance remixes) became popular with DJs in the fall, the band arranged to have most of the album remixed by David Kershenbaum. In June 1982, Duran Duran appeared for the first time on American television, performing \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Rio\" on \"Dancin' on Air\", the forerunner to the national hit show \"Dance Party USA\".\nNow promoted as a dance album, \"Rio\" was re-released in the US in November and began to climb the American charts six months after its European success. MTV placed \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and several other Duran Duran videos into heavy rotation, pushing the single and album into the US top twenty in early 1983. The ballad \"Save a Prayer\" also did well. \"The band was a natural for music television,\" noted \"Rolling Stone\". \"They may be the first rock group to ride in on a video wave.\" The album ultimately peaked at number six in the US and remained on the charts there for 129 weeks. In 2003, \"Rio\" was listed at number 65 in the \"NME\"'s list of the 100 Greatest Albums of All Time.\nDuran Duran were among the earliest bands to work on their own remixes. Before the days of digital synthesizer and easy audio sampling, they created multi-layered arrangements of their singles, sometimes recording entirely different extended performances of the songs in the studio. These \"night versions\" were generally available only on vinyl as b-sides to 45 rpm singles or on 12-inch club singles until the release of the compilation \"\" in 1998.\n1983\u20131985: The \"Fab Five\", Side projects and Live Aid.\nThe band began 1983 at the Palladium in New York playing the MTV New Year's Eve Rock n' Roll Ball with \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" still climbing the charts in the US, and the American reissue of the \"Rio\" single to follow in March. To satisfy America's appetite for their music, the band re-released their eponymous first album in the US in the middle of the year with the addition of the new single \"Is There Something I Should Know?\". Upon its release, this song entered the chart at number one in the UK (a rarity then and their first chart-topper in their home country) and reached number five on the American charts. During the promotion of this album, Rhodes and Le Bon were MTV guest VJs for a show, during which artist and admirer Andy Warhol dropped by to greet them. \"Our first gigs in the United States were crazy and culty\", Rhodes said later, \"But when we came back after 'Hungry' was a hit, it was mayhem. It was Beatlemania. We were doing a signing of the 'Girls on Film' video at a store in Times Square. We couldn't get out of the store. The cops sealed off the streets.\" Also in 1983, Rhodes produced the UK number one and US number five hit \"Too Shy\" for English band Kajagoogoo and Andy Taylor became the first member of Duran Duran to get married.\nThe band spent the next year as tax exiles, writing songs at a ch\u00e2teau in France where \"The Tube\" with Jools Holland filmed a documentary with the band in May 1983 before they flew to Montserrat and then Sydney to record and mix their third album. During the summer, they returned to the UK to perform two concerts, the first on 20 July in front of the Prince and Princess of Wales at the Dominion Theatre, and the second, a charity concert at Aston Villa's home ground. The band were under pressure to follow up the success of \"Rio\", and the recording process took over six months as different band members went through bouts of perfectionism and insecurity. A newly decadent lifestyle and substance abuse issues for some members added complications. In the documentary film \"Extraordinary World\", filmed a decade later, Rhodes described the effect on their sound as \"barely controlled hysteria, scratching beneath the surface\".\nThe new album, \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" (1983), included the late 1983 hit \"Union of the Snake\" (with the soprano saxophone solo by Andy Hamilton). With \"Hungry Like the Wolf\", \"Rio\", \"Save a Prayer\" and \"Is There Something I Should Know?\", Duran Duran now had five US Top Twenty hits from three different albums in a single year. The band made music headlines by deciding to release the \"Union of the Snake\" video to MTV a full week before the single was released to radio. They followed up with \"New Moon on Monday\", which reached number nine in the UK. Their next single \"The Reflex\", taken from \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" and given a significant remix overhaul by Nile Rodgers of Chic fame, became their first number one hit in the United States. \"The Reflex\" was also their second and final UK number one and was successful in numerous other countries around the world.\nThe band embarked on a global tour that continued throughout the first four months of 1984 including their first major stadium dates in America. A film crew led by director Russell Mulcahy followed the band closely, leading to the documentary film \"Sing Blue Silver\" and the accompanying concert film \"Arena\". The live album \"Arena\" was also recorded during the tour and was released with the new single \"The Wild Boys\", which went to number two on both sides of the Atlantic. In February 1984, the band appeared on the cover of \"Rolling Stone\" magazine and won two Grammy Awards in the brand-new Long Form and Short Form music video categories. Meanwhile, \"Save a Prayer\" gained momentum in North America, and a special US remix of the song became a single in January 1985. It peaked at number 16 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 in March. A live version of the song was used for the single's B-side, taken from the concert video footage for \"Arena\" / \"As the Lights Go Down\".\nDuring this period, all of the band members became heartthrobs for many of their young teenage fans. After the tour, Roger Taylor was married in Naples, Italy, and Rhodes wed in London, wearing a pink velvet tuxedo and top hat. At the end of 1984, the group featured on the Band Aid benefit single \"Do They Know It's Christmas?\" along with other popular British and Irish musical acts. Le Bon sang fourth on the song, after Paul Young, Boy George and George Michael sing their lines.\nEven with Duran Duran on hold, band members were soon anxious to record new music, leading to a supposedly temporary split into two side projects. John Taylor and Andy Taylor wanted to break away from the Duran Duran sound and pursue hard rock material; they collaborated with lead vocalist Robert Palmer and Chic's drummer Tony Thompson to form the rock/funk supergroup the Power Station, releasing two top 10 singles. Le Bon and Rhodes wanted to further explore Duran Duran's atmospheric aspect and formed Arcadia, releasing one album (\"So Red the Rose\") and an accompanying single (\"Election Day\"). Contributors to that album included guitarist Masami Tsuchiya, bassist Mark Egan, percussionist David Van Tieghem, drummer Steve Jordan, Sting, Herbie Hancock and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. Roger Taylor was a drummer for Arcadia as well as contributing percussion to the Power Station album. According to Rhodes, the two side projects \"were commercial suicide... But we've always been good at that.\" The band regrouped to contribute \"A View to a Kill\" to the 1985 James Bond film of the same name. This single was the first Bond theme to go to number one on the US charts, and was at the time the joint highest-placed Bond theme on the UK chart where it reached number two. It was the last single the band recorded as the original five-piece for close to twenty years.\nAs a follow-up to the Christmas 1984 Band Aid single, Duran Duran performed in front of 90,000 people (and an estimated 1.5\u00a0billion TV viewers) at the Live Aid charity concert at John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 13 July 1985 while their Bond song held the top spot on the American charts. It was not intended to be a farewell performance\u2014the band planned only to take a break after four years of non-stop touring and public appearances\u2014but the original five did not play live together again until July 2003. During their Live Aid set, Le Bon inadvertently hit an off-key falsetto note in the chorus of \"A View to a Kill\", an error that was trumpeted by numerous media outlets as \"The Bum Note Heard Round the World\" (in contrast to Freddie Mercury's \"Note Heard Round the World\" at the Wembley Stadium Live Aid show). Le Bon later described the moment as the most embarrassing of his career.\n1986\u20131989: Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor trio.\nAfter releasing three studio albums and one live album in five years, each accompanied by heavy media promotion and lengthy concert tours, the band lost two of its core members to fatigue and tension in 1986. After Live Aid and Arcadia, Roger Taylor left the band and retired to the English countryside, suffering from exhaustion.\nAndy Taylor led the remaining members to believe he would return to work on a new Duran Duran album, even as he was signing a solo recording contract in Los Angeles with MCA Records, eventually releasing a solo album in 1986 called \"Thunder\". The band resorted to legal measures to get him into the studio but after numerous delays they let him go at last. He played on only a few songs on the next album, including \"A Matter of Feeling\", whilst the disagreements were being settled.\nWithout a guitarist or a drummer, Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor had producer (and former Chic guitarist) Nile Rodgers play a few tracks on guitar, and hired Steve Ferrone to play drums while they searched for replacements. In September 1986, Warren Cuccurullo (formerly of Missing Persons and Frank Zappa's band) was hired as a session guitarist. With Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor, he recorded the rest of the \"Notorious\" album, which was released in October 1986. The black-and-white documentary film \"Three to Get Ready\" chronicled the recording of the album, legal tensions, and preparations for the tour.\nAlthough the song \"Notorious\" was a US and UK top ten hit, the album was a relative failure globally, reaching number 16 in the UK and spending one week in the top 50 album chart. The band found they had lost much of the momentum and hysteria they had left behind in 1985. In the three years between the release of \"Seven and the Ragged Tiger\" and \"Notorious\", many of their teenage fans had grown up and the music was funkier, more mature, and less \"pop\", given the added experience of their work on Arcadia and Power Station and with other musicians. \"Skin Trade\" and \"Meet El Presidente\", the two subsequent singles, made the charts but fared poorly compared to the band's earlier successes. Finally in late 1987, Sterling Campbell was hired as a session drummer.\nSubsequently, Duran Duran struggled to escape the teen idol image and gain respect among critics with more complex music. The new serious image was not accepted at first and their popularity began to wane. \"Rolling Stone\" said, \"In their search for musical maturity, the surviving Durans have lost a good deal of their identity.\" In contrast the \"New York Times\" said, \"Duran Duran's newfound disillusionment may mark a step toward maturity...they managed to catch a trend on the upswing, perhaps \"Notorious\" suggests that for late 1980s grit and pessimism is coming into style.\" Another factor was the band's dismissal of early managers, the Berrow brothers. There was no announcement of the reasons for the decision, but disagreements over money, and the brothers' involvement in Le Bon's yachting adventures (they were co-owners of \"Drum\") were thought to have played a part. Whatever the reason, Duran Duran switched managers frequently and undertook periods of self-management in the later stages of their career. In addition, EMI fired its president and went through a major corporate restructuring that summer and seemed to have lost interest in promoting the band. According to Rhodes the band needed to break up in order to come back together stronger.\nThe next album \"Big Thing\" (1988) yielded the singles \"I Don't Want Your Love\" (number four in the US), and \"All She Wants Is\" (the last top ten hit in the UK until 1993). The record was experimental, mixing influences from house music and raves with Duran's atmospheric synth-pop and the creative guitar work of Cuccurullo (now a full band member), as well as more mature lyrics.\n1989\u20131991: Five again, \"Decade\" and \"Liberty\".\nBy the end of 1989 and at the start of the 1990s, the popularity of synth-pop was fading and losing fans to other momentum-gaining music genres at the time, such as hip hop, techno and alternative rock. After touring for the album finished, the band regained a five-man membership as Cuccurullo and Campbell were made full members of Duran Duran.\nThe compilation album \"Decade\" was released late in 1989, along with the megamix single \"Burning the Ground\", which consisted of woven snippets of the band's hits from the previous ten years, created and produced with John Jones, who began working with the band after the release of \"Big Thing\". The single came and went with little fanfare, but the album became another major seller for the band. The 1990 release \"Liberty\" (a retreat from the experimentation of \"Big Thing\") failed to capitalise on any regained momentum. The album entered the UK album chart in the top ten, but faded away quickly. The singles \"Violence of Summer (Love's Taking Over)\" and \"Serious\" were only mildly successful. For the first time, Duran Duran did not tour in support of an album, performing on only a handful of club dates and TV shows. Campbell left the band early in 1991, going on to work with Soul Asylum and David Bowie. The quartet of Le Bon, Rhodes, John Taylor and Cuccurullo would remain intact for six more years.\n1992\u20131996: Quartet line-up and a brief comeback.\nIn 1993, the band released a second self-titled album: this \"Duran Duran\" album is known as \"The Wedding Album\" (for Nick Egan's cover art featuring the wedding photos of the band members' parents) to distinguish it from the 1981 release, and was produced and recorded with John Jones. The release of this first \"comeback\" album was delayed, with then manager at Left Bank, Tommy Manzi, later telling HitQuarters that this was due to industry resistance to the revival of the band, who he said would rather focus on \"the next hip band\". Listener demand for leaked single \"Ordinary World\" forced it onto radio playlists months earlier than planned; it reached number three on the US chart and number six in the UK and won a prestigious Ivor Novello Award for song writing.\n\"Come Undone\", primarily written by Cuccurullo, with lyrics by Le Bon, made number seven in the US and number 13 in the UK. Both the band and the record label seemed to be caught by surprise by the album's critical and commercial success (number four in the UK, number seven in the US). John Taylor had been considering leaving the band but changed his mind. The band's largest tour ever, which included stops in the Middle East, the then recently de-embargoed South Africa, and South America, was halted after seven months when Le Bon suffered from strained vocal cords. After six weeks' recuperation, the band performed intermittently for another five months, including appearances in Israel, Thailand, and Indonesia.\nIn 1995, the band released the cover album \"Thank You\". Songs from \"Thank You\" included covers of Lou Reed's \"Perfect Day\" and Melle Mel's \"White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)\" (with backing vocals from the original artists). The album also marked the temporary return of former drummer Roger Taylor, who joined the band in studio to play drums on \"Watching the Detectives\" and \"Perfect Day\" (as well as a cover of \"Jeepster\" by T. Rex that did not appear on the album). In a video interview provided with the album's electronic press kit, Reed said he considered Duran Duran's version the best cover ever done of one of his songs, and they received praise from Robert Plant and Jimmy Page for their cover of Led Zeppelin's \"Thank You\".\n1997\u20132000: John Taylor's departure and second trio.\nAfter the promo tour for \"Thank You\" was completed, John Taylor co-founded the B5 Records label, recorded a solo album, founded and toured with the supergroup Neurotic Outsiders, and reunited the Power Station, though the project proceeded without him when he had to withdraw to deal with his divorce. Finally, after struggling for months to record the next album, \"Medazzaland\", in January 1997, John Taylor announced at the DuranCon fan convention that he was leaving the band \"for good\". His departure reduced the band to two long time members (Le Bon and Rhodes) and Cuccurullo, who decided to continue recording under the name Duran Duran.\nFreed from some internal writing conflicts, the band returned to the studio to rewrite and re-record many of the songs on \"Medazzaland\" (John Taylor's work remains on only four tracks). The album marked a return to the layered experimentation of \"Big Thing\", with intricate guitar textures and processed vocals. The track \"Out of My Mind\" was used as the theme song for the film \"The Saint\" (1997), but the only true single to be released in the United States was the quirky \"Electric Barbarella\", which is one of the first singles ever to be sold online. The music video for this single, featuring a sexy robot purchased and played with by band members, had to be censored before airing on MTV, but there was little of the controversy that had surrounded \"Girls on Film\". \"Electric Barbarella\" peaked at number 52 in the US in October 1997. Although \"Medazzaland\" was released in the US in October 1997, the album was never released in the UK. \"Electric Barbarella\" was later released in the UK as a single from the 1998 \"Greatest\" compilation album and peaked at number 23 on the UK chart in January 1999. The group played a set at the Princess Diana Tribute Concert on 27 June 1998 by special request of her family.\nDuran Duran parted ways with Capitol/EMI in 1999, although the label has since used Duran Duran's back catalogue to release several compilations of remixes and rare vinyl-only B-sides. The band then signed what was intended to be a three-album contract with Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records, but it lasted only through the poorly received 2000 album \"Pop Trash\". This slow-paced and heavy album seemed out-of-keeping with earlier band material. Rhodes' intricate production and Cuccurullo's songwriting and experimentation with guitar sounds and time signatures were not enough to hook the public, and the album did not perform well. The dreamy single \"Someone Else Not Me\" lasted barely two weeks on the radio, although its video was noted as the first to be produced entirely with Flash animation. While supporting \"Medazzaland\" and \"Pop Trash\", Duran Duran toured with bassist Wes Wehmiller and drummer Joe Travers.\n2001\u20132005: Reunion.\nIn 2000, Le Bon approached John Taylor with a proposal to reform Duran Duran's classic line-up. They agreed to part company with Cuccurullo after completing the \"Pop Trash\" tour. Cuccurullo then announced on his website that he was leaving Duran Duran to resume work with his 1980s band Missing Persons. This announcement was confirmed the next day by Duran Duran's website, followed a day later by the news that John, Roger and Andy had rejoined. To fulfill contractual obligations, Cuccurullo played three Duran Duran concerts in Japan in June 2001, ending his tenure in the band.\nThroughout 2001, 2002 and 2003, the band worked on writing new material, initially renting a house in Saint-Tropez where audio engineer Mark Tinley built a recording studio for their first serious writing session. They then returned to London to do some self-financed work with various producers (including old friend Nile Rodgers) and search for a new record deal. It proved difficult to find a record label willing to gamble on the band's comeback, so Duran Duran went on tour to prove the drawing power of the reunited band. The response of the fans and the media exceeded expectations. The band played a handful of 25th-anniversary dates across 2003, starting with two arena dates in Tokyo filled to capacity. Tickets sold out for each show within minutes, and celebrities turned out \"en masse\" for reunion dates. Amongst these were a number of shows at smaller venues that the band had played on both sides of the pond when they first got together in the early 1980s. In August, the band were booked as presenters at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, only to be surprised with a Lifetime Achievement Award. They also received a Lifetime Achievement award from \"Q\" magazine in October, and the equivalent Outstanding Contribution award at the BRIT Awards in February 2004.\nThe pace picked up with a sold-out tour of America, Australia and New Zealand. The band played a full concert at a private tailgate party at Super Bowl XXXVIII, their performance of \"The Wild Boys\" broadcast to millions during the pre-game show. A remix of the new track \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\" was released on many TV shows in February while magazines hailed (the modern \"Fab Five\") Duran Duran as one of the greatest bands of all time. Duran Duran then celebrated their homecoming to the UK with fourteen stadium dates in April 2004, including five sold-out nights at Wembley Arena. The British press, traditionally hostile to the band, accorded the shows some very warm reviews. Duran Duran brought along band Goldfrapp and the Scissor Sisters as alternating opening acts for this tour. The last two shows were filmed, resulting in the concert DVD \"Duran Duran: Live from London\" which was released in November.\nFinally, with more than thirty-five songs completed, the band signed a two-album contract with Epic Records in June, and completed the new album, now titled \"Astronaut\". The album was released in October 2004 and entered the UK charts at number three and the US charts at number 17. The first single was \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\", which reached number one on the \"Billboard\" US Dance chart in November and peaked at number five on the UK Singles Chart, Duran Duran's highest chart position since \"A View to a Kill\" in 1985. A second single, \"What Happens Tomorrow\", debuted at No.\u00a011 on the UK chart in February. A 5.1 mix of \"Astronaut\" was created by Jeremy Wheatley for the dual-disc release of \"Astronaut\". The CD side contains the album as-is and the DVD side contains the 5.1 mix of the album in DVD Audio format along with some DVD footage and videos.\nAfter a world tour in early 2005, Duran Duran were presented with the PRS Outstanding Contribution to British Music at the 2005 Ivor Novello Awards. Later that summer, the band headlined the massive Live 8 concert, Rome on 2 July 2005 in the Circus Maximus.\n2006\u20132008: \"Red Carpet Massacre\" and Andy Taylor's second departure.\nIn early 2006, Duran Duran covered John Lennon's song \"Instant Karma!\" for the \"Make Some Noise\" campaign sponsored by Amnesty International. Their version later appeared on \"\" as an iTunes exclusive bonus track. They also performed at two high-profile events\u00a0\u2013 the Nobel Prize Awards and the 2006 Winter Olympics. After a couple of weeks of songwriting in Northern California, the band began working with producer Michael Patterson in London, and continued intermittently for the next several months. At one point, they reported having had fifteen tracks nearly complete for an album tentatively titled \"Reportage\", but no further news emerged from the band for months afterward. In September, the band held meetings in New York City with Justin Timberlake and producer Timbaland with an eye to a potential collaboration and were soon reported to have completed three songs with the producer, including a song with Justin Timberlake.\nOn 25 October 2006, Duran Duran parted company with Andy Taylor once again. In an official announcement on their website, the band stated that an \"unworkable gulf\" had developed between them and Taylor and that \"we can no longer effectively function together\". It was noted by Andy Taylor in his book \"Wild Boy\" that tensions had arisen between the group's management and himself, and he was also diagnosed with clinical depression connected with the death of his father. Dom Brown, who had previously toured with the band, again took over guitar duties and has been performing with them since. After Taylor's departure, the band scrapped the \"Reportage\" album. They wrote and recorded a new album titled \"Red Carpet Massacre\" (2007), which included the Timbaland tracks. Dom Brown is the featured guitarist on the album.\nIn July 2007, the band performed twice at Wembley Stadium. Their first appearance at the stadium was the Concert for Diana which celebrated the life of Princess Diana almost 10 years after her death. The band performed \"(Reach Up for The) Sunrise\", \"The Wild Boys\" and \"Rio\". Their second appearance was at Live Earth concert, London. On 25 September, the Timberlake collaboration \"Falling Down\" was released as a download single on iTunes, and the band announced that they would play nine shows at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway to launch the \"Red Carpet Massacre\" album. The album launch was later extended to incorporate a show in London on 3 December 2007 and one in Dublin on 5 December 2007.\nIn May 2008, they toured the US leg of their 2008 world tour and were supported by the British band Your Vegas. In June 2008, they played the Louvre in Paris in a fundraising effort that contributed to the restoration of a Louis XV drawing room. Guests dined, privately viewed some of the museum's artworks, then attended a performance by the band in the I.M. Pei-designed Pyramid du Louvre. The group's performance marked a first for the 18th-century museum which had never before allowed a rock concert to occur anywhere within the grounds or buildings and another groundbreaker for Duran Duran.\nOn 2 July 2008, in Paris, Mark Ronson performed a unique live set with Duran Duran for an exclusive, invitation-only performance. Together, they showcased specially re-worked versions of some of Duran Duran's classic hits re-created by Ronson, along with tracks from \"Red Carpet Massacre\". Le Bon also performed songs from Ronson's latest album, \"Version\" (2007), as one of Ronson's featured guest vocalists. Unlike the band's previous album \"Astronaut\" (2004), \"Red Carpet Massacre\" sold poorly and received mixed responses from the music press. In 2008, \"Rio\" was included in the \"Classic Albums\" series.\n2009\u20132012: \"All You Need Is Now\".\nThe band departed from Epic Records in 2009, after releasing just two albums. In early 2010, it was revealed that the band would be contributing a cover of \"Boys Keep Swinging\" to a tribute/charity record for David Bowie called \"\" from which all profits go to War Child. Other contributing artists included Carla Bruni, Devendra Banhart, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, and Warpaint. The album was released on 14 September 2010 on Manimal Vinyl Records. A limited edition split 7-inch single with Duran Duran and Carla Bruni was also released on Manimal Vinyl in December 2010.\nOn 21 December 2010, Duran Duran's thirteenth album, titled \"All You Need Is Now\", produced by the Grammy Award-winning Mark Ronson and mixed by Spike Stent, was released exclusively on iTunes and hit the number one spot on download charts in 15 countries (including the UK). The first single from the record, title track \"All You Need Is Now\", was free to download worldwide on 8 December 2010 exclusively in iTunes. Guitarist and songwriter Dom Brown co-wrote all but two songs on the album.\nOn 25 February 2011, while in Milan, Duran Duran received a Style Icons of the 20th Century Award and a key to the city, presented by the city's mayor Letizia Moratti.\nIn March 2011 the band embarked on a world tour in support of the album. After a warm-up show in London, the tour officially began 16 March 2011 in Austin, Texas. On 23 March, the band performed live at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles as the start of the second season of \"\". The concert was directed by David Lynch and live-streamed on YouTube. The band was joined onstage by Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, Beth Ditto of Gossip, and Kelis. On 17 April 2011, Duran Duran performed at the Coachella Music Festival located at Empire Polo Grounds, in Indio, California. In May 2011, Le Bon contracted laryngitis leading to either cancellation or rescheduling of most of the European dates for the \"All You Need Is Now\" World Tour.\nOn 27 July 2012, Duran Duran headlined the London Summer Olympics 2012 Opening Ceremony celebration in Hyde Park. They represented England, along with Snow Patrol for Northern Ireland, Stereophonics for Wales, and Paolo Nutini for Scotland. At the end of August 2012, with one week left of their 18-month world tour, the band were forced to cancel the rest of the North American leg of the tour as Nick Rhodes had become ill with a viral infection.\n2013\u20132018: \"Paper Gods\".\nOn 4 March 2013, the band returned to the studio to work on their fourteenth album, and continued during the week beginning 23 September. They reconvened 13 to 18 December. On 31 December 2013, the band posted a mixtape curated by John Taylor as a New Year's \"thank you\" to their fans. On 10 February 2014, John Taylor and Roger Taylor worked with the Voce Chamber Choir and London Youth Chamber Choir on vocals for use on some Duran Duran tracks. Then former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante worked with the band on the new album.\nOn 11 September 2015, the album \"Paper Gods\" was released. The single \"Pressure Off\" was also released the same week, first via Microsoft's Xbox Music. The song subsequently appeared on Google Play Music. The album debuted at number 10 on the \"Billboard\" 200, the band's highest debut in 22 years. The album also reached number two in Italy, number four in the Netherlands, and number five in the UK. In 2016, the artist MNDR stood in for Rhodes during part of the third leg of the Paper Gods tour in the United States, while he returned to the UK in order to attend to an urgent family matter. Rhodes was quoted as saying, \"I will be back as soon as I can but know, in the meantime, that I am leaving both the band and fans in great hands, with the fabulous MNDR.\" Also, several remixes of their song \"Last Night in the City\" were released in digital form in that year.\nIn December 2016, the original five-piece lineup lost a case in the British High Court after they attempted to reclaim the U.S. copyright on their first three albums from Gloucester Place Music, part of EMI Music Publishing. Rhodes commented, \"We signed a publishing agreement as unsuspecting teenagers, over three decades ago, when just starting out and when we knew no better... if left untested, this judgment sets a very bad precedent for all songwriters of our era.\" In March 2020, Duran Duran signed with the Warner/Chappell Music publisher, covering their post-1986 catalogue. The band spent 2017 touring the American continent and playing a handful of festival dates in Europe and Asia.\n2019\u20132022: \"Future Past\" and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction.\nIn 2019, Duran Duran were working on a new album with Ronson, Erol Alkan and Giorgio Moroder handling production duties, and Graham Coxon and Lykke Li being confirmed as collaborators. Rhodes described the content and sound of a possible first single to be \"very different for us.\" Initially planned for release in 2020, the recording of the album was put on hold in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On 8 January 2021, a cover of \"Five Years\" by David Bowie was released for the fifth anniversary of his death. On 13 January 2021, \"Rolling Stone\" included the album at number 50 on their \"54 Most Anticipated Albums of 2021\" list. Le Bon said that the album is \"quite naked, raw. The grass is slightly sharp and twinkly rather than smooth,\" and is \"groovy (and) modern and very honest. The lyrics are quite something.\u201d On 18 May, the album title was announced as \"Future Past\".\nOn 19 May, the first single from the album \"Invisible\" was released along with a music video, and features Coxon as a guitarist and co-writer. On 9 July, the band premiered a second song from the album titled \"Give It All Up\" on NBC's \"Today\" show. On 5 August, Duran Duran released the album's second single \"More Joy!\", featuring further collaboration with Coxon, Erol Alkan and also Japanese rock band Chai. On 12 August, the band appeared on \"The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon\" performing \"Invisible\". On 31 August, Duran Duran released the album's third single \"Anniversary\", followed by the fourth single, \"Tonight United\", on 24 September. On 14 and 15 September, the band played two sold-out gigs at Birmingham's O2 Institute. That was the first time they played live since their last live gig in 2019. Along with their hit songs, they performed three tracks from \"Future Past\"\u2014\"Invisible\", \"Anniversary\" and \"Tonight United\". The band headlined the Isle of Wight festival on 19 September.\nOn 22 October 2021, \"Future Past\" was released. The album entered the UK Album Chart at number three, the band's highest peak since 2004's \"Astronaut\". This also earned the band the distinction of having UK Top 5 albums in each of the five decades they had been releasing music (1980s\u20132020s). On 22 January 2022, Duran Duran played on \"Austin City Limits\". In June 2022, Duran Duran performed at the Platinum Party at the Palace. In July 2022, the band returned to the city of their origin, Birmingham to headline the opening ceremony of Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games playing to a capacity Alexander Stadium.\nIn 2022, the band topped the fan vote (over 1 million preferences) for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the class of 2022, and in May of that year were announced as one of the seven inductees in the \"Performer\" category. \nOn 11 July 2022, Duran Duran headlined a concert in Hyde Park, London, to more than 80,000 adoring fans, as part of the 2022 BST concert series.\nThe ceremony at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was held on 5 November 2022, where Robert Downey Jr. inducted the band. John Taylor, Roger Taylor, Rhodes and Le Bon each attended the induction ceremony and performed \"Girls on Film\", \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Ordinary World\" along with longtime touring guitarist Dom Brown. During the acceptance speech, Simon Le Bon read from a letter written by Andy Taylor, who was absent from the ceremony, that revealed he has been privately fighting stage IV metastatic prostate cancer for the past four years and was \"massively disappointed\" he couldn't attend.\n2023\u2013present: \"Danse Macabre\".\nOn 20 March 2023, Duran Duran took to their Instagram to announce they are working on a new musical project, set for release in late 2023. The work will feature a collaboration with former band members Andy Taylor and Warren Cuccurullo. The project, \"Danse Macabre\", was released on 27 October. A Halloween-themed album, it features new songs, reworkings of older material and several covers.\nThe first single \u2013 the title track \"Danse Macabre\" \u2013 was released on 30 August 2023. The second single, \"Black Moonlight\", followed on 21 September.\nOn 13 September 2024, the band released a new reworking of their 1983 single \"New Moon on Monday\" titled \"New Moon (Dark Phase)\", ahead of a planned deluxe reissue of \"Danse Macabre\". The single features contributions from Andy Taylor.\nIn 2025, Carlo Conti announced that Duran Duran would be special guests of Sanremo Music Festival in the third night. They perform with Victoria De Angelis.\nInfluences.\nAlthough they began their career as \"a group of art school, experimental, post punk rockers,\" the band's quick rise to stardom, polished good looks and embrace of the teen press almost guaranteed disfavour from music critics. During the 1980s, Duran Duran were considered the quintessential manufactured, throw-away pop group. However, according to the \"Sunday Herald\", \"To describe them, as some have, as the first boy band, misrepresents their appeal. Their weapons were never just their looks, but self-penned songs.\" Moby said of the band in his blog in 2003: \"...\u00a0they were cursed by what we can call the 'Bee Gees' curse, which is: 'write amazing songs, sell tons of records, and consequently incur the wrath or disinterest of the rock obsessed critical establishment.'\"\nInfluences on Duran Duran included David Bowie, Roxy Music, the Beatles and the Doors; the electronic music of John Foxx's Ultravox, Kraftwerk, the Yellow Magic Orchestra and Giorgio Moroder; glam rock and American rock such as T. Rex, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and Sparks; British punk and post-punk bands such as the Clash, Sex Pistols and Siouxsie and the Banshees; and the disco/funk band Chic. Duran Duran were also influenced by contemporary synth-pop groups, with records by Japan, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and the Human League becoming fixtures in Rhodes's 1980 DJ sets at the Rum Runner club. Andy Taylor was a fan of the rock band AC/DC, \"...all these different influences were coming into the studio. Somehow, it had its own life. It became very unique in itself. It was influenced by a lot of different people\", Roger Taylor said in a 2012 interview.\nSeveral of the band's contemporaries including the Bangles, Elton John, Kylie Minogue, Paul Young and even the Monkees, have named themselves fans of the band's music. Le Bon described the group as \"the band to dance to when the bomb drops\". Successors like Barenaked Ladies, Beck, Jonathan Davis of Korn, the Bravery, Gwen Stefani and Pink have all cited Duran Duran as a key band in their formative years. Justin Timberlake is a fan of the band and presented them with the Outstanding Contribution award at the 2004 Brit Awards. The most recent crop of performers to name Duran Duran as an influence include Dido, Franz Ferdinand, Panic! at the Disco, Goldfrapp and Brandon Flowers of the Killers, who said, \"Nick Rhodes is an absolute hero of mine\u2014their records still sound fresh, which is no mean feat as far as synths are concerned.\"\nRhodes has directly lent his production techniques to Kajagoogoo's debut album \"White Feathers\" (1983) and its number one single \"Too Shy\", and to the Dandy Warhols' fourth album \"Welcome to the Monkey House\" (2003). The band's music has been used by several hip hop artists, most notably the Notorious B.I.G., who sampled Duran Duran's 1986 single \"Notorious\". Numerous bands have covered their music on record and in concert.\nVideos.\nThe MTV cable channel and the band were launched at about the same time, and each had a hand in propelling the other to greater heights. MTV needed showcase videos with charismatic performers. Les Garland, senior executive vice-president at MTV, said \"I remember our director of talent and artist relations came running in and said, \"You have got to see this video that's come in\". Duran Duran were getting zero radio airplay at the time, and MTV wanted to try to break new music. \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" was the greatest video I'd ever seen\". The band's video work was influential in several ways. First, Duran Duran filmed in exotic locales like Sri Lanka and Antigua, creating memorable images that were radically different from the then-common low budget \"band-playing-on-a-stage\" videos. Second, rather than simply playing their instruments, the band participated in mini-storylines (often taking inspiration from contemporary movies: \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" riffs on 1981's \"Raiders of the Lost Ark\", \"The Wild Boys\" on 1981's \"Mad Max 2\"), etc. While videos were already headed in this direction, Duran Duran led the trend with a style, featuring quick editing, arresting graphic design, and surreal-to-nonsensical image inserts, that drew attention from commentators and spawned a wealth of imitators.\nDuran Duran were among the first bands to have their videos shot with a professional movie camera on 35mm film, rather than on videotape, making them look superior to many of the quickly shot videos which had been MTV staples until then. MTV provided Duran Duran with access to American radio markets that were unfriendly to British music, new wave music, or \"anything with synthesisers\". Because MTV was not available everywhere in the United States at first, it was easy to see a pattern: where MTV went, listener demand for Duran Duran, Tears for Fears, Def Leppard and other European bands with interesting videos went through the roof. The band's sun-drenched videos for \"Rio\", \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" and \"Save a Prayer\", and the surreal \"Is There Something I Should Know?\" were filmed by future movie director Russell Mulcahy, who made eleven videos for the band. Duran Duran have always sought out innovative directors and techniques, even in their later years when MTV gave them little airplay. In addition to Mulcahy, they have had videos filmed by influential photographers Dean Chamberlain and Ellen von Unwerth, Chinese director Chen Kaige, documentary filmmaker Julien Temple, and the Polish Brothers, among others. According to Rhodes, \"Video is to us like stereo was to Pink Floyd.\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"The British won out here, hands down. Next to the prosaic, foursquare appearance of the American bands, such acts as Duran Duran seemed like caviar. MTV opened up a whole new world that could not be fully apprehended over the radio. The visual angle played to the arty conceits of Britain's young style barons, suggesting something more exotic than the viewer was likely to find in the old hometown. The big Duran Duran hits, \"Girls on Film\" and \"Hungry Like the Wolf\", were MTV favorites three months before radio began to pick up on them. And via MTV, Duran Duran and their like have engendered an outpouring of good old-fashioned hysteria among teenage girls.\"\nIn 1984, Duran Duran introduced video technology into their live stadium shows by being among the first acts to provide video screens above the stage. They have recorded concerts using IMAX and 360-degree panoramic \"immersive video\" cameras, with 10.2 channel audio. In 2000, they experimented with augmented reality technology, which allowed three-dimensional computer-generated images to appear on stage with the band. They appeared on several century-end video countdowns: The MTV \"100 Greatest Videos Ever Made\" featured \"Hungry Like the Wolf\" at No.\u00a011 and \"Girls on Film\" at No.\u00a068, and the \"VH1: 100 Greatest Videos\" listed \"Hungry\" at No.\u00a031 and \"Rio\" at No.\u00a060. MTV named \"Hungry\" the 15th of their most played videos of all time.\nThe band has released several video compilations, starting with the self-titled \"video album\" \"Duran Duran\" (1983), for which they won a Grammy Award, up to the 2004 two-disc DVD release \"Greatest\", which included alternative versions of several popular videos as Easter eggs. In addition to \"Greatest\", the documentary \"Sing Blue Silver\", and the concert film \"Arena\" (both from 1984) were released on DVD in 2004. \"Live from London\", a concert video from one of their sold-out 2004 reunion shows at Wembley Arena, was released in the fall of 2005.\nOther video collections, concert films, and documentaries remain available only on videotape, and Duran Duran have not yet released a collection which includes all their videos. The band has said that a huge amount of unreleased concert and documentary footage has been filmed over the years, which they hope can be edited and released in some form in the near future. The video for \"Falling Down\" was released in October 2007. The Nick Egan-directed video for the lead single and title track from \"All You Need Is Now\" was premiered via Yahoo Music on 20 December 2010. The second video from \"All You Need Is Now\", \"Girl Panic\", was released on 8 November 2011. It features some of the world's most famous supermodels, such as Yasmin Le Bon, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Eva Herzigov\u00e1 and Helena Christensen, playing the band. The video was directed by Jonas Akerlund, and during the filming, an editorial was made for \"Harper's Bazaar\" magazine.\nVisual style.\nFrom the beginning of their career, all the members had a keen sense of visual style. They worked with stylist Perry Haines and fashion designers such as Kahn & Bell and Antony Price to build a sharp and elegant image, soon outgrowing the ruffles and sashes of the pirate-flavoured early New Romantic look that had been popularised by Adam Ant during 1980\u201381. They have continued to present fashion as part of their package throughout their career. In the 1990s they worked with Vivienne Westwood and in the 2000s with Giorgio Armani. The band retained creative control of their visual presentation having worked closely with graphic designer Malcolm Garrett and many others over the years to create album covers, tour programs and other materials.\nTeen and music magazines in the UK latched onto their good looks quickly, and the USA soon followed. It was a rare month in the early 1980s when there was not at least one picture of the band members in teen magazines such as \"Smash Hits\" or \"Tiger Beat\". John Taylor once remarked that the band was \"like a box of Quality Street [chocolates]; everyone is someone's favourite\" Duran Duran later came to regret this early pin-up exposure, but at the time it helped attract national attention. In an interview with \"Rock Fever Superstars\" magazine in early 1988, John Taylor stated:\nWe used to be a very chi-chi name to drop in '79, but then the Fab Five hype started and something went wrong. Something went really wrong. That wasn't what I wanted. [...] Not that I didn't like being screamed at. At one point I really did\".\nDiscography.\nStudio albums\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nTours.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nExplanatory notes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "13363207": "Master Mixes\nMaster Mixes is a remix EP by the English pop rock band Duran Duran. This double 12\" compilation was released commercially in the United States by Capitol under the production label of Masterdisk Corporation and in Brazil by EMI in 1987.\nNotes.\nIn 1999, EMI released a collection of remixes under the title \"Strange Behaviour\" and included the \"American Science (Chemical Reaction Mix)\", giving the mix its first truly commercial release. The other remix of \"American Science\" and the Kurtis Mantronik mixes of \"Vertigo\" have yet to receive a commercial release. Neither has the \"Notoriousaurus Rex (Master Mix)\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["13363207", "148703"], "permutation_1": ["13363207", "148703"], "permutation_2": ["13363207", "148703"], "permutation_3": ["148703", "13363207"]}
{"id": "2hop__83811_63979", "docs_added": {"43173676": "Thinking Out Loud\n2014 single by Ed Sheeran\n\"Thinking Out Loud\" is a song by English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran recorded for his second studio album, \"\u00d7\" (2014). It was written by Ed Sheeran and Amy Wadge, and produced by frequent collaborator Jake Gosling. It was released in the US on 14 August 2014 as the album's third single.\nIn the UK, the song spent 19 weeks within the top 40 before peaking at number one in early November 2014; it became Sheeran's second number-one single there. The single has also reached the top spot in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Denmark, the Netherlands, Slovakia and South Africa, and peaked at number two on both the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and the Canadian Hot 100. It was Sheeran's highest-charting single in North America until \"Shape of You\" topped the charts in both countries in 2017.\nIn June 2015, \"Thinking Out Loud\" became the first single to spend a full year in the UK top 40. In September 2015, it also became the seventh single to have achieved triple platinum certification in the UK during the 21st century. In October 2015, the song became the first to be streamed over 500 million times on Spotify, is also one of the most streamed songs in the UK and has been viewed more than 3.8 billion times on YouTube as of February 2025.\n\"Thinking Out Loud\" received nominations for Grammy Award for Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance at the 58th Grammy Awards, winning the latter two.\nBackground and writing.\nSheeran wrote \"Thinking Out Loud\" with Amy Wadge, a Wales-based singer-songwriter. He met Wadge when he was 17 years old and they had since written several songs together. Of these, five songs composed the extended play \"Songs I Wrote with Amy\", which Sheeran independently released on 4 April 2010. Wadge also co-wrote the song \"Gold Rush\", a track on the deluxe version of Sheeran's debut album, \"+\" (2011).\nIn February 2014, Wadge visited Sheeran at home for a \"chilling-out time\". Around that time, Sheeran's second studio album, \"\u00d7\", was nearly completed. Wadge revealed that her visit was not supposed to be a songwriting session. While Sheeran was taking a shower, Wadge played a few chords on a guitar. The tune caught the attention of Sheeran and he ran downstairs. Sheeran suggested working with the tune, but only after returning home from dinner, work began. The melody developed from a simple riff. According to Sheeran, he composed the melody on a guitar in a manner which was \"very Van-like\", referring to Van Morrison. The Irish musician has been an inspiration to Sheeran since a young age, and Sheeran wanted to capture that vibe when he composed the song.\nIn the kitchen, Sheeran and Wadge began writing the song at 2:00am on 4 February 2014, and completed it in 20 minutes. According to Wadge, the lyrical content resulted from her and Sheeran's talking about \"everlasting love\", inspired by the circumstances relevant at that time. Sheeran also revealed that the lyrics were inspired by his then-girlfriend, Athina Andrelos, whom Sheeran met in early 2014. Sheeran would later explain that he wrote the song \"in a relationship at a really, really happy point\". Sheeran revealed that he also had his grandparents in mind and maintaining love in old age (\"'til we're 70\" in the lyrics), and the early version of the chorus was \"I'm singing out now\" before it became \"I'm thinking out loud\". Immediately after writing, Sheeran recorded the song on his phone. He was keen to include \"Thinking Out Loud\" on the second album. He properly recorded the song the following day at the Sticky Studios, a recording facility located in the small Surrey village of Windlesham, and informed Wadge of its inclusion on the album. It became the last song recorded for the album. For \"Thinking Out Loud\", Sheeran sought the assistance of Jake Gosling, who produced much of his debut album and had earlier contributed tracks, four of which appear on the standard version of the second album.\nComposition.\n\"Thinking Out Loud\" is a romantic ballad with blue-eyed soul influences. Sheeran referred to it as a \"walking down the aisle song\". In the lyrics, Sheeran reflects on \"getting older and fidelity and love in a fairly conventional context\", according to Eric Clarke, professor of music at University of Oxford.\nThe song was composed in the key of D major with a tempo of 79 beats per minute. Sheeran's vocals range from B2 to A4. In the mix, Sheeran's voice is \"unusually\" loud over the instruments, which, for Mike Senior of the music technology magazine, \"Sound on Sound\", is \"surprisingly rare\" in contemporary records. Senior analysed the vocal elements in which he found that, in spite of several notes sung off pitch, \"the overall framework of the vocal remains fundamentally in tune\".\nJournalists noted similarities between \"Thinking Out Loud\" and \"Let's Get It On\", a 1973 single by soul musician Marvin Gaye. Andrew Unterberger of \"Spin\" wrote that \"the gently loping four-note bass pattern and crisp '70s soul drums absolutely smack of the Gaye classic, as do the embrace-insistent lyrics and general candlelit-bedroom feel\". Jason Lipshutz of \"Billboard\" called it a \"sleek update\" of the classic.\nRelease.\nPrior to the album release, Sheeran debuted \"Thinking Out Loud\" on 24 May 2014 by performing it live on the British music television show, \"Later... with Jools Holland\". The debut followed the release of the video accompaniment to \"Sing\", the album's lead single. \"Thinking Out Loud\" was immediately perceived as having contrast to \"Sing\", which is a \"high-energy funk/R&B-infused song\". \"Thinking Out Loud\" became available on 18 June 2014 as an \"instant grat\" download for consumers who pre-ordered \"\u00d7\" on the iTunes Store. It served as a promotional single from \"\u00d7\", which was released two days later. On the standard version of the album, \"Thinking Out Loud\" is the next-to-last track, the last being \"Afire Love\".\n\"Thinking Out Loud\" was initially serviced to Australian radio on 14 August 2014 and later released on 24 September 2014. It served as the third of five singles released from the album; it followed the songs, \"Sing\" and \"Don't\", the first and second single respectively. According to Sheeran, no one from his record label wanted to release \"Thinking Out Loud\" as a single, favouring over \"Photograph\" as the \"big song\". \"Photograph\" was supposed to be the main single, but when \"Thinking Out Loud\" spent several weeks within the top 20 on the UK Singles Chart albeit not receiving rotation, the latter song was kept as the third single. \"Photograph\" was later released as the fifth and final single. \"Thinking Out Loud\" was issued on 7\" vinyl exclusively as part of the Black Friday Record Store Day, which was celebrated on 28 November 2014. The vinyl record included, as a B-side, the live version of \"I'm A Mess\" which Sheeran performed at the Lightship 95 studio. On 26 December 2015, Sheeran released an Irish-language version of \"Thinking Out Loud\" for the Irish album \"CEOL 2016\".\nCritical reception.\nLauren Murphy of \"The Irish Times\" noted that the \"injection of blue-eyed soul\" on the song is \"enjoyable\", and that it \"makes Sheeran's aptitude for melody difficult to dismiss\". Jim Beviglia of the \"American Songwriter\" thought that although \"tidy\", \"Thinking Out Loud\" comes \"toothless\" compared with the \"daring confessionals\" Sheeran made on the other songs.\n\"The Washington Post\" writer, Allison Stewart, has hailed the song as \"a blatant and mercilessly effective bid for 'I'll Be'-style wedding-song immortality\". \"Billboard\" magazine's Jason Lipshutz, commented that Sheeran \"pushes this bold stab at romance past its sappiest moments, and ends the album on a likable note\". Jamieson Cox of \"Time\" wrote that \"the album's greatest moment by a country mile is relegated to its penultimate slot\", referring to \"Thinking Out Loud\".\nChart performance.\n\"Thinking Out Loud\" topped several charts in Europe, Oceania and South Africa, and reached the top ten in several other countries in North America (see Weekly charts below). Upon the album's release, the single debuted at number 26 on the UK Singles Chart. On 2 November 2014, \"Thinking Out Loud\" topped the UK Singles Chart in its 19th week in the Top 40, becoming Sheeran's second UK number one and breaking the record for the longest ascent to number one. In the week ending 27 June 2015, it had spent a record consecutive 52 weeks (or a full year) inside the top 40. Around the same time, the single had accumulated 1.65 million combined sales and streams; it became one of the 161 million-selling singles and the 26th best-selling of the 2010s in the UK. On 18 September 2015, the British Phonographic Industry certified the single triple platinum for combined sales (including streaming points) of 1,800,000 units. As of September 2017, the song has sold 1,219,000 copies with 130 million streams, making a total of 2,521,000 units sold in the United Kingdom. In February 2025, its certification was upgraded to octuple platinum, denoting sales and streams of over 4,800,000.\nIn the US, \"Thinking Out Loud\" peaked at number two on the all-encompassing chart \"Billboard\" Hot 100; the single became Sheeran's highest-charting single until the release of \"Shape of You\" in 2017. It remained the runner-up spot for eight consecutive weeks, a chart feat last held in 2004. \"Thinking Out Loud\" was kept off the top spot by \"Uptown Funk\", although it outperformed the latter song for a week in February 2015 on the \"Billboard\" Digital Songs. On other specific US charts, \"Thinking Out Loud\" reached number one on the \"Billboard\" Adult Pop Songs for the week ending 21 February 2015, marking Sheeran's first. For the week ending 21 March 2015, \"Thinking Out Loud\" held the top position on the \"Billboard\" Pop Songs, Adult Pop Songs, and Adult Contemporary charts, becoming the fourth song in history to lead all three adult charts simultaneously. In celebration of Google Play's fifth anniversary, Google announced \"Thinking Out Loud\" as the top-selling song on the platform. \"Thinking Out Loud\" is Sheeran's best-selling song in the United States, with 5,622,000 copies sold as of September 2017.\nOn streaming services.\nIn the UK, Sheeran's native country, \"Thinking Out Loud\" claimed the record for the most streams in a single week in December 2014. The track accumulated over 1,638,000 streams, and subsequently achieved a personal best of 1,850,000 streams in the week ending 21 December 2014. This record has since been broken by several songs.\nIn April 2015, the song ranked as the most popular based on the 2.8 million sleep-themed playlists created by Spotify users. Sleep is one of the company's most popular categories that, according to Spotify, \"people also use for general relaxation and to help themselves unwind\". \"The Guardian\" columnist Tim Dowling suggested that the report indicated \"very popular, slightly mellow songs that keep cropping up on sleep playlists\" but not a list of a \"carefully curated journey to unconsciousness\".\nIn October 2015, \"Thinking Out Loud\" set the record of most streams of a song on Spotify, having accumulated over 500 million streams. The company created the \"Sheerio Index\", an interactive graphic map which showed where Sheeran was most popular. The colour-based map indicated that Sheeran was most popular in Denmark. It was surpassed a month later by \"Lean On\", a song by Major Lazer and DJ Snake featuring M\u00d8.\nMusic video.\nEmil Nava directed the video accompaniment to the single. Most of it was filmed in the Crystal Ballroom at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, California. The video was shot continuously using a 16 mm film camera.\nUnlike Sheeran's earlier videos, where he assumed a low profile, he took the lead role on \"Thinking Out Loud\". In the video, Sheeran executes a contemporary dance with Brittany Cherry, a contestant from the televised American dance competition, \"So You Think You Can Dance\". The routine was choreographed by Nappytabs and with training help from Paul Karmiryan. While on concert tour, Sheeran spent five hours a day for three weeks to practice with Cherry.\nThe video was released on 7 October 2014. After the first 24 hours, the video had over 2.7 million views on video-sharing website, YouTube. As of October 2022, it has 3.5 billion views, making it the 17th most viewed video on the site. The music video received four nominations at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards including Video of the Year and Best Male Video.\nLive performances.\nOn 26 October 2014, Sheeran performed the song on third live results show of series 11 of \"The X Factor\". He also performed it on 9 November 2014 in the 2014 MTV Europe Music Awards. Sheeran also performed the song as a special guest at \"The Voice\"'s live finale on 16 December 2014. Furthermore, Sheeran performed the track on the Christmas Special of \"The Jonathan Ross Show\" on 20 December 2014. He also performed the song at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards on 8 February 2015 along with John Mayer, Questlove, Adam Blackstone, and Herbie Hancock. Sheeran performed \"Thinking Out Loud\" on 13 April 2015 results show of the second series of \"The X Factor\" in New Zealand. Sheeran also performed the song at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show 2014. On 15 August 2024, Sheeran and Taylor Swift performed \"Thinking Out Loud\" at Wembley Stadium in London as part of a mashup with their collaborations \"Everything Has Changed\" and \"End Game\" for Swift's Eras Tour (2023\u20132024).\nParodies and usage in media.\nOn 28 April 2015 episode of \"The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon\", actor Jeremy Renner, known for his role as Hawkeye in the \"Avengers\" movies, performed on piano and sang a song captioned by Fallon's show on YouTube as \"Hawkeye Sings About His Super Powers\". While not parodying Sheeran's lyrics, it is sung to the same tune. The lyrics suggest that Hawkeye feels defensive compared with the other Avengers as he was the only mortally human one in a team of superhuman or enhanced heroes: \"But listen, I've got powers too; they're pretty sweet. / I promise I can do so much more than just archery ... / I can open a pickle jar. / I'm friggin' Hawkeye. / Maybe I'm as super as they are.\"\nThe song and video were also parodied in the CW series \"Crazy Ex-Girlfriend\". Titled \"Let's Have Intercourse\", the song was sung by Scott Michael Foster with Rachel Bloom appearing in the scene dancing with Foster in the same manner as Sheeran and Cherry. The lyrics are an appeal by Foster's character, Nathaniel Plimpton III, to series protagonist Rebecca Bunch (Bloom) to have sex whilst trapped in an elevator.\nPlagiarism allegations.\nOn 10 August 2016, it was announced that the family of Ed Townsend, who co-wrote Marvin Gaye's \"Let's Get It On\", was suing Sheeran, alleging that \"the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic compositions of 'Thinking' are substantially and/or strikingly similar to the drum composition of 'Let's [Get It On]'.\" The case was dismissed without prejudice in February 2017. Two years later, on 28 June 2018, Ed Sheeran was again sued on similar grounds, this time for $100 million in damages by Structured Asset Sales, owners of one-third of the copyright to \"Let's Get It On\". The case was heard by a jury in New York City in 2023, which found in favor of Sheeran.\nSheeran's defence rests on the argument that, while the two songs have similar \"building blocks\" and a specific chord progression in particular, such features are true for many pop songs. After winning the trial, Sheeran said: \"These chords are common building blocks which were used to create music long before 'Let\u2019s Get It On' was written and will be used to create music long after we are all gone.\"\nFormats and track listings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCredits and personnel.\nCredits adapted from the album liner notes:\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nChad Brownlee version.\nCanadian country singer Chad Brownlee recorded a cover version and released it as a single in 2015. He also released a video of himself performing the song.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "37807230": "Everything Has Changed\n2013 single by Taylor Swift featuring Ed Sheeran\n\"Everything Has Changed\" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift featuring the English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran from Swift's fourth studio album, \"Red\" (2012). It was released as the sixth single from the album on July 14, 2013, by Big Machine Records. A music video for the song was released earlier on June 6, 2013. Produced by Butch Walker, \"Everything Has Changed\" is a guitar-led folk-pop ballad. Its lyrics are about wanting to know a new lover better. The song received mixed reviews from critics, who either complimented or criticized the production.\n\"Everything Has Changed\" peaked at number 32 on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It reached the top 10 on the Irish Singles Chart and the UK Singles Chart in Sheeran's native United Kingdom, and was certified platinum in the UK. Swift included it on the set list of the Red Tour (2013\u20132014). A re-recorded version, \"Everything Has Changed (Taylor's Version)\", was released as part of Swift's re-recorded album \"Red (Taylor's Version)\" on November 12, 2021.\nBackground and composition.\nTaylor Swift released her third studio album, \"Speak Now\", in October 2010. She wrote the album by herself and co-produced it with Nathan Chapman. \"Speak Now\" was similar to Swift's previous album, \"Fearless\" (2008), in its country pop production style. On her fourth studio album, \"Red\" (2012), Swift wanted to experiment with other musical styles. To this end, she approached different producers other than Chapman, beyond her career base in Nashville, Tennessee.\nSwift wrote \"Everything Has Changed\" with Ed Sheeran on a trampoline in Swift's backyard. It was produced by Butch Walker, a prominent contemporary producer. Swift initially worked with Walker and Sheeran on separate songs, but brought \"Everything Has Changed\" to Walker because she \"knew he would approach it from an organic place, which is where [Sheeran] comes from\". She chose Walker as a new collaborator on \"Red\" because she admired his \"emotionally charged\" production.\n\"Everything Has Changed\" is a midtempo ballad driven by guitar. Critics described it as a folk-pop song. The track extensively uses syncopation at the sixteenth-note level, which musicologist James E. Perone deemed a trademark style of Swift's music and reminiscent of her self-titled debut album (2006). Perone commented that \"Everything Has Changed\" incorporates hip-hop influences with the deep bass drum beats in its production. Lyrically, the song is about two new lovers wanting to get to know each other better. Both Swift and Sheeran provide lead vocals, alternating between the verses.\nRelease and commercial performance.\n\"Everything Has Changed\" is track number 14 on \"Red\", which was released on October 22, 2012, by Big Machine Records. On June 8, 2013, Swift and Sheeran performed the song on the season finale of the seventh series of \"Britain's Got Talent\". It was included on the set list of Swift's the Red Tour (2013\u20132014), with Sheeran. At the July 22, 2023, show in Seattle, she performed \"Everything Has Changed\" as a \"surprise song\" for the Eras Tour. She later performed the song as part of a mashup with her song \"Glitch\" on June 3, 2024, and with Sheeran as part of a mashup with \"End Game\" and \"Thinking Out Loud\" on August 15, 2024.\nIn April 2013, Swift announced that \"Everything Has Changed\" would be released as a single in the United Kingdom. It was released in the UK on July 14, and then the United States two days later. In the US, \"Everything Has Changed\" peaked at number 32 on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100. On \"Billboard\" airplay charts, it peaked at number eight on the Adult Pop Songs, number 11 on Adult Contemporary, and number 14 on Mainstream Top 40. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified the song double platinum for surpassing two million units based on sales and streaming. Elsewhere, \"Everything Has Changed\" entered in other English-speaking territories, including the Irish Singles Chart (5), the UK Singles Chart (7), New Zealand (22), Australia (28), and the Canadian Hot 100 (28). The song was certified gold in New Zealand, and platinum in Australia and the UK. It is Swift's most-downloaded collaborative single in the UK, selling 373,400 downloads as of July 2021.\nCritical reception.\n\"Everything Has Changed\" received mixed reviews from music critics. Perone gave the song a positive review, calling it a pleasant track that \"should not be overlooked\". Mesfin Fekadu of the Associated Press considered \"Everything Has Changed\" a highlight on \"Red\", praising Swift and Sheeran's falsetto vocals. In the \"Los Angeles Times\", Randall Roberts called it a \"powerful collaboration\" and picked it as one of the album's \"well-constructed pop songs Taylor-made for bedroom duets\". Phil Gallo from \"Billboard\" considered the song \"Swift at her most plaintive\". Another \"Billboard\" article reviewing \"Red\" gave the song a mixed review, criticizing the lyrics as clich\u00e9d but complimenting Sheeran's harmony vocals.\nJon Caramanica from \"The New York Times\" considered Swift's songwriting on \"Everything Has Changed\" not as strong as on her past songs, but still maintained \"her ear for the awkward and tentative rhythms of romantic bonding\". Robert Cospey of \"Digital Spy\" gave the song a three stars out of five rating, praising the song's musical style as \"cutesy\" but felt that \"their exchanges leave us with a warm and fuzzy feeling that is all too rare these days\". Sian Rowe, a writer from \"NME\" was upright critical, deeming it inferior to respective singer-songwriters' material and \"disappointing in every way\". Bernard Perusse from the \"Edmonton Journal\" considered it a weak song. Tony Clayton-Lea from \"The Irish Times\" deemed the track Swift's \"desperate attempt\" to reach out to new audiences. Also from \"The Irish Times\", Eoin Butler gave the single a two-out-of-five rating, calling it a \"typically slushy ballad\".\nMusic video.\nA music video for \"Everything Has Changed\" was released on Swift's Vevo channel on YouTube on June 6, 2013. It was directed by Philip Andelman and filmed in Oak Park, California at Medea Creek Middle School and Oak Hills Elementary. Also filmed in San Antonio, Texas. The video begins with two children who initially appear to be Swift and Sheeran when they were much younger, meeting each other on a bus to elementary school. Throughout the video, the two children engage in many activities at school together, including painting their faces with crayons, pretending to be a princess and knight, and dancing with each other in the empty school gym. At the end, Swift and Sheeran appear and are revealed to actually be the parents of their child counterparts, arriving at the school to pick them up and take them back to their respective homes.\nJason Lipshutz from \"Billboard\" labelled the video as \"impossibly adorable\", while Ray Rahman from \"Entertainment Weekly\" compared the video's synopsis to \"Forrest Gump\", but \"much more gentle than that\". The two actors who starred in the \"Everything Has Changed\" video appeared together again in the music video of \"The Joker and the Queen\" (2022), a song by Sheeran featuring Swift. To this extent, some media publications deemed \"The Joker and the Queen\" a sequel to the \"Everything Has Changed\" video.\nPersonnel.\nAdapted from \"Red\" album liner notes\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\n\"Everything Has Changed (Taylor's Version)\".\nSwift re-recorded \"Everything Has Changed\", subtitled \"(Taylor's Version)\", with Sheeran for her second re-recorded album, \"Red (Taylor's Version)\", released on November 12, 2021, through Republic Records. Prior to the release, on August 23, 2021, Sheeran shared a clip on social media showing him in the studio, re-recording the track and another collaboration with Swift for \"Red (Taylor's Version)\" titled \"Run\". \"Everything Has Changed (Taylor's Version)\" entered on the charts of Canada, Singapore, and the United States, and peaked at number 59 on the \"Billboard\" Global 200 chart.\nPersonnel.\nAdapted from \"Red (Taylor's Version)\" liner notes\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "68409617": "I Bet You Think About Me\n2021 single by Taylor Swift featuring Chris Stapleton\n\"I Bet You Think About Me\" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift featuring harmony vocals from the American singer-songwriter Chris Stapleton. Swift wrote it with Lori McKenna in June 2011 and intended to include it on her fourth studio album, \"Red\" (2012). Although it did not make the cut, it was produced by Swift and Aaron Dessner for \"Red\"'s re-recorded version, \"Red (Taylor's Version)\" (2021). Republic Records and MCA Nashville released the song to US country radio on November 15, 2021.\n\"I Bet You Think About Me\" is a country and folk-pop ballad with a harmonica-laced production that incorporates acoustic guitars, lap steel guitars, high-strung guitars, and a string section. Its tongue-in-cheek lyrics contrast the narrator's humble upbringing with an ex-lover's pretentious, high-class lifestyle. The accompanying music video, which marked Blake Lively's directorial debut, stars Swift as a woman who attempts to sabotage the wedding of her ex-boyfriend (Miles Teller). \nMusic critics generally complimented the country production, songwriting, and Stapleton's vocals. \"I Bet You Think About Me\" peaked at number 22 on the \"Billboard\" Global 200 and entered on the charts in Australia, Canada, and the United States. The song was nominated for Best Country Song at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards, and the music video was nominated for Video of the Year at both the 57th Academy of Country Music Awards and 56th Annual Country Music Association Awards. \nBackground and release.\nAfter ending her 13-year contract with Big Machine Records and signing a new deal with Republic Records in 2018, Taylor Swift began re-recording her first six studio albums in November 2020. The decision followed a public 2019 dispute between Swift and the talent manager Scooter Braun, who had acquired Big Machine, including the masters of her albums which the label had released. By re-recording the albums, Swift had full ownership of the new masters, which enabled her to encourage licensing of her re-recorded songs for commercial use in hopes of substituting the Big Machine-owned masters.\nIn April 2021, Swift released her first re-recorded album: the re-recording of her 2008 studio album \"Fearless\", subtitled \"Taylor's Version\". In addition to the re-recorded tracks, it contained several unreleased \"From the Vault\" tracks that she had written but left out of the original album. On November 12, 2021, she released her second re-recorded album: the re-recorded version of her 2012 studio album \"Red\", also subtitled \"Taylor's Version\". As with its predecessor, \"Red (Taylor's Version)\" also includes \"From the Vault\" tracks that Swift had intended for but left out of the original \"Red\".\n\"I Bet You Think About Me\" is one of the vault tracks on \"Red (Taylor's Version)\". Swift wrote the song while staying in Foxborough, Massachusetts, to play two Gillette Stadium shows as part of her Speak Now World Tour in June 2011. She then contacted the American musician Lori McKenna, whom she had known through their mutual friend Liz Rose, to ask McKenna to join the song as a co-writer. The two completed writing at McKenna's house in Stoughton, Massachusetts within the first day of the Gillette show. McKenna recalled that Swift had the rough idea and title, and she helped Swift \"bounce stuff off of\". Officially titled \"I Bet You Think About Me (Taylor's Version) (From the Vault)\", it is track number 26 on \"Red (Taylor's Version)\". Republic Records and MCA Nashville released the song to US country radio on November 15, 2021. On April 30, 2023, Swift performed \"I Bet You Think About Me\" on guitar as a \"surprise song\" at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, as part of her sixth headlining concert tour, the Eras Tour.\nProduction and lyrics.\nSwift produced \"I Bet You Think About Me\" with Aaron Dessner, who recorded and engineered the track with Jonathan Low. Christopher Rowe recorded Swift's lead vocals at Kitty Committee Studio in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Dessner played acoustic guitar, bass guitar, high-strung guitar, and piano. Josh Kaufman was an additional recording engineer and played the harmonica, electric guitar, and lap steel guitar. The track features a string section (consisting of violins, violas, cellos) played by the London Contemporary Orchestra; their performance was conducted by Robert Ames, orchestrated by Dessner's brother Bryce Dessner, and recorded by Jeremy Murphy at the EBC Studio in London. Chris Stapleton's vocals were recorded at Sputnik Sound Studio in Nashville. Low mixed the track and Dessner recorded the instruments that he played at Long Pond Studios in New York.\nThe end product is a country and folk-pop ballad. It has a harmonica-driven production with twangy vocals and background vocal harmonies from Stapleton. In the lyrics, Swift makes multiple sarcastic remarks towards an ex-lover and his lifestyle. Swift said, \"We wanted this song to be like a comedic, tongue-in-cheek, funny, not caring what anyone thinks about you sort of breakup song\", and explained that she and McKenna wanted to write a drinking song. The ex-lover in question has made Swift feel inferior towards him; she fails to fit in with his \"upper-crust circles\", and he has once told her that he and Swift are \"too different\". Recounting the differences between the two former partners' childhoods, she labels herself as a girl \"raised on a farm\" and the ex-lover as someone born with a \"silver spoon\" and from a \"gated community. At the end of the song, Swift additionally references her ex-lover's \"cool indie concerts\", \"organic shoes\", and \"million-dollar [couches]\". She concludes the song by referring to her songwriting profession: \"When you say, 'Oh my god, she's insane, she wrote a song about me?'/ I bet you think about me.\"\nReception.\nMusic critics praised the production, Swift's songwriting, and Stapleton's guest appearance. \"Variety\"'s Chris Willman gave \"I Bet You Think About Me\" a five-star rating and lauded the lyrics as sharp. Although Willman considered Stapleton's guest appearance too short, he praised the country production as rowdier compared to Swift's early artistic output. Jessica Nicholson from \"Billboard\" complimented Stapleton's \"burnished, bluesy vocal\" and the \"well-crafted\" lyrics about a kiss-off to a high-class ex-lover. Also from \"Billboard\", Jason Lipshutz remarked that Swift's \"deadpanning\" delivery highlighted her wittiness. In \"USA Today\", Melissa Ruggieri wrote that Stapleton's \"whiskey-hued vocals are the beautiful sandpaper to Swift's sleek voice\" and found the lyrics some of Swift's \"snarkiest\". \"Time\"'s critics in 2023 placed \"I Bet You Think About Me\" fourth on their ranking of Swift's 25 vault tracks; Moises Mendes II commended the lyricism and deemed Stapleton a fitting guest vocalist. Josh Kurp of \"Uproxx\" ranked it seventh out of 26 vault tracks and said that the \"sarcastic\" lyricism made it a good drinking song. At the 65th Annual Grammy Awards (2023), the song received a nomination for Best Country Song.\nAfter \"Red (Taylor's Version)\" was released, \"I Bet You Think About Me\" debuted at number 22 on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart dated November 27, 2021. According to \"MusicRow\", it was the most added song on country radio during its first week of release. The single peaked at number 23 on the Country Airplay chart and number three on the Hot Country Songs chart. In Canada, \"I Bet You Think About Me\" reached number 17 on the Canadian Hot 100 and number 34 on the Canada Country chart. The song peaked at number 22 on the \"Billboard\" Global 200, number 43 on the ARIA Singles Chart in Australia, and number 75 on the UK Streaming Chart in the United Kingdom.\nMusic video.\nA music video for \"I Bet You Think About Me\" premiered on the video-sharing platform YouTube on November 15, 2021. Swift and American actress Blake Lively wrote the treatment for the video, and the latter directed it in her directorial debut. The video documents a wedding, with the wedding couple played by the actor Miles Teller and his wife Keleigh Sperry, who had been a friend of Swift's for years. Swift plays an ex-girlfriend who intrudes upon the wedding. Aaron Dessner has a cameo as a member of the wedding band, while Swift's brother Austin Swift is credited as a producer for the music video. Stapleton does not appear in the video. 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{"id": "2hop__3826_92217", "docs_added": {"10932444": "2008 Summer Olympics torch relay\nThe 2008 Summer Olympics torch relay was run from March 24 until August 8, 2008, prior to the 2008 Summer Olympics, with the theme of \"one world, one dream\". Plans for the relay were announced on April 26, 2007, in Beijing, China. The relay, also called by the organizers as the \"Journey of Harmony\", lasted 129 days and carried the torch \u2013 the longest distance of any Olympic torch relay since the tradition was started ahead of the 1936 Summer Olympics.\nAfter being lit at the birthplace of the Olympic Games in Olympia, Greece on March 24, the torch traveled to the Panathinaiko Stadium in Athens, and then to Beijing, arriving on March 31. From Beijing, the torch was following a route passing through six continents. The torch visited cities along the Silk Road, symbolizing ancient links between China and the rest of the world. The relay also included an ascent with the flame to the top of Mount Everest on the border of Nepal and Tibet, China from the Chinese side, which was closed specially for the event.\nIn many cities along the North American and European route, the torch relay was attended by advocates of Tibetan independence, animal rights, nudism, and legal online gambling, and people protesting against China's human rights record, resulting in confrontations at a few of the relay locations. These protests, which included thousands of people in San Francisco, forced the path of the torch relay to be changed or shortened on a number of occasions. The torch was extinguished by Chinese security officials several times during the Paris leg for security reasons, and once in protest in Paris.\nThe attacks on the torch in London and Paris were described as \"despicable\" by the Chinese government, condemning them as \"deliberate disruptions... who gave no thought to the Olympic spirit or the laws of Britain and France\" and who \"tarnish the lofty Olympic spirit\", and vowed they would continue with the relay and not allow the protests to \"impede the Olympic spirit\". Large-scale counter-protests by overseas Chinese and foreign-based Chinese nationals became prevalent in later segments of the relay. No major protests were visible in the Latin America, Africa, and Western Asia legs of the torch relay.\nPrompted by the chaotic torch relays in Western Europe and North America, the president of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge described the situation as a \"crisis\" for the organization and stated that any athletes displaying Tibetan flags at Olympic venues could be expelled from the games. However, he stopped short of cancelling the relay altogether despite calls to do so by some IOC members. The outcome of the relay influenced the IOC's decision to scrap global relays in future editions of the games.\nIn June 2008, the Beijing Games' Organizing Committee announced that the planned international torch relay for the Paralympic Games had been cancelled. The Committee stated that the relay was being cancelled to enable the Chinese government to \"focus on the rescue and relief work\" following the Sichuan earthquake.\nRelay elements.\nTorch.\nThe Olympic Torch is based on traditional scrolls and uses a traditional Chinese design known as \"Lucky Cloud\". It is made from aluminum. It is 72 centimetres high and weighs 985\u00a0grams. The torch is designed to remain lit in 65 kilometre per hour (37\u00a0mile per hour) winds, and in rain of up to 50 millimetres (2\u00a0inches) per hour. An ignition key is used to ignite and extinguish the flame. The torch is fueled by cans of propane. Each can will light the torch for 15 minutes. It is designed by a team from Lenovo Group. The Torch is designed in reference to the traditional Chinese concept of the 5 elements that make up the entire universe.\nLanterns.\nThe Olympic flame is supposed to remain lit for the whole relay. When the Torch is extinguished at night, on aircraft, in bad weather, or during protests (such as the several occasions in Paris), the Olympic flame is kept alight in a set of 8 lanterns.\nAircraft.\nInternationally, the torch and its accompanying party traveled in a chartered Air China Airbus A330 (registered B-6075), painted in the red and yellow colors of the Olympic Games. Air China was chosen by the Beijing Committees of the Olympic Games as the designated Olympic torch carrier in March 2008 for its long-standing participation in the Olympic cause. The plane traveled a total of for a duration of 130 days through 21 countries and regions.\nRoute.\nThe route carried the torch through six continents from March 2008 to May 2008 to August 2008. The planned route originally included a stop in Taipei between Ho Chi Minh City and Hong Kong, but there was disagreement in Beijing and Taipei over language used to describe whether it was an international or a domestic part of the route. While the Olympic committees of China and Chinese Taipei reached initial consensus on the approach, the government of the Republic of China in Taiwan intervened, stating that this placement could be interpreted as placing Taiwan on the same level as Hong Kong and Macau, an implication it objected to. The Beijing Organizing Committee attempted to continue negotiation, but further disputes arose over the flag or the anthem of the Republic of China along the 24\u00a0km torch route in Taiwan. By the midnight deadline for concluding the negotiation on September 21, 2007, Taiwan and mainland China were unable to come to terms with the issue of the Torch Relay. In the end, both sides of the Taiwan Strait decided to eliminate the Taipei leg.\nSequence of events.\nInternational and HK/Macau leg.\n\u00a0Greece: On March 24, 2008, the Olympic Flame was ignited at Olympia, Greece, site of the ancient Olympic Games. The actress Maria Nafpliotou, in the role of a High Priestess, ignited the torch of the first torchbearer, a silver medalist of the 2004 Summer Olympics in taekwondo Alexandros Nikolaidis from Greece, who handed the flame over to the second torchbearer, Olympic champion in women's breaststroke Luo Xuejuan from China.\nFollowing the recent unrest in Tibet, three members of Reporters Without Borders, including Robert M\u00e9nard, breached security and attempted to disrupt a speech by Liu Qi, the head of Beijing's Olympic organising committee during the torch lighting ceremony in Olympia, Greece. The People's Republic of China called this a \"disgraceful\" attempt to sabotage the Olympics. On March 30, 2008, in Athens, during ceremonies marking the handing over of the torch from Greek officials to organizers of the Beijing games, demonstrators shouted 'Free Tibet' and unfurled banners; some 10 of the 15 protesters were taken into police detention. After the hand-off, protests continued internationally, with particularly violent confrontations with police in Nepal.\n China: In China, the torch was first welcomed by Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang and State Councilor Liu Yandong. It was subsequently passed onto CPC General Secretary Hu Jintao. A call to boycott French hypermart Carrefour from May 1 began spreading through mobile text messaging and online chat rooms amongst the Chinese over the weekend from April 12, accusing the company's major shareholder, the LVMH Group, of donating funds to the Dalai Lama. There were also calls to extend the boycott to include French luxury goods and cosmetic products. According to the \"Washington Times\" on April 15, however, the Chinese government was attempting to \"calm the situation\" through censorship: \"All comments posted on popular Internet forum Sohu.com relating to a boycott of Carrefour have been deleted.\" Chinese protesters organized boycotts of the French-owned retail chain Carrefour in major Chinese cities including Kunming, Hefei and Wuhan, accusing the French nation of pro-secessionist conspiracy and anti-Chinese racism. Some burned French flags, some added Nazism's \"Swastika\" to the French flag, and spread short online messages calling for large protests in front of French consulates and embassy. The Carrefour boycott was met with anti-boycott demonstrators who insisted on entering one of the Carrefour stores in Kunming, only to be blocked by boycotters wielding large Chinese flags and hit by water bottles. The BBC reported that hundreds of people demonstrated in Beijing, Wuhan, Hefei, Kunming and Qingdao.\nIn response to the demonstrations, an editorial in the \"People's Daily\" urged Chinese people to \"express [their] patriotic enthusiasm calmly and rationally, and express patriotic aspiration in an orderly and legal manner\".\n Kazakhstan: The first torchbearer in Almaty, where the Olympic torch arrived for the first time ever on April 2, was the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbaev. The route ran 20\u00a0km from Medeo stadium to Astana Square. There were reports that Uighur activists were arrested and some were deported back to China.\n Turkey: The torch relay leg in Istanbul, held on April 3, started on Sultanahmet Square and finished in Taksim Square. Uyghurs living in Turkey protested at Chinese treatment of their compatriots living in Xinjiang. Several protesters who tried to disrupt the relay were promptly arrested by the police.\n Russia: On April 5 the Olympic torch arrived at Saint Petersburg, Russia. The length of the torch relay route in the city was 20\u00a0km, with the start at the Victory Square and finish at the Palace Square. Mixed martial arts icon and former PRIDE Heavyweight Champion Fedor Emelianenko was one of the torch bearers. This gives him the distinction of the being the first active MMA fighter to carry the Olympic flame.\n Great Britain: The torch relay leg held in London, the host city of the 2012 Summer Olympics, on April 6 began at Wembley Stadium, passed through the City of London, and eventually ended at O2 Arena in the eastern part of the city. The leg took a total of seven and a half hours to complete, and attracted protests by pro-Tibetan independence and pro-Human Rights supporters, prompting changes to the planned route and an unscheduled move onto a bus, which was then briefly halted by protesters. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has officially complained to Beijing Organising Committee about the conduct of the tracksuit-clad Chinese security guards. The Chinese officials, seen manhandling protesters, were described by both the London Mayor Ken Livingstone and Lord Coe, chairman of the London Olympic Committee as \"thugs\". A Metropolitan police briefing paper revealed that security for the torch relay cost \u00a3750,000 and the participation of the Chinese security team had been agreed in advance, despite the Mayor stating, \"We did not know beforehand these thugs were from the security services. Had I known so, we would have said no.\"\nOf the 80 torch-bearers in London, Sir Steve Redgrave, who started the relay, mentioned to the media that he had received e-mailed pleas to boycott the event and could \"see why they would like to make an issue\" of it. Francesca Martinez and Richard Vaughan refused to carry the torch, while Konnie Huq decided to carry it and also speak out against China. The pro-Tibetan Member of Parliament Norman Baker asked all bearers to reconsider. Amid pressure from both directions, Prime Minister Gordon Brown welcomed the torch outside 10 Downing Street without holding or touching it.\nThe London relay saw the torch surrounded by what the BBC described as \"a mobile protective ring.\" Protests began as soon as Redgrave started the event, leading to at least thirty-five arrests. In Ladbroke Grove a demonstrator attempted to snatch the torch from Konnie Huq in a momentary struggle, and in a separate incident, a fire extinguisher was set off near the torch. The Chinese ambassador carried the torch through Chinatown after an unpublicized change to the route amid security concerns. The torch made an unscheduled move onto a bus along Fleet Street amid security concerns and efforts to evade the protesters.\nIn an effort to counter the pro-Tibet protesters and show their support for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, more than 2,000 Chinese also gathered on the torch route and demonstrated with signs, banners and Chinese flags. A large number of supporters were concentrated in Trafalgar Square, displaying the Olympic slogan \"One World, One Dream\".\n France: The torch relay leg in Paris, held on April 7, began on the first level of the Eiffel Tower and finished at the Stade Charl\u00e9ty. The relay was initially supposed to cover 28\u00a0km, but it was shortened at the demand of Chinese officials following widespread protests by pro-Tibet and human rights activists, who repeatedly attempted to disrupt, hinder or halt the procession. A scheduled ceremony at the town hall was cancelled at the request of the Chinese authorities, and, also at the request of Chinese authorities, the torch finished the relay by bus instead of being carried by athletes.\nParis City officials had announced plans to greet the Olympic flame with peaceful protest when the torch was to reach the French capital. The city government attached a banner reading \"Paris defends human rights throughout the world\" to the City Hall, in an attempt to promote values \"of all humanity and of human rights.\" Members from Reporters Without Borders turned out in large numbers to protest. An estimated 3,000 French police protected the Olympic torch relay as it departed from the Eiffel Tower and criss-crossed Paris amid threat of protests. Widespread pro-Tibet protests, including an attempt by more than one demonstrator to extinguish the flame with water or fire extinguishers, prompted relay authorities to put out the flame five times (according to the police authorities in Paris) and load the torch onto a bus, at the demand of Chinese officials. This was later denied by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, despite video footage broadcast by French television network France 2 which showed Chinese flame attendants extinguishing the torch. Backup flames are with the relay at all times to relight the torch. French judoka and torchbearer David Douillet expressed his annoyance at the Chinese flame attendants who extinguished the torch which he was about to hand over to Teddy Riner: \"I understand they're afraid of everything, but this is just annoying. They extinguished the flame despite the fact that there was no risk, and they could see it and they knew it. I don't know why they did it.\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nThe Chinese officials decided they would not stop here because they were upset by Parisian citizens expressing their support for human rights.\nParis Mayor Bertrand Delano\u00eb\nChinese officials canceled the torch relay ceremony amidst disruptions, including a Tibetan flag flown from a window in the City Hall by Green Party officials.\nThe third torchbearer in the Paris leg, Jin Jing, who was disabled and carried the torch on a wheelchair, was assaulted several times by unidentified protesters seemingly from the pro-Tibet independent camp. In interviews, Jin Jing said that she was \"tugged at, scratched\" and \"kicked\", but that she \"did not feel the pain at the time.\" She received praise from ethnic Chinese worldwide as \"Angel in Wheelchair\". The Chinese government gave the comment that \"the Chinese respect France a lot\" but \"Paris [has slapped] its own face.\"\nReporters Without Borders organised several symbolic protests, including scaling the Eiffel Tower to hang a protest banner from it, and hanging an identical banner from the Notre Dame cathedral.\nSeveral hundred pro-Tibet protesters gathered at the Trocad\u00e9ro with banners and Tibetan flags, and remained there for a peaceful protest, never approaching the torch relay itself. Among them was Jane Birkin, who spoke to the media about the \"lack of freedom of speech\" in China. Also present was Thupten Gyatso, President of the French Tibetan community, who called upon pro-Tibet demonstrators to \"remain calm, non-violent, peaceful\".\nFrench members of Parliament and other French politicians also organised a protest. All political parties in Parliament\u2014UMP, Socialists, New Centre, Communists, Democratic Movement (centre) and Greens\u2014jointly requested a pause in the National Assembly's session, which was granted, so that MPs could step outside and unfurl a banner which read \"Respect for Human Rights in China\". The coach containing the torch drove past the National Assembly and the assembled protesting MPs, who shouted \"Freedom for Tibet!\" several times as it passed.\nFrench police were criticised for their handling of the events, and notably for confiscating Tibetan flags from demonstrators. The newspaper \"Lib\u00e9ration\" commented: \"The police did so much that only the Chinese were given freedom of expression. The Tibetan flag was forbidden everywhere except on the Trocad\u00e9ro.\" Minister of the Interior Mich\u00e8le Alliot-Marie later stated that the police had not been ordered to do so, and that they had acted on their own initiative. A cameraman for France 2 was struck in the face by a police officer, knocked unconscious, and had to be sent to hospital.\n United States of America: The torch relay's North American leg occurred in San Francisco, California on April 9. On the day of the relay officials diverted the torch run to an unannounced route. The start was at McCovey Cove, where Norman Bellingham of the U.S. Olympic Committee gave the torch to the first torchbearer, Chinese 1992 Olympic champion swimmer Lin Li. The planned closing ceremony at Justin Herman Plaza was cancelled and instead, a ceremony was held at San Francisco International Airport, where the torch was to leave for Buenos Aires. The route changes allowed the run to avoid large numbers of China supporters and protesters against China. As people found out there would be no closing ceremony at Justin Herman Plaza, there were angry reactions. One demonstrator was quoted as saying that the route changes were an effort to \"thwart any organized protest that had been planned.\" San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, a critic of Mayor Gavin Newsom, said that it was a \"cynical plan to please the Bush State Department and the Chinese government because of the incredible influence of money.\" Newsom, on the other hand, said he felt it was in \"everyone's best interest\" and that he believed people had been \"afforded the right to protest and support the torch\" despite the route changes. Peter Ueberroth, head of the U.S. Olympic Committee, praised the route changes, saying, \"The city of San Francisco, from a global perspective, will be applauded.\" People who saw the torch were surprised and cheered as shown from live video of CBS and NBC. The cost to the city for hosting the event was reported to be US$726,400, nearly half of which has been recovered by private fundraising. Mayor Gavin Newsom said that \"exponential\" costs associated with mass arrests were avoided by his decision to change the route in consultation with police chief Heather Fong.\nOn April 1, 2008, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a resolution addressing human rights concerns when the Beijing Olympic torch arrives in San Francisco on April 9. The resolution would welcome the torch with \"alarm and protest at the failure of China to meet its past solemn promises to the international community, including the citizens of San Francisco, to cease the egregious and ongoing human rights abuses in China and occupied Tibet.\" On April 8, numerous protests were planned including one at the city's United Nations Plaza led by actor Richard Gere and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.\nSome advocates for Tibet, Darfur, and Falun Gong (recognized as cult in mainland China), planned to protest the April 9 arrival of the torch in San Francisco. China had already requested the torch route in San Francisco be shortened.\nOn April 7, 2008, two days prior to the actual torch relay, three activists carrying Tibetan flags scaled the suspension cables of the Golden Gate Bridge to unfurl two banners, one saying \"One World, One Dream. Free Tibet\", and the other, \"Free Tibet '08\".\nAmong them was San Francisco resident Laurel Sutherlin, who spoke to the local TV station KPIX-CBS5 live from a cellphone, urging the International Olympic Committee to ask China not to allow the torch to go through Tibet. \"Sutherlin said he was worried that the torch's planned route through Tibet would lead to more arrests and Chinese officials would use force to stifle dissent.\" The three activists and five supporters face charges related to trespassing, conspiracy and causing a public nuisance.\nThe torch was lit at a park outside at AT&T Park at about 1:17\u00a0pm PDT (20:17 UTC), briefly held aloft by American and Chinese Olympic officials. The relay descended into confusion as the first runner in the elaborately planned relay disappeared into a warehouse on a waterfront pier where it stayed for a half-an-hour. There were clashes between thousands of pro-China demonstrators, many of whom said they were bused in by the Chinese Consulate and other pro-China groups, and both pro-Tibet and Darfur protesters. The non-Chinese demonstrators were reported to have been swamped and trailed by angry crowds. Around 2\u00a0pm PDT (21:00 UTC), the torch resurfaced about away from the stadium along Van Ness Avenue, a heavily trafficked thoroughfare that was not on official route plans. Television reports showed the flame flanked by motorcycles and uniformed police officers. Two torchbearers carried the flame running slowly behind a truck and surrounded by Olympic security guards. During the torch relay, two torchbearers, Andrew Michael who uses a wheelchair and is the Vice President for Sustainable Development for the Bay Area Council and Director of Partnerships For Change, and an environmental advocate, Majora Carter, managed to display Tibetan flags in protest, resulting in their ejection from the relay. The closing ceremony at Justin Herman Plaza was canceled due to the presence of large numbers of protesters at the site. The torch run ended with a final stretch through San Francisco's Marina district and was then moved by bus to San Francisco International Airport for a makeshift closing ceremony at the terminal, from which the free media was excluded. \"San Jose Mercury News\" described the \"deceiving\" event as \"a game of \"Where's Waldo\", played against the landscape of a lovely city.\" International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said the San Francisco relay had \"fortunately\" avoided much of the disruptions that marred the legs in London and Paris, but \"was, however, not the joyous party that we had wished it to be.\"\n Argentina: The torch relay leg in Buenos Aires, Argentina, held on April 11, began with an artistic show at the Lola Mora amphitheatre in Costanera Sur. In the end of the show the mayor of Buenos Aires Mauricio Macri gave the torch to the first torchbearer, Carlos Esp\u00ednola. The leg finished at the Buenos Aires Riding Club in the Palermo district, the last torchbearer being Gabriela Sabatini. The 13.8\u00a0km route included landmarks like the obelisk and Plaza de Mayo.\nThe day was marked by several pro-Tibet protests, which included a giant banner reading \"Free Tibet\", and an alternative \"human rights torch\" that was lit by protesters and paraded along the route the flame was to take. Most of these protests were peaceful in nature, and the torch was not impeded. Chinese immigrants also turned out in support of the Games, but only minor scuffles were reported between both groups. Runners surrounded by rows of security carried the Olympic flame past thousands of jubilant Argentines in the most trouble-free torch relay in nearly a week. People showered the parade route with confetti as banks, government offices and businesses took an impromptu half-day holiday for the only Latin American stop on the flame's five-continent journey.\nArgentine activists told a news conference that they would not try to snuff out the torch's flame as demonstrators had in Paris and London. \"I want to announce that we will not put out the Olympic torch,\" said pro-Tibet activist Jorge Carcavallo. \"We'll be carrying out surprise actions throughout the city of Buenos Aires, but all of these will be peaceful.\" Among other activities, protesters organized an alternative march that went from the Obelisk to the city hall, featuring their own \"Human Rights Torch.\" A giant banner reading \"Free Tibet\" was also displayed on the torch route. According to a representative from the NGO 'Human Rights Torch Relay', their objective was to \"show the contradiction between the Olympic Games and the presence of widespread human rights violations in China\" The outreach director of HRTR, Susan Prager, is also the communication director of \"Friends of Falun Gong\", a quasi-government non-profit funded by fmr. Congressman Tom Lanto's wife and Ambassador Mark Palmer of NED. A major setback to the event was caused by footballer Diego Maradona, scheduled to open the relay through Buenos Aires, pulling out in an attempt to avoid the Olympic controversy. Trying to avoid the scenes that marred the relay in the UK, France and the US, the city government designed a complex security operative to protect the torch relay, involving 1200 police officers and 3000 other people, including public employees and volunteers. Overall, the protests were peaceful in nature, although there were a few incidents such as the throwing of several water balloons in an attempt to extinguish the Olympic flame, and minor scuffles between Olympic protesters and supporters from Chinese immigrant communities.\n Tanzania: Dar es Salaam was the torch's only stop in Africa, on April 13. The relay began at the grand terminal of the TAZARA Railway, which was China's largest foreign aid project of the 1970s, and continued for 5\u00a0km through the old city to the Benjamin Mkapa National Stadium in Temeke, which was built with Chinese aid in 2005. The torch was lit by Vice-President Ali Mohamed Shein. About a thousand people followed the relay, waving the Olympic flag. The only noted instance of protest was Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai's withdrawal from the list of torchbearers, in protest against human rights abuses in Tibet.\n Sultanate of Oman: Muscat was the torch's only stop in the Middle East, on April 14. The relay covered 20\u00a0km. No protests or incidents were reported. One of the torchbearers was Syrian actress Sulaf Fawakherji.\n Pakistan: The Olympic torch reached Islamabad for the first time ever on April 16. President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani spoke at the opening ceremony of the relay. Security was high, for what one newspaper called the \"most sensitive leg\" of the torch's Olympic journey. The relay was initially supposed to carry the torch around Islamabad, but the entire relay was cancelled due to security concerns regarding \"militant threats or anti-China protests\", and replaced by an indoors ceremony with the torch carried around the track of Jinnah Stadium.\nIn fear of violent protests and bomb attacks, the torch relay in Pakistan took place in a stadium behind closed doors. Although the relay was behind closed doors, thousands of policemen and soldiers guarded the flame. As a consequence, no incidents arose.\n India: Due to concerns about pro-Tibet protests, the relay through New Delhi on April 17 was cut to just 2.3\u00a0km (less than 1.5\u00a0miles), which was shared amongst 70 runners. It concluded at the India Gate. The event was peaceful due to the public not being allowed at the relay. A total of five intended torchbearers -Kiran Bedi, Soha Ali Khan, Sachin Tendulkar, Bhaichung Bhutia and Sunil Gavaskar- withdrew from the event, citing \"personal reasons\", or, in Bhutia's case, explicitly wishing to \"stand by the people of Tibet and their struggle\" and protest against the PRC \"crackdown\" in Tibet. Indian national football captain, Baichung Bhutia refused to take part in the Indian leg of the torch relay, citing concerns over Tibet. Bhutia, who is Sikkimese, is the first athlete to refuse to run with the torch. Indian film star Aamir Khan states on his personal blog that the \"Olympic Games do not belong to China\" and confirms taking part in the torch relay \"with a prayer in his heart for the people of Tibet, and ... for all people across the world who are victims of human rights violations\". Rahul Gandhi, son of the Congress President Sonia Gandhi and scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family, also refused to carry the torch.\nWary of protests, the Indian authorities have decided to shorten the route of the relay in New Delhi, and have given it the security normally associated with Republic Day celebrations, which are considered terrorist targets.\nChinese intelligence's expectations of points on the relay route that would be particularly 'vulnerable' to protesters were presented to the Indian ambassador to Beijing, Nirupama Sen. The Indian media responded angrily to the news that the ambassador, a distinguished lady diplomat, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry at 2\u00a0am local time; the news was later denied by anonymous sources in Delhi. The Indian media reported that India's Commerce Minister, Kamal Nath, cancelled an official trip to Beijing in protest, though both Nath and Chinese sources have denied it.\nIndia rejected Chinese demands that the torch route be clear of India's 150,000-strong Tibetan exile community, by which they required a ban on congregation near the curtailed 3\u00a0km route. In response Indian officials said India was a democracy, and \"a wholesale ban on protests was out of the question\".\nContradicting some other reports, Indian officials also refused permission to the \"Olympic Holy Flame Protection Unit\". The combined effect is a \"rapid deterioration\" of relations between India and China. Meanwhile, the Tibetan government in exile, which is based in India, has stated that it did not support the disruption of the Olympic torch relay.\nThe noted Indian social activist and a retired Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Kiran Bedi\nrefused to participate saying \"she doesn't want to run in the event as \u2018caged woman\u2019.\" On April 15, Bollywood actress Soha Ali Khan pulled out of the Olympic torch relay, citing \u201cvery strong personal reasons\u201d.\nOn April 16, a protest was organised in Delhi \"against Chinese repression in Tibet\", and was broken up by the police.\n Thailand: The April 18 relay through Bangkok was the Olympic flame's first visit to Thailand. The relay covered just over 10\u00a0km, and included Bangkok's Chinatown. The torch was carried past Democracy Monument, Chitralada Palace and a number of other city landmarks. M.R. Narisa Chakrabongse, Green World Foundation (GWF) chairwoman, withdrew from the torch-running ceremony, protesting against China's actions in Tibet. Several hundred protesters were present, along with Olympic supporters.\nThai authorities threatened to arrest foreign protesters and ban them from future entry into Thailand. A coalition of Thai human rights groups announced that it would organise a \"small demonstration\" during the relay, and several hundred people did indeed take part in protests, facing Beijing supporters. Intended torchbearer Mom Rajawongse Narissara Chakrabongse boycotted the relay, to protest against China's actions in Tibet. In Bangkok, students told the media that the Chinese Embassy provided them with transportation and gave them shirts to wear.\n Malaysia: The event was held in the capital city, Kuala Lumpur, on April 21. The 16.5\u00a0km long-relay began from the historic Independence Square, passed in front of several city landmarks before coming to an end at the iconic Petronas Twin Towers. Among the landmarks the Olympic flame passed next to were the Parliament House, National Mosque, KL Tower and Merdeka Stadium. A team of 1000 personnel from the Malaysian police Special Action Squad guarded the event and escorted the torchbearers. The last time an Olympic torch relay was held in Malaysia was the 1964 Tokyo edition.\nJust days before the relay supporters of Falun Gong demonstrated in front of the Chinese embassy in the Malaysian capital. As many as 1,000 personnel from the special police unit were expected to be deployed on the day of the relay. A Japanese family with Malaysian citizenship and their 5-year-old child who unfurled a Tibetan flag were hit by a group of Chinese nationals with plastic air-filled batons and heckled by a crowd of Chinese citizens during the confrontation at Independence Square where the relay began, and the Chinese group shouted: \"Taiwan and Tibet belong to China.\" Later during the day, the Chinese volunteers forcefully took away placards from two other Malaysians protesting at the relay. One of the protesting Malaysian was hit in the head.\n Indonesia: The Olympic flame reached Jakarta on April 22. The original 20\u00a0km relay through Jakarta was cancelled due to \"security worries\", at the request of the Chinese embassy, and the torch was instead carried round the city main's stadium, as it had been in Islamabad. Several dozen pro-Tibet protesters gathered near the stadium, and were dispersed by the police.\nThe event was held in the streets around the city main's stadium. The cancelling of the relay through the city itself was decided due to security concerns and at the request of the Chinese embassy. Only invitees and journalists were admitted inside the stadium. Protests took place outside the stadium.\n Australia: The event was held in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory on April 24, and covered around 16\u00a0km of Canberra's central areas, from Reconciliation Place to Commonwealth Park. Upon its arrival in Canberra, the Olympic flame was presented by Chinese officials to local Aboriginal elder Agnes Shea, of the Ngunnawal people. She, in turn, offered them a message stick, as a gift of peace and welcome. Hundreds of pro-Tibet protesters and thousands of Chinese students reportedly attended. Demonstrators and counter-demonstrators were kept apart by the Australian Federal Police. Preparations for the event were marred by a disagreement over the role of the Chinese flame attendants, with Australian and Chinese officials arguing publicly over their function and prerogatives during a press conference.\nFollowing the events in Olympia, there were reports that China requested permission to deploy People's Liberation Army personnel along the relay route to protect the flame in Canberra. Australian authorities stated that such a request, if it were to be made, would be refused. Chinese officials labeled it a rumor. Australian police have been given powers to search relay spectators, following a call by the Chinese Students and Scholars Association for Chinese Australian students to \"go defend our sacred torch\" against \"ethnic degenerate scum and anti-China separatists\". Tony Goh, chairman of the Australian Council of Chinese Organisations, has said the ACCO would be taking \"thousands\" of pro-Beijing demonstrators to Canberra by bus, to support the torch relay. Zhang Rongan, a Chinese Australian student organising pro-Beijing demonstrations, told the press that Chinese diplomats were assisting with the organization of buses, meals and accommodation for pro-Beijing demonstrators, and helping them organise a \"peaceful show of strength\". Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said Chinese officials were urging supporters to \"turn up and put a point of view\", but that he had no objection to it as long as they remained peaceful.\nIntended torchbearer Lin Hatfield Dodds withdrew from the event, explaining that she wished to express concern about China's human rights record. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said her decision was \"a very good example of peacefully making a point\".\nUp to 600 pro-Tibet protesters were expected to attend the relay, along with between 2,000 and 10,000 Chinese supporters. Taking note of the high number of Chinese supporters, Ted Quinlan, head of the Canberra torch relay committee, said: \"We didn't expect this reaction from the Chinese community. It is obviously a well-coordinated plan to take the day by weight of numbers. But we have assurances that it will be done peacefully.\". Also, Australia's ACT Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope confirmed that the Chinese embassy was closely involved to ensure that \"pro-China demonstrators vastly outnumbered Tibetan activists.\" Australian freestyle swimmer and five-time Olympic gold medalist Ian Thorpe ended the Australian leg of the torch relay April 24, 2008, touching the flame to light a cauldron after a run that was only marginally marked by protests. People demonstrated both for China and for Tibet. At least five people were arrested during the torch relay. Police said \"the five were arrested for interfering with the event under special powers enacted in the wake of massive protests against Chinese policy toward Tibet.\" At one point, groups of Chinese students surrounded and intimidated pro-Tibet protesters. One person had to be pulled aboard a police launch when a group of pro-Chinese students looked like they might force him into the lake.\n Japan: The event was held in Nagano, which hosted the 1998 Winter Olympics, on April 26. Japanese Buddhist temple Zenk\u014d-ji, which was originally scheduled to be the starting point for the Olympic torch relay in Nagano, refused to host the torch and pulled out of the relay plans, amid speculation that monks there sympathized with anti-Chinese government protesters. as well as the risk of disruption by violent protests. Parts of Zenk\u014d-ji temple's main building (Zenk\u014d-ji Hond\u014d), reconstructed in 1707 and one of the National Treasures of Japan, was then vandalized with spraypaint. A new starting point, previously the site of a municipal building and now a parking lot, was chosen by the city. Thousands of riot police were mobilized to protect the torch along its route. The show of force kept most protesters in check, but slogans shouted by pro-China or pro-Tibet demonstrators, Japanese nationalists, and human rights organizations flooded the air. Five men were arrested and four injured amidst scenes of mob violence. The torch route was packed with mostly peaceful demonstrators. The public was not allowed at the parking lot where the relay started. After the Zenkoji monks held a prayer ceremony for victims of the recent events in Tibet. More than 100 police officers ran with the torch and riot police lined the streets while three helicopters flew above. Only two Chinese guards were allowed to accompany the torch because of Japan's concern over their treatment of demonstrators at previous relays. A man with a Tibetan flag tried to stop the torch at the beginning of the relay but was dragged off by police. Some raw eggs were also thrown from the crowd.\n South Korea: The event was held in Seoul, which hosted the 1988 Summer Olympics, on April 27.\nIntended torchbearers Choi Seung-kook and Park Won-sun boycotted the event to protest against the Chinese government's crackdown in Tibet. More than 8,000 riot police were deployed to guard the 24-kilometre route, which began at Olympic Park, which was built when Seoul hosted the 1988 Summer Games. On the day of the torch relay in Seoul, Chinese students clashed with protesters, throwing rocks, bottles, and punches. A North Korean defector whose brother defected to China but was captured and executed by the DPRK, attempted to set himself on fire in protest of China's treatment of North Korean refugees. He poured gasoline on himself but police quickly surrounded him and carried him away. Two other demonstrators tried to storm the torch but failed. Fighting broke out near the beginning of the relay between a group of 500 Chinese supporters and approximately 50 protesters who carried a banner that read: \"Free North Korean refugees in China.\" The students threw stones and water bottles as approximately 2,500 police tried to keep the groups separated. Police said they arrested five people, including a Chinese student who was arrested for allegedly throwing rocks. Thousands of Chinese followed the torch on its 4.5 hour journey, some chanting, \"Go China, go Olympics!\" By the end of the relay, Chinese students became violent, and it was reported in Korean media that they were \"lynching\" everyone who was disagreeing with them. One police man was also rushed to hospital after being attacked by Chinese students. On Apr 29, the Secretary of Justice, Kim Kyung Han, told the prime minister that he will find \"every single Chinese who was involved and bring them to justice.\" Later in the day, South Korea's Prosecutor's Office, National Police Agency, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and National Intelligence Service made a joint statement saying that they will be deporting every Chinese student that was involved in the incident. China defended the conduct of the students.\n North Korea: The event was held in Pyongyang on April 28. It was the first time that the Olympic torch has traveled to North Korea. A crowd of thousands waving pink paper flowers and small flags with the Beijing Olympics logo were organized by the authoritarian regime watched the beginning of the relay in Pyongyang, some waving Chinese flags. The event was presided over by the head of the country's parliament, Kim Yong Nam. The North, an ally of China, has been critical of disruptions to the torch relay elsewhere and has supported Beijing in its actions against protests in Tibet. Kim passed the torch to the first runner Pak Du Ik, who played on North Korea's 1966 World Cup soccer team, as he began the 19-kilometre route through Pyongyang. The relay began from the large sculpted flame of the obelisk of the Juche Tower, which commemorates the national ideology of Juche, or \"self-reliance\", created by the country's late founding President Kim Il Sung, father of leader Kim Jong Il, who did not attend.\nThe United Nations Organization and its children's agency UNICEF withdrew their staff, saying that it was not sure the event would help its mission of raising awareness of conditions for children and amid concerns that the relay would be used as a propaganda stunt. \"It was unconscionable,\" said a UN official who was briefed on the arguments. North Korea is frequently listed among the world's worst offenders against human rights.\n Vietnam: The event was held in Ho Chi Minh City on April 29. Some 60 torchbearers carried the torch from the downtown Opera House to the Military Zone 7 Competition Hall stadium near Tan Son Nhat International Airport along an undisclosed route. Vietnam is involved in a territorial dispute with China (and other countries) for sovereignty of the Spratly and Paracel Islands; tensions have risen recently following reports that the Chinese government had established a county-level city named Sansha in the disputed territories, resulting in anti-Chinese demonstrations in December 2007 in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. However to sustain its relationship with China the Vietnamese government has actively sought to head off protests during the torch relay, with Prime Minister Nguy\u1ec5n T\u1ea5n D\u0169ng warning government agencies that \"hostile forces\" may try to disrupt the torch relay.\nPrior to the rally, seven anti-China protesters were arrested in Hanoi after unfurling a banner and shouting \"Boycott the Beijing Olympics\" through a loudhailer at a market. A Vietnamese American was deported for planning protests against the torch, while a prominent blogger, \u0110i\u1ebfu C\u00e0y (real name Nguy\u1ec5n V\u0103n H\u1ea3i), who blogged about protests around the world and who called for demonstrations in Vietnam, was arrested on charges of tax evasion. Outside Vietnam, there were protests by overseas Vietnamese in Paris, San Francisco and Canberra. L\u00ea Minh Phi\u1ebfu, a torchbearer who is a Vietnamese law student studying in France, wrote a letter to the president of the International Olympic Committee protesting China's \"politicisation of the Olympics\", citing maps of the torch relay at the official Beijing Olympic website depicting the disputed islands as Chinese territory and posted it on his blog. One day before the relay was to start, the official website appeared to have been updated to remove the disputed islands and dotted lines marking China's maritime claims in the South China Sea.\n\u00a0Hong Kong: The event was held in Hong Kong on May 2. In the ceremony held at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui, Chief Executive Donald Tsang handed the torch to the first torchbearer, Olympic medalist Lee Lai Shan. The torch relay then traveled through Nathan Road, Lantau Link, Sha Tin (crossed Shing Mun River via a dragon boat, which had been never used before in the history of Olympic torch relays), Victoria Harbour (crossed by \"Tin Hau\", a VIP vessel managed by the Marine Department) before ending in Golden Bauhinia Square in Wan Chai.\nA total of 120 torchbearers were selected to participate in the event consisting of celebrities, athletes and pro-Beijing camp politicians. No politicians from the pro-democracy camp were selected as torchbearers. One torchbearer could not participate due to flight delay. It was estimated that more than 200,000 spectators came out and watched the relay. Many enthusiastic supporters wore red shirts and waved large Chinese flags. According to Hong Kong Chief Secretary for Administration Henry Tang, 3,000 police were deployed to ensure order.\nThere were several protests along the torch relay route. Members of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, including pro-democracy activist Szeto Wah, waved novelty inflatable plastic Olympic flames, which they said symbolised democracy. They wanted accountability for the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and the implementation of democracy in Hong Kong. Political activist and Legislative Council member Leung Kwok-hung (Longhair) also joined the protest, saying \"I'm very proud that in Hong Kong we still have people brave enough to speak out.\" Pro-democracy activists were overwhelmed by a crowd of torch supporters with insults like \"running dog,\" \"traitor,\" \"get out!,\" and \"I love the Communist Party.\" At the same time, about 10 members of the Civil Human Rights Front had orange banners calling for human rights improvements and universal suffrage. Onlookers were saying \"Aren't you Chinese?\" in Mandarin putonghua as they tried to cover the orange banners with a large Chinese national flag. One woman had an orange sign that said, \"Olympic flame for democracy\", while a man carried a poster with a tank and the slogan \"One world, two dreams\". A university student and former RDHK radio host Christina Chan wrapped the Tibetan snow lion flag around her body and later began waving it. Several onlookers heckled Chan, shouting \"What kind of Chinese are you?\" and \"What a shame!\" In the end, she and some of the protesters were taken away against their will by the authorities via a police vehicle \"for their own protection.\" Chan is currently suing the Hong Kong government, claiming her human rights were breached. (case number HCAL139/08)\nThe Color Orange democracy group, led by Danish sculptor Jens Galschi\u00f8t, originally planned to join the Hong Kong Alliance relay and paint the \"Pillar of Shame\", a structure he built in Hong Kong to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. However, Galschi\u00f8t and two other people were denied entry to Hong Kong on April 26, 2008, due to \"immigration reasons\" and were forced to leave Hong Kong. In response, Lee Cheuk Yan, vice chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, said, \"It's outrageous that the government is willing to sacrifice the image of Hong Kong because of the torch relay.\" Hollywood actress Mia Farrow was also briefly questioned at the Hong Kong airport though officials allowed her to enter. She later gave a speech criticizing China's relations with Sudan in Hong Kong, as there was also a small minority of people protesting about China's role in the crisis of Darfur. Legislator Cheung Man Kwong have also said the government's decision allowing Farrow to enter while denying others is a double standard and a violation to Hong Kong's one country, two systems policy.\n Macao: The event was held in Macau on May 3. It was the first time that the Olympic torch had traveled to Macau. A ceremony was held at Macau Fisherman's Wharf. Afterward, the torch traveled through Macau, passing by a number of landmarks including A-Ma Temple, Macau Tower, Ponte Governador Nobre de Carvalho, Ponte de Sai Van, Macau Cultural Centre, Macau Stadium and then back to the Fisherman's Wharf for the closing ceremony. Parts of the route near Ruins of St. Paul's and Taipa was shortened due to large crowds of supporters blocking narrow streets. A total of 120 torchbearers participated in this event including casino tycoon Stanley Ho. Leong Hong Man and Leong Heng Teng were the first and last torchbearer in the relay respectively. An article published on Macao Daily News criticized that the list of the torchbearers could not fully represent the Macanese and that there were too many non-athletes among the torchbearers. (some of whom had already been torchbearers of other sporting events)\nA union planned to protest at the relay for better living conditions. Hong Kong legislator Michael Mak Kwok-fung and activist Chan Cheong, both members of the League of Social Democrats, were not allowed to enter Macau.\nA Macau resident was arrested on April 26 for posting a message on cyberctm.com encouraging people to disrupt the relay. Both orchidbbs.com and cyberctm.com Internet forums were shut down from May 2 to 4. This fueled speculation that the shutdowns were targeting speeches against the relay. The head of the Bureau of Telecommunications Regulation has denied that the shutdowns of the websites were politically motivated. About 2,200 police were deployed on the streets, there were no interruptions.\nDomestic (Mainland China) leg.\n Mainland China: The torch returned to China for the first time since April. The torch arrived in Sanya, Hainan on May 4 with celebrations attended by International Olympic Committee (IOC) officials and Chinese big names like Jackie Chan. The entire relay through Mainland China was largely a success with many people welcoming the arrival of the torch along the way.\nSome notable incidents were:\nControversies.\nMedia coverage.\nThe coverage of the events by the media came under scrutiny during the relay. Chinese media coverage of the torch relay has been distinct in a number of ways from coverage elsewhere. Western reporters in Beijing have described Chinese media coverage as partial and censored (for example when Chinese media did not broadcast Reporters Without Borders' disruption of the torch lighting ceremony), whereas Chinese netizens have in turn accused Western media coverage of being biased. The French newspaper \"Lib\u00e9ration\" was criticised by the Chinese State press agency Xinhua for its allegedly biased reporting; Xinhua suggested that \"Lib\u00e9ration\" needed \"a stinging slap in the face\" for having \"insulted the Olympic flame\" and \"supported a handful of saboteurs\".\nIn response to pro-Tibet and pro-human rights protests, the Chinese media focused on the more disruptive protesters, referring for example to \"a very small number of 'Tibet independence' secessionists and a handful of so-called human rights-minded NGO activists\" intent on \"disrupting and sabotaging the Beijing Olympic Games\". However, the Chinese media published articles about crowds supporting the torch relay.\nXinhua and CCTV quoted relay spectators who condemned the protests, to a greater extent than most Western media, but did not quote any alternative viewpoints, providing no coverage of support for the protests by some ordinary citizens in Western countries. It quoted athletes who expressed pride at taking part in the relays, to a greater extent than Western media, but not those who, like Marie-Jos\u00e9 P\u00e9rec, expressed understanding and support for the protesters. The Beijing Organising Committee for the Games mentioned the \"smiling faces of the elderly, children and the artists on the streets\", of cheering and supportive Londoners. Xinhua said that protesters were \"radicals\" who \"trampled human rights\" and whose activities were condemned by \"the people of the world who cordially love the Olympic spirit\".\nReports on the Delhi relay were similarly distinct. Despite intended torchbearers Kiran Bedi, Soha Ali Khan, Sachin Tendulkar and Bhaichung Bhutia all withdrawing from the event, the official Chinese website for the relay reported \"Indian torchbearers vow to run for spirit of Olympics\", and quoted torchbearers Manavjit Singh Sandhu, Abhinav Bindra, Ayaan Ali Khan and Rajinder Singh Rahelu all stating that sports and politics should not be mixed.\nChinese media have also reported on Jin Jing, whom the official Chinese torch relay website described as \"heroic\" and an \"angel\", whereas Western media initially gave her little mention \u2013 despite a Chinese claim that \"Chinese Paralympic athlete Jin Jing has garnered much attention from the media\".\nSome Western media have reported on Chinese accusations of Western media bias. \"The Daily Telegraph\" published an opinion piece by the Chinese ambassador to the United Kingdom, Fu Ying, who accused Western media of \"demonising\" China during their coverage of the torch relays. \"The Telegraph\" also asked its readers to send their views in response to the question \"Is the West demonising China?\" The BBC reported on a demonstration in Sydney by Chinese Australians \"voicing support for Beijing amid controversy over Tibet\" and protesting against what they saw as Western media bias. The report showed demonstrators carrying signs which read \"Shame on some Western media\", \"BBC CNN lies too\" and \"Stop media distortion!\". One demonstrator interviewed by the BBC stated: \"I saw some news from CNN, from the BBC, some media [inaudible], and they are just lying.\" \"Lib\u00e9ration\" also reported that it had been accused of bias by the Chinese media.\nOn April 17, Xinhua condemned what it called \"biased coverage of the Lhasa riots and the Olympic torch relay by the U.S.-based Cable News Network (CNN)\". The same day, the Chinese government called on CNN to \"apologise\" for having allegedly insulted the Chinese people, and for \"attempting to incite the Chinese people against the government\". CNN issued a statement on April 14, responded to China over 'thugs and goons' comment by Jack Cafferty.\nOn April 19, the BBC reported that 1,300 people had gathered outside BBC buildings in Manchester and London, protesting against what they described as Western media bias. Several days earlier, the BBC had published an article entitled \"The challenges of reporting in China\", responding to earlier criticism. The BBC's Paul Danahar noted that Chinese people were now \"able to access the BBC News website for the first time, after years of strict censorship\", and that \"many were critical of our coverage\". He provided readers with a reminder of censorship in China, and added: \"People who criticise the media for their coverage in Tibet should acknowledge that we were and still are banned from reporting there.\" He also quoted critical Chinese responses, and invited readers to comment.\nOn April 20, the \"People's Daily\" published a report entitled \"Overseas Chinese rally against biased media coverage, for Olympics\". It included images of Chinese people demonstrating in France, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States. One picture showed Chinese demonstrators holding a sign which claimed, incorrectly, that the BBC had not reported on Jin Jing. The \"People's Daily\" quoted one protester who claimed the \"BBC on some of the recent events has misled the British public and the rest of the world by providing intensive untruthful reports and biased coverage.\"\nOn April 4, there were reports of an Anti-CNN website that criticizes the cable network's coverage of recent events. The site appears to have been created by a Beijing citizen. However, foreign correspondents in Beijing claimed that the site may be a semi-government-made website. A Chinese government spokesman said the site was spontaneously set up by a Chinese citizen angered over media coverage.\nTorch security.\nThe Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee sent out a team of 30 unarmed attendants selected from the People's Armed Police to escort the flame throughout its journey. According to Asian Times, sworn in as the \"Beijing Olympic Games Sacred Flame Protection Unit\" during a ceremony in August 2007, their main job was to keep the Olympic flame alight throughout the journey and to assist in transferring the flame between the torches, the lanterns and the cauldrons. They wear matching blue tracksuits and are intended to accompany the torch every step of the way. One of the torch attendants, dubbed \"Second Right Brother,\" had developed a significant online fan-base, particularly among China's female netizens.\nTwo additional teams of 40 attendants each accompanied the flame on its Mainland China route. This arrangement had however sparked several controversies.\nFlashpoints\nIOC Response\nIn response to these controversies, the International Olympic Committee noted on April 9 that the Protection Unit's role is \"100% normal...The torch relay escort team is always supplied by the organising committee of the Games... there is nothing unusual about it\". The Chinese government has also responded to the criticism, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu stating: \"Relevant countries should have a clear understanding of the rules of the escorts and understand their work. They have used their bodies to protect the torch, so their acts should be praised and the violent acts of those Tibet independence elements be condemned.\" Also, according to British journalist Brendan O\u2019Neill, there is nothing mysterious about the security-service employees of the Beijing Olympic Organising Committee. O'Neill reported presence of foreign security officials in the UK and their duty to guard foreign embassies and protect visiting foreign dignitaries. During the 2004 Olympic torch relay, Greek security officials followed and monitored the movement of the Olympic flame.\nReactions.\nIn China, a call to boycott French hypermart Carrefour from May 1 began spreading through mobile text messaging and online chat rooms amongst the Chinese over the weekend from April 12, accusing the company's major shareholder, the LVMH Group, of donating funds to the Dalai Lama. There were also calls to extend the boycott to include French luxury goods and cosmetic products. Chinese protesters organized boycotts of the French-owned retail chain Carrefour in major Chinese cities including Kunming, Hefei and Wuhan, accusing the French nation of pro-secessionist conspiracy and anti-Chinese racism. Some burned French flags, some added \"Swastika\" (due to its connotations with Nazism) to the French flag, and spread short online messages calling for large protests in front of French consulates and embassy. Some shoppers who insisted on entering one of the Carrefour stores in Kunming were blocked by boycotters wielding large Chinese flags and hit by water bottles. Hundreds of people joined Anti-French rallies in Beijing, Wuhan, Hefei, Kunming and Qingdao, which quickly spread to other cities like Xi'an, Harbin and Jinan. Carrefour denied any support or involvement in the Tibetan issue, and had its staff in its Chinese stores wear uniforms emblazoned with the Chinese national flag and caps with Olympic insignia and as well as the words \"Beijing 2008\" to show its support for the games. The effort had to be ceased when the BOCOG deemed the use of official Olympic insignia as illegal and a violation of copyright.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nThe more the Dalai Lama clique tries to disrupt the Olympic torch relay and some Western politicians and media take advantage to launch attacks and condemn China, the more we need to unify with the people of the world to hold a successful Olympic Games.\nIn response to the demonstrations, the Chinese government attempted to calm the situation, possibly fearing the protests may spiral out of control as has happened in recent years, including the anti-Japanese protests in 2005. State media and commentaries began to call for calm, such as an editorial in the \"People's Daily\" which urged Chinese people to \"express [their] patriotic enthusiasm calmly and rationally, and express patriotic aspiration in an orderly and legal manner\". The government also began to patrol and censor the internet forums such as Sohu.com, with comments related to the Carrefour boycott removed. In the days prior to the planned boycott, evidence of efforts by Chinese authorities to choke the mass boycott's efforts online became even more evident, including barring searches of words related to the French protests, but protests broke out nonetheless in front of Carrefour's stores at Beijing, Changsha, Fuzhou and Shenyang on May 1.\nPro-China rallies and demonstrations were held in several cities in response to the relay protests, including Paris, London, Berlin and Los Angeles.\nIn Japan, the Mayor of Nagano Shoichi Washizawa said that it has become a \"great nuisance\" for the city to host the torch relay prior to the Nagano leg. Washizawa's aides said the mayor's remark was not criticism about the relay itself but about the potential disruptions and confusion surrounding it.\u3000A city employee of the Nagano City Office ridiculed the protests in Europe, saying \"they are doing something foolish\" in a televised interview. The City Office officially apologized later and explained what he had wanted to say was \"such violent protests were not easy to accept\". Also citing concerns about protests as well as the recent violence in Tibet, a major Buddhist temple in Nagano cancelled its plans to host the opening stage of the Olympic torch relay. This temple was vandalised by an unidentified person the day after in apparent revenge.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1217319": "Tan Son Nhat International Airport\nCommercial airport serving Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam\nT\u00e2n S\u01a1n Nh\u1ea5t International Airport () is an international airport serving Ho Chi Minh City, the most populous city in Vietnam. The airport is located in the T\u00e2n B\u00ecnh district within the Ho Chi Minh City metropolitan area. \nIt is the busiest airport in Vietnam, with 32.5 million passengers in 2016, 38.5 million passengers in 2018, and about 41 million passengers in 2023. As of December 2023, it is the 50th-busiest airport in the world, and the fourth-busiest in Southeast Asia. As of April 2024, it has a total capacity of only around 30 million passengers, which has caused constant and increasing traffic and congestion, hence it has sparked debates for expanding or building a new airport, of which the plan of the new airport as an alternative is under construction since 2021, and will be completed by the first half of 2026.\nOf the routes the airport serves, the domestic Ho Chi Minh City\u2013Hanoi route is the busiest in Southeast Asia and the fourth-busiest in the world, serving around 11 million passengers in 2023. Its IATA airport code, SGN, is derived from the city's former name of Saigon.\nHistory.\nEarly history and Vietnam War era.\nTan Son Nhat International Airport has its origins in the early 1930s when the French colonial government constructed a small airport with unpaved runways, known as T\u00e2n S\u01a1n Nh\u1ee9t Airfield near the village of Tan Son Nhut. \nBy mid-1956, with U.S. aid, a runway had been built; the airfield near Saigon became known as South Vietnam's principal international gateway. During the Vietnam War (or Second Indochina War), Tan Son Nhut Air Base (then using the Southern spelling \"T\u00e2n S\u01a1n Nh\u1ee9t\") was an important facility for both the U.S. Air Force and the Republic of Vietnam Air Force. Between 1968 and 1974, Tan Son Nhut Airport was one of the busiest military airbases in the world. Pan Am schedules from 1973 show that during the last days of South Vietnam, Boeing 747 service was being operated four times a week to San Francisco via Guam and Manila. Continental Airlines operated up to 30 Boeing 707 military charters per week to and from Tan Son Nhut Airport during the 1968\u201374 period.\nPost-war era.\nOn 9 December 2004, United Airlines became the first U.S. airline to fly to Vietnam since Pan Am's last flight during the Fall of Saigon in April 1975. Flight UA 869, operated using a Boeing 747-400 landed at Ho Chi Minh City, the terminus of the flight that originated from San Francisco via Hong Kong. On 29 October 2006, this service was switched from San Francisco to Los Angeles with a stop in Hong Kong, operating as UA 867 (also using a 747\u2013400). In 2009, the service UA 869 has resumed once again from San Francisco via Hong Kong International Airport. United ended the route to San Francisco via Hong Kong on 30 October 2011. The airline resumed the route from Ho Chi Minh City to Hong Kong after its merger with Continental Airlines. The flight until suspended, no longer made a stop at San Francisco and was flown on a Boeing 777-200ER instead of the 747-400.\nIn 2006, Tan Son Nhat International Airport served approximately 8.5 million passengers (compared with 7 million in 2005) with 64,000 aircraft movements. It has recently accounted for nearly two-thirds of the arrivals and departures at Vietnam's international gateway airports. Due to increasing demand (about 15\u201320% per annum), the airport has been continuously expanded by the Southern Airports Corporation.\nIn 2010, Tan Son Nhat domestic terminal handled 8 million passengers, its maximum capacity. The airport reached its full capacity of 20 million passengers in 2013, two years earlier than predicted. Both domestic and international terminal are being expanded to meet the increasing demand. In December 2014, expansion for the domestic terminal was finished, boosting the terminal's capacity to 13 million passengers per annum. In September 2017, People's Army of Vietnam ceded 21 hectare of military land in the vicinity of the airport to Airports Corporation of Vietnam for civil use. This gave way for the construction of 21 new aircraft parking spaces, expected to be completed by Tet holidays in 2018. Tan Son Nhat will then have 72 parking spaces for airplanes.\nOf the routes the airport serves, the Ho Chi Minh City\u2013Hanoi route is the busiest in Southeast Asia and the seventh busiest in the world, serving 6,769,823 customers in 2017.\nTerminals and other facilities.\nPassenger terminals.\nTerminal 1 (T1).\nUntil the opening of the International Terminal in 2007, the domestic terminal was the sole civilian terminal of the airport. The French Indochinese administration built the original terminal. It initially covered an area of . Between 1954 and 1975 when the airport quickly became one of the busiest airports in the world, it was expanded 4 more times: in 1956, 1960, 1963 (which was handled by the contractor RMK-BRJ), and 1969. By 1972, the terminal grew to in space with a capacity of 1.5 million passengers a year.\nIn recent history, after years of constant expansion to meet growing traffic, the terminal's handling capacity increased tenfold to 15 million passengers a year as of 2023. It has a floor area of with 20 boarding gates (4 aerobridge gates and 16 remote gates). \nThe terminal has two lounges: Lotus Lounge and Le Saigonnais Lounge. After the opening of Terminal 3, the terminal will serve domestic flights for VASCO, Pacific Airlines, Bamboo Airways and Vietravel Airlines.\nTerminal 2 (T2).\nA new international terminal, constructed by a consortium of four Japanese contractors (KTOM, abbreviation of four contractors' names: Kajima \u2013 Taisei \u2013 Obayashi \u2013 Maeda), opened in December 2007 with an initial designed capacity of 10 million passengers a year. The terminal was funded by Japanese official development assistance at a cost of 219 million USD. Following the opening of its new international terminal in September 2007, Tan Son Nhat has two major terminal buildings with separate sections for international and domestic flights.\nIn 2014, the terminal served over 9 million international passengers and a demand of an expansion to the terminal was in sight. Plan for a 109 million-USD expansion of the international terminal was approved in August 2014. The first phase of an urgent expansion to the terminal was finished in December 2016 with the addition of 2 new jet bridges and other facilities. Upon the completion of phase two in 2018, the terminal has a floor area of and 26 boarding gates, and can handle 13 million passengers annually.\nThere are a total of five passenger lounges situated in the International Terminal: Lotus Lounge 1 and 2, Le Saigonnais, Orchid Lounge, and Rose Business Lounge.\nThe terminal is connected to Terminal 1 by an outdoor walkway on the landside.\nTerminal 3 (T3).\nA new passenger terminal for the airport broke ground on 24 December 2022. The new terminal includes 27 gates (13 jetbridges and 14 remote gates) for an annual handling capacity of 20 million passengers. The terminal building have a total floor area of , and is connected with a new non-aviation services and parking complex by footbridges. The project has a budget of 10,986 billion VND (US$467.6 million) and was projected to be completed by the end of 2024, which is now slated to be completed by April 2025. Upon completion, the terminal will serve domestic flights to support the current domestic terminal. Vietnam Airlines and VietJet Air will move their domestic operations from Terminal 1 to Terminal 3 starting from May 5, 2025.\nCargo terminal.\nTan Son Nhat Airport currently has three cargo terminals. Two of them (Air Freight Terminal 1 and 2) are operated by Tan Son Nhat Cargo Services (TCS) and the other one is operated by Saigon Cargo Services Corporation (SCSC). These facilities have a handling capacity of 700,000 tonnes of cargo per year combined.\nTCS's Air Freight Terminal 1 was the first cargo terminal at the airport. It was inaugurated on January 1, 1997. In May 2012, Air Freight Terminal 2 was opened after 20 months of construction. The latter was built at a cost of $15 million and covers an area of .\nThe Prime Minister of Vietnam, by Decision 1646/TTg-NN, has approved the addition of of the adjacent area to extend the apron and to build a cargo terminal to handle the rapid increase of passenger (expected to reach 17 million in 2010, compared to 7 million and 8.5 million in 2005 and 2006 respectively) and cargo volume at the airport.\nThe SCSC cargo terminal was constructed from March 2009 to December 2010 at a cost of $50 million. The cargo handling area consists of a cargo terminal, of apron area, and of warehouse and other facilities.\nRunways and air control.\nThe airport has two parallel runways, namely 07L/25R, and 07R/25L. Since the runways are only 365 meters apart, they are operated dependently. Due to the maximum processing capacity of the passenger terminals (about 3,600 passengers/hour), the runway system's capacity is capped at 44 operations per hour. During peak seasons such as T\u1ebft, the hourly limit is extended to 48 operations.\nThe original air traffic control tower is situated between present-day taxiway Y1 and S5. It was originally built in 1949 before being rebuilt in 1959. During the Tet Offensive in 1968, the tower was damaged by a rocket and a new tower was built in June 1969.\nA new 70-meter (230-feet) tall air control tower was put into use in 2013. The new airport control tower is situated in the corner area between the Domestic Terminal and the International Terminal.\nThere were four USAF ATRC facilities in Viet Nam in the 1960-1973 era. The one located on Tan son Nhut was designated Paris ATRC. Patty was located down in the Delta, there was one in Da Nang, and Pyramid was in the highlands. Paris operated on the top Dias inside the radar facility located mid-base with the US Army's Recovery and ground radio operations. The USAF 2027th Communications Squadron staffed the air traffic controllers that operate the scopes and handle all non-civilian in-country fixed wing radar traffic 24-7. Once Tan Son Nhut radar traffic got within 15 miles of the base it was normally handed off to Approach Control for sequencing and landing, which operated inside the air control tower. Usually none of the local helicopter traffic was under radar control; it was basically flown VFR and was based at Hotel 3. There was too much air traffic for controllers to be able to handle anything but fixed wing. In 70-71 VNAF controllers were introduced to work alongside the 2027th squadron's controllers to help with communication with pilots who did not speak English.\nStatistics.\nCargo volume (tons).\n2020\u2013present.\nSource: Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey\nGround transportation.\nBus and shuttle.\nA bus station is situated in front of the international terminal and is served by Ho Chi Minh City Bus. It is connected to the city center by bus line 109 and 152 as well as shuttle bus line 49. Connecting the airport to Vung Tau and other cities in Mekong Delta are express minibus services as well as bus line 119 (via Mien Tay Bus Station).\nMetro.\nThe airport is expected to be served by Ho Chi Minh City Metro Line 4B, connected to Line 4 and 5 with services to the southern and eastern area of the city. However, it is currently not known when the line will be constructed.\nTaxi.\nThere are several options for getting a taxi from the airport to the city\nRoad.\nUntil 2016, the airport only had one main access route via Tr\u01b0\u1eddng S\u01a1n Street, which caused chronic congestion for traffic going in and out of the airport. As an effort to ease traffic bottleneck, in August 2016, Ph\u1ea1m V\u0103n \u0110\u1ed3ng Boulevard officially opened and connected the airport to National Route 1 in an intersection east of the airport.\nThe new terminal 3 building will be accessible via a new road connecting the existing Tr\u1ea7n Qu\u1ed1c Ho\u00e0n Street and C\u1ed9ng H\u00f2a Street. This new connector road is expected to alleviate the traffic pressure surrounding the airport area and provide an alternative exit from the airport to the west side of the city.\nAccidents and incidents.\nThroughout its history there have been several incidents that happened at the airport, some of the most notable are summarized below:\nFuture plans.\nNew airport.\nTan Son Nhat International Airport is located inside the crowded urban core of Ho Chi Minh City, making expansions difficult. In a report submitted to the Vietnamese National Assembly in 2015, legislators deemed continued expansion of Tan Son Nhat problematic in five aspects. Firstly, it would be more economically viable to build a new airport rather than extensively upgrade Tan Son Nhat. An estimated US$9.1 billion was reportedly needed for a new 4,000 m runway, a new passenger terminal and other facilities at Tan Son Nhat. Secondly, Tan Son Nhat airspace overlaps with that of Bien Hoa Airport, which is currently reserved for national defense purpose. A reduction in military activities in Bien Hoa is considered to be temporary and unsustainable. At the same time, Tan Son Nhat also acts as a strategic location in national defense; therefore, the airport cannot be used entirely for civic air transport. Additionally, due to its urban location, aside from increasing ground traffic stress in its access points, the airport cannot operate between midnight and 5AM in accordance to the International Civil Aviation Organization sustainable development goals, further limiting its capability.\nHowever, Ho Chi Minh City People's Assembly believed that building a new airport can be impractical and unrealistic, giving that the numbers supporting the new airport are \"wrong calculations, magical stats\" to \"trick others with a purpose of serving their own designs.\" The cost of construction is too high in the midst of already-suppressed national debt, stressing the people without fully-diagnosed value. It is believed that the delay of the expansion is due to the military-run golf course at the north of the airport, where the land is listed as \"defense land.\" Ho Chi Minh City hired an independent French consultant firm ADPi to evaluate the suggestions. The firm supported the idea of expansion at first, but then called off and delayed its final statement, and finally released a report to support the new airport proposition. The city's Assembly responded that the report was rigged.\nFollowing Decision 703/Q\u0110-TTg by the Vietnamese Prime Minister in July 2005, a new airport\u2014Long Thanh International Airport\u2014was planned to replace Tan Son Nhat airport for international departure use. The initial master plan for the new airport was publicly announced in December 2006. The new airport will be built in Long Th\u00e0nh District, \u0110\u1ed3ng Nai Province, about east of Ho Chi Minh City and north of the petroleum-focused city of Vung Tau, near Highway 51A.\nAccording to the approved modified plan in 2011, Long Thanh International Airport will be constructed on an area of , and will have four runways (4,000\u00a0m x 60\u00a0m or 13,100\u00a0ft x 200\u00a0ft) and be capable of receiving the Airbus A380. The project will be divided in three stages. Stage One calls for the construction of two parallel runways and a terminal with a capacity of 25 million passengers per year, due to be completed in 2020. Stage Two is scheduled for completion in 2030, giving the airport three runways, two passenger terminals and a cargo terminal designed to receive 1.5 million metric tons of cargo and 50 million passengers per year. The final stage is scheduled to be initiated after 2035, envisioned to handle 100 million passengers, 5 million metric tons of cargo annually on an infrastructure of four runways and four passenger terminals. The total budget for the first stage alone was estimated to be US$6.7 billion.\nAfter the opening of Long Thanh International Airport.\nIn accordance with the master planning of Vietnam's network of airports, Tan Son Nhat will continue to operate after the opening of Long Thanh International Airport. In the feasibility report for Long Thanh, Airports Corporation of Vietnam proposed that, for international carriers, only low-cost carriers would fly out of Tan Son Nhat, while for Vietnamese carriers, only short-haul international flights and selected domestic routes would be operated out of the airport. In another report, the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam presented a different approach to the division of flights between the two airports. As such, Tan Son Nhat would only serve flights under 1000\u00a0km operated by Code C aircraft or smaller.\nExpansion.\nBecause Long Thanh will not be ready for service until at least 2025, Tan Son Nhat must expand to meet the increasing demand. In January 2017, Airport Design and Construction Consultancy (ADCC) presented three proposals to expand the airport. Vietnam's Deputy Prime Minister Tr\u1ecbnh \u0110\u00ecnh D\u0169ng agreed to proceed a US$860 million upgrade proposal for final review before submitting to the government. Under the chosen proposal, there would be a new mixed-use Terminal 3 and a civil-use Terminal 4 (to be built on the south side of the airport), a parallel taxiway between the existing runways and technical hangars on the northeast. The estimated time to complete the upgrade would be three years and the airport would then have a capacity of 43\u201345 million passengers annually. The decision was controversial due to the fact that the golf course immediately north of SGN would remain untouched despite the urgent need of airport expansion. The Minister of Transport Tr\u01b0\u01a1ng Quang Ngh\u0129a explained that the airport could not be expanded northward due to costs and environmental impact. On 12 June 2017, Prime Minister Nguy\u1ec5n Xu\u00e2n Ph\u00fac requested the Ministry of Transport to research the prospect of constructing a third runway at Tan Son Nhut International Airport. The French consulting company ADP Ing\u00e9nierie (ADPi) was subsequently hired to provide a second opinion for the project.\nIn March 2018, ADPi presented their plan for the expansion. The firm advised against the construction of a third runway and supported a southward expansion plan. Without a new runway, Tan Son Nhat has a maximum capacity of 51 million passengers per year \u2013 a number ADPi predicted SGN to reach in 2025, in time for the opening of Long Thanh. However, an independent consultancy of Ho Chi Minh City believed it could reach up to 80 million by the time Long Thanh was supposed to open, in accordance with reports by Boeing or the International Air Transport Association. As such, they proposed a three-phase northward expansion plan that would see a new runway and two new terminals to increase the airport's capacity to 70 million passengers per year.\nOn 28 March 2018, Prime Minister Nguy\u1ec5n Xu\u00e2n Ph\u00fac ultimately selected the ADPi proposal as the basis for the expansion of the airport. This proposal includes a new Terminal 3 with a designed capacity of 20 million passengers per year south of Runway 07R/25L, additional facilities in the north area where a golf court currently occupies as well as improvements and constructions of access points for the airport.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["10932444", "1217319"], "permutation_1": ["10932444", "1217319"], "permutation_2": ["10932444", "1217319"], "permutation_3": ["1217319", "10932444"]}
{"id": "2hop__706548_134984", "docs_added": {"273777": "John Cassavetes\nAmerican filmmaker and actor (1929\u20131989)\nJohn Nicholas Cassavetes (December 9, 1929 \u2013 February 3, 1989) was an American filmmaker and actor. He began as an actor in film and television before helping to pioneer modern American independent cinema as a writer and director, often self-financing, producing, and distributing his own films. He received nominations for three Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and an Emmy Award.\nAfter studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Cassavetes started his career in television acting in numerous network dramas. From 1959 to 1960 he played the title role in the NBC detective series \"Johnny Staccato\". He acted in notable films, such as Martin Ritt's film noir \"Edge of the City\" (1957), Robert Aldrich's war film \"The Dirty Dozen\" (1967), Roman Polanski's horror film \"Rosemary's Baby\" (1968) and Elaine May's crime drama \"Mikey and Nicky\" (1976). For \"The Dirty Dozen\", he earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.\nAs a director, Cassavetes became known for a string of critically acclaimed independent dramas including \"Shadows\" (1959), \"Faces\" (1968), \"Husbands\" (1970), \"A Woman Under the Influence\" (1974), \"Opening Night\" (1977), and \"Love Streams\" (1984). His films employed an actor-centered approach which prioritized raw character relationships and \"small feelings\" while rejecting traditional Hollywood storytelling, method acting, and stylization. His films became associated with an improvisational aesthetic and a cin\u00e9ma v\u00e9rit\u00e9 feel. He received Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay (\"Faces\") and Best Director (\"A Woman Under the Influence\").\nHe frequently collaborated with American actress Gena Rowlands (to whom he was married from 1954 until his death in 1989) and friends Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara, and Seymour Cassel. Many of his films were shot and edited in his and Rowlands' own Los Angeles home. \nHe and Rowlands had a son named Nick and two daughters, named Alexandra and Zoe, all of whom followed them into acting and filmmaking.\nEarly life and education.\nJohn Nicholas Cassavetes was born in New York City on December 9, 1929, the son of Greek-American actress Katherine Cassavetes (n\u00e9e Demetriou), who was later featured in some of his films, and Greek immigrant Nicholas John Cassavetes. His early years were spent with his family in Greece; when he returned to New York at the age of seven, he spoke no English. He was then raised on Long Island, where he attended Paul D. Schreiber Senior High School (then known as Port Washington High School) from 1945 to 1947 and participated in \"Port Weekly\" (the school paper), \"Red Domino\" (interclass play), football, and the \"Port Light\" (yearbook).\nCassavetes attended Blair Academy in New Jersey and spent a semester at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont, but was expelled due to his failing grades. He spent a few weeks hitchhiking to Florida and then transferred to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, encouraged by recently enrolled friends who told him the school was \"packed with girls\". He graduated in 1950 and met his future wife Gena Rowlands at her audition to enter the Academy in 1953. They were married four months later in 1954. He continued acting in the theater, took small parts in films, and began working on television in anthology series such as \"Alcoa Theatre\".\nCareer.\nActing workshop.\nBy 1956, Cassavetes had begun teaching an alternative to method acting in his own workshop\u2014co-founded with friend Burt Lane in New York City\u2014in which performance would be based on character creation rather than back-story or narrative requirements. Cassavetes particularly scorned Lee Strasberg's Method-based Actors Studio, and the Cassavetes-Lane approach held that acting should be an expression of creative joy rather than the \"moody, broody anguish\" associated with Strasberg's teaching.\nShortly after opening the workshop, Cassavetes was invited to audition at the Actors Studio, and he and Lane devised a prank: they claimed to be performing a scene from a recent stage production but in fact improvised a performance on the spot, fooling an impressed Strasberg. Cassavetes then fabricated a story about his financial troubles, prompting Strasberg to offer him a full scholarship to the Studio; Cassavetes immediately rejected it, feeling that Strasberg did not know anything about acting if he had been so easily fooled by the two ruses.\nAn improvisation exercise in the workshop inspired the idea for his writing and directorial debut, \"Shadows\" (1959; first version 1957). Cassavetes raised the funds for the production from friends and family, as well as listeners to Jean Shepherd's late-night radio talk-show \"Night People\". His stated purpose was to make a film about modest-income \u201clittle people\u201d, unlike Hollywood studio productions, which focused on stories about wealthy people. Cassavetes was unable to gain American distribution of \"Shadows\", but it won the Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival. European distributors later released the movie in the United States as an import. Although the box-office returns of \"Shadows\" in the United States were slight, it did gain attention from the Hollywood studios.\nTelevision and acting jobs.\nCassavetes played bit-parts in B pictures and in television serials, until gaining notoriety in 1955 as a vicious killer in \"The Night Holds Terror,\" and as a juvenile delinquent in the live TV drama \"Crime in the Streets\". Cassavetes would repeat this performance credited as an \u201cintroducing\u201d lead in the 1956 film version, which also included another future director, Mark Rydell, as his gang mate. His first starring role in a feature film was \"Edge of the City\" (1957), which co-starred Sidney Poitier. He was briefly under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and co-starred with Robert Taylor in the western \"Saddle the Wind\", written by Rod Serling. In the late 1950s, Cassavetes guest-starred in Beverly Garland's groundbreaking crime drama, \"Decoy\", about a New York City woman police undercover detective. Thereafter, he played Johnny Staccato, the title character in a television series about a jazz pianist who also worked as a private detective. In total he directed five episodes of the series, which also features a guest appearance by his wife Gena Rowlands. It was broadcast on NBC between September 1959 and March 1960, and then acquired by ABC; although critically acclaimed, the series was cancelled in September 1960. Cassavetes would appear on the NBC interview program, \"Here's Hollywood\".\n1960s.\nIn 1961 Cassavetes signed a seven-year deal with Paramount. Cassavetes directed two movies for Hollywood in the early 1960s: \"Too Late Blues\" (1961); \"A Child Is Waiting (1963)\" starring Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland. He starred in the CBS western series \"Rawhide\" in the episode \"Incident Near Gloomy River\" (1961). In the 1963\u20131964 season he was cast in the ABC medical drama about psychiatry, \"Breaking Point\". In 1964, he again co-starred with his wife, this time in an episode of \"The Alfred Hitchcock Hour\" anthology program, and in 1965, he appeared on ABC's western series, \"The Legend of Jesse James\". In the same year, he also guest-starred in the World War II series \"Combat!\", in the episode \"S.I.W.\", and as the insane nuclear scientist Everett Lang in \"Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea\", season 2, episode \"The Peacemaker\".\nWith payment for his work on television, as well as a handful of film acting jobs, he was able to relocate to California and to make his subsequent films independent of any studio, as \"Shadows\" had been made. The films in which he acted with this intention include Don Siegel's \"The Killers\" (1964), the motorcycle gang movie \"Devil's Angels\" (1967), \"The Dirty Dozen\" (1967), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, the Guy Woodhouse lead (originally intended for Robert Redford) in Roman Polanski's \"Rosemary's Baby\" (1968), and \"The Fury\" (1978). Cassavetes portrayed the murderer in a 1972 episode of the TV crime series \"Columbo\", titled \"\u00c9tude in Black\". Cassavetes and series star Peter Falk had previously starred together in the 1969 mob action thriller \"Machine Gun McCain\". The two later starred in Elaine May's film \"Mikey and Nicky\" (1976).\n\"Faces\" (1968) was the second film to be both directed and independently financed by Cassavetes. The film starred his wife Gena Rowlands\u2014whom he had married during his struggling actor days\u2014John Marley, Seymour Cassel and Val Avery, as well as several first-time actors, such as lead actress Lynn Carlin and industry fringies like Vince Barbi. It depicts the slow disintegration of a contemporary marriage. The film reportedly took three years to make, and was made largely in the Cassavetes home. \"Faces\" was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress. Around this time, Cassavetes formed \"Faces International\" as a distribution company to handle all of his films.\n1970s.\nIn 1970, Cassavetes directed and acted in \"Husbands\", with actors Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara. They played a trio of married men on a spree in New York and London after the funeral of one of their best friends. Cassavetes stated that this was a personal film for him; his elder brother had died at the age of 30.\n\"Minnie and Moskowitz\" (1971), about two unlikely lovers, featured Rowlands and Cassel. \"A Woman Under the Influence\" (1974) stars Rowlands as an increasingly troubled housewife. Rowlands received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, while Cassavetes was nominated for Best Director. In \"The Killing of a Chinese Bookie\" (1976), Gazzara plays a small-time strip-club owner with an out-of-control gambling habit, pressured by mobsters to commit a murder to pay off his debt.\nIn \"Opening Night\" (1977), Rowlands plays the lead alongside Cassavetes; the film also stars Gazzara and Joan Blondell. Rowlands portrays an aging film star named Myrtle Gordon, who is working in the theater and suffering a personal crisis. Alone and unloved by her colleagues, afraid of aging and always removed from others due to her stardom, she succumbs to alcohol and hallucinations after witnessing a young fan accidentally die. Ultimately, Gordon fights through it all, delivering the performance of her life in a play. Rowlands won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 28th Berlin International Film Festival for her performance.\n1980s.\nCassavetes directed the film \"Gloria\" (1980), featuring Rowlands as a Mob moll who tries to protect an orphan boy whom the Mob wants to kill, which earned her another Best Actress nomination. In 1982, Cassavetes starred in Paul Mazursky's \"Tempest,\" which co-starred Rowlands, Susan Sarandon, Molly Ringwald, Ra\u00fal Juli\u00e1 and Vittorio Gassman.\nCassavetes penned the stage play \"Knives\", the earliest version of which he allowed to be published in the 1978 premiere issue of \"On Stage\", the quarterly magazine of the American Community Theatre Association, a division of the American Theatre Association. The play was produced and directed as one of his \"Three Plays of Love and Hate\" at Hollywood, California's Center Theater in 1981. The trio of plays included versions of Canadian playwright Ted Allan's \"The Third Day Comes\" and \"Love Streams,\" the latter of which served as the blueprint for Cassavetes' 1984 film of the same name.\nCassavetes made the Cannon Films-financed \"Love Streams\" (1984), which featured him as an aging playboy who suffers the overbearing affection of his recently divorced sister. It was entered into the 34th Berlin International Film Festival where it won the Golden Bear. The film is often considered Cassavetes' \"last film\" in that it brought together many aspects of his previous films. He despised the film \"Big Trouble\" (1986), which he took over during filming from Andrew Bergman, who wrote the original screenplay. Cassavetes came to refer to the film as \"The aptly titled 'Big Trouble,'\" since the studio vetoed many of his decisions for the film and eventually edited most of it in a way with which Cassavetes disagreed.\nIn January 1987, Cassavetes was facing health problems, but he wrote the three-act play \"Woman of Mystery\" and brought it to the stage in May and June at the Court Theatre, Los Angeles.\nCassavetes worked during the last year of his life to produce a last film that was to be titled \"She's Delovely\". He was in talks with Sean Penn to star, though legal and financial hurdles proved insurmountable and the project was forgotten about until after Cassavetes' death, when his son Nick finally directed it as \"She's So Lovely\" (1997).\nFilmmaking style.\nCassavetes spent the majority of his directing career working 'off the grid' and in a communal atmosphere \"unfettered by the commercial concerns of Hollywood.\" His films aim to capture \"small feelings\" often repressed by Hollywood filmmaking, emphasizing intimate character examination and relationships rather than plot, backstory, or stylization. He often presented difficult characters whose behaviors were not easily understood, rejecting simplistic psychological or narrative explanations for their actions. Cassavetes also disregarded the \"impressionistic cinematography, linear editing, and star-centred scene making\" fashionable in Hollywood and art films. Often unable to interest Hollywood studios in financing his work, Cassavetes typically worked with small but dedicated crew of friends and technicians. He said: \"The hardest thing for a film-maker, or a person like me, is to find people \u2026 who really want to do something.\"\nCassavetes worked to create a comfortable and informal environment where actors could freely experiment with their performances and go beyond acting clich\u00e9s or \"programmed behaviors.\" He dismissed Method acting as \"more a form of psychotherapy than of acting\" which resulted in sentimental cliches and self-indulgent emotion. Instead, he held that acting should be an expression of creative joy and exuberance, with emphasis put on the character's creation of \"masks\" in the process of interacting with other people. Cassavetes also said that he strove \"to put [actors] in a position where they may make asses of themselves without feeling they're revealing things that will eventually be used against them.\" He frequently filmed scenes in long, uninterrupted takes, explaining that:The drama of the scenes comes naturally from the real passage of time lived by the actors [...] The camera isn't content to just follow the characters' words and actions. I focus in on specific gestures and mannerisms. It's from focusing on these little things\u2014the moods, silences, pauses, or anxious moments\u2014that the form arises.\nCassavetes also rejected the dominance of the director's singular vision, instead believing each character must be the actor's \"individual creation\" and refusing to explain the characters to his actors in any significant detail. He claimed that \"stylistic unity drains the humanity out of a text [...] The stories of many different and potentially inarticulate people are more interesting than a contrived narrative that exists only in one articulate man's imagination.\" The manner in which Cassavetes employed improvisation is frequently misunderstood: with the exception of the original version of \"Shadows\", his films were tightly scripted. However, he allowed actors to interpret characters in their own way, and often rewrote scripts based on the results of rehearsals and performances. He explained that \"I believe in improvising on the basis of the written word and not on undisciplined creativity.\"\nCassavetes worked with jazz musicians Charles Mingus and Shafi Hadi to provide the score for \"Shadows\". Mingus's friend, Diane Dorr-Dorynek, described Cassavetes' approach to film-making in jazz terms:\nThe script formed the skeleton around which the actors might change or ad lib lines according to their response to the situation at the moment, so that each performance was slightly different. A jazz musician works in this way, using a given musical skeleton and creating out of it, building a musical whole related to a particular moment by listening to and interacting with his fellow musicians. Jazz musicians working with actors could conceivably provide audiences with some of the most moving and alive theater they have ever experienced.\nWhen asked by Andr\u00e9 S. Labarthe during the making of \"Faces\" whether he had the desire to make a musical film, Cassavetes responded he wanted to make only one musical, Dostoyevsky's \"Crime and Punishment\". Cassavetes was passionate about a wide range of music, from jazz to classical to rock, saying \"I like all music. It makes you feel like living. Silence is death.\"\nCassavetes worked with composer Bo Harwood from 1970 to 1984 on six films in several different capacities, even though Harwood had initially only signed on to do \"a little editing\" for \"Husbands\", and \"a little sound editing\" for \"Minnie and Moskowitz\". Harwood composed poignant music for Cassavetes' following three films, and was also credited as \"Sound\" for two of them. During these projects Harwood wrote several songs, some with Cassavetes contributing lyrics and rudimentary tunes. During his work with Cassavetes, Harwood claimed the notoriously unpredictable director preferred to use the \"scratch track\" version of his compositions, rather than to let Harwood refine and re-record them with an orchestra. Some of these scratch tracks were recorded in Cassavetes' office, with piano or guitar, as demos, and then eventually ended up in the final film. While this matched the raw, unpolished feel that marks most of Cassavetes' films, Harwood was sometimes surprised and embarrassed.\nThe relationship between Harwood and Cassavetes ended amicably. When asked by documentarian Michael Ventura during the making of Cassavetes' last film \"Love Streams\", what he had learned from working with Cassavetes, Harwood replied:\nI learned a lot through John. I've done a lot of editing for him. Picture editing, sound editing, music editing, shot sound, composed score, and I've learned a lot about integrity ... I think you know what I mean. You know, thirty years from now, I can say I rode with Billy the Kid.\nPersonal life.\nMarriage.\nCassavetes was married to American actress Gena Rowlands from 1954 until his death in 1989. Many of his films were shot and edited in his and Rowlands' own Los Angeles home. He and Rowlands had a son named Nick and two daughters named Alexandra and Zoe, all of whom followed them into acting and filmmaking.\nDeath.\nA long-time alcoholic, Cassavetes died in Los Angeles from complications of cirrhosis at the age of 59 on February 3, 1989. He is buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park cemetery in Los Angeles.\nAt the time of his death, Cassavetes had amassed a collection of more than 40 unproduced screenplays, as well as a novel, \"Husbands\". He also left three unproduced plays: \"Sweet Talk\", \"Entrances and Exits\", and \"Begin the Beguine\", the last of which, in German translation, was co-produced by Needcompany of Belgium and Burgtheater of Vienna, and premiered on stage at Vienna's Akademietheater in 2014.\nLegacy and reception.\nCassavetes is the subject of several biographies. \"Cassavetes on Cassavetes\" is a collection of interviews collected or conducted by Boston University film scholar Ray Carney, in which the filmmaker recalled his experiences, influences, and outlook on the film industry. In the 2005 Hollywood issue of \"Vanity Fair\", one article features a tribute to Cassavetes by three members of his stock company, Rowlands, Gazzara, and Falk.\nMany of Cassavetes' films are owned by Faces Distribution, a company overseen by Gena Rowlands and Julian Schlossberg, distributed by Jumer Films (Schlossberg's own company), with additional sales and distribution by Janus Films. In September 2004, The Criterion Collection produced a Region 1 DVD box set of his five independent films: \"Shadows\", \"Faces\", \"A Woman Under the Influence\", \"The Killing of a Chinese Bookie\" and \"Opening Night\". Also featured in the set is a documentary about the life and works of Cassavetes, \"A Constant Forge\", a booklet featuring critical assessments of the director's work and tributes by old friends. Criterion released a Blu-ray version of the set in October 2013. In 2005, a box set of the same films was released in Region 2 by Optimum Releasing. The Optimum DVD of \"Shadows\" has a voice-over commentary by Seymour Cassel. Then, in 2014, the Faces/Jumer library became the property of Shout! Factory, which acquired the films' holding parent company, Westchester Films.\nCassavetes' son Nick followed in his father's footsteps as an actor and director, adapting the \"She's Delovely\" screenplay his father had written into the 1997 film \"She's So Lovely\", which starred Sean Penn, as John Cassavetes had wanted. Alexandra Cassavetes directed the documentary \"\" in 2004, and in 2006 served as 2nd Unit Director on her brother Nick's film, \"Alpha Dog\". Cassavetes' younger daughter Zoe wrote and directed the 2007 film \"Broken English\", featuring Rowlands and Parker Posey.\n\"The New Yorker\" wrote that Cassavetes \"may be the most influential American director of the last half century\"\u2014this in announcing that all the films he directed, plus others he acted in, were being screened in a retrospective tribute at the Brooklyn Academy of Music throughout July 2013. AllMovie called Cassavetes \"an iconoclastic maverick\".\nThe Independent Spirit Awards named one of their categories after Cassavetes, the Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award. A one-person show about John Cassavetes titled \"Independent\" premiered at Essential Theatre in Atlanta in August 2017. The play was written by John D. Babcock III and starred actor Dan Triandiflou as Cassavetes. The song \"What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?\" by the band Le Tigre is about misogynistic themes within John Cassavetes' films and whether they can still be praised after those themes are identified. The song \"Cassavetes\" by the band Fugazi parallels John Cassavetes' independence from the film industry with the band's own independence from the record industry. In concert, singer Guy Picciotto introduced it as \"a song about making your own road.\"\nFilmography.\nAs director\nAwards and nominations.\nAs a filmmaker, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for \"Faces\" (1968) and the Academy Award for Best Director for \"A Woman Under the Influence\" (1974). The Independent Spirit Awards named the John Cassavetes Award in his honor.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "240372": "Gloria (1980 film)\n1980 film by John Cassavetes\nGloria is a 1980 American neo-noir crime thriller film written and directed by John Cassavetes. It tells the story of a gangster's former girlfriend who goes on the run with a young boy who is being hunted by the mob for information he may or may not have. It stars Gena Rowlands, Julie Carmen, Buck Henry, and John Adames.\nThe film had its world premiere at the 37th Venice International Film Festival, winning the Golden Lion, the festival's top prize, in a tie with \"Atlantic City\" by Louis Malle.\nPlot.\nIn New York City, in the South Bronx, Jeri Dawn is heading home with groceries. Inside the lobby of her apartment building, she passes a man whose dress and appearance are out of place. The woman quickly boards the elevator.\nShe is met in her apartment by her husband Jack Dawn, an accountant for a New York City mob family. There is a contract on Jack and his family, as he has been acting as an informant for the FBI. Suddenly, the family's neighbor, Gloria Swenson, rings their doorbell, asking to borrow some coffee. Jeri tells Gloria there is an impending hit on her family and implores Gloria to protect her children. Gloria, formerly a mobster's girlfriend, tells Jeri that she doesn't like kids but begrudgingly agrees. The Dawns' daughter Joan refuses to leave and locks herself in the bathroom. While the family attempts to get Joan, Gloria takes their young son Phil, and an incriminating accounts ledger, to her apartment, narrowly missing the hit squad.\nAfter hearing loud shotgun blasts from the Dawns' apartment, a visibly shaken Gloria decides that she and Phil must go into hiding. After quickly packing a bag they leave the building, just as a police SWAT team is entering with heavy weapons. Meanwhile, a crowd of onlookers and news reporters has gathered in front of the building, and a cameraman captures a picture of them leaving.\nGloria and Phil take a cab into Manhattan, where they hide out in an empty apartment belonging to a friend of hers. The following morning, Phil sneaks out of the apartment and sees his photograph on the front page of several newspapers. Later on, Gloria watches the news on television, which reports the mob hit and names her as Phil's suspected abductor.\nThe next morning, realizing they are not safe where they are, Gloria and Phil sneak out of the apartment just as a group of gangsters close in on them. The gangsters know Gloria and confront her on the sidewalk outside, exhorting her to give up Phil and the ledger. In desperation, Gloria shoots her revolver at the car of five gangsters, which takes off and flips over. Gloria realizes both her fate and Phil's are now deeply intertwined, and that they will have to leave New York to survive.\nGloria goes to the bank to empty her safe deposit box, and the two settle for the night at a flophouse. She confronts another group of gangsters at a restaurant; she asks for immunity in exchange for the ledger. \"Only Mr. Tanzinni can agree to that\", says one of the goons, so she takes some of their guns and flees.\nThe next day, Gloria tells Phil that she plans to send him away to a boarding school. Offended by her intentions, Phil claims he is an independent grown man who can manage alone. Gloria decides to abandon him and have a drink. She is soon filled with guilt for leaving the child and rushes back to look for him; however, he has been captured by some wiseguys. Gloria rescues him, killing one mobster in the process, and fleeing from two others via a taxi and the subway, where several by-standers help her escape.\nThe two eventually make it to a hotel room, where Gloria laments the mob's strength and ubiquitous presence, explaining to Phil that she was once the mistress of Tanzinni himself. She meets with Tanzinni, relinquishes the ledger, and then flees, killing one gangster as another shoots down upon her elevator car. Phil waits several hours, then flees to Pittsburgh via rail. At a cemetery, Phil and Gloria (the latter disguised as the former's grandmother arriving in a limousine after miraculously surviving her ordeal) reunite.\nProduction.\nJohn Cassavetes did not originally intend to direct his screenplay; he planned merely to sell the story to Columbia Pictures. However, once his wife, Gena Rowlands, was asked to play the title character in the film, she asked Cassavetes to direct it. \"Gloria\" is John Adames' only film role.\nA sequel was in the works before Cassavetes's death. \nReception and legacy.\nOn review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 91% approval rating based on 33 reviews, with an average rating of 7.1/10. The website's critics consensus reads: \"A comparatively commercial entry from director John Cassavetes, \"Gloria\"'s pulpy pleasures are elevated by his observant touch and Gena Rowlands' galvanizing star performance.\"\nReviewing for the \"Chicago Sun-Times\", Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and described it as \"tough, sweet and goofy\", as well as \"fun and engaging but slight\". He believed the overly silly nature of the script is redeemed by \"Cassavetes' reliance on a tried-and-true plot construction\" and the acting performances, particularly that of Rowlands, who he said \"propels the action with such appealing nervous energy that we don't have the heart to stop and think how silly everything is\". In a retrospective review, \"Slant Magazine\" praised Rowlands' performance and said that \"the supporting cast pales in comparison to Rowlands\".\nThe film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:\nThe Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited \"Gloria\" as one of his favorite films.\nThe film was remade in 1999 under the same title with a screenplay by Steve Antin. The remake was directed by Sidney Lumet. It starred Sharon Stone and Jean-Luke Figueroa.\nOther films inspired by \"Gloria\" include Erick Zonca's 2008 film \"Julia\", starring Tilda Swinton and Luc Besson's 1994 film \"L\u00e9on: The Professional\". In 2013, Paul Schrader was planning his own remake of the film, starring Lindsay Lohan. And, in 2018, Taraji P. Henson starred in a loose remake entitled \"Proud Mary\".\nJohn Adames.\nThe film is notable for the performance of child actor John Adames (also known as Juan Adames), for which he won the first ever Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actor, shared with Laurence Olivier for his role in \"The Jazz Singer\". Adames, who had been cast after an open call, was between five and seven years old when cast, and his character Phil Dawn was six. He did not have any subsequent film roles afterwards.\nAdames' performance was criticized by contemporary reviewers, who according to critic Ray Carney, expected Adames to be \"cute and cuddly\", and when he was not, they judged that Cassavetes had failed. Eric Henderson of \"Slant\" magazine posited that the criticism was due to Adames' vocal delivery, which he compared to \"what Paddy Chayefsky would sound like impersonating Alvin Chipmunk\".\nRoger Ebert praised Adames' performance, calling him \"well cast\". Writing for \"Film Comment\" in 2017, Shonni Enelow revisited Adames' performance as the \"crucial positive negative\" that \"makes the film work\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "77453918": "\u00c0ma Gloria\n2023 French film by Marie Amachoukeli\n\u00c0ma Gloria is a 2023 French film written and directed by Marie Amachoukeli.\nPlot summary.\nCl\u00e9o is six years old, has glasses and a dad - but has lost her mother to cancer. Fortunately, there is Gloria, her nanny , who loves her and whom Cl\u00e9o adores. However, Gloria's mother has also died, and she must return to her native island of Santiago in Cape Verde to care for own children, the teenage C\u00e9sar, who has seldom seen her, and the twenty-year-old Fernanda, who is about to give birth to her own child. Gloria will also supervise the construction of a hotel that she hopes to open for the next tourist season.\nCl\u00e9o is shocked, and only the promise that she manages to extract from her father cheers her up: the following summer she will be able to join Gloria in her village. Although Cl\u00e9o harbours a secret hope of bringing \"her\" Gloria back to Paris, she comes to understand that Gloria now has her own life.\nCritical reception.\nOn the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes website, the film has an approval rating of 100% based on 29 reviews.\nJessica Kiang, writing for \"Variety\" praised Mauroy-Panzani: \"A last summer of nanny-child togetherness is detailed in a debut made dazzling by an astonishingly intricate performance from its six-year-old star.\"\nCharlotte O'Sullivan of \"The Guardian\" also had appreations for the film and its young lead actress, writing that \"One of the year\u2019s most hypnotic performances nestles inside this seemingly modest French-language coming-of-age drama\" calling Mauroy-Panzani a \"Gifted six-year-old newcomer.\"\nAllan Hunger of \"Screen Daily\" wrote that \"\"Ama Gloria\" is quite the heartbreaker as writer/director Marie Amachoukeli confidently traces the intense bond between a six year-old girl and her beloved nanny.\"\nMansel Stimpson of \"Film Review Daily\" wrote \"Over the years it is impossible not to be amazed by the remarkable achievements of so many child players who have taken leading roles in films. Nevertheless, [...] it is immediately clear that Louise Mauroy-Panzani is not just on that level but that her portrayal of the six-year-old Cl\u00e9o is one for the ages. [...], she astounds us all over again when, near the close of the film, she rises to the challenge of a big dramatic scene which one would expect to be outside the capability of such a young actor.\"\nAccolades.\nCritics' Week chose to have \"\u00c0ma Gloria\" world premiere at its opening gala.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "11452664": "Gloria Hemingway\nAmerican physician (1931\u20132001)\nGloria Hemingway (born Gregory Hancock Hemingway, November 12, 1931 \u2013 October 1, 2001) was an American physician and writer who was the third and youngest child of author Ernest Hemingway. Although she was born a male and lived most of her life publicly as a man, she struggled with her gender identity from a young age. In her 60s, she underwent gender transition surgery, and preferred the name Gloria when possible.\nA good athlete and a crack shot, Gloria longed to be a typical Hemingway hero and trained as a professional hunter in Africa, but her alcoholism prevented her from gaining a license, and it ultimately cost her her medical license in the United States. Gloria maintained a long-running feud with her father, stemming from a 1951 incident when her arrest for entering a bar in drag caused an argument between Ernest and Gloria's mother Pauline Pfeiffer. Pfeiffer died from a stress-related condition the following day, which Ernest blamed on Gloria.\nIn 1976, she authored a bestselling memoir of her father, \"Papa: A Personal Memoir\", which was seen by some to reflect troubles of her own. These included wearing women's clothes, which she ascribed to gender dysphoria.\nEarly life and education.\nBorn in Kansas City, Missouri, to novelist Ernest Hemingway and his second wife Pauline Pfeiffer, she was called 'Gigi' or 'Gig' in childhood and was, according to a close observer, \"a tremendous athlete\" and a \"crack shot\". As an adult, she preferred the name 'Greg'. At the age of 12, she was wearing her stepmother Martha Gellhorn's stockings almost daily. Ernest caught her wearing them, and had an outburst of anger that left an impression on Gloria for decades. However, a few days later he said to her: \"Gigi, we come from a strange tribe, you and I.\" Hemingway attended the Canterbury School, a Catholic prep school in Connecticut, graduating in 1949. She dropped out of St. John's College, Annapolis, after one year and worked for a time as an aircraft mechanic before moving to California"}, "descending_order": ["77453918", "11452664", "240372", "273777"], "permutation_1": ["273777", "77453918", "240372", "11452664"], "permutation_2": ["273777", "240372", "11452664", "77453918"], "permutation_3": ["11452664", "273777", "240372", "77453918"]}
{"id": "2hop__501254_21587", "docs_added": {"2067": "Ann Arbor, Michigan\nCity in Michigan, United States\nAnn Arbor is a city in Washtenaw County, Michigan, United States, and its county seat. The 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851, making it the fifth-most populous city in Michigan. Located on the Huron River, Ann Arbor is the principal city of its metropolitan area, which encompasses all of Washtenaw County and had 372,258 residents in 2020. Ann Arbor is included in the Detroit\u2013Warren\u2013Ann Arbor combined statistical area and the Great Lakes megalopolis.\nAnn Arbor was founded in 1824 by John Allen and Elisha Rumsey. It was named after the wives of the village's founders, both named Ann, and the stands of bur oak trees they found at the site of the town. The University of Michigan was established in Ann Arbor in 1837, and the city's population grew at a rapid rate in the early to mid-20th century.\nA college town, Ann Arbor is currently home to the University of Michigan, which significantly shapes the city's economy, employing about 30,000 workers which includes about 12,000 in its medical center. The city's economy is also centered on high technology, with several companies drawn to the area by the university's research and development infrastructure. The city has been a center for progressive politics as well as several social and religious movements.\nHistory.\nBefore founding as Ann Arbor.\nThe region was once inhabited by several Native American tribes, the most prominent being the Anishinaabe people of the Three Fires: the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi. The Potawatomi founded two villages in the area of what is now Ann Arbor in about 1774. Other tribes that inhabited the area included the Fox, Wyandots, and Sauk. These peoples established several trails that converged on present-day Ann Arbor. The land that included Washtenaw County was ceded to the U.S. by the Odawa, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Wyandot in the Treaty of Detroit of 1807.\n19th century.\nAnn Arbor was founded in 1824 by land speculators John Allen and Elisha Walker Rumsey. On May 25, 1824, the town plat was registered with Wayne County as the Village of Annarbour, the earliest known use of the town's name. Allen and Rumsey decided to name it for their wives, both named Ann, and for the stands of bur oak in the of land they purchased for $800 () from the federal government at $1.25 per acre. The local Ojibwa named the settlement , after the sound of Allen's sawmill.\nAnn Arbor became the seat of Washtenaw County in 1827 and was incorporated as a village in 1833. The Ann Arbor Land Company, a group of speculators, set aside of undeveloped land and offered it to the state of Michigan as the site of the state capitol, but lost the bid to Lansing. In 1837, the property was accepted instead as the site of the University of Michigan.\nSince the university's establishment in the city in 1837, the histories of the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor have been closely linked. The town became a regional transportation hub in 1839 with the arrival of the Michigan Central Railroad, and a north\u2013south railway connecting Ann Arbor to Toledo and other markets to the south was established in 1878. Throughout the 1840s and the 1850s settlers continued to come to Ann Arbor. While the earlier settlers were primarily of British ancestry, the newer settlers also consisted of Germans, Irish, and Black people. In 1851, Ann Arbor was chartered as a city, though the city showed a drop in population during the Depression of 1873. It was not until the early 1880s that Ann Arbor again saw robust growth, with new immigrants from Greece, Italy, Russia, and Poland.\n20th century.\nAnn Arbor saw increased growth in manufacturing, particularly in milling. Ann Arbor's Jewish community also grew after the turn of the 20th century, and its first and oldest synagogue, Beth Israel Congregation, was established in 1916.\nFollowing a 1956 vote, the city of East Ann Arbor merged with Ann Arbor to encompass the eastern sections of the city.\nIn 1960, Ann Arbor voters approved a $2.3\u00a0million bond issue (equivalent to $\u00a0million in 2023) to build the current city hall, which was designed by architect Alden B. Dow. The City Hall opened in 1963. In 1995, the building was renamed the Guy C. Larcom Jr. Municipal Building in honor of the longtime city administrator who championed the building's construction.\nDuring the 1960s and 1970s, the city gained a reputation as an important center for liberal politics. Ann Arbor also became a locus for left-wing activism and anti-Vietnam War movement, as well as the student movement. The first major meetings of the national left-wing campus group Students for a Democratic Society took place in Ann Arbor in 1960; in 1965, the city was home to the first U.S. teach-in against the Vietnam War. During the ensuing 15 years, many countercultural and New Left enterprises sprang up and developed large constituencies within the city. These influences washed into municipal politics during the early and mid-1970s when three members of the Human Rights Party (HRP) won city council seats on the strength of the student vote. During their time on the council, HRP representatives fought for measures including pioneering antidiscrimination ordinances, measures decriminalizing marijuana possession, and a rent-control ordinance.\nTwo religious-conservative institutions were created in Ann Arbor; the Word of God (established in 1967), a charismatic inter-denominational movement; and the Thomas More Law Center (established in 1999). Since 1998, Ann Arbor is also the home office of the Anthroposophical Society in the United States, an organization dedicated to supporting the community of those interested in the inner path of schooling known as anthroposophy, developed by Rudolf Steiner.\n21st century.\nIn the past several decades, Ann Arbor has grappled with the effects of sharply rising land values, gentrification, and urban sprawl stretching into outlying countryside. On November 4, 2003, voters approved a greenbelt plan under which the city government bought development rights on agricultural parcels of land adjacent to Ann Arbor to preserve them from sprawling development. Since then, a vociferous local debate has hinged on how and whether to accommodate and guide development within city limits. Ann Arbor consistently ranks in the \"top places to live\" lists published by various mainstream media outlets every year.\nIn 2016, the city changed mayoral terms from two years to four. Until 2017, City Council held annual elections in which half of the seats (one from each ward) were elected to 2-year terms. These elections were staggered, with each ward having one of its seats up for election in odd years and its other seat up for election in even years. Beginning in 2018 the city council has had staggered elections to 4-year terms in even years. This means that half of the members (one from each ward) are elected in presidential election years, while the other half are elected in mid-term election years. To facilitate this change in scheduling, the 2017 election elected members to terms that lasted 3-years.\nIn 2020, partly as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the city government opened several downtown streets to pedestrians, limiting their use by motor vehicles to emergency vehicles during summertime weekends. In addition to providing a large pedestrian mall, these changes allow restaurants to use more of the sidewalks and part of the street for outdoor seating. These changes were popular enough that in 2021 the city council extended the dates from March to November, continuing the schedule of cordoning off cars from Thursday evening until Monday morning.\nGeography.\nAnn Arbor is located along the Huron River, which flows southeast through the city on its way to Lake Erie. It is the central core of the Ann Arbor, MI Metropolitan Statistical Area, which consists of the whole of Washtenaw County, but is also a part of the Metro Detroit Combined Statistical Area designated by the U.S. Census Bureau. While it borders only Townships, the built-up nature of the sections of Pittsfield and Ypsilanti townships between Ann Arbor and the city of Ypsilanti make the two effectively a single urban area.\nLandscape.\nThe landscape of Ann Arbor consists of hills and valleys, with the terrain becoming steeper near the Huron River. The elevation ranges from about along the Huron River to on the city's west side, near the intersection of Maple Road and Pauline Blvd. Ann Arbor Municipal Airport, which is south of the city at , has an elevation of . Ann Arbor is nicknamed \"Tree Town\", both due to its name and to the dense forestation of its parks and residential areas. The city contains more than 50,000 trees along its streets and an equal number in parks. Into the early 2000s, the emerald ash borer has destroyed many of the city's approximately 10,500 ash trees.\nThe city contains over 160 municipal parks ranging from small neighborhood green spots to large recreation areas such as Buhr Park. Several large city parks and a university park border sections of the Huron River. Fuller Recreation Area, near the University Hospital complex, contains sports fields, pedestrian and bike paths, and swimming pools. Opened in the summer of 2014, the city-funded Ann Arbor Skatepark is a skatepark located within Veterans Memorial Park. The city is also home to the Washtenaw County-owned County Farm Park. The Nichols Arboretum, owned by the University of Michigan, is a arboretum that contains hundreds of plant and tree species. It is on the city's east side, near the university's Central Campus. Located across the Huron River just beyond the university's North Campus is the university's Matthaei Botanical Gardens, which contains 300\u00a0acres of gardens and a large tropical conservatory. Several other green spaces around Ann Arbor are privately owned or owned by government agencies such as Ann Arbor Public Schools.\nCityscape.\nThe cityscape of Ann Arbor is heavily influenced by the University of Michigan, with 22% of downtown and 9.4% of the total land owned by the university. The downtown Central Campus contains some of the oldest extant structures in the city\u2014including the President's House, built in 1840\u2014and separates the South University District from the other three downtown commercial districts. These other three districts, Kerrytown, State Street, and Main Street are contiguous near the northwestern corner of the university.\nMajor landmarks in downtown Ann Arbor include the Michigan Theater, The Diag, and Tower Plaza, a 26-story condominium building that is the city's tallest building. Downtown is also home to several Fairy Doors and other public art installations.\nThree commercial areas south of downtown include the areas near I-94 and Ann Arbor-Saline Road, Briarwood Mall, and the South Industrial area. Other commercial areas include the Arborland/Washtenaw Avenue and Packard Road merchants on the east side, the Plymouth Road area in the northeast, and the Westgate/West Stadium areas on the west side. Downtown contains a mix of 19th- and early-20th-century structures and modern-style buildings, as well as a farmers' market in the Kerrytown district. The city's commercial districts are composed mostly of two- to four-story structures, although downtown and the area near Briarwood Mall contain a small number of high-rise buildings.\nAnn Arbor's residential neighborhoods contain architectural styles ranging from classic 19th- and early 20th-century designs to ranch-style houses. Among these homes are a number of kit houses built in the early 20th century. Contemporary-style houses are farther from the downtown district. Surrounding the University of Michigan campus are houses and apartment complexes occupied primarily by student renters. The 19th-century buildings and streetscape of the Old West Side neighborhood have been preserved virtually intact; in 1972, the district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), and it is further protected by city ordinances and a nonprofit preservation group.\nClimate.\nAnn Arbor has a typically Midwestern humid continental climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Dfa\"), which is influenced by the Great Lakes. There are four distinct seasons: winters are cold and snowy, with average highs around . Summers are warm to hot and humid, with average highs around and with slightly more precipitation. Spring and autumn are transitional between the two. The area experiences lake effect weather, primarily in the form of increased cloudiness during late fall and early winter. The monthly daily average temperature in July is , while the same figure for January is . Temperatures reach or exceed on 10 days, and drop to or below on 4.6 nights. Precipitation tends to be the heaviest during the summer months, but most frequent during winter. Snowfall, which normally occurs from November to April but occasionally starts in October, averages per season. The lowest recorded temperature was on February 11, 1885, and the highest recorded temperature was on July 24, 1934.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nAnn Arbor has seen consistent growth in population between all decennial censuses since 1860 with the exception of the 2010 census which reported almost no growth from the previous census. As of the 2020 U.S. census, there were 123,851 people and 49,337 households residing in the city, with a population density of . The racial makeup of the city including Hispanics in the racial categories was 67.6% White, 6.8% Black, 0.2% Native American, 15.7% Asian, 0.1% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 1.8% from other races, and 7.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race made up 5.5% of the population. Ann Arbor has a small population of Arab Americans, including students as well as local Lebanese and Palestinians, and a large community of Japanese nationals.\nAccording to the 2022 American Community Survey estimates, out of 49,337 households, 33.8% were married-couple households, 9.8% were cohabiting couple households, 26.1% had a male householder with no spouse present, and 30.4% had a female householder with no spouse present. 18.4% of the households had individuals under the age of 18 living in them, and 20.1% had individuals over age 65 living in them. The average household size was 2.22 people and the average family size was 2.78 people. The median age was 25.9; 12.2% of the population was under age 18, and 12.3% was age 65 or older. The percentage of city residents age 25 years or older with at least a high school degree was 97.8% while 77.5% had a bachelor's degree or higher, which is higher than the U.S. national percentage of 89.1% for persons age 25 years or older with at least a high school degree and 34.3% with a bachelor's degree or higher.\nThe median household income in 2022 was $78,740 (versus the U.S. national figure of $75,149), with family households having a median income of $126,292. The per capita income for the city was $52,276, which is higher than the U.S. national per capita income of $41,261. Males working full-time jobs had median earnings of $86,970 compared to $61,543 for females. Out of the 109,973 people with a determined poverty status, 23.1% were below the poverty line compared to the U.S. national poverty rate of 11.1%; the age group with the highest percentage below the poverty level was persons between 18 and 34 years at 43.0% while other age groups have percentages between 2.7% and 7.7%. Further, 3.5% of minors and 7.7% of seniors were below the poverty line.\nCrime.\nAccording to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program in 2022, Ann Arbor had 371 reported violent crimes (which include homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) and 2069 reported property crimes (which include arson, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft). With a violent crime rate of 309.5 per 100,000 people, the city's violent crime rate is lower than Michigan's rate of 461 per 100,000 people and the U.S. national rate of 380.7 per 100,000 people. However, Ann Arbor's property crime rate, at 1726.0 per 100,000 people, is higher than Michigan's property crime rate of 1536.8 per 100,000 people and lower than the U.S. national property crime rate of 1954.4 per 100,000 people.\nEconomy.\nThe University of Michigan shapes Ann Arbor's economy significantly. It employs about 30,000 workers which includes about 12,000 in the medical center. Other employers are drawn to the area by the university's research and development money, and by its graduates. High tech, health services and biotechnology are other major components of the city's economy; numerous medical offices, laboratories, and associated companies are located in the city. Automobile manufacturers, such as General Motors and Visteon, also employ residents.\nHigh tech companies have located in the area since the 1930s, when International Radio Corporation introduced the first mass-produced AC/DC radio (the Kadette, in 1931) as well as the first pocket radio (the Kadette Jr., in 1933). Current firms include Arbor Networks (provider of Internet traffic engineering and security systems), Arbortext (provider of XML-based publishing software), JSTOR (the digital scholarly journal archive), Truven Health Analytics, and ProQuest, which includes UMI. Duo Security, a cloud-based access security provider of two-factor authentication, is headquartered in Ann Arbor. It was formerly a unicorn and continues to be headquartered in Ann Arbor after its acquisition by Cisco Systems. In November 2021, semiconductor test equipment company KLA Corporation opened a new North American headquarters in Ann Arbor.\nAnn Arbor is the home to Internet2 and the Merit Network, a not-for-profit research and education computer network. Both are located in the South State Commons 2 building on South State Street. The city is also home to a secondary office of Google's AdWords program\u2014the company's primary revenue stream. As of 2022,[ [update]] Ann Arbor is home to more than twenty video game and XR studios of varying sizes. The city plays host to a regional chapter of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) which hosts monthly meetups, presentations, and educational events.\nThe city is the home of many research and engineering centers, including the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory that is operated by NOAA and the Michigan Tech Research Institute. Other research centers sited in the city are the United States Environmental Protection Agency's National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory and the Toyota Technical Center. The city is also home to National Sanitation Foundation International (NSF International), the nonprofit non-governmental organization that develops generally accepted standards for a variety of public health related industries and subject areas.\nNon-high tech companies in Ann Arbor include Domino's Pizza, headquartered on Domino's Farms, a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired complex just northeast of the city. Another Ann Arbor-based company is Zingerman's Delicatessen, which serves sandwiches and has developed businesses under a variety of brand names. Avfuel, a global supplier of aviation fuels and services, is headquartered in Ann Arbor as is Pinkerton, a detective and private security firm. Many cooperative enterprises were founded in the city; among those that remain are the People's Food Co-op and the Inter-Cooperative Council at the University of Michigan, a student housing cooperative founded in 1937. There are also three cohousing communities\u2014Sunward, Great Oak, and Touchstone\u2014located immediately to the west of the city limits.\nCulture.\nSeveral performing arts groups and facilities are on the University of Michigan's campus, as are museums dedicated to art, archaeology, and natural history and sciences. Founded in 1879, the University Musical Society is an independent performing arts organization that presents over 60 events each year, bringing international artists in music, dance, and theater. Since 2001 Shakespeare in the Arb has presented one play by Shakespeare each June, in a large park near downtown. Regional and local performing arts groups not associated with the university include the Ann Arbor Civic Theatre, the Arbor Opera Theater, the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, The Ark, and Performance Network Theatre. State Theatre and the adjacent Michigan Theater are a movie palace and a performing arts center, respectively. Another unique piece of artistic expression in Ann Arbor is the fairy doors. These small portals are examples of installation art and can be found throughout the downtown area.\nThe Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum, an interactive science center, is located in a renovated and expanded historic downtown fire station. The Ann Arbor Art Center is a nonprofit that organizes art activities and exhibitions. Aside from the Ann Arbor District Library, which maintains four branch outlets in addition to its main downtown building, and being the home to the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, Ann Arbor ranks first among U.S. cities in the number of booksellers and books sold per capita.\nSeveral annual events\u2014many of them centered on performing and visual arts\u2014draw visitors to Ann Arbor. One such event is the Ann Arbor Art Fairs, a set of four concurrent juried fairs held on downtown streets. Scheduled on Thursday through Sunday of the third week of July, the fairs draw upward of half a million visitors. Another is the Ann Arbor Film Festival, held during the third week of March, which receives more than 2,500 submissions annually from more than 40 countries and serves as one of a handful of Academy Award\u2013qualifying festivals in the United States.\nAnn Arbor has a long history of openness to marijuana, given Ann Arbor's decriminalization of cannabis, the large number of medical marijuana dispensaries in the city (one dispensary, called People's Co-op, was directly across the street from Michigan Stadium until zoning forced it to move one mile to the west), the large number of pro-marijuana residents, and the annual Hash Bash: an event that is held on the first Saturday of April. Until (at least) the successful passage of Michigan's medical marijuana law, the event had arguably strayed from its initial intent, although for years, a number of attendees have received serious legal responses due to marijuana use on University of Michigan property, which does not fall under the city's progressive and compassionate ticketing program.\nA person from Ann Arbor is called an \"Ann Arborite\", and many long-time residents call themselves \"townies\". The city itself is often called \"A\u00b2\" (\"A-squared\") or \"A2\" (\"A two\") or \"AA\", \"The Deuce\" (mainly by Chicagoans), and \"Tree Town\". With tongue-in-cheek reference to the city's liberal political leanings, some occasionally refer to Ann Arbor as \"The People's Republic of Ann Arbor\" or \"25 square miles surrounded by reality.\" In \"A Prairie Home Companion\" broadcast from Ann Arbor, Garrison Keillor described Ann Arbor as \"a city where people discuss socialism, but only in the fanciest restaurants.\" Ann Arbor sometimes appears on citation indexes as an author, instead of a location, often with the academic degree \"MI\", a misunderstanding of the abbreviation for Michigan.\nSports.\nAnn Arbor is a major center for college sports, most notably at the University of Michigan. Several well-known college sports facilities exist in the city, including Michigan Stadium, the largest American football stadium and the third-largest stadium of any kind in the world with a capacity of 107,601. The stadium is colloquially known as \"The Big House\" due to its status as the largest American football stadium. Crisler Center and Yost Ice Arena play host to the school's basketball (both men's and women's) and ice hockey teams, respectively. Concordia University, a member of the NAIA, also fields sports teams.\nIn semi-professional sports Ann Arbor is represented in the NPSL by AFC Ann Arbor, a soccer club founded in 2014 who call themselves The Mighty Oak.\nGovernment.\nAs the county seat of Washtenaw County, the Washtenaw County Trial Court (22nd Circuit Court) is located in Ann Arbor at the Washtenaw County Courthouse on Main Street. Seven judges serve on the court. The 15th Michigan district court, which serves only the city itself, is located within the Ann Arbor Justice Center, immediately next to city hall. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan and Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit are also located in downtown Ann Arbor, at the federal building on Liberty Street.\nIn the Michigan Legislature, the city is split between Districts 23, 33, 47, and 48 in the Michigan House of Representatives. In the Michigan Senate, Ann Arbor is covered by Districts 14 and 15. Ann Arbor is within the 6th congressional district, currently represented by Debbie Dingell.\nAnn Arbor has a council\u2013manager form of government, with 11 voting members: the mayor and 10 city council members. Each of the city's five wards are represented by two council members, with the mayor elected at-large during midterm years. Half of the council members are elected in midterm years, with the other in general election years. The mayor is the presiding officer of the city council and has the power to appoint all council committee members as well as board and commission members, with the approval of the city council. The current mayor of Ann Arbor is Christopher Taylor, a Democrat who was elected as mayor in 2014. Day-to-day city operations are managed by a city administrator chosen by the city council. While Democrats, as of 2024,[ [update]] hold the mayorship and all ten council seats, Ann Arbor has two major political factions. A major source of this local divide is differences in views on the city's growth.\nEducation.\nPrimary and secondary education.\nPublic schools are part of the Ann Arbor Public Schools (AAPS) district. AAPS has one of the country's leading music programs. For the 2021\u20132022 school year, 17,070 students were enrolled in the Ann Arbor Public Schools. Notable schools include Pioneer, Huron, Skyline, Community high schools, Pathways to Success Academic Campus, and Ann Arbor Open School. The district has a preschool center with both free and tuition-based programs for preschoolers in the district. The University High School, a \"demonstration school\" with teachers drawn from the University of Michigan's education program, was part of the school system from 1924 to 1968.\nAnn Arbor is home to several private schools, including Clonlara School, Michigan Islamic Academy, and Greenhills School, a prep school. The city is also home to several charter schools such as Central Academy (Michigan) (PreK\u201312) of the Global Educational Excellence (GEE) charter school company.\nHigher education.\nThe University of Michigan dominates the city of Ann Arbor, providing the city with its distinctive college-town character. University buildings are located in the center of the city and the campus is directly adjacent to the State Street and South University downtown areas.\nOther local colleges and universities include Concordia University Ann Arbor, a Lutheran liberal-arts institution. Washtenaw Community College is located in neighboring Ann Arbor Township. In 2000, the Ave Maria School of Law, a Roman Catholic law school established by Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan, opened in northeastern Ann Arbor, but the school moved to Ave Maria, Florida in 2009, and the Thomas M. Cooley Law School acquired the former Ave Maria buildings for use as a branch campus.\nMedia.\n\"The Ann Arbor News\", owned by the Michigan-based Booth Newspapers chain, was the major newspaper serving Ann Arbor and the rest of Washtenaw County. The newspaper ended its 174-year daily print run in 2009 due to economic difficulties, and began producing two printed editions a week under the name AnnArbor.com. Ann Arbor has been said to be the first significant city to lose its only daily paper. The publication resumed using its former name in 2013, and also produces a daily digital edition named MLive.com. Another Ann Arbor-based publication that has ceased production was the \"Ann Arbor Paper\", a free monthly. The \"Ann Arbor Chronicle\", an online newspaper, covered local news, including meetings of the library board, county commission, and DDA until September 3, 2014.\nCurrent publications in the city include the \"Ann Arbor Journal\" (\"A2 Journal\"), a weekly community newspaper; the \"Ann Arbor Observer\", a free monthly local magazine; and \"Current\", a free entertainment-focused alt-weekly. The \"Ann Arbor Business Review\" covers local business in the area. \"Car and Driver\" magazine and \"Automobile Magazine\" are also based in Ann Arbor. The University of Michigan is served by many student publications, including the independent \"Michigan Daily\" student newspaper, which reports on local, state, and regional issues in addition to campus news.\nFour major AM radio stations based in or near Ann Arbor are WAAM 1600, a conservative news and talk station; WLBY 1290, a business news and talk station; WDEO 990, Catholic radio; and WTKA 1050, which is primarily a sports station. The city's FM stations include NPR affiliate WUOM 91.7; country station WWWW 102.9; and adult-alternative station WQKL 107.1. Freeform station WCBN-FM 88.3 is a local community radio/college radio station operated by the students of the University of Michigan featuring noncommercial, eclectic music and public-affairs programming. The city is also served by public and commercial radio broadcasters in Ypsilanti, the Lansing/Jackson area, Detroit, Windsor, and Toledo.\nAnn Arbor is part of the Detroit television market. WPXD channel 31, the owned-and-operated Detroit outlet of the ION Television network, is licensed to the city. Until its sign-off on August 31, 2017, WHTV channel 18, a MyNetworkTV-affiliated station for the Lansing market, was broadcast from a transmitter in Lyndon Township, west of Ann Arbor. Community Television Network (CTN) is a city-provided cable television channel with production facilities open to city residents and nonprofit organizations. Detroit and Toledo-area radio and television stations also serve Ann Arbor, and stations from Lansing and Windsor, Ontario, can be seen in parts of the area.\nInfrastructure.\nHealthcare.\nThe University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) includes University Hospital, C.S. Mott Children's Hospital and Women's Hospital in its core complex. UMHS also operates out-patient clinics and facilities throughout the city. The area's other major medical centers include a large facility operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs in Ann Arbor, and Saint Joseph Mercy Hospital in nearby Superior Township.\nUtilities.\nThe city provides sewage disposal and water supply services, with water coming from the Huron River and groundwater sources. There are two water-treatment plants, one main and three outlying reservoirs, four pump stations, and two water towers. These facilities serve the city, which is divided into five water districts. The city's water department also operates four dams along the Huron River\u2014Argo, Barton, Geddes, and Superior\u2014of which Barton and Superior provide hydroelectric power.\nThe city also offers waste management services, with Recycle Ann Arbor handling recycling service. Other utilities are provided by private entities. Electrical power and gas are provided by DTE Energy. AT&T Inc. is the primary wired telephone service provider for the area. Cable TV service is primarily provided by Comcast.\nA plume of the industrial solvent dioxane is migrating under the city from the contaminated Gelman Sciences, Inc. property on the westside of Ann Arbor. As of 2021,[ [update]] the average measured concentration was found to be 201.19 ppb, with the maximum being 6.000 ppm. While the United States Environmental Protection Agency does not impose a federal limit on the level of the contaminant allowed in drinking water, the World Health Organization suggests a limit of 35 ppb. The Gelman plume is a potential threat to one of the City of Ann Arbor's drinking water sources, the Huron River, which flows through downtown Ann Arbor.\nTransportation.\nThe streets in downtown Ann Arbor conform to a grid pattern, though this pattern is less common in the surrounding areas. Major roads branch out from the downtown district to the highways surrounding the city. The city is belted by three freeways: Interstate\u00a094 (I-94), which runs along the southern and western portion of the city; U.S. Highway\u00a023 (US\u00a023), which primarily runs along the eastern edge of Ann Arbor; and M-14, which runs along the northern edge of the city. Other nearby highways include US\u00a012 (Michigan Avenue), M-17 (Washtenaw Avenue), and M-153 (Ford Road). Several of the major surface arteries lead to the I-94/M-14 interchange in the west, US\u00a023 in the east, and the city's southern areas. The Washtenaw County Border-to-Border Trail connects Ann Arbor to Ypsilanti, mostly along the Huron River, for pedestrians, bicycles and other non-motorized transportation.\nThe Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority (AAATA), which brands itself as \"TheRide\", operates public bus services throughout the city and nearby Ypsilanti. The AAATA operates the Blake Transit Center on Fourth Ave. in downtown Ann Arbor, and the Ypsilanti Transit Center. A separate zero-fare bus service operates within and between the University of Michigan campuses. In 2019, 36% of trips in Ann Arbor were taken by walking, biking or transit.\nSince April 2012, the \"AirRide\" connects to Detroit Metro Airport a dozen times a day. The Michigan Flyer, a service operated by Indian Trails, cooperates with AAATA for their AirRide and additionally offers bus service to East Lansing. Greyhound Lines provides intercity bus service. Megabus has direct service to Chicago, Illinois, while a bus service is provided by Amtrak Thruway for rail passengers making connections to services in East Lansing and Toledo, Ohio.\nAmtrak, which provides service to the city at the Ann Arbor Train Station, operates the \"Wolverine\" train between Chicago and Pontiac via Detroit. The present-day train station neighbors the city's old Michigan Central Depot, which was renovated as a restaurant in 1970. Ann Arbor Municipal Airport is a small, city-run general aviation airport located south of I-94.\nSister cities.\nAnn Arbor has eight sister cities:\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3330354": "Zingerman's\nGourmet food business\nZingerman's, or Zingerman's Community of Businesses, is a gourmet food business group headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The original business and current flagship operation is Zingerman's Delicatessen.\nStarting from the original deli, Zingerman's Community of Businesses (ZCoB) has expanded to nine Ann Arbor based businesses with over 500 total employees. Each business has shared ownership between original founders Paul Saginaw and Ari Weinzweig, and the managing partners who started each business. Each business has its own organizational structure, but they carry out the same standards and commit to the company's values.\nHistory.\nZingerman's Delicatessen was founded in 1982, by Paul Saginaw and Ari Weinzweig, and began serving non-kosher traditional Ashkenazi Jewish delicatessen dishes and sandwiches. The Deli was originally to be named Greenberg's Delicatessen after a regular customer at Monahan's Fish Market, where Saginaw had been a partner with Mike Monahan, but another business that had that name objected.\nIn the early 1990s, the co-founding partners generated a plan for their company to 2009, which called for 15 individual businesses generating $20 million in revenue.\nIn 1997, Monahan sold his share of the company to Saginaw to focus on his original business venture, Monahan's Seafood Market. As Zingerman's grew, it expanded its offerings to imported gourmet foods, making its own bread at Zingerman's Bakehouse and creating dairy products at Zingerman's Creamery. It opened a second restaurant, Zingerman's Roadhouse, which focuses on regional American cuisine. The enterprise now owns several brand names, including the aforementioned enterprises in addition to Zingerman's Mail Order, Zingerman's Coffee Company, Zingerman's Training, Inc., Zingerman's Candy, and Zingerman's Catering. Zingerman's sponsors several mail-order food clubs and occasional culinary study tours.\nZingerman's assisted Avalon International Breads with a substantial discount on the purchase of its old steam-powered oven as well as its original business plan when Ann Perrault and Jackie Victor established the Detroit-based bakery in 1997.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["3330354", "2067"], "permutation_1": ["2067", "3330354"], "permutation_2": ["3330354", "2067"], "permutation_3": ["2067", "3330354"]}
{"id": "2hop__40371_4681", "docs_added": {"352308": "BBC Television\nTelevision service of the British Broadcasting Corporation\nBBC Television is a service of the BBC. The corporation has operated a public broadcast television service in the United Kingdom, under the terms of a royal charter, since 1927. It produced television programmes from its own studios from 1932, although the start of its regular service of television broadcasts is dated to 2 November 1936.\nThe BBC's domestic television channels have no commercial advertising and collectively they accounted for more than 30% of all UK viewing in 2013. The services are funded by a television licence.\nAs a result of the 2016 Licence Fee settlement, the BBC Television division was split, with in-house television production being separated into a new division called BBC Studios and the remaining parts of television (channels and genre commissioning, BBC Sport and BBC iPlayer) being renamed BBC Content.\nHistory of BBC Television.\nThe BBC operates several television networks, television stations (although there is generally very little distinction between the two terms in the UK), and related programming services in the United Kingdom. As well as being a broadcaster, the corporation also produces a large number of its own outsourcing programmes and thereby ranks as one of the world's largest television production companies.\nEarly years (before 1939).\nJohn Logie Baird set up the Baird Television Development Company in 1926; on 30 September 1929, he made the first experimental television broadcast for the BBC from its studio in Long Acre in the Covent Garden area of London via the BBC's London radio transmitter propagating an analog signal. Baird used his electromechanical system with a vertically scanned image of 30 lines, which is just enough resolution for a close-up of one person, and a bandwidth low enough to use existing radio transmitters. The simultaneous transmission of sound and pictures was achieved on 30 March 1930, by using the BBC's new twin transmitter at Brookmans Park. By late 1930, thirty minutes of morning programmes were broadcast from Monday to Friday, and thirty minutes at midnight on Tuesdays and Fridays after BBC radio went off the air. Baird's broadcasts via the BBC continued until June 1932.\nThe BBC began its own regular television programming from the basement of Broadcasting House, London, on 22 August 1932. The studio moved to larger quarters in 16 Portland Place, London, in February 1934, and continued broadcasting the 30-line images, carried by telephone line to the medium wave transmitter at Brookmans Park, until 11 September 1935, by which time advances in the all-electronic 405-line television system made electromechanical broadcasts and systems obsolete.\nFollowing a series of test transmissions and special broadcasts that began in August 1936, the BBC Television Service officially launched at 3.00pm on 2 November 1936 from a converted wing of Alexandra Palace in London. The opening day's programming started using the Baird System at 3.00 pm with \"Opening of the B.B.C. television service by Major G. C. Tryon\", the Postmaster General of the United Kingdom, followed by the latest British Movietone News newsreel at 3.15. This was then followed up with a 10-minute variety show with Adele Dixon and the African-American duo of Buck and Bubbles, and the B.B.C. Television Orchestra. At 4.00pm, the both programmes were shown using the Marconi-E.M.I. System. \"Ally Pally\" housed two studios; Studio A for the 405-line Marconi E.M.I. system, and Studio B for Baird's 240-line intermediate film system. It also housed several scenery stores, make-up areas, dressing rooms, offices, and the transmitter itself, which then broadcast on the VHF band. BBC television initially used both the Baird and Marconi-E.M.I systems on alternate weeks. The use of both formats made the BBC's service the world's first regular high-definition television service; it broadcast from Monday to Saturday between 15:00 and 16:00, and 21:00 and 22:00. The first programme broadcast \u2013 and thus the first ever, on a dedicated TV channel \u2013 was \"Opening of the BBC Television Service\" at 15:00. The first major outside broadcast was the coronation of George VI and Elizabeth in May 1937.\nThe two systems were to run on a trial basis for six months; early television sets supported both resolutions. However, the Baird system, which used a mechanical camera for filmed programming and Farnsworth image dissector cameras for live programming, proved too cumbersome and visually inferior, and ended with closedown (at 22:00) on Saturday 30 January 1937. It was advertised in \"Radio Times\" for two weeks later but the decision to end the Baird system was made too late for it be changed in the printed \"Radio Times\".\nInitially, the station's range was officially a 40 kilometres radius of the Alexandra Palace transmitter\u2014in practice, however, transmissions could be picked up a good deal further away, and on one occasion in 1938 were picked up by engineers at RCA in New York, who were experimenting with a British television set. The service was reaching an estimated 25,000\u201340,000 homes before the outbreak of World War II which caused the BBC Television service to be suspended on 1 September 1939 with little warning.\nWartime closure (1939\u20131946).\nOn 1 September 1939, the station went off the air; the government was concerned that the VHF transmissions would act as a beacon to enemy aircraft homing in on London. Also, many of the television service's technical staff and engineers would be needed for the war effort, in particular on the radar programme. The last programme transmitted was a Mickey Mouse cartoon, \"Mickey's Gala Premier\" (1933), which was followed by test transmissions; this account refuted the popular memory according to which broadcasting was suspended before the end of the cartoon.\nAccording to figures from Britain's Radio Manufacturers Association, 18,999 television sets had been manufactured from 1936 to September 1939, when production was halted by the war.\nThe remaining monopoly years (1946\u20131955).\nBBC Television returned on 7 June 1946 at 15:00. Jasmine Bligh, one of the original announcers, made the first announcement, saying, 'Good afternoon, everybody. How are you? Do you remember me, Jasmine Bligh? Well, here we are after a lapse of nearly seven years ready to start again and of course we are all terribly excited and thrilled...' The Mickey Mouse cartoon of 1939 was repeated twenty minutes later. On 31 December the BBC broadcast \"First-year Flashbacks\", a compilation of the year's highlights. An edited copy is now the oldest programme on the BBC's iPlayer streaming service.\nAlexandra Palace was the home base of the channel until the early 1950s, when the majority of production moved into the newly acquired Lime Grove Studios. Postwar broadcast coverage was extended to Birmingham in 1949, with the opening of the Sutton Coldfield transmitting station on 17 December, and by the mid-1950s most of the country was covered, transmitting a 405-line interlaced video image on VHF.\n1964 to 1967.\nBBC TV was split into BBC1 and BBC2 in 1964, with BBC2 having a remit to provide more niche programming. The channel was due to launch on 20 April 1964, but this was postponed after a fire at Battersea Power Station resulted in most of west London, including Television Centre, losing power. A videotape made on the opening night was rediscovered in 2003 by a BBC technician. The launch went ahead the following night, beginning with host Denis Tuohy sarcastically blowing out a candle. BBC2 was the first British channel to use UHF and 625-line pictures, giving higher definition than the existing VHF 405-line television system.\n1967 to 2003.\nOn 1 July 1967, BBC Two became the first television channel in Europe to broadcast regularly in colour, using the West German PAL system that was used for decades until it was gradually superseded by digital systems. (BBC One and ITV began 625-line colour broadcasts simultaneously on 15 November 1969). Unlike other terrestrial channels, BBC Two does not have soap opera or standard news programming, but a range of programmes intended to be eclectic and diverse (although if a programme has high audience ratings it is often eventually repositioned to BBC One). The different remit of BBC2 allowed its first controller, David Attenborough to commission the first heavyweight documentaries and documentary series such as \"Civilisation\", \"The Ascent of Man\" and \"Horizon\".\nAttenborough was later granted sabbatical leave from his job as Controller to work with the BBC Studios Natural History Unit which had existed since the 1950s. This unit is now famed throughout the world for producing high quality programmes with Attenborough such as \"Life on Earth\", \"The Private Life of Plants\", \"The Blue Planet\", \"The Life of Mammals\", \"Planet Earth\" and \"Frozen Planet\".\nNational and regional variations also occur within the BBC One and BBC Two schedules. England's BBC One output is split up into fifteen regions (such as South West and East), which exist mainly to produce local news programming, but also occasionally opt out of the network to show programmes of local importance (such as major local events). The other nations of the United Kingdom (Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) have been granted more autonomy from the English network; for example, programmes are mostly introduced by local announcers, rather than by those in London. BBC One and BBC Two schedules in the other UK nations can vary immensely from BBC One and BBC Two in England.\nProgrammes, such as the politically fuelled \"Give My Head Peace\" (produced by BBC Northern Ireland) and the soap opera \"River City\" (produced by BBC Scotland), have been created specifically to cater for some viewers in their respective nations. BBC Scotland produces daily programmes for its Gaelic-speaking viewers, including current affairs, political and children's programming such as the popular \"E\u00f2rpa\" and \"D\u00e8 a-nis?\". BBC Wales also produces a large amount of Welsh language programming for S4C, particularly news, sport and other programmes, especially the soap opera \"Pobol y Cwm\" ('People of the Valley') briefly shown on BBC2 across the UK with subtitles in the 1990s. The UK nations also produce a number of programmes that are shown across the UK, such as BBC Scotland's comedy series \"Chewin' the Fat\", and BBC Northern Ireland's talk show \"Patrick Kielty Almost Live\".\nDuring the 1980s, the BBC came under pressure to commission more programmes from independent British production companies, and following the Broadcasting Act 1990 it was legally required to source 25% of its output from such companies by the terms of the Act. This eventually led to the creation of the \"WoCC\" (Window of Creative Competition) for independent production companies to pitch programmes to the BBC.\nProgrammes have also been imported mainly from English-speaking countries: notable\u2014though no longer shown\u2014examples include \"The Simpsons\" from the United States and \"Neighbours\" from Australia. Programming from countries outside the English-speaking world consisted of feature films, shown in the original language with subtitles instead of being dubbed, with dubbing only used for cartoons and children's programmes. These included programmes from Eastern Europe, including \"The Singing Ringing Tree\" from East Germany, although voice-over translation was used instead of dubbing for budgetary reasons.\nCeefax, the first teletext service, launched on 23 September 1974. This service allowed BBC viewers to view textual information such as the latest news on their television. CEEFAX did not make a full transition to digital television, instead being gradually replaced, from late onwards, by the new interactive BBCi service before being fully closed down on 22 October 2012.\nIn March 2003 the BBC announced that from the end of May 2003 (subsequently deferred to 14 July) it intended to transmit all eight of its domestic television channels (including the 15 regional variations of BBC1) unencrypted from the Astra 2D satellite. This move was estimated to save the BBC \u00a385\u00a0million over the next five years.\nWhile the \"footprint\" of the Astra 2D satellite was smaller than that of Astra 2A, from which it was previously broadcast encrypted, it meant that viewers with appropriate equipment were able to receive BBC channels \"free-to-air\" over much of Western Europe. Consequently, some rights concerns have needed to be resolved with programme providers such as Hollywood studios and sporting organisations, which have expressed concern about the unencrypted signal leaking out. This led to some broadcasts being made unavailable on the Sky Digital platform, such as Scottish Premier League and Scottish Cup football, while on other platforms such broadcasts were not disrupted. Later, when rights contracts were renewed, this problem was resolved.\n2006 onwards.\nThe BBC Television department headed by Jana Bennett was absorbed into a new, much larger group; BBC Vision, in late 2006. The new group was part of larger restructuring within the BBC with the onset of new media outlets and technology.\nIn 2008, the BBC began experimenting with live streaming of certain channels in the UK, and in November 2008, all standard BBC television channels were made available to watch online via BBC iPlayer.\nWhen Tony Hall became Director General in April 2013, he reverted the division to its original name of BBC Television. As Television it was responsible for the commissioning, scheduling and broadcasting of all programming on the BBC's television channels and online, as well as producing content for broadcast.\nFollowing the 2016 Licence Fee settlement, BBC Television was split into two divisions, with in-house television production being separated into a new division called BBC Studios controlled by Mark Linsey and the remaining parts of television (channels and genre commissioning, BBC Sport and BBC iPlayer) being renamed as BBC Content, controlled by Charlotte Moore. As a result, the BBC Television division is now known internally as BBC Content and \"BBC Television\" as an entity has ceased to exist.\nOn 8 December 2020, Moore announced a new leadership structure for BBC Content taking effect in April 2021, which will prioritise iPlayer in order to compete with commercial streaming services. The role of Controller for BBC One, Two, and Four will be scrapped, in favour of giving the BBC's genre heads autonomy in commissioning programmes without the requirement for a channel controller to provide secondary approval. A team of \"portfolio editors\" will select from these commissions for carriage on BBC television channels and iPlayer, with iPlayer Controller Dan McGolpin will becoming Portfolio Director for iPlayer and channels. McGolpin and the genre heads will report to Moore.\nIn July 2022, the BBC announced plans to merge BBC News (for UK audiences) and BBC World News (for international audiences) as one international news network, under the name BBC News, covering news from both the UK and around the world. The merger took effect in April 2023.\nIn November 2024, six BBC FAST channels were added to Australia's 9Now platform.\nFunding.\nThe BBC domestic television channels do not broadcast advertisements; they are instead funded by a television licence fee which TV viewers are required to pay annually. This includes viewers who watch real-time streams or catch up services of the BBC's channels online or via their mobile phone. The BBC's international television channels are funded by advertisements and subscription.\nChannels.\nFree-to-air in the UK.\n\"These channels are also available outside the UK in neighbouring countries e.g. Belgium, the Netherlands and the Republic of Ireland. For BBC News, CBBC and Cbeebies see national & international channels\"\nThe Corporation's flagship network, broadcasting mainstream entertainment, comedy, drama, documentaries, films, news, sport, and some children's programmes. BBC One is also the home of the BBC's main news programmes, with \"BBC Breakfast\" airing every morning from 06:00 and bulletins airing at 13:00, 18:00 and 22:00 (on weekdays; times vary for weekend news bulletins) and overnight bulletins from the BBC News channel. The main news bulletins are followed by local news. These are provided by production centres in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and a further 14 regional and sub-regional centres in England. The centres also produce local news magazine programming.\nA high definition simulcast, BBC One HD, launched on 3 November 2010.\nHome to more specialist programming, including comedy, documentaries, dramas, children's programming and minority interest programmes, as well as imported programmes from other countries, particularly the United States. An important feature of the schedule is \"Newsnight\", a 45-minute news analysis programme shown each weeknight at 22:30. There are slight differences in the programming for England and Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.\nA high definition simulcast, BBC Two HD, launched on 26 March 2013.\nHome to mainly programming geared towards 16-34-year olds, particularly new comedies, drama, programs related to LGBTQ+, music, fashion and documentaries. This channel broadcasts every night from 19:00 to about 04:00 and timeshares with the CBBC channel.\nA high definition simulcast, BBC Three HD, launched on 10 December 2013.\nOn 16 February 2016, BBC Three moved as an online-only content.\nOn 1 February 2022, BBC Three relaunched as a broadcast programming channel.\nNiche programming for an intellectual audience, including specialist documentaries, occasional 'serious' dramas, live theatre, foreign language films and television programmes and 'prestige' archive television repeats. This channel broadcasts every night from 19:00 to about 04:00 and timeshares with the CBeebies channel.\nA high definition simulcast, BBC Four HD, launched on 10 December 2013.\nThe Corporation's dedicated politics channel, covering both houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and unicameral houses of Scottish Parliament, Senedd, and Northern Ireland Assembly, as well as international politics.\nProgramming for children aged six and above. This channel is broadcast every day from 07:00 to 19:00 and timeshares with BBC Three. UK & Ireland, United States and Australia feeds.\nA high definition simulcast, CBBC HD, launched on 10 December 2013.\nProgramming for children aged six and under. This channel is broadcast every day from 06:00 to 19:00 and timeshares with BBC Four. UK & Ireland, International, South African, Asian and Spanish feeds.\nA high definition simulcast, CBeebies HD, launched on 10 December 2013.\nA dedicated English-language news channel based on the BBC's news service of the same name, covering news and sport from across the UK and around the world, 24 hours a day. There are several regional variations: UK & Ireland, Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, North America and South Asia.\nNational & international channels.\nNews channels.\nOn 3 April 2023, the BBC merged the BBC News and BBC World News channels into a single networked news channel, but there are opt-outs for both the domestic and international versions.\nA news and factual programming channel broadcast to the Middle East and North Africa. It was launched on 11 March 2008.\nNews channel that targets Persian-speaking countries including Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan in the Persian/Dari/Tajiki language.\nAlthough this Welsh language channel is not operated by the corporation, the BBC contributes programmes funded by the licence fee as part of its public service obligation. The BBC used to broadcast Welsh-language programmes on its own channels in Wales, but these were transferred to S4C when it started broadcasting in 1982. S4C is available on iPlayer but without adverts there.\nA part-time Scottish Gaelic channel. Although it carries the BBC name, it is a partnership between the BBC and MG Alba, with the majority of funding coming from the Scottish Government via MG Alba. Scottish Gaelic programmes were also shown on BBC Two in Scotland \u2013 subject to approval from the BBC Trust, but moved to BBC Alba after digital switchover.\nLaunched on 24 February 2019, the BBC Scotland channel replaced the Scottish version of BBC Two and is home to homegrown Scottish programming. \"The Nine\" (and \"The Seven\") are Scottish news programmes, similar to \"BBC Reporting Scotland\". BBC Scotland also airs Scottish comedy, drama, sport, documentaries and music.\nBBC Studios.\nThe BBC's wholly owned commercial subsidiary, BBC Studios, also operates several international television channels under BBC branding:\nA US general entertainment channel, distributed in co-operation with AMC Networks, showcasing British television programming.\nAn entertainment subscription television channel featuring male-skewed factual entertainment programming. Launched 1 February 2015 in Poland, April 2015 for Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland replacing BBC Entertainment.\nA Canadian general entertainment channel, co-owned with Corus Entertainment, showing Canadian and British television programming. Closed down on 31 December 2020.\nA documentary subscription television channel featuring premium factual programming. Launched 1 February 2015 in Poland, April 2015 for Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland and as of 14 April 2015 in Hungary replacing BBC Knowledge also replaced BBC Knowledge in Asia (Cambodia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam) as of 3 October 2015 \u2013 21h00 Singapore/Hong Kong Time\nBroadcasts comedy, drama, light entertainment and children's programming by BBC and other UK production houses, available in the following regions: Europe (except Scandinavia and Eastern Europe), Turkey and Israel.\nAn entertainment subscription television channel featuring drama, crime and comedy programming. The channel kicked off in Australia on 3 August 2014. Currently available in the following regions: Asia, Australia, Benelux, Central and Eastern Europe (Croatia, Macedonia, Poland and Slovenia), Middle East & North Africa and South Africa.\nA high-definition channel gradually replaced by other BBC Studios channels, currently still available in Turkey.\nDocumentaries and factual programming, currently available in Australia and New Zealand.\nLifestyle programming, currently available in Asia, Poland and South Africa.\nAn entertainment channel in Australia and New Zealand, carrying drama and comedy programmes from the BBC, Talkback Thames, ITV1, and Channel 4.\nThe BBC also owns the following:\nCommercial television network in the United Kingdom. The channels broadcast mainly BBC archive and specially produced programming.\nBBC Japan was a general entertainment channel, which operated between December 2004 and April 2006. It ceased operations after its Japanese distributor folded.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "321943": "Sky UK\nBritish broadcaster and telecommunications company\nSky UK Limited (formerly British Sky Broadcasting Limited (BSkyB)), trading as Sky, is a British broadcaster and telecommunications company that provides television, broadband internet, fixed line and mobile telephone services to consumers and businesses in the United Kingdom. It is a subsidiary of Sky Group (currently owned by Comcast) and is headquartered at the Sky Studios in Isleworth.\nSky is a major media company and the largest British broadcaster by revenue. It operates the Sky News news media organisation, Sky Sports which is the largest sports TV broadcaster in the UK, and the Sky Studios film and TV production company. Sky is also the country's leading provider of pay-TV services (12.7 million customers as of the end of 2019) through its satellite TV platform Sky Q as well as the IPTV-based Sky Glass and Sky Stream products. Its flagship channels include Sky Showcase, Sky Max, Sky Witness, Sky Documentaries, Sky Atlantic, and Sky Cinema. Sky is also one of the \"big four\" internet service providers.\nFormed in 1990 through the merger of Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting, BSkyB grew into a major media company by the end of the decade, notably owning all the television broadcasting rights for the Premier League and almost all the domestic rights of Hollywood films. Following BSkyB's acquisition of Sky Italia and a majority interest in Sky Deutschland in 2014, its holding company British Sky Broadcasting Group plc changed its name to Sky plc (now Sky Group Limited). The UK subsidiary's name was changed from British Sky Broadcasting Limited to Sky UK Limited, and continuing to trade as \"Sky\".\nHistory.\nOrigins.\nThe present service can trace its heritage back to 1990, when BSkyB's predecessors Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting encrypted their respective film channels \u2013 Sky Movies and The Movie Channel which required viewers to get decoding equipment and a subscription to watch the channels. After the two companies merged, subscribers could get access to both channels, and two years later, the sports channel Sky Sports also became encrypted.\nPremier League football.\nIn the autumn of 1991, talks were held for the broadcast rights for Premier League for five years, from the 1992 season. ITV were the current rights holders and fought hard to retain the new rights. ITV had increased its offer from \u00a318m to \u00a334m per year to keep control of the rights. BSkyB joined forces with the BBC to make a counter bid. The BBC was given the highlights of most of the matches, while BSkyB paying \u00a3304m for the Premier League rights, would give them a monopoly of all live matches, up to 60 per year from the 1992 season. Murdoch described sport as a \"battering ram\" for pay television, providing a strong customer base. A few weeks after the deal, ITV went to the High Court to get an injunction as it believed their bid details had been leaked before the decision was taken. ITV also asked the Office of Fair Trading to investigate since it believed Rupert Murdoch's media empire via its newspapers had influenced the deal. A few days later neither action took effect, ITV believed BSkyB was telephoned and informed of its \u00a3262m bid, and Premier League advised BSkyB to increase its counter bid.\nBSkyB retained the rights paying \u00a3670m 1997\u20132001 deal, but was challenged by ONdigital for the rights from 2001 to 2004, thus were forced to \u00a31.1 billion which gave them 66 live games a year.\nFollowing a lengthy legal battle with the European Commission, which deemed the exclusivity of the rights to be against the interests of competition and the consumer, BSkyB's monopoly came to an end from the 2007\u201308 season. In May 2006, the Irish broadcaster Setanta Sports was awarded two of the six Premier League packages that the English FA offered to broadcasters. Sky picked up the remaining four for \u00a31.3bn.\nIn February 2015, Sky bid \u00a34.2bn for a package of 120 premier league games across the three seasons from 2016. This represented an increase of 70% on the previous contract and was said to be \u00a31bn more than the company had expected to pay. The move has been followed by staff cuts, increased subscription prices (including 9% in Sky's family package) and the dropping of the 3D channel.\nSky Multichannels.\nIn September 1993, BSkyB launched Sky Multichannels which was the present digital platform's analogue predecessor. Sky Multichannels was a subscription package that gave access not only to Sky's channels but also to those of third-party broadcasters.\nThe service started on 1 September 1993. It was based on an idea by then CEO Sam Chisholm and chairman Rupert Murdoch of converting the company's business strategy to an entirely fee-based concept. The new package included four channels formerly available free-to-air, broadcasting on Astra's satellites, as well as introducing new channels. The service continued until the closure of BSkyB's analogue service on 27 September 2001, due to the expansion of the Sky Digital platform after its launch three years before. Some of the channels did broadcast either in the clear or soft encrypted (whereby a Videocrypt decoder was required to decode, without a subscription card) before their addition to the Sky Multichannels package. Within two months of the launch, BSkyB gained 400,000 new subscribers, with the majority taking at least one premium channel as well, which helped BSkyB reach 3.5 million households by mid-1994. Michael Grade criticised the operations in front of the Select Committee on National Heritage, mainly for the lack of original programming on many of the new channels.\nLaunch of Sky Digital.\nBSkyB's digital service was officially launched on 1 October 1998 under the name Sky Digital, although small-scale tests were carried out before then. At this time the use of the Sky Digital brand made an important distinction between the new service and Sky's analogue services. Key selling points were the improvement in picture and sound quality, increased number of channels and an interactive service branded Open..., later called Sky Active. BSkyB competed with the ONdigital (later \"ITV Digital\") terrestrial offering and cable services. Within 30 days, over 100,000 digiboxes had been sold, which helped bolster BSkyB's decision to give away free digiboxes and mini dishes from May 1999.\nIn addition to most channels from the Sky Multichannels package, many of which broadcast additional hours on Sky Digital, Sky Digital launched several new channels that were exclusive to the digital offer.\nThe switchover from analogue to digital proceeded relatively quickly. In 1998, there were 6 million 'multichannel' TV homes in the UK (i.e. homes that watch television other than the traditional analogue terrestrial), and over half of these homes watched television using BSkyB's analogue service. BSkyB's digital service surpassed the analogue service in terms of subscribers in late 1999.\nBy June 2000 the service had 3.6 million subscribers, which gave BSkyB 8.988 million subscribers across all platforms. This substantial growth reflected BSkyB's 34% share of viewers in multi-channel homes (up from 13.4% in 1999).\nBSkyB's analogue service ended in October 2001, and the digital service would eventually be marketed as just 'Sky'.\nBy June 2005, the number of digital subscribers increase to 7.8m, while it produced 38,375 hours of sport in 2005.\nIn November 2005, in partnership with Vodafone, Sky Mobile TV was launched which was the UK's first commercially available mobile TV service. Vodafone live! customers with 3G-enabled handsets would receive the service.\n2010s.\nSky's direct-to-home satellite service became available in 10 million homes in 2010, Europe's first pay-TV platform to achieve that milestone. Confirming it had reached its target, the broadcaster said its reach into 36% of households in the UK represented an audience of more than 25m people. The target was first announced in August 2004, and since then an additional 2.4 million customers had subscribed to Sky's direct-to-home service. Media commentators had debated whether the figure could be reached as the growth in subscriber numbers elsewhere in Europe flattened.\nIn December, the UK's parliament heard a claim that a subscription to Sky was 'often damaging' to welfare recipients, along with alcohol, tobacco and gambling. Conservative MP Alec Shelbrooke was proposing the payments of benefits and tax credits on a \"Welfare Cash Card\", in the style of the American Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, that could be used to buy only \"essentials\".\nIn 2016, Sky launched its new TV and entertainment service called Sky Q.\nOn 1 March 2018, it was reported that Sky UK had concluded successful negotiations with Netflix to offer Sky subscribers access to its international streaming service.\nComcast, the largest cable TV provider in the United States, outbid 21st Century Fox, on 22 September 2018 in an auction for control of Sky UK. On 4 October 2018, Fox sold their stake to Comcast, giving the latter a 76.8% controlling stake. On 12 October 2018, Comcast announced it will compulsorily acquire the rest of Sky after its bid gained acceptance from 95.3% of the broadcaster's shareholders with the company being delisted by early 2019. Sky was delisted on 7 November 2018 after Comcast acquired all remaining shares.\n2020s.\nOn 17 September 2020, Sky Arts became the first premium Sky channel to become available on the free to air terrestrial Freeview service, joining Sky News and a couple of channels which trace their lineage back to Flextech (Pick and Challenge).\nOn 28 July 2021, Sky announced that its flagship channel Sky One would shut down on 1 September, to be replaced by two channels; Sky Showcase, showing a mixture of content from other Sky Channels, and Sky Max, showing Sky's original programming and entertainment previously shown on Sky One.\nOn 7 October 2021, Sky announced a new all-in-one TV set called Sky Glass. It is designed to support streaming of Sky TV and streaming service shows over WiFi, eliminating the need for a satellite dish or box. It launched on 18 October 2021, with three sizes available: 43-inch, 55-inch and 65-inch.\nIn October 2022, Comcast announced that it had written off US$8.6 billion of its valuation of Sky, with its third-quarter sales dropping 14.7 percent to $4.3 bn \nIn March 2025, the company announced plans to close customer call centres in Stockport, Sheffield and Leeds, which will result in around 2,000 job losses and a 7 per cent reduction in its workforce. \nInternet service.\nHistory.\nIn October 2005, Sky agreed to purchase the ISP EasyNet for \u00a3211 million. At the time, EasyNet were one of the few ISPs that had made major investments in local-loop unbundling (LLU), giving Sky access to 232 unbundled telephone exchanges. The acquired EasyNet was placed under a new Sky Broadband division. In October 2007, Sky reached 1 million broadband customers and claimed to be gained one new customer every 40 seconds. By September 2009, Sky Broadband had 2.3 million customers. By July 2012 Sky Broadband had reached four million customers and had unbundled exchanges covering over 70% of the United Kingdom. \nOn 1 March 2013, it was announced that Sky would buy O2's and Be's broadband services from Telef\u00f3nica for \u00a3180 million upfront plus another \u00a320 million once customers have been transferred. Telef\u00f3nica said the deal would allow it to concentrate on providing better mobile services, including rolling out 4G.\nNetwork.\nSky offers broadband using the Openreach network. Customer premises connect to the network using ADSL, FTTC and FTTP.\nSky Talk.\nSky Talk is a fixed-line telephone service, with options for pay-as-you-go or bundled call minutes.\nNOW Broadband.\nNOW Broadband is a brand name of low-cost broadband plans. It is associated with the Now over-the-top television service brand operated by Sky.\nAdditional services.\nSky offer two security add-ons for Sky Broadband, Sky Broadband Shield and Sky Talk Shield. Sky Broadband Shield offers network-wide web filtering and security and Sky Talk Shield offers spam call blocking.\nTelevision.\nDigital terrestrial television.\nSky initially faced competition from the ONdigital digital terrestrial television service (later renamed ITV Digital). ITV Digital failed for numerous reasons, including, but not limited to numerous administrative and technical failures, nervous investors after a large downturn in the advertising market and the dot com crash, and Sky's aggressive marketing and domination of premium sporting rights.\nWhile Sky had been excluded from being a part of the ONdigital consortium, thereby making them a competitor by default, Sky was able to join ITV Digital's free-to-air replacement, Freeview, in which it holds an equal stake with the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Arqiva. Prior to October 2005, three Sky channels were available on this platform: Sky News, Sky Three, and Sky Sports News. Initially, Sky provided Sky Travel to the service. However, this was replaced by Sky Three on 31 October 2005, which was itself later re-branded as 'Pick TV' in 2011.\nOn 8 February 2007, Sky announced its intention to replace its three free-to-air digital terrestrial channels with four subscription channels. It was proposed that these channels would offer a range of content from the Sky portfolio including sports (including English Premier League Football), films, entertainment and news. The announcement came a day after Setanta Sports confirmed that it would launch in March as a subscription service on the digital terrestrial platform, and on the same day that NTL's services re-branded as Virgin Media. However, industry sources believe Sky will be forced to shelve plans to withdraw its channels from Freeview and replace them with subscription channels, due to possible lost advertising revenue.\nVideo on demand.\nSky initially faced increased competition from telecommunications providers to deliver pay television services over existing telephone lines using ADSL. Such providers are able to offer \"triple play\" or \"quadruple play\" packages combining landline telephone, broadband Internet, mobile telephone and pay television services.\nTo compete with these providers, in October 2005, Sky bought the broadband Internet service provider Easynet for \u00a3211\u00a0million. This acquisition allowed Sky to start offering a Sky-branded broadband service as well as a \"triple play\" package combining satellite television, land-line telephone and Broadband service. Sky also offers some streaming live TV channels to a computer using Microsoft's Silverlight.\nIn early 2012, Sky released an update to its Sky Anytime service. This update offers customers the chance to buy and rent films from the Sky Store.\nOn 26 September 2012, Sky relaunched its \"Anytime+\" on-demand-via-broadband service as \"On Demand\" as the BBC's iPlayer joined the line-up of channels offering catch-up TV on the company's Sky+ HD box \u2013 linked to a router, the signal from which was recorded before viewing. The BBC was making the preceding week's programmes available alongside ITV, Channel 4's All 4, Channel 5 and the partly BBC Worldwide-owned UKTV, as well as Sky's own channels.\nSky Go.\nSky Go is provided free of charge for Sky (satellite TV) subscribers and allows them to watch channels live and on-demand through an internet connection on a computer or mobile device.\nOn 29 May 2009, it was confirmed that Sky Go would be made available on the Xbox 360. In November 2011 Sony Computer Entertainment struck a deal with Sky to bring some of its shows to the PlayStation Store Video Store. Users are able buy individual TV episodes in SD or HD. On 3 December 2014, Sky Go became available on the PlayStation 4 under the name \"TV from Sky\", followed by the PlayStation 3 on 29 January 2015.\nSky Store.\nSky Store has a library of films from Sky Cinema that can be rented or bought, either via an app or physical DVD/Blu-ray copies by post. Sky Store is available on Sky Q boxes as well as through apps on devices such as computers and mobile devices. It is available to anyone with a compatible device and does not require a Sky TV subscription.\nNOW.\nAn over-the-top contract-free television service from Sky. The service is provided on a NOW device or through an app on selected computers, mobile devices, set-top boxes and smart TVs. NOW is separate from the core Sky TV service.\nSky Mobile.\nOn 21 October 2016, it was announced that public pre-registration for Sky's new mobile network, Sky Mobile, would take place from 31 October 2016. The network will operate as a Full MVNO, utilising the O2 radio access network infrastructure, and O2's full network speeds and 4G+.\nOn 5 January 2017 Sky Mobile went live to the public across the UK. Coining itself as the Smarter Network, with tariffs mainly focused on data rather than traditional calls & text, effectively saving consumers money in wasted unused minutes and texts. 1GB data costs \u00a310.00 per month while 5GB costs \u00a315.00 per month with 10GB data costing \u00a320.00 per month. With all those data tariffs, the customer can choose from two different call & text packages with the 'Pay as you use' costing 10p per minute of calls and 10p per text message sent or \u00a310.00 per month for Unlimited Calls & Texts. The Unlimited Calls & Texts package is free for new or existing Sky TV customers using the Sky Mobile network. Since it was launched Sky has reduced the cost of its tariffs with, as of March 2021, 2GB now starting for \u00a36.00 per month, 8GB for \u00a310.00 per month, 10GB for \u00a312.00 per month, 25GB for \u00a315.00 per month, 30GB for \u00a320 per month and 60GB for \u00a330 has and they have also expanded the Sky VIP offering to mobile plans. They have also expanded the \"piggybank\" facility to allow customers to \"cash-in\" piggybank data to bring the monthly cost of a phone down.\nSky Mobile launched in Ireland in September 2024, and also announced their plans to expand to Italy.\nAs of 30 March 2017, Sky Mobile is offering handset deals. Products are available from manufacturers such as Samsung, Sony and Apple.\nProducts.\nSky Digibox.\nSky launched with a set-top box known as the Sky Digibox, using the Slogans \"\"What do you want to watch?\", \"Entertainment your way\"\" and the current slogan \"Believe in Better\". This was followed by Sky+, a digital video recorder with an internal hard drive which allows viewers to 'pause live television' (by switching from a live feed to a paused real-time recording that can be restarted at any point) and schedule programs to record in the future.\nIn later years the Sky+ box and then the Sky+ HD box replaced the original Digibox. The first photos of a prototype Sky HD box began appearing in magazines in August 2005. Sky launched HDTV services in May 2006. All Sky+ HD boxes incorporate a version of Sky+ using a 300GB, 500GB, or 1TB hard drive (of which 160GB, 250GB or 500GB are available to the user) to accommodate the necessary extra data.\nSky+.\nSky initially charged an additional subscription fee for using a Sky+ PVR with their service; waiving the charge for subscribers whose package included two or more premium channels. This changed as of 1 July 2007, and now customers that subscribe to any Sky package have Sky+ included at no extra charge. Customers that do not subscribe to Sky's channels can still pay a monthly fee to enable Sky+ functions. In September 2007, Sky launched a new TV advertising campaign targeting Sky+ at women. As of 31 March 2008, Sky had 3,393,000 Sky+ users.\nIn January 2010 Sky discontinued the Sky+ Box, limited the standard Sky Box to Multiroom upgrade only and started to issue the Sky+ HD Box as standard, thus giving all new subscribers the functions of Sky+. In February 2011 Sky discontinued the non-HD variant of its Multiroom box, offering a smaller version of the SkyHD box without Sky+ functionality.\nSky+ HD.\nSky launched its HDTV service, Sky+ HD, on 22 May 2006. Prior to its launch, Sky claimed that 40,000 people had registered to receive the HD service. In the week before the launch, rumours started to surface that Sky was having supply issues with its set-top box (STB) from the manufacturer Thomson. On Thursday 18 May 2006, and continuing through the weekend before launch, people were reporting that Sky had either cancelled or rescheduled its installation. Finally, the BBC reported that 17,000 customers had yet to receive the service due to failed deliveries. On 31 March 2012, Sky announced the total number of homes with Sky+ HD was 4,222,000.\nIn early 2012, Sky released an update to its Sky Anytime service. This update offers customers the chance to buy and rent films from the Sky Store. In June 2012, Sky launched a new EPG for Sky+ HD boxes. The update included a new modernised look and improved functionality. As of 1 October 2012, Sky Anytime was rebranded as Sky On Demand which included ITV Player and Demand 5. BBC iPlayer followed in late autumn with 4oD which changed to All 4 on 30 March 2015, and launched in early 2013.\nSky 3D.\nSky began to broadcast programmes in 3D in April 2010. This included new 3D channels, including a \"Sky Sports 3D\" and \"Sky Movies 3D\". Sky previously experimented with 3D broadcasting by broadcasting an Arsenal vs Manchester United football game live in 3D in nine pubs situated throughout the United Kingdom.\nSky Q.\nOn 18 November 2015, Sky announced Sky Q, a range of products and services to be available in 2016. The Sky Q range consists of three set-top boxes (Sky Q 1TB, Sky Q 2TB and Sky Q Mini), a broadband router (Sky Q Hub) and mobile applications.\nThe Sky Q set-top boxes introduce a new user interface, Wi-Fi hotspot functionality, Power-line and Bluetooth connectivity and a new touch-sensitive remote control. The Sky Q Mini set-top boxes connect to the Sky Q set-top boxes with a Wi-Fi or Power-line connection rather than receive their own satellite feeds. This allows all set-top boxes in a household to share recordings and other media. Sky Q Mini boxes are not capable of UHD playback due to hardware limitations.\nSky Q became available to order on 9 February 2016.\nUnlike Sky, Sky+, and Sky+ HD boxes, Sky Q boxes remain the property of Sky and must be returned when the contract ends. Charges of up to \u00a3140 per item apply for unreturned items \u2013 Sky claims this charge does not buy the equipment, which must still be given back.\n4K UHD.\nThe Sky Q 2TB set-top box is capable of receiving and displaying 4K UHD broadcasts. HDR was added on 27 May 2020, alongside the launch of Sky Nature and Sky Documentary channels. The HLG format is to be included in a select number of UHD VoD downloads, starting with Sky Nature before being added to other channel content. UHD broadcasts started on 13 August 2016, with the first live Premier League football match of the 2016/17 season, Hull vs Leicester City. UHD broadcasts are available free of charge to Sky Q 2TB multiscreen customers with any other relevant subscriptions.\nSky Glass.\nOn 11 October 2021, Sky announced an in-house smart TV range known as Sky Glass. Features include a 4K quantum dot display, integrated Dolby Atmos surround sound speakers and voice controls. Also announced was a 4K camera with motion controls, gesture support and a TV sharing feature developed in partnership with Microsoft. The TV set is designed to stream video over an internet connection; a satellite dish is therefore not required. It also includes a backup Freeview tuner in case a broadband connection is not available. Sky Glass was released on 18 October 2021 in the UK, and 25 August 2022 in Ireland.\nSky Stream.\nOn 27 September 2022, Sky announced a new streaming box called Sky Stream, which was released on 18 October 2022. The service is compatible with any broadband company, however the box is registered with a specific home.\nTelevision channels.\nSky, and its sister companies, operate a number of channels in the UK and Ireland with some being joint ventures with other companies:\nMarketing.\nSky (formerly marketed as Sky Digital) is the brand name for Sky Group's United Kingdom digital satellite television and telecommunications services. Slogans that have been used for marketing include \"\"What do you want to watch?\", \"Entertainment your way\"\" and the current slogan \"Believe in Better\". Sky has also aired several advertisements featuring characters from Toy Story for \"Toy Story of Terror!\" and \"Toy Story That Time Forgot\", \"Minions\", \"Inside Out\", \"Kung Fu Panda 3\", \"The Secret Life of Pets\", \"The Lego Batman Movie\", \"Despicable Me 3\" and \"Monster Family\".\nBroadcasting.\nTransmission.\nWhen Sky Digital was launched in 1998 the new service used the Astra 2A satellite which was located at the 28.2\u00b0E orbital position, unlike the analogue service which was broadcast from 19.2\u00b0E. This was subsequently followed by more Astra satellites as well as Eutelsat's Eurobird 1 (now Eutelsat 33C) at 28.5\u00b0E), enabled the company to launch a new all-digital service, Sky, with the potential to carry hundreds of television and radio channels. The old position was shared with broadcasters from several European countries, while the new position at 28.5\u00b0E came to be used almost exclusively for channels that broadcast to the United Kingdom.\nNew Astra satellites joined the position in 2000 and 2001, and the number of channels available to customers increased accordingly. This trend continued with the launch of Eurobird 1 (now Eutelsat 33C) in 2001. Additionally, some channels occasionally received new numbering \u2013 However, in early 2006, the majority of channels received new numbering, with some receiving single-digit changes, whilst others received new numbers entirely.\nIt was the UK's most popular digital TV service until it was overtaken by Freeview in April 2007.\nPrior to the migration to Astra 2E, 2F and 2G, Sky was transmitted from the Astra satellites located at 28.2\u00b0 east (2A/2C/2E/2F) and Eutelsat's Eutelsat 33C satellite at 28.5\u00b0E.\nAs of 2019, Astra 2E, 2F and 2G are the sole satellites used by Sky UK; a number of services are served via narrow UK-only spot beams, the other services downlinked with a Europe-wide footprint. UK-only spot beams are intentionally tightly focused over mainland UK, however they are still receivable dependent on location and access to a sufficiently large dish and sensitive LNB.\nEutelsat 33C was subsequently moved to 33\u00b0 East, then moved again to 133\u00b0 West and renamed as 'Eutelsat 133 West A' to serve transponders offering European and African language services.\nLow-noise block converter.\nProvided is a universal Ku band LNB (9.75/10.600\u00a0GHz) which is fitted at the end of the dish and pointed at the correct satellite constellation; most digital receivers will receive the free to air channels. Some broadcasts are free-to-air and unencrypted, some are encrypted but do not require a monthly subscription (known as free-to-view), some are encrypted and require a monthly subscription, and some are pay-per-view services. To view the encrypted content a VideoGuard UK-equipped receiver (all of which are dedicated to the Sky service, and cannot be used to decrypt other services) needs to be used. Unofficial CAMs are now available to view the service, although the use of\nthem breaks the user's contract with Sky and invalidates the user's rights to use the card.\nStandard definition broadcasts.\nSky's standard definition broadcasts are in DVB-compliant MPEG-2, with the Sky Cinema and Sky Box Office channels including optional Dolby Digital soundtracks for recent films, although these are only accessible with a Sky+ box. Sky+ HD material is broadcast using MPEG-4 and most of the HD material uses the DVB-S2 standard. Interactive services and 7-day EPG use the proprietary OpenTV system, with set-top boxes including modems for a return path. Sky News, amongst other channels, provides a pseudo-video on demand interactive service by broadcasting looping video streams.\nDigital satellite receivers.\nSky utilises the VideoGuard pay-TV scrambling system owned by NDS, a Cisco Systems company. There are tight controls over the use of VideoGuard decoders; they are not available as stand-alone DVB CAMs (conditional-access modules). Sky has design authority over all digital satellite receivers capable of receiving their service. The receivers, though designed and built by different manufacturers, must conform to the same user interface look and feel as all the others. This extends to the Personal video recorder (PVR) offering (branded Sky+).\nElectronic programme guide.\nTechnology.\nSky maintains an electronic programme guide (EPG) which provides information about upcoming programmes and a list of channels. TV channels available on Sky are assigned a three-digit logical channel number which can be entered on the remote control to access the channel and determines in what order the channels are listed. Since 2005, radio channels similarly receive a four-digit EPG number (usually 0 prefix + three digits, although they can sometimes have a 3 prefix instead of a 0 on some older Sky Digiboxes & Sky+ boxes).\nThe EPG differs depending on the viewer's location due to the limited regional availability of certain channels or conditions relating to their must-carry status. For example, this ensures that viewers get access to the correct BBC or ITV region or that S4C gets a prominent listing in Wales.\nAll channels are grouped into categories depending on their content. What section of the EPG a channel gets allocated is determined by rules set up by Sky.\nIn 2000, Sky introduced an audio channel line-up service for its blind or partially-sighted customers on channel 996, which features a continuous recording of a voice reading out the names and numbers of all the channels that are currently available. The service started with a female voice, who has since been replaced by several male voices in later years (including today's male voice) - as by far she was the only female voice to be used on the service.\nSky has no veto over the presence of channels on their EPG, with open access being enforced as part of their operating licence from Ofcom. Any channel which can get carriage on a suitable beam of a satellite at 28\u00b0 East is entitled to access to Sky's EPG for a fee, ranging from \u00a315\u2013100,000. Third-party channels which opt for encryption receive discounts ranging from reduced price to free EPG entries, free carriage on a Sky leased transponder or actual payment for being carried. However, even in this case, Sky does not carry any control over the channel's content or carriage issues such as picture quality.\nIn October 2007, Sky announced that they would not accept new applications to launch the channel on their EPG, citing \"very significant memory constraints\" on many of its older digiboxes.\nIn June 2012, Sky launched a new EPG dubbed \"Darwin\" for their Sky+HD receivers, offering a more modern, refreshed interface and some improved functionality. Newer SkyQ UHD receivers utilise different hardware, so run a different software stack.\nNumbering system.\nThe EPG numbering is altered frequently when new channels launch or receive new numbers. A few times, the EPG has been substantially altered. For example:\nCompetition.\nOn 12 July 2011, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown claimed that Sky's largest shareholder \u2013 News Corporation \u2013 attempted to affect government policy with regards to the BBC in pursuit of its own commercial interests. He went further, in a speech in Parliament on 13 July 2011, stating:\n\"Mr James Murdoch, which included his cold assertion that profit, not standards were what mattered in the media, underpinned an ever more aggressive News International and Sky agenda under his and Mrs Brooks' leadership that was brutal in its simplicity. Their aim was to cut the BBC licence fee, to force BBC online to charge for its content, for the BBC to sell off its commercial activities, to open up more national sporting events to bids from Sky and move them away from the BBC, to open up the cable and satellite infrastructure market, and to reduce the power of their regulator, Ofcom. I rejected those policies.\"\nOn 13 July 2011, MP Chris Bryant stated to the House of Commons, in the Parliamentary Debate on the Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation Bid for Sky that the company was anti-competitive:\n\"The company has lots of technological innovation that only a robust entrepreneur could bring to British society, but it has also often been profoundly anti-competitive. I believe that the bundling of channels so as to increase profit and make it impossible for others to participate in the market is anti-competitive. I believe that the way in which the application programming interface\u2014the operating system\u2014has been used has been anti-competitive and that Sky has deliberately set about selling set-top boxes elsewhere, outside areas where they have proper rights. If one visits a flat in Spain where a British person lives, one finds that they mysteriously manage to have a Sky box there even though it is registered to a house in the United Kingdom.\" \nVirgin Media dispute.\nVirgin Media (re-branded in 2007 from \"NTL:Telewest\") started to offer a high-definition television (HDTV) capable set top box, although from 30 November 2006 until 30 July 2009 it only carried one linear HD channel, BBC HD, after the conclusion of the ITV HD trial. Virgin Media has claimed that other HD channels were \"locked up\" or otherwise withheld from their platform, although Virgin Media did in fact have an option to carry Channel 4 HD in the future. Nonetheless, the linear channels were not offered, Virgin Media instead concentrating on its Video on Demand service to carry a modest selection of HD content. Virgin Media has nevertheless made a number of statements over the years, suggesting that more linear HD channels are on the way.\nIn 2007, Sky and Virgin Media became involved in a dispute over the carriage of Sky channels on cable TV. The failure to renew the existing carriage agreements negotiated with NTL and Telewest resulted in Virgin Media removing the basic channels from the network on 1 March 2007. Virgin Media claimed that Sky had substantially increased the asking price for the channels, a claim which Sky denied, on the basis that their new deal offered \"substantially more value\" by including HD channels and Video On Demand content which was not previously carried by cable.\nIn response, Sky ran a number of TV, radio and print advertisements claiming that Virgin Media \"doubted the value\" of the channels concerned, at first urging Virgin Media customers to call their cable operator to show their support for Sky, and later urging Virgin Media customers to migrate to Sky to continue receiving the channels. The broadcasting regulator Ofcom subsequently found these adverts in breach of their code.\nThe availability (at an extra charge) of Sky's premium sports and movie services was not affected by the dispute, and Sky Sports 3 was offered as a replacement for Sky One on many Virgin Media packages. This impasse continued for twenty-one months, with both companies initiating High Court proceedings. Amongst Virgin Media's claims to the court (denied by Sky) were that Sky had unfairly reduced the amount which it paid to VMTV for the carriage of Virgin Media's own channels on satellite.\nEventually, on 4 November 2008 it was announced that an agreement had been struck for Sky's basic channels\u00a0\u2013 including Sky One, Sky Two, Sky Three, Sky News, Sky Sports News, Sky Arts 1, Sky Arts 2, Sky Real Lives and Sky Real Lives 2 to return to Virgin Media from 13 November 2008 until 12 June 2011. In exchange, Sky would be provided continued carriage of Virgin Media Television's channels\u00a0\u2013 Living, Livingit, Bravo, Bravo +1, Trouble, Challenge and Virgin1 for the same period.\nThe agreements include fixed annual carriage fees of \u00a330m for the channels with both channel suppliers able to secure additional capped payments if their channels meet certain performance-related targets. Currently, there is no indication as to whether the new deal includes the additional Video On Demand and High Definition content which had previously been offered by Sky. As part of the agreements, both Sky and Virgin Media agreed to terminate all High Court proceedings against each other relating to the carriage of their respective basic channels.\nDiscovery Networks dispute.\nOn 25 January 2017, Discovery Networks announced that they were in a dispute with Sky UK over the costs of payment fees to the broadcaster.\nThe broadcaster threatened to blackout their channels on the Sky platform, which includes Eurosport, Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Investigation Discovery, DMAX, Discovery Turbo, Discovery Shed, Discovery Science, Discovery History and Home & Health, unless Sky accepted their request for fair pricing. Sky indicated that they will not bow down, and the channels would likely become unavailable from 1 February 2017.\nThe same day, Discovery sent out a press release on the dispute and also blocked access to its own website with the news. Discovery stated \"enough is enough\" and claimed that Sky is paying less for its channels than it was ten years ago. At that time, Discovery had stated that its viewing share has grown by more than 20%. Managing Director Susanna Dinnage stated in the press release:\"We believe Sky is using what we consider to be its dominant market position to further its own commercial interest over those of viewers and independent broadcasters. The vitality of independent broadcasters like Discovery and plurality in TV is under threat.\"\nIn response, Sky stated that they had been \"overpaying Discovery for years.\" It comes after Sky had paid \u00a34.2 billion on Premier League rights for the following three seasons.\nThe channel 'blackout' would have also affected the Sky-owned NOW TV with the removal of Discovery Channel from both the live stream and On Demand service.\nOn 31 January 2017 at around 21:00, Sky UK revealed that they would continue to broadcast the Discovery Networks Channels by releasing the following statement:\n\"Great news, we can confirm that Sky will continue to carry the Discovery and Eurosport channels. This means you can still watch channels including: Animal Planet, Discovery HD, Discovery History, Discovery Home & Health, Discovery Science, Discovery Shed, Discovery Turbo, DMAX, Eurosport1, Eurosport2, Investigation Discovery, TLC, and Quest.\"\nAt the time of the statement release, it had not been revealed how much Sky UK had paid Discovery Networks.\nLitigation.\nIn July 2013, the English High Court of Justice found that Microsoft's use of the term \"SkyDrive\" infringed on Sky's right to the \"Sky\" trademark. On 31 July 2013, Sky and Microsoft announced their settlement, in which Microsoft will not appeal the ruling, and will rename its SkyDrive cloud storage service after an unspecified \"reasonable period of time to allow for an orderly transition to a new brand,\" plus \"financial and other terms, the details of which are confidential\". On 27 January 2014, Microsoft announced \"that SkyDrive will soon become OneDrive\" and \"SkyDrive Pro\" becomes \"OneDrive for Business\".\nHello Games was in legal negotiations with Sky over the trademark on the word \"Sky\" used for the title of their video game \"No Man's Sky\" for three years. The issue was ultimately settled in June 2016, allowing Hello Games to continue to use the name.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["352308", "321943"], "permutation_1": ["352308", "321943"], "permutation_2": ["352308", "321943"], "permutation_3": ["321943", "352308"]}
{"id": "2hop__362049_131909", "docs_added": {"42108": "Kassel\nKassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, in central Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name, and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020. The former capital of the state of Hesse-Kassel, it has many palaces and parks, including the Bergpark Wilhelmsh\u00f6he, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Kassel is also known for the \"documenta\" exhibitions of contemporary art. Kassel has a public university with 25,000 students (2018) and a multicultural population (39% of the citizens in 2017 had a migration background).\nHistory.\nKassel was first mentioned in 913 AD, as the place where two deeds were signed by King Conrad I. The place was called \"Chasella\" or \"Chassalla\" and was a fortification at a bridge crossing the Fulda river. There are several yet unproven assumptions about the origin of the name. It could be derived from the ancient \"Castellum Cattorum\", a castle of the Chatti, a German tribe that had lived in the area since Roman times. Another assumption is a portmanteau from Frankonian \"cas\", meaning \u2018valley\u2019 or \u2018recess\u2019, and \"sali\" meaning \u2018hall\u2019 or \u2018service building\u2019, which can be interpreted as \u2018(town) hall in a valley\u2019.\nA deed from 1189 certifies that Cassel had city rights, but the date when they were granted is not known.\nThe first castle in Kassel was constructed in 1277, later replaced by a Renaissance castle, the Kassel City Palace, which burned down in 1811.\nIn 1567 the Landgraviate of Hesse, until then centered in Marburg, was divided among four sons, with Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel) becoming one of its successor states. Kassel was its capital and became a centre of Calvinist Protestantism in Germany. Strong fortifications were built to protect the Protestant stronghold against Catholic enemies. Secret societies, such as Rosicrucianism, came to the rise, with Christian Rosenkreutz's work \"Fama Fraternitatis\" first published in 1617. In 1685 Kassel became a refuge for 1,700 Huguenots, who found shelter in the newly established borough of Oberneustadt. Landgrave Charles, who was responsible for this humanitarian act, also ordered the construction of the \"Oktogon\" (Hercules monument) and of the \"Orangerie\". In the late 18th century, Hesse-Kassel became infamous for selling mercenaries (Hessians) to the British crown to help suppress the American Revolution and to finance the construction of palaces and the Landgrave's opulent lifestyle.\nThe Brothers Grimm lived in Kassel in the early 19th century, where they collected and wrote most of their fairy tales. At that time, around 1803, the Landgraviate was elevated to a Principality and its ruler to \"Prince-elector\". Shortly after, it was annexed by Napoleon and became the capital of the short-lived Kingdom of Westphalia under Napoleon's brother J\u00e9r\u00f4mein 1807. The Electorate was restored in 1813.\nHaving sided with Austria in the Austro-Prussian War to gain supremacy in Germany, the principality was annexed by Prussia in 1866. The Prussian administration united Nassau, Frankfurt and Hesse-Kassel into the new Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau. Kassel ceased to be a princely residence but soon developed into a major industrial centre as well as a major railway junction. Henschel & Son, the largest railway locomotive manufacturer in Germany at the end of the nineteenth century, was based in Kassel.\nIn 1870, after the Battle of Sedan, Napoleon III was sent as a prisoner to the Wilhelmsh\u00f6he Palace above the city. During World War I, the German military headquarters were located in the Wilhelmsh\u00f6he Palace. In the late 1930s, Nazis destroyed Heinrich H\u00fcbsch's Kassel Synagogue.\nDuring World War II, Kassel was the headquarters for Germany's Wehrkreis IX, and a local subcamp of Dachau concentration camp provided forced labour for the Henschel facilities, which included tank production plants. There was also a camp for Sinti and Romani people (see \"Romani Holocaust\"). Allied prisoners of war from the Stalag IX-A POW camp were deployed to forced labour in the local arms industry in violation of the Geneva Conventions. The most severe bombing of Kassel in World War II destroyed 90% of the downtown area, and some 10,000 people were killed and 150,000 were made homeless. Most of the casualties were civilians or wounded soldiers recuperating in local hospitals, whereas factories survived the attack generally undamaged. Karl Gerland replaced the regional Gauleiter, Karl Weinrich, soon after the raid.\nThe Allied ground advance into Germany reached Kassel at the beginning of April 1945. The US 80th Infantry Division captured Kassel in house-to-house fighting during 1\u20134 April 1945, which included numerous German panzer-grenadier counterattacks, and resulted in further damage to bombed and unbombed structures alike.\nPost-war, most of the ancient buildings in the city centre were not restored, and large parts of the inner city area were completely rebuilt in the style of the 1950s. A few historic buildings, however, such as the Museum Fridericianum, were restored. \nIn 1949, the interim parliament (\"Parlamentarischer Rat\") eliminated Kassel in the first round as a city to become the provisional capital of the Federal Republic of Germany, which the western city of Bonn won.\nIn 1964, the town hosted the fourth \"Hessentag\" state festival. \nIn 1970, the Chancellor of West Germany Willy Brandt and the prime minister of the German Democratic Republic Willy Stoph met in Wilhelmsh\u00f6he Palace for negotiations between the two German states. In 1991, the central rail station moved from \"Hauptbahnhof\" (\"main station\") to \"Kassel-Wilhelmsh\u00f6he\", the former now being used exclusively for regional trains. The city had a dynamic economic and social development in the recent years, reducing the unemployment rate by half and attracting new citizens.\nEconomy.\nSeveral international operating companies have factories or headquarters in the city (Volkswagen, Mercedes Benz, SMA, Wintershall, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, Rheinmetall, Bombardier). The city is home to several hospitals; the public Klinikum Kassel is one of the largest hospitals in the federal state.\nGeography.\nKassel is the largest city in the north of the federated state of Hesse in the south-western part of Germany, about 70 kilometers northwest of the geographic center of Germany.\nIt is located on both sides of the river Fulda. Kassel's deepest point is in the north-eastern Fulda valley at 132.9 m above sea level.\nThe urban area of Kassel is divided into 23 local districts, each of which has a local council with a local mayor as chairman. The local councils are elected every five years by the population of the local districts. The local advisory board can be heard on all important issues affecting the local district. However, the final decision on a measure rests with the Kassel city council.\nNeighboring communities.\nAround Kassel is the administrative district (\"Landkreis\") of Landkreis Kassel. The following cities and municipalities border the city of Kassel (starting clockwise in the north): Ahnatal, Vellmar, Fuldatal, Staufenberg, Niestetal, Kaufungen, Lohfelden, Fuldabr\u00fcck, Baunatal, Schauenburg, Habichtswald. Of these, Vellmar and Fuldatal in the north, Kaufungen in the east, Lohfelden in the southeast and Baunatal in the south are growing closer to the urban area.\nCulture.\nThe first German observatory was built in Kassel in 1558, and a later version from 1714 survives as the Bellevue Palace. The \"Ottoneum\", the first permanent German theatre building, was built in 1606. The old building is today the Natural History Museum, and the now-called Staatstheater Kassel is located in a nearby building that was constructed in the 1950s. \nSince 1927, Kassel has been home to B\u00e4renreiter, a music publishing house distributing compositions of several critically acclaimed classical musicians.\nSince 1955 the \"documenta\", an international exhibition of modern and contemporary art, has been held regularly in Kassel. The \"documenta\" now takes place every five years. As a result of the \"documenta 6\" in 1977, Kassel became the first city in the world to be illuminated by laser beams at night (Laserscape, by artist Horst H. Baumann). This laser installation is nowadays still visible at weekends. Artworks from former editions of the \"documenta\" (mainly sculptures) can be found in multiple places in Kassel; among those are the \"7000 Oaks\", a work of land art by the German artist Joseph Beuys. The latest/current edition of the \"documenta\", known as \"documenta 15\", ran from 18 June until 25 September 2022.\nClimate.\nKassel experiences an oceanic climate (K\u00f6ppen: \"Cfb\") close to marine climates, with a more notable continental influence than Berlin. Using the 1961\u20131990 normal and 0\u00a0\u00b0C isotherm, the city already had a humid continental climate (\"Dfb\").\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nKassel has a population of about 200,000, and is the 3rd largest city in Hesse state and the only large city in the North Hesse region. \nKassel is often called the city that located on the center of Germany due to its position. \nKassel first reached its first population peak of over 100,000 in 1899, and its second in 1943 with about 225,000. Kassel was destroyed during World War II and became an industrial city in 1950s. Today, Kassel is home to multiple companies and universities.\nSights.\nThe bombing raids of 1943 destroyed 90% of the city center. The city center was almost completely rebuilt during the 1950s and is a combination of renovated or reconstructed old buildings and architecture of the 1950s. Outside the city center, the suburbs are dominated by 19th-century architecture. Timber-framed old towns are situated in suburbs like Harleshausen and Bad Wilhelmsh\u00f6he. The oldest monument is the Druselturm; the Br\u00fcderkirche and the Martinskirche are also, in part, of medieval origin. The towers of the Martinskirche are from the 1950s.\nChurches.\nSt. Martin, Kassel.\nThe main Protestant church of Kassel, it was begun in 1364 and finished in 1462. Severely damaged by British bombing in 1943, it was later reconstructed in a more modern style between 1954 and 1958.\nSt. Bonifatius, Kassel.\nSt. Bonifatius was designed and built in 1956 by Josef Bieling.\nBergpark Wilhelmsh\u00f6he.\nThe complex includes Wilhelmsh\u00f6he Palace (with the Antiquities Collection and Old Masters), the Hercules monument, and the Lions Castle.\nWilhelmsh\u00f6he Palace above the city was built in 1786, by landgrave Wilhelm IX of Hesse-Kassel. The palace is now a museum and houses an important collection of Graeco-Roman antiques and a fine gallery of paintings comprising the second largest collection of Rembrandts in Germany. It is surrounded by the beautiful Bergpark Wilhelmsh\u00f6he with many appealing sights. The complex was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013.\nThe Hercules monument is a huge octagonal stone structure carrying a giant replica of Hercules \"Farnese\" (now at Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples, Italy). From its base down to Wilhelmsh\u00f6he Palace runs a long set of artificial cascades. Every Sunday and Wednesday afternoon at 14:30 (from May until October), the famous water features take place, which start at the Oktagon, and during a one-hour walk through the park visitors can follow the water's way until they reach the lake of the Wilhelmsh\u00f6he Palace, where a fountain of about marks the end of the features.\nThe \"L\u00f6wenburg\" (\"Lions Castle\") is a replica of a medieval castle, also built during the reign of Wilhelm IX. After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870\u201371, Napol\u00e9on III was imprisoned in Wilhelmsh\u00f6he. In 1918, Wilhelmsh\u00f6he became the seat of the German Army High Command (OHL); it was there that the military commanders Hindenburg and Ludendorff prepared the German capitulation.\nStaatspark Karlsaue (Karlsaue Park).\nThe Karlsaue is a large park along the Fulda River that is part of the European Garden Heritage Network. Established in the 16th century, it is known for the Orangerie, a palace built in 1710 as a summer residence for the landgraves. Today, the Orangerie contains the Museum of Astronomy and Technology, with a scale model of the Solar System spanning the entire park and beyond. \nIn addition, the Park Sch\u00f6nfeld contains a small, municipal botanical garden, the Botanischer Garten Kassel.\nArt museums.\nEurope's first public museum, the Museum Fridericianum, was founded in 1779. By the end of the 19th century, the museum held one of the largest collections of watches and clocks in the world.\nOther art museums in Kassel include: \nSports.\nHessen Kassel is the football club in the city, who plays in the Hessenliga after being relegated from the Regionalliga S\u00fcdwest in the 2017/2018 season. The city's own football stadium, the Auestadion was built in 1953 and is able to hold 18,737 people. It is located in the south of Kassel at the quarter S\u00fcdstadt, next to the Karlsaue.\nKassel has a long ice hockey tradition, but it was not until 1977 that the Kassel ice rink (Eissporthalle) opened on a private initiative. The Kassel Huskies were founding members of the DEL in 1994, belonging to the league from 1994 to 2006 and again from 2008 to 2010. In 1997, they were runners-up in the championship playoffs, losing to Adler Mannheim, and reached the semi-finals on three more occasions. The Huskies ran into financial difficulties and dissolved in 2010. The \"Young Huskies\", which is a junior and youth hockey club, decided to enter a men's team in the Hessenliga. This is the fifth division and the lowest men's competition in the state of Hesse. The new club was expecting no more than 3,000 supporters for the first home game in the Hessenliga. However, they had over 5,000 supporters come to watch.\nTransport.\nKassel has seven tram lines (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8), with trams arriving usually every 15 minutes. The city also operates a light rail Stadtbahn network called \"RegioTram\" using Regio Citadis low-floor trams which run on both tram and main line railway tracks with three lines (RT1, RT4, RT5). Moreover, a number of low-floor buses complete the Kassel public transport system. The introduction of low-floor buses led to the development of the Kassel kerb which improves the accessibility at bus stops.\nThe city is connected to the national rail network at two stations, Kassel Central, and Kassel-Wilhelmsh\u00f6he. The traditional central station (Hauptbahnhof) has been reduced to the status of a regional station since the opening of the Hanover-W\u00fcrzburg high-speed rail line in 1991 and its station (Kassel-Wilhelmsh\u00f6he) on the high-speed line at which the InterCityExpress (ICE) and InterCity services call as well as Nightjet and Flixtrain.\nKassel is connected to the motorways A 7, A 49 and A 44.\nThe city is served by Kassel Calden Airport.\nPolitics.\nMayor.\nThe current mayor of Kassel is Sven Schoeller of Alliance 90/The Greens, who was elected in March 2023. He succeeded Christian Geselle (SPD), who had been in office since 2017.\nCity council.\nThe Kassel city council (\"Stadtverordnetenversammlung\") governs the city alongside the Mayor. The most recent city council election was held on 14 March 2021, and the results were as follows:\nEducation and research.\nUniversity of Kassel.\nThe University of Kassel is a public higher education institution and was founded in 1971 as a so-called reform university. It is the newest university in the state of Hessen and has an urban inner-city campus between the city center and the Northern city district. There were around 25,000 students enrolled at the university in 2018, 3,359 of them non-Germans. Two hundred and twenty-four students obtained their doctorate from the university in 2017.\nThe university offers a range of study programs, and several English master's programs as well as two short-term international programs, the Summer University and the Winter University. The Kunsthochschule Kassel (University of Fine Arts) is also part of the university with a satellite campus directly at the Karlsaue park in the Southern city district.\nCourts.\nSeveral courts are located in Kassel, including:\nTwin towns \u2013 sister cities.\nKassel is twinned with:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n Media related to at Wikimedia Commons\n travel guide from Wikivoyage", "42251763": "Hans Olde\nGerman painter\nJohannes Wilhelm (Hans) Olde (27 April 1855, S\u00fcderau \u2013 25 October 1917, Kassel) was a German painter and art school administrator.\nLife.\nHe originally planned to follow family tradition and become a farmer but, over his father's strong objections, went to study with Ludwig von L\u00f6fftz at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich in 1879. He and his friend, the sculptor Adolf Br\u00fctt, moved to Italy in 1883. Three years later, however, he decided to attend the Acad\u00e9mie Julian in Paris, where he exhibited at the Salon and discovered impressionism. Upon his return to Germany, he was one of the founders of the Munich Secession and, in 1894, helped to create the Schleswig-Holstein Art Appreciation Society. He travelled widely over the next few years and this is considered to be his most creative period. In 1898, he also participated in the founding of the Berlin Secession. Friedrich Nietzsche is one of his most famous portrait subjects.\nIn 1902, when Olde became director of the Weimar Saxon-Grand Ducal Art School, he began working on plans to create a university and instituted many reforms, including the admission of women. When Br\u00fctt became director of the Weimar Sculpture School in 1905, the schools were joined as the \"Grand Ducal Saxon College of Fine Arts\", which would later be joined with the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts to become the \"Staatlisches Bauhaus\" (today's Bauhaus University).\nDuring this time, Olde, Br\u00fctt and Henry van de Velde acted as advisors for Grand Duke Wilhelm Ernst's renovation of Weimar's city center. Olde became the director of the Royal Academy of Art in Kassel in 1911 and began the process of turning that school into a university as well. (Today, it is a division of the University of Kassel called the Kunsthochschule Kassel)\nThree streets are named after him; in Kiel, D\u00e4nischenhagen (where he is buried) and Blankenfelde-Mahlow. His son, Hans Olde the Younger, was also a painter.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "55168826": "November (2017 film)\n2017 Estonian film\nNovember is a 2017 fantasy horror drama film written and directed by Rainer Sarnet, based on Andrus Kivir\u00e4hk's 2000 novel \"Rehepapp ehk November\" (\"Old Barny aka November\"). The film has received praise internationally, and it was selected as the Estonian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards, but it was not nominated.\nPlot.\nIn 19th century Estonia, a mythical village is inhabited by personified Black Death, spirits, werewolves and the Devil himself. The film opens with a supernaturally-powered automaton called a kratt stealing a cow. It drags the cow by its chains and lifts it up in the air, depositing it at the farm of its master, the villager called Raak. Fashioned out of odds, ends, and farm tools, kratts need to be imbued with a soul in order to do their masters' bidding: primarily stealing livestock from other villagers, aside from menial farm labor. Villagers whistle for the Devil at a crossroads in order to arrange a deal: their human soul, to buy a soul for their kratt. However, wily villagers such as Raak continually trick the devil by using the sap of three black currants in lieu of blood to sign the Devil's contract.\nThe villagers are driven by a need to survive the harsh winter, and resort to all manner of thievery and deceit to accomplish their ends. They steal from one another, and trade their souls for the kratt in order to keep their souls from being stolen, too. They even fool the Plague - first disguised as a blanched young woman crossing the river, then later as a white goat \u2014 by wearing pants over their heads to make it think they have two asses, and thus leave them alone. But the Plague cannot be fooled twice, and when it finally assumes a pig form, the village elder, Sander, makes a pact with the Plague: if it has to kill, then it must leave a young boy and a young girl alive so that their people can go on. Hans refuses the bargain and it is implied he kills the pig with a scythe while it's distracted swearing on a bible brought by Sander. Relieved, the villagers dance on ecstatic for having survived yet again.\nThe young girl and the young boy are the main characters, Liina and Hans.\nLiina is Raak's daughter: a headstrong young woman whom her penurious father has arranged, in a drunken pub session, to be married to an older, piggish farmer named Endel. But she longs for the local village boy, Hans. He, in turn, is besotted with a young Baroness \u2014 the visiting daughter of the local Baltic German baron, whom the local Estonians secretly resent, and get their revenge on by stealing food and valuable objects from the estate. The Baroness is afflicted with somnambulism, and must often be guarded so she does not sleepwalk off the manor roof, which she almost does several times.\nHans and Liina try to use mystical powers so that their unrequited love could change into requited love. Liina can transform into a werewolf, and watches Hans as he stares at the Baroness' window at night. Seeing how smitten Hans is with the Baroness, Liina consults the local witch, Minna, who gives her an arrow and tells her to fling it at the Baroness when she looks out her window, saying that the arrow will split the Baroness' skull and spill her brains out. Liina stands watch at the manor one night, and sees the Baroness atop the manor, sleepwalking. She cannot bring herself to kill the Baroness, however; Liina materializes atop the manor and pulls the Baroness back from the edge.\nHans, meanwhile, fashions a kratt out of a snowman and tries to trick the devil with the three black currants. But the devil has wised up to the ruse and forces Hans into trading his own soul in order that his kratt may be imbued with one. Hans tries to use the kratt to bring him the Baroness; however, the kratt sadly replies that it cannot steal humans, only livestock and inanimate things. Hans then consults his kratt about love and romance; the kratt, made out of snow made out of water that has seen many things, enchants Hans with tales of romances it has witnessed through millennia.\nThe witch Minna asks why Liina did not kill the Baroness; she replies that Hans loves the Baroness, and that he might die of sadness if she died. The witch is revealed to be an old spurned love of Sander, who in spite cast a spell that killed his wife. But in a rare spirit of forgiveness, Minna confides to Sander her concern over Liina's unrequited feelings. In a last effort to enchant Hans, the witch asks Sander to ask Liina if she can procure a dress the baroness might wear. Luise, the baron's housekeeper, who has been pilfering the old Baroness' garments and other belongings, trades in the old Baroness' last gown for a silver brooch that Liina's forebears had been safeguarding as part of the Raak family treasure.\nThat night, Hans and Liina encounter each other in a dreamlike state in the forest. Liina wears the old Baroness' gown with a veil over her head. Hans does not seem to recognize Liina. He introduces himself and falls to his knees, thinking she is the young Baroness. Sander watches the two from a distance, saying to himself \"Two fools\" before walking away. The pair kneel in silence through the rainy night, and when morning comes, Hans finally kisses Liina through her veil. Ecstatic, Liina walks away, and Hans asks his melting kratt one final question. The kratt replies \"That girl loves you\" before dissolving into a muddy puddle. Hans then finds an expensive ring in the slush \u2014 one that had figured in a romantic tale in Venice that the kratt had relayed to Hans via the snowman's liquid memories.\nHans chases after Liina \u2014 still thinking she is the Baroness \u2014 to propose. Meanwhile, the actual Baroness is shown to have finally sleepwalked off the manor roof the previous night, and died. Liina hears Hans' wagon approaching and after removing her concealing veil a little earlier on the road, resigns herself to reveal the truth. However, the Devil appears on Hans' cart, and asks where his kratt is. When Hans replies that it had melted, the Devil says \"Then it's time to pay!\", then snaps Hans' neck. Liina chases after the wagon bearing Hans' dead body, as it encounters the funeral procession for the dead young Baroness.\nHans' father, Sander, berates his own kratt while they prepare Hans' body for burial, saying the kratts are burdens on humanity who will not hesitate to cut human throats. The kratt retorts by asking who told humans to make deals with the devil, and chides the father why humans fool the plague and the devil, but do not want to pay with their souls as promised. Sander then replies \"But I have no soul.\"\nAfter Hans' burial, Liina walks into a nearby river and drowns herself. Underneath the waters, her body slips from the Baroness' gown as she encounters Hans and kisses him one last time. Later, two villagers are then shown discovering solid gold pieces in the river. They declare it the buried Raak treasure before one of them lifts up Liina's body. They take the gold pieces but leave a gold necklace for Liina's corpse, saying it will make a nice dowry for a virgin bride. Liina's corpse then replies \"Oh, yes. Just what a virgin bride dreams of.\"\nReception.\nOn the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 96%, based on 27 reviews, with an average rating of 7.17/10. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 79 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating \"generally favorable reviews\". Peter Travers, writing for \"Rolling Stone\", described \"November\" as a \"marvelously strange film\" and a \"midnight-movie classic in the making,\" awarding it 3.5 stars out of 4. Sheri Linden's review for the \"Los Angeles Times\" was equally positive, referring to \"November\" as an \"earthbound fairy tale\" that \"occupies a dreamscape somewhere between the teeming canvases of Brueghel and the existential agonies of Bela Tarr\u2019s films.\" Much of the critical praise focused on the cinematography, with NPR's Mark Jenkins calling it \"bewitching\" while criticizing the plot as \"slight.\"\nDespite being selected as the Estonian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards, \"November\" was not picked for nomination. However, the film did win a number of accolades, including the Spotlight Award by the American Society of Cinematographers, the International Fantasy Film Award at Fantasporto, Best Cinematography in an International Narrative Feature at Tribeca Film Festival, Best Film and Best Cinematography at Listapad, and Best Estonian Film at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "382525": "The Happy Prince and Other Tales\n1888 collection of fairytales by Oscar Wilde\nThe Happy Prince and Other Tales (or Stories) is a collection of bedtime stories for children by Oscar Wilde, first published in May 1888. It contains five stories that are highly popular among children and frequently read in schools: \"The Happy Prince,\" \"The Nightingale and the Rose,\" \"The Selfish Giant,\" \"The Devoted Friend,\" and \"The Remarkable Rocket.\" The short stories are valued for their morals, and have been made into animated films.\nIn 2003, the second through fourth stories were adapted by Lupus Films and Terraglyph Interactive Studios into the three-part series \"Wilde Stories\" for Channel 4.\nContents.\nThe Happy Prince.\nIn a town full of suffering poor people, a swallow who was left behind after his flock flew off to Egypt for the winter meets the statue of the late \"Happy Prince\", who has never experienced true sorrow, for he lived in a palace where sorrow was not allowed to enter. Viewing various scenes of people suffering in poverty from his tall monument, the Happy Prince asks the swallow to take the ruby from his hilt, the sapphires from his eyes, and the gold leaf covering his body to give to the poor. As winter comes and the Happy Prince is stripped of all of his beauty, his lead heart breaks when the swallow dies as a result of his selfless deeds and severe cold. The people, unaware of their good deeds, take the statue down from the pillar due to its shabbiness (intending to replace it with one of the Mayor) and melt the metal in a furnace, leaving behind the broken heart and the dead swallow, which are thrown in a dust heap. These are taken up to heaven by an Angel that has deemed them the two most precious things in the city. This is affirmed by God, and they live forever in His \"city of gold\" and garden of Paradise.\nThe Nightingale and the Rose.\nThis story is an allegory of the moral decay and materialism of the age.\nA nightingale overhears a student complaining that the professor's daughter will not dance with him, as he is unable to give her a red rose; a lizard, a butterfly and a daisy laugh at the student for doing so. The nightingale visits all the rose-trees in the garden, and one of the roses tells her there is a way to produce a red rose, but only if the nightingale is prepared to sing the sweetest song for the rose all night with her heart pressing into a thorn, sacrificing her life. Seeing the student in tears, and valuing his human life above her bird life, the nightingale carries out the ritual and dies painfully. The student takes the rose to the professor's daughter, but she again rejects him because the Chamberlain's nephew has sent her some real jewels, and \"everybody knows that jewels cost far more than flowers.\" The student angrily throws the rose into the gutter, returns to his study of metaphysics, and decides not to believe in true love anymore.\nAdaptations.\nThere are many adaptations of this story in the form of operas and ballets. These include:\nThe Selfish Giant.\nThe Selfish Giant owns a beautiful garden which has 12 peach trees and lovely fragrant flowers, in which children love to play after returning from school. On the giant's return after visiting his friend the Cornish Ogre for seven years, he takes offence at the children and builds a wall to keep them out. He puts up a notice board \"TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.\" The garden falls into perpetual winter. One day, the giant is awakened by a linnet, and discovers that spring has returned to the garden, as the children have found a way in through a gap in the wall. He sees the error of his ways, and resolves to destroy the wall. However, when he emerges from his castle, all the children run away except for one boy who was trying to climb a tree. The giant helps this boy into the tree and announces: \"It is your garden now, little children,\" and knocks down the wall. The children once more play in the garden, and Spring returns. But the boy that the Giant helped does not return, and the Giant is heartbroken. Many years later, after happily playing with the children all the time, the Giant is old and feeble. One winter morning, he awakes to see the trees in one part of his garden in full blossom. He descends from the castle to discover the boy that he once helped standing beneath a beautiful white tree. The Giant sees that the boy bears the stigmata. He does not realise that the boy is actually the Christ Child and is furious that somebody has wounded him.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"Who hath dared to wound thee?\" cried the Giant; \"tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him.\"\n\"Nay!\" answered the child; \"but these are the wounds of Love.\"\n\"Who are you?\" said the Giant, and a strange awe fell on him, and he knelt before the little child.\nAnd the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, \"You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.\"\nShortly afterwards, the happy giant dies. That same afternoon, his body is found lying under the tree, covered in blossoms.\nThe Devoted Friend.\nOnce upon a time, there was a kind and honest man named Hans. He lived alone in a tiny cottage.\nHans was a little man who owned a beautiful garden, where he grew flowers of all kinds and colours which were sold in the market to make some money. He enjoyed the company of another man called Hugh, a miller who used to visit Hans very often during the summer time and with whom he shared thoughts about friendship and loyalty. Hans was so devoted to Hugh that he even gifted him whole bunches of flowers from his own garden.\nHowever, when winter came, Hans found himself in a very difficult situation, as his flowers wouldn't flourish anymore until the following spring, meaning that he was impoverished, living on a simple diet of a few pears and hard nuts. That winter was so stark that he had to sell some of his useful gardening tools, including his wheelbarrow, a silver chain, his pipe"}, "descending_order": ["42251763", "55168826", "382525", "42108"], "permutation_1": ["42251763", "42108", "382525", "55168826"], "permutation_2": ["42251763", "42108", "55168826", "382525"], "permutation_3": ["382525", "42251763", "55168826", "42108"]}
{"id": "2hop__328329_42292", "docs_added": {"32908": "Warsaw\nCapital and largest city of Poland\nWarsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at 1.86\u00a0million residents within a greater metropolitan area of 3.27\u00a0million residents, which makes Warsaw the 6th most-populous city in the European Union. The city area measures and comprises 18 districts, while the metropolitan area covers . Warsaw is classified as an alpha global city, a major political, economic and cultural hub, and the country's seat of government. It is also the capital of the Masovian Voivodeship.\nWarsaw traces its origins to a small fishing town in Masovia. The city rose to prominence in the late 16th century, when Sigismund III decided to move the Polish capital and his royal court from Krak\u00f3w. Warsaw surpassed Gda\u0144sk as Poland's most populous city by the 18th century. It served as the de facto capital of the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1795, and subsequently as the seat of Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. The 19th century and its Industrial Revolution brought a demographic boom, which made it one of the largest and most densely populated cities in Europe. Known then for its elegant architecture and boulevards, Warsaw was bombed and besieged at the start of World War II in 1939. Much of the historic city was destroyed and its diverse population decimated by the Ghetto Uprising in 1943, the general Warsaw Uprising in 1944, and systematic razing.\nWarsaw is served by three international airports, the busiest being Warsaw Chopin, as well as Warsaw Modlin and Warsaw Radom Airport. Major public transport services operating in the city include the Warsaw Metro, buses, commuter rail service and an extensive tram network. The city is a significant economic centre for the region, with the Warsaw Stock Exchange being the largest in Central and Eastern Europe. It is the base for Frontex, the European Union agency for external border security, and ODIHR, one of the principal institutions of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Warsaw has one of Europe's highest concentrations of skyscrapers, and the Varso Tower is the tallest building in the European Union.\nThe city's primary educational and cultural institutions comprise the University of Warsaw, the Warsaw University of Technology, the SGH Warsaw School of Economics, the Chopin University of Music, the Polish Academy of Sciences, the National Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Museum, and the Warsaw Grand Theatre, the largest of its kind in the world. The reconstructed Old Town, which represents a variety of European architectural styles, was listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1980. Other landmarks include the Royal Castle, Sigismund's Column, the Wilan\u00f3w Palace, the Palace on the Isle, St. John's Archcathedral, Main Market Square, and numerous churches and mansions along the Royal Route. Warsaw is a green capital, with around a quarter of the city's area occupied by parks. In sports, the city is home to Legia Warsaw football club and hosts the annual Warsaw Marathon.\nToponymy and names.\nWarsaw's name in the Polish language is . Other previous spellings of the name may have included: , , or . The exact origin and meaning of the name is uncertain and has not been fully determined. Originally, Warszawa was the name of a small fishing settlement on the banks of the Vistula river. One hypothesis states that means \"belonging to Warsz\", being a shortened form of the masculine Old Polish name Warcis\u0142aw, which etymologically is linked with Wroc\u0142aw. However the ending -awa is unusual for a large city; the names of Polish cities derived from personal names usually end in -\u00f3w/owo/ew/ewo (e.g. Piotrk\u00f3w, Adam\u00f3w).\nFolk etymology attributes the city name to Wars and Sawa. There are several versions of the legend with their appearance. According to one version, Sawa was a mermaid living in the Vistula with whom fisherman Wars fell in love. The official city name in full is (\"The Capital City of Warsaw\").\nA native or resident of Warsaw is known as a \"Varsovian\" \u2013 in Polish , (male); (female); , and (plural). \nHistory.\n1300\u20131800.\nThe first fortified settlements on the site of today's Warsaw were located in Br\u00f3dno (9th/10th century) and Jazd\u00f3w (12th/13th century). After Jazd\u00f3w was raided by nearby clans and dukes, a new fortified settlement was established on the site of a small fishing village called \"Warszowa\". The Prince of P\u0142ock, Boles\u0142aw II of Masovia, established the modern-day city in about 1300 and the first historical document attesting to the existence of a castellany dates to 1313. With the completion of St John's Cathedral in 1390, Warsaw became one of the seats of the Dukes of Masovia and was officially made capital of the Masovian Duchy in 1413. The economy then predominantly rested on craftsmanship or trade, and the town housed approximately 4,500 people at the time.\nDuring the 15th century, the population migrated and spread beyond the northern city wall into a newly formed self-governing precinct called New Town. The existing older settlement became eventually known as the Old Town. Both possessed their own town charter and independent councils. The aim of establishing a separate district was to accommodate new incomers or \"undesirables\" who were not permitted to settle in Old Town, particularly Jews. Social and financial disparities between the classes in the two precincts led to a minor revolt in 1525. Following the sudden death of Janusz III and the extinction of the local ducal line, Masovia was incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland in 1526. Bona Sforza, wife of Sigismund I of Poland, was widely accused of poisoning the duke to uphold Polish rule over Warsaw.\nIn 1529, Warsaw for the first time became the seat of a General Sejm and held that privilege permanently from 1569. The city's rising importance encouraged the construction of a new set of defenses, including the landmark Barbican. Renowned Italian architects were brought to Warsaw to reshape the Royal Castle, the streets and the marketplace, resulting in the Old Town's early Italianate appearance. In 1573, the city gave its name to the Warsaw Confederation which formally established religious freedom in the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth. Due to its central location between the capitals of the Commonwealth's two component parts, Poland and Lithuania, which were Krak\u00f3w and Vilnius respectively, Warsaw became the capital of the Commonwealth and the Polish Crown when Sigismund III Vasa transferred his royal court in 1596. In the subsequent years the town significantly expanded to the south and westwards. Several private independent districts (\"jurydyka\") were the property of aristocrats and the gentry, which they ruled by their own laws. Between 1655 and 1658 the city was besieged and pillaged by the Swedish, Brandenburgian and Transylvanian forces. The conduct of the Great Northern War (1700\u20131721) also forced Warsaw to pay heavy tributes to the invading armies.\nThe reign of Augustus II and Augustus III was a time of great development for Warsaw, which turned into an early-capitalist city. The Saxon monarchs employed many German architects, sculptors and engineers, who rebuilt the city in a style similar to Dresden. The year 1727 marked the opening of the Saxon Garden in Warsaw, the first publicly accessible park. The Za\u0142uski Library, the first Polish public library and the largest at the time, was founded in 1747. Stanis\u0142aw II Augustus, who remodelled the interior of the Royal Castle, also made Warsaw a centre of culture and the arts. He extended the Royal Baths Park and ordered the construction or refurbishment of numerous palaces, mansions and richly-decorated tenements. This earned Warsaw the nickname \"Paris of the North\".\nWarsaw remained the capital of the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1795 when it was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia in the third and final partition of Poland; it subsequently became the capital of the province of South Prussia. During this time, Louis XVIII of France spent his exile in Warsaw under the pseudonym \"Comte de Lille\".\n1800\u20131939.\nWarsaw was made the capital of a newly created French client state, known as the Duchy of Warsaw, after a portion of Poland's territory was liberated from Prussia, Russia and Austria by Napoleon in 1806. Following Napoleon's defeat and exile, the 1815 Congress of Vienna assigned Warsaw to Congress Poland, a constitutional monarchy within the easternmost sector (or partition) under a personal union with Imperial Russia. The Royal University of Warsaw was established in 1816.\nWith the violation of the Polish constitution, the 1830 November Uprising broke out against foreign influence. The Polish-Russian war of 1831 ended in the uprising's defeat and in the curtailment of Congress Poland's autonomy. On 27 February 1861, a Warsaw crowd protesting against Russian control over Congress Poland was fired upon by Russian troops. Five people were killed. The Underground Polish National Government resided in Warsaw during the January Uprising in 1863\u201364.\nWarsaw flourished throughout the 19th century under Mayor Sokrates Starynkiewicz (1875\u201392), who was appointed by Alexander III. Under Starynkiewicz Warsaw saw its first water and sewer systems designed and built by the English engineer William Lindley and his son, William Heerlein Lindley, as well as the expansion and modernisation of trams, street lighting, and gas infrastructure. Between 1850 and 1882, the population grew by 134% to 383,000 as a result of rapid urbanisation and industrialisation. Many migrated from surrounding rural Masovian towns and villages to the city for employment opportunities. The western borough of Wola was transformed from an agricultural periphery occupied mostly by small farms and windmills (mills being the namesake of Wola's central neighbourhood M\u0142yn\u00f3w) to an industrial and manufacturing centre. Metallurgical, textile and glassware factories were commonplace, with chimneys dominating the westernmost skyline.\nLike London, Warsaw's population was subjected to income segmentation. Gentrification of inner suburbs forced poorer residents to move across the river into Praga or Powi\u015ble and Solec districts, similar to the East End of London and London Docklands. Poorer religious and ethnic minorities, such as the Jews, settled in the crowded parts of northern Warsaw, in Muran\u00f3w. The Imperial Census of 1897 recorded 626,000 people living in Warsaw, making it the third-largest city of the Empire after St. Petersburg and Moscow as well as the largest city in the region. Grand architectural complexes and structures were also erected in the city centre, including the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Church of the Holiest Saviour and tenements along Marsza\u0142kowska Street.\nDuring World War I, Warsaw was occupied by Germany from 4 August 1915 until November 1918. The Armistice of 11 November 1918 concluded that defeated Germany is to withdraw from all foreign areas, which included Warsaw. Germany did so, and underground leader J\u00f3zef Pi\u0142sudski returned to Warsaw on the same day which marked the beginning of the Second Polish Republic, the first truly sovereign Polish state after 1795. In the course of the Polish\u2013Soviet War (1919\u20131921), the 1920 Battle of Warsaw was fought on the eastern outskirts of the city. Poland successfully defended the capital, stopped the brunt of the Bolshevik Red Army and temporarily halted the \"export of the communist revolution\" to other parts of Europe.\nThe interwar period (1918\u20131939) was a time of major development in the city's infrastructure. New modernist housing estates were built in Mokot\u00f3w to de-clutter the densely populated inner suburbs. In 1921, Warsaw's total area was estimated at only 124.7\u00a0km2 with 1 million inhabitants\u2013over 8,000 people/km2 made Warsaw more densely populated than contemporary London. The \u015arednicowy Bridge was constructed for railway (1921\u20131931), connecting both parts of the city across the Vistula. Warszawa G\u0142\u00f3wna railway station (1932\u20131939) was not completed due to the outbreak of the Second World War.\nStefan Starzy\u0144ski was the Mayor of Warsaw between 1934 and 1939.\nSecond World War.\nAfter the German Invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 started the Second World War, Warsaw was defended until 27 September. Central Poland, including Warsaw, came under the rule of the General Government, a German Nazi colonial administration. All higher education institutions were immediately closed and Warsaw's entire Jewish population \u2013 several hundred thousand, some 30% of the city\u00a0\u2013 were herded into the Warsaw Ghetto. In July 1942, the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto began to be deported en masse to the Aktion Reinhard extermination camps, particularly Treblinka. The city would become the centre of urban resistance to Nazi rule in occupied Europe. When the order came to annihilate the ghetto as part of Hitler's \"Final Solution\" on 19 April 1943, Jewish fighters launched the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Despite being heavily outgunned and outnumbered, the ghetto held out for almost a month. When the fighting ended, almost all survivors were massacred, with only a few managing to escape or hide.\nBy July 1944, the Red Army was deep into Polish territory and pursuing the Nazis toward Warsaw. The Polish government-in-exile in London gave orders to the underground Home Army (AK) to try to seize control of Warsaw before the Red Army arrived. Thus, on 1 August 1944, as the Red Army was nearing the city, the Warsaw uprising began. The armed struggle, planned to last 48 hours, was partially successful, however, it went on for 63 days. Eventually, the Home Army fighters and civilians assisting them were forced to capitulate. They were transported to PoW camps in Germany, while the entire civilian population was expelled. Polish civilian deaths are estimated at between 150,000 and 200,000.\nHitler, ignoring the agreed terms of the capitulation, ordered the entire city to be razed to the ground and the library and museum collections taken to Germany or burned. Monuments and government buildings were blown up by special German troops known as \"Verbrennungs- und Vernichtungskommando\" (\"Burning and Destruction Detachments\"). About 85% of the city was destroyed, including the historic Old Town and the Royal Castle.\nOn 17 January 1945\u00a0\u2013 after the beginning of the Vistula\u2013Oder Offensive of the Red Army\u00a0\u2013 Soviet troops and Polish troops of the First Polish Army entered the ruins of Warsaw, and liberated Warsaw's suburbs from German occupation. The city was swiftly freed by the Soviet Army, which rapidly advanced towards \u0141\u00f3d\u017a, as German forces regrouped at a more westward position.\n1945\u20131989.\nIn 1945, after the bombings, revolts, fighting, and demolition had ended, most of Warsaw lay in ruins. The area of the former ghetto was razed to the ground, with only a sea of rubble remaining. The immense destruction prompted a temporary transfer of the new government and its officials to \u0141\u00f3d\u017a, which became the transitional seat of power. Nevertheless, Warsaw officially resumed its role as the capital of Poland and the country's centre of political and economic life.\nAfter World War II, the \"Bricks for Warsaw\" campaign was initiated and large prefabricated housing projects were erected in Warsaw to address the major housing shortage. Plattenbau-styled apartment buildings were seen as a solution to avoid Warsaw's former density problem and to create more green spaces. Some of the buildings from the 19th century that had survived in a reasonably reconstructible form were nonetheless demolished in the 1950s and 1960s, like the Kronenberg Palace. The \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie (central) region's urban system was completely reshaped; former cobblestone streets were asphalted and significantly widened for traffic use. Many notable streets such as G\u0119sia, Nalewki and Wielka disappeared as a result of these changes and some were split in half due to the construction of Plac Defilad (Parade Square), one of the largest of its kind in Europe.\nMuch of the central district was also designated for future skyscrapers. The 237-metre Palace of Culture and Science resembling New York's Empire State Building was built as a gift from the Soviet Union. Warsaw's urban landscape is one of modern and contemporary architecture. Despite wartime destruction and post-war remodelling, many of the historic streets, buildings, and churches were restored to their original form.\nJohn Paul II's visits to his native country in 1979 and 1983 brought support to the budding \"Solidarity\" movement and encouraged the growing anti-communist fervor there. In 1979, less than a year after becoming pope, John Paul celebrated Mass in Victory Square in Warsaw and ended his sermon with a call to \"renew the face\" of Poland. These words were meaningful for Varsovians and Poles who understood them as the incentive for liberal-democratic reforms.\n1989\u2013present.\nIn 1995, the Warsaw Metro opened with a single line. A second line was opened in March 2015. On 28 September 2022, three new Warsaw metro stations were opened, increasing the number of Warsaw Metro stations to 36 and its length to 38.3 kilometers. In February 2023, Warsaw's mayor, Rafa\u0142 Trzaskowski, announced plans to more than double the size of the city's metro system by 2050.\nWith the entry of Poland into the European Union in 2004,[ [update]] Warsaw is experiencing a large economic boom. The opening fixture of UEFA Euro 2012 took place in Warsaw and the city also hosted the 2013 United Nations Climate Change Conference and the 2016 NATO Summit. As of August 2022, Warsaw had received around 180,000 refugees from Ukraine, because of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The amount means a tenth of the Polish capital's population of 1.8 million \u2014 the second-largest single group of Ukrainian refugees.\nGeography.\nLocation and topography.\nWarsaw lies in east-central Poland about from the Carpathian Mountains and about from the Baltic Sea, east of Berlin, Germany. The city straddles the Vistula River. It is located in the heartland of the Masovian Plain, and its average elevation is above sea level. The highest point on the West side of the city lies at a height of (\"Redutowa\" bus depot, district of Wola), on the East side\u00a0\u2013 (\"Grosz\u00f3wka\" estate, district of Weso\u0142a, by the eastern border). The lowest point lies at a height (at the right bank of the Vistula, by the eastern border of Warsaw). There are some hills (mostly artificial) located within the confines of the city\u00a0\u2013 e.g. Warsaw Uprising Hill () and Szcz\u0119\u015bliwice hill (\u00a0\u2013 the highest point of Warsaw in general).\nWarsaw is located on two main geomorphologic formations: the plain moraine plateau and the Vistula Valley with its asymmetrical pattern of different terraces. The Vistula River is the specific axis of Warsaw, which divides the city into two parts, left and right. The left one is situated both on the moraine plateau ( above Vistula level) and on the Vistula terraces (max. above Vistula level). The significant element of the relief, in this part of Warsaw, is the edge of moraine plateau called Warsaw Escarpment. It is high in the Old Town and Central district and about in the north and south of Warsaw. It goes through the city and plays an important role as a landmark.\nThe plain moraine plateau has only a few natural and artificial ponds and also groups of clay pits. The pattern of the Vistula terraces is asymmetrical. The left side consists mainly of two levels: the highest one contains former flooded terraces and the lowest one is the floodplain terrace. The contemporary flooded terrace still has visible valleys and ground depressions with water systems coming from the old Vistula\u00a0\u2013 riverbed. They consist of still quite natural streams and lakes as well as the pattern of drainage ditches. The right side of Warsaw has a different pattern of geomorphological forms. There are several levels of the Vistula plain terraces (flooded as well as formerly flooded), and only a small part is a not-so-visible moraine escarpment. Aeolian sand with a number of dunes parted by peat swamps or small ponds cover the highest terrace. These are mainly forested areas (pine forest).\nClimate.\nWarsaw experiences an oceanic (K\u00f6ppen: \"Cfb)\" or humid continental (K\u00f6ppen: \"Dfb)\" climate, depending on the isotherm used; although the city used to be humid continental regardless of isotherm prior to the recent effect of climate change and the city's urban heat island. Meanwhile, by the genetic climate classification of Wincenty Oko\u0142owicz, it has a temperate \"fusion\" climate, with both oceanic and continental features.\nThe city has cold, sometimes snowy, cloudy winters, and warm, relatively sunny but frequently stormy summers. Spring and autumn can be unpredictable, highly prone to sudden weather changes; however, temperatures are usually mild, especially around May and September. The daily average temperature ranges between in January and in July and the mean year temperature is . Temperatures may reach in the summer, although the effects of hot weather are usually offset by relatively low dew points and large diurnal temperature differences. Warsaw is Europe's sixth driest major city (driest in Central Europe), with yearly rainfall averaging , the wettest month being July.\nCityscape.\nUrbanism and architecture.\nWarsaw's long and eclectic history left a noticeable mark on its architecture and urban form. Unlike most Polish cities, Warsaw's cityscape is mostly contemporary \u2013 modern glass buildings are towering above older historical edifices which is a common feature of North American metropolises. Warsaw is among the European cities with the highest number of skyscrapers and is home to European Union's tallest building. Skyscrapers are mostly centered around the \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie district, with many located in the commercial district of Wola. A concentric zone pattern emerged within the last decades; the majority of Warsaw's residents live outside the commercial city centre and commute by metro, bus or tram. Tenements and apartments in the central neighbourhoods are often reserved for commercial activity or temporary (tourist, student) accommodation. The nearest residential zones are predominantly located on the outskirts of the inner borough, in Ochota, Mokot\u00f3w and \u017boliborz or along the Vistula in Powi\u015ble.\nA seat of Polish monarchs since the end of the 16th century, Warsaw remained a small city with only privately owned palaces, mansions, villas and several streets of townhouses. These displayed a richness of color and architectonic details. The finest German, Italian and Dutch architects were employed, among them Tylman van Gameren, Andreas Schl\u00fcter, Jakub Fontana, and Enrico Marconi. The buildings situated in the vicinity of the Warsaw Old Town represent nearly every European architectural style and historical period. Warsaw has excellent examples of architecture from the Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassical periods, all of which are located within walking distance of the centre. This architectural richness has led to Warsaw being described by some commentators as a \"Paris of the East\".\nGothic architecture is represented in the majestic churches but also at the burgher houses and fortifications. The most significant buildings are St John's Cathedral (1390), a typical example of the so-called Masovian Brick Gothic style; St Mary's Church (1411); the Burbach townhouse (14th century); Gunpowder Tower (after 1379); and Royal Castle's \"Curia Maior\" (1407\u20131410). The most notable examples of Renaissance architecture in the city are the house of the Baryczko merchant family (1562), a building called \"The Negro\" (early 17th century), and Salwator tenement (1632), all situated on the Old Market Place. The most interesting examples of Mannerist architecture are the Royal Castle (1596\u20131619) and the Jesuit Church (1609\u20131626).\nBaroque architecture arrived in Warsaw at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries with the artists from the court circle of King Sigismund III Vasa (the early Warsaw Baroque is referred to as Vasa Baroque). Among the first structures of the early Baroque, the most important are St. Hyacinth's Church and Sigismund's Column, the first secular monument in the form of a column in modern history. At that time, part of the Royal Castle was rebuilt in this style, the Ujazd\u00f3w Castle and numerous Baroque palaces on the Vistula escarpment were constructed. In the architecture of Catholic churches, the Counter-Reformation type became a novelty, exemplified by the Church of St. Anthony of Padua, the Carmelite Church and the Holy Cross Church.\nWarsaw Baroque from the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries was characterized by building facades with a predominance of vertical elements close to the wall and numerous ornaments. The most important architect working in Warsaw at that time was Tylman van Gameren. His projects include the Krasi\u0144ski Palace, Palace of the Four Winds, Ostrogski Palace, Czapski Palace, Br\u00fchl Palace, and St. Kazimierz Church. The most significant Baroque building of this period is the Wilan\u00f3w Palace, built on the order of King John III Sobieski.\nThe late Baroque era was the epoch of the Saxon Kings (1697\u20131763). During this time, three major spatial projects were realized: the 880-meter Piaseczy\u0144ski Canal on the axis of Ujazd\u00f3w Castle, the Ujazd\u00f3w Calvary and the Saxon Axis. The Visitationist Church also dates from this period.\nThe neoclassical architecture began to be the main style in the capital's architecture in Warsaw in the second half of the 18th century thanks to King Stanis\u0142aw August Poniatowski. It can be described by the simplicity of the geometrical forms teamed with a great inspiration from the Roman period. The best-known architect who worked in Warsaw at the time was Domenico Merlini, who designed the Palace on the Isle. Other significant buildings from this period include Kr\u00f3likarnia, Holy Trinity Church, St. Anne's Church, Warsaw.\nAlso in the first half of the 19th century, neoclassicism dominated the architecture of Warsaw. Old buildings were rebuilt and new ones were built in this style. The neoclassical revival affected all aspects of architecture; the most notable examples are the Great Theater, buildings located at Bank Square, headquarters of the Warsaw Society of Friends of Sciences (Staszic Palace), St. Alexander's Church, the Belweder. Many classicist tenement houses were built on Senatorska Street and along Nowy \u015awiat Street. After the outbreak of the November Uprising, the Warsaw Citadel was constructed in the north of the city, and the Saxon Palace underwent a complete reconstruction, where the central body of the building was demolished and replaced by a monumental 11-bay colonnade.\nIn the mid-19th century, the industrial revolution reached Warsaw, leading to the mass use of iron as a building material. In 1845, the Warsaw-Vienna Railway Station was opened. Another important aspect of the developing city was ensuring access to water and sewage disposal. The first modern Warsaw water supply system was launched in 1855, designed by one of the most outstanding architects of that period \u2013 Enrico Marconi, who designed also All Saints Church. The dynamic development of the railway became a factor that enabled equally dynamic development of Warsaw's industry. Among the establishments built at that time were the Wedel factory and the extensive Municipal Gasworks complex.\nIn the architecture of the 1920s, national historicism and other historical forms were dominant. Art Deco forms also appeared, and towards the end of the decade, avant-garde functionalism emerged. The creation of urban plans for the capital of Poland can be traced back to 1916, when, after the retreat of the Russians from Warsaw and the beginnings of the German occupation, the territories of the surrounding municipalities were annexed to the city. Even before Poland regained its independence, parallel to the creation of the administration of the future state, the first urban visions were emerging. These included, among others, the construction of a representative government district in the southern part of \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie. However, major changes in urban planning and the architectural landscape of the city only began in the mid-1920s. The forming state structures needed headquarters, leading to the construction of many monumental public buildings, including the buildings of the Sejm and the Senate, the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Public Education, the Ministry of Public Works, the National Museum, the State Geological Institute, the State Agricultural Bank, the Domestic Economy Bank, the directorate of the Polish State Railways, the Supreme Audit Office, and the campus of the Warsaw School of Economics. New districts were also established in \u017boliborz, Ochota, and Mokot\u00f3w, often designed around a central square with radiating streets (Narutowicz Square, Wilson Square). Examples of new large urban projects are the Staszic and Lubecki colonies in Ochota.\nExceptional examples of the bourgeois architecture of the later periods were not restored by the communist authorities after the war or were remodelled into a socialist realist style (like Warsaw Philharmonic edifice originally inspired by Palais Garnier in Paris). Despite that, the Warsaw University of Technology (Polytechnic) building. is the most interesting of the late 19th-century architecture. Some 19th-century industrial and brick workhouse buildings in the Praga district were restored, though many have been poorly maintained or demolished. Notable examples of post-war architecture include the Palace of Culture and Science, a soc-realist and art deco skyscraper based on the Empire State Building in New York. The Constitution Square with its monumental socialist realism architecture (MDM estate) was modelled on the grand squares of Paris, London, Moscow and Rome. Italianate tuscan-styled colonnades based on those at Piazza della Repubblica in Rome were also erected on Saviour Square.\nContemporary architecture in Warsaw is represented by the Metropolitan Office Building at Pilsudski Square and Varso tower, both by Norman Foster, Warsaw University Library (BUW) by Marek Budzy\u0144ski and Zbigniew Badowski, featuring a garden on its roof and view of the Vistula River, Rondo 1 office building by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Z\u0142ota 44 residential skyscraper by Daniel Libeskind, Museum of the History of Polish Jews by Rainer Mahlam\u00e4ki and Golden Terraces, consisting of seven overlapping domes retail and business centre. Jointly with Moscow, Istanbul, Frankfurt, London, Paris and Rotterdam, Warsaw is one of the cities with the highest number of skyscrapers in Europe.\nLandmarks.\nAlthough contemporary Warsaw is a fairly young city compared to other European capitals, it has numerous tourist attractions and architectural monuments dating back centuries. Apart from the Warsaw Old Town area, reconstructed after World War II, each borough has something to offer. Among the most notable landmarks of the Old Town are the Royal Castle, Sigismund's Column, Market Square, and the Barbican.\nFurther south is the so-called Royal Route, with many historical churches, Baroque and Classicist palaces, most notably the Presidential Palace, and the University of Warsaw campus. The former royal residence of King John III Sobieski at Wilan\u00f3w is notable for its Baroque architecture and eloquent palatial garden.\nIn many places in the city the Jewish culture and history resonates down through time. Among them the most notable are the Jewish theater, the No\u017cyk Synagogue, Janusz Korczak's Orphanage and the picturesque Pr\u00f3\u017cna Street. The tragic pages of Warsaw's history are commemorated in places such as the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, the Umschlagplatz, fragments of the ghetto wall on Sienna Street and a mound in memory of the Jewish Combat Organization.\nMany places commemorate the heroic history of Warsaw such as Pawiak, a German Gestapo prison now occupied by a Mausoleum of Memory of Martyrdom and a museum. The Warsaw Citadel, a 19th-century fortification built after the defeat of the November Uprising, was a place of martyrdom for the Poles. Another important monument, the statue of Little Insurrectionist located at the ramparts of the Old Town, commemorates the children who served as messengers and frontline troops in the Warsaw Uprising, while the Warsaw Uprising Monument by Wincenty Ku\u0107ma was erected in memory of the largest insurrection of World War II.\nIn Warsaw there are many places connected with the life and work of Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin who was born near the city in \u017belazowa Wola. The heart of the Polish composer is sealed inside Warsaw's Holy Cross Church. During the summer time the Chopin Statue in \u0141azienki Park is a place where pianists give concerts to the park audience.\nAlso many references to Marie Curie, her work and her family can be found in Warsaw; Curie's birthplace at the Warsaw New Town, the working places where she did her first scientific works and the Radium Institute at Wawelska Street for the research and the treatment of which she founded in 1925.\nCemeteries.\nThe oldest necropolis in Warsaw is Stare Pow\u0105zki, established in 1790. It is one of Poland's national necropolises.\nThe cemetery covers an area of 43 ha. On the day of consecration of the Pow\u0105zki Cemetery, the foundation stone was laid for the construction of the church of Saint Charles Borromeo, designed by the royal architect Domenico Merlini. Catacombs were intended to be a prestigious resting place intended mainly for the nobles, such as Micha\u0142 Poniatowski, Hugo Ko\u0142\u0142\u0105taj, Micha\u0142 Kazimierz Ogi\u0144ski. Over a million people are buried at Stare Pow\u0105zki. In the Avenue of Merit there are the graves of insurgents and soldiers, independence activists, writers, poets, scientists, artists and thinkers. The nearby Pow\u0105zki Military Cemetery was established in 1912 for soldiers stationed in Warsaw. After World War II, the cemetery became a burial place for people associated with the Polish People's Republic - politicians, officials and military personnel.\nThe complex of non-Roman Catholic cemeteries consists of Evangelical\u2013Augsburg Cemetery, Evangelical Reformed Cemetery, Jewish Cemetery, Orthodox Cemetery and Muslim Tatar Cemetery. Other significant Warsaw necropolises are: Br\u00f3dno Cemetery Warsaw Insurgents Cemetery, S\u0142u\u017cew Old Cemetery, S\u0142u\u017cew New Cemetery. There are two large municipal cemeteries in the city \u2013 Northern Communal Cemetery and Southern Communal Cemetery.\nMemorials.\nThe city's symbol is the mermaid placed in the capital's coat of arms. There are three mermaid monuments in Warsaw: one on the banks of the Vistula, the second on the Old Town Square, and the third in Praga-Po\u0142udnie. The oldest monument in Warsaw is the Sigismund's Column. It was built in 1644 according to the design of the Italians: Augustine Locci and Constantin Tencall. The King of Poland Sigismund III Vasa stands on a 22-meter high tower, holding a cross and a sword in his hand. The monument was destroyed and rebuilt many times.\nMany monuments commemorate heroic and tragic moments in the history of Poland and Warsaw. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier located in Pi\u0142sudski Square was built on the initiative of General W\u0142adys\u0142aw Sikorski in the arcades of the Saxon Palace. In 1925, the ashes of the unknown soldier who died during the defense of Lviv were placed under the colonnade, then urns with soil from 24 battlefields were buried here. Among the monuments related to the World War II are Nike Monument that commemorates the heroes of Warsaw from 1939 to 1945, Monument to the Polish Underground State and Home Army, Monument to the Little Insurrectionist and Warsaw Uprising Monument in front of the Supreme Court building at Krasi\u0144ski Square. Monument to the Ghetto Heroes commemorates the\u00a0Warsaw Ghetto Uprising\u00a0of 1943.\nIn 1929, a monument to Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin was constructed in the Royal \u0141azienki Park. Every summer at its foot classical music concerts featuring world-famous pianists take place. Other important monuments are: Adam Mickiewicz Monument, Tadeusz Ko\u015bciuszko Monument, Marie Curie Monument, Prince J\u00f3zef Poniatowski Monument, Nicolaus Copernicus Monument, Stefan Starzy\u0144ski Monument, J\u00f3zef Pi\u0142sudski Monument, Janusz Korczak Monument.\nFlora and fauna.\nGreen space covers almost a quarter of Warsaw's total area. These range from small neighborhood parks and green spaces along streets or in courtyards, to tree-lined avenues, large historic parks, nature conservation areas and urban forests at the fringe of the city. There are as many as 82 parks in the city; the oldest ones were once part of representative palaces and include the Saxon and Krasi\u0144ski Gardens, \u0141azienki Park (Royal Baths Park) and Wilan\u00f3w Palace Parkland.\nThe Saxon Garden, covering an area of 15.5 ha, formally served as a royal garden to the now nonexistent Saxon Palace. In 1727, it was made into one of the world's first public parks and later remodelled in the forest-like English style. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is situated at the east end of the park near the central fountain, on Pi\u0142sudski Square. With its benches, flower carpets and a central pond, the Krasi\u0144ski Palace Garden was once a notable strolling destination for most Varsovians. The \u0141azienki Park covers an area of 76 ha and its unique character and history is reflected in the landscape architecture (pavilions, sculptures, bridges, water cascades) and vegetation (domestic and foreign species of trees and shrubs). The presence of peacocks, pheasants and squirrels at \u0141azienki attracts tourists and locals. The Wilan\u00f3w Palace Parkland on the outskirts of Warsaw traces it history to the second half of the 17th century and covers an area of 43 ha. Its French-styled alleys corresponds to the ancient, Baroque forms of the palace.\nThe Botanical Garden and the University Library rooftop garden host an extensive collection of rare domestic and foreign plants, while a palm house in the New Orangery displays plants of subtropics from all over the world. Mokot\u00f3w Field (once a racetrack), Ujazd\u00f3w Park and Skaryszewski Park are also located within the city borders. The oldest park in the Praga borough was established between 1865 and 1871.\nThe flora of Warsaw may be considered very rich in species on city standards. This is mainly due to the location of Warsaw within the border region of several big floral regions comprising substantial proportions of close-to-wilderness areas (natural forests, wetlands along the Vistula) as well as arable land, meadows and forests. The nearby Kampinos Nature Reserve is the last remaining part of the Masovian Primeval Forest and is protected by law. The Kabaty Woods are by the southern city border and are visited by the residents of southern boroughs such as Ursyn\u00f3w. There are 13 natural reserves in the vicinity and just from Warsaw, the environment features a perfectly preserved ecosystem with a habitat of animals like the otter, beavers and hundreds of bird species. There are also several lakes in Warsaw\u00a0\u2013 mainly the oxbow lakes at Czerniak\u00f3w and Kamionek.\nThe Warsaw Zoo covers an area of . There are about 5,000 animals representing nearly 500 species. Although officially created in 1928, it traces back its roots to 17th century private menageries, often open to the public.\nDemographics.\nDemographically, Warsaw was the most diverse city in Poland, with significant numbers of foreign-born residents. In addition to the Polish majority, there was a large and thriving Jewish minority. According to the Imperial Census of 1897, out of the total population of 638,000, Jews constituted 219,000 (equivalent to 34%). Prior to the Second World War, Warsaw hosted the world's second largest Jewish population after New York \u2013 approximately 30 percent of the city's total population in the late 1930s. In 1933, 833,500 out of 1,178,914 people declared Polish as their mother tongue. There was also a notable German community. The ethnic composition of contemporary Warsaw is incomparable to the diversity that existed for nearly 300 years. Most of the modern-day population growth is based on internal migration and urbanisation. In the 2021 census, 98.78% of Warsaw residents identified themselves as Polish, 0.46% as Ukrainian, 0.31% as Belarusian and 0.21% as Jewish.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nIn 1939, approximately 1,300,000 people resided in Warsaw; by 1945 the population had dropped to 420,000. During the first years after the war, the population growth rate was high and the city soon began to suffer from the lack of flats and dwellings to house new incomers. The first remedial measure was the enlargement of Warsaw's total area (1951)\u00a0\u2013 however the city authorities were still forced to introduce limitations; only the spouses and children of permanent residents as well as some persons of public importance (renowned specialists, artists, engineers) were permitted to stay. This negatively affected the image of an average Warsaw citizen, who was perceived as more privileged than those migrating from rural areas, towns or other cities. While all restrictions on residency registration were scrapped in 1990, the negative opinion of Varsovians in some form continues to this day.\nWarsaw metropolitan area is an example of the development of a strongly polarized region. The capital, along with its immediate surroundings, concentrates over half of the demographic potential of the Masovian Voivodeship, 2/3 of residents with higher education, and 3/4 of larger economic entities employing more than 50 workers.\nCurrent demographic development trends are as follows:\nIn the coming years, an increase in the city's population is predicted, with migration being the main factor determining the state and structure of Warsaw's population, including mainly internal (national) and external (foreign) influx. Changes in the population are not uniform for the entire Warsaw and in the division into districts, the predicted demographic changes will have a varied course. A decrease in population is forecasted in some central districts (Praga-P\u00f3\u0142noc, \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie) and an increase in other districts.\nImmigrant population.\nIn 2019, it was estimated that 40,000 people living in Warsaw were foreign-born. Of those, Ukrainians, Vietnamese, Belarusians, and Russians were the most prominent groups. After Russia's aggression against Ukraine, over 1.1 million refugees from Ukraine passed through Warsaw, and at the beginning of March 2022, approximately 40,000 people applied for help every day. According to official data, over 104,000 of Ukrainian citizens who arrived in the first days after the outbreak of the war still reside in the city, including 17,000 young people and children attending urban educational institutions. Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the immigrant population has increased significantly to about 340,000.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nThroughout its existence, Warsaw had been a multi-cultural and multi-religious city. According to the 1901 census, out of 711,988 inhabitants 56.2% were Catholics, 35.7% Jews, 5% Greek Orthodox Christians and 2.8% Protestants. Eight years later, in 1909, there were 281,754 Jews (36.9%), 18,189 Protestants (2.4%) and 2,818 Mariavites (0.4%). This led to construction of hundreds of places of religious worship in all parts of the town. Most of them were destroyed in the aftermath of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. After the war, the new communist authorities of Poland discouraged church construction and only a small number were rebuilt.\nThe archdiocese of Warsaw and the Diocese of Warsaw-Praga are the two ecclesiastical districts active in the city which serve the large Roman Catholic population of 1.4 million. The Lutheran Diocese of Warsaw is one of six in Poland; its main house of worship is the Holy Trinity Church from 1782, one of Warsaw's most important and historic landmarks. The Evangelical Reformed Parish (Calvinist) is leading the Polish Reformed Church. The main tserkva of the Orthodox Christians is Praga's Cathedral of St. Mary Magdalene from 1869. The Jewish Commune of Warsaw (\"Gmina Wyznaniowa \u017bydowska\") is one of eight in the country; Chief Rabbi of Poland Michael Schudrich resides in the city. There are also 3 active synagogues, one of which is the pre-war No\u017cyk Synagogue designated for Orthodox Jews. An Islamic Cultural Centre in Ochota and a small mosque in Wilan\u00f3w serve the Muslims.\nThere are several Marian shrines in the city, including: sanctuary of the Gracious Mother of God with her image crowned in 1651 in the presence of King John Casimir. Another patron of the city is Blessed W\u0142adys\u0142aw of Gielni\u00f3w, bernardine from the St. Anne's Church. The greatest cult is that of St. Andrew Bobola, patron of the metropolis of Warsaw, whose relics are in the sanctuary of St. Andrew Bobola in Mokot\u00f3w.\nGovernment and politics.\nAs the capital of Poland, Warsaw is the political centre of the country. Almost all central government institutions are located there, including the Chancellery of the President, both houses of the Polish Parliament (the lower house called Sejm and the upper house called Senate), the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, the Constitutional Tribunal, the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Administrative Court. Warsaw is also host to many major international organizations, including Frontex and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (the oldest and principal institution of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe).\nThe city is represented in the parliament by 20 members of Sejm (out of 460) and 4 senators (out of 100). In addition, Warsaw together with its metropolitan area elects 6 MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) out of 705.\nMunicipal government.\nThe first city mayor of Warsaw was Jan Andrzej Menich (1695\u20131696). The municipal self-government existed in Warsaw until World War II and was restored in 1990 (during the communist times, the National City Council\u00a0\u2013 \"Miejska Rada Narodowa\"\u00a0\u2013 governed in Warsaw). Since 1990, the structure of city government has been modified several times. Between 1975 and 1990 the Warsaw city mayors simultaneously led the Warsaw Voivodeship. In the years 1990\u20131994, the city mayor of Warsaw was elected by the city council. \nA controversial reform was introduced in 1994, which transformed the city into a loose municipal union of several gminas, dominated by one of them, the gmina Centrum encompassing the entire inner city. During this period, the mayor of gmina Centrum who was elected by its council was automatically designated as the city mayor of Warsaw, in spite of representing only a fraction of the population of the city. The city was becoming increasingly unmanageable, especially after the administrative reform of Poland in 1999 which further complicated the local government structure of Warsaw. In 2002, the new \"Warsaw Act\" of the Polish parliament restored Warsaw as a single urban gmina with the status of a city with powiat rights, led by a unified local government. At the same time, a significant reform was implemented in all Polish municipal governments, introducing direct elections of the w\u00f3jt/town mayor/city mayor in all Polish gminas. The first city mayor of Warsaw elected according to these rules was Lech Kaczy\u0144ski, who however resigned ahead of term when he was elected President of Polish Republic in 2005.\nWarsaw has thereafter remained an urban gmina with the status of a city with powiat rights. Legislative power in Warsaw is vested in a unicameral Warsaw City Council (\"Rada Miasta\"), which comprises 60 members. Council members are elected directly every five years (since 2018 election). Like most legislative bodies, the city council divides itself into committees which have the oversight of various functions of the city government. The city mayor exercises the executive power in the city, being the superior of all unelected municipal- or county-level officials and other employees and supervising all subsidiary entities of the city. The incumbent city mayor of Warsaw is Rafa\u0142 Trzaskowski.\nThe \"Warsaw Act\" imposes a mandatory division into 18 auxiliary units called \"dzielnica\" (district) on the city. In spite of remaining an integral part of the city as an entity, the districts have a degree of autonomy legally guaranteed through a form of an own local self-government exercising some powers devolved by law from the city. They have the duty to assist the city mayor and the City Council in their tasks, such as supervising some municipal companies, city-owned property or schools. Each of the 18 city districts has an own council (\"rada dzielnicy\") which elects an executive board (\"zarz\u0105d dzielnicy\") headed by a district mayor (\"burmistrz dzielnicy\"), the latter elected by the council among several candidates nominated by the city mayor of Warsaw among the council's members.\nDistricts.\nBia\u0142o\u0142\u0119ka\nBielany\nBemowo\n\u017boliborz\nPraga-P\u00f3\u0142noc\nTarg\u00f3wek\n\u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie\nWola\nOchota\nW\u0142ochy\nUrsus\nMokot\u00f3w\nWawer\nPraga-Po\u0142udnie\nRembert\u00f3w\nWeso\u0142a\nUrsyn\u00f3w\nWilan\u00f3w\nAs a result, Warsaw has thereafter continued as an urban gmina holding status of a city with powiat rights, divided into 18 districts (\"dzielnica\"), auxiliary municipal units established within the city as an entity as its integral parts, though with some limited powers devolved from the city to their own local self-governments. Each of the districts is customarily subdivided into several neighbourhoods lacking any meaningful legal or administrative powers. The central district of \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie includes the two founding neighbourhoods of the city, called the Old Town (\"Stare Miasto\") and the New Town (\"Nowe Miasto\").\nEconomy.\nWarsaw is the leading economic and financial hub of the Visegr\u00e1d Group and the Three Seas Initiative. In 2021, the city's gross metropolitan product (GDP) was estimated at \u20ac100 billion, which places Warsaw 20th among the metropolitan areas in the European Union with largest GDP. Warsaw generates almost 1/5 of the Polish GDP and the country's national income. In 2020, Warsaw was classified as a global city, because Warsaw is a major global city that links economic regions into the world economy.\nWarsaw's city centre (\u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie) and commercial Wola district are home not only to many national institutions and government agencies, but also to many domestic and international companies. Warsaw's ever-growing business community has been noticed globally, regionally, and nationally. In 2019 Warsaw was one of the top destinations for foreign investors in Europe.\nThe average monthly gross salary in the enterprise sector in the last quarter of 2022 amounted to 8,104 PLN and was 404 PLN higher than the average in the Masovian Voivodeship and as much as 1,450 PLN higher than in Poland. The highest gross salary was received by employees working in the information and communication section (11,701.47 PLN). There are 525,475 registered business entities in Warsaw, most of them in the districts of \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie, Mokot\u00f3w, Wola and Praga-Po\u0142udnie, 1.1 million people work in the enterprise sector. Warsaw has a well-developed office base, the office space is 6.27 million m2. The largest office buildings are Varso (63,800 m2), Warsaw Spire (60 000 m2), Forest Tower (51,500 m2) and P180 (32,000 m2), the largest projects under construction are The Bridge (47,000 m2) and Skyliner II (38,000 m2). The space resources of shopping centers in the Warsaw agglomeration in amount to over 1.7 million m2.\nIn October 2019 Warsaw's unemployment rate was 1.3%, the lowest in the country. Shopping and consumerism is an important component of Warsaw's economy. The retail streets in Warsaw are New World Street (\"Nowy \u015awiat\") along with Krakowskie Przedmie\u015bcie. These streets and their neighboring areas host many luxury stores and popular restaurants. However, most retailers choose to operate in the central shopping centres and malls such as Z\u0142ote Tarasy-Golden Terraces, Galeria Mokot\u00f3w and Westfield Arkadia. Luxury goods as well as designer labels can be found in the Vitkac Department Store and around Frascati.\nWarsaw Stock Exchange.\nWarsaw's first stock exchange was established in 1817 and continued trading until World War II. It was re-established in April 1991, following the end of a communist planned economy and the reintroduction of a free-market economy. Today, the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) is, according to many indicators, the largest market in the region, with 433 companies listed and total capitalisation of 1 trillion PLN as of 26 November 2020. From 1991 until 2000, the stock exchange was, ironically, located in the building previously used as the headquarters of the communist Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR).\nIndustry.\nThe most prominent industries and industrial sectors include high-tech, electrotechnical, chemical, cosmetic, construction, food processing, printing, metallurgy, machinery and clothing. The majority of production plants and facilities are concentrated within the WOP Warsaw Industrial Precinct (\"Warszawski Okr\u0119g Przemys\u0142owy\") which is situated around the city's peripheral localities such as Praga, Pruszk\u00f3w, Sochaczew, Piaseczno, Marki and \u017byrard\u00f3w. Warsaw has developed a particularly strong retail market/sector, representing around 13% of the total retail stock in the country.\nFollowing World War II, the authorities decided that the city will be transformed into a major centre for heavy industry and manufacturing. As a result, numerous large factories and production facilities were built in and around the city. Among the largest were \"Huta Warszawa\" steel works, now arcelor), the Ursus SA, and the Fabryka Samochod\u00f3w Osobowych (FSO) car factory. The now-defunct FSO, established in 1951, was once Warsaw's most successful corporation. Notable vehicles assembled there over the decades include the FSO Warszawa, FSO Syrena, Polski Fiat 125p and the FSO Polonez. In 1995, the factory was purchased by the South Korean car manufacturer Daewoo, which assembled its models in Warsaw for the European market.\nTourism.\nThe estimated number of tourist arrivals to Warsaw in 2022 was over 9 million. Most tourists came from the United Kingdom (347,000), Germany (321,000), the United States (206,000) and France (145,000). Additionally, Warsaw was visited by 5.8 million one-day tourists, giving a total of over 14.8 million tourists in 2022. The above data does not include Ukrainian citizens who came to Warsaw in connection with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The accommodation base consists of 1,010 hotels offering over 56,000 beds. The estimated contribution of the tourism economy to Warsaw's GDP is 12.9 billion PLN, and the tourism industry employs 87,703 people.\n144,220 people used Warsaw Tourist Lines in 2022 - almost 14,000 more than previous year. In the summer, Warsaw residents and tourists could use ferries across the Vistula, a ship to Serock, bus and tram lines operated with historic rolling stock, and a narrow-gauge railway. The most popular attraction among tourists was the Royal \u0141azienki Museum, which was visited by 5,265,110 tourists.\nWarsaw is an important center for conferences and congresses. The Warsaw Convention Bureau collected information on 9,000 events in 2022, which gathered a total of 1,240,467 participants in Warsaw.\nMedia and film.\nWarsaw is the media centre of Poland, and the location of the main headquarters of TVP and other numerous local and national TV and radio stations, such as Polskie Radio (Polish Radio), TVN, Polsat, TV4, TV Puls, Canal+ Poland, Cyfra+ and MTV Poland. Warsaw also has a sizable movie and television industry. The city houses several movie companies and studios.\nSince May 1661 the first Polish newspaper, the \"Polish Ordinary Mercury\", was printed in Warsaw. The city is also the printing capital of Poland with a wide variety of domestic and foreign periodicals expressing diverse views, and domestic newspapers are extremely competitive. \"Rzeczpospolita\", and \"Dziennik Polska-Europa-\u015awiat\", Poland's large nationwide daily newspapers, have their headquarters in Warsaw.\nSince World War II, Warsaw has been the most important centre of film production in Poland. Among the movie companies are TOR, Czo\u0142\u00f3wka, Zebra and Kadr which is behind several international movie productions. The city itself has featured in numerous movies, both Polish and foreign, for example: \"Kana\u0142\" and \"Korczak\" by Andrzej Wajda and \"The Decalogue\" by Krzysztof Kie\u015blowski, also including Oscar winner \"The Pianist\" by Roman Pola\u0144ski. It is also home to the National Film Archive, which, since 1955, has been collecting and preserving Polish film culture.\nEducation.\nWarsaw holds some of the finest institutions of higher education in Poland. It is home to four major universities and over 62 smaller schools of higher education. The overall number of students of all grades of education in Warsaw is almost 500,000 (29.2% of the city population; 2002). The number of university students is over 280,000. Most of the reputable universities are public, but in recent years there has also been an upsurge in the number of private universities.\nThe University of Warsaw was established in 1816, when the partitions of Poland separated Warsaw from the oldest and most influential Polish academic center, in Krak\u00f3w. The university is the largest in the country, and often regarded as one of the most prestigious, with international recognition in mathematics and science. Warsaw University of Technology is the second academic school of technology in the country, and one of the largest in East-Central Europe. Other institutions for higher education include the Medical University of Warsaw, the largest medical school in Poland and one of the most prestigious; the National Defence University, the highest military academic institution in Poland; the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music, the oldest and largest music school in Poland and one of the largest in Europe; the Warsaw School of Economics, the oldest and most renowned economic university in the country; the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, the largest agricultural university, founded in 1818; and the SWPS University, the first private secular university in the country.\nWarsaw has numerous libraries, many of which contain vast collections of historic documents. The most important library in terms of historic document collections is the National Library of Poland. The library holds 8.2\u00a0million volumes in its collection. Formed in 1928, it sees itself as a successor to the Za\u0142uski Library, the biggest in Poland and one of the first and biggest libraries in the world.\nAnother important library \u2013 the University Library, founded in 1816, is home to over two million items. The building was designed by architects Marek Budzy\u0144ski and Zbigniew Badowski and opened on 15 December 1999. It is surrounded by green. The University Library garden, designed by Irena Bajerska, was opened on 12 June 2002. It is one of the largest roof gardens in Europe with an area of more than , and plants covering . As the university garden it is open to the public every day.\nTransport.\nWarsaw is a considerable transport hub linking Western, Central and Eastern Europe. The city has a good network of buses and a continuously expanding perpendicular metro running north to south and east to west. The tram system is one of the biggest in Europe, with a total length of . As a result of increased foreign investment, economic growth and EU funding, the city has undertaken the construction of new roads, flyovers and bridges. The supervising body is the City Roads Authority (ZDM \u2013 \"Zarz\u0105d Dr\u00f3g Miejskich\").\nPublic transport.\nThe first section of the Warsaw Metro was opened in 1995 initially with a total of 11 stations. As of 2024, it has 39 stations running a distance of approximately .\nPublic transport also extends to light rail Warszawska Kolej Dojazdowa line, urban railway Szybka Kolej Miejska, regional rail Koleje Mazowieckie (Mazovian Railways), and bicycle sharing systems (Veturilo). The buses, trams, urban railway and Metro are managed by the Public Transport Authority and are collectively known as Warsaw Public Transport.\nThe table presents statistics on public transport in Warsaw.\nRoads.\nWarsaw lacks a complete ring road system and most traffic goes directly through the city centre, leading to the eleventh highest level of congestion in Europe. The Warsaw ring road has been planned to consist of four express roads: S2 (south), S8 (north-west) and S17 (east). S8, S2 and a small 3\u00a0km section of S17 are open. Additionally, the S2 and S8 have a concurrency with the S7 and the S2 has a short concurrency with the S8. A second ring road consisting of the A50 motorway (south) and S50 expressway (north) is also planned but it is unknown when construction will start.\nThe A2 motorway opened in June 2012, stretches west from Warsaw and is a direct motorway connection with \u0141\u00f3d\u017a, Pozna\u0144 and ultimately with Berlin.\nAviation.\nThe city has three international airports: Warsaw Chopin Airport, located just from the city centre, Warsaw-Radom Airport, located just south of Warsaw, which serves mainly low-cost and charter operations and finally Warsaw-Modlin Airport, located to the north, opened in July 2012. With around 100 international and domestic flights a day and with 7,440,056 passengers served in 2021, and it has also been called \"the most important and largest airport in Central Europe\".\nWarsaw Chopin Airport is the busiest airport in Poland a with 21.3 million passengers in 2024 handling approximately 40% of the country's total air passenger traffic. The airport is a central hub for LOT Polish Airlines as well as a base for Enter Air and Wizz Air. There are 50 air operations performed at the airport per hour. London, Frankfurt, Paris, and Amsterdam are the busiest international connections, while Krak\u00f3w, Wroc\u0142aw, and Gda\u0144sk are the most popular domestic ones. The complex contains 45 passenger gates, 27 of which are equipped with jetways. A rail link has been added to connect the city with the airport in 2012.\nRail.\nLong distance and intercity trains are operated by Polish State Railways (PKP). There are also some suburban bus lines run by private operators. Bus service covers the entire city, with approximately 256 routes totalling above , and with some 1,700 vehicles.\nThe main railway station is Warszawa Centralna serving both domestic traffic to almost every major city in Poland, and international connections. There are also five other major railway stations and a number of smaller suburban stations.\nCulture.\nMusic and theatre.\nThanks to numerous musical venues, including the \"Teatr Wielki\", the Polish National Opera, the Chamber Opera, the National Philharmonic Hall and the National Theatre, as well as the Roma and Buffo music theatres and the Congress Hall in the Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw hosts many events and festivals. Among the events worth particular attention are: the International Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin Piano Competition, the International Contemporary Music Festival Warsaw Autumn, the Jazz Jamboree, Warsaw Summer Jazz Days, the International Stanis\u0142aw Moniuszko Vocal Competition, the Mozart Festival, and the Festival of Old Music.\nWarsaw is also considered one of the European hubs of underground electronic music with a very attractive house and techno music scene.\nWarsaw is home to over 30 major theatres spread throughout the city, including the National Theatre (founded in 1765) and the Grand Theatre (established 1778).\nWarsaw also attracts many young and off-stream directors and performers who add to the city's theatrical culture. Their productions may be viewed mostly in smaller theatres and \"Houses of Culture\" (\"Domy Kultury\"), mostly outside \"\u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie\" (Central Warsaw). Warsaw hosts the International Theatrical Meetings.\nFrom 1833 to the outbreak of World War II, Plac Teatralny \"(Theatre Square)\" was the country's cultural hub and home to the various theatres. Plac Teatralny and its environs was the venue for numerous parades, celebrations of state holidays, carnival balls and concerts.\nThe main building housed the Great Theatre from 1833 to 1834, the Rozmaito\u015bci Theatre from 1836 to 1924 and then the National Theatre, the Reduta Theatre from 1919 to 1924, and from 1928 to 1939\u00a0\u2013 the Nowy Theatre, which staged productions of contemporary poetical drama, including those directed by Leon Schiller.\nNearby, in Ogr\u00f3d Saski (the Saxon Garden), the Summer Theatre was in operation from 1870 to 1939, and in the inter-war period, the theatre complex also included Momus, Warsaw's first literary cabaret, and Leon Schiller's musical theatre Melodram. The Wojciech Bogus\u0142awski Theatre (1922\u201326) was the best example of \"Polish monumental theatre\". From the mid-1930s, the Great Theatre building housed the Upati Institute of Dramatic Arts\u00a0\u2013 the first state-run academy of dramatic art, with an acting department and a stage directing department.\nMuseums and art galleries.\nThere are over 60 museums and galleries in Warsaw which are accessible to the public. Among the positions are the world's first Museum of Posters boasting one of the largest collections of art posters in the world, and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Among the most prestigious ones are the National Museum with a collection of works whose origin ranges in time from antiquity until the present epoch as well as one of the best collections of paintings in the country including some paintings from Adolf Hitler's private collection, and the Museum of the Polish Army whose set portrays the history of arms.\nThe collections of \u0141azienki and Wilan\u00f3w palaces focus on the paintings of the \"old masters\", as do those of the Royal Castle which displays the Lanckoro\u0144ski Collection including two paintings by Rembrandt. The Palace in Natolin, a former rural residence of Duke Czartoryski, is another venue with its interiors and park accessible to tourists.\nThe famous Copernicus Science Centre is an interactive science museum containing over 450 exhibits, enabling visitors to carry out experiments and discover the laws of science for themselves. Warsaw does not have a natural history museum. Yet, it hosts small museums of Evolution and the Earth, which play a similar role.\nHolding Poland's largest private collection of art, the Carroll Porczy\u0144ski Collection Museum displays works from such varied artists as Paris Bordone, Cornelis van Haarlem, Jos\u00e9 de Ribera, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Vincent van Gogh along with some copies of masterpieces of European painting.\nA fine tribute to the fall of Warsaw and history of Poland can be found in the Warsaw Uprising Museum and in the Katy\u0144 Museum which preserves the memory of that crime. The Warsaw Uprising Museum also operates a rare preserved and operating historic stereoscopic theatre, the Warsaw Fotoplastikon. The Museum of Independence preserves patriotic and political objects connected with Poland's struggles for independence. Dating back to 1936 the Warsaw Historical Museum contains 60 rooms which host a permanent exhibition of the history of Warsaw from its origins until today.\nThe 17th century Royal Ujazd\u00f3w Castle houses the Centre for Contemporary Art, with some permanent and temporary exhibitions, concerts, shows and creative workshops. The Centre realizes about 500 projects a year. The Zach\u0119ta National Gallery of Art, the oldest exhibition site in Warsaw, with a tradition stretching back to the mid-19th century organises exhibitions of modern art by Polish and International Artists and promotes art in many other ways. Since 2011, Warsaw Gallery Weekend is held on the last weekend of September.\n28 September 2023 the opening of the new building of the Museum of Polish History located at the Warsaw Citadel took place.\nThe city also possesses some oddities such as the Neon Museum, the Museum of Caricature, the Museum of John Paul II and Primate Wyszy\u0144ski, the Legia Warsaw Museum, and a Motorisation Museum in Otr\u0119busy.\nCuisine and food.\nWarsaw's culinary tradition was shaped by its once multicultural population; its cuisine is distinct from that of other cities and towns in Poland. Strong Jewish and French influences were cultivated over the years, in particular herring, consomm\u00e9, bagels, aspic and French meringue-based pastries or cakes. Traditional Varsovian food is hearty and includes a tripe soup for entr\u00e9e, a pyza dumpling for main and the iconic wuzetka (voo-zetka) chocolate cream pie for dessert. Crayfish and fish in gelatin were the classical dishes in Warsaw's restaurants throughout the 1920s and the 1930s.\nMuch like Paris or Vienna, Warsaw once possessed a prominent caf\u00e9 culture which dated back to the early 18th century, and the city's cafeterias were a place for socializing. The historic Wedel Chocolate Lounge on Szpitalna Street remains one of the most renowned spots for social gatherings. Cafeterias, confectioneries and patisseries such as Caff\u00e8 Nero, Costa Coffee and Starbucks are predominantly found along the Royal Route on New World Street. Thousands of Warsaw's residents also flock annually to the pastry workshops (\"p\u0105czkarnia\") to buy p\u0105czki doughnuts on Fat Thursday.\nRestaurants offering authentic Polish cuisine are concentrated around the Old Town district. Various spit cakes of Czech or Hungarian origin (k\u00fcrt\u0151skal\u00e1cs and trdeln\u00edk) are also sold primarily in the Old Town. Hala Koszyki is a popular meeting place in Warsaw noted for its food hall.\nIn the 20th century, Warsaw was famed for its state-owned milk bars (\"bar mleczny\") which offered cheap fast food in the form of home dinners. Examples of dishes popularized by these canteens include tomato soup, schnitzels, frikadeller, mizeria salad and many others. Contemporary fast food giants like McDonald's, KFC, Subway and Burger King are the successors to milk bars, though some reemerged in recent years due to widespread nostalgia.\nGourmet and haute cuisine establishments are situated in the vicinity of the downtown area or in the Frascati neighbourhood. Thirteen Varsovian restaurants were appreciated by the Michelin Guide, with two receiving a michelin star in 2019.\nIn 2021, National Geographic named Warsaw one of the top cities for vegans in Europe. \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie Po\u0142udniowe (Southern Downtown) and its \"hipster food culture\" was singled out as the epicenter.\nEvents.\nSeveral commemorative events take place every year, notably the Orange Warsaw Festival featuring music concerts. One of the more popular events is the procession of the Three Wise Men (in Polish known as the Three Kings) on Epiphany, shortly after the New Year. Paper crowns are usually worn by spectators throughout the day. The event, which runs along the Royal Route, is attended by Warsaw's highest officials and by the Polish president who resides nearby.\nGatherings of thousands of people on the banks of the Vistula on Midsummer's Night for a festival called Wianki (Polish for \"Wreaths\") have also become a tradition and a yearly event in the programme of cultural events in Warsaw. The festival traces its roots to a peaceful pagan ritual where maidens would float their wreaths of herbs on the water to predict when they would be married, and to whom. By the 19th century this tradition had become a festive event, and it continues today. The city council organize concerts and other events. Each Midsummer's Eve, apart from the official floating of wreaths, jumping over fires, and looking for the fern flower, there are musical performances, dignitaries' speeches, fairs and fireworks by the river bank.\nWarsaw Multimedia Fountain Park is located in an enchanting place, near the Old Town and the Vistula. The 'Water \u2013 Light \u2013 Sound' multimedia shows take place each Friday and Saturday from May until September at 9.30\u00a0pm (May and \u2013 9 October pm). On other weekdays, the shows do not include lasers and sound.\nThe Warsaw Film festival, an annual festival that takes place every October. Films are usually screened in their original language with Polish subtitles and participating cinemas include Kinoteka (Palace of Science and Culture), Multikino at Golden Terraces and Kultura. Over 100 films are shown throughout the festival, and awards are given to the best and most popular films.\nWarsaw Mermaid.\nThe mermaid (\"syrenka\") is Warsaw's symbol and can be found on statues throughout the city and on the city's coat of arms. This imagery has been in use since at least the mid-14th century. The oldest existing armed seal of Warsaw is from the year 1390, consisting of a round seal bordered with the Latin inscription \"Sigilium Civitatis Varsoviensis\" (Seal of the city of Warsaw). City records as far back as 1609 document the use of a crude form of a sea monster with a female upper body and holding a sword in its claws. In 1653 the poet Zygmunt Laukowski asks the question:\n<templatestyles src=\"Rquote/styles.css\"/>{ class=\"rquote pullquote floatcenter\" role=\"presentation\" style=\"display:table; border-collapse:collapse; border-style:none; float:center; margin:0.5em 0.75em; width:33%; \"\nThe Mermaid Statue stands in the very centre of Old Town Square, surrounded by a fountain. Due to vandalism, the original statue had been moved to the grounds of the Museum of Warsaw \u2013 the statue in the square is a copy.\nThis is not the only mermaid in Warsaw. Another is located on the bank of the Vistula River near \u015awi\u0119tokrzyski Bridge and another on Karowa Street.\nThe origin of the legendary figure is not fully known. The best-known legend, by Artur Oppman, is that long ago two of Triton's daughters set out on a journey through the depths of the oceans and seas. One of them decided to stay on the coast of Denmark and can be seen sitting at the entrance to the port of Copenhagen. The second mermaid reached the mouth of the Vistula River and plunged into its waters. She stopped to rest on a sandy beach by the village of Warszowa, where fishermen came to admire her beauty and listen to her beautiful voice. A greedy merchant also heard her songs; he followed the fishermen and captured the mermaid.\nAnother legend says that a mermaid once swam to Warsaw from the Baltic Sea for the love of the Griffin, the ancient defender of the city, who was killed in a struggle against the Swedish invasions of the 17th century. The mermaid, wishing to avenge his death, took the position of defender of Warsaw, becoming the symbol of the city.\nEvery member of the Queen's Royal Hussars of the UK's light cavalry wears the \"Maid of Warsaw\", the crest of the City of Warsaw, on the left sleeve of his No. 2 (Service) Dress. Members of 651 Squadron Army Air Corps of the United Kingdom also wear the \"Maid of Warsaw\" on the left sleeve of their No. 2 (Service) Dress.\nSports.\nOn 9 April 2008, the Mayor of Warsaw, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, obtained from the mayor of Stuttgart Wolfgang Schuster a challenge award\u00a0\u2013 a commemorative plaque awarded to Warsaw as the European capital of Sport in 2008.\nThe Kazimierz G\u00f3rski National Stadium, a 58,580-seat-capacity football (soccer) stadium, replaced Warsaw's recently demolished 10th-Anniversary Stadium. The National Stadium hosted the opening match, two group matches, a quarter-final, and a semi-final of UEFA Euro 2012.\nThere are many sports centres in the city as well. Most of these facilities are swimming pools and sports halls, many of them built by the municipality in the past several years. The main indoor venue is Hala Torwar, used for a variety of indoor sports (it was a venue for the 2009 EuroBasket but it is also used as an indoor skating rink). There is also an open-air skating rink (Stegny) and a horse racetrack (S\u0142u\u017cewiec).\nThe best of the city's swimming centres is at Wodny Park Warszawianka, south of the centre at Merliniego Street, where there's an Olympic-sized pool as well as water slides and children's areas.\nAmong the Varsovian football teams, the most recognisable is Legia Warsaw\u00a0\u2013 the army club with a nationwide following play at the Polish Army Stadium, just southeast of the centre at \u0141azienkowska Street. Established in 1916, they have won the country's championship fifteen times (most recently in 2021) and won the Polish Cup nineteen times. In the 1995\u201396 UEFA Champions League season, they reached the quarter-finals, where they lost to Greek club Panathinaikos.\nTheir local rivals, Polonia Warsaw, have significantly fewer supporters, yet they managed to win the country's championship two times (in 1946 and 2000) and won the cup twice as well. Polonia's home venue is located at Konwiktorska Street, a ten-minute walk north from the Old Town. Polonia was relegated from the country's top flight in 2013 because of their disastrous financial situation. They are now playing in the first league (2nd tier in Poland).\nLegia Warsaw's basketball team was one of the country's best teams in 50s and 60s. They are now participating in PLK, the highest-tier level of the Polish basketball.\nFamous people.\nOne of the most famous people born in Warsaw was Maria Sk\u0142odowska-Curie, who achieved international recognition for her research on radioactivity and was the first female recipient of the Nobel Prize. Famous musicians include W\u0142adys\u0142aw Szpilman, Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin and Witold Lutos\u0142awski. Though Chopin was born in the village of \u017belazowa Wola, about from Warsaw, he moved to the city with his family when he was seven months old. Casimir Pulaski, a Polish general and hero of the American Revolutionary War, was born here in 1745. Other important people, who lived in Warsaw (although were not born here) are also Rosa Luxemburg and L. L. Zamenhof.\nTamara de Lempicka was a famous artist born in Warsaw. She was born Maria G\u00f3rska in Warsaw to wealthy parents and in 1916 married a Polish lawyer Tadeusz \u0141empicki. Better than anyone else she represented the art deco style in painting and art. Another notable artist born in the city was Wojciech Fangor. He was associated with Op art and Color field movements and recognized as a key figure in the history of Polish postwar abstract art. Nathan Alterman, the Israeli poet, was born in Warsaw, as was Moshe Vilenski, the Israeli composer, lyricist, and pianist, who studied music at the Warsaw Conservatory.\nOther notable individuals from Warsaw include Samuel Goldwyn, the founder of Goldwyn Pictures, mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, physicist Joseph Rotblat, biochemist Casimir Funk, Moshe Prywes, an Israeli physician who was the first President of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and I. L. Peretz, one of the three founding fathers of modern Yiddish literature. Warsaw was the beloved city of Isaac Bashevis Singer, which he described in many of his novels: \"Warsaw has just now been destroyed. No one will ever see the Warsaw I knew. Let me just write about it. Let this Warsaw not disappear forever\", he wrote. Notable sportspeople born in Warsaw include footballers Robert Lewandowski and Wojciech Szcz\u0119sny as well as tennis player Iga \u015awi\u0105tek.\nInternational relations.\nTwin towns and sister cities.\nWarsaw is twinned with:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nFormer twin towns:\nPartnership and friendship.\nWarsaw also cooperates with:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nFormer partner cities:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "2108466": "Thomas Brzustowski\nCanadian engineer, academic, and civil servant (1937\u20132020)\nThomas Anthony Brzustowski, (; April 4, 1937 \u2013 June 19, 2020) was a Canadian engineer, academic, and civil servant.\nBorn in Warsaw, he came to Canada with his family when he was 11. He received a B.A.Sc. degree in engineering physics from the University of Toronto in 1958. He received an M.A. degree from Princeton University in 1960 and a Ph.D. degree in aeronautical engineering in 1963.\nHe then joined the University of Waterloo teaching in the department of mechanical engineering. From 1967 to 1970 he was the chairman of the department and from 1975 to 1987 he was Vice-President, Academic. From 1987 to 1991 he was the Ontario deputy minister of Colleges and Universities. He was president of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council from 1995 to 2005.\nFrom 2005 to 2012 he served as the inaugural RBC Professor in Commercialization of Innovation at the University of Ottawa and wrote the book \"The Way Ahead: Meeting Canada's Productivity Challenge\". He coined the phrase \"Necessity may be the mother of invention, but competition is the father of innovation.\" He was also the first Chair of the Advisory Committee of the Institute for Science, Society and Policy at that university.\nHe was chair of the board of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo from 2006 to 2014, chair of the scientific advisory committee (SAC) for the national Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) from 2010 to 2013; from 2016 to 2019 he sat on CCA's board of directors.\nHe died on June 19, 2020, at Grand River Hospital following a brief illness.\nHonours.\nBrzustowski has received honorary degrees from the University of Guelph (1994), Ryerson Polytechnic University (1996), University of Waterloo (1997), McMaster University (2000), University of Alberta (2000), University of Ottawa (2000), \u00c9cole Polytechnique de Montr\u00e9al (2001), Concordia University (2003), Royal Military College of Canada (2003), Brock University (2005), the University of Victoria (2005), York University (2005), University of Northern British Columbia (2006), Carleton University (2007), and Lakehead University (2011).\nIn 1997 Brzustowski was elected to Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering. In 2001, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2002, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. He is an honorary member of the Royal Military College of Canada, student # S143.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["2108466", "32908"], "permutation_1": ["32908", "2108466"], "permutation_2": ["2108466", "32908"], "permutation_3": ["32908", "2108466"]}
{"id": "2hop__169861_145386", "docs_added": {"782487": "Nat Adderley\nAmerican jazz cornet & trumpet player (1931\u20132000)\nNathaniel Carlyle Adderley (November 25, 1931 \u2013 January 2, 2000) was an American jazz trumpeter. He was the younger brother of saxophonist Julian \"Cannonball\" Adderley, with whom he played for many years.\nAdderley's composition \"Work Song\" (1960) is a jazz standard, and also became a success on the pop charts after singer Oscar Brown Jr. wrote lyrics for it.\nEarly life.\nNat Adderley was born in Tampa, Florida, but moved to Tallahassee when his parents were hired to teach at Florida A&M University. His father played trumpet professionally in his younger years, and he passed down his trumpet to Cannonball. When Cannonball picked up the alto saxophone, he passed the trumpet to Nat, who began playing in 1946. He and Cannonball played with Ray Charles in the early 1940s in Tallahassee and in amateur gigs around the area.\nAdderley attended Florida A&M University, majoring in sociology with a minor in music. He switched to cornet in 1950. From 1951 to 1953, he served in the army and played in the army band under his brother, taking at least one tour of Korea before returning to a station in the United States. After returning home, he attended Florida A&M intending to become a teacher.\nShortly before Adderley was expected to begin student teaching, Lionel Hampton played a concert at Florida A&M. Confident in his abilities, he played for Hampton, and Hampton invited him to join the band. Putting school on hold, he played under Hampton from 1954 to 1955 and visited Europe on tour. After returning, he intended to go back to school to become a teacher.\nCareer.\n1950s.\nThe turning point in the Adderley brothers' careers occurred on a trip to New York in 1955. The brothers stopped by the Caf\u00e9 Bohemia in Greenwich Village when bassist Oscar Pettiford was playing. Both of them showed up ready to play. Cannonball was asked to sit in because the regular saxophonist, Jerome Richardson was out, and he overwhelmed the musicians. Then Nat was pulled on stage, and everyone was equally impressed. This appearance was enough to renew their careers. Job offers began pouring in, and Nat recorded for the first time that year.\nThe brothers moved to New York City, founding the bop group Cannonball Adderley Quintet in 1956. Due to a lack of popular interest, they disbanded the group in 1957. Nat played for trombonist J. J. Johnson for a couple of years and ended up in the Woody Herman sextet. Cannonball gained a higher profile and joined the Miles Davis sextet alongside John Coltrane in time to record the album \"Kind of Blue\".\nIn 1959, the Cannonball Adderley Quintet reunited. This time around the group was more successful and had its first hit, \"This Here\", written by pianist Bobby Timmons. The group sound became known as soul jazz, starting the genre. The quintet also played hard bop, as everyone in the group had been influenced by bebop and wanted to continue a virtuosic tradition. Soul jazz kept the group popular, while hard bop gave the musicians a chance to challenge themselves and demonstrate their abilities.\n1960s.\nDuring the 1960s, Adderley acted as cornetist, composer, and manager for the quintet. While he kept the band in order, he also composed some of the group's most successful songs. His most successful song was \"Work Song\" (January 1960), a hard bop tune. Adderley called it his \"Social Security song\" due to the steady flow of income over the years from royalty payments when others recorded the song. \"Work Song\" is now considered a jazz standard. His other popular songs include \"Jive Samba\", \"Hummin'\", \"Sermonette\", and \"The Old Country\".\nWhile he was an integral part of the Cannonball Adderley Quintet, this was not the only project occupying his time in his career as a professional jazz musician. Since moving to New York, he had been recording outside the Adderley group. He worked with Kenny Clarke, Wes Montgomery, and Walter Booker.\nOther projects included the film \"A Man Called Adam\" (1966). In the film, Sammy Davis Jr.'s character plays the trumpet. Since Davis could not himself play the trumpet, Adderley was hired to ghost everything that the character played. His other significant project during this time was a musical. He and his brother wrote \"Shout Up a Morning\" based on the folk hero John Henry. While this project started as a collaboration, work was interrupted when Cannonball died from a stroke.\n1970s.\nAfter Cannonball's death in 1975, the quintet broke up. Nat Adderley toured Europe as a headliner. He toured Japan, then returned to the U.S. and taught courses at Harvard while performing and recording with his quintet, which included Walter Booker, Jimmy Cobb, and Vincent Herring. Adderley established himself in his own right. He also worked with Ron Carter, Sonny Fortune, Johnny Griffin, and Antonio Hart.\n1980s and later years.\nAdderley created the Adderley Brotherhood, a sextet which included several members of the Cannonball Adderley Quintet. This group toured Europe in 1980. \"Shout Up a Morning\", after having a concert performance in Carnegie Hall shortly after Cannonball's death, was staged in several locations around the United States in 1986. Adderley became involved in several other ensembles over the next decade, including the Paris Reunion Band and a group called the Riverside Reunion Band (after the Riverside label), a bop group that formed at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1993 and then toured Europe in 1994.\nAdderley spent half the year touring and the other half at home in Lakeland, Florida, writing and recording. He thought many of his greatest fans were in Japan, but Europeans were also enthusiastic about the music.\nIn 1997, he joined the faculty of Florida Southern College as an artist-in-residence. He also helped in the founding and development of the annual Child of the Sun Jazz Festival held annually at the university which he headlined for over a decade. During the same year, he was inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame in Kansas City.\nHe lived on 112th Street in Harlem in the 1960s and in Teaneck, New Jersey, in the 1970s, before moving to Lakeland. He also lived near his brother in Corona, Queens.\nDeath and legacy.\nNat Adderley died as a result of complications from diabetes at the age of 68 in Lakeland, Florida. He was interred near his brother in the Southside Cemetery in Tallahassee, Florida. He was survived by his wife, Ann; a son, Nat Adderley Jr. of West Orange, N.J.; a daughter, Alison Adderley-Pittman of Palm Bay, Florida; and five grandchildren.\nHe was an innovator in the popularization of soul jazz and was one of the most prolific jazz artists of his time, recording nearly 100 albums. He proved that cornet could be a modern jazz instrument.\nStyle.\nAlthough Adderley started playing trumpet, he switched to the less common cornet. He preferred the darker tone of the conical cornet to the brighter sound of the cylindrical trumpet. He could produce a rich, earthy tone that became his signature sound, one that could only come from the cornet. He also enjoyed the cornet's historic quality, reinvigorating the instrument played by early jazz musicians.\nAdderley is widely attributed with the development and establishment of the 1960s style of soul jazz along with the rest of the members Cannonball Adderley Quintet. This style is characterized by simple harmonies, a heavy blues feel, catchy riffs, and a presence of the church. The point of soul jazz was to bring back a simpler type of jazz that had direct influence from blues and church music.\nHowever, this is not the only style that Adderley wrote and played. The quintet was also widely known for their hard bop, which comprised roughly half of their recorded work. This is a rougher, edgier style descended from bebop, and virtuosic abilities are required to be able to play it.\nAs a soloist and composer, Adderley had a wide range of abilities. He could improvise simpler, more soulful solos for soul jazz numbers, but he could experiment and show off all of his abilities for hard bop. Especially in playing hard bop, he was not afraid to use the range of the instrument, often playing below the typical cornet range for short bursts before returning to the normal range. Although his range was starting to fade by the late 1960s, this did not keep him from continuing to play for the rest of his life.\nDiscography.\nAs leader.\nCompilation:\nAs sideman.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "26217822": "Much Brass\nMuch Brass is an album by jazz cornetist Nat Adderley released on the Riverside label featuring performances by Adderley's Sextet with Slide Hampton, Wynton Kelly, Sam Jones, Laymon Jackson, and Albert Heath.\nReception.\nThe Allmusic review awarded the album 4 stars. \n\"The Penguin Guide to Jazz\" awarded the album 3 stars, stating: \"Some interesting arrangements here, presumably largely the work of Hampton, and some delicately interwoven playing which largely belies the bluster implied in the title... Not immediately identifiable as a 'typical' Nat Adderley record, but a beautiful statement all the same.\" \n\"All compositions by Nat Adderley except as indicated\"\n*Recorded in New York City on March 23 & 27, 1959\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "375030": "British brass band\nType of musical ensemble\nIn Britain, a brass band (known regionally as a silver band or colliery band) is a musical ensemble comprising a standardized range of brass and percussion instruments. The modern form of the brass band in the United Kingdom dates back to the 19th century, with a vibrant tradition of competition based around communities and local industry, with colliery bands being particularly notable. The Stalybridge Old Band, for example, first performed in 1815 and is still in existence, although it did not become a brass band until the 1840s.\nBands using the British instrumentation are the most common form of brass band in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, and are also widespread in continental Europe, Japan and North America. The tradition for brass bands in the UK is continuing, and local communities and schools have brass bands. British band contests are highly competitive, with bands organized into five sections much like a football league. Competitions are held throughout the year at local, regional, and national levels, and at the end of each year there are promotions and relegations. The 2019 holder of the National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain was the Cory Band from South Wales.\nA selection of brass bands can be experienced at the annual Durham Miners' Gala. There are also hotly-contested annual events held on Whit Friday in the Saddleworth area of Greater Manchester in which hundreds of bands compete.\nEtymology.\nThe terms \"brass band\" and \"silver band\" are synonymous in that the vast majority of bands termed either \"brass\" or \"silver\" incorporate musicians playing a mix of lacquered brass and silver-plated instruments. However, in the days when plain or lacquered brass instruments were not as costly as silver-plated ones, the term \"silver band\" implied an ensemble that could afford the latter and were thus perceived to be more successful. With the cost of each type now being similar, the distinction between brass and silver bands is generally not made. There are, however, some brass bands which carried the name \"silver prize band\" as a result of their successes in contests and competitions. As time went on, some kept the name \"silver\" but not necessarily the instruments. Nowadays, the only real difference is that silver bands are located mainly in the south of England and brass bands in the north, although some silver bands do still exist in the North and many brass bands exist in the South.\nInstrumentation.\nBritish brass bands are limited to specific instruments, excluding, for instance, trumpets and French horns, which are found in orchestras and concert bands.\nThe standard instrumentation is as follows:\nThe above totals 27\u201329 players, although in practice a band often has fewer than this. Spare seats may be filled for concerts and contests by players brought in from other bands, commonly known as \"deputising players\" or \"deps\".\nNotation.\nWith the exception of percussion, bass trombone and some older tenor trombone music, all parts are transposing and written in the treble clef with the instrument's lowest open note (B\u266d or E\u266d) notated as middle C. This means that for every valved instrument, from the basses to the soprano cornet, a given note on the stave corresponds to the same valve fingering, enabling players to move more easily between parts. This system is unique to UK-style brass bands, though historically the North American drum and bugle corps activity followed the brass band convention of all-treble-clef writing.\nTenor trombone music is usually in treble clef like the other instruments in the band, though older scores or marches sometimes use tenor clef.\nBass trombone music is written at concert pitch in bass clef. This was historically due to this part being taken by a G bass trombone, rather than the modern B\u266d bass trombone. As instrument technology modernized, the need for a bass trombone in G diminished, with the introduction of the B\u266d bass trombone with F rotary valve. The larger bore and open wrap of the F valve gave the B\u266d bass trombone a lower available playing register than the straight G bass trombone.\nTuned percussion is written in concert pitch (with the appropriate octave transpositions) with the appropriate clef for the instrument \u2013 e.g. bass clef for timpani, treble clef for glockenspiel (sounding two octaves higher). Unpitched percussion parts (including drum kit) are written in neutral clef on a 1- to 5-line stave using standard percussion notation, though some older scores may use bass and/or treble clefs.\nUnited Kingdom.\nHistory.\nThe rise of brass bands in nineteenth-century Britain owed much to industrialisation, armed conflict, and improvements to instrument designs. Village and church ensembles had existed in the eighteenth century, while military bands, which featured a mix of woodwind, brass, and percussion instruments, proliferated during the Napoleonic Wars. The British Army began experimenting with all-brass bands from the late 1810s; the first civilian brass bands, featuring instruments such as keyed bugles, trumpets and trombones, emerged by the end of the 1820s. These early brass ensembles were often organised by former regimental musicians: the Waterloo veteran James Sanderson led a 'military brass band' in Leamington Spa and Warwick in 1829.\nWind and brass bands enjoyed the support of industrial employers who sponsored bands to promote discipline, community spirit, and temperance among their workers. The advent of Adolphe Sax's valved brass designs, which were easier to play and produced a more accurate, consistent sound, also helped fuel the growth of the brass band movement from the 1840s. Arguably brass bands were an expression of the local solidarity and aspirations of newly formed or rapidly growing communities. This was seen, for instance, in the creation of large-scale brass band competitions by the late 1850s. In 1853 John Jennison, owner of Belle Vue Zoological Gardens in Manchester, agreed to stage the first British open brass band championships. The event was attended by a crowd of over 16,000 and continued annually until 1981. Brass bands reached their peak in the 1890s, when there were around 5,000 brass bands in the country. Today, there are 1,200 brass bands in Britain with around 30,000 players.\nMany British bands were originally either works bands or sponsored by various industrial concerns. This was particularly evident in coal mining areas, for example, bands such as the Grimethorpe Colliery Band and Carlton Main Frickley Colliery Band in Yorkshire. Bands sponsored by factories include The Black Dyke Mills Band, Yorkshire Imperial Band (originally the Yorkshire Copperworks Band), Foden's sponsored by the truck manufacturer, Fairey sponsored by the aircraft manufacturer, and Leyland Band sponsored by the vehicle manufacturer. One of the reasons for this was to keep the workers from organizing in radical groups. With the decline of these industries several bands have dissolved and others now draw their membership from other industries and other parts of the community. The Brighouse and Rastrick Band, is unique in having operated continually at the highest level without sponsorship, drawing its income from regular concerts, public donations and sales of recordings and merchandise.\nThe leading bands in Wales include the Cory Band, Tredegar Town Band and Tongwynlais Temperance Band The leading bands in Scotland are The Cooperation Band (formally Co-operative Funeralcare), Whitburn Band and the Kirkintilloch Band. All these bands compete at the highest level in the banding movement. In Northern Ireland the Brass Band League currently has 26 members.\nThere are also many non-contesting or 'community' brass bands in the UK providing entertainment for audiences and enjoyment for musicians of all ages.\nContesting in the United Kingdom.\nBritish banding is highly competitive, with bands organized into five sections much like a football league \u2013 Championship section, 1st section, 2nd section, 3rd section and 4th section. Competitions are held throughout the year at local, regional, and national levels, and at the end of each year there are promotions and relegations.\nAt a national level the main contest is the National Brass Band Championship, and this determines a band's section. For this, the UK is split into 8 regions: London and Southern Counties, Midlands, North of England, North West, Scotland, Wales, West of England, and Yorkshire. Each year in Spring the bands compete in a regional contest for their section, and the top two or three in each section go on to the \"National Finals\" in Autumn. Recently (2011), the finals for Sections 1 to 4 have been held in Cheltenham, and the finals for the Championship Section at the Royal Albert Hall in London (as featured in the film \"Brassed Off\").\nThe bands are awarded points for their result (1st gets 1 point, 9th gets 9 points), and this is added to the previous two years to give a three-year total. Two or three bands with the best total are promoted, and two or three bands are relegated.\nThere are also separate contests for university brass bands, including the annual UniBrass contest, founded at Lancaster University in 2010 and hosted in 2023 by the University of Warwick. The Cambridge and Oxford University brass bands also compete against each other in annual 'varsity' contests.\nThe National Youth Band Brass Championships held annually has a Youth Champs' non-competitive section offering the opportunity for young people new to brass to take part and contribute a performance without the pressure of competition. Bands of all standards play in the Debut Section and join in the fun.\nThe Salvation Army.\nIn the UK, the brass bands of The Salvation Army have run parallel to the main brass band movement since the 1870s. Bands of The Salvation Army range from small church bands to staff bands composed of the best bandsmen of The Salvation Army in the area. Their instrumentation is almost identical except for a minor difference in the cornet section whereby the repiano is dropped and the remainder of the row is made up of parts designated 1st and 2nd (two players each) rather than 2nd and 3rd; and that some major pieces have a split first trombone part, the lower part usually cued elsewhere in the band. Bands of The Salvation Army can be found in most countries around the world in which it operates.\nAustralia.\nThe Australian derivation of a brass band is the same as the UK brass band (i.e. standard instrumentation with no woodwind). Contesting bands in Australia are graded from A Grade to D Grade. National Contests are held each year at Easter, with the location moving from state to state, and often including bands from New Zealand or other locations around the Asia Pacific region.\nEach state also conducts their own championships. National and state contests are generally of the same format: a set test piece for each grade, a hymn, an own choice, a stage march (march or concert march performed on the stage without marching) and a light entertainment concert program. Smaller regional contests often replace the major works with an own choice concert program.\nAmong the country's most famous brass band identities have been conductor and composer Percy Code; and David King and Frank Wright who made their mark in Britain. Early Australian brass composers include Thomas Bulch, Alex Lithgow and Charles Trussell. In later years, leading composers have included Brenton Broadstock (\"Winds of Change\", \"Rutherford Variations\", \"Valiant Take All My Sins Away\" and many more), Barrie Gott (\"Mumbo Jumbo\", \"Gospel Train\", \"Glasshouse Sketches\") and Joe Cook (\"Taskforce\", \"Keighley Moor\").\nEurope.\nBelgium.\nIn Belgium, there are about 30 brass bands. The best known is Brass Band Willebroek, who were crowned European Brass Band Champions in 1993, 2006 and 2007. The average banding level is still rising, as the brass movement was only introduced in Belgium some 30 years ago.\nThe national brass band Championships are held annually at CC Zwanenberg in Heist-Op-Den-Berg. The winner represents Belgium at the European Championships.\nParticipants are divided into four categories going from Championship section to third section. Currently there are seven bands competing in Championship section. These are: Brass Band Willebroek Brass Band Buizingen, Metropole Brass Band, Festival Brass Band, Kortrijk Brass Band, Brass Band Heist, and De Noord-Limburgse Brassband,\nOther Belgian bands include: Mercator Brassband, , , Brass Band Zele, , and many more.\nSome of the brass bands in Belgium are primarily based around recreational music, do not conform to British brass band instrumentation, and therefore do not compete.\nGermany.\nBrass bands in Germany are not as widespread as in other European countries like Switzerland or the Netherlands.\nThere are just a few bands (about 40) playing in authentic British instrumentation. This is primarily due to the popularity of wind bands, particularly in Southern Germany, and brass groups (composed of soprano to bass instruments) known as \"Posaunench\u00f6re\" (trombone choirs) related to churches.\nNational Brass Band \"competitions\" took place as part of the German Festival of Wind Music in W\u00fcrzburg 2007 and 2008, in Duisburg 2010, in Coesfeld 2012 and in Bad Kissingen 2014.\nIreland.\nBrass bands in Ireland can primarily trace their origins to the past influence of British Army bands during the period between 1801 and 1922. As well as military bands however, community led groups were also in existence around this time. While concert bands are more prevalent today, possibly due to the association of brass bands with British rule, brass bands are still popular, especially on the east coast. Dungarvan, Arklow and Drogheda are all examples of towns with brass bands of note. Dublin has a number of Brass Bands. The oldest is the Blanchardstown Brass Band (Blanchardstown) formed in 1826, St.Georges Brass Band Formed 1936 (in Dublin City Centre) and the Stedfast Brass Band (Blackrock)\nBrass competitions take place annually, both regionally and nationally.\nNetherlands.\nIn the years 1870\u20131900 the Salvation Army spread out their missionary activities in the Netherlands, at first the main port city Amsterdam, and then to the then still important northern seaport of Harlingen, Friesland around the 1900.\nBrass Band contesting began in Friesland after World War II. The Frisian conductor Sierd de Boer made a great effort to develop the British Brass Band standardisation, and the Frisians nowadays continue to set the standard of brass bands in the Netherlands. Brass Bands in Friesland include\n\"De W\u00e2ldsang\" Buitenpost, \"Pro Rege\" Heerenveen, \"De Bazuin\" Oenkerk and \"De Spijkerpakkenband\" Opsterland. Other well known brass bands across the country are Brassband Rijnmond (Rotterdam) and Brass Band Schoonhoven.\nNorway.\nThe Norwegian Band Federation is the largest voluntary music organisation in Norway. Through their membership, the 1712 member bands with their 70,318 players (official figures as of 9/1/04) are offered good conditions for their hobby. A network rich in tradition also gives them a strong and influential position in the cultural life of Norway. Many primary schools have their own bands.\nCrown Prince Haakon is the patron of the Norwegian Band Federation. The Federation is granted an annual audience with the Crown Prince in order to report to him and receive advice for the future. The King has awarded a royal trophy to the championships for adult bands.\nNorth and South America.\nCanada.\nBrass bands in the British tradition, sometimes sponsored by employers, existed in Canada in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The geography of Canada (e.g. large distances between communities, making regular contests and migration of players difficult) was a key factor among many challenges that led to the demise of most such bands.\nToday, excepting the Salvation Army bands, there are few British-style brass bands in Canada. Most operate as recreational, amateur, \"community\" bands such as the Oshawa Civic Band, King Street Brass from Kitchener, and the Whitby Brass Band, who celebrated their 160th anniversary in 2023. There are some semi-professional groups, like the Intrada Brass of Oakville, Ontario and the Weston Silver Band of Toronto. One of the most successful brass bands in Canada is the Hannaford Street Silver Band.\nThere are hopes for growth in the education field of brass bands in Canada, and in particular southern Ontario. In 1999, the professional Hannaford Street Silver Band launched the Hannaford Street Youth Band, which is internationally recognized for its success. In 2005, another youth band was created for beginning brass players known as the Hannaford Junior Band. Beginning in September 2006, the Hannaford organization plans to launch a third, intermediate, band known as the Hannaford Community Youth Band. These three ensembles target a wide range of youth from ages 11 to people well into their twenties.\nLatin America.\nBrass bands long enjoyed popularity in many parts of Latin America as well.\nMexican banda music has similar origins to the British brass band tradition and was influenced by it in its early days. In 19th century Mexico very large bands were formed, such as that of composer Juventino Rosas and in parts of Mexico brass band concerts remain a popular entertainment.\nUnited States.\nBrass bands in the British tradition are becoming more popular through the efforts of the North American Brass Band Association (NABBA), which organizes an annual brass band convention and set piece style contest. The US Open Brass Band Championships are held in early November and serves as the countries leading entertainment competition. Brass Band Festivals such as The Great American Brass Festival, Ohio Brass Arts Festival, Gettysburg Brass Band Festival, Dublin Festival of Brass, Mid-Atlantic Brass Festival, and Texas Brass Fest occur throughout the year.\nBrass bands were very popular throughout the United States in the late 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century. Well known bands of virtuoso musicians toured widely, and most towns had their own bands that put on weekend music concerts. One notable example of this was The Ohio State University Marching Band which formed in 1879 and still performs with only brass and percussion instruments. Other groups, ranging from benevolent societies to large factories, would often have a band. The brass band movement has undergone a resurgence in the late twentieth century, led by the North American Brass Band Association. The United States boasts two professional brass bands, the Brass Band of Battle Creek and the River City Brass Band, as well as community brass bands such as the Dallas Brass Band, Central Ohio Brass Band, Dublin Silver Band, Motor City Brass Band, Atlantic Brass Band, Nebraska Brass Band, Imperial Brass, The Chesapeake Silver Cornet Brass Band (Delaware), Five Lakes Silver Band, Allegheny Brass Band, The Brass Band of Central Florida, the Sheldon Theatre Brass Band (Red Wing, MN), the Lake Wobegon Brass Band (Anoka, MN), the Twin Cities Brass Band (Bloomington, MN), the Fountain City Brass Band, the Triangle Brass Band, the Smoky Mountain Brass Band the River Brass, and the Mission Peak Brass Band (Fremont, CA), and the Rockville Brass Band (the oldest competing American band in Maryland, founded in 1976); several collegiate brass bands, including the James Madison University Brass Band, the Mansfield University Brass Band, the Slippery Rock University Brass Ensemble, the Pennwest-Clarion University Brass Ensemble, and the University of Georgia British Brass Band; and various youth brass bands, including the Triangle Youth Brass Band and the Fountain City Youth Brass Bands also exist.\nRepertoire.\nThere are several notable composers in the brass band world. The current favourite is possibly Philip Sparke, who has written many pieces, including \"Music of the Spheres\". A noted Welsh Composer was T. J. (Tom) Powell, born in Tredegar in 1897, also known as \"The Welsh Sousa\". Powell composed over 500 pieces for brass bands, including marches (such as \"The Castle Marches\"), tone poems and suites.\nOther notable composers include:\nSeveral classical composers have written music specifically for brass band. These include:\nOutdoor banding.\nAn advantage of the brass band is that it is mobile and capable of playing at any time and anywhere, even on the march. Marching and outdoor functions have been the preserve of the brass band for well over a century. Many UK brass bands are closely woven into the local community, performing outdoor civic duties throughout the year.\nThe bandstand became popular in the Victorian era, typically associated with the British brass band or military band. It is a simple construction which not only creates an ornamental focal point, but also serves acoustic requirements whilst providing shelter from the changeable British weather.\nIn popular culture.\nThe 1996 British film \"Brassed Off\" is the story of a colliery brass band from a Yorkshire mining village, where the mine is threatened with closure. It culminates in the band winning the national finals in the Royal Albert Hall.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "15873946": "Eastern Iowa Brass Band\nIowa Brass was formerly known as the Eastern Iowa Brass Band (EIBB), changing its name to Iowa Brass on June 17, 2021.\nIowa Brass is an amateur band which primarily performs brass band literature in the style and tradition of the British brass bands dating back to the early nineteenth century and continuing today. Iowa Brass also covers contemporary ensemble pieces, ranging from Broadway works, swing, New Orleans jazz, and artists such as Pat Metheny.\nFounded in 1985, Iowa Brass is the only band of its kind in the state of Iowa. Iowa Brass plays in concert to audiences throughout the midwest.\nHistory of the band.\nIowa Brass, originally called The Eastern Iowa Brass Band, grew from a brass ensemble that was part of the City Band in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, in 1985 after Don Stine, director of the city band, attended a seminar on the growing brass band movement in the United States. Regular rehearsals began soon thereafter, and the band competed in its first North American Brass Band Association (NABBA) Championship in April 1986. 2016 marked the 30th anniversary of the band. In celebration of this milestone, the band toured the upper Midwest over the summer, playing for and with other brass bands in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa. In 2018, the band entered into a new community relationship, relocating to dedicated facilities in Solon, Iowa, after a 32 year run in Mt. Vernon.\nThe music.\nBritish band instrumentation features horns which are conical in design. Iowa Brass conforms to the unique British band style, characteristically limiting its instrumentation to brass, including cornets, flugelhorn, tenor horns, euphoniums, baritones, trombones, and tubas, as well as percussion. The 35-member band performs from a repertoire which features original works for brass band, as well as arrangements of well known orchestral and wind band literature. In addition, featured soloists are frequently used in concert programs which also include marches, medleys, hymn tune arrangements, folk songs, American patriotic offerings, Broadway showtunes, and novelty features. The majority of the band's concert schedule takes place during the summer months for community celebrations, civic events, and countless special festivals. They have performed in a variety of settings, from ornate concert halls to outdoor parks. Local audiences can also hear the band at three annual subscription concerts presented in April, September, and December.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2106060": "Acid Brass\nBritish musical collaboration\nAcid Brass is a musical collaboration between Turner-Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller and the Williams Fairey Brass Band. The project is based on fusing the music of a traditional brass band with acid house and Detroit techno.\nHistory.\nAcid Brass began in 1997 as a collaboration between Deller, the Stockport-based Fairey Brass Band and Rodney Newton who created all the brass arrangements. Deller saw a connection between the two apparently disparate genres, viewing them as \"two authentic forms of folk art rooted in specific communities\". The music has since been taken all over the world, and was performed by the Fairey Band before a London crowd of 25,000 in July 2005.\nIn 1997, The KLF co-founder Bill Drummond heard Acid Brass performing The KLF's \"What Time Is Love?\" as part of their encore. Consequently, Acid Brass collaborated with The KLF (appearing in their alternative personae as The Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu) on a track titled \"Fuck the Millennium\", incorporating Acid Brass' cover of \"What Time Is Love?\". The track was released as a single under the moniker 2K.\nThe track \"The Groove that won't stop\" was played over the end titles to the 2010 movie \"Four Lions\".\nThe Fairey Band still plays regular Acid Brass gigs at major music festivals in the UK and abroad, and in 2011 issued a new Acid Brass CD.\nIn June 2024, Deller brought Acid Brass to the streets of Melbourne, as part of the 2024 RISING: festival, with local brass bands including Merri-bek City Band, Glenferrie Brass, Victorian State Youth Brass Band, Dandenong Band, and Western Brass. \nAlbums.\nThe original \"Acid Brass\" album was released on 3 November on the Blast First label and featured versions of dance classics such as A Guy Called Gerald's \"Voodoo Ray\", Rhythm Is Rhythm's \"Strings of Life\" and 808 State's \"Pacific 202\". The original studio album was recorded at the BBC North's sound studios on Oxford Road in Manchester, whilst a live version was recorded on 1 March 1997 at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts.\nA new collection entitled \"Acid Brass 2 - In Yer Face!\" was recorded in January 2011. It consists of 10 arrangements by Richard Rock of acid house hits such as \"Infinity\", \"Jack to the Sound of the Underground\", \"Acid Thunder\", \"Theme from S-Express\" and \"We Call It Acieed\".\nCritical reception.\n\"Acid Brass\" was released to generally favourable reviews. Steve Huey of Allmusic was mixed in his assessment, who said \"the somewhat dodgy (and condescending) concept for this record, by artist Jeremy Deller, is that both brass bands and raves are staples of"}, "descending_order": ["375030", "26217822", "15873946", "2106060", "782487"], "permutation_1": ["782487", "375030", "15873946", "2106060", "26217822"], "permutation_2": ["15873946", "782487", "2106060", "375030", "26217822"], "permutation_3": ["375030", "26217822", "15873946", "782487", "2106060"]}
{"id": "2hop__37097_53663", "docs_added": {"21244": "Nile\nMajor river in northeastern Africa\nThe Nile (also known as the Nile River or River Nile) is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa. It has historically been considered the longest river in the world,\nthough this has been contested by research suggesting that the Amazon River is slightly longer.\nOf the world's major rivers, the Nile has one of the lowest average annual flow rates.\nAbout long, its drainage basin covers eleven countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, South Sudan, Sudan, and Egypt.\nIn particular, the Nile is the primary water source of Egypt, Sudan and South Sudan.\nIn these countries it is an important economic factor in agriculture and fishing.\nThe Nile has two major tributaries: the White Nile and the Blue Nile. The White Nile, being the longer, is traditionally considered to be the headwaters stream, while the Blue Nile actually contributes 80% of the water and silt below the confluence of the two. The White Nile rises in the Great Lakes region. It begins at Lake Victoria and flows through Uganda and South Sudan. The Blue Nile begins at Lake Tana in Ethiopia and flows into Sudan from the southeast. The two rivers meet at the Sudanese capital of Khartoum.\nAfter Khartoum the river flows north, almost entirely through the Nubian Desert, to Cairo and its large delta, joining the Mediterranean Sea at Alexandria. Egyptian civilization and Sudanese kingdoms have depended on the river and its annual flooding since ancient times. Most of the population and cities of Egypt lie along those parts of the Nile valley north of the Aswan Dam. Nearly all the cultural and historical sites of Ancient Egypt developed and are found along river banks. The Nile is, with the Rh\u00f4ne and Po, one of the three Mediterranean rivers with the largest water discharge.\nEtymology.\nThe standard English names \"White Nile\" and \"Blue Nile\" refer to the river's source, derived from Arabic names formerly applied to only the Sudanese stretches that meet at Khartoum.\nIn the ancient Egyptian language, the Nile is called \"\u1e24\ua725py\" (Hapy) or \"Jtrw\" (Iteru), meaning \"river\". In Coptic, the word \u2cab\u2c93\u2c81\u2ca3\u2c9f, pronounced \"piaro\" (Sahidic) or \"phiaro\" (Bohairic), means \"the river\" (lit. p(h).iar-o \"the.canal-great\"), and comes from the same ancient name. In Nobiin, the river is called \"\u00c1man Daw\u016b\", meaning \"the great water\". In Luganda, the river is called \"Kiira\" or \"Kiyira\". In Runyoro, it is called \"Kihiira\". In Egyptian Arabic, the Nile is called \"en-N\u012bl\", while in Standard Arabic it is called \"an-N\u012bl\". In Biblical Hebrew, it is <templatestyles src=\"Script/styles_hebrew.css\" />\u05d4\u05b7\u05d9\u05b0\u05d0\u05d5\u05b9\u05e8\u200e, \"Ha-Ye'or\" or <templatestyles src=\"Script/styles_hebrew.css\" />\u05d4\u05b7\u05e9\u05b4\u05c1\u05d9\u05d7\u05d5\u05b9\u05e8\u200e, \"Ha-Shi\u1e25or\".\nThe English name \"Nile\" and the Arabic names \"en-N\u00eel\" and \"an-N\u00eel\" both derive from the Latin ' and the Ancient Greek . Beyond that, however, the etymology is disputed. Homer called the river , \"Aiguptos\", but in subsequent periods, Greek authors referred to its lower course as \"Neilos\"; this term became generalized for the entire river system. Thus, the name may derive from Ancient Egyptian expression \"n\"\ua723 \"r\"\ua723\"w-\u1e25\"\ua723\"w(t)\" (lit.\u2009'the mouths of the front parts'), which referred specifically to the branches of the Nile transversing the Delta, and would have been pronounced \"ni-lo-he\" in the area around Memphis in the 8th century BCE. Hesiod at his \"Theogony\" refers to Nilus (\u039d\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2) as one of the river gods, son of Oceanus and Tethys.\nAnother derivation of \"Nile\" might be related to the term \"Nil\" (; ), which refers to \"Indigofera tinctoria\", one of the original sources of indigo dye. Another possible etymology derives from the Semitic term \"Nahal\", meaning \"river\". Old Libyan has the term \"lilu\", meaning water (in modern Berber \"ilel\" \u2d49\u2d4d\u2d3b\u2d4d means \"sea\").\nCourses.\nWith a total length of about between the region of Lake Victoria and the Mediterranean Sea, the Nile is among the longest rivers on Earth. The drainage basin of the Nile covers , about 10% of the area of Africa. Compared to other major rivers, though, the Nile carries little water (5% of that of the Congo River, for example). The Nile basin is complex, and because of this, the discharge at any given point along the main stem depends on many factors including weather, diversions, evaporation and evapotranspiration, and groundwater flow.\nUpstream from Khartoum (to the south), the river is known as the White Nile, a term also used in a limited sense to describe the section between Lake No and Khartoum. At Khartoum, the river is joined by the Blue Nile. The White Nile starts in equatorial East Africa, and the Blue Nile begins in Ethiopia. Both branches are on the western flanks of the East African Rift.\nSources.\nThe source of the Blue Nile is Lake Tana in the Gish Abay region in the Ethiopian Highlands.\nThe source of the White Nile, even after centuries of exploration, remains in dispute. The most remote source that is indisputably a source for the White Nile is of the Kagera River; however, the Kagera has multiple tributaries that are in contention for the farthest source of the White Nile. Two start in Burundi: the Ruvyironza River (also known as the Luvironza) and the Rurubu River.<ref name=\"core.ac.uk/Aziz\"></ref> In addition, in 2010, an exploration party in Rwanda went to a place described as the source of the Rukarara tributary, and by hacking a path up steep jungle-choked mountain slopes in the Nyungwe Forest found (in the dry season) an appreciable incoming surface flow for many kilometres upstream, thence finding a new source, giving the Nile a length of .\nIn Uganda.\nThe White Nile leaves Lake Victoria at Ripon Falls near Jinja, Uganda, as the \"Victoria Nile.\" It flows north for some to Lake Kyoga. The last part of the approximately river section starts from the western shores of the lake and flows at first to the west until just south of Masindi Port, where the river turns north, then makes a great half circle to the east and north to Karuma Falls. For the remaining part, it flows westerly through the Murchison Falls until it reaches the northern shores of Lake Albert where it forms a significant river delta. Lake Albert is on the border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but the Nile is not a border river at this point. After leaving Lake Albert, the river continues north through Uganda and is known as the Albert Nile.\nIn South Sudan.\nThe White Nile flows into South Sudan just south of Nimule, where it is known as the \"Bahr al Jabal\" (\"Mountain River\"). Just south of the town is the confluence with the Achwa River. The Bahr al Ghazal, long, joins the Bahr al Jabal at a small lagoon called Lake No, after which the Nile becomes known as the \"Bahr al Abyad\", or the White Nile, from the whitish clay suspended in its waters. When the Nile floods it leaves a rich silty deposit which fertilizes the soil. The Nile no longer floods in Egypt since the completion of the Aswan Dam in 1970. An anabranch river, the Bahr el Zeraf, flows out of the Nile's Bahr al Jabal section and rejoins the White Nile.\nThe flow rate of the Bahr al Jabal at Mongalla is almost constant throughout the year and averages . After Mongalla, the Bahr Al Jabal enters the enormous swamps of the Sudd region. More than half of the Nile's water is lost in this swamp to evaporation and transpiration. The average flow rate of the White Nile at the tails of the swamps is about . From here it meets with the Sobat River at Malakal. On an annual basis, the White Nile upstream of Malakal contributes about 15% of the total outflow of the Nile.\nThe average flow of the White Nile at Lake Kawaki Malakal, just below the Sobat River, is ; the peak flow is approximately in October and minimum flow is about in April. This fluctuation is caused by the substantial variation in the flow of the Sobat, which has a minimum flow of about in March and a peak flow of over in October. During the dry season (January to June) the White Nile contributes between 70% and 90% of the total discharge from the Nile.\nIn Sudan.\nBelow Renk, the White Nile enters Sudan, it flows north to Khartoum and meets the Blue Nile.\nThe course of the Nile in Sudan is distinctive. It flows over six groups of cataracts, from the sixth at Sabaloka just north of Khartoum northward to Abu Hamad. The tectonic uplift of the Nubian Swell diverts the river south-west for over 300\u00a0km, following the structure of the Central African Shear Zone embracing the Bayuda Desert. At Al Dabbah it resumes its northward course towards the first cataract at Aswan forming the S-shaped Great Bend of the Nile mentioned by Eratosthenes.\nIn the north of Sudan, the river enters Lake Nasser (known in Sudan as Lake Nubia), the larger part of which is in Egypt.\nIn Egypt.\nBelow the Aswan Dam, at the northern limit of Lake Nasser, the Nile resumes its historic course. North of Cairo, the Nile splits into two branches (or distributaries) that feed the Mediterranean: the Rosetta Branch (an anglicized version of the name Rashid) to the west and the Damietta to the east, forming the Nile Delta.\nSediment transport.\nThe annual sediment transport by the Nile in Egypt has been quantified.\nTributaries.\nRed Nile.\nBelow the confluence with the Blue Nile the only major tributary is the Atbarah River, also known as the Red Nile. Roughly halfway to the sea, it originates in Ethiopia north of Lake Tana, and is around long. The Atbarah flows only while there is rain in Ethiopia and dries very rapidly. During the dry period of January to June, it typically dries up north of Khartoum.\nBlue Nile.\nThe Blue Nile (, \"\u02bf\u0100bay\") springs from Lake Tana in the Ethiopian Highlands. The Blue Nile flows about 1,400 kilometres to Khartoum, where the Blue Nile and White Nile join to form the Nile. Ninety percent of the water and ninety-six percent of the transported sediment carried by the Nile come from the Atbarah and Blue Nile,[] both of which originate in Ethiopia, with fifty-nine percent of the water coming from the Blue Nile. The erosion and transportation of silt only occurs during the Ethiopian rainy season when rainfall is especially high in the Ethiopian Highlands; the rest of the year, the great rivers draining Ethiopia into the Nile have a weaker flow. In harsh and arid seasons and droughts, the Blue Nile dries out completely.\nThe flow of the Blue Nile varies considerably over its yearly cycle and is the main contribution to the large natural variation of the Nile flow. During the dry season the natural discharge of the Blue Nile can be as low as , although upstream dams regulate the flow of the river. During the wet season, the peak flow of the Blue Nile often exceeds in late August (a difference of a factor of 50).\nBefore the placement of dams on the river the yearly discharge varied by a factor of 15 at Aswan. Peak flows of over occurred during late August and early September, and minimum flows of about occurred during late April and early May.\nBahr el Ghazal and Sobat River.\nThe Bahr al Ghazal and the Sobat River are the two most important tributaries of the White Nile in terms of discharge.\nThe Bahr al Ghazal's drainage basin is the largest of any of the Nile's sub-basins, measuring in size, but it contributes a relatively small amount of water, about annually, because tremendous volumes of water are lost in the Sudd wetlands.\nThe Sobat River, which joins the Nile a short distance below Lake No, drains about half as much land, , but contributes annually to the Nile. When in flood the Sobat carries a large amount of sediment, adding greatly to the White Nile's color.\nYellow Nile.\nThe Yellow Nile is a former tributary that connected the Ouadda\u00ef highlands of eastern Chad to the Nile River Valley c.\u20098000 to c.\u20091000 BCE. Its remains are known as the Wadi Howar. The wadi passes through Gharb Darfur near the northern border with Chad and meets up with the Nile near the southern point of the Great Bend.\nHistory.\nThe Nile has been the lifeline of civilization in Egypt since the Stone Age, with most of the population and all of the cities of Egypt developing along those parts of the Nile valley lying north of Aswan. However, the Nile used to run much more westerly through what is now Wadi Hamim and Wadi al Maqar in Libya and flow into the Gulf of Sidra. As the sea level rose at the end of the most recent ice age, the stream which is now the northern Nile captured the ancestral Nile near Asyut. This change in climate also led to the current extents of the Sahara desert, around 3400 BCE.\nKhufu branch.\nThe Giza pyramid complex originally overlooked a branch of the Nile that no longer exists. This branch was highest during the African Humid Period.\nAncient Niles.\nThe existing Nile has five earlier phases:\nFlowing north from the Ethiopian Highlands, satellite imagery was used to identify dry watercourses in the desert to the west of the Nile. A canyon, now filled by surface drift, represents the Eonile that flowed during 23\u20135.3\u00a0million years before present. The Eonile transported clastic sediments to the Mediterranean; several natural gas fields have been discovered within these sediments.\nDuring the late-Miocene Messinian salinity crisis, when the Mediterranean Sea was a closed basin and evaporated to the point of being empty or nearly so, the Nile cut its course down to the new base level until it was several hundred metres below world ocean level at Aswan and below Cairo. This created a very long and deep canyon which was filled with sediment after the Mediterranean was recreated. At some point the sediments raised the riverbed sufficiently for the river to overflow westward into a depression to create Lake Moeris.\nLake Tanganyika drained northwards into the Nile until the Virunga Volcanoes blocked its course in Rwanda. The Nile was much longer at that time, with its furthest headwaters in northern Zambia. The currently existing Nile first flowed during the former parts of the W\u00fcrm glaciation period.\nAffad 23 is an archaeological site located in alluvial deposits formed by an ancient channel of the Nile in the Affad region of southern Dongola Reach, Sudan.\nIntegrated Nile.\nThere are two theories about the age of the integrated Nile. One is that the integrated drainage of the Nile is of young age and that the Nile basin was formerly broken into series of separate basins, only the most northerly of which fed a river following the present course of the Nile in Egypt and Sudan. Rushdi Said postulates that Egypt supplied most of the waters of the Nile during the early part of its history.\nThe other theory is that the drainage from Ethiopia via rivers equivalent to the Blue Nile, the Atbara and the Takazze flowed to the Mediterranean via the Egyptian Nile since well back into Tertiary times.\nSalama suggests that during the Paleogene and Neogene Periods (66\u00a0million to 2.588\u00a0million years ago) a series of separate closed continental basins each occupied one of the major parts of the Sudanese Rift System: Mellut rift, White Nile rift, Blue Nile rift, Atbara rift and Sag El Naam rift.\nThe Mellut Basin is nearly deep at its central part. This rift is possibly still active, with reported tectonic activity in its northern and southern boundaries. The Sudd swamp which forms the central part of the basin may still be subsiding. The White Nile Rift system, although shallower than the Bahr el Arab rift, is about deep. Geophysical exploration of the Blue Nile Rift System estimated the depth of the sediments to be . These basins were not interconnected until their subsidence ceased, and the rate of sediment deposition was enough to fill and connect them.\nThe Egyptian Nile connected to the Sudanese Nile, which captures the Ethiopian and Equatorial headwaters during the current stages of tectonic activity in the Eastern, Central and Sudanese Rift systems. The connection of the different Niles occurred during cyclic wet periods. The Atbarah overflowed its closed basin during the wet periods that occurred about 100,000 to 120,000 years ago. The Blue Nile connected to the main Nile during the 70,000\u201380,000 years B.P. wet period. The White Nile system in Bahr El Arab and White Nile Rifts remained a closed lake until the connection of the Victoria Nile to the main system some 12,500 years ago during the African humid period.\nRole in the founding of Egyptian civilization.\nThe Greek historian Herodotus wrote that \"Egypt was the gift of the Nile\". An unending source of sustenance, it played a crucial role in the development of Egyptian civilization. Because the river overflowed its banks annually and deposited new layers of silt, the surrounding land was very fertile. The Ancient Egyptians cultivated and traded wheat, flax, papyrus and other crops around the Nile. Wheat was a crucial crop in the famine-plagued Middle East. This trading system secured Egypt's diplomatic relationships with other countries and contributed to economic stability. Far-reaching trade has been carried on along the Nile since ancient times. A tune, Hymn to the Nile, was created and sung by the ancient Egyptian peoples about the flooding of the Nile River and all of the miracles it brought to Ancient Egyptian civilization.\nWater buffalo were introduced from Asia, and the Assyrians introduced camels in the 7th century BCE. These animals were raised for meat and were domesticated and used for ploughing\u2014or in the camels' case, carriage. Water was vital to both people and livestock. The Nile was also a convenient and efficient means of transportation for people and goods.\nThe Nile was also an important part of ancient Egyptian spiritual life. Hapi was the god of the annual floods, and both he and the pharaoh were thought to control the flooding. The Nile was considered to be a causeway from life to death and the afterlife. The east was thought of as a place of birth and growth, and the west was considered the place of death, as the god Ra, the Sun, underwent birth, death, and resurrection each day as he crossed the sky. Thus, all tombs were west of the Nile, because the Egyptians believed that in order to enter the afterlife, they had to be buried on the side that symbolized death.\nAs the Nile was such an important factor in Egyptian life, the ancient calendar was even based on the three cycles of the Nile. These seasons, each consisting of four months of thirty days each, were called Akhet, Peret, and Shemu. Akhet, which means inundation, was the time of the year when the Nile flooded, leaving several layers of fertile soil behind, aiding in agricultural growth. Peret was the growing season, and Shemu, the last season, was the harvest season when there were no rains.\nEuropean search for the source.\nTo the ancient Greeks and Romans, the upper reaches of the White Nile remained largely unknown, as they failed to penetrate the \"Sudd\" wetlands of South Sudan. Vitruvius thought that source of the Nile was in Mauritania, on the \"other\" (south) side of the Atlas Mountains. Various expeditions failed to determine the river's source. Agatharchides records that in the time of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, a military expedition had penetrated far enough along the course of the Blue Nile to determine that the summer floods were caused by heavy seasonal rainstorms in the Ethiopian Highlands, but no European of antiquity is known to have reached Lake Tana. The \"Tabula Rogeriana\" depicted the source as three lakes in 1154.\nEuropeans began to learn about the origins of the Nile in the 14th century when the Pope sent monks as emissaries to Mongolia who passed India, the Middle East and Africa, and described being told of the source of the Nile in Abyssinia (Ethiopia). Later in the 15th and 16th centuries, travelers to Ethiopia visited Lake Tana and the source of the Blue Nile in the mountains south of the lake. Supposedly, Paolo Trevisani (c.\u20091452\u20131483), a Venetian traveller in Ethiopia, wrote a journal of his travels to the \"origin of the Nile\" that has since been lost.\nJames Bruce claimed to be the first European to have visited the headwaters.\nModern writers give the credit to the Jesuit Pedro P\u00e1ez. P\u00e1ez's account of the source of the Nile is a long and vivid account of Ethiopia. It was published in full only in the early 20th century, but was featured in works of P\u00e1ez's contemporaries, like Baltazar T\u00e9llez, Athanasius Kircher and Johann Michael Vansleb.\nEuropeans had been resident in Ethiopia since the late 15th century, and one of them may have visited the headwaters even earlier without leaving a written trace. The Portuguese Jo\u00e3o Bermudes published the first description of the Tis Issat Falls in his 1565 memoirs, compared them to the Nile Falls alluded to in Cicero's \"De Republica\". Jer\u00f3nimo Lobo describes the source of the Blue Nile, visiting shortly after Pedro P\u00e1ez. Telles also uses his account.\nThe White Nile was even less understood. The ancients mistakenly believed that the Niger River represented the upper reaches of the White Nile. For example, Pliny the Elder writes that the Nile had its origins \"in a mountain of lower Mauretania\", flowed above ground for \"many days\" distance, then went underground, reappeared as a large lake in the territories of the Masaesyli, then sank again below the desert to flow underground \"for a distance of 20 days' journey till it reaches the nearest Ethiopians.\"\nModern exploration of the Nile basin began with the conquest of the northern and central Sudan by the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, and his sons from 1821 onward. As a result of this, the Blue Nile was known as far as its exit from the Ethiopian foothills and the White Nile as far as the mouth of the Sobat River. Three expeditions under a Turkish officer, Selim Bimbashi, were made between 1839 and 1842, and two got to the point about beyond the present port of Juba, where the country rises and rapids make navigation very difficult.\nLake Victoria was first sighted by Europeans in 1858 when British explorer John Hanning Speke reached its southern shore while traveling with Richard Francis Burton to explore central Africa and locate the great lakes. Believing he had found the source of the Nile on seeing this \"vast expanse of open water\" for the first time, Speke named the lake after Queen Victoria. Burton, recovering from illness and resting further south on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, was outraged that Speke claimed to have proven his discovery to be the true source of the Nile when Burton regarded this as still unsettled. A quarrel ensued which sparked intense debate within the scientific community and interest by other explorers keen to either confirm or refute Speke's discovery. British explorer and missionary David Livingstone pushed too far west and entered the Congo River system instead. It was ultimately Welsh-American explorer Henry Morton Stanley who confirmed Speke's discovery, circumnavigating Lake Victoria and reporting the great outflow at Ripon Falls on the lake's northern shore.\nSince 1950.\nThe Nile has long been used to transport goods along its length. Winter winds blow south, up river, so ships could sail up river using sails and down river using the flow of the river. While most Egyptians still live in the Nile valley, the 1970 completion of the Aswan Dam ended the summer floods and their renewal of the fertile soil, fundamentally changing farming practices. The Nile supports much of the population living along its banks, enabling Egyptians to live in otherwise inhospitable regions of the Sahara. The river's flow is disturbed at several points by the Cataracts of the Nile which form an obstacle to navigation by boats. The Sudd also forms a formidable navigation obstacle and impedes water flow, to the extent that Sudan had once attempted to build the Jonglei Canal to bypass the swamp.\nNile cities include Khartoum, Aswan, Luxor (Thebes), and the Giza\u00a0\u2013 Cairo conurbation. The first cataract, the closest to the mouth of the river, is at Aswan, north of the Aswan Dam. This part of the river is a regular tourist route, with cruise ships and traditional wooden sailing boats known as feluccas. Many cruise ships ply the route between Luxor and Aswan, stopping at Edfu and Kom Ombo along the way. Security concerns have limited cruising on the northernmost portion for many years.\nA computer simulation study to plan the economic development of the Nile was directed by H.A.W. Morrice and W.N. Allan, for the Ministry of Hydro-power of Sudan, during 1955\u201357 Morrice was their hydrological adviser, and Allan his predecessor. The calculations were enabled by accurate monthly inflow data collected for 50 years. The underlying principle was the use of over-year storage, to conserve water from rainy years for use in dry years. Irrigation, navigation and other needs were considered. Each computer run postulated a set of reservoirs and operating equations for the release of water as a function of the month and the levels upstream. The behavior that would have resulted given the inflow data was modeled. Over 600 models were run. Recommendations were made to the Sudanese authorities. The calculations were run on an IBM 650 computer. Simulation studies to design water resources are discussed further in the article on hydrology transport models, which have been used since the 1980s to analyze water quality.\nDespite the development of many reservoirs, drought during the 1980s led to widespread starvation in Ethiopia and Sudan, but Egypt was nourished by water impounded in Lake Nasser. Drought has proven to be a major cause of fatality in the Nile river basin. According to a report by the Strategic Foresight Group, droughts in the last century have affected around 170 million people and killed half a million people. From the 70 incidents of drought which took place between 1900 and 2012, 55 incidents took place in Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya and Tanzania.\nWater sharing dispute.\nThe Nile's water has affected the politics of East Africa and the Horn of Africa for many decades. The dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over the $4.5 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has become a national preoccupation in both countries, stoking patriotism, deep-seated fears and even murmurs of war. Countries including Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya have complained about Egyptian domination of its water resources. The Nile Basin Initiative promotes a peaceful cooperation among those states.\nSeveral attempts have been made to establish agreements between the countries sharing the Nile waters. On 14 May 2010 at Entebbe, Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Tanzania signed a new agreement on sharing the Nile water even though this agreement raised strong opposition from Egypt and Sudan. Ideally, such international agreements should promote equitable and efficient usage of the Nile basin's water resources. Without a better understanding about the availability of the future water resources of the Nile, it is possible that conflicts could arise between these countries relying on the Nile for their water supply, economic and social developments.\nModern achievements and exploration.\nWhite Nile.\nIn 1951, American John Goddard together with two French explorers became the first to successfully navigate the entire Nile from its source in Burundi at the potential headsprings of the Kagera River in Burundi to its mouth on the Mediterranean Sea, a journey of approximately . Their 9-month journey is described in the book \"Kayaks down the Nile\".\nThe White Nile Expedition, led by South African national Hendrik Coetzee, navigated the White Nile's entire length of approximately . The expedition began at the White Nile's beginning at Lake Victoria in Uganda, on 17 January 2004 and arrived at the Mediterranean in Rosetta, four and a half months later.\nBlue Nile.\nThe Blue Nile Expedition, led by geologist Pasquale Scaturro and his partner, kayaker and documentary filmmaker Gordon Brown became the first known people to descend the entire Blue Nile, from Lake Tana in Ethiopia to the beaches of Alexandria on the Mediterranean. Their approximately journey took 114 days, from 25 December 2003 to 28 April 2004. Though their expedition included others, Brown and Scaturro were the only ones to complete the entire journey. Although they descended whitewater manually, the team used outboard motors for much of their journey.\nOn 29 January 2005, Canadian Les Jickling and New Zealander Mark Tanner completed the first human-powered transit of Ethiopia's Blue Nile. Their journey of over took five months. They recount that they paddled through two war zones, regions notorious for bandits, and were arrested at gunpoint.\nCrossings.\nCrossings from Khartoum to the Mediterranean Sea.\nThe following bridges cross the Blue Nile and connect Khartoum to Khartoum North:\nThe following bridges cross the White Nile and connect Khartoum to Omdurman:\nThe following bridges cross from Omdurman: to Khartoum North:\nThe following bridges cross to Tuti from Khartoum state's three cities\nOther bridges\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotes and references.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "8087628": "Egypt\nCountry in Northeast Africa and Southwest Asia\nEgypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip of Palestine and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west; the Gulf of Aqaba in the northeast separates Egypt from Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Cairo is the capital, largest city, and leading cultural center, while Alexandria is the second-largest city and an important hub of industry and tourism. With over 107 million inhabitants, Egypt is the third-most populous country in Africa and 14th-most populated in the world.\nEgypt has one of the longest histories of any country, tracing its heritage along the Nile Delta back to the 6th\u20134th millennia BCE. Considered a cradle of civilisation, Ancient Egypt saw some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, organised religion and central government. Egypt was an early and important centre of Christianity, later adopting Islam from the seventh century onwards. Cairo became the capital of the Fatimid Caliphate in the tenth century and of the subsequent Mamluk Sultanate in the 13th century. Egypt then became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1517, until its local ruler Muhammad Ali established modern Egypt as an autonomous Khedivate in 1867. The country was then occupied by the British Empire along with Sudan and gained independence in 1922 as a monarchy.\nFollowing the 1952 revolution, Egypt declared itself a republic. For a brief period between 1958 and 1961 Egypt merged with Syria to form the United Arab Republic. Egypt fought several armed conflicts with Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, and occupied the Gaza Strip intermittently until 1967. In 1978, Egypt signed the Camp David Accords, which recognised Israel in exchange for its withdrawal from the occupied Sinai. After the Arab Spring, which led to the 2011 Egyptian revolution and overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, the country faced a protracted period of political unrest; its first democratic election in 2012 resulted in the short-lived, Muslim Brotherhood-aligned government of Mohamed Morsi, which was overthrown by the military after mass protests in 2013. The current government is a semi-presidential republic led by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who was elected in 2014 but is widely regarded as authoritarian.\nEgypt is a developing country with the second-largest economy in Africa. It is considered to be a regional power in the Middle East, North Africa and the Muslim world, and a middle power worldwide. Islam is the official religion and Arabic is official language. Egypt is a founding member of the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Arab League, the African Union, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, World Youth Forum, and a member of BRICS.\nNames.\nThe English name \"Egypt\" is derived from the Ancient Greek \" (\"), via Middle French \"Egypte\" and Latin \"\". It is reflected in early Greek Linear B tablets as \"a-ku-pi-ti-yo\". The adjective \"aig\u00fdpti-\"/\"aig\u00fdptios\" was borrowed into Coptic as \"\", and from there into Arabic as \", back formed into \" (), whence English \"Copt\". Prominent Ancient Greek historian and Geographer, Strabo, provided a folk etymology stating that \"'\" (Aig\u00fdptios) had originally evolved as a compound from \"'\" (), meaning \"Below the Aegean\".\n\" (; \") is the Classical Quranic Arabic and modern official name of Egypt, while \"\" (; ) is the local pronunciation in Egyptian Arabic. The current name of Egypt, Misr/Misir/Misru, stems from the Ancient Semitic name for it. The term originally connoted \"Civilisation\" or \"Metropolis\". Classical Arabic ' (Egyptian Arabic ') is directly cognate with the Biblical Hebrew \"Mi\u1e63r\u00e1y\u012bm\" (\u05de\u05b4\u05e6\u05b0\u05e8\u05b7\u05d9\u05b4\u05dd / \u05de\u05b4\u05e6\u05b0\u05e8\u05b8\u05d9\u05b4\u05dd), meaning \"the two straits\", a reference to the predynastic separation of Upper and Lower Egypt. Also mentioned in several Semitic languages as \"Mesru\", \"Misir\" and \"Masar\". The oldest attestation of this name for Egypt is the Akkadian \"mi-i\u1e63-ru\" (\"mi\u1e63ru\") related to \"mi\u1e63ru/mi\u1e63irru/mi\u1e63aru\", meaning \"border\" or \"frontier\". The Neo-Assyrian Empire used the derived term , \"Mu-\u1e63ur\".\nThe ancient Egyptian name of the country was km-m-t:O49 (\ud80c\udd8e \ud80c\udd53 \ud80c\udfcf\ud80c\ude96) , which means black land, likely referring to the fertile black soils of the Nile flood plains, distinct from the \"deshret\" (\u27e8\u27e9), or \"red land\" of the desert. This name is commonly vocalised as \"Kemet\", but was probably pronounced in ancient Egyptian. The name is realised as ' (, ) in the Coptic stage of the Egyptian language, and appeared in early Greek as ('). Another name was \u27e8\u27e9 \"land of the riverbank\". The names of Upper and Lower Egypt were \"Ta-Sheme'aw\" (\u27e8\u27e9) \"sedgeland\" and \"Ta-Mehew\" (\u27e8\u27e9) \"northland\", respectively.\nHistory.\nPrehistory and Ancient Egypt.\nThere is evidence of rock carvings along the Nile terraces and in desert oases. In the 10th millennium BCE, a culture of hunter-gatherers and fishers was replaced by a grain-grinding culture. Climate changes or overgrazing around 8000 BCE began to desiccate the pastoral lands of Egypt, forming the Sahara. Early tribal peoples migrated to the Nile River where they developed a settled agricultural economy and more centralised society.\nBy about 6000 BCE, a Neolithic culture took root in the Nile Valley. During the Neolithic era, several predynastic cultures developed independently in Upper and Lower Egypt. The Badarian culture and the successor Naqada series are generally regarded as precursors to dynastic Egypt. The earliest known Lower Egyptian site, Merimda, predates the Badarian by about seven hundred years. Contemporaneous Lower Egyptian communities coexisted with their southern counterparts for more than two thousand years, remaining culturally distinct, but maintaining frequent contact through trade. The earliest known evidence of Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions appeared during the predynastic period on Naqada III pottery vessels, dated to about 3200 BCE.\nA unified kingdom was founded c.\u20093150 BCE by King Menes, leading to a series of dynasties that ruled Egypt for the next three millennia. Egyptian culture flourished during this long period and remained distinctively Egyptian in its religion, arts, language and customs. The first two ruling dynasties of a unified Egypt set the stage for the Old Kingdom period, c.\u20092700\u20132200 BCE, which constructed many pyramids, most notably the Third Dynasty pyramid of Djoser and the Fourth Dynasty Giza pyramids.\nThe First Intermediate Period ushered in a time of political upheaval for about 150 years. Stronger Nile floods and stabilisation of government, however, brought back renewed prosperity for the country in the Middle Kingdom c.\u20092040 BCE, reaching a peak during the reign of Pharaoh Amenemhat III. A second period of disunity heralded the arrival of the first foreign ruling dynasty in Egypt, that of the Semitic Hyksos. The Hyksos invaders took over much of Lower Egypt around 1650 BCE and founded a new capital at Avaris. They were driven out by an Upper Egyptian force led by Ahmose I, who founded the Eighteenth Dynasty and relocated the capital from Memphis to Thebes.\nThe New Kingdom c.\u20091550\u20131070 BCE began with the Eighteenth Dynasty, marking the rise of Egypt as an international power that expanded during its greatest extension to an empire as far south as Tombos in Nubia, and included parts of the Levant in the east. This period is noted for some of the most well known Pharaohs, including Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti, Tutankhamun and Ramesses II. The first historically attested expression of monotheism came during this period as Atenism. Frequent contacts with other nations brought new ideas to the New Kingdom. The country was later invaded and conquered by Libyans, Nubians and Assyrians, but native Egyptians eventually drove them out and regained control of their country.\nIn 525\u00a0BCE, the Achaemenid Empire, led by Cambyses II, began their conquest of Egypt, eventually capturing the pharaoh Psamtik III at the battle of Pelusium. Cambyses II then assumed the formal title of pharaoh, but ruled Egypt from his home of Susa in Persia (modern Iran), leaving Egypt under the control of a satrapy. The entire Twenty-seventh Dynasty of Egypt, from 525 to 402 BCE, save for Petubastis III, was an entirely Achaemenid-ruled period, with the Achaemenid emperors all being granted the title of pharaoh. A few temporarily successful revolts against the Achaemenids marked the fifth century BCE, but Egypt was never able to permanently overthrow the Achaemenids.\nThe Thirtieth Dynasty was the last native ruling dynasty during the Pharaonic epoch. It fell to the Achaemenids again in 343 BCE after the last native Pharaoh, King Nectanebo II, was defeated in battle. This Thirty-first Dynasty of Egypt, however, did not last long, as the Achaemenids were toppled several decades later by Alexander the Great. The Macedonian Greek general of Alexander, Ptolemy I Soter, founded the Ptolemaic dynasty.\nPtolemaic and Roman Egypt.\nThe Ptolemaic Kingdom was a powerful Hellenistic state, extending from southern Syria in the east, to Cyrene to the west, and south to the frontier with Nubia. Alexandria became the capital city and a centre of Greek culture and trade. To gain recognition by the native Egyptian populace, they named themselves as the successors to the Pharaohs. The later Ptolemies took on Egyptian traditions, had themselves portrayed on public monuments in Egyptian style and dress, and participated in Egyptian religious life.\nThe last ruler from the Ptolemaic line was Cleopatra VII, who committed suicide following the burial of her lover Mark Antony, after Octavian had captured Alexandria and her mercenary forces had fled.\nThe Ptolemies faced rebellions of native Egyptians and were involved in foreign and civil wars that led to the decline of the kingdom and its annexation by Rome.\nChristianity was brought to Egypt by Saint Mark the Evangelist in the 1st century. Diocletian's reign (284\u2013305 CE) marked the transition from the Roman to the Byzantine era in Egypt, when a great number of Egyptian Christians were persecuted. The New Testament had by then been translated into Egyptian. After the Council of Chalcedon in CE 451, a distinct Egyptian Coptic Church was firmly established.\nMiddle Ages (7th century \u2013 1517).\nThe Byzantines were able to regain control of the country after a brief Sasanid Persian invasion early in the 7th century amidst the Byzantine\u2013Sasanian War of 602\u2013628 during which they established a new short-lived province for ten years known as Sasanian Egypt, until 639\u201342, when Egypt was invaded and\nconquered by the Islamic caliphate by the Muslim Arabs. When they defeated the Byzantine armies in Egypt, the Arabs brought Islam to the country. Some time during this period, Egyptians began to blend in their new faith with indigenous beliefs and practices, leading to various Sufi orders that have flourished to this day. These earlier rites had survived the period of Coptic Christianity.\nIn 639 an army was sent in Egypt by the second caliph, Umar, under the command of Amr ibn al-As. They defeated a Roman army at the battle of Heliopolis. Amr next proceeded in the direction of Alexandria, which surrendered to him by a treaty signed on 8 November 641. Alexandria was regained for the Byzantine Empire in 645 but was retaken by Amr in 646. In 654 an invasion fleet sent by Constans II was repulsed.\nThe Arabs founded the capital of Egypt called Fustat, which was later burned down during the Crusades. Cairo was later built in the year 986 to grow to become the largest and richest city in the Arab caliphate, second only to Baghdad.\nThe Abbasid period was marked by new taxations, and the Copts revolted again in the fourth year of Abbasid rule. At the beginning of the 9th century the practice of ruling Egypt through a governor was resumed under Abdallah ibn Tahir, who decided to reside at Baghdad, sending a deputy to Egypt to govern for him. In 828 another Egyptian revolt broke out, and in 831 the Copts joined with native Muslims against the government. Eventually the power loss of the Abbasids in Baghdad led for general upon general to take over rule of Egypt, yet being under Abbasid allegiance, the Tulunid dynasty (868\u2013905) and Ikhshidid dynasty (935\u2013969) were among the most successful to defy the Abbasid Caliph.\nMuslim rulers remained in control of Egypt for the next six centuries, with Cairo as the seat of the Fatimid Caliphate. With the end of the Ayyubid dynasty, the Mamluks, a Turco-Circassian military caste, took control about 1250. By the late 13th century, Egypt linked the Red Sea, India, Malaya, and East Indies. The mid-14th-century Black Death killed about 40% of the country's population.\nEarly modern period: Ottoman Egypt (1517\u20131867).\nEgypt was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1517, after which it became a province of the Ottoman Empire. The defensive militarisation damaged its civil society and economic institutions. The weakening of the economic system combined with the effects of plague left Egypt vulnerable to foreign invasion. Portuguese traders took over their trade. Between 1687 and 1731, Egypt experienced six famines. The 1784 famine cost it roughly one-sixth of its population. Egypt was always a difficult province for the Ottoman Sultans to control, due in part to the continuing power and influence of the Mamluks, the Egyptian military caste who had ruled the country for centuries. Egypt remained semi-autonomous under the Mamluks until it was invaded by the French forces of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798. After the French were defeated by the British, a three-way power struggle ensued between the Ottoman Turks, Egyptian Mamluks who had ruled Egypt for centuries, and Albanian mercenaries in the service of the Ottomans. \nAfter the French were expelled, power was seized in 1805 by Muhammad Ali Pasha, an Albanian military commander of the Ottoman army in Egypt. Muhammad Ali massacred the Mamluks and established a dynasty that was to rule Egypt until the revolution of 1952. The introduction in 1820 of long-staple cotton transformed its agriculture into a cash-crop monoculture before the end of the century, concentrating land ownership and shifting production towards international markets. Muhammad Ali annexed Northern Sudan (1820\u20131824), Syria (1833), and parts of Arabia and Anatolia; but in 1841 the European powers, fearful lest he topple the Ottoman Empire itself, forced him to return most of his conquests to the Ottomans. His military ambition required him to modernise the country: he built industries, a system of canals for irrigation and transport, and reformed the civil service. He constructed a military state with around four percent of the populace serving the army to raise Egypt to a powerful positioning in the Ottoman Empire in a way showing various similarities to the Soviet strategies (without communism) conducted in the 20th century.\nMuhammad Ali Pasha evolved the military from one that convened under the tradition of the corv\u00e9e to a great modernised army. He introduced conscription of the male peasantry in 19th century Egypt, and took a novel approach to create his great army, strengthening it with numbers and in skill. Education and training of the new soldiers became mandatory; the new concepts were furthermore enforced by isolation. The men were held in barracks to avoid distraction of their growth as a military unit to be reckoned with. The resentment for the military way of life eventually faded from the men and a new ideology took hold, one of nationalism and pride. It was with the help of this newly reborn martial unit that Muhammad Ali imposed his rule over Egypt. The policy that Mohammad Ali Pasha followed during his reign explains partly why the numeracy in Egypt compared to other North-African and Middle-Eastern countries increased only at a remarkably small rate, as investment in further education only took place in the military and industrial sector. Muhammad Ali was succeeded briefly by his son Ibrahim (in September 1848), then by a grandson Abbas I (in November 1848), then by Said (in 1854), and Isma'il (in 1863) who encouraged science and agriculture and banned slavery in Egypt.\nEgypt under the Muhammad Ali dynasty remained nominally an Ottoman province. It was granted the status of an autonomous vassal state or \"Khedivate\" (1867\u20131914) in 1867. The Suez Canal, built in partnership with the French, was completed in 1869. Its construction was financed by European banks. Large sums also went to patronage and corruption. New taxes caused popular discontent. In 1875 Isma'il avoided bankruptcy by selling all Egypt's shares in the canal to the British government. Within three years this led to the imposition of British and French controllers who sat in the Egyptian cabinet, and, \"with the financial power of the bondholders behind them, were the real power in the Government\", Other circumstances like epidemic diseases (cattle disease in the 1880s), floods and wars drove the economic downturn and increased Egypt's dependency on foreign debt even further.\nLocal dissatisfaction with the Khedive and with European intrusion led to the formation of the first nationalist groupings in 1879, with Ahmed \u02bbUrabi a prominent figure. After increasing tensions and nationalist revolts, the United Kingdom invaded Egypt in 1882, crushing the Egyptian army at the Battle of Tell El Kebir and militarily occupying the country. Following this, the Khedivate became a \"de facto\" British protectorate under nominal Ottoman sovereignty. In 1899 the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium Agreement was signed: the Agreement stated that Sudan would be jointly governed by the Khedivate of Egypt and the United Kingdom. However, actual control of Sudan was in British hands only. In 1906, the Denshawai incident prompted many neutral Egyptians to join the nationalist movement.\nSultanate and Kingdom of Egypt.\nIn 1914 the Ottoman Empire entered World War I in alliance with the Central Empires; Khedive Abbas II (who had grown increasingly hostile to the British in preceding years) decided to support the motherland in war. Following such decision, the British forcibly removed him from power and replaced him with his brother Hussein Kamel. Hussein Kamel declared Egypt's independence from the Ottoman Empire, assuming the title of Sultan of Egypt. Shortly following independence, Egypt was declared a protectorate of the United Kingdom.\nAfter World War I, Saad Zaghlul and the Wafd Party led the Egyptian nationalist movement to a majority at the local Legislative Assembly. When the British exiled Zaghlul and his associates to Malta on 8 March 1919, the country arose in its first modern revolution. The revolt led the UK government to issue a unilateral declaration of Egypt's independence on 22 February 1922. Following independence from the United Kingdom, Sultan Fuad I assumed the title of King of Egypt; despite being nominally independent, the Kingdom was still under British military occupation and the UK still had great influence over the state. The new government drafted and implemented a constitution in 1923 based on a parliamentary system. The nationalist Wafd Party won a landslide victory in the 1923\u20131924 election and Saad Zaghloul was appointed as the new prime minister. In 1936, the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty was concluded and British troops withdrew from Egypt, except for the Suez Canal. The treaty did not resolve the question of Sudan, which, under the terms of the existing Anglo-Egyptian Condominium Agreement of 1899, stated that Sudan should be jointly governed by Egypt and Britain, but with real power remaining in British hands.\nBritain used Egypt as a base for Allied operations throughout the region, especially the battles in North Africa against Italy and Germany. Its highest priorities were control of the Eastern Mediterranean, and especially keeping the Suez Canal open for merchant ships and for military connections with India and Australia. When the war began in September 1939, Egypt declared martial law and broke off diplomatic relations with Germany. It broke diplomatic relations with Italy in 1940, but never declared war, even when the Italian army invaded Egypt. The Egyptian army did no fighting. In June 1940 the King dismissed Prime Minister Aly Maher, who got on poorly with the British. A new coalition Government was formed with the Independent Hassan Pasha Sabri as prime minister.\nFollowing a ministerial crisis in February 1942, the ambassador Sir Miles Lampson, pressed Farouk to have a Wafd or Wafd-coalition government replace Hussein Sirri Pasha's government. On the night of 4 February 1942, British troops and tanks surrounded Abdeen Palace in Cairo and Lampson presented Farouk with an ultimatum. Farouk capitulated, and Nahhas formed a government shortly thereafter.\nMost British troops were withdrawn to the Suez Canal area in 1947 (although the British army maintained a military base in the area), but nationalist, anti-British feelings continued to grow after the War. Anti-monarchy sentiments further increased following the disastrous performance of the Kingdom in the First Arab-Israeli War. The 1950 election saw a landslide victory of the nationalist Wafd Party and the King was forced to appoint Mostafa El-Nahas as new prime minister. In 1951 Egypt unilaterally withdrew from the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 and ordered all remaining British troops to leave the Suez Canal.\nAs the British refused to leave their base around the Suez Canal, the Egyptian government cut off the water and refused to allow food into the Suez Canal base, announced a boycott of British goods, forbade Egyptian workers from entering the base and sponsored guerrilla attacks. On 24 January 1952, Egyptian guerrillas staged a fierce attack on the British forces around the Suez Canal, during which the Egyptian Auxiliary Police were observed helping the guerrillas. In response, on 25 January, General George Erskine sent out British tanks and infantry to surround the auxiliary police station in Ismailia. The police commander called the Interior Minister, Fouad Serageddin, Nahas's right-hand man, to ask if he should surrender or fight. Serageddin ordered the police to fight \"to the last man and the last bullet\". The resulting battle saw the police station levelled and 43 Egyptian policemen killed together with 3 British soldiers. The Ismailia incident outraged Egypt. The next day, 26 January 1952 was \"Black Saturday\", as the anti-British riot was known, that saw much of downtown Cairo which the Khedive Ismail the Magnificent had rebuilt in the style of Paris, burned down. Farouk blamed the Wafd for the Black Saturday riot, and dismissed Nahas as prime minister the next day. He was replaced by Aly Maher Pasha.\nOn 22\u201323 July 1952, the Free Officers Movement, led by Muhammad Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser, launched a coup d'\u00e9tat (Egyptian Revolution of 1952) against the king. Farouk I abdicated the throne to his son Fouad II, who was, at the time, a seven-month-old baby. The Royal Family left Egypt some days later and the Council of Regency, led by Prince Muhammad Abdel Moneim was formed. The council, however, held only nominal authority and the real power was actually in the hands of the Revolutionary Command Council, led by Naguib and Nasser. Popular expectations for immediate reforms led to the workers' riots in Kafr Dawar on 12 August 1952. Following a brief experiment with civilian rule, the Free Officers abrogated the monarchy and the 1923 constitution and declared Egypt a republic on 18 June 1953. Naguib was proclaimed as president, while Nasser was appointed as the new prime minister.\nRepublican Egypt under Nasser (1952\u20131970).\nFollowing the 1952 Revolution by the Free Officers Movement, the rule of Egypt passed to military hands and all political parties were banned. On 18 June 1953, the Egyptian Republic was declared, with General Muhammad Naguib as the first President of the Republic, serving in that capacity for a little under one and a half years. Republic of Egypt (1953\u20131958) was declared.\nNaguib was forced to resign in 1954 by Gamal Abdel Nasser\u00a0\u2013 a Pan-Arabist and the real architect of the 1952 movement\u00a0\u2013 and was later put under house arrest. After Naguib's resignation, the position of president was vacant until the election of Nasser in 1956. In October 1954, Egypt and the United Kingdom agreed to abolish the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium Agreement of 1899 and grant Sudan independence; the agreement came into force on 1 January 1956. Nasser assumed power as president in June 1956 and began dominating the history of modern Egypt. British forces completed their withdrawal from the occupied Suez Canal Zone on 13 June 1956. He nationalised the Suez Canal on 26 July 1956; his hostile approach towards Israel and economic nationalism prompted the beginning of the Second Arab-Israeli War (Suez Crisis), in which Israel (with support from France and the United Kingdom) occupied the Sinai peninsula and the Canal. The war came to an end because of US and USSR diplomatic intervention and the \"status quo\" was restored.\nIn 1958, Egypt and Syria formed a sovereign union known as the United Arab Republic. The union was short-lived, ending in 1961 when Syria seceded. During most of its existence, the United Arab Republic was also in a loose confederation with North Yemen (or the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen), known as the United Arab States. In the early 1960s, Egypt became fully involved in the North Yemen Civil War. Despite several military moves and peace conferences, the war sank into a stalemate. In mid May 1967, the Soviet Union issued warnings to Nasser of an impending Israeli attack on Syria. Although the chief of staff Mohamed Fawzi verified them as \"baseless\", Nasser took three successive steps that made the war virtually inevitable: on 14 May he deployed his troops in Sinai near the border with Israel, on 19 May he expelled the UN peacekeepers stationed in the Sinai Peninsula border with Israel, and on 23 May he closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. On 26 May Nasser declared, \"The battle will be a general one and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel\".\nThis prompted the beginning of the Third Arab Israeli War (Six-Day War) in which Israel attacked Egypt, and occupied Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, which Egypt had occupied since the 1948 Arab\u2013Israeli War. During the 1967 war, an Emergency Law was enacted, and remained in effect until 2012, with the exception of an 18-month break in 1980/81. Under this law, police powers were extended, constitutional rights suspended and censorship legalised. At the time of the fall of the Egyptian monarchy in the early 1950s, less than half a million Egyptians were considered upper class and rich, four million middle class and 17 million lower class and poor. Fewer than half of all primary-school-age children attended school, most of them being boys. Nasser's policies changed this. Land reform and distribution, the dramatic growth in university education, and government support to national industries greatly improved social mobility and flattened the social curve. From academic year 1953\u201354 through 1965\u201366, overall public school enrolments more than doubled. Millions of previously poor Egyptians, through education and jobs in the public sector, joined the middle class. Doctors, engineers, teachers, lawyers, journalists, constituted the bulk of the swelling middle class in Egypt under Nasser. During the 1960s, the Egyptian economy went from sluggish to the verge of collapse, the society became less free, and Nasser's appeal waned considerably.\nEgypt under Sadat and Mubarak (1971\u20132011).\n In 1970, President Nasser died and was succeeded by Anwar Sadat. During his period, Sadat switched Egypt's Cold War allegiance from the Soviet Union to the United States, expelling the Soviet advisors in 1972. Egypt was renamed as Arab Republic of Egypt in 1971. Sadat launched the Infitah economic reform policy, while clamping down on religious and secular opposition. In 1973, Egypt, along with Syria, launched the Fourth Arab-Israeli War (Yom Kippur War), a surprise attack to regain part of the Sinai territory Israel had captured 6 years earlier. In 1975, Sadat shifted Nasser's economic policies and sought to use his popularity to reduce government regulations and encourage foreign investment through his programme of Infitah. Through this policy, incentives such as reduced taxes and import tariffs attracted some investors, but investments were mainly directed at low risk and profitable ventures like tourism and construction, abandoning Egypt's infant industries. Because of the elimination of subsidies on basic foodstuffs, it led to the 1977 Egyptian Bread Riots. Sadat made a historic visit to Israel in 1977, which led to the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from Sinai. In return, Egypt recognised Israel as a legitimate sovereign state. Sadat's initiative sparked enormous controversy in the Arab world and led to Egypt's expulsion from the Arab League, but it was supported by most Egyptians. Sadat was assassinated by an Islamic extremist in October 1981. \nHosni Mubarak came to power after the assassination of Sadat in a referendum in which he was the only candidate. He became another leader to dominate the Egyptian history. Hosni Mubarak reaffirmed Egypt's relationship with Israel yet eased the tensions with Egypt's Arab neighbours. Domestically, Mubarak faced serious problems. Mass poverty and unemployment led rural families to stream into cities like Cairo where they ended up in crowded slums, barely managing to survive. On 25 February 1986, the Security Police started rioting, protesting against reports that their term of duty was to be extended from 3 to 4 years. Hotels, nightclubs, restaurants and casinos were attacked in Cairo and there were riots in other cities. A day time curfew was imposed. It took the army 3 days to restore order. 107 people were killed.\nIn the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, terrorist attacks in Egypt became numerous and severe, and began to target Christian Copts, foreign tourists and government officials. In the 1990s an Islamist group, Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, engaged in an extended campaign of violence, from the murders and attempted murders of prominent writers and intellectuals, to the repeated targeting of tourists and foreigners. Serious damage was done to the largest sector of Egypt's economy\u2014tourism\u2014and in turn to the government, but it also devastated the livelihoods of many of the people on whom the group depended for support. During Mubarak's reign, the political scene was dominated by the National Democratic Party, which was created by Sadat in 1978. It passed the 1993 Syndicates Law, 1995 Press Law, and 1999 Nongovernmental Associations Law which hampered freedoms of association and expression by imposing new regulations and draconian penalties on violations. As a result, by the late 1990s parliamentary politics had become virtually irrelevant and alternative avenues for political expression were curtailed as well. Cairo grew into a metropolitan area with a population of over 20 million.\nOn 17 November 1997, 62 people, mostly tourists, were massacred near Luxor. In late February 2005, Mubarak announced a reform of the presidential election law, paving the way for multi-candidate polls for the first time since the 1952 movement. However, the new law placed restrictions on the candidates, and led to Mubarak's easy re-election victory. Voter turnout was less than 25%. Election observers also alleged government interference in the election process. After the election, Mubarak imprisoned Ayman Nour, the runner-up.\nHuman Rights Watch's 2006 report on Egypt detailed serious human rights violations under Mubarak's rule, including routine torture, arbitrary detentions and trials before military and state security courts. In 2007, Amnesty International released a report alleging that Egypt had become an international centre for torture, where other nations send suspects for interrogation, often as part of the War on Terror. Egypt's foreign ministry quickly issued a rebuttal to this report. Constitutional changes voted on 19 March 2007 prohibited parties from using religion as a basis for political activity, allowed the drafting of a new anti-terrorism law, authorised broad police powers of arrest and surveillance, and gave the president power to dissolve parliament and end judicial election monitoring. In 2009, Dr. Ali El Deen Hilal Dessouki, Media Secretary of the National Democratic Party (NDP), described Egypt as a \"pharaonic\" political system, and democracy as a \"long-term goal\". Dessouki also stated that \"the real centre of power in Egypt is the military\".\nRevolution, political crisis and transition (2011\u2013present).\nOn 25 January 2011, widespread protests began against Mubarak's government. On 11 February 2011, Mubarak resigned and fled Cairo. Jubilant celebrations broke out in Cairo's Tahrir Square at the news. The Egyptian military then assumed the power to govern. Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, became the \"de facto\" interim head of state. On 13 February 2011, the military dissolved the parliament and suspended the constitution.\nA constitutional referendum was held on 19 March 2011. On 28 November 2011, Egypt held its first parliamentary election since the previous regime had been in power. Turnout was high and there were no reports of major irregularities or violence.\nMohamed Morsi, who was affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, was elected president on 24 June 2012. On 30 June 2012, Mohamed Morsi was sworn in as Egypt's president. On 2 August 2012, Egypt's prime minister Hisham Qandil announced his 35-member cabinet comprising 28 newcomers, including four from the Muslim Brotherhood. Liberal and secular groups walked out of the constituent assembly because they believed that it would impose strict Islamic practices, while Muslim Brotherhood backers threw their support behind Morsi. On 22 November 2012, President Morsi issued a temporary declaration immunising his decrees from challenge and seeking to protect the work of the constituent assembly.\nThe move led to massive protests and violent action throughout Egypt. On 5 December 2012, tens of thousands of supporters and opponents of President Morsi clashed, in what was described as the largest violent battle between Islamists and their foes since the country's revolution. Mohamed Morsi offered a \"national dialogue\" with opposition leaders but refused to cancel the December 2012 constitutional referendum. On 3 July 2013, after a wave of public discontent with autocratic excesses of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood government, the military removed Morsi from office, dissolved the Shura Council and installed a temporary interim government.\nOn 4 July 2013, 68-year-old Chief Justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt Adly Mansour was sworn in as acting president over the new government following the removal of Morsi. The new Egyptian authorities cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters, jailing thousands and forcefully dispersing pro-Morsi and pro-Brotherhood protests. Many of the Muslim Brotherhood leaders and activists have either been sentenced to death or life imprisonment in a series of mass trials. On 18 January 2014, the interim government instituted a new constitution following a referendum approved by an overwhelming majority of voters (98.1%). 38.6% of registered voters participated in the referendum a higher number than the 33% who voted in a referendum during Morsi's tenure.\nIn the elections of June 2014, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi won with a percentage of 96.1%. On 8 June 2014, Abdel Fatah el-Sisi was officially sworn in as Egypt's new president. Under President el-Sisi, Egypt has implemented a rigorous policy of controlling the border to the Gaza Strip, including the dismantling of tunnels between the Gaza strip and Sinai. In April 2018, El-Sisi was re-elected by a landslide in election with no real opposition. In April 2019, Egypt's parliament extended presidential terms from four to six years. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was also allowed to run for a third term in the next election in 2024.\nUnder El-Sisi Egypt is said to have returned to authoritarianism. New constitutional reforms have been implemented, meaning strengthening the role of military and limiting the political opposition. The constitutional changes were accepted in a referendum in April 2019. In December 2020, final results of the parliamentary election confirmed a clear majority of the seats for Egypt's Mostaqbal Watan (Nation's Future) Party, which strongly supports president El-Sisi. The party even increased its majority, partly because of new electoral rules.\nGeography.\nEgypt lies primarily between latitudes 22\u00b0 and 32\u00b0N, and longitudes 25\u00b0 and 35\u00b0E. At , it is the world's 30th-largest country. Due to the extreme aridity of Egypt's climate, population centres are concentrated along the narrow Nile Valley and Delta, meaning that about 99% of the population uses about 5.5% of the total land area. 98% of Egyptians live on 3% of the territory.\nEgypt is bordered by Libya to the west, the Sudan to the south, and the Gaza Strip and Israel to the east. A transcontinental nation, it possesses a land bridge (the Isthmus of Suez) between Africa and Asia, traversed by a navigable waterway (the Suez Canal) that connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Indian Ocean by way of the Red Sea.\nApart from the Nile Valley, the majority of Egypt's landscape is desert, with a few oases scattered about. Winds create prolific sand dunes that peak at more than high. Egypt includes parts of the Sahara desert and of the Libyan Desert.\nSinai peninsula hosts the highest mountain in Egypt, Mount Catherine at 2,642 metres. The Red Sea Riviera, on the east of the peninsula, is renowned for its wealth of coral reefs and marine life.\nTowns and cities include Alexandria, the second largest city; Aswan; Asyut; Cairo, the modern Egyptian capital and largest city; El Mahalla El Kubra; Giza, the site of the Pyramid of Khufu; Hurghada; Luxor; Kom Ombo; Port Safaga; Port Said; Sharm El Sheikh; Suez, where the south end of the Suez Canal is located; Zagazig; and Minya. Oases include Bahariya, Dakhla, Farafra, Kharga and Siwa. Protectorates include Ras Mohamed National Park, Zaranik Protectorate and Siwa.\nOn 13 March 2015, plans for a proposed new capital of Egypt were announced.\nClimate.\nMost of Egypt's rain falls in the winter months. South of Cairo, rainfall averages only around per year and at intervals of many years. On a very thin strip of the northern coast the rainfall can be as high as , mostly between October and March. Snow falls on Sinai's mountains and some of the north coastal cities such as Damietta, Baltim and Sidi Barrani, and rarely in Alexandria. A very small amount of snow fell on Cairo on 13 December 2013, the first time in many decades. Frost is also known in mid-Sinai and mid-Egypt.\nEgypt has an unusually hot, sunny and dry climate. Average high temperatures are high in the north but very to extremely high in the rest of the country during summer. The cooler Mediterranean winds consistently blow over the northern sea coast, which helps to get more moderated temperatures, especially at the height of the summertime. The Khamaseen is a hot, dry wind that originates from the vast deserts in the south and blows in the spring or in the early summer. It brings scorching sand and dust particles, and usually brings daytime temperatures over and sometimes over in the interior, while the relative humidity can drop to 5% or even less.\nPrior to the construction of the Aswan Dam, the Nile flooded annually, replenishing Egypt's soil. This gave Egypt a consistent harvest throughout the years.\nEgypt's hot and arid climate is increasingly strained by climate change, leading to extreme temperatures, droughts, floods, and rising sea levels. As a highly vulnerable nation, these environmental shifts threaten food security, water availability, public health, and economic stability.\nBiodiversity.\nEgypt signed the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity on 9 June 1992, and became a party to the convention on 2 June 1994. It has subsequently produced a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, which was received by the convention on 31 July 1998. Where many CBD National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans neglect biological kingdoms apart from animals and plants,\nThe plan stated that the following numbers of species of different groups had been recorded from Egypt: algae (1483 species), animals (about 15,000 species of which more than 10,000 were insects), fungi (more than 627 species), monera (319 species), plants (2426 species), protozoans (371 species). For some major groups, for example lichen-forming fungi and nematode worms, the number was not known. Apart from small and well-studied groups like amphibians, birds, fish, mammals and reptiles, the many of those numbers are likely to increase as further species are recorded from Egypt. For the fungi, including lichen-forming species, for example, subsequent work has shown that over 2200 species have been recorded from Egypt, and the final figure of all fungi actually occurring in the country is expected to be much higher. For the grasses, 284 native and naturalised species have been identified and recorded in Egypt.\nGovernment.\nThe House of Representatives, whose members are elected to serve five-year terms, specialises in legislation. Elections were held between November 2011 and January 2012, which were later dissolved.\nAfter a wave of public discontent with the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Mohamed Morsi, on 3 July 2013 then-General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi announced the removal of Morsi from office and the suspension of the constitution. A 50-member constitution committee was formed for modifying the constitution, which was later published for public voting and was adopted on 18 January 2014.\nThe next parliamentary election was announced to be held within 6 months of the constitution's ratification on 18 January 2014, and were held in two phases, from 17 October to 2 December 2015. Originally, the parliament was to be formed before the president was elected, but interim president Adly Mansour pushed the date. The 2014 Egyptian presidential election took place on 26\u201328 May. Official figures showed a turnout of 25,578,233 or 47.5%, with Abdel Fattah el-Sisi winning with 23.78 million votes, or 96.9% compared to 757,511 (3.1%) for Hamdeen Sabahi.\nIn 2024, as part of its Freedom in the World report, Freedom House rated political rights in Egypt at 6 (with 40 representing the most free and 0 the least), and civil liberties at 12 (with 60 being the highest score and 0 the lowest), which gave it the freedom rating of \"Not Free\". According to the 2023 V-Dem Democracy indices Egypt is the eighth least democratic country in Africa. The 2023 edition of The Economist Democracy Index categorises Egypt as an \"authoritarian regime\", with a score of 2.93.\nEgypt has the oldest continuous parliamentary tradition in the Arab world. The first popular assembly was established in 1866. It was disbanded as a result of the British occupation of 1882, and the British allowed only a consultative body to sit. In 1923, however, after the country's independence was declared, a new constitution provided for a parliamentary monarchy.\nForeign relations.\nEgypt\u2019s foreign policy is shaped by its strategic geographical position, historical legacy, and diplomatic influence in Africa, the Mediterranean, and Southwest Asia. As a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement and the United Nations, Egypt has maintained a non-aligned stance while playing a pivotal role in regional diplomacy. Cairo, historically a crossroads of commerce and culture, remains a center of intellectual and political influence in the region.\nThe United States has been a key partner, providing Egypt with US$1.3 billion in annual military assistance as of 2015. In 1989, Egypt was designated a major non-NATO ally, but relations soured following the 2013 Egyptian coup d'\u00e9tat, as the Obama administration criticized Egypt\u2019s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and suspended joint military exercises. Under President Donald Trump, relations improved, with Abdel Fattah el-Sisi\u2019s 2017 visit to the White House marking the first by an Egyptian president in eight years.\nRelations with Russia strengthened after Morsi\u2019s removal, with both nations expanding military cooperation and trade relations. Similarly, relations with China have deepened, culminating in the establishment of a \"comprehensive strategic partnership\" in 2014.\nIn 2024 Egypt and the European Union elevated their relationship to a \"strategic and comprehensive partnership\", emphasizing political cooperation, and economic collaboration. Additionally, both sides are working on deepening trade relations under the Association Agreement, supporting Egypt\u2019s economic stability, and strengthening counterterrorism efforts.\nEgypt remains an influential mediator in Middle Eastern conflicts, particularly in brokering ceasefires in Gaza and facilitating the Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace process. It is also a Member State of the African Union and the Arab League, hosting the Arab League headquarters in Cairo. The Arab League temporarily moved to Tunis in 1978 in protest of Egypt\u2019s Egypt\u2013Israel peace treaty, but returned to Cairo in 1989. Egypt has also cultivated strong economic ties with Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both of which have provided billions of dollars in financial assistance.\nMilitary.\nThe Egyptian Armed Forces constitute Egypt\u2019s military establishment, comprising the Egyptian Army, Navy, Air Force, and Air Defense Forces under the direct supervision of the Chief of Staff, with their headquarters at the State Strategic Command Center, commonly known as the Octagon, in the New Administrative Capital. The military primarily oversees external defense but also plays a domestic role, assisting police in protecting vital infrastructure during emergencies and counterterrorism operations. They also participate in foreign peacekeeping missions and engage in bilateral and multinational military exercises.\nThe military wields significant political influence, operating autonomously and remaining exempt from many civilian laws. A significant amount of military information is not made publicly available, including budget information, the names of the general officers and the military's size (which is considered a state secret).\nIn addition, the military is a major driver of Egypt\u2019s economic landscape, engaging in infrastructure development, consumer goods production, and real estate holdings through the National Service Projects Organization. The defense industry is also well-established, manufacturing small arms, armored vehicles, and naval vessels, while maintaining licensed production agreements with countries such as Germany and the United States.\nWith an active personnel strength of 438,500 and 479,000 reservists, it is one of the largest and best-equipped militaries in the region. The military operates a diverse arsenal consisting of modern Western, Soviet-era, and domestically produced equipment, sourced primarily from China, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and the United States. Recent efforts have focused on modernization and procurement of advanced weaponry. Egypt is believed to be the second country in the region to possess spy satellites, launching EgyptSat 1 in 2007, followed by EgyptSat 2 in 2014. In 2023 it launched MisrSat-2, followed by Horus-1 in 2025, both high-resolution spy satellites.\nConscription is mandatory for men aged 18\u201330, with service obligations ranging from 14 to 36 months, depending on educational level, followed by a nine-year reserve duty. Voluntary enlistment is possible from age 16 for men and 17 for women.\nLaw.\nThe legal system is based on Islamic and civil law (particularly Napoleonic codes); and judicial review by a Supreme Court, which accepts compulsory International Court of Justice jurisdiction only with reservations.\nIslamic jurisprudence is the principal source of legislation. Sharia courts and qadis are run and licensed by the Ministry of Justice. The personal status law that regulates matters such as marriage, divorce and child custody is governed by Sharia. In a family court, a woman's testimony is worth half of a man's testimony.\nOn 26 December 2012, the Muslim Brotherhood attempted to institutionalise a controversial new constitution. It was approved by the public in a referendum held 15\u201322 December 2012 with 64% support, but with only 33% electorate participation. It replaced the 2011 Provisional Constitution of Egypt, adopted following the revolution.\nThe Penal code was unique as it contains a \"Blasphemy Law\". The present court system allows a death penalty including against an absent individual tried \"in absentia\". Several Americans and Canadians were sentenced to death in 2012.\nOn 18 January 2014, the interim government successfully institutionalised a more secular constitution. The president is elected to a four-year term and may serve 2 terms. The parliament may impeach the president. Under the constitution, there is a guarantee of gender equality and absolute freedom of thought. The military retains the ability to appoint the national Minister of Defence for the next two full presidential terms since the constitution took effect. Under the constitution, political parties may not be based on \"religion, race, gender or geography\".\nHuman rights.\nThe National Council for Human Rights was established in 2003, but it has faced criticism from activists who argue it serves as a government propaganda tool to justify human rights violations and repressive laws such as the Emergency Law.\nEgypt has been ranked among the worst countries for religious freedom, with widespread discrimination against minorities such as Coptic Christians, Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds, and other Muslim sects. A 2009 report by Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life ranked Egypt fifth worst globally for religious freedom, while the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has placed Egypt on its watch list due to state-tolerated violations. A 2010 Pew survey found that 84% of Egyptians supported the death penalty for apostasy, 77% backed amputations for theft, and 82% endorsed stoning for adultery.\nSince the 2013 Egyptian coup d'\u00e9tat, political repression has intensified, with mass arrests and harsh crackdowns on dissent. During the August 2013 sit-in dispersal, 595 protesters were killed, making 14 August 2013 the deadliest day in Egypt\u2019s modern history. Since then, an estimated 60,000 political prisoners remain behind bars.\nEgypt has also drawn international condemnation for mass death sentences, including a 2014 ruling sentencing 529 people to death in a single hearing. The United Nations and human rights groups have condemned these trials as gross violations of international law.\nHomosexuality remains de facto criminalized, with 95% of Egyptians opposing its acceptance, according to a 2013 Pew survey. A poll by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, based on assessments from specialists in women\u2019s rights, ranked Cairo as the worst megacity for women, evaluating cities on sexual harassment, healthcare access, harmful cultural practices, and economic opportunities.\nFreedom of the press.\nReporters Without Borders ranked Egypt in their 2017 World Press Freedom Index at No. 160 out of 180 nations. At least 18 journalists were imprisoned in Egypt, as of August\u00a02015[ [update]]. A new anti-terror law was enacted in August 2015 that threatens members of the media with fines ranging from about US$25,000 to $60,000 for the distribution of wrong information on acts of terror inside the country \"that differ from official declarations of the Egyptian Department of Defence\".\nAdministrative divisions.\nEgypt is divided into 27 governorates. The governorates are further divided into regions. The regions contain towns and villages. Each governorate has a capital, sometimes carrying the same name as the governorate.\nEconomy.\nThe economy of Egypt is the second-largest in Africa and ranks 39th worldwide as of 2024. It is a major emerging market economy, marked by its membership in organizations like the African Union, Arab League, BRICS, and its participation in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). The Egyptian economy has evolved significantly since the early 2000s, transitioning toward a market-oriented system through fiscal and monetary reforms, privatization efforts, and foreign investment incentives. These measures have contributed to macroeconomic stability and improved unemployment and poverty rates.\nEgypt\u2019s industrial base is diverse, encompassing chemical production, electronics, mining, steel, automotive manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and textiles. The chemical industry is one of Egypt\u2019s largest, comprising plastics, rubber, paper, detergents, paints, fertilizers, and glass. Petrochemicals alone contribute around 12% of industrial output, valued at approximately $7 billion annually. With projected exports of $9 billion in 2024, the government supports the sector through infrastructure development, technology investments, and trade agreements. In electronics and home appliances, Egypt has positioned itself as a manufacturing hub through initiatives such as \"Egypt Makes Electronics,\" with many international companies setting up factories in the country, including Electrolux, Samsung, Hisense, Beko, and Haier. Egypt is Africa\u2019s top steel producer, ranking 20th globally, with 9.8 million tons in 2022 and exports tripling to 1.54 million tons in 2023.\nEgypt's automotive industry, led by state-owned El Nasr Automotive Manufacturing Company and private firms like Ghabbour Group and MCV, has expanded through partnerships with global manufacturers, producing a range of passenger and commercial vehicles for both local and export markets. The government\u2019s 2024\u20132030 strategy aims to increase production to 500,000 vehicles annually, boost exports, and establish local electric vehicle manufacturing by 2025, integrating EVs into public transportation and fostering an automotive hub for regional and international markets.\nEgypt's gold mining industry has expanded rapidly, driven by untapped reserves and government-led reforms aimed at modernizing the sector. The launch of international bid rounds marked a shift towards private sector participation, attracting major players such as AngloGold Ashanti and Alexander Nubia International. The Sukari mine, Egypt\u2019s first large-scale modern gold operation, became the centerpiece of these efforts, contributing significantly to production. The government has since introduced structural reforms to increase mining\u2019s GDP share to 5\u20136% by 2030, including digitization initiatives and investment-friendly policies. These measures have fueled a surge in gold exports, reaching $2.17 billion in 2024, nearly double the previous year, with Egypt aiming to rank among the world's top 10 gold exporters by 2027.\nEgypt\u2019s agricultural sector remains essential to its economy, though its share of GDP and employment has declined over time. Egypt produces substantial quantities of wheat, maize, sugarcane, fruits, vegetables, fodder, and rice, yet remains reliant on wheat and maize imports, primarily from Ukraine and Russia, despite yield improvements since 1970. This dependency stems from high domestic demand, driven by subsidies and a culinary preference for bread, as well as Egypt\u2019s limited arable land and its emphasis on high-value export crops. The Aswan High Dam, completed in 1971, significantly improved irrigation stability. As of 2010, 3.6 million hectares were cultivated, with the government targeting 4.8 million hectares by 2030. Major initiatives include the New Delta and Toshka Project, designed to convert desert areas into farmland using advanced irrigation techniques, wastewater treatment, groundwater and water desalination. Efforts to deregulate agriculture have improved price alignment with global markets, but climate change and water scarcity continue to pose long-term challenges.\nEgypt is among the world\u2019s top five recipients of remittances, which reached $23.7 billion in the first 10 months of 2024, a 45.3% increase from the previous year. These inflows are crucial for Egypt\u2019s foreign reserves and household incomes. Since 1979, Egypt has received substantial United States foreign aid, averaging $1.5 billion annually, with approximately $200 million allocated to economic assistance and the remainder directed toward military aid for procuring weapon systems from American suppliers.\nOne of Egypt's most significant economic events in recent years was the currency flotation in 2024, which led to a 38% depreciation of the national currency, the Egyptian pound, after securing over $50 billion in international financing. This action, along with strategic agreements with the IMF, World Bank, EU, and Gulf states, improved Egypt\u2019s credit outlook. The government also implemented fiscal measures to raise the tax-to-revenue ratio and accelerate the privatization of state-owned companies to strengthen public finances. As a result, in the final quarter of 2024, private investment in Egypt exceeded public investment for the second consecutive quarter, accounting for more than half of the total investment volume. Private investment rose by 35.4% year-on-year, while public investment declined by 25.7%. This shift represents a significant rebalancing of Egypt's economic landscape, marking a notable departure from the dominance of public investments in the country's recent economic history.\nTourism.\nTourism is one of the most important sectors in Egypt's economy. 2024 saw a record 15.7 million tourists, surpassing 14.9 million in 2023. This growth, driven by government efforts to enhance security and tourism support, reflects a strong recovery from the pandemic-induced decline of 2020. Tourism revenues have also surged, reaching $14.1 billion, reflecting steady improvement over previous years.\nEgypt\u2019s tourism strategy aims to attract 30 million tourists by 2028, with a focus on infrastructure improvements, high-profile projects like the Grand Egyptian Museum, and enhancing visitor experiences. In 2024, the country\u2019s top tourism markets included Germany, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.\nThe Giza Necropolis is one of Egypt's best-known tourist attractions; it is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still in existence.\nEgypt's beaches on the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, which extend to over , are also popular tourist destinations; the Gulf of Aqaba beaches, Safaga, Sharm el-Sheikh, Hurghada, Luxor, Dahab, Ras Sidr and Marsa Alam are popular sites.\nEnergy.\nEgypt has a diversified energy sector based primarily on coal, oil, natural gas, and hydropower. Coal deposits in northeastern Sinai produce around annually. Egypt's oil production is concentrated in the Western Desert, the Gulf of Suez, and the Nile Delta, with peak crude oil output reaching approximately in 1993 before declining to by 2008. This decline transformed Egypt into a net oil importer by 2008\u20132009, prompting a strategic shift toward natural gas.\nNatural gas has since become crucial to Egypt\u2019s economy, attracting substantial foreign investment and governmental prioritization of petrochemical industries and gas exports. In 2009, around 38% of domestically produced natural gas was allocated for export. However, rising domestic demand led Egypt to prioritize local consumption over exports by 2014, significantly reducing gas available for international markets.\nIn 2015, Eni discovered the Zohr gas field, the largest natural gas reserve in the Mediterranean, with approximately 30 trillion cubic feet of gas. Production commenced in December 2017, reaching 2.7 billion cubic feet per day (bcf/d) by 2019, significantly improving Egypt\u2019s energy prospects. However, recent technical issues have reduced output from Zohr, prompting Egypt to secure additional gas imports from Cyprus to maintain exports to Europe through its LNG terminals. New drilling operations are planned to recover Zohr's production capacity.\nInternational oil companies, notably BP, have invested heavily in Egypt's natural gas development. In 2015, BP committed $12 billion primarily toward the West Nile Delta project, currently producing nearly 1 bcf/d, alongside other significant fields such as Atoll (300 million cubic feet per day) and North Damietta, with production from the Qattameya discovery beginning in 2020.\nEgypt is currently constructing its first nuclear power facility, the El Dabaa Nuclear Power Plant, in the northern coastal region, financed by a US$25 billion loan from Russia.\nTransport.\nTransport in Egypt is primarily concentrated around Cairo, following the Nile River\u2019s settlement patterns. The country\u2019s railway network is operated by Egyptian National Railways, with its main line running from Alexandria to Aswan. In 2021, Egypt launched a $4.5 billion high-speed rail project to connect Ain Sokhna, Mersa Matruh, and Alexandria, later expanding to include routes linking Greater Cairo to Aswan and Luxor to Hurghada and Safaga.\nThe Cairo Metro currently operates three lines, with a fourth line under construction and plans for additional expansions in the future. Meanwhile, two monorail lines are also being built in the city, along with a metro system in Alexandria.\nEgypt has also undertaken major road infrastructure expansion through the National Roads Project, increasing the total length of main roads by nearly 30% from 23,500\u00a0km in 2014 to 30,500\u00a0km in 2024. Alongside constructing new highways, thousands of kilometers of roads have been upgraded, leading to improvements in Egypt\u2019s Road Quality Index, which rose from 118th place in 2015 to 18th place in 2024.\nEgypt\u2019s aviation sector is led by EgyptAir, the country\u2019s flag carrier and largest airline, founded in 1932 by Talaat Harb. Now state-owned, EgyptAir operates from its Cairo International Airport hub, with scheduled passenger and cargo services to over 75 destinations across the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The airline's current fleet consists of 80 aircraft.\nThe Suez Canal, an artificial sea-level waterway, connects the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, enabling direct shipping between Europe and Asia without navigating around Africa. In 2023 it generated a record $9.4 billion in revenue for Egypt. Opened in November 1869, the canal runs from Port Said in the north to Port Tawfiq in the south, with Ismailia situated west of its midpoint. The canal is deep and wide as of 2010[ [update]], consisting of a northern access channel, a main section, and a southern access channel. The Ballah By-Pass and the Great Bitter Lake provide passing points along the canal, which operates without locks, allowing seawater to flow freely. Expansions completed in 2015 increased its daily capacity from 49 to 97 ships, reducing transit times and boosting global maritime trade.\nOn 26 August 2014, Egypt proposed the New Suez Canal, a parallel shipping lane aimed at increasing traffic capacity. The project was completed in July 2015, and the official inauguration took place on 6 August 2015, marked by international attendance and military flyovers.\nWater supply and sanitation.\nEgypt's water supply is heavily dependent on the Nile River, which provides approximately 90% of the country\u2019s total water resources, with an annual share of 55 billion cubic meters, unchanged since 1954. An additional 0.5 billion cubic meters comes from non-renewable groundwater sources. However, national demand exceeds 90 billion cubic meters annually, creating a persistent water deficit. As a result, Egypt's per capita water share fell to 570 cubic meters in 2018, well below the 1,000 cubic meter international water scarcity threshold. To address this, the government has prioritized efficient water management, particularly in response to population growth and agricultural expansion.\nDespite these challenges, water access has significantly improved. Between 1990 and 2010, piped water coverage rose from 89% to 100% in urban areas and from 39% to 93% in rural areas, eliminating open defecation in rural regions and achieving near-universal access to an improved water source. By 2015, 90% of the population had access to safely managed drinking water, increasing to 96.9% by 2019. Similarly, proper sanitation coverage expanded from 50% in 2015 to 66.2% in 2019, while the percentage of treated wastewater relative to total wastewater rose from 50% to 68.7% in the same period, reaching 74% in 2022. However, gaps in sanitation infrastructure have historically led to health concerns, with a 2007 report estimating 17,000 child deaths annually from diarrheal diseases linked to poor sanitation.\nEgypt has made significant investments in wastewater treatment infrastructure as part of its broader water management strategy. In 2021, the Bahr El Baqar Wastewater Treatment Plant was completed, becoming the largest in the world at the time, with a capacity of 5 million cubic meters per day. The treated water from this facility is allocated to irrigating 342,000 acres under the Sinai Peninsula Development Plan. In 2023, Egypt inaugurated the New Delta Wastewater Treatment Plant, surpassing Bahr El Baqar as the largest wastewater facility globally, with a capacity of 7.5 million cubic meters per day. A key component of Egypt\u2019s agricultural expansion strategy, the plant supports the New Delta reclamation project while also reducing pollution in Lake Mariout and the Mediterranean Sea.\nGiven Egypt\u2019s arid climate and lack of appreciable rainfall, agriculture is entirely dependent on irrigation. The Nile River, regulated by the Aswan High Dam, releases an annual average of 55 billion cubic meters, of which 46 billion cubic meters are diverted into irrigation canals. This irrigation sustains 33,600 square kilometers (13,000 square miles) of agricultural land in the Nile Valley and Nile Delta, producing an average of 1.8 crops per year.\nDemographics.\nEgypt is the most populated country in the Arab world and the third most populous on the African continent, with about 95 million inhabitants as of 2017[ [update]]. Its population grew rapidly from 1970 to 2010 due to medical advances and increases in agricultural productivity enabled by the Green Revolution. Egypt's population was estimated at 3 million when Napoleon invaded the country in 1798. The great majority of its people live near the banks of the Nile River, an area of about , where the only arable land is found. The large regions of the Sahara desert, which constitute most of Egypt's territory, are sparsely inhabited. About 43% of Egypt's residents live across the country's urban areas, with most spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria and other major cities in the Nile Delta.\nEgypt's people are highly urbanised, being concentrated along the Nile (notably Cairo and Alexandria), in the Delta and near the Suez Canal. Egyptians are divided demographically into those who live in the major urban centres and the fellahin, or farmers, that reside in rural villages. The total inhabited area constitutes only 77,041 km\u00b2, putting the physiological density at over 1,200 people per km2, similar to Bangladesh.\nWhile emigration was restricted under Nasser, thousands of Egyptian professionals were dispatched abroad in the context of the Arab Cold War. Egyptian emigration was liberalised in 1971, under President Sadat, reaching record numbers after the 1973 oil crisis. An estimated 2.7 million Egyptians live abroad. Approximately 70% of Egyptian migrants live in Arab countries (923,600 in Saudi Arabia, 332,600 in Libya, 226,850 in Jordan, 190,550 in Kuwait with the rest elsewhere in the region) and the remaining 30% reside mostly in Europe and North America (318,000 in the United States, 110,000 in Canada and 90,000 in Italy). The process of emigrating to non-Arab states has been ongoing since the 1950s.\nEthnic groups.\nEthnic Egyptians are by far the largest ethnic group in the country, constituting 99.7% of the total population. Ethnic minorities include the Abazas, Turks, Greeks, Bedouin Arab tribes living in the eastern deserts and the Sinai Peninsula, the Berber-speaking Siwis (Amazigh) of the Siwa Oasis, and the Nubian communities clustered along the Nile. There are also tribal Beja communities concentrated in the southeasternmost corner of the country, and a number of Dom clans mostly in the Nile Delta and Faiyum who are progressively becoming assimilated as urbanisation increases.\nEgypt hosts a migrant population of over 9 million, constituting 8.7% of the country\u2019s total population, according to the International Organization for Migration. These migrants originate from 133 countries, with the largest groups being Sudanese (4 million), Syrians (1.5 million), Yemenis (1 million), and Libyans (1 million), collectively making up 80% of all international migrants in Egypt.\nLanguages.\nThe official language of Egypt is Literary Arabic. The spoken languages are: Egyptian Arabic (68%), Sa'idi Arabic (29%), Eastern Egyptian Bedawi Arabic (1.6%), Sudanese Arabic (0.6%), Domari (0.3%), Nobiin (0.3%), Beja (0.1%), Siwi and others. Additionally, Greek, Armenian and Italian, and more recently, African languages like Amharic and Tigrigna are the main languages of immigrants.\nThe main foreign languages taught in schools, by order of popularity, are English, French, German and Italian.\nHistorically Egyptian was spoken, the latest stage of which is Coptic Egyptian. Spoken Coptic was mostly extinct by the 17th century but may have survived in isolated pockets in Upper Egypt as late as the 19th century. It remains in use as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. It forms a separate branch among the family of Afroasiatic languages.\nReligion.\nIslam is the state religion of Egypt, and the country has the largest Muslim population in the Arab world and the world's sixth largest Muslim population, accounting for five percent of all Muslims worldwide. Egypt also has the largest Christian population in the Middle East and North Africa. Official data about religion is lacking due to social and political sensitivities. An estimated 85\u201390% are identified as Muslim, 10\u201315% as Coptic Christians, and 1% as other Christian denominations; other estimates place the Christian population as high as 15\u201320%.\nEgypt was an early and leading centre of Christianity into late antiquity; the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria was founded in the first century and remains the largest church in the country. With the arrival of Islam in the seventh century, the country was gradually Islamised into a majority-Muslim country. It is unknown when Muslims reached a majority, variously estimated from c.\u20091000 CE to as late as the 14th century. Egypt emerged as a centre of politics and culture in the Muslim world. Under Anwar Sadat, Islam became the official state religion and Sharia the main source of law.\nThe majority of Egyptian Muslims adhere to the Sunni branch of Islam. Nondenominational Muslims form roughly 12% of the population. There is also a Shi'a minority. The Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs estimates the Shia population at 1 to 2.2 million and could measure as much as 3 million. The Ahmadiyya population is estimated at less than 50,000, whereas the Salafi (ultra-conservative Sunni) population is estimated at five to six million. Cairo is famous for its numerous mosque minarets and has been dubbed \"The City of 1,000 Minarets\". The city also hosts Al-Azhar University, which is considered the preeminent institution of Islamic higher learning and jurisprudence; founded in the late tenth century, it is by some measures the second oldest continuously operating university in the world. It is estimated that 15 million Egyptians follow native Sufi orders, with Sufi leadership asserting that the numbers are much greater, as many Egyptian Sufis are not officially registered with a Sufi order. At least 305 people were killed during a November 2017 attack on a Sufi mosque in Sinai.\nOf the Christian population in Egypt over 90% belong to the native Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, an Oriental Orthodox Christian Church. Other native Egyptian Christians are adherents of the Coptic Catholic Church, the Evangelical Church of Egypt and various other Protestant denominations. Non-native Christian communities are largely found in the urban regions of Cairo and Alexandria, such as the Syro-Lebanese, who belong to Greek Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Maronite Catholic denominations.\nThe Egyptian government recognises only three religions: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Other faiths and minority Muslim sects, such as the small Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith and Ahmadiyya communities, are not recognised by the state and face persecution by the government, which labels these groups a threat to Egypt's national security. Individuals, particularly Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds and atheists, wishing to include their religion (or lack thereof) on their mandatory state issued identification cards are denied this ability, and were put in the position of either not obtaining required identification or lying about their faith. A 2008 court ruling allowed members of unrecognised faiths to obtain identification and leave the religion field blank.\nEducation.\nIn 2022, Egypt's adult literacy rate was 74.5%, compared to 71.1% in 2017. Literacy is lowest among those over 60 years of age, at 35.1%, and highest among youth between 15 and 24 years of age, at 92.2%.A European-style education system was first introduced in Egypt by the Ottomans in the early 19th century to nurture a class of loyal bureaucrats and army officers. Under British occupation, investment in education was curbed drastically, and secular public schools, which had previously been free, began to charge fees.\nIn the 1950s, President Nasser phased in free education for all Egyptians. The Egyptian curriculum influenced other Arab education systems, which often employed Egyptian-trained teachers. Demand soon outstripped the level of available state resources, causing the quality of public education to deteriorate. Today this trend has culminated in poor teacher\u2013student ratios (often around one to fifty) and persistent gender inequality.\nBasic education, which includes six years of primary and three years of preparatory school, is a right for Egyptian children from the age of six. After grade 9, students are tracked into one of two strands of secondary education: general or technical schools. General secondary education prepares students for further education, and graduates of this track normally join higher education institutes based on the results of the Thanaweya Amma, the leaving exam. In 2025 Egypt introduced a new Baccalaureate Certificate System which will replace the Thanaweya Amma starting 2026.\nTechnical secondary education has two strands, one lasting three years and a more advanced education lasting five. Graduates of these schools may have access to higher education based on their results on the final exam, but this is generally uncommon.\nThe QS World University Rankings 2025 includes 15 Egyptian universities, with Cairo University ranked highest among them. The American University in Cairo follows, improving its position to 410th place. Several Egyptian universities have advanced in rankings compared to the previous year, reflecting ongoing improvements in higher education.\nThe country is currently opening new research institutes with the aim of modernising scientific research and development; the most recent example is Zewail City of Science and Technology. Egypt was ranked 86th in the Global Innovation Index in 2024.\nHealth.\nAs of 2024, Egypt's average life expectancy stands at 75 years, with 73.8 years for males and 76.2 years for females. Healthcare access has significantly improved in both urban and rural areas, with immunization programs now covering 98% of the population. Life expectancy has risen from 45 years in the 1960s to its current level, reflecting advancements in medical services and disease prevention. The infant mortality rate has also declined sharply, dropping from 101\u2013132 deaths per 1,000 live births in the 1970s and 1980s to 50\u201360 per 1,000 in 2000, and further to 16\u201318 per 1,000 in 2024.\nThe Ministry of Health and Population oversees most public hospitals, while the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research manages university hospitals, offering free medical services. Other ministries operate hospitals for employees, and the Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Interior run facilities that require out-of-pocket payments for non-service members.\nThe private sector provides about 60% of healthcare services, including for-profit and nonprofit organizations, private hospitals, pharmacies, and independent practitioners. Numerous nongovernmental organizations also offer healthcare, including religious and charitable institutions. As of 2021, Egypt had 1,145 private hospitals, a 23.69% increase since 2011. Private healthcare facilities in Egypt are generally of high quality.\nEgypt grants refugees and asylum-seekers access to public healthcare on equal terms with citizens, allowing them to receive care at primary health facilities either free or at low cost.\nA 2008 report by the World Health Organisation estimated that 91.1% of Egypt's girls and women aged 15 to 49 have been subjected to genital mutilation. Government measures have reduced the practice among younger generations. By 2014, rates had dropped to 10.4% in urban areas and 15.9% in rural areas among girls aged 1\u201314, compared to 87.2% among women aged 15\u201349. Legislative reforms, awareness campaigns, and stricter law enforcement contributed to this decline. In 2016, penalties for performing the practice were increased, with prison sentences of up to 15 years for practitioners and up to 3 years for those who facilitate the procedure.\nLargest cities.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nCulture.\nEgypt is a recognised cultural trendsetter of the Arabic-speaking world. Contemporary Arabic and Middle-Eastern culture is heavily influenced by Egyptian literature, music, film and television. Egypt gained a regional leadership role during the 1950s and 1960s, giving a further enduring boost to the standing of Egyptian culture in the Arabic-speaking world.\nEgyptian identity evolved in the span of a long period of occupation to accommodate Islam, Christianity and Judaism; and a new language, Arabic, and its spoken descendant, Egyptian Arabic which is also based on many Ancient Egyptian words.\nThe work of early 19th century scholar Rifa'a al-Tahtawi renewed interest in Egyptian antiquity and exposed Egyptian society to Enlightenment principles. Tahtawi co-founded with education reformer Ali Mubarak a native Egyptology school that looked for inspiration to medieval Egyptian scholars, such as Suyuti and Maqrizi, who themselves studied the history, language and antiquities of Egypt.\nEgypt's renaissance peaked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries through the work of people like Muhammad Abduh, Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed, Muhammad Loutfi Goumah, Tawfiq el-Hakim, Louis Awad, Qasim Amin, Salama Moussa, Taha Hussein and Mahmoud Mokhtar. They forged a liberal path for Egypt expressed as a commitment to personal freedom, secularism and faith in science to bring progress.\nArts.\nThe Egyptians were one of the first major civilisations to codify design elements in art and architecture. Egyptian blue, also known as calcium copper silicate, is a pigment used by Egyptians for thousands of years. It is considered to be the first synthetic pigment. The wall paintings done in the service of the Pharaohs followed a rigid code of visual rules and meanings. Egyptian civilisation is renowned for its colossal pyramids, temples and monumental tombs.\nWell-known examples are the Pyramid of Djoser designed by ancient architect and engineer Imhotep, the Sphinx, and the temple of Abu Simbel. Modern and contemporary Egyptian art can be as diverse as any works in the world art scene, from the vernacular architecture of Hassan Fathy and Ramses Wissa Wassef, to Mahmoud Mokhtar's sculptures, to the distinctive Coptic iconography of Isaac Fanous. The Cairo Opera House serves as the main performing arts venue in the Egyptian capital.\nLiterature.\nEgyptian literature traces its beginnings to ancient Egypt and is some of the earliest known literature. Indeed, the Egyptians were the first culture to develop literature as we know it today, that is, the book. It is an important cultural element in the life of Egypt. Egyptian novelists and poets were among the first to experiment with modern styles of Arabic literature, and the forms they developed have been widely imitated throughout the Arab world. The first modern Egyptian novel \"Zaynab\" by Muhammad Husayn Haykal was published in 1913 in the Egyptian vernacular. Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz was the first Arabic-language writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Egyptian women writers include Nawal El Saadawi, well known for her feminist activism, and Alifa Rifaat who also writes about women and tradition.\nVernacular poetry is perhaps the most popular literary genre among Egyptians, represented by the works of Ahmed Fouad Negm (Fagumi), Salah Jaheen and Abdel Rahman el-Abnudi.\nMedia.\nEgyptian media are highly influential throughout the Arab World, attributed to large audiences and increasing freedom from government control. Freedom of the media is guaranteed in the constitution; however, many laws still restrict this right.\nCinema.\nEgyptian cinema became a regional force with the coming of sound. In 1936, Studio Misr, financed by industrialist Talaat Harb, emerged as the leading Egyptian studio, a role the company retained for three decades. For over 100 years, more than 4000 films have been produced in Egypt, three quarters of the total Arab production. Egypt is considered the leading country in the field of cinema in the Arab world. Actors from all over the Arab world seek to appear in the Egyptian cinema for the sake of fame. The Cairo International Film Festival has been rated as one of 11 festivals with a top class rating worldwide by the International Federation of Film Producers' Associations.\nThe number of cinemas increased with the emergence of talking films, and reached 395 in 1958. This number began to decline after the establishment of television in 1960 and the establishment of the public sector in cinemas in 1962, and reached 297 in 1965, then to 141 in 1995 due to the circulation of films through video equipment though the boom of the film industry in this period. Due to laws and procedures that encouraged investment in the establishment of private cinemas, they increased again, especially in commercial centres, until their number reached 200 in 2001 and 400 in 2009. Over a period of more than a hundred years, Egyptian cinema has presented more than four thousand films.\nMusic.\nEgyptian music is a rich mixture of indigenous, Mediterranean, African and Western elements. It has been an integral part of Egyptian culture since antiquity. The ancient Egyptians credited one of their gods Hathor with the invention of music, which Osiris in turn used as part of his effort to civilise the world. Egyptians used music instruments since then.\nContemporary Egyptian music traces its beginnings to the creative work of people such as Abdu al-Hamuli, Almaz and Mahmoud Osman, who influenced the later work of Sayed Darwish, Umm Kulthum, Mohammed Abdel Wahab and Abdel Halim Hafez. Prominent contemporary Egyptian pop singers include Amr Diab and Mohamed Mounir.\nDances.\nToday, Egypt is often considered the home of belly dance. Egyptian belly dance has two main styles \u2013 raqs baladi and raqs sharqi. There are also numerous folkloric and character dances that may be part of an Egyptian-style belly dancer's repertoire, as well as the modern shaabi street dance which shares some elements with raqs baladi.\nMuseums.\nEgypt is home to one of the world's oldest civilizations. It has engaged with numerous cultures and nations throughout its history and has experienced a vast array of eras, from the prehistoric age to modern times, encompassing periods such as ancient Egypt, Ptolemaic, Roman, Medieval, Ottoman, and the Alawiyya dynasty.\nNotable museums in Egypt include the Egyptian Museum, which boasts over 120,000 items; the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, home to 50,000 artifacts from various eras, with the remains of 22 ancient Egyptian kings and queens relocated there in 2021 during the Pharaohs' Golden Parade; and the Abdeen Palace Museum.\nThe Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) is an under construction museum that will house the largest collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts in the world, it has been described as the world's largest archaeological museum. The museum is sited on of land approximately from the Giza Necropolis and is part of a new master plan for the plateau. It is slated to open the 3rd of July 2025.\nFestivals.\nEgypt celebrates many festivals and religious carnivals, also known as \"mulid\". They are usually associated with a particular Coptic or Sufi saint, but are often celebrated by Egyptians irrespective of creed or religion.\nThe ancient spring festival of Sham en Nisim (Coptic: \u03ec\u2cb1\u2c99\u2018\u2c9b\u2c9b\u2c93\u2ca5\u2c93\u2c99 \"shom en nisim\") has been celebrated by Egyptians for thousands of years, typically between the Egyptian months of Paremoude (April) and Pashons (May), following Easter Sunday.\nCuisine.\nEgyptian cuisine relies heavily on legume and vegetable dishes. Although food in Alexandria and the coast of Egypt tends to use a great deal of fish and other seafood, for the most part Egyptian cuisine is based on foods that grow out of the ground. Red meat in particular has been less available for the majority of Egyptians throughout history due to the limited arable land in the largely desert country. With the Nile\u2019s fertile banks primarily used to cultivate crops for consumption rather than for animal feed and grazing, a great number of vegetarian dishes have been developed as a result.\nSome consider kushari (a mixture of rice, lentils, and macaroni) to be the national dish. In addition, ful medames (mashed fava beans) is one of the most popular dishes. Fava bean is also used in making falafel (also known as \"ta'miya\"), which may have originated in Egypt and spread to other parts of the Middle East. Garlic fried with coriander is added to molokhiya, a popular green soup made from finely chopped jute leaves, sometimes with chicken or rabbit.\nSports.\nFootball is the most popular national sport of Egypt. The Cairo Derby is one of the fiercest derbies in Africa, and the BBC picked it as one of the 7 toughest derbies in the world. Al Ahly is the most successful club of the 20th century in the African continent according to CAF, closely followed by their rivals Zamalek SC. They are known as the \"African Club of the Century\". With twenty titles, Al Ahly is currently the world's most successful club in terms of international trophies, surpassing Italy's A.C. Milan and Argentina's Boca Juniors, both having eighteen.\nThe Egyptian national football team, known as the Pharaohs, won the African Cup of Nations seven times, including three times in a row in 2006, 2008, and 2010. Considered the most successful African national team and one which has reached the top 10 of the FIFA world rankings, Egypt has qualified for the FIFA World Cup three times. Two goals from star player Mohamed Salah in their last qualifying game took Egypt through to the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The Egyptian Youth National team Young Pharaohs won the Bronze Medal of the 2001 FIFA youth world cup in Argentina. Egypt was 4th place in the football tournament in the 1928 and the 1964 Olympics.\nSquash and tennis are other popular sports in Egypt. The Egyptian squash team has been competitive in international championships since the 1930s. Amr Shabana, Ali Farag and Ramy Ashour are Egypt's best players and all were ranked the world's number one squash player. Egypt has won the Squash World Championships five times, with the last title being in 2019.\nIn 1999, Egypt hosted the IHF World Men's Handball Championship, and hosted it again in 2021. In 2001, the national handball team achieved its best result in the tournament by reaching fourth place. Egypt has won in the African Men's Handball Championship five times, being the best team in Africa. In addition to that, it also championed the Mediterranean Games in 2013, the Beach Handball World Championships in 2004 and the Summer Youth Olympics in 2010.\nAmong all African nations, the Egypt national basketball team holds the record for best performance at the Basketball World Cup and at the Summer Olympics. Further, the team has won a record number of 16 medals at the African Championship.\nEgypt has taken part in the Summer Olympic Games since 1912 and has hosted including the first Mediterranean Games in 1951, the 1991 All-Africa Games, the 2009 FIFA U-20 World Cup and the 1953, 1965 and 2007 editions of the Pan Arab Games.\nEgypt featured a national team in beach volleyball that competed at the 2018\u20132020 CAVB Beach Volleyball Continental Cup in both the women's and the men's section.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["21244", "8087628"], "permutation_1": ["8087628", "21244"], "permutation_2": ["8087628", "21244"], "permutation_3": ["21244", "8087628"]}
{"id": "2hop__650851_112595", "docs_added": {"42838332": "Qian Hongzun\nQian Hongzun (\u9322\u5f18\u50d4) (925 \u2013 June 7, 940), formally Heir Apparent Xiaoxian (\u5b5d\u737b\u4e16\u5b50, \"the filial and wise heir apparent\"), was an heir apparent to the throne of the Chinese Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period state Wuyue during most of the reign of his father Qian Yuanguan (n\u00e9 Qian Chuanguan, King Wenmu), but did not inherit the throne on account of his predeceasing his father.\nBackground.\nQian Hongzun was born in 925. He was the fifth son of his father Qian Chuanguan, who then was still serving under his father (Qian Hongzun's grandfather), Wuyue's first king Qian Liu (King Wusu), as the acting military governor (\"Jiedushi\") of Wuyue's two main circuits, Zhenhai (\u93ae\u6d77, headquartered at Wuyue's capital Hang Prefecture (\u676d\u5dde, in modern Hangzhou, Zhejiang)) and Zhendong (\u93ae\u6771, headquartered in modern Shaoxing, Zhejiang). His mother was Qian Chuanguan's concubine Lady Fu. While he was ranked as Qian Chuanguan's fifth son, traditional histories heavily implied that he was the first-born in terms of Qian Chuanguan's biological sons, as they emphasized that Qian Chuanguan and his wife Lady Ma were sonless and that, therefore, Qian Chuanguan was sonless into his 30s because Qian Liu had forbidden officials from taking concubines, until Lady Ma personally pleaded for an exemption for Qian Chuanguan due to that reason \u2014 and listing Qian Hongzun among the biological sons born from Qian Chuanguan's concubines, while omitting his older brothers Qian Hongzhuan (\u9322\u5f18\u50ce), Qian Hongxuan (\u9322\u5f18\u5107), Qian Hongyou (\u9322\u5f18\u4f91), and Qian Hong'an (\u9322\u5f18\u4f92), although only Qian Hongyou was explicitly stated to be an adoptive son and explicitly stated to have the birth name of Sun. (After Qian Hongzun's death, his father would (at least in words) consider the possibility of passing the throne to a member of another branch of the Qian clan before affirming the heir status of Qian Hongzun's younger brother Qian Hongzuo, further suggesting that he did not consider his four older sons to truly be members of his clan.)\nDuring Qian Yuanguan's reign.\nIn 932, Qian Liu died. Qian Chuanguan took control of the state (and changed his name to Qian Yuanguan), but did not claim the title of king at that time, but only the military governor of Zhenhai and Zhendong, as a vassal to Later Tang of the Central Plains. Qian Hongzun received the title of deputy military governor of Zhenhai and Zhendong, and military prefect (\u5718\u7df4\u4f7f, \"Tuanlianshi\") of Guo Prefecture (\u679c\u5dde, in modern Nanchong, Sichuan \u2014 a completely honorary title as Guo was then under the control of Later Shu). In 937, by which time Later Tang had fallen and Wuyue was a vassal state of Later Jin, Qian Yuanguan assumed the title of king. He created Qian Hongzun as his heir apparent, and had a mansion built for Qian Hongzun. Qian Hongzun, however, would die in 940, before his father, who would eventually pass the throne to Qian Hongzuo.", "37915910": "Qian Yuanguan\nQian Yuanguan () (30 November 887 \u2013 17 September 941), born Qian Chuanguan (\u9322\u50b3\u74d8), also known by his temple name as the King Shizong of Wuyue (\u5433\u8d8a\u4e16\u5b97), courtesy name Mingbao (\u660e\u5bf6), was the second king of Wuyue during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period of China. He ascended to the throne in 932, when his father Qian Liu (King Taizu) left the state in his hands, to 941. He was the father to all three of Wuyue's subsequent kings.\nEarly life.\nQian Chuanguan was born in 887, during the reign of Emperor Xizong of Tang, at a time when his father Qian Liu was serving as the prefect of Hang Prefecture (\u676d\u5dde, in modern Hangzhou, Zhejiang), loosely as a vassal of the warlord Dong Chang the military governor (\"Jiedushi\") of Weisheng Circuit (\u5a01\u52dd, headquartered in modern Shaoxing, Zhejiang). He was Qian Liu's seventh son, and his mother was Qian Liu's concubine Lady Chen.\nThe first significant reference to Qian Chuanguan, historically, was in 902, when his father Qian Liu, then the military governor of both Zhendong (\u93ae\u6771, i.e., Weisheng, now named Zhendong) and Zhenhai (\u93ae\u6d77, headquartered at Hang Prefecture) Circuits, was facing a major threat to his control of the region in the forms of a mutiny led by the officers Xu Wan (\u5f90\u7db0) and Xu Zaisi (\u8a31\u518d\u601d), who were able to obtain the aid of Tian Jun the military governor of Ningguo Circuit (\u5be7\u570b, headquartered in modern Xuancheng, Anhui), a vassal of the major warlord Yang Xingmi the military governor of Huainan Circuit (\u6dee\u5357, headquartered in modern Yangzhou, Jiangsu). Qian Liu was able to get Yang to exert pressure on Tian to withdraw by sending the officer Gu Quanwu (\u9867\u5168\u6b66) and Qian Chuanguan's older brother Qian Chuanliao (\u9322\u50b3\u7499) to Yang to persuade Yang that if Tian became any stronger, he would pose a future threat to Yang, and for Qian Chuanliao to subsequently remain at Huainan to serve as a hostage. (Yang subsequently gave a daughter to Qian Chuanliao in marriage.) Yang therefore warned Tian that if he did not withdraw, he would send another officer to take over the command of Ningguo from him. Tian was forced to withdraw, but extracted from Qian Liu the promise of a monetary tribute, as well as a son to serve as hostage (with Tian offering to give the son a daughter in marriage). When Qian Liu gathered his sons and asked them, \"Who is willing to be a son-in-law for the Tians?\" none responded initially. Qian Liu considered sending Qian Chuanguan's younger brother Qian Chuanqiu (\u9322\u50b3\u7403), but Qian Chuanqiu refused, drawing Qian Liu's great anger such that Qian Liu almost killed him \u2014 at which point Qian Chuanguan volunteered to go. Qian Liu's wife Lady Wu, who considered Qian Chuanguan like her own son as well, wept bitterly, not wanting to send him, but Qian Chuanguan responded, \"In order to save the state from disaster, how can I spare my own body?\" He thus left with Tian's army as Tian withdrew, and apparently married Tian's daughter.\nIn 904, Tian, unhappy that Yang was continuously curbing his desire to expand, rebelled against Yang along with An Renyi (\u5b89\u4ec1\u7fa9) the military prefect (\u5718\u7df4\u4f7f, \"Tuanlianshi\") of Run Prefecture (\u6f64\u5dde, in modern Zhenjiang, Jiangsu). Initially they caused much apprehension within Yang's realm, but Tian shortly after began to suffer repeated defeats at the hands of Yang's generals Li Shenfu and Tai Meng (\u81fa\u6fdb). As Tian's situation became more and more desperate, and perhaps because Qian Liu sided with Yang in this war, each time he suffered a defeat, he considered killing Qian Chuanguan, but Qian Chuanguan escaped death as he was protected by Tian's mother Lady Yin and Tian's brother-in-law Guo Shicong (\u90ed\u5e2b\u5f9e). After Tian was finally defeated and killed in battle by Tai, Qian Chuanguan was able to return to Hang Prefecture with Guo, and Guo thereafter became an officer under Qian Liu.\nDuring Qian Liu's reign.\nDuring Later Liang.\nIn 907, the major warlord Zhu Quanzhong the military governor of Xuanwu Circuit (\u5ba3\u6b66, headquartered in modern Kaifeng, Henan), who had had Emperor Xizong's brother and successor Emperor Zhaozong, and then Emperor Zhaozong's son and successor Emperor Ai, under his physical control for a number of years, had Emperor Ai yield the throne to him, ending Tang and starting a new Later Liang as its Emperor Taizu. While some independent warlords refused to recognize the new emperor, Qian Liu did so, and thereafter was created by the Later Liang emperor as the Prince of Wuyue; his state thereafter became known as Wuyue.\nShortly before taking the title of Prince of Wuyue, Qian Liu sent Qian Chuanliao and Qian Chuanguan to attack Lu Ji (\u76e7\u4f76), who controlled Wen Prefecture (\u6eab\u5dde, in modern Wenzhou, Zhejiang) and whose brother Lu Yue (\u76e7\u7d04) controlled Chu Prefecture (\u8655\u5dde, in modern Lishui, Zhejiang). Anticipating Qian Chuanliao and Qian Chuanguan to attack by water, Lu Ji placed his fleet at Qing'ao (\u9752\u6fb3, in modern Taizhou, Zhejiang) to defend against their attack. Believing that the better strategy was to bypass Lu Ji's fleet, Qian Chuanguan advocated, and thereafter his army did so, advancing to Angu (\u5b89\u56fa, in modern Wenzhou), landing there, and directly attack Wen Prefecture. They were able to quickly capture Wen Prefecture and capture and kill Lu Ji. Qian Liu subsequently ordered them to advance on Chu Prefecture. Subsequently, Lu Yue surrendered Chu Prefecture to Wuyue.\nIn 913, Li Tao (\u674e\u6fe4), a general of Wuyue's northern neighbor Wu (i.e., formerly Yang Xingmi's domain, now under the rule of Yang's son Yang Longyan) attacked Wuyue, going over Qianqiu Heights (\u5343\u79cb\u5dba, in modern Xuancheng) heading toward Qian Liu's hometown Yijin Base (\u8863\u9326\u8ecd, in modern Hangzhou). Qian Liu had Qian Chuanguan, who was then the prefect of Hu Prefecture (\u6e56\u5dde, in modern Huzhou, Zhejiang) command the defense against the attack while sending Qian Chuanliao to attack Wu's Dongzhou (\u6771\u6d32, in modern Changzhou, Jiangsu) to try to divert Wu's forces. Qian Chuanguan cut off trees on Qianqiu Heights to cut off the path of the Wu army and then attacked it, taking Li and 3,000 Wu soldiers captive. Later in the year, the Wu officers Hua Qian (\u82b1\u8654) and Wo Xin (\u6e26\u4fe1) rendezvoused at Guangde (\u5ee3\u5fb7, in modern Xuancheng) to plan another attack on Yijin. Qian Chuanguan took the initiative and attacked Guangde himself, capturing Hua and Wo. However, when Qian Chuanguan, Qian Chuanliao, and another brother, Qian Chuanying (\u9322\u50b3\u745b), then attacked Wu's Chang Prefecture (\u5e38\u5dde, in modern Changzhou) together, the Wu regent Xu Wen and the Wu general Chen You (\u9673\u7950) defeated them, killing many Wuyue soldiers. Later in 913, then-reigning Later Liang emperor Zhu Zhen created Qian Chuanguan the Baron of Dapeng (\u5927\u5f6d\u7e23\u958b\u570b\u7537), and in 914 upgraded the title to marquess.\nIn 919, at Zhu Zhen's order, Qian Liu sent Qian Chuanguan, who was then serving as his deputy military governor, to attack Wu's Dongzhou with 500 ships. The Wu general Peng Yanzhang (\u5f6d\u5f65\u7ae0) defended against the attack. In anticipation for the battle, Qian Chuanguan loaded his ships with ashes, sand, and beans. Furthermore, this battle also witnessed the world's first proper 'flamethrower' that used gunpowder after its recent invention in 850. Having been installed in Qian Chuanguan's dragon ship and decorated with silver, his weapon was readied in a way that would conceal it and hide it from the enemy in the event of his capture. When the fleets encountered each other at the Battle of Langshan Jiang, Qian Chuanguan maneuvered his fleet into an upwind position and then scattered ashes at the Wu fleet, making the Wu soldiers unable to see his ships, and then spread the decks of his own ships with sand while throwing beans at the Wu ships, causing the Wu ships' decks to be covered with beans and the Wu soldiers to thereafter slip and unable to act quickly. He then threw torches at the Wu ships, setting them afire and causing a general rout. Qian Chuanguan's makeshift double pump flamethrower also aided in tearing through the Wu's forces, delivering destruction they have never withstood before. When Peng's deputy Chen Fen (\u9673\u6c7e) did not come to Peng's aid, Peng committed suicide. Qian Liu then ordered Qian Chuanguan to attack Chang Prefecture, and Xu personally defended against the attack. At that time, the weather was dry, and the Wu soldiers were able to set fires against the Wuyue army, causing Wuyue soldiers to panic. The Wuyue generals He Feng (\u4f55\u9022) and Wu Jian (\u5433\u5efa) were killed, and Qian Chuanguan was forced to flee. Xu took the opportunity to negotiate peace between the two states by returning the captives that he took, and it was said that for the next 20 years, there were no major confrontations between the two states.\nIn 920, Zhu Zhen bestowed on Qian Chuanguan the honorary titles of military governor of Qinghai Circuit (\u6e05\u6d77, headquartered in modern Guangzhou, Guangdong, then under the rule of Southern Han) and chancellor (\u540c\u4e2d\u66f8\u9580\u4e0b\u5e73\u7ae0\u4e8b, \"Tong Zhongshu Menxia Pingzhangshi\"). In 923, when Zhu Zhen created Qian Liu the King of Wuyue (\u570b\u738b, \"Guo Wang\") and Qian Liu thereafter acted as full sovereign of the state, he commissioned Qian Chuanguan as the acting military governor of Zhenhai and Zhendong and put Qian Chuanguan in charge of the military affairs.\nMeanwhile, by the time that Qian Chuanguan was in his 30s, he still had not had a son with his then-wife Lady Ma. At that time, there was an order by Qian Liu in effect in the Wuyue realm that officials were not allowed to have concubines, but Lady Ma went to see Qian Liu to ask for an exemption on Qian Chuanguan's behalf. Qian Liu responded to her happily, \"My family's future bloodline is in your hands.\" He thus allowed Qian Chuanguan to have concubines, and they bore him a large number of sons, whom Lady Ma treated as her own sons.\nDuring Later Tang.\nLater in 923, Later Liang was conquered by its rival Later Tang. In 924, Qian Liu established tributary relations with Later Tang, formally submitting to Emperor Zhuangzong of Later Tang as a vassal. Emperor Zhuangzong confirmed all of the titles that Later Liang had bestowed on him. He also confirmed Qian Chuanguan's titles of military governor of Qinghai, as well as acting military governor of Zhenhai and Zhendong, and also bestowed the greater honorary chancellor title of \"Zhongshu Ling\" (\u4e2d\u66f8\u4ee4, \"Zhongshu Ling\"), acting \"Taishi\" (\u592a\u5e2b), and \"Kaifu Yitong Sansi\" (\u958b\u5e9c\u5100\u540c\u4e09\u53f8).\nIn 926, Qian Liu fell ill briefly, and went to Yijin to recuperate, leaving the affairs of the state to Qian Chuanguan, until Qian Liu completed his recovery and returned to Hang Prefecture.\nIn 928, Qian Liu wanted to formally designate Qian Chuanguan his heir, but to make sure that the other sons agreed (particularly because Qian Chuanguan was not the oldest), he gathered them and stated to them, \"Describe your accomplishments. I will make the one with the most accomplishments my heir.\" Qian Chuanguan's older brothers Qian Chuanchou (\u9322\u50b3\u5114) and Qian Chuanliao, as well as younger brother Qian Chaunjing (\u9322\u50b3\u749f), all praised Qian Chuanliao's accomplishments. Qian Liu thus submitted a petition to then-reigning Emperor Mingzong of Later Tang (Emperor Zhuangzong's adoptive brother and successor) to pass the two circuits to Qian Chuanguan. Emperor Mingzong agreed and issued an edict making Qian Chuanguan the military governor of Zhenhai and Zhendong.\nHowever, by 929, the relationship between Qian Liu and the Later Tang imperial government had been damaged because Emperor Mingzong's chief advisor An Chonghui considered Qian Liu to be arrogant and rude in his letters to An. At An's request (after An accused Qian Liu of spying on the matters of the Later Tang imperial court), Emperor Mingzong issued an edict ordering Qian Liu to retire with the title of \"Taishi\" and stripping him of all his other titles (including, presumably, King of Wuyue), and further put all Wuyue emissaries to the Later Tang court under arrest. Qian Liu had Qian Chuanguan submit a petition on his behalf claiming innocence, but An (and Emperor Mingzong) ignored Qian Chuanguan's petition. (The Wuyue emissaries were released in 930 after Qian Liu submitted another petition through Pei Yu (\u88f4\u7fbd), the Later Tang emissary to Wuyue's southern neighbor Min and this time apologized for his own faults, but the full relations were not reestablished until 931 after Emperor Mingzong forced An into retirement (and, after blaming An for the Later Tang imperial government's confrontations with Qian Liu, Meng Zhixiang the military governor of Xichuan Circuit (\u897f\u5ddd, headquartered in modern Chengdu, Sichuan), and Dong Zhang the military governor of Dongchuan Circuit (\u6771\u5ddd, headquartered in modern Mianyang, Sichuan), killing An), at which time Emperor Mingzong restored all of Qian Liu's titles.\nIn May 932, Qian Liu fell deathly ill, and he, to see whether his subordinates were in fact faithful, asked whom they would support as their new leader \u2014 at which time the generals and officials all endorsed Qian Chuanguan. Qian Liu thus entrusted the seals and the keys to the treasuries to Qian Chuanguan, left directions that he should serve whichever dynasty controlled the Central Plains with care even if the dynasty changed, and then died.\nReign.\nAs military governor of Zhenhai and Zhendong.\nAfter Qian Liu's death, Qian Chuanguan and his brothers initially spent the mourning period in the same tent, but at the urging of the royal guard commander Lu Renzhang (\u9678\u4ec1\u7ae0), who pointed out that then there would be no distinction between him and the brothers, he spent the mourning period in a separate tent from them. For reasons unclear, he changed his name to Qian Yuanguan at this point and also changed his brothers' names accordingly (changing the \"Chuan\" character in their names to \"Yuan\" as well). He no longer took on the trappings of king or prince in his dealings with the Later Tang imperial court, instead only using the titles due a military governor. He entrusted the governance to the official Cao Zhongda and the selection of officials to the general Shen Song. Meanwhile, the officers had long been resentful of the power that Lu and fellow royal guard commander LIu Renqi (\u5289\u4ec1\u675e) had, and one day they gathered around Qian Yuanguan's headquarters, demanding that Lu and Liu be put to death. In response, Qian Yuanguan sent his nephew Qian Renjun (\u9322\u4ec1\u4fca) out to the officers to state to them:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />These two generals had long served the deceased King. I was about to reward them for their service, but instead you want to, because of your private resentment, kill them; can this be done? As I am your king, you should follow my orders. Otherwise, I will return to Lin'an [(\u81e8\u5b89, i.e., Yijin)] and yield the path to whoever is talented enough to advance.\nIn fear, the officers left. Qian Yuanguan subsequently sent Lu and Liu out of the headquarters to serve as prefectural prefects. It was also said that he helped to foster peacefulness among the officials by refusing to listen to people who submit reports against each other, and therefore the realm became calm. In 933, Emperor Mingzong created him the Prince of Wu.\nIt was said that Qian Yuanguan treated his brothers well. When Qian Yuanliao (i.e., Qian Chuanliao), then serving as the military governor of Zhongwu Circuit (\u4e2d\u5433, headquartered in modern Suzhou, Jiangsu) went to Hang Prefecture to pay homage to him, Qian Yuanguan bowed to him as a younger brother, and stated to him, \"This seat was yours, older brother. This young son sits here because of your blessings.\" Qian Yuanliao responded, \"The deceased King selected the wisest to be the heir. Now the relationship between lord and subject is set, and all I know is being submissive and faithful.\" The brothers were touched by each other and wept. Still, when needed, he was willing to take actions against brothers. For example, by 933, his younger brother Qian Yuanxiang (\u9322\u5143\u73e6), who was serving as the military governor of Shunhua Circuit (\u9806\u5316, headquartered in modern Ningbo, Zhejiang), had become arrogant and spoiled, such that whenever there were requests he made to Qian Yuanguan that were rejected, he would submit further letters to show his anger and displeasure. Qian Yuanguan sent his officer Yang Renquan to Shunhua's capital Ming Prefecture to summon him, knowing that he was fearful of Yang. Yang was able to seize him and bring him back to Hang Prefecture, where Qian Yuanguan put him under house arrest.\nIn 934, Emperor Mingzong's son and successor Emperor Min of Later Tang created Qian Yuanguan the Prince of Wuyue. His mother Lady Chen died around this time, and was posthumously honored as a lady dowager by Emperor Min's adoptive brother and successor Li Congke (who overthrew Emperor Min in 934). It was said that because of Qian Yuanguan's love for his mother, he treated his mother's family well, but did not give them political offices.\nIn 936, Li Congke's brother-in-law (Emperor Mingzong's son-in-law) Shi Jingtang the military governor of Hedong Circuit (\u6cb3\u6771, headquartered in modern Taiyuan, Shanxi) rebelled against Li Congke with Khitan aid, declaring himself the emperor of a new Later Jin (as its Emperor Gaozu). The joint Later Jin/Khitan forces defeated Later Tang forces quickly, and Li Congke committed suicide, ending Later Tang. Qian Yuanguan apparently submitted to Later Jin quickly as a vassal, for later that year Emperor Gaozu bestowed on him the title of deputy generalissimo of the entire realm (\u5929\u4e0b\u5175\u99ac\u526f\u5143\u5e25, \"Tianxia Bingma Fu Yuanshuai\").\nIn 937, apparently after Qian Yuanxiang offended him more, Qian Yuanguan stripped Qian Yuanxiang of his titles of military governor of Shunhua and honorary chancellor, and demoted him to commoner rank. Later in the year, Qian Yuanguan further became suspicious of another younger brother, Qian Yuanxu (\u9322\u5143\u3eb7), who was gathering arms and trying to associate with many officials, particularly after Qian Yuanxu refused to abandon those arms and accept a commission as the prefect of Wen Prefecture. Qian Yuanguan took an opportunity, when Qian Yuanxu was in the palace for a feast, to kill both him and Qian Yuanxiang. However, when he then further considered punishing officials who were close associates of Qian Yuanxu and Qian Yuanxiang, Qian Renjun urged him to be lenient, and he agreed.\nAs King of Wuyue.\nIn November 937, Emperor Gaozu created Qian Yuanguan the King of Wuyue. Qian Yuanguan thereafter took on the same royal trappings that his father did as King of Wuyue. He created his son Qian Hongzun as his heir, and made Cao Zhongda, Shen Song, and Pi Guangye his chancellors.\nIn November 939, Qian Yuanguan's wife Lady Ma died.\nIn 940, Wang Xi the Prince of Min was having a major dispute with his younger brother Wang Yanzheng the prefect of Jian Prefecture (\u5efa\u5dde, in modern Nanping, Fujian) that developed into a military conflict. Wang Xi sent an army to put Jian Prefecture under siege, and Wang Yanzheng sought aid from Wuyue. Despite the advice of the chancellor Lin Ding against such intervention on Wang Yanzheng's behalf, Qian Yuanguan nevertheless sent a 40,000-men army under Yang Renquan and Xue Wanzhong (\u859b\u842c\u5fe0) to aid Wang Yanzheng. By the time that they reached Jian Prefecture, Wang Yanzheng had already repelled Wang Xi's attack, and he sent the Wuyue army gifts, requesting that they withdraw. Yang and Xue refused and instead pitched camp near the city. In fear, Wang Yanzheng turned around and sought aid from Wang Xi. Wang Xi sent his nephew Wang Jiye (\u738b\u7e7c\u696d) to aid Wang Yanzheng and had his army cut off the food supply path of the Wuyue army. Wang Yanzheng then attacked the Wuyue army, defeating them, forcing Yang and Xue to flee. Later in the year, Emperor Gaozu gave Qian Yuanguan the greater titles of generalissimo of all armies (\u5929\u4e0b\u5175\u99ac\u90fd\u5143\u5e25, \"Tianxia Bingma Du Yuanshuai\") as well as \"Shangshu Ling\" (\u5c1a\u66f8\u4ee4).\nIn August 941, a major fire burned down much of the Wuyue palace and treasury. As a result of trauma from the fire, it was said that Qian Yuanguan lost his mental wellness. The officials of Wuyue's northern neighbor Southern Tang \u2014 i.e., the former Wu, which had been taken over by its regent Xu Zhigao, who took the throne as Southern Tang's Emperor Liezu \u2014 all encouraged the Southern Tang emperor to attack and conquer Wuyue. The Southern Tang emperor, however, did not want to take advantage of Wuyue and instead sent emissaries to wish Qian Yuanguan recovery and also to give gifts.\nApparently, in addition to his mental wellness, Qian Yuanguan's physical wellness also took an immediate downturn. He entrusted his son Qian Hongzuo (Qian Hongzun having died in 940) to his official Zhang De'an (\u7ae0\u5fb7\u5b89), and then died. Qian Hongzuo thereafter took the throne and was created the King of Wuyue by Emperor Gaozu.", "42927100": "Qian Hongzuo\nKing of Wuyue\nQian Hongzuo (; 14 August 928 \u2013 22 June 947), courtesy name Yuanyou (), also known by his temple name as the King Chengzong of Wuyue (), was the third king of Wuyue during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period of China.\nBackground.\nQian Hongzuo was born in 928. He was the sixth son of father Qian Chuanguan (King Wenmu), who was then still serving under his father (Qian Hongzun's grandfather), Wuyue's first king Qian Liu (King Wusu), as the acting military governor (\"Jiedushi\") of Wuyue's two main circuits, Zhenhai (\u93ae\u6d77, headquartered at Wuyue's capital Hang Prefecture (\u676d\u5dde, in modern Hangzhou, Zhejiang)) and Zhendong (\u93ae\u6771, headquartered in modern Shaoxing, Zhejiang). His mother was Qian Chuanguan's concubine Lady Xu Xinyue. While he was ranked as Qian Chuanguan's sixth son, traditional histories heavily implied that he was the second-born in terms of Qian Chuanguan's biological sons, as they emphasized that Qian Chuanguan and his wife Lady Ma were sonless and that, therefore, Qian Chuanguan was sonless into his 30s because Qian Liu had forbidden officials from taking concubines, until Lady Ma personally pleaded for an exemption for Qian Chuanguan due to that reason \u2014 and listing Qian Chuanguan's fifth son Qian Hongzun and Qian Hongzuo among the biological sons born from Qian Chuanguan's concubines, while omitting their older brothers Qian Hongzhuan (), Qian Hongxuan (), Qian Hongyou (), and Qian Hong'an (), although only Qian Hongyou was explicitly stated to be an adoptive son.\nAfter Qian Chuanguan succeeded to the throne after Qian Liu's death in 932 (and changed his name to Qian Yuanguan), Qian Hongzun was initially designated the heir apparent. As his sons grew older, Qian Yuanguan built a mansion of the heir apparent for Qian Hongzun. Shortly before Qian Hongzun was to move into the mansion, there was a time when Qian Hongzuo and Qian Hongzun were gambling with each other, and Qian Hongzun made a comment in jest, \"The Lord King is building an office for me. I am willing to gamble you for it.\" When they then played dice, however, Qian Hongzuo won, causing Qian Hongzun to lose his composure. Qian Hongzuo, without losing composure as well, stated, \"When you, fifth brother, enter the headquarters, I, Hongzuo, will receive the seal of a general.\" He bowed to Qian Hongzun, but Qian Hongzun was not pleased and left immediately.\nQian Hongzun died in 940. Qian Hongzuo was thereafter made the deputy military governors of Zhenhai and Zhendong, effectively being designated the heir. In 941, Qian Yuanguan was deathly ill. After a conversation with his officer Zhang De'an () in which he toyed with the idea of passing the throne to an older member of his clan because of Qian Hongzuo's youth, he ultimately decided on entrusting Qian Hongzuo to Zhang. He died shortly after. As there were rumors that another officer, Dai Yun (), whose wife was a relative to Qian Hongyou's wet nurse, was planning on supporting Qian Hongyou to succeed Qian Yuanguan, Zhang initially kept Qian Yuanguan's death a secret; rather, he had his soldiers ambush, arrest, and kill Dai, and then had Qian Hongyou demoted to commoner rank and changed in name back to his birth name of Sun. Zhang then led the other officials and officers in announcing Qian Yuanguan's will, naming Qian Hongzuo the military governor of Zhenhai and Zhendong. Qian Hongzuo shortly after took the position, apparently, not only of military governor, but also king.\nReign.\nAt the start of his reign, Qian Hongzuo designated the chancellor Cao Zhongda as regent. Shortly after, when the soldiers complained about unevenness of rewards to them, the officers were unable to quell their discontent, requiring Cao to personally speak to them and comfort them before the discontent faded.\nAs king, Qian Hongzuo was said to be mild-tempered and respectful, studious, diligent, and capable of discovering hidden evils. Once, upon hearing that the state had 10 years worth of excess food storage, he decided to exempt the people of taxes for three years. Around the new year 942, Shi Jingtang the emperor of Later Jin, to whom he was formally a vassal, formally created him the King of Wuyue, the military governor of Zhenhai and Zhendong, and honorary chancellor with the title of \"Zhongshu Ling\" ().\nBy fall 943, however, the commander of the headquarter corps, Kan Fan (), was said to be so dominant at Qian's court such that, even though Zhang De'an and another officer, Li Wenqing (), tried to counterbalance his power, they could not do so, and Zhang and Li ended up being sent out to be prefects of Chu (\u8655\u5dde, in modern Lishui, Zhejiang) and Mu (\u7766\u5dde, in modern Hangzhou), respectively, such that Kan and Hu Jinsi became particularly dominant after that. Later in the year, Qian married the daughter of the senior general Yang Renquan as his wife. (He had a prior wife, a Lady Du, but she appeared to have died before his becoming king. Consort Yuan herself, though, apparently did not live a long time after the marriage, although when she died is unclear.)\nBy 944, Wuyue's southern neighbor Min was deeply caught in civil war, with the general Zhu Wenjin (having earlier assassinated the emperor Wang Yanxi and taken control of the capital Fu Prefecture (\u798f\u5dde, in modern Fuzhou, Fujian)) claiming the title of Emperor of Min, battling Wang Yanxi's brother Wang Yanzheng (in control of Jian Prefecture (\u5efa\u5dde, in modern Nanping, Fujian), who claimed the title of Emperor of Yin. Zhu sought aid from Wuyue and sent brother(s) and son(s) to serve as hostages in that effort, but there was no record of any responses by Qian. After Zhu was later assassinated, Wang Yanzheng briefly took control of all of the Min realm and reclaimed the title of Emperor of Min, but soon the general Li Renda led a revolt against him at Fu. Li Renda established friendly relations with Wuyue, as Wang Yanzheng later also attempted to do in seeking aid from Wuyue when Jian Prefecture came under the attack of Min's (and Wuyue's) northwestern neighbor Southern Tang. Before Wuyue could intervene at all, however, Jian fell to Southern Tang, ending Min, and Southern Tang, at least nominally, took over all of the former Min realm, although Li Renda, while formally a Southern Tang vassal, continued to control Fu and the surrounding area.\nBy late 945, Qian was said to have trusted the wicked officer Cheng Zhaoyue (), who had previously been a wealthy merchant who was able to become an officer by ingratiating Kan and Du Zhaoda (), a nephew to the deceased Lady Du. Kan became irritated at the close association between Qian and Cheng, and when Cheng tried to appease Kan by apologizing to him, Kan made him more fearful by stating, \"I wanted to kill you at first. Now that you are showing remorse, I will not do so.\" Cheng thereafter conspired with Hu, and had Qian issue orders making Kan and Hu the prefects of Ming (\u660e\u5dde, in modern Ningbo, Zhejiang) and Hu (\u6e56\u5dde, in modern Huzhou, Zhejiang) respectively. Kan initially wanted to refuse the order, but Hu persuaded him to accept. Cheng then falsely accused Kan and Du of wanting to support Qian's cousin Qian Renjun () to be the new king, and Qian Hongzuo then put Kan and Du to death and put Qian Renjun under house arrest. Cheng used this opportunity to accuse many officers of being in league with Kan and Du, and it was said that some 100 were either killed or exiled.\nBy 946, Southern Tang's emperor Li Jing, unable to get Li Renda to yield actual control of the Fu region by himself, sent the official Chen Jue to Fu to try to persuade Li Renda to do so. When Li Renda refused, Chen, initially without Li Jing's orders, launched an army and attacked Fu. Li Renda requested aid from Wuyue, and while most officials and generals at Qian Hongzuo's court opposed intervention, Qian himself"}, "descending_order": ["42838332", "42927100", "37915910"], "permutation_1": ["37915910", "42838332", "42927100"], "permutation_2": ["37915910", "42838332", "42927100"], "permutation_3": ["42927100", "42838332", "37915910"]}
{"id": "2hop__144969_19219", "docs_added": {"19505731": "Ximena Valero\nAmerican Mexican born fashion designer\nXimena Valero (born Jimena del Carmen Valero Jarillo; May 26, 1977) is an American, Mexican born fashion designer and winner of the 2007 International Award for Designer of the Year for Excellence in Evening Wear at \"Miami's Fashion Week\". She is known for introducing Transformable Fashion and has dressed a number of celebrities. Valero made her name in Tijuana and now lives in Los Angeles. She was recently (fall, 2016) featured as a designer and judge on \"The Fashion Hero\".\nEarly life and education.\nXimena Valero was born Jimena del Carmen Valero Jarillo in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico to Carmen Jarillo-Ya\u00f1ez, a school teacher and housewife, and Jos\u00e9 L. Valero, M.D. a plastic surgeon. Ximena's parents moved to Tijuana, Mexico in 1982. She got her formal training at Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM) in San Diego.She started studying fashion during summer breaks at the age of 8. It was with her mother's influence that she began to study fashion and couture lessons. At which point, fashion design grew to be her passion, eventually leading her to become a student of fashion design at Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, in neighboring San Diego, at the age of 17.\nCareer.\nShe started designing women's apparel in her first workshop in Tijuana, in the late 1990s. In 1999, she was offered and accepted a paid internship in the design department at Victoria's Secret & Limited Brands by Victoria's Secret CEO Grace Nichols. After her internship ended she started working in New York as a free-lance fashion designer. In early 2006, she moved back to the Tijuana-San Diego area. During the following two years, she developed new designs incorporating Frida Kalhlo's look into her apparel creations and also designed women's shoes and pets apparel.\nBy late 2007, she moved to Los Angeles, where she has her current workshop and showroom studio. During 2007 and 2008, she has appeared in several Fashion Week shows around Latin America and the US, and was the winner of the 2007 International Award for Designer of the Year for Excellence in Evening Wear in 2007's Miami's Fashion Week. On October 14, 2008, she was appointed one of 15 members of 2008's Tijuana's Hall of Fame, at the Canaco (National Chamber of Commerce), selected by the Tijuana's Image Committee, headed by Tijuana's tycoon, Jos\u00e9 Galicot Behar.\nTransformable Fashion.\nHer major contribution to fashion in 2009 was so-called \"Transformable Fashion,\" that is, women's apparel that can be worn in many different ways. On her innovation, she recalled, \"I was running out of clothes. So I repurposed what we had. Then I thought, what if I made original designs with that transformability in mind?\" Valero went on to design a long line of Transformable Fashion women's outfits that can be worn in multiple ways.\nReality television.\nXimena Valero was featured as a designer and judge on \"The Fashion Hero\", hosted by Brooke Hogan. It is available on Amazon Prime. She has also been featured on a number of television and internet programs.\nCelebrities dressed.\nAccording to various online and print publications, Valero has dressed a number of high-profile celebrities in her career:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18987": "Mexico City\nCapital and most populous city of Mexico\nMexico City is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and is also North America's most populous city. It is one of the most important cultural and financial centers in the world. Mexico City is located in the Valley of Mexico within the high Mexican central plateau, at an altitude of . The city has 16 boroughs or , which are in turn divided into neighborhoods or . \nThe 2020 population for the city proper was 9,209,944, with a land area of . According to the most recent definition agreed upon by the federal and state governments, the population of Greater Mexico City is 21,804,515, which makes it the sixth-largest metropolitan area in the world, the second-largest urban agglomeration in the Western Hemisphere (behind S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil), and the largest Spanish-speaking city (city proper) in the world. Greater Mexico City has a GDP of $411 billion in 2011, which makes it one of the most productive urban areas in the world. The city was responsible for generating 15.8% of Mexico's GDP, and the metropolitan area accounted for about 22% of the country's GDP. If it were an independent country in 2013, Mexico City would be the fifth-largest economy in Latin America.\nMexico City is the oldest capital city in the Americas and one of two founded by Indigenous people. The city was originally built on a group of islands in Lake Texcoco by the Mexica around 1325, under the name Tenochtitlan. It was almost completely destroyed in the 1521 siege of Tenochtitlan and subsequently redesigned and rebuilt in accordance with the Spanish urban standards. In 1524, the municipality of Mexico City was established, known as , and as of 1585, it was officially known as (Mexico City). Mexico City played a major role in the Spanish colonial empire as a political, administrative, and financial center. Following independence from Spain, the federal district was established in 1824.\nAfter years of demanding greater political autonomy, residents were finally given the right to elect both a head of government and the representatives of the unicameral Legislative Assembly by election in 1997. Ever since, left-wing parties (first the Party of the Democratic Revolution and later the National Regeneration Movement) have controlled both of them. The city has several progressive policies, such as elective abortions, a limited form of euthanasia, no-fault divorce, same-sex marriage, and legal gender change. On 29 January 2016, it ceased to be the \"Federal District\" ( or ) and is now officially known as (or ), with a greater degree of autonomy. A clause in the Constitution of Mexico, however, prevents it from becoming a state within the Mexican federation, as long it remains the capital of the country.\nNicknames and mottos.\nMexico City was traditionally known as \"La Ciudad de los Palacios\" (\"the City of the Palaces\"), a nickname attributed to Baron Alexander von Humboldt when visiting the city in the 19th century, who, sending a letter back to Germany, said Mexico City could rival any major city in Europe. But it was English politician Charles Latrobe who really penned the following: \"... look at their works: the moles, aqueducts, churches, roads\u2014and the luxurious \"City of Palaces\" which has risen from the clay-built ruins of Tenochtitlan...\", on page 84 of the Letter V of \"The Rambler in Mexico\".\nDuring the colonial period, the city's motto was \"Muy Noble e Insigne, Muy Leal e Imperial\" (Very Noble and Distinguished, Very Loyal and Imperial). During Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador's administration a political slogan was introduced: \"la Ciudad de la Esperanza\" (lit.\u2009'The City of Hope'). This motto was quickly adopted as a city nickname but has faded since the new motto, \"Capital en Movimiento\" (\"Capital in Movement\"), was adopted by the administration headed by Marcelo Ebrard, though the latter is not treated as often as a nickname in media. \nUp until 2013, it was common to refer to the city by the initialism \n\"DF\" from \"Distrito Federal de M\u00e9xico\". Since 2013, the abbreviation \"CDMX\" (Ciudad de M\u00e9xico) has been more common, particularly in relation to government campaigns.\nThe city is colloquially known as \"Chilangolandia\" after the locals' nickname \"chilangos\". Chilango is used pejoratively by people living outside Mexico City to \"connote a loud, arrogant, ill-mannered, loutish person\". For their part those living in Mexico City designate insultingly those who live elsewhere as living in \"la provincia\" ('the provinces', 'the periphery') and many proudly embrace the term chilango. Residents of Mexico City are more recently called \"defe\u00f1os\" (deriving from the postal abbreviation of the Federal District in Spanish: D.F., which is read \"De-Efe\"). They are formally called \"capitalinos\" (in reference to the city being the capital of the country), but \"[p]erhaps because capitalino is the more polite, specific, and correct word, it is almost never utilized\".\nHistory.\nThe oldest signs of human occupation in the area of Mexico City are those of the \"Pe\u00f1\u00f3n woman\" and others found in San Bartolo Atepehuacan (Gustavo A. Madero). They were believed to correspond to the lower Cenolithic period (9500\u20137000 BC). However, a 2003 study placed the age of the Pe\u00f1on woman at 12,700 years old (calendar age), one of the oldest human remains discovered in the Americas. Studies of her mitochondrial DNA suggest she was either of Asian or European or Aboriginal Australian origin.\nThe area was the destination of the migrations of the Teochichimecas during the 8th and 13th centuries, people that would give rise to the Toltec, and Mexica (Aztecs) cultures. The latter arrived around the 14th century to settle first on the shores of the lake.\nAztec period.\nThe city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan was founded by the Mexica people in 1325 or 1327. The old Mexica city that is now referred to as Tenochtitlan was built on an island in the center of the inland lake system of the Valley of Mexico, which is shared with a smaller city-state called Tlatelolco. According to legend, the Mexicas' principal god, Huitzilopochtli, indicated the site where they were to build their home by presenting a golden eagle perched on a prickly pear devouring a rattlesnake.\nBetween 1325 and 1521, Tenochtitlan grew in size and strength, eventually dominating the other city-states around Lake Texcoco and in the Valley of Mexico. When the Spaniards arrived, the Aztec Empire had reached much of Mesoamerica, touching both the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean.\nSpanish conquest.\nAfter landing in Veracruz, Spanish explorer Hern\u00e1n Cort\u00e9s advanced upon Tenochtitlan with the aid of many of the other native peoples,\narriving there on 8 November 1519. Cort\u00e9s and his men marched along the causeway leading into the city from Iztapalapa (Ixtapalapa), and the city's ruler, Moctezuma II, greeted the Spaniards; they exchanged gifts, but the camaraderie did not last long. Cort\u00e9s put Moctezuma under house arrest, hoping to rule through him.\nTensions increased until, on the night of 30 June 1520 \u2013 during a struggle known as \"La Noche Triste\" \u2013 the Aztecs rose up against the Spanish intrusion and managed to capture or drive out the Europeans and their Tlaxcalan allies. Cort\u00e9s regrouped at Tlaxcala. The Aztecs thought the Spaniards were permanently gone, and they elected a new king, Cuitl\u00e1huac, but he soon died; the next king was Cuauht\u00e9moc. Cort\u00e9s began a siege of Tenochtitlan in May 1521. For three months, the city suffered from the lack of food and water as well as the spread of smallpox brought by the Europeans. Cort\u00e9s and his allies landed their forces in the south of the island and slowly fought their way through the city. Cuauht\u00e9moc surrendered in August 1521. The Spaniards practically razed Tenochtitlan during the final siege of the conquest.\nCort\u00e9s first settled in Coyoac\u00e1n, but decided to rebuild the Aztec site to erase all traces of the old order. He did not establish a territory under his own personal rule, but remained loyal to the Spanish crown. The first Spanish viceroy arrived in Mexico City fourteen years later. By that time, the city had again become a city-state, having power that extended far beyond its borders. Although the Spanish preserved Tenochtitlan's basic layout, they built Catholic churches over the old Aztec temples and claimed the imperial palaces for themselves. Tenochtitlan was renamed \"Mexico\" because the Spanish found the word easier to pronounce.\nGrowth of colonial Mexico City.\nThe city had been the capital of the Aztec Empire and in the colonial era, Mexico City became the capital of New Spain. The viceroy of Mexico or vice-king lived in the viceregal palace on the main square or Z\u00f3calo. The Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral, the seat of the Archbishopric of New Spain, was constructed on another side of the Z\u00f3calo, as was the archbishop's palace, and across from it the building housing the city council or \"ayuntamiento\" of the city. A late seventeenth-century painting of the Z\u00f3calo by Crist\u00f3bal de Villalpando depicts the main square, which had been the old Aztec ceremonial center. The existing central plaza of the Aztecs was effectively and permanently transformed to the ceremonial center and seat of power during the colonial period, and remains to this day in modern Mexico, the central plaza of the nation. The rebuilding of the city after the siege of Tenochtitlan was accomplished by the abundant indigenous labor in the surrounding area. Franciscan friar Toribio de Benavente Motolinia, one of the Twelve Apostles of Mexico who arrived in New Spain in 1524, described the rebuilding of the city as one of the afflictions or plagues of the early period:\nThe seventh plague was the construction of the great City of Mexico, which, during the early years used more people than in the construction of Jerusalem. The crowds of laborers were so numerous that one could hardly move in the streets and causeways, although they are very wide. Many died from being crushed by beams, or falling from high places, or in tearing down old buildings for new ones. \nPreconquest Tenochtitlan was built in the center of the inland lake system, with the city reachable by canoe and by wide causeways to the mainland. The causeways were rebuilt under Spanish rule with indigenous labor. Colonial Spanish cities were constructed on a grid pattern, if no geographical obstacle prevented it. In Mexico City, the Z\u00f3calo (main square) was the central place from which the grid was then built outward. The Spanish lived in the area closest to the main square in what was known as the \"traza\", in orderly, well laid-out streets. Indigenous residences were outside that exclusive zone and houses were haphazardly located. Spaniards sought to keep indigenous people separate but since the Z\u00f3calo was a center of commerce for Amerindians, they were a constant presence in the central area, so strict segregation was never enforced. At intervals Z\u00f3calo was where major celebrations took place as well as executions. It was also the site of two major riots in the seventeenth century, one in 1624, the other in 1692.\nThe city grew as the population did, coming up against the lake's waters. As the depth of the lake water fluctuated, Mexico City was subject to periodic flooding. A major labor draft, the desag\u00fce, compelled thousands of indigenous over the colonial period to work on infrastructure to prevent flooding. Floods were not only an inconvenience but also a health hazard, since during flood periods human waste polluted the city's streets. By draining the area, the mosquito population dropped as did the frequency of the diseases they spread. However, draining the wetlands also changed the habitat for fish and birds and the areas accessible for indigenous cultivation close to the capital. The 16th century saw a proliferation of churches, many of which can still be seen today in the historic center.\nEconomically, Mexico City prospered as a result of trade. Unlike Brazil or Peru, Mexico had easy contact with both the Atlantic and Pacific worlds. Although the Spanish crown tried to completely regulate all commerce in the city, it had only partial success.\nThe concept of nobility flourished in New Spain in a way not seen in other parts of the Americas. Spaniards encountered a society in which the concept of nobility mirrored that of their own. Spaniards respected the indigenous order of nobility and added to it. In the ensuing centuries, possession of a noble title in Mexico did not mean one exercised great political power, for one's power was limited even if the accumulation of wealth was not. The concept of nobility in Mexico was not political but rather a very conservative Spanish social one, based on proving the worthiness of the family. Most of these families proved their worth by making fortunes in New Spain outside of the city itself, then spending the revenues in the capital, building churches, supporting charities and building extravagant palatial homes. The craze to build the most opulent residence possible reached its height in the last half of the 18th century. Many of these palaces can still be seen today, leading to Mexico City's nickname of \"The city of palaces\" given by Alexander Von Humboldt.\nThe Grito de Dolores (\"Cry of Dolores\"), also known as El Grito de la Independencia (\"Cry of Independence\"), marked the beginning of the Mexican War of Independence. The Battle of Guanajuato, the first major engagement of the insurgency, occurred four days later. After a decade of war, Mexico's independence from Spain was effectively declared in the Declaration of Independence of the Mexican Empire on 27 September 1821. Agust\u00edn de Iturbide is proclaimed Emperor of the First Mexican Empire by Congress, crowned in the Cathedral of Mexico. \nThe Mexican Federal District was established by the new government and by the signing of their new constitution, where the concept of a federal district was adapted from the United States Constitution. Before this designation, Mexico City had served as the seat of government for both the State of Mexico and the nation as a whole. Texcoco de Mora and then Toluca became the capital of the State of Mexico.\nBattle of Mexico City in the U.S.\u2013Mexican War of 1847.\nDuring the 19th century, Mexico City was the center stage of all the political disputes of the country. It was the imperial capital on two occasions (1821\u20131823 and 1864\u20131867), and of two federalist states and two centralist states that followed innumerable coups d'\u00e9tats in the space of half a century before the triumph of the Liberals after the Reform War. It was also the objective of one of the two French invasions to Mexico (1861\u20131867), and occupied for a year by American troops in the framework of the Mexican\u2013American War (1847\u20131848).\nThe Battle for Mexico City was the series of engagements from 8 to 15 September 1847, in the general vicinity of Mexico City during the U.S. Mexican War. Included are major actions at the battles of Molino del Rey and Chapultepec, culminating with the fall of Mexico City. The U.S. Army under Winfield Scott scored a major success that ended the war. The American invasion into the Federal District was first resisted during the Battle of Churubusco on 8 August, where the Saint Patrick's Battalion, which was composed primarily of Catholic Irish and German immigrants but also Canadians, English, French, Italians, Poles, Scots, Spaniards, Swiss, and Mexicans, fought for the Mexican cause, repelling the American attacks. After defeating the Saint Patrick's Battalion, the Mexican\u2013American War came to a close after the United States deployed combat units deep into Mexico resulting in the capture of Mexico City and Veracruz by the U.S. Army's 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Divisions. The invasion culminated with the storming of Chapultepec Castle in the city itself.\nDuring this battle, on 13 September, the 4th Division, under John A. Quitman, spearheaded the attack against Chapultepec and carried the castle. Future Confederate generals George E. Pickett and James Longstreet participated in the attack. Serving in the Mexican defense were the cadets later immortalized as \"Los Ni\u00f1os H\u00e9roes\" (the \"Boy Heroes\"). The Mexican forces fell back from Chapultepec and retreated within the city. Attacks on the Bel\u00e9n and San Cosme Gates came afterwards. The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in what is now the far north of the city.\nMexican Revolution (1910\u20131920).\nThe capital escaped the worst of the violence of the ten-year conflict of the Mexican Revolution. The most significant episode of this period for the city was the Decena Tr\u00e1gica (\"Ten Tragic Days\") of February 1913, when forces counter to the elected government of Francisco I. Madero staged a successful coup. The center of the city was subjected to artillery attacks from the army stronghold of the \"ciudadela\" or citadel, with significant civilian casualties and the undermining of confidence in the Madero government. Victoriano Huerta, chief general of the Federal Army, saw a chance to take power, forcing Madero and Pino Suarez to sign resignations. The two were murdered later while on their way to Lecumberri prison. Huerta's ouster in July 1914 saw the entry of the armies of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, but the city did not experience violence. Huerta had abandoned the capital and the conquering armies marched in. Venustiano Carranza's Constitutionalist faction ultimately prevailed in the revolutionary civil war and Carranza took up residence in the presidential palace.\n20th century to present.\nIn the 20th century the phenomenal growth of the city and its environmental and political consequences dominate. In 1900, the population of Mexico City was about 500,000. The city began to grow rapidly westward in the early part of the 20th century and then began to grow upwards in the 1950s, with the Torre Latinoamericana becoming the city's first skyscraper.\nThe rapid development of Mexico City as a center for modernist architecture was most fully manifested in the mid-1950s construction of the Ciudad Universitaria, Mexico City, the main campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Designed by the most prestigious architects of the era, including Mario Pani, Eugenio Peschard, and Enrique del Moral, the buildings feature murals by artists Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Jos\u00e9 Ch\u00e1vez Morado. It has since been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.\nThe 1968 Olympic Games brought about the construction of large sporting facilities. In 1969, the Mexico City Metro was inaugurated. Explosive growth in the population of the city started in the 1960s, with the population overflowing the boundaries of the Federal District into the neighboring State of Mexico, especially to the north, northwest, and northeast. Between 1960 and 1980 the city's population more than doubled to nearly 9\u00a0million.\nIn 1980, half of all the industrial jobs in Mexico were located in Mexico City. Under relentless growth, the Mexico City government could barely keep up with services. Villagers from the countryside who continued to pour into the city to escape poverty only compounded the city's problems. With no housing available, they took over lands surrounding the city, creating huge shanty towns.\nThe inhabitants of Mexico City faced serious air pollution and water pollution problems, as well as groundwater-related subsidence. Air and water pollution has been contained and improved in several areas due to government programs, the renovation of vehicles and the modernization of public transportation.\nThe autocratic government that ruled Mexico City since the Revolution was tolerated, mostly because of the continued economic expansion since World War II. This was the case even though this government could not handle the population and pollution problems adequately. Nevertheless, discontent and protests began in the 1960s leading to the massacre of an unknown number of protesting students in Tlatelolco.\nThree years later, a demonstration in the Maestros avenue, organized by former members of the 1968 student movement, was violently repressed by a paramilitary group called \"Los Halcones\", composed of gang members and teenagers from many sports clubs who received training in the US.\nOn 19 September 1985, at 7:19am CST, the area was struck by the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. The earthquake proved to be a disaster politically for the one-party state government. The Mexican government was paralyzed by its own bureaucracy and corruption, forcing ordinary citizens to create and direct their own rescue efforts and to reconstruct much of the housing that was lost as well.\nIn 1987, the Historic center of Mexico City, a central neighborhood of Mexico City was enlisted as UNESCO World Heritage Site for its large collection of ancient Aztec and colonial architecture.\nHowever, the last straw may have been the controversial elections of 1988. That year, the presidency was set between the P.R.I.'s candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, and a coalition of left-wing parties led by Cuauht\u00e9moc C\u00e1rdenas, son of the former president L\u00e1zaro C\u00e1rdenas. The counting system \"fell\" because coincidentally the power went out and suddenly, when it returned, the winning candidate was Salinas, even though C\u00e1rdenas had the upper hand.\nAs a result of the fraudulent election, C\u00e1rdenas became a member of the Party of the Democratic Revolution. Discontent over the election eventually led Cuauht\u00e9moc C\u00e1rdenas to become the first elected mayor of Mexico City in 1997. C\u00e1rdenas promised a more democratic government, and his party claimed some victories against crime, pollution, and other major problems. He resigned in 1999 to run for the presidency.\nGeography.\nMexico City is located in the Valley of Mexico, sometimes called the Basin of Mexico. This valley is located in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt in the high plateaus of south-central Mexico.\nIt has a minimum altitude of above sea level and is surrounded by mountains and volcanoes that reach elevations of over . This valley has no natural drainage outlet for the waters that flow from the mountainsides, making the city vulnerable to flooding. Drainage was engineered through the use of canals and tunnels starting in the 17th century.\nMexico City primarily rests on what was Lake Texcoco. Seismic activity is frequent there. Lake Texcoco was drained starting from the 17th century. Although none of the lake waters remain, the city rests on the lake bed's heavily saturated clay. This soft base is collapsing due to the over-extraction of groundwater, called \"groundwater-related subsidence\".\nSince the beginning of the 20th century the city has sunk as much as in some areas. On average Mexico City sinks every year. This sinking is causing problems with runoff and wastewater management, leading to flooding problems, especially during the summer. The entire lake bed is now paved over and most of the city's remaining forested areas lie in the southern boroughs of Milpa Alta, Tlalpan and Xochimilco.\nEnvironment.\nOriginally much of the valley lay beneath the waters of Lake Texcoco, a system of interconnected salt and freshwater lakes. The Aztecs built dikes to separate the fresh water used to raise crops in \"chinampas\" and to prevent recurrent floods. These dikes were destroyed during the siege of Tenochtitlan, and during colonial times the Spanish regularly drained the lake to prevent floods. Only a small section of the original lake remains, located outside Mexico City, in the municipality of Atenco, State of Mexico.\nArchitects Teodoro Gonz\u00e1lez de Le\u00f3n and Alberto Kalach along with a group of Mexican urbanists, engineers and biologists have developed the project plan for \"Recovering the City of Lakes\". If approved by the government the project will contribute to the supply of water from natural sources to the Valley of Mexico, the creation of new natural spaces, a great improvement in air quality, and greater population establishment planning.\nPollution.\nBy the 1990s Mexico City had become infamous as one of the world's most polluted cities; however, the city has since become a model for drastically lowering pollution levels. By 2014 carbon monoxide pollution had dropped drastically, while sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide were at levels about a third of those in 1992. The levels of signature pollutants in Mexico City are similar to those of Los Angeles. Despite the cleanup, the metropolitan area is still the most ozone-polluted part of the country, with ozone levels 2.5 times beyond WHO-defined safe limits.\nTo clean up pollution, the federal and local governments implemented numerous plans including the constant monitoring and reporting of environmental conditions, such as ozone and nitrogen oxides. When the levels of these two pollutants reached critical levels, contingency actions were implemented which included closing factories, changing school hours, and extending the \"A day without a car\" program to two days of the week. The government also instituted industrial technology improvements, a strict biannual vehicle emission inspection and the reformulation of gasoline and diesel fuels. The introduction of Metrob\u00fas bus rapid transit and the Ecobici bike-sharing were among efforts to encourage alternate, greener forms of transportation.\nParks and recreation.\nChapultepec, the city's most iconic public park, has history back to the Aztec emperors who used the area as a retreat. It is south of Polanco district, and houses the Chapultepec Zoo the main city's zoo, several ponds and seven museums, including the National Museum of Anthropology. Other iconic city parks include the Alameda Central, it is recognized as the oldest public park in the Americas. Parque M\u00e9xico and Parque Espa\u00f1a in the hip Condesa district; Parque Hundido and \"Parque de los Venados\" in Colonia del Valle, and Parque Lincoln in Polanco. There are many smaller parks throughout the city. Most are small \"squares\" occupying two or three square blocks amid residential or commercial districts. Several other larger parks such as the Bosque de Tlalpan and Viveros de Coyoac\u00e1n, and in the east Alameda Oriente, offer many recreational activities. Northwest of the city is a large ecological reserve, the Bosque de Arag\u00f3n. In the southeast is the Xochimilco Ecological Park and Plant Market, a World Heritage Site. West of Santa Fe district are the pine forests of the Desierto de los Leones National Park. Amusement parks include Six Flags M\u00e9xico, in Ajusco neighborhood which is the largest in Latin America. There are numerous seasonal fairs present in the city.\nMexico City has three zoos. Chapultepec Zoo, the San Juan de Aragon Zoo and Los Coyotes Zoo. Chapultepec Zoo is located in the first section of Chapultepec Park in the Miguel Hidalgo. It was opened in 1924. Visitors can see about 243 specimens of different species including kangaroos, giant panda, gorillas, caracal, hyena, hippos, jaguar, giraffe, lemur, lion, among others. Zoo San Juan de Aragon is near the San Juan de Aragon Park in the Gustavo A. Madero. In this zoo, opened in 1964, there are species that are in danger of extinction such as the jaguar and the Mexican wolf. Other guests are the golden eagle, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, caracara, zebras, African elephant, macaw, hippo, among others. Zoo Los Coyotes is a 27.68-acre (11.2 ha) zoo located south of Mexico City in the Coyoacan. It was inaugurated on 2 February 1999. It has more than 301 specimens of 51 species of wild native or endemic fauna from the area, featuring eagles, ajolotes, coyotes, macaws, bobcats, Mexican wolves, raccoons, mountain lions, teporingos, foxes, white-tailed deer.\nClimate.\nMexico City has a subtropical highland climate (K\u00f6ppen climate classification \"Cwb\"), due to its tropical location but high elevation. The lower region of the valley receives less rainfall than the upper regions of the south; the lower boroughs of Iztapalapa, Iztacalco, Venustiano Carranza and the east portion of Gustavo A. Madero are usually drier and warmer than the upper southern boroughs of Tlalpan and Milpa Alta, a mountainous region of pine and oak trees known as the range of Ajusco. The average annual temperature varies from , depending on the altitude of the borough. The temperature is rarely below or above . At the Tacubaya observatory, the lowest temperature ever registered was on 13 February 1960, and the highest temperature on record was on 25 May 2024. Overall precipitation is heavily concentrated in the summer months, and includes dense hail.\nSnow falls in the city scarcely, although somewhat more often on nearby mountaintops. Throughout its history, the Central Valley of Mexico was accustomed to having several snowfalls per decade (including a period between 1878 and 1895 in which every single year\u2014except 1880\u2014recorded snowfalls), mostly lake-effect snow. The effects of the draining of Lake Texcoco and global warming have greatly reduced snowfalls after the snow flurries of 12 February 1907. Since 1908, snow has only fallen thrice: snow on 14 February 1920; snow flurries on 14 March 1940; and on 12 January 1967, when of snow fell on the city, the most on record. The 1967 snowstorm coincided with the operation of \"Deep Drainage System\" that resulted in the total draining of what was left of Lake Texcoco. After the disappearance of Lake Texcoco, snow has never fallen again over Mexico City. The region of the Valley of Mexico receives anti-cyclonic systems. The weak winds of these systems do not allow for the dispersion, outside the basin, of the air pollutants which are produced by the 50,000 industries and 4\u00a0million vehicles operating in and around the metropolitan area.\nThe area receives about of annual rainfall, which is concentrated from May through October with little or no precipitation for the remainder of the year. The area has two main seasons. The wet humid summer runs from May to October when winds bring in tropical moisture from the sea, the wettest month being July. The cool sunny winter runs from November to April, when the air is relatively drier, the driest month being December. This season is subdivided into a cold winter period and a warm spring period. The cold period spans from November to February, when polar air masses push down from the north and keep the air fairly dry. The warm period extends from March to May when subtropical winds again dominate but do not yet carry enough moisture for rain to form.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nHistorically, and since Pre-Columbian times, the Valley of Anahuac has been one of the most densely populated areas in Mexico. When the Federal District was created in 1824, the urban area of Mexico City extended approximately to the area of today's Cuauht\u00e9moc borough. At the beginning of the 20th century, began migrating to the south and west and soon the small towns of Mixcoac and San \u00c1ngel were incorporated by the growing conurbation. According to the 1921 census, 54.78% of the city's population was considered Mestizo (Indigenous mixed with European), 22.79% considered European, and 18.74% considered Indigenous.\nUp to the 1990s, the Federal District was the most populous federal entity in Mexico, but since then, its population has remained stable at around 8.7\u00a0million. The growth of the city has extended beyond the limits of the city proper to 59 municipalities of the State of Mexico and 1 in the state of Hidalgo. With a population of approximately 19.8\u00a0million inhabitants (2008), it is one of the most populous conurbations in the world. Nonetheless, the annual rate of growth of the Metropolitan Area of Mexico City is much lower than that of other large urban agglomerations in Mexico, a phenomenon most likely attributable to the environmental policy of decentralization. The net migration rate of Mexico City from 1995 to 2000 was negative.\nMetropolitan area.\nThe metropolitan area, Greater Mexico City ('Zona Metropolitana del Valle de M\u00e9xico' or 'ZMVM' in Spanish) consists of Mexico City itself plus 60 municipalities in the State of Mexico and one in Hidalgo state. With a population of 21,804,515 (2020 census), Greater Mexico City is both the biggest and the densest metropolitan area in the country. Of the ca. 21.8 million, 9.2 million live in Mexico City proper and 12.4 million in the State of Mexico (ca. 75% of the state's population), including the municipalities of:\nMegalopolis.\nGreater Mexico City, in turn, forms part of an even larger megalopolis officially known as the \"Corona regional del centro de M\u00e9xico\" (Mexico City megalopolis), with a population of 33.4 million, more than one quarter of the country's population according to the 2020 census. The megalopolis as defined by the Environmental Commission of the Megalopolis (\"CAMe\") covers Mexico City and the states of Mexico, Hidalgo, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Morelos, and since 2019, Quer\u00e9taro, thus encompassing the metropolitan areas of Mexico City, Puebla, Quer\u00e9taro, Toluca, Cuernavaca, Pachuca, and others.\nGrowth.\nGreater Mexico City was the fastest growing metropolitan area in the country until the late 1980s. Since then, government policies have supported decentralization with the aim of reducing pollution in Greater Mexico City. While still growing, the annual rate of growth has decreased and is lower than that of Greater Guadalajara and Greater Monterrey.\nThe net migration rate of Mexico City proper from 1995 to 2000 was negative, which implies that residents are moving to the suburbs of the metropolitan area, or to other states of Mexico. In addition, some inner suburbs are losing population to outer suburbs, indicating the continuing expansion of Greater Mexico City.\nReligion.\nThe majority (82%) of the residents in Mexico City are Catholic, slightly lower than the 2010 census national percentage of 87%, making it the largest Christian denomination, though it has been decreasing over the last decades. Many other religions and philosophies are also practiced in the city: many different types of Protestant groups, different types of Jewish communities, Buddhist, Islamic and other spiritual and philosophical groups. There are also growing numbers of irreligious people, whether agnostic or atheist.\nThe patron saint of Mexico City is Saint Philip of Jesus, a Mexican Catholic missionary who became one of the Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan.\nThe Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico is the largest archdiocese in the world. There are two Catholic cathedrals in the city, the Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral and the Iztapalapa Cathedral, and three former Catholic churches who are now the cathedrals of other rites, the San Jos\u00e9 de Gracia Cathedral (Anglican church), the Porta Coeli Cathedral (Melkite Greek Catholic church) and the Valvanera Cathedral (Maronite church).\nEthnic groups.\nRepresenting around 18.74% of the city's population, indigenous peoples from different areas of Mexico have migrated to the capital in search of better economic opportunities. Nahuatl, Otomi, Mixtec, Zapotec and Mazahua are the indigenous languages with the greatest number of speakers in Mexico City. According to the 2020 Census, 2.03% of Mexico City's population identified as Black, Afro-Mexican, or of African descent.\nAdditionally, Mexico City is home to large communities of expatriates and immigrants from the rest of North America (U.S. and Canada), from South America (mainly from Argentina and Colombia, but also from Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Venezuela), from Central America and the Caribbean (mainly from Cuba, Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti and Honduras); from Europe (mainly from Spain, Germany and Switzerland, but also from Czech Republic, Hungary, France, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland and Romania), and from the Arab world (mostly from Lebanon, and other countries like Syria and Egypt).\nMexico City is home to the largest population of Americans living outside the United States. Estimates are as high as 700,000 Americans living in Mexico City, while in 1999 the U.S. Bureau of Consular Affairs estimated over 440,000 Americans lived in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area.\nHealth.\nMexico City is home to some of the best private hospitals in the country, including Hospital \u00c1ngeles, Hospital ABC and M\u00e9dica Sur. The national public healthcare institution for private-sector employees, IMSS, has its largest facilities in Mexico City\u2014including the National Medical Center and the La Raza Medical Center\u2014and has an annual budget of over 6\u00a0billion pesos. The IMSS and other public health institutions, including the ISSSTE (Public Sector Employees' Social Security Institute) and the National Health Ministry (SSA) maintain large specialty facilities in the city. These include the National Institutes of Cardiology, Nutrition, Psychiatry, Oncology, Pediatrics, Rehabilitation, among others.\nEducation.\nAmong its many public and private schools (K\u201313), the city offers multi-cultural, multi-lingual and international schools attended by Mexican and foreign students. Best known are the Colegio Alem\u00e1n (German school with three main campuses), the Liceo Mexicano Japon\u00e9s (Japanese), the Centro Cultural Coreano en M\u00e9xico (Korean), the Lyc\u00e9e Franco-Mexicain (French), the American School, The Westhill Institute (American School), the Edron Academy and the Greengates School (British). Mexico City joined the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities in 2015.\nIn the Plaza de las Tres Culturas is the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco that is recognized for being the first and oldest European school of higher learning in the Americas and the first major school of interpreters and translators in the New World. Other, the now-defunct Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico is considered the father of the UNAM, and it was located in the city and was the third oldest university in the Americas.\nThe National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), located in Mexico City, is the largest university on the continent, with more than 300,000 students from all backgrounds. Three Nobel laureates, several Mexican entrepreneurs and most of Mexico's modern-day presidents are among its former students. UNAM conducts 50% of Mexico's scientific research and has presence all across the country with satellite campuses, observatories and research centers. UNAM ranked 74th in the Top 200 World University Ranking published by Times Higher Education (then called Times Higher Education Supplement) in 2006, making it the highest ranked Spanish-speaking university in the world. The sprawling main campus of the university, known as Ciudad Universitaria, was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2007.\nThe second largest higher-education institution is the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), which includes among many other relevant centers the Centro de Investigaci\u00f3n y de Estudios Avanzados (Cinvestav), where varied high-level scientific and technological research is done. Other major higher-education institutions in the city include the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM), the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH), the Instituto Tecnol\u00f3gico Aut\u00f3nomo de M\u00e9xico (ITAM), the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (3 campuses), the Universidad Panamericana (UP), the Universidad La Salle, the Universidad Intercontinental (UIC), the Universidad del Valle de M\u00e9xico (UVM), the Universidad An\u00e1huac, Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar University (USB), the Universidad Intercontinental (UIC), the Alliant International University, the Universidad Iberoamericana, El Colegio de M\u00e9xico (Colmex), Escuela Libre de Derecho and the Centro de Investigaci\u00f3n y Docencia Econ\u00f3mica, (CIDE).\nIn addition, the prestigious University of California maintains a campus known as \"Casa de California\" in the city. The Universidad Tecnol\u00f3gica de M\u00e9xico is also in Mexico City.\nPolitics.\nPolitical structure.\nThe Acta Constitutiva de la Federaci\u00f3n of 31 January 1824, and the Federal Constitution of 4 October 1824, fixed the political and administrative organization of the United Mexican States after the Mexican War of Independence. In addition, Section XXVIII of Article 50 gave the new Congress the right to choose where the federal government would be located. This location would then be appropriated as federal land, with the federal government acting as the local authority. The two main candidates to become the capital were Mexico City and Quer\u00e9taro.\nDue in large part to the persuasion of representative Servando Teresa de Mier, Mexico City was chosen because it was the center of the country's population and history, even though Queretaro was closer to the center geographically. The choice was official on 18 November 1824, and Congress delineated a surface area of two leagues square (8,800 acres) centered on the Zocalo. This area was then separated from the State of Mexico, forcing that state's government to move from the Palace of the Inquisition (now Museum of Mexican Medicine) in the city to Texcoco. This area did not include the population centers of the towns of Coyoac\u00e1n, Xochimilco, Mexicaltzingo and Tlalpan, all of which remained as part of the State of Mexico.\nIn 1854 president Antonio L\u00f3pez de Santa Anna enlarged the area of Mexico City almost eightfold from the original , annexing the rural and mountainous areas to secure the strategic mountain passes to the south and southwest to protect the city in event of a foreign invasion. (The Mexican\u2013American War had just been fought.) The last changes to the limits of Mexico City were made between 1898 and 1902, reducing the area to the current by adjusting the southern border with the state of Morelos. By that time, the total number of municipalities within Mexico City was twenty-two. In 1941, the General Anaya borough was merged with the Central Department, which was then renamed \"Mexico City\" (thus reviving the name but not the autonomous municipality). From 1941 to 1970, the Federal District comprised twelve \"delegaciones\" and Mexico City. In 1970, Mexico City was split into four different \"delegaciones\": Cuauht\u00e9moc, Miguel Hidalgo, Venustiano Carranza and Benito Ju\u00e1rez, increasing the number of \"delegaciones\" to 16. Since then, the whole Federal District, whose \"delegaciones\" had by then almost formed a single urban area, began to be considered \"de facto\" a synonym of Mexico City.\nThe lack of a \"de jure\" stipulation left a legal vacuum that led to a number of sterile discussions about whether one concept had engulfed the other or if the latter had ceased to exist altogether. In 1993, the situation was solved by an amendment to the 44th article of the Constitution of Mexico; Mexico City and the Federal District were stated to be the same entity. The amendment was later introduced into the second article of the Statute of Government of the Federal District.\nOn 29 January 2016, Mexico City ceased to be the \"Federal District\" (Spanish: \"Distrito Federal\" or D.F.), and was officially renamed \"Ciudad de M\u00e9xico\" (or \"CDMX\"). On that date, Mexico City began a transition to becoming the country's 32nd federal entity, giving it a level of autonomy comparable to that of a state. It will have its own constitution and its legislature, and its \"delegaciones\" will now be headed by mayors. Because of a clause in the Mexican Constitution, however, as it is the seat of the powers of the federation, it can never become a state, or the capital of the country has to be relocated elsewhere.\nIn response to the demands, Mexico City received a greater degree of autonomy, with the 1987 elaboration the first Statute of Government (\"Estatuto de Gobierno\") and the creation of an assembly of representatives. The city has a Statute of Government, and as of its ratification on 31 January 2017, a , similar to the states of the Union. As part of the recent changes in autonomy, the budget is administered locally; it is proposed by the head of government and approved by the Legislative Assembly. Nonetheless, it is the Congress of the Union that sets the ceiling to internal and external public debt issued by the city government.\nThe politics pursued by the administrations of heads of government in Mexico City at the end of the 20th century have usually been more liberal than those of the rest of the country, whether with the support of the federal government, as was the case with the approval of several comprehensive environmental laws in the 1980s, or by laws that were since approved by the Legislative Assembly. The Legislative Assembly expanded provisions on abortions, becoming the first federal entity to expand abortion in Mexico beyond cases of rape and economic reasons, to permit it at the choice of the mother before the 12th week of pregnancy. In December 2009, the then Federal District became the first city in Latin America and one of very few in the world to legalize same-sex marriage.\nBoroughs and neighborhoods.\nAfter the political reforms in 2016, the city is divided for administrative purposes into 16 boroughs (, colloquially \"alcald\u00edas\"), formerly called \"delegaciones\". While they are not fully equivalent to municipalities, the boroughs have gained significant autonomy. Formerly appointed by the Federal District's head of government, local authorities were first elected directly by plurality in 2000. From 2016, each borough is headed by a mayor, expanding their local government powers.\nThe boroughs of Mexico City with their 2020 populations are:\nThe Human Development Index report of 2005 shows that there were three boroughs with a very high Human Development Index, 12 with a high HDI value (9 above .85), and one with a medium HDI value (almost high). Benito Ju\u00e1rez borough had the highest HDI of the country (0.9510) followed by Miguel Hidalgo, which came up fourth nationally with an HDI of (0.9189), and Coyoac\u00e1n was fifth nationally, with an HDI of (0.9169). Cuajimalpa (15th), Cuauht\u00e9moc (23rd), and Azcapotzalco (25th) also had very high values of 0.8994, 0.8922, and 0.8915, respectively.\nIn contrast, the boroughs of Xochimilco (172nd), Tl\u00e1huac (177th), and Iztapalapa (183rd) presented the lowest HDI values of Mexico City, with values of 0.8481, 0.8473, and 0.8464, respectively, which are still in the global high-HDI range. The only borough that did not have a high HDI was that of rural Milpa Alta, which had a \"medium\" HDI of 0.7984, far below those of all the other boroughs (627th nationally, the rest being in the top 200). Mexico City's HDI for the 2005 report was 0.9012 (very high), and its 2010 value of 0.9225 (very high), or (by newer methodology) 0.8307, was Mexico's highest.\nLaw enforcement.\nThe Secretariat of Public Security of Mexico City (Secretar\u00eda de Seguridad P\u00fablica de la Ciudad de M\u00e9xico \u2013 SSP) manages a combined force of over 90,000 officers in Mexico City. The SSP is charged with maintaining public order and safety in the heart of Mexico City. The historic district is also roamed by tourist police, aiming to orient and serve tourists. These horse-mounted agents dress in traditional uniforms. The investigative Judicial Police of Mexico City (Polic\u00eda Judicial de la Ciudad de M\u00e9xico \u2013 PJCDMX) is organized under the Office of the Attorney General of Mexico City (the Procuradur\u00eda General de Justicia de la Ciudad de M\u00e9xico). The PGJCDMX maintains 16 precincts (delegaciones) with an estimated 3,500 judicial police, 1,100 investigating agents for prosecuting attorneys (agentes del ministerio p\u00fablico), and nearly 1,000 criminology experts or specialists (peritos).\nBetween 2000 and 2004 an average of 478 crimes were reported each day in Mexico City; however, the actual crime rate is thought to be much higher \"since most people are reluctant to report crime\". Under policies enacted by Mayor Marcelo Ebrard between 2009 and 2011, Mexico City underwent a major security upgrade with violent and petty crime rates both falling significantly despite the rise in violent crime in other parts of the country. Some of the policies enacted included the installation of 11,000 security cameras around the city and a very large expansion of the police force. Mexico City has one of the world's highest police officer-to-resident ratios, with one uniformed officer per 100 citizens. Since 1997 the prison population has increased by more than 500%. Political scientist Markus-Michael M\u00fcller argues that mostly informal street vendors are hit by these measures. He sees punishment \"related to the growing politicization of security and crime issues and the resulting criminalization of the people living at the margins of urban society, in particular those who work in the city's informal economy\".\nIn 2016, the incidence of femicides was 3.2 per 100 000 inhabitants, the national average being 4.2. A 2015 city government report found that two of three women over the age of 15 in the capital suffered some form of violence. In addition to street harassment, one of the places where women in Mexico City are subjected to violence is on and around public transport. Annually the Metro of Mexico City receives 300 complaints of sexual harassment.\nInternational relations.\nMexico City is twinned with:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nEconomy.\nMexico City is one of the most important economic hubs in Latin America. The city proper produces 15.8% of the country's gross domestic product. In 2002, Mexico City had a Human Development Index score of 0.915, identical to that of South Korea. In 2007, residents in the top twelve percent of GDP per capita holders in the city had a mean disposable income of US$. The high spending power of Mexico City inhabitants makes the city attractive for companies offering prestige and luxury goods. According to a 2009 study conducted by PwC, Mexico City had a GDP of $390 billion, ranking it as the eighth richest city in the world and the richest in Latin America. In 2009, Mexico City alone would rank as the 30th largest economy in the world.\nMexico City is the greatest contributor to the country's industrial GDP (15.8%) and also the greatest contributor to the country's GDP in the service sector (25.3%). Due to the limited non-urbanized space at the south\u2014most of which is protected through environmental laws\u2014the contribution of Mexico City in agriculture is the smallest of all federal entities in the country. The economic reforms of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari had a tremendous effect on the city, as a number of businesses, including banks and airlines, were privatized. He also signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This led to decentralization and a shift in Mexico City's economic base, from manufacturing to services, as most factories moved away to either the State of Mexico, or more commonly to the northern border. By contrast, corporate office buildings set their base in the city.\nMexico City offers an immense and varied consumer retail market, ranging from basic foods to ultra high-end luxury goods. Consumers may buy in fixed indoor markets, in mobile markets (\"tianguis\"), from street vendors, from downtown shops in a street dedicated to a certain type of good, in convenience stores and traditional neighborhood stores, in modern supermarkets, in warehouse and membership stores and the shopping centers that they anchor, in department stores, in big-box stores, and in modern shopping malls. In addition, \"tianguis\" or mobile markets set up shop on streets in many neighborhoods, depending on day of week. Sundays see the largest number of these markets.\nThe city's main source of fresh produce is the Central de Abasto. This in itself is a self-contained mini-city in Iztapalapa borough covering an area equivalent to several dozen city blocks. The wholesale market supplies most of the city's \"mercados\", supermarkets and restaurants, as well as people who come to buy the produce for themselves. Tons of fresh produce are trucked in from all over Mexico every day. The principal fish market is known as La Nueva Viga, in the same complex as the Central de Abastos. The world-renowned market of Tepito occupies 25 blocks, and sells a variety of products. A staple for consumers in the city is the omnipresent \"mercado\". Every major neighborhood in the city has its own borough-regulated market, often more than one. These are large well-established facilities offering most basic products, such as fresh produce and meat/poultry, dry goods, tortiller\u00edas, and many other services such as locksmiths, herbal medicine, hardware goods, sewing implements; and a multitude of stands offering freshly made, home-style cooking and drinks in the tradition of aguas frescas and atole.\nStreet vendors ply their trade from stalls in the \"tianguis\" as well as at non-officially controlled concentrations around metro stations and hospitals; at \"plazas comerciales\", where vendors of a certain \"theme\" (e.g. stationery) are housed; originally these were organized to accommodate vendors formerly selling on the street; or simply from improvised stalls on a city sidewalk. In addition, food and goods are sold from people walking with baskets, pushing carts, from bicycles or the backs of trucks, or simply from a tarp or cloth laid on the ground. In the center of the city informal street vendors are increasingly targeted by laws and prosecution. The weekly San Felipe de Jes\u00fas Tianguis is reported to be the largest in Latin America.\nThe Historic Center of Mexico City is widely known for specialized, often low-cost retailers. Certain blocks or streets are dedicated to shops selling a certain type of merchandise, with areas dedicated to over 40 categories such as home appliances, lamps and electricals, closets and bathrooms, housewares, wedding dresses, jukeboxes, printing, office furniture and safes, books, photography, jewelry, and opticians.\nTourism.\nMexico City is a destination for many foreign tourists. The Historic center of Mexico City (\"Centro Hist\u00f3rico\") and the \"floating gardens\" of Xochimilco in the southern borough have been declared World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. Landmarks in the Historic Center include the Plaza de la Constituci\u00f3n (Z\u00f3calo), the main central square with its epoch-contrasting Spanish-era Metropolitan Cathedral and National Palace, ancient Aztec temple ruins Templo Mayor (\"Major Temple\") and modern structures, all within a few steps of one another. (The Templo Mayor was discovered in 1978 while workers were digging to place underground electric cables).\nThe most recognizable icon of Mexico City is the golden Angel of Independence on the wide, elegant avenue Paseo de la Reforma, modeled by the order of the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico after the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es in Paris. This avenue was designed over the Americas' oldest known major roadway in the 19th century to connect the National Palace (seat of government) with the Castle of Chapultepec, the imperial residence. Today, this avenue is an important financial district in which the Mexican Stock Exchange and several corporate headquarters are located. Another important avenue is the Avenida de los Insurgentes, which extends and is one of the longest single avenues in the world.\nChapultepec Park houses the Chapultepec Castle, now a museum on a hill that overlooks the park and its numerous museums, monuments and the national zoo and the National Museum of Anthropology (which houses the Aztec Calendar Stone). \nAnother piece of architecture is the Palacio de Bellas Artes, a white marble theater/museum whose weight is such that it has gradually been sinking into the soft ground below. Its construction began during the presidency of Porfirio D\u00edaz and ended in 1934, after being interrupted by the Mexican Revolution in the 1920s.\nThe Plaza de las Tres Culturas, in this square are located the College of Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, that is the first and oldest European school of higher learning in the Americas, and the archeological site of the city-state of Tlatelolco, and the shrine and Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe are also important sites. There is a double-decker bus, known as the \"Turibus\", that circles most of these sites, and has timed audio describing the sites in multiple languages as they are passed.\nIn addition, according to the Secretariat of Tourism, the city has about 170 museums\u2014is among the top ten of cities in the world with highest number of museums\u2014over 100 art galleries, and some 30 concert halls, all of which maintain a constant cultural activity during the whole year. Many areas (e.g. Palacio Nacional and the National Institute of Cardiology) have murals painted by Diego Rivera. He and his wife Frida Kahlo lived in Coyoac\u00e1n, where several of their homes, studios, and art collections are open to the public. The house where Leon Trotsky was initially granted asylum and finally murdered in 1940 is also in Coyoac\u00e1n. In addition, there are several \"haciendas\" that are now restaurants, such as the San \u00c1ngel Inn, the Hacienda de Tlalpan, Hacienda de Cort\u00e9s and the Hacienda de los Morales.\nTransportation.\nAirports.\nMexico City International Airport is Mexico City's primary airport (IATA Airport Code: MEX), and serves as the hub of Aerom\u00e9xico (Skyteam). Felipe \u00c1ngeles International Airport (IATA Airport Code: NLU) is Mexico City's secondary airport, and was opened in 2022, rebuilt from the former Santa Luc\u00eda Air Force Base. It is located in Zumpango, State of Mexico, north-northeast of the historic center of Mexico City by car.\nSistema de Movilidad Integrada.\nIn 2019, the graphic designer Lance Wyman was engaged to create an integrated map of the multimodal public transportation system; he presented a new logo for the Sistema de Movilidad Integrada, describing eight distinct modes of transportation. The head of the government, Claudia Sheinbaum, said the branding would be used for a new single payment card to streamline public transportation fare collection.\nMetro.\nMexico City is served by the Mexico City Metro, a metro system, which is the largest in Latin America. The first portions were opened in 1969 and it has expanded to 12 lines with 195 stations, transporting 4.4\u00a0million people every day.\nTren Suburbano.\nA suburban rail system, the Tren Suburbano serves the metropolitan area, beyond the reach of the metro, with one line serving to municipalities such as Tlalnepantla and Cuautitl\u00e1n Izcalli, but with future lines planned to serve e.g. Chalco and La Paz.\nElectric transport other than the metro also exists, in the form of several Mexico City trolleybus routes and the Xochimilco Light Rail line, both of which are operated by Servicio de Transportes El\u00e9ctricos. The central area's last streetcar line (tramway, or \"\") closed in 1979.\nBus.\nMexico City has an extensive bus network, consisting of public buses, bus rapid transit, and trolleybuses.\nRoads.\nMexico City has a large road network, and relatively high private car usage, estimated at more than 4.5 million in 2016. There is an environmental program, called Hoy No Circula (\"Today Does Not Run\", or \"One Day without a Car\"), whereby vehicles that have not passed emissions testing are restricted from circulating on certain days according to the ending digit of their license plates, in an attempt to cut down on pollution and traffic congestion.\nCycling.\nThe Mexico City local government oversees the administration of Ecobici, North America's second-largest bicycle sharing system. Established to promote sustainable urban transportation, Ecobici facilitates convenient access to bicycles for residents and visitors alike. As of September 2013, the system comprised 276 stations strategically positioned across an expansive area extending from the Historic center to Polanco, a prominent district in the city. Within this network, approximately 4,000 bicycles are available for public use, enabling individuals to navigate the metropolitan landscape efficiently and reduce reliance on traditional motorized modes of transportation. Ecobici serves as a model for environmentally conscious urban mobility initiatives, reflecting Mexico City's commitment to fostering sustainable development and enhancing the quality of life for its populace.\nCulture.\nArt.\nSecular works of art of this period include the equestrian sculpture of Charles IV of Spain, locally known as \"El Caballito\" (\"The little horse\"). This piece, in bronze, was the work of Manuel Tols\u00e1 and it has been placed at the Plaza Tols\u00e1, in front of the Palacio de Mineria (Mining Palace). Directly in front of this building is the Museo Nacional de Arte (Munal) (the National Museum of Art).\nDuring the 19th century, an important producer of art was the Academia de San Carlos (San Carlos Art Academy), founded during colonial times, and which later became the Escuela Nacional de Artes Pl\u00e1sticas (the National School of Arts) including painting, sculpture and graphic design, one of UNAM's art schools. Many of the works produced by the students and faculty of that time are now displayed in the Museo Nacional de San Carlos (National Museum of San Carlos). One of the students, Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Velasco, is considered one of the greatest Mexican landscape painters of the 19th century. Porfirio D\u00edaz's regime sponsored arts, especially those that followed the French school. Popular arts in the form of cartoons and illustrations flourished, e.g. those of Jos\u00e9 Guadalupe Posada and Manuel Manilla. The permanent collection of the San Carlos Museum also includes paintings by European masters such as Rembrandt, Vel\u00e1zquez, Murillo, and Rubens.\nAfter the Mexican Revolution, an avant-garde artistic movement originated in Mexico City: muralism. Many of the works of muralists Jos\u00e9 Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera are displayed in numerous buildings in the city, most notably at the National Palace and the Palacio de Bellas Artes. Frida Kahlo, wife of Rivera, with a strong nationalist expression, was also one of the most renowned of Mexican painters. Her house has become a museum that displays many of her works.\nThe former home of Rivera muse Dolores Olmedo houses the namesake museum. The facility is in Xochimilco borough in southern Mexico City and includes several buildings surrounded by sprawling manicured lawns. It houses a large collection of Rivera and Kahlo paintings and drawings, as well as living \"Xoloizcuintles\" (Mexican Hairless Dog). It also regularly hosts small but important temporary exhibits of classical and modern art (e.g. Venetian Masters and Contemporary New York artists).\nDuring the 20th century, many artists immigrated to Mexico City from different regions of Mexico, such as Leopoldo M\u00e9ndez, an engraver from Veracruz, who supported the creation of the socialist Taller de la Gr\u00e1fica Popular (Popular Graphics Workshop), designed to help blue-collar workers find a venue to express their art. Other painters came from abroad, such as Catalan painter Remedios Varo and other Spanish and Jewish exiles. It was in the second half of the 20th century that the artistic movement began to drift apart from the Revolutionary theme. Jos\u00e9 Luis Cuevas opted for a modernist style in contrast to the muralist movement associated with social politics.\nMuseums.\nMexico City has numerous museums dedicated to art, including Mexican colonial, modern and contemporary art, and international art. The Museo Tamayo was opened in the mid-1980s to house the collection of international contemporary art donated by Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo. The collection includes pieces by Picasso, Klee, Kandinsky, Warhol and many others, though most of the collection is stored while visiting exhibits are shown. The Museo de Arte Moderno is a repository of Mexican artists from the 20th century, including Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros, Kahlo, Gerzso, Carrington, Tamayo, and also regularly hosts temporary exhibits of international modern art. In southern Mexico City, the Carrillo Gil Museum showcases avant-garde artists, as does the Museo Universitario Arte Contempor\u00e1neo, designed by Mexican architect Teodoro Gonz\u00e1lez de Le\u00f3n, inaugurated in late 2008.\nThe Museo Soumaya, named after the wife of Mexican magnate Carlos Slim, has the largest private collection of original Rodin sculptures outside of France. It also has a large collection of Dal\u00ed sculptures, and recently began showing pieces in its masters collection including El Greco, Vel\u00e1zquez, Picasso and Canaletto. The museum inaugurated a new futuristic-design facility in 2011 just north of Polanco, while maintaining a smaller facility in Plaza Loreto in southern Mexico City. The Colecci\u00f3n J\u00famex is a contemporary art museum located on the sprawling grounds of the Jumex juice company in the northern industrial suburb of Ecatepec. It has the largest private contemporary art collection in Latin America and hosts pieces from its permanent collection as well as traveling exhibits. The Museo de San Ildefonso, housed in the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso in Mexico City's historic downtown district is a 17th-century colonnaded palace housing an art museum that regularly hosts world-class exhibits of Mexican and international art. The Museo Nacional de Arte is also located in a former palace in the historic center. It houses a large collection of pieces by all major Mexican artists of the last 400 years and also hosts visiting exhibits.\nJack Kerouac, the noted American author, spent extended periods of time in the city, and wrote his 1959 masterpiece volume of poetry \"Mexico City Blues\" here. Another American author, William S. Burroughs, also lived in Colonia Roma where he accidentally shot his wife. Most of Mexico City's museums can be visited from Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 5pm, although some of them have extended schedules, such as the Museum of Anthropology and History, which is open to 7pm. In addition to this, entrance to most museums are free on Sunday. In some cases a modest fee may be charged.\nThe Memory and Tolerance Museum, inaugurated in 2011, showcases historical events of discrimination and genocide. Permanent exhibits include those on the Holocaust and other large-scale atrocities. It also houses temporary exhibits; one on Tibet was inaugurated by the Dalai Lama in September 2011.\nMusic, theater and entertainment.\nMexico City is home to a number of orchestras offering season programs. These include the Mexico City Philharmonic, which performs at the Sala Ollin Yoliztli; the National Symphony Orchestra, whose home base is the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of the Fine Arts), a masterpiece of art nouveau and art dec\u00f3 styles; the Philharmonic Orchestra of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (OFUNAM), and the Miner\u00eda Symphony Orchestra, both of which perform at the Sala Nezahualc\u00f3yotl, which was the first wrap-around concert hall in the Western Hemisphere when inaugurated in 1976. There are also many smaller ensembles that enrich the city's musical scene, including the Carlos Ch\u00e1vez Youth Symphony, the Cuarteto Latinoamericano, the New World Orchestra (Orquesta del Nuevo Mundo), the National Polytechnical Symphony and the Bellas Artes Chamber Orchestra (Orquesta de C\u00e1mara de Bellas Artes).\nThe city is also a leading center of popular culture and music. There are a multitude of venues hosting Spanish and foreign-language performers. These include the 10,000-seat National Auditorium that regularly schedules the Spanish and English-language pop and rock artists, as well as many of the world's leading performing arts ensembles, the auditorium also broadcasts grand opera performances from New York's Metropolitan Opera on giant, high definition screens. In 2007 National Auditorium was selected world's best venue by multiple genre media. Other sites for pop-artist performances include the 3,000-seat Teatro Metropolitan, the 15,000-seat Palacio de los Deportes, and the larger 50,000-seat Foro Sol Stadium, where popular international artists perform on a regular basis. The Cirque du Soleil has held several seasons at the Carpa Santa Fe, in the Santa Fe district in the western part of the city. There are numerous venues for smaller musical ensembles and solo performers. These include the Hard Rock Live, Batacl\u00e1n, Foro Scotiabank, Lunario, Circo Volador and Voil\u00e1 Acoustique. Recent additions include the 20,000-seat Arena Ciudad de M\u00e9xico, the 3,000-seat Pepsi Center World Trade Center, and the 2,500-seat Auditorio Blackberry.\nThe Centro Nacional de las Artes (National Center for the Arts) has several venues for music, theater, dance. UNAM's main campus, also in the southern part of the city, is home to the Centro Cultural Universitario (the University Culture Center) (CCU). The CCU also houses the National Library, the interactive Universum, Museo de las Ciencias, the Sala Nezahualc\u00f3yotl concert hall, several theaters and cinemas, and the new University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC). A branch of the National University's CCU cultural center was inaugurated in 2007 in the facilities of the former Ministry of Foreign Affairs, known as Tlatelolco, in north-central Mexico City.\nThe Jos\u00e9 Vasconcelos Library, a national library, is located on the grounds of the former Buenavista railroad station in the northern part of the city. The Papalote Museo del Ni\u00f1o (Kite Children's Museum), which houses the world's largest dome screen, is located in the wooded park of Chapultepec, near the Museo Tecnol\u00f3gico, and Aztl\u00e1n Parque Urbano, an amusement park. The theme park Six Flags M\u00e9xico (the largest amusement park in Latin America) is located in the Ajusco neighborhood, in Tlalpan borough, southern Mexico City. During the winter, the main square of the Z\u00f3calo is transformed into a gigantic ice skating rink, which is said to be the largest in the world behind that of Moscow's Red Square.\nThe Cineteca Nacional (Mexican Film Library), near the Coyoac\u00e1n suburb, shows a variety of films, and stages many film festivals, including the annual International Showcase, and many smaller ones ranging from Scandinavian and Uruguayan cinema, to Jewish and LGBT-themed films. Cin\u00e9polis and Cinemex, the two biggest film business chains, also have several film festivals throughout the year, with both national and international movies. Mexico City has a number of IMAX theaters, providing residents and visitors access to films ranging from documentaries to blockbusters on these large screens.\nCuisine.\nOnce considered plebeian fare, by the 19th century tacos had become a standard of Mexico City's cuisine. Furthermore, as authorities struggled to tax local taquerias, imposing licensing requirements and penalties, they recorded some details of the types of foods being served by these establishments. The most frequent reference was for \"tacos de barbacoa\". Also mentioned are enchiladas, \"tacos de minero\" and \"gorditas\", along with oyster shops and fried fish stands. There is evidence of some regional specialties being made available for recent migrants; at least two shops were known to serve \"pozole\", a type of stew similar to hominy that is a staple of Guadalajara, Jalisco. Mexico City is known for having some of the freshest fish and seafood in Mexico's interior. La Nueva Viga Market is the second largest seafood market in the world after the Tsukiji fish market in Japan.\nMexico City offers a variety of cuisines: restaurants specializing in the regional cuisines of Mexico's 31 states are available in the city, and the city also has several branches of internationally recognized restaurants. These include Paris' Au Pied de Cochon and Brasserie Lipp, Philippe (by Philippe Chow); Nobu, Quintonil, Morimoto; P\u00e1mpano, owned by Mexican-raised opera singer Pl\u00e1cido Domingo. There are branches of Japanese restaurant Suntory, Italian restaurant Alfredo, as well as New York steakhouses Morton's and The Palm, and Monte Carlo's BeefBar. Three of Lima's Haute restaurants, serving Peruvian cuisine, have locations in Mexico City: La Mar, Segundo Muelle and Astrid y Gast\u00f3n.\nFor the 2023 list of World's 50 Best Restaurants as named by the British magazine \"Restaurant\", Mexico City ranked 13th best with the Mexican avant-garde restaurant Pujol (owned by Mexican chef Enrique Olvera). Also notable is the Basque-Mexican fusion restaurant Biko (run and co-owned by Bruno Oteiza and Mikel Alonso), which placed outside the list at 59th, but in previous years has ranked within the top 50. Other that has been placed on the list in 2019 is the restaurant Sud 777 at 58th place. In 2024, seven restaurants in the city received Michelin stars. At the other end of the scale are working class pulque bars known as \"pulquer\u00edas\", a challenge for tourists to locate and experience.\nMedia.\nMexico City is Mexico's most important hub for the printed media and book publishing industries. Dozens of daily newspapers are published, including \"El Universal\", \"Exc\u00e9lsior\", \"Reforma\" and \"La Jornada\". Other major papers include \"Milenio\", \"Cr\u00f3nica\", \"El Economista\" and . Leading magazines include , \"Proceso\", \"Poder\", as well as dozens of entertainment publications such as \"Vanidades\", \"Qui\u00e9n\", \"Chilango\", \"TV Notas\", and local editions of \"Vogue\", \"GQ\", and \"Architectural Digest\".\nIt is also a leading center of the advertising industry. Most international ad firms have offices in the city, including Grey, JWT, Leo Burnett, Euro RSCG, BBDO, Ogilvy, Saatchi & Saatchi, and McCann Erickson. Many local firms also compete in the sector, including Alazraki, Olabuenaga/Chemistri, Ter\u00e1n, Augusto El\u00edas, and Clemente C\u00e1mara, among others. There are 60 radio stations operating in the city and many local community radio transmission networks.\nThe two largest media companies in the Spanish-speaking world, Televisa and TV Azteca, are headquartered in Mexico City. Televisa often presents itself as the largest producer of Spanish-language content. Other local television channels include:\nXHDF 1 (Azteca Uno),\nXEW 2 (Televisa W),\nXHCTMX 3,\nXHTV 4,\nXHGC 5,\nXHTDMX 6,\nXHIMT 7,\nXEQ 9,\nXEIPN 11,\nXHUNAM 20,\nXHCDM 21,\nXEIMT 22,\nXHTRES 28,\nXHTVM 40 and\nXHHCU 45.\nSports.\nAssociation football is the country's most popular and most televised franchised sport. Its important venues in Mexico City include the Azteca Stadium, home to the Mexico national football team and giants Am\u00e9rica and Cruz Azul, which can seat 91,653 fans, making it the biggest stadium in Latin America. The Olympic Stadium in Ciudad Universitaria is home to the football club giants Universidad Nacional, with a seating capacity of over 52,000. The Sports City Stadium, which seats 33,042 fans, is near the World Trade Center Mexico City in the Nochebuena neighborhood, and is home to the historical Atlante. Am\u00e9rica, Cruz Azul and Universidad Nacional are based in Mexico City and play in the First Division; they are also part, with Guadalajara-based giants Club Deportivo Guadalajara, of Mexico's traditional \"Big Four\". The city's three derbies are the \"Cl\u00e1sico Joven\", played between Am\u00e9rica and Cruz Azul, the capital's two most popular and successful teams; the \"Cl\u00e1sico Capitalino\", between Am\u00e9rica and Universidad Nacional, and the \"Cl\u00e1sico Metropolitano\", between Cruz Azul and Universidad Nacional.\nThe country hosted the FIFA World Cup in 1970 and 1986, and Azteca Stadium is the first stadium in World Cup history to host the final twice. The city will be one of the host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Mexico City is the first Latin American city to host the Olympic Games, having held the Summer Olympics in 1968, winning bids against Buenos Aires, Lyon and Detroit. The city hosted the 1955 and 1975 Pan American Games, the latter after Santiago and S\u00e3o Paulo withdrew. The ICF Flatwater Racing World Championships were hosted here in 1974 and 1994. Lucha libre is a Mexican style of wrestling, and is one of the more popular sports throughout the country. The main venues in the city are Arena M\u00e9xico and Arena Coliseo.\nThe Aut\u00f3dromo Hermanos Rodr\u00edguez is the main venue for motorsport, and hosts the Formula 1 Mexican Grand Prix since its return to the sport in 2015, the event being held in the past from 1962 to 1970, and again from 1986 to 1992. Since 2016, it also hosts the Formula E Mexico City ePrix. From 1980 to 1981 and again from 2002 to 2007, the circuit hosted the Champ Car World Series Gran Premio de M\u00e9xico. Beginning in 2005, the NASCAR Nationwide Series ran the Telcel-Motorola M\u00e9xico 200. 2005 also marked the first running of the Mexico City 250 by the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series. Both races were removed from their series' schedules for 2009.\nBaseball is another sport played professionally in the city. Mexico City is home of the Mexico City Red Devils of the Mexican League, which is considered a Triple-A league by Major League Baseball. The Devils play their home games at Estadio Alfredo Harp Hel\u00fa designed by international Mexican-American architect FGP Atelier Founder Francisco Gonzalez Pulido in collaboration with local architect Taller ADG. Mexico City has some 10 Little Leagues for young baseball players. In 2005, Mexico City became the first city to host an NFL regular season game outside of the United States, at the Azteca Stadium. The crowd of 103,467 people attending this game was the largest ever for a regular season game in NFL history until 2009.\nThe city has also hosted several NBA pre-season games and has hosted international basketball's FIBA Americas Championship, along with north-of-the-border Major League Baseball exhibition games at Foro Sol. In 2017, NBA commissioner Adam Silver expressed interest in placing an NBA G League expansion team in Mexico City as early as 2018. This came to fruition on 12 December 2019 when commissioner Silver announced at a press conference in Mexico City Arena that LNBP team, Capitanes de Ciudad de M\u00e9xico will be joining the G League in the 2020\u201321 season on a five-year agreement.\nOther sports facilities in Mexico City are the Palacio de los Deportes indoor arena, Francisco M\u00e1rquez Olympic Swimming Pool, the Hip\u00f3dromo de Las Am\u00e9ricas, the Agustin Melgar Olympic Velodrome, and venues for equestrianism and horse racing, ice hockey, rugby, American-style football, baseball, and basketball. Prior to the 2025 ban on traditional bullfights enacted by Mexico City's Congress, bullfighting was held every Sunday during the season at the 50,000-seat Plaza M\u00e9xico, the world's largest bullring. Mexico City's golf courses have hosted Women's LPGA action, and two Men's Golf World Cups. Courses throughout the city are available as private as well as public venues.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["19505731", "18987"], "permutation_1": ["18987", "19505731"], "permutation_2": ["19505731", "18987"], "permutation_3": ["18987", "19505731"]}
{"id": "2hop__312223_144857", "docs_added": {"194037": "Raymond Carver\nAmerican story writer and poet (1938\u20131988)\nRaymond Clevie Carver Jr. (May 25, 1938 \u2013 August 2, 1988) was an American short story writer and poet. He published his first collection of stories, \"Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?\", in 1976. His breakout collection, \"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love\" (1981), received immediate acclaim and established Carver as an important figure in the literary world. It was followed by \"Cathedral\" (1983), which Carver considered his watershed and is widely regarded as his masterpiece. The definitive collection of his stories, \"\", was published shortly before his death in 1988. In their 1989 nomination of Carver for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the jury concluded, \"The revival in recent years of the short story is attributable in great measure to Carver's mastery of the form.\"\nEarly life.\nCarver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, a mill town on the Columbia River, and grew up in Yakima, Washington, the son of Ella Beatrice Carter (n\u00e9e Casey) and Clevie Raymond Carver. His father, a sawmill worker from Arkansas, was a fisherman and a heavy drinker. Carver's mother worked on and off as a waitress and a retail clerk. His brother, James Franklin Carver, was born in 1943.\nCarver was educated at local schools in Yakima. In his spare time, he read mostly novels by Mickey Spillane or publications such as \"Sports Afield\" and \"Outdoor Life\", and hunted and fished with friends and family.\nAfter graduating from Yakima High School in 1956, Carver worked with his father at a sawmill in California. In June 1957, at age 19, he married 16-year-old Maryann Burk, who had just graduated from a private Episcopal school for girls. Their daughter, Christine La Rae, was born in December 1957. Their second child, a boy named Vance Lindsay, was born a year later. Carver worked as a delivery man, janitor, library assistant, and sawmill laborer, while Maryann worked as an administrative assistant, high school English teacher, salesperson, and waitress.\nWriting career.\nCarver moved to Paradise, California, with his family in 1958 to be close to his mother-in-law. He became interested in writing while attending Chico State College and enrolled in a creative writing course taught by the novelist John Gardner, then a recent doctoral graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, who became a mentor and had a major influence on Carver's life and career. In 1961, Carver's first published story, \"The Furious Seasons\", appeared. More florid than his later work, the story strongly bore the influence of William Faulkner. \"Furious Seasons\" was later used as a title for a collection of stories published by Capra Press, and is part of the collection, \"No Heroics, Please\" and \"Call If You Need Me\".\nCarver continued his studies under the short story writer Richard Cortez Day (alumnus of the Iowa program) beginning in autumn 1960 at Humboldt State College in Arcata. He chose not to take the foreign language courses required by the English program and received a B.A. in general studies in 1963. During this period he was first published and served as editor for \"Toyon,\" the college's literary magazine, in which he published several of his own pieces under his own name as well as the pseudonym John Vale.\nWith his B-minus average, exacerbated by his penchant to forsake coursework for literary endeavors, ballasted by a sterling recommendation from Day, Carver was accepted into the Iowa Writers' Workshop on a $1,000 fellowship for the 1963\u20131964 academic year. Homesick for California and unable to fully adjust to the program's upper middle class milieu, he only completed 12 credits out of the 30 required for a M.A. degree or 60 for the M.F.A. degree. Although program director Paul Engle awarded him a fellowship for a second year of study after Maryann Carver personally interceded and compared her husband's plight to Tennessee Williams' deleterious experience in the program three decades earlier, Carver decided to leave the University of Iowa at the end of the semester. According to biographer Carol Sklenicka, Carver falsely claimed to have received an M.F.A. from Iowa in 1966 on later curricula vitae. Maryann, who postponed completing her education to support her husband's educational and literary endeavors, eventually graduated from San Jose State College in 1970 and taught English at Los Altos High School until 1977. After completing graduate work at Stanford, she briefly enrolled in the University of California, Santa Barbara's English doctoral program when Carver taught at the institution as a visiting lecturer in 1974.\nIn the mid-1960s, Carver and his family resided in Sacramento, where he briefly worked at a bookstore before taking a position as a night custodian at Mercy Hospital. He did all of the janitorial work in the first hour and then wrote through the rest of his shift. He audited classes at what was then Sacramento State College, including workshops with poet Dennis Schmitz. Carver and Schmitz soon became friends, and Carver wrote and published his first book of poems, \"Near Klamath\", under Schmitz's guidance.\n1967 was a landmark year for Carver with the appearance of \"Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?\" in Martha Foley's annual \"Best American Short Stories\" anthology and the impending publication of \"Near Klamath\" by the English Club of Sacramento State College. He briefly enrolled in the library science graduate program at the University of Iowa that summer but returned to California following the death of his father. Shortly thereafter, the Carvers relocated to Palo Alto, California, so he could take his first white-collar job, at Science Research Associates, a subsidiary of IBM in nearby Menlo Park, California, where he worked intermittently as a textbook editor and public relations director through 1970.\nFollowing a 1968 sojourn to Israel, the Carvers relocated to San Jose, California; as Maryann finished her undergraduate degree, he continued his graduate studies in library science at San Jose State through the end of 1969 before failing once again to take a degree. During this period, he established vital literary connections with Gordon Lish, who worked across the street from Carver as director of linguistic research at Behavioral Research Laboratories, and the poet/publisher George Hitchcock.\nAfter the publication of \"Neighbors\" in the June 1971 issue of \"Esquire\" at the instigation of Lish (by now ensconced as the magazine's fiction editor), Carver began to teach at the University of California, Santa Cruz at the behest of provost James B. Hall, an Iowa alumnus and early mentor to Ken Kesey at the University of Oregon, commuting from his new home in Sunnyvale, California.\nHaving endured a succession of failed applications to the Stegner Fellowship, Carver was admitted to the prestigious non-degree Stanford University graduate creative writing program for the 1972\u20131973 term, where he cultivated friendships with Kesey-era luminaries Ed McClanahan and Gurney Norman in addition to contemporaneous fellows Chuck Kinder, Max Crawford, and William Kittredge. The $4,000 stipend enabled the Carvers to buy a house in Cupertino, California. He also took on another teaching job at the University of California, Berkeley that year and briefly rented a pied-\u00e0-terre in the city; this development was precipitated by his initiation of an extramarital affair with Diane Cecily, a University of Montana administrator and mutual friend of Kittredge who would subsequently marry Kinder.\nDuring his years of working at miscellaneous jobs, rearing children, and trying to write, Carver started abusing alcohol. By his own admission, he gave up writing and took to full-time drinking. In the fall semester of 1973, Carver was a visiting lecturer in the Iowa Writers' Workshop with John Cheever, but Carver stated that they did less teaching than drinking and almost no writing. With the assistance of Kinder and Kittredge, he attempted to simultaneously commute to Berkeley and maintain his lectureship at Santa Cruz; after missing all but a handful of classes due to the inherent logistical hurdles of this arrangement and various alcohol-related illnesses, Hall gently enjoined Carver to resign his position. The next year, after leaving Iowa City, Carver went to a treatment center to attempt to overcome his alcoholism, but continued drinking for another three years.\nHis first short story collection, \"Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?\", was published in 1976. The collection itself was shortlisted for the National Book Award, though it sold fewer than 5,000 copies that year.\nPersonal life and death.\nDecline of first marriage.\nThe following excerpt from Scott Driscoll's review of Maryann Burk Carver's 2006 memoir describes the decline of her and Raymond's marriage.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The fall began with Ray's trip to Missoula, Mont., in '72 to fish with friend and literary helpmate Bill Kittredge. That summer Ray fell in love with Diane Cecily, an editor at the University of Montana, whom he met at Kittredge's birthday party. \"That's when the serious drinking began. It broke my heart and hurt the children. It changed everything.\"\n\"By fall of '74\", writes Carver, \"he was more dead than alive. I had to drop out of the PhD program so I could get him cleaned up and drive him to his classes\". Over the next several years, Maryann's husband physically abused her. Friends urged her to leave Raymond.\n\"But I couldn't. I really wanted to hang in there for the long haul. I thought I could outlast the drinking. I'd do anything it took. I loved Ray, first, last and always.\"\nCarver describes, without a trace of rancor, what finally put her over the edge. In the fall of '78, with a new teaching position at the University of Texas at El Paso, Ray started seeing Tess Gallagher, a writer from Port Angeles, who would become his muse and wife near the end of his life. \"It was like a contretemps. He tried to call me to talk about where we were. I missed the calls. He knew he was about to invite Tess to Thanksgiving.\" So he wrote a letter instead.\n\"I thought, I've gone through all those years fighting to keep it all balanced. Here it was, coming at me again, the same thing. I had to get on with my own life. But I never fell out of love with him.\"\nAfter being hospitalized three times between June 1976 and February or March 1977, Carver began his \"second life\" and stopped drinking on June 2, 1977, with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous. While he continued to regularly smoke cannabis and later experimented with cocaine at the behest of Jay McInerney during a 1980 visit to New York City, Carver believed he would have died of alcoholism at the age of 40 had he not overcome his drinking.\nSecond marriage.\nIn November 1977, Carver met the poet Tess Gallagher at a writers' conference in Dallas, Texas. Gallagher later remembered feeling \"as if my life until then had simply been a rehearsal for meeting him.\" Beginning in January 1979, Carver and Gallagher lived together in El Paso, Texas, in a borrowed cabin near Port Angeles, Washington, and in Tucson, Arizona.\nIn 1980, the two moved to Syracuse, New York, where Gallagher had been appointed the coordinator of the creative writing program at Syracuse University; Carver taught as a professor in the English department. He and Gallagher jointly purchased a house in Syracuse, at 832 Maryland Avenue. In ensuing years, the house became so popular that the couple had to hang a sign outside that read \"Writers At Work\" in order to be left alone. \nIn 1982, he and his first wife, Maryann, were divorced.\nOn June 17, 1988, six weeks prior to his death, Carver and Gallagher married in Reno, Nevada.\nDeath.\nOn August 2, 1988, Carver died in Port Angeles from lung cancer at the age of 50. In the same year, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is buried at Ocean View Cemetery in Port Angeles, Washington. The inscription on his tombstone reads:\n<poem>\nLATE FRAGMENT\nAnd did you get what\nyou wanted from this life, even so?\nI did.\nAnd what did you want?\nTo call myself beloved, to feel myself\nbeloved on the earth.\n</poem>\nHis poem \"Gravy\" is also inscribed.\nAs Carver's will directed, Tess Gallagher assumed the management of his literary estate.\nAwards and memorials.\nCarver was nominated for the National Book Award for his first major-press collection, \"Will You Please Be Quiet, Please\" in 1977 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his third major-press collection, \"Cathedral\" (1983), the volume generally perceived as his best. Included in the latter collection are the award-winning stories \"A Small, Good Thing\", and \"Where I'm Calling From\". John Updike selected the latter for inclusion in \"The Best American Short Stories of the Century.\" For his part, Carver perceived \"Cathedral\" as a watershed in his career for its shift toward a more optimistic and confidently poetic style amid the diminution of Lish's literary influence.\nCarver won five O. Henry Awards with \"Are These Actual Miles\" (originally titled \"What Is It?\") (1972), \"Put Yourself in My Shoes\" (1974), \"Are You A Doctor?\" (1975), \"A Small, Good Thing\" (1983), and \"Errand\" (1988).\nIn Carver's birth town of Clatskanie, Oregon, a memorial park and statue are at the corner of Lillich and Nehalem streets, across from the library. A block away is the building where Carver was born.\nLegacy and posthumous publications.\nIn December 2006, Gallagher published an essay in \"The Sun magazine\", titled \"Instead of Dying\", about alcoholism and Carver's having maintained his sobriety. The essay is an adaptation of a talk she initially delivered at the Welsh Academy's Academi Intoxication Conference in 2006. The first lines read: \"Instead of dying from alcohol, Raymond Carver chose to live. I would meet him five months after this choice, so I never knew the Ray who drank, except by report and through the characters and actions of his stories and poems.\"\nChuck Kinder's \"Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale\" (2001) is a roman \u00e0 clef about his friendship with Carver in the 1970s. Carver's high school sweetheart and first wife, Maryann Burk Carver, wrote a memoir of her years with Carver, \"What it Used to be Like: A Portrait of My Marriage to Raymond Carver\" (2006).\nIn 2009, \"The New York Times Book Review\" and \"San Francisco Chronicle\" named Carol Sklenicka's unauthorized biography, \"Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life\" (2009), published by Scribner, one of the Best Ten Books of that year; and the \"San Francisco Chronicle\" deemed it: \"exhaustively researched and definitive biography\". Carver's widow, Tess Gallagher, refused to engage with Sklenicka.\nHis final (incomplete) collection of seven stories, titled \"Elephant and Other Stories\" in Britain (included in \"\") was composed in the five years before his death. The nature of these stories, especially \"Errand\", have led to some speculation that Carver was preparing to write a novel. Only one piece of this work has survived \u2013 the fragment \"The Augustine Notebooks\", first printed in \"No Heroics, Please\".\nTess Gallagher fought with Knopf for permission to republish the stories in \"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love\" as they were originally written by Carver, as opposed to the heavily edited and altered versions that appeared in 1981 under the editorship of Gordon Lish. On October 1, 2009, the book, entitled \"Beginners\", was released in hardback in Great Britain, followed by its publication in the Library of America edition which collected all of Carver's short fiction in a single volume.\nThe Raymond Carver Reading Series at Syracuse University is a reading series program which annually brings 12 to 14 prominent writers to the campus. It is presented by the \"Creative Writing Program\" in SU's College of Arts and Sciences.\nLiterary characteristics.\nCarver's career emphasized short stories and poetry. He described himself as \"inclined toward brevity and intensity\" and \"hooked on writing short stories\" (in the foreword of \"\", a collection published in 1988 and a recipient of an honorable mention in the 2006 \"New York Times\" article citing the best works of fiction of the previous 25 years). Another stated reason for his brevity was \"that the story [or poem] can be written and read in one sitting.\" This was not simply a preference but, particularly at the beginning of his career, a practical consideration as he juggled writing with work. His subject matter was often focused on blue-collar experience, and was clearly reflective of his own life.\nCharacteristics of minimalism are generally seen as one of the hallmarks of Carver's work, although, as reviewer David Wiegand notes:\nCarver never thought of himself as a minimalist or in any category, for that matter.\n\"He rejected categories generally,\" Sklenicka says. \"I don't think he had an abstract mind at all. He just wasn't built that way, which is why he's so good at picking the right details that will stand for many things.\"\nCarver's editor at \"Esquire\", Gordon Lish, was instrumental in shaping his prose in this direction \u2013 where his earlier tutor John Gardner had advised Carver to use fifteen words instead of twenty-five, Lish instructed Carver to use five in place of fifteen. Objecting to the \"surgical amputation and transplantation\" of Lish's heavy editing, Carver eventually broke with him. During this time, Carver also submitted poetry to James Dickey, then poetry editor of \"Esquire\".\nCarver's style has also been described as dirty realism, which connected him with a group of writers in the 1970s and 1980s that included Richard Ford and Tobias Wolff with both of whom Carver was closely acquainted, as well as others such as Ann Beattie, Frederick Barthelme, and Jayne Anne Phillips. With the exception of Beattie, who wrote about upper-middle-class people, these were writers who focused on sadness and loss in the everyday lives of ordinary people\u2014often lower-middle class or isolated and marginalized people.\nIn his essay \"On Influence\", Carver states that, while he was an admirer of Ernest Hemingway's fiction, he never saw him as an influence, citing instead the work of Lawrence Durrell.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "14104237": "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love\n1981 short story collection by Raymond Carver\nWhat We Talk About When We Talk About Love is a 1981 collection of short stories by American writer Raymond Carver, as well as the title of one of the stories in the collection. Considered by many one of American literature's most ambitious short-story collections, it was this collection that turned Raymond Carver into a household name in the publishing industry.\nContent.\n\"Why Don't You Dance?\".\n\"Why Don't You Dance?\" tells the story of a middle-aged man overseeing a yard sale, where many of his possessions are being sold. A young couple stops by to select furniture for their new apartment. They briefly haggle with him over prices, buying a TV and a bed. The man tells the young woman to put a record on, and, when the music begins, asks the couple to dance. The young man is reluctant, but they dance. When the middle-aged man dances with the girl she tells him \"You must be desperate or something.\" Several weeks later, the woman is telling her friends about the man at his yard sale. She indicates the record player and records he gave them, saying: \"Will you look at this shit?\" She repeatedly and unsuccessfully tries to describe the man's situation to others, hoping to make sense of the man's situation, before eventually giving up.\n\"Viewfinder\".\nA hook-handed man takes a photograph of the narrator's house from the street, then sells it to him. The narrator asks the photographer in for coffee. The manuscript version of the same title appears in \"Beginners\" (2009).\n\"Mr. Coffee and Mr. Fixit\".\nA man reflects \"about three years back\" on his struggle to come to grips with a couple of troublesome relationships. He was surprised to see his elderly single mother kissing a man on the sofa upstairs. He says his kids were crazy and so was his wife, Myrna, who eventually fell for another man named Ross whom she met at Alcoholics Anonymous. He remembers how his father died and suggests to Myrna that they \"hug awhile\" and have a \"real nice supper,\" and she responds somewhat lukewarmly. The manuscript version titled \"Where Is Everyone?\" appears in \"Beginners\" (2009).\n\"Gazebo\".\nSet in a roomy upstairs suite, motel managers Holly & Duane discuss the disintegration of their marriage. Duane has been having an affair with a cleaning lady, Juanita. Duane tries to convince Holly that their love can be rekindled and reconciled but Holly does not agree. Duane is left hopelessly bemoaning the future he had envisioned with Holly. Though he is self aware that it might not have really been the future he wanted himself. The manuscript version of the same title appears in \"Beginners\" (2009).\n\"I Could See the Smallest Things\".\nNancy wakes up in the middle of the night because of a noise outside. She realizes it's the open gate, and hesitantly she goes to the kitchen to smoke for a while before going out to investigate, leaving her alcoholic husband Cliff \"passed out\" and snoring loudly in bed. At the fence, Nancy meets her neighbor Sam, a widower, who is spreading insecticide to kill slugs which are ruining his garden. Nancy & Sam talk and it becomes clear Sam and Cliff, once good friends, have had a falling-out. Lonely and wishing to patch up their relationship, Sam asks Nancy to tell Cliff he said hello. Nancy says she will and goes back to bed, realizing she forgot to latch the gate shut. The manuscript version titled \"Want to See Something?\" appears in \"Beginners\" (2009).\n\"Sacks\".\nLes, a textbook salesman, reflects back a year ago on an incident where he met up with his father in a Sacramento airport. It's been two years since his father's divorce from his mother. While the wife was away, the father had been having an extramarital affair with a Stanley Products saleswoman. The father asks Les if everything is okay, and Les lies, saying everything is fine. A fissure seems to grow between the father and son during the uncomfortable, transient, confusing meeting. Fairly sure that his father will play a negligent to nonexistent role in his future, Les boards his flight. The manuscript version titled \"The Fling\" appears in \"Beginners\" (2009).\n\"The Bath\".\nOn his birthday, young Scotty is walking to school when he is hit by a car and knocked unconscious. \"The Bath\" is a predecessor of \"A Small, Good Thing,\" one of Carver's most famous stories, which was published in \"Cathedral\". It is much shorter than \"A Small, Good Thing\" and ends on an ambiguous note as Scotty's mother goes home from the hospital to take a bath, which is where this version of the story gets its name.\n\"Tell the Women We're Going\".\nTwo close childhood friends, identified by the author as Bill Jamison & Jerry Roberts, are out of school and have married. After Jerry married, Bill sensed a change in his friend, something that he'd never once shown. One afternoon, the two men leave both their wives and Jerry's kids to go out for a drive, for old-time's sake. They play pool and drink beer at the Rec Center while reminiscing about the olden days. On their way out, they see two women biking down the road. Jerry proposes turning back and chatting them up, juvenile and excited. They pull up to the women and Bill introduces himself and Jerry, but the girls, named Barbara and Sharon, seem completely uninterested. They drive ahead and wait for the women to pass. The women, when they arrive, drop their bikes and cut down a path away from the men, which doesn't really bother Bill but angers Jerry, who devises a plan to cut them off. The story ends in a surprise twist, with Jerry bashing Sharon and Barbara over their heads with a rock, ostensibly killing them both and proving Jerry's deep unhappiness with life. The manuscript version of the same title appears in \"Beginners\" (2009).\n\"After the Denim\".\nJames and Edith Packer, an elderly couple, go out for the night to play bingo at the local community center. While there, James is perturbed by a young hippy-like couple dressed in denim who go on to ruin his fun and evening: they take the Packers' parking spot; James sees the young man cheating and confronts him but the man denies the allegation. Later, when the young girl gets bingo, everybody but James claps. James is certain the couple will use the victory money on drugs. That night as the Packers are getting ready for bed, Edith reveals to James that she's been \"bleeding\" and \"spotting,\" and she'll require medical attention. Restless and upset over his wife's sickness, James wonders why it isn't the young couple who has all the problems. The manuscript version titled \"If It Please You\" appears in \"Beginners\" (2009).\n\"So Much Water So Close to Home\".\nAs she is having breakfast, Claire, is shocked to learn that her husband, Stuart, and his three buddies found the body of a girl washed up on the rivershore upon arriving in the afternoon for their yearly camping trip, as reported by the morning newspaper that day. Instead of reporting the body to the police immediately, the four rather enjoy their vacation, spending some time fishing, getting to eating, and drinking whisky as they sit by the fire, all the while the body of the dead girl lays there. As the quartet packs up the next morning, Stuart uses a payphone to alert the police about the corpse found by the riverbed. Claire feels deeply distanced from her husband, whom she thought she knew, and cannot stop wondering about the dead girl, to whom she feels oddly connected. She starts believing that Stuart and his friends could be behind the girl's murder. Claire wonders why they didn't go fishing locally and why they didn't report the body quickly, as she'd have. Later, after the body is identified and Stuart is at work, Claire reads the funeral plans in the newspaper and decides to attend. On her way to the funeral, a man in a pickup truck pulls her over and asks to talk to her. Though he claims he just wants to make sure she's safe, Claire believes that he is looking at her sexually through the glass. Claustrophobic and frightened, Claire clicks her car locks shut and says she's fine. After the funeral Claire overhears a woman saying they caught the killer, but Claire is not so certain they have the right man. The story ends with Stuart making a sexual advance on Claire in the kitchen. As he reaches for her breasts, she hears water running in the sink and is reminded of the girl floating in the river. The manuscript version of the same title appears in \"Beginners\" (2009).\n\"The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off\".\nThe character of Jack Fraser, in classical Carver style, tells the story of a local outsider named Dummy who worked in the same sawmill as Jack's father Del. Del gets Dummy to fill a pond on his land with bass, but Dummy eventually builds an electric fence around it so people stop coming by. Dummy drifts further into isolation and his wife starts going around with another man, much to his discontent. The story ends with Dummy murdering his wife and committing suicide by drowning in his beloved pond. Del impresses upon Jack what a wrong woman can turn a man into. Later, Jack understands Dummy's plight more clearly. The manuscript version titled \"Dummy\" appears in \"Beginners\" (2009).\n\"A Serious Talk\".\nBurt finds himself incapable of leaving his wife Vera alone. On Boxing Day, Burt comes back to his wife's house to try and explain away his poor behavior from the night before. On Christmas Day, Burt put too many logs in the fire which could've burned the place down. On his way out to make room for Vera's boyfriend Charlie, Burt finds it appropriate to steal six pies from the kitchen counter left unattended. On the 26th, Vera does not want to talk to Burt; she doesn't have the time, it's obvious she has plans already. Burt tries again and again to apologize but Vera does not think it's sincere. Burt notices cigarette butts that are not Vera's regular brand collected in the ashtray, \"their ashtray,\" and feels out of place. While Vera is the bathroom the phone rings and she shouts at Burt to answer it. It's a call for Charlie and Burt responds curtly, saying he's \"not here\" before leaving the phone off the hook. Vera comes back into the kitchen, and it's clear she cannot tolerate Burt sticking around. The phone rings again and Vera says she'll answer it from the bedroom. Instead of hanging up when Vera commands, Burt takes a knife from the cabinet and cuts the cord in two. Vera realizes what's happened and yells for Burt to leave, saying she'll get a restraining order. Burt leaves calmly and, as he drives away in his car holding their ashtray, he is deludedly convinced that in a few weeks they'll have a \"serious talk\" and get back together. The manuscript version titled \"Pie\" appears in \"Beginners\" (2009).\n\"The Calm\".\nA man sitting in a barber's chair getting a haircut listens as three men waiting their turn argue about a hunting story one of the men is telling. The manuscript version of the same title appears in \"Beginners\" (2004).\n\"Popular Mechanics\".\nThe protagonist is seen first packing a suitcase, all the while a woman swears at him and yells loudly, glad that he's finally leaving her. Their baby won't stop crying. The protagonist decides he wants to bring the baby with him but the woman won't let him even get near their baby. The two get into a tussle and a tug-of-war over the baby. The story ends with the man and the woman pulling tremendously on the baby, with somewhat ambiguously grim and dark possibilities. Titled \"Little Things\" in \"\" (1988); the manuscript version titled \"Mine\" appears in \"Beginners\" (2009).\n\"Everything Stuck to Him\".\nA father tells his young adult daughter what life was like for their family when she was a young child, all while on vacation in Milan. The manuscript version titled \"Distance\" appears in \"Beginners\" (2009).\n\"One More Thing\".\nAt the kitchen table, L.D. argues with his daughter Rae, age 15, about her beliefs. Maxine, the wife, comes home and notices L.D. is drunk. Maxine sides with Rae, saying she can like what she likes. In a moment of fury, L.D. throws a pickle jar through the window, shattering the glass. Maxine gives L.D. an ultimatum: he must pack his things and go or she'll call the police. L.D. starts packing, stuffing not only his belongings into his suitcase but also vindictively taking womanly toiletries he could make no use of. Taking one last look around, about to leave for good, L.D. says he has one more thing to tell his wife and daughter but, suddenly inarticulate, he is unable to put what he feels into words. The manuscript version of the same title appears in \"Beginners\" (2009).\n\"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love\".\nMel McGinnis is a 45-year-old cardiologist married to Teresa, also known as Terri. They live together in Albuquerque. The narrator, Nick, describes Mel as tall and rangy with curly soft hair and Teresa (who is Mel's second wife) as bone-thin with a pretty face, dark eyes, and brown hair. Nick is 38 years old, and married to Laura, 35, who works as a legal secretary. The four sit around a table at Mel and Terri's, drinking gin in the afternoon.\nThey soon start to talk about love. Terri has had an abusive relationship; the abuse, she says, derives from love. Ed, Terri's former abusive boyfriend, \"loved her so much he tried to kill her.\" Ed would beat Terri; he dragged her around the living room by her ankles knocking her into things along the way. Terri believes that Ed loved her and his abuse was his way of showing it. No matter what Terri says, Mel refuses to believe that was \"love\". Ed also stalked Mel and Terri and called Mel at work with threatening messages. At one point, Mel was so scared he bought a gun and made out a will. Mel even wrote to his brother in California, saying that \"if something happened to him\" to look for Ed.\nTerri's abusive boyfriend eventually committed suicide after two attempts (as Terri sees it, another act of love). Ed's first attempt at suicide was when Terri had left him. Ed had drunk rat poison, but was rushed to the hospital where he was saved. In Ed's second, successful attempt he shot himself in the mouth. Terri and Mel argued about whether she could be in the hospital bedroom with him when he died. Terri won and was with Ed as he died; as Terri puts it, \"He never came up out of it.\"\nSoon afterward, Mel begins a story about an elderly couple struck by a drunk driver, a teenager who was pronounced dead at the scene. Mel was called into the hospital and saw how badly the elderly couple had been injured. He says that they had \"multiple fractures, internal injuries, hemorrhaging, contusions, and lacerations.\" The couple were in casts and bandages from head to toe. Mel's point in telling the story is the husband's consternation when the couple was moved into the intensive care unit. Mel would visit the couple daily, and when he put his ear to the husband's mouth-hole, the latter told Mel he was upset because he could not see his wife through his eye-holes.\nMel strays from the topic with more talk about Ed, his personal thoughts about love, hatred toward his ex-wife, and life as a knight. Mel feels even though one loves a person, if something were to happen to them, the survivor would grieve but love again.\nAfter finishing the second bottle of gin, the couples discuss going to dinner, but no one makes any moves to proceed with their plans.\nEarlier version.\nCarver's original draft of the story \"Beginners\" was heavily edited by Gordon Lish, who cut out nearly half of Carver's story, adding in details of his own. Carver's original draft, released by his widow Tess Gallagher and published in a December 2007 issue of \"the New Yorker\", reveals the extensive edits. For instance, the character Mel was originally named Herb, and the abusive boyfriend, renamed Ed by Lish, was originally named Carl. Additionally, Herb's story about the old couple was cut nearly in half, with Lish removing the story of the old couple's home life, love, and reunion in the hospital. In Carver's original version, the two had separate rooms, which caused them to pine for each other and eventually led to a scene when they met again. Lish removed all of this, rewrote the couple into the same room, but in body casts that prevented them from seeing each other, and then explained the old man's distress thus:\n \"I mean, the accident was one thing, but it wasn't everything. I'd get up to his mouth-hole, you know, and he'd say no, it wasn't the accident exactly but it was because he couldn't see her through the eye-holes. He said that that was making him feel so bad. Can you imagine? I'm telling you, the man's heart was breaking because he couldn't turn his goddamn head and 'see' his goddamn wife.\"\n Mel looked around the table and shook his head at what he was going to say.\n \"I mean, it was killing the old fart just because he couldn't 'look' at the fucking woman.\"\nLish also cut out eight paragraphs at the end, in which Terri communicates her worry over Herb's depression to Laura and Nick, and another aspect of love is shown as Laura comforts Terri, tying together all the types of love discussed in the story.\nEditing.\nThere was some contention between Raymond Carver and his editor Gordon Lish over several stories in the collection; the author complained about the \"surgical amputation and transplant that might make them someway fit into the carton so the lid will close.\" Eventually, the book was published with Lish's extensive alterations, and received critical acclaim.\nShortly before his death, Carver arranged the publication of his own selection of 37 of his stories, \"\". He included some stories as edited by Lish, some restored from his original manuscripts, and some unpublished stories.\nCarver's widow, Tess Gallagher, fought with Knopf for permission to republish the 17 stories in \"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love\" as they were originally written by Carver. These original versions eventually appeared in \"Beginners\", published by Jonathan Cape in 2009, and in the Library of America volume \"Collected Stories\"."}, "descending_order": ["14104237", "194037"], "permutation_1": ["194037", "14104237"], "permutation_2": ["194037", "14104237"], "permutation_3": ["194037", "14104237"]}
{"id": "2hop__380425_10038", "docs_added": {"96602": "Zhejiang\nProvince of China\nZhejiang is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Hangzhou, and other notable cities include Ningbo and Wenzhou. Zhejiang is bordered by Jiangsu and Shanghai to the north, Anhui to the northwest, Jiangxi to the west and Fujian to the south. To the east is the East China Sea, beyond which lies the Ryukyu Islands. The population of Zhejiang stands at 64.6 million, the 8th largest in China. It has been called \"the backbone of China\" because it is a major driving force in the Chinese economy and being the birthplace of several notable people, including the Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and entrepreneur Jack Ma. Zhejiang consists of 90 counties (incl. county-level cities and districts).\nThe area of Zhejiang was controlled by the Kingdom of Yue during the Spring and Autumn period. The Qin Empire later annexed it in 222 BC. Under the late Ming dynasty and the Qing dynasty that followed it, Zhejiang's ports became important centers of international trade. It was occupied by the Empire of Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese war and placed under the control of the Japanese puppet state known as the Reorganized National Government of China. After the establishment of the PRC, Zhejiang's economy became stagnant under Mao Zedong's policies. Nevertheless, after China's economic reform, Zhejiang has grown to be considered one of China's wealthiest provinces, ranking fourth in GDP nationally and sixth by GDP per capita, with a nominal GDP of US$1.14 trillion as of 2022.\nZhejiang consists mostly of hills, which account for about 70% of its total area, with higher altitudes towards the south and the west. Zhejiang also has a longer coastline than any other mainland province of China. The Qiantang River runs through the province, from which it derives its name. Included in the province are three thousand islands, the most in China. The capital Hangzhou marks the end of the Grand Canal and lies on Hangzhou Bay on the north of Zhejiang, which separates Shanghai and Ningbo. The bay contains many small islands collectively called the Zhoushan Islands.\nHangzhou is a historically important city of China and is considered a World City with a \"Beta+\" classification according to GaWC. It includes the notable West Lake. Various varieties of Chinese are spoken in Zhejiang, the most prominent being Wu Chinese. Zhejiang is also one of China's leading provinces in research and education. As of 2024[ [update]], two major cities in Zhejiang ranked in the world's top 200 cities (Hangzhou 13th and Ningbo 123rd) by scientific research output, as tracked by Nature Index.\nEtymology.\nThe province's name originates from the Zhe River (), the former name of the Qiantang River which flows past Hangzhou and whose mouth forms Hangzhou Bay. It is usually understood as meaning \"Crooked\" or \"Bent River\", from the meaning of Chinese , but is more likely a phono-semantic compound formed from adding (the \"water\" radical used for river names) to phonetic (Pinyin \"zh\u00e9\" but reconstructed Old Chinese *\"tet\"), preserving a proto-Wu name of the local Yue, similar to Yuhang, Kuaiji and Jiang.\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nKuahuqiao culture was an early Neolithic culture that flourished in the Hangzhou area in 6,000-5,000 BC.\nZhejiang was the site of the Neolithic cultures of the Hemudu (starting in 5500 BC) and Liangzhu (starting in 3400 BC).\nAncient history.\nThe area of modern Zhejiang was outside the major sphere of influence of Shang civilization during the second millennium BC. Instead, this area was populated by peoples collectively known as Dongyue.\nThe kingdom of Yue began to appear in the chronicles and records written during the Spring and Autumn period. According to the chronicles, the kingdom of Yue was in Northern Zhejiang. Shiji claims that its leaders were descended from the Xia founder Yu the Great. The \"Song of the Yue Boatman\" () was transliterated into Chinese and recorded by authors in North China or inland China of Hebei and Henan around 528 BC. The song shows that the Yue people spoke a language that was mutually unintelligible with the dialects spoken in north and inland China. The Sword of Goujian bears bird-worm seal script. Yuen\u00fc () was a swordswoman from the state of Yue. To check the growth of the kingdom of Wu, Chu pursued a policy of strengthening Yue.\nUnder King Goujian, Yue recovered from its early reverses and fully annexed the lands of its rival in 473 BC. The Yue kings then moved their capital center from their original home around Mount Kuaiji in present-day Shaoxing to the former Wu capital at present-day Suzhou. With no southern power to turn against Yue, Chu opposed it directly and, in 333\u00a0BC, succeeded in destroying it. Yue's former lands were annexed by the Qin Empire in 222\u00a0BC and organized into a commandery named for Kuaiji in Zhejiang but initially headquartered in Wu in Jiangsu.\nHan and the Three Kingdoms.\nKuaiji Commandery was the initial power base for Xiang Liang and Xiang Yu's rebellion against the Qin Empire which initially succeeded in restoring the kingdom of Chu but eventually fell to the Han. Under the Later Han, control of the area returned to the settlement below Mount Kuaiji but authority over the Minyue hinterland was nominal at best and its Yue inhabitants largely retained their own political and social structures.\nAt the beginning of the Three Kingdoms era (AD 220\u2013280), Zhejiang was home to the warlords Yan Baihu and Wang Lang prior to their defeat by Sun Ce and Sun Quan, who eventually established the Kingdom of Wu. Despite the removal of their court from Kuaiji to Jianye (present-day Nanjing) and they continued development of the region and benefitted from influxes of refugees fleeing the turmoil in northern China. Industrial kilns were established and trade reached as far as Manchuria and Funan (southern Mainland Southeast Asia).\nZhejiang was part of the Wu during the Three Kingdoms. Wu (229\u2013280), commonly known as Eastern Wu or Sun Wu, had been the economically most developed state among the Three Kingdoms (220\u2013280). The historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms records that Zhejiang had the best-equipped naval force. The story depicts how the states of Wei () and Shu (), lack of material resources, avoided direct confrontation with the Wu. In armed military conflicts with Wu, the two states relied intensively on tactics of camouflage and deception to steal Wu's military resources including arrows and bows.\nSix Dynasties.\nDespite the continuing prominence of Nanjing (then known as Jiankang), the settlement of Qiantang, the former name of Hangzhou, remained one of the three major metropolitan centers in the south to provide major tax revenue to the imperial centers in the north China. The other two centers in the south were Jiankang and Chengdu. In 589, Qiantang was raised in status and renamed Hangzhou.\nFollowing the fall of Wu and the turmoil of the Wu Hu uprising against the Jin dynasty (266\u2013420), most of elite Chinese families had collaborated with the non-Chinese rulers and military conquerors in the north. Some may have lost social privilege and took refuge in areas south of the Yangtze River. Some of the Chinese refugees from North China might have resided in areas near Hangzhou. For example, the clan of Zhuge Liang (181\u2013234), a chancellor of the state of Shu Han from Central Plain in north China during the Three Kingdoms period, gathered together at the suburb of Hangzhou, forming an exclusive, closed village Zhuge Village (Zhege Cun), consisting of villagers all with family name \"Zhuge.\" The village has intentionally isolated itself from the surrounding communities for centuries to this day and only recently came to be known in public. It suggests that a small number of powerful, elite Chinese refugees from the Central Plain might have taken refuge south of the Yangtze River. However, considering the mountainous geography and relative lack of agrarian lands in Zhejiang, most of these refugees might have resided in some areas in South China beyond Zhejiang, where fertile agrarian lands and metropolitan resources were available, mainly Southern Jiangsu, Eastern Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Anhui and provinces where less cohesive, organized regional governments had been in place. Metropolitan areas of Sichuan was another hub for refugees, given that the state of Shu had long been founded and ruled by political and military elites from the Central Plain and North China. Some refugees from North China might have found residence in South China depending on their social status and military power in the north. The rump Jin state or the Southern dynasties vied against some elite Chinese from the Central Plain and south of the Yangtze River.\nSui and Tang eras.\nZhejiang, as the heartland of the Jiangnan (Yangtze River Delta), remained the wealthiest area during the Six Dynasties (220 or 222\u2013589), Sui and Tang. After being incorporated into the Sui dynasty, its economic richness was used for the Sui dynasty's ambitions to expand north and south, particularly into Korea and Vietnam. The plan led the Sui dynasty to restore and expand the network which became the Grand Canal of China. The Canal regularly transported grains and resources from Zhejiang, through its metropolitan center Hangzhou (and its hinterland along both the Zhe River and the shores of Hangzhou Bay) and from Suzhou and thence to the North China Plain. The d\u00e9b\u00e2cle of the Korean war led to Sui's overthrow by the Tang, who then presided over a centuries-long golden age for the country. Zhejiang was an important economic center of the empire's Jiangnan East Circuit and was considered particularly prosperous. Throughout the Tang dynasty, The Grand Canal had remained effective, transporting grains and material resources to North China plain and metropolitan centers of the empire. As the Tang dynasty disintegrated, Zhejiang constituted most of the territory of the regional kingdom of Wuyue.\nWuyue era.\nAfter the collapse of the Tang dynasty in 907, the entire area of what is now Zhejiang fell under the control of the kingdom Wuyue established by King Qian Liu, who selected Hangzhou (a city in the modern day area of Zhejiang) as his kingdom's capital. Despite being under Wuyue rule for a relatively short period of time, Zhejiang underwent a long period of financial and cultural prosperity which continued even after the kingdom fell.\nAfter Wuyue was conquered during the reunification of China, many shrines were erected across the former territories of Wuyue, mainly in Zhejiang, where the kings of Wuyue were memorialised, and sometimes, worshipped as being able to dictate weather and agriculture. Many of these shrines, known as \"Shrine of the Qian King\" or \"Temple to the Qian King\", still remain today, with the most popularly visited example being that near West Lake in Hangzhou.\nChina's province of Zhejiang during the 940s was also the place of origin of the H\u00fa family (H\u1ed3 in Vietnamese) from which the founder of the H\u1ed3 dynasty who ruled Vietnam, Emperor H\u1ed3 Qu\u00fd Ly, came from.\nSong era.\nThe Song dynasty re-established unity around 960. Under the Song, the prosperity of South China began to overtake that of North China. After the north was lost to the Jurchen Jin dynasty in 1127 following the Jingkang Incident, Hangzhou became the capital of the Song dynasty under the name Lin'an, which was renowned for its prosperity and beauty, it was suspected to have been the largest city in the world at the time.\nFrom then on, northern Zhejiang and neighboring southern Jiangsu have been synonymous with luxury and opulence in Chinese culture. The Mongol conquest and the establishment of the Yuan dynasty in 1279 ended Hangzhou's political clout, but its economy continued to prosper. The famous traveler Marco Polo visited the city, which he called \"Kinsay\" (after the Chinese \"Jingshi\", meaning \"Capital City\") claiming it was \"the finest and noblest city in the world.\"\nGreenware ceramics made from celadon had been made in the area since the 3rd-century Jin dynasty, but it returned to prominence\u2014particularly in Longquan\u2014during the Southern Song and Yuan. Longquan greenware is characterized by a thick unctuous glaze of a particular bluish-green tint over an otherwise undecorated light-grey porcellaneous body that is delicately potted. Yuan Longquan celadons feature a thinner, greener glaze on larger vessels with decoration and shapes derived from Middle Eastern ceramic and metalwares. These were produced in large quantities for the Chinese export trade to Southeast Asia, the Middle East and (during the Ming) Europe. By the Ming, however, production was notably deficient in quality. It is in this period that the Longquan kilns declined, to be eventually replaced in popularity and ceramic production by the kilns of Jingdezhen in Jiangxi.\nYuan and Ming eras.\nZhejiang was finally conquered by the Mongols in the late 13th century who later established the short lived Yuan dynasty. Zhejiang became part of the much larger Jiangzhe Province.\nThe Ming dynasty, which drove out the Mongols in 1368, finally established the present day province of Zhejiang with its borders having little changes since this establishment.\nAs in other coastal provinces, number of fortresses were constructed along the Zhejiang coast during the early Ming to defend the land against pirate incursions. Some of them have been preserved or restored, such as Pucheng in the south of the province (Cangnan County).\nQing era.\nUnder the late Ming dynasty and the Qing dynasty that followed it, Zhejiang's ports were important centers of international trade.\n\"In 1727 the to-min or 'idle people' of Cheh Kiang province (a Ningpo name still existing), the yoh-hu or 'music people' of Shanxi province, the si-min or 'small people' of Kiang Su (Jiangsu) province and the Tanka people or 'egg-people' of Canton (to this day the boat population there), were all freed from their social disabilities and allowed to count as free men.\" \"Cheh Kiang\" is another romanization for Zhejiang. The Duomin () are a caste of outcasts in this province.\nDuring the First Opium War, the British navy defeated Eight Banners forces at Ningbo and Dinghai. Under the terms of the Treaty of Nanking, signed in 1843, Ningbo became one of the five Chinese treaty ports opened to virtually unrestricted foreign trade. Much of Zhejiang came under the control of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom during the Taiping Rebellion, which resulted in a considerable loss of life in the north-western and central parts of the province, sparing the rest of Zhejiang from the disastrous depopulation that occurred. In 1876, Wenzhou became Zhejiang's second treaty port. Jianghuai Mandarin speakers later came to settle in these depopulated regions of northern Zhejiang.\nRepublican era.\nDuring the Second Sino-Japanese War, which led into World War II, much of Zhejiang was occupied by Japan and placed under the control of the Japanese puppet state known as the Reorganized National Government of China. Following the Doolittle Raid, most of the B-25 American crews that came down in China eventually made it to safety with the help of Chinese civilians and soldiers. The Chinese people who helped them, however, paid dearly for sheltering the Americans. The Imperial Japanese Army began the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign to intimidate the Chinese out of helping downed American airmen. Imperial Japanese forces killed an estimated 250,000 Chinese civilians from the area of Hangzhou to Nanchang and also Zhuzhou while searching for Doolittle's men.\nPeople's Republic era.\nAfter the People's Republic of China took control of Mainland China in 1949, the Republic of China government based in Taiwan continued to control the Dachen Islands off the coast of Zhejiang until 1955, even establishing a rival Zhejiang provincial government there. During the Cultural Revolution (1966\u201376), Zhejiang was in chaos and disunity and its economy was stagnant, especially during the high tide (1966\u201369) of the revolution. The agricultural policy favoring grain production at the expense of industrial and cash crops intensified economic hardships in the province. Mao's self-reliance policy and the reduction in maritime trade cut off the lifelines of the port cities of Ningbo and Wenzhou. While Mao invested heavily in railroads in interior China, no major railroads were built in South Zhejiang, where transportation remained poor.\nZhejiang benefited less from central government investment than some other provinces due to its lack of natural resources, a location vulnerable to potential flooding from the sea and an economic base at the national average. Zhejiang, however, has been an epicenter of capitalist development in China and has led the nation in the development of a market economy and private enterprises. Northeast Zhejiang, as part of the Yangtze Delta, is flat, more developed and industrial.\nGeography.\nZhejiang consists mostly of hills, which account for about 70% of its total area. Altitudes tend to be the highest to the south and west and the highest peak of the province, Huangmaojian Peak (), is located there. Other prominent mountains include Mounts Yandang, Tianmu, Tiantai and Mogan, which reach altitudes of .\nValleys and plains are found along the coastline and rivers. The north of the province lies just south of the Yangtze Delta and consists of plains around the cities of Hangzhou, Jiaxing and Huzhou, where the Grand Canal of China enters from the northern border to end at Hangzhou. Another relatively flat area is found along the Qu River around the cities of Quzhou and Jinhua. Major rivers include the Qiangtang and Ou Rivers. Most rivers carve out valleys in the highlands, with plenty of rapids and other features associated with such topography. Well-known lakes include the West Lake of Hangzhou and the South Lake of Jiaxing.\nThere are over three thousand islands along the rugged coastline of Zhejiang. The largest, Zhoushan Island, is mainland China's third largest island, after Hainan and Chongming. There are also many bays, of which Hangzhou Bay is the largest. Zhejiang has a humid subtropical climate with four distinct seasons. Spring starts in March and is rainy with changeable weather. Summer, from June to September is long, hot, rainy and humid. Fall is generally dry, warm and sunny. Winters are short but cold except in the far south. Average annual temperature is around , average January temperature is around and average July temperature is around . Annual precipitation is about . There is plenty of rainfall in early summer and by late summer Zhejiang is directly threatened by typhoons forming in the Pacific.\nAdministrative divisions.\nZhejiang is divided into eleven prefecture-level divisions: all prefecture-level cities (including two sub-provincial cities):\nThe eleven prefecture-level divisions of Zhejiang are subdivided into 90 county-level divisions (37 districts, 20 county-level cities, 32 counties, and one autonomous county). Those are in turn divided into 1,364 township-level divisions (618 towns, 488 townships, and 258 subdistricts). Hengdian belongs to Jinhua, which is the largest base of shooting films and TV dramas in China. Hengdian World Studios is called \"China's Hollywood.\" At the year end of 2021, the total population was 65.40 million.\nUrban areas.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nPolitics.\nThe politics of Zhejiang is structured in a dual party-government system like all other governing institutions in mainland China. The Governor of Zhejiang is the highest-ranking official in the People's Government of Zhejiang. However, in the province's dual party-government governing system, the Governor is subordinate to the secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.\nSeveral political figures who served as Zhejiang's top political office of Party Secretary have played key roles in various events in PRC history. Tan Zhenlin (term 1949\u20131952), the inaugural Party Secretary, was one of the leading voices against Mao's Cultural Revolution during the so-called February Countercurrent of 1967. Jiang Hua (term 1956\u20131968), was the \"chief justice\" on the Special Court in the case against the Gang of Four in 1980. Three provincial Party Secretaries since the 1990s have gone onto prominence at the national level. They include CPC General Secretary and President Xi Jinping (term 2002\u20132007), National People's Congress Chairman and former Vice-Premier Zhang Dejiang (term 1998\u20132002), and Zhao Hongzhu (term 2007\u20132012), the Deputy Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, China's top anti-corruption body. Of Zhejiang's fourteen Party Secretaries since 1949, none were native to the province.\nZhejiang was home to Chiang Kai-shek and many high-ranking officials in the Kuomintang, who fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Civil War.\nEconomy.\nZhejiang is one of the richest and most developed provinces in China. As of 2022[ [update]], its nominal GDP was US$1.15 trillion (CN\u00a5 7.77 trilion), about 6.42% of the country's GDP and ranked 4th among province-level administrative units; the province's primary, secondary and tertiary industries were worth CN\u00a5232.48 billion (US$34.56 billion), CN\u00a53.3205 trillion (US$493.67 billion) and CN\u00a54.2185 trillion (US$627.18 billion) respectively. Its nominal GDP per capita was US$17,617 (CN\u00a5118,496) and ranked the 6th in the country. The private sector in the province has been playing an increasingly important role in boosting the regional economy since Economic Reform in 1978. Zhejiang is generally regarded as having one of the strongest private sectors among Chinese provinces and its local governments typically adopt permissive business policies.186\nZhejiang's main manufacturing sectors are electromechanical industries, textiles, chemical industries, food and construction materials. In recent years Zhejiang has followed its own development model, dubbed the \"Zhejiang model\", which is based on prioritizing and encouraging entrepreneurship, an emphasis on small businesses responsive to the whims of the market, large public investments into infrastructure, and the production of low-cost goods in bulk for both domestic consumption and export. As a result, Zhejiang has made itself one of the richest provinces and the \"Zhejiang spirit\" has become something of a legend within China. However, some economists now worry that this model is not sustainable, in that it is inefficient and places unreasonable demands on raw materials and public utilities, and also a dead end, in that the myriad small businesses in Zhejiang producing cheap goods in bulk are unable to move to more sophisticated or technologically more advanced industries. The economic heart of Zhejiang is moving from North Zhejiang, centered on Hangzhou, southeastward to the region centered on Wenzhou and Taizhou. The per capita disposable income of urbanites in Zhejiang reached 55,574 yuan (US$8,398) in 2018, an annual real growth of 8.4%. The per capita disposable income of rural residents stood at 27,302 yuan (US$4,126), a real growth of 9.4%.\nZhejiang was the first province to pilot a common prosperity pilot program.166\nTraditionally, the province is known as the \"Land of Fish and Rice.\" True to its name, rice is the main crop, followed by wheat; north Zhejiang is also a center of aquaculture in China, and the Zhoushan fishery is the largest fishery in the country. The main cash crops include jute and cotton and the province also leads the provinces of China in tea production. (The renowned Longjing tea is a product of Hangzhou.) Zhejiang's towns have been known for handicraft production of goods such as silk, for which it is ranked second among the provinces. Its many market towns connect the cities with the countryside.\nIn 1832, the province was exporting silk, paper, fans, pencils, wine, dates, tea and \"golden-flowered\" hams.\nZhejiang has been leading the digital economy development in China, in recent years, the provincial economy has been boosted by the economic surge brought by internet corporations such as Alibaba and NetEase.\nNingbo, Wenzhou, Taizhou and Zhoushan are important commercial ports. The Hangzhou Bay Bridge between Haiyan County and Cixi, is the longest bridge over a continuous body of sea water in the world.\nEconomic and technological development concerns.\nWaste disposal.\nOn Thursday, September 15, 2011, more than 500 people from Hongxiao Village protested over the large-scale death of fish in a nearby river. Angry protesters stormed the Zhejiang Jinko Solar Company factory compound, overturned eight company vehicles, and destroyed the offices before police came to disperse the crowd. Protests continued on the two following nights with reports of scuffles, officials said. Chen Hongming, a deputy head of Haining's environmental protection bureau, said the factory's waste disposal had failed pollution tests since April. The environmental watchdog had warned the factory, but it had not effectively controlled the pollution, Chen added.\nDemographics.\nHan Chinese make up the vast majority of the population and the largest Han subgroup are the speakers of Wu varieties of Chinese. There are also 400,000 members of ethnic minorities, including approximately 200,000 She people and approximately 20,000 Hui Chinese. Jingning She Autonomous County in Lishui is the only She autonomous county in China.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nThe predominant religions in Zhejiang are Chinese folk religions, Taoist traditions and Chinese Buddhism. According to surveys conducted in 2007 and 2009, 23.02% of the population believes and is involved in ancestor veneration, while 2.62% of the population identifies as Christian, decreasing from 3.92% in 2004. The reports did not give figures for other types of religion; 74.36% of the population may be either irreligious or involved in worship of nature deities, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, folk religious sects. As of the mid-2010s, Zhejiang has 34,880 registered folk religious temples greater than 20 sqm and 10,000 registered places of worship of the five doctrines (Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam).\nIn mid-2015 the government of Zhejiang recognised folk religion as \"civil religion\" beginning the formal registration of the province's folk religious temples under the aegis of the provincial Bureau of Folk Faith. Buddhism has an important presence since its arrival in Zhejiang 1,800 years ago.\nCatholicism arrived 400 years ago in the province and Protestantism 150 years ago. Zhejiang is one of the provinces of China with the largest concentrations of Protestants, especially notable in the city of Wenzhou. In 1999, Zhejiang's Protestant population comprised 2.8% of the provincial population, a small percentage but higher than the national average.\nThe rapid development of religions in Zhejiang has driven the local committee of ethnic and religious affairs to enact policies to rationalise them in 2014, variously named \"Three Remodelings and One Demolition\" operations or \"Special Treatment Work on Illegally Constructed Sites of Religious and Folk Religion Activities\" according to the locality. These regulations have led to cases of demolition of churches and folk religion temples or the removal of crosses from churches' roofs and spires. An exemplary case was that of the Sanjiang Church. Despite English-language media focused on Christian churches, only 2.3% of the buildings affected by the regulations were Christian churches; most of them were folk religious temples.\nIslam arrived 1,400 years ago in Zhejiang. Today Islam is practiced by a small number of people including virtually all the Hui Chinese living in Zhejiang. In 2020, there are 117,000 Muslims in Zhejiang. Another religion present in the province is She shamanism (practiced by She ethnic minority).\nMedia.\nThe Zhejiang Radio & Television Group, Hangzhou Radio & Television Group, Ningbo Radio & Television Group are the local broadcasters in Zhejiang Province.\nCulture.\nLanguages.\nZhejiang is mountainous and has therefore fostered the development of many distinct local cultures. Linguistically speaking, Zhejiang is extremely diverse. Most inhabitants of Zhejiang speak varieties of Wu, but those Wu dialects are very diverse, especially in the south, where one valley may speak a dialect completely unintelligible to the next valley a few kilometers away. Other varieties of Chinese are spoken as well, mostly along the borders; Mandarin and Huizhou dialects are spoken on the border with Anhui, while Min dialects are spoken on the border with Fujian. (See Hangzhou dialect, Shaoxing dialect, Ningbo dialect, Wenzhou dialect, Taizhou dialect, Jinhua dialect and Quzhou dialect for more information)\nThroughout history there have been a series of \"lingua francas\" in the area to allow for better communication. The dialects spoken in Hangzhou, Shaoxing and Ningbo have taken on this role historically. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Mandarin, which is not mutually intelligible with any of the Wu dialects, has been promoted as the standard language of communication throughout China. As a result, most of the population now can, to some degree, speak and comprehend Mandarin and can code-switch when necessary. A majority of the population educated since 1978 can speak some Mandarin. Urban residents tend to be more fluent in Mandarin than rural people. Nevertheless, a Zhejiang accent is detectable in almost everyone from the area communicating in Mandarin and the home dialect remains an important part of the everyday lives and cultural identities of most Zhejiang residents.\nMusic.\nZhejiang is the home of Yue opera, one of the most prominent forms of Chinese opera. \"Yueju\" originated in Shengzhou and is traditionally performed by actresses only, in both male and female roles. Other important opera traditions include Yongju (of Ningbo), Shao opera (of Shaoxing), Ouju (of Wenzhou), Wuju (of Jinhua), Taizhou Luantan (of Taizhou) and Zhuji Luantan (of Zhuji).\nCuisine.\nLongjing tea (also called dragon well tea), originating in Hangzhou, is one of the most prestigious, if not \"the\" most prestigious Chinese tea. Hangzhou is also renowned for its silk umbrellas and hand fans. Zhejiang cuisine (itself subdivided into many traditions, including Hangzhou cuisine) is one of the eight great traditions of Chinese cuisine.\nPlace names.\nSince ancient times, north Zhejiang and neighboring south Jiangsu have been famed for their prosperity and opulence and simply inserting north Zhejiang place names (Hangzhou, Jiaxing, etc.) into poetry gave an effect of dreaminess, a practice followed by many noted poets. In particular, the fame of Hangzhou (as well as Suzhou in neighboring Jiangsu province) has led to the popular saying: \"Above there is heaven; below there is Suzhou and Hangzhou\" (), a saying that continues to be a source of pride for the people of these two still prosperous cities.\nTourism.\nTourist destinations in Zhejiang include:\nSports.\nProfessional sports teams based in Zhejiang include:\nEducation and research.\nZhejiang is one of China's leading provinces in research and education. As of 2024[ [update]], two major cities in Zhejiang ranked in the world's top 200 cities (Hangzhou 13th and Ningbo 123rd) by scientific research output, as tracked by Nature Index.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "23169240": "Tianmu Mountain\nMountain in Zhejiang, China\nTianmu Mountain, Mount Tianmu, or Tianmushan () is a mountain in Lin'an County west of Hangzhou, Zhejiang, in eastern China. It is made up of two peaks: West Tianmu () and East Tianmu (). Twin ponds near the top of the peaks led to the name of the mountain. China's Tianmu Mountain National Nature Reserve lies on the northwest portion of the mountain. It is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve as part of UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme.\nTianmu is known for giant Japanese cedars, waterfalls, Tianmu tea, peaks surrounded by clouds, bamboo shoots, temples and nunneries, and odd-shaped rocks. More than 2,000 species of plants grow on the mountain, including (on West Tianmu) the last surviving truly wild population of Ginkgo trees. Prominent among the Japanese cedars is the \"Giant Tree King\", named by the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing. In 2009, it measured in height, in diameter, and in volume. The mountain is also home to hundreds of species of birds and animals, including 39 endangered or protected species. These include the clouded leopard and the black muntjac.\nIn Chinese, the name Tianmushan can also refer to the adjacent range of mountains, including Mount Mogan.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "17555646": "Lin'an, Hangzhou\nLin'an District () is a suburban district of Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. It is located in northwest Zhejiang as a separate urban area of Hangzhou, and borders Anhui province to the west and northwest. Lin'an held a population of 573,100 in 2014, over an area of . The postal code is 311300, and the phone area code 0571.\nMay 2015, Lin'an was listed as the Top 100 Economic Potential City/County, ranking 73. Lin'an also voted as No. 16 Innovative County. After the promotion of Fuyang District, Lin'an was converted into the 10th district of Hangzhou in August 2017. The Lin'an government is located at 398 Yijin Street.\nLin'an is rich in natural resources, abundant in rainfall, and has a warm climate. All of these factors work together allowing the district to be covered with 71.3% forest. Such an ecological environment breeds more than 4,700 biological species. Mountains, lakes, forest, hot springs, caves, and other ancient remains are everywhere. The district's Daming Mountain and Tianmu Mountain are its well-known attractions.\nGeography and climate.\nThe climate in Lin'an is temperate and humid subtropical monsoon. The annual average temperature is with of precipitation.\nAdministrative divisions.\nSubdistricts:\nTowns:\nTownships:\nTransport.\nLin'an is connected to the main urban area of Hangzhou through Line 16 of the Hangzhou Metro and the G56 Hangzhou\u2013Ruili Expressway.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "57927571": "Lin'an Prefecture\nCapital of the Southern Song dynasty\nLin'an Prefecture (1129\u20131277) was, after 1138, the capital of the Southern Song dynasty (1127\u20131279). With over one million people by 1276, it was the most populous city in the world. Lin'an Prefecture was"}, "descending_order": ["17555646", "57927571", "96602", "23169240"], "permutation_1": ["57927571", "23169240", "96602", "17555646"], "permutation_2": ["57927571", "17555646", "96602", "23169240"], "permutation_3": ["23169240", "17555646", "96602", "57927571"]}
{"id": "2hop__374316_58115", "docs_added": {"8930075": "Let It Go (Tim McGraw album)\nLet It Go is the ninth studio album by American country music artist Tim McGraw. It was released on March 27, 2007 by Curb Records. It was entered the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200 at number one with sales of 325,000 copies. The album has produced seven Top 20 singles on the \"Billboard\" Hot Country Songs charts, including a number one; one of those seven songs was only included on later issues of the album. Of all McGraw's albums, this one has produced the most singles in his career.\nContent.\nThe first single from the album, \"Last Dollar (Fly Away)\" (written by Big Kenny of Big & Rich), reached the top of the country charts in early 2007, giving McGraw his first number one hit since \"Back When\" in late 2004. Following it was \"I Need You\", a duet with his wife Faith Hill. This song peaked at #8. Shortly after the latter was released, McGraw charted with a live rendition of the song \"If You're Reading This\". He performed that song live at the Academy of Country Music awards in May 2007. A month after this song entered the charts, the album was re-issued with \"If You're Reading This\" added to the track listing. Afterwards, that song was later officially issued as the album's third single and reached #3 on the country charts.\n\"If You're Reading This\" was followed in late 2007 by \"Suspicions\", a cover of Eddie Rabbitt's number one hit from 1979. However, McGraw's version became the second Top 40 hit of all his career to miss the Top 10 by peaking at #12 on Hot Country Songs. Following that song were \"Kristofferson\" and the title track in 2008; the former also failed to make the Top Ten by at #16 while the latter went to #2 in early December. The seventh single, \"Nothin' to Die For\", was released in January 2009. It entered the Hot Country Songs chart as an album cut at #57 in late December before its official release that month.\nThe song \"Shotgun Rider\" is not to be confused with another song with the same name which McGraw recorded on his 2014 album, \"Sundown Heaven Town\". This song, written by Marv Green, Hillary Lindsey and Troy Verges, was released by McGraw as the latter album's third single in 2014, and became a number one song for him that year.\nPersonnel.\nTim McGraw & the Dancehall Doctors\nAdditional Musician\nBackground Vocals\nProduction\nChart performance.\n\"Let It Go\" entered the U.S. \"Billboard\" 200 and the Top Country Albums charts at #1. This became McGraw's fourth #1 Billboard 200 and eleventh #1 Top Country Albums release.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "525336": "Tim McGraw\nAmerican country singer and actor (born 1967)\nSamuel Timothy McGraw (born May 1, 1967) is an American country singer and actor. He has released 16 studio albums (11 for Curb Records, five for Big Machine Records and one for Arista Nashville). 10 of those albums have reached number one on the Top Country Albums charts, with his 1994 breakthrough album \"Not a Moment Too Soon\" being the top country album of 1994. In total, McGraw's albums have produced 65 singles, 25 of which have reached number one on the Hot Country Songs or Country Airplay charts.\nThree of these singles \u2013 \"It's Your Love\", \"Just to See You Smile\", and \"Live Like You Were Dying\" \u2013 were respectively the top country songs of 1997, 1998, and 2004 according to \"Billboard\" Year-End. He has also won three Grammy Awards, 14 Academy of Country Music awards, 11 Country Music Association (CMA) awards, 10 American Music Awards, and three People's Choice Awards. His Soul2Soul II Tour, which was done in partnership with his wife, Faith Hill, is one of the highest-grossing tours in country music history, and one of the top five among all genres of music. He has sold more than 80 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time.\nMcGraw has ventured into acting, with supporting roles in \"The Blind Side\", \"Friday Night Lights\", \"The Kingdom\", \"Tomorrowland\", \"Four Christmases\", flashback scenes in 2 episodes of \"Yellowstone\", and \"The Shack\" as well as lead roles in \"Flicka\" (2006), \"Country Strong\" (2010), and \"1883\" (2021). He was a minority owner of the Arena Football League's Nashville Kats. McGraw has been married to singer Faith Hill since 1996 and is the eldest son of former MLB pitcher Tug McGraw.\nEarly life and education.\nSamuel Timothy McGraw was born in Delhi, Louisiana, the only child of Elizabeth \"Betty\" Ann D'Agostino, a waitress from Jacksonville, Florida, and Frank Edwin \"Tug\" McGraw Jr., a pitcher for the minor league Jacksonville Suns and future star pitcher for the New York Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies. In 1966, D'Agostino was a student at Terry Parker High School. She lived in the same apartment building as Tug McGraw, who was playing baseball for Jacksonville. When she became pregnant with McGraw as a teen, D'Agostino's parents sent her to Louisiana to live with relatives. Through his father, McGraw has two half-brothers, Mark and Matthew, and a half-sister named Cari. He also has two younger half-sisters, Tracey and Sandra, through his mother's marriage to Horace Smith.\nMcGraw grew up believing Smith was his father, and used this stepfather's surname until meeting Tug. At age 11, McGraw discovered his birth certificate while searching in his mother's closet to look for a picture for a school project. Following the discovery, he learned from her who his biological father was and she took him to meet the elder McGraw for the first time. Tug McGraw denied the parentage for seven years until Tim was 18 years old. After that time, the two formed a relationship and remained close until the former baseball star died in 2004.\nAs a child, McGraw played competitive sports, including baseball, even before the knowledge of who his father was and his professional baseball career. McGraw was also a member of the FFA in high school. Following high school graduation, he attended Northeast Louisiana University on a baseball scholarship, where he was a pre-law major and pledged as a member of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. A knee injury sustained while playing baseball for the college prevented him from pursuing a professional career in sports.\nWhile in college, McGraw learned to play guitar and would frequently perform and sing for money. He has claimed his roommates often hid the guitar because he was so bad. McGraw followed his mother when she returned to Jacksonville, Florida, in 1987. After the move, he attended Florida Community College at Jacksonville for one term, and occasionally sat in with local bands. In 1989, on the day his hero Keith Whitley died, McGraw dropped out of college to head to Nashville and pursue a musical career.\nMusic career.\n1990s.\n\"Tim McGraw\".\nMcGraw came to the attention of Curb Records in 1990. After cutting a demo single, McGraw gave a copy to his father. A man who was friends with Curb Records executives heard the demo while driving with Tug one day and recommended that Curb contact the young singer. Several weeks later, he was able to play his tape for Curb executives, after which they signed him to a recording contract. McGraw made his debut with the single \"What Room Was the Holiday In\", which was released on March 29, 1991, and did not enter the \"Billboard\" Hot Country Songs chart upon its release. In a 2001 retrospective on McGraw's career in \"Billboard\", a former program director for Nashville station WSM-FM said that he added the song to the station's playlist because it showed \"undeniable promise\", while another former program director at WXTU in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, recalled that McGraw's debut single was \"terrible\" but that he booked the singer to make an appearance at the station due to his father's fame.\nTwo years later in April 1993, McGraw released his debut album \"Tim McGraw\", which was commercially unsuccessful and did not sell well. This is his only studio album not to achieve a music recording sales certification or to enter the Top Country Albums charts. Three more singles were released from \"Tim McGraw\": \"Welcome to the Club\", \"Memory Lane\", and \"Two Steppin' Mind\". None made country Top 40 and the album itself did not chart. Both \"Memory Lane\" and \"Tears in the Rain\", another cut from the album, were co-written by Joe Diffie. \"Memory Lane\" had originally appeared on Keith Palmer's self-titled 1991 debut album.\n\"Not a Moment Too Soon\".\nMcGraw's second album, entitled \"Not a Moment Too Soon\", was much more successful than his self-titled debut, and it was the best-selling country album of 1994. Its first single, \"Indian Outlaw\", sparked controversy, as critics argued that it presented Native Americans in a patronizing way. Some radio stations even chose not to play it. However, the controversy helped spur sales, and the song became McGraw's first Top 10 entry on the U.S. country charts after getting as high as number 8. The song also peaked at number 15 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100.\nThe album's second single, \"Don't Take the Girl\", became McGraw's first number one on the U.S. country charts, in addition to peaking at number 17 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. The song also \"helped cement his image as a ruggedly good-looking guy with a sensitive side.\" By year's end, the third single from the album, \"Down on the Farm\" peaked at number 2; after that, the album's fourth single, also its title track, became the singer's second number one song in early 1995. The fifth and final single \"Refried Dreams\" reached number 5. The album sold over 6 million copies, topping the \"Billboard\" 200 and Top Country Album charts. On the strength of this success, McGraw won Academy of Country Music awards for Album of the Year and Top New Male Vocalist in 1994. \"Billboard\" named \"Not a Moment Too Soon\" as the top country album of 1994 on Billboard Year-End.\n\"All I Want\".\nMcGraw's third studio album, \"All I Want\", was released in 1995. Just like its predecessor, this album debuted at No.\u00a01 on the country charts. The album even sold over 2 million copies in the United States and reached the Top 5 on the \"Billboard\" 200. The album's first single, \"I Like It, I Love It\", became McGraw's third number one on the American country charts and it also peaked at number 25 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. This song also eventually became the goal song for the Nashville Predators once they began their inaugural season and since then has been left unchanged. The album's next two singles, \"Can't Be Really Gone\" and \"All I Want Is a Life\" (its partial title track) both made the top 5 at numbers 2 and 5, respectively. The fourth single, \"She Never Lets It Go to Her Heart\", gave McGraw his fourth number one on the U.S. country charts in 1996. Finishing off the singles was \"Maybe We Should Just Sleep on It\", which peaked at number 4.\nIn 1996, McGraw headlined the most successful country tour of the year, The Spontaneous Combustion Tour, with Faith Hill as his supporting act. Hill broke off her engagement to her former producer Scott Hendricks so that she and McGraw could start dating each other; they then married on October 6, 1996.\n\"Everywhere\".\nThe singer's fourth album, \"Everywhere\" was released in 1997. It topped the country charts as well and reached No.\u00a02 on the \"Billboard\" 200, selling 4 million copies. The album spawned six singles. Four of those singles - \"It's Your Love\" (a duet with Faith Hill), the title track, \"Where the Green Grass Grows\", and \"Just to See You Smile\" - reached number one on the country charts. The Country Music Association awarded \"Everywhere\" its Album of the Year award for 1997. At the 40th Grammy Awards, \"It's Your Love\" received two Grammy Award nominations for Best Country Collaboration With Vocals and Best Country Song. Both \"It's Your Love\" and \"Just to See You Smile\" were the number one country songs of 1997 and 1998 according to \"Billboard\" Year-End charts; \"Just to See You Smile\" also set a record for the longest run on the country charts at the time, at 42 weeks. The album's other two singles, \"One of These Days\" and \"For a Little While\" both peaked at number 2.\n\"A Place in the Sun\".\nMcGraw's fifth album, \"A Place in the Sun\", continued his streak in 1999, debuting atop both the US country and pop album charts and selling 3 million copies. Over 251,000 of those copies were sold during its first week, making this the singer's first number 1 opener on the \"Billboard\" 200. It produced another four number one hits on the U.S. country charts with \"Please Remember Me\", \"Something Like That\", \"My Best Friend\", and \"My Next Thirty Years\". \"Some Things Never Change\" peaked at number 7 on the charts. McGraw also contributed a song for the Grammy-winning tribute album to Bob Wills entitled \"Ride With Bob\". A cover of \"Milk Cow Blues\", this song was recorded as a duet with Asleep at the Wheel, whom he had met while performing together at the George Strait Country Music Festival.\nMcGraw recorded two more duets with his wife in the late-1990s, both of which appeared on her albums. \"Just to Hear You Say That You Love Me\", from her multi-platinum-certified 1998 album \"Faith\", reached the Top 5 of the US country charts. Her follow-up album, 1999's \"Breathe\", featured \"Let's Make Love\", which won a Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Collaboration in 2000.\n2000s.\n\"Greatest Hits\".\nIn 2000, McGraw released his first \"Greatest Hits\" album, which topped the country albums charts for nine weeks and sold nearly 6 million copies, making this one of the biggest-selling albums in the modern country market. In the latter half of the year, he and Hill went out on the Soul2Soul Tour, playing to sellout crowds in 64 venues, including Madison Square Garden. The tour was one of the top tours of any genre in the U.S. It was also the leading country tour of 2000. While in Buffalo, New York, McGraw and Kenny Chesney became involved in a scuffle with police officers after Chesney attempted to ride a police horse. McGraw came to Chesney's aid after police officers nearby believed the horse was being stolen and tried to arrest him. The two were arrested and charged with assault but were later cleared. During a concert with the George Strait Country Music Festival several weeks later, Hill, dressed as a police officer, made an unscheduled appearance at the end of McGraw's set and led him off the stage.\n\"Set This Circus Down\".\nMcGraw's sixth studio album, \"Set This Circus Down\", was released in April 2001. It even spawned four number one hits on the country charts as well, this time with \"Grown Men Don't Cry\", \"Angry All the Time\" (with Faith Hill), \"The Cowboy in Me\", and \"Unbroken\". The singer provided harmony vocals for Jo Dee Messina's song \"Bring On the Rain\", which he also produced. That song topped the country charts. Hungry for more of his music, fans downloaded a version of his performance of the song \"Things Change\" from his appearance at the Country Music Association Awards Show. The song was played extensively on radio, becoming the first country song to appear on the charts from a fully downloaded version.\n\"Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors\".\nIn 2002, McGraw bucked country music traditions by recording his seventh studio album \"Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors\" with his tour band The Dancehall Doctors. Unlike rock music\u2014where it is commonplace for touring bands to provide the music on albums recorded by the artist they support, country albums are typically recorded with session musicians. McGraw chose to use his own touring band, in order to recognize their part in \nhis success, and to capture some of the feel of a real band.\nAll of the Dancehall Doctors have worked with McGraw since at least 1996. Their lineup includes:\nThe album debuted at No.\u00a02 on the country albums charts, Its fourth and fifth singles \"Real Good Man\" and \"Watch the Wind Blow By\" both climbed to number one on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot Country Songs chart. \"She's My Kind of Rain\" peaked at No.\u00a02 in 2003, and \"Red Rag Top\" reached number 5. The album also features a cover of Elton John's early-1970s classic \"Tiny Dancer,\" as well as duets with Kim Carnes on \"Comfort Me\" (a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks) and Don Henley and Timothy B. Schmit of the Eagles on \"Illegal.\" \"She's My Kind of Rain\" also received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Country Vocal Performance-Male at the 46th Grammy Awards.\n\"Live Like You Were Dying\".\nHis eighth album, 2004's \"Live Like You Were Dying\", continued the singer's record of commercial success. The album's first single and its title track was dedicated to his father Tug McGraw, who died of a brain tumor earlier in the year, was an ode to living life fully and in the moment. The second single \"Back When\" was a paean to an easy nostalgia. In December 2019, McGraw spoke on stage at the annual End Well Symposium about why he wrote \"Live Like You Were Dying\" and his struggles with caregiving for his dying father. \"Live Like You Were Dying\" spent seven non-consecutive weeks at No.\u00a01 on \"Billboard\" and went on to become the top country song of 2004 on the \"Billboard\" Year-End charts. It also became one of the most awarded records by winning ACM Single and Song of the Year, CMA Single and Song of the Year, and a Grammy. \"Back When\" went to number one on the country charts as well. The album produced three more singles with \"Drugs or Jesus\", \"Do You Want Fries with That\", and \"My Old Friend\". \"Drugs or Jesus\" became McGraw's first single since 1993 to not ever reach within the Top 10 on the U.S. country charts, while \"Do You Want Fries with That\" and \"My Old Friend\" peaked at numbers 5 and 6, respectively.\nIn late 2004, his unlikely duet with hip hop artist Nelly on \"Over and Over\" became a crossover hit, spending 10 weeks atop the top 40 chart. \"Over and Over\" brought McGraw a success he had never previously experienced on contemporary hit radio or R&B radio, and brought both artists success neither had previously experienced in the hot adult contemporary market. The song also spent a week at the top of the charts in the United Kingdom, becoming McGraw's first hit single in Britain and Nelly's third number one hit in the country after \"Dilemma\" and \"My Place\". \"Over and Over\" also reached the top of the charts in Australia, New Zealand, and the Republic of Ireland, and the top 10 in Austria, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Romania, and Switzerland.\nThroughout the 2005 NFL season, McGraw sang an alternate version of \"I Like It, I Love It\" every week during the season. The alternate lyrics, which changed each week, would make reference to plays during Sunday's games, and the song would be played alongside video highlights during halftime on \"Monday Night Football\". Later in the year, McGraw became a minority owner of the Arena Football League's Nashville Kats when majority owner Bud Adams (owner of the NFL's Tennessee Titans) was awarded the expansion franchise.\n\"Let It Go\".\nIn April 2006, McGraw and Hill began their 73-concert 55-city Soul2Soul II Tour, again to strong commercial acceptance. The tour grossed roughly $89 million and sold approximately 1.1 million tickets, making it the top-grossing tour in the history of country music. It was also named \"Major Tour of the Year\" by \"Pollstar\", beating out such heavyweights as Madonna and the Rolling Stones. In a special gesture, the couple donated all of the profits from their performance in New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina relief. McGraw, along with Kenny Chesney, contributed to a version of Tracy Lawrence's song \"Find Out Who Your Friends Are\", which can be found on Lawrence's album \"For the Love\". Although the official single version features only Lawrence's vocals, many stations have opted to play the version with McGraw and Chesney instead.\nMcGraw released his eleventh studio album, \"Let It Go\", on March 27, 2007. The album's first single, \"Last Dollar (Fly Away)\", peaked at number one on the Hot Country Songs chart. This marked McGraw's first No.\u00a01 single since \"Back When\" in late 2004. The album debuted at No.\u00a01 on both the \"Billboard\" 200 and Top Country Album charts, marking his fourth No.\u00a01 album on the 200 charts and his ninth overall. His daughters can be heard singing the chorus during the last few seconds of the song on the video. During the Academy of Country Music awards show on May 15, 2007, McGraw performed a song titled \"If You're Reading This\", which he co-wrote with The Warren Brothers. Several radio stations began to play the live recording of the song; as a result, it entered the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot Country Songs chart at No.\u00a035. McGraw also produced the debut album of country music duo Halfway to Hazard. The duo's first single, \"Daisy\", peaked at No.\u00a039 on the country charts in the summer of 2007. In the summer of 2007, McGraw and Hill toured together once again in the Soul2Soul 2007 tour.\nIn the edition of January 18, 2008 of the \"USA Today\" newspaper, McGraw was stated to be featured on the Def Leppard album \"Songs from the Sparkle Lounge\", having also co-written the first single, \"Nine Lives\", with Def Leppard band members Joe Elliott, Phil Collen, and Rick Savage. The unusual pairing goes back to 2006 when McGraw joined Def Leppard onstage for the song \"Pour Some Sugar On Me\", and then collaborated on the song \"Nine Lives\" afterward. The album was released on April 25, 2008. At the 2007 50th Annual Grammy Awards, McGraw received 5 nominations including Best Country Album (for \"Let It Go\"), Best Country Song (both for \"If You're Reading This\" and \"I Need You\"), Best Country Collaboration with Vocals (with \"I Need You\"), and Best Male Country Vocal Performance (with \"If You're Reading This\"). In May 2008, he hit the road with the Live Your Voice tour. The mainly-outdoor arena concert tour was his first solo outing in nearly three years. Also in May 2008, he debuted a new song in his follow-up to \"Let It Go\" at the Stagecoach Music Festival in Indio, California. In July 2008, the album's sixth single and its title track, \"Let It Go\", was released to country radio. Following that, a seventh single, \"Nothin' to Die For\", entered the Country charts at No.\u00a057 in late December. McGraw released his third greatest-hits package, \"Greatest Hits 3\" on October 7, 2008. The album features 12 tracks. McGraw was set to debut a new song at the 2009 ACM Awards, but then canceled his performance; he was replaced by Blake Shelton, who sang \"She Wouldn't Be Gone\".\n\"Southern Voice\".\nMcGraw's twelfth studio album, \"Southern Voice\", was released October 20, 2009, and led by the single \"It's A Business Doing Pleasure With You\", which was shipped to radio outlets in late June 2009.\n\"Southern Voice\" was argued to be McGraw's last album for Curb Records, following the dispute over releasing his third Greatest Hits collection back in October 2008 without his permission. McGraw did not approve of the release. On November 30, 2010, Curb Records released his fourth greatest hits compilation, \"Number One Hits\".\n2010s.\n\"Emotional Traffic\" and Curb Records lawsuit.\nOn January 2, 2011, McGraw announced plans for his Emotional Traffic Tour featuring opening acts Luke Bryan and The Band Perry.\nSirius XM announced on March 30, 2011, that they would be launching Tim McGraw radio, a commercial-free music channel devoted to McGraw's music, and featuring an in-depth interview with McGraw as well. As of fall 2010, McGraw had finished work on the album \"Emotional Traffic\", his last album with Curb Records. On May 13, 2011, Curb Records filed a breach-of-contract suit against McGraw. The label alleged that McGraw recorded tracks for his \"Emotional Traffic\" album too early prior to its delivery to the label. Several days later, McGraw filed a counter suit against the label seeking advance payment and recording-fund reimbursement, unspecified damages, and a jury trial. A trial was scheduled to begin in July 2012. In November 2011, a judge granted McGraw permission to record music for another label, ending his relationship with Curb Records that began in 1990. A few hours after the ruling, Curb released \"Better Than I Used to Be\", the first single from \"Emotional Traffic\". The album was released on January 24, 2012.\n\"Two Lanes of Freedom\".\nIn December 2011, McGraw released his first Christmas single, \"Christmas All Over the World\", on his own label StyleSonic Records. On May 21, 2012, however, he signed with Big Machine Records.\nMcGraw's debut album for Big Machine, entitled \"Two Lanes of Freedom\", was released on February 5, 2013. It debuted at number 2 on the charts by selling 108,000 copies. The album includes the singles \"Truck Yeah\", \"One of Those Nights\", \"Highway Don't Care\" (a duet with Taylor Swift which also features Keith Urban on lead guitar), and \"Southern Girl\". McGraw performed at the festival in London on March 16, 2013.\n\"Love Story\" and \"Sundown Heaven Town\".\nMcGraw released a single titled \"Lookin' for That Girl\" in January 2014 as the lead-off single to his second album for Big Machine. It was followed immediately by the announcement of the Sundown Heaven Town Tour. The album, titled \"Sundown Heaven Town\", was released on September 16, 2014. Four months into its run, \"Lookin' for That Girl\" was withdrawn as a single and replaced with \"Meanwhile, Back at Mama's\", which features backing vocals from Hill. \"Shotgun Rider\" became the album's third single and a number 1 Country Airplay hit by the end of 2014. Following it was \"Diamond Rings and Old Barstools\", a duet with Catherine Dunn. McGraw's eighth greatest hits album, \"Love Story\", is a compilation of his twelve biggest love songs and two previously unreleased recordings. It was released exclusively through Walmart on February 4, 2014, by Curb Records.\n\"Damn Country Music\".\nOn August 10, 2015, McGraw released a new single to digital retailers, titled \"Top of the World\", which was later released to radio on August 17, 2015, as the lead single to his third studio album for Big Machine Records. On September 17, McGraw announced that the album was titled \"Damn Country Music\", with a release date scheduled for November 6. The album's second single, \"Humble and Kind\", released to country radio on February 1, 2016, and went on to reach number 1 on the Billboard Hot Country charts. McGraw was selected as one of 30 artists to perform on \"Forever Country\", a mash-up track of Take Me Home, Country Roads, On the Road Again and I Will Always Love You which celebrates 50 years of the CMA Awards. The album's third single, \"How I'll Always Be\" released to country radio on July 11, 2016. It reached number 3 on the Country Airplay in January 2017.\n\"The Rest of Our Life\".\nOn October 4, 2016, during a show at the Ryman Auditorium, McGraw and Hill announced that they would be going back on the road together again on the . The tour began on April 7, 2017, in New Orleans and will continue into 2018, incorporating the festival held in the UK and Ireland throughout March 2018.\nBefore the commencement of the tour, it was reported that McGraw, alongside Hill, had signed a new deal with Sony Music Nashville. The signing also indicated the release of a duet album between the couple, and that multiple solo recordings would be produced. The new record label signing also preceded the release of \"Speak to a Girl\", the lead single from the duet album, \"The Rest of Our Life\", which was released on November 17, 2017. The release of the album coincided with the opening of an exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum titled \"Mississippi Woman, Louisiana Man\", which celebrates the careers of both McGraw and Hill.\nMcGraw released two major best-selling books in 2019, with the first co-written with \"Pulitzer Prize\" winner Jon Meacham which reached No. 2 on the New York Times Bestsellers list. Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music That Made a Nation. New York: Random House. 2019. . His second book, \"Grit and Grace\", also reached No. 2 on the New York Times Bestsellers list.\n2020s.\n\"Here on Earth\".\nIn February 2020, McGraw rejoined Big Machine Records, which he was previously signed to from 2011 to 2017. He released a new album, \"Here on Earth\", on August 21, 2020. The \"Here on Earth Tour\" was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In January 2021, McGraw released the single \"Undivided\" with Tyler Hubbard of Florida Georgia Line, which was included on a deluxe edition of \"Here on Earth\" released later that year. On October 9, 2021, McGraw confronted a heckler at a performance at the Nugget Events Center in Sparks, Nevada, after he forgot the words to his song \"Just to See You Smile.\" After removing the heckler, he explained that he had been filming a movie and had a lot on his mind, and asked for the audience's help in remembering the words.\n\"Standing Room Only\" and \"Poet's Resum\u00e9\".\nOn August 25, 2023, McGraw released his sixteenth studio album, \"Standing Room Only\". The title track was released as the album's lead single on March 10, 2023. It reached number 2 on the U.S. Country Airplay chart. Three months after releasing \"Standing Room Only\", McGraw surprise-released a six-track EP, \"Poet's Resum\u00e9\" on November 21, 2023.\nProduction career.\nMcGraw has occasionally served as a record producer in collaboration with Byron Gallimore, who has co-produced all of his albums. The two co-produced Jo Dee Messina's self-titled debut, as well as her next two albums, \"I'm Alright\" and \"Burn\". McGraw and Gallimore also produced the only album released by The Clark Family Experience in 2000, and Halfway to Hazard's 2007 self-titled debut album.\nActing career.\nMcGraw's first acting appearance came in a 1997 episode of \"The Jeff Foxworthy Show\", where he played Foxworthy's rival. In 2004, McGraw played a sheriff in Rick Schroder's independent release \"Black Cloud\". Later in the same year, McGraw received critical acclaim as the overbearing father of running back \"Donald Billingsley\" in the major studio Texas high school football drama \"Friday Night Lights\". The \"Dallas Observer\" said the role was \"played with unexpected ferocity by country singer Tim McGraw\". The movie went on to gross over $60 million worldwide at the box office, and sold millions in the DVD market. Most recently, it was named one of the Top 50 High School Movies of All Time (No.\u00a037) by \"Entertainment Weekly\".\nMcGraw's first lead role was in the 2006 film \"Flicka\", which was released in theaters October 20, 2006. In the remake of the classic book \"My Friend Flicka\", McGraw played the father, Rob, costarring with Alison Lohman and Maria Bello. The family-friendly movie debuted in the top 10 list and has grossed over $25 million at the box office. McGraw again achieved critical acclaim for his acting. Shortly before \"Flicka\" opened, McGraw received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His star is located at 6901 Hollywood Boulevard near stars honoring Julie Andrews, William Shatner, and the late Greta Garbo. One of his \"Flicka\" co-stars, Alison Lohman, attended the ceremony that included comments from Billy Bob Thornton, McGraw's co-star in the film \"Friday Night Lights\". In addition to acting in \"Flicka\", McGraw served as executive producer of the soundtrack album, which was released by his record label, StyleSonic Records, in association with Curb Records and Fox 2000 films. It featured the closing credit song \"My Little Girl\", one of the first two songs that McGraw recorded that he also co-wrote (the other being \"I've Got Friends That Do\", both of which were included on \"Greatest Hits Vol. 2\"). The song was nominated by the Broadcast Film Critics for \"Best Song\" in a film, and the movie was nominated in the category \"Best Family Film (Live Action)\". The movie proved to be another success in the DVD market, and has sold over a million copies, debuting at No.\u00a03 on the DVD sales chart.\nMcGraw also had a small part in the Michael Mann\u2013produced 2007 film \"The Kingdom\", reuniting him with \"Friday Night Lights\" director Peter Berg. McGraw played a bitter, angered widower whose wife was killed in the terrorist attack that is the centerpiece of the movie. On November 22, 2008, McGraw made his first appearance on \"Saturday Night Live\". He also played \"Dallas McVie\" in \"Four Christmases\". McGraw appeared in the 2009 film \"The Blind Side\" as Sean Tuohy, husband of Sandra Bullock's character, Leigh Anne Tuohy. \"The Blind Side\" is based on the true story of Michael Oher, a homeless African-American youngster from a broken home, taken in and adopted by the Tuohys, a well-to-do white family who help him fulfill his potential. He is among the stars of \"Dirty Girl\", a film that premiered on September 12, 2010, at the Toronto Film Festival, along with Juno Temple, Milla Jovovich, William H. Macy and Dwight Yoakam. Also in 2010, McGraw starred in \"Country Strong\" as James Canter, the husband and manager of the fictional country singer Kelly Canter (portrayed by Gwyneth Paltrow). In addition to his appearance in the film, McGraw's song \"Me and Tennessee\", a duet with Paltrow, was played during the closing credits and appears on the film's soundtrack. In 2015, McGraw appeared in Brad Bird's \"Tomorrowland\" as Eddie Newton, a NASA engineer, and Casey Newton's (played by Britt Robertson) father.\n\"1883\", a spinoff prequel to Taylor Sheridan's Yellowstone television series was released in late 2021 and stars McGraw, Faith Hill, and Sam Elliott.\nCharitable efforts.\nIn 1994, when McGraw first reached fame, he established the annual Swampstock event. It began as a charity softball game to raise money for hometown little league programs; the event now includes a celebrity softball game and a multi-artist concert that attracts over 11,000 fans per year. The combined events have funded new Little League parks and equipment, and have established college scholarship funds for students in the northeast Louisiana area.\nFrom 1996 to 1999, McGraw hosted an annual New Year's Eve concert in Nashville with special guests including Jeff Foxworthy, the Dixie Chicks, and Martina McBride. The 1997 show raised over $100,000 for the Country Music Foundation Hall of Fame and Museum. Beginning in 1999, McGraw would pick select cities on each tour, and the night before he was scheduled to perform, would choose a local club and host a quickly-organized show. This tour-within-a-tour became known as \"The Bread and Water Tour\", and all proceeds from the show would go to a charity from that community.\nMcGraw designed a charity T-shirt sold through Angelwear to benefit MusiCares. MusiCares supports musicians in times of need. His charity focuses particularly on health issues. The Tim McGraw Foundation raises funds to enhance the quality of life of children and adults with brain tumors. He supports the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center, the David Foster Foundation, which helps families of children in need of organ transplants, and Musicians on Call, which brings music to hospital patients' bedsides. He also performs during dinners and auctions to benefit children with disabilities. Hill and McGraw gave the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society $375,000 (the entire gate receipts from one of their concerts) to assist the families of 17 sailors following the terrorist attack on , the guided-missile destroyer that suffered significant damage in the Gulf of Aden, Yemen on October 12, 2000.\nIn the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina, McGraw who was raised in Mississippi, joined groups taking supplies to Gulfport, Mississippi. The two also hosted several charity concerts to benefit those who were displaced by the storm. Later in the year, the couple established the Neighbor's Keeper Foundation, which provides funding for community charities to assist with basic humanitarian services, in the event of a natural disaster, or for desperate personal circumstances.\nMcGraw is also a member of the American Red Cross National Celebrity Cabinet, to which various celebrities donate their time, skills, and fame, to help the Red Cross highlight important initiatives and response efforts.\nMcGraw has helped out with charity events held by Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre. The Brett Favre Fourward Foundation has featured McGraw performing concerts during dinners and auctions that benefit children with disabilities in Wisconsin and Mississippi. One instance is recorded on Favre's official website.\nOn July 12, 2007, it was made public that McGraw while in Grand Rapids, Michigan for a performance, donated $5,000 to Kailey Kozminski, the 3-year-old daughter of Officer Robert Kozminski, a Grand Rapids police officer who was killed on July 8, 2007, while responding to a domestic disturbance.\nIn April 2023, McGraw surprised rising country star Brandon Davis, whom he previously brought on tour with him in 2022, with a new guitar after all of his gear was stolen earlier in the month.\nPersonal politics.\nIn a 2006 interview with \"Esquire\" magazine, McGraw stated he would like to run for public office as a Democratic Party candidate, possibly for United States Senate or Governor of Tennessee\u2014his home state. In the same interview, he praised Bill Clinton.\nIn a 2008 interview with \"People\" magazine, McGraw referred to himself as a \"Blue Dog Democrat\" and stated that he and his family support Barack Obama.\nIn January 2021, McGraw performed on the \"Celebrating America\" inaugural special, a primetime virtual concert celebrating the inauguration of Joe Biden.\nPersonal life.\nMcGraw married fellow country singer Faith Hill in 1996, and they have three daughters. He and Hill own Goat Cay, which they unofficially named L'\u00eele d'Anges, a private island in the Bahamas.\nIn 2000, Kenny Chesney and McGraw became involved in a scuffle with police officers in Buffalo, New York, after Chesney was riding a State Police horse and refused to get off the horse. McGraw came to Chesney's aid after police officers nearby believed the horse was being stolen. The two were arrested and charged, Chesney for disorderly conduct and McGraw for assault, but were acquitted in 2001.\nMcGraw holds a private pilot license and owns a single-engine Cirrus SR22.\nIn 2015, \"Forbes\" estimated McGraw's annual income at $38 million.\nMcGraw is the godfather to the son of Garrett Hedlund and Emma Roberts. He and Hedlund became friends after co-starring in \"Friday Night Lights\" and \"Country Strong\".\nIn acknowledgment of his grandfather's Italian heritage, McGraw was honored by the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) in 2004, receiving the NIAF Special Achievement Award in Music during the Foundation's 29th Anniversary Gala.\nMcGraw's Bracco Italiano named Lepshi won Best of Breed at the 2023 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. The McGraw-Hill family also has two other Bracco Italianos, Caesar and Stromboli.\nTours.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["8930075", "525336"], "permutation_1": ["8930075", "525336"], "permutation_2": ["8930075", "525336"], "permutation_3": ["525336", "8930075"]}
{"id": "2hop__553982_125776", "docs_added": {"16918479": "String Quartet No. 18 (Mozart)\nFifth of Mozart's six string quartets dedicated to Haydn (1785)\nWolfgang Amadeus Mozart's String Quartet No. 18 in A major, K. 464, the fifth of the Quartets dedicated to Haydn, was completed in 1785. Mozart's autograph catalogue states as the date of composition \"1785. / the 10th January\". It is in four movements:\nThe whole piece is characterized by the use of several different contrapuntal devices. In England \"this quartet is known as the \"Drum\" because the cello part in variation six [of the Andante] maintains a staccato drum-like motion.\"\nIn his biography of Mozart entitled \"Mozart: A Life\", musicologist Maynard Solomon quotes Beethoven as telling his pupil Carl Czerny that this work, with its complex contrapuntal techniques, was Mozart's way of saying to the world, \"Look what I could produce, if only you were ready for it.\" Beethoven thoroughly studied this quartet he much \"admired and even copied into score\", which he used as model for his String Quartet in A major, Opus 18 No. 5.\nEven though it is one of Mozart's longest quartets, there is a great economy to the writing. The finale is as monothematic as anything Haydn ever wrote, with all the development deriving from the opening two phrases, and the other movements make use of a very small amount of melodic material for their development sections as well. The minuet for example, builds primarily on just two small motifs.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "33163": "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart\nComposer (1756\u20131791)\nWolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 \u2013 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age resulted in more than 800 works representing virtually every Western classical genre of his time. Many of these compositions are acknowledged as pinnacles of the symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral repertoires. Mozart is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music, with his music admired for its \"melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture\".\nBorn in Salzburg, Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. At age five, he was already competent on keyboard and violin, had begun to compose, and performed before European royalty. His father took him on a grand tour of Europe and then three trips to Italy. At 17, he was a musician at the Salzburg court but grew restless and travelled in search of a better position. Mozart's search for employment led to positions in Paris, Mannheim, Munich, and again in Salzburg, during which he wrote his five violin concertos, Sinfonia Concertante, and Concerto for Flute and Harp, as well as sacred pieces and masses, the motet\u00a0\"Exsultate Jubilate\", and the opera \"Idomeneo,\" among other works.\nWhile visiting Vienna in 1781, Mozart was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He stayed in Vienna, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During Mozart's early years in Vienna, he produced several notable works, such as the opera \"Die Entf\u00fchrung aus dem Serail\", the \"Great Mass in C minor\", the \"Haydn\" Quartets and a number of symphonies. Throughout his Vienna years, Mozart composed over a dozen piano concertos, many considered some of his greatest achievements. In the final years of his life, Mozart wrote many of his best-known works, including his last three symphonies, culminating in the \"Jupiter\" Symphony, the serenade \"Eine kleine Nachtmusik\", his Clarinet Concerto, the operas \"The Marriage of Figaro\", \"Don Giovanni\", \"Cos\u00ec fan tutte\" and \"The Magic Flute\" and his Requiem. The Requiem was largely unfinished at the time of his death at age 35, the circumstances of which are uncertain and much mythologised.\nLife and career.\nEarly life.\nFamily and childhood.\nWolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on 27 January 1756 to Leopold Mozart and Anna Maria, n\u00e9e Pertl, at Getreidegasse 9 in Salzburg. Salzburg was the capital of the Archbishopric of Salzburg, an ecclesiastic principality in the Holy Roman Empire (today in Austria). He was the youngest of seven children, five of whom died in infancy. His elder sister was Maria Anna Mozart, nicknamed \"Nannerl\". Mozart was baptised the day after his birth, at St. Rupert's Cathedral in Salzburg. The baptismal record gives his name in Latinised form, as \"Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart\". He generally called himself \"Wolfgang Amad\u00e8 Mozart\" as an adult, but his name had many variants.\nLeopold Mozart, a native of Augsburg, then an Imperial Free City in the Holy Roman Empire, was a minor composer and an experienced teacher. In 1743, he was appointed as the fourth violinist in the musical establishment of Count Leopold Anton von Firmian, the ruling Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. Four years later, he married Anna Maria in Salzburg. Leopold became the orchestra's deputy Kapellmeister in 1763. During the year of his son's birth, Leopold published a violin textbook, \"Versuch einer gr\u00fcndlichen Violinschule\", which achieved success.\nWhen Nannerl was seven, she began keyboard lessons with her father, while her three-year-old brother looked on. Years later, after her brother's death, she reminisced:\nHe often spent much time at the clavier, picking out thirds, which he was ever striking, and his pleasure showed that it sounded good... In the fourth year of his age his father, for a game as it were, began to teach him a few minuets and pieces at the clavier... He could play it faultlessly and with the greatest delicacy, and keeping exactly in time... At the age of five, he was already composing little pieces, which he played to his father who wrote them down.\nThese early pieces, K. 1\u20135, were recorded in the \"Nannerl Notenbuch\". There is some scholarly debate about whether Mozart was four or five years old when he created his first musical compositions, though there is little doubt that Mozart composed his first three pieces of music within a few weeks of each other: K. 1a, 1b, and 1c.\nIn his early years, Wolfgang's father was his only teacher. Along with music, he taught his children languages and academic subjects. Biographer Solomon notes that, while Leopold was a devoted teacher to his children, there is evidence that Mozart was keen to progress beyond what he was taught. His first ink-spattered composition and his precocious efforts with the violin were of his initiative and came as a surprise to Leopold, who eventually gave up composing when his son's musical talents became evident.\n1762\u201373: Travel.\nWhile Wolfgang was young, his family made several European journeys in which he and Nannerl performed as child prodigies. These began with an exhibition in 1762 at the court of Prince-elector Maximilian III of Bavaria in Munich, and at the Imperial Courts in Vienna and Prague. A long concert tour followed, spanning three and a half years, taking the family to the courts of Munich, Mannheim, Paris, London, Dover, The Hague, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Mechelen and again to Paris, and back home via Z\u00fcrich, Donaueschingen, and Munich. During this trip, Wolfgang met many musicians and acquainted himself with the works of other composers. A particularly significant influence was Johann Christian Bach, whom he visited in London in 1764 and 1765. When he was eight years old, Mozart wrote his first symphony, most of which was probably transcribed by his father.\nThe family trips were often challenging, and travel conditions were primitive. They had to wait for invitations and reimbursement from the nobility, and they endured long, near-fatal illnesses far from home: first Leopold (London, summer 1764), then both children (The Hague, autumn 1765). The family again went to Vienna in late 1767 and remained there until December 1768.\nAfter one year in Salzburg, Leopold and Wolfgang set off for Italy, leaving Anna Maria and Nannerl at home. This tour lasted from December 1769 to March 1771. As with earlier journeys, Leopold wanted to display his son's abilities as a performer and a rapidly maturing composer. Wolfgang met Josef Myslive\u010dek and Giovanni Battista Martini in Bologna and was accepted as a member of the famous Accademia Filarmonica. There exists a myth, according to which, while in Rome, he heard Gregorio Allegri's \"Miserere\" twice in performance in the Sistine Chapel. Allegedly, he subsequently wrote it out from memory, thus producing the \"first unauthorised copy of this closely guarded property of the Vatican\". However, both the origin and plausibility of this account are disputed.\nIn Milan, Mozart wrote the opera \"Mitridate, re di Ponto\" (1770), which was performed with success. This led to further opera commissions. He returned with his father twice to Milan (August\u2013December 1771; October 1772\u00a0\u2013 March 1773) for the composition and premieres of \"Ascanio in Alba\" (1771) and \"Lucio Silla\" (1772). Leopold hoped these visits would result in a professional appointment for his son, and indeed ruling Archduke Ferdinand contemplated hiring Mozart, but owing to his mother Empress Maria Theresa's reluctance to employ \"useless people\", the matter was dropped and Leopold's hopes were never realised. Toward the end of the journey, Mozart wrote the solo motet \"Exsultate, jubilate\", K.165.\n1773\u201377: Employment at the Salzburg court.\nAfter finally returning with his father from Italy on 13 March 1773, Mozart was employed as a court musician by the ruler of Salzburg, Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. The composer had many friends and admirers in Salzburg and had the opportunity to work in many genres, including symphonies, sonatas, string quartets, masses, serenades, and a few minor operas. Between April and December 1775, Mozart developed an enthusiasm for violin concertos, producing a series of five (the only ones he ever wrote), which steadily increased in their musical sophistication. The last three\u2014K.\u00a0216, K.\u00a0218, K.\u00a0219\u2014are now staples of the repertoire. In 1776, he turned his efforts to piano concertos, culminating in the E\u266d concerto K.\u00a0271 of early 1777, considered by critics to be a breakthrough work.\nDespite these artistic successes, Mozart grew increasingly discontented with Salzburg and redoubled his efforts to find a position elsewhere. One reason was his low salary, 150 florins a year; Mozart longed to compose operas, and Salzburg provided only rare occasions for these. The situation worsened in 1775 when the court theatre was closed, especially since the other theatre in Salzburg was primarily reserved for visiting troupes.\nTwo long expeditions in search of work interrupted this long Salzburg stay. Mozart and his father visited Vienna from 14 July to 26 September 1773, and Munich from 6December 1774 to March 1775. Neither visit was successful, though the Munich journey resulted in a popular success with the premiere of Mozart's opera \"La finta giardiniera\".\n1777\u201378: Journey to Paris.\nIn August 1777, Mozart resigned his position at Salzburg and on 23 September ventured out once more in search of employment, with visits to Augsburg, Mannheim, Paris, and Munich.\nMozart became acquainted with members of the famous orchestra in Mannheim, the best in Europe at the time. He also fell in love with Aloysia Weber, one of four daughters of a musical family. There were prospects of employment in Mannheim, but they came to nothing, and Mozart left for Paris on 14 March 1778 to continue his search. One of his letters from Paris hints at a possible post as an organist at Versailles, but Mozart was not interested in such an appointment. He fell into debt and took to pawning valuables. The nadir of the visit occurred when Mozart's mother was taken ill and died on 3July 1778. There had been delays in calling a doctor\u2014probably, according to Halliwell, because of a lack of funds. Mozart stayed with Melchior Grimm at Marquise d'\u00c9pinay's residence, 5 rue de la Chauss\u00e9e-d'Antin.\nWhile Mozart was in Paris, his father was pursuing opportunities of employment for him in Salzburg. With the support of the local nobility, Mozart was offered a post as court organist and concertmaster. The annual salary was 450 florins, but he was reluctant to accept. By that time, relations between Grimm and Mozart had cooled, and Mozart moved out. After leaving Paris in September 1778 for Strasbourg, he lingered in Mannheim and Munich, still hoping to obtain an appointment outside Salzburg. In Munich, he again encountered Aloysia, now a very successful singer, but she was no longer interested in him. Mozart finally returned to Salzburg on 15 January 1779 and took up his new appointment, but his discontent with Salzburg remained undiminished.\nAmong the better-known works which Mozart wrote on the Paris journey are the A minor piano sonata, K.\u00a0310/300d, the \"Paris\" Symphony (No.\u00a031), which were performed in Paris on 12 and 18 June 1778; and the Concerto for Flute and Harp in C major, K. 299/297c.\nVienna.\n1781: Departure.\nIn January 1781, Mozart's opera \"Idomeneo\" premiered with \"considerable success\" in Munich. The following March, Mozart was summoned to Vienna, where his employer, Archbishop Colloredo, was attending the celebrations for the accession of Joseph II to the Austrian throne. For Colloredo, this was simply a matter of wanting his musical servant to be at hand (Mozart indeed was required to dine in Colloredo's establishment with the valets and cooks). He planned a bigger career as he continued in the archbishop's service; for example, he wrote to his father:\nMy main goal right now is to meet the emperor in some agreeable fashion, I am absolutely determined he should get to know me. I would be so happy if I could whip through my opera for him and then play a fugue or two, for that's what he likes.\nMozart did indeed soon meet the Emperor, who eventually was to support his career substantially with commissions and a part-time position.\nIn the same letter to his father just quoted, Mozart outlined his plans to participate as a soloist in the concerts of the \"Tonk\u00fcnstler-Societ\u00e4t\", a prominent benefit concert series; this plan as well came to pass after the local nobility prevailed on Colloredo to drop his opposition.\nColloredo's wish to prevent Mozart from performing outside his establishment was in other cases carried through, raising the composer's anger; one example was a chance to perform before the Emperor at Countess Thun's for a fee equal to half of his yearly Salzburg salary.\nThe quarrel with the archbishop came to a head in May: Mozart attempted to resign and was refused. The following month, permission was granted, but in a grossly insulting way: the composer was dismissed literally \"with a kick in the arse\", administered by the archbishop's steward, Count Arco. Mozart decided to settle in Vienna as a freelance performer and composer.\nThe quarrel with Colloredo was more difficult for Mozart because his father sided against him. Hoping fervently that he would obediently follow Colloredo back to Salzburg, Mozart's father exchanged intense letters with his son, urging him to be reconciled with their employer. Mozart passionately defended his intention to pursue an independent career in Vienna. The debate ended when Mozart was dismissed by the archbishop, freeing himself both of his employer and of his father's demands to return. Solomon characterizes Mozart's resignation as a \"revolutionary step\" that significantly altered the course of his life.\nEarly years.\nMozart's new career in Vienna began well. He often performed as a pianist, notably in a competition before the Emperor with Muzio Clementi on 24 December 1781, and he soon \"had established himself as the finest keyboard player in Vienna\". He also prospered as a composer, and in 1782 completed the opera \"Die Entf\u00fchrung aus dem Serail\" (\"The Abduction from the Seraglio\"), which premiered on 16 July 1782 and achieved considerable success. The work was soon being performed \"throughout German-speaking Europe\", and thoroughly established Mozart's reputation as a composer.\nNear the height of his quarrels with Colloredo, Mozart moved in with the Weber family, who had moved to Vienna from Mannheim. The family's father, Fridolin, had died, and the Webers were now taking in lodgers to make ends meet.\nMarriage and children.\nAfter failing to win the hand of Aloysia Weber, who was now married to the actor and artist Joseph Lange, Mozart's interest shifted to the third daughter of the family, Constanze.\nThe courtship did not go entirely smoothly; surviving correspondence indicates that Mozart and Constanze briefly broke up in April 1782, over an episode involving jealousy (Constanze had permitted another young man to measure her calves in a parlour game). Mozart also faced a very difficult task getting permission for the marriage from his father, Leopold.\nThe marriage took place in an atmosphere of crisis. Daniel Heartz suggests that eventually, Constanze moved in with Mozart, which would have placed her in disgrace by the mores of the time. Mozart wrote to Leopold on 31 July 1782, \"All the good and well-intentioned advice you have sent fails to address the case of a man who has already gone so far with a maiden. Further postponement is out of the question.\" Heartz relates, \"Constanze's sister Sophie had tearfully declared that her mother would send the police after Constanze if she did not return home [presumably from Mozart's apartment].\" On 4 August, Mozart wrote to Baroness von Waldst\u00e4tten, asking: \"Can the police here enter anyone's house in this way? Perhaps it is only a ruse of Madame Weber to get her daughter back. If not, I know no better remedy than to marry Constanze tomorrow morning or if possible today.\"\nThe couple were finally married on 4August 1782 in St. Stephen's Cathedral, the day before his father's consenting letter arrived in the mail. In the marriage contract, Constanze \"assigns to her bridegroom five hundred gulden which ... the latter has promised to augment with one thousand gulden\", with the total \"to pass to the survivor\". Further, all joint acquisitions during the marriage were to remain the common property of both. \nThe couple had six children, of whom only two survived infancy:\n1782\u201387.\nIn 1782 and 1783, Mozart became intimately acquainted with the work of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel as a result of the influence of Gottfried van Swieten, who owned many manuscripts of the Baroque masters. Mozart's study of these scores inspired compositions in the Baroque style and later influenced his musical language, for example in fugal passages in \"Die Zauberfl\u00f6te\" (\"The Magic Flute\") and the finale of Symphony No.\u00a041.\nIn 1783, Mozart and his wife visited his family in Salzburg. His father and sister were cordially polite to Constanze, but the visit prompted the composition of one of Mozart's great liturgical pieces, the Mass in C minor. Though not completed, it was premiered in Salzburg, with Constanze singing a solo part.\nMozart met Joseph Haydn in Vienna around 1784, and the two composers became friends. When Haydn visited Vienna, they sometimes played together in an impromptu string quartet. Mozart's six quartets dedicated to Haydn (K.\u00a0387, K.\u00a0421, K.\u00a0428, K.\u00a0458, K.\u00a0464, and K.\u00a0465) date from the period 1782 to 1785, and are judged to be a response to Haydn's Opus 33 set from 1781. Haydn wrote, \"posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years\" and in 1785 told Mozart's father: \"I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition.\"\nFrom 1782 to 1785 Mozart mounted concerts with himself as a soloist, presenting three or four new piano concertos in each season. Since space in the theatres was scarce, he booked unconventional venues: a large room in the Trattnerhof apartment building, and the ballroom of the Mehlgrube restaurant. The concerts were very popular, and his concertos premiered there are still firm fixtures in the repertoire. Solomon writes that during this period, Mozart created \"a harmonious connection between an eager composer-performer and a delighted audience, which was given the opportunity of witnessing the transformation and perfection of a major musical genre\".\nWith substantial returns from his concerts and elsewhere, Mozart and his wife adopted a more luxurious lifestyle. They moved to an expensive apartment, with a yearly rent of 460 florins. Mozart bought a fine fortepiano from Anton Walter for about 900 florins, and a billiard table for about 300. The Mozarts sent their son Karl Thomas to an expensive boarding school and kept servants. During this period Mozart saved little of his income.\nOn 14 December 1784, Mozart became a Freemason, admitted to the lodge Zur Wohlt\u00e4tigkeit (\"Beneficence\"). Freemasonry played an essential role in the remainder of Mozart's life: he attended meetings, a number of his friends were Masons, and on various occasions, he composed Masonic music, e.g. the Maurerische Trauermusik.\n1786\u201387: Return to opera.\nDespite the great success of \"Die Entf\u00fchrung aus dem Serail\", Mozart did little operatic writing for the next four years, producing only two unfinished works and the one-act \"Der Schauspieldirektor\". He focused instead on his career as a piano soloist and writer of concertos. Around the end of 1785, Mozart moved away from keyboard writing and began his famous operatic collaboration with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. The year 1786 saw the successful premiere of \"Le nozze di Figaro\" in Vienna. Its reception in Prague later in the year was even warmer, and this led to a second collaboration with Da Ponte: the opera \"Don Giovanni\", which premiered in October 1787 to acclaim in Prague, but less success in Vienna during 1788. The two are among Mozart's most famous works and are mainstays of operatic repertoire today, though at their premieres their musical complexity caused difficulty both for listeners and for performers. These developments were not witnessed by Mozart's father, who had died on 28 May 1787.\nIn December 1787, Mozart finally obtained a steady post under aristocratic patronage. Emperor Joseph II appointed him as his \"chamber composer\", a post that had fallen vacant the previous month on the death of Gluck. It was a part-time appointment, paying just 800 florins per year, and required Mozart only to compose dances for the annual balls in the Redoutensaal (see \"Mozart and dance\"). This modest income became important to Mozart when hard times arrived. Court records show that Joseph aimed to keep the esteemed composer from leaving Vienna in pursuit of better prospects.\nIn 1787, the young Ludwig van Beethoven spent several weeks in Vienna, hoping to study with Mozart. No reliable records survive to indicate whether the two composers ever met.\nLater years.\n1788\u201390.\nToward the end of the decade, Mozart's circumstances worsened. Around 1786, he ceased to appear frequently in public concerts, and his income shrank. This was a difficult time for musicians in Vienna because of the Austro-Turkish War: both the general level of prosperity and the ability of the aristocracy to support music had declined. According to Solomon, in 1788, Mozart saw a 66% decline in his income compared to his best years in 1781.\nBy mid-1788, Mozart and his family had moved from central Vienna to the suburb of Alsergrund. Although it has been suggested that Mozart aimed to reduce his rental expenses by moving to a suburb, as he wrote in his letter to Michael von Puchberg, Mozart had not reduced his expenses but merely increased the housing space at his disposal. Mozart began to borrow money, most often from his friend and fellow mason Puchberg; \"a pitiful sequence of letters pleading for loans\" survives. Maynard Solomon and others have suggested that Mozart was suffering from depression, and it seems his musical output slowed. Major works of the period include the last three symphonies (Nos.\u00a039, 40, and 41, all from 1788), and the last of the three Da Ponte operas, \"Cos\u00ec fan tutte\", premiered in 1790.\nAround this time, Mozart made some long journeys hoping to improve his fortunes, visiting Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin in the spring of 1789, and Frankfurt, Mannheim, and other German cities in 1790.\n1791.\nMozart's last year was, until his final illness struck, a time of high productivity\u2014and by some accounts, one of personal recovery. He composed a great deal, including some of his most admired works: the opera \"The Magic Flute\"; the final piano concerto (K.\u00a0595 in B\u266d); the Clarinet Concerto K.\u00a0622; the last in his series of string quintets (K.\u00a0614 in E\u266d); the motet Ave verum corpus K.\u00a0618; and the unfinished Requiem K.\u00a0626.\nMozart's financial situation, a source of anxiety in 1790, finally began to improve. Although the evidence is inconclusive, it appears that wealthy patrons in Hungary and Amsterdam pledged annuities to Mozart in return for the occasional composition. He is thought to have benefited from the sale of dance music written in his role as Imperial chamber composer. Mozart no longer borrowed large sums from Puchberg and began to pay off his debts.\nHe experienced great satisfaction in the public success of some of his works, notably \"The Magic Flute\" (which was performed several times in the short period between its premiere and Mozart's death) and the Little Masonic Cantata K.\u00a0623, premiered on 17 November 1791.\nFinal illness and death.\nMozart fell ill while in Prague for the premiere, on 6September 1791, of his opera \"La clemenza di Tito\", which was written in that same year on commission for Emperor Leopold II's coronation festivities. He continued his professional functions for some time and conducted the premiere of \"The Magic Flute\" on 30 September. His health deteriorated on 20 November, at which point he became bedridden, suffering from swelling, pain, and vomiting.\nMozart was nursed in his final days by his wife and her youngest sister and was attended by the family doctor, Thomas Franz Closset. He was mentally occupied with the task of finishing his Requiem, but the evidence that he dictated passages to his student Franz Xaver S\u00fcssmayr is minimal.\nMozart died in his home on at 12:55 am. The \"New Grove\" describes his funeral:\nMozart was interred in a common grave, in accordance with contemporary Viennese custom, at the St. Marx Cemetery outside the city on 7December. If, as later reports say, no mourners attended, that too is consistent with Viennese burial customs at the time; later Otto Jahn (1856) wrote that Salieri, S\u00fcssmayr, van Swieten and two other musicians were present. The tale of a storm and snow is false; the day was calm and mild.\nThe expression \"common grave\" refers to neither a communal grave nor a pauper's grave, but an individual grave for a member of the common people (i.e., not the aristocracy). Common graves were subject to excavation after ten years; the graves of aristocrats were not.\nThe cause of Mozart's death is not known with certainty. The official record of \"hitziges Frieselfieber\" (\"severe miliary fever\", referring to a rash that looks like millet seeds) is more a symptomatic description than a diagnosis. Researchers have suggested more than a hundred causes of death, including acute rheumatic fever, streptococcal infection, trichinosis, influenza, mercury poisoning, and a rare kidney ailment.\nMozart's modest funeral did not reflect his standing with the public as a composer; memorial services and concerts in Vienna and Prague were well attended. Indeed, in the period immediately after his death, his reputation rose substantially. Solomon describes an \"unprecedented wave of enthusiasm\" for his work; biographies were written first by Schlichtegroll, Niemetschek, and Nissen, and publishers vied to produce complete editions of his works.\nAppearance and character.\nMozart's physical appearance was described by tenor Michael Kelly in his \"Reminiscences\": \"a remarkably small man, very thin and pale, with a profusion of fine, fair hair of which he was rather vain\". His early biographer Niemetschek wrote, \"there was nothing special about [his] physique... He was small and his countenance, except for his large intense eyes, gave no signs of his genius.\" His facial complexion was pitted, a reminder of his childhood case of smallpox. Of his voice, his wife later wrote that it \"was a tenor, rather soft in speaking and delicate in singing, but when anything excited him, or it became necessary to exert it, it was both powerful and energetic.\"\nHe loved elegant clothing. Kelly remembered him at a rehearsal: \"[He] was on the stage with his crimson pelisse and gold-laced cocked hat, giving the time of the music to the orchestra.\" Based on paintings that researchers were able to find of Mozart, he seemed to wear a white wig for most of his formal occasions\u2014researchers of the Salzburg Mozarteum declared that only one of his fourteen portraits they had found showed him without his wig.\nMozart usually worked long and hard, finishing compositions at a tremendous pace as deadlines approached. He often made sketches and drafts; unlike Beethoven's, these are mostly not preserved, as his wife sought to destroy them after his death.\nMozart lived at the centre of the Viennese musical world and knew a significant number and variety of people: fellow musicians, theatrical performers, fellow Salzburgers, and aristocrats, including some acquaintance with Emperor Joseph II. Solomon considers his three closest friends to have been Gottfried von Jacquin, Count August Hatzfeld, and Sigmund Barisani; others included his elder colleague Joseph Haydn, singers Franz Xaver Gerl and Benedikt Schack, and the horn player Joseph Leutgeb. Leutgeb and Mozart carried on a kind of friendly mockery, often with Leutgeb as the butt of Mozart's practical jokes.\nHe enjoyed billiards, dancing, and kept pets, including a canary, a starling, a dog, and a horse for recreational riding. He had a startling fondness for scatological humour, which is preserved in his surviving letters, notably those written to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart around 1777\u20131778, and in his correspondence with his sister and parents. Mozart also wrote scatological music, a series of canons that he sang with his friends. He had an ear for languages, and having travelled all over Europe as a boy, was fluent in Latin, Italian, and French in addition to his native Salzburg dialect of German. He possibly also understood and spoke some English, having jokingly written \"You are an ass\" after his 19-year-old student Thomas Attwood made a thoughtless mistake on his exercise papers.\nMozart was raised a Catholic and remained a devout member of the Church throughout his life. He embraced the teachings of Freemasonry in 1784.\nWorks, musical style, and innovations.\nStyle.\nMozart's music, like Haydn's, stands as an archetype of the Classical style. At the time he began composing, European music was dominated by the \"style galant\", a reaction against the highly evolved intricacy of the Baroque. Progressively, and in large part at the hands of Mozart himself, the contrapuntal complexities of the late Baroque emerged once more, moderated and disciplined by new forms, and adapted to a new aesthetic and social milieu. Mozart was a versatile composer, and wrote in every major genre, including symphony, opera, the solo concerto, chamber music including string quartet and string quintet, and the piano sonata. These forms were not new, but Mozart advanced their technical sophistication and emotional reach. He almost single-handedly developed and popularised the Classical piano concerto. He wrote a great deal of religious music, including large-scale masses, as well as dances, divertimenti, serenades, and other forms of light entertainment.\nThe central traits of the Classical style are all present in Mozart's music. Clarity, balance, and transparency are the hallmarks of his work, but simplistic notions of its delicacy mask the exceptional power of his finest masterpieces, such as the Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K.\u00a0491; the Symphony No.\u00a040 in G minor, K.\u00a0550; and the opera \"Don Giovanni\". Charles Rosen makes the point forcefully:\nIt is only through recognising the violence and sensuality at the centre of Mozart's work that we can make a start towards a comprehension of his structures and an insight into his magnificence. In a paradoxical way, Schumann's superficial characterisation of the G minor Symphony can help us to see Mozart's daemon more steadily. In all of Mozart's supreme expressions of suffering and terror, there is something shockingly voluptuous.\nDuring his last decade, Mozart frequently exploited chromatic harmony. A notable instance is his \"String Quartet in C major\", K.\u00a0465 (1785), whose introduction abounds in chromatic suspensions, giving rise to the work's nickname, the \"Dissonance\" quartet.\nMozart had a gift for absorbing and adapting the valuable features of others' music. His travels helped in the forging of a unique compositional language. In London as a child, he met J.\u00a0C. Bach and heard his music. In Paris, Mannheim, and Vienna he met with other compositional influences, as well as the avant-garde capabilities of the Mannheim orchestra. In Italy, he encountered the Italian overture and opera buffa, both of which deeply affected the evolution of his practice. In London and Italy, the galant style was in the ascendent: simple, light music with a mania for cadencing; an emphasis on tonic, dominant, and subdominant to the exclusion of other harmonies; symmetrical phrases; and clearly articulated partitions in the overall form of movements. Some of Mozart's early symphonies are Italian overtures, with three movements running into each other; many are homotonal (all three movements having the same key signature, with the slow middle movement being in the relative minor). Others mimic the works of J.\u00a0C. Bach, and others show the simple rounded binary forms turned out by Viennese composers.\nAs Mozart matured, he progressively incorporated more features adapted from the Baroque. For example, the Symphony No.\u00a029 in A major K.\u00a0201 has a contrapuntal main theme in its first movement, and experimentation with irregular phrase lengths. Some of his quartets from 1773 have fugal finales, probably influenced by Haydn, who had included three such finales in his recently published Opus\u00a020 set. The influence of the \"Sturm und Drang\" (\"Storm and Stress\") period in music, with its brief foreshadowing of the Romantic era, is evident in the music of both composers at that time. Mozart's Symphony No.\u00a025 in G minor K.\u00a0183 is another excellent example.\nMozart would sometimes switch his focus between operas and instrumental music. He produced operas in each of the prevailing styles: opera buffa, such as \"Le nozze di Figaro\", \"Don Giovanni\", and \"Cos\u00ec fan tutte\"; opera seria, such as \"Idomeneo\"; and Singspiel, of which \"Die Zauberfl\u00f6te\" is the most famous example by any composer. In his later operas, he employed subtle changes in instrumentation, orchestral texture, and tone colour, for emotional depth and to mark dramatic shifts. Here, his advances in opera and instrumental composing interacted: his increasingly sophisticated use of the orchestra in the symphonies and concertos influenced his operatic orchestration, and his developing subtlety in using the orchestra to psychological effect in his operas was in turn reflected in his later non-operatic compositions.\nK\u00f6chel catalogue.\nFor unambiguous identification of works by Mozart, a \"K\u00f6chel catalogue number\" is used. This is a unique number assigned, in regular chronological order, to every one of his known works. A work is referenced by the abbreviation \"K.\" or \"KV\" followed by this number. The first edition of the catalogue was completed in 1862 by Ludwig von K\u00f6chel. It has since been repeatedly updated, as scholarly research improves knowledge of the dates and authenticity of individual works.\nInstruments.\nAlthough some of Mozart's early pieces were written for harpsichord, he also became acquainted in his early years with fortepianos made by Regensburg builder Franz Jakob Sp\u00e4th. Later when Mozart was visiting Augsburg, he was impressed by Stein fortepianos and shared this in a letter to his father. On 22 October 1777, Mozart had premiered his triple-piano concerto, K. 242, on instruments provided by Stein. The Augsburg Cathedral organist Demmler was playing the first, Mozart the second and Stein the third part. In 1783, when living in Vienna he purchased an instrument by Walter. Leopold Mozart confirmed the attachment which Mozart had with his Walter fortepiano: \"It is impossible to describe the hustle and bustle. Your brother's pianoforte has been moved at least twelve times from his house to the theatre or to someone else's house.\"\nInfluence.\nHis most famous pupil was Johann Nepomuk Hummel, a transitional figure between the Classical and Romantic eras whom the Mozarts took into their Vienna home for two years as a child. More important is the influence Mozart had on composers of later generations. Ever since the surge in his reputation after his death, studying his scores has been a standard part of a classical musician's training.\nLudwig van Beethoven, Mozart's junior by fifteen years, was deeply influenced by his work, with which he was acquainted as a teenager. He is thought to have performed Mozart's operas while playing in the court orchestra at Bonn and travelled to Vienna in 1787 hoping to study with the older composer. Some of have direct models in comparable works by Mozart, and he wrote cadenzas (WoO\u00a058) to Mozart's D minor piano concerto K.\u00a0466.\nComposers have paid homage to Mozart by writing sets of variations on his themes. Beethoven wrote four such sets (Op.\u00a066, WoO\u00a028, WoO\u00a040, WoO\u00a046). Others include Fernando Sor's Introduction and Variations on a Theme by Mozart (1821), Mikhail Glinka's Variations on a Theme from Mozart's Opera \"The Magic Flute\" (1822), Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin's Variations on \"L\u00e0 ci darem la mano\" from \"Don Giovanni\" (1827), and Max Reger's Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart (1914), based on the variation theme in the piano sonata K.\u00a0331. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who revered Mozart, wrote his Orchestral Suite No.\u00a04 in G, \"Mozartiana\" (1887), as a tribute to him.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nFurther reading.\n\"See for an extensive bibliography\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nExternal links.\nDigitized documents\nSheet music"}, "descending_order": ["16918479", "33163"], "permutation_1": ["33163", "16918479"], "permutation_2": ["33163", "16918479"], "permutation_3": ["33163", "16918479"]}
{"id": "3hop1__437119_23998_24055", "docs_added": {"53825": "New Haven, Connecticut\nNew Haven is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is the third largest city in Connecticut after Bridgeport and Stamford, the largest city in the South Central Connecticut Planning Region, and the principal municipality of Greater New Haven, which had a total population of 864,835 in 2020.\nNew Haven was one of the first planned cities in the U.S. A year after its founding by English Puritans in 1638, eight streets were laid out in a four-by-four grid, creating the \"Nine Square Plan\". The central common block is the New Haven Green, a square at the center of Downtown New Haven. The Green is now a National Historic Landmark, and the \"Nine Square Plan\" is recognized by the American Planning Association as a National Planning Landmark.\nNew Haven is the home of Yale University, New Haven's biggest taxpayer and employer, and an integral part of the city's economy. Health care, professional and financial services and retail trade also contribute to the city's economic activity.\nThe city served as co-capital of Connecticut from 1701 until 1873, when sole governance was transferred to the more centrally located city of Hartford. New Haven has since billed itself as the \"Cultural Capital of Connecticut\" for its supply of established theaters, museums, and music venues. New Haven had the first public tree planting program in the U.S., producing a canopy of mature trees (including some large elms) that gave the city the nickname \"The Elm City\".\nHistory.\nPre-colonial foundation as an independent colony.\nBefore Europeans arrived, the New Haven area was the home of the Quinnipiac tribe of Native Americans, who lived in villages around the harbor and sustained an economy of local fisheries and the farming of maize. The area was briefly visited by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block in 1614. Dutch traders set up a small trading system of beaver pelts with the local inhabitants, but trade was sporadic and the Dutch did not settle permanently in the area.\nIn 1637, a small party of Puritans did a reconnaissance of the New Haven harbor area and wintered over. In April 1638, the main party of five hundred Puritans, who had left the Massachusetts Bay Colony under the leadership of Reverend John Davenport and London merchant Theophilus Eaton, sailed into the harbor. It was their hope to set up a theological community with the government more closely linked to the church than that in Massachusetts, and to exploit the area's potential as a port. The Quinnipiacs, who were under attack by neighboring Pequots, sold their land to the settlers in return for a pledge of protection.\nBy 1640, \"Quinnipiac's\" theocratic government and nine-square grid plan were in place, and the town was renamed New Haven, with 'haven' meaning harbor or port. However, the area to the north remained Quinnipiac until 1678, when it was renamed Hamden. The settlement became the headquarters of the New Haven Colony, distinct from the Connecticut Colony previously established to the north centering on Hartford. Reflecting its theocratic roots, the New Haven Colony forbade the establishment of other churches, whereas the Connecticut Colony permitted them.\nEconomic disaster struck New Haven in 1646, when the town sent its first fully loaded ship of local goods (the \"Great Shippe\") back to England. It never reached its destination, and its disappearance hindered New Haven's development as compared to the rising trade powers of Boston and New Amsterdam (modern day New York City).\nIn 1660, Colony founder John Davenport's wishes were fulfilled, and Hopkins School was founded in New Haven with money from the estate of Edward Hopkins.\nIn 1661, the Regicides who had signed the death warrant of Charles I of England were pursued by Charles II. Two of them, Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe, fled to New Haven for refuge. Davenport arranged for them to hide in the West Rock hills northwest of the town. A third judge, John Dixwell, later joined the others. None of the three were ever returned to England for trial; Dixwell died of old age in New Haven, the others likewise elsewhere in New England.\nAs part of the Connecticut Colony.\nIn 1664, New Haven became part of the Connecticut Colony when the two colonies were merged under political pressure from England. Seeking to establish a new theocracy elsewhere, some members of the New Haven Colony went on to establish Newark, New Jersey.\nNew Haven was made co-capital of Connecticut in 1701, a status it retained until 1873.\nIn 1716, the Collegiate School relocated from Old Saybrook to New Haven, establishing it as a center of learning. In 1718, in response to a large donation from East India Company merchant Elihu Yale, former Governor of Madras, the Collegiate School was renamed Yale College.\nFor over a century, New Haven citizens had fought in the colonial militia alongside regular British forces, including the French and Indian War. As the American Revolution approached, General David Wooster and other influential residents hoped that the conflict with the British parliament could be resolved short of rebellion. On April 23, 1775, Captain Benedict Arnold commanded the Second Company, Governor's Foot Guard, of New Haven to break into the powder house to arm themselves for a three-day march to Cambridge, Massachusetts, an event still celebrated in New Haven as Powder House Day. Other New Haven militia members were on hand to escort George Washington from his overnight stay in New Haven on his way to Cambridge. Contemporary reports, from both sides, remark on the New Haven volunteers' professional military bearing, including uniforms.\nOn July 5, 1779, 2,600 loyalists and British regulars under General William Tryon, governor of New York, landed in New Haven Harbor and raided the town of 3,500. A militia of Yale students had been preparing for battle, and former Yale president and Yale Divinity School professor Naphtali Daggett rode out to confront the Redcoats. Yale president Ezra Stiles recounted in his diary that while he moved furniture in anticipation of battle, he still couldn't quite believe the revolution had begun. New Haven was not torched as the invaders did with Danbury in 1777, or Fairfield and Norwalk a week after the New Haven raid, preserving many of the town's colonial features.\nPost-colonial period and industrialization.\nNew Haven was incorporated as a city in 1784, and Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Constitution and author of the \"Connecticut Compromise\", became the new city's first mayor.\nThe city struck fortune in the late 18th century with the inventions and industrial activity of Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate who remained in New Haven to develop the cotton gin and establish a gun-manufacturing factory in the northern part of the city near the Hamden town line. That area is still known as Whitneyville, and the main road through both towns is known as Whitney Avenue. The factory is now the Eli Whitney Museum, which has a particular emphasis on activities for children and exhibits pertaining to the A. C. Gilbert Company. His factory, along with that of Simeon North, and the lively clock-making and brass hardware sectors, contributed to making early Connecticut a powerful manufacturing economy; so many arms manufacturers sprang up that the state became known as \"The Arsenal of America\". It was in Whitney's gun-manufacturing plant that Samuel Colt invented the automatic revolver in 1836. Many other talented machinists and firearms designers would go on to found successful firearms manufacturing companies in New Haven, including Oliver Winchester and O.F. Mossberg & Sons.\nThe Farmington Canal, created in the early 19th century, was a short-lived transporter of goods into the interior regions of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and ran from New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts.\nNew Haven was to be the site of the first college for African Americans in the United States, but the plan was obstructed by efforts led by Yale Law School founder and former New Haven Mayor David Daggett, who went on to serve as a U.S. Senator and judge on Connecticut's highest court. Daggett denigrated African Americans, denied they were citizens, and presided over the trial of a woman persecuted for trying to admit an African American girl to her boarding school and, having that effort blocked, running a boarding school for African American girls.\nNew Haven was home to one of the important early events in the burgeoning anti-slavery movement when, in 1839, the trial of mutineering Mende tribesmen being transported as slaves on the Spanish slaveship \"Amistad\" was held in New Haven's United States District Court. There is a statue of Joseph Cinqu\u00e9, the informal leader of the slaves, beside City Hall. See \"Museums\" below for more information. Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech on slavery in New Haven in 1860, shortly before he secured the Republican nomination for President.\nThe American Civil War boosted the local economy with wartime purchases of industrial goods, including that of the New Haven Arms Company, which would later become the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. (Winchester would continue to produce arms in New Haven until 2006, and many of the buildings that were a part of the Winchester plant are now a part of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company Historic District). After the war, population grew and doubled by the start of the 20th century, most notably due to the influx of immigrants from southern Europe, particularly Italy. Today, roughly half the populations of East Haven, West Haven, and North Haven are Italian-American. Jewish immigration to New Haven has left an enduring mark on the city. Westville was the center of Jewish life in New Haven, though today many have fanned out to suburban communities such as Woodbridge and Cheshire. Lowell House, the city's first settlement, opened in 1900.\nPost-industrial era and urban redevelopment.\nNew Haven's expansion continued during the two World Wars, with most new inhabitants being African Americans from the American South, and Puerto Ricans. The city reached its peak population after World War II. The area of New Haven is only , encouraging further development of new housing after 1950 in adjacent, suburban towns. Moreover, as in other U.S. cities in the 1950s, New Haven began to suffer white flight of middle-class workers. One author suggested that aggressive redlining and rezoning made it difficult for residents to obtain financing for older, deteriorating urban housing stock, thereby condemning such structures to deterioration.\nIn 1954, then-mayor Richard C. Lee began some of the earliest major urban renewal projects in the United States. Certain sections of downtown New Haven were redeveloped to include museums, new office towers, a hotel, and large shopping complexes. Other parts of the city, particularly the Wooster Square and Fair Haven neighborhoods were affected by the construction of Interstate 95 along the Long Wharf section, Interstate 91, and the Oak Street Connector. The Oak Street Connector (Route 34), running between Interstate 95, downtown, and The Hill neighborhood, was originally intended as a highway to the city's western suburbs but was only completed as a highway to the downtown area, with the area to the west becoming a boulevard (See \"Redevelopment\" below).\nIn 1970, a series of criminal prosecutions against various members of the Black Panther Party took place in New Haven, inciting mass protests on the New Haven Green involving twelve thousand demonstrators and many well-known New Left political activists. (See \"Political Culture\" below for more information). From the 1960s through the early 1990s, some areas of New Haven continued to decline both economically and in terms of population despite attempts to resurrect certain neighborhoods through renewal projects. In conjunction with its declining population, New Haven experienced a steep rise in its crime rate.\nSince approximately 2000, many parts of downtown New Haven have been revitalized with new restaurants, nightlife, and small retail stores. In particular, the area surrounding the New Haven Green has experienced an influx of apartments and condominiums. In addition, two new supermarkets opened to serve downtown's growing residential population: a Stop & Shop opened just west of downtown, while Elm City Market, located one block from the Green, opened in 2011. The recent turnaround of downtown New Haven has received positive press from various periodicals.\nMajor projects include the current construction of a new campus for Gateway Community College downtown, and also a 32-story, 500-unit apartment/retail building called 360 State Street. The 360 State Street project is now occupied and is the largest residential building in Connecticut. A new boathouse and dock is planned for New Haven Harbor, and the linear park Farmington Canal Trail is set to extend into downtown New Haven within the coming year. Additionally, foundation and ramp work to widen I-95 to create a new harbor crossing for New Haven, with an extradosed bridge to replace the 1950s-era Q Bridge, has begun. The city still hopes to redevelop the site of the New Haven Coliseum, which was demolished in 2007.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 18 white firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no black firefighters scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. In the subsequent \"Ricci v. DeStefano\" decision the court found 5\u20134 that New Haven's decision to ignore the test results violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a result, a district court subsequently ordered the city to promote 14 of the white firefighters.\nIn 2010 and 2011, state and federal funds were awarded to Connecticut (and Massachusetts) to construct the Hartford Line, with a southern terminus at New Haven's Union Station and a northern terminus at Springfield's Union Station. According to the White House, \"This corridor [currently] has one train per day connecting communities in Connecticut and Massachusetts to the Northeast Corridor and Vermont. The vision for this corridor is to restore the alignment to its original route via the Knowledge Corridor in western Massachusetts, improving trip time and increasing the population base that can be served.\" Set for construction in 2013, the \"Knowledge Corridor high speed intercity passenger rail\" project will cost approximately $1\u00a0billion, and the ultimate northern terminus for the project is reported to be Montreal in Canada. Train speeds between will reportedly exceed and increase both cities' rail traffic exponentially.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 6.67%, is water.\nNew Haven's best-known geographic features are its large, shallow harbor, and two reddish basalt trap rock ridges which rise to the northeast and northwest of the city core. These trap rocks are known respectively as East Rock and West Rock, and both serve as extensive parks. West Rock has been tunneled through to make way for the east\u2013west passage of the Wilbur Cross Parkway (the only highway tunnel through a natural obstacle in Connecticut), and once served as the hideout of the \"Regicides\" (see: Regicides Trail). Most New Haveners refer to these men as \"The Three Judges\". East Rock features the prominent Soldiers and Sailors war monument on its peak as well as the \"Great/Giant Steps\" which run up the rock's cliffside.\nThe city is drained by three rivers; the West, Mill, and Quinnipiac, named in order from west to east. The West River discharges into West Haven Harbor, while the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers discharge into New Haven Harbor. Both harbors are embayments of Long Island Sound. In addition, several smaller streams flow through the city's neighborhoods, including Wintergreen Brook, the Beaver Ponds Outlet, Wilmot Brook, Belden Brook, and Prospect Creek. Not all of these small streams have continuous flow year-round.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen classification, New Haven experiences a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\"), bordering a hot-summer humid continental climate (\"Dfa\"). The city has hot, humid summers and cool to cold winters. From May to late September, the weather is typically hot and humid, with average temperatures exceeding on 70 days per year. In summer, the Bermuda High creates as southern flow of warm and humid air, with frequent (but brief) thundershowers. October to early December is normally mild to cool late in the season, while early spring (April) can be cool to warm. Winters are more variable, with cool to cold temperatures, mixed with warmer spells, with both rain and snow fall.\nWhile the weather patterns that affect New Haven result from a primarily offshore direction, thus reducing the marine influence of Long Island Sound, the location on Long Island Sound often influences the weather along the coastline compared to inland. During summer heat waves, temperatures may reach or higher on occasion with heat-index values of over . Tropical cyclones have struck New Haven in the past, including 1938 Hurricane (Long Island Express), Hurricane Carol in 1954, Hurricane Gloria in 1985. The hardiness zone is 7a.\nStreetscape.\nNew Haven has a long tradition of urban planning and a purposeful design for the city's layout. The city could be argued to have some of the first preconceived layouts in the country. Upon founding, New Haven was laid out in a grid plan of nine square blocks; the central square was left open, in the tradition of many New England towns, as the city green (a commons area). The city also instituted the first public tree planting program in America. As in other cities, many of the elms that gave New Haven the nickname \"Elm City\" perished in the mid-20th century due to Dutch elm disease, although many have since been replanted. The New Haven Green is currently home to three separate historic churches which speak to the original theocratic nature of the city. The Green remains the social center of the city today. It was named a National Historic Landmark in 1970.\nDowntown New Haven, occupied by nearly 7,000 residents, has a more residential character than most downtowns. The downtown area provides about half of the city's jobs and half of its tax base and in recent years has become filled with dozens of new upscale restaurants, in addition to shops and thousands of apartments and condominium units which subsequently help overall growth of the city.\nNeighborhoods.\nThe city has many distinct neighborhoods. In addition to Downtown, centered on the central business district and the Green, are the following neighborhoods: the west central neighborhoods of Dixwell and Dwight; the southern neighborhoods of The Hill, historic water-front City Point (or Oyster Point), and the harborside district of Long Wharf; the western neighborhoods of Beaver Hills, Edgewood, West River, Westville, Amity, and West Rock-Westhills; East Rock, Cedar Hill, Prospect Hill, and Newhallville in the northern side of town; the east central neighborhoods of Mill River and Wooster Square, an Italian-American neighborhood; Fair Haven, an immigrant community located between the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers; Quinnipiac Meadows and Fair Haven Heights across the Quinnipiac River; and facing the eastern side of the harbor, The Annex and East Shore (or Morris Cove).\nDemographics.\nCensus data.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nThe U.S. Census Bureau reports a 2010 population of 129,779, with 47,094 households and 25,854 families within the city of New Haven. The population density was . There were 52,941 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 42.6% White, 35.4% African American, 0.5% Native American, 4.6% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 12.9% from other races, and 3.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 27.4% of the population. Non-Hispanic Whites were 31.8% of the population in 2010, down from 69.6% in 1970. The city's Latino population is growing rapidly. Previous influxes among ethnic groups have been African-Americans in the postwar era, and Irish, Italian and (to a lesser degree) Slavic peoples in the prewar period.\nAs of the 2010 census, of the 47,094 households, 29.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 27.5% include married couples living together, 22.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 36.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.5% had someone living alone who was 65\u00a0years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40 and the average family size 3.19.\nThe ages of New Haven's residents were 25.4% under the age of 18, 16.4% from 18 to 24, 31.2% from 25 to 44, 16.7% from 45 to 64, and 10.2% who were 65\u00a0years of age or older. The median age was 29\u00a0years, which was significantly lower than the national average. There were 91.8 males per 100 females. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.6 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $29,604, and the median income for a family was $35,950. Median income for males was $33,605, compared with $28,424 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,393. About 20.5% of families and 24.4% of the population were living below the poverty line, including 32.2% of those under age 18 and 17.9% of those age 65 or over.\nOther data.\nIt is estimated that 14% of New Haven residents are pedestrian commuters, ranking it number four by highest percentage in the United States. This is primarily due to New Haven's small area and the presence of Yale University.\nNew Haven is noted for having the highest percentage of Italian American residents of any US city, and is noted for its local style of pizza.\nA study of the demographics of the New Haven metro area, based on age, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity, found that they were the closest of any American city to the national average.\nEconomy.\nNew Haven's economy originally was based in manufacturing, but the postwar period brought rapid industrial decline; the entire Northeast was affected, and medium-sized cities with large working-class populations, like New Haven, were hit particularly hard. Simultaneously, the growth and expansion of Yale University further affected the economic shift. Today, over half (56%) of the city's economy is now made up of services, in particular education and health care; Yale is the city's largest employer, followed by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital. Other large employers include Southern Connecticut State University, Assa Abloy lock manufacturing, the Knights of Columbus headquarters, Higher One, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Covidien and United Illuminating. Clothing stores Gant and Ann Taylor were founded in the city.\nIn 2017, New Haven was ranked by a Verizon study as one of the top 10 cities in America for launching tech startups, and top two in New England.\nIndustry sectors: Agriculture (.6%), Construction and Mining (4.9%), Manufacturing (2.9%), Transportation and Utilities (2.9%), Trade (21.7%), Finance and Real Estate (7.1%), Services (55.9%), Government (4.0%)\nHeadquarters.\nThe Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization and a Fortune 1000 company, is headquartered in New Haven. Amphenol, based in Greater New Haven (Wallingford), is a Fortune 100 company. Eight Courant 100 companies are based in Greater New Haven, with four headquartered in New Haven proper. New Haven-based companies traded on stock exchanges include NewAlliance Bank, the second largest bank in Connecticut and fourth-largest in New England (NYSE: NAL), Higher One Holdings (NYSE: ONE), a financial services firm, United Illuminating, the electricity distributor for southern Connecticut (NYSE: UIL), and Transpro Inc. (AMEX: TPR). The American division of Assa Abloy (one of the world's leading manufacturers of locks) is located in the city. The Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET) began operations in the city as the District Telephone Company of New Haven in 1878; the company remains headquartered in New Haven as a subsidiary of Frontier Communications and provides telephone service for all but two municipalities in Connecticut. SeeClickFix was founded and has been headquartered in the city since 2007. Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company (a candy-making division of the Hershey Company) was formerly located in the city. Achillion Pharmaceuticals and Alexion Pharmaceuticals were also formerly headquartered in New Haven.\nLaw and government.\nPolitical structure.\nNew Haven is governed via the mayor-council system. Connecticut municipalities (like those of neighboring states Massachusetts and Rhode Island) provide nearly all local services (such as fire and rescue, education, snow removal, etc.), as county government has been abolished since 1960.\nNew Haven County merely refers to a grouping of towns and a judicial district, not a governmental entity. New Haven is a member of the South Central Connecticut Regional Council of Governments (SCRCOG), a regional agency created to facilitate coordination between area municipal governments and state and federal agencies, in the absence of county government.\nJustin Elicker is the mayor of New Haven. He was sworn in as the 51st mayor of New Haven on January 1, 2020.\nThe city council, called the Board of Alders, consists of thirty members, each elected from single-member wards. Each of the 30 wards consists of slightly over 4,300 residents; redistricting takes place every ten years.\nThe city is overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2017, of the town's 83,694 voters, 66% were registered as Democrats (\u22124% since 2015), 4% were registered as Republicans (+1%), and 29% were unaffiliated (+3). The board of alders is dominated by Democrats; a Republican has not served as a New Haven alder since 2011.\nNew Haven is served by the New Haven Police Department, which had 443 sworn officers in 2011. The city is also served by the New Haven Fire Department.\nNew Haven lies within Connecticut's 3rd congressional district and has been represented by Rosa DeLauro since 1991. Martin Looney and Gary Holder-Winfield represent New Haven in the Connecticut State Senate, and the city lies within six districts (numbers 92 through 97) of the Connecticut House of Representatives.\nThe Greater New Haven area is served by the New Haven Judicial District Court and the New Haven Superior Court, both headquartered at the New Haven County Courthouse. The federal District Court for the District of Connecticut has a New Haven facility, the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse.\nPolitical history.\nNew Haven is the birthplace of former president George W. Bush, who was born when his father, former president George H. W. Bush, was living in New Haven while a student at Yale. In addition to being the site of the college educations of both Presidents Bush, as Yale students, New Haven was also the temporary home of former presidents William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, and Bill Clinton, as well as Secretary of State John Kerry. President Clinton met his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while the two were students at Yale Law School. Former vice presidents John C. Calhoun and Dick Cheney also studied in New Haven (although the latter did not graduate from Yale). Before the 2008 election, the last time there was not a person with ties to New Haven and Yale on either major party's ticket was 1968. James Hillhouse, a New Haven native, served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate in 1801.\nNew Haven voters overwhelmingly supported Al Gore in the 2000 election, Yale graduate John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. In the 2008 election, New Haven County was third among all Connecticut counties in campaign contributions, after Fairfield and Hartford counties. (Connecticut, in turn, was ranked 14th among all states in total campaign contributions.)\nNew Haven was the subject of \" Who Governs? Democracy and Power in An American City\", a very influential book in political science by preeminent Yale professor Robert A. Dahl, which includes an extensive history of the city and thorough description of its politics in the 1950s. New Haven's theocratic history is also mentioned several times by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic volume on 19th-century American political life, \"Democracy in America\". New Haven was the residence of conservative thinker William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1951, when he wrote his influential \"God and Man at Yale\". William Lee Miller's \"The Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society\" (1966) similarly explores the relationship between local politics in New Haven and national political movements, focusing on Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and urban renewal.\nGeorge Williamson Crawford, a Yale Law School graduate, served as the city's first black corporation counsel from 1954 to 1962, under Mayor Richard C. Lee.\nIn 1970, the New Haven Black Panther trials took place, the largest and longest trials in Connecticut history. Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale and ten other party members were tried for murdering an alleged informant. Beginning on May Day, the city became a center of protest for 12,000 Panther supporters, college students, and New Left activists (including Jean Genet, Benjamin Spock, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and John Froines), who amassed on the New Haven Green, across the street from where the trials were being held. Violent confrontations between the demonstrators and the New Haven Police occurred, and several bombs were set off in the area by radicals. The event became a rallying point for the New Left and critics of the Nixon Administration.\nDuring the summer of 2007, New Haven was the center of protests by anti-immigration groups who opposed the city's program of offering municipal ID cards, known as the Elm City Resident Card, to illegal immigrants. In 2008, the country of Ecuador opened a consulate in New Haven to serve the large Ecuadorean immigrant population in the area. It is the first foreign mission to open in New Haven since Italy opened a consulate (now closed) in the city in 1910.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 20 white and Hispanic firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no blacks scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. On June 29, 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the firefighters, agreeing that they were improperly denied promotion because of their race. The case, \"Ricci v. DeStefano\", became highly publicized and brought national attention to New Haven politics due to the involvement of then-Supreme Court nominee (and Yale Law School graduate) Sonia Sotomayor in a lower court decision.\nGarry Trudeau, creator of the political \"Doonesbury\" comic strip, attended Yale University. There he met fellow student and later Green Party candidate for Congress Charles Pillsbury, a long-time New Haven resident for whom Trudeau's comic strip is named. During his college years, Pillsbury was known by the nickname \"The Doones\". A theory of international law, which argues for a sociological normative approach in regards to jurisprudence, is named the New Haven Approach, after the city. Connecticut US senator Richard Blumenthal is a Yale graduate, as is former Connecticut US Senator Joe Lieberman who also was a New Haven resident for many years, before moving back to his hometown of Stamford.\nCrime.\nCrime increased in the 1990s, with New Haven having one of the ten highest violent crime rates per capita in the United States. In the late 1990s New Haven's crime began to stabilize. The city, adopting a policy of community policing, saw crime rates drop during the 2000s.\nViolent crime levels vary dramatically among New Haven's neighborhoods, with some areas having crime rates in line with the state of Connecticut average, and others having extremely high rates of crime. A 2011 New Haven Health Department report identifies these issues in greater detail.\nIn 2010, New Haven ranked as the 18th most dangerous city in the United States (albeit below the safety benchmark of 200.00 for the second consecutive year). However, according to a completely different analysis conducted by the \"24/7 Wall Street Blog\", in 2011 New Haven had risen to become the fourth most dangerous city in the United States, and was widely cited in the press as such.\nHowever, an analysis by the Regional Data Cooperative for Greater New Haven, Inc., has shown that due to issues of comparative denominators and other factors, such municipality-based rankings can be considered inaccurate. For example, two cities of identical population can cover widely differing land areas, making such analyses irrelevant. The research organization called for comparisons based on neighborhoods, blocks, or standard methodologies (similar to those used by Brookings, DiversityData, and other established institutions), not based on municipalities.\nEducation.\nColleges and universities.\nNew Haven is a notable center for higher education. Yale University, at the heart of downtown, is one of the city's best known features and its largest employer. New Haven is also home to Southern Connecticut State University, part of the Connecticut State University System, and Albertus Magnus College, a private institution. Gateway Community College has a campus in downtown New Haven, formerly located in the Long Wharf district; Gateway consolidated into one campus downtown into a new state-of-the-art campus (on the site of the old Macy's building) and was open for the Fall 2012 semester.\nThere are several institutions immediately outside of New Haven, as well. Quinnipiac University and the Paier College of Art are located just to the north, in the town of Hamden. The University of New Haven is located not in New Haven but in neighboring West Haven.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nNew Haven Public Schools is the school district serving the city. Wilbur Cross High School and Hillhouse High School are New Haven's two largest public secondary schools.\nHopkins School, a private school, was founded in 1660 and is the fifth-oldest educational institution in the United States. New Haven is home to a number of other private schools as well as public magnet schools, including Metropolitan Business Academy, High School in the Community, Hill Regional Career High School, Co-op High School, New Haven Academy, Edgewood Magnet School, ACES Educational Center for the Arts, the Foote School and the Sound School, all of which draw students from New Haven and suburban towns. New Haven is also home to two Achievement First charter schools, Amistad Academy and Elm City College Prep, and to Common Ground, an environmental charter school.\nThe city is renowned for its progressive school lunch programs, and participation in statewide bussing efforts toward increased diversity in schools.\nCulture.\nCuisine.\nLivability.com named New Haven as the Best Foodie City in the country in 2014. There are dozens of Zagat-rated restaurants in New Haven, the most in Connecticut and the third most in New England (after Boston and Cambridge). More than 120 restaurants are located within two blocks of the New Haven Green. The city is home to an eclectic mix of ethnic restaurants and small markets specializing in various foreign foods. Represented cuisines include Malaysian, Ethiopian, Spanish, Belgian, French, Greek, Latin American, Mexican, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Cuban, Peruvian, Syrian/Lebanese, and Turkish.\nNew Haven's greatest culinary claim to fame may be its pizza, which has been claimed to be among the best in the country, or even in the world. New Haven-style pizza, called \"apizza\", made its debut at the iconic Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana (known as Pepe's) in 1925. Apizza is baked in coal- or wood-fired brick ovens, and is notable for its thin crust. Apizza may be red (with a tomato-based sauce) or white (with a sauce of garlic and olive oil), and pies ordered \"plain\" are made without the otherwise customary mozzarella (originally smoked mozzarella, known as \"scamorza\" in Italian). A white clam pie is a well-known specialty of the restaurants on Wooster Street in the Little Italy section of New Haven, including Pepe's and Sally's Apizza (which opened in 1938). Modern Apizza on State Street, which opened in 1934, is also well-known.\nA second New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Louis' Lunch, which is located in a small brick building on Crown Street and has been serving fast food since 1895. Though fiercely debated, the restaurant's founder Louis Lassen is credited by the Library of Congress with inventing the hamburger and steak sandwich. Louis' Lunch broils hamburgers, steak sandwiches and hot dogs vertically in original antique 1898 cast iron stoves using gridirons, patented by local resident Luigi Pieragostini in 1939, that hold the meat in place while it cooks.\nA third New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Miya's, the first sustainable sushi restaurant in the world. Miya's, founded by Chef Yoshiko Lai in 1982, featured the first sustainable seafood-based sushi menu, the first plant-based sushi menu, and the first invasive species menu in the world. Second generation Miya's chef, Bun Lai, is the 2016 White House Champions of Change for Sustainable Seafood and a James Beard Foundation Award nominee. Chef Bun Lai is credited as the first chef in the world for implementing a sustainability paradigm to the cuisine of sushi.\nDuring weekday lunchtime, over 150 lunch carts and food trucks cater to diners around the city. The carts and food trucks cluster at four main points: on Long Wharf Drive, along the city's shoreline with quick access off Interstate 95, by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital in the center of the Hospital Green (Cedar and York streets), by Yale's Trumbull College (Elm and York streets), and on the intersection of Prospect and Sachem streets by the Yale School of Management.\nPopular farmers' markets, managed by the local non-profit CitySeed, set up shop weekly in several neighborhoods, including Westville/Edgewood Park, Fair Haven, Upper State Street, Wooster Square, and Downtown/New Haven Green.\nA large grocery store, the Elm City Market, opened on 360 State Street in New Haven in early fall 2011 and served local produce and groceries to the community. Originally, the market was a member-owned co-op, but debt defaults in August 2014 forced a sale of the business. It is now an employee-owned business; the co-op's previous owners received no equity in the new business.\nIn the past several years, two separate Downtown food tour companies have started offering popular restaurant tours on weekends.\nTaste of New Haven Tours offers several different weekly restaurant/bar tours and a popular pizza, bike, and pints tour. Culinary Walking Tours offers monthly restaurant tours and sponsors an annual Elm City Iron Chef competition.\nTheatre and film.\nThe city hosts numerous theatres and production houses, including the Yale Repertory Theatre, the Long Wharf Theatre, and the Shubert Theatre. There is also theatre activity from the Yale School of Drama, which works through the Yale University Theatre and the student-run Yale Cabaret. Southern Connecticut State University hosts the Lyman Center for the Performing Arts. The shuttered Palace Theatre (opposite the Shubert Theatre) was renovated and reopened as the College Street Music Hall in May 2015. Smaller theatres include the Little Theater on Lincoln Street. Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School also has a theatre on College Street. The theatre is used for student productions, and is the home to weekly services to a local non-denominational church, the City Church New Haven.\nThe Shubert Theatre once premiered many major theatrical productions before their Broadway debuts. Productions that premiered at the Shubert include \"Oklahoma!\" (which was also written in New Haven), \"Carousel\", \"South Pacific\", \"My Fair Lady\", \"The King and I\", and \"The Sound of Music\", and the Tennessee Williams play \"A Streetcar Named Desire\".\nBow Tie Cinemas owns and operates the Criterion Cinemas, the first new movie theater to open in New Haven in over 30 years and the first luxury movie complex in the city's history. The Criterion has seven screens and opened in November 2004, showing a mix of upscale first run commercial and independent film.\nMuseums.\nNew Haven has a variety of museums, many of them associated with Yale. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library features an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible. There is also the Connecticut Children's Museum; the Knights of Columbus museum near that organization's world headquarters; the Peabody Museum of Natural History; the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments; the Eli Whitney Museum (across the town line in Hamden, Connecticut, on Whitney Avenue); the Yale Center for British Art, which houses the largest collection of British art outside the U.K., and the Yale University Art Gallery, the western hemisphere's oldest college art museum. New Haven is also home to the New Haven Museum and Historical Society on Whitney Avenue, which has a library of many primary source treasures dating from Colonial times to the present.\nArtspace on Orange Street is one of several contemporary art galleries around the city, showcasing the work of local, national, and international artists. Others include City Gallery and A. Leaf Gallery in the downtown area. Westville galleries include Kehler Liddell, Jennifer Jane Gallery, and The Hungry Eye. The Erector Square complex in the Fair Haven neighborhood houses, the Parachute Factory gallery along with numerous artist studios, and the complex serves as an active destination during City-Wide Open Studios held yearly in October.\nNew Haven is the home port of a life-size replica of the historical \"Freedom Schooner Amistad\", which is open for tours at Long Wharf pier at certain times during the summer. Also at Long Wharf pier is the \"Quinnipiack\" schooner, offering sailing cruises of the harbor area throughout the summer. The \"Quinnipiack\" also functions as a floating classroom for hundreds of local students.\nMusic.\nThe New Haven Green is the site of many free music concerts, especially during the summer months. These have included the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the July Free Concerts on the Green, and the New Haven Jazz Festival in August. The Jazz Festival, which began in 1982, is one of the longest-running free outdoor festivals in the U.S., until it was canceled for 2007. Headliners such as Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles and Celia Cruz have historically drawn 30,000 to 50,000 fans, filling up the New Haven Green to capacity. The New Haven Jazz Festival was revived in 2008 and has been sponsored since by Jazz Haven.\nNew Haven is home to the concert venue Toad's Place, and a new venue, College Street Music Hall. The city has retained an alternative art and music underground that has helped to influence post-punk era music movements such as indie, college rock and underground hip-hop.\nThe Yale School of Music contributes to the city's music scene by offering hundreds of free concerts throughout the year at venues in and around the Yale campus. Large performances are held in the 2,700-seat Woolsey Hall auditorium, which contains the world's largest symphonic organs, while chamber music and recitals are performed in Sprague Hall.\nHardcore band Hatebreed are from Wallingford, but got their start in New Haven under the name Jasta 14. The band Miracle Legion formed in New Haven in 1983. Folk musicians from New Haven include Loren Mazzacane Connors and Kath Bloom.\nThe Hillhouse Opera Company is a U.S. non-profit opera company based in New Haven that performs in the New Haven area. Founded in 2008 by Victoria Leigh Gardner, Nicole Rodriguez and Jim Coatsworth Hillhouse Opera Company has performed operas as well as opera scenes programs, master classes and concert series. In 2011, the Company professionally staged the works created through the Riverview Opera Project. The Riverview Opera Project created workshops for children and adolescents at Riverview Hospital, Connecticut's only state-funded psychiatric hospital for youth, and helped them to successfully create, produce, and perform four original operas.\nFestivals.\nIn addition to the Jazz Festival (described above), New Haven serves as the home city of the annual International Festival of Arts and Ideas. New Haven's Saint Patrick's Day parade, which began in 1842, is New England's oldest and draws the largest crowds of any one-day spectator event in Connecticut. The St. Andrew the Apostle Italian Festival has taken place in the historic Wooster Square neighborhood every year since 1900. Other parishes in the city celebrate the Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua and a carnival in honor of St. Bernadette Soubirous. New Haven celebrates Powder House Day every April on the New Haven Green to commemorate the city's entrance into the Revolutionary War. The annual Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival commemorates the 1973 planting of 72 Yoshino Japanese cherry blossom trees by the New Haven Historic Commission in collaboration with the New Haven Parks Department and residents of the neighborhood. The Festival now draws well over 5,000 visitors. The Film Fest New Haven has been held annually since 1995.\nNightlife.\nIn the past decade downtown has seen an influx of new restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Large crowds are drawn to the Crown Street area downtown on weekends where many of the restaurants and bars are located. Crown Street between State and High Streets has dozens of establishments, as do nearby Temple and College Streets. Away from downtown, Upper State Street has a number of restaurants and bars popular with local residents and weekend visitors.\nNewspapers and media.\nNew Haven is served by the daily \"New Haven Register\", the weekly \"alternative\" \"New Haven Advocate\" (which is run by Tribune, the corporation owning the \"Hartford Courant\"), the online daily \"New Haven Independent\", and the monthly \"Grand News Community Newspaper.\" Downtown New Haven is covered by an in-depth civic news forum, Design New Haven. The \"Register\" also backs \"PLAY\" magazine, a weekly entertainment publication. The city is also served by several student-run papers, including the \"Yale Daily News\", the weekly \"Yale Herald\" and a humor tabloid, \"Rumpus Magazine\".\nWTNH Channel 8, the ABC affiliate for Connecticut, WCTX Channel 59, the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the state, Connecticut Public Television station WEDY channel 65, a PBS affiliate, and WTXX Channel 34, the IntrigueTV affiliate, broadcast from New Haven. All New York City news and sports team stations broadcast to New Haven County.\nSports and athletics.\nNew Haven has a history of professional sports franchises dating back to the 19th century and has been the home to professional baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer teams\u2014including the New York Giants of the National Football League from 1973 to 1974, who played at the Yale Bowl. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, New Haven consistently had minor league hockey and baseball teams, which played at the New Haven Arena (built in 1926, demolished in 1972), New Haven Coliseum (1972\u20132002), and Yale Field (1928\u2013present).\nWhen John DeStefano, Jr., became mayor of New Haven in 1995, he outlined a plan to transform the city into a major cultural and arts center in the Northeast, which involved investments in programs and projects other than sports franchises. As nearby Bridgeport built new sports facilities, the brutalist New Haven Coliseum rapidly deteriorated. Believing the upkeep on the venue to be a drain of tax dollars, the DeStefano administration closed the Coliseum in 2002; it was demolished in 2007. New Haven's last professional sports team, the New Haven County Cutters, left in 2009. The DeStefano administration did, however, see the construction of the New Haven Athletic Center in 1998, a indoor athletic facility with a seating capacity of over 3,000. The NHAC, built adjacent to Hillhouse High School, is used for New Haven public schools athletics, as well as large-scale area and state sporting events; it is the largest high school indoor sports complex in the state.\nNew Haven was the host of the 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games; then-President Bill Clinton spoke at the opening ceremonies. The city is home to the Pilot Pen International tennis event, which takes place every August at the Connecticut Tennis Center, one of the largest tennis venues in the world. New Haven biannually hosts \"The Game\" between Yale and Harvard, the country's second-oldest college football rivalry. Numerous road races take place in New Haven, including the USATF 20K Championship during the New Haven Road Race.\nGreater New Haven is home to a number of college sports teams. The Yale Bulldogs play Division I college sports, as do the Quinnipiac Bobcats in neighboring Hamden. Division II athletics are played by Southern Connecticut State University and the University of New Haven (actually located in neighboring West Haven), while Albertus Magnus College athletes perform at the Division III level.\nNew Haven is home to many New York Yankees, New York Mets, & Boston Red Sox fans due to the proximity of New York City & Boston.\nWalter Camp, deemed the \"father of American football\", was a New Havener.\nThe New Haven Warriors rugby league team play in the AMNRL. They have a large number of Pacific Islanders playing for them. Their field is located at the West Haven High School's Ken Strong Stadium. They won the 2008 AMNRL Grand Final.\nStructures.\nArchitecture.\nNew Haven has many architectural landmarks dating from every important time period and architectural style in American history. The city has been home to a number of architects and architectural firms that have left their mark on the city including Ithiel Town and Henry Austin in the 19th century and Cesar Pelli, Warren Platner, Kevin Roche, Herbert Newman and Barry Svigals in the 20th. The Yale School of Architecture has fostered this important component of the city's economy. Cass Gilbert, of the Beaux-Arts school, designed New Haven's Union Station and the New Haven Free Public Library and was also commissioned for a City Beautiful plan in 1919. Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, Alexander Jackson Davis, Philip C. Johnson, Gordon Bunshaft, Louis Kahn, James Gamble Rogers, Frank Gehry, Charles Willard Moore, Stefan Behnisch, James Polshek, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen and Robert Venturi all have designed buildings in New Haven. Yale's 1950s-era Ingalls Rink, designed by Eero Saarinen, was included on the \"America's Favorite Architecture\" list created in 2007.\nSeveral residential homes in New Haven were designed by Alice Washburn, a noted female architect whose Colonial Revival style set a standard for homes in the region.\nMany of the city's neighborhoods are well-preserved as walkable \"museums\" of 19th- and 20th-century American architecture, particularly by the New Haven Green, Hillhouse Avenue and other residential sections close to Downtown New Haven. Overall, a large proportion of the city's land area is National (NRHP) historic districts. One of the best sources on local architecture is \"New Haven: Architecture and Urban Design\", by Elizabeth Mills Brown.\nThe five tallest buildings in New Haven are:\nHistoric points of interest.\nMany historical sites exist throughout the city, including 59 properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Of these, nine are among the 60 U.S. National Historic Landmarks in Connecticut. The New Haven Green, one of the National Historic Landmarks, was formed in 1638, and is home to three 19th-century churches. Below the First Church of Christ in New Haven (referred to as the Center Church on the Green) lies a 17th-century crypt, which is open to visitors. Some of the more famous burials include the first wife of Benedict Arnold and the aunt and grandmother of President Rutherford B. Hayes; Hayes visited the crypt while President in 1880. The Old Campus of Yale University is located next to the Green, and includes Connecticut Hall, Yale's oldest building and a National Historic Landmark. The Hillhouse Avenue area, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a part of Yale's campus, has been called a walkable museum, due to its 19th-century mansions and street scape; Charles Dickens is said to have called Hillhouse Avenue \"the most beautiful street in America\" when visiting the city in 1868.\nIn 1660, Edward Whalley (a cousin and friend of Oliver Cromwell) and William Goffe, two English Civil War generals who signed the death warrant of King Charles I, hid in a rock formation in New Haven after having fled England upon the restoration of Charles II to the English throne. They were later joined by a third regicide, John Dixwell. The rock formation, which is now a part of West Rock Park, is known as Judges' Cave, and the path leading to the cave is called the Regicides Trail.\nAfter the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, the Connecticut colonial government ordered the construction of Black Rock Fort (to be built on top of an older 17th-century fort) to protect the port of New Haven. In 1779, during the Battle of New Haven, British soldiers captured Black Rock Fort and burned the barracks to the ground. The fort was reconstructed in 1807 by the federal government (on orders from the Thomas Jefferson administration), and rechristened Fort Nathan Hale, after the Revolutionary War hero who had lived in New Haven. The cannons of Fort Nathan Hale were successful in defying British war ships during the War of 1812. In 1863, during the Civil War, a second Fort Hale was built next to the original, complete with bomb-resistant bunkers and a moat, to defend the city should a Southern raid against New Haven be launched. The United States Congress deeded the site to the state in 1921, and all three versions of the fort have been restored. The site is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and receives thousands of visitors each year.\nGrove Street Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark which lies adjacent to Yale's campus, contains the graves of Roger Sherman, Eli Whitney, Noah Webster, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Charles Goodyear and Walter Camp, among other notable burials. The cemetery is noted for its Egyptian Revival gateway, and is the oldest planned burial ground in the United States. The Union League Club of New Haven building, located on Chapel Street, is notable for not only being a historic Beaux-Arts building, but also is built on the site where Roger Sherman's home once stood; George Washington is known to have stayed at the Sherman residence while President in 1789 (one of three times Washington visited New Haven throughout his lifetime).\nTwo sites pay homage to the time President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft lived in the city, as both a student and later Professor at Yale: a plaque on Prospect Street marks the site where Taft's home formerly stood, and downtown's Taft Apartment Building (formerly the Taft Hotel) bears the name of the former president who resided in the building for eight years before becoming Chief Justice of the United States.\nLighthouse Point Park, a public beach run by the city, was a popular tourist destination during the Roaring Twenties, attracting luminaries of the period such as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. The park remains popular among New Haveners, and is home to the Five Mile Point Lighthouse, constructed in 1847, and the Lighthouse Point Carousel, constructed in 1916. Five Mile Point Light was decommissioned in 1877 following the construction of Southwest Ledge Light at the entrance of the harbor, which remains in service to this day. Both of the lighthouses and the carousel are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nOther historic sites in the city include the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, which stands at the summit of East Rock, the Marsh Botanical Garden, Wooster Square, Dwight Street, Louis' Lunch, and the Farmington Canal, all of which date back to the 19th century. Other historic parks besides the Green include Edgerton Park, Edgewood Park, and East Rock Park, each of which is included on the National Register of Historic Places.\nTransportation.\nRail.\nNew Haven has two railroad stations, connected to New York City and points along the Northeast Corridor by commuter rail, regional rail and inter-city rail. Service is provided by:\nThe city's main railroad station is the historic Beaux-Arts Union Station, which serves Metro-North, Hartford Line, and Shore Line East commuter trains. Approximately 175 trains serve Union Station on weekdays. Union Station is also served by four Amtrak lines: the \"Northeast Regional\" and the high-speed \"Acela Express\" provide service to New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston, and rank as the first and second busiest routes in the country; the New Haven\u2013Springfield Line provides service to Hartford and Springfield, Massachusetts; and the \"Vermonter\" provides service to both Washington, D.C., and Vermont, from the Canada\u2013US border.\nAn additional station, State Street Station, was opened in 2002, providing passengers easier access to downtown New Haven. State Street Station is currently serviced by Shore Line East and Hartford Line trains, plus some peak-hour Metro-North trips.\nBus.\nThe New Haven Division of Connecticut Transit (CT Transit), the state's bus system, is the second largest division in the state with 24 routes. All routes originate from the New Haven Green, making it the central transfer hub of the city. Service is provided to 19 different municipalities throughout Greater New Haven. Bus routes were formerly identified by letters, but as of October 8, 2017, all service was renamed using 200-series numbers, in accordance with a renumbering of CTtransit's statewide services.\nCT Transit's Union Station Shuttle provides free service from Union Station to the New Haven Green and several New Haven parking garages. Peter Pan and Greyhound bus lines have scheduled stops at Union Station, and connections downtown can be made via the Union Station Shuttle. A private company operates the New Haven/Hartford Express which provides commuter bus service to Hartford. The Yale University Shuttle provides free transportation around New Haven for Yale students, faculty, and staff.\nThe New Haven Division buses follow routes that had originally been covered by trolley service. Horse-drawn streetcars began operating in New Haven in the 1860s, and by the mid-1890s all the lines had become electric. In the 1920s and 1930s, some of the trolley lines began to be replaced by bus lines, with the last trolley route converted to bus in 1948. The City of New Haven is in the very early stages of considering the restoration of streetcar (light-rail) service, which has been absent since the postwar period.\nBicycle.\nBikeshare.\nOn February 21, 2018, New Haven officially launched its Bike New Haven bikeshare program. based on dockless technology powered by Noa Technologies At time of launch, the program features 10 docking stations and 100 bikes, spread throughout the urban core; there are plans to reach 30 bike stations and 300 bikes by the end of April 2018. The launch of the New Haven bikeshare program coincided with the launch of Yale University's own bikeshare program, which uses the same technology powered by Noa.\nBike lanes.\nIn 2004, the first bike lane in the city was added to Orange Street, connecting East Rock Park and the East Rock neighborhood to downtown. Since then, bike lanes have also been added to sections of Howard Ave, Elm St, Dixwell Avenue, Water Street, Clinton Avenue and State Street. The city has created recommended bike routes for getting around New Haven, including use of the Canal Trail and the Orange Street lane. As of the end of 2012, bicycle lanes have also been added in both directions on Dixwell Avenue along most of the street from downtown to the Hamden town line, as well as along Howard Avenue from Yale New Haven Hospital to City Point.\nThe city has plans to create two additional bike lanes connecting Union Station with downtown, and the Westville neighborhood with downtown. The city has added dozens of covered bike parking spots at Union Station, in order to facilitate more bike commuting to the station.\nFarmington Canal Greenway.\nThe Farmington Canal Trail is a rail trail that will eventually run continuously from downtown New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts. The scenic trail follows the path of the historic New Haven and Northampton Company and the Farmington Canal. Currently, there is a continuous stretch of the trail from downtown, through Hamden and into Cheshire, making bicycle commuting between New Haven and those suburbs possible. The trail is part of the East Coast Greenway, a proposed bike path that would link every major city on the East Coast from Florida to Maine.\nRoads.\nNew Haven lies at the intersection of Interstate 95 on the coast\u2014which provides access southwards and/or westwards to the western coast of Connecticut and to New York City, and eastwards to the eastern Connecticut shoreline, Rhode Island, and eastern Massachusetts\u2014and Interstate 91, which leads northward to the interior of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont and the Canada\u2013US border. I-95 is notorious for traffic jams increasing with proximity to New York City; on the east side of New Haven it passes over the Quinnipiac River via the Pearl Harbor Memorial, or \"Q Bridge\", which often presents a major bottleneck to traffic. I-91, however, is relatively less congested, except at the intersection with I-95 during peak travel times.\nThe Oak Street Connector (Connecticut Route 34) intersects I-91 at exit 1, just south of the I-95/I-91 interchange, and runs northwest for a few blocks as an expressway spur into downtown before emptying onto surface roads. The Wilbur Cross Parkway (Connecticut Route 15) runs parallel to I-95 west of New Haven, turning northwards as it nears the city and then running northwards parallel to I-91 through the outer rim of New Haven and Hamden, offering an alternative to the I-95/I-91 journey (restricted to non-commercial vehicles). Route 15 in New Haven is the site of the only highway tunnel in the state (officially designated as Heroes Tunnel), running through West Rock, home to West Rock Park and the Three Judges Cave.\nThe city also has several major surface arteries. U.S. Route 1 (Columbus Avenue, Union Avenue, Water Street, Forbes Avenue) runs in an east\u2013west direction south of downtown serving Union Station and leading out of the city to Milford, West Haven, East Haven and Branford. The main road from downtown heading northwest is Whalley Avenue (partly signed as Route 10 and Route 63) leading to Westville and Woodbridge. Heading north towards Hamden, there are two major thoroughfares, Dixwell Avenue and Whitney Avenue. To the northeast are Middletown Avenue (Route 17), which leads to the Montowese section of North Haven, and Foxon Boulevard (Route 80), which leads to the Foxon section of East Haven and to the town of North Branford. To the west is Route 34, which leads to the city of Derby. Other major intracity arteries are Ella Grasso Boulevard (Route 10) west of downtown, and College Street, Temple Street, Church Street, Elm Street, and Grove Street in the downtown area.\nTraffic safety is a major concern for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists in New Haven. In addition to many traffic-related fatalities in the city each year, since 2005, over a dozen Yale students, staff and faculty have been killed or injured in traffic collisions on or near the campus.\nAirport.\nTweed New Haven Airport is located within the city limits east of the business district, straddling the border with neighboring East Haven. Service to approximately 25 cities is provided by Avelo Airlines, which established its first East Coast base at the airport in 2021. Breeze Airways plans to begin operations at Tweed in December 2024, and will provide service to 10 destinations. The airport is currently planning a runway lengthening and new terminal on the East Haven side of the airport.\nBus service between Downtown New Haven and Tweed is available via the CT Transit New Haven Division.\nSeaport.\nNew Haven Harbor is home to the Port of New Haven, a deep-water seaport with three berths capable of hosting vessels and barges as well as the facilities required to handle break bulk cargo. The port has the capacity to load 200 trucks a day from the ground or via loading docks. Providence and Worcester Railroad provides freight rail transportation to the port, with the railroad operating a switch engine for yard movements, a private siding for loading and unloading, and trackage over the Tomlinson Lift Bridge toward the Northeast Corridor. Approximately of inside storage and of outside storage are available at the site. Five shore cranes with a 250-ton capacity and 26 forklifts, each with a 26-ton capacity, are also available.\nOn June 17, 2013, the city commissioned the \"Nathan Hale\", a port security vessel capable of serving search and rescue, firefighting, and constabulary roles.\nInfrastructure.\nHospitals and medicine.\nThe New Haven area supports several medical facilities that are considered some of the best hospitals in the country. There are two major medical centers downtown: Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital has four pavilions, including the Yale \u2013 New Haven Children's Hospital and the Smilow Cancer Hospital; the Hospital of Saint Raphael is several blocks north, and touts its excellent cardiac emergency care program. Smaller downtown health facilities are the Temple Medical Center located downtown on Temple Street, Connecticut Mental Health Center/ across Park Street from Y-NHH, and the Hill Health Center, which serves the working-class Hill neighborhood. A large Veterans Affairs hospital is located in neighboring West Haven. To the west in Milford is Milford Hospital, and to the north in Meriden is the MidState Medical Center.\nIn recent years, Yale and the City of New Haven have been working to build a medical and biotechnology research hub in the city and Greater New Haven region. The city, state and Yale together run Science Park, a large site three blocks northwest of Yale's Science Hill campus. This multi-block site, approximately bordered by Mansfield Street, Division Street, and Shelton Avenue, is the former home of Winchester's and Olin Corporation's 45 large-scale factory buildings. Currently, sections of the site are large-scale parking lots or abandoned structures, but there is also a large remodeled and functioning area of buildings (leased primarily by a private developer) with numerous Yale employees, financial service and biotech companies.\nA second biotechnology district is being planned for the median strip on Frontage Road, on land cleared for the never-built Route 34 extension. As of late 2009, a Pfizer drug-testing clinic, a medical laboratory building serving Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital, and a mixed-use structure containing parking, housing and office space, have been constructed on this corridor. A former SNET telephone building at 300 George Street is being converted into lab space, and has been quite successful so far in attracting biotechnology and medical firms.\nPower supply facilities.\nElectricity for New Haven is generated by a 448\u00a0MW oil and gas-fired generating station located on the shore at New Haven Harbor. PPL Corporation operates a 220\u00a0MW peaking natural gas turbine plant in nearby Wallingford.\nNear New Haven there is the static inverter plant of the HVDC Cross Sound Cable.\nThere are three PureCell Model 400 fuel cells placed in the city of New Haven\u2014one at the New Haven Public Schools and newly constructed Roberto Clemente School, one at the mixed-use 360 State Street building, and one at City Hall. According to Giovanni Zinn of the city's Office of Sustainability, each fuel cell may save the city up to $1 million in energy costs over a decade. The fuel cells were provided by ClearEdge Power, formerly UTC Power. Additional fuel cells are located at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and at the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority (GNHWPCA). Ikea's New Haven facility also utilizes a 250\u00a0kW fuel cell and 940.8\u00a0kW solar array.\nNew Haven recently installed solar panels at 11 city schools with a combined power generation capacity of 1.8 MW. Owned and maintained by Greenskies, the panels allow New Haven to purchase electricity at a discounted rate through a power-purchasing agreement. The panels bring New Haven's solar capacity to 2.8 MW and will help New Haven meet its commitment to powering 100% of its municipal operations through clean energy, which it made in Summer 2017 and reaffirmed in the 2018 New Haven Climate and Sustainability Framework.\nIn popular culture.\nSeveral movies have been filmed in New Haven since 2000, including \"Mona Lisa Smile\" (2003), with Julia Roberts, \"The Life Before Her Eyes\" (2007), with Uma Thurman, and \"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull\" (2008) directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett and Shia LaBeouf. The filming of \"Crystal Skull\" involved an extensive chase sequence through the streets of New Haven. Several downtown streets were closed to traffic and received a \"makeover\" to look like streets of 1957, when the film is set. 500 locals were cast as extras for the film. In \"Everybody's Fine\" (2009), Robert De Niro has a close encounter in what is supposed to be the Denver train station; the scene was filmed in New Haven's Union Station.\n New Haven is mentioned in the song Peace Frog by the Doors, referencing a 1967 incident where vocalist Jim Morrison was arrested for \"attempting to incite a riot\" in the middle of a concert at the New Haven Arena.\nSister cities.\nNew Haven's sister cities are:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSome of these were selected because of historical connection\u2014Freetown because of the \"Amistad\" trial. Others, such as Amalfi and Afula, reflect ethnic groups in New Haven.\nIn 1990, the United Nations named New Haven a \"Peace Messenger City\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "7234091": "Sonny Berman\nAmerican jazz trumpeter\nSaul \"Sonny\" Berman (April 21, 1925 \u2013 January 16, 1947) was an American jazz trumpeter.\nBerman was born in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. He began touring at age sixteen and performed with Louis Prima, Harry James and Benny Goodman, but is best known for his later work with Woody Herman. Berman was distinguished by his passionate and innovative soloing, and his versatility of tone\u2014ranging from bold and emotional to sweetly muted. He was also known for his sense of humor, which often made its way into a playfulness and joyfulness found in his solo work.\nSonny Berman died at the age of 21 in New York City of heart failure, caused by a heroin overdose.\nDiscography.\nWith Georgie Auld\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["7234091", "53825"], "permutation_1": ["7234091", "53825"], "permutation_2": ["53825", "7234091"], "permutation_3": ["7234091", "53825"]}
{"id": "2hop__98274_154727", "docs_added": {"182000": "Gulf War\n1990\u20131991 conflict between Iraq and a 42-country coalition\n<section begin=\"lede\"/>The Gulf War was an armed conflict between Iraq and a 42-country coalition led by the United States. The coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases: Operation Desert Shield, which marked the military buildup from August 1990 to January 1991; and Operation Desert Storm, which began with the aerial bombing campaign against Iraq on 17 January 1991 and came to a close with the American-led liberation of Kuwait on 28 February 1991.\nOn 2 August 1990, Iraq, governed by Saddam Hussein, invaded neighboring Kuwait and fully occupied the country within two days. The invasion was primarily over disputes regarding Kuwait's alleged slant drilling in Iraq's Rumaila oil field, as well as to cancel Iraq's large debt to Kuwait from the recently ended Iran-Iraq War. After Iraq briefly occupied Kuwait under a rump puppet government known as the Republic of Kuwait, it split Kuwait's sovereign territory into the Saddamiyat al-Mitla' District in the north, which was absorbed into Iraq's existing Basra Governorate, and the Kuwait Governorate in the south, which became Iraq's 19th governorate. \nThe invasion of Kuwait was met with immediate international condemnation, including the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 660, which demanded Iraq's immediate withdrawal from Kuwait, and the imposition of comprehensive international sanctions against Iraq with the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 661. British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and U.S. president George H. W. Bush deployed troops and equipment into Saudi Arabia and urged other countries to send their own forces. Many countries joined the American-led coalition forming the largest military alliance since World War II. The bulk of the coalition's military power was from the United States, with Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, and Egypt as the largest lead-up contributors, in that order. \nUnited Nations Security Council Resolution 678, adopted on 29 November 1990, gave Iraq an ultimatum, expiring on 15 January 1991, to implement Resolution 660 and withdraw from Kuwait, with member-states empowered to use \"all necessary means\" to force Iraq's compliance. Initial efforts to dislodge the Iraqis from Kuwait began with aerial and naval bombardment of Iraq on 17 January, which continued for five weeks. As the Iraqi military struggled against the coalition attacks, Iraq fired missiles at Israel to provoke an Israeli military response, with the expectation that such a response would lead to the withdrawal of several Muslim-majority countries from the coalition. The provocation was unsuccessful; Israel did not retaliate and Iraq continued to remain at odds with most Muslim-majority countries. Iraqi missile barrages against coalition targets in Saudi Arabia were also largely unsuccessful, and on 24 February 1991, the coalition launched a major ground assault into Iraqi-occupied Kuwait. The offensive was a decisive victory for the coalition, who liberated Kuwait and promptly began to advance past the Iraq\u2013Kuwait border into Iraqi territory. A hundred hours after the beginning of the ground campaign, the coalition ceased its advance into Iraq and declared a ceasefire. Aerial and ground combat was confined to Iraq, Kuwait, and areas straddling the Iraq\u2013Saudi Arabia border.\nThe conflict marked the introduction of live news broadcasts from the front lines of the battle, principally by the American network CNN. It has also earned the nickname \"Video Game War\", after the daily broadcast of images from cameras onboard American military aircraft during Operation Desert Storm. The Gulf War has also gained fame for some of the largest tank battles in American military history: the Battle of Medina Ridge, the Battle of Norfolk, and the Battle of 73 Easting.<section end=\"lede\"/>\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nNames.\nThe war is also known under other names, such as the Second Gulf War (not to be confused with the 2003 Iraq War, also referred to as such), Persian Gulf War, Kuwait War, First Iraq War, or Iraq War before the term \"Iraq War\" became identified with the 2003 Iraq War (also known in the US as \"Operation Iraqi Freedom\"). The war was named (\"mother of all battles\") by Iraqi officials. After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Gulf War of 1990\u20131991 is often known as the \"First Iraq War\".\nThe following names have been used to describe the conflict itself:\n\"Gulf War\" and \"Persian Gulf War\" are the most common terms for the conflict used within western countries, though it may also be called the \"First Gulf War\" (to distinguish it from the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent Iraq War). Some authors have called it the \"Second Gulf War\" to distinguish it from the Iran\u2013Iraq War. \"Liberation of Kuwait\" () (\"ta\u1e25r\u012br al-kuwayt\") is the term used by Kuwait and most of the coalition's Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. Terms in other languages include and (\"War of Kuwait\"); (\"Gulf War\") and (\"Second Gulf War\").\nOperational names.\nMost of the coalition states used various names for their operations and the war's operational phases. These are sometimes incorrectly used as the conflict's overall name, especially the US \"Desert Storm\":\nCampaign names.\nThe US divided the conflict into three major campaigns:\nBackground.\nThroughout the Cold War, Iraq had been an ally of the Soviet Union, and there was a history of friction between Iraq and the United States. The US was concerned with Iraq's position on Israeli\u2013Palestinian politics. The US also disliked Iraqi support for Palestinian militant groups, which led to Iraq's inclusion on the developing US list of State Sponsors of Terrorism in December 1979.\nThe US remained officially neutral after Iraq's invasion of Iran in 1980, which became the Iran\u2013Iraq War, although it provided resources, political support, and some \"non-military\" aircraft to Iraq. In March 1982, Iran began a successful counteroffensive (Operation Undeniable Victory), and the US increased its support for Iraq to prevent Iran from forcing a surrender. In a US bid to open full diplomatic relations with Iraq, the country was removed from the US list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. Ostensibly, this was because of improvement in the regime's record, although former US Assistant Defense Secretary Noel Koch later stated: \"No one had any doubts about [the Iraqis'] continued involvement in terrorism\u00a0... The real reason was to help them succeed in the war against Iran.\"\nWith Iraq's newfound success in the war, and the Iranian rebuff of a peace offer in July, arms sales to Iraq reached a record spike in 1982. When Iraqi President Saddam Hussein expelled Abu Nidal to Syria at the US's request in November 1983, the Reagan administration sent Donald Rumsfeld to meet Saddam as a special envoy and to cultivate ties. By the time the was signed in August 1988, Iraq was heavily debt-ridden and tensions within society were rising. Most of its debt was owed to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Iraq's debts to Kuwait amounted to $14\u00a0billion. Iraq pressured both nations to forgive the debts, but they refused.\nThe Iraq\u2013Kuwait border dispute involved Iraqi claims to Kuwaiti territory. Kuwait had been a part of the Ottoman Empire's province of Basra, something that Iraq claimed made Kuwait rightful Iraqi territory. Kuwait's ruling dynasty, the al-Sabah family, had concluded a protectorate agreement in 1899 that assigned responsibility for Kuwait's foreign affairs to the United Kingdom. The UK drew the border between Kuwait and Iraq in 1922, making Iraq almost entirely landlocked. Kuwait rejected Iraqi attempts to secure further provisions in the region.\nIraq also accused Kuwait of exceeding its OPEC quotas for oil production. In order for the cartel to maintain its desired price of $18 per barrel, discipline was required. The United Arab Emirates and Kuwait were consistently overproducing; the latter at least in part to repair losses caused by Iranian attacks in the Iran\u2013Iraq War and to pay for the losses of an economic scandal. The result was a slump in the oil price\u00a0\u2013 as low as \u00a0\u2013 with a resulting loss of $7\u00a0billion a year to Iraq, equal to its 1989 balance of payments deficit. Resulting revenues struggled to support the government's basic costs, let alone repair Iraq's damaged infrastructure. Jordan and Iraq both looked for more discipline, with little success. The Iraqi government described it as a form of economic warfare, which it claimed was aggravated by Kuwait slant-drilling across the border into Iraq's Rumaila oil field. According to oil workers in the area, Iraq's slant drilling claim was fabricated, as \"oil flows easily from the Rumaila field without any need for these techniques.\" At the same time, Saddam looked for closer ties with those Arab states that had supported Iraq in the war. This move was supported by the US, who believed that Iraqi ties with pro-Western Gulf states would help bring and maintain Iraq inside the US' sphere of influence.\nIn 1989, it appeared that Saudi\u2013Iraqi relations, strong during the war, would be maintained. A pact of non-interference and non-aggression was signed between the countries, followed by a Kuwaiti-Iraqi deal for Iraq to supply Kuwait with water for drinking and irrigation, although a request for Kuwait to lease Iraq Umm Qasr was rejected. Saudi-backed development projects were hampered by Iraq's large debts, even with the demobilization of 200,000 soldiers. Iraq also looked to increase arms production so as to become an exporter, although the success of these projects was also restrained by Iraq's obligations; in Iraq, resentment to OPEC's controls mounted.\nIraq's relations with its Arab neighbors, particularly Egypt, were degraded by mounting violence in Iraq against expatriate groups, who were well-employed during the war, by unemployed Iraqis, among them demobilized soldiers. These events drew little notice outside the Arab world because of fast-moving events directly related to the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. However, the US did begin to condemn Iraq's human rights record, including the well-known use of torture. The UK also condemned the execution of Farzad Bazoft, a journalist working for the British newspaper \"The Observer\". Following Saddam's declaration that \"binary chemical weapons\" would be used on Israel if it used military force against Iraq, Washington halted part of its funding. A UN mission to the Israeli-occupied territories, where riots had resulted in Palestinian deaths, was vetoed by the US, making Iraq deeply skeptical of US foreign policy aims in the region, combined with the reliance of the US on Middle Eastern energy reserves.\nIn early July 1990, Iraq complained about Kuwait's behavior, such as not respecting their quota, and openly threatened to take military action. On the 23rd, the CIA reported that Iraq had moved 30,000 troops to the Iraq-Kuwait border, and the US naval fleet in the Persian Gulf was placed on alert. Saddam believed an anti-Iraq conspiracy was developing\u00a0\u2013 Kuwait had begun talks with Iran, and Iraq's rival Syria had arranged a visit to Egypt. On 15 July 1990, Saddam's government laid out its combined objections to the Arab League, including that policy moves were costing Iraq $1\u00a0billion a year, that Kuwait was still using the Rumaila oil field, and that loans made by the UAE and Kuwait could not be considered debts to its \"Arab brothers\". He threatened force against Kuwait and the UAE, saying: \"The policies of some Arab rulers are American\u00a0... They are inspired by America to undermine Arab interests and security.\" The US sent aerial refuelling planes and combat ships to the Persian Gulf in response to these threats. Discussions in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, mediated on the Arab League's behalf by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, were held on 31 July and led Mubarak to believe that a peaceful course could be established.\nDuring Saddam Hussein's 2003\u20132004 interrogation following his capture he claimed that in addition to economic disputes, an insulting exchange between the Kuwaiti emir Al Sabah and the Iraqi foreign minister \u2013 during which the emir stated his intention to turn \"every Iraqi woman into a $10 prostitute\" by bankrupting the country \u2013 was a decisive factor in triggering the Iraqi invasion.\nOn the 25th, Saddam met with April Glaspie, the US Ambassador to Iraq, in Baghdad. The Iraqi leader attacked American policy with regards to Kuwait and the UAE:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nGlaspie replied:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nSaddam stated that he would attempt last-ditch negotiations with the Kuwaitis but Iraq \"would not accept death.\"\nAccording to Glaspie's own account, she stated in reference to the precise border between Kuwait and Iraq, \"...\u00a0that she had served in Kuwait 20 years before; 'then, as now, we took no position on these Arab affairs'.\" Glaspie similarly believed that war was not imminent.\nSaddam's foreign minister Tariq Aziz later told PBS \"Frontline\" in 1996 that the Iraqi leadership was under \"no illusion\" about America's likely response to the Iraqi invasion: \"She [Glaspie] didn't tell us anything strange. She didn't tell us in the sense that we concluded that the Americans will not retaliate. That was nonsense you see. It was nonsense to think that the Americans would not attack us.\" Then in a second 2000 interview with the same television program, Aziz said:There were no mixed signals. We should not forget that the whole period before August 2 witnessed a negative American policy towards Iraq. So it would be quite foolish to think that, if we go to Kuwait, then America would like that. Because the American tendency\u00a0... was to untie Iraq. So how could we imagine that such a step was going to be appreciated by the Americans? It looks foolish, you see, this is fiction. About the meeting with April Glaspie\u2014it was a routine meeting...She didn't say anything extraordinary beyond what any professional diplomat would say without previous instructions from his government...what she said were routine, classical comments on what the president was asking her to convey to President Bush. He wanted her to carry a message to George Bush\u2014not to receive a message through her from Washington. On 26 July 1990, only a few days before the Iraqi invasion, OPEC officials said that Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates had agreed to a proposal to limit their oil output to per day, \"down from the nearly 2 million barrels a day they had each been pumping,\" thus potentially settling differences over oil policy between Kuwait and Iraq.\nInvasion of Kuwait.\nThe result of the Jeddah talks was an Iraqi demand for $10\u00a0billion to cover the lost revenues from Rumaila; Kuwait offered $500\u00a0million. The Iraqi response was to immediately order an invasion, which started on 2 August 1990 with the bombing of Kuwait's capital, Kuwait City.\nBefore the invasion, the Kuwaiti military was believed to have numbered 16,000 men, arranged into three armored, one mechanized infantry and one under-strength artillery brigade. The pre-war strength of the Kuwait Air Force was around 2,200 Kuwaiti personnel, with 80 fixed-wing aircraft and 40 helicopters. In spite of Iraqi saber rattling, Kuwait did not mobilize its force; the army had been stood-down on 19 July, and during the Iraqi invasion many Kuwaiti military personnel were on leave.\nBy 1988, at the end of the Iran\u2013Iraq war, the Iraqi Army was the world's fourth largest army, consisting of 955,000 standing soldiers and 650,000 paramilitary forces in the Popular Army. According to John Childs and Andr\u00e9 Corvisier, a low estimate shows the Iraqi Army capable of fielding 4,500 tanks, 484 combat aircraft and 232 combat helicopters. According to Michael Knights, a high estimate shows the Iraqi Army capable of fielding one million troops and 850,000 reservists, 5,500 tanks, 3,000 artillery pieces, 700 combat aircraft and helicopters; it held 53 divisions, 20 special-forces brigades, and several regional militias, and had a strong air defense.\nIraqi commandos infiltrated the Kuwaiti border first to prepare for the major units, which began the attack at midnight. The Iraqi attack had two prongs, with the primary attack force driving south straight for Kuwait City down the main highway, and a supporting attack force entering Kuwait farther west, but then turning and driving east, cutting off Kuwait City from the country's southern half. The commander of a Kuwaiti armored battalion, 35th Armoured Brigade, deployed them against the Iraqi attack and conducted a robust defense at the Battle of the Bridges near Al Jahra, west of Kuwait City.\nKuwaiti aircraft scrambled to meet the invading force, but approximately 20% were lost or captured. A few combat sorties were flown against Iraqi ground forces.\nThe main Iraqi thrust into Kuwait City was conducted by commandos deployed by helicopters and boats to attack the city from the sea, while other divisions seized the airports and two airbases. The Iraqis attacked the Dasman Palace, the Royal Residence of Kuwait's Emir, Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, which was defended by the Emiri Guard supported with M-84 tanks. In the process, the Iraqis killed Fahad Al-Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, the Emir's youngest brother.\nWithin 12 hours, most resistance had ended within Kuwait, and the royal family had fled, allowing Iraq to control most of Kuwait. After two days of intense combat, most of the Kuwaiti military were either overrun by the Iraqi Republican Guard, or had escaped to Saudi Arabia. The Emir and key ministers fled south along the highway for refuge in Saudi Arabia. Iraqi ground forces consolidated their control of Kuwait City, then headed south and redeployed along the Saudi border. After the decisive Iraqi victory, Saddam initially installed a puppet regime known as the \"Provisional Government of Free Kuwait\" before installing his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid as Kuwait's governor on 8 August.\nAfter the invasion, the Iraqi military looted over $1 billion in banknotes from Kuwait's Central Bank. At the same time, Saddam Hussein made the Kuwaiti dinar equal to the Iraqi dinar, thereby lowering the Kuwaiti currency to one-twelfth of its original value. In response, Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah ruled the banknotes as invalid and refused to reimburse stolen notes, which became worthless because of a UN embargo. After the conflict ended, many of the stolen banknotes made their way back into circulation. The stolen banknotes are a collectible for numismatists.\nKuwaiti resistance movement.\nKuwaitis founded a local armed resistance movement following the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. The Kuwaiti resistance's casualty rate far exceeded that of the coalition military forces and Western hostages. The resistance predominantly consisted of ordinary citizens who lacked any form of training and supervision.\nRun-up to the war.\nDiplomatic means.\nA key element of US political, military and energy economic planning occurred in early 1984. The Iran\u2013Iraq war had been going on for five years by that time and both sides sustained significant casualties, reaching into the hundreds of thousands. Within President Ronald Reagan's National Security Council concern was growing that the war could spread beyond the boundaries of the two belligerents. A National Security Planning Group meeting was formed, chaired by then Vice President George H. W. Bush, to review US options. It was determined that the conflict would likely spread into Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states, but that the United States had little capability to defend the region. Furthermore, it was determined that a prolonged war in the region would induce much higher oil prices and threaten the fragile recovery of the world economy, which was just beginning to gain momentum. On 22 May 1984, President Reagan was briefed on the project conclusions in the Oval Office by William Flynn Martin who had served as the head of the NSC staff that organized the study. (The full declassified presentation can be seen here:) The conclusions were threefold: first, oil stocks needed to be increased among members of the International Energy Agency and, if necessary, released early if the oil market was disrupted; second, the United States needed to beef up the security of friendly Arab states in the region; and third, an embargo should be placed on sales of military equipment to Iran and Iraq. The plan was approved by President Reagan and later affirmed by the G7 leaders headed by the United Kingdom's Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, in the London Summit of 1984. The plan was implemented and became the basis for US preparedness to respond to the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in 1991.\nWithin hours of the invasion, Kuwait and US delegations requested a meeting of the UN Security Council, which passed Resolution 660, condemning the invasion and demanding a withdrawal of Iraqi troops. On 3 August 1990, the Arab League passed its own resolution, which called for a solution to the conflict from within the league, and warned against outside intervention. Iraq and Libya were the only two Arab League states that opposed the resolution for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait; the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) opposed it as well. The Arab states of Yemen and Jordan\u00a0\u2013 a Western ally which bordered Iraq and relied on the country for economic support\u00a0\u2013 opposed military intervention from non-Arab states. Separately, Sudan, also an Arab League member, aligned itself with Saddam.\nOn 6 August, Resolution 661 placed economic sanctions on Iraq. Resolution 665 followed soon after, which authorized a naval blockade to enforce the sanctions. It said the \"use of measures commensurate to the specific circumstances as may be necessary\u00a0... to halt all inward and outward maritime shipping in order to inspect and verify their cargoes and destinations and to ensure strict implementation of resolution 661.\"\nThe US administration had at first been indecisive with an \"undertone ... of resignation to the invasion and even adaptation to it as a fait accompli\" until the UK's prime minister Margaret Thatcher played a powerful role, reminding the President that appeasement in the 1930s had led to war, that Saddam would have the whole Gulf at his mercy along with 65 percent of the world's oil supply, and famously urging President Bush \"not to go wobbly\".\nOnce persuaded, US officials insisted on a total Iraqi pullout from Kuwait, without any linkage to other Middle Eastern problems, accepting the British view that any concessions would strengthen Iraqi influence in the region for years to come.\nOn 12 August 1990, Saddam \"propose[d] that all cases of occupation, and those cases that have been portrayed as occupation, in the region, be resolved simultaneously\". Specifically, he called for Israel to withdraw from occupied territories in Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, Syria to withdraw from Lebanon, and \"mutual withdrawals by Iraq and Iran and arrangement for the situation in Kuwait.\" He also called for a replacement of US troops that mobilized in Saudi Arabia in response to Kuwait's invasion with \"an Arab force\", as long as that force did not involve Egypt. Additionally, he requested an \"immediate freeze of all boycott and siege decisions\" and a general normalization of relations with Iraq. From the beginning of the crisis, President Bush was strongly opposed to any \"linkage\" between Iraq's occupation of Kuwait and the Palestinian issue.\nOn 23 August, Saddam appeared on state television with Western hostages to whom he had refused exit visas. In the video, he asks a young British boy, Stuart Lockwood, whether he is getting his milk, and goes on to say, through his interpreter, \"We hope your presence as guests here will not be for too long. Your presence here, and in other places, is meant to prevent the scourge of war.\"\nAnother Iraqi proposal communicated in August 1990 was delivered to US National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft by an unidentified Iraqi official. The official communicated to the White House that Iraq would \"withdraw from Kuwait and allow foreigners to leave\" provided that the UN lifted sanctions, allowed \"guaranteed access to the Persian Gulf through the Kuwaiti islands of Bubiyan and Warbah\", and allowed Iraq to \"gain full control of the Rumaila oil field that extends slightly into Kuwaiti territory\". The proposal also \"include[d] offers to negotiate an oil agreement with the United States 'satisfactory to both nations' national security interests,' develop a joint plan 'to alleviate Iraq's economical and financial problems' and 'jointly work on the stability of the gulf.'\"\nOn 29 November 1990, the Security Council passed Resolution 678, which gave Iraq until 15 January 1991 to withdraw from Kuwait, and empowered states to use \"all necessary means\" to force Iraq out of Kuwait after the deadline.\nIn December 1990, Iraq made a proposal to withdraw from Kuwait provided that foreign troops left the region and that an agreement was reached regarding the Palestinian problem and the dismantlement of both Israel's and Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The White House rejected the proposal. The PLO's Yasser Arafat expressed that neither he nor Saddam insisted that solving the Israel\u2013Palestine issues should be a precondition to solving the issues in Kuwait, though he did acknowledge a \"strong link\" between these problems.\nUltimately, the US and UK stuck to their position that there would be no negotiations until Iraq withdrew from Kuwait and that they should not grant Iraq concessions, lest they give the impression that Iraq benefited from its military campaign. Also, when US Secretary of State James Baker met with Tariq Aziz in Geneva, Switzerland, for last minute peace talks in early 1991, Aziz reportedly made no concrete proposals and did not outline any hypothetical Iraqi moves.\nOn 14 January 1991, France proposed that the UN Security Council call for \"a rapid and massive withdrawal\" from Kuwait along with a statement to Iraq that Council members would bring their \"active contribution\" to a settlement of the region's other problems, \"in particular, of the Arab\u2013Israeli conflict and in particular to the Palestinian problem by convening, at an appropriate moment, an international conference\" to assure \"the security, stability and development of this region of the world.\" The French proposal was supported by Belgium (at the moment one of the rotating Council members), Germany, Spain, Italy, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and several non-aligned states. The US, the UK, and the Soviet Union rejected it; US Ambassador to the UN Thomas Pickering stated that the French proposal was unacceptable, because it went beyond previous Council resolutions on the Iraqi invasion. France dropped this proposal when it found \"no tangible sign of interest\" from Baghdad.\nMilitary means.\nOne of the main concerns in the Western world was the significant threat Iraq posed to Saudi Arabia. Following Kuwait's conquest, the Iraqi Army was within easy striking distance of Saudi oil fields. Control of these fields, along with Kuwaiti and Iraqi reserves, would have given Saddam control over the majority of the world's oil reserves. Iraq also had a number of grievances with Saudi Arabia. The Saudis had lent Iraq 26\u00a0billion dollars during its war with Iran. The Saudis had backed Iraq in that war, as they feared the influence of Shia Iran's Islamic revolution on its own Shia minority. After the war, Saddam felt he should not have to repay the loans due to the help he had given the Saudis by fighting Iran.\nSoon after his conquest of Kuwait, Saddam began verbally attacking the Saudis. He argued that the US-supported Saudi state was an illegitimate and unworthy guardian of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. He combined the language of the Islamist groups that had recently fought in Afghanistan with the rhetoric Iran had long used to attack the Saudis.\nActing on the Carter Doctrine policy, and out of fear the Iraqi Army could launch an invasion of Saudi Arabia, US President George H. W. Bush quickly announced that the US would launch a \"wholly defensive\" mission to prevent Iraq from invading Saudi Arabia, under the codename Operation Desert Shield. The operation began on 7 August 1990, when US troops were sent to Saudi Arabia, due also to the request of its monarch, King Fahd, who had earlier called for US military assistance. This \"wholly defensive\" doctrine was quickly abandoned when, on 8 August, Iraq declared Kuwait to be Iraq's 19th province and Saddam named his cousin, Ali Hassan Al-Majid, as its military-governor.\nThe US Navy dispatched two naval battle groups built around the aircraft carriers USS \"Dwight D. Eisenhower\" and USS \"Independence\" to the Persian Gulf, where they were ready by 8 August. The US also sent the battleships USS \"Missouri\" and USS \"Wisconsin\" to the region. A total of 48 US Air Force F-15s from the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, landed in Saudi Arabia and immediately commenced round-the-clock air patrols of the Saudi\u2013Kuwait\u2013Iraq border to discourage further Iraqi military advances. They were joined by 36 F-15 A-Ds from the 36th Tactical Fighter Wing at Bitburg, Germany. The Bitburg contingent was based at Al Kharj Air Base, approximately an hour south east of Riyadh. The 36th TFW would be responsible for 11 confirmed Iraqi Air Force aircraft shot down during the war. Two Air National Guard units were stationed at Al Kharj Air Base, the South Carolina Air National Guard's 169th Fighter Wing flew bombing missions with 24 F-16s flying 2,000 combat missions and dropping of munitions, and the New York Air National Guard's 174th Fighter Wing from Syracuse flew 24 F-16s on bombing missions. Military buildup continued from there, eventually reaching 543,000 troops, twice the number used in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Much of the material was airlifted or carried to the staging areas via fast sealift ships, allowing a quick buildup. As part of the buildup, amphibious exercises were carried out in the Gulf, including Operation Imminent Thunder, which involved the USS \"Midway\" and 15 other ships, 1,100 aircraft, and a thousand Marines. In a press conference, General Schwarzkopf stated that these exercises were intended to deceive the Iraqi forces, forcing them to continue their defense of the Kuwaiti coastline.\nCreating a coalition.\nA series of UN Security Council resolutions and Arab League resolutions were passed regarding Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Resolution 678, passed on 29 November 1990, gave Iraq a withdrawal deadline until 15 January 1991 and authorized \"all necessary means to uphold and implement Resolution 660\", and a diplomatic formulation authorizing the use of force if Iraq failed to comply.\nTo ensure that the US received economic backing, James Baker went on an 11-day journey to nine countries in September 1990, which the press dubbed \"The Tin Cup Trip\". The first stop was Saudi Arabia, which a month before had already granted permission to the United States to use its facilities. However, Baker believed that Saudi Arabia should assume some of the cost of the military efforts to defend it. When Baker asked King Fahd for $15 billion, the King readily agreed, with the promise that Baker ask Kuwait for the same amount.\nThe next day, 7 September, he did just that, and the Emir of Kuwait, displaced in a Sheraton hotel outside his invaded country, easily agreed. Baker then moved to enter talks with Egypt, whose leadership he considered \"the moderate voice of the Middle East\". President Mubarak of Egypt was furious with Saddam for his invasion of Kuwait, and for the fact that Saddam had assured Mubarak that an invasion was not his intention. Egypt received approximately $7\u00a0billion in debt forgiveness for its providing of support and troops for the US-led intervention.\nAfter stops in Helsinki and Moscow to smooth out Iraqi demands for a Middle-Eastern peace conference with the Soviet Union, Baker traveled to Syria to discuss its role in the crisis with its President Hafez Assad. Assad had a deep personal enmity towards Saddam, which was defined by the fact that \"Saddam had been trying to kill him [Assad] for years.\" Harboring this animosity and impressed with Baker's diplomatic initiative to visit Damascus (relations had been severed since the 1983 bombing of US Marine barracks in Beirut), Assad agreed to pledge up to 100,000 Syrian troops to the coalition effort. This was a vital step in ensuring Arab states were represented in the coalition. In exchange, Washington gave al-Assad the green light to wipe out forces opposing Syria's rule in Lebanon and arranged for weapons valued at a billion dollars to be provided to Syria, mostly through Gulf states. In exchange for Iran's support for the US-led intervention, the US government promised the Iranian government to end US opposition to World Bank loans to Iran. On the day before the ground invasion began, the World Bank gave Iran the first loan of $250m.\nBaker flew to Rome for a brief visit with the Italians in which he was promised the use of some military equipment, before journeying to Germany to meet with American ally Chancellor Kohl. Although Germany's constitution (which was brokered essentially by the United States) prohibited military involvement outside Germany's borders, Kohl committed a two billion dollar contribution to the coalition's war effort, as well as further economic and military support of coalition ally Turkey, and the transportation of Egyptian soldiers and ships to the Persian Gulf.\nA coalition of forces opposing Iraq's aggression was formed, consisting of forces from 42 countries: Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Honduras, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Niger, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Syria, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. It was the largest coalition since World War II. A group of Afghan mujahideen soldiers also reportedly joined towards the end of the war.\nUS Army General Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. was designated to be the commander of the coalition forces in the Persian Gulf area. The Soviet Union condemned Baghdad's aggression against Kuwait, but did not support the United States and allied intervention in Iraq and tried to avert it.\nAlthough they did not contribute any forces, Japan and Germany made financial contributions totaling $10\u00a0billion and $6.6\u00a0billion respectively. Luxembourg also provided financial support to the coalition. US troops represented 73% of the coalition's 956,600 troops in Iraq.\nMany of the coalition countries were reluctant to commit military forces. Some felt that the war was an internal Arab affair or did not want to increase US influence in the Middle East. In the end, however, many governments were persuaded by Iraq's belligerence towards other Arab states, offers of economic aid or debt forgiveness, and threats to withhold aid.\nJustification for intervention.\nThe US and the UN gave several public justifications for involvement in the conflict, the most prominent being the Iraqi violation of Kuwaiti territorial integrity. In addition, the US moved to support its ally Saudi Arabia, whose importance in the region, and as a key supplier of oil, made it of considerable geopolitical importance. Shortly after the Iraqi invasion, US Defense Secretary Dick Cheney made the first of several visits to Saudi Arabia where King Fahd requested US military assistance. During a speech in a special joint session of the US Congress given on 11 September 1990, Bush summed up the reasons with the following remarks: \"Within three days, 120,000 Iraqi troops with 850 tanks had poured into Kuwait and moved south to threaten Saudi Arabia. It was then that I decided to act to check that aggression.\"\nThe Pentagon stated that satellite photos showing a buildup of Iraqi forces along the border were the source of this information, but this was later alleged to be false. A reporter for the \"St. Petersburg Times\" acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images made at the time, which showed nothing but empty desert.\nOther justifications for foreign involvement included Iraq's history of human rights abuses under Saddam. Iraq was also known to possess biological weapons and chemical weapons, which Saddam had used against Iranian troops during the Iran\u2013Iraq War and against his own country's Kurdish population in the Al-Anfal campaign. Iraq was also known to have a nuclear weapons program; the report about it from January 1991 was partially declassified by the CIA on 26 May 2001.\nPublic relations campaign targeting the public.\nAlthough the Iraqi military committed human rights abuses during the invasion, the alleged incidents that received the most publicity in the US were fabrications of the public relations firm hired by the government of Kuwait to persuade Americans to support military intervention. Shortly after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the organization \"Citizens for a Free Kuwait\" was formed in the US. It hired the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton for about $11\u00a0million, paid by Kuwait's government.\nAmong many other means of influencing US opinion, such as distributing books on Iraqi atrocities to US soldiers deployed in the region, \"Free Kuwait\" T-shirts and speakers to college campuses, and dozens of video news releases to television stations, the firm arranged for an appearance before a group of members of the US Congress in which a young woman identifying herself as a nurse working in the Kuwait City hospital described Iraqi soldiers pulling babies out of incubators and letting them die on the floor.\nThe story helped tip both the public and Congress towards a war with Iraq: six Congressmen said the testimony was enough for them to support military action against Iraq and seven Senators referenced the testimony in debate. The Senate supported the military actions in a 52\u201347 vote. However, a year after the war, this allegation was revealed to be a fabrication. The young woman who had testified was found to be a member of Kuwait's royal family and the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the US. She had not lived in Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion.\nThe details of the Hill & Knowlton public relations campaign, including the incubator testimony, were published in John R. MacArthur's \"Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War\", and came to wide public attention when an Op-ed by MacArthur was published in \"The New York Times\". This prompted a reexamination by Amnesty International, which had originally promoted an account alleging even greater numbers of babies torn from incubators than the original fake testimony. After finding no evidence to support it, the organization issued a retraction. President Bush then repeated the incubator allegations on television.\nIn reality, the Iraqi Army did commit various well-documented crimes during its occupation of Kuwait, such as the summary execution without trial of three brothers, after which their bodies were stacked and left to decay in a public street. Iraqi troops also ransacked and looted private Kuwaiti homes; one residence was repeatedly defecated in. A resident later commented: \"The whole thing was violence for the sake of violence, destruction for the sake of destruction\u00a0... Imagine a surrealistic painting by Salvador Dal\u00ed\".\nUS President Bush repeatedly compared Saddam Hussein to Hitler.\nEarly battles.\nAir campaign.\nThe Gulf War began with an extensive aerial bombing campaign on 16 January 1991. For 42 consecutive days and nights, the coalition forces subjected Iraq to one of the most intensive air bombardments in military history. The coalition flew over 100,000 sorties, dropping 88,500 tonnes of bombs, which widely destroyed military and civilian infrastructure.\nIraqi anti-aircraft defenses, including man-portable air-defense systems, were surprisingly ineffective against enemy aircraft, and the coalition suffered only 75 aircraft losses in over 100,000 sorties, 44 due to Iraqi action. Two of these losses are the result of aircraft colliding with the ground while evading Iraqi ground-fired weapons. One of these losses is a confirmed air-air victory.\nIraqi Scud missile strikes on Israel and Saudi Arabia.\nIraq's government made no secret that it would attack Israel if invaded. Prior to the war's start, in the aftermath of the failed US\u2013Iraq peace talks in Geneva, Switzerland, a reporter asked Iraq's English-speaking Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz: \"Mr. Foreign Minister, if war starts\u00a0... will you attack Israel?\" His response was: \"Yes, absolutely, yes.\"\nFive hours after the first attacks, Iraq's state radio broadcast declared that \"The dawn of victory nears as this great showdown begins.\" Iraq fired eight missiles the next day. These missile attacks were to continue throughout the war. Iraq fired 88 Scud missiles during the war's seven weeks.\nIraq hoped to provoke a military response from Israel. The Iraqi government hoped that many Arab states would withdraw from the Coalition, as they would be reluctant to fight alongside Israel. Following the first attacks, Israeli Air Force jets were deployed to patrol the northern airspace with Iraq. Israel prepared to militarily retaliate, as its policy for the previous 40 years had always been retaliation. However, President Bush pressured Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir not to retaliate and withdraw Israeli jets, fearing that if Israel attacked Iraq, the other Arab states would either desert the coalition or join Iraq. It was also feared that if Israel used Syrian or Jordanian airspace to attack Iraq, they would intervene in the war on Iraq's side or attack Israel. The coalition promised to deploy Patriot missiles to defend Israel if it refrained from responding to the Scud attacks.\nThe Scud missiles targeting Israel were relatively ineffective, as firing at extreme range resulted in a dramatic reduction in accuracy and payload. Two Israeli civilians died as a direct result of the missile attacks. Between 11 and 74 were killed from incorrect use of gas masks, heart attacks, and incorrect use of the anti-chemical weapons drug atropine. Approximately 230 Israelis were injured. Extensive property damage was also caused, and, according to the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, \"Damage to general property consisted of 1,302 houses, 6,142 apartments, 23 public buildings, 200 shops and 50 cars.\" It was feared that Iraq would fire missiles filled with nerve agents such as sarin. As a result, Israel's government issued gas masks to its citizens. When the first Iraqi missiles hit Israel, some people injected themselves with an antidote for nerve gas. It has been suggested that the sturdy construction techniques used in Israeli cities, coupled with the fact that Scuds were only launched at night, played an important role in limiting the number of casualties from Scud attacks.\nIn response to the threat of Scuds on Israel, the US rapidly sent a Patriot missile air defense artillery battalion to Israel along with two batteries of MIM-104 Patriot missiles for the protection of civilians. The Royal Netherlands Air Force also deployed a Patriot missile squadron to Israel and Turkey. The Dutch Defense Ministry later stated that the military use of the Patriot missile system was largely ineffective, but its psychological value for the affected populations was high.\nCoalition air forces were also extensively exercised in \"Scud hunts\" in the Iraqi desert, trying to locate the camouflaged trucks before they fired their missiles at Israel or Saudi Arabia. On the ground, special operations forces also infiltrated Iraq, tasked with locating and destroying Scuds \u2013 including the ill-fated Bravo Two Zero patrol of the SAS. Once special operations were combined with air patrols, the number of attacks fell sharply, then increased slightly as Iraqi forces adjusted to coalition tactics.\nAs the Scud attacks continued, the Israelis grew increasingly impatient, and considered taking unilateral military action against Iraq. On 22 January 1991, a Scud missile hit the Israeli city of Ramat Gan, after two coalition Patriots failed to intercept it. Three elderly people suffered fatal heart attacks, another 96 people were injured, and 20 apartment buildings were damaged. After this attack, the Israelis warned that if the US failed to stop the attacks, they would. At one point, Israeli commandos boarded helicopters prepared to fly into Iraq, but the mission was called off after a phone call from US Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, reporting on the extent of coalition efforts to destroy Scuds and emphasizing that Israeli intervention could endanger US forces.\nIn addition to the attacks on Israel, 47 Scud missiles were fired into Saudi Arabia, and one missile was fired at Bahrain and another at Qatar. The missiles were fired at both military and civilian targets. One Saudi civilian was killed, and 78 others were injured. No casualties were reported in Bahrain or Qatar. The Saudi government issued all its citizens and expatriates with gas masks in the event of Iraq using missiles with warheads containing chemical weapons. The government broadcast alerts and 'all clear' messages over television to warn citizens during Scud attacks.\nOn 25 February 1991, a Scud missile hit a US Army barracks of the 14th Quartermaster Detachment, out of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, stationed in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 28 soldiers and injuring over 100. A subsequent investigation found that the assigned Patriot missile battery had failed to engage due to the loss of significance effect in the onboard computer's floating point calculations compounding over 100 hours of consecutive use, shifting the range gate position far enough to lose contact with the Scud during tracking action.\nIraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia (Battle of Khafji).\nOn 29 January, Iraqi forces attacked and occupied the lightly defended Saudi city of Khafji with tanks and infantry. The Battle of Khafji ended two days later when the Iraqis were driven back by the Saudi Arabian National Guard, supported by Qatari forces and US Marines. The allied forces used extensive artillery fire.\nBoth sides suffered casualties, although Iraqi forces sustained substantially more dead and captured than the allied forces. Eleven Americans were killed in two separate friendly fire incidents, an additional 14 US airmen were killed when their AC-130 gunship was shot down by an Iraqi surface-to-air missile, and two US soldiers were captured during the battle. Saudi and Qatari forces had a total of 18 dead. Iraqi forces in Khafji had 60\u2013300 dead and 400 captured.\nThe Battle of Khafji was an example of how air power could single-handedly hinder the advance of enemy ground forces. Upon learning of Iraqi troop movements, 140 coalition aircraft were diverted to attack an advancing column consisting of two armored divisions in battalion-sized units. Precision stand-off attacks were conducted during the night and through to the next day. Iraqi vehicle losses included 357 tanks, 147 armored personnel carriers, and 89 mobile artillery pieces. Some crews simply abandoned their vehicles upon realizing that they could be destroyed by guided bombs, stopping the divisions from massing for an organized attack on the town. One Iraqi soldier, who had fought in the Iran\u2013Iraq War, remarked that his brigade \"had sustained more punishment from allied airpower in 30 minutes at Khafji than in eight years of fighting against Iran.\"\nCounter reconnaissance for 2nd Armored Division.\nTask Force 1-41 Infantry was a US Army heavy battalion task force from the 2nd Armored Division (Forward). 2nd Armored Division (Forward) included the 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment, the 2nd and 3rd Battalions, 66th Armor Regiment, and the 4th Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment. Task Force 1\u201341 was the first coalition force to breach the Saudi Arabian border on 15 February 1991, and to conduct ground combat operations in Iraq against the enemy on 17 February 1991. Shortly after arrival in theatre \"..the battalion received, for planning, a brigade cross-boundary counter-reconnaissance mission.\" 1\u201341 Infantry was assisted by the 1st Squadron, 4th Armored Cavalry Regiment. This joint effort would become known as Task Force Iron. Counter-reconnaissance generally includes destroying or repelling the enemy's reconnaissance elements and denying their commander any observation of friendly forces. On 15 February 1991 4th Battalion of the 3rd Field Artillery Regiment fired on a trailer and a few trucks in the Iraqi sector observing American forces.\nOn 16 February 1991 several groups of Iraqi vehicles appeared to be performing reconnaissance on the Task Force and were driven away by fire from 4\u20133 FA. Another enemy platoon, including six vehicles, was reported as being to the northeast of the Task Force. They were engaged with artillery fire from 4\u20133 FA. Later that evening another group of Iraqi vehicles was spotted moving towards the center of the Task Force. They appeared to be Iraqi Soviet-made BTRs and tanks. For the next hour the Task Force fought several small battles with Iraqi reconnaissance units. TF 1\u201341 IN fired TOW missiles at the Iraqi formation destroying one tank. The rest of the formation was destroyed or driven away by artillery fire from 4\u20133 FA. On 17 February 1991 the Task Force took enemy mortar fire, but the enemy forces managed to escape. Later that evening the Task Force received enemy artillery fire but suffered no casualties. That same evening the Task Force identified an Iraqi mortar position and engaged it with both direct and indirect fires. The Iraqis continued probing operations against the Task Force for approximately two hours. For the next two days the Task Force observed Iraqi wheeled vehicles and small units move in front of them. Several times Iraqi mortars fired on Task Force 1\u201341 Infantry positions. On 18 February Iraqi mortar positions continued to conduct fire missions against the Task Force. The Task Force returned fire on the Iraqi positions with artillery fire from 4\u20133 FA and 1st Infantry Division Artillery. During the Iraqi mortar attacks two American soldiers were wounded. Iraqi reconnaissance elements continued to patrol the area between the Task Force and the 1st Cavalry Division. VII Corps air units and artillery conducted combat operations against Iraqi defensive positions.\nBreach.\nTask Force 1\u201341 Infantry was the first coalition force to breach the Saudi Arabian border on 15 February 1991 and conduct ground combat operations in Iraq engaging in direct and indirect fire fights with the enemy on 17 February 1991. Prior to this action the Task Force's primary fire support battalion, 4th Battalion of the 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, participated in a massive artillery preparation. Around 300 guns from multiple countries participated in the artillery barrage. Over 14,000 rounds were fired during these missions. M270 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems contributed an additional 4,900 rockets fired at Iraqi targets. Iraq lost close to 22 artillery battalions during the initial stages of this barrage, including the destruction of approximately 396 Iraqi artillery pieces.\nBy the end of these raids Iraqi artillery assets had all but ceased to exist. One Iraqi unit that was totally destroyed during the preparation was the Iraqi 48th Infantry Division Artillery Group. The group's commander stated his unit lost 83 of its 100 guns to the artillery preparation. The artillery bombardment was supplemented by Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bombing raids and Lockheed AC-130 attacks. AH-64 Apache attack helicopters from the 1st Infantry Division and B-52 bombers attacked the Iraqi 110th Infantry Brigade. Under enemy fire, the 1st and 9th Engineer Battalions marked and proofed assault lanes to secure a foothold in enemy territory and pass the 1st Infantry Division and the 1st Armoured Division forward.\nOn 24 February 1991 the 1st Cavalry Division fired its artillery against Iraqi artillery units. One artillery mission struck a series of Iraqi bunkers, reinforced by Iraqi T-55 tanks, in the sector of the Iraqi 25th Infantry Division. The same day the 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division with the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry, 1st Battalion, 32nd Armor, and the 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry destroyed Iraqi bunkers and combat vehicles in the sector of the Iraqi 25th Infantry Division. On 24 February 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division rolled through the breach in the Iraqi defense west of Wadi al-Batin and also cleared the northeastern sector of the breach site of enemy resistance. Task Force 3\u201337th Armor breached the Iraqi defense clearing four passage lanes and expanding the gap under direct enemy fire. Also on 24 February the 1st Infantry Division along with the 1st Cavalry Division destroyed Iraqi outposts and patrols belonging to the Iraqi 26th Infantry Division. The two divisions also began capturing prisoners. The 1st Infantry Division cleared a zone between Phase Line Vermont and Phase Line Kansas. Once the 1st Infantry Division's 3rd Battalion, 37th Armor reached the Iraqi rear defensive positions it destroyed an Iraqi D-30 artillery battery and many trucks and bunkers.\nTask Force 1\u201341 Infantry was given the task of breaching Iraq's initial defensive positions along the Iraq\u2013Saudi Arabia border. The 1st Squadron, 4th Armored Cavalry Regiment handled similar responsibilities in its sector of operations. The 1st Infantry Division's 5th Battalion, 16th Infantry also played a significant role clearing the trenches and captured 160 Iraqi soldiers in the process. Once into Iraqi territory Task Force 1\u201341 Infantry encountered multiple Iraqi defensive positions and bunkers. These defensive positions were occupied by a brigade-sized element. Task Force 1\u201341 Infantry elements dismounted and prepared to engage the enemy soldiers who occupied these well-prepared and heavily fortified bunkers. The Task Force found itself engaged in six hours of combat in order to clear the extensive bunker complex. The Iraqis engaged the Task Force with small arms fire, RPGs, mortar fire, and what was left of Iraqi artillery assets. A series of battles unfolded resulting in heavy Iraqi casualties and the Iraqis being removed from their defensive positions with many becoming prisoners of war. Some escaped to be killed or captured by other coalition forces. In the process of clearing the bunkers, Task Force 1\u201341 captured two brigade command posts and the command post of the Iraqi 26th Infantry Division. The Task Force also captured a brigade commander, several battalion commanders, company commanders, and staff officers. As combat operations progressed Task Force 1\u201341 Infantry engaged at short range multiple dug in enemy tanks in ambush positions. For a few hours, bypassed Iraqi RPG-equipped anti-tank teams, T-55 tanks, and dismounted Iraqi infantry fired at passing American vehicles, only to be destroyed by other US tanks and fighting vehicles following the initial forces.\nThe 1st Infantry Division's Task Force 2\u201316 Infantry cleared four lanes simultaneously through an enemy fortified trench system while inflicting heavy casualties on Iraqi forces. Task Force 2\u201316 continued the attack clearing over of entrenched enemy positions resulting in the capture and destruction of numerous enemy vehicles, equipment, personnel and command bunkers.\nGround campaign.\nA 90,000 round artillery preparation fire on Iraqi defensive positions preceded the major ground assault, lasting 2.5 hours. 1st Infantry Division Artillery, which included 4-3 FA battalion, was decisive during artillery combat operations performing multiple raids and fire missions. These combat operations resulted in the destruction of 50 enemy tanks, 139 APCs, 30 air defense systems, 152 artillery pieces, 27 missile launchers, 108 mortars, and 548 wheeled vehicles, 61 trench lines and bunker positions, 92 dug in and open infantry targets, and 34 logistical sites. The ground campaign consisted of three or possibly four of the largest tank battles in American military history. The battles at 73 Easting, Norfolk, and Medina Ridge are well noted for their historical significance. Some consider the Battle of Medina Ridge the largest tank battle of the war. Other sources consider the Battle of Norfolk the largest tank battle of the war and the second largest tank battle in American history. The U.S. Marine Corps also fought the biggest tank battle in its history at Kuwait International Airport. The U.S. 3rd Armored Division also fought a significant battle at Objective Dorset not far from where the Battle of Norfolk was taking place. The U.S. 3rd Armored Division destroyed approximately 300 enemy combat vehicles during this particular encounter with Iraqi forces.\nThe U.S. VII Corps was the primary combat formation of the coalition forces. It was a formidable fighting force consisting of 1,487 tanks, 1,384 infantry fighting vehicles, 568 artillery pieces, 132 MLRS, 8 missile launchers, and 242 attack helicopters. It had a total troop strength of 146,321 troops. Its primary full strength fighting formations were the 1st Armored Division (United States), the 3rd Armored Division (United States) and the 1st Infantry Division (United States). The 2nd Armored Division (Forward) was assigned to the 1st Infantry Division as its third maneuver brigade. Its Task Force 1-41 Infantry would be the spearhead of VII Corps. In addition, the corps had the 2nd Cavalry Regiment (United States) to act as a scouting and screening force, and two further heavy divisions, the 1st Cavalry Division (United States) and the United Kingdom's 1st Armoured Division, as well as the U.S. 11th Aviation Group. VII Corps fought a number of large battles against Iraqi forces. Some of them historical in scope and size. Three of the battles at Norfolk, Medina Ridge, and 73 Easting are considered among the largest tank battles in history. By the end of combat operations on 28 February 1991, U.S. VII Corps had driven , captured 22,000 Iraqi soldiers, and destroyed 1,350 Iraqi tanks, 1,224 armored personnel carriers, 285 artillery pieces, 105 air defense systems, and 1,229 trucks.\nThe primary combat vehicles of the American divisions were the M1A1 Abrams tank and the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The primary American artillery system was the self propelled M109 howitzer. The primary American attack helicopter was the Boeing AH-64 Apache (Army) with the Bell AH-1 Cobra (Army and Marines) also being in theatre. The U.S. Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II ground attack aircraft would distinguish itself during the Gulf War aided by the OH-58D JAATT eyes in the sky. Together they inflicted significant damage on Iraqi ground forces. U.S. A-10 \"Warthog\" crews would destroy 900 Iraqi tanks, 2,000 other military vehicles and 1,200 artillery pieces during combat operations.\nThe U.S. Marine Corps was represented by the 1st Marine Division and the 2nd Marine Division. They were supported by the U.S. Army's 2nd Armored Division's Tiger Brigade to provide the Marines with additional armor support. Marine armor units mostly consisted of the older M-60 tank. The 1st Marine Division destroyed around 60 Iraqi tanks near the Burgan oil field without suffering any losses. The 1st Marine Division Task Force Ripper led the drive to the Kuwait International Airport on 27 February 1991. Marine Task Force Ripper destroyed about 100 Iraqi tanks and armored personnel carriers, including T-72 tanks. The division commander Maj. Gen. J.M. Myatt said, \"During the first day of combat operations 1st Platoon, D Company, 3rd Tank Battalion destroyed 15 Iraqi tanks\". The Marines also destroyed 25 APCs and took 300 prisoners of war. The U.S.M.C. would often encounter the Iraqi 3rd Armored Division in their theater of operations. Once the 1st Marine Division reached Kuwait International Airport they found what remained of the Iraqi 12th Armored Brigade, 3rd Armored Division defending it. The Marines destroyed 30 to 40 Iraqi T-72 tanks which had taken up defensive positions around the airport. The Iraqi 3rd Armored Division losses included more than 250 T-55/62s and 70 T-72 tanks by the end of combat operations. The Iraqi 3rd Armored Division would be totally destroyed. The 2nd Marine Division played a major role repelling the attempted Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia which is known as the Battle of Khafji. The 2nd Marine Division also faced heavy resistance during the Battle of Kuwait International Airport. The battle featured the \"Reveille Engagement\" which went on to become the largest tank battle in United States Marine Corps' entire history. Marine Reserve unit Bravo Company, 4th Tank Battalion, 4th Marine division was assigned to the 2nd Marine Division. Bravo Company destroyed a total of 119 enemy vehicles and took over 800 POWs by the end of combat operations. The 1st Tank Battalion claimed 50 Iraqi T-55 and T-62 tanks and 25 APCs. The 3rd Battalion claimed 57 T-55s and T-62s along with 5 T-72s, 7 APCs, and 10 trucks. The 8th Battalion destroyed more than three dozen tanks and a number of other vehicles. U.S. Marine Corps armor units would destroy hundreds of Iraqi tanks by the end of combat operations. U.S. Marine Corps tank losses would be light as they suffered the loss of ten M-60 tanks during combat operations.\nThe United Kingdom was represented by its 1st Armoured Division known as the Desert Rats. The British 1st Armoured Division fielded approximately 176 Challenger 1 tanks. British infantry rode into battle on the Warrior tracked armoured vehicle. It had reasonable armour protection and a 30mm gun. Modified versions of the vehicle included mortar carriers, MILAN antitank systems, and command and control vehicles; and the British possessed a variety of excellent light armoured vehicles built on their FV101 Scorpion chassis. British artillery was primarily American made M109 howitzers (155mm), M110 howitzers (203mm), and M270 MLRS which were compatible with American systems. Their air support consisted of Gazelle helicopters, used for reconnaissance, and the Lynx helicopter which was comparable to the American AH-1 Cobra. The British had their full contingent of engineer, logistics, and medical units.\nThe British 1st Armoured Division was responsible for protecting the right flank of VII Corps. It was assumed by the Corps' planners the Iraqi 52nd Armored Division would counterattack VII Corps once their penetration into Iraqi defenses was discovered. The British 1st Armoured Division had two brigades (the 4th and 7th) which participated in Operation Granby, the name given to the British military operations during the 1991 Gulf War. The British 1st Armoured Division had traveled 217 miles in 97 hours. The British 1st Armored Division had captured or destroyed about 300 Iraqi tanks and a very large number of armored personnel carriers, trucks, reconnaissance vehicles, etc. The Desert Rats also destroyed multiple Iraqi artillery positions. The division also took over 7,000 Iraqi prisoners of war including two division commanders and two other general officers. The British 1st Armoured Division destroyed or isolated four Iraqi infantry divisions (the 26th, 48th, 31st, and 25th) and overran the Iraqi 52nd Armored Division in several sharp engagements. The Iraqi 80th Armored Brigade would also fall victim to the British 1st Armoured Division.\nIraq was represented mostly by its own VII Corps and its Jihad Corps. Its most notable participants were its elite Republican Guard Divisions Tawakalna, Medina, Hammurabi, and Adnan. The first three of these had a strength of over 660 tanks, 660 infantry fighting vehicles, and thousands of antitank weapons, self propelled artillery, and other combat systems. The Tawakalna Republican Guard Division was Iraq's most powerful division which included approximately 14,000 soldiers, 220 T-72 tanks, 284 infantry fighting vehicles, 126 artillery pieces, and 18 MLRS. The Iraqi 52nd Armored Division was also a primary participant. It was a powerful division consisting of 245 tanks and 195 armored fighting vehicles. The Iraqi 10th and 12th Armored Divisions were also present. The two divisions formed the foundation of the Jihad Corps. The Iraqi 10th Armored Division was considered the best regular division in the Iraqi Army. It had more modern equipment than the other regular Iraqi units. It was equipped with T-72 and T-62 tanks. The T-62 tank being its primary system. Overall the primary tank of the Iraqi forces was the T-55 tank. The Iraqis fielded them in great numbers. The Iraqis also had elements of two other independent armored brigades in theatre, those being the 50th and 29th Armored Brigades.\nIraq would also field multiple Infantry Divisions.\nThe Iraqis suffered the loss of over 3,000 tanks and over 2,000 other combat vehicles during these battles against the American-led coalition. It is estimated that Iraqi forces suffered 20,000\u201350,000 troops killed during combat operations. It is also estimated that over 75,000 Iraqi soldiers were wounded. Between 80,000 and 175,000 Iraqi troops were taken prisoner. Iraqi forces inflicted very minimal damage on Coalition forces.\nLiberation of Kuwait.\nUS decoy attacks by air attacks and naval gunfire the night before Kuwait's liberation were designed to make the Iraqis believe the main coalition ground attack would focus on central Kuwait. For months, American units in Saudi Arabia had been under almost constant Iraqi artillery fire, as well as threats from Scud missiles and chemical attacks. On 24 February 1991, the 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions and the 1st Light Armored Infantry Battalion crossed into Kuwait and headed toward Kuwait City. They encountered trenches, barbed wire, and minefields. However, these positions were poorly defended, and were overrun in the first few hours. Several tank battles took place, but otherwise coalition troops encountered minimal resistance, as most Iraqi troops surrendered. The general pattern was that the Iraqis would put up a short fight before surrendering. However, Iraqi air defenses shot down nine US aircraft. Meanwhile, forces from Arab states advanced into Kuwait from the east, encountering little resistance and suffering few casualties.\nDespite the successes of coalition forces, it was feared that the Iraqi Republican Guard would escape into Iraq before it could be destroyed. It was decided to send British armored forces into Kuwait 15 hours ahead of schedule, and to send US forces after the Republican Guard. The coalition advance was preceded by a heavy artillery and rocket barrage, after which 150,000 troops and 1,500 tanks began their advance. Iraqi forces in Kuwait counterattacked against US troops, acting on a direct order from Saddam Hussein himself. Despite the intense combat, the Americans repulsed the Iraqis and continued to advance towards Kuwait City.\nKuwaiti forces were tasked with liberating the city. Iraqi troops offered only light resistance. The Kuwaitis quickly liberated the city despite losing one soldier and having one plane shot down. On 27 February, and President Bush declared it liberated. However, an Iraqi unit at Kuwait International Airport appeared not to have received the message and fiercely resisted. US Marines had to fight for hours before securing the airport, after which Kuwait was declared secure. After four days of fighting, Iraqi forces were expelled from Kuwait. As part of a scorched earth policy, they set fire to nearly 700 oil wells and placed land mines around the wells to make extinguishing the fires more difficult.\nInitial moves into Iraq.\nThe war's ground phase was officially designated Operation Desert Saber. The first units to move into Iraq were three patrols of the British Special Air Service's B squadron, call signs Bravo One Zero, Bravo Two Zero, and Bravo Three Zero, in late January. These eight-man patrols landed behind Iraqi lines to gather intelligence on the movements of Scud mobile missile launchers, which could not be detected from the air, as they were hidden under bridges and camouflage netting during the day. Other objectives included the destruction of the launchers and their fiber-optic communications arrays that lay in pipelines and relayed coordinates to the TEL operators launching attacks against Israel. The operations were designed to prevent any possible Israeli intervention. Due to lack of sufficient ground cover to carry out their assignment, One Zero and Three Zero abandoned their operations, while Two Zero remained, and was later compromised, with only Sergeant Chris Ryan escaping to Syria.\nElements of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Battalion 5th Cavalry of the 1st Cavalry Division of the US Army performed a direct attack into Iraq on 15 February 1991, followed by one in force on 20 February that led directly through seven Iraqi divisions which were caught off guard. On 17 January 1991 the 101st Airborne Division Aviation Regiment fired the first shots of the war when eight AH-64 helicopters successfully destroyed two Iraqi early warning radar sites. From 15 to 20 February, the Battle of Wadi al-Batin took place inside Iraq; this was the first of two attacks by 1 Battalion 5th Cavalry of the 1st Cavalry Division. It was a feint attack, designed to make the Iraqis think that a coalition invasion would take place from the south. The Iraqis fiercely resisted, and the Americans eventually withdrew as planned back into the Wadi al-Batin. Three US soldiers were killed and nine wounded, with one M2 Bradley IFV turret destroyed, but they had taken 40 prisoners and destroyed five tanks, and successfully deceived the Iraqis. This attack led the way for the XVIII Airborne Corps to sweep around behind the 1st Cav and attack Iraqi forces to the west. On 22 February 1991, Iraq agreed to a Soviet-proposed ceasefire agreement. The agreement called for Iraq to withdraw troops to pre-invasion positions within six weeks following a total ceasefire, and called for monitoring of the ceasefire and withdrawal to be overseen by the UN Security Council.\nThe coalition rejected the proposal, but said that retreating Iraqi forces would not be attacked, and gave 24 hours for Iraq to withdraw its forces. On 23 February, fighting resulted in the capture of 500 Iraqi soldiers. On 24 February, British and American armored forces crossed the Iraq\u2013Kuwait border and entered Iraq in large numbers, taking hundreds of prisoners. Iraqi resistance was light, and four Americans were killed.\nCoalition forces enter Iraq.\nShortly afterwards, the US VII Corps, in full strength and spearheaded by the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, launched an armored attack into Iraq early on 24 February, just to the west of Kuwait, surprising Iraqi forces. Simultaneously, the US XVIII Airborne Corps launched a sweeping \"left-hook\" attack across southern Iraq's largely undefended desert, led by the US 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized). This movement's left flank was protected by the French Division Daguet. The 101st Airborne Division conducted a combat air assault into enemy territory. The 101st Airborne Division had struck behind enemy lines. It was the deepest air assault operation in history. Approximately 400 helicopters transported 2,000 soldiers into Iraq where they destroyed Iraqi columns trying to flee westward and prevented the escape of Iraqi forces. The 101st Airborne Division travelled a further into Iraq. By nightfall, the 101st cut off Highway 8 which was a vital supply line running between Basra and the Iraqi forces. The 101st had lost 16 soldiers in action during the 100-hour war and captured thousands of enemy prisoners of war.\nThe French force quickly overcame Iraq's 45th Infantry Division, suffering light casualties and taking a large number of prisoners, and took up blocking positions to prevent an Iraqi counterattack on the coalition's flank. The movement's right flank was protected by the United Kingdom's 1st Armoured Division. Once the allies had penetrated deep into Iraqi territory, they turned eastward, launching a flank attack against the elite Republican Guard before it could escape. The Iraqis resisted fiercely from dug-in positions and stationary vehicles, and even mounted armored charges.\nUnlike many previous engagements, the destruction of the first Iraqi tanks did not result in a mass surrender. The Iraqis suffered massive losses and lost dozens of tanks and vehicles, while US casualties were comparatively low, with a single Bradley knocked out. Coalition forces pressed another into Iraqi territory, and captured their objective within three hours. They took 500 prisoners and inflicted heavy losses, defeating Iraq's 26th Infantry Division. A US soldier was killed by an Iraqi land mine, another five by friendly fire, and 30 wounded during the battle. Meanwhile, British forces attacked Iraq's Medina Division and a major Republican Guard logistics base. In nearly two days of some of the war's most intense fighting, the British destroyed 40 enemy tanks and captured a division commander.\nMeanwhile, US forces attacked the village of Al Busayyah, meeting fierce resistance. The US force destroyed military hardware and took prisoners, while suffering no casualties.\nOn 25 February 1991, Iraqi forces fired a Scud missile at an American barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The missile attack killed 28 US military personnel.\nThe coalition's advance was much swifter than US generals had expected. On 26 February, Iraqi troops began retreating from Kuwait, after they had set 737 of its oil wells on fire. A long convoy of retreating Iraqi troops formed along the main Iraq\u2013Kuwait highway. Although they were retreating, this convoy was bombed so extensively by coalition air forces that it came to be known as the Highway of Death. Thousands of Iraqi troops were killed. American, British, and French forces continued to pursue retreating Iraqi forces over the border and back into Iraq, eventually moving to within of Baghdad, before withdrawing back to Iraq's border with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.\nEnd of active hostilities.\nIn coalition-occupied Iraqi territory, a peace conference was held where a ceasefire agreement was negotiated and signed by both sides. At the conference, Iraq was authorized to fly armed helicopters on their side of the temporary border, ostensibly for government transit due to the damage done to civilian infrastructure. Soon after, these helicopters and much of Iraq's military were used to fight an uprising in the south. On March 1, 1991, one day after the Gulf War ceasefire, a revolt broke out in Basra against the Iraqi government. The uprising spread within days to all of the largest Shia cities in southern Iraq: Najaf, Amarah, Diwaniya, Hilla, Karbala, Kut, Nasiriyah and Samawah. The rebellions were encouraged by an airing of \"The Voice of Free Iraq\" on 24 February 1991, which was broadcast from a CIA-run radio station out of Saudi Arabia. The Arabic service of the Voice of America supported the uprising by stating that the rebellion was well supported, and that they would soon be liberated from Saddam.\nIn the North, Kurdish leaders took American statements that they would support an uprising to heart, and began fighting, hoping to trigger a coup d'\u00e9tat. However, when no US support came, Iraqi generals remained loyal to Saddam and brutally crushed the Kurdish uprising and the uprising in the south. Millions of Kurds fled across the mountains to Turkey and Kurdish areas of Iran. On April 5, the Iraqi government announced \"the complete crushing of acts of sedition, sabotage and rioting in all towns of Iraq.\" An estimated 25,000 to 100,000 Iraqis were killed in the uprisings. These events later resulted in no-fly zones being established in northern and southern Iraq.\nIn Kuwait, the Emir was restored, and suspected Iraqi collaborators were repressed. Eventually, over 400,000 people were expelled from the country, including a large number of Palestinians, because of PLO support of Saddam. Yasser Arafat did not apologize for his support of Iraq, but after his death Mahmoud Abbas formally apologized in 2004 on behalf of the PLO. This came after the Kuwaiti government formally forgave the group.\nThere was some criticism of the Bush administration, as they chose to allow Saddam to remain in power instead of pushing on to capture Baghdad and overthrowing his government. In their co-written 1998 book, \"A World Transformed\", Bush and Brent Scowcroft argued that such a course would have fractured the alliance, and would have had many unnecessary political and human costs associated with it.\nIn 1992, the US Defense Secretary during the war, Dick Cheney, made the same point:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I would guess if we had gone in there, we would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home.\nAnd the final point that I think needs to be made is this question of casualties. I don't think you could have done all of that without significant additional US casualties, and while everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the (1991) conflict, for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn't a cheap war.\nAnd the question in my mind is, how many additional American casualties is Saddam [Hussein] worth? And the answer is, not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the President made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.\nOn 10 March 1991, 540,000 US troops began moving out of the Persian Gulf.\nOn 15 March 1991, Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah returned to Kuwait, staying at the private home of a wealthy Kuwaiti as his own palace had been destroyed. He was met with a symbolic arrival with several dozens cars filled with people honking their horns and waving Kuwaiti flags who tried to follow the Emir's convoy. According to \"The New York Times\", he faced a population divided between those who stayed and those who fled, a government straining to reassert control and a rejuvenated opposition that is pressing for greater democracy and other postwar changes, including voting rights for women. Democracy advocates had been calling for restoration of Parliament that the Emir had suspended in 1986.\nCoalition involvement.\nCoalition members included Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Honduras, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Niger, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Syria, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. The United States had 700,000 troops.\nGermany and Japan provided financial assistance and donated military hardware, although they did not send direct military assistance. This later became known as \"checkbook diplomacy\".\nAustralia.\nAustralia contributed a Naval Task Group, which formed part of the multi-national fleet in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, under Operation Damask. In addition, medical teams were deployed aboard a US hospital ship, and a naval clearance diving team took part in de-mining Kuwait's port facilities following the end of combat operations. Australian forces experienced a number of incidents in the first number of weeks of the Desert Storm Campaign including the detection of significant air threats from Iraq as a part of the outer perimeter of Battle Force Zulu; the detection of free sea floating mines and assistance to the aircraft carrier . The Australian Task Force was also placed at great risk with regard to the sea mine threat, with narrowly avoiding a mine. The Australians played a significant role in enforcing the sanctions put in place against Iraq following Kuwait's invasion. Following the war's end, Australia deployed a medical unit on Operation Habitat to northern Iraq as part of Operation Provide Comfort.\nArgentina.\nArgentina was the only South American country to participate in the 1991 Gulf War. It sent a destroyer, ARA Almirante Brown (D-10), a corvette, ARA Spiro (P-43) (later replaced by another corvette, ARA Rosales (P-42)) and a supply ship, ARA \"Bah\u00eda San Blas\" (B-4) to participate on the United Nations blockade and sea control effort of the Persian Gulf. The success of \"Operaci\u00f3n Alfil\" (English: \"Operation Bishop\") with more than 700 interceptions and sailed in the theatre of operations helped to overcome the so-called \"Malvinas syndrome\".\nArgentina was later classified by the US as a major non-NATO ally due to its contributions during the war.\nCanada.\nCanada was one of the first countries to condemn Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, and it quickly agreed to join the US-led coalition. In August 1990, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney committed the Canadian Forces to deploy a Naval Task Group. The destroyers and joined the maritime interdiction force supported by the supply ship in Operation Friction. The Canadian Task Group led the coalition's maritime logistics forces in the Persian Gulf. A fourth ship, , arrived in-theater after hostilities had ceased and was the first allied ship to visit Kuwait.\nFollowing the UN-authorized use of force against Iraq, the Canadian Forces deployed a CF-18 Hornet and CH-124 Sea King squadron with support personnel, as well as a field hospital to deal with casualties from the ground war. When the air war began, the CF-18s were integrated into the coalition force and provided air cover and attacked ground targets. This was the first time since the Korean War that the Canadian Armed Forces had participated in an offensive. The only CF-18 Hornet to record an official victory during the conflict was an aircraft involved in the beginning of the Battle of Bubiyan against the Iraqi Navy.\nFrance.\nThe second largest European contingent was from France, which committed 18,000 troops. Operating on the left flank of the US XVIII Airborne Corps, the French Army force was the Division Daguet, including troops from the French Foreign Legion. Initially, the French operated independently under national command and control, but coordinated closely with the Americans (via CENTCOM) and Saudis. In January, the Division was placed under the tactical control of the XVIII Airborne Corps. France also deployed several combat aircraft and naval units. The French called their contribution Op\u00e9ration Daguet.\nItaly.\nFollowing the invasion and annexation of Kuwait by Iraq, on September 25, 1990, the Italian Government sent eight multirole fighter bombers Tornado IDS (plus two spare) in the Persian Gulf, belonging to the 6\u00ba, 36\u00ba and 50\u00ba Stormo, which were deployed at the Al Dhafra Air Base, near Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. During the 42 days of war, Italian fighters made 226 sorties for a total of 589 flight hours. The Italian Air Force recorded the loss of a single aircraft in the Gulf War. The use of Italian aircraft as part of the Desert Storm operation represented the first operational employment in combat missions of Italian Air Force aircraft since the end of World War II.\nUnited Kingdom.\nThe United Kingdom committed the largest contingent of any European state that participated in the war's combat operations. Operation Granby was the code name for the operations in the Persian Gulf. British Army regiments (mainly with the 1st Armoured Division), Royal Air Force, Naval Air Squadrons and Royal Navy vessels were mobilized in the Persian Gulf. Both Royal Air Force and Naval Air Squadrons, using various aircraft, operated from airbases in Saudi Arabia and Naval Air Squadrons from various vessels in the Persian Gulf. The United Kingdom played a major role in the Battle of Norfolk, where its forces destroyed over 200 Iraqi tanks and a large quantity of other vehicles. After 48 hours of combat the British 1st Armoured Division destroyed or isolated four Iraqi infantry divisions (the 26th, 48th, 31st, and 25th) and overran the Iraqi 52nd Armored Division in several sharp engagements.\nChief Royal Navy vessels deployed to the Persian Gulf included \"Broadsword\"-class frigates, and \"Sheffield\"-class destroyers; other R.N. and RFA ships were also deployed. The light aircraft carrier HMS \"Ark Royal\" was deployed to the Mediterranean Sea.\nSeveral SAS squadrons were deployed.\nA British Challenger 1 achieved the longest range confirmed tank kill of the war, destroying an Iraqi tank with an armour-piercing fin-stabilized discarding-sabot (APFSDS) round fired over \u2014the longest tank-on-tank kill shot recorded.\nCasualties.\nCivilian.\nOver 1,000 Kuwaiti civilians were killed by Iraqis. More than 600 Kuwaitis went missing during Iraq's occupation, and approximately 375 remains were found in mass graves in Iraq. The increased importance of air attacks from both coalition warplanes and cruise missiles led to controversy over the number of civilian deaths caused during Desert Storm's initial stages. Within Desert Storm's first 24 hours, more than 1,000 sorties were flown, many against targets in Baghdad. The city was the target of heavy bombing, as it was the seat of power for Saddam and the Iraqi forces' command and control. This ultimately led to civilian casualties.\nIn one noted incident, two USAF stealth planes bombed a bunker in Amiriyah, causing the deaths of 408 Iraqi civilians in the shelter. Scenes of burned and mutilated bodies were subsequently broadcast, and controversy arose over the bunker's status, with some stating that it was a civilian shelter, while others contended that it was a center of Iraqi military operations, and that the civilians had been deliberately moved there to act as human shields.\nSaddam's government gave high civilian casualty to draw support from Islamic countries. The Iraqi government claimed that 2,300 civilians died during the air campaign. According to the Project on Defense Alternatives study, 3,664 Iraqi civilians were killed in the conflict.\nDuring the nationwide uprisings against the Ba'athist Iraqi government that directly followed the end of the Gulf War in March and April, an estimated 25,000 to 100,000 Iraqis were killed, overwhelmingly civilians.\nA Harvard University study released in June 1991 predicted that there would be tens of thousands of additional Iraqi civilian deaths by the end of 1991 due to the \"public health catastrophe\" caused by the destruction of the country's electrical generating capacity. \"Without electricity, hospitals cannot function, perishable medicines spoil, water cannot be purified and raw sewage cannot be processed,\". The US government refused to release its own study of the effects of the Iraqi public health crisis.\nAn investigation in 1992 by Beth Osborne Daponte estimated about 13,000 civilians were directly killed in the war, while another 70,000 died indirectly from the war's other effects. According to a 1992 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine by researchers known as the International Study Team (IST), child mortality increased threefold as a result of the war, with 46,900 children under the age of 5 dying between January and August 1991. However, these figures have been challenged by a 2017 study published in The BMJ, which stated that the \"IST survey probably understated the level of child mortality that prevailed during 1985\u20131990 and overstated the level during 1991.\" According to this study, \"there was no major rise in child mortality in Iraq after 1990\". A report published in 2002 by Medact estimated the total number of Iraqi deaths caused directly and indirectly by the Gulf War to be between 142,500 and 206,000, including 100,000\u2013120,000 military deaths, and 20,000\u201335,000 civilian deaths in the civil war and 15,000\u201330,000 refugee deaths after the end of the Gulf war.\nIraq also launched numerous attacks on civilian targets in Israel and Saudi Arabia. A 1991 report by Middle East Watch said that at least one Saudi civilian was killed after they were hit by Iraqi shelling in Riyadh. A disputed number of people were also killed during the Iraqi rocket attacks on Israel.\nIraqi.\nA United Nations report in March 1991 described the effect on Iraq of the US-led bombing campaign as \"near apocalyptic\", bringing back Iraq to the \"pre-industrial age.\" The exact number of Iraqi combat casualties is unknown, but is believed to have been heavy. Some estimate that Iraq sustained between 20,000 and 35,000 fatalities. A report commissioned by the US Air Force estimated 10,000\u201312,000 Iraqi combat deaths in the air campaign, and as many as 10,000 casualties in the ground war. This analysis is based on Iraqi prisoner of war reports.\nAccording to the Project on Defense Alternatives study, between 20,000 and 26,000 Iraqi military personnel were killed in the conflict while 75,000 others were wounded.\nAccording to Kanan Makiya, \"For the Iraqi people, the cost of enforcing the will of the United Nations has been grotesque.\" General Schwarzkopf talked about \"a very, very large number of dead in these units, a very, very large number indeed.\" The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Les Aspin, estimated that \"at least 65,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed\". A figure was supported by Israeli sources who speak of \"one to two hundred thousand Iraqi casualties.\" Most of the killing \"took place during the ground war. Fleeing soldiers were bombed with a device known as a 'fuel-air explosive.'\"\nCoalition.\nThe US Department of Defense reports that US forces suffered 148 battle-related deaths (35 to friendly fire), with one pilot listed as MIA (his remains were found and identified in August 2009). A further 145 Americans died in non-combat accidents. The UK suffered 47 deaths (nine to friendly fire, all by US forces), France nine, and the other countries, not including Kuwait, suffered 37 deaths (18 Saudis, one Egyptian, six UAE and three Qataris). At least 605 Kuwaiti soldiers were still missing 10 years after their capture.\nThe largest single loss of life among coalition forces happened on 25 February 1991, when an Iraqi Al Hussein missile hit a US military barrack in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 28 US Army Reservists from Pennsylvania. In all, 190 coalition troops were killed by Iraqi fire during the war, 113 of whom were American, out of 358 coalition deaths. Another 44 soldiers were killed and 57 wounded by friendly fire. 145 soldiers died of exploding munitions or non-combat accidents.\nThe largest accident among coalition forces happened on 21 March 1991, when a Royal Saudi Air Force C-130H crashed in heavy smoke on approach to Ras Al-Mishab Airport, Saudi Arabia. 92 Senegalese soldiers and six Saudi crew members were killed.\nThe number of coalition wounded in combat was 776, including 458 Americans.\n190 coalition troops were killed by Iraqi combatants, the rest of the 379 coalition deaths were from friendly fire or accidents. This number was much lower than expected. Among the American combat dead were four female soldiers.\nFriendly fire.\nWhile the death toll among coalition forces engaging Iraqi combatants was very low, a substantial number of deaths were caused by accidental attacks from other Allied units. Of the 148 US troops who died in battle, 24% were killed by friendly fire, a total of 35 service personnel. A further 11 died in detonations of coalition munitions. Nine British military personnel were killed in a friendly fire incident when a USAF A-10 Thunderbolt II destroyed a group of two Warrior IFVs.\nAftermath.\nGulf War illness.\nMany returning coalition soldiers reported illnesses following their action in the war, a phenomenon known as Gulf War syndrome (GWS) or Gulf War illness (GWI). Common symptoms reported are chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and gastrointestinal disorder. There has been widespread speculation and disagreement about the causes of the illness and the possibly related birth defects. Researchers found that infants born to male veterans of the 1991 war had higher rates of two types of heart valve defects. Some children born after the war to Gulf War veterans had a certain kidney defect that was not found in Gulf War veterans' children born before the war. Researchers have said that they did not have enough information to link birth defects with exposure to toxic substances.\nIn 1994, the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs with Respect to Export Administration published a report entitled, \"U.S. Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq and their Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the Gulf War\". This publication, called the Riegle Report, summarized testimony this committee had received establishing that the U.S. had in the 1980s supplied Saddam Hussein with chemical and biological warfare technology, that Saddam had used such chemical weapons against Iran and his own native Kurds, and possibly against U.S. soldiers as well, plausibly contributing to the GWS.\nA 2022 study by Dr. Robert W. Haley of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, \"et al.\", of 1,016 U.S. Gulf War veterans found evidence of a causal link between GWS and exposure to low levels of the nerve agent sarin, which was released into the air by coalition bombing of Iraqi chemical weapons facilities. Significantly, the study found an increased incidence of GWS not only among veterans who recounted hearing nerve agent alarms, but also among veterans with the RR or QR (as opposed to the QQ) forms of the PON1 gene, which produces an enzyme that deactivates organophosphates (including sarin) through hydrolysis. By contrast, GWS was \"inversely\" associated with higher levels of the type Q isozyme, which is more efficient at breaking down sarin than its type R counterpart. The authors \"found that the PON1 genotype and hearing nerve agent alarms were independent and the findings robust to both measured and unmeasured confounding, supporting a mechanistic [gene\u2013environment] interaction.\u00a0... Moreover, the change in the combined effect from one category to the next was significantly greater than the sum of the independent effects of the environmental exposure and the genotype\".\nEffects of depleted uranium.\nThe US military used depleted uranium in tank kinetic energy penetrators and cannon ordnance. Significant controversy regarding the long term safety of depleted uranium exists, including claims of pyrophoric, genotoxic, and teratogenic heavy metal effects. Many have cited its use during the war as a contributing factor to a number of major health issues in veterans and in surrounding civilian populations, including in birth defects and child cancer rates. Scientific opinion on the risk is mixed. In 2004, Iraq had the highest mortality rate due to leukemia of any country.\nDepleted uranium has 40% less radioactivity than natural uranium. Depleted uranium is not a significant health hazard unless it is taken into the body. External exposure to radiation from depleted uranium is generally not a major concern because the alpha particles emitted by its isotopes travel only a few centimeters in air or can be stopped by a sheet of paper. Also, the uranium-235 that remains in depleted uranium emits only a small amount of low-energy gamma radiation. However, if allowed to enter the body, depleted uranium, like natural uranium, has the potential for both chemical and radiological toxicity with the two important target organs being the kidneys and the lungs.\nHighway of Death.\nIn the night of 26\u201327 February 1991, some Iraqi forces began leaving Kuwait on the main highway north of Al Jahra in a column of some 1,400 vehicles. A patrolling E-8 Joint STARS aircraft observed the retreating forces and relayed the information to the DDM-8 air operations center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. These vehicles and the retreating soldiers were subsequently attacked by two A-10 aircraft, resulting in a stretch of highway strewn with debris\u2014the Highway of Death. \"New York Times\" reporter Maureen Dowd wrote, \"With the Iraqi leader facing military defeat, Mr. Bush decided that he would rather gamble on a violent and potentially unpopular ground war than risk the alternative: an imperfect settlement hammered out by the Soviets and Iraqis that world opinion might accept as tolerable.\"\nChuck Horner, Commander of US and allied air operations, has written:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />[By February 26], the Iraqis totally lost heart and started to evacuate occupied Kuwait, but airpower halted the caravan of Iraqi Army and plunderers fleeing toward Basra. This event was later called by the media \"The Highway of Death.\" There were certainly a lot of dead vehicles, but not so many dead Iraqis. They'd already learned to scamper off into the desert when our aircraft started to attack. Nevertheless, some people back home wrongly chose to believe we were cruelly and unusually punishing our already whipped foes.\nBy February 27, talk had turned toward terminating the hostilities. Kuwait was free. We were not interested in governing Iraq. So the question became \"How do we stop the killing.\"\nBulldozer assault.\nAnother incident during the war highlighted the question of large-scale Iraqi combat deaths. This was the \"bulldozer assault\", wherein two brigades from the US 1st Infantry Division (Mechanized) were faced with a large and complex trench network, as part of the heavily fortified \"Saddam Hussein Line\". After some deliberation, they opted to use anti-mine plows mounted on tanks and combat earthmovers to simply plow over and bury alive the defending Iraqi soldiers. Not a single American was killed during the attack. Reporters were banned from witnessing the attack, near the neutral zone that touches the border between Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Every American in the assault was inside an armored vehicle.\nPatrick Day Sloyan of \"Newsday\" reported, \"Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Vulcan armored carriers straddled the trench lines and fired into the Iraqi soldiers as the tanks covered them with mounds of sand. 'I came through right after the lead company,' [Col. Anthony] Moreno said. 'What you saw was a bunch of buried trenches with peoples' arms and things sticking out of them.'\" However, after the war, the Iraqi government said that only 44 bodies were found. In his book \"The Wars Against Saddam\", John Simpson alleges that US forces attempted to cover up the incident. After the incident, the commander of the 1st Brigade said: \"I know burying people like that sounds pretty nasty, but it would be even nastier if we had to put our troops in the trenches and clean them out with bayonets.\" Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney did not mention the First Division's tactics in an interim report to Congress on Operation Desert Storm. In the report, Cheney acknowledged that 457 enemy soldiers were buried during the ground war.\nPalestinian exodus from Kuwait.\nA Palestinian exodus from Kuwait took place during and after the Gulf War. During the Gulf War, more than 200,000 Palestinians fled Kuwait during the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait due to harassment and intimidation by Iraqi security forces, in addition to getting fired from work by Iraqi authority figures in Kuwait. After the Gulf War, the Kuwaiti authorities forcibly pressured nearly 200,000 Palestinians to leave Kuwait in 1991. Kuwait's policy, which led to this exodus, was a response to alignment of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the PLO with Saddam Hussein.\nThe Palestinians who fled Kuwait were Jordanian citizens. In 2013, 280,000 Jordanian citizens of Palestinian origin lived in Kuwait. In 2012, 80,000 Palestinians (without Jordanian citizenship) lived in Kuwait.\nSaudi Arabia expelled Yemeni workers after Yemen supported Saddam during the Gulf War.\nCoalition bombing of Iraq's civilian infrastructure.\nIn the 23 June 1991 edition of \"The Washington Post\", reporter Bart Gellman wrote: \n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Many of the targets were chosen only secondarily to contribute to the military defeat of Iraq\u00a0... Military planners hoped the bombing would amplify the economic and psychological impact of international sanctions on Iraqi society\u00a0... They deliberately did great harm to Iraq's ability to support itself as an industrial society\u00a0...\nIn the Jan/Feb 1995 edition of \"Foreign Affairs\", French diplomat Eric Rouleau wrote: \n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />[T]he Iraqi people, who were not consulted about the invasion, have paid the price for their government's madness\u00a0... Iraqis understood the legitimacy of a military action to drive their army from Kuwait, but they have had difficulty comprehending the Allied rationale for using air power to systematically destroy or cripple Iraqi infrastructure and industry: electric power stations (92 percent of installed capacity destroyed), refineries (80 percent of production capacity), petrochemical complexes, telecommunications centers (including 135 telephone networks), bridges (more than 100), roads, highways, railroads, hundreds of locomotives and boxcars full of goods, radio and television broadcasting stations, cement plants, and factories producing aluminum, textiles, electric cables, and medical supplies.\nHowever, the UN subsequently spent billions rebuilding hospitals, schools, and water purification facilities throughout the country.\nAbuse of Coalition POWs.\nDuring the conflict, coalition aircrew shot down over Iraq were displayed as prisoners of war on TV, most with visible signs of abuse. Amongst several testimonies to poor treatment, USAF Captain Richard Storr was allegedly tortured by Iraqis during the Persian Gulf War. Iraqi secret police broke his nose, dislocated his shoulder and punctured his eardrum. Royal Air Force Tornado crew John Nichol and John Peters have both alleged that they were tortured during this time. Nichol and Peters were forced to make statements against the war on television. Members of British Special Air Service Bravo Two Zero were captured while providing information about an Iraqi supply line of Scud missiles to coalition forces. Only one, Chris Ryan, evaded capture while the group's other surviving members were violently tortured. Flight surgeon (later General) Rhonda Cornum was sexually assaulted by one of her captors after the Black Hawk helicopter in which she was riding was shot down while searching for a downed F-16 pilot.\nOperation Southern Watch.\nSince the war, the US has had a continued presence of 5,000 troops stationed in Saudi Arabia\u00a0\u2013 a figure that rose to 10,000 during the 2003 conflict in Iraq. Operation Southern Watch enforced the no-fly zones over southern Iraq set up after 1991; oil exports through the Persian Gulf's shipping lanes were protected by the Bahrain-based US Fifth Fleet.\nSince Saudi Arabia houses Mecca and Medina, Islam's holiest sites, many Muslims were upset at the permanent military presence. The continued presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia after the war was one of the stated motivations behind the 11 September terrorist attacks, the Khobar Towers bombing, and the date chosen for the 1998 US embassy bombings (7 August), which was eight years to the day that US troops were sent to Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden interpreted the Islamic prophet Muhammad as banning the \"permanent presence of infidels in Arabia\". In 1996, bin Laden issued a fatwa, calling for US troops to leave Saudi Arabia. In a December 1999 interview with Rahimullah Yusufzai, bin Laden said he felt that Americans were \"too near to Mecca\" and considered this a provocation to the entire Islamic world.\nSanctions.\nOn 6 August 1990, after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 661 which imposed economic sanctions on Iraq, providing for a full trade embargo, excluding medical supplies, food and other items of humanitarian necessity, these to be determined by the council's sanctions committee. From 1991 until 2003, the effects of government policy and sanctions regime led to hyperinflation, widespread poverty and malnutrition.\nDuring the late 1990s, the UN considered relaxing the sanctions imposed because of the hardships suffered by ordinary Iraqis. Studies dispute the number of people who died in south and central Iraq during the years of the sanctions.\nDraining of the Qurna Marshes.\nThe draining of the Qurna Marshes was an irrigation project in Iraq during and immediately after the war, to drain a large area of marshes in the Tigris\u2013Euphrates river system. Formerly covering an area of around , the large complex of wetlands were nearly emptied of water, and the local Shi'ite population relocated, following the war and 1991 uprisings. By 2000, the United Nations Environment Programme estimated that 90% of the marshlands had disappeared, causing desertification of over .\nThe draining occurred in Iraq and to a smaller degree in Iran between the 1950s and 1990s to clear large areas of the marshes. Formerly covering an area of around , the large complex of wetlands was 90% drained before the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. The marshes are typically divided into three main sub-marshes, the Hawizeh, Central, and Hammar Marshes and all three were drained at different times for different reasons. Initial draining of the Central Marshes was intended to reclaim land for agriculture but later all three marshes would become a tool of war and revenge.\nMany international organizations such as the UN Human Rights Commission, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the Wetlands International, and Middle East Watch have described the project as a political attempt to force the Marsh Arabs out of the area through water diversion tactics.\nOil spill.\nOn 23 January, Iraq dumped of crude oil into the Persian Gulf, causing the largest offshore oil spill in history at that time. It was reported as a deliberate natural resources attack to keep US Marines from coming ashore (\"Missouri\" and \"Wisconsin\" had shelled Failaka Island during the war to reinforce the idea that there would be an amphibious assault attempt). About 30\u201340% of this came from allied raids on Iraqi coastal targets.\nKuwaiti oil fires.\nThe Kuwaiti oil fires were caused by the Iraqi military setting fire to 700 oil wells as part of a scorched earth policy while retreating from Kuwait in 1991 after conquering the country but being driven out by coalition forces. The fires started in January and February 1991, and the last one was extinguished by November.\nThe resulting fires burned uncontrollably because of the dangers of sending in firefighting crews. Land mines had been placed in areas around the oil wells, and a military cleaning of the areas was necessary before the fires could be put out. Somewhere around of oil were lost each day. Eventually, privately contracted crews extinguished the fires, at a total cost of US$1.5\u00a0billion to Kuwait. By that time, however, the fires had burned for approximately 10 months, causing widespread pollution.\nCost.\nThe cost of the war to the United States was calculated by the US Congress in April 1992 to be $61.1\u00a0billion (equivalent to $ in 2023). About $52\u00a0billion of that amount was paid by other countries: $36\u00a0billion by Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states of the Persian Gulf; $16\u00a0billion by Germany and Japan (which sent no combat forces due to their constitutions). About 25% of Saudi Arabia's contribution was paid with in-kind services to the troops, such as food and transportation. US troops represented about 74% of the combined force, and the global cost was therefore higher.\nEffect on developing countries.\nApart from the impact on Arab States of the Persian Gulf, the resulting economic disruptions after the crisis affected many states. The Overseas Development Institute (ODI) undertook a study in 1991 to assess the effects on developing states and the international community's response. A briefing paper finalized on the day that the conflict ended draws on their findings which had two main conclusions: Many developing states were severely affected and while there has been a considerable response to the crisis, the distribution of assistance was highly selective.\nThe ODI factored in elements of \"cost\" which included oil imports, remittance flows, re-settlement costs, loss of export earnings and tourism. For Egypt, the cost totaled $1\u00a0billion, 3% of GDP. Yemen had a cost of $830\u00a0million, 10% of GDP, while it cost Jordan $1.8\u00a0billion, 32% of GDP.\nInternational response to the crisis on developing states came with the channeling of aid through The Gulf Crisis Financial Co-ordination Group. They were 24 states, comprising most of the OECD countries plus some Gulf states: Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait. The members of this group agreed to disperse $14\u00a0billion in development assistance.\nThe World Bank responded by speeding up the disbursement of existing project and adjustment loans. The International Monetary Fund adopted two lending facilities\u00a0\u2013 the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) and the Compensatory & Contingency Financing Facility (CCFF). The European Community offered $2\u00a0billion in assistance.\nMedia coverage.\nUS policy regarding media freedom was much more restrictive than in the Vietnam War. The policy had been spelled out in a Pentagon document entitled \"Annex Foxtrot\". Most of the press information came from briefings organized by the military. Only selected journalists were allowed to visit the front lines or conduct interviews with soldiers. Those visits were always conducted in the presence of officers, and were subject to both prior approval by the military and censorship afterward. This was ostensibly to protect sensitive information from being revealed to Iraq. This policy was heavily influenced by the military's experience with the Vietnam War, in which public opposition within the US grew throughout the war's course. It was not only the limitation of information in the Middle East; media were also restricting what was shown about the war with more graphic depictions like Ken Jarecke's image of a burnt Iraqi soldier being pulled from the American AP wire whereas in Europe it was given extensive coverage.\nTwo BBC journalists, John Simpson and Bob Simpson (no relation), defied their editors and remained in Baghdad to report on the war's progress. They were responsible for a report which included an \"infamous cruise missile that travelled down a street and turned left at a traffic light.\"\nAlternative media outlets provided views opposing the war. Deep Dish Television compiled segments from independent producers in the US and abroad, and produced a 10-hour series that was distributed internationally, called The Gulf Crisis TV Project. The series' first program \"War, Oil and Power\" was compiled and released in 1990, before the war broke out. \"News World Order\" was the title of another program in the series; it focused on the media's complicity in promoting the war, as well as Americans' reactions to the media coverage.\nMedia watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) critically analyzed media coverage during the war in various articles and books, such as the 1991 \"Gulf War Coverage: The Worst Censorship was at Home\".\nTechnology and equipments.\nPrecision-guided munitions were heralded as key in allowing military strikes to be made with a minimum of civilian casualties compared to previous wars, although they were not used as often as more traditional, less accurate bombs. Specific buildings in downtown Baghdad could be bombed while journalists in their hotels watched cruise missiles fly by.\nPrecision-guided munitions amounted to approximately 7.4% of all bombs dropped by the coalition. Other bombs included cluster bombs, which disperse numerous submunitions, and daisy cutters, 15,000-pound bombs which can disintegrate everything within hundreds of yards.\nGlobal Positioning System (GPS) units were relatively new at the time and were important in enabling coalition units to easily navigate across the desert. Since military GPS receivers were not available for most troops, many used commercially available units. To permit these to be used to best effect, the \"selective availability\" feature of the GPS system was turned off for the duration of Desert Storm, allowing these commercial receivers to provide the same precision as the military equipment.\nAirborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) and satellite communication systems were also important. Two examples of this are the US Navy's Grumman E-2 Hawkeye and the US Air Force's Boeing E-3 Sentry. Both were used in command and control area of operations. These systems provided essential communications links between air, ground, and naval forces. It is one of several reasons coalition forces dominated the air war.\nAmerican-made color photocopiers were used to produce some of Iraq's battle plans. Some of the copiers contained concealed high-tech transmitters that revealed their positions to American electronic warfare aircraft, leading to more precise bombings.\nScud and Patriot missiles.\nThe role of Iraq's Scud missiles featured prominently in the war. Scud is a tactical ballistic missile that the Soviet Union developed and deployed among the forward deployed Soviet Army divisions in East Germany.\nScud missiles utilize inertial guidance which operates for the duration that the engines operate. Iraq used Scud missiles, launching them into both Saudi Arabia and Israel. Some missiles caused extensive casualties, while others caused little damage.\nThe US Patriot missile was used in combat for the first time. The US military claimed a high effectiveness against Scuds at the time, but later analysis gives figures as low as 9%, with 45% of the 158 Patriot launches being against debris or false targets. The Dutch Ministry of Defense, which also sent Patriot missiles to protect civilians in Israel and Turkey, later disputed the higher claim. Further, there is at least one incident of a software error causing a Patriot missile's failure to engage an incoming Scud, resulting in deaths. Both the US Army and the missile manufacturers maintained the Patriot delivered a \"miracle performance\" in the Gulf War.\nIn popular culture.\nThe Gulf War has been the subject of several video games including ', ', ', and '. There have also been numerous depictions in film including \"Jarhead\" (2005), which is based on US Marine Anthony Swofford's 2003 memoir of the same name. The 2016 Bollywood movie \"Airlift\" is based on 1990 airlift of Indians from Kuwait, the evacuation of Indian citizens stranded in Kuwait during the Gulf War.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nWorks cited.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFilms.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nNovels.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "697054": "Scott Speicher\nUS Navy pilot and first American casualty of the Persian Gulf War\n \nMichael Scott Speicher (July 12, 1957 \u2013 unknown) was a naval aviator in the United States Navy who was shot down over Iraq during the Persian Gulf War becoming the first American combat casualty of the war. His fate was not known until 2 August 2009 when the U.S. Navy reported that Speicher's remains had been found in Iraq by the United States military. The official cause of death was \"homicide by undetermined means\" and DNA testing showed survival after his crash. He is also the most recent American to have been shot down in air-to-air combat.\nEarly life and education.\nMichael Scott Speicher was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on 12 July 1957. Scott and his sister went to Lakewood Elementary School and Eastgate Middle School before attending Winnetonka High School.\nWhen Speicher was 15, his family moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where he attended Nathan Bedford Forrest High School. After graduating from high school, he then attended Florida State University (FSU). Speicher graduated from FSU in 1980 with a bachelor's degree in accounting and business management. While at Florida State, he met Joanne, whom he eventually married, and they had two children. Eighteen months after Speicher went missing in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, friend and fellow U.S. Navy pilot Buddy Harris married Joanne. They had two children.\nSpeicher's father had been a fighter pilot in World War II. Speicher went on his first airplane flight when he was five years old. Speicher was a cadet member of the Civil Air Patrol as a teenager. Upon graduation from FSU, Speicher joined the U.S. Navy and attended Aviation Officer Candidate School at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida. After flight training at various bases, he was designated as a naval aviator and spent several years as both a fleet squadron aviator in the A-7 Corsair II and F/A-18 Hornet and as a flight instructor on the F/A-18.\nBy the early 1990s, Speicher had attained the rank of lieutenant commander and was stationed at NAS Cecil Field near Jacksonville, Florida. He was assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron Eighty One (VFA-81 \"Sunliners\"), deploying with Carrier Air Wing 17 (CVW-17) aboard the aircraft carrier . At the time of his deployment to the Iraq theater, Speicher and his wife had a 3-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son.\nLoss incident.\nSpeicher was flying an F/A-18 Hornet fighter, BuNo 163484, when he was shot down by Iraqi Air Force (IQAF) aircraft 100 miles west of Baghdad, in the early hours of 17 January 1991, the first night of Operation Desert Storm. His plane crashed in a remote, uninhabited wasteland known as Tulul ad Dulaym at . He was the first combat casualty for American forces in the war.\nThe U.S. Navy maintained in a 1997 document that Speicher was downed by a surface-to-air missile. However, an unclassified summary of a 2001 CIA report suggests that Speicher's aircraft was shot down by a missile fired from an Iraqi aircraft, most likely a MiG-25, flown by Lieutenant Zuhair Dawoud, 84th squadron of the IQAF. Speicher was at 28,000 feet and travelling at 0.92 Mach (540 knots) when the front of the aircraft suffered a catastrophic event. The impact from the R-40 missile threw the aircraft laterally off its flight path between fifty and sixty degrees with a resulting 6 g minimum load. A pilot on the same mission stated: \"I'm telling you right now, don't believe what you're being told. It was that MiG that shot Spike down.\"\nStatus and investigations.\n1990s.\nThe day after the shoot-down, Speicher was placed on MIA status. On 22 May 1991, after the end of the Gulf War, Speicher's status was changed to killed in action, body not recovered (KIA/BNR). Navy Commander Buddy Harris, who was a friend and fellow naval aviator of Speicher's, became a strong advocate for searching for Speicher, often meeting with U.S. officials.\nIn December 1993, a military official from Qatar discovered the wreckage of a plane in the desert, which was subsequently identified as Speicher's aircraft. The canopy was a good distance from the rest of the aircraft, suggesting Speicher had tried to eject. In April 1994, a U.S. satellite photographed apparent human-made symbols on the desert floor near the wreck's location, which might possibly be Speicher's E & E (Escape and Evade) sign, suggesting that Speicher might have survived the crash. A covert American operation to inspect the site was considered, but rejected by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Shalikashvili, as too risky.\nIn December 1995, working through the International Committee of the Red Cross, investigators from the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army's Central Identification Laboratory went to Iraq and conducted an excavation of the crash site. Bedouin nomads gave investigators a flight uniform that was likely Speicher's, with his name supposedly cut out of it, but the investigators concluded it had been planted there. Other evidence led investigators to further conclude Speicher had likely ejected, and was not in the plane at the time it crashed. In September 1996, the Secretary of the Navy in a new review reaffirmed the presumptive finding of death.\nIn 1997, a U.S. Department of Defense document leaked to \"The New York Times\" showed that the Pentagon had not been forthcoming with information previously requested by U.S. Senator Rod Grams of Minnesota. Senator Grams publicly accused the Pentagon of misleading him, and joined with Senator Bob Smith of New Hampshire in calling for an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Speicher case was taken up by the National Alliance of Families, which had been quite active in the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue. Speculative theories were developed as to the circumstances of Speicher's shoot-down, and assuming he was still alive, why the U.S. military might not want to find him and why Iraq might not want to return him.\n2000s.\nIn January 2001, the Secretary of the Navy changed Speicher's status to \"missing in action\". This was the first time the Defense Department had ever made such a change. In conjunction with the change in classification, Speicher was promoted to commander, in accordance with U.S. Navy practice for POWs held a long time. The 2001 CIA report stated that he may have survived by ejecting. Rumors from Iraq said that Speicher was captive, walked with a limp, and had facial scars. In July 2002, Speicher was further promoted to Captain.\nSpeicher's possible situation became a more high-profile issue in the build-up to war. In March 2002, the \"Washington Times\" ran five successive front-page articles about it, National Review Online ran a long piece on it, and on 12 September 2002, President George W. Bush mentioned Speicher in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly as part of his case for war against Iraq. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida also took a strong interest in the case. Speicher's status was changed again to \"missing/captured\" on 11 October 2002, one day after the United States Congress authorized the use of military force in Iraq. Then-U.S. Secretary of the Navy Gordon R. England said, \"While the information available to me now does not prove definitively that Commander Speicher is alive and in Iraqi custody, I am personally convinced the Iraqis seized him sometime after his plane went down. Further, it is my firm belief that the government of Iraq knows what happened to Cmdr. Speicher.\"\nUpon the 2003 invasion of Iraq in March 2003, a major investigation on the ground began, that also further increased public attention to the matter. In April 2003, Speicher's possible initials were discovered in a cell at Hakmiyah prison in Baghdad. Investigators did not think it was significant because a similar carving of \"MJN\" was found directly above the \"MSS\" scrawl. Subsequent tests on hair found in the cell's drain did not match Speicher's DNA. Senator Nelson went to Iraq to visit the prison personally. Speicher's name was also found on a document in Iraq, dated January 2003, that had the names of prisoners being held in the country. Officials stated that the 90-page document offered no evidence of whether Speicher was alive and might have been written either to provide an accounting of former Iraqi POWs or to confuse the U.S. military.\nOver time, as the U.S. occupation increasingly gained control over Anbar Province, the Pentagon said that Speicher probably was not captured.\nOn 5 January 2009, the U.S. Navy held a review board to consider officially closing the case. The review board recommended that the Pentagon continue investigating what happened to Speicher. The recommendation went to Secretary of the Navy Donald C. Winter who had the final decision. Speicher's family believed and was worried that would change the status of Captain Speicher to KIA and declared they would oppose such action.\nOn 10 March 2009, the Secretary of the Navy declared that Captain Speicher's status was changed from \"Missing/Captured\" back to \"Missing-in-Action.\"\nDiscovery and positive identification.\nOn 2 August 2009, the Navy reported that Speicher's remains were found in Iraq by United States Marines from 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines. His jawbone was used to identify him after study at the Charles C. Carson Center for Mortuary Affairs at Dover Air Force Base. According to local civilians, Speicher was buried by Bedouins after his plane was shot down. Senator Nelson attributed the delayed finding to the culture of the locality: \"These Bedouins roam around in the desert, they don't stay in one place, and it just took this time to find the specific site.\"\nSpeicher's family expressed gratitude that the Defense Department had stayed with the case and that closure was now available. \"The Christian Science Monitor\" termed the case \"a veritable saga punctuated with hope, uncertainty, and despair for the past 18 years.\"\nLegacy.\nFlorida State University named its tennis center after Speicher, an avid player. The $1.2 million Scott Speicher Tennis Complex was completed in 2003. In 2018, FSU President John Thrasher joined members of Speicher\u2019s family to unveil a new memorial honoring Speicher. The memorial, located at the entrance of the tennis facility named after him in 1993, features a bronze Navy pilot\u2019s helmet and oxygen mask and will eventually include a bronze Navy G-1 flight jacket and naval officer's khaki garrison cap similar to what Speicher would have worn.\nA memorial statue and plaque were erected on Naval Air Station Cecil Field and dedicated to him. The Naval Air Station has since been deactivated but the facility remains in operation as a joint civil\u2013military airport.\nA memorial head marker dedicated to Speicher stood in Section H of Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia as of 2002. The memorial markers are erected when there are no identifiable remains for an individual whose death has been substantiated. Cemetery policy states that if remains are later recovered, the head marker will be interred with the coffin.\nIn effort to honor Speicher, a former Iraqi air base in the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit was renamed COB Speicher.\nA U.S. Navy F/A-18 Hornet on display outside the Naval Aviation Schools Command at NAS Pensacola, Florida, was dedicated to the Speicher family in May 2009. The aircraft was painted in the markings of United States Navy squadron VFA-81 \"Sunliners\" and , which was Speicher's squadron and ship when he was shot down. A front-page story in the 7 August 2009 issue of the Naval Air Station Pensacola newspaper \"Gosport\" describes how Speicher's remains were discovered and identified after 18 years. The story has a photo of Speicher's children talking with a member of VFA-81 next to the plane.\nOn 13 August 2009, the remains of Captain Speicher arrived in Florida 18 years after having been shot down in the Persian Gulf War. The plane containing his remains touched down at Naval Air Station Jacksonville at 3 p.m. Thousands of friends and family gathered for his burial. Captain Speicher's final resting place is at the Jacksonville Memory Garden located in Orange Park, Florida.\nOn 7 September 2009, Captain Speicher was honored at the start of the Florida State University football game against the University of Miami at Bobby Bowden Field at Doak Campbell Stadium when a flight of F/A-18s performed the missing man formation.\nOn Memorial Day 2010, an American flag and a wooden cross bearing his name were commissioned, adding him to the Clay County Florida Parade of Flags.\nFamily.\nSpeicher was married to JoAnne and they had two children (Meghan and Michael).\nIn the early months and years after Speicher's incident over Iraq, JoAnne Speicher was supported by Speicher's friend, \"Buddy\" Harris. Eventually, the two became a couple and married. Harris took her two children as his own, then they had two children (Madison and Makenzie) of their own. Harris was a significant voice for action to settle the details of Speicher's death, and has been an ongoing voice for POWs and MIAs.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["697054", "182000"], "permutation_1": ["697054", "182000"], "permutation_2": ["182000", "697054"], "permutation_3": ["697054", "182000"]}
{"id": "2hop__451574_120065", "docs_added": {"21012": "Merseburg\nTown in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany\n \nMerseburg () is a town in central Germany in southern Saxony-Anhalt, situated on the river Saale, and approximately 14\u00a0km south of Halle (Saale) and 30\u00a0km west of Leipzig. It is the capital of the Saalekreis district. It had a diocese founded by Archbishop Adalbert of Magdeburg.\nThe University of Merseburg is located within the town. Merseburg has around 35,000 inhabitants. \nGeography.\nThe town Merseburg consists of Merseburg proper and the following four \"Ortschaften\" or municipal divisions:\nAdministrative reforms.\nVenenien was incorporated into Merseburg on 1 January 1949. The parish K\u00f6tzschen followed on 1 July 1950. Since 30 May 1994, Meuschau is part of Merseburg. Trebnitz, previously part of Kreypau, followed in 2003. Beuna was annexed on 1 January 2009. Geusa is a part of Merseburg since 1 January 2010.\nHistory.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nHistorical affiliations\n Bishopric of Merseburg 1004-1565<br>\n\u00a0Electorate of Saxony 1565-1657<br>\n Duchy of Saxe-Merseburg 1657-1738<br>\n Poland-Saxony 1738-1763<br>\n\u00a0Electorate of Saxony 1763-1806<br>\n Kingdom of Saxony 1806-1815<br>\n\u00a0Kingdom of Prussia 1815-1871<br>\n\u00a0German Empire 1871-1918<br>\n\u00a0Weimar Republic 1918-1933<br>\n\u00a0Nazi Germany 1933-1945<br>\n\u00a0Allied-occupied Germany 1945-1949<br>\n\u00a0East Germany 1949-1990<br>\n 1990-present\nPre-history and Middle Ages.\nMerseburg was first mentioned in 850. King Henry the Fowler built a royal palace at Merseburg; in the 933 Battle of Riade, he gained his great victory over the Hungarians in the vicinity.\nThietmar, appointed in 973, became the first bishop of the newly created bishopric of Prague in Bohemia. Prague had been part of the archbishopric of Mainz for a hundred years before that. From 968 until the Protestant Reformation, Merseburg was the seat of the Bishop of Merseburg, and in addition to being for a time the residence of the margraves of Meissen, it was a favorite residence of the German kings during the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries. Fifteen diets were held here during the Middle Ages, during which time its fairs enjoyed the importance which was afterwards transferred to those of Leipzig. After Ekkehard's treacherous death on 3 April 1002, Boles\u0142aw I Chrobry took Merseburg and Meissen, and then Milsko with Bautzen and Strehla, with the help of the local Slavic population. The German princes accepted the sovereignty of the Polish prince in these areas. Some historians believe that since the convention in Gniezno, the Brave might have had certain rights to the German throne after Otto III, guaranteed by some succession document. Merseburg was later the site of a failed assassination attempt on Polish ruler Boles\u0142aw I Chrobry in 1002. The town suffered severely during the German Peasants' War and also during the Thirty Years' War.\n17th century to 20th century.\nFrom 1657 to 1738 Merseburg was the residence of the Dukes of Saxe-Merseburg, after which it fell to the Electorate of Saxony. In 1815 following the Napoleonic Wars, the town became part of the Prussian Province of Saxony.\nMerseburg is where the Merseburg Incantations were rediscovered in 1841. Written down in Old High German, they are hitherto the only preserved German documents with a heathen theme. One of them is a charm to release warriors caught during battle, and the other is a charm to heal a horse's sprained foot.\nAt the beginning of the 20th century, Merseburg was transformed into an industrial town, largely due to the pioneering work done by Carl Bosch and Friedrich Bergius, who laid down the scientific fundamentals of the catalytic high-pressure ammonia synthesis from 1909 to 1913. The nearby Leuna works continue this tradition of chemical industry. The \"Merseburger Tageblatt\" was published as a local newspaper in Merseburg.\nMerseburg was badly damaged in World War II. In 23 air raids, 6,200 dwellings were completely or partly destroyed. The historic town centre was almost completely destroyed.\nBriefly part of Saxony-Anhalt after the war, it was then administered within the \"Bezirk\" Halle in East Germany. It became part of Saxony-Anhalt again after the reunification of Germany.\nDemographics.\nLike many towns in the former East Germany, Merseburg has had a general decline in population since German Reunification despite annexing and merging with a number of smaller nearby villages.\nPopulation of Merseburg \"(from 1960, population on 31 December, unless otherwise indicated)\":\nSights.\nAmong the notable buildings of Merseburg are the Merseburg Cathedral of St John the Baptist (founded 1015, rebuilt in the 13th and 16th centuries) and the episcopal palace (15th century). The cathedral-and-palace ensemble also features a palace garden.\nOther sights include the Merseburg House of Trades with a cultural stage and the German Museum of Chemistry, Merseburg.\nArts and culture.\nThe Merseburg Palace Festival with the Historical Pageant, the International Palace-Moat Concerts, Merseburg Organ Days and the Puppet Show Festival Week are events celebrated every year.\nTransport.\nMerseburg station is located on the Halle\u2013Bebra railway. Leipzig/Halle Airport is 25 kilometers away.\nMerseburg is connected with the Halle (Saale) tramway network. A tram ride from Halle's city centre to Merseburg takes about 50 minutes.\nTwin towns \u2013 sister cities.\nMerseburg is twinned with:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "998505": "Ludwig Friedrich Otto Baumgarten-Crusius\nLudwig Friedrich Otto Baumgarten-Crusius (31 July 1788 \u2013 31 May 1843) was a German Protestant theologian and divine born in Merseburg. He was the brother of philologist Detlev Karl Wilhelm Baumgarten-Crusius (1786-1845).\nLife.\nIn 1805 he entered the University of Leipzig, where he studied theology and philology, becoming a university minister in 1810. In 1812 he became an associate professor of theology at the University of Jena, where in 1817, he attained a full professorship. He would remain at Jena for the rest of his life.\nHe was considered a champion of religious liberty, a theme that was expressed throughout his various writings. Early in his career, he was influenced by the metaphysics of Schelling, a belief system that he ultimately abandoned as his career progressed.\nWith the exception of church history, he lectured on all branches of so-called theoretical theology, especially on New Testament exegesis, Biblical theology, dogmatic ethics, and the history of dogma. His comprehensive knowledge, accurate scholarship and wide sympathies gave unusual value to his lectures and treatises, especially those on the development of church doctrine.\nLiterary works.\nHis published works are many, the most important being:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "39517084": "Detlev Karl Wilhelm Baumgarten-Crusius\nGerman educator and philologist\nDetlev Karl Wilhelm Baumgarten-Crusius (24 January 1786, Dresden \u2013 5 May 1845, Meissen) was a German educator and philologist. He was the older brother of theologian Ludwig Friedrich Otto Baumgarten-Crusius (1788-1842).\nFrom 1810, he served as a vice-principal in Merseburg, afterwards performing similar duties in Dresden (from 1817). In 1833 he was appointed rector at the \"Landesschule\" in Meissen, where he worked for the remainder of his career.\nBaumgarten-Crusius is known for his work in the field of classical philology, in particular, editions of the Roman historian Suetonius. In 1822-24, he published an edition of Homer's Odyssey.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "37179186": "Alfred Baumgarten\nBaron Alfred Moritz Friedrich Baumgarten (13 November 1842 \u2013 3 October 1919) was the co-founder and president of the St. Lawrence Sugar Refinery at Montreal, and a life governor of the Montreal General Hospital and Master of Foxhounds for the Montreal Hunt. His house in Montreal's Golden Square Mile is today home to the McGill University Faculty Club.\nFamily and education.\nAlfred Moritz Friedrich Baumgarten was born on 13 November 1842 in Dresden, the son of Dr Moritz Friedrich Oswald Baumgarten, court physician to John, king of Saxony, and Emmy Zocher, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Carola of Saxony.\nBaumgarten attended Dresden High School and Dresden Polytechnic School (where he graduated as a chemist), before studying chemistry at the University of Berlin and the University of G\u00f6ttingen, during which time he received two years' practical experience at the chemical plant at Sch\u00f6ningen. In 1864, he was awarded a doctor of philosophy degree.\nCareer.\nBaumgarten began his career as the manager of a sugar beet house at Hamersleben, remaining there until 1866, when he emigrated to the United States.\nNew York.\nBaumgarten came to New York with the intention of entering the North American chemical industry. He became an assistant in the laboratory of the chemist Charles F. Chandler of the New York School of Mines.\nWhilst at the School of Mines, Baumgarten formed a business partnership with C.W. Walter, establishing with him the Laurel Hill Chemical Works, under the name of Walter & Baumgarten. The company later became the Nicholson Company, the largest acid manufacturing works in North America. Baumgarten then moved from the company, when he obtained a management post at the Long Island Sugar refinery.\nMontreal.\nIn 1873, Baumgarten came to Montreal, where he worked as manager of the de Castro Syrup Company. In 1879, he co-founded the St. Lawrence Sugar Refining Company, becoming the company's vice-president and, in 1894, its president.\nBaumgarten's training as a chemical engineer enabled him to develop the process of refining sugar beet. The company imported raw sugar from the British West Indies and Europe before refining it into a pure substance. The plant was enlarged several times to accommodate the growth in demand. When the original buildings were destroyed by fire in 1887, a new factory was built at Maisonneuve on a riverside site that allowed the largest ships to unload their cargo near to the factory doors.\nBy 1908, the company was worth CA$\u00a0(1908) and was exporting 300,000 barrels a year. Baumgarten became a wealthy man as a result of his stakes in the company.\nIn 1911, Baumgarten was appointed as a director of the Bank of Montreal. He was also a director of C. Meredith & Company; vice-president of the Montreal Archaeological Institute, and published several essays on chemistry. He retired in 1912 and was succeeded as president of the St. Lawrence Refinery by John Wilson McConnell, though he remained the principal shareholder and was given the position of honorary president.\nForced resignation from the St. Lawrence Sugar Refining Company.\nPrior to the First World War, anti-German sentiment spread through the British Empire, reaching a peak after the outbreak of war in 1914. The St. Lawrence Sugar Refinery was targeted in the local press for allegedly still being \"in the hands of enemy Germans\". By 1915, McConnell was forced to hold a shareholders' meeting to discuss \"the serious menace to the welfare of our business caused by hostile publications in the press against certain persons connected with our company\". The company decided that every officeholder with a German-sounding name had to resign his post, and most did. As well as being made to sell his shares, Baumgarten and his brother-in-law, the vice-president and managing director, Otto Wilhelm Donner, all resigned their positions.\nThese events, as well as the way several of his pre-war associates shunned him as soon as war was declared against Germany, distressed Baumgarten greatly. Some of his close friends stood by him, frustrated by how he had been treated.\nDuring the war, Baumgarten contributed generously towards the Canadian Patriotic Fund, and he offered to let his Montreal town house become a convalescent home for disabled soldiers. However, aspersions were cast that he was a sympathiser and, stories were told that the house was used by the spy Joachim von Ribbentrop.\nFamily and private life.\nIn 1885, Baumgarten married Martha Christina Donner, the daughter of John Donner of Altona, Hamburg. The marriage produced two daughters, Mimi Donner Baumgarten (b. 1888), and Elsa Baumgarten (b. 1900). In 1895, he purchased a large house at Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, which eventually had stables and galleries and dominated the hillside overlooking the lake.\nBaumgarten was a life governor of the Montreal General Hospital, the Montreal Western Hospital and the Alexandra Hospital. He enjoyed a prominent place in Montreal's social world. After he retired from public life he spent the greater part of his time at his country house. He died on 3 October 1919, having been in poor health during the last five years of his life. He was buried in the Mount Royal Cemetery in Montreal.\nBaumgarten died a wealthy man. In his will, executed in 1919, he left donations to the three hospitals where he had been a governor, and a substantial annual sum for his family, which allowed them to retain the family country house, even after Martha Baumgarten's death in 1953.\nBaumgarten House.\nIn 1880, Baumgarten purchased land on McTavish Street, now located within Montreal's Golden Square Mile for a new mansion, Baumgarten House, which was completed in 1887.\nThe house had a modest exterior, but the interior was sumptuously decorated and boasted a 'sunken bathtub' (an indoor swimming pool), the first in the city. It was also the first private residence to be fitted with electrical lighting. In 1902 he made further extensions to his home.\nThe ceiling of the ballroom, from which hung several chandeliers, was supported by marble columns and a minstrels' gallery was suspended from the ceiling with brass cords. The ballroom floor was built on springs to help boost the dancers' feet. Baumgarten personally designed and built the spring floor, which was transplanted to his home from the Montreal Hunt clubhouse when the Hunt relocated.\nThe Gothic Gallery, which spanned two stories of the house, was designed to resemble a German hunting lodge and was covered by an immense, amber-coloured stained glass skylight. In the early 1900s his home was the favourite Montreal place for Governor-General the Earl of Minto.\nAfter Baumgarten's death in 1919, the house continued to be lived in by his widow and their two daughters. In 1926, McGill University purchased the house for a nominal sum to serve as a residence for the principal of McGill. General Sir Arthur Currie occupied the house until 1935, but it was felt by his successor that the house was too grand for his needs and from 1935 the house was renovated to become the McGill Faculty Club. At this time, the Gothic Gallery was split into two separate floors, the lower of which is now the main dining room, and the upper of which serves as the billiard room.\nMontreal Hunt.\nBaumgarten was an ardent sportsman and had a passion for horses. From 1882 to 1887, he was the Master of Foxhounds for the Montreal Hunt, rejuvenating the club after the departure of British troops from Canada in 1870. He introduced dinners and dancing after the meet.\nIn 1881, Baumgarten bought some land on the corner of what is today Mount Royal Avenue and Delormier Avenue.He commissioned the building of new kennels and a clubhouse, that included a banquet room, a billiards room, a ballroom, a swimming pool and a library. The front of the clubhouse featured a long gallery, where the meet could be viewed. The interior was decorated in light oak with burnished brass. The fireplace in the entrance hall was decorated with Dutch tiles depicting hunting scenes. The swimming pool was described as \"an oriental plunge bathroom all inlaid with white tiles\".\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "8927085": "Otto Crusius (1857\u20131918)\nGerman classical scholar\nOtto Crusius (20 December 1857 \u2013 29 December 1918) was a German classical scholar. He was born in Hanover and died in Munich.\nIn his youth he was a student of Franz Ahrens at the Lyceum in Hanover, afterwards studying classical philology at the University of Leipzig (1875\u201379). At Leipzig his influences included Otto Ribbeck and Rudolf Hildebrand. He earned his habilitation in 1883 and three years later was a professor at the University of T\u00fcbingen, succeeding Erwin Rohde. Later on, he worked as a professor at the University of Heidelberg (from 1898) and at Munich (from 1903). In 1915 he became president of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences as well as general curator of the Bavarian State collections.\nHis works include: \"\"Beitr\u00e4ge zur griechischen Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte\" (1886), \"Untersuchungen zu den Mimiamben des Herondas\"\" (1892), etc. He published editions of the poet Herondas, the fables of Babrius, \"Anthologia lyrica Graeca\" (1897 ff) and was an editor of the journal \"Philologus\". After 1909 he published, with others, several volumes of \"Das Erbe der Alten. Schriften \u00dcber Wesen und Wirkung Der Antike\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "61659245": "Hans Heinrich Baumgarten\nDanish industrialist\nHans Heinrich Baumgarten (29 May 1806 \u2013 3 March 1875) was a Holstein-Danish industrialist. In 1843, he founded a company which from 1846 became known as Baumgarten & Burmeister and after his retirement became Burmeister & Wain.\nEarly life and career.\nBaumgarten was born on 29 May 1806 in Halstenbeck, Holstein, the son of Hufner Franz Heinrich Joachim B. (1757\u20131826) and Anna Marie K\u00f6ncke (1763\u20131820). He started as a farm worker in his home town but later apprenticed as a koiner in Hamburg. He moved to Copenhagen in 1829 where he was introduced to mechanics in Frederik Schi\u00f8tt's machine workshop. Baumgarten went abroad When Schi\u00f8tt's firm was dissolved in 1832. He first managed an iron foundry in L\u00fcbeck for a few years and then continued to Berlin where he first worked for three years as a mechanic in Vossische Zeitung's printer business and then for about a year as foreman Freund's machine factory. In 1865, Burmeister made William Wain a partner in the company.\nIn 1839, Baumgarten return to Copenhagen. He initially worked for a short time as engineer in Berling's printer and then for a few years managed P. F. Lunde's machine workshop.\nBaumgarten & Burmeister.\nOn 18 February 1843,Baumgarten was granted a royal license to establish his own machine workshop. His first workshop was located at the second floor in a rear wing at K\u00f8bmagergade 46. It later moved to the so-called Wismer House on Gammel M\u00f8nt.\nIn October 1846, Baumgarten and C. C. Burmeister merged their ventures Baumgarten & Burmeister after being encouraged to do so by Hans Christian \u00d8rsted. The company was based in the former beer garden \"Kierulffs Have\" at Overgaden neden Vandet in Christianshavn. Baumgarten retired from the company in 1862. It had by then grown to 450 workers and had produced a total of 134 steam engines.\nBaumgarten was a board member of Industriforeningen in 1846\u201360.\nPersonal life.\nBaumgarten married Frederikke Margrethe Andersen (17 June 1810 - 18 March 1896), a daughter of Thue Andersen and Anne Marie Svendsen, on 29 October 1830. They had two children, Ludwig Ferdinand Baumgarten and Emma Vilhelmine Wendt. Their son died as an infant.\nIn 1863, Baumgarten was created a Knight in the Order of the Dannebrog. He spent his last years on his property in Lyngby where he constructed a machine for the perforation of sheets of stamps. He died on 3 March 1875 and is buried in Assistens Cemetery in Copenhagen.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "26676192": "Hermann Baumgarten\nGerman historian and political publicist\nHermann Baumgarten (; ; 28 April 1825 \u2013 19 June 1893) was a German historian and political publicist whose work had a major impact on liberalism during the unification of Germany. Baumgarten's philosophy also created a significant political impression on Max Weber, an influential social theorist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.\nLife and career.\nHermann Baumgarten was born in Wolfenb\u00fcttel in the Duchy of Brunswick. He studied philology and history at the University of Jena before becoming a journalist in 1855. In 1859 he began working at Maximilian Duncker's \"literary bureau\", a Prussian institution used to disseminate propaganda. In 1861, he also took up a teaching post at the Technical University of Karlsruhe.\nAs a champion of Prussian/German liberalism, Baumgarten faced the dilemma as to whether or not to accept the military and political successes of Prussia's conservative Prime Minister, Otto von Bismarck. In 1866, Baumgarten published his support of Bismarck's policies in an essay entitled \"A Self-Criticism of German Liberalism\". This work essentially ended radical German liberalism as a force, whereupon many Prussians joined the Bismarck-supporting National Liberal Party), and allowed the new German empire to nationalize and solidify.\nIn 1872, Baumgarten became Professor of History at the Reichsuniversit\u00e4t in Strasbourg. During the late 1880s and early 1890s, Baumgarten made a significant political impression upon Max Weber, Baumgarten's nephew by marriage. Weber would go on to profoundly influence social theory and the remit of sociology itself. At the age of 68, Baumgarten died in Strasbourg, Alsace\u2013Lorraine.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "70640415": "Ludwig Otto\nGerman painter\nLouis Eugen Friedrich Otto (21 July 1850 \u2014 15 May 1920), known as Ludwig Otto, was a German landscape and court painter, etcher, and lithographer.\nBorn at Borna, near Leipzig, in the Kingdom of Saxony, in 1865 he was admitted as a student to the Academy Leipzig and from 1868 to 1870 continued his education at the Dresden Academy under Franz Theodor Grosse, before studying etching with Karl K\u00f6pping in Berlin. In 1871 the German Empire was created, giving Otto a new and wider-reaching citizenship. He spent some fifteen years in Italy, Greece, and England, documenting the finds of archaeological expeditions, and gaining international recognition as a scientific illustrator and landscape painter; he also worked as a court painter to the Saxon royal family.\nOtto married Marie R\u00fcdiger, daughter of a pastor of Gro\u00dfdrebnitz, a village he regularly visited to paint. One of his paintings survives there in the Martinskirche.\nIn May to October 1906, Otto\u2019s work was exhibited at the \"S\u00e4chsische Kunstausstellung\", a major exhibition in Dresden on the Br\u00fchlesche Terrasse.\nHe was appointed a professor and also designed stained glass windows and other interior features for churches.\nOtto died in 1920 in Dresden, by then in the Weimar Republic.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "58196547": "Charles Frederick Baumgarten\nGerman-born violinist, organist, composer and teacher\nCharles Frederick Baumgarten (originally Karl Friedrich Baumgarten; 1739/1740 \u2013 1824) was a German-born violinist, organist, composer and teacher, living in London.\nLife.\nBaumgarten was born in L\u00fcbeck, and was a pupil of the organist Johann Paul Kunzen. In 1757 he moved to England.\nThere are few details of his early career. By 1760 he was organist of the Lutheran chapel at the Savoy. In 1763 he was leader of the orchestra of the Haymarket Theatre in London; in 1764 he was at the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin.\nHe was leader of the Duke of Cumberland's private band, whose other members included William Shield and William Thomas Parke. From 1780 until 1794 he was leader of the orchestra of Covent Garden Theatre in London. Joseph Haydn met him in 1792; by this time he had almost forgotten his mother tongue. Haydn wrote in his diary that Baumgarten led \"a sleepy orchestra\". However he and Adalbert Gyrowetz, who was in London at the same time, acknowledged his theoretical knowledge.\nHis many pupils included William Dance, Thomas Welsh and William Thomas Parke.\nBaumgarten died in London in 1824, aged 84. Carl Ferdinand Pohl wrote \"he does not seem to have possessed the art of making use of his advantages, and was quickly forgotten.\"\nCompositions.\nBaumgarten's compositions include keyboard works, an oboe concerto, and six quartets for various instruments.\nHe also wrote some material for the theatre, including the music for Carlo Antonio Delpini's \"Blue Beard\" (1791), the overture for \"Harlequin, Junior\" (Covent Garden 1784) and some of the music for \"Netley Abbey\" (Covent Garden 1794).\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "24383069": "Ludwig II of Bavaria\nKing of Bavaria from 1864 to 1886\nLudwig II (Ludwig Otto Friedrich Wilhelm; 25 August 1845 \u2013 13 June 1886), also called the Swan King or the Fairy Tale King (), was King of Bavaria from 1864 until his death in 1886. He also held the titles of Count Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Bavaria, Duke of Franconia, and Duke in Swabia. Outside Germany, he is at times called \"the Mad King\" or Mad King Ludwig.\nLudwig ascended to the throne in 1864 at the age of 18 but increasingly withdrew from day-to-day affairs of state in favour of extravagant artistic and architectural projects. He commissioned the construction of lavish palaces: Neuschwanstein Castle, Linderhof Palace, and Herrenchiemsee. He was also a devoted patron of the composer Richard Wagner. Ludwig spent all his own private royal revenues (although not state funds as is commonly thought) on these projects, borrowed extensively, and defied all attempts by his ministers to restrain him. This extravagance was used against him to declare him insane, an accusation that has since come under scrutiny.\nLudwig was taken into custody and effectively deposed on 12 June 1886, and he and his doctor were found dead on the following day. His death was ruled to be a suicide, a decision that has since been disputed. Today, his architectural and artistic legacy includes many of Bavaria's most important tourist attractions.\nEarly life.\nBorn at Nymphenburg Palace, which is located in what is today part of central Munich, he was the elder son of Maximilian II of Bavaria and Marie of Prussia, Crown Prince and Princess of Bavaria, who became King and Queen in 1848 after the abdication of the former's father, Ludwig I, during the German revolution of 1848\u20131849. His parents intended to name him Otto, but his grandfather insisted that his grandson be named after him, since their common birthday, 25 August, is the feast day of Saint Louis IX of France, patron saint of Bavaria (with \"Ludwig\" being the German form of \"Louis\").\nLike many young heirs in an age when kings governed most of Europe, Ludwig was continually reminded of his royal status. King Maximilian II wanted to instruct both of his sons in the burdens of royal duty from an early age. Ludwig was both extremely indulged and severely controlled by his tutors and subjected to a strict regimen of study and exercise. Some point to the stresses of growing up in a royal family as cause for much of his odd behaviour as an adult.\nLudwig was not close to either of his parents. King Maximilian's advisers had suggested that on his daily walks he might like, at times, to be accompanied by his future successor. The King replied, \"But what am I to say to him? After all, my son takes no interest in what other people tell him.\" Later, Ludwig would refer to his mother as \"my predecessor's consort\". He was far closer to his grandfather, the deposed and notorious King Ludwig I.\nLudwig's childhood years did have happy moments. He lived for much of the time at Hohenschwangau Castle, a fantasy castle his father had built near the (Alp Lake) near F\u00fcssen. It was decorated in the Gothic Revival style with many frescoes depicting heroic German sagas, most notably images of Lohengrin, the Knight of the Swans. The family also visited Lake Starnberg (then called Lake W\u00fcrm). \nAs an adolescent, Ludwig began a relationship with his aide de camp, Prince Paul, a member of the wealthy Bavarian Thurn und Taxis family. The two young men rode together, read poetry aloud, and staged scenes from the Romantic operas of Richard Wagner. The friendship ended when Paul became engaged to a commoner in 1868. During his youth, Ludwig also initiated a lifelong friendship with his similarly-eccentric cousin Duchess Elisabeth in Bavaria, later Empress of Austria.\nEarly reign.\nCrown Prince Ludwig was in his 19th year when his father died after a three-day illness, and he ascended the Bavarian throne. Although he was not prepared for high office, his youth and brooding good looks made him popular in Bavaria and elsewhere. He continued the state policies of his father and retained his ministers. His real interests were in art, music, and architecture. One of the first acts of his reign, a few months after his accession, was to summon the composer Richard Wagner to his court. Also in 1864, he laid the foundation stone of a new Court Theatre, now the (\"G\u00e4rtnerplatz\"-Theater).\nLudwig was notably eccentric in ways that made serving as Bavaria's head of state problematic. He disliked large public functions and avoided formal social events whenever possible, preferring a life of seclusion that he pursued with various creative projects. He last inspected a military parade on 22 August 1875 and last gave a court banquet on 10 February 1876. His mother had foreseen difficulties for Ludwig when she recorded her concern for her extremely introverted and creative son who spent much time day-dreaming. These idiosyncrasies, combined with the fact that Ludwig avoided Munich and participating in the government there at all costs, caused considerable tension with the king's government ministers but did not cost him popularity among the citizens of Bavaria.\nThe king enjoyed traveling in the Bavarian countryside and chatting with farmers and labourers he met along the way. He also delighted in rewarding those who were hospitable to him during his travels with lavish gifts. He is still remembered in Bavaria as (\"Our Cherished King\" in the Bavarian dialect).\nAustro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian Wars.\nUnification with Prussia took center stage from 1866. In the Austro-Prussian War, which began in August, Ludwig's government supported the Austrian Empire against Prussia. Austria and Bavaria were defeated, and the Kingdom of Bavaria was forced to sign a mutual defence treaty with Prussia. When the Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870, Bavaria was required to fight alongside Prussia. After the Prussian victory over the Second French Empire, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck moved to complete the unification of Germany.\nIn November 1870, Bavaria joined the North German Confederation, thus losing its status as an independent kingdom; however, the Bavarian delegation under Minister President, Count Otto von Bray-Steinburg, secured privileged status for Bavaria within the empire (). Bavaria retained its own diplomatic corps and the Bavarian Army, which would come under Prussian command only in times of war.\nIn December 1870, Bismarck used financial concessions to induce Ludwig, with the support of the king's equerry, Maximilian Count von Holnstein, to write the , a letter endorsing the creation of the German Empire with King Wilhelm I of Prussia as Emperor. Nevertheless, Ludwig regretted Bavaria's loss of independence and refused to attend Wilhelm's 18 January proclamation as German Emperor in the Palace of Versailles. Ludwig's brother Prince Otto and his uncle Luitpold went instead.\nIn the Constitution of the German Empire, Bavaria was able to secure for itself extensive rights, in particular regarding military sovereignty. Not only did the Royal Bavarian Army retain, like the kingdoms of Saxony and W\u00fcrttemberg, its own troops, war ministry, and military justice system but was excluded from the empire-wide regimental renumbering of the army regiments and would only come under imperial control in times of war. Bavaria also kept its light-blue infantry uniforms, the \"Raupenhelm\" (until 1886), the light cavalry, and some other peculiarities. The officers and men of the Bavarian Army continued to swear their oaths to the King of Bavaria and not the German Emperor. Nevertheless, the uniform cut, equipment, and training was standardised to the Prussian model. 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{"id": "2hop__721331_495090", "docs_added": {"4373207": "Hans Gude\nNorwegian painter (1825\u20131903)\nHans Fredrik Gude (March 13, 1825\u00a0\u2013 August 17, 1903) was a Norwegian romanticist painter and is considered along with Johan Christian Dahl to be one of Norway's foremost landscape painters. He has been called a mainstay of Norwegian National Romanticism. He is associated with the D\u00fcsseldorf school of painting.\nGude's artistic career was not one marked with drastic change and revolution, but was instead a steady progression that slowly reacted to general trends in the artistic world. Gude's early works are of idyllic, sun-drenched Norwegian landscapes which present a romantic, yet still realistic view of his country. Around 1860 Gude began painting seascapes and other coastal subjects. Gude had difficulty with figure drawing initially and so collaborated with Adolph Tidemand in some of his painting, drawing the landscape himself and allowing Tidemand to paint the figures. Later Gude would work specifically on his figures while at Karlsruhe, and so began populating his paintings with them. Gude initially painted primarily with oils in a studio, basing his works on studies he had done earlier in the field. However, as Gude matured as a painter he began to paint en plein air and espoused the merits of doing so to his students. Gude would paint with watercolors later in life as well as gouache in an effort to keep his art constantly fresh and evolving, and although these were never as well received by the public as his oil paintings, his fellow artists greatly admired them.\nGude spent forty-five years as an art professor and so he played an important role in the development of Norwegian art by acting as a mentor to three generations of Norwegian artists. Young Norwegian artists flocked to wherever Gude was teaching, first at the Academy of Art in D\u00fcsseldorf and later at the School of Art in Karlsruhe. Gude also served as a professor at the Berlin Academy of Art from 1880 to 1901, although he attracted few Norwegians to the Berlin Academy because by this time Berlin had been surpassed in prestige in the eyes of young Norwegian artists by Paris.\nOver the course of his lifetime Gude won numerous medals, was inducted as an honorary member into many art academies, and was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Olav. He was the father of painter Nils Gude and watercolorist and illustrator Agnes Charlotte Guide. His daughter Sigrid married German sculptor Otto Lessing.\nEarly life.\nGude was born in Christiania in 1825 the son of Ove Gude, a judge, and Marie Elisabeth Brandt.\nGude began his artistic career with private lessons from Johannes Flintoe, and by 1838 he was attending Flintoe's evening classes at the Royal School of Drawing in Christiania. In the autumn of 1841 Johan Sebastian Welhaven suggested that the young Gude should be sent to D\u00fcsseldorf to further his education in the arts.\nAcademy of Art in D\u00fcsseldorf.\nAt the Academy of Art in D\u00fcsseldorf Gude encountered Johann Wilhelm Schirmer \u2013 a professor in landscape painting \u2013 who advised him to give up his ambitions of being a painter and to return to his regular studies before it was too late. Gude was rejected by the academy, but attracted the attention of Andreas Achenbach who provided him with private lessons.\nAs a student.\nGude was finally accepted into the academy in the autumn of 1842 and joined Schirmer's landscape painting class where he made quick progress. The landscape painting class at the academy was new at the time, having been founded in 1839 as a counterpart to the more long standing figure painting class. At the time figure painting was considered a more prestigious genre than landscape painting as it was thought only through painting the human body could true beauty be expressed.\nGude, along with most of the class of twelve, received a grade of \"good\" his first semester and was described as \"talented\". On his report card for the 1843\u201344 school year he was the only student to be described as \"very talented\", and the report for his fourth year said that he \"paints Norwegian scenery in a truthful and distinctive manner\".\nWhile Gude was a student, two different trends in landscaping were developing at the academy: a romantic trend and a classical trend. The romanticists depicted wild, untamed wildernesses with dark forests, soaring peaks, and rushing water to capture the terrifying and overpowering aspects of nature. They used rich, saturated colors with strong contrast of light and shadow. The classicists were more interested in recreating landscapes from the heroic or mythical past and often set them in the midst of religious or historical events. The classicists focused on lines and clarity in their compositions. It was through Achenbach \u2013 Gude's first teacher upon arriving in D\u00fcsseldorf \u2013 that he was exposed to the romanticist tradition, while it was through his classes with and later time teaching for Schirmer that he was exposed to the classicist traditions.\nIn 1827 Schirmer and Carl Friedrich Lessing founded a Society for Landscape Composition that would meet a few times each year at Schirmer's home where Schirmer would offer advice on the composition of landscape paintings. Fifteen years later Gude began attending the meetings of the society with other students from his class, but as he progressed to greater levels of realism Gude began to make it clear that he did not agree with the ideas of composition Schirmer put forward during the meetings, saying specifically:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I painted a large mountain view for which my studies of the Rondane Mountains provided the subject, and I had severe problems because Schirmer did not approve of the realistic rendering, and his suggestion that I should group the mountains more in accordance with the Classical ideal was impossible for me to accept.\nIn D\u00fcsseldorf Gude met Carl Friedrich Lessing who, while initially aloof, became Gude's friend and colleague. Their relationship was such a close one that Gude's eldest daughter eventually married one of Lessing's sons. The two artists differed in style though, with Lessing painting dramatic, historical works while Gude never once introduced historical events into his own paintings.\nGude served as a student teacher at the academy until 1844, before leaving to live in Christiania. On July 25, 1850, Gude married Betsy Charlotte Juliane Anker (1830\u20131912), the daughter of General Erik Anker, in Christiania (today called Oslo).\nProfessorship.\nIn 1854 Gude was appointed the professor of landscape painting at the academy replacing his former teacher Schirmer. Gude was twenty-nine when appointed, making him the youngest professor at the academy. His appointment was partially political, in a conflict between Rhineland and Prussian interests Gude was seen as a neutral candidate because of his Norwegian roots. Gude was recommended for the position by the current Director of the academy Wilhelm von Schadow, but only after Andreas Achenbach, Oswald Achenbach, and Lessing had refused the post due to lack of suitable pay. In regards to his position and compensation, Gude wrote:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />About this post of professor I can only say I cannot comprehend why I should not accept pay for being a teacher, since I really have to have pupils. All those who wished that I should be their teacher are here, and poor as church mice. If I become professor, they can now enter the Academy. I will in any case be here for many years, so I might just as well paint in a studio twice as big and grand as any private one, especially if I receive a salary into the bargain. When I become tired of it, I can always hand in my notice.\nThroughout his tenure, Gude had private pupils in addition to his normal classes. As a professor Gude taught six hours of class, held two hours of office hours, took turns with other professors supervising the nude drawing class and attended staff meetings. In 1857 Gude handed in his resignation, officially citing family considerations and failing health as his reasons for resigning, although in his memoirs he blamed opposition and backbiting from two of his pupils. The landscape painting professorship was the bottom of the pay scale at the academy, and Gude was one of the few professors to be refused a raise when others received them in 1855. Others have suggested that Gude wished to leave the academy for fear for becoming stuck in a rut artistically. Gude received better treatment from the academy after he turned in his resignation, and it would take him a full five years to finally leave D\u00fcsseldorf. Although professors at the academy complained that their teaching prevented them from undertaking more lucrative endeavors, Gude was able to sell enough works to afford a modest house in D\u00fcsseldorf which stood in what is now Hofgarten.\nNorwegian or German art.\nBy the mid-19th century the academy in D\u00fcsseldorf had become a center for training Norwegian artists, but within Norway there arose a debate as to whether the art was truly Norwegian as it did not originate in Norway, and was in fact produced by artists who had been trained in Germany. The debate was sparked by proposals to build an art school in Norway, and it was therefore essential for supporters of a Norwegian academy to argue that Norwegian values could not be instilled in the artists if they had to go abroad.\nIn a letter to J\u00f8rgen Moe Gude writes that he see possibility for his own development in D\u00fcsseldorf, and that even if it would cause him to be known as a German artist instead of a Norwegian, he would not be ashamed of the fact. In defense of Norwegian artists at the academy, Gude writes that they were not simply imitating German artists:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />If we learn something from Achenbach and Lessing, it is certainly not to our detriment; no one has ever said about me or Tidemand or, so far as I know, any of us Norwegian D\u00fcsseldorfers that we copy and imitate.\nGude was convinced that for Norwegian artists at the academy it was impossible to escape their heritage and that Norway influenced their art whether they wanted it to or not. On this subject he wrote:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />[...] and you, my compatriots in Norway, have no grounds for complaining that we have forgotten the dear, familiar and specific character with which God has endowed our land and our nation. That is so firmly entrenched in our being that it finds expression, whether we like it or not. Do not, therefore, insult us further with such [an accusation]; it hurts our feelings, and thereby proves how unfounded it is, for otherwise it would be easy to treat it with indifference.\nVon Schadow however argued the Gude's art was in fact German in an attempt to defend his nomination of Gude to succeed Schirmer. He wrote of Gude that \"His education is totally German, his style unwontedly elevated.\"\nWales.\nMany of Gude's peers moved on from the academy in D\u00fcsseldorf to other art institutes, but Gude decided to seek more direct contact with nature. Gude had gained a foothold in the British art market in the 1850s after his works were accepted into the galleries of Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere and the Marquess of Lansdowne, and so when an English art dealer and former student of Gude \u2013 Mr. Stiff \u2013 suggested Gude might find success in England, he was quick to respond. In the autumn of 1862 Gude set off for the Lledr Valley near Conwy. Wales, a place renowned for its picturesque scenery, was already home to a colony of British plein-air artists. While small groups of artists living in the countryside in order to inspire each other, be closer to their subject and escape the city were common, Gude was one of the first Norwegian artists to live in such a manner. Gude rented a house overlooking River Lledr where he painted one of the ancient Roman bridges which was popular with artists of the time.\nGude reports that the British and Welsh landscape painters were disdainful of artists from the continent, and that they used a very different style of painting from the continental artists. Whereas Gude and fellow continental artists would go out in nature and make sketches to act as studies for studio works, the British and Welsh painters set up their easels in the field and worked on their paintings with their subjects in front of them. Gude attempted to improve his reputation among the local painters with exhibitions at the Royal Academy's spring shows in London in 1863 and 1864, but both were flops that Gude described as \"useful but bitter medicine\". Despite these setbacks \u2013 furthered by the strain the trip had put on Gude's finances due to lack of paintings being sold \u2013 Gude felt the trip was of great benefit to himself as an artist, writing to his brother-in-law Theodor Kjerulf:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />It was sad to leave the lovely yet wild scenery that had become so dear to us, and a peaceful, quiet home it had been. My English stay was of great benefit to me in that I freed myself from many of the prevailing studio maxims by being alone and in a landscape so new to me that it forced me to observe more keenly.\nWhile in Wales Gude was visited by Adolph Tidemand together with Frederik Collett, and the three traveled to Caernarvon and Holyhead from which Gude observed his first real Atlantic storm.\nBaden School of Art.\nIn December 1863 Gude was offered and accepted a professorship at the Baden School of Art in Karlsruhe where he would once again succeed Schirmer, and so he left Wales. Gude was hesitant to take the position as he felt that it was working for the enemy but was unable to support himself in Norway due to the lack of an art school. He wrote about his thoughts on the position to Kjerulf, stating:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />At this time I feel oppressively and profoundly what it means to float about the world without a mother country \u2013 now I have obtained a post, and shall serve to the best of my powers the country that may shortly be at open war with my own native land; I shall express no sympathies and be deaf to what goes on beyond the walls of my own studio; that which makes hearts at home beat faster will not exist for me; and how offensive and unbearable it will be to watch the enthusiasm displayed around me for the rights of a German nationality, while my own nation perhaps bleeds to death in a struggle for existence. On the other hand, how serious my commitments are to my wife and children; and I shall use my talents where I am permitted to \u2013 at home I can make no use of them, and in two to three years I would come to the end of my career and sink into deep misery with all my children \u2013 I am sure of that.\nIt is suspected that Gude was offered the professorship due to a recommendation from Lessing. When Gude accepted the position at Karlsruhe the flow of Norwegian painters to the D\u00fcsseldorf Academy redirected to Karlsruhe, which would produce many of the Norwegian painters of the 1860s and 1870s, among them Frederik Collett, Johan Martin Nielssen, Kitty L. Kielland, Nicolai Ulfsten, Eilif Peterssen, Marcus Gr\u00f8nvold, Otto Sinding, Christian Krohg and Frits Thaulow.\nIn Karlsruhe Gude continued to faithfully reproduce the landscapes he saw, a style that he passed on to his students by taking them to Chiemsee to paint the lake \"en plein air\". While on these trips Gude and his pupils often encountered Eduard Schleich the Elder with his own students from Munich who were, as Gude described, only out to capture the mood of the scene and were skeptical of the advantages of painting in the sunshine. Gude also took special interest in how light reflected in water while in Karlsruhe, as well as expanding his study of the human figure. Although Gude rarely portrayed humans for their own sake, he began populating his paintings with convincing, if sometimes anatomically incorrect, individuals.\nGude's painted \"Fra Chiemsee\" while at Karlsruhe. The painting which was shown in Vienna was so enthusiastically received that it was purchased by the Kunsthistorisches Hofmuseum for display, won Gude a number of medals, and earned him membership in the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.\nThe school in Karlsruhe was founded by the Grand Duke of Baden whom Gude had good relations with. Because of this fact Gude received better pay than at the D\u00fcsseldorf Academy, had spacious and rent-free accommodations and was given generous periods of leave which allowed him to travel in the summer to perform studies for future paintings. Gude served as the director of Karlsruhe from 1866 to 1868 and again from 1869 to 1870, where he introduced several of his own educational principles designed to develop pupil's individual talent. But Gude's reign as director at Karlsruhe was not without resistance to his methods, and it is this opposition that he cites as his reason for visiting the Berlin Academy of Art that as early as 1874 in search of better conditions. Because of Gude's visits to Berlin, his relation with the Grand Duke became strained as the Grand Duke felt that the concessions he had made to Gude were so great that Gude should be grateful and not look for a professorships elsewhere. Gude remained at Karlsruhe for six more years after his first visits to the Berlin Academy of Art, but in 1880 he decided to retire from the Karlsruhe school to take up a position in Berlin.\nBerlin Academy of Art.\nIn 1880 Gude accepted a position to lead the master studio in landscape painting at the Academy of Art in Berlin, a position which gave him a spot on the academy's Senate. The Senate was responsible for upholding \"all the artistic interests of the state\" and membership was a mark of the highest official recognition of Gude's work.\nIn 1895 the Christiania Art Society held a comprehensive retrospective of Gude's works including his paintings, oil studies, watercolors, sketches and etchings. When asked what should be shown at the exhibition Gude replied that \"[...]perhaps room could be found for studies and drawings; I rather think that these will meet with interest. They are also (unfortunately) of greater artistic value.\" By the time of the exhibition Gude had abandoned his previous style of painting large-scale compositions based on studies, and was working in mediums other than oil. In Berlin Gude began working more heavily in gouache and watercolor in an effort to preserve the 'freshness' of his art. Although Gude did not heavily exhibit his watercolors they still gained admiration from follow painters, including Harriet Backer who said:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I believe that if Gude exhibited watercolours and study drawings, he would have the warmest admirers among painters. [...] Let it rather happen now, while there can be controversy and a row and some lively discussion about his art[...].\nGude would spend a few weeks each summer near the Baltic coast where he drew material for numerous paintings of Ahlbeck and R\u00fcgen. Although Gude filled these paintings with more figures than his earlier works, his focus was still on accurately capturing the scene and especially the landscape.\nAs the century drew to a close the established art academies faced 'secession' movements from groups of artists looking to branch of into different style. Gude rallied around his friend Anton von Werner in defending the academies, going so far as to mock \"the so-called Symbolism\" movement. As Gude approached the end of his life he felt more and more unable to keep up with the changes in the art world. After a disappointing exhibition in Kristiania in 1902 Gude wrote to Johan Martin Nielssen:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />All I have heard about it [the exhibition] are your and [Wilhelm] Holter's letters, and that acclaim has consoled me after the scorn I have had to suffer in common with many an elderly artist. You recognized several studies from my portfolios, but all of them were more or less unfinished, and over the last two winters I finished them, truly \"con amore\". I had serious scruples when I decided to exhibit them, because I knew full well how different the opinion of the modernists is, and it is quite understandable that they want to 'take the helm' alone!\nIn 1880 Gude had between five and eight students, but this number had shrunk to two or three by 1890. In part this reduction of pupils was due to a lack of interest in the Berlin academy, as explained to Gude by Prince Eug\u00e9n, Duke of N\u00e4rke who wrote that he, as well as numerous other young artists, had more of a taste for French art than German.\nGude retired from the Berlin Academy in 1901. He died two years later in Berlin in 1903.\nAwards and honors.\nGude was also a member of the Order of the Z\u00e4hringer Lion, Order of the Red Eagle, and the Order of Franz Joseph.\nAcademy memberships.\nGude earned membership in the following art academies:\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "16073282": "N\u00f8dhavn Ved Norskekysten\nPainting by Hans Gude\nN\u00f8dhavn Ved Norskekysten (English translation: Port of Refuge on the Norwegian Coast or Norwegian Harbor of Refuge) is a painting by Norwegian romanticist painter Hans Gude completed in 1873. \nExhibition history.\nThe painting was first shown at the World Exhibition in Vienna in 1873 where it won a gold medal. It was later displayed at an international exhibition of art at the Academy of Art in Berlin in 1896 while Gude was a professor at the Academy, and yet later still it was shown in Dresden in 1904, the year after Gude's death.\nScene and style.\nThe painting shows a realistic rendering of a storm hitting a Norwegian harbor, with a brig stranded in the distant breakers. The painting is divided into a foreground, where women and children watch the rescue effort; a middle ground, where various moored ships bob in the strong waves; and a background, where wavelike rocks enclose the refuge point and bring the eye down to the stranded brig. The colors used are predominantly the blue-grey of the sea and the beige of the reflections on the sea which serve to unify the piece. Various elements of the scene including the waterfront buildings, the groups of figures, and the departing rowboat, would be reused by Gude in later works.\nOwnership.\nIn 1875, the painting was purchased by the Bremen Art Society, although Gude incorrectly identifies them as the Stadtgalerie Bremen in his notes about the sale. In 1907 the painting was transferred to the Kunsthalle Bremen. In 1920 the painting was auctioned off due in part to changing tastes in art and the painting's large size () which made it difficult to store. In 1932 the painting was auctioned off again in Oslo where it was purchased by its current owner.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2131894": "Johan Christian Dahl\nNorwegian painter (1788\u20131857)\nJohan Christian Claussen Dahl (24 February 1788\u00a0\u2013 14 October 1857), often known as J. C. Dahl or I. C. Dahl, was a Danish-Norwegian artist who is considered the first great romantic painter in Norway, the founder of the \"golden age\" of Norwegian painting. He is often described as \"the father of Norwegian landscape painting\" and is regarded as the first Norwegian painter to reach a level of artistic accomplishment comparable to that attained by the greatest European artists of his day. He was also the first to acquire genuine fame and cultural renown abroad. As one critic has put it, \"J.C. Dahl occupies a central position in Norwegian artistic life of the first half of the 19th century.\nAlthough Dahl spent much of his life outside of Norway, his love for his country is clear in the motifs he chose for his paintings and in his extraordinary efforts on behalf of Norwegian culture generally. He was, for example, a key figure in the founding of the Norwegian National Gallery and of several other major art institutions in Norway, as well as in the preservation of Norwegian stave churches and the restoration of the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim and Bergenhus Fortress in Bergen.\nLife.\nEarly life.\nDahl came from a simple background \u2013 his father was a modest fisherman in Bergen, Norway \u2013 and he would later look back at his youth with bitterness. He regretted that he never had a \"real teacher\" in his childhood and, despite all his spectacular success, he believed that if he had been more fortunate in his birth, he would have achieved even more than he had.\nTime at Bergen.\nAs a boy, Dahl was educated by a sympathetic mentor at the Bergen Cathedral who at first thought that this bright student would make a good priest, but then, recognizing his remarkably precocious artistic ability, arranged for him to be trained as an artist. From 1803 to 1809 Dahl studied with the painter Johan Georg M\u00fcller, whose workshop was the most important one in Bergen at the time. Still, Dahl looked back on his teacher as having kept him in ignorance in order to exploit him, putting him to work painting theatrical sets, portraits, and views of Bergen and its surroundings. Another mentor, Lyder Sagen, showed the aspiring artist books about art and awakened his interest in historical and patriotic subjects. It was also Sagen who took up a collection that made it possible for Dahl to go to Copenhagen in 1811 to complete his education at the academy there.\nAs important as Dahl's studies at the academy in Copenhagen were his experiences in the surrounding countryside and in the city's art collections. In 1812 he wrote to Sagen that the landscape artists he most wished to emulate were Ruisdahl and Everdingen, and for that reason he was studying \"nature above all,\" Dahl's artistic program was, then, already in place: he would become a part of the great landscape tradition, but he would also be as faithful as possible to nature itself.\nDahl held that a landscape painting should not just depict a specific view, but should also say something about the land's nature and character \u2013 the greatness of its past and the life and work of its current inhabitants. The mood was often idyllic, often melancholy. When he added snow to a landscape he painted in the summer, it was not to show the light and colors of snow; it was to use snow as a symbol of death. As one critic has put it, \"Unlike the radically Romantic works also appearing at the time, Dahl softens his landscape, introducing elements of genre painting by imbuing it with anecdotal materials: In the background a wisp of smoke rises from a cabin, perhaps the home of the hunter on the snow-covered field.\" Thanks to Sagen's recommendations and to his own personal charm, Dahl soon gained access to the leading social circles in Copenhagen.\nDahl took part in annual art exhibitions in Copenhagen beginning in 1812, but his real breakthrough came in 1815, when he exhibited no fewer than 13 paintings. Prince Christian Frederik of Denmark, who developed an early interest in Dahl's artistic genius and saw to it that his works were purchased for the royal collection, became a lifelong friend and patron of the artist.\nIn 1816 C. W. Eckersberg returned from abroad with his paintings of Roman settings; Dahl was impressed at once, and they became good friends and exchanged pictures. Dahl's 1817 painting \"Den Store Kro i Fredensborg\" marked the real beginning of his lifelong production of oil paintings depicting natural subjects.\nAfter his success in Copenhagen, Dahl realized that he wanted to live as an independent, self-supporting artist. One challenge facing him was that the academic preference of the day was for historical paintings with moral messages. Landscapes were considered the lowest kind of art, and perhaps even not as art at all, but as a purely mechanical imitation of nature. The only landscapes that could be considered art, according to the academy, were ideal, imaginary landscapes in pastoral or heroic styles. In accordance with this reigning taste, Dahl attempted to give his Danish themes a certain atmospheric character in order to lift them up above what was considered a merely commercial level. But at the same time it was his deepest wish to provide a more faithful picture of Norwegian nature than were offered by the old-fashioned, dry paintings of Haas and Lorentzen. This desire was partly motivated by homesickness and patriotism, but it was also suited to the public taste of the day for \"picturesque\" works.\nAbroad in Dresden.\nDahl traveled to Dresden in September 1818. He arrived with introductions to the city's leading citizens and to major artists such as Caspar David Friedrich, who helped him establish himself there and became his close friend. One critic has written: \"Friedrich's still, meticulously executed landscapes - products of an art informed by his strict Protestant upbringing and a seeking for the divine in nature - were justifiably famous by the time he and Dahl became acquainted. We are able to see his \"Two Men Contemplating the Moon\" (1819), which ranks among his greatest works, and features two \"R\u00fcckenfiguren,\" or figures seen from behind, solemnly and companionably gazing at a young sickle moon from the edge of an old forest. 'Greifswald in Moonlight' (1816\u201317) depicts the artist's birthplace in Pomerania, on the Baltic coast: bathed in an even, gauzy moonlight, the ancient university town assumes an almost ethereal appearance.\"\nFriedrich was fourteen years Dahl's elder and an established artist, but the two found in each other a shared love for nature and a shared enthusiasm for a way of depicting nature that was based on the study of nature itself rather than on the academic cliches that they both profoundly despised. One writer has put it this way: \"A warm and sociable character, he soon met and became friendly with the more introverted and reclusive Friedrich, recording how they once walked together in the park of the Gr\u00f6sser Garten among 'many lovely trees of different kinds, and the moon looked beautiful behind the dark fir trees.'\"\nTogether with Friedrich and Carl Gustav Carus, Dahl would become one of the Dresden painters of the period who exerted a decisive influence on German Romantic painting.\nIn Dresden, as in Copenhagen, Dahl traveled around the area to draw subjects that could be of use to him in larger works that would be painted later in his atelier. He wrote to Prince Christian Frederik in 1818 that \"most of all I am representing nature in all its freedom and wildness.\" Dahl found enough material in the Dresden area to supply motifs for his paintings, but he continued to paint imaginary landscapes with forests, mountains, and waterfalls. One such painting, completed in 1819, entitled \"Norsk fjellandskap med elv\" (Mountainous Norwegian landscape with river\"), garnered great attention among younger artists who considered the striking natural quality of the painting a breath of fresh air on Dresden's stagnant art scene. Another monumental waterfall painting, completed the next year, was lavished with praised by the critic for Kunstblatt who said that Dahl was greater than Jacob van Ruisdael. Dahl was accepted into the Dresden academy in 1820.\nAbroad in Italy.\nPrince Christian Frederik wrote to Dahl in 1820 from Italy and invited him to join him at the Gulf of Naples. Dahl was at the time courting a young woman named Emilie von Bloch, but felt he should take the prince up on his offer, so he married Emilie quickly and traveled to Italy the next day. He ended up spending 10 months in Italy. Though he missed his bride, the sojourn was a decisive factor in his artistic development. It was in Italy, with its strong southern light, that Dahl's art truly flowered. It forced him to see nature plain, without the mediation of the old masters' renderings of light and color.\nDahl went to Rome in February 1821. He spent a great deal of time visiting museums, meeting other artists, and painting pictures to sell. In addition to painting sights in Rome and pictures of the Gulf of Naples, he painted landscapes inspired by the mountains of Norway. Dahl said that not until he was in Rome did he truly appreciate Norwegian nature. In June 1821 Dahl returned north to Emilie and a quiet life of family and painting.\nDahl quickly became a member of Dresden's leading circles of poets, artists, and scientists, among them the archeologist C. A. B\u00f6ttiger, publisher of Artistisches Notizenblatt, who ran a major article on Dahl in 1822.\nMentorship.\nAs a member of the academy, Dahl always dedicated his time to young artists who sought him out. In 1824 he and Friedrich were named \"extraordinary professors\" who had no chair but who received a regular salary. In 1823 Dahl moved in with Friedrich, so that many of his students, such as Knud Baade, Peder Balke, and Thomas Fearnley, were equally influenced by both artists. \"Well before their meeting,\" writes one critic, \"Dahl had also painted a number of 'moonlights' and, travelling in Europe, he was in the Bay of Naples in 1821 when Mount Vesuvius was active. Here he painted 'Boats on the Beach Near Naples', where fishing crafts lie at anchor in the calm, shimmering waters with the twin peaks of the mountain smoking and flaming behind. Predictably, after his close association with Friedrich began\u2014the two families shared a house in Dresden from 1823\u2014he was considerably influenced by him, but his own more spontaneous and painterly style soon prevailed. Clients sometimes commissioned pictures from them both, a tranquil coastal scene by Friedrich to pair with a more stormy subject from Dahl.\"\nDahl never formed a \"school\" around himself, but rather preferred for his students to cultivate their own styles; it was against his principles and his respect for artistic freedom to try to inhibit his students' individuality. It was this impulse toward individuality that later caused him to turn down an offer of a permanent chair at the academy \u2013 he didn't want to feel compelled to show up for class when he was busy working on a painting.\nDahl continued his studies of nature in the area around Dresden when he had the time, or on longer trips which provided him with themes for his paintings. But most often he painted the view of the Elbe outside his windows in various kinds of light. Like John Constable, Dahl felt that the sky was an important part of a landscape painting, and he never grew tired of watching the clouds move over the flat plain. One critic has compared two paintings of Friedrich and Dahl: \"In...Dahl's 'Mother and Child by the Sea', there are echoes of Friedrich's 'Woman by the Sea' (1818). Whereas in Friedrich's work a woman dressed for the windy weather sits idly watching five fishing boats sailing past, in Dahl's picture, there seems to be a more personal note, with echoes of his own upbringing in a seafaring community, as the mother and small child eagerly await the return of the little ship from the sea.\" The same critic has written about one of his paintings of Dresden: \"Dahl also commemorated the magnificent Baroque buildings of his adopted city, and a version of his \"View of Dresden by Moonlight\" (1838) has travelled from the National Museum of Art, Architecture, and Design in Oslo. This small picture, measuring only 18.5 x 34.5 cm (7\u00bc\" x 13\u00bd\"), shows the dome of the Frauenkirche and the tower of the Hofkirche dominating the skyline; silvers and deep blue combine to give it a wonderful jewel-like effect, together with a certain elegiac quality, perhaps indicative of the artist's awareness that his long friendship with Friedrich was nearing an end.\"\nReturn home.\nAs Dahl wrote in 1828 to the director of the Dresden academy, he found the area around Dresden useful for nature studies, but the \"real thing\" was always missing; that was something he could only find in his mountainous homeland. He viewed himself as a \"more Nordic painter\" with a \"love for seacoasts, mountains, waterfalls, sailboats, and pictures of the sea in daylight and moonlight.\" He longed to return to Norway, but not until 1826 was he able to make a journey home.\nHe made subsequent trips to Norway in 1834, 1839, 1844, and 1850, mostly exploring and painting the mountains, leading to the monumental works \"Fortundalen\" (1836) and \"Stalheim\" (1842). During his visits to Norway he received \"an enthusiastic welcome as a painter of renown.\"\nA critic notes"}, "descending_order": ["16073282", "2131894", "4373207"], "permutation_1": ["4373207", "16073282", "2131894"], "permutation_2": ["4373207", "16073282", "2131894"], "permutation_3": ["16073282", "2131894", "4373207"]}
{"id": "2hop__18025_34539", "docs_added": {"2174": "Arsenal F.C.\nAssociation football club in England\nFootball club\nThe Arsenal Football Club, commonly known as simply Arsenal, is a professional football club based in Islington, North London, England. They compete in the Premier League, the top tier of English football. In domestic football, Arsenal have won 13 league titles (including one unbeaten title), a record 14 FA Cups, 2 League Cups, 17 FA Community Shields, and a Football League Centenary Trophy. In European football, they have one European Cup Winners' Cup and one Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. In terms of trophies won, it is the third-most successful club in English football.\nArsenal was the first club from southern England to join the Football League in 1893, and it reached the First Division in 1904. Relegated only once, in 1913, it continues the longest streak in the top division, and has won the second-most top-flight matches in English football history. In the 1930s, Arsenal won five League Championships and two FA Cups, and another FA Cup and two Championships after the war. In 1970\u201371, it won its first League and FA Cup double. Between 1989 and 2005, they won five league titles and five FA Cups, including two more doubles. They completed the 20th century with the highest average league position. Between 1998 and 2017, Arsenal qualified for the UEFA Champions League for an English football record nineteen consecutive seasons.\nIn 1886, munitions workers at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich founded the club as Dial Square. In 1913, the club crossed the city to Arsenal Stadium in Highbury, becoming close neighbours of Tottenham Hotspur, and creating the North London derby. Herbert Chapman won the club its first silverware, and his legacy enabled a trophy-laden period in the 1930s. He helped introduce the WM formation, floodlights, and shirt numbers; he also added the white sleeves and brighter red to the club's jersey. Ars\u00e8ne Wenger is the club's longest-serving manager and has won the most trophies. He won a record seven FA Cups, and his third and final title-winning team set an English record for the longest top-flight unbeaten league run at 49 games between 2003 and 2004, receiving the nickname The Invincibles.\nIn 2006, the club moved to the nearby Emirates Stadium. With an annual revenue of \u00a3367.1m in the 2021\u201322 season, Arsenal was estimated to be worth US$2.26 billion by \"Forbes\", making it the world's tenth-most valuable football club, while it is one of the most followed on social media. The motto of the club is \"Victoria Concordia Crescit\", Latin for \"Victory Through Harmony\".\nHistory.\n1886\u20131912: Dial Square to Royal Arsenal.\nIn October 1886, Scotsman David Danskin and fifteen fellow munitions workers in Woolwich formed Dial Square Football Club, named after a workshop at the heart of the Royal Arsenal complex. Each member contributed sixpence, and Danskin also added three shillings to help form the club. Dial Square played their first match on 11 December 1886 against the Eastern Wanderers and won 6\u20130. The club had been renamed Royal Arsenal by January 1887, and its first home was Plumstead Common, though they spent most of their time playing at the Manor Ground. Their first trophies were the Kent Senior Cup and London Charity Cup in 1889\u201390 and the London Senior Cup in 1890\u201391; these were the only county association trophies Arsenal won during their time in South East London. In 1891, Royal Arsenal became the first London club to turn professional.\nRoyal Arsenal was renamed for the second time upon becoming a limited liability company in 1893. They registered their new name, Woolwich Arsenal, with the Football League when the club ascended later that year. Woolwich Arsenal was the first southern member of the Football League, starting out in the Second Division and reaching the First Division in 1904. Falling attendances, due to financial difficulties among the munitions workers and the arrival of more accessible football clubs elsewhere in the city, led the club close to bankruptcy by 1910. Businessmen Henry Norris and William Hall became involved in the club, and sought to move them elsewhere.\n1912\u20131925: Bank of England club.\nIn 1913, soon after relegation back to the Second Division, the club moved across the river to the new Arsenal Stadium in Highbury. In 1919, the Football League controversially voted to promote The Arsenal, instead of relegated local rivals Tottenham Hotspur, into the newly enlarged First Division, despite only finishing fifth in the Second Division's last pre-war season of 1914\u201315. Later that year, The Arsenal started dropping \"The\" in official documents, gradually shifting its name for the final time towards Arsenal, as it is generally known today.\nWith a new home and First Division football, attendances were more than double those at the Manor Ground, and Arsenal's budget grew rapidly. With record-breaking spending and gate receipts, Arsenal quickly became known as the Bank of England club.\n1925\u20131934: Herbert Chapman's legendary Gunners.\nArsenal's location and record-breaking salary offer lured star Huddersfield Town manager Herbert Chapman in 1925. Over the next five years, Chapman built a revolutionary new Arsenal. Firstly, he appointed an enduring new trainer, Tom Whittaker who would one day rise to become a fabled Arsenal manager himself. With the help of player Charlie Buchan, implemented the nascent WM formation which would serve as a stable bedrock to his outfit. He also captured generational young talents such as Cliff Bastin and Eddie Hapgood, whilst also lavishing Highbury's high income on stars such as David Jack and Alex James.\nTransformed, Chapman's Arsenal claimed their first national trophy, the FA Cup in 1930, and League Championships followed in 1930\u201331 and 1932\u201333. Chapman also presided over off-pitch changes: white sleeves and shirt numbers were added to the kit; a Tube station was named after the club; and the first of two opulent Art Deco stands was completed, with some of the first floodlights in English football. Suddenly, in the middle of the 1933\u201334 season, Chapman died of pneumonia.\n1934\u20131947: Shaw, Allison and the Second World War.\nChapman's death meant work was left to his colleagues Joe Shaw and George Allison, with both proving to be shrewd and consummate custodians of Chapman's excellent Arsenal team, seeing out a hat-trick of league wins with the 1933\u201334, 1934\u201335, and 1937\u201338 titles, and then furthermore winning the 1936 FA Cup.\nWorld War II meant the Football League was suspended for seven years. While Arsenal were paraded by the nation as a symbol of solidarity with war efforts, the war took a huge toll on the team as the club had had more players killed than any top flight club. Furthermore, debt from reconstructing an ambitious North Bank Stand redevelopment greatly bled Arsenal's resources.\n1947\u20131962: Tom Whittaker's meteoric Gunners.\nDespite this period of turbulence and churn, Arsenal returned to win the league in the second post-war season of 1947\u201348. This was Tom Whittaker's first season as manager, and meant the club equalled the champions of England record. Whittaker, despite his disarming humble and modest disposition, was oft-referred to as the \"brains\" behind charismatic Chapman's legendary Arsenal side. He gathered a successful and highly skilled Arsenal side in spite of greatly limited resources, with a fiery and expansive style that drove great fanfare at the time.\nThey won a third FA Cup in 1950, and then won a record-breaking seventh championship in 1952\u201353 making Arsenal the most successful team in English history at the time.\n1962\u20131984: Billy Wright, Bertie Mee and Terry Neill's cohorts.\nArsenal were not to win the League or the FA Cup for another 18 years. The '53 Champions squad had aged, and the club failed to attract strong enough replacements. Although Arsenal were competitive during these years, their fortunes had waned; the club spent most of the 1950s and 1960s in mid-table mediocrity. Even former England captain Billy Wright could not bring the club any success as manager, in a stint between 1962 and 1966.\nArsenal tentatively appointed club physiotherapist Bertie Mee as acting manager in 1966. With new assistant Don Howe and new players such as Bob McNab and George Graham, Mee led Arsenal to their first League Cup finals, in 1967\u201368 and 1968\u201369. Next season saw a breakthrough, with Arsenal's first competitive European trophy, the 1969\u201370 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. The season after, Arsenal achieved an even greater triumph with their first League and FA Cup double, and a new champions of England record. This marked a premature high point of the decade; the Double-winning side was soon broken up and the rest of the decade was characterised by a series of near misses, with Arsenal finishing as FA Cup runners up in 1972, and First Division runners-up in 1972\u201373.\nFormer player Terry Neill succeeded Mee in 1976. At the age of 34, he became the youngest Arsenal manager to date. With new signings like Malcolm Macdonald and Pat Jennings, and a crop of talent in the side like Liam Brady and Frank Stapleton, the club reached a trio of FA Cup finals (1978 FA Cup, 1979 FA Cup and 1980 FA Cup), and lost the 1980 European Cup Winners' Cup Final on penalties. The club's only trophy during this time was the 1979 FA Cup, achieved with a last-minute 3\u20132 victory over Manchester United, in a final is widely regarded as a classic.\n1984\u20131996: George Graham's Arsenal.\nOne of Mee's double winners, George Graham, returned as manager in 1986, with Arsenal winning their first League Cup in 1987, Graham's first season in charge. New signings Nigel Winterburn, Lee Dixon and Steve Bould had joined the club by 1988 to complete the \"famous Back Four\", led by homegrown player Tony Adams. Graham's credo of prioritising defensive excellence seemingly clashed with the club's traditionally expansive motifs and many had skepticism whether it would work with the young squad at the club in that time period; however, his methods quickly gained a cult following after initial successes.\nThe side immediately won the 1988 Football League Centenary Trophy, and followed it with the 1988\u201389 Football League title, snatched with a last-minute goal in the final game of the season against fellow title challengers Liverpool. Graham's Arsenal won another title in 1990\u201391, losing only one match, won the FA Cup and League Cup double in 1993, and the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1994. Graham's reputation was tarnished when he was found to have taken kickbacks from agent Rune Hauge for signing certain players, and he was dismissed in 1995. His replacement, Bruce Rioch, lasted for only one season, leaving the club after a dispute with the board of directors.\n1996\u20132018: Arsene Wenger years.\nThe club metamorphosed during the tenure of French manager Ars\u00e8ne Wenger, who was appointed in 1996. Attacking football, an overhaul of dietary and fitness practices, and elite scouting defined his reign. Accumulating key players from Wenger's homeland, such as Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry, Arsenal won a second League and Cup double in 1997\u201398 and a third in 2001\u201302. In addition, the club reached the final of the 1999\u20132000 UEFA Cup, were victorious in the 2003 and 2005 FA Cup finals, and won the Premier League in 2003\u201304 without losing a single match, an achievement which earned the side the nickname \"The Invincibles\". This feat came within a run of 49 league matches unbeaten from 7 May 2003 to 24 October 2004, a national record.\nArsenal finished in either first or second place in the league in eight of Wenger's first nine seasons at the club, although they never won the title in two consecutive seasons.\nThe club had never progressed beyond the quarter-finals of the Champions League until 2005\u201306; in that season, they became the first club from London to reach the final in the competition's fifty-year history, but were beaten 2\u20131 by Barcelona. In July 2006, they moved into the Emirates Stadium, after 93 years at Highbury.\nArsenal reached the finals of the 2007 and 2011 League Cups, losing 2\u20131 to Chelsea and Birmingham City respectively. The club had not gained a trophy since the 2005 FA Cup until, spearheaded by club record acquisition Mesut \u00d6zil, Arsenal beat Hull City in the 2014 FA Cup Final, coming back from a 2\u20130 deficit to win the match 3\u20132. A year later, Arsenal completed another victorious FA Cup campaign, and became the most successful club in the tournament's history by winning their 13th FA Cup in 2016\u201317. However, in that same season Arsenal finished fifth in the league, the first time they had finished outside the top four since before Wenger arrived in 1996. In his 21st and final season, Arsenal under Arsene Wenger finished sixth and won the FA Community Shield. Wenger departed Arsenal following the end of the season on 13 May 2018.\n2018\u20132020: post-Wenger revolution.\nAfter conducting an overhaul in the club's operating model to coincide with Wenger's departure, Spaniard Unai Emery was named as the club's new head coach on 23 May 2018. He became the club's first ever 'head coach' and second manager from outside the United Kingdom. In Emery's first season, Arsenal finished fifth in the Premier League and as runner-up in the Europa League. On 29 November 2019, Emery was dismissed as manager and former player and assistant first team coach Freddie Ljungberg was appointed as interim head coach.\n2020\u2013: Mikel Arteta era.\nOn 20 December 2019, Arsenal appointed former club captain Mikel Arteta as the new head coach. Arsenal finished the 2019\u201320 season in eighth, their lowest finish since 1994\u201395, but beat Chelsea 2\u20131 to earn a record-extending 14th FA Cup win. After the season, Arteta's title was changed from head coach to manager. On 18 April 2021, Arsenal were announced as a founding club of the breakaway European competition The Super League; they withdrew from the competition two days later amid near-universal condemnation. Arsenal finished the 2020\u201321 season in eighth place once again, not qualifying for a European competition for the first time in 26 years. The season after (2021\u201322), Arteta had assembled the youngest outfit in the Premier League with an average starting age of 24 years and 308 days \u2013 more than a whole year younger than the next team. They finished in fifth in the Premier League that year, and qualified for next season's UEFA Europa League.\nBy the 2022\u201323 season, Arsenal returned to the Champions League by coming second to Manchester City, setting a record for most time spent on top of the table without actually winning the league, ending on 84 points. In the 2023\u201324 season, Arsenal beat Manchester City to claim their 17th FA Community Shield, they finished second in the Premier League to Manchester City with an improved 89 points from their previous campaign.\nCrest.\nUnveiled in 1888, Royal Arsenal's first crest featured three cannons viewed from above, pointing northwards, similar to the coat of arms of the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich (nowadays transferred to the coat of arms of the Royal Borough of Greenwich). These can sometimes be mistaken for chimneys, but the presence of a carved lion's head and a cascabel on each are clear indicators that they are cannons. This was dropped after the move to Highbury in 1913, only to be reinstated in 1922, when the club adopted a crest featuring a single cannon, pointing eastwards, with the club's nickname, \"The Gunners\", inscribed alongside it; this crest only lasted until 1925, when the cannon was reversed to point westward and its barrel slimmed down.\nIn 1949, the club unveiled a modernised crest featuring the same style of cannon below the club's name, set in blackletter typography, and above the coat of arms of the Metropolitan Borough of Islington and a scroll inscribed with the club's newly adopted Latin motto, \"Victoria Concordia Crescit\" (VCC) \u2013 \"victory comes from harmony\" \u2013 coined by the club's programme editor Harry Homer. For the first time, the crest was rendered in colour, which varied slightly over the crest's lifespan, finally becoming red, gold and green. Because of the numerous revisions of the crest, Arsenal were unable to copyright it. Although the club had managed to register the crest as a trademark, and had fought (and eventually won) a long legal battle with a local street trader who sold \"unofficial\" Arsenal merchandise, Arsenal eventually sought a more comprehensive legal protection. Therefore, in 2002 they introduced a new crest featuring more modern curved lines and a simplified style, which was copyrightable.\nThe cannon once again faces east, and the club's name is written in a sans-serif typeface above the cannon. Green was replaced by dark blue. The new crest was criticised by some supporters; the Arsenal Independent Supporters' Association claimed that the club had ignored much of Arsenal's history and tradition with such a radical modern design, and that fans had not been properly consulted on the issue.\nUntil the 1960s, a badge was worn on the playing shirt only for high-profile matches such as FA Cup finals, usually in the form of a monogram of the club's initials in red on a white background.\nThe monogram theme was developed into an Art Deco-style badge on which the letters A and C framed a football rather than the letter F, the whole set within a hexagonal border. This early example of a corporate logo, introduced as part of Herbert Chapman's rebranding of the club in the 1930s, was used not only on Cup Final shirts but as a design feature throughout Highbury Stadium, including above the main entrance and inlaid in the floors.\nFrom 1967, a white cannon was regularly worn on the shirts, until replaced by the club crest, sometimes with the addition of the nickname \"The Gunners\", in the 1990s.\nIn the 2011\u201312 season, Arsenal celebrated their 125th anniversary. The celebrations included a modified version of the current crest worn on their jerseys for the season. The crest was all-white, surrounded by 15 oak leaves to the right and 15 laurel leaves to the left. The oak leaves represent the 15 founding members of the club who met at the Royal Oak pub. The 15 laurel leaves represent the design detail on the six pence pieces paid by the founding fathers to establish the club. The laurel leaves also represent strength. To complete the crest, 1886 and 2011 are shown on either sides of the motto \"Forward\" at the bottom of the crest.\nStarting in the 2021\u201322 season, Adidas reintroduced the cannon-only crest on that season's away kit. It was the first time it had been seen on an Arsenal shirt since 1991. It would remain in use on the away kit in 2022\u201323 and in 2023\u201324 would be added to the third kit as well, before being used on all three kits in 2024\u201325 - marking the first time the crest would not be seen on an Arsenal kit since its introduction in 2002.\nColours.\n Arsenal's original home colours. The team wore a similar kit (but with redcurrant socks) during the 2005\u201306 season.\nWhite sleeves first appeared on the shirt in 1933.\nYellow shirt with blue trim and blue shorts are Arsenal's traditional away colours.\nSince the 1990s, Blue has been prominently used for either the away or third kit.\nFor much of Arsenal's history, their home colours have been bright red shirts with white sleeves and white shorts, though this has not always been the case. The choice of red is in recognition of a charitable donation from Nottingham Forest, soon after Arsenal's foundation in 1886. Two of Dial Square's founding members, Fred Beardsley and Morris Bates, were former Forest players who had moved to Woolwich for work. As they put together the first team in the area, no kit could be found, so Beardsley and Bates wrote home for help and received a set of kit and a ball. The shirt was redcurrant, a dark shade of red, and was worn with white shorts and socks with blue and white hoops.\nIn 1933, Herbert Chapman, wanting his players to be more distinctly dressed, updated the kit, adding white sleeves and changing the shade to a brighter pillar box red. Two possibilities have been suggested for the origin of the white sleeves. One story reports that Chapman noticed a supporter in the stands wearing a red sleeveless sweater over a white shirt; another was that he was inspired by a similar outfit worn by the cartoonist Tom Webster, with whom Chapman played golf. Regardless of which story is true, the red-and-white shirts have come to define Arsenal, and the team have worn that combination ever since that time, aside from two seasons. The first was 1966\u201367, when Arsenal wore all-red shirts; this proved unpopular, and the white sleeves returned the following season. The second was 2005\u201306, the last season that Arsenal played at Highbury, when the team wore commemorative redcurrant shirts similar to those worn in 1913, their first season in the stadium; the side reverted to their normal colours at the start of the next season. In the 2008\u201309 season, Arsenal replaced the traditional all-white sleeves with red sleeves that bore a broad white stripe.\nArsenal's home colours have been the inspiration for at least three other clubs. In 1909, Sparta Prague adopted a dark red kit like the one Arsenal wore at the time; in 1938, Hibernian adopted the design of the Arsenal shirt sleeves in their own green-and-white strip. In 1941, Luis Robledo, an England-schooled founder of Santa Fe and a fan of Arsenal, selected the main colours for his newly created team. In 1920, Sporting Clube de Braga's manager returned from a game at Highbury and changed his team's green kit to a duplicate of Arsenal's red-with-white-sleeves-and-shorts, giving rise to the team's nickname of \"Os Arsenalistas\". These teams still wear those designs to this day.\nFor many years Arsenal's away colours were white or navy blue. However, in 1968 the FA banned navy shirts (they looked too similar to referees' black kit), so in the 1969\u201370 season Arsenal introduced an away kit of yellow shirts with blue shorts. This kit was worn in the 1971 FA Cup Final when Arsenal beat Liverpool to secure the double for the first time in their history. The yellow and blue strip became almost as famous as their iconic red-and-white home kit. Arsenal reached the FA Cup final again the following year wearing the red-and-white home strip and were beaten by Leeds United. Arsenal then competed in three consecutive FA Cup finals between 1978 and 1980 wearing their \"lucky\" yellow and blue strip, which remained the club's away strip until the release of a green and navy away kit in 1982\u201383. The following season, Arsenal returned to the yellow and blue scheme, albeit with a darker shade of blue than before.\nWhen Nike took over from Adidas as Arsenal's kit provider in 1994, Arsenal's away colours were again changed to two-tone blue shirts and shorts. Since the advent of the lucrative replica kit market, the away kits have been changed regularly, with Arsenal usually releasing both away and third choice kits. During this period the designs have been either all blue designs, or variations on the traditional yellow and blue, such as the metallic gold and navy strip used in the 2001\u201302 season, the yellow and dark grey used from 2005 to 2007, and the yellow and maroon of 2010 to 2013.\nUntil 2014, the away kit was changed every season, and the outgoing away kit became the third-choice kit if a new home kit was being introduced in the same year.\nAfter Puma began manufacturing Arsenal's kits in 2014, new home, away and third kits were released every season. In the 2017\u201318 season, Puma released a new colour scheme for the away and third kits. The away kit was a light blue, which faded to a darker blue near the bottom, while the third kit was black with red highlight. Puma returned to the original colour scheme for the 2018\u201319 season. From the 2019\u201320 season Arsenal's kits are manufactured by Adidas.\nStadiums.\nBefore joining the Football League, Arsenal played briefly on Plumstead Common, then at the Manor Ground in Plumstead, then spent three years between 1890 and 1893 at the nearby Invicta Ground. Upon joining the Football League in 1893, the club returned to the Manor Ground and installed stands and terracing, upgrading it from just a field. Arsenal continued to play their home games there for the next twenty years (with two exceptions in the 1894\u201395 season), until the move to north London in 1913.\nWidely referred to as Highbury, Arsenal Stadium was the club's home from September 1913 until May 2006. The original stadium was designed by the renowned football architect Archibald Leitch, and had a design common to many football grounds in the UK at the time, with a single covered stand and three open-air banks of terracing. The entire stadium was given a massive overhaul in the 1930s: new Art Deco West and East stands were constructed, opening in 1932 and 1936 respectively, and a roof was added to the North Bank terrace, which was bombed during the Second World War and not restored until 1954.\nHighbury could hold more than 60,000 spectators at its peak, and had a capacity of 57,000 until the early 1990s. The Taylor Report and Premier League regulations obliged Arsenal to convert Highbury to an all-seater stadium in time for the 1993\u201394 season, thus reducing the capacity to 38,419 seated spectators. This capacity had to be reduced further during Champions League matches to accommodate additional advertising boards, so much so that for two seasons, from 1998 to 2000, Arsenal played Champions League home matches at Wembley, which could house more than 70,000 spectators.\nExpansion of Highbury was restricted because the East Stand had been designated as a Grade II listed building and the other three stands were close to residential properties. These limitations prevented the club from maximising matchday revenue during the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century, putting them in danger of being left behind in the football boom of that time. After considering various options, in 2000 Arsenal proposed building a new 60,361-capacity stadium at Ashburton Grove, since named the Emirates Stadium, about 500\u00a0metres south-west of Highbury. The project was initially delayed by red tape and rising costs, and construction was completed in July 2006, in time for the start of the 2006\u201307 season. The stadium was named after its sponsors, the airline company Emirates, with whom the club signed the largest sponsorship deal in English football history, worth around \u00a3100\u00a0million. Some fans referred to the ground as Ashburton Grove, or the Grove, as they did not agree with corporate sponsorship of stadium names. The stadium will be officially known as Emirates Stadium until at least 2028, and the airline will be the club's shirt sponsor until at least 2024. From the start of the 2010\u201311 season on, the stands of the stadium have been officially known as North Bank, East Stand, West Stand and Clock end. The capacity of the Emirates now stands at 60,704.\nArsenal's players train at the Shenley Training Centre in Hertfordshire, a purpose-built facility which opened in 1999.\nBefore that the club used facilities on a nearby site owned by the University College of London Students' Union. Until 1961 they had trained at Highbury.\nArsenal's Academy under-18 teams play their home matches at Shenley, while the reserves play their games at Meadow Park, which is also the home of Boreham Wood. Both the Academy under-18 team and the reserves occasionally play their big games at the Emirates in front of a crowd reduced to only the lower west stand.\nSupporters and rivalries.\nArsenal's fanbase are referred to as \"Gooners\" \u2013 the name derived from the club's nickname \"The Gunners\". Virtually all home matches sell out; in 2007\u201308 Arsenal had the second-highest average League attendance for an English club (60,070, which was 99.5% of available capacity), and, as of 2015, the third-highest all-time average attendance. Arsenal have the seventh highest average attendance of European football clubs only behind Borussia Dortmund, Barcelona, Manchester United, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Schalke 04. The club's location, adjoining wealthy areas such as Canonbury and Barnsbury, mixed areas such as Islington, Holloway, Highbury, and the adjacent London Borough of Camden, and largely working-class areas such as Finsbury Park and Stoke Newington, has meant that Arsenal's supporters have come from a variety of social classes. Much of the Afro-Caribbean support comes from the neighbouring London Borough of Hackney and a large portion of the South Asian Arsenal supporters commute to the stadium from Wembley Park, North West of the capital. There was also traditionally a large Irish community that followed Arsenal, with the surrounding Islington and particularly the nearby Archway area having a large community of residents with Irish heritage. But Irish migration to North London is recently much lower than in the 1960s or 1970s.\nLike all major English football clubs, Arsenal have a number of domestic supporters' clubs, including the Arsenal Football Supporters' Club, which works closely with the club, and the Arsenal Independent Supporters' Association, which maintains a more independent line. The Arsenal Supporters' Trust promotes greater participation in ownership of the club by fans. The club's supporters also publish fanzines such as \"The Gooner\", \"Gunflash\" and the satirical \"Up The Arse!\"\nThere have always been Arsenal supporters outside London, and since the advent of satellite television, a supporter's attachment to a football club has become less dependent on geography. Consequently, Arsenal have a significant number of fans from beyond London and all over the world; in 2007, 24 UK, 37 Irish and 49 other overseas supporters' clubs were affiliated with the club. A 2011 report by SPORT+MARKT estimated Arsenal's global fanbase at 113\u00a0million. The club's social media activity was the fifth highest in world football during the 2014\u201315 season.\nChants.\nThe team's anthem is \"The Angel (North London Forever)\" by Louis Dunford. The song is typically played at Arsenal home games before a match.\nIn addition to the usual English football chants, Arsenal's supporters sing \"One-Nil to the Arsenal\" (to the tune of \"Go West\") and also regularly sing \"Who's that team they call the Arsenal\", \"Good Old Arsenal\" (to the tune of \"Rule, Britannia!\") and \"We're the North Bank/Clock End Highbury\". The fans also chant \"Boring, Boring Arsenal\" in self-deprecating reference to Arsenal's reputation during the 1970s and 1980s as an overly defensive, cautious team.\nRivalries.\nArsenal's longest-running and deepest rivalry is with their nearest major neighbour, Tottenham Hotspur; matches between the two are referred to as the North London derby. There also exists a rivalry between Arsenal and Chelsea. In addition, Arsenal and Manchester United developed a strong on-pitch rivalry in the late 1980s, which intensified in the early 2000s when both clubs were competing for the Premier League title.\nMascot.\nThe club mascot is Gunnersaurus Rex, a smiling, seven-foot-tall green dinosaur, who first appeared at a home match against Manchester City in August 1994 (or 1993). He is based on a drawing by then-11-year-old Peter Lovell, whose design and another similar idea won a Junior Gunners contest; his official backstory is that he hatched from an egg found during renovations at Highbury.\nThe same performer, Jerry Quy, has been inside the suit from the start; in early October 2020, as part of cost-cutting brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, the club made him redundant from that and his other part-time job in supporter liaison, together with 55 full-time employees, although they later said Gunnersaurus could return after spectators were allowed back in stadiums. An online fundraiser was begun for Quy, and Mesut \u00d6zil offered to pay his salary himself as long as he remains with Arsenal. In November 2020, in advance of COVID-19 regulations being relaxed to allow supporters to attend home games from 3 December, Arsenal announced that Gunnersaurus would return, to be played by a roster of people that could include Quy if he wished.\nOwnership and finances.\nThe largest shareholder on the Arsenal board is American sports tycoon Stan Kroenke. Kroenke first launched a bid for the club in April 2007, and faced competition for shares from Red and White Securities, which acquired its first shares from David Dein in August 2007. Red & White Securities was co-owned by Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov and London-based Iranian financier Farhad Moshiri, though Usmanov bought Moshiri's stake in 2016. Kroenke came close to the 30% takeover threshold in November 2009, when he increased his holding to 18,594 shares (29.9%). In April 2011, Kroenke achieved a full takeover by purchasing the shareholdings of Nina Bracewell-Smith and Danny Fiszman, taking his shareholding to 62.89%. In May 2017, Kroenke owned 41,721 shares (67.05%) and Red & White Securities owned 18,695 shares (30.04%). In January 2018, Kroenke expanded his ownership by buying twenty-two more shares, taking his total ownership to 67.09%. In August 2018, Kroenke bought out Usmanov for \u00a3550m. Now owning more than 90% of the shares, he had the required stake to complete the buyout of the remaining shares and become the sole owner. There has been criticism of Arsenal's poor performance since Kroenke took over, which has been attributed to his ownership. Ivan Gazidis was the club's Chief executive from 2009 to 2018.\nArsenal's parent company, Arsenal Holdings plc, operates as an unlisted public limited company, whose ownership is considerably different from that of other football clubs. Only 62,219 shares in Arsenal have been issued, and they are not traded on a public exchange such as the FTSE or AIM; instead, they are traded relatively infrequently on the ICAP Securities and Derivatives Exchange, a specialist market. On 29 May 2017, a single share in Arsenal had a mid price of \u00a318,000, which sets the club's market capitalisation value at approximately \u00a31,119.9m. Most football clubs are not listed on an exchange, which makes direct comparisons of their values difficult. Consultants Brand Finance valued the club's brand and intangible assets at $703m in 2015, and consider Arsenal an AAA global brand. Business magazine \"Forbes\" valued Arsenal as a whole at $2.238\u00a0billion (\u00a31.69\u00a0billion) in 2018, ranked third in English football. Research by the Henley Business School ranked Arsenal second in English football, modelling the club's value at \u00a31.118\u00a0billion in 2015.\nArsenal's financial results for the 2019\u201320 season showed an after tax loss of \u00a347.8m, due in part to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Deloitte Football Money League is a publication that homogenises and compares clubs' annual revenue. Deloitte put Arsenal's footballing revenue in 2019 at \u00a3392.7m (\u20ac445.6m), ranking Arsenal eleventh among world football clubs. Arsenal and Deloitte both listed the match day revenue generated in 2019 by the Emirates Stadium as \u20ac109.2m (\u00a396.2m).\nIn popular culture.\nPartly due to their proximity to the Alexandra Palace transmitter, Arsenal have appeared in a number of media \"firsts\". On 22 January 1927, their match at Highbury against Sheffield United was the first English League match to be broadcast live on radio. A decade later, on 16 September 1937, an exhibition match between Arsenal's first team and the reserves was the first football match in the world to be televised live. Arsenal also featured in the first edition of the BBC's \"Match of the Day\", which screened highlights of their match against Liverpool at Anfield on 22 August 1964. Sky's coverage of Arsenal's January 2010 match against Manchester United was the first live public broadcast of a sports event on 3D television.\nAs one of the most successful teams in the country, Arsenal have often featured when football is depicted in the arts in Britain. They formed the backdrop to one of the earliest football-related novels, \"The Arsenal Stadium Mystery\" (1939), which was made into a film in the same year. The story centres on a friendly match between Arsenal and an amateur side, one of whose players is poisoned while playing. Many Arsenal players appeared as themselves in the film and manager George Allison was given a speaking part. The book \"Fever Pitch\" by Nick Hornby was an autobiographical account of Hornby's life and relationship with football, and with Arsenal in particular. Published in 1992, it formed part of the revival and rehabilitation of football in British society during the 1990s. The book was twice adapted for the cinema\u00a0\u2013 the 1997 British film focuses on Arsenal's 1988\u201389 title win, and a 2005 American version features a fan of baseball's Boston Red Sox.\nArsenal have often been stereotyped as a defensive and \"boring\" side, especially during the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1997 film \"The Full Monty\" the principal characters move forward in a line and raise their hands, deliberately mimicking the Arsenal defence's offside trap, in an attempt to co-ordinate their striptease routine.\nFifteen years later, an almost identical scene was included in the 2012 Disney science-fiction film \"John Carter\" (director and co-writer Andrew Stanton, a notable overseas supporter of the club), along with other visual cues and oblique dialogue hints and references to the club throughout the film.\nAnother film reference to the club's defence comes in the film \"Plunkett & Macleane\", in which two characters are named Dixon and Winterburn after Arsenal's long-serving full backs \u2013 the right-sided Lee Dixon and the left-sided Nigel Winterburn.\nIn August 2022, Amazon Prime Video released an eight-episode docuseries called \"\". It documented the club by spending time with the coaching staff and players behind the scenes both on and off the field throughout their 2021\u201322 season, in which they were the youngest team in the Premier League with an average starting age of 24 years and 308 days \u2013 more than a whole year younger than the next team.\nIn the community.\nIn 1985, Arsenal founded a community scheme, \"Arsenal in the Community\", which offered sporting, social inclusion, educational and charitable projects. The club support a number of charitable causes directly and in 1992 established The Arsenal Charitable Trust, which by 2006 had raised more than \u00a32 million for local causes. An ex-professional and celebrity football team associated with the club also raised money by playing charity matches. The club launched the Arsenal for Everyone initiative in 2008 as an annual celebration of the diversity of the Arsenal family. In the 2009\u201310 season Arsenal announced that they had raised a record breaking \u00a3818,897 for the Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity. The original target was \u00a3500,000. In 2022, Arsenal and Adidas partnered up to launch the \"No More Red\" campaign to support the long-standing work being done by Arsenal in the Community to help keep young people safe from knife crime and youth violence. To promote the event, the club launched an exclusive all white kit that was not commercially available and only awarded to individuals who are making a positive difference in the community.\nSave the Children has been Arsenal global charity partner since 2011 and have worked together in numerous projects to improve safety and well-being for vulnerable children in London and abroad. On 3 September 2016 The Arsenal Foundation has donated \u00a31m to build football pitches for children in London, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan and Somalia thanks to The Arsenal Foundation Legends Match against Milan Glorie at the Emirates Stadium. On 3 June 2018, Arsenal played Real Madrid in the Corazon Classic Match 2018 at the Bernabeu, where the proceeds went to Realtoo Real Madrid Foundation projects that are aimed at the most vulnerable children. In addition there will be a return meeting on 8 September 2018 at the Emirates stadium where proceeds will go towards the Arsenal foundation.\nDuring 2007 in Pleiku, Vietnam, Arsenal partnered with the JMG Academy and the Hoang Anh Gia Lai Corporation to found a youth academy for the V.League 1 side Ho\u00e0ng Anh Lai Lai, which saw a selection of Vietnam-based players train with Arsenal; the club ended their partnership with the club in 2017. Additionally, the club formally partnered with a variety of clubs overseas including Virginia based Richmond Strikers and Cairo based Wadi Degla.\n \"As of 31 January 2025\"\nPlayers.\nFirst-team squad.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Football squad player/styles.css\" />\nOut on loan.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Football squad player/styles.css\" />\n \"As of 3 February 2025\"\n Players with at least one first-team appearance for Arsenal.\nAcademy.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Football squad player/styles.css\" />\nOut on loan.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Football squad player/styles.css\" />\nStatistics and records.\nArsenal's tally of 13 League Championships is the third highest in English football, after Manchester United (20) and Liverpool (19),\nand they were the first club to reach a seventh and an eighth League Championship. As of June 2020, they are one of seven teams, the others being Manchester United, Blackburn Rovers, Chelsea, Manchester City, Leicester City and Liverpool, to have won the Premier League since its formation in 1992.\nThey hold the highest number of FA Cup trophies, with 14. The club is one of only six clubs to have won the FA Cup twice in succession, in 2002 and 2003, and 2014 and 2015.\nArsenal have achieved three League and FA Cup \"Doubles\" (in 1971, 1998 and 2002), a feat only previously achieved by Manchester United (in 1994, 1996 and 1999).\nThey were the first side in English football to complete the FA Cup and League Cup double, in 1993.\nArsenal were also the first London club to reach the final of the UEFA Champions League, in 2006, losing the final 2\u20131 to Barcelona.\nArsenal have one of the best top-flight records in history, having finished below fourteenth only seven times. They have won the second most top flight league matches in English football, and have also accumulated the second most points, whether calculated by two points per win or by the contemporary points value. They have been in the top flight for the most consecutive seasons (98 as of 2023\u201324). Arsenal also have the highest average league finishing position for the 20th century, with an average league placement of 8.5.\nArsenal hold the record for the longest run of unbeaten League matches (49 between May 2003 and October 2004). This included all 38 matches of their title-winning 2003\u201304 season, when Arsenal became only the second club to finish a top-flight campaign unbeaten, after Preston North End (who played only 22 matches) in 1888\u201389. They also hold the record for the longest top flight win streak. Arsenal set a Champions League record during the 2005\u201306 season by going ten matches without conceding a goal, beating the previous best of seven set by AC Milan. They went a record total stretch of 995\u00a0minutes without letting an opponent score; the streak ended in the final, when Samuel Eto'o scored a 76th-minute equaliser for Barcelona.\nDavid O'Leary holds the record for Arsenal appearances, having played 722 first-team matches between 1975 and 1993. Fellow centre half and former captain Tony Adams comes second, having played 669 times. The record for a goalkeeper is held by David Seaman, with 564 appearances. Thierry Henry is the club's top goalscorer with 228 goals in all competitions between 1999 and 2012; he surpassed Ian Wright's total of 185 in October 2005. Wright's record had stood since September 1997, when he overtook the longstanding total of 178 goals set by winger Cliff Bastin in 1939. Henry also holds the club record for goals scored in the League, with 175, a record that had been held by Bastin until February 2006. Declan Rice holds the Arsenal record signing price after a deal with West Ham United was completed in July 2023, for an initial \u00a3100 million. This easily surpassed the former record of \u00a372 million for Nicolas Pepe.\nArsenal's record home attendance is 73,707, for a UEFA Champions League match against Lens on 25 November 1998 at Wembley, where the club formerly played home European matches because of the limits on Highbury's capacity. The record attendance for an Arsenal match at Highbury is 73,295, for a 0\u20130 draw against Sunderland on 9 March 1935, while that at Emirates Stadium is 60,161, for a 2\u20132 draw with Manchester United on 3 November 2007.\nHonours.\nArsenal's first ever silverware was won as the Royal Arsenal in 1890. The Kent Junior Cup, won by Royal Arsenal's reserves, was the club's first trophy, while the first team's first trophy came three weeks later when they won the Kent Senior Cup. Their first national senior honour came in 1930, when they won the FA Cup. The club enjoyed further success in the 1930s, winning another FA Cup and five Football League First Division titles. Arsenal won their first league and cup double in the 1970\u201371 season and twice repeated the feat, in 1997\u201398 and 2001\u201302, as well as winning a cup double of the FA Cup and League Cup in 1992\u201393. The 2003\u201304 season was the only 38-match league season unbeaten in English football history. A special gold version of the Premier League trophy was commissioned and presented to the club the following season.\nOther.\nWhen the FA Cup was the only national football association competition available to Arsenal, the other football association competitions were County Cups, and they made up many of the matches the club played during a season. Arsenal's first first-team trophy was a County Cup, the inaugural Kent Senior Cup. Arsenal became ineligible for the London Cups when the club turned professional in 1891, and rarely participated in County Cups after this. Due to the club's original location within the borders of both the London and Kent Football Associations, Arsenal competed in and won trophies organised by each.\nDuring Arsenal's history, the club has participated in and won a variety of pre-season and friendly honours. These include Arsenal's own pre-season competition the Emirates Cup, begun in 2007. During the wars, previous competitions were widely suspended and the club had to participate in wartime competitions. During WWII, Arsenal won several of these.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "11250": "Premier League\nAssociation football league\nFootball league\nThe Premier League is a professional association football league in England and the highest level of the English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Football League (EFL). Seasons usually run from August to May, with each team playing 38 matches: two against each other team, one home and one away. Most games are played on weekend afternoons, with occasional weekday evening fixtures.\nThe competition was founded as the FA Premier League on 20\u00a0February 1992, following the decision of First Division (the top-tier league from 1888 until 1992) clubs to break away from the English Football League. However, teams are still relegated to and promoted from the EFL Championship at the conclusion of each season. The Premier League is a corporation managed by a chief executive, with member clubs acting as shareholders. The Premier League takes advantage of a \u00a35\u00a0billion television rights deal, with Sky and BT Group securing the domestic rights to broadcast 128 and 32 games, respectively. This deal will rise to \u00a36.7\u00a0billion for the four seasons from 2025 to 2029. The league is projected to earn $7.2\u00a0billion in overseas TV rights from 2022 to 2025. Clubs were apportioned central payment revenues of \u00a32.4\u00a0billion in 2016\u201317, with a further \u00a3343\u00a0million in solidarity payments to EFL clubs.\nThe Premier League is the most-watched sports league in the world, broadcast in 212 territories to 643\u00a0million homes, with a potential TV audience of 4.7\u00a0billion people. For the 2023\u201324 season, the average Premier League match attendance was 38,375, second to the German Bundesliga's 39,512, whilst aggregated attendance across all matches in a 38-game season is the highest of any association football league. Most stadium occupancies are near capacity. As of 2024/25[ [update]], the Premier League is ranked first in the UEFA coefficient rankings based on performances in European competitions over the past five seasons, ahead of Spain's La\u00a0Liga. The English top-flight has produced the second-highest number of European Cup / UEFA Champions League titles, with a record six English clubs having won fifteen European cups in total.\nFifty-one clubs have competed in the Premier League since its inception in 1992: 49 from England and 2 from Wales. Seven have won the title: Manchester United (13), Manchester City (8), Chelsea (5), Arsenal (3), Blackburn Rovers (1), Leicester City (1), and Liverpool (1). Only six clubs have played in every season to date: Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United, and Tottenham Hotspur.\nHistory.\nOrigins.\nDespite major European success in the 1970s and early 1980s, the mid-to-late 1980s marked a low point for English football. Stadiums were ageing with poor facilities, hooliganism was rife, and English clubs faced a 5-year ban from European competition following the events of the 1985 Heysel Stadium disaster. The Football League First Division, the top level of English football since 1888, was behind leagues such as Italy's Serie A and Spain's La Liga in attendance and revenues, and several top English players had moved abroad.\nBy the turn of the 1990s, the downward trend was starting to reverse. At the 1990 FIFA World Cup, England reached the semi-finals; UEFA, European football's governing body, lifted the five-year ban on English clubs playing in European competitions in 1990, resulting in Manchester United lifting the Cup Winners' Cup in 1991. The Taylor Report on stadium safety standards, which proposed expensive upgrades to create all-seater stadiums in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster (between the fans of Liverpool and the fans of Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough Stadium, Sheffield, Yorkshire on 15 April 1989) was published in January 1990.\nDuring the 1980s, major English clubs began to transform into business ventures, applying commercial principles to club administration to maximise revenue. Martin Edwards of Manchester United, Irving Scholar of Tottenham Hotspur, and David Dein of Arsenal were among the leaders in this transformation. The commercial imperative led to the top clubs seeking to increase their power and revenue: the clubs in Division One threatened to break away from the Football League, and in doing so, they managed to increase their voting power and gain a more favourable financial arrangement, taking a 50% share of all television and sponsorship income in 1986. They demanded that television companies should pay more for their coverage of football matches, and revenue from television grew in importance. The Football League received \u00a36.3\u00a0million for a two-year agreement in 1986, but by 1988, in a deal agreed with ITV, the price rose to \u00a344\u00a0million over four years, with the leading clubs taking 75% of the cash. According to Scholar, who was involved in the negotiations of television deals, each of the First Division clubs received only around \u00a325,000 per year from television rights before 1986, this increased to around \u00a350,000 in the 1986 negotiation, then to \u00a3600,000 in 1988. The 1988 negotiations were conducted under the threat of ten clubs leaving to form a \"super league\", but they were eventually persuaded to stay, with the top clubs taking the lion's share of the deal. The negotiations also convinced the bigger clubs that, in order to receive enough votes, they needed to take the whole of the First Division with them instead of a smaller \"super league\". By the beginning of the 1990s, the big clubs again considered breaking away, especially now that they had to fund the cost of stadium upgrades as proposed by the Taylor Report.\nIn 1990, the managing director of London Weekend Television (LWT), Greg Dyke, met with the representatives of the \"big five\" football clubs in England (Manchester United, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur, Everton, and Arsenal) over a dinner. The meeting was to pave the way for a breakaway from the Football League. Dyke believed that it would be more lucrative for LWT if only the larger clubs in the country were featured on national television and wanted to establish whether the clubs would be interested in a larger share of television rights money. The five clubs agreed with the suggestion and decided to press ahead with it; however, the league would have no credibility without the backing of the Football Association, and so David Dein of Arsenal held talks to see whether the FA were receptive to the idea. The FA did not have an amicable relationship with the Football League at the time and considered it a way to weaken the Football League's position. The FA released a report in June 1991, \"Blueprint for the Future of Football\", that supported the plan for the Premier League, with the FA as the ultimate authority that would oversee the breakaway league.\nFounding and Manchester United dominance (1990s).\nAt the close of the 1990\u20131991 season, a proposal was tabled for the establishment of a new league that would bring more money into the game overall. The Founder Members Agreement, signed on 17 July 1991, by the game's top-flight clubs, established the basic principles for setting up the FA Premier League. The newly formed top division was to have commercial independence from the Football Association and the Football League, giving the FA Premier League licence to negotiate its own broadcast and sponsorship agreements. The argument given at the time was that the extra income would allow English clubs to compete with teams across Europe. Although Dyke played a significant role in the creation of the Premier League, he and ITV (of which LWT was part) lost out in the bidding for broadcast rights: BSkyB won with a bid of \u00a3304\u00a0million over five years, with the BBC awarded the highlights package broadcast on \"Match of the Day\".\nLuton Town, Notts County, and West Ham United were the three teams relegated from the old First Division at the end of the 1991\u201392 season, and did not take part in the inaugural Premier League season. They were replaced by Ipswich Town, Middlesbrough, and Blackburn Rovers, promoted from the old Second Division. The 22 First Division clubs resigned en masse from the Football League in 1992, and on 27 May that year, the FA Premier League was formed as a limited company, working out of an office at the Football Association's then headquarters in Lancaster Gate. The 22 inaugural members of the new Premier League were:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nThis meant a break-up of the 104-year-old Football League that had operated until then with four divisions; the Premier League would operate with a single division and the Football League with three. There was no change in competition format; the same number of teams competed in the top flight, and promotion and relegation between the Premier League and the new First Division remained the same as the old First and Second Divisions, with three teams relegated from the league and three promoted.\nThe league held its first season in 1992\u201393. It was composed of 22 clubs for that season (reduced to 20 in the 1995\u201396 season). The first Premier League goal was scored by Brian Deane of Sheffield United in a 2\u20131 win against Manchester United.\nManchester United won the inaugural edition of the new league, ending a twenty-six year wait to be crowned champions of England. Bolstered by this breakthrough, United immediately became the competition's dominant team, winning seven of the first nine trophies, two League and FA Cup 'doubles' and a European treble, initially under a team of hardened veterans such as Bryan Robson, Steve Bruce, Paul Ince, Mark Hughes, and Eric Cantona, before Cantona, Bruce, and Roy Keane led a young, dynamic new team filled with the Class of 92, a group of young players including David Beckham who came through the Manchester United Academy.\nBetween 1993 and 1997, Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United came close to challenging Manchester United's early dominance, both of whom housed Alan Shearer up front. Blackburn won the 1994\u201395 FA Premier League and Newcastle led the title charge over United for much of the 1995\u201396 season. As the decade closed, Arsenal replicated Manchester United's dominance by winning the League and FA Cup double in 1997\u201398, and together they would form a duopoly over the league between 1997 and 2003.\nEmergence of the \"Big Four\" (2000s).\nThe 2000s saw Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Manchester United dominate the Premier League, forming the so-called \"Big Four\". Manchester United won five league titles (1999\u20132000, 2000\u201301, 2002\u201303, 2006\u201307, 2007\u201308), Arsenal claimed two (2001\u201302, 2003\u201304), while Chelsea rose to prominence with three under Jos\u00e9 Mourinho (2004\u201305, 2005\u201306, 2009\u201310). Arsenal\u2019s unbeaten 2003\u201304 season earned them the nickname \"The Invincibles,\" the only team to achieve this in the Premier League era. Only three other clubs secured a top-four finish during the decade: Newcastle United (2001\u201302, 2002\u201303), Everton (2004\u201305), and Tottenham Hotspur (2009\u201310). However, the Big Four consistently dominated the top spots, with three of them finishing in the top four every season from 1999\u20132000 to 2009\u201310.\nPremier League clubs were also highly competitive in Europe. Between 2005 and 2012, an English side reached seven of eight Champions League finals, with Liverpool (2005), Manchester United (2008), and Chelsea (2012) winning. Arsenal (2006), Liverpool (2007), Chelsea (2008), and Manchester United (2009, 2011) finished as runners-up. Leeds United were the only non-Big Four side to reach the semi-finals, doing so in 2000\u201301. Three English clubs made the semi-finals in 2006\u201307, 2007\u201308, and 2008\u201309\u2014a feat only matched twice by other leagues.\nIn the UEFA Cup/Europa League, four Premier League teams reached the final between 2000 and 2010, with only Liverpool lifting the trophy in 2001. Arsenal (2000), Middlesbrough (2006), and Fulham (2010) all fell short.\nThe decade saw record-breaking points tallies, including Chelsea\u2019s 95-point haul in 2004\u201305 and Manchester United\u2019s three consecutive title wins (2006\u201307 to 2008\u201309). The rise of billionaire owners, including Roman Abramovich at Chelsea and Sheikh Mansour at Manchester City (2008), began reshaping the league\u2019s financial landscape, setting the stage for a more competitive 2010s.\nEmergence of the \"Big Six\" (2010s).\nAfter 2009, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City regularly broke into the top four, forming a \"Big Six\". In 2009\u201310, Tottenham finished fourth, the first new club to do so since Everton five years earlier.\nDespite growing competition, criticism remains over the financial gap between elite clubs and the rest of the league. Manchester City's 2011\u201312 title win was the first by a club outside the \"Big Four\" since Blackburn Rovers in 1994\u201395. That season also saw Chelsea and Liverpool finish outside the top four for the first time since 1994\u201395.\nWith only four UEFA Champions League spots available, competition among the \"Big Six\" intensified. In the five seasons after 2011\u201312, Manchester United and Liverpool missed the top four three times, and Chelsea finished 10th in 2015\u201316. Arsenal\u2019s 2016\u201317 fifth-place finish ended their 20-year top-four streak.\nIn 2015\u201316, Leicester City defied 5000/1 odds to win the league, becoming the first non-\"Big Six\" champion since Blackburn in 1994\u201395.\nFinancially, the \"Big Six\" hold outsized influence, arguing for a greater revenue share due to their global status and style of play. Critics argue that the league's egalitarian revenue model ensures long-term competitiveness. The 2016\u201317 Deloitte Football Money League highlighted the revenue gap. The \"Big Six\" each earned over \u20ac350\u00a0million, with Manchester United leading at \u20ac676.3\u00a0million. Leicester City was closest, with \u20ac271.1\u00a0million, boosted by Champions League participation. West Ham, eighth in revenue (\u20ac213.3\u00a0million), earned less than half of fifth-place Liverpool (\u20ac424.2\u00a0million).\nTV broadcast deals accounted for a large portion of club revenues, with the top clubs earning between \u00a3150\u00a0million and nearly \u00a3200\u00a0million in 2016\u201317. By 2019, all \"Big Six\" clubs ranked in the world\u2019s top ten richest.\nLiverpool and Manchester City dominance (2020s).\nFrom the 2019\u201320 season, video assistant referees were used in the league. The 2019\u201320 season saw Liverpool win their first Premier League trophy, their first top-flight trophy in 30 years.\nProject Big Picture was announced in October 2020 that described a plan to reunite the top Premier League clubs with the English Football League, proposed by Manchester United and Liverpool. It has been criticised by the Premier League leadership and the UK government's Department for Culture, Media and Sport.\nOn 26 April 2021, play was stopped during a match between Leicester City and Crystal Palace to allow Muslim players Wesley Fofana and Cheikhou Kouyat\u00e9 to break Ramadan fast. It is believed to be the first time in Premier League history that a game was paused to allow Muslim players to eat and drink after the sun had set in accordance with the rules of the faith.\nThe 2022\u201323 season was the first to take a six-week break between November and December 2022 to allow for the first winter World Cup, with a return for the Boxing Day fixtures. The Premier League players decided to take the knee at selected \"significant moments\". They assured to \"remain resolutely committed to eradicate racial prejudice\". That season was notable for Newcastle United and Brighton & Hove Albion breaking the traditional \"Big Six\" as they finished fourth and sixth, respectively, whilst \"Big Six\" teams Tottenham and Chelsea finished eighth and twelfth. Meanwhile, 2015\u201316 champions Leicester City were relegated, becoming the second league-winning club to suffer relegation since 1992, after Blackburn Rovers in the 2011\u201312 season.\nIn the 2023\u201324 season, Manchester City won the Premier League for the sixth time in seven years to become the first top-flight team to win four consecutive league titles in English football history. Meanwhile, non-Big Six club Aston Villa finished fourth and qualified for the 2024\u201325 UEFA Champions League.\nCorporate structure.\nThe Football Association Premier League Ltd (FAPL) is operated as a corporation and is owned by the 20 member clubs. Each club is a shareholder, with one vote each on issues such as rule changes and contracts. The clubs select a chairman, chief executive, and board of directors to oversee the daily operations of the league. The Football Association is not directly involved in the day-to-day operations of the Premier League, but has veto power as a special shareholder during the election of the chairman and chief executive and when new rules are adopted by the league.\nThe current chief executive is Richard Masters, who was appointed in December 2019. The chair is currently Alison Brittain, who took over the role in early 2023.\nThe Premier League sends representatives to UEFA's European Club Association, the number of clubs and the clubs themselves chosen according to UEFA coefficients. For the 2023\u201324 season, the Premier League has 13 representatives in the Association: Arsenal, Aston Villa, Brighton & Hove Albion, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Newcastle United, Nottingham Forest, Tottenham Hotspur, West Ham United, and Wolverhampton Wanderers. The European Club Association is responsible for electing three members to UEFA's Club Competitions Committee, which is involved in the operations of UEFA competitions such as the Champions League and UEFA Europa League.\nCriticism of governance.\nThe Premier League has faced criticism of its governance due to an alleged lack of transparency and accountability.\nFollowing the Premier League's blocking of the attempted takeover of Newcastle United by a PIF-backed consortium through the league's Owners' and Directors' test, many MPs, Newcastle United fans and related parties to the deal denounced the Premier League for its perceived lack of transparency and accountability throughout the process. On 6 July 2021, consortium member Amanda Staveley of PCP Capital Partners said that \"fans surely deserve absolute transparency from the regulators across all their processes \u2013 to best ensure that they act responsibly. They (the Premier League) are performing a function like that of a government regulator \u2013 but without the same systems for accountability.\"\nOn 22 July 2021, Tracey Crouch MP \u2013 chair of the fan-led review into the UK's football governance \u2013 announced in the review's interim findings that the Premier League had \"lost the trust and confidence\" of fans. The review also recommended that a new independent regulator be created to oversee matters such as club takeovers.\nPremier League chief executive Richard Masters had earlier spoken out against the implementation of an independent regulator, saying in May 2021, \"I don't think that the independent regulator is the answer to the question. I would defend the Premier League's role as regulator of its clubs over the past 30 years.\"\nCompetition format.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n[The Premier League] is very tough and is different. If you compare this league to another league, it's like playing another sport.\n\u2013Antonio Conte, on the competitiveness of the Premier League.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nIn [The Premier League] you never really know what is going to happen, there is very little between the teams.\n\u2013Luis Suarez \nCompetition.\nThere are 20 clubs in the Premier League. During the course of a season (from August to May) each club plays the others twice (a double round-robin system), once at their home stadium and once at that of their opponents, for 38 games. Teams receive three points for a win and one point for a draw. No points are awarded for a loss. Teams are ranked by total points, then goal difference, and then goals scored. If still equal, teams are deemed to occupy the same position. If there is a tie for the championship, for relegation, or for qualification to other competitions, the head-to-head record between the tied teams is taken into consideration (points scored in the matches between the teams, followed by away goals in those matches.) If two teams are still tied, a play-off match at a neutral venue decides rank.\nPromotion and relegation.\nA system of promotion and relegation exists between the Premier League and the EFL Championship. The three lowest placed teams in the Premier League are relegated to the Championship, and the top two teams from the Championship promoted to the Premier League, with an additional team promoted after a series of play-offs involving the third, fourth, fifth and sixth placed clubs. The number of clubs was reduced from 22 to 20 in 1995, when four teams were relegated from the league and only two teams promoted. The top flight had only been expanded to 22 teams at the start of the 1991\u201392 season \u2013 the year prior to the formation of the Premier League.\nOn 8 June 2006, FIFA requested that all major European leagues, including Italy's Serie A and Spain's La Liga, be reduced to 18 teams by the start of the 2007\u201308 season. The Premier League responded by announcing their intention to resist such a reduction. Ultimately, the 2007\u201308 season kicked off again with 20 teams.\nVideo Assistant Referee.\nVideo assistant referee (VAR), was introduced to the Premier League at the beginning of the 2019\u201320 season. It uses technology and officials to assist the referee in making decisions on the pitch. However, its use has been met with mixed receptions from fans and pundits, with some praising its accuracy whilst others criticise its impact on the flow of the game and consistency of decision-making.\nThe on-field referee still makes the final decision, but VAR can assist the referee in the decision-making process. VAR can only be used for four types of decisions: goals, penalty decisions, direct red card incidents, and cases of mistaken identity. VAR officials review the video footage and communicate with the on-field referee via a headset. The VAR officials are located in a central control room, which is equipped with multiple camera angles and the ability to replay footage at various speeds.\nA study evaluating fan reception of VAR in the Premier League was made by Otto Kolbinger and Melanie Knopp and was done by analysing Twitter data. The researchers used sentiment analysis to measure the overall positive or negative attitudes towards VAR, as well as topic modelling to identify specific issues that fans are discussing related to VAR. The study found that the reception of VAR on Twitter is largely negative, with fans expressing frustration and criticism of the technology's impact on the flow of the game and the inconsistency of decisions. The researchers also identified specific issues, such as handball and offside decisions, that fans are particularly critical of. The study concludes that VAR has not been well received by fans in the Premier League, and that efforts to improve the technology and increase transparency in decision-making are needed to address these concerns.\nClubs.\nFifty-one clubs have played in the Premier League from its inception in 1992, up to and including the 2023\u201324 season.\nChampions.\n\"Italics\" indicate former Premier League champions that are currently outside the Premier League.\n2024\u201325 season.\nTwenty clubs are competing in the 2024\u201325 season \u2013 top seventeen from the previous season and three promoted from the Championship.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nNon-English clubs.\nIn 2011, after Swansea City gained promotion, a Welsh club participated in the Premier League for the first time. The first Premier League match to be played outside England was Swansea City's home match at Liberty Stadium against Wigan Athletic on 20 August 2011. The number of Welsh clubs in the Premier League increased to two in 2013\u201314, as Cardiff City gained promotion, but they were relegated after their maiden season. Cardiff were promoted again in 2017\u201318 but the number of Welsh clubs remained the same for the 2018\u201319 Premier League season, as Swansea City had been relegated from the Premier League in 2017\u201318. Following Cardiff City's relegation after the 2018\u201319 season, there are currently no Welsh clubs participating in the Premier League.\nBecause they are members of the Football Association of Wales (FAW), the question of whether clubs like Swansea should represent England or Wales in European competitions has caused long-running discussions in UEFA. Swansea took one of England's three available places in the Europa League in 2013\u201314 by winning the League Cup in 2012\u201313. The right of Welsh clubs to take up such English places was in doubt until UEFA clarified the matter in March 2012, allowing them to participate.\nParticipation in the Premier League by some Scottish or Irish clubs has sometimes been discussed, but without result. The idea came closest to reality in 1998, when Wimbledon received Premier League approval to relocate to Dublin, Ireland, but the move was blocked by the Football Association of Ireland. Additionally, the media occasionally discusses the idea that Scotland's two biggest teams, Celtic and Rangers, should or will take part in the Premier League, but nothing has come of these discussions.\nInternational competitions.\nQualification for European competitions.\nQualification criteria for 2024\u201325.\nThe top four teams in the Premier League qualify automatically for the subsequent season's UEFA Champions League league phase. The champions of the Champions League and UEFA Europa League may earn an additional qualification for the subsequent season's Champions League league phase if did not finish in the top four. If this means six Premier League teams qualify, then the fourth-placed team in the Premier League is instead entered in the Europa League, as any single nation is limited to a maximum of five teams in the Champions League. However, starting from the 2024\u201325 UEFA Champions League there are additional berths for the two best associations in the previous season's ranking, which may result in a maximum of six teams from one association in the Champions League.\nThe fifth-placed team in the Premier League, as well as the winners of the FA Cup, qualify for the subsequent season's Europa League league phase, but if the winner of the FA Cup also finishes in the top five places in the Premier League or has won one of UEFA's major tournaments, then this place reverts to the team that finished sixth. The winner of the EFL Cup qualifies for the subsequent season's UEFA Conference League, but if the winner had already qualified for a UEFA competition via their performance in another competition, then this place reverts to the team that finished sixth in the Premier League, or seventh if the FA Cup result had already caused the sixth-placed team to qualify.\nThe number of places allocated to English clubs in UEFA competitions is dependent upon the position the country holds in the UEFA coefficient rankings, which are calculated based on the performance of teams in UEFA competitions over the previous five years. Currently, England is ranked first, ahead of Spain.\nAs of 26 September 2024, the coefficients for are as follows (only top five European leagues are shown):\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nPrevious seasons.\nAn exception to the usual European qualification system happened in 2005, after Liverpool won the Champions League the season before, but did not finish in a Champions League qualification place in the Premier League. UEFA gave special dispensation for Liverpool to enter the Champions League, giving England five qualifiers. The governing body subsequently ruled that the defending champions qualify for the competition the following year regardless of their domestic league placing. However, for those leagues with four entrants in the Champions League, this meant that if the Champions League winners finished outside the top four in its domestic league, it would qualify at the expense of the fourth-placed team. At that time, no association could have more than four entrants in the Champions League. This occurred in 2012, when Chelsea \u2013 who had won the Champions League that summer, but finished sixth in the league \u2013 qualified for the 2012\u201313 Champions League in place of Tottenham Hotspur, who went into the Europa League.\nFrom 2015\u201316, the Europa League champions qualify for the Champions League, increasing the maximum number of participants per country to five. This took effect in England in 2016\u201317, when Manchester United finished sixth in the Premier League and won the Europa League, giving England five Champions League entrants for 2017\u201318. In these instances, any Europa League berth vacated is not handed down to the next-best Premier League finisher outside of a qualifying place. If both Champions League and Europa League winners are of the same association and both finish outside the top four, then the fourth-placed team is transferred to the Europa League.\nPerformance in international competition.\nWith 48 continental trophies won, English clubs are the third-most successful in European football, behind Italy (50) and Spain (67). In the top-tier UEFA Champions League, a record six English clubs have won a total of 15 titles and lost a further 11 finals, behind Spanish clubs with 20 and 11, respectively. In the second-tier UEFA Europa League, English clubs are third, with nine victories and eight losses in the finals. In the former second-tier UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, English teams won a record eight titles and had a further five finalists. In the non-UEFA organised Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, English clubs provided four winners and four runners-up, the second-most behind Spain with six and three, respectively. In the newly created third-tier UEFA Conference League, English clubs have won a joint-record one title so far. In the former fourth-tier UEFA Intertoto Cup, England won four titles and had a further final appearance, placing it fifth in the rankings, although English clubs were notorious for treating the tournament with disdain, either sending \"B\" squads or withdrawing from it altogether. In the one-off UEFA Super Cup, England has ten winners and ten runners-up, the second-most behind Spain with 17 and 15, respectively. Similarly to the Intertoto Cup, English teams did not take the former Intercontinental Cup seriously enough, despite its international status of the \"Club World Championship\". They a made a total of six appearances in the one-off competition, winning only one of them, and withdrew a further three times. English clubs have won the FIFA-organised Club World Cup four times, tied for the second-most with Brazil, and behind only Spain, with eight.\nSponsorship.\nAfter an inaugural season with no sponsorship, the Premier League was sponsored by Carling from 1993 until 2001, during which time it was known as the FA Carling Premiership. In 2001, a new sponsorship deal with Barclaycard saw the league rebranded the FA Barclaycard Premiership, which was changed to the FA Barclays Premiership in time for the 2004\u201305 season.\nFor the 2007\u201308 season, the league was rebranded the Barclays Premier League.\nBarclays' deal with the Premier League expired at the end of the 2015\u201316 season. The organisation announced on 4 June 2015 that it would not pursue any further title sponsorship deals for the Premier League, arguing that they wanted to build a \"clean\" brand for the competition more in line with those of major U.S. sports leagues.\nAs well as sponsorship for the league itself, the Premier League has a number of official partners and suppliers. The official ball supplier for the league is Nike who have had the contract since the 2000\u201301 season when they took over from Mitre. Under its \"Merlin\" brand, Topps held the licence to produce collectables for the Premier League between 1994 and 2019 including stickers (for their sticker album) and trading cards. Launched in the 2007\u201308 season, Topps' Match Attax, the official Premier League trading card game, is the best selling boys collectable in the UK, and is also the biggest selling sports trading card game in the world. In October 2018, Panini were awarded the licence to produce collectables from the 2019\u201320 season. The chocolate company Cadbury has been the official snack partner of the Premier League since 2017, and sponsored the Golden Boot, Golden Glove and Playmaker of the Season awards from the 2017\u201318 season to 2019\u201320 season. The Coca-Cola Company (under its Coca-Cola Zero Sugar product line) sponsored these awards during the 2020\u201321 season with Castrol being the current sponsor as of the 2021\u201322 season.\nFinances.\nThe Premier League has the highest revenue of any association football league in the world, with total club revenues of \u20ac2.48\u00a0billion in 2009\u201310. In 2013\u201314, due to improved television revenues and cost controls, the Premier League clubs collectively made a net profit in excess of \u00a378\u00a0million, exceeding all other football leagues. In 2010 the Premier League was awarded the Queen's Award for Enterprise in the International Trade category for its outstanding contribution to international trade and the value it brings to English football and the United Kingdom's broadcasting industry.\nThe Premier League includes some of the richest football clubs in the world. Deloitte's \"Football Money League\" listed seven Premier League clubs in the top 20 for the 2009\u201310 season, and all 20 clubs were in the top 40 globally by the end of the 2013\u201314 season, largely as a result of increased broadcasting revenue. In 2019, the league generated around \u00a33.1\u00a0billion per year in domestic and international television rights.\nPremier League clubs agreed in principle in December 2012, to radical new cost controls. The two proposals consist of a break-even rule and a cap on the amount clubs can increase their wage bill by each season. With the new television deals on the horizon, momentum has been growing to find ways of preventing the majority of the cash going straight to players and agents.\nCentral payments for the 2016\u201317 season amounted to \u00a32,398,515,773 across the 20 clubs, with each team receiving a flat participation fee of \u00a335,301,989 and additional payments for TV broadcasts (\u00a31,016,690 for general UK rights to match highlights, \u00a31,136,083 for each live UK broadcast of their games and \u00a339,090,596 for all overseas rights), commercial rights (a flat fee of \u00a34,759,404) and a notional measure of \"merit\" which was based upon final league position. The merit component was a nominal sum of \u00a31,941,609 multiplied by each finishing place, counted from the foot of the table (e.g., Burnley finished 16th in May 2017, five places counting upwards, and received 5 \u00d7 \u00a31,941,609 = \u00a39,708,045 merit payment).\nRelegation.\nSince its split with the Football League, established clubs in the Premier League have a funding disparity from counterparts in lower leagues. Revenue from television rights between the leagues has played a part in this.\nPromoted teams have found it difficult to avoid relegation in their first Premier League season. One Premier League newcomer has been relegated back to the Football League every season, save the 2001\u201302, 2011\u201312, 2017\u201318 & 2022\u201323 seasons. In the 1997\u201398 and 2023\u201324 seasons, all three promoted clubs were relegated by the season's end.\nThe Premier League distributes a portion of its television revenue as \"parachute payments\" to relegated clubs for adjustment to television revenue loss. The average Premier League team receives \u00a341\u00a0million whilst the average Championship club receives \u00a32\u00a0million. Starting with the 2013\u201314 season, these payments are in excess of \u00a360\u00a0million over four seasons. Critics maintain that the payments widen the gap between teams that have reached the Premier League and those that have not, leading to the common occurrence of teams \"bouncing back\" soon after their relegation.\nClubs which have failed to win immediate promotion back to the Premier League have seen financial problems, in some cases administration or liquidation. Further relegations down the footballing ladder have occurred for multiple clubs unable to cope with the gap.\nMedia coverage.\nUnited Kingdom and Ireland.\nTelevision has played a major role in the history of the Premier League. The League's decision to assign broadcasting rights to Sky in 1992 was at the time a radical decision, but one that has paid off. At the time, paid television was an almost untested proposition in the UK market as was charging fans to watch live televised football. However, a combination of Sky's strategy, the quality of Premier League football and the public's appetite for the game has seen the value of the Premier League's TV rights soar.\nThe Premier League sells its television rights on a collective basis. This is in contrast to some other European leagues, including La Liga, in which each club sells its rights individually, leading to a much higher share of the total income going to the top few clubs. The money is divided into three parts: half is divided equally between the clubs; one quarter is awarded on a merit basis based on final league position, the top club getting twenty times as much as the bottom club, and equal steps all the way down the table; the final quarter is paid out as facilities fees for games that are shown on television, with the top clubs generally receiving the largest shares of this. The income from overseas rights is divided equally between the twenty clubs.\nNot all Premier League matches are televised in the United Kingdom, as the league upholds the long-standing prohibition on telecasts of any association football match (domestic or otherwise) that kicks off between 2:45\u00a0p.m. and 5:15\u00a0p.m. on Saturday matchdays.\nThe first Sky television rights agreement was worth \u00a3304\u00a0million over five seasons. The next contract, negotiated to start from the 1997\u201398 season, rose to \u00a3670\u00a0million over four seasons. The third contract was a \u00a31.024\u00a0billion deal with BSkyB for the three seasons from 2001 to 2004. The league brought in \u00a3320\u00a0million from the sale of its international rights for the three-year period from 2004 to 2007. It sold the rights itself on a territory-by-territory basis. Sky's monopoly was broken from August 2006 when Setanta Sports was awarded rights to show two out of the six packages of matches available. This occurred following an insistence by the European Commission that exclusive rights should not be sold to one television company. Sky and Setanta paid \u00a31.7\u00a0billion, a two-thirds increase which took many commentators by surprise as it had been widely assumed that the value of the rights had levelled off following many years of rapid growth. Setanta also hold rights to a live 3\u00a0pm match solely for Irish viewers. The BBC retained the rights to show highlights for the same three seasons (on \"Match of the Day\") for \u00a3171.6\u00a0million, a 63\u00a0per\u00a0cent increase on the \u00a3105\u00a0million it paid for the previous three-year period. Sky and BT Group (via its new channel BT Sport, now TNT Sports) agreed to jointly pay \u00a384.3\u00a0million for delayed television rights to 242 games (that is the right to broadcast them in full on television and over the internet) in most cases for a period of 50 hours after 10\u00a0p.m. on matchday. Overseas television rights fetched \u00a3625\u00a0million, nearly double the previous contract. The total raised from those deals was more than \u00a32.7\u00a0billion, giving Premier League clubs an average media income from league games of around \u00a340\u00a0million-a-year from 2007 to 2010.\nThe TV rights agreement between the Premier League and Sky faced accusations of being a cartel, and a number of court cases arose as a result. An investigation by the Office of Fair Trading in 2002 found BSkyB to be dominant within the pay TV sports market, but concluded that there were insufficient grounds for the claim that BSkyB had abused its dominant position. In July 1999 the Premier League's method of selling rights collectively for all member clubs was investigated by the UK Restrictive Practices Court, which concluded that the agreement was not contrary to the public interest.\nThe BBC's highlights package on Saturday and Sunday nights, as well as other evenings when fixtures justify, ran until 2016. Television rights alone for the period 2010 to 2013 were purchased for \u00a31.782\u00a0billion. On 22 June 2009, due to troubles encountered by Setanta Sports after it failed to meet a final deadline over a \u00a330\u00a0million payment to the Premier League, ESPN was awarded two packages of UK rights containing 46 matches that were available for the 2009\u201310 season as well as a package of 23 matches per season from 2010 to 2013. On 13 June 2012, the Premier League announced that BT had been awarded 38 games a season for the 2013\u201314, 2014\u201315 and 2015\u201316 seasons at \u00a3246\u00a0million-a-year. The remaining 116 games were retained by Sky, which paid \u00a3760\u00a0million-a-year. The total domestic rights raised \u00a33.018\u00a0billion, an increase of 70.2% over the 2010\u201311 to 2012\u201313 rights. The value of the licensing deal rose by another 70.2% in 2015, when Sky and BT paid \u00a35.136\u00a0billion to renew their contracts with the Premier League for another three years up to the 2018\u201319 season.\nA new rights cycle began in the 2019\u201320 season, with the domestic package increasing to 200 matches overall; in February 2018, BT were awarded the package of 32 lunchtime fixtures on Saturdays, whilst Sky was awarded four of the seven packages, covering the majority of weekend fixtures (including eight new prime time fixtures on Saturdays), as well as Monday and Friday matches. Two remaining packages of 20 fixtures each were to be sold at a later date, including three rounds of mid-week fixtures and a bank holiday round. As Sky already owned the maximum number of matches it could hold without breaching a 148-match cap, it was speculated that at least one of the new packages could go to a new entrant, such as a streaming service. The five packages sold to BT and Sky were valued at \u00a34.464\u00a0billion. In June 2018, it was announced that Amazon Prime Video and BT had acquired the remaining two packages; Amazon acquired rights to 20 matches per-season, covering a mid-week round in December, and all Boxing Day fixtures. The Amazon telecasts are produced in association with Sunset + Vine and BT Sport.\nWith the resumption of play in the 2019\u201320 Premier League due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, the Premier League announced that all remaining matches would be carried on British television, split primarily across Sky, BT, and Amazon. A large number of these matches were also scheduled for free-to-air broadcasts, with Sky airing 25 on Pick, Amazon streaming its four matches on Twitch, and the BBC \u2013 for the first time in league history \u2013 carrying four live matches.\nAs matches would continue to be played without spectators upon the start of the 2020\u201321 Premier League, its clubs voted on 8 September to continue broadcasting all matches through at least September (with the BBC and Amazon each holding one additional match), and \"appropriate arrangements\" being made for October. It was later announced that matches not selected for broadcast would be carried on pay-per-view via BT Sport Box Office and Sky Box Office at a cost of \u00a314.95 per-match. The PPV scheme was poorly received; the Football Supporters' Federation felt that the price was too high, and there were concerns that it could encourage piracy. There were calls from supporters to boycott the pay-per-views, and make donations to support charitable causes instead (with Newcastle's \"Charity Not PPV\" campaign raising \u00a320,000 for a local food bank, and Arsenal fans raising \u00a334,000 for Islington Giving). On 13 November, amid the reintroduction of measures across the UK, the Premier League officially announced that the non-televised matches would be assigned to its main broadcast partners, and again including additional matches for the BBC and Amazon Prime.\nThe next cycle of rights between 2022\u201323 and 2024\u201325 season was renewed without tender due to compelling and exceptional circumstances in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, rights remained as they were since the 2019\u201320 season.\nUK highlights\nIn August 2016, it was announced the BBC would be creating a new magazine-style show for the Premier League entitled \"The Premier League Show\".\nWorldwide.\nThe Premier League is the most-watched football league in the world, broadcast in 212 territories to 643\u00a0million homes and a potential TV audience of 4.7\u00a0billion people. The Premier League's production arm, Premier League Productions, is operated by IMG Productions and produces content for its international television partners. On 22 November 2024, the Premier League announced plans to end its agreement with IMG and take Premier League Productions in-house beginning in 2026\u201327.\nThe Premier League is the most widely distributed sports programme in Asia. In the Indian subcontinent, the matches are broadcast live on STAR Sports. In MENA region, BeIN Sports holds exclusive rights to the Premier League. In China, the broadcast rights were awarded to iQiyi, Migu and CCTV that began in the 2021\u201322 season. SCTV broadcast the matches for Indonesia, and Astro for Malaysia. In Australia, Optus telecommunications holds exclusive rights to the Premier League, providing live broadcasts and online access (Fox Sports formerly held rights). As of the 2022\u201323 season, Canadian media rights to the Premier League are owned by FuboTV, after having been jointly owned by Sportsnet and TSN, and most recently DAZN.\nThe Premier League is broadcast in the United States by NBC Sports, a division of Sky parent Comcast. Acquiring the rights to the Premier League in 2013 (replacing Fox Soccer and ESPN), NBC Sports has been widely praised for its coverage. NBC Sports reached a six-year extension with the Premier League in 2015 to broadcast the league until the end of the 2021\u201322 season in a deal valued at $1\u00a0billion (\u00a3640\u00a0million). In November 2021, NBC reached another six-year extension through 2028 in a deal valued at $2.76\u00a0billion (\u00a32\u00a0billion).\nThe Premier League is broadcast by SuperSport across sub-Saharan Africa. Broadcasters to continental Europe until 2025 include Canal+ for France, Sky Sport Germany for Germany and Austria, Match TV for Russia, Sky Sport Italy for Italy, Eleven Sports for Portugal, DAZN for Spain, beIN Sports Turkey to Turkey, Digi Sport for Romania, and NENT to Nordic countries (Sweden, Denmark and Norway), Poland and the Netherlands. In South America, ESPN covers much of the continent, with coverage in Brazil shared between ESPN Brasil and ESPN4. Paramount+ broadcasts the league in Central America.\nStadiums.\nAs of the 2023\u201324 season, Premier League football has been played in 61 stadiums since the formation of the division. The Hillsborough disaster in 1989 and the subsequent Taylor Report saw a recommendation that standing terraces should be abolished. As a result, all stadiums in the Premier League are all-seater. Since the formation of the Premier League, football grounds in England have seen constant improvements to capacity and facilities, with some clubs moving to new-build stadiums. Eleven stadiums that have seen Premier League football have now been demolished. The stadiums for the 2023\u201324 season show a large disparity in capacity. For example, Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United, has a capacity of 74,031 whilst Dean Court, the home of Bournemouth, has a capacity of 11,307. The combined total capacity of the Premier League in the 2023\u201324 season is 787,002 with an average capacity of 39,350.\nStadium attendances are a significant source of regular income for Premier League clubs. For the 2022\u201323 season, average attendances across the league clubs were 40,235 for Premier League matches with an aggregate attendance of 15,289,340.<ref name=\"2022/23 Attendance\"></ref> This represents an increase of 19,109 from the average attendance of 21,126 recorded in the Premier League's first season (1992\u201393). However, during the 1992\u201393 season, the capacities of most stadiums were reduced as clubs replaced terraces with seats in order to meet the Taylor Report's 1994\u201395 deadline for all-seater stadiums. The 2022\u201323 season also set a competition record for total attendance with more than 15\u00a0million spectators, with average attendance also reaching record levels, surpassing the previous record of 39,989 set in the 2021\u201322 season, which in turn broke an over 70-year-old record set in the 1948\u201349 season.\nIn October 2024 it was reported that the government is planning to grant the independent regulator authority to stop Premier League clubs from selling their stadiums to affiliated or third-party companies.\nManagers.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nI have never known this level before. Of course, there are managers in Germany, Italy, and Spain, but in the Premier League, these are the best managers, the elite managers. The quality, the preparation. The level is so high.\n Pep Guardiola, on the quality of managers of Premier League teams.\nManagers in the Premier League are involved in the day-to-day running of the team, including the training, team selection and player acquisition. Their influence varies from club-to-club and is related to the ownership of the club and the relationship of the manager with fans. Managers are required to have a UEFA Pro Licence which is the final coaching qualification available, and follows the completion of the UEFA 'B' and 'A' Licences. The UEFA Pro Licence is required by every person who wishes to manage a club in the Premier League on a permanent basis (\"i.e.\", more than 12 weeks, the amount of time an unqualified caretaker manager is allowed to take control). Caretaker appointments are managers that fill the gap between a managerial departure and a new appointment. Several caretaker managers have gone on to secure a permanent managerial post after performing well as a caretaker, including Paul Hart at Portsmouth, David Pleat at Tottenham Hotspur and Ole Gunnar Solskj\u00e6r at Manchester United.\nArs\u00e8ne Wenger is the longest-serving manager, having been in charge of Arsenal in the Premier League from 1996 to his departure at the conclusion of the 2017\u201318 season, and holds the record for most matches managed in the Premier League with 828, all with Arsenal. He broke the record set by Alex Ferguson, who had managed 810 matches with Manchester United from the Premier League's inception to his retirement at the end of the 2012\u201313 season. Ferguson was in charge of Manchester United from November 1986 until his retirement at the end of the 2012\u201313 season, meaning he was manager for the last five years of the old Football League First Division and all of the first 21 seasons of the Premier League.\nNotably, since its creation the Premier League has never been won by an English manager.\nThere have been several studies into the reasoning behind, and effects of, managerial sackings. Most famously, Sue Bridgewater of the University of Liverpool and Bas ter Weel of the University of Amsterdam, performed two separate studies which helped to explain the statistics behind managerial sackings. Bridgewater's study found clubs generally sack their managers upon dropping below an average of one point per match.\nPlayers.\nTransfer regulations and foreign players.\nPlayer transfers may only take place within transfer windows set by the Football Association. The two transfer windows run from the last day of the season to 31 August and from 31 December to 31 January. Player registrations cannot be exchanged outside these windows except under specific licence from the FA, usually on an emergency basis. As of the 2010\u201311 season, the Premier League introduced new rules mandating that each club must register a maximum 25-man squad of players aged over 21, with the squad list only allowed to be changed in transfer windows or in exceptional circumstances. This was to enable the \"home grown\" rule to be enacted, whereby the Premier League would also from 2010 require at least eight members of the named 25-man squad to be \"home-grown players\".\nAt the inception of the Premier League in 1992\u201393, just 11 players named in the starting line-ups for the first round of matches hailed from outside of the United Kingdom or Ireland. By 2000\u201301, the number of foreign players participating in the Premier League was 36% of the total. In the 2004\u201305 season, the figure had increased to 45%. On 26 December 1999, Chelsea became the first Premier League side to field an entirely foreign starting line-up, and on 14 February 2005, Arsenal were the first to name a completely foreign 16-man squad for a match. By 2009, under 40% of the players in the Premier League were English. By February 2020, 117 different nationalities had played in the Premier League, and 101 nationalities had scored in the competition.\nIn 1999, in response to concerns that clubs were increasingly passing over young English players in favour of foreign players, the Home Office tightened its rules for granting work permits to players from countries outside of the European Union. A non-EU player applying for the permit must have played for his country in at least 75\u00a0per\u00a0cent of its competitive 'A' team matches for which he was available for selection during the previous two years, and his country must have averaged at least 70th place in the official FIFA world rankings over the previous two years. If a player does not meet those criteria, the club wishing to sign him may appeal.\nFollowing the implementation of Brexit in January 2021, new regulations were introduced which require all foreign players to obtain a Governing Body Endorsement (GBE) in order to play football in the United Kingdom, regardless of EU status.\n \"As of 9 March 2025\"\nTop scorers.\n\"Italics\" denotes players still playing professional football,Bold denotes players still playing in the Premier League.\nThe Premier League Golden Boot is awarded each season to the top scorer in the division. Former Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United striker Alan Shearer holds the record for most Premier League goals with 260. Thirty-three players have reached the 100-goal mark. Since the first Premier League season in 1992\u201393, 23 players from 11 clubs have won or shared the top scorer title. Thierry Henry won his fourth overall scoring title by scoring 27 goals in the 2005\u201306 season. Erling Haaland holds the record for most goals in a Premier League season (38 matches) with 36 goals as of 15 May 2023. Ryan Giggs of Manchester United holds the record for scoring goals in consecutive seasons, having scored in the first 21 seasons of the league. Giggs also holds the record for the most Premier League assists, with 162.\nWages.\nThere is no team or individual salary cap in the Premier League. As a result of the increasingly lucrative television deals, player wages rose sharply following the formation of the Premier League, when the average player wage was \u00a375,000 per year. In the 2018\u201319 season the average annual salary stood at \u00a32.99\u00a0million.\nThe total salary bill for the 20 Premier League clubs in the 2018\u201319 season was \u00a31.62\u00a0billion; this compares to \u00a31.05\u00a0billion in La Liga, \u00a30.83\u00a0billion in Serie A, \u00a30.72\u00a0billion in Bundesliga, and \u00a30.54\u00a0billion in Ligue 1. The club with the highest average wage is Manchester United at \u00a36.5\u00a0million. This is smaller than the club with the highest wage bill in Spain (Barcelona \u00a310.5\u00a0million) and Italy (Juventus \u00a36.7\u00a0million), but higher than in Germany (Bayern Munich \u00a36.4\u00a0million) and France (Paris Saint-Germain \u00a36.1\u00a0million). For the 2018\u201319 season, the ratio of the wages of the highest-paid team to lowest-paid in the Premier League is 6.82 to 1. This is much lower than in La Liga (19.1 to 1), Serie A (16 to 1), Bundesliga (20.5 to 1), and Ligue 1 (26.6 to 1). Because of the lower differential between team wage bills in the Premier League, it is often regarded as being more competitive than other top European leagues.\nPlayer transfer fees.\nThe record transfer fee for a Premier League player has risen steadily over the lifetime of the competition. Before the start of the first Premier League season, Alan Shearer became the first British player to command a transfer fee of more than \u00a33\u00a0million. The record has increased steadily and Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez is now the most expensive transfer fee paid by a Premier League club at \u00a3106.8\u00a0million, whilst Philippe Coutinho is the biggest transfer involving a Premier League club at \u00a3105\u00a0million.\nAwards.\nTrophy.\nThe Premier League maintains two trophies \u2013 the genuine trophy (held by the reigning champions) and a spare replica. Two trophies are held for the purpose of making the award within minutes of the title being secured, in the event that on the final day of the season two clubs are still within reach of winning the League. In the rare event that more than two clubs are vying for the title on the final day of the season, a replica won by a previous club is used.\nThe current Premier League trophy was created by Royal Jewellers Garrard & Co/Asprey of London and was designed in house at Garrard & Co by Trevor Brown and Paul Marsden. It consists of a trophy with a golden crown and a malachite plinth base. The plinth weighs and the trophy weighs . The trophy and plinth are tall, wide and deep.\nIts main body is solid sterling silver and silver gilt, whilst its plinth is made of malachite, a semi-precious stone. The plinth has a silver band around its circumference, upon which the names of the title-winning clubs are listed. The green of the malachite represents the green field of play. The design of the trophy is based on the heraldry of Three Lions that is associated with English football. Two of the lions are found above the handles on either side of the trophy \u2013 the third is symbolised by the captain of the title-winning team as he raises the trophy, and its gold crown, above his head at the end of the season. The ribbons that drape the handles are presented in the team colours of the league champions that year. In 2004, a special gold version of the trophy was commissioned to commemorate Arsenal winning the title without a single defeat.\nPlayer and manager awards.\nIn addition to the winner's trophy and the individual winner's medals awarded to players who win the title, the Premier League also issues other awards throughout the season.\nA man-of-the-match award is awarded to the player who has the greatest impact in an individual match.\nMonthly awards are also given for the Manager of the Month, Player of the Month and Goal of the Month. These are also issued annually for Manager of the Season, Player of the Season and Goal of the Season. The Young Player of the Season award is given to the most outstanding U-23 player starting from the 2019\u201320 season.\nThe Golden Boot award is given to the top goalscorer of every season, the Playmaker of the Season award is given to the player who makes the most assists of every season, and the Golden Glove award is given to the goalkeeper with the most clean sheets at the end of the season.\nStarting with the 2021\u201322 season, four new awards are given. The Save of the Season is awarded to the goalkeeper deemed to have made the most impressive save. The Game Changer of the Season is earned by the player with the single most game-changing performance over the course of the campaign. The Most Powerful Goal is given to the player whose goal-scoring shot had the highest average velocity from the time it was struck to the time it crossed the goal line, and the Most Improbable Comeback award is meant for the team that, based on calculations performed by Oracle Corporation, goes behind and overcomes a deficit to win their respective match.\nFrom the 2017\u201318 season, players receive a milestone award for 100 appearances and every century there after and also players who score 50 goals and multiples thereof. Each player to reach these milestones is to receive a presentation box from the Premier League containing a special medallion and a plaque commemorating their achievement.\n20 Seasons Awards.\nIn 2012, the Premier League celebrated its second decade by holding the 20 Seasons Awards:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["2174", "11250"], "permutation_1": ["2174", "11250"], "permutation_2": ["11250", "2174"], "permutation_3": ["2174", "11250"]}
{"id": "2hop__675522_42292", "docs_added": {"32908": "Warsaw\nCapital and largest city of Poland\nWarsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at 1.86\u00a0million residents within a greater metropolitan area of 3.27\u00a0million residents, which makes Warsaw the 6th most-populous city in the European Union. The city area measures and comprises 18 districts, while the metropolitan area covers . Warsaw is classified as an alpha global city, a major political, economic and cultural hub, and the country's seat of government. It is also the capital of the Masovian Voivodeship.\nWarsaw traces its origins to a small fishing town in Masovia. The city rose to prominence in the late 16th century, when Sigismund III decided to move the Polish capital and his royal court from Krak\u00f3w. Warsaw surpassed Gda\u0144sk as Poland's most populous city by the 18th century. It served as the de facto capital of the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1795, and subsequently as the seat of Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. The 19th century and its Industrial Revolution brought a demographic boom, which made it one of the largest and most densely populated cities in Europe. Known then for its elegant architecture and boulevards, Warsaw was bombed and besieged at the start of World War II in 1939. Much of the historic city was destroyed and its diverse population decimated by the Ghetto Uprising in 1943, the general Warsaw Uprising in 1944, and systematic razing.\nWarsaw is served by three international airports, the busiest being Warsaw Chopin, as well as Warsaw Modlin and Warsaw Radom Airport. Major public transport services operating in the city include the Warsaw Metro, buses, commuter rail service and an extensive tram network. The city is a significant economic centre for the region, with the Warsaw Stock Exchange being the largest in Central and Eastern Europe. It is the base for Frontex, the European Union agency for external border security, and ODIHR, one of the principal institutions of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Warsaw has one of Europe's highest concentrations of skyscrapers, and the Varso Tower is the tallest building in the European Union.\nThe city's primary educational and cultural institutions comprise the University of Warsaw, the Warsaw University of Technology, the SGH Warsaw School of Economics, the Chopin University of Music, the Polish Academy of Sciences, the National Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Museum, and the Warsaw Grand Theatre, the largest of its kind in the world. The reconstructed Old Town, which represents a variety of European architectural styles, was listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1980. Other landmarks include the Royal Castle, Sigismund's Column, the Wilan\u00f3w Palace, the Palace on the Isle, St. John's Archcathedral, Main Market Square, and numerous churches and mansions along the Royal Route. Warsaw is a green capital, with around a quarter of the city's area occupied by parks. In sports, the city is home to Legia Warsaw football club and hosts the annual Warsaw Marathon.\nToponymy and names.\nWarsaw's name in the Polish language is . Other previous spellings of the name may have included: , , or . The exact origin and meaning of the name is uncertain and has not been fully determined. Originally, Warszawa was the name of a small fishing settlement on the banks of the Vistula river. One hypothesis states that means \"belonging to Warsz\", being a shortened form of the masculine Old Polish name Warcis\u0142aw, which etymologically is linked with Wroc\u0142aw. However the ending -awa is unusual for a large city; the names of Polish cities derived from personal names usually end in -\u00f3w/owo/ew/ewo (e.g. Piotrk\u00f3w, Adam\u00f3w).\nFolk etymology attributes the city name to Wars and Sawa. There are several versions of the legend with their appearance. According to one version, Sawa was a mermaid living in the Vistula with whom fisherman Wars fell in love. The official city name in full is (\"The Capital City of Warsaw\").\nA native or resident of Warsaw is known as a \"Varsovian\" \u2013 in Polish , (male); (female); , and (plural). \nHistory.\n1300\u20131800.\nThe first fortified settlements on the site of today's Warsaw were located in Br\u00f3dno (9th/10th century) and Jazd\u00f3w (12th/13th century). After Jazd\u00f3w was raided by nearby clans and dukes, a new fortified settlement was established on the site of a small fishing village called \"Warszowa\". The Prince of P\u0142ock, Boles\u0142aw II of Masovia, established the modern-day city in about 1300 and the first historical document attesting to the existence of a castellany dates to 1313. With the completion of St John's Cathedral in 1390, Warsaw became one of the seats of the Dukes of Masovia and was officially made capital of the Masovian Duchy in 1413. The economy then predominantly rested on craftsmanship or trade, and the town housed approximately 4,500 people at the time.\nDuring the 15th century, the population migrated and spread beyond the northern city wall into a newly formed self-governing precinct called New Town. The existing older settlement became eventually known as the Old Town. Both possessed their own town charter and independent councils. The aim of establishing a separate district was to accommodate new incomers or \"undesirables\" who were not permitted to settle in Old Town, particularly Jews. Social and financial disparities between the classes in the two precincts led to a minor revolt in 1525. Following the sudden death of Janusz III and the extinction of the local ducal line, Masovia was incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland in 1526. Bona Sforza, wife of Sigismund I of Poland, was widely accused of poisoning the duke to uphold Polish rule over Warsaw.\nIn 1529, Warsaw for the first time became the seat of a General Sejm and held that privilege permanently from 1569. The city's rising importance encouraged the construction of a new set of defenses, including the landmark Barbican. Renowned Italian architects were brought to Warsaw to reshape the Royal Castle, the streets and the marketplace, resulting in the Old Town's early Italianate appearance. In 1573, the city gave its name to the Warsaw Confederation which formally established religious freedom in the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth. Due to its central location between the capitals of the Commonwealth's two component parts, Poland and Lithuania, which were Krak\u00f3w and Vilnius respectively, Warsaw became the capital of the Commonwealth and the Polish Crown when Sigismund III Vasa transferred his royal court in 1596. In the subsequent years the town significantly expanded to the south and westwards. Several private independent districts (\"jurydyka\") were the property of aristocrats and the gentry, which they ruled by their own laws. Between 1655 and 1658 the city was besieged and pillaged by the Swedish, Brandenburgian and Transylvanian forces. The conduct of the Great Northern War (1700\u20131721) also forced Warsaw to pay heavy tributes to the invading armies.\nThe reign of Augustus II and Augustus III was a time of great development for Warsaw, which turned into an early-capitalist city. The Saxon monarchs employed many German architects, sculptors and engineers, who rebuilt the city in a style similar to Dresden. The year 1727 marked the opening of the Saxon Garden in Warsaw, the first publicly accessible park. The Za\u0142uski Library, the first Polish public library and the largest at the time, was founded in 1747. Stanis\u0142aw II Augustus, who remodelled the interior of the Royal Castle, also made Warsaw a centre of culture and the arts. He extended the Royal Baths Park and ordered the construction or refurbishment of numerous palaces, mansions and richly-decorated tenements. This earned Warsaw the nickname \"Paris of the North\".\nWarsaw remained the capital of the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1795 when it was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia in the third and final partition of Poland; it subsequently became the capital of the province of South Prussia. During this time, Louis XVIII of France spent his exile in Warsaw under the pseudonym \"Comte de Lille\".\n1800\u20131939.\nWarsaw was made the capital of a newly created French client state, known as the Duchy of Warsaw, after a portion of Poland's territory was liberated from Prussia, Russia and Austria by Napoleon in 1806. Following Napoleon's defeat and exile, the 1815 Congress of Vienna assigned Warsaw to Congress Poland, a constitutional monarchy within the easternmost sector (or partition) under a personal union with Imperial Russia. The Royal University of Warsaw was established in 1816.\nWith the violation of the Polish constitution, the 1830 November Uprising broke out against foreign influence. The Polish-Russian war of 1831 ended in the uprising's defeat and in the curtailment of Congress Poland's autonomy. On 27 February 1861, a Warsaw crowd protesting against Russian control over Congress Poland was fired upon by Russian troops. Five people were killed. The Underground Polish National Government resided in Warsaw during the January Uprising in 1863\u201364.\nWarsaw flourished throughout the 19th century under Mayor Sokrates Starynkiewicz (1875\u201392), who was appointed by Alexander III. Under Starynkiewicz Warsaw saw its first water and sewer systems designed and built by the English engineer William Lindley and his son, William Heerlein Lindley, as well as the expansion and modernisation of trams, street lighting, and gas infrastructure. Between 1850 and 1882, the population grew by 134% to 383,000 as a result of rapid urbanisation and industrialisation. Many migrated from surrounding rural Masovian towns and villages to the city for employment opportunities. The western borough of Wola was transformed from an agricultural periphery occupied mostly by small farms and windmills (mills being the namesake of Wola's central neighbourhood M\u0142yn\u00f3w) to an industrial and manufacturing centre. Metallurgical, textile and glassware factories were commonplace, with chimneys dominating the westernmost skyline.\nLike London, Warsaw's population was subjected to income segmentation. Gentrification of inner suburbs forced poorer residents to move across the river into Praga or Powi\u015ble and Solec districts, similar to the East End of London and London Docklands. Poorer religious and ethnic minorities, such as the Jews, settled in the crowded parts of northern Warsaw, in Muran\u00f3w. The Imperial Census of 1897 recorded 626,000 people living in Warsaw, making it the third-largest city of the Empire after St. Petersburg and Moscow as well as the largest city in the region. Grand architectural complexes and structures were also erected in the city centre, including the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Church of the Holiest Saviour and tenements along Marsza\u0142kowska Street.\nDuring World War I, Warsaw was occupied by Germany from 4 August 1915 until November 1918. The Armistice of 11 November 1918 concluded that defeated Germany is to withdraw from all foreign areas, which included Warsaw. Germany did so, and underground leader J\u00f3zef Pi\u0142sudski returned to Warsaw on the same day which marked the beginning of the Second Polish Republic, the first truly sovereign Polish state after 1795. In the course of the Polish\u2013Soviet War (1919\u20131921), the 1920 Battle of Warsaw was fought on the eastern outskirts of the city. Poland successfully defended the capital, stopped the brunt of the Bolshevik Red Army and temporarily halted the \"export of the communist revolution\" to other parts of Europe.\nThe interwar period (1918\u20131939) was a time of major development in the city's infrastructure. New modernist housing estates were built in Mokot\u00f3w to de-clutter the densely populated inner suburbs. In 1921, Warsaw's total area was estimated at only 124.7\u00a0km2 with 1 million inhabitants\u2013over 8,000 people/km2 made Warsaw more densely populated than contemporary London. The \u015arednicowy Bridge was constructed for railway (1921\u20131931), connecting both parts of the city across the Vistula. Warszawa G\u0142\u00f3wna railway station (1932\u20131939) was not completed due to the outbreak of the Second World War.\nStefan Starzy\u0144ski was the Mayor of Warsaw between 1934 and 1939.\nSecond World War.\nAfter the German Invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 started the Second World War, Warsaw was defended until 27 September. Central Poland, including Warsaw, came under the rule of the General Government, a German Nazi colonial administration. All higher education institutions were immediately closed and Warsaw's entire Jewish population \u2013 several hundred thousand, some 30% of the city\u00a0\u2013 were herded into the Warsaw Ghetto. In July 1942, the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto began to be deported en masse to the Aktion Reinhard extermination camps, particularly Treblinka. The city would become the centre of urban resistance to Nazi rule in occupied Europe. When the order came to annihilate the ghetto as part of Hitler's \"Final Solution\" on 19 April 1943, Jewish fighters launched the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Despite being heavily outgunned and outnumbered, the ghetto held out for almost a month. When the fighting ended, almost all survivors were massacred, with only a few managing to escape or hide.\nBy July 1944, the Red Army was deep into Polish territory and pursuing the Nazis toward Warsaw. The Polish government-in-exile in London gave orders to the underground Home Army (AK) to try to seize control of Warsaw before the Red Army arrived. Thus, on 1 August 1944, as the Red Army was nearing the city, the Warsaw uprising began. The armed struggle, planned to last 48 hours, was partially successful, however, it went on for 63 days. Eventually, the Home Army fighters and civilians assisting them were forced to capitulate. They were transported to PoW camps in Germany, while the entire civilian population was expelled. Polish civilian deaths are estimated at between 150,000 and 200,000.\nHitler, ignoring the agreed terms of the capitulation, ordered the entire city to be razed to the ground and the library and museum collections taken to Germany or burned. Monuments and government buildings were blown up by special German troops known as \"Verbrennungs- und Vernichtungskommando\" (\"Burning and Destruction Detachments\"). About 85% of the city was destroyed, including the historic Old Town and the Royal Castle.\nOn 17 January 1945\u00a0\u2013 after the beginning of the Vistula\u2013Oder Offensive of the Red Army\u00a0\u2013 Soviet troops and Polish troops of the First Polish Army entered the ruins of Warsaw, and liberated Warsaw's suburbs from German occupation. The city was swiftly freed by the Soviet Army, which rapidly advanced towards \u0141\u00f3d\u017a, as German forces regrouped at a more westward position.\n1945\u20131989.\nIn 1945, after the bombings, revolts, fighting, and demolition had ended, most of Warsaw lay in ruins. The area of the former ghetto was razed to the ground, with only a sea of rubble remaining. The immense destruction prompted a temporary transfer of the new government and its officials to \u0141\u00f3d\u017a, which became the transitional seat of power. Nevertheless, Warsaw officially resumed its role as the capital of Poland and the country's centre of political and economic life.\nAfter World War II, the \"Bricks for Warsaw\" campaign was initiated and large prefabricated housing projects were erected in Warsaw to address the major housing shortage. Plattenbau-styled apartment buildings were seen as a solution to avoid Warsaw's former density problem and to create more green spaces. Some of the buildings from the 19th century that had survived in a reasonably reconstructible form were nonetheless demolished in the 1950s and 1960s, like the Kronenberg Palace. The \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie (central) region's urban system was completely reshaped; former cobblestone streets were asphalted and significantly widened for traffic use. Many notable streets such as G\u0119sia, Nalewki and Wielka disappeared as a result of these changes and some were split in half due to the construction of Plac Defilad (Parade Square), one of the largest of its kind in Europe.\nMuch of the central district was also designated for future skyscrapers. The 237-metre Palace of Culture and Science resembling New York's Empire State Building was built as a gift from the Soviet Union. Warsaw's urban landscape is one of modern and contemporary architecture. Despite wartime destruction and post-war remodelling, many of the historic streets, buildings, and churches were restored to their original form.\nJohn Paul II's visits to his native country in 1979 and 1983 brought support to the budding \"Solidarity\" movement and encouraged the growing anti-communist fervor there. In 1979, less than a year after becoming pope, John Paul celebrated Mass in Victory Square in Warsaw and ended his sermon with a call to \"renew the face\" of Poland. These words were meaningful for Varsovians and Poles who understood them as the incentive for liberal-democratic reforms.\n1989\u2013present.\nIn 1995, the Warsaw Metro opened with a single line. A second line was opened in March 2015. On 28 September 2022, three new Warsaw metro stations were opened, increasing the number of Warsaw Metro stations to 36 and its length to 38.3 kilometers. In February 2023, Warsaw's mayor, Rafa\u0142 Trzaskowski, announced plans to more than double the size of the city's metro system by 2050.\nWith the entry of Poland into the European Union in 2004,[ [update]] Warsaw is experiencing a large economic boom. The opening fixture of UEFA Euro 2012 took place in Warsaw and the city also hosted the 2013 United Nations Climate Change Conference and the 2016 NATO Summit. As of August 2022, Warsaw had received around 180,000 refugees from Ukraine, because of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The amount means a tenth of the Polish capital's population of 1.8 million \u2014 the second-largest single group of Ukrainian refugees.\nGeography.\nLocation and topography.\nWarsaw lies in east-central Poland about from the Carpathian Mountains and about from the Baltic Sea, east of Berlin, Germany. The city straddles the Vistula River. It is located in the heartland of the Masovian Plain, and its average elevation is above sea level. The highest point on the West side of the city lies at a height of (\"Redutowa\" bus depot, district of Wola), on the East side\u00a0\u2013 (\"Grosz\u00f3wka\" estate, district of Weso\u0142a, by the eastern border). The lowest point lies at a height (at the right bank of the Vistula, by the eastern border of Warsaw). There are some hills (mostly artificial) located within the confines of the city\u00a0\u2013 e.g. Warsaw Uprising Hill () and Szcz\u0119\u015bliwice hill (\u00a0\u2013 the highest point of Warsaw in general).\nWarsaw is located on two main geomorphologic formations: the plain moraine plateau and the Vistula Valley with its asymmetrical pattern of different terraces. The Vistula River is the specific axis of Warsaw, which divides the city into two parts, left and right. The left one is situated both on the moraine plateau ( above Vistula level) and on the Vistula terraces (max. above Vistula level). The significant element of the relief, in this part of Warsaw, is the edge of moraine plateau called Warsaw Escarpment. It is high in the Old Town and Central district and about in the north and south of Warsaw. It goes through the city and plays an important role as a landmark.\nThe plain moraine plateau has only a few natural and artificial ponds and also groups of clay pits. The pattern of the Vistula terraces is asymmetrical. The left side consists mainly of two levels: the highest one contains former flooded terraces and the lowest one is the floodplain terrace. The contemporary flooded terrace still has visible valleys and ground depressions with water systems coming from the old Vistula\u00a0\u2013 riverbed. They consist of still quite natural streams and lakes as well as the pattern of drainage ditches. The right side of Warsaw has a different pattern of geomorphological forms. There are several levels of the Vistula plain terraces (flooded as well as formerly flooded), and only a small part is a not-so-visible moraine escarpment. Aeolian sand with a number of dunes parted by peat swamps or small ponds cover the highest terrace. These are mainly forested areas (pine forest).\nClimate.\nWarsaw experiences an oceanic (K\u00f6ppen: \"Cfb)\" or humid continental (K\u00f6ppen: \"Dfb)\" climate, depending on the isotherm used; although the city used to be humid continental regardless of isotherm prior to the recent effect of climate change and the city's urban heat island. Meanwhile, by the genetic climate classification of Wincenty Oko\u0142owicz, it has a temperate \"fusion\" climate, with both oceanic and continental features.\nThe city has cold, sometimes snowy, cloudy winters, and warm, relatively sunny but frequently stormy summers. Spring and autumn can be unpredictable, highly prone to sudden weather changes; however, temperatures are usually mild, especially around May and September. The daily average temperature ranges between in January and in July and the mean year temperature is . Temperatures may reach in the summer, although the effects of hot weather are usually offset by relatively low dew points and large diurnal temperature differences. Warsaw is Europe's sixth driest major city (driest in Central Europe), with yearly rainfall averaging , the wettest month being July.\nCityscape.\nUrbanism and architecture.\nWarsaw's long and eclectic history left a noticeable mark on its architecture and urban form. Unlike most Polish cities, Warsaw's cityscape is mostly contemporary \u2013 modern glass buildings are towering above older historical edifices which is a common feature of North American metropolises. Warsaw is among the European cities with the highest number of skyscrapers and is home to European Union's tallest building. Skyscrapers are mostly centered around the \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie district, with many located in the commercial district of Wola. A concentric zone pattern emerged within the last decades; the majority of Warsaw's residents live outside the commercial city centre and commute by metro, bus or tram. Tenements and apartments in the central neighbourhoods are often reserved for commercial activity or temporary (tourist, student) accommodation. The nearest residential zones are predominantly located on the outskirts of the inner borough, in Ochota, Mokot\u00f3w and \u017boliborz or along the Vistula in Powi\u015ble.\nA seat of Polish monarchs since the end of the 16th century, Warsaw remained a small city with only privately owned palaces, mansions, villas and several streets of townhouses. These displayed a richness of color and architectonic details. The finest German, Italian and Dutch architects were employed, among them Tylman van Gameren, Andreas Schl\u00fcter, Jakub Fontana, and Enrico Marconi. The buildings situated in the vicinity of the Warsaw Old Town represent nearly every European architectural style and historical period. Warsaw has excellent examples of architecture from the Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassical periods, all of which are located within walking distance of the centre. This architectural richness has led to Warsaw being described by some commentators as a \"Paris of the East\".\nGothic architecture is represented in the majestic churches but also at the burgher houses and fortifications. The most significant buildings are St John's Cathedral (1390), a typical example of the so-called Masovian Brick Gothic style; St Mary's Church (1411); the Burbach townhouse (14th century); Gunpowder Tower (after 1379); and Royal Castle's \"Curia Maior\" (1407\u20131410). The most notable examples of Renaissance architecture in the city are the house of the Baryczko merchant family (1562), a building called \"The Negro\" (early 17th century), and Salwator tenement (1632), all situated on the Old Market Place. The most interesting examples of Mannerist architecture are the Royal Castle (1596\u20131619) and the Jesuit Church (1609\u20131626).\nBaroque architecture arrived in Warsaw at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries with the artists from the court circle of King Sigismund III Vasa (the early Warsaw Baroque is referred to as Vasa Baroque). Among the first structures of the early Baroque, the most important are St. Hyacinth's Church and Sigismund's Column, the first secular monument in the form of a column in modern history. At that time, part of the Royal Castle was rebuilt in this style, the Ujazd\u00f3w Castle and numerous Baroque palaces on the Vistula escarpment were constructed. In the architecture of Catholic churches, the Counter-Reformation type became a novelty, exemplified by the Church of St. Anthony of Padua, the Carmelite Church and the Holy Cross Church.\nWarsaw Baroque from the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries was characterized by building facades with a predominance of vertical elements close to the wall and numerous ornaments. The most important architect working in Warsaw at that time was Tylman van Gameren. His projects include the Krasi\u0144ski Palace, Palace of the Four Winds, Ostrogski Palace, Czapski Palace, Br\u00fchl Palace, and St. Kazimierz Church. The most significant Baroque building of this period is the Wilan\u00f3w Palace, built on the order of King John III Sobieski.\nThe late Baroque era was the epoch of the Saxon Kings (1697\u20131763). During this time, three major spatial projects were realized: the 880-meter Piaseczy\u0144ski Canal on the axis of Ujazd\u00f3w Castle, the Ujazd\u00f3w Calvary and the Saxon Axis. The Visitationist Church also dates from this period.\nThe neoclassical architecture began to be the main style in the capital's architecture in Warsaw in the second half of the 18th century thanks to King Stanis\u0142aw August Poniatowski. It can be described by the simplicity of the geometrical forms teamed with a great inspiration from the Roman period. The best-known architect who worked in Warsaw at the time was Domenico Merlini, who designed the Palace on the Isle. Other significant buildings from this period include Kr\u00f3likarnia, Holy Trinity Church, St. Anne's Church, Warsaw.\nAlso in the first half of the 19th century, neoclassicism dominated the architecture of Warsaw. Old buildings were rebuilt and new ones were built in this style. The neoclassical revival affected all aspects of architecture; the most notable examples are the Great Theater, buildings located at Bank Square, headquarters of the Warsaw Society of Friends of Sciences (Staszic Palace), St. Alexander's Church, the Belweder. Many classicist tenement houses were built on Senatorska Street and along Nowy \u015awiat Street. After the outbreak of the November Uprising, the Warsaw Citadel was constructed in the north of the city, and the Saxon Palace underwent a complete reconstruction, where the central body of the building was demolished and replaced by a monumental 11-bay colonnade.\nIn the mid-19th century, the industrial revolution reached Warsaw, leading to the mass use of iron as a building material. In 1845, the Warsaw-Vienna Railway Station was opened. Another important aspect of the developing city was ensuring access to water and sewage disposal. The first modern Warsaw water supply system was launched in 1855, designed by one of the most outstanding architects of that period \u2013 Enrico Marconi, who designed also All Saints Church. The dynamic development of the railway became a factor that enabled equally dynamic development of Warsaw's industry. Among the establishments built at that time were the Wedel factory and the extensive Municipal Gasworks complex.\nIn the architecture of the 1920s, national historicism and other historical forms were dominant. Art Deco forms also appeared, and towards the end of the decade, avant-garde functionalism emerged. The creation of urban plans for the capital of Poland can be traced back to 1916, when, after the retreat of the Russians from Warsaw and the beginnings of the German occupation, the territories of the surrounding municipalities were annexed to the city. Even before Poland regained its independence, parallel to the creation of the administration of the future state, the first urban visions were emerging. These included, among others, the construction of a representative government district in the southern part of \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie. However, major changes in urban planning and the architectural landscape of the city only began in the mid-1920s. The forming state structures needed headquarters, leading to the construction of many monumental public buildings, including the buildings of the Sejm and the Senate, the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Public Education, the Ministry of Public Works, the National Museum, the State Geological Institute, the State Agricultural Bank, the Domestic Economy Bank, the directorate of the Polish State Railways, the Supreme Audit Office, and the campus of the Warsaw School of Economics. New districts were also established in \u017boliborz, Ochota, and Mokot\u00f3w, often designed around a central square with radiating streets (Narutowicz Square, Wilson Square). Examples of new large urban projects are the Staszic and Lubecki colonies in Ochota.\nExceptional examples of the bourgeois architecture of the later periods were not restored by the communist authorities after the war or were remodelled into a socialist realist style (like Warsaw Philharmonic edifice originally inspired by Palais Garnier in Paris). Despite that, the Warsaw University of Technology (Polytechnic) building. is the most interesting of the late 19th-century architecture. Some 19th-century industrial and brick workhouse buildings in the Praga district were restored, though many have been poorly maintained or demolished. Notable examples of post-war architecture include the Palace of Culture and Science, a soc-realist and art deco skyscraper based on the Empire State Building in New York. The Constitution Square with its monumental socialist realism architecture (MDM estate) was modelled on the grand squares of Paris, London, Moscow and Rome. Italianate tuscan-styled colonnades based on those at Piazza della Repubblica in Rome were also erected on Saviour Square.\nContemporary architecture in Warsaw is represented by the Metropolitan Office Building at Pilsudski Square and Varso tower, both by Norman Foster, Warsaw University Library (BUW) by Marek Budzy\u0144ski and Zbigniew Badowski, featuring a garden on its roof and view of the Vistula River, Rondo 1 office building by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Z\u0142ota 44 residential skyscraper by Daniel Libeskind, Museum of the History of Polish Jews by Rainer Mahlam\u00e4ki and Golden Terraces, consisting of seven overlapping domes retail and business centre. Jointly with Moscow, Istanbul, Frankfurt, London, Paris and Rotterdam, Warsaw is one of the cities with the highest number of skyscrapers in Europe.\nLandmarks.\nAlthough contemporary Warsaw is a fairly young city compared to other European capitals, it has numerous tourist attractions and architectural monuments dating back centuries. Apart from the Warsaw Old Town area, reconstructed after World War II, each borough has something to offer. Among the most notable landmarks of the Old Town are the Royal Castle, Sigismund's Column, Market Square, and the Barbican.\nFurther south is the so-called Royal Route, with many historical churches, Baroque and Classicist palaces, most notably the Presidential Palace, and the University of Warsaw campus. The former royal residence of King John III Sobieski at Wilan\u00f3w is notable for its Baroque architecture and eloquent palatial garden.\nIn many places in the city the Jewish culture and history resonates down through time. Among them the most notable are the Jewish theater, the No\u017cyk Synagogue, Janusz Korczak's Orphanage and the picturesque Pr\u00f3\u017cna Street. The tragic pages of Warsaw's history are commemorated in places such as the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, the Umschlagplatz, fragments of the ghetto wall on Sienna Street and a mound in memory of the Jewish Combat Organization.\nMany places commemorate the heroic history of Warsaw such as Pawiak, a German Gestapo prison now occupied by a Mausoleum of Memory of Martyrdom and a museum. The Warsaw Citadel, a 19th-century fortification built after the defeat of the November Uprising, was a place of martyrdom for the Poles. Another important monument, the statue of Little Insurrectionist located at the ramparts of the Old Town, commemorates the children who served as messengers and frontline troops in the Warsaw Uprising, while the Warsaw Uprising Monument by Wincenty Ku\u0107ma was erected in memory of the largest insurrection of World War II.\nIn Warsaw there are many places connected with the life and work of Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin who was born near the city in \u017belazowa Wola. The heart of the Polish composer is sealed inside Warsaw's Holy Cross Church. During the summer time the Chopin Statue in \u0141azienki Park is a place where pianists give concerts to the park audience.\nAlso many references to Marie Curie, her work and her family can be found in Warsaw; Curie's birthplace at the Warsaw New Town, the working places where she did her first scientific works and the Radium Institute at Wawelska Street for the research and the treatment of which she founded in 1925.\nCemeteries.\nThe oldest necropolis in Warsaw is Stare Pow\u0105zki, established in 1790. It is one of Poland's national necropolises.\nThe cemetery covers an area of 43 ha. On the day of consecration of the Pow\u0105zki Cemetery, the foundation stone was laid for the construction of the church of Saint Charles Borromeo, designed by the royal architect Domenico Merlini. Catacombs were intended to be a prestigious resting place intended mainly for the nobles, such as Micha\u0142 Poniatowski, Hugo Ko\u0142\u0142\u0105taj, Micha\u0142 Kazimierz Ogi\u0144ski. Over a million people are buried at Stare Pow\u0105zki. In the Avenue of Merit there are the graves of insurgents and soldiers, independence activists, writers, poets, scientists, artists and thinkers. The nearby Pow\u0105zki Military Cemetery was established in 1912 for soldiers stationed in Warsaw. After World War II, the cemetery became a burial place for people associated with the Polish People's Republic - politicians, officials and military personnel.\nThe complex of non-Roman Catholic cemeteries consists of Evangelical\u2013Augsburg Cemetery, Evangelical Reformed Cemetery, Jewish Cemetery, Orthodox Cemetery and Muslim Tatar Cemetery. Other significant Warsaw necropolises are: Br\u00f3dno Cemetery Warsaw Insurgents Cemetery, S\u0142u\u017cew Old Cemetery, S\u0142u\u017cew New Cemetery. There are two large municipal cemeteries in the city \u2013 Northern Communal Cemetery and Southern Communal Cemetery.\nMemorials.\nThe city's symbol is the mermaid placed in the capital's coat of arms. There are three mermaid monuments in Warsaw: one on the banks of the Vistula, the second on the Old Town Square, and the third in Praga-Po\u0142udnie. The oldest monument in Warsaw is the Sigismund's Column. It was built in 1644 according to the design of the Italians: Augustine Locci and Constantin Tencall. The King of Poland Sigismund III Vasa stands on a 22-meter high tower, holding a cross and a sword in his hand. The monument was destroyed and rebuilt many times.\nMany monuments commemorate heroic and tragic moments in the history of Poland and Warsaw. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier located in Pi\u0142sudski Square was built on the initiative of General W\u0142adys\u0142aw Sikorski in the arcades of the Saxon Palace. In 1925, the ashes of the unknown soldier who died during the defense of Lviv were placed under the colonnade, then urns with soil from 24 battlefields were buried here. Among the monuments related to the World War II are Nike Monument that commemorates the heroes of Warsaw from 1939 to 1945, Monument to the Polish Underground State and Home Army, Monument to the Little Insurrectionist and Warsaw Uprising Monument in front of the Supreme Court building at Krasi\u0144ski Square. Monument to the Ghetto Heroes commemorates the\u00a0Warsaw Ghetto Uprising\u00a0of 1943.\nIn 1929, a monument to Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin was constructed in the Royal \u0141azienki Park. Every summer at its foot classical music concerts featuring world-famous pianists take place. Other important monuments are: Adam Mickiewicz Monument, Tadeusz Ko\u015bciuszko Monument, Marie Curie Monument, Prince J\u00f3zef Poniatowski Monument, Nicolaus Copernicus Monument, Stefan Starzy\u0144ski Monument, J\u00f3zef Pi\u0142sudski Monument, Janusz Korczak Monument.\nFlora and fauna.\nGreen space covers almost a quarter of Warsaw's total area. These range from small neighborhood parks and green spaces along streets or in courtyards, to tree-lined avenues, large historic parks, nature conservation areas and urban forests at the fringe of the city. There are as many as 82 parks in the city; the oldest ones were once part of representative palaces and include the Saxon and Krasi\u0144ski Gardens, \u0141azienki Park (Royal Baths Park) and Wilan\u00f3w Palace Parkland.\nThe Saxon Garden, covering an area of 15.5 ha, formally served as a royal garden to the now nonexistent Saxon Palace. In 1727, it was made into one of the world's first public parks and later remodelled in the forest-like English style. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is situated at the east end of the park near the central fountain, on Pi\u0142sudski Square. With its benches, flower carpets and a central pond, the Krasi\u0144ski Palace Garden was once a notable strolling destination for most Varsovians. The \u0141azienki Park covers an area of 76 ha and its unique character and history is reflected in the landscape architecture (pavilions, sculptures, bridges, water cascades) and vegetation (domestic and foreign species of trees and shrubs). The presence of peacocks, pheasants and squirrels at \u0141azienki attracts tourists and locals. The Wilan\u00f3w Palace Parkland on the outskirts of Warsaw traces it history to the second half of the 17th century and covers an area of 43 ha. Its French-styled alleys corresponds to the ancient, Baroque forms of the palace.\nThe Botanical Garden and the University Library rooftop garden host an extensive collection of rare domestic and foreign plants, while a palm house in the New Orangery displays plants of subtropics from all over the world. Mokot\u00f3w Field (once a racetrack), Ujazd\u00f3w Park and Skaryszewski Park are also located within the city borders. The oldest park in the Praga borough was established between 1865 and 1871.\nThe flora of Warsaw may be considered very rich in species on city standards. This is mainly due to the location of Warsaw within the border region of several big floral regions comprising substantial proportions of close-to-wilderness areas (natural forests, wetlands along the Vistula) as well as arable land, meadows and forests. The nearby Kampinos Nature Reserve is the last remaining part of the Masovian Primeval Forest and is protected by law. The Kabaty Woods are by the southern city border and are visited by the residents of southern boroughs such as Ursyn\u00f3w. There are 13 natural reserves in the vicinity and just from Warsaw, the environment features a perfectly preserved ecosystem with a habitat of animals like the otter, beavers and hundreds of bird species. There are also several lakes in Warsaw\u00a0\u2013 mainly the oxbow lakes at Czerniak\u00f3w and Kamionek.\nThe Warsaw Zoo covers an area of . There are about 5,000 animals representing nearly 500 species. Although officially created in 1928, it traces back its roots to 17th century private menageries, often open to the public.\nDemographics.\nDemographically, Warsaw was the most diverse city in Poland, with significant numbers of foreign-born residents. In addition to the Polish majority, there was a large and thriving Jewish minority. According to the Imperial Census of 1897, out of the total population of 638,000, Jews constituted 219,000 (equivalent to 34%). Prior to the Second World War, Warsaw hosted the world's second largest Jewish population after New York \u2013 approximately 30 percent of the city's total population in the late 1930s. In 1933, 833,500 out of 1,178,914 people declared Polish as their mother tongue. There was also a notable German community. The ethnic composition of contemporary Warsaw is incomparable to the diversity that existed for nearly 300 years. Most of the modern-day population growth is based on internal migration and urbanisation. In the 2021 census, 98.78% of Warsaw residents identified themselves as Polish, 0.46% as Ukrainian, 0.31% as Belarusian and 0.21% as Jewish.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\nIn 1939, approximately 1,300,000 people resided in Warsaw; by 1945 the population had dropped to 420,000. During the first years after the war, the population growth rate was high and the city soon began to suffer from the lack of flats and dwellings to house new incomers. The first remedial measure was the enlargement of Warsaw's total area (1951)\u00a0\u2013 however the city authorities were still forced to introduce limitations; only the spouses and children of permanent residents as well as some persons of public importance (renowned specialists, artists, engineers) were permitted to stay. This negatively affected the image of an average Warsaw citizen, who was perceived as more privileged than those migrating from rural areas, towns or other cities. While all restrictions on residency registration were scrapped in 1990, the negative opinion of Varsovians in some form continues to this day.\nWarsaw metropolitan area is an example of the development of a strongly polarized region. The capital, along with its immediate surroundings, concentrates over half of the demographic potential of the Masovian Voivodeship, 2/3 of residents with higher education, and 3/4 of larger economic entities employing more than 50 workers.\nCurrent demographic development trends are as follows:\nIn the coming years, an increase in the city's population is predicted, with migration being the main factor determining the state and structure of Warsaw's population, including mainly internal (national) and external (foreign) influx. Changes in the population are not uniform for the entire Warsaw and in the division into districts, the predicted demographic changes will have a varied course. A decrease in population is forecasted in some central districts (Praga-P\u00f3\u0142noc, \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie) and an increase in other districts.\nImmigrant population.\nIn 2019, it was estimated that 40,000 people living in Warsaw were foreign-born. Of those, Ukrainians, Vietnamese, Belarusians, and Russians were the most prominent groups. After Russia's aggression against Ukraine, over 1.1 million refugees from Ukraine passed through Warsaw, and at the beginning of March 2022, approximately 40,000 people applied for help every day. According to official data, over 104,000 of Ukrainian citizens who arrived in the first days after the outbreak of the war still reside in the city, including 17,000 young people and children attending urban educational institutions. Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the immigrant population has increased significantly to about 340,000.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nThroughout its existence, Warsaw had been a multi-cultural and multi-religious city. According to the 1901 census, out of 711,988 inhabitants 56.2% were Catholics, 35.7% Jews, 5% Greek Orthodox Christians and 2.8% Protestants. Eight years later, in 1909, there were 281,754 Jews (36.9%), 18,189 Protestants (2.4%) and 2,818 Mariavites (0.4%). This led to construction of hundreds of places of religious worship in all parts of the town. Most of them were destroyed in the aftermath of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. After the war, the new communist authorities of Poland discouraged church construction and only a small number were rebuilt.\nThe archdiocese of Warsaw and the Diocese of Warsaw-Praga are the two ecclesiastical districts active in the city which serve the large Roman Catholic population of 1.4 million. The Lutheran Diocese of Warsaw is one of six in Poland; its main house of worship is the Holy Trinity Church from 1782, one of Warsaw's most important and historic landmarks. The Evangelical Reformed Parish (Calvinist) is leading the Polish Reformed Church. The main tserkva of the Orthodox Christians is Praga's Cathedral of St. Mary Magdalene from 1869. The Jewish Commune of Warsaw (\"Gmina Wyznaniowa \u017bydowska\") is one of eight in the country; Chief Rabbi of Poland Michael Schudrich resides in the city. There are also 3 active synagogues, one of which is the pre-war No\u017cyk Synagogue designated for Orthodox Jews. An Islamic Cultural Centre in Ochota and a small mosque in Wilan\u00f3w serve the Muslims.\nThere are several Marian shrines in the city, including: sanctuary of the Gracious Mother of God with her image crowned in 1651 in the presence of King John Casimir. Another patron of the city is Blessed W\u0142adys\u0142aw of Gielni\u00f3w, bernardine from the St. Anne's Church. The greatest cult is that of St. Andrew Bobola, patron of the metropolis of Warsaw, whose relics are in the sanctuary of St. Andrew Bobola in Mokot\u00f3w.\nGovernment and politics.\nAs the capital of Poland, Warsaw is the political centre of the country. Almost all central government institutions are located there, including the Chancellery of the President, both houses of the Polish Parliament (the lower house called Sejm and the upper house called Senate), the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, the Constitutional Tribunal, the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Administrative Court. Warsaw is also host to many major international organizations, including Frontex and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (the oldest and principal institution of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe).\nThe city is represented in the parliament by 20 members of Sejm (out of 460) and 4 senators (out of 100). In addition, Warsaw together with its metropolitan area elects 6 MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) out of 705.\nMunicipal government.\nThe first city mayor of Warsaw was Jan Andrzej Menich (1695\u20131696). The municipal self-government existed in Warsaw until World War II and was restored in 1990 (during the communist times, the National City Council\u00a0\u2013 \"Miejska Rada Narodowa\"\u00a0\u2013 governed in Warsaw). Since 1990, the structure of city government has been modified several times. Between 1975 and 1990 the Warsaw city mayors simultaneously led the Warsaw Voivodeship. In the years 1990\u20131994, the city mayor of Warsaw was elected by the city council. \nA controversial reform was introduced in 1994, which transformed the city into a loose municipal union of several gminas, dominated by one of them, the gmina Centrum encompassing the entire inner city. During this period, the mayor of gmina Centrum who was elected by its council was automatically designated as the city mayor of Warsaw, in spite of representing only a fraction of the population of the city. The city was becoming increasingly unmanageable, especially after the administrative reform of Poland in 1999 which further complicated the local government structure of Warsaw. In 2002, the new \"Warsaw Act\" of the Polish parliament restored Warsaw as a single urban gmina with the status of a city with powiat rights, led by a unified local government. At the same time, a significant reform was implemented in all Polish municipal governments, introducing direct elections of the w\u00f3jt/town mayor/city mayor in all Polish gminas. The first city mayor of Warsaw elected according to these rules was Lech Kaczy\u0144ski, who however resigned ahead of term when he was elected President of Polish Republic in 2005.\nWarsaw has thereafter remained an urban gmina with the status of a city with powiat rights. Legislative power in Warsaw is vested in a unicameral Warsaw City Council (\"Rada Miasta\"), which comprises 60 members. Council members are elected directly every five years (since 2018 election). Like most legislative bodies, the city council divides itself into committees which have the oversight of various functions of the city government. The city mayor exercises the executive power in the city, being the superior of all unelected municipal- or county-level officials and other employees and supervising all subsidiary entities of the city. The incumbent city mayor of Warsaw is Rafa\u0142 Trzaskowski.\nThe \"Warsaw Act\" imposes a mandatory division into 18 auxiliary units called \"dzielnica\" (district) on the city. In spite of remaining an integral part of the city as an entity, the districts have a degree of autonomy legally guaranteed through a form of an own local self-government exercising some powers devolved by law from the city. They have the duty to assist the city mayor and the City Council in their tasks, such as supervising some municipal companies, city-owned property or schools. Each of the 18 city districts has an own council (\"rada dzielnicy\") which elects an executive board (\"zarz\u0105d dzielnicy\") headed by a district mayor (\"burmistrz dzielnicy\"), the latter elected by the council among several candidates nominated by the city mayor of Warsaw among the council's members.\nDistricts.\nBia\u0142o\u0142\u0119ka\nBielany\nBemowo\n\u017boliborz\nPraga-P\u00f3\u0142noc\nTarg\u00f3wek\n\u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie\nWola\nOchota\nW\u0142ochy\nUrsus\nMokot\u00f3w\nWawer\nPraga-Po\u0142udnie\nRembert\u00f3w\nWeso\u0142a\nUrsyn\u00f3w\nWilan\u00f3w\nAs a result, Warsaw has thereafter continued as an urban gmina holding status of a city with powiat rights, divided into 18 districts (\"dzielnica\"), auxiliary municipal units established within the city as an entity as its integral parts, though with some limited powers devolved from the city to their own local self-governments. Each of the districts is customarily subdivided into several neighbourhoods lacking any meaningful legal or administrative powers. The central district of \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie includes the two founding neighbourhoods of the city, called the Old Town (\"Stare Miasto\") and the New Town (\"Nowe Miasto\").\nEconomy.\nWarsaw is the leading economic and financial hub of the Visegr\u00e1d Group and the Three Seas Initiative. In 2021, the city's gross metropolitan product (GDP) was estimated at \u20ac100 billion, which places Warsaw 20th among the metropolitan areas in the European Union with largest GDP. Warsaw generates almost 1/5 of the Polish GDP and the country's national income. In 2020, Warsaw was classified as a global city, because Warsaw is a major global city that links economic regions into the world economy.\nWarsaw's city centre (\u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie) and commercial Wola district are home not only to many national institutions and government agencies, but also to many domestic and international companies. Warsaw's ever-growing business community has been noticed globally, regionally, and nationally. In 2019 Warsaw was one of the top destinations for foreign investors in Europe.\nThe average monthly gross salary in the enterprise sector in the last quarter of 2022 amounted to 8,104 PLN and was 404 PLN higher than the average in the Masovian Voivodeship and as much as 1,450 PLN higher than in Poland. The highest gross salary was received by employees working in the information and communication section (11,701.47 PLN). There are 525,475 registered business entities in Warsaw, most of them in the districts of \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie, Mokot\u00f3w, Wola and Praga-Po\u0142udnie, 1.1 million people work in the enterprise sector. Warsaw has a well-developed office base, the office space is 6.27 million m2. The largest office buildings are Varso (63,800 m2), Warsaw Spire (60 000 m2), Forest Tower (51,500 m2) and P180 (32,000 m2), the largest projects under construction are The Bridge (47,000 m2) and Skyliner II (38,000 m2). The space resources of shopping centers in the Warsaw agglomeration in amount to over 1.7 million m2.\nIn October 2019 Warsaw's unemployment rate was 1.3%, the lowest in the country. Shopping and consumerism is an important component of Warsaw's economy. The retail streets in Warsaw are New World Street (\"Nowy \u015awiat\") along with Krakowskie Przedmie\u015bcie. These streets and their neighboring areas host many luxury stores and popular restaurants. However, most retailers choose to operate in the central shopping centres and malls such as Z\u0142ote Tarasy-Golden Terraces, Galeria Mokot\u00f3w and Westfield Arkadia. Luxury goods as well as designer labels can be found in the Vitkac Department Store and around Frascati.\nWarsaw Stock Exchange.\nWarsaw's first stock exchange was established in 1817 and continued trading until World War II. It was re-established in April 1991, following the end of a communist planned economy and the reintroduction of a free-market economy. Today, the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) is, according to many indicators, the largest market in the region, with 433 companies listed and total capitalisation of 1 trillion PLN as of 26 November 2020. From 1991 until 2000, the stock exchange was, ironically, located in the building previously used as the headquarters of the communist Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR).\nIndustry.\nThe most prominent industries and industrial sectors include high-tech, electrotechnical, chemical, cosmetic, construction, food processing, printing, metallurgy, machinery and clothing. The majority of production plants and facilities are concentrated within the WOP Warsaw Industrial Precinct (\"Warszawski Okr\u0119g Przemys\u0142owy\") which is situated around the city's peripheral localities such as Praga, Pruszk\u00f3w, Sochaczew, Piaseczno, Marki and \u017byrard\u00f3w. Warsaw has developed a particularly strong retail market/sector, representing around 13% of the total retail stock in the country.\nFollowing World War II, the authorities decided that the city will be transformed into a major centre for heavy industry and manufacturing. As a result, numerous large factories and production facilities were built in and around the city. Among the largest were \"Huta Warszawa\" steel works, now arcelor), the Ursus SA, and the Fabryka Samochod\u00f3w Osobowych (FSO) car factory. The now-defunct FSO, established in 1951, was once Warsaw's most successful corporation. Notable vehicles assembled there over the decades include the FSO Warszawa, FSO Syrena, Polski Fiat 125p and the FSO Polonez. In 1995, the factory was purchased by the South Korean car manufacturer Daewoo, which assembled its models in Warsaw for the European market.\nTourism.\nThe estimated number of tourist arrivals to Warsaw in 2022 was over 9 million. Most tourists came from the United Kingdom (347,000), Germany (321,000), the United States (206,000) and France (145,000). Additionally, Warsaw was visited by 5.8 million one-day tourists, giving a total of over 14.8 million tourists in 2022. The above data does not include Ukrainian citizens who came to Warsaw in connection with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The accommodation base consists of 1,010 hotels offering over 56,000 beds. The estimated contribution of the tourism economy to Warsaw's GDP is 12.9 billion PLN, and the tourism industry employs 87,703 people.\n144,220 people used Warsaw Tourist Lines in 2022 - almost 14,000 more than previous year. In the summer, Warsaw residents and tourists could use ferries across the Vistula, a ship to Serock, bus and tram lines operated with historic rolling stock, and a narrow-gauge railway. The most popular attraction among tourists was the Royal \u0141azienki Museum, which was visited by 5,265,110 tourists.\nWarsaw is an important center for conferences and congresses. The Warsaw Convention Bureau collected information on 9,000 events in 2022, which gathered a total of 1,240,467 participants in Warsaw.\nMedia and film.\nWarsaw is the media centre of Poland, and the location of the main headquarters of TVP and other numerous local and national TV and radio stations, such as Polskie Radio (Polish Radio), TVN, Polsat, TV4, TV Puls, Canal+ Poland, Cyfra+ and MTV Poland. Warsaw also has a sizable movie and television industry. The city houses several movie companies and studios.\nSince May 1661 the first Polish newspaper, the \"Polish Ordinary Mercury\", was printed in Warsaw. The city is also the printing capital of Poland with a wide variety of domestic and foreign periodicals expressing diverse views, and domestic newspapers are extremely competitive. \"Rzeczpospolita\", and \"Dziennik Polska-Europa-\u015awiat\", Poland's large nationwide daily newspapers, have their headquarters in Warsaw.\nSince World War II, Warsaw has been the most important centre of film production in Poland. Among the movie companies are TOR, Czo\u0142\u00f3wka, Zebra and Kadr which is behind several international movie productions. The city itself has featured in numerous movies, both Polish and foreign, for example: \"Kana\u0142\" and \"Korczak\" by Andrzej Wajda and \"The Decalogue\" by Krzysztof Kie\u015blowski, also including Oscar winner \"The Pianist\" by Roman Pola\u0144ski. It is also home to the National Film Archive, which, since 1955, has been collecting and preserving Polish film culture.\nEducation.\nWarsaw holds some of the finest institutions of higher education in Poland. It is home to four major universities and over 62 smaller schools of higher education. The overall number of students of all grades of education in Warsaw is almost 500,000 (29.2% of the city population; 2002). The number of university students is over 280,000. Most of the reputable universities are public, but in recent years there has also been an upsurge in the number of private universities.\nThe University of Warsaw was established in 1816, when the partitions of Poland separated Warsaw from the oldest and most influential Polish academic center, in Krak\u00f3w. The university is the largest in the country, and often regarded as one of the most prestigious, with international recognition in mathematics and science. Warsaw University of Technology is the second academic school of technology in the country, and one of the largest in East-Central Europe. Other institutions for higher education include the Medical University of Warsaw, the largest medical school in Poland and one of the most prestigious; the National Defence University, the highest military academic institution in Poland; the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music, the oldest and largest music school in Poland and one of the largest in Europe; the Warsaw School of Economics, the oldest and most renowned economic university in the country; the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, the largest agricultural university, founded in 1818; and the SWPS University, the first private secular university in the country.\nWarsaw has numerous libraries, many of which contain vast collections of historic documents. The most important library in terms of historic document collections is the National Library of Poland. The library holds 8.2\u00a0million volumes in its collection. Formed in 1928, it sees itself as a successor to the Za\u0142uski Library, the biggest in Poland and one of the first and biggest libraries in the world.\nAnother important library \u2013 the University Library, founded in 1816, is home to over two million items. The building was designed by architects Marek Budzy\u0144ski and Zbigniew Badowski and opened on 15 December 1999. It is surrounded by green. The University Library garden, designed by Irena Bajerska, was opened on 12 June 2002. It is one of the largest roof gardens in Europe with an area of more than , and plants covering . As the university garden it is open to the public every day.\nTransport.\nWarsaw is a considerable transport hub linking Western, Central and Eastern Europe. The city has a good network of buses and a continuously expanding perpendicular metro running north to south and east to west. The tram system is one of the biggest in Europe, with a total length of . As a result of increased foreign investment, economic growth and EU funding, the city has undertaken the construction of new roads, flyovers and bridges. The supervising body is the City Roads Authority (ZDM \u2013 \"Zarz\u0105d Dr\u00f3g Miejskich\").\nPublic transport.\nThe first section of the Warsaw Metro was opened in 1995 initially with a total of 11 stations. As of 2024, it has 39 stations running a distance of approximately .\nPublic transport also extends to light rail Warszawska Kolej Dojazdowa line, urban railway Szybka Kolej Miejska, regional rail Koleje Mazowieckie (Mazovian Railways), and bicycle sharing systems (Veturilo). The buses, trams, urban railway and Metro are managed by the Public Transport Authority and are collectively known as Warsaw Public Transport.\nThe table presents statistics on public transport in Warsaw.\nRoads.\nWarsaw lacks a complete ring road system and most traffic goes directly through the city centre, leading to the eleventh highest level of congestion in Europe. The Warsaw ring road has been planned to consist of four express roads: S2 (south), S8 (north-west) and S17 (east). S8, S2 and a small 3\u00a0km section of S17 are open. Additionally, the S2 and S8 have a concurrency with the S7 and the S2 has a short concurrency with the S8. A second ring road consisting of the A50 motorway (south) and S50 expressway (north) is also planned but it is unknown when construction will start.\nThe A2 motorway opened in June 2012, stretches west from Warsaw and is a direct motorway connection with \u0141\u00f3d\u017a, Pozna\u0144 and ultimately with Berlin.\nAviation.\nThe city has three international airports: Warsaw Chopin Airport, located just from the city centre, Warsaw-Radom Airport, located just south of Warsaw, which serves mainly low-cost and charter operations and finally Warsaw-Modlin Airport, located to the north, opened in July 2012. With around 100 international and domestic flights a day and with 7,440,056 passengers served in 2021, and it has also been called \"the most important and largest airport in Central Europe\".\nWarsaw Chopin Airport is the busiest airport in Poland a with 21.3 million passengers in 2024 handling approximately 40% of the country's total air passenger traffic. The airport is a central hub for LOT Polish Airlines as well as a base for Enter Air and Wizz Air. There are 50 air operations performed at the airport per hour. London, Frankfurt, Paris, and Amsterdam are the busiest international connections, while Krak\u00f3w, Wroc\u0142aw, and Gda\u0144sk are the most popular domestic ones. The complex contains 45 passenger gates, 27 of which are equipped with jetways. A rail link has been added to connect the city with the airport in 2012.\nRail.\nLong distance and intercity trains are operated by Polish State Railways (PKP). There are also some suburban bus lines run by private operators. Bus service covers the entire city, with approximately 256 routes totalling above , and with some 1,700 vehicles.\nThe main railway station is Warszawa Centralna serving both domestic traffic to almost every major city in Poland, and international connections. There are also five other major railway stations and a number of smaller suburban stations.\nCulture.\nMusic and theatre.\nThanks to numerous musical venues, including the \"Teatr Wielki\", the Polish National Opera, the Chamber Opera, the National Philharmonic Hall and the National Theatre, as well as the Roma and Buffo music theatres and the Congress Hall in the Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw hosts many events and festivals. Among the events worth particular attention are: the International Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin Piano Competition, the International Contemporary Music Festival Warsaw Autumn, the Jazz Jamboree, Warsaw Summer Jazz Days, the International Stanis\u0142aw Moniuszko Vocal Competition, the Mozart Festival, and the Festival of Old Music.\nWarsaw is also considered one of the European hubs of underground electronic music with a very attractive house and techno music scene.\nWarsaw is home to over 30 major theatres spread throughout the city, including the National Theatre (founded in 1765) and the Grand Theatre (established 1778).\nWarsaw also attracts many young and off-stream directors and performers who add to the city's theatrical culture. Their productions may be viewed mostly in smaller theatres and \"Houses of Culture\" (\"Domy Kultury\"), mostly outside \"\u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie\" (Central Warsaw). Warsaw hosts the International Theatrical Meetings.\nFrom 1833 to the outbreak of World War II, Plac Teatralny \"(Theatre Square)\" was the country's cultural hub and home to the various theatres. Plac Teatralny and its environs was the venue for numerous parades, celebrations of state holidays, carnival balls and concerts.\nThe main building housed the Great Theatre from 1833 to 1834, the Rozmaito\u015bci Theatre from 1836 to 1924 and then the National Theatre, the Reduta Theatre from 1919 to 1924, and from 1928 to 1939\u00a0\u2013 the Nowy Theatre, which staged productions of contemporary poetical drama, including those directed by Leon Schiller.\nNearby, in Ogr\u00f3d Saski (the Saxon Garden), the Summer Theatre was in operation from 1870 to 1939, and in the inter-war period, the theatre complex also included Momus, Warsaw's first literary cabaret, and Leon Schiller's musical theatre Melodram. The Wojciech Bogus\u0142awski Theatre (1922\u201326) was the best example of \"Polish monumental theatre\". From the mid-1930s, the Great Theatre building housed the Upati Institute of Dramatic Arts\u00a0\u2013 the first state-run academy of dramatic art, with an acting department and a stage directing department.\nMuseums and art galleries.\nThere are over 60 museums and galleries in Warsaw which are accessible to the public. Among the positions are the world's first Museum of Posters boasting one of the largest collections of art posters in the world, and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Among the most prestigious ones are the National Museum with a collection of works whose origin ranges in time from antiquity until the present epoch as well as one of the best collections of paintings in the country including some paintings from Adolf Hitler's private collection, and the Museum of the Polish Army whose set portrays the history of arms.\nThe collections of \u0141azienki and Wilan\u00f3w palaces focus on the paintings of the \"old masters\", as do those of the Royal Castle which displays the Lanckoro\u0144ski Collection including two paintings by Rembrandt. The Palace in Natolin, a former rural residence of Duke Czartoryski, is another venue with its interiors and park accessible to tourists.\nThe famous Copernicus Science Centre is an interactive science museum containing over 450 exhibits, enabling visitors to carry out experiments and discover the laws of science for themselves. Warsaw does not have a natural history museum. Yet, it hosts small museums of Evolution and the Earth, which play a similar role.\nHolding Poland's largest private collection of art, the Carroll Porczy\u0144ski Collection Museum displays works from such varied artists as Paris Bordone, Cornelis van Haarlem, Jos\u00e9 de Ribera, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Vincent van Gogh along with some copies of masterpieces of European painting.\nA fine tribute to the fall of Warsaw and history of Poland can be found in the Warsaw Uprising Museum and in the Katy\u0144 Museum which preserves the memory of that crime. The Warsaw Uprising Museum also operates a rare preserved and operating historic stereoscopic theatre, the Warsaw Fotoplastikon. The Museum of Independence preserves patriotic and political objects connected with Poland's struggles for independence. Dating back to 1936 the Warsaw Historical Museum contains 60 rooms which host a permanent exhibition of the history of Warsaw from its origins until today.\nThe 17th century Royal Ujazd\u00f3w Castle houses the Centre for Contemporary Art, with some permanent and temporary exhibitions, concerts, shows and creative workshops. The Centre realizes about 500 projects a year. The Zach\u0119ta National Gallery of Art, the oldest exhibition site in Warsaw, with a tradition stretching back to the mid-19th century organises exhibitions of modern art by Polish and International Artists and promotes art in many other ways. Since 2011, Warsaw Gallery Weekend is held on the last weekend of September.\n28 September 2023 the opening of the new building of the Museum of Polish History located at the Warsaw Citadel took place.\nThe city also possesses some oddities such as the Neon Museum, the Museum of Caricature, the Museum of John Paul II and Primate Wyszy\u0144ski, the Legia Warsaw Museum, and a Motorisation Museum in Otr\u0119busy.\nCuisine and food.\nWarsaw's culinary tradition was shaped by its once multicultural population; its cuisine is distinct from that of other cities and towns in Poland. Strong Jewish and French influences were cultivated over the years, in particular herring, consomm\u00e9, bagels, aspic and French meringue-based pastries or cakes. Traditional Varsovian food is hearty and includes a tripe soup for entr\u00e9e, a pyza dumpling for main and the iconic wuzetka (voo-zetka) chocolate cream pie for dessert. Crayfish and fish in gelatin were the classical dishes in Warsaw's restaurants throughout the 1920s and the 1930s.\nMuch like Paris or Vienna, Warsaw once possessed a prominent caf\u00e9 culture which dated back to the early 18th century, and the city's cafeterias were a place for socializing. The historic Wedel Chocolate Lounge on Szpitalna Street remains one of the most renowned spots for social gatherings. Cafeterias, confectioneries and patisseries such as Caff\u00e8 Nero, Costa Coffee and Starbucks are predominantly found along the Royal Route on New World Street. Thousands of Warsaw's residents also flock annually to the pastry workshops (\"p\u0105czkarnia\") to buy p\u0105czki doughnuts on Fat Thursday.\nRestaurants offering authentic Polish cuisine are concentrated around the Old Town district. Various spit cakes of Czech or Hungarian origin (k\u00fcrt\u0151skal\u00e1cs and trdeln\u00edk) are also sold primarily in the Old Town. Hala Koszyki is a popular meeting place in Warsaw noted for its food hall.\nIn the 20th century, Warsaw was famed for its state-owned milk bars (\"bar mleczny\") which offered cheap fast food in the form of home dinners. Examples of dishes popularized by these canteens include tomato soup, schnitzels, frikadeller, mizeria salad and many others. Contemporary fast food giants like McDonald's, KFC, Subway and Burger King are the successors to milk bars, though some reemerged in recent years due to widespread nostalgia.\nGourmet and haute cuisine establishments are situated in the vicinity of the downtown area or in the Frascati neighbourhood. Thirteen Varsovian restaurants were appreciated by the Michelin Guide, with two receiving a michelin star in 2019.\nIn 2021, National Geographic named Warsaw one of the top cities for vegans in Europe. \u015ar\u00f3dmie\u015bcie Po\u0142udniowe (Southern Downtown) and its \"hipster food culture\" was singled out as the epicenter.\nEvents.\nSeveral commemorative events take place every year, notably the Orange Warsaw Festival featuring music concerts. One of the more popular events is the procession of the Three Wise Men (in Polish known as the Three Kings) on Epiphany, shortly after the New Year. Paper crowns are usually worn by spectators throughout the day. The event, which runs along the Royal Route, is attended by Warsaw's highest officials and by the Polish president who resides nearby.\nGatherings of thousands of people on the banks of the Vistula on Midsummer's Night for a festival called Wianki (Polish for \"Wreaths\") have also become a tradition and a yearly event in the programme of cultural events in Warsaw. The festival traces its roots to a peaceful pagan ritual where maidens would float their wreaths of herbs on the water to predict when they would be married, and to whom. By the 19th century this tradition had become a festive event, and it continues today. The city council organize concerts and other events. Each Midsummer's Eve, apart from the official floating of wreaths, jumping over fires, and looking for the fern flower, there are musical performances, dignitaries' speeches, fairs and fireworks by the river bank.\nWarsaw Multimedia Fountain Park is located in an enchanting place, near the Old Town and the Vistula. The 'Water \u2013 Light \u2013 Sound' multimedia shows take place each Friday and Saturday from May until September at 9.30\u00a0pm (May and \u2013 9 October pm). On other weekdays, the shows do not include lasers and sound.\nThe Warsaw Film festival, an annual festival that takes place every October. Films are usually screened in their original language with Polish subtitles and participating cinemas include Kinoteka (Palace of Science and Culture), Multikino at Golden Terraces and Kultura. Over 100 films are shown throughout the festival, and awards are given to the best and most popular films.\nWarsaw Mermaid.\nThe mermaid (\"syrenka\") is Warsaw's symbol and can be found on statues throughout the city and on the city's coat of arms. This imagery has been in use since at least the mid-14th century. The oldest existing armed seal of Warsaw is from the year 1390, consisting of a round seal bordered with the Latin inscription \"Sigilium Civitatis Varsoviensis\" (Seal of the city of Warsaw). City records as far back as 1609 document the use of a crude form of a sea monster with a female upper body and holding a sword in its claws. In 1653 the poet Zygmunt Laukowski asks the question:\n<templatestyles src=\"Rquote/styles.css\"/>{ class=\"rquote pullquote floatcenter\" role=\"presentation\" style=\"display:table; border-collapse:collapse; border-style:none; float:center; margin:0.5em 0.75em; width:33%; \"\nThe Mermaid Statue stands in the very centre of Old Town Square, surrounded by a fountain. Due to vandalism, the original statue had been moved to the grounds of the Museum of Warsaw \u2013 the statue in the square is a copy.\nThis is not the only mermaid in Warsaw. Another is located on the bank of the Vistula River near \u015awi\u0119tokrzyski Bridge and another on Karowa Street.\nThe origin of the legendary figure is not fully known. The best-known legend, by Artur Oppman, is that long ago two of Triton's daughters set out on a journey through the depths of the oceans and seas. One of them decided to stay on the coast of Denmark and can be seen sitting at the entrance to the port of Copenhagen. The second mermaid reached the mouth of the Vistula River and plunged into its waters. She stopped to rest on a sandy beach by the village of Warszowa, where fishermen came to admire her beauty and listen to her beautiful voice. A greedy merchant also heard her songs; he followed the fishermen and captured the mermaid.\nAnother legend says that a mermaid once swam to Warsaw from the Baltic Sea for the love of the Griffin, the ancient defender of the city, who was killed in a struggle against the Swedish invasions of the 17th century. The mermaid, wishing to avenge his death, took the position of defender of Warsaw, becoming the symbol of the city.\nEvery member of the Queen's Royal Hussars of the UK's light cavalry wears the \"Maid of Warsaw\", the crest of the City of Warsaw, on the left sleeve of his No. 2 (Service) Dress. Members of 651 Squadron Army Air Corps of the United Kingdom also wear the \"Maid of Warsaw\" on the left sleeve of their No. 2 (Service) Dress.\nSports.\nOn 9 April 2008, the Mayor of Warsaw, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, obtained from the mayor of Stuttgart Wolfgang Schuster a challenge award\u00a0\u2013 a commemorative plaque awarded to Warsaw as the European capital of Sport in 2008.\nThe Kazimierz G\u00f3rski National Stadium, a 58,580-seat-capacity football (soccer) stadium, replaced Warsaw's recently demolished 10th-Anniversary Stadium. The National Stadium hosted the opening match, two group matches, a quarter-final, and a semi-final of UEFA Euro 2012.\nThere are many sports centres in the city as well. Most of these facilities are swimming pools and sports halls, many of them built by the municipality in the past several years. The main indoor venue is Hala Torwar, used for a variety of indoor sports (it was a venue for the 2009 EuroBasket but it is also used as an indoor skating rink). There is also an open-air skating rink (Stegny) and a horse racetrack (S\u0142u\u017cewiec).\nThe best of the city's swimming centres is at Wodny Park Warszawianka, south of the centre at Merliniego Street, where there's an Olympic-sized pool as well as water slides and children's areas.\nAmong the Varsovian football teams, the most recognisable is Legia Warsaw\u00a0\u2013 the army club with a nationwide following play at the Polish Army Stadium, just southeast of the centre at \u0141azienkowska Street. Established in 1916, they have won the country's championship fifteen times (most recently in 2021) and won the Polish Cup nineteen times. In the 1995\u201396 UEFA Champions League season, they reached the quarter-finals, where they lost to Greek club Panathinaikos.\nTheir local rivals, Polonia Warsaw, have significantly fewer supporters, yet they managed to win the country's championship two times (in 1946 and 2000) and won the cup twice as well. Polonia's home venue is located at Konwiktorska Street, a ten-minute walk north from the Old Town. Polonia was relegated from the country's top flight in 2013 because of their disastrous financial situation. They are now playing in the first league (2nd tier in Poland).\nLegia Warsaw's basketball team was one of the country's best teams in 50s and 60s. They are now participating in PLK, the highest-tier level of the Polish basketball.\nFamous people.\nOne of the most famous people born in Warsaw was Maria Sk\u0142odowska-Curie, who achieved international recognition for her research on radioactivity and was the first female recipient of the Nobel Prize. Famous musicians include W\u0142adys\u0142aw Szpilman, Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin and Witold Lutos\u0142awski. Though Chopin was born in the village of \u017belazowa Wola, about from Warsaw, he moved to the city with his family when he was seven months old. Casimir Pulaski, a Polish general and hero of the American Revolutionary War, was born here in 1745. Other important people, who lived in Warsaw (although were not born here) are also Rosa Luxemburg and L. L. Zamenhof.\nTamara de Lempicka was a famous artist born in Warsaw. She was born Maria G\u00f3rska in Warsaw to wealthy parents and in 1916 married a Polish lawyer Tadeusz \u0141empicki. Better than anyone else she represented the art deco style in painting and art. Another notable artist born in the city was Wojciech Fangor. He was associated with Op art and Color field movements and recognized as a key figure in the history of Polish postwar abstract art. Nathan Alterman, the Israeli poet, was born in Warsaw, as was Moshe Vilenski, the Israeli composer, lyricist, and pianist, who studied music at the Warsaw Conservatory.\nOther notable individuals from Warsaw include Samuel Goldwyn, the founder of Goldwyn Pictures, mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, physicist Joseph Rotblat, biochemist Casimir Funk, Moshe Prywes, an Israeli physician who was the first President of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and I. L. Peretz, one of the three founding fathers of modern Yiddish literature. Warsaw was the beloved city of Isaac Bashevis Singer, which he described in many of his novels: \"Warsaw has just now been destroyed. No one will ever see the Warsaw I knew. Let me just write about it. Let this Warsaw not disappear forever\", he wrote. Notable sportspeople born in Warsaw include footballers Robert Lewandowski and Wojciech Szcz\u0119sny as well as tennis player Iga \u015awi\u0105tek.\nInternational relations.\nTwin towns and sister cities.\nWarsaw is twinned with:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nFormer twin towns:\nPartnership and friendship.\nWarsaw also cooperates with:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nFormer partner cities:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "2948665": "Andrzej S\u0142awi\u0144ski\nAndrzej S\u0142awi\u0144ski (born July 31, 1951 in Warsaw) is a Polish economist and Professor of Economics at the Warsaw School of Economics. He is a member of the Council of Monetary Policies since 2004 and a fellow of Collegium Invisibile.\nHe received his M.A. in economics in 1973 and Ph.D. in international finance in 1979 both from the Warsaw School of Economics.\nHis research work concentrates on central banks functioning, financial crises in developing economies and financial (especially derivatives) markets. Author of numerous publications. In September 2010, he was appointed to the Economic Institute of the National Bank of Poland.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["2948665", "32908"], "permutation_1": ["32908", "2948665"], "permutation_2": ["2948665", "32908"], "permutation_3": ["32908", "2948665"]}
{"id": "2hop__712784_127375", "docs_added": {"12275272": "Ready 1\n\"Ready 1\" is a song by Australian rock band Grinspoon which was released 18 October 1999 as the lead single from their second studio album, \"Easy\". It peaked at No.\u00a036 on the ARIA Singles Chart. It was written by band members Phil Jamieson and Pat Davern. Jamieson has also performed the song as a solo artist.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "567703": "Grinspoon\nAustralian rock band\nGrinspoon are an Australian rock band from Lismore, New South Wales, which formed in 1995 by Pat Davern on guitar, Joe Hansen on bass guitar, Kristian Hopes on drums and frontman Phil Jamieson on vocals and guitar. Also in that year, Grinspoon won the national youth radio, Triple J\u2013sponsored Unearthed competition for Lismore, with their post-grunge song \"Sickfest\". The band's name references Lester Grinspoon, an associate professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who supported marijuana for medical use.\nAll eight of Grinspoon's studio albums have reached the ARIA albums chart top\u00a010. Their sound changed to mainstream rock with the release of their third studio album, \"New Detention\" (2002), which peaked at No.\u00a02; likewise, their fifth studio album \"Alibis & Other Lies\" (2007) also reached No.\u00a02. The 2004 fourth album, \"Thrills, Kills & Sunday Pills\", peaked at No.\u00a04. At the ARIA Music Awards of 2005 it won the Best Rock Album Award.\nThe band were signed to Universal Records in the United States by late 1998, and were promoted with the songs \"Champion\", which featured in \"Gran Turismo 3\"; \"Post Enebriated Anxiety\", which was on the international version of \"Guide to Better Living\" (1999); \"Chemical Heart\", via the internet; and a cover of the Prong song \"Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck\", from Grinspoon's \"Pushing Buttons\" (1998) EP, which was also included on \"\" (1998). On 4 December 2013, the band members announced an indefinite hiatus to pursue individual projects, although they made a return in earnest in 2017. Their eighth studio album, \"Whatever, Whatever\" (2024) reached No.\u00a03.\nHistory.\n1995-2000: Early years.\nIn July 1995, Pat Davern (guitar), Joe Hansen (bass guitar), Kristian Hopes (drums) and Phil Jamieson (vocals, guitar) met at a Lismore hotel, The Gollan, for a jam night. They decided to form a band and three\u00a0weeks later they recorded a two-track demo, which they entered for the national youth radio station Triple J's Unearthed competition. Their name was taken from Lester Grinspoon, an associate professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who supported marijuana for medical use. They won the competition with their post-grunge, alternative rock song \"Sickfest\" \u2013 their first track ever written together by Davern and Jamieson.\nGrinspoon gained airplay on Triple J and independent radio stations. They developed a strong following among the Australian \"alternative\" and \"mosh pit crowd.\" Their debut extended Play (EP) was the six-track, \"Grinspoon\" (a.k.a. \"Green Album\"), was released in 1995 through the independent Oracle Records. It contained the songs \"Sickfest\" and \"More Than You Are\" that became popular with fans and were rerecorded on later releases.\nGrinspoon's second EP, \"Licker Bottle Cozy\", recorded in June 1996 and produced by Phil McKellar, was released by Grudge Records in December. It had a slightly heavier sound than their earlier EP with five tracks including the songs \"Champion\" and \"Pig Pen\". In September 1997 they released their first full-length album, \"Guide to Better Living\", co-produced by McKellar and well-known Swiss-American heavy metal producer Ulrich Wild. The album peaked at No.\u00a011 on the ARIA Albums Charts and went platinum with sales of over 70,000 in Australia. It represents the Helmet-influenced alternative metal sound of their early career with heavier songs like \"Pressure Tested 1984\". The Australian version of the album features five live songs\u2014illustrating the band's sense of humour and ability to play live\u2014and a hidden track, the acoustic \"Protest\". US branch of Universal Records signed the band by late 1998 and released an altered version of \"Guide to Better Living\" in March 1999.\nWhilst in US touring for ten months as support act for Creed, Lit, Godsmack and Anthrax, Grinspoon released a six track EP, \"Pushing Buttons\", for their Australian market in September 1998. It featured the popular heavy song \"Black Friday\" and the lighter songs \"Busy\" and \"Explain\". After the intense US touring, Grinspoon released their second album, \"Easy\" in September 1999, which peaked at No.\u00a04 and went platinum in Australia. It contained the singles \"Ready 1\" and \"Rock Show\".\n2001-2007: Changing direction.\nAfter a break to reconsider their direction and sound Grinspoon started recording their next album, \"New Detention\", in Sydney's Festival Studios in September 2001 but prior to finishing the studios were shut down and so vocals and guitars were recorded in smaller studios. Further delays occurred after Hopes injured his hand on a studio window. \"New Detention\" was released in June 2002 and was more commercial\u2014it peaked at No.\u00a02 on the ARIA Albums Charts and went platinum. The first single from the album, \"Chemical Heart\", released in February had created a stir with long term fans and the media because it was different from their previous grunge sound. The band insisted the change was a natural one and was an improvement. Nevertheless, the band still performs older tracks in their live shows. They released a four track EP in March 2003, \"Panic Attack\"\u2014containing a cover of INXS's \"Don't Change\"\u2014which reached No.\u00a013 on the ARIA Singles Chart.\nIn August 2004, they released a new single, \"Hard Act To Follow\", which reached the Top 30. It was from the September album \"Thrills, Kills & Sunday Pills\", which peaked at No.\u00a04 and went platinum. Grinspoon also performed at the 2004 NRL grand final before a second single, \"Better Off Alone\", issued in November, also reached the Top 30. The third single was \"Hold on Me\" released in February 2005. For \"Thrills, Kills & Sunday Pills\", the band agreed that they were deliberately seeking a new audience, claiming they wrote a number of songs for the release and rejected any that sounded like earlier work. It won the 2005 'Best Rock Album Award' at the ARIA Music Awards. They had previously been nominated 9 times.\nGrinspoon had built a strong local following after their rise, they were regulars at Australian music festivals. On 26 March 2006, Grinspoon performed \"Hard Act To Follow\" and \"Better Off Alone\" at the 2006 Commonwealth Games Closing Ceremony in Melbourne. They headlined the inaugural \"Thank God It's Over\" in Melbourne, at \"BOBFest '06\" in South Australia in October and at Odyssey 2006 at Dreamworld for New Year's Eve.\nIn February 2007, Jamieson admitted himself to rehab due to addiction to crystal methamphetamine. On Andrew Denton's \"Enough Rope\" in July, Jamieson discussed his drug addictions, an extramarital affair, stealing money from bandmates, detox and rehab experiences.\nThe band completed, \"Alibis & Other Lies\" in July 2007, as their final album for Universal. It was co-produced by the band and Ramesh Sathiah, who had worked with them on their earliest recordings. Earlier albums before this were pop-oriented rock, while \"Easy\" and \"Alibis & Other Lies\" were more heavy rock. The first single from the album, \"Black Tattoo\", was released as a digital download on 23 June and physically a week later. The album peaked at No.\u00a02, their equal highest album chart position (with \"New Detention\" in 2002). Grinspoon released a 2-disc compilation entitled \"Best in Show\". The first disc featured their hits and several older songs, like \"Champion\", which landed the song on \"Gran Turismo 3\". The second disc includes a collection of covers recorded over the years. In the US, all Grinspoon albums had been released on iTunes and other online music stores. The first four were \"Guide To Better Living\", \"Best In Show\", \"Thrills, Kills, and Sunday Pills\", and \"New Detention\". \"Easy\" and \"Alibis & Other Lies\" followed on 31 October 2007.\n2008-2009: Hiatus.\nOn 5 February 2008, Jamieson announced, via the band's official website, that Grinspoon were on hiatus following their appearance at Big Day Out in late January. Grinspoon headlined the Newton's Playground festival, held atop Bathurst's famous Mount Panorama in March, with their song \"Lost Control\" played in advertisements for the festival. On 1 May, Grinspoon announced they would complete more shows before writing a new album.\nGrinspoon recorded The Easybeats' track \"St. Louis\" for a tribute album, \"Easy Fever: A Tribute to The Easybeats and Stevie Wright\"\u2014released in October 2008\u2014while Jamieson's duet with The Wrights on \"Evie part 3: I'm Losing You\" from 2005 was included. The band contributed the track \"Blind Lead Blind\", their B side of 2007's \"Minute By Minute\", to a compilation CD for The Buttery Drug and Alcohol Rehab Centre titled \"Caution: Life Ahead\", which included contributions from other Australian acts such as Powderfinger, Midnight Oil and The Living End, and was released in November.\nGrinspoon performed on 26 July 2009 at the annual Splendour in the Grass Festival in Byron Bay. Jamieson then toured with a supergroup composed of The Living End's Chris Cheney, You Am I's Tim Rogers, and Josh Pyke with a 17-piece band in August 2009. The group performed a tribute to The Beatles' White Album for its 40th anniversary.\n2010: \"Six to Midnight\".\nGrinspoon's next album, titled \"Six to Midnight\", was released on 11 September 2009 on the band's imprint Chk Chk Boom Records, distributed by Universal Records, which peaked at No.\u00a06. Two tracks, \"Dogs\" and the first single, \"Comeback\", were released to radio earlier. For promotion of the album, the band toured in a more intimate setting than most of their previous concerts. On 6 November, Grinspoon played live on Triple J radio and confirmed that \"Summer\" was the second single from the album. In 2010 Premonitions was released as the third single from the album. The band toured for the album including two acoustic shows in London in early 2012 featuring Phil and Pat.\n2011\u20132019: \"Black Rabbits\" and hiatus.\nIn September 2011 Grinspoon announced on their website that they are writing and recording their seventh studio album.\nIn May 2012 the band announced that they were heading to the United States for a month to record the album. The band also hinted that the title of the album would be \"Black Rabbits\". The album was later slated to feature guest musicians including Chris Cheney of The Living End, Tim Rogers of You Am I and Scott Russo of Unwritten Law.\nOn 23 July 2012, Grinspoon released the artwork of the album on their official Facebook page, confirming the name of the release \"Black Rabbits\".\nThe album was released on 28 September, debuting at number 8 on the ARIA charts.\nOn 5 December 2013 a statement on the official Grinspoon website announced that the band would be going on hiatus. A section of the statement reads: \"Thanks to all our families, friends, and especially our fans for the support over the last 18 years \u2013 it's been a wild ride to say the least. We are still a band of brothers but it's time for us to take a break and recharge the batteries. We're excited to see what our future holds\u2026adios amigos, it's been a blast!\"\nIn August 2015, it was announced that the band would be reforming exclusively to play a run of dates opening for Cold Chisel.\nIn 2017, the band announced they would be re-releasing a special 20th Anniversary edition of Guide To Better Living and announced an Australia wide tour. The tour was sold out.\nIn 2019, the group released the compilation, \"Chemical Hearts\".\n2020\u2013present: \"Whatever, Whatever\".\nIn May 2024, the group released the single \"Unknown Pretenders\", which was written in February 2020. At the same time, they announced the release of their eighth studio album \"Whatever, Whatever\".\nAwards and nominations.\nAPRA Awards.\nThe APRA Awards are presented annually from 1982 by the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), \"honouring composers and songwriters\". They commenced in 1982.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Awards table/styles.css\" />\n! scope=\"col\" | Year\n! scope=\"col\" | Nominee / work\n! scope=\"col\" | Award\n! scope=\"col\" | Result\n! Ref.\nARIA Awards.\nThe ARIA Music Awards are a set of annual ceremonies presented by Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), which recognise excellence, innovation, and achievement across all genres of the music of Australia. They commenced in 1987. Grinspoon has won 2 awards from 14 nominations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Awards table/styles.css\" />\n! scope=\"col\" | Year\n! scope=\"col\" | Nominee / work\n! scope=\"col\" | Award\n! scope=\"col\" | Result\nJ Awards.\nThe J Awards are an annual series of Australian music awards that were established by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's youth-focused radio station Triple J. They commenced in 2005.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Awards table/styles.css\" />\n! scope=\"col\" | Year\n! scope=\"col\" | Nominee / work\n! scope=\"col\" | Award\n! scope=\"col\" | Result\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "25814482": "The Ready Set\nAmerican singer-songwriter, performer, and musician\nJordan Mark Witzigreuter (born November 14, 1989), known professionally as The Ready Set, is an American singer-songwriter and musician from Fort Wayne, Indiana, United States. He is the lead vocalist and sole member of the act, using a backup band while on tour. He has released six studio albums, \"Syntax and Bright Lights\", \"Tantrum Castle\", \"I'm Alive, I'm Dreaming\", \"The Bad & the Better\", \"I Will Be Nothing Without Your Love\" and \"Cherryland\", nine extended plays and nineteen singles. He is best known for the commercially successful single \"Love Like Woe\" from his major label debut, \"I'm Alive, I'm Dreaming\".\nFrom 2019 to 2022, Witzigreuter briefly released music under the name Onlychild. He has released twelve singles and a four-track EP, \"Solstice\" under this name.\nWitzigreuter is also a part of the synthpop band Nekokat, alongside Cameron Walker, and Jess Bowen of the Summer Set.\nIn 2021, in collaboration with Walker, Witzigreuter created the music label \"Swim Team Records\". The company has featured a multitude of artists such as Future Coyote, TALKBAK, and Casey Abrams. The label's music has been featured in promotion for things such as the PGA Tour.\nEarly life.\nWitzigreuter was born and raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a location he frequently mentions in his music. At the age of 11, his mother signed him up for drum lessons. This led to him playing the drums in bands throughout middle school and high school. After becoming acquainted with other instruments, he began touring with bands and writing songs at the age of 16. As a seventeen-year-old, Witzigreuter participated in various bands playing drums for the ska band Take Sides and the hardcore band Saints Never Surrender. Witzigreuter was credited on Saints Never Surrender's sophomore album, \"Brutus\", which was released in 2008. He was also in the acoustic band brideandgroom.\nCareer.\n2007\u201309: \"Syntax and Bright Lights\" and \"Tantrum Castle\".\nIn 2007, Witzigreuter began making music independently in the basement of his childhood home under the name the Ready Set. He decided to go under this name because of his long last name and felt that the Ready Set was better and easier to say. According to Witzigreuter, the name refers to being \"ready to set all of your fears and worries behind and just do what you really want to do.\" His first two albums \"Syntax and Bright Lights\" and \"Tantrum Castle\" were released in 2008. Initially uploading his music to the once popular Myspace, Witzigreuter then began performing his music live. His first performances took place at The Mocha Lounge in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a coffee shop where he worked. His performances evolved to that of a live band, and he began performing for music festivals. These included The Bamboozle and Bamboozle Left, the Bamboozle Roadshow, and the mtvU VMA Tour. He also opened for bands like Boys Like Girls and Never Shout Never. He released a three-track EP, \"Stays Four the Same\" on June 23, 2009, via iTunes.\nThe Ready Set has also made performances on MTV on multiple occasions, including an appearance on MTV's \"TJ Search Live Finale\" and being the \"One to Watch\" on MTV's 10 on Top. Witzigreuter has also been featured twice on MTV's \"Buzzworthy\".\n2010\u201311: \"I'm Alive, I'm Dreaming\" and \"Feel Good Now\".\nIn November 2009, Pete Wentz signed Witzigreuter to his label Decaydance Records. An early version of \"Love Like Woe\" was sent to Wentz who took one listen to it and decided to sign him to the label. He also felt that Witzigreuter was \"passionate and believes in himself,\" hence why he signed him to the label. Recording for his third studio album started in 2009, where he flew out to Los Angeles, Miami and Atlanta, working with different producers. His debut single, \"Love Like Woe\" was released on March 29, 2010. It was met with commercial success peaking at number 27 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and number 30 on the Canada CHR/Top 40 chart. This led to the song being certified platinum by the RIAA and winning the BDS Certified Spin Award based on the 50,000 spins it received. \"More Than Alive\" was released as the second single from the album on May 25. The Ready Set's major label debut and third studio album, \"I'm Alive, I'm Dreaming\", was made available for streaming on June 8. It was officially released on June 14. The album peaked at number three on the Heatseekers Albums chart and at number 172 on the \"Billboard\" Top Current Album Sales chart. In support of the album's release, Witzigreuter went on tour in the fall of 2010 with Cartel, Hey Monday, This Century, and We Are the In Crowd.\nIn September 2010, the Ready Set was named MTV Push Artist of the Week. In November 2010, Witzigreuter was a part of the \"Punk Goes Pop Volume 03.\" compilation album performing the track, \"Airplanes\". On November 26, 2010, he released a Christmas EP, \"Regifted\" and the song \"Wishlist\" peaked at number 32 on the Holiday Digital Song Sales chart. In February 2011, he embarked on his first headlining tour called, \"The Glamour Kills Tour\" with supporting acts from Allstar Weekend, We Are the In Crowd and The Downtown Fiction. \nOn March 1, 2011, the Ready Set released \"Young Forever\" from his upcoming EP. The song peaked at number 39 on the US Mainstream Top 40 and at number five on the US Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart. He released the EP's second single, \"Hollywood Dream\" on August 19. \"Killer\" was released as the third single for streaming via his website on September 27. On October 7, The Ready Set released his EP, \"Feel Good Now\" which was produced by Ian Kirkpatrick. The EP peaked at number 179 on the \"Billboard\" 200. In an interview with \"Alternative Press\", Witzigreuter stated that he had plans to re-release \"Tantrum Castle\", however, those plans appear to be scrapped. In January 2012, Witzigreuter was featured in an episode of Disney Channel's \"So Random!\". He joined A Rocket to the Moon, Forever the Sickest Kids and the Summer Set for a Philippines tour in February. He also toured in Australia and South America in March, in support of the EP. In the spring of 2012, The Ready Set and Breathe Carolina co-headlined the Blackout Forever Tour with support from Ashland High.\n2012\u201315: \"The Bad & The Better\".\nIn January 2012, Witzigreuter began working on a new album in Los Angeles. On May 18, 2012, The Ready Set released the song, \"Give Me Your Hand (Best Song Ever)\" which was released through Warner Records and later served as the lead single from his fourth studio album, \"The Bad & The Better\". The song peaked at number 30 on the US Mainstream Top 40 and number 33 on the New Zealand Top 40 chart. In May 2012, he confirmed he had finished a third of the album and after finishing writing 25 songs, he planned to continue writing for the majority of the summer, flying out to California during his time off to work on the rest of the album. He hoped for a release date sometime later that year in the fall.\nIn February 2013, the Ready Set co-headlined a US tour with Outasight. In May 2013, he released a remix EP for \"Give Me Your Hand (Best Song Ever)\" titled, \"GMYH V.2\". In June 2013, Witzigreuter confirmed that he finished writing the album. Prior to releasing his fourth studio album, he released a handful of EP's including, \"I'll Be Waiting\", produced by his live guitarist Deryck Stanek and \"Sorry, Sorry\". He toured in North America with Breathe Carolina and rapper T. Mills in August 2013. After leaving Decaydance following his third studio album, he subsequently signed with the label Razor & Tie.\nOn March 18, 2014, he announced the release date for \"The Bad & The Better\", which was set for May 27. He worked with producer Ian Kirkpatrick again on the album. \"Higher\" served as the album's second single and was released on April 8. \"Freakin' Me Out\" was released on May 6, as the third single from the album. The album peaked at number 75 on the \"Billboard\" 200. He served as an act on Warped Tour in the summer of 2014. In October 2014, The Ready Set co-headlined a tour with Metro Station called, The Outsiders Tour with supporting acts, the Downtown Fiction and Against the Current. A live music video for the album's fourth single, \"Fangz\" was released on December 10. In 2015, Witzigreuter started a side project band Nekokat with singer-songwriter Cameron Walker-Wright and drummer Jess Bowen of The Summer Set.\n2016\u201318: \"I Will Be Nothing Without Your Love\" and \"V1 & V2\".\nFollowing a one-year hiatus of releasing music under the Ready Set, Witzigreuter signed with Hopeless Records in November 2015. Upon his return as the Ready Set, Witzigreuter stated in a 2016 interview with \"Alternative Press\" that he almost ended the Ready Set following the release of \"The Bad & the Better\". He felt that he was in a \"weird spot at the end of 2014,\" feeling like he wasn't \"progressing\" as an artist and cited burn out as a reason for taking a break as the Ready Set and starting Nekokat. While working on the new side project, it helped motivate him into writing music again and helped him learn a lot about production.\nOn February 5, 2016, \"Good Enough\" was released as the lead single from his fifth studio album, \"I Will Be Nothing Without Your Love\". The album's second single, \"Disappearing Act\" was released on March 11. The album was officially released on April 8, which was written, produced and engineered by Witzigreuter by the end of 2015. The album peaked at number 24 on the US Independent Albums chart. In May 2016, he collaborated with Haitian DJ Michael Brun and released a remix to \"Good Enough\". The remix version peaked at number 40 on the Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart. The Ready Set embarked on the Fight For Something tour in the spring of 2016 with Tonight Alive, Set It Off and SayWeCanFly. He also joined Emblem3 and Megan Nicole on tour in July 2016.\nIn 2017, Witzigreuter continued releasing with Nekokat, whilst also appearing on features for other artists. In 2018, he started to release music independently again with two extended plays: \"V1\" and \"V2\". \"Life In Pink\" was released on February 15, 2018, as the lead single from \"V1\". He released another single, \"Stitch\" on July 27, 2018, as the lead single from \"V2\". Another EP, \"V3\", was set for release in October 2018, however was pushed back for a later date.\n2019\u20132022: Onlychild.\nIn mid-2019, Witzigreuter temporarily took a step back from The Ready Set and adopted a new name, Onlychild. He stated that the reasoning for this decision was to create \"something where the initial love of the thing came from.\" He also added that he would return to the Ready Set at some point but wanted to focus on Onlychild for the time being. He released his first EP \"Solstice\" under that name on July 27, 2019. He also began co-writing for other artists, joining Breathe Carolina on \"In the Dark\" from their 2019 album, \"\". In May 2020, Onlychild released the single, \"Chardonnay and Tangerine\". \nIn January 2021, Witzigreuter started a record label with Walker-Wright called, Swim Team Records. In May 2021, Onlychild collaborated with American Teeth on the single, \"Sloppy\". In October 2021, Witzigreuter and Nekokat collaborator Cameron Walker contributed writing credits to the single \"Rock with You\" on South Korean band Seventeen's mini-album \"Attacca\".\n2022\u2013present: return of The Ready Set and \"Cherryland\".\nWitzigreuter revived the Ready Set name in 2022 at the So What Music Festival and performed under that name at the 2022 When We Were Young Festival. In May 2023, Witzigreuter released his first solo single under the Ready Set name since 2018 titled, \"Who You Really Are\". Another single followed in July 2023 titled \"Teammate\". In August 2023, Witzigretuer released a hyperpop track \"ACT 2\", which serves as the third single from his sixth studio album. He joined Boys Like Girls on the Speaking Our Language Tour in the fall of 2023. On August 25, 2023, Witzigreuter announced his sixth studio album, \"Cherryland\" which was released on October 27, 2023. In October 2023, Witzigreuter joined Boys Like Girls on a reimagined version of their song, \"The Outside\". In support of the album's release, Witzigreuter performed a concert show at the Echo in Los Angeles on May 7, 2024. On May 20, Witzigreuter signed with Big Machine Records.\nMusical styles and influences.\nThe Ready Set's music is described as electropop and synth-pop. Witzigreuter has stated that he typically likes to blend his sound ranging from pop to hip-hop to hardcore punk. Witzigreuter grew up listening to Copeland which he has stated as his main influence. He also cited inspiration from Daft Punk and Kanye West. The Ready Set has also been compared to Owl City, generally for his sound, work as a one-man band and how he uses a live band while on tour.\nPersonal life.\nWitzigreuter married his longtime girlfriend Katelyn Gentry in late 2017. Witzigreuter has a brother who is also a musician.\nTours.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "22329783": "Ready (Trey Songz album)\nReady is the third studio album by American R&B recording artist Trey Songz. It was released on August 31, 2009, by Troy Taylor's record label Songbook, distributed by Atlantic Records. The album serves as the sequel to \"Trey Day\" (2007). Production for the album took place from 2008 to 2009, which was contributed by Songz's longtime collaborator and his mentor Troy Taylor, along with Bryan-Michael Cox, StarGate and Los da Mystro, among others.\nThe album received generally positive reviews from critics, which positively compared \"Ready\" to the work of R. Kelly, but also was criticized for this album's inconsistency. The album debuted at number 3 on the US \"Billboard\" 200, selling 131,000 copies in its first week. The album was a certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), becoming Songz's first certified album. 4 years later, \"Ready\" was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).\nThe album was supported by five singles, including the top ten \"Billboard\" Hot 100 hit \"Say Aah\", and the top five Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs hits \"Neighbors Know My Name\" and \"I Invented Sex\", the latter of which topped the chart. Songz promoted \"Ready\" in a number of live appearances, including co-heading the 106 & Live tour, sponsored by \"106 & Park\", and serving as a support act on Jay-Z's The Blueprint 3 Tour. \"Ready\" earned Songz a Grammy Award nomination for Best Contemporary R&B Album at the 52nd Grammy Awards; but lost to Beyonc\u00e9 Knowles' \"I Am... Sasha Fierce\".\nBackground and production.\nWhen Songz began recording for \"Ready\"; the purpose of the album was to crossover and increase his exposure on radio. The album's lead single, \"I Need a Girl\" was released to connect to mainstream radio. Songz said that \"[it] was a very radio-geared record which would do great and play on radio heavily during whatever time. It wasn't a record I expected to last forever, or one I was even excited about singing, but it was a record I knew would do well.\" Speaking of the following singles, Songz thought that \"I Invented Sex\" would be a \"career-defining record, and I knew 'Say Aah' would be a monster club record.\"\nSpeaking on his collaborations with the producers, Songz said that on \"Ready\", \"we're breaking down every song, every hook, every chorus, every bridge, and we're making sure every song is the best song it could be. This album isn't just going to be a compilation of songs, but a classic body of work.\" The album only contained three guest features with Drake, Gucci Mane and Soulja Boy Tell 'Em. Songz wanted to keep the number of features very limited, and stated that \"anybody else I add is going to be very special\". American rapper Fabolous was added as a guest feature on the track, titled \"Say Aah\".\nSongz said that compared to his previous albums, \"this album is very adult, very easygoing and very sexy [...] My first album was very adult-like, but in a different, more soulful, sample-driven kind of way, and my second one was more contemporary and trendy.\" To reflect his transition into adulthood and the changes in his music, Songz changed his appearance by cutting off his trademark braids. Songz also began dressing in more sophisticated attire, trading in sneakers and T-shirts for vests, tailored pants, and \"tasteful\" shoes. On the appearance change, Songz's mentor, producer, and the head of Songbook Entertainment, Troy Taylor said, \"Trey's from the streets, he's a hood kid. He wasn't glamorous and (didn't have) the finer things in life growing up, [...] He didn't want to lose his street-ism, [...] As he grew into it I think he began to realize, 'Wait a minute, this ain't that bad after all,' and then he got the ladies' opinions.\"\nAfter \"Ready\"'s success, Songz explained that the album was a result of his growth and new-found maturity. Commenting about the success of his singles, Songz stated that \"they're very strong records and they're not just radio records. They're records that embody the person I am as well as the artist I am. I think they're more definitive of who I am than any other album I've had. I've grown as an artist. I've been doing this for awhile [\"sic\"] now. As I've matured, I've learned how to exude that of which I want to be felt. I've learned what my fans want from me and things of that nature.\"\nComposition.\n\"Ready\" is an R&B album that contains influences of hip-hop and pop, with a bit of soul, as much of the work has been compared to vintage R. Kelly. Concerning the album's lyrical content, Ken Capobianco of the \"Boston Globe\" said, \"While many male modern R&B vocalists are moving to a more mature vibe, Trey Songz keeps the horndog-with-a-heart tradition alive with his third album.\" Sean Fennessey of \"The Village Voice\" said, that \"Ready\", featured Songz's \"re-imagining the notion of flow\u2014if not melody\u2014just as his hero Kelly did 15 years ago.\" Andrew Rennie of \"Now Magazine\" said the production had a 1980s soundtrack vibe. According to Mark Edward Nero of About.com, \"I Need A Girl\" contains familiar qualities of Songz's breakout hit \"Can't Help but Wait\", also produced"}, "descending_order": ["25814482", "22329783", "12275272", "567703"], "permutation_1": ["22329783", "25814482", "567703", "12275272"], "permutation_2": ["12275272", "25814482", "22329783", "567703"], "permutation_3": ["12275272", "567703", "25814482", "22329783"]}
{"id": "2hop__67755_82010", "docs_added": {"2070074": "Busch Stadium\nBaseball stadium in St. Louis, Missouri\n \nBusch Stadium (also referred to informally as \"New Busch Stadium\" or \"Busch Stadium III\") is a baseball stadium located in St. Louis, Missouri. It is the home of Major League Baseball's St. Louis Cardinals. It has a seating capacity of 44,383, with 3,706 club seats and 61 luxury suites. It replaced Busch Memorial Stadium (aka Busch Stadium II) and occupies a portion of that stadium's former footprint. A commercial area dubbed Ballpark Village was built adjacent to the stadium over the remainder of the former stadium's footprint.\nThe stadium opened on April 4, 2006 with an exhibition between the minor league Memphis Redbirds and Springfield Cardinals (both affiliates of the St. Louis Cardinals), which Springfield won 5\u20133 with right-hander Mike Parisi recording the first win. The first official major league game occurred on April 10, 2006, as the Cardinals defeated the Milwaukee Brewers 6\u20134 behind an Albert Pujols home run and winning pitcher Mark Mulder.\nIn 2004, then-Anheuser-Busch president August Busch IV announced that the brewing giant had purchased 20-year naming rights for the stadium. Team owner William DeWitt Jr. said: \"From the day we began planning for the new ballpark, we wanted to keep the name 'Busch Stadium.' August Busch IV and Anheuser-Busch share our vision for continuing that tradition for our great fans and the entire St. Louis community.\"\nIt is the third stadium in St. Louis to carry the name Busch Stadium. Sportsman's Park was renamed Busch Stadium in 1953; then-team owner August Busch Jr. had planned to name it Budweiser Stadium, but at the time league rules prohibited naming a venue after an alcoholic beverage. Busch named the stadium after himself, and the Anheuser-Busch corporation later introduced \"Busch Beer\". The first Busch Stadium closed in 1966 and both the baseball Cardinals, and the National Football League (NFL)'s team of the same name (now the Arizona Cardinals) moved to a new multi-purpose stadium, named Busch Memorial Stadium (Busch Stadium II).\nHistory.\nPlanning.\nIn 1995, St. Louis Cardinals team ownership began to lobby for a new ballpark in downtown St. Louis, but the team was unable to acquire funding for the project for several years. In June 2001, the Missouri state government signed a contract with the team, proposing a ballpark in downtown St. Louis, but a subsequent funding bill was struck down in May 2002, leaving the saga open. Team owners sought a location near Madison, Illinois, adjacent to Gateway International Raceway, until the city of St. Louis drafted a financing plan for the team to construct the new stadium in downtown St. Louis. The stadium was financed through private bonds, bank loans, a long-term loan from St. Louis County, and money from the team owners. The development, including the Ballpark Village was projected to cost approximately $665 million with the stadium alone costing $365 million.\nConstruction and opening.\nNew Busch Stadium was designed by Populous (then known as HOK Sport) and built by Hunt Construction with an estimated cost of $344.8 million, which proved too low by $20.2 million to its final cost of $365 million. Populous' senior project designer for Busch Stadium was Jim Chibnall, who was also the lead designer of Progressive Field in Cleveland, Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, Sydney Olympic Stadium, and other notable stadiums throughout the world.\nThe field level (16,880 seats), terrace level (9,150), and bleachers (3,661) were completed in time for opening day, with total capacity on that day of 37,962, not including up to 2,751 standing room tickets. An integrated LED video and scoring system from Daktronics was installed in the stadium prior to its opening, featuring a video display measuring high by wide and three message displays, as well as more than of digital ribbon board technology.\nConstruction on the seating area was completed in late May increasing the capacity for the May 29, 2006 game vs the Houston Astros with finishing touches performed throughout the year. Including all 2,886 standing-room-only tickets for the general public, as well as suites and party rooms, the stadium's total capacity is 46,861. Natural grass turf was installed in March 2006.\nNotable baseball events.\nIn the stadium's debut season every Cardinal game was sold out, giving a total attendance of 3,407,104 for the season, the second-largest in team history, but since surpassed in 2007, 2008, and from 2014 to 2017.\nThe largest attendance for a baseball game occurred August 6, 2022, when 48,581 fans watched a game between the Cardinals and the New York Yankees, a 1-0 Cardinals victory.\nPlayoffs.\n2006.\nIn the first season of the new stadium, the Cardinals hosted the San Diego Padres in Games 3 and 4 of the National League Division Series. In Game 3 on October 7, San Diego defeated St. Louis 3\u20131. The Cardinals won the next night by the score of 6\u20132, clinching the series win. In the 2006 National League Championship Series the Cardinals hosted the New York Mets in Games 3, 4, and 5. St. Louis won Game 3 and Game 5, and eventually clinched their 17th National League pennant by defeating the Mets on the road in Game 7, 3\u20131.\nThe Cardinals faced the Detroit Tigers in the 2006 World Series. This was the third meeting between the two ballclubs in the Fall Classic, and the first in 38 years. The Cardinals won the first in 1934, and the Tigers won the second in 1968; each went the full seven games. Because the American League won that year's All-Star Game, the Tigers were granted home field advantage, meaning the Cardinals would host Games 3, 4, and 5. This proved fortuitous for St. Louis, as they won every game at home, clinching their 10th World Series championship in Game 5 on October 27, by the score of 4\u20132.\n2009.\nBusch Stadium hosted only one postseason game in 2009, a 5\u20131 loss versus the Los Angeles Dodgers on October 10, to complete a sweep of the Cardinals.\n2011.\nIn 2011, Busch Stadium hosted two postseason games in the National League Division Series versus the Philadelphia Phillies. On October 4, the Phillies won 3\u20132, to take a 2\u20131 game lead over the Cardinals. The next night, the 5th, the Cardinals beat the Phillies 5\u20133 to tie the series at 2 games apiece. In the NLCS versus the Milwaukee Brewers, the Cardinals won 2 of the three games they played at home (Games 3, 4, 5). The Cards ended up winning the series on the road in Milwaukee to advance to the World Series. (This was the second time the Cardinals had defeated the Brewers in a postseason series, the first being the 1982 World Series, when Milwaukee was represented as an American League team; the Brewers switched over to the National League in 1998.)\nBecause the National League had won the 2011 MLB All-Star Game, home field advantage went to the Cardinals as the National League champions, thus allowing the team to host the Texas Rangers for Games 1, 2, 6 and 7. Game 1 was won by the Cardinals on October 19, along with Game 6 on October 27, in a game won in walk-off fashion by a David Freese home run, then the deciding Game 7, which was taken by the Cardinals in a 6\u20132 final, giving the team the 2011 World Series title.\n2012.\nBusch Stadium hosted two postseason games vs. the Washington Nationals in the 2012 National League Division Series. The two teams split the two games at Busch, before the Cardinals won two of the next three games at Nationals Park. The Cardinals then won the first two home games against the San Francisco Giants to take a 3\u20131 series lead, but lost Game 5 and went on to lose the series in Game 7 at AT&T Park.\n2013.\nThe Cardinals hosted nine postseason games at Busch Stadium in 2013. In the National League Division Series, they won Games 1 and 5 against the Pittsburgh Pirates, with the latter game capping off a series comeback after trailing 2\u20131. They would win every home game of the NLCS against the Dodgers, including a 9\u20130 shutout win in Game 6 to take the series 4\u20132. In the World Series, the Cardinals hosted Games 3\u20135 against the Boston Red Sox. Game 3 on October 26 ended in an obstruction call when Allen Craig was impeded by Will Middlebrooks at third base, thus awarding him a run after umpire Jim Joyce ruled obstruction on the play. The next night Game 4 ended on a successful pickoff by Koji Uehara on pinch-runner Kolten Wong at first base. The Cardinals led 2\u20131 after the controversial Game 3 win, but proceeded to drop the next three games to lose the series 4\u20132.\n2014.\nThe Cardinals played two games in Busch Stadium against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Division Series. The first two games of the Series were played at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, and the teams each won a game there. The Series then moved to Busch Stadium, and the Cardinals won the next two games, to win the Series 3-1 and advance to the National League Championship Series.\nThe Cardinals opened the National League Championship Series at Busch Stadium on October 11, 2014, against the San Francisco Giants. The teams split games 1 and 2 played at Busch Stadium, and the Series moved to AT&T Park in San Francisco. The Giants won games 3, 4, and 5 in their home ballpark, to defeat the Cardinals in the NLCS 4\u20131, and move on to an appearance in the 2014 World Series against the Kansas City Royals.\n2015.\nThe Cardinals hosted two postseason games at Busch Stadium in 2015. In the National League Division Series, they won game 1 on October 9, 2015, but lost game 2 against the Chicago Cubs. The Cardinals then lost games 3 and 4 to the Cubs at Wrigley Field to lose the series 3\u20131.\n2019.\nThe Cardinals hosted four postseason games at Busch Stadium in 2019, in the National League Division Series against the Atlanta Braves. After splitting the first two games in Atlanta, the Cardinals lost Game 3 to be down 2-1 in the series, but secured the win in Game 4 after a walk-off sac fly by Yadier Molina who had also tied the game late in his previous at bat. St Louis would finish off the Braves and the series with a 10-run thumping in the 1st inning of Game 5 winning 13-1. The Cardinals next played the National League Championship Series against the Washington Nationals, losing every game including the first two at Busch.\nMLB All-Star Game.\nThe stadium hosted the 2009 Major League Baseball All-Star Game on July 14, 2009. The American League defeated the National League in that game, 4\u20133. Tampa Bay Rays outfielder Carl Crawford won MVP. President Barack Obama threw out the ceremonial first pitch wearing a Chicago White Sox jacket.\nCollege and high school baseball.\nMissouri started playing games at Busch in 2009 when they defeated SLU. The Tigers have also played at Busch in 2010, 2017, and 2018. \nThe Cardinals have allowed local high school teams to play each other on the field following select weekend afternoon games. So far, only 3 homeruns have been hit by high school students. The first was on May 7, 2011, by Johnny Wilson of Marquette Catholic High School against Farmington High School. The second was on April 11, 2018, by Zach Hilboldt of De Smet Jesuit High school against Palmyra High School. The third was on April 21, 2018, by David Olejnik (St. Louis Home School Patriots) against (Marshall County High School, Benton, Kentucky).\nOther sports.\nProfessional soccer.\nBusch Stadium hosted an exhibition soccer game on May 23, 2013, between English clubs Manchester City and Chelsea. Tickets for the match sold out within 20 minutes of going on sale, and Manchester City won 4\u20133 in front of a crowd of 48,263, to date the 2nd largest attendance at a sporting event at the stadium.\nLater that year on November 18, Busch hosted a friendly between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Argentina; before a crowd of more than 30,000, many of which were members of St. Louis' large Bosniak community, Argentina beat Bosnia 2\u20130, with Sergio Ag\u00fcero scoring both goals.\nOn April 4, 2015, the United States Women's National Soccer Team defeated New Zealand 4\u20130 in front of over 35,000 fans.\nOn November 13, 2015, the United States Men's National Soccer Team defeated St. Vincent and the Grenadines 6\u20131 in the first match of the fourth round of qualifiers for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in front of a crowd of 43,433.\nAnother international friendly was hosted at Busch in 2016: Italian side A.S. Roma, bolstered by a goal from Bosnian star Edin D\u017eeko, defeated Liverpool F.C. 2\u20131.\nThe United States women's national team returned on May 16, 2019, for another friendly against New Zealand as part of their preparations for the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup. The United States won 5\u20130 in front of 35,761 spectators.\nProfessional hockey.\n On March 9, 2016, the National Hockey League announced that the St. Louis Blues, for the first time in their 50-year history, would host an outdoor game. The 2017 NHL Winter Classic was held at Busch Stadium on January 2, 2017. The Blues won the game by a score of 4\u20131 against the Chicago Blackhawks. Despite thick fog and spotty rain, Busch Stadium sold out to a crowd of 46,556 St. Louis hockey fans.\nOn June 12, 2019, the stadium hosted a watch party for Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals when the Blues beat the Boston Bruins and won their first ever Stanley Cup. The Cardinals offered the stadium for use as it was empty that evening (the Cards were at Miami for a series) and the Blues' main watch party at Enterprise Center had sold out within a minute for Game 7, with many of the $10 tickets being picked up by scalpers who sold them on secondary markets at inflated prices. More than 25,000 fans viewed the game on the main scoreboards while braving a heavy rainstorm that hit the area during the 1st period.\nCollege football.\nSouthern Illinois University and Southeast Missouri State played each other in the first ever football game at Busch Stadium on September 21, 2013. The announced attendance was 14,618.\nFeatures.\nDesign.\nWhereas the previous stadium was enclosed on all sides in the \"cookie-cutter\" style very similar to Riverfront, Veterans, Three Rivers and Atlanta-Fulton County stadiums, the new stadium is similar to the many other Populous designed \"retro-classic\" fields. Like all those, it offers a panoramic view of the downtown skyline.\nThe Gate 3 entrance on the west side of the stadium is most iconic, with a large \"bridge\" resembling the Eads Bridge arching over the entrance. The exterior of the stadium contains historical plaques of Cardinals logos, the STL insignia and a Busch Stadium logo behind home plate.\nAfter complaints from fans that not all out-of-town games could be placed on the Daktronics out-of-town scoreboard at one time, following the inaugural season a number of advertisement panels were removed to expand the scoreboard and also create a secondary video board. In 2016, the entire original scoreboard and fascia-board system was replaced, creating two full HD video boards: the main board, which took up the entire area of the original scoreboard and video board, measures 4,800 sq ft (40\u00a0ft x 120\u00a0ft), with the out-of-town scoreboard measuring 3,280 sq ft (40 x 81\u00a0ft). 2019 saw the installation of LED floodlights with light-show capabilities, as well as the construction of the Budweiser Terrace in the right field upper deck. The Terrace is a multi-level general admission standing area with two full bars, a BBQ outlet and social areas in the concourse, and a stage area for pre- and in-game entertainment.\nStatues.\nOutside the Gate 3 entrance stands a bronze statue of Cardinals legend Stan \"The Man\" Musial. Other Cardinals statues that previously surrounded Busch Memorial Stadium are now displayed at the corner of Clark and 8th streets, outside the Cardinals' team store. The statues are of former Cardinal players and Hall of Fame inductees Enos Slaughter, Dizzy Dean, Rogers Hornsby, Red Schoendienst, Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, Ozzie Smith, and Ted Simmons; former St. Louis Browns player and Hall of Fame inductee George Sisler; former Negro league St. Louis Stars player and Hall of Fame inductee Cool Papa Bell; and former Cardinals radio broadcaster and Hall of Fame honoree Jack Buck.\nConcessions.\nFans at the stadium have access to a large amount of food and drink options, ranging from standard ballpark fare like bratwurst, nachos and peanuts to St Louis-area favorites such as pork steak sandwiches and toasted ravioli. Budweiser holds the beer contract for the stadium as one would expect, but local craft breweries such as Saint Louis Brewery, Urban Chestnut, and 4 Hands all are available at multiple outlets. Tickets for multiple all-inclusive areas are sold on a single game basis, with amenities running the gamut from the ritzy Champions Club (offering a multiple-course buffet, large screen televisions, a chance to get on television or radio as a broadcast booth is located inside the club, and a full bar) to the more family-oriented Scoreboard Patio (with table seating for four in center field and a cookout-style selection of food). Cardinal management also allows outside food and drink (including soft-sided drink coolers); as a result, it is not uncommon to see vendors selling discounted bags of peanuts and bottles of soda and water, or even scalpers including a box of Cracker Jack with tickets.\n\"Fredbird\" store.\nThe ballpark features a make-your-own-mascot store featuring Fredbird, the Cardinals' team mascot. Operated by St. Louis-based Build-A-Bear, the store was first located in the right-field lower deck before it was moved to center field across from Ballpark Village in 2015 to allow it to be open on non-game days.\nPress accommodations.\nAfter \"St. Louis Post-Dispatch\" sportswriter Rick Hummel was honored with the BBWAA Career Excellence Award and induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in 2007, the Cardinals renamed the stadium's press box the \"Bob Broeg-Rick Hummel Press Box\", honoring the two local writers enshrined in Cooperstown.\nOn October 3, 2021, the Cardinals honored Mike Shannon at his last game in St. Louis by naming the KMOX broadcast booth after Shannon. Shannon had been calling Cardinal games since 1971, and retired in 2021.\nBallpark Village.\nBallpark Village is a multi-phase residential and entertainment complex located on the site of the former Busch Memorial Stadium across the street from the new ballpark. Despite several years of delays, groundbreaking occurred in February 2013 and the first phase was completed in time for Opening Day 2014.\nOther modifications.\nDuring a weather incident during a July 2006 game vs the Atlanta Braves, portable concession stands were knocked over, the infield rain tarp was damaged, and plastic sheets used to protect the press box were dislodged. As a result of the storm at least 30 spectators were injured, of whom five were taken to the hospital. After the storm happened, the stadium designated shelter areas for such disasters which are located throughout the ballpark.\nFollowing Juan Encarnaci\u00f3n's face injury on August 31, 2007, workers extended the screen from dugout to dugout during the 2007-2008 off season.\nIn 2018, the Cardinals Front Office announced that six sections of seating would be removed to make way for a new fan experience called the Budweiser Terrace, which features food, drinks, games, drink rails, and lounge style seating while providing a view of the game.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n ", "1088360": "2004 World Series\n100th edition of Major League Baseball's championship series\nThe 2004 World Series was the championship series of Major League Baseball's (MLB) 2004 season. The 100th edition of the World Series, it was a best-of-seven playoff between the American League (AL) champion Boston Red Sox and the National League (NL) champion St. Louis Cardinals; the Red Sox swept the Cardinals in four games. The series was played from October 23 to 27, 2004, at Fenway Park and Busch Memorial Stadium, broadcast on Fox, and watched by an average of just under 25.5 million viewers. The Red Sox's World Series championship was their first since 1918, ending the Curse of the Bambino.\nThe Cardinals earned their berth into the playoffs by winning the NL Central division title, and had the best win\u2013loss record in the NL. The Red Sox won the AL wild card to earn theirs. The Cardinals reached the World Series by defeating the Los Angeles Dodgers in the best-of-five NL Division Series and the Houston Astros in the best-of-seven NL Championship Series. The Red Sox defeated the Anaheim Angels in the AL Division Series. After trailing three games to none to the New York Yankees in the AL Championship Series, the Red Sox came back to win the series, advancing to their first World Series since 1986. The Cardinals made their first appearance in the World Series since 1987. With the New England Patriots winning Super Bowl XXXVIII, the World Series victory made Boston the first city to have Super Bowl and World Series championship teams in the same year (2004) since Pittsburgh in 1979. The Red Sox became the third straight wild card team to win the World Series; the Anaheim Angels won in 2002 and the Florida Marlins won in 2003.\nThe Red Sox had home-field advantage in the World Series by virtue of the AL winning the 2004 All-Star Game. In game one, Mark Bellhorn helped the Red Sox win with a go-ahead home run in the 8th, while starter Curt Schilling led the team to a game two victory by pitching six innings and allowing just one run. The Red Sox won the first two games despite committing four errors in each. The Red Sox won game three, aided by seven shutout innings by Pedro Mart\u00ednez. A leadoff home run by Johnny Damon in the first inning gave the Sox a lead they never relinquished in game four for the Red Sox to secure the series. The Cardinals did not lead in any of the games in the series; the sixth and eighth innings of the first game was the only time that the two teams were tied. Manny Ram\u00edrez was named the series' Most Valuable Player. While not a particularly competitive series, the 2004 World Series is ranked as one of the most memorable World Series of all time, and one of the most iconic professional sports moments from the 2000s due to its historical significance for Boston. The Red Sox and Cardinals faced each other again in the 2013 World Series, which the Red Sox also won, this time 4 games to 2.\nRoute to the series.\nThis was the ninth meeting between teams from Boston and St. Louis for a major professional sports championship. This previously happened in two World Series (1946, 1967), four NBA Finals (1957, 1958, 1960, 1961), Super Bowl XXXVI two years prior, and the 1970 Stanley Cup Finals. It was also the third World Series between the Red Sox and Cardinals. The previous two meetings in 1946 and 1967 were both won by the Cardinals in seven games.\nBoston Red Sox.\nThe Red Sox had lost in the previous season's ALCS against the New York Yankees. The loss was mainly blamed on the decision by then-manager Grady Little to keep starting pitcher Pedro Mart\u00ednez in the game in the 8th inning of Game 7, that resulted the win (and the 2003 American League championship in general) to rival New York via a walk-off home run, then Little was fired two weeks later.\nDuring the off-season, the Red Sox hired Terry Francona as their new manager. They also signed Keith Foulke as their closer and traded for Curt Schilling as a starting pitcher. The Red Sox played two particularly notable games against the Yankees during the regular season. A game on July 1, in which they came back from a 3-run deficit to force extra innings, is best remembered for an incident in the 12th inning, when Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter made a catch on the run before hurling himself head-first into the stands. The Yankees won the game in the next inning to take an 8-game lead in the American League East. In the 3rd inning of a game on July 24, Red Sox pitcher Bronson Arroyo hit Yankees batter Alex Rodriguez with one of his pitches. As Rodriguez walked towards first base, he began shouting profanities at Arroyo. Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek positioned himself between the two players. After a brief argument, Varitek pushed his glove into Rodriguez' face, causing a bench-clearing brawl. The Red Sox eventually won the game thanks to a home run by Bill Mueller in the 9th inning. On July 31, the Red Sox traded shortstop Nomar Garciaparra to the Chicago Cubs after he had spent eight years with the team. They acquired shortstop Orlando Cabrera and first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz in this trade. They won the wild card to earn a place in the post-season for the second year in a row.\nIn the divisional round of the playoffs, the Red Sox faced the second-seeded Anaheim Angels in a best-of-five series. They won Game 1 largely thanks to a 7-run 4th inning, and went on to sweep the series. In the 7th inning of Game 3, with the Red Sox leading by 4, Vladimir Guerrero tied the game for the Angels with a grand slam. However, David Ortiz won the series with a game-winning home run in the 10th. In the American League Championship Series, the Red Sox lost the first three games against the top-seeded New York Yankees, including a 19\u20138 drubbing in Game 3, and were trailing 4\u20133 in Game 4 when they began the 9th inning. Kevin Millar was walked by Yankees closer Mariano Rivera. Dave Roberts then came into the game to pinch run for Millar and stole second base. Mueller then singled to enable him to tie the game. Another game-winning home run by Ortiz won the game 6\u20134 for the Red Sox in the 12th inning. Ortiz' single in the 14th inning of Game 5 scored the winning run for the Red Sox, in what was, then, the longest post-season game in baseball history. Despite having a dislocated ankle tendon, Schilling started Game 6 for the Red Sox. He pitched for seven innings, and allowed just one run, during which time his sock became soaked in blood. In the eighth inning, Yankees third baseman Rodriguez slapped a ball out of pitcher Arroyo's hand, allowing the Yankees to score a run. However, after a discussion the umpires called Rodriguez out for interference and canceled the run. Fans then threw debris onto the field in protest and the game was stopped for ten minutes. The Red Sox won the game 4\u20132 and became the first baseball team to ever force a Game 7 after having been down 3 games to none. A 10\u20133 win in Game 7 brought the Red Sox to the World Series for the first time in 18 years.\nSt. Louis Cardinals.\nHaving failed to make the playoffs the season before, and with their division rivals (the Chicago Cubs and Houston Astros) expected to be strong, the Cardinals were generally expected to finish 3rd in the National League Central. However, strong offensive seasons from Albert Pujols, Scott Rolen, and Jim Edmonds\u2014during which they each hit more than 30\u00a0home runs and 100\u00a0runs batted in (RBI)\u2014helped them to lead the league in runs scored. They also allowed the fewest runs of any team in the league. Four of their starters recorded at least 15 wins and closer Jason Isringhausen recorded a league-best\u00a047 saves. They added outfielder Larry Walker in August and finished the regular season with the best win\u2013loss record in the league at 105-57.\nThe top-seeded Cardinals faced the #3 seed Los Angeles Dodgers in the divisional round of the playoffs. Five home runs in Game 1 and no runs allowed by the bullpen in Game 2 helped the Cardinals to win the first two games. A complete game by Dodgers pitcher Jos\u00e9 Lima enabled the Dodgers to force a Game 4, during which a home run by Pujols won the series for the Cardinals. In the National League Championship Series, the Cardinals faced the #4 seed Houston Astros and won the first two games in St. Louis. However, the Astros tied the series in the next two games in Houston, before a combined one-hitter by Astros pitchers Brandon Backe and Brad Lidge gave them the series lead. An RBI single by Jeff Bagwell in the 9th inning of Game 6 tied the game and forced extra innings. In the 12th, Edmonds won the game for the Cardinals with a walk-off home run. Trailing in the sixth inning of Game 7, a game-tying RBI double by Albert Pujols followed by a Scott Rolen two-run home run and then an RBI single by Larry Walker in the 8th inning helped the Cardinals to a 5\u20132 win and their first World Series berth in 17 years.\nBy reaching the World Series with the Cardinals, Tony La Russa became the sixth manager to win pennants in both leagues. This was after La Russa had managed the Oakland Athletics to three straight pennants between 1988 and 1990 and winning the 1989 World Series. He would attempt to join Sparky Anderson as the only men to have managed teams to World Series championships in both leagues. He wore #10 in tribute to Anderson (who wore 10 while manager of the Cincinnati Reds) and to indicate he was trying to win the team's 10th championship.\nSeries build-up.\nThe coming series was heavily discussed and analyzed by the American media. The \"Star-News\" of Wilmington, North Carolina, compared the Red Sox and Cardinals position by position and concluded that the Cardinals were stronger in eight positions, the Red Sox in four and both teams even in one. They predicted that the Cardinals would win the series in seven games. Andrew Haskett of E-Sports.com praised the two teams' starting pitchers but also said that the Cardinals \"took a serious blow\" when Chris Carpenter was forced out of the series due to an injury to his arm. He noted the teams' power hitters, especially the Red Sox's David Ortiz and the Cardinals' Albert Pujols, Scott Rolen and Jim Edmonds. While he praised the Red Sox defense, he called the Cardinals \"one of the best defensive teams to ever walk onto a baseball field\". Ultimately he concluded that the series would be close and that the Red Sox would win it.\nJohn Donovan of \"Sports Illustrated\" noted the team's expected ascent to the championship, writing that they were \"not supposed to be here\". He called the series a \"blast from the past\" because both teams were very old franchises and had twice previously met in the World Series. He wrote that the Red Sox had the edge in pitching and the Cardinals in defense and batting. He concluded that Schilling and Martinez would be the \"key to [the] Series\" and that the Red Sox would win in six games. Jim Molony of MLB.com, said he expected the series to play out differently from the last time the two teams met in the World Series in 1967 because both team offenses had been some of the best in the league during the season, while pitching had been very dominant in 1967.\nDan Shaughnessy of \"The Boston Globe\" said that \"Bally's in Las Vegas set the Red Sox as 8\u20135 favorites to win the Series\" and that there was \"some sentiment in St. Louis that the NL champions have been disrespected\". but also that Red Sox General Manager Theo Epstein \"Did not want to dis[respect] the Cardinals\". Shaughnessy also quoted Schilling as having said: \"There's a lot of good players in that [visitors] clubhouse over there. This isn't the time for us to be thinking about history. If we get three wins and 26 outs into the fourth win, I'm pretty sure it will hit us.\" Before the series began, Shaughnessy wrote that although the Red Sox had beaten the Yankees, the series needed to be won, as it was the only way to end the Curse of the Bambino, which he had publicized based on the book of the same title in 1990, and demeaning chants of \"1918!\" would no longer echo at Yankee Stadium. During the series, he wrote that people in New England were thinking about loved ones who had spent their entire lives hoping that they would see their Red Sox win a World Series.\nBoth teams had lost in their previous World Series appearances in seven games. The Red Sox lost to the New York Mets in 1986, while the Cardinals lost in 1987 to the Minnesota Twins. The Cardinals and Red Sox had not won the World Series since 1982 and 1918 respectively. When the two teams had previously played each other in the 1946 and 1967 World Series, the Cardinals won both series in seven games. Having won the All-Star Game, the AL had been awarded home-field advantage, which meant the Red Sox had the advantage at Fenway Park in four of the seven games in the series.\nSummary.\n\"Boston won the series, 4\u20130.\"\nMatchups.\nGame 1.\nLocal band Dropkick Murphys performed \"Tessie\", and a moment of silence was observed to remember local student Victoria Snelgrove, who had been accidentally killed by police two days earlier as Sox fans had celebrated winning the American League pennant. Steven Tyler, the lead singer of Aerosmith, another local band, performed \"The Star-Spangled Banner\" and Red Sox legend Carl Yastrzemski threw the ceremonial first pitch. Kelly Clarkson sang \"God Bless America\" during the seventh-inning stretch.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nDown the right field line, into the corner it is fair! And a three-run home run, Ortiz has done it again!\nJoe Buck of Fox Sports, calling the fifth home run of the postseason by David Ortiz in Game 1.\nTim Wakefield made his first start of the 2004 postseason for the Red Sox, becoming the first knuckleball pitcher to make a World Series start since 1948, while Woody Williams, who had won his previous two starts in the post-season, was the Cardinals' starting pitcher. In the bottom of the first inning, Williams gave up a lead-off double to Johnny Damon, and then hit Orlando Cabrera in the shoulder with one of his pitches. After Manny Ram\u00edrez flied out, Ortiz hit a three-run home run in his first-ever World Series at bat. Kevin Millar then scored by virtue of a single by Bill Mueller to put the Red Sox up 4\u20130.\nThe Cardinals scored one run in the second on a sacrifice fly by Mike Matheny to score Jim Edmonds, then one in the third innings on a solo home run to right field by Walker. In the bottom of the third, the Red Sox scored three runs after seven consecutive batters reached base, giving them a five-run lead. Dan Haren came in from the Cardinals' bullpen to replace Williams during the inning.\nIn the top of the fourth inning, Bronson Arroyo was brought in to replace Wakefield after he had walked four batters. Those walks, combined with a throwing error by Millar and a passed ball by Doug Mirabelli, allowed the Cardinals to reduce the lead to two runs. In the sixth inning, So Taguchi reached first on an infield hit and was allowed to advance to second when Arroyo threw the ball into the stands. Doubles by \u00c9dgar Renter\u00eda and Walker tied the game at seven. In the bottom of the seventh inning, Ram\u00edrez singled with two men on base, and a poor throw by Edmonds allowed Mark Bellhorn to score. Ortiz then hit a line drive that appeared to skip off the lip of the infield and hit Cardinals' second baseman Tony Womack with \"considerable force\". Womack immediately grabbed his clavicle as a second Red Sox run scored. He was attended to once play had ended and replaced by Marlon Anderson. A precautionary X-ray revealed that there was no damage.\nIn the top of the eighth inning, with one out and two men on base, Red Sox closer Keith Foulke came in to pitch. Renter\u00eda singled towards Ram\u00edrez in left field, who unintentionally kicked the ball away, allowing Jason Marquis to score. Walker also hit the ball towards Ram\u00edrez in the next at bat. Ram\u00edrez slid in an attempt to try to catch the ball, but tripped and deflected the ball for his second error in two plays, and the fourth Red Sox error in the game. Roger Cede\u00f1o scored on the play to tie the game at nine. In the bottom of the eighth inning, however, Jason Varitek reached on an error, and Bellhorn then hit a home run off the right field foul pole, also known as Pesky's Pole, for his third home run in as many games to give the Red Sox a two-run lead. In the ninth inning, Foulke struck out Cede\u00f1o to win the game for the Red Sox 11\u20139.\nWith a total of 20\u00a0runs, it was the highest-scoring opening game of a World Series ever. With four RBI, Ortiz also tied a franchise record for RBI in a World Series game. Walker, making his World Series debut in Game 1, collected four hits in five at bats with a home run and two doubles. His four-hit outing tied a Cardinals World Series record, becoming the seventh overall and first to do so since Lou Brock in 1967, also against Boston.\nGame 2.\nBoston native James Taylor performed \"The Star-Spangled Banner\" before Game 2 and singer Donna Summer, also a Boston native, performed \"God Bless America\" during the seventh-inning stretch. The ceremonial first pitch was thrown by the surviving three members of the famous Red Sox quartet that had faced the Cardinals in 1946: Bobby Doerr, Dom DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky (Ted Williams had died two years earlier).\nDespite having a torn tendon in his right ankle, similar to Game 6 of the ALCS against the Yankees, Schilling started Game 2 for the Red Sox. Schilling had four stitches in the ankle the day before, causing him \"considerable discomfort\". He was not sure on the morning of Game 2 if he would be able to play, but after one of the stitches was removed, he was treated with antibiotics and was able to pitch.\nMorris started for the Cardinals on three days' rest (one day fewer than is orthodox rest for a starting pitcher).\nIn the first inning, Albert Pujols doubled with two out, and Scott Rolen hit a line drive towards Mueller, who caught it to end the inning. Morris walked Ram\u00edrez and Ortiz in the bottom of the inning. Varitek then tripled to center field to give the Red Sox a 2\u20130 lead.\nIn the fourth inning, Pujols doubled again and was able to score on an error by Mueller. The Red Sox also scored in the bottom of the inning when Bellhorn doubled to center with two runners on base, to give them a three-run lead. Cal Eldred came in to relieve Morris in the fifth inning, after he had walked the leadoff hitter, having already given up four runs in the previous four innings. Mueller committed his World Series record-tying third error of the game, in the sixth inning; however, the Cardinals failed to capitalize. In the bottom of the inning, Trot Nixon led off with a single to center, and two more singles by Johnny Damon and Orlando Cabrera enabled two more runs to score to make it 6\u20131.\nAfter six innings of allowing no earned runs \u2013 which gave him a total of 13 innings against the Yankees and Cardinals with only one earned run allowed on a torn ankle tendon \u2013 Schilling made way for Alan Embree, who pitched a scoreless seventh. Mike Timlin replaced Embree in the eighth, in which a sacrifice fly by Scott Rolen reduced the Red Sox lead to four. Keith Foulke then came in to strike out Jim Edmonds to end the inning and also pitched the ninth to end the game. For the second game in a row, the Red Sox won despite committing four fielding errors.\nWith the win, Schilling became only the fifth pitcher to ever win a World Series game with a team from both leagues, having previously done it with National League teams, the Philadelphia Phillies in 1993, and the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2001. He later donated the bloody sock he wore during the game to the Baseball Hall of Fame museum. Much of the blame for the Cardinals' losses in the first two games was directed at the fact that Rolen, Edmonds and Reggie Sanders, three of the Cardinals' best batters, had combined for one hit in 22\u00a0at-bats.\nGame 3.\nSeattle Mariners designated hitter Edgar Mart\u00ednez was presented with the 2004 Roberto Clemente Award, having announced his retirement one month before. The ceremonial first pitch was thrown by arguably the Cardinals' best-ever position player, Stan Musial, and caught by arguably their best-ever pitcher, Bob Gibson. \"The Star-Spangled Banner\" and \"God Bless America\" were sung by country music singer Martina McBride and singer\u2013songwriter Amy Grant respectively. During the game, a sign for the fast-food restaurant Taco Bell that measured and read \"Free Taco Here\", was hung approximately from home plate, over the left-center field bullpen. Taco Bell promised that, if the sign was hit by a home run ball, they would give a free \"Crunchy Beef Taco\" to everyone in the United States.\nOnce again, the Red Sox took the lead in the first inning when Ram\u00edrez hit a home run off former Red Sox pitcher Jeff Suppan. Pedro Mart\u00ednez was the starting pitcher for the Red Sox, and in the bottom of the first inning, he allowed the Cardinals to load the bases with one out. Edmonds then hit a fly ball towards Ram\u00edrez in left field, who caught it on the run and threw to catcher Jason Varitek at home plate. Varitek tagged out Walker, who was attempting to score from third, ending the inning.\nIn the bottom of the third inning, the Cardinals had two runners on base with no one out. Walker hit a ground ball towards first base, and Cardinals third base coach Jos\u00e9 Oquendo signalled to Suppan on third to run to home plate. However, halfway towards home, Suppan \"suddenly stopped\". \u00c9dgar Renter\u00eda, who had been running from second base towards third, was forced to return to second when he saw Suppan had stopped. After stepping on first base, David Ortiz began moving toward Suppan, who had turned back toward third, Ortiz threw to third baseman Mueller, who tagged Suppan out. After the next batter, Albert Pujols, grounded to Mueller, the inning ended.\nTrot Nixon extended the Red Sox lead to two in the top of the fourth, hitting a single to right field that scored Mueller, who had started the rally with a two-out double to left-center. Johnny Damon then led off the Red Sox's fifth inning with a double to right. Singles by Orlando Cabrera and Ram\u00edrez, to right and left respectively, scored Damon to make it 3\u20130. With two out, Mueller singled along the first base line, enabling Cabrera to score the Red Sox's fourth run. Suppan was replaced by Al Reyes, which meant none of the Cardinals three starting pitchers had finished five innings during the series.\nMike Timlin relieved Martinez in the bottom of the eighth inning. He finished with six strikeouts, three hits allowed and retired the last 14\u00a0batters he faced. The Cardinals avoided a shutout when Walker hit a home run to center field off Foulke in the ninth inning, but Foulke retired the other three batters he faced in the inning to secure the win for the Red Sox 4\u20131.\nOn the same day the Red Sox won Game 3, \"The Boston Globe\"'s Dan Shaughnessy wrote that, as this win brought the Red Sox on the verge of winning a World Series, he wondered how many people in New England were thinking about loved ones who had spent their entire lives rooting for the Red Sox and hoping that one day, they would see the Red Sox win a World Series.\nGame 4.\nCountry music singer Gretchen Wilson, a lifelong Cardinals fan, performed \"The Star-Spangled Banner\". Creed lead singer Scott Stapp sang \"God Bless America\" during the seventh-inning stretch. Barry Bonds and Manny Ram\u00edrez received the Hank Aaron Award for the National and American Leagues, respectively. Former Cardinals players Lou Brock and Red Schoendienst threw out ceremonial first pitches along with Rashima Manning, from the Herbert Hoover Boys & Girls Clubs of America. A lunar eclipse was visible during the game \u2013 the first lunar eclipse to take place during a World Series game. The game was also played on the 18th anniversary of Game 7 of the 1986 World Series, which the Red Sox had lost at Shea Stadium to the New York Mets, despite taking a 3\u20130 lead into the sixth inning.\nDamon hit a home run to right field in the first at-bat of the game on a 2\u20131 count to give the Red Sox the lead in the first inning for the fourth straight game; it proved to be the game-winning run. Ram\u00edrez singled in the third inning to give him a hit in 17\u00a0consecutive postseason games. Doubles to right by David Ortiz and to center by Trot Nixon, who narrowly missed a grand slam after swinging on a 3\u20130 count, scored two more runs for the Red Sox to give them a three-run lead. Cardinals starter Jason Marquis went six innings and allowed just the three runs. Marquis was the only Cardinal pitcher who went past five innings, but would be saddled with the loss with no run support.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nBack to Foulke, Red Sox fans have longed to hear it: The Boston Red Sox are World Champions!\nJoe Buck, calling the final play of Game\u00a04.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nSwing and a ground ball stabbed by Foulke! He has it, he underhands to first \u2013 and the Boston Red Sox are the World Champions! For the first time in 86 years, the Red Sox have won baseball's world championship! Can you believe it?\nJoe Castiglione calling the final play of Game\u00a04 for WEEI in Boston.\nIn the top of the eighth, Mueller led off with a single to right and Nixon followed with his third double of the game. Jason Isringhausen came in to pitch for the Cardinals with the bases loaded and nobody out, and was able to finish the inning without allowing a run to score. Kevin Millar pinch hit for the Red Sox starting pitcher Derek Lowe during this inning. It was the third straight game in which the Red Sox starting pitcher had not allowed an earned run.\nRed Sox closer Foulke came in to pitch the bottom of the ninth. Pujols led off the inning by hitting a single through Foulke's legs and into center field. After Foulke induced Rolen into a fly out and struck out Edmonds, Pujols took second base, but no stolen base due to fielder's indifference. \u00c9dgar Renter\u00eda then hit a ground ball that bounced back to Foulke on the mound. Foulke threw it underhand to Doug Mientkiewicz at first base to end the game, and the Red Sox drought.\nThe series win was the Red Sox's first title in 86\u00a0years. They were also the fourth team to win a World Series without trailing in any of the games in the series, and the seventh to win it having previously been three outs away from elimination. With the win, pitcher Lowe became the first pitcher to ever win three series-clinching games in a single postseason having also won Game 3 of the ALDS against the Angels and Game 7 of the ALCS against the Yankees. Although the series was won in St. Louis, 3,000\u00a0Red Sox fans were present at the game, and many stayed after the final out to celebrate with the team, including going on the field when the team came back out of their dugout with the World Series trophy. Ram\u00edrez, who was named the Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the series, said afterwards \"I don't believe in curses, I believe you make your own destination. [\"sic\"]\" Kevin Millar said that it was important to finish off the Cardinals in four and not let it go to a fifth game given the team's history.\nThe Cardinals offense struggled to find spark in the final three games. Pujols, Rolen, and Edmonds, the normally fearsome 3-4-5 hitters for the Cardinals, were six-for-45 with one RBI. The club batted .190 with a .562 OPS overall. Walker was one of very few exceptions, batting .357 with a 1.366 OPS. His two home runs accounted for the only two home runs hit by the entire Cardinals team. In the 2004 postseason, Walker scored 21 percent (14 of 68) of Cardinal runs.\nComposite line score.\n2004 World Series (4\u20130): Boston Red Sox (A.L.) beat St. Louis Cardinals (N.L.).\nSeries statistics.\nBoston Red Sox.\nBatting.\n\"Note: GP=Games Played; AB=At Bats; R=Runs; H=Hits; 2B=Doubles; 3B=Triples; HR=Home Runs; RBI=Runs Batted In; BB=Walks; AVG=Batting Average; OBP=On Base Percentage; SLG=Slugging Percentage\"\nPitching.\n\"Note: G=Games Played; GS=Games Started; IP=Innings Pitched; H=Hits; BB=Walks; R=Runs; ER=Earned Runs; SO=Strikeouts; W=Wins; L=Losses; SV=Saves; ERA=Earned Run Average\"\nSt. Louis Cardinals.\nBatting.\n\"Note: GP=Games Played; AB=At Bats; R=Runs; H=Hits; 2B=Doubles; 3B=Triples; HR=Home Runs; RBI=Runs Batted In; BB=Walks; AVG=Batting Average; OBP=On Base Percentage; SLG=Slugging Percentage\"\nPitching.\n\"Note: G=Games Played; GS=Games Started; IP=Innings Pitched; H=Hits; BB=Walks; R=Runs; ER=Earned Runs; SO=Strikeouts; W=Wins; L=Losses; SV=Saves; ERA=Earned Run Average\"\nBroadcasting.\nThe series was broadcast by Fox, and the announcers were Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. Jeanne Zelasko covered the pre-game build up to all four games and the presentation of the World Series trophy.\nAn average of 23.1\u00a0million people watched Game 1. This was the highest television ratings for the opening game of a World Series in five years and had the highest average number of viewers since 1996. It was also the highest rated broadcast on any network in the past ten months. The ratings for the first two games were also the highest average since 1996, and the average for the first three games was the highest since 1999. Game 3 had the highest average number of viewers with 24.4\u00a0million, since 1996 when 28.7\u00a0million watched the Atlanta Braves and New York Yankees. It was also the Fox network's highest rating for a Game 3 of a World Series ever. Game 4 posted an 18.2\u00a0national rating giving the series an overall average of 15.8. This was the highest average in five years, and the average number of viewers of 25.4\u00a0million was the highest since 1995.\nIn terms of local radio, Joe Castiglione and Jerry Trupiano called the series for WEEI in Boston while Mike Shannon and Wayne Hagin announced for KMOX in St. Louis.\nAftermath.\nWith the win coming eight months after the New England Patriots victory in Super Bowl XXXVIII, the event made Boston the first city to have a Super Bowl and World Series winner in the same year since Pittsburgh in 1979. A number of players from both teams won awards for their performances during the season. Manny Ram\u00edrez won the Hank Aaron Award and, along with Albert Pujols, a Silver Slugger Award, while Gold Glove awards were won by Mike Matheny, Scott Rolen and Jim Edmonds. The American sports magazine \"Sports Illustrated\" honored the Red Sox with their Sportsman of the Year award a month later, making them the first professional team to ever win the award. For pitcher Curt Schilling, it was the second time he had won the award, having shared it with then-Arizona Diamondbacks teammate Randy Johnson in 2001.\nThis World Series win by the Red Sox continued a history of Boston teams beating St. Louis teams to win championships. Previously, in Super Bowl XXXVI, the New England Patriots had upset the St. Louis Rams' \"Greatest Show on Turf\" to win their first Super Bowl and herald a dynasty led by Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, the Boston Bruins had swept the St. Louis Blues in the 1970 Stanley Cup Finals (with Game 4 being remembered for Bobby Orr's Cup-winning overtime goal that sent him flying), and the Boston Celtics (as led by Bill Russell) met the St. Louis Hawks four times from 1957 to 1961 for the NBA championship and won three times, which included the first in a dynasty in 1957. With championship showdowns between teams from Boston and St. Louis seen in Major League Baseball, the NFL, NBA and NHL, it is the only showdown between teams from two specific locations, that has been seen in each of these four leagues. St. Louis would finally end Boston's dominance against them when the St. Louis Blues defeated the Boston Bruins in the 2019 Stanley Cup Finals.\nRed Sox.\nThe Red Sox's win in the World Series ended the \"Curse of the Bambino\", which supposedly had afflicted the team ever since the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1919. Pitcher Derek Lowe and other players said that the team would no longer hear \"1918!\" at Yankee Stadium ever again. Kevin Millar said to all Red Sox fans: \"We wanted to do it so bad for the city of Boston. To win a World Series with this on our chests, it hasn't been done since 1918. So rip up those '1918!' posters right now.\" Members of previous Red Sox teams who had fallen short immediately acclaimed the 2004 team, including Pesky \u2013 who had been the shortstop responsible for a fatal checking error that had allowed the Cardinals' Enos Slaughter to complete his \"Mad Dash\" to score the winning run in Game 7 at the old Sportsman's Park in 1946. Pesky watched the game from the visiting clubhouse and was immediately embraced by Millar, Wakefield, Schilling and others as a living representative of those previous teams as he joined the celebrations.\nIt also added to the recent success of Boston-area teams, following the Patriots wins in Super Bowls XXXVI and XXXVIII. With the Patriots having won Super Bowl XXXVIII the previous February, the Red Sox winning the World Series marked the first time since 1979 that the same city had a Super Bowl and World Series winner in the same year \u2013 the last city to accomplish the feat had been Pittsburgh, when the Steelers and Pirates had won Super Bowl XIII and the World Series respectively. The city would go on to record a decade of sports success from 2001 to 2011 with seven championships in the four major North American sports leagues (MLB, the NFL, the NBA and the NHL), including one in each league after the Patriots won two more Super Bowls, the Celtics won the 2008 NBA championship and the Bruins won the Stanley Cup in 2011. Following the Bruins winning the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals, \"Boston Globe\" columnist Dan Shaughnessy ranked all seven championships and chose the Red Sox' 2004 World Series win as the greatest Boston sports championship during the ten-year span.\nRed Sox Manager Terry Francona became the third manager in four years to win a World Series in his first year as manager, following Bob Brenly of the 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks and Jack McKeon of the 2003 Florida Marlins.\nMassachusetts US Senator, Boston resident and future Secretary of State John Kerry, who had been named Democratic presidential nominee in Boston that summer, wore a Red Sox cap the day after the series ended. He also said that the Red Sox had \"[come] back against all odds and showed America what heart is\". His Republican opponent, incumbent President George W. Bush, made a phone call from the White House to congratulate the team's owner John W. Henry, president Larry Lucchino and manager Terry Francona. The team also visited Bush at the White House the following March, where he gave a speech honoring their presence, in which he asked \"what took [them] so long?\" A future Presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, at the time Massachusetts Governor, ceremonially helped remove the Reverse Curve road sign on Storrow Drive that had been famously spray-painted to read \"Reverse the Curse\" as a further marking of the end of the Curse.\nThe day after the Red Sox win, the \"Boston Globe\" more than doubled its daily press run, from 500,000 to 1.2 million copies, with the headline, \"YES!!!\" right across the front page.\nThe Red Sox held their World Series victory parade on the following Saturday, October 30. The team was transported around on 17 duck boats equipped with loudspeakers so the players could talk to the spectators. Due to large interest in the parade, it was lengthened by officials the day before to include the Charles River, so that fans could watch from the Boston and Cambridge river banks. The parade did not however, include a staged rally. The parade began at 10\u00a0a.m. local time at Fenway Park, turned east onto Boylston Street, then west onto Tremont Street and Storrow Drive before entering the river. One of the lanes on Massachusetts Avenue had to be closed to accommodate members of the media filming the parade as it passed under the Harvard Bridge. Ram\u00edrez was handed a sign by one of the spectators part of the way through the parade, which read, \"Jeter is playing golf today. This is better!\" He held on to this sign for the rest of the parade, in a similar way to what Tug McGraw said after the Philadelphia Phillies won the 1980 World Series. Over three million people were estimated to have attended the parade, making it the largest gathering ever in the city of Boston.\nThe Red Sox were presented with their World Series rings on April 11, 2005, at a ceremony before the team's first home game of the 2005 season. Former Red Sox players Bobby Doerr, Dom DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, and Carl Yastrzemski were all present, as were the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops Orchestra. During the ceremony, five red pennants were first unfurled at the top of the Green Monster, showing the years of each of the Red Sox' previous World Series wins. A much larger banner was unfurled that covered the entire wall and read \"2004 World Series Champions\". James Taylor, himself a Boston native and a Red Sox fan, performed \"America the Beautiful\", and 19 members of the United States Army and Marine Corps who had fought in the Iraq War walked onto the field. Moments of silence were held to honor the deaths of Pope John Paul II, who had died nine days earlier, and former Red Sox relief pitcher, Dick Radatz. The rings were handed out by the team's owner, John W. Henry. Former Red Sox players Lowe and Dave Roberts, who had joined the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres respectively during the off-season, were also present to collect their rings. The ceremony, which lasted around an hour, ended with stars from other Boston sports teams, including the Celtics' Bill Russell, the Bruins' Bobby Orr and the Patriots' Tedy Bruschi and Richard Seymour, throwing ceremonial first pitches. The presence of Bruschi and Seymour made evident the recent success of Boston-area teams. The day after the Red Sox won the Series, Shaughnessy and the rest of the news media said of the Red Sox home opener: \"The team in the third-base dugout? The New York Yankees, Sweet.\" In a sign of respect, the Red Sox rivals came to the top step of the visitors dugout and gave the Red Sox a standing ovation. The Fenway Park crowd burst into cheers when Yankees pitcher Mariano Rivera was introduced, breaking from the tradition of fans booing opposing players, due to him having blown save opportunities in Games 4 and 5 of the 2004 ALCS. Rivera was a good sport about it and laughed while waving his arms in mock appreciation of the fans.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nAll right...Forget about ending the curse and having 86 years of baggage erased in one fell swoop. If you don't get emotional watching a group of guys celebrating and hugging when you feel like you know them, when you suffered all the same highs and lows, when you spent the last seven months with them...I mean, why even follow sports at all? (Translation: It's getting a little dusty in here.)\nBill Simmons' entry in his Game 4 running diary at 8:42 PM Pacific Time, 1 minute after the final out\nThe following August, Simon & Schuster published \"Faithful\", a book which collected e-mails about the Red Sox between American writers and Red Sox fans Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan during the 2004 season. In March 2005, Houghton Mifflin Company published \"Reversing the Curse\", a book by Shaughnessy, author of the bestselling \"The Curse of the Bambino\", chronicling the 2004 Red Sox season. ESPN's Bill Simmons published \"Now I Can Die In Peace\", a collection of his columns with updated annotations and notes, including columns for each of the last four games of the ALCS and each World Series game \u2013 with Game 4 being a running diary. The Farrelly Brothers altered the ending of their 2005 film \"Fever Pitch\" \u2013 which includes appearances by Damon, Nixon and Varitek \u2013 to coincide with the actual end of the series. They and their crew, plus stars Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon, flew to St. Louis and Barrymore and Fallon attended Game 4 in character, complete with the two of them running onto the field at Busch Stadium and kissing once the final out was made.\nOn May 28, 2014, the team reunited at Fenway Park as the Red Sox celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the historic championship as they hosted the Atlanta Braves. Ramirez threw out the first pitch to Varitek but was cut off by Damon in a reversal of Ramirez once cutting off Damon's throw from center field during a game.\nOn April 9, 2024, the team reunited again for their 20-year anniversary of the 2004 championship as the Red Sox hosted the Baltimore Orioles on Opening Day at Fenway Park. The pregame ceremony was also in memory of Wakefield, who had died of brain cancer on October 1st at the age of 57, Wakefield's wife Stacy, who had died of pancreatic cancer on February 29th at the age of 53, and Lucchino, who had died of heart failure on April 2nd at the age of 78. Tim and Stacy's children \u2013 their son Trevor and daughter Brianna \u2013 led the 2004 team in from left field, and Brianna threw the ceremonial first pitch to Varitek.\nCardinals.\nOn the Cardinals' side, the media expressed disappointment at the team's failure to win a game in the Series after recording the team's best regular season in over 60\u00a0years. Many reporters believed that the Cardinals had not played up to their usual standard, and much of the blame was directed at Rolen, Edmonds and Reggie Sanders, three of the Cardinals' best hitters, who had combined for one hit in 39\u00a0at bats in the series.\nIt also marked the last time that Busch Memorial Stadium would host a World Series. The Cardinals moved to the new Busch Stadium in their championship season of 2006, which was their first since 1982.\n2005 season and beyond.\nBoth the Red Sox and Cardinals made the playoffs the following season. The Red Sox lost to the eventual champions the Chicago White Sox, in the American League Division Series, who would go on to end their own curse in the Curse of the Black Sox. The Cardinals, in a repeat meeting of the previous season's National League Championship Series, lost to the Houston Astros. However, the city of Boston would see more success when the New England Patriots won Super Bowl XXXIX, three months after the Red Sox won the World Series, giving the greater Boston area its third championship in 12 months, making it the first time since 1980 that any city had two Super Bowl winners and a World Series winner in a period of the same length.\nBoth teams also won one of the next three World Series in successive years; the Cardinals, as noted above, in 2006, beating the Detroit Tigers in five games, becoming the first team since the New York Yankees in 1923, to win a World Series championship in their first season in a new stadium (which the Yankees themselves would also do in 2009). Tony La Russa would achieve the distinction that he could not achieve in 2004 of managing World Series winners in both leagues. He would continue to wear number 10 to pay tribute to Sparky Anderson afterwards. \nThe Red Sox won the World Series the following year, sweeping the Colorado Rockies in four games. Tom Werner, chairman of the Red Sox, and team president Larry Lucchino said that the 2004 championship was \"for the parents and grandparents who had suffered through the Curse of the Bambino\", while 2007 was \"for children, grandchildren, and for Red Sox Nation\".\nBoth teams would meet again in the 2013 World Series, with the Red Sox winning the championship in six games. It was the first time Boston clinched the World Series at its home field, Fenway Park, since 1918. Boston would win an additional title in 2018 when they defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers 4 games to 1.\nTwelve years after this World Series, the Chicago Cubs would end their own championship drought at 108 years, defeating the Cleveland Indians in seven games in their first World Series appearance in 71 years. In doing this, Theo Epstein is now credited with helping to end two of the most famous curses in all of professional sports. Coincidentally, the losing manager in that year's World Series was Terry Francona, who had managed the Red Sox to both the 2004 and 2007 championships. The winning manager in that World Series, Joe Maddon, like La Russa, managed pennant winning teams in both leagues having managed the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays.\nIn the 2021 National League Division Series, 2004 Red Sox members faced off against each other as managers, as Dave Roberts' Los Angeles Dodgers beat Gabe Kapler's San Francisco Giants in five games.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["1088360", "2070074"], "permutation_1": ["1088360", "2070074"], "permutation_2": ["2070074", "1088360"], "permutation_3": ["2070074", "1088360"]}
{"id": "2hop__819523_3429", "docs_added": {"191890": "American Idol\nAmerican singing competition\nAmerican Idol is an American singing competition television series created by Simon Fuller, produced by Fremantle North America and 19 Entertainment, and distributed by Fremantle North America. It aired on Fox from June 11, 2002, to April 7, 2016, for 15 seasons. It was on hiatus for two years until March 11, 2018, when a revival of the series began airing on ABC.\nIt started as an addition to the \"Idol\" format that was based on \"Pop Idol\" from British television, in which the programme's first series, which was won by Will Young, ended over four months before the show began, as it later became one of the most successful shows in the history of American television. The concept of the series involves discovering recording stars from unsigned singing talents, with the winner determined by American viewers using phones, Internet platforms, and SMS text voting. The winners of the first twenty-two seasons, as chosen by viewers, are Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Hicks, Jordin Sparks, David Cook, Kris Allen, Lee DeWyze, Scotty McCreery, Phillip Phillips, Candice Glover, Caleb Johnson, Nick Fradiani, Trent Harmon, Maddie Poppe, Laine Hardy, Just Sam, Chayce Beckham, Noah Thompson, Iam Tongi, and Abi Carter.\n\"American Idol\" employs a select panel of judges who critique the contestants' performances. The original judges, for seasons one through eight, were record producer and music manager Randy Jackson, singer and choreographer Paula Abdul, and music executive and manager Simon Cowell. The judging panel for the last three seasons on Fox consisted of singers Keith Urban, Jennifer Lopez, and Harry Connick Jr. Season sixteen brought three new judges: singers Luke Bryan, Katy Perry, and Lionel Richie. Beginning in the twenty-third season, Underwood replaced Perry, alongside returning judges Bryan and Richie. The show has been hosted by television presenter Ryan Seacrest throughout its run, apart from the show's inaugural season when comedian Brian Dunkleman joined Seacrest as co-host.\nThe success of \"American Idol\" has been described as \"unparalleled in broadcasting history\". A rival TV executive said the series was \"the most impactful show in the history of television\". It became a recognized springboard for launching the career of many artists as bona fide stars. According to \"Billboard\" magazine, in its first ten years, \"\"Idol\" has spawned 345 \"Billboard\" chart-toppers and a platoon of pop idols, including Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Chris Daughtry, Fantasia, Ruben Studdard, Jennifer Hudson, Clay Aiken, Adam Lambert, and Jordin Sparks while remaining a TV ratings juggernaut.\" For an unprecedented eight consecutive years, from the 2003\u201304 television season through the 2010\u201311 season, either its performance show or result show was ranked number one in U.S. television ratings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\n\"American Idol\" was based on the British show \"Pop Idol\" created by Simon Fuller, which was in turn inspired by the New Zealand television singing competition \"Popstars\". Television producer Nigel Lythgoe saw a version in Australia and helped bring it over to Britain. Fuller was inspired by the idea from \"Popstars\" of employing a panel of judges to select singers in audition. He then added other elements, including telephone voting by the viewing public (which at the time was already in use in shows, such as the \"Eurovision Song Contest\"), the drama of backstories, and real-life soap opera unfolding in real time. \"Pop Idol\" debuted in Britain in 2001 with Lythgoe as showrunner\u200d\u2014\u200cthe executive producer and production leader\u200d\u2014\u200cand Simon Cowell as one of the judges, and was successful with the viewing public.\nIn 2001, Fuller, Cowell, and TV producer Simon Jones attempted to sell the \"Pop Idol\" format to the United States, but the idea was initially met with poor responses from all the television networks including UPN and Fox. However, Rupert Murdoch, head of Fox's parent company, was later persuaded to buy the series by his daughter, Elisabeth, who had seen the British show. Although Fox's executives wanted to change the format, Murdoch insisted that it should remain the same as the British one. One change was nevertheless made due to the presence of multiple time zones in the United States that made it impractical for the country to vote in the same time period, an additional half-hour results show was therefore added the day following the performance show. The show was renamed \"\" and debuted in the summer of 2002. Cowell was initially offered the job of showrunner but turned down the offer; Lythgoe then took over that position. Much to the surprise of Cowell and Fox, it became one of the biggest shows of the summer. With its successful launch in the summer, the show was then moved to January and expanded. The show grew into a phenomenon largely due to its personal engagement with the contestants by prompting the viewers to vote, and the presence of the acid-tongued Cowell as a judge. By 2004, it had become the most-watched show on American television, a position it then held for seven consecutive seasons until 2011.\nHowever, after a few years of sharp declining ratings starting in 2012, with rating falls of over 20% each season, the fifteenth season would be its last on Fox, ending its run in April 2016. In May 2017, ABC acquired the rights to the series and the program returned for the 2017\u201318 television season. The first season of the revived series, or the sixteenth season overall, started airing in March 2018. Seven seasons have been aired on ABC as of May 2024.\nJudges and hosts.\nJudges.\nThe show had originally planned on having four judges following the \"Pop Idol\" format; however, only three judges had been found by the time of the audition round in the first season, namely Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell. A fourth judge, radio DJ Stryker, was originally chosen but he dropped out citing \"image concerns.\" In the second season, New York radio personality Angie Martinez had been hired as a fourth judge but withdrew after only a few days of auditions, due to being uncomfortable with giving out criticism. The show decided to continue with the three judges format until the eighth season. All three original judges stayed on the judging panel for eight seasons.\nIn the eighth season, Latin Grammy Award-nominated singer-songwriter and record producer Kara DioGuardi was added as a fourth judge. Abdul left the show in 2009, after the eighth season, as a result of failing to agree to terms with the show producers. Emmy Award-winning talk show host Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul for the ninth season, but left in 2010 after just one season. DioGuardi was let go from \"American Idol\" in 2010 after two seasons, as producers favored a return to the three-person judges panel previously used prior to DioGuardi's appearance on the show. Cowell also left the show in 2010 to introduce the American version of his show \"The X Factor\" in 2011. Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth.\nJennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined the judging panel in the tenth season, but both left in 2012 after two seasons. Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. They were replaced by three new judges, Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj, and Keith Urban, who joined Jackson in the twelfth season. However, both Carey and Minaj left after one season. Jackson also departed the judges table after twelve seasons, but would return as the in-house mentor for the thirteenth season in 2014, after which he left the show permanently.\nUrban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. After a one-season hiatus, Lopez returned to \"American Idol\" for the thirteenth season, and was joined by former mentor Harry Connick Jr. After this, Lopez, Urban, and Connick Jr. remained on the show until its cancellation after the fifteenth season in 2016.\nWhen the show was revived by ABC in 2018, Katy Perry, Luke Bryan, and Lionel Richie were selected as judges, marking the sixteenth season of \"Idol\". Bryan and Richie have remained on the show since, while Perry left the show in May 2024 after seven seasons. On July 31, 2024, published reports announced former \"Idol\" winner Carrie Underwood as Perry's replacement, joining Bryan and Richie for the twenty-third season.\nGuest judges may occasionally be introduced. In the second season, guest judges such as Richie and Gladys Knight were used, and in the third season, Donna Summer, Quentin Tarantino, Gloria Estefan, and some of the mentors also joined as judges to critique the performances in the final rounds. Guest judges were sporadically used during the audition rounds: Gene Simmons, LL Cool J, Brandy, Mark McGrath, and Kenny Loggins in the fourth season; Carole Bayer Sager, Jewel, and Olivia Newton-John in the sixth season; Shania Twain, Neil Patrick Harris, Avril Lavigne, Mary J. Blige, Joe Jonas, Kristin Chenoweth, Victoria Beckham, and Perry in the ninth season (substituting in the vacant chair, before DeGeneres was hired); and Adam Lambert filled in for Urban at one audition location during the fourteenth season. In the ABC version, two instances occurred during the live shows: Abdul filled in for Bryan on one episode of the nineteenth season, while Alanis Morissette and Ed Sheeran filled in for Perry and Richie on an episode of the twenty-first season.\nHosts.\nThe first season was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman, following the format of \"Pop Idol\" of using two presenters. Dunkleman quit thereafter, resulting in Seacrest becoming the sole emcee starting with the second season in 2003.\nSeacrest has remained as sole host of \"American Idol\" ever since, with the exception of the two-year hiatus between 2016 and 2018 as well as April 8, 2019, during the seventeenth season, when Bobby Bones subbed for Seacrest after the latter fell ill. Dunkleman did, however, return for the initial in 2016 as a guest.\nCast timeline.\nAnnotations\nSelection process.\nIn a series of steps, the show selected the eventual winner out of many tens of thousands of contestants.\nContestant eligibility.\nThe eligible age-range for contestants is fifteen to twenty-eight years old. The initial age limit was sixteen to twenty-four in the first three seasons, but the upper limit was raised to twenty-eight in the fourth season, and the lower limit was reduced to fifteen in the tenth season. The contestants have to be legal U.S. residents, can not have advanced to particular stages of the competition in previous seasons, and must not have held a current recording or talent representation contract by the semi-final stage (in previous years by the audition stage).\nInitial auditions.\nFor the first eighteen seasons, contestants went through at least three sets of cuts. The first was a brief audition with a few other contestants in front of selectors which may include one of the show's producers. Although auditions can exceed 10,000 in each city, only a few hundred of these made it past the preliminary round of auditions. Successful contestants then sing in front of producers, where more may be cut. Only then can they proceed to audition in front of the judges, which is the only audition stage shown on television. Those selected by the judges are sent to Hollywood. Between 10 and 60 people in each city may make it to Hollywood (the average total is between 150 and 200).\nFrom the nineteenth season onwards, contestants request a Zoom interview and audition remotely for the show's producers. If the audition goes well, they will then invite the contestants to audition in front of the judges, in one of the audition cities.\nHollywood week.\nOnce in Hollywood, the contestants perform individually or in groups in a series of rounds. Until the tenth season, there were usually three rounds of eliminations in Hollywood. In the first round the contestants emerged in groups but performed individually. For the next round, the contestants put themselves in small groups and performed a song together. In the final round, the contestants performed solo with a song of their choice a cappella or accompanied by a band\u200d\u2014\u200cdepending on the season. In the second and third seasons, contestants were also asked to write original lyrics or melody in an additional round after the first round. In the seventh season, the group round was eliminated and contestants may, after a first solo performance and on judges approval, skip a second solo round and move directly to the final Hollywood round. In the twelfth season, the executive producers split up the females and males and chose the members to form the groups in the group round.\nIn the tenth and eleventh seasons, a further round was added in Las Vegas, where the contestants performed in groups based on a theme, followed by one final solo round to determine the semi-finalists. At the end of this stage of the competition, 24 to 36 contestants were selected to move on to the semi-final stage. In the twelfth season the Las Vegas round became a Sudden Death round, where the judges had to choose five guys and five girls each night (four nights) to make the top twenty. In the thirteenth season, the Las Vegas round was eliminated and a new round called \"Hollywood or Home\" was added, where if the judges were uncertain about some contestants, those contestants were required to perform soon after landing in Los Angeles, and those who failed to impress were sent back home before they reached Hollywood. In the fourteenth season, the \"Hollywood or Home\" round was dropped, and a Showcase round was added, where the contestants performed at the House of Blues or auditorium for the judges and a live audience, and these performances determine who makes into the Top 24. In the seventeenth and eighteenth seasons, the showcase round took place in Hawaii. From the nineteenth season onward, a showstopper round was used.\nAudience voting.\nFrom the semi-finals onward, the fate of the contestants is decided by public vote. During the contestant's performance as well as the recap at the end, a toll-free telephone number for each contestant was displayed on the screen. For a two-hour period after the episode ends (up to four hours for the finale) in each US time zone, viewers may call or send a text message to their preferred contestant's telephone number, and each call or text message was registered as a vote for that contestant. Viewers were allowed to vote as many times as they can within the two-hour voting window. However, the show reserves the right to discard votes by power dialers. One or more of the least popular contestants may be eliminated in successive weeks until a winner emerges. Over 110\u00a0million votes were cast in the first season, and by the tenth season the seasonal total had increased to nearly 750 million. Voting via text messaging was made available in the second season when AT&T Wireless joined as a sponsor of the show, and 7.5\u00a0million text messages were sent to \"American Idol\" that season. The number of text messages rapidly increased, reaching 178\u00a0million texts by the eighth season. Online voting was offered for the first time in the tenth season. The votes are counted and verified by Telescope Inc.\nSemi-finals.\nIn the first three seasons, the semi-finalists were split into different groups to perform individually in their respective night. In the first season, there were three groups of ten, with the top three contestants from each group making the finals. In the second and third seasons, there were four groups of eight, and the top two of each selected. These seasons also featured a wildcard round, where contestants who failed to qualify were given another chance. In the first season, only one wildcard contestant was chosen by the judges, giving a total of ten finalists. In the second and third seasons, each of the three judges championed one contestant with the public advancing a fourth into the finals, making 12 finalists in all.\nFrom the fourth through seventh and ninth seasons, the twenty-four semi-finalists were divided by gender in order to ensure an equal gender division in the top twelve. The men and women sang separately on consecutive nights, and the bottom two in each groups were eliminated each week until only six of each remained to form the top twelve.\nThe wildcard round returned in the eighth season, wherein there were three groups of twelve, with three contestants moving forward \u2013 the highest male, the highest female, and the next highest-placed singer \u2013 for each night, and four wildcards were chosen by the judges to produce a final 13. Starting in tenth season, the girls and boys perform on separate nights. In the tenth and eleventh seasons, five of each gender were chosen, and three wildcards were chosen by the judges to form a final 13. In the twelfth season, the top twenty semifinalists were split into gender groups, with five of each gender advancing to form the final 10. In the thirteenth season, there were thirty semifinalists, but only twenty semifinalists (ten for each gender) were chosen by the judges to perform on the live shows, with five in each gender based on the vote and three wildcards chosen by the judges composing the final 13. In the fourteenth season, the top 24 performed at The Fillmore Detroit, starting with the 12 males on one night and then the 12 females on the next night. The following week, the same order went for the top 16, with four males eliminated, followed by four females based on the vote. Then, on the first night of finals, a similar sequence from the thirteenth season was used to determine the final 12, with five of each gender based on the vote and two wildcards chosen by the judges. In the fifteenth season, the top 24 performed at Cathedral of Saint Vibiana in Los Angeles and were split into two groups of twelve and performed twice, one being a solo performance and one being a duet with a former Idol contestant. In each group, the judges chose 7 contestants to advance to the top 14 where the judges chose 4 to advance to the top 10 and remaining 6 contestants were chosen based on the vote. In the sixteenth season, the top 24 performed at the Academy in the Heart of LA, and the show repeated the process from the previous season. However, instead of Idol alumnus as duet partners, superstar celebrity singers were used as the duet partners. In the seventeenth season, the same process was repeated again. However, instead of a top 24, it's a top 20, the contestants performed at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, and performed solos in one episode, and performed the duets in two episodes. In the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the top 20 performed at their homes, and based on the vote, half of the top 20 would advance to the top 10, and the other half would be eliminated. However, a wild card was given to one of the bottom 10 to save them from elimination. In the nineteenth season, the show used a combination of the process from the sixteenth and fourteenth seasons. In the twentieth season, the show repeated the process from the previous season, but they used a top 20 instead of a top 16, and there were no all star duets. In the twenty-first season, the same process was repeated, but they started with a top 26 instead of a top 24. In the twenty-second season, the show repeated the process from the twentieth season.\nFinals.\nThe finals are broadcast in primetime from Los Angeles, in front of a live studio audience (except the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic). From 2002 to 2019 and from 2021 to 2022, the venue was CBS Television City. Starting in 2023, it changed to Red Studios. The finals lasted eight weeks in the first season. From the second to ninth and fourteenth seasons, the finals lasted eleven weeks. The tenth and eleventh seasons lasted for twelve weeks, while the twelfth season lasted for ten weeks. In the thirteenth season, the finals lasted thirteen weeks. The finals lasted seven weeks in the fifteenth season, and six weeks in the sixteenth season. Each finalist performs songs based on a weekly theme which may be a musical genre such as Motown, disco, or big band, songs by artists such as Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley or The Beatles, or more general themes such as \"Billboard\" number-one hits or songs from the contestant's year of birth. Contestants usually worked with a celebrity mentor related to the theme. From the tenth to twelfth seasons, Jimmy Iovine was brought in as a mentor for the season. Initially the contestants sang one song each week, but this was increased to two songs from top four or five onwards, then three songs for the top two or three.\nThe most popular contestants are usually not revealed in the results show. Instead, typically the three contestants (two in later rounds) who received the lowest number of votes was called to the center of the stage. One of these three was usually sent to safety; however the two remaining were not necessarily the bottom two. The contestant with the fewest votes was then revealed and eliminated from the competition. A montage of the eliminated contestant's time on the show was played and they gave their final performance (from the fourteenth season onward, the montage and the final performance were dropped). However, in the sixth season, during the series' first ever Idol Gives Back episode, no contestant was eliminated, but on the following week, two were sent home. Moreover, from the eighth to the fourteenth seasons, and the seventeenth season onward, the judges may overturn viewers' decision with a \"Judges' Save\" if they unanimously agreed to. \"The save\" could only be used once, and only up through the Top 5. In the eighth to tenth and fourteenth seasons, a double elimination then took place in the week following the activation of the save, but in the eleventh and thirteenth seasons, a regular single elimination took place. The save was not activated in the twelfth season and consequently, a non-elimination took place in the week after its expiration with the votes then carrying over into the following week.\nThe \"Fan Save\" was introduced in the fourteenth season. During the finals, viewers were given a five-minute window to vote for the contestants in danger of elimination by using their Twitter account to decide which contestant will move on to the next show, starting with the Top 8.\nSeason finale.\nDuring the original run of \"American Idol\" on Fox, the finale week consisted of a one-hour long final performance night and a two-hour last episode of the season that culminates in revealing the winner, both of which are broadcast live in the U.S. Eastern and Central time zones. For the first, third through sixth and fourteenth through fifteenth seasons it was broadcast from the Dolby Theatre, which has an audience capacity of approximately 3,400. The second-season finale took place at the Gibson Amphitheatre, which had an audience capacity of over 6,000. In the seventh through thirteenth seasons, the venue was at the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live, which holds an audience of over 7,000. Since the show's reboot on ABC, the venue remains the same throughout the entire show (excluding auditions), but was still two episodes in the sixteenth season, and then stretched to a single three-hour season finale that is annually aired live simultaneously in all U.S. territories, starting with the seventeenth season. The eighteenth-season finale was conducted virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nRewards for winner and finalists.\nThe winner usually receives a record deal with a major label, which may be for up to six albums, and secures a management contract with \"American Idol\"-affiliated 19 Management (which has the right of first refusal to sign all contestants), as well as various lucrative contracts. All winners prior to the ninth season reportedly earned at least $1\u00a0million in their first year as winner. At first the contract came with a $250,000-plus advance, but dropped to about $62,500 over the Fox years. All the runners-up of the first ten seasons, as well as some of other finalists, had also received record deals with major labels. However, starting in the eleventh season, the runner-up may only be guaranteed a single-only deal. BMG/Sony (first through ninth seasons), UMG (tenth through fifteenth seasons), and Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records (sixteenth through eighteenth seasons) had the right of first refusal to sign contestants for three months after the season's finale. In the fourteenth and fifteenth seasons, the winner was signed with Big Machine Records. Prominent music mogul Clive Davis also produced some of the selected contestants' albums, such as Kelly Clarkson, Clay Aiken, Fantasia Barrino and Diana DeGarmo. All top 10 (11 in the tenth and twelfth seasons, 5 in the fourteenth season, and 7 in the sixteenth season) finalists earn the privilege of going on a tour, where the participants may each earn a six-figure sum.\nSeason synopses.\nEach season premieres with the audition round, taking place in different cities. The audition episodes typically feature a mix of potential finalists, interesting characters and woefully inadequate contestants. Each successful contestant receives a golden or platinum ticket to proceed on to the next round in Hollywood. Based on their performances during the Hollywood round (Las Vegas round from the tenth through twelfth seasons), 24 to 36 contestants are selected by the judges to participate in the semifinals. From the semifinals onward the contestants perform their songs live, with the judges making their critiques after each performance. The contestants are voted for by the viewing public, and the outcome of the public votes is then revealed during a results segment. The results segment feature group performances by the contestants as well as guest performers. The Top-three results also features homecoming events for the Top 3 finalists. The season reaches its climax in a two-hour results finale show, where the winner of the season is revealed.\nWith the exception of the first two seasons, the contestants in the semifinals onward perform in front of a studio audience. They perform with a full band in the finals. The current musical director is Kris Pooley, who has been with the show since the sixteenth season. In previous seasons, the \"American Idol\" band was led by Rickey Minor (fourth through ninth and thirteenth through fifteenth seasons) and Ray Chew (tenth through twelfth seasons). Assistance has also been given by vocal coaches and song arrangers, such as Michael Orland and Debra Byrd to contestants behind the scene. Starting with the seventh season, contestants may perform with a musical instrument from the Hollywood rounds onward. In later seasons, the contestants were allowed to perform with a musical instrument in the auditions. During the first nine seasons, performances were usually aired live on Tuesday nights, followed by the results shows on Wednesdays, but moved to Wednesdays and Thursdays from the tenth through thirteenth seasons, with the tenth, eleventh and thirteenth-season finales aired on Tuesday and Wednesday. From the fourteenth season onward, there were no separate results shows. On the fourteenth season, the show aired on Wednesday nights, and on the fifteenth season, Thursday nights. Since the sixteenth season, the show has been airing on Sundays and Mondays.\n2002\u20132016: Fox.\nSeason 1 (2002).\nThe first season of \"American Idol\" debuted as a summer replacement show in June 2002 on the Fox network. It was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell served as judges.\nIn the audition rounds, 121 contestants were selected from around 10,000 who attended the auditions. These were cut to 30 for the semifinal, with ten going on to the finals. One semifinalist, Delano Cagnolatti, was disqualified for lying to evade the show's age limit. One of the early favorites, Tamyra Gray, was eliminated at the top four, the first of several such shock eliminations that were to be repeated in later seasons. Christina Christian was hospitalized before the top six result show due to chest pains and palpitations, and she was eliminated while she was in the hospital. Jim Verraros was the first openly gay contestant on the show; his sexual orientation was revealed on his blog, however it was removed during the competition after a request from the show producers over concerns that it might be unfairly influencing votes.\nThe final showdown was between Justin Guarini, one of the early favorites, and Kelly Clarkson. Clarkson was not initially thought of as a contender, but impressed the judges with some good performances in the final rounds, such as her performance of Aretha Franklin's \"Natural Woman\", and Betty Hutton's \"Stuff Like That There\", and eventually won the crown on September 4, 2002.\nIn what was to become a tradition, Clarkson performed the coronation song during the finale, and released the song immediately after the season ended. The single, \"A Moment Like This\", went on to break a 38-year-old record held by The Beatles for the biggest leap to number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. Guarini did not release any song immediately after the show and remains the only runner-up not to do so. Both Clarkson and Guarini made a musical film, \"From Justin to Kelly\", which was released in 2003 but was widely panned. Clarkson has since become one of the most successful \"Idol\" contestants internationally, with worldwide album sales of more than 25\u00a0million.\nStarting September 30, 2006, this season was repackaged as \"\"American Idol Rewind\"\" and syndicated directly to stations in the U.S.\nSeason 2 (2003).\nFollowing the success of the first season, the second season was moved up to air in January 2003. The number of episodes increased, as did the show's budget and the charge for commercial spots. Dunkleman left the show, leaving Ryan Seacrest as the lone host. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Kristin Adams was a correspondent for this season.\nCorey Clark was disqualified during the finals for having an undisclosed police record; however, he later alleged that he and Paula Abdul had an affair while on the show and that this contributed to his expulsion. Clark also claimed that Abdul gave him preferential treatment on the show due to their affair. The allegations were dismissed by Fox after an independent investigation. Two semi-finalists were also disqualified that year \u2013 Jaered Andrews for an arrest on an assault charge, and Frenchie Davis for having previously modeled for an adult website.\nThe season finale drew more than 38 million viewers, marking \"Idol\"'s biggest audience ever for a single episode. Ruben Studdard emerged as the winner, beating Clay Aiken by a small margin. Out of a total of 24 million votes, Studdard finished just 134,000 votes ahead of Aiken. This slim margin of victory was controversial due to the large number of calls that failed to get through. In an interview prior to the fifth season, executive producer Nigel Lythgoe indicated that Aiken had led the fan voting from the wildcard week onward until the finale.\nBoth finalists found success after the show, but Aiken out-performed Studdard's coronation song \"Flying Without Wings\" with his single release from the show \"This Is the Night\", as well as in their subsequent album releases. The fourth-place finisher Josh Gracin also enjoyed some success as a country singer.\nSeason 3 (2004).\nThe third season premiered on January 19, 2004. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. One of the most talked-about contestants during the audition process was William Hung whose off-key rendition of Ricky Martin's \"She Bangs\" received widespread attention. His exposure on \"Idol\" landed him a record deal and surprisingly he became the third bestselling singer from that season.\nMuch media attention on the season had been focused on the three black singers, Fantasia Barrino, LaToya London, and Jennifer Hudson, dubbed the Three Divas. All three unexpectedly landed on the bottom three on the top seven result show, with Hudson controversially eliminated. Elton John, who was one of the mentors that season, called the results of the votes \"incredibly racist\". The prolonged stays of John Stevens and Jasmine Trias in the finals, despite negative comments from the judges, had aroused resentment, so much so that John Stevens reportedly received a death threat, which he dismissed as a joke 'blown out of proportion'.\nThe performance of \"Summertime\" by Barrino, later known simply as \"Fantasia\", at Top 8 was widely praised, and Simon Cowell considered it as his favorite \"Idol\" moment in the nine seasons he was on the show. Fantasia and Diana DeGarmo were the last two finalists, and Fantasia was crowned as the winner. Fantasia released as her coronation single \"I Believe\", a song co-written by the first season finalist Tamyra Gray, and DeGarmo released \"Dreams\".\nSeason 4 (2005).\nThe fourth season premiered on January 18, 2005. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This was the first full season of the series to be aired in high definition; the finale of the third season was also aired in high definition. The number of those attending the auditions by now had increased to over 100,000 from the 10,000 of the first season. The age limit was raised to 28 in this season, and among those who benefited from this new rule were Constantine Maroulis and Bo Bice, the two rockers of the show.\nThe top 12 finalists originally included Mario Vazquez, but he dropped out citing 'personal reasons' and was replaced by Nikko Smith. Later, an employee of Fremantle Media, which produces the show, sued the company for wrongful termination, claiming that he was dismissed after complaining about lewd behavior by Vazquez toward him during the show.\nDuring the top 11 week, due to a mix-up with the contestants' telephone number, voting was repeated on what was normally the result night, with the result reveal postponed until the following night.\nIn May 2005, Underwood was announced the winner, with Bice the runner-up. Both Underwood and Bice released the coronation song \"Inside Your Heaven\", with Underwood's version of the song making her the first country artist ever to debut at number-one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart. As of 2015, Underwood has become the most successful \"Idol\" contestant in the U.S., selling 16 million albums in the country, while selling a total of 65 million records worldwide.\nSeason 5 (2006).\nThe fifth season began on January 17, 2006. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. It remains the highest-rated season in the show's run so far. Two of the more prominent contestants during the Hollywood round were the Brittenum twins who were later disqualified for identity theft.\nChris Daughtry's performance of Fuel's \"Hemorrhage (In My Hands)\" on the show was widely praised and led to an invitation to join the band as Fuel's new lead singer, an invitation he declined. His performance of Live's version of \"I Walk the Line\" was well received by the judges but later criticized in some quarters for not crediting the arrangement to Live. He was eliminated at the top four in a shocking result.\nOn May 30, 2006, Taylor Hicks was named \"American Idol\", with Katharine McPhee the runner-up. \"Do I Make You Proud\" was released as Hicks' first single and McPhee's was \"My Destiny\".\nDespite being eliminated earlier in the season, Chris Daughtry (as lead of the band Daughtry) became the most successful recording artist from this season. Other contestants, such as Hicks, McPhee, Bucky Covington, Mandisa, Kellie Pickler, and Elliott Yamin have had varying levels of success.\nSeason 6 (2007).\nThe sixth season began on Tuesday, January 16, 2007. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The premiere drew a massive audience of 37.3\u00a0million viewers, peaking in the last half hour with more than 41\u00a0million viewers.\nTeenager Sanjaya Malakar was the season's most talked-about contestant for his unusual hairdo, and for managing to survive elimination for many weeks due in part to the weblog Vote for the Worst and satellite radio personality Howard Stern, who both encouraged fans to vote for him. However, on the Top 7 results, Sanjaya was voted off.\nThis season saw the first \"Idol Gives Back\" telethon-inspired event, which raised more than $76\u00a0million in corporate and viewer donations. No contestant was eliminated that week, but two (Phil Stacey and Chris Richardson) were eliminated the next.\nIn the May 23 season finale, Jordin Sparks was declared the winner with the runner-up being Blake Lewis. Sparks has had some success as a recording artist post-\"Idol\".\nThis season also saw the launch of the \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest which allows fans to vote for the \"coronation song\". Thousands of recordings of original songs were submitted by songwriters, and 20 entries selected for the public vote. The winning song, \"This Is My Now\", was performed by both finalists during the finale and released by Sparks on May 24, 2007.\nSeason 7 (2008).\nThe seventh season premiered on January 15, 2008, for a two-day, four-hour premiere. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The media focused on the professional status of the seventh season contestants, the so-called 'ringers', many of whom, including Kristy Lee Cook, Brooke White, Michael Johns, and in particular Carly Smithson, had prior recording contracts. Contestant David Hernandez also attracted some attention due to his past employment as a stripper.\nFor the finals, \"American Idol\" debuted a new state-of-the-art set and stage on March 11, 2008, along with a new on-air look. David Cook's performance of \"Billie Jean\" on top-ten night was lauded by the judges, but provoked controversy when they apparently mistook the Chris Cornell arrangement to be David Cook's own even though the performance was introduced as Cornell's version. Cornell himself said he was 'flattered' and praised David Cook's performance. David Cook was taken to the hospital after the top-nine performance show due to heart palpitations and high blood pressure.\nDavid Archuleta's performance of John Lennon's \"Imagine\" was considered by many as one of the best of the season. Jennifer Lopez, who was brought in as a judge in the tenth season, called it a beautiful song-moment that she will never forget. Jason Castro's semi-final performance of \"Hallelujah\" also received considerable attention, and it propelled Jeff Buckley's version of the song to the top of the \"Billboard\" digital song chart. This was the first season in which contestants' recordings were released onto iTunes after their performances, and although sales information was not released so as not to prejudice the contest, leaked information indicated that contestants' songs frequently reached the top of iTunes sales charts.\n\"Idol Gives Back\" returned on April 9, 2008, and raised $64\u00a0million for charity.\nThe finalists were Cook and Archuleta. David Cook was announced the winner on May 21, 2008, the first rocker to win the show. Both Cook and Archuleta had some success as recording artists with both selling over a million albums in the U.S.\nThe \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest was also held this season. From ten of the most popular submissions, each of the final two contestants chose a song to perform, although neither of their selections was used as the \"coronation song\". The winning song, \"The Time of My Life\", was recorded by David Cook and released on May 22, 2008.\nSeason 8 (2009).\nThe eighth season premiered on January 13, 2009. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This season featured the first major change to the judging panel; a fourth judge, Kara DioGuardi, was introduced. Mike Darnell, the president of alternative programming for Fox, stated that the season would focus more on the contestants' personal life.\nThis was also the first season without executive producer Nigel Lythgoe who left to focus on the international versions of his show \"So You Think You Can Dance\". The Hollywood round was moved to the Kodak Theatre for 2009 and was also extended to two weeks. \"Idol Gives Back\" was canceled for this season due to the global recession at the time.\nThere were 13 finalists this season, but two were eliminated in the first result show of the finals. A new feature introduced was the \"Judges' Save\", and Matt Giraud was saved from elimination at the top seven by the judges when he received the fewest votes. The next week, Lil Rounds and Anoop Desai were eliminated.\nThe two finalists were Kris Allen and Adam Lambert, both of whom had previously landed in the bottom three at the top five. Allen won the contest in the most controversial voting result since the second season. It was claimed, and then later retracted, that 38\u00a0million of the 100\u00a0million votes cast on the night came from Allen's home state of Arkansas alone, and that AT&T employees unfairly influenced the votes by giving lessons on power-texting at viewing parties in Arkansas.\nBoth Allen and Lambert released the coronation song, \"No Boundaries\" which was co-written by DioGuardi. This is the first season in which the winner failed to achieve gold album status.\nSeason 9 (2010).\nThe ninth season premiered on January 12, 2010. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Kara DioGuardi, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Paula Abdul left the show and Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul at the start of Hollywood Week. One of the most prominent auditioners this season was General Larry Platt whose performance of \"Pants on the Ground\" became a viral hit song.\nCrystal Bowersox, who has Type-I diabetes, fell ill due to diabetic ketoacidosis on the morning of the girls performance night for the top 20 week and was hospitalized. The schedule was rearranged so the boys performed first and she could perform the following night instead; she later revealed that Ken Warwick, the show producer, wanted to disqualify her but she begged to be allowed to stay on the show.\nMichael Lynche was the lowest vote getter at top nine and was given the Judges' Save. The next week Katie Stevens and Andrew Garcia were eliminated. That week, Adam Lambert was invited back to be a mentor, the first \"Idol\" alum to do so. \"Idol Gives Back\" returned this season on April 21, 2010, and raised $45 million.\nA special tribute to Simon Cowell was presented in the finale for his final season with the show. Many figures from the show's past, including Paula Abdul, made an appearance.\nThe final two contestants were Lee DeWyze and Bowersox. DeWyze was declared the winner during the May 26 finale. No new song was used as coronation song this year; instead, the two finalists each released a cover song \u2013 DeWyze chose U2's \"Beautiful Day\", and Bowersox chose Patty Griffin's \"Up to the Mountain\". This is the first season where neither finalist achieved significant album sales.\nSeason 10 (2011).\nThe tenth season premiered on January 19, 2011. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Many changes were introduced this season, from the format to the personnel of the show. Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined Randy Jackson as judges following the departures of Simon Cowell (who left to launch the American version of \"The X Factor\"), Kara DioGuardi (whose contract was not renewed) and Ellen DeGeneres, who left the show on her own accord.\nRandy Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth. Nigel Lythgoe returned as executive producer. Jimmy Iovine, chairman of the Interscope Geffen A&M label group, the new partner of \"American Idol\", acted as the in-house mentor in place of weekly guest mentors, although in later episodes special guest mentors such as Beyonc\u00e9, will.i.am and Lady Gaga were brought in.\nThe tenth season is the first to include online auditions where contestants could submit a 40-second video audition via Myspace. Karen Rodriguez was one such auditioner and reached the final rounds.\nOne of the more prominent contestants this year was Chris Medina, whose story of caring for his brain-damaged fianc\u00e9e received widespread coverage. Medina was cut in the Top 40 round. Casey Abrams, who suffers from ulcerative colitis, was hospitalized twice and missed the Top 13 result show. The judges used their one save on Abrams on the Top 11, and as a result this was the first season that 11 finalists went on tour instead of 10. In the following week, Naima Adedapo and Thia Megia were both eliminated.\nPia Toscano, one of the presumed favorites to advance far in the season, was unexpectedly eliminated on April 7, 2011, finishing in ninth place. Her elimination drew criticisms from some former \"Idol\" contestants, as well as actor Tom Hanks. After \"Idol\", Jennifer Lopez helped guide her career.\nThe two finalists in 2011 were Lauren Alaina and Scotty McCreery, both teenage country singers. McCreery won the competition on May 25, being the youngest male winner and the fourth male in a row to win \"American Idol\". McCreery released his first single, \"I Love You This Big\", as his coronation song, and Alaina released \"Like My Mother Does\". McCreery's debut album, \"Clear as Day\", became the first debut album by an \"Idol\" winner to reach No. 1 on the US \"Billboard\" 200 since Ruben Studdard's \"Soulful\" in 2003, and he became the youngest male artist to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200.\nSeason 11 (2012).\nThe eleventh season premiered on January 18, 2012. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez, and Randy Jackson returned as judges. One more finalist would join the Top 24 making it the Top 25, which was later revealed to be Jermaine Jones. However, on March 14, Jones was disqualified in 12th place for concealing arrests and outstanding warrants. Jones denied the accusation that he concealed his arrests.\nFinalist Phillip Phillips suffered from kidney pain and was taken to the hospital before the Top 13 results show, and later received medical procedure to alleviate a blockage caused by kidney stones. He was reported to have eight surgeries during his Idol run, and had considered quitting the show due to the pain. He underwent surgery to remove the stones and reconstruct his kidney soon after the season had finished.\nJessica Sanchez received the fewest votes during the Top 7 week, and the judges decided to use their \"save\" option on her, making her the first female recipient of the save. The following week, unlike previous seasons, Colton Dixon was the only contestant sent home. Sanchez later made the final two, the first season where a recipient of the save reached the finale.\nPhillips became the winner, beating Sanchez. During the finale, fifth season finalist Ace Young proposed marriage to third season runner-up Diana DeGarmo on stage \u2013 which she accepted.\nPhillips released \"Home\" as his coronation song, while Sanchez released \"Change Nothing\". Phillips' \"Home\" has since become the best selling of all coronation songs, with over 5 million copies sold.\nSeason 12 (2013).\nThe twelfth season premiered on January 16, 2013. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Judges Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler left the show after two seasons. Randy Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. This season's judging panel consisted of Randy Jackson, along with Mariah Carey, Keith Urban and Nicki Minaj.\nThis was the first season since the ninth season to have four judges on the panel. The pre-season buzz and the early episodes of the show were dominated by the feud between the judges Minaj and Carey after a video of their dispute was leaked to TMZ.\nThe top 10 contestants started with five males and five females, however, the males were eliminated consecutively in the first five weeks, with Lazaro Arbos the last male to be eliminated. For the first time in the show's history, the top 5 contestants were all female. It was also the first time that the judges' \"save\" was not used, the top four contestants were therefore given an extra week to perform again with their votes carried over with no elimination in the first week.\n23-year-old Candice Glover won the season with Kree Harrison taking the runner-up spot. Glover became the first female to win \"American Idol\" since Jordin Sparks, who won the show in 2007. Glover released \"I Am Beautiful\" as a single while Harrison released \"All Cried Out\" immediately after the show. Glover sold poorly with her debut album, and this is also the first season that the runner-up was not signed by a music label.\nTowards the end of the season, Randy Jackson, the last remaining of the original judges, announced he would no longer serve as a judge to pursue other business ventures. Both judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj also decided to leave after one season to focus on their music careers.\nSeason 13 (2014).\nThe thirteenth season premiered on January 15, 2014. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Keith Urban returned as a judge. Urban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. Randy Jackson returned, though Jackson moved from the judging panel to the role of in-mentor. Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj left the panel after one season. Former judge Jennifer Lopez and former mentor Harry Connick, Jr. joined Urban on the panel. Connick Jr. served as a mentor for \"Idol\" in 2010 and 2012. Also, Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick were replaced as executive producers by Per Blankens, Jesse Ignjatovic and Evan Pragger. Bill DeRonde replaced Warwick as a director of the audition episodes, while Louis J. Horvitz replaced Gregg Gelfand as a director of the show.\nThis was the first season where the contestants were permitted to perform in the final rounds songs they wrote themselves. In the Top 8, Sam Woolf received the fewest votes, but he was saved from elimination by the judges. The 500th episode of the series was the Top 3 performance night.\nCaleb Johnson was named the winner of the season, with Jena Irene as the runner-up. Johnson released \"As Long as You Love Me\" as his coronation single while Irene released \"We Are One\".\nSeason 14 (2015).\nThe fourteenth season premiered on January 7, 2015. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban and Harry Connick, Jr. returned for their respective fourth, third and second seasons as judges. Eighth season runner-up Adam Lambert filled in for Urban during the New York City auditions. Randy Jackson did not return as the in-house mentor and left the show permanently. Scott Borchetta replaced Jackson as the mentor.\nChanges this season include only airing one episode a week during the final ten. Coca-Cola ended their longtime sponsorship of the show and Ford Motor Company maintained a reduced role. The winner of the season also received a recording contract with Big Machine Records.\nNick Fradiani won the season, defeating Clark Beckham. Fradiani became the first winner from the Northeast region. Fradiani released \"Beautiful Life\" as his coronation single while Beckham released \"Champion\". Jax, the third place finalist, also released a single called \"Forcefield\".\nSeason 15 (2016).\nFox announced on May 11, 2015, that the fifteenth season would be the final season of \"American Idol\"; as such, the season was expected to have an additional focus on the program's alumni. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, with Harry Connick Jr., Keith Urban, and Jennifer Lopez all returning as judges. The fifteenth season premiered on January 6, 2016. The season was shortened by four weeks compared to previous years. During the finale episode, President Barack Obama praised the millions of young people that voted for contestants and pitched that they vote in the upcoming election. The farewell season concluded on April 7, 2016. Seacrest signed off by saying: \"And one more time\u2014this is so tough\u2014we say to you from Hollywood, goodnight America\", and then he added, \"for now.\"\nTrent Harmon won the season against runner-up La'Porsha Renae. Harmon released \"Falling\" co-written by Keith Urban as his coronation song. Renae's \"Battles\", third-place finisher Dalton Rapattoni's \"Strike A Match\" and fourth-place finisher MacKenzie Bourg's \"Roses\" were also released as singles.\n2018\u2013present: ABC revival.\nIn early 2017, \"Variety\" reported that Fremantle Media was in talks to revive the show for NBC or for its original network, Fox. A dispute between Fremantle and Core Media Group derailed these plans. In May 2017, ABC was making a bid to revive the program. ABC acquired the rights to the series, and \"American Idol\" returned for the 2017\u201318 television season.\nSeason 16 (2018).\nIn July 2017, it was announced that Ryan Seacrest would return as host, and by September 2017 it was revealed that Katy Perry, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie would serve as judges. The sixteenth season premiered on March 11, 2018. This was the first season of \"American Idol\" to air on ABC. The season was again shortened compared to the previous season to twelve weeks, with multiple elimination in the final rounds. Unlike previous seasons where only two finalists remained in the final episode, three finalists performed in the finale. On May 21, 2018, the season concluded with Maddie Poppe crowned the winner, beating Caleb Lee Hutchinson as runner-up and Gabby Barrett in third place. Her winning song was \"Going, Going, Gone\". Caleb Lee Hutchinson released \"Johnny Cash Heart\" as a single, while Gabby Barrett's song was \"Rivers Deep\".\nSeason 17 (2019).\nABC renewed the revival series for another season. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. The seventeenth season premiered on March 3, 2019. For the finale, the show no longer features separate performance and result shows. On May 19, 2019, the season concluded with three finalists, with Madison VanDenburg eliminated in third place after performing two songs, and the final two performing their last song. For the first time, there were no separate performance and grand finale shows this season. Laine Hardy was crowned the winner and Alejandro Aranda runner-up. Hardy released a single, \"Flame\", immediately after the win, but Aranda did not. However, Aranda later released a song he performed in the finale, \"Tonight\", under the name Scarypoolparty on June 28, 2019.\nSeason 18 (2020).\nOn May 13, 2019, the series was renewed for an eighteenth season and it premiered on February 16, 2020. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. For the first time, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, from the top 20 to the finale, the contestants performed in their own homes, while Ryan Seacrest hosted the show remotely in his own home in Los Angeles with the judges also in their respective homes. The season was also further truncated, with the top 5 performing in the finale. Each finalist also performed only two songs for the finale. On May 17, the season concluded, with Just Sam crowned as the winner, with Arthur Gunn finishing as the runner-up. \"Rise Up\", the song Just Sam performed for their audition and reprised on the finale, was released as their debut song.\nSeason 19 (2021).\nOn May 15, 2020, ABC renewed the series for a nineteenth season and it premiered on February 14, 2021. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. Later in October, it was announced that Bobby Bones will return as mentor. On May 23, the season concluded, with Chayce Beckham crowned the winner, with Willie Spence finishing as the runner-up. \"23\", the song Chayce Beckham wrote and performed for Top 4, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 20 (2022).\nOn May 13, 2021, ABC renewed the series for a twentieth season and it premiered on February 27, 2022. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On December 31, it was announced that Bones would not be returning as a mentor. On May 22, the season concluded, with Noah Thompson crowned as the winner, with HunterGirl finishing as the runner-up. \"One Day Tonight\", the song Noah Thompson performed for the Grand Finale, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 21 (2023).\nOn May 13, 2022, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-first season and it premiered on February 19, 2023. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On May 21, the season concluded, with Iam Tongi crowned as the winner, with Megan Danielle finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 22 (2024).\nOn May 16, 2023, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-second season and it premiered on February 18, 2024. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. In February 2024, Perry announced that the season would be her last. On May 20, the season concluded, with Abi Carter crowned as the winner, with Will Moseley finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 23 (2025).\nOn May 10, 2024, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-third season; it was also announced the network was in-talks with \"high-profile stars\" to replace the outgoing Perry. On July 31, 2024, it was announced Seacrest would return as host, with Bryan and Richie returning as judges; Underwood was named as Perry's successor. The season premiered on March 9, 2025.\nReception.\nU.S. television ratings.\nSeasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of \"American Idol\". It holds the distinction of having the longest winning streak in the Nielsen annual television ratings; it became the highest-rated of all television programs in the United States overall for an unprecedented seven consecutive years, or eight consecutive (and total) years when either its performance or result show was ranked number one overall.\n\"Each U.S. network television season starts in late September and ends in late May, which coincides with the completion of May sweeps.\"\n\"American Idol\" premiered in June 2002 and became the surprise summer hit show of 2002. The first show drew 9.9\u00a0million viewers, giving Fox the best viewing figure for the 8.30\u00a0pm spot in over a year. The audience steadily grew, and by finale night, the audience had averaged 23\u00a0million, with more than 40\u00a0million watching some part of that show. That episode was placed third amongst all age groups, but more importantly it led in the 18\u201349 demographic, the age group most valued by advertisers.\nThe growth continued into the next season, starting with a season premiere of 26.5 million. The season attracted an average of 21.7\u00a0million viewers, and was placed second overall amongst the 18\u201349 age group. The finale night when Ruben Studdard won over Clay Aiken was also the highest-rated ever \"American Idol\" episode at 38.1\u00a0million for the final hour. By the third season, the show had become the top show in the 18\u201349 demographic<ref name=\"realitytvworld_5/24/2007\"></ref> a position it has held for all subsequent years up to and including the tenth season, and its competition stages ranked first in the nationwide overall ratings. By the fourth season, \"American Idol\" had become the most-watched series amongst all viewers on American TV for the first time, with an average viewership of 26.8\u00a0million. The show reached its peak in the fifth season with numbers averaging 30.6\u00a0million per episode, and this season remains the highest-rated of the series.\nThe sixth season premiered with the series' highest-rated debut episode and a few of its succeeding episodes rank among the most-watched episodes of \"American Idol.\" During this time, many television executives begun to regard the show as a programming force unlike any seen before, as its consistent dominance of up to two hours two or three nights a week exceeded the 30- or 60-minute reach of previous hits such as NBC's \"The Cosby Show\". The show was dubbed \"the Death Star\", and competing networks often rearranged their schedules in order to minimize losses. However, the sixth season also showed a steady decline in viewership over the course of the season. The season finale saw a drop in ratings of 16% from the previous year. The sixth season was the first season wherein the average results show rated higher than the competition stages (unlike in the previous seasons), and became the second-highest-rated of the series after the preceding season.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the seventh season. The premiere was down 11% among total viewers, and the results show in which Kristy Lee Cook was eliminated delivered its lowest-rated Wednesday show among the 18\u201334 demo since the first season in 2002. However, the ratings rebounded for the seventh-season finale with the excitement over the battle of the Davids, and improved over the sixth season as the series' third most watched finale. The strong finish of season seven also helped Fox become the most watched TV network in the country for the first time since its inception, a first ever in American television history for a non-Big Three major broadcast network. Overall ratings for the season were down 10% from the sixth season, which is in line with the fall in viewership across all networks due in part to the 2007\u20132008 Writers Guild of America strike.\nThe declining trend however continued into the eighth season, as total viewers numbers fell by 5\u201310% for early episodes compared to the seventh season, and by 9% for the finale. In the ninth season, \"Idol\"'s six-year extended streak of perfection in the ratings was broken, when NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics on February 17 beat \"Idol\" in the same time slot with 30.1\u00a0million viewers over \"Idol\"'s 18.4\u00a0million. Nevertheless, \"American Idol\" overall finished its ninth season as the most watched TV series for the sixth year running, breaking the previous record of five consecutive seasons achieved by CBS' \"All in the Family\" and NBC's \"The Cosby Show\".\nIn the tenth season, the total viewer numbers for the first week of shows fell 12\u201313%, and by up to 23% in the 18\u201349 demo compared to the ninth season. Later episodes, however, retained viewers better, and the season ended on a high with a significant increase in viewership for the finale \u2013 up 12% for the adults 18\u201349 demographic and a 21% increase in total viewers from the ninth-season finale. While the overall viewer number has increased this season, its viewer demographics have continued to age year on year \u2013 the median age this season was 47.2 compared to a median age of 32.1 in its first season. The demographics also became \"whiter\" over time and less diverse. Nevertheless, in the 2010\u201311 television season, Fox maintained its lead on over other networks with its seventh consecutive season of victory overall in the 18\u201349 demographic ratings in the United States.\nThe eleventh season, however, suffered a steep drop in ratings, a drop attributed by some to the arrival of new shows such as \"The Voice\" and \"The X Factor\". The ratings for the first two episodes of the eleventh season fell 16\u201321% in overall viewer numbers and 24\u201327% in the 18/49 demo, while the season finale fell 27% in total viewer number and 30% in the 18\u201349 demo. The average viewership for the season fell below 20 million viewers the first time since 2003, a drop of 23% in total viewers and 30% in the 18/49 demo. For the first time in eight years, \"American Idol\" lost the leading position in both the total viewers number and the 18/49 demo, coming in second to \"NBC Sunday Night Football\", although the strengths of \"Idol\" in its second year in the Wednesday-Thursday primetime slots helped Fox achieve the longest period of 18\u201349 demographic victory in the Nielsen ratings, standing at 8 straight years from 2004 to 2012.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the twelfth season, which saw the show hitting a number of series low in the 18\u201349 demo. The finale had 7.2 million fewer viewers than the previous season, and saw a drop of 44% in the 18\u201349 demo. The season viewers averaged at 13.3 million, a drop of 24% from the previous season. The thirteenth season suffered a huge decline in the 18\u201349 demographic, a drop of 28% from the twelfth season, and \"American Idol\" lost its Top 10 position in the Nielsen ratings by the end of the 2013\u201314 television season for the first time since its entry to the rankings in 2003 as a result, and never regained its Top 10 position by the series' end in 2016.\nThe continuing decline influenced further changes for the fourteenth season, including the loss of Coca-Cola as the show's major sponsor, and a decision to only broadcast one, two-hour show per week during the top 12 rounds (with results from the previous week integrated into the performance show, rather than having a separate results show). On May 11, 2015, prior to the fourteenth-season finale, Fox announced that the fifteenth season of \"American Idol\" would be its last. Despite these changes, the show's ratings would decline more sharply. The fourteenth-season finale was the lowest-rated finale ever, with an average of only 8.03 million viewers watching the finale. The show's ratings, however, rebounded in its final season and ended its run in 2016 as Fox's first-ever program to conclude its run without dropping from the Nielsen Top 30 most-watched television shows in each of its seasons.\nFor the revived series on ABC, the ratings were lower but remained stable compared to previous seasons on Fox. The finale of the seventeenth season was slightly more watched than the sixteenth.\nCritical reception.\nEarly reviews were mixed in their assessment. Ken Tucker of \"Entertainment Weekly\" considered that \"As TV, \"American Idol\" is crazily entertaining; as music, it's dust-mote inconsequential\". Others, however, thought that \"the most striking aspect of the series was the genuine talent it revealed\". It was also described as a \"sadistic musical bake-off\", and \"a romp in humiliation\". Other aspects of the show have attracted criticisms. The product placement in the show in particular was noted, and some critics were harsh about what they perceived as its blatant commercial calculations \u2013 Karla Peterson of \"The San Diego Union-Tribune\" charged that \"American Idol\" is \"a conniving multimedia monster\" that has \"absorbed the sin of our debauched culture and spit them out in a lump of reconstituted evil\". The decision to send the first season winner to sing the national anthem at the Lincoln Memorial on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks in 2002 was also poorly received by many. Lisa de Moraes of \"The Washington Post\" noted sarcastically that \"The terrorists have won\" and, with a sideswipe at the show's commercialism and voting process, that the decision as to who \"gets to turn this important site into just another cog in the 'Great \"American Idol\" Marketing Mandala' is in the hands of the millions of girls who have made \"American Idol\" a hit. Them and a handful of phone-redialer geeks who have been clocking up to 10,000 calls each week for their contestant of choice (but who, according to Fox, are in absolutely no way skewing the outcome).\"\nSome of the later writers about the show were more positive, Michael Slezak, again of \"Entertainment Weekly\", thought that \"for all its bloated, synthetic, product-shilling, money-making trappings, \"Idol\" provides a once-a-year chance for the average American to combat the evils of today's music business.\" Singer Sheryl Crow, who was later to act as a mentor on the show, however took the view that the show \"undermines art in every way and promotes commercialism\". Pop music critic Ann Powers nevertheless suggested that Idol has \"reshaped the American songbook\", \"led us toward a new way of viewing ourselves in relationship to mainstream popular culture\", and connects \"the classic Hollywood dream to the multicentered popular culture of the future.\" Others focused on the personalities in the show; Ramin Setoodeh of \"Newsweek\" accused judge Simon Cowell's cruel critiques in the show of helping to establish in the wider world a culture of meanness, that \"Simon Cowell has dragged the rest of us in the mud with him.\" Some such as singer John Mayer disparaged the contestants, suggesting that those who appeared on \"Idol\" are not real artists with self-respect.\nSome in the entertainment industry were critical of the star-making aspect of the show. Usher, a mentor on the show, bemoaning the loss of the \"true art form of music\", thought that shows like \"American Idol\" made it seem \"so easy that everyone can do it, and that it can happen overnight\", and that \"television is a lie\". Musician Michael Feinstein, while acknowledging that the show had uncovered promising performers, said that \"American Idol\" \"isn't really about music. It's about all the bad aspects of the music business \u2013 the arrogance of commerce, this sense of 'I know what will make this person a star; artists themselves don't know.' \" That \"American Idol\" is seen to be a fast track to success for its contestants has been a cause of resentment for some in the industry. LeAnn Rimes, commenting on Carrie Underwood winning Best Female Artist in Country Music Awards over Faith Hill in 2006, said that \"Carrie has not paid her dues long enough to fully deserve that award\". It is a common theme that has been echoed by many others. Elton John, who had appeared as a mentor in the show but turned down an offer to be a judge on \"American Idol\", commenting on talent shows in general, said that \"there have been some good acts but the only way to sustain a career is to pay your dues in small clubs\". \"American Idol\" revolutionized American pop culture and the pop idol process and has provided an opportunity for many to bypass the small club scene and allow a much larger audience to participate in and select the next potential chart topping performer.\nThe success of the show's alumni, however, has led to a more positive assessment of the show, and the show was described as having \"proven it has a valid way to pick talent and a proven way to sell records\". While the industry is divided on the show success, its impact is felt particularly strongly in the country music format. According to a CMT exec, reflecting on the success of Idol alumni in the country genre, \"if you want to try and get famous fast by going to a cattle call audition on TV, Idol reasonably remains the first choice for anyone\", and that country music and Idol \"go together well\".\n\"American Idol\" was nominated for the Emmy's Outstanding Reality Competition Program for nine years but never won. Director Bruce Gower won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Series in 2009, and the show won a Creative Arts Emmys each in 2007 and 2008, three in 2009, and two in 2011, as well as a Governor's Award in 2007 for its Idol Gives Back edition. It won the People's Choice Award, which honors the popular culture of the previous year as voted by the public, for favorite competition/reality show in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2012. It won the first Critics' Choice Television Award in 2011 for Best Reality Competition.\nIn 2013, TV Guide ranked the series No. 48 on its list of the 60 Best Series of All Time.\nGeographical, ethnic, and gender bias.\nThroughout the series, twelve of the seventeen \"Idol\" winners, including its first five, had come from the Southern United States. A large number of other finalists during the series' run have also hailed from the American South, including Clay Aiken, Kellie Pickler, and Chris Daughtry, who are all from North Carolina. In 2012, an analysis of the 131 contestants who have appeared in the finals of all seasons of the show up to that point found that 48% have some connection to the Southern United States.\nThe show itself was popular in the Southern United States, with households in the Southeastern United States 10% more likely to watch \"American Idol\" during the eighth season in 2009, and those in the East Central region, such as Kentucky, were 16 percent more likely to tune into the series. Data from Nielsen SoundScan, a music-sales tracking service, showed that of the 47\u00a0million CDs sold by \"Idol\" contestants through January 2010, 85 percent were by contestants with ties to the American South.\nTheories given for the success of Southerners on \"Idol\" have been: more versatility with musical genres, as the Southern U.S. is home to several music genre scenes; not having as many opportunities to break into the pop music business; text-voting due to the South having the highest percentage of cell-phone only households; and the strong heritage of music and singing, which is notable in the Bible Belt, where it is in church that many people get their start in public singing. Others also suggest that the Southern character of these contestants appeal to the South, as well as local pride. According to fifth season winner Taylor Hicks, who is from the state of Alabama, \"People in the South have a lot of pride ... So, they're adamant about supporting the contestants who do well from their state or region.\"\nFor five consecutive seasons, starting in the seventh season, the title was given to a white male who plays the guitar \u2013 a trend that \"Idol\" pundits call the \"White guy with guitar\" or \"WGWG\" factor. Just hours before the eleventh-season finale, where Phillip Phillips was named the winner, Richard Rushfield, author of the book \"American Idol: The Untold Story\", said, \"You have this alliance between young girls and grandmas and they see it, not necessarily as a contest to create a pop star competing on the contemporary radio, but as ... who's the nicest guy in a popularity contest\", he says, \"And that has led to this dynasty of four, and possibly now five, consecutive, affable, very nice, good-looking white boys.\"\nStart order bias.\nSome fans call the final performance of the night the \"pimp spot\" because it usually receives a big boost in votes, due to the recency effect. By performing first, a performer may benefit from the primacy effect, but any other early performance may be stifled. The second performance spot is sometimes called the \"un-pimp spot\" because it is the least beneficial.\nControversy.\nThe show was criticized in earlier seasons over the onerous contract contestants had to sign that gave excessive control to 19 Entertainment over their future careers and handed a large part of their future earnings to the management.\nIndividual contestants have generated controversy in this competition for their past actions or for being 'ringers' planted by the producers. A number of contestants have been disqualified for various reasons, such as for having an existing contract or undisclosed criminal record, although the show has also been accused of a double standard for disqualifying some but not others.\nVoting results have been a consistent source of controversy. The mechanism of voting has aroused considerable criticism, most notably in the second season when Ruben Studdard beat Clay Aiken in a close vote, and in the eighth season, when the massive increase in text votes fueled the texting controversy. Concerns about power voting have been expressed from the first season. Since 2004, votes also have been affected to a limited degree by online communities such as DialIdol and Vote for the Worst.\nCultural impact.\nTelevision.\nThe enormous success of the show and the revenue it generated were transformative for the Fox Broadcasting Company. \"American Idol\" and other shows such as \"Survivor\" and \"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?\" were credited for expanding reality television programming in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s, and \"Idol\" became the most watched non-scripted primetime television series, which it remained for almost a decade, from 2003 to 2012, breaking records on U.S. television (dominated by drama shows and sitcoms in the preceding decades). On several occasions, notably in 2003 and 2008, \"American Idol\" overtook the Academy Awards as the most-watched non-sports entertainment event on U.S. television, marking the most recent time as of 2025 that a live regular non-sports primetime series has garnered such viewership in the country.\nThe show pushed Fox to become the number one U.S. TV network in overall viewers in 2008 and among adults aged 18\u201349, the key demographic coveted by advertisers, for an unprecedented eight consecutive years from 2005 to 2012. Its success also helped lift the ratings of other shows that were scheduled around it such as \"House\" and \"Bones\", and \"Idol\", for years, was Fox's strongest platform primetime television program for promoting eventual hit shows of the 2010s (of the same network) such as \"Glee\", \"New Girl\" and \"Empire\". The show, its creator Simon Fuller claimed, \"saved Fox\".\nThe show's massive success in the mid-2000s to early 2010s spawned a number of imitating singing-competition shows, such as \"Rock Star\", \"Nashville Star\", \"The Voice\", \"Rising Star\", \"The Sing-Off\", and \"The X Factor\". The number of imitative singing shows on American television had reached 17 by 2016. Its format also served as a blueprint for non-singing TV shows such as \"Dancing with the Stars\" and \"So You Think You Can Dance\", most of which contribute to the current highly competitive reality TV landscape on American television.\nMusic.\nAs one of the most successful shows on U.S. television history, \"American Idol\" has had a strong impact not just on television, but also in the wider world of entertainment. It helped create a number of highly successful recording artists, such as Kelly Clarkson, Daughtry and Carrie Underwood, as well as others of varying notability. The alumni of the show's original run scored 13 Grammy Award wins out of 54 Grammy nominations up to its end in 2016, with Underwood and Clarkson receiving 10 wins combined.\nVarious \"American Idol\" alumni had success on various record charts around the world; in the U.S. they had achieved 345 number ones on the \"Billboard\" charts in its first 10 years, and 458 by its last year of broadcast in 2016, with 100 achieved by Kelly Clarkson alone. According to Fred Bronson, author of books on the Billboard charts, no other entity has ever created as many hit-making artists and bestselling albums and singles. In 2007, \"American Idol\" alums accounted for 2.1% of all music sales. Its alumni have a massive impact on radio; in 2007, \"American Idol\" had become \"a dominant force in radio\" according to Rich Meyer, president of the radio station monitoring research company Mediabase. By 2010, four winners each had more than a million radio spins, with Kelly Clarkson leading the field with over four million spins.\nAt the end of the show's original run on Fox in 2016, \"Idol\"'s contestants have sold more than 60 million albums in the U.S. and more than 100 million records globally, more than 175 of which are certified platinum or gold. Its participants have generated more than 450 Billboard No. 1 hits and sold more than 260 million digital downloads.\nFilm and theater.\nThe impact of \"American Idol\" was also strongly felt in musical theater, where many of \"Idol\" alumni have forged successful careers. The striking effect of former \"American Idol\" contestants on Broadway has been noted and commented on. The casting of a popular \"Idol\" contestant can lead to significantly increased ticket sales. Other alumni have gone on to work in television and films, the most notable being Jennifer Hudson who, on the recommendation of the \"Idol\" vocal coach Debra Byrd, won a role in \"Dreamgirls\" and eventually went on to win an Academy Award for her performance. She later became the show's first and only alumnus ever to win the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). In all, as of 2025, \"American Idol\" finalists resulted to 5 Grammy Award winners (Clarkson, Barrino, Hudson, Underwood and Mandisa), 2 Emmy Award winners (Clarkson and Hudson), and an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Tony Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Critics' Choice Award winner (Hudson).\nIn 2007, a musical based on the show, \"\", played off-Broadway. The musical closed after its official opening night.\nRevenue and commercial ventures.\nThe dominance of \"American Idol\" in the ratings had made it the most profitable show in U.S. TV for many years. The show was estimated to generate $900\u00a0million for the year 2004 through sales of TV ads, albums, merchandise and concert tickets. By the seventh season, the show was estimated to earn around $900\u00a0million from its ad revenue alone, not including ancillary sponsorship deals and other income. One estimate puts the total TV revenue for the first eight seasons of \"American Idol\" at $6.4\u00a0billion. Sponsors that bought fully integrated packages can expect a variety of promotions of their products on the show, such as product placement, adverts and product promotion integrated into the show, and various promotional opportunities. Other off-air promotional partners pay for the rights to feature \"Idol\" branding on their packaging, products and marketing programs. \"American Idol\" also partnered with Disney in its theme park attraction The American Idol Experience.\nAdvertising revenue.\n\"American Idol\" became the most expensive series on broadcast networks for advertisers starting the fourth season, and by the next season, it had broken the record in advertising rate for a regularly scheduled prime-time network series, selling over $700,000 for a 30-seconds slot, and reaching up to $1.3\u00a0million for the finale. Its ad prices reached a peak in the seventh season at $737,000. Estimated revenue more than doubled from $404\u00a0million in the third season to $870\u00a0million in the sixth season. While that declined from the eighth season onwards, it still earned significantly more than its nearest competitor, with advertising revenue topping $800\u00a0million annually the next few seasons. However, the sharp drop in ratings in the eleventh season also resulted in a sharp drop in advertising rate for the twelfth season, and the show lost its leading position as the costliest show for advertisers. By 2014, ad revenue from had fallen to $427 million where a 30-second spot went for less than $300,000. For the relaunched \"Idol\" on ABC, it has been reported that a 30-second spot may cost between $120,000 and $160,000.\nMedia sponsorship.\nFord Motor Company and Coca-Cola were two of the first sponsors of \"American Idol\" in its first season. The sponsorship deal cost around $10\u00a0million in the first season, rising to $35\u00a0million by the seventh season, and between $50 and $60 million in the tenth season. The third major sponsor AT&T Wireless joined in the second season but ended after the twelfth season, and Coca-Cola officially ended its sponsorship after the thirteenth season amidst the declining ratings of \"Idol\" in the mid-2010s. iTunes sponsored the show since the seventh season.\n\"American Idol\" prominent display of its sponsors' logo and products had been noted since the early seasons. By the sixth season, \"Idol\" showed 4,349 product placements according to Nielsen Media Research. The branded entertainment integration proved beneficial to its advertisers \u2013 promotion of AT&T text-messaging as a means to vote successfully introduced the technology into the wider culture, and Coca-Cola has seen its equity increased during the show.\nCoca-Cola's archrival PepsiCo declined to sponsor \"American Idol\" at the show's start. What the \"Los Angeles Times\" later called \"missing one of the biggest marketing opportunities in a generation\" contributed to Pepsi losing market share, by 2010 falling to third place from second in the United States. PepsiCo sponsored the American version of Cowell's \"The X Factor\" in hopes of not repeating its \"Idol\" mistake until its cancellation.\nFor the revived series on ABC, Macy's and Johnson & Johnson's Zyrtec signed on as the major sponsors of the show.\nAmerican Idol tour.\nThe top ten (eleven in the tenth season, five in the fourteenth season, and seven in the sixteenth season) toured at the end of every season except for the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons. In the twelfth season tour a semi-finalist who won a sing-off was also added to the tour. Kellogg's Pop-Tarts was the sponsor for the first seven seasons, and Guitar Hero was added for the seventh season tour. M&M's Pretzel Chocolate Candies was a sponsor of the ninth season tour. The fifth season tour was the most successful tour with gross of over $35\u00a0million. However no concert tour was organized in the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons, the only seasons not to have an associated tour. The sixteenth season tour featured the band In Real Life as an opener on select dates.\n\"Idol Gives Back\".\n\"Idol Gives Back\" was a special charity event started in season six featuring performances by celebrities and various fund-raising initiatives. This event was also held in seasons seven and nine and has raised nearly $185\u00a0million in total.\nMusic releases.\n\"American Idol\" has traditionally released studio recordings of contestants' performances as well as the winner's coronation single for sale. For the first five seasons, the recordings were released as a compilation album at the end of the season. All five of these albums reached the top ten in Billboard 200 which made \"American Idol\" the most successful soundtrack franchise of any motion picture or television program. Starting late in the fifth season, individual performances were released during the season as digital downloads, initially from the \"American Idol\" official website only. In the seventh season the live performances and studio recordings were made available during the season from iTunes when it joined as a sponsor. In the tenth season the weekly studio recordings were also released as compilation digital album straight after performance night.\n19 Recordings, a recording label owned by 19 Entertainment, currently hold the rights to phonographic material recorded by all the contestants. 19 Recordings originally partnered with Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) to promote and distribute the recordings through its labels RCA Records, Arista Records, J Records, and Jive Records. From 2005\u20132007, BMG partnered with Sony Music Entertainment to form a joint venture known as Sony BMG Music Entertainment. From 2008 to 2010, following their acquisition of BMG, Sony Music handled the distribution of \"American Idol\"'s music. In 2010, UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records replaced Sony as the music label for \"American Idol\".\nTie-ins.\n\"American Idol\" video games\nTheme park attraction.\nOn February 14, 2009, The Walt Disney Company debuted \"The American Idol Experience\" at its Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. In this live production, co-produced by 19 Entertainment, park guests chose from a list of songs and auditioned privately for Disney cast members. Those selected then performed on a stage in a 1000-seat theater replicating the \"Idol\" set. Three judges, whose mannerisms and style mimicked those of the real \"Idol\" judges, critiqued the performances. Audience members then voted for their favorite performer. There were several preliminary-round shows during the day that culminated in a \"finals\" show in the evening where one of the winners of the previous rounds that day was selected as the overall winner. The winner of the finals show received a \"Dream Ticket\" that granted them front-of-the-line privileges at any future \"American Idol\" audition. The attraction closed on August 30, 2014.\nOther broadcasts.\n\"American Idol\" is broadcast to over 100 nations worldwide. In most nations these are not live broadcasts and may be tape delayed by several days or weeks, except for other season finales that are aired live in several countries simulcast with the U.S. broadcast on Fox (2002\u20132016) and ABC (since 2018). In Canada, the first thirteen seasons of American Idol were aired live countrywide by CTV and/or CTV Two, in simulcast with Fox. CTV dropped \"Idol\" after its thirteenth season and in August 2014, Yes TV announced that it had picked up Canadian rights to \"American Idol\" beginning in its 2015 season. In 2017, it was announced the show would return to CTV Two for its sixteenth season. Since season nineteen, the show started airing on Citytv. In Slovakia, American Idol was broadcast on Jednotka.\nIn Latin America, the show is broadcast and subtitled by Sony Entertainment Television. In Southeast Asia, it is broadcast by Sony Channel every Monday and Tuesday nine or ten hours after since its revival. In Philippines, it is aired every Thursday and Friday nine or ten hours after its United States telecast; from 2004 to 2007 on ABC; 2008\u201311 on QTV, then GMA News TV; 2012\u201316, 2018\u201319 on ETC; and since 2024 on TV5. In Indonesia, it was aired on RCTI in the 2002 to 2003 season with the Indonesian subtitles, before Indonesian Idol was held in the 2004, aired after each episode ended, and in the 2011 to 2013 season it was broadcast by B-Channel (now RTV). In Australia, it aired a few hours after the U.S. telecast. It was aired on Network Ten from 2002 to 2008 and then again in 2013. Between 2008 and 2012 it aired on Fox8 and the thirteenth and fourteenth seasons (2014\u201315) it aired on digital channel, Eleven, a sister channel to Network Ten. Its final season (2016) aired on Fox8 hours after the original U.S. broadcast. The show enjoyed a lot of popularity in Australia throughout the 2000s before declining in the ratings. In the United Kingdom, episodes were aired one day after the U.S. broadcast on digital channel ITV2. In the twelfth season, the episodes aired on 5*. It was also aired in Ireland on TV3 two days after the telecast. In Brazil and Israel, the show airs two days after its original broadcast, and broadcast live during the season finale. In the instances where the airing is delayed, the shows may sometimes be combined into one episode to summarize the results. In Italy, the twelfth season was broadcast by La3. In Singapore, The show was broadcast on Mediacorp Channel 5 for the ninth and tenth seasons.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1648383": "Since U Been Gone\n2004 single by Kelly Clarkson\n\"Since U Been Gone\" is a song recorded by American singer Kelly Clarkson from her second studio album, \"Breakaway\" (2004). The song, which was written and produced by Max Martin and Lukasz \"Dr. Luke\" Gottwald, was released as the lead single from \"Breakaway\" two weeks before the album was released. It is an uptempo pop rock and power pop power ballad that infuses electronic sounds with a mixture of a soft and loud pop rock sound. Martin originally wrote \"Since U Been Gone\" with Pink in mind, but she turned it down. It was then given to Hilary Duff, but she rejected the song because she could not reach its higher notes. The song was finally given to Clarkson after Clive Davis convinced the writers to give it to her. Clarkson decided to add heavier guitars and harder drums to the song after noticing that the demo had an obvious pop sound. Lyrically, the song is written from a woman's point of view where she expresses her sense of relief with the end of her troubled relationship.\n\"Since U Been Gone\" received positive reviews from music critics who considered the song to be the highlight of \"Breakaway\". Critics also felt that it was one of the best pop songs in the last decade. \"Rolling Stone\" ranked it at number 482 of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2010 and at number 93 in the revamped 2021 ranking, while Billboard ranked it as the fifth greatest pop song of all time. \"Since U Been Gone\" was a commercial success. In the United States, the song peaked at number two on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. It topped the US Pop 100 for six consecutive weeks and the US Pop Songs for seven consecutive weeks respectively. It was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipments of over one million copies sold. It was also the fourth-bestselling song of 2005 in the US. \"Since U Been Gone\" was also a worldwide success, peaking in the top five in Austria, Australia, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. It also peaked in the top ten in Norway, Germany, and Switzerland.\nClarkson performed \"Since U Been Gone\" at the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards and at the 2006 BRIT Awards. It has been included on the set-list of Clarkson's many tours. The song's accompanying music video was directed by Alex De Rakoff, which shows Clarkson ruining her ex-boyfriend's apartment. The music video was nominated for three awards in the 2005 MTV Music Awards, winning two out of the three awards namely Best Female Video and Best Pop Video. At the 48th Grammy Awards, the song won the award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. \"Since U Been Gone\" was covered by many artists, notably the American rock band A Day to Remember, indie rocker Ted Leo as well as the Canadian indie rock band, Tokyo Police Club, and used in the musical \"& Juliet\".\nBackground and writing.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"I went to Max Martin's studio in Sweden. We recorded it there with Max and the co-writer of the song, Lukasz Gottwald. The first time I heard the song I thought it was a little poppy, so I asked if we could rock the track a little. We put some heavier guitars and harder drums on it. Now it's explosive.\"\n\u2014 Clarkson's first impression of \"Since U Been Gone\".\nIn an interview for \"Blender\", Martin and Dr. Luke revealed that they had originally intended Pink to sing \"Since U Been Gone\", however, she turned it down. Dr. Luke also explained that Hilary Duff's management was interested in the song but rejected it because Duff could not reach the song's higher notes. It was Clive Davis who convinced Martin and Dr. Luke to give the song to Clarkson, even though they were initially reluctant. Davis said, \"Max was looking to move on from what he had done with Backstreet Boys, and I really spent time convincing them that an 'American Idol' winner could bring all the feeling and passion that was required to the song.\"\nAccording to MTV, Clarkson had already finished recording her materials for her second album, \"Breakaway\" in late 2004 when she was advised by her A&R to fly to Sweden to meet with Martin and Dr. Luke. Both Martin and Dr. Luke were associated with pop music, but they wanted to produce rock songs. Realizing that her record had more of a rock influence, Clarkson finally agreed to collaborate with them.\"\n\"Since U Been Gone\" was inspired by indie rock of the early 2000s. In an interview with \"Billboard\", Dr. Luke said:\nThat was a conscious move by Max and myself, because we were listening to alternative and indie music and talking about some song \u2013 I don't remember what it was. I said, \"Ah, I love this song,' and Max was like, 'If they would just write a damn pop chorus on it!' It was driving him nuts, because that indie song was sort of on six, going to seven, going to eight, the chorus comes ... and it goes back down to five. It drove him crazy. And when he said that, it was like, light bulb. 'Why don't we do that, but put a big chorus on it?\" It worked.\nIn \"Rolling Stone\" in 2011, Dr. Luke made more specific claims about what music had inspired the song:Either the first or the second thing we did was \"Since U Been Gone\". We were listening to the Hives and the Strokes, and Max was like, \u2018Why can\u2019t they just write a hit chorus?\u2019 And that\u2019s what we did.Despite these statements, the identity of the song is widely speculated to be the 2003 song \"Maps\" by Yeah Yeah Yeahs. \"Maps\" and \"Since U Been Gone\" share a similar guitar line in its middle eight, and are both in the key of G major. The first significant observation of this was in a satirical 2005 medley of \"Since U Been Gone\"/\"Maps\" by Ted Leo, which went viral for using this part of \"Since U Been Gone\" to transition into \"Maps\". In 2006, \"Rolling Stone\" journalist Rob Sheffield told \"Maps\" songwriter Karen O about the similarity, to which she responded that it was \"like getting bitten by a poisonous varmint\" and that \"if it wasn't [Kelly Clarkson], it just would've been Ashlee Simpson\". The 2015 book \"The Song Machine\" by John Seabrook claimed that the song was based on \"Maps\" as if it was a confirmed fact. In 2025, the music critic Dave Moore speculated that \"Hard To Explain\" by The Strokes was a more likely candidate, arguing that the instrumental on the verses is almost identical, that Dr. Luke had cited The Strokes as an influence, and noting the song's similarity to \"Stroke Of Genie-us\" by The Freelance Hellraiser, a highly influential 2001 mashup of \"Hard To Explain\" with Christina Aguilera's \"Genie In A Bottle\".\n\"Since U Been Gone\" was the last track that Clarkson recorded for \"Breakaway\"; it was recorded in Sweden. At first, Clarkson was not fully convinced by the prospect of recording the song saying, \"It didn't have any lyrics and the melody really wasn't finalized ... the track was done on a computer, there was no band on it. My record label was freaking out about it and I was, like, why?\" Clarkson also explained that when she first heard \"Since U Been Gone\", she felt that it sounded a little bit pop for her direction, and she decided to tweak the song musically by incorporating drums and guitars. Clarkson told MTV that the song is about a relationship turned sour although it was going well at the very beginning. The song was officially released to mainstream radio stations in the United States on November 16, 2004, as the lead single of \"Breakaway\".\nComposition.\n\"Since U Been Gone\" is a bubblegum and indie rock-influenced pop rock and power pop power ballad written and produced by Max Martin and Dr. Luke. The song, which is set in common time with a moderate tempo of 132 beats per minute, is written in the key of G major. Popdose staff noted that the song contains an \"electronics-enhanced sheen\" over \"alt-rock's soft/loud dichotomy\". The song also incorporates ringing guitars with plaintive lyrics and a huge chorus. It has a chord progression of G-Am\u2013Em\u2013F, and Clarkson's vocal range in the song spans two octaves from the low note of G3 to the high note of G5. Film Laureate of Blogcritics praised \"Since U Been Gone\" for its \"high energy, vocally powered, pop/rock jam with a hook that is infectious\". The same opinion was echoed by \"Entertainment Weekly\" staff who thought that the song highlighted Clarkson's \"sublime\" vocals and praised the song for its \"addictive\" hook. Dave Donnelly of Sputnikmusic compared the musical arrangements of \"Since U Been Gone\" to Clarkson's \"Behind These Hazel Eyes\". He opined that the two songs allow the melodies to represent themselves because the tight musical arrangements complement Clarkson's vocals.\nThe song's narrative is in first person, from the point of view of a woman who is relieved with the end of her relationship. Steve Lampiris of ZME Music lauded Clarkson's vocals as the heart of the song. He praised the way Clarkson sings the chorus, which implies that she was the one who ended the relationship. He also thought that the line \"I can breathe for the first time/ I'm so moving on, yeah yeah\" was believable \"that either her ex is a total prick or she's deserves [\"sic\"] an Oscar nom.\" In an interview with Dan Snierson of \"Entertainment Weekly\", it was noted that Clarkson sang \"So together but so broken up inside/ 'Cause I can't breathe\" in \"Behind These Hazel Eyes\", but in \"Since U Been Gone\", she sang \"But since you been gone/ I can breathe for the first time.\" When asked whether she was a bipolar asthmatic, Clarkson responded that \"Behind These Hazel Eyes\" is about a dipstick who is unhappy because she has completely screwed up, and \"Since U Been Gone\" is an expression of relief because her ex is now miserable.\nResponse.\nCritical reception.\nUpon release, the song received universal acclaim from music critics. In his review for \"Breakaway\", Stephen Thomas Erlewine of MSN considered \"Since U Been Gone\", \"Walk Away\", and \"You Found Me\" as the spine of the album. He added that the songs sound mainstream and youthful. Rohin of Blogcritics gave a positive response to the song, emphasizing that \"it is almost one of the best pieces of throwaway pop in recent history\". He also thought that the song represents a song \"that you can roll down the windows of your car and proudly headbang your way through a yellow light somewhere on a suburban side street.\" Sal Cinquemani of \"Slant Magazine\" thought that Clarkson did a good impression of Pat Benatar in \"Since U Been Gone\". He concluded his review by emphasizing that \"Breakaway\" proves that Clarkson has successfully dodged the sophomore slump but \"Since U Been Gone\" helped her establish her success. The staff of \"Slant Magazine\" later ranked \"Since U Been Gone\" at number thirteen in their list of Best Singles of the Aughts, writing that the song proves Clarkson's powerful ability as a vocalist as well as her versatility as an artist.\nStephen Thompson of NPR Music called the song \"one of the decade's finest pop anthems\" which is infused with energy, charisma and full-throated intensity. Steve Lampiris of ZME Music opined that the song is \"one of very few perfect pop songs released in the last ten years,\" stating that it is hard to determine the principal reason that makes the song very successful. Gary Trust of \"Billboard\" thought that \"Since U Been Gone\" is a defining song of the 2000s. He commented on its status as a blueprint for female pop songs, as seen in song productions by artists such as Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry and Pink. In 2014, Ryan Kailath of NPR Music argued that the song succeeded by borrowing from musical trends that preceded it, such as 1990s R&B and alternative rock. In 2015, Gary Trust of \"Billboard\" wrote that \"Kelly Clarkson's \"Since U Been Gone\", co-written by Max Martin, especially helped lead to pure pop's reemergence, and the breakthroughs of Rihanna, Katy Perry, [Taylor] Swift and Lady Gaga would soon follow (as well as [Britney] Spears' own revival)\", stating that the song \"began to erode hip-hop's early '00s reign, with women at the forefront of turning the tide.\"\nAwards and recognition.\nAt the 48th Grammy Awards, \"Since U Been Gone\" won the category of Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. At the 2005 Teen Choice Awards, the song won the category of Choice Single. It also won the award for Best Pop Sing-Along Song at the 2005 XM Nation Music Awards. The song received a nomination in the category of Song of the Year: Mainstream Hit Radio at the 2005 Radio Music Awards but lost to Mariah Carey's \"We Belong Together\". At the 2005 Billboard Music Awards, the song received nominations for two awards. It received a nomination for the Hot 100 Single of the Year but lost to Mariah Carey's \"We Belong Together\" and for the Digital Song of the Year but lost to Gwen Stefani's \"Hollaback Girl\". In 2023, \"Billboard\" named \"Since U Been Gone\" the fifth-best pop song of all time, the highest-ranked song on the list from the 21st century.\nChart performance.\n\"Since U Been Gone\" entered the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 at number 70 for the week ending December 18, 2004. On its second week, the song moved to number 53, before jumping to number 38 the following week. During the week ending April 9, 2005, \"Since U Been Gone\" ascended to a new peak of number two on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. This made \"Since U Been Gone\" the first pop song by a solo female artist to reach the top two chart positions in 2005. The song also became the first non-R&B/hip hop song by a solo female artist to reach top two on the chart since Christina Aguilera's \"Beautiful\" hit number two in February 2003. Fred Bronson of \"Billboard\" noted that had \"Since U Been Gone\" moved to number one, it would become the 41st chart-topper for the \"American Idol\" franchise. The song stayed in the top 10 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 for 20 weeks. After the week ending March 26, 2005, the song topped the US Pop 100 for six consecutive weeks, through the week ending March 26, 2005. It also spent seven consecutive weeks at number one on the US Pop Songs. On the \"Billboard\"'s Radio Songs chart, the song peaked at number four on April 23, 2005. \"Since U Been Gone\" was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on January 25, 2006. As of September 2017, \"Since U Been Gone\" has sold 2,973,000 paid digital downloads.\nInternationally, \"Since U Been Gone\" was a commercial success. In Australia, the song debuted and peaked at number three on February 13, 2005. It was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) for shipments of over 70,000 units. In New Zealand, Since U Been Gone debuted at number 18 on the week ending March 21, 2005. Three weeks later, it peaked at number 11 and matched that position for three non-consecutive weeks. On July 16, 2005, \"Since U Been Gone\" debuted and peaked at number five in the United Kingdom, and as of April 2023, the song sold over 1,200,000 copies there. In Ireland, it entered the Irish Singles Chart at number eight on the week ending July 7, 2005 and peaked at number four three weeks later. Elsewhere in Europe, the song was also a success; it peaked at number three in Austria, number seven in Switzerland, number nine in Norway, number 10 in the Netherlands, and number 16 in Sweden.\nMusic video.\nBackground.\nThe music video for \"Since U Been Gone\" was directed by Alex De Rakoff and filmed in early November 2004. Clarkson told MTV that she conceived the idea of the video after assuming that revenge is what every girl wants to do when their boyfriend cheats on them. She added, \"You know, 'Why don't I just go trash her house? [...] And so I do it in the video. All I do is break stuff. It's a cool job. I could get used to this.\" Clarkson expressed that in the music video, viewers would get to see her act out of character. She explained, \"In the beginning, I'm like tipping things over and smearing mud all over the walls and it seems like my apartment, but it ends up being the other girl's that he's with, so it's a humorous video.\" The music video premiered on \"Total Request Live\" on November 16, 2004.\nSynopsis.\nThe music video begins with Clarkson sitting on a couch in an apartment's living room, holding a heart-shaped locket in her hand. The next scene shows Clarkson in the bathroom where she fixes her face in the mirror, she opens the medicine cabinet and tossing all the pills in the medicine cabinet over her shoulder and messing all the bathroom items on the floor, squirting the toothpaste into the sink. When she gets to a container of birth control pills, she turns on the water in the sink, snaps the pills out, and drops them down the drain. Clarkson then starts to take other items; she throws a container of makeup powder spray in the air and smears a container of facial mud mask on the wall. During the chorus, Clarkson and her band perform the song for a dancing crowd in a club. After the first chorus, Clarkson walks into a room full of closets. She cuts up dresses, rifling through the closets and pulling out clothes, destroying them and singing in a pile of them. After the second chorus, she walks into a bedroom and begins to tear the pillow on the bed, filling the room with feathers. The scenes of Clarkson singing with her band then alternate with a montage of her destroying the apartment, breaks the glass window from the door, breaks the vase, television, clock, fridge, lights, microwave, phone, furniture, and chair. Later, Clarkson takes a framed photo of her ex-boyfriend with another girl in the living room, before pushing a tall CD rack over. She then smashes the framed photo through a glass table, breaking it in half. Having decimated the apartment, Clarkson walks out the door and down the hallway with a hat on her head, just as her ex-boyfriend appears with his girlfriend, walking arm in arm. Clarkson hides her face as she walks away from them. The final scene shows the couple seeing their damaged apartment in shock and the scene of the locket swinging.\nReception and accolades.\nStephen Thompson of NPR Music was disappointed with the music video because it \"undercuts its message to an alarming degree: The words say 'Since you've been gone / I can breathe for the first time,' but the pictures say, 'Breaking up with you necessitates destroying all of your property.'\" On the other hand, Johnni Macke of E! felt the video was amusing and Clarkson was \"at her rocker prime.\" She added, \"It features the tomboy side of the singer messing up her ex's closet, destroying his bed and getting some major revenge by destroying his place.\" At the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards, the music video received nominations for three awards; it won Best Female Video and Best Pop Video, and received a nomination for the Viewer's Choice Awards but lost to Green Day's \"Boulevard of Broken Dreams\". MusicOMH ranked the music video as the 86th best video of the last decade. In February 2012, the music video received a \"Pop-Up Video\" treatment by VH1 which shows \"pops up\" bubbles containing trivia, witticisms and borderline sexual innuendos throughout the video.\nLive performances.\nClarkson performed \"Since U Been Gone\" at the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards. Her performance garnered positive reviews from critics, who considered it one of the highlights in the event. Performing barefoot, Clarkson sang the song as rain cascaded onto the audience. Clarkson told \"People\" that one of her favourite moments on television was performing \"Since U Been Gone\" at the MTV Video Music Awards, saying \"I hate being all dressed up, so the fact that I was soaking wet with mascara smeared all over my face was definitely the highlight of my evening!\" Becky Bain of Idolator thought that the performance was Clarkson's most memorable live performances while Kelefa Sanneh of \"The New York Times\" thought Clarkson's performance was very solid despite the feeling that she sounded better dry than drenched. Clarkson performed the song on \"Saturday Night Live\" in 2005, along with the 2006 BRIT Awards which took place in Earls Court, London.\n\"Since U Been Gone\" has been performed by Clarkson in all of her tours since the Breakaway Tour. It was included in the setlist of her My December Tour as an encore. While performing at Mohegan Sun Arena, Uncasville, Connecticut, Clarkson performed \"Since U Been Gone\" and let the audience sing the song's chorus. Clarkson's performance of the song at the Beacon Theatre, New York City stirred crowd into a frenzy, causing the show to be closed abruptly. During her All I Ever Wanted Tour, Clarkson performed the song at the Hammerstein Ballroom, where Caryn Ganz of \"Rolling Stone\" remarked that \"the room turned into an electric sea of flailing arms and pogo-ing heads.\" In 2011, Clarkson performed \"Since U Been Gone\" as well as \"Mr. Know It All\" on \"The Ellen DeGeneres Show\" while promoting her fifth album, \"Stronger\". At the \"VH1 Divas Celebrates Soul\" television special, Clarkson performed a medley of \"You Keep Me Hangin' On\", \"Spotlight\", \"Real Love\", and \"Since U Been Gone\" with Mary J. Blige and Jennifer Hudson. The song was also performed by Clarkson during her 2012 Stronger Tour. While touring at the Times Union Center, Albany, New York, Clarkson performed the song with a musical arrangement. Grey Haymes of Times Union remarked that the song was \"re-made and re-modeled with a throbbing, fuzzed-out bassline and an irresistible techno pulse as the foundation for her hook-filled pop song.\" He also added that it was one of the several surprises from the concert.\nCover versions and use in media.\n\"Since U Been Gone\" has been covered by many artists. On September 27, 2011, Joseph Gordon-Levitt covered the song in the style of Axl Rose on \"Late Night with Jimmy Fallon\". The song was also covered by American musician Butch Walker in his 2005 album, \"Cover Me Badd\". Dave Donelly of Sputnikmusic praised Walker's cover for sticking closely to Clarkson's version. American metalcore band A Day to Remember recorded their own version of \"Since U Been Gone\" which was included in the reissued version of their album, \"For Those Who Have Heart\". Indie rock artist Ted Leo recorded an acoustic version of \"Since U Been Gone\" for a videotaped web session, a few hours after watching the song's music video, which included an interpolation of \"Maps\" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. He commented, \"It's just one great hook after another. I also really appreciate the more advanced pop pastiche aspects of it. It's written in a way that is so transparent in terms of drawing from a lot of what's vaguely edgy and popular right now, but put together in such a perfect little package. It's undeniable.\" A cover of the song by Canadian indie rock band Tokyo Police Club was included in their \"Ten Days, Ten Covers, Ten Years\" project where they covered a song every day for ten days. \"Since U Been Gone\" was sampled in Girl Talk's \"Here's The Thing\" on his 2008 album, \"Feed the Animals\". The song was included as the opening track of the \"American Idol 10th Anniversary \u2013 The Hits\", a compilation album that celebrates 10 years of \"American Idol\" which features tracks from nine winners of the show. The song was parodied on MadTV as \"Since We Were On\" in a skit about the various performers who came after Clarkson on American Idol. \n\"Since U Been Gone\" has also been covered by contestants from reality television singing competitions. The song was performed by Todrick Hall on the eighth season of \"American Idol\". Despite fulfilling the judges' desire to hear something original, his rendition of the song drew criticism from the judges, with Simon Cowell commenting that Hall seemed like a dancer trying to sing. On November 26, 2011, Amelia Lily performed the song on the eighth series of \"The X Factor UK\". Her rendition was praised by the judges; Louis Walsh felt that her performance was effortless while Kelly Rowland remarked that \"Amelia Lily hits those notes in her sleep!\" The song was also covered by Luke O'Dell on the third season of \"The X Factor Australia\". On June 13, 2012, John Legend and his duet partner, Meleana Brown, covered \"Since U Been Gone\" in \"Duets\". Katy Kroll of \"Rolling Stone\" lambasted their cover for being \"pitchy\" and \"almost unlistenable\", Gord Craig of \"Leader-Post\" felt that Brown did not deliver her best although she sounded great with Legend. In the third season of \"The Sing Off\", the winning group Pentatonix sang a \"mastermix\" of \"Since U Been Gone\" and \"Forget You\". All three judges were impressed with Ben Folds commenting \"You guys gave voices to the instruments\" while Shawn Stockman, praising the rhythm and percussion section, renamed Kevin and Avi \"Meat and Potatoes\".\n\"Since U Been Gone\" was performed by Ester Dean and Skylar Astin in the 2012 musical comedy film, \"Pitch Perfect\". Lanford Beard of \"Entertainment Weekly\" noted that the song was used during the audition sequences in the film, writing \"Set to Kelly Clarkson's \"Since U Been Gone,\" it arranged the singers in a clever a cappella tapestry that simultaneously landed laughs and showed off their talents.\" Christy Lemire of \"The Boston Globe\" was positive of the song's incorporation in the film during the audition process due to its beautiful editing which makes \"it feels like a fresh take on the tried-and-true, bad-first-date montage.\" The song was used in twelfth season of Brazilian soap opera \"Malha\u00e7\u00e3o\". The song was also used in the first season of \"Supergirl,\" and in \"Unpregnant.\" The song is used the musical \"& Juliet\" a coming-of-age stage musical featuring the music of Max Martin. For the \"& Juliet (Original Broadway Cast Recording)\", Clarkson re-recorded the song along with the Lorna Courtney who plays Juliet.\nLegacy.\nAs of 2014, the song has appeared in more than 40 different albums either remixed or in its original format. The song propelled Clarkson to success in mainstream pop music and was regarded as a power pop milestone in the 2000s. Maura Johnston from \"Billboard\" asserted that \"the song inspired covers from all corners\u2014Ted Leo, Kidz Bop\u2014and helped prime the pop world for tracks like Pink's \"Who Knew\" and Paramore's \"Misery Business\", not to mention later Clarkson hits like \"My Life Would Suck Without You\". \"Entertainment Weekly\" put it on its end-of-the-decade \"best-of\" list, saying, \"Can anyone do bitter better? Nothing packs more romantic rage than the original Idol's 2004 kiss-off to a coldhearted ex.\" The song was ranked by \"Pitchfork Media\" as the 21st best track of the 2000s; they wrote that \"'Since U Been Gone' gave us one of the most blunt rallying cries of the last ten years, a perfectly realized sing-along chorus that will be a karaoke staple for years.\" In 2014, \"The Atlantic\" magazine dubbed \"Since U Been Gone\" as the best pop song of the past decade.\nBill Lamb of About.com ranked the song as the 29th best pop song of all time, expressing that \"Kelly Clarkson has stated that she insisted on adding the rock feel to the recording. The result was a record that captured the prevailing sound of mainstream pop with near perfection.\" \"NME\" placed it at number 135 on its list of the \"150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years\", writing \"What should have been a slice of American schlock power-pop turned into a brilliant kiss-off, in any genre.\" \"The A.V. Club\" staff rated the song as one of their favorite gleeful breakup songs, writing \"The minute that bass and drum machine start, this song is an anthem of the scorned, a call to self-actualization, and an instant hands-in-the-air dance party.\" \"Rolling Stone\" ranked \"Since U Been Gone\" at number 482 of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2010, and later at 93 in the 2021 revamped ranking, whose readers listed it as the ninth-ranked single of the last decade. The AOL Radio Staff put the song at number 10 on their list of 10 Best Break Up Songs. \"Since U Been Gone\" has also appeared in several \"Billboard\" lists; in March 2013, it was ranked at number one on its list of Top 100 American Idol Hits of All Time. In April 2017, it appeared at number two of \"Billboard\"'s 100 greatest choruses of the 21st century and is also one of Clarkson's biggest \"Billboard\" Hot 100 hits.\nThe song has been ranked 342nd by \"Billboard\" on its 600 most massive smashes over the chart's six decades.\nTrack listings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCredits and personnel.\nCredits are adapted from the liner notes of \"Breakaway\".\nRecording\nPersonnel\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["1648383", "191890"], "permutation_1": ["191890", "1648383"], "permutation_2": ["191890", "1648383"], "permutation_3": ["1648383", "191890"]}
{"id": "2hop__5658_25002", "docs_added": {"24795561": "Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic\nSoviet republic from 1917 to 1991\nThe Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR or RSFSR), previously known as the Russian Soviet Republic and the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, and unofficially as Soviet Russia, was a socialist state from 1917 to 1922, and afterwards the largest and most populous constituent republic of the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1922 to 1991, until becoming a sovereign part of the Soviet Union with priority of Russian laws over Union-level legislation in 1990 and 1991, the last two years of the existence of the USSR. The Russian SFSR was composed of sixteen smaller constituent units of autonomous republics, five autonomous oblasts, ten autonomous okrugs, six krais and forty oblasts. Russians formed the largest ethnic group. The capital of the Russian SFSR and the USSR as a whole was Moscow and the other major urban centers included Leningrad (Petrograd until 1924), Stalingrad (Volgograd after 1961), Novosibirsk, Sverdlovsk, Gorky and Kuybyshev.\nOn 7 November 1917 (O.S. 25 October), as a result of the October Revolution, the Russian Soviet Republic was proclaimed as a sovereign state and the world's first constitutionally socialist state guided by communist ideology. The first constitution was adopted in 1918. In 1922, the Russian SFSR signed a treaty officially creating the USSR. On 12 June 1990, the Congress of People's Deputies adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty. On 12 June 1991, Boris Yeltsin, supported by the Democratic Russia pro-reform movement, was elected the first and only President of the RSFSR, a post that would later become the Presidency of the Russian Federation. The August 1991 Soviet coup d'\u00e9tat attempt in Moscow with the temporary brief internment of President Mikhail Gorbachev destabilised the Soviet Union. Following these events, Gorbachev lost all his remaining power, with Yeltsin superseding him as the pre-eminent figure in the country. On 8 December 1991, the heads of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed the Belovezha Accords declaring dissolution of the USSR and established the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as a loose replacement confederation. On 12 December, the agreement was ratified by the Supreme Soviet (the parliament of the Russian SFSR); therefore the Russian SFSR had renounced the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and \"de facto\" declared Russia's independence from the USSR itself and the ties with the other Soviet republics.\nOn 25 December 1991, following the resignation of Gorbachev as President of the Soviet Union, the Russian SFSR was renamed the Russian Federation. The next day, the USSR was self-dissolved by the Soviet of the Republics on 26 December, which by that time was the only functioning parliamentary chamber of the All-Union Supreme Soviet. After the dissolution, Russia took full responsibility for all the rights and obligations of the USSR under the Charter of the United Nations, including the financial obligations. As such, Russia assumed the Soviet Union's UN membership and permanent membership on the Security Council, nuclear stockpile and the control over the armed forces; Soviet embassies abroad became Russian embassies.\nThe 1978 constitution of the Russian SFSR was amended several times to reflect the transition to democracy, private property and market economy. The new Russian constitution, coming into effect on 25 December 1993 after a constitutional crisis, completely abolished the Soviet form of government and replaced it with a semi-presidential system. The economy of Russia became heavily industrialized, accounting for about two-thirds of the electricity produced in the USSR. By 1961, it was the third largest producer of petroleum due to new discoveries in the Volga-Urals region and Siberia. In 1974, there were 475 institutes of higher education in the republic providing education in 47 languages to some 23,941,000 students. A network of territorially organized public-health services provided health care. The economy began to be liberalized starting in 1985 under Gorbachev's \"perestroika\" restructuring policies, including the introduction of non-state owned enterprises (e.g. cooperatives).\nNomenclature.\nUnder the leadership of Vladimir Lenin (1870\u20131924) and Leon Trotsky (1879\u20131940), the Bolsheviks established the Soviet state on 7 November\u00a0[O.S. 25 October]\u00a01917. This happened immediately after the October Revolution toppled the interim Russian Provisional Government (most recently led by opposing democratic socialist Alexander Kerensky (1881\u20131970)) which had governed the new Russian Republic after the abdication of the Russian Empire government of the Romanov imperial dynasty of Tsar Nicholas II the previous March (Old Style: February). The October Revolution was thus the second of the two Russian Revolutions of the turbulent year of 1917. Initially, the new Soviet state did not have an official name and was not recognized by neighboring countries for five months.\nAnti-Bolsheviks soon suggested new names, however. By 1919 they had coined the mocking label Sovdepia () for the nascent state of the Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies. Speakers of colloquial English coined the term \"Bololand\"\nto refer to the land of the Bolos (a term identified from 1919 onwards with the Bolsheviks).\nOn 25 January 1918 the third meeting of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets proclaimed the establishment of the Russian Soviet Republic. In July 1918, the Fifth All\u2013Russian Congress of Soviets adopted both the new name, Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR), and the Constitution of the Russian SFSR.\nInternationally, the Russian SFSR was recognized as an independent state in 1920 only by its bordering neighbors (Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania) in the Treaty of Tartu and by the short-lived Irish Republic of 1919\u20131922 in Ireland.\nOn 30 December 1922, with the treaty on the creation of the Soviet Union, Russia (the RSFSR), alongside the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR, formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The final Soviet name for the constituent republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, was adopted in the later Soviet Constitution of 1936. By that time, Soviet Russia had gained roughly the same borders of the old Tsardom of Russia before the Great Northern War of 1700 to 1721.\nThe RSFSR dominated the Soviet Union to a significant extent. For most of its existence, the Soviet Union was commonly (but incorrectly) referred to as \"Russia\". While the RSFSR itself was only one republic within the larger union, it was the largest, most powerful and most highly developed of the 15 republics.\nOn 25 December 1991, during the collapse of the Soviet Union, which concluded on the next day, the RSFSR's official name was changed to the Russian Federation, which it remains to this day. This name and \"Russia\" were specified as the official state names on 21 April 1992, in an amendment to the then existing Constitution of 1978, and were retained as such in the subsequent 1993 Constitution of Russia.\nGeography.\nAt a total of about 17,125,200\u00a0km (6,612,100 sq mi), the Russian SFSR was the largest of the fifteen Soviet republics, with its southerly neighbor, the Kazakh SSR, being second.\nThe international borders of the RSFSR touched Poland on the west; Norway and Finland on the northwest; and to its southeast in eastern Asia were the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), Mongolian People's Republic (now Mongolia) and the People's Republic of China (China, formerly the Republic of China; 1912\u20131949). Within the Soviet Union, the RSFSR bordered the Slavic states: Ukrainian SSR (now Ukraine), Byelorussian SSR (now Belarus), the Baltic states: Estonian SSR (now Estonia), Latvian SSR (now Latvia) and Lithuanian SSR (now Lithuania, included into USSR in 1940) to its west and the Azerbaijan SSR (now Azerbaijan), Georgian SSR (now Georgia), and Kazakh SSR (now Kazakhstan) to the south.\nRoughly 70% of the area in the RSFSR consisted of broad plains, with mountainous tundra regions mainly concentrated in the east of Siberia with Central Asia and East Asia. The area is rich in mineral resources, including petroleum, natural gas, and iron ore.\nHistory.\nEarly years (1917\u20131920).\nThe Soviet government first came to power on 7 November 1917, immediately after the interim Russian Provisional Government headed by Alexander Kerensky, which governed the Russian Republic, was overthrown in the October Revolution, the second of the two Russian Revolutions. The state it governed, which did not have an official name, would be unrecognized by neighboring countries for another five months. The initial stage of the October Revolution which involved the assault on Petrograd occurred largely without any human casualties.\nOn 18 January 1918, the newly elected Constituent Assembly issued a decree, proclaiming Russia a democratic federal republic under the name \"Russian Democratic Federal Republic\". However, the Bolsheviks dissolved the Assembly on the following day and declared its decrees null and void. Conversely, the Bolsheviks also reserved a number of vacant seats in the Soviets and Central Executive for the opposition parties in proportion to their vote share at the Congress. At the same time, a number of prominent members of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries had assumed positions in Lenin's government and lead commissariats in several areas. This included agriculture (Kolegaev), property (Karelin), justice (Steinberg), post offices and telegraphs (Proshian) and local government (Trutovsky). Lenin's government also instituted a number of progressive measures such as universal education, healthcare and equal rights for women.\nOn 25 January 1918, at the third meeting of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, the establishment of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) was proclaimed. On 3 March 1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed, giving away much of the westernmost lands of the former Russian Empire to the German Empire, in exchange for peace on the Eastern Front of World War I. In July 1918, the fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets adopted the Constitution of the Russian SFSR. By 1918, during the Russian Civil War, several states within the former Russian Empire had seceded, reducing the size of the country even more, although some were conquered by the Bolsheviks.\n1920s.\nThe Russian famine of 1921\u201322, also known as Povolzhye famine, killed an estimated 5\u00a0million, primarily affecting the Volga and Ural River regions.\nThe economic impact of the Civil War was devastating. A black market emerged in Russia, despite the threat of martial law against profiteering. The ruble collapsed, with barter increasingly replacing money as a medium of exchange and, by 1921, heavy industry output had fallen to 20% of 1913 levels. 90% of wages were paid with goods rather than money. 70% of locomotives were in need of repair, and food requisitioning, combined with the effects of seven years of war and a severe drought, contributed to a famine that caused between 3 and 10 million deaths. Coal production decreased from 27.5\u00a0million tons (1913) to 7 million tons (1920), while overall factory production also declined from 10,000\u00a0million roubles to 1,000\u00a0million roubles. According to the noted historian David Christian, the grain harvest was also slashed from 80.1\u00a0million tons (1913) to 46.5\u00a0million tons (1920).\nOn 30 December 1922, the First Congress of the Soviets of the USSR approved the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, by which Russia was united with the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic and Transcaucasian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic into a single federal state, the Soviet Union. The treaty was included in the 1924 Soviet Constitution, adopted on 31 January 1924 by the Second Congress of Soviets of the USSR.\nOne of the early ambitious economic plans of the Soviet government was GOELRO, Russian abbreviation for \"State Commission for Electrification of Russia\" (\u0413\u043e\u0441\u0443\u0434\u0430\u0440\u0441\u0442\u0432\u0435\u043d\u043d\u0430\u044f \u043a\u043e\u043c\u0438\u0441\u0441\u0438\u044f \u043f\u043e \u044d\u043b\u0435\u043a\u0442\u0440\u0438\u0444\u0438\u043a\u0430\u0446\u0438\u0438 \u0420\u043e\u0441\u0441\u0438\u0438), which sought to achieve total electrification of the entire country. Soviet propaganda declared the plan was basically fulfilled by 1931. The national power output per year stood at 1.9\u00a0billion kWh in Imperial Russia in 1913, and Lenin's goal of 8.8\u00a0billion kWh was reached in 1931. National power output continued to increase significantly. It reached 13.5\u00a0billion kWh by the end of the first five-year plan in 1932, 36\u00a0billion kWh by 1937, and 48\u00a0billion kWh by 1940.\nParagraph\u00a03 of Chapter\u00a01 of the 1925 Constitution of the RSFSR stated the following:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />By the will of the peoples of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, who decided on the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during the Tenth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, being a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, devolves to the Union the powers which according to Article\u00a01 of the Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics are included within the scope of responsibilities of the government bodies of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.\n1930s.\nMany regions in Russia were affected by the Soviet famine of 1932\u20131933: Volga, Central Black Soil Region, North Caucasus, the Urals, the Crimea, part of Western Siberia, and the Kazakh ASSR. With the adoption of the 1936 Soviet Constitution on 5 December 1936, the size of the RSFSR was significantly reduced. The Kazakh ASSR and Kirghiz ASSR were transformed into the Kazakh SSR (now Kazakhstan) and Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic (Kyrgyzstan). The former Karakalpak Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic was transferred to the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (Uzbekistan).\nThe final name for the republic during the Soviet era was adopted by the Russian Constitution of 1937, which renamed it the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR).\n1940s.\nJust four months after Operation Barbarossa, the Wehrmacht was quickly advancing through the Russian SFSR, and was approximately away from Moscow. However, after the defeat in the Battle of Moscow and the Soviet winter offensive, the Germans were pushed back. In 1942, the Wehrmacht entered Stalingrad. Despite a deadly five-month battle in which the Soviets suffered over 1,100,000 casualties, they achieved victory following the surrender of the last German troops near the Volga River, ultimately pushing German forces out of Russia by 1944.\nIn 1943, Karachay Autonomous Oblast was dissolved by Joseph Stalin (1878\u20131953), General Secretary of the Communist Party, later Premier, when the Karachays were exiled to Central Asia for their alleged collaboration with the invading Germans in the Great Patriotic War (World War II, 1941\u20131945), and territory was incorporated into the Georgian SSR.\nOn 3 March 1944, on the orders of Stalin, the Chechen-Ingush ASSR was disbanded and its population forcibly deported upon the accusations of collaboration with the invaders and separatism. The territory of the ASSR was divided between other administrative units of Russian SFSR and the Georgian SSR.\nOn 11 October 1944, the Tuvan People's Republic was joined with the Russian SFSR as the Tuvan Autonomous Oblast, becoming an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1961.\nAfter reconquering Estonia and Latvia in 1944, the Russian SFSR annexed their easternmost territories around Ivangorod and within the modern Pechorsky and Pytalovsky Districts in 1944\u20131945.\nAt the end of World War II Soviet troops of the Red Army occupied southern Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands off the coast of East Asia, north of Japan, making them part of the RSFSR. The status of the southernmost Kurils, north of Hokkaido of the Japanese home islands remains in dispute with Japan and the United States following the peace treaty of 1951 ending the state of war.\nOn 17 April 1946, the Kaliningrad Oblast \u2013 the north-eastern portion of the former Kingdom of Prussia, the founding state of the German Empire (1871\u20131918) and later the German province of East Prussia including the capital and Baltic seaport city of K\u00f6nigsberg \u2013 was annexed by the Soviet Union and made part of the Russian SFSR.\n1950s.\nAfter the death of Joseph Stalin on 5 March 1953, Georgy Malenkov became the new leader of the USSR. In January 1954, Malenkov (via Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union issuing a decree) transferred the Crimean Oblast from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR. \nOn 8 February 1955, Malenkov was officially demoted to deputy Prime Minister. As First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev's authority was significantly enhanced by Malenkov's demotion.\nUnder Khrushchev's leadership of the country, the Karelo-Finnish SSR was transferred back to the RSFSR as the Karelian ASSR in 1956.\nOn 9 January 1957, Karachay Autonomous Oblast and Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic were restored by Khrushchev and they were transferred from the Georgian SSR back to the Russian SFSR.\n1960s\u20131980s.\nIn 1964, Nikita Khrushchev was removed from his position of power and replaced with Leonid Brezhnev. Under his rule, the Russian SFSR and the rest of the Soviet Union went through a mass era of stagnation. Even after Brezhnev's death in 1982, the era did not end until Mikhail Gorbachev took power in March 1985 and introduced liberal reforms in Soviet society.\nOn 12 April 1978, a new Constitution of Russia was adopted.\nEarly 1990s.\nOn 29 May 1990, at his third attempt, Boris Yeltsin was elected the chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR. The Congress of People's Deputies of the Republic adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian SFSR on 12 June 1990, which was the beginning of the \"War of Laws\", pitting the Soviet Union against the Russian Federation and other constituent republics.\nOn 17 March 1991, an all-Russian referendum created the post of President of the RSFSR and on 12 June, Boris Yeltsin was elected president by popular vote.\nDuring the unsuccessful 1991 Soviet coup d'\u00e9tat attempt of 19\u201321 August 1991 in Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union and Russia, Yeltsin strongly supported the President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. On 23 August, Yeltsin, in the presence of Gorbachev, signed a decree suspending all activity by the Communist Party of the Russian SFSR in the territory of Russia. On 6 November, he went further, banning the Communist Parties of the USSR and the RSFSR in the RSFSR.\nOn 8 December 1991, at Viskuli near Brest (Belarus), Yeltsin, Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk and Belarusian leader Stanislav Shushkevich signed the \"Agreement on the Establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States\", known in media as the Belovezh Accords. The document, consisting of a preamble and fourteen articles, stated that the Soviet Union no longer existed \"as a subject of international law and geopolitical reality\". However, based on the historical community of peoples and relations between the three states, as well as bilateral treaties, the desire for a democratic rule of law, the intention to develop their relations based on mutual recognition and respect for state sovereignty, the parties agreed to the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States. On 12 December, the agreement was ratified by the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR by an overwhelming majority: 188 votes for, 6 against and 7 abstentions. The legality of this ratification raised doubts among some members of the Russian parliament, since according to the Constitution of the RSFSR of 1978 consideration of this document was in the exclusive jurisdiction of the Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR. However, by this time the Soviet government had been rendered more or less impotent, and was in no position to object. On the same day, the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR denounced the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and recalled all Russian deputies from the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. A number of lawyers believe that the denunciation of the union treaty was meaningless since it became invalid in 1924 with the adoption of the first constitution of the USSR. Although the 12 December vote is sometimes reckoned as the moment that the RSFSR seceded from the collapsing Soviet Union, this is not the case. It appears that the RSFSR took the line that it did not need to follow the secession process delineated in the Soviet Constitution because it was not possible to secede from a country that no longer existed.\nOn 24 December, Yeltsin informed the Secretary-General of the United Nations that by agreement of the member states of the CIS the Russian Federation would assume the membership of the Soviet Union in all UN organs (including the Soviet Union's permanent seat on the UN Security Council). Russia took full responsibility for all the rights and obligations of the USSR under the Charter of the United Nations, including the financial obligations, and assumed control over its nuclear stockpile and the armed forces; Soviet embassies abroad became Russian embassies. On 25 December \u2013 just hours after Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union \u2013 the Russian SFSR was renamed the Russian Federation (Russia), reflecting that it was now a sovereign state with Yeltsin assuming the Presidency. That same night, the Soviet flag was lowered and replaced with the tricolor. The Soviet Union officially ceased to exist the next day. The change was originally published on 6 January 1992 (). According to law, during 1992, it was allowed to use the old name of the RSFSR for official business (forms, seals, and stamps).\nOn 21 April 1992, the Congress of People's Deputies of Russia approved the renaming of the RSFSR into the Russian Federation, by making appropriate amendments to the Constitution, which entered into force \nsince publication on 16 May 1992.\nGovernment.\nThe Government was known officially as the Council of People's Commissars (1917\u20131946) and Council of Ministers (1946\u20131991). The first government was headed by Vladimir Lenin as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian SFSR and the last by Boris Yeltsin as both head of government and head of state under the title of president. The Russian SFSR was controlled by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union until the 1991 August coup, which prompted President Yeltsin to suspend the recently created Communist Party of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.\nEconomy.\nIn the first years of the existence of the RSFSR, the doctrine of war communism became the starting point of the state's economic activity. In March 1921, at the X Congress of the RCP (B), the tasks of the policy of \"war communism\" were recognized by the country's leadership as fulfilled, and a new economic policy was introduced at Lenin's suggestion.\nAfter the formation of the Soviet Union, the economy of the RSFSR became an integral part of the economy of the USSR. The economic program of the RSFSR (NEP) was continued in all union republics. The Gosplan (State General Planning Commission) of the RSFSR, which replaced GOELRO, was reorganized into the Gosplan of the USSR. His early task was to develop a unified national economic plan based on the electrification plan and to oversee the overall implementation of this plan.\nUnlike the previous Russian constitutions, the 1978 Constitution devoted an entire chapter (Chapter II) to the description of the economic system of the RSFSR, which defined the types of property and indicated the goals of the economic tasks of the state.\nAs noted by Corresponding Member RAS RAS V. I. Suslov, who took part in large-scale studies of the relationship between the economies of the republics of the USSR and the RSFSR in the late Soviet era: \"The degree of inequality of economic exchange was very high, and Russia was always the losing side. The product created by Russia largely supported the consumption of other union republics\".\nCulture.\nNational holidays and symbols.\nThe public holidays for the Russian SFSR included Defender of the Fatherland Day (23 February), which honors Russian men, especially those serving in the army; International Women's Day (8 March), which combines the traditions of Mother's Day and Valentine's Day; Spring and Labor Day (1 May); Victory Day; and like all other Soviet republics, the Great October Socialist Revolution (7 November).\nVictory Day is the second most popular holiday in Russia as it commemorates the victory over Nazism in the Great Patriotic War. A huge military parade, hosted by the President of Russia, is annually organised in Moscow on Red Square. Similar parades take place in all major Russian cities and cities with the status Hero City or City of Military Glory.\nDuring its 76-year existence, the Russian SFSR anthem was the same as the Soviet anthem (unlike other republics): The Internationale until 1944 and then the State Anthem of the USSR. In 1990, the RSFSR adopted its own separate anthem called Patrioticheskaya Pesnya, which went on to become the anthem of independent Russia since 1991. In 2000, Vladimir Putin re-introduced the Soviet anthem. The motto \"Workers of the world, unite!\" was commonly used and shared with other Soviet republics. The hammer and sickle and the full Soviet coat of arms are still widely seen in Russian cities as part of architectural decorations. The Soviet red stars are also encountered, often on military equipment and war memorials. The Red Banner continues to be honored, especially the Banner of Victory of 1945.\nThe Matryoshka doll is a recognizable symbol of the Russian SFSR (and the Soviet Union as a whole) and the towers of Moscow Kremlin and Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow are Russian SFSR's main architectural icons. Chamomile is the national flower while birch is the national tree. The Russian bear is an animal symbol and a national personification of Russia. Though this image has a Western origin, Russians themselves have accepted it. The native Soviet Russian national personification is Mother Russia.\nFlag history.\nThe flag of the Russian SFSR changed numerous times, with the original being a field of red with the Russian name of the republic written on the flag's centre in white. This flag had always been intended to be temporary, as it was changed less than a year after its adoption. The second flag had the letters \u0420\u0421\u0424\u0421\u0420 (RSFSR) written in yellow within the canton and encased within two yellow lines forming a right angle. The next flag was used from 1937, notably during World War II. Interesting because it was used until Stalin's death when a major vexillological reform was undertaken within the Soviet Union. This change incorporated an update for all the flags of the Soviet Republics as well as for the flag of the Soviet Union itself. The flag of the Russian SFSR was now a defaced version of the flag of the Soviet Union, with the main difference being a minor repositioning of the hammer and sickle and most notably adding a blue vertical stripe to the hoist. This version of the flag was used from 1954 all the way to 1991, where it was changed due to the ongoing collapse of the Soviet Union. The flag was changed to a design that resembled the original ensign of the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, with a notable difference of the flag ratio being 1:2 instead of the original 2:3 ratio. After 1993, when the Soviet form of government was officially dissolved in the Russian Federation, the flag of the Russian Federation was changed to the original civil ensign with its original 2:3 proportions.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "40494892": "Dissolution of the Soviet Union\n1988\u20131991 breakup of a sovereign state\nThe Soviet Union was formally dissolved as a sovereign state and subject of international law on 26 December 1991 by Declaration \u2116 142-\u041d of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. It also brought an end to the Soviet Union's federal government and General Secretary (also President) Mikhail Gorbachev's effort to reform the Soviet political and economic system in an attempt to stop a period of political stalemate and economic backslide. The Soviet Union had experienced internal stagnation and ethnic separatism. Although highly centralized until its final years, the country was made up of 15 top-level republics that served as the homelands for different ethnicities. By late 1991, amid a catastrophic political crisis, with several republics already departing the Union and Gorbachev continuing the waning of centralized power, the leaders of three of its founding members, the Russian, Belorussian, and Ukrainian SSRs, declared that the Soviet Union no longer existed. Eight more republics joined their declaration shortly thereafter. Gorbachev resigned on 25 December 1991 and what was left of the Soviet parliament voted to dissolve the union the following day.\nThe process began with growing unrest in the country's various constituent national republics developing into an incessant political and legislative conflict between them and the central government. Estonia was the first Soviet republic to declare state sovereignty inside the Union on 16 November 1988. Lithuania was the first republic to declare full independence restored from the Soviet Union by the Act of 11 March 1990 with its Baltic neighbors and the Southern Caucasus republic of Georgia joining it over the next two months.\nDuring the failed 1991 August coup, communist hardliners and military elites attempted to overthrow Gorbachev and stop the failing reforms. However, the turmoil led to the central government in Moscow losing influence, ultimately resulting in many republics proclaiming independence in the following days and months. The secession of the Baltic states was recognized in September 1991. The Belovezha Accords were signed on 8 December by President Boris Yeltsin of Russia, President Kravchuk of Ukraine, and Chairman Shushkevich of Belarus, recognizing each other's independence and creating the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) to replace the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan was the last republic to leave the Union, proclaiming independence on 16 December. All the ex-Soviet republics, with the exception of Georgia and the Baltic states, joined the CIS on 21 December, signing the Alma-Ata Protocol. Russia, as by far the largest and most populous republic, became the Soviet Union's de facto successor state. On 25 December, Gorbachev resigned and turned over his presidential powers\u00a0\u2013 including control of the nuclear launch codes\u00a0\u2013 to Yeltsin, who was now the first president of the Russian Federation. That evening, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the Russian tricolor flag. The following day, the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union's upper chamber, the Soviet of the Republics, formally dissolved the Union. The events of the dissolution resulted in its 15 constituent republics gaining full independence which also marked the major conclusion of the Revolutions of 1989 and the end of the Cold War.\nIn the aftermath of the Cold War, several of the former Soviet republics have retained close links with Russia and formed multilateral organizations such as the CIS, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and the Union State, for economic and military cooperation. On the other hand, the Baltic states and all of the other former Warsaw Pact states became part of the European Union (EU) and joined NATO, while some of the other former Soviet republics like Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova have been publicly expressing interest in following the same path since the 1990s, despite Russian attempts to persuade them otherwise.\nBackground.\n1985: Gorbachev elected.\nMikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo on 11 March 1985, just over four hours after his predecessor Konstantin Chernenko died at the age of 73. Gorbachev, aged 54, was the youngest member of the Politburo. His initial goal as general secretary was to revive the stagnating Soviet economy, and he realized that doing so would require reforming underlying political and social structures. The reforms began with personnel changes of senior Brezhnev-era officials who would impede political and economic change. On 23 April 1985, Gorbachev brought two prot\u00e9g\u00e9s, Yegor Ligachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov, into the Politburo as full members. He kept the \"power\" ministries favorable by promoting KGB Chief Viktor Chebrikov from candidate to full member and appointing Minister of Defence Marshal Sergei Sokolov as a Politburo candidate.\nThe freedom of speech brought by Gorbachev's reforms allowed nationalist movements and ethnic disputes within the Soviet Union to be expressed and grow into dominant political movements. It also led indirectly to the revolutions of 1989 in which Soviet-imposed socialist regimes of the Warsaw Pact were toppled peacefully (with the notable exception of Romania), which in turn increased pressure on Gorbachev to introduce greater democracy and autonomy for the Soviet Union's constituent republics. Under Gorbachev's leadership, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1989 introduced limited competitive elections to a new central legislature, the Congress of People's Deputies (although the ban on other political parties was not lifted until 1990).\nOn 1 July 1985, Gorbachev sidelined his main rival by removing Grigory Romanov from the Politburo and brought Boris Yeltsin into the Central Committee Secretariat. On 23 December 1985, Gorbachev appointed Yeltsin First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party, replacing Viktor Grishin.\n1986: Sakharov returns.\nGorbachev continued to press for greater liberalization. On 23 December 1986 Andrei Sakharov, the most prominent Soviet dissident, returned to Moscow shortly after receiving a personal telephone call from Gorbachev telling him that after almost seven years his internal exile for defying the authorities was over.\n1987: One-party democracy.\nAt the 28\u201330 January Central Committee plenum, Gorbachev suggested a new policy of \"demokratizatsiya\" throughout Soviet society. He proposed that future Communist Party elections should offer a choice between multiple candidates, elected by secret ballot. However, the party delegates at the Plenum watered down Gorbachev's proposal, and democratic choice within the Communist Party was never significantly implemented.\nGorbachev also radically expanded the scope of \"glasnost\" and stated that no subject was off limits for open discussion in the media. On 7 February, dozens of political prisoners were freed in the first group release since the Khrushchev Thaw in the mid-1950s.\nOn 10 September, Boris Yeltsin wrote a letter of resignation to Gorbachev. At the 27 October plenary meeting of the Central Committee, Yeltsin, frustrated that Gorbachev had not addressed any of the issues outlined in his resignation letter, criticized the slow pace of reform, and servility to the general secretary. In his reply, Gorbachev accused Yeltsin of \"political immaturity\" and \"absolute irresponsibility\". Nevertheless, news of Yeltsin's insubordination and \"secret speech\" spread, and soon \"samizdat\" versions began to circulate. That marked the beginning of Yeltsin's rebranding as a rebel and rise in popularity as an anti-establishment figure. The following four years of political struggle between Yeltsin and Gorbachev played a large role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union. On 11 November, Yeltsin was fired from the post of First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party.\nProtest activity.\nIn the years leading up to the dissolution, various protests and resistance movements occurred or took hold throughout the Soviet Union, which were variously suppressed or tolerated.\nThe CTAG () Helsinki-86 was founded in July 1986 in the Latvian port town of Liep\u0101ja. Helsinki-86 was the first openly anti-Communist organization in the Soviet Union, and the first openly organized opposition to the Soviet regime, setting an example for other ethnic minorities' pro-independence movements.\nOn 26 December 1986, 300 Latvian youths gathered in Riga's Cathedral Square and marched down Lenin Avenue toward the Freedom Monument, shouting, \"Soviet Russia out! Free Latvia!\" Security forces confronted the marchers, and several police vehicles were overturned.\nThe \"Jeltoqsan\" ('December') of 1986 were riots in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, sparked by Gorbachev's dismissal of Dinmukhamed Kunaev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan and an ethnic Kazakh, who was replaced with Gennady Kolbin, an outsider from the Russian SFSR. Demonstrations started in the morning of 17 December 1986, with 200 to 300 students in front of the Central Committee building on Brezhnev Square. On the next day, 18 December, protests turned into civil unrest as clashes between troops, volunteers, militia units, and Kazakh students turned into a wide-scale confrontation. The clashes could only be controlled on the third day.\nOn 6 May 1987, Pamyat, a Russian nationalist group, held an unsanctioned demonstration in Moscow. The authorities did not break up the demonstration and even kept traffic out of the demonstrators' way while they marched to an impromptu meeting with Boris Yeltsin.\nOn 14 June 1987, about 5,000 people gathered again at Freedom Monument in Riga, and laid flowers to commemorate the anniversary of Stalin's mass deportation of Latvians in 1941. The authorities did not crack down on demonstrators, which encouraged more and larger demonstrations throughout the Baltic States. On 18 November 1987, hundreds of police and civilian militiamen cordoned off the central square to prevent any demonstration at Freedom Monument, but thousands lined the streets of Riga in silent protest regardless.\nOn 25 July 1987, 300 Crimean Tatars staged a noisy demonstration near the Kremlin Wall for several hours, calling for the right to return to their homeland, from which they were deported in 1944; police and soldiers looked on.\nOn 23 August 1987, the 48th anniversary of the secret protocols of the 1939 Molotov Pact, thousands of demonstrators marked the occasion in the three Baltic capitals to sing independence songs and attend speeches commemorating Stalin's victims. The gatherings were sharply denounced in the official press and closely watched by the police but were not interrupted.\nOn 17 October 1987, about 3,000 Armenians demonstrated in Yerevan complaining about the condition of Lake Sevan, the Nairit chemicals plant, and the Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant, and air pollution in Yerevan. Police tried to prevent the protest but took no action to stop it once the march was underway. The following day 1,000 Armenians participated in another demonstration calling for Armenian national rights in Karabakh and the proposed unification of both Nakhchivan and Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia. The police tried to physically prevent the march and after a few incidents, dispersed the demonstrators.\nTimeline.\n1988.\nMoscow loses control.\nIn 1988, Gorbachev started to lose control of two regions of the Soviet Union, as the Baltic republics were now leaning towards independence, and the Caucasus descended into violence and civil war.\nOn 1 July 1988, the fourth and last day of a bruising 19th Party Conference, Gorbachev won the backing of the tired delegates for his last-minute proposal to create a new supreme legislative body called the Congress of People's Deputies. Frustrated by the old guard's resistance, Gorbachev embarked on a set of constitutional changes to attempt separation of party and state, thereby isolating his Party opponents. Detailed proposals for the new Congress of People's Deputies were published on 2 October 1988, and to enable the creation of the new legislature. The Supreme Soviet, during its 29 November \u2013 1 December 1988, session, implemented amendments to the 1977 Soviet Constitution, enacted a law on electoral reform, and set the date of the election for 26 March 1989.\nOn 29 November 1988, the Soviet Union ceased jamming all foreign radio stations, allowing Soviet citizens \u2013 for the first time since a brief period in the 1960s \u2013 to have unrestricted access to news sources beyond Communist Party control.\nBaltic republics.\nIn 1986 and 1987, Latvia had been in the vanguard of the Baltic states in pressing for reform. In 1988, Estonia took over the lead role with the foundation of the Soviet Union's first popular front and starting to influence state policy.\nThe Estonian Popular Front was founded in April 1988. On 16 June 1988, Gorbachev replaced Karl Vaino, the \"old guard\" leader of the Communist Party of Estonia, with the comparatively liberal Vaino V\u00e4ljas. In late June 1988, V\u00e4ljas bowed to pressure from the Estonian Popular Front and legalized the flying of the old blue-black-white flag of Estonia, and agreed to a new state language law that made Estonian the official language of the Republic.\nOn 2 October, the Popular Front formally launched its political platform at a two-day congress. V\u00e4ljas attended, gambling that the Front could help Estonia become a model of economic and political revival, while moderating separatist and other radical tendencies. On 16 November 1988, the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR adopted a declaration of national sovereignty under which Estonian laws would take precedence over those of the Soviet Union. Estonia's parliament also laid claim to the republic's natural resources including land, inland waters, forests, mineral deposits, and to the means of industrial production, agriculture, construction, state banks, transportation, and municipal services within the territory of Estonia's borders. At the same time the Estonian Citizens' Committees started registration of citizens of the Republic of Estonia to carry out the elections of the Congress of Estonia.\nThe Latvian Popular Front was founded in June 1988. On 4 October, Gorbachev replaced Boris Pugo, the \"old guard\" leader of the Communist Party of Latvia, with the more liberal J\u0101nis Vagris. In October 1988 Vagris bowed to pressure from the Latvian Popular Front and legalized flying the former carmine red-and-white flag of independent Latvia, and on 6 October he passed a law making Latvian the country's official language.\nThe Popular Front of Lithuania, called S\u0105j\u016bdis (\"Movement\"), was founded in May 1988. On 19 October 1988, Gorbachev replaced Ringaudas Songaila, the \"old guard\" leader of the Communist Party of Lithuania \u2013 who had been in office for nearly a year \u2013 with the relatively liberal Algirdas Mykolas Brazauskas. In October 1988, Brazauskas bowed to pressure from S\u0105j\u016bdis members, and legalized the flying of the historic yellow-green-red flag of independent Lithuania, and in November 1988 he passed a law making Lithuanian the country's official language; also, the former national anthem, \"Tauti\u0161ka giesm\u0117\", was later reinstated. Following a violent protest action in the capital on 28 October, many of Songalia's remaining holdovers within the CPL either resigned or retired in protest of the police brutality of that day.\nRebellion in the Caucasus.\nOn 20 February 1988, after a week of growing demonstrations in Stepanakert, capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (the ethnically Armenian-majority area within the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic), the Regional Soviet voted to secede and join with the Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia. This local vote in a small, remote part of the Soviet Union made headlines around the world; it was an unprecedented defiance of republican and national authorities. On 22 February 1988, in what became known as the \"Askeran clash\", thousands of Azerbaijanis marched towards Nagorno-Karabakh, demanding information about rumors of an Azerbaijani having been killed in Stepanakert. They were informed that no such incident had occurred, but refused to believe it. Dissatisfied with what they were told, thousands began marching toward Nagorno-Karabakh, killing (or injuring?) 50. Karabakh authorities mobilised over a thousand police to stop the march, with the resulting clashes leaving two Azerbaijanis dead. These deaths, announced on state radio, led to the Sumgait Pogrom. Between 26 February and 1 March, the city of Sumgait (Azerbaijan) saw violent anti-Armenian rioting during which at least 32 people were killed. The authorities totally lost control and occupied the city with paratroopers and tanks; nearly all of the 14,000 Armenian residents of Sumgait fled.\nGorbachev refused to make any changes to the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, which remained part of Azerbaijan. He instead sacked the Communist Party Leaders in both Republics in response \u2013 on 21 May 1988, Kamran Baghirov was replaced by Abdulrahman Vezirov as First Secretary of the Azerbaijan Communist Party. From 23 July to September 1988, a group of Azerbaijani intellectuals began working for a new organization called the Popular Front of Azerbaijan, loosely based on the Estonian Popular Front. On 17 September, when gun battles broke out between the Armenians and Azerbaijanis near Stepanakert, two soldiers were killed and more than two dozen injured. This led to almost tit-for-tat ethnic polarization in Nagorno-Karabakh's two main towns: the Azerbaijani minority was expelled from Stepanakert, and the Armenian minority was expelled from Shusha. On 17 November 1988, in response to the exodus of tens of thousands of Azerbaijanis from Armenia, a series of mass demonstrations began in Baku's Lenin Square, lasting 18 days and attracting half a million demonstrators in support of their compatriots in that region. On 5 December 1988, the Soviet police and civilian militiamen moved in, cleared the square by force, and imposed a curfew that lasted ten months.\nThe rebellion of fellow Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh had an immediate effect in Armenia itself. Daily demonstrations, which began in the Armenian capital Yerevan on 18 February, initially attracted few people, but each day the Nagorno-Karabakh issue became increasingly prominent and the numbers swelled. On 20 February, a 30,000-strong crowd demonstrated in the Theater Square, by 22 February, there were 100,000, the next day 300,000, and a transport strike was declared, by 25 February, there were close to a million demonstrators\u00a0\u2013 more than a quarter of Armenia's population. This was the first of the large, peaceful public demonstrations that would become a feature of communism's overthrow in Prague, Berlin, and, ultimately, Moscow. Leading Armenian intellectuals and nationalists, including the future first president of independent Armenia Levon Ter-Petrossian, formed the eleven-member Karabakh Committee to lead and organize the new movement.\nOn the same day, when Gorbachev replaced Baghirov with Vezirov as First Secretary of the Azerbaijan Communist Party, he also replaced Karen Demirchian with Suren Harutyunyan as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia, however, Harutyunyan quickly decided to run before the nationalist wind and on 28 May, allowed Armenians to unfurl the red-blue-orange First Armenian Republic flag for the first time in almost 70 years to mark the 1918 declaration of the First Republic. On 15 June 1988, the Armenian Supreme Soviet adopted a resolution formally approving the idea of Nagorno-Karabakh's unification as part of the republic. Armenia, formerly one of the most loyal republics, had suddenly turned into the leading rebel republic. On 5 July 1988, when a contingent of troops was sent in to remove demonstrators by force from Yerevan's Zvartnots International Airport, shots were fired and one student protester was killed. In September, further large demonstrations in Yerevan led to the deployment of armored vehicles. In the autumn of 1988 almost all of the 200,000 Azerbaijani minority in Armenia was expelled by Armenian nationalists, with over 100 killed in the process. That, after the Sumgait pogrom earlier that year, which had been carried out by Azerbaijanis to ethnic Armenians and led to the expulsion of Armenians from Azerbaijan, was for many Armenians considered an act of revenge for the killings at Sumgait. On 25 November 1988, a military commandant took control of Yerevan as the Soviet government moved to prevent further ethnic violence.\nOn 7 December 1988, the Spitak earthquake struck, killing an estimated 25,000 to 50,000 people. When Gorbachev rushed back from a visit to the United States, he was so angered with being confronted by protesters calling for Nagorno-Karabakh to be made part of the Armenian Republic during a natural disaster that on 11 December 1988, he ordered that the entire Karabakh Committee be arrested.\nIn Tbilisi, the capital of Soviet Georgia, many demonstrators camped out in front of the republic's legislature in November 1988 calling for Georgia's independence and in support of Estonia's declaration of sovereignty.\nWestern republics.\nBeginning in February 1988, the Democratic Movement of Moldova (formerly Moldavia) organized public meetings, demonstrations, and song festivals, which gradually grew in size and intensity. In the streets, the center of public manifestations was the Stephen the Great Monument in Chi\u0219in\u0103u, and the adjacent park harboring \"Aleea Clasicilor\" (The \"Alley of Classics [of Literature]\"). On 15 January 1988, in a tribute to Mihai Eminescu at his bust on the Aleea Clasicilor, Anatol \u0218alaru submitted a proposal to continue the meetings. In the public discourse, the movement called for national awakening, freedom of speech, the revival of Moldovan traditions, and for the attainment of official status for the Romanian language and return to the Latin alphabet. The transition from \"movement\" (an informal association) to \"front\" (a formal association) was seen as a natural \"upgrade\" once a movement gained momentum with the public, and the Soviet authorities no longer dared to crack down on it.\nOn 26 April 1988, about 500 people participated in a march organized by the Ukrainian Cultural Club on Kyiv's Khreschatyk Street to mark the second anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, carrying placards with slogans like \"Openness and Democracy to the End\". Between May and June 1988, Ukrainian Catholics in western Ukraine celebrated the Millennium of Christianity in Kyivan Rus in secret by holding services in the forests of Buniv, Kalush, Hoshi, and Zarvanytsia. On 5 June 1988, as the official celebrations of the Millennium were held in Moscow, the Ukrainian Cultural Club hosted its own observances in Kyiv at the monument to St. Volodymyr the Great, the grand prince of Kyivan Rus.\nOn 16 June 1988, 6,000 to 8,000 people gathered in Lviv to hear speakers declare no confidence in the local list of delegates to the 19th Communist Party conference, to begin on 29 June. On 21 June, a rally in Lviv attracted 50,000 people who had heard about a revised delegate list. Authorities attempted to disperse the rally in front of Druzhba Stadium. On 7 July, 10,000 to 20,000 people witnessed the launch of the Democratic Front to Promote Perestroika. On 17 July, a group of 10,000 gathered in the village Zarvanytsia for Millennium services celebrated by Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Bishop Pavlo Vasylyk. The militia tried to disperse attendees, but it turned out to be the largest gathering of Ukrainian Catholics since Stalin outlawed the Church in 1946. On 4 August, which came to be known as \"Bloody Thursday\", local authorities violently suppressed a demonstration organized by the Democratic Front to Promote Perestroika. Forty-one people were detained, fined, or sentenced to 15 days of administrative arrest. On 1 September, local authorities violently displaced 5,000 students at a public meeting lacking official permission at Ivan Franko State University.\nOn 13 November 1988, approximately 10,000 people attended an officially sanctioned meeting organized by the cultural heritage organization \"Spadschyna\", the Kyiv University student club \"Hromada\", and the environmental groups \"Zelenyi Svit\" (\"Green World\") and \"Noosfera\", to focus on ecological issues. From 14 to 18 November, 15 Ukrainian activists were among the 100 human-, national- and religious-rights advocates invited to discuss human rights with Soviet officials and a visiting delegation of the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (also known as the Helsinki Commission). On 10 December, hundreds gathered in Kyiv to observe International Human Rights Day at a rally organized by the Democratic Union. The unauthorized gathering resulted in the detention of local activists.\nThe Belarusian Popular Front was established in 1988 as a political party and cultural movement for democracy and independence, similar to the Baltic republics' popular fronts. The discovery of mass graves in Kurapaty outside Minsk by historian Zianon Pazniak, the Belarusian Popular Front's first leader, gave additional momentum to the pro-democracy and pro-independence movement in Belarus. It claimed that the NKVD performed secret killings in Kurapaty. Initially the Front had significant visibility because its numerous public actions almost always ended in clashes with the police and the KGB.\n1989.\nMoscow: limited democratization.\nSpring 1989 saw the people of the Soviet Union exercising a democratic choice, albeit limited, for the first time since 1917, when they elected the new Congress of People's Deputies. Just as important was the uncensored live TV coverage of the legislature's deliberations, where people witnessed the previously feared Communist leadership being questioned and held accountable. This example fueled a limited experiment with democracy in Poland, which quickly led to the toppling of the Communist government in Warsaw that summer and in turn sparked uprisings that overthrew governments in the other five Warsaw Pact countries before the end of 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell.\nThis was also the year that CNN became the first non-Soviet broadcaster allowed to beam its TV news programs to Moscow. Officially, CNN was available only to foreign guests in the Savoy Hotel, but Muscovites quickly learned how to pick up signals on their home televisions. That had a major effect on how Soviets saw events in their country and made censorship almost impossible.\nThe month-long nomination period for candidates for the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union lasted until 24 January 1989. For the next month, selection among the 7,531 district nominees took place at meetings organized by constituency-level electoral commissions. On 7 March, a final list of 5,074 candidates was published; about 85% were Party members.\nIn the two weeks prior to the 1,500 district polls, elections to fill 750 reserved seats of public organizations, contested by 880 candidates, were held. Of these seats, 100 were allocated to the CPSU, 100 to the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, 75 to the Communist Youth Union (Komsomol), 75 to the Committee of Soviet Women, 75 to the War and Labour Veterans' Organization, and 325 to other organizations such as the Academy of Sciences. The selection process was done in April.\nIn the 26 March general elections, voter participation was an impressive 89.8%, and 1,958 (including 1,225 district seats) of the 2,250 CPD seats were filled. In district races, run-off elections were held in 76 constituencies on 2 and 9 April and fresh elections were organized on 14 and 20 April to 23 May, in the 199 remaining constituencies where the required absolute majority was not attained. While most CPSU-endorsed candidates were elected, more than 300 lost to independent candidates such as Yeltsin, the physicist Andrei Sakharov and the lawyer Anatoly Sobchak.\nIn the first session of the new Congress of People's Deputies (from 25 May to 9 June), hardliners retained control but reformers used the legislature as a platform for debate and criticism, which was broadcast live and uncensored. This transfixed the population since nothing like such a freewheeling debate had ever been witnessed in the Soviet Union. On 29 May, Yeltsin managed to secure a seat on the Supreme Soviet, and in the summer he formed the first opposition, the Inter-Regional Deputies Group, composed of Russian nationalists and liberals. Composing the final legislative group in the Soviet Union, those elected in 1989 played a vital part in reforms and the eventual breakup of the Soviet Union during the next two years.\nOn 30 May 1989, Gorbachev proposed that local elections across the country, scheduled for November 1989, be postponed until early 1990 because there were still no laws governing the conduct of such elections. This was seen by some as a concession to local Party officials, who feared they would be swept from power in a wave of anti-establishment sentiment.\nOn 25 October 1989, the Supreme Soviet voted to eliminate special seats for the Communist Party and other official organizations in union-level and republic-level elections, responding to sharp popular criticism that such reserved slots were undemocratic. After vigorous debate, the 542-member Supreme Soviet passed the measure 254\u201385 (with 36 abstentions). The decision required a constitutional amendment, ratified by the full congress, which met 12\u201325 December. It also passed measures that would allow direct elections for presidents of each of the 15 constituent republics. Gorbachev strongly opposed such a move during debate but was defeated.\nThe vote expanded the power of republics in local elections, enabling them to decide for themselves how to organize voting. Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia had already proposed laws for direct presidential elections. Local elections in all the republics had already been scheduled to take place between December and March 1990.\nThe six Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern Europe, while nominally independent, were widely recognized as the Soviet satellite states (along with Mongolia). All had been occupied by the Soviet Red Army in 1945, had Soviet-style socialist states imposed upon them, and had very restricted freedom of action in either domestic or international affairs. Any moves towards real independence were suppressed by military force \u2013 in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Prague Spring in 1968. Gorbachev abandoned the oppressive and expensive Brezhnev Doctrine, which mandated intervention in the Warsaw Pact states, in favor of non-intervention in the internal affairs of allies \u2013 jokingly termed the Sinatra Doctrine in a reference to the Frank Sinatra song \"My Way\". Poland was the first republic to democratize following the enactment of the April Novelization, as agreed upon following the Polish Round Table Agreement talks from February to April between the government and the Solidarity trade union. The Polish Solidarity Union, as established through the 1980 August Accords, presented Lech Wa\u0142\u0119sa as their candidate, who became the first democratically elected president of Poland. The elections in Poland inspired other Eastern European Soviet Nations to pursue peaceful democratic transitions, and soon the Pact began to dissolve itself. The last of the countries to overthrow Communist leadership, Romania, only did so following the violent Romanian Revolution.\nBaltic Chain of Freedom.\nThe Baltic Way or Baltic Chain (also Chain of Freedom; , , , ) was a peaceful political demonstration on 23 August 1989. An estimated 2\u00a0million people joined hands to form a human chain extending across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which had been forcibly reincorporated into the Soviet Union in 1944. The colossal demonstration marked the 50th anniversary of the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact that divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence and led to the occupation of the Baltic states in 1940.\nJust months after the Baltic Way protests, in December 1989, the Congress of People's Deputies accepted\u00a0\u2013 and Gorbachev signed\u00a0\u2013 the report by the Yakovlev Commission condemning the secret protocols of the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop pact which led to the annexations of the three Baltic republics.\nIn the March 1989 elections to the Congress of Peoples Deputies, 36 of the 42 deputies from Lithuania were candidates from the independent national movement S\u0105j\u016bdis. That was the greatest victory for any national organization within the Soviet Union and was a devastating revelation to the Lithuanian Communist Party of its growing unpopularity.\nOn 7 December 1989, the Communist Party of Lithuania, under the leadership of Algirdas Brazauskas, split from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and abandoned its claim to have a constitutional \"leading role\" in politics. A smaller loyalist faction of the Communist Party, headed by hardliner Mykolas Burokevi\u010dius, was established and remained affiliated with the party. However, Lithuania's governing Communist Party was formally independent from Moscow's control, a first for a Soviet republics and a political earthquake that prompted Gorbachev to arrange a visit to Lithuania the following month in a futile attempt to bring the local party back under control. The following year, the Communist Party lost power altogether in multiparty parliamentary elections, which had caused Vytautas Landsbergis to become the first noncommunist leader (Chairman of the Supreme Council of Lithuania) of Lithuania since its forced incorporation into the Soviet Union.\nCaucasus.\nOn 16 July 1989, the Popular Front of Azerbaijan held its first congress and elected Abulfaz Elchibey, who would become president, as its chairman. On 19 August, 600,000 protesters jammed Baku's Lenin Square (now Azadliq Square) to demand the release of political prisoners. In the second half of 1989, weapons were handed out in Nagorno-Karabakh. When Karabakhis got hold of small arms to replace hunting rifles and crossbows, casualties began to mount; bridges were blown up, roads were blockaded, and hostages were taken.\nIn a new and effective tactic, the Popular Front launched a rail blockade of Armenia, which caused petrol and food shortages because 85 percent of Armenia's freight came from Azerbaijan. Under pressure from the Popular Front the Communist authorities in Azerbaijan started making concessions. On 25 September, they passed a sovereignty law that gave precedence to Azerbaijani law, and on 4 October, the Popular Front was permitted to register as a legal organization as long as it lifted the blockade. Transport communications between Azerbaijan and Armenia never fully recovered. Tensions continued to escalate and on 29 December, Popular Front activists seized local party offices in Jalilabad, wounding dozens.\nOn 31 May 1989, the 11 members of the Karabakh Committee, who had been imprisoned without trial in Moscow's Matrosskaya Tishina prison, were released and returned home to a hero's welcome. Soon after his release, Levon Ter-Petrossian, an academic, was elected chairman of the anti-communist opposition Pan-Armenian National Movement, and later stated that it was in 1989 that he first began considering full independence as his goal.\nOn 7 April 1989, Soviet troops and armored personnel carriers were sent to Tbilisi after more than 100,000 people protested in front of Communist Party headquarters with banners calling for Georgia to secede from the Soviet Union and for Abkhazia to be fully integrated into Georgia. On 9 April 1989, troops attacked the demonstrators; some 20 people were killed and more than 200 wounded. This event radicalized Georgian politics, prompting many to conclude that independence was preferable to continued Soviet rule. Given the abuses by members of the armed forces and police, Moscow acted fast. On 14 April, Gorbachev removed Jumber Patiashvili as First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party as a result of the killings and replaced him with former Georgian KGB chief Givi Gumbaridze.\nOn 16 July 1989, in Abkhazia's capital Sukhumi, a protest against the opening of a Georgian university branch in the town led to violence that quickly degenerated into a large-scale inter-ethnic confrontation in which 18 died and hundreds were injured before Soviet troops restored order. This riot marked the start of the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict.\nOn 17 November 1989, the Supreme Council of Georgia held its fall plenary session, which lasted two days. One of the resolutions that came out of it was as a declaration against what it called an \"illegal\" accession into the Soviet Union of the country 68 years ago, forced against its will by the Red Army, the CPSU and the All-Russian Council of People's Commissars.\nWestern republics.\nOn 26 March 1989, elections to the Congress of People's Deputies, 15 of the 46 Moldovan deputies elected for congressional seats in Moscow were supporters of the Nationalist/Democratic movement. The Popular Front of Moldova founding congress took place two months later, on 20 May. During its second congress (30 June \u2013 1 July 1989), Ion Had\u00e2rc\u0103 was elected its president.\nA series of demonstrations that became known as the Grand National Assembly () was the Front's first major achievement. Such mass demonstrations, including one attended by 300,000 people on 27 August, convinced the Moldovan Supreme Soviet on 31 August to adopt the language law making Romanian the official language, and replacing the Cyrillic alphabet with Latin characters.\nIn Ukraine, Lviv and Kyiv celebrated Ukrainian Independence Day on 22 January 1989. Thousands gathered in Lviv for an unauthorized \"moleben\" (religious service) in front of St. George's Cathedral. In Kyiv, 60 activists met in a Kyiv apartment to commemorate the proclamation of the Ukrainian People's Republic in 1918. On 11\u201312 February 1989, the Ukrainian Language Society held its founding congress. On 15 February 1989, the formation of the Initiative Committee for the Renewal of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was announced. The program and statutes of the movement were proposed by the Writers' Union of Ukraine and were published in the journal \"Literaturna Ukraina\" on 16 February 1989. The organization heralded Ukrainian dissidents such as Vyacheslav Chornovil.\nIn late February, large public rallies took place in Kyiv to protest the election laws, on the eve of the 26 March elections to the USSR Congress of People's Deputies, and to call for the resignation of the first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, lampooned as \"the mastodon of stagnation\". The demonstrations coincided with a visit to Ukraine by Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. On 26 February 1989, between 20,000 and 30,000 people participated in an unsanctioned ecumenical memorial service in Lviv, marking the anniversary of the death of 19th-century Ukrainian artist and nationalist Taras Shevchenko.\nOn 4 March 1989, the Memorial Society, committed to honoring the victims of Stalinism and cleansing society of Soviet practices, was founded in Kyiv. A public rally was held the next day. On 12 March, A pre-election meeting organized in Lviv by the Ukrainian Helsinki Union and the Marian Society \"Myloserdia\" (Compassion) was violently dispersed, and nearly 300 people were detained. On 26 March, elections were held to the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union; by-elections were held on 9 April 14 May, and 21 May. Among the 225 Ukrainian representatives to the Congress, most were conservatives, though a handful of progressives were also elected.\nFrom 20 to 23 April 1989, pre-election meetings were held in Lviv for four consecutive days, drawing crowds of up to 25,000. The action included a one-hour warning strike at eight local factories and institutions. It was the first labor strike in Lviv since 1944. On 3 May, a pre-election rally attracted 30,000 in Lviv. On 7 May, The Memorial Society organized a mass meeting at Bykivnia, site of a mass grave of Ukrainian and Polish victims of Stalinist terror. After a march from Kyiv to the site, a memorial service was staged.\nFrom mid-May to September 1989, Ukrainian Greek-Catholic hunger strikers staged protests on Moscow's Arbat to call attention to the plight of their Church. They were especially active during the July session of the World Council of Churches held in Moscow. The protest ended with the arrests of the group on 18 September. On 27 May 1989, the founding conference of the Lviv regional Memorial Society was held. On 18 June 1989, an estimated 100,000 faithful participated in public religious services in Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine, responding to Cardinal Myroslav Lubachivsky's call for an international day of prayer.\nOn 19 August 1989, the Russian Orthodox Parish of Saints Peter and Paul announced it would be switching to the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. On 2 September 1989, tens of thousands across Ukraine protested a draft election law that reserved special seats for the Communist Party and for other official organizations for parliamentary seats: 50,000 in Lviv, 40,000 in Kyiv, 10,000 in Zhytomyr, 5,000 each in Dniprodzerzhynsk and Chervonohrad, and 2,000 in Kharkiv. From 8\u201310 September 1989, writer Ivan Drach was elected to head Rukh, the People's Movement of Ukraine, at its founding congress in Kyiv. On 17 September, between 150,000 and 200,000 people marched in Lviv, demanding the legalization of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. On 21 September 1989, exhumation of a mass grave began in Demianiv Laz, a nature preserve south of Ivano-Frankivsk. On 28 September, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, a holdover from the Brezhnev era, was replaced in this office by Vladimir Ivashko.\nOn 1 October 1989, a peaceful demonstration of 10,000 to 15,000 people was violently dispersed by police constables in front of Lviv's Druzhba Stadium, where a concert celebrating the Soviet \"reunification\" of Ukrainian lands was being held. On 10 October, Ivano-Frankivsk was the site of a pre-election protest attended by 30,000 people. On 15 October, several thousand people gathered in Chervonohrad, Chernivtsi, Rivne, and Zhytomyr; 500 in Dnipropetrovsk; and 30,000 in Lviv to protest the election law. On 20 October, faithful and clergy of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church participated in a synod in Lviv, the first since its forced liquidation in the 1930s.\nOn 24 October, the union Supreme Soviet passed a law eliminating special seats for Communist Party and other official organizations' representatives in parliament. On 26 October, twenty factories in Lviv held strikes and meetings to protest the police brutality of 1 October and the authorities' unwillingness to prosecute those responsible. From 26 to 28 October, the \"Zelenyi Svit\" (Friends of the Earth \u2013 Ukraine) environmental association held its founding congress, and on 27 October the Ukrainian Parliament passed a law eliminating the special status of party and other official organizations as deputies of parliament.\nOn 28 October 1989, the Ukrainian Parliament decreed that effective 1 January 1990, Ukrainian would be the official language of Ukraine, while Russian would be used for communication between ethnic groups. On the same day, The Congregation of the Church of the Transfiguration in Lviv left the Russian Orthodox Church and proclaimed itself the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. The following day, thousands attended a memorial service at Demianiv Laz, and a temporary marker was placed to indicate that a monument to the \"victims of the repressions of 1939\u20131941\" soon would be erected.\nIn mid-November, The Shevchenko Ukrainian Language Society was officially registered. On 19 November 1989, a public gathering in Kyiv attracted thousands of mourners, friends, and family to the reburial in Ukraine of three inmates of the infamous Gulag Camp No.\u00a036 in Perm in the Ural Mountains: human-rights activists Vasyl Stus, Oleksiy Tykhy, and Yuriy Lytvyn. Their remains were reinterred in Baikove Cemetery. On 26 November 1989, a day of prayer and fasting was proclaimed by Cardinal Myroslav Lubachivsky, thousands of faithful in western Ukraine participated in religious services on the eve of a meeting between Pope John Paul II and General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Gorbachev. On 28 November 1989, the Ukrainian SSR's Council for Religious Affairs issued a decree allowing Ukrainian Catholic congregations to register as legal organizations. The decree was proclaimed on December\u00a01, coinciding with a meeting at the Vatican between the pope and the Soviet General Secretary.\nOn 10 December 1989, the first officially sanctioned observance of International Human Rights Day was held in Lviv. On 17 December, an estimated 30,000 attended a public meeting organized in Kyiv by Rukh in memory of Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov, who died on 14 December. On 26 December, the Supreme Soviet of Ukrainian SSR adopted a law designating Christmas, Easter, and the Feast of the Holy Trinity official holidays.\nIn May 1989, a Soviet dissident, Mustafa Dzhemilev, was elected to lead the newly founded Crimean Tatar National Movement. He also led the campaign for the return of Crimean Tatars to their homeland in Crimea after 45 years of exile.\nOn 24 January 1989, the Soviet authorities in Byelorussia agreed to the demand of the democratic opposition (the Belarusian Popular Front) to build a monument to thousands of people shot by Stalin-era police in the Kuropaty Forest near Minsk in the 1930s.\nOn 30 September 1989, thousands of Belarusians, denouncing local leaders, marched through Minsk to demand additional cleanup of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster site in Ukraine. Up to 15,000 protesters wearing armbands bearing radioactivity symbols and carrying the banned red-and-white national flag used by the government-in-exile filed through torrential rain in defiance of a ban by local authorities. Later, they gathered in the city center near the government's headquarters, where speakers demanded the resignation of Yefrem Sokolov, the republic's Communist Party leader, and called for the evacuation of half a million people from the contaminated zones.\nMiners' strikes.\nStrike actions by coal miners in the Kuznetsk Basin, or Kuzbass, began on 10 or 11 July 1989, in reaction to increased prices, unsafe working conditions and popular frenzy against corruption as a result of \"perestroika\". Miners in the Kuzbass were soon joined by other miners in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region and the northern city of Vorkuta. Shcherbytsky, Ukraine's first secretary, came under significant political pressure as the strikes in the Donbas became particularly militant and connected themselves to Ukrainian dissident groups. The strikes came to an end from 24 to 27 July after the Soviet government agreed to codify the workers' demands into law, but by that point the damage had already been done. Following a 7 August meeting of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Shcherbytsky was forced to retire.\nThe government's accession to the miners' demands failed to prevent the growth of public anger, particularly in Ukraine, where the miners had become especially militant. The Independent Union of Miners, the Soviet Union's first independent trade union, would go on to be founded in July 1990 as the Ukrainian dissident movement continued to gain broader public support.\nCentral Asian republics.\nThousands of Soviet troops were sent to the Fergana Valley, southeast of the Uzbek capital Tashkent, to re-establish order after clashes in which local Uzbeks hunted down members of the Meskhetian minority in several days of rioting between 4\u201311 June 1989 in what would be called the Fergana massacre; about 100 people were killed. As a consequence, most of the Meskhetian community fled away from Uzbekistan. Uzbek outrage over the events soon reached the capital and soon Moscow acted fast. On 23 June 1989, Gorbachev removed Rafiq Nishonov as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Uzbek SSR for being unable to stop the race riots in the region and replaced him with Islam Karimov, who went on to lead Uzbekistan as a Soviet Republic and subsequently as an independent state until his death in 2016. \nIn Kazakhstan on 19 June 1989, young men carrying guns, firebombs, iron bars, and stones rioted in Zhanaozen, causing a number of deaths. The youths tried to seize a police station and a water-supply station. They brought public transportation to a halt and shut down various shops and industries. By 25 June, the rioting had spread to five other towns near the Caspian Sea. A mob of about 150 people armed with sticks, stones and metal rods attacked the police station in Mangishlak, about from Zhanaozen before they were dispersed by government troops flown in by helicopters. Mobs of young people also rampaged through Yeraliev, Shepke, Fort-Shevchenko and Kulsary, where they poured flammable liquid on trains housing temporary workers and set them on fire.\nWith the government and CPSU shocked by the riots, on 22 June 1989, as a result of the riots, Gorbachev removed Gennady Kolbin (the ethnic Russian whose appointment caused riots in December 1986) as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan for his poor handling of the June events and replaced him with Nursultan Nazarbayev, an ethnic Kazakh who went on to lead Kazakhstan as the Soviet Republic and subsequently to independence. Nazarbayev would lead Kazakhstan for 27 years until he stepped down as president on 19 March 2019.\n1990.\nMoscow loses five republics.\nOn 7 February 1990, the Central Committee of the CPSU accepted Gorbachev's recommendation that the party give up its monopoly on political power. In 1990, all fifteen constituent republics of the USSR held their first competitive elections, with reformers and ethnic nationalists winning many seats. The CPSU lost the elections in five republics:\nThe constituent republics began to declare their fledgling states' sovereignty and began a \"war of laws\" with the Moscow central government; they rejected union-wide legislation that conflicted with local laws, asserted control over their local economies, and refused to pay taxes to the Soviet government. Landsbergis, Chairman of the Supreme Council of Lithuania, also exempted Lithuanian men from mandatory service in the Soviet Armed Forces. This conflict caused economic dislocation as supply lines were disrupted, and caused the Soviet economy to decline further.\nRivalry between USSR and RSFSR.\nOn 4 March 1990, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic held relatively free elections for the Congress of People's Deputies of Russia. Boris Yeltsin was elected, representing Sverdlovsk, garnering 72 percent of the vote. On 29 May 1990, Yeltsin was elected chair of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, despite the fact that Gorbachev asked Russian deputies not to vote for him.\nYeltsin was supported by democratic and conservative members of the Supreme Soviet, who sought power in the developing political situation. A new power struggle emerged between the RSFSR and the Soviet Union. On 12 June 1990, the Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR adopted a declaration of sovereignty. On 12 July 1990, Yeltsin resigned from the Communist Party in a dramatic speech at the 28th Congress.\nBaltic republics.\nGorbachev's visit to the Lithuanian capital Vilnius on 11\u201313 January 1990, provoked a pro-independence rally attended by an estimated 250,000 people.\nOn 11 March, the newly elected parliament of the Lithuanian SSR elected Vytautas Landsbergis, the leader of S\u0105j\u016bdis, as its chairman and proclaimed the Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania, making Lithuania the first Soviet Republic to declare independence from the Soviet Union. Moscow reacted with an economic blockade keeping the troops in Lithuania ostensibly \"to secure the rights of ethnic Russians\".\nOn 25 March 1990, the Estonian Communist Party voted to split from the CPSU after a six-month transition.\nOn 30 March 1990, the Estonian Supreme Council declared the Soviet occupation of Estonia since the Second World War to be illegal and began a period of national transition towards the formal reestablishment of national independence within the republic.\nOn 3 April 1990, Edgar Savisaar of the Popular Front of Estonia was elected chairman of the Council of Ministers (the equivalent of being Prime Minister), and soon a majority-pro independence cabinet was formed.\nLatvia declared the restoration of independence on 4 May 1990, with the declaration stipulating a transitional period to complete independence. The Declaration stated that although Latvia had de facto lost its independence in World War II, the country had \"de jure\" remained a sovereign country because the annexation had been unconstitutional and against the will of the Latvian people. The declaration also stated that Latvia would base its relationship with the Soviet Union on the basis of the Latvian\u2013Soviet Peace Treaty of 1920, in which the Soviet Union recognized Latvia's independence as inviolable \"for all future time\". 4 May is now a national holiday in Latvia.\nOn 7 May 1990, Ivars Godmanis of the Latvian Popular Front was elected chairman of the Council of Ministers (the equivalent of being Latvia's Prime Minister), becoming the first premier of the restored Latvian republic.\n\u041en 8 May 1990, the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR adopted a law officially declaring the reinstatement of the 1938 Constitution of the independent Republic of Estonia.\nCaucasus.\nDuring the first week of January 1990, in the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan, the Popular Front led crowds in the storming and destruction of the frontier fences and watchtowers along the border with Iran, and thousands of Soviet Azerbaijanis crossed the border to meet their ethnic cousins in Iranian Azerbaijan.\nEthnic tensions had escalated between the Armenians and Azerbaijanis in spring and summer 1988. On 9 January 1990, after the Armenian parliament voted to include Nagorno-Karabakh within its budget, renewed fighting broke out, hostages were taken, and four Soviet soldiers were killed. On 11 January, Popular Front radicals stormed party buildings and effectively overthrew the communist powers in the southern town of Lenkoran. Gorbachev resolved to regain control of Azerbaijan; the events that ensued are known as \"Black January\". Late on 19 January 1990, after blowing up the central television station and cutting the phone and radio lines, 26,000 Soviet troops entered the Azerbaijani capital Baku, smashing barricades, attacking protesters, and firing into crowds. On that night and during subsequent confrontations (which lasted until February), more than 130 people died. Most of these were civilians. More than 700 civilians were wounded, hundreds were detained, but only a few were actually tried for alleged criminal offenses.\nCivil liberties suffered. Soviet Defence Minister Dmitry Yazov stated that the use of force in Baku was intended to prevent the \"de facto\" takeover of the Azerbaijani government by the non-communist opposition, to prevent their victory in upcoming free elections (scheduled for March 1990), to destroy them as a political force, and to ensure that the Communist government remained in power.\nThe army had gained control of Baku, but by 20 January it had essentially lost Azerbaijan. Nearly the entire population of Baku turned out for the mass funerals of \"martyrs\" buried in the Alley of Martyrs. Thousands of Communist Party members publicly burned their party cards. First Secretary Vezirov decamped to Moscow and Ayaz Mutalibov was appointed his successor in a free vote of party officials. The ethnic Russian Viktor Polyanichko remained second secretary. In reaction to the Soviet actions in Baku, Sakina Aliyeva, Chair of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic called a special session where it was debated whether or not Nakhchivan could secede from the USSR under Article 81 of the Soviet Constitution. Deciding that it was legal, deputies prepared a declaration of independence, which Aliyeva signed and presented on 20 January on national television. It was the first declaration of secession by a recognized region in the USSR. Aliyeva and the Nakhchivan Soviet's actions were denounced by government officials who forced her to resign and the attempt at independence was aborted.\nFollowing the hardliners' takeover, the 30 September 1990 elections (runoffs on 14 October) were characterized by intimidation; several Popular Front candidates were jailed, two were murdered, and unabashed ballot stuffing took place, even in the presence of Western observers. The election results reflected the threatening environment; out of the 350 members, 280 were Communists, with only 45 opposition candidates from the Popular Front and other non-communist groups, who together formed a Democratic Bloc (\"Dembloc\"). In May 1990 Mutalibov was elected chairman of the Supreme Soviet unopposed.\nOn 23 August 1990, the Supreme Soviet of the Armenian SSR adopted the Declaration of Independence of Armenia. The document proclaimed the independent Republic of Armenia with its own symbols, army, financial institutions, foreign and tax policy.\nWestern republics.\nOn 21 January 1990, Rukh organized a human chain between Kyiv, Lviv, and Ivano-Frankivsk. Hundreds of thousands joined hands to commemorate the proclamation of Ukrainian independence in 1918 and the reunification of Ukrainian lands one year later (1919 Unification Act). On 23 January 1990, the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church held its first synod since its liquidation by the Soviets in 1946 (an act which the gathering declared invalid). On 9 February 1990, the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice officially registered Rukh. However, the registration came too late for Rukh to field its own candidates for the parliamentary and local elections on 4 March. At those 1990 elections of people's deputies to the Supreme Council (\"Verkhovna Rada\"), candidates from the Democratic Bloc won landslide victories in western Ukrainian oblasts. A majority of the seats had to hold run-off elections. On 18 March, Democratic candidates scored further victories in the run-offs. The Democratic Bloc gained about 90 out of 450 seats in the new parliament.\nOn 6 April 1990, the Lviv City Council voted to return St. George Cathedral to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. The Russian Orthodox Church refused to yield. On 29\u201330 April 1990, the Ukrainian Helsinki Union disbanded to form the Ukrainian Republican Party. On 15 May the new parliament convened. The bloc of conservative communists held 239 seats; the Democratic Bloc, which had evolved into the National Council, had 125 deputies. On 4 June 1990, two candidates remained in the protracted race for parliament chair. The leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU), Volodymyr Ivashko, was elected with 60 percent of the vote as more than 100 opposition deputies boycotted the election. On 5\u20136 June 1990, Metropolitan Mstyslav of the U.S.-based Ukrainian Orthodox Church was elected patriarch of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) during that Church's first synod. The UAOC declared its full independence from the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, which in March had granted autonomy to the Ukrainian Orthodox church headed by the Metropolitan Filaret.\nOn 22 June 1990, Volodymyr Ivashko withdrew his candidacy for leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine in view of his new position in parliament. Stanislav Hurenko was elected first secretary of the CPU. On 11 July, Ivashko resigned from his post as chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament after he was elected deputy general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Parliament accepted the resignation a week later, on 18 July. On 16 July Parliament overwhelmingly approved the Declaration on State Sovereignty of Ukraine \u2013 with a vote of 355 in favour and four against. The people's deputies voted 339 to 5 to proclaim 16 July a Ukrainian national holiday.\nOn 23 July 1990, Leonid Kravchuk was elected to replace Ivashko as parliament chairman. On 30 July, Parliament adopted a resolution on military service ordering Ukrainian soldiers \"in regions of national conflict such as Armenia and Azerbaijan\" to return to Ukrainian territory. On August\u00a01, Parliament voted overwhelmingly to shut down the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. On 3 August, it adopted a law on the economic sovereignty of the Ukrainian republic. On 19 August, the first Ukrainian Catholic liturgy in 44 years was celebrated at St. George Cathedral. On 5\u20137 September, the International Symposium on the Great Famine of 1932\u20131933 was held in Kyiv. On 8 September, The first \"Youth for Christ\" rally since 1933 took place held in Lviv, with 40,000 participants. In 28\u201330 September, the Green Party of Ukraine held its founding congress. On 30 September, nearly 100,000 people marched in Kyiv to protest against the new union treaty proposed by Gorbachev.\nOn 1 October 1990, parliament reconvened amid mass protests calling for the resignations of Kravchuk and of Prime Minister Vitaliy Masol, a leftover from the previous r\u00e9gime. Students erected a tent city on October Revolution Square, where they continued the protest.\nOn 17 October Masol resigned, and on 20 October, Patriarch Mstyslav\u00a0I of Kyiv and all Ukraine arrived at Saint Sophia's Cathedral, ending a 46-year banishment from his homeland. On 23 October 1990, Parliament voted to delete Article\u00a06 of the Ukrainian Constitution, which referred to the \"leading role\" of the Communist Party.\nOn 25\u201328 October 1990, Rukh held its second congress and declared that its principal goal was the \"renewal of independent statehood for Ukraine\". On 28 October UAOC faithful, supported by Ukrainian Catholics, demonstrated near St. Sophia's Cathedral as newly elected Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Aleksei and Metropolitan Filaret celebrated liturgy at the shrine. On 1 November, the leaders of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, respectively, Metropolitan Volodymyr Sterniuk and Patriarch Mstyslav, met in Lviv during anniversary commemorations of the 1918 proclamation of the Western Ukrainian National Republic.\nOn 18 November 1990, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church enthroned Mstyslav as Patriarch of Kyiv and all Ukraine during ceremonies at Saint Sophia's Cathedral. Also on 18 November, Canada announced that its consul-general to Kyiv would be Ukrainian-Canadian Nestor Gayowsky. On 19 November, the United States announced that its consul to Kyiv would be Ukrainian-American John Stepanchuk. On 19 November, the chairmen of the Ukrainian and Russian parliaments, respectively, Kravchuk and Yeltsin, signed a 10-year bilateral pact. In early December 1990 the Party of Democratic Rebirth of Ukraine was founded; on 15 December, the Democratic Party of Ukraine was founded.\nOn 27 July 1990 the Supreme Soviet of the Byelorussian SSR passed a Declaration of State Sovereignty, asserting its sovereignty as a republic inside the Soviet Union.\nCentral Asian republics.\nOn 12\u201314 February 1990, anti-government riots took place in Tajikistan's capital, Dushanbe, as tensions rose between nationalist Tajiks and ethnic Armenian refugees, after the Sumgait pogrom and anti-Armenian riots in Azerbaijan in 1988. A state of emergency was declared in the capital on 12 February following disturbances caused by demonstrators at the republican party headquarters demanding that the refugees leave Tajikistan. Demonstrations sponsored by the nationalist Rastokhez movement turned violent. Radical economic and political reforms were demanded by the protesters, who torched government buildings; shops and other businesses were attacked and looted. During these riots 26 people were killed and 565 injured.\nIn June 1990, the city of Osh and its environs experienced bloody ethnic clashes between ethnic Kirghiz nationalist group Osh Aymaghi and Uzbek nationalist group Adolat over the land of a former collective farm. There were about 1,200 casualties, including over 300 dead and 462 seriously injured. The riots broke out over the division of land resources in and around the city.\nIn Turkmen SSR, the national conservative became a supporter of independence, uniting the Turkmen intelligentsia and moderate and radical Turkmen nationalists. They did not have a pronounced and eminent leader. Since 1989, small rallies have been held in Ashghabad and Krasnovodsk for the independence of Turkmenistan, as well as for the assignment of the status of the \"state language\" to the Turkmen language in the republic. The rallies also demanded that the republican leadership leave most of the oil revenues in the republic itself, and \"\"not feed Moscow\"\". Turkmen oppositionists and dissidents actively cooperated with opposition from Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Georgia. The leadership of Soviet Turkmenistan, led by Saparmurat Niyazov, opposed independence, suppressing Turkmen dissidents and oppositionists, but following the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the Turkmen SSR in January 1990, several dissidents were able to be elected to the republican parliament as independent candidates, who, together with their supporters, managed to actively participate in political life and express their opinions. The role of the Communist Party of Turkmenistan was very strong in this republic, especially in the west and south, where the Russian-speaking population lived. Over 90% of the seats in the republican parliament were held by communists. Despite all of the above, during the dissolution of the USSR, there were practically no high-profile events in Turkmenistan, and the Turkmen SSR was considered by the CPSU to be one of the \"most exemplary and loyal republics\" of the Soviet Union to Moscow.\n1991.\nMoscow's crisis.\nOn 14 January 1991, Nikolai Ryzhkov resigned from his post as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or premier of the Soviet Union, and was succeeded by Valentin Pavlov in the newly established post of Prime Minister of the Soviet Union.\nOn 17 March 1991, in a Union-wide referendum 77.85% percent of voters endorsed retention of a reformed Soviet Union. The Baltic republics, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova boycotted the referendum as well as Checheno-Ingushetia (an autonomous republic within Russia that had a strong desire for independence, and by now referred to itself as Ichkeria). In each of the other nine republics, a majority of the voters supported the retention of a reformed Soviet Union, the same in the Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia who also voted for the continuation of the state.\nRussia's President Boris Yeltsin.\nOn 12 June 1991, Boris Yeltsin was elected President of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic with 57 percent of the popular vote in the country's first Presidential election, defeating Gorbachev's preferred candidate, Nikolai Ryzhkov, who won 16 percent of the vote. Following Yeltsin's election as president, the RSFSR declared itself autonomous from the Soviet Union. In his election campaign, Yeltsin criticized the \"dictatorship of the center\", but did not yet suggest that he would introduce a market economy.\nThe Caucasus: Georgia takes the lead.\nIn response to the USSR-wide referendum, on 31 March 1991, an independence referendum was held on the matter of Georgian independence. Boycotted by the South Ossetian and Abkhaz minorities, who showed up in the all-Union plebiscite earlier that month, a record 99.5% of Georgian voters voted for the restoration of Georgian independence as against 0.5% against. Voter turnout was 90.6%.\nOn 9 April 1991, two years after the massacres in Tbilisi and a year and two months after Lithuania's declaration of restored independence, the Supreme Council of the Georgian SSR in plenary session declared the formal reconstitution of Georgia's independence from the Soviet Union, 70 years after the Soviet Armed Forces overthrew the Democratic Republic. This landmark declaration of independence by Georgia made it the first of the Caucasian republics to officially secede from the Soviet Union and the 3rd republic overall so far.\nBaltic republics.\nOn 13 January 1991, Soviet troops, along with the KGB Spetsnaz Alpha Group, stormed the Vilnius TV Tower in Lithuania to suppress the independence movement. Fourteen unarmed civilians were killed and hundreds more injured. On the night of 31 July, Russian OMON from Riga, the Soviet military headquarters in the Baltics, assaulted the Lithuanian border post in Medininkai and killed seven Lithuanian servicemen. This event further weakened the Soviet Union's position internationally and domestically, and stiffened Lithuanian resistance.\nThe bloody attacks in Lithuania prompted Latvians to organize defensive barricades (the events are still today known as \"The Barricades\") blocking access to strategically important buildings and bridges in Riga. Soviet attacks in the ensuing days resulted in six deaths and several injuries; one person died later of their wounds.\n\u041en 9 February, Lithuania held an independence referendum with 93.2% voting in favor of independence.\nOn 12 February, the independence of Lithuania was recognized by Iceland.\nOn 3 March, a referendum was held on the independence of the Republic of Estonia, which was attended by those who lived in Estonia before the Soviet annexation and their descendants, as well as persons who have received the so-called \"green cards\" of the Congress of Estonia. 77.8% of those who voted supported the idea of restoring independence.\nOn 11 March, Denmark recognized Estonia's independence.\nWhen Estonia reaffirmed its independence during the coup (see below) in the dark hours of 20 August 1991, at 11:03 pm Tallinn time, many Estonian volunteers surrounded the Tallinn TV Tower in an attempt to prepare to cut off the communication channels after the Soviet troops seized it and refused to be intimidated by the Soviet troops. When Edgar Savisaar confronted the Soviet troops for ten minutes, they finally retreated from the TV tower after a failed resistance against the Estonians.\nAugust coup.\nFaced with growing separatism, Gorbachev sought to restructure the Soviet Union into a less centralized state. On 20 August, the Russian SFSR was scheduled to sign a New Union Treaty that would have converted the Soviet Union into a federation of independent republics with a common president, foreign policy and military. It was strongly supported by the Central Asian republics, which needed the economic advantages of a common market to prosper. However, it would have meant some degree of continued Communist Party control over economic and social life.\nMore radical reformists were increasingly convinced that a rapid transition to a market economy was required, even if the eventual outcome meant the disintegration of the Soviet Union into several independent states. Independence also accorded with Yeltsin's desires as president of the RSFSR, as well as those of regional and local authorities to get rid of Moscow's pervasive control. In contrast to the reformers' lukewarm response to the treaty, the conservatives, \"patriots\", and Russian nationalists of the USSR \u2013 still strong within the CPSU and the military \u2013 were opposed to weakening the Soviet state and its centralized power structure.\nOn 19 August 1991, Gorbachev's vice president, Gennady Yanayev, Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov, KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov and other senior officials acted to prevent the union treaty from being signed by forming the \"General Committee on the State Emergency\", which put Gorbachev \u2013 on holiday in Foros, Crimea \u2013 under house arrest and cut off his communications. The coup leaders issued an emergency decree suspending political activity and banning most newspapers.\nThousands of Muscovites came out to defend the White House (the Russian Federation's parliament and Yeltsin's office), the symbolic seat of Russian sovereignty at the time. The organizers of the coup tried but ultimately failed to arrest Yeltsin, who rallied opposition to the coup by making speeches from atop a tank. The special forces dispatched by the coup leaders took up positions near the White House, but members refused to storm the barricaded building. The coup leaders also neglected to jam foreign news broadcasts, so many Muscovites watched it unfold live on CNN. Even the isolated Gorbachev was able to stay abreast of developments by tuning into the BBC World Service on a small transistor radio.\nAfter three days, on 21 August 1991, the coup collapsed. The organizers were detained and Gorbachev was reinstated as president, albeit with his power much depleted.\nFall: August to December.\nOn 24 August 1991, Gorbachev resigned as general secretary of the CPSU and dissolved all party units in the government. On the same day, the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR passed a Declaration of Independence of Ukraine, calling for a national referendum on the independence of Ukraine from the Soviet Union. Five days later, the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union indefinitely suspended all CPSU activity on Soviet territory, effectively ending Communist rule in the Soviet Union and dissolving the only remaining unifying force in the country. Gorbachev established a State Council of the Soviet Union on 5 September, designed to bring him and the highest officials of the remaining republics into a collective leadership. The State Council was also empowered to appoint a premier of the Soviet Union. The premiership never functioned properly, though Ivan Silayev \"de facto\" took the post through the Committee on the Operational Management of the Soviet Economy and the Inter-Republican Economic Committee and tried to form a government, though with rapidly shrinking powers.\nThe Soviet Union collapsed with dramatic speed in the last quarter of 1991. Between August and December, 10 republics seceded from the union, largely out of fear of another coup. By the end of September, Gorbachev no longer had the ability to influence events outside of Moscow. He was challenged even there by Yeltsin, who had begun taking over what remained of the Soviet government, including the Kremlin.\nThe Soviet Union recognized the independence of Baltic republics on 6 September 1991. Georgia cut all ties with the Soviet Union on 7 September, citing the failure to receive a \"sufficiently grounded answer\" why the USSR did not recognise its independence when it had recognised the Baltic States' secession.\nOn 17 September 1991, General Assembly resolution numbers 46/4, 46/5, and 46/6 admitted Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to the United Nations, conforming to Security Council resolution numbers 709, 710, and 711 passed on 12 September without a vote.\nOn 6 November, Yeltsin\u00a0\u2013 who had by then taken over much of the Soviet government\u00a0\u2013 issued a decree banning all Communist Party activities on Russian territory.\nBy 7 November 1991, most newspapers referred to the 'former Soviet Union'.\nThe final round of the Soviet Union's collapse began on 1 December 1991. That day, a Ukrainian popular referendum resulted in 91 percent of Ukraine's voters voting to affirm the independence declaration passed in August and formally secede from the Union. The secession of Ukraine, long second only to Russia in economic and political power, ended any realistic chance of Gorbachev keeping the Soviet Union together even on a limited scale. The leaders of the three Slavic republics, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (formerly Byelorussia), agreed to discuss possible alternatives to the union.\nOn 8 December, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus secretly met in Belavezhskaya Pushcha, in western Belarus, and signed the Belavezha Accords, which proclaimed the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and announced formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as a looser association to take its place. They also invited other republics to join the CIS. Gorbachev called it an unconstitutional coup. However, by this time there was no longer any reasonable doubt that, as the preamble of the Accords put it, that the Soviet Union no longer existed \"as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality\".\nOn 10 December, the agreement was ratified by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and the Supreme Council of Belarus.\nOn 12 December, the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR formally ratified the Belavezha Accords, denounced the 1922 Union Treaty, and recalled the Russian deputies from the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The legality of this ratification raised doubts among some members of the Russian parliament, since according to the 1978 RSFSR Constitution consideration of this document was in the exclusive jurisdiction of the Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR. Additionally, the Soviet Constitution did not allow a republic to unilaterally recall its deputies. However, no one in either Russia or the Kremlin objected. Any objections from the latter would have likely had no effect, since what was left of the Soviet government had effectively been rendered impotent long before December. A number of lawyers believe that the denunciation of the union treaty was meaningless since it became invalid in 1924 with the adoption of the first constitution of the USSR. (In 1996 the State Duma had voiced the same position.) Later that day, Gorbachev hinted for the first time that he was considering stepping down. On the surface, it appeared that the largest republic had formally seceded. However, this is not the case. Rather, Russia apparently took the line that it did not need to follow the secession process delineated in the Soviet Constitution because it was not possible to secede from a country that no longer existed.\nOn 16 December 1991, the Kazakh SSR became the last republic to formally secede from the Soviet Union, causing the Soviet Union to neither control any territory nor claim to control any territory (although Soviet embassies still existed).\nOn 17 December 1991, along with 28 European countries, the European Economic Community, and four non-European countries, the three Baltic Republics and nine of the twelve remaining Soviet republics signed the European Energy Charter in the Hague as sovereign states. On the same day, members of the lower house of the union parliament (Council of the Union) held a meeting of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union. The meeting adopted a statement in connection with the signing of the Belovezhskaya Agreement and its ratification by the parliaments of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, in which it noted that it considers the decisions made on the liquidation of state power and administration bodies illegal and not meeting the current situation and the vital interests of the peoples and stated that in the event further complication of the situation in the country reserves the right to convene in the future the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR.\nOn 18 December, the upper chamber of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (Council of Republics) adopted a statement, according to which it accepts with understanding the Agreement on the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States and considers it a real guarantee of a way out of the acute political and economic crisis.\nGorbachev met with Yeltsin and accepted the \"fait accompli\" of the Soviet Union's dissolution. On the same day, the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR adopted a statute to change Russia's legal name from \"Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic\" to \"Russian Federation\", showing that it was now a fully sovereign non-communist state.\nDoubts remained over whether the Belavezha Accords had legally dissolved the Soviet Union, since they were signed by only three republics. However, on 21 December, representatives of 11 of the 12 remaining republics \u2013 all except Georgia \u2013 signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, which confirmed the dissolution of the Soviet Union and formally established the CIS. They also \"accepted\" Gorbachev's resignation. The command of the Armed Forces of the USSR was entrusted to the Minister of Defense Yevgeny Shaposhnikov. Even at this moment, Gorbachev had not made any formal plans to leave the scene yet. However, with a majority of republics now agreeing that the Soviet Union no longer existed, Gorbachev bowed to the inevitable, telling CBS News that he would resign as soon as he saw that the CIS was indeed a reality.\nIn a nationally televised speech in the evening of 25 December, Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union \u2013 or, as he put it, \"I hereby discontinue my activities at the post of President of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.\" He declared the office extinct, and ceded all of its powers (such as control of the nuclear arsenal) to Yeltsin.\nOn the night of 25 December, at 7:35\u00a0p.m. Moscow time, after Gorbachev appeared on television, the Soviet flag was lowered and the Russian tricolor raised in its place at 7:45 pm, symbolically marking the end of the Soviet Union. In his parting words, Gorbachev defended his record on domestic reform and d\u00e9tente, but conceded, \"The old system collapsed before a new one had time to start working.\" On that same day, the President of the United States George H. W. Bush held a brief televised speech officially recognizing the independence of the 11 remaining republics.\nGorbachev's speech, as well as the replacement of the Soviet flag with the Russian flag, symbolically marked the end of the Soviet Union. However, the final legal step in the Soviet Union's demise came on 26 December, when the Soviet of Nationalities, the upper chamber of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, ratified the Belavezha Accords, effectively voting the Soviet Union out of existence (the lower chamber, the Soviet of the Union, had been unable to work since 12 December, when the recall of the Russian deputies left it without a quorum). The following day Yeltsin moved into Gorbachev's former office, though the Russian authorities had taken over the suite two days earlier. The Soviet Armed Forces were placed under the command of the Commonwealth of Independent States, but were eventually subsumed by the newly independent republics, with the bulk becoming the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. By the end of 1991, the few remaining Soviet institutions that had not been taken over by Russia ceased operation, and individual republics assumed the central government's role.\nOther issues were also addressed at Alma-Ata on 21 December 1991, including UN membership. In a document additional to the main Alma-Ata Declaration, Russia was authorized to assume the Soviet Union's UN membership, including its permanent seat on the Security Council. The Soviet Ambassador to the UN delivered a letter signed by Russian President Yeltsin to the UN Secretary-General dated 24 December 1991, informing him that \"with the support of the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States\", Russia was the successor state to the USSR. After being circulated among the other UN member states, Russia attended the UN Security Council meeting on the last day of the year, 31 December 1991, with no objection raised. But questions of state succession, settlement of external debt, and division of assets abroad remain disputed between Russia and Ukraine to this day.\nIn April 1992, the Congress of People's Deputies of Russia refused to ratify the Belovezhskaya Agreements and to exclude references to the Constitution and laws of the USSR from the text of the Constitution of the RSFSR. According to some Russian politicians, this was one of the reasons for the political crisis of September \u2013 October 1993. In a referendum on 12 December 1993, a new Russian constitution was adopted, in which there was no mention of the union state.\nConsequences.\nEconomic decline, hunger, and excess mortality.\nIn the decades following the end of the Cold War, only five or six of the post-Soviet states are on a path to joining the wealthy capitalist states of the West, and most are falling behind, some to such an extent that over 50 years will be needed before they catch up to how they were before the end of communism. However, virtually all the former Soviet republics were able to turn their economies around and increase GDP to multiple times what it was under the USSR. In a 2001 study by the economist Steven Rosefielde, he calculated that there were 3.4\u00a0million premature deaths in Russia from 1990 to 1998, which he partly blames on the \"shock therapy\" that came with the Washington Consensus. Nearly all of the post-Soviet states suffered deep and prolonged recessions after shock therapy, with poverty increasing more than tenfold. Catastrophic drops in caloric intake followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union.\nPost-Soviet conflicts.\nAccording to the scholar Marcel H. Van Herpen, the end of the Soviet Union marked the end of the last European empire, and some authors called it the death of Russian colonialism and imperialism.\nAs the Soviet Union began to collapse, social disintegration and political instability fueled a surge in ethnic conflict. Social and economic disparities, along with ethnic differences, created an upsurge in nationalism within groups and discrimination between groups. In particular, disputes over territorial boundaries have been the source of conflict between states experiencing political transition and upheaval. Territorial conflicts can involve several different issues: the reunification of ethnic groups which have been separated, restoration of territorial rights to those who experienced forced deportation, and restoration of boundaries arbitrarily changed during the Soviet era. Territorial disputes remain significant points of controversy as minority groups consistently oppose election outcomes and seek autonomy and self-determination. In addition to territorial disputes and other structural causes of conflict, legacies from the Soviet and pre-Soviet eras, along with the suddenness of the actual sociopolitical change, have resulted in conflict throughout the region. As each group experiences dramatic economic reform and political democratization, there has been a surge in nationalism and interethnic conflict. Overall, the fifteen independent states that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union face problems stemming from uncertain identities, contested boundaries, apprehensive minorities, and an overbearing Russian hegemony.\nChina.\nAfter decades of hardship following the Sino-Soviet split, the People's Republic of China entered a gradual rapprochement with the Soviet Union in 1989 when Gorbachev visited the country. Afterwards, the border treaty was demarcated in 1991, and they signed the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation in 2001, which was renewed in June 2021 for five more years. Both countries are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation which was founded in 1996.\nOn the eve of a 2013 state visit to Moscow by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin remarked that the two nations were forging a special relationship. The two countries have enjoyed close relations militarily, economically, and politically, while supporting each other on various global issues. Commentators have debated whether the bilateral strategic partnership constitutes an alliance. Russia and China officially declared their relations 'Not allies, but better than allies'. The relations between the two countries are currently being put to the test after Russia invading Ukraine. Unlike in the Soviet era, Putin ruled Russia as increasingly China's \"junior partner\".\nCuba.\nThe \"Special Period\", officially known as the \"Special Period in the Time of Peace\" was an extended period of economic crisis in Cuba that began in 1991 It was defined primarily by extreme reductions of rationed foods at state-subsidized prices, the severe shortages of hydrocarbon energy resources in the form of gasoline, diesel, and other petroleum derivatives that occurred upon the implosion of economic agreements between the petroleum-rich Soviet Union and Cuba, and the shrinking of an economy overdependent on Soviet imports.\nDuring its existence, the Soviet Union provided Cuba with large amounts of oil, food, and machinery. In the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba's gross domestic product shrunk 35%, imports and exports both fell over 80%, and many domestic industries shrank considerably. In a speculated attempt to re-join the IMF and the World Bank, executive director Jacques de Groote and another IMF official were invited to Havana in late 1993. After assessing the economic situation in the country they concluded that from 1989 to 1993, Cuba's economic decline was more grave than that experienced by any other socialist Eastern European country.\nIn 1993 a series of economic reforms began to go into effect, initially enacted to offset the economic imbalances which was a result of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The main aspect of these reforms was to legalize the then illegal U.S. Dollar and regulate its usage in the island's economy.\nNorth Korea.\nWhen the Soviet Union dissolved, it ended all aid and trade concessions such as cheap oil to North Korea. Without Soviet aid, the flow of imports to the North Korean agricultural sector ended, and the government proved to be too inflexible to respond. Energy imports fell by 75%. The economy went into a downward spiral, with imports and exports falling in tandem. Flooded coal mines required electricity to operate pumps, and the shortage of coal worsened the shortage of electricity. Agriculture reliant on electrically powered irrigation systems, artificial fertilizers and pesticides was hit particularly hard by the economic collapse.\nIsrael.\nBetween 1989 and 2006, about 1.6 million Soviet Jews and their non-Jewish spouses and their relatives, as defined by the Law of Return, emigrated from the former Soviet Union. About 979,000, or 61%, migrated to Israel.\nAfghanistan.\nAs the Soviet Union began to disintegrate, it also lost support to Mohammad Najibullah's regime in Afghanistan following the withdrawal in 1989. The end of Soviet war in Afghanistan would lead into a continuing multi-sided civil war, only for the Taliban to rise in 1996. Because of this, U.S. policies in the war are also thought to have contributed to a \"blowback\" of unintended consequences against American interests, which led to the United States entering into its own war in Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks in 2001, only to end with the US' withdrawal in 2021 and the Taliban regaining control of Afghanistan.\nSports and \"Unified Team\".\nThe breakup of the Soviet Union saw a massive impact in the sporting world. Before its dissolution, the Soviet football team had just qualified for Euro 1992, but its place was instead taken by the CIS national football team. After the tournament, the former Soviet Republics competed as separate independent nations, with FIFA allocating the Soviet team's record to Russia.\nBefore the start of the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville and the Summer Olympics in Barcelona, the Olympic Committee of the Soviet Union formally existed until 12 March 1992, when it disbanded but it was succeeded by the Russian Olympic Committee. However, 12 of the 15 former Soviet Republics competed together as the Unified Team and marched under the Olympic flag in Barcelona, where they finished first in the medal rankings. Separately, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia also competed as independent nations in the 1992 Games. The Unified Team also competed in Albertville earlier in the year (represented by six of the twelve ex-republics) and finished second in the medal ranking at those Games. Afterwards, the individual NOCs of the non-Baltic former republics were established. Some NOCs made their debuts at the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer, and others did so at the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta.\nMembers of the Unified Team at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona consisted of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. At those Summer Games, the Unified Team secured 45 gold medals, 38 silver medals, and 29 bronze medals; four medals more than second-place United States, and 30 more than third-place Germany. In addition to great team success, the Unified Team also saw great personal success. Vitaly Scherbo of Belarus secured six gold medals for the team in gymnastics and also became the most decorated athlete of the Summer Games. Gymnastics, athletics, wrestling, and swimming were the strongest sports for the team, as the four combined earned 28 gold medals and 64 medals in total.\nOnly six of the countries competed earlier at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. The Unified team placed second, three fewer medals than Germany. However, much like the Summer Games, the Unified team had the most decorated medalist in the Winter Games as well, with Lyubov Yegorova of Russia, a cross-country skier winning five total medals.\nTelecommunications.\nThe Soviet Union's calling code of +7 is still used by Russia and Kazakhstan. Between 1993 and 1997, many newly independent republics implemented their own numbering plans such as Belarus (+375) and Ukraine (+380). The Internet domain \".su\" remains in use alongside the internet domains of the newly created countries.\nGlasnost and \"Memorial\".\nThe lifting of total censorship and communist propaganda led to disclosure to public of such political and historical issues as the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact, the Katyn massacre, revision of the Stalinist repressions, revision of the Russian Civil War, the White movement, the New Economic Policy, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, censorship, pacification and procrastination by the Soviet authorities.\nIn 1989, the Soviet Union established a civil rights society, Memorial, which specialized in research and recovery of memory for victims of political repressions as well as support for a general human rights movement.\nChronology of declarations.\n\"States with limited recognition are shown in italics.\"\nLegacy.\nIn 2013, the American Gallup analytics company found that a majority of citizens in four former Soviet countries regretted the dissolution of the Soviet Union: Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Ukraine. In Armenia, 12% of respondents in 2013 said the Soviet collapse did good, while 66% said it did harm. In Kyrgyzstan, 16% of respondents in 2013 said the Soviet collapse did good, while 61% said it did harm. Ever since the Soviet collapse, annual polling by the Levada Center has shown that over 50 percent of Russia's population regretted its collapse. Consistently, 57% of citizens of Russia regretted the collapse of the Soviet Union in a poll in 2014 (while 30 percent said otherwise), and in 2018 a Levada Center poll showed that 66% of Russians lamented the fall of the Soviet Union. In 2005, Russian president Vladimir Putin called the dissolution of the USSR as \"the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century\".\nIn a similar poll held in February 2005, 50% of respondents in Ukraine stated they regretted the disintegration of the Soviet Union. In 2013, according to Gallup, 56% of Ukrainians said that the dissolution of the Soviet Union did more harm than good, with only 23% saying it did more good than harm. However, a similar poll conducted in 2016 by a Ukrainian group showed only 35% Ukrainians regretting the Soviet collapse and 50% not regretting it.\nThe breakdown of economic ties that followed the Soviet collapse led to a severe economic crisis and catastrophic fall in the standard of living in post-Soviet states and the former Eastern Bloc, which was even worse than the Great Depression. An estimated seven million premature deaths took place in the former USSR after it collapsed, with around four million in Russia alone. Poverty and economic inequality surged between 1988 and 1989 and between 1993 and 1995, with the Gini ratio increasing by an average of 9 points for all former socialist countries. Even before the 1998 Russian financial crisis, the Russian GDP was half of what it had been in the early 1990s. By 1999, around 191 million people in post-Soviet states and former Eastern Bloc countries were living on less than $5.50 a day. It has been posited by several scholars that the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of communism as a global force in the post-Cold War era allowed neoliberal capitalism to become the dominant global system, which has resulted in rising economic inequality.\nIn the Kitchen Debate of 1959, Nikita Khrushchev claimed that then US Vice-president Richard Nixon's grandchildren would live \"under communism\", and Nixon claimed that Khrushchev's grandchildren would live \"under freedom\". In a 1992 interview, Nixon commented that during the debate, he was sure Khrushchev's claim was wrong, but Nixon was not sure that his own assertion was correct. Nixon said that events had proved that he was indeed right because Khrushchev's grandchildren now lived \"in freedom\" in reference to the recent end of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev's son Sergei Khrushchev became a naturalized American citizen.\nUnited Nations membership.\nIn a letter dated 24 December 1991, Boris Yeltsin, the Russian President, informed the United Nations Secretary-General that the membership of the Soviet Union in the Security Council and all other UN organs would be continued by the Russian Federation with the support of the 11 member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States.\nHowever, the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic had already joined the UN as original members on 24 October 1945, together with the Soviet Union. After declaring independence, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic changed its name to Ukraine on 24 August 1991, and on 19 September, the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic informed the UN that it had changed its name to the Republic of Belarus.\nAll of the twelve other independent states that were established from the former Soviet republics were admitted to the UN:\nHistoriographic explanations.\nHistoriography on the Soviet collapse can be roughly classified in two groups: intentionalist accounts and structuralist accounts.\nThe end of the Soviet Union caught many people by surprise. Before 1991, many thought that Soviet Union collapse was impossible or unlikely.\nIntentionalist accounts contend that Soviet collapse was not inevitable and resulted from the policies and decisions of specific individuals, usually Gorbachev and Yeltsin. One characteristic example of intentionalist writing is the historian Archie Brown's \"The Gorbachev Factor\", which argues Gorbachev was the main force in Soviet politics at least from 1985 to 1988 and even later and that he largely spearheaded the political reforms and developments, as opposed to being led by events. That was especially true of the policies of \"perestroika\" and \"glasnost\", market initiatives, and foreign policy stance, as the political scientist George Breslauer has seconded by labelling Gorbachev a \"man of the events\". In a slightly different vein, David Kotz and Fred Weir have contended that Soviet elites were responsible for spurring on both nationalism and capitalism from which they could personally benefit, which is demonstrated also by their continued presence in the higher economic and political echelons of post-Soviet republics.\nIn contrast, structuralist accounts take a more deterministic view in which Soviet dissolution was an outcome of deeply rooted structural issues, which planted a time bomb. For example, Edward Walker has argued that minority nationalities were denied power at the Union level, confronted by a culturally destabilizing form of economic modernization, and subjected to a certain amount of Russification, but they were at the same time strengthened by several policies pursued by the Soviet government (indigenization of leadership, support for local languages, etc.). Over time, they created conscious nations. Furthermore, the basic legitimating myth of the Soviet federative system (that it was a voluntary and mutual union of allied peoples) eased the task of secession and independence. On 25 January 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin supported that view by calling Lenin's support of the right of secession for the Soviet republics a \"delayed-action bomb\".\nAn opinion piece by Gorbachev in April 2006 stated: \"The nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl 20 years ago this month, even more than my launch of perestroika, was perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union.\"\nIt also had a profound impact on the policy-making circles of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), in particular on CCP general secretary Xi Jinping, who states:Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Communist Party of the Soviet Union fall from power? An important reason was that the struggle in the field of ideology was extremely intense, completely negating the history of the Soviet Union, negating the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, negating Lenin, negating Stalin, creating historical nihilism and confused thinking. Party organs at all levels had lost their functions, the military was no longer under Party leadership. In the end, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, a great party, was scattered, the Soviet Union, a great socialist country, disintegrated. This is a cautionary tale!\nAccording to political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way in their book In \"Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism\" (2022), the cohesion of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) leadership had declined by the 1980s. Most party leaders were born after the Soviet Union's origins during the Russian Civil War, and memories of the Eastern Front during World War II were fading.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["24795561", "40494892"], "permutation_1": ["40494892", "24795561"], "permutation_2": ["24795561", "40494892"], "permutation_3": ["24795561", "40494892"]}
{"id": "4hop3__164419_608613_83398_4107", "docs_added": {"9687589": "Arrondissement of Mouscron\nThe Arrondissement of Mouscron (; ) is a former arrondissement in the Walloon province of Hainaut, Belgium. It is not a judicial arrondissement. Its municipalities are a part of the Judicial Arrondissement of Tournai.\nThe arrondissement was created in 1963 after several municipalities were transferred from the Dutch-speaking province of West Flanders to French-speaking Hainaut following the language laws of 1962. In 2019 it was merged into the new Arrondissement of Tournai-Mouscron.\nMunicipalities.\nThe Administrative Arrondissement of Mouscron consists of the following municipalities and former municipalities (with their Dutch name):\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "510990": "Dutch Reformed Church\nReformed Christian denomination in the Netherlands\nThe Dutch Reformed Church (, , abbreviated NHK ) was the largest Christian denomination in the Netherlands from the onset of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century until 1930. It was the traditional denomination of the Dutch royal family and the foremost Protestant denomination until 2004, the year it helped found and merged into the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (the largest Protestant and second largest Christian communion in the Netherlands). It was the larger of the two major Reformed denominations, after the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (\"Gereformeerde kerk\") was founded in 1892. It spread to the United States, South Africa, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Brazil, and various other world regions through Dutch colonization. Allegiance to the Dutch Reformed Church was a common feature among Dutch immigrant communities around the world and became a crucial part of Afrikaner nationalism in South Africa.\nThe Dutch Reformed Church was founded in 1571 during the Protestant Reformation in the Calvinist tradition, being shaped theologically by John Calvin, but also other major Reformed theologians. The church was influenced by various theological developments and controversies during its history, including Arminianism, the Nadere Reformatie, and a number of splits in the 19th century that greatly diversified Dutch Calvinism. The church functioned until 2004, the year it merged with the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Kingdom of the Netherlands to form the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN), a united church of both Reformed and Evangelical Lutheran theological orientations. At the time of the merger, the Church had 2 million members organised in 1,350 congregations. A minority of members of the church chose not to participate in the merger and instead formed the Restored Reformed Church (HHK).\nStatus.\nBefore the demise of the Dutch Republic in 1795, the Dutch Reformed Church enjoyed the status of \"public\" or \"privileged\" church. Though it was never formally adopted as the state religion, the law demanded that every public official should be a communicant member. Consequently, the Church had close relations with the Dutch government. A privilege of members of the Dutch Reformed Church was that they could have their businesses open on Sundays, otherwise considered a religious day and not one for business.\nDisestablishment.\nThe Dutch Reformed Church was officially disestablished in 1795 with the end of the Republic. Although it remained endorsed by the royal family, the Netherlands never had any public church afterwards.\nHistory.\nReformation and the Synod of Emden.\nThe Reformation was a time of religious violence between the established Catholic Church, Protestants and governments, in some cases. Efforts to form a Reformed church in the southern provinces stemmed from a secret meeting of Protestant leaders at Antwerp in 1566, and despite Spanish repression, many nobles joined the Protestant movement. Two years later, in 1568, following an attack on the Netherlands by the forces of the Duke of Alba, many Netherlanders fled to the German city of Wesel, where a Synod was convened at which the Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism were adopted, and provisions were made for the offices of pastor, elder, teacher and deacon. The first Synod of 23 Dutch Reformed leaders was held in October 1571 in the German city of Emden. The Synod of Emden is generally considered to be the founding of the Dutch Reformed Church, the oldest of the Reformed churches in the Netherlands. The Synod both affirmed the actions of the earlier Synod of Wesel, as well as established presbyterian church government for the Dutch Reformed Church.\nSynod of Dort.\nThe first Synod to be located in the Dutch Republic was held in Dordrecht in 1578. This synodical meeting is not to be confused with the better known Second Synod of Dort of 1618. Large groups of Marranos settled in Emden and converted to Christianity. Mostly all Marranos, many Jewish groups converted to Christianity around 1649 to the Nederduitsche, Niederdeutsche church later on Dutch Reformed Church. In the latter meeting, the Church fathers expelled Arminians and added the Canons of Dort to the Confessions. The Canons of Dort, together with the previously adopted Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism, were called the \"Drie formulieren van Enigheid\" (Three Forms of Unity). Most conflicts and splits in the Church arose because of disagreement over the substance and interpretation of these doctrinal documents. The government of the Dutch Republic, which had instigated the Arminians' expulsion, subsequently prohibited the Reformed Church from assembling synodically. No Synod was held in the Netherlands until after the end of the Republic in 1795.\nFurther Reformation.\nThe 17th and early 18th centuries were the age of the Dutch Nadere Reformatie (best translated in English as the \"Further Reformation\"), led primarily by Gisbertus Voetius and Wilhelmus \u00e0 Brakel, which was greatly influenced by English Puritanism.\n19th century splits.\nIn the 19th century, theological liberalism led to splits in the Dutch Reformed Church. King William I of the Netherlands imposed a new form of government for the church, in which the civil authorities selected the commissioners to the National Synod in 1816, making it increasingly difficult for ministers to speak out against perceived errors. In 1834, the minister Hendrik de Cock of the town of Ulrum was told by church leaders that he could not preach against certain colleagues, who he believed held erroneous views. He and his congregation seceded from the Dutch Reformed Church. In time, the \"Afscheiding\" (the Separation) led to the departure of 120 congregations from the Dutch Reformed Church. In 1886, another separation, the \"Doleantie\", occurred, led by Dutch Reformed journalist, theologian and politician Abraham Kuyper.\n20th century to the present.\nThe Dutch Reformed Church remained the largest church body in the Netherlands until the middle of the 20th century, when it was overtaken by the Catholic Church. The rapid secularisation of the Netherlands in the 1960s dramatically reduced participation in the mainstream Protestant church. From the '60s onward, a number of attempts were made to effect a reunion with the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (\"Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland\"). This led to the two churches uniting with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Kingdom of the Netherlands (\"Evangelisch-Lutherse Kerk in het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden\") to establish the Protestant Church in the Netherlands in 2004.\nThe 2004 merger led to a separation in which a number of congregations and members of the Dutch Reformed Church separated to form the Restored Reformed Church (\"Hersteld Hervormde Kerk\"). Estimations of their membership vary from 35,000 up to 70,000 in about 120 local congregations served by 88 ministers. The Restored Reformed Church disapproves of the pluralistic nature of the merged church, which they allege contains partly contradicting Reformed and Lutheran confessions. This conservative group also opposes the ordination of women and the blessing of same-sex unions in Christian churches, which have been adopted as practices by the merged church.\nInternational distribution.\nAfrica.\nDutch migrants carried the Dutch Reformed Church with them, planting several Reformed denominations in Kenya (The Reformed Church of East Africa), South Africa, including the Three Sister Churches of South Africa (the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK) (\"Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk\"), the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NHKA) (\"Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk\"), the Reformed Churches in South Africa (\"Gereformeerde Kerke in Suid-Afrika\")), the Afrikaans Protestant Church (\"Afrikaanse Protestantse Kerk\"), and the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (\"Verenigende Gereformeerde Kerk in Suid-Afrika\").\nAsia.\nThrough the Dutch East India Company and its workers, the Dutch Reformed Church was established in Ceylon in 1642. The Groote Kerk, built in 1755, still stands in Galle. The Dutch Reformed Church of Ceylon officially changed its name in 2007 to the Christian Reformed Church of Sri Lanka to reflect its Christian identity in the nation, rather than on its Dutch colonial heritage. As of 2007, its membership stands around 5,000, comprising both communicant and baptised members in 29 congregations, preaching stations, and mission outposts. Christianity in Indonesia is strongly influenced under the Dutch reformed church, the first known church established in the country is \"De Oude kerk\" in Batavia in 1640. Christianity in Indonesia, like Sri Lanka, has been nationalised into different branches of Protestantism while retaining many of the reformed church elements, such as Protestant Church in Indonesia.\nAmericas.\nThe Dutch Reformed Church went with migrants to the Americas, beginning in 1628 in New Amsterdam. St. Thomas Reformed Church, founded in 1660 in St. Thomas, Danish West Indies, became the first Dutch Reformed Church in the Caribbean. During the period of Dutch settlement in Brazil in the 17th century colonists organised the Reformed Church\nin Pernambuco.\nIn Canada and the United States, the oldest and second largest body is the Reformed Church in America, which was the American branch of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Netherlands between 1628 and 1819. The Brookville Reformed Church is one of the oldest Dutch Reformed Church built in America. The largest Dutch Reformed body in North America, the Christian Reformed Church in North America, split off from Reformed Church in America in 1857 under the leadership of Gijsbert Haan. Smaller related denominations and federations include the Canadian and American Reformed Churches, the Free Reformed Churches of North America (FRC), the Heritage Reformed Congregations (HRC), the Netherlands Reformed Congregations (NRC), the Protestant Reformed Churches in America (PRC), and the United Reformed Churches in North America (URC). The Dutch were mainly Protestant and Catholic before arrival to America, but became dominantly Protestant after settling in America. They spread their religion by forming bonds with the natives in The Ohio River Valley.\nIn 1766, ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church founded Queen's College, which would later become Rutgers College, in the Province of New Jersey. Today, Rutgers University is a major public research institution in the state of New Jersey. As one of nine colonial colleges clustered in the eastern United States, Rutgers serves as a reminder of early Dutch cultural influence in the North American colonies.\nFormer U.S. Presidents Martin Van Buren and Theodore Roosevelt, both of Dutch descent, were affiliated with the Dutch Reformed Church.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1121030": "Institute of technology\nType of institution offering tertiary education\nAn institute of technology (also referred to as technological university, technical university, university of technology, polytechnic university) is an institution of tertiary education that specializes in engineering, technology, applied science, and natural sciences.\nInstitutes of technology versus polytechnics.\nThe institutes of technology and polytechnics have been in existence since at least the 18th century, but became popular after World War II with the expansion of engineering and applied science education, associated with the new needs created by industrialization. The world's first institution of technology, the Berg-Schola (today its legal successor is the University of Miskolc), was founded by the Court Chamber of Vienna in Selmecb\u00e1nya, Kingdom of Hungary (now Bansk\u00e1 \u0160tiavnica, Slovakia), in 1735 in order to train specialists of precious metal and copper mining according to the requirements of the industrial revolution in Hungary. The oldest German Institute of Technology is the Braunschweig University of Technology, founded in 1745 as \"Collegium Carolinum\". The French \"\u00c9cole Polytechnique\" was founded in 1794. In some cases, polytechnics or institutes of technology are engineering schools or technical colleges.\nIn several countries, like Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Turkey and Taiwan, institutes of technology are institutions of higher education and have been accredited to award academic degrees and doctorates. Famous examples are the Istanbul Technical University, ETH Zurich, Delft University of Technology, RWTH Aachen and National Taiwan University of Science and Technology all considered universities.\nIn countries like Iran, Finland, Malaysia, Portugal, Singapore or the United Kingdom, there is often a significant and confused distinction between polytechnics and universities. In the UK, a binary system of higher education emerged consisting of universities (research orientation) and polytechnics (engineering and applied science and professional practice orientation). Polytechnics offered university equivalent degrees mainly in STEM subjects from bachelor's, master's and PhD that were validated and governed at the national level by the independent UK Council for National Academic Awards. In 1992, UK polytechnics were designated as universities which meant they could award their own degrees. The CNAA was disbanded. The UK's first polytechnic, the Royal Polytechnic Institution (now the University of Westminster), was founded in 1838 in Regent Street, London. In Ireland the term \"institute of technology\" is the more favored synonym of a \"regional technical college\" though the latter is the legally correct term; however, Dublin Institute of Technology was a university in all but name as it can confer degrees in accordance with law; Cork Institute of Technology and other Institutes of Technology have delegated authority from HETAC to make awards to and including master's degree level\u2014Level 9 of Ireland's National Framework for Qualifications (NFQ)\u2014for all areas of study and Doctorate level in a number of others. In 2018, Ireland passed the Technological Universities Act, which allowed a number of Institutes of Technology to transform into Technological Universities.\nIn a number of countries, although being today generally considered similar institutions of higher learning across many countries, polytechnics and institutes of technology used to have a quite different statute among each other, its teaching competences and organizational history. In many cases, \"polytechnic\" were elite technological universities concentrating on applied science and engineering and may also be a former designation for a vocational institution, before it has been granted the exclusive right to award academic degrees and can be truly called an \"institute of technology\". A number of polytechnics providing higher education is simply a result of a formal upgrading from their original and historical role as intermediate technical education schools. In some situations, former polytechnics or other non-university institutions have emerged solely through an administrative change of statutes, which often included a name change with the introduction of new designations like \"institute of technology\", \"polytechnic university\", \"university of applied sciences\" or \"university of technology\" for marketing purposes. Such emergence of so many upgraded polytechnics, former vocational education and technical schools converted into more university-like institutions has caused concern where the lack of specialized intermediate technical professionals lead to industrial skill shortages in some fields, being also associated to an increase of the graduate unemployment rate. This is mostly the case in those countries, where the education system is not controlled by the state and any institution can grant degrees. Evidence have also shown a decline in the general quality of teaching and graduate's preparation for the workplace, due to the fast-paced conversion of that technical institutions to more advanced higher level institutions. Mentz, Kotze and Van der Merwe argue that all the tools are in place to promote the debate on the place of technology in higher education in general and in universities of technology specifically and they posit several questions for the debate.\nInstitutes by country.\nArgentina.\nIn Argentina, the main higher institution devoted to the study of technology is the National Technological University which has \"Regional Faculties\" throughout Argentina. The Buenos Aires Institute of Technology (ITBA) and Balseiro Institute are other recognized institutes of technology.\nAustralia.\nDuring the 1970s to early 1990s, the term was used to describe state owned and funded technical schools that offered both vocational and higher education. They were part of the College of Advanced Education system. In the 1990s most of these merged with existing universities or formed new ones of their own. These new universities often took the title University of Technology, for marketing rather than legal purposes. AVCC report The most prominent such university in each state founded the Australian Technology Network a few years later.\nSince the mid-1990s, the term has been applied to some technically minded technical and further education (TAFE) institutes. A recent example is the Melbourne Polytechnic rebranding and repositioning in 2014 from Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE. These primarily offer vocational education, although some like Melbourne Polytechnic are expanding into higher education offering vocationally oriented applied bachelor's degrees. This usage of the term is most prevalent historically in NSW and the ACT. The new terminology is apt given that this category of institution are becoming very much like the institutes of the 1970s\u20131990s period.\nIn 2009, the old college system in Tasmania and TAFE Tasmania have started a 3-year restructure to become the Tasmanian Polytechnic www.polytechnic.tas.edu.au, Tasmanian Skills Institute www.skillsinstitute.tas.edu.au and Tasmanian Academy www.academy.tas.edu.au\nIn the higher education sector, there are seven designated universities of technology in Australia (though, note, not all use the phrase \"university of technology\", such as the Universities of Canberra and South Australia, which used to be Colleges of Advanced Education before transitioning into fully-fledged universities with the ability \u2013 most important of all \u2013 to confer doctorates):\nAustria.\nThese institutions are entitled to confer habilitation and doctoral degrees and focus on research.\nThese institutions focus only on research.\nSeveral universities have faculties of technology that are entitled to confer habilitation and doctoral degrees and which focus on research.\nFachhochschule is a German type of tertiary education institution and adopted later in Austria and Switzerland. They do not focus exclusively on technology, but may also offer courses in social science, medicine, business and design. They grant bachelor's degrees and master's degrees and focus more on teaching than research and more on specific professions than on science.\nIn 2010, there were 20 in Austria\nBangladesh.\nThere are some public engineering universities in Bangladesh:\nThere are some general, technological and specialized universities in Bangladesh offer engineering programs:\nThere are some private engineering universities in Bangladesh:\nThere is only one international engineering university in Bangladesh:\nThere are numerous private and other universities as well as science and technology universities providing engineering education. Most prominent are:\nThere are numerous government-funded as well as private polytechnic institutes, engineering colleges and science and technology institutes providing engineering education. Most prominent are:\nBelgium and the Netherlands.\nIn the Netherlands, there are four universities of technology, jointly known as 4TU:\nIn Belgium and in the Netherlands, \"Hogescholen\" or \"Hautes \u00e9coles\" (also translated into \"colleges\", \"university colleges\" or \"universities of applied science\") are applied institutes of higher education that do not award doctorates. They are generally limited to Bachelor-level education, with degrees called professional bachelors, and only minor Master's programmes. The hogeschool thus has many similarities to the \"Fachhochschule\" in the German language areas and to the \"ammattikorkeakoulu\" in Finland. A list of all \"hogescholen\" in the Netherlands, including some which might be called polytechnics, can be found at the end of this list.\nBrazil.\n\"Federal:\"\n\"Service academy:\"\n\"Private:\"\n\"State:\"\nCambodia.\nIn Cambodia, there are institutes of technology/polytechnic institutes and Universities that offer instruction in a variety of programs that can lead to: certificates, diplomas and degrees. Institutes of technology/polytechnic institutes and universities tend to be independent institutions.\nCanada.\nIn Canada, there are affiliate schools, colleges, and institutes of technology/polytechnic institutes that offer instruction in a variety of programs that can lead to the bestowment of apprenticeships, citations, certificates, diplomas, and associate's degrees upon successful completion. Affiliate schools are polytechnic divisions attached to a national university and offer select technical and engineering transfer programs. Colleges, institutes of technology/polytechnic institutes, and universities tend to be independent institutions.\nCredentials are typically conferred at the undergraduate level; however, university-affiliated schools like the \u00c9cole de technologie sup\u00e9rieure and the \u00c9cole Polytechnique de Montr\u00e9al (both of which are located in Quebec), also offer graduate and postgraduate programs, in accordance with provincial higher education guidelines. Canadian higher education institutions, at all levels, undertake directed and applied research with financing allocated through public funding, private equity, or industry sources.\nSome of Canada's most well-known colleges and polytechnic institutions also partake in collaborative institute-industry projects, leading to technology commercialization, made possible through the scope of Polytechnics Canada, a national alliance of eleven leading research-intensive colleges and institutes of technology.\nChina.\nChina's modern higher education began in 1895 with the Imperial Tientsin University which was a polytechnic plus a law department. Liberal arts were not offered until three years later at Capital University. To this day, about half of China's elite universities remain essentially polytechnical. Harbin Institute of Technology is among the best engineering school in China and the world.\nCroatia.\nIn Croatia there are many polytechnic institutes and colleges that offer a polytechnic education. The law about polytechnic education in Croatia was passed in 1997.\nEcuador.\nEPN is known for research and education in the applied science, astronomy, atmospheric physics, engineering and physical sciences. The Geophysics Institute monitors the country's seismic, tectonic and volcanic activity in the continental territory and in the Gal\u00e1pagos Islands.\nOne of the oldest observatories in South America is the Quito Astronomical Observatory. It was founded in 1873 and is located 12 minutes south of the Equator in Quito, Ecuador. The Quito Astronomical Observatory is the National Observatory of Ecuador and is located in the Historic Center of Quito and is managed by the National Polytechnic School.\nThe Nuclear Science Department at EPN is the only one in Ecuador and has the large infrastructure, related to irradiation facilities like cobalt-60 source and electron beam processing.\nFinland.\nUniversities of technology are categorised as universities, are allowed to grant B.Sc. (Tech.), Diplomi-insin\u00f6\u00f6ri M.Sc. (Tech.), Lic.Sc. (Tech.), Ph.D. and D.Sc. (Tech.) degrees and roughly correspond to Instituts de technologie of French-speaking areas and Technische Universit\u00e4t of Germany in prestige. In addition to universities of technology, some universities, e.g. University of Oulu and \u00c5bo Akademi University, are allowed to grant the B.Sc. (tech.), M.Sc. (tech.) and D.Sc. (Tech.) degrees.\nUniversities of technology are academically similar to other (non-polytechnic) universities. Prior to Bologna process, M.Sc. (Tech.) required 180 credits, whereas M.Sc. from a normal university required 160 credits. The credits between universities of technology and normal universities are comparable.\nSome Finnish universities of technology are:\nPolytechnic schools are distinct from academic universities in Finland. \"Ammattikorkeakoulu\" is the common term in Finland, as is the Swedish alternative \"yrkesh\u00f6gskola\" \u2013 their focus is on studies leading to a degree (for instance \"insin\u00f6\u00f6ri\", engineer; in international use, Bachelor of Engineering) in kind different from but in level comparable to an academic bachelor's degree awarded by a university. Since 2006 the polytechnics have offered studies leading to master's degrees (Master of Engineering). After January 1, 2006, some Finnish ammattikorkeakoulus switched the English term \"polytechnic\" to the term \"university of applied sciences\" in the English translations of their legal names. The ammattikorkeakoulu has many similarities to the \"hogeschool\" in Belgium and in the Netherlands and to the \"Fachhochschule\" in the German language areas.\nSome recognized Finnish polytechnics are:\nA complete list may be found in List of polytechnics in Finland.\nFrance and Francophone regions.\nCollegiate universities grouping several engineering schools or multi-site clusters of French grandes \u00e9coles provide sciences and technology curricula as autonomous higher education engineering institutes. They include:\nThey provide science and technology master's degrees and doctoral degrees.\nThe universities of technology () are public institutions awarding degrees and diplomas that are accredited by the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research. Although called \"universities\", the universities of technology are in fact non-university institutes (\"\u00e9coles ext\u00e9rieures aux universit\u00e9s\"), as defined by Chapter I, Section II (Articles 34 through 36) of French law 84-52 of 26 January 1984 regarding higher education (the \"loi Savary\").\nThey possess the advantage of combining all the assets of the engineering \"Grandes \u00c9coles\" and those of universities as they develop simultaneously and coherently three missions: Education, Research, Transfer of technology.\nThey maintain close links with the industrial world both on national and international levels and they are reputed for their ability to innovate, adapt and provide an education that matches the ever-changing demands of industry.\nThis network includes three institutions:\n'Polytech institutes', embedded as a part of eleven French universities provide both undergraduate and graduate engineering curricula.\nIn the French-speaking part of Switzerland exists also the term \"haute \u00e9cole specialis\u00e9e\" for a type of institution called \"Fachhochschule\" in the German-speaking part of the country. (see below).\nHigher education systems, that are influenced by the French education system set at the end of the 18th century, use a terminology derived by reference to the French \"\u00c9cole polytechnique\". Such terms include \"\u00c9coles Polytechniques\" (Algeria, Belgium, Canada, France, Switzerland, Tunisia), Escola Polit\u00e9cnica (Brasil, Spain), Polytechnicum (Eastern Europe).\nIn French language, higher education refers to \"\u00e9coles polytechniques\", providing science and engineering curricula:\nGermany.\n were first founded in the early 1970s. They do not focus exclusively on technology, but may also offer courses in social science, medicine, business and design. They grant bachelor's degrees and master's degrees and focus more on teaching than research and more on specific professions than on science.\nIn 2009/10, there existed about 200 in Germany. See the for a list.\n\"Technische Universit\u00e4t\" (abbreviation: \"TU\") is the common term for universities of technology. These institutions can grant habilitation and doctoral degrees and focus on research.\nThe nine largest and most renowned \"Technische Universit\u00e4ten\" in Germany have formed TU9 German Institutes of Technology as community of interests. Technische Universit\u00e4ten normally have faculties or departements of natural sciences and often of economics but can also have units of cultural and social sciences and arts. RWTH Aachen, TU Dresden and TU M\u00fcnchen also have a faculty of medicine associated with university hospitals (Klinikum Aachen, University Hospital Dresden, Rechts der Isar Hospital).\nThere are 20 universities of technology in Germany with about 290,000 students enrolled. The three states of Bremen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Schleswig-Holstein do not have a \"Technische Universit\u00e4t\". Saxony and Lower Saxony have the highest counts of \"TUs\", while in Saxony three out of four universities are universities of technology.\nGreece.\nGreece has Technical Universities (also known as Polytechnic Universities) with 5 years of study legally equivalent to Bachelor's and master's degree 300 ECTS, ISCED 7 and has the full professional rights of the Engineer. and had Technological Educational Institutes (TEIs) (1982\u20132019) also known as Higher Educational Institute of Technology, Technological Institute, Institute of Technology (provides at least 4-year undergraduate degree qualification \u03c0\u03c4\u03c5\u03c7\u03af\u03bf, Latinised version: Ptychion, in line with the Bologna Process legally equivalent to Bachelor's honours degree 240 ECTS, ISCED 6. Previously it was three and a half years studies from 1983 to 1995, 210 ECTS). All the Technical Universities and Technological Educational Institutes are Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) with university title (UT) and degree awarding powers (DAPs). TEIs existed from 1983 to 2019; they were reformed between 2013 and 2019 and their departments incorporated into existing higher education institutions (HEIs).\nThe two Polytechnic Universities (Technical Universities) in Greece (Greek: \u03a0\u03bf\u03bb\u03c5\u03c4\u03b5\u03c7\u03bd\u03b5\u03af\u03bf) are the National Technical University of Athens and the Technical University of Crete. However, many other universities have a faculty of engineering that provides an equivalent diploma of engineerings with an integrated master and the full professional rights as well.\nMany TEIs that got dismantled created engineering faculty with 5 years of study and 300 ECTS, ISCED 6. But those faculty are not under the general term of Polytechnics nor they have an integrated master's degree yet waiting evaluation to be characterised as equivalent. These have been named School of Engineers for the time being and not Technical Universities or Polytechnic.\nIn Greece, all Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are public university owned and government-funded, with free education undergraduate programmes that can be attended without any payment of tuition fee. About 1 out of 4 (one-fourth of) HEIs postgraduate programmes are offered free without any payment of tuition fee, especially about a 30% percentage of students can be entitled without tuition fee to attend all the HEIs statutory tuition fee postgraduate programmes after they be assessed on an individual basis of determined criteria as set out in the Ministry of Education.\nHong Kong.\nThe first polytechnic in Hong Kong is The Hong Kong Polytechnic, established in 1972 through upgrading the Hong Kong Technical College (Government Trade School before 1947). The second polytechnic, the City Polytechnic of Hong Kong, was founded in 1984. These polytechnics awards diplomas, higher diplomas, as well as academic degrees. Like the United Kingdom, the two polytechnics were granted university status in 1994 and renamed The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the City University of Hong Kong respectively. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, a university with a focus in applied science, engineering and business, was founded in 1991.\nHungary.\nThe world's first Institute of Technology the Berg-Schola (Bergschule) established in Selmecb\u00e1nya, Kingdom of Hungary, by the Court Chamber of Vienna in 1735 providing Further education to train specialists of precious metal and copper mining. In 1762 the institute ranked up to be Academia providing Higher Education courses. After the Treaty of Trianon the institute had to be moved to Sopron.\nIndia.\nThere are Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Information Technology, and National Institutes of Technology in India which are autonomous public institutions. These institutions are Institutes of National Importance, and hence each of the institutions are autonomous. All Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Information Technology, and National Institutes of Technology have their own councils which are headed by President of India. The activities of these institutions are generally governed by the institutes alone, but sometimes they are bound to follow the directives of Ministry of Education (India) and are answerable to Ministry of Education (India) and President of India. Some departments of some of these institutions are bound to follow certain guidelines of National Board of Accreditation (NBA) if they receive the accreditation from NBA. However, unlike other institutions, it is not mandatory for these institutes to follow guidelines of All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and NBA completely.\nThe authority controlling technical education, other than the Institutes of National Importance, in India is All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and National Board of Accreditation (NBA).\nIndonesia.\nThere are four public institutes of technology in Indonesia that are owned by the government of Indonesia. Other than that, there are hundreds of other institutes that are owned by private or other institutions.\nFour public institutes are:\nPublic state-owned polytechnics also available and provides vocational education offers either three-year Diploma degrees, which is similar to an associate degree or four-year bachelor's degree in applied sciences (). The more advanced vocational Master's are also available and doctoral degrees are still in progress.\nSome notable polytechnics in Indonesia includes State Polytechnic of Jakarta, State Polytechnic of Bandung, State Polytechnic of Malang, State Electronics Polytechnic of Surabaya, and State Naval and Shipbuilding Polytechnic of Surabaya. These polytechnics are known to be departed from Indonesian prestigious universities and institute of technologies, e.g. the State Polytechnic of Jakarta was departed from the University of Indonesia while both Surabaya Polytechnics were departed from Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology.\nIran.\nThere are 18 technological universities in Iran.\nIreland.\nAn \"Institute of Technology\" was formerly referred to as Regional Technical College (RTCs) system. The abbreviation IT is now widely used to refer to an Institute of Technology. These institutions offer sub-degree, degree and masters level studies. Unlike the Irish university system an Institute of Technology also offers sub-degree programmes such as 2-year Higher Certificate programme in various academic fields of study. Some institutions have \"delegated authority\" that allows them to make doctoral awards in their own name, after authorisation by the Quality and Qualifications Ireland.\nDublin Institute of Technology developed separately from the Regional Technical College system and after several decades of association with the University of Dublin it acquired the authority to confer its own degrees before becoming a member ofTU Dublin.\nThe approval of Ireland's first Technological University, TU Dublin was announced in July 2018 and the new university established on 01 January 2019. It is the result of a merger of three of the ITs in the County Dublin area - Dublin Institute of Technology, IT Tallaght and IT Blanchardstown. Several Technological Universities have since been set up in the country. Munster TU was established 01 January 2021 through a merger of Cork IT and IT Tralee (Kerry). The was the third such university, established in October 2021 out of Limerick IT and Athlone IT. The Atlantic Technological University was formally established on 01 April 2022 out of Galway-Mayo IT, IT Sligo, and Letterkenny IT. As a fifth such institution, the South East Technological University was established on 01 May 2022 out of Carlow IT and Waterford IT. As of May 2023, the only remaining Institutes of Technology in Ireland are Dundalk IT and the Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology.\nThe Technological Higher Education Association is the representative body for the various Institutes of Technology in Ireland.\nItaly.\nIn Italy, the term \"technical institute\" generally refers to a secondary school which offers a five-year course granting the access to the university system.\nIn higher education, \"Politecnico\" refers to a technical university awarding bachelor, master and PhD degrees in engineering. Historically there were two \"Politecnici\", one in each of the two largest industrial cities of the north:\nA third \"Politecnico\" was added in the south in 1990:\nIn 2003 the Libera Universit\u00e0 di Ancona becomes:\nHowever, many other universities have a faculty of engineering.\nIn 2003, the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (Italy) and the Ministry of Economy and Finance (Italy) jointly established the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology), headquartered in Genoa with 10 laboratories around Italy, which however focuses on research, not entirely in the fields of engineering and does not offer undergraduate degrees.\nJapan.\nIn Japan, an is a type of university that specializes in the sciences. See also the Imperial College of Engineering, which was the forerunner of the University of Tokyo's engineering faculty.\nKenya.\nIn Kenya, Technical Universities are special Universities that focus on technical and engineering courses and offer certifications in the same from Artisan, Craft, Diploma, Higher Diploma, Degree, Masters and Doctorate levels. They are former national polytechnics and are the only institutions of learning that offer the complete spectrum of tertiary education programs.\nThey Include\nMacau.\nThe first polytechnic in Macau is the Polytechnic Institute of the University of East Asia which was established in 1981, as an institute of a private university. In 1991, following the splitting of the University of East Asia into three (University of Macau, Macao Polytechnic Institute, Asia International Open University), a public and independent Polytechnic Institute, Macao Polytechnic Institute, was officially established. The first private technology university Macau University of Science and Technology is established in 2000. Macao Polytechnic Institute has renamed Macao Polytechnic University in 2022.\nMalaysia.\nPolytechnics in Malaysia have been in operation since 1969. The institutions provide courses for bachelor's degree & Bachelor of Science (BSc), Advanced Diploma, Diploma and Special Skills Certificate. The first polytechnic in Malaysia, Politeknik Ungku Omar, was established by the Ministry of Education in 1969 with the help of UNESCO and the amount of RM24.5 million from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).\nAt present, Malaysia has 36 polytechnics all over the country providing engineering, agriculture, commerce, hospitality and design courses.\nThe following is a list of the polytechnics in Malaysia in order of establishment:\nThere are four technical universities in Malaysia and all are belongs to Malaysian Technical University Network: \nMauritius.\nThe only technical university in Mauritius is the University of Technology, Mauritius with its main campus situated in La Tour Koenig, Pointe aux Sables.\nMexico.\nIn Mexico there are different Institutes and Colleges of Technology. Most of them are public institutions.\nThe National Technological Institute of Mexico (in Spanish: , TecNM) is a Mexican public university system created on 23 July 2014 by presidential decree with the purpose to unify 263 public institutes of technology that had been created since 1948 and are found all around Mexico.\nAnother important institute of technology in Mexico is the National Polytechnic Institute (\"\"), which is located in the northern region of Mexico City.\nNew Zealand.\nNew Zealand polytechnics are established under the Education Act 1989 as amended and are typically considered state-owned tertiary institutions along with universities, colleges of education and w\u0101nanga; there is today often much crossover in courses and qualifications offered between all these types of Tertiary Education Institutions. Some have officially taken the title 'institute of technology' which is a term recognized in government strategies equal to that of the term 'polytechnic'. One has opted for the name 'Universal College of Learning' (UCOL) and another 'Unitec New Zealand'. These are legal names but not recognized terms like 'polytechnic' or 'institute of technology'. Many if not all now grant at least bachelor-level degrees. Some colleges of education or institutes of technology are privately owned, however, the qualification levels vary widely.\nSince the 1990s, there has been consolidation in New Zealand's state-owned tertiary education system. In the polytechnic sector: Wellington Polytechnic amalgamated with Massey University. The Central Institute of Technology explored a merger with the Waikato Institute of Technology, which was abandoned, but later, after financial concerns, controversially amalgamated with Hutt Valley Polytechnic, which in turn became Wellington Institute of Technology. Some smaller polytechnics in the North Island, such as Waiarapa Polytechnic, amalgamated with UCOL. (The only other amalgamations have been in the colleges of education.)\nThe Auckland University of Technology is the only polytechnic to have been elevated to university status; while Unitec has had repeated attempts blocked by government policy and consequent decisions; Unitec has not been able to convince the courts to overturn these decisions.\nIn mid-February 2019, the Minister of Education Minister Chris Hipkins proposed merging the country's sixteen polytechnics into a \"NZ Institute of Skills and Technology\" in response to deficits and a decline in domestic enrollments. This was commenced with branding changes to 20 establishments in 2022 in preparation of their merger into Te P\u016bkenga\nNigeria.\nVirtually, every state in Nigeria has a polytechnic university operated by either the federal or state government. In Rivers State for example, there are two state-owned polytechnic universities; Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa Polytechnic, Bori City and the Rivers State College of Arts and Science, Port Harcourt. The former was established on 13 May 1988 while the latter\u2013though founded in 1984\u2013was approved by the NBTE in 2006. The first private polytechnic university in the state is the Eastern Polytechnic, established in 2008.\nPakistan.\nThe polytechnic institutes in Pakistan offer Diploma in Engineering spanning three years in different engineering branches. This diploma is known as Diploma of Associate Engineering (DAE). Students are admitted to the diploma program based on their results in the 10th grade standardized exams. The main purpose of the diploma offered in polytechnic institutes is to train people in various trades.\nThese institutes are located throughout Pakistan and started in the early 1950s.\nAfter successfully completion of diploma at a polytechnic, students can either get employment or enroll in Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) and Bachelor of Engineering (BE) degree programs.\nUniversities of Engineering & Technology in Pakistan offer undergraduate (BE/BS/BSc Engineering) and postgraduate (ME/MS/MSc Engineering and PhD) degree programs in engineering. BE/BS/BSc Engineering is a professional degree in Pakistan. It is a four-year full-time program after HSSC (higher secondary school certificate).\nPalestine.\nUniversity College of Applied Sciences (UCAS) is a technical college in Gaza founded in 1998. The College offers undergraduate degrees in several unique specializations such as education technology, technological management and planning, and geographic information systems\nPoland.\nPolitechnika (translated as a \"technical university\" or \"university of technology\") is the designation of a technical university in Poland. Here are some of the larger polytechnics in Poland:\nOther polytechnic universities:\nPortugal.\nTill recently, there was a Technical University of Lisbon (UTL). It included several of the most prestigious schools, including, an engineering school (Instituto Superior Tecnico) and one of the most ancient business schools in the world (ISEG Lisbon). But UTL merged with the University of Lisbon. In this field, here are also a number of non-university higher educational institutions which are called polytechnic institutes since the 1970s. Some of these institutions existed since the 19th century with different designations (industrial and commercial institutes, agricultural managers, elementary teachers and nurses schools, etc.). In theory, the polytechnics higher education system is aimed to provide a more practical training and be profession-oriented, while the university higher education system is aimed to have a stronger theoretical basis and be highly research-oriented. The polytechnics are also oriented to provide shorter length studies aimed to respond to local needs. The Portuguese polytechnics can then be compared to the US community colleges.\nSince the implementation of Bologna Process in Portugal in 2007, the polytechnics offer the 1st cycle (licentiate degree) and 2nd cycle (master's degree) of higher studies. Until 1998, the polytechnics only awarded bachelor () degrees (three-year short-cycle degrees) and were not authorized to award higher degrees. They however granted post-bachelor diplomas in specialized higher studies (DESE, ), that could be obtained after the conclusion of a two-year second cycle of studies and were academical equivalent to the university's licentiate degrees (\"\"). After 1998, they started to be allowed to confer their own licentiate degrees, which replaced the DESE diplomas.\nSingapore.\nPolytechnics in Singapore do not offer bachelor's, master's degrees or doctorate. However, Polytechnics in Singapore offer three-year diploma courses in fields ranging from applied sciences to business, information technology, humanities, social sciences, and other vocational fields such as engineering and nursing. There are five polytechnics in Singapore: Singapore Polytechnic, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Temasek Polytechnic, Nanyang Polytechnic and Republic Polytechnic.\nThe Polytechnic diploma certification in Singapore is equivalent to an associate degree obtainable at the community colleges in the United States. A Polytechnic diploma in Singapore is also known to be parallel and sometimes equivalent to the first years at a bachelor's degree-granting institution, thus, Polytechnic graduates in Singapore have the privilege of being granted transfer credits or module exemptions when they apply to a local or overseas universities, depending on the university's policies on transfer credits.\nThe only university in Singapore with the term \"institute of technology\", most notably the Singapore Institute of Technology were developed in 2009 as an option for Polytechnic graduates who desire to pursue a bachelor's degree. Other technological universities in Singapore includes the Nanyang Technological University and the Singapore University of Technology and Design.\nSlovakia.\nThe world's first institution of technology or technical university with tertiary technical education is the Bansk\u00e1 Akad\u00e9mia in Bansk\u00e1 \u0160tiavnica, Slovakia, founded in 1735, Academy since December 13, 1762 established by queen Maria Theresa in order to train specialists of silver and gold mining and metallurgy in neighbourhood. Teaching started in 1764. Later the department of Mathematics, Mechanics and Hydraulics and department of Forestry were settled. University buildings are still at their place today and are used for teaching. University has launched the first book of electrotechnics in the world.\nSouth Africa.\nIn South Africa, there was a division between universities and technikons (polytechnics), as well between institutions servicing particular racial and language groupings.\nBy the mid-2000s, former technikons have either been merged with traditional universities to form comprehensive universities or have become universities of technology; however, the universities of technology have not to date acquired all of the traditional rights and privileges of a university (such as the ability to confer a wide range of degrees).\nTaiwan.\nThe question of Taiwanese college education is, the students either from high school (the aims is to go to normal college) or tech high school(the aims is to go to work or technology university), almost all of the students take the same test(the score can go to two kinds of school), and the school would not care what kind of high school you are from.\nThailand.\nMost of Thailand's institutes of technology were developed from technical colleges, in the past could not grant bachelor's degrees; today, however, they are university level institutions, some of which can grant degrees to the doctoral level. Examples are Pathumwan Institute of Technology (developed from Pathumwan Technical School), King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang (Nondhaburi Telecommunications Training Centre) and King Mongkut's Institute of Technology North Bangkok (Thai-German Technical School).\nThere are two former institutes of technology, which already changed their name to \"University of Technology\": Rajamangala University of Technology (formerly Institute of Technology and Vocational Education) and King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi (Thonburi Technology Institute).\nInstitutes of technology with different origins are Asian Institute of Technology, which developed from SEATO Graduate School of Engineering and Sirindhorn International Institute of Technology, an engineering school of Thammasat University. Suranaree University of Technology is the only government-owned technological university in Thailand that was established (1989) as such; while Mahanakorn University of Technology is the most well known private technological institute. Technology/Technical colleges in Thailand is associated with bitter rivalries which erupts into frequent off-campus brawls and assassinations of students in public locations that has been going on for nearly a decade, with innocent bystanders also commonly among the injured and the military under martial law still unable to stop them from occurring.\nTurkey.\nIn Turkey, with historical roots extending back to the Ottoman Empire, Istanbul Technical University is recognized as the oldest technical university, established in 1773. Notably, Karadeniz Technical University in Trabzon was established in 1955. Middle East Technical University in Ankara followed closely, founded in 1956. More recent developments include the transformation of Y\u0131ld\u0131z University into Y\u0131ld\u0131z Technical University, along with the establishment of Gebze Technical University in Kocaeli, and \u0130zmir Institute of Technology in \u0130zmir. Additionally, the technical education landscape broadened with the founding of Bursa Technical University in Bursa in 2010.\nUnited Kingdom.\nInstitutes of Technology\nThe UK Government defines institutes of technology as \"Business-led Institutes of Technology [that] offer higher level technical education to help close skills gaps in key STEM areas\". They deliver qualifications from level 3 (T-levels) to level 7 (master's degrees). The government is investing \u00a3300 million in developing a network of 21 institutes of technology across England, with 19 open as of September 2023[ [update]] and two further institutes expected to open in September 2024.\nPolytechnics\nPolytechnics were tertiary education teaching institutions in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The comparable institutions in Scotland were collectively referred to as central institutions.\nFrom 1965 to 1992, UK polytechnics operated under the binary system of education along with universities. Polytechnics offered diplomas and degrees (bachelor's, master's, PhD) validated at the national level by the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA). Initially they concentrated on engineering and applied science degree courses and other STEM subjects similar to technological universities in the US and continental Europe. Polytechnics were associated with innovations including women's studies, the academic study of communications and media, sandwich degrees and the rise of management and business studies.\nBritain's first polytechnic, the Royal Polytechnic Institution later known as the Polytechnic of Central London (now the University of Westminster) was established in 1838 at Regent Street in London and its goal was to educate and popularize engineering and scientific knowledge and inventions in Victorian Britain \"at little expense\". The London Polytechnic led a mass movement to create numerous polytechnic institutes across the UK in the late 19th century. Most polytechnic institutes were established at the center of major metropolitan cities and their focus was on engineering, applied science and technology education.\nThe designation \"institute of technology\" was occasionally used by polytechnics (Bolton), Central Institutions (Dundee, Robert Gordon's) and for the Cranfield Institute of Technology (now Cranfield University), most of which later adopted the designation university and there were two \"institutes of science and technology\": UMIST and UWIST (part of the University of Wales). Loughborough University was called Loughborough University of Technology from 1966 to 1996, the only institution in the UK to have had such a designation. The University of Strathclyde was the Royal Technical College from 1912 to 1956 and then the Royal College of Science and Technology from 1956 until granted university status in 1964.\nPolytechnics were granted university status under the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. This meant that polytechnics could confer degrees without the oversight of the national CNAA organization. These institutions are sometimes referred to as post-1992 universities.\nTechnical colleges\nIn 1956, some colleges of technology received the designation college of advanced technology. They became universities in 1966 meaning they could award their own degrees.\nInstitutions called \"technical institutes\" or \"technical schools\" that were formed in the early 20th century provided further education between high school and university or polytechnic. Most technical institutes have been merged into regional colleges and some have been designated university colleges if they are associated with a local university.\nUnited States.\nPolytechnic institutes in the USA are technological universities, many dating back to the mid-19th century. A handful of American universities include the phrases \"Institute of Technology\", \"Polytechnic Institute\", \"Polytechnic University\" or similar phrasing in their names; these are generally research-intensive universities with a focus on engineering, science and technology. Conversely, schools dubbed \"technical colleges\" or \"technical institutes\" generally provide post-secondary training in technical and mechanical fields, focusing on training vocational skills primarily at a community college level, parallel and sometimes equivalent to the first two years at a bachelor's degree-granting institution.\nSome of America's earliest institutes of technology include Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1824), Rochester Institute of Technology (1829), Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute (1854), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1861), and Worcester Polytechnic Institute (1865).\nVenezuela.\nInstitutes of technology in Venezuela were developed in the 1950s as an option for post-secondary education in technical and scientific courses, after the \"polytechnic\" French concepts. At that time, technical education was considered essential for the development of a sound middle class economy.\nNowadays, most of the \"Institutos de Tecnolog\u00eda\" are privately run businesses, with varying degrees of quality.\nMost of these institutes award diplomas after three or three and a half years of education. The institute of technology implementation (IUT, from ) began with the creation of the first IUT at Caracas, the capital city of Venezuela, called IUT. Dr. Federico Rivero Palacio adopted the French \"Institut Universitaire de Technologie\"s system, using French personnel and study system based on three-year periods, with research and engineering facilities at the same level as the main national universities to obtain French equivalent degrees. This IUT is the first and only one in Venezuela having French equivalent degrees accepted, implementing this system and observing the high-level degrees some other IUTs were created in \nVenezuela, regardless of this the term IUT was not used appropriately resulting in some institutions with mediocre quality and no equivalent degree in France. Later, some private institutions sprang up using IUT in their names, but they are not regulated by the original French system and award lower quality degrees.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2289235": "\u00c9ric Losfeld\nFrench publisher (1922\u20131979)\n\u00c9ric Losfeld (Mouscron, 9 March 1922 \u2013 Paris, 18 November 1979) was a Belgian-born French publisher who had a reputation for publishing controversial material with his publishing imprint \u00c9ditions Le Terrain Vague.\nHe was the publisher of \"Emmanuelle\" (1967), two film magazines \"(Midi Minuit Fantastique\" and ) founded by Ado Kyrou.\nHe published a series of controversial erotic cult comic books, like \"Barbarella\", created by Jean-Claude Forest, \"Scarlett Dream\" by Robert Gigi, \"Epoxy\" by Paul Cuvelier and Jean van Hamme, the French edition of \"Phoebe Zeit-Geist\", \"The Adventures of Jodelle\" and \"Pravda\", both by Guy Peellaert. In 1967, he also published legendary psychedelic feminist comic book \"Saga de Xam\" by Jean Rollin. In 1970, he published \"Xiris\" by Serge San Juan and \"Kris Kool\" by Caza.\nLosfeld's tombstone inscription reads, \"Tout ce qu'il \u00e9ditait avait le souffle de la libert\u00e9.\" (\"Everything he edited had the breath of freedom.\").\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["2289235", "510990", "1121030", "9687589"], "permutation_1": ["510990", "1121030", "9687589", "2289235"], "permutation_2": ["9687589", "510990", "1121030", "2289235"], "permutation_3": ["9687589", "2289235", "1121030", "510990"]}
{"id": "4hop1__89787_28719_74386_516763", "docs_added": {"193703": "Alaska Purchase\n1867 sale by Russia to the United States\nThe Alaska Purchase was the purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire by the United States for a sum of $7.2\u00a0million in 1867 (equivalent to $\u00a0million in 2023). On May 15 of that year, the United States Senate ratified a bilateral treaty that had been signed on March 30, and American sovereignty became legally effective across the territory on October 18.\nDuring the first half of the 18th century, Russia had established a colonial presence in parts of North America, but few Russians ever settled in Alaska. Alexander\u00a0II of Russia, having faced a catastrophic defeat in the Crimean War, began exploring the possibility of selling the state's Alaskan possessions, which, in any future war, would be difficult to defend from the United Kingdom. To this end, William H. Seward, the U.S. Secretary of State at the time, entered into negotiations with Russian diplomat Eduard de\u00a0Stoeckl towards the United States' acquisition of Alaska after the American Civil War. Seward and Stoeckl agreed to a treaty for the sale on March 30, 1867.\nAt an original cost of $0.02 per acre ($ per acre in 2023), the United States had grown by . Reactions to the Alaska Purchase among Americans were mostly positive, as many believed that Alaska would serve as a base to expand American trade in Asia. Some opponents labeled the purchase as \"Seward's Folly\" or \"Seward's Icebox\" as they contended that the United States had acquired useless land. Nearly all Russian settlers left Alaska in the aftermath of the purchase; Alaska would remain sparsely populated until the Klondike Gold Rush began in 1896. Originally organized as the Department of Alaska, the area was renamed the District of Alaska in 1884 and the Territory of Alaska in 1912, ultimately becoming the modern-day State of Alaska in 1959.\nHistory.\nRussian America was settled by , merchants and fur trappers who expanded through Siberia. They arrived in Alaska in 1732, and in 1799 the Russian-American Company (RAC) received a charter to hunt for fur. No colony was established, but the Russian Orthodox Church sent missionaries to the natives and built churches. About 700 Russians enforced sovereignty in a territory over twice as large as Texas. In 1821, Tsar Alexander\u00a0I issued an edict declaring Russia's sovereignty over the North American Pacific coast north of the 51st parallel north. The edict also forbade foreign ships to approach within 100 Italian miles (115 miles or 185\u00a0km) of the Russian claim. US Secretary of State John Quincy Adams strongly protested the edict, which potentially threatened both the commerce and expansionary ambitions of the United States. Seeking favorable relations with the U.S., Alexander agreed to the Russo-American Treaty of 1824. In the treaty, Russia limited its claims to lands north of parallel 54\u00b040\u2032 north and also agreed to open Russian ports to U.S. ships.\nBy the 1850s, a population of once 300,000 sea otters was almost extinct, and Russia needed money after being defeated by France and Britain in the Crimean War. The California Gold Rush showed that if gold were discovered in Alaska, Americans and Canadians would overwhelm the Russian presence in what one scholar later described as \"Siberia's Siberia\". However, the principal reason for the sale was that the hard-to-defend colony would be easily conquered by British forces based in neighboring Canada in any future conflict, and Russia did not wish to see its archrival being next door just across the Bering Sea. Therefore, Emperor Alexander\u00a0II decided to sell the territory. The Russian government discussed the proposal in 1857 and 1858 and offered to sell the territory to the United States, hoping that its presence in the region would offset the plans of Britain. However, no deal was reached, as the risk of an American Civil War was a more pressing concern in Washington.\nGrand Duke Konstantin, a younger brother of the Tsar, began to press for the handover of Russian America to the United States in 1857. In a memorandum to Foreign Minister Alexander Gorchakov he stated that <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nKonstantin's letter was shown to his brother, Tsar Alexander II, who wrote \"this idea is worth considering\" on the front page. Supporters of Konstantin's proposal to immediately withdraw from North America included Admiral Yevfimy Putyatin and the Russian minister to the United States, Eduard de\u00a0Stoeckl. Gorchakov agreed with the necessity of abandoning Russian America but argued for a gradual process leading to its sale. He found a supporter in the naval minister and former chief manager of the Russian-American Company, Ferdinand von\u00a0Wrangel. Wrangel pressed for some proceeds to be invested in the economic development of Kamchatka and the Amur Basin. The Emperor eventually sided with Gorchakov, deciding to postpone negotiations until the end of the RAC's patent, set to expire in 1861.\nOver the winter of 1859\u20131860, Stoeckl held meetings with United States officials, though he had been instructed not to initiate discussions about the sale of the RAC assets. Communicating primarily with Assistant Secretary of State John Appleton and California Senator William M. Gwin, Stoeckl reported the interest expressed by the Americans in acquiring Russian America. While President James Buchanan kept these hearings informal, preparations were made for further negotiations. Stoeckl reported a conversation in which he asked \"in passing\" what price the U.S. government might pay for the Russian colony and Senator Gwin replied that they \"might go as far as $5,000,000\", a figure Gorchakov found far too low. Stoeckl informed Appleton and Gwin of this, the latter saying that his Congressional colleagues in Oregon and California would support a larger figure. Buchanan's increasingly unpopular presidency forced the matter to be shelved until a new presidential election. With the oncoming American Civil War, Stoeckl proposed a renewal of the RAC's charter. Two of its ports were to be open to foreign traders and commercial agreements with Peru and Chile to be signed to give \"a fresh jolt\" to the company.\nRussia continued to see an opportunity to weaken British power by causing British Columbia, including the Royal Navy base at Esquimalt, to be surrounded or annexed by American territory. Following the Union victory in the Civil War in 1865, the Tsar instructed Stoeckl to re-enter into negotiations with William H. Seward in the beginning of March 1867. President Andrew Johnson was busy with negotiations about Reconstruction, and Seward had alienated a number of Republicans, so both men believed that the purchase would help divert attention from domestic issues. The negotiations concluded after an all-night session with the signing of the treaty at 04:00 on March 30, 1867. The purchase price was set at $7.2\u00a0million (equivalent to $\u00a0million in 2023), or about 2 cents per acre ($4.74/km2).\nAmerican ownership.\nThe Russian name for the Alaska Peninsula was \"Alyaska\" (\"\u0410\u043b\u044f\u0441\u043a\u0430\") or \"Alyeska\", from an Aleut word, \"alashka\" or \"alaesksu\", meaning \"great land\" or \"mainland\". The United States chose the name \"Alaska\" to refer to the area purchased from Russia.\nSeward told the nation that, according to Russian estimates, Alaska had about 60,000 inhabitants. This included about 10,500 who were under the direct government of the Russian fur company: about 8,000 indigenous people and 2,500 people of Russian or mixed Russian and indigenous descent (for example, having a Russian father and a native mother). The remaining 50,000 or so were Inuit or Alaska Natives living outside of Russia's jurisdiction.\nSeward also said that the Russians were settled at 23 trading posts, placed on accessible islands and at points along the coast. At smaller trading posts, typically only four or five Russians were stationed: their job was to collect furs from the natives for storage and then for shipment when the company's boats arrived to take the furs away. There were two larger towns. One was New Archangel (now named Sitka), established in 1804 to handle the valuable trade in the skins of sea otters; in 1867, it had 116 small log cabins and 968 residents. The other was St. Paul, in the Pribilof Islands, which had 100 homes and 283 residents, and was the center of the seal fur industry.\nSeward and many other Americans expected that Asia would become an important market for U.S. products, and that Alaska would serve as a base for American trade with Asia and globally, and for the extension of American power into the Pacific.\nSenator Charles Sumner, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sponsored the Senate bill authorizing the U.S. to approve the treaty to acquire the territory. He not only agreed about the benefit to trade, but also said he expected the territory to be valuable on its own; having studied the records of explorers, he believed it contained valuable animals and forests. He compared the acquisition to contemporary European colonial acquisitions, such as the French conquest of Algeria. The United States Senate approved the treaty by a vote of 37 to 2.\nPublic opinion favors the purchase.\nMany Americans believed in 1867 that the purchase process had been corrupt, but W. H. Dall in 1872 wrote that \"there can be no doubt that the feelings of a majority of the citizens of the United States are in favor of it.\" The notion that the purchase was unpopular among Americans is, a scholar wrote 120 years later, \"one of the strongest historical myths in American history. It persists despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, and the efforts of the best historians to dispel it\", likely in part because it fits American and Alaskan writers' view of the territory as distinct and filled with self-reliant pioneers.\nA majority of newspapers either supported the purchase or were neutral. A review of dozens of contemporary newspapers found general support for the purchase, especially in California; most of 48 major newspapers supported the purchase. Public opinion was not universally positive; to some the purchase was known as \"Seward's folly\", \"Walrussia\", or \"Seward's icebox\". Editorials contended that taxpayer money had been wasted on a \"polar bear garden\". Nonetheless, most newspaper editors argued that the U.S. would probably derive great economic benefits from the purchase, such as considerable mineral resources that previous geological explorations of the region suggested were available there; friendship with Russia was important; and it would facilitate the acquisition of British Columbia. Forty-five percent of supportive newspapers cited the increased potential for annexing British Columbia in their support, and \"The New York Times\" stated that, consistent with Seward's reason, Alaska would increase American trade with East Asia.\nThe principal urban newspaper that opposed the purchase was the \"New York Tribune\", published by Seward opponent Horace Greeley. The ongoing controversy over Reconstruction spread to other acts, including the Alaska purchase. Some opposed the United States obtaining its first non-contiguous territory, seeing it as a colony; others saw no need to pay for land that they expected the country to obtain through manifest destiny. Historian Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer summarized the minority opinion of some American newspaper editors who opposed the purchase:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Already, so it was said, we were burdened with territory we had no population to fill. The Indians within the present boundaries of the republic strained our power to govern aboriginal peoples. Could it be that we would now, with open eyes, seek to add to our difficulties by increasing the number of such peoples under our national care? The purchase price was small; the annual charges for administration, civil and military, would be yet greater, and continuing. The territory included in the proposed cession was not contiguous to the national domain. It lay away at an inconvenient and a dangerous distance. The treaty had been secretly prepared, and signed and foisted upon the country at one o'clock in the morning. It was a dark deed done in the night\u2026 The \"New York World\" said that it was a \"sucked orange.\" It contained nothing of value but furbearing animals, and these had been hunted until they were nearly extinct. Except for the Aleutian Islands and a narrow strip of land extending along the southern coast the country would be not worth taking as a gift\u2026 Unless gold were found in the country much time would elapse before it would be blessed with Hoe printing presses, Methodist chapels and a metropolitan police. It was \"a frozen wilderness.\"\nTransfer ceremony.\nThe transfer ceremony took place in Sitka on October 18, 1867. Russian and American soldiers paraded in front of the governor's house; the Russian flag was lowered and the American flag raised amid peals of artillery.\nA description of the events was published in Finland six years later. It was written by a blacksmith named Thomas Ahllund, who had been recruited to work in Sitka:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />We had not spent many weeks at Sitka when two large steam ships arrived there, bringing things that belonged to the American crown, and a few days later the new governor also arrived in a ship together with his soldiers. The wooden two-story mansion of the Russian governor stood on a high hill, and in front of it in the yard at the end of a tall spar flew the Russian flag with the double-headed eagle in the middle of it. Of course, this flag now had to give way to the flag of the United States, which is full of stripes and stars. On a predetermined day in the afternoon, a group of soldiers came from the American ships, led by one who carried the flag. Marching solemnly, but without accompaniment, they came to the governor's mansion, where the Russian troops were already lined up and waiting for the Americans. Now they started to pull the [Russian double-headed] eagle down, but\u2014whatever had gone into its head\u2014it only came down a little bit, and then entangled its claws around the spar so that it could not be pulled down any further. A Russian soldier was therefore ordered to climb up the spar and disentangle it, but it seems that the eagle cast a spell on his hands, too\u2014for he was not able to arrive at where the flag was, but instead slipped down without it. The next one to try was not able to do any better; only the third soldier was able to bring the unwilling eagle down to the ground. While the flag was brought down, music was played and cannons were fired off from the shore, and then, while the other flag was hoisted, the Americans fired off their cannons from the ships equally many times. After that American soldiers replaced the Russian ones at the gates of the fence surrounding the Kolosh [i.e. Tlingit] village.\nAfter the flag transition was completed, Captain of 2nd Rank Aleksei Alekseyevich Peshchurov said, \"General Rousseau, by authority from His Majesty, the Emperor of Russia, I transfer to the United States the territory of Alaska.\" General Lovell Rousseau accepted the territory. (Peshchurov had been sent to Sitka as commissioner of the Russian government in the transfer of Alaska.) A number of forts, blockhouses and timber buildings were handed over to the Americans. The troops occupied the barracks; General Jefferson C. Davis established his residence in the governor's house, and most of the Russian citizens went home, leaving a few traders and priests who chose to remain.\nAftermath.\nAfter the transfer, a number of Russian citizens remained in Sitka, but nearly all of them very soon decided to return to Russia, which was still possible at the expense of the Russian-American Company. Ahllund's story \"corroborates other accounts of the transfer ceremony, and the dismay felt by many of the Russians and creoles, jobless and in want, at the rowdy troops and gun-toting civilians who looked on Sitka as merely one more western frontier settlement.\" Ahllund gives a vivid account of what life was like for civilians in Sitka under US rule and helps to explain why hardly any Russian subject wanted to stay there. Moreover, Ahllund's article is the only known description of the return voyage on the \"Winged Arrow\", a ship that was specially purchased to transport the Russians back to their native country. \"The over-crowded vessel, with crewmen who got roaring drunk at every port, must have made the voyage a memorable one.\" Ahllund mentions stops at the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands, Tahiti, Brazil, London, and finally Kronstadt, the port for St. Petersburg, where they arrived on August 28, 1869.\nAmerican settlers who shared Sumner's belief in the riches of Alaska rushed to the territory but found that much capital was required to exploit its resources, many of which could also be found closer to markets in the contiguous United States. Most soon left, and by 1873, Sitka's population had declined from about 2,500 to a few hundred. The United States acquired an area over twice as large as Texas, but it was not until the great Klondike Gold Rush in 1896 that Alaska generally came to be seen as a valuable addition to U.S. territory.\nThe seal fishery was one of the chief considerations that induced the United States to purchase Alaska. It provided considerable revenue by the lease of the privilege of taking seals, an amount that was eventually more than the price paid for Alaska. From 1870 to 1890, the seal fisheries yielded 100,000 skins a year. The company to which the administration of the fisheries was entrusted by a lease from the US government paid a rental of $50,000 per annum and in addition thereto <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />$2.62+1\u20442 per skin for the total number taken. The skins were transported to London to be dressed and prepared for world markets. The business grew so large that the earnings of English laborers after the acquisition of Alaska by the United States amounted by 1890 to $12,000,000.\nHowever, exclusive US control of this resource was eventually challenged, and the Bering Sea Controversy resulted when the United States seized over 150 sealing ships flying the British flag, based out of the coast of British Columbia. The conflict between the United States and Britain was resolved by an arbitration tribunal in 1893. The waters of the Bering Sea were deemed to be international waters, contrary to the US contention that they were an internal sea. The US was required to make a payment to Britain, and both nations were required to follow regulations developed to preserve the resource.\nFinancial return.\nThe purchase of Alaska has been referenced as a \"bargain basement deal\" and as the principal positive accomplishment of the otherwise much-maligned presidency of Andrew Johnson.\nEconomist David R. Barker has argued that the US federal government has not earned a positive financial return on the purchase of Alaska. According to Barker, tax revenue and mineral and energy royalties to the federal government have been less than federal costs of governing Alaska plus interest on the borrowed funds used for the purchase.\nJohn M. Miller has taken the argument further by contending that US oil companies that developed Alaskan petroleum resources did not earn enough profits to compensate for the risks that they incurred.\nOther economists and scholars, including Scott Goldsmith and Terrence Cole, have criticized the metrics used to reach those conclusions by noting that most contiguous Western states would fail to meet the bar of \"positive financial return\" using the same criteria and by contending that looking at the increase in net national income, instead of only US Treasury revenue, would paint a much more accurate picture of the financial return of Alaska as an investment.\nAlaska Day.\nAlaska Day celebrates the formal transfer of Alaska from Russia to the United States, which took place on October 18, 1867, according to the Gregorian calendar which came into effect in Alaska the day following the transfer, replacing the Julian calendar, which was used by the Russians (the Julian calendar in the 19th century was 12 days behind the Gregorian calendar). Alaska Day is a holiday for all state workers.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1940400": "Lafayette C. Baker\nUnion Army officer\nLafayette Curry Baker (October 13, 1826 \u2013 July 3, 1868) was a United States investigator and spy, serving the Union Army during the American Civil War and under Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson.\nEarly life.\nBaker was born in Stafford, New York, on October 13, 1826. He became a mechanic, moved to Michigan in 1839, returned to New York in 1848, moved to California in 1853, and was a San Francisco vigilante in 1856. He moved to the District of Columbia in 1861.\nAmerican Civil War.\nBaker's exploits are mainly known through his book \"A History of the Secret Service\" which he published in 1867 after his fall from grace. During the early months of the Civil War, he spied for General Winfield Scott on Confederate forces in Virginia. Despite numerous scrapes, he returned to Washington, D.C., with information that Scott evidently thought valuable enough to raise him to the rank of captain. As Provost Marshal of Washington, D.C., from September 12, 1862, to November 7, 1863, Baker ran the National Detective Bureau also sometimes known as the \"National Detective Police Department.\" He was appointed colonel of 1st D.C. Cavalry, May 5, 1863. According to Glenn Hastedt \"Although his accomplishments were many, Baker operated with little regard for warrants or the constitutional rights of those he pursued. He is also reported to have employed brutal interrogation techniques in order to obtain information.\"\nBaker owed his appointment largely to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, but suspected the secretary of corruption and was eventually demoted for tapping his telegraph lines and packed off to New York.\nLincoln assassination investigation.\nBaker was recalled to Washington after the assassination of President Lincoln in 1865. Within two days of his arrival in Washington, Baker's agents in Maryland had made four arrests and had the names of two more conspirators, including the actual presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth. Before the month was out, Booth along with David Herold were found holed up in a barn and Booth was himself shot and killed by Sgt. Boston Corbett. Baker received a generous share of the $100,000 reward offered to the person who apprehended the president's killer. President Andrew Johnson nominated Baker for appointment to the grade of brigadier general of volunteers, April 26, 1865, but the United States Senate never confirmed the appointment. Baker was mustered out of the volunteers on January 15, 1866.\nFiring and death.\nThe following year, Baker was sacked from his position as government spymaster. President Johnson accused him of spying on him, a charge Baker admitted in his book which he published in response. He also announced that he had had Booth's diary in his possession which was being suppressed by the Department of War and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. When the diary was eventually produced, Baker claimed that eighteen vital pages were missing. It was suggested by Otto Eisenschiml in his book, \"Why Was Lincoln Murdered?,\" that these would implicate Stanton in the assassination. However, this notion has been proven as speculation by author Edward Steers Jr. and based on non-reputable sources.\nOn July 3, 1868, Baker retired to home complaining of soreness from a gun wound during a hunting trip. He had been out drinking with Wally Pollack, his brother-in-law, and came home feeling sick, passing away later that night, reportedly from meningitis.\nA widely criticized 1977 book, \"The Lincoln Conspiracy\" by conspiracy theorists David W. Balsiger and Charles E. Sellier, alleges that Baker was poisoned by high-placed conspirators, including Stanton, who supported John Wilkes Booth's plan to kidnap Abraham Lincoln in 1864 and early 1865. The conspirators supposedly planned to have Lincoln impeached in his absence. The authors speculate that the conspirators were concerned that Baker could link them to the planned kidnapping, which might lead to accusations that they were conspirators in Lincoln's assassination. The authors believe the conspirators did not support Booth after March 1865. Academic historians have treated the book with hostility and derision, having many objections based on errors and misuse of sources in the book.\nInterment.\nBaker is buried in Forest Hills Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.\nIn popular culture.\nBaker was portrayed by Patton Oswalt in the 2024 Apple TV+ miniseries series \"Manhunt\"\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3546592": "Oyster pail\nFood container\nAn oyster pail (also known as a paper pail, Chinese food box or Chinese takeout container) is a folded, waxed or plastic coated, paperboard container originally designed to hold oysters. It commonly comes with a handle made of solid wire. It is often used by American Chinese cuisine restaurants in the United States to package take-out food. It can also be found in other countries, such as Poland, but is rarely seen in China and other Asian countries with high numbers of ethnic Chinese.\nUses.\nThe container is inexpensive, durable and fairly leak-proof when kept upright. The top usually has a locking paperboard tab that is self-closing. The simple origami-like folded construction allows for some escape of steam from hot food. It is common to eat directly out of the container with chopsticks. The containers are primarily used with American Chinese cuisine, though they have begun to spread in some European and Latin American countries.\nOyster pails that can be used safely in microwave ovens (without the metal handle, which can cause arcing) are available. They often have no handle, or a plastic handle.\nThe containers may also be used for storing or transporting non-food items, such as soap bath beads or small parts. Takeout containers have also been offered as novelty packaging for small gifts.\nHistory.\nEarly patents date to 1890, 1894, and 1908. The paperboard oyster pail was invented at a time when fresh oysters were more popular and plentiful and less expensive than they are today. Since shucking oysters (removing the raw meat from the shell) takes some skill and can be difficult and dangerous, it was common to have the oyster seller open the oysters so they could be taken home for use in recipes. The oyster pail provided an inexpensive and sanitary way to do this. In the early 20th century oyster pails were used to hold honey. In the mid-20th century, overfishing (and the subsequent rise in price) of oysters left manufacturers with a significant number of unsold oyster pails.\nIn the United States after World War II, there was a huge increase in sales of takeout foods that could be purchased from restaurants. Chinese food was a popular choice, since it was tasty, unusual, fairly inexpensive, and traveled well. The oyster pail was quickly adopted for \"Chinese takeout\". The paperboard pails were to some extent self-insulating, and could be used for a wide variety of foods including cooked rice, moist dishes such as egg foo young and sauced dishes, though they were unsuitable for hot highly liquid dishes such as soups.\nThe containers are also used by restaurants offering classic American takeout food, such as French fries or fried clams, but the containers have become strongly associated with Chinese takeout. In 2011, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History displayed Chinese takeout containers in its exhibit \"Sweet & Sour: A Look at the History of Chinese Food in the United States\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "624": "Alaska\nU.S. state\nAlaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the northernmost, westernmost, and easternmost (the Aleutian Islands cross the 180th meridian into the eastern hemisphere) state in the United States. It borders the Canadian territory of Yukon and the province of British Columbia to the east. It shares a western maritime border, in the Bering Strait, with Russia's Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. The Chukchi and Beaufort Seas of the Arctic Ocean lie to the north, and the Pacific Ocean lies to the south. Technically, it is a semi-exclave of the U.S., and is the largest exclave in the world.\nAlaska is the largest U.S. state by area, comprising more total area than the following three largest states of Texas, California, and Montana combined, and is the seventh-largest subnational division in the world. It is the third-least populous and most sparsely populated U.S. state; however, with a population of 740,133 as of 2024, it is the most populous territory in North America located mostly north of the 60th parallel, with more than quadruple the combined populations of Northern Canada and Greenland. The state contains the four largest cities in the United States by area, including the state capital of Juneau. The state's most populous city is Anchorage, and approximately half of Alaska's residents live within its metropolitan area.\nIndigenous people have lived in Alaska for thousands of years, and it is widely believed that the region served as the entry point for the initial settlement of North America by way of the Bering land bridge. The Russian Empire was the first to actively colonize the area beginning in the 18th century, eventually establishing Russian America, which spanned most of the current state and promoted and maintained a native Alaskan Creole population. The expense and logistical difficulty of maintaining this distant possession prompted its sale to the U.S. in 1867 for US$7.2\u00a0million (equivalent to $ million in 2024). The area went through several administrative changes before becoming organized as a territory on May 11, 1912. It was admitted as the 49th state of the U.S. on January 3, 1959.\nAbundant natural resources have enabled Alaska\u2014 with one of the smallest state economies\u2014to have one of the highest per capita incomes, with commercial fishing, and the extraction of natural gas and oil, dominating Alaska's economy. U.S. Armed Forces bases and tourism also contribute to the economy; more than half of the state is federally-owned land containing national forests, national parks, and wildlife refuges. It is among the most irreligious states and one of the first to legalize recreational marijuana. The Indigenous population of Alaska is proportionally the second highest of any U.S. state, at over 15 percent, after only Hawaii.\nEtymology.\nThe name \"Alaska\" () was introduced during the Russian colonial period when it was used to refer to the Alaska Peninsula. It was derived from an Aleut-language idiom, , meaning \"the mainland\" or, more literally, \"the object towards which the action of the sea is directed\".\nHistory.\nPre-colonization.\nNumerous indigenous peoples occupied Alaska for thousands of years before the arrival of European peoples to the area. Linguistic and DNA studies done here have provided evidence for the settlement of North America by way of the Bering land bridge. At the Upward Sun River site in the Tanana Valley in Alaska, remains of a six-week-old infant were found. The baby's DNA showed that she belonged to a population that was genetically separate from other native groups present elsewhere in the New World at the end of the Pleistocene. Ben Potter, the University of Alaska Fairbanks archaeologist who unearthed the remains at the Upward Sun River site in 2013, named this new group Ancient Beringian.\nThe Tlingit people developed a society with a matrilineal kinship system of property inheritance and descent in what is today Southeast Alaska, along with parts of British Columbia and the Yukon. Also in Southeast were the Haida, now well known for their unique arts. The Tsimshian people came to Alaska from British Columbia in 1887, when President Grover Cleveland, and later the U.S. Congress, granted them permission to settle on Annette Island and found the town of Metlakatla, Alaska. All three of these peoples, as well as other indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, experienced smallpox outbreaks from the late 18th through the mid-19th century, with the most devastating epidemics occurring in the 1830s and 1860s, resulting in high fatalities and social disruption.\nColonization.\nSome researchers believe the first Russian settlement in Alaska was established in the 17th century. According to this hypothesis, in 1648 several koches of Semyon Dezhnyov's expedition came ashore in Alaska by storm and founded this settlement. This hypothesis is based on the testimony of Chukchi geographer Nikolai Daurkin, who had visited Alaska in 1764\u20131765 and who had reported on a village on the Kheuveren River, populated by \"bearded men\" who \"pray to the icons\". Some modern researchers associate Kheuveren with Koyuk River.\nThe first European vessel to reach Alaska is generally held to be the \"St. Gabriel\" under the authority of the surveyor M. S. Gvozdev and assistant navigator I. Fyodorov on August 21, 1732, during an expedition of Siberian Cossack A. F. Shestakov and Russian explorer Dmitry Pavlutsky (1729\u20131735). Another European contact with Alaska occurred in 1741, when Vitus Bering led an expedition for the Russian Navy aboard the \"St. Peter\". After his crew returned to Russia with sea otter pelts judged to be the finest fur in the world, small associations of fur traders began to sail from the shores of Siberia toward the Aleutian Islands. The first permanent European settlement was founded in 1784.\nBetween 1774 and 1800, Spain sent several expeditions to Alaska to assert its claim over the Pacific Northwest. In 1789, a Spanish settlement and fort were built in Nootka Sound. These expeditions gave names to places such as Valdez, Bucareli Sound, and Cordova. Later, the Russian-American Company carried out an expanded colonization program during the early-to-mid-19th century. Sitka, renamed New Archangel from 1804 to 1867, on Baranof Island in the Alexander Archipelago in what is now Southeast Alaska, became the capital of Russian America. It remained the capital after the colony was transferred to the United States. The Russians never fully colonized Alaska, and the colony was never very profitable. Evidence of Russian settlement in names and churches survives throughout southeastern Alaska.\nIn 1867, William H. Seward, the United States Secretary of State under President Andrew Johnson, negotiated the Alaska Purchase (referred to pejoratively as Seward's Folly) with the Russians for $7.2\u00a0million. Russia's contemporary ruler Tsar Alexander II, the Emperor of the Russian Empire, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland, also planned the sale; the purchase was made on March 30, 1867. Six months later the commissioners arrived in Sitka and the formal transfer was arranged; the formal flag-raising took place at Fort Sitka on October 18, 1867. In the ceremony, 250 uniformed U.S. soldiers marched to the governor's house at \"Castle Hill\", where the Russian troops lowered the Russian flag and the U.S. flag was raised. This event is celebrated as Alaska Day, a legal holiday on October 18.\nAlaska was loosely governed by the military initially and was administered as a district starting in 1884, with a governor appointed by the United States president. A federal district court was headquartered in Sitka. For most of Alaska's first decade under the United States flag, Sitka was the only community inhabited by American settlers. They organized a \"provisional city government\", which was Alaska's first municipal government, but not in a legal sense. Legislation allowing Alaskan communities to legally incorporate as cities did not come about until 1900, and home rule for cities was extremely limited or unavailable until statehood took effect in 1959.\nU.S. territorial incorporation.\nStarting in the 1890s and stretching in some places to the early 1910s, gold rushes in Alaska and the nearby Yukon Territory brought thousands of miners and settlers to Alaska. From 1879 to 1920, Alaska produced a cumulative total of over $460,000,000 ($6,691,927,500 inflation-adjusted) of mineral production. Alaska was officially incorporated as an organized territory in 1912. Alaska's capital, which had been in Sitka until 1906, was moved north to Juneau. Construction of the Alaska Governor's Mansion began that same year. European immigrants from Norway and Sweden also settled in southeast Alaska, where they entered the fishing and logging industries.\nDuring World War II, the Aleutian Islands Campaign focused on Attu, Agattu and Kiska, all of which were occupied by the Empire of Japan. During the Japanese occupation, an American civilian and two United States Navy personnel were killed at Attu and Kiska respectively, and nearly a total of 50 Aleut civilians and eight sailors were interned in Japan. About half of the Aleuts died during the period of internment. Unalaska/Dutch Harbor and Adak became significant bases for the United States Army, United States Army Air Forces and United States Navy. The United States Lend-Lease program involved flying American warplanes through Canada to Fairbanks and then Nome; Soviet pilots took possession of these aircraft, ferrying them to fight the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The construction of military bases contributed to the population growth of some Alaskan cities.\nStatehood.\nStatehood for Alaska was an important cause of James Wickersham early in his tenure as a congressional delegate. Decades later, the statehood movement gained its first real momentum following a territorial referendum in 1946. The Alaska Statehood Committee and Alaska's Constitutional Convention would soon follow. Statehood supporters also found themselves fighting major battles against political foes, mostly in the U.S. Congress but also within Alaska. Statehood was approved by the U.S. Congress on July 7, 1958; Alaska was officially proclaimed a state on January 3, 1959.\nGood Friday earthquake.\nOn March 27, 1964, the massive Good Friday earthquake killed 133 people and destroyed several villages and portions of large coastal communities, mainly by the resultant tsunamis and landslides. It was the fourth-most-powerful earthquake in recorded history, with a moment magnitude of 9.2 (more than a thousand times as powerful as the 1989 San Francisco earthquake). The time of day (5:36\u00a0pm), time of year (spring) and location of the epicenter were all cited as factors in potentially sparing thousands of lives, particularly in Anchorage. Alaska suffered a more severe megathrust earthquake on July 11, 1585, estimated at magnitude 9.25, which remains the most powerful earthquake recorded in North American history, and the second most powerful earthquake recorded in world history.\nThe Good Friday earthquake lasted 4 minutes and 38 seconds. of fault ruptured at once and moved up to , releasing about 500 years of stress buildup. Soil liquefaction, fissures, landslides, and other ground failures caused major structural damage in several communities and much damage to property. Anchorage sustained great destruction or damage to many inadequately earthquake-engineered houses, buildings, and infrastructure (paved streets, sidewalks, water and sewer mains, electrical systems, and other human-made equipment), particularly in the several landslide zones along Knik Arm. southwest, some areas near Kodiak were permanently raised by . Southeast of Anchorage, areas around the head of Turnagain Arm near Girdwood and Portage dropped as much as , requiring reconstruction and fill to raise the Seward Highway above the new high tide mark.\nIn Prince William Sound, Port Valdez suffered a massive underwater landslide, resulting in the deaths of 32 people between the collapse of the Valdez city harbor and docks, and inside the ship that was docked there at the time. Nearby, a tsunami destroyed the village of Chenega, killing 23 of the 68 people who lived there; survivors out-ran the wave, climbing to high ground. Post-quake tsunamis severely affected Whittier, Seward, Kodiak, and other Alaskan communities, as well as people and property in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California. Tsunamis also caused damage in Hawaii and Japan. Evidence of motion directly related to the earthquake was also reported from Florida and Texas.\nAlaska had never experienced a major disaster in a highly populated area before and had very limited resources for dealing with the effects of such an event. In Anchorage, at the urging of geologist Lidia Selkregg, the City of Anchorage and the Alaska State Housing Authority appointed a team of 40 scientists, including geologists, soil scientists, and engineers, to assess the damage done by the earthquake to the city. The team, called the Engineering and Geological Evaluation Group, was headed by Ruth A. M. Schmidt, a geology professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage. The team of scientists came into conflict with local developers and downtown business owners who wanted to immediately rebuild; the scientists wanted to identify future dangers to ensure that the rebuilt infrastructure would be safe. The team produced a report on May 8, 1964, just a little more than a month after the earthquake.\nThe United States military, which has a large active presence in Alaska, also stepped in to assist within moments of the end of the quake. The U.S. Army rapidly re-established communications with the lower 48 states, deployed troops to assist the citizens of Anchorage, and dispatched a convoy to Valdez. On the advice of military and civilian leaders, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared all of Alaska a major disaster area the day after the quake. The U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard deployed ships to isolated coastal communities to assist with immediate needs. Bad weather and poor visibility hampered air rescue and observation efforts the day after the quake, but on Sunday the 29th the situation improved and rescue helicopters and observation aircraft were deployed. A military airlift immediately began shipping relief supplies to Alaska, eventually delivering of food and other supplies. Broadcast journalist, Genie Chance, assisted in recovery and relief efforts, staying on the KENI air waves over Anchorage for more than 24 continuous hours as the voice of calm from her temporary post within the Anchorage Public Safety Building. She was effectively designated as the public safety officer by the city's police chief. Chance provided breaking news of the catastrophic events that continued to develop following the magnitude 9.2 earthquake, and she served as the voice of the public safety office, coordinating response efforts, connecting available resources to needs around the community, disseminating information about shelters and prepared food rations, passing messages of well-being between loved ones, and helping to reunite families.\nIn the longer term, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers led the effort to rebuild roads, clear debris, and establish new townsites for communities that had been completely destroyed, at a cost of $110\u00a0million. The West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center was formed as a direct response to the disaster. Federal disaster relief funds paid for reconstruction as well as financially supporting the devastated infrastructure of Alaska's government, spending hundreds of millions of dollars that helped keep Alaska financially solvent until the discovery of massive oil deposits at Prudhoe Bay. At the order of the U.S. Defense Department, the Alaska National Guard founded the Alaska Division of Emergency Services to respond to any future disasters.\nOil boom.\nThe 1968 discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay and the 1977 completion of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System led to an oil boom. Royalty revenues from oil have funded large state budgets from 1980 onward.\nOil production was not the only economic value of Alaska's land. In the second half of the 20th century, Alaska discovered tourism as an important source of revenue. Tourism became popular after World War II when military personnel stationed in the region returned home praising its natural splendor. The Alcan Highway, built during the war, and the Alaska Marine Highway System, completed in 1963, made the state more accessible than before. Tourism has become increasingly important in Alaska, and today over 1.4\u00a0million people visit the state each year.\nWith tourism more vital to the economy, environmentalism also rose in importance. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) of 1980 added 53.7\u00a0million acres (217,000\u00a0km2) to the National Wildlife Refuge system, parts of 25 rivers to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System, 3.3\u00a0million acres (13,000\u00a0km2) to National Forest lands, and 43.6\u00a0million acres (176,000\u00a0km2) to National Park land. Because of the Act, Alaska now contains two-thirds of all American national parklands. Today, more than half of Alaskan land is owned by the Federal Government.\nIn 1989, the \"Exxon Valdez\" hit a reef in the Prince William Sound, spilling more than 11 million gallons (42 megalitres) of crude oil over of coastline. Today, the battle between philosophies of development and conservation is seen in the contentious debate over oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the proposed Pebble Mine.\nGeography.\nLocated at the northwest corner of North America, Alaska is the northernmost and westernmost state in the United States, but also has the most easterly longitude in the United States because the Aleutian Islands extend into the Eastern Hemisphere. Alaska is the only non-contiguous U.S. state on continental North America; about of Canadian territory consisting of British Columbia (in Canada) separates Alaska from Washington. It is technically part of the continental U.S., but is not usually included in the colloquial use of the term; Alaska is not part of the contiguous U.S., often called \"the Lower 48\". The capital city, Juneau, is situated on the mainland of the North American continent but is not connected by road to the rest of the North American highway system. The largest lake in Alaska is Lake Illiamna.\nThe state is bordered by Canada's Yukon and British Columbia to the east (making it the only state to border only a Canadian territory); the Gulf of Alaska and the Pacific Ocean to the south and southwest; the Bering Sea, Bering Strait, and Chukchi Sea to the west; and the Arctic Ocean to the north. Alaska's territorial waters touch Russia's territorial waters in the Bering Strait, as the Russian Big Diomede Island and Alaskan Little Diomede Island are only apart. Alaska has a longer coastline than all the other U.S. states combined.\nAt in total area, Alaska is by far the largest state in the United States. Alaska is more than twice the size of the second-largest U.S. state (Texas), and it is larger than the next three largest states (Texas, California, and Montana) combined. Alaska is the seventh largest subnational division in the world. If it was an independent nation, it would be the 18th largest country in the world; almost the same size as Iran.\nWith its myriad islands, Alaska has nearly of tidal shoreline. The Aleutian Islands chain extends west from the southern tip of the Alaska Peninsula. Many active volcanoes are found in the Aleutians and in coastal regions. Unimak Island, for example, is home to Mount Shishaldin, which is an occasionally smoldering volcano that rises to above the North Pacific. The chain of volcanoes extends to Mount Spurr, west of Anchorage on the mainland. Geologists have identified Alaska as part of Wrangellia, a large region consisting of multiple states and Canadian provinces in the Pacific Northwest, which is actively undergoing continent building.\nOne of the world's largest tides occurs in Turnagain Arm, just south of Anchorage, where tidal differences can be more than .\nAlaska has more than 409,000 natural lakes at least one hectare or bigger. Marshlands and wetland permafrost cover (mostly in northern, western and southwest flatlands). Glacier ice covers about of Alaska. The Bering Glacier is the largest glacier in North America, covering alone.\nRegions.\nThere are no officially defined borders demarcating the various regions of Alaska, however there are five/six regions that the state is most commonly broken up into:\nSouthcentral.\nThe most populous region of Alaska contains Anchorage, the Matanuska-Susitna Valley and the Kenai Peninsula. Rural, mostly unpopulated areas south of the Alaska Range and west of the Wrangell Mountains also fall within the definition of South Central, as do the Prince William Sound area and the communities of Cordova and Valdez.\nSoutheast.\nAlso referred to as the Panhandle or Inside Passage, this is the region of Alaska closest to the contiguous states. As such, this was where most of the initial non-indigenous settlement occurred in the years following the Alaska Purchase. The region is dominated by the Alexander Archipelago as well as the Tongass National Forest, the largest national forest in the United States. It contains the state capital Juneau, the former capital Sitka, and Ketchikan, at one time Alaska's largest city. The Alaska Marine Highway provides a vital surface transportation link throughout the area and country, as only three communities (Haines, Hyder and Skagway) enjoy direct connections to the contiguous North American road system.\nInterior.\nThe Interior is the largest region of Alaska; much of it is uninhabited wilderness. Fairbanks is the only large city in the region. Denali National Park and Preserve is located here. Denali, federally designated as Mount McKinley, is the highest mountain in North America and is also located here.\nNorth Slope.\nThe North Slope is mostly tundra peppered with small villages. The area is known for its massive reserves of crude oil and contains both the National Petroleum Reserve\u2013Alaska and the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field. The city of Utqia\u0121vik, formerly known as Barrow, is the northernmost city in the United States and is located here. The Northwest Arctic area, anchored by Kotzebue and also containing the Kobuk River valley, is often considered part of this region. The respective Inupiat of the North Slope and of the Northwest Arctic seldom consider themselves to be one people.\nSouthwest.\nSouthwest Alaska is a sparsely inhabited region stretching some inland from the Bering Sea. Most of the population lives along the coast. Kodiak Island is also located in the Southwest. The massive Yukon\u2013Kuskokwim Delta, one of the largest river deltas in the world, is here. Portions of the Alaska Peninsula are considered part of the Southwest, with the Aleutian Islands often (but not always) being grouped in as well.\nAleutian Islands.\nWhile primarily part of Southwest Alaska when grouped economically, the Aleutian islands are sometimes recognized as an alternate group from the rest of the region due to the geographic separation from the continent. More than 300 small volcanic islands make up this chain, which stretches more than into the Pacific Ocean. Some of these islands fall in the Eastern Hemisphere, but the International Date Line was drawn west of 180\u00b0 to keep the whole state, and thus the entire North American continent, within the same legal day. Two of the islands, Attu and Kiska, were occupied by Japanese forces during World War II.\nLand ownership.\nAccording to an October 1998 report by the United States Bureau of Land Management, approximately 65% of Alaska is owned and managed by the U.S. federal government as public lands, including a multitude of national forests, national parks, and national wildlife refuges. Of these, the Bureau of Land Management manages , or 23.8% of the state. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. It is the world's largest wildlife refuge, comprising .\nOf the remaining land area, the state of Alaska owns , its entitlement under the Alaska Statehood Act. A portion of that acreage is occasionally ceded to the organized boroughs presented above, under the statutory provisions pertaining to newly formed boroughs. Smaller portions are set aside for rural subdivisions and other homesteading-related opportunities. These are not very popular due to the often remote and roadless locations. The University of Alaska, as a land grant university, also owns substantial acreage which it manages independently.\nAnother are owned by 12 regional, and scores of local, Native corporations created under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971. Regional Native corporation Doyon, Limited often promotes itself as the largest private landowner in Alaska in advertisements and other communications. Provisions of ANCSA allowing the corporations' land holdings to be sold on the open market starting in 1991 were repealed before they could take effect. Effectively, the corporations hold title (including subsurface title in many cases, a privilege denied to individual Alaskans) but cannot sell the land. Individual Native allotments are sold on the open market.\nVarious private interests own the remaining land, totaling about one percent of the state. Alaska is, by a large margin, the state with the smallest percentage of private land ownership when Native corporation holdings are excluded.\nAlaska Heritage Resources Survey.\nThe Alaska Heritage Resources Survey (AHRS) is a restricted inventory of all reported historic and prehistoric sites within the U.S. state of Alaska; it is maintained by the Office of History and Archaeology. The survey's inventory of cultural resources includes objects, structures, buildings, sites, districts, and travel ways, with a general provision that they are more than fifty years old. As of 2012[ [update]], more than 35,000 sites have been reported.\nCities, towns and boroughs.\nAlaska is not divided into counties, like Louisiana's parishes and unlike most of the other U.S. states, but it is divided into \"boroughs\". Delegates to the Alaska Constitutional Convention wanted to avoid the pitfalls of the traditional county system and adopted their own unique model. Many of the more densely populated parts of the state are part of Alaska's 16 boroughs, which function somewhat similarly to counties in other states. Unlike county-equivalents in the other states, the boroughs do not cover the state's entire land area. The area not part of any borough is referred to as the Unorganized Borough.\nThe Unorganized Borough has no government of its own, but the U.S. Census Bureau in cooperation with the state divided the Unorganized Borough into 11 census areas solely for the purposes of statistical analysis and presentation. A \"recording district\" is a mechanism for management of the public record in Alaska. The state is divided into 34 recording districts which are centrally administered under a state recorder. All recording districts use the same acceptance criteria, fee schedule, etc., for accepting documents into the public record.\nWhereas many U.S. states use a three-tiered system of decentralization\u2014state/county/township\u2014most of Alaska uses only two tiers\u2014state/borough. Owing to the low population density, most of the land is located in the Unorganized Borough. As the name implies, it has no intermediate borough government but is administered directly by the state government. In 2000, 57.71% of Alaska's area has this status, with 13.05% of the population.\nAnchorage merged the city government with the Greater Anchorage Area Borough in 1975 to form the Municipality of Anchorage, containing the city proper and the communities of Eagle River, Chugiak, Peters Creek, Girdwood, Bird, and Indian. Fairbanks has a separate borough (the Fairbanks North Star Borough) and municipality (the City of Fairbanks).\nThe state's most populous city is Anchorage, home to 291,247 people in 2020. The richest location in Alaska by per capita income is Denali ($42,245). Yakutat City, Sitka, Juneau, and Anchorage are the four largest cities in the U.S. by area.\nCities and census-designated places (by population).\nAs reflected in the 2020 United States census, Alaska has a total of 355 incorporated cities and census-designated places (CDPs). The tally of cities includes four unified municipalities, essentially the equivalent of a consolidated city\u2013county. The majority of these communities are located in the rural expanse of Alaska known as \"The Bush\" and are unconnected to that contiguous North American road network. The table at the bottom of this section lists the 100 largest cities and census-designated places in Alaska, in population order.\nOf Alaska's 2020 U.S. census population figure of 733,391, 16,655 people, or 2.27% of the population, did not live in an incorporated city or census-designated place. Approximately three-quarters of that figure were people who live in urban and suburban neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city limits of Ketchikan, Kodiak, Palmer and Wasilla. CDPs have not been established for these areas by the United States Census Bureau, except that seven CDPs were established for the Ketchikan-area neighborhoods in the 1980 census (Clover Pass, Herring Cove, Ketchikan East, Mountain Point, Alaska Route 7, Pennock Island and Saxman East), but have not been used since. The remaining population was scattered throughout Alaska, both within organized boroughs and in the Unorganized Borough, in largely remote areas.\nClimate.\nAlaska is the coldest state in the United States. The climate in the south and southeastern Alaska is a mid-latitude oceanic climate (K\u00f6ppen climate classification: \"Cfb\"), and a subarctic oceanic climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Cfc\") in the northern parts, with cool summers and relatively mild winters. On an annual basis, the southeast is both the wettest and warmest part of Alaska with milder temperatures in the winter and high precipitation throughout the year. Juneau averages over of precipitation a year, and Ketchikan averages over . This is also the only region in Alaska in which the average daytime high temperature is above freezing during the winter months.The climate of Anchorage and south central Alaska is mild by Alaskan standards due to the region's proximity to the seacoast. While the area gets less rain than southeast Alaska, it gets more snow, and days tend to be clearer. On average, Anchorage receives of precipitation a year, with around of snow, although there are areas in the south central which receive far more snow. It is a subarctic climate () due to its brief, cool summers.\nThe climate of western Alaska is determined in large part by the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska. It is a subarctic oceanic climate in the southwest and a continental subarctic climate farther north. The temperature is somewhat moderate considering how far north the area is. This region has a tremendous amount of variety in precipitation. An area stretching from the northern side of the Seward Peninsula to the Kobuk River valley (i.e., the region around Kotzebue Sound) is technically a desert, with portions receiving less than of precipitation annually. On the other extreme, some locations between Dillingham and Bethel average around of precipitation.\nThe climate of the interior of Alaska is subarctic and is a classic example of a continental subarctic climate, except in a few valleys where the climate approaches humid continental (K\u00f6ppen: \"Dfb\"). Some of the highest and lowest temperatures in Alaska occur around the area near Fairbanks. Summers are warm (albeit generally short) and may have temperatures reaching into the 90s \u00b0F (the low-to-mid 30s \u00b0C), while in the long and very cold winters, the temperature can fall below . Precipitation is sparse in the Interior, often less than a year, but what precipitation falls in the winter tends to stay the entire winter.\nThe highest and lowest recorded temperatures in Alaska are both in the Interior. The highest is in Fort Yukon (which is just inside the arctic circle) on June 27, 1915, making Alaska tied with Hawaii as the state with the lowest high temperature in the United States. The lowest official Alaska temperature is in Prospect Creek on January 23, 1971, one degree above the lowest temperature recorded in continental North America (in Snag, Yukon, Canada).\nThe climate in the extreme north of Alaska, north of the Brooks Range, is Arctic () with long, very cold winters and short, cool summers. Even in July, the average low temperature in Utqia\u0121vik is . Precipitation is light in this part of Alaska, with many places averaging less than per year, mostly as snow which stays on the ground almost the entire year.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nThe United States Census Bureau found in the 2020 United States census that the population of Alaska was 733,391 on April 1, 2020, a 3.3% increase since the 2010 United States census. According to the 2010 United States Census, the U.S. state of Alaska had a population of 710,231, a 13.3% increase from 626,932 at the 2000 U.S. census.\nIn 2020, Alaska ranked as the 48th largest state by population, ahead of only Vermont and Wyoming. Alaska is the least densely populated state, and one of the most sparsely populated areas in the world, at , with the next state, Wyoming, at . Alaska is by far the largest U.S. state by area, and the tenth wealthiest (per capita income). As of 2018[ [update]] due to its population size, it is one of 14 U.S. states that still have only one telephone area code.\nAccording to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 2,320 homeless people in Alaska.\nRace and ethnicity.\nThe 2019 American Community Survey estimated 60.2% of the population was non-Hispanic white, 3.7% black or African American, 15.6% American Indian or Alaska Native, 6.5% Asian, 1.4% Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, 7.5% two or more races, and 7.3% Hispanic or Latin American of any race. At the survey estimates, 7.8% of the total population was foreign-born from 2015 to 2019. In 2015, 61.3% was non-Hispanic white, 3.4% black or African American, 13.3% American Indian or Alaska Native, 6.2% Asian, 0.9% Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, 0.3% some other race, and 7.7% multiracial. Hispanics and Latin Americans were 7% of the state population in 2015. From 2015 to 2019, the largest Hispanic and Latin American groups were Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cuban Americans. The largest Asian groups living in the state were Filipinos, Korean Americans, and Japanese and Chinese Americans.\nThe state was 66.7% white (64.1% non-Hispanic white), 14.8% American Indian and Alaska Native, 5.4% Asian, 3.3% black or African American, 1.0% Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, 1.6% from some other race, and 7.3% from two or more races in 2010. Hispanics or Latin Americans of any race made up 5.5% of the population in 2010. As of 2011[ [update]], 50.7% of Alaska's population younger than one year of age belonged to minority groups (i.e., did not have two parents of non-Hispanic white ancestry). In 1960, the United States Census Bureau reported Alaska's population as 77.2% white, 3% black, and 18.8% American Indian and Alaska Native.\nIn 2018, the top countries of origin for Alaska's immigrants were the Philippines, Mexico, Canada, Thailand and South Korea.\nLanguages.\nAccording to the 2011 American Community Survey, 83.4% of people over the age of five spoke only English at home. About 3.5% spoke Spanish at home, 2.2% spoke another Indo-European language, about 4.3% spoke an Asian language (including Tagalog), and about 5.3% spoke other languages at home. In 2019, the American Community Survey determined 83.7% spoke only English, and 16.3% spoke another language other than English. The most spoken European language after English was Spanish, spoken by approximately 4.0% of the state population. Collectively, Asian and Pacific Islander languages were spoken by 5.6% of Alaskans. Since 2010, a total of 5.2% of Alaskans speak one of the state's 20 indigenous languages, known locally as \"native languages\".\nThe Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks claims that at least 20 Alaskan native languages exist and there are also some languages with different dialects. Most of Alaska's native languages belong to either the Eskimo\u2013Aleut or Na-Dene language families; some languages are thought to be isolates (e.g. Haida) or have not yet been classified (e.g. Tsimshianic). As of 2014[ [update]] nearly all of Alaska's native languages were classified as either threatened, shifting, moribund, nearly extinct, or dormant languages.\nIn October 2014, the governor of Alaska signed a bill declaring the state's 20 indigenous languages to have official status. This bill gave them symbolic recognition as official languages, though they have not been adopted for official use within the government. The 20 languages that were included in the bill are:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nMultiple surveys have ranked Alaska among the most irreligious states.\nAccording to statistics collected by the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) from 2010, about 34% of Alaska residents were members of religious congregations. Of the religious population, roughly 4% were Mormon, 0.5% Jewish, 0.5% Muslim, 1% Buddhist, 0.2% Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed, and 0.5% Hindu. The largest religious denominations in Alaska as of 2010[ [update]] was the Catholic Church with 50,866 adherents; non-denominational Evangelicals with 38,070 adherents; The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with 32,170 adherents; and the Southern Baptist Convention with 19,891 adherents. Alaska has been identified, along with Washington and Oregon in the Pacific Northwest, as being the least religious states in the United States, in terms of church membership.\nThe Pew Research Center in 2014 determined 62% of the adult population practiced Christianity. Of the Christian denominations, Catholicism was the largest Christian group. When Protestant denominations were combined, Protestantism was the largest Christian tradition, with Evangelicalism being the largest movement within the Protestant group. The unaffiliated population made up the largest non-Christian religious affiliation at 37%. Atheists made up 5% of the population and the largest non-Christian religion was Buddhism. In 2020, the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) determined 57% of adults were Christian. By 2022, Christianity increased to 77% of the population according to the PRRI.\nThrough the Association of Religion Data Archives in 2020, its Christian population was dominated by non/inter-denominational Protestantism as the single largest Christian cohort, with 73,930 adherents. Roman Catholics were second with 40,280 members; throughout its Christian population, non-denominational Christians had an adherence rate of 100.81 per 1,000 residents, and Catholics 54.92 per 1,000 residents. Per 2014's Pew study, religion was seen as very important to 41% of the population, although 29% considered it somewhat important. In 2014, Pew determined roughly 55% believed in God with absolute certainty, and 24% believed fairly certainly. Reflecting the separate 2020 ARDA study, the 2014 Pew study showed 30% attended religious services once a week, 34% once or twice a month, and 36% seldom/never. In 2018, \"The Gospel Coalition\" published an article using Pew data and determined non-churchgoing Christians nationwide did not attend religious services often through the following: practicing the faith in other ways, not finding a house of worship they liked, disliking sermons and feeling unwelcomed, and logistics.\nIn 1795, the first Russian Orthodox Church was established in Kodiak. Intermarriage with Alaskan Natives helped the Russian immigrants integrate into society. As a result, an increasing number of Russian Orthodox churches gradually became established within Alaska. Alaska also has the largest Quaker population (by percentage) of any state. In 2009, there were 6,000 Jews in Alaska (for whom observance of halakha may pose special problems). Alaskan Hindus often share venues and celebrations with members of other Asian religious communities, including Sikhs and Jains. In 2010, Alaskan Hindus established the Sri Ganesha Temple of Alaska, making it the first Hindu Temple in Alaska and the northernmost Hindu Temple in the world. There are an estimated 2,000\u20133,000 Hindus in Alaska. The vast majority of Hindus live in Anchorage or Fairbanks.\nEstimates for the number of Muslims in Alaska range from 2,000 to 5,000. In 2020, ARDA estimated there were 400 Muslims in the state. The Islamic Community Center of Anchorage began efforts in the late 1990s to construct a mosque in Anchorage. They broke ground on a building in south Anchorage in 2010 and were nearing completion in late 2014. When completed, the mosque was the first in the state and one of the northernmost mosques in the world. There is also a Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed center, and there were 690 adherents in 2020. Additionally, there were 469 adherents of Hinduism and Yoga altogether in 2020, and a small number of Buddhists were present.\nEconomy.\nAs of October 2022, Alaska had a total employment of 316,900. The number of employer establishments was 21,077.\nThe 2018 gross state product was $55\u00a0billion, 48th in the U.S. Its per capita personal income for 2018 was $73,000, ranking 7th in the nation. According to a 2013 study by Phoenix Marketing International, Alaska had the fifth-largest number of millionaires per capita in the United States, with a ratio of 6.75 percent. The oil and gas industry dominates the Alaskan economy, with more than 80% of the state's revenues derived from petroleum extraction. Alaska's main export product (excluding oil and natural gas) is seafood, primarily salmon, cod, pollock and crab.\nAgriculture represents a very small fraction of the Alaskan economy. Agricultural production is primarily for consumption within the state and includes nursery stock, dairy products, vegetables, and livestock. Manufacturing is limited, with most foodstuffs and general goods imported from elsewhere.\nEmployment is primarily in government and industries such as natural resource extraction, shipping, and transportation. Military bases are a significant component of the economy in the Fairbanks North Star, Anchorage and Kodiak Island boroughs, as well as Kodiak. Federal subsidies are also an important part of the economy, allowing the state to keep taxes low. Its industrial outputs are crude petroleum, natural gas, coal, gold, precious metals, zinc and other mining, seafood processing, timber and wood products. There is also a growing service and tourism sector. Tourists have contributed to the economy by supporting local lodging.\nEnergy.\nAlaska has vast energy resources, although its oil reserves have been largely depleted. Major oil and gas reserves were found in the Alaska North Slope (ANS) and Cook Inlet basins, but according to the Energy Information Administration, by February 2014 Alaska had fallen to fourth place in the nation in crude oil production after Texas, North Dakota, and California. Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope is still the second highest-yielding oil field in the United States, typically producing about , although by early 2014 North Dakota's Bakken Formation was producing over . Prudhoe Bay was the largest conventional oil field ever discovered in North America, but was much smaller than Canada's enormous Athabasca oil sands field, which by 2014 was producing about of unconventional oil, and had hundreds of years of producible reserves at that rate.\nThe Trans-Alaska Pipeline can transport and pump up to of crude oil per day, more than any other crude oil pipeline in the United States. Additionally, substantial coal deposits are found in Alaska's bituminous, sub-bituminous, and lignite coal basins. The United States Geological Survey estimates that there are of undiscovered, technically recoverable gas from natural gas hydrates on the Alaskan North Slope. Alaska also offers some of the highest hydroelectric power potential in the country from its numerous rivers. Large swaths of the Alaskan coastline offer wind and geothermal energy potential as well.\nAlaska's economy depends heavily on increasingly expensive diesel fuel for heating, transportation, electric power and light. Although wind and hydroelectric power are abundant and underdeveloped, proposals for statewide energy systems were judged uneconomical (at the time of the report, 2001) due to low (less than 50\u00a2/gal) fuel prices, long distances and low population. The cost of a gallon of gas in urban Alaska is usually thirty to sixty cents higher than the national average; prices in rural areas are generally significantly higher but vary widely depending on transportation costs, seasonal usage peaks, nearby petroleum development infrastructure and many other factors.\nPermanent Fund.\nThe Alaska Permanent Fund is a constitutionally authorized appropriation of oil revenues, established by voters in 1976 to manage a surplus in state petroleum revenues from oil, largely in anticipation of the then recently constructed Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. The fund was originally proposed by Governor Keith Miller on the eve of the 1969 Prudhoe Bay lease sale, out of fear that the legislature would spend the entire proceeds of the sale (which amounted to $900\u00a0million) at once. It was later championed by Governor Jay Hammond and Kenai state representative Hugh Malone. It has served as an attractive political prospect ever since, diverting revenues which would normally be deposited into the general fund.\nThe Alaska Constitution was written so as to discourage dedicating state funds for a particular purpose. The Permanent Fund has become the rare exception to this, mostly due to the political climate of distrust existing during the time of its creation. From its initial principal of $734,000, the fund has grown to $50\u00a0billion as a result of oil royalties and capital investment programs. Most if not all the principal is invested conservatively outside Alaska. This has led to frequent calls by Alaskan politicians for the Fund to make investments within Alaska, though such a stance has never gained momentum.\nStarting in 1982, dividends from the fund's annual growth have been paid out each year to eligible Alaskans, ranging from an initial $1,000 in 1982 (equal to three years' payout, as the distribution of payments was held up in a lawsuit over the distribution scheme) to $3,269 in 2008 (which included a one-time $1,200 \"Resource Rebate\"). Every year, the state legislature takes out 8% from the earnings, puts 3% back into the principal for inflation proofing, and the remaining 5% is distributed to all qualifying Alaskans. To qualify for the Permanent Fund Dividend, one must have lived in the state for a minimum of 12 months, maintain constant residency subject to allowable absences, and not be subject to court judgments or criminal convictions which fall under various disqualifying classifications or may subject the payment amount to civil garnishment.\nThe Permanent Fund is often considered to be one of the leading examples of a basic income policy in the world.\nCost of living.\nThe cost of goods in Alaska has long been higher than in the contiguous 48 states. Federal government employees, particularly United States Postal Service (USPS) workers and active-duty military members, receive a Cost of Living Allowance usually set at 25% of base pay because, while the cost of living has gone down, it is still one of the highest in the country.\nRural Alaska suffers from extremely high prices for food and consumer goods compared to the rest of the country, due to the relatively limited transportation infrastructure.\nAgriculture and fishing.\nDue to the northern climate and short growing season, relatively little farming occurs in Alaska. Most farms are in either the Matanuska Valley, about northeast of Anchorage, or on the Kenai Peninsula, about southwest of Anchorage. The short 100-day growing season limits the crops that can be grown, but the long sunny summer days make for productive growing seasons. The primary crops are potatoes, carrots, lettuce, and cabbage.\nThe Tanana Valley is another notable agricultural locus, especially the Delta Junction area, about southeast of Fairbanks, with a sizable concentration of farms growing agronomic crops; these farms mostly lie north and east of Fort Greely. This area was largely set aside and developed under a state program spearheaded by Hammond during his second term as governor. Delta-area crops consist predominantly of barley and hay. West of Fairbanks lies another concentration of small farms catering to restaurants, the hotel and tourist industry, and community-supported agriculture.\nAlaskan agriculture has experienced a surge in growth of market gardeners, small farms and farmers' markets in recent years, with the highest percentage increase (46%) in the nation in growth in farmers' markets in 2011, compared to 17% nationwide. The peony industry has also taken off, as the growing season allows farmers to harvest during a gap in supply elsewhere in the world, thereby filling a niche in the flower market.\nAlaska, with no counties, lacks county fairs. Instead, a small assortment of state and local fairs (with the Alaska State Fair in Palmer the largest), are held mostly in the late summer. The fairs are mostly located in communities with historic or current agricultural activity, and feature local farmers exhibiting produce in addition to more high-profile commercial activities such as carnival rides, concerts and food. \"Alaska Grown\" is used as an agricultural slogan.\nAlaska has an abundance of seafood, with the primary fisheries in the Bering Sea and the North Pacific. Seafood is one of the few food items that is often cheaper within the state than outside it. Many Alaskans take advantage of salmon seasons to harvest portions of their household diet while fishing for subsistence, as well as sport. This includes fish taken by hook, net or wheel.\nHunting for subsistence, primarily caribou, moose, and Dall sheep is still common in the state, particularly in remote Bush communities. An example of a traditional native food is Akutaq, the Eskimo ice cream, which can consist of reindeer fat, seal oil, dried fish meat and local berries.\nAlaska's reindeer herding is concentrated on Seward Peninsula, where wild caribou can be prevented from mingling and migrating with the domesticated reindeer.\nMost food in Alaska is transported into the state from \"Outside\" (the other 49 U.S. states), and shipping costs make food in the cities relatively expensive. In rural areas, subsistence hunting and gathering is an essential activity because imported food is prohibitively expensive. Although most small towns and villages in Alaska lie along the coastline, the cost of importing food to remote villages can be high because of the terrain and difficult road conditions, which change dramatically due to varying climate and precipitation changes. Transport costs can reach 50\u00a2 per pound ($1.10/kg) or higher in some remote areas during times of inclement weather or rough terrain conditions, if these locations can be reached at all. The cost of delivering a gallon (3.8 L) of milk is about $3.50 in many villages where per capita income can be $20,000 or less. Fuel cost per gallon is routinely twenty to thirty cents higher than the contiguous United States average, with only Hawaii having higher prices.\nCulture.\nSome of Alaska's popular annual events are the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race from Anchorage to Nome, World Ice Art Championships in Fairbanks, the Blueberry Festival and Alaska Hummingbird Festival in Ketchikan, the Sitka Whale Fest, and the Stikine River Garnet Fest in Wrangell. The Stikine River attracts the largest springtime concentration of American bald eagles in the world.\nThe Alaska Native Heritage Center celebrates the rich heritage of Alaska's 11 cultural groups. Their purpose is to encourage cross-cultural exchanges among all people and enhance self-esteem among Native people. The Alaska Native Arts Foundation promotes and markets Native art from all regions and cultures in the State, using the internet.\nMusic.\nInfluences on music in Alaska include the traditional music of Alaska Natives as well as folk music brought by later immigrants from Russia and Europe. Prominent musicians from Alaska include singer Jewel, traditional Aleut flautist Mary Youngblood, folk singer-songwriter Libby Roderick, Christian music singer-songwriter Lincoln Brewster, metal/post hardcore band 36 Crazyfists and the groups Pamyua and Portugal. The Man.\nThere are many established music festivals in Alaska, including the Alaska Folk Festival, the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival, the Anchorage Folk Festival, the Athabascan Old-Time Fiddling Festival, the Sitka Jazz Festival, the Sitka Summer Music Festival, and the Anchorage Chamber Music Festival. The most prominent orchestra in Alaska is the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra, though the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra and Juneau Symphony are also notable. The Anchorage Opera is currently the state's only professional opera company, though there are several volunteer and semi-professional organizations in the state as well.\nThe official state song of Alaska is \"Alaska's Flag\", which was adopted in 1955; it celebrates the flag of Alaska.\nFilm and television.\nThe 1983 Disney movie \"Never Cry Wolf\" was at least partially shot in Alaska. The 1991 film \"White Fang\", based on Jack London's 1906 novel and starring Ethan Hawke, was filmed in and around Haines. Steven Seagal's 1994 \"On Deadly Ground\", starring Michael Caine, was filmed in part at the Worthington Glacier near Valdez.\nMany reality television shows are filmed in Alaska. In 2011, the \"Anchorage Daily News\" found ten set in the state.\nSports.\nThe following is a list of sporting venues, events, and teams based in Alaska.\nPublic health and safety.\nThe Alaska State Troopers are Alaska's statewide police force. They have a long and storied history, but were not an official organization until 1941. Before the force was officially organized, law enforcement in Alaska was handled by various federal agencies. Larger towns usually have their own local police and some villages rely on \"Public Safety Officers\" who have police training but do not carry firearms. In much of the state, the troopers serve as the only police force available. In addition to enforcing traffic and criminal law, wildlife Troopers enforce hunting and fishing regulations. Due to the varied terrain and wide scope of the Troopers' duties, they employ a wide variety of land, air, and water patrol vehicles.\nMany rural communities in Alaska are considered \"dry\", having outlawed the importation of alcoholic beverages. Suicide rates for rural residents are higher than urban.\nDomestic abuse and other violent crimes are also at high levels in the state; this is in part linked to alcohol abuse. Alaska has the highest rate of sexual assault in the nation, especially in rural areas. The average age of sexually assaulted victims is 16 years old. In four out of five cases, the suspects were relatives, friends, or acquaintances.\nHealth insurance.\nAs of 2022[ [update]], CVS Health and Premera account for 47% and 46% of private health insurance, respectively. Premera and Moda Health offer insurance on the federally-run Affordable Care Exchange.\nHospitals.\nProvidence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage is the largest hospital in the state as of 2021; Anchorage also hosts Alaska Regional Hospital and Alaska Native Medical Center.\nAlaska's other major cities such as Fairbanks and Juneau also have local hospitals. In Southeast Alaska, Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, runs healthcare facilities across 27 communities as of 2022, including hospitals in Sitka and Wrangell; although it originally served Native Americans only, it has expanded access and combined with other local facilities over time.\nEducation.\nThe Alaska Department of Education and Early Development administers many school districts in Alaska. In addition, the state operates a boarding school, Mt. Edgecumbe High School in Sitka, and provides partial funding for other boarding schools, including Nenana Student Living Center in Nenana and The Galena Interior Learning Academy in Galena.\nThere are more than a dozen colleges and universities in Alaska. Accredited universities in Alaska include the University of Alaska Anchorage, University of Alaska Fairbanks, University of Alaska Southeast, and Alaska Pacific University. Alaska is the only state that has no collegiate athletic programs that are members of NCAA Division I, although both Alaska-Fairbanks and Alaska-Anchorage maintain single sport membership in Division I for men's ice hockey.\nThe Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development operates AVTEC, Alaska's Institute of Technology. Campuses in Seward and Anchorage offer one-week to 11-month training programs in areas as diverse as Information Technology, Welding, Nursing, and Mechanics.\nAlaska has had a problem with a \"brain drain\". Many of its young people, including most of the highest academic achievers, leave the state after high school graduation and do not return. As of 2013[ [update]], Alaska did not have a law school or medical school. The University of Alaska has attempted to combat this by offering partial four-year scholarships to the top 10% of Alaska high school graduates, via the Alaska Scholars Program.\nBeginning in 1998, schools in rural Alaska must have at least 10 students to retain funding from the state, and campuses not meeting the number close. This was due to the loss in oil revenues that previously propped up smaller rural schools. In 2015, there was a proposal to raise that minimum to 25, but legislators in the state largely did not agree.\nTransportation.\nRoad.\nAlaska has few road connections compared to the rest of the U.S. The state's road system, covering a relatively small area of the state, linking the central population centers and the Alaska Highway, the principal route out of the state through Canada. The state capital, Juneau, is not accessible by road, with access only being through ferry or flight; this has spurred debate over decades about moving the capital to a city on the road system, or building a road connection from Haines. The western part of Alaska has no road system connecting the communities with the rest of Alaska.\nThe Interstate Highways in Alaska consists of a total of . One unique feature of the Alaska Highway system is the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel, an active Alaska Railroad tunnel recently upgraded to provide a paved roadway link with the isolated community of Whittier on Prince William Sound to the Seward Highway about southeast of Anchorage at Portage. At , the tunnel was the longest road tunnel in North America until 2007. The tunnel is the longest combination road and rail tunnel in North America.\nSouthwest Alaska is largely coastal, sparsely populated, and unconnected to the road system. Access to most communities in Southwest Alaska is primarily by air taxi, although larger towns like Kodiak, Bethel, King Salmon, Dillingham, and Dutch Harbor are accessible by scheduled air service. Additionally, some coastal communities can be reached via the Alaska Marine Highway ferry.\nRail.\nBuilt around 1915, the Alaska Railroad (ARR) played a key role in the development of Alaska through the 20th century. It links shipping lanes on the North Pacific with Interior Alaska with tracks that run from Seward by way of South Central Alaska, passing through Anchorage, Eklutna, Wasilla, Talkeetna, Denali, and Fairbanks, with spurs to Whittier, Palmer and North Pole. The cities, towns, villages, and region served by ARR tracks are known statewide as \"The Railbelt\". In recent years, the ever-improving paved highway system began to eclipse the railroad's importance in Alaska's economy.\nThe railroad played a vital role in Alaska's development, moving freight into Alaska while transporting natural resources southward, such as coal from the Usibelli coal mine near Healy to Seward and gravel from the Matanuska Valley to Anchorage. It is well known for its summertime tour passenger service.\nThe Alaska Railroad was one of the last railroads in North America to use cabooses in regular service and still uses them on some gravel trains. It continues to offer one of the last flag stop routes in the country. A stretch of about of track along an area north of Talkeetna remains inaccessible by road; the railroad provides the only transportation to rural homes and cabins in the area. Until construction of the Parks Highway in the 1970s, the railroad provided the only land access to most of the region along its entire route.\nIn northern Southeast Alaska, the White Pass and Yukon Route also partly runs through the state from Skagway northwards into Canada (British Columbia and Yukon Territory), crossing the border at White Pass Summit. This line is now mainly used by tourists, often arriving by cruise liner at Skagway. It was featured in the 1983 BBC television series \"Great Little Railways.\"\nThese two railroads are connected neither to each other nor any other railroad. The nearest link to the North American railway network is the northwest terminus of the Canadian National Railway at Prince Rupert, British Columbia, several hundred miles to the southeast. In 2000, the U.S. Congress authorized $6\u00a0million to study the feasibility of a rail link between Alaska, Canada, and the lower 48. As of 2021, the Alaska-Alberta Railway Development Corporation had been placed into receivership.\nSome private companies provides car float service between Whittier and Seattle.\nSea.\nMany cities, towns, and villages in the state do not have road or highway access; the only modes of access involve travel by air, river, or the sea.\nAlaska's well-developed state-owned ferry system (known as the Alaska Marine Highway) serves the cities of southeast, the Gulf Coast and the Alaska Peninsula. The ferries transport vehicles as well as passengers. The system also operates a ferry service from Bellingham, Washington and Prince Rupert, British Columbia, in Canada through the Inside Passage to Skagway. The Inter-Island Ferry Authority also serves as an important marine link for many communities in the Prince of Wales Island region of Southeast and works in concert with the Alaska Marine Highway.\nIn recent years, cruise lines have created a summertime tourism market, mainly connecting the Pacific Northwest to Southeast Alaska and, to a lesser degree, towns along Alaska's gulf coast. The population of Ketchikan for example fluctuates dramatically on many days\u2014up to four large cruise ships can dock there at the same time.\nAir.\nCities not served by road, sea, or river can be reached only by air, foot, dogsled, or snowmachine, accounting for Alaska's extremely well developed bush air services\u2014an Alaskan novelty. Anchorage, and to a lesser extent Fairbanks, is served by many major airlines. Because of limited highway access, air travel remains the most efficient form of transportation in and out of the state. Anchorage recently completed extensive remodeling and construction at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport to help accommodate the upsurge in tourism (in 2012\u20132013, Alaska received almost two million visitors).\nMaking regular flights to most villages and towns within the state commercially viable is difficult, so they are heavily subsidized by the federal government through the Essential Air Service program. Alaska Airlines is the only major airline offering in-state travel with jet service (sometimes in combination cargo and passenger Boeing 737-400s) from Anchorage and Fairbanks to regional hubs like Bethel, Nome, Kotzebue, Dillingham, Kodiak, and other larger communities as well as to major Southeast and Alaska Peninsula communities.\nThe bulk of remaining commercial flight offerings come from small regional commuter airlines such as Ravn Alaska, PenAir, and Frontier Flying Service. The smallest towns and villages must rely on scheduled or chartered bush flying services using general aviation aircraft such as the Cessna Caravan, the most popular aircraft in use in the state. Much of this service can be attributed to the Alaska bypass mail program which subsidizes bulk mail delivery to Alaskan rural communities. The program requires 70% of that subsidy to go to carriers who offer passenger service to the communities.\nMany communities have small air taxi services. These operations originated from the demand for customized transport to remote areas. Perhaps the most quintessentially Alaskan plane is the bush seaplane. The world's busiest seaplane base is Lake Hood, located next to Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, where flights bound for remote villages without an airstrip carry passengers, cargo, and many items from stores and warehouse clubs.\nIn 2006, Alaska had the highest number of pilots per capita of any U.S. state. In Alaska there are 8,795 active pilot certificates as of 2020.\nSnow.\nAnother Alaskan transportation method is the dogsled. In modern times (that is, any time after the mid-late 1920s), dog mushing is more of a sport than a true means of transportation. Various races are held around the state, but the best known is the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, a trail from Anchorage to Nome (although the distance varies from year to year, the official distance is set at ). The race commemorates the famous 1925 serum run to Nome in which mushers and dogs like Togo and Balto took much-needed medicine to the diphtheria-stricken community of Nome when all other means of transportation had failed. Mushers from all over the world come to Anchorage each March to compete for cash, prizes, and prestige. The \"Serum Run\" is another sled dog race that more accurately follows the route of the famous 1925 relay, leaving from the community of Nenana (southwest of Fairbanks) to Nome.\nIn areas not served by road or rail, primary transportation in summer is by all-terrain vehicle and in winter by snowmobile or \"snow machine\", as it is commonly referred to in Alaska.\nCommunication.\nAlaska's internet and other data transport systems are provided largely through the two major telecommunications companies: GCI and Alaska Communications. GCI owns and operates what it calls the Alaska United Fiber Optic system and, as of late 2011, Alaska Communications advertised that it has \"two fiber optic paths to the lower 48 and two more across Alaska. In January 2011, it was reported that a $1\u00a0billion project to connect Asia and rural Alaska was being planned, aided in part by $350\u00a0million in stimulus from the federal government.\nLaw and government.\nState government.\nLike all other U.S. states, Alaska is governed as a republic, with three branches of government: an executive branch consisting of the governor of Alaska and their appointees which head executive departments; a legislative branch consisting of the Alaska House of Representatives and Alaska Senate; and a judicial branch consisting of the Alaska Supreme Court and lower courts.\nThe state of Alaska employs approximately 16,000 people statewide.\nThe Alaska State Legislature consists of a 40-member House of Representatives and a 20-member Senate. Senators serve four-year terms and House members two. The governor of Alaska serves four-year terms. The lieutenant governor runs separately from the governor in the primaries, but during the general election, the nominee for governor and nominee for lieutenant governor run together on the same ticket.\nAlaska's court system has four levels: the Alaska Supreme Court, the Alaska Court of Appeals, the superior courts and the district courts. The superior and district courts are trial courts. Superior courts are courts of general jurisdiction, while district courts hear only certain types of cases, including misdemeanor criminal cases and civil cases valued up to $100,000.\nThe Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals are appellate courts. The Court of Appeals is required to hear appeals from certain lower-court decisions, including those regarding criminal prosecutions, juvenile delinquency, and habeas corpus. The Supreme Court hears civil appeals and may in its discretion hear criminal appeals.\nState politics.\nAlthough in its early years of statehood Alaska was a Democratic state, since the early 1970s it has been characterized as Republican-leaning. Local political communities have often worked on issues related to land use development, fishing, tourism, and individual rights. Alaska Natives, while organized in and around their communities, have been active within the Native corporations. These have been given ownership over large tracts of land, which require stewardship.\nAlaska was formerly the only state in which possession of one ounce or less of marijuana in one's home was completely legal under state law, though the federal law remains in force.\nThe state has an independence movement favoring a vote on secession from the United States, with the Alaskan Independence Party.\nSix Republicans and four Democrats have served as governor of Alaska. In addition, Republican governor Wally Hickel was elected to the office for a second term in 1990 after leaving the Republican party and briefly joining the Alaskan Independence Party ticket just long enough to be reelected. He officially rejoined the Republican party in 1994.\nAlaska's voter initiative making marijuana legal took effect on February 24, 2015, placing Alaska alongside Colorado and Washington, as well as Washington D.C., as the first three U.S. states where recreational marijuana is legal. The new law means people over 21 can consume small amounts of cannabis. The first legal marijuana store opened in Valdez in October 2016.\nTaxes.\nTo finance state government operations, Alaska depends primarily on petroleum revenues and federal subsidies. This allows it to have the lowest individual tax burden in the United States. It is one of five states with no sales tax, one of seven states with no individual income tax, and\u2014along with New Hampshire\u2014one of two that has neither. The Department of Revenue Tax Division reports regularly on the state's revenue sources. The department also issues an annual summary of its operations, including new state laws that directly affect the tax division. In 2014, the Tax Foundation ranked Alaska as having the fourth most \"business friendly\" tax policy, behind only Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nevada.\nWhile Alaska has no state sales tax, 89 municipalities collect a local sales tax, from 1.0 to 7.5%, typically 3\u20135%. Other local taxes levied include raw fish taxes, hotel, motel, and bed-and-breakfast 'bed' taxes, severance taxes, liquor and tobacco taxes, gaming (pull tabs) taxes, tire taxes and fuel transfer taxes. A part of the revenue collected from certain state taxes and license fees (such as petroleum, aviation motor fuel, telephone cooperative) is shared with municipalities in Alaska.\nThe fall in oil prices after the fracking boom in the early 2010s has decimated Alaska's state treasury, which has historically received about 85 percent of its revenue from taxes and fees imposed on oil and gas companies. The state government has had to drastically reduce its budget, and has brought its budget shortfall from over $2\u00a0billion in 2016 to under $500\u00a0million by 2018. In 2020, Alaska's state government budget was $4.8\u00a0billion, while projected government revenues were only $4.5\u00a0billion.\nFederal politics.\nAlaska regularly supports Republicans in presidential elections and has done so since statehood. Republicans have won the state's electoral college votes in all but one election that it has participated in (1964). No state has voted for a Democratic presidential candidate fewer times. Alaska was carried by Democratic nominee Lyndon B. Johnson during his landslide election in 1964, while the 1960 and 1968 elections were close. Since 1972, Republicans have carried the state by large margins. In 2008, Republican John McCain defeated Democrat Barack Obama in Alaska, 59.49% to 37.83%. McCain's running mate was Sarah Palin, the state's governor and the first Alaskan on a major party ticket. Obama lost Alaska again in 2012, but he captured 40% of the state's vote in that election, making him the first Democrat to do so since 1968. In 2020, Joe Biden received 42.77% of the vote for president, marking the high point for a Democratic presidential candidate since Johnson's 1964 victory.\nThe Alaska Bush, central Juneau, midtown and downtown Anchorage, and the areas surrounding the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus and Ester have been strongholds of the Democratic Party. The Matanuska-Susitna Borough, the majority of Fairbanks (including North Pole and the military base), and South Anchorage typically have the strongest Republican showing.\nElections.\nAlaska has a history of primary defeats for incumbent U.S. Senators, including Ernest Gruening, Mike Gravel, and Lisa Murkowski. However, Murkowski won re-election with a write-in campaign. Despite this, Alaska has also seen long-serving members of Congress, such as Ted Stevens, who served as a U.S. Senator for 40 years, and Don Young, who held Alaska's sole U.S. House seat for 49 years (from 1973 to 2022).\nIn the 2020 election cycle, Alaskan voters approved Ballot Measure 2. The measure passed by a margin of 1.1%, or about 4,000 votes. The measure requires campaigns to disclose the original source and any intermediaries for campaign contributions over $2,000. The measure also establishes non-partisan primaries, sometimes called jungle primaries, for statewide elections (like in Washington state and California) and ranked-choice voting (like in Maine). Measure 2 makes Alaska the third state with nonpartisan primaries for all statewide races, the second state with ranked choice voting, and the only state with both.\nThe 2022 special election to fill Alaska's only U.S. House seat, left vacant by the death of Don Young, was won by Mary Peltola. She became the first Democrat to win the House seat since 1972 and the first Alaskan Native elected to the United States Congress in history. After winning a full term in the 2022 general election, Peltola lost reelection in 2024 to Republican Nick Begich III.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["3546592", "624", "193703", "1940400"], "permutation_1": ["193703", "624", "3546592", "1940400"], "permutation_2": ["3546592", "1940400", "624", "193703"], "permutation_3": ["3546592", "1940400", "624", "193703"]}
{"id": "4hop1__131718_74386_444296_179769", "docs_added": {"193703": "Alaska Purchase\n1867 sale by Russia to the United States\nThe Alaska Purchase was the purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire by the United States for a sum of $7.2\u00a0million in 1867 (equivalent to $\u00a0million in 2023). On May 15 of that year, the United States Senate ratified a bilateral treaty that had been signed on March 30, and American sovereignty became legally effective across the territory on October 18.\nDuring the first half of the 18th century, Russia had established a colonial presence in parts of North America, but few Russians ever settled in Alaska. Alexander\u00a0II of Russia, having faced a catastrophic defeat in the Crimean War, began exploring the possibility of selling the state's Alaskan possessions, which, in any future war, would be difficult to defend from the United Kingdom. To this end, William H. Seward, the U.S. Secretary of State at the time, entered into negotiations with Russian diplomat Eduard de\u00a0Stoeckl towards the United States' acquisition of Alaska after the American Civil War. Seward and Stoeckl agreed to a treaty for the sale on March 30, 1867.\nAt an original cost of $0.02 per acre ($ per acre in 2023), the United States had grown by . Reactions to the Alaska Purchase among Americans were mostly positive, as many believed that Alaska would serve as a base to expand American trade in Asia. Some opponents labeled the purchase as \"Seward's Folly\" or \"Seward's Icebox\" as they contended that the United States had acquired useless land. Nearly all Russian settlers left Alaska in the aftermath of the purchase; Alaska would remain sparsely populated until the Klondike Gold Rush began in 1896. Originally organized as the Department of Alaska, the area was renamed the District of Alaska in 1884 and the Territory of Alaska in 1912, ultimately becoming the modern-day State of Alaska in 1959.\nHistory.\nRussian America was settled by , merchants and fur trappers who expanded through Siberia. They arrived in Alaska in 1732, and in 1799 the Russian-American Company (RAC) received a charter to hunt for fur. No colony was established, but the Russian Orthodox Church sent missionaries to the natives and built churches. About 700 Russians enforced sovereignty in a territory over twice as large as Texas. In 1821, Tsar Alexander\u00a0I issued an edict declaring Russia's sovereignty over the North American Pacific coast north of the 51st parallel north. The edict also forbade foreign ships to approach within 100 Italian miles (115 miles or 185\u00a0km) of the Russian claim. US Secretary of State John Quincy Adams strongly protested the edict, which potentially threatened both the commerce and expansionary ambitions of the United States. Seeking favorable relations with the U.S., Alexander agreed to the Russo-American Treaty of 1824. In the treaty, Russia limited its claims to lands north of parallel 54\u00b040\u2032 north and also agreed to open Russian ports to U.S. ships.\nBy the 1850s, a population of once 300,000 sea otters was almost extinct, and Russia needed money after being defeated by France and Britain in the Crimean War. The California Gold Rush showed that if gold were discovered in Alaska, Americans and Canadians would overwhelm the Russian presence in what one scholar later described as \"Siberia's Siberia\". However, the principal reason for the sale was that the hard-to-defend colony would be easily conquered by British forces based in neighboring Canada in any future conflict, and Russia did not wish to see its archrival being next door just across the Bering Sea. Therefore, Emperor Alexander\u00a0II decided to sell the territory. The Russian government discussed the proposal in 1857 and 1858 and offered to sell the territory to the United States, hoping that its presence in the region would offset the plans of Britain. However, no deal was reached, as the risk of an American Civil War was a more pressing concern in Washington.\nGrand Duke Konstantin, a younger brother of the Tsar, began to press for the handover of Russian America to the United States in 1857. In a memorandum to Foreign Minister Alexander Gorchakov he stated that <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nKonstantin's letter was shown to his brother, Tsar Alexander II, who wrote \"this idea is worth considering\" on the front page. Supporters of Konstantin's proposal to immediately withdraw from North America included Admiral Yevfimy Putyatin and the Russian minister to the United States, Eduard de\u00a0Stoeckl. Gorchakov agreed with the necessity of abandoning Russian America but argued for a gradual process leading to its sale. He found a supporter in the naval minister and former chief manager of the Russian-American Company, Ferdinand von\u00a0Wrangel. Wrangel pressed for some proceeds to be invested in the economic development of Kamchatka and the Amur Basin. The Emperor eventually sided with Gorchakov, deciding to postpone negotiations until the end of the RAC's patent, set to expire in 1861.\nOver the winter of 1859\u20131860, Stoeckl held meetings with United States officials, though he had been instructed not to initiate discussions about the sale of the RAC assets. Communicating primarily with Assistant Secretary of State John Appleton and California Senator William M. Gwin, Stoeckl reported the interest expressed by the Americans in acquiring Russian America. While President James Buchanan kept these hearings informal, preparations were made for further negotiations. Stoeckl reported a conversation in which he asked \"in passing\" what price the U.S. government might pay for the Russian colony and Senator Gwin replied that they \"might go as far as $5,000,000\", a figure Gorchakov found far too low. Stoeckl informed Appleton and Gwin of this, the latter saying that his Congressional colleagues in Oregon and California would support a larger figure. Buchanan's increasingly unpopular presidency forced the matter to be shelved until a new presidential election. With the oncoming American Civil War, Stoeckl proposed a renewal of the RAC's charter. Two of its ports were to be open to foreign traders and commercial agreements with Peru and Chile to be signed to give \"a fresh jolt\" to the company.\nRussia continued to see an opportunity to weaken British power by causing British Columbia, including the Royal Navy base at Esquimalt, to be surrounded or annexed by American territory. Following the Union victory in the Civil War in 1865, the Tsar instructed Stoeckl to re-enter into negotiations with William H. Seward in the beginning of March 1867. President Andrew Johnson was busy with negotiations about Reconstruction, and Seward had alienated a number of Republicans, so both men believed that the purchase would help divert attention from domestic issues. The negotiations concluded after an all-night session with the signing of the treaty at 04:00 on March 30, 1867. The purchase price was set at $7.2\u00a0million (equivalent to $\u00a0million in 2023), or about 2 cents per acre ($4.74/km2).\nAmerican ownership.\nThe Russian name for the Alaska Peninsula was \"Alyaska\" (\"\u0410\u043b\u044f\u0441\u043a\u0430\") or \"Alyeska\", from an Aleut word, \"alashka\" or \"alaesksu\", meaning \"great land\" or \"mainland\". The United States chose the name \"Alaska\" to refer to the area purchased from Russia.\nSeward told the nation that, according to Russian estimates, Alaska had about 60,000 inhabitants. This included about 10,500 who were under the direct government of the Russian fur company: about 8,000 indigenous people and 2,500 people of Russian or mixed Russian and indigenous descent (for example, having a Russian father and a native mother). The remaining 50,000 or so were Inuit or Alaska Natives living outside of Russia's jurisdiction.\nSeward also said that the Russians were settled at 23 trading posts, placed on accessible islands and at points along the coast. At smaller trading posts, typically only four or five Russians were stationed: their job was to collect furs from the natives for storage and then for shipment when the company's boats arrived to take the furs away. There were two larger towns. One was New Archangel (now named Sitka), established in 1804 to handle the valuable trade in the skins of sea otters; in 1867, it had 116 small log cabins and 968 residents. The other was St. Paul, in the Pribilof Islands, which had 100 homes and 283 residents, and was the center of the seal fur industry.\nSeward and many other Americans expected that Asia would become an important market for U.S. products, and that Alaska would serve as a base for American trade with Asia and globally, and for the extension of American power into the Pacific.\nSenator Charles Sumner, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sponsored the Senate bill authorizing the U.S. to approve the treaty to acquire the territory. He not only agreed about the benefit to trade, but also said he expected the territory to be valuable on its own; having studied the records of explorers, he believed it contained valuable animals and forests. He compared the acquisition to contemporary European colonial acquisitions, such as the French conquest of Algeria. The United States Senate approved the treaty by a vote of 37 to 2.\nPublic opinion favors the purchase.\nMany Americans believed in 1867 that the purchase process had been corrupt, but W. H. Dall in 1872 wrote that \"there can be no doubt that the feelings of a majority of the citizens of the United States are in favor of it.\" The notion that the purchase was unpopular among Americans is, a scholar wrote 120 years later, \"one of the strongest historical myths in American history. It persists despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, and the efforts of the best historians to dispel it\", likely in part because it fits American and Alaskan writers' view of the territory as distinct and filled with self-reliant pioneers.\nA majority of newspapers either supported the purchase or were neutral. A review of dozens of contemporary newspapers found general support for the purchase, especially in California; most of 48 major newspapers supported the purchase. Public opinion was not universally positive; to some the purchase was known as \"Seward's folly\", \"Walrussia\", or \"Seward's icebox\". Editorials contended that taxpayer money had been wasted on a \"polar bear garden\". Nonetheless, most newspaper editors argued that the U.S. would probably derive great economic benefits from the purchase, such as considerable mineral resources that previous geological explorations of the region suggested were available there; friendship with Russia was important; and it would facilitate the acquisition of British Columbia. Forty-five percent of supportive newspapers cited the increased potential for annexing British Columbia in their support, and \"The New York Times\" stated that, consistent with Seward's reason, Alaska would increase American trade with East Asia.\nThe principal urban newspaper that opposed the purchase was the \"New York Tribune\", published by Seward opponent Horace Greeley. The ongoing controversy over Reconstruction spread to other acts, including the Alaska purchase. Some opposed the United States obtaining its first non-contiguous territory, seeing it as a colony; others saw no need to pay for land that they expected the country to obtain through manifest destiny. Historian Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer summarized the minority opinion of some American newspaper editors who opposed the purchase:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Already, so it was said, we were burdened with territory we had no population to fill. The Indians within the present boundaries of the republic strained our power to govern aboriginal peoples. Could it be that we would now, with open eyes, seek to add to our difficulties by increasing the number of such peoples under our national care? The purchase price was small; the annual charges for administration, civil and military, would be yet greater, and continuing. The territory included in the proposed cession was not contiguous to the national domain. It lay away at an inconvenient and a dangerous distance. The treaty had been secretly prepared, and signed and foisted upon the country at one o'clock in the morning. It was a dark deed done in the night\u2026 The \"New York World\" said that it was a \"sucked orange.\" It contained nothing of value but furbearing animals, and these had been hunted until they were nearly extinct. Except for the Aleutian Islands and a narrow strip of land extending along the southern coast the country would be not worth taking as a gift\u2026 Unless gold were found in the country much time would elapse before it would be blessed with Hoe printing presses, Methodist chapels and a metropolitan police. It was \"a frozen wilderness.\"\nTransfer ceremony.\nThe transfer ceremony took place in Sitka on October 18, 1867. Russian and American soldiers paraded in front of the governor's house; the Russian flag was lowered and the American flag raised amid peals of artillery.\nA description of the events was published in Finland six years later. It was written by a blacksmith named Thomas Ahllund, who had been recruited to work in Sitka:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />We had not spent many weeks at Sitka when two large steam ships arrived there, bringing things that belonged to the American crown, and a few days later the new governor also arrived in a ship together with his soldiers. The wooden two-story mansion of the Russian governor stood on a high hill, and in front of it in the yard at the end of a tall spar flew the Russian flag with the double-headed eagle in the middle of it. Of course, this flag now had to give way to the flag of the United States, which is full of stripes and stars. On a predetermined day in the afternoon, a group of soldiers came from the American ships, led by one who carried the flag. Marching solemnly, but without accompaniment, they came to the governor's mansion, where the Russian troops were already lined up and waiting for the Americans. Now they started to pull the [Russian double-headed] eagle down, but\u2014whatever had gone into its head\u2014it only came down a little bit, and then entangled its claws around the spar so that it could not be pulled down any further. A Russian soldier was therefore ordered to climb up the spar and disentangle it, but it seems that the eagle cast a spell on his hands, too\u2014for he was not able to arrive at where the flag was, but instead slipped down without it. The next one to try was not able to do any better; only the third soldier was able to bring the unwilling eagle down to the ground. While the flag was brought down, music was played and cannons were fired off from the shore, and then, while the other flag was hoisted, the Americans fired off their cannons from the ships equally many times. After that American soldiers replaced the Russian ones at the gates of the fence surrounding the Kolosh [i.e. Tlingit] village.\nAfter the flag transition was completed, Captain of 2nd Rank Aleksei Alekseyevich Peshchurov said, \"General Rousseau, by authority from His Majesty, the Emperor of Russia, I transfer to the United States the territory of Alaska.\" General Lovell Rousseau accepted the territory. (Peshchurov had been sent to Sitka as commissioner of the Russian government in the transfer of Alaska.) A number of forts, blockhouses and timber buildings were handed over to the Americans. The troops occupied the barracks; General Jefferson C. Davis established his residence in the governor's house, and most of the Russian citizens went home, leaving a few traders and priests who chose to remain.\nAftermath.\nAfter the transfer, a number of Russian citizens remained in Sitka, but nearly all of them very soon decided to return to Russia, which was still possible at the expense of the Russian-American Company. Ahllund's story \"corroborates other accounts of the transfer ceremony, and the dismay felt by many of the Russians and creoles, jobless and in want, at the rowdy troops and gun-toting civilians who looked on Sitka as merely one more western frontier settlement.\" Ahllund gives a vivid account of what life was like for civilians in Sitka under US rule and helps to explain why hardly any Russian subject wanted to stay there. Moreover, Ahllund's article is the only known description of the return voyage on the \"Winged Arrow\", a ship that was specially purchased to transport the Russians back to their native country. \"The over-crowded vessel, with crewmen who got roaring drunk at every port, must have made the voyage a memorable one.\" Ahllund mentions stops at the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands, Tahiti, Brazil, London, and finally Kronstadt, the port for St. Petersburg, where they arrived on August 28, 1869.\nAmerican settlers who shared Sumner's belief in the riches of Alaska rushed to the territory but found that much capital was required to exploit its resources, many of which could also be found closer to markets in the contiguous United States. Most soon left, and by 1873, Sitka's population had declined from about 2,500 to a few hundred. The United States acquired an area over twice as large as Texas, but it was not until the great Klondike Gold Rush in 1896 that Alaska generally came to be seen as a valuable addition to U.S. territory.\nThe seal fishery was one of the chief considerations that induced the United States to purchase Alaska. It provided considerable revenue by the lease of the privilege of taking seals, an amount that was eventually more than the price paid for Alaska. From 1870 to 1890, the seal fisheries yielded 100,000 skins a year. The company to which the administration of the fisheries was entrusted by a lease from the US government paid a rental of $50,000 per annum and in addition thereto <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />$2.62+1\u20442 per skin for the total number taken. The skins were transported to London to be dressed and prepared for world markets. The business grew so large that the earnings of English laborers after the acquisition of Alaska by the United States amounted by 1890 to $12,000,000.\nHowever, exclusive US control of this resource was eventually challenged, and the Bering Sea Controversy resulted when the United States seized over 150 sealing ships flying the British flag, based out of the coast of British Columbia. The conflict between the United States and Britain was resolved by an arbitration tribunal in 1893. The waters of the Bering Sea were deemed to be international waters, contrary to the US contention that they were an internal sea. The US was required to make a payment to Britain, and both nations were required to follow regulations developed to preserve the resource.\nFinancial return.\nThe purchase of Alaska has been referenced as a \"bargain basement deal\" and as the principal positive accomplishment of the otherwise much-maligned presidency of Andrew Johnson.\nEconomist David R. Barker has argued that the US federal government has not earned a positive financial return on the purchase of Alaska. According to Barker, tax revenue and mineral and energy royalties to the federal government have been less than federal costs of governing Alaska plus interest on the borrowed funds used for the purchase.\nJohn M. Miller has taken the argument further by contending that US oil companies that developed Alaskan petroleum resources did not earn enough profits to compensate for the risks that they incurred.\nOther economists and scholars, including Scott Goldsmith and Terrence Cole, have criticized the metrics used to reach those conclusions by noting that most contiguous Western states would fail to meet the bar of \"positive financial return\" using the same criteria and by contending that looking at the increase in net national income, instead of only US Treasury revenue, would paint a much more accurate picture of the financial return of Alaska as an investment.\nAlaska Day.\nAlaska Day celebrates the formal transfer of Alaska from Russia to the United States, which took place on October 18, 1867, according to the Gregorian calendar which came into effect in Alaska the day following the transfer, replacing the Julian calendar, which was used by the Russians (the Julian calendar in the 19th century was 12 days behind the Gregorian calendar). Alaska Day is a holiday for all state workers.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4102673": "Service High School\nRobert Service High School is a public high school in Anchorage, Alaska. It had an enrollment of 1,779 students as of August 2, 2016. Serving grades 9 through 12, the school was named for the poet Robert W. Service. Part of the Anchorage School District, the school opened in 1971 and was the last of four high schools built by the district (its lineal predecessor, the Anchorage Independent School District) within a decade. Service High originally operated as Service-Hanshew; as was the case common within Anchorage during that time, junior and senior high schools shared a single building. Included in the case with other junior-senior high schools in Anchorage, a separate structure was built to educate the junior student body and referred as Hanshew Middle School in the period of the 1980s oil glut. This is located approximately two miles west of Service along the Lake Otis Parkway. The school completed a partial renovation in 2005. The official school colors are green and gold, and its mascot is the cougar. Service High School's current principal is Allen Wardlaw.\nDemographics.\nThe ethnic and gender demographics for Service High School during the 2013-14 year were the following:\nA total of 34% of the school was categorized as economically disadvantaged as measured by the number of students who qualified for a free or reduced price lunch.\nAccreditation.\nService High School is accredited by the Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges and participates in sports and extramural activities sponsored by the Alaska School Activities Association.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2794443": "Andrew Johnson National Cemetery\nReconstruction-era historic cemetery\nThe Andrew Johnson National Cemetery is a United States National Cemetery on the grounds of the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site in Greeneville, Tennessee. Established in 1906, the cemetery was built around the resting place of Andrew Johnson, the 17th President of the United States, and holds more than 2,000 graves.\nHistory.\nAmidst some kind of dispute with his neighbors in 1847, Johnson wrote, \"If I should happen to die among the damn spirits that infest Greeneville, my last request before death would be for some friend I would bequeath the last dollar to some Negro to pay\u2014to take my dirty stinking carcass after death out on some mountain peak, and there leave it to be devoured by the vultures and wolves or make a fire sufficiently large to consume the smallest particle that it might pass off and smoke and ride upon the wind in triumph over the God-forsaken and hell-deserving, money-loving, hypocritical, backbiting, Sunday-praying scoundrels of the town of Greeneville.\" It seems that Johnson more or less kept this vow. Andrew Johnson acquired twenty-three acres outside Greeneville on \"Signal Hill\" in 1852. According to Robert W. Winston's \"Plebian and Patriot\" (1928), \"Though little given to sentiment, he pointed out this spot to a friend, saying that there he wished to rest and to take his final sleep. Searching out the owner, he acquired this property, and took a deed to the same.\"\nIt became known as Signal Hill due to being an excellent place for soldiers to signal to friendly forces. When Johnson died, he was buried on the property on August 3, 1875. The funeral was performed by Freemasons. On June 5, 1878, a tall marble statue was placed by Johnson's grave. The monument was considered so dominant that the place came to be known as \"Monument Hill\". \nAndrew Johnson's daughter Martha Johnson Patterson willed on September 2, 1898, that the land become a park. She further pushed in 1900 to make the site a national cemetery, so that instead of the Johnson family maintaining it, the federal government would. The United States Congress chose to make the site a National Cemetery in 1906, and by 1908 the United States War Department took control of it. By 1939 there were 100 total graves in the cemetery. On May 23, 1942, control of the cemetery went to the National Park Service.\nWhen the National Park Service was given jurisdiction of the cemetery in 1942, they ruled to allow no more interments, in order to preserve the historic nature of the cemeteries. Due to efforts by the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution, the cemetery once again accepted new interments, making the national cemetery one of the few controlled by the National Park Service to contain soldiers of the World Wars, Spanish\u2013American War, Korean War, Vietnam War, and the Gulf War. It stopped accepting new burials in 2019, leaving Andersonville National Cemetery as the only National Cemetery under the United States Department of the Interior to accept new burials.\nJohnson monument.\nAt the time of Johnson's death in 1875, a Knoxville paper wrote that the burial place was called Johnson's Hill, located about southeast of town, and could be seen \"the right of the railroad as you approach Greeneville from the west.\"\nWhen the area was made into a cemetery following the death of Andrew Johnson, two of Andrew Johnson's sons were reinterred: Charles Johnson, who had originally been buried in Nashville, Tennessee, and Robert Johnson, originally buried elsewhere in Greeneville. Several other members of the Johnson family, including grandchildren, would later be buried in the cemetery. Amongst these are his daughter Martha and her husband, former Tennessee United States Senator David T. Patterson.\nThe -tall monument was made in Philadelphia and was paid for by the three surviving Johnson children, Martha, Mary, and Frank. The marble monument depicts the United States Constitution, an eagle, and the Bible. The cost was said to be US$ with the carving of the eagle costing US$ on its own. The base, granite \"with a plinth die,\" is square. The monument was dedicated in 1878. Planned speakers for the dedication ceremony were former United States and Confederate States congressman George W. Jones and biographer of First Ladies Laura C. Holloway.\nJohnson's grave marker is inscribed \"his faith in the people never wavered.\" One newspaper account of Andrew Johnson's life, published in 1891, stated \"There is something singularly enigmatic in the epitaph, for no one ever knew precisely what is meant by 'His faith in the people never wavered.'\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />It is supposed that they were well-satisfied that their work would be the only monument ever erected to the man. Of one thing we may feel quite sure, unless there is a great change in the feelings of the American people Andrew Johnson is one dead American to whose memory no public monument of any great value will ever be reared.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "135195": "Greeneville, Tennessee\nCounty seat of Greene County, Tennessee, United States\nGreeneville is a town in and the county seat of Greene County, Tennessee, United States. The population as of the 2020 census was 15,479. The town was named in honor of Revolutionary War hero Nathanael Greene, and it is the second oldest town in Tennessee. It is the only town with this spelling in the United States, although there are numerous U.S. towns named \"Greenville\". The town was the capital of the short-lived State of Franklin in the 18th-century history of East Tennessee.\nGreeneville is known as the town where United States President Andrew Johnson began his political career when elected to be an alderman and transitioned from his trade as a tailor. He and his family lived there for most of his adult years. It was an area of strong abolitionist and Unionist views and yeoman farmers, an environment that influenced Johnson's outlook.\nThe Greeneville Historic District was established in 1974.\nThe U.S. Navy was named in honor of the town.\nGreeneville is part of the Johnson City-Kingsport-Bristol, TN-VA Combined Statistical Area \u2013 commonly known as the \"Tri-Cities\" region.\nGeography.\nGreeneville lies in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. These hills are part of the Appalachian Ridge-and-Valley Province, which is characterized by fertile river valleys flanked by narrow, elongate ridges. Greeneville is located roughly halfway between Bays Mountain to the northwest and the Bald Mountains\u2014 part of the main Appalachian crest\u2014 to the southeast. The valley in which Greeneville is situated is part of the watershed of the Nolichucky River, which passes a few miles south of the town.\nSeveral federal and state highways now intersect in Greeneville, as they were built to follow old roads and trails. U.S. Route 321 follows Main Street through the center of the town and connects Greeneville to Newport to the southwest. U.S. Route 11E (Andrew Johnson Highway), which connects Greeneville with Morristown to the west, intersects U.S. 321 in Greeneville and the merged highway proceeds northeast to Johnson City. Tennessee State Route 107, which also follows Main Street and Andrew Johnson Hwy, Greeneville to Erwin to the east and to the Del Rio area to the south. Tennessee State Route 70 (Lonesome Pine Trail) connects Greeneville with Interstate 81, and Rogersville to the north and Asheville, North Carolina to the south. Tennessee State Route 172 (Baileyton Road) connects Greeneville with Interstate 81 and Baileyton to the north.\nTennessee State Route 93 (Kingsport Highway) connects Greeneville to Interstate 81, Fall Branch and Kingsport to the north.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , all land.\nHistory.\nEarly history.\nNative Americans were hunting and camping in the Nolichucky Valley as early as the Paleo-Indian period (c. 10,000 B.C.). A substantial Woodland period (1000 B.C. - 1000 A.D.) village existed at the Nolichucky's confluence with Big Limestone Creek (now part of Davy Crockett Birthplace State Park). By the time the first Euro-American settlers arrived in the area in the late 18th century, the Cherokee claimed the valley as part of their hunting grounds. The Great Indian Warpath passed just northwest of modern Greeneville, and the townsite is believed to have once been the juncture of two lesser Native American trails.\nThe permanent European settlement of Greene County began in 1772. Jacob Brown, a North Carolina merchant, leased a large stretch of land from the Cherokee, located between the upper Lick Creek watershed and the Nolichucky River, in what is now the northeastern corner of the county. The \"Nolichucky Settlement\" initially aligned itself with the Watauga Association as part of Washington County, North Carolina. After voting irregularities in a local election, however, an early Nolichucky settler named Daniel Kennedy (1750\u20131802) led a movement to form a separate county, which was granted in 1783.\nThe county was named after Nathanael Greene, reflecting the loyalties of the numerous Revolutionary War veterans who settled in the Nolichucky Valley, especially from Pennsylvania and Virginia. The first county court sessions were held at the home of Robert Kerr, who lived at \"Big Spring\" (near the center of modern Greeneville). Kerr donated for the establishment of the county seat, most of which was located in the area currently bounded by Irish, College, Church, and Summer streets. \"Greeneville\" was officially recognized as a town in 1786.\nState of Franklin.\nIn 1784, North Carolina attempted to resolve its debts by giving the U.S. Congress its lands west of the Appalachian Mountains, including Greene County, abandoning responsibility for the area to the federal government. In response, delegates from Greene and neighboring counties convened at Jonesborough and resolved to break away from North Carolina and establish an independent state. The delegates agreed to meet again later that year to form a constitution, which was rejected when presented to the general delegation in December. Reverend Samuel Houston (not to be confused with the later governor of Tennessee and Texas) had presented a draft constitution that restricted the election of lawyers and other professionals. Houston's draft met staunch opposition, especially from Reverend Hezekiah Balch (1741\u20131810) (who was later instrumental in the creation of Tusculum College). John Sevier was elected governor, and other executive offices were filled.\nA petition for statehood for what would have become known as the State of Franklin (named in honor of Benjamin Franklin) was drawn at the delegates session in May 1785. The delegates submitted a petition for statehood to Congress, which failed to gain the requisite votes needed for admission to the Union. The first state legislature of Franklin met in December 1785 in a crude log courthouse in Greeneville, which had been named the capital city the previous August. During this session, the delegates finally approved a constitution that was based on, and quite similar to, the North Carolina state constitution. However, the Franklin movement began to collapse soon thereafter, with North Carolina reasserting its control of the area the following spring.\nIn 1897, at the Tennessee Centennial Exposition in Nashville, a log house that had been moved from Greeneville was displayed as the capitol where the State of Franklin's delegates met in the 1780s. There is, however, nothing to verify that this building was the actual capitol. In the 1960s, the capitol was reconstructed, based largely on the dimensions given in historian J. G. M. Ramsey's \"Annals of Tennessee\".\nGreeneville and the abolitionist movement.\nGreene County, like much of East Tennessee, was home to a strong abolitionist movement in the early 19th century. This movement was likely influenced by the relatively large numbers of Quakers who migrated to the region from Pennsylvania in the 1790s. The Quakers considered slavery to be in violation of Biblical Scripture and were active in the region's abolitionist movement throughout the antebellum period. One such Quaker was Elihu Embree (1782\u20131820), who published the nation's first abolitionist newspaper, \"The Emancipator\", at nearby Jonesborough.\nWhen Embree's untimely death in 1820 effectively ended publication of \"The Emancipator\", several of Embree's supporters turned to Ohio abolitionist Benjamin Lundy, who had started publication of his own antislavery newspaper, \"The Genius of Universal Emancipation\", in 1821. Anticipating that a southern-based abolitionist movement would be more effective, Lundy purchased Embree's printing press and moved to Greeneville in 1822. Lundy remained in Greeneville for two years before moving to Baltimore. He would later prove influential in the career of William Lloyd Garrison, whom he hired as an associate editor in 1829.\nGreenevillians involved in the abolitionist movement included Hezekiah Balch, who freed his slaves at the Greene County Courthouse in 1807. Samuel Doak, the founder of Tusculum College, followed in 1818. Valentine Sevier (1780\u20131854), a nephew of John Sevier who served as Greene County Court Clerk, freed his slaves in the 1830s and offered to pay for their passage to Liberia, which had been formed as a colony for freed slaves. Francis McCorkle, the pastor of Greeneville's Presbyterian Church, was a leading member of the Manumission Society of Tennessee.\nCivil War.\nIn June 1861, on the eve of the Civil War, thirty counties of the pro-Union East Tennessee Convention met in Greeneville to discuss strategy after state voters had elected to join the Confederate States of America. The convention sought to create a separate state in East Tennessee that would remain with the United States. The state government in Nashville rejected the convention's request, however, and East Tennessee was occupied by Confederate forces shortly thereafter. Thomas Dickens Arnold, a Greeneville resident and former congressman who attended the convention, advocated the use of violent force to allow East Tennessee to break away from Tennessee, and taunted other members of the convention who advocated a more peaceful set of resolutions.\nSeveral conspirators involved in the pro-Union East Tennessee bridge burnings lived near what is now Mosheim, and managed to destroy the railroad bridge over Lick Creek in western Greene County on the night of November 8, 1861. Two of the conspirators, Jacob Hensie and Henry Fry, were executed in Greeneville on November 30, 1861.\nA portion of James Longstreet's army wintered in Greeneville following the failed Siege of Knoxville in late 1863. Confederate general John Hunt Morgan was killed in Greeneville during a raid by Union soldiers led by Alvan Cullem Gillem on September 4, 1864.\nAndrew Johnson.\nAndrew Johnson, the 17th President of the United States, spent much of his active life in Greeneville. In 1826, Johnson arrived in Greeneville after fleeing an apprenticeship in Raleigh. Johnson chose to remain in Greeneville after learning that the town's tailor was planning to retire. Johnson purchased the tailor shop, which he moved from Main Street to its present location at the corner of Depot and College streets. Johnson married a local girl, Eliza McCardle, in 1827. The two were married by Mordecai Lincoln (1778\u20131851), who was Greene County's Justice of the Peace. He was a cousin of Abraham Lincoln, under whom Johnson would serve as vice president.\nIn the late 1820s, a local artisan named Blackstone McDannel often stopped by Johnson's tailor shop to debate issues of the day, especially the Indian Removal, which Johnson opposed. Johnson and McDannel decided to debate the issue publicly. The interest sparked by this debate led Johnson, McDannel, and several others to form a local debate society. The experience and influence Johnson gained in debating local issues helped him get elected to the Greeneville City Council in 1829. He was elected mayor of Greeneville in 1834, although he resigned after just a few months in office to pursue a position in the Tennessee state legislature, which he attained the following year. As Johnson rose through the ranks of political office in state and national government, he used his influence to help Greeneville constituents obtain government positions, among them his long-time supporter, Sam Milligan, who was appointed to the Court of Claims in Washington, D.C.\nWhilst Andrew Johnson was away from home, during his vice-presidency, both Union and Confederate armies often used his home as a place to stay and rest during their travel. Soldiers left graffiti on the walls of Johnson's home. Confederate soldiers left notes on the walls expressing their displeasure, to put it delicately, of Johnson. Evidence of this can still be seen at the Andrew Johnson home. Andrew Johnson had to almost completely renovate his home after he returned home from Washington, D.C.\nThe Andrew Johnson National Historic Site, located in Greeneville, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1963. Contributing properties include Johnson's tailor shop at the corner of Depot and College streets. The site also maintains Johnson's house on Main Street and the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery (atop Monument Hill to the south). A replica of Johnson's birth home and a life-size statue of Johnson have been placed across the street from the visitor center and tailor shop.\nIndian Wars.\nBuffalo Soldiers originally were members of the 10th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army, formed on September 21, 1866, at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. This nickname was given to the Black Cavalry by Native American tribes who fought in the Indian Wars. The term eventually became synonymous with all of the African-American regiments formed in 1866. Greeneville was home to at least four men who bravely served the country as \"Buffalo Soldiers\".\nGeorge Clem School.\nIn 1887, with assistance from the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the George Clem School was organized as Greeneville College. In 1932, the Greeneville Board of Education leased the property to provide public education for Negroes. Three years later, George Clem was appointed principal. Consisting of grades one through ten, the school was renamed Greeneville College High School. In 1937, the 11th grade was added. A year later, the school became an accredited four-year school. In 1939, the city purchased the school and renamed it the George Clem School. A decade later, the original building was demolished and the present building was erected in 1950. The school closed in 1965 when the public schools desegregated, and it became the location of the Greeneville City Schools Central Office. The George Clem School is often overlooked when talking about Greeneville history. Topics such as Sam Doak, the death of General Morgan, and Andrew Johnson are often the focal points when learning about Greeneville. The George Clem School is something the town should promote and be proud of. This history shows the accomplishments of the black community in Greeneville through the years. There is now a non profit organization in Greeneville by the name of George Clem Multicultural Alliance that helps honor the history of the school. The George Clem Multicultural Alliance is a non-profit 501(c)(3), public benefit, & exclusively charitable organization dedicated to supporting civic pride & cultural diversity awareness through various means within Wesley Heights community, and Greeneville/Greene County at large \nMagnavox.\nFrom 1947 to 2005, Magnavox\u2014an electronics manufacturer best known for its television sets\u2014operated its main three facilities in Greeneville. Magnavox was at one time the largest employer of Greeneville, employing more than 5,000 workers. Eight years after the first plant opened, Magnavox workers voted to form a union through the IBEW. In 1974, the facilities and the Magnavox company were acquired by the electronics giant Philips. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, the Greeneville facility saw a fluctuation and drops in employment. In 1997, Phillips sold its facilities to Knoxville-based company Five Rivers Electronic Innovations. In 2005, Five Rivers closed the former Magnavox plant after declaring bankruptcy. Before its shuttering, the Five Rivers facility was the site of the last television manufactured in the United States, which is now on display in the Greeneville-Greene County History Museum.\n2011 tornado outbreak.\nOn April 27, 2011, the rural community of Camp Creek south of Greeneville was severely affected by an EF3 tornado in the 2011 Super Outbreak. Six people were killed and 220 were injured by the tornado that either damaged or destroyed over 175 homes. Two hours later, Horse Creek, southeast of Greeneville, was also hit by an EF3 tornado, with the path travelling alongside and later crossing the earlier Camp Creek event as it moved into Washington County. Another 60-65 homes were either damaged or destroyed, and around 25 farms sustained heavy structural damage. Two more people were killed by that tornado, with an estimated 70 more being injured. A total of seven were killed in Greene County, with an eighth fatality in Washington County.\nDowntown revitalization.\nIn 2018, town officials, with the cooperation of a development and urban design firm, began efforts towards the redevelopment of the central business district of Greeneville. The project is projected to operate in several phases, projects proposed include: a farmer's market pavilion, a greenway along Richland Creek, an alley park, improved access for pedestrians and cyclists, parking garages, and the conversion of Depot Street into a street fair area. In October 2021, construction work began on a complete street-approach to Depot Street between Main Street and Irish Street in downtown Greeneville with enhanced pedestrian access. The project was completed in November 2023.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2020 census.\nAs of the 2020 United States census, there were 15,479 people, 6,075 households, and 3,549 families residing in the town.\n2010 census.\nAs of the 2010 census, there were 15,062 people; 6,478 households; 7,399 housing units; and 3,845 families in the town. The population density was . The racial makeup of the city was 89.1% White, 5.6% African American, 0.2% Native American, 0.8% Asian, 0.0% Pacific Islander, 2.3% from other races, and 2% from two or more races. Hispanics or Latinos of any race were 4.4% of the population.\nThere were 6,506 households, out of which 24.8% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 40.2% were married couples living together, 14.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 40.6% were non-families. 36.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 17.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.2 and the average family size was 2.86.\nThe age distribution was 21.2% under 18 and 21% who were 65 or older. The median age was 42.6 years. The median income for a household in the city was $51,692. The per capita income for the city was $24,376. About 13.9% of the population was below the poverty line.\nEconomy.\nTop employers.\nAccording to Greeneville Forward, a long-term growth plan published for the town in 2017, the top employers in the town are:\nManufacturing remained as the top employing industry in Greeneville until the 1990s, after Magnavox, once the town's largest employer, shuttered its facilities in the town.\nRetail is a major employer in Greeneville. The largest shopping center in Greeneville is Greeneville Commons which contains several national retailers. As of 2017, grocery stores in Greeneville include three Food City Supermarkets, two Ingles Markets, Dollar General Market, Sav-Mor Foods (a grocery store owned by Ingles Markets), Publix and Save-A-Lot. Walmart and Lowe's also have stores in Greeneville.\nArts and culture.\nFestivals and fairs.\nThere has been a fair in some form in Greene County since 1870 when the Farmers and Mechanics Association held its first exposition. The present Greene County Fair Association was incorporated in 1949. The Greene County Fair is recognized statewide as one of the best fairs of its size. In 2021, the Fair received the First Runner-Up Award in the AAA Division. In 2015, the Fair was recognized as the AAA Division Champion Fair in the state of Tennessee by the Tennessee Association of Fairs. In 2005, we were honored to receive the Tennessee Association of Fairs highest award, the \u201cChampion of Champions\u201d fair trophy, and in 2006, the Fair received the \u201cChampion of Champions Premier Fair\u201d award.\nThe town is home to the Street Dance on Davis celebration, which is held annually on the weekend before Aug. 8, in remembrance of Aug. 8, 1863, the date when Andrew Johnson freed his personal slaves at his home in Greeneville. This street dance is a celebration that includes live music, dancing in the streets, kids zones, and most importantly open dialogue that supports black history. In recent years, The George Clem Multicultural Alliance has been the host of this celebration. Although the celebration started as primarily involving the local African-American community, the event has expanded to celebrate the African-American community of East Tennessee.\nThe fair was also an inspiration for The Band Perry's song \"Walk Me Down The Middle\", which was featured on their eponymous debut album.\nSports.\nGreeneville is home to the Greeneville Flyboys, a collegiate summer baseball team of the Appalachian League, which was started in 2021. The team's home stadium is Pioneer Park on the campus of Tusculum College.\nProfessional baseball was first played in Greeneville by the Greeneville Burley Cubs in the Appalachian League in 1921. They remained in the league through 1925 and returned for a second stretch from 1938 to 1942. The Burley Cubs won the league championship in 1925 and 1938. They were followed in the same league by the Greeneville Astros, who played in the city from 2004 to 2017. They won the Appalachian League championship in 2004 and 2015. The Houston Astros, parent club of Greeneville, withdrew their affiliate from the Appalachian League after the 2017 season. The circuit's vacancy was filled by the Cincinnati Reds, who placed a Rookie-level affiliate in Greeneville known as the Greeneville Reds. In conjunction with a contraction of Minor League Baseball beginning with the 2021 season, the Appalachian League was reorganized as a collegiate summer baseball league, and the Reds were replaced by the Flyboys, a new franchise in the revamped league designed for rising college freshmen and sophomores.\nParks and recreation.\nThe Town of Greeneville Parks and Recreation Department maintains:\nGovernment.\nMunicipal.\nGreeneville is administered through a mayor/city council/city manager form of government. It previously had a mayor/board of aldermen/administrator form of government until April 18, 2023, when the then board of mayor and aldermen voted to change the \ntown's charter.\nThe town has a mayor and four city council members, along with the city manager who is the chief administrative officer and is in charge of supervising all town employees and is required to develop an annual budget and present it to the mayor and council members.\nThe following is a list of current officials as of April 2023:\nState.\nGreeneville is represented in the Tennessee House of Representatives in the 5th district, by Representative David Hawk, a Republican.\nIn the Tennessee State Senate, Greeneville is represented by the 1st district, by Senator Steve Southerland, also a Republican.\nFederal.\nGreeneville is represented in the United States House of Representatives by Republican Diana Harshbarger of the 1st congressional district.\nEducation.\nGreeneville is home to Walters State Niswonger Campus, which was expanded in 2019.\nTusculum University is located in nearby Tusculum.\nThe Greeneville City School District, the school district for areas in the city limits, operates:\nMedia.\nTelevision.\nGreeneville is part of both the and the . One station has Greeneville listed as its city of license (WEMT-Fox Tri-Cities). WGRV (AM) also has a television station on Comcast Cable channel 18. The channel simulcasts WGRV's live newscasts and other live programs and shows local events.\nRadio.\nGreeneville has three radio stations: WGRV (AM), WIKQ-FM, and WSMG-AM.\nNewspaper.\nThe Greeneville and Greene County area are served by \"The Greeneville Sun\", a daily newspaper published Monday through Saturday. \"The Greeneville Sun\" also publishes a free newspaper, \"The Greeneville Neighbor News\", which spotlights arts and entertainment.\nInfrastructure.\nHealthcare.\nGreeneville has one hospital, which is part of Ballad Health.\nGreeneville also has many nursing facilities, including: Life Care Center of Greeneville, Laughlin Healthcare Center, Signature Healthcare of Greeneville, Morning Pointe, Wellington Place owned by Brookdale Senior Living, Maxim Healthcare Services and Comcare.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["4102673", "135195", "193703", "2794443"], "permutation_1": ["4102673", "135195", "2794443", "193703"], "permutation_2": ["193703", "135195", "4102673", "2794443"], "permutation_3": ["2794443", "135195", "4102673", "193703"]}
{"id": "4hop1__3496_5274_458768_33633", "docs_added": {"191890": "American Idol\nAmerican singing competition\nAmerican Idol is an American singing competition television series created by Simon Fuller, produced by Fremantle North America and 19 Entertainment, and distributed by Fremantle North America. It aired on Fox from June 11, 2002, to April 7, 2016, for 15 seasons. It was on hiatus for two years until March 11, 2018, when a revival of the series began airing on ABC.\nIt started as an addition to the \"Idol\" format that was based on \"Pop Idol\" from British television, in which the programme's first series, which was won by Will Young, ended over four months before the show began, as it later became one of the most successful shows in the history of American television. The concept of the series involves discovering recording stars from unsigned singing talents, with the winner determined by American viewers using phones, Internet platforms, and SMS text voting. The winners of the first twenty-two seasons, as chosen by viewers, are Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Hicks, Jordin Sparks, David Cook, Kris Allen, Lee DeWyze, Scotty McCreery, Phillip Phillips, Candice Glover, Caleb Johnson, Nick Fradiani, Trent Harmon, Maddie Poppe, Laine Hardy, Just Sam, Chayce Beckham, Noah Thompson, Iam Tongi, and Abi Carter.\n\"American Idol\" employs a select panel of judges who critique the contestants' performances. The original judges, for seasons one through eight, were record producer and music manager Randy Jackson, singer and choreographer Paula Abdul, and music executive and manager Simon Cowell. The judging panel for the last three seasons on Fox consisted of singers Keith Urban, Jennifer Lopez, and Harry Connick Jr. Season sixteen brought three new judges: singers Luke Bryan, Katy Perry, and Lionel Richie. Beginning in the twenty-third season, Underwood replaced Perry, alongside returning judges Bryan and Richie. The show has been hosted by television presenter Ryan Seacrest throughout its run, apart from the show's inaugural season when comedian Brian Dunkleman joined Seacrest as co-host.\nThe success of \"American Idol\" has been described as \"unparalleled in broadcasting history\". A rival TV executive said the series was \"the most impactful show in the history of television\". It became a recognized springboard for launching the career of many artists as bona fide stars. According to \"Billboard\" magazine, in its first ten years, \"\"Idol\" has spawned 345 \"Billboard\" chart-toppers and a platoon of pop idols, including Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Chris Daughtry, Fantasia, Ruben Studdard, Jennifer Hudson, Clay Aiken, Adam Lambert, and Jordin Sparks while remaining a TV ratings juggernaut.\" For an unprecedented eight consecutive years, from the 2003\u201304 television season through the 2010\u201311 season, either its performance show or result show was ranked number one in U.S. television ratings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\n\"American Idol\" was based on the British show \"Pop Idol\" created by Simon Fuller, which was in turn inspired by the New Zealand television singing competition \"Popstars\". Television producer Nigel Lythgoe saw a version in Australia and helped bring it over to Britain. Fuller was inspired by the idea from \"Popstars\" of employing a panel of judges to select singers in audition. He then added other elements, including telephone voting by the viewing public (which at the time was already in use in shows, such as the \"Eurovision Song Contest\"), the drama of backstories, and real-life soap opera unfolding in real time. \"Pop Idol\" debuted in Britain in 2001 with Lythgoe as showrunner\u200d\u2014\u200cthe executive producer and production leader\u200d\u2014\u200cand Simon Cowell as one of the judges, and was successful with the viewing public.\nIn 2001, Fuller, Cowell, and TV producer Simon Jones attempted to sell the \"Pop Idol\" format to the United States, but the idea was initially met with poor responses from all the television networks including UPN and Fox. However, Rupert Murdoch, head of Fox's parent company, was later persuaded to buy the series by his daughter, Elisabeth, who had seen the British show. Although Fox's executives wanted to change the format, Murdoch insisted that it should remain the same as the British one. One change was nevertheless made due to the presence of multiple time zones in the United States that made it impractical for the country to vote in the same time period, an additional half-hour results show was therefore added the day following the performance show. The show was renamed \"\" and debuted in the summer of 2002. Cowell was initially offered the job of showrunner but turned down the offer; Lythgoe then took over that position. Much to the surprise of Cowell and Fox, it became one of the biggest shows of the summer. With its successful launch in the summer, the show was then moved to January and expanded. The show grew into a phenomenon largely due to its personal engagement with the contestants by prompting the viewers to vote, and the presence of the acid-tongued Cowell as a judge. By 2004, it had become the most-watched show on American television, a position it then held for seven consecutive seasons until 2011.\nHowever, after a few years of sharp declining ratings starting in 2012, with rating falls of over 20% each season, the fifteenth season would be its last on Fox, ending its run in April 2016. In May 2017, ABC acquired the rights to the series and the program returned for the 2017\u201318 television season. The first season of the revived series, or the sixteenth season overall, started airing in March 2018. Seven seasons have been aired on ABC as of May 2024.\nJudges and hosts.\nJudges.\nThe show had originally planned on having four judges following the \"Pop Idol\" format; however, only three judges had been found by the time of the audition round in the first season, namely Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell. A fourth judge, radio DJ Stryker, was originally chosen but he dropped out citing \"image concerns.\" In the second season, New York radio personality Angie Martinez had been hired as a fourth judge but withdrew after only a few days of auditions, due to being uncomfortable with giving out criticism. The show decided to continue with the three judges format until the eighth season. All three original judges stayed on the judging panel for eight seasons.\nIn the eighth season, Latin Grammy Award-nominated singer-songwriter and record producer Kara DioGuardi was added as a fourth judge. Abdul left the show in 2009, after the eighth season, as a result of failing to agree to terms with the show producers. Emmy Award-winning talk show host Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul for the ninth season, but left in 2010 after just one season. DioGuardi was let go from \"American Idol\" in 2010 after two seasons, as producers favored a return to the three-person judges panel previously used prior to DioGuardi's appearance on the show. Cowell also left the show in 2010 to introduce the American version of his show \"The X Factor\" in 2011. Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth.\nJennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined the judging panel in the tenth season, but both left in 2012 after two seasons. Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. They were replaced by three new judges, Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj, and Keith Urban, who joined Jackson in the twelfth season. However, both Carey and Minaj left after one season. Jackson also departed the judges table after twelve seasons, but would return as the in-house mentor for the thirteenth season in 2014, after which he left the show permanently.\nUrban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. After a one-season hiatus, Lopez returned to \"American Idol\" for the thirteenth season, and was joined by former mentor Harry Connick Jr. After this, Lopez, Urban, and Connick Jr. remained on the show until its cancellation after the fifteenth season in 2016.\nWhen the show was revived by ABC in 2018, Katy Perry, Luke Bryan, and Lionel Richie were selected as judges, marking the sixteenth season of \"Idol\". Bryan and Richie have remained on the show since, while Perry left the show in May 2024 after seven seasons. On July 31, 2024, published reports announced former \"Idol\" winner Carrie Underwood as Perry's replacement, joining Bryan and Richie for the twenty-third season.\nGuest judges may occasionally be introduced. In the second season, guest judges such as Richie and Gladys Knight were used, and in the third season, Donna Summer, Quentin Tarantino, Gloria Estefan, and some of the mentors also joined as judges to critique the performances in the final rounds. Guest judges were sporadically used during the audition rounds: Gene Simmons, LL Cool J, Brandy, Mark McGrath, and Kenny Loggins in the fourth season; Carole Bayer Sager, Jewel, and Olivia Newton-John in the sixth season; Shania Twain, Neil Patrick Harris, Avril Lavigne, Mary J. Blige, Joe Jonas, Kristin Chenoweth, Victoria Beckham, and Perry in the ninth season (substituting in the vacant chair, before DeGeneres was hired); and Adam Lambert filled in for Urban at one audition location during the fourteenth season. In the ABC version, two instances occurred during the live shows: Abdul filled in for Bryan on one episode of the nineteenth season, while Alanis Morissette and Ed Sheeran filled in for Perry and Richie on an episode of the twenty-first season.\nHosts.\nThe first season was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman, following the format of \"Pop Idol\" of using two presenters. Dunkleman quit thereafter, resulting in Seacrest becoming the sole emcee starting with the second season in 2003.\nSeacrest has remained as sole host of \"American Idol\" ever since, with the exception of the two-year hiatus between 2016 and 2018 as well as April 8, 2019, during the seventeenth season, when Bobby Bones subbed for Seacrest after the latter fell ill. Dunkleman did, however, return for the initial in 2016 as a guest.\nCast timeline.\nAnnotations\nSelection process.\nIn a series of steps, the show selected the eventual winner out of many tens of thousands of contestants.\nContestant eligibility.\nThe eligible age-range for contestants is fifteen to twenty-eight years old. The initial age limit was sixteen to twenty-four in the first three seasons, but the upper limit was raised to twenty-eight in the fourth season, and the lower limit was reduced to fifteen in the tenth season. The contestants have to be legal U.S. residents, can not have advanced to particular stages of the competition in previous seasons, and must not have held a current recording or talent representation contract by the semi-final stage (in previous years by the audition stage).\nInitial auditions.\nFor the first eighteen seasons, contestants went through at least three sets of cuts. The first was a brief audition with a few other contestants in front of selectors which may include one of the show's producers. Although auditions can exceed 10,000 in each city, only a few hundred of these made it past the preliminary round of auditions. Successful contestants then sing in front of producers, where more may be cut. Only then can they proceed to audition in front of the judges, which is the only audition stage shown on television. Those selected by the judges are sent to Hollywood. Between 10 and 60 people in each city may make it to Hollywood (the average total is between 150 and 200).\nFrom the nineteenth season onwards, contestants request a Zoom interview and audition remotely for the show's producers. If the audition goes well, they will then invite the contestants to audition in front of the judges, in one of the audition cities.\nHollywood week.\nOnce in Hollywood, the contestants perform individually or in groups in a series of rounds. Until the tenth season, there were usually three rounds of eliminations in Hollywood. In the first round the contestants emerged in groups but performed individually. For the next round, the contestants put themselves in small groups and performed a song together. In the final round, the contestants performed solo with a song of their choice a cappella or accompanied by a band\u200d\u2014\u200cdepending on the season. In the second and third seasons, contestants were also asked to write original lyrics or melody in an additional round after the first round. In the seventh season, the group round was eliminated and contestants may, after a first solo performance and on judges approval, skip a second solo round and move directly to the final Hollywood round. In the twelfth season, the executive producers split up the females and males and chose the members to form the groups in the group round.\nIn the tenth and eleventh seasons, a further round was added in Las Vegas, where the contestants performed in groups based on a theme, followed by one final solo round to determine the semi-finalists. At the end of this stage of the competition, 24 to 36 contestants were selected to move on to the semi-final stage. In the twelfth season the Las Vegas round became a Sudden Death round, where the judges had to choose five guys and five girls each night (four nights) to make the top twenty. In the thirteenth season, the Las Vegas round was eliminated and a new round called \"Hollywood or Home\" was added, where if the judges were uncertain about some contestants, those contestants were required to perform soon after landing in Los Angeles, and those who failed to impress were sent back home before they reached Hollywood. In the fourteenth season, the \"Hollywood or Home\" round was dropped, and a Showcase round was added, where the contestants performed at the House of Blues or auditorium for the judges and a live audience, and these performances determine who makes into the Top 24. In the seventeenth and eighteenth seasons, the showcase round took place in Hawaii. From the nineteenth season onward, a showstopper round was used.\nAudience voting.\nFrom the semi-finals onward, the fate of the contestants is decided by public vote. During the contestant's performance as well as the recap at the end, a toll-free telephone number for each contestant was displayed on the screen. For a two-hour period after the episode ends (up to four hours for the finale) in each US time zone, viewers may call or send a text message to their preferred contestant's telephone number, and each call or text message was registered as a vote for that contestant. Viewers were allowed to vote as many times as they can within the two-hour voting window. However, the show reserves the right to discard votes by power dialers. One or more of the least popular contestants may be eliminated in successive weeks until a winner emerges. Over 110\u00a0million votes were cast in the first season, and by the tenth season the seasonal total had increased to nearly 750 million. Voting via text messaging was made available in the second season when AT&T Wireless joined as a sponsor of the show, and 7.5\u00a0million text messages were sent to \"American Idol\" that season. The number of text messages rapidly increased, reaching 178\u00a0million texts by the eighth season. Online voting was offered for the first time in the tenth season. The votes are counted and verified by Telescope Inc.\nSemi-finals.\nIn the first three seasons, the semi-finalists were split into different groups to perform individually in their respective night. In the first season, there were three groups of ten, with the top three contestants from each group making the finals. In the second and third seasons, there were four groups of eight, and the top two of each selected. These seasons also featured a wildcard round, where contestants who failed to qualify were given another chance. In the first season, only one wildcard contestant was chosen by the judges, giving a total of ten finalists. In the second and third seasons, each of the three judges championed one contestant with the public advancing a fourth into the finals, making 12 finalists in all.\nFrom the fourth through seventh and ninth seasons, the twenty-four semi-finalists were divided by gender in order to ensure an equal gender division in the top twelve. The men and women sang separately on consecutive nights, and the bottom two in each groups were eliminated each week until only six of each remained to form the top twelve.\nThe wildcard round returned in the eighth season, wherein there were three groups of twelve, with three contestants moving forward \u2013 the highest male, the highest female, and the next highest-placed singer \u2013 for each night, and four wildcards were chosen by the judges to produce a final 13. Starting in tenth season, the girls and boys perform on separate nights. In the tenth and eleventh seasons, five of each gender were chosen, and three wildcards were chosen by the judges to form a final 13. In the twelfth season, the top twenty semifinalists were split into gender groups, with five of each gender advancing to form the final 10. In the thirteenth season, there were thirty semifinalists, but only twenty semifinalists (ten for each gender) were chosen by the judges to perform on the live shows, with five in each gender based on the vote and three wildcards chosen by the judges composing the final 13. In the fourteenth season, the top 24 performed at The Fillmore Detroit, starting with the 12 males on one night and then the 12 females on the next night. The following week, the same order went for the top 16, with four males eliminated, followed by four females based on the vote. Then, on the first night of finals, a similar sequence from the thirteenth season was used to determine the final 12, with five of each gender based on the vote and two wildcards chosen by the judges. In the fifteenth season, the top 24 performed at Cathedral of Saint Vibiana in Los Angeles and were split into two groups of twelve and performed twice, one being a solo performance and one being a duet with a former Idol contestant. In each group, the judges chose 7 contestants to advance to the top 14 where the judges chose 4 to advance to the top 10 and remaining 6 contestants were chosen based on the vote. In the sixteenth season, the top 24 performed at the Academy in the Heart of LA, and the show repeated the process from the previous season. However, instead of Idol alumnus as duet partners, superstar celebrity singers were used as the duet partners. In the seventeenth season, the same process was repeated again. However, instead of a top 24, it's a top 20, the contestants performed at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, and performed solos in one episode, and performed the duets in two episodes. In the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the top 20 performed at their homes, and based on the vote, half of the top 20 would advance to the top 10, and the other half would be eliminated. However, a wild card was given to one of the bottom 10 to save them from elimination. In the nineteenth season, the show used a combination of the process from the sixteenth and fourteenth seasons. In the twentieth season, the show repeated the process from the previous season, but they used a top 20 instead of a top 16, and there were no all star duets. In the twenty-first season, the same process was repeated, but they started with a top 26 instead of a top 24. In the twenty-second season, the show repeated the process from the twentieth season.\nFinals.\nThe finals are broadcast in primetime from Los Angeles, in front of a live studio audience (except the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic). From 2002 to 2019 and from 2021 to 2022, the venue was CBS Television City. Starting in 2023, it changed to Red Studios. The finals lasted eight weeks in the first season. From the second to ninth and fourteenth seasons, the finals lasted eleven weeks. The tenth and eleventh seasons lasted for twelve weeks, while the twelfth season lasted for ten weeks. In the thirteenth season, the finals lasted thirteen weeks. The finals lasted seven weeks in the fifteenth season, and six weeks in the sixteenth season. Each finalist performs songs based on a weekly theme which may be a musical genre such as Motown, disco, or big band, songs by artists such as Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley or The Beatles, or more general themes such as \"Billboard\" number-one hits or songs from the contestant's year of birth. Contestants usually worked with a celebrity mentor related to the theme. From the tenth to twelfth seasons, Jimmy Iovine was brought in as a mentor for the season. Initially the contestants sang one song each week, but this was increased to two songs from top four or five onwards, then three songs for the top two or three.\nThe most popular contestants are usually not revealed in the results show. Instead, typically the three contestants (two in later rounds) who received the lowest number of votes was called to the center of the stage. One of these three was usually sent to safety; however the two remaining were not necessarily the bottom two. The contestant with the fewest votes was then revealed and eliminated from the competition. A montage of the eliminated contestant's time on the show was played and they gave their final performance (from the fourteenth season onward, the montage and the final performance were dropped). However, in the sixth season, during the series' first ever Idol Gives Back episode, no contestant was eliminated, but on the following week, two were sent home. Moreover, from the eighth to the fourteenth seasons, and the seventeenth season onward, the judges may overturn viewers' decision with a \"Judges' Save\" if they unanimously agreed to. \"The save\" could only be used once, and only up through the Top 5. In the eighth to tenth and fourteenth seasons, a double elimination then took place in the week following the activation of the save, but in the eleventh and thirteenth seasons, a regular single elimination took place. The save was not activated in the twelfth season and consequently, a non-elimination took place in the week after its expiration with the votes then carrying over into the following week.\nThe \"Fan Save\" was introduced in the fourteenth season. During the finals, viewers were given a five-minute window to vote for the contestants in danger of elimination by using their Twitter account to decide which contestant will move on to the next show, starting with the Top 8.\nSeason finale.\nDuring the original run of \"American Idol\" on Fox, the finale week consisted of a one-hour long final performance night and a two-hour last episode of the season that culminates in revealing the winner, both of which are broadcast live in the U.S. Eastern and Central time zones. For the first, third through sixth and fourteenth through fifteenth seasons it was broadcast from the Dolby Theatre, which has an audience capacity of approximately 3,400. The second-season finale took place at the Gibson Amphitheatre, which had an audience capacity of over 6,000. In the seventh through thirteenth seasons, the venue was at the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live, which holds an audience of over 7,000. Since the show's reboot on ABC, the venue remains the same throughout the entire show (excluding auditions), but was still two episodes in the sixteenth season, and then stretched to a single three-hour season finale that is annually aired live simultaneously in all U.S. territories, starting with the seventeenth season. The eighteenth-season finale was conducted virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nRewards for winner and finalists.\nThe winner usually receives a record deal with a major label, which may be for up to six albums, and secures a management contract with \"American Idol\"-affiliated 19 Management (which has the right of first refusal to sign all contestants), as well as various lucrative contracts. All winners prior to the ninth season reportedly earned at least $1\u00a0million in their first year as winner. At first the contract came with a $250,000-plus advance, but dropped to about $62,500 over the Fox years. All the runners-up of the first ten seasons, as well as some of other finalists, had also received record deals with major labels. However, starting in the eleventh season, the runner-up may only be guaranteed a single-only deal. BMG/Sony (first through ninth seasons), UMG (tenth through fifteenth seasons), and Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records (sixteenth through eighteenth seasons) had the right of first refusal to sign contestants for three months after the season's finale. In the fourteenth and fifteenth seasons, the winner was signed with Big Machine Records. Prominent music mogul Clive Davis also produced some of the selected contestants' albums, such as Kelly Clarkson, Clay Aiken, Fantasia Barrino and Diana DeGarmo. All top 10 (11 in the tenth and twelfth seasons, 5 in the fourteenth season, and 7 in the sixteenth season) finalists earn the privilege of going on a tour, where the participants may each earn a six-figure sum.\nSeason synopses.\nEach season premieres with the audition round, taking place in different cities. The audition episodes typically feature a mix of potential finalists, interesting characters and woefully inadequate contestants. Each successful contestant receives a golden or platinum ticket to proceed on to the next round in Hollywood. Based on their performances during the Hollywood round (Las Vegas round from the tenth through twelfth seasons), 24 to 36 contestants are selected by the judges to participate in the semifinals. From the semifinals onward the contestants perform their songs live, with the judges making their critiques after each performance. The contestants are voted for by the viewing public, and the outcome of the public votes is then revealed during a results segment. The results segment feature group performances by the contestants as well as guest performers. The Top-three results also features homecoming events for the Top 3 finalists. The season reaches its climax in a two-hour results finale show, where the winner of the season is revealed.\nWith the exception of the first two seasons, the contestants in the semifinals onward perform in front of a studio audience. They perform with a full band in the finals. The current musical director is Kris Pooley, who has been with the show since the sixteenth season. In previous seasons, the \"American Idol\" band was led by Rickey Minor (fourth through ninth and thirteenth through fifteenth seasons) and Ray Chew (tenth through twelfth seasons). Assistance has also been given by vocal coaches and song arrangers, such as Michael Orland and Debra Byrd to contestants behind the scene. Starting with the seventh season, contestants may perform with a musical instrument from the Hollywood rounds onward. In later seasons, the contestants were allowed to perform with a musical instrument in the auditions. During the first nine seasons, performances were usually aired live on Tuesday nights, followed by the results shows on Wednesdays, but moved to Wednesdays and Thursdays from the tenth through thirteenth seasons, with the tenth, eleventh and thirteenth-season finales aired on Tuesday and Wednesday. From the fourteenth season onward, there were no separate results shows. On the fourteenth season, the show aired on Wednesday nights, and on the fifteenth season, Thursday nights. Since the sixteenth season, the show has been airing on Sundays and Mondays.\n2002\u20132016: Fox.\nSeason 1 (2002).\nThe first season of \"American Idol\" debuted as a summer replacement show in June 2002 on the Fox network. It was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell served as judges.\nIn the audition rounds, 121 contestants were selected from around 10,000 who attended the auditions. These were cut to 30 for the semifinal, with ten going on to the finals. One semifinalist, Delano Cagnolatti, was disqualified for lying to evade the show's age limit. One of the early favorites, Tamyra Gray, was eliminated at the top four, the first of several such shock eliminations that were to be repeated in later seasons. Christina Christian was hospitalized before the top six result show due to chest pains and palpitations, and she was eliminated while she was in the hospital. Jim Verraros was the first openly gay contestant on the show; his sexual orientation was revealed on his blog, however it was removed during the competition after a request from the show producers over concerns that it might be unfairly influencing votes.\nThe final showdown was between Justin Guarini, one of the early favorites, and Kelly Clarkson. Clarkson was not initially thought of as a contender, but impressed the judges with some good performances in the final rounds, such as her performance of Aretha Franklin's \"Natural Woman\", and Betty Hutton's \"Stuff Like That There\", and eventually won the crown on September 4, 2002.\nIn what was to become a tradition, Clarkson performed the coronation song during the finale, and released the song immediately after the season ended. The single, \"A Moment Like This\", went on to break a 38-year-old record held by The Beatles for the biggest leap to number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. Guarini did not release any song immediately after the show and remains the only runner-up not to do so. Both Clarkson and Guarini made a musical film, \"From Justin to Kelly\", which was released in 2003 but was widely panned. Clarkson has since become one of the most successful \"Idol\" contestants internationally, with worldwide album sales of more than 25\u00a0million.\nStarting September 30, 2006, this season was repackaged as \"\"American Idol Rewind\"\" and syndicated directly to stations in the U.S.\nSeason 2 (2003).\nFollowing the success of the first season, the second season was moved up to air in January 2003. The number of episodes increased, as did the show's budget and the charge for commercial spots. Dunkleman left the show, leaving Ryan Seacrest as the lone host. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Kristin Adams was a correspondent for this season.\nCorey Clark was disqualified during the finals for having an undisclosed police record; however, he later alleged that he and Paula Abdul had an affair while on the show and that this contributed to his expulsion. Clark also claimed that Abdul gave him preferential treatment on the show due to their affair. The allegations were dismissed by Fox after an independent investigation. Two semi-finalists were also disqualified that year \u2013 Jaered Andrews for an arrest on an assault charge, and Frenchie Davis for having previously modeled for an adult website.\nThe season finale drew more than 38 million viewers, marking \"Idol\"'s biggest audience ever for a single episode. Ruben Studdard emerged as the winner, beating Clay Aiken by a small margin. Out of a total of 24 million votes, Studdard finished just 134,000 votes ahead of Aiken. This slim margin of victory was controversial due to the large number of calls that failed to get through. In an interview prior to the fifth season, executive producer Nigel Lythgoe indicated that Aiken had led the fan voting from the wildcard week onward until the finale.\nBoth finalists found success after the show, but Aiken out-performed Studdard's coronation song \"Flying Without Wings\" with his single release from the show \"This Is the Night\", as well as in their subsequent album releases. The fourth-place finisher Josh Gracin also enjoyed some success as a country singer.\nSeason 3 (2004).\nThe third season premiered on January 19, 2004. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. One of the most talked-about contestants during the audition process was William Hung whose off-key rendition of Ricky Martin's \"She Bangs\" received widespread attention. His exposure on \"Idol\" landed him a record deal and surprisingly he became the third bestselling singer from that season.\nMuch media attention on the season had been focused on the three black singers, Fantasia Barrino, LaToya London, and Jennifer Hudson, dubbed the Three Divas. All three unexpectedly landed on the bottom three on the top seven result show, with Hudson controversially eliminated. Elton John, who was one of the mentors that season, called the results of the votes \"incredibly racist\". The prolonged stays of John Stevens and Jasmine Trias in the finals, despite negative comments from the judges, had aroused resentment, so much so that John Stevens reportedly received a death threat, which he dismissed as a joke 'blown out of proportion'.\nThe performance of \"Summertime\" by Barrino, later known simply as \"Fantasia\", at Top 8 was widely praised, and Simon Cowell considered it as his favorite \"Idol\" moment in the nine seasons he was on the show. Fantasia and Diana DeGarmo were the last two finalists, and Fantasia was crowned as the winner. Fantasia released as her coronation single \"I Believe\", a song co-written by the first season finalist Tamyra Gray, and DeGarmo released \"Dreams\".\nSeason 4 (2005).\nThe fourth season premiered on January 18, 2005. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This was the first full season of the series to be aired in high definition; the finale of the third season was also aired in high definition. The number of those attending the auditions by now had increased to over 100,000 from the 10,000 of the first season. The age limit was raised to 28 in this season, and among those who benefited from this new rule were Constantine Maroulis and Bo Bice, the two rockers of the show.\nThe top 12 finalists originally included Mario Vazquez, but he dropped out citing 'personal reasons' and was replaced by Nikko Smith. Later, an employee of Fremantle Media, which produces the show, sued the company for wrongful termination, claiming that he was dismissed after complaining about lewd behavior by Vazquez toward him during the show.\nDuring the top 11 week, due to a mix-up with the contestants' telephone number, voting was repeated on what was normally the result night, with the result reveal postponed until the following night.\nIn May 2005, Underwood was announced the winner, with Bice the runner-up. Both Underwood and Bice released the coronation song \"Inside Your Heaven\", with Underwood's version of the song making her the first country artist ever to debut at number-one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart. As of 2015, Underwood has become the most successful \"Idol\" contestant in the U.S., selling 16 million albums in the country, while selling a total of 65 million records worldwide.\nSeason 5 (2006).\nThe fifth season began on January 17, 2006. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. It remains the highest-rated season in the show's run so far. Two of the more prominent contestants during the Hollywood round were the Brittenum twins who were later disqualified for identity theft.\nChris Daughtry's performance of Fuel's \"Hemorrhage (In My Hands)\" on the show was widely praised and led to an invitation to join the band as Fuel's new lead singer, an invitation he declined. His performance of Live's version of \"I Walk the Line\" was well received by the judges but later criticized in some quarters for not crediting the arrangement to Live. He was eliminated at the top four in a shocking result.\nOn May 30, 2006, Taylor Hicks was named \"American Idol\", with Katharine McPhee the runner-up. \"Do I Make You Proud\" was released as Hicks' first single and McPhee's was \"My Destiny\".\nDespite being eliminated earlier in the season, Chris Daughtry (as lead of the band Daughtry) became the most successful recording artist from this season. Other contestants, such as Hicks, McPhee, Bucky Covington, Mandisa, Kellie Pickler, and Elliott Yamin have had varying levels of success.\nSeason 6 (2007).\nThe sixth season began on Tuesday, January 16, 2007. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The premiere drew a massive audience of 37.3\u00a0million viewers, peaking in the last half hour with more than 41\u00a0million viewers.\nTeenager Sanjaya Malakar was the season's most talked-about contestant for his unusual hairdo, and for managing to survive elimination for many weeks due in part to the weblog Vote for the Worst and satellite radio personality Howard Stern, who both encouraged fans to vote for him. However, on the Top 7 results, Sanjaya was voted off.\nThis season saw the first \"Idol Gives Back\" telethon-inspired event, which raised more than $76\u00a0million in corporate and viewer donations. No contestant was eliminated that week, but two (Phil Stacey and Chris Richardson) were eliminated the next.\nIn the May 23 season finale, Jordin Sparks was declared the winner with the runner-up being Blake Lewis. Sparks has had some success as a recording artist post-\"Idol\".\nThis season also saw the launch of the \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest which allows fans to vote for the \"coronation song\". Thousands of recordings of original songs were submitted by songwriters, and 20 entries selected for the public vote. The winning song, \"This Is My Now\", was performed by both finalists during the finale and released by Sparks on May 24, 2007.\nSeason 7 (2008).\nThe seventh season premiered on January 15, 2008, for a two-day, four-hour premiere. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The media focused on the professional status of the seventh season contestants, the so-called 'ringers', many of whom, including Kristy Lee Cook, Brooke White, Michael Johns, and in particular Carly Smithson, had prior recording contracts. Contestant David Hernandez also attracted some attention due to his past employment as a stripper.\nFor the finals, \"American Idol\" debuted a new state-of-the-art set and stage on March 11, 2008, along with a new on-air look. David Cook's performance of \"Billie Jean\" on top-ten night was lauded by the judges, but provoked controversy when they apparently mistook the Chris Cornell arrangement to be David Cook's own even though the performance was introduced as Cornell's version. Cornell himself said he was 'flattered' and praised David Cook's performance. David Cook was taken to the hospital after the top-nine performance show due to heart palpitations and high blood pressure.\nDavid Archuleta's performance of John Lennon's \"Imagine\" was considered by many as one of the best of the season. Jennifer Lopez, who was brought in as a judge in the tenth season, called it a beautiful song-moment that she will never forget. Jason Castro's semi-final performance of \"Hallelujah\" also received considerable attention, and it propelled Jeff Buckley's version of the song to the top of the \"Billboard\" digital song chart. This was the first season in which contestants' recordings were released onto iTunes after their performances, and although sales information was not released so as not to prejudice the contest, leaked information indicated that contestants' songs frequently reached the top of iTunes sales charts.\n\"Idol Gives Back\" returned on April 9, 2008, and raised $64\u00a0million for charity.\nThe finalists were Cook and Archuleta. David Cook was announced the winner on May 21, 2008, the first rocker to win the show. Both Cook and Archuleta had some success as recording artists with both selling over a million albums in the U.S.\nThe \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest was also held this season. From ten of the most popular submissions, each of the final two contestants chose a song to perform, although neither of their selections was used as the \"coronation song\". The winning song, \"The Time of My Life\", was recorded by David Cook and released on May 22, 2008.\nSeason 8 (2009).\nThe eighth season premiered on January 13, 2009. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This season featured the first major change to the judging panel; a fourth judge, Kara DioGuardi, was introduced. Mike Darnell, the president of alternative programming for Fox, stated that the season would focus more on the contestants' personal life.\nThis was also the first season without executive producer Nigel Lythgoe who left to focus on the international versions of his show \"So You Think You Can Dance\". The Hollywood round was moved to the Kodak Theatre for 2009 and was also extended to two weeks. \"Idol Gives Back\" was canceled for this season due to the global recession at the time.\nThere were 13 finalists this season, but two were eliminated in the first result show of the finals. A new feature introduced was the \"Judges' Save\", and Matt Giraud was saved from elimination at the top seven by the judges when he received the fewest votes. The next week, Lil Rounds and Anoop Desai were eliminated.\nThe two finalists were Kris Allen and Adam Lambert, both of whom had previously landed in the bottom three at the top five. Allen won the contest in the most controversial voting result since the second season. It was claimed, and then later retracted, that 38\u00a0million of the 100\u00a0million votes cast on the night came from Allen's home state of Arkansas alone, and that AT&T employees unfairly influenced the votes by giving lessons on power-texting at viewing parties in Arkansas.\nBoth Allen and Lambert released the coronation song, \"No Boundaries\" which was co-written by DioGuardi. This is the first season in which the winner failed to achieve gold album status.\nSeason 9 (2010).\nThe ninth season premiered on January 12, 2010. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Kara DioGuardi, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Paula Abdul left the show and Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul at the start of Hollywood Week. One of the most prominent auditioners this season was General Larry Platt whose performance of \"Pants on the Ground\" became a viral hit song.\nCrystal Bowersox, who has Type-I diabetes, fell ill due to diabetic ketoacidosis on the morning of the girls performance night for the top 20 week and was hospitalized. The schedule was rearranged so the boys performed first and she could perform the following night instead; she later revealed that Ken Warwick, the show producer, wanted to disqualify her but she begged to be allowed to stay on the show.\nMichael Lynche was the lowest vote getter at top nine and was given the Judges' Save. The next week Katie Stevens and Andrew Garcia were eliminated. That week, Adam Lambert was invited back to be a mentor, the first \"Idol\" alum to do so. \"Idol Gives Back\" returned this season on April 21, 2010, and raised $45 million.\nA special tribute to Simon Cowell was presented in the finale for his final season with the show. Many figures from the show's past, including Paula Abdul, made an appearance.\nThe final two contestants were Lee DeWyze and Bowersox. DeWyze was declared the winner during the May 26 finale. No new song was used as coronation song this year; instead, the two finalists each released a cover song \u2013 DeWyze chose U2's \"Beautiful Day\", and Bowersox chose Patty Griffin's \"Up to the Mountain\". This is the first season where neither finalist achieved significant album sales.\nSeason 10 (2011).\nThe tenth season premiered on January 19, 2011. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Many changes were introduced this season, from the format to the personnel of the show. Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined Randy Jackson as judges following the departures of Simon Cowell (who left to launch the American version of \"The X Factor\"), Kara DioGuardi (whose contract was not renewed) and Ellen DeGeneres, who left the show on her own accord.\nRandy Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth. Nigel Lythgoe returned as executive producer. Jimmy Iovine, chairman of the Interscope Geffen A&M label group, the new partner of \"American Idol\", acted as the in-house mentor in place of weekly guest mentors, although in later episodes special guest mentors such as Beyonc\u00e9, will.i.am and Lady Gaga were brought in.\nThe tenth season is the first to include online auditions where contestants could submit a 40-second video audition via Myspace. Karen Rodriguez was one such auditioner and reached the final rounds.\nOne of the more prominent contestants this year was Chris Medina, whose story of caring for his brain-damaged fianc\u00e9e received widespread coverage. Medina was cut in the Top 40 round. Casey Abrams, who suffers from ulcerative colitis, was hospitalized twice and missed the Top 13 result show. The judges used their one save on Abrams on the Top 11, and as a result this was the first season that 11 finalists went on tour instead of 10. In the following week, Naima Adedapo and Thia Megia were both eliminated.\nPia Toscano, one of the presumed favorites to advance far in the season, was unexpectedly eliminated on April 7, 2011, finishing in ninth place. Her elimination drew criticisms from some former \"Idol\" contestants, as well as actor Tom Hanks. After \"Idol\", Jennifer Lopez helped guide her career.\nThe two finalists in 2011 were Lauren Alaina and Scotty McCreery, both teenage country singers. McCreery won the competition on May 25, being the youngest male winner and the fourth male in a row to win \"American Idol\". McCreery released his first single, \"I Love You This Big\", as his coronation song, and Alaina released \"Like My Mother Does\". McCreery's debut album, \"Clear as Day\", became the first debut album by an \"Idol\" winner to reach No. 1 on the US \"Billboard\" 200 since Ruben Studdard's \"Soulful\" in 2003, and he became the youngest male artist to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200.\nSeason 11 (2012).\nThe eleventh season premiered on January 18, 2012. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez, and Randy Jackson returned as judges. One more finalist would join the Top 24 making it the Top 25, which was later revealed to be Jermaine Jones. However, on March 14, Jones was disqualified in 12th place for concealing arrests and outstanding warrants. Jones denied the accusation that he concealed his arrests.\nFinalist Phillip Phillips suffered from kidney pain and was taken to the hospital before the Top 13 results show, and later received medical procedure to alleviate a blockage caused by kidney stones. He was reported to have eight surgeries during his Idol run, and had considered quitting the show due to the pain. He underwent surgery to remove the stones and reconstruct his kidney soon after the season had finished.\nJessica Sanchez received the fewest votes during the Top 7 week, and the judges decided to use their \"save\" option on her, making her the first female recipient of the save. The following week, unlike previous seasons, Colton Dixon was the only contestant sent home. Sanchez later made the final two, the first season where a recipient of the save reached the finale.\nPhillips became the winner, beating Sanchez. During the finale, fifth season finalist Ace Young proposed marriage to third season runner-up Diana DeGarmo on stage \u2013 which she accepted.\nPhillips released \"Home\" as his coronation song, while Sanchez released \"Change Nothing\". Phillips' \"Home\" has since become the best selling of all coronation songs, with over 5 million copies sold.\nSeason 12 (2013).\nThe twelfth season premiered on January 16, 2013. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Judges Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler left the show after two seasons. Randy Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. This season's judging panel consisted of Randy Jackson, along with Mariah Carey, Keith Urban and Nicki Minaj.\nThis was the first season since the ninth season to have four judges on the panel. The pre-season buzz and the early episodes of the show were dominated by the feud between the judges Minaj and Carey after a video of their dispute was leaked to TMZ.\nThe top 10 contestants started with five males and five females, however, the males were eliminated consecutively in the first five weeks, with Lazaro Arbos the last male to be eliminated. For the first time in the show's history, the top 5 contestants were all female. It was also the first time that the judges' \"save\" was not used, the top four contestants were therefore given an extra week to perform again with their votes carried over with no elimination in the first week.\n23-year-old Candice Glover won the season with Kree Harrison taking the runner-up spot. Glover became the first female to win \"American Idol\" since Jordin Sparks, who won the show in 2007. Glover released \"I Am Beautiful\" as a single while Harrison released \"All Cried Out\" immediately after the show. Glover sold poorly with her debut album, and this is also the first season that the runner-up was not signed by a music label.\nTowards the end of the season, Randy Jackson, the last remaining of the original judges, announced he would no longer serve as a judge to pursue other business ventures. Both judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj also decided to leave after one season to focus on their music careers.\nSeason 13 (2014).\nThe thirteenth season premiered on January 15, 2014. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Keith Urban returned as a judge. Urban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. Randy Jackson returned, though Jackson moved from the judging panel to the role of in-mentor. Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj left the panel after one season. Former judge Jennifer Lopez and former mentor Harry Connick, Jr. joined Urban on the panel. Connick Jr. served as a mentor for \"Idol\" in 2010 and 2012. Also, Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick were replaced as executive producers by Per Blankens, Jesse Ignjatovic and Evan Pragger. Bill DeRonde replaced Warwick as a director of the audition episodes, while Louis J. Horvitz replaced Gregg Gelfand as a director of the show.\nThis was the first season where the contestants were permitted to perform in the final rounds songs they wrote themselves. In the Top 8, Sam Woolf received the fewest votes, but he was saved from elimination by the judges. The 500th episode of the series was the Top 3 performance night.\nCaleb Johnson was named the winner of the season, with Jena Irene as the runner-up. Johnson released \"As Long as You Love Me\" as his coronation single while Irene released \"We Are One\".\nSeason 14 (2015).\nThe fourteenth season premiered on January 7, 2015. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban and Harry Connick, Jr. returned for their respective fourth, third and second seasons as judges. Eighth season runner-up Adam Lambert filled in for Urban during the New York City auditions. Randy Jackson did not return as the in-house mentor and left the show permanently. Scott Borchetta replaced Jackson as the mentor.\nChanges this season include only airing one episode a week during the final ten. Coca-Cola ended their longtime sponsorship of the show and Ford Motor Company maintained a reduced role. The winner of the season also received a recording contract with Big Machine Records.\nNick Fradiani won the season, defeating Clark Beckham. Fradiani became the first winner from the Northeast region. Fradiani released \"Beautiful Life\" as his coronation single while Beckham released \"Champion\". Jax, the third place finalist, also released a single called \"Forcefield\".\nSeason 15 (2016).\nFox announced on May 11, 2015, that the fifteenth season would be the final season of \"American Idol\"; as such, the season was expected to have an additional focus on the program's alumni. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, with Harry Connick Jr., Keith Urban, and Jennifer Lopez all returning as judges. The fifteenth season premiered on January 6, 2016. The season was shortened by four weeks compared to previous years. During the finale episode, President Barack Obama praised the millions of young people that voted for contestants and pitched that they vote in the upcoming election. The farewell season concluded on April 7, 2016. Seacrest signed off by saying: \"And one more time\u2014this is so tough\u2014we say to you from Hollywood, goodnight America\", and then he added, \"for now.\"\nTrent Harmon won the season against runner-up La'Porsha Renae. Harmon released \"Falling\" co-written by Keith Urban as his coronation song. Renae's \"Battles\", third-place finisher Dalton Rapattoni's \"Strike A Match\" and fourth-place finisher MacKenzie Bourg's \"Roses\" were also released as singles.\n2018\u2013present: ABC revival.\nIn early 2017, \"Variety\" reported that Fremantle Media was in talks to revive the show for NBC or for its original network, Fox. A dispute between Fremantle and Core Media Group derailed these plans. In May 2017, ABC was making a bid to revive the program. ABC acquired the rights to the series, and \"American Idol\" returned for the 2017\u201318 television season.\nSeason 16 (2018).\nIn July 2017, it was announced that Ryan Seacrest would return as host, and by September 2017 it was revealed that Katy Perry, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie would serve as judges. The sixteenth season premiered on March 11, 2018. This was the first season of \"American Idol\" to air on ABC. The season was again shortened compared to the previous season to twelve weeks, with multiple elimination in the final rounds. Unlike previous seasons where only two finalists remained in the final episode, three finalists performed in the finale. On May 21, 2018, the season concluded with Maddie Poppe crowned the winner, beating Caleb Lee Hutchinson as runner-up and Gabby Barrett in third place. Her winning song was \"Going, Going, Gone\". Caleb Lee Hutchinson released \"Johnny Cash Heart\" as a single, while Gabby Barrett's song was \"Rivers Deep\".\nSeason 17 (2019).\nABC renewed the revival series for another season. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. The seventeenth season premiered on March 3, 2019. For the finale, the show no longer features separate performance and result shows. On May 19, 2019, the season concluded with three finalists, with Madison VanDenburg eliminated in third place after performing two songs, and the final two performing their last song. For the first time, there were no separate performance and grand finale shows this season. Laine Hardy was crowned the winner and Alejandro Aranda runner-up. Hardy released a single, \"Flame\", immediately after the win, but Aranda did not. However, Aranda later released a song he performed in the finale, \"Tonight\", under the name Scarypoolparty on June 28, 2019.\nSeason 18 (2020).\nOn May 13, 2019, the series was renewed for an eighteenth season and it premiered on February 16, 2020. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. For the first time, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, from the top 20 to the finale, the contestants performed in their own homes, while Ryan Seacrest hosted the show remotely in his own home in Los Angeles with the judges also in their respective homes. The season was also further truncated, with the top 5 performing in the finale. Each finalist also performed only two songs for the finale. On May 17, the season concluded, with Just Sam crowned as the winner, with Arthur Gunn finishing as the runner-up. \"Rise Up\", the song Just Sam performed for their audition and reprised on the finale, was released as their debut song.\nSeason 19 (2021).\nOn May 15, 2020, ABC renewed the series for a nineteenth season and it premiered on February 14, 2021. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. Later in October, it was announced that Bobby Bones will return as mentor. On May 23, the season concluded, with Chayce Beckham crowned the winner, with Willie Spence finishing as the runner-up. \"23\", the song Chayce Beckham wrote and performed for Top 4, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 20 (2022).\nOn May 13, 2021, ABC renewed the series for a twentieth season and it premiered on February 27, 2022. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On December 31, it was announced that Bones would not be returning as a mentor. On May 22, the season concluded, with Noah Thompson crowned as the winner, with HunterGirl finishing as the runner-up. \"One Day Tonight\", the song Noah Thompson performed for the Grand Finale, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 21 (2023).\nOn May 13, 2022, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-first season and it premiered on February 19, 2023. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On May 21, the season concluded, with Iam Tongi crowned as the winner, with Megan Danielle finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 22 (2024).\nOn May 16, 2023, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-second season and it premiered on February 18, 2024. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. In February 2024, Perry announced that the season would be her last. On May 20, the season concluded, with Abi Carter crowned as the winner, with Will Moseley finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 23 (2025).\nOn May 10, 2024, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-third season; it was also announced the network was in-talks with \"high-profile stars\" to replace the outgoing Perry. On July 31, 2024, it was announced Seacrest would return as host, with Bryan and Richie returning as judges; Underwood was named as Perry's successor. The season premiered on March 9, 2025.\nReception.\nU.S. television ratings.\nSeasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of \"American Idol\". It holds the distinction of having the longest winning streak in the Nielsen annual television ratings; it became the highest-rated of all television programs in the United States overall for an unprecedented seven consecutive years, or eight consecutive (and total) years when either its performance or result show was ranked number one overall.\n\"Each U.S. network television season starts in late September and ends in late May, which coincides with the completion of May sweeps.\"\n\"American Idol\" premiered in June 2002 and became the surprise summer hit show of 2002. The first show drew 9.9\u00a0million viewers, giving Fox the best viewing figure for the 8.30\u00a0pm spot in over a year. The audience steadily grew, and by finale night, the audience had averaged 23\u00a0million, with more than 40\u00a0million watching some part of that show. That episode was placed third amongst all age groups, but more importantly it led in the 18\u201349 demographic, the age group most valued by advertisers.\nThe growth continued into the next season, starting with a season premiere of 26.5 million. The season attracted an average of 21.7\u00a0million viewers, and was placed second overall amongst the 18\u201349 age group. The finale night when Ruben Studdard won over Clay Aiken was also the highest-rated ever \"American Idol\" episode at 38.1\u00a0million for the final hour. By the third season, the show had become the top show in the 18\u201349 demographic<ref name=\"realitytvworld_5/24/2007\"></ref> a position it has held for all subsequent years up to and including the tenth season, and its competition stages ranked first in the nationwide overall ratings. By the fourth season, \"American Idol\" had become the most-watched series amongst all viewers on American TV for the first time, with an average viewership of 26.8\u00a0million. The show reached its peak in the fifth season with numbers averaging 30.6\u00a0million per episode, and this season remains the highest-rated of the series.\nThe sixth season premiered with the series' highest-rated debut episode and a few of its succeeding episodes rank among the most-watched episodes of \"American Idol.\" During this time, many television executives begun to regard the show as a programming force unlike any seen before, as its consistent dominance of up to two hours two or three nights a week exceeded the 30- or 60-minute reach of previous hits such as NBC's \"The Cosby Show\". The show was dubbed \"the Death Star\", and competing networks often rearranged their schedules in order to minimize losses. However, the sixth season also showed a steady decline in viewership over the course of the season. The season finale saw a drop in ratings of 16% from the previous year. The sixth season was the first season wherein the average results show rated higher than the competition stages (unlike in the previous seasons), and became the second-highest-rated of the series after the preceding season.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the seventh season. The premiere was down 11% among total viewers, and the results show in which Kristy Lee Cook was eliminated delivered its lowest-rated Wednesday show among the 18\u201334 demo since the first season in 2002. However, the ratings rebounded for the seventh-season finale with the excitement over the battle of the Davids, and improved over the sixth season as the series' third most watched finale. The strong finish of season seven also helped Fox become the most watched TV network in the country for the first time since its inception, a first ever in American television history for a non-Big Three major broadcast network. Overall ratings for the season were down 10% from the sixth season, which is in line with the fall in viewership across all networks due in part to the 2007\u20132008 Writers Guild of America strike.\nThe declining trend however continued into the eighth season, as total viewers numbers fell by 5\u201310% for early episodes compared to the seventh season, and by 9% for the finale. In the ninth season, \"Idol\"'s six-year extended streak of perfection in the ratings was broken, when NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics on February 17 beat \"Idol\" in the same time slot with 30.1\u00a0million viewers over \"Idol\"'s 18.4\u00a0million. Nevertheless, \"American Idol\" overall finished its ninth season as the most watched TV series for the sixth year running, breaking the previous record of five consecutive seasons achieved by CBS' \"All in the Family\" and NBC's \"The Cosby Show\".\nIn the tenth season, the total viewer numbers for the first week of shows fell 12\u201313%, and by up to 23% in the 18\u201349 demo compared to the ninth season. Later episodes, however, retained viewers better, and the season ended on a high with a significant increase in viewership for the finale \u2013 up 12% for the adults 18\u201349 demographic and a 21% increase in total viewers from the ninth-season finale. While the overall viewer number has increased this season, its viewer demographics have continued to age year on year \u2013 the median age this season was 47.2 compared to a median age of 32.1 in its first season. The demographics also became \"whiter\" over time and less diverse. Nevertheless, in the 2010\u201311 television season, Fox maintained its lead on over other networks with its seventh consecutive season of victory overall in the 18\u201349 demographic ratings in the United States.\nThe eleventh season, however, suffered a steep drop in ratings, a drop attributed by some to the arrival of new shows such as \"The Voice\" and \"The X Factor\". The ratings for the first two episodes of the eleventh season fell 16\u201321% in overall viewer numbers and 24\u201327% in the 18/49 demo, while the season finale fell 27% in total viewer number and 30% in the 18\u201349 demo. The average viewership for the season fell below 20 million viewers the first time since 2003, a drop of 23% in total viewers and 30% in the 18/49 demo. For the first time in eight years, \"American Idol\" lost the leading position in both the total viewers number and the 18/49 demo, coming in second to \"NBC Sunday Night Football\", although the strengths of \"Idol\" in its second year in the Wednesday-Thursday primetime slots helped Fox achieve the longest period of 18\u201349 demographic victory in the Nielsen ratings, standing at 8 straight years from 2004 to 2012.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the twelfth season, which saw the show hitting a number of series low in the 18\u201349 demo. The finale had 7.2 million fewer viewers than the previous season, and saw a drop of 44% in the 18\u201349 demo. The season viewers averaged at 13.3 million, a drop of 24% from the previous season. The thirteenth season suffered a huge decline in the 18\u201349 demographic, a drop of 28% from the twelfth season, and \"American Idol\" lost its Top 10 position in the Nielsen ratings by the end of the 2013\u201314 television season for the first time since its entry to the rankings in 2003 as a result, and never regained its Top 10 position by the series' end in 2016.\nThe continuing decline influenced further changes for the fourteenth season, including the loss of Coca-Cola as the show's major sponsor, and a decision to only broadcast one, two-hour show per week during the top 12 rounds (with results from the previous week integrated into the performance show, rather than having a separate results show). On May 11, 2015, prior to the fourteenth-season finale, Fox announced that the fifteenth season of \"American Idol\" would be its last. Despite these changes, the show's ratings would decline more sharply. The fourteenth-season finale was the lowest-rated finale ever, with an average of only 8.03 million viewers watching the finale. The show's ratings, however, rebounded in its final season and ended its run in 2016 as Fox's first-ever program to conclude its run without dropping from the Nielsen Top 30 most-watched television shows in each of its seasons.\nFor the revived series on ABC, the ratings were lower but remained stable compared to previous seasons on Fox. The finale of the seventeenth season was slightly more watched than the sixteenth.\nCritical reception.\nEarly reviews were mixed in their assessment. Ken Tucker of \"Entertainment Weekly\" considered that \"As TV, \"American Idol\" is crazily entertaining; as music, it's dust-mote inconsequential\". Others, however, thought that \"the most striking aspect of the series was the genuine talent it revealed\". It was also described as a \"sadistic musical bake-off\", and \"a romp in humiliation\". Other aspects of the show have attracted criticisms. The product placement in the show in particular was noted, and some critics were harsh about what they perceived as its blatant commercial calculations \u2013 Karla Peterson of \"The San Diego Union-Tribune\" charged that \"American Idol\" is \"a conniving multimedia monster\" that has \"absorbed the sin of our debauched culture and spit them out in a lump of reconstituted evil\". The decision to send the first season winner to sing the national anthem at the Lincoln Memorial on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks in 2002 was also poorly received by many. Lisa de Moraes of \"The Washington Post\" noted sarcastically that \"The terrorists have won\" and, with a sideswipe at the show's commercialism and voting process, that the decision as to who \"gets to turn this important site into just another cog in the 'Great \"American Idol\" Marketing Mandala' is in the hands of the millions of girls who have made \"American Idol\" a hit. Them and a handful of phone-redialer geeks who have been clocking up to 10,000 calls each week for their contestant of choice (but who, according to Fox, are in absolutely no way skewing the outcome).\"\nSome of the later writers about the show were more positive, Michael Slezak, again of \"Entertainment Weekly\", thought that \"for all its bloated, synthetic, product-shilling, money-making trappings, \"Idol\" provides a once-a-year chance for the average American to combat the evils of today's music business.\" Singer Sheryl Crow, who was later to act as a mentor on the show, however took the view that the show \"undermines art in every way and promotes commercialism\". Pop music critic Ann Powers nevertheless suggested that Idol has \"reshaped the American songbook\", \"led us toward a new way of viewing ourselves in relationship to mainstream popular culture\", and connects \"the classic Hollywood dream to the multicentered popular culture of the future.\" Others focused on the personalities in the show; Ramin Setoodeh of \"Newsweek\" accused judge Simon Cowell's cruel critiques in the show of helping to establish in the wider world a culture of meanness, that \"Simon Cowell has dragged the rest of us in the mud with him.\" Some such as singer John Mayer disparaged the contestants, suggesting that those who appeared on \"Idol\" are not real artists with self-respect.\nSome in the entertainment industry were critical of the star-making aspect of the show. Usher, a mentor on the show, bemoaning the loss of the \"true art form of music\", thought that shows like \"American Idol\" made it seem \"so easy that everyone can do it, and that it can happen overnight\", and that \"television is a lie\". Musician Michael Feinstein, while acknowledging that the show had uncovered promising performers, said that \"American Idol\" \"isn't really about music. It's about all the bad aspects of the music business \u2013 the arrogance of commerce, this sense of 'I know what will make this person a star; artists themselves don't know.' \" That \"American Idol\" is seen to be a fast track to success for its contestants has been a cause of resentment for some in the industry. LeAnn Rimes, commenting on Carrie Underwood winning Best Female Artist in Country Music Awards over Faith Hill in 2006, said that \"Carrie has not paid her dues long enough to fully deserve that award\". It is a common theme that has been echoed by many others. Elton John, who had appeared as a mentor in the show but turned down an offer to be a judge on \"American Idol\", commenting on talent shows in general, said that \"there have been some good acts but the only way to sustain a career is to pay your dues in small clubs\". \"American Idol\" revolutionized American pop culture and the pop idol process and has provided an opportunity for many to bypass the small club scene and allow a much larger audience to participate in and select the next potential chart topping performer.\nThe success of the show's alumni, however, has led to a more positive assessment of the show, and the show was described as having \"proven it has a valid way to pick talent and a proven way to sell records\". While the industry is divided on the show success, its impact is felt particularly strongly in the country music format. According to a CMT exec, reflecting on the success of Idol alumni in the country genre, \"if you want to try and get famous fast by going to a cattle call audition on TV, Idol reasonably remains the first choice for anyone\", and that country music and Idol \"go together well\".\n\"American Idol\" was nominated for the Emmy's Outstanding Reality Competition Program for nine years but never won. Director Bruce Gower won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Series in 2009, and the show won a Creative Arts Emmys each in 2007 and 2008, three in 2009, and two in 2011, as well as a Governor's Award in 2007 for its Idol Gives Back edition. It won the People's Choice Award, which honors the popular culture of the previous year as voted by the public, for favorite competition/reality show in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2012. It won the first Critics' Choice Television Award in 2011 for Best Reality Competition.\nIn 2013, TV Guide ranked the series No. 48 on its list of the 60 Best Series of All Time.\nGeographical, ethnic, and gender bias.\nThroughout the series, twelve of the seventeen \"Idol\" winners, including its first five, had come from the Southern United States. A large number of other finalists during the series' run have also hailed from the American South, including Clay Aiken, Kellie Pickler, and Chris Daughtry, who are all from North Carolina. In 2012, an analysis of the 131 contestants who have appeared in the finals of all seasons of the show up to that point found that 48% have some connection to the Southern United States.\nThe show itself was popular in the Southern United States, with households in the Southeastern United States 10% more likely to watch \"American Idol\" during the eighth season in 2009, and those in the East Central region, such as Kentucky, were 16 percent more likely to tune into the series. Data from Nielsen SoundScan, a music-sales tracking service, showed that of the 47\u00a0million CDs sold by \"Idol\" contestants through January 2010, 85 percent were by contestants with ties to the American South.\nTheories given for the success of Southerners on \"Idol\" have been: more versatility with musical genres, as the Southern U.S. is home to several music genre scenes; not having as many opportunities to break into the pop music business; text-voting due to the South having the highest percentage of cell-phone only households; and the strong heritage of music and singing, which is notable in the Bible Belt, where it is in church that many people get their start in public singing. Others also suggest that the Southern character of these contestants appeal to the South, as well as local pride. According to fifth season winner Taylor Hicks, who is from the state of Alabama, \"People in the South have a lot of pride ... So, they're adamant about supporting the contestants who do well from their state or region.\"\nFor five consecutive seasons, starting in the seventh season, the title was given to a white male who plays the guitar \u2013 a trend that \"Idol\" pundits call the \"White guy with guitar\" or \"WGWG\" factor. Just hours before the eleventh-season finale, where Phillip Phillips was named the winner, Richard Rushfield, author of the book \"American Idol: The Untold Story\", said, \"You have this alliance between young girls and grandmas and they see it, not necessarily as a contest to create a pop star competing on the contemporary radio, but as ... who's the nicest guy in a popularity contest\", he says, \"And that has led to this dynasty of four, and possibly now five, consecutive, affable, very nice, good-looking white boys.\"\nStart order bias.\nSome fans call the final performance of the night the \"pimp spot\" because it usually receives a big boost in votes, due to the recency effect. By performing first, a performer may benefit from the primacy effect, but any other early performance may be stifled. The second performance spot is sometimes called the \"un-pimp spot\" because it is the least beneficial.\nControversy.\nThe show was criticized in earlier seasons over the onerous contract contestants had to sign that gave excessive control to 19 Entertainment over their future careers and handed a large part of their future earnings to the management.\nIndividual contestants have generated controversy in this competition for their past actions or for being 'ringers' planted by the producers. A number of contestants have been disqualified for various reasons, such as for having an existing contract or undisclosed criminal record, although the show has also been accused of a double standard for disqualifying some but not others.\nVoting results have been a consistent source of controversy. The mechanism of voting has aroused considerable criticism, most notably in the second season when Ruben Studdard beat Clay Aiken in a close vote, and in the eighth season, when the massive increase in text votes fueled the texting controversy. Concerns about power voting have been expressed from the first season. Since 2004, votes also have been affected to a limited degree by online communities such as DialIdol and Vote for the Worst.\nCultural impact.\nTelevision.\nThe enormous success of the show and the revenue it generated were transformative for the Fox Broadcasting Company. \"American Idol\" and other shows such as \"Survivor\" and \"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?\" were credited for expanding reality television programming in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s, and \"Idol\" became the most watched non-scripted primetime television series, which it remained for almost a decade, from 2003 to 2012, breaking records on U.S. television (dominated by drama shows and sitcoms in the preceding decades). On several occasions, notably in 2003 and 2008, \"American Idol\" overtook the Academy Awards as the most-watched non-sports entertainment event on U.S. television, marking the most recent time as of 2025 that a live regular non-sports primetime series has garnered such viewership in the country.\nThe show pushed Fox to become the number one U.S. TV network in overall viewers in 2008 and among adults aged 18\u201349, the key demographic coveted by advertisers, for an unprecedented eight consecutive years from 2005 to 2012. Its success also helped lift the ratings of other shows that were scheduled around it such as \"House\" and \"Bones\", and \"Idol\", for years, was Fox's strongest platform primetime television program for promoting eventual hit shows of the 2010s (of the same network) such as \"Glee\", \"New Girl\" and \"Empire\". The show, its creator Simon Fuller claimed, \"saved Fox\".\nThe show's massive success in the mid-2000s to early 2010s spawned a number of imitating singing-competition shows, such as \"Rock Star\", \"Nashville Star\", \"The Voice\", \"Rising Star\", \"The Sing-Off\", and \"The X Factor\". The number of imitative singing shows on American television had reached 17 by 2016. Its format also served as a blueprint for non-singing TV shows such as \"Dancing with the Stars\" and \"So You Think You Can Dance\", most of which contribute to the current highly competitive reality TV landscape on American television.\nMusic.\nAs one of the most successful shows on U.S. television history, \"American Idol\" has had a strong impact not just on television, but also in the wider world of entertainment. It helped create a number of highly successful recording artists, such as Kelly Clarkson, Daughtry and Carrie Underwood, as well as others of varying notability. The alumni of the show's original run scored 13 Grammy Award wins out of 54 Grammy nominations up to its end in 2016, with Underwood and Clarkson receiving 10 wins combined.\nVarious \"American Idol\" alumni had success on various record charts around the world; in the U.S. they had achieved 345 number ones on the \"Billboard\" charts in its first 10 years, and 458 by its last year of broadcast in 2016, with 100 achieved by Kelly Clarkson alone. According to Fred Bronson, author of books on the Billboard charts, no other entity has ever created as many hit-making artists and bestselling albums and singles. In 2007, \"American Idol\" alums accounted for 2.1% of all music sales. Its alumni have a massive impact on radio; in 2007, \"American Idol\" had become \"a dominant force in radio\" according to Rich Meyer, president of the radio station monitoring research company Mediabase. By 2010, four winners each had more than a million radio spins, with Kelly Clarkson leading the field with over four million spins.\nAt the end of the show's original run on Fox in 2016, \"Idol\"'s contestants have sold more than 60 million albums in the U.S. and more than 100 million records globally, more than 175 of which are certified platinum or gold. Its participants have generated more than 450 Billboard No. 1 hits and sold more than 260 million digital downloads.\nFilm and theater.\nThe impact of \"American Idol\" was also strongly felt in musical theater, where many of \"Idol\" alumni have forged successful careers. The striking effect of former \"American Idol\" contestants on Broadway has been noted and commented on. The casting of a popular \"Idol\" contestant can lead to significantly increased ticket sales. Other alumni have gone on to work in television and films, the most notable being Jennifer Hudson who, on the recommendation of the \"Idol\" vocal coach Debra Byrd, won a role in \"Dreamgirls\" and eventually went on to win an Academy Award for her performance. She later became the show's first and only alumnus ever to win the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). In all, as of 2025, \"American Idol\" finalists resulted to 5 Grammy Award winners (Clarkson, Barrino, Hudson, Underwood and Mandisa), 2 Emmy Award winners (Clarkson and Hudson), and an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Tony Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Critics' Choice Award winner (Hudson).\nIn 2007, a musical based on the show, \"\", played off-Broadway. The musical closed after its official opening night.\nRevenue and commercial ventures.\nThe dominance of \"American Idol\" in the ratings had made it the most profitable show in U.S. TV for many years. The show was estimated to generate $900\u00a0million for the year 2004 through sales of TV ads, albums, merchandise and concert tickets. By the seventh season, the show was estimated to earn around $900\u00a0million from its ad revenue alone, not including ancillary sponsorship deals and other income. One estimate puts the total TV revenue for the first eight seasons of \"American Idol\" at $6.4\u00a0billion. Sponsors that bought fully integrated packages can expect a variety of promotions of their products on the show, such as product placement, adverts and product promotion integrated into the show, and various promotional opportunities. Other off-air promotional partners pay for the rights to feature \"Idol\" branding on their packaging, products and marketing programs. \"American Idol\" also partnered with Disney in its theme park attraction The American Idol Experience.\nAdvertising revenue.\n\"American Idol\" became the most expensive series on broadcast networks for advertisers starting the fourth season, and by the next season, it had broken the record in advertising rate for a regularly scheduled prime-time network series, selling over $700,000 for a 30-seconds slot, and reaching up to $1.3\u00a0million for the finale. Its ad prices reached a peak in the seventh season at $737,000. Estimated revenue more than doubled from $404\u00a0million in the third season to $870\u00a0million in the sixth season. While that declined from the eighth season onwards, it still earned significantly more than its nearest competitor, with advertising revenue topping $800\u00a0million annually the next few seasons. However, the sharp drop in ratings in the eleventh season also resulted in a sharp drop in advertising rate for the twelfth season, and the show lost its leading position as the costliest show for advertisers. By 2014, ad revenue from had fallen to $427 million where a 30-second spot went for less than $300,000. For the relaunched \"Idol\" on ABC, it has been reported that a 30-second spot may cost between $120,000 and $160,000.\nMedia sponsorship.\nFord Motor Company and Coca-Cola were two of the first sponsors of \"American Idol\" in its first season. The sponsorship deal cost around $10\u00a0million in the first season, rising to $35\u00a0million by the seventh season, and between $50 and $60 million in the tenth season. The third major sponsor AT&T Wireless joined in the second season but ended after the twelfth season, and Coca-Cola officially ended its sponsorship after the thirteenth season amidst the declining ratings of \"Idol\" in the mid-2010s. iTunes sponsored the show since the seventh season.\n\"American Idol\" prominent display of its sponsors' logo and products had been noted since the early seasons. By the sixth season, \"Idol\" showed 4,349 product placements according to Nielsen Media Research. The branded entertainment integration proved beneficial to its advertisers \u2013 promotion of AT&T text-messaging as a means to vote successfully introduced the technology into the wider culture, and Coca-Cola has seen its equity increased during the show.\nCoca-Cola's archrival PepsiCo declined to sponsor \"American Idol\" at the show's start. What the \"Los Angeles Times\" later called \"missing one of the biggest marketing opportunities in a generation\" contributed to Pepsi losing market share, by 2010 falling to third place from second in the United States. PepsiCo sponsored the American version of Cowell's \"The X Factor\" in hopes of not repeating its \"Idol\" mistake until its cancellation.\nFor the revived series on ABC, Macy's and Johnson & Johnson's Zyrtec signed on as the major sponsors of the show.\nAmerican Idol tour.\nThe top ten (eleven in the tenth season, five in the fourteenth season, and seven in the sixteenth season) toured at the end of every season except for the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons. In the twelfth season tour a semi-finalist who won a sing-off was also added to the tour. Kellogg's Pop-Tarts was the sponsor for the first seven seasons, and Guitar Hero was added for the seventh season tour. M&M's Pretzel Chocolate Candies was a sponsor of the ninth season tour. The fifth season tour was the most successful tour with gross of over $35\u00a0million. However no concert tour was organized in the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons, the only seasons not to have an associated tour. The sixteenth season tour featured the band In Real Life as an opener on select dates.\n\"Idol Gives Back\".\n\"Idol Gives Back\" was a special charity event started in season six featuring performances by celebrities and various fund-raising initiatives. This event was also held in seasons seven and nine and has raised nearly $185\u00a0million in total.\nMusic releases.\n\"American Idol\" has traditionally released studio recordings of contestants' performances as well as the winner's coronation single for sale. For the first five seasons, the recordings were released as a compilation album at the end of the season. All five of these albums reached the top ten in Billboard 200 which made \"American Idol\" the most successful soundtrack franchise of any motion picture or television program. Starting late in the fifth season, individual performances were released during the season as digital downloads, initially from the \"American Idol\" official website only. In the seventh season the live performances and studio recordings were made available during the season from iTunes when it joined as a sponsor. In the tenth season the weekly studio recordings were also released as compilation digital album straight after performance night.\n19 Recordings, a recording label owned by 19 Entertainment, currently hold the rights to phonographic material recorded by all the contestants. 19 Recordings originally partnered with Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) to promote and distribute the recordings through its labels RCA Records, Arista Records, J Records, and Jive Records. From 2005\u20132007, BMG partnered with Sony Music Entertainment to form a joint venture known as Sony BMG Music Entertainment. From 2008 to 2010, following their acquisition of BMG, Sony Music handled the distribution of \"American Idol\"'s music. In 2010, UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records replaced Sony as the music label for \"American Idol\".\nTie-ins.\n\"American Idol\" video games\nTheme park attraction.\nOn February 14, 2009, The Walt Disney Company debuted \"The American Idol Experience\" at its Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. In this live production, co-produced by 19 Entertainment, park guests chose from a list of songs and auditioned privately for Disney cast members. Those selected then performed on a stage in a 1000-seat theater replicating the \"Idol\" set. Three judges, whose mannerisms and style mimicked those of the real \"Idol\" judges, critiqued the performances. Audience members then voted for their favorite performer. There were several preliminary-round shows during the day that culminated in a \"finals\" show in the evening where one of the winners of the previous rounds that day was selected as the overall winner. The winner of the finals show received a \"Dream Ticket\" that granted them front-of-the-line privileges at any future \"American Idol\" audition. The attraction closed on August 30, 2014.\nOther broadcasts.\n\"American Idol\" is broadcast to over 100 nations worldwide. In most nations these are not live broadcasts and may be tape delayed by several days or weeks, except for other season finales that are aired live in several countries simulcast with the U.S. broadcast on Fox (2002\u20132016) and ABC (since 2018). In Canada, the first thirteen seasons of American Idol were aired live countrywide by CTV and/or CTV Two, in simulcast with Fox. CTV dropped \"Idol\" after its thirteenth season and in August 2014, Yes TV announced that it had picked up Canadian rights to \"American Idol\" beginning in its 2015 season. In 2017, it was announced the show would return to CTV Two for its sixteenth season. Since season nineteen, the show started airing on Citytv. In Slovakia, American Idol was broadcast on Jednotka.\nIn Latin America, the show is broadcast and subtitled by Sony Entertainment Television. In Southeast Asia, it is broadcast by Sony Channel every Monday and Tuesday nine or ten hours after since its revival. In Philippines, it is aired every Thursday and Friday nine or ten hours after its United States telecast; from 2004 to 2007 on ABC; 2008\u201311 on QTV, then GMA News TV; 2012\u201316, 2018\u201319 on ETC; and since 2024 on TV5. In Indonesia, it was aired on RCTI in the 2002 to 2003 season with the Indonesian subtitles, before Indonesian Idol was held in the 2004, aired after each episode ended, and in the 2011 to 2013 season it was broadcast by B-Channel (now RTV). In Australia, it aired a few hours after the U.S. telecast. It was aired on Network Ten from 2002 to 2008 and then again in 2013. Between 2008 and 2012 it aired on Fox8 and the thirteenth and fourteenth seasons (2014\u201315) it aired on digital channel, Eleven, a sister channel to Network Ten. Its final season (2016) aired on Fox8 hours after the original U.S. broadcast. The show enjoyed a lot of popularity in Australia throughout the 2000s before declining in the ratings. In the United Kingdom, episodes were aired one day after the U.S. broadcast on digital channel ITV2. In the twelfth season, the episodes aired on 5*. It was also aired in Ireland on TV3 two days after the telecast. In Brazil and Israel, the show airs two days after its original broadcast, and broadcast live during the season finale. In the instances where the airing is delayed, the shows may sometimes be combined into one episode to summarize the results. In Italy, the twelfth season was broadcast by La3. In Singapore, The show was broadcast on Mediacorp Channel 5 for the ninth and tenth seasons.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1071662": "Sony Music\nAmerican multinational music recording company\nSony Music Entertainment (SME), commonly known as Sony Music, is an American multinational music company owned by Sony Entertainment and managed by the American umbrella division of multinational conglomerate Sony Group Corporation. It is the recording division of Sony Music Group, with the other half being the publishing division, Sony Music Publishing.\nFounded in 1929 as American Record Corporation, it was acquired by the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1938 and renamed Columbia Recording Corporation. In 1966, the company was reorganized to become CBS Records. Sony bought the company in 1988 and renamed it SME in 1991. In 2004, Sony and Bertelsmann established a 50\u201350 joint venture known as Sony BMG to handle the operations of Sony Music and Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG), but Sony bought out Bertelsmann's stake four years later and reverted to using the 1991 company name. This buyout led to labels formerly under BMG ownership, including Arista, Jive, LaFace and J Records into former BMG and currently Sony's co-flagship record label, RCA Records, in 2011 and led to the relaunch of BMG as BMG Rights Management. Arista Records would later be revived in 2018.\nOn July 17, 2019, Sony announced a merger of Sony Music Entertainment and music publishing arm Sony/ATV to form the Sony Music Group. The merger was completed on August 1, 2019.\nAs of 2023[ [update]], Sony Music Entertainment is the second largest of the \"Big Three\" record companies, behind Universal Music Group and followed by Warner Music Group. Its music publishing division Sony Music Publishing (formerly Sony/ATV) is the largest music publisher in the world.\nHistory.\n1929\u20131938: American Record Corporation.\nThe American Record Corporation (ARC) was founded in 1929 through a merger of several record companies. The company grew over the next several years, acquiring other brands such as the Columbia Phonograph Company, including its Okeh Records subsidiary, in 1934.\n1938\u20131970: Columbia/CBS Records.\nIn 1938, ARC was acquired by the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) under the guidance of chief executive William S. Paley. The company was later renamed Columbia Recording Corporation, and changed again to Columbia Records Inc. in 1947. Edward Wallerstein, who served as the head of Columbia Records since the late 1930s, helped establish the company as a leader in the record industry by spearheading the successful introduction of the LP record. Columbia's success continued through the 1950s with the launch of Epic Records in 1953 and Date Records in 1958. By 1962, the Columbia Records productions unit was operating four plants around the United States located in Los Angeles, California; Terre Haute, Indiana; Bridgeport, Connecticut; and Pitman, New Jersey.\nColumbia's international arm was launched in 1962 under the name \"CBS Records\", as the company only owned the rights to the Columbia name in North America. In 1964, the company began acquiring record companies in other countries for its CBS Records International unit and established its own UK distribution outfit with the acquisition of Oriole Records.\nBy 1966, Columbia was renamed CBS Records and was a separate unit of the parent company, CBS-Columbia Group. In March 1968, CBS and Sony formed CBS/Sony Records, a Japanese business joint venture.\n1971\u20131991: CBS Records Group.\nIn 1971, CBS Records was expanded into its own \"CBS Records Group\", with Clive Davis as its administrative vice president and general manager. In the 1980s to the early 1990s, the company managed several successful labels, including CBS Associated Records, which signed artists including Ozzy Osbourne, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Electric Light Orchestra, Joan Jett, and Henry Lee Summer. In 1983, CBS expanded its music publishing business by acquiring the music publishing arm of MGM/UA Communications Co. CBS later sold the print music arm to Columbia Pictures. By 1987, CBS was the only \"big three\" American TV network to have a co-owned record company. With Sony being one of the developers behind the compact disc digital music media, a compact disc production plant was constructed in Japan under the joint venture, allowing CBS to begin supplying some of the first compact disc releases for the American market in 1983.\nIn 1986, CBS sold its music publishing division, CBS Songs, to SBK Entertainment. On November 17, 1987, Sony acquired CBS Records for US$2 billion. CBS Inc., now Paramount Global, retained the rights to the CBS name for music recordings but granted Sony a temporary license to use the CBS name. The sale was completed on January 5, 1988. CBS Corporation founded a new CBS Records in 2006, which was distributed by Sony through its RED subsidiary.\nIn 1989, CBS Records re-entered the music publishing business by acquiring Nashville-based Tree International Publishing.\n1991\u20132004: Sony Music Entertainment.\nSony renamed the record company Sony Music Entertainment (SME) on January 1, 1991, fulfilling the terms set under the 1988 buyout, which granted only a transitional license to the CBS trademark. The CBS Associated label was renamed Epic Associated. Also on January 1, 1991, to replace the CBS label, Sony reintroduced the Columbia label worldwide, which it previously held in the United States and Canada only, after it acquired the international rights to the trademark from EMI in 1990. Japan is the only country where Sony does not have rights to the Columbia name as it is controlled by Nippon Columbia, an unrelated company. Thus, Sony Music Entertainment Japan issues labels under Sony Records. The Columbia Records trademark's rightsholder in Spain was Bertelsmann Music Group, Germany, which Sony Music subsequently subsumed via a 2004 merger, and a subsequent 2008 buyout.\nIn 1995, Sony and pop singer Michael Jackson formed a joint venture which merged Sony's music publishing operations with Jackson's ATV Music to form Sony/ATV Music Publishing.\n2004\u20132008: Sony BMG.\n<br>\nIn August 2004, Sony entered a joint venture with an equal partner Bertelsmann, by merging Sony Music and Bertelsmann Music Group, Germany, to establish Sony BMG Music Entertainment. However, Sony continued to operate its Japanese music business independently from Sony BMG and BMG Japan was made part of the merger.\nThe merger made Columbia and Epic sister labels to RCA Records, which was once owned by CBS rival, NBC. It also started the process of bringing BMG's Arista Records back under common ownership with its former parent Columbia Pictures, a Sony division since 1989, and brought Arista founder Clive Davis back into the fold. As of 2017, Davis was still with Sony Music as a chief creative officer.\n2008\u2013present: Sony Music revival and restructuring.\nOn August 5, 2008, Sony Corporation of America (SCA) and Bertelsmann announced that Sony had agreed to acquire Bertelsmann's 50% stake in Sony BMG. The acquisition was completed on October 1, 2008. On July 1, 2009, SME and IODA announced a strategic partnership to leverage worldwide online retail distribution networks and complementary technologies to support independent labels and music rights holders. In March 2010, Sony Corp partnered with The Michael Jackson Company in a contract of more than $250 million, the largest deal in recorded music history.\nFrom 2009 to 2020, Sony owned 50% of Syco Entertainment, which operates some of the world's most successful reality TV formats, including \"Got Talent\" and \"The X Factor\" with Simon Cowell. Cowell acquired Sony's stake in 2020.\nDoug Morris, who was head of Warner Music Group, and later Universal Music, became chairman and CEO of Sony Music Entertainment on July 1, 2011. Sony Music underwent restructuring upon Morris's arrival; with some artists switching labels and other labels eliminated.\nIn June 2012, a consortium led by Sony/ATV acquired EMI Music Publishing, making Sony/ATV the world's largest music publisher at the time. This acquisition also reunited the common ownership of pre-1986 CBS Songs (as SBK Songs) catalog to Sony/ATV.\nRob Stringer became CEO of Sony Music Entertainment on April 1, 2017. He previously served as chairman and CEO of Columbia Records.\nSony has experienced many changes with its international labels. In February 2012, Sony Music reportedly closed its Filipino office due to piracy, and Ivory Music and Video had been handling distribution for its catalog a few months earlier in July 2011. In early 2018, their distribution deal with Ivory expired and SME resumed its operations in the Philippines, with the new offices still located in Ortigas Center, Pasig. In July 2013, Sony Music withdrew from the Greek market due to an economic crisis. Albums released by Sony Music in Greece from domestic and foreign artists would then be carried by Feelgood Records.\nIn June 2017, Sony announced that by March 2018 it would be producing vinyl records internally for the first time since ceasing its production in 1989. Reporting the decision, the BBC noted that, \"Sony's move comes a few months after it equipped its Tokyo studio with a cutting lathe, used to produce the master discs needed for manufacturing vinyl records\" but added that \"Sony is even struggling to find older engineers who know how to make records\".\nOn February 5, 2019, a group of 1970s-era musicians including David Johansen and John Waite filed lawsuits accusing Sony Music Entertainment and UMG Recordings, Inc. of improperly refusing to let them reclaim the rights to songs they had signed away earlier in their careers. The lawsuit cites U.S. copyright law, which gives artists who formerly bargained away their rights on unfavorable terms a chance to reclaim those rights by filing termination notices after 35 years. The plaintiffs claim that Sony and UMG have \"routinely and systematically\" ignored hundreds of notices, having taken the position that recordings are \"works made for hire\" and are therefore not subject to being reclaimed.\nIn April 2021, the Brazilian media company Grupo Globo sold its domestic record label Som Livre to Sony Music for an undisclosed amount. It was approved by the Administrative Council for Economic Defense on November 4, 2021.\nThe UK media company Somethin' Else was acquired outright by Sony Music in 2021, to form a Global Podcast Division, headed up by the Somethin' Else principles, Steve Ackerman and Jez Nelson. The new division was to have teams in New York, LA and London.\nIn 2022, Sony Music Entertainment acquired boutique branding and merchandising agency, Ceremony of Roses (CoR). CoR would handle SME's 'branding, design, media and events'. The newly acquired company would merge with Sony's existing merch division and continue under the CoR banner. The merger brought together artists like Adele, A$AP Rocky, and Lil Nas X under one merchandising house. According to Sony, the move will help expand their merchandising team and take artists' merch to the next level.\nIn January 2023, Sony Music and Alamo Records founder Todd Moscowitz launched Santa Anna, an artist and label services company.\nIn April 2024, it was announced Sony Music Entertainment's Global Podcast Division had acquired the Los Angeles-headquartered podcast production company, Neon Hum Media for an undisclosed amount.\nSony Music Canada.\nSony Music Canada was formed when Sony Music acquired Canadian assets of CBS Records in 1990 (itself formerly Columbia Records Canada in 1954).\nSony Music Canada is operated by Sony Canada, which evolved from General Distributors or Gendis, which had been founded in Winnipeg in 1954 by Albert D. Cohen, who had made a deal with Sony to market its transistor radios in the same year.\nSony Music UK.\nSony Music UK is owned and operated by Sony Music Entertainment in the United Kingdom. Since 2014, Jason Iley has been chairman and CEO of Sony Music UK. Though owned by Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Music UK has standalone operations in the UK to promote musicians within the UK.\nIn June 2017, it was announced that Sony would be merging its two independent distribution companies The Orchard and Red Essential.\nIn 2014, Sony had its best singles success of 33 years, with 11 number 1 singles. Sony Music artists won a total of five individual awards at the BRITs 2015, including Best Female Solo Artist for Paloma Faith, and Mark Ronson's \"Uptown Funk\", which picked up Best British Single. Several other of the label's artists \u2013 Foo Fighters, One Direction and Pharrell Williams \u2013 also collected awards.\nSony's performance at the BRITs 2015 was the label's best in nearly 20 years, winning a total of 5 awards. In 2017, Sony Music UK celebrated the most successful BRIT Awards in the company's history, winning seven of the 11 awards.\nSony Music UK has made key acquisitions including forming Insanity Records with Insanity Management. Craig David became the first artist to sign an album deal with Insanity Records. Sony Music UK signed Robbie Williams, who released his 11th album \"The Heavy Entertainment Show\" in 2016. Jason Iley commented that the agreement was \"a once in a lifetime signing with the biggest male solo artist of our generation\".\nSony Music UK incorporated the independent sales and distribution company Essential Music and Marketing \u2013 renamed to Red Essential. In August 2016, Sony Music acquired Ministry of Sound Recordings, home to London Grammar, DJ Fresh and Sigala.\nOn April 5, 2017, two of Sony Music UK's labels won awards at the annual Music Week Awards. Columbia Records was awarded A&R of the Year, and Syco was awarded Record Company of the Year.\nIn 2021, Sony agreed to buy Kobalt neighboring rights division and independent distribution company AWAL, from the Kobalt Music Group for $430 million.\nSony Music Russia.\nSony Music Entertainment Russia was the Russian music label of Sony Music Entertainment. The company opened its division in the Russian Federation in 1999. In 2000, the first contract was signed with the Russian group Bi-2. For 2021, experts estimated the company's share in the Russian recording market at approximately 15-20%. Sony Music Entertainment LLC's revenue in 2021 amounted to 2.56 billion rubles ($42.7 million). Net profit amounted to 132.9 million rubles ($2.22 million).\nOn March 10, 2022, in connection with Russian invasion of Ukraine, Sony Music Entertainment announced the suspension of operations and new releases in Russia, while Russian employees of Sony Music Group receive pay indefinitely. On September 8, Sony Music officially announced its final withdrawal from Russia. The company recalled all foreign catalogs from the Russian streaming services Yandex Music, Zvooq and VK Music, and tracks from AC/DC, Beyonc\u00e9, Britney Spears, Bring Me the Horizon and many other artists were removed. The Russian division is intended as a completely independent structure from Sony Music to represent only local musicians under the new brand Kiss Koala, which was later bought by the structures of former top managers of Warner Music Russia.\nCriticism and controversies.\nCD price fixing.\nBetween 1995 and 2000, music companies were found to have used illegal marketing agreements such as minimum advertised pricing to artificially inflate prices of compact discs. This was done in order to end price wars of the early 1990s among discounters such as Best Buy and Target. A settlement was reached in 2002 that included music publishers and distributors Sony Music, Warner Music, Bertelsmann Music Group, EMI Music and Universal Music. In restitution for price fixing, they agreed to pay a $67.4 million fine and distribute $75.7 million in CDs to public and non-profit groups but admitted no wrongdoing. It is estimated that customers were overcharged by nearly $500 million overall and up to $5 per album.\nGeorge Michael.\nBritish artist George Michael, signed to Columbia in the U.S. and Epic worldwide, advised Sony executives in 1990 that he would not be appearing in music videos to support his forthcoming album, \"Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1\". Michael then accused Sony of not promoting the album at all. He sued in the UK in 1992, asking to be released from his contract. Sony ultimately prevailed in the courts in 1994, but Michael's contract was bought out by other labels. Some 11 years later, Michael licensed tracks to Sony for release.\nMichael Jackson and Tommy Mottola.\nThe release of \"Invincible\" was preceded by a dispute between Michael Jackson and Sony Music Entertainment. Jackson had expected the licenses to the masters of his albums to revert to him sometime in the early 2000s, after which he would be able to promote the material however he pleased and keep the profits; however, clauses in the contract set the revert date years into the future. Jackson discovered that the attorney who had represented him in the deal had also been representing Sony. He was also concerned that for years Sony had been pressuring him to sell his share in its music catalog venture; he feared that Sony might have had a conflict of interest, since if Jackson's career failed, he would have had to sell his share of the catalog at a low price. Jackson sought an early exit from his contract.\nIn July 2002, Jackson alleged that the then-Sony Music chairman Tommy Mottola was a \"devil\" and \"racist\" who did not support his African-American artists, using them merely for his own gain. He charged that Mottola had called his colleague Irv Gotti a \"fat nigger\". Sony refused to renew Jackson's contract, and claimed that a $25 million promotional campaign had failed because Jackson refused to tour in the United States.\nProsecution of copyright infringement.\nIn May 2012, Sony Music filed charges against the website IsoHunt. The plaintiff's claims in the court document filed at the Supreme Court of British Columbia read: \"The IsoHunt Websites have been designed and are operated by the defendants with the sole purpose of profiting from rampant copyright infringement which defendants actively encourage, promote, authorize, induce, aid, abet, materially contribute to and commercially profit from.\" In February 2016, in a lawsuit filed at a California federal court, Sony Music Entertainment and its associated brands (Arista Records and LaFace Records, formerly owned by Bertelsmann Music Group) accused Belgian radio aggregator Radionomy (owned by Universal Music Group's parent Vivendi) of copyright infringement.\nKesha v. Dr. Luke and 2016 boycott.\nIn February 2016, 100,000 people signed an online petition in less than 24 hours, calling for a boycott of Sony Music and all other Sony-affiliated businesses after rape allegations against music producer Dr. Luke were made by musical artist Kesha. Kesha asked a New York City Supreme Court to free her from her contract with Sony Music, but the court denied the request, prompting a widespread public and media response.\nList of Sony Music Entertainment labels.\nGenre-limited record labels.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nOthers.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nPreviously affiliated labels.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "17356462": "The Right Stuff Records\nThe Right Stuff Records is an American reissue record label that was part of EMI, which is now owned by Universal Music Group and is based out of Santa Monica, California.\nThe label primarily released classic rock and R&B repertoire which included greatest hits collections, anthologies, boxed sets and compilations. The Right Stuff's repertoire was sourced from the various labels owned by EMI Records and also leased-in labels such as Dick Griffey's SOLAR (the Sound of Los Angeles Records), the post-1976 Philadelphia International Records, Hi Records, Tabu Records and Salsoul Records. The label also owned Leon Russell and Denny Cordell's Shelter Records and the New York\u2013based Laurie Records. The label also created many joint venture projects with outside brands such as Harley-Davidson, Hot Rod Magazine, Shape Magazine, and others. The label was started by former EMI and Capitol Records executive Tom Cartwright.\nSelected artists on reissues.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "28208": "Santa Monica, California\nCity in California, United States\nSanta Monica (; Spanish: \"Santa M\u00f3nica\") is a city in Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 U.S. census population was 93,076. Santa Monica is a popular resort town, owing to its climate, beaches, and hospitality industry. It has a diverse economy, hosting headquarters of companies such as Hulu, Activision Blizzard, Universal Music Group, Starz Entertainment, Lionsgate Studios, Illumination and The Recording Academy.\nSanta Monica traces its history to Rancho San Vicente y Santa M\u00f3nica, granted in 1839 to the Sep\u00falveda family of California. The rancho was later sold to John P. Jones and Robert Baker, who in 1875, along with his Californio heiress wife Arcadia Bandini de Stearns Baker, founded Santa Monica, which incorporated as a city in 1886. The city developed into a seaside resort during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the creation of tourist attractions such as Palisades Park, the Santa Monica Pier, Ocean Park, and the Hotel Casa del Mar.\nHistory.\nIndigenous.\nThe Tongva are Indigenous to the Santa Monica area. The village of Comicranga was established in the Santa Monica area. One of the village's notable residents was Victoria Reid, who was the daughter of the chief of the village. During the Spanish period, she was taken to Mission San Gabriel from her parents at the age of six.\nSpanish era.\nThe first non-indigenous group to set foot in the area was the party of explorer Gaspar de Portol\u00e1, which camped near the present-day intersection of Barrington and Ohio Avenues on August 3, 1769.\nThere are two different accounts of how the city's name came to be. One says it was named in honor of the feast day of Saint Monica (mother of Saint Augustine), but her feast day is May 4. Another version says it was named by Juan Cresp\u00ed on account of a pair of springs, the Kuruvungna Springs, that were reminiscent of the tears Saint Monica shed over her son's early impiety.\nMexican era.\nIn 1839, Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado granted Rancho San Vicente y Santa M\u00f3nica to Francisco Sep\u00falveda II, of the Sep\u00falveda family of California. As the definitions of the rancho grant were not precise, the Sep\u00falveda family came into conflict with the neighboring Rancho Boca de Santa M\u00f3nica, owned by Ysidro Reyes and Francisco M\u00e1rquez. A small Californio community grew up on Rancho San Vicente y Santa M\u00f3nica, made up primarily of vaqueros working on the rancho and their families.\nPost-conquest era.\nAfter the American conquest of California, Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which gave Mexicans and Californios living in state certain unalienable rights. U.S. government sovereignty in California began on February 2, 1848.\nIn the 1870s, the Los Angeles and Independence Railroad connected Santa Monica with Los Angeles, and a wharf out into the bay. The first town hall was an 1873 brick building, later a beer hall, and now part of the Santa Monica Hostel. By 1885, the town's first hotel was the Santa Monica Hotel.\nAmusement piers became popular in the first decades of the 20th century and the extensive Pacific Electric Railway brought people to the city's beaches from across the Greater Los Angeles Area.\nAround the start of the 20th century, a growing population of Asian Americans lived in and around Santa Monica and Venice. A Japanese fishing village was near the Long Wharf while small numbers of Chinese lived or worked in Santa Monica and Venice. The two ethnic minorities were often viewed differently by White Americans, who were often well-disposed toward the Japanese but condescending to the Chinese. The Japanese village fishermen were an integral economic part of the Santa Monica Bay community.\nDonald Wills Douglas Sr. built a plant in 1922 at Clover Field (Santa Monica Airport) for the Douglas Aircraft Company. In 1924, four Douglas-built planes took off from Clover Field to attempt the first aerial circumnavigation of the world. Two planes returned after covering in 175 days, and were greeted on their return September 23, 1924, by a crowd of 200,000. The Douglas Company (later McDonnell Douglas) kept facilities in the city until the 1970s.\nThe Great Depression hit Santa Monica deeply. One report gives citywide employment in 1933 of just 1,000. Hotels and office building owners went bankrupt. In the 1930s, corruption infected Santa Monica (along with neighboring Los Angeles). The federal Works Project Administration helped build several buildings, most notably City Hall. The main Post Office and Barnum Hall (Santa Monica High School auditorium) were also among other WPA projects.\nModern era.\nDouglas's business grew with the onset of World War II, employing as many as 44,000 people in 1943. To defend against air attack, set designers from the Warner Brothers Studios prepared elaborate camouflage that disguised the factory and airfield. The RAND Corporation began as a project of the Douglas Company in 1945, and spun off into an independent think tank on May 14, 1948. RAND acquired a campus across the street from the Civic Center and is still there today.\nThe completion of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in 1958 eliminated Belmar, the first African American community in the city, and the Santa Monica Freeway in 1966 decimated the Pico neighborhood that had been a leading African American enclave on the Westside.\nBeach volleyball is believed to have been developed by Duke Kahanamoku in Santa Monica during the 1920s.\nSanta Monica has two hospitals: Saint John's Health Center and Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center. Its cemetery is Woodlawn Memorial.\nSanta Monica has several local newspapers including \"Santa Monica Daily Press\", \"Santa Monica Mirror\", and \"Santa Monica Star\".\nGeography.\nSanta Monica rests on a mostly flat slope that angles down toward Ocean Avenue and toward the south. High bluffs separate the north side of the city from the beaches. Santa Monica borders the L.A. neighborhoods of Pacific Palisades to the north and Venice to the south. To the west, Santa Monica has a 3-mile coastline fronting Santa Monica Bay, and to the east of the city are the L.A. communities of West Los Angeles and Brentwood.\nClimate.\nSanta Monica has a coastal Mediterranean climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Csb\"). It receives an average of 310 days of sunshine a year. It is in USDA plant hardiness zone 11a. Because of its location, nestled on the vast and open Santa Monica Bay, morning fog is a common phenomenon in May, June, July and early August (caused by ocean temperature variations and currents). Like other inhabitants of the greater Los Angeles area, residents have a particular terminology for this phenomenon: the \"May Gray\", the \"June Gloom\" and even \"Fogust\". Overcast skies are common on June mornings, but usually the strong sun burns the fog off by noon. In the late winter/early summer, daily fog is a phenomenon too. It happens suddenly and it may last some hours or past sunset time. Nonetheless, it will sometimes stay cloudy and cool all day during June, even as other parts of the Los Angeles area experience sunny skies and warmer temperatures. At times, the sun can be shining east of 20th Street while the beach area is overcast. As a general rule, the beach temperature is from 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (3 to 6 degrees Celsius) cooler than it is inland during summer days, and 5 to 10 degrees warmer during winter nights.\nIt is also in September that the highest temperatures tend to be reached. It is winter, however, when the hot, dry winds of the Santa Anas are most common. In contrast, temperatures exceeding 10 degrees below average are rare.\nThe rainy season is from late October through late March. Winter storms usually approach from the northwest and pass quickly through the Southland. There is very little rain during the rest of the year. Yearly rainfall totals are unpredictable as rainy years are occasionally followed by droughts. There has never been any snow or frost, but there has been hail.\nSanta Monica usually enjoys cool breezes blowing in from the ocean, which tend to keep the air fresh and clean. Therefore, smog is less of a problem for Santa Monica than elsewhere around Los Angeles. However, from September through November, the Santa Ana winds sometimes blow from the east, bringing smoggy and hot inland air to the beaches.\nThe hottest temperature ever reported in Santa Monica was on November 1, 1966, while the lowest is on March 1, 1945, and again on March 21, 1952. The highest minimum temperature is on October 24, 2007, and the lowest maximum temperature is on 4 dates in February 2001 and again March 10, 2006. The snowiest months on record are January 1954 and March 1955, both with trace amounts. They are the only months to ever report snowfall. Many months have reported no rainfall at all. Conversely, the wettest month on record is January 1995 with a total of of rainfall. The wettest year on record is 1998, with a total of of rainfall; the driest is 1989, with a total of of rainfall.\nEnvironment.\nThe city first proposed its Sustainable City Plan in 1992 and in 1994, was one of the first cities in the nation to formally adopt a comprehensive sustainability plan, setting waste reduction and water conservation policies for both public and private sector through its Office of Sustainability and the Environment. Eighty-two percent of the city's public works vehicles run on alternative fuels, including most of the municipal bus system, making it among the largest of such fleets in the country. Santa Monica fleet vehicles and buses source their natural gas from Redeem, a Southern California-based supplier of renewable and sustainable natural gas obtained from non-fracked methane biogas generated from organic landfill waste.\nSanta Monica adopted a Community Energy Independence Initiative, with a goal of achieving complete energy independence by 2020 (vs. California's already ambitious 33% renewables goal). The city exceeded that aspiration when, in February 2019, it switched over to electricity from the Clean Power Alliance, with a citywide default of 100% renewably sourced energy. That same year, the Santa Monica City Council adopted a Climate Action and Adaptation Plan aimed at achieving an 80% cut in carbon emissions by 2030, and reaching community-wide carbon neutrality by 2050 or sooner.\nAn urban runoff facility (SMURFF), the first of its kind in the US, catches and treats of water each week that would otherwise flow into the bay via storm-drains and sells it back to end-users within the city for reuse as gray-water, while bioswales throughout the city allow rainwater to percolate into and replenish the groundwater. The groundwater supply plays an important role in the city's Sustainable Water Master Plan, whereby Santa Monica has set a goal of attaining 100% water independence by 2020. The city has numerous programs designed to promote water conservation among residents, including a rebate for those who convert lawns to drought-tolerant gardens that require less water.\nSanta Monica has also instituted a green building-code whereby merely constructing to code automatically renders a building equivalent to the US Green Building Council's LEED Silver standards. The city's Main Library is one of many LEED certified or LEED equivalent buildings in the city. It is built over a 200,000 gallon cistern that collects filtered stormwater from the roof. The water is used for landscape irrigation.\nSince 2009, Santa Monica has been developing the Zero Waste Strategic Operations Plan by which the city will set a goal of diverting at least 95% of all waste away from landfills, and toward recycling and composting, by 2030. The plan includes a food waste composting program, which diverts 3 million pounds of restaurant food waste away from landfills annually. As of 2013[ [update]], 77% of all solid waste produced citywide is diverted from landfills.\nEnvironmentally focused initiatives include curbside recycling, curbside composting bins (in addition to trash, yard-waste, and recycle bins), farmers' markets, community gardens, garden-share, an urban forest initiative, a hazardous materials home-collection service, and a green business certification.\nAs in other coastal beach communities, coastal erosion due to coastal infrastructure and high human usage is an increasing challenge, and will become worse due to sea level rise. Starting in 2016, local environmental groups began dune and beach restoration projects.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2020.\nThe 2020 United States census reported Santa Monica had a population of 93,076. This corresponds to density of 11,067.3 people per square mile. The racial makeup of Santa Monica was 63,383 (68.1%) white, 8,602 (9.2%) Asian, 3,776 (4.1%) Black or African American, 539 (0.6%) American Indian and Alaska Native, 123 (0.1%) Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, 5,347 (5.7%) some other race, and 11,306 (12.1%) people were of two or more races.\nIncluding all responses for people of two or more races, 73,996 (79.5%) were white alone or in combination with one or more other races, 11,864 (12.7%) were Asian alone or in combination with one or more other races, 5,459 (5.9%) were Black or African American alone or in combination, 1,877 (2.0%) were American Indian and Alaska Native alone or in combination, 415 (0.4%) were Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander alone or in combination, and 11,619 (12.5%) were some other race alone or in combination with one or more other races.\n13,544 (14.6%) were Hispanic or Latino of any race. Of those, 2,729 (2.9% of the total population) were white alone, 153 (0.2%) were Black or African American alone, 410 (0.4%) were American Indian and Alaska Native alone, 136 (0.1%) were Asian alone, 14 (0.0%) were Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, 4,542 (4.9%) were some other race alone, and 5,560 (6.0%) were two or more races.\nThe census reported that Santa Monica had 52,389 housing units. Of those, 47,438 (90.5%) were occupied. 12,856 (27.1%) of the occupied units were owner-occupied and 34,582 (72.9%) were renter-occupied. Of the vacant units, 2,540 (4.8% of total) were for rent, 230 (0.4%) were rented but not occupied, 183 (0.3%) were for sale only, 205 (0.4%) were sold but not occupied, 693 (1.3%) were for seasonal, recreational, or occasional use, and 1,100 (2.1%) were otherwise vacant.\nThe median household income between 2017 and 2021 was $99,847 (2021 dollars), with 10.6% of people living in poverty. 94.8% of households had a computer between 2017 and 2021, and 91.0% had broadband internet access.\n2010.\nThe 2010 United States Census reported Santa Monica had a population of 89,736. The population density was . The racial makeup of Santa Monica was 69,663 (77.6%) White (70.1% Non-Hispanic White), 3,526 (3.9%) African American, 338 (0.4%) Native American, 8,053 (9.0%) Asian, 124 (0.1%) Pacific Islander, 4,047 (4.5%) from other races, and 3,985 (4.4%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 11,716 persons (13.1%), with Mexican Americans, Spanish Americans, and Argentine Americans making up 64.2%, 6.4%, and 4.7% of the Hispanic population respectively.\nThe Census reported 87,610 people (97.6% of the population) lived in households, 1,299 (1.4%) lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 827 (0.9%) were institutionalized.\nThere were 46,917 households, out of which 7,835 (16.7%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 13,092 (27.9%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 3,510 (7.5%) had a female householder with no husband present, 1,327 (2.8%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 2,867 (6.1%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 416 (0.9%) same-sex married couples or partnerships. 22,716 households (48.4%) were made up of individuals, and 5,551 (11.8%) had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 1.87. There were 17,929 families (38.2% of all households); the average family size was 2.79.\nThe population was spread out, with 12,580 people (14.0%) under the age of 18, 6,442 people (7.2%) aged 18 to 24, 32,552 people (36.3%) aged 25 to 44, 24,746 people (27.6%) aged 45 to 64, and 13,416 people (15.0%) who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40.4 years. For every 100 females, there were 93.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 91.2 males.\nThere were 50,912 housing units at an average density of , of which 13,315 (28.4%) were owner-occupied, and 33,602 (71.6%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 1.1%; the rental vacancy rate was 5.1%. 30,067 people (33.5% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 57,543 people (64.1%) lived in rental housing units.\nAccording to the 2010 United States Census, Santa Monica had a median household income of $73,649, with 11.2% of the population living below the federal poverty line.\n2000.\nAs of the census of 2000, there were 84,084 people, 44,497 households, and 16,775 families in the city. The population density was . There were 47,863 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 78.29% White, 7.25% Asian, 3.78% African American, 0.47% Native American, 0.10% Pacific Islander, 5.97% from other races, and 4.13% from two or more races. 13.44% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.\nThere were 44,497 households, out of which 15.8% had children under the age of 18, 27.5% were married couples living together, 7.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 62.3% were non-families. 51.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 1.83 and the average family size was 2.80.\nThe city of Santa Monica is consistently among the most educated cities in the United States, with 23.8 percent of all residents holding graduate degrees.\nThe population was diverse in age, with 14.6% under 18, 6.1% from 18 to 24, 40.1% from 25 to 44, 24.8% from 45 to 64, and 14.4% 65 years or older. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females, there were 93.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 91.3 males.\nAccording to a 2009 estimate, the median income for a household in the city was $71,095, and the median income for a family was $109,410. Males had a median income of $55,689 versus $42,948 for females. The per capita income for the city was $42,874. 10.4% of the population and 5.4% of families were below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 9.9% of those under the age of 18 and 10.2% of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line.\nCrime.\nIn 2006, crime in Santa Monica affected 4.41% of the population, slightly lower than the national average crime rate that year of 4.48%. The majority of this was property crime, which affected 3.74% of Santa Monica's population in 2006; this was higher than the rates for Los Angeles County (2.76%) and California (3.17%), but lower than the national average (3.91%). These per-capita crime rates are computed based on Santa Monica's full-time population of about 85,000. However, the Santa Monica Police Department has suggested the actual per-capita crime rate is much lower, as tourists, workers, and beachgoers can increase the city's daytime population to between 250,000 and 450,000 people.\nHate crime has typically been minimal in Santa Monica, with only one reported incident in 2007. The city experienced a spike of anti-Islamic hate crime in 2001 after the September 11 attacks, but hate crime levels returned to their minimal 2000 levels by 2002.\nGang activity.\nThe Pico neighborhood of Santa Monica (south of the Santa Monica Freeway) experiences some gang activity. The city estimates there are about 50 gang members based in Santa Monica, although some community organizers dispute this claim. Gang activity has been prevalent for decades in the Pico neighborhood.\nIn October 1998, alleged Culver City 13 gang member Omar Sevilla of Culver City was killed. A couple of hours after the shooting of Sevilla, German tourist Horst Fietze was killed. Several days later Juan Martin Campos, a Santa Monica city employee, was shot and killed. Police believe this was a retaliatory killing in response to Sevilla's killing. Less than 24 hours later, Javier Cruz was wounded in a drive-by shooting outside his home on 17th and Michigan.\nIn 1998, there was a double homicide in the Westside Clothing store on Lincoln Boulevard. During the incident, Culver City gang members David \"Puppet\" Robles and Jesse \"Psycho\" Garcia entered the store masked and began opening fire, killing Anthony and Michael Juarez. Police say the incident was in retaliation for a shooting committed by the Santa Monica 13 gang days before the Juarez brothers were shot down.\nHomeless population.\nIn 2022, there were 826 homeless individuals in Santa Monica.\nEconomy.\nSanta Monica is home to the headquarters of many notable businesses, such as Beachbody, Fatburger, Hulu, Illumination, Otter Media, Lionsgate, Macerich, Miramax, CBS Media Ventures, the RAND Corporation, Saban Capital Group, The Recording Academy (which presents the annual Grammy Awards), TOMS Shoes, Universal Music Group, and ZipRecruiter. Atlantic Aviation is at the Santa Monica Airport. The National Public Radio member station KCRW is on the Santa Monica College campus. VCA Animal Hospitals is just outside the eastern city limit.\nA number of videogame development studios are based in Santa Monica, making it a major location for the industry. These include:\nIn addition, Santa Monica is part of Silicon Beach, and the area serves as the home of hundreds of venture capital funded startup companies.\nFormer Santa Monica businesses include Douglas Aircraft (now merged with Boeing), GeoCities (which in December 1996 was headquartered on the third floor of 1918 Main Street in Santa Monica), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and MySpace (now headquartered in Beverly Hills).\nTop employers.\nAccording to the city's 2022 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, the top employers in the city were:\nArts and culture.\nThe Santa Monica Looff Hippodrome (carousel) is a National Historic Landmark. It sits on the Santa Monica Pier, which was built in 1909. The La Monica Ballroom on the pier was once the largest ballroom in the US and the source for many New Year's Eve national network broadcasts.\nThe Santa Monica Civic Auditorium was an important music venue for several decades and hosted the Academy Awards in the 1960s. McCabe's Guitar Shop is a leading acoustic performance space as well as retail outlet. The \"Santa Monica Playhouse\" is a popular theater in the city.\nBergamot Station is a city-owned art gallery compound. The city is also home to the California Heritage Museum and the Angels Attic dollhouse and toy museum.\nThe New West Symphony is the resident orchestra of Barnum Hall. They are also resident orchestra of the Oxnard Performing Arts Center and the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza.\nSanta Monica hosts the annual Santa Monica Film Festival.\nThe city's oldest movie theater is the Majestic. Opened in 1912 and also known as the Mayfair Theatre, it has been closed since the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The Aero Theater (now operated by the American Cinematheque) and Criterion Theater were built in the 1930s and still show movies.\nNotable restaurants have included Madame Wu's Garden, Batterfish, Stout Burgers and Beers, and The Misfit.\nShopping districts.\nSanta Monica has three main shopping districts: Montana Avenue on the north side, the Downtown District in the city's core, and Main Street on the south end. Each has its own unique feel and personality. Montana Avenue is a stretch of luxury boutique stores, restaurants, and small offices that generally features more upscale shopping. The Main Street district offers an eclectic mix of clothing, restaurants, and other specialty retail.\nThe Downtown District is the home of the Third Street Promenade, a major outdoor pedestrian-only shopping district that stretches for three blocks between Wilshire Blvd. and Broadway. Third Street is closed to vehicles for those three blocks to allow people to stroll, congregate, shop and enjoy street performers.\nThe Santa Monica Place, featuring Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom in a three-level outdoor environment, is at the Promenade's southern end. After a period of redevelopment, the mall reopened in the fall of 2010 as a modern shopping, entertainment and dining complex with more outdoor space.\nPublic library system.\nThe Santa Monica Public Library consists of a Main Library in the downtown area, plus four neighborhood branches: Fairview, Montana Avenue, Ocean Park, and Pico Boulevard.\nSports.\nThe men's and women's marathon ran through parts of Santa Monica during the 1984 Summer Olympics. The Santa Monica Track Club has many prominent track athletes, including many Olympic gold medalists. Santa Monica is the home to Southern California Aquatics, which was founded by Olympic swimmer Clay Evans and Bonnie Adair. Santa Monica is also home to the Santa Monica Rugby Club, a semi-professional team that competes in the Pacific Rugby Premiership, the highest-level rugby union club competition in the United States.\nDuring the 2028 Summer Olympics, Santa Monica will host beach volleyball and surfing.\nParks and recreation.\nPalisades Park stretches out along the crumbling bluffs overlooking the Pacific and is a favorite walking area to view the ocean. It includes public art, a totem pole, camera obscura, benches, picnic areas, p\u00e9tanque courts, and restrooms.\nTongva Park occupies 6 acres between Ocean Avenue and Main Street, just south of Colorado Avenue. The park includes an overlook, amphitheater, playground, garden, fountains, picnic areas, and restrooms.\nThe Santa Monica Stairs, a long, steep staircase consisting of 152 wooden steps and 18 concrete steps in a straight path, that leads from north of San Vicente down into Santa Monica Canyon, is a popular spot for outdoor workouts. Some area residents have complained that the stairs have become too popular, and attract too many exercisers to the wealthy neighborhood of multimillion-dollar properties.\nIshihara Park opened to the public in 2017 and acts as a buffer between the Los Angeles Metro Rail and the surrounding residential community.\nGovernment.\nLocal government.\nSanta Monica is governed by the Santa Monica City Council, a Council-Manager governing body with seven members elected at-large. The mayor is Lana Negrete, and the Mayor Pro Tempore is Caroline Torosis. The other five council members are Jesse Zwick, Natalya Zernitskaya, Barry Snell, Dan Hall, and Ellis Raskin.\nRepresentation.\nIn the California State Legislature, Santa Monica is in the Senate District, represented by Democrat Ben Allen, and in the Assembly District, represented by Democrat Rick Zbur.\nIn the United States House of Representatives, Santa Monica is in California's congressional district, represented by Democrat Ted Lieu.\nEducation.\nPublic schools.\nThe Santa Monica\u2013Malibu Unified School District provides public education at the elementary and secondary levels. In addition to the traditional model of early education school houses, SMASH (Santa Monica Alternative School House) is \"a K\u20138 public school of choice with team teachers and multi-aged classrooms\". The district maintains eight elementary schools, three middle schools, and three high schools in Santa Monica.\nPrivate schools.\nPrivate schools in the city include Crossroads School and Saint Monica Catholic High School.\nAsahi Gakuen, a weekend Japanese supplementary school system, operates its Santa Monica campus (\u30b5\u30f3\u30bf\u30e2\u30cb\u30ab\u6821\uff65\u9ad8\u7b49\u90e8 \"Santamonika-k\u014d k\u014dt\u014dbu\") at Webster Middle in the Sawtelle neighborhood of Los Angeles. All high school classes in the Asahi Gakuen system are held at the Santa Monica campus.\nPost-secondary.\nSanta Monica College is a community college founded in 1929. Many SMC graduates transfer to the University of California system. It occupies and enrolls 30,000 students annually. The Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School, associated with the RAND Corporation, is the U.S.'s largest producer of public policy PhDs. The Art Institute of California \u2013 Los Angeles is also in Santa Monica near the Santa Monica Airport.\nUniversities and colleges within a radius from Santa Monica include Santa Monica College, Antioch University Los Angeles, Loyola Marymount University, Mount St. Mary's University, Pepperdine University, California State University, Northridge, California State University, Los Angeles, UCLA, USC, West Los Angeles College, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Occidental College (Oxy), Los Angeles City College, Los Angeles Southwest College, Los Angeles Valley College, and Emperor's College of Traditional Oriental Medicine.\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nBicycles.\nSanta Monica has a bike action plan and launched a bicycle sharing system in November 2015. The city is traversed by the Marvin Braude Bike Trail. Santa Monica has received the Bicycle Friendly Community Award (Bronze in 2009, Silver in 2013) by the League of American Bicyclists. Local bicycle advocacy organizations include Santa Monica Spoke, a local chapter of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition. Santa Monica is thought to be one of the leaders for bicycle infrastructure and programming in Los Angeles County although cycling infrastructure in Los Angeles County in general remains very poor compared to other major cities.\nThe city implemented a 5-year and 20-year Bike Action Plan with a goal of attaining 14 to 35% bicycle transportation mode share by 2030 through the installation of enhanced bicycle infrastructure throughout the city. In 2023, Santa Monica scored near the 90th percentile of cities surveyed in the PeopleForBikes City Ratings, which measures the quality of a city's bike network.\nIn terms of number of bicycle accidents, Santa Monica ranks as one of the worst (#2) out of 102 California cities with population 50,000\u2013100,000, a ranking consistent with the city's composite ranking.\nIn 2007 and 2008, local police cracked down on Santa Monica Critical Mass rides that had become controversial, putting a damper on the tradition.\nHighways.\nThe Santa Monica Freeway (Interstate 10) begins in Santa Monica near the Pacific Ocean and heads east. The Santa Monica Freeway between Santa Monica and downtown Los Angeles has the distinction of being one of the busiest highways in all of North America. After traversing the Greater Los Angeles area, I-10 crosses seven more states, terminating at Jacksonville, Florida. In Santa Monica, there is a road sign designating this route as the Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway. State Route 2 (Santa Monica Boulevard) begins in Santa Monica, barely grazing State Route 1 at Lincoln Boulevard, and continues northeast across Los Angeles County, through the Angeles National Forest, crossing the San Gabriel Mountains as the Angeles Crest Highway, ending in Wrightwood. Santa Monica is also the western terminus of Historic U.S. Route 66. Close to the eastern boundary of Santa Monica, Sepulveda Boulevard reaches from Long Beach at the south, to the northern end of the San Fernando Valley. Just east of Santa Monica is Interstate 405, the San Diego Freeway, a major north\u2013south route in Los Angeles and Orange counties.\nMotorized vehicles.\nSanta Monica has purchased the first ZeroTruck all-electric medium-duty truck. The vehicle will be equipped with a Scelzi utility body, it is based on the Isuzu N series chassis, a UQM PowerPhase 100 advanced electric motor and is the only US built electric truck offered for sale in the United States in 2009.\nBus.\nThe city of Santa Monica runs its own bus service, the Big Blue Bus, which also serves much of West Los Angeles and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). A Big Blue Bus was featured prominently in the action movie \"Speed\".\nThe city of Santa Monica is also served by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority's (Metro) bus lines. Metro also complements Big Blue service, as when Big Blue routes are not operational overnight, Metro buses make many Big Blue Bus stops, in addition to MTA stops.\nLight rail.\nDesign and construction on the of the Expo Line from Culver City to Santa Monica started in September 2011, with service beginning on May 20, 2016. Santa Monica Metro stations include , , and . Travel time between Downtown Santa Monica station and 7th Street/Metro Center station in Downtown Los Angeles is approximately 46 minutes, while the travel time between the downtown Santa Monica station and the terminal Atlantic station in East Los Angeles is approximately 1 hour and 9 minutes.\nHistorical aspects of the Expo line route are noteworthy. It uses the former Los Angeles region's electric interurban Pacific Electric Railway's right-of-way that ran from the Exposition Park area of Los Angeles to Santa Monica. This route was called the Santa Monica Air Line and provided electric-powered freight and passenger service between Los Angeles and Santa Monica beginning in the 1920s. Passenger service was discontinued in 1953, but diesel-powered freight deliveries to warehouses along the route continued until March 11, 1988. The abandonment of the line spurred future transportation considerations and concerns within the community, and the entire right-of-way was purchased from Southern Pacific by Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The line was built in 1875 as the steam-powered Los Angeles and Independence Railroad to bring mining ore to ships in Santa Monica harbor and as a passenger excursion train to the beach.\nAirport and ports.\nThe city owns and operates a general aviation airport, Santa Monica Airport, which has been the site of several important aviation achievements. Commercial flights are available for residents at LAX, a few miles south of Santa Monica.\nLike other cities in Los Angeles County, Santa Monica is dependent upon the Port of Long Beach and the Port of Los Angeles for international ship cargo. In the 1890s, Santa Monica was once in competition with Wilmington, California, and San Pedro for recognition as the \"Port of Los Angeles\" (see History of Santa Monica, California).\nOther.\nSince the mid-1980s, various proposals have been made to extend the Purple Line subway to Santa Monica under Wilshire Boulevard. There are no current plans to complete the \"subway to the sea\", an estimated $5\u00a0billion project.\nIn August 2018, Santa Monica issued permits to Bird, Lime, Lyft, and Jump Bikes to operate dockless scooter-sharing systems in the city. As of April 2023, Lyft, Spin, Veo, and Wheels are licensed to provide micro-mobility transportation in city.\nEmergency services.\nTwo major hospitals are within the Santa Monica city limits, UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica and Saint John's Health Center. Four fire stations provide medical and fire response, staffed with six Paramedic Engines, a Truck company, a Hazardous Materials team and an Urban Search & Rescue team. Santa Monica Fire Department has its own Dispatch Center. Ambulance transportation is provided by McCormick Ambulance Services.\nLaw enforcement services are provided by the Santa Monica Police Department\nThe Los Angeles County Department of Health Services operates the Simms/Mann Health and Wellness Center in Santa Monica. The Department's West Area Health Office is in the Simms/Mann Center.\nInternet services.\nSanta Monica has a municipal wireless network which provides several free city Wi-Fi hotspots distributed around the city.\nIn popular culture.\nFilm and television.\nHundreds of moving pictures have been shot or set in part in Santa Monica.\nFilms.\nOne of the oldest exterior shots in Santa Monica is Buster Keaton's \"Spite Marriage\" (1929) which shows much of 2nd Street. The comedy \"It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World\" (1963) included several scenes shot in Santa Monica, including those along the California Incline, which led to the movie's treasure spot, \"The Big W\". The Sylvester Stallone film \"Rocky III\" (1982) shows Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed training to fight Clubber Lang by running on the Santa Monica Beach, and Stallone's \"Demolition Man\" (1993) includes Santa Monica settings. In \"Pee-wee's Big Adventure\" (1985), the theft of Pee-wee's bike occurs on the Third Street Promenade. Henry Jaglom's indie \"Someone to Love\" (1987), the last film in which Orson Welles appeared, takes place in Santa Monica's venerable Mayfair Theatre. \"Heathers\" (1988) used Santa Monica's John Adams Middle School for many exterior shots. \"The Truth About Cats & Dogs\" (1996) is set entirely in Santa Monica, particularly the Palisades Park area, and features a radio station that resembles KCRW at Santa Monica College. \"17 Again\" (2009) was shot at Samohi. Other films that show significant exterior shots of Santa Monica include \"Fletch\" (1985), \"Species\" (1995), \"Get Shorty\" (1995), and \"Ocean's Eleven\" (2001). Richard Rossi's biopic \"Aimee Semple McPherson\" opens and closes at the beach in Santa Monica. \"Iron Man\" features the Santa Monica pier and surrounding communities as Tony Stark tests his experimental flight suit.\nThe documentary \"Dogtown and Z-Boys\" (2001) and the related dramatic film \"Lords of Dogtown\" (2005) are both about the influential skateboarding culture of Santa Monica's Ocean Park neighborhood in the 1970s.\nSanta Monica (and in particular the Santa Monica Airport) was featured in Roland Emmerich's disaster film \"2012\" (2009). A magnitude 10.9 earthquake destroys the airport and the surrounding area as a group of survivors escape in a personal plane. The Santa Monica Pier and the whole city sinks into the Pacific Ocean after the earthquake.\nTelevision.\nA number of television series have been set in Santa Monica, including \"Baywatch\", \"Goliath\", \"Pacific Blue\" (1996\u20132000), \"Private Practice\" (2007\u20132013), and \"Three's Company\" (1977\u20131984), which was set in the Ocean Park neighborhood of Santa Monica. The Santa Monica pier is shown in the main theme of CBS series \"\". In \"Buffy the Vampire Slayer\", the main exterior set of the town of Sunnydale that includes the infamous \"sun sign\", was in Santa Monica in a lot on Olympic Boulevard.\nLiterature.\nHorace McCoy's 1935 novel \"They Shoot Horses, Don't They?\" is set at a dance marathon held in a ballroom on the Santa Monica Pier.\nRaymond Chandler's most famous character, private detective Philip Marlowe, frequently has a portion of his adventures in a place called \"Bay City\", which is modeled on Depression-era Santa Monica. In Marlowe's world, Bay City is \"a wide-open town\", where gambling and other crimes thrive due to a massively corrupt and ineffective police force.\nTennessee Williams lived (while working at MGM Studios) in a hotel on Ocean Avenue in the 1940s. At that location he wrote the play \"The Glass Menagerie\" (which premiered in 1944). His short story \"\" (1954) is set near Santa Monica Beach and mentions the clock visible in much of the city, high up on The Broadway Building, on Broadway near Second Street.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["1071662", "191890", "17356462", "28208"], "permutation_1": ["28208", "1071662", "191890", "17356462"], "permutation_2": ["28208", "1071662", "17356462", "191890"], "permutation_3": ["28208", "17356462", "191890", "1071662"]}
{"id": "4hop1__629520_49925_13759_736921", "docs_added": {"14871423": "Victor Razafimahatratra\nMalagasy Cardinal\nVictor Razafimahatratra, S.J. (8 September 1921 \u2013 6 October 1993) was a Malagasy Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Antananarivo from 1976 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1976.\nBiography.\nVictor Razafimahatratra was born in Ambanitsilena-Ranomasina, and studied at the Major Seminary of Fianarantsoa before entering the Society of Jesus, more commonly known as the Jesuits, on 19 September 1945. He continued his education at the Jesuit schools in Fianarantsoa, and then went to Belgium to study at the Theological Faculty of Brussels and the Catechetical Center \"Lumen Gentium\", also in Brussels.\nRazafimahatratra was ordained to the priesthood on 28 July 1956, finishing his studies in 1960. From 1960 to 1963 he was Rector of the Minor Seminary of Fianarantsoa. He made his solemn profession as a Jesuit on 2 February 1963 and then served as Superior of the Jesuit residence in Ambositra until 1969. He was Rector of the Major Seminary and Institute of Superior Studies in Fianarantsoa from 1969 to 1971.\nOn 16 January 1971 Razafimahatratra was appointed Bishop of Farafangana by Pope Paul VI. He received his episcopal consecration on the following 18 April from Archbishop Gilbert Ramanantoanina, SJ, with Archbishop Albert Tsiahoana and Bishop Jean-Pierre-Dominique Z\u00e9vaco, CM, serving as co-consecrators. Razafimahatratra was later named President of the Episcopal Conference of Madagascar in 1974, and was promoted to Archbishop of Tananarive on 10 April 1976.\nPope Paul created him Cardinal Priest of \"S. Croce in Gerusalemme\" in the consistory of 24 May 1976. Razafimahatratra was one of the cardinal electors who participated in the conclaves of August and October 1978, which selected Popes John Paul I and John Paul II respectively. On 28 October 1989 the Archdiocese of Tananarive was renamed as the Archdiocese of Antananarivo.\nThe Cardinal died in Antananarivo, at the age of 72.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "37857": "Reformation\n16th-century movement in Western Christianity\nThe Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation and the European Reformation, was a major theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the papacy and the authority of the Catholic Church. Following the start of the Renaissance, the Reformation marked the beginning of Protestantism. It is considered one of the events that signified the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the early modern period in Europe. The end of the Reformation era is disputed among modern scholars.\nPrior to Martin Luther and other Protestant Reformers, there were earlier reform movements within Western Christianity. The Reformation, however, is usually considered to have started with the publication of the \"Ninety-five Theses\", authored by Martin Luther in 1517. Four years later, in January 1521, Luther was excommunicated by Pope Leo X. In May 1521, at the Diet of Worms, Luther was condemned by the Holy Roman Empire, which officially banned citizens from defending or propagating Luther's ideas. Luther survived after being declared an outlaw due to the protection of Elector Frederick the Wise.\nIn general, the Reformers argued that salvation in Christianity was a completed status based on faith in Jesus alone and not a process that could involve good works, as in the Catholic view. Protestantism also introduced new ecclesiology. The spread of Gutenberg's printing press provided the means for the rapid dissemination of religious materials in the vernacular. The initial movement in Germany diversified, and nearby other reformers such as Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin with different theologies arose.\nThe Counter-Reformation comprised the Catholic response to the Reformation, and largely affirmed Catholic positions that had been subject to critique by reformers.\nTerminology.\nIn the 16th-century context, the term mainly covers four major movements: Lutheranism, Calvinism, the Radical Reformation, and the Catholic Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Since the late 20th century, historians often use the plural of the term to emphasize that the Reformation was not a uniform and coherent historical phenomenon but the result of parallel movements. \nAnglican theologian Alister McGrath explains the term \"Reformation\" as \"an interpretative category\u2014a way of mapping out a slice of history in which certain ideas, attitudes, and values were developed, explored, and applied\". Historian John Bossy criticized the term Reformation for \"wrongly implying that bad religion was giving way to good,\" but also because it has \"little application to actual social behaviour and little or no sensitivity to thought, feeling or culture.\" A French scholar has noted \"no Reformation term is indisputable\" and that \"Reformation studies has revealed that \u201cProtestants\u201d and \u201cCatholics\u201d were not as homogenous as once thought.\" \nSpecific terminology includes:\nSeveral aspects of the Reformation, such as changes in the arts, music, rituals, and communities are frequently presented in specialised studies.\nThe historian Peter Marshall emphasizes that the \"call for 'reform' within Christianity is about as old as the religion itself, and in every age there have been urgent attempts to bring it about\". Charlemagne employed a \"rhetoric of reform\". Medieval examples include the Cluniac Reform in the 10th\u201311th centuries, and the 11th-century Gregorian Reform, both striving against lay influence over church affairs. When demanding a church reform, medieval authors mainly adopted a conservative and utopian approach, expressing their admiration for a previous \"golden age\" or \"apostolic age\" when the Church had allegedly been perfect and free of abuses.\nWhen considered as a historical time period, both the starting and ending date of the Reformation have always been debated. The most commonly used starting date is 31 October 1517\u2014the day when the German theologian Martin Luther (d. 1546) allegedly nailed up a copy of his disputation paper on indulgences and papal power known as the \"Ninety-five Theses\" to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg in Electoral Saxony. Calvinist historians often propose that the Reformation started when the Swiss priest Huldrych Zwingli (d. 1531) first preached against abuses in the Church in 1516. The end date of the Reformation is even more disputed: considered as political/martial strife, 25 September 1555 (when the Peace of Augsburg was accepted), 23 May 1618 and 24 October 1648 (when the Thirty Years' War began and ended, respectively) are the most commonly mentioned terminuses. The Reformation has always been presented as one of the most crucial episodes of the early modern period, or even regarded as the event separating the modern era from the Middle Ages.\nThe term Protestant, though initially purely political in nature, later acquired a broader sense, referring to a member of any Western church that subscribed to the main Reformation (or anti-Catholic) principles. Six princes of the Holy Roman Empire and rulers of fourteen Imperial Free Cities, who issued a protest (or dissent) against the edict of the Diet of Speyer (1529), were the first individuals to be called Protestants. The edict reversed concessions made to the Lutherans with the approval of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V three years earlier.\nBackground.\nCalamities.\nEurope experienced a period of dreadful calamities from the early 14th century. These culminated in a devastating pandemic known as the Black Death, which killed about one-third of Europe's population. Around 1500, the population of Europe was about 60\u201385 million people\u2014no more than 75 percent of the mid-14th-century demographic maximum. Due to a shortage of workforce, the landlords began to restrict the rights of their tenants which led to rural revolts that often ended with a compromise.\nThe constant fear of unexpected death was mirrored by popular artistic motifs, such as the allegory of ('dance of death'). The fear also contributed to the growing popularity of Masses for the dead. Already detectable among early Christians, these ceremonies indicated a widespread belief in purgatory\u2014a transitory state for souls that needed purification before entering heaven. Fear of malevolent magical practice was also growing, and witch hunts intensified.\nAt the end of the 15th century, the sexually transmitted infection known as syphilis spread throughout Europe for the first time. Syphilis destroyed its victims' looks with ulcers and scabs before killing them. Along with the French invasion of Italy, syphilis contributed to the success of the charismatic preacher Girolamo Savonarola (d. 1498) who called for a moral renewal in Florence. He was arrested and executed for heresy, but his meditations remained a popular reading.\nLate Medieval Christianity.\nLay community.\nHistorian John Bossy (as summarized by Eamon Duffy) emphasized that \"medieval Christianity had been fundamentally concerned with the creation and maintenance of peace in a violent world. 'Christianity' in medieval Europe denoted neither an ideology nor an institution, but a community of believers whose religious ideal\u2014constantly aspired to if seldom attained\u2014was peace and mutual love.\"\nThe Catholic Church taught that entry into heaven required dying in a state of grace. Based on Christ's parable on the Last Judgement, the Church considered the performance of good works by the faithful, such as feeding the hungry and visiting the sick, as an important co-condition of salvation. \nVillagers and urban laypeople were frequently members of confraternities (such as the Archconfraternity of the Gonfalone), mutual-support guilds associated with a saint, or religious fraternities (such as the Third Order of Saint Francis). The faithful made pilgrimages to saints' shrines, but the proliferation in the saints' number undermined their reputation. There was a strong non-theological Biblical awareness, especially of the Gospels and Psalms.\nNew religious movements promoted the deeper involvement of laity in religious practices. The communal fraternities of the Brethren of the Common Life did not encourage lay brothers to become priests and often placed their houses under the protection of urban authorities. They were closely associated with the , a new method of Catholic spirituality with a special emphasis on the education of laypeople. A leader of the movement the Dutch Wessel Gansfort (d. 1489) attacked abuses of indulgences.\nChurch buildings were richly decorated with paintings, sculptures, and stained glass windows. While Romanesque and Gothic art made a clear distinction between the supernatural and the human, Renaissance artists depicted God and the saints in a more human way. Historian Caroline Walker Bynum has written of 'a sort of religious materialism' in the period: 'a frenzied conviction that the divine tended to erupt into matter'.\nSources of authority.\nThe sources of religious authority included the Bible and its authoritative commentaries, apostolic tradition, decisions by ecumenical councils, scholastic theology, and papal authority. Catholics regarded the Vulgate as the Bible's authentic Latin translation. Commentators applied several methods of interpretations to resolve contradictions within the Bible. Apostolic tradition verified religious practices with unclear Biblical foundations or which required deduction, such as infant baptism. The ecumenical councils' decisions were binding to all Catholics. The crucial elements of mainstream Christianity had been first summarised in the Nicene Creed in 325. Its western text contained a unilateral addition which contributed to the schism between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. The Creed contained the dogma of Trinity about one God uniting three equal persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Church authorities acknowledged that an individual might exceptionally receive direct revelations from God but maintained that a genuine revelation could not challenge traditional religious principles. Preaching was an important part of bishops' and priests' responsibilities.\nClergy.\nWestern Christianity displayed a remarkable unity. This was the outcome of the Gregorian Reform that established papal supremacy over the Catholic Church, and achieved the legal separation of the Catholic clergy from laity. Clerical celibacy was reinforced through the prohibition of clerical marriage; ecclesiastical courts were granted exclusive jurisdiction over clerics, and also over matrimonial causes. Priests were ordained by bishops in accordance with the principle of apostolic succession\u2014a claim to the uninterrupted transmission of their consecrating power from Christ's Apostles through generations of bishops. Bishops, abbots, abbesses, and other prelates might possess remarkable wealth. Some of the ecclesiastic leaders also functioned as local secular princes, such as the prince-bishops in Kingdom of Germany and the English County Palatine of Durham, and the Grand Masters of the Teutonic Knights in their Baltic . Other prelates might be regents or the power behind the throne. Believers were expected to pay the tithe (one tenth of their income) to the Church. Pluralism\u2014the practice of holding multiple Church offices (or benefices)\u2014was not unusual. This led to non-residence, and the absent priests' deputies were often poorly educated and underpaid.\nThe clergy consisted of two major groups, the regular clergy and the secular clergy. Regular clerics lived under a monastic rule within the framework of a religious order; secular clerics were responsible for pastoral care. The Church was a hierarchical organisation. The pope was elected by high-ranking clergymen, the cardinals, and assisted by the professional staff of the Roman Curia. Secular clerics were organised into territorial units known as dioceses, each ruled by a bishop or archbishop. Each diocese was divided into parishes headed by parish priests who administered most sacraments to the faithful. These were sacred rites thought to transfer divine grace to humankind. The Council of Florence declared baptism, confirmation, marriage, extreme unction, penance, the Eucharist, and priestly ordination as the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. Women were not ordained priests but could live as nuns in convents after taking the three monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.\nPapacy.\nThe authority of the papacy was based on a well-organised system of communication and bureaucracy. The popes claimed the power of binding and loosing that Christ granted to Peter the Apostle (d. c. 66), and offered indulgence\u2014the reduction of the penance in both this world and the purgatory\u2014to sinners from an allegedly inexhaustible treasury of merit. The popes also granted dispensations to institutions or individuals, exempting them from certain provisions of canon law (or ecclesiastic law). \nFrom 1309 to 1417, the papacy was in turmoil: first a Pope was arrested by French troops and the papal court moved to Avignon, then various election controversies resulted in the Western Schism (1378-1417) leading to, at the end, three rival claimant Popes. At the Council of Constance, one of the three popes resigned, his two rivals were deposed, and the newly elected Martin V (r.\u20091417\u00a0\u2013\u00a01431) was acknowledged as the legitimate pope throughout Catholic Europe.\nThe Council of Constance declared that the popes owed obedience to the ecumenical councils. This idea known as conciliarism was condemned by Pope Pius II (r.\u20091458\u00a0\u2013\u00a01467) in a papal bull, but ecclesiastic and secular leaders often referred to it during their conflicts with the papacy. Relationships between the papacy and powerful Catholic rulers were regulated in special agreements known as concordats, limiting papal authority.\nAs princes of the Papal States in Italy, the popes were deeply involved in the power struggles of the peninsula. In this respect, the Renaissance popes were not dissimilar to secular rulers. Pope Alexander VI (r.\u20091492\u00a0\u2013\u00a01503) appointed his relatives, among them his own illegitimate sons to high offices. Pope Julius II (r.\u20091503\u00a0\u2013\u00a01513) took up arms to recover papal territories lost during his predecessors' reign. In the Age of Exploration, Pope Alexander VI claimed the right to distribute the newly discovered lands between Spain and Portugal, and his decision was confirmed in the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. The Spanish and Portuguese conquests and developing trade networks contributed to the global expansion of Catholicism. \nThe popes were generous patrons of art and architecture. Julius II ordered the demolition of the ruined 4th-century St. Peter's Basilica in preparation for the building of a new Renaissance basilica.\nPartial and failed institutional reforms.\nThe necessity of a church reform ('in head and limbs') was frequently discussed at the ecumenical councils from the late 13th century. However, most stakeholders\u2014popes, prelates and kings\u2014preferred the because they did not want to lose privileges or revenues. The system of papal dispensations was a principal obstacle to the implementation of reform measures, as the Holy See regularly granted immunities to those who did not want to execute them.\nWithin regular clergy, the so-called \"congregations of strict observance\" spread. These were monastic communities that returned to the strict interpretation of their order's rule. Reformist bishops tried to discipline their clergy through regular canonical visitations but their attempts mainly failed due to the resistance of autonomous institutions such as cathedral chapters. Neither could they exercise authority over non-resident clerics who had received their benefice from the papacy. On the eve of the Reformation, the Fifth Council of the Lateran was the last occasion when efforts to introduce a far-reaching reform from above could have achieved but it was dissolved in 1517 without making decisions on the issues that would soon come to the fore.\nHumanism.\nA new intellectual movement known as Humanism emerged in the Late Middle Ages. The Humanists' slogan ('back to the sources!') demonstrated their enthusiasm for Classical texts and textual criticism. The rise of the Ottoman Empire led to the mass immigration of Byzantine scholars to Western Europe, and many of them brought manuscripts previously unknown to western scholarship. This led to the rediscovery of the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato (347/348 BC). Plato's ideas about an ultimate reality lying beyond visible reality posed a serious challenge to scholastic theologians' rigorous definitions. Textual criticism called into question the reliability of some of the fundamental texts of papal privilege: humanist scholars, like Nicholas of Cusa (d. 1464) proved that one of the basic documents of papal authority, the allegedly 4th-century \"Donation of Constantine\" was a medieval forgery.\nAs the manufacturing of paper from rags and the printing machine with movable type were spreading in Europe, books could be bought at a reasonable price from the 15th century. Demand for religious literature was especially high. The German inventor Johannes Gutenberg (d. 1468) first published a two-volume printed version of the Vulgata in the early 1450s. High and Low German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Czech and Catalan translations of the Bible were published between 1466 and 1492; in France, the Bible's abridged French versions gained popularity. Laypeople who read the Bible could challenge their priests' sermons, as it happened already in 1515.\nCompleted by Jerome (d. 420), the Vulgate contained the Septuagint version of the Old Testament. The systematic study of Biblical manuscripts revealed that Jerome had sometimes misinterpreted his sources of translation. A series of Latin-Greek editions of the New Testament was completed by the Dutch humanist Erasmus (d. 1536). These new Latin translations challenged some scriptural proof texts for some Catholic dogmas.\nDissidents.\nAfter Arianism\u2014a Christological doctrine condemned as heresy at ecumenical councils\u2014disappeared in the late 7th century, no major disputes menaced the theological unity of the Western Church. Religious enthusiasts could organise their followers into nonconformist groups but they disbanded after their founder died. The Waldensians were a notable exception. Due to their efficient organisation, they survived not only the death of their founder Peter Waldo (d. c. 1205), but also a series of anti-heretic crusades. They rejected the clerics' monopoly of public ministry, and allowed all trained members of their community, men and women alike, to preach.\nThe Western Schism reinforced a general desire for church reform. The Oxford theologian John Wycliffe (d. 1384) was one of the most radical critics. He attacked pilgrimages, the veneration of saints, and the doctrine of transubstantiation. He regarded the Church as an exclusive community of those chosen by God to salvation, and argued that the state could seize the corrupt clerics' endowments. Known as Lollards, Wycliffe's followers rejected images, clerical celibacy and the by crusading lords. The Parliament of England passed a law against heretics, but Lollard communities survived the purges.\nWycliffe's theology had a marked impact on the Prague academic Jan Hus (d. 1415). He delivered popular sermons against the clerics' wealth and temporal powers, for which he was summoned to the Council of Constance. Although the German king Sigismund of Luxemburg (r.\u20091410\u00a0\u2013\u00a01437) had granted him safe conduct, Hus was sentenced to death for heresy and burned at the stake on 6 July 1415. His execution led to a nationwide religious movement in Bohemia, and the papacy called for a series of crusades against Hus's followers. The moderate Hussites, mainly Czech aristocrats and academics, were known as Utraquists for they taught that the Eucharist was to be administered ('in both kinds') to the laity. The most radical Hussites, called Taborites after their new town of T\u00e1bor, held their property in common. Their millenarianism shocked the Utraquists who destroyed them in the Battle of Lipany in 1434. By this time, the remaining Catholic communities in Bohemia were almost exclusively German-speaking. The lack of a Hussite church hierarchy enabled the Czech aristocrats and urban magistrates to assume control of the Hussite clergy from the 1470s. The radical Hussites set up their own Church known as the Union of Bohemian Brethren. They rejected the separation of clergy and laity, and condemned all forms of violence and oath taking.\nMarshall writes that the Lollards, Hussites and conciliarist theologians \"collectively give the lie to any suggestion that torpor and complacency were the hallmarks of religious life in the century before Martin Luther.\" Historians customarily refer to Wycliffe and Hus as \"Forerunners of the Reformation\". The two reformers' emphasis on the Bible is often regarded as an early example of one of the basic principles of the Reformation\u2014the idea ('by the Scriptures alone'), although prominent scholastic theologians were also convinced that Scripture, interpreted reasonably and in accord with the Church and the Fathers, contained all knowledge necessary for salvation.\nBeginnings.\nThe Reformation in Germanic countries was instigated by Martin Luther, however historians note that many of his ideas were pre-dated by Wycliff, Huss, Erasmus, Zwingli and others, both heretic and orthodox. Historian Peter Marshall has noted \"In recent decades, scholars have become increasingly acclimatized to the idea that the Reformation was in important respects a continuation and intensification of trends within later medieval Catholicism, rather than simply a wholesale rejection of it.\"\nLuther and the \"Ninety-five Theses\".\nPope Leo X (r.\u20091513\u00a0\u2013\u00a01521) decided to complete the construction of the new St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. As the sale of certificates of indulgences had been a well-established method of papal fund raising, he announced new indulgences in the papal bull in 1515. On the advice of the banker Jakob Fugger (d. 1525), he appointed the pluralist prelate Albert of Brandenburg (d. 1545) to supervise the sale campaign in Germany. The Dominican friar Johann Tetzel (d. 1519), a leading figure in the campaign, applied unusually aggressive marketing methods. A slogan attributed to him famously claimed that \"As soon as the coin into the box rings, a soul from purgatory to heaven springs\". Frederick the Wise, Prince-elector of Saxony (r.\u20091486\u00a0\u2013\u00a01525) forbade the campaign because the suspended the sale of previous indulgences, depriving him of revenues that he had spent on his collection of relics.\nThe campaign's vulgarity shocked many serious-minded believers, among them Martin Luther, a theology professor at the University of Wittenberg in Saxony. Born into a middle-class family, Luther entered an Augustinian monastery after a heavy thunderstorm dreadfully reminded him the risk of sudden death and eternal damnation, but his anxiety about his sinfulness did not abate. His studies on the works of the Late Roman theologian Augustine of Hippo (d. 430) convinced him that those whom God chose as his elect received a gift of faith independently of their acts. He first denounced the idea of justification through human efforts in his ('Disputation against Scholastic Theology') in September 1517.\nOn 31 October 1517, Luther addressed a letter to Albert of Brandenburg, stating that the clerics preaching the St. Peter's indulgences were deceiving the faithful, and attached his \"Ninety-five Theses\" to it. He questioned the efficacy of indulgences for the dead, although also stated \"If ... indulgences were preached according to the spirit and intention of the pope, all ... doubts would be readily resolved\". Archbishop Albert ordered the theologians at the University of Mainz to examine the document. Tetzel, and the theologians Konrad Wimpina (d. 1531) and Johann Eck (d. 1543) were the first to associate some of Luther's propositions with Hussitism. The case was soon forwarded to the Roman Curia for judgement. Pope Leo remained uninterested, and mentioned the case as \"a quarrel among friars\".\nNew theology.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nLuther on the Christian struggles toward God\nChristians should be exhorted to seek earnestly to follow Christ, their Head, through penalties, deaths, hells. And let them thus be more confident of entering heaven through many tribulations rather than through a false assurance of peace.\nMartin Luther, \"Ninety-five Theses\"\nAs the historian Lyndal Roper notes, the \"Reformation proceeded by a set of debates and arguments\". Luther presented his views in public at the observant Augustinians' assembly in Heidelberg on 26 April 1518. Here he explained his \"theology of the Cross\" about a loving God who had become frail to save fallen humanity, contrasting it with what he saw as the scholastic \"theology of glory\" that in his view celebrated erudition and human acts. It is uncertain when Luther's concept of justification by faith alone\u2014a central element of his theology\u2014crystallised. He would later attribute it to his \"tower experience\" (1519), when he comprehended that God could freely declare even sinners righteous while he was thinking about the words of Paul the Apostle (d. 64 or 65)\u2014\"\".\nUrged by Luther's opponents, Pope Leo appointed the jurist Girolamo Ghinucci (d. 1541) and the theologian Sylvester Mazzolini (d. 1527) to inspect Luther's teaching. Mazzolini argued that Luther had questioned papal authority by attacking the indulgences, while Luther concluded that only a fundamental reform could put an end to the abuse of indulgences. Pope Leo did not excommunicate Luther because Leo did not want to alienate Luther's patron Frederick the Wise. Instead, he appointed Cardinal Thomas Cajetan (d. 1534) to convince Luther to withdraw some of his theses. Cajetan met with Luther at Augsburg in October 1518. The historian Berndt Hamm says that the meeting was the \"historical point at which the opposition between the Reformation and Catholicism first emerged\", as Cajetan thought that believers accepting Luther's views of justification would no more obey clerical guidance.\nLuther first expressed his sympathy for Jan Hus at a disputation in Leipzig in June 1519. His case was reopened at the Roman Curia. Cajetan, Eck and other papal officials drafted the papal bull ('Arise, O Lord') which was published on 15 June 1520. It condemned Luther's forty-one theses, and offered a sixty-day-long grace period to him to recant. Luther's theology quickly developed. In a Latin treatise \"On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church\", he stated that only baptism and the Eucharist could be regarded as sacraments, and priests were not members of a privileged class but servants of the community (hence they became called ministers from the Latin word for servant). His German manifesto \"To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation\" associated the papacy with the Antichrist, and described the Holy See as \"the worst whorehouse of all whorehouses\" in reference to the funds flowing to the Roman Curia. It also challenged the Biblical justification of clerical celibacy. Luther's study \"On the Freedom of a Christian\" consolidated his thoughts about the believers' inner freedom with their obligation to care for their neighbours although he rejected the traditional teaching about good works. The study is a characteristic example of Luther's enthusiasm for paradoxes.\nThe papal nuncio Girolamo Aleandro (d. 1542) ordered the burning of Luther's books. In response, Luther and his followers burned the papal bull along with a copy of the \u2014the fundamental document of medieval ecclesiastic law\u2014at Wittenberg. The papal bull excommunicating Luther was published on 3 January 1521. The newly elected Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (r.\u20091519\u00a0\u2013\u00a01556) wanted to outlaw Luther at the Diet of Worms, but could not make the decision alone. The Holy Roman Empire was a confederation of autonomous states, and authority rested with the Imperial Diets where the Imperial Estates assembled. Frederick the Wise vetoed the imperial ban against Luther, and Luther was summoned to Worms to defend his case at the Diet in April 1521. Here he refused to recant stating that only arguments from the Bible could convince him that his works contained errors.\nAfter Luther and his supporters left the Diet, those who remained sanctioned the imperial ban, threatening Luther's supporters with imprisonment and confiscation of their property. To save Luther's life but also to hide his involvement, Frederick arranged Luther's abduction on 4 May. During his ten-month-long staged captivity at Frederick's castle of Wartburg, Luther translated the New Testament to High German. The historian Diarmaid MacCulloch describes the translation as an \"extraordinary achievement that has shaped the German language ever since\", adding that \"Luther's gift was for seizing the emotion with sudden, urgent phrases\". The translation would be published at the 1522 Leipzig Book Fair along with Luther's treatise \"On Monastic Vows\" that laid the theological foundations of the dissolution of monasteries. Luther also composed religious hymns in Wartburg. They would be first published in collections in 1524. During Luther's absence, his co-workers, primarily Philip Melanchthon (d. 1560) and Andreas Karlstadt (d. 1541) assumed the leadership of Reformation in Wittenberg. Melanchthon consolidated Luther's thoughts into a coherent theological work titled ('Common Places').\nSpread.\nRoper argues that \"the most important reason why Luther did not meet with Hus's fate was technology: the new medium of print\". Luther was publishing his views in short but pungent treatises that gained unexpected popularity: he was responsible for about one-fifth of all works printed in Germany in the first third of the 16th century. German printing presses were scattered in many urban centers which prevented their control by central authorities. Statistical analysis indicates a significant correlation between the presence of a printing press in a German city and the adoption of Reformation.\nReformation spread through the activities of enthusiastic preachers such as Johannes Oecolampadius (d. 1531) and Konrad K\u00fcrsner (d. 1556) in Basel, Sebastian Hofmeister (d. 1533) in Schaffhausen, and Matth\u00e4us Zell (d. 1548) and Martin Bucer (d. 1551) in Strasbourg. They were called \"Evangelicals\" due to their insistence on teaching in accordance with the Gospels (or ). Luther and many of his followers worked with the artist Lucas Cranach the Elder (d. 1553) who had a keen sense of visualising their message. He produced Luther's idealised portrait setting a template for further popular images printed on the covers of books. Cranach's woodcuts together with itinerant preachers' explanations helped the mainly illiterate people to understand Luther's teaching. The illustrated pamphlets were carried from place to place typically by peddlers and merchants. Laypeople started to discuss various aspects of religion in both private and public all over Germany.\nThe self-governing free imperial cities were the first centers of the Reformation. The Evangelical preachers emphasized that many of the well-established church practices had no precedent in the Bible. They offered the Eucharist to the laity in both kinds, and denied the clerics' monopolies, which resonated with popular anti-clericalism. It was not unusual that their supporters attacked clerics and church buildings. Violent iconoclasm was common.In some cities such as Strasbourg and Ulm, the urban magistrates supported the Reformation; in the cities of the Hanseatic League the affluent middle classes enforced changes in church life. Cities located closer to the most important ideological centers of the Reformation\u2014Wittenberg and Basel\u2014adopted its ideas more likely than other towns. This indicates the significance either of student networks, or of neighbours who had rejected Catholicism.\nThe sociologist Steven Pfaff underlines that \"ecclesiastical and liturgical reform was not simply a religious question ... since the sort of reforms demanded by Evangelicals could not be accommodated within existing institutions, prevailing customs, or established law\". After their triumph, the reformers expelled their leading opponents, dissolved the monasteries and convents, secured the urban magistrates' control of the appointment of priests, and established new civic institutions. Evangelical town councils usually prohibited begging but established a common chest for poverty relief by expropriating the property of dissolved ecclesiastic institutions. The funds were used for the daily support of orphans, old people and the sick, but also for low-interest loans to the impoverished to start a business. Luther was convinced that only educated people could effectively serve both God and the community. Under his auspices, public schools and libraries were opened in many towns offering education to more children than the traditional monastic and cathedral schools.\nResistance and oppression.\nResistance to Evangelical preaching was significant in Flanders, the Rhineland, Bavaria and Austria. Here the veneration of local saints was strong, and statistical analysis indicates that cities where indigenous saints' shrines served as centers of vivid communal cults less likely adopted Reformation. Likewise, cities with an episcopal see or monasteries more likely resisted Evangelical proselytism. \nLuther's ideas were rejected by most representatives of the previous generation of Humanists. Erasmus stated that Luther's \"unrestrained enthusiasm carries him beyond what is right\". Jacob van Hoogstraaten (d. 1527) compared Luther's theology of salvation \"as if Christ takes to himself the most foul bride and is unconcerned about her cleanliness\". Luther's works were burned in most European countries. Emperor Charles initiated the execution of the first Evangelical martyrs, the Augustinian monks Jan van Essen and Hendrik Vos. They were burned in Brussels on 1 July 1523. Charles was determined to protect the Catholic Church, but the Ottoman Turks' expansion towards Central Europe often thwarted him. The Spanish Inquisition prevented the spread of Evangelical literature in that country, and suppressed the spiritual movement of the ('Illuminists') who put a special emphasis on personal faith. Some Italian men of letters, such as the Venetian nobleman Gasparo Contarini (d. 1542) and the Augustinian canon Peter Martyr Vermigli (d. 1562) expressed ideas resembling Luther's theology of salvation but did not quickly break with Catholicism. They were part of a group known as . \nThe English king Henry VIII (r.\u20091509\u00a0\u2013\u00a01547) commissioned a team of theologians to defend the Catholic dogmas against Luther's attacks. Their treatise titled \"The Assertion of the Seven Sacraments\" was published under Henry's name, and the grateful Pope awarded him with the title Defender of the Faith. In Scotland, the first Evangelical preacher Patrick Hamilton (d. 1528) was burned for heresy. In France, the theologians of the Sorbonne stated that Luther \"vomited up a doctrine of pestilence\". Guillaume Bri\u00e7onnet (d. 1534), Bishop of Meaux, also condemned Luther but employed reform-minded clerics like Jacques Lef\u00e8vre d'\u00c9taples (d. c. 1536) and William Farel (d. 1565) to renew religious life in his diocese. They enjoyed the protection of Marguerite of Angoul\u00eame (d. 1549), the well-educated sister of the French king Francis I (r.\u20091515\u00a0\u2013\u00a01547). The Parlement of Paris only took actions against them after Francis was captured in the Battle of Pavia in 1525, forcing many of them into exile.\nCorrespondence between Luke of Prague (d. 1528), leader of the Bohemian Brethren, and Luther made it clear that their theologies were incompatible even if their views about justification were similar. In Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland, Luther's theology spread in the local German communities. King Louis of Bohemia and Hungary (r.\u20091516\u00a0\u2013\u00a01526) ordered the persecution of Evangelical preachers although his wife Mary of Austria (d. 1558) favoured the reformers. Sigismund I the Old, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania (r.\u20091506\u00a0\u2013\u00a01548) banned the import of Evangelical literature. Christian II, who ruled the Kalmar Union of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway (r.\u20091513\u00a0\u2013\u00a01523), was sympathetic towards the Reformation but his despotic methods led to revolts. He was replaced by his uncle Frederick I in Denmark and Norway (r.\u20091523\u00a0\u2013\u00a01533), and by a local aristocrat Gustav I Vasa in Sweden (r.\u20091523\u00a0\u2013\u00a01560).\nAlternatives.\nSaxon radicals and rebellious knights.\nAndreas Karlstadt accelerated the implementation of Reformation in Wittenberg. On Christmas Day 1521, he administered the Eucharist in common garment; the next day he announced his engagement to a fifteen-year-old noble girl Anna von Mochau. He proclaimed that images were examples of \"devilish deceit\" which led to the mass destruction of religious art. Enthusiasts began swarming to Wittenberg. The Zwickau prophets, who had been incited by the radical preacher Thomas M\u00fcntzer (d. 1525), claimed that they had received revelations from God. They rejected transubstantiation and attacked infant baptism. Luther defended art as a proof of the beauty of the Creation, maintained that Christ's Body and Blood were physically present in the Eucharist, and regarded infant baptism as a sign of membership in the Christian community. To put an end to the anarchy, Frederick the Wise released Luther in March 1522. Luther achieved the Zwickau prophets' removal from Wittenberg, calling them fanatics. Karlstadt voluntarily left Wittenberg for Orlam\u00fcnde where the local congregation elected him its minister. Luther visited most parishes in the region to prevent radical reforms, but he was often received by verbal or physical abuses. When he wanted to dismiss Karlstadt, the parishioners referred to his own words about the congregations' right to freely elect their ministers, and Karlstadt called him a \"perverter of the Scriptures\". Karlstadt was expelled from Electoral Saxony without a trial on Luther's initiative.\nLuther condemned violence but some of his followers took up arms. Franz von Sickingen (d. 1523), an imperial knight from the Rhineland, formed an alliance with his peers against Richard von Greiffenklau, Archbishop-elector of Trier (r.\u20091511\u00a0\u2013\u00a01531), allegedly to lead the Archbishop's subjects \"to evangelical, light laws and Christian freedom\". Sickingen had demanded the restitution of monastic property to the grantors' descendants, stating that the secularisation of church property would also improve the poor peasants' situation. Sickingen and his associates attacked the archbishopric but failed at the siege of Trier. Sickingen was mortally wounded while defending his Nanstein Castle against the Archbishop's troops. Luther denounced Sickingen's violent acts. According to his \"theory of two kingdoms\", true Christians had to submit themselves to princely authority.\nZwingli.\nThe Swiss Humanist priest Huldrych Zwingli would claim that he \"began to preach the Gospel of Christ in 1516 long before anyone in our region had ever heard of Luther\". He came to prominence when attended a meal of sausages in Z\u00fcrich during Lent 1522, breaching the rules of fasting. He held disputations with the urban magistrates' authorization to discuss changes in church life, and always introduced them with the magistrates' support. In 1524, all images were removed from the churches, and fasting and clerical celibacy were abolished. Two years later, a German communion service replaced the Latin liturgy of the Mass, and the Eucharist (or Lord's Supper) was administered on a plain wooden table instead of an embellished altar. Two new institutions were organised in Z\u00fcrich: the (a public school for Biblical studies), and the Marriage and Morals Court (a legal court and moral police consisting of two laymen and two clerics). Both would be copied in other towns. Zwingli's interpretation of the Eucharist differed from both Catholic theology and Luther's teaching. He denied Christ's presence in the sacramental bread and wine, and regarded the Eucharist as a commemorative ceremony in honor of the crucified Jesus. The disagreement caused a bitter pamphlet war between Luther and Zwingli. They both rejected intermediary Eucharistic formulas coined by Bucer.\nSwiss Brethren.\nZwingli's cautious \"Magisterial Reformation\" outraged the more radical reformers, among them Conrad Grebel (d. 1526), a Z\u00fcrich patrician's son who had fallen out with his family for marrying a low born girl. The radicals summarized their theology in a letter to M\u00fcntzer in 1524. They identified the Church as an exclusive community of the righteous, and demanded its liberation from the state. They deplored all religious practices that had no Biblical foundations, and endorsed believers' (or adult) baptism. \nIn January 1525, a former Catholic priest George Blaurock (d. 1529) asked Grebel to rebaptize him, and after his request was granted they rebaptized fifteen other people. For this practice, they were called Anabaptists ('rebaptizers'). As a featuring element of Donatism and other heretic movements, rebaptism had been a capital offence since the Late Roman period. After the magistrates had some radicals imprisoned, Blaurock called Zwingli the Antichrist. The town council enacted a law that threatened rebaptizers with capital punishment, and the Anabaptist Felix Manz (d. 1527) was condemned to death and drowned in the Limmat River. He was the first victim of religious persecution by reformist authorities. The purge convinced many Anabaptists that they were the true heirs to early Christians who had suffered martyrdom for their faith. The most radicals took inspiration from the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation for apocalyptic prophesies. Some of them burnt the Bible reciting St Paul's words, \"the letter kills\". In St. Gallen, Anabaptist women cut their hair short to avoid arousing sexual passion, while a housemaid Frena Bumenin proclaimed herself the New Messiah before announcing that she would give birth to the Antichrist.\nAccording to Dr Kenneth R. Davis, \"the Anabaptists can best be understood as, apart from their own creativity, a radicalization and Protestantization not of the Magisterial Reformation but of the lay-oriented, ascetic reformation of which Erasmus is the principle mediator.\"\nPeasants' War.\nMacCulloch says that the Reformation \"injected an extra element of instability\" into the relationship between the peasants and their lords, as it raised \"new excitement and bitterness against established authority\". Public demonstrations in the Black Forest area indicated a general discontent among the southern German peasantry in May 1524. The Anabaptist preacher Balthasar Hubmaier (d. 1528) was one of the peasant leaders, but most participants never went beyond traditional anti-clericalism. In early 1525, the movement spread towards Upper Swabia. The radical preacher Cristopher Schappler and the pamphleteer Sebastian Lotzer summarized the Swabian peasants' demand in a manifesto known as \"Twelve Articles\". The peasants wanted to control their ministers' election and to supervise the use of church revenues, but also demanded the abolition of the tithe on meat. They reserved the right to present further demands against non-Biblical seigneurial practices but promised to abandon any of their demands that contradicted the Bible, and appointed fourteen \"arbitrators\" to clarify divine law on the relationship between peasants and landlords. The arbitrators approached Luther, Zwingli, Melanchthon and other leaders of the Reformation for advice but none of them answered. Luther wrote a treatise, equally blaming the landlords for the oppression of the peasantry and the rebels for their arbitrary acts.\nGeorg Truchsess von Waldburg (d. 1531), commander of the army of the aristocratic Swabian League, achieved the dissolution of the peasant armies either by force or through negotiations. By this time the peasant movements reached Franconia and Th\u00fcringia. The Franconian peasants formed alliances with artisans and petty nobles such as Florian Geyer (d. 1525) against the patricians and the Prince-Bishopric of W\u00fcrzburg but Truchsess forced them into submission. In Th\u00fcringia, M\u00fcntzer convinced 300 radicals that they were invincible but they were annihilated at Frankenhausen by Philip the Magnanimous, Landgrave of Hesse (r.\u20091509\u00a0\u2013\u00a01567) and George, Duke of Saxony (r.\u20091500\u00a0\u2013\u00a01539). M\u00fcntzer who had hidden in an attic before the battle was discovered and executed. News of atrocities by peasant bands and meetings with disrespectful peasants during a preaching tour outraged Luther while he was writing his treatise \"Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants\". In it, he urged the German princes to \"smite, slay, and slab\" the rebels. Moderate observers felt aggrieved at his cruel words. They regarded as an especially tasteless act that Luther married Katharina von Bora (d. 1552), a former nun while the punitive actions against the peasantry were still in process. Further peasant movements began in other regions in Central Europe but they were pacified through concessions or suppressed by force before the end of 1525.\nConsolidation.\nPrincely Reformation in Germany.\nThe Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach (r.\u20091510\u00a0\u2013\u00a01525) was the first prince to formally abandon Catholicism. The Teutonic Order held Royal Prussia in fief of Poland. After defeats in a war against Poland and Lithuania demoralised the Knights, Albert transformed the region into the hereditary Duchy of Prussia in April 1525. As the secularisation of Prussia represented an open rebellion against Catholicism, it was followed by the establishment of the first Evangelical state church. In August, Albert's brothers, Casimir (r.\u20091515\u00a0\u2013\u00a01527) and George (r.\u20091536\u00a0\u2013\u00a01543) instructed the priests in Brandenburg-Kulmbach and Brandenburg-Ansbach to pray the doctrine of justification by faith alone. The Reformation was officially introduced in Electoral Saxony under John the Constant (r.\u20091525\u00a0\u2013\u00a01532) on Christmas Day 1525. Electoral Saxony's conversion facilitated the adoption of the Reformation in smaller German states, such as Mansfeld and Hessen. Philip of Hessen founded the first Evangelical university at his capital Marburg in 1527.\nAt the Diet of Speyer in 1526, the German princes agreed that they would \"live, govern, and act in such a way as everyone trusted to justify before God and the Imperial Majesty\". In practice, they sanctioned the principle ('whose realm, their religion'), acknowledging the princes' right to determine their subjects' religious affiliation. Fully occupied with the War of the League of Cognac against France and its Italian allies, Emperor Charles had appointed his brother Ferdinand I, Archduke of Austria (r.\u20091521\u00a0\u2013\u00a01564) to represent him in Germany. They both opposed the compromise, but Ferdinand was brought into succession struggles in Bohemia and Hungary after their brother-in-law King Louis died in the Battle of Moh\u00e1cs. In 1527, Charles's mutinous troops sacked Rome and took Pope Clement VII (r.\u20091523\u00a0\u2013\u00a01534) under custody. Luther stated that \"Christ reigns in such a way that the emperor who persecutes Luther for the pope is forced to destroy the pope for Luther\".\nAfter his experiences with radical communities, Luther no more wrote of the congregations' right to elect their ministers (or pastors). Instead, he expected that princes acting as \"emergency bishops\" would prevent the disintegration of the Church. Close cooperation between clerics and princely officials at church visitations paved the way for the establishment of the new church system. In Electoral Saxony, princely decrees enacted the Evangelical ideas. Liturgy was simplified, the church courts' jurisdiction over secular cases was abolished, and state authorities took control of church property. The Evangelical equivalent to bishop was created with the appointment of a former Catholic priest Johannes Bugenhagen (d. 1558) as superintendent in 1533. The church visitations convinced Luther that the villagers' knowledge of the Christian faith was imperfect. To deal with the situation, he completed two cathecisms\u2014the \"Large Catechism\" for the education of priests, and the \"Small Catechism\" for children. Records from Brandenburg-Ansbach indicates that Evangelical pastors often attacked traditional communal activities such as church fairs and spinning bees for debauchery.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nEvangelical Imperial Estates on their protestation at the Diet of Speyer\n\"In matters concerning God's honor and our soul's salvation everyone must stand before God and answer by himself, nobody can excuse himself in that place by the actions of decisions of others whether they be a minority or majority.\"\nFive imperial princes and representatives of fourteen imperial cities, \"Protestation at Speyer\" (1529)\nTaking advantage of Emperor Charles' victories in Italy, Ferdinand I achieved the reinforcement of the imperial ban against Luther at the Diet of Speyer in 1529. In response, five imperial princes and fourteen imperial cities presented a formal . They were mocked as \"Protestants\", and this appellation would be quickly applied to all followers of the new theologies. To promote Protestant unity, Philip the Magnanimous organised a colloquy (or theological debate) between Luther, Melanchton, Zwingli and Oecolampadius at Marburg early in October 1529, but they could not coin a common formula on the Eucharist. During the discussion, Luther remarked that \"Our spirit has nothing in common with your spirit\", expressing the rift between the two mainstream versions of the Reformation. Zwingli's followers started to call themselves the \"Reformed\", as they regarded themselves as the true reformers.\nStalemate in Switzerland.\nIn 1526, the villagers of the autonomous Graub\u00fcnden region in Switzerland agreed that each village could freely choose between Protestantism and Catholicism, setting a precedent for the coexistence of the two denominations in the same jurisdiction. Religious affiliation in the Mandated Territories (lands jointly administered by the Swiss cantons) became the subject of much controversy between Protestant and Catholic cantons. The Protestant cantons concluded a military alliance early in 1529, the Catholic cantons in April. After a bloodless armed conflict, the Mandated communities were granted the right to choose between the two religions by a majority vote of the male citizens. Zwingli began an intensive proselityzing campaign which led to the conversion of most Mandated communities to Protestantism. He set up a council of clergymen and lay delegates for church administration, thus creating the forerunners of presbyteries. Z\u00fcrich imposed an economic blockade on the Catholic cantons but the Catholics routed Z\u00fcrich's army in 1531. The Catholics' victory stopped the Protestant expansion in Switzerland. \nZwingli was killed in the battlefield, and succeeded by a former monk Heinrich Bullinger (d. 1575) in Z\u00fcrich. Bullinger developed Zwingli's Eucharistic formula in an attempt to reach a compromise with Luther, saying that the faithful made spiritual contact with God during the commemorative ceremony.\n\"Schleitheim Articles\".\nThe historian Carter Lindberg states that the \"Peasants' War was a formative experience for many leaders of Anabaptism\". Hans Hut (d. 1527) continued M\u00fcntzer's apocalyticism but others rejected all forms of violence. \nThe pacifist Michael Sattler (d. 1527) took the chair at an Anabaptist assembly at Schleitheim in February 1527. Here the participants adopted an anti-militarist program now known as the \"Schleitheim Articles\". The document ordered the believers' separation from the evil world, and prohibited oath-taking, bearing of arms and holding of civic offices. Facing Ottoman expansionism, the Austrian authorities considered this pacifism as a direct threat to their country's defense. Sattler was quickly captured and executed. During his trial, he stated that \"If the Turks should come, we ought not to resist them. For Thou shalt not kill.\"\nTotal segregation was alien to H\u00fcbmaier who tried to achieve a peaceful coexistence with non-Anabaptists. Expelled from Z\u00fcrich, he settled in the Moravian domains of Count Leonhard von Liechtenstein at Nikolsburg (now Mikulov, Czech Republic). He baptised infants on the parents' request for which hard-line Anabaptists regarded him as an evil compromiser. He was sentenced to death and burned at the stake for heresy on Ferdinand I's orders. His execution inaugurated a period of intensive purge against rebaptisers. His followers relocated to Austerlitz (now Slavkov u Brna, Czech Republic) where refugees from Tyrol joined them. After the Tyrolian Jakob Hutter (d. 1536) assumed the leadership of the community, they began to held their goods in common. The Bohemian Brethren symphatised with the Hutterites which facilitated their survival in Moravia.\nConfessions.\nBack in Germany in January 1530, Charles V asked the Protestants to summarize their theology at the following Diet in Augsburg. As the imperial ban prevented Luther from attending the Diet, Melanchthon completed the task. Melanchthon sharply condemned Anabaptist ideas and adopted a reconciliatory tone towards Catholicism but did not fail to emphasize the most featuring elements of Evangelical theology, such as justification by faith alone. The twenty-eight articles of the \"Augsburg Confession\" were presented at the Diet on 25 June. Four south German Protestant cities\u2014Strasbourg, Constance, Lindau, and Memmingen\u2014adopted a separate confessional document, the \"Tetrapolitan Confession\" because they were influenced by Zwingli's Eucharistic theology. On Charles's request, Eck and other Catholic theologians completed a response to the \"Augsburg Confession\", called ('refutation'). Charles ordered the Evangelical theologians to admit that their argumentation had been completely refuted. Instead, Melanchthon wrote a detailed explanation for the Evangelical articles of faith, known as the \"Apology of the Augsburg Confession\".\nCharles wanted to attack the Protestant princes and cities but the Catholic princes did not support him fearing that his victory would strengthen his power. The Diet passed a law prohibiting further religious innovations and ordering the Protestants to return to Catholicism until 15 April 1531. Luther had previously questioned the princes' right to resist imperial power, but by then he had concluded that a defensive war for religious purposes could be regarded as a just war. The Schmalkaldic League\u2014the Protestant Imperial Estates' defensive alliance\u2014was signed by five princes and fourteen cities on 27 February 1531. As a new Ottoman invasion prevented the Habsburgs from wage war against the Protestants, a peace treaty was signed at Nuremberg in July 1532.\nRoyal Reformation in Scandinavia.\nRelationship between the papacy and the Scandinavian kingdoms was tense, as both Frederick I of Denmark and Norway, and Gustav I of Sweden appointed their own candidates to vacant episcopal sees. In 1526, the Danish Parliament prohibited the bishops to seek confirmation from the Holy See, and declared all fees payable for their confirmation as royal revenue. The former Hospitaller knight Hans Tausen (d. 1561) delivered Evangelical sermons in Viborg under royal protection from 1526. Four years later, the Parliament rejected the Catholic prelates' demand to condemn Evangelical preaching. After Frederick's death the bishops and conservative aristocrats prevented the election of his openly Protestant son Christian as his successor. Christopher, Count of Oldenburg (r.\u20091526\u00a0\u2013\u00a01566) took up arms on the deposed Christian II's behalf, but the war known as Count's Feud ended with the victory of Frederick's son who ordered the arrest of the Catholic bishops. Christian III (r.\u20091534\u00a0\u2013\u00a01559) was crowned king by Bugenhagen. Bugenhagen also ordained seven superintendents to lead the Church of Denmark. Christian declared the \"Augsburg Confession\" as the authoritative articles of faith in 1538, but pilgrimages to the most popular shrines continued, and the Eucharistic liturgy kept Catholic elements, such as kneeling.\nIn the Danish dependencies of Norway and Iceland, the Reformation required vigorous governmental interventions. The last Catholic Archbishop of Nidaros in Norway Olav Engelbrektsson (d. 1538) was a staunch opponent of the changes, but was succeeded by the Evangelical Gjeble Pederss\u00f8n (d. 1557) as superintendent. In Iceland, J\u00f3n Arason, Bishop of H\u00f3lar (d. 1550)\u2014the last Nordic Catholic bishop\u2014took up arms to prevent the Reformation, but he was captured and executed by representatives of royal authority.\nGustav I of Sweden appointed the Evangelical preacher Laurentius Andreae (d. 1552) as his chancellor, and the Evangelical scholar Olaus Petri (d. 1552) as a minister at Stockholm. Petri translated the Gospels to Swedish. On his advice, Gustav dissolved a Catholic printing house that published popular anti-Protestant literature under the auspices of Hans Brask (d. 1538), Bishop of Link\u00f6ping. Gustav also expelled the radical German pastor Melchior Hoffman (d. c. 1543) from Sweden for iconoclastic propaganda. The royal treasury needed extra funds to repay the loans borrowed from the Hanseatic League to finance the war against Christian II. Gustav persuaded the legislative assembly to secularise church property by threatening the delegates with his abdication. The peasantry remained very cautious about changes in church life. This together with heavy taxation led to uprisings. To appease the rebels, Gustav declared that he had not sanctioned the changes, and dismissed Andreae in 1531, Petri in 1533. He continued the transformation of church life in Sweden and Finland after the Reformation was fully introduced in Denmark. He was assisted by two Evangelical theologians Georg Norman (d. 1552/1553) and Mikael Agricola (d. 1557). In 1539, Norman was appointed as supertindent of the Church of Sweden, and Gustav took the title of \"Supreme Defender of the Church\".\nCatholic reform.\nBeginnings.\nThe religious upheaval in Germany and the sack of Rome convinced many Catholics that their Church was in need of a profound reform. Pope Paul III (r.\u20091534\u00a0\u2013\u00a01549) appointed prominent representatives of the Catholic reform movement as cardinals, among them Contarini, Reginald Pole (d. 1558), and Giovanni Pietro Caraffa (d. 1559). They completed a report condemning the corruption of church administration and the waste of church revenues. Contarini, Pole and other were ready to make concessions to the Protestants but their liberalism shocked Caraffa and other conservative prelates.\nNegotiations between moderate Catholic and Protestant theologians were not unusual. In 1541, Bucer and the Catholic theologian Johann Gropper (d. 1559) drafted a compromise formula on justification. The draft was discussed along with other issues at a colloquy during the Diet of Regensburg but no compromise was reached, not least due to opposition by both Luther and the Holy See. Contarini, who represented the papacy at the Diet, died in 1541; many such as Vermigli fled from Italy to avoid persecution. Hermann of Wied, Archbishop-elector of Cologne (r.\u20091515\u00a0\u2013\u00a01546) completed a reform program with Bucer's assistance, criticising prayers to the saints and traditional Eucharistic theology, and proposing sermons about justification by faith. The canons of the Cologne Cathedral requested Gropper to write a critical response to it, and achieved Hermann's deposal by the Roman Curia.\nNew Orders.\nThe spread of new monastic orders was an important element of the Catholic reform movement. Most new orders placed great value on pastoral care. Among them, the Society of Jesus (or Jesuits) became the most influential. Its founder Ignatius of Loyola (d. 1556) was born to a Basque noble family. He chose a military career but abandoned it after being wounded during a siege. He started to write a devotional guide, the \"Spiritual Exercises\", during his ascetic retreat at a cave. His mysticism arouse the Spanish Inquisition's suspicion but the supported him. Paul III sanctioned the establishment of the Jesuits on Contarini's influence in 1540. The new order quickly developed: when Loyola died, the Society had about 1,000 members; in less than a decade, it numbered around 3,500. The maintenance of a well organised schooling system was the Jesuits' most prominent feature. Their Roman collegium prepared future priests to discuss and reject Protestant theologies primarily in Germany, Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary.\nCouncil of Trent.\nPaul III decided to convoke the nineteenth ecumenical council to handle the crisis caused by the Reformation. The Council of Trent met in a series of sessions from December 1545 to 1548, 1521 to 1522, and 1562 to 1563. The topics dealt with included the Creed, the Sacraments including transubstantiation and ordination, justification, and improvement in the quality of priests by diocesan seminaries and annual canonical visitations. The council reaffirmed that apostolic tradition was as authentic a source of faith as the Bible, and emphasized the importance of good works in salvation, rejecting two important elements of Luther's theology. Before being closed in December 1563, the Council mandate the papacy to revise liturgical books and complete a new catechism. Carlo Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan (d. 1582) adopted a more practical approach. He completed a handbook covering everyday details of church life, including the delivery of sermons, arrangement of church interiors, and hearing confessions. After the council, papal authority was reinforced through the establishment of central offices known as congregations. One of them became responsible for the list of forbidden literature. All church officials and university teachers were required to take a Tridentine confessional oath that included an oath of \"true obedience\" to the papacy.\nLindberg suggests that (following Trent) the \"spirituality of Catholic reform was the ascetic, subjective, and personal piety\", as expressed in public processions, the \"perpetual\" adoration of the Eucharist, and the reaffirmed veneration of Mary the Virgin and the saints.\nNew waves.\nEnglish reformation under Henry VIII.\nIn England, reformist clerics such as Thomas Bilney (d. 1531) and Robert Barnes (d. 1540) spread Luther's theology among Cambridge and Oxford scholars and students. The young priest William Tyndale (d. 1536) translated the New Testament to English using Erasmus's Latin-Greek edition. By around 1535, more than 15,000 copies of his translation had been distributed in secret. Tyndale's biographer David Daniell (d. 2016) writes that the translation \"gave the English language a plain prose style of the very greatest importance\", and his \"influence has been greater than any other writer in English\".\nThe Lord Chancellor Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (d. 1530) had strong links to the Roman Curia, he was unable to achieve the annulment of the marriage of Henry VIII and the middle-aged Catherine of Aragon (d. 1536). They had needed a papal dispensation to marry because Catherine was the widow of Henry's brother Arthur, Prince of Wales (d. 1502). As she had not produced a male heir, Henry became convinced that their incestuous marriage drew the wrath of God.\nHenry charged a group of scholars including Thomas Cranmer (d. 1556) with collecting arguments in favour of the annulment. They concluded that the English kings had always had authority over the clergy, and the Book of Leviticus forbade marriage between a man and his brother's widow in all circumstances. In 1530, the Parliament limited the jurisdiction of church courts. Wolsey had meanwhile lost Henry's favour and died, but More tried to convince Henry to abandon his plan about the annulment of his marriage. In contrast, Cranmer and Henry's new chief advisor Thomas Cromwell (d. 1540) argued that the marriage could be annulled without papal interference. Henry who had fallen in love with Catherine's lady-in-waiting Anne Boleyn (d. 1536) decided to marry her even if the marriage could lead to a total break with the papacy. During a visit in Germany, Cranmer married but kept his marriage in secret. On his return to England, Henry appointed him as the new Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Holy See confirmed the appointment.\nThe links between the English Church and the papacy were severed by Acts of Parliament. In April 1533, the Act of Appeals decreed that only English courts had jurisdiction in cases of last wills, marriages and grants to the Church, emphasizing that \"this realm of England is an Empire\". A special church court annulled the marriage of Henry and Catherine, and declared their only daughter Mary (d. 1558) illegitimate in May 1533. Pope Clement VII did not sanction the judgement and excommunicated Henry. Ignoring the papal ban, Henry married Anne, and she gave birth to a daughter Elizabeth (d. 1603). Anne was a staunch supporter of the Reformation, and mainly her nominees were appointed to the vacant bishoprics between 1532 and 1536. In 1534, the Act of Supremacy declared the king the \"only supreme head of the Church of England\". Many of those who refused to swear a special oath of loyalty to the king\u201465 from about 400 defendants\u2014were executed. More and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester (d. 1535) were among the most prominent victims. Cromwell gradually convinced Henry that a \"purification\" of church life was needed. The number of feast days was reduced by about 75 per cent, pilgrimages were forbidden, all monasteries were dissolved and their property was seized by the Crown.\nThe Parliament of Ireland passed similar acts but they could only be fully implemented in the lands under direct English rule. Resistance against the Reformation was vigorous. In 1534, the powerful Lord Thomas FitzGerald (d. 1537) staged a revolt. Although it was crushed, thereafter Henry's government did not introduce drastic changes in the Church of Ireland. In England, the dissolution of monasteries caused a popular revolt known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. The \"pilgrims\" demanded the dismissal of \"heretic\" royal advisors but they were overcame by royalist forces. The principal articles of faith of the Church of England were summarized in the \"Six Articles\" in 1539. It reaffirmed several elements of traditional theology, such as transubstantiation and clerical celibacy.\nAs Anne Boleyn did not give birth to a son, she lost Henry's favour. She was executed for adultery, and Elizabeth was declared a bastard. Henry's only son Edward (d. 1553) was born to Henry's third wife Jane Seymour (d. 1537). In 1543, an Act of Parliament returned Mary and Elizabeth to the line of the succession behind Edward. Henry attacked Scotland to enforce the marriage of Edward and the infant Mary, Queen of Scots (r.\u20091542\u00a0\u2013\u00a01567) but her mother Mary of Guise (d. 1560) reinforced Scotland's traditional alliance with France. The priest George Wishart (d. 1546) was the first to preach Zwinglian theology in Scotland. After he was burned for heresy, his followers, among them John Knox (d. 1572), assassinated Cardinal David Beaton, Archbishop of St Andrews (d. 1546), but French troops crushed their revolt.\nM\u00fcnster.\nHaving been banished from Sweden, Hoffman was wandering in southern Germany and the Low Countries. He turned Anabaptist but suspended adult baptism to avoid persecution. He denied that Christ had become flesh, and preached that 144,000 elect were to gather in Strasbourg to witness Christ's return in 1533. His followers known as Melchiorites swarmed into the city, presenting an enormous challenge for its charity provisions. Hoffman also came to Strasbourg, but the authorities arrested him. After the deadline for Christ's return passed uneventfully, many disappointed Melchiorites accepted the leadership of a charismatic Dutch baker Jan Matthijszoon (d. 1534). He blamed Hoffman for the suspension of adult baptism, and proclaimed the city of M\u00fcnster as the New Jerusalem. Although M\u00fcnster was an episcopal see, the town council had installed a Protestant pastor Bernhard Rothmann (d. c. 1535) in clear defiance to the new prince-bishop Franz von Waldeck (r.\u20091532\u00a0\u2013\u00a01553). Those who expected a radical social transformation from the Reformation flocked to M\u00fcnster. The radicals assumed full control of the town in February 1534.\nBishop Franz and his allies, among them Philip of Hessen, attacked M\u00fcnster but could not capture it. Under Matthijszoon's rule, private property and the use of money was outlawed in the town. Believing that God would protect him, Matthijszoon made a sortie against the enemy, but he was killed. Another charismatic Dutchman, John of Leiden (d. 1536)\u2014a former tailor\u2014succeeded him. Leiden announced that he was receiving revelations from God, and proclaimed himself \"king of righteousness\" and \"the ruler of the new Zion\". Church and state were united, and all sinners were executed. Leiden legalized polygyny, and ordered all women who were twelve or older to marry. The protracted siege demoralized the defenders, and M\u00fcnster fell through treason on 25 June 1535. After the fall of M\u00fcnster, most Anabaptist groups adopted a pacifist approach under the leadership of a former priest Menno Simons (d. 1561). He associated the Anabaptist communities with the New Jerusalem. His followers would be known as Mennonites. Nearly all Anabaptist communities were destroyed in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, but moderate Anabaptist groups survived in East Frisia, and were mainly tolerated in England.\nCalvin and the \"Institutes of the Christian Religion\".\nThe future reformer John Calvin (d. 1564) was destined to a church career by his father, a lay administrator of the Bishopric of Noyon in France. He studied theology at the Sorbonne, and law at Orl\u00e9ans and Bourges. He read treatises by Lef\u00e8vre and Lef\u00e8vre's disciples at the newly established , and abandoned Catholicism under the influence of his Protestant friends, particularly the physician Nicolas Cop (d. 1540). The persecution of French Protestants intensified after the so-called Affair of the Placards. In October 1534, placards (or posters) attacking the Mass were placed at many places, including the door to the royal bedchamber in Ch\u00e2teau d'Amboise. In retaliation, twenty-four Protestants were executed, and many intellectuals had to leave France.\nCalvin was one of the religious refugees. He settled in Basel and completed the first version of his principal theological treatise, the \"Institutes of the Christian Religion\" in 1536. He would be rewriting and expanding it several times until 1559. As the historian Carlos Eire writes, \"Calvin's text was blessed with a lawyer's penchant for precision, a humanist's love for poetic expression and rhetorical flourishes, and a theologian's respect for paradox\". With Eire's words, Calvin \"revived the jealous God of the Old Testament\". He warned King Francis that the persecution of the faithful would incur the wrath of God upon him but sharply distanced moderate Protestants from Anabaptists. Already the first edition of the \"Institutes\" contained references to two distinguishing elements of Calvin's theology, both traceable back to Augustine: his conviction that the original sin had completely corrupted human nature, and his strong belief in \"double predestination\". In his view, only strict social and ecclesiastic control could prevent sins and crimes, and God did not only decide who were saved but also those who were destined to damnation.\nIn 1536, Farel convinced Calvin to settle in Geneva. Their attempts to implement radical reforms in discipline brought them into conflicts with those who feared that the new measures would lead to clerical despotism. After they refused to acknowledge the urban magistrates' claim to intervene in the process of excommunication, they were banished from the town. Calvin moved to Strasbourg where Bucer made a profound impact on him. Under Bucer's influence, Calvin adopted an intermediate position on the Eucharist between Luther and Zwingli, denying Christ's presence in it but acknowledging that the rite included a real spiritual communion with Christ.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nCalvin on the \"double pedestrination\"\nNo one who wishes to be thought religious dares simply deny predestination, by which God adopts some to hope of life, and sentences others to eternal death...For all are not created in an equal condition; rather eternal life is fore-ordained for some, eternal damnation for others.\nJohn Calvin, \"Institutes of the Christian Religion\" (1559)\nAfter Calvin and Farel left Geneva, no pastors were able to assume the leadership of the local Protestant community. Fearing of a Catholic restoration, the urban magistrates convinced Calvin to come back to Geneva in 1541. Months after his return, the town council enacted \"The Ecclesiastical Ordinances\", a detailed regulation summarizing Calvin's proposals for church administration. The \"Ordinances\" established four church offices. The pastors were responsible for pastoral care and discipline; the doctors instructed believers in the faith; the elders (or presbyters) were authorized to \"watch over the life of each person\" and to report those who lived a \"disorderly\" life to the pastors; and deacons were appointed to administer the town's charity. All townspeople were obliged to regularly attend church services. Calvin established a special court called the consistory to hear cases of moral lapse such as blasphemy, adultery, disrespect to authorities, gossiping, witchcraft and participation in rites considered superstitious by church authorities. The consistory was composed of the pastors, the elders, and an urban magistrate, and the townspeople were encouraged to report sinful acts to it. First-time offenders mainly received lenient sentences such as fines, but repeat offenders were banished from the town or executed. Resistance against the \"Ordinances\" was significant. Many continued visit shrines and pray to saints, while many patricians insisted on liberal traditional customs for which Calvin called them \"Libertines\".\nReformation in Britain.\nHenry VIII died on 27 January 1547. His nine-year-old son Edward VI (r.\u20091547\u00a0\u2013\u00a01553) succeeded him, and Edward's maternal uncle Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset (d. 1552) assumed power as Lord Protector. Somerset halted the persecution of religious dissidents, making England a safe haven for religious refugees from all over Europe. They established their own congregations, served by prominent pastors, such as the Polish Jan \u0141aski (d. 1560) and the Spanish Casiodoro de Reina (d. 1594). Most of them adhered to Reformed theology. Cranmer introduced further religious reforms: images were removed from the churches, the doctrine of purgatory was rejected, and all endowments for prayers for the dead (or chantries) were confiscated. With the introduction of Cranmer's \"Book of Common Prayer\", the Mass was replaced by a vernacular liturgy.\nMarshall notes, that it is \"safe to say that the greater part of the population disliked what was taking place\". The liturgical changes caused popular revolts in Devon and Cornwall and other places but they were quickly suppressed, just like the riot against the dissolution of chantries in East Yorkshire. Even in Norfolk, where the peasants adopted a Protestant rhetoric, they assembled under the banners of their parish saints. Somerset's opponents take advantage of the unrest to get rid of him. He was replaced by John Dudley (d. 1553) who was made Duke of Northumberland. Cranmer continued the liturgical reforms, and the new version of the \"Book of Common Prayer\" rejected the dogma of transubstantiation. He completed the \"Forty-two Articles\", a new confessional document combining elements of Reformed and Evangelical theologies.\nEdward died of tuberculosis on 6 July 1553. He had designated his Protestant relative Jane Grey (d. 1554) as his heir to prevent the succession of his Catholic sister Mary, but most English remained loyal to the Tudor dynasty. Initially, Mary I (r.\u20091553\u00a0\u2013\u00a01558) took advantage of her royal prerogatives to dismiss married clergy, appoint Catholic priests to bishoprics, and restore the Mass. She had to make concessions to landowners who had seized church property to achieve the restoration of papal supremacy by the Parliament in November 1554. Cranmer was forced to sign six documents condemning his own acts but withdrew his recantations while being burned for heresy in public in March 1556. Reginald Pole was appointed as the new archbishop of Canterbury, but he was accused of heresy after his old enemy Carafa had been elected pope as Paul IV (r.\u20091555\u00a0\u2013\u00a01559). The restoration of the altars and images gained popular support in many places, but recatholisation faced significant resistance\u2014around 300 Protestants were burned, and about 1,000 were forced into exile during Mary's reign. Her marriage with Philip II of Spain was unpopular, and she died childless on 17 November 1558.\nMary's sister and successor Elizabeth I (r.\u20091558\u00a0\u2013\u00a01603) sought a ('middle way') between religious extremists. Her first Parliament restored the royal leadership of the Church of England, and introduced a modified version of the \"Book of Common Prayer\". The Anglican liturgy retained elements of Catholic ceremonies, such as priestly vestments, and contained ambiguous sentences about the Eucharist, suggesting the real presence of Jesus's Blood and Body for conservatives, and a memorial service for reformers. Elizabeth supervised the revision of the Anglican articles of faith in person. The subsequent \"Thirty-nine Articles\" were formulated in a way that adherents to the major mainstream Protestant theologies could accept them. However, the most resolute Protestants were determined to purify the Church of England from the remnants of Catholic ceremonies, hence they were called Puritans. They were especially influential at the universities. Many of them rejected the authority of bishops, the Presbyterians emphasized the equal status of all priests, whereas the Congregationalists wanted to strengthen the position of local communities in church administration.\nEngland's recatholisation contributed to the triumph of Reformation in Scotland. James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran (d. 1575), heir presumptive to Queen Mary of the Scots, assumed the leadership of the Protestant lords. Incited by Knox's passionate sermons, anti-Catholic sentiments led to a popular revolt of elementary force in 1559, causing the destruction of monasteries and friaries.\nServetus and the \"Restoration of Christianity\".\nThe first radicals who rejected the dogma of Trinity were put on trial in Augsburg in 1527. A scholar from Navarre Michael Servetus (d. 1553) adopted antitrinitarian theology in the 1530s. MacCulloch proposes that Servetus rejected the Trinity, a dogma extremely offensive to Jews and Muslims, because he wanted to present Christianity as a universal religion. After studying medicine and anatomy in Paris, Servetus became the court physician of the elderly Catholic archbishop of Vienne in southern France. While in Vienne, he sent the first (unpublished) versions of his theological work, the \"Restoration of Christianity\" to Calvin. He disrespectfully described the Trinity as a three-headed Cerberus, attacked infant baptism, and denied original sin. He also wrote insulting comments on Calvin's \"Institutes\". The \"Restoration\" was published anonymously in Lyon in 1553, but the Catholic Inquisition identified Servetus as its author by using documents from Calvin's personal files. Servetus fled from France but attended a church service delivered by Calvin in Geneva. He was recognised and arrested, and the urban authorities sentenced him to death with Calvin's consent. He was burned at the stake on 27 October 1553.\nBucer, Melanchthon and other leading Protestant theologians agreed with Servetus's execution. Only the Basel-based schoolmaster and Bible translator Sebastian Castellio (d. 1563) condemned it in a manifesto for religious toleration. He also addressed a letter to Calvin, echoing Erasmus his posthumous benefactor, stating \"To burn a heretic is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man\". Erasmus was a Trinitarian himself, but had noted that the theological formulation had developed from the time of the Apostles, which fueled many subsequent antitrinitarians who took this to mean it that the idea was unbiblical. \nAntitrinitarian theology survived among Italian exiles in Basel. Lelio Sozzini (d. 1562), a scholar from Siena, argued that Biblical texts calling Jesus \"Son of God\" did not refer to his divinity but to his faultless humanity. His nephew, Fausto Sozzini (d. 1604) rejected original sin and the theory of satisfaction (the concept that Christ's sufferings brought about atonement to God the Father for the original sin). Their followers became known as Socinians.\nAfter Servetus's execution Calvin strengthened his position as the leading figure of Reformed Protestantism. In Geneva, the Libertines rose up but they were quickly overcame, and forced into exile or executed. The confiscation of the property of the wealthy Ami Perrin (d. 1561) and his family provided the city with funds to create an academy. It served both as a preparatory school for local youths and as a seminary for Reformed ministers. Calvin's chief assistant Theodore Beza (d. 1605) was appointed as its first rector. The academy quickly developed into a principal center of theologian training for students from all over Europe, earning Geneva the nickname \"the Protestant Rome\". It was especially popular among French Protestants.\nWars of religion and tolerance.\nSchmalkaldic Wars.\nScandals and internal conflicts weakened the Protestants' position in Germany in the early 1540s. Philip the Magnanimous committed bigamy by secretly marrying a lady-in-waiting of his court although his wife was still alive. Bucer, Luther, and Melanchthon had discretely sanctioned the bigamious marriage allegedly to prevent adultery. In 1542, Philip and John the Constant's successor, John Frederick I (r.\u20091532\u00a0\u2013\u00a01547) invaded the Duchy of Braunschweig-Wolfenb\u00fcttel which brought disapproval from other princes. Disputes over lands renewed the old rivalry between the Ernestine and Albertine branches of the Wettin dynasty of Saxony. Taking advantage of the situation, Emperor Charles built a broad coalition of Catholic and Evangelical princes against Hesse and Electoral Saxony. The coalition included the Albertine duke Maurice of Saxony (r.\u20091541\u00a0\u2013\u00a01553). During the ensuing Schmalkaldic War, Charles and his allies won a decisive victory, and Maurice was rewarded with John Frederick's title of elector.\nThe triumphant Charles V regulated religious issues with an imperial edict known as the \"Augsburg Interim\". The \"Interim\" sanctioned clerical marriage and the communion in both kinds in Protestant territories, but denied further concessions. Maurice issued an alternative regulation called the \"Leipzig Interim\" for Saxony which ordered the clergy to wear surplices. Melanchthon supported the \"Leipzig Interim\", stating that such issues were \"matters indifferent\" but uncompromising Lutheran theologians such as Nicolaus von Amsdorf (d. 1565) and Matthias Flacius (d. 1575) rejected all concessions to imperial demands. Different views on justification and the Eucharist caused further heated debates between Melanchton's followers, known as Philippists, and their opponents, called Gnesio-Lutherans ('authentic Lutherans') in the 1550s. The \"Augsburg Interim\" was only implemented in the southern German Protestant cities. This led to the expulsion of recalcitrant clerics, including Bucer from Strasbourg. Alarmed by Charles's triumph, Calvin and Bullinger agreed on a consensual Eucharistic formula, now known as ('Consensus of Z\u00fcrich'), emphasising that Christ \"makes us participants of himself\" in the Lord's Supper, but also stating that God \"uses the ministry of the sacraments\" without infusing divine power into them. Luther had died in 1546 but his followers rejected the \"Consensus\". The rift between Evangelical and Reformed Protestants widened to the extent that Reformed refugees faced an unfriendly reception at Evangelical countries. In Bohemia, Hussite and Evangelical aristocrats and townspeople rose up against King Ferdinand I. Although Ferdinand crushed the revolt, he had to sanction religious plurality in Moravia as a reward for the Moravian Estates' loyalty during the Bohemian revolt.\nDistrusting Emperor Charles, Maurice brokered a coalition of Evangelical princes, and promised four prince-bishoprics to King Henry II of France (r.\u20091547\u00a0\u2013\u00a01559) for financial support. Maurice and his allies invaded the Habsburgs' domains, forcing Charles to flee. Signed on 10 August 1552, the Peace of Passau prescribed that the religious issues were to be discussed at the following Imperial Diet. The Diet was opened at Augsburg on 5 February 1555. Already exhausted, Charles appointed Ferdinand to represent him. Ferdinand's negotiations with the Evangelical princes ended with the Peace of Augsburg on 25 September. The document reaffirmed the principle , but the Imperial Estates could only choose between Catholicism and the \"Augsburg Confession\". Evangelical imperial free cities had to tolerate the existence of Catholic communities within their walls, and prince-bishoprics could not be secularised in case the bishop abandoned the Catholic faith. Charles, who did not sign the peace treaty, abdicated, ceding his imperial title to Ferdinand, and his vast empire to his son Philip II of Spain (r.\u20091556\u00a0\u2013\u00a01598).\nFrench Wars of Religion.\nMany French Protestants did not risk to profess their faith in public. They were known as Nicodemites after Nicodemus, a Pharisee who visited Jesus in secret. Calvin condemned this practice describing those who attended the Mass as soldiers \"in the army of Antichrist\". Under his influence, the French Protestants started to stay away from Catholic church services. They were called Huguenots for uncertain reason. The poet Cl\u00e9ment Marot (d. 1544) provided them with popular stirring songs by translating forty-nine Psalms to French. Francis I promised to exterminate heresy in France in a peace treaty with Charles V in 1544. Next year, Waldensians were massacred in the Luberon region. In 1547, Henry II established a special court for heresy cases, named ('the burning chamber'). The lawyer Jean Crespin (d. 1572) completed a catalogue of martyrs to commemorate the victims of the purges, and it gained immense popularity in the Protestant communities all over Europe. After around 1555, prominent French aristocrats converted to Protestantism, including Marguerite of Angoul\u00eame's daughter, Jeanne d'Albret, (d. 1572), Jeanne's husband Antoine de Bourbon (d. 1562), and Gaspard II de Coligny (d. 1572), admiral of France. Their patronage encouraged less distinguished Huguenots to express their faith in public. In 1559, delegates from seventy-two congregations attended the first synod of the Reformed Church of France, representing about 1.5\u20132 million believers. The synod adopted the \"Gallican Confession\", a confessional document drated by Calvin.\nFully preoccupied with a new war against Emperor Charles, Henry II did not take severe measures against the Huguenot nobility. After his sudden death after an accident, his eldest son Francis II (r.\u20091559\u00a0\u2013\u00a01560) ascended the throne. His wife, Mary, Queen of Scots was the niece of Francis, Duke of Guise (d. 1563) and Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine (d. 1574), two leaders of the most resolute Catholic faction of the nobility. The queen mother Catherine de' Medici (d. 1589) distrusted them but the persecution of Huguenots intensified under their influence. When Francis died by an ear infection, Calvin considered his fate as divine deliverance. Francis was succeeded by his brother Charles IX (r.\u20091560\u00a0\u2013\u00a01574) under Catherine's regency. She enacted the Huguenots' right to freely attend church services and hold public assemblies because she wanted to avoid a civil war along religious lines.\nUncompromising Catholics and Huguenots considered their confrontation inevitable. The first of the French Wars of Religion\u2014a series of armed conflicts between Catholics and Huguenots\u2014began after Guise's retainers massacred more than fifty Huguenots at Vassy on 1 March 1562. As Antoine de Bourbon had returned to Catholicism, his brother Louis I, Prince of Cond\u00e9 (d. 1569) assumed the leadership of a Huguenot revolt. They concluded a treaty with England in September 1562. To achieve a reconciliation, Catherine de'Medici married off her daughter Margaret of Valois (d. 1615) to the Protestant son of Jeanne d'Albret and Antoine de Bourbon, Henry de Bourbon, King of Navarre (r.\u20091572\u00a0\u2013\u00a01610). Mutual mistrust between Catholics and Huguenots, and the Parisians' determination to cleanse their city of heresy led to the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre after the wedding. On 24 August 1572, a fanatic mob slaughtered 2,000\u20133,000 Protestants in Paris, and by early October further 6,000\u20137,000 Huguenots fell victim to pogroms in other cities and towns. Many Huguenots returned to the Catholic Church or fled from France, and those who remained gathered in southern and southern-west France and continued the armed resistance. Known as \"Malcontents\", moderate Catholics concluded that only concessions to the Huguenots could restore peace.\nCharles IX died in May 1574 leaving an almost empty treasury to his brother Henry III (r.\u20091574\u00a0\u2013\u00a01567). Henry adopted a moderate religious policy but the uncompromising Catholics established the Catholic League in 1576. They entered into a secret alliance with Philip II of Spain to prevent the spread of Protestantism. In 1589, the monk Jacques Cl\u00e9ment mortally wounded King Henry. He named Henry de Bourbon as his heir, but the League and many cities refused to obey to a Huguenot king. Henry IV secured the support of moderate Catholics by converting to Catholicism. He defeated his French opponents and their Spanish allies, and put an end to the civil war early in 1598. He enacted many of the demands of the Huguenots, about fifteen per cent of the population, in the Edict of Nantes. Among others, they were allowed to attend religious services in many places, and their right to hold public offices was confirmed.\nRevolt in the Netherlands.\nMore Protestants fell victim to persecution in the seventeen provinces of Habsburg Netherlands than in any other country between 1523 and 1555. The ruthless persecution prevented the establishment of Evangelical congregations although Luther's ideas were widely discussed in Flemish communities. Reformed theology spread among the Walloons through individuals' correspondence with Calvin and the Genevan academy from the 1540s. Nicodemism was not unusual but uncompromising Protestants disturbed Catholic ceremonies. The preacher Guido de Bres (d. 1567) established the first permanent Reformed congregations. He was a main contributor to the \"Belgic Confession\", a confessional document based on the \"Gallican Confession\", first published in Walloon in 1561, and in Dutch in 1562. The \"Confession\" sharply criticised the Anapabtists, and emphasized the importance of church discipline.\nIn 1566, 300 nobles requested Philip II's governor Margaret of Parma (d. 1586) to moderate anti-heretic legislation. Although the petitioners were mocked as \"beggars\", Margaret was open to a compromise. Protestant refugees returned from abroad, and religious enthusiasts stirred up public demonstrations. On the night of 20\u201321 August 1566, a Protestant mob sacked the Antwerp Cathedral, introducing a popular iconoclastic movement that spread all over the Netherlands. In 1567, Philip appointed Fernando \u00c1lvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba (d. 1582) to crush the riots. Alba arrived at the head of a 20,000-strong army, and introduced a reign of terror, leading to the execution of thousands of people. A prominent aristocrat William the Silent, Prince of Orange (d. 1584) assumed the leadership of the resistance. His \"Sea Beggars\"\u2014a squadron of privateers\u2014seized the provinces of Holland and Zeeland by 1572, although the Reformed communities were in the minority in most towns.\nPhilip II's government faced bankruptcy and his unpaid Spanish troops sacked Antwerp in 1576. This led to a general revolt against Spanish rule. The Catholic aristocrat Philippe III de Cro\u00ff, Duke of Aarschot (d. 1595), made an alliance with William the Silent but rivalry between Catholics and Protestants did not abate. In 1581, the northern provinces united under William's leadership, and renounced allegiance to Philip. In the south, Margaret of Parma's son Alessandro Farnese crushed the revolts, forcing about 100,000 Protestants to seek refugee in the north. Developed from the union of seven northern provinces, the Dutch Republic remained under the loose leadership of the House of Orange. The Reformed pastors were eager to transform the whole society along their ideas. They failed because William preferred a more tolerant approach, and significant Protestant groups associated church discipline with Catholicism. As a consequence, Evangelical, Annabaptist and Catholic communities survived in the Dutch Republic. Heterodox theologies could also spread, such as the views of Jacobus Arminius (d. 1609) who argued that an individual could resist divine grace. Although Arminianism was rejected at the international Synod of Dort in 1619, it continued to influence Protestant theologians.\nEdict of Torda.\nAfter King Louis's death at Moh\u00e1cs, two claimants John Z\u00e1polya (r.\u20091526\u00a0\u2013\u00a01540) and Ferdinand I of Habsburg (r.\u20091526\u00a0\u2013\u00a01564) competed for the Hungarian throne. They were Catholic but neither of them risked to alienate potential supporters by anti-Protestant purges. The Transylvanian Saxon leader Markus Pemfflinger (d. 1537) promoted Evangelical preaching in the Saxon metropolis Hermanstadt (Sibiu, Romania) from around 1530. Evangelical teaching spread among ethnic Hungarians, Slovaks, and Croats after Protestant aristocrats started to appoint Evangelical preachers to the churches under their patronage in the 1530s. After Z\u00e1polya's death, the Ottomans conquered central Hungary, his widow Isabella Jagiellon (d. 1559) assumed the regency for their infant son John Sigismund Z\u00e1polya (r.\u20091540\u00a0\u2013\u00a01571) in eastern Hungary under Ottoman suzerainty, and Ferdinand ruled Royal Hungary in the north and west. Often in need of funds, Ferdinand seized church revenues, while Isabella and her treasurer the Catholic bishop George Martinuzzi (d. 1551) secularised the estates of the Transylvanian bishopric. The Transylvanian Saxons adopted the \"Augsburg Confession\" in 1544; five years later, five free royal boroughs accepted an Evangelical confession in Royal Hungary.\nTwo former Catholic priests M\u00e1ty\u00e1s D\u00e9vai B\u00edr\u00f3 (d. 1547) and Mih\u00e1ly Szt\u00e1rai (d. 1575) were among the first Hungarian pastors to teach Zwinglian Eucharistic theology. \"Sacramentarianism\" (the denial of Christ's presence in the Eucharist) and rebaptism were outlawed by the Diet in Royal Hungary in 1548. John Sigismund was open to religious innovations. Under the influence of his court chaplain Ferenc D\u00e1vid (d. 1579), he adhered to Reformed theology from 1562, and accepted antitrinitarian views during the last years of his life. The Edict of Torda legalised three Protestant denominations\u2014Evangelical, Reformed and Unitarian\u2014in eastern Hungary in 1568. Eastern Hungary transformed into the autonomous Principality of Transylvania under Ottoman suzerainty in 1570. The coexistence of four officially recognised churches\u2014Catholicism and the three legalised Protestant denominations\u2014remained a lasting feature of religious politics in Transylvania. The most radical antitrinitarians rejected the New Testament and held Saturday (or Sabbath) as weekly holiday; hence they were called Sabbatarians.\nWarsaw Confederation.\nAs the Bohemian Brethren were famed for their diligence, many Polish aristocrats eagerly settled them on their estates. Ethnic Poles became receptive to Protestant ideas, especially to Calvin's theology from the 1540s. The Jan Tarnowski (d. 1561) entered into correspondence with Calvin in 1540; in 1542, Jan \u0141aski (d. 1560) converted although his uncle (and namesake) had been the Primate of Poland. In 1548, Sigismund the Old's tolerant son Sigismund II Augustus (r.\u20091548\u00a0\u2013\u00a01572) ascended the throne. Two years later, the first synod of the Polish Reformed Church assembled at Pi\u0144cz\u00f3w. Proposals for the introduction of vernacular liturgy and communion in both kinds, and the abolition of clerical celibacy were forwarded by Sigismund Augustus to the Holy See but Pope Paul IV (r.\u20091555\u00a0\u2013\u00a01559) rejected them. The Catholic prelates tried to put Protestant nobles and married priests on trial for heresy but the legislative assembly, or Sejm suspended such persecutions on the initiative of the Protestant Marshal of the Sejm Rafa\u0142 Leszczy\u0144ski and Tarnowski in 1552. In 1556, \u0141aski organised a synod in the hope of reuniting all non-Lutheran Protestants but failed. At the meeting, Piotr of Goni\u0105dz (d. 1573) openly attacked infant baptism and the doctrine of Trinity. The antitrinitarian Polish Brethren established their own church, known as Minor Church in contrast with the Reformed Major Church. From 1565, Polish nobles could no more be persecuted on religious grounds which allowed them to freely choose between competing theologies. By this time, around one-fifth of the nobility had converted to the Reformed faith, and most secular members of the Senate were Protestant. Relationship between Poland and Lithuania was redefined by the 1569 Union of Lublin which created the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth. After Sigismund Augustus died, the Sejm passed the Warsaw Confederation prescribing that only candidates who promised to protect religious freedom could be elected king.\nCounter-Reformation and regional conflicts.\nThe continuous expansion of Protestantism stopped in Germany after the Peace of Augsburg. The Bavarian duke Albert V (r.\u20091550\u00a0\u2013\u00a01579) took the lead of recatholicisation. He overcame the opposition of Evangelical nobles, and exiled all clerics who refused to take the Tridentine oath. With Albert's support, the Jesuits opened a college in Ingolstadt that accepted Evangelical and Hussite students. Emperor Ferdinand I's eldest son and successor, Maximilian II (r.\u20091564\u00a0\u2013\u00a01576) pursued a tolerant religious policy but his brothers, Ferdinand II of the Tyrol (r.\u20091564\u00a0\u2013\u00a01595) and Charles II of Inner Austria (r.\u20091564\u00a0\u2013\u00a01590) were determined to subdue their Protestant subjects. After the predominantly Evangelical Estates of Inner Austria who controlled taxation extracted concessions from Charles II, he promoted Catholicism by appointing Catholics to state offices even if he needed to hire Bavarian and Tyrolian nobles.\nInterreligious conflicts led to wars in many regions of Central Europe. The Cologne War broke out after Gebhard Truchsess von Waldburg, Archbishop-elector of Cologne (r.\u20091577\u00a0\u2013\u00a01583), abandoned Catholicism and married his Protestant lover Agnes von Mansfeld-Eisleben (d. 1637) in 1582. The war ended with the victory of his Catholic opponent Ernest (r.\u20091583\u00a0\u2013\u00a01612), a younger son of Albert V. The Strasbourg Bishops' War began when both the Catholic and Protestant canons of the Strasbourg Cathedral elected their own candidate to the see of Strasbourg in 1592. At the end, the Protestant candidate Johann Georg von Brandenburg (d. 1624) renounced in favor of his opponent Charles of Lorraine (r.\u20091592\u00a0\u2013\u00a01607).\nCharles II's son and successor Ferdinand II (r.\u20091590\u00a0\u2013\u00a01637) set up \"reformation commissions\"\u2014a group of clerics and state officials led by a senior clergyman\u2014to visit the Inner Austrian parishes between 1598 and 1601. The commissioners seized and destroyed Evangelical churches, burned Protestant books and expelled Evangelical priests, often with the support of the local (mainly Slovenian) peasantry. His cousin Emperor Rudolf II (r.\u20091576\u00a0\u2013\u00a01612) introduced anti-Protestant measures in Royal Hungary and Transylvania, provoking a rebellion. The Ottomans supported the rebels whose leader, the Reformed aristocrat Stephen Bocskai was proclaimed prince of Transylvania (r.\u20091605\u00a0\u2013\u00a01606). Rudolph appointed his brother Matthias to conduct negotiations with Bocskai, and the peace treaty sanctioned the freedom of the Evangelical and Reformed Churches in Royal Hungary in 1606. Rudolph was forced to cede Hungary, Austria and Moravia to Matthias in 1608, and to confirm religious freedom in Bohemia in 1609.\nReformation outside Germany.\nThe Reformation also spread widely throughout Europe, starting with Bohemia, in the Czech lands, and, over the next few decades, to other countries.\nNordic countries.\nAll of Scandinavia ultimately adopted Lutheranism over the course of the 16th century, as the monarchs of Denmark (who also ruled Norway and Iceland) and Sweden (who also ruled Finland) converted to that faith.\nIceland.\nLuther's influence had already reached Iceland before King Christian's decree. The Germans fished near Iceland's coast, and the Hanseatic League engaged in commerce with the Icelanders. These Germans raised a Lutheran church in Hafnarfj\u00f6r\u00f0ur as early as 1533. Through German trade connections, many young Icelanders studied in Hamburg. In 1538, when the kingly decree of the new Church ordinance reached Iceland, bishop \u00d6gmundur and his clergy denounced it, threatening excommunication for anyone subscribing to the German \"heresy\". In 1539, the King sent a new governor to Iceland, Klaus von Mervitz, with a mandate to introduce reform and take possession of church property. Von Mervitz seized a monastery in Vi\u00f0ey with the help of his sheriff, Dietrich of Minden, and his soldiers. They drove the monks out and seized all their possessions, for which they were promptly excommunicated by \u00d6gmundur.\nGreat Britain.\nEngland.\nThe English Reformation is a complex historical series of events and reversals, whose nature and effect has been debated by historians. The results of the reformation included an established church with a \"Prayer Book consciously aligned with Swiss theology...(but) the most elaborate liturgy of any Protestant Church in Europe\" practiced in Cathedrals, with plain, sermon-centred services in parish churches, politically imposed by a \"literate Protestant elite\".\nAccording to political historian Gregory Slysz \"The dissolution of the monasteries [...] brought social catastrophe to England\" for the next 50 or so years, due to the closure of the numerous associated urban almshouses for poor relief and hospitals, worsened by spiraling inflation and a doubling of the population. Popular revolts by grassroots Catholics against the changes, such as the Prayer Book Rebellion in the South and the Pilgrimage of Grace and Bigod's rebellion in the North, were ruthlessly put down by government forces with the loss of thousands of lives.\nEnglish North America.\nThe most famous emigration to America was the migration of Puritan separatists from the Anglican Church of England. They fled first to Holland, and then later to America to establish the English colony of Massachusetts in New England, which later became one of the original United States. These Puritan separatists were also known as \"the Pilgrims\". After establishing a colony at Plymouth (which became part of the colony of Massachusetts) in 1620, the Puritan pilgrims received a charter from the King of England that legitimised their colony, allowing them to do trade and commerce with merchants in England, in accordance with the principles of mercantilism. \nThe Pilgrims held radical Protestant disapproval of Christmas, and its celebration was outlawed in Boston from 1659 to 1681. The ban was revoked in 1681 by the English-appointed governor Edmund Andros, who also revoked a Puritan ban on festivities on Saturday nights. Nevertheless, it was not until the mid-19th century that celebrating Christmas became fashionable in the Boston region.\nWales.\nBishop Richard Davies and dissident Protestant cleric John Penry introduced Calvinist theology to Wales. In 1588, the Bishop of Llandaff published the entire Bible in the Welsh language. The translation had a significant impact upon the Welsh population and helped to firmly establish Protestantism among the Welsh people. The Welsh Protestants used the model of the Synod of Dort of 1618\u20131619. Calvinism developed through the Puritan period, following the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II, and within Wales' Calvinistic Methodist movement. However few copies of Calvin's writings were available before the mid-19th century.\nScotland.\nThe Reformation in Scotland's case culminated ecclesiastically in the establishment of a church along reformed lines, and politically in the triumph of English influence over that of France. John Knox is regarded as the leader of the Scottish reformation.\nThe Reformation Parliament of 1560 repudiated the pope's authority by the \"Papal Jurisdiction Act 1560\", forbade the celebration of the Mass and approved a Protestant Confession of Faith. It was made possible by a revolution against French hegemony under the regime of the regent Mary of Guise, who had governed Scotland in the name of her absent daughter Mary, Queen of Scots (then also Queen of France).\nAlthough Protestantism triumphed relatively easily in Scotland, the exact form of Protestantism remained to be determined. The 17th century saw a complex struggle between Presbyterianism (particularly the Covenanters) and Episcopalianism. The Presbyterians eventually won control of the Church of Scotland, which went on to have an important influence on Presbyterian churches worldwide, but Scotland retained a relatively large Episcopalian minority.\nFrance.\nCatholicism remained the official state religion, and the fortunes of French Protestants gradually declined over the next century, culminating in Louis XIV's Edict of Fontainebleau (1685), which revoked the Edict of Nantes and made Catholicism the sole legal religion of France, leading some Huguenots to live as Nicodemites. In response to the Edict of Fontainebleau, Frederick William I, Elector of Brandenburg declared the Edict of Potsdam (October 1685), giving free passage to Huguenot refugees and tax-free status to them for ten years.\nIn the late 17th century, 150,000\u2013200,000 Huguenots fled to England, the Netherlands, Prussia, Switzerland, and the English and Dutch overseas colonies. A significant community in France remained in the C\u00e9vennes region. A separate Protestant community, of the Lutheran faith, existed in the newly conquered province of Alsace, its status not affected by the Edict of Fontainebleau.\nSpain.\nIn the early 16th century, Spain had a different political and cultural milieu from its Western and Central European neighbours in several respects, which affected the mentality and the reaction of the nation towards the Reformation. Spain, which had only recently managed to complete the reconquest of the Peninsula from the Moors in 1492, had been preoccupied with converting the Muslim and Jewish populations of the newly conquered regions through the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition in 1478. The rulers of the nation stressed political, cultural, and religious unity, and by the time of the Lutheran Reformation, the Spanish Inquisition was already 40 years old and had the capability of quickly persecuting any new movement that the leaders of the Catholic Church perceived or interpreted to be religious heterodoxy. Charles V did not wish to see Spain or the rest of Habsburg Europe divided, and in light of continual threat from the Ottomans, preferred to see the Catholic Church reform itself from within. This led to a Counter-Reformation in Spain in the 1530s. During the 1520s, the Spanish Inquisition had created an atmosphere of suspicion and sought to root out any religious thought seen as suspicious. As early as 1521, the Pope had written a letter to the Spanish monarchy warning against allowing the unrest in Northern Europe to be replicated in Spain. Between 1520 and 1550, printing presses in Spain were tightly controlled and any books of Protestant teaching were prohibited.\nBetween 1530 and 1540, Protestantism in Spain was still able to gain followers clandestinely, and in cities such as Seville and Valladolid adherents would secretly meet at private houses to pray and study the Bible. Protestants in Spain were estimated at between 1000 and 3000, mainly among intellectuals who had seen writings such as those of Erasmus. Notable reformers included Juan Gil and Juan P\u00e9rez de Pineda who subsequently fled and worked alongside others such as Francisco de Enzinas to translate the Greek New Testament into the Spanish language, a task completed by 1556. Protestant teachings were smuggled into Spain by Spaniards such as Juli\u00e1n Hern\u00e1ndez, who in 1557 was condemned by the Inquisition and burnt at the stake. Under Philip II, conservatives in the Spanish church tightened their grip, and those who refused to recant such as Rodrigo de Valer were condemned to life imprisonment. On May 21, 1559, sixteen Spanish Lutherans were burnt at the stake; 14 were strangled before being burnt, while two were burnt alive. In October another 30 were executed. Spanish Protestants who were able to flee the country were to be found in at least a dozen cities in Europe, such as Geneva, where some of them embraced Calvinist teachings. Those who fled to England were given support by the Church of England.\nThe Kingdom of Navarre, although by the time of the Protestant Reformation a minor principality territoriality restricted to southern France, had French Huguenot monarchs, including Henry IV of France and his mother, Jeanne III of Navarre, a devout Calvinist.\nUpon the arrival of the Protestant Reformation, Calvinism reached some Basques through the translation of the Bible into the Basque language by Joanes Leizarraga. As Queen of Navarre, Jeanne III commissioned the translation of the New Testament into Basque and B\u00e9arnese for the benefit of her subjects.\nItaly.\nWord of the Protestant reformers reached Italy in the 1520s but never caught on. Its development was stopped by the Counter-Reformation, the Inquisition and popular disinterest. Not only was the Church highly aggressive in seeking out and suppressing heresy, but there was a shortage of Protestant leadership. No-one made a new Protestant translation of the Bible into Italian to compete with the existing Catholic vernacular translations; few tracts were written. No core of Protestantism emerged. The few preachers who did take an interest in \"Lutheranism\", as it was called in Italy, were suppressed, or went into exile to northern countries where their message was well received. As a result, the Reformation exerted almost no lasting influence in Italy, except for strengthening the Catholic Church and pushing for an end to ongoing abuses during the Counter-Reformation.\nSome Protestants left Italy and became notable activists of the Eastern European Reformation, mainly in the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth (e.g. Giorgio Biandrata, Bernardino Ochino, Giovanni Alciato, Giovanni Battista Cetis, Fausto Sozzini, Francesco Stancaro and Giovanni Valentino Gentile some of whom propagated Nontrinitarianism there and were chief instigators of the movement of Polish Brethren.) Some also fled to England and Switzerland, including Peter Vermigli.\nIn 1532, the Waldensians, who had been already present centuries before the Reformation, aligned themselves and adopted the Calvinist theology. The Waldensian Church survived in the Western Alps through many persecutions and remains a Protestant church in Italy.\nSlovenia.\nPrimo\u017e Trubar is notable for consolidating the Slovene language and is considered to be the key figure of Slovenian cultural history, in many aspects a major Slovene historical personality. He was the key figure of the Protestant Church of the Slovene Lands, as he was its founder and its first superintendent. The first books in Slovene, \"Catechismus\" and \"Abecedarium\", were written by Trubar.\nGreece.\nThe Protestant teachings of the Western Church were also briefly adopted within the Eastern Orthodox Church through the Greek Patriarch Cyril Lucaris in 1629 with the publishing of the \"Confessio\" (Calvinistic doctrine) in Geneva. Motivating factors in their decision to adopt aspects of the Reformation included the historical rivalry and mistrust between the Greek Orthodox and the Catholic Churches along with their concerns of Jesuit priests entering Greek lands in their attempts to propagate the teachings of the Counter-Reformation to the Greek populace. He subsequently sponsored Maximos of Gallipoli's translation of the New Testament into the Modern Greek language and it was published in Geneva in 1638. Upon Lucaris's death in 1638, the conservative factions within the Eastern Orthodox Church held two synods: the Synod of Constantinople (1638) and Synod of Ia\u0219i (1642) criticising the reforms and, in the 1672 convocation led by Dositheos, they officially condemned the Calvinistic doctrines.\nIn 2019, Christos Yannaras told Norman Russell that although he had participated in the Zo\u00eb movement, he had come to regard it as Crypto-Protestant.\nSpread.\nThe Reformation spread throughout Europe beginning in 1517, reaching its peak between 1545 and 1620. The greatest geographical extent of Protestantism occurred at some point between 1545 and 1620. In 1620, the Battle of White Mountain defeated Protestants in Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) who sought to have the 1609 Letter of Majesty upheld.\nThe Thirty Years' War began in 1618 and brought a drastic territorial and demographic decline when the House of Habsburg introduced counter-reformational measures throughout their vast possessions in Central Europe. Although the Thirty Years' War concluded with the Peace of Westphalia, the French Wars of the Counter-Reformation continued, as well as the expulsion of Protestants in Austria.\nAccording to a 2020 study in the \"American Sociological Review\", the Reformation spread earliest to areas where Luther had pre-existing social relations, such as mail correspondents, and former students, as well as where he had visited. The study argues that these social ties contributed more to the Reformation's early breakthroughs than the printing press.\nConclusion and legacy.\nThere is no universal agreement on the exact or even the approximate date the Reformation ended. Various interpretations emphasise different dates, entire periods, or argue that the Reformation never really ended. However, there are a few popular interpretations. The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 officially ended the religious struggle between the two groups and made the legal division of Christianity permanent within the Holy Roman Empire, allowing rulers to choose either Lutheranism or Catholicism as the official confession of their state. It could be considered to end with the enactment of the confessions of faith. Other suggested ending years relate to the Counter-Reformation or the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. From one Catholic perspective, the Second Vatican Council ended the Counter-Reformation.\nThirty Years' War: 1618\u20131648.\nThe Reformation and Counter-Reformation era conflicts are termed the European wars of religion. In particular, the Thirty Years' War (1618\u201348) devastated much of Germany, killing between 25 and 40% of its population. The Catholic House of Habsburg and its allies fought against the Protestant princes of Germany, supported at various times by Denmark, Sweden and France. The Habsburgs, who ruled Spain, Austria, the Crown of Bohemia, Hungary, Slovene Lands, the Spanish Netherlands and much of Germany and Italy, were staunch defenders of the Catholic Church.\nTwo main tenets of the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War, were:\nThe treaty also effectively ended the Papacy's pan-European political power. Pope Innocent X declared the treaty \"null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, empty of meaning and effect for all times\" in his apostolic brief \"Zelo Domus Dei\". European sovereigns, Catholic and Protestant alike, ignored his verdict.\nConsequences of the Reformation.\nIn nations that remained Catholic, or reverted to it, remaining Protestants sometimes lived as crypto-Protestants, also called Nicodemites, contrary to the urging of John Calvin, who wanted them to live their faith openly. Some crypto-Protestants have been identified as late as the 19th century after immigrating to Latin America. \nIn Britain from the Elizabethan period, dissenters called Recusants included both Catholic families and English Dissenters (Quakers, Ranters, Diggers, Grindletonians, etc.): almost the entire Irish population were recusants from the imposed Protestant Church of Ireland.\nTravel and migration between countries became more difficult. \"In 1500, a Christian could travel from one end of Europe to another without fear of persecution; by 1600, every form of Christianity was illegal somewhere in Europe.\" Two prolonged series of conflicts, the French Wars of Religion (1562\u20131598) and the Thirty Years' War (1618\u20131648) resulted in between six and sixteen million deaths.\nAs well as wars, most countries and colonies of Europe enacted discriminatory legislation, these only winding down in the late 1700s Age of Enlightenment. For example, the Popery Acts (1699 and 1704) disallowed Irish Catholic schooling and purchase of land, and changed inheritance law; it was repealed by the 1778 and 1791 Catholic Relief Acts. The Quebec Act (1774) re-allowed Catholics to worship and hold public office, but was one of the Intolerable Acts that precipitated the American Revolutionary War. In the countries of the Holy Roman Empire, the Patent of Toleration (1781, 1782) allowed religious toleration for non-Catholic Christians and Jews. In France, the Edict of Toleration (1787) proposed the non-persecution of non-Catholics and Jews. However vestiges of Reformation-period legal discrimination continued: for example, currently, a Roman Catholic, or someone married to a Roman Catholic, may not be crowned the British Monarch.\nRadical Reformation.\nIn parts of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, a majority sympathised with the Radical Reformation despite intense persecution. Although the surviving proportion of the European population that rebelled against Catholic, Lutheran and Zwinglian churches was small, Radical Reformers wrote profusely and the literature on the Radical Reformation is disproportionately large, partly as a result of the proliferation of the Radical Reformation teachings in the United States.\nDespite significant diversity among the early Radical Reformers, some \"repeating patterns\" emerged among many Anabaptist groups. Many of these patterns were enshrined in the \"Schleitheim Confession\" (1527) and include believers' (or adult) baptism, memorial view of the Lord's Supper, belief that Scripture is the final authority on matters of faith and practice, emphasis on the New Testament and the Sermon on the Mount, interpretation of Scripture in community, separation from the world and a two-kingdom theology, pacifism and nonresistance, communal ownership and economic sharing, belief in the freedom of the will, non-swearing of oaths, \"yieldedness\" (\"Gelassenheit\") to one's community and to God, the ban (i.e., shunning), salvation through divinization (\"Verg\u00f6ttung\") and ethical living, and discipleship (\"Nachfolge Christi\").\nLiteracy.\nThe Protestant Reformation was a triumph of literacy and the new printing press. Luther's translation of the Bible into High German (the New Testament was published in 1522; the Old Testament was published in parts and completed in 1534) was also decisive for the German language and its evolution from Early New High German to Modern Standard German. Luther's translation of the Bible promoted the development of non-local forms of language and exposed all speakers to forms of German from outside their own area. The publication of Luther's Bible was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy in early modern Germany, and stimulated as well the printing and distribution of religious books and pamphlets. From 1517 onward, religious pamphlets flooded Germany and much of Europe.\nBy 1530, over 10,000 publications are known, with a total of ten million copies. The Reformation was thus a media revolution. Luther strengthened his attacks on Rome by depicting a \"good\" against \"bad\" church. From there, it became clear that print could be used for propaganda in the Reformation for particular agendas, although the term propaganda derives from the Catholic \"Congregatio de Propaganda Fide\" (\"Congregation for Propagating the Faith\") from the Counter-Reformation. Reform writers used existing styles, cliches and stereotypes which they adapted as needed. Especially effective were writings in German, including Luther's translation of the Bible, his Smaller Catechism for parents teaching their children, and his Larger Catechism, for pastors.\nIllustrations in the German Bible and in many tracts popularised Luther's ideas. Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472\u20131553), the great painter patronised by the electors of Wittenberg, was a close friend of Luther, and he illustrated Luther's theology for a popular audience. He dramatised Luther's views on the relationship between the Old and New Testaments, while remaining mindful of Luther's careful distinctions about proper and improper uses of visual imagery.\nOutcomes.\nProtestants have to some extent developed their own culture, with major contributions in education, the humanities and sciences, the political and social order, the economy and the arts and many other fields. Various outcomes of the Reformation have been suggested by scholars: improved human capital formation, the disputed Protestant work ethic, improved economic development, the modern state, and \"dark\" outcomes:\nHuman capital formation.\nClaims include:\nProtestant ethic.\nClaims include:\nEconomic development.\nClaims include:\nModern states.\nClaims include:\nWorld demographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nToday, classical Protestantism (including Anglicans) has between 300 and 625 million worldwide adherents, up to one quarter of all Christians.\nAnd general Protestantism\u2014broadly defined to also include Evangelical, Pentecostal, non-conformist and non-denominationalists\u2014constitutes the second-largest form of Christianity (after Catholicism), with between 850,000 and 1.17 billion adherents worldwide (between 40% and 45% of all Christians) divided into an estimated 45,000 denominations.\nOther outcomes.\nOther claims include:\nHistoriography.\nMargaret C. Jacob argues that there has been a dramatic shift in the historiography of the Reformation. Until the 1960s, historians focused their attention largely on the great leaders and theologians of the 16th century, especially Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli. Their ideas were studied in depth. However, the rise of the new social history in the 1960s led to looking at history from the bottom up, not from the top down. Historians began to concentrate on the values, beliefs and behavior of the people at large. She finds, \"in contemporary scholarship, the Reformation is now seen as a vast cultural upheaval, a social and popular movement, textured and rich because of its diversity.\"\nFor example, historian John Bossy characterized the Reformation as a period where Christianity was re-cast not as \"a community sustained by ritual acts, but as a teaching enforced by institutional structures,\" for Catholics as well as Protestants; and sin was re-cast from the seven deadly sins \u2014wrong because antisocial\u2014 to transgressions of the Ten Commandments \u2014wrong as affronts to God.\nMusic and art.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nPainting and sculpture\nBuilding\nLiterature\nMusical forms\nLiturgies\nHymnals\nSecular music\nPartly due to Martin Luther's love for music, music became important in Lutheranism. The study and practice of music was encouraged in Protestant majority countries. Songs such as the Lutheran hymns or the Calvinist Psalter became tools for the spread of Protestant ideas and beliefs, as well as identity flags. Similar attitudes developed among Catholics, who in turn encouraged the creation and use of music for religious purposes.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\nSurveys.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nTheology.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nPrimary sources in translation.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistoriography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "306519": "Wittenberg (district)\nWittenberg is a district () in the east of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Neighboring districts are (from west clockwise) Anhalt-Bitterfeld, the district-free city of Dessau-Ro\u00dflau, the districts of Potsdam-Mittelmark, Teltow-Fl\u00e4ming and Elbe-Elster in Brandenburg, and the district of Nordsachsen in Saxony. The capital and largest city is Wittenberg, famous for its association with the influential religious reformer Martin Luther and containing a UNESCO World Heritage Site.\nHistory.\nIn 1994, the district was merged with the district of Jessen and a small part of the district of Gr\u00e4fenhainichen. In 2007, 27 municipalities from the former district Anhalt-Zerbst were added to the district of Wittenberg.\nGeography.\nThe area of the district is . The main rivers in the district are the Elbe and its tributary, the Schwarze Elster.\nCoat of arms.\nThe coat of arms shows two swords, which is the symbol of a field marshal in the Holy Roman Empire. This title was bestowed upon the counts of Saxony, who therefore added the symbol to their coat of arms. The center of the principality of Saxony was located in the area now covered by the district.\nTowns and municipalities.\nThe district of Wittenberg consists of the following towns:\nAfter the resolution of 6 October 2005, as part of municipal reform, the (then) 27 towns and municipalities of the former Verwaltungsgemeinschaften of Coswig and W\u00f6rlitzer Winkel, formerly in the Anhalt-Zerbst district, were assigned to Wittenberg district on 1 July 2007.\nExternal links.\n Media related to at Wikimedia Commons\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "73513": "Mary, mother of Jesus\nMother of Jesus\nMary was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Joseph and the mother of Jesus. She is an important figure of Christianity, venerated under various titles such as virgin or queen, many of them mentioned in the Litany of Loreto. The Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, and Lutheran churches believe that Mary, as mother of Jesus, is the Mother of God. The Church of the East historically regarded her as Christotokos, a term still used in Assyrian Church of the East liturgy. Other Protestant views on Mary vary, with some holding her to have lesser status. She has the highest position in Islam among all women and is mentioned numerous times in the Quran, including in a chapter named after her. She is also revered in the Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith and the Druze Faith.\nThe synoptic Gospels name Mary as the mother of Jesus. The gospels of Matthew and Luke describe Mary as a virgin who was chosen by God to conceive Jesus through the Holy Spirit. After giving birth to Jesus in Bethlehem, she and her husband Joseph raised him in the city of Nazareth in Galilee, and she was in Jerusalem at his crucifixion and with the apostles after his ascension. Although her later life is not accounted in the Bible, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and some Protestant traditions believe that her body was raised into heaven at the end of her earthly life, which is known in Western Christianity as the Assumption of Mary and in Eastern Christianity as the Dormition of the Mother of God.\nMary has been venerated since early Christianity, and is often considered to be the holiest and greatest saint. There is a certain diversity in the Mariology and devotional practices of major Christian traditions. The Catholic Church holds distinctive Marian dogmas, namely her Immaculate Conception and her bodily Assumption into heaven. Many Protestants hold less exalted views of Mary's role, often based on a perceived lack of biblical support for many traditional Christian dogmas pertaining to her.\nThe multiple forms of Marian devotions include various prayers and hymns, the celebration of several Marian feast days in liturgy, the veneration of images and relics, the construction of churches dedicated to her and pilgrimages to Marian shrines. Many Marian apparitions and miracles attributed to her intercession have been reported by believers over the centuries. She has been a traditional subject in arts, notably in Byzantine art, medieval art and Renaissance art.\nNames and titles.\nMary's name in the original manuscripts of the New Testament was based on her original Aramaic name , transliterated as or . The English name \"Mary\" comes from the Greek , a shortened form of the name . Both and appear in the New Testament.\nIn Christianity.\nIn Christianity, Mary is commonly referred to as the Virgin Mary, in accordance with the belief that the Holy Spirit impregnated her, thereby conceiving her first-born son Jesus miraculously, without sexual relations with her betrothed Joseph, \"until her son [Jesus] was born\". The word \"until\" has inspired considerable analysis on whether Joseph and Mary produced siblings after the birth of Jesus or not. Among her many other names and titles are the Blessed Virgin Mary (often abbreviated to \"BVM\" after the Latin ), Saint Mary (occasionally), the Mother of God (primarily in Western Christianity), the (primarily in Eastern Christianity), Our Lady (Medieval ), and Queen of Heaven (; see also here). The title \"queen of heaven\" had previously been used as an epithet for a number of goddesses, such as Isis, or Ishtar.\nTitles in use vary among Anglicans, Lutherans and other Protestants, as well as Mormons, Catholics, Orthodox and other Christians.\nThe three main titles for Mary used by the Orthodox are ( or \"God-bearer\"), () which means ever-virgin, as confirmed in the Second Council of Constantinople in 553, and () meaning \"all-holy\". Catholics use a wide variety of titles for Mary, and these titles have in turn given rise to many artistic depictions.\nThe title , which means \"God-bearer\", was recognized at the Council of Ephesus in 431. The direct equivalents of title in Latin are and , although the phrase is more often loosely translated into Latin as (\"Mother of God\"), with similar patterns for other languages used in the Latin Church. However, this same phrase in Greek (), in the abbreviated form , is an indication commonly attached to her image in Byzantine icons. The Council stated that the Church Fathers \"did not hesitate to speak of the holy Virgin as the Mother of God\".\nSome Marian titles have a direct scriptural basis. For instance, the title \"Queen Mother\" has been given to Mary, as she was the mother of Jesus, sometimes referred to as the \"King of Kings\" due to his ancestral descent from King David. This is also based on the Hebrew tradition of the \"Queen-Mother\", the Gebirah or \"Great Lady\". Other titles have arisen from reported miracles, special appeals, or occasions for calling on Mary.\nIn Islam.\nIn Islam, Mary is known as Maryam (), mother of Isa (, , lit.\u2009'Jesus, son of Mary'). She is often referred to by the honorific title , meaning \"Our Lady\"; this title is in parallel to (\"Our Lord\"), used for the prophets. A related term of endearment is , meaning \"she who confirms the truth\" and \"she who believes sincerely completely\". Another title for Mary is , which signifies both constant submission to God and absorption in prayer and invocation in Islam. She is also called , meaning \"one who has been purified\" and representing her status as one of two humans in creation to not be touched by Satan at any point, the other being Jesus. In the Quran, she is described both as \"the daughter of Imran\" and \"the sister of Aaron\", alluding to Miriam from the Hebrew Bible. However, the title of \"the sister of Aaron\" is confirmed to be metaphorical (which is a common figure of speech in Arabic) as per a Hadith from the Islamic prophet Muhammad explaining Mary was indeed named after Miriam. \nLife in ancient sources.\nNew Testament.\nThe canonical Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are the primary sources of historical information about Mary. They are almost contemporary sources, as the synoptic Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are generally considered dating from around AD 66\u201390, while the gospel of John dates from AD 90\u2013110. They provide limited information about Mary, as they primarily focus on the teaching of Jesus and on his apostles. The historical reliability of the Gospels and historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles are subject to debate, as it was common practice in early Christian writings to mix historical facts with legendary stories.\nThe earliest New Testament account of Mary is in the epistle to the Galatians, which was written before the gospels. She is referred to as \"a woman\" and is not named: \"But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law\" (Galatians 4:4).\nMary is mentioned several times in the canonical Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles:\nIn the Book of Revelation, also part of the New Testament, the \"woman clothed with the sun\" (Revelation 12:1, 12:5\u20136) is sometimes identified as Mary.\nGenealogy.\nThe New Testament tells little of Mary's early history. The Gospel of Matthew gives a genealogy for Jesus by his father's paternal line, only identifying Mary as the wife of Joseph. John 19:25 states that Mary had a sister; semantically it is unclear if this sister is the same as Mary of Clopas, or if she is left unnamed. Jerome identifies Mary of Clopas as the sister of Mary, mother of Jesus. According to the early 2nd century historian Hegesippus, Mary of Clopas was likely Mary's sister-in-law, understanding Clopas (Cleophas) to have been Joseph's brother.\nAccording to the writer of Luke, Mary was a relative of Elizabeth, wife of the priest Zechariah of the priestly division of Abijah, who was herself part of the lineage of Aaron and so of the Tribe of Levi. Some of those who believe that the relationship with Elizabeth was on the maternal side, believe that Mary, like Joseph, was of the royal Davidic line and so of the Tribe of Judah, and that the genealogy of Jesus presented in Luke 3 from Nathan, is in fact the genealogy of Mary, while the genealogy from Solomon given in Matthew 1 is that of Joseph. (Aaron's wife Elisheba was of the tribe of Judah, so all their descendants are from both Levi and Judah.)\nAnnunciation.\nMary resided in \"her own house\" in Nazareth in Galilee, possibly with her parents, and during her betrothal\u2014the first stage of a Jewish marriage. Jewish girls were considered marriageable at the age of twelve years and six months, though the actual age of the bride varied with circumstances. The marriage was preceded by the betrothal, after which the bride legally belonged to the bridegroom, though she did not live with him till about a year later, when the marriage was celebrated.\nThe angel Gabriel announced to her that she was to be the mother of the promised Messiah by conceiving him through the Holy Spirit, and, after initially expressing incredulity at the announcement, she responded, \"I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done unto me according to your word.\" Joseph planned to quietly divorce her, but was told her conception was by the Holy Spirit in a dream by \"an angel of the Lord\"; the angel told him to not hesitate to take her as his wife, which Joseph did, thereby formally completing the wedding rites.\nSince the angel Gabriel had told Mary that Elizabeth\u2014having previously been barren\u2014was then miraculously pregnant, Mary hurried to see Elizabeth, who was living with her husband Zechariah in \"the hill country..., [in] a city of Juda\". Mary arrived at the house and greeted Elizabeth who called Mary \"the mother of my Lord\", and Mary spoke the words of praise that later became known as the from her first word in the Latin version. After about three months, Mary returned to her own house.\nBirth of Jesus.\nAccording to the gospel of Luke, a decree of the Roman Emperor Augustus required that Joseph return to his hometown of Bethlehem to register for a Roman census. While he was there with Mary, she gave birth to Jesus; but because there was no place for them in the inn, she used a manger as a cradle. It is not told how old Mary was at the time of the Nativity, but attempts have been made to infer it from the age of a typical Jewish mother of that time. Mary Joan Winn Leith represents the view that Jewish girls typically married soon after the onset of puberty, while according to Amram Tropper, Jewish females generally married later in Palestine and the Western Diaspora than in Babylonia. Some scholars hold the view that among them it typically happened between their mid and late teen years or late teens and early twenties. After eight days, the boy was circumcised according to Jewish law and named \"Jesus\" (, ), which means \"Yahweh is salvation\".\nAfter Mary continued in the \"blood of her purifying\" another 33 days, for a total of 40 days, she brought her burnt offering and sin offering to the Temple in Jerusalem (Luke 2:22), so the priest could make atonement for her. They also presented Jesus\u00a0\u2013 \"As it is written in the law of the Lord, Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord\" (Luke 2:23; Exodus 13:2; 23:12\u201315; 22:29; 34:19\u201320; Numbers 3:13; 18:15). After the prophecies of Simeon and the prophetess Anna in Luke 2:25\u201338, the family \"returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth\".\nAccording to the gospel of Matthew, magi coming from Eastern regions arrived at Bethlehem where Jesus and his family were living, and worshiped him. Joseph was then warned in a dream that King Herod wanted to murder the infant, and the family fled by night to Egypt and stayed there for some time. After Herod's death in 4\u00a0BC, they returned to Nazareth in Galilee, rather than Bethlehem, because Herod's son Archelaus was the ruler of Judaea.\nMary is involved in the only event in Jesus' adolescent life that is recorded in the New Testament. At the age of 12, Jesus, having become separated from his parents on their return journey from the Passover celebration in Jerusalem, was found in the Temple among the religious teachers.\nMinistry of Jesus.\nMary was present when, at her suggestion, Jesus worked his first miracle during a wedding at Cana by turning water into wine. Subsequently, there are events when Mary is mentioned along with the Jesus' brothers. According to Epiphanius, Origen and Eusebius, these \"brothers\" would be sons of Joseph from a previous marriage. This view is still the official position of the Eastern Orthodox churches. Following Jerome, those would be actually Jesus' cousins, children of Mary's sister. This remains the official Roman Catholic position. For Helvidius, those would be full siblings of Jesus, born to Mary and Joseph after the firstborn Jesus. This has been the most common Protestant position.\nThe hagiography of Mary and the Holy Family can be contrasted with other material in the Gospels. These references include an incident which can be interpreted as Jesus rejecting his family in the New Testament: \"And his mother and his brothers arrived, and standing outside, they sent in a message asking for him ... And looking at those who sat in a circle around him, Jesus said, 'These are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother'.\"\nMary is also depicted as being present in a group of women at the crucifixion standing near the disciple whom Jesus loved along with Mary of Clopas and Mary Magdalene, to which list Matthew 27:56 adds \"the mother of the sons of Zebedee\", presumably the Salome mentioned in Mark 15:40.\nAfter the Ascension of Jesus.\nIn Acts 1:12\u201326, especially verse 14, Mary is the only one other than the eleven apostles to be mentioned by name who abode in the upper room, when they returned from Mount Olivet. Her presence with the apostles during the Pentecost is not explicit, although it has been held as a fact by Christian tradition.\nFrom this time, she disappears from the biblical accounts, although it is held by Catholics that she is again portrayed as the heavenly woman in the Book of Revelation.\nHer death is not recorded in the scriptures, but Orthodox tradition, tolerated also by Catholics, has her first dying a natural death, known as the Dormition of Mary, and then, soon after, her body itself also being assumed (taken bodily) into Heaven. Belief in the corporeal assumption of Mary is a dogma of the Catholic Church, in the Latin and Eastern Catholic Churches alike, and is believed as well by the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Church, and parts of the Anglican Communion and Continuing Anglican movement.\nLater writings.\nAccording to the apocryphal Gospel of James, Mary was the daughter of Joachim and Anne. Before Mary's conception, Anne had been barren and was far advanced in years. Mary was given to service as a consecrated virgin in the Temple in Jerusalem when she was three years old. This was in spite of the patent impossibility of its premise that a girl could be kept in the Temple of Jerusalem along with some companions.\nSome unproven apocryphal accounts, such as the apocryphal Gospel of James, state that at the time of her betrothal to Joseph, Mary was 12\u201314 years old and suggests she was 16 during her pregnancy. Her age during her pregnancy has varied up to 17 in apocryphal sources. In a large part, apocryphal texts are historically unreliable. According to ancient Jewish custom, Mary technically could have been betrothed at about 12, but some scholars hold the view that in Judea it typically happened later.\nHyppolitus of Thebes says that Mary lived for 11 years after the death of her son Jesus, dying in 41 AD.\nThe earliest extant biographical writing on Mary is \"Life of the Virgin\", attributed to the 7th-century saint Maximus the Confessor, which portrays her as a key element of the early Christian Church after the death of Jesus.\nReligious perspectives.\nChristian.\nChristian Marian perspectives include a great deal of diversity. While some Christians such as Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have well established Marian traditions, Protestants at large pay scant attention to Mariological themes. Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutherans venerate the Virgin Mary. This veneration especially takes the form of prayer for intercession with her Son, Jesus Christ. Additionally, it includes composing poems and songs in Mary's honor, painting icons or carving statues of her, and conferring titles on Mary that reflect her position among the saints.\nCatholic.\nIn the Catholic Church, Mary is accorded the title \"Blessed\" (, , ) in recognition of her assumption to Heaven and her capacity to intercede on behalf of those who pray to her. There is a difference between the usage of the term \"blessed\" as pertaining to Mary and its usage as pertaining to a beatified person. \"Blessed\" as a Marian title refers to her exalted state as being the greatest among the saints; for a person who has been declared beatified, on the other hand, \"blessed\" simply indicates that they may be venerated despite not being canonized. Catholic teachings make clear that Mary is not considered divine and prayers to her are not answered by her, but rather by God through her intercession. The four Catholic dogmas regarding Mary are: her status as , or Mother of God; her perpetual virginity; the Immaculate Conception; and her bodily Assumption into Heaven.\nThe Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus has a more central role in Roman Catholic teachings and beliefs than in any other major Christian group. Not only do Roman Catholics have more theological doctrines and teachings that relate to Mary, but they have more feasts, prayers, devotional and venerative practices than any other group. The \"Catechism of the Catholic Church\" states: \"The Church's devotion to the Blessed Virgin is intrinsic to Christian worship.\"\nFor centuries, Catholics have performed acts of consecration and entrustment to Mary at personal, societal and regional levels. These acts may be directed to the Virgin herself, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and to the Immaculate Conception. In Catholic teachings, consecration to Mary does not diminish or substitute the love of God, but enhances it, for all consecration is ultimately made to God.\nFollowing the growth of Marian devotions in the 16th century, Catholic saints wrote books such as \"Glories of Mary\" and \"True Devotion to Mary\" that emphasized Marian veneration and taught that \"the path to Jesus is through Mary\". Marian devotions are at times linked to Christocentric devotions (such as the Alliance of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary).\nMajor Marian devotions include: Seven Sorrows of Mary, Rosary and scapular, Miraculous Medal and Reparations to Mary. The months of May and October are traditionally \"Marian months\" for Roman Catholics; the daily rosary is encouraged in October and in May Marian devotions take place in many regions. Popes have issued a number of Marian encyclicals and Apostolic Letters to encourage devotions to and the veneration of the Virgin Mary.\nCatholics place high emphasis on Mary's roles as protector and intercessor and the \"Catechism\" refers to Mary as \"honored with the title 'Mother of God', to whose protection the faithful fly in all their dangers and needs\". Key Marian prayers include: , , , , , and the .\nMary's participation in the processes of salvation and redemption has also been emphasized in the Catholic tradition, but they are not doctrines. Pope John Paul II's 1987 encyclical began with the sentence: \"The Mother of the Redeemer has a precise place in the plan of salvation.\"\nIn the 20th century, both popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI emphasized the Marian focus of the Catholic Church. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) suggested a redirection of the whole church towards the program of Pope John Paul II in order to ensure an authentic approach to Christology via a return to the \"whole truth about Mary,\" writing:\n\"It is necessary to go back to Mary if we want to return to that 'truth about Jesus Christ,' 'truth about the Church' and 'truth about man.'\"\nThere is significant diversity in the Marian doctrines attributed to her primarily by the Catholic Church. The key Marian doctrines held primarily in Catholicism can be briefly outlined as follows:\nThe acceptance of these Marian doctrines by Roman Catholics and other Christians can be summarized as follows:\nThe title \"Mother of God\" () for Mary was confirmed by the First Council of Ephesus, held at the Church of Mary in 431. The Council decreed that Mary is the Mother of God because her son Jesus is one person who is both God and man, divine and human. This doctrine is widely accepted by Christians in general, and the term \"Mother of God\" had already been used within the oldest known prayer to Mary, the , which dates to around 250 AD.\nThe Virgin birth of Jesus was an almost universally held belief among Christians from the 2nd until the 19th century. It is included in the two most widely used Christian creeds, which state that Jesus \"was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary\" (the Nicene Creed, in what is now its familiar form) and the Apostles' Creed. The Gospel of Matthew describes Mary as a virgin who fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14, The authors of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke consider Jesus' conception not the result of intercourse, and assert that Mary had \"no relations with man\" before Jesus' birth. This alludes to the belief that Mary conceived Jesus through the action of God the Holy Spirit, and not through intercourse with Joseph or anyone else.\nThe doctrines of the Assumption or Dormition of Mary relate to her death and bodily assumption to heaven. Roman Catholic Church has dogmatically defined the doctrine of the Assumption, which was done in 1950 by Pope Pius XII in . Whether Mary died or not is not defined dogmatically, however, although a reference to the death of Mary is made in . In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Assumption of the Virgin Mary is believed, and celebrated with her Dormition, where they believe she died.\nCatholics believe in the Immaculate Conception of Mary, as proclaimed by Pope Pius IX in 1854, namely that she was filled with grace from the very moment of her conception in her mother's womb and preserved from the stain of original sin. The Latin Church has a liturgical feast by that name, kept on 8 December. Orthodox Christians reject the Immaculate Conception dogma principally because their understanding of ancestral sin (the Greek term corresponding to the Latin \"original sin\") differs from the Augustinian interpretation and that of the Catholic Church.\nThe Perpetual Virginity of Mary asserts Mary's real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made Man. The term Ever-Virgin (Greek ) is applied in this case, stating that Mary remained a virgin for the remainder of her life, making Jesus her biological and only son, whose conception and birth are held to be miraculous. The Orthodox Churches hold the position articulated in the Protoevangelium of James that Jesus' brothers and sisters were Joseph's children from a marriage prior to that of Mary, which had left him widowed. Roman Catholic teaching follows the Latin father Jerome in considering them Jesus' cousins.\nEastern Orthodox.\nEastern Orthodox Christianity includes a large number of traditions regarding the Ever-Virgin Mary, the . The Orthodox believe that she was and remained a virgin before and after Christ's birth. The (hymns to the Theotokos) are an essential part of the Divine Services in the Eastern Church and their positioning within the liturgical sequence effectively places the in the most prominent place after Christ. Within the Orthodox tradition, the order of the saints begins with: the , Angels, Prophets, Apostles, Fathers and Martyrs, giving the Virgin Mary precedence over the angels. She is also proclaimed as the \"Lady of the Angels\".\nThe views of the Church Fathers still play an important role in the shaping of Orthodox Marian perspective. However, the Orthodox views on Mary are mostly doxological, rather than academic: they are expressed in hymns, praise, liturgical poetry, and the veneration of icons. One of the most loved Orthodox Akathists (standing hymns) is devoted to Mary and it is often simply called the \"Akathist Hymn\". Five of the twelve Great Feasts in Orthodoxy are dedicated to Mary. The Sunday of Orthodoxy directly links the Virgin Mary's identity as Mother of God with icon veneration.\nA number of Orthodox feasts are connected with the miraculous icons of the .\nThe Orthodox view Mary as \"superior to all created beings\", although not divine. As such, the designation of Saint to Mary as Saint Mary is not appropriate. The Orthodox does not venerate Mary as conceived immaculate. Gregory of Nazianzus, Archbishop of Constantinople in the 4th century AD, speaking on the Nativity of Jesus Christ argues that \"Conceived by the Virgin, who first in body and soul was purified by the Holy Ghost, He came forth as God with that which He had assumed, One Person in two Natures, Flesh and Spirit, of which the latter defined the former.\" The Orthodox celebrate the Dormition of the Theotokos, rather than Assumption.\nThe Protoevangelium of James, an extra-canonical book, has been the source of many Orthodox beliefs on Mary. The account of Mary's life presented includes her consecration as a virgin at the temple at age three. The high priest Zachariah blessed Mary and informed her that God had magnified her name among many generations. Zachariah placed Mary on the third step of the altar, whereby God gave her grace. While in the temple, Mary was miraculously fed by an angel, until she was 12 years old. At that point, an angel told Zachariah to betroth Mary to a widower in Israel, who would be indicated. This story provides the theme of many hymns for the Feast of Presentation of Mary, and icons of the feast depict the story. The Orthodox believe that Mary was instrumental in the growth of Christianity during the life of Jesus, and after his Crucifixion, and Orthodox theologian Sergei Bulgakov has written: \"The Virgin Mary is the centre, invisible, but real, of the Apostolic Church.\"\nTheologians from the Orthodox tradition have made prominent contributions to the development of Marian thought and devotion.\nJohn Damascene (c.\u2009650\u00a0\u2013 c.\u2009750) was one of the greatest Orthodox theologians. Among other Marian writings, he proclaimed the essential nature of Mary's heavenly Assumption or Dormition and her meditative role.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />It was necessary that the body of the one who preserved her virginity intact in giving birth should also be kept incorrupt after death. It was necessary that she, who carried the Creator in her womb when he was a baby, should dwell among the tabernacles of heaven.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />From her we have harvested the grape of life; from her we have cultivated the seed of immortality. For our sake she became Mediatrix of all blessings; in her God became man, and man became God.\nMore recently, Sergei Bulgakov expressed the Orthodox sentiments towards Mary as follows:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Mary is not merely the instrument, but the direct positive condition of the Incarnation, its human aspect. Christ could not have been incarnate by some mechanical process, violating human nature. It was necessary for that nature itself to say for itself, by the mouth of the most pure human being: \"Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to Thy word.\"\nProtestant.\nProtestants in general reject the veneration and invocation of the Saints. They share the belief that Mary is the mother of Jesus and \"blessed among women\" (Luke 1:42) but they generally do not agree that Mary is to be venerated. She is considered to be an outstanding example of a life dedicated to God. As such, they tend not to accept certain church doctrines such as her being preserved from sin. Theologian Karl Barth wrote that \"the heresy of the Catholic Church is its Mariology\".\nSome early Protestants venerated Mary. Martin Luther wrote that: \"Mary is full of grace, proclaimed to be entirely without sin. God's grace fills her with everything good and makes her devoid of all evil.\" However, as of 1532, Luther stopped celebrating the feast of the Assumption of Mary and also discontinued his support of the Immaculate Conception. John Calvin remarked, \"It cannot be denied that God in choosing and destining Mary to be the Mother of his Son, granted her the highest honor.\" However, Calvin firmly rejected the notion that Mary can intercede between Christ and man.\nAlthough Calvin and Huldrych Zwingli honored Mary as the Mother of Christ in the 16th century, they did so less than Martin Luther. Thus the idea of respect and high honor for Mary was not rejected by the first Protestants; however, they came to criticize the Roman Catholics for venerating Mary. Following the Council of Trent in the 16th century, as Marian veneration became associated with Catholics, Protestant interest in Mary decreased. During the Age of the Enlightenment, any residual interest in Mary within Protestant churches almost disappeared, although Anglicans and Lutherans continued to honor her.\nIn the 20th century, some Protestants reacted in opposition to the Catholic dogma of the Assumption of Mary. The tone of the Second Vatican Council began to mend the ecumenical differences, and Protestants began to show interest in Marian themes. In 1997 and 1998, ecumenical dialogues between Catholics and Protestants took place, but, to date, the majority of Protestants disagree with Marian veneration and some view it as a challenge to the authority of Scripture.\nAnglican.\nThe various churches that form the Anglican Communion and the Continuing Anglican movement have different views on Marian doctrines and venerative practices given that there is no single church with universal authority within the Communion and that the mother church (the Church of England) understands itself to be both \"Catholic\" and \"Reformed\". Thus unlike the Protestant churches at large, the Anglican Communion includes segments which still retain some veneration of Mary.\nMary's special position within God's purpose of salvation as \"God-bearer\" is recognized in a number of ways by some Anglican Christians. All the member churches of the Anglican Communion affirm in the historic creeds that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, and celebrates the feast days of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. This feast is called in older prayer books the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 2 February. The Annunciation of our Lord to the Blessed Virgin on 25 March was from before the time of Bede until the 18th century New Year's Day in England. The Annunciation is called the \"Annunciation of our Lady\" in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Anglicans also celebrate in the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin on 31 May, though in some provinces the traditional date of 2 July is kept. The feast of the St. Mary the Virgin is observed on the traditional day of the Assumption, 15 August. The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin is kept on 8 September.\nThe Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary is kept in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, on 8 December. In certain Anglo-Catholic parishes this feast is called the Immaculate Conception. Again, the Assumption of Mary is believed in by most Anglo-Catholics, but is considered a pious opinion by moderate Anglicans. Protestant-minded Anglicans reject the celebration of these feasts.\nPrayers and venerative practices vary greatly. For instance, as of the 19th century, following the Oxford Movement, Anglo-Catholics frequently pray the Rosary, the , , and other litanies and anthems of Mary reminiscent of Catholic practices. Conversely, low church Anglicans rarely invoke the Blessed Virgin except in certain hymns, such as the second stanza of \"Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones\".\nThe Anglican Society of Mary was formed in 1931 and maintains chapters in many countries. The purpose of the society is to foster devotion to Mary among Anglicans. High church Anglicans espouse doctrines that are closer to Roman Catholics, and retain veneration for Mary, such as Anglican pilgrimages to Our Lady of Lourdes, which have taken place since 1963, and pilgrimages to Our Lady of Walsingham, which have taken place for hundreds of years.\nHistorically, there has been enough common ground between Roman Catholics and Anglicans on Marian issues that in 2005, a joint statement called \"Mary: grace and hope in Christ\" was produced through ecumenical meetings of Anglicans and Roman Catholic theologians. This document, informally known as the \"Seattle Statement\", is not formally endorsed by either the Catholic Church or the Anglican Communion, but is viewed by its authors as the beginning of a joint understanding of Mary.\nLutheran.\nDespite Martin Luther's harsh polemics against his Roman Catholic opponents over issues concerning Mary and the saints, theologians appear to agree that Luther adhered to the Marian decrees of the ecumenical councils and dogmas of the church. He held fast to the belief that Mary was a perpetual virgin and Mother of God. Special attention is given to the assertion that Luther, some 300 years before the dogmatization of the Immaculate Conception by Pope Pius IX in 1854, was a firm adherent of that view. Others maintain that Luther in later years changed his position on the Immaculate Conception, which, at that time was undefined in the church, maintaining however the sinlessness of Mary throughout her life. For Luther, early in his life, the Assumption of Mary was an understood fact, although he later stated that the Bible did not say anything about it and stopped celebrating its feast. Important to him was the belief that Mary and the saints do live on after death. \"Throughout his career as a priest-professor-reformer, Luther preached, taught, and argued about the veneration of Mary with a verbosity that ranged from childlike piety to sophisticated polemics. His views are intimately linked to his Christocentric theology and its consequences for liturgy and piety.\"\nLuther, while revering Mary, came to criticize the \"Papists\" for blurring the line between high admiration of the grace of God wherever it is seen in a human being, and religious service given to another creature. He considered the Roman Catholic practice of celebrating saints' days and making intercessory requests addressed especially to Mary and other departed saints to be idolatry. His final thoughts on Marian devotion and veneration are preserved in a sermon preached at Wittenberg only a month before his death:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Therefore, when we preach faith, that we should worship nothing but God alone, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, as we say in the Creed: 'I believe in God the Father almighty and in Jesus Christ,' then we are remaining in the temple at Jerusalem. Again,'This is my beloved Son; listen to him.' 'You will find him in a manger'. He alone does it. But reason says the opposite:\nWhat, us? Are we to worship only Christ? Indeed, shouldn't we also honor the holy mother of Christ? She is the woman who bruised the head of the serpent. Hear us, Mary, for thy Son so honors thee that he can refuse thee nothing. Here Bernard went too far in his \"Homilies on the Gospel: Missus est Angelus\". God has commanded that we should honor the parents; therefore I will call upon Mary. She will intercede for me with the Son, and the Son with the Father, who will listen to the Son. So you have the picture of God as angry and Christ as judge; Mary shows to Christ her breast and Christ shows his wounds to the wrathful Father. That's the kind of thing this comely bride, the wisdom of reason cooks up: Mary is the mother of Christ, surely Christ will listen to her; Christ is a stern judge, therefore I will call upon St. George and St. Christopher. No, we have been by God's command baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, just as the Jews were circumcised.\nCertain Lutheran churches such as the Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church continue to venerate Mary and the saints in the same manner that Roman Catholics do, and hold all Marian dogmas as part of their faith.\nMethodist.\nMethodists do not have any additional teachings on the Virgin Mary except from what is mentioned in Scripture and the ecumenical Creeds. As such, Methodists generally accept the doctrine of the virgin birth, but reject the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. John Wesley, the principal founder of the Methodist movement within the Church of England, believed that Mary \"continued a pure and unspotted virgin\", thus upholding the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary. Contemporary Methodism holds that Mary was a virgin before, during, and immediately after the birth of Christ. In addition, some Methodists also hold the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary as a pious opinion.\nNontrinitarian.\nNontrinitarians, such as Unitarians, Christadelphians, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Latter Day Saints also acknowledge Mary as the biological mother of Jesus Christ, but most reject any immaculate conception and do not recognize Marian titles such as \"Mother of God\". The Latter Day Saint movement's view affirms the virgin birth of Jesus and Christ's divinity, but only as a separate being than God the Father. The Book of Mormon refers to Mary by name in prophecies and describes her as \"most beautiful and fair above all other virgins\" and as a \"precious and chosen vessel.\"\nIn nontrinitarian groups that are also Christian mortalists, Mary is not seen as an intercessor between humankind and Jesus, whom mortalists would consider \"asleep\", awaiting resurrection.\nJewish.\nThe issue of the parentage of Jesus in the Talmud also affects Jewish views of Mary. However, the Talmud does not mention Mary by name, and is considerate rather than only polemic. The story about Panthera is also found in the , the literary origins of which can not be traced with any certainty, and given that it is unlikely to go before the 4th century, the time is too late to include authentic remembrances of Jesus. \"The Blackwell Companion to Jesus\" states that the has no historical facts and was perhaps created as a tool for warding off conversions to Christianity. The tales from the did impart a negative picture of Mary to ordinary Jewish readers. The circulation of the was widespread among European and Middle Eastern Jewish communities since the 9th century. The name Panthera may be a distortion of the term (\"virgin\") and Raymond E. Brown considers the story of Panthera a fanciful explanation of the birth of Jesus that includes very little historical evidence. Robert Van Voorst states that because is a medieval document with its lack of a fixed form and orientation towards a popular audience, it is \"most unlikely\" to have reliable historical information. Stacks of the copies of the Talmud were burnt upon a court order after the 1240 Disputation for allegedly containing material defaming the character of Mary.\nIslamic.\nThe Virgin Mary holds a singularly exalted place in Islam, and she is considered by the Quran to have been the greatest woman in the history of humankind. The Islamic scripture recounts the Divine Promise given to Mary as being: \"\"O Mary! Surely Allah has selected you, purified you, and chosen you over all women of the world\" ( 3:42).\nMary is often referred to by Muslims by the honorific title (\"Our Lady\"). She is mentioned in the Quran as the daughter of Imran.\nMoreover, Mary is the only woman named in the Quran and she is mentioned or referred to in the scripture a total of 50 times. Mary holds a singularly distinguished and honored position among women in the Quran. A (chapter) in the Quran is titled \"Maryam\" (Mary), the only in the Quran named after a woman, in which the story of Mary (Maryam) and Jesus (Isa) is recounted according to the view of Jesus in Islam.\nBirth.\nIn a narration of hadith from Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq, he mentions that Allah revealed to Imran, \"I will grant you a boy, blessed, one who will cure the blind and the leper and one who will raise the dead by My permission. And I will send him as an apostle to the Children of Israel.\" Then Imran related the story to his wife, Hannah, the mother of Mary. When she became pregnant, she conceived it was a boy, but when she gave birth to a girl, she stated \"Oh my Lord! Verily I have delivered a female, and the male is not like the female, for a girl will not be a prophet,\" to which Allah replies in the Quran, \"Allah knows better what has been delivered\" (3:36). When Allah bestowed Jesus to Mary, he fulfilled his promise to Imran.\nMotherhood.\nMary was declared (uniquely along with Jesus) to be a \"Sign of God\" to humanity; as one who \"guarded her chastity\"; an \"obedient one\"; and dedicated by her mother to Allah whilst still in the womb; uniquely (amongst women) \"Accepted into service by God\"; cared for by (one of the prophets as per Islam) Zakariya (Zacharias); that in her childhood she resided in the Temple and uniquely had access to Al-Mihrab (understood to be the Holy of Holies), and was provided with heavenly \"provisions\" by God.\nMary is also called a \"Chosen One\"; a \"Purified One\"; a \"Truthful one\"; her child conceived through \"a Word from God\"; and \"chosen you above the women of the worlds(the material and heavenly worlds)\".\nThe Quran relates detailed narrative accounts of Maryam (Mary) in two places, 3:35-47 and 19:16-34. These state beliefs in both the Immaculate Conception of Mary and the virgin birth of Jesus. The account given in Surah Maryam 19 is nearly identical with that in the Gospel according to Luke, and both of these (Luke, Sura 19) begin with an account of the visitation of an angel upon Zakariya (Zecharias) and \"Good News of the birth of Yahya (John)\", followed by the account of the annunciation. It mentions how Mary was informed by an angel that she would become the mother of Jesus through the actions of God alone.\nIn the Islamic tradition, Mary and Jesus were the only children who could not be touched by Satan at the moment of their birth, for God imposed a veil between them and Satan. According to the author Shabbir Akhtar, the Islamic perspective on Mary's Immaculate Conception is compatible with the Catholic doctrine of the same topic. \n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"O People of the Book! Do not go to extremes regarding your faith; say nothing about Allah except the truth. The Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, was no more than a messenger of Allah and the fulfilment of His Word through Mary and a spirit \u02f9created by a command\u02fa from Him. So believe in Allah and His messengers and do not say, \"Trinity.\" Stop!\u2014for your own good. Allah is only One God. Glory be to Him! He is far above having a son! To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. And Allah is sufficient as a Trustee of Affairs.\nThe Quran says that Jesus was the result of a virgin birth. The most detailed account of the annunciation and birth of Jesus is provided in Suras 3 and 19 of the Quran, where it is written that God sent an angel to announce that she could shortly expect to bear a son, despite being a virgin.\nDruze Faith.\nThe Druze faith holds the Virgin Mary, known as \"Sayyida Maryam\", in high regard. Although the Druze religion is distinct from mainstream Islam and Christianity, it incorporates elements from both and honors many of their figures, including the Virgin Mary. The Druze revere Mary as a holy and pure figure, embodying virtue and piety. She is respected not only for her role as the mother of Messiah Jesus but also for her spiritual purity and dedication to God. In regions where Druze and Christians coexist, such as parts of Lebanon, Syria and Israel, the veneration of Mary often reflects a blend of traditions. Shared pilgrimage sites and mutual respect for places like the Church of Saidet et Tall\u00e9 in Deir el Qamar, the Our Lady of Lebanon shrine in Harrisa, the Our Lady of Saidnaya Monastery in Saidnaya, and the Stella Maris Monastery in Haifa exemplify this.\nHistorical records and writings by authors like Pierre-Marie Martin and Glenn Bowman show that Druze leaders and community members have historically shown deep reverence for Marian sites. They often sought her intercession before battles or during times of need, demonstrating a cultural and spiritual integration of Marian veneration into their religious practices.\nBah\u00e1'\u00ed Faith.\nThe Bah\u00e1'\u00ed Faith venerates Mary as the mother of Jesus. The , the primary theological work of the Bah\u00e1'\u00ed religion, describes Mary as \"that most beauteous countenance,\" and \"that veiled and immortal Countenance.\" The Bah\u00e1'\u00ed writings claim Jesus Christ was \"conceived of the Holy Ghost\" and assert that in the Bah\u00e1'\u00ed Faith \"the reality of the mystery of the Immaculacy of the Virgin Mary is confessed.\"\nBiblical scholars.\nThe statement found in that Joseph did not have sexual relations with Mary before she gave birth to Jesus has been debated among scholars, with some saying that she did not remain a virgin and some saying that she was a perpetual virgin. Other scholars contend that the Greek word (\"until\") denotes a state up to a point, but does not mean that the state ended after that point, and that Matthew 1:25 does not confirm or deny the virginity of Mary after the birth of Jesus. According to Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman, the Hebrew word , meaning young woman of childbearing age, was translated into Greek as , which often, though not always, refers to a young woman who has never had sex. In Isaiah 7:14, it is commonly believed by Christians to be the prophecy of the Virgin Mary referred to in Matthew 1:23. While Matthew and Luke give differing versions of the virgin birth, John quotes the uninitiated Philip and the disbelieving Jews gathered at Galilee referring to Joseph as Jesus' father.\nOther biblical verses have also been debated; for example, the reference made by Paul the Apostle that Jesus was made \"of the seed of David according to the flesh\" (Romans 1:3) meaning that he was a descendant of David through Joseph.\nPre-Christian Rome.\nFrom the early stages of Christianity, belief in the virginity of Mary and the virgin conception of Jesus, as stated in the gospels, holy and supernatural, was used by detractors, both political and religious, as a topic for discussions, debates, and writings, specifically aimed to challenge the divinity of Jesus and thus Christians and Christianity alike. In the 2nd century, as part of his anti-Christian polemic \"The True Word\", the pagan philosopher Celsus contended that Jesus was actually the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier named Panthera. The Church Father Origen dismissed this assertion as a complete fabrication in his apologetic treatise \"Against Celsus\". How far Celsus sourced his view from Jewish sources remains a subject of discussion.\nChristian devotions.\nHistory.\n2nd century.\nJustin Martyr was among the first to draw a parallel between Eve and Mary. This derives from his comparison of Adam and Jesus. In his \"Dialogue with Trypho\", written sometime between 155 and 167, he explains:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />He became man by the Virgin, in order that the disobedience which proceeded from the serpent might receive its destruction in the same manner in which it derived its origin. For Eve, who was a virgin and undefiled, having conceived the word of the serpent, brought forth disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy, when the angel Gabriel announced the good tidings to her that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her, and the power of the Highest would overshadow her: wherefore also the Holy Thing begotten of her is the Son of God; and she replied, 'Be it unto me according to thy word.\" And by her has He been born, to whom we have proved so many scriptures refer, and by whom God destroys both the serpent and those angels and men who are like him; but works deliverance from death to those who repent of their wickedness and believe upon Him.\nIt is possible that the teaching of Mary as the New Eve was part of the apostolic tradition rather than merely Justin Martyr's own creation, according to Serafim Sepp\u00e4l\u00e4. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon, also takes up this parallel, in \"Against Heresies\", written about the year 182:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />In accordance with this design, Mary the Virgin is found obedient, saying, \"Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to your word.\" Luke 1:38 But Eve was disobedient; for she did not obey when as yet she was a virgin. ... having become disobedient, was made the cause of death, both to herself and to the entire human race; so also did Mary, having a man betrothed [to her], and being nevertheless a virgin, by yielding obedience, become the cause of salvation, both to herself and the whole human race. And on this account does the law term a woman betrothed to a man, the wife of him who had betrothed her, although she was as yet a virgin; thus indicating the back-reference from Mary to Eve...For the Lord, having been born \"the First-begotten of the dead,\" Revelation 1:5 and receiving into His bosom the ancient fathers, has regenerated them into the life of God, He having been made Himself the beginning of those that live, as Adam became the beginning of those who die. 1 Corinthians 15:20\u201322 Wherefore also Luke, commencing the genealogy with the Lord, carried it back to Adam, indicating that it was He who regenerated them into the Gospel of life, and not they Him. And thus also it was that the knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. For what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the virgin Mary set free through faith.\nDuring the second century, the Gospel of James was also written. According to Stephen J. Shoemaker, \"its interest in Mary as a figure in her own right and its reverence for her sacred purity mark the beginnings of Marian piety within early Christianity\".\n3rd to 5th centuries.\nDuring the Age of Martyrs and at the latest in the fourth century, the majority of the most essential ideas of Marian devotion already appeared in some form \u2013 in the writings of the Church Fathers, apocrypha and visual arts. The lack of sources makes it unclear whether the devotion to Mary played a role in liturgical use during the first centuries of Christianity. In the 4th century, Marian devotion in a liturgical context becomes evident.\nThe earliest known Marian prayer (the , or \"Beneath Thy Protection\") is from the 3rd century (perhaps 270), and its text was rediscovered in 1917 on a papyrus in Egypt. According to some sources, Theonas of Alexandria consecrated one of the first holy places dedicated to Mary during the late 3rd century. An even earlier place has been found in Nazareth, dated to the previous century by some scholars. Following the Edict of Milan in 313, by the 5th century artistic images of Mary began to appear in public and larger churches were being dedicated to Mary, such as the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. At the Council of Ephesus in 431, Mary was officially declared the \"Theotokos\", meaning \"God-bearer\" or \"Mother of God\". The term had possibly been used for centuries or at least since the early 300s, when it seems to have already been in established use.\nThe Council of Ephesus was long thought to have been held at a church in Ephesus which had been dedicated to Mary about a hundred years before. Though, recent archeological surveys indicate that St. Mary's Church in Ephesus did not exist at the time of the Council or, at least, the building was not dedicated to Mary before 500. The Church of the Seat of Mary in Judea was built shortly after the introduction of Marian liturgy at the council of Ephesus, in 456, by a widow named Ikelia.\nAccording to the 4th-century heresiologist Epiphanius of Salamis, the Virgin Mary was worshipped as a mother goddess in the Christian sect of Collyridianism, which was found throughout Arabia sometime during the 300s AD. Collyridianism had women performing priestly acts, and made bread offerings to the Virgin Mary. The group was condemned as heretical by the Roman Catholic Church and was preached against by Epiphanius of Salamis, who wrote about the group in his writings titled Panarion.\nByzantium.\nDuring the era of the Byzantine Empire, Mary was venerated as the virginal Mother of God and as an intercessor.\nEphesus is a cultic centre of Mary, the site of the first church dedicated to her and the rumoured place of her death. Ephesus was previously a centre for worship of Artemis, a virgin goddess; the Temple of Artemis there is regarded as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The cult of Mary was furthered by Queen Theodora in the 6th century. According to William E. Phipps, in the book \"Survivals of Roman Religion\", \"Gordon Laing argues convincingly that the worship of Artemis as both virgin and mother at the grand Ephesian temple contributed to the veneration of Mary.\"\nMiddle Ages.\nThe Middle Ages saw many legends about Mary, her parents, and even her grandparents. Mary's popularity increased dramatically from the 12th century, linked to the Roman Catholic Church's designation of Mary as Mediatrix.\nPost-Reformation.\nOver the centuries, devotion and veneration to Mary has varied greatly among Christian traditions. For instance, while Protestants show scant attention to Marian prayers or devotions, of all the saints whom the Orthodox venerate, the most honored is Mary, who is considered \"more honorable than the Cherubim and more glorious than the Seraphim\".\nOrthodox theologian Sergei Bulgakov wrote: \"Love and veneration for the Virgin is the soul of Orthodox piety. A faith in Christ which does not include [...] His mother is another faith, another Christianity from that of the Orthodox Church.\"\nAlthough the Catholics and the Orthodox may honor and venerate Mary, they do not view her as divine, nor do they worship her. Roman Catholics view Mary as subordinate to Christ, but uniquely so, in that she is seen as above all other creatures. Similarly, Bulgakov wrote that the Orthodox view Mary as \"superior to all created beings\" and \"ceaselessly pray for her intercession\". However, she is not considered a \"substitute for the One Mediator\" who is Christ. \"Let Mary be in honor, but let worship be given to the Lord\", he wrote. Similarly, Catholics do not worship Mary as a divine being, but rather \"hyper-venerate\" her. In Roman Catholic theology, the term is reserved for Marian veneration, for the worship of God, and for the veneration of other saints and angels. The definition of the three level hierarchy of , and goes back to the Second Council of Nicaea in 787.\nDevotions to artistic depictions of Mary vary among Christian traditions. There is a long tradition of Catholic Marian art and no image permeates Catholic art as does the image of Madonna and Child. The icon of the Virgin with Christ is, without doubt, the most venerated icon in the Orthodox Church. Both Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians venerate images and icons of Mary, given that the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 permitted their veneration with the understanding that those who venerate the image are venerating the reality of the person it represents, and the 842 Synod of Constantinople confirming the same. According to Orthodox piety and traditional practice, however, believers ought to pray before and venerate only flat, two-dimensional icons, and not three-dimensional statues.\nThe Anglican position towards Mary is in general more conciliatory than that of Protestants at large and in a book he wrote about praying with the icons of Mary, Rowan Williams, former archbishop of Canterbury, said: \"It is not only that we cannot understand Mary without seeing her as pointing to Christ; we cannot understand Christ without seeing his attention to Mary.\"\nOn 4 September 1781, 11 families of arrived from the Gulf of California and established a city in the name of King Carlos III. The small town was named (after our Lady of the Angels), a city that today is known simply as Los Angeles. In an attempt to revive the custom of religious processions within the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, in September 2011 the Queen of Angels Foundation, and founder Mark Anchor Albert, inaugurated an annual Grand Marian Procession in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles' historic core. This yearly procession, held on the last Saturday of August and intended to coincide with the anniversary of the founding of the City of Los Angeles, begins at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels and concludes at the parish of La Iglesia de Nuestra Se\u00f1ora Reina de los Angeles which is part of the Los Angeles Plaza Historic District, better known as \"La Placita\".\nFeasts.\nThe earliest feasts that relate to Mary grew out of the cycle of feasts that celebrated the Nativity of Jesus. Given that according to the Gospel of Luke (Luke 2:22\u201340), 40 days after the birth of Jesus, along with the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, Mary was purified according to Jewish customs. The Feast of the Purification began to be celebrated by the 5th century, and became the \"Feast of Simeon\" in Byzantium.\nIn the 7th and 8th centuries, four more Marian feasts were established in Eastern Christianity. In the West, a feast dedicated to Mary, just before Christmas was celebrated in the Churches of Milan and Ravenna in Italy in the 7th century. The four Roman Marian feasts of Purification, Annunciation, Assumption and Nativity of Mary were gradually and sporadically introduced into England by the 11th century.\nOver time, the number and nature of feasts (and the associated Titles of Mary) and the venerative practices that accompany them have varied a great deal among diverse Christian traditions. Overall, there are significantly more titles, feasts and venerative Marian practices among Roman Catholics than any other Christians traditions. Some such feasts relate to specific events, such as the Feast of Our Lady of Victory, based on the 1571 victory of the Papal States in the Battle of Lepanto.\nDifferences in feasts may also originate from doctrinal issues\u2014the Feast of the Assumption is such an example. Given that there is no agreement among all Christians on the circumstances of the death, Dormition or Assumption of Mary, the feast of assumption is celebrated among some denominations and not others. While the Roman Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of the Assumption on 15 August, some Eastern Catholics celebrate it as Dormition of the, and may do so on 28 August, if they follow the Julian calendar. The Eastern Orthodox also celebrate it as the Dormition of the , one of their 12 Great Feasts. Protestants do not celebrate this, or any other Marian feasts.\nRelics.\nThe veneration of Marian relics used to be common practice before the Reformation. It was later largely surpassed by the veneration of Marian images.\nBodily relics.\nAs Mary's body is believed by most Christians to have been taken up into the glory of heaven, her bodily relics have been limited to hair, nails and breast milk.\nAccording to John Calvin's 1543 \"Treatise on Relics\", her hair was exposed for veneration in several churches, including in Rome, Saint-Flour, Cluny and Nevers.\nIn this book, Calvin criticized the veneration of the Holy Milk due to the lack of biblical references to it and the doubts about the veracity of such relics:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />With regard to the milk, there is not perhaps a town, a convent, or nunnery, where it is not shown in large or small quantities. Indeed, had the Virgin been a wet-nurse her whole life, or a dairy, she could not have produced more than is shown as hers in various parts. How they obtained all this milk they do not say, and it is superfluous here to remark that there is no foundation in the Gospels for these foolish and blasphemous extravagances.\nAlthough the veneration of Marian bodily relics is no longer a common practice today, there are some remaining traces of it, such as the Chapel of the Milk Grotto in Bethlehem, named after Mary's milk.\nClothes.\nClothes which are believed to have belonged to Mary include the Cincture of the Theotokos kept in the Vatopedi monastery and her Holy Girdle kept in Mount Athos.\nOther relics are said to have been collected during later Marian apparitions, such as her robe, veil, and part of her belt which were kept in Blachernae church in Constantinople after she appeared there during the 10th century. These relics, now lost, are celebrated by the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic Churches as the Intercession of the Theotokos.\nFew other objects are said to have been touched or given by Mary during apparitions, notably a 1531 image printed on a \"tilma\", known as Our Lady of Guadalupe, belonging to Juan Diego.\nPlaces.\nPlaces where Mary is believed to have lived include the Basilica della Santa Casa in Loreto, Marche, and the House of the Virgin Mary in Ephesus.\nEastern Christians believe that she died and was put in the Tomb of the Virgin Mary near Jerusalem before the Assumption.\nThe belief that Mary's house was in Ephesus is recent, as it was claimed in the 19th century based on the visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich, an Augustinian nun in Germany. It has since been named as the House of the Virgin Mary by Roman Catholic pilgrims who consider it the place where Mary lived until her assumption. The Gospel of John states that Mary went to live with the Disciple whom Jesus loved, traditionally identified as John the Evangelist and John the Apostle. Irenaeus and Eusebius of Caesarea wrote in their histories that John later went to Ephesus, which may provide the basis for the early belief that Mary also lived in Ephesus with John.\nThe apparition of Our Lady of the Pillar in the first century was believed to be a bilocation, as it occurred in Spain while Mary was living in Ephesus or Jerusalem. The pillar on which she was standing during the apparition is believed to be kept in the Cathedral-Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar in Zaragoza and is therefore venerated as a relics, as it was in physical contact with Mary.\nIn arts.\nIconography.\nIn paintings, Mary is traditionally portrayed in blue. This tradition can trace its origin to the Byzantine Empire, from c.\u2009500 AD, where blue was \"the colour of an empress\". A more practical explanation for the use of this colour is that in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, the blue pigment was derived from the rock lapis lazuli, a stone of greater value than gold, which was imported from Afghanistan. Beyond a painter's retainer, patrons were expected to purchase any gold or lapis lazuli to be used in the painting. Hence, it was an expression of devotion and glorification to swathe the Virgin in gowns of blue. Transformations in visual depictions of Mary from the 13th to 15th centuries mirror her \"social\" standing within the Church and in society.\nTraditional representations of Mary include the crucifixion scene, called . While not recorded in the Gospel accounts, Mary cradling the dead body of her son is a common motif in art, called a \"piet\u00e0\" or \"pity\".\nIn the Egyptian, Eritrean, and Ethiopian tradition, Mary has been portrayed in story and paint for centuries. Beginning in the 1600s, however, highland Ethiopians began portraying Mary performing a variety of miracles for the faithful, including paintings of her giving water to a thirsty dog, healing monks with her breast milk, and saving a man eaten by a crocodile. Over 1,000 such stories about her exist in this tradition, and about one hundred of those have hundreds of paintings each, in various manuscripts, adding up to thousands of paintings.\nCinematic portrayals.\nMary has been portrayed in various films and on television, including:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["14871423", "73513", "37857", "306519"], "permutation_1": ["73513", "306519", "14871423", "37857"], "permutation_2": ["306519", "73513", "14871423", "37857"], "permutation_3": ["14871423", "37857", "306519", "73513"]}
{"id": "4hop1__106922_52584_71250_135051", "docs_added": {"13588": "History of Egypt\nEgypt, one of the world\u2019s oldest civilizations, was unified around 3150 BC by King Narmer. It later came under Persian, Greek, Roman, and Islamic rule before joining the Ottoman Empire in 1517. Controlled by Britain in the late 19th century, it became a republic in 1953. After several political transitions, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi currently leads the country, focusing on stability and economic reform.\nPredynastic Egypt (pre-3150 BC).\nThere is evidence of petroglyphs along the Nile terraces and in desert oases. In the 10th millennium BC, a culture of hunter-gatherers and fishermen was replaced by a grain-grinding culture. Climate changes and/or overgrazing around 6000 BC began to desiccate the pastoral lands of Egypt, forming the Sahara. Early tribal peoples migrated to the Nile River, where they developed a settled agricultural economy and more centralized society.\nBy about 6000 BC, a Neolithic culture had taken root in the Nile Valley. During the Neolithic era, several predynastic cultures developed independently in Upper and Lower Egypt. The Badari culture and the successor Naqada series are generally regarded as precursors to dynastic Egypt. The earliest known Lower Egyptian site, Merimde, predates the Badarian by about seven hundred years. Contemporaneous Lower Egyptian communities coexisted with their southern counterparts for more than two thousand years, remaining culturally distinct, but maintaining frequent contact through trade. The earliest known evidence of Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions appeared during the predynastic period on Naqada III pottery vessels, dated to about 3200 BC.\nDynastic Egypt (3150\u2013332 BC).\nEarly Dynastic Period and the Old Kingdom.\nA unified kingdom was formed in 3150 BC by King Menes, leading to a series of dynasties that ruled Egypt for the next three millennia. Egyptian culture flourished during this long period and remained distinctively Egyptian in its religion, arts, language and customs.\nThe first two ruling dynasties of a unified Egypt set the stage for the Old Kingdom period (c. 2700\u20132200 BC), which constructed many pyramids, most notably the pyramid of Djoser, constructed during the Third Dynasty and the Giza Pyramids, constructed in the Fourth Dynasty.\nFirst Intermediate Period, the Middle Kingdom and the Second Intermediate Period.\nThe First Intermediate Period ushered in a time of political upheaval for about 150 years. Stronger Nile floods and stabilization of government, however, brought back renewed prosperity for the country in the Middle Kingdom c. 2040 BC, reaching a peak during the reign of Pharaoh Amenemhat III. A second period of disunity heralded the arrival of the first foreign ruling dynasty in Egypt, that of the Semitic-speaking Hyksos. The Hyksos migrants took over much of Lower Egypt around 1650 BC and founded a new capital at Avaris. They were driven out by an Upper Egyptian force led by Ahmose I, who founded the Eighteenth Dynasty and relocated the capital from Memphis to Thebes.\nNew Kingdom, Third Intermediate Period and Late Period.\nThe New Kingdom (c. 1550\u20131070 BC) began with the Eighteenth Dynasty, marking the rise of Egypt as an international power that expanded during its greatest extension to an empire from Syria to Upper Nubia. This period is noted for some of the most well known Pharaohs, including Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti, Tutankhamun and Ramesses II. The first historically attested expression of monotheism came during this period as Atenism, although some consider Atenism to be a form of monolatry rather than of monotheism. Frequent contacts with other nations brought new ideas to the New Kingdom. The country was later ruled and invaded by Libyans, Nubians and Assyrians, but native Egyptians eventually drove them out and regained control of their country.\nAchaemenid rule.\nIn the sixth century BC, the Achaemenid Empire conquered Egypt. The entire Twenty-seventh Dynasty of Egypt, from 525 BC to 402 BC, save for Petubastis III and possibly Psammetichus IV, was an entirely Persian-ruled period, with the Achaemenid kings being granted the title of pharaoh. Amyrtaeus' successful rebellion ended the first Achaemenid rule and inaugurated Egypt's last significant phase of independence under native rulers. The Thirtieth Dynasty was the last native ruling dynasty during the Pharaonic epoch. It fell to the Persians again in 343 BC after the last native Pharaoh, King Nectanebo II, was defeated in battle.\nSecond Achaemenid conquest.\nThe Thirty-first Dynasty of Egypt, also known as the Second Egyptian Satrapy, was effectively a short-living province of the Achaemenid Empire between 343 BC to 332 BC. After an interval of independence, during which three indigenous dynasties reigned (the 28th, 29th and 30th dynasty), Artaxerxes III (358\u2013338 BC) reconquered the Nile valley for a brief second period (343\u2013332 BC), which is called the Thirty-first Dynasty of Egypt, thus starting another period of pharaohs of Persian origin.\nA team led by Johannes Krause managed the first reliable sequencing of the genomes of 90 mummified individuals in 2017. Whilst not conclusive, because of the non-exhaustive time frame and restricted location that the mummies represent, their study nevertheless showed that these Ancient Egyptians \"closely resembled ancient and modern Near Eastern populations, especially those in the Levant, and had almost no DNA from sub-Saharan Africa. What's more, the genetics of the mummies remained remarkably consistent even as different powers\u2014including Nubians, Greeks, and Romans\u2014conquered the empire\".\nGreek rule.\nPtolemaic Kingdom.\nThe Ptolemaic Kingdom was a powerful Hellenistic state extending from southern Syria in the east, to Cyrene to the west, and south to the frontier with Nubia. Alexandria became the capital city and a center of Greek culture and trade. To gain recognition by the native Egyptian populace, they named themselves as the successors to the Pharaohs. The later Ptolemies took on Egyptian traditions, had themselves portrayed on public monuments in Egyptian style and dress, and participated in Egyptian religious life.\nThe last ruler from the Ptolemaic dynasty was Cleopatra, who committed suicide following the burial of her lover Mark Antony, who had died in her arms (from a self-inflicted stab wound) after Augustus had captured Alexandria and her mercenary forces had fled.\nThe Ptolemies faced rebellions of native Egyptians, often caused by an unwanted regime, and were involved in foreign and civil wars that led to the decline of the kingdom and its annexation by Rome. Nevertheless, Hellenistic culture continued to thrive in Egypt well after the Muslim conquest. The native Egyptian/Coptic culture continued to exist as well (the Coptic language itself was Egypt's most widely spoken language until at least the 10th century).\nRoman Egypt.\nRoman province of Egypt.\nEgypt quickly became the Empire's breadbasket supplying the greater portion of the Empire's grain in addition to flax, papyrus, glass and many other finished goods. The city of Alexandria became a key trading outpost for the Roman Empire (by some accounts, the most important for a time). Shipping from Egypt regularly reached India and Ethiopia among other international destinations. It was also a leading (perhaps \"the\" leading) scientific and technological center of the Empire. Scholars such as Ptolemy, Hypatia, and Heron broke new ground in astronomy, mathematics, and other disciplines. Culturally, the city of Alexandria at times rivaled Rome in its importance.\nDiocese of Egypt.\nChristianity reached Egypt relatively early in the evangelist period of the first century (traditionally credited to Mark the Evangelist). Alexandria, Egypt and Antioch, Syria quickly became the leading centers of Christianity. Diocletian's reign marked the transition from the classical Roman to the Late antique/Byzantine era in Egypt, when a great number of Egyptian Christians were persecuted. The New Testament had by then been translated into Egyptian. After the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, a distinct Egyptian Coptic Church was firmly established.\nSassanid Conquest of Egypt.\nSasanian Egypt (known in Middle Persian sources as \"Agiptus\") refers to the brief rule of Egypt and parts of Libya by the Sasanian Empire, which lasted from 619 to 629, until the Sasanian rebel Shahrbaraz made an alliance with the Byzantine emperor Heraclius and had control over Egypt returned to him.\nEarly Islamic Egypt.\nThe Byzantines were able to regain control of the country after a brief Persian invasion early in the 7th century, until 639\u2013642, when Egypt was invaded and conquered by the Arab Islamic Empire. The final loss of Egypt was of incalculable significance to the Byzantine Empire, which had relied on Egypt for many agricultural and manufactured goods.\nWhen they defeated the Byzantine armies in Egypt, the Arabs brought Sunni Islam to the country. Early in this period, Egyptians began to blend their new faith with their Christian traditions as well as other indigenous beliefs and practices, leading to various Sufi orders that have flourished to this day. These earlier rites had survived the period of Coptic Christianity.\nLate Medieval Egypt.\nMuslim rulers nominated by the Islamic Caliphate remained in control of Egypt for the next six centuries, with Cairo as the seat of the Caliphate under the Fatimids. With the end of the Kurdish Ayyubid dynasty, the Mamluks, a Turco-Circassian military caste, took control about AD 1250. By the late 13th century, Egypt linked the Red Sea, India, Malaya, and East Indies. The Greek and Coptic languages and cultures went into a steep decline in favor of Arabic culture (though Coptic managed to last as a spoken language until the 17th century and remains a liturgical language today).\nThe Mamluks continued to govern the country until the conquest of Egypt by the Ottoman Turks in 1517, after which it became a province of the Ottoman Empire. The mid-14th-century Black Death killed about 40% of the population of Egypt.\nOttoman Egypt.\nAfter the 15th century, the Ottoman invasion pushed the Egyptian system into decline. The defensive militarization damaged its civil society and economic institutions. The weakening of the economic system combined with the effects of the plague left Egypt vulnerable to foreign invasion. Portuguese traders took over their trade. Egypt suffered six famines between 1687 and 1731. The 1784 famine cost it roughly one-sixth of its population.\nThe brief French invasion of Egypt led by Napoleon Bonaparte began in 1798. The campaign eventually led to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, creating the field of Egyptology. Despite early victories and an initially successful expedition into Syria, Napoleon and his Arm\u00e9e d'Orient were eventually defeated and forced to withdraw, especially after suffering the defeat of the supporting French fleet at the Battle of the Nile.\nMuhammed Ali Dynasty.\nThe expulsion of the French in 1801 by Ottoman, Mamluk, and British forces was followed by four years of anarchy in which Ottomans, Mamluks, and Albanians \u2014 who were nominally in the service of the Ottomans \u2013 wrestled for power. Out of this chaos, the commander of the Albanian regiment, Muhammad Ali (Kavalali Mehmed Ali Pasha) emerged as a dominant figure and in 1805 was acknowledged by the Sultan in Istanbul as his viceroy in Egypt; the title implied subordination to the Sultan but this was in fact a polite fiction: Ottoman power in Egypt was finished and Muhammad Ali, an ambitious and able leader, established a dynasty that was to rule Egypt until the revolution of 1952. After 1882 the dynasty became a British puppet.\nMuhammad Ali's primary focus was military: he annexed Northern Sudan (1820\u20131824), Syria (1833), and parts of Arabia and Anatolia; but in 1841 the European powers, fearful lest he topple the Ottoman Empire itself, forced him to return most of his conquests to the Ottomans. He kept the Sudan and his title to Egypt was made hereditary. A more lasting result of his military ambition is that it required him to modernize the country. Eager to adopt the military (and therefore industrial) techniques of the great powers, he sent students to the West and invited training missions to Egypt. He built industries, a system of canals for irrigation and transport, and reformed the civil service.\nThe introduction in 1820 of long-staple cotton, the Egyptian variety of which became notable, transformed its agriculture into a cash-crop monoculture before the end of the century. The social effects of this were enormous: land ownership became concentrated and many foreigners arrived, shifting production towards international markets.\nBritish Protectorate (1882\u20131952).\nBritish indirect rule lasted from 1882, when the British succeeded in defeating the Egyptian Army at Tel el-Kebir in September and took control of the country, to the 1952 Egyptian revolution which made Egypt a republic and when British advisers were expelled.\nMuhammad Ali was succeeded briefly by his son Ibrahim (in September 1848), then by a grandson Abbas I (in November 1848), then by Said (in 1854), and Isma'il (in 1863).\nAbbas I was cautious. Said and Ismail were ambitious developers, but they spent beyond their means. The Suez Canal, built in partnership with the French, was completed in 1869. The cost of this and other projects had two effects: it led to enormous debt to European banks, and caused popular discontent because of the onerous taxation it required. In 1875, Ismail sold Egypt's 44% share in the canal to the British Government.\nIsmail also tried to conquer the Ethiopian Empire and was defeated twice at Gundet in 1875 and again at the Battle of Gura in 1876.\nWithin three years this led to the imposition of British and French controllers who sat in the Egyptian cabinet, and, \"with the financial power of the bondholders behind them, were the real power in the Government.\"\nLocal dissatisfaction with Ismail and with European intrusion led to the formation of the first nationalist groupings in 1879, with Ahmad Urabi a prominent figure. In 1882 he became head of a nationalist-dominated ministry committed to democratic reforms including parliamentary control of the budget. Fearing a reduction of their control, Britain and France intervened militarily, bombarding Alexandria and crushing the Egyptian army at the battle of Tel el-Kebir. They reinstalled Ismail's son Tewfik as the figurehead of a \"de facto\" British protectorate.\nIn 1914, the Protectorate was made official, and the Ottoman Empire no longer had a role. The title for the head of state, which in 1867 had changed from \"pasha\" to \"khedive\", was changed again to \"sultan\". Abbas II was deposed as khedive and replaced by his uncle, Hussein Kamel, as sultan.\nIn 1906, the Dinshaway Incident prompted many neutral Egyptians to join the nationalist movement. After the First World War, Saad Zaghlul and the Wafd Party led the Egyptian nationalist movement to a majority at the local Legislative Assembly. When the British exiled Zaghlul and his associates to Malta on 8 March 1919, the country arose in its first modern revolution. The revolt led the UK government to issue a unilateral declaration of Egypt's independence on 22 February 1922.\nThe new government drafted and implemented a constitution in 1923 based on a parliamentary system. Saad Zaghlul was popularly elected as Prime Minister of Egypt in 1924. In 1936, the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty was concluded. Continued instability due to remaining British influence and increasing political involvement by the king led to the dissolution of the parliament in a military \"coup d'\u00e9tat\" known as the 1952 Revolution. The Free Officers Movement forced King Farouk to abdicate in support of his son Fuad.\nBritish military presence in Egypt lasted until 1954.\nRepublican Egypt (since 1953).\nOn 18 June 1953, the Egyptian Republic was declared, with General Muhammad Naguib as the first President of the Republic. Naguib was forced to resign in 1954 by Gamal Abdel Nasser\u00a0\u2013 the real architect of the 1952 movement\u00a0\u2013 and was later put under house arrest.\nNasser era.\nNasser assumed power as president in June 1956. British forces completed their withdrawal from the occupied Suez Canal Zone on 13 June 1956. He nationalized the Suez Canal on 26 July 1956, prompting the 1956 Suez Crisis.\nIn 1958, Egypt and Syria formed a sovereign union known as the United Arab Republic. The union was short-lived, ending in 1961 when Syria seceded, thus ending the union. During most of its existence, the United Arab Republic was also in a loose confederation with North Yemen (the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen) known as the United Arab States.\nIn the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel invaded and occupied Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, which Egypt had occupied since the 1948 Arab\u2013Israeli War. Three years later (1970), President Nasser died and was succeeded by Anwar Sadat.\nSadat era.\nSadat switched Egypt's Cold War allegiance from the Soviet Union to the United States, expelling Soviet advisors in 1972. He launched the Infitah economic reform policy, while clamping down on religious and secular opposition.\nIn 1973, Egypt, along with Syria, launched the October War, a surprise attack against the Israeli forces occupying the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. It was an attempt to regain part of the Sinai territory that Israel had captured six years earlier. Sadat hoped to seize some territory through military force, and then regain the rest of the peninsula by diplomacy. The conflict sparked an international crisis between the US and the USSR, both of whom intervened. The second UN-mandated ceasefire halted military action. While the war ended with a military stalemate, it presented Sadat with a political victory that later allowed him to regain the Sinai in return for peace with Israel.\nSadat made a historic visit to Israel in 1977, which led to the 1979 peace treaty in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from Sinai. Sadat's initiative sparked enormous controversy in the Arab world and led to Egypt's expulsion from the Arab League, but it was supported by most Egyptians. On 6 October 1981, Sadat and six diplomats were assassinated while observing a military parade commemorating the eighth anniversary of the October 1973 War. He was succeeded by Hosni Mubarak.\nTerrorist insurgency.\nIn 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, terrorist attacks in Egypt became numerous and severe, and began to target Copts and foreign tourists as well as government officials. Some scholars and authors have credited Islamist writer Sayyid Qutb, who was executed in 1967, as the inspiration for the new wave of attacks.\nThe 1990s saw an Islamist group, al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, engage in an extended campaign of violence, from the murders and attempted murders of prominent writers and intellectuals, to the repeated targeting of tourists and foreigners. Serious damage was done to the largest sector of Egypt's economy\u2014tourism\u2014and in turn to the government, but it also devastated the livelihoods of many of the people on whom the group depended for support.\nVictims of the campaign against the Egyptian state from 1992 to 1997 exceeded 1,200 and included the head of the counter-terrorism police (Major General Raouf Khayrat), a speaker of parliament (Rifaat el-Mahgoub), dozens of European tourists and Egyptian bystanders, and over 100 Egyptian police. At times, travel by foreigners in parts of Upper Egypt was severely restricted and dangerous. On 17 November 1997, 62 people, mostly tourists, were killed near Luxor. The assailants trapped the people in the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut. During this period, Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya was given support by the governments of Iran and Sudan, as well as al-Qaeda. The Egyptian government received support during that time from the United States.\nCivil unrest (2011\u201314).\nRevolution.\nIn 2003, the \"Kefaya\" (\"Egyptian Movement for Change\"), was launched to oppose the Mubarak regime and to establish democratic reforms and greater civil liberties.\nOn 25 January 2011, widespread protests began against Mubarak's government. The objective of the protest was the removal of Mubarak from power. These took the form of an intensive campaign of civil resistance supported by a very large number of people and mainly consisting of continuous mass demonstrations. By 29 January, it was becoming clear that Mubarak's government had lost control when a curfew order was ignored, and the army took a semi-neutral stance on enforcing the curfew decree.\nOn 11 February 2011, Mubarak resigned and fled Cairo. Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that Mubarak had stepped down and that the Egyptian military would assume control of the nation's affairs in the short term. Jubilant celebrations broke out in Tahrir Square at the news. Mubarak may have left Cairo for Sharm el-Sheikh the previous night, before or shortly after the airing of a taped speech in which Mubarak vowed he would not step down or leave.\nOn 13 February 2011, the high level military command of Egypt announced that both the constitution and the parliament of Egypt had been dissolved. The parliamentary election was to be held in September.\nA constitutional referendum was held on 19 March 2011. On 28 November 2011, Egypt held its first parliamentary election since the Mubarak regime fell. Turnout was high and there were no reports of violence, although members of some parties broke the ban on campaigning at polling places by handing out pamphlets and banners. There were, however, complaints of irregularities.\nMorsi's presidency.\nThe first round of a presidential election was held in Egypt on 23 and 24 May 2012. Mohamed Morsi won 25% of the vote and Ahmed Shafik, the last prime minister under deposed leader Hosni Mubarak, 24%. A second round was held on 16 and 17 June. On 24 June 2012, the election commission announced that Mohamed Morsi had won the election, making him the first democratically elected president of Egypt. According to official results, Morsi took 51.7 percent of the vote while Shafik received 48.3 percent. On 30 June 2012, Mohamed Morsi was sworn in as Egypt's new president.\nOn 8 July 2012, Egypt's new president Mohamed Morsi announced he was overriding the military edict that dissolved the country's elected parliament and called lawmakers back into session.\nOn 10 July 2012, the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt negated the decision by Morsi to call the nation's parliament back into session. On 2 August 2012, Egypt's Prime Minister Hisham Qandil announced his 35-member cabinet, including 28 newcomers, of whom four came from the influential Muslim Brotherhood while six and the former interim military ruler Mohamed Hussein Tantawi as the Defence Minister came from the previous Government.\nOn 22 November 2012, Morsi issued a declaration immunizing his decrees from challenge and seeking to protect the work of the constituent assembly drafting the new constitution. The declaration also requires a retrial of those accused in the Mubarak-era killings of protesters, who had been acquitted, and extends the mandate of the constituent assembly by two months. Additionally, the declaration authorizes Morsi to take any measures necessary to protect the revolution. Liberal and secular groups previously walked out of the constitutional constituent assembly because they believed that it would impose strict Islamic practices, while Muslim Brotherhood backers threw their support behind Morsi.\nThe move was criticized by Mohamed ElBaradei, the leader of Egypt's Constitution Party, who stated \"Morsi today usurped all state powers & appointed himself Egypt's new pharaoh\" on his Twitter feed. The move led to massive protests and violent action throughout Egypt. On 5 December 2012, Tens of thousands of supporters and opponents of Egypt's president clashed, hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails and brawling in Cairo's streets, in what was described as the largest violent battle between Islamists and their foes since the country's revolution. Six senior advisors and three other officials resigned from the government and the country's leading Islamic institution called on Morsi to stem his powers. Protesters also clamored from coastal cities to desert towns.\nMorsi offered a \"national dialogue\" with opposition leaders but refused to cancel a 15 December vote on a draft constitution written by an Islamist-dominated assembly that has ignited two weeks of political unrest.\nA constitutional referendum was held in two rounds on 15 and 22 December 2012, with 64% support, and 33% against. It was signed into law by a presidential decree issued by Morsi on 26 December 2012. On 3 July 2013, the constitution was suspended by order of the Egyptian army.\nOn 30 June 2013, on the first anniversary of the election of Morsi, millions of protesters across Egypt took to the streets and demanded the immediate resignation of the president. On 1 July, the Egyptian Armed Forces issued a 48-hour ultimatum that gave the country's political parties until 3 July to meet the demands of the Egyptian people. The presidency rejected the Egyptian Army's 48-hour ultimatum, vowing that the president would pursue his own plans for national reconciliation to resolve the political crisis. On 3 July, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, head of the Egyptian Armed Forces, announced that he had removed Morsi from power, suspended the constitution and would be calling new presidential and Shura Council elections and named Supreme Constitutional Court's leader, Adly Mansour as acting president. Mansour was sworn in on 4 July 2013.\nAfter Morsi.\nDuring the months after the coup d'\u00e9tat, a new constitution was prepared, which took effect on 18 January 2014. After that, presidential and parliamentary elections have to be held in June 2014. On 24 March 2014, 529 Morsi's supporters were sentenced to death, while the trial of Morsi himself was still ongoing. Having delivered a final judgement, 492 sentences were commuted to life imprisonment with 37 death sentences being upheld. On 28 April, another mass trial took place with 683 Morsi supporters sentenced to death for killing 1 police officer. In 2015, Egypt participated in the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen.\nEl-Sisi Presidency.\nIn the elections of June 2014 El-Sisi won with a percentage of 96.1%. On 8 June 2014, Abdel Fatah el-Sisi was officially sworn in as Egypt's new president. Egypt has implemented a rigorous policy of controlling the border to the Gaza Strip, including the dismantling of tunnels between the Gaza strip and Sinai.\nIn April 2018, El-Sisi was re-elected by landslide in election with no real opposition. In April 2019, Egypt's parliament extended presidential terms from four to six years. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was also allowed to run for third term in next election in 2024.\nUnder El-Sisi Egypt is said to have returned to authoritarianism. New constitutional reforms have been implemented, meaning strengthening the role of military and limiting the political opposition. The constitutional changes were accepted in a referendum in April 2019.\nIn December 2020, final results of the parliamentary election confirmed a clear majority of the seats for Egypt's Mostaqbal Want (Nation's Future) Party, which strongly supports president El-Sisi. The party even increased its majority, partly because of new electoral rules.\nDuring the 2020\u20132021 Tigray War, Egypt was also involved. On 19 December 2020, an EEPA report stated, based on testimonials of three Egyptian officials and one European diplomat, that the UAE used its base in Assab (Eritrea) to launch drones strikes against Tigray. The investigative platform Bellingcat confirmed the presence of Chinese-produced drones at the UAE's military base in Assab, Eritrea. Egyptian officials were concerned about strengthening ties between the UAE and Israel. They fear that both countries will collaborate in the construction of an alternative to the Suez Canal, starting from Haifa in Israel. On 19 December 2020, Egypt was reportedly encouraging Sudan to support the TPLF in Tigray. It wants to strengthen a joint position in relation to negotiations on the GERD Dam, which impacts both countries downstream.", "21563824": "Garbage Dreams\n2009 film\nGarbage Dreams is a 2009 feature length documentary film produced and directed by Mai Iskander. Filmed over the course of four years, \"Garbage Dreams\" follows three teenage boys growing up in Egypt's garbage village. \"Garbage Dreams\" aired on the PBS program \"Independent Lens\" for the occasion of Earth Day 2010 and has been screened in many international film festivals.\nSynopsis.\n\"Garbage Dreams\" follows three teenage boys born into the trash trade and growing up in the world's largest garbage village, on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. It is the home to 60,000 Zaballeen, also spelled \"Zabbaleen\" as Arabic for \"garbage people.\" Far ahead of any modern \"Green\" initiatives, the Zaballeen survive by recycling 80 percent of the garbage they collect. When their community is suddenly faced with the globalization of its trade, each of the teenage boys is forced to make choices that will impact his future and the survival of his community.\nRelease.\n\"Garbage Dreams\" premiered at the 2009 SXSW Film Festival, where it ran in the US Documentary Competition \"Garbage Dreams\" had its international premiere in Europe at the twenty-second International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam\nand its Middle Eastern premiere at the Dubai International Film Festival.\nGarbage Dreams was shortlisted for the 2010 Academy Awards in the category of Best Feature Length Documentary, was nominated for the 2010 Best Documentary by the Directors Guild of America, and has won 26 international awards including the Al Gore Reel Current Award and IDA Humanitas Award.\n\"Garbage Dreams\" aired on PBS \"Independent Lens\" for the occasion of Earth Day 2010. It has been screened in over 100 international film festivals, including the Woodstock Film Festival, the Hollywood Film Festival, the Bel Air Film Festival, Maryland Film Festival, and the Seattle International Film Festival.\nCritical reception.\nFormer U.S. Vice President Al Gore presented the 2009 REEL Current Award to the documentary \"Garbage Dreams\" at the Nashville Film Festival. Gore, and the writer of \"An Inconvenient Truth\", presents the award annually to a film that gives outstanding insight into a contemporary global issue.\nGore said of the film, \"\"Garbage Dreams\" is a moving story of young men searching for a ways to eke out a living for their families and facing tough choices as they try to do the right thing for the planet. Mai Iskander guides us into a 'garbage village', a place so different from our own, and yet the choices they face there are so hauntingly familiar. Ultimately, \"Garbage Dreams\" makes a compelling case that modernization does not always equal progress.\"\nIn \"Variety\" Ronnie Scheib called the film \"Stunning debut ... [Iskander's] lensing grants her subjects immense dignity (they never appear \"other\" in their poverty) and her film its curious beauty.\"\nIn her review in \"The New York Times\", Jeannette Catsoulis said \"Expertly weaving personal fears, family tensions and political action, 'Garbage Dreams' records the tremblings of a culture at a crossroads.\"\nIn \"The Hollywood Reporter\" Frank Scheck wrote \"Championed by Oscar winner Al Gore and the spur for a million-dollar donation by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, \"Garbage Dreams \" could ride its sociological importance to Oscar recognition.\"\nIn \"The Village Voice\" Andrew Schenker called \"Garbage Dreams\" a \"handsomely shot and intermittently fascinating look at Cairo's Zaballeen community.\"\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "30570": "Trajan\nRoman emperor from AD 98 to 117\nTrajan ( ; born Marcus Ulpius Traianus, 18 September\u00a053\u00a0\u2013\u00a0c.\u20099 August\u00a0117) was a Roman emperor from AD\u00a098 to 117, remembered as the second of the Five Good Emperors of the Nerva\u2013Antonine dynasty. He was a philanthropic ruler and a successful soldier-emperor who presided over one of the greatest military expansions in Roman history, during which, by the time of his death, the Roman Empire reached its maximum territorial extent. He was given the title of ('the best') by the Roman Senate.\nTrajan was born in the of Italica in the present-day Andalusian province of Seville in southern Spain, an Italic settlement in Hispania Baetica; his came from the town of Tuder in the Umbria region of central Italy. His namesake father, Marcus Ulpius Traianus, was a general and distinguished senator. Trajan rose to prominence during the reign of Domitian; in AD 89, serving as a in , he supported the emperor against a revolt on the Rhine led by Antonius Saturninus. He then served as governor of Germania and Pannonia. In September 96, Domitian was succeeded by the elderly and childless Nerva, who proved to be unpopular with the army. After a revolt by members of the Praetorian Guard, Nerva decided to adopt as his heir and successor the more popular Trajan, who had distinguished himself in military campaigns against Germanic tribes.\nAs emperor of Rome, Trajan oversaw the construction of building projects such as the forum named after him, the introduction of social welfare policies such as the , and new military conquests. He annexed Nabataea and Dacia, and his war against the Parthian Empire ended with the incorporation of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria as Roman provinces. In August AD\u00a0117, while sailing back to Rome, Trajan fell ill and died of a stroke in the city of Selinus. He was deified by the senate and his successor Hadrian (Trajan's cousin). According to historical tradition, Trajan's ashes were entombed in a small room beneath Trajan's Column.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nSources.\nAn account of the Dacian Wars, the \"Commentarii de bellis Dacicis\", written by Trajan himself or a ghostwriter and modelled after Caesar's \"Commentarii de Bello Gallico\", is lost with the exception of one sentence. Only fragments remain of the \"Getica\", a book by Trajan's personal physician Titus Statilius Criton. The \"Parthica\", a 17-volume account of the Parthian Wars written by Arrian, has met a similar fate. Book68 in Greek author Cassius Dio's \"Roman History\", which survives mostly as Byzantine abridgements and epitomes, is the main source for the political history of Trajan's rule. Besides this, Pliny the Younger's \"Panegyricus\" and Dio Chrysostom's orations are the best surviving contemporary sources. Both are adulatory perorations, typical of the High Imperial period, that describe an idealized monarch and an equally idealized view of Trajan's rule, and concern themselves more with ideology than with fact.\nThe 10th volume of Pliny's letters contains his correspondence with Trajan, which deals with various aspects of imperial Roman government. It is generally agreed that Pliny, being part of the emperor's inner circle, provides a unique and valuable source of information through his letters with Trajan, the only surviving correspondence between a governor and his emperor. However, it has been argued that Pliny's correspondence with Trajan is neither intimate nor candid, but rather an exchange of official mail in which Pliny's stance borders on the servile. Some authors have even proposed that much of the text was written and/or edited by Trajan's Imperial secretary, his \"ab epistulis\". Given the scarcity of literary sources, discussion of Trajan and his rule in modern historiography cannot avoid speculation. Non-literary sources such as archaeology, epigraphy, and numismatics are also useful for reconstructing his reign.\nEarly life.\nMarcus Ulpius Traianus was born on 18 September AD53 in the Roman province of Hispania Baetica (in what is now Andalusia in modern Spain), in the \"municipium\" of Italica (now in the municipal area of Santiponce, in the outskirts of Seville), a Roman colony established in 206BC by Scipio Africanus. At the time of Trajan's birth it was a small town, without baths, theatre and amphitheatre, and with a very narrow territory under its direct administration. Trajan's year of birth is not reliably attested and may instead have been AD 56.\nThe epitome of Cassius Dio's Roman history describes Trajan as \"an Iberian and neither an Italian nor even an Italiote\", but this claim is contradicted by other ancient sources and rejected by modern scholars, who have reconstructed Trajan's Italic lineage. Appian states that Trajan's hometown of Italica was settled by and named after Italic veterans who fought in Spain under Scipio, and new settlers arrived there from Italy in the following centuries. Among the Italic settlers were the Ulpii and the Traii, who were either part of the original colonists or arrived as late as the end of the 1st century BC. Their original home, according to the description of Trajan as \"Ulpius Traianus ex urbe Tudertina\" in the Epitome de Caesaribus, was the town of Tuder (Todi) in the Umbria region of central Italy. This is confirmed by archeology, with epigraphic evidence placing both the Ulpii and the Traii in Umbria generally and Tuder specifically, and by linguistic studies of the family names \"Ulpius\" and \"Traius\" which show that both are of Osco-Umbrian origin. \nIt is unknown whether Trajan's ancestors were Roman citizens or not at their arrival in Spain. They would have certainly possessed Roman citizenship in case they arrived after the Social War (91\u201387 BC), when Tuder became a municipium of Roman citizens. In Spain they may well have intermarried with native Iberians, in which case they would have lost their citizenship. Had they lacked or lost the status of Roman citizens, they would have achieved it or recovered it when Italica became a municipium with Latin rights in the mid-1st century BC.\nTrajan's paternal grandfather Ulpius married a Traia. Their son, Trajan's namesake father Marcus Ulpius Traianus, was born at Italica during the reign of Tiberius and became a prominent senator and general, commanding the Legio X Fretensis under Vespasian in the First Jewish-Roman War. Trajan's mother was Marcia, a Roman noblewoman of the gens Marcia and a sister-in-law of the second Flavian Emperor Titus. Little is known of her. Her father is believed to be Quintus Marcius Barea Sura. Her mother was Antonia Furnilla, daughter of Aulus Antonius Rufus and Furnia. Trajan owned some lands called \"Figlinae Marcianae\" in Ameria, another Umbrian town, located near both Tuder and Reate (the home of the Flavian dynasty) and believed to be the home of Marcia's family.\nThe line of the Ulpii continued long after Trajan's death. His elder sister was Ulpia Marciana, and his niece was Salonia Matidia. Very little is known about Trajan's early formative years, but it is thought likely that he spent his first months or years in Italica before moving to Rome and then, perhaps at around eight or nine years of age, he almost certainly would have returned temporarily to Italica with his father during Trajanus's governorship of Baetica (ca. 64\u201365). The lack of a strong local power base, caused by the size of the town from which they came, made it necessary for the Ulpii (and for the Aelii, the other important senatorial family of Italica with whom they were allied) to weave local alliances, in the Baetica (with the Annii, the Ucubi and perhaps the Dasumii from Corduba), the Tarraconense and the Narbonense, here above all through Pompeia Plotina, Trajan's wife. Many of these alliances were made not in Spain, but in Rome. The family home in Rome, the Domus Traiana, was on the Aventine Hill; excavations under the Piazza del Tempio di Diana found remains thought to be of the family's large suburban villa, with evidence of highly decorated rooms.\nMilitary career.\nAs a young man Trajan rose through the ranks of the Roman army, serving in some of the most contested parts of the empire's frontier. In 76\u201377, his father was Governor of Syria (\"Legatus pro praetore Syriae\"), where Trajan himself remained as \"Tribunus legionis\". From there, after his father's replacement, he seems to have been transferred to an unspecified Rhine province, and Pliny implies that he engaged in active combat duty during both commissions.\nIn about 86, Trajan's cousin Aelius Afer died, leaving his young children Hadrian and Paulina orphans. Trajan and his colleague Publius Acilius Attianus became co-guardians of the two children. Trajan, in his late thirties, was created ordinary consul for the year 91. This early appointment may reflect the prominence of his father's career, as his father had been instrumental to the ascent of the ruling Flavian dynasty, held consular rank himself and had just been made a patrician. Around this time Trajan brought the architect and engineer Apollodorus of Damascus with him to Rome, and married Pompeia Plotina, a noblewoman from the Roman settlement at N\u00eemes; the marriage ultimately remained childless.\nThe historian Cassius Dio later noted that Trajan was a lover of young men, in contrast to the usual bisexual activity that was common among upper-class Roman men of the period. The emperor Julian also made a sardonic reference to his predecessor's sexual preference, stating that Zeus himself would have had to be on guard had his Ganymede come within Trajan's vicinity. This distaste reflected a change of mores that began with the Severan dynasty, Trajan's putative lovers included the future emperor, Hadrian, pages of the imperial household, the actor Pylades, a dancer called Apolaustus, Lucius Licinius Sura, and Trajan's predecessor Nerva. Cassius Dio also relates that Trajan made an ally out of Abgar VII on account of the latter's beautiful son, Arbandes, who would then dance for Trajan at a banquet.\nThe details of Trajan's early military career are obscure, save for the fact that in 89, as legate of Legio VII Gemina in Hispania Tarraconensis, he supported Domitian against an attempted coup by Lucius Antonius Saturninus, the governor of Germania Superior. Trajan probably remained in the region after the revolt was quashed, to engage with the Chatti who had sided with Saturninus, before returning the VII Gemina legion to Legio in Hispania Tarraconensis. In 91 he held a consulate with Acilius Glabrio, a rarity in that neither consul was a member of the ruling dynasty. He held an unspecified consular commission as governor of either Pannonia or Germania Superior, or possibly both. Pliny\u00a0\u2013\u00a0who seems to deliberately avoid offering details that would stress personal attachment between Trajan and the \"tyrant\" Domitian\u00a0\u2013\u00a0attributes to him, at the time, various (and unspecified) feats of arms.\nRise to power.\nDomitian's successor, Nerva, was unpopular with the army, and had been forced by his Praetorian Prefect Casperius Aelianus to execute Domitian's killers. Nerva needed the army's support to avoid being ousted. He accomplished this in the summer of 97 by naming Trajan as his adoptive son and successor, claiming that this was entirely due to Trajan's outstanding military merits. There are hints, however, in contemporary literary sources that Trajan's adoption was imposed on Nerva. Pliny implied as much when he wrote that, although an emperor could not be coerced into doing something, if this was the way in which Trajan was raised to power, then it was worth it. Alice K\u00f6nig argues that the notion of a natural continuity between Nerva's and Trajan's reigns was an \"ex post facto\" fiction developed by authors writing under Trajan, including Tacitus and Pliny.\nAccording to the \"Historia Augusta\", the future Emperor Hadrian brought word to Trajan of his adoption. Trajan retained Hadrian on the Rhine frontier as a military tribune, and Hadrian thus became privy to the circle of friends and relations with whom Trajan surrounded himself. Among them was Lucius Licinius Sura, a Roman senator born in Spain and the governor of Germania Inferior, who was Trajan's personal friend and became an official adviser of the Emperor. Sura was highly influential, and was appointed consul for a third term in 107. Some senators may have resented Sura's activities as a kingmaker and \u00e9minence grise, among them the historian Tacitus, who acknowledged Sura's military and oratorical talents, but compared his rapacity and devious ways to those of Vespasian's \u00e9minence grise Licinius Mucianus. Sura is said to have informed Hadrian in 108 that he had been chosen as Trajan's imperial heir.\nAs governor of Upper Germany (Germania Superior) during Nerva's reign, Trajan received the impressive title of \"Germanicus\" for his skilful management and rule of the volatile Imperial province. When Nerva died on 28 January 98, Trajan succeeded to the role of emperor without any outward adverse incident. The fact that he chose not to hasten towards Rome, but made a lengthy tour of inspection on the Rhine and Danube frontiers, may suggest that he was unsure of his position, both in Rome and with the armies at the front. Alternatively, Trajan's keen military mind understood the importance of strengthening the empire's frontiers. His vision for future conquests required the diligent improvement of surveillance networks, defences and transport along the Danube. Prior to his frontier tours, Trajan ordered his Prefect Aelianus to attend him in Germany, where he was apparently executed forthwith (\"put out of the way\"), and his now-vacant post taken by Attius Suburanus. Trajan's accession, therefore, could qualify more as a successful coup than an orderly succession.\nRoman emperor.\nOn his entry to Rome, Trajan granted the plebs a direct gift of money. The traditional donative to the troops, however, was reduced by half. There remained the issue of the strained relations between the emperor and the Senate, especially after the supposed bloodiness that had marked Domitian's reign and his dealings with the Curia. By feigning reluctance to hold power, Trajan was able to start building a consensus around him in the Senate. His belated ceremonial entry into Rome in 99 was notably understated, something on which Pliny the Younger elaborated. By not openly supporting Domitian's preference for equestrian officers, Trajan appeared to conform to the idea (developed by Pliny) that an emperor derived his legitimacy from his adherence to traditional hierarchies and senatorial morals. Therefore, he could point to the allegedly republican character of his rule.\nIn a speech at the inauguration of his third consulship, on 1January 100, Trajan exhorted the senate to share the care-taking of the empire with him\u00a0\u2013\u00a0an event later celebrated on a coin. In reality, Trajan did not share power in any meaningful way with the senate, something that Pliny admits candidly: \"[E]verything depends on the whims of a single man who, on behalf of the common welfare, has taken upon himself all functions and all tasks\". One of the most significant trends of his reign was his encroachment on the senate's sphere of authority, such as his decision to make the senatorial provinces of Achaea and Bithynia into imperial ones in order to deal with the inordinate spending on public works by local magnates and the general mismanagement of provincial affairs by various proconsuls appointed by the Senate.\n\"Optimus princeps\".\nIn the formula developed by Pliny, however, Trajan was a \"good\" emperor in that, by himself, he approved or blamed the same things that the Senate would have approved or blamed. If in reality Trajan was an autocrat, his deferential behavior towards his peers qualified him to be viewed as a virtuous monarch. The idea is that Trajan wielded autocratic power through \"moderatio\" instead of \"contumacia\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0moderation instead of insolence. In short, according to the ethics for autocracy developed by most political writers of the Imperial Roman Age, Trajan was a good ruler in that he ruled less by fear, and more by acting as a role model, for, according to Pliny, \"men learn better from examples\". Eventually, Trajan's popularity among his peers was such that the Roman Senate bestowed upon him the honorific of \"optimus\", meaning \"the best\", which appears on coins from 105 on. This title had mostly to do with Trajan's role as benefactor, such as in the case of his returning confiscated property. The epithet \"optimus princeps\" had already been used for the emperors since the late republic, but Trajan was the only one officially honoured by the title.\nPliny states that Trajan's ideal role was a conservative one, argued as well by the orations of Dio Chrysostom\u2014in particular his four \"Orations on Kingship\", composed early during Trajan's reign. Dio, as a Greek notable and intellectual with friends in high places, and possibly an official friend to the emperor (\"amicus caesaris\"), saw Trajan as a defender of the \"status quo\". In his third kingship oration, Dio describes an ideal king ruling by means of \"friendship\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0that is, through patronage and a network of local notables who act as mediators between the ruled and the ruler. Dio's notion of being \"friend\" to Trajan (or any other Roman emperor), however, was that of an \"informal\" arrangement, that involved no formal entry of such \"friends\" into the Roman administration. Trajan ingratiated himself with the Greek intellectual elite by recalling to Rome many (including Dio) who had been exiled by Domitian, and by returning (in a process begun by Nerva) a great deal of private property that Domitian had confiscated. He also had good dealings with Plutarch, who, as a notable of Delphi, seems to have been favoured by the decisions taken on behalf of his home-place by one of Trajan's legates, who had arbitrated a boundary dispute between Delphi and its neighbouring cities.\nHowever, it was clear to Trajan that Greek intellectuals and notables were to be regarded as tools for local administration, and not be allowed to fancy themselves in a privileged position. As Pliny said in one of his letters at the time, it was official policy that Greek civic elites be treated according to their status as notionally free but not put on an equal footing with their Roman rulers. When the city of Apamea complained of an audit of its accounts by Pliny, alleging its \"free\" status as a Roman colony, Trajan replied by writing that it was by his own wish that such inspections had been ordered. Concern about independent local political activity is seen in Trajan's decision to forbid Nicomedia from having a corps of firemen (\"If people assemble for a common purpose... they soon turn it into a political society\", Trajan wrote to Pliny) as well as in his and Pliny's fears about excessive civic generosities by local notables such as distribution of money or gifts.\nPliny's letters suggest that Trajan and his aides were as much bored as they were alarmed by the claims of Dio and other Greek notables to political influence based on what they saw as their \"special connection\" to their Roman overlords. Pliny tells of Dio of Prusa placing a statue of Trajan in a building complex where Dio's wife and son were buried \u2013 therefore incurring a charge of treason for placing the emperor's statue near a grave. Trajan, however, dropped the charge. Nevertheless, while the office of \"corrector\" was intended as a tool to curb any hint of independent political activity among local notables in the Greek cities, the \"correctores\" themselves were all men of the highest social standing entrusted with an exceptional commission. The post seems to have been conceived partly as a reward for senators who had chosen to make a career solely on the emperor's behalf. Therefore, in reality the post was conceived as a means for \"taming\" both Greek notables and Roman senators. It must be added that, although Trajan was wary of the civic oligarchies in the Greek cities, he also admitted into the senate a number of prominent Eastern notables already slated for promotion during Domitian's reign by reserving for them one of the twenty posts open each year for minor magistrates (the \"vigintiviri\"). Such must be the case of the Galatian notable and \"leading member of the Greek community\" (according to one inscription) Gaius Julius Severus, who was a descendant of several Hellenistic dynasts and client kings.\nSeverus was the grandfather of the prominent general Gaius Julius Quadratus Bassus, consul in 105. Other prominent Eastern senators included Gaius Julius Alexander Berenicianus, a descendant of Herod the Great, suffect consul in 116. Trajan created at least fourteen new senators from the Greek-speaking half of the empire, an unprecedented recruitment number that opens to question the issue of the \"traditionally Roman\" character of his reign, as well as the \"Hellenism\" of his successor Hadrian. But then Trajan's new Eastern senators were mostly very powerful and very wealthy men with more than local influence and much interconnected by marriage, so that many of them were not altogether \"new\" to the Senate. On the local level, among the lower section of the Eastern propertied, the alienation of most Greek notables and intellectuals towards Roman rule, and the fact that the Romans were seen by most such Greek notables as aliens, persisted well after Trajan's reign. One of Trajan's senatorial creations from the East, the Athenian Gaius Julius Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappos, a member of the Royal House of Commagene, left behind him a funeral monument on the Mouseion Hill that was later disparagingly described by Pausanias as \"a monument built to a Syrian man\".\nGreek-Roman relations.\nAs a senatorial Emperor, Trajan was inclined to choose his local base of political support from among the members of the ruling urban oligarchies. In the West, that meant local senatorial families like his own. In the East, that meant the families of Greek notables. The Greeks, though, had their own memories of independence\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and a commonly acknowledged sense of cultural superiority\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and, instead of seeing themselves as Roman, disdained Roman rule. What the Greek oligarchies wanted from Rome was, above all, to be left in peace, to be allowed to exert their right to self-government (i.e., to be excluded from the provincial government, as was Italy) and to concentrate on their local interests. This was something the Romans were not disposed to do as from their perspective the Greek notables were shunning their responsibilities in regard to the management of Imperial affairs\u00a0\u2013\u00a0primarily in failing to keep the common people under control, thus creating the need for the Roman governor to intervene. An excellent example of this Greek alienation was the personal role played by Dio of Prusa in his relationship with Trajan. Dio is described by Philostratus as Trajan's close friend, and Trajan as supposedly engaging publicly in conversations with Dio.\nNevertheless, as a Greek local magnate with a taste for costly building projects and pretensions of being an important political agent for Rome, Dio of Prusa was actually a target for one of Trajan's authoritarian innovations: the appointing of imperial \"correctores\" to audit the civic finances of the technically free Greek cities. The main goal was to curb the overenthusiastic spending on public works that served to channel ancient rivalries between neighbouring cities. As Pliny wrote to Trajan, this had as its most visible consequence a trail of unfinished or ill-kept public utilities. Competition among Greek cities and their ruling oligarchies was mainly for marks of pre-eminence, especially for titles bestowed by the Roman emperor. Such titles were ordered in a ranking system that determined how the cities were to be outwardly treated by Rome. The usual form that such rivalries took was that of grandiose building plans, giving the cities the opportunity to vie with each other over \"extravagant, needless... structures that would make a show\". A side effect of such extravagant spending was that junior and thus less wealthy members of the local oligarchies felt disinclined to present themselves to fill posts as local magistrates, positions that involved ever-increasing personal expense. Roman authorities liked to play the Greek cities against one another\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something of which Dio of Prusa was fully aware:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />[B]y their public acts [the Roman governors] have branded you as a pack of fools, yes, they treat you just like children, for we often offer children the most trivial things in place of things of greatest worth [...] In place of justice, in place of the freedom of the cities from spoliation or from the seizure of the private possessions of their inhabitants, in place of their refraining from insulting you [...] your governors hand you titles, and call you 'first' either by word of mouth or in writing; that done, they may thenceforth with impunity treat you as being the very last!\"These same Roman authorities had also an interest in assuring the cities' solvency and therefore ready collection of Imperial taxes. Last but not least, inordinate spending on civic buildings was not only a means to achieve local superiority, but also a means for the local Greek elites to maintain a separate cultural identity\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something expressed in the contemporary rise of the Second Sophistic; this \"cultural patriotism\" acted as a kind of substitute for the loss of political independence, and as such was shunned by Roman authorities. As Trajan himself wrote to Pliny: \"These poor Greeks all love a gymnasium... they will have to content with one that suits their real needs\". The first known \"corrector\" was charged with a commission \"to deal with the situation of the free cities\", as it was felt that the old method of \"ad hoc\" intervention by the Emperor and/or the proconsuls had not been enough to curb the pretensions of the Greek notables. It is noteworthy that an embassy from Dio's city of Prusa was not favourably received by Trajan, and that this had to do with Dio's chief objective, which was to elevate Prusa to the status of a free city, an \"independent\" city-state exempt from paying taxes to Rome. Eventually, Dio gained for Prusa the right to become the head of the assize-district, conventus (meaning that Prusans did not have to travel to be judged by the Roman governor), but \"eleutheria\" (freedom, in the sense of full political autonomy) was denied.\nEventually, it fell to Pliny, as imperial governor of Bithynia in AD110, to deal with the consequences of the financial mess wrought by Dio and his fellow civic officials. \"It's well established that [the cities' finances] are in a state of disorder\", Pliny once wrote to Trajan, plans for unnecessary works made in collusion with local contractors being identified as one of the main problems. One of the compensatory measures proposed by Pliny expressed a thoroughly Roman conservative position: as the cities' financial solvency depended on the councilmen's purses, it was necessary to have more councilmen on the local city councils. According to Pliny, the best way to achieve this was to lower the minimum age for holding a seat on the council, making it possible for more sons of the established oligarchical families to join and thus contribute to civic spending; this was seen as preferable to enrolling non-noble wealthy upstarts. Such an increase in the number of council members was granted to Dio's city of Prusa, to the dismay of existing councilmen who felt their status lowered. A similar situation existed in Claudiopolis, where a public bath was built with the proceeds from the entrance fees paid by \"supernumerary\" members of the council, enrolled with Trajan's permission. According to the Digest, Trajan decreed that when a city magistrate promised to achieve a particular public building, his heirs inherited responsibility for its completion.\nBuilding projects.\nTrajan was a prolific builder. Many of his buildings were designed and erected by the gifted architect Apollodorus of Damascus, including a massive bridge over the Danube, which the Roman army and its reinforcements could use regardless of weather; the Danube sometimes froze over in winter, but seldom enough to bear the passage of a party of soldiers. Trajan's works at the Iron Gates region of the Danube created or enlarged the boardwalk road cut into the cliff-face along the Iron Gate's gorge. A canal was built between the Danube's Kasajna tributary and Ducis Pratum, circumventing rapids and cataracts.\nTrajan's Forum Traiani was Rome's largest forum. It was built to commemorate his victories in Dacia, and was largely financed from that campaign's loot. To accommodate it, parts of the Capitoline and Quirinal Hills had to be removed, the latter enlarging a clear area first established by Domitian. Apollodorus of Damascus' \"magnificent\" design incorporated a Triumphal arch entrance, a forum space approximately 120 m long and 90m wide, surrounded by peristyles: a monumentally sized basilica: and later, Trajan's Column and libraries. It was started in AD 107, dedicated on 1 January 112, and remained in use for at least 500 years. It still drew admiration when Emperor Constantius II visited Rome in the fourth century. It accommodated Trajan's Market, and an adjacent brick market.\nTrajan was also a prolific builder of triumphal arches, many of which survive. He built roads, such as the Via Traiana, an extension of the Via Appia from Beneventum to Brundisium and the Via Traiana Nova, a mostly military road between Damascus and Aila, which Rome employed in its annexation of Nabataea and founding of Arabia Province.\nSome historians attribute the construction or reconstruction of Old Cairo's Roman fortress (also known as \"Babylon Fort\") to Trajan, and the building of a canal between the River Nile and the Red Sea. In Egypt, Trajan was \"quite active\" in constructing and embellishing buildings. He is portrayed, together with Domitian, on the propylon of the Temple of Hathor at Dendera. His cartouche also appears in the column shafts of the Temple of Khnum at Esna.\nHe built palatial villas outside Rome at Arcinazzo, at Centumcellae and at Talamone.\nHe also built a bath complex as well as the Aqua Traiana.\nGames.\nTrajan invested heavily in the provision of popular amusements. He carried out a \"massive reconstruction\" of the Circus Maximus, which was already the empire's biggest and best appointed circuit for the immensely popular sport of chariot racing. The Circus also hosted religious theatrical spectacles and games, and public processions on a grand scale. Trajan's reconstruction, completed by 103, was modestly described by Trajan himself as \"adequate\" for the Roman people. It replaced flammable wooden seating tiers with stone, and increased the Circus' already vast capacity by about 5,000 seats. Its lofty, elevated Imperial viewing box was rebuilt among the seating tiers, so that spectators could see their emperor sharing their enjoyment of the races, alongside his family and images of the gods,\nAt some time during 108 or 109, Trajan held 123 days of games to celebrate his Dacian victory. They involved \"fully 10,000\" gladiators and the slaughter of thousands, \"possibly tens of thousands,\" of animals, both wild and domestic. Trajan's careful management of public spectacles led the orator Fronto to congratulate him for paying equal attention to public entertainments and more serious issues, acknowledging that \"neglect of serious matters can cause greater damage, but neglect of amusements greater discontent\". State-funded public entertainments helped to maintain contentment among the populace; the more \"serious matter\" of the corn dole aimed to satisfy individuals.\nChristians.\nDuring the period of peace that followed the Dacian war, Trajan exchanged letters with Pliny the Younger on how best to deal with the Christians of Pontus. Trajan told Pliny to continue prosecutions of Christians if they merited that, but not to accept anonymous or malicious denunciations. He considered this to be in the interests of justice, and to reflect \"the spirit of the age\". Non-citizens who admitted to being Christians and refused to recant were to be executed \"for obstinacy\". Citizens were sent to Rome for trial.\nFurther tests faced by Christians in Pontus are alluded to in correspondence between Pliny the Younger, governor of the Roman province of Bithynia and Pontus, and Emperor Trajan. Writing from Pontus in about AD 112, Pliny reported that the \"contagion\" of Christianity threatened everyone, regardless of gender, age, or rank. Pliny gave those accused of being Christians opportunity to deny it, and those who would not, he executed. Any who cursed Christ or recited a prayer to the gods or to Trajan\u2019s statue were released. Pliny acknowledged that these were things that \"those who are really Christians cannot be made to do.\"\nCurrency and welfare.\nIn 107, Trajan devalued the Roman currency, decreasing the silver content of the denarius from 93.5% to 89.0%\u00a0\u2013\u00a0the actual silver weight dropping from 3.04grams to 2.88grams. This devaluation, along with the massive amounts of gold and silver acquired through his Dacian wars, allowed Trajan to mint many more denarii than his predecessors. He also withdrew from circulation silver denarii minted before Nero's devaluation. Trajan's devaluation may have had a political intent, enabling planned increases in civil and military spending. Trajan formalised the alimenta, a welfare program that helped orphans and poor children throughout Italy by providing cash, food and subsidized education. The program was supported out of Dacian War booty, estate taxes and philanthropy. The alimenta also relied indirectly on mortgages secured against Italian farms (\"fundi\"). Registered landowners received a lump sum from the imperial treasury, and in return were expected to repay an annual sum to support the alimentary fund.\nMilitary campaigns.\nConquest of Dacia.\nThe earliest of Trajan's conquests were Rome's two wars against Dacia, an area that had troubled Roman politics for over a decade in regard to the unstable peace negotiated by Domitian's ministers with the powerful Dacian king Decebalus. Dacia would be reduced by Trajan's Rome to a client kingdom in the first war (101\u2013102), followed by a second war that ended in actual incorporation into the Empire of the trans-Danube border group of Dacia. According to the provisions of Decebalus's earlier treaty with Rome, made in the time of Domitian, Decebalus was acknowledged as \"rex amicus\", that is, client king; in exchange for accepting client status, he received from Rome both a generous stipend and a steady supply of technical experts. The treaty seems to have allowed Roman troops the right of passage through the Dacian kingdom in order to attack the Marcomanni, Quadi and Sarmatians. However, senatorial opinion never forgave Domitian for paying what was seen as tribute to a barbarian king. Unlike the Germanic tribes, the Dacian kingdom was an organized state capable of developing alliances of its own, thus making it a strategic threat and giving Trajan a strong motive to attack it.\nIn May of 101, Trajan launched his first campaign into the Dacian kingdom, crossing to the northern bank of the Danube and defeating the Dacian army at Tapae (see Second Battle of Tapae), near the Iron Gates of Transylvania. It was not a decisive victory, however. Trajan's troops took heavy losses in the encounter, and he put off further campaigning for the year in order to regroup and reinforce his army. Nevertheless, the battle was considered a Roman victory and Trajan strived to ultimately consolidate his position, including other major engagements, as well as the capture of Decebalus' sister as depicted on Trajan's Column.\nThe following winter, Decebalus took the initiative by launching a counter-attack across the Danube further downstream, supported by Sarmatian cavalry, forcing Trajan to come to the aid of the troops in his rearguard. The Dacians and their allies were repulsed after two battles in Moesia, at Nicopolis ad Istrum and Adamclisi. Trajan's army then advanced further into Dacian territory, and, a year later, forced Decebalus to submit. He had to renounce claim to some regions of his kingdom, return runaways from Rome then under his protection (most of them technical experts), and surrender all his war machines. Trajan returned to Rome in triumph and was granted the title \"Dacicus\". The peace of 102 had returned Decebalus to the condition of more or less harmless client king; however, he soon began to rearm, to again harbour Roman runaways, and to pressure his Western neighbours, the Iazyges Sarmatians, into allying themselves with him. Through his efforts to develop an anti-Roman bloc, Decebalus prevented Trajan from treating Dacia as a protectorate instead of an outright conquest. In 104, Decebalus devised an attempt on Trajan's life by means of some Roman deserters, a plan that failed. Decebalus also took prisoner Trajan's legate Longinus, who eventually poisoned himself while in custody. Finally, in 105, Decebalus undertook an invasion of Roman-occupied territory north of the Danube.\nPrior to the campaign, Trajan had raised two entirely new legions: II Traiana\u00a0\u2013\u00a0which, however, may have been posted in the East, at the Syrian port of Laodicea\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and XXX Ulpia Victrix, which was posted to Brigetio, in Pannonia. By 105, the concentration of Roman troops assembled in the middle and lower Danube amounted to fourteen legions (up from nine in 101)\u00a0\u2013\u00a0about half of the entire Roman army. Even after the Dacian wars, the Danube frontier would permanently replace the Rhine as the main military axis of the Roman Empire. Including auxiliaries, the number of Roman troops engaged on both campaigns was between 150,000 and 175,000, while Decebalus could dispose of up to 200,000. Other estimates for the Roman forces involved in Trajan's second Dacian War cite around 86,000 for active campaigning with large reserves retained in the proximal provinces, and potentially much lower numbers around 50,000 for Decebalus' depleted forces and absent allies.\nIn a fierce campaign that seems to have consisted mostly of static warfare, the Dacians, devoid of manoeuvring room, kept to their network of fortresses, which the Romans sought systematically to storm (see also Second Dacian War). The Romans gradually tightened their grip around Decebalus' stronghold in Sarmizegetusa Regia, which they finally took and destroyed. A controversial scene on Trajan's column just before the fall of Sarmizegetusa Regia suggests that Decebalus may have offered poison to his remaining men as an alternative option to capture or death while trying to flee the besieged capital with him. Decebalus fled but, when later cornered by Roman cavalry, committed suicide. His severed head, brought to Trajan by the cavalryman Tiberius Claudius Maximus, was later exhibited in Rome on the steps leading up to the Capitol and thrown on the Gemonian stairs. The famous Dacian treasures were not found in the captured capital and their whereabouts were only revealed when a Dacian nobleman called Bikilis was captured. Decebalus\u2019 treasures had been buried under a temporarily diverted river and the captive workers executed to retain the secret. Staggering amounts of gold and silver were found and packed off to fill Rome's coffers.\nTrajan built a new city, Colonia Ulpia Traiana Augusta Dacica Sarmizegetusa, on another site (north of the hill citadel holding the previous Dacian capital), although bearing the same full name, Sarmizegetusa. This capital city was conceived as a purely civilian administrative centre and was provided the usual Romanized administrative apparatus (decurions, aediles, etc.). Urban life in Roman Dacia seems to have been restricted to Roman colonists, mostly military veterans; there is no extant evidence for the existence in the province of peregrine cities. Native Dacians continued to live in scattered rural settlements, according to their own ways. In another arrangement with no parallels in any other Roman province, the existing quasi-urban Dacian settlements disappeared after the Roman conquest.\nA number of unorganized urban settlements (\"vici\") developed around military encampments in Dacia proper \u2013 the most important being Apulum \u2013 but were only acknowledged as cities proper well after Trajan's reign. The main regional effort of urbanization was concentrated by Trajan at the rearguard, in Moesia, where he created the new cities of Nicopolis ad Istrum and Marcianopolis. A vicus was also created around the Tropaeum Traianum. The garrison city of Oescus received the status of Roman colony after its legionary garrison was redeployed. The fact that these former Danubian outposts had ceased to be frontier bases and were now in the deep rear acted as an inducement to their urbanization and development. Not all of Dacia was permanently occupied. After the post-Trajanic evacuation of lands across the lower Danube, land extending from the Danube to the inner arch of the Carpathian Mountains, including Transylvania, the Metaliferi Mountains and Oltenia was absorbed into the Roman province, which eventually took the form of an \"excrescence\" with ill-defined limits, stretching from the Danube northwards to the Carpathians. This may have been intended as a basis for further expansion within Eastern Europe, as the Romans believed the region to be much more geographically \"flattened\", and thus easier to traverse, than it actually was; they also underestimated the distance from those vaguely defined borders to the ocean.\nDefence of the province was entrusted to a single legion, the XIII Gemina, stationed at Apulum, which functioned as an advance guard that could, in case of need, strike either west or east at the Sarmatians living at the borders. Therefore, the indefensible character of the province did not appear to be a problem for Trajan, as the province was conceived more as a sally-base for further attacks. Even in the absence of further Roman expansion, the value of the province depended on Roman overall strength: while Rome was strong, the Dacian salient was an instrument of military and diplomatic control over the Danubian lands; when Rome was weak, as during the Crisis of the Third Century, the province became a liability and was eventually abandoned. Trajan resettled Dacia with Romans and annexed it as a province of the Roman Empire. Aside from their enormous booty (over half a million slaves, according to John Lydus), Trajan's Dacian campaigns benefited the Empire's finances through the acquisition of Dacia's gold mines, managed by an imperial procurator of equestrian rank (\"procurator aurariarum\"). On the other hand, commercial agricultural exploitation on the villa model, based on the centralized management of a huge landed estate by a single owner (\"fundus\") was poorly developed. Therefore, use of slave labor in the province itself seems to have been relatively undeveloped, and epigraphic evidence points to work in the gold mines being conducted by means of labor contracts (\"locatio conductio rei\") and seasonal wage-earning. The victory was commemorated by the construction both of the 102 cenotaph generally known as the Tropaeum Traiani in Moesia, as well of the much later (113) Trajan's Column in Rome, the latter depicting in stone carved bas-reliefs the Dacian Wars' most important moments.\nNabataean annexation.\nIn 106, Rabbel II Soter, one of Rome's client kings, died. This event might have prompted the annexation of the Nabataean Kingdom, but the manner and the formal reasons for the annexation are unclear. Some epigraphic evidence suggests a military operation, with forces from Syria and Egypt. What is known is that by 107, Roman legions were stationed in the area around Petra and Bosra, as is shown by a papyrus found in Egypt. The furthest south the Romans occupied (or, better, garrisoned, adopting a policy of having garrisons at key points in the desert) was Hegra, over south-west of Petra. The empire gained what became the province of Arabia Petraea (modern southern Jordan and northwest Saudi Arabia). At this time, a Roman road (\"Via Traiana Nova\") was built from Aila (now Aqaba) in Limes Arabicus to Bosrah. As Nabataea was the last client kingdom in Asia west of the Euphrates, the annexation meant that the entire Roman East had been provincialized, completing a trend towards direct rule that had begun under the Flavians.\nParthian campaign.\nIn 113, Trajan embarked on his last campaign, provoked by Parthia's decision to put an unacceptable king on the throne of Armenia, a kingdom over which the two great empires had shared hegemony since the time of Nero some fifty years earlier. Trajan, already in Syria early in 113, consistently refused to accept diplomatic approaches from the Parthians intended to settle the Armenian imbroglio peacefully. As the surviving literary accounts of Trajan's Parthian War are fragmentary and scattered, it is difficult to assign them a proper context, something that has led to a long-running controversy about its precise happenings and ultimate aims.\nCause of the war.\nModern historians advance the possibility that Trajan's decision to wage war against Parthia had economic motives: after Trajan's annexation of Arabia, he built a new road, Via Traiana Nova, that went from Bostra to Aila on the Red Sea. That meant that Charax on the Persian Gulf was the sole remaining western terminus of the Indian trade route outside direct Roman control, and such control was important in order to lower import prices and to limit the supposed drain of precious metals created by the deficit in Roman trade with the Far East. That Charax traded with the Roman Empire, there can be no doubt, as its actual connections with merchants from Palmyra during the period are well documented in a contemporary Palmyrene epigraph, which tells of various Palmyrene citizens honoured for holding office in Charax. Also, Charax's rulers' domains at the time possibly included the Bahrain islands, which offered the possibility of extending Roman hegemony into the Persian Gulf itself. (A Palmyrene citizen held office as satrap over the islands shortly after Trajan's death, though the appointment was made by a Parthian king of Charax.) The rationale behind Trajan's campaign, in this case, was one of breaking down a system of Far Eastern trade through small Semitic (\"Arab\") cities under Parthia's control and to put it under Roman control instead.\nIn his Dacian conquests, Trajan had already resorted to Syrian auxiliary units, whose veterans, along with Syrian traders, had an important role in the subsequent colonization of Dacia. He had recruited Palmyrene units into his army, including a camel unit, therefore apparently procuring Palmyrene support to his ultimate goal of annexing Charax. It has even been ventured that, when earlier in his campaign Trajan annexed Armenia, he was bound to annex the whole of Mesopotamia lest the Parthians interrupt the flux of trade from the Persian Gulf and/or foment trouble at the Roman frontier on the Danube. Other historians reject these motives, as the supposed Parthian \"control\" over the maritime Far Eastern trade route was, at best, conjectural and based on a selective reading of Chinese sources\u00a0\u2013\u00a0trade by land through Parthia seems to have been unhampered by Parthian authorities and left solely to the devices of private enterprise. Commercial activity in second century Mesopotamia seems to have been a general phenomenon, shared by many peoples within and without the Roman Empire, with no sign of a concerted Imperial policy towards it.\nAs in the case of the \"alimenta\", scholars like Moses Finley and Paul Veyne have considered the idea that a foreign trade policy underlay Trajan's war to be anachronistic; according to these scholars, the concern of Roman leaders with the trade in far eastern luxuries\u00a0\u2013\u00a0besides collecting toll taxes and customs\u00a0\u2013\u00a0was moral in nature, because contemporary Roman mores frowned upon the \"softness\" of luxuries. In the absence of conclusive evidence, trade between Rome and India might have been far more balanced, in terms of quantities of precious metals exchanged: one of our sources for the notion of the Roman gold drain\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Pliny's the Younger's uncle Pliny the Elder\u00a0\u2013\u00a0had earlier described the Gangetic Plains as one of the gold sources for the Roman Empire. Accordingly \u2013 in a controversial book on the Roman economy \u2013 Finley considers Trajan's \"badly miscalculated and expensive assault on Parthia\" to be an example of the many Roman \"commercial wars\" that had in common the fact of existing only in the books of modern historians.\nThe alternative view is to see the campaign as triggered by the lure of territorial annexation and prestige, the sole motive ascribed by Cassius Dio. As far as territorial conquest involved tax-collecting, especially of the 25% tax levied on all goods entering the Roman Empire, the \"tetarte\", one can say that Trajan's Parthian War had an \"economic\" motive. Also, there was the propaganda value of an Eastern conquest that would emulate, in Roman fashion, those of Alexander the Great. The fact that emissaries from the Kushan Empire might have attended to the commemorative ceremonies for the Dacian War may have kindled in some Greco-Roman intellectuals like Plutarch\u00a0\u2013\u00a0who wrote about only 70,000 Roman soldiers being necessary to a conquest of India \u00a0\u2013\u00a0as well as in Trajan's closer associates, speculative dreams about the booty to be obtained by reproducing Macedonian Eastern conquests. There could also be Trajan's idea to use an ambitious blueprint of conquests as a way to emphasize quasi-divine status, such as with his cultivated association, in coins and monuments, to Hercules.\nAlso, it is possible that the attachment of Trajan to an expansionist policy was supported by a powerful circle of conservative senators from Hispania committed to a policy of imperial expansion, first among them being the all-powerful Licinius Sura. Alternatively, one can explain the campaign by the fact that, for the Romans, their empire was in principle unlimited, and that Trajan only took advantage of an opportunity to make idea and reality coincide. Finally, there are other modern historians who think that Trajan's original aims were purely military and strategic: to assure a more defensible Eastern frontier for the Roman Empire, crossing Northern Mesopotamia along the course of the Khabur River in order to offer cover to a Roman Armenia. This interpretation is backed by the fact that all subsequent Roman wars against Parthia would aim at establishing a Roman presence deep into Parthia itself. It is possible that during the onset of Trajan's military experience, as a young tribune, he had witnessed engagement with the Parthians; so any strategic vision was grounded in a tactical awareness of what was needed to tackle Parthia.\nCourse of the war.\nThe campaign was carefully planned in advance: ten legions were concentrated in the Eastern theatre; since 111, the correspondence of Pliny the Younger witnesses to the fact that provincial authorities in Bithynia had to organize supplies for passing troops, and local city councils and their individual members had to shoulder part of the increased expenses by supplying troops themselves. The intended campaign, therefore, was immensely costly from its very beginning. Trajan marched first on Armenia, deposed the Parthian-appointed king, Parthamasiris (who was afterwards murdered while kept in the custody of Roman troops in an unclear incident, later described by Fronto as a breach of Roman good faith), and annexed it to the Roman Empire as a province, receiving in passing the acknowledgement of Roman hegemony by various tribes in the Caucasus and on the Eastern coast of the Black Sea\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a process that kept him busy until the end of 114. At the same time, a Roman column under the legate Lusius Quietus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0an outstanding cavalry general who had signalled himself during the Dacian Wars by commanding a unit from his native Mauretania\u00a0\u2013\u00a0crossed the Araxes river from Armenia into Media Atropatene and the land of the Mardians (present-day Ghilan). It is possible that Quietus' campaign had as its goal the extending of the newer, more defensible Roman border eastwards towards the Caspian Sea and northwards to the foothills of the Caucasus. This newer, more \"rational\" frontier, depended, however, on an increased, permanent Roman presence east of the Euphrates.\nThe chronology of subsequent events is uncertain, but it is generally believed that early in 115 Trajan launched a Mesopotamian campaign, marching down towards the Taurus mountains in order to consolidate territory between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. He placed permanent garrisons along the way to secure the territory. While Trajan moved from west to east, Lusius Quietus moved with his army from the Caspian Sea towards the west, both armies performing a successful pincer movement, whose apparent result was to establish a Roman presence into the Parthian Empire proper, with Trajan taking the northern Mesopotamian cities of Nisibis and Batnae and organizing a province of Mesopotamia, including the Kingdom of Osrhoene\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where King Abgar VII submitted to Trajan publicly\u00a0\u2013\u00a0as a Roman protectorate. This process seems to have been completed at the beginning of 116, when coins were issued announcing that Armenia and Mesopotamia had been put under the authority of the Roman people. The area between the Khabur River and the mountains around Singara seems to have been considered as the new frontier, and as such received a road surrounded by fortresses.\nAfter wintering in Antioch during 115/116 \u00a0\u2013\u00a0and, according to literary sources, barely escaping from a violent earthquake that claimed the life of one of the consuls, Marcus Pedo Virgilianus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Trajan again took to the field in 116, with a view to the conquest of the whole of Mesopotamia, an overambitious goal that eventually backfired on the results of his entire campaign. According to some modern historians, the aim of the campaign of 116 was to achieve a \"pre-emptive demonstration\" aiming not toward the conquest of Parthia, but for tighter Roman control over the Eastern trade route. However, the overall scarcity of manpower for the Roman military establishment meant that the campaign was doomed from the start. It is noteworthy that no new legions were raised by Trajan before the Parthian campaign, maybe because the sources of new citizen recruits were already over-exploited.\nAs far as the sources allow a description of this campaign, it seems that one Roman division crossed the Tigris into Adiabene, sweeping south and capturing Adenystrae; a second followed the river south, capturing Babylon; Trajan himself sailed down the Euphrates from Dura-Europos\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where a triumphal arch was erected in his honour\u00a0\u2013\u00a0through Ozogardana, where he erected a \"tribunal\" still to be seen at the time of Julian the Apostate's campaigns in the same area. Having come to the narrow strip of land between the Euphrates and the Tigris, he then dragged his fleet overland into the Tigris, capturing Seleucia and finally the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon. He continued southward to the Persian Gulf, when, after escaping with his fleet a tidal bore on the Tigris, he received the submission of Athambelus, the ruler of Charax. He declared Babylon a new province of the Empire and had his statue erected on the shore of the Persian Gulf, after which he sent the Senate a laurelled letter declaring the war to be at a close and bemoaning that he was too old to go on any further and repeat the conquests of Alexander the Great. Since Charax was a \"de facto\" independent kingdom whose connections to Palmyra were described above, Trajan's bid for the Persian Gulf may have coincided with Palmyrene interests in the region. Another hypothesis is that the rulers of Charax had expansionist designs on Parthian Babylon, giving them a rationale for alliance with Trajan. The Parthian city of Susa was apparently also occupied by the Romans.\nAccording to late literary sources (not backed by numismatic or inscriptional evidence) a province of Assyria was also proclaimed, apparently covering the territory of Adiabene. Some measures seem to have been considered regarding the fiscal administration of Indian trade\u00a0\u2013\u00a0or simply about the payment of customs (\"portoria\") on goods traded on the Euphrates and Tigris. It is possible that it was this \"streamlining\" of the administration of the newly conquered lands according to the standard pattern of Roman provincial administration in tax collecting, requisitions and the handling of local potentates' prerogatives, that triggered later resistance against Trajan. According to some modern historians, Trajan might have busied himself during his stay on the Persian Gulf with ordering raids on the Parthian coasts, as well as probing into extending Roman suzerainty over the mountaineer tribes holding the passes across the Zagros Mountains into the Iranian plateau eastward, as well as establishing some sort of direct contact between Rome and the Kushan Empire. No attempt was made to expand into the Iranian Plateau itself, where the Roman army, with its relative weakness in cavalry, would have been at a disadvantage.\nTrajan left the Persian Gulf for Babylon\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where he intended to offer sacrifice to Alexander in the house where he had died in 323BC\u00a0\u2013\u00a0 But a revolt led by Sanatruces, a nephew of the Parthian king Osroes I who had retained a cavalry force, possibly strengthened by the addition of Saka archers, imperilled Roman positions in Mesopotamia and Armenia. Trajan sought to deal with this by forsaking direct Roman rule in Parthia proper, at least partially. Trajan sent two armies towards Northern Mesopotamia: the first, under Lusius Quietus, recovered Nisibis and Edessa from the rebels, probably having King Abgarus deposed and killed in the process, with Quietus probably earning the right to receive the honors of a senator of praetorian rank (\"adlectus inter praetorios\"). The second army, however, under Appius Maximus Santra (probably a governor of Macedonia) was defeated and Santra killed.\nLater in 116, Trajan, with the assistance of Quietus and two other legates, Marcus Erucius Clarus and Tiberius Julius Alexander Julianus, defeated a Parthian army in a battle where Sanatruces was killed (possibly with the assistance of Osroes' son and Sanatruces' cousin, Parthamaspates, whom Trajan wooed successfully). After re-taking and burning Seleucia, Trajan then formally deposed Osroes, putting Parthamaspates on the throne as client ruler. This event was commemorated in a coin as the reduction of Parthia to client kingdom status: , \"a king is given to the Parthians\". That done, Trajan retreated north in order to retain what he could of the new provinces of Armenia\u00a0\u2013\u00a0where he had already accepted an armistice in exchange for surrendering part of the territory to Sanatruces' son Vologeses\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and Mesopotamia. It was at this point that Trajan's health started to fail him. The fortress city of Hatra, on the Tigris in his rear, continued to hold out against repeated Roman assaults. He was personally present at the siege, and it is possible that he suffered a heat stroke while in the blazing heat.\nDiaspora revolt.\nAbout this same time (AD 116\u2013117), Jews in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire\u2014Egypt, Cyprus, and Cyrene, which was likely the original trouble hotspot\u2014rebelled in what appears to have been an ethnic and religious uprising against the local populations, later known as the Diaspora Revolt. Additionally, Jewish communities in Northern Mesopotamia revolted, likely as part of a broader resistance against Roman occupation. Trajan had to withdraw his army to suppress these revolts, a move he considered a temporary setback. He never returned to command, delegating Eastern operations to Lusius Quietus, who was appointed governor of Judaea in early 117 and likely dealt with Jewish unrest there. Quietus discharged his commissions successfully, leading rabbinic sources to name the conflict in Judaea the \"Kitos War,\" with \"Kitus\" being a corruption of \"Quietus\". Whether or not the Diaspora revolt included Judea proper, or only the Jewish Eastern diaspora, remains doubtful in the absence of clear epigraphic and archaeological evidence. What is certain is that there was an increased Roman military presence in Judea at the time.\nQuietus was promised a consulate in the following year (118) for his victories, but he was killed before this could occur, during the bloody purge that opened Hadrian's reign, in which Quietus and three other former consuls were sentenced to death after being tried on a vague charge of conspiracy by the (secret) court of the Praetorian Prefect Attianus. It has been thought that Quietus and his colleagues were executed on Hadrian's direct orders, for fear of their popular standing with the army and their close connections to Trajan. In contrast, the next prominent Roman figure in charge of the repression of the Jewish revolt, the equestrian Quintus Marcius Turbo, who had dealt with the rebel leader from Cyrene, Loukuas, retained Hadrian's trust, eventually becoming his Praetorian Prefect. As all four consulars were senators of the highest standing and as such generally regarded as able to take imperial power (\"capaces imperii\"), Hadrian seems to have decided to forestall these prospective rivals.\nDeath and succession.\nEarly in 117, Trajan grew ill and set sail for Italy. His health declined throughout the spring and summer of 117, possibly acknowledged to the public by the display of a bronze portrait-bust at the public baths of Ancyra, showing an aged and emaciated man, though the identification with Trajan is disputed. He reached Selinus, where he suddenly died, shortly before 11 August. Trajan in person could have lawfully nominated Hadrian as his successor, but Dio claims that Trajan's wife, Pompeia Plotina, assured Hadrian's succession by keeping Trajan's death a secret, long enough for her to produce and sign a document attesting to Hadrian's adoption as son and successor. Dio, who tells this narrative, offers his father\u00a0\u2013\u00a0the governor of Cilicia Apronianus\u00a0\u2013\u00a0as a source, so his narrative may be based on contemporary rumour. It may also reflect male Roman displeasure that an empress\u00a0\u2013\u00a0let alone any woman\u00a0\u2013\u00a0 could presume to meddle in Rome's political affairs.\nHadrian held an ambiguous position during Trajan's reign. After commanding Legio I Minervia during the Dacian Wars, he had been relieved from front-line duties at the decisive stage of the Second Dacian War, being sent to govern the newly created province of Pannonia Inferior. He had pursued a senatorial career without particular distinction and had not been officially adopted by Trajan although he received from him decorations and other marks of distinction that made him hope for the succession. He received no post after his 108 consulate and no further honours other than being made Archon eponymos for Athens in 111/112. He probably did not take part in the Parthian War. Literary sources relate that Trajan had considered others, such as the jurist Lucius Neratius Priscus, as heir. Hadrian, who was eventually entrusted with the governorship of Syria at the time of Trajan's death, was Trajan's cousin and was married to Trajan's grandniece, which all made him as good as heir designate. Hadrian seems to have been well connected to the powerful and influential coterie of Spanish senators at Trajan's court, through his ties to Plotina and the Prefect Attianus. His refusal to sustain Trajan's senatorial and expansionist policy during his own reign may account for the \"crass hostility\" shown him by literary sources.\nHadrian's first major act as emperor was to abandon Mesopotamia as too costly and distant to defend, and to restore Armenia and Osrhoene to Parthian hegemony, under Rome's suzerainty. The Parthian campaign had been an enormous setback to Trajan's policy, proof that Rome had overstretched its capacity to sustain an ambitious program of conquest. According to the \"Historia Augusta\", Hadrian claimed to follow the precedent set by Cato the Elder towards the Macedonians, who \"were to be set free because they could not be protected\" \u2013 something Birley sees as an unconvincing precedent. Other territories conquered by Trajan were retained. According to a well-established historical tradition, Trajan's ashes were placed within the small cella that still survives at the base of Trajan's column. In some modern scholarship, his ashes were more likely interred near his column, in a mausoleum, temple or tomb built for his cult as a \"divus\" of the Roman state.\nLegacy.\nAncient sources on Trajan's personality and accomplishments are unanimously positive. Pliny the Younger, for example, celebrates Trajan in his panegyric as a wise and just emperor and a moral man. Cassius Dio added that he always remained dignified and fair. A third-century emperor, Decius, even received from the Senate the name Trajan as a decoration. In the Later Roman Empire, following the setbacks of the third century, Trajan, together with Augustus, became the paragon of the most positive traits of the Imperial order. Emperors in the 4th century were honoured by the Senate with the acclamation \"Felicior Augusto, Melior Traiano\" (\"May you be more fortunate than Augustus and better than Trajan\"). The fourth-century emperor Constantine I is credited with calling him a \"plant upon every wall\" for the many buildings bearing inscriptions with his name.\nIconography.\nAll Roman emperors until Trajan, except Nero who occasionally wore sideburns, were depicted clean-shaven, according to the fashion introduced among the Romans by Scipio Africanus (236\u00a0\u2013\u00a0183 BC). This Imperial fashion was changed by Trajan's successor Hadrian who made beards fashionable for emperors.\nAfter Rome.\nDuring the Middle Ages, some theologians such as Thomas Aquinas discussed Trajan as an example of a virtuous pagan. In the \"Divine Comedy\", Dante, following this legend, sees the spirit of Trajan in the Heaven of Jupiter with other historical and mythological persons noted for their justice. Also, a mural of Trajan stopping to provide justice for a poor widow is present in the first terrace of Purgatory as a lesson to those who are purged for being proud.\n<poem>\nI noticed that the inner bank of the curve...\nWas of white marble, and so decorated\nWith carvings that not only Polycletus\nBut nature herself would there be put to shame...\nThere was recorded the high glory\nOf that ruler of Rome whose worth\nMoved Gregory to his great victory;\nI mean by this the Emperor Trajan;\nAnd at his bridle a poor widow\nWhose attitude bespoke tears and grief...\nThe wretched woman, in the midst of all this,\nSeemed to be saying: 'Lord, avenge my son,\nWho is dead, so that my heart is broken..'\nSo he said: 'Now be comforted, for I must\nCarry out my duty before I go on:\nJustice requires it and pity holds me back.'\n\"Dante, The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio X, ll. 32 f. and 73 f.\"\n</poem>\nIn the Renaissance, Machiavelli, speaking on the advantages of adoptive succession over heredity, mentioned the five successive good emperors \"from Nerva to Marcus\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a trope out of which the 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon popularized the notion of the Five Good Emperors, of whom Trajan was the second.\nIn the 18th century, King Charles III of Spain commissioned Anton Raphael Mengs to paint \"The Triumph of Trajan\" on the ceiling of the banquet hall of the Royal Palace of Madrid\u00a0\u2013\u00a0considered among the best works of this artist.\nIt was only during the Enlightenment that this legacy began to be contested, when Edward Gibbon expressed doubts about the militarized character of Trajan's reign in contrast to the \"moderate\" practices of his immediate successors. Mommsen adopted a divided stance towards Trajan, at some point of his posthumously published lectures even speaking about his \"vainglory\" (\"Scheinglorie\"). Mommsen also speaks of Trajan's \"insatiable, unlimited lust for conquest\". Although Mommsen had no liking for Trajan's successor Hadrian\u00a0\u2013\u00a0\"a repellent manner, and a venomous, envious and malicious nature\"\u00a0\u2013\u00a0he admitted that Hadrian, in renouncing Trajan's conquests, was \"doing what the situation clearly required\".\nIt was exactly this military character of Trajan's reign that attracted his early twentieth-century biographer, the Italian historian Roberto Paribeni, who in his 1927 two-volume biography \"Optimus Princeps\" described Trajan's reign as the acme of the Roman principate, which he saw as Italy's patrimony. Following in Paribeni's footsteps, the German historian Alfred Heuss saw in Trajan \"the accomplished human embodiment of the imperial title\" (\"die ideale Verk\u00f6rperung des humanen Kaiserbegriffs\"). Trajan's first English-language biography by Julian Bennett is also a positive one in that it assumes that Trajan was an active policy-maker concerned with the management of the empire as a whole\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something his reviewer Lendon considers an anachronistic outlook that sees in the Roman emperor a kind of modern administrator.\nDuring the 1980s, the Romanian historian Eugen Cizek took a more nuanced view as he described the changes in the \"personal\" ideology of Trajan's reign, stressing the fact that it became ever more autocratic and militarized, especially after 112 and towards the Parthian War (as \"only an universal monarch, a \"kosmocrator\", could dictate his law to the East\"). The biography by the German historian Karl Strobel stresses the continuity between Domitian's and Trajan's reigns, saying that Trajan's rule followed the same autocratic and sacred character as Domitian's, culminating in a failed Parthian adventure intended as the crown of his personal achievement. It is in modern French historiography that Trajan's reputation becomes most markedly deflated: Paul Petit writes about Trajan's portraits as a \"lowbrow boor with a taste for booze and boys\". For Paul Veyne, what is to be retained from Trajan's \"stylish\" qualities was that he was the last Roman emperor to think of the empire as a purely Italian and Rome-centred hegemony of conquest. In contrast, his successor Hadrian would stress the notion of the empire as ecumenical and of the emperor as universal benefactor and not \"kosmocrator\".\nIn Romanian culture.\nIn Romania, Trajan (Romanian: \"Traian\") is regarded as one of the founders of the Romanian nation and a historical figure of great importance to the Romanian people and culture. This is due to his orchestration of the Dacian Wars that led to the foundation of the Daco-Roman culture and the Latin-based Romanian language. The creation of Roman Dacia is therefore seen in the country as the ethnogenesis of the Romanian nation.\nIn Jewish legend.\nIn the Jewish homiletical works, such as \"Esther Rabbah\", Trajan is described with the epitaph \"may his bones be crushed\" (). The same epitaph is also used for Hadrian.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "25507": "Roman Empire\nTerritory ruled by Rome and period of Roman history\nThe Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Romans conquered most of this during the Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of effective sole rule in 27\u00a0BC. The western empire collapsed in 476\u00a0AD, but the eastern empire lasted until the fall of Constantinople in 1453.\nBy 100\u00a0BC, the city of Rome had expanded its rule from the Italian peninsula to most of the Mediterranean and beyond. However, it was severely destabilised by civil wars and political conflicts, which culminated in the victory of Octavian over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31\u00a0BC, and the subsequent conquest of the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt. In 27\u00a0BC, the Roman Senate granted Octavian overarching military power () and the new title of \"Augustus\", marking his accession as the first Roman emperor. The vast Roman territories were organized into senatorial provinces, governed by proconsuls who were appointed by lot annually, and imperial provinces, which belonged to the emperor but were governed by legates.\nThe first two centuries of the Empire saw a period of unprecedented stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana (lit.\u2009'Roman Peace'). Rome reached its greatest territorial extent under Trajan (r.\u200998\u00a0\u2013\u00a0117\u00a0AD), but a period of increasing trouble and decline began under Commodus (r.\u2009180\u00a0\u2013\u00a0192). In the 3rd century, the Empire underwent a 49-year crisis that threatened its existence due to civil war, plagues and barbarian invasions. The Gallic and Palmyrene empires broke away from the state and a series of short-lived emperors led the Empire, which was later reunified under Aurelian (r.\u2009270\u00a0\u2013\u00a0275). The civil wars ended with the victory of Diocletian (r.\u2009284\u00a0\u2013\u00a0305), who set up two different imperial courts in the Greek East and Latin West. Constantine the Great (r.\u2009306\u00a0\u2013\u00a0337), the first Christian emperor, moved the imperial seat from Rome to Byzantium in 330, and renamed it Constantinople. The Migration Period, involving large invasions by Germanic peoples and by the Huns of Attila, led to the decline of the Western Roman Empire. With the fall of Ravenna to the Germanic Herulians and the deposition of Romulus Augustus in 476 by Odoacer, the Western Empire finally collapsed. The Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire survived for another millennium with Constantinople as its sole capital, until the city's fall in 1453.\nDue to the Empire's extent and endurance, its institutions and culture had a lasting influence on the development of language, religion, art, architecture, literature, philosophy, law, and forms of government across its territories. Latin evolved into the Romance languages while Medieval Greek became the language of the East. The Empire's adoption of Christianity resulted in the formation of medieval Christendom. Roman and Greek art had a profound impact on the Italian Renaissance. Rome's architectural tradition served as the basis for Romanesque, Renaissance and Neoclassical architecture, influencing Islamic architecture. The rediscovery of classical science and technology (which formed the basis for Islamic science) in medieval Europe contributed to the Scientific Renaissance and Scientific Revolution. Many modern legal systems, such as the Napoleonic Code, descend from Roman law. Rome's republican institutions have influenced the Italian city-state republics of the medieval period, the early United States, and modern democratic republics.\nHistory.\nTransition from Republic to Empire.\nRome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the Roman Republic in the 6th century BC, though not outside the Italian Peninsula until the 3rd century BC. Thus, it was an \"empire\" (a great power) long before it had an emperor. The Republic was not a nation-state in the modern sense, but a network of self-ruled towns (with varying degrees of independence from the Senate) and provinces administered by military commanders. It was governed by annually elected magistrates (Roman consuls above all) in conjunction with the Senate. The 1st century BC was a time of political and military upheaval, which ultimately led to rule by emperors. The consuls' military power rested in the Roman legal concept of \"imperium\", meaning \"command\" (typically in a military sense). Occasionally, successful consuls or generals were given the honorary title \"imperator\" (commander); this is the origin of the word \"emperor\", since this title was always bestowed to the early emperors.\nRome suffered a long series of internal conflicts, conspiracies, and civil wars from the late second century BC (see Crisis of the Roman Republic) while greatly extending its power beyond Italy. In 44 BC Julius Caesar was briefly perpetual dictator before being assassinated by a faction that opposed his concentration of power. This faction was driven from Rome and defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC by Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son Octavian. Antony and Octavian divided the Roman world between them, but this did not last long. Octavian's forces defeated those of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. In 27 BC the Senate gave him the title \"Augustus\" (\"venerated\") and made him \"princeps\" (\"foremost\") with proconsular \"imperium\", thus beginning the Principate, the first epoch of Roman imperial history. Although the republic stood in name, Augustus had all meaningful authority. During his 40-year rule, a new constitutional order emerged so that, upon his death, Tiberius would succeed him as the new \"de facto\" monarch.\n\"Pax Romana\".\nThe 200 years that began with Augustus's rule is traditionally regarded as the \"Pax Romana\" (\"Roman Peace\"). The cohesion of the empire was furthered by a degree of social stability and economic prosperity that Rome had never before experienced. Uprisings in the provinces were infrequent and put down \"mercilessly and swiftly\". The success of Augustus in establishing principles of dynastic succession was limited by his outliving a number of talented potential heirs. The Julio-Claudian dynasty lasted for four more emperors\u2014Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero\u2014before it yielded in 69 AD to the strife-torn Year of the Four Emperors, from which Vespasian emerged as the victor. Vespasian became the founder of the brief Flavian dynasty, followed by the Nerva\u2013Antonine dynasty which produced the \"Five Good Emperors\": Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius.\nTransition from classical to late antiquity.\nIn the view of contemporary Greek historian Cassius Dio, the accession of Commodus in 180 marked the descent \"from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron\", a comment which has led some historians, notably Edward Gibbon, to take Commodus' reign as the beginning of the Empire's decline.\nIn 212, during the reign of Caracalla, Roman citizenship was granted to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. The Severan dynasty was tumultuous; an emperor's reign was ended routinely by his murder or execution and, following its collapse, the Empire was engulfed by the Crisis of the Third Century, a period of invasions, civil strife, economic disorder, and plague. In defining historical epochs, this crisis sometimes marks the transition from Classical to Late Antiquity. Aurelian (r.\u2009270\u00a0\u2013\u00a0275) stabilised the empire militarily and Diocletian reorganised and restored much of it in 285. Diocletian's reign brought the empire's most concerted effort against the perceived threat of Christianity, the \"Great Persecution\".\nDiocletian divided the empire into four regions, each ruled by a separate tetrarch. Confident that he fixed the disorder plaguing Rome, he abdicated along with his co-emperor, but the Tetrarchy collapsed shortly after. Order was eventually restored by Constantine the Great, who became the first emperor to convert to Christianity, and who established Constantinople as the new capital of the Eastern Empire. During the decades of the Constantinian and Valentinian dynasties, the empire was divided along an east\u2013west axis, with dual power centres in Constantinople and Rome. Julian, who under the influence of his adviser Mardonius attempted to restore Classical Roman and Hellenistic religion, only briefly interrupted the succession of Christian emperors. Theodosius I, the last emperor to rule over both East and West, died in 395 after making Christianity the state religion.\nFall in the West and survival in the East.\nThe Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate in the early 5th century. The Romans fought off all invaders, most famously Attila, but the empire had assimilated so many Germanic peoples of dubious loyalty to Rome that the empire started to dismember itself. Most chronologies place the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476, when Romulus Augustulus was forced to abdicate to the Germanic warlord Odoacer.\nOdoacer ended the Western Empire by declaring Zeno sole emperor and placing himself as Zeno's nominal subordinate. In reality, Italy was ruled by Odoacer alone. The Eastern Roman Empire, called the Byzantine Empire by later historians, continued until the reign of Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Roman emperor. He died in battle in 1453 against Mehmed II and his Ottoman forces during the siege of Constantinople. Mehmed II adopted the title of \"caesar\" in an attempt to claim a connection to the former Empire. His claim was soon recognized by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, but not by European monarchs.\nGeography and demography.\nThe Roman Empire was one of the largest in history, with contiguous territories throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The Latin phrase \"imperium sine fine\" (\"empire without end\") expressed the ideology that neither time nor space limited the Empire. In Virgil's \"Aeneid\", limitless empire is said to be granted to the Romans by Jupiter. This claim of universal dominion was renewed when the Empire came under Christian rule in the 4th century. In addition to annexing large regions, the Romans directly altered their geography, for example cutting down entire forests.\nRoman expansion was mostly accomplished under the Republic, though parts of northern Europe were conquered in the 1st century, when Roman control in Europe, Africa, and Asia was strengthened. Under Augustus, a \"global map of the known world\" was displayed for the first time in public at Rome, coinciding with the creation of the most comprehensive political geography that survives from antiquity, the \"Geography\" of Strabo. When Augustus died, the account of his achievements (\"Res Gestae\") prominently featured the geographical cataloguing of the Empire. Geography alongside meticulous written records were central concerns of Roman Imperial administration.\nThe Empire reached its largest expanse under Trajan (r.\u200998\u00a0\u2013\u00a0117), encompassing 5 million km2. The traditional population estimate of 55\u201360 million inhabitants accounted for between one-sixth and one-fourth of the world's total population and made it the most populous unified political entity in the West until the mid-19th century. Recent demographic studies have argued for a population peak from 70 million to more than 100 million. Each of the three largest cities in the Empire\u2014Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch\u2014was almost twice the size of any European city at the beginning of the 17th century.\nAs the historian Christopher Kelly described it:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Then the empire stretched from Hadrian's Wall in drizzle-soaked northern England to the sun-baked banks of the Euphrates in Syria; from the great Rhine\u2013Danube river system, which snaked across the fertile, flat lands of Europe from the Low Countries to the Black Sea, to the rich plains of the North African coast and the luxuriant gash of the Nile Valley in Egypt. The empire completely circled the Mediterranean\u00a0... referred to by its conquerors as \"mare nostrum\"\u2014'our sea'.\nTrajan's successor Hadrian adopted a policy of maintaining rather than expanding the empire. Borders (\"fines\") were marked, and the frontiers (\"limites\") patrolled. The most heavily fortified borders were the most unstable. Hadrian's Wall, which separated the Roman world from what was perceived as an ever-present barbarian threat, is the primary surviving monument of this effort.\nLanguages.\nLatin and Greek were the main languages of the Empire, but the Empire was deliberately multilingual. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill says \"The main desire of the Roman government was to make itself understood\". At the start of the Empire, knowledge of Greek was useful to pass as educated nobility and knowledge of Latin was useful for a career in the military, government, or law. Bilingual inscriptions indicate the everyday interpenetration of the two languages.\nLatin and Greek's mutual linguistic and cultural influence is a complex topic. Latin words incorporated into Greek were very common by the early imperial era, especially for military, administration, and trade and commerce matters. Greek grammar, literature, poetry and philosophy shaped Latin language and culture.\nThere was never a legal requirement for Latin in the Empire, but it represented a certain status. High standards of Latin, \"Latinitas\", started with the advent of Latin literature. Due to the flexible language policy of the Empire, a natural competition of language emerged that spurred \"Latinitas\", to defend Latin against the stronger cultural influence of Greek. Over time Latin usage was used to project power and a higher social class. Most of the emperors were bilingual but had a preference for Latin in the public sphere for political reasons, a \"rule\" that first started during the Punic Wars. Different emperors up until Justinian would attempt to require the use of Latin in various sections of the administration but there is no evidence that a linguistic imperialism existed during the early Empire.\nAfter all freeborn inhabitants were universally enfranchised in 212, many Roman citizens would have lacked a knowledge of Latin. The wide use of Koine Greek was what enabled the spread of Christianity and reflects its role as the lingua franca of the Mediterranean during the time of the Empire. Following Diocletian's reforms in the 3rd century CE, there was a decline in the knowledge of Greek in the west. Spoken Latin later fragmented into the incipient romance languages in the 7th century CE following the collapse of the Empire's west.\nThe dominance of Latin and Greek among the literate elite obscure the continuity of other spoken languages within the Empire. Latin, referred to in its spoken form as Vulgar Latin, gradually replaced Celtic and Italic languages. References to interpreters indicate the continuing use of local languages, particularly in Egypt with Coptic, and in military settings along the Rhine and Danube. Roman jurists also show a concern for local languages such as Punic, Gaulish, and Aramaic in assuring the correct understanding of laws and oaths. In Africa, Libyco-Berber and Punic were used in inscriptions into the 2nd century. In Syria, Palmyrene soldiers used their dialect of Aramaic for inscriptions, an exception to the rule that Latin was the language of the military. The last reference to Gaulish was between 560 and 575. The emergent Gallo-Romance languages would then be shaped by Gaulish. Proto-Basque or Aquitanian evolved with Latin loan words to modern Basque. The Thracian language, as were several now-extinct languages in Anatolia, are attested in Imperial-era inscriptions.\nSociety.\nThe Empire was remarkably multicultural, with \"astonishing cohesive capacity\" to create shared identity while encompassing diverse peoples. Public monuments and communal spaces open to all\u2014such as forums, amphitheatres, racetracks and baths\u2014helped foster a sense of \"Romanness\".\nRoman society had multiple, overlapping social hierarchies. The civil war preceding Augustus caused upheaval, but did not effect an immediate redistribution of wealth and social power. From the perspective of the lower classes, a peak was merely added to the social pyramid. Personal relationships\u2014patronage, friendship (\"amicitia\"), family, marriage\u2014continued to influence politics. By the time of Nero, however, it was not unusual to find a former slave who was richer than a freeborn citizen, or an equestrian who exercised greater power than a senator.\nThe blurring of the Republic's more rigid hierarchies led to increased social mobility, both upward and downward, to a greater extent than all other well-documented ancient societies. Women, freedmen, and slaves had opportunities to profit and exercise influence in ways previously less available to them. Social life, particularly for those whose personal resources were limited, was further fostered by a proliferation of voluntary associations and confraternities (\"collegia\" and \"sodalitates\"): professional and trade guilds, veterans' groups, religious sodalities, drinking and dining clubs, performing troupes, and burial societies.\nLegal status.\nAccording to the jurist Gaius, the essential distinction in the Roman \"law of persons\" was that all humans were either free (\"liberi\") or slaves (\"servi\"). The legal status of free persons was further defined by their citizenship. Most citizens held limited rights (such as the \"ius Latinum\", \"Latin right\"), but were entitled to legal protections and privileges not enjoyed by non-citizens. Free people not considered citizens, but living within the Roman world, were \"peregrini\", non-Romans. In 212, the \"Constitutio Antoniniana\" extended citizenship to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. This legal egalitarianism required a far-reaching revision of existing laws that distinguished between citizens and non-citizens.\nWomen in Roman law.\nFreeborn Roman women were considered citizens, but did not vote, hold political office, or serve in the military. A mother's citizen status determined that of her children, as indicated by the phrase \"ex duobus civibus Romanis natos\" (\"children born of two Roman citizens\"). A Roman woman kept her own family name (\"nomen\") for life. Children most often took the father's name, with some exceptions. Women could own property, enter contracts, and engage in business. Inscriptions throughout the Empire honour women as benefactors in funding public works, an indication they could hold considerable fortunes.\nThe archaic \"manus\" marriage in which the woman was subject to her husband's authority was largely abandoned by the Imperial era, and a married woman retained ownership of any property she brought into the marriage. Technically she remained under her father's legal authority, even though she moved into her husband's home, but when her father died she became legally emancipated. This arrangement was a factor in the degree of independence Roman women enjoyed compared to many other cultures up to the modern period: although she had to answer to her father in legal matters, she was free of his direct scrutiny in daily life, and her husband had no legal power over her. Although it was a point of pride to be a \"one-man woman\" (\"univira\") who had married only once, there was little stigma attached to divorce, nor to speedy remarriage after being widowed or divorced. Girls had equal inheritance rights with boys if their father died without leaving a will. A mother's right to own and dispose of property, including setting the terms of her will, gave her enormous influence over her sons into adulthood.\nAs part of the Augustan programme to restore traditional morality and social order, moral legislation attempted to regulate conduct as a means of promoting \"family values\". Adultery was criminalized, and defined broadly as an illicit sex act (\"stuprum\") between a male citizen and a married woman, or between a married woman and any man other than her husband. That is, a double standard was in place: a married woman could have sex only with her husband, but a married man did not commit adultery if he had sex with a prostitute or person of marginalized status. Childbearing was encouraged: a woman who had given birth to three children was granted symbolic honours and greater legal freedom (the \"ius trium liberorum\").\nSlaves and the law.\nAt the time of Augustus, as many as 35% of the people in Roman Italy were slaves, making Rome one of five historical \"slave societies\" in which slaves constituted at least a fifth of the population and played a major role in the economy. Slavery was a complex institution that supported traditional Roman social structures as well as contributing economic utility. In urban settings, slaves might be professionals such as teachers, physicians, chefs, and accountants; the majority of slaves provided trained or unskilled labour. Agriculture and industry, such as milling and mining, relied on the exploitation of slaves. Outside Italy, slaves were on average an estimated 10 to 20% of the population, sparse in Roman Egypt but more concentrated in some Greek areas. Expanding Roman ownership of arable land and industries affected preexisting practices of slavery in the provinces. Although slavery has often been regarded as waning in the 3rd and 4th centuries, it remained an integral part of Roman society until gradually ceasing in the 6th and 7th centuries with the disintegration of the complex Imperial economy.\nLaws pertaining to slavery were \"extremely intricate\". Slaves were considered property and had no legal personhood. They could be subjected to forms of corporal punishment not normally exercised on citizens, sexual exploitation, torture, and summary execution. A slave could not as a matter of law be raped; a slave's rapist had to be prosecuted by the owner for property damage under the Aquilian Law. Slaves had no right to the form of legal marriage called \"conubium\", but their unions were sometimes recognized. Technically, a slave could not own property, but a slave who conducted business might be given access to an individual fund (\"peculium\") that he could use, depending on the degree of trust and co-operation between owner and slave. Within a household or workplace, a hierarchy of slaves might exist, with one slave acting as the master of others. Talented slaves might accumulate a large enough \"peculium\" to justify their freedom, or be manumitted for services rendered. Manumission had become frequent enough that in 2 BC a law (\"Lex Fufia Caninia\") limited the number of slaves an owner was allowed to free in his will.\nFollowing the Servile Wars of the Republic, legislation under Augustus and his successors shows a driving concern for controlling the threat of rebellions through limiting the size of work groups, and for hunting down fugitive slaves. Over time slaves gained increased legal protection, including the right to file complaints against their masters. A bill of sale might contain a clause stipulating that the slave could not be employed for prostitution, as prostitutes in ancient Rome were often slaves. The burgeoning trade in eunuchs in the late 1st century prompted legislation that prohibited the castration of a slave against his will \"for lust or gain\".\nRoman slavery was not based on race. Generally, slaves in Italy were indigenous Italians, with a minority of foreigners (including both slaves and freedmen) estimated at 5% of the total in the capital at its peak, where their number was largest. Foreign slaves had higher mortality and lower birth rates than natives and were sometimes even subjected to mass expulsions. The average recorded age at death for the slaves of the city of Rome was seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females).\nDuring the period of republican expansionism when slavery had become pervasive, war captives were a main source of slaves. The range of ethnicities among slaves to some extent reflected that of the armies Rome defeated in war, and the conquest of Greece brought a number of highly skilled and educated slaves. Slaves were also traded in markets and sometimes sold by pirates. Infant abandonment and self-enslavement among the poor were other sources. \"Vernae\", by contrast, were \"homegrown\" slaves born to female slaves within the household, estate or farm. Although they had no special legal status, an owner who mistreated or failed to care for his \"vernae\" faced social disapproval, as they were considered part of the family household and in some cases might actually be the children of free males in the family.\nFreedmen.\nRome differed from Greek city-states in allowing freed slaves to become citizens; any future children of a freedman were born free, with full rights of citizenship. After manumission, a slave who had belonged to a Roman citizen enjoyed active political freedom (\"libertas\"), including the right to vote. His former master became his patron (\"patronus\"): the two continued to have customary and legal obligations to each other. A freedman was not entitled to hold public office or the highest state priesthoods, but could play a priestly role. He could not marry a woman from a senatorial family, nor achieve legitimate senatorial rank himself, but during the early Empire, freedmen held key positions in the government bureaucracy, so much so that Hadrian limited their participation by law. The rise of successful freedmen\u2014through political influence or wealth\u2014is a characteristic of early Imperial society. The prosperity of a high-achieving group of freedmen is attested by .\nCensus rank.\nThe Latin word \"ordo\" (plural \"ordines\") is translated variously and inexactly into English as \"class, order, rank\". One purpose of the Roman census was to determine the \"ordo\" to which an individual belonged. Two of the highest \"ordines\" in Rome were the senatorial and equestrian. Outside Rome, cities or colonies were led by decurions, also known as \"curiales.\"\n\"Senator\" was not itself an elected office in ancient Rome; an individual gained admission to the Senate after he had been elected to and served at least one term as an executive magistrate. A senator also had to meet a minimum property requirement of 1 million \"sestertii\". Not all men who qualified for the \"ordo senatorius\" chose to take a Senate seat, which required legal domicile at Rome. Emperors often filled vacancies in the 600-member body by appointment. A senator's son belonged to the \"ordo senatorius\", but he had to qualify on his own merits for admission to the Senate. A senator could be removed for violating moral standards.\nIn the time of Nero, senators were still primarily from Italy, with some from the Iberian peninsula and southern France; men from the Greek-speaking provinces of the East began to be added under Vespasian. The first senator from the easternmost province, Cappadocia, was admitted under Marcus Aurelius. By the Severan dynasty (193\u2013235), Italians made up less than half the Senate. During the 3rd century, domicile at Rome became impractical, and inscriptions attest to senators who were active in politics and munificence in their homeland (\"patria\").\nSenators were the traditional governing class who rose through the \"cursus honorum\", the political career track, but equestrians often possessed greater wealth and political power. Membership in the equestrian order was based on property; in Rome's early days, \"equites\" or knights had been distinguished by their ability to serve as mounted warriors, but cavalry service was a separate function in the Empire. A census valuation of 400,000 sesterces and three generations of free birth qualified a man as an equestrian. The census of 28 BC uncovered large numbers of men who qualified, and in 14 AD, a thousand equestrians were registered at C\u00e1diz and Padua alone. Equestrians rose through a military career track (\"tres militiae\") to become highly placed prefects and procurators within the Imperial administration.\nThe rise of provincial men to the senatorial and equestrian orders is an aspect of social mobility in the early Empire. Roman aristocracy was based on competition, and unlike later European nobility, a Roman family could not maintain its position merely through hereditary succession or having title to lands. Admission to the higher \"ordines\" brought distinction and privileges, but also responsibilities. In antiquity, a city depended on its leading citizens to fund public works, events, and services (\"munera\"). Maintaining one's rank required massive personal expenditures. Decurions were so vital for the functioning of cities that in the later Empire, as the ranks of the town councils became depleted, those who had risen to the Senate were encouraged to return to their hometowns, in an effort to sustain civic life.\nIn the later Empire, the \"dignitas\" (\"worth, esteem\") that attended on senatorial or equestrian rank was refined further with titles such as \"vir illustris\" (\"illustrious man\"). The appellation \"clarissimus\" (Greek \"lamprotatos\") was used to designate the \"dignitas\" of certain senators and their immediate family, including women. \"Grades\" of equestrian status proliferated.\nUnequal justice.\nAs the republican principle of citizens' equality under the law faded, the symbolic and social privileges of the upper classes led to an informal division of Roman society into those who had acquired greater honours (\"honestiores\") and humbler folk (\"humiliores\"). In general, \"honestiores\" were the members of the three higher \"orders\", along with certain military officers. The granting of universal citizenship in 212 seems to have increased the competitive urge among the upper classes to have their superiority affirmed, particularly within the justice system. Sentencing depended on the judgment of the presiding official as to the relative \"worth\" (\"dignitas\") of the defendant: an \"honestior\" could pay a fine for a crime for which an \"humilior\" might receive a scourging.\nExecution, which was an infrequent legal penalty for free men under the Republic, could be quick and relatively painless for \"honestiores\", while \"humiliores\" might suffer the kinds of torturous death previously reserved for slaves, such as crucifixion and condemnation to the beasts. In the early Empire, those who converted to Christianity could lose their standing as \"honestiores\", especially if they declined to fulfil religious responsibilities, and thus became subject to punishments that created the conditions of martyrdom.\nGovernment and military.\nThe three major elements of the Imperial state were the central government, the military, and the provincial government. The military established control of a territory through war, but after a city or people was brought under treaty, the mission turned to policing: protecting Roman citizens, agricultural fields, and religious sites. The Romans lacked sufficient manpower or resources to rule through force alone. Cooperation with local elites was necessary to maintain order, collect information, and extract revenue. The Romans often exploited internal political divisions.\nCommunities with demonstrated loyalty to Rome retained their own laws, could collect their own taxes locally, and in exceptional cases were exempt from Roman taxation. Legal privileges and relative independence incentivized compliance. Roman government was thus limited, but efficient in its use of available resources.\nCentral government.\nThe Imperial cult of ancient Rome identified emperors and some members of their families with divinely sanctioned authority (\"auctoritas\"). The rite of apotheosis (also called \"consecratio\") signified the deceased emperor's deification. The dominance of the emperor was based on the consolidation of powers from several republican offices. The emperor made himself the central religious authority as \"pontifex maximus\", and centralized the right to declare war, ratify treaties, and negotiate with foreign leaders. While these functions were clearly defined during the Principate, the emperor's powers over time became less constitutional and more monarchical, culminating in the Dominate.\nThe emperor was the ultimate authority in policy- and decision-making, but in the early Principate, he was expected to be accessible and deal personally with official business and petitions. A bureaucracy formed around him only gradually. The Julio-Claudian emperors relied on an informal body of advisors that included not only senators and equestrians, but trusted slaves and freedmen. After Nero, the influence of the latter was regarded with suspicion, and the emperor's council (\"consilium\") became subject to official appointment for greater transparency. Though the Senate took a lead in policy discussions until the end of the Antonine dynasty, equestrians played an increasingly important role in the \"consilium\". The women of the emperor's family often intervened directly in his decisions.\nAccess to the emperor might be gained at the daily reception (\"salutatio\"), a development of the traditional homage a client paid to his patron; public banquets hosted at the palace; and religious ceremonies. The common people who lacked this access could manifest their approval or displeasure as a group at games. By the 4th century, the Christian emperors became remote figureheads who issued general rulings, no longer responding to individual petitions. Although the Senate could do little short of assassination and open rebellion to contravene the will of the emperor, it retained its symbolic political centrality. The Senate legitimated the emperor's rule, and the emperor employed senators as legates (\"legati\"): generals, diplomats, and administrators.\nThe practical source of an emperor's power and authority was the military. The legionaries were paid by the Imperial treasury, and swore an annual oath of loyalty to the emperor. Most emperors chose a successor, usually a close family member or adopted heir. The new emperor had to seek a swift acknowledgement of his status and authority to stabilize the political landscape. No emperor could hope to survive without the allegiance of the Praetorian Guard and the legions. To secure their loyalty, several emperors paid the \"donativum\", a monetary reward. In theory, the Senate was entitled to choose the new emperor, but did so mindful of acclamation by the army or Praetorians.\nMilitary.\nAfter the Punic Wars, the Roman army comprised professional soldiers who volunteered for 20 years of active duty and five as reserves. The transition to a professional military began during the late Republic and was one of the many profound shifts away from republicanism, under which an army of conscript citizens defended the homeland against a specific threat. The Romans expanded their war machine by \"organizing the communities that they conquered in Italy into a system that generated huge reservoirs of manpower for their army\". By Imperial times, military service was a full-time career. The pervasiveness of military garrisons throughout the Empire was a major influence in the process of Romanization.\nThe primary mission of the military of the early empire was to preserve the Pax Romana. The three major divisions of the military were:\nThrough his military reforms, which included consolidating or disbanding units of questionable loyalty, Augustus regularized the legion. A legion was organized into ten cohorts, each of which comprised six centuries, with a century further made up of ten squads (\"contubernia\"); the exact size of the Imperial legion, which was likely determined by logistics, has been estimated to range from 4,800 to 5,280. After Germanic tribes wiped out three legions in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, the number of legions was increased from 25 to around 30. The army had about 300,000 soldiers in the 1st century, and under 400,000 in the 2nd, \"significantly smaller\" than the collective armed forces of the conquered territories. No more than 2% of adult males living in the Empire served in the Imperial army. Augustus also created the Praetorian Guard: nine cohorts, ostensibly to maintain the public peace, which were garrisoned in Italy. Better paid than the legionaries, the Praetorians served only sixteen years.\nThe \"auxilia\" were recruited from among the non-citizens. Organized in smaller units of roughly cohort strength, they were paid less than the legionaries, and after 25 years of service were rewarded with Roman citizenship, also extended to their sons. According to Tacitus there were roughly as many auxiliaries as there were legionaries\u2014thus, around 125,000 men, implying approximately 250 auxiliary regiments. The Roman cavalry of the earliest Empire were primarily from Celtic, Hispanic or Germanic areas. Several aspects of training and equipment derived from the Celts.\nThe Roman navy not only aided in the supply and transport of the legions but also in the protection of the frontiers along the rivers Rhine and Danube. Another duty was protecting maritime trade against pirates. It patrolled the Mediterranean, parts of the North Atlantic coasts, and the Black Sea. Nevertheless, the army was considered the senior and more prestigious branch.\nProvincial government.\nAn annexed territory became a Roman province in three steps: making a register of cities, taking a census, and surveying the land. Further government recordkeeping included births and deaths, real estate transactions, taxes, and juridical proceedings. In the 1st and 2nd centuries, the central government sent out around 160 officials annually to govern outside Italy. Among these officials were the Roman governors: magistrates elected at Rome who in the name of the Roman people governed senatorial provinces; or governors, usually of equestrian rank, who held their \"imperium\" on behalf of the emperor in imperial provinces, most notably Roman Egypt. A governor had to make himself accessible to the people he governed, but he could delegate various duties. His staff, however, was minimal: his official attendants (\"apparitores\"), including lictors, heralds, messengers, scribes, and bodyguards; legates, both civil and military, usually of equestrian rank; and friends who accompanied him unofficially.\nOther officials were appointed as supervisors of government finances. Separating fiscal responsibility from justice and administration was a reform of the Imperial era, to avoid provincial governors and tax farmers exploiting local populations for personal gain. Equestrian procurators, whose authority was originally \"extra-judicial and extra-constitutional\", managed both state-owned property and the personal property of the emperor (\"res privata\"). Because Roman government officials were few, a provincial who needed help with a legal dispute or criminal case might seek out any Roman perceived to have some official capacity.\nIn the High Empire, Italy was legally distinguished from the provinces, and along with some favored provincial communities, enjoyed immunity from the property tax and poll tax. However, under the Emperor Diocletian, Italy lost these privileges and was subdivided into provinces.\nLaw.\nRoman courts held original jurisdiction over cases involving Roman citizens throughout the empire, but there were too few judicial functionaries to impose Roman law uniformly in the provinces. Most parts of the Eastern Empire already had well-established law codes and juridical procedures. Generally, it was Roman policy to respect the \"mos regionis\" (\"regional tradition\" or \"law of the land\") and to regard local laws as a source of legal precedent and social stability. The compatibility of Roman and local law was thought to reflect an underlying \"ius gentium\", the \"law of nations\" or international law regarded as common and customary. If provincial law conflicted with Roman law or custom, Roman courts heard appeals, and the emperor held final decision-making authority.\nIn the West, law had been administered on a highly localized or tribal basis, and private property rights may have been a novelty of the Roman era, particularly among Celts. Roman law facilitated the acquisition of wealth by a pro-Roman elite. The extension of universal citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Empire in 212 required the uniform application of Roman law, replacing local law codes that had applied to non-citizens. Diocletian's efforts to stabilize the Empire after the Crisis of the Third Century included two major compilations of law in four years, the \"Codex Gregorianus\" and the \"Codex Hermogenianus\", to guide provincial administrators in setting consistent legal standards.\nThe pervasiveness of Roman law throughout Western Europe enormously influenced the Western legal tradition, reflected by continued use of Latin legal terminology in modern law.\nTaxation.\nTaxation under the Empire amounted to about 5% of its gross product. The typical tax rate for individuals ranged from 2 to 5%. The tax code was \"bewildering\" in its complicated system of direct and indirect taxes, some paid in cash and some in kind. Taxes might be specific to a province, or kinds of properties such as fisheries; they might be temporary. Tax collection was justified by the need to maintain the military, and taxpayers sometimes got a refund if the army captured a surplus of booty. In-kind taxes were accepted from less-monetized areas, particularly those who could supply grain or goods to army camps.\nThe primary source of direct tax revenue was individuals, who paid a poll tax and a tax on their land, construed as a tax on its produce or productive capacity. Tax obligations were determined by the census: each head of household provided a headcount of his household, as well as an accounting of his property. A major source of indirect-tax revenue was the \"portoria\", customs and tolls on trade, including among provinces. Towards the end of his reign, Augustus instituted a 4% tax on the sale of slaves, which Nero shifted from the purchaser to the dealers, who responded by raising their prices. An owner who manumitted a slave paid a \"freedom tax\", calculated at 5% of value. An inheritance tax of 5% was assessed when Roman citizens above a certain net worth left property to anyone outside their immediate family. Revenues from the estate tax and from an auction tax went towards the veterans' pension fund (\"aerarium militare\").\nLow taxes helped the Roman aristocracy increase their wealth, which equalled or exceeded the revenues of the central government. An emperor sometimes replenished his treasury by confiscating the estates of the \"super-rich\", but in the later period, the resistance of the wealthy to paying taxes was one of the factors contributing to the collapse of the Empire.\nEconomy.\nThe Empire is best thought of as a network of regional economies, based on a form of \"political capitalism\" in which the state regulated commerce to assure its own revenues. Economic growth, though not comparable to modern economies, was greater than that of most other societies prior to industrialization. Territorial conquests permitted a large-scale reorganization of land use that resulted in agricultural surplus and specialization, particularly in north Africa. Some cities were known for particular industries. The scale of urban building indicates a significant construction industry. Papyri preserve complex accounting methods that suggest elements of economic rationalism, and the Empire was highly monetized. Although the means of communication and transport were limited in antiquity, transportation in the 1st and 2nd centuries expanded greatly, and trade routes connected regional economies. The supply contracts for the army drew on local suppliers near the base (\"castrum\"), throughout the province, and across provincial borders.\nEconomic historians vary in their calculations of the gross domestic product during the Principate. In the sample years of 14, 100, and 150 AD, estimates of per capita GDP range from 166 to 380 \"HS\". The GDP per capita of Italy is estimated as 40 to 66% higher than in the rest of the Empire, due to tax transfers from the provinces and the concentration of elite income.\nEconomic dynamism resulted in social mobility. Although aristocratic values permeated traditional elite society, wealth requirements for rank indicate a strong tendency towards plutocracy. Prestige could be obtained through investing one's wealth in grand estates or townhouses, luxury items, public entertainments, funerary monuments, and religious dedications. Guilds (\"collegia\") and corporations (\"corpora\") provided support for individuals to succeed through networking. \"There can be little doubt that the lower classes of ... provincial towns of the Roman Empire enjoyed a high standard of living not equaled again in Western Europe until the 19th century\". Households in the top 1.5% of income distribution captured about 20% of income. The \"vast majority\" produced more than half of the total income, but lived near subsistence.\nCurrency and banking.\nThe early Empire was monetized to a near-universal extent, using money as a way to express prices and debts. The \"sestertius\" (English \"sesterces\", symbolized as \"HS\") was the basic unit of reckoning value into the 4th century, though the silver \"denarius\", worth four sesterces, was also used beginning in the Severan dynasty. The smallest coin commonly circulated was the bronze \"as\", one-tenth \"denarius\". Bullion and ingots seem not to have counted as \"pecunia\" (\"money\") and were used only on the frontiers. Romans in the first and second centuries counted coins, rather than weighing them\u2014an indication that the coin was valued on its face. This tendency towards fiat money led to the debasement of Roman coinage in the later Empire. The standardization of money throughout the Empire promoted trade and market integration. The high amount of metal coinage in circulation increased the money supply for trading or saving.\nRome had no central bank, and regulation of the banking system was minimal. Banks of classical antiquity typically kept less in reserves than the full total of customers' deposits. A typical bank had fairly limited capital, and often only one principal. Seneca assumes that anyone involved in Roman commerce needs access to credit. A professional deposit banker received and held deposits for a fixed or indefinite term, and lent money to third parties. The senatorial elite were involved heavily in private lending, both as creditors and borrowers. The holder of a debt could use it as a means of payment by transferring it to another party, without cash changing hands. Although it has sometimes been thought that ancient Rome lacked documentary transactions, the system of banks throughout the Empire permitted the exchange of large sums without physically transferring coins, in part because of the risks of moving large amounts of cash. Only one serious credit shortage is known to have occurred in the early Empire, in 33 AD; generally, available capital exceeded the amount needed by borrowers. The central government itself did not borrow money, and without public debt had to fund deficits from cash reserves.\nEmperors of the Antonine and Severan dynasties debased the currency, particularly the \"denarius\", under the pressures of meeting military payrolls. Sudden inflation under Commodus damaged the credit market. In the mid-200s, the supply of specie contracted sharply. Conditions during the Crisis of the Third Century\u2014such as reductions in long-distance trade, disruption of mining operations, and the physical transfer of gold coinage outside the empire by invading enemies\u2014greatly diminished the money supply and the banking sector. Although Roman coinage had long been fiat money or fiduciary currency, general economic anxieties came to a head under Aurelian, and bankers lost confidence in coins. Despite Diocletian's introduction of the gold \"solidus\" and monetary reforms, the credit market of the Empire never recovered its former robustness.\nMining and metallurgy.\nThe main mining regions of the Empire were the Iberian Peninsula (silver, copper, lead, iron and gold); Gaul (gold, silver, iron); Britain (mainly iron, lead, tin), the Danubian provinces (gold, iron); Macedonia and Thrace (gold, silver); and Asia Minor (gold, silver, iron, tin). Intensive large-scale mining\u2014of alluvial deposits, and by means of open-cast mining and underground mining\u2014took place from the reign of Augustus up to the early 3rd century, when the instability of the Empire disrupted production.\nHydraulic mining allowed base and precious metals to be extracted on a proto-industrial scale. The total annual iron output is estimated at 82,500\u00a0tonnes. Copper and lead production levels were unmatched until the Industrial Revolution. At its peak around the mid-2nd century, the Roman silver stock is estimated at 10,000\u00a0t, five to ten times larger than the combined silver mass of medieval Europe and the Caliphate around 800\u00a0AD. As an indication of the scale of Roman metal production, lead pollution in the Greenland ice sheet quadrupled over prehistoric levels during the Imperial era and dropped thereafter.\nTransportation and communication.\nThe Empire completely encircled the Mediterranean, which they called \"our sea\" (\"Mare Nostrum\"). Roman sailing vessels navigated the Mediterranean as well as major rivers. Transport by water was preferred where possible, as moving commodities by land was more difficult. Vehicles, wheels, and ships indicate the existence of a great number of skilled woodworkers.\nLand transport utilized the advanced system of Roman roads, called \"viae\". These roads were primarily built for military purposes, but also served commercial ends. The in-kind taxes paid by communities included the provision of personnel, animals, or vehicles for the \"cursus publicus\", the state mail and transport service established by Augustus. Relay stations were located along the roads every seven to twelve Roman miles, and tended to grow into villages or trading posts. A \"mansio\" (plural \"mansiones\") was a privately run service station franchised by the imperial bureaucracy for the \"cursus publicus\". The distance between \"mansiones\" was determined by how far a wagon could travel in a day. Carts were usually pulled by mules, travelling about 4\u00a0mph.\nTrade and commodities.\nRoman provinces traded among themselves, but trade extended outside the frontiers to regions as far away as China and India. Chinese trade was mostly conducted overland through middle men along the Silk Road; Indian trade also occurred by sea from Egyptian ports. The main commodity was grain. Also traded were olive oil, foodstuffs, \"garum\" (fish sauce), slaves, ore and manufactured metal objects, fibres and textiles, timber, pottery, glassware, marble, papyrus, spices and \"materia medica\", ivory, pearls, and gemstones. Though most provinces could produce wine, regional varietals were desirable and wine was a central trade good.\nLabour and occupations.\nInscriptions record 268 different occupations in Rome and 85 in Pompeii. Professional associations or trade guilds (\"collegia\") are attested for a wide range of occupations, some quite specialized.\nWork performed by slaves falls into five general categories: domestic, with epitaphs recording at least 55 different household jobs; imperial or public service; urban crafts and services; agriculture; and mining. Convicts provided much of the labour in the mines or quarries, where conditions were notoriously brutal. In practice, there was little division of labour between slave and free, and most workers were illiterate and without special skills. The greatest number of common labourers were employed in agriculture: in Italian industrial farming (\"latifundia\"), these may have been mostly slaves, but elsewhere slave farm labour was probably less important.\nTextile and clothing production was a major source of employment. Both textiles and finished garments were traded and products were often named for peoples or towns, like a fashion \"label\". Better ready-to-wear was exported by local businessmen (\"negotiatores\" or \"mercatores\"). Finished garments might be retailed by their sales agents, by \"vestiarii\" (clothing dealers), or peddled by itinerant merchants. The fullers (\"fullones\") and dye workers (\"coloratores\") had their own guilds. \"Centonarii\" were guild workers who specialized in textile production and the recycling of old clothes into pieced goods.\nArchitecture and engineering.\nThe chief Roman contributions to architecture were the arch, vault, and dome. Some Roman structures still stand today, due in part to sophisticated methods of making cements and concrete. Roman temples developed Etruscan and Greek forms, with some distinctive elements. Roman roads are considered the most advanced built until the early 19th century.\nRoman bridges were among the first large and lasting bridges, built from stone (and in most cases concrete) with the arch as the basic structure. The largest Roman bridge was Trajan's bridge over the lower Danube, constructed by Apollodorus of Damascus, which remained for over a millennium the longest bridge to have been built. The Romans built many dams and reservoirs for water collection, such as the Subiaco Dams, two of which fed the Anio Novus, one of the largest aqueducts of Rome.\nThe Romans constructed numerous aqueducts. \"De aquaeductu\", a treatise by Frontinus, who served as water commissioner, reflects the administrative importance placed on the water supply. Masonry channels carried water along a precise gradient, using gravity alone. It was then collected in tanks and fed through pipes to public fountains, baths, toilets, or industrial sites. The main aqueducts in Rome were the Aqua Claudia and the Aqua Marcia. The complex system built to supply Constantinople had its most distant supply drawn from over 120\u00a0km away along a route of more than 336\u00a0km. Roman aqueducts were built to remarkably fine tolerance, and to a technological standard not equalled until modern times. The Romans also used aqueducts in their extensive mining operations across the empire.\nInsulated glazing (or \"double glazing\") was used in the construction of public baths. Elite housing in cooler climates might have hypocausts, a form of central heating. The Romans were the first culture to assemble all essential components of the much later steam engine: the crank and connecting rod system, Hero's aeolipile (generating steam power), the cylinder and piston (in metal force pumps), non-return valves (in water pumps), and gearing (in water mills and clocks).\nDaily life.\nCity and country.\nThe city was viewed as fostering civilization by being \"properly designed, ordered, and adorned\". Augustus undertook a vast building programme in Rome, supported public displays of art that expressed imperial ideology, and reorganized the city into neighbourhoods \"(vici)\" administered at the local level with police and firefighting services. A focus of Augustan monumental architecture was the Campus Martius, an open area outside the city centre: the Altar of Augustan Peace () was located there, as was an obelisk imported from Egypt that formed the pointer (\"gnomon\") of a horologium. With its public gardens, the Campus was among the most attractive places in Rome to visit.\nCity planning and urban lifestyles was influenced by the Greeks early on, and in the Eastern Empire, Roman rule shaped the development of cities that already had a strong Hellenistic character. Cities such as Athens, Aphrodisias, Ephesus and Gerasa tailored city planning and architecture to imperial ideals, while expressing their individual identity and regional preeminence. In areas inhabited by Celtic-speaking peoples, Rome encouraged the development of urban centres with stone temples, forums, monumental fountains, and amphitheatres, often on or near the sites of preexisting walled settlements known as \"oppida\". Urbanization in Roman Africa expanded on Greek and Punic coastal cities.\nThe network of cities (, \"municipia\", \"civitates\" or in Greek terms \"poleis\") was a primary cohesive force during the Pax Romana. Romans of the 1st and 2nd centuries were encouraged to \"inculcate the habits of peacetime\". As the classicist Clifford Ando noted:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Most of the cultural appurtenances popularly associated with imperial culture\u2014public cult and its games and civic banquets, competitions for artists, speakers, and athletes, as well as the funding of the great majority of public buildings and public display of art\u2014were financed by private individuals, whose expenditures in this regard helped to justify their economic power and legal and provincial privileges.\nIn the city of Rome, most people lived in multistory apartment buildings (\"insulae\") that were often squalid firetraps. Public facilities\u2014such as baths (\"thermae\"), toilets with running water (\"latrinae\"), basins or elaborate fountains (\"nymphea\") delivering fresh water, and large-scale entertainments such as chariot races and gladiator combat\u2014were aimed primarily at the common people. \nThe public baths served hygienic, social and cultural functions. Bathing was the focus of daily socializing. Roman baths were distinguished by a series of rooms that offered communal bathing in three temperatures, with amenities that might include an exercise room, sauna, exfoliation spa, ball court, or outdoor swimming pool. Baths had hypocaust heating: the floors were suspended over hot-air channels. Public baths were part of urban culture throughout the provinces, but in the late 4th century, individual tubs began to replace communal bathing. Christians were advised to go to the baths only for hygiene.\nRich families from Rome usually had two or more houses: a townhouse (\"domus\") and at least one luxury home (\"villa\") outside the city. The \"domus\" was a privately owned single-family house, and might be furnished with a private bath (\"balneum\"), but it was not a place to retreat from public life. Although some neighbourhoods show a higher concentration of such houses, they were not segregated enclaves. The \"domus\" was meant to be visible and accessible. The atrium served as a reception hall in which the \"paterfamilias\" (head of household) met with clients every morning. It was a centre of family religious rites, containing a shrine and images of family ancestors. The houses were located on busy public roads, and ground-level spaces were often rented out as shops (\"tabernae\"). In addition to a kitchen garden\u2014windowboxes might substitute in the \"insulae\"\u2014townhouses typically enclosed a peristyle garden.\nThe villa by contrast was an escape from the city, and in literature represents a lifestyle that balances intellectual and artistic interests (\"otium\") with an appreciation of nature and agriculture. Ideally a villa commanded a view or vista, carefully framed by the architectural design. \nAugustus' programme of urban renewal, and the growth of Rome's population to as many as one million, was accompanied by nostalgia for rural life. Poetry idealized the lives of farmers and shepherds. Interior decorating often featured painted gardens, fountains, landscapes, vegetative ornament, and animals, rendered accurately enough to be identified by species. On a more practical level, the central government took an active interest in supporting agriculture. Producing food was the priority of land use. Larger farms (\"latifundia\") achieved an economy of scale that sustained urban life. Small farmers benefited from the development of local markets in towns and trade centres. Agricultural techniques such as crop rotation and selective breeding were disseminated throughout the Empire, and new crops were introduced from one province to another.\nMaintaining an affordable food supply to the city of Rome had become a major political issue in the late Republic, when the state began to provide a grain dole (Cura Annonae) to citizens who registered for it (about 200,000\u2013250,000 adult males in Rome). The dole cost at least 15% of state revenues, but improved living conditions among the lower classes, and subsidized the rich by allowing workers to spend more of their earnings on the wine and olive oil produced on estates. The grain dole also had symbolic value: it affirmed the emperor's position as universal benefactor, and the right of citizens to share in \"the fruits of conquest\". The \"annona\", public facilities, and spectacular entertainments mitigated the otherwise dreary living conditions of lower-class Romans, and kept social unrest in check. The satirist Juvenal, however, saw \"bread and circuses\" (\"panem et circenses\") as emblematic of the loss of republican political liberty:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The public has long since cast off its cares: the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things: bread and circuses.\nHealth and disease.\nEpidemics were common in the ancient world, and occasional pandemics in the Empire killed millions. The Roman population was unhealthy. About 20 percent\u2014a large percentage by ancient standards\u2014lived in cities, Rome being the largest. The cities were a \"demographic sink\": the death rate exceeded the birth rate and constant immigration was necessary to maintain the population. Average lifespan is estimated at the mid-twenties, and perhaps more than half of children died before reaching adulthood. Dense urban populations and poor sanitation contributed to disease. Land and sea connections facilitated and sped the transfer of infectious diseases across the empire's territories. The rich were not immune; only two of emperor Marcus Aurelius's fourteen children are known to have reached adulthood.\nThe importance of a good diet to health was recognized by medical writers such as Galen (2nd century). Views on nutrition were influenced by beliefs like humoral theory. A good indicator of nutrition and disease burden is average height: the average Roman was shorter in stature than the population of pre-Roman Italian societies and medieval Europe.\nFood and dining.\nMost apartments in Rome lacked kitchens, though a charcoal brazier could be used for rudimentary cookery. Prepared food was sold at pubs and bars, inns, and food stalls (\"tabernae\", \"cauponae\", \"popinae\", \"thermopolia\"). Carryout and restaurants were for the lower classes; fine dining appeared only at dinner parties in wealthy homes with a chef (\"archimagirus\") and kitchen staff, or banquets hosted by social clubs (\"collegia\").\nMost Romans consumed at least 70% of their daily calories in the form of cereals and legumes. \"Puls\" (pottage) was considered the food of the Romans, and could be elaborated to produce dishes similar to polenta or risotto. Urban populations and the military preferred bread. By the reign of Aurelian, the state had begun to distribute the \"annona\" as a daily ration of bread baked in state factories, and added olive oil, wine, and pork to the dole.\nRoman literature focuses on the dining habits of the upper classes, for whom the evening meal (\"cena\") had important social functions. Guests were entertained in a finely decorated dining room (\"triclinium\") furnished with couches. By the late Republic, women dined, reclined, and drank wine along with men. The poet Martial describes a dinner, beginning with the \"gustatio\" (\"tasting\" or \"appetizer\") salad. The main course was kid, beans, greens, a chicken, and leftover ham, followed by a dessert of fruit and wine. Roman \"foodies\" indulged in wild game, fowl such as peacock and flamingo, large fish (mullet was especially prized), and shellfish. Luxury ingredients were imported from the far reaches of empire. A book-length collection of Roman recipes is attributed to Apicius, a name for several figures in antiquity that became synonymous with \"gourmet\".\nRefined cuisine could be moralized as a sign of either civilized progress or decadent decline. Most often, because of the importance of landowning in Roman culture, produce\u2014cereals, legumes, vegetables, and fruit\u2014were considered more civilized foods than meat. The Mediterranean staples of bread, wine, and oil were sacralized by Roman Christianity, while Germanic meat consumption became a mark of paganism. Some philosophers and Christians resisted the demands of the body and the pleasures of food, and adopted fasting as an ideal. Food became simpler in general as urban life in the West diminished and trade routes were disrupted; the Church formally discouraged gluttony, and hunting and pastoralism were seen as simple and virtuous.\nSpectacles.\nWhen Juvenal complained that the Roman people had exchanged their political liberty for \"bread and circuses\", he was referring to the state-provided grain dole and the \"circenses\", events held in the entertainment venue called a \"circus\". The largest such venue in Rome was the Circus Maximus, the setting of horse races, chariot races, the equestrian Troy Game, staged beast hunts (\"venationes\"), athletic contests, gladiator combat, and historical re-enactments. From earliest times, several religious festivals had featured games (\"ludi\"), primarily horse and chariot races (\"ludi circenses\"). The races retained religious significance in connection with agriculture, initiation, and the cycle of birth and death.\nUnder Augustus, public entertainments were presented on 77 days of the year; by the reign of Marcus Aurelius, this had expanded to 135. Circus games were preceded by an elaborate parade (\"pompa circensis\") that ended at the venue. Competitive events were held also in smaller venues such as the amphitheatre, which became the characteristic Roman spectacle venue, and stadium. Greek-style athletics included footraces, boxing, wrestling, and the pancratium. Aquatic displays, such as the mock sea battle (\"naumachia\") and a form of \"water ballet\", were presented in engineered pools. State-supported theatrical events (\"ludi scaenici\") took place on temple steps or in grand stone theatres, or in the smaller enclosed theatre called an \"odeon\".\nCircuses were the largest structure regularly built in the Roman world. The Flavian Amphitheatre, better known as the Colosseum, became the regular arena for blood sports in Rome. Many Roman amphitheatres, circuses and theatres built in cities outside Italy are visible as ruins today. The local ruling elite were responsible for sponsoring spectacles and arena events, which both enhanced their status and drained their resources. The physical arrangement of the amphitheatre represented the order of Roman society: the emperor in his opulent box; senators and equestrians in reserved advantageous seats; women seated at a remove from the action; slaves given the worst places, and everybody else in-between. The crowd could call for an outcome by booing or cheering, but the emperor had the final say. Spectacles could quickly become sites of social and political protest, and emperors sometimes had to deploy force to put down crowd unrest, most notoriously at the Nika riots in 532.\nThe chariot teams were known by the colours they wore. Fan loyalty was fierce and at times erupted into sports riots. Racing was perilous, but charioteers were among the most celebrated and well-compensated athletes. Circuses were designed to ensure that no team had an unfair advantage and to minimize collisions (\"naufragia\"), which were nonetheless frequent and satisfying to the crowd. The races retained a magical aura through their early association with chthonic rituals: circus images were considered protective or lucky, curse tablets have been found buried at the site of racetracks, and charioteers were often suspected of sorcery. Chariot racing continued into the Byzantine period under imperial sponsorship, but the decline of cities in the 6th and 7th centuries led to its eventual demise.\nThe Romans thought gladiator contests had originated with funeral games and sacrifices. Some of the earliest styles of gladiator fighting had ethnic designations such as \"Thracian\" or \"Gallic\". The staged combats were considered , \"services, offerings, benefactions\", initially distinct from the festival games (\"ludi\"). To mark the opening of the Colosseum, Titus presented 100 days of arena events, with 3,000 gladiators competing on a single day. Roman fascination with gladiators is indicated by how widely they are depicted on mosaics, wall paintings, lamps, and in graffiti. Gladiators were trained combatants who might be slaves, convicts, or free volunteers. Death was not a necessary or even desirable outcome in matches between these highly skilled fighters, whose training was costly and time-consuming. By contrast, \"noxii\" were convicts sentenced to the arena with little or no training, often unarmed, and with no expectation of survival; physical suffering and humiliation were considered appropriate retributive justice. These executions were sometimes staged or ritualized as re-enactments of myths, and amphitheatres were equipped with elaborate stage machinery to create special effects.\nModern scholars have found the pleasure Romans took in the \"theatre of life and death\" difficult to understand. Pliny the Younger rationalized gladiator spectacles as good for the people, \"to inspire them to face honourable wounds and despise death, by exhibiting love of glory and desire for victory\". Some Romans such as Seneca were critical of the brutal spectacles, but found virtue in the courage and dignity of the defeated fighter\u2014an attitude that finds its fullest expression with the Christians martyred in the arena. Tertullian considered deaths in the arena to be nothing more than a dressed-up form of human sacrifice. Even martyr literature, however, offers \"detailed, indeed luxuriant, descriptions of bodily suffering\", and became a popular genre at times indistinguishable from fiction.\nRecreation.\nThe singular \"ludus\", \"play, game, sport, training\", had a wide range of meanings such as \"word play\", \"theatrical performance\", \"board game\", \"primary school\", and even \"gladiator training school\" (as in \"Ludus Magnus\"). Activities for children and young people in the Empire included hoop rolling and knucklebones (\"astragali\" or \"jacks\"). Girls had dolls made of wood, terracotta, and especially bone and ivory. Ball games include trigon and harpastum. People of all ages played board games, including \"latrunculi\" (\"Raiders\") and \"XII scripta\" (\"Twelve Marks\"). A game referred to as \"alea\" (dice) or \"tabula\" (the board) may have been similar to backgammon. Dicing as a form of gambling was disapproved of, but was a popular pastime during the festival of the Saturnalia.\nAfter adolescence, most physical training for males was of a military nature. The Campus Martius originally was an exercise field where young men learned horsemanship and warfare. Hunting was also considered an appropriate pastime. According to Plutarch, conservative Romans disapproved of Greek-style athletics that promoted a fine body for its own sake, and condemned Nero's efforts to encourage Greek-style athletic games. Some women trained as gymnasts and dancers, and a rare few as female gladiators. The \"Bikini Girls\" mosaic shows young women engaging in routines comparable to rhythmic gymnastics. Women were encouraged to maintain health through activities such as playing ball, swimming, walking, or reading aloud (as a breathing exercise).\nClothing.\nIn a status-conscious society like that of the Romans, clothing and personal adornment indicated the etiquette of interacting with the wearer. Wearing the correct clothing reflected a society in good order. There is little direct evidence of how Romans dressed in daily life, since portraiture may show the subject in clothing with symbolic value, and surviving textiles are rare.\nThe toga was the distinctive national garment of the male citizen, but it was heavy and impractical, worn mainly for conducting political or court business and religious rites. It was a \"vast expanse\" of semi-circular white wool that could not be put on and draped correctly without assistance. The drapery became more intricate and structured over time. The \"toga praetexta\", with a purple or purplish-red stripe representing inviolability, was worn by children who had not come of age, curule magistrates, and state priests. Only the emperor could wear an all-purple toga (\"toga picta\").\nOrdinary clothing was dark or colourful. The basic garment for all Romans, regardless of gender or wealth, was the simple sleeved tunic, with length differing by wearer. The tunics of poor people and labouring slaves were made from coarse wool in natural, dull shades; finer tunics were made of lightweight wool or linen. A man of the senatorial or equestrian order wore a tunic with two purple stripes (\"clavi\") woven vertically: the wider the stripe, the higher the wearer's status. Other garments could be layered over the tunic. Common male attire also included cloaks, and in some regions, trousers. In the 2nd century, emperors and elite men are often portrayed wearing the pallium, an originally Greek mantle; women are also portrayed in the pallium. Tertullian considered the pallium an appropriate garment both for Christians, in contrast to the toga, and for educated people.\nRoman clothing styles changed over time. In the Dominate, clothing worn by both soldiers and bureaucrats became highly decorated with geometrical patterns, stylized plant motifs, and in more elaborate examples, human or animal figures. Courtiers of the later Empire wore elaborate silk robes. The militarization of Roman society, and the waning of urban life, affected fashion: heavy military-style belts were worn by bureaucrats as well as soldiers, and the toga was abandoned, replaced by the pallium as a garment embodying social unity.\nArts.\nGreek art had a profound influence on Roman art. Public art\u2014including sculpture, monuments such as victory columns or triumphal arches, and the iconography on coins\u2014is often analysed for historical or ideological significance. In the private sphere, artistic objects were made for religious dedications, funerary commemoration, domestic use, and commerce. The wealthy advertised their appreciation of culture through artwork and decorative arts in their homes. Despite the value placed on art, even famous artists were of low social status, partly as they worked with their hands.\nPortraiture.\nPortraiture, which survives mainly in sculpture, was the most copious form of imperial art. Portraits during the Augustan period utilize classical proportions, evolving later into a mixture of realism and idealism. Republican portraits were characterized by verism, but as early as the 2nd century BC, Greek heroic nudity was adopted for conquering generals. Imperial portrait sculptures may model a mature head atop a youthful nude or semi-nude body with perfect musculature. Clothed in the toga or military regalia, the body communicates rank or role, not individual characteristics. \nPortraiture in painting is represented primarily by the Fayum mummy portraits, which evoke Egyptian and Roman traditions of commemorating the dead with realistic painting. Marble portrait sculpture were painted, but traces have rarely survived.\nSculpture and sarcophagi.\nExamples of Roman sculpture survive abundantly, though often in damaged or fragmentary condition, including freestanding statuary in marble, bronze and terracotta, and reliefs from public buildings and monuments. Niches in amphitheatres were originally filled with statues, as were formal gardens. Temples housed cult images of deities, often by famed sculptors.\nElaborately carved marble and limestone sarcophagi are characteristic of the 2nd to 4th centuries. Sarcophagus relief has been called the \"richest single source of Roman iconography\", depicting mythological scenes or Jewish/Christian imagery as well as the deceased's life.\nPainting.\nInitial Roman painting drew from Etruscan and Greek models and techniques. Examples of Roman paintings can be found in palaces, catacombs and villas. Much of what is known of Roman painting is from the interior decoration of private homes, particularly as preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius. In addition to decorative borders and panels with geometric or vegetative motifs, wall painting depicts scenes from mythology and theatre, landscapes and gardens, spectacles, everyday life, and erotic art.\nMosaic.\nMosaics are among the most enduring of Roman decorative arts, and are found on floors and other architectural features. The most common is the tessellated mosaic, formed from uniform pieces \"(tesserae)\" of materials such as stone and glass. \"Opus sectile\" is a related technique in which flat stone, usually coloured marble, is cut precisely into shapes from which geometric or figurative patterns are formed. This more difficult technique became especially popular for luxury surfaces in the 4th century (e.g. the Basilica of Junius Bassus).\nFigurative mosaics share many themes with painting, and in some cases use almost identical compositions. Geometric patterns and mythological scenes occur throughout the Empire. In North Africa, a particularly rich source of mosaics, homeowners often chose scenes of life on their estates, hunting, agriculture, and local wildlife. Plentiful and major examples of Roman mosaics come also from present-day Turkey (particularly the (Antioch mosaics), Italy, southern France, Spain, and Portugal.\nDecorative arts.\nDecorative arts for luxury consumers included fine pottery, silver and bronze vessels and implements, and glassware. Pottery manufacturing was economically important, as were the glass and metalworking industries. Imports stimulated new regional centres of production. Southern Gaul became a leading producer of the finer red-gloss pottery (\"terra sigillata\") that was a major trade good in 1st-century Europe. Glassblowing was regarded by the Romans as originating in Syria in the 1st century BC, and by the 3rd century, Egypt and the Rhineland had become noted for fine glass.\nPerforming arts.\nIn Roman tradition, borrowed from the Greeks, literary theatre was performed by all-male troupes that used face masks with exaggerated facial expressions to portray emotion. Female roles were played by men in drag (\"travesti\"). Roman literary theatre tradition is represented in Latin literature by the tragedies of Seneca, for example.\nMore popular than literary theatre was the genre-defying \"mimus\" theatre, which featured scripted scenarios with free improvisation, risqu\u00e9 language and sex scenes, action sequences, and political satire, along with dance, juggling, acrobatics, tightrope walking, striptease, and dancing bears. Unlike literary theatre, \"mimus\" was played without masks, and encouraged stylistic realism. Female roles were performed by women. \"Mimus\" was related to \"pantomimus\", an early form of story ballet that contained no spoken dialogue but rather a sung libretto, often mythological, either tragic or comic.\nAlthough sometimes regarded as foreign, music and dance existed in Rome from earliest times. Music was customary at funerals, and the \"tibia\", a woodwind instrument, was played at sacrifices. Song \"(carmen)\" was integral to almost every social occasion. Music was thought to reflect the orderliness of the cosmos. Various woodwinds and \"brass\" instruments were played, as were stringed instruments such as the \"cithara\", and percussion. The \"cornu\", a long tubular metal wind instrument, was used for military signals and on parade. These instruments spread throughout the provinces and are widely depicted in Roman art. The hydraulic pipe organ \"(hydraulis)\" was \"one of the most significant technical and musical achievements of antiquity\", and accompanied gladiator games and events in the amphitheatre. Although certain dances were seen at times as non-Roman or unmanly, dancing was embedded in religious rituals of archaic Rome. Ecstatic dancing was a feature of the mystery religions, particularly the cults of Cybele and Isis. In the secular realm, dancing girls from Syria and Cadiz were extremely popular.\nLike gladiators, entertainers were legally \"infames\", technically free but little better than slaves. \"Stars\", however, could enjoy considerable wealth and celebrity, and mingled socially and often sexually with the elite. Performers supported each other by forming guilds, and several memorials for theatre members survive. Theatre and dance were often condemned by Christian polemicists in the later Empire.\nLiteracy, books, and education.\nEstimates of the average literacy rate range from 5 to over 30%. The Roman obsession with documents and inscriptions indicates the value placed on the written word. Laws and edicts were posted as well as read out. Illiterate Roman subjects could have a government scribe (\"scriba\") read or write their official documents for them. The military produced extensive written records. The Babylonian Talmud declared \"if all seas were ink, all reeds were pen, all skies parchment, and all men scribes, they would be unable to set down the full scope of the Roman government's concerns\".\nNumeracy was necessary for commerce. Slaves were numerate and literate in significant numbers; some were highly educated. Graffiti and low-quality inscriptions with misspellings and solecisms indicate casual literacy among non-elites.\nThe Romans had an extensive priestly archive, and inscriptions appear throughout the Empire in connection with votives dedicated by ordinary people, as well as \"magic spells\" (e.g. the Greek Magical Papyri).\nBooks were expensive, since each copy had to be written out on a papyrus roll (\"volumen\") by scribes. The codex\u2014pages bound to a spine\u2014was still a novelty in the 1st century, but by the end of the 3rd century was replacing the \"volumen\". Commercial book production was established by the late Republic, and by the 1st century certain neighbourhoods of Rome and Western provincial cities were known for their bookshops. The quality of editing varied wildly, and plagiarism or forgery were common, since there was no copyright law.\nCollectors amassed personal libraries, and a fine library was part of the cultivated leisure (\"otium\") associated with the villa lifestyle. Significant collections might attract \"in-house\" scholars, and an individual benefactor might endow a community with a library (as Pliny the Younger did in Comum). Imperial libraries were open to users on a limited basis, and represented a literary canon. Books considered subversive might be publicly burned, and Domitian crucified copyists for reproducing works deemed treasonous.\nLiterary texts were often shared aloud at meals or with reading groups. Public readings (\"recitationes\") expanded from the 1st through the 3rd century, giving rise to \"consumer literature\" for entertainment. Illustrated books, including erotica, were popular, but are poorly represented by extant fragments.\nLiteracy began to decline during the Crisis of the Third Century. The emperor Julian banned Christians from teaching the classical curriculum, but the Church Fathers and other Christians adopted Latin and Greek literature, philosophy and science in biblical interpretation. As the Western Roman Empire declined, reading became rarer even for those within the Church hierarchy, although it continued in the Byzantine Empire.\nEducation.\nTraditional Roman education was moral and practical. Stories were meant to instil Roman values (\"mores maiorum\"). Parents were expected to act as role models, and working parents passed their skills to their children, who might also enter apprenticeships. Young children were attended by a pedagogue, usually a Greek slave or former slave, who kept the child safe, taught self-discipline and public behaviour, attended class and helped with tutoring.\nFormal education was available only to families who could pay for it; lack of state support contributed to low literacy. Primary education in reading, writing, and arithmetic might take place at home if parents hired or bought a teacher. Other children attended \"public\" schools organized by a schoolmaster (\"ludimagister\") paid by parents. \"Vernae\" (homeborn slave children) might share in-home or public schooling. Boys and girls received primary education generally from ages 7 to 12, but classes were not segregated by grade or age. Most schools employed corporal punishment. For the socially ambitious, education in Greek as well as Latin was necessary. Schools became more numerous during the Empire, increasing educational opportunities.\nAt the age of 14, upperclass males made their rite of passage into adulthood, and began to learn leadership roles through mentoring from a senior family member or family friend. Higher education was provided by \"grammatici\" or \"rhetores\". The \"grammaticus\" or \"grammarian\" taught mainly Greek and Latin literature, with history, geography, philosophy or mathematics treated as explications of the text. With the rise of Augustus, contemporary Latin authors such as Virgil and Livy also became part of the curriculum. The \"rhetor\" was a teacher of oratory or public speaking. The art of speaking (\"ars dicendi\") was highly prized, and \"eloquentia\" (\"speaking ability, eloquence\") was considered the \"glue\" of civilized society. Rhetoric was not so much a body of knowledge (though it required a command of the literary canon) as it was a mode of expression that distinguished those who held social power. The ancient model of rhetorical training\u2014\"restraint, coolness under pressure, modesty, and good humour\"\u2014endured into the 18th century as a Western educational ideal.\nIn Latin, \"illiteratus\" could mean both \"unable to read and write\" and \"lacking in cultural awareness or sophistication\". Higher education promoted career advancement. Urban elites throughout the Empire shared a literary culture imbued with Greek educational ideals (\"paideia\"). Hellenistic cities sponsored schools of higher learning to express cultural achievement. Young Roman men often went abroad to study rhetoric and philosophy, mostly to Athens. The curriculum in the East was more likely to include music and physical training. On the Hellenistic model, Vespasian endowed chairs of grammar, Latin and Greek rhetoric, and philosophy at Rome, and gave secondary teachers special exemptions from taxes and legal penalties. In the Eastern Empire, Berytus (present-day Beirut) was unusual in offering a Latin education, and became famous for its school of Roman law. The cultural movement known as the Second Sophistic (1st\u20133rd century AD) promoted the assimilation of Greek and Roman social, educational, and esthetic values.\nLiterate women ranged from cultured aristocrats to girls trained to be calligraphers and scribes. The ideal woman in Augustan love poetry was educated and well-versed in the arts. Education seems to have been standard for daughters of the senatorial and equestrian orders. An educated wife was an asset for the socially ambitious household.\nLiterature.\nLiterature under Augustus, along with that of the Republic, has been viewed as the \"Golden Age\" of Latin literature, embodying classical ideals. The three most influential Classical Latin poets\u2014Virgil, Horace, and Ovid\u2014belong to this period. Virgil's \"Aeneid\" was a national epic in the manner of the Homeric epics of Greece. Horace perfected the use of Greek lyric metres in Latin verse. Ovid's erotic poetry was enormously popular, but ran afoul of Augustan morality, contributing to his exile. Ovid's \"Metamorphoses\" wove together Greco-Roman mythology; his versions of Greek myths became a primary source of later classical mythology, and his work was hugely influential on medieval literature. The early Principate produced satirists such as Persius and Juvenal.\nThe mid-1st through mid-2nd century has conventionally been called the \"Silver Age\" of Latin literature. The three leading writers\u2014Seneca, Lucan, and Petronius\u2014committed suicide after incurring Nero's displeasure. Epigrammatist and social observer Martial and the epic poet Statius, whose poetry collection \"Silvae\" influenced Renaissance literature, wrote during the reign of Domitian. Other authors of the Silver Age included Pliny the Elder, author of the encyclopedic \"Natural History\"; his nephew, Pliny the Younger; and the historian Tacitus.\nThe principal Latin prose author of the Augustan age is the historian Livy, whose account of Rome's founding became the most familiar version in modern-era literature. \"The Twelve Caesars\" by Suetonius is a primary source for imperial biography. Among Imperial historians who wrote in Greek are Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Josephus, and Cassius Dio. Other major Greek authors of the Empire include the biographer Plutarch, the geographer Strabo, and the rhetorician and satirist Lucian.\nFrom the 2nd to the 4th centuries, Christian authors were in active dialogue with the classical tradition. Tertullian was one of the earliest prose authors with a distinctly Christian voice. After the conversion of Constantine, Latin literature is dominated by the Christian perspective. In the late 4th century, Jerome produced the Latin translation of the Bible that became authoritative as the Vulgate. Around that same time, Augustine wrote \"The City of God against the Pagans\", considered \"a masterpiece of Western culture\".\nIn contrast to the unity of Classical Latin, the literary esthetic of late antiquity has a tessellated quality. A continuing interest in the religious traditions of Rome prior to Christian dominion is found into the 5th century, with the \"Saturnalia\" of Macrobius and \"The Marriage of Philology and Mercury\" of Martianus Capella. Latin poets of late antiquity include Ausonius, Prudentius, Claudian, and Sidonius Apollinaris.\nReligion.\nThe Romans thought of themselves as highly religious, and attributed their success to their collective piety (\"pietas\") and good relations with the gods (\"pax deorum\"). The archaic religion believed to have come from the earliest kings of Rome was the foundation of the \"mos maiorum\", \"the way of the ancestors\", central to Roman identity.\nRoman religion was practical and contractual, based on the principle of \"do ut des\", \"I give that you might give\". Religion depended on knowledge and the correct practice of prayer, ritual, and sacrifice, not on faith or dogma, although Latin literature preserves learned speculation on the nature of the divine. For ordinary Romans, religion was a part of daily life. Each home had a household shrine to offer prayers and libations to the family's domestic deities. Neighbourhood shrines and sacred places such as springs and groves dotted the city. The Roman calendar was structured around religious observances; as many as 135 days were devoted to religious festivals and games (\"ludi\").\nIn the wake of the Republic's collapse, state religion adapted to support the new regime. Augustus justified one-man rule with a vast programme of religious revivalism and reform. Public vows now were directed at the wellbeing of the emperor. So-called \"emperor worship\" expanded on a grand scale the traditional veneration of the ancestral dead and of the \"Genius\", the divine tutelary of every individual. Upon death, an emperor could be made a state divinity (\"divus\") by vote of the Senate. The Roman imperial cult, influenced by Hellenistic ruler cult, became one of the major ways Rome advertised its presence in the provinces and cultivated shared cultural identity. Cultural precedent in the Eastern provinces facilitated a rapid dissemination of Imperial cult, extending as far as Najran, in present-day Saudi Arabia. Rejection of the state religion became tantamount to treason.\nThe Romans are known for the great number of deities they honoured. As the Romans extended their territories, their general policy was to promote stability among diverse peoples by absorbing local deities and cults rather than eradicating them, building temples that framed local theology within Roman religion. Inscriptions throughout the Empire record the side-by-side worship of local and Roman deities, including dedications made by Romans to local gods. By the height of the Empire, numerous syncretic or reinterpreted gods were cultivated, among them cults of Cybele, Isis, Epona, and of solar gods such as Mithras and Sol Invictus, found as far north as Roman Britain. Because Romans had never been obligated to cultivate one god or cult only, religious tolerance was not an issue.\nMystery religions, which offered initiates salvation in the afterlife, were a matter of personal choice, practiced in addition to one's family rites and public religion. The mysteries, however, involved exclusive oaths and secrecy, which conservative Romans viewed with suspicion as characteristic of \"magic\", conspiracy (\"coniuratio\"), and subversive activity. Thus, sporadic and sometimes brutal attempts were made to suppress religionists. In Gaul, the power of the druids was checked, first by forbidding Roman citizens to belong to the order, and then by banning druidism altogether. However, Celtic traditions were reinterpreted within the context of Imperial theology, and a new Gallo-Roman religion coalesced; its capital at the Sanctuary of the Three Gauls established precedent for Western cult as a form of Roman-provincial identity. The monotheistic rigour of Judaism posed difficulties for Roman policy that led at times to compromise and granting of special exemptions. Tertullian noted that Judaism, unlike Christianity, was considered a \"religio licita\", \"legitimate religion\". The Jewish\u2013Roman wars resulted from political as well as religious conflicts; the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD led to the sacking of the Second Temple and the dispersal of Jewish political power (see Jewish diaspora).\nChristianity emerged in Roman Judaea as a Jewish religious sect in the 1st century and gradually spread out of Jerusalem throughout the Empire and beyond. Imperially authorized persecutions were limited and sporadic, with martyrdoms occurring most often under the authority of local officials. Tacitus reports that after the Great Fire of Rome in AD\u00a064, the emperor attempted to deflect blame from himself onto the Christians. A major persecution occurred under the emperor Domitian and a persecution in 177 took place at Lugdunum, the Gallo-Roman religious capital. A letter from Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia, describes his persecution and executions of Christians. The Decian persecution of 246\u2013251 seriously threatened the Christian Church, but ultimately strengthened Christian defiance. Diocletian undertook the most severe persecution of Christians, from 303 to 311.\nFrom the 2nd century onward, the Church Fathers condemned the diverse religions practiced throughout the Empire as \"pagan\". In the early 4th century, Constantine I became the first emperor to convert to Christianity. He supported the Church financially and made laws that favored it, but the new religion was already successful, having moved from less than 50,000 to over a million adherents between 150 and 250. Constantine and his successors banned public sacrifice while tolerating other traditional practices. Constantine never engaged in a purge, there were no \"pagan martyrs\" during his reign, and people who had not converted to Christianity remained in important positions at court. Julian attempted to revive traditional public sacrifice and Hellenistic religion, but met Christian resistance and lack of popular support.\nChristians of the 4th century believed the conversion of Constantine showed that Christianity had triumphed over paganism (in Heaven) and little further action besides such rhetoric was necessary. Thus, their focus shifted towards heresy. According to Peter Brown, \"In most areas, polytheists were not molested, and apart from a few ugly incidents of local violence, Jewish communities also enjoyed a century of stable, even privileged, existence\". There were anti-pagan laws, but they were not generally enforced; through the 6th century, centers of paganism existed in Athens, Gaza, Alexandria, and elsewhere.\nAccording to recent Jewish scholarship, toleration of the Jews was maintained under Christian emperors. This did not extend to heretics: Theodosius I made multiple laws and acted against alternate forms of Christianity, and heretics were persecuted and killed by both the government and the church throughout Late Antiquity. Non-Christians were not persecuted until the 6th century. Rome's original religious hierarchy and ritual influenced Christian forms, and many pre-Christian practices survived in Christian festivals and local traditions.\nLegacy.\nSeveral states claimed to be the Roman Empire's successor. The Holy Roman Empire was established in 800 when Pope Leo\u00a0III crowned Charlemagne as Roman emperor. The Russian Tsardom, as inheritor of the Byzantine Empire's Orthodox Christian tradition, counted itself the Third Rome (Constantinople having been the second), in accordance with the concept of translatio imperii. The last Eastern Roman titular, Andreas Palaiologos, sold the title of Emperor of Constantinople to Charles VIII of France; upon Charles' death, Palaiologos reclaimed the title and on his death granted it to Ferdinand and Isabella and their successors, who never used it. When the Ottomans, who based their state on the Byzantine model, took Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed\u00a0II established his capital there and claimed to sit on the throne of the Roman Empire. He even launched an invasion of Otranto with the purpose of re-uniting the Empire, which was aborted by his death. In the medieval West, \"Roman\" came to mean the church and the Catholic Pope. The Greek form Romaioi remained attached to the Greek-speaking Christian population of the Byzantine Empire and is still used by Greeks.\nThe Roman Empire's control of the Italian Peninsula influenced Italian nationalism and the unification of Italy (\"Risorgimento\") in 1861. \nIn the United States, the founders were educated in the classical tradition, and used classical models for landmarks in Washington, D.C.. The founders saw Athenian democracy and Roman republicanism as models for the mixed constitution, but regarded the emperor as a figure of tyranny.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nstyle=\"width:100%\""}, "descending_order": ["30570", "25507", "13588", "21563824"], "permutation_1": ["30570", "21563824", "25507", "13588"], "permutation_2": ["13588", "25507", "30570", "21563824"], "permutation_3": ["13588", "21563824", "30570", "25507"]}
{"id": "4hop1__473563_309800_355213_203322", "docs_added": {"33265976": "Let the Good Times Roll (film)\n1973 film by Robert Abel\nLet the Good Times Roll is a 1973 rockumentary / concert film directed by Robert Abel and Sidney Levin. It features numerous stars from the American pop and rock music scene of the 1950s.\nSummary.\nThe film edits together footage of two concerts from 1973, one at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, and a second at Cobo Hall in Detroit, Michigan, during the height of a series of multi-artist tours known as the \"Rock and Roll Revival,\" interspersed with footage of the singers from the 1950s and 60s. It also includes interviews with the singers.\nCast.\nThe film features performances from numerous stars from the 1950s and early 1960s, including\nThe film ends with a rare, and apparently impromptu, duet between Berry and Diddley, who had recorded together before, but were not often filmed on stage together.\nStyle.\nThe film uses split screen techniques to contrast the performers' appearances in the 1950s and in the 1970s (as well as clips from 1950s-era films such as \"I Was a Teenage Werewolf\"). Vincent Canby, writing for \"The New York Times\", described it as \"world's-fair avant-garde\".\nThemes.\nThe film was historically significant because it was one of the earliest 1950s nostalgic themed films that inaugurated that genre.\nChristine Sprengler argued that the film was an attempt to show \"musical milestones\" in the context of the times (both political and social), and, like \"American Graffiti\" and \"Grease\", sets rock and roll as the soundtrack to the decade.\nCanby noted that the film may have a possibly unintentional social commentary, with the majority-white audience giving the black fist to the majority-African American performers. He suggests that it implied that \"there are no black memories of the nineteen-fifties\".\nRelease and reception.\n\"Let the Good Times Roll\" premiered on May 25, 1973 in four theatres; two in New York City, one in Hicksville, New York and one in Totowa, New Jersey. It was later shown in Finland, Hungary, and Sweden. Steven Otfinoski credits its success with bolstering Bo Diddley's career, which at the time was stagnating.\nCanby noted that the performers seemed much different than they were during their earlier careers, with gained weight, longer and thinner hair, and Little Richard having \"openly embraced androgyny\". Overall, he considered the film an \"engaging, technically superior concert film that recalls music of the nineteen-fifties\". A review in \"Variety\" stated, \"Columbia's 'Let the Good Times Roll' is a smash recreation of 1950s rock 'n' roll frenzy, a moving and exciting nostalgia trip\" that \"could become one of the sleepers of 1973.\" Roger Ebert of the \"Chicago Sun-Times\" gave the film three stars out of four and wrote that it \"gives us mostly the music of the late 1950s as performed 15 years later by the same artists. But it doesn\u2019t condescend. It isn't a movie that finds anything camp about Chuck Berry singing 'Johnny B. Goode.' It understands that if the song and the singer were good then, they are both still good.\" Gene Siskel of the \"Chicago Tribune\" awarded three-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, \"Interspersed among the 28 songs (including Chuck Berry with his 'Johnny B. Goode,' Danny and the Juniors bubbling 'At the Hop,' and The Five Satins wailing 'In the Still of the Night,') are film clips and photographs of the persons, movies, and fads that marked the time and, seen again, bring on laughter and a wistful feeling.\" Kevin Thomas of the \"Los Angeles Times\" described the film as \"an infectiously nostalgic\u2014and therefore often amusing\u2014entertainment that should appeal as much to the youth of today as to those of us who came of age in the 50s.\" Tom Zito of \"The Washington Post\" called it \"the first film to view rock 'n' roll in its broad cultural perspective. The result may well be the best rock film yet.\"\nMark Deming of Allmovie wrote that the artists are in \"fine shape\" and that \"Let the Good Times Roll\" is one of the \"few movies about '50s rock that well and truly rocks\".\nThe film has been shown on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) with an introductory analysis by host Ben Mankiewicz. The film has not been released on DVD.\nSoundtrack album.\nThe Bell Records label released a 2-disc soundtrack album featuring performances from the film, including complete versions of songs truncated in the film (such as Bill Haley's 'Shake, Rattle and Roll'). Omitted from the album, however, are any of Chuck Berry's performances due to Berry being under contract to Chess Records at the time; this includes his jam session with Bo Diddley, although Diddley's other two performances are retained on the album.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "128196": "Cleveland, North Carolina\nCleveland is a town in the Cleveland Township of Rowan County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 871 at the 2010 census.\nHistory.\nThe town dates from 1831 but was not incorporated until 1833. The first post office in Cleveland\u2014which was named Cowansville at that time\u2014was established on 18 March 1831 with John Cowan the first postmaster. On 7 January 1856, prior to the US Civil War and the completion of the Western Carolina Railroad, the town was renamed to Rowan Mills. Rowan Mills was the name the nearby plantation owned by Osborn Giles Foard. Foard was also the first postmaster of the Rowan Mills Post Office. The Rowan Mills Post Office served the area until 25 February 1884 when it was renamed to Third Creek. In the 1880 U.S. Census, there were 17 families and 89 persons living in the Third Creek community. It was not until 2 March 1887 that the townspeople renamed the town after Grover Cleveland, who is supposed to have visited the town during his presidential campaign. William L. Allison was the first postmaster of both the Third Creek Post Office and the Cleveland Post Office.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , all land.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2020 census.\nAs of the 2020 United States census, there were 846 people, 392 households, and 283 families residing in the town.\n2010 census.\nAs of the census of 2010, there were 871 people, 328 households, and 236 families residing in the town. The population density was . There were 377 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the town was 66.9% White, 24.1% African American, 5.4% from other races, and 3.6% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 6.5% of the population.\nThere were 328 households, out of which 34.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 47.6% were married couples living together, 16.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 28.0% were non-families. 24.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 9.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.66 and the average family size was 3.10.\nIn the town, the population was spread out, with 28.4% under the age of 18, 7.2% from 18 to 24, 29.3% from 25 to 44, 23.4% from 45 to 64, and 11.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 34.8 years. For every 100 females, there were 95.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 90.2 males.\nThe median income for a household in the town was $39,474, and the median income for a family was $58,000. Males had a median income of $51,000 versus $29,500 for females. The per capita income for the town was $19,506. About 13.1% of families and 20.5% of the population were below the poverty line, including 25.0% of those under age 18 and 8.9% of those age 65 or over.\nTown twinning / sister city.\nSince February 8, 2008, Cleveland has been twinned with Killyleagh, Northern Ireland.", "7659729": "Gold Hill, North Carolina\nGold Hill is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in southeastern Rowan County, North Carolina, United States near the Cabarrus County line. It was first listed as a CDP in the 2020 census with a population of 372. It is situated near the Yadkin River and is served by U.S. Highway 52 and Old Beatty Ford Road.\nMining.\nGold was first discovered in what would become the town of Gold Hill in southeastern Rowan County in 1824. $6 million in gold was mined here prior to the Civil War and a mint was located in Charlotte as a result. In the 1840s, Gold Hill was \"a raucous mining camp town with a considerable number of saloons and brothels.\" The Barnhardt shaft, named for Col. George Barnhardt of the Reed Mine (NC State Historic Site) family, was opened in 1842 and reached a depth of 435 feet. The Earnhardt/Randolph Mine Shaft was opened in 1843 across the street from the Barnhardt Mine and reached a depth of 850 feet becoming the deepest gold mine in the United States. The Barnhardt and Randolph mines together were described as \"the richest and most productive gold mines east of the Mississippi\". Gold Hill was incorporated in 1843 and had a population of 3000 people and a total of 23 mines in the Gold Hill Mining District. The California Gold Rush and the American Civil War significantly reduced the mining activity. Although some mining occurred in the years following the Civil War a greater resurgence of mining began with the purchase of the Gold Hill Mines and the establishment of 'The New Gold Hill Mining Company' based in London, England. Considerable profits were realized with gold being shipped to England during the period of 1880-1900. Production came to an end by 1915.\nTourist attraction.\nThe town's first Founders' Day, which was not called by that name, took place in 1989 and was not intended to become an annual event, but it ended up being so popular that a steering committee was formed for the purpose of starting a foundation to find and preserve the town's heritage. The Historic Gold Hill and Mines Foundation, Inc. began in 1992, and that year, a second Founders' Day took place. Gold Hill Mines Historic Park began with a donation of 16 acres by Billie Johnson and was dedicated in 1993; by the 25th Founders' Day it was 70 acres. Founders' Day became an annual event on the fourth Saturday in September, and they were moved from the fire department to the park located at 735 St. Stephens Church Road.\nE.H. Montgomery General Store, Mauney\u2019s Store, the jail and a rock wall date back to the 1840s. Several buildings were moved to and restored for what has been described as a \"re-creation\" of a historic village. A gas station built in 1928 was moved from U.S. 52 in 1998. The File Store from Craven, North Carolina near Salisbury was built in 1906 and moved to Gold Hill in 2001. A miner's cabin was moved to Gold Hill in 2011 and became a bakery.\nThe Daniel Isenhour House and Farm was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2020 census.\n\"Note: the US Census treats Hispanic/Latino as an ethnic category. This table excludes Latinos from the racial categories and assigns them to a separate category. Hispanics/Latinos can be of any race.\"", "5374670": "Robert Abel (animator)\nAmerican film director and animator\nRobert Abel (March 10, 1937 \u2013 September 23, 2001) was an American pioneer in visual effects, computer animation and interactive media, best known for the work of his company, Robert Abel and Associates.\nBorn in Cleveland, he received degrees in Design and Film from UCLA. He began his work in computer graphics in the 1950s, as an apprentice to John Whitney.\nIn the 1960s and early 1970s, Abel wrote or directed several films, including \"The Making of the President, 1968\", \"Elvis on Tour\" and \"Let the Good Times Roll\".\nIn 1971, Abel and Con Pederson founded Robert Abel and Associates (RA&A), creating slit-scan effects and using motion-controlled cameras for television commercials and films. RA&A began using Evans & Sutherland computers to previsualize their effects; this led to the creation of the trailer for \"The Black Hole\", and the development of their own software for digitally animating films (including \"Tron\").\nAbel and Associates was contracted to provide Paramount Pictures the special effects for \"\", but was not able to deliver them, and its services were terminated by Paramount.\nIn 1984, Robert Abel and Associates produced a commercial named \"Brilliance\" for the Canned Food Information Council for airing during the Super Bowl XIX telecast. It featured a sexy robot with reflective environment mapping and human-like motion.\nAbel & Associates closed in 1987 following an ill-fated merger with now defunct Omnibus Computer Graphics, Inc., a company which had been based in Toronto.\nIn the 1990s, Abel founded Synapse Technologies, an early interactive media company, which produced pioneering educational projects for IBM, including \"Columbus: Discovery, Encounter and Beyond\" and \"Evolution/Revolution: The World from 1890-1930\".\nHe received numerous honors, including a Golden Globe Award (for Elvis on Tour), 2 Emmy Awards, and 33 Clios.\nAbel died from complications following a heart attack at the age of 64.\nAbel's film \"By the Sea\", made with Pat O'Neill, was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2007.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "96144": "Blackford County, Indiana\nCounty in Indiana, United States\nBlackford County is located in the east central portion of the U.S. state of Indiana. The county is named for Judge Isaac Blackford, who was the first speaker of the Indiana General Assembly and a long-time chief justice of the Indiana Supreme Court. Created in 1838, Blackford County is divided into four townships, and its county seat is Hartford City. Two incorporated cities and one incorporated town are located within the county. The county is also the site of numerous unincorporated communities and ghost towns. Occupying only , Blackford County is the fourth smallest county in Indiana. As of the 2020 census, the county's population was 12,112. Based on population, the county is the 8th smallest county of the 92 in Indiana. Although no interstate highways are located in Blackford County, three Indiana state roads cross the county, and an additional state road is located along the county's southeast border. The county has two railroad lines. A north\u2013south route crosses the county, and intersects with a second railroad line that connects Hartford City with communities to the west.\nBefore the arrival of European-American settlers during the 1830s, the northeastern portion of the future Blackford County was briefly the site of an Indian reservation for Chief Francois Godfroy of the Miami tribe. The first European-American pioneers were typically farmers who settled on arable land near rivers. Originally, the county was mostly swampland, but more land became available for farming as the marshes were cleared and drained. Over the next 30 years, small communities developed throughout the county. When the county's rail lines were constructed in the 1860s and 1870s, additional communities evolved around railroad stops.\nBeginning in the late 1880s, the discovery of natural gas and crude oil in the county (and surrounding region) caused the area to undergo an economic boom period known as the Indiana Gas Boom. Manufacturers relocated to the area to take advantage of the low-cost energy and railroad facilities. The boom period lasted about 15 years, and is reflected in Blackford County's population, which peaked in 1900 at 17,213. The construction associated with the additional prosperity of the boom period caused a significant upgrade in the county's appearance, as wooden buildings were replaced with masonry structures. Much of the infrastructure built during that time remains today\u2014including Montpelier's historic Carnegie Library and many of Hartford City's buildings in the Courthouse Square Historic District.\nAgriculture continues to be important to the county, and became even more important after the loss of several large manufacturers during the 20th century. As of 2010, 72 percent of Blackford County is covered by either corn or soybean fields; additional crops, such as wheat and hay, are also grown.\nHistory.\nFollowing thousands of years of varying cultures of indigenous peoples, the historic Miami and Delaware Indians (a.k.a. Lenape) are the first-recorded permanent settlers in the Blackford County area, living on the Godfroy Reserve after an 1818 treaty. The site is located in Blackford County's Harrison Township, east of Montpelier. Although the Godfroy Reserve was allotted to Miami Native Chief Francois (a.k.a. Francis) Godfroy, Delaware Indians were also allowed to stay there. The Miami tribe was the most powerful group of Natives in the region, and Francois Godfroy (who was half French) was one of their chiefs. By 1839, Godfroy had sold the reserve, and the Natives had migrated west. Benjamin Reasoner was the first European\u2013American to enter future Blackford County, and its first land owner. He entered the area on July 9, 1831. Reasoner and his sons built the county's first mill, on their farm.\nThe land that would become Blackford County was originally the western part of Jay County. A January 30, 1836, act of the Indiana General Assembly created Jay County, effective March 1, 1836. In December 1836, a motion was made in the Indiana House of Representatives to review dividing Jay County, but that resolution was not adopted.\nTwo Blackford County communities, Matamoras and Montpelier, originally existed as part of Jay County. They lie along the Salamonie River in what became the northeast portion of Blackford County. John Blount founded Matamoras, arriving in 1833. This village is Blackford County's oldest community, and is the site of the county's largest water mill. The mill, constructed around 1843, was considered one of the finest in the state. Blackford County's other former Jay County community is Montpelier, west of Matamoras on the Salamonie River. Led by Abel Baldwin, the community was started in 1836 by groups of migrant settlers from Vermont. They named the settlement after the capital of their previous home state. Blackford County's Montpelier was platted in 1837 (before Matamoras), and is the county's oldest platted community.\nSeveral sources list the creation year for Blackford County as 1837. However, the law was not finalized until 1838. Indiana bill of the House No. 152 was originally for the creation of a county named Windsor. The name \"Windsor\" was replaced with the name \"Blackford\" by the House of Representatives in January 1838. An \"act for the formation of the county of Blackford\" was approved on February 15, 1838. This act intended that the county would be \"open for business\" on the first Monday in April 1838, which was April 2. However, the county was not organized. Finally, on January 29, 1839, the original February 15 act was amended, stating that Blackford County shall \"enjoy the rights and privileges\" of an independent county. The act also appointed commissioners, and corrected a misprint that defined the southeast corner of the new county.\nOver the next two years, a political struggle continued to determine the location of the county seat. The tiny community of Hartford was repeatedly selected by the commissioners, but those decisions were challenged by individuals favoring Montpelier. While Licking Township (where Hartford lay) was the most populous township in the county, Montpelier was the county's oldest platted community. After a third and fourth act of the Indiana General Assembly, Hartford was finalized as the location of the county seat\u2014and construction of a courthouse began. When it was noted that another Indiana community was also named Hartford, Blackford County's Hartford was renamed Hartford City.\nDuring the next 25 years, the county grew slowly. Plans were made for roads and railroads, and swampland was drained. The first railroad line was authorized in 1849. The plan was for the Fort Wayne & Southern Railroad Company to connect the Indiana cities of Fort Wayne and Muncie\u2014running north\u2013south through the Blackford County communities of Montpelier and Hartford City. Although construction began in the 1850s, it was not completed (by connecting Fort Wayne to Muncie) until 1870, and this delay caused it to be the second railroad to operate in Blackford County. By the time the railroad began operations, it was named Fort Wayne, Cincinnati & Louisville Railroad. The Lake Erie and Western Railroad acquired this railroad in 1890.\nThe first railroad to operate in Blackford County crossed somewhat east\u2013west through the county's southern half. The railroad was named Union and Logansport Railroad Company by the time it entered Blackford County. This line was proposed in 1862, and completed to Hartford City in 1867\u2014running through the Blackford County communities of Dunkirk, Crumley's Crossing, and Hartford City. The small community of Crumley's Crossing was renamed Converse, and two other communities (Millgrove and Renner) became established on this line. The railroad was eventually named Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railroad. Other names for the railroad since that time include the Panhandle division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Penn Central Transportation Company, Conrail, and Norfolk Southern Railway. A portion of this line is now abandoned, and the track has been removed between Converse and Hartford City, south of State Road 26.\nGas boom.\nIn 1886, natural gas was discovered in two counties adjacent to Blackford County. The discoveries were in the small community of Eaton (south of Hartford City along railroad line) in Delaware County, and in the city of Portland in Jay County (east of Hartford City and Millgrove). The Hartford City Gas & Oil Company was formed in early 1887, and successfully drilled a natural gas well later in the year. The Montpelier Gas & Oil Mining company was organized in 1887. While natural gas was found throughout Blackford County, crude oil was found mostly in the county's Harrison Township (between Montpelier and Mollie). Blackford County's first successful oil well, located south of Montpelier, began producing in 1890. Montpelier was thought to be \"the very heart of the greatest natural gas and oil field in the world\". Oil was also found in parts of Washington Township, including a well that was thought to be \"the most phenomenal well ever drilled in America\". By 1896, Blackford County had 18 natural gas companies, headquartered in all four of the county's townships, including the communities of Hartford City, Montpelier, Roll, Dunkirk, Trenton (Priam Post Office), and Millgrove.\nIn June 1880, only 171 people held manufacturing jobs in Blackford County. The Indiana Gas Boom transformed the region, as manufacturers moved to the area to utilize the natural gas and railroad system. During 1901, Indiana state inspectors visited 21 manufacturing facilities in Blackford County, and these companies employed 1,346 people (compare to 171 two decades earlier). Since these inspections were in Hartford City and Montpelier only, additional manufacturing employees from the county's small communities (such as Millgrove's glass factory) could be added to the count of 1,346. The county's two largest employers were glass factories: American Window Glass plant number 3 and Sneath Glass Company. Hartford City's resources (low\u2013cost energy, two railroads, and skilled workforce) were especially favored by glass factories, and a 1904 directory lists 10 of them.\nIn addition to an economic transformation, another byproduct of the gas boom was an upgrade of Blackford County's appearance. Many of the county's landmark buildings were constructed during the gas boom, including the current courthouse and surrounding buildings in Hartford City's Courthouse Square Historic District. The city's water supply system was also built during that period. Additional buildings include the Carnegie Library, and the historic Presbyterian Church. Many of Montpelier's Downtown Historic District structures were built during the gas boom. Montpelier's historic Baptist Church and Montpelier's Carnegie Library were constructed in the early 1900s \u2013 near the end of the gas boom.\nPost-gas boom.\nThe Indiana Gas Boom ended during the first decade of the 20th\u00a0century, reducing the county's economy. Gas and oil workers left, some manufacturers moved, and service industries were forced to cut back operations. Adding to the county's problems, machines made the labor\u2013intensive method originally used for producing window glass obsolete, causing many of the county's skilled glass workers at the large American Window Glass plant to lose their jobs. By 1932, the window glass plant of the county's former largest employer was closed. According to the United States Census, Blackford County's population peaked at 17,123 in 1900, and it still has not returned to that zenith over 100 years later.\nThe end of the gas boom was especially difficult for the smaller communities in the county, since the loss of a single business has more of an impact on small communities. In the case of Millgrove, the community's major manufacturer (a glass factory) closed. For other communities, such as Mollie, the loss of the gas and oil workers meant that the local post office was a \"waste of time\", and consumer demand at the general store was significantly diminished.\nImprovements to the automobile and highways, which coincided with the end of the gas boom, also contributed to the decline of the county's smaller communities. The automobile changed \"business and shopping patterns at the expense of the small-town merchant\". Small\u2013town residents began to drive to larger communities to purchase goods, because of the wider selection. The improved quality of automobiles and roads competed with passenger service on the railroads (and interurban lines), causing a decline in passenger traffic on the rails. Small towns associated with railroad stations suffered from the loss in traffic. In Blackford County, passenger service on the Lake Erie and Western Railroad line (owned by the Nickel Plate Road by that time) was discontinued in 1931, and the last interurban train ran on January 18, 1941.\nAlthough many workers left the area after the gas and oil bust, Montpelier's population eventually stabilized\u2014and Hartford City's grew. Some manufacturers remained because of a lack of better alternatives. Hartford City's Sneath Glass Company, a major employer, continued operations until the 1950s. Hartford City leaders attracted businesses such as Overhead Door (1923) and 3M (1955) to replace the former companies. Overhead Door was a major employer in Hartford City for over 60 years. In the 1960s, Overhead Door moved its headquarters from Hartford City to Dallas, Texas, although its Hartford City manufacturing plant continued until the 1980s as a major manufacturer, when it began reducing its local presence. It ceased the Indiana operation in 2000. The county lost another 200 jobs in 2011 when Hartford City's Key Plastics plant closed.\nAgriculture continues to be an important factor in the county's economy. Over 70\u00a0percent of Blackford County's land is occupied by soybean or corn fields. Additional crops and livestock are also raised. Good returns in agriculture are not always reflected in the economy of nearby towns, as industrial agriculture has reduced the number of workers it needs, and family farms have declined. Many small towns in the \"Corn Belt\", such as the communities in Blackford County, continue to decline in size and affluence.\nGeography.\nAccording to the 2010 census, Blackford County has a total area of , of which (or 99.70%) is land and (or 0.30%) is water, making it the fourth smallest county in the state. The county is located in East Central Indiana, about south of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and about northeast of Indianapolis.\nAdjacent counties.\nThe terrain of Blackford County shows the influence of glacial passage in the distant past. These glaciers were responsible for the rich farmland that became available after the county was cleared and drained. During the early 20th\u00a0century, the Renner Stock Farm, in Licking Township, was known statewide for its quality cattle, hogs, and horses.\nWaterways.\nThe county has some small streams, and several man-made lakes. The Salamonie River, flowing out of Jay County (Indiana) from the east, crosses the northeast corner of Blackford County. Big and Little Lick Creek flow westward in Licking and Jackson townships in the southern half of the county. Early settlers were attracted to Lick Creek, and then the Salamonie River, because the nearby land had suitable drainage for farming. The county's lakes include Lake Blue Water in Harrison Township; Cain's Lake, Shamrock Lakes and Lake Mohee in Licking Township; and Lake Placid in Jackson Township. Lake Blue Water is a spring-fed former stone quarry located one mile (1.6\u00a0km) east of Montpelier. The Shamrock Lakes (a group of six lakes) were created between 1960 and 1965, and the first lake was originally intended to be a water supply for a farmer's cattle.\nUnincorporated communities.\nThese communities are sometimes listed as ghost towns, most businesses in these communities have closed. However, residences are still maintained in these communities, and they are listed as populated places by the U.S. Geological Survey. Millgrove, Roll, and Trenton all had post offices during the 19th or 20th century.\nExtinct settlements.\nBlackford County has over 10 communities that do not exist anymore. In some cases, a church, farm or single residence remains at the extinct community's location. Among these former communities, Bowser Station, Dorsey Station, Mollie, Silas, and Slocum all had post offices during the 19th\u00a0century. Mollie's post office lasted until 1907.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\nAs of the 2010 United States Census, Blackford County's population density was , well below the average for Indiana, which was . Blackford County had 12,766\u00a0people, 5,236\u00a0households, and 3,567\u00a0families residing within its borders. The racial makeup of the county was 97.7 percent white, 0.4 percent black or African American, 0.2 percent Native American, 0.1 percent Asian, 0.3 percent from other races, and 1.3 percent from two or more races. Those of Hispanic or Latino origin made up 0.9 percent of the population.\nThe average household size was 2.41, and the average family size was 2.88. Families accounted for 68.1 percent of the county's 5,236\u00a0households, and 75.5 percent of these families included a husband and wife living together. Children under the age of 18 were living in 38.9 percent of the family households. Non-family households accounted for 31.9 percent of total households, and 86.8 percent of them were occupied by someone living alone. People 65 years and older, living alone, accounted for 40.1 percent of non-family households\u2014or 12.8 percent of all types of households.\nIn terms of age distribution, 22.8 percent of the population were under the age of 18, and 21.6 percent were 62 years of age or older. The median age was 42.4 years. For every 100\u00a0females, there were 97.2\u00a0males. For every 100 females\u00a0age 18 and over, there were 93.7\u00a0males.\nAs of the 2000 United States Census, the median income for a household in the county was $34,760, and the median income for a family was $41,758. Males had a median income of $30,172 versus $21,386 for females. The per capita income for the county was $16,543. About 6.0 percent of families and 8.7 percent of the population were below the poverty line, including 12.3 percent of those under age 18 and 8.6 percent of those age 65 or over. In terms of ancestry, 16.7 percent were German, 15.5 percent were American, 9.3 percent were Irish and 7.8 percent were English.\nGovernment.\nThe county government is a constitutional body granted specific powers by the Constitution of Indiana and the Indiana Code. The county council is the legislative branch of the county government and controls all spending and revenue collection. Representatives are elected from county districts. The council members serve four-year terms and are responsible for setting salaries, the annual budget and special spending. The council also has limited authority to impose local taxes, in the form of an income and property tax that is subject to state level approval, excise taxes and service taxes. In 2010, the county budgeted approximately $3.95\u00a0million for the district's schools and $3.18\u00a0million for other county operations and services, for a total annual budget of approximately $7.1\u00a0million.\nThe executive body of the county is a board of commissioners. They are elected county-wide, in staggered four\u2013year terms. One commissioner serves as president. The commissioners are charged with executing the acts legislated by the council, collecting revenue and managing day-to-day functions of the county government.\nThe county maintains a small claims court that can handle some civil cases. The judge on the court is elected to a term of four years and must be a member of the Indiana Bar Association. The judge is assisted by a constable who is elected to a four-year term. In some cases, court decisions can be appealed to the state level circuit court.\nThe county has several other elected offices, including sheriff, coroner, auditor, treasurer, recorder, surveyor and circuit court clerk. Each serves a four\u2013year term and oversees a different part of county government. Members elected to county government positions are required to declare party affili"}, "descending_order": ["96144", "33265976", "128196", "7659729", "5374670"], "permutation_1": ["5374670", "7659729", "128196", "96144", "33265976"], "permutation_2": ["128196", "33265976", "7659729", "5374670", "96144"], "permutation_3": ["7659729", "128196", "96144", "5374670", "33265976"]}
{"id": "4hop1__3496_5274_458768_33637", "docs_added": {"28208": "Santa Monica, California\nCity in California, United States\nSanta Monica (; Spanish: \"Santa M\u00f3nica\") is a city in Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 U.S. census population was 93,076. Santa Monica is a popular resort town, owing to its climate, beaches, and hospitality industry. It has a diverse economy, hosting headquarters of companies such as Hulu, Activision Blizzard, Universal Music Group, Starz Entertainment, Lionsgate Studios, Illumination and The Recording Academy.\nSanta Monica traces its history to Rancho San Vicente y Santa M\u00f3nica, granted in 1839 to the Sep\u00falveda family of California. The rancho was later sold to John P. Jones and Robert Baker, who in 1875, along with his Californio heiress wife Arcadia Bandini de Stearns Baker, founded Santa Monica, which incorporated as a city in 1886. The city developed into a seaside resort during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the creation of tourist attractions such as Palisades Park, the Santa Monica Pier, Ocean Park, and the Hotel Casa del Mar.\nHistory.\nIndigenous.\nThe Tongva are Indigenous to the Santa Monica area. The village of Comicranga was established in the Santa Monica area. One of the village's notable residents was Victoria Reid, who was the daughter of the chief of the village. During the Spanish period, she was taken to Mission San Gabriel from her parents at the age of six.\nSpanish era.\nThe first non-indigenous group to set foot in the area was the party of explorer Gaspar de Portol\u00e1, which camped near the present-day intersection of Barrington and Ohio Avenues on August 3, 1769.\nThere are two different accounts of how the city's name came to be. One says it was named in honor of the feast day of Saint Monica (mother of Saint Augustine), but her feast day is May 4. Another version says it was named by Juan Cresp\u00ed on account of a pair of springs, the Kuruvungna Springs, that were reminiscent of the tears Saint Monica shed over her son's early impiety.\nMexican era.\nIn 1839, Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado granted Rancho San Vicente y Santa M\u00f3nica to Francisco Sep\u00falveda II, of the Sep\u00falveda family of California. As the definitions of the rancho grant were not precise, the Sep\u00falveda family came into conflict with the neighboring Rancho Boca de Santa M\u00f3nica, owned by Ysidro Reyes and Francisco M\u00e1rquez. A small Californio community grew up on Rancho San Vicente y Santa M\u00f3nica, made up primarily of vaqueros working on the rancho and their families.\nPost-conquest era.\nAfter the American conquest of California, Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which gave Mexicans and Californios living in state certain unalienable rights. U.S. government sovereignty in California began on February 2, 1848.\nIn the 1870s, the Los Angeles and Independence Railroad connected Santa Monica with Los Angeles, and a wharf out into the bay. The first town hall was an 1873 brick building, later a beer hall, and now part of the Santa Monica Hostel. By 1885, the town's first hotel was the Santa Monica Hotel.\nAmusement piers became popular in the first decades of the 20th century and the extensive Pacific Electric Railway brought people to the city's beaches from across the Greater Los Angeles Area.\nAround the start of the 20th century, a growing population of Asian Americans lived in and around Santa Monica and Venice. A Japanese fishing village was near the Long Wharf while small numbers of Chinese lived or worked in Santa Monica and Venice. The two ethnic minorities were often viewed differently by White Americans, who were often well-disposed toward the Japanese but condescending to the Chinese. The Japanese village fishermen were an integral economic part of the Santa Monica Bay community.\nDonald Wills Douglas Sr. built a plant in 1922 at Clover Field (Santa Monica Airport) for the Douglas Aircraft Company. In 1924, four Douglas-built planes took off from Clover Field to attempt the first aerial circumnavigation of the world. Two planes returned after covering in 175 days, and were greeted on their return September 23, 1924, by a crowd of 200,000. The Douglas Company (later McDonnell Douglas) kept facilities in the city until the 1970s.\nThe Great Depression hit Santa Monica deeply. One report gives citywide employment in 1933 of just 1,000. Hotels and office building owners went bankrupt. In the 1930s, corruption infected Santa Monica (along with neighboring Los Angeles). The federal Works Project Administration helped build several buildings, most notably City Hall. The main Post Office and Barnum Hall (Santa Monica High School auditorium) were also among other WPA projects.\nModern era.\nDouglas's business grew with the onset of World War II, employing as many as 44,000 people in 1943. To defend against air attack, set designers from the Warner Brothers Studios prepared elaborate camouflage that disguised the factory and airfield. The RAND Corporation began as a project of the Douglas Company in 1945, and spun off into an independent think tank on May 14, 1948. RAND acquired a campus across the street from the Civic Center and is still there today.\nThe completion of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in 1958 eliminated Belmar, the first African American community in the city, and the Santa Monica Freeway in 1966 decimated the Pico neighborhood that had been a leading African American enclave on the Westside.\nBeach volleyball is believed to have been developed by Duke Kahanamoku in Santa Monica during the 1920s.\nSanta Monica has two hospitals: Saint John's Health Center and Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center. Its cemetery is Woodlawn Memorial.\nSanta Monica has several local newspapers including \"Santa Monica Daily Press\", \"Santa Monica Mirror\", and \"Santa Monica Star\".\nGeography.\nSanta Monica rests on a mostly flat slope that angles down toward Ocean Avenue and toward the south. High bluffs separate the north side of the city from the beaches. Santa Monica borders the L.A. neighborhoods of Pacific Palisades to the north and Venice to the south. To the west, Santa Monica has a 3-mile coastline fronting Santa Monica Bay, and to the east of the city are the L.A. communities of West Los Angeles and Brentwood.\nClimate.\nSanta Monica has a coastal Mediterranean climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Csb\"). It receives an average of 310 days of sunshine a year. It is in USDA plant hardiness zone 11a. Because of its location, nestled on the vast and open Santa Monica Bay, morning fog is a common phenomenon in May, June, July and early August (caused by ocean temperature variations and currents). Like other inhabitants of the greater Los Angeles area, residents have a particular terminology for this phenomenon: the \"May Gray\", the \"June Gloom\" and even \"Fogust\". Overcast skies are common on June mornings, but usually the strong sun burns the fog off by noon. In the late winter/early summer, daily fog is a phenomenon too. It happens suddenly and it may last some hours or past sunset time. Nonetheless, it will sometimes stay cloudy and cool all day during June, even as other parts of the Los Angeles area experience sunny skies and warmer temperatures. At times, the sun can be shining east of 20th Street while the beach area is overcast. As a general rule, the beach temperature is from 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (3 to 6 degrees Celsius) cooler than it is inland during summer days, and 5 to 10 degrees warmer during winter nights.\nIt is also in September that the highest temperatures tend to be reached. It is winter, however, when the hot, dry winds of the Santa Anas are most common. In contrast, temperatures exceeding 10 degrees below average are rare.\nThe rainy season is from late October through late March. Winter storms usually approach from the northwest and pass quickly through the Southland. There is very little rain during the rest of the year. Yearly rainfall totals are unpredictable as rainy years are occasionally followed by droughts. There has never been any snow or frost, but there has been hail.\nSanta Monica usually enjoys cool breezes blowing in from the ocean, which tend to keep the air fresh and clean. Therefore, smog is less of a problem for Santa Monica than elsewhere around Los Angeles. However, from September through November, the Santa Ana winds sometimes blow from the east, bringing smoggy and hot inland air to the beaches.\nThe hottest temperature ever reported in Santa Monica was on November 1, 1966, while the lowest is on March 1, 1945, and again on March 21, 1952. The highest minimum temperature is on October 24, 2007, and the lowest maximum temperature is on 4 dates in February 2001 and again March 10, 2006. The snowiest months on record are January 1954 and March 1955, both with trace amounts. They are the only months to ever report snowfall. Many months have reported no rainfall at all. Conversely, the wettest month on record is January 1995 with a total of of rainfall. The wettest year on record is 1998, with a total of of rainfall; the driest is 1989, with a total of of rainfall.\nEnvironment.\nThe city first proposed its Sustainable City Plan in 1992 and in 1994, was one of the first cities in the nation to formally adopt a comprehensive sustainability plan, setting waste reduction and water conservation policies for both public and private sector through its Office of Sustainability and the Environment. Eighty-two percent of the city's public works vehicles run on alternative fuels, including most of the municipal bus system, making it among the largest of such fleets in the country. Santa Monica fleet vehicles and buses source their natural gas from Redeem, a Southern California-based supplier of renewable and sustainable natural gas obtained from non-fracked methane biogas generated from organic landfill waste.\nSanta Monica adopted a Community Energy Independence Initiative, with a goal of achieving complete energy independence by 2020 (vs. California's already ambitious 33% renewables goal). The city exceeded that aspiration when, in February 2019, it switched over to electricity from the Clean Power Alliance, with a citywide default of 100% renewably sourced energy. That same year, the Santa Monica City Council adopted a Climate Action and Adaptation Plan aimed at achieving an 80% cut in carbon emissions by 2030, and reaching community-wide carbon neutrality by 2050 or sooner.\nAn urban runoff facility (SMURFF), the first of its kind in the US, catches and treats of water each week that would otherwise flow into the bay via storm-drains and sells it back to end-users within the city for reuse as gray-water, while bioswales throughout the city allow rainwater to percolate into and replenish the groundwater. The groundwater supply plays an important role in the city's Sustainable Water Master Plan, whereby Santa Monica has set a goal of attaining 100% water independence by 2020. The city has numerous programs designed to promote water conservation among residents, including a rebate for those who convert lawns to drought-tolerant gardens that require less water.\nSanta Monica has also instituted a green building-code whereby merely constructing to code automatically renders a building equivalent to the US Green Building Council's LEED Silver standards. The city's Main Library is one of many LEED certified or LEED equivalent buildings in the city. It is built over a 200,000 gallon cistern that collects filtered stormwater from the roof. The water is used for landscape irrigation.\nSince 2009, Santa Monica has been developing the Zero Waste Strategic Operations Plan by which the city will set a goal of diverting at least 95% of all waste away from landfills, and toward recycling and composting, by 2030. The plan includes a food waste composting program, which diverts 3 million pounds of restaurant food waste away from landfills annually. As of 2013[ [update]], 77% of all solid waste produced citywide is diverted from landfills.\nEnvironmentally focused initiatives include curbside recycling, curbside composting bins (in addition to trash, yard-waste, and recycle bins), farmers' markets, community gardens, garden-share, an urban forest initiative, a hazardous materials home-collection service, and a green business certification.\nAs in other coastal beach communities, coastal erosion due to coastal infrastructure and high human usage is an increasing challenge, and will become worse due to sea level rise. Starting in 2016, local environmental groups began dune and beach restoration projects.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2020.\nThe 2020 United States census reported Santa Monica had a population of 93,076. This corresponds to density of 11,067.3 people per square mile. The racial makeup of Santa Monica was 63,383 (68.1%) white, 8,602 (9.2%) Asian, 3,776 (4.1%) Black or African American, 539 (0.6%) American Indian and Alaska Native, 123 (0.1%) Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, 5,347 (5.7%) some other race, and 11,306 (12.1%) people were of two or more races.\nIncluding all responses for people of two or more races, 73,996 (79.5%) were white alone or in combination with one or more other races, 11,864 (12.7%) were Asian alone or in combination with one or more other races, 5,459 (5.9%) were Black or African American alone or in combination, 1,877 (2.0%) were American Indian and Alaska Native alone or in combination, 415 (0.4%) were Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander alone or in combination, and 11,619 (12.5%) were some other race alone or in combination with one or more other races.\n13,544 (14.6%) were Hispanic or Latino of any race. Of those, 2,729 (2.9% of the total population) were white alone, 153 (0.2%) were Black or African American alone, 410 (0.4%) were American Indian and Alaska Native alone, 136 (0.1%) were Asian alone, 14 (0.0%) were Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, 4,542 (4.9%) were some other race alone, and 5,560 (6.0%) were two or more races.\nThe census reported that Santa Monica had 52,389 housing units. Of those, 47,438 (90.5%) were occupied. 12,856 (27.1%) of the occupied units were owner-occupied and 34,582 (72.9%) were renter-occupied. Of the vacant units, 2,540 (4.8% of total) were for rent, 230 (0.4%) were rented but not occupied, 183 (0.3%) were for sale only, 205 (0.4%) were sold but not occupied, 693 (1.3%) were for seasonal, recreational, or occasional use, and 1,100 (2.1%) were otherwise vacant.\nThe median household income between 2017 and 2021 was $99,847 (2021 dollars), with 10.6% of people living in poverty. 94.8% of households had a computer between 2017 and 2021, and 91.0% had broadband internet access.\n2010.\nThe 2010 United States Census reported Santa Monica had a population of 89,736. The population density was . The racial makeup of Santa Monica was 69,663 (77.6%) White (70.1% Non-Hispanic White), 3,526 (3.9%) African American, 338 (0.4%) Native American, 8,053 (9.0%) Asian, 124 (0.1%) Pacific Islander, 4,047 (4.5%) from other races, and 3,985 (4.4%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 11,716 persons (13.1%), with Mexican Americans, Spanish Americans, and Argentine Americans making up 64.2%, 6.4%, and 4.7% of the Hispanic population respectively.\nThe Census reported 87,610 people (97.6% of the population) lived in households, 1,299 (1.4%) lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 827 (0.9%) were institutionalized.\nThere were 46,917 households, out of which 7,835 (16.7%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 13,092 (27.9%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 3,510 (7.5%) had a female householder with no husband present, 1,327 (2.8%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 2,867 (6.1%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 416 (0.9%) same-sex married couples or partnerships. 22,716 households (48.4%) were made up of individuals, and 5,551 (11.8%) had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 1.87. There were 17,929 families (38.2% of all households); the average family size was 2.79.\nThe population was spread out, with 12,580 people (14.0%) under the age of 18, 6,442 people (7.2%) aged 18 to 24, 32,552 people (36.3%) aged 25 to 44, 24,746 people (27.6%) aged 45 to 64, and 13,416 people (15.0%) who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40.4 years. For every 100 females, there were 93.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 91.2 males.\nThere were 50,912 housing units at an average density of , of which 13,315 (28.4%) were owner-occupied, and 33,602 (71.6%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 1.1%; the rental vacancy rate was 5.1%. 30,067 people (33.5% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 57,543 people (64.1%) lived in rental housing units.\nAccording to the 2010 United States Census, Santa Monica had a median household income of $73,649, with 11.2% of the population living below the federal poverty line.\n2000.\nAs of the census of 2000, there were 84,084 people, 44,497 households, and 16,775 families in the city. The population density was . There were 47,863 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 78.29% White, 7.25% Asian, 3.78% African American, 0.47% Native American, 0.10% Pacific Islander, 5.97% from other races, and 4.13% from two or more races. 13.44% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.\nThere were 44,497 households, out of which 15.8% had children under the age of 18, 27.5% were married couples living together, 7.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 62.3% were non-families. 51.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 1.83 and the average family size was 2.80.\nThe city of Santa Monica is consistently among the most educated cities in the United States, with 23.8 percent of all residents holding graduate degrees.\nThe population was diverse in age, with 14.6% under 18, 6.1% from 18 to 24, 40.1% from 25 to 44, 24.8% from 45 to 64, and 14.4% 65 years or older. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females, there were 93.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 91.3 males.\nAccording to a 2009 estimate, the median income for a household in the city was $71,095, and the median income for a family was $109,410. Males had a median income of $55,689 versus $42,948 for females. The per capita income for the city was $42,874. 10.4% of the population and 5.4% of families were below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 9.9% of those under the age of 18 and 10.2% of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line.\nCrime.\nIn 2006, crime in Santa Monica affected 4.41% of the population, slightly lower than the national average crime rate that year of 4.48%. The majority of this was property crime, which affected 3.74% of Santa Monica's population in 2006; this was higher than the rates for Los Angeles County (2.76%) and California (3.17%), but lower than the national average (3.91%). These per-capita crime rates are computed based on Santa Monica's full-time population of about 85,000. However, the Santa Monica Police Department has suggested the actual per-capita crime rate is much lower, as tourists, workers, and beachgoers can increase the city's daytime population to between 250,000 and 450,000 people.\nHate crime has typically been minimal in Santa Monica, with only one reported incident in 2007. The city experienced a spike of anti-Islamic hate crime in 2001 after the September 11 attacks, but hate crime levels returned to their minimal 2000 levels by 2002.\nGang activity.\nThe Pico neighborhood of Santa Monica (south of the Santa Monica Freeway) experiences some gang activity. The city estimates there are about 50 gang members based in Santa Monica, although some community organizers dispute this claim. Gang activity has been prevalent for decades in the Pico neighborhood.\nIn October 1998, alleged Culver City 13 gang member Omar Sevilla of Culver City was killed. A couple of hours after the shooting of Sevilla, German tourist Horst Fietze was killed. Several days later Juan Martin Campos, a Santa Monica city employee, was shot and killed. Police believe this was a retaliatory killing in response to Sevilla's killing. Less than 24 hours later, Javier Cruz was wounded in a drive-by shooting outside his home on 17th and Michigan.\nIn 1998, there was a double homicide in the Westside Clothing store on Lincoln Boulevard. During the incident, Culver City gang members David \"Puppet\" Robles and Jesse \"Psycho\" Garcia entered the store masked and began opening fire, killing Anthony and Michael Juarez. Police say the incident was in retaliation for a shooting committed by the Santa Monica 13 gang days before the Juarez brothers were shot down.\nHomeless population.\nIn 2022, there were 826 homeless individuals in Santa Monica.\nEconomy.\nSanta Monica is home to the headquarters of many notable businesses, such as Beachbody, Fatburger, Hulu, Illumination, Otter Media, Lionsgate, Macerich, Miramax, CBS Media Ventures, the RAND Corporation, Saban Capital Group, The Recording Academy (which presents the annual Grammy Awards), TOMS Shoes, Universal Music Group, and ZipRecruiter. Atlantic Aviation is at the Santa Monica Airport. The National Public Radio member station KCRW is on the Santa Monica College campus. VCA Animal Hospitals is just outside the eastern city limit.\nA number of videogame development studios are based in Santa Monica, making it a major location for the industry. These include:\nIn addition, Santa Monica is part of Silicon Beach, and the area serves as the home of hundreds of venture capital funded startup companies.\nFormer Santa Monica businesses include Douglas Aircraft (now merged with Boeing), GeoCities (which in December 1996 was headquartered on the third floor of 1918 Main Street in Santa Monica), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and MySpace (now headquartered in Beverly Hills).\nTop employers.\nAccording to the city's 2022 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, the top employers in the city were:\nArts and culture.\nThe Santa Monica Looff Hippodrome (carousel) is a National Historic Landmark. It sits on the Santa Monica Pier, which was built in 1909. The La Monica Ballroom on the pier was once the largest ballroom in the US and the source for many New Year's Eve national network broadcasts.\nThe Santa Monica Civic Auditorium was an important music venue for several decades and hosted the Academy Awards in the 1960s. McCabe's Guitar Shop is a leading acoustic performance space as well as retail outlet. The \"Santa Monica Playhouse\" is a popular theater in the city.\nBergamot Station is a city-owned art gallery compound. The city is also home to the California Heritage Museum and the Angels Attic dollhouse and toy museum.\nThe New West Symphony is the resident orchestra of Barnum Hall. They are also resident orchestra of the Oxnard Performing Arts Center and the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza.\nSanta Monica hosts the annual Santa Monica Film Festival.\nThe city's oldest movie theater is the Majestic. Opened in 1912 and also known as the Mayfair Theatre, it has been closed since the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The Aero Theater (now operated by the American Cinematheque) and Criterion Theater were built in the 1930s and still show movies.\nNotable restaurants have included Madame Wu's Garden, Batterfish, Stout Burgers and Beers, and The Misfit.\nShopping districts.\nSanta Monica has three main shopping districts: Montana Avenue on the north side, the Downtown District in the city's core, and Main Street on the south end. Each has its own unique feel and personality. Montana Avenue is a stretch of luxury boutique stores, restaurants, and small offices that generally features more upscale shopping. The Main Street district offers an eclectic mix of clothing, restaurants, and other specialty retail.\nThe Downtown District is the home of the Third Street Promenade, a major outdoor pedestrian-only shopping district that stretches for three blocks between Wilshire Blvd. and Broadway. Third Street is closed to vehicles for those three blocks to allow people to stroll, congregate, shop and enjoy street performers.\nThe Santa Monica Place, featuring Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom in a three-level outdoor environment, is at the Promenade's southern end. After a period of redevelopment, the mall reopened in the fall of 2010 as a modern shopping, entertainment and dining complex with more outdoor space.\nPublic library system.\nThe Santa Monica Public Library consists of a Main Library in the downtown area, plus four neighborhood branches: Fairview, Montana Avenue, Ocean Park, and Pico Boulevard.\nSports.\nThe men's and women's marathon ran through parts of Santa Monica during the 1984 Summer Olympics. The Santa Monica Track Club has many prominent track athletes, including many Olympic gold medalists. Santa Monica is the home to Southern California Aquatics, which was founded by Olympic swimmer Clay Evans and Bonnie Adair. Santa Monica is also home to the Santa Monica Rugby Club, a semi-professional team that competes in the Pacific Rugby Premiership, the highest-level rugby union club competition in the United States.\nDuring the 2028 Summer Olympics, Santa Monica will host beach volleyball and surfing.\nParks and recreation.\nPalisades Park stretches out along the crumbling bluffs overlooking the Pacific and is a favorite walking area to view the ocean. It includes public art, a totem pole, camera obscura, benches, picnic areas, p\u00e9tanque courts, and restrooms.\nTongva Park occupies 6 acres between Ocean Avenue and Main Street, just south of Colorado Avenue. The park includes an overlook, amphitheater, playground, garden, fountains, picnic areas, and restrooms.\nThe Santa Monica Stairs, a long, steep staircase consisting of 152 wooden steps and 18 concrete steps in a straight path, that leads from north of San Vicente down into Santa Monica Canyon, is a popular spot for outdoor workouts. Some area residents have complained that the stairs have become too popular, and attract too many exercisers to the wealthy neighborhood of multimillion-dollar properties.\nIshihara Park opened to the public in 2017 and acts as a buffer between the Los Angeles Metro Rail and the surrounding residential community.\nGovernment.\nLocal government.\nSanta Monica is governed by the Santa Monica City Council, a Council-Manager governing body with seven members elected at-large. The mayor is Lana Negrete, and the Mayor Pro Tempore is Caroline Torosis. The other five council members are Jesse Zwick, Natalya Zernitskaya, Barry Snell, Dan Hall, and Ellis Raskin.\nRepresentation.\nIn the California State Legislature, Santa Monica is in the Senate District, represented by Democrat Ben Allen, and in the Assembly District, represented by Democrat Rick Zbur.\nIn the United States House of Representatives, Santa Monica is in California's congressional district, represented by Democrat Ted Lieu.\nEducation.\nPublic schools.\nThe Santa Monica\u2013Malibu Unified School District provides public education at the elementary and secondary levels. In addition to the traditional model of early education school houses, SMASH (Santa Monica Alternative School House) is \"a K\u20138 public school of choice with team teachers and multi-aged classrooms\". The district maintains eight elementary schools, three middle schools, and three high schools in Santa Monica.\nPrivate schools.\nPrivate schools in the city include Crossroads School and Saint Monica Catholic High School.\nAsahi Gakuen, a weekend Japanese supplementary school system, operates its Santa Monica campus (\u30b5\u30f3\u30bf\u30e2\u30cb\u30ab\u6821\uff65\u9ad8\u7b49\u90e8 \"Santamonika-k\u014d k\u014dt\u014dbu\") at Webster Middle in the Sawtelle neighborhood of Los Angeles. All high school classes in the Asahi Gakuen system are held at the Santa Monica campus.\nPost-secondary.\nSanta Monica College is a community college founded in 1929. Many SMC graduates transfer to the University of California system. It occupies and enrolls 30,000 students annually. The Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School, associated with the RAND Corporation, is the U.S.'s largest producer of public policy PhDs. The Art Institute of California \u2013 Los Angeles is also in Santa Monica near the Santa Monica Airport.\nUniversities and colleges within a radius from Santa Monica include Santa Monica College, Antioch University Los Angeles, Loyola Marymount University, Mount St. Mary's University, Pepperdine University, California State University, Northridge, California State University, Los Angeles, UCLA, USC, West Los Angeles College, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Occidental College (Oxy), Los Angeles City College, Los Angeles Southwest College, Los Angeles Valley College, and Emperor's College of Traditional Oriental Medicine.\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nBicycles.\nSanta Monica has a bike action plan and launched a bicycle sharing system in November 2015. The city is traversed by the Marvin Braude Bike Trail. Santa Monica has received the Bicycle Friendly Community Award (Bronze in 2009, Silver in 2013) by the League of American Bicyclists. Local bicycle advocacy organizations include Santa Monica Spoke, a local chapter of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition. Santa Monica is thought to be one of the leaders for bicycle infrastructure and programming in Los Angeles County although cycling infrastructure in Los Angeles County in general remains very poor compared to other major cities.\nThe city implemented a 5-year and 20-year Bike Action Plan with a goal of attaining 14 to 35% bicycle transportation mode share by 2030 through the installation of enhanced bicycle infrastructure throughout the city. In 2023, Santa Monica scored near the 90th percentile of cities surveyed in the PeopleForBikes City Ratings, which measures the quality of a city's bike network.\nIn terms of number of bicycle accidents, Santa Monica ranks as one of the worst (#2) out of 102 California cities with population 50,000\u2013100,000, a ranking consistent with the city's composite ranking.\nIn 2007 and 2008, local police cracked down on Santa Monica Critical Mass rides that had become controversial, putting a damper on the tradition.\nHighways.\nThe Santa Monica Freeway (Interstate 10) begins in Santa Monica near the Pacific Ocean and heads east. The Santa Monica Freeway between Santa Monica and downtown Los Angeles has the distinction of being one of the busiest highways in all of North America. After traversing the Greater Los Angeles area, I-10 crosses seven more states, terminating at Jacksonville, Florida. In Santa Monica, there is a road sign designating this route as the Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway. State Route 2 (Santa Monica Boulevard) begins in Santa Monica, barely grazing State Route 1 at Lincoln Boulevard, and continues northeast across Los Angeles County, through the Angeles National Forest, crossing the San Gabriel Mountains as the Angeles Crest Highway, ending in Wrightwood. Santa Monica is also the western terminus of Historic U.S. Route 66. Close to the eastern boundary of Santa Monica, Sepulveda Boulevard reaches from Long Beach at the south, to the northern end of the San Fernando Valley. Just east of Santa Monica is Interstate 405, the San Diego Freeway, a major north\u2013south route in Los Angeles and Orange counties.\nMotorized vehicles.\nSanta Monica has purchased the first ZeroTruck all-electric medium-duty truck. The vehicle will be equipped with a Scelzi utility body, it is based on the Isuzu N series chassis, a UQM PowerPhase 100 advanced electric motor and is the only US built electric truck offered for sale in the United States in 2009.\nBus.\nThe city of Santa Monica runs its own bus service, the Big Blue Bus, which also serves much of West Los Angeles and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). A Big Blue Bus was featured prominently in the action movie \"Speed\".\nThe city of Santa Monica is also served by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority's (Metro) bus lines. Metro also complements Big Blue service, as when Big Blue routes are not operational overnight, Metro buses make many Big Blue Bus stops, in addition to MTA stops.\nLight rail.\nDesign and construction on the of the Expo Line from Culver City to Santa Monica started in September 2011, with service beginning on May 20, 2016. Santa Monica Metro stations include , , and . Travel time between Downtown Santa Monica station and 7th Street/Metro Center station in Downtown Los Angeles is approximately 46 minutes, while the travel time between the downtown Santa Monica station and the terminal Atlantic station in East Los Angeles is approximately 1 hour and 9 minutes.\nHistorical aspects of the Expo line route are noteworthy. It uses the former Los Angeles region's electric interurban Pacific Electric Railway's right-of-way that ran from the Exposition Park area of Los Angeles to Santa Monica. This route was called the Santa Monica Air Line and provided electric-powered freight and passenger service between Los Angeles and Santa Monica beginning in the 1920s. Passenger service was discontinued in 1953, but diesel-powered freight deliveries to warehouses along the route continued until March 11, 1988. The abandonment of the line spurred future transportation considerations and concerns within the community, and the entire right-of-way was purchased from Southern Pacific by Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The line was built in 1875 as the steam-powered Los Angeles and Independence Railroad to bring mining ore to ships in Santa Monica harbor and as a passenger excursion train to the beach.\nAirport and ports.\nThe city owns and operates a general aviation airport, Santa Monica Airport, which has been the site of several important aviation achievements. Commercial flights are available for residents at LAX, a few miles south of Santa Monica.\nLike other cities in Los Angeles County, Santa Monica is dependent upon the Port of Long Beach and the Port of Los Angeles for international ship cargo. In the 1890s, Santa Monica was once in competition with Wilmington, California, and San Pedro for recognition as the \"Port of Los Angeles\" (see History of Santa Monica, California).\nOther.\nSince the mid-1980s, various proposals have been made to extend the Purple Line subway to Santa Monica under Wilshire Boulevard. There are no current plans to complete the \"subway to the sea\", an estimated $5\u00a0billion project.\nIn August 2018, Santa Monica issued permits to Bird, Lime, Lyft, and Jump Bikes to operate dockless scooter-sharing systems in the city. As of April 2023, Lyft, Spin, Veo, and Wheels are licensed to provide micro-mobility transportation in city.\nEmergency services.\nTwo major hospitals are within the Santa Monica city limits, UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica and Saint John's Health Center. Four fire stations provide medical and fire response, staffed with six Paramedic Engines, a Truck company, a Hazardous Materials team and an Urban Search & Rescue team. Santa Monica Fire Department has its own Dispatch Center. Ambulance transportation is provided by McCormick Ambulance Services.\nLaw enforcement services are provided by the Santa Monica Police Department\nThe Los Angeles County Department of Health Services operates the Simms/Mann Health and Wellness Center in Santa Monica. The Department's West Area Health Office is in the Simms/Mann Center.\nInternet services.\nSanta Monica has a municipal wireless network which provides several free city Wi-Fi hotspots distributed around the city.\nIn popular culture.\nFilm and television.\nHundreds of moving pictures have been shot or set in part in Santa Monica.\nFilms.\nOne of the oldest exterior shots in Santa Monica is Buster Keaton's \"Spite Marriage\" (1929) which shows much of 2nd Street. The comedy \"It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World\" (1963) included several scenes shot in Santa Monica, including those along the California Incline, which led to the movie's treasure spot, \"The Big W\". The Sylvester Stallone film \"Rocky III\" (1982) shows Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed training to fight Clubber Lang by running on the Santa Monica Beach, and Stallone's \"Demolition Man\" (1993) includes Santa Monica settings. In \"Pee-wee's Big Adventure\" (1985), the theft of Pee-wee's bike occurs on the Third Street Promenade. Henry Jaglom's indie \"Someone to Love\" (1987), the last film in which Orson Welles appeared, takes place in Santa Monica's venerable Mayfair Theatre. \"Heathers\" (1988) used Santa Monica's John Adams Middle School for many exterior shots. \"The Truth About Cats & Dogs\" (1996) is set entirely in Santa Monica, particularly the Palisades Park area, and features a radio station that resembles KCRW at Santa Monica College. \"17 Again\" (2009) was shot at Samohi. Other films that show significant exterior shots of Santa Monica include \"Fletch\" (1985), \"Species\" (1995), \"Get Shorty\" (1995), and \"Ocean's Eleven\" (2001). Richard Rossi's biopic \"Aimee Semple McPherson\" opens and closes at the beach in Santa Monica. \"Iron Man\" features the Santa Monica pier and surrounding communities as Tony Stark tests his experimental flight suit.\nThe documentary \"Dogtown and Z-Boys\" (2001) and the related dramatic film \"Lords of Dogtown\" (2005) are both about the influential skateboarding culture of Santa Monica's Ocean Park neighborhood in the 1970s.\nSanta Monica (and in particular the Santa Monica Airport) was featured in Roland Emmerich's disaster film \"2012\" (2009). A magnitude 10.9 earthquake destroys the airport and the surrounding area as a group of survivors escape in a personal plane. The Santa Monica Pier and the whole city sinks into the Pacific Ocean after the earthquake.\nTelevision.\nA number of television series have been set in Santa Monica, including \"Baywatch\", \"Goliath\", \"Pacific Blue\" (1996\u20132000), \"Private Practice\" (2007\u20132013), and \"Three's Company\" (1977\u20131984), which was set in the Ocean Park neighborhood of Santa Monica. The Santa Monica pier is shown in the main theme of CBS series \"\". In \"Buffy the Vampire Slayer\", the main exterior set of the town of Sunnydale that includes the infamous \"sun sign\", was in Santa Monica in a lot on Olympic Boulevard.\nLiterature.\nHorace McCoy's 1935 novel \"They Shoot Horses, Don't They?\" is set at a dance marathon held in a ballroom on the Santa Monica Pier.\nRaymond Chandler's most famous character, private detective Philip Marlowe, frequently has a portion of his adventures in a place called \"Bay City\", which is modeled on Depression-era Santa Monica. In Marlowe's world, Bay City is \"a wide-open town\", where gambling and other crimes thrive due to a massively corrupt and ineffective police force.\nTennessee Williams lived (while working at MGM Studios) in a hotel on Ocean Avenue in the 1940s. At that location he wrote the play \"The Glass Menagerie\" (which premiered in 1944). His short story \"\" (1954) is set near Santa Monica Beach and mentions the clock visible in much of the city, high up on The Broadway Building, on Broadway near Second Street.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1071662": "Sony Music\nAmerican multinational music recording company\nSony Music Entertainment (SME), commonly known as Sony Music, is an American multinational music company owned by Sony Entertainment and managed by the American umbrella division of multinational conglomerate Sony Group Corporation. It is the recording division of Sony Music Group, with the other half being the publishing division, Sony Music Publishing.\nFounded in 1929 as American Record Corporation, it was acquired by the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1938 and renamed Columbia Recording Corporation. In 1966, the company was reorganized to become CBS Records. Sony bought the company in 1988 and renamed it SME in 1991. In 2004, Sony and Bertelsmann established a 50\u201350 joint venture known as Sony BMG to handle the operations of Sony Music and Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG), but Sony bought out Bertelsmann's stake four years later and reverted to using the 1991 company name. This buyout led to labels formerly under BMG ownership, including Arista, Jive, LaFace and J Records into former BMG and currently Sony's co-flagship record label, RCA Records, in 2011 and led to the relaunch of BMG as BMG Rights Management. Arista Records would later be revived in 2018.\nOn July 17, 2019, Sony announced a merger of Sony Music Entertainment and music publishing arm Sony/ATV to form the Sony Music Group. The merger was completed on August 1, 2019.\nAs of 2023[ [update]], Sony Music Entertainment is the second largest of the \"Big Three\" record companies, behind Universal Music Group and followed by Warner Music Group. Its music publishing division Sony Music Publishing (formerly Sony/ATV) is the largest music publisher in the world.\nHistory.\n1929\u20131938: American Record Corporation.\nThe American Record Corporation (ARC) was founded in 1929 through a merger of several record companies. The company grew over the next several years, acquiring other brands such as the Columbia Phonograph Company, including its Okeh Records subsidiary, in 1934.\n1938\u20131970: Columbia/CBS Records.\nIn 1938, ARC was acquired by the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) under the guidance of chief executive William S. Paley. The company was later renamed Columbia Recording Corporation, and changed again to Columbia Records Inc. in 1947. Edward Wallerstein, who served as the head of Columbia Records since the late 1930s, helped establish the company as a leader in the record industry by spearheading the successful introduction of the LP record. Columbia's success continued through the 1950s with the launch of Epic Records in 1953 and Date Records in 1958. By 1962, the Columbia Records productions unit was operating four plants around the United States located in Los Angeles, California; Terre Haute, Indiana; Bridgeport, Connecticut; and Pitman, New Jersey.\nColumbia's international arm was launched in 1962 under the name \"CBS Records\", as the company only owned the rights to the Columbia name in North America. In 1964, the company began acquiring record companies in other countries for its CBS Records International unit and established its own UK distribution outfit with the acquisition of Oriole Records.\nBy 1966, Columbia was renamed CBS Records and was a separate unit of the parent company, CBS-Columbia Group. In March 1968, CBS and Sony formed CBS/Sony Records, a Japanese business joint venture.\n1971\u20131991: CBS Records Group.\nIn 1971, CBS Records was expanded into its own \"CBS Records Group\", with Clive Davis as its administrative vice president and general manager. In the 1980s to the early 1990s, the company managed several successful labels, including CBS Associated Records, which signed artists including Ozzy Osbourne, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Electric Light Orchestra, Joan Jett, and Henry Lee Summer. In 1983, CBS expanded its music publishing business by acquiring the music publishing arm of MGM/UA Communications Co. CBS later sold the print music arm to Columbia Pictures. By 1987, CBS was the only \"big three\" American TV network to have a co-owned record company. With Sony being one of the developers behind the compact disc digital music media, a compact disc production plant was constructed in Japan under the joint venture, allowing CBS to begin supplying some of the first compact disc releases for the American market in 1983.\nIn 1986, CBS sold its music publishing division, CBS Songs, to SBK Entertainment. On November 17, 1987, Sony acquired CBS Records for US$2 billion. CBS Inc., now Paramount Global, retained the rights to the CBS name for music recordings but granted Sony a temporary license to use the CBS name. The sale was completed on January 5, 1988. CBS Corporation founded a new CBS Records in 2006, which was distributed by Sony through its RED subsidiary.\nIn 1989, CBS Records re-entered the music publishing business by acquiring Nashville-based Tree International Publishing.\n1991\u20132004: Sony Music Entertainment.\nSony renamed the record company Sony Music Entertainment (SME) on January 1, 1991, fulfilling the terms set under the 1988 buyout, which granted only a transitional license to the CBS trademark. The CBS Associated label was renamed Epic Associated. Also on January 1, 1991, to replace the CBS label, Sony reintroduced the Columbia label worldwide, which it previously held in the United States and Canada only, after it acquired the international rights to the trademark from EMI in 1990. Japan is the only country where Sony does not have rights to the Columbia name as it is controlled by Nippon Columbia, an unrelated company. Thus, Sony Music Entertainment Japan issues labels under Sony Records. The Columbia Records trademark's rightsholder in Spain was Bertelsmann Music Group, Germany, which Sony Music subsequently subsumed via a 2004 merger, and a subsequent 2008 buyout.\nIn 1995, Sony and pop singer Michael Jackson formed a joint venture which merged Sony's music publishing operations with Jackson's ATV Music to form Sony/ATV Music Publishing.\n2004\u20132008: Sony BMG.\n<br>\nIn August 2004, Sony entered a joint venture with an equal partner Bertelsmann, by merging Sony Music and Bertelsmann Music Group, Germany, to establish Sony BMG Music Entertainment. However, Sony continued to operate its Japanese music business independently from Sony BMG and BMG Japan was made part of the merger.\nThe merger made Columbia and Epic sister labels to RCA Records, which was once owned by CBS rival, NBC. It also started the process of bringing BMG's Arista Records back under common ownership with its former parent Columbia Pictures, a Sony division since 1989, and brought Arista founder Clive Davis back into the fold. As of 2017, Davis was still with Sony Music as a chief creative officer.\n2008\u2013present: Sony Music revival and restructuring.\nOn August 5, 2008, Sony Corporation of America (SCA) and Bertelsmann announced that Sony had agreed to acquire Bertelsmann's 50% stake in Sony BMG. The acquisition was completed on October 1, 2008. On July 1, 2009, SME and IODA announced a strategic partnership to leverage worldwide online retail distribution networks and complementary technologies to support independent labels and music rights holders. In March 2010, Sony Corp partnered with The Michael Jackson Company in a contract of more than $250 million, the largest deal in recorded music history.\nFrom 2009 to 2020, Sony owned 50% of Syco Entertainment, which operates some of the world's most successful reality TV formats, including \"Got Talent\" and \"The X Factor\" with Simon Cowell. Cowell acquired Sony's stake in 2020.\nDoug Morris, who was head of Warner Music Group, and later Universal Music, became chairman and CEO of Sony Music Entertainment on July 1, 2011. Sony Music underwent restructuring upon Morris's arrival; with some artists switching labels and other labels eliminated.\nIn June 2012, a consortium led by Sony/ATV acquired EMI Music Publishing, making Sony/ATV the world's largest music publisher at the time. This acquisition also reunited the common ownership of pre-1986 CBS Songs (as SBK Songs) catalog to Sony/ATV.\nRob Stringer became CEO of Sony Music Entertainment on April 1, 2017. He previously served as chairman and CEO of Columbia Records.\nSony has experienced many changes with its international labels. In February 2012, Sony Music reportedly closed its Filipino office due to piracy, and Ivory Music and Video had been handling distribution for its catalog a few months earlier in July 2011. In early 2018, their distribution deal with Ivory expired and SME resumed its operations in the Philippines, with the new offices still located in Ortigas Center, Pasig. In July 2013, Sony Music withdrew from the Greek market due to an economic crisis. Albums released by Sony Music in Greece from domestic and foreign artists would then be carried by Feelgood Records.\nIn June 2017, Sony announced that by March 2018 it would be producing vinyl records internally for the first time since ceasing its production in 1989. Reporting the decision, the BBC noted that, \"Sony's move comes a few months after it equipped its Tokyo studio with a cutting lathe, used to produce the master discs needed for manufacturing vinyl records\" but added that \"Sony is even struggling to find older engineers who know how to make records\".\nOn February 5, 2019, a group of 1970s-era musicians including David Johansen and John Waite filed lawsuits accusing Sony Music Entertainment and UMG Recordings, Inc. of improperly refusing to let them reclaim the rights to songs they had signed away earlier in their careers. The lawsuit cites U.S. copyright law, which gives artists who formerly bargained away their rights on unfavorable terms a chance to reclaim those rights by filing termination notices after 35 years. The plaintiffs claim that Sony and UMG have \"routinely and systematically\" ignored hundreds of notices, having taken the position that recordings are \"works made for hire\" and are therefore not subject to being reclaimed.\nIn April 2021, the Brazilian media company Grupo Globo sold its domestic record label Som Livre to Sony Music for an undisclosed amount. It was approved by the Administrative Council for Economic Defense on November 4, 2021.\nThe UK media company Somethin' Else was acquired outright by Sony Music in 2021, to form a Global Podcast Division, headed up by the Somethin' Else principles, Steve Ackerman and Jez Nelson. The new division was to have teams in New York, LA and London.\nIn 2022, Sony Music Entertainment acquired boutique branding and merchandising agency, Ceremony of Roses (CoR). CoR would handle SME's 'branding, design, media and events'. The newly acquired company would merge with Sony's existing merch division and continue under the CoR banner. The merger brought together artists like Adele, A$AP Rocky, and Lil Nas X under one merchandising house. According to Sony, the move will help expand their merchandising team and take artists' merch to the next level.\nIn January 2023, Sony Music and Alamo Records founder Todd Moscowitz launched Santa Anna, an artist and label services company.\nIn April 2024, it was announced Sony Music Entertainment's Global Podcast Division had acquired the Los Angeles-headquartered podcast production company, Neon Hum Media for an undisclosed amount.\nSony Music Canada.\nSony Music Canada was formed when Sony Music acquired Canadian assets of CBS Records in 1990 (itself formerly Columbia Records Canada in 1954).\nSony Music Canada is operated by Sony Canada, which evolved from General Distributors or Gendis, which had been founded in Winnipeg in 1954 by Albert D. Cohen, who had made a deal with Sony to market its transistor radios in the same year.\nSony Music UK.\nSony Music UK is owned and operated by Sony Music Entertainment in the United Kingdom. Since 2014, Jason Iley has been chairman and CEO of Sony Music UK. Though owned by Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Music UK has standalone operations in the UK to promote musicians within the UK.\nIn June 2017, it was announced that Sony would be merging its two independent distribution companies The Orchard and Red Essential.\nIn 2014, Sony had its best singles success of 33 years, with 11 number 1 singles. Sony Music artists won a total of five individual awards at the BRITs 2015, including Best Female Solo Artist for Paloma Faith, and Mark Ronson's \"Uptown Funk\", which picked up Best British Single. Several other of the label's artists \u2013 Foo Fighters, One Direction and Pharrell Williams \u2013 also collected awards.\nSony's performance at the BRITs 2015 was the label's best in nearly 20 years, winning a total of 5 awards. In 2017, Sony Music UK celebrated the most successful BRIT Awards in the company's history, winning seven of the 11 awards.\nSony Music UK has made key acquisitions including forming Insanity Records with Insanity Management. Craig David became the first artist to sign an album deal with Insanity Records. Sony Music UK signed Robbie Williams, who released his 11th album \"The Heavy Entertainment Show\" in 2016. Jason Iley commented that the agreement was \"a once in a lifetime signing with the biggest male solo artist of our generation\".\nSony Music UK incorporated the independent sales and distribution company Essential Music and Marketing \u2013 renamed to Red Essential. In August 2016, Sony Music acquired Ministry of Sound Recordings, home to London Grammar, DJ Fresh and Sigala.\nOn April 5, 2017, two of Sony Music UK's labels won awards at the annual Music Week Awards. Columbia Records was awarded A&R of the Year, and Syco was awarded Record Company of the Year.\nIn 2021, Sony agreed to buy Kobalt neighboring rights division and independent distribution company AWAL, from the Kobalt Music Group for $430 million.\nSony Music Russia.\nSony Music Entertainment Russia was the Russian music label of Sony Music Entertainment. The company opened its division in the Russian Federation in 1999. In 2000, the first contract was signed with the Russian group Bi-2. For 2021, experts estimated the company's share in the Russian recording market at approximately 15-20%. Sony Music Entertainment LLC's revenue in 2021 amounted to 2.56 billion rubles ($42.7 million). Net profit amounted to 132.9 million rubles ($2.22 million).\nOn March 10, 2022, in connection with Russian invasion of Ukraine, Sony Music Entertainment announced the suspension of operations and new releases in Russia, while Russian employees of Sony Music Group receive pay indefinitely. On September 8, Sony Music officially announced its final withdrawal from Russia. The company recalled all foreign catalogs from the Russian streaming services Yandex Music, Zvooq and VK Music, and tracks from AC/DC, Beyonc\u00e9, Britney Spears, Bring Me the Horizon and many other artists were removed. The Russian division is intended as a completely independent structure from Sony Music to represent only local musicians under the new brand Kiss Koala, which was later bought by the structures of former top managers of Warner Music Russia.\nCriticism and controversies.\nCD price fixing.\nBetween 1995 and 2000, music companies were found to have used illegal marketing agreements such as minimum advertised pricing to artificially inflate prices of compact discs. This was done in order to end price wars of the early 1990s among discounters such as Best Buy and Target. A settlement was reached in 2002 that included music publishers and distributors Sony Music, Warner Music, Bertelsmann Music Group, EMI Music and Universal Music. In restitution for price fixing, they agreed to pay a $67.4 million fine and distribute $75.7 million in CDs to public and non-profit groups but admitted no wrongdoing. It is estimated that customers were overcharged by nearly $500 million overall and up to $5 per album.\nGeorge Michael.\nBritish artist George Michael, signed to Columbia in the U.S. and Epic worldwide, advised Sony executives in 1990 that he would not be appearing in music videos to support his forthcoming album, \"Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1\". Michael then accused Sony of not promoting the album at all. He sued in the UK in 1992, asking to be released from his contract. Sony ultimately prevailed in the courts in 1994, but Michael's contract was bought out by other labels. Some 11 years later, Michael licensed tracks to Sony for release.\nMichael Jackson and Tommy Mottola.\nThe release of \"Invincible\" was preceded by a dispute between Michael Jackson and Sony Music Entertainment. Jackson had expected the licenses to the masters of his albums to revert to him sometime in the early 2000s, after which he would be able to promote the material however he pleased and keep the profits; however, clauses in the contract set the revert date years into the future. Jackson discovered that the attorney who had represented him in the deal had also been representing Sony. He was also concerned that for years Sony had been pressuring him to sell his share in its music catalog venture; he feared that Sony might have had a conflict of interest, since if Jackson's career failed, he would have had to sell his share of the catalog at a low price. Jackson sought an early exit from his contract.\nIn July 2002, Jackson alleged that the then-Sony Music chairman Tommy Mottola was a \"devil\" and \"racist\" who did not support his African-American artists, using them merely for his own gain. He charged that Mottola had called his colleague Irv Gotti a \"fat nigger\". Sony refused to renew Jackson's contract, and claimed that a $25 million promotional campaign had failed because Jackson refused to tour in the United States.\nProsecution of copyright infringement.\nIn May 2012, Sony Music filed charges against the website IsoHunt. The plaintiff's claims in the court document filed at the Supreme Court of British Columbia read: \"The IsoHunt Websites have been designed and are operated by the defendants with the sole purpose of profiting from rampant copyright infringement which defendants actively encourage, promote, authorize, induce, aid, abet, materially contribute to and commercially profit from.\" In February 2016, in a lawsuit filed at a California federal court, Sony Music Entertainment and its associated brands (Arista Records and LaFace Records, formerly owned by Bertelsmann Music Group) accused Belgian radio aggregator Radionomy (owned by Universal Music Group's parent Vivendi) of copyright infringement.\nKesha v. Dr. Luke and 2016 boycott.\nIn February 2016, 100,000 people signed an online petition in less than 24 hours, calling for a boycott of Sony Music and all other Sony-affiliated businesses after rape allegations against music producer Dr. Luke were made by musical artist Kesha. Kesha asked a New York City Supreme Court to free her from her contract with Sony Music, but the court denied the request, prompting a widespread public and media response.\nList of Sony Music Entertainment labels.\nGenre-limited record labels.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nOthers.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nPreviously affiliated labels.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "17356462": "The Right Stuff Records\nThe Right Stuff Records is an American reissue record label that was part of EMI, which is now owned by Universal Music Group and is based out of Santa Monica, California.\nThe label primarily released classic rock and R&B repertoire which included greatest hits collections, anthologies, boxed sets and compilations. The Right Stuff's repertoire was sourced from the various labels owned by EMI Records and also leased-in labels such as Dick Griffey's SOLAR (the Sound of Los Angeles Records), the post-1976 Philadelphia International Records, Hi Records, Tabu Records and Salsoul Records. The label also owned Leon Russell and Denny Cordell's Shelter Records and the New York\u2013based Laurie Records. The label also created many joint venture projects with outside brands such as Harley-Davidson, Hot Rod Magazine, Shape Magazine, and others. The label was started by former EMI and Capitol Records executive Tom Cartwright.\nSelected artists on reissues.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "191890": "American Idol\nAmerican singing competition\nAmerican Idol is an American singing competition television series created by Simon Fuller, produced by Fremantle North America and 19 Entertainment, and distributed by Fremantle North America. It aired on Fox from June 11, 2002, to April 7, 2016, for 15 seasons. It was on hiatus for two years until March 11, 2018, when a revival of the series began airing on ABC.\nIt started as an addition to the \"Idol\" format that was based on \"Pop Idol\" from British television, in which the programme's first series, which was won by Will Young, ended over four months before the show began, as it later became one of the most successful shows in the history of American television. The concept of the series involves discovering recording stars from unsigned singing talents, with the winner determined by American viewers using phones, Internet platforms, and SMS text voting. The winners of the first twenty-two seasons, as chosen by viewers, are Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Hicks, Jordin Sparks, David Cook, Kris Allen, Lee DeWyze, Scotty McCreery, Phillip Phillips, Candice Glover, Caleb Johnson, Nick Fradiani, Trent Harmon, Maddie Poppe, Laine Hardy, Just Sam, Chayce Beckham, Noah Thompson, Iam Tongi, and Abi Carter.\n\"American Idol\" employs a select panel of judges who critique the contestants' performances. The original judges, for seasons one through eight, were record producer and music manager Randy Jackson, singer and choreographer Paula Abdul, and music executive and manager Simon Cowell. The judging panel for the last three seasons on Fox consisted of singers Keith Urban, Jennifer Lopez, and Harry Connick Jr. Season sixteen brought three new judges: singers Luke Bryan, Katy Perry, and Lionel Richie. Beginning in the twenty-third season, Underwood replaced Perry, alongside returning judges Bryan and Richie. The show has been hosted by television presenter Ryan Seacrest throughout its run, apart from the show's inaugural season when comedian Brian Dunkleman joined Seacrest as co-host.\nThe success of \"American Idol\" has been described as \"unparalleled in broadcasting history\". A rival TV executive said the series was \"the most impactful show in the history of television\". It became a recognized springboard for launching the career of many artists as bona fide stars. According to \"Billboard\" magazine, in its first ten years, \"\"Idol\" has spawned 345 \"Billboard\" chart-toppers and a platoon of pop idols, including Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Chris Daughtry, Fantasia, Ruben Studdard, Jennifer Hudson, Clay Aiken, Adam Lambert, and Jordin Sparks while remaining a TV ratings juggernaut.\" For an unprecedented eight consecutive years, from the 2003\u201304 television season through the 2010\u201311 season, either its performance show or result show was ranked number one in U.S. television ratings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\n\"American Idol\" was based on the British show \"Pop Idol\" created by Simon Fuller, which was in turn inspired by the New Zealand television singing competition \"Popstars\". Television producer Nigel Lythgoe saw a version in Australia and helped bring it over to Britain. Fuller was inspired by the idea from \"Popstars\" of employing a panel of judges to select singers in audition. He then added other elements, including telephone voting by the viewing public (which at the time was already in use in shows, such as the \"Eurovision Song Contest\"), the drama of backstories, and real-life soap opera unfolding in real time. \"Pop Idol\" debuted in Britain in 2001 with Lythgoe as showrunner\u200d\u2014\u200cthe executive producer and production leader\u200d\u2014\u200cand Simon Cowell as one of the judges, and was successful with the viewing public.\nIn 2001, Fuller, Cowell, and TV producer Simon Jones attempted to sell the \"Pop Idol\" format to the United States, but the idea was initially met with poor responses from all the television networks including UPN and Fox. However, Rupert Murdoch, head of Fox's parent company, was later persuaded to buy the series by his daughter, Elisabeth, who had seen the British show. Although Fox's executives wanted to change the format, Murdoch insisted that it should remain the same as the British one. One change was nevertheless made due to the presence of multiple time zones in the United States that made it impractical for the country to vote in the same time period, an additional half-hour results show was therefore added the day following the performance show. The show was renamed \"\" and debuted in the summer of 2002. Cowell was initially offered the job of showrunner but turned down the offer; Lythgoe then took over that position. Much to the surprise of Cowell and Fox, it became one of the biggest shows of the summer. With its successful launch in the summer, the show was then moved to January and expanded. The show grew into a phenomenon largely due to its personal engagement with the contestants by prompting the viewers to vote, and the presence of the acid-tongued Cowell as a judge. By 2004, it had become the most-watched show on American television, a position it then held for seven consecutive seasons until 2011.\nHowever, after a few years of sharp declining ratings starting in 2012, with rating falls of over 20% each season, the fifteenth season would be its last on Fox, ending its run in April 2016. In May 2017, ABC acquired the rights to the series and the program returned for the 2017\u201318 television season. The first season of the revived series, or the sixteenth season overall, started airing in March 2018. Seven seasons have been aired on ABC as of May 2024.\nJudges and hosts.\nJudges.\nThe show had originally planned on having four judges following the \"Pop Idol\" format; however, only three judges had been found by the time of the audition round in the first season, namely Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell. A fourth judge, radio DJ Stryker, was originally chosen but he dropped out citing \"image concerns.\" In the second season, New York radio personality Angie Martinez had been hired as a fourth judge but withdrew after only a few days of auditions, due to being uncomfortable with giving out criticism. The show decided to continue with the three judges format until the eighth season. All three original judges stayed on the judging panel for eight seasons.\nIn the eighth season, Latin Grammy Award-nominated singer-songwriter and record producer Kara DioGuardi was added as a fourth judge. Abdul left the show in 2009, after the eighth season, as a result of failing to agree to terms with the show producers. Emmy Award-winning talk show host Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul for the ninth season, but left in 2010 after just one season. DioGuardi was let go from \"American Idol\" in 2010 after two seasons, as producers favored a return to the three-person judges panel previously used prior to DioGuardi's appearance on the show. Cowell also left the show in 2010 to introduce the American version of his show \"The X Factor\" in 2011. Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth.\nJennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined the judging panel in the tenth season, but both left in 2012 after two seasons. Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. They were replaced by three new judges, Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj, and Keith Urban, who joined Jackson in the twelfth season. However, both Carey and Minaj left after one season. Jackson also departed the judges table after twelve seasons, but would return as the in-house mentor for the thirteenth season in 2014, after which he left the show permanently.\nUrban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. After a one-season hiatus, Lopez returned to \"American Idol\" for the thirteenth season, and was joined by former mentor Harry Connick Jr. After this, Lopez, Urban, and Connick Jr. remained on the show until its cancellation after the fifteenth season in 2016.\nWhen the show was revived by ABC in 2018, Katy Perry, Luke Bryan, and Lionel Richie were selected as judges, marking the sixteenth season of \"Idol\". Bryan and Richie have remained on the show since, while Perry left the show in May 2024 after seven seasons. On July 31, 2024, published reports announced former \"Idol\" winner Carrie Underwood as Perry's replacement, joining Bryan and Richie for the twenty-third season.\nGuest judges may occasionally be introduced. In the second season, guest judges such as Richie and Gladys Knight were used, and in the third season, Donna Summer, Quentin Tarantino, Gloria Estefan, and some of the mentors also joined as judges to critique the performances in the final rounds. Guest judges were sporadically used during the audition rounds: Gene Simmons, LL Cool J, Brandy, Mark McGrath, and Kenny Loggins in the fourth season; Carole Bayer Sager, Jewel, and Olivia Newton-John in the sixth season; Shania Twain, Neil Patrick Harris, Avril Lavigne, Mary J. Blige, Joe Jonas, Kristin Chenoweth, Victoria Beckham, and Perry in the ninth season (substituting in the vacant chair, before DeGeneres was hired); and Adam Lambert filled in for Urban at one audition location during the fourteenth season. In the ABC version, two instances occurred during the live shows: Abdul filled in for Bryan on one episode of the nineteenth season, while Alanis Morissette and Ed Sheeran filled in for Perry and Richie on an episode of the twenty-first season.\nHosts.\nThe first season was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman, following the format of \"Pop Idol\" of using two presenters. Dunkleman quit thereafter, resulting in Seacrest becoming the sole emcee starting with the second season in 2003.\nSeacrest has remained as sole host of \"American Idol\" ever since, with the exception of the two-year hiatus between 2016 and 2018 as well as April 8, 2019, during the seventeenth season, when Bobby Bones subbed for Seacrest after the latter fell ill. Dunkleman did, however, return for the initial in 2016 as a guest.\nCast timeline.\nAnnotations\nSelection process.\nIn a series of steps, the show selected the eventual winner out of many tens of thousands of contestants.\nContestant eligibility.\nThe eligible age-range for contestants is fifteen to twenty-eight years old. The initial age limit was sixteen to twenty-four in the first three seasons, but the upper limit was raised to twenty-eight in the fourth season, and the lower limit was reduced to fifteen in the tenth season. The contestants have to be legal U.S. residents, can not have advanced to particular stages of the competition in previous seasons, and must not have held a current recording or talent representation contract by the semi-final stage (in previous years by the audition stage).\nInitial auditions.\nFor the first eighteen seasons, contestants went through at least three sets of cuts. The first was a brief audition with a few other contestants in front of selectors which may include one of the show's producers. Although auditions can exceed 10,000 in each city, only a few hundred of these made it past the preliminary round of auditions. Successful contestants then sing in front of producers, where more may be cut. Only then can they proceed to audition in front of the judges, which is the only audition stage shown on television. Those selected by the judges are sent to Hollywood. Between 10 and 60 people in each city may make it to Hollywood (the average total is between 150 and 200).\nFrom the nineteenth season onwards, contestants request a Zoom interview and audition remotely for the show's producers. If the audition goes well, they will then invite the contestants to audition in front of the judges, in one of the audition cities.\nHollywood week.\nOnce in Hollywood, the contestants perform individually or in groups in a series of rounds. Until the tenth season, there were usually three rounds of eliminations in Hollywood. In the first round the contestants emerged in groups but performed individually. For the next round, the contestants put themselves in small groups and performed a song together. In the final round, the contestants performed solo with a song of their choice a cappella or accompanied by a band\u200d\u2014\u200cdepending on the season. In the second and third seasons, contestants were also asked to write original lyrics or melody in an additional round after the first round. In the seventh season, the group round was eliminated and contestants may, after a first solo performance and on judges approval, skip a second solo round and move directly to the final Hollywood round. In the twelfth season, the executive producers split up the females and males and chose the members to form the groups in the group round.\nIn the tenth and eleventh seasons, a further round was added in Las Vegas, where the contestants performed in groups based on a theme, followed by one final solo round to determine the semi-finalists. At the end of this stage of the competition, 24 to 36 contestants were selected to move on to the semi-final stage. In the twelfth season the Las Vegas round became a Sudden Death round, where the judges had to choose five guys and five girls each night (four nights) to make the top twenty. In the thirteenth season, the Las Vegas round was eliminated and a new round called \"Hollywood or Home\" was added, where if the judges were uncertain about some contestants, those contestants were required to perform soon after landing in Los Angeles, and those who failed to impress were sent back home before they reached Hollywood. In the fourteenth season, the \"Hollywood or Home\" round was dropped, and a Showcase round was added, where the contestants performed at the House of Blues or auditorium for the judges and a live audience, and these performances determine who makes into the Top 24. In the seventeenth and eighteenth seasons, the showcase round took place in Hawaii. From the nineteenth season onward, a showstopper round was used.\nAudience voting.\nFrom the semi-finals onward, the fate of the contestants is decided by public vote. During the contestant's performance as well as the recap at the end, a toll-free telephone number for each contestant was displayed on the screen. For a two-hour period after the episode ends (up to four hours for the finale) in each US time zone, viewers may call or send a text message to their preferred contestant's telephone number, and each call or text message was registered as a vote for that contestant. Viewers were allowed to vote as many times as they can within the two-hour voting window. However, the show reserves the right to discard votes by power dialers. One or more of the least popular contestants may be eliminated in successive weeks until a winner emerges. Over 110\u00a0million votes were cast in the first season, and by the tenth season the seasonal total had increased to nearly 750 million. Voting via text messaging was made available in the second season when AT&T Wireless joined as a sponsor of the show, and 7.5\u00a0million text messages were sent to \"American Idol\" that season. The number of text messages rapidly increased, reaching 178\u00a0million texts by the eighth season. Online voting was offered for the first time in the tenth season. The votes are counted and verified by Telescope Inc.\nSemi-finals.\nIn the first three seasons, the semi-finalists were split into different groups to perform individually in their respective night. In the first season, there were three groups of ten, with the top three contestants from each group making the finals. In the second and third seasons, there were four groups of eight, and the top two of each selected. These seasons also featured a wildcard round, where contestants who failed to qualify were given another chance. In the first season, only one wildcard contestant was chosen by the judges, giving a total of ten finalists. In the second and third seasons, each of the three judges championed one contestant with the public advancing a fourth into the finals, making 12 finalists in all.\nFrom the fourth through seventh and ninth seasons, the twenty-four semi-finalists were divided by gender in order to ensure an equal gender division in the top twelve. The men and women sang separately on consecutive nights, and the bottom two in each groups were eliminated each week until only six of each remained to form the top twelve.\nThe wildcard round returned in the eighth season, wherein there were three groups of twelve, with three contestants moving forward \u2013 the highest male, the highest female, and the next highest-placed singer \u2013 for each night, and four wildcards were chosen by the judges to produce a final 13. Starting in tenth season, the girls and boys perform on separate nights. In the tenth and eleventh seasons, five of each gender were chosen, and three wildcards were chosen by the judges to form a final 13. In the twelfth season, the top twenty semifinalists were split into gender groups, with five of each gender advancing to form the final 10. In the thirteenth season, there were thirty semifinalists, but only twenty semifinalists (ten for each gender) were chosen by the judges to perform on the live shows, with five in each gender based on the vote and three wildcards chosen by the judges composing the final 13. In the fourteenth season, the top 24 performed at The Fillmore Detroit, starting with the 12 males on one night and then the 12 females on the next night. The following week, the same order went for the top 16, with four males eliminated, followed by four females based on the vote. Then, on the first night of finals, a similar sequence from the thirteenth season was used to determine the final 12, with five of each gender based on the vote and two wildcards chosen by the judges. In the fifteenth season, the top 24 performed at Cathedral of Saint Vibiana in Los Angeles and were split into two groups of twelve and performed twice, one being a solo performance and one being a duet with a former Idol contestant. In each group, the judges chose 7 contestants to advance to the top 14 where the judges chose 4 to advance to the top 10 and remaining 6 contestants were chosen based on the vote. In the sixteenth season, the top 24 performed at the Academy in the Heart of LA, and the show repeated the process from the previous season. However, instead of Idol alumnus as duet partners, superstar celebrity singers were used as the duet partners. In the seventeenth season, the same process was repeated again. However, instead of a top 24, it's a top 20, the contestants performed at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, and performed solos in one episode, and performed the duets in two episodes. In the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the top 20 performed at their homes, and based on the vote, half of the top 20 would advance to the top 10, and the other half would be eliminated. However, a wild card was given to one of the bottom 10 to save them from elimination. In the nineteenth season, the show used a combination of the process from the sixteenth and fourteenth seasons. In the twentieth season, the show repeated the process from the previous season, but they used a top 20 instead of a top 16, and there were no all star duets. In the twenty-first season, the same process was repeated, but they started with a top 26 instead of a top 24. In the twenty-second season, the show repeated the process from the twentieth season.\nFinals.\nThe finals are broadcast in primetime from Los Angeles, in front of a live studio audience (except the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic). From 2002 to 2019 and from 2021 to 2022, the venue was CBS Television City. Starting in 2023, it changed to Red Studios. The finals lasted eight weeks in the first season. From the second to ninth and fourteenth seasons, the finals lasted eleven weeks. The tenth and eleventh seasons lasted for twelve weeks, while the twelfth season lasted for ten weeks. In the thirteenth season, the finals lasted thirteen weeks. The finals lasted seven weeks in the fifteenth season, and six weeks in the sixteenth season. Each finalist performs songs based on a weekly theme which may be a musical genre such as Motown, disco, or big band, songs by artists such as Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley or The Beatles, or more general themes such as \"Billboard\" number-one hits or songs from the contestant's year of birth. Contestants usually worked with a celebrity mentor related to the theme. From the tenth to twelfth seasons, Jimmy Iovine was brought in as a mentor for the season. Initially the contestants sang one song each week, but this was increased to two songs from top four or five onwards, then three songs for the top two or three.\nThe most popular contestants are usually not revealed in the results show. Instead, typically the three contestants (two in later rounds) who received the lowest number of votes was called to the center of the stage. One of these three was usually sent to safety; however the two remaining were not necessarily the bottom two. The contestant with the fewest votes was then revealed and eliminated from the competition. A montage of the eliminated contestant's time on the show was played and they gave their final performance (from the fourteenth season onward, the montage and the final performance were dropped). However, in the sixth season, during the series' first ever Idol Gives Back episode, no contestant was eliminated, but on the following week, two were sent home. Moreover, from the eighth to the fourteenth seasons, and the seventeenth season onward, the judges may overturn viewers' decision with a \"Judges' Save\" if they unanimously agreed to. \"The save\" could only be used once, and only up through the Top 5. In the eighth to tenth and fourteenth seasons, a double elimination then took place in the week following the activation of the save, but in the eleventh and thirteenth seasons, a regular single elimination took place. The save was not activated in the twelfth season and consequently, a non-elimination took place in the week after its expiration with the votes then carrying over into the following week.\nThe \"Fan Save\" was introduced in the fourteenth season. During the finals, viewers were given a five-minute window to vote for the contestants in danger of elimination by using their Twitter account to decide which contestant will move on to the next show, starting with the Top 8.\nSeason finale.\nDuring the original run of \"American Idol\" on Fox, the finale week consisted of a one-hour long final performance night and a two-hour last episode of the season that culminates in revealing the winner, both of which are broadcast live in the U.S. Eastern and Central time zones. For the first, third through sixth and fourteenth through fifteenth seasons it was broadcast from the Dolby Theatre, which has an audience capacity of approximately 3,400. The second-season finale took place at the Gibson Amphitheatre, which had an audience capacity of over 6,000. In the seventh through thirteenth seasons, the venue was at the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live, which holds an audience of over 7,000. Since the show's reboot on ABC, the venue remains the same throughout the entire show (excluding auditions), but was still two episodes in the sixteenth season, and then stretched to a single three-hour season finale that is annually aired live simultaneously in all U.S. territories, starting with the seventeenth season. The eighteenth-season finale was conducted virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nRewards for winner and finalists.\nThe winner usually receives a record deal with a major label, which may be for up to six albums, and secures a management contract with \"American Idol\"-affiliated 19 Management (which has the right of first refusal to sign all contestants), as well as various lucrative contracts. All winners prior to the ninth season reportedly earned at least $1\u00a0million in their first year as winner. At first the contract came with a $250,000-plus advance, but dropped to about $62,500 over the Fox years. All the runners-up of the first ten seasons, as well as some of other finalists, had also received record deals with major labels. However, starting in the eleventh season, the runner-up may only be guaranteed a single-only deal. BMG/Sony (first through ninth seasons), UMG (tenth through fifteenth seasons), and Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records (sixteenth through eighteenth seasons) had the right of first refusal to sign contestants for three months after the season's finale. In the fourteenth and fifteenth seasons, the winner was signed with Big Machine Records. Prominent music mogul Clive Davis also produced some of the selected contestants' albums, such as Kelly Clarkson, Clay Aiken, Fantasia Barrino and Diana DeGarmo. All top 10 (11 in the tenth and twelfth seasons, 5 in the fourteenth season, and 7 in the sixteenth season) finalists earn the privilege of going on a tour, where the participants may each earn a six-figure sum.\nSeason synopses.\nEach season premieres with the audition round, taking place in different cities. The audition episodes typically feature a mix of potential finalists, interesting characters and woefully inadequate contestants. Each successful contestant receives a golden or platinum ticket to proceed on to the next round in Hollywood. Based on their performances during the Hollywood round (Las Vegas round from the tenth through twelfth seasons), 24 to 36 contestants are selected by the judges to participate in the semifinals. From the semifinals onward the contestants perform their songs live, with the judges making their critiques after each performance. The contestants are voted for by the viewing public, and the outcome of the public votes is then revealed during a results segment. The results segment feature group performances by the contestants as well as guest performers. The Top-three results also features homecoming events for the Top 3 finalists. The season reaches its climax in a two-hour results finale show, where the winner of the season is revealed.\nWith the exception of the first two seasons, the contestants in the semifinals onward perform in front of a studio audience. They perform with a full band in the finals. The current musical director is Kris Pooley, who has been with the show since the sixteenth season. In previous seasons, the \"American Idol\" band was led by Rickey Minor (fourth through ninth and thirteenth through fifteenth seasons) and Ray Chew (tenth through twelfth seasons). Assistance has also been given by vocal coaches and song arrangers, such as Michael Orland and Debra Byrd to contestants behind the scene. Starting with the seventh season, contestants may perform with a musical instrument from the Hollywood rounds onward. In later seasons, the contestants were allowed to perform with a musical instrument in the auditions. During the first nine seasons, performances were usually aired live on Tuesday nights, followed by the results shows on Wednesdays, but moved to Wednesdays and Thursdays from the tenth through thirteenth seasons, with the tenth, eleventh and thirteenth-season finales aired on Tuesday and Wednesday. From the fourteenth season onward, there were no separate results shows. On the fourteenth season, the show aired on Wednesday nights, and on the fifteenth season, Thursday nights. Since the sixteenth season, the show has been airing on Sundays and Mondays.\n2002\u20132016: Fox.\nSeason 1 (2002).\nThe first season of \"American Idol\" debuted as a summer replacement show in June 2002 on the Fox network. It was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell served as judges.\nIn the audition rounds, 121 contestants were selected from around 10,000 who attended the auditions. These were cut to 30 for the semifinal, with ten going on to the finals. One semifinalist, Delano Cagnolatti, was disqualified for lying to evade the show's age limit. One of the early favorites, Tamyra Gray, was eliminated at the top four, the first of several such shock eliminations that were to be repeated in later seasons. Christina Christian was hospitalized before the top six result show due to chest pains and palpitations, and she was eliminated while she was in the hospital. Jim Verraros was the first openly gay contestant on the show; his sexual orientation was revealed on his blog, however it was removed during the competition after a request from the show producers over concerns that it might be unfairly influencing votes.\nThe final showdown was between Justin Guarini, one of the early favorites, and Kelly Clarkson. Clarkson was not initially thought of as a contender, but impressed the judges with some good performances in the final rounds, such as her performance of Aretha Franklin's \"Natural Woman\", and Betty Hutton's \"Stuff Like That There\", and eventually won the crown on September 4, 2002.\nIn what was to become a tradition, Clarkson performed the coronation song during the finale, and released the song immediately after the season ended. The single, \"A Moment Like This\", went on to break a 38-year-old record held by The Beatles for the biggest leap to number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. Guarini did not release any song immediately after the show and remains the only runner-up not to do so. Both Clarkson and Guarini made a musical film, \"From Justin to Kelly\", which was released in 2003 but was widely panned. Clarkson has since become one of the most successful \"Idol\" contestants internationally, with worldwide album sales of more than 25\u00a0million.\nStarting September 30, 2006, this season was repackaged as \"\"American Idol Rewind\"\" and syndicated directly to stations in the U.S.\nSeason 2 (2003).\nFollowing the success of the first season, the second season was moved up to air in January 2003. The number of episodes increased, as did the show's budget and the charge for commercial spots. Dunkleman left the show, leaving Ryan Seacrest as the lone host. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Kristin Adams was a correspondent for this season.\nCorey Clark was disqualified during the finals for having an undisclosed police record; however, he later alleged that he and Paula Abdul had an affair while on the show and that this contributed to his expulsion. Clark also claimed that Abdul gave him preferential treatment on the show due to their affair. The allegations were dismissed by Fox after an independent investigation. Two semi-finalists were also disqualified that year \u2013 Jaered Andrews for an arrest on an assault charge, and Frenchie Davis for having previously modeled for an adult website.\nThe season finale drew more than 38 million viewers, marking \"Idol\"'s biggest audience ever for a single episode. Ruben Studdard emerged as the winner, beating Clay Aiken by a small margin. Out of a total of 24 million votes, Studdard finished just 134,000 votes ahead of Aiken. This slim margin of victory was controversial due to the large number of calls that failed to get through. In an interview prior to the fifth season, executive producer Nigel Lythgoe indicated that Aiken had led the fan voting from the wildcard week onward until the finale.\nBoth finalists found success after the show, but Aiken out-performed Studdard's coronation song \"Flying Without Wings\" with his single release from the show \"This Is the Night\", as well as in their subsequent album releases. The fourth-place finisher Josh Gracin also enjoyed some success as a country singer.\nSeason 3 (2004).\nThe third season premiered on January 19, 2004. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. One of the most talked-about contestants during the audition process was William Hung whose off-key rendition of Ricky Martin's \"She Bangs\" received widespread attention. His exposure on \"Idol\" landed him a record deal and surprisingly he became the third bestselling singer from that season.\nMuch media attention on the season had been focused on the three black singers, Fantasia Barrino, LaToya London, and Jennifer Hudson, dubbed the Three Divas. All three unexpectedly landed on the bottom three on the top seven result show, with Hudson controversially eliminated. Elton John, who was one of the mentors that season, called the results of the votes \"incredibly racist\". The prolonged stays of John Stevens and Jasmine Trias in the finals, despite negative comments from the judges, had aroused resentment, so much so that John Stevens reportedly received a death threat, which he dismissed as a joke 'blown out of proportion'.\nThe performance of \"Summertime\" by Barrino, later known simply as \"Fantasia\", at Top 8 was widely praised, and Simon Cowell considered it as his favorite \"Idol\" moment in the nine seasons he was on the show. Fantasia and Diana DeGarmo were the last two finalists, and Fantasia was crowned as the winner. Fantasia released as her coronation single \"I Believe\", a song co-written by the first season finalist Tamyra Gray, and DeGarmo released \"Dreams\".\nSeason 4 (2005).\nThe fourth season premiered on January 18, 2005. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This was the first full season of the series to be aired in high definition; the finale of the third season was also aired in high definition. The number of those attending the auditions by now had increased to over 100,000 from the 10,000 of the first season. The age limit was raised to 28 in this season, and among those who benefited from this new rule were Constantine Maroulis and Bo Bice, the two rockers of the show.\nThe top 12 finalists originally included Mario Vazquez, but he dropped out citing 'personal reasons' and was replaced by Nikko Smith. Later, an employee of Fremantle Media, which produces the show, sued the company for wrongful termination, claiming that he was dismissed after complaining about lewd behavior by Vazquez toward him during the show.\nDuring the top 11 week, due to a mix-up with the contestants' telephone number, voting was repeated on what was normally the result night, with the result reveal postponed until the following night.\nIn May 2005, Underwood was announced the winner, with Bice the runner-up. Both Underwood and Bice released the coronation song \"Inside Your Heaven\", with Underwood's version of the song making her the first country artist ever to debut at number-one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart. As of 2015, Underwood has become the most successful \"Idol\" contestant in the U.S., selling 16 million albums in the country, while selling a total of 65 million records worldwide.\nSeason 5 (2006).\nThe fifth season began on January 17, 2006. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. It remains the highest-rated season in the show's run so far. Two of the more prominent contestants during the Hollywood round were the Brittenum twins who were later disqualified for identity theft.\nChris Daughtry's performance of Fuel's \"Hemorrhage (In My Hands)\" on the show was widely praised and led to an invitation to join the band as Fuel's new lead singer, an invitation he declined. His performance of Live's version of \"I Walk the Line\" was well received by the judges but later criticized in some quarters for not crediting the arrangement to Live. He was eliminated at the top four in a shocking result.\nOn May 30, 2006, Taylor Hicks was named \"American Idol\", with Katharine McPhee the runner-up. \"Do I Make You Proud\" was released as Hicks' first single and McPhee's was \"My Destiny\".\nDespite being eliminated earlier in the season, Chris Daughtry (as lead of the band Daughtry) became the most successful recording artist from this season. Other contestants, such as Hicks, McPhee, Bucky Covington, Mandisa, Kellie Pickler, and Elliott Yamin have had varying levels of success.\nSeason 6 (2007).\nThe sixth season began on Tuesday, January 16, 2007. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The premiere drew a massive audience of 37.3\u00a0million viewers, peaking in the last half hour with more than 41\u00a0million viewers.\nTeenager Sanjaya Malakar was the season's most talked-about contestant for his unusual hairdo, and for managing to survive elimination for many weeks due in part to the weblog Vote for the Worst and satellite radio personality Howard Stern, who both encouraged fans to vote for him. However, on the Top 7 results, Sanjaya was voted off.\nThis season saw the first \"Idol Gives Back\" telethon-inspired event, which raised more than $76\u00a0million in corporate and viewer donations. No contestant was eliminated that week, but two (Phil Stacey and Chris Richardson) were eliminated the next.\nIn the May 23 season finale, Jordin Sparks was declared the winner with the runner-up being Blake Lewis. Sparks has had some success as a recording artist post-\"Idol\".\nThis season also saw the launch of the \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest which allows fans to vote for the \"coronation song\". Thousands of recordings of original songs were submitted by songwriters, and 20 entries selected for the public vote. The winning song, \"This Is My Now\", was performed by both finalists during the finale and released by Sparks on May 24, 2007.\nSeason 7 (2008).\nThe seventh season premiered on January 15, 2008, for a two-day, four-hour premiere. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The media focused on the professional status of the seventh season contestants, the so-called 'ringers', many of whom, including Kristy Lee Cook, Brooke White, Michael Johns, and in particular Carly Smithson, had prior recording contracts. Contestant David Hernandez also attracted some attention due to his past employment as a stripper.\nFor the finals, \"American Idol\" debuted a new state-of-the-art set and stage on March 11, 2008, along with a new on-air look. David Cook's performance of \"Billie Jean\" on top-ten night was lauded by the judges, but provoked controversy when they apparently mistook the Chris Cornell arrangement to be David Cook's own even though the performance was introduced as Cornell's version. Cornell himself said he was 'flattered' and praised David Cook's performance. David Cook was taken to the hospital after the top-nine performance show due to heart palpitations and high blood pressure.\nDavid Archuleta's performance of John Lennon's \"Imagine\" was considered by many as one of the best of the season. Jennifer Lopez, who was brought in as a judge in the tenth season, called it a beautiful song-moment that she will never forget. Jason Castro's semi-final performance of \"Hallelujah\" also received considerable attention, and it propelled Jeff Buckley's version of the song to the top of the \"Billboard\" digital song chart. This was the first season in which contestants' recordings were released onto iTunes after their performances, and although sales information was not released so as not to prejudice the contest, leaked information indicated that contestants' songs frequently reached the top of iTunes sales charts.\n\"Idol Gives Back\" returned on April 9, 2008, and raised $64\u00a0million for charity.\nThe finalists were Cook and Archuleta. David Cook was announced the winner on May 21, 2008, the first rocker to win the show. Both Cook and Archuleta had some success as recording artists with both selling over a million albums in the U.S.\nThe \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest was also held this season. From ten of the most popular submissions, each of the final two contestants chose a song to perform, although neither of their selections was used as the \"coronation song\". The winning song, \"The Time of My Life\", was recorded by David Cook and released on May 22, 2008.\nSeason 8 (2009).\nThe eighth season premiered on January 13, 2009. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This season featured the first major change to the judging panel; a fourth judge, Kara DioGuardi, was introduced. Mike Darnell, the president of alternative programming for Fox, stated that the season would focus more on the contestants' personal life.\nThis was also the first season without executive producer Nigel Lythgoe who left to focus on the international versions of his show \"So You Think You Can Dance\". The Hollywood round was moved to the Kodak Theatre for 2009 and was also extended to two weeks. \"Idol Gives Back\" was canceled for this season due to the global recession at the time.\nThere were 13 finalists this season, but two were eliminated in the first result show of the finals. A new feature introduced was the \"Judges' Save\", and Matt Giraud was saved from elimination at the top seven by the judges when he received the fewest votes. The next week, Lil Rounds and Anoop Desai were eliminated.\nThe two finalists were Kris Allen and Adam Lambert, both of whom had previously landed in the bottom three at the top five. Allen won the contest in the most controversial voting result since the second season. It was claimed, and then later retracted, that 38\u00a0million of the 100\u00a0million votes cast on the night came from Allen's home state of Arkansas alone, and that AT&T employees unfairly influenced the votes by giving lessons on power-texting at viewing parties in Arkansas.\nBoth Allen and Lambert released the coronation song, \"No Boundaries\" which was co-written by DioGuardi. This is the first season in which the winner failed to achieve gold album status.\nSeason 9 (2010).\nThe ninth season premiered on January 12, 2010. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Kara DioGuardi, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Paula Abdul left the show and Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul at the start of Hollywood Week. One of the most prominent auditioners this season was General Larry Platt whose performance of \"Pants on the Ground\" became a viral hit song.\nCrystal Bowersox, who has Type-I diabetes, fell ill due to diabetic ketoacidosis on the morning of the girls performance night for the top 20 week and was hospitalized. The schedule was rearranged so the boys performed first and she could perform the following night instead; she later revealed that Ken Warwick, the show producer, wanted to disqualify her but she begged to be allowed to stay on the show.\nMichael Lynche was the lowest vote getter at top nine and was given the Judges' Save. The next week Katie Stevens and Andrew Garcia were eliminated. That week, Adam Lambert was invited back to be a mentor, the first \"Idol\" alum to do so. \"Idol Gives Back\" returned this season on April 21, 2010, and raised $45 million.\nA special tribute to Simon Cowell was presented in the finale for his final season with the show. Many figures from the show's past, including Paula Abdul, made an appearance.\nThe final two contestants were Lee DeWyze and Bowersox. DeWyze was declared the winner during the May 26 finale. No new song was used as coronation song this year; instead, the two finalists each released a cover song \u2013 DeWyze chose U2's \"Beautiful Day\", and Bowersox chose Patty Griffin's \"Up to the Mountain\". This is the first season where neither finalist achieved significant album sales.\nSeason 10 (2011).\nThe tenth season premiered on January 19, 2011. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Many changes were introduced this season, from the format to the personnel of the show. Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined Randy Jackson as judges following the departures of Simon Cowell (who left to launch the American version of \"The X Factor\"), Kara DioGuardi (whose contract was not renewed) and Ellen DeGeneres, who left the show on her own accord.\nRandy Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth. Nigel Lythgoe returned as executive producer. Jimmy Iovine, chairman of the Interscope Geffen A&M label group, the new partner of \"American Idol\", acted as the in-house mentor in place of weekly guest mentors, although in later episodes special guest mentors such as Beyonc\u00e9, will.i.am and Lady Gaga were brought in.\nThe tenth season is the first to include online auditions where contestants could submit a 40-second video audition via Myspace. Karen Rodriguez was one such auditioner and reached the final rounds.\nOne of the more prominent contestants this year was Chris Medina, whose story of caring for his brain-damaged fianc\u00e9e received widespread coverage. Medina was cut in the Top 40 round. Casey Abrams, who suffers from ulcerative colitis, was hospitalized twice and missed the Top 13 result show. The judges used their one save on Abrams on the Top 11, and as a result this was the first season that 11 finalists went on tour instead of 10. In the following week, Naima Adedapo and Thia Megia were both eliminated.\nPia Toscano, one of the presumed favorites to advance far in the season, was unexpectedly eliminated on April 7, 2011, finishing in ninth place. Her elimination drew criticisms from some former \"Idol\" contestants, as well as actor Tom Hanks. After \"Idol\", Jennifer Lopez helped guide her career.\nThe two finalists in 2011 were Lauren Alaina and Scotty McCreery, both teenage country singers. McCreery won the competition on May 25, being the youngest male winner and the fourth male in a row to win \"American Idol\". McCreery released his first single, \"I Love You This Big\", as his coronation song, and Alaina released \"Like My Mother Does\". McCreery's debut album, \"Clear as Day\", became the first debut album by an \"Idol\" winner to reach No. 1 on the US \"Billboard\" 200 since Ruben Studdard's \"Soulful\" in 2003, and he became the youngest male artist to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200.\nSeason 11 (2012).\nThe eleventh season premiered on January 18, 2012. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez, and Randy Jackson returned as judges. One more finalist would join the Top 24 making it the Top 25, which was later revealed to be Jermaine Jones. However, on March 14, Jones was disqualified in 12th place for concealing arrests and outstanding warrants. Jones denied the accusation that he concealed his arrests.\nFinalist Phillip Phillips suffered from kidney pain and was taken to the hospital before the Top 13 results show, and later received medical procedure to alleviate a blockage caused by kidney stones. He was reported to have eight surgeries during his Idol run, and had considered quitting the show due to the pain. He underwent surgery to remove the stones and reconstruct his kidney soon after the season had finished.\nJessica Sanchez received the fewest votes during the Top 7 week, and the judges decided to use their \"save\" option on her, making her the first female recipient of the save. The following week, unlike previous seasons, Colton Dixon was the only contestant sent home. Sanchez later made the final two, the first season where a recipient of the save reached the finale.\nPhillips became the winner, beating Sanchez. During the finale, fifth season finalist Ace Young proposed marriage to third season runner-up Diana DeGarmo on stage \u2013 which she accepted.\nPhillips released \"Home\" as his coronation song, while Sanchez released \"Change Nothing\". Phillips' \"Home\" has since become the best selling of all coronation songs, with over 5 million copies sold.\nSeason 12 (2013).\nThe twelfth season premiered on January 16, 2013. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Judges Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler left the show after two seasons. Randy Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. This season's judging panel consisted of Randy Jackson, along with Mariah Carey, Keith Urban and Nicki Minaj.\nThis was the first season since the ninth season to have four judges on the panel. The pre-season buzz and the early episodes of the show were dominated by the feud between the judges Minaj and Carey after a video of their dispute was leaked to TMZ.\nThe top 10 contestants started with five males and five females, however, the males were eliminated consecutively in the first five weeks, with Lazaro Arbos the last male to be eliminated. For the first time in the show's history, the top 5 contestants were all female. It was also the first time that the judges' \"save\" was not used, the top four contestants were therefore given an extra week to perform again with their votes carried over with no elimination in the first week.\n23-year-old Candice Glover won the season with Kree Harrison taking the runner-up spot. Glover became the first female to win \"American Idol\" since Jordin Sparks, who won the show in 2007. Glover released \"I Am Beautiful\" as a single while Harrison released \"All Cried Out\" immediately after the show. Glover sold poorly with her debut album, and this is also the first season that the runner-up was not signed by a music label.\nTowards the end of the season, Randy Jackson, the last remaining of the original judges, announced he would no longer serve as a judge to pursue other business ventures. Both judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj also decided to leave after one season to focus on their music careers.\nSeason 13 (2014).\nThe thirteenth season premiered on January 15, 2014. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Keith Urban returned as a judge. Urban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. Randy Jackson returned, though Jackson moved from the judging panel to the role of in-mentor. Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj left the panel after one season. Former judge Jennifer Lopez and former mentor Harry Connick, Jr. joined Urban on the panel. Connick Jr. served as a mentor for \"Idol\" in 2010 and 2012. Also, Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick were replaced as executive producers by Per Blankens, Jesse Ignjatovic and Evan Pragger. Bill DeRonde replaced Warwick as a director of the audition episodes, while Louis J. Horvitz replaced Gregg Gelfand as a director of the show.\nThis was the first season where the contestants were permitted to perform in the final rounds songs they wrote themselves. In the Top 8, Sam Woolf received the fewest votes, but he was saved from elimination by the judges. The 500th episode of the series was the Top 3 performance night.\nCaleb Johnson was named the winner of the season, with Jena Irene as the runner-up. Johnson released \"As Long as You Love Me\" as his coronation single while Irene released \"We Are One\".\nSeason 14 (2015).\nThe fourteenth season premiered on January 7, 2015. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban and Harry Connick, Jr. returned for their respective fourth, third and second seasons as judges. Eighth season runner-up Adam Lambert filled in for Urban during the New York City auditions. Randy Jackson did not return as the in-house mentor and left the show permanently. Scott Borchetta replaced Jackson as the mentor.\nChanges this season include only airing one episode a week during the final ten. Coca-Cola ended their longtime sponsorship of the show and Ford Motor Company maintained a reduced role. The winner of the season also received a recording contract with Big Machine Records.\nNick Fradiani won the season, defeating Clark Beckham. Fradiani became the first winner from the Northeast region. Fradiani released \"Beautiful Life\" as his coronation single while Beckham released \"Champion\". Jax, the third place finalist, also released a single called \"Forcefield\".\nSeason 15 (2016).\nFox announced on May 11, 2015, that the fifteenth season would be the final season of \"American Idol\"; as such, the season was expected to have an additional focus on the program's alumni. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, with Harry Connick Jr., Keith Urban, and Jennifer Lopez all returning as judges. The fifteenth season premiered on January 6, 2016. The season was shortened by four weeks compared to previous years. During the finale episode, President Barack Obama praised the millions of young people that voted for contestants and pitched that they vote in the upcoming election. The farewell season concluded on April 7, 2016. Seacrest signed off by saying: \"And one more time\u2014this is so tough\u2014we say to you from Hollywood, goodnight America\", and then he added, \"for now.\"\nTrent Harmon won the season against runner-up La'Porsha Renae. Harmon released \"Falling\" co-written by Keith Urban as his coronation song. Renae's \"Battles\", third-place finisher Dalton Rapattoni's \"Strike A Match\" and fourth-place finisher MacKenzie Bourg's \"Roses\" were also released as singles.\n2018\u2013present: ABC revival.\nIn early 2017, \"Variety\" reported that Fremantle Media was in talks to revive the show for NBC or for its original network, Fox. A dispute between Fremantle and Core Media Group derailed these plans. In May 2017, ABC was making a bid to revive the program. ABC acquired the rights to the series, and \"American Idol\" returned for the 2017\u201318 television season.\nSeason 16 (2018).\nIn July 2017, it was announced that Ryan Seacrest would return as host, and by September 2017 it was revealed that Katy Perry, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie would serve as judges. The sixteenth season premiered on March 11, 2018. This was the first season of \"American Idol\" to air on ABC. The season was again shortened compared to the previous season to twelve weeks, with multiple elimination in the final rounds. Unlike previous seasons where only two finalists remained in the final episode, three finalists performed in the finale. On May 21, 2018, the season concluded with Maddie Poppe crowned the winner, beating Caleb Lee Hutchinson as runner-up and Gabby Barrett in third place. Her winning song was \"Going, Going, Gone\". Caleb Lee Hutchinson released \"Johnny Cash Heart\" as a single, while Gabby Barrett's song was \"Rivers Deep\".\nSeason 17 (2019).\nABC renewed the revival series for another season. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. The seventeenth season premiered on March 3, 2019. For the finale, the show no longer features separate performance and result shows. On May 19, 2019, the season concluded with three finalists, with Madison VanDenburg eliminated in third place after performing two songs, and the final two performing their last song. For the first time, there were no separate performance and grand finale shows this season. Laine Hardy was crowned the winner and Alejandro Aranda runner-up. Hardy released a single, \"Flame\", immediately after the win, but Aranda did not. However, Aranda later released a song he performed in the finale, \"Tonight\", under the name Scarypoolparty on June 28, 2019.\nSeason 18 (2020).\nOn May 13, 2019, the series was renewed for an eighteenth season and it premiered on February 16, 2020. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. For the first time, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, from the top 20 to the finale, the contestants performed in their own homes, while Ryan Seacrest hosted the show remotely in his own home in Los Angeles with the judges also in their respective homes. The season was also further truncated, with the top 5 performing in the finale. Each finalist also performed only two songs for the finale. On May 17, the season concluded, with Just Sam crowned as the winner, with Arthur Gunn finishing as the runner-up. \"Rise Up\", the song Just Sam performed for their audition and reprised on the finale, was released as their debut song.\nSeason 19 (2021).\nOn May 15, 2020, ABC renewed the series for a nineteenth season and it premiered on February 14, 2021. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. Later in October, it was announced that Bobby Bones will return as mentor. On May 23, the season concluded, with Chayce Beckham crowned the winner, with Willie Spence finishing as the runner-up. \"23\", the song Chayce Beckham wrote and performed for Top 4, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 20 (2022).\nOn May 13, 2021, ABC renewed the series for a twentieth season and it premiered on February 27, 2022. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On December 31, it was announced that Bones would not be returning as a mentor. On May 22, the season concluded, with Noah Thompson crowned as the winner, with HunterGirl finishing as the runner-up. \"One Day Tonight\", the song Noah Thompson performed for the Grand Finale, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 21 (2023).\nOn May 13, 2022, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-first season and it premiered on February 19, 2023. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On May 21, the season concluded, with Iam Tongi crowned as the winner, with Megan Danielle finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 22 (2024).\nOn May 16, 2023, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-second season and it premiered on February 18, 2024. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. In February 2024, Perry announced that the season would be her last. On May 20, the season concluded, with Abi Carter crowned as the winner, with Will Moseley finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 23 (2025).\nOn May 10, 2024, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-third season; it was also announced the network was in-talks with \"high-profile stars\" to replace the outgoing Perry. On July 31, 2024, it was announced Seacrest would return as host, with Bryan and Richie returning as judges; Underwood was named as Perry's successor. The season premiered on March 9, 2025.\nReception.\nU.S. television ratings.\nSeasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of \"American Idol\". It holds the distinction of having the longest winning streak in the Nielsen annual television ratings; it became the highest-rated of all television programs in the United States overall for an unprecedented seven consecutive years, or eight consecutive (and total) years when either its performance or result show was ranked number one overall.\n\"Each U.S. network television season starts in late September and ends in late May, which coincides with the completion of May sweeps.\"\n\"American Idol\" premiered in June 2002 and became the surprise summer hit show of 2002. The first show drew 9.9\u00a0million viewers, giving Fox the best viewing figure for the 8.30\u00a0pm spot in over a year. The audience steadily grew, and by finale night, the audience had averaged 23\u00a0million, with more than 40\u00a0million watching some part of that show. That episode was placed third amongst all age groups, but more importantly it led in the 18\u201349 demographic, the age group most valued by advertisers.\nThe growth continued into the next season, starting with a season premiere of 26.5 million. The season attracted an average of 21.7\u00a0million viewers, and was placed second overall amongst the 18\u201349 age group. The finale night when Ruben Studdard won over Clay Aiken was also the highest-rated ever \"American Idol\" episode at 38.1\u00a0million for the final hour. By the third season, the show had become the top show in the 18\u201349 demographic<ref name=\"realitytvworld_5/24/2007\"></ref> a position it has held for all subsequent years up to and including the tenth season, and its competition stages ranked first in the nationwide overall ratings. By the fourth season, \"American Idol\" had become the most-watched series amongst all viewers on American TV for the first time, with an average viewership of 26.8\u00a0million. The show reached its peak in the fifth season with numbers averaging 30.6\u00a0million per episode, and this season remains the highest-rated of the series.\nThe sixth season premiered with the series' highest-rated debut episode and a few of its succeeding episodes rank among the most-watched episodes of \"American Idol.\" During this time, many television executives begun to regard the show as a programming force unlike any seen before, as its consistent dominance of up to two hours two or three nights a week exceeded the 30- or 60-minute reach of previous hits such as NBC's \"The Cosby Show\". The show was dubbed \"the Death Star\", and competing networks often rearranged their schedules in order to minimize losses. However, the sixth season also showed a steady decline in viewership over the course of the season. The season finale saw a drop in ratings of 16% from the previous year. The sixth season was the first season wherein the average results show rated higher than the competition stages (unlike in the previous seasons), and became the second-highest-rated of the series after the preceding season.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the seventh season. The premiere was down 11% among total viewers, and the results show in which Kristy Lee Cook was eliminated delivered its lowest-rated Wednesday show among the 18\u201334 demo since the first season in 2002. However, the ratings rebounded for the seventh-season finale with the excitement over the battle of the Davids, and improved over the sixth season as the series' third most watched finale. The strong finish of season seven also helped Fox become the most watched TV network in the country for the first time since its inception, a first ever in American television history for a non-Big Three major broadcast network. Overall ratings for the season were down 10% from the sixth season, which is in line with the fall in viewership across all networks due in part to the 2007\u20132008 Writers Guild of America strike.\nThe declining trend however continued into the eighth season, as total viewers numbers fell by 5\u201310% for early episodes compared to the seventh season, and by 9% for the finale. In the ninth season, \"Idol\"'s six-year extended streak of perfection in the ratings was broken, when NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics on February 17 beat \"Idol\" in the same time slot with 30.1\u00a0million viewers over \"Idol\"'s 18.4\u00a0million. Nevertheless, \"American Idol\" overall finished its ninth season as the most watched TV series for the sixth year running, breaking the previous record of five consecutive seasons achieved by CBS' \"All in the Family\" and NBC's \"The Cosby Show\".\nIn the tenth season, the total viewer numbers for the first week of shows fell 12\u201313%, and by up to 23% in the 18\u201349 demo compared to the ninth season. Later episodes, however, retained viewers better, and the season ended on a high with a significant increase in viewership for the finale \u2013 up 12% for the adults 18\u201349 demographic and a 21% increase in total viewers from the ninth-season finale. While the overall viewer number has increased this season, its viewer demographics have continued to age year on year \u2013 the median age this season was 47.2 compared to a median age of 32.1 in its first season. The demographics also became \"whiter\" over time and less diverse. Nevertheless, in the 2010\u201311 television season, Fox maintained its lead on over other networks with its seventh consecutive season of victory overall in the 18\u201349 demographic ratings in the United States.\nThe eleventh season, however, suffered a steep drop in ratings, a drop attributed by some to the arrival of new shows such as \"The Voice\" and \"The X Factor\". The ratings for the first two episodes of the eleventh season fell 16\u201321% in overall viewer numbers and 24\u201327% in the 18/49 demo, while the season finale fell 27% in total viewer number and 30% in the 18\u201349 demo. The average viewership for the season fell below 20 million viewers the first time since 2003, a drop of 23% in total viewers and 30% in the 18/49 demo. For the first time in eight years, \"American Idol\" lost the leading position in both the total viewers number and the 18/49 demo, coming in second to \"NBC Sunday Night Football\", although the strengths of \"Idol\" in its second year in the Wednesday-Thursday primetime slots helped Fox achieve the longest period of 18\u201349 demographic victory in the Nielsen ratings, standing at 8 straight years from 2004 to 2012.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the twelfth season, which saw the show hitting a number of series low in the 18\u201349 demo. The finale had 7.2 million fewer viewers than the previous season, and saw a drop of 44% in the 18\u201349 demo. The season viewers averaged at 13.3 million, a drop of 24% from the previous season. The thirteenth season suffered a huge decline in the 18\u201349 demographic, a drop of 28% from the twelfth season, and \"American Idol\" lost its Top 10 position in the Nielsen ratings by the end of the 2013\u201314 television season for the first time since its entry to the rankings in 2003 as a result, and never regained its Top 10 position by the series' end in 2016.\nThe continuing decline influenced further changes for the fourteenth season, including the loss of Coca-Cola as the show's major sponsor, and a decision to only broadcast one, two-hour show per week during the top 12 rounds (with results from the previous week integrated into the performance show, rather than having a separate results show). On May 11, 2015, prior to the fourteenth-season finale, Fox announced that the fifteenth season of \"American Idol\" would be its last. Despite these changes, the show's ratings would decline more sharply. The fourteenth-season finale was the lowest-rated finale ever, with an average of only 8.03 million viewers watching the finale. The show's ratings, however, rebounded in its final season and ended its run in 2016 as Fox's first-ever program to conclude its run without dropping from the Nielsen Top 30 most-watched television shows in each of its seasons.\nFor the revived series on ABC, the ratings were lower but remained stable compared to previous seasons on Fox. The finale of the seventeenth season was slightly more watched than the sixteenth.\nCritical reception.\nEarly reviews were mixed in their assessment. Ken Tucker of \"Entertainment Weekly\" considered that \"As TV, \"American Idol\" is crazily entertaining; as music, it's dust-mote inconsequential\". Others, however, thought that \"the most striking aspect of the series was the genuine talent it revealed\". It was also described as a \"sadistic musical bake-off\", and \"a romp in humiliation\". Other aspects of the show have attracted criticisms. The product placement in the show in particular was noted, and some critics were harsh about what they perceived as its blatant commercial calculations \u2013 Karla Peterson of \"The San Diego Union-Tribune\" charged that \"American Idol\" is \"a conniving multimedia monster\" that has \"absorbed the sin of our debauched culture and spit them out in a lump of reconstituted evil\". The decision to send the first season winner to sing the national anthem at the Lincoln Memorial on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks in 2002 was also poorly received by many. Lisa de Moraes of \"The Washington Post\" noted sarcastically that \"The terrorists have won\" and, with a sideswipe at the show's commercialism and voting process, that the decision as to who \"gets to turn this important site into just another cog in the 'Great \"American Idol\" Marketing Mandala' is in the hands of the millions of girls who have made \"American Idol\" a hit. Them and a handful of phone-redialer geeks who have been clocking up to 10,000 calls each week for their contestant of choice (but who, according to Fox, are in absolutely no way skewing the outcome).\"\nSome of the later writers about the show were more positive, Michael Slezak, again of \"Entertainment Weekly\", thought that \"for all its bloated, synthetic, product-shilling, money-making trappings, \"Idol\" provides a once-a-year chance for the average American to combat the evils of today's music business.\" Singer Sheryl Crow, who was later to act as a mentor on the show, however took the view that the show \"undermines art in every way and promotes commercialism\". Pop music critic Ann Powers nevertheless suggested that Idol has \"reshaped the American songbook\", \"led us toward a new way of viewing ourselves in relationship to mainstream popular culture\", and connects \"the classic Hollywood dream to the multicentered popular culture of the future.\" Others focused on the personalities in the show; Ramin Setoodeh of \"Newsweek\" accused judge Simon Cowell's cruel critiques in the show of helping to establish in the wider world a culture of meanness, that \"Simon Cowell has dragged the rest of us in the mud with him.\" Some such as singer John Mayer disparaged the contestants, suggesting that those who appeared on \"Idol\" are not real artists with self-respect.\nSome in the entertainment industry were critical of the star-making aspect of the show. Usher, a mentor on the show, bemoaning the loss of the \"true art form of music\", thought that shows like \"American Idol\" made it seem \"so easy that everyone can do it, and that it can happen overnight\", and that \"television is a lie\". Musician Michael Feinstein, while acknowledging that the show had uncovered promising performers, said that \"American Idol\" \"isn't really about music. It's about all the bad aspects of the music business \u2013 the arrogance of commerce, this sense of 'I know what will make this person a star; artists themselves don't know.' \" That \"American Idol\" is seen to be a fast track to success for its contestants has been a cause of resentment for some in the industry. LeAnn Rimes, commenting on Carrie Underwood winning Best Female Artist in Country Music Awards over Faith Hill in 2006, said that \"Carrie has not paid her dues long enough to fully deserve that award\". It is a common theme that has been echoed by many others. Elton John, who had appeared as a mentor in the show but turned down an offer to be a judge on \"American Idol\", commenting on talent shows in general, said that \"there have been some good acts but the only way to sustain a career is to pay your dues in small clubs\". \"American Idol\" revolutionized American pop culture and the pop idol process and has provided an opportunity for many to bypass the small club scene and allow a much larger audience to participate in and select the next potential chart topping performer.\nThe success of the show's alumni, however, has led to a more positive assessment of the show, and the show was described as having \"proven it has a valid way to pick talent and a proven way to sell records\". While the industry is divided on the show success, its impact is felt particularly strongly in the country music format. According to a CMT exec, reflecting on the success of Idol alumni in the country genre, \"if you want to try and get famous fast by going to a cattle call audition on TV, Idol reasonably remains the first choice for anyone\", and that country music and Idol \"go together well\".\n\"American Idol\" was nominated for the Emmy's Outstanding Reality Competition Program for nine years but never won. Director Bruce Gower won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Series in 2009, and the show won a Creative Arts Emmys each in 2007 and 2008, three in 2009, and two in 2011, as well as a Governor's Award in 2007 for its Idol Gives Back edition. It won the People's Choice Award, which honors the popular culture of the previous year as voted by the public, for favorite competition/reality show in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2012. It won the first Critics' Choice Television Award in 2011 for Best Reality Competition.\nIn 2013, TV Guide ranked the series No. 48 on its list of the 60 Best Series of All Time.\nGeographical, ethnic, and gender bias.\nThroughout the series, twelve of the seventeen \"Idol\" winners, including its first five, had come from the Southern United States. A large number of other finalists during the series' run have also hailed from the American South, including Clay Aiken, Kellie Pickler, and Chris Daughtry, who are all from North Carolina. In 2012, an analysis of the 131 contestants who have appeared in the finals of all seasons of the show up to that point found that 48% have some connection to the Southern United States.\nThe show itself was popular in the Southern United States, with households in the Southeastern United States 10% more likely to watch \"American Idol\" during the eighth season in 2009, and those in the East Central region, such as Kentucky, were 16 percent more likely to tune into the series. Data from Nielsen SoundScan, a music-sales tracking service, showed that of the 47\u00a0million CDs sold by \"Idol\" contestants through January 2010, 85 percent were by contestants with ties to the American South.\nTheories given for the success of Southerners on \"Idol\" have been: more versatility with musical genres, as the Southern U.S. is home to several music genre scenes; not having as many opportunities to break into the pop music business; text-voting due to the South having the highest percentage of cell-phone only households; and the strong heritage of music and singing, which is notable in the Bible Belt, where it is in church that many people get their start in public singing. Others also suggest that the Southern character of these contestants appeal to the South, as well as local pride. According to fifth season winner Taylor Hicks, who is from the state of Alabama, \"People in the South have a lot of pride ... So, they're adamant about supporting the contestants who do well from their state or region.\"\nFor five consecutive seasons, starting in the seventh season, the title was given to a white male who plays the guitar \u2013 a trend that \"Idol\" pundits call the \"White guy with guitar\" or \"WGWG\" factor. Just hours before the eleventh-season finale, where Phillip Phillips was named the winner, Richard Rushfield, author of the book \"American Idol: The Untold Story\", said, \"You have this alliance between young girls and grandmas and they see it, not necessarily as a contest to create a pop star competing on the contemporary radio, but as ... who's the nicest guy in a popularity contest\", he says, \"And that has led to this dynasty of four, and possibly now five, consecutive, affable, very nice, good-looking white boys.\"\nStart order bias.\nSome fans call the final performance of the night the \"pimp spot\" because it usually receives a big boost in votes, due to the recency effect. By performing first, a performer may benefit from the primacy effect, but any other early performance may be stifled. The second performance spot is sometimes called the \"un-pimp spot\" because it is the least beneficial.\nControversy.\nThe show was criticized in earlier seasons over the onerous contract contestants had to sign that gave excessive control to 19 Entertainment over their future careers and handed a large part of their future earnings to the management.\nIndividual contestants have generated controversy in this competition for their past actions or for being 'ringers' planted by the producers. A number of contestants have been disqualified for various reasons, such as for having an existing contract or undisclosed criminal record, although the show has also been accused of a double standard for disqualifying some but not others.\nVoting results have been a consistent source of controversy. The mechanism of voting has aroused considerable criticism, most notably in the second season when Ruben Studdard beat Clay Aiken in a close vote, and in the eighth season, when the massive increase in text votes fueled the texting controversy. Concerns about power voting have been expressed from the first season. Since 2004, votes also have been affected to a limited degree by online communities such as DialIdol and Vote for the Worst.\nCultural impact.\nTelevision.\nThe enormous success of the show and the revenue it generated were transformative for the Fox Broadcasting Company. \"American Idol\" and other shows such as \"Survivor\" and \"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?\" were credited for expanding reality television programming in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s, and \"Idol\" became the most watched non-scripted primetime television series, which it remained for almost a decade, from 2003 to 2012, breaking records on U.S. television (dominated by drama shows and sitcoms in the preceding decades). On several occasions, notably in 2003 and 2008, \"American Idol\" overtook the Academy Awards as the most-watched non-sports entertainment event on U.S. television, marking the most recent time as of 2025 that a live regular non-sports primetime series has garnered such viewership in the country.\nThe show pushed Fox to become the number one U.S. TV network in overall viewers in 2008 and among adults aged 18\u201349, the key demographic coveted by advertisers, for an unprecedented eight consecutive years from 2005 to 2012. Its success also helped lift the ratings of other shows that were scheduled around it such as \"House\" and \"Bones\", and \"Idol\", for years, was Fox's strongest platform primetime television program for promoting eventual hit shows of the 2010s (of the same network) such as \"Glee\", \"New Girl\" and \"Empire\". The show, its creator Simon Fuller claimed, \"saved Fox\".\nThe show's massive success in the mid-2000s to early 2010s spawned a number of imitating singing-competition shows, such as \"Rock Star\", \"Nashville Star\", \"The Voice\", \"Rising Star\", \"The Sing-Off\", and \"The X Factor\". The number of imitative singing shows on American television had reached 17 by 2016. Its format also served as a blueprint for non-singing TV shows such as \"Dancing with the Stars\" and \"So You Think You Can Dance\", most of which contribute to the current highly competitive reality TV landscape on American television.\nMusic.\nAs one of the most successful shows on U.S. television history, \"American Idol\" has had a strong impact not just on television, but also in the wider world of entertainment. It helped create a number of highly successful recording artists, such as Kelly Clarkson, Daughtry and Carrie Underwood, as well as others of varying notability. The alumni of the show's original run scored 13 Grammy Award wins out of 54 Grammy nominations up to its end in 2016, with Underwood and Clarkson receiving 10 wins combined.\nVarious \"American Idol\" alumni had success on various record charts around the world; in the U.S. they had achieved 345 number ones on the \"Billboard\" charts in its first 10 years, and 458 by its last year of broadcast in 2016, with 100 achieved by Kelly Clarkson alone. According to Fred Bronson, author of books on the Billboard charts, no other entity has ever created as many hit-making artists and bestselling albums and singles. In 2007, \"American Idol\" alums accounted for 2.1% of all music sales. Its alumni have a massive impact on radio; in 2007, \"American Idol\" had become \"a dominant force in radio\" according to Rich Meyer, president of the radio station monitoring research company Mediabase. By 2010, four winners each had more than a million radio spins, with Kelly Clarkson leading the field with over four million spins.\nAt the end of the show's original run on Fox in 2016, \"Idol\"'s contestants have sold more than 60 million albums in the U.S. and more than 100 million records globally, more than 175 of which are certified platinum or gold. Its participants have generated more than 450 Billboard No. 1 hits and sold more than 260 million digital downloads.\nFilm and theater.\nThe impact of \"American Idol\" was also strongly felt in musical theater, where many of \"Idol\" alumni have forged successful careers. The striking effect of former \"American Idol\" contestants on Broadway has been noted and commented on. The casting of a popular \"Idol\" contestant can lead to significantly increased ticket sales. Other alumni have gone on to work in television and films, the most notable being Jennifer Hudson who, on the recommendation of the \"Idol\" vocal coach Debra Byrd, won a role in \"Dreamgirls\" and eventually went on to win an Academy Award for her performance. She later became the show's first and only alumnus ever to win the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). In all, as of 2025, \"American Idol\" finalists resulted to 5 Grammy Award winners (Clarkson, Barrino, Hudson, Underwood and Mandisa), 2 Emmy Award winners (Clarkson and Hudson), and an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Tony Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Critics' Choice Award winner (Hudson).\nIn 2007, a musical based on the show, \"\", played off-Broadway. The musical closed after its official opening night.\nRevenue and commercial ventures.\nThe dominance of \"American Idol\" in the ratings had made it the most profitable show in U.S. TV for many years. The show was estimated to generate $900\u00a0million for the year 2004 through sales of TV ads, albums, merchandise and concert tickets. By the seventh season, the show was estimated to earn around $900\u00a0million from its ad revenue alone, not including ancillary sponsorship deals and other income. One estimate puts the total TV revenue for the first eight seasons of \"American Idol\" at $6.4\u00a0billion. Sponsors that bought fully integrated packages can expect a variety of promotions of their products on the show, such as product placement, adverts and product promotion integrated into the show, and various promotional opportunities. Other off-air promotional partners pay for the rights to feature \"Idol\" branding on their packaging, products and marketing programs. \"American Idol\" also partnered with Disney in its theme park attraction The American Idol Experience.\nAdvertising revenue.\n\"American Idol\" became the most expensive series on broadcast networks for advertisers starting the fourth season, and by the next season, it had broken the record in advertising rate for a regularly scheduled prime-time network series, selling over $700,000 for a 30-seconds slot, and reaching up to $1.3\u00a0million for the finale. Its ad prices reached a peak in the seventh season at $737,000. Estimated revenue more than doubled from $404\u00a0million in the third season to $870\u00a0million in the sixth season. While that declined from the eighth season onwards, it still earned significantly more than its nearest competitor, with advertising revenue topping $800\u00a0million annually the next few seasons. However, the sharp drop in ratings in the eleventh season also resulted in a sharp drop in advertising rate for the twelfth season, and the show lost its leading position as the costliest show for advertisers. By 2014, ad revenue from had fallen to $427 million where a 30-second spot went for less than $300,000. For the relaunched \"Idol\" on ABC, it has been reported that a 30-second spot may cost between $120,000 and $160,000.\nMedia sponsorship.\nFord Motor Company and Coca-Cola were two of the first sponsors of \"American Idol\" in its first season. The sponsorship deal cost around $10\u00a0million in the first season, rising to $35\u00a0million by the seventh season, and between $50 and $60 million in the tenth season. The third major sponsor AT&T Wireless joined in the second season but ended after the twelfth season, and Coca-Cola officially ended its sponsorship after the thirteenth season amidst the declining ratings of \"Idol\" in the mid-2010s. iTunes sponsored the show since the seventh season.\n\"American Idol\" prominent display of its sponsors' logo and products had been noted since the early seasons. By the sixth season, \"Idol\" showed 4,349 product placements according to Nielsen Media Research. The branded entertainment integration proved beneficial to its advertisers \u2013 promotion of AT&T text-messaging as a means to vote successfully introduced the technology into the wider culture, and Coca-Cola has seen its equity increased during the show.\nCoca-Cola's archrival PepsiCo declined to sponsor \"American Idol\" at the show's start. What the \"Los Angeles Times\" later called \"missing one of the biggest marketing opportunities in a generation\" contributed to Pepsi losing market share, by 2010 falling to third place from second in the United States. PepsiCo sponsored the American version of Cowell's \"The X Factor\" in hopes of not repeating its \"Idol\" mistake until its cancellation.\nFor the revived series on ABC, Macy's and Johnson & Johnson's Zyrtec signed on as the major sponsors of the show.\nAmerican Idol tour.\nThe top ten (eleven in the tenth season, five in the fourteenth season, and seven in the sixteenth season) toured at the end of every season except for the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons. In the twelfth season tour a semi-finalist who won a sing-off was also added to the tour. Kellogg's Pop-Tarts was the sponsor for the first seven seasons, and Guitar Hero was added for the seventh season tour. M&M's Pretzel Chocolate Candies was a sponsor of the ninth season tour. The fifth season tour was the most successful tour with gross of over $35\u00a0million. However no concert tour was organized in the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons, the only seasons not to have an associated tour. The sixteenth season tour featured the band In Real Life as an opener on select dates.\n\"Idol Gives Back\".\n\"Idol Gives Back\" was a special charity event started in season six featuring performances by celebrities and various fund-raising initiatives. This event was also held in seasons seven and nine and has raised nearly $185\u00a0million in total.\nMusic releases.\n\"American Idol\" has traditionally released studio recordings of contestants' performances as well as the winner's coronation single for sale. For the first five seasons, the recordings were released as a compilation album at the end of the season. All five of these albums reached the top ten in Billboard 200 which made \"American Idol\" the most successful soundtrack franchise of any motion picture or television program. Starting late in the fifth season, individual performances were released during the season as digital downloads, initially from the \"American Idol\" official website only. In the seventh season the live performances and studio recordings were made available during the season from iTunes when it joined as a sponsor. In the tenth season the weekly studio recordings were also released as compilation digital album straight after performance night.\n19 Recordings, a recording label owned by 19 Entertainment, currently hold the rights to phonographic material recorded by all the contestants. 19 Recordings originally partnered with Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) to promote and distribute the recordings through its labels RCA Records, Arista Records, J Records, and Jive Records. From 2005\u20132007, BMG partnered with Sony Music Entertainment to form a joint venture known as Sony BMG Music Entertainment. From 2008 to 2010, following their acquisition of BMG, Sony Music handled the distribution of \"American Idol\"'s music. In 2010, UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records replaced Sony as the music label for \"American Idol\".\nTie-ins.\n\"American Idol\" video games\nTheme park attraction.\nOn February 14, 2009, The Walt Disney Company debuted \"The American Idol Experience\" at its Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. In this live production, co-produced by 19 Entertainment, park guests chose from a list of songs and auditioned privately for Disney cast members. Those selected then performed on a stage in a 1000-seat theater replicating the \"Idol\" set. Three judges, whose mannerisms and style mimicked those of the real \"Idol\" judges, critiqued the performances. Audience members then voted for their favorite performer. There were several preliminary-round shows during the day that culminated in a \"finals\" show in the evening where one of the winners of the previous rounds that day was selected as the overall winner. The winner of the finals show received a \"Dream Ticket\" that granted them front-of-the-line privileges at any future \"American Idol\" audition. The attraction closed on August 30, 2014.\nOther broadcasts.\n\"American Idol\" is broadcast to over 100 nations worldwide. In most nations these are not live broadcasts and may be tape delayed by several days or weeks, except for other season finales that are aired live in several countries simulcast with the U.S. broadcast on Fox (2002\u20132016) and ABC (since 2018). In Canada, the first thirteen seasons of American Idol were aired live countrywide by CTV and/or CTV Two, in simulcast with Fox. CTV dropped \"Idol\" after its thirteenth season and in August 2014, Yes TV announced that it had picked up Canadian rights to \"American Idol\" beginning in its 2015 season. In 2017, it was announced the show would return to CTV Two for its sixteenth season. Since season nineteen, the show started airing on Citytv. In Slovakia, American Idol was broadcast on Jednotka.\nIn Latin America, the show is broadcast and subtitled by Sony Entertainment Television. In Southeast Asia, it is broadcast by Sony Channel every Monday and Tuesday nine or ten hours after since its revival. In Philippines, it is aired every Thursday and Friday nine or ten hours after its United States telecast; from 2004 to 2007 on ABC; 2008\u201311 on QTV, then GMA News TV; 2012\u201316, 2018\u201319 on ETC; and since 2024 on TV5. In Indonesia, it was aired on RCTI in the 2002 to 2003 season with the Indonesian subtitles, before Indonesian Idol was held in the 2004, aired after each episode ended, and in the 2011 to 2013 season it was broadcast by B-Channel (now RTV). In Australia, it aired a few hours after the U.S. telecast. It was aired on Network Ten from 2002 to 2008 and then again in 2013. Between 2008 and 2012 it aired on Fox8 and the thirteenth and fourteenth seasons (2014\u201315) it aired on digital channel, Eleven, a sister channel to Network Ten. Its final season (2016) aired on Fox8 hours after the original U.S. broadcast. The show enjoyed a lot of popularity in Australia throughout the 2000s before declining in the ratings. In the United Kingdom, episodes were aired one day after the U.S. broadcast on digital channel ITV2. In the twelfth season, the episodes aired on 5*. It was also aired in Ireland on TV3 two days after the telecast. In Brazil and Israel, the show airs two days after its original broadcast, and broadcast live during the season finale. In the instances where the airing is delayed, the shows may sometimes be combined into one episode to summarize the results. In Italy, the twelfth season was broadcast by La3. In Singapore, The show was broadcast on Mediacorp Channel 5 for the ninth and tenth seasons.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["1071662", "191890", "28208", "17356462"], "permutation_1": ["28208", "191890", "17356462", "1071662"], "permutation_2": ["17356462", "191890", "1071662", "28208"], "permutation_3": ["191890", "28208", "1071662", "17356462"]}
{"id": "4hop3__385156_9522_28235_22384", "docs_added": {"11542": "Federalism\nPolitical concept\nFederalism is a mode of government that combines a general level of government (a central or federal government) with a regional level of sub-unit governments (e.g., provinces, states, cantons, territories, etc.), while dividing the powers of governing between the two levels of governments. Two illustrative examples of federated countries\u2014one of the world's oldest federations, and one recently organized\u2014are Australia and the Federated States of Micronesia, (Micronesia).\nJohannes Althusius (1563-1638), is considered the father of modern federalism, along with Montesquieu. In 1603, Althusius first described the bases of this political philosophy in his \"Politica Methodice Digesta, Atque Exemplis Sacris et Profanis Illustrata\". By 1748, in his treatise \"The Spirit of Law\", Montesquieu (1689-1755) observed various examples of federalist governments: in corporate societies, in the \"polis\" bringing villages together, and in cities themselves forming confederations. In the modern era Federalism was first adopted by a union of the states of the Old Swiss Confederacy as of the mid-14th century.\nFederalism differs from confederalism, where the \"central government is created subordinate\" to the regional states\u2014and is notable for its \"regional-separation\" of governing powers, (e.g., the Articles of Confederation as the general level of government of the original Thirteen Colonies; and, later in the United States, the Confederate States of America). And federalism also differs from the unitary state, where the \"regional level is subordinate\" to the central/federal government, even after a devolution of powers\u2014and is notable for \"regional-integration of governing powers\", (e.g., the United Kingdom). \nFederalism is at the midpoint of variations on the pathway (or spectrum) of \"regional-integration or regional-separation\". It is bordered on the increasing-separation side by confederalism, and on the increasing-integration side by devolution within a unitary state; (see \"pathway\" graphic).\nSome characterize the European Union as a pioneering example of federalism in a multi-state setting\u2014with the concept termed a \"federal union of states\", as situated on the \"pathway\" (sprectrum) of \"regional-integration or regional-separation\".\nExamples of federalism today, i.e., the federation of a central/federal government with regional sub-unit governments, include: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Canada, Ethiopia, Germany, India, Iraq, Malaysia, Mexico, Micronesia, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, and Venezuela. \nOverview.\nEtymology.\nThe\u00a0terms\u00a0\"federalism\"\u00a0and\u00a0\"confederalism\" share a root in the Latin word \"foedus\", meaning \"treaty, pact or covenant\". Until the late eighteenth century their two early meanings were essentially the same: a simple league among sovereign states, based on a treaty; (thus, initially the two were synonyms). It was in this sense that James Madison referred to the new US Constitution as \"neither a national nor a federal Constitution, but a composition of both\"\u2014i.e., constituting neither a single large unitary state nor a league/confederation among several small states, but a hybrid of the two forms\u2014according to Madison; \"The Federalist No. 39\". \nNotably, in the course of the nineteenth century in the United States, the meaning of federalism shifted, now referring uniquely to the novel compound-political form established at the Philadelphia Constitution Convention\u2014while the meaning of confederalism remained as a league of states.\nHistory.\nIn a narrow sense, federalism refers to the mode in which the body politic of a state is organized internally\u2014and this is the meaning most often used in modern times. Political scientists, however, use the term federalism in a much broader sense, referring instead to a \"multi-layer or pluralistic concept of social and political life.\"\nThe first forms of federalism took place in ancient times, in the form of alliances between city states. Some examples from the seventh to second century BC were the Archaic League, the Aetolic League, the Peloponnesian League, and the Delian League. An early ancestor of federalism was the Achaean League in Hellenistic Greece. Unlike the Greek city states of Classical Greece, each of which insisted on keeping its complete independence, changing conditions in the Hellenistic period drove city states to band together even at the cost of surrendering part of their sovereignty. Subsequent unions of states included the first and second Swiss Confederations (1291\u20131798 and 1815\u201348); the United Provinces of the Netherlands (1579\u20131795); the German Bund (1815\u201366); the first American union, known as the Confederation of the United States of America (1781\u201389); and the second American union, formed as the United States of America (1789-present).\nPolitical theory.\nModern federalism is a political system that (nominally) is based upon operating under democratic rules and institutions; and where governing powers are shared between a country's national and provincial/state governments. However, the term \"federalist\" comprises various political practices that differ in important details among the (so-called) federalist nations\u2014some of which are \"democratic in name only\" (e.g., modern Russia)\u2014leaving the terms \"federalist\", \"federalism\", \"federation\", etc., dependent on context. And, because the term \"federalization\" also proclaims distinctive political processes, its use also depends on context.\nTypically, political theory today discusses two main types of the federalization process:\nReasons for adoption.\nAccording to Daniel Ziblatt, there are four competing theoretical explanations for adopting a federal system:\nImmanuel Kant noted that \"the problem of setting up a state can be solved even by a nation of devils\"\u2014\"if\" they possess a constitution that pits opposing factions against each other with a durable system of binding checks and balances. Essentially, particular states may use federation as a mechanism (a safeguard) against the possibilities of rebellion or war\u2014or the rise of repressive government via a would-be dictator or a centralized oligarchy.\nProponents of federal systems have historically argued that the structures of checks-and-balances and power-sharing that are inherent in a federal system reduces threats\u2014both foreign and domestic. And federalism enables a state to be \"both large and diverse\", by mitigating the risk of a central government turning tyrannical.\nExamples.\nCountries around the world have implemented federal systems using variations of central and regional sovereignty for their governments. For convenience of studying these governments, they may be divided according to several categories, such as: \"minimalistic\" federations, which consist of only two sub-federal units (subunits); as compared to \"multi-regional\" federations, consisting of three or more regional governments (subunits). Or, based on their body polity type: emirate, provincial, state, republicanism or constitutional monarchy, democratic\u2014or \"democratic in-name-only\". And, federal systems may be differentiated between those whose \"entire\" territory is federated, vs. \"only part\" of their territory is federated. Some systems are national while others, like the European Union, are supra-national.\nTwo extremes of federalism are notable: 1) at one extreme, the strong federal state is almost completely unitary, with few powers reserved to local governments; 2) at the opposite extreme, the national government may be a federation in name-only, while actually operating as a confederation, (see \"pathway\" graphic re regional integration or regional separation). Federalism may encompass as few as two or three internal divisions, as is the case in Belgium or Bosnia and Herzegovina.\nIn Canada, federalism typically implies opposition to sovereignty movements\u2014most commonly the question of Quebec separatism. In 1999, the Government of Canada established the Forum of Federations as an international network for exchange of best practices among federal and federalizing countries. Headquartered in Ottawa, the Forum of Federations partner governments include Australia, Brazil, Ethiopia, Germany, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan and Switzerland.\nThe governments of Argentina, Australia, Brazil, India, and Mexico, among others, are organized along federalist principles.\nEurope vs. the United States.\nIn Europe, \"federalist\" is sometimes used to describe those who favor a common federal government, with distributed power at regional, national and supranational levels. The Union of European Federalists advocates for this development within the European Union, ultimately leading to the United States of Europe. Although there are medieval and early modern examples of European states which used confederal and federal systems, contemporary European federalism originated in post-war Europe; one of the more important initiatives was Winston Churchill's speech in Z\u00fcrich in 1946.\nIn the United States, federalism originally referred to belief in a stronger central government. When the U.S. Constitution was being drafted, the Federalist Party supported a stronger central government, while \"Anti-Federalists\" wanted a weaker central government. This is very different from the modern usage of \"federalism\" in Europe and the United States. The distinction stems from the fact that \"federalism\" is situated in the middle of the political spectrum between a confederacy and a unitary state. The U.S. Constitution was written as a replacement for the Articles of Confederation, under which the United States was a loose confederation with a weak central government.\nIn contrast, Europe has a greater history of unitary states than North America, thus European \"federalism\" argues for a weaker central government, relative to a unitary state. The modern American usage of the word is much closer to the European sense. As the power of the U.S. federal government has increased, some people have perceived a much more unitary state than they believe the Founding Fathers intended. Most people politically advocating \"federalism\" in the United States argue in favor of limiting the powers of the federal government, especially the judiciary (see Federalist Society, New Federalism).\nThe contemporary concept of federalism came about with the creation of an entirely new system of government that provided for democratic representation at two governing levels simultaneously, which was implemented in the US Constitution. In the United States implementation of federalism, a bicameral general government, consisting of a chamber of popular representation proportional to population (the House of Representatives), and a chamber of equal State-based representation consisting of two delegates per State (the Senate), was overlaid upon the pre-existing regional governments of the thirteen independent States. With each level of government allocated a defined sphere of powers, under a written constitution and the rule of law (that is, subject to the independent third-party arbitration of a supreme court in competence disputes), the two levels were thus brought into a coordinate relationship for the first time.\nIn 1946, Kenneth Wheare observed that the two levels of government in the US were \"co-equally supreme\". In this, he echoed the perspective of American founding father James Madison who saw the several States as forming \"distinct and independent portions of the supremacy\" in relation to the general government.\nIn anarchism.\nIn anarchism, federalism is a horizontalist and decentralized organizational doctrine which holds that society should be built from the bottom-up, from the periphery to the centre. Higher-order units are merely the direct expression of lower-order units delegating, combining and coordinating. Though there is no central government or administration, higher-order committees and councils, composed of delegates from federal constituencies, may convene under a popular, revocable mandate.\nEmbracing the principle of free and voluntary association as the basis of a federal society, constituent entities of an anarchist federation are ideally autonomous and self-determining, collaborating equally, freely and mutually within the federation through the values of solidarity and autonomy.\nUnlike a republican federation, federalism, in anarchy, is not simply a form of political division or devolution, but rather, federative principles apply to all aspects of society, including social relations and the economy. Consequently, anarchist federalism, promoting widespread, common ownership over the means of production, detests the centralized and unequal nature of capitalism, and the hierarchy of its companies and corporations: an anarchist federalist society would envisage widespread, federalized wealth distribution.\nComparing republican and anarchist federalism, James Guillaume states that Switzerland's federative cantonal system, despite its direct democracy, differs significantly from anarchist federalism: while Swiss federalism retains a state and provides only limited regional sovereignty, anarchist federalism as envisioned by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon is stateless, providing every autonomy with absolute sovereignty and distinct individuality. The Swiss constitution, in its support of indivisibility and nationhood and its view that its cantons are mere territorial divisions rather than sovereign constituencies, is incompatible with anarchist federalism and its principles of free association, decentralization and autonomy.\nAnarchist federalism is a rejection of the statism and nationalism present in modern federations, and instead provides an alternative system of federative organization founded on stateless individuality and autonomy. For anarchists, republican federalism is as oppressive as a centralized, unitary state, for all it is perceived to accomplish is delegate and transfer the perceived oppression of a state to local levels and jurisdictions.\nConstitutional structure.\nDivision of powers.\nIn a federation, the division of power between federal and regional governments is usually outlined in the constitution. Almost every country allows some degree of regional self-government, but in federations the right to self-government of the component states is constitutionally entrenched. Component states often also possess their own constitutions which they may amend as they see fit, although in the event of conflict the federal constitution usually takes precedence.\nIn almost all federations the central government enjoys the powers of foreign policy and national defense as exclusive federal powers. Were this not the case a federation would not be a single sovereign state, per the UN definition. Notably, the states of Germany retain the right to act on their own behalf at an international level, a condition originally granted in exchange for the Kingdom of Bavaria's agreement to join the German Empire in 1871. The constitutions of Germany and the United States provide that all powers not specifically granted to the federal government are retained by the states. The Constitution of some countries, like Canada and India, state that powers not explicitly granted to the provincial/state governments are retained by the federal government. Much like the US system, the Australian Constitution allocates to the Federal government (the Commonwealth of Australia) the power to make laws about certain specified matters which were considered too difficult for the States to manage, so that the States retain all other areas of responsibility. Under the division of powers of the European Union in the Lisbon Treaty, powers which are not either exclusively of or shared between the Union and the Member States as concurrent powers are retained by the constituent States.\nWhere every component state of a federation possesses the same powers, we are said to find 'symmetric federalism'. Asymmetric federalism exists where states are granted different powers, or some possess greater autonomy than others do. This is often done in recognition of the existence of a distinct culture in a particular region or regions. In Spain, the Basques and Catalans, as well as the Galicians, spearheaded a historic movement to have their national specificity recognized, crystallizing in the \"historical communities\" such as Navarre, Galicia, Catalonia, and the Basque Country. They have more powers than the later expanded arrangement for other Spanish regions, or the Spain of the autonomous communities (called also the \"coffee for everyone\" arrangement), partly to deal with their separate identity and to appease peripheral nationalist leanings, partly out of respect to specific rights they had held earlier in history. However, strictly speaking Spain is not a federation, but a system of asymmetric devolved government within a unitary state.\nIt is common that during the historical evolution of a federation there is a gradual movement of power from the component states to the centre, as the federal government acquires additional powers, sometimes to deal with unforeseen circumstances. The acquisition of new powers by a federal government may occur through formal constitutional amendment or simply through a broadening of the interpretation of a government's existing constitutional powers given by the courts.\nUsually, a federation is formed at two levels: the central government and the regions (states, provinces, territories), and little to nothing is said about second or third level administrative political entities. Brazil is an exception, because the 1988 Constitution included the municipalities as autonomous political entities making the federation tripartite, encompassing the Union, the States, and the municipalities. Each state is divided into municipalities (\"munic\u00edpios\") with their own legislative council (\"c\u00e2mara de vereadores\") and a mayor (\"prefeito\"), which are partly autonomous from both Federal and State Government. Each municipality has a \"little constitution\", called \"organic law\" (\"lei org\u00e2nica\"). Mexico is an intermediate case, in that municipalities are granted full-autonomy by the federal constitution and their existence as autonomous entities (\"municipio libre\", \"free municipality\") is established by the federal government and cannot be revoked by the states' constitutions. Moreover, the federal constitution determines which powers and competencies belong exclusively to the municipalities and not to the constituent states. However, municipalities do not have an elected legislative assembly.\nFederations often employ the paradox of being a union of states, while still being states (or having aspects of statehood) in themselves. For example, James Madison (author of the United States Constitution) wrote in Federalist Paper No. 39 that the US Constitution \"is in strictness neither a national nor a federal constitution; but a composition of both. In its foundation, it is federal, not national; in the sources from which the ordinary powers of the Government are drawn, it is partly federal, and partly national...\" This stems from the fact that states in the US maintain all sovereignty that they do not yield to the federation by their own consent. This was reaffirmed by the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which reserves all powers and rights that are not delegated to the Federal Government as left to the States and to the people.\nBicameralism.\nThe structures of most federal governments incorporate mechanisms to protect the rights of component states. One method, known as 'intrastate federalism', is to directly represent the governments of component states in federal political institutions. Where a federation has a bicameral legislature the upper house is often used to represent the component states while the lower house represents the people of the nation as a whole. A federal upper house may be based on a special scheme of apportionment, as is the case in the senates of the United States and Australia, where each state is represented by an equal number of senators irrespective of the size of its population.\nAlternatively, or in addition to this practice, the members of an upper house may be indirectly elected by the government or legislature of the component states, as occurred in the United States prior to 1913, or be actual members or delegates of the state governments, as, for example, is the case in the German Bundesrat and in the Council of the European Union. The lower house of a federal legislature is usually directly elected, with apportionment in proportion to population, although states may sometimes still be guaranteed a certain minimum number of seats.\nIntergovernmental relations.\nIn Canada, the provincial governments represent regional interests and negotiate directly with the central government. A First Ministers conference of the prime minister and the provincial premiers is the \"de facto\" highest political forum in the land, although it is not mentioned in the constitution.\nConstitutional change.\nFederations often have special procedures for amendment of the federal constitution. As well as reflecting the federal structure of the state this may guarantee that the self-governing status of the component states cannot be abolished without their consent. An amendment to the constitution of the United States must be ratified by three-quarters of either the state legislatures, or of constitutional conventions specially elected in each of the states, before it can come into effect. In referendums to amend the constitutions of Australia and Switzerland it is required that a proposal be endorsed not just by an overall majority of the electorate in the nation as a whole, but also by separate majorities in each of a majority of the states or cantons. In Australia, this latter requirement is known as a \"double majority\".\nSome federal constitutions also provide that certain constitutional amendments cannot occur without the unanimous consent of all states or of a particular state. The US constitution provides that no state may be deprived of equal representation in the senate without its consent. In Australia, if a proposed amendment will specifically impact one or more states, then it must be endorsed in the referendum held in each of those states. Any amendment to the Canadian constitution that would modify the role of the monarchy would require unanimous consent of the provinces. The German Basic Law provides that no amendment is admissible at all that would abolish the federal system.\nIn relation to conflict.\nIt has been argued that federalism and other forms of territorial autonomy are a useful way to structure political systems in order to prevent violence among different groups within countries because it allows certain groups to legislate at the subnational level. Some scholars have suggested, however, that federalism can divide countries and result in state collapse because it creates proto-states. Still others have shown that federalism is only divisive when it lacks mechanisms that encourage political parties to compete across regional boundaries.\nFederalism is sometimes viewed in the context of international negotiation as \"the best system for integrating diverse nations, ethnic groups, or combatant parties, all of whom may have cause to fear control by an overly powerful center.\" However, those skeptical of federal prescriptions sometimes believe that increased regional autonomy can lead to secession or dissolution of the nation. In Syria, for example, federalization proposals have failed in part because \"Syrians fear that these borders could turn out to be the same as the ones that the fighting parties have currently carved out.\"\nNotes and references.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "24723710": "Monte Rosa Hotel\nHotel, located in Zermatt\nThe Monte Rosa is a hotel, located in the main street of Zermatt. It was frequented by the members of the Alpine Club, including Edward Whymper who made the first ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865. The hotel is named after the highest mountain near Zermatt, Monte Rosa.", "981": "Alps\nMajor mountain range in central Europe\nThe Alps () are some of the highest and most extensive mountain ranges in Europe, stretching approximately across eight Alpine countries (from west to east): Monaco, France, Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria and Slovenia.\nThe Alpine arch extends from Nice on the western Mediterranean to Trieste on the Adriatic and Vienna at the beginning of the Pannonian Basin. The mountains were formed over tens of millions of years as the African and Eurasian tectonic plates collided. Extreme shortening caused by the event resulted in marine sedimentary rocks rising by thrusting and folding into high mountain peaks such as Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn.\nMont Blanc spans the French\u2013Italian border, and at is the highest mountain in the Alps. The Alpine region area contains 82 peaks higher than .\nThe altitude and size of the range affect the climate in Europe; in the mountains, precipitation levels vary greatly and climatic conditions consist of distinct zones. Wildlife such as ibex live in the higher peaks to elevations of , and plants such as edelweiss grow in rocky areas in lower elevations as well as in higher elevations.\nEvidence of human habitation in the Alps goes back to the Palaeolithic era. A mummified man (\"\u00d6tzi\"), determined to be 5,000 years old, was discovered on a glacier at the Austrian\u2013Italian border in 1991.\nBy the 6th century BC, the Celtic La T\u00e8ne culture was well established. Hannibal notably crossed the Alps with a herd of elephants, and the Romans had settlements in the region. In 1800, Napoleon crossed one of the mountain passes with an army of 40,000. The 18th and 19th centuries saw an influx of naturalists, writers, and artists, in particular, the Romanticists, followed by the golden age of alpinism as mountaineers began to ascend the peaks of the Alps.\nThe Alpine region has a strong cultural identity. Traditional practices such as farming, cheesemaking, and woodworking still thrive in Alpine villages. However, the tourist industry began to grow early in the 20th century and expanded significantly after World War II, eventually becoming the dominant industry by the end of the century.\nThe Winter Olympic Games have been hosted in the Swiss, French, Italian, Austrian and German Alps. As of 2010,[ [update]] the region is home to 14\u00a0million people and has 120\u00a0million annual visitors.\nEtymology and toponymy.\nThe English word \"Alps\" comes from the Latin \"Alpes\".\nThe Latin word \"Alpes\" could possibly come from the adjective \"albus\" (\"white\"), or could possibly come from the Greek goddess Alphito, whose name is related to \"alphita\", the \"white flour\"; \"alphos\", a dull white leprosy; and finally the Proto-Indo-European word *alb\u02b0\u00f3s. Similarly, the river god Alpheus is also supposed to derive from the Greek \"alphos\" and means whitish.\nIn his commentary on the \"Aeneid\" of Virgil, the late fourth-century grammarian Maurus Servius Honoratus says that all high mountains are called \"Alpes\" by Celts.\nAccording to the \"Oxford English Dictionary\", the Latin \"Alpes\" might derive from a pre-Indo-European word *\"alb\" \"hill\"; \"Albania\" is a related derivation. Albania, the name of the region known as the country of Albania, has been used as a name for several mountainous areas across Europe.\nIn Roman times, \"Albania\" was a name for the eastern Caucasus, while in the English languages \"Albania\" (or \"Albany\") was occasionally used as a name for Scotland, although it is more likely derived from the Latin word \"albus\", the colour white.\nIn modern languages the term \"alp\", \"alm\", \"albe\" or \"alpe\" refers to a grazing pastures in the alpine regions below the glaciers, not the peaks.\nAn \"alp\" refers to a high mountain pasture, typically near or above the tree line, where cows and other livestock are taken to be grazed during the summer months and where huts and hay barns can be found, sometimes constituting tiny hamlets. Therefore, the term \"the Alps\", as a reference to the mountains, is a misnomer. The term for the mountain peaks varies by nation and language: words such as \"Horn\", \"Kogel\", \"Kopf\", \"Gipfel\", \"Spitze\", \"Stock\", and \"Berg\" are used in German-speaking regions; \"Mont\", \"Pic\", \"T\u00eate\", \"Pointe\", \"Dent\", \"Roche\", and \"Aiguille\" in French-speaking regions; and \"Monte\", \"Picco\", \"Corno\", \"Punta\", \"Pizzo\", or \"Cima\" in Italian-speaking regions.\nGeography.\nThe Alps are a crescent shaped geographic feature of central Europe that ranges in an arc (curved line) from east to west and is in width. The mean height of the mountain peaks is . The range stretches from the Mediterranean Sea north above the Po basin, extending through France from Grenoble, and stretching eastward through mid and southern Switzerland. The range continues onward toward Vienna, Austria, and southeast to the Adriatic Sea and Slovenia.\nTo the south it dips into northern Italy and to the north extends to the southern border of Bavaria in Germany. In areas like Chiasso, Switzerland, and Allg\u00e4u, Bavaria, the demarcation between the mountain range and the flatlands are clear; in other places such as Geneva, the demarcation is less clear.\nThe Alps are found in the following countries: Austria (28.7% of the range's area), Italy (27.2%), France (21.4%), Switzerland (13.2%), Germany (5.8%), Slovenia (3.6%), Liechtenstein (0.08%) and Monaco (0.001%).\nThe highest portion of the range is divided by the glacial trough of the Rh\u00f4ne valley, from Mont Blanc to the Matterhorn and Monte Rosa on the southern side, and the Bernese Alps on the northern. The peaks in the easterly portion of the range, in Austria and Slovenia, are smaller than those in the central and western portions.\nThe variances in nomenclature in the region spanned by the Alps make classification of the mountains and subregions difficult, but a general classification is that of the Eastern Alps and Western Alps with the divide between the two occurring in eastern Switzerland according to geologist Stefan Schmid, near the Spl\u00fcgen Pass.\nThe highest peaks of the Western Alps and Eastern Alps, respectively, are Mont Blanc, at , and Piz Bernina, at . The second-highest major peaks are Monte Rosa, at , and Ortler, at , respectively.\nA series of lower mountain ranges run parallel to the main chain of the Alps, including the French Prealps in France and the Jura Mountains in Switzerland and France. The secondary chain of the Alps follows the watershed from the Mediterranean Sea to the Wienerwald, passing over many of the highest and most well-known peaks in the Alps. From the Colle di Cadibona to Col de Tende it runs westwards, before turning to the northwest and then, near the Colle della Maddalena, to the north. Upon reaching the Swiss border, the line of the main chain heads approximately east-northeast, a heading it follows until its end near Vienna.\nThe northeast end of the Alpine arc, directly on the Danube, which flows into the Black Sea, is the Leopoldsberg near Vienna. In contrast, the southeastern part of the Alps ends on the Adriatic Sea in the area around Trieste towards Duino and Barcola.\nPasses.\nThe Alps have been crossed for war and commerce, and by pilgrims, students, and tourists. Crossing routes by road, train, or foot are known as \"passes\", and usually consist of depressions in the mountains in which a valley leads from the plains and hilly pre-mountainous zones. Merchant traffic was supported by pack animals such as mules. In the late Middle Ages heavy carts and sleighs were in use on the alpine passes.\nIn the medieval period hospices were established by religious orders at the summits of many of the main passes. The most important passes are the Col de l'Iseran (the highest), the Col Agnel, the Brenner Pass, the Mont-Cenis, the Great St. Bernard Pass, the Col de Tende, the Gotthard Pass, the Semmering Pass, the Simplon Pass, and the Stelvio Pass.\nCrossing the Italian-Austrian border, the Brenner Pass separates the \u00d6tztal Alps and Zillertal Alps and has been in use as a trading route since the 14th century. The lowest of the Alpine passes at is the Semmering crossing from Lower Austria to Styria. It has been in continuous use since the 12th century when a hospice was built there. A railroad with a tunnel long was built along the route of the pass in the mid-19th century. With a summit of , the Great St Bernard Pass is one of the highest in the Alps, crossing the Italian-Swiss border east of the Pennine Alps along the flanks of Mont Blanc. The pass was used by Napoleon Bonaparte to cross 40,000 troops in 1800.\nThe Mont Cenis pass has been a major commercial and military road between Western Europe and Italy. The pass was crossed by many troops on their way to the Italian peninsula. From Constantine I, Pepin the Short and Charlemagne to Henry IV, Napol\u00e9on and more recently the German Gebirgsj\u00e4gers during World War II. \nIn the 18th century the principal passes of the Alps were modernized by engineers to speed up passenger and freight transport. The Mont Cenis pass has been supplanted by the Fr\u00e9jus Rail Tunnel opening in 1871, while the Fr\u00e9jus Road Tunnel opened 1980. Railway lines could not be built in the Alps without tunnels and bridges. Apart from the Mont Cenis railway tunnel the Semmering railway tunnel and the Gotthard railway tunnel were built between 1854 and 1882. By the early 19th century eight trans-alpine railway lines had been put into operation.\nThe Saint Gotthard Pass crosses from Central Switzerland to Ticino. In 1882 the Saint Gotthard Railway Tunnel was opened connecting Lucerne in Switzerland, with Milan in Italy. 98 years later followed Gotthard Road Tunnel ( long) connecting the A2 motorway in G\u00f6schenen on the north side with Airolo on the south side, exactly like the railway tunnel.\nOn 1 June 2016 the world's longest railway tunnel, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, was opened, which connects Erstfeld in canton of Uri with Bodio in canton of Ticino by two single tubes of .\nIt is the first tunnel that traverses the Alps on a flat route.\nFrom 11 December 2016, it has been part of the regular railway timetable and used hourly as standard ride between Basel/Lucerne/Zurich and Bellinzona/Lugano/Milan.\nThe highest pass in the alps is the Col de l'Iseran in Savoy (France) at , followed by the Stelvio Pass in northern Italy at ; the road was built in the 1820s.\nHighest mountains.\nThe Union Internationale des Associations d'Alpinisme (UIAA) has defined a list of 82 \"official\" Alpine summits that reach at least . The list includes not only mountains, but also subpeaks with little prominence that are considered important mountaineering objectives. Below are listed the 29 \"four-thousanders\" with at least of prominence.\nWhile Mont Blanc was first climbed in 1786 and the Jungfrau in 1811, most of the Alpine four-thousanders were climbed during the second half of the 19th century, notably Piz Bernina (1850), the Dom (1858), the Grand Combin (1859), the Weisshorn (1861) and the Barre des \u00c9crins (1864); the ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865 marked the end of the golden age of alpinism. Karl Blodig (1859\u20131956) was among the first to successfully climb all the major 4,000\u00a0m peaks. He completed his series of ascents in 1911. Many of the big Alpine three-thousanders were climbed in the early 19th century, notably the Grossglockner (1800) and the Ortler (1804), although some of them were climbed only much later, such at Mont Pelvoux (1848), Monte Viso (1861) and La Meije (1877).\nThe first British Mont Blanc ascent by a man was in 1788; the first ascent by a woman was in 1808. By the mid-1850s Swiss mountaineers had ascended most of the peaks and were eagerly sought as mountain guides. Edward Whymper reached the top of the Matterhorn in 1865 (after seven attempts), and in 1938 the last of the six great north faces of the Alps was climbed with the first ascent of the Eiger \"Nordwand\" (north face of the Eiger).\nGeology and orogeny.\nImportant geological concepts were established as naturalists began studying the rock formations of the Alps in the 18th century. In the mid-19th century, the now-defunct idea of geosynclines was used to explain the presence of \"folded\" mountain chains. This theory was replaced in the mid-20th century by the theory of plate tectonics.\nThe formation of the Alps (the Alpine orogeny) was an episodic process that began about 300\u00a0million years ago. In the Paleozoic Era the Pangaean supercontinent consisted of a single tectonic plate; it broke into separate plates during the Mesozoic Era and the Tethys sea developed between Laurasia and Gondwana during the Jurassic Period. The Tethys was later squeezed between colliding plates causing the formation of mountain ranges called the Alpide belt, from Gibraltar through the Himalayas to Indonesia\u2014a process that began at the end of the Mesozoic and continues into the present. The formation of the Alps was a segment of this orogenic process, caused by the collision between the African and the Eurasian plates that began in the late Cretaceous Period.\nUnder extreme compressive stresses and pressure, marine sedimentary rocks were uplifted, forming characteristic recumbent folds, and thrust faults. As the rising peaks underwent erosion, a layer of marine flysch sediments was deposited in the foreland basin, and the sediments became involved in younger folds as the orogeny progressed. Coarse sediments from the continual uplift and erosion were later deposited in foreland areas north of the Alps. These regions in Switzerland and Bavaria are well-developed, containing classic examples of flysch, which is sedimentary rock formed during mountain building.\nThe Alpine orogeny occurred in ongoing cycles through to the Paleogene causing differences in folded structures, with a late-stage orogeny causing the development of the Jura Mountains. A series of tectonic events in the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods caused different paleogeographic regions. The Alps are subdivided by different lithology (rock composition) and nappe structures according to the orogenic events that affected them. The geological subdivision differentiates the Western, Eastern Alps, and Southern Alps: the Helveticum in the north, the Penninicum and Austroalpine system in the centre and, south of the Periadriatic Seam, the Southern Alpine system.\nAccording to geologist Stefan Schmid, because the Western Alps underwent a metamorphic event in the Cenozoic Era while the Austroalpine peaks underwent an event in the Cretaceous Period, the two areas show distinct differences in nappe formations. Flysch deposits in the Southern Alps of Lombardy probably occurred in the Cretaceous or later.\nPeaks in France, Italy and Switzerland lie in the \"Houilli\u00e8re zone\", which consists of basement with sediments from the Mesozoic Era. High \"massifs\" with external sedimentary cover are more common in the Western Alps and were affected by Neogene Period thin-skinned thrusting whereas the Eastern Alps have comparatively few high peaked massifs. Similarly the peaks in eastern Switzerland extending to western Austria (Helvetic nappes) consist of thin-skinned sedimentary folding that detached from former basement rock.\nIn simple terms, the structure of the Alps consists of layers of rock of European, African, and oceanic (Tethyan) origin. The bottom nappe structure is of continental European origin, above which are stacked marine sediment nappes, topped off by nappes derived from the African plate. The Matterhorn is an example of the ongoing orogeny and shows evidence of great folding. The tip of the mountain consists of gneisses from the African plate; the base of the peak, below the glaciated area, consists of European basement rock. The sequence of Tethyan marine sediments and their oceanic basement is sandwiched between rock derived from the African and European plates.\nThe core regions of the Alpine orogenic belt have been folded and fractured in such a manner that erosion produced the characteristic steep vertical peaks of the Swiss Alps that rise seemingly straight out of the foreland areas. Peaks such as Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn, and high peaks in the Pennine Alps, the Brian\u00e7onnais, and Hohe Tauern consist of layers of rock from the various orogenies including exposures of basement rock.\nDue to the ever-present geologic instability, earthquakes continue in the Alps to this day. Typically, the largest earthquakes in the alps have been between magnitude 6 and 7 on the Richter scale. Geodetic measurements show ongoing topographic uplift at rates of up to about 2.5\u00a0mm per year in the North, Western and Central Alps, and at ~1\u00a0mm per year in the Eastern and South-Western Alps. The underlying mechanisms that jointly drive the present-day uplift pattern are the isostatic rebound due to the melting of the last glacial maximum ice-cap or long-term erosion, detachment of the Western Alpine subducting slab, mantle convection as well as ongoing horizontal convergence between Africa and Europe, but their relative contributions to the uplift of the Alps are difficult to quantify and likely to vary significantly in space and time.\nMinerals.\nThe Alps are a source of minerals that have been mined for thousands of years. In the 8th to 6th centuries, BC during the Hallstatt culture, Celtic tribes mined copper; later the Romans mined gold for coins in the Bad Gastein area. Erzberg in Styria furnishes high-quality iron ore for the steel industry. Crystals, such as cinnabar, amethyst, and quartz, are found throughout much of the Alpine region. The cinnabar deposits in Slovenia are a notable source of cinnabar pigments.\nAlpine crystals have been studied and collected for hundreds of years and began to be classified in the 18th century. Leonhard Euler studied the shapes of crystals, and by the 19th-century crystal hunting was common in Alpine regions. David Friedrich Wiser amassed a collection of 8000 crystals that he studied and documented. In the 20th century Robert Parker wrote a well-known work about the rock crystals of the Swiss Alps; at the same period a commission was established to control and standardize the naming of Alpine minerals.\nGlaciers.\nIn the Miocene Epoch the mountains underwent severe erosion because of glaciation, which was noted in the mid-19th century by naturalist Louis Agassiz who presented a paper proclaiming the Alps were covered in ice at various intervals\u2014a theory he formed when studying rocks near his Neuch\u00e2tel home which he believed originated to the west in the Bernese Oberland. Because of his work he came to be known as the \"father of the ice-age concept\" although other naturalists before him put forth similar ideas.\nAgassiz studied glacier movement in the 1840s at the Unteraar Glacier where he found the glacier moved per year, more rapidly in the middle than at the edges. His work was continued by other scientists and now a permanent laboratory exists inside a glacier under the Jungfraujoch, devoted exclusively to the study of Alpine glaciers.\nGlaciers pick up rocks and sediment with them as they flow. This causes erosion and the formation of valleys over time. The Inn valley is an example of a valley carved by glaciers during the ice ages with a typical terraced structure caused by erosion. Eroded rocks from the most recent ice age lie at the bottom of the valley while the top of the valley consists of erosion from earlier ice ages. Glacial valleys have characteristically steep walls (reliefs); valleys with lower reliefs and talus slopes are remnants of glacial troughs or previously infilled valleys. Moraines, piles of rock picked up during the movement of the glacier, accumulate at edges, centre, and the terminus of glaciers.\nAlpine glaciers can be straight rivers of ice, long sweeping rivers, spread in a fan-like shape (Piedmont glaciers), and curtains of ice that hang from vertical slopes of the mountain peaks. The stress of the movement causes the ice to break and crack loudly, perhaps explaining why the mountains were believed to be home to dragons in the medieval period. The cracking creates unpredictable and dangerous crevasses, often invisible under new snowfall, which causes the greatest danger to mountaineers.\nGlaciers end in ice caves (the Rh\u00f4ne Glacier), by trailing into a lake or river, or by shedding snowmelt on a meadow. Sometimes a piece of glacier will detach or break resulting in flooding, property damage, and loss of life.\nHigh levels of precipitation cause the glaciers to descend to permafrost levels in some areas whereas in other, more arid regions, glaciers remain above about the level. The of the Alps covered by glaciers in 1876 had shrunk to by 1973, resulting in decreased river run-off levels. Forty percent of the glaciation in Austria has disappeared since 1850, and 30% of that in Switzerland.\nAlthough the Alpine topography shows marked glacial morphologies, the mechanisms by which glacial reshaping occurs are unclear. Numerical modeling suggests that glacial erosion propagates from low elevations to high elevations leading to an early increase of local relief followed by lowering of the mean orogen elevation.\nRivers and lakes.\nThe Alps provide lowland Europe with drinking water, irrigation, and hydroelectric power. Although the area is only about 11% of the surface area of Europe, the Alps provide up to 90% of water to lowland Europe, particularly to arid areas and during the summer months. Cities such as Milan depend on 80% of water from Alpine runoff. Water from the rivers is used in at least 550 hydroelectricity power plants, considering only those producing at least 10MW of electricity.\nMajor European rivers flow from the Alps, such as the Rhine, the Rh\u00f4ne, the Inn, and the Po, all of which have headwaters in the Alps and flow into neighbouring countries, finally emptying into the North Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Adriatic Sea and the Black Sea. Other rivers such as the Danube have major tributaries flowing into them that originate in the Alps.\nThe Rh\u00f4ne is second to the Nile as a freshwater source to the Mediterranean Sea; the river begins as glacial meltwater, flows into Lake Geneva, and from there to France where one of its uses is to cool nuclear power plants. The Rhine originates in a area in Switzerland and represents almost 60% of water exported from the country. Tributary valleys, some of which are complicated, channel water to the main valleys which can experience flooding during the snowmelt season when rapid runoff causes debris torrents and swollen rivers.\nThe rivers form lakes, such as Lake Geneva, a crescent-shaped lake crossing the Swiss border with Lausanne on the Swiss side and the town of Evian-les-Bains on the French side. In Germany, the medieval St. Bartholomew's chapel was built on the south side of the K\u00f6nigssee, accessible only by boat or by climbing over the abutting peaks.\nAdditionally, the Alps have led to the creation of large lakes in Italy. For instance, the Sarca, the primary inflow of Lake Garda, originates in the Italian Alps. The Italian Lakes are a popular tourist destination since the Roman Era for their mild climate.\nScientists have been studying the impact of climate change and water use. For example, each year more water is diverted from rivers for snowmaking in the ski resorts, the effect of which is yet unknown. Furthermore, the decrease of glaciated areas combined with a succession of winters with lower-than-expected precipitation may have a future impact on the rivers in the Alps as well as an effect on the water availability to the lowlands.\nClimate.\nThe Alps are a classic example of what happens when a temperate area at lower altitude gives way to higher-elevation terrain. Elevations around the world that have cold climates similar to those of the polar regions have been called Alpine. A rise from sea level into the upper regions of the atmosphere causes the temperature to decrease (see adiabatic lapse rate). The effect of mountain chains on prevailing winds is to carry warm air belonging to the lower region into an upper zone, where it expands in volume at the cost of a proportionate loss of temperature, often accompanied by precipitation in the form of snow or rain. The height of the Alps is sufficient to divide the weather patterns in Europe into a wet north and dry south because moisture is sucked from the air as it flows over the high peaks.\nThe severe weather in the Alps has been studied since the 18th century; particularly the weather patterns such as the seasonal foehn wind. Numerous weather stations were placed in the mountains early in the early 20th century, providing continuous data for climatologists. Some of the valleys are quite arid such as the Aosta Valley in Italy, the Maurienne in France, the Valais in Switzerland, and northern Tyrol.\nThe areas that are not arid and receive high precipitation experience periodic flooding from rapid snowmelt and runoff. The mean precipitation in the Alps ranges from a low of per year to per year, with the higher levels occurring at high altitudes. At altitudes between , snowfall begins in November and accumulates through to April or May when the melt begins. Snow lines vary from , above which the snow is permanent and the temperatures hover around the freezing point even during July and August. High-water levels in streams and rivers peak in June and July when the snow is still melting at the higher altitudes.\nThe Alps are split into five climatic zones, each with different vegetation. The climate, plant life, and animal life vary among the different sections or zones of the mountains. The lowest zone is the colline zone, which exists between , depending on the location. The montane zone extends from , followed by the sub-Alpine zone from . The Alpine zone, extending from tree line to the snow line, is followed by the glacial zone, which covers the glaciated areas of the mountain. Climatic conditions show variances within the same zones; for example, weather conditions at the head of a mountain valley, extending directly from the peaks, are colder and more severe than those at the mouth of a valley which tend to be less severe and receive less snowfall.\nVarious models of climate change have been projected into the 22nd century for the Alps, with an expectation that a trend toward increased temperatures will have an effect on snowfall, snowpack, glaciation, and river runoff. Significant changes, of both natural and anthropogenic origins, have already been diagnosed from observations, including a 5.6% reduction per decade in snow cover duration over the last 50\u2009years, which also highlights climate change adaptation needs due to impacts on the climate and regional socio-economic activities.<ref name=\"10.1038/s41558-022-01575-3\"></ref>\nEcology.\nFlora.\nThirteen thousand species of plants have been identified in the Alpine regions. Alpine plants are grouped by habitat and soil type which can be limestone or non-calcareous. The habitats range from meadows, bogs, and woodland (deciduous and coniferous) areas to soil-less scree and moraines, and rock faces and ridges. A natural vegetation limit with altitude is given by the presence of the chief deciduous trees\u2014oak, beech, ash and sycamore maple. These do not reach the same elevation, nor are they often found growing together, but their upper limit corresponds accurately enough to the change from a temperate to a colder climate that is further proved by a change in the presence of wild herbaceous vegetation. This limit usually lies about above the sea on the north side of the Alps, but on the southern slopes it often rises to , sometimes even to .\nAbove the forestry, there is often a band of dwarf pine trees (\"Pinus mugo\"), which is in turn superseded by \"Alpenrosen\", dwarf shrubs, typically \"Rhododendron ferrugineum\" (on acid soils) or \"Rhododendron hirsutum\" (on alkaline soils). Although Alpenrose prefers acidic soil, the plants are found throughout the region. Above the tree line is the area defined as \"alpine\" where in the alpine meadow plants are found that have adapted well to harsh conditions of cold temperatures, aridity, and high altitudes. The alpine area fluctuates greatly because of regional fluctuations in tree lines.\nAlpine plants such as the Alpine gentian grow in abundance in areas such as the meadows above the Lauterbrunnental. Gentians are named after the Illyrian king Gentius, and 40 species of the early-spring blooming flower grow in the Alps, in a range of . Writing about the gentians in Switzerland D. H. Lawrence described them as \"darkening the day-time, torch-like with the smoking blueness of Pluto's gloom.\" Gentians tend to \"appear\" repeatedly as the spring blooming takes place at progressively later dates, moving from the lower altitude to the higher altitude meadows where the snow melts much later than in the valleys. On the highest rocky ledges, the spring flowers bloom in the summer.\nAt these higher altitudes, the plants tend to form isolated cushions. In the Alps, several species of flowering plants have been recorded above , including \"Ranunculus glacialis\", \"Androsace alpina\" and \"Saxifraga biflora\". \"Eritrichium nanum\", commonly known as the King of the Alps, is the most elusive of the alpine flowers, growing on rocky ridges at . Perhaps the best known of the alpine plants is Edelweiss which grows in rocky areas and can be found at altitudes as low as and as high as . The plants that grow at the highest altitudes have adapted to conditions by specialization such as growing in rock screes that give protection from winds.\nThe extreme and stressful climatic conditions give way to the growth of plant species with secondary metabolites important for medicinal purposes. \"Origanum vulgare\", \"Prunella vulgaris\", \"Solanum nigrum\", and \"Urtica dioica\" are some of the more useful medicinal species found in the Alps.\nHuman interference has nearly exterminated the trees in many areas, and, except for the beech forests of the Austrian Alps, forests of deciduous trees are rarely found after the extreme deforestation between the 17th and 19th centuries. The vegetation has changed since the second half of the 20th century, as the high alpine meadows cease to be harvested for hay or used for grazing which eventually might result in a regrowth of the forest. In some areas, the modern practice of building ski runs by mechanical means has destroyed the underlying tundra from which the plant life cannot recover during the non-skiing months, whereas areas that still practice a natural \"piste\" type of ski slope building preserve the fragile underlayers.\nFauna.\nThe Alps are a habitat for 30,000 species of wildlife, ranging from the tiniest snow fleas to brown bears, many of which have made adaptations to the harsh cold conditions and high altitudes to the point that some only survive in specific micro-climates either directly above or below the snow line.\nThe largest mammal to live in the highest altitudes are the alpine ibex, which have been sighted as high as . The ibex live in caves and descend to eat the succulent alpine grasses. Classified as antelopes, chamois are smaller than ibex and found throughout the Alps, living above the tree line and are common in the entire alpine range. Areas of the eastern Alps are still home to brown bears. In Switzerland the canton of Bern was named for the bears but the last bear is recorded as having been killed in 1792 above Kleine Scheidegg by three hunters from Grindelwald.\nMany rodents such as voles live underground. Marmots live almost exclusively above the tree line as high as . They hibernate in large groups to provide warmth, and can be found in all areas of the Alps, in large colonies they build beneath the alpine pastures. Golden eagles and bearded vultures are the largest birds to be found in the Alps; they nest high on rocky ledges and can be found at altitudes of . The most common bird is the alpine chough which can be found scavenging at climber's huts or the Jungfraujoch, a high-altitude tourist destination.\nReptiles such as adders and vipers live up to the snow line; because they cannot bear the cold temperatures they hibernate underground and soak up the warmth on rocky ledges. The high-altitude Alpine salamanders have adapted to living above the snow line by giving birth to fully developed young rather than laying eggs. Brown trout can be found in the streams up to the snow line. Molluscs such as the wood snail live up the snow line. Popularly gathered as food, the snails are now protected.\nSeveral species of moths live in the Alps, some of which are believed to have evolved in the same habitat up to 120\u00a0million years ago, long before the Alps were created. Blue butterflies can commonly be seen drinking from the snowmelt; some species of blues fly as high as . The butterflies tend to be large, such as those from the swallowtail \"Parnassius\" family, with a habitat that ranges to . Twelve species of beetles have habitats up to the snow line; the most beautiful and formerly collected for its colours but now protected is \"Rosalia alpina\". Spiders, such as the large wolf spider, live above the snow line and can be seen as high as . Scorpions can be found in the Italian Alps.\nSome of the species of moths and insects show evidence of having been indigenous to the area from as long ago as the Alpine orogeny. In \u00c9mosson in Valais, Switzerland, dinosaur tracks were found in the 1970s, dating probably from the Triassic Period.\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nWhen the ice melted after the W\u00fcrm glaciation, Paleolithic settlements were established along the lake shores and in cave systems. Evidence of human habitation has been found in caves near the Vercors Cave System, close to Grenoble and Echirolles. In Austria, the Mondsee lake shows evidence of houses built on piles. Standing stones have been found in the Alpine areas of France and Italy. About 200,000 drawings and etchings have been documented, and are known as the Rock Drawings in Valcamonica.\nA mummy of a Neolithic human, known as \u00d6tzi, was discovered on the Similaun. His clothing lets modern people assume that he was an alpine farmer, while the location and manner of his death suggests that \u00d6tzi was traveling. Analysis of the mitochondrial DNA of \u00d6tzi, has shown that he belongs to the K1 subclade. His remains and personal belongings are on exhibit at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, South Tyrol, Italy.\nFrom the 13th to the 6th century BC much of the Alps was settled by the Germanic peoples, Lombards, Alemanni, Bavarii, and Franks. Celt tribes settled in modern-day Switzerland between 1500 and 1000 BC. The Raeti lived in the eastern regions, while the west was occupied by the Helvetii and the Allobroges settled in the Rh\u00f4ne valley and in Savoy. The Ligures and Adriatic Veneti lived in Northwest Italy and Triveneto respectively. The Celts mined salt in areas such as Salzburg, where evidence was found of the Hallstatt culture. By the 6th century BC the La T\u00e8ne culture was well established in the region, and became known for high quality Celtic art.\nBetween 430 and 400 BC prolonged warfare in the Alps resulted in the devastation of agricultural land and human settlements, ultimately triggering the enslavement of men, women, and children, goods had to be imported as a result. The Etruscan civilization responded to raids by the Massalia and acquired absolute control over the Alpine trade routes. Aggressors in modern-day Italy were dealt with and an alliance was formed with the Celts. The grip of the Etruscan settlements broke down, as the Roman political system expanded, so as to take control over Alpine trade routes that connected human settlements in the Alps with settlements in the Mediterranean.\nDuring the Second Punic War in 218 BC, the Carthage general Hannibal initiated one of the most celebrated achievements of any military force in ancient warfare, recorded as Hannibal crossing the Alps. The Roman people built roads along the Alpine mountain passes, which continued to be used through the medieval period. Roman road markers can still be found on the Alpine mountain passes.\nDuring the Gallic Wars in 58 BC Julius Caesar defeated the Helvetii. The Rhaetian continued to resist but their territory was eventually conquered when the Romans crossed the Danube valley and defeated the Brigantes. The Romans built settlements in the Alps. In towns such as Aosta, Martigny, Lausanne, and Partenkirchen remains of villas, arenas, and temples have been discovered.\nChristianity, feudalism, and Napoleonic wars.\nChristianity was established in the Alps by the Roman people. Monasteries and churches were constructed, even at high Alpine altitudes. The Franks expanded their Carolingian Empire, while the Baiuvarii introduced feudalism in the eastern Alps. The construction of castles in the Alps supported the growing number of dukedoms and kingdoms. Castello del Buonconsiglio in Trento, still has intricate frescoes, and excellent examples of Gothic art. The Ch\u00e2teau de Chillon is preserved as an example of medieval architecture. There are several important alpine saints and one such one is Saint Maurice. Much of the medieval period was a time of power struggles between competing dynasties such as the House of Savoy, the Visconti of Milan, and the House of Habsburg.\nThe Great St Bernard Hospice, built in the 9th or 10th centuries, at the summit of the Great Saint Bernard Pass was a shelter for humans and destination for pilgrims. In 1291, to protect themselves from incursions by the House of Habsburg, four Alpine cantons drew up the Federal Charter of 1291, which is considered to be a declaration of independence from neighboring kingdoms. After a series of battles fought in the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, more cantons joined the confederacy and by the 16th century, Switzerland was established as a sovereign state.\nIn the Alps, the War of the Spanish Succession fallout resulted in a 1713 treaty, part of the Peace of Utrecht, which relocated the Western Alps border along the watersheds. Historically, the Alps were used to determine the borders of political and administrative gangs, but the Peace of Utrecht was the first significant body of treaty that considered geographical conditions. The Alps were carved up and borders were agreed, so that enclaves in the Alps could be eliminated.\nDuring the Napoleonic Wars in the late 18th century and early 19th century, Napoleon annexed territory formerly controlled by the House of Habsburg, and the House of Savoy. In 1798, the Helvetic Republic was established, two years later an army across the Great St Bernard Pass. In 1799 the Russian imperial military engaged the revolutionary French army in the Alps, this episode has been recorded as significant achievement in mountain warfare. In October 1799 the troops commanded by Alexander Suvorov were surrounded in the Alps by much larger French troops. The Russian troops broke out, mauled the French troops, and retreated through the Panix Pass.\nAfter the fall of Napoleon, many alpine countries developed heavy protections to prevent further invasion. Thus, Savoy built a series of fortifications to protect the major alpine passes, such as the col du Mont-Cenis, which was crossed by Charlemagne to obliterate the Lombards.\nIn the 19th century, the monasteries built in the Alps to shelter humans became tourist destinations. The Benedictines had built monasteries in Lucerne, and Oberammergau. The Cistercians built their temple at Lake Constance. Meanwhile, the Augustinians maintained abbeys in Savoy and one in Interlaken.\nExploration.\nRadiocarbon-dated charcoal placed around 50,000 years ago was found in the \"Drachloch\" (Dragon's Hole) cave above the village of Vattis in the canton of St. Gallen, proving that the high peaks were visited by prehistoric people. Seven bear skulls from the cave may have been buried by the same prehistoric people. The peaks, however, were mostly ignored except for a few notable examples, and long left to the exclusive attention of the people of the adjoining valleys. The mountain peaks were seen as terrifying, the abode of dragons and demons, to the point that people blindfolded themselves to cross the Alpine passes. The glaciers remained a mystery and many still believed the highest areas to be inhabited by dragons.\nCharles VII of France ordered his chamberlain to climb Mont Aiguille in 1356. The knight reached the summit of Rocciamelone where he left a bronze triptych of three crosses, a feat which he conducted with the use of ladders to traverse the ice. In 1492, Antoine de Ville climbed Mont Aiguille, without reaching the summit, an experience he described as \"horrifying and terrifying.\" Leonardo da Vinci was fascinated by variations of light in the higher altitudes, and climbed a mountain\u2014scholars are uncertain which one; some believe it may have been Monte Rosa. From his description of a \"blue like that of a gentian\" sky it is thought that he reached a significantly high altitude. In the 18th century four Chamonix men almost made the summit of Mont Blanc but were overcome by altitude sickness and snowblindness.\nConrad Gessner was the first naturalist to ascend the mountains in the 16th century, to study them, writing that in the mountains he found the \"theatre of the Lord\". By the 19th century more naturalists began to arrive to explore, study and conquer the high peaks. Two men who first explored the regions of ice and snow were Horace-B\u00e9n\u00e9dict de Saussure (1740\u20131799) in the Pennine Alps, and the Benedictine monk of Disentis Placidus a Spescha (1752\u20131833). Born in Geneva, Saussure was enamoured with the mountains from an early age; he left a law career to become a naturalist and spent many years trekking through the Bernese Oberland, the Savoy, the Piedmont and Valais, studying the glaciers and geology, as he became an early proponent of the theory of rock upheaval. Saussure, in 1787, was a member of the third ascent of Mont Blanc\u2014today the summits of all the peaks have been climbed.\nThe Romantics and Alpinists.\nAlbrecht von Haller's poem \"Die Alpen\", published in 1732 described the mountains as an area of mythical purity. Jean-Jacques Rousseau presented the Alps as a place of allure and beauty, in his novel \"Julie, or the New Heloise\", published in 1761. Later the first wave of Romanticism such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and J. M. W. Turner came to admire the Alpine scenery; Wordsworth visited the area in 1790, writing of his experiences in \"The Prelude\" (1799). Schiller later wrote the play \"William Tell\" (1804), which tells the story of the legendary Swiss marksman William Tell as part of the greater Swiss struggle for independence from the Habsburg Empire in the early 14th century. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Alpine countries began to see an influx of poets, artists, and musicians, as visitors came to experience the sublime effects of monumental nature.\nIn 1816, Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary Shelley visited Geneva and all three were inspired by the scenery in their writings. During these visits Shelley wrote the poem \"Mont Blanc\", Byron wrote \"The Prisoner of Chillon\" and the dramatic poem \"Manfred\", and Mary Shelley, who found the scenery overwhelming, conceived the idea for the novel \"Frankenstein\" in her villa on the shores of Lake Geneva amid a thunderstorm. When Coleridge travelled to Chamonix, he declaimed, in defiance of Shelley, who had signed himself \"Atheos\" in the guestbook of the Hotel de Londres near Montenvers, \"Who would be, who could be an atheist in this valley of wonders\".\nBy the mid-19th century scientists began to arrive en masse to study the geology and ecology of the region.\nFrom the beginning of the 19th century, the tourism and mountaineering development of the Alps began. In the early years of the \"golden age of alpinism\" initially scientific activities were mixed with sport, for example by the physicist John Tyndall, with the first ascent of the Matterhorn by Edward Whymper being the highlight. In the later years, the \"silver age of alpinism\", the focus was on mountain sports and climbing. The first president of the Alpine Club, John Ball, is considered the discoverer of the Dolomites, which for decades were the focus of climbers like Paul Grohmann, Michael Innerkofler and Angelo Dibona.\nThe Nazis.\nIn autumn 1932, Adolf Hitler commissioned the first of a series of refurbishments, which eventually turned a mountain cottage, later named Berghof, into a fortified citadel. This domestic, but representative, fortification had two small bedrooms, and a full bathroom, planned by the Munich architect and NSDAP member Josef Neumaier. Guests, such as Rudolf Hess, stayed over, sleeping in tents or over the garage.\nThe Alps, Adolf Hitler, and improbable powerful organizations have been subject to crime fiction. The Alps acted as a geographical barrier to Italy, and the Alps for centuries were permeated with established smuggling routes, known as \"green line\". After World War II, members of the Schutzstaffel that feared prosecution as war criminals, known in modern English only as \"SS\", disappeared into a crowd of refugees. Massive numbers of refugees entered Italy illegally, by navigating the Alps.\nUndocumented migrants.\nSmugglers of humans claim that crossing the Alps is less dangerous, or deadly, than traveling 355\u00a0km on water between Tripoli and Lampedusa with a tramp ship (\"carretta del mare\") or a dinghy. Undocumented migrants, visa overstayers, false tourists, asylum seekers, and other clandestine humans, lose their lives crossing the Alps. The exact number of smuggled humans who die a brutal death in the Alps can only be estimated.\nLargest Alpine cities.\nThe largest city within the Alps is the city of Grenoble in France. Other larger and important cities within the Alps with over 100,000 inhabitants are in Tyrol with Bolzano/Bozen (Italy), Trento (Italy) and Innsbruck (Austria). Larger cities outside the Alps are Milan, Verona, Turin (Italy), Munich (Germany), Graz, Vienna, Salzburg (Austria), Ljubljana, Maribor, Kranj (Slovenia), Zurich, Geneva (Switzerland), Nice and Lyon (France).\nCities with over 100,000 inhabitants in the Alps are:\nAlpine people and culture.\nThe population of the region is 14\u00a0million spread across eight countries. On the rim of the mountains, on the plateaus, and on the plains the economy consists of manufacturing and service jobs whereas in the higher altitudes and the mountains farming is still essential to the economy. Farming and forestry continue to be mainstays of Alpine culture, industries that provide for export to the cities and maintain the mountain ecology.\nThe Alpine regions are multicultural and linguistically diverse. Dialects are common and vary from valley to valley and region to region. In the Slavic Alps alone 19 dialects have been identified. Some of the Romance dialects spoken in the French, Swiss and Italian alps of Aosta Valley derive from Arpitan, while the southern part of the western range is related to Occitan; the German dialects derive from Germanic tribal languages. Romansh, spoken by two percent of the population in southeast Switzerland, is an ancient Rhaeto-Romanic language derived from Latin, remnants of ancient Celtic languages and perhaps Etruscan.\nMuch of the Alpine culture is unchanged since the medieval period when skills that guaranteed survival in the mountain valleys and the highest villages became mainstays, leading to strong traditions of carpentry, woodcarving, baking, pastry-making, and cheesemaking.\nFarming has been a traditional occupation for centuries, although it became less dominant in the 20th century with the advent of tourism. Grazing and pasture land are limited because of the steep and rocky topography of the Alps. In mid-June, cows are moved to the highest pastures close to the snowline, where they are watched by herdsmen who stay in the high altitudes often living in stone huts or wooden barns during the summers. Villagers celebrate the day the cows are herded up to the pastures and again when they return in mid-September. The Almabtrieb, Alpabzug, Alpabfahrt, D\u00e9salpes (\"coming down from the alps\") is celebrated by decorating the cows with garlands and enormous cowbells while the farmers dress in traditional costumes.\nCheesemaking is an ancient tradition in most Alpine countries. A wheel of cheese from the Emmental in Switzerland can weigh up to , and the Beaufort in Savoy can weigh up to . Owners of the cows traditionally receive from the cheesemakers a portion about the proportion of the cows' milk from the summer months in the high alps. Haymaking is an important farming activity in mountain villages that have become somewhat mechanized in recent years, although the slopes are so steep that scythes are usually necessary to cut the grass. Hay is normally brought in twice a year, often also on festival days.\nIn the high villages, people live in homes built according to medieval designs that withstand cold winters. The kitchen is separated from the living area (called the \"stube\", the area of the home heated by a stove), and second-floor bedrooms benefit from rising heat. The typical Swiss chalet originated in the Bernese Oberland. Chalets often face south or downhill and are built of solid wood, with a steeply gabled roof to allow accumulated snow to slide off easily. Stairs leading to upper levels are sometimes built on the outside, and balconies are sometimes enclosed.\nFood is passed from the kitchen to the stube, where the dining room table is placed. Some meals are communal, such as fondue, where a pot is set in the middle of the table for each person to dip into. Other meals are still served traditionally on carved wooden plates. Furniture has been traditionally elaborately carved and in many Alpine countries, carpentry skills are passed from generation to generation.\nRoofs are traditionally constructed from Alpine rocks such as pieces of schist, gneiss, or slate. Such chalets are typically found in the higher parts of the valleys, as in the Maurienne valley in Savoy, where the amount of snow during the cold months is important. The inclination of the roof cannot exceed 40%, allowing the snow to stay on top, thereby functioning as insulation from the cold. In the lower areas where the forests are widespread, wooden tiles are traditionally used. Commonly made of Norway spruce, they are called \"tavaillon\".\nIn the German-speaking parts of the Alps (Austria, Bavaria, South Tyrol, Liechtenstein and Switzerland) and also Slovenia, there is a strong tradition of Alpine folk culture. Old traditions are carefully maintained among inhabitants of Alpine areas, even though this is seldom obvious to the visitor: many people are members of cultural associations where the Alpine folk culture is cultivated. At cultural events, traditional folk costume (in German \"Tracht\") is expected: typically lederhosen for men and dirndls for women. Visitors can get a glimpse of the rich customs of the Alps at public Volksfeste. Even when large events feature only a little folk culture, all participants take part with gusto. Good opportunities to see local people celebrating the traditional culture occur at the many fairs, wine festivals, and firefighting festivals which fill weekends in the countryside from spring to autumn. Alpine festivals vary from country to country. Frequently they include music (e.g. the playing of Alpenhorns), dance (e.g. Schuhplattler), sports (e.g. wrestling marches and archery), as well as traditions with pagan roots such as the lighting of fires on Walpurgis Night and Saint John's Eve. Many areas celebrate Fastnacht in the weeks before Lent. Folk costume also continues to be worn for most weddings and festivals.\nTourism.\nThe Alps are one of the more popular tourist destinations in the world with many resorts such as Oberstdorf, in Bavaria, Saalbach in Austria, Davos in Switzerland, Chamonix in France, and Cortina d'Ampezzo in Italy recording more than a million annual visitors. With over 120\u00a0million visitors a year, tourism is integral to the Alpine economy with much of it coming from winter sports, although summer visitors are also an important component.\nThe tourism industry began in the early 19th century when foreigners visited the Alps, travelled to the bases of the mountains to enjoy the scenery, and stayed at the spa-resorts. Large hotels were built during the Belle \u00c9poque; cog-railways, built early in the 20th century, brought tourists to ever-higher elevations, with the Jungfraubahn terminating at the Jungfraujoch, well above the eternal snow-line, after going through a tunnel in Eiger. During this period winter sports were slowly introduced: in 1882 the first figure skating championship was held in St. Moritz, and downhill skiing became a popular sport with English visitors early in the 20th century, as the first ski-lift was installed in 1908 above Grindelwald.\nIn the first half of the 20th century the Olympic Winter Games were held three times in Alpine venues: the 1924 Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France; the 1928 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland; and the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. During World War II the winter games were cancelled but after that time the Winter Games have been held in St. Moritz (1948), Cortina d'Ampezzo (1956), Innsbruck, Austria (1964 and 1976), Grenoble, France, (1968), Albertville, France, (1992), and Turin (2006). In 1930, the \"Lauberhorn Rennen\" (Lauberhorn Race), was run for the first time on the Lauberhorn above Wengen; the equally demanding Hahnenkamm was first run in the same year in Kitzb\u00fchl, Austria. Both races continue to be held each January on successive weekends. The Lauberhorn is the more strenuous downhill race at and poses danger to racers who reach within seconds of leaving the start gate.\nDuring the post-World War I period, ski lifts were built in Swiss and Austrian towns to accommodate winter visitors, and summer tourism continued to be important. By the mid-20th century the popularity of downhill skiing increased greatly as it became more accessible and in the 1970s several new villages were built in France devoted almost exclusively to skiing, such as Les Menuires. Until this point, Austria and Switzerland had been the traditional and more popular destinations for winter sports, and by the end of the 20th century and into the early 21st century, France, Italy, and Tyrol began to see increases in winter visitors. Since the 1980s tourism expansion and easy global access generate grave concerns regarding the loss of traditional Alpine culture and many uncertainties about sustainable development. As a likely result of climatic change, the number of high altitude ski resorts and piste km is in decline since 2015, with snow-making machines installed at many sites.\nTransportation.\nThe region is serviced by of roads used by six million vehicles per year. Train travel is well established in the Alps, with, for instance of track for every in a country such as Switzerland. Most of Europe's highest railways are located there. In 2007, the new L\u00f6tschberg Base Tunnel was opened, which circumvents the 100 years older L\u00f6tschberg Tunnel. With the opening of the Gotthard Base Tunnel on June 1, 2016, it bypasses the Gotthard Tunnel built in the 19th century and realizes the first flat route through the Alps.\nSome high mountain villages are car-free either because of inaccessibility or by choice. Wengen, and Zermatt (in Switzerland) are accessible only by cable car or cog-rail trains. Avoriaz (in France), is car-free, with other Alpine villages considering becoming car-free zones or limiting the number of cars for reasons of sustainability of the fragile Alpine terrain.\nThe lower regions and larger towns of the Alps are well-served by motorways and main roads, but higher mountain passes and byroads, which are amongst the highest in Europe, can be treacherous even in summer due to steep slopes. Many passes are closed in winter. Several airports around the Alps (and some within), as well as long-distance rail links from all neighbouring countries, afford large numbers of travellers easy access.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nWorks cited.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "26748": "Switzerland\nCountry in Central Europe\nSwitzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is geographically divided among the Swiss Plateau, the Alps and the Jura; the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory, whereas most of the country's nearly 9 million people are concentrated on the plateau, which hosts its largest cities and economic centres, including Zurich, Geneva, and Lausanne. \nSwitzerland is a federal republic composed of 26 cantons, with federal authorities based in Bern. It has four main linguistic and cultural regions: German, French, Italian and Romansh. Although most Swiss are German-speaking, national identity is fairly cohesive, being rooted in a common historical background, shared values such as federalism and direct democracy, and Alpine symbolism. Swiss identity transcends language, ethnicity, and religion, leading to Switzerland being described as a (\"nation of volition\") rather than a nation state.\nSwitzerland originates from the Old Swiss Confederacy established in the Late Middle Ages as a defensive and commercial alliance; the Federal Charter of 1291 is considered the country's founding document. The confederation steadily expanded and consolidated despite external threats and internal political and religious strife. Swiss independence from the Holy Roman Empire was formally recognised in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The confederation was among the first and few republics of the early modern period, and the only one besides San Marino to survive the Napoleonic Wars. \nSwitzerland remained a network of self-governing states until 1798, when revolutionary France invaded and imposed the centralist Helvetic Republic. Napoleon abolished the republic in 1803 and reinstated a confederation. Following the Napoleonic Wars, Switzerland restored its pre-revolutionary system, but by 1830 faced growing division and conflict between liberal and conservative movements; this culminated in a new constitution in 1848 that established the current federal system and enshrined principles such as individual rights, separation of powers, and parliamentary bicameralism. \nSwitzerland has maintained a policy of armed neutrality since the 16th century and has not fought an international war since 1815. It joined the United Nations only in 2002 but pursues an active foreign policy that includes frequent involvement in peace building and global governance. Switzerland is the birthplace of the Red Cross and hosts the headquarters or offices of most major international institutions, including the WTO, the WHO, the ILO, FIFA, the WEF, and the UN. It is a founding member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) but not part of the European Union (EU), the European Economic Area, or the eurozone; however, it participates in the European single market and the Schengen Area. \nSwitzerland is among the world's most developed countries, with the highest nominal wealth per adult and the eighth-highest gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. It performs highly on several international metrics, including economic competitiveness, democratic governance, and press freedom. Zurich, Geneva and Basel rank among the highest in quality of life, albeit with some of the highest costs of living. Switzerland holds an international reputation for its established banking sector and for its specialized industries in watchmaking and chocolate production.\nEtymology.\nThe English name \"Switzerland\" is a portmanteau of \"Switzer\", an obsolete term for a Swiss person which was in use during the 16th to 19th centuries, and \"land\". The English adjective \"Swiss\" is a loanword from French ', also in use since the 16th century. The name \"Switzer\" is from the Alemannic ', in origin an inhabitant of \"Schwyz\" and its associated territory, one of the cantons which formed the nucleus of the Old Swiss Confederacy. The Swiss began to adopt the name for themselves after the Swabian War of 1499, used alongside the term for \"Confederates\", (literally: \"comrades by oath\"), used since the 14th century. The data code for Switzerland, CH, is derived from Latin (\"Helvetic Confederation\").\nThe toponym \"Schwyz\" itself was first attested in 972, as Old High German ', perhaps related to ' 'to burn' (cf. Old Norse 'to singe, burn'), referring to the area of forest that was burned and cleared to build. The name was extended to the area dominated by the canton, and after the Swabian War of 1499 gradually came to be used for the entire Confederation. The Swiss German name of the country, ', is homophonous to that of the canton and the settlement, but distinguished by the use of the definite article (' for the Confederation, but simply \"\" for the canton and the town). The long [i\u02d0] of Swiss German is historically and still often today spelled \u27e8y\u27e9 rather than \u27e8ii\u27e9, preserving the original identity of the two names even in writing.\nThe Latin name was neologised and introduced gradually after the formation of the federal state in 1848, harking back to the Napoleonic Helvetic Republic. It appeared on coins from 1879, inscribed on the Federal Palace in 1902 and after 1948 used in the official seal (e.g., the ISO banking code \"CHF\" for the Swiss franc, the Swiss postage stamps ('HELVETIA') and the country top-level domain \".ch\", are both taken from the state's Latin name). is derived from the \"Helvetii\", a Gaulish tribe living on the Swiss Plateau before the Roman era.\n\"Helvetia\" appeared as a national personification of the Swiss confederacy in the 17th century in a 1672 play by Johann Caspar Weissenbach.\nHistory.\nThe state of Switzerland took its present form with the adoption of the Swiss Federal Constitution in 1848. Switzerland's precursors established a defensive alliance in 1291, forming a loose confederation that persisted for centuries.\nBeginnings.\nThe oldest traces of hominid existence in Switzerland date to about 150,000 years ago. The oldest known farming settlements in Switzerland, which were found at G\u00e4chlingen, date to around 5300 BC.\nThe earliest known tribes formed the Hallstatt and La T\u00e8ne cultures, named after the archaeological site of La T\u00e8ne on the north side of Lake Neuch\u00e2tel. La T\u00e8ne culture developed and flourished during the late Iron Age from around 450 BC, possibly influenced by Greek and Etruscan civilisations. One of the most prominent La T\u00e8ne tribes were the Helvetii, who primarily occupied the Swiss Plateau, alongside the Rhaetians in the eastern regions. Facing pressures from Germanic tribes, in 58 BC, the Helvetii, influenced by Orgetorix, a wealthy aristocrat, decided to abandon the Swiss Plateau for better opportunities in western Gallia. After Orgetorix's mysterious death, the tribe continued their migration but was decisively defeated by Julius Caesar's armies at the Battle of Bibracte, in present-day eastern France. Following their defeat, the Helvetii were forced by Caesar to return to their original lands, where they were subjected to stringent restrictions on their autonomy and movements. In 15 BC, Tiberius (later the second Roman emperor) and his brother Drusus conquered the Alps, integrating them into the Roman Empire. The area occupied by the Helvetii first became part of Rome's Gallia Belgica province and then of its Germania Superior province. The eastern portion of modern Switzerland was integrated into the Roman province of Raetia. Sometime around the start of the Common Era, the Romans maintained a large camp called Vindonissa, now a ruin at the confluence of the Aare and Reuss rivers, near the town of Windisch.\nThe first and second century AD was an age of prosperity on the Swiss Plateau. Towns such as Aventicum, Iulia Equestris and Augusta Raurica reached a remarkable size, while hundreds of agricultural estates (Villae rusticae) were established in the countryside.\nAround 260 AD, the fall of the Agri Decumates territory north of the Rhine transformed today's Switzerland into a frontier land of the Empire. Repeated raids by the Alamanni tribes provoked the ruin of the Roman towns and economy, forcing the population to shelter near Roman fortresses, like the Castrum Rauracense near Augusta Raurica. The Empire built another line of defence at the north border (the so-called Donau-Iller-Rhine-Limes). At the end of the fourth century, the increased Germanic pressure forced the Romans to abandon the linear defence concept. The Swiss Plateau was finally open to Germanic tribes.\nIn the Early Middle Ages, from the end of the fourth century, the western extent of modern-day Switzerland was part of the territory of the Kings of the Burgundians, who introduced the French language to the area. The Alemanni settled the Swiss Plateau in the fifth century and the valleys of the Alps in the eighth century, forming Alemannia. Modern-day Switzerland was then divided between the kingdoms of Alemannia and Burgundy. The entire region became part of the expanding Frankish Empire in the sixth century, following Clovis I's victory over the Alemanni at Tolbiac in 504 AD, and later Frankish domination of the Burgundians.\nThroughout the rest of the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries, Swiss regions continued under Frankish hegemony (Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties) but after its extension under Charlemagne, the Frankish Empire was divided by the Treaty of Verdun in 843. The territories of present-day Switzerland became divided into Middle Francia and East Francia until they were reunified under the Holy Roman Empire around 1000\u00a0AD.\nIn the 10th century, as the rule of the Carolingians waned, Magyars destroyed Basel in 917 and St. Gallen in 926. In response, Henry the Fowler, the then ruler of East Francia, decreed the fortification of key settlements to defend against these invasions. Large villages and towns, including strategic locations like Zurich and St.Gallen, were fortified. This initiative led to the development of what were essentially early urban strongholds and city governments in Eastern Switzerland.\nBy 1200, the Swiss Plateau comprised the dominions of the houses of Savoy, Z\u00e4hringer, Habsburg, and Kyburg. Some regions (Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, later known as ) were accorded the Imperial immediacy to grant the empire direct control over the mountain passes. With the extinction of its male line in 1263, the Kyburg dynasty fell in AD 1264. The Habsburgs under King Rudolph I (Holy Roman Emperor in 1273) laid claim to the Kyburg lands and annexed them, extending their territory to the eastern Swiss Plateau.\nOld Swiss Confederacy.\nThe Old Swiss Confederacy was an alliance among the valley communities of the central Alps. The Confederacy was governed by nobles and patricians of various cantons who facilitated management of common interests and ensured peace on mountain trade routes. The Federal Charter of 1291 is considered the confederacy's founding document, even though similar alliances likely existed decades earlier. The document was agreed among the rural communes of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden.\nBy 1353, the three original cantons had joined with the cantons of Glarus and Zug and the Lucerne, Zurich and Bern city-states to form the \"Old Confederacy\" of eight states that obtained through the end of the 15th century. The expansion led to increased power and wealth for the confederation. By 1460, the confederates controlled most of the territory south and west of the Rhine to the Alps and the Jura mountains, and the University of Basel was founded (with a faculty of medicine) establishing a tradition of chemical and medical research. This increased after victories against the Habsburgs (Battle of Sempach, Battle of N\u00e4fels), over Charles the Bold of Burgundy during the 1470s, and the success of the Swiss mercenaries. The Swiss victory in the Swabian War against the Swabian League of Emperor Maximilian I in 1499 amounted to \"de facto\" independence within the Holy Roman Empire. In 1501, Basel and Schaffhausen joined the Old Swiss Confederacy.\nThe Confederacy acquired a reputation of invincibility during these earlier wars, but expansion of the confederation suffered a setback in 1515 with the Swiss defeat in the Battle of Marignano. This ended the so-called \"heroic\" epoch of Swiss history. The success of Zwingli's Reformation in some cantons led to inter-cantonal religious conflicts in 1529 and 1531 (Wars of Kappel). It was not until more than one hundred years after these internal wars that, in 1648, under the Peace of Westphalia, European countries recognised Switzerland's independence from the Holy Roman Empire and its neutrality.\nDuring the Early Modern period of Swiss history, the growing authoritarianism of the patriciate families combined with a financial crisis in the wake of the Thirty Years' War led to the Swiss peasant war of 1653. In the background to this struggle, the conflict between Catholic and Protestant cantons persisted, erupting in further violence at the First War of Villmergen, in 1656, and the Toggenburg War (or Second War of Villmergen), in 1712.\nNapoleonic era.\nIn 1798, the revolutionary French government invaded Switzerland and imposed a new unified constitution. This centralised the government of the country, effectively abolishing the cantons: moreover, M\u00fclhausen left Switzerland and the Valtellina valley became part of the Cisalpine Republic. The new regime, known as the Helvetic Republic, was highly unpopular. An invading foreign army had imposed and destroyed centuries of tradition, making Switzerland nothing more than a French satellite state. The fierce French suppression of the Nidwalden Revolt in September 1798 was an example of the oppressive presence of the French Army and the local population's resistance to the occupation.\nWhen war broke out between France and its rivals, Russian and Austrian forces invaded Switzerland. The Swiss refused to fight alongside the French in the name of the Helvetic Republic. In 1803 Napoleon organised a meeting of the leading Swiss politicians from both sides in Paris. The Act of Mediation was the result, which largely restored Swiss autonomy and introduced a Confederation of 19 cantons. Henceforth, much of Swiss politics would concern balancing the cantons' tradition of self-rule with the need for a central government.\nIn 1815, the Congress of Vienna fully re-established Swiss independence, and the European powers recognised permanent Swiss neutrality. Swiss troops served foreign governments until 1860 when they fought in the siege of Gaeta. The treaty allowed Switzerland to increase its territory, with the admission of the cantons of Valais, Neuch\u00e2tel and Geneva. Switzerland's borders saw only minor adjustments thereafter.\nFederal state.\nThe restoration of power to the patriciate was only temporary. After a period of unrest with repeated violent clashes, such as the Z\u00fcriputsch of 1839, civil war (the \"Sonderbundskrieg\") broke out in 1847 when some Catholic cantons tried to set up a separate alliance (the \"Sonderbund\"). The war lasted less than a month, causing fewer than 100 casualties, most of which were through friendly fire. The Sonderbundskrieg had a significant impact on the psychology and society of Switzerland.\nThe war convinced most Swiss of the need for unity and strength. Swiss from all strata of society, whether Catholic or Protestant, from the liberal or conservative current, realised that the cantons would profit more from merging their economic and religious interests.\nThus, while the rest of Europe saw revolutionary uprisings, the Swiss drew up a constitution that provided for a federal layout, much of it inspired by the American example. This constitution provided central authority while leaving the cantons the right to self-government on local issues. Giving credit to those who favoured the power of the cantons (the Sonderbund Kantone), the national assembly was divided between an upper house (the Council of States, two representatives per canton) and a lower house (the National Council, with representatives elected from across the country). Referendums were made mandatory for any amendments. This new constitution ended the legal power of nobility in Switzerland.\nA single system of weights and measures was introduced, and in 1850 the Swiss franc became the Swiss single currency, complemented by the WIR franc in 1934. Article 11 of the constitution forbade sending troops to serve abroad, marking the end of foreign service. It came with the expectation of serving the Holy See, and the Swiss were still obliged to serve Francis II of the Two Sicilies with Swiss Guards present at the siege of Gaeta in 1860.\nAn important clause of the constitution was that it could be entirely rewritten, if necessary, thus enabling it to evolve as a whole rather than being modified one amendment at a time.\nThis need soon proved itself when the rise in population and the Industrial Revolution that followed led to calls to modify the constitution accordingly. The population rejected an early draft in 1872, but modifications led to its acceptance in 1874. It introduced the facultative referendum for laws at the federal level. It also established federal responsibility for defence, trade, and legal matters.\nIn 1891, the constitution was revised with uncommonly strong elements of direct democracy, which remain unique today.\nModern history.\nSwitzerland was not invaded during either of the world wars. During World War I, Switzerland was home to the revolutionary and founder of the Soviet Union Vladimir Illych Ulyanov (Vladimir Lenin) who remained there until 1917. Swiss neutrality was seriously questioned by the short-lived Grimm\u2013Hoffmann affair in 1917. In 1920, Switzerland joined the League of Nations, which was based in Geneva, after it was exempted from military requirements.\nDuring World War II, detailed invasion plans were drawn up by the Germans, but Switzerland was never attacked. Switzerland was able to remain independent through a combination of military deterrence, concessions to Germany, and good fortune, as larger events during the war intervened. General Henri Guisan, appointed the commander-in-chief for the duration of the war ordered a general mobilisation of the armed forces. The Swiss military strategy changed from static defence at the borders to organised long-term attrition and withdrawal to strong, well-stockpiled positions high in the Alps, known as the Reduit. Switzerland was an important base for espionage by both sides and often mediated communications between the Axis and Allied powers.\nSwitzerland's trade was blockaded by both the Allies and the Axis. Economic cooperation and extension of credit to Nazi Germany varied according to the perceived likelihood of invasion and the availability of other trading partners. Concessions reached a peak after a crucial rail link through Vichy France was severed in 1942, leaving Switzerland (together with Liechtenstein) entirely isolated from the wider world by Axis-controlled territory. Over the course of the war, Switzerland interned over 300,000 refugees aided by the International Red Cross, based in Geneva. Strict immigration and asylum policies and the financial relationships with Nazi Germany raised controversy, only at the end of the 20th century.\nDuring the war, the Swiss Air Force engaged aircraft of both sides, shooting down 11 intruding Luftwaffe planes in May and June 1940, then forcing down other intruders after a change of policy following threats from Germany. Over 100 Allied bombers and their crews were interned. Between 1940 and 1945, Switzerland was bombed by the Allies, causing fatalities and property damage. Among the cities and towns bombed were Basel, Brusio, Chiasso, Cornol, Geneva, Koblenz, Niederweningen, Rafz, Renens, Samedan, Schaffhausen, Stein am Rhein, T\u00e4gerwilen, Thayngen, Vals, and Zurich. Allied forces maintained that the bombings, which violated the 96th Article of War, resulted from navigation errors, equipment failure, weather conditions, and pilot errors. The Swiss expressed fear and concern that the bombings were intended to put pressure on Switzerland to end economic cooperation and neutrality with Nazi Germany. Court-martial proceedings took place in England. The US paid SFR 62M for reparations.\nSwitzerland's attitude towards refugees was complicated and controversial; over the course of the war, it admitted as many as 300,000 refugees while refusing tens of thousands more, including Jews persecuted by the Nazis.\nAfter the war, the Swiss government exported credits through the charitable fund known as the and donated to the Marshall Plan to help Europe's recovery, efforts that ultimately benefited the Swiss economy.\nDuring the Cold War, Swiss authorities considered the construction of a Swiss nuclear bomb. Leading nuclear physicists at the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich such as Paul Scherrer made this a realistic possibility. In 1988, the Paul Scherrer Institute was founded in his name to explore the therapeutic uses of neutron scattering technologies. Financial problems with the defence budget and ethical considerations prevented the substantial funds from being allocated, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 was seen as a valid alternative. Plans for building nuclear weapons were dropped by 1988. Switzerland joined the Council of Europe in 1963.\nSwitzerland was the last Western republic (the Principality of Liechtenstein followed in 1984) to grant women the right to vote. Some Swiss cantons approved this in 1959, while at the federal level, it was achieved in 1971 and, after resistance, in the last canton Appenzell Innerrhoden (one of only two remaining \"Landsgemeinde\", along with Glarus) in 1990. After obtaining suffrage at the federal level, women quickly rose in political significance. The first woman on the seven-member Federal Council executive was Elisabeth Kopp, who served from 1984 to 1989, and the first female president was Ruth Dreifuss in 1999.\nIn 1979 areas from the canton of Bern attained independence from the Bernese, forming the new canton of Jura. On 18 April 1999, the Swiss population and the cantons voted in favour of a completely revised federal constitution.\nIn 2002 Switzerland became a full member of the United Nations, leaving Vatican City as the last widely recognised state without full UN membership. Switzerland is a founding member of the EFTA but not the European Economic Area (EEA). An application for membership in the European Union was sent in May 1992, but did not advance since rejecting the EEA in December 1992 when Switzerland conducted a referendum on the EEA. Several referendums on the EU issue ensued; due to opposition from the citizens, the membership application was withdrawn. Nonetheless, Swiss law is gradually changing to conform with that of the EU, and the government signed bilateral agreements with the European Union. Switzerland, together with Liechtenstein, has been surrounded by the EU since Austria's entry in 1995. On 5 June 2005, Swiss voters agreed by a 55% majority to join the Schengen treaty, a result that EU commentators regarded as a sign of support. In September 2020, a referendum calling for a vote to end the pact that allowed a free movement of people from the European Union was introduced by the Swiss People's Party (SVP). However, voters rejected the attempt to retake control of immigration, defeating the motion by a roughly 63%\u201337% margin.\nOn 9 February 2014, 50.3% of Swiss voters approved a ballot initiative launched by the Swiss People's Party (SVP/UDC) to restrict immigration. This initiative was mostly backed by rural (57.6% approval) and suburban groups (51.2% approval), and isolated towns (51.3% approval) as well as by a strong majority (69.2% approval) in Ticino, while metropolitan centres (58.5% rejection) and the French-speaking part (58.5% rejection) rejected it. In December 2016, a political compromise with the EU was attained that eliminated quotas on EU citizens, but still allowed favourable treatment of Swiss-based job applicants. On 27 September 2020, 62% of Swiss voters rejected the anti-free movement referendum by SVP.\nGeography.\nExtending across the north and south side of the Alps in west-central Europe, Switzerland encompasses diverse landscapes and climates across its .\nSwitzerland lies between latitudes 45\u00b0 and 48\u00b0 N, and longitudes 5\u00b0 and 11\u00b0 E. It contains three basic topographical areas: the Swiss Alps to the south, the Swiss Plateau or Central Plateau, and the Jura mountains on the west. The Alps are a mountain range running across the central and south of the country, constituting about 60% of the country's area. The majority of the population live on the Swiss Plateau. The Swiss Alps host many glaciers, covering . From these originate the headwaters of several major rivers, such as the Rhine, Inn, Ticino and Rh\u00f4ne, which flow in the four cardinal directions, spreading across Europe. The hydrographic network includes several of the largest bodies of fresh water in Central and Western Europe, among which are Lake Geneva (Lac L\u00e9man in French), Lake Constance (Bodensee in German) and Lake Maggiore. Switzerland has more than 1500 lakes and contains 6% of Europe's freshwater stock. Lakes and glaciers cover about 6% of the national territory. Lake Geneva is the largest lake and is shared with France. The Rh\u00f4ne is both the main source and outflow of Lake Geneva. Lake Constance is the second largest and, like Lake Geneva, an intermediate step by the Rhine at the border with Austria and Germany. While the Rh\u00f4ne flows into the Mediterranean Sea at the French Camargue region and the Rhine flows into the North Sea at Rotterdam, about apart, both springs are only about apart in the Swiss Alps. 90% of Switzerland's 65,000-kilometre-long network of rivers and streams have been straightened, dammed, canalized or channeled underground, in an effort to prevent natural disasters such as flooding, landslides, and avalanches. 80% of all Swiss drinking water comes from groundwater sources.\nForty-eight mountains are or higher in height. At , Monte Rosa is the highest, although the Matterhorn () is the best known. Both are located within the Pennine Alps in the canton of Valais, on the border with Italy. The section of the Bernese Alps above the deep glacial Lauterbrunnen valley, containing 72 waterfalls, is well known for the Jungfrau () Eiger and M\u00f6nch peaks, and its many picturesque valleys. In the southeast the long Engadin Valley, encompassing St. Moritz, is also well known; the highest peak in the neighbouring Bernina Alps is Piz Bernina ().\nThe Swiss Plateau has greater open and hilly landscapes, partly forested, partly open pastures, usually with grazing herds or vegetable and fruit fields, but it is still hilly. Large lakes and the biggest Swiss cities are found there.\nSwitzerland contains two small enclaves: B\u00fcsingen belongs to Germany, while Campione d'Italia belongs to Italy. Switzerland has no exclaves.\nClimate.\nThe Swiss climate is generally temperate, but can vary greatly across localities, from glacial conditions on the mountaintops to the near-Mediterranean climate at Switzerland's southern tip. Some valley areas in the southern part of Switzerland offer cold-hardy palm trees. Summers tend to be warm and humid at times with periodic rainfall, ideal for pastures/grazing. The less humid winters in the mountains may see weeks-long intervals of stable conditions. At the same time, the lower lands tend to suffer from inversion during such periods, hiding the sun.\nA weather phenomenon known as the f\u00f6hn (with an identical effect to the chinook wind) can occur any time and is characterised by an unexpectedly warm wind, bringing low relative humidity air to the north of the Alps during rainfall periods on the south-facing slopes. This works both ways across the alps but is more efficient if blowing from the south due to the steeper step for oncoming wind. Valleys running south to north trigger the best effect. The driest conditions persist in all inner alpine valleys that receive less rain because arriving clouds lose a lot of their moisture content while crossing the mountains before reaching these areas. Large alpine areas such as Graub\u00fcnden remain drier than pre-alpine areas, and as in the main valley of the Valais, wine grapes are grown there.\nThe wettest conditions persist in the high Alps and in the Ticino canton, which has much sun yet heavy bursts of rain from time to time. Precipitation tends to be spread moderately throughout the year, with a peak in summer. Autumn is the driest season, winter receives less precipitation than summer, yet the weather patterns in Switzerland are not in a stable climate system. They can vary from year to year with no strict and predictable periods.\nEnvironment.\nSwitzerland contains two terrestrial ecoregions: Western European broadleaf forests and Alps conifer and mixed forests.\nSwitzerland's many small valleys separated by high mountains often host unique ecologies. The mountainous regions themselves offer a rich range of plants not found at other altitudes. The climatic, geological and topographical conditions of the alpine region make for a fragile ecosystem that is particularly sensitive to climate change. According to the 2014 Environmental Performance Index, Switzerland ranks first among 132 nations in safeguarding the environment, due to its high scores on environmental public health, its heavy reliance on renewable sources of energy (hydropower and geothermal energy), and its level of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2020 it was ranked third out of 180 countries. The country pledged to cut GHG emissions by 50% by 2030 compared to the level of 1990 and plans to reach zero emissions by 2050.\nHowever, access to biocapacity in Switzerland is far lower than the world average. In 2016, Switzerland had 1.0 hectares of biocapacity per person within its territory, 40 per cent less than world average of 1.6. In contrast, in 2016, Swiss consumption required 4.6 hectares of biocapacity \u2013 their ecological footprint, 4.6 times as much as Swiss territory can support. The remainder comes from other countries and the shared resources (such as the atmosphere impacted by greenhouse gas emissions). Switzerland had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 3.53/10, ranking it 150th globally out of 172 countries.\nSwitzerland ranked 9th in the Environmental Performance Index for 2024. It scored well in parameters including air pollution, sanitation and drinking water, waste management, and climate change mitigation.\nUrbanisation.\nAbout 85% of the population live in urban areas. Switzerland went from a largely rural country to an urban one from 1930 to 2000. After 1935 urban development claimed as much of the Swiss landscape as it did during the prior 2,000 years. Urban sprawl affects the plateau, the Jura and the Alpine foothills, raising concerns about land use. During the 21st century, population growth in urban areas is higher than in the countryside.\nSwitzerland has a dense network of complementary large, medium and small towns. The plateau is densely populated with about 400 people per km2 and the landscape shows uninterrupted signs of human presence. The weight of the largest metropolitan areas \u2013 Zurich, Geneva\u2013Lausanne, Basel and Bern \u2013 tend to increase. The importance of these urban areas is greater than their population suggests. These urban centers are recognised for their high quality of life.\nThe average population density in 2019 was . In the largest canton by area, Graub\u00fcnden, lying entirely in the Alps, population density falls to . In the canton of Zurich, with its large urban capital, the density is .\nGovernment and politics.\nThe Federal Constitution adopted in 1848 is the legal foundation of Switzerland's federal state. It is regularly modified by referendum and has been completely revised twice, in 1874 and 1999. The constitution outlines rights of individuals and citizen participation in public affairs, divides the powers between the confederation and the cantons and defines federal jurisdiction and authority. Three main bodies govern on the federal level: the Federal Assembly (legislative), the Federal Council (executive) and the federal courts (judicial).\nFederal Assembly.\nThe Federal Assembly is the parliament of Switzerland. It consists of two houses: The Council of States has 46 members, two from each canton and one from each half-canton. The National Council has 200 members, apportioned to reflect the population of each canton, and elected by proportional representation within each canton. Members of both houses serve for four years and work part-time (\"Milizsystem\"). When both houses are in joint session, they are known collectively as the Federal Assembly. Through optional referendums, citizens may challenge any law passed by parliament.\nFederal Council.\nThe Federal Council is the Swiss executive. It leads the federal administration and serves as a collective head of state. It is a collegial body of seven members, elected to four-year terms by the Federal Assembly, which oversees the council. Each member leads a department of the federal government. Each year, one member of the Council is elected President of the Confederation by the Assembly, with the presidency traditionally rotating between members. The President chairs and represents the government, but has no additional powers and remains the head of their department.\nThe government has been a coalition of the four major political parties since 1959, each party having a number of seats that roughly reflects its share of the electorate and representation in the federal parliament. This distribution is called the \"magic formula\". Since 2003, the seven seats in the Federal Council have been distributed as follows:\nSupreme Court.\nThe function of the Federal Supreme Court is to hear appeals against rulings of cantonal or federal courts. The judges are elected by the Federal Assembly for six-year terms.\nDirect democracy.\nDirect democracy and federalism are hallmarks of the Swiss political system defined in the Swiss constitution. The Swiss people are subject to three legal jurisdictions: the municipal, cantonal and federal levels. At the federal level, popular rights include the right to submit a federal initiative and a referendum, both of which may overturn parliamentary decisions.\nThere are three types of federal referendum in Switzerland: \nThe Federal Council and the Federal Assembly can supplement a popular initiative with a counterproposal. Voters must then indicate their preference if both proposals are accepted. \nCantons.\nThe Swiss Confederation consists of 26 cantons. The cantons are federated states, with permanent constitutional status and a high degree of independence relative to the subnational divisions of most countries. Under the Federal Constitution, all 26 cantons are equal in status, except that six (referred to often as the half-cantons) are represented by one councillor instead of two in the Council of States and have only half a cantonal vote with respect to the required cantonal majority in referendums on constitutional amendments. Each canton has its own constitution and its own parliament, government, police and courts. However, considerable differences define the individual cantons, particularly in terms of population and geographical area. Their populations vary between 16,003 (Appenzell Innerrhoden) and 1,487,969 (Zurich), and their area between (Basel-Stadt) and (Grisons).\nMunicipalities.\nAs of 2018 the cantons comprised 2,222 municipalities.\nFederal City.\nUntil 1848, the loosely coupled Confederation did not have a central political organisation. Issues thought to affect the whole Confederation were the subject of periodic meetings in various locations.\nIn 1848, the federal constitution provided that details concerning federal institutions, such as their locations, should be addressed by the Federal Assembly (BV 1848 Art. 108). Thus on 28 November 1848, the Federal Assembly voted in the majority to locate the seat of government in Bern and, as a prototypical federal compromise, to assign other federal institutions, such as the Federal Polytechnical School (1854, the later ETH) to Zurich, and other institutions to Lucerne, such as the later SUVA (1912) and the Federal Insurance Court (1917). Other federal institutions were subsequently attributed to Lausanne (Federal Supreme Court in 1872, and EPFL in 1969), Bellinzona (Federal Criminal Court, 2004), and St. Gallen (Federal Administrative Court and Federal Patent Court, 2012).\nThe 1999 Constitution does not mention a Federal City and the Federal Council has yet to address the matter. Thus no city in Switzerland has the \"official\" status either of capital or of Federal City. Nevertheless, Bern is commonly referred to as \"Federal City\" (, , ).\nForeign relations and international institutions.\nTraditionally, Switzerland avoids alliances that might entail military, political, or direct economic action and has been neutral since the end of its expansion in 1515. Its policy of neutrality was internationally recognised at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Swiss neutrality has been questioned at times. In 2002 Switzerland became a full member of the United Nations. It was the first state to join it by referendum. Switzerland maintains diplomatic relations with almost all countries and historically has served as an intermediary between other states. Switzerland is not a member of the European Union; the Swiss people have consistently rejected membership since the early 1990s. However, Switzerland does participate in the Schengen Area.\nMany international institutions have headquarters in Switzerland, in part because of its policy of neutrality. Geneva is the birthplace of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the Geneva Conventions and, since 2006, hosts the United Nations Human Rights Council. Even though Switzerland is one of the most recent countries to join the United Nations, the Palace of Nations in Geneva is the second biggest centre for the United Nations after the headquarters in New York. Switzerland was a founding member and hosted the League of Nations.\nApart from the United Nations headquarters, the Swiss Confederation is host to many UN agencies, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and about 200 other international organisations, including the World Trade Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization. The annual meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos bring together business and political leaders from Switzerland and foreign countries to discuss important issues. The headquarters of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) moved to Basel in 1930.\nMany sports federations and organisations are located in the country, including the International Handball Federation in Basel, the International Basketball Federation in Geneva, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) in Nyon, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) and the International Ice Hockey Federation both in Zurich, the International Cycling Union in Aigle, and the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne.\nSwitzerland became a member of the United Nations Security Council for the 2023\u20132024 period. According to the 2024 Global Peace Index, Switzerland is the 6th most peaceful country in the world.\nSwitzerland and the European Union.\nAlthough not a member, Switzerland maintains relationships with the EU and European countries through bilateral agreements. The Swiss have brought their economic practices largely into conformity with those of the EU, in an effort to compete internationally. EU membership faces considerable negative popular sentiment. It is opposed by the conservative SVP party, the largest party in the National Council, and not advocated by several other political parties. The membership application was formally withdrawn in 2016. The western French-speaking areas and the urban regions of the rest of the country tend to be more pro-EU, but do not form a significant share of the population.\nAn Integration Office operates under the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Economic Affairs. Seven bilateral agreements liberalised trade ties, taking effect in 2001. This first series of bilateral agreements included the free movement of persons. A second series of agreements covering nine areas was signed in 2004, including the Schengen Treaty and the Dublin Convention.\nIn 2006, a referendum approved 1 billion francs of supportive investment in Southern and Central European countries in support of positive ties to the EU as a whole. A further referendum will be needed to approve 300 million francs to support Romania and Bulgaria and their recent admission.\nThe Swiss have faced EU and international pressure to reduce banking secrecy and raise tax rates to parity with the EU. Preparatory discussions involved four areas: the electricity market, participation in project Galileo, cooperating with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and certificates of origin for food products.\nSwitzerland is a member of the Schengen passport-free zone. Land border checkpoints monitor goods movements, but not people.\nMilitary.\nThe Swiss Armed Forces, including the Land Forces and the Air Force, are composed mostly of conscripts, male citizens aged from 20 to 34 (in exceptional cases up to 50) years. Being a landlocked country, Switzerland has no navy; however, on lakes bordering neighbouring countries, armed boats patrol. Swiss citizens are prohibited from serving in foreign armies, except for the Swiss Guards of the Vatican, or if they are dual citizens of a foreign country and reside there.\nThe Swiss militia system stipulates that soldiers keep their army-issued equipment, including fully automatic personal weapons, at home. Women can serve voluntarily. Men usually receive military conscription orders for training at the age of 18. About two-thirds of young Swiss are found suitable for service; for the others, various forms of alternative service are available. Annually, approximately 20,000 persons are trained in recruit centres for 18 to 21 weeks. The reform \"Army XXI\" was adopted by popular vote in 2003, replacing \"Army 95\", reducing the rolls from 400,000 to about 200,000. Of those, 120,000 are active in periodic Army training, and 80,000 are non-training reserves.\nThe newest reform of the military, (WEA; English: Further development of the Army), started in 2018 and was expected to reduce the number of army personnel to 100,000 by the end of 2022.\nOverall, three general mobilisations have been declared to ensure the integrity and neutrality of Switzerland. The first mobilisation was held in response to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870\u201371; while the second was in response to the First World War outbreak in August 1914; the third mobilisation took place in September 1939 in response to the German attack on Poland.\nBecause of its neutrality policy, the Swiss army does not take part in armed conflicts in other countries but joins some peacekeeping missions. Since 2000 the armed force department has maintained the Onyx intelligence gathering system to monitor satellite communications.\nGun politics in Switzerland are unique in Europe in that 2\u20133.5\u00a0million guns are in the hands of civilians, giving the nation an estimate of 28\u201341 guns per 100 people. As per the Small Arms Survey, only 324,484 guns are owned by the military. Only 143,372 are in the hands of soldiers. However, ammunition is no longer issued.\nEconomy and labour law.\nSwitzerland has a stable, prosperous and high-tech economy. It is the world's wealthiest country per capita in multiple rankings. The country ranks as one of the least corrupt countries in the world, while its banking sector is rated as \"one of the most corrupt in the world\". It has the world's twentieth largest economy by nominal GDP and the thirty-eighth largest by purchasing power parity. As of 2021, it is the thirteenth largest exporter, and the fifth largest per capita. Zurich and Geneva are regarded as global cities, ranked as Alpha and Beta respectively. Basel is the capital of Switzerland's pharmaceutical industry, hosting Novartis, Roche, and many other players. It is one of the world's most important centres for the life sciences industry.\nSwitzerland had the second-highest global rating in the Index of Economic Freedom 2023, while also providing significant public services. On a per capita basis, nominal GDP is higher than those of the larger Western and Central European economies and Japan, while adjusted for purchasing power, Switzerland ranked 11th in 2017, fifth in 2018, and ninth in 2020.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nThe 2016 World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report ranked Switzerland's economy as the world's most competitive; as of 2019, it ranks fifth globally. The European Union labeled it Europe's most innovative country. Switzerland has been ranked the most innovative country in the Global Innovation Index in 2024, as it had done in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019. It ranked 20th of 189 countries in the Ease of Doing Business Index. Switzerland's slow growth in the 1990s and the early 2000s increased support for economic reforms and harmonisation with the European Union. In 2020, IMD placed Switzerland first in attracting skilled workers.\nFor much of the 20th century, Switzerland was the wealthiest country in Europe by a considerable margin (per capita GDP). Switzerland has one of the world's largest account balances as a percentage of GDP. In 2018, the canton of Basel-City had the highest GDP per capita, ahead of Zug and Geneva. According to Credit Suisse, only about 37% of residents own their own homes, one of the lowest rates of home ownership in Europe. Housing and food price levels were 171% and 145% of the EU-25 index in 2007, compared to 113% and 104% in Germany.\nSwitzerland is home to several large multinational corporations. The largest by revenue are Glencore, Gunvor, Nestl\u00e9, Mediterranean Shipping Company, Novartis, Hoffmann-La Roche, ABB, Mercuria Energy Group and Adecco. Also, notable are UBS, Zurich Insurance, Richemont, Credit Suisse, Barry Callebaut, Swiss Re, Rolex, Tetra Pak, Swatch Group and Swiss International Air Lines.\nSwitzerland's most important economic sector is manufacturing. Manufactured products include specialty chemicals, health and pharmaceutical goods, scientific and precision measuring instruments and musical instruments. The largest exported goods are chemicals (34% of exported goods), machines/electronics (20.9%), and precision instruments/watches (16.9%). The service sector \u2013 especially banking and insurance, commodities trading, tourism, and international organisations \u2013 is another important industry for Switzerland. Exported services amount to a third of exports.\nAgricultural protectionism\u2014a rare exception to Switzerland's free trade policies\u2014contributes to high food prices. Product market liberalisation is lagging behind many EU countries according to the OECD. Apart from agriculture, economic and trade barriers between the European Union and Switzerland are minimal, and Switzerland has free trade agreements with many countries. Switzerland is a member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).\nSwitzerland is considered as the \"land of Cooperatives\" with the ten largest cooperative companies accounting for more than 11% of GDP in 2018. They include Migros and Coop, the two largest retail companies in Switzerland.\nTaxation and government spending.\nSwitzerland is a tax haven. The private sector economy dominates. It features low tax rates; tax revenue to GDP ratio is one of the smallest of developed countries. The Swiss Federal budget reached 62.8 billion Swiss francs in 2010, 11.35% of GDP; however, canton and municipality budgets are not counted as part of the federal budget. Total government spending is closer to 33.8% of GDP. The main sources of income for the federal government are the value-added tax (33% of tax revenue) and the direct federal tax (29%). The main areas of expenditure are in social welfare and finance/taxes. The expenditures of the Swiss Confederation have been growing from 7% of GDP in 1960 to 9.7% in 1990 and 10.7% in 2010. While the social welfare and finance sectors and tax grew from 35% in 1990 to 48.2% in 2010, a significant reduction of expenditures has been occurring in agriculture and national defence; from 26.5% to 12.4% (estimation for the year 2015).\nLabour force.\nSlightly more than 5 million people work in Switzerland; about 25% of employees belonged to a trade union in 2004. Switzerland has a more flexible labor market than neighbouring countries and the unemployment rate is consistently low. The unemployment rate increased from 1.7% in June 2000 to 4.4% in December 2009. It then decreased to 3.2% in 2014 and held steady for several years, before further dropping to 2.5% in 2018 and 2.3% in 2019; in 2023 it had reached a 20-year low of 2%. Population growth (from net immigration) reached 0.52% of population in 2004, increased in the following years before falling to 0.54% again in 2017. The foreign citizen population was 28.9% in 2015, about the same as in Australia.\nIn 2016, the median monthly gross income in Switzerland was 6,502 francs per month (equivalent to US$6,597 per month). After rent, taxes and pension contributions, plus spending on goods and services, the average household has about 15% of its gross income left for savings. Though 61% of the population made less than the mean income, income inequality is relatively low with a Gini coefficient of 29.7, placing Switzerland among the top 20 countries. In 2015, the richest 1% owned 35% of the wealth. Wealth inequality increased through 2019.\nAbout 8.2% of the population live below the national poverty line, defined in Switzerland as earning less than CHF3,990 per month for a household of two adults and two children, and a further 15% are at risk of poverty. Single-parent families, those with no post-compulsory education and those out of work are among the most likely to live below the poverty line. Although work is considered a way out of poverty, some 4.3% are considered working poor. One in ten jobs in Switzerland is considered low-paid; roughly 12% of Swiss workers hold such jobs, many of them women and foreigners.\nEducation and science.\nEducation in Switzerland is diverse, because the constitution of Switzerland delegates the operation for the school system to the cantons. Public and private schools are available, including many private international schools.\nPrimary education.\nThe minimum age for primary school is about six years, but most cantons provide a free \"children's school\" starting at age four or five. Primary school continues until grade four, five or six, depending on the school. Traditionally, the first foreign language in school was one of the other Swiss languages, although in 2000, English was elevated in a few cantons. At the end of primary school or at the beginning of secondary school, pupils are assigned according to their capacities into one of several sections (often three). The fastest learners are taught advanced classes to prepare for further studies and the matura, while other students receive an education adapted to their needs.\nTertiary education.\nSwitzerland hosts 12 universities, ten of which are maintained at cantonal level and usually offer non-technical subjects. It ranked 87th on the 2019 Academic Ranking of World Universities. The largest is the University of Zurich with nearly 25,000 students. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) and the University of Zurich are listed 20th and 54th respectively, on the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities.\nThe federal government sponsors two institutes: the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) in Zurich, founded in 1855 and the (EPFL) in Lausanne, founded in 1969, formerly associated with the University of Lausanne.\nEight of the world's ten best hotel schools are located in Switzerland. In addition, various universities of applied sciences are available. In business and management studies, the University of St. Gallen, (HSG) is ranked 329th in the world according to QS World University Rankings and the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), was ranked first in open programmes worldwide\".\" Switzerland has the second highest rate (almost 18% in 2003) of foreign students in tertiary education, after Australia (slightly over 18%).\nThe Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, located in Geneva, is continental Europe's oldest graduate school of international and development studies. It is widely held to be one of its most prestigious.\nScience.\nSwitzerland is among the countries with the highest number of Nobel laureates, both in total and per capita; of the 28 Swiss nationals who have won the Nobel Prize, 23 were recognised in the sciences. Among the most famous is Albert Einstein, who became a Swiss citizen in 1901 and developed his theory of special relativity in Bern. Among the Nobel laureates born or nautralised in Switzerland are Vladimir Prelog, Heinrich Rohrer, Richard Ernst, Edmond Fischer, Rolf Zinkernagel, Kurt W\u00fcthrich and Jacques Dubochet. Over 100 laureates across all fields have a relationship to Switzerland. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded nine times to organisations headquartered in Switzerland.\nGeneva and the nearby French department of Ain co-host the world's largest laboratory, CERN, dedicated to particle physics research. Another important research centre is the Paul Scherrer Institute, which conducts multi-disciplinary research in the natural and engineering sciences. \nNotable Swiss inventions include lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), diazepam (Valium), Velcro, and the scanning tunnelling microscope (which earned inventors Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics. Auguste Piccard became the first person to enter the Stratosphere with his pressurised hydrogen ballon, while his son Jacques Piccard became one of the first people to explore the deepest known part of the world's ocean (along with American Don Walsh).\nThe Swiss Space Office has been involved in various space technologies and programmes. It was one of the 10 founders of the European Space Agency in 1975 and is the seventh largest contributor to the ESA budget. In the private sector, several companies participate in the space industry, such as Oerlikon Space and Maxon Motors.\nEnergy.\nElectricity generated in Switzerland is 56% from hydroelectricity and 39% from nuclear power, producing negligible CO2. On 18 May 2003, two anti-nuclear referendums were defeated: \"Moratorium Plus\", aimed at forbidding the building of new nuclear power plants (41.6% supported), and Electricity Without Nuclear (33.7% supported) after a moratorium expired in 2000. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, in 2011 the government announced plans to end the use of nuclear energy in the following 20 to 30 years. In November 2016, Swiss voters rejected a Green Party referendum to accelerate the phaseout of nuclear power (45.8% supported). The Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) is responsible for energy supply and energy use within the Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC). The agency supports the 2000-watt society initiative to cut the nation's energy use by more than half by 2050.\nTransport.\nThe densest rail network in Europe spans and carried 614 million passengers in 2023. In 2015, each Swiss resident travelled on average by rail, more than any other European country. Virtually 100% of the network is electrified. 60% of the network is operated by the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB\u00a0CFF\u00a0FFS). Besides the second largest standard gauge railway company, BLS AG, two railways companies operate on narrow gauge networks: the Rhaetian Railway (RhB) in Graub\u00fcnden, which includes some World Heritage lines, and the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn (MGB), which co-operates with RhB the Glacier Express between Zermatt and St. Moritz/Davos. Switzerland operates the world's longest and deepest railway tunnel and the first flat, low-level route through the Alps, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the largest part of the New Railway Link through the Alps (NRLA) project.\nSwitzerland has a publicly managed, toll-free road network financed by highway permits as well as vehicle and petrol taxes. The Swiss autobahn/autoroute system requires the annual purchase of a vignette (toll sticker)\u2014for 40 Swiss francs\u2014to use its roadways, including passenger cars and trucks. The Swiss autobahn/autoroute network stretches for and has one of the highest motorway densities in the world.\nZurich Airport is Switzerland's largest international flight gateway; it handled 22.8\u00a0million passengers in 2012. The other international airports are Geneva Airport (13.9\u00a0million passengers in 2012), EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg (located in France), Bern Airport, Lugano Airport, St. Gallen-Altenrhein Airport and Sion Airport. Swiss International Air Lines is the flag carrier. Its main hub is Zurich, but it is legally domiciled in Basel.\nEnvironment.\nSwitzerland has one of the best environmental records among developed nations. It is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol. With Mexico and South Korea, it forms the Environmental Integrity Group (EIG).\nThe country is active in recycling and anti-littering programs and is one of the world's top recyclers, recovering 66% to 96% of recyclable materials, varying across the country. The 2014 Global Green Economy Index placed Switzerland among the top 10 green economies.\nSwitzerland has an economic system for garbage disposal, which is based mostly on recycling and energy-producing incinerators. As in other European countries, the illegal disposal of garbage is heavily fined. In almost all Swiss municipalities, mandatory stickers or dedicated garbage bags allow the identification of disposable garbage.\nDemographics.\nIn common with other developed countries, the Swiss population increased rapidly during the industrial era, quadrupling between 1800 and 1990, and it has continued to grow.\nThe population is about 9 million (2023 est.). Population growth is projected to continue to 2035, due mostly to immigration. Like most of Europe, Switzerland faces an ageing population, with a fertility rate close to replacement level. Switzerland has one of the world's oldest populations, with an average age of 44.5 years.\nAccording to the World Factbook, ethnic groups in Switzerland are as follows: Swiss 69.2%, German 4.2%, Italian 3.2%, Portuguese 2.5%, French 2.1%, Kosovan 1.1%, Turkish 1%, other 16.7% (2020 est). The Council of Europe figures suggest a population of around 30,000 Romani people in the country.\nImmigration.\nIn 2023, resident foreigners made up 26.3% of Switzerland's population. Most of these (83%) were from European countries. Italy provided the largest single group of foreigners, providing 14.7% of total foreign population, followed closely by Germany (14.0%), Portugal (11.7%), France (6.6%), Kosovo (5.1%), Spain (3.9%), Turkey (3.1%), North Macedonia (3.1%), Serbia (2.8%), Austria (2.0%), United Kingdom (1.9%), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1.3%) and Croatia (1.3%). Immigrants from Sri Lanka (1.3%), most of them former Tamil refugees, were the largest group of Asian origin (7.9%).\n2021 figures show that 39.5% (compared to 34.7% in 2012) of the permanent resident population aged 15 or over (around 2.89\u00a0million), had an immigrant background. 38% of the population with an immigrant background (1.1\u00a0million) held Swiss citizenship.\nIn the 2000s, domestic and international institutions expressed concern about what was perceived as an increase in xenophobia. In reply to one critical report, the Federal Council noted that \"racism unfortunately is present in Switzerland\", but stated that the high proportion of foreign citizens in the country, as well as the generally successful integration of foreigners, underlined Switzerland's openness. A follow-up study conducted in 2018 reported that 59% considered racism a serious problem in Switzerland. The proportion of the population that claimed to have been targeted by racial discrimination increased from 10% in 2014 to almost 17% in 2018, according to the Federal Statistical Office.\nLargest cities.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nLanguages.\nSwitzerland has four national languages: mainly German (spoken natively by 62.8% of the population in 2016); French (22.9%) spoken natively in the west; and Italian (8.2%) spoken natively in the south. The fourth national language, Romansh (0.5%), is a Romance language spoken locally in the southeastern trilingual canton of Grisons, and is designated by Article 4 of the Federal Constitution as a national language along with German, French, and Italian. In Article 70 it is mentioned as an official language if the authorities communicate with persons who speak Romansh. However, federal laws and other official acts do not need to be decreed in Romansh.\nIn 2016, the languages most spoken at home among permanent residents aged 15 and older were Swiss German (59.4%), French (23.5%), Standard German (10.6%), and Italian (8.5%). Other languages spoken at home included English (5.0%), Portuguese (3.8%), Albanian (3.0%), Spanish (2.6%) and Serbian and Croatian (2.5%). 6.9% reported speaking another language at home. In 2014 almost two-thirds (64.4%) of the permanent resident population indicated speaking more than one language regularly.\nThe federal government is obliged to communicate in the official languages, and in the federal parliament simultaneous translation is provided from and into German, French and Italian.\nAside from the official forms of their respective languages, the four linguistic regions of Switzerland also have local dialectal forms. The role played by dialects in each linguistic region varies dramatically: in German-speaking regions, Swiss German dialects have become more prevalent since the second half of the 20th century, especially in the media, and are used as an everyday language for many, while the Swiss variety of Standard German is almost always used instead of dialect for written communication (cf. diglossic usage of a language). Conversely, in the French-speaking regions, local Franco-Proven\u00e7al dialects have almost disappeared (only 6.3% of the population of Valais, 3.9% of Fribourg, and 3.1% of Jura still spoke dialects at the end of the 20th century), while in the Italian-speaking regions, the use of Lombard dialects is mostly limited to family settings and casual conversation.\nThe principal official languages have terms not used outside of Switzerland, known as Helvetisms. German Helvetisms are, roughly speaking, a large group of words typical of Swiss Standard German that do not appear in Standard German, nor in other German dialects. These include terms from Switzerland's surrounding language cultures (German \"Billett\" from French), from similar terms in another language (Italian \"azione\" used not only as \"act\" but also as \"discount\" from German \"Aktion\"). Swiss French, while generally close to the French of France, also contains some Helvetisms. The most frequent characteristics of Helvetisms are in vocabulary, phrases, and pronunciation, although certain Helvetisms denote themselves as special in syntax and orthography. Duden, the comprehensive German dictionary, contains about 3000 Helvetisms. Current French dictionaries, such as the Petit Larousse, include several hundred Helvetisms; notably, Swiss French uses different terms than that of France for the numbers 70 (\"septante\") and 90 (\"nonante\") and often 80 (\"huitante\") as well.\nLearning one of the other national languages is compulsory for all Swiss pupils, hence many Swiss are supposed to be at least bilingual, especially those belonging to linguistic minority groups. Because the largest part of Switzerland is German-speaking, many French, Italian, and Romansh speakers migrating to the rest of Switzerland and the children of those non-German-speaking Swiss born within the rest of Switzerland speak German. While learning one of the other national languages at school is important, most Swiss learn English to communicate with Swiss speakers of other languages, as it is perceived as a neutral means of communication. English often functions as the de facto lingua franca.\nHealth.\nSwiss residents are required to buy health insurance from private insurance companies, which in turn are required to accept every applicant. While the cost of the system is among the highest, its health outcomes compare well with other European countries; patients have been reported as in general, highly satisfied with it. In 2012, life expectancy at birth was 80.4 years for men and 84.7 years for women \u2013 the world's highest. However, spending on health at 11.4% of GDP (2010) is on par with Germany and France (11.6%) and other European countries, but notably less than the US (17.6%). From 1990, costs steadily increased.\nIt is estimated that one out of six Swiss persons suffers from mental illness.\nAccording to a survey conducted by Addiction Switzerland, fourteen per cent of men and 6.5% of women between 20 and 24 reported consuming cannabis in the past 30 days in 2020, and 4 Swiss cities were listed among the top 10 European cities for cocaine use as measured in wastewater, down from 5 in 2018.\nCulture.\nSwiss culture is characterised by diversity, which is reflected in diverse traditional customs. A region may be in some ways culturally connected to the neighbouring country that shares its language, all rooted in western European culture. The linguistically isolated Romansh culture in Graub\u00fcnden in eastern Switzerland constitutes an exception. It survives only in the upper valleys of the Rhine and the Inn and strives to maintain its rare linguistic tradition.\nSwitzerland is home to notable contributors to literature, art, architecture, music and sciences. In addition, the country attracted creatives during times of unrest or war. Some 1000 museums are found in the country.\nAmong the most important cultural performances held annually are the Pal\u00e9o Festival, Lucerne Festival, the Montreux Jazz Festival, the Locarno International Film Festival and Art Basel.\nAlpine symbolism played an essential role in shaping Swiss history and the Swiss national identity. Many alpine areas and ski resorts attract visitors for winter sports as well as hiking and mountain biking in summer. The quieter seasons are spring and autumn. A traditional pastoral culture predominates in many areas, and small farms are omnipresent in rural areas. Folk art is nurtured in organisations across the country. Switzerland most directly in appears in music, dance, poetry, wood carving, and embroidery. The alphorn, a trumpet-like musical instrument made of wood has joined yodeling and the accordion as epitomes of traditional Swiss music.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nChristianity is the predominant religion according to national surveys of Swiss Federal Statistical Office (about 67% of resident population in 2016\u20132018 and 75% of Swiss citizens), divided between the Catholic Church (35.8% of the population), the Swiss Reformed Church (23.8%), further Protestant churches (2.2%), Eastern Orthodoxy (2.5%), and other Christian denominations (2.2%).\nSwitzerland has no official state religion, though most of the cantons (except Geneva and Neuch\u00e2tel) recognise official churches, either the Catholic Church or the Swiss Reformed Church. These churches, and in some cantons the Old Catholic Church and Jewish congregations, are financed by official taxation of members. In 2020, the Roman Catholic Church had 3,048,475 registered and church tax paying members (corresponding to 35.2% of the total population), while the Swiss Reformed Church had 2,015,816 members (23.3% of the total population).\n26.3% of Swiss permanent residents are not affiliated with a religious community.\nAs of 2020, according to a national survey conducted by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, Christian minority communities included Neo-Pietism (0.5%), Pentecostalism (0.4%, mostly incorporated in the Schweizer Pfingstmission), Apostolic communities (0.3%), other Protestant denominations (1.1%, including Methodism), the Old Catholic Church (0.1%), other Christian denominations (0.3%). Non-Christian religions are Islam (5.3%), Hinduism (0.6%), Buddhism (0.5%), Judaism (0.25%) and others (0.4%).\nHistorically, the country was about evenly balanced between Catholic and Protestant, in a complex patchwork. During the Reformation Switzerland became home to many reformers. Geneva converted to Protestantism in 1536, just before John Calvin arrived. In 1541, he founded the \"Republic of Geneva\" on his own ideals. It became known internationally as the \"Protestant Rome\" and housed such reformers as Theodore Beza, William Farel or Pierre Viret. Zurich became another reform stronghold around the same time, with Huldrych Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger taking the lead. Anabaptists Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel also operated there. They were later joined by the fleeing Peter Martyr Vermigli and Hans Denck. Other centres included Basel (Andreas Karlstadt and Johannes Oecolampadius), Bern (Berchtold Haller and Niklaus Manuel), and St. Gallen (Joachim Vadian). One canton, Appenzell, was officially divided into Catholic and Protestant sections in 1597. The larger cities and their cantons (Bern, Geneva, Lausanne, Zurich and Basel) used to be predominantly Protestant. Central Switzerland, the Valais, the Ticino, Appenzell Innerrhodes, the Jura, and Fribourg are traditionally Catholic.\nThe Swiss Constitution of 1848, under the recent impression of the clashes of Catholic vs Protestant cantons that culminated in the Sonderbundskrieg, consciously defines a consociational state, allowing the peaceful co-existence of Catholics and Protestants. A 1980 initiative calling for the complete separation of church and state was rejected by 78.9% of the voters. Some traditionally Protestant cantons and cities nowadays have a slight Catholic majority, because since about 1970 a steadily growing minority were not affiliated with any religious body (21.4% in Switzerland, 2012) especially in traditionally Protestant regions, such as Basel-City (42%), canton of Neuch\u00e2tel (38%), canton of Geneva (35%), canton of Vaud (26%), or Zurich city (city: >25%; canton: 23%).\nLiterature.\nThe earliest forms of literature were in German, reflecting the language's early predominance. In the 18th century, French became fashionable in Bern and elsewhere, while the influence of the French-speaking allies and subject lands increased.\nAmong the classic authors of Swiss literature are Jeremias Gotthelf (1797\u20131854) and Gottfried Keller (1819\u20131890); later writers are Max Frisch (1911\u20131991) and Friedrich D\u00fcrrenmatt (1921\u20131990), whose (\"\") was released as a Hollywood film in 2001, starring Jack Nicholson.\nFamous French-speaking writers were Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712\u20131778) and Germaine de Sta\u00ebl (1766\u20131817). More recent authors include Charles Ferdinand Ramuz (1878\u20131947), whose novels describe the lives of peasants and mountain dwellers, set in a harsh environment, and Blaise Cendrars (born Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Sauser, 1887\u20131961). Italian and Romansh-speaking authors also contributed to the Swiss literary landscape, generally in proportion to their number.\nProbably the most famous Swiss literary creation, \"Heidi\", the story of an orphan girl who lives with her grandfather in the Alps, is one of the most popular children's books and has come to be a symbol of Switzerland. Her creator, Johanna Spyri (1827\u20131901), wrote a number of books on similar themes.\nMedia.\nFreedom of the press and the right to free expression is guaranteed in the constitution. The Swiss News Agency (SNA) broadcasts information in three of the four national languages\u2014on politics, economics, society and culture. The SNA supplies almost all Swiss media and foreign media with its reporting.\nIn Switzerland, the most influential newspapers include the German-language and \"Neue Z\u00fcrcher Zeitung\", as well as the French-language \"Le Temps\". Additionally, almost every city has at least one local newspaper published in the predominant local language.\nThe government exerts greater control over broadcast media than print media, especially due to financing and licensing. The Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, whose name was recently changed to SRG SSR, is charged with the production and distribution of radio and television content. SRG SSR studios are distributed across the various language regions. Radio content is produced in six central and four regional studios while video media are produced in Geneva, Zurich, Basel, and Lugano. An extensive cable network allows most Swiss to access content from neighbouring countries.\nSports.\nSkiing, snowboarding and mountaineering are among the most popular sports, reflecting the nature of the country Winter sports are practised by natives and visitors. The bobsleigh was invented in St. Moritz. The first world ski championships were held in M\u00fcrren (1931) and St. Moritz (1934). The latter town hosted the second Winter Olympic Games in 1928 and the fifth edition in 1948. Among its most successful skiers and world champions are Pirmin Zurbriggen and Didier Cuche.\nThe most prominently watched sports in Switzerland are football and ice hockey.\nThe headquarters of the international football's and ice hockey's governing bodies, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) and International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) are located in Zurich. Many other headquarters of international sports federations are located in Switzerland. For example, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), IOC's Olympic Museum and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) are located in Lausanne.\nSwitzerland hosted the 1954 FIFA World Cup and was the joint host, with Austria, of the UEFA Euro 2008 tournament. The Swiss Super League is the nation's professional football club league. Europe's highest football pitch, at above sea level, is located in Switzerland, the \"Ottmar Hitzfeld Stadium\".\nMany Swiss follow ice hockey and support one of the 12 teams of the National League, which is the most attended league in Europe. In 2009, Switzerland hosted the IIHF World Championship for the tenth time. It also became World Vice-Champion in 2013 and 2018. Its numerous lakes make Switzerland an attractive sailing destination. The largest, Lake Geneva, is the home of the sailing team Alinghi which was the first European team to win the America's Cup in 2003 and which successfully defended the title in 2007.\nSwiss tennis player Roger Federer is widely regarded as among the sport's greatest players. He won 20 Grand Slam tournaments overall including a record 8 Wimbledon titles. He won six ATP Finals. He was ranked no. 1 in the ATP rankings for a record 237 consecutive weeks. He ended 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009 ranked no. 1. Fellow Swiss players Martina Hingis and Stan Wawrinka also won multiple Grand Slam titles. Switzerland won the Davis Cup title in 2014.\nMotorsport racecourses and events were banned in Switzerland following the 1955 Le Mans disaster with exceptions for events such as hillclimbing. The country continued to produce successful racing drivers such as Clay Regazzoni, S\u00e9bastien Buemi, Jo Siffert, Dominique Aegerter, successful World Touring Car Championship driver Alain Menu, 2014 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Marcel F\u00e4ssler and 2015 24 Hours N\u00fcrburgring winner Nico M\u00fcller. Switzerland also won the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport in 2007\u201308 with driver Neel Jani. Swiss motorcycle racer Thomas L\u00fcthi won the 2005 MotoGP World Championship in the 125cc category. In June 2007 the Swiss National Council, one house of the Federal Assembly of Switzerland, voted to overturn the ban, however the other house, the Swiss Council of States rejected the change and the ban remains in place.\nTraditional sports include Swiss wrestling or , a tradition from the rural central cantons and considered the national sport by some. Hornussen is another indigenous Swiss sport, which is like a cross between baseball and golf. is the Swiss variant of stone put, a competition in throwing a heavy stone. Practised only among the alpine population since prehistoric times, it is recorded to have taken place in Basel in the 13th century. It is central to the Unspunnenfest, first held in 1805, with its symbol the 83.5 stone named .\nCuisine.\nThe cuisine is multifaceted. While dishes such as fondue, raclette or r\u00f6sti are omnipresent, each region developed its gastronomy according to the varieties of climate and language, for example, , engl.: sliced meat Zurich style. Traditional Swiss cuisine uses ingredients similar to those in other European countries, as well as unique dairy products and cheeses such as Gruy\u00e8re or Emmental, produced in the valleys of Gruy\u00e8res and Emmental. The number of fine-dining establishments is high, particularly in western Switzerland.\nChocolate has been made in Switzerland since the 18th century. Its reputation grew at the end of the 19th century with the invention of modern techniques such as conching and tempering, which enabled higher quality. Another breakthrough was the invention of solid milk chocolate in 1875 by Daniel Peter. The Swiss are the world's largest chocolate consumers.\nThe most popular alcoholic drink is wine. Switzerland is notable for its variety of grape varieties, reflecting the large variations in terroirs. Swiss wine is produced mainly in Valais, Vaud (Lavaux), Geneva and Ticino, with a small majority of white wines. Vineyards have been cultivated in Switzerland since the Roman era, even though traces of a more ancient origin can be found. The most widespread varieties are the Chasselas (called Fendant in Valais) and Pinot Noir. Merlot is the main variety produced in Ticino.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["24723710", "26748", "981", "11542"], "permutation_1": ["26748", "981", "24723710", "11542"], "permutation_2": ["24723710", "26748", "11542", "981"], "permutation_3": ["11542", "26748", "981", "24723710"]}
{"id": "4hop1__32903_103178_77757_384713", "docs_added": {"43460": "Han dynasty\nImperial dynasty in China (202 BC \u2013 220 AD)\nThe Han dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China (202\u00a0BC\u00a0\u2013 9\u00a0AD, 25\u2013220\u00a0AD) established by Liu Bang and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221\u2013206\u00a0BC) and a warring interregnum known as the Chu\u2013Han Contention (206\u2013202\u00a0BC), and it was succeeded by the Three Kingdoms period (220\u2013280\u00a0AD). The dynasty was briefly interrupted by the Xin dynasty (9\u201323\u00a0AD) established by the usurping regent Wang Mang, and is thus separated into two periods\u2014the Western Han (202\u00a0BC\u00a0\u2013 9\u00a0AD) and the Eastern Han (25\u2013220\u00a0AD). Spanning over four centuries, the Han dynasty is considered a golden age in Chinese history, and had a permanent impact on Chinese identity in later periods. The majority ethnic group of modern China refer to themselves as the \"Han people\" or \"Han Chinese\". The spoken Chinese and written Chinese are referred to respectively as the \"Han language\" and \"Han characters\".\nThe Han emperor was at the pinnacle of Han society and culture. He presided over the Han government but shared power with both the nobility and the appointed ministers who came largely from the scholarly gentry class. The Han Empire was divided into areas directly controlled by the central government called commanderies, as well as a number of semi-autonomous kingdoms. These kingdoms gradually lost all vestiges of their independence, particularly following the Rebellion of the Seven States. From the reign of Emperor Wu (r.\u2009141\u00a0\u2013\u00a087\u00a0BC) onward, the Chinese court officially sponsored Confucianism in education and court politics, synthesized with the cosmology of later scholars such as Dong Zhongshu.\nThe Han dynasty oversaw periods of economic prosperity as well as significant growth in the money economy that had first been established during the Zhou dynasty (c.\u20091050\u00a0\u2013 256\u00a0BC). The coinage minted by the central government in 119\u00a0BC remained the standard in China until the Tang dynasty (618\u2013907\u00a0AD). The period saw a number of limited institutional innovations. To finance its military campaigns and the settlement of newly conquered frontier territories, the Han government nationalised private salt and iron industries in 117\u00a0BC, creating government monopolies that were later repealed during the Eastern period. There were significant advances in science and technology during the Han period, including the emergence of papermaking, rudders for steering ships, negative numbers in mathematics, raised-relief maps, hydraulic-powered armillary spheres for astronomy, and seismometers that discerned the cardinal direction of distant earthquakes by use of inverted pendulums.\nThe Han dynasty had many conflicts with the Xiongnu, a nomadic confederation centred in the eastern Eurasian steppe. The Xiongnu defeated the Han in 200\u00a0BC, prompting the Han to appease the Xiongnu with a policy of marriage alliance and payments of tribute, though the Xiongnu continued to raid the Han's northern borders. Han policy changed in 133\u00a0BC, under Emperor Wu, when Han forces began a series of military campaigns to quell the Xiongnu. The Xiongnu were eventually defeated and forced to accept a status as Han vassals, and the Xiongnu confederation fragmented. The Han conquered the Hexi Corridor and Inner Asian territory of the Tarim Basin from the Xiongnu, helping to establish the Silk Road. The lands north of the Han's borders were later overrun by the nomadic Xianbei confederation. Emperor Wu also launched successful conquests in the south, annexing Nanyue in 111\u00a0BC and Dian in 109\u00a0BC. He further expanded Han territory into the northern Korean Peninsula, where Han forces conquered Gojoseon and established the Xuantu and Lelang commanderies in 108\u00a0BC. \nAfter 92\u00a0AD, palace eunuchs increasingly involved themselves in the dynasty's court politics, engaging in violent power struggles between various consort clans of the empresses and empresses dowager. Imperial authority was also seriously challenged by large Taoist religious societies which instigated the Yellow Turban Rebellion and the Five Pecks of Rice Rebellion. Following the death of Emperor Ling (r.\u2009168\u00a0\u2013\u00a0189\u00a0AD), the palace eunuchs were massacred by military officers, allowing members of the aristocracy and military governors to become warlords and divide the empire. The Han dynasty came to an end in 220\u00a0AD when Cao Pi, king of Wei, usurped the throne from Emperor Xian.\nEtymology.\nAccording to the \"Records of the Grand Historian\", after the collapse of the Qin dynasty the hegemon Xiang Yu appointed Liu Bang as prince of the small fief of Hanzhong, named after its location on the Han River (in modern southwest Shaanxi). Following Liu Bang's victory in the Chu\u2013Han Contention, the resulting Han dynasty was named after the Hanzhong fief.\nHistory.\nWestern Han (202 BC \u2013 9 AD).\nChina's first imperial dynasty was the Qin dynasty (221\u2013206\u00a0BC). The Qin united the Chinese Warring States by conquest, but their regime became unstable after the death of the first emperor Qin Shi Huang. Within four years, the dynasty's authority had collapsed in a rebellion. Two former rebel leaders, Xiang Yu (d.\u2009202\u00a0BC) of Chu and Liu Bang (d.\u2009195\u00a0BC) of Han, engaged in a war to determine who would have hegemony over China, which had fissured into Eighteen Kingdoms, each claiming allegiance to either Xiang Yu or Liu Bang. Although Xiang Yu proved to be an effective commander, Liu Bang defeated him at the Battle of Gaixia (202\u00a0BC) in modern-day Anhui. Liu Bang assumed the title of Emperor at the urging of his followers and is known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu (r.\u2009202\u00a0\u2013\u00a0195\u00a0BC). Chang'an (modern Xi'an) was chosen as the new capital of the reunified empire under Han.\nAt the beginning of the Western Han (), also known as the Former Han (), thirteen centrally-controlled commanderies\u2014including the capital region\u2014existed in the western third of the empire, while the eastern two-thirds were divided into ten semi-autonomous kingdoms. To placate his prominent commanders from the war with Chu, Emperor Gaozu enfeoffed some of them as kings.\nBy 196, the Han court had replaced all of these kings with royal Liu family members, with the lone exception of Changsha. The loyalty of non-relatives to the emperor was questioned, and after several insurrections by Han kings\u2014with the largest being the Rebellion of the Seven States in 154\u2014the imperial court began enacting a series of reforms that limited the power of these kingdoms in 145, dividing their former territories into new commanderies under central control. Kings were no longer able to appoint their own staff; this duty was assumed by the imperial court. Kings became nominal heads of their fiefs and collected a portion of tax revenues as their personal incomes. The kingdoms were never entirely abolished and existed throughout the remainder of Western and Eastern Han.\nTo the north of China proper, the nomadic Xiongnu chieftain Modu Chanyu (r.\u2009209\u00a0\u2013\u00a0174\u00a0BC) conquered various tribes inhabiting the eastern portion of the Eurasian Steppe. By the end of his reign, he controlled the Inner Asian regions of Manchuria, Mongolia, and the Tarim Basin, subjugating over twenty states east of Samarkand. Emperor Gaozu was troubled about the abundant Han-manufactured iron weapons traded to the Xiongnu along the northern borders, and he established a trade embargo against the group.\nIn retaliation, the Xiongnu invaded what is now Shanxi, where they defeated the Han forces at Baideng in 200\u00a0BC. After negotiations, the \"heqin\" agreement in 198\u00a0BC nominally held the leaders of the Xiongnu and the Han as equal partners in a royal marriage alliance, but the Han were forced to send large amounts of tribute items such as silk clothes, food, and wine to the Xiongnu.\nDespite the tribute and negotiation between Laoshang Chanyu (r.\u2009174\u00a0\u2013\u00a0160\u00a0BC) and Emperor Wen (r.\u2009180\u00a0\u2013\u00a0157\u00a0BC) to reopen border markets, many of the Chanyu's subordinates chose not to obey the treaty and periodically raided Han territories south of the Great Wall for additional goods. In a court conference assembled by Emperor Wu (r.\u2009141\u00a0\u2013\u00a087\u00a0BC) in 135\u00a0BC, the majority consensus of the ministers was to retain the \"heqin\" agreement. Emperor Wu accepted this, despite continuing Xiongnu raids.\nHowever, a court conference the following year convinced the majority that a limited engagement at Mayi involving the assassination of the Chanyu would throw the Xiongnu realm into chaos and benefit the Han. When this plot failed in 133\u00a0BC, Emperor Wu launched a series of massive military invasions into Xiongnu territory. The assault culminated in 119\u00a0BC at the Battle of Mobei, when Han commanders Huo Qubing (d.\u2009117\u00a0BC) and Wei Qing (d.\u2009106\u00a0BC) forced the Xiongnu court to flee north of the Gobi Desert, and Han forces reached as far north as Lake Baikal.\nAfter Wu's reign, Han forces continued to fight the Xiongnu. The Xiongnu leader Huhanye (r.\u200958\u00a0\u2013\u00a031\u00a0BC) finally submitted to the Han as a tributary vassal in 51\u00a0BC. Huhanye's rival claimant to the throne, Zhizhi Chanyu (r.\u200956\u00a0\u2013\u00a036\u00a0BC), was killed by Han forces under Chen Tang and Gan Yanshou () at the Battle of Zhizhi, in modern Taraz, Kazakhstan.\nIn 121\u00a0BC, Han forces expelled the Xiongnu from a vast territory spanning the Hexi Corridor to Lop Nur. They repelled a joint Xiongnu-Qiang invasion of this northwestern territory in 111\u00a0BC. In that same year, the Han court established four new frontier commanderies in this region to consolidate their control: Jiuquan, Zhangyi, Dunhuang, and Wuwei. The majority of people on the frontier were soldiers. On occasion, the court forcibly moved peasant farmers to new frontier settlements, along with government-owned slaves and convicts who performed hard labour. The court also encouraged commoners, such as farmers, merchants, landowners, and hired labourers, to voluntarily migrate to the frontier.\nEven before the Han's expansion into Central Asia, diplomat Zhang Qian's travels from 139 to 125\u00a0BC had established Chinese contacts with many surrounding civilizations. Zhang encountered Dayuan (Fergana), Kangju (Sogdiana), and Daxia (Bactria, formerly the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom); he also gathered information on Shendu (the Indus River valley) and Anxi (the Parthian Empire). All of these countries eventually received Han embassies. These connections marked the beginning of the Silk Road trade network that extended to the Roman Empire, bringing goods like Chinese silk and Roman glasswares between the two.\nFrom c.\u2009115 BC until c.\u200960 BC, Han forces fought the Xiongnu over control of the oasis city-states in the Tarim Basin. The Han was eventually victorious and established the Protectorate of the Western Regions in 60\u00a0BC, which dealt with the region's defence and foreign affairs. The Han also expanded southward. The naval conquest of Nanyue in 111\u00a0BC expanded the Han realm into what are now modern Guangdong, Guangxi, and northern Vietnam. Yunnan was brought into the Han realm with the conquest of the Dian Kingdom in 109\u00a0BC, followed by parts of the Korean Peninsula with the Han conquest of Gojoseon and establishment of the Xuantu and Lelang commanderies in 108\u00a0BC. The first nationwide census in Chinese history was taken in 2\u00a0AD; the Han's total population was registered as comprising 57,671,400 individuals across 12,366,470 households.\nTo pay for his military campaigns and colonial expansion, Emperor Wu nationalised several private industries. He created central government monopolies administered largely by former merchants. These monopolies included salt, iron, and liquor production, as well as bronze coinage. The liquor monopoly lasted only from 98 to 81\u00a0BC, and the salt and iron monopolies were eventually abolished in the early Eastern Han. The issuing of coinage remained a central government monopoly throughout the rest of the Han dynasty.\nThe government monopolies were eventually repealed when a political faction known as the Reformists gained greater influence in the court. The Reformists opposed the Modernist faction that had dominated court politics in Emperor Wu's reign and during the subsequent regency of Huo Guang (d.\u200968\u00a0BC). The Modernists argued for an aggressive and expansionary foreign policy supported by revenues from heavy government intervention in the private economy. The Reformists, however, overturned these policies, favouring a cautious, non-expansionary approach to foreign policy, frugal budget reform, and lower tax-rates imposed on private entrepreneurs.\nWang Mang's reign and civil war.\nWang Zhengjun (71\u00a0BC\u00a0\u2013 13\u00a0AD) was first empress, then empress dowager, and finally grand empress dowager during the reigns of the Emperors Yuan (r.\u200949\u00a0\u2013\u00a033\u00a0BC), Cheng (r.\u200933\u00a0\u2013\u00a07\u00a0BC), and Ai (r.\u20097\u00a0\u2013\u00a01\u00a0BC), respectively. During this time, a succession of her male relatives held the title of regent. Following the death of Ai, Wang Zhengjun's nephew Wang Mang (45\u00a0BC\u00a0\u2013 23\u00a0AD) was appointed regent as Marshall of State on 16 August under Emperor Ping (r.1\u00a0BC\u00a0\u2013 6\u00a0AD).\nWhen Ping died on 3 February 6\u00a0AD, Ruzi Ying (d.\u200925\u00a0AD) was chosen as the heir and Wang Mang was appointed to serve as acting emperor for the child. Wang promised to relinquish his control to Liu Ying once he came of age. Despite this promise, and against protest and revolts from the nobility, Wang Mang claimed on 10 January that the divine Mandate of Heaven called for the end of the Han dynasty and the beginning of his own: the Xin dynasty (9\u201323\u00a0AD).\nWang Mang initiated a series of major reforms that were ultimately unsuccessful. These reforms included outlawing slavery, nationalizing and equally distributing land between households, and introducing new currencies, a change which debased the value of coinage. Although these reforms provoked considerable opposition, Wang's regime met its ultimate downfall with the massive floods of c.\u20093\u00a0AD and 11\u00a0AD. Gradual silt build-up in the Yellow River had raised its water level and overwhelmed the flood control works. The Yellow River split into two new branches: one emptying to the north and the other to the south of the Shandong Peninsula, though Han engineers managed to dam the southern branch by 70\u00a0AD.\nThe flood dislodged thousands of peasant farmers, many of whom joined roving bandit and rebel groups such as the Red Eyebrows to survive. Wang Mang's armies were incapable of quelling these enlarged rebel groups. Eventually, an insurgent mob forced their way into the Weiyang Palace and killed Wang Mang.\nThe Gengshi Emperor (r.\u200923\u00a0\u2013\u00a025\u00a0AD), a descendant of Emperor Jing (r.\u2009157\u00a0\u2013\u00a0141\u00a0BC), attempted to restore the Han dynasty and occupied Chang'an as his capital. However, he was overwhelmed by the Red Eyebrow rebels who deposed, assassinated, and replaced him with the puppet monarch Liu Penzi. Gengshi's distant cousin Liu Xiu, known posthumously as Emperor Guangwu (r.\u200925\u00a0\u2013\u00a057\u00a0AD), after distinguishing himself at the Battle of Kunyang in 23\u00a0AD, was urged to succeed Gengshi as emperor.\nUnder Guangwu's rule, the Han Empire was restored. Guangwu made Luoyang his capital in 25\u00a0AD, and by 27 his officers Deng Yu and Feng Yi had forced the Red Eyebrows to surrender and executed their leaders for treason. From 26 until 36\u00a0AD, Emperor Guangwu had to wage war against other regional warlords who claimed the title of emperor; when these warlords were defeated, China reunified under the Han.\nThe period between the foundation of the Han dynasty and Wang Mang's reign is known as the Western Han () or Former Han () (206\u00a0BC\u00a0\u2013 9\u00a0AD). During this period the capital was at Chang'an (modern Xi'an). From the reign of Guangwu the capital was moved eastward to Luoyang. The era from his reign until the fall of Han is known as the Eastern Han or Later Han (25\u2013220\u00a0AD).\nEastern Han (25\u2013220 AD).\nThe Eastern Han (), also known as the Later Han (), formally began on 5 August AD\u00a025, when Liu Xiu became Emperor Guangwu of Han. During the widespread rebellion against Wang Mang, the state of Goguryeo was free to raid Han's Korean commanderies; Han did not reaffirm its control over the region until AD\u00a030.\nThe Tr\u01b0ng Sisters of Vietnam rebelled against Han in AD\u00a040. Their rebellion was crushed by Han general Ma Yuan (d.\u2009AD\u00a049) in a campaign from AD\u00a042 to 43. Wang Mang renewed hostilities against the Xiongnu, who were estranged from Han until their leader Bi (), a rival claimant to the throne against his cousin Punu (), submitted to Han as a tributary vassal in AD\u00a050. This created two rival Xiongnu states: the Southern Xiongnu led by Bi, an ally of Han, and the Northern Xiongnu led by Punu, an enemy of Han.\nDuring the turbulent reign of Wang Mang, China lost control over the Tarim Basin, which was conquered by the Northern Xiongnu in AD\u00a063 and used as a base to invade the Hexi Corridor in Gansu. Dou Gu (d.\u200988\u00a0AD) defeated the Northern Xiongnu at the Battle of Yiwulu in AD\u00a073, evicting them from Turpan and chasing them as far as Lake Barkol before establishing a garrison at Hami. After the new Protector General of the Western Regions Chen Mu (d.\u2009AD\u00a075) was killed by allies of the Xiongnu in Karasahr and Kucha, the garrison at Hami was withdrawn.\nAt the Battle of Ikh Bayan in AD\u00a089, Dou Xian (d.\u2009AD\u00a092) defeated the Northern Xiongnu \"chanyu\" who then retreated into the Altai Mountains. After the Northern Xiongnu fled into the Ili River valley in AD\u00a091, the nomadic Xianbei occupied the area from the borders of the Buyeo Kingdom in Manchuria to the Ili River of the Wusun people. The Xianbei reached their apogee under Tanshihuai (d.\u2009AD\u00a0181), who consistently defeated Chinese armies. However, Tanshihuai's confederation disintegrated after his death.\nBan Chao (d.\u2009AD\u00a0102) enlisted the aid of the Kushan Empire, which controlled territory across South and Central Asia, to subdue Kashgar and its ally Sogdiana. When a request by Kushan ruler Vima Kadphises (r.) for a marriage alliance with the Han was rejected in AD\u00a090, he sent his forces to Wakhan (modern-day Afghanistan) to attack Ban Chao. The conflict ended with the Kushans withdrawing because of lack of supplies. In AD\u00a091, the office of Protector General of the Western Regions was reinstated when it was bestowed on Ban Chao.\nForeign travellers to the Eastern Han empire included Buddhist monks who translated works into Chinese, such as An Shigao from Parthia, and Lokaksema from Kushan-era Gandhara. In addition to tributary relations with the Kushans, the Han empire received gifts from sovereigns in the Parthian Empire, as well as from kings in modern Burma and Japan. He also initiated an unsuccessful mission to Rome in AD\u00a097 with Gan Ying as emissary.\nA Roman embassy of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (r.\u2009161\u00a0\u2013\u00a0180\u00a0AD) is recorded in the \"Weil\u00fce\" and \"Book of Later Han\" to have reached the court of Emperor Huan of Han (r.\u2009146\u00a0\u2013\u00a0168\u00a0AD) in AD\u00a0166, yet Rafe de Crespigny asserts that this was most likely a group of Roman merchants. In addition to Roman glasswares and coins found in China, Roman medallions from the reign of Antoninus Pius and his adopted son Marcus Aurelius have been found at \u00d3c Eo in Vietnam. This was near the commandery of Rinan where Chinese sources claim the Romans first landed, as well as embassies from Tianzhu in northern India in 159 and 161. \u00d3c Eo is also thought to be the port city \"Cattigara\" described by Ptolemy in his \"Geography\" (c.\u2009150\u00a0AD) as lying east of the Golden Chersonese (Malay Peninsula) along the \"Magnus Sinus\" (i.e. the Gulf of Thailand and South China Sea), where a Greek sailor had visited.\nEmperor Zhang's (r.\u200975\u00a0\u2013\u00a088\u00a0AD) reign came to be viewed by later Eastern Han scholars as the high point of the dynastic house. Subsequent reigns were increasingly marked by eunuch intervention in court politics and their involvement in the violent power struggles of the imperial consort clans. In 92\u00a0AD, with the aid of the eunuch Zheng Zhong (d.\u2009107\u00a0AD), Emperor He (r.\u200988\u00a0\u2013\u00a0105\u00a0AD) had Empress Dowager Dou (d.\u200997\u00a0AD) put under house arrest and her clan stripped of power. This was in revenge for Dou's purging of the clan of his natural mother\u2014Consort Liang\u2014and then concealing her identity from him. After Emperor He's death, his wife Empress Deng Sui (d.\u2009121\u00a0AD) managed state affairs as the regent empress dowager during a turbulent financial crisis and widespread Qiang rebellion that lasted from 107 to 118\u00a0AD.\nWhen Empress Dowager Deng died, Emperor An (r.\u2009106\u00a0\u2013\u00a0125\u00a0AD) was convinced by the accusations of the eunuchs Li Run () and Jiang Jing () that Deng and her family had planned to depose him. An dismissed Deng's clan members from office, exiled them, and forced many to commit suicide. After An's death, his wife, Empress Dowager Yan (d.\u2009126\u00a0AD) placed the child Marquess of Beixiang on the throne in an attempt to retain power within her family. However, palace eunuch Sun Cheng (d.\u2009132\u00a0AD) masterminded a successful overthrow of her regime to enthrone Emperor Shun of Han (r.\u2009125\u00a0\u2013\u00a0144\u00a0AD). Yan was placed under house arrest, her relatives were either killed or exiled, and her eunuch allies were slaughtered. The regent Liang Ji (d.\u2009159\u00a0AD), brother of Empress Liang Na (d.\u2009150\u00a0AD), had the brother-in-law of Consort Deng Mengn\u00fc (d.\u2009165\u00a0AD) killed after Deng Mengn\u00fc resisted Liang Ji's attempts to control her. Afterward, Emperor Huan employed eunuchs to depose Liang Ji, who was then forced to commit suicide.\nStudents from the imperial university organized a widespread student protest against the eunuchs of Emperor Huan's court. Huan further alienated the bureaucracy when he initiated grandiose construction projects and hosted thousands of concubines in his harem at a time of economic crisis. Palace eunuchs imprisoned the official Li Ying () and his associates from the Imperial University on a dubious charge of treason. In 167\u00a0AD, the Grand Commandant Dou Wu (d.\u2009168\u00a0AD) convinced his son-in-law, Emperor Huan, to release them. However, the emperor permanently barred Li Ying and his associates from serving in office, marking the beginning of the Partisan Prohibitions.\nFollowing Huan's death, Dou Wu and the Grand Tutor Chen Fan (d.\u2009168\u00a0AD) attempted a coup against the eunuchs Hou Lan (d.\u2009172\u00a0AD), Cao Jie (d.\u2009181\u00a0AD), and Wang Fu (). When the plot was uncovered, the eunuchs arrested Empress Dowager Dou (d.\u2009172\u00a0AD) and Chen Fan. General Zhang Huan () favoured the eunuchs. He and his troops confronted Dou Wu and his retainers at the palace gate where each side shouted accusations of treason against the other. When the retainers gradually deserted Dou Wu, he was forced to commit suicide.\nUnder Emperor Ling (r.\u2009168\u00a0\u2013\u00a0189\u00a0AD) the eunuchs had the partisan prohibitions renewed and expanded, while also auctioning off top government offices. Many affairs of state were entrusted to the eunuchs Zhao Zhong (d.\u2009189\u00a0AD) and Zhang Rang (d.\u2009189\u00a0AD) while Emperor Ling spent much of his time roleplaying with concubines and participating in military parades.\nEnd of the Han dynasty.\nThe Partisan Prohibitions were repealed during the Yellow Turban Rebellion and Five Pecks of Rice Rebellion in 184\u00a0AD, largely because the court did not want to continue to alienate a significant portion of the gentry class who might otherwise join the rebellions. The Yellow Turbans and Five-Pecks-of-Rice adherents belonged to two different hierarchical Taoist religious societies led by faith healers Zhang Jue (d.\u2009184\u00a0AD) and Zhang Lu (d.\u2009216\u00a0AD), respectively.\nZhang Lu's rebellion, in what is now northern Sichuan and southern Shaanxi, was not quelled until 215\u00a0AD. Zhang Jue's massive rebellion across eight provinces was annihilated by Han forces within a year; however, the following decades saw much smaller recurrent uprisings. Although the Yellow Turbans were defeated, many generals appointed during the crisis never disbanded their assembled militias and used these troops to amass power outside of the collapsing imperial authority.\nGeneral-in-chief He Jin (d.\u2009189\u00a0AD), half-brother to Empress He (d.\u2009189\u00a0AD), plotted with Yuan Shao (d.\u2009202\u00a0AD) to overthrow the eunuchs by having several generals march to the outskirts of the capital. There, in a written petition to Empress He, they demanded the eunuchs' execution. After a period of hesitation, Empress He consented. When the eunuchs discovered this, however, they had her brother He Miao () rescind the order. The eunuchs assassinated He Jin on 22 September 189.\nYuan Shao then besieged Luoyang's Northern Palace while his brother Yuan Shu (d.\u2009199\u00a0AD) besieged the Southern Palace. On September 25 both palaces were breached and approximately two thousand eunuchs were killed. Zhang Rang had previously fled with Emperor Shao (r.189\u00a0AD) and his brother Liu Xie\u2014the future Emperor Xian of Han (r.\u2009189\u00a0\u2013\u00a0220\u00a0AD). While being pursued by the Yuan brothers, Zhang committed suicide by jumping into the Yellow River.\nGeneral Dong Zhuo (d.\u2009192\u00a0AD) found the young emperor and his brother wandering in the countryside. He escorted them safely back to the capital and was made Minister of Works, taking control of Luoyang and forcing Yuan Shao to flee. After Dong Zhuo demoted Emperor Shao and promoted his brother Liu Xie as Emperor Xian, Yuan Shao led a coalition of former officials and officers against Dong, who burned Luoyang to the ground and resettled the court at Chang'an in May 191\u00a0AD. Dong Zhuo later poisoned Emperor Shao.\nDong was killed by his adopted son L\u00fc Bu (d.\u2009198\u00a0AD) in a plot hatched by Wang Yun (d.\u2009192\u00a0AD). Emperor Xian fled from Chang'an in 195\u00a0AD to the ruins of Luoyang. Xian was persuaded by Cao Cao (155\u2013220\u00a0AD), then Governor of Yan Province in modern western Shandong and eastern Henan, to move the capital to Xuchang in 196\u00a0AD.\nYuan Shao challenged Cao Cao for control over the emperor. Yuan's power was greatly diminished after Cao defeated him at the Battle of Guandu in 200\u00a0AD. After Yuan died, Cao killed Yuan Shao's son Yuan Tan (173\u2013205\u00a0AD), who had fought with his brothers over the family inheritance. His brothers Yuan Shang and Yuan Xi were killed in 207\u00a0AD by Gongsun Kang (d.\u2009221\u00a0AD), who sent their heads to Cao Cao.\nAfter Cao's defeat at the naval Battle of Red Cliffs in 208\u00a0AD, China was divided into three spheres of influence, with Cao Cao dominating the north, Sun Quan (182\u2013252\u00a0AD) dominating the south, and Liu Bei (161\u2013223\u00a0AD) dominating the west. Cao Cao died in March 220\u00a0AD. By December his son Cao Pi (187\u2013226\u00a0AD) had Emperor Xian relinquish the throne to him and is known posthumously as Emperor Wen of Wei. This formally ended the Han dynasty and initiated an age of conflict between the Three Kingdoms: Cao Wei, Eastern Wu, and Shu Han.\nCulture and society.\nSocial class.\nIn the hierarchical social order, the emperor was at the apex of Han society and government. However, the emperor was often a minor, ruled over by a regent such as the empress dowager or one of her male relatives. Ranked immediately below the emperor were the kings who were of the same Liu family clan. The rest of society, including nobles lower than kings and all commoners excluding slaves, belonged to one of twenty ranks (\"ershi gongcheng\" ).\nEach successive rank gave its holder greater pensions and legal privileges. The highest rank, of full marquess, came with a state pension and a territorial fiefdom. Holders of the rank immediately below, that of ordinary marquess, received a pension, but had no territorial rule. Scholar-bureaucrats who served in government belonged to the wider commoner social class and were ranked just below nobles in social prestige. The highest government officials could be enfeoffed as marquesses.\nBy the Eastern Han, local elites of unattached scholars, teachers, students, and government officials began to identify themselves as members of a nationwide gentry class with shared values and a commitment to mainstream scholarship. When the government became noticeably corrupt in mid-to-late Eastern Han, many gentry even considered the cultivation of morally-grounded personal relationships more important than serving in public office.\nFarmers, namely small landowner\u2013cultivators, were ranked just below scholars and officials in the social hierarchy. Other agricultural cultivators were of a lower status, such as tenants, wage labourers, and slaves. The Han dynasty made adjustments to slavery in China and saw an increase in agricultural slaves. Artisans, technicians, tradespeople, and craftsmen had a legal and socioeconomic status between that of owner-cultivator farmers and common merchants.\nState-registered merchants, who were forced by law to wear white-coloured clothes and pay high commercial taxes, were considered by the gentry as social parasites with a contemptible status. These were often petty shopkeepers of urban marketplaces; merchants such as industrialists and itinerant traders working between a network of cities could avoid registering as merchants and were often wealthier and more powerful than the vast majority of government officials.\nWealthy landowners, such as nobles and officials, often provided lodging for retainers who provided valuable work or duties, sometimes including fighting bandits or riding into battle. Unlike slaves, retainers could come and go from their master's home as they pleased. Physicians, pig breeders, and butchers had fairly high social status, while occultist diviners, runners, and messengers had low status.\nMarriage, gender, and kinship.\nThe Han-era family was patrilineal and typically had four to five nuclear family members living in one household. Multiple generations of extended family members did not occupy the same house, unlike families of later dynasties. According to Confucian family norms, various family members were treated with different levels of respect and intimacy. For example, there were different accepted time frames for mourning the death of a father versus a paternal uncle.\nMarriages were highly ritualized, particularly for the wealthy, and included many important steps. The giving of betrothal gifts, known as bride price and dowry, were especially important. A lack of either was considered dishonourable and the woman would have been seen not as a wife, but as a concubine. Arranged marriages were typical, with the father's input on his offspring's spouse being considered more important than the mother's.\nMonogamous marriages were also normal, although nobles and high officials were wealthy enough to afford and support concubines as additional lovers. Under certain conditions dictated by custom, not law, both men and women were able to divorce their spouses and remarry. However, a woman who had been widowed continued to belong to her husband's family after his death. In order to remarry, the widow would have to be returned to her family in exchange for a ransom fee. Her children would not be allowed to go with her.\nApart from the passing of noble titles or ranks, inheritance practices did not involve primogeniture; each son received an equal share of the family property. Unlike the practice in later dynasties, the father usually sent his adult married sons away with their portions of the family fortune. Daughters received a portion of the family fortune through their dowries, though this was usually much less than the shares of sons. A different distribution of the remainder could be specified in a will, but it is unclear how common this was.\nWomen were expected to obey the will of their father, then their husband, and then their adult son in old age. However, it is known from contemporary sources that there were many deviations to this rule, especially in regard to mothers over their sons, and empresses who ordered around and openly humiliated their fathers and brothers. Women were exempt from the annual corv\u00e9e labour duties, but often engaged in a range of income-earning occupations aside from their domestic chores of cooking and cleaning.\nThe most common occupation for women was weaving clothes for the family, for sale at market, or for large textile enterprises that employed hundreds of women. Other women helped on their brothers' farms or became singers, dancers, sorceresses, respected medical physicians, and successful merchants who could afford their own silk clothes. Some women formed spinning collectives, aggregating the resources of several different families.\nEducation, literature, and philosophy.\nThe early Western Han court simultaneously accepted the philosophical teachings of Legalism, Huang-Lao Taoism, and Confucianism in making state decisions and shaping government policy. However, the Han court under Emperor Wu gave Confucianism exclusive patronage. In 136\u00a0BC, he abolished all academic chairs not concerned with the Five Classics, and in 124 BC he established the Imperial University, at which he encouraged nominees for office to receive a Confucian education.\nUnlike the original ideology espoused by Confucius (551\u2013479\u00a0BC), Han Confucianism in Emperor Wu's reign was the creation of Dong Zhongshu (179\u2013104\u00a0BC). Dong was a scholar and minor official who aggregated the ethical Confucian ideas of ritual, filial piety, and harmonious relationships with five phases and yin-yang cosmologies. Dong's synthesis justified the imperial system of government within the natural order of the universe.\nThe Imperial University grew in importance as the student body grew to over 30,000 by the 2nd century\u00a0AD. A Confucian-based education was also made available at commandery-level schools and private schools opened in small towns, where teachers earned respectable incomes from tuition payments. Schools were established in far southern regions where standard Chinese texts were used to assimilate the local populace.\nSome important texts were created and studied by scholars. Philosophy written by Yang Xiong (53\u00a0BC\u00a0\u2013 18\u00a0AD), Huan Tan (43\u00a0BC\u00a0\u2013 28\u00a0AD), Wang Chong (27\u2013100\u00a0AD), and Wang Fu (78\u2013163\u00a0AD) questioned whether human nature was innately good or evil and posed challenges to Dong's universal order. The \"Records of the Grand Historian\" started by Sima Tan (d.\u2009110\u00a0BC) and finished by his son Sima Qian (145\u201386\u00a0BC) established the standard model for imperial China's tradition of official histories, being emulated initially by the \"Book of Han\" authored by Ban Biao (3\u201354\u00a0AD) with his son Ban Gu (32\u201392\u00a0AD), and his daughter Ban Zhao (45\u2013116\u00a0AD). Biographies on important figures were written by members of the gentry. There were also dictionaries published during the Han period such as the \"Shuowen Jiezi\" by Xu Shen (c.\u200958\u00a0\u2013 c.\u2009147\u00a0AD) and the \"Fangyan\" by Yang Xiong. Han dynasty poetry was dominated by the \"fu\" genre, which achieved its greatest prominence during the reign of Emperor Wu.\nLaw and order.\nHan scholars such as Jia Yi (201\u2013169\u00a0BC) portrayed the Qin as a brutal regime. However, archaeological evidence from Zhangjiashan and Shuihudi reveal that many of the statutes in the Han law code compiled by Chancellor Xiao He (d.\u2009193\u00a0BC) were derived from Qin law.\nVarious cases for rape, physical abuse, and murder were prosecuted in court. Women, although usually having fewer rights by custom, were allowed to level civil and criminal charges against men. While suspects were jailed, convicted criminals were never imprisoned. Instead, punishments were commonly monetary fines, periods of forced hard labour for convicts, and the penalty of death by beheading. Early Han punishments of torturous mutilation were borrowed from Qin law. A series of reforms abolished mutilation punishments with progressively less-severe beatings by the bastinado.\nActing as a judge in lawsuits was one of the many duties of the county magistrate and Administrators of commanderies. Complex, high-profile, or unresolved cases were often deferred to the Minister of Justice in the capital or even the emperor. In each Han county was several districts, each overseen by a chief of police. Order in the cities was maintained by government officers in the marketplaces and constables in the neighbourhoods.\nFood.\nThe most common staple crops consumed during Han were wheat, barley, foxtail millet, proso millet, rice, and beans. Commonly eaten fruits and vegetables included chestnuts, pears, plums, peaches, melons, apricots, strawberries, red bayberries, jujubes, calabash, bamboo shoots, mustard plant, and taro. Domesticated animals that were also eaten included chickens, Mandarin ducks, geese, cows, sheep, pigs, camels, and dogs (various types were bred specifically for food, while most were used as pets). Turtles and fish were taken from streams and lakes. Commonly hunted game, such as owl, pheasant, magpie, sika deer, and Chinese bamboo partridge were consumed. Seasoning included sugar, honey, salt, and soy sauce. Beer and wine were regularly consumed.\nClothing.\nThe types of clothing worn and the materials used during the Han period depended upon social class. Wealthy folk could afford silk robes, skirts, socks, and mittens, coats made of badger or fox fur, duck plumes, and slippers with inlaid leather, pearls, and silk lining. Peasants commonly wore clothes made of hemp, wool, and ferret skins.\nReligion, cosmology, and metaphysics.\nFamilies throughout Han China made ritual sacrifices of animals and food to deities, spirits, and ancestors at temples and shrines. They believed that these items could be used by those in the spiritual realm. It was thought that each person had a two-part soul: the spirit-soul which journeyed to the afterlife paradise of immortals (\"xian\"), and the body-soul which remained in its grave or tomb on earth and was only reunited with the spirit-soul through a ritual ceremony.\nIn addition to his many other roles, the emperor acted as the highest priest in the land who made sacrifices to Heaven, the main deities known as the Five Powers, and spirits of mountains and rivers known as \"shen\". It was believed that the three realms of Heaven, Earth, and Mankind were linked by natural cycles of yin and yang and the five phases. If the emperor did not behave according to proper ritual, ethics, and morals, he could disrupt the fine balance of these cosmological cycles and cause calamities such as earthquakes, floods, droughts, epidemics, and swarms of locusts.\nIt was believed that immortality could be achieved if one reached the lands of the Queen Mother of the West or Mount Penglai. Han-era Taoists assembled into small groups of hermits who attempted to achieve immortality through breathing exercises, sexual techniques, and the use of medical elixirs.\nBy the 2nd century\u00a0AD, Taoists formed large hierarchical religious societies such as the Way of the Five Pecks of Rice. Its followers believed that the sage-philosopher Laozi (fl.\u20096th century\u00a0BC) was a holy prophet who would offer salvation and good health if his devout followers would confess their sins, ban the worship of unclean gods who accepted meat sacrifices, and chant sections of the \"Tao Te Ching\".\nBuddhism first entered Imperial China through the Silk Road during the Eastern Han, and was first mentioned in 65\u00a0AD. Liu Ying (d.\u200971\u00a0AD), a half-brother to Emperor Ming of Han (r.\u200957\u00a0\u2013\u00a075\u00a0AD), was one of its earliest Chinese adherents, although Chinese Buddhism at this point was heavily associated with Huang\u2013Lao Taoism. China's first known Buddhist temple, the White Horse Temple, was constructed outside the wall of Luoyang during Emperor Ming's reign. Important Buddhist canons were translated into Chinese during the 2nd century\u00a0AD, including the \"Sutra of Forty-two Chapters\", \"Perfection of Wisdom\", \"Shurangama Sutra\", and \"Pratyutpanna Sutra\".\nGovernment and politics.\nCentral government.\nIn Han government, the emperor was the supreme judge and lawgiver, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and sole designator of official nominees appointed to the top posts in central and local administrations; those who earned a 600-bushel salary-rank or higher. Theoretically, there were no limits to his power.\nHowever, state organs with competing interests and institutions such as the court conference (\"tingyi\" )\u2014where ministers were convened to reach a majority consensus on an issue\u2014pressured the emperor to accept the advice of his ministers on policy decisions. If the emperor rejected a court conference decision, he risked alienating his high ministers. Nevertheless, emperors sometimes did reject the majority opinion reached at court conferences.\nBelow the emperor were his cabinet members known as the Three Councillors of State. These were the Chancellor or Minister over the Masses, the Imperial Counsellor or Excellency of Works (\"Yushi dafu\" or \"Da sikong\" ), and Grand Commandant or Grand Marshal (\"Taiwei\" or \"Da sima\" ).\nThe Chancellor, whose title had changed in 8\u00a0BC to Minister over the Masses, was chiefly responsible for drafting the government budget. The Chancellor's other duties included managing provincial registers for land and population, leading court conferences, acting as judge in lawsuits, and recommending nominees for high office. He could appoint officials below the salary-rank of 600 bushels.\nThe Imperial Counsellor's chief duty was to conduct disciplinary procedures for officials. He shared similar duties with the Chancellor, such as receiving annual provincial reports. However, when his title was changed to Minister of Works in 8\u00a0BC, his chief duty became the oversight of public works projects.\nThe Grand Commandant, whose title was changed to Grand Marshal in 119\u00a0BC before reverting to Grand Commandant in 51\u00a0AD, was the irregularly posted commander of the military and then regent during the Western Han period. In the Eastern Han era he was chiefly a civil official who shared many of the same censorial powers as the other two Councillors of State.\nRanked below the Three Councillors of State were the Nine Ministers, who each headed a specialized ministry. The Minister of Ceremonies (\"Taichang\" ) was the chief official in charge of religious rites, rituals, prayers, and the maintenance of ancestral temples and altars. The Minister of the Household (\"Guang lu xun\" ) was in charge of the emperor's security within the palace grounds, external imperial parks, and wherever the emperor made an outing by chariot.\nThe Minister of the Guards (\"Weiwei\" ) was responsible for securing and patrolling the walls, towers, and gates of the imperial palaces. The Minister Coachman (\"Taipu\" ) was responsible for the maintenance of imperial stables, horses, carriages, and coach-houses for the emperor and his palace attendants, as well as the supply of horses for the armed forces. The Minister of Justice (\"Tingwei\" ) was the chief official in charge of upholding, administering, and interpreting the law. The Minister Herald (\"Da honglu\" ) was the chief official in charge of receiving honoured guests like nobles and foreign ambassadors at court.\nThe Minister of the Imperial Clan (\"Zongzheng\" ) oversaw the imperial court's interactions with the empire's nobility and extended imperial family, such as granting fiefs and titles. The Minister of Finance (\"da s\u00ecnong\" ) was the treasurer for the official bureaucracy and the armed forces who handled tax revenues and set standards for units of measurement. The Minister Steward (\"Shaofu\" ) served the emperor exclusively, providing him with entertainment and amusements, proper food and clothing, medicine and physical care, valuables and equipment.\nLocal government.\nThe Han empire, excluding kingdoms and marquessates, was divided, in descending order of size, into political units of provinces, commanderies, and counties. A county was divided into several districts (\"xiang\" ), the latter composed of a group of hamlets (\"li\" ), each containing about a hundred families.\nThe heads of provinces, whose official title was changed from Inspector to Governor and vice versa several times during Han, were responsible for inspecting several commandery-level and kingdom-level administrations. On the basis of their reports, the officials in these local administrations would be promoted, demoted, dismissed, or prosecuted by the imperial court.\nA governor could take various actions without permission from the imperial court. The lower-ranked inspector had executive powers only during times of crisis, such as raising militias across the commanderies under his jurisdiction to suppress a rebellion.\nA commandery consisted of a group of counties, and was headed by an administrator. He was the top civil and military leader of the commandery and handled defence, lawsuits, seasonal instructions to farmers, and recommendations of nominees for office sent annually to the capital in a quota system first established by Emperor Wu. The head of a large county of about 10,000 households was called a Prefect, while the heads of smaller counties were called chiefs, and both could be referred to as magistrates. A Magistrate maintained law and order in his county, registered the populace for taxation, mobilized commoners for annual corv\u00e9e duties, repaired schools, and supervised public works.\nKingdoms and marquessates.\nKingdoms\u2014roughly the size of commanderies\u2014were ruled exclusively by the emperor's male relatives as semi-autonomous fiefdoms. Before 157\u00a0BC, some kingdoms were ruled by non-relatives, granted to them in return for their services to Emperor Gaozu. The administration of each kingdom was very similar to that of the central government. Although the emperor appointed the Chancellor of each kingdom, kings appointed all the remaining civil officials in their fiefs.\nHowever, in 145\u00a0BC, after several insurrections by the kings, Emperor Jing removed the kings' rights to appoint officials whose salaries were higher than 400 bushels. The Imperial Counsellors and Nine Ministers (excluding the Minister Coachman) of every kingdom were abolished, although the Chancellor was still appointed by the central government.\nWith these reforms, kings were reduced to being nominal heads of their fiefs, gaining a personal income from only a portion of the taxes collected in their kingdom. Similarly, the officials in the administrative staff of a full marquess's fief were appointed by the central government. A marquess's chancellor was ranked as the equivalent of a county prefect. Like a king, the marquess collected a portion of the tax revenues in his fief as personal income.\nUntil the reign of Emperor Jing of Han, the Han emperors had great difficulties controlling their vassal kings, who often switched allegiances to the Xiongnu whenever they felt threatened by imperial centralization of power. The seven years of Gaozu's reign featured defections by three vassal kings and one marquess, who then aligned themselves with the Xiongnu. Even imperial princes controlling fiefdoms would sometimes invite a Xiongnu invasion in response to the Emperor's threats. The Han moved to secure a treaty with the Xiongnu, aiming to clearly divide authority between them. The Han and Xiongnu now held one another out as the \"two masters\" with sole dominion over their respective peoples; they cemented this agreement with a marriage alliance (\"heqin\"), before eliminating the rebellious vassal kings in 154\u00a0BC. This prompted some of the Xiongnu vassals to swap allegiances to the Han, starting in 147. Han court officials were initially hostile to the idea of disrupting the status quo by expanding into Xiongnu territory in the steppe. The surrendered Xiongnu were integrated into a parallel military and political structures loyal to the Han emperor, a step toward a potential Han challenge to the superiority of Xiongnu cavalry in steppe warfare. This also brought the Han into contact with the interstate trade networks through the Tarim Basin in the far northwest, allowing for the Han's expansion from a regional state to a universalist, cosmopolitan empire achieved in part through further marriage alliances with the Wusun, another steppe power.\nMilitary.\nAt the beginning of the Han, every male commoner aged twenty-three was liable for conscription into the military. The minimum age was reduced to twenty following the reign of Emperor Zhao (r.\u200987\u00a0\u2013\u00a074). Conscripted soldiers underwent one year of training and one year of service as non-professional soldiers. The year of training was spent in one of three branches of the armed forces: infantry, cavalry, or navy. Prior to the abolition of much of the conscription system after 30\u00a0AD, soldiers could be called up for future service following the completion of their terms. They had to continue training regularly to maintain their skills, and were subject to annual inspections of their military readiness. The year of active service was served either on the frontier, in a king's court, or in the capital under the Minister of the Guards. A small professional army was stationed near the capital.\nDuring the Eastern Han, conscription could be avoided if one paid a commutable tax. The Eastern Han court favoured the recruitment of a volunteer army. The volunteer army comprised the Southern Army (\"Nanjun\" ), while the standing army stationed in and near the capital was the Northern Army (\"Beijun\" ). Led by Colonels (\"Xiaowei\" ), the Northern Army consisted of five regiments, each composed of several thousand soldiers. When central authority collapsed after 189\u00a0AD, wealthy landowners, members of the aristocracy/nobility, and regional military-governors relied upon their retainers to act as their own personal troops.\nDuring times of war, the volunteer army was increased, and a much larger militia was raised across the country to supplement the Northern Army. In these circumstances, a general (\"jiangjun\" ) led a division, which was divided into regiments led by a colonel or major (\"sima\" ). Regiments were divided into companies and led by captains. Platoons were the smallest units.\nEconomy.\nCurrency.\nThe Han dynasty inherited the \"ban liang\" coin type from the Qin. In the beginning of the Han, Emperor Gaozu closed the government mint in favour of private minting of coins. This decision was reversed in 186\u00a0BC by his widow Grand Empress Dowager L\u00fc Zhi (d.\u2009180\u00a0BC), who abolished private minting. In 182\u00a0BC, L\u00fc Zhi issued a bronze coin that was much lighter in weight than previous coins. This caused widespread inflation that was not reduced until 175\u00a0BC, when Emperor Wen allowed private minters to manufacture coins that were precisely in weight.\nIn 144\u00a0BC, Emperor Jing abolished private minting in favour of central-government and commandery-level minting; he also introduced a new coin. Emperor Wu introduced another in 120\u00a0BC, but a year later he abandoned the \"ban liangs\" entirely in favour of the \"wuzhu\" coin, weighing . The \"wuzhu\" became China's standard coin until the Tang dynasty (618\u2013907). Its use was interrupted briefly by several new currencies introduced during Wang Mang's regime until it was reinstated in 40\u00a0AD by Emperor Guangwu.\nSince commandery-issued coins were often of inferior quality and lighter weight, the central government closed commandery mints and monopolized the issue of coinage in 113\u00a0BC. This central government issuance of coinage was overseen by the Superintendent of Waterways and Parks, this duty being transferred to the Minister of Finance during the Eastern Han.\nTaxation and property.\nAside from the landowner's land tax paid in a portion of their crop yield, the poll tax and property taxes were paid in coin cash. The annual poll tax rate for adult men and women was 120 coins and 20 coins for minors. Merchants were required to pay a higher rate of 240 coins. The poll tax stimulated a money economy that necessitated the minting of over 28,000,000,000 coins from 118\u00a0BC to 5\u00a0AD, an average of 220,000,000 coins a year.\nThe widespread circulation of coin cash allowed successful merchants to invest money in land, empowering the very social class the government attempted to suppress through heavy commercial and property taxes. Emperor Wu even enacted laws which banned registered merchants from owning land, yet powerful merchants were able to avoid registration and own large tracts of land.\nThe small landowner-cultivators formed the majority of the Han tax base; this revenue was threatened during the latter half of Eastern Han when many peasants fell into debt and were forced to work as farming tenants for wealthy landlords. The Han government enacted reforms in order to keep small landowner-cultivators out of debt and on their own farms. These reforms included reducing taxes, temporary remissions of taxes, granting loans, and providing landless peasants temporary lodging and work in agricultural colonies until they could recover from their debts.\nIn 168\u00a0BC, the land tax rate was reduced from one-fifteenth of a farming household's crop yield to one-thirtieth, and later to one-hundredth of a crop yield for the last decades of the dynasty. The consequent loss of government revenue was compensated for by increasing property taxes.\nThe labour tax took the form of conscripted labour for one month per year, which was imposed upon male commoners aged fifteen to fifty-six. This could be avoided in Eastern Han with a commutable tax, since hired labour became more popular.\nPrivate manufacture and government monopolies.\nIn the early Western Han, a wealthy salt or iron industrialist, whether a semi-autonomous king or wealthy merchant, could boast funds that rivalled the imperial treasury and amass a peasant workforce numbering in the thousands. This kept many peasants away from their farms and denied the government a significant portion of its land tax revenue. To eliminate the influence of such private entrepreneurs, Emperor Wu nationalized the salt and iron industries in 117\u00a0BC and allowed many of the former industrialists to become officials administering the state monopolies. By the Eastern Han, the central government monopolies were repealed in favour of production by commandery and county administrations, as well as private businessmen.\nLiquor was another profitable private industry nationalized by the central government in 98\u00a0BC. However, this was repealed in 81\u00a0BC and a property tax rate of two coins for every was levied for those who traded it privately. By 110\u00a0BC, Emperor Wu also interfered with the profitable trade in grain when he eliminated speculation by selling government stores of grain at a lower price than that demanded by merchants. Apart from Emperor Ming's creation of a short-lived Office for Price Adjustment and Stabilization, which was abolished in 68\u00a0AD, central-government price control regulations were largely absent during the Eastern Han.\nScience and technology.\nThe Han dynasty was a unique period in the development of premodern Chinese science and technology, comparable to the level of scientific and technological growth during the Song dynasty (960\u20131279).\nWriting materials.\nIn the 1st millennium\u00a0BC, typical ancient Chinese writing materials were bronzeware, oracle bones, and bamboo slips or wooden boards. By the beginning of the Han, the chief writing materials were clay tablets, silk cloth, hemp paper, and rolled scrolls made from bamboo strips sewn together with hempen string; these were passed through drilled holes and secured with clay stamps.\nThe oldest known Chinese piece of hempen paper dates to the 2nd century\u00a0BC. The standard papermaking process was invented by Cai Lun (AD\u00a050\u2013121) in 105. The oldest known surviving piece of paper with writing on it was found in the ruins of a Han watchtower that had been abandoned in AD\u00a0110, in Inner Mongolia.\nMetallurgy and agriculture.\nEvidence suggests that blast furnaces, that convert raw iron ore into pig iron, which can be remelted in a cupola furnace to produce cast iron by means of a cold blast and hot blast, were operational in China by the late Spring and Autumn period (c.\u2009770\u00a0\u2013 c.\u2009481\u00a0BC). The bloomery was non-existent in ancient China; however, the Han-era Chinese produced wrought iron by injecting excess oxygen into a furnace and causing decarburisation. Cast iron and pig iron could be converted into wrought iron and steel using a fining process.\nThe Han dynasty Chinese used bronze and iron to make a range of weapons, culinary tools, carpenters' tools, and domestic wares. A significant product of these improved iron-smelting techniques was the manufacture of new agricultural tools. The three-legged iron seed drill, invented by the 2nd century\u00a0BC, enabled farmers to carefully plant crops in rows instead of sowing seeds by hand. The heavy mouldboard iron plough, also invented during the Han, required only one man to control it with two oxen to pull it. It had three ploughshares, a seed box for the drills, a tool which turned down the soil and could sow roughly of land in a single day.\nTo protect crops from wind and drought, the grain intendant Zhao Guo () created the alternating fields system (\"daitianfa\" ) during Emperor Wu's reign. This system switched the positions of furrows and ridges between growing seasons. Once experiments with this system yielded successful results, the government officially sponsored it and encouraged peasants to use it. Han farmers also used the pit field system ( ) for growing crops, which involved heavily fertilized pits that did not require ploughs or oxen and could be placed on sloping terrain. In the southern and small parts of central Han-era China, paddy fields were chiefly used to grow rice, while farmers along the Huai River used transplantation methods of rice production.\nStructural and geo-technical engineering.\nTimber was the chief building material during the Han; it was used to build palace halls, multi-story residential towers and halls, and single-story houses. Because wood decays rapidly, the only remaining evidence of Han wooden architecture is a collection of scattered ceramic roof tiles. The oldest surviving wooden halls in China date to the Tang dynasty. Architectural historian Robert L. Thorp points out the scarcity of Han-era archaeological remains, and claims that often unreliable Han-era literary and artistic sources are used by historians as clues concerning lost Han architecture.\nThough Han wooden structures decayed, some Han dynasty ruins made of brick, stone, and rammed earth remain intact. This includes stone pillar-gates, brick tomb chambers, rammed-earth city walls, rammed-earth and brick beacon towers, rammed-earth sections of the Great Wall, rammed-earth platforms where elevated halls once stood, and two rammed-earth castles in Gansu. The ruins of rammed-earth walls that once surrounded the capitals Chang'an and Luoyang still stand, along with their drainage systems of brick arches, ditches, and ceramic water pipes. Monumental stone pillar-gates called \"que\", of which 29 dated to the Han survive, formed entrances of walled enclosures at shrine and tomb sites. These pillars feature artistic imitations of wooden and ceramic building components such as roof tiles, eaves, and balustrades.\nThe courtyard house is the most common type of home portrayed in Han artwork. Ceramic architectural models of buildings, like houses and towers, were found in Han tombs, perhaps to provide lodging for the dead in the afterlife. These provide valuable clues about lost wooden architecture. The artistic designs found on ceramic roof tiles of tower models are in some cases exact matches to Han roof tiles found at archaeological sites.\nOver ten Han-era underground tombs have been found, many of them featuring archways, vaulted chambers, and domed roofs. Underground vaults and domes did not require buttress supports since they were held in place by earthen pits. The use of brick vaults and domes in aboveground Han structures is unknown.\nFrom Han literary sources, it is known that wooden-trestle beam bridges, arch bridges, simple suspension bridges, and floating pontoon bridges existed during the Han. However, there are only two known references to arch bridges in Han literature. There is only one Han-era relief sculpture, located in Sichuan, that depicts an arch bridge.\nUnderground mine shafts were dug to extract metal ores, with some reaching depths of more than . Borehole drilling and derricks were used to lift brine to iron pans where it was distilled into salt. The distillation furnaces were heated by natural gas funnelled to the surface through bamboo pipelines. It is possible that these boreholes reached a total depth of .\nMechanical and hydraulic engineering.\nHan-era mechanical engineering comes largely from the choice observational writings of sometimes-disinterested Confucian scholars who generally considered scientific and engineering endeavours to be far beneath them. Professional artisan-engineers (\"jiang\" ) did not leave behind detailed records of their work. Han scholars, who often had little or no expertise in mechanical engineering, sometimes provided insufficient information on the various technologies they described.\nNevertheless, some literary sources provide crucial information. For example, in 15\u00a0BC the philosopher and poet Yang Xiong described the invention of the belt drive for a quilling machine, which was of great importance to early textile manufacturing. The inventions of mechanical engineer and craftsman Ding Huan are mentioned in the \"Miscellaneous Notes on the Western Capital\". Around AD\u00a0180, Ding created a manually operated rotary fan used for air conditioning within palace buildings. Ding also used gimbals as pivotal supports for one of his incense burners and invented the world's first known zoetrope lamp.\nModern archaeology has led to the discovery of Han artwork portraying inventions which were otherwise absent in Han literary sources. As observed in Han miniature tomb models, but not in literary sources, the crank handle was used to operate the fans of winnowing machines that separated grain from chaff. The odometer cart, invented during the Han period, measured journey lengths, using mechanical figures banging drums and gongs to indicate each distance travelled. This invention is depicted in Han artwork by the 2nd century, yet detailed written descriptions were not offered until the 3rd century.\nModern archaeologists have also unearthed specimens of devices used during the Han dynasty, for example a pair of sliding metal calipers used by craftsmen for making minute measurements. These calipers contain inscriptions of the exact day and year they were manufactured. These tools are not mentioned in any Han literary sources.\nThe waterwheel appeared in Chinese records during the Han. As mentioned by Huan Tan c.\u200920\u00a0AD, they were used to turn gears that lifted iron trip hammers, and were used in pounding, threshing, and polishing grain. However, there is no sufficient evidence for the watermill in China until around the 5th century. The administrator, mechanical engineer, and metallurgist Du Shi (d.\u200938\u00a0AD) created a waterwheel-powered reciprocator that worked the bellows for the smelting of iron. Waterwheels were also used to power chain pumps that lifted water to raised irrigation ditches. The chain pump was first mentioned in China by the philosopher Wang Chong in his 1st-century \"Lunheng\".\nThe armillary sphere, a three-dimensional representation of the movements in the celestial sphere, was invented by the Han during the 1st century\u00a0BC. Using a water clock, waterwheel, and a series of gears, the Court Astronomer Zhang Heng (78\u2013139\u00a0AD) was able to mechanically rotate his metal-ringed armillary sphere. To address the problem of slowed timekeeping in the pressure head of the inflow water clock, Zhang was the first in China to install an additional tank between the reservoir and inflow vessel.\nZhang also invented a device he termed an \"earthquake weathervane\" ( ), which the British sinologist and historian Joseph Needham described as \"the ancestor of all seismographs\". This device was able to detect the exact cardinal or ordinal direction of earthquakes from hundreds of kilometres away. It employed an inverted pendulum that, when disturbed by ground tremors, would trigger a set of gears that dropped a metal ball from one of eight dragon mouths (representing all eight directions) into a metal toad's mouth. The account of this device in the \"Book of the Later Han\" describes how, on one occasion, one of the metal balls was triggered without any of the observers feeling a disturbance. Several days later, a messenger arrived bearing news that an earthquake had struck in Longxi Commandery (modern Gansu), the direction the device had indicated, which forced the officials at court to admit the efficacy of Zhang's device.\nMathematics.\nThree Han mathematical treatises still exist. These are the \"Book on Numbers and Computation\", the \"Zhoubi Suanjing,\" and the \"Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art\". Han mathematical achievements include solving problems with right triangles, square roots, cube roots, and matrix methods, finding more accurate approximations for pi, providing mathematical proof of the Pythagorean theorem, use of the decimal fraction, Gaussian elimination to solve linear equations, and continued fractions to find the roots of equations.\nOne of the Han's greatest mathematical advancements was the world's first use of negative numbers. Negative numbers first appeared in the \"Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art\" as black counting rods, where positive numbers were represented by red counting rods. Negative numbers were also used by the Greek mathematician Diophantus around AD\u00a0275, and in the 7th-century Bakhshali manuscript of Gandhara, South Asia, but were not widely accepted in Europe until the 16th century.\nThe Han applied mathematics to various diverse disciplines. In musical tuning, Jing Fang (78\u201337\u00a0BC) realized that 53 perfect fifths was approximate to 31 octaves. He also created a musical scale of 60 tones, calculating the difference at 177147\u2044176776 (the same value of 53 equal temperament discovered by the German mathematician Nicholas Mercator [1620\u20131687], i.e. 353/284).\nAstronomy.\nMathematics were essential in drafting the astronomical calendar, a lunisolar calendar that used the Sun and Moon as time-markers throughout the year. In the 5th century\u00a0BC, during the Spring and Autumn period, the Chinese established the Sifen calendar (), which measured the tropical year at 365.25 days. This was replaced in 104\u00a0BC with the Taichu calendar () that measured the tropical year at <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />365+385\u20441539 (~ 365.25016) days and the lunar month at <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />29+43\u204481 days. However, Emperor Zhang later reinstated the Sifen calendar.\nHan dynasty astronomers made star catalogues and detailed records of comets that appeared in the night sky, including recording the appearance of the comet now known as Halley's Comet in 12\u00a0BC. They adopted a geocentric model of the universe, theorizing that it was a sphere surrounding the Earth in the centre. They assumed that the Sun, Moon, and planets were spherical and not disc-shaped. They also thought that the illumination of the Moon and planets was caused by sunlight, that lunar eclipses occurred when the Earth obstructed sunlight falling onto the Moon, and that a solar eclipse occurred when the Moon obstructed sunlight from reaching the Earth. Although others disagreed with his model, Wang Chong accurately described the water cycle of the evaporation of water into clouds.\nCartography, ships, and vehicles.\nBoth literary and archaeological evidence has demonstrated that cartography in China predated the Han. Some of the oldest Han-era maps that have been discovered were written using ink on silk, and were found amongst the Mawangdui Silk Texts in a 2nd-century\u00a0BC tomb in Hunan. The general Ma Yuan created the world's first known raised-relief map from rice in the 1st century. This date could be revised if the tomb of Qin Shi Huang is excavated and the \"Shiji\"'s account of a model map of the empire is proven to be true.\nAlthough the use of graduated scales and grid references in maps was not thoroughly described prior to the work of Pei Xiu (AD\u00a0224\u2013271), there is evidence that their use was introduced in the early 2nd century by the cartographer Zhang Heng.\nThe Han sailed in various types of ships that differed from those used in previous eras, such as the tower ship. The \"junk\" design was developed and realized during the Han era. Junk ships featured a square-ended bow and stern, a flat-bottomed hull or carvel-shaped hull with no keel or sternpost, and solid transverse bulkheads in the place of [structural ribs found in Western vessels. Moreover, Han ships were the first in the world to be steered using a rudder at the stern, in contrast to the simpler steering oar used for riverine transport, allowing them to sail on the high seas.\nAlthough ox carts and chariots were previously used in China, the wheelbarrow was first used in Han China in the 1st century\u00a0BC. Han artwork of horse-drawn chariots shows that the Warring-States-Era heavy wooden yoke placed around a horse's chest was replaced by the softer \"breast strap\". Later, during the Northern Wei (386\u2013534), the fully developed horse collar was invented.\nMedicine.\nHan-era medical physicians believed that the human body was subject to the same forces of nature that governed the greater universe, namely the cosmological cycles of yin and yang and the five phases. Each organ of the body was associated with a particular phase. Illness was viewed as a sign that qi, or vital energy, channels leading to a certain organ had been disrupted. Thus, Han-era physicians prescribed medicine that was believed to counteract this imbalance.\nFor example, since the wood phase was believed to promote the fire phase, medicinal ingredients associated with the wood phase could be used to heal an organ associated with the fire phase. Besides dieting, Han physicians also prescribed moxibustion, acupuncture, and callisthenics as methods of maintaining one's health. When surgery was performed by the Chinese physician Hua Tuo (d.\u2009AD\u00a0208), he used anaesthesia to numb his patients' pain and prescribed a rubbing ointment that allegedly sped up the healing process for surgical wounds. The physician Zhang Zhongjing (c.\u2009150\u00a0\u2013 c.\u2009219\u00a0AD) is known to have written the \"Shanghan Lun\" (\"Dissertation on Typhoid Fever\"), and it is thought that he and Hua Tuo collaborated to compile the \"Shennong Bencaojing\" medical text.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources cited.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "1505285": "Wang Chong\n1st century Chinese meteorologist, astronomer, and philosopher\nWang Chong (; 27 \u2013 c. 97 AD), courtesy name Zhongren (\u4ef2\u4efb), was a Chinese astronomer, meteorologist, naturalist, philosopher, and writer active during the Eastern Han dynasty. He developed a rational, secular, naturalistic and mechanistic account of the world and of human beings and gave a materialistic explanation of the origin of the universe. His main work was the \"Lunheng\" (\u8ad6\u8861, \"Critical Essays\"). This book contained many theories involving early sciences of astronomy and meteorology, and Wang Chong was even the first in Chinese history to mention the use of the square-pallet chain pump, which became common in irrigation and public works in China thereafter. Wang also accurately described the process of the water cycle.\nUnlike most of the Chinese philosophers of his period, Wang spent much of his life in non-self-inflicted poverty. He was said to have studied by standing at bookstalls, and had a superb memory, which allowed him to become very well-versed in the Chinese classics. He eventually reached the rank of District Secretary, a post he soon lost as a result of his combative and anti-authoritarian nature.\nLife.\nWang was born into a poor family in modern Shangyu, Zhejiang. Born a son of Wang Song, he was admired in his local community for his filial piety and devotion to his father. With the urging of his parents, Wang travelled to the Eastern Han capital at Luoyang to study at the Imperial University. It was there that Wang became acquainted with the prestigious historian Ban Biao (3\u201354), the latter who initiated the \"Book of Han\". He also befriended Ban Gu (32\u201392), the son of Ban Biao who made further contributions to the \"Book of Han\". Since he was poor and lacked enough money to purchase proper texts of study, Wang had to resort to frequent visits to bookshops to acquire knowledge. Rafe de Crespigny writes that during his studies Wang was most likely influenced by contemporary Old Text realists such as Huan Tan (d. 28). Due to his humble origins, Wang became resentful of officials who were admired simply because of their wealth and power and not for any scholarly abilities.\nWang returned to his home commandery where he became a local teacher. He was elevated as an Officer of Merit, but due to his critical and quarrelsome nature he decided to resign from this position. Following this was a period of isolated retirement when Wang composed essays on philosophy, his \"Jisu\" (\"On Common Morality\"), \"Jeiyi\" (\"Censures\"), \"Zheng wu\" (\"On Government\"), and \"Yangxing shu\" (\"On Macrobiotics\"). About eighty of these essays were later compiled into his \"Lunheng\" (\"Discourses Weighed in the Balance\").\nDespite his self-imposed retirement, he eventually accepted an invitation of Inspector Dong Qin (fl. AD 80\u201390) of Yang province to work as a Headquarters Officer. However, Wang soon resigned from this post as well. Xie Yiwu, a friend of Wang Chong's and a long-standing inspector and official, made an official recommendation to the court requesting that Wang serve as a senior scholar under Emperor Zhang of Han (r. 75\u201388). Emperor Zhang accepted this and summoned Wang Chong to appear at his court, yet Wang claimed ill health and refused to travel. Wang later died at home around the year 100.\nAlthough Wang's rationalistic philosophy and criticism of so-called New Text Confucianism were largely ignored during his lifetime, the prominent official and later scholar Cai Yong (132\u2013192) wrote of his admiration for Wang's written works. The politician Wang Lang (d. 228) acquired a copy of Wang's \"Lunheng\" and brought it with him on his trip in 198 to the Han court established at Xuchang by the notable statesman Cao Cao (155\u2013220). As some of the questionable tenets of the philosophy of New Text Confucianism fell out of use and repute, Rafe de Crespigny states that the rationalist philosophy of Wang Chong became much more influential in Chinese thought.\nWork and philosophy.\nWang Chong reacted to the state that philosophy had reached in China. Daoism had long ago changed into a religious and magic way, and Confucianism had been the state religion for some 150 years. Confucius and Laozi were worshipped as gods, omens were seen everywhere, belief in ghosts was almost universal, and fengshui had begun to rule people's lives. Wang derided all this and made a vocation of giving a rational, naturalistic account of the world and the human place in it.\nAt the centre of his thought was the denial that Heaven has any purpose for us, whether benevolent or hostile. To say that Heaven provides us food and clothing is to say it acts as our farmer or tailor\u2014an obvious absurdity. Humans are insignificant specks in the universe and cannot hope to effect changes in it, and it is ludicrous arrogance to think that the universe would change itself for us.\nWang insisted that the words of previous sages should be treated critically, and that they were often contradictory or inconsistent. He criticized scholars of his time for not accepting this, as well as what he called the popular acceptance of written works. He believed that the truth could be discovered, and would become obvious, by making the words clear, and by clear commentary on the text.\nOne example of Wang's rationality is his argument that thunder must be caused by fire or heat, and is not a sign of the heavens being displeased. He argued that repeatable experience and experiment should be tried before adopting the belief that divine will was involved.\nHe was equally scathing about the popular belief in ghosts. Why should only human beings have ghosts, he asked, not other animals? We are all living creatures, animated by the same vital principle. Besides, so many people have died that their ghosts would vastly outnumber living people; the world would be swamped by them. He never, however, explicitly denies the existence of ghosts (\"gui\" \u9b3c) or spirits (\"shen\" \u795e), he simply separates them from the notion that they are the souls of the dead. He seems to believe that the phenomena exist, but whatever they may be, they have no relation to the deceased.\nPeople say that spirits are the souls of dead men. That being the case, spirits should always appear naked, for surely it is not contended that clothes have souls as well as men. (\"Lunheng\")\nWang was just as rational and uncompromising about knowledge. Beliefs require evidence, just as actions require results. Anyone can prattle nonsense, and they'll always be able to find people to believe it, especially if they can dress it up in superstitious flummery. Careful reasoning and experience of the world are needed.\nThe Swedish linguist and sinologist Bernhard Karlgren called his style straightforward and without literary pretensions; in general, modern Western writers have noted that Wang was one of the most original thinkers of his time, even iconoclastic in his opinions. They note that he gained popularity in the early 20th century because his ideas correspond to those that later evolved in Europe. His writing is praised for being clear and well ordered. But, because there was no functioning scientific method or larger scientific discourse in his time, his formulations can seem alien to the modern eye\u2014to some readers, even as peculiar as the superstitions that he was rejecting. But despite this barrier to his work, he gained some fame, though mostly after his death. He had an effect on what Karlgren called, the 'neo-Daoism'\u2014a reformed Daoist philosophy with a more rational, naturalistic metaphysics, without much of the superstition and mysticism into which Daoism had fallen.\nEarly scientific thought.\nMeteorology.\nWith his acute rationale and objective approach, Wang Chong wrote many things that would be praised by later modern sinologists and scientists alike as being modern-minded. For example, much like Greek polymath Aristotle's 4th century BC \"Meteorology\" portrayed the water cycle, Wang Chong wrote the following passage about clouds and rain:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Seeing the rain gather from above, people say that it comes from the heavens\u2014admittedly it comes from above the earth. How can we demonstrate that the rain originates in the earth and rises from the mountains? Gongyang Gao's [i.e. Gongyang Zhuan] commentary on the \"Spring and Autumn Annals\" says; \"It evaporates upwards through stones one or two inches thick, and gathers. In one day's time it can spread over the whole empire, but this is only so if it comes from Thai Shan.\" What he means is that from Mount Tai rain clouds can spread all over the empire, but from small mountains only over a single province\u2014the distance depends on the height. As to this coming of rain from the mountains, some hold that the clouds carry the rain with them, dispersing as it is precipitated (and they are right). Clouds and rain are really the same thing. Water evaporating upwards becomes clouds, which condense into rain, or still further into dew. When the garments (of those travelling on high mountain passes) are moistened, it is not the effect of the clouds and mists they pass through, but of the suspended rain water.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Some persons cite the \"Shujing,\" which says, \"When the moon follows the stars, there will be wind and rain,\" or the \"Shijing\", which says, \"The approach of the moon to Pi \"hsiu\" [the Hyades] will bring heavy rain showers.\" They believe that according to these two passages of the classics, heaven itself causes the rain. What are we to say to this?\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />When the rain comes from the mountains, the moon passes the (other) stars and approaches Pi \"hsiu\". When it approaches Pi \"hsiu\" there must be rain. As long as it does not rain, the moon has not approached, and the mountains have no clouds. Heaven and earth, above and below, act in mutual resonance. When the moon approaches above, the mountains steam below, and the embodied qi meet and unite. This is (part of the) spontaneous Tao of Nature. Clouds and fog show that rain is coming. In summer it turns to dew, in winter to frost. Warm, it is rain, cold, it is snow. Rain, dew, and frost, all proceed from the earth, and do not descend from the heavens.\nWang's reference to Gongyan Gao's (i.e. Gongyan Zhuan's) commentary perhaps demonstrates that Gongyan's work, compiled in the 2nd century BC, explored the topic of the hydrological cycle long before Wang wrote about the process. The British biochemist, historian, and sinologist Joseph Needham asserts that: \"As to the seasonal lunar and stellar connections, the thought of Wang Chong (about 83 AD) is that in some way or other the cyclical behavior of the qi on earth, where water is distilled into mountain clouds, is correlated with the behavior of the qi in the heavens, which brings the moon near to the Hyades at certain times.\" Thus, Wang Chong was uniting classical Chinese thought with radically modern ways of scientific thinking in his day.\nAstronomy.\nSimilar to Han dynasty polymath contemporary Zhang Heng (78\u2013139) and Chinese scholars before him, Wang discussed theories about the causation of eclipses, with solar eclipse and lunar eclipse. However, Wang Chong's theory went against the correct 'radiating influence' theory supported by Zhang Heng (that the light of the rounded Moon was simply a reflection of the light emanating from the rounded Sun). Writing little more than a century before Zhang Heng, the mathematician and music theorist Jing Fang (78\u201337 BC) wrote in the 1st century BC:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nZhang Heng wrote in his \"Ling Xian\" (Mystical Laws) of 120 AD:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The sun is like fire and the moon like water. The fire gives out light and the water reflects it. Thus the moon's brightness is produced from the radiance of the sun, and the moon's darkness is due to (the light of) the sun being obstructed. The side that faces the sun is fully lit, and the side that is away from it is dark. The planets (as well as the moon) have the nature of water and reflect light. The light pouring forth from the sun does not always reach the moon owing to the obstruction of the earth itself\u2014this is called 'anxu', a lunar eclipse. When (a similar effect) happens with a planet (we call it) an occultation (xingwei); when the moon passes across (the sun's path) then there is a solar eclipse (shi).\nGoing against the grain of the accepted theory, and thinking more along the lines of the 1st century BC Roman philosopher Lucretius, Wang Chong wrote:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />According to the scholars, solar eclipses are brought about by the moon. It has been observed that they occur at times of new moon (lit. on the last days and first days of months), when the moon is in conjunction with the sun, and therefore the moon can eclipse it. In the Spring and Autumn period there were many eclipses, and the \"Chun Qiu\" says that at such and such a month at new moon there was an eclipse of the sun, but these statements do not imply that the moon did it. Why should (the chroniclers) have made no mention of the moon if they knew that it was really responsible?\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Roughly speaking, every 41 or 42 months there is a solar eclipse, and every 180 days there is a lunar eclipse. The reason why the eclipses have definite times is not (as the scholars say) that there are (recurring) abnormal events due to the periods (of the moon's cycle), but because it is the nature of the qi (of the sun) to change (at those times). Why should it be said that the moon has anything to do with the times of (changing of) the sun('s qi) at the first and last days of the months? The sun should normally be full; if there is a shrinkage it is an abnormal event (and the scholars say that) there must be something consuming (the sun). But in such cases as landslides and earthquakes, what does the consuming then?\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />But that the moon covers the light of the sun in solar eclipses\u2014no, that is not true. How can this be verified? When the sun and the moon are in conjunction and the light of the former is 'covered' by the latter, the edges of the two must meet at the beginning, and when the light reappears they must have changed places. Suppose the sun is in the east and the moon is in the west. The moon falls back (lit. moves) quickly eastwards and meets the sun, 'covering' its edge. Soon the moon going on eastwards passes the sun. When the western edge (of the sun), which has been 'covered' first, shines again with its light, the eastern edge, which was not 'covered' before, should (now) be 'covered'. But in fact we see that during an eclipse of the sun the light of the western edge is extinguished, yet when (the light) comes back the western edge is bright (but the eastern edge is bright also). The moon goes on and covers the eastern (inner) part as well as the western (inner) part. This is called 'exact intrustion' and 'mutual covering and obscuring'. How can these facts be explained (by astronomers who believe that the moon covers the light of the sun in solar eclipse).\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nAlthough Wang Chong was certain of his ideas about eclipses (without the knowledge of how gravity forms naturally large spherical bodies in space), his ideas on this would not be later accepted in China. Although there were some figures like \"Liu Chi\", writing in his Lun Tian (Discourse on the Heavens) of 274 AD that supported Wang's theory by arguing the inferior Yin (Moon) could never obstruct the superior Yang (Sun), Liu was still outside of the mainstream accepted Confucian tradition. The Song dynasty (960\u20131279) polymathic scientist Shen Kuo (1031\u20131095) supported the old theory of a spherical Sun and Moon by using his own reasoning about eclipses, which he explained were due to the Moon and the Sun coming into obstruction of one another. The Song dynasty Chinese philosopher Zhu Xi (1130\u20131200) also supported this theory in his writing. Although Wang Chong was right about the water cycle and other aspects of early science, his stern opposition to mainstream Confucian thought at the time made him a skeptic of all their theories, including eclipses (the Confucian-accepted model being correct).\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "24967743": "Chabi\nChabi (, \u1834\u1820\u182a\u1822 \u182c\u1820\u1832\u1824\u1828; , c. 1216\u20131281) was a Khongirad empress consort of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty of China, married to Kublai Khan (Emperor Shizu).\nLife.\nChabi was born around 1216 to Anchen (\u6309\u9673), Prince of Jining Zhongwu (\u6fdf\u5be7\u5fe0\u6b66\u738b) of Khongirad. She married Kublai as his second wife and bore him four sons and six daughters. She was an important political and diplomatic influence, especially in pleasing the Chinese masses through reconciliation with Confucianism. She was compared to B\u00f6rte though for her reputation. Rashid al-Din described her as extremely beautiful and charming.\nM\u00f6ngke Khagan died in 1259 while Kublai was campaigning against the Song dynasty. She warned her husband of advancements of Ariq B\u00f6ke beforehand. After the conquest of China, she suggested a better treatment of the north Chinese imperial family, namely Empress Quan in 1276. She also introduced new court fashion in the form of hats. Chabi also fiercely promoted Buddhism in the high levels of government. She also named her child under the influence of Buddhism. She mediated religious disputes between Kublai and Phagpa, and supported the latter both economically and politically. She was also patron of Zangpo Pal.\nHere are some of the many accomplishments of the queen: \"Mongol hats didn't have a brim before. The king's eyes sparkled when he shot a bow and arrow. When he told the queen about it, the queen immediately sewed a brim for his hat. The king was very happy and immediately started to wear the hat. This sable hat is the hat depicted in the portraits of many Mongolian kings of the Yuan dynasty.\nThe queen made another item of clothing. According to the \"Yuan shi\", the invention of bijia is attributed to Empress Chabi during the Yuan dynasty. Empress Chabi designed the bijia so that it would be a convenient form of attire while riding horses and shooting arrows. The front region of the bijia designed by Empress Chabi was made of a single piece of fabric, and its back region was twice as long as the front region. It was collarless and sleeveless, and there were two loop straps which attached to it. It also had no lapels. The bijia was first worn by the Yuan dynasty emperor but it later became popular among commoners.\nShe died in 1281, probably arranging for her niece Nambui to marry Kublai afterwards. She was posthumously renamed Empress Zhaorui Shunsheng (\u662d\u777f\u9806\u8056\u7687\u540e) by her grandson Tem\u00fcr Khan.\nFamily.\nChabi had four sons and six daughters with Kublai Khan:\nIn popular media.\nChabi was portrayed several times in TV series and films:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "56978": "Song dynasty\nChinese imperial dynasty from 960 to 1279\nThe Song dynasty ( ) was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 960 to 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song, who usurped the throne of the Later Zhou dynasty and went on to conquer the rest of the Ten Kingdoms, ending the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. The Song often came into conflict with the contemporaneous Liao, Western Xia and Jin dynasties in northern China. After retreating to southern China following attacks by the Jin dynasty, the Song was eventually conquered by the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty.\nThe dynasty's history is divided into two periods: during the Northern Song (; 960\u20131127), the capital was in the northern city of Bianjing (now Kaifeng) and the dynasty controlled most of what is now East China. The Southern Song (; 1127\u20131279) comprise the period following the loss of control over the northern half of Song territory to the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty in the Jin\u2013Song wars. At that time, the Song court retreated south of the Yangtze and established its capital at Lin'an (now Hangzhou). Although the Song dynasty had lost control of the traditional Chinese heartlands around the Yellow River, the Southern Song Empire contained a large population and productive agricultural land, sustaining a robust economy. In 1234, the Jin dynasty was conquered by the Mongols, who took control of northern China, maintaining uneasy relations with the Southern Song. M\u00f6ngke Khan, the fourth Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, died in 1259 while besieging the mountain castle Diaoyucheng in Chongqing. His younger brother Kublai Khan was proclaimed the new Great Khan and in 1271 founded the Yuan dynasty. After two decades of sporadic warfare, Kublai Khan's armies conquered the Song dynasty in 1279 after defeating the Southern Song in the Battle of Yamen, and reunited China under the Yuan dynasty.\nTechnology, science, philosophy, mathematics, and engineering flourished during the Song era. The Song dynasty was the first in world history to issue banknotes or true paper money and the first Chinese government to establish a permanent standing navy. This dynasty saw the first surviving records of the chemical formula for gunpowder, the invention of gunpowder weapons such as fire arrows, bombs, and the fire lance. It also saw the first discernment of true north using a compass, first recorded description of the pound lock, and improved designs of astronomical clocks. Economically, the Song dynasty was unparalleled with a gross domestic product three times larger than that of Europe during the 12th century. China's population doubled in size between the 10th and 11th centuries. This growth was made possible by expanded rice cultivation, use of early-ripening rice from Southeast and South Asia, and production of widespread food surpluses. The Northern Song census recorded 20\u00a0million households, double that of the Han and Tang dynasties. It is estimated that the Northern Song had a population of 90\u00a0million people, and 200\u00a0million by the time of the Ming dynasty. This dramatic increase of population fomented an economic revolution in pre-modern China.\nThe expansion of the population, growth of cities, and emergence of a national economy led to the gradual withdrawal of the central government from direct intervention in the economy. The lower gentry assumed a larger role in local administration and affairs. Song society was vibrant, and cities had lively entertainment quarters. Citizens gathered to view and trade artwork, and intermingled at festivals and in private clubs. The spread of literature and knowledge was enhanced by the rapid expansion of woodblock printing and the 11th-century invention of movable type printing. Philosophers such as Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi reinvigorated Confucianism with new commentary, infused with Buddhist ideals, and emphasized a new organization of classic texts that established the doctrine of Neo-Confucianism. Although civil service examinations had existed since the Sui dynasty, they became much more prominent in the Song period. Officials gaining power through imperial examination led to a shift from a military-aristocratic elite to a scholar-bureaucratic elite.\nHistory.\nNorthern Song, 960\u20131127.\nAfter usurping the throne of the Later Zhou dynasty, Emperor Taizu of Song (r.\u2009960\u00a0\u2013\u00a0976) spent sixteen years conquering the rest of China proper, reuniting much of the territory that had once belonged to the Han and Tang empires and ending the upheaval of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. In Kaifeng, he established a strong central government over the empire. The establishment of this capital marked the start of the Northern Song period. He ensured administrative stability by promoting the civil service examination system of drafting state bureaucrats by skill and merit (instead of aristocratic or military position) and promoted projects that ensured efficiency in communication throughout the empire. In one such project, cartographers created detailed maps of each province and city that were then collected in a large atlas. Emperor Taizu also promoted groundbreaking scientific and technological innovations by supporting works like the astronomical clock tower designed and built by the engineer Zhang Sixun.\nThe Song court maintained diplomatic relations with Chola India, the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt, Srivijaya, the Kara-Khanid Khanate in Central Asia, the Goryeo Kingdom in Korea, and other countries that were also trade partners with Japan. Chinese records even mention an embassy from the ruler of \"Fu lin\" (\u62c2\u83fb, i.e. the Byzantine Empire), Michael VII Doukas, and its arrival in 1081. However, China's closest neighbouring states had the greatest impact on its domestic and foreign policy. From its inception under Taizu, the Song dynasty alternated between warfare and diplomacy with the ethnic Khitans of the Liao dynasty in the northeast and with the Tanguts of the Western Xia in the northwest. The Song dynasty used military force in an attempt to quell the Liao dynasty and to recapture the Sixteen Prefectures, a territory under Khitan control since 938 that was traditionally considered to be part of China proper (most parts of today's Beijing and Tianjin). Song forces were repulsed by the Liao forces, who engaged in aggressive yearly campaigns into Northern Song territory until 1005, when the signing of the Shanyuan Treaty ended these northern border clashes. The Song were forced to provide tribute to the Khitans, although this did little damage to the Song economy since the Khitans were economically dependent upon importing massive amounts of goods from the Song. More significantly, the Song state recognized the Liao state as its diplomatic equal. The Song created an extensive defensive forest along the Song\u2013Liao border to thwart potential Khitan cavalry attacks.\nThe Song dynasty managed to win several military victories over the Tanguts in the early 11th century, culminating in a campaign led by the polymath scientist, general, and statesman Shen Kuo (1031\u20131095). However, this campaign was ultimately a failure due to a rival military officer of Shen disobeying direct orders, and the territory gained from the Western Xia was eventually lost. The Song fought against the Vietnamese kingdom of \u0110\u1ea1i Vi\u1ec7t twice, the first conflict in 981 and later a significant war from 1075 to 1077 over a border dispute and the Song's severing of commercial relations with \u0110\u1ea1i Vi\u1ec7t. After the Vietnamese forces inflicted heavy damages in a raid on Guangxi, the Song commander Guo Kui (1022\u20131088) penetrated as far as Th\u0103ng Long (modern Hanoi). Heavy losses on both sides prompted the Vietnamese commander Th\u01b0\u1eddng Ki\u1ec7t (1019\u20131105) to make peace overtures, allowing both sides to withdraw from the war effort; captured territories held by both Song and Vietnamese were mutually exchanged in 1082, along with prisoners of war.\nDuring the 11th century, political rivalries divided members of the court due to the ministers' differing approaches, opinions, and policies regarding the handling of the Song's complex society and thriving economy. The idealist Chancellor, Fan Zhongyan (989\u20131052), was the first to receive a heated political backlash when he attempted to institute the Qingli Reforms, which included measures such as improving the recruitment system of officials, increasing the salaries for minor officials, and establishing sponsorship programs to allow a wider range of people to be well educated and eligible for state service.\nAfter Fan was forced to step down from his office, Wang Anshi (1021\u20131086) became Chancellor of the imperial court. With the backing of Emperor Shenzong (1067\u20131085), Wang Anshi severely criticized the educational system and state bureaucracy. Seeking to resolve what he saw as state corruption and negligence, Wang implemented a series of reforms called the New Policies. These involved land value tax reform, the establishment of several government monopolies, the support of local militias, and the creation of higher standards for the Imperial examination to make it more practical for men skilled in statecraft to pass.\nThe reforms created political factions in the court. Wang Anshi's \"New Policies Group\" (\"Xin Fa\"), also known as the \"Reformers\", were opposed by the ministers in the \"Conservative\" faction led by the historian and Chancellor Sima Guang (1019\u20131086). As one faction supplanted another in the majority position of the court ministers, it would demote rival officials and exile them to govern remote frontier regions of the empire. One of the prominent victims of the political rivalry, the famous poet and statesman Su Shi (1037\u20131101), was jailed and eventually exiled for criticizing Wang's reforms.\nThe continual alternation between reform and conservatism had effectively weakened the dynasty. This decline can also be attributed to Cai Jing (1047\u20131126), who was appointed by Emperor Zhezong (1085\u20131100) and who remained in power until 1125. He revived the New Policies and pursued political opponents, tolerated corruption and encouraged Emperor Huizong (1100\u20131126) to neglect his duties to focus on artistic pursuits. Later, a peasant rebellion broke out in Zhejiang and Fujian, headed by Fang La in 1120. The rebellion may have been caused by an increasing tax burden, the concentration of landownership and oppressive government measures.\nWhile the central Song court remained politically divided and focused upon its internal affairs, alarming new events to the north in the Liao state finally came to its attention. The Jurchen, a subject tribe of the Liao, rebelled against them and formed their own state, the Jin dynasty. The Song official Tong Guan (1054\u20131126) advised Emperor Huizong to form an alliance with the Jurchens, and the joint military campaign under this Alliance Conducted at Sea toppled and completely conquered the Liao dynasty by 1125. During the joint attack, the Song's northern expedition army removed the defensive forest along the Song\u2013Liao border.\nHowever, the poor performance and military weakness of the Song army was observed by the Jurchens, who immediately broke the alliance, beginning the Jin\u2013Song Wars of 1125 and 1127. Because of the removal of the previous defensive forest, the Jin army marched quickly across the North China Plain to Kaifeng. In the Jingkang Incident during the latter invasion, the Jurchens captured not only the capital, but the retired Emperor Huizong, his successor Emperor Qinzong, and most of the Imperial court.\nThe remaining Song forces regrouped under the self-proclaimed Emperor Gaozong (1127\u20131162) and withdrew south of the Yangtze to establish a new capital at Lin'an (modern Hangzhou). The Jurchen conquest of North China and shift of capitals from Kaifeng to Lin'an was the dividing line between the Northern and Southern Song dynasties.\nAfter their fall to the Jin, the Song lost control of North China. Now occupying what has been traditionally known as \"China proper\", the Jin regarded themselves the rightful rulers of China. The Jin later chose earth as their dynastic element and yellow as their royal color. According to the theory of the Five Elements (wuxing), the earth element follows the fire, the dynastic element of the Song, in the sequence of elemental creation. Therefore, their ideological move showed that the Jin considered Song reign in China complete, with the Jin replacing the Song as the rightful rulers of China proper.\nSouthern Song, 1127\u20131279.\nAlthough weakened and pushed south beyond the Huai River, the Southern Song found new ways to bolster its strong economy and defend itself against the Jin dynasty. It had able military officers such as Yue Fei and Han Shizhong. The government sponsored massive shipbuilding and harbor improvement projects, and the construction of beacons and seaport warehouses to support maritime trade abroad, including at the major international seaports, such as Quanzhou, Guangzhou, and Xiamen, that were sustaining China's commerce.\nTo protect and support the multitude of ships sailing for maritime interests into the waters of the East China Sea and Yellow Sea (to Korea and Japan), Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, and the Red Sea, it was necessary to establish an official standing navy. The Song dynasty therefore established China's first permanent navy in 1132, with a headquarters at Dinghai. With a permanent navy, the Song were prepared to face the naval forces of the Jin on the Yangtze River in 1161, in the Battle of Tangdao and the Battle of Caishi. During these battles the Song navy employed swift paddle wheel driven naval vessels armed with traction trebuchet catapults aboard the decks that launched gunpowder bombs. Although the Jin forces commanded by Wanyan Liang (the Prince of Hailing) boasted 70,000 men on 600 warships, and the Song forces only 3,000 men on 120 warships, the Song dynasty forces were victorious in both battles due to the destructive power of the bombs and the rapid assaults by paddlewheel ships. The strength of the navy was heavily emphasized following these victories. A century after the navy was founded it had grown in size to 52,000 fighting marines.\nThe Song government confiscated portions of land owned by the landed gentry in order to raise revenue for these projects, an act which caused dissension and loss of loyalty amongst leading members of Song society but did not stop the Song's defensive preparations. Financial matters were made worse by the fact that many wealthy, land-owning families\u2014some of which had officials working for the government\u2014used their social connections with those in office in order to obtain tax-exempt status.\nAlthough the Song dynasty was able to hold back the Jin, a new foe came to power over the steppe, deserts, and plains north of the Jin dynasty. The Mongols, led by Genghis Khan (r. 1206\u20131227), initially invaded the Jin dynasty in 1205 and 1209, engaging in large raids across its borders, and in 1211 an enormous Mongol army was assembled to invade the Jin. The Jin dynasty was forced to submit and pay tribute to the Mongols as vassals; when the Jin suddenly moved their capital city from Beijing to Kaifeng, the Mongols saw this as a revolt. Under the leadership of \u00d6gedei Khan (r.1229\u20131241), both the Jin dynasty and Western Xia dynasty were conquered by Mongol forces in 1233/34.\nThe Mongols were allied with the Song, but this alliance was broken when the Song recaptured the former imperial capitals of Kaifeng, Luoyang, and Chang'an at the collapse of the Jin dynasty. After the first Mongol invasion of Vietnam in 1258, Mongol general Uriyangkhadai attacked Guangxi from Hanoi as part of a coordinated Mongol attack in 1259 with armies attacking in Sichuan under Mongol leader M\u00f6ngke Khan and other Mongol armies attacking in modern-day Shandong and Henan. On August 11, 1259, M\u00f6ngke Khan died during the siege of Diaoyu Castle in Chongqing.\nHis successor Kublai Khan continued the assault against the Song, gaining a temporary foothold on the southern banks of the Yangtze. By the winter of 1259, Uriyangkhadai's army fought its way north to meet Kublai's army, which was besieging Ezhou in Hubei. Kublai made preparations to take Ezhou, but a pending civil war with his brother Ariq B\u00f6ke\u2014a rival claimant to the Mongol Khaganate\u2014forced Kublai to move back north with the bulk of his forces. In Kublai's absence, the Song forces were ordered by Chancellor Jia Sidao to make an immediate assault and succeeded in pushing the Mongol forces back to the northern banks of the Yangtze. There were minor border skirmishes until 1265, when Kublai won a significant battle in Sichuan.\nFrom 1268 to 1273, Kublai blockaded the Yangtze River with his navy and besieged Xiangyang, the last obstacle in his way to invading the rich Yangtze River basin. Kublai officially declared the creation of the Yuan dynasty in 1271. In 1275, a Song force of 130,000 troops under Chancellor Jia Sidao was defeated by Kublai's newly appointed commander-in-chief, general Bayan. By 1276, most of the Song territory had been captured by Yuan forces, including the capital Lin'an.\nIn the Battle of Yamen on the Pearl River Delta in 1279, the Yuan army, led by the general Zhang Hongfan, finally crushed the Song resistance. The last remaining ruler, the 13-year-old emperor Zhao Bing, committed suicide, along with Prime Minister Lu Xiufu and approximately 1300 members of the royal clan. On Kublai's orders, carried out by his commander Bayan, the rest of the former imperial family of Song were unharmed; the deposed Emperor Gong was demoted, being given the title 'Duke of Ying', but was eventually exiled to Tibet where he took up a monastic life. The former emperor would eventually be forced to commit suicide under the orders of Kublai's great-great-grandson, Gegeen Khan, out of fear that Emperor Gong would stage a coup to restore his reign. Other members of the Song imperial family continued to live in the Yuan dynasty, including Zhao Mengfu and Zhao Yong.\nCulture and society.\nThe Song dynasty was an era of administrative sophistication and complex social organization. Some of the largest cities in the world were found in China during this period (Kaifeng and Hangzhou had populations of over a million). People enjoyed various social clubs and entertainment in the cities, and there were many schools and temples to provide the people with education and religious services. The Song government supported social welfare programs including the establishment of retirement homes, public clinics, and paupers' graveyards. The Song dynasty supported a widespread postal service that was modeled on the earlier Han dynasty (202 BCE \u2013 CE 220) postal system to provide swift communication throughout the empire. The central government employed thousands of postal workers of various ranks to provide service for post offices and larger postal stations. In rural areas, farming peasants either owned their own plots of land, paid rents as tenant farmers, or were serfs on large estates.\nAlthough women were on a lower social tier than men according to Confucian ethics, they enjoyed many social and legal privileges and wielded considerable power at home and in their own small businesses. As Song society became more and more prosperous and parents on the bride's side of the family provided larger dowries for her marriage, women naturally gained many new legal rights in ownership of property. Under certain circumstances, an unmarried daughter without brothers, or a surviving mother without sons, could inherit one-half of her father's share of undivided family property. There were many notable and well-educated women, and it was a common practice for women to educate their sons during their earliest youth. The mother of the scientist, general, diplomat, and statesman Shen Kuo taught him essentials of military strategy. There were also exceptional women writers and poets, such as Li Qingzhao (1084\u20131151), who became famous even in her lifetime.\nReligion in China during this period had a great effect on people's lives, beliefs, and daily activities, and Chinese literature on spirituality was popular. The major deities of Daoism and Buddhism, ancestral spirits, and the many deities of Chinese folk religion were worshipped with sacrificial offerings. Tansen Sen asserts that more Buddhist monks from India traveled to China during the Song than in the previous Tang dynasty (618\u2013907). With many ethnic foreigners travelling to China to conduct trade or live permanently, there came many foreign religions; religious minorities in China included Middle Eastern Muslims, the Kaifeng Jews, and Persian Manichaeans.\nThe populace engaged in a vibrant social and domestic life, enjoying such public festivals as the Lantern Festival and the Qingming Festival. There were entertainment quarters in the cities providing a constant array of amusements. There were puppeteers, acrobats, theatre actors, sword swallowers, snake charmers, storytellers, singers and musicians, prostitutes, and places to relax, including tea houses, restaurants, and organized banquets. People attended social clubs in large numbers; there were tea clubs, exotic food clubs, antiquarian and art collectors' clubs, horse-loving clubs, poetry clubs, and music clubs. Like regional cooking and cuisines in the Song, the era was known for its regional varieties of performing arts styles as well. Theatrical drama was very popular amongst the elite and general populace, although Classical Chinese\u2014not the vernacular language\u2014was spoken by actors on stage. The four largest drama theatres in Kaifeng could hold audiences of several thousand each. There were also notable domestic pastimes, as people at home enjoyed activities such as the go and xiangqi board games.\nCivil service examinations and the gentry.\nDuring this period greater emphasis was laid upon the civil service system of recruiting officials; this was based upon degrees acquired through competitive examinations, in an effort to select the most capable individuals for governance. Selecting men for office through proven merit was an ancient idea in China. The civil service system became institutionalized on a small scale during the Sui and Tang dynasties, but by the Song period, it became virtually the only means for drafting officials into the government. The advent of widespread printing helped to widely circulate Confucian teachings and to educate more and more eligible candidates for the exams. This can be seen in the number of exam takers for the low-level prefectural exams rising from 30,000 annual candidates in the early 11th century to 400,000 candidates by the late 13th century. The civil service and examination system allowed for greater meritocracy, social mobility, and equality in competition for those wishing to attain an official seat in government. Using statistics gathered by the Song state, Edward A. Kracke, Sud\u014d Yoshiyuki, and Ho Ping-ti supported the hypothesis that simply having a father, grandfather, or great-grandfather who had served as an official of state did not guarantee one would obtain the same level of authority. Robert Hartwell and Robert P. Hymes criticized this model, stating that it places too much emphasis on the role of the nuclear family and considers only three paternal ascendants of exam candidates while ignoring the demographic reality of Song China, the significant proportion of males in each generation that had no surviving sons, and the role of the extended family. Many felt disenfranchised by what they saw as a bureaucratic system that favored the land-holding class able to afford the best education. One of the greatest literary critics of this was the official and famous poet Su Shi. Yet Su was a product of his times, as the identity, habits, and attitudes of the scholar-official had become less aristocratic and more bureaucratic with the transition of the periods from Tang to Song. At the beginning of the dynasty, government posts were disproportionately held by two elite social groups: a founding elite who had ties with the founding emperor and a semi-hereditary professional elite who used long-held clan status, family connections, and marriage alliances to secure appointments. By the late 11th century, the founding elite became obsolete, while political partisanship and factionalism at court undermined the marriage strategies of the professional elite, which dissolved as a distinguishable social group and was replaced by a multitude of gentry families.\nDue to Song's enormous population growth and the body of its appointed scholar-officials being accepted in limited numbers (about 20,000 active officials during the Song period), the larger scholarly gentry class would now take over grassroots affairs on the vast local level. Excluding the scholar-officials in office, this elite social class consisted of exam candidates, examination degree-holders not yet assigned to an official post, local tutors, and retired officials. These learned men, degree-holders, and local elites supervised local affairs and sponsored necessary facilities of local communities; any local magistrate appointed to his office by the government relied upon the cooperation of the few or many local gentry in the area. For example, the Song government\u2014excluding the educational-reformist government under Emperor Huizong\u2014spared little amount of state revenue to maintain prefectural and county schools; instead, the bulk of the funds for schools was drawn from private financing. This limited role of government officials was a departure from the earlier Tang dynasty (618\u2013907), when the government strictly regulated commercial markets and local affairs; now the government withdrew heavily from regulating commerce and relied upon a mass of local gentry to perform necessary duties in their communities.\nThe gentry distinguished themselves in society through their intellectual and antiquarian pursuits, while the homes of prominent landholders attracted a variety of courtiers, including artisans, artists, educational tutors, and entertainers. Despite the disdain for trade, commerce, and the merchant class exhibited by the highly cultured and elite exam-drafted scholar-officials, commercialism played a prominent role in Song culture and society. A scholar-official would be frowned upon by his peers if he pursued means of profiteering outside of his official salary; however, this did not stop many scholar-officials from managing business relations through the use of intermediary agents.\nLaw, justice, and forensic science.\nThe Song judicial system retained most of the legal code of the earlier Tang dynasty, the basis of traditional Chinese law up until the modern era. Roving sheriffs maintained law and order in the municipal jurisdictions and occasionally ventured into the countryside. Official magistrates overseeing court cases were not only expected to be well-versed in written law but also to promote morality in society. Magistrates such as the famed Bao Zheng (999\u20131062) embodied the upright, moral judge who upheld justice and never failed to live up to his principles. Song judges specified the guilty person or party in a criminal act and meted out punishments accordingly, often in the form of caning. A guilty individual or parties brought to court for a criminal or civil offense were not viewed as wholly innocent until proven otherwise, while even accusers were viewed with a high level of suspicion by the judge. Due to costly court expenses and immediate jailing of those accused of criminal offenses, people in the Song preferred to settle disputes and quarrels privately, without the court's interference.\nShen Kuo's \"Dream Pool Essays\" argued against traditional Chinese beliefs in anatomy (such as his argument for two throat valves instead of three); this perhaps spurred the interest in the performance of post-mortem autopsies in China during the 12th century. The physician and judge known as Song Ci (1186\u20131249) wrote a pioneering work of forensic science on the examination of corpses in order to determine cause of death (strangulation, poisoning, drowning, blows, etc.) and to prove whether death resulted from murder, suicide, or accidental death. Song Ci stressed the importance of proper coroner's conduct during autopsies and the accurate recording of the inquest of each autopsy by official clerks.\nMilitary and methods of warfare.\nThe Song military was chiefly organized to ensure that the army could not threaten Imperial control, often at the expense of effectiveness in war. Northern Song's Military Council operated under a Chancellor, who had no control over the imperial army. The imperial army was divided among three marshals, each independently responsible to the Emperor. Since the Emperor rarely led campaigns personally, Song forces lacked unity of command. The imperial court often believed that successful generals endangered royal authority, and relieved or even executed them (notably Li Gang, Yue Fei, and Han Shizhong).\nAlthough the scholar-officials viewed military soldiers as lower members in the hierarchic social order, a person could gain status and prestige in society by becoming a high-ranking military officer with a record of victorious battles. At its height, the Song military had one million soldiers divided into platoons of 50 troops, companies made of two platoons, battalions composed of 500 soldiers. Crossbowmen were separated from the regular infantry and placed in their own units as they were prized combatants, providing effective missile fire against cavalry charges. The government was eager to sponsor new crossbow designs that could shoot at longer ranges, while crossbowmen were also valuable when employed as long-range snipers. Song cavalry employed a slew of different weapons, including halberds, swords, bows, spears, and 'fire lances' that discharged a gunpowder blast of flame and shrapnel.\nMilitary strategy and military training were treated as sciences that could be studied and perfected; soldiers were tested in their skills of using weaponry and in their athletic ability. The troops were trained to follow signal standards to advance at the waving of banners and to halt at the sound of bells and drums.\nThe Song navy was of great importance during the consolidation of the empire in the 10th century; during the war against the Southern Tang state, the Song navy employed tactics such as defending large floating pontoon bridges across the Yangtze River in order to secure movements of troops and supplies. There were large ships in the Song navy that could carry 1,000 soldiers aboard their decks, while the swift-moving paddle-wheel craft were viewed as essential fighting ships in any successful naval battle.\nIn a battle on January 23, 971, massive arrow fire from Song dynasty crossbowmen decimated the war elephant corps of the Southern Han army. This defeat not only marked the eventual submission of the Southern Han to the Song dynasty, but also the last instance where a war elephant corps was employed as a regular division within a Chinese army.\nThere was a total of 347 military treatises written during the Song period, as listed by the history text of the \"Song Shi\" (compiled in 1345). However, only a handful of these military treatises have survived, which includes the \"Wujing Zongyao\" written in 1044. It was the first known book to have listed formulas for gunpowder; it gave appropriate formulas for use in several different kinds of gunpowder bombs. It also provided detailed descriptions and illustrations of double-piston pump flamethrowers, as well as instructions for the maintenance and repair of the components and equipment used in the device.\nArts, literature, philosophy, and religion.\nThe visual arts during the Song dynasty were heightened by new developments such as advances in landscape and portrait painting. The gentry elite engaged in the arts as accepted pastimes of the cultured scholar-official, including painting, composing poetry, and writing calligraphy. The poet and statesman Su Shi and his associate Mi Fu (1051\u20131107) enjoyed antiquarian affairs, often borrowing or buying art pieces to study and copy. Poetry and literature profited from the rising popularity and development of the ci poetry form. Enormous encyclopedic volumes were compiled, such as works of historiography and dozens of treatises on technical subjects. This included the universal history text of the \"Zizhi Tongjian\", compiled into 1000 volumes of 9.4\u00a0million written Chinese characters. The genre of Chinese travel literature also became popular with the writings of the geographer Fan Chengda (1126\u20131193) and Su Shi, the latter of whom wrote the 'daytrip essay' known as \"Record of Stone Bell Mountain\" that used persuasive writing to argue for a philosophical point. Although an early form of the local geographic gazetteer existed in China since the 1st century, the matured form known as \"treatise on a place\", or \"fangzhi\", replaced the old \"map guide\", or , during the Song dynasty.\nThe imperial courts of the emperor's palace were filled with his entourage of court painters, calligraphers, poets, and storytellers. Emperor Huizong was the eighth emperor of the Song dynasty and he was a renowned artist as well as a patron of the art and the catalogue of his collection listed over 6,000 known paintings. A prime example of a highly venerated court painter was Zhang Zeduan (1085\u20131145) who painted an enormous panoramic painting, \"Along the River During the Qingming Festival\". Emperor Gaozong of Song initiated a massive art project during his reign, known as the \"Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute\" from the life story of Cai Wenji (b. 177). This art project was a diplomatic gesture to the Jin dynasty while he negotiated for the release of his mother from Jurchen captivity in the north.\nIn philosophy, Chinese Buddhism had waned in influence but it retained its hold on the arts and on the charities of monasteries. Buddhism had a profound influence upon the budding movement of Neo-Confucianism, led by Cheng Yi (1033\u20131107) and Zhu Xi (1130\u20131200). Mahayana Buddhism influenced Fan Zhongyan and Wang Anshi through its concept of ethical universalism, while Buddhist metaphysics deeply affected the pre\u2013Neo-Confucian doctrine of Cheng Yi. The philosophical work of Cheng Yi in turn influenced Zhu Xi. Although his writings were not accepted by his contemporary peers, Zhu's commentary and emphasis upon the Confucian classics of the Four Books as an introductory corpus to Confucian learning formed the basis of the Neo-Confucian doctrine. By the year 1241, under the sponsorship of Emperor Lizong, Zhu Xi's Four Books and his commentary on them became standard requirements of study for students attempting to pass the civil service examinations. The neighbouring countries of Japan and Korea also adopted Zhu Xi's teaching, known as the Shushigaku (\u6731\u5b50\u5b78, School of Zhu Xi) of Japan, and in Korea the Jujahak (\uc8fc\uc790\ud559). Buddhism's continuing influence can be seen in painted artwork such as Lin Tinggui's \"Luohan Laundering\". However, the ideology was highly criticized and even scorned by some. The statesman and historian Ouyang Xiu (1007\u20131072) called the religion a \"curse\" that could only be remedied by uprooting it from Chinese culture and replacing it with Confucian discourse. The Chan sect experienced a literary flourishing in the Song period, which saw the publication of several major classical koan collections which remain influential in Zen philosophy and practice to the present day. A true revival of Buddhism in Chinese society would not occur until the Mongol rule of the Yuan dynasty, with Kublai Khan's sponsorship of Tibetan Buddhism and Drog\u00f6n Ch\u00f6gyal Phagpa as the leading lama. The Christian sect of Nestorianism, which had entered China in the Tang era, would also be revived in China under Mongol rule.\nCuisine and clothing.\nSumptuary laws regulated the food that one consumed and the clothes that one wore according to status and social class. Clothing was made of hemp or cotton cloths, restricted to a color standard of black and white. Trousers were the acceptable attire for peasants, soldiers, artisans, and merchants, although wealthy merchants might choose to wear more ornate clothing and male blouses that came down below the waist. Acceptable apparel for scholar-officials was rigidly defined by the social ranking system. However, as time went on this rule of rank-graded apparel for officials was not as strictly enforced. Each official was able to display his awarded status by wearing different-colored traditional silken robes that hung to the ground around his feet, specific types of headgear, and even specific styles of girdles that displayed his graded-rank of officialdom.\nWomen wore long dresses, blouses that came down to the knee, skirts, and jackets with long or short sleeves, while women from wealthy families could wear purple scarves around their shoulders. The main difference in women's apparel from that of men was that it was fastened on the left, not on the right.\nThe main food staples in the diet of the lower classes remained rice, pork, and salted fish. In 1011, Emperor Zhenzong of Song introduced Champa rice to China from Vietnam's Kingdom of Champa, which sent 30,000 bushels as a tribute to Song. Champa rice was drought-resistant and able to grow fast enough to offer two harvests a year instead of one.\nSong restaurant and tavern menus are recorded. They list entrees for feasts, banquets, festivals, and carnivals. They reveal a diverse and lavish diet for those of the upper class. They could choose from a wide variety of meats and seafood, including shrimp, geese, duck, mussel, shellfish, fallow deer, hare, partridge, pheasant, francolin, quail, fox, badger, clam, crab, and many others. Dairy products were rare in Chinese cuisine at this time. Beef was rarely consumed since the bull was a valuable draft animal, and dog meat was absent from the diet of the wealthy, although the poor could choose to eat dog meat if necessary (yet it was not part of their regular diet). People also consumed dates, raisins, jujubes, pears, plums, apricots, pear juice, lychee-fruit juice, honey and ginger drinks, spices and seasonings of Sichuan pepper, ginger, soy sauce, vegetable oil, sesame oil, salt, and vinegar.\nEconomy.\nThe Song dynasty had one of the most prosperous and advanced economies in the medieval world. Song Chinese invested their funds in joint stock companies and in multiple sailing vessels at a time when monetary gain was assured from the vigorous overseas trade and domestic trade along the Grand Canal and Yangtze River. Both private and government-controlled industries met the needs of a growing Chinese population in the Song; prominent merchant families and private businesses were allowed to occupy industries that were not already government-operated monopolies. Economic historians emphasize this toleration of market mechanisms over population growth or new farming technologies as the major cause of Song economic prosperity. Artisans and merchants formed guilds that the state had to deal with when assessing taxes, requisitioning goods, and setting standard workers' wages and prices on goods.\nThe iron industry was pursued by both private entrepreneurs who owned their own smelters as well as government-supervised smelting facilities. The Song economy was stable enough to produce over of iron products per year. Large-scale Deforestation in China would have continued if not for the 11th-century innovation of the use of coal instead of charcoal in blast furnaces for smelting cast iron. Much of this iron was reserved for military use in crafting weapons and armouring troops, but some was used to fashion the many iron products needed to fill the demands of the growing domestic market. The iron trade within China was advanced by the construction of new canals, facilitating the flow of iron products from production centres to the large market in the capital city.\nThe annual output of minted copper currency in 1085 reached roughly six billion coins. The most notable advancement in the Song economy was the establishment of the world's first government issued paper-printed money, known as Jiaozi (see also \"Huizi\"). For the printing of paper money, the Song court established several government-run factories in the cities of Huizhou, Chengdu, Hangzhou, and Anqi. The size of the workforce employed in paper money factories was large; it was recorded in 1175 that the factory at Hangzhou employed more than a thousand workers a day.\nThe economic power of Song China can be attested by the growth of the urban population of its capital city Hangzhou. The population was 200,000 at the start of the 12th century and increased to 500,000 around 1170 and doubled to over a million a century later. This economic power also heavily influenced foreign economies abroad. In 1120 alone, the Song government collected 18,000,000 ounces (510,000 kg) of silver in taxes. The Moroccan geographer al-Idrisi wrote in 1154 of the prowess of Chinese merchant ships in the Indian Ocean and of their annual voyages that brought iron, swords, silk, velvet, porcelain, and various textiles to places such as Aden (Yemen), the Indus River, and the Euphrates. Foreigners, in turn, affected the Chinese economy. For example, many West and Central Asian Muslims went to China to trade, becoming a preeminent force in the import and export industry, while some were even appointed as officers supervising economic affairs. Sea trade with the South-west Pacific, the Hindu world, the Islamic world, and East Africa brought merchants great fortune and spurred an enormous growth in the shipbuilding industry of Song-era Fujian. However, there was risk involved in such long overseas ventures. In order to reduce the risk of losing money on maritime trade missions abroad, wrote historians Ebrey, Walthall, and Palais:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />[Song era] investors usually divided their investment among many ships, and each ship had many investors behind it. One observer thought eagerness to invest in overseas trade was leading to an outflow of copper cash. He wrote, \"People along the coast are on intimate terms with the merchants who engage in overseas trade, either because they are fellow-countrymen or personal acquaintances. ... [They give the merchants] money to take with them on their ships for purchase and return conveyance of foreign goods. They invest from ten to a hundred strings of cash, and regularly make profits of several hundred percent\".\nScience and technology.\nGunpowder warfare.\nAdvancements in weapons technology enhanced by gunpowder, including the evolution of the early flamethrower, explosive grenades, firearms, cannons, and land mines, enabled the Song Chinese to ward off their militant enemies until the Song's ultimate collapse in the late 13th century. The \"Wujing Zongyao\" manuscript of 1044 was the first book in history to provide formulas for gunpowder and their specified use in different types of bombs. While engaged in a war with the Mongols, in 1259 the official Li Zengbo wrote in his \"Kezhai Zagao, Xugaohou\" that the city of Qingzhou was manufacturing one to two thousand strong iron-cased bombshells a month, dispatching to Xiangyang and Yingzhou about ten to twenty thousand such bombs at a time. In turn, the invading Mongols employed northern Chinese soldiers and used these same types of gunpowder weapons against the Song. By the 14th century the firearm and cannon could also be found in Europe, India, and the Middle East, during the early age of gunpowder warfare.\nMeasuring distance and mechanical navigation.\nAs early as the Han dynasty, when the state needed to accurately measure distances traveled throughout the empire, the Chinese relied on a mechanical odometer. The Chinese odometer was a wheeled carriage, its gearwork being driven by the rotation of the carriage's wheels; specific units of distance\u2014the Chinese li\u2014were marked by the mechanical striking of a drum or bell as an auditory signal. The specifications for the 11th-century odometer were written by Chief Chamberlain Lu Daolong, who is quoted extensively in the historical text of the \"Song Shi\" (compiled by 1345). In the Song period, the odometer vehicle was also combined with another old complex mechanical device known as the south-pointing chariot. This device, originally crafted by Ma Jun in the 3rd century, incorporated a differential gear that allowed a figure mounted on the vehicle to always point in the southern direction, no matter how the vehicle's wheels turned about. The concept of the differential gear that was used in this navigational vehicle is now found in modern automobiles in order to apply an equal amount of torque to a car's wheels even when they are rotating at different speeds.\nPolymaths, inventions, and astronomy.\nPolymaths such as the scientists and statesmen Shen Kuo (1031\u20131095) and Su Song (1020\u20131101) embodied advancements in all fields of study, including botany, zoology, geology, mineralogy, metallurgy, mechanics, magnetics, meteorology, horology, astronomy, pharmaceutical medicine, archeology, mathematics, cartography, optics, art criticism, hydraulics, and many other fields.\nShen Kuo was the first to discern magnetic declination of true north while experimenting with a compass. Shen theorized that geographical climates gradually shifted over time. He created a theory of land formation involving concepts accepted in modern geomorphology. He performed optical experiments with camera obscura just decades after Ibn al-Haytham was the first to do so. He also improved the designs of astronomical instruments such as the widened astronomical sighting tube, which allowed Shen Kuo to fix the position of the pole star (which had shifted over centuries of time). Shen Kuo was also known for hydraulic clockworks, as he invented a new overflow-tank clepsydra which had more efficient higher-order interpolation instead of linear interpolation in calibrating the measure of time.\nSu Song was best known for his horology treatise written in 1092, which described and illustrated in great detail his hydraulic-powered, tall astronomical clock tower built in Kaifeng. The clock tower featured large astronomical instruments of the armillary sphere and celestial globe, both driven by an early intermittently working escapement mechanism (similarly to the western verge escapement of true mechanical clocks appeared in medieval clockworks, derived from ancient clockworks of classical times). Su's tower featured a rotating gear wheel with 133 clock jack mannequins who were timed to rotate past shuttered windows while ringing gongs and bells, banging drums, and presenting announcement plaques. In his printed book, Su published a celestial atlas of five star charts. These star charts feature a cylindrical projection similar to Mercator projection, the latter being a cartographic innovation of Gerardus Mercator in 1569.\nThe Song Chinese observed supernovae, including SN 1054, the remnants of which would form the Crab Nebula. Moreover, the \"Soochow Astronomical Chart\" on Chinese planispheres was prepared in 1193 for instructing the crown prince on astronomical findings. The planispheres were engraved in stone several decades later.\nMathematics and cartography.\nThere were many notable improvements to Chinese mathematics during the Song era. Mathematician Yang Hui's 1261 book provided the earliest Chinese illustration of Pascal's triangle, although it had earlier been described by Jia Xian in around 1100. Yang Hui also provided rules for constructing combinatorial arrangements in magic squares, provided theoretical proof for Euclid's forty-third proposition about parallelograms, and was the first to use negative coefficients of 'x' in quadratic equations. Yang's contemporary Qin Jiushao (c.\u20091202\u20131261) was the first to introduce the zero symbol into Chinese mathematics; before this blank spaces were used instead of zeroes in the system of counting rods. He is also known for working with the Chinese remainder theorem, Heron's formula, and astronomical data used in determining the winter solstice. Qin's major work was the \"Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections\" published in 1247.\nGeometry was essential to surveying and cartography. The earliest extant Chinese maps date to the 4th century BCE, yet it was not until the time of Pei Xiu (224\u2013271) that topographical elevation, a formal rectangular grid system, and use of a standard graduated scale of distances was applied to terrain maps. Following a long tradition, Shen Kuo created a raised-relief map, while his other maps featured a uniform graduated scale of 1:900,000. A squared map of 1137\u2014carved into a stone block\u2014followed a uniform grid scale of 100 li for each gridded square, and accurately mapped the outline of the coasts and river systems of China, extending all the way to India. Furthermore, the world's oldest known terrain map in printed form comes from the edited encyclopedia of Yang Jia in 1155, which displayed western China without the formal grid system that was characteristic of more professionally made Chinese maps. Although gazetteers had existed since 52 CE during the Han dynasty and gazetteers accompanied by illustrative maps (Chinese: ) since the Sui dynasty, the illustrated gazetteer became much more common during the Song dynasty, when the foremost concern was for illustrative gazetteers to serve political, administrative, and military purposes.\nMovable type printing.\nThe innovation of movable type printing was made by the artisan Bi Sheng (990\u20131051), first described by the scientist and statesman Shen Kuo in his \"Dream Pool Essays\" of 1088. The collection of Bi Sheng's original clay-fired typeface was passed on to one of Shen Kuo's nephews, and was carefully preserved. Movable type enhanced the already widespread use of woodblock methods of printing thousands of documents and volumes of written literature, consumed eagerly by an increasingly literate public. The advancement of printing deeply affected education and the scholar-official class, since more books could be made faster while mass-produced, printed books were cheaper in comparison to laborious handwritten copies. The enhancement of widespread printing and print culture in the Song period was thus a direct catalyst in the rise of social mobility and expansion of the educated class of scholar elites, the latter which expanded dramatically in size from the 11th to 13th centuries.\nThe movable type invented by Bi Sheng was ultimately trumped by the use of woodblock printing due to the limitations of Chinese characters, yet movable type printing continued to be used and was improved in later periods. The Yuan scholar-official Wang Zhen () implemented a faster typesetting process, improved Bi's baked-clay movable type character set with a wooden one, and experimented with tin-metal movable type. The wealthy printing patron Hua Sui (1439\u20131513) of the Ming dynasty established China's first metal movable type (using bronze) in 1490. In 1638, the \"Peking Gazette\" switched their printing process from woodblock to movable type printing. Yet it was during the Qing dynasty that massive printing projects began to employ movable type printing. This includes the printing of sixty-six copies of a 5,020 volume long encyclopedia in 1725, the \"Complete Classics Collection of Ancient China\", which necessitated the crafting of 250,000 movable type characters cast in bronze. By the 19th century the European style printing press replaced the old Chinese methods of movable type, while traditional woodblock printing in modern East Asia is used sparsely and for aesthetic reasons.\nHydraulic and nautical engineering.\nThe most important nautical innovation of the Song period seems to have been the introduction of the magnetic mariner's compass, which permitted accurate navigation on the open sea regardless of the weather. The magnetized compass needle \u2013 known in Chinese as the \"south-pointing needle\" \u2013 was first described by Shen Kuo in his 1088 \"Dream Pool Essays\" and first mentioned in active use by sailors in Zhu Yu's 1119 \"Pingzhou Table Talks\".\nThere were other considerable advancements in hydraulic engineering and nautical technology during the Song dynasty. The 10th-century invention of the pound lock for canal systems allowed different water levels to be raised and lowered for separated segments of a canal, which significantly aided the safety of canal traffic and allowed for larger barges. There was the Song-era innovation of watertight bulkhead compartments that allowed damage to hulls without sinking the ships. If ships were damaged, the Chinese of the 11th century employed drydocks to repair them while suspended out of the water. The Song used crossbeams to brace the ribs of ships in order to strengthen them in a skeletal-like structure. Stern-mounted rudders had been mounted on Chinese ships since the 1st century, as evidenced by a preserved Han tomb model of a ship. In the Song period, the Chinese devised a way to mechanically raise and lower rudders in order for ships to travel in a wider range of water depths. The Song arranged the protruding teeth of anchors in a circular pattern instead of in one direction. David Graff and Robin Higham state that this arrangement \"[made] them more reliable\" for anchoring ships.\nStructural engineering and architecture.\nArchitecture during the Song period reached new heights of sophistication. Authors such as Yu Hao and Shen Kuo wrote books outlining the field of architectural layouts, craftsmanship, and structural engineering in the 10th and 11th centuries, respectively. Shen Kuo preserved the written dialogues of Yu Hao when describing technical issues such as slanting struts built into pagoda towers for diagonal wind bracing. Shen Kuo also preserved Yu's specified dimensions and units of measurement for various building types. The architect Li Jie (1065\u20131110), who published the \"Yingzao Fashi\" ('Treatise on Architectural Methods') in 1103, greatly expanded upon the works of Yu Hao and compiled the standard building codes used by the central government agencies and by craftsmen throughout the empire. He addressed the standard methods of construction, design, and applications of moats and fortifications, stonework, greater woodwork, lesser woodwork, wood-carving, turning and drilling, sawing, bamboo work, tiling, wall building, painting and decoration, brickwork, glazed tile making, and provided proportions for mortar formulas in masonry. In his book, Li provided detailed and vivid illustrations of architectural components and cross-sections of buildings. These illustrations displayed various applications of corbel brackets, cantilever arms, mortise and tenon work of tie beams and cross beams, and diagrams showing the various building types of halls in graded sizes. He also outlined the standard units of measurement and standard dimensional measurements of all building components described and illustrated in his book.\nGrandiose building projects were supported by the government, including the erection of towering Buddhist Chinese pagodas and the construction of enormous bridges (wood or stone, trestle or segmental arch bridge). Many of the pagoda towers built during the Song period were erected at heights that exceeded ten stories. Some of the most famous are the Iron Pagoda built in 1049 during the Northern Song and the Liuhe Pagoda built in 1165 during the Southern Song, though there were others. The tallest is the Liaodi Pagoda built in 1055 in Hebei, towering in total height. Some of the bridges reached lengths of , with many being wide enough to allow two lanes of cart traffic simultaneously over a waterway or ravine. The government also oversaw construction of their own administrative offices, palace apartments, city fortifications, ancestral temples, and Buddhist temples.\nThe professions of the architect, craftsman, carpenter, and structural engineer were not seen as professionally equal to that of a Confucian scholar-official. Architectural knowledge had been passed down orally for thousands of years in China, in many cases from a father craftsman to his son. Structural engineering and architecture schools were known to have existed during the Song period; one prestigious engineering school was headed by the renowned bridge-builder Cai Xiang (1012\u20131067) in medieval Fujian province.\nBesides existing buildings and technical literature of building manuals, Song dynasty artwork portraying cityscapes and other buildings aid modern-day scholars in their attempts to reconstruct and realize the nuances of Song architecture. Song dynasty artists such as Li Cheng, Fan Kuan, Guo Xi, Zhang Zeduan, Emperor Huizong of Song, and Ma Lin painted close-up depictions of buildings as well as large expanses of cityscapes featuring arched bridges, halls and pavilions, pagoda towers, and distinct Chinese city walls. The scientist and statesman Shen Kuo was known for his criticism relating to architecture, saying that it was more important for an artist to capture a holistic view of a landscape than it was to focus on the angles and corners of buildings. For example, Shen criticized the work of the painter Li Cheng for failing to observe the principle of \"seeing the small from the viewpoint of the large\" in portraying buildings.\nThere were also pyramidal tomb structures in the Song era, such as the Song imperial tombs located in Gongxian, Henan. About from Gongxian is another Song dynasty tomb at Baisha, which features \"elaborate facsimiles in brick of Chinese timber frame construction, from door lintels to pillars and pedestals to bracket sets, that adorn interior walls.\" The two large chambers of the Baisha tomb also feature conical-shaped roofs. Flanking the avenues leading to these tombs of officials, tomb guardians, animals, and legendary creatures.\nArchaeology.\nIn addition to the Song gentry's antiquarian pursuits of art collecting, scholar-officials during the Song became highly interested in retrieving ancient relics from archaeological sites, in order to revive the use of ancient vessels in ceremonies of state ritual. Scholar-officials of the Song period claimed to have discovered ancient bronze vessels that were created as far back as the Shang dynasty (1600\u20131046 BCE), which bore the oracle bone script of the Shang era. Some attempted to recreate these bronze vessels by using imagination alone, not by observing tangible evidence of relics; this practice was criticized by Shen Kuo in his work of 1088. Yet Shen Kuo had much more to criticize than this practice alone. Shen objected to the idea of his peers that ancient relics were products created by famous \"sages\" in lore or the ancient aristocratic class; Shen rightfully attributed the discovered handicrafts and vessels from ancient times as the work of artisans and commoners from previous eras. He also disapproved of his peers' pursuit of archaeology simply to enhance state ritual, since Shen not only took an interdisciplinary approach with the study of archaeology, but he also emphasized the study of functionality and investigating what was the ancient relics' original processes of manufacture. Shen used ancient texts and existing models of armillary spheres to create one based on ancient standards; Shen described ancient weaponry such as the use of a scaled sighting device on crossbows; while experimenting with ancient musical measures, Shen suggested hanging an ancient bell by using a hollow handle.\nDespite the gentry's overriding interest in archaeology simply for reviving ancient state rituals, some of Shen's peers took a similar approach to the study of archaeology. His contemporary Ouyang Xiu (1007\u20131072) compiled an analytical catalogue of ancient rubbings on stone and bronze which pioneered ideas in early epigraphy and archaeology. During the 11th century, Song scholars discovered the ancient shrine of Wu Liang (78\u2013151 CE), a scholar of the Han dynasty; they produced rubbings of the carvings and bas-reliefs decorating the walls of his tomb so that they could be analyzed elsewhere. On the unreliability of historical works written after the fact, the epigrapher and poet Zhao Mingcheng (1081\u20131129) stated \"... the inscriptions on stone and bronze are made at the time the events took place and can be trusted without reservation, and thus discrepancies may be discovered.\" Historian R.C. Rudolph states that Zhao's emphasis on consulting contemporary sources for accurate dating is parallel with the concern of the German historian Leopold von Ranke (1795\u20131886), and was in fact emphasized by many Song scholars. The Song scholar Hong Mai (1123\u20131202) heavily criticized what he called the court's \"ridiculous\" archaeological catalogue \"Bogutu\" compiled during the Huizong reign periods of Zheng He and Xuan He (1111\u20131125). Hong Mai obtained old vessels from the Han dynasty and compared them with the descriptions offered in the catalogue, which he found so inaccurate he stated he had to \"hold my sides with laughter.\" Hong Mai pointed out that the erroneous material was the fault of Chancellor Cai Jing, who prohibited scholars from reading and consulting written histories.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["56978", "43460", "1505285", "24967743"], "permutation_1": ["24967743", "1505285", "56978", "43460"], "permutation_2": ["24967743", "1505285", "56978", "43460"], "permutation_3": ["56978", "24967743", "43460", "1505285"]}
{"id": "4hop2__339729_20606_51791_77420", "docs_added": {"165231": "Triple Alliance (1882)\nAlliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy\nThe Triple Alliance was a defensive military alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. It was formed on 20 May 1882 and renewed periodically until it expired in 1915 during World War I. Germany and Austria-Hungary had been closely allied since 1879. Italy was looking for support against France shortly after it lost North African ambitions to the French. Each member promised mutual support in the event of an attack by any other great power. The treaty provided that Germany and Austria-Hungary were to assist Italy if it was attacked by France without provocation. In turn, Italy would assist Germany if attacked by France without provocation. In the event of a war between Austria-Hungary and Russia, Italy promised to remain neutral. After the Austro-Hungarian empire and Germany declared war without first being attacked by other nations, Italy did not take part in World War I on the side of the Central Powers and later joined on the side of the Allied Powers.\nWhen the treaty was renewed in February 1887, Italy gained an empty promise of German support of Italian colonial ambitions in North Africa in return for Italy's continued friendship. Austria-Hungary had to be pressured by German chancellor Otto von Bismarck into accepting the principles of consultation and mutual agreement with Italy on any territorial changes initiated in the Balkans or on the coasts and islands of the Adriatic and Aegean seas. Italy and Austria-Hungary did not overcome their basic conflict of interest in that region despite the treaty. In 1891, attempts were made to join Britain to the Triple Alliance, which, though unsuccessful, were widely believed to have succeeded in Russian diplomatic circles.\nShortly after renewing the Alliance in June 1902, Italy secretly extended a similar guarantee to France. By a particular agreement, neither Austria-Hungary nor Italy would change the status quo in the Balkans without previous consultation.\nOn 18 October 1883 Carol I of Romania, through his Prime Minister Ion C. Br\u0103tianu, had also secretly pledged to support the Triple Alliance, but he later remained neutral in the First World War due to viewing Austria-Hungary as the aggressor. On 1 November 1902, five months after the Triple Alliance was renewed, Italy reached an understanding with France that each would remain neutral in the event of an attack on the other.\nWhen the Austro-Hungarian Empire decided to start a war in August 1914 with the rival Triple Entente, Italy proclaimed its neutrality, considering Austria-Hungary the aggressor. Italy defaulted on the obligation to consult and agree to compensations before changing the status quo in the Balkans, as agreed in 1912 renewal of the Triple Alliance. Following parallel negotiation with both Triple Alliance (which aimed to keep Italy neutral) and the Triple Entente (which aimed to make Italy enter the conflict), Italy sided with the Triple Entente and declared war on Austria-Hungary.\nGermany.\nThe man chiefly responsible for the Triple Alliance was Otto von Bismarck, the Chancellor of Germany. His primary goal was to preserve the status quo in Europe after he had unified Germany in 1871. He was particularly concerned about France finding allies to help it regain Alsace-Lorraine. By promising to aid Austria-Hungary and Italy in the event of an attack, Bismarck sought to make them somewhat dependent on Germany and therefore unsympathetic to French adventures.\nAustria-Hungary.\nBy the late 1870s, Austrian territorial ambitions in both the Italian Peninsula and Central Europe had been thwarted by the rise of Italy and Germany as new powers. With the decline and the failed reforms of the Ottoman Empire, Slavic discontent in the occupied Balkans grew, which both Russia and Austria-Hungary saw as an opportunity to expand in the region. In 1876, Russia offered to partition the Balkans, but the Hungarian statesman Gyula Andr\u00e1ssy declined because Austria-Hungary was already a \"saturated\" state and could not cope with additional territories. The whole empire was thus drawn into a new style of diplomatic brinkmanship, which was first conceived of by Andr\u00e1ssy, centering on the province of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a predominantly-Slav area that was still under the control of the Ottoman Empire.\nOn the heels of the Great Balkan Crisis, Austro-Hungarian forces occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina in August 1878, and Austria-Hungary eventually annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in October 1908 as a common holding under the control of the finance ministry, rather than attaching it to either Austria or Hungary. The occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina was a step taken in response to Russian advances into Bessarabia. Unable to mediate between the Ottoman and the Russian Empires over the control of Serbia, Austria\u2013Hungary declared neutrality when the conflict between the empires escalated into war. To counter Russian and French interests in Europe, an alliance was concluded with Germany in October 1879 and with Italy in May 1882.\nItaly.\nItaly had several motives for joining the existing Austro-German alliance. The Italian government at that time was controlled by conservatives, who sympathized ideologically with the two monarchies. Also, Catholic Austria was a traditional protector of the Papacy, which Italy had poor relations with. However, perhaps most importantly, Italy was seeking potential allies against France. The Kingdom of Italy, like most of the other European powers, wanted to set up colonies and build up an overseas empire. Although France had supported Italian unification, Italy's colonial ambitions in Africa quickly brought it into a rivalry with France. That was reflected in anger at the French conquest of Tunisia in 1881, the so-called \"Slap of Tunis\" by the Italian press, which many Italians had seen as a potential colony. By joining the Alliance, Italy hoped to guarantee itself support in case of foreign aggression. The main alliance compelled any signatory country to support the other parties if two other countries attacked. Germany had won a war against France in 1870 and was a natural ally for Italy. Thus, Italy found itself coming to terms with its historical enemy, Austria-Hungary, against which Italy had fought three wars in the 34 years before the signing of the first treaty.\nHowever, Italian public opinion remained unenthusiastic about their country's alignment with Austria-Hungary, a past enemy of Italian unification and whose Italian-populated districts in the Trentino and Istria were seen as occupied territories by Italian irredentists. In the years before World War I, many distinguished military analysts predicted that Italy would attack its supposed ally in the event of a large scale conflict. On its own hand, the Austro-Hungarian General Staff maintained at least from 1903 plans for a possible war against Rome. Mutual suspicions led to reinforcement of the frontier and speculation in the press about a war between the two countries into the first decade of the 20th century. As late as 1911, Count Franz Conrad von H\u00f6tzendorf, the chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff, was advocating a preemptive strike against Austria's supposed Italian ally. That prediction was strengthened by Italy's invasion and annexation of Libya, bringing it into conflict with the German-backed Ottoman Empire.\nRomania.\nKing Carol I of Romania was of German ancestry, which, combined with his wish to turn Romania into a centre of stability in Southeastern Europe and his fear of Russian expansion and the competing claims on Bessarabia, led to Romania secretly joining the Triple Alliance on 18 October 1883. Only the King and a handful of senior Romanian politicians knew about it. Romania and Austria-Hungary pledged to help each other in the event of a Russian, Serbian or Bulgarian attack. There were, however, several disputes between Romania and Hungary, the most notable being the status and community rights of Romanians in Transylvania. Romania eventually managed to achieve the status of regional power in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars and the 1913 Treaty of Bucharest, but less than a year later, World War I started, and Romania, after a period of neutrality in which both the Central Powers and the Allies tried persuading Romania to join their respective sides, eventually joined the Allies in 1916, after it had been promised significant Romanian-inhabited Hungarian lands. Romania's official reason for not siding with the Triple Alliance when the war started was the same as Italy's: The Triple Alliance was a defensive alliance, but Germany and Austria-Hungary had taken the offensive.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "5171132": "Ottoman Tripolitania\nSemi-autonomous state affiliated with the Ottoman Empire (1551\u20131912)\nOttoman Tripolitania, also known as the Regency of Tripoli, was officially ruled by the Ottoman Empire from 1551 to 1912. It corresponded roughly to the northern parts of modern-day Libya in historic Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. It was initially established as an Ottoman province ruled by a pasha (governor) in Tripoli who was appointed from Constantinople, though in practice it was semi-autonomous due to the power of the local Janissaries. From 1711 to 1835, the Karamanli dynasty ruled the province as a \"de facto\" hereditary monarchy while remaining under nominal Ottoman suzerainty. In 1835, the Ottomans reestablished direct control over the region until its annexation by Italy in 1912.\nLike the Ottoman regencies in Tunis and Algiers, the Regency of Tripoli was a major base for the privateering activities of the North African corsairs, who also provided revenues for Tripoli. A remnant of the centuries of Turkish rule is the presence of a population of Turkish origin, and those of partial Turkish origin, the \"Kouloughlis\".\nHistory.\nOttoman conquest.\nBy the beginning of the 16th\u00a0century the Libyan coast had minimal central authority and its harbours were havens for unchecked bands of pirates. The Spaniards occupied Tripoli in 1510, but the Spaniards were more concerned with controlling the port than with the inconveniences of administering a colony. In 1530 the city, along with Malta and Gozo, was ceded by Charles\u00a0I of Spain to the Knights of St\u00a0John as compensation for their recent expulsion from the island of Rhodes at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. Christian rule lasted then until 1551, when Tripoli was besieged and conquered by famed Ottoman admirals Sinan Pasha and Turgut Reis. Declared as Bey and later Pasha of Tripoli, Turgut Reis received submission from the tribes of the interior and several cities like Misrata, Zuwara, Gharyan, and Gafsa in the next decade. These efforts contributed to cement the foundations of a statal structure in what is today Libya, but control from Constantinople remained loose at best, much like in the rest of the Barbary Coast of North Africa.\nUnder the Ottomans, the Maghreb was divided into three provinces, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. After 1565, administrative authority in Tripoli was vested in a Pasha directly appointed by the Sultan in Constantinople. The sultan supported the pasha with a corps of janissaries who he was dependent upon, which was in turn divided into a number of companies under the command of a junior officer or \"bey\". The janissaries quickly became the dominant force in Ottoman Libya and were also in charge of collecting taxes; however, Barbary corsairs were the ones who steadily provided income to Tripoli from privateering activities. As a self-governing military guild answerable only to their own laws and protected by a \"divan\" (a council of senior officers who advised the pasha), the janissaries soon reduced the pasha to a largely ceremonial role.\nIn 1611, the local chiefs of the area conducted a coup d'\u00e9tat and successfully appointed Suleiman Safar, their own leader, as \"dey\" (local chief). As a result, his successors continually held the title and even occasionally identified as pasha. As Pasha of Tripoli, Osman Saqizli managed to maintain political stability during the 1650s and 1660s. However, by the 1670s, the position of the dey experienced the succession of eight different leaders, leading to instability.260\nThomas Baker, an English consul stationed in Tripoli from 1679 to 1686, described a turbulent government, a dwindling treasury and an economy heavily reliant on piracy. Tripoli's fleet was the smallest among the Barbary States, with only 13 vessels compared to 20 in Tunis and 40 in Algiers.259 Besides piracy, the region's inland areas, consisting of ravines, mountains and inhospitable desert, forced a reliance on exports of salt, coastal slave raiding in Calabria and Morea, and tribute from the interior tribes. The 1676 peace treaty between Tripoli and English shipping had shifted most pirate activity towards the French, leading to French demands for peace in 1681. Driven by financial desperation, Tripoli violated these terms a year later by seizing a French merchant ship. The following dispute saw the French mortar-bombing Tripoli into submission in 1686.\nKaramanli dynasty and the Barbary Wars.\nDuring the 18th century, Ottoman power waned in North Africa, with the sultans ending the practice of sending pashas to Tripoli, Algiers and Tunis. The title of pasha began to assume its hereditary status.\nIn 1711, Ahmed Karamanli, an Ottoman cavalry officer and son of a Turkish officer and Libyan woman, seized power and founded the Karamanli dynasty, which would last 124 years. The 1790\u201395 Tripolitanian civil war occurred in those years.\nIn May 1801, Pasha Yusuf Karamanli demanded from the United States an increase in the tribute ($83,000) which it had paid since 1796 for the protection of their commerce and enslavement of crews by barbary pirates when the Treaty of Tripoli was signed. The demand was refused by third American President Thomas Jefferson, an American naval force was sent and blockaded Tripoli, and the desultory First Barbary War dragged on from 1801 until 3 June 1805. The Regency of Tripoli was defeated by the newly revived United States Navy.\nThe Second Barbary War (1815, also known as the Algerian War) was the second of the two wars fought between the United States and the Ottoman Turks' North African regencies of Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis, known collectively as the Barbary States.\nOn 5 September 1817, Yusuf Karamanli invited the leaders of the Libyan tribe of Al-Jawazi to his castle in Benghazi, following a dispute regarding tribute and an uprising against his rule. Consequently, the Pasha ordered the execution of all attendees, and chased down the other tribe members, which resulted in the massacre of at least 10,000 people, who eventually sought refuge in neighboring countries, especially Egypt. This was known as the Al-Jawazi massacre.\nReassertion of Ottoman authority.\nIn 1835 the government of Sultan Mahmud\u00a0II took advantage of local disturbances to reassert their direct authority. As decentralized Ottoman power had resulted in the virtual independence of Egypt as well as Tripoli, the coast and desert lying between them relapsed to anarchy, even after direct Ottoman control was resumed in Tripoli. The indigenous Senusiyya (or Sanusi) Movement, led by Islamic cleric Muhammad ibn Ali al-Sanusi, called on the countryside to resist Ottoman rule. The Grand Senussi established his headquarters in the oasis town of Jaghbub while his \"ikhwan\" (brothers) set up \"zawiyas\" (religious colleges or monasteries) across North Africa and brought some stability to regions not known for their submission to central authority. In line with the expressed instruction of the Grand Sanusi, these gains were made largely without any coercion.\nIt was one of the first Ottoman provinces to be reclassified from an eyalet to a vilayet after an administrative reform in 1865, and by 1867 it had been reformed into the Tripolitania Vilayet.\nThe Ottoman sultan Abdulhamid II twice sent his aide-de-camp Azmzade Sadik El Mueyyed to meet Sheikh Sanusi to cultivate positive relations and counter the West European scramble for Africa.\nThe highpoint of the Sanusi influence came in the 1880s under the Grand Senussi's son, Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi. With 146\u00a0lodges spanning the entire Sahara, he moved the Senussi capital to Kufra.\nOver a 75\u2011year period, the Ottoman Turks provided 33\u00a0governors and Libya remained part of the empire until Italy invaded for the second time in 1911.\nItalo-Turkish War.\nThe Italo-Turkish War was fought between the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Italy from September 29, 1911, to October 18, 1912.\nAs a result of this conflict, the Ottoman Turks ceded the provinces of Tripolitania, Fezzan, and Cyrenaica to Italy. These provinces together formed what became known as Libya.\nAdministrative divisions.\nBy the 19th century, the province of Tripoli, known officially as \"Tarablus al-Gharb\" ('Tripoli of the West') was organized into five \"sanjak\"s (districts):\nThese district names were reported by James Henry Skene in 1851 and five districts of the same name existed after the reforms of the 1860s that transformed the province officially into a \"vilayet\" (or in Arabic). Among these, Cyrenaica was made an independent \"sanjak\" in 1863 that was directly dependent on Istanbul, then it was assigned to Tripoli's supervision in 1871, and finally it was attached to Istanbul again in 1888.", "30997172": "Al-Berka\nAl-Berka (Arabic:\u0627\u0644\u0628\u0631\u0643\u0629) is a Basic People's Congress administrative division of Benghazi, Libya. As of the 2011 Libyan revolution, the area is simply known as a district of Benghazi after the Gaddafi era Basic People's Congresses were disbanded. \nHistory.\nAl-Berka is one of the oldest districts in Benghazi and has buildings which attest to both its Ottoman and Italian era routes. One such example is the Hadiya mosque built in the early 20th century.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4721": "British Empire\nTerritory ruled by the United Kingdom\nThe British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and colonisation attempts by Scotland during the 17th century. At its height in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it became the largest empire in history and, for a century, was the foremost global power. By 1913, the British Empire held sway over 412\u00a0million people, of the world population at the time, and by 1920, it covered , of the Earth's total land area. As a result, its constitutional, legal, linguistic, and cultural legacy is widespread. At the peak of its power, it was described as \"the empire on which the sun never sets\", as the sun was always shining on at least one of its territories.\nDuring the Age of Discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal and Spain pioneered European exploration of the globe, and in the process established large overseas empires. Envious of the great wealth these empires generated, England, France, and the Netherlands began to establish colonies and trade networks of their own in the Americas and Asia. A series of wars in the 17th and 18th centuries with the Netherlands and France left Britain the dominant colonial power in North America. Britain became a major power in the Indian subcontinent after the East India Company's conquest of Mughal Bengal at the Battle of Plassey in 1757.\nThe American War of Independence resulted in Britain losing some of its oldest and most populous colonies in North America by 1783. While retaining control of British North America (now Canada) and territories in and near the Caribbean in the British West Indies, British colonial expansion turned towards Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. After the defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars (1803\u20131815), Britain emerged as the principal naval and imperial power of the 19th century and expanded its imperial holdings. It pursued trade concessions in China and Japan, and territory in Southeast Asia. The Great Game and Scramble for Africa also ensued. The period of relative peace (1815\u20131914) during which the British Empire became the global hegemon was later described as (Latin for \"British Peace\"). Alongside the formal control that Britain exerted over its colonies, its dominance of much of world trade, and of its oceans, meant that it effectively controlled the economies of, and readily enforced its interests in, many regions, such as Asia and Latin America. It also came to dominate the Middle East. Increasing degrees of autonomy were granted to its white settler colonies, some of which were formally reclassified as Dominions by the 1920s. By the start of the 20th century, Germany and the United States had begun to challenge Britain's economic lead. Military, economic and colonial tensions between Britain and Germany were major causes of the First World War, during which Britain relied heavily on its empire. The conflict placed enormous strain on its military, financial, and manpower resources. Although the empire achieved its largest territorial extent immediately after the First World War, Britain was no longer the world's preeminent industrial or military power.\nIn the Second World War, Britain's colonies in East Asia and Southeast Asia were occupied by the Empire of Japan. Despite the final victory of Britain and its allies, the damage to British prestige and the British economy helped accelerate the decline of the empire. India, Britain's most valuable and populous possession, achieved independence in 1947 as part of a larger decolonisation movement, in which Britain granted independence to most territories of the empire. The Suez Crisis of 1956 confirmed Britain's decline as a global power, and the handover of Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997 symbolised for many the end of the British Empire, though fourteen overseas territories that are remnants of the empire remain under British sovereignty. After independence, many former British colonies, along with most of the dominions, joined the Commonwealth of Nations, a free association of independent states. Fifteen of these, including the United Kingdom, retain the same person as monarch, currently King Charles III.\nOrigins (1497\u20131583).\nThe foundations of the British Empire were laid when England and Scotland were separate kingdoms. In 1496, King Henry VII of England, following the successes of Spain and Portugal in overseas exploration, commissioned John Cabot to lead an expedition to discover a northwest passage to Asia via the North Atlantic. Cabot sailed in 1497, five years after the first voyage of Christopher Columbus, and made landfall on the coast of Newfoundland. He believed he had reached Asia, and there was no attempt to found a colony. Cabot led another voyage to the Americas the following year but did not return; it is unknown what happened to his ships.\nNo further attempts to establish English colonies in the Americas were made until well into the reign of Queen Elizabeth\u00a0I, during the last decades of the 16th century. In the meantime, Henry VIII's 1533 Statute in Restraint of Appeals had declared \"that this realm of England is an Empire\". The Protestant Reformation turned England and Catholic Spain into implacable enemies. In 1562, Elizabeth\u00a0I encouraged the privateers John Hawkins and Francis Drake to engage in slave-raiding attacks against Spanish and Portuguese ships off the coast of West Africa with the aim of establishing an Atlantic slave trade. This effort was rebuffed and later, as the Anglo-Spanish Wars intensified, Elizabeth\u00a0I gave her blessing to further privateering raids against Spanish ports in the Americas and shipping that was returning across the Atlantic, laden with treasure from the New World. At the same time, influential writers such as Richard Hakluyt and John Dee (who was the first to use the term \"British Empire\") were beginning to press for the establishment of England's own empire. By this time, Spain had become the dominant power in the Americas and was exploring the Pacific Ocean, Portugal had established trading posts and forts from the coasts of Africa and Brazil to China, and France had begun to settle the Saint Lawrence River area, later to become New France.\nAlthough England tended to trail behind Portugal, Spain, and France in establishing overseas colonies, it carried out its first modern colonisation, referred to as the Munster Plantations, in 16th century Ireland by settling it with English and Welsh Protestant settlers. England had already colonised part of the country following the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169. Several people who helped establish the Munster plantations later played a part in the early colonisation of North America, particularly a group known as the West Country Men.\nEnglish overseas possessions (1583\u20131707).\nIn 1578, Elizabeth I granted a patent to Humphrey Gilbert for discovery and overseas exploration. That year, Gilbert sailed for the Caribbean with the intention of engaging in piracy and establishing a colony in North America, but the expedition was aborted before it had crossed the Atlantic. In 1583, he embarked on a second attempt. On this occasion, he formally claimed the harbour of the island of Newfoundland, although no settlers were left behind. Gilbert did not survive the return journey to England and was succeeded by his half-brother, Walter Raleigh, who was granted his own patent by Elizabeth in 1584. Later that year, Raleigh founded the Roanoke Colony on the coast of present-day North Carolina, but lack of supplies caused the colony to fail.\nIn 1603, James VI of Scotland ascended (as James I) to the English throne and in 1604 negotiated the Treaty of London, ending hostilities with Spain. Now at peace with its main rival, English attention shifted from preying on other nations' colonial infrastructures to the business of establishing its own overseas colonies. The British Empire began to take shape during the early 17th century, with the English settlement of North America and the smaller islands of the Caribbean, and the establishment of joint-stock companies, most notably the East India Company, to administer colonies and overseas trade. This period, until the loss of the Thirteen Colonies after the American War of Independence towards the end of the 18th century, has been referred to by some historians as the \"First British Empire\".\nAmericas, Africa and the slave trade.\nEngland's early efforts at colonisation in the Americas met with mixed success. An attempt to establish a colony in Guiana in 1604 lasted only two years and failed in its main objective to find gold deposits. Colonies on the Caribbean islands of St Lucia\u00a0(1605) and Grenada\u00a0(1609) rapidly folded. The first permanent English settlement in the Americas was founded in 1607 in Jamestown by Captain John Smith, and managed by the Virginia Company; the Crown took direct control of the venture in 1624, thereby founding the Colony of Virginia. Bermuda was settled and claimed by England as a result of the 1609 shipwreck of the Virginia Company's flagship, while attempts to settle Newfoundland were largely unsuccessful. In 1620, Plymouth was founded as a haven by Puritan religious separatists, later known as the Pilgrims. Fleeing from religious persecution would become the motive for many English would-be colonists to risk the arduous trans-Atlantic voyage: Maryland was established by English Roman Catholics\u00a0(1634), Rhode Island\u00a0(1636) as a colony tolerant of all religions and Connecticut\u00a0(1639) for Congregationalists. England's North American holdings were further expanded by the annexation of the Dutch colony of New Netherland in 1664, following the capture of New Amsterdam, which was renamed New York. Although less financially successful than colonies in the Caribbean, these territories had large areas of good agricultural land and attracted far greater numbers of English emigrants, who preferred their temperate climates.\nThe British West Indies initially provided England's most important and lucrative colonies. Settlements were successfully established in St. Kitts\u00a0(1624), Barbados\u00a0(1627) and Nevis\u00a0(1628), but struggled until the \"Sugar Revolution\" transformed the Caribbean economy in the mid-17th century. Large sugarcane plantations were first established in the 1640s on Barbados, with assistance from Dutch merchants and Sephardic Jews fleeing Portuguese Brazil. At first, sugar was grown primarily using white indentured labour, but rising costs soon led English traders to embrace the use of imported African slaves. The enormous wealth generated by slave-produced sugar made Barbados the most successful colony in the Americas, and one of the most densely populated places in the world. This boom led to the spread of sugar cultivation across the Caribbean, financed the development of non-plantation colonies in North America, and accelerated the growth of the Atlantic slave trade, particularly the triangular trade of slaves, sugar and provisions between Africa, the West Indies and Europe.\nTo ensure that the increasingly healthy profits of colonial trade remained in English hands, Parliament decreed in 1651 that only English ships would be able to ply their trade in English colonies. This led to hostilities with the United Dutch Provinces\u2014a series of Anglo-Dutch Wars\u2014which would eventually strengthen England's position in the Americas at the expense of the Dutch. In 1655, England annexed the island of Jamaica from the Spanish, and in 1666 succeeded in colonising the Bahamas.\nIn 1670, Charles II incorporated by royal charter the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), granting it a monopoly on the fur trade in the area known as Rupert's Land, which would later form a large proportion of the Dominion of Canada. Forts and trading posts established by the HBC were frequently the subject of attacks by the French, who had established their own fur trading colony in adjacent New France.\nTwo years later, the Royal African Company was granted a monopoly on the supply of slaves to the British colonies in the Caribbean. The company would transport more slaves across the Atlantic than any other, and significantly grew England's share of the trade, from 33 per cent in 1673 to 74 per cent in 1683. The removal of this monopoly between 1688 and 1712 allowed independent British slave traders to thrive, leading to a rapid escalation in the number of slaves transported. British ships carried a third of all slaves shipped across the Atlantic\u2014approximately 3.5\u00a0million Africans\u2014until the abolition of the trade by Parliament in 1807 (see ). To facilitate the shipment of slaves, forts were established on the coast of West Africa, such as James Island, Accra and Bunce Island. In the British Caribbean, the percentage of the population of African descent rose from 25 per cent in 1650 to around 80 per cent in 1780, and in the Thirteen Colonies from 10 per cent to 40 per cent over the same period (the majority in the southern colonies). The transatlantic slave trade played a pervasive role in British economic life, and became a major economic mainstay for western port cities. Ships registered in Bristol, Liverpool and London were responsible for the bulk of British slave trading. For the transported, harsh and unhygienic conditions on the slaving ships and poor diets meant that the average mortality rate during the Middle Passage was one in seven.\nRivalry with other European empires.\nAt the end of the 16th century, England and the Dutch Empire began to challenge the Portuguese Empire's monopoly of trade with Asia, forming private joint-stock companies to finance the voyages\u2014the English, later British, East India Company and the Dutch East India Company, chartered in 1600 and 1602 respectively. The primary aim of these companies was to tap into the lucrative spice trade, an effort focused mainly on two regions: the East Indies archipelago, and an important hub in the trade network, India. There, they competed for trade supremacy with Portugal and with each other. Although England eclipsed the Netherlands as a colonial power, in the short term the Netherlands' more advanced financial system and the three Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th century left it with a stronger position in Asia. Hostilities ceased after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when the Dutch William of Orange ascended the English throne, bringing peace between the Dutch Republic and England. A deal between the two nations left the spice trade of the East Indies archipelago to the Netherlands and the textiles industry of India to England, but textiles soon overtook spices in terms of profitability.\nPeace between England and the Netherlands in 1688 meant the two countries entered the Nine Years' War as allies, but the conflict\u2014waged in Europe and overseas between France, Spain and the Anglo-Dutch alliance\u2014left the English a stronger colonial power than the Dutch, who were forced to devote a larger proportion of their military budget to the costly land war in Europe. The death of Charles II of Spain in 1700 and his bequeathal of Spain and its colonial empire to Philip V of Spain, a grandson of the King of France, raised the prospect of the unification of France, Spain and their respective colonies, an unacceptable state of affairs for England and the other powers of Europe. In 1701, England, Portugal and the Netherlands sided with the Holy Roman Empire against Spain and France in the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted for thirteen years.\nColonies and territories of Scotland (1629\u20131707).\nColonisation attempts by the Kingdom of Scotland predates the establishment of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and the British Empire. During the 17th century, the Kingdom of Scotland made attempts to establish trading schemes in Ireland and Canada. Nova Scotia, today a province of Canada, was a short lived scheme in the Mi'kmaq people territory. Additionally, there was a high number of Scots in Ireland, particularly in the region of Ulster, who settled there as planters.\nNorth America.\nThe first documented Scottish settlement in the Americas was of Nova Scotia in 1629. On 29 September 1621, the charter for the foundation of a colony was granted by James VI of Scotland to Sir William Alexander. Between 1622 and 1628, Sir William launched four attempts to send colonists to Nova Scotia; all failed for various reasons. A successful settlement of Nova Scotia was finally achieved in 1629. The colony's charter, in law, made Nova Scotia (defined as all land between Newfoundland and New England; i.e., The Maritimes) a part of mainland Scotland; this was later used to get around the English navigation acts.\nAs a country, Scotland engaged in two ventures in an attempt to establish colonies within English colonies during the 1680s in Carolina and East New Jersey. The attempt to establish themselves in Carolina was largely in part due to Scottish Presbyterians fleeing from the threat of religious persecution in Scotland, and were assisted in their efforts by Scottish merchants who were aiming to develop transatlantic trade which was not subjected to the English Navigation Acts. The Act restricted Scottish trade with English colonies. Scottish settlement attempts in Carolina began in 1682, and was eventually defeated by the dissolution of the Scottish settlement of Stewartstoun, which was established in 1684, by the Spanish in 1686.\nSouth America.\nIn 1695, the Parliament of Scotland granted a charter to the Company of Scotland, which established a settlement in 1698 on the Isthmus of Panama. Besieged by neighbouring Spanish colonists of New Granada, and affected by malaria, the colony was abandoned two years later. The Darien scheme was a financial disaster for Scotland: a quarter of Scottish capital was lost in the enterprise. The episode had major political consequences, helping to persuade the government of the Kingdom of Scotland of the merits of turning the personal union with England into a political and economic one under the Kingdom of Great Britain established by the Acts of Union 1707.\nBritish Empire (1707\u20131783).\nThe 18th century saw the newly united Great Britain rise to be the world's dominant colonial power, with France becoming its main rival on the imperial stage. Great Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and the Holy Roman Empire continued the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted until 1714 and was concluded by the Treaty of Utrecht. Philip V of Spain renounced his and his descendants' claim to the French throne, and Spain lost its empire in Europe. The British Empire was territorially enlarged: from France, Britain gained Newfoundland and Acadia, and from Spain, Gibraltar and Menorca. Gibraltar became a critical naval base and allowed Britain to control the Atlantic entry and exit point to the Mediterranean. Spain ceded the rights to the lucrative \"asiento\" (permission to sell African slaves in Spanish America) to Britain. With the outbreak of the Anglo-Spanish War of Jenkins' Ear in 1739, Spanish privateers attacked British merchant shipping along the Triangle Trade routes. In 1746, the Spanish and British began peace talks, with the King of Spain agreeing to stop all attacks on British shipping; however, in the 1750 Treaty of Madrid Britain lost its slave-trading rights in Latin America.\nIn the East Indies, British and Dutch merchants continued to compete in spices and textiles. With textiles becoming the larger trade, by 1720, in terms of sales, the British company had overtaken the Dutch. During the middle decades of the 18th century, there were several outbreaks of military conflict on the Indian subcontinent, as the English East India Company and its French counterpart, struggled alongside local rulers to fill the vacuum that had been left by the decline of the Mughal Empire. The Battle of Plassey in 1757, in which the British defeated the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies, left the British East India Company in control of Bengal and as a major military and political power in India. France was left control of its enclaves but with military restrictions and an obligation to support British client states, ending French hopes of controlling India. In the following decades the British East India Company gradually increased the size of the territories under its control, either ruling directly or via local rulers under the threat of force from the Presidency Armies, the vast majority of which was composed of Indian sepoys, led by British officers. The British and French struggles in India became but one theatre of the global Seven Years' War (1756\u20131763) involving France, Britain, and the other major European powers.\nThe signing of the Treaty of Paris of 1763 had important consequences for the future of the British Empire. In North America, France's future as a colonial power effectively ended with the recognition of British claims to Rupert's Land, and the ceding of New France to Britain (leaving a sizeable French-speaking population under British control) and Louisiana to Spain. Spain ceded Florida to Britain. Along with its victory over France in India, the Seven Years' War therefore left Britain as the world's most powerful maritime power.\nLoss of the Thirteen American Colonies.\nDuring the 1760s and early 1770s, relations between the Thirteen Colonies and Britain became increasingly strained, primarily because of resentment of the British Parliament's attempts to govern and tax American colonists without their consent. This was summarised at the time by the colonists' slogan \"No taxation without representation\", a perceived violation of the guaranteed Rights of Englishmen. The American Revolution began with a rejection of Parliamentary authority and moves towards self-government. In response, Britain sent troops to reimpose direct rule, leading to the outbreak of war in 1775. The following year, in 1776, the Second Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence proclaiming the colonies' sovereignty from the British Empire as the new United States of America. The entry of French and Spanish forces into the war tipped the military balance in the Americans' favour and after a decisive defeat at Yorktown in 1781, Britain began negotiating peace terms. American independence was acknowledged at the Peace of Paris in 1783.\nThe loss of such a large portion of British America, at the time Britain's most populous overseas possession, is seen by some historians as the event defining the transition between the first and second empires, in which Britain shifted its attention away from the Americas to Asia, the Pacific and later Africa. Adam Smith's \"Wealth of Nations\", published in 1776, had argued that colonies were redundant, and that free trade should replace the old mercantilist policies that had characterised the first period of colonial expansion, dating back to the protectionism of Spain and Portugal. The growth of trade between the newly independent United States and Britain after 1783 seemed to confirm Smith's view that political control was not necessary for economic success.\nThe war to the south influenced British policy in Canada, where between 40,000 and 100,000 defeated Loyalists had migrated from the new United States following independence. The 14,000 Loyalists who went to the Saint John and Saint Croix river valleys, then part of Nova Scotia, felt too far removed from the provincial government in Halifax, so London split off New Brunswick as a separate colony in 1784. The Constitutional Act 1791 created the provinces of Upper Canada (mainly English speaking) and Lower Canada (mainly French-speaking) to defuse tensions between the French and British communities, and implemented governmental systems similar to those employed in Britain, with the intention of asserting imperial authority and not allowing the sort of popular control of government that was perceived to have led to the American Revolution.\nTensions between Britain and the United States escalated again during the Napoleonic Wars, as Britain tried to cut off American trade with France and boarded American ships to impress men into the Royal Navy. The United States Congress declared war, the War of 1812, and invaded Canadian territory. In response, Britain invaded the US, but the pre-war boundaries were reaffirmed by the 1814 Treaty of Ghent, ensuring Canada's future would be separate from that of the United States.\nBritish Empire (1783\u20131815).\nExploration of the Pacific.\nSince 1718, transportation to the American colonies had been a penalty for various offences in Britain, with approximately one thousand convicts transported per year. Forced to find an alternative location after the loss of the Thirteen Colonies in 1783, the British government looked for an alternative, eventually turning to Australia. On his first of three voyages commissioned by the government, James Cook reached New Zealand in October 1769. He was the first European to circumnavigate and map the country. From the late 18th century, the country was regularly visited by explorers and other sailors, missionaries, traders and adventurers but no attempt was made to settle the country or establish possession. The coast of Australia had been discovered for Europeans by the Dutch in 1606, but there was no attempt to colonise it. In 1770, after leaving New Zealand, James Cook charted the eastern coast, claimed the continent for Britain, and named it New South Wales. In 1778, Joseph Banks, Cook's botanist on the voyage, presented evidence to the government on the suitability of Botany Bay for the establishment of a penal settlement, and in 1787 the first shipment of convicts set sail, arriving in 1788. Unusually, Australia was claimed through proclamation. Indigenous Australians were considered too uncivilised to require treaties, and colonisation brought disease and violence that together with the deliberate dispossession of land and culture were devastating to these peoples. Britain continued to transport convicts to New South Wales until 1840, to Tasmania until 1853 and to Western Australia until 1868. The Australian colonies became profitable exporters of wool and gold, mainly because of the Victorian gold rush, making its capital Melbourne for a time the richest city in the world.\nThe British also expanded their mercantile interests in the North Pacific. Spain and Britain had become rivals in the area, culminating in the Nootka Crisis in 1789. Both sides mobilised for war, but when France refused to support Spain it was forced to back down, leading to the Nootka Convention. The outcome was a humiliation for Spain, which practically renounced all sovereignty on the North Pacific coast. This opened the way to British expansion in the area, and a number of expeditions took place; firstly a naval expedition led by George Vancouver which explored the inlets around the Pacific North West, particularly around Vancouver Island. On land, expeditions sought to discover a river route to the Pacific for the extension of the North American fur trade. Alexander Mackenzie of the North West Company led the first, starting out in 1792, and a year later he became the first European to reach the Pacific overland north of the Rio Grande, reaching the ocean near present-day Bella Coola. This preceded the Lewis and Clark Expedition by twelve years. Shortly thereafter, Mackenzie's companion, John Finlay, founded the first permanent European settlement in British Columbia, Fort St. John. The North West Company sought further exploration and backed expeditions by David Thompson, starting in 1797, and later by Simon Fraser. These pushed into the wilderness territories of the Rocky Mountains and Interior Plateau to the Strait of Georgia on the Pacific Coast, expanding British North America westward.\nContinued conquest in India.\nThe East India Company fought a series of Anglo-Mysore wars in Southern India with the Sultanate of Mysore under Hyder Ali and then Tipu Sultan. Defeats in the First Anglo-Mysore war and stalemate in the Second were followed by victories in the Third and the Fourth. Following Tipu Sultan's death in the fourth war in the Siege of Seringapatam (1799), the kingdom became a protectorate of the company.\nThe East India Company fought three Anglo-Maratha Wars with the Maratha Confederacy. The First Anglo-Maratha War ended in 1782 with a restoration of the pre-war \"status quo\". The Second and Third Anglo-Maratha wars resulted in British victories. After the surrender of Peshwa Bajirao II on 1818, the East India Company acquired control of a large majority of the Indian subcontinent.\nWars with France.\nBritain was challenged again by France under Napoleon, in a struggle that, unlike previous wars, represented a contest of ideologies between the two nations. It was not only Britain's position on the world stage that was at risk: Napoleon threatened to invade Britain itself, just as his armies had overrun many countries of continental Europe.\nThe Napoleonic Wars were therefore ones in which Britain invested large amounts of capital and resources to win. French ports were blockaded by the Royal Navy, which won a decisive victory over a French Imperial Navy-Spanish Navy fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Overseas colonies were attacked and occupied, including those of the Netherlands, which was annexed by Napoleon in 1810. France was finally defeated by a coalition of European armies in 1815. Britain was again the beneficiary of peace treaties: France ceded the Ionian Islands, Malta (which it had occupied in 1798), Mauritius, St Lucia, the Seychelles, and Tobago; Spain ceded Trinidad; the Netherlands ceded Guiana, Ceylon and the Cape Colony, while the Danish ceded Heligoland. Britain returned Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, and R\u00e9union to France; Menorca to Spain; Danish West Indies to Denmark and Java and Suriname to the Netherlands.\nAbolition of slavery.\nWith the advent of the Industrial Revolution, goods produced by slavery became less important to the British economy. Added to this was the cost of suppressing regular slave rebellions. With support from the British abolitionist movement, Parliament enacted the Slave Trade Act in 1807, which abolished the slave trade in the empire. In 1808, Sierra Leone Colony was designated an official British colony for freed slaves. Parliamentary reform in 1832 saw the influence of the West India Committee decline. The Slavery Abolition Act, passed the following year, abolished slavery in the British Empire on 1 August 1834, finally bringing the empire into line with the law in the UK (with the exception of the territories administered by the East India Company and Ceylon, where slavery was ended in 1844). Under the Act, slaves were granted full emancipation after a period of four to six years of \"apprenticeship\". Facing further opposition from abolitionists, the apprenticeship system was abolished in 1838. The British government compensated slave-owners.\nBritain's imperial century (1815\u20131914).\nBetween 1815 and 1914, a period referred to as Britain's \"imperial century\" by some historians, around of territory and roughly 400\u00a0million people were added to the British Empire. Victory over Napoleon left Britain without any serious international rival, other than Russia in Central Asia. Unchallenged at sea, Britain adopted the role of global policeman, a state of affairs later known as the \"Pax Britannica\", and a foreign policy of \"splendid isolation\". Alongside the formal control it exerted over its own colonies, Britain's dominant position in world trade meant that it effectively controlled the economies of many countries, such as China, Argentina and Siam, which has been described by some historians as an \"Informal Empire\".\nBritish imperial strength was underpinned by the steamship and the telegraph, new technologies invented in the second half of the 19th century, allowing it to control and defend the empire. By 1902, the British Empire was linked together by a network of telegraph cables, called the All Red Line.\nEast India Company rule and the British Raj in India.\nThe East India Company drove the expansion of the British Empire in Asia. The company's army had first joined forces with the Royal Navy during the Seven Years' War, and the two continued to co-operate in arenas outside India: the eviction of the French from Egypt (1799), the capture of Java from the Netherlands (1811), the acquisition of Penang Island (1786), Singapore (1819) and Malacca (1824), and the defeat of Burma (1826).\nFrom its base in India, the company had been engaged in an increasingly profitable opium export trade to Qing China since the 1730s. This trade, illegal since it was outlawed by China in 1729, helped reverse the trade imbalances resulting from the British imports of tea, which saw large outflows of silver from Britain to China. In 1839, the confiscation by the Chinese authorities at Canton of 20,000 chests of opium led Britain to attack China in the First Opium War, and resulted in the seizure by Britain of Hong Kong Island, at that time a minor settlement, and other treaty ports including Shanghai.\nDuring the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the British Crown began to assume an increasingly large role in the affairs of the company. A series of acts of Parliament were passed, including the Regulating Act 1773, East India Company Act 1784 and the Charter Act 1813 which regulated the company's affairs and established the sovereignty of the Crown over the territories that it had acquired. The company's eventual end was precipitated by the Indian Rebellion in 1857, a conflict that had begun with the mutiny of sepoys, Indian troops under British officers and discipline. The rebellion took six months to suppress, with heavy loss of life on both sides. The following year the British government dissolved the company and assumed direct control over India through the Government of India Act 1858, establishing the British Raj, where an appointed governor-general administered India and Queen Victoria was crowned the Empress of India. India became the empire's most valuable possession, \"the Jewel in the Crown\", and was the most important source of Britain's strength.\nA series of serious crop failures in the late 19th century led to widespread famines on the subcontinent in which it is estimated that over 15\u00a0million people died. The East India Company had failed to implement any coordinated policy to deal with the famines during its period of rule. Later, under direct British rule, commissions were set up after each famine to investigate the causes and implement new policies, which took until the early 1900s to have an effect.\nNew Zealand.\nOn each of his three voyages to the Pacific between 1769 and 1777, James Cook visited New Zealand. He was followed by an assortment of Europeans and Americans which including whalers, sealers, escaped convicts from New South Wales, missionaries and adventurers. Initially, contact with the indigenous M\u0101ori people was limited to the trading of goods, although interaction increased during the early decades of the 19th century with many trading and missionary stations being set up, especially in the north. The first of several Church of England missionaries arrived in 1814 and as well as their missionary role, they soon become the only form of European authority in a land that was not subject to British jurisdiction: the closest authority being the New South Wales governor in Sydney. The sale of weapons to M\u0101ori resulted from 1818 on in the intertribal warfare of the Musket Wars, with devastating consequences for the M\u0101ori population.\nThe UK government finally decided to act, dispatching Captain William Hobson with instructions to take formal possession after obtaining native consent. There was no central M\u0101ori authority able to represent all New Zealand so, on 6 February 1840, Hobson and many M\u0101ori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi in the Bay of Islands; most other chiefs signing in stages over the following months. William Hobson declared British sovereignty over all New Zealand on 21 May 1840, over the North Island by cession and over the South Island by discovery (the island was sparsely populated and deemed terra nullius). Hobson became Lieutenant-Governor, subject to Governor Sir George Gipps in Sydney, with British possession of New Zealand initially administered from Australia as a dependency of the New South Wales colony. From 16 June 1840 New South Wales laws applied in New Zealand. This transitional arrangement ended with the Charter for Erecting the Colony of New Zealand on 16 November 1840. The Charter stated that New Zealand would be established as a separate Crown colony on 3 May 1841 with Hobson as its governor.\nRivalry with Russia.\nDuring the 19th century, Britain and the Russian Empire vied to fill the power vacuums that had been left by the declining Ottoman Empire, Qajar dynasty and Qing dynasty. This rivalry in Central Asia came to be known as the \"Great Game\". As far as Britain was concerned, defeats inflicted by Russia on Persia and Turkey demonstrated its imperial ambitions and capabilities and stoked fears in Britain of an overland invasion of India. In 1839, Britain moved to pre-empt this by invading Afghanistan, but the First Anglo-Afghan War was a disaster for Britain.\nWhen Russia invaded the Ottoman Balkans in 1853, fears of Russian dominance in the Mediterranean and the Middle East led Britain and France to enter the war in support of the Ottoman Empire and invade the Crimean Peninsula to destroy Russian naval capabilities. The ensuing Crimean War (1854\u20131856), which involved new techniques of modern warfare, was the only global war fought between Britain and another imperial power during the \"Pax Britannica\" and was a resounding defeat for Russia. The situation remained unresolved in Central Asia for two more decades, with Britain annexing Baluchistan in 1876 and Russia annexing Kirghizia, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. For a while, it appeared that another war would be inevitable, but the two countries reached an agreement on their respective spheres of influence in the region in 1878 and on all outstanding matters in 1907 with the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente. The destruction of the Imperial Russian Navy by the Imperial Japanese Navy at the Battle of Tsushima during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904\u20131905 limited its threat to the British.\nCape to Cairo.\nThe Dutch East India Company had founded the Dutch Cape Colony on the southern tip of Africa in 1652 as a way station for its ships travelling to and from its colonies in the East Indies. Britain formally acquired the colony, and its large Afrikaner (or Boer) population in 1806, having occupied it in 1795 to prevent its falling into French hands during the Flanders Campaign. British immigration to the Cape Colony began to rise after 1820, and pushed thousands of Boers, resentful of British rule, northwards to found their own\u2014mostly short-lived\u2014independent republics, during the Great Trek of the late 1830s and early 1840s. In the process the Voortrekkers clashed repeatedly with the British, who had their own agenda with regard to colonial expansion in South Africa and to the various native African polities, including those of the Sotho people and the Zulu Kingdom. Eventually, the Boers established two republics that had a longer lifespan: the South African Republic or Transvaal Republic (1852\u20131877; 1881\u20131902) and the Orange Free State (1854\u20131902). In 1902 Britain occupied both republics, concluding a treaty with the two Boer Republics following the Second Boer War (1899\u20131902).\nIn 1869 the Suez Canal opened under Napoleon III, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Indian Ocean. Initially the Canal was opposed by the British; but once opened, its strategic value was quickly recognised and became the \"jugular vein of the Empire\". In 1875, the Conservative government of Benjamin Disraeli bought the indebted Egyptian ruler Isma'il Pasha's 44 per cent shareholding in the Suez Canal for \u00a34\u00a0million (equivalent to \u00a3 in 2023). Although this did not grant outright control of the strategic waterway, it did give Britain leverage. Joint Anglo-French financial control over Egypt ended in outright British occupation in 1882. Although Britain controlled the Khedivate of Egypt into the 20th century, it was officially a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire and not part of the British Empire. The French were still majority shareholders and attempted to weaken the British position, but a compromise was reached with the 1888 Convention of Constantinople, which made the Canal officially neutral territory.\nWith competitive French, Belgian and Portuguese activity in the lower Congo River region undermining orderly colonisation of tropical Africa, the Berlin Conference of 1884\u201385 was held to regulate the competition between the European powers in what was called the \"Scramble for Africa\" by defining \"effective occupation\" as the criterion for international recognition of territorial claims. The scramble continued into the 1890s, and caused Britain to reconsider its decision in 1885 to withdraw from Sudan. A joint force of British and Egyptian troops defeated the Mahdist Army in 1896 and rebuffed an attempted French invasion at Fashoda in 1898. Sudan was nominally made an Anglo-Egyptian condominium, but a British colony in reality.\nBritish gains in Southern and East Africa prompted Cecil Rhodes, pioneer of British expansion in Southern Africa, to urge a \"Cape to Cairo\" railway linking the strategically important Suez Canal to the mineral-rich south of the continent. During the 1880s and 1890s, Rhodes, with his privately owned British South Africa Company, occupied and annexed territories named after him, Rhodesia.\nChanging status of the white colonies.\nThe path to independence for the white colonies of the British Empire began with the 1839 Durham Report, which proposed unification and self-government for Upper and Lower Canada, as a solution to political unrest which had erupted in armed rebellions in 1837. This began with the passing of the Act of Union in 1840, which created the Province of Canada. Responsible government was first granted to Nova Scotia in 1848, and was soon extended to the other British North American colonies. With the passage of the British North America Act, 1867 by the British Parliament, the Province of Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were formed into Canada, a confederation enjoying full self-government with the exception of international relations. Australia and New Zealand achieved similar levels of self-government after 1900, with the Australian colonies federating in 1901. The term \"dominion status\" was officially introduced at the 1907 Imperial Conference. As the dominions gained greater autonomy, they would come to be recognized as distinct realms of the empire with unique customs and symbols of their own. Imperial identity, through imagery such as patriotic artworks and banners, began developing into a form that attempted to be more inclusive by showcasing the empire as a family of newly birthed nations with common roots.\nThe last decades of the 19th century saw concerted political campaigns for Irish home rule. Ireland had been united with Britain into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland with the Act of Union 1800 after the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and had suffered a severe famine between 1845 and 1852. Home rule was supported by the British prime minister, William Gladstone, who hoped that Ireland might follow in Canada's footsteps as a Dominion within the empire, but his 1886 Home Rule bill was defeated in Parliament. Although the bill, if passed, would have granted Ireland less autonomy within the UK than the Canadian provinces had within their own federation, many MPs feared that a partially independent Ireland might pose a security threat to Great Britain or mark the beginning of the break-up of the empire. A second Home Rule bill was defeated for similar reasons. A third bill was passed by Parliament in 1914, but not implemented because of the outbreak of the First World War leading to the 1916 Easter Rising.\nWorld wars (1914\u20131945).\nBy the turn of the 20th century, fears had begun to grow in Britain that it would no longer be able to defend the metropole and the entirety of the empire while at the same time maintaining the policy of \"splendid isolation\". Germany was rapidly rising as a military and industrial power and was now seen as the most likely opponent in any future war. Recognising that it was overstretched in the Pacific and threatened at home by the Imperial German Navy, Britain formed an alliance with Japan in 1902 and with its old enemies France and Russia in 1904 and 1907, respectively.\nFirst World War.\nBritain's fears of war with Germany were realised in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War. Britain quickly invaded and occupied most of Germany's overseas colonies in Africa. In the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand occupied German New Guinea and German Samoa respectively. Plans for a post-war division of the Ottoman Empire, which had joined the war on Germany's side, were secretly drawn up by Britain and France under the 1916 Sykes\u2013Picot Agreement. This agreement was not divulged to the Sharif of Mecca, who the British had been encouraging to launch an Arab revolt against their Ottoman rulers, giving the impression that Britain was supporting the creation of an independent Arab state.\nThe British declaration of war on Germany and its allies committed the colonies and Dominions, which provided invaluable military, financial and material support. Over 2.5\u00a0million men served in the armies of the Dominions, as well as many thousands of volunteers from the Crown colonies. The contributions of Australian and New Zealand troops during the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign against the Ottoman Empire had a great impact on the national consciousness at home and marked a watershed in the transition of Australia and New Zealand from colonies to nations in their own right. The countries continue to commemorate this occasion on Anzac Day. Canadians viewed the Battle of Vimy Ridge in a similar light. The important contribution of the Dominions to the war effort was recognised in 1917 by British prime minister David Lloyd George when he invited each of the Dominion prime ministers to join an Imperial War Cabinet to co-ordinate imperial policy.\nUnder the terms of the concluding Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919, the empire reached its greatest extent with the addition of and 13\u00a0million new subjects. The colonies of Germany and the Ottoman Empire were distributed to the Allied powers as League of Nations mandates. Britain gained control of Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, parts of Cameroon and Togoland, and Tanganyika. The Dominions themselves acquired mandates of their own: the Union of South Africa gained South West Africa (modern-day Namibia), Australia gained New Guinea, and New Zealand Western Samoa. Nauru was made a combined mandate of Britain and the two Pacific Dominions.\nInter-war period.\nThe changing world order that the war had brought about, in particular the growth of the United States and Japan as naval powers, and the rise of independence movements in India and Ireland, caused a major reassessment of British imperial policy. Forced to choose between alignment with the United States or Japan, Britain opted not to renew its Anglo-Japanese Alliance and instead signed the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, where Britain accepted naval parity with the United States. This decision was the source of much debate in Britain during the 1930s as militaristic governments took hold in Germany and Japan helped in part by the Great Depression, for it was feared that the empire could not survive a simultaneous attack by both nations. The issue of the empire's security was a serious concern in Britain, as it was vital to the British economy.\nIn 1919, the frustrations caused by delays to Irish home rule led the MPs of Sinn F\u00e9in, a pro-independence party that had won a majority of the Irish seats in the 1918 British general election, to establish an independent parliament in Dublin, at which Irish independence was declared. The Irish Republican Army simultaneously began a guerrilla war against the British administration. The Irish War of Independence ended in 1921 with a stalemate and the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, creating the Irish Free State, a Dominion within the British Empire, with effective internal independence but still constitutionally linked with the British Crown. Northern Ireland, consisting of six of the 32 Irish counties which had been established as a devolved region under the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, immediately exercised its option under the treaty to retain its existing status within the United Kingdom.\nA similar struggle began in India when the Government of India Act 1919 failed to satisfy the demand for independence. Concerns over communist and foreign plots following the Ghadar conspiracy ensured that war-time strictures were renewed by the Rowlatt Acts. This led to tension, particularly in the Punjab region, where repressive measures culminated in the Amritsar Massacre. In Britain, public opinion was divided over the morality of the massacre, between those who saw it as having saved India from anarchy, and those who viewed it with revulsion. The non-cooperation movement was called off in March 1922 following the Chauri Chaura incident, and discontent continued to simmer for the next 25 years.\nIn 1922, Egypt, which had been declared a British protectorate at the outbreak of the First World War, was granted formal independence, though it continued to be a British client state until 1954. British troops remained stationed in Egypt until the signing of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty in 1936, under which it was agreed that the troops would withdraw but continue to occupy and defend the Suez Canal zone. In return, Egypt was assisted in joining the League of Nations. Iraq, a British mandate since 1920, gained membership of the League in its own right after achieving independence from Britain in 1932. In Palestine, Britain was presented with the problem of mediating between the Arabs and increasing numbers of Jews. The Balfour Declaration, which had been incorporated into the terms of the mandate, stated that a national home for the Jewish people would be established in Palestine, and Jewish immigration allowed up to a limit that would be determined by the mandatory power. This led to increasing conflict with the Arab population, who openly revolted in 1936. As the threat of war with Germany increased during the 1930s, Britain judged the support of Arabs as more important than the establishment of a Jewish homeland, and shifted to a pro-Arab stance, limiting Jewish immigration and in turn triggering a Jewish insurgency.\nThe right of the Dominions to set their own foreign policy, independent of Britain, was recognised at the 1923 Imperial Conference. Britain's request for military assistance from the Dominions at the outbreak of the Chanak Crisis the previous year had been turned down by Canada and South Africa, and Canada had refused to be bound by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. After pressure from the Irish Free State and South Africa, the 1926 Imperial Conference issued the Balfour Declaration of 1926, declaring Britain and the Dominions to be \"autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another\" within a \"British Commonwealth of Nations\". This declaration was given legal substance under the 1931 Statute of Westminster. The parliaments of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland were now independent of British legislative control, they could nullify British laws and Britain could no longer pass laws for them without their consent. Newfoundland reverted to colonial status in 1933, suffering from financial difficulties during the Great Depression. In 1937 the Irish Free State introduced a republican constitution renaming itself \"Ireland\".\nSecond World War.\nBritain's declaration of war against Nazi Germany in September 1939 included the Crown colonies and India but did not automatically commit the Dominions of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Newfoundland and South Africa. All soon declared war on Germany. While Britain continued to regard Ireland as still within the British Commonwealth, Ireland chose to remain legally neutral throughout the war.\nAfter the Fall of France in June 1940, Britain and the empire stood alone against Germany, until the German invasion of Greece on 7 April 1941. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill successfully lobbied President Franklin D. Roosevelt for military aid from the United States, but Roosevelt was not yet ready to ask Congress to commit the country to war. In August 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt met and signed the Atlantic Charter, which included the statement that \"the rights of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they live\" should be respected. This wording was ambiguous as to whether it referred to European countries invaded by Germany and Italy, or the peoples colonised by European nations, and would later be interpreted differently by the British, Americans, and nationalist movements. Nevertheless, Churchill rejected its universal applicability when it came to the self-determination of subject nations including the British Indian Empire. Churchill further added that he did not become Prime Minister to oversee the liquidation of the empire.\nFor Churchill, the entry of the United States into the war was the \"greatest joy\". He felt that Britain was now assured of victory, but failed to recognise that the \"many disasters, immeasurable costs and tribulations [which he knew] lay ahead\" in December 1941 would have permanent consequences for the future of the empire. The manner in which British forces were rapidly defeated in the Far East irreversibly harmed Britain's standing and prestige as an imperial power, including, particularly, the Fall of Singapore, which had previously been hailed as an impregnable fortress and the eastern equivalent of Gibraltar. The realisation that Britain could not defend its entire empire pushed Australia and New Zealand, which now appeared threatened by Japanese forces, into closer ties with the United States and, ultimately, the 1951 ANZUS Pact. The war weakened the empire in other ways: undermining Britain's control of politics in India, inflicting long-term economic damage, and irrevocably changing geopolitics by pushing the Soviet Union and the United States to the centre of the global stage.\nDecolonisation and decline (1945\u20131997).\nThough Britain and the empire emerged victorious from the Second World War, the effects of the conflict were profound, both at home and abroad. Much of Europe, a continent that had dominated the world for several centuries, was in ruins, and host to the armies of the United States and the Soviet Union, who now held the balance of global power. Britain was left essentially bankrupt, with insolvency only averted in 1946 after the negotiation of a US$3.75\u00a0billion loan from the United States, the last instalment of which was repaid in 2006. At the same time, anti-colonial movements were on the rise in the colonies of European nations. The situation was complicated further by the increasing Cold War rivalry of the United States and the Soviet Union. In principle, both nations were opposed to European colonialism. In practice, American anti-communism prevailed over anti-imperialism, and therefore the United States supported the continued existence of the British Empire to keep Communist expansion in check. At first, British politicians believed it would be possible to maintain Britain's role as a world power at the head of a re-imagined Commonwealth, but by 1960 they were forced to recognise that there was an irresistible \"wind of change\" blowing. Their priorities changed to maintaining an extensive zone of British influence and ensuring that stable, non-Communist governments were established in former colonies. In this context, while other European powers such as France and Portugal waged costly and unsuccessful wars to keep their empires intact, Britain generally adopted a policy of peaceful disengagement from its colonies, although violence occurred in Malaya, Kenya and Palestine. Between 1945 and 1965, the number of people under British rule outside the UK itself fell from 700 million to 5 million, 3 million of whom were in Hong Kong.\nInitial disengagement.\nThe pro-decolonisation Labour government, elected at the 1945 general election and led by Clement Attlee, moved quickly to tackle the most pressing issue facing the empire: Indian independence. India's major political party\u2014the Indian National Congress (led by Mahatma Gandhi) \u2014 had been campaigning for independence for decades, but disagreed with Muslim League (led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah) as to how it should be implemented. Congress favoured a unified secular Indian state, whereas the League, fearing domination by the Hindu majority, desired a separate Islamic state for Muslim-majority regions. Increasing civil unrest led Attlee to promise independence no later than 30 June 1948. When the urgency of the situation and risk of civil war became apparent, the newly appointed (and last) Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, hastily brought forward the date to 15 August 1947. The borders drawn by the British to broadly partition India into Hindu and Muslim areas left tens of millions as minorities in the newly independent states of India and Pakistan. The princely states were provided with a choice to either remain independent or join India or Pakistan. Millions of Muslims crossed from India to Pakistan and Hindus vice versa, and violence between the two communities cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Burma, which had been administered as part of British India until 1937 gained independence the following year in 1948 along with Sri Lanka (formerly known as British Ceylon). India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka became members of the Commonwealth, while Burma chose not to join. That same year, the British Nationality Act was enacted, in hopes of strengthening and unifying the Commonwealth: it provided British citizenship and right of entry to all those living within its jurisdiction.\nThe British Mandate in Palestine, where an Arab majority lived alongside a Jewish minority, presented the British with a similar problem to that of India. The matter was complicated by large numbers of Jewish refugees seeking to be admitted to Palestine following the Holocaust, while Arabs were opposed to the creation of a Jewish state. Frustrated by the intractability of the problem, attacks by Jewish paramilitary organisations and the increasing cost of maintaining its military presence, Britain announced in 1947 that it would withdraw in 1948 and leave the matter to the United Nations to solve. The UN General Assembly subsequently voted for a plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. It was immediately followed by the outbreak of a civil war between the Arabs and Jews of Palestine, and British forces withdrew amid the fighting. The British Mandate for Palestine officially terminated at midnight on 15 May 1948 as the State of Israel declared independence and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War broke out, during which the territory of the former Mandate was partitioned between Israel and the surrounding Arab states. Amid the fighting, British forces continued to withdraw from Israel, with the last British troops departing from Haifa on 30 June 1948.\nFollowing the surrender of Japan in the Second World War, anti-Japanese resistance movements in Malaya turned their attention towards the British, who had moved to quickly retake control of the colony, valuing it as a source of rubber and tin. The fact that the guerrillas were primarily Malaysian Chinese Communists meant that the British attempt to quell the uprising was supported by the Muslim Malay majority, on the understanding that once the insurgency had been quelled, independence would be granted. The Malayan Emergency, as it was called, began in 1948 and lasted until 1960, but by 1957, Britain felt confident enough to grant independence to the Federation of Malaya within the Commonwealth. In 1963, the 11 states of the federation together with Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo joined to form Malaysia, but in 1965 Chinese-majority Singapore was expelled from the union following tensions between the Malay and Chinese populations and became an independent city-state. Brunei, which had been a British protectorate since 1888, declined to join the union.\nSuez and its aftermath.\nIn the 1951 general election, the Conservative Party returned to power in Britain under the leadership of Winston Churchill. Churchill and the Conservatives believed that Britain's position as a world power relied on the continued existence of the empire, with the base at the Suez Canal allowing Britain to maintain its pre-eminent position in the Middle East in spite of the loss of India. Churchill could not ignore Gamal Abdul Nasser's new revolutionary government of Egypt that had taken power in 1952, and the following year it was agreed that British troops would withdraw from the Suez Canal zone and that Sudan would be granted self-determination by 1955, with independence to follow Sudan was granted independence on 1 January 1956.\nIn July 1956, Nasser unilaterally nationalised the Suez Canal. The response of Anthony Eden, who had succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister, was to collude with France to engineer an Israeli attack on Egypt that would give Britain and France an excuse to intervene militarily and retake the canal. Eden infuriated US President Dwight D. Eisenhower by his lack of consultation, and Eisenhower refused to back the invasion. Another of Eisenhower's concerns was the possibility of a wider war with the Soviet Union after it threatened to intervene on the Egyptian side. Eisenhower applied financial leverage by threatening to sell US reserves of the British pound and thereby precipitate a collapse of the British currency. Though the invasion force was militarily successful in its objectives, UN intervention and US pressure forced Britain into a humiliating withdrawal of its forces, and Eden resigned.\nThe Suez Crisis very publicly exposed Britain's limitations to the world and confirmed Britain's decline on the world stage and its end as a first-rate power, demonstrating that henceforth it could no longer act without at least the acquiescence, if not the full support, of the United States. The events at Suez wounded British national pride, leading one Member of Parliament (MP) to describe it as \"Britain's Waterloo\" and another to suggest that the country had become an \"American satellite\". Margaret Thatcher later described the mindset she believed had befallen Britain's political leaders after Suez where they \"went from believing that Britain could do anything to an almost neurotic belief that Britain could do nothing\", from which Britain did not recover until the successful recapture of the Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982.\nWhile the Suez Crisis caused British power in the Middle East to weaken, it did not collapse. Britain again deployed its armed forces to the region, intervening in Oman (1957), Jordan (1958) and Kuwait (1961), though on these occasions with American approval, as the new Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's foreign policy was to remain firmly aligned with the United States. Although Britain granted Kuwait independence in 1961, it continued to maintain a military presence in the Middle East for another decade. On 16 January 1968, a few weeks after the devaluation of the pound, Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his Defence Secretary Denis Healey announced that British Armed Forces troops would be withdrawn from major military bases East of Suez, which included the ones in the Middle East, and primarily from Malaysia and Singapore by the end of 1971, instead of 1975 as earlier planned. By that time over 50,000 British military personnel were still stationed in the Far East, including 30,000 in Singapore. The British granted independence to the Maldives in 1965 but continued to station a garrison there until 1976, withdrew from Aden in 1967, and granted independence to Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates in 1971.\nWind of change.\nMacmillan gave a speech in Cape Town, South Africa in February 1960 where he spoke of \"the wind of change blowing through this continent\". Macmillan wished to avoid the same kind of colonial war that France was fighting in Algeria, and under his premiership decolonisation proceeded rapidly. To the three colonies that had been granted independence in the 1950s\u2014Sudan, the Gold Coast and Malaya\u2014were added nearly ten times that number during the 1960s. Owing to the rapid pace of decolonisation during this period, the cabinet post of Secretary of State for the Colonies was abolished in 1966, along with the Colonial Office, which merged with the Commonwealth Relations Office to form the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) in October 1968.\nBritain's remaining colonies in Africa, except for self-governing Southern Rhodesia, were all granted independence by 1968. British withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of Africa was not a peaceful process. From 1952 the Kenya Colony saw the eight-year long Mau Mau rebellion, in which tens of thousands of suspected rebels were interned by the colonial government in detention camps to suppress the rebellion and over 1000 convicts executed, with records systematically destroyed. Throughout the 1960s, the British government took a \"No independence until majority rule\" policy towards decolonising the empire, leading the white minority government of Southern Rhodesia to enact the 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain, resulting in a civil war that lasted until the British-mediated Lancaster House Agreement of 1979. The agreement saw the British Empire temporarily re-establish the Colony of Southern Rhodesia from 1979 to 1980 as a transitionary government to a majority rule Republic of Zimbabwe. This was the last British possession in Africa.\nIn Cyprus, a guerrilla war waged by the Greek Cypriot organisation EOKA against British rule, was ended in 1959 by the London and Z\u00fcrich Agreements, which resulted in Cyprus being granted independence in 1960. The UK retained the military bases of Akrotiri and Dhekelia as sovereign base areas. The Mediterranean colony of Malta was amicably granted independence from the UK in 1964 and became the country of Malta, though the idea had been raised in 1955 of integration with Britain.\nMost of the UK's Caribbean territories achieved independence after the departure in 1961 and 1962 of Jamaica and Trinidad from the West Indies Federation, established in 1958 in an attempt to unite the British Caribbean colonies under one government, but which collapsed following the loss of its two largest members. Jamaica attained independence in 1962, as did Trinidad and Tobago. Barbados achieved independence in 1966 and the remainder of the eastern Caribbean islands, including the Bahamas, in the 1970s and 1980s, but Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands opted to revert to British rule after they had already started on the path to independence. The British Virgin Islands, The Cayman Islands and Montserrat opted to retain ties with Britain, while Guyana achieved independence in 1966. Britain's last colony on the American mainland, British Honduras, became a self-governing colony in 1964 and was renamed Belize in 1973, achieving full independence in 1981. A dispute with Guatemala over claims to Belize was left unresolved.\nBritish Overseas Territories in the Pacific acquired independence in the 1970s beginning with Fiji in 1970 and ending with Vanuatu in 1980. Vanuatu's independence was delayed because of political conflict between English and French-speaking communities, as the islands had been jointly administered as a condominium with France. Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu became Commonwealth realms.\nEnd of empire.\nBy 1981, aside from a scattering of islands and outposts, the process of decolonisation that had begun after the Second World War was largely complete. In 1982, Britain's resolve in defending its remaining overseas territories was tested when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, acting on a long-standing claim that dated back to the Spanish Empire. Britain's successful military response to retake the Falkland Islands during the ensuing Falklands War contributed to reversing the downward trend in Britain's status as a world power.\nThe 1980s saw Canada, Australia, and New Zealand sever their final constitutional links with Britain. Although granted legislative independence by the Statute of Westminster 1931, vestigial constitutional links had remained in place. The British Parliament retained the power to amend key Canadian constitutional statutes, meaning that an act of the British Parliament was required to make certain changes to the Canadian Constitution. The British Parliament had the power to pass laws extending to Canada at Canadian request. Although no longer able to pass any laws that would apply to Australian Commonwealth law, the British Parliament retained the power to legislate for the individual Australian states. With regard to New Zealand, the British Parliament retained the power to pass legislation applying to New Zealand with the New Zealand Parliament's consent. In 1982, the last legal link between Canada and Britain was severed by the Canada Act 1982, which was passed by the British parliament, formally patriating the Canadian Constitution. The act ended the need for British involvement in changes to the Canadian constitution. Similarly, the Australia Act 1986 (effective 3 March 1986) severed the constitutional link between Britain and the Australian states, while New Zealand's Constitution Act 1986 (effective 1 January 1987) reformed the constitution of New Zealand to sever its constitutional link with Britain.\nOn 1 January 1984, Brunei, Britain's last remaining Asian protectorate, was granted full independence. Independence had been delayed due to the opposition of the Sultan, who had preferred British protection.\nIn September 1982 the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, travelled to Beijing to negotiate with the Chinese Communist government, on the future of Britain's last major and most populous overseas territory, Hong Kong. Under the terms of the 1842 Treaty of Nanking and 1860 Convention of Peking, Hong Kong Island and Kowloon Peninsula had been respectively ceded to Britain \"in perpetuity\", but the majority of the colony consisted of the New Territories, which had been acquired under a 99-year lease in 1898, due to expire in 1997. Thatcher, seeing parallels with the Falkland Islands, initially wished to hold Hong Kong and proposed British administration with Chinese sovereignty, though this was rejected by China. A deal was reached in 1984\u2014under the terms of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, Hong Kong would become a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China. The handover ceremony in 1997 marked for many, including King Charles III, then Prince of Wales, who was in attendance, \"the end of Empire\", though many British territories that are remnants of the empire still remain.\nLegacy.\nBritain retains sovereignty over 14 territories outside the British Isles. In 1983, the British Nationality Act 1981 renamed the existing Crown Colonies as \"British Dependent Territories\", and in 2002 they were renamed the British Overseas Territories. Most former British colonies and protectorates are members of the Commonwealth of Nations, a voluntary association of equal members, comprising a population of around 2.2\u00a0billion people. The United Kingdom and 14 other countries, all collectively known as the Commonwealth realms, voluntarily continue to share the same person\u2014 King Charles III\u2014as their respective head of state. These 15 nations are distinct and equal legal entities: the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.\nDuring the colonial era, emphasis was given to study of the classical Greco-Roman heritage and their experience with empire, aiming to parse how that heritage could be applied to improve the future of the colonies. American hegemony, which throughout its early rise had challenged British claims of being the \"New Rome\", became the successor to British dominance in the mid-20th century; the two countries' historical ties and wartime collaboration supported a peaceful handoff of power after World War II. As for the United Kingdom itself, British views of the former Empire are more positive than is the case with other post-imperial nations; discourse around the former Empire has continued to impact the nation's present-day understanding of itself, as seen in the debate leading up to its decision to leave the European Union in 2016.\nDecades, and in some cases centuries, of British rule and emigration have left their mark on the independent nations that rose from the British Empire. The empire established the use of the English language in regions around the world. Today it is the primary language of up to 460\u00a0million people and is spoken by about 1.5 billion as a first, second or foreign language. It has also significantly influenced other languages. Individual and team sports developed in Britain, particularly football, cricket, lawn tennis, and golf were exported. Some sports were also invented or standardised in the former colonies, such as badminton, polo, and snooker in India. British missionaries who travelled around the globe often in advance of soldiers and civil servants spread Protestantism (including Anglicanism) to all continents. The British Empire provided refuge for religiously persecuted continental Europeans for hundreds of years. British educational institutions also remain popular in the present day, in part due to the importance of the English language and similarity of British curriculums to those in the former colonies.\nPolitical boundaries drawn by the British did not always reflect homogeneous ethnicities or religions, contributing to conflicts in formerly colonised areas. The British Empire was responsible for large migrations of peoples (see also: Commonwealth diaspora). Millions left the British Isles, with the founding settler colonist populations of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand coming mainly from Britain and Ireland. Millions of people moved between British colonies, with large numbers of South Asian people emigrating to other parts of the empire, such as Malaysia and Fiji, and Overseas Chinese people to Malaysia, Singapore and the Caribbean; about half of all modern immigration to the Commonwealth nations continues to occur between them. The demographics of the United Kingdom changed after the Second World War owing to immigration to Britain from its former colonies.\nIn the 19th century, innovation in Britain led to revolutionary changes in manufacturing, the development of factory systems, and the growth of transportation by railway and steamship. Debate has also occurred as to what extent the Industrial Revolution, originating from the United Kingdom, was facilitated by or dependent on imperialism. British colonial architecture, such as in churches, railway stations and government buildings, can be seen in many cities that were once part of the British Empire; Western technologies and architecture had been globalised in part due to the Empire's military and administrative requirements. Integration of former colonies into the global economy was also a major legacy. The British choice of system of measurement, the imperial system, continues to be used in some countries in various ways. The convention of driving on the left-hand side of the road has been retained in much of the former empire.\nThe Westminster system of parliamentary democracy has served as the template for the governments of many former colonies, and English common law for legal systems. It has been observed that almost every former colony that emerged as an independent democratic state is a former British colony, though this correlation greatly declines in strength after 30 years of an ex-colony's independence. International commercial contracts are often based on English common law. The British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council still serves as the highest court of appeal for twelve former colonies.\nInterpretations of Empire.\nHistorians' approaches to understanding the British Empire are diverse and evolving. Two key sites of debate over recent decades have been the impact of post-colonial studies, which seek to critically re-evaluate the history of imperialism, and the continued relevance of historians Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, whose work greatly influenced imperial historiography during the 1950s and 1960s. In addition, differing assessments of the empire's legacy remain relevant to debates over recent history and politics, such as the Anglo-American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Britain's role and identity in the contemporary world.\nHistorians such as Caroline Elkins have argued against perceptions of the British Empire as a primarily liberalising and modernising enterprise, criticising its widespread use of violence and emergency laws to maintain power. Common criticisms of the empire include the use of detention camps in its colonies, massacres of indigenous peoples, and famine-response policies. Some scholars, including Amartya Sen, assert that British policies worsened the famines in India that killed millions during British rule. Conversely, historians such as Niall Ferguson say that the economic and institutional development the British Empire brought resulted in a net benefit to its colonies. Other historians treat its legacy as varied and ambiguous. Public attitudes towards the empire within 21st-century Britain have been broadly positive although sentiment towards the Commonwealth has been one of apathy and decline.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["165231", "5171132", "4721", "30997172"], "permutation_1": ["4721", "5171132", "165231", "30997172"], "permutation_2": ["4721", "165231", "5171132", "30997172"], "permutation_3": ["4721", "165231", "30997172", "5171132"]}
{"id": "4hop1__166346_9522_41885_856982", "docs_added": {"25845": "Rhine\nMajor river in Western Europe\nThe Rhine ( ) is one of the major European rivers. The river begins in the Swiss canton of Graub\u00fcnden in the southeastern Swiss Alps. It forms part of the Swiss-Liechtenstein border, then part of the Swiss-Austrian border. From Lake Constance downstream, it forms part of the Swiss-German border. After that the Rhine defines much of the Franco-German border. It then flows in a mostly northerly direction through the German Rhineland. Finally in Germany, the Rhine turns into a predominantly westerly direction and flows into the Netherlands where it eventually empties into the North Sea. It drains an area of 9,973\u00a0km2.\nIts name derives from the Gaulish \"R\u0113nos\". There are two German states named after the river, North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, in addition to several districts (e.g. Rhein-Sieg). The departments of Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin in Alsace (France) are also named after the river. Some adjacent towns are named after it, such as Rheinau, Stein am Rhein, Rheineck, Rheinfelden (CH) and Rheinfelden (D).\nThe International Commission for the Hydrology of the Rhine Basin (CHR) and EUWID contend that the river could experience a massive decrease in volume, or even dry up completely in case of drought, within the next 30 to 80 years, as a result of the climate crisis.\nThe Rhine is the second-longest river in Central and Western Europe (after the Danube), at about , with an average discharge of about .\nThe Rhine and the Danube comprised much of the Roman Empire's northern inland boundary, and the Rhine has been a vital navigable waterway bringing trade and goods deep inland since those days. The various castles and defenses built along it attest to its prominence as a waterway in the Holy Roman Empire. Among the largest and most important cities on the Rhine are Cologne, Rotterdam, D\u00fcsseldorf, Duisburg, Strasbourg, Arnhem, and Basel.\nName.\nThe variants of the name of the Rhine (Latin Rhenus; French Rhin, Italian Reno, Romansh Rain or Rein, Dutch Rijn, Alemannic Ry, Ripuarian Rhing) in modern languages are all derived from the Gaulish name ', which was adapted in Roman-era geography (1st century BC) as Latin ', and as Greek (\"\").\nThe spelling with \"Rh-\" in English \"Rhine\" as well as in German ' and French ' is due to the influence of Greek orthography, while the vocalization \"-i-\" is due to the Proto-Germanic adoption of the Gaulish name as *\"R\u012bnaz\", via Old Frankish giving Old English ', Old High German ', early Middle Dutch (c.\u20091200) ' (then also spelled ' or ').\nThe modern German diphthong ' (also used in Romansh) ' is a Central German development of the early modern period, with the Alemannic name ' keeping the older vocalism. In Alemannic, the deletion of the ending \"-n\" in pausa is a recent development; the form ' is largely preserved in Lucernese dialects. ' in Ripuarian is diphthongized, as is ' in Palatine. While Spanish has adopted the Germanic vocalism ', Italian, Occitan, and Portuguese have retained the Latin '.\nThe Gaulish name \"R\u0113nos\" (Proto-Celtic or pre-Celtic \"*Reinos\") belongs to a class of river names built from the PIE root \"*rei-\" \"to move, flow, run\", also found in other names such as the Reno in Italy.\nThe grammatical gender of the Celtic name (as well as of its Greek and Latin adaptation) is masculine, and the name remains masculine in German, Dutch, French, Spanish and Italian. The Old English river name was variously inflected as masculine or feminine; and its Old Icelandic adoption was inflected as feminine.\nGeography.\nThe length of the Rhine is conventionally measured in \"Rhine-kilometers\" (\"Rheinkilometer\"), a scale introduced in 1939 that runs from the 0\u00a0km datum at Old Rhine Bridge in the city of Konstanz, at the western end of Lake Constance, to the Hook of Holland at 1,036.20\u00a0km.\nThe river is significantly shortened from its natural course due to a number of canal projects completed in the 19th and 20th centuries. The \"total length of the Rhine\", to the inclusion of Lake Constance and the Alpine Rhine is more difficult to measure objectively; it was cited as by the Dutch Rijkswaterstaat in 2010.\nIts course is conventionally divided as follows:\nHeadwaters and sources.\nSources.\nThe Rhine carries its name without distinctive accessories only from the confluence of the Rein Anteriur/Vorderrhein and Rein Posteriur/Hinterrhein next to Reichenau in Tamins. Above this point is the extensive catchment area of the headwaters of the Rhine. This area belongs almost exclusively to the Swiss canton of Grisons (), ranging from Saint-Gotthard Massif in the west via one valley lying in the canton of Ticino and Sondrio (Lombardy, Italy) in the south to the Fl\u00fcela Pass in the east. The Rhine is one of four major rivers taking their source in the Gotthard region, along with the Ticino (drainage basin of the Po), Rh\u00f4ne and Reuss (Rhine basin). The Witenwasserenstock is the triple watershed between the Rhine, Rh\u00f4ne and Po.\nTraditionally, Lake Toma near the Oberalp Pass in the Gotthard region is seen as the source of the Anterior Rhine and the Rhine as a whole. The Posterior Rhine rises in the Rheinwald below the Rheinwaldhorn.\nAnterior Rhine and Posterior Rhine.\nThe source of the river is generally considered north of \"Lai da Tuma/Tomasee\" on \"Rein Anteriur/Vorderrhein\", although its southern tributary \"Rein da Medel\" is actually longer before its confluence with the Anterior Rhine near Disentis.\nThe Anterior Rhine (, ) springs from \"Lai da Tuma/Tomasee\", near the Oberalp Pass and passes the impressive \"Ruinaulta\" formed by the largest visible rock slide in the alps, the Flims Rockslide.\nThe Posterior Rhine (, ) starts from the Paradies Glacier, near the \"Rheinwaldhorn\". One of its tributaries, the \"Reno di Lei\", drains the \"Valle di Lei\" on politically Italian territory. After three main valleys separated by the two gorges, \"Roflaschlucht\" and \"Viamala\", it reaches Reichenau in Tamins.\nThe Anterior Rhine arises from numerous source streams in the upper Surselva and flows in an easterly direction. One source is \"Lai da Tuma\" () with the \"Rein da Tuma\", which is usually indicated as source of the Rhine, flowing through it.\nInto it flow tributaries from the south, some longer, some equal in length, such as the \"Rein da Medel\", the \"Rein da Maighels\", and the \"Rein da Curnera\". The Cadlimo Valley in the canton of Ticino is drained by the \"Reno di Medel\", which crosses the geomorphologic Alpine main ridge from the south. All streams in the source area are partially, sometimes completely, captured and sent to storage reservoirs for the local hydro-electric power plants.\nThe culminating point of the Anterior Rhine's drainage basin is the Piz Russein of the T\u00f6di massif of the Glarus Alps at above sea level. It starts with the creek \"Aua da Russein\" (lit.: \"Water of the Russein\").\nIn its lower course, the Anterior Rhine flows through a gorge named \"Ruinaulta\" (Flims Rockslide). The whole stretch of the Anterior Rhine to the Alpine Rhine confluence next to Reichenau in Tamins is accompanied by a long-distance hiking trail called \"Senda Sursilvana\".\nThe Posterior Rhine flows first east-northeast, then north. It flows through the three valleys named Rheinwald, Schams and Domleschg-Heinzenberg. The valleys are separated by the Rofla Gorge and Viamala Gorge. Its sources are located in the Adula Alps (Rheinwaldhorn, Rheinquellhorn, and G\u00fcferhorn).\nThe Avers Rhine joins from the south. One of its headwaters, the \"Reno di Lei\" (stowed in the Lago di Lei), is partially located in Italy.\nNear Sils the Posterior Rhine is joined by the Albula, from the east, from the Albula Pass region. The Albula draws its water mainly from the Landwasser with the Dischmabach as the largest source stream, but almost as much from the Gelgia, which comes down from the Julier Pass.\nNumerous larger and smaller tributary rivers bear the name of the \"Rhine\" or equivalent in various Romansh idioms, including \"Rein\" or \"Ragn\", including:\nAlpine Rhine.\nNext to Reichenau in Tamins the Anterior Rhine and the Posterior Rhine join and form the Alpine Rhine. The river makes a distinctive turn to the north near Chur. This section is nearly 86\u00a0km long, and descends from a height of 599 meters to 396 meters. It flows through a wide glacial Alpine valley known as the Rhine Valley (). Near Sargan a natural dam, only a few meters high, prevents it from flowing into the open Sztal valley and then through Lake Walen and Lake Zurich into the Aare. The Alpine Rhine begins in the westernmost part of the Swiss canton of Graub\u00fcnden, and later forms the border between Switzerland to the west and Liechtenstein and later Austria to the east.\nAs an effect of human work, it empties into Lake Constance on Austrian territory and not on the border that follows its old natural river bed called \"Alter Rhein\" (lit.\u2009'Old Rhine').\nThe mouth of the Rhine into Lake Constance forms an inland delta. The delta is delimited in the west by the \"Alter Rhein\" and in the east by the modern canalized section of the Alpine Rhine (). Most of the delta is a nature reserve and bird sanctuary. It includes the Austrian towns of Gai\u00dfau, H\u00f6chst and Fu\u00dfach. The natural Rhine originally branched into at least two arms and formed small islands by precipitating sediments. In the local Alemannic dialect, the singular is pronounced \"Isel\" and this is also the local pronunciation of \"Esel\" (\"Donkey\"). Many local fields have an official name containing this element.\nA regulation of the Rhine was called for, with an upper canal near Diepoldsau and a lower canal at Fu\u00dfach, in order to counteract the constant flooding and strong sedimentation in the western Rhine Delta. The Dornbirner Ach had to be diverted, too, and it now flows parallel to the canalized Rhine into the lake. Its water has a darker color than the Rhine; the latter's lighter suspended load comes from higher up the mountains. It is expected that the continuous input of sediment into the lake will silt up the lake. This has already happened to the former Lake Tuggenersee.\nThe cut-off Old Rhine at first formed a swamp landscape. Later an artificial ditch of about two km was dug. It was made navigable to the Swiss town of Rheineck.\nLake Constance.\nLake Constance consists of three bodies of water: the Obersee (\"upper lake\"), the Untersee (\"lower lake\"), and a connecting stretch of the Rhine, called the Seerhein (\"Lake Rhine\"). The lake is situated in Germany, Switzerland and Austria near the Alps. Specifically, its shorelines lie in the German states of Bavaria and Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg, the Austrian state of Vorarlberg, and the Swiss cantons of Thurgau and St. Gallen. The Rhine flows into it from the south following the Swiss-Austrian border. It is located at approximately .\nObersee.\nThe flow of cold, grey mountain water continues for some distance into the lake. The cold water flows near the surface and at first does not mix with the warmer, green waters of Upper Lake. But then, at the so-called \"Rheinbrech\", the Rhine water abruptly falls into the depths because of the greater density of cold water. The flow reappears on the surface at the northern (German) shore of the lake, off the island of Lindau. The water then follows the northern shore until Hagnau am Bodensee. A small fraction of the flow is diverted off the island of Mainau into Lake \u00dcberlingen. Most of the water flows via the \"Constance hopper\" into the \"Rheinrinne\" (\"Rhine Gutter\") and Seerhein. Depending on the water level, this flow of the Rhine water is clearly visible along the entire length of the lake.\nThe Rhine carries very large amounts of debris into the lake\u00a0\u2013 over annually. In the mouth region, it is therefore necessary to permanently remove gravel by dredging. The large sediment loads are partly due to the extensive land improvements upstream.\nThree countries border the Obersee, namely Switzerland in the south, Austria in the southeast and the German states of Bavaria in the northeast and Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg in the north and northwest.\nSeerhein.\nThe Seerhein is only long. It connects the Obersee with the 30\u00a0cm lower Untersee. Distance markers along the Rhine measure the distance from the bridge in the old city center of Konstanz.\nFor most of its length, the Seerhein forms the border between Germany and Switzerland. The exception is the old city center of Konstanz, on the Swiss side of the river.\nThe Seerhein emerged in the last thousands of years, when erosion caused the lake level to be lowered by about 10 meters. Previously, the two lakes formed a single lake, as the name still suggests.\nUntersee.\nLike in the Obersee, the flow the Rhine can be traced in the Untersee. Here, too, the river water is hardly mixed with the lake water. The northern parts of the Untersee (Lake Zell and Gnadensee) remain virtually unaffected by the flow. The river traverses the southern, which, in isolation, is sometimes called \"Rhinesee\" (\"Lake Rhine\"). The \"Schweizerische Schifffahrtsgesellschaft Untersee und Rhein\" (URh) offers regular boat trips on Untersee.\nBesides the \"Seerhein\", the Radolfzeller Aach is the main tributary of \"Untersee\". It adds large amounts of water from the Danube system to the \"Untersee\" via the Danube Sinkhole.\nReichenau Island was formed at the same time as the Seerhein, when the water level fell to its current level.\nLake Untersee is part of the border between Switzerland and Germany, with Germany on the north bank and Switzerland on the south, except both sides are Swiss in Stein am Rhein, where the High Rhine flows out of the lake.\nHigh Rhine.\nThe High Rhine () begins in Stein am Rhein at the western end of the Untersee. Now flowing generally westwards, it passes over the Rhine Falls () below Schaffhausen before being joined\u00a0\u2013 near Koblenz in the canton of Aargau\u00a0\u2013 by its major tributary, the Aare. The Aare more than doubles the Rhine's water discharge, to an average of slightly more than , and provides more than a fifth of the discharge at the Dutch border. The Aare also contains the waters from the summit of Finsteraarhorn, the highest point of the Rhine basin.\nBetween Eglisau and Basel, the vast majority of its length, the High Rhine forms the border between Germany and Switzerland. Only for brief distances at its extremities does the river run entirely within Switzerland; at the eastern end it separates the bulk of the canton of Schaffhausen and the German exclave of B\u00fcsingen am Hochrhein on the northern bank from cantons of Z\u00fcrich and Thurgau, while at the western end it bisects the canton of Basel-Stadt. Here, at the Rhine knee, the river turns north and leaves Switzerland altogether.\nThe High Rhine is characterized by numerous dams. On the few remaining natural sections, there are still several rapids. Over its entire course from Lake Constance to the Swiss border at Basel the river descends from .\nThere are passenger boat lines on the lower High Rhine and between Schaffhausen and Kreuzlingen.\nUpper Rhine.\nIn the center of Basel, the first major city in the course of the stream, is the Rhine knee, a major bend, where the overall direction of the Rhine changes from west to north. Here the High Rhine ends. Legally, the Central Bridge is the boundary between High and Upper Rhine. The river now flows north as Upper Rhine through the Upper Rhine Plain, which is about 300\u00a0km long and up to 40\u00a0km wide. The most important tributaries in this area are the Ill below of Strasbourg, the Neckar in Mannheim and the Main across from Mainz. In Mainz, the Rhine leaves the Upper Rhine Valley and flows through the Mainz Basin.\nThe southern half of the Upper Rhine forms the border between France (Alsace) and Germany (Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg). The northern part forms the border between the German states of Rhineland-Palatinate in the west on the one hand, and Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg and Hesse on the other hand, in the east and north. A curiosity of this border line is that the parts of the city of Mainz on the right bank of the Rhine were given to Hesse by the occupying forces in 1945.\nThe Upper Rhine was a significant cultural landscape in Central Europe already in antiquity and during the Middle Ages. Today, the Upper Rhine area hosts many important manufacturing and service industries, particularly in the centers Basel, Strasbourg and Mannheim-Ludwigshafen. Strasbourg is the seat of the European Parliament, and so one of the three European capitals is located on the Upper Rhine.\nThe Upper Rhine region was changed significantly by a Rhine straightening program in the 19th century. The rate of flow was increased and the ground water level fell significantly. Dead branches were removed by construction workers and the area around the river was made more habitable for humans on flood plains as the rate of flooding decreased sharply. On the French side, the Grand Canal d'Alsace was dug, which carries a significant part of the river water, and all of the traffic. In some places, there are large compensation pools, for example, the huge \"Bassin de compensation de Plobsheim\" in Alsace.\nThe Upper Rhine has undergone significant human change since the 19th century. While it was slightly modified during the Roman occupation, it was not until the emergence of engineers such as Johann Gottfried Tulla that significant modernization efforts changed the shape of the river. Earlier work under Frederick the Great surrounded efforts to ease shipping and construct dams to serve coal transportation. Tulla is considered to have domesticated the Upper Rhine, a domestication that served goals such as reducing stagnant bogs that fostered waterborne diseases, making regions more habitable for human settlement, and reduce high frequency of floods. Not long before Tulla went to work on widening and straightening the river, heavy floods caused significant loss of life. Four diplomatic treaties were signed among German state governments and French regions dealing with the changes proposed along the Rhine, one was \"the Treaty for the Rectification of the Rhine flow from Neuberg to Dettenheim\"(1817), which surrounded states such as Bourbon France and the Bavarian Palatinate. Loops, oxbows, branches and islands were removed along the Upper Rhine so that there would be uniformity to the river. The engineering of the Rhine was not without protest, farmers and fishermen had grave concerns about valuable fishing areas and farmland being lost. While some areas lost ground, other areas saw swamps and bogs be drained and turned into arable land. Johann Tulla had the goal of shortening and straightening the Upper Rhine. Early engineering projects the Upper Rhine also had issues, with Tulla's project at one part of the river creating rapids, after the Rhine cut down from erosion to sheer rock. Engineering along the Rhine eased flooding and made transportation along the river less cumbersome. These state projects were part of the advanced and technical progress going on in the country alongside the industrial revolution. For the German state, making the river more predictable was to ensure development projects could easily commence.\nThe section of the Upper Rhine downstream from Mainz is also known as the \"Island Rhine\". Here a number of river islands occur, locally known as \"Rheinauen\".\nMiddle Rhine.\nThe Rhine is the longest river in Germany. It is here that the Rhine encounters some more of its main tributaries, such as the Neckar, the Main and, later, the Moselle, which contributes an average discharge of more than . Northeastern France drains to the Rhine via the Moselle; smaller rivers drain the Vosges and Jura Mountains uplands. Most of Luxembourg and a very small part of Belgium also drain to the Rhine via the Moselle. As it approaches the Dutch border, the Rhine has an annual mean discharge of and an average width of .\nBetween Bingen am Rhein and Bonn, the Middle Rhine flows through the Rhine Gorge, a formation which was created by erosion. The rate of erosion equaled the uplift in the region, such that the river was left at about its original level while the surrounding lands raised. The gorge is quite deep and is the stretch of the river which is known for its many castles and vineyards. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (2002) and known as \"the Romantic Rhine\", with more than 40\u00a0castles and fortresses from the Middle Ages and many quaint and lovely country villages.\nThe Mainz Basin ends in Bingen am Rhein; the Rhine continues as \"Middle Rhine\" into the Rhine Gorge in the Rhenish Slate Mountains. In this sections the river falls from 77.4\u00a0m above sea level to 50.4\u00a0m. On the left, is located the mountain ranges of Hunsr\u00fcck and Eifel, on the right Taunus and Westerwald. According to geologists, the characteristic narrow valley form was created by erosion by the river while the surrounding landscape was lifted (see water gap).\nMajor tributaries in this section are the Lahn and the Moselle. They join the Rhine near Koblenz, for the right and left respectively. Almost the entire length of the Middle Rhine runs in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate.\nThe dominant economic sectors in the Middle Rhine area are viniculture and tourism. The Rhine Gorge between R\u00fcdesheim am Rhein and Koblenz is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Near Sankt Goarshausen, the Rhine flows around the famous rock Lorelei. With its outstanding architectural monuments, the slopes full of vines, settlements crowded on the narrow river banks and scores of castles lined up along the top of the steep slopes, the Middle Rhine Valley can be considered the epitome of the Rhine romanticism.\nLower Rhine.\nIn Bonn, where the Sieg flows into the Rhine, the Rhine enters the North German Plain and turns into the Lower Rhine. The Lower Rhine falls from 50\u00a0m to 12\u00a0m. The main tributaries on this stretch are the Ruhr and the Lippe. Like the Upper Rhine, the Lower Rhine used to meander until engineering created a solid river bed. Because the levees are some distance from the river, at high tide the Lower Rhine has more room for widening than the Upper Rhine.\nThe Lower Rhine flows through North Rhine-Westphalia. Its banks are usually heavily populated and industrialized, in particular the agglomerations Cologne, D\u00fcsseldorf and Ruhr area. Here the Rhine flows through the largest conurbation in Germany, the Rhine-Ruhr region. One of the most important cities in this region is Duisburg with the largest river port in Europe (Duisport). The region downstream of Duisburg is more agricultural. In Wesel, 30\u00a0km downstream of Duisburg, is located the western end of the second east\u2013west shipping route, the Wesel-Datteln Canal, which runs parallel to the Lippe. Between Emmerich and Cleves the Emmerich Rhine Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in Germany, crosses the river. Near Krefeld, the river crosses the Uerdingen line, the line which separates the areas where Low German and High German are spoken. The Rhine River is crossed by several ferries, including the one between Bad Honnef and Rolandseck, where the Lohfelderf\u00e4hre district is situated.\nUntil the early 1980s, industry was a major source of water pollution. Although many plants and factories can be found along the Rhine up into Switzerland, it is along the Lower Rhine that the bulk of them are concentrated, as the river passes the major cities of Cologne, D\u00fcsseldorf and Duisburg. Duisburg is the home of Europe's largest inland port and functions as a hub to the sea ports of Rotterdam, Antwerp and Amsterdam. The Ruhr, which joins the Rhine in Duisburg, is nowadays a clean river, thanks to a combination of stricter environmental controls, a transition from heavy industry to light industry and cleanup measures, such as the reforestation of Slag and brownfields. The Ruhr currently provides the region with drinking water. It contributes to the Rhine. Other rivers in the Ruhr Area include the Emscher.\nDelta.\nThe Dutch name for Rhine is \"Rijn\". The Rhine turns west and enters the Netherlands, where, together with the rivers Meuse and Scheldt, it forms the extensive Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta, with the largest river delta in Europe. Crossing the border into the Netherlands at Spijk, close to Nijmegen and Arnhem, the Rhine is at its widest, although the river then splits into three main distributaries: the Waal, Nederrijn (\"Nether Rhine\") and IJssel.\nFrom here, the situation becomes more complicated, as the Dutch name \"Rijn\" no longer coincides with the main flow of water. Two-thirds of the water flow volume of the Rhine flows farther west, through the Waal and then, via the Merwede and Nieuwe Merwede (De Biesbosch), merging with the Meuse, through the Hollands Diep and Haringvliet estuaries, into the North Sea. The Beneden Merwede branches off, near Hardinxveld-Giessendam and continues as the Noord, to join the Lek, near the village of Kinderdijk, to form the Nieuwe Maas; then flows past Rotterdam and continues via Het Scheur and the Nieuwe Waterweg, to the North Sea. The Oude Maas branches off, near Dordrecht, farther down rejoining the Nieuwe Maas to form Het Scheur.\nThe other third of the water flows through the Pannerdens Kanaal and redistributes in the IJssel and Nederrijn. The IJssel branch carries one ninth of the water flow of the \"Rhine\" north into the IJsselmeer (a former bay), while the Nederrijn carries approximately two-ninths of the flow west along a route parallel to the Waal. However, at Wijk bij Duurstede, the Nederrijn changes its name and becomes the Lek. It flows farther west, to rejoin the Noord into the Nieuwe Maas and to the North Sea.\nThe name \"Rijn\", from here on, is used only for smaller streams farther to the north, which together formed the main river Rhine in Roman times. Though they retained the name, these streams no longer carry water from the Rhine, but are used for draining the surrounding land and polders. From Wijk bij Duurstede, the old north branch of the Rhine is called Kromme Rijn (\"Bent Rhine\") past Utrecht, first Leidse Rijn (\"Rhine of Leiden\") and then, Oude Rijn (\"Old Rhine\"). The latter flows west into a sluice at Katwijk, where its waters can be discharged into the North Sea. This branch once formed the line along which the Limes Germanicus were built. During periods of lower sea levels within the various ice ages, the Rhine took a left turn, creating the Channel River, the course of which now lies below the English Channel.\nThe Rhine-Meuse Delta, the most important natural region of the Netherlands begins near Millingen aan de Rijn, close to the Dutch-German border with the division of the Rhine into Waal and Nederrijn. The region between the Dutch-German border and Rotterdam, where the Waal, Lek, and Meuse run more or less parallel, is colloquially known as the \"Great Rivers\". Since the Rhine contributes most of the water, the shorter term \"Rhine Delta\" is commonly used. However, this name is also used for the river delta where the Rhine flows into Lake Constance, so it is clearer to call the larger one \"Rhine-Meuse delta\", or even \"Rhine\u2013Meuse\u2013Scheldt delta\", as the Scheldt ends in the same delta.\nThe shape of the Rhine delta is determined by two bifurcations: first, at Millingen aan de Rijn, the Rhine splits into Waal and Pannerdens Kanaal, which changes its name to Nederrijn at Angeren, and second near Arnhem, the IJssel branches off from the Nederrijn. This creates three main flows, two of which change names rather often. The largest and southern main branch begins as Waal and continues as Boven Merwede (\"Upper Merwede\"), Beneden Merwede (\"Lower Merwede\"), Noord (\"the North\"), Nieuwe Maas (\"New Meuse\"), Het Scheur (\"the Rip\") and Nieuwe Waterweg (\"New Waterway\"). The middle flow begins as Nederrijn, then changes into Lek, then joins the Noord, thereby forming Nieuwe Maas. The northern flow keeps the name IJssel until it flows into Lake IJsselmeer. Three more flows carry significant amounts of water: the Nieuwe Merwede (\"New Merwede\"), which branches off from the southern branch where it changes from Boven to Beneden Merwede; the Oude Maas (\"Old Meuse\"), which branches off from the southern branch where it changes from Beneden Merwede into Noord, and Dordtse Kil, which branches off from Oude Maas.\nBefore the St. Elizabeth's flood (1421), the Meuse flowed just south of today's line Merwede-Oude Maas to the North Sea and formed an archipelago-like estuary with Waal and Lek. This system of numerous bays, estuary-like extended rivers, many islands and constant changes of the coastline, is hard to imagine today. From 1421 to 1904, the Meuse and Waal merged further upstream at Gorinchem to form Merwede. For flood protection reasons, the Meuse was separated from the Waal through a lock and diverted into a new outlet called \"Bergse Maas\", then Amer and then flows into the former bay Hollands Diep.\nThe northwestern part of the estuary (around Hook of Holland), is still called \"Maasmond\" (\"Meuse Mouth\"), ignoring the fact that it now carries only water from the Rhine. This might explain the confusing naming of the various branches.\nThe hydrography of the current delta is characterized by the delta's main arms, disconnected arms (Hollandse IJssel, Linge, Vecht, etc.) and smaller rivers and streams. Many rivers have been closed (\"dammed\") and now serve as drainage channels for the numerous polders. The construction of Delta Works changed the Delta in the second half of the 20th century fundamentally. Currently Rhine water runs into the sea, or into former marine bays now separated from the sea, in five places, namely at the mouths of the Nieuwe Merwede, Nieuwe Waterway (Nieuwe Maas), Dordtse Kil, Spui and IJssel.\nThe Rhine-Meuse Delta is a tidal delta, shaped not only by the sedimentation of the rivers, but also by tidal currents. This meant that high tide formed a serious risk because strong tidal currents could tear huge areas of land into the sea. Before the construction of the Delta Works, tidal influence was palpable up to Nijmegen, and even today, after the regulatory action of the Delta Works, the tide acts far inland. At the Waal, the most landward tidal influence can be detected between Brakel and Zaltbommel.\nGeologic history.\nAlpine orogeny.\nThe Rhine flows from the Alps to the North Sea Basin. The geography and geology of its present-day watershed has been developing since the Alpine orogeny began.\nIn southern Europe, the stage was set in the Triassic Period of the Mesozoic Era, with the opening of the Tethys Ocean, between the Eurasian and African tectonic plates, between about 240\u00a0MBP and 220\u00a0MBP (million years before present). The present Mediterranean Sea descends from this somewhat larger Tethys sea. At about 180\u00a0MBP, in the Jurassic Period, the two plates reversed direction and began to compress the Tethys floor, causing it to be subducted under Eurasia and pushing up the edge of the latter plate in the Alpine Orogeny of the Oligocene and Miocene Periods. Several microplates were caught in the squeeze and rotated or were pushed laterally, generating the individual features of Mediterranean geography: Iberia pushed up the Pyrenees; Italy, the Alps, and Anatolia, moving west, the mountains of Greece and the islands. The compression and orogeny continue today, as shown by the ongoing raising of the mountains a small amount each year and the active volcanoes.\nIn northern Europe, the North Sea Basin had formed during the Triassic and Jurassic periods and continued to be a sediment receiving basin since. In between the zone of Alpine orogeny and North Sea Basin subsidence, highlands resulting from an earlier orogeny (Variscan) remained, such as the Ardennes, Eifel and Vosges.\nFrom the Eocene onward, the ongoing Alpine orogeny caused a north\u2013south rift system to develop in this zone. The main elements of this rift are the Upper Rhine Graben, in southwest Germany and eastern France and the Lower Rhine Embayment, in northwest Germany and the southeastern Netherlands. By the time of the Miocene, a river system had developed in the Upper Rhine Graben, that continued northward and is considered the first Rhine river. At that time, it did not yet carry discharge from the Alps; instead, the watersheds of the Rhone and Danube drained the northern flanks of the Alps.\nStream capture.\nThe watershed of the Rhine reaches into the Alps today, but it did not start out that way. In the Miocene period, the watershed of the Rhine reached south, only to the Eifel and Westerwald hills, about north of the Alps. The Rhine then had the Sieg as a tributary, but not yet the Moselle. The northern Alps were then drained by the Danube.\nThrough stream capture, the Rhine extended its watershed southward. By the Pliocene period, the Rhine had captured streams down to the Vosges Mountains, including the Main and the Neckar. The northern Alps were then drained by the Rhone. By the early Pleistocene period, the Rhine had captured most of its current Alpine watershed from the Rh\u00f4ne, including the Aare. Since that time, the Rhine has added the watershed above Lake Constance (Vorderrhein, Hinterrhein, Alpenrhein; captured from the Rh\u00f4ne), the upper reaches of the Main, beyond Schweinfurt and the Moselle in the Vosges Mountains, captured during the Saale Ice-age from the Meuse, to its watershed.\nAround 2.5\u00a0million years ago (ending 11,600 years ago) the Ice Ages began. Since approximately 600,000\u00a0years ago, six major glacial periods have occurred, in which sea level dropped as much as and much of the continental margins were exposed. In the Early Pleistocene, the Rhine followed a course to the northwest, through the present North Sea. During the so-called Anglian glaciation (~450,000\u00a0yr\u00a0BP, marine oxygen isotope stage\u00a012), the northern part of the present North Sea was blocked by the ice and a large lake developed, that overflowed through the English Channel. This caused the Rhine's course to be diverted through the English Channel. Since then, during glacial times, the river mouth was located offshore of Brest, France and rivers, like the River Thames and the Seine, became tributaries to the Rhine. During interglacials, when sea level rose to approximately the present level, the Rhine built deltas in what is now the Netherlands.\nThe most recent glacial period ran from ~74,000 (BP = Before Present), until the end of the Pleistocene (~11,600\u00a0BP). In northwest Europe, it saw two very cold phases, peaking around 70,000\u00a0BP and around 29,000\u201324,000\u00a0BP. The last phase slightly predates the global last ice age maximum (Last Glacial Maximum). During this time, the lower Rhine flowed roughly west through the Netherlands and extended to the southwest, through the English Channel and finally, to the Atlantic Ocean. The English Channel, the Irish Channel and most of the North Sea were dry land, mainly because sea level was approximately lower than today.\nMost of the Rhine's current course was not under the ice during the last Ice Age; although, its source must still have been a glacier. A tundra, with Ice Age flora and fauna, stretched across middle Europe, from Asia to the Atlantic Ocean. Such was the case during the Last Glacial Maximum, ca. 22,000\u201314,000\u00a0yr\u00a0BP, when ice-sheets covered Scandinavia, the Baltics, Scotland and the Alps, but left the space between as open tundra. Loess (wind-blown topsoil dust) arose from the south and North Sea plain settling on the slopes of the Alps, Urals and the Rhine Valley, rendering the valleys facing the prevailing winds especially fertile.\nEnd of the last glacial period.\nAs northwest Europe slowly began to warm from 22,000 years ago onward, frozen subsoil and expanded alpine glaciers began to thaw and fall-winter snow covers melted in spring. Much of the discharge was routed to the Rhine and its downstream extension. Rapid warming and changes of vegetation, to open forest, began about 13,000\u00a0BP. By 9000\u00a0BP, Europe was fully forested. With globally shrinking ice-cover, ocean water levels rose and the English Channel and North Sea re-inundated. Meltwater, adding to the ocean and land subsidence, drowned the former coasts of Europe transgressionally.\nAbout 11000 years ago, the Rhine estuary was in the Strait of Dover. There remained some dry land in the southern North Sea, known as Doggerland, connecting mainland Europe to Britain. About 9000 years ago, that last divide was overtopped / dissected. Humans were already resident in the area when these events happened.\nSince 7500 years ago the situation of tides, currents and land-forms has resembled the present. Rates of sea level rise dropped such that natural sedimentation by the Rhine and coastal processes widely compensate for transgression by the sea. In the southern North Sea, due to ongoing tectonic subsidence, the coastline and sea bed are sinking at the rate of about per century (1\u00a0meter or 39\u00a0inches in last 3000\u00a0years).\nAbout 7000\u20135000 BP, a general warming encouraged migration of all former ice-locked areas, including up the Danube and down the Rhine by peoples to the east. A sudden massive expansion of the Black Sea as the Mediterranean Sea burst into it through the Bosporus may have occurred about 7500\u00a0BP.\nHolocene delta.\nAt the beginning of the Holocene (~11,700 years ago), the Rhine occupied its Late-Glacial valley. As a meandering river, it reworked its ice-age floodplain. As sea-level rise continued in the Netherlands, the formation of the Holocene Rhine-Meuse delta began (~8,000\u00a0years ago). Coeval absolute sea-level rise and tectonic subsidence have strongly influenced delta evolution. Other factors of importance to the shape of the delta are the local tectonic activities of the Peel Boundary Fault, the substrate and geomorphology, as inherited from the Last Glacial period and the coastal-marine dynamics, such as barrier and tidal inlet formations.\nSince ~3000 yr BP (= years Before Present), human impact is seen in the delta. As a result of increasing land clearance (Bronze Age agriculture), in the upland areas (central Germany), the sediment load of the Rhine has strongly increased and delta growth has sped up. This has caused increased flooding and sedimentation, ending peat formation in the delta. In the geologically recent past the main process distributing sediment across the delta has been the shifting of river channels to new locations on the floodplain (termed avulsion). Over the past 6000\u00a0years, approximately 80\u00a0avulsions have occurred. Direct human impact in the delta began with the mining of peat for salt and fuel from Roman times onward. This was followed by embankment of the major distributaries and damming of minor distributaries, which took place in the 11\u201313th century AD. Thereafter, canals were dug, bends were straightened and groynes were built to prevent the river's channels from migrating or silting up.\nAt present, the branches Waal and Nederrijn-Lek discharge to the North Sea through the former Meuse estuary, near Rotterdam. The river IJssel branch flows to the north and enters the IJsselmeer (formerly the Zuider Zee), initially a brackish lagoon but a freshwater lake since 1932. The discharge of the Rhine is divided into three branches: the Waal (6/9 of total discharge), the Nederrijn \u2013 Lek (2/9 of total discharge) and the IJssel (1/9 of total discharge). This discharge distribution has been maintained since 1709 by river engineering works including the digging of the Pannerdens Kanaal and the installation, in the 20th century, of a series of weirs on the Nederrijn.\nMilitary and cultural history.\nAntiquity.\nThe Rhine was not known to Herodotus and first enters the historical period in the 1st century BC in Roman-era geography. At that time, it formed the boundary between Gaul and Germania. \"It is estimated that Germanic tribes have been inhabiting the area since 2000 BCE.\" [no source]\nThe Upper Rhine had been part of the areal of the late Hallstatt culture since the 6th century BC, and by the 1st century BC, the areal of the La T\u00e8ne culture covered almost its entire length, forming a contact zone with the Jastorf culture, i.e. the locus of early Celtic-Germanic cultural contact.\nIn Roman geography, the Rhine formed the boundary between \"Gallia\" and \"Germania\" by definition; e.g. Maurus Servius Honoratus, \"Commentary on the Aeneid of Vergil\" (8.727) \"(Rhenus) fluvius Galliae, qui Germanos a Gallia dividit\" \"(The Rhine is a) river of Gaul, which divides the Germanic people from Gaul.\"\nIn Roman geography, the Rhine and Hercynia Silva were considered the boundary of the civilized world; as it was a wilderness, the Romans were eager to explore it. This view is typified by \"Res Gestae Divi Augusti\", a long public inscription of Augustus, in which he boasts of his exploits; including, sending an expeditionary fleet north of the Rheinmouth, to Old Saxony and Jutland, which he claimed no Roman had ever done before.\nAugustus ordered his stepson Roman general Drusus to establish 50 military camps along the Rhine, starting the Germanic Wars in 12 BC. At this time, the plain of the Lower Rhine was the territory of the Ubii. The first urban settlement, on the grounds of what is today Downtown Cologne, along the Rhine, was \"Oppidum Ubiorum\", which was founded in 38\u00a0BC by the Ubii. Cologne became acknowledged, as a city by the Romans in AD\u00a050, by the name of \"Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium\".\nFrom the death of Augustus in AD 14 until after AD 70, Rome accepted as her Germanic frontier the water-boundary of the Rhine and upper Danube. Beyond these rivers she held only the fertile plain of Frankfurt, opposite the Roman border fortress of Moguntiacum (Mainz), the southernmost slopes of the Black Forest and a few scattered bridge-heads. The northern section of this frontier, where the Rhine is deep and broad, remained the Roman boundary until the empire fell. The southern part was different. The upper Rhine and upper Danube are easily crossed. The frontier which they form is inconveniently long, enclosing an acute-angled wedge of foreign territory between the modern Baden and W\u00fcrttemberg. The Germanic populations of these lands seem in Roman times to have been scanty, and Roman subjects from the modern Alsace-Lorraine had drifted across the river eastwards.\nThe Romans kept eight legions in five bases along the Rhine. The number was reduced to four as more units were moved to the Danube. The actual number of legions present at any base or in all, depended on whether a state or threat of war existed. Between about AD\u00a014 and 180, the assignment of legions was as follows:\nFor the army of Germania Inferior, two legions at Vetera (Xanten), \"I Germanica\" and \"XX Valeria\" (Pannonian troops); two legions at oppidum Ubiorum (\"town of the Ubii\"), which was renamed to Colonia Agrippina, descending to Cologne, \"V Alaudae\", a Celtic legion recruited from Gallia Narbonensis and \"XXI\", possibly a Galatian legion from the other side of the empire.\nFor the army of Germania Superior: one legion, \"II Augusta\", at Argentoratum (Strasbourg); and one, \"XIII Gemina\", at Vindonissa (Windisch). Vespasian had commanded II\u00a0Augusta, before he became emperor. In addition, were a double legion, XIV and XVI, at Moguntiacum (Mainz).\nThe two original military districts of Germania Inferior and Germania Superior, came to influence the surrounding tribes, who later respected the distinction in their alliances and confederations. For example, the upper Germanic peoples combined into the Alemanni. For a time, the Rhine ceased to be a border, when the Franks crossed the river and occupied Roman-dominated Celtic Gaul, as far as Paris.\nGermanic tribes crossed the Rhine in the Migration period, by the 5th century establishing the kingdoms of Francia on the Lower Rhine, Burgundy on the Upper Rhine and Alemannia on the High Rhine. This \"Germanic Heroic Age\" is reflected in medieval legend, such as the which tells of the hero Siegfried killing a dragon on the Drachenfels (Siebengebirge) (\"dragons rock\"), near Bonn at the Rhine and of the Burgundians and their court at Worms, at the Rhine and Kriemhild's golden treasure, which was thrown into the Rhine by Hagen.\nMedieval and modern history.\nBy the 6th century, the Rhine was within the borders of Francia. In the 9th, it formed part of the border between Middle and Eastern Francia, but in the 10th century, it was fully within the Holy Roman Empire, flowing through Swabia, Franconia and Lower Lorraine. The mouths of the Rhine, in the county of Holland, fell to the Burgundian Netherlands in the 15th century; Holland remained contentious territory throughout the European wars of religion and the eventual collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, when the length of the Rhine fell to the First French Empire and its client states. The Alsace on the left banks of the Upper Rhine was sold to Burgundy by Archduke Sigismund of Austria in 1469 and eventually fell to France in the Thirty Years' War. The numerous historic castles in Rhineland-Palatinate attest to the importance of the river as a commercial route.\nSince the Peace of Westphalia, the Upper Rhine formed a contentious border between France and Germany. Establishing \"natural borders\" on the Rhine was a long-term goal of French foreign policy, since the Middle Ages, though the language border was \u2013 and is \u2013 far more to the west. French leaders, such as Louis XIV and Napoleon Bonaparte, tried with varying degrees of success to annex lands west of the Rhine. The Confederation of the Rhine was established by Napoleon, as a French client state, in 1806 and lasted until 1814, during which time it served as a significant source of resources and military manpower for the First French Empire. In 1840, the Rhine crisis, prompted by French prime minister Adolphe Thiers's desire to reinstate the Rhine as a natural border, led to a diplomatic crisis and a wave of nationalism in Germany. \nThe Rhine became an important symbol in German nationalism during the formation of the German state in the 19th century (see Rhine romanticism).\nAt the end of World War I, the Rhineland was subject to the Treaty of Versailles. This decreed that it would be occupied by the allies, until 1935 and after that, it would be a demilitarized zone, with the German army forbidden to enter. The Treaty of Versailles and this particular provision, in general, caused much resentment in Germany. The Allies' troops left the Rhineland in 1930 and, following the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, the German army re-occupied it in 1936, which proved an enormously popular action in Germany. Although the Allies could probably have prevented the reoccupation, Britain and France were not inclined to do so, a feature of their policy of appeasement to Hitler.\nIn World War II, it was recognized that the Rhine would present a formidable natural obstacle to the invasion of Germany, by the Western Allies. The Rhine bridge at Arnhem, immortalized in the book, \"A Bridge Too Far\" and the film, was a central focus of the battle of Arnhem, during the failed Operation Market Garden of September 1944. The bridges at Nijmegen, over the Waal distributary of the Rhine, were also an objective of Operation Market Garden. In a separate operation, the Ludendorff Bridge, crossing the Rhine at Remagen, became famous, when U.S. forces were able to capture it intact \u2013 much to their own surprise \u2013 after the Germans failed to demolish it. This also became the subject of a film, \"The Bridge at Remagen\".\n\"Seven Days to the River Rhine\" was a Warsaw Pact war plan for an invasion of Western Europe during the Cold War.\nUntil 1932, the generally accepted length of the Rhine was . In 1932 the German encyclopedia Knaurs Lexikon stated the length as , presumably a typographical error. \nAfter this number was placed into the authoritative Brockhaus Enzyklop\u00e4die, it became generally accepted and found its way into numerous textbooks and official publications. The error was discovered in 2010, and the Dutch Rijkswaterstaat confirms the length at .\nLists of features.\nCities on the Rhine.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCountries and borders.\nDuring its course from the Alps to the North Sea, the Rhine passes through four countries and constitutes six different country borders. On the various parts:\nFormer distributaries.\n\"Order: panning north to south through the Western Netherlands\":\nCanals.\n\"Order: upstream to downstream\":\nNotes and references.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "4035865": "Fr\u00e4nzi Aufdenblatten\nSwiss alpine skier (born 1981)\nFranziska Christine \"Fr\u00e4nzi\" Aufdenblatten (born 10 February 1981) is a retired Swiss World Cup alpine ski racer.\nBorn in Zermatt, Valais, Aufdenblatten made her World Cup debut in March 2000 in a giant slalom at Sestriere. She scored four podium finishes on the World Cup: one win in a super-G in Val-d'Is\u00e8re in December 2009, and three third places in downhill at Haus im Ennstal (2004), Bad Kleinkirchheim (2006), and Lenzerheide (2014). Aufdenblatten competed in three Winter Olympics (2002, 2006 and 2014) and her best finish was a sixth place in the 2014 super-G at Rosa Khutor.\nAfter the 2014 Games, Aufdenblatten announced that she would be retiring from competition at the end of the season in order to start a new career in sports management. After announcing her retirement, she scored a fourth and final World Cup podium finish with a third place in the downhill at the 2014 World Cup Finals at Lenzerheide in her native Switzerland.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "981": "Alps\nMajor mountain range in central Europe\nThe Alps () are some of the highest and most extensive mountain ranges in Europe, stretching approximately across eight Alpine countries (from west to east): Monaco, France, Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria and Slovenia.\nThe Alpine arch extends from Nice on the western Mediterranean to Trieste on the Adriatic and Vienna at the beginning of the Pannonian Basin. The mountains were formed over tens of millions of years as the African and Eurasian tectonic plates collided. Extreme shortening caused by the event resulted in marine sedimentary rocks rising by thrusting and folding into high mountain peaks such as Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn.\nMont Blanc spans the French\u2013Italian border, and at is the highest mountain in the Alps. The Alpine region area contains 82 peaks higher than .\nThe altitude and size of the range affect the climate in Europe; in the mountains, precipitation levels vary greatly and climatic conditions consist of distinct zones. Wildlife such as ibex live in the higher peaks to elevations of , and plants such as edelweiss grow in rocky areas in lower elevations as well as in higher elevations.\nEvidence of human habitation in the Alps goes back to the Palaeolithic era. A mummified man (\"\u00d6tzi\"), determined to be 5,000 years old, was discovered on a glacier at the Austrian\u2013Italian border in 1991.\nBy the 6th century BC, the Celtic La T\u00e8ne culture was well established. Hannibal notably crossed the Alps with a herd of elephants, and the Romans had settlements in the region. In 1800, Napoleon crossed one of the mountain passes with an army of 40,000. The 18th and 19th centuries saw an influx of naturalists, writers, and artists, in particular, the Romanticists, followed by the golden age of alpinism as mountaineers began to ascend the peaks of the Alps.\nThe Alpine region has a strong cultural identity. Traditional practices such as farming, cheesemaking, and woodworking still thrive in Alpine villages. However, the tourist industry began to grow early in the 20th century and expanded significantly after World War II, eventually becoming the dominant industry by the end of the century.\nThe Winter Olympic Games have been hosted in the Swiss, French, Italian, Austrian and German Alps. As of 2010,[ [update]] the region is home to 14\u00a0million people and has 120\u00a0million annual visitors.\nEtymology and toponymy.\nThe English word \"Alps\" comes from the Latin \"Alpes\".\nThe Latin word \"Alpes\" could possibly come from the adjective \"albus\" (\"white\"), or could possibly come from the Greek goddess Alphito, whose name is related to \"alphita\", the \"white flour\"; \"alphos\", a dull white leprosy; and finally the Proto-Indo-European word *alb\u02b0\u00f3s. Similarly, the river god Alpheus is also supposed to derive from the Greek \"alphos\" and means whitish.\nIn his commentary on the \"Aeneid\" of Virgil, the late fourth-century grammarian Maurus Servius Honoratus says that all high mountains are called \"Alpes\" by Celts.\nAccording to the \"Oxford English Dictionary\", the Latin \"Alpes\" might derive from a pre-Indo-European word *\"alb\" \"hill\"; \"Albania\" is a related derivation. Albania, the name of the region known as the country of Albania, has been used as a name for several mountainous areas across Europe.\nIn Roman times, \"Albania\" was a name for the eastern Caucasus, while in the English languages \"Albania\" (or \"Albany\") was occasionally used as a name for Scotland, although it is more likely derived from the Latin word \"albus\", the colour white.\nIn modern languages the term \"alp\", \"alm\", \"albe\" or \"alpe\" refers to a grazing pastures in the alpine regions below the glaciers, not the peaks.\nAn \"alp\" refers to a high mountain pasture, typically near or above the tree line, where cows and other livestock are taken to be grazed during the summer months and where huts and hay barns can be found, sometimes constituting tiny hamlets. Therefore, the term \"the Alps\", as a reference to the mountains, is a misnomer. The term for the mountain peaks varies by nation and language: words such as \"Horn\", \"Kogel\", \"Kopf\", \"Gipfel\", \"Spitze\", \"Stock\", and \"Berg\" are used in German-speaking regions; \"Mont\", \"Pic\", \"T\u00eate\", \"Pointe\", \"Dent\", \"Roche\", and \"Aiguille\" in French-speaking regions; and \"Monte\", \"Picco\", \"Corno\", \"Punta\", \"Pizzo\", or \"Cima\" in Italian-speaking regions.\nGeography.\nThe Alps are a crescent shaped geographic feature of central Europe that ranges in an arc (curved line) from east to west and is in width. The mean height of the mountain peaks is . The range stretches from the Mediterranean Sea north above the Po basin, extending through France from Grenoble, and stretching eastward through mid and southern Switzerland. The range continues onward toward Vienna, Austria, and southeast to the Adriatic Sea and Slovenia.\nTo the south it dips into northern Italy and to the north extends to the southern border of Bavaria in Germany. In areas like Chiasso, Switzerland, and Allg\u00e4u, Bavaria, the demarcation between the mountain range and the flatlands are clear; in other places such as Geneva, the demarcation is less clear.\nThe Alps are found in the following countries: Austria (28.7% of the range's area), Italy (27.2%), France (21.4%), Switzerland (13.2%), Germany (5.8%), Slovenia (3.6%), Liechtenstein (0.08%) and Monaco (0.001%).\nThe highest portion of the range is divided by the glacial trough of the Rh\u00f4ne valley, from Mont Blanc to the Matterhorn and Monte Rosa on the southern side, and the Bernese Alps on the northern. The peaks in the easterly portion of the range, in Austria and Slovenia, are smaller than those in the central and western portions.\nThe variances in nomenclature in the region spanned by the Alps make classification of the mountains and subregions difficult, but a general classification is that of the Eastern Alps and Western Alps with the divide between the two occurring in eastern Switzerland according to geologist Stefan Schmid, near the Spl\u00fcgen Pass.\nThe highest peaks of the Western Alps and Eastern Alps, respectively, are Mont Blanc, at , and Piz Bernina, at . The second-highest major peaks are Monte Rosa, at , and Ortler, at , respectively.\nA series of lower mountain ranges run parallel to the main chain of the Alps, including the French Prealps in France and the Jura Mountains in Switzerland and France. The secondary chain of the Alps follows the watershed from the Mediterranean Sea to the Wienerwald, passing over many of the highest and most well-known peaks in the Alps. From the Colle di Cadibona to Col de Tende it runs westwards, before turning to the northwest and then, near the Colle della Maddalena, to the north. Upon reaching the Swiss border, the line of the main chain heads approximately east-northeast, a heading it follows until its end near Vienna.\nThe northeast end of the Alpine arc, directly on the Danube, which flows into the Black Sea, is the Leopoldsberg near Vienna. In contrast, the southeastern part of the Alps ends on the Adriatic Sea in the area around Trieste towards Duino and Barcola.\nPasses.\nThe Alps have been crossed for war and commerce, and by pilgrims, students, and tourists. Crossing routes by road, train, or foot are known as \"passes\", and usually consist of depressions in the mountains in which a valley leads from the plains and hilly pre-mountainous zones. Merchant traffic was supported by pack animals such as mules. In the late Middle Ages heavy carts and sleighs were in use on the alpine passes.\nIn the medieval period hospices were established by religious orders at the summits of many of the main passes. The most important passes are the Col de l'Iseran (the highest), the Col Agnel, the Brenner Pass, the Mont-Cenis, the Great St. Bernard Pass, the Col de Tende, the Gotthard Pass, the Semmering Pass, the Simplon Pass, and the Stelvio Pass.\nCrossing the Italian-Austrian border, the Brenner Pass separates the \u00d6tztal Alps and Zillertal Alps and has been in use as a trading route since the 14th century. The lowest of the Alpine passes at is the Semmering crossing from Lower Austria to Styria. It has been in continuous use since the 12th century when a hospice was built there. A railroad with a tunnel long was built along the route of the pass in the mid-19th century. With a summit of , the Great St Bernard Pass is one of the highest in the Alps, crossing the Italian-Swiss border east of the Pennine Alps along the flanks of Mont Blanc. The pass was used by Napoleon Bonaparte to cross 40,000 troops in 1800.\nThe Mont Cenis pass has been a major commercial and military road between Western Europe and Italy. The pass was crossed by many troops on their way to the Italian peninsula. From Constantine I, Pepin the Short and Charlemagne to Henry IV, Napol\u00e9on and more recently the German Gebirgsj\u00e4gers during World War II. \nIn the 18th century the principal passes of the Alps were modernized by engineers to speed up passenger and freight transport. The Mont Cenis pass has been supplanted by the Fr\u00e9jus Rail Tunnel opening in 1871, while the Fr\u00e9jus Road Tunnel opened 1980. Railway lines could not be built in the Alps without tunnels and bridges. Apart from the Mont Cenis railway tunnel the Semmering railway tunnel and the Gotthard railway tunnel were built between 1854 and 1882. By the early 19th century eight trans-alpine railway lines had been put into operation.\nThe Saint Gotthard Pass crosses from Central Switzerland to Ticino. In 1882 the Saint Gotthard Railway Tunnel was opened connecting Lucerne in Switzerland, with Milan in Italy. 98 years later followed Gotthard Road Tunnel ( long) connecting the A2 motorway in G\u00f6schenen on the north side with Airolo on the south side, exactly like the railway tunnel.\nOn 1 June 2016 the world's longest railway tunnel, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, was opened, which connects Erstfeld in canton of Uri with Bodio in canton of Ticino by two single tubes of .\nIt is the first tunnel that traverses the Alps on a flat route.\nFrom 11 December 2016, it has been part of the regular railway timetable and used hourly as standard ride between Basel/Lucerne/Zurich and Bellinzona/Lugano/Milan.\nThe highest pass in the alps is the Col de l'Iseran in Savoy (France) at , followed by the Stelvio Pass in northern Italy at ; the road was built in the 1820s.\nHighest mountains.\nThe Union Internationale des Associations d'Alpinisme (UIAA) has defined a list of 82 \"official\" Alpine summits that reach at least . The list includes not only mountains, but also subpeaks with little prominence that are considered important mountaineering objectives. Below are listed the 29 \"four-thousanders\" with at least of prominence.\nWhile Mont Blanc was first climbed in 1786 and the Jungfrau in 1811, most of the Alpine four-thousanders were climbed during the second half of the 19th century, notably Piz Bernina (1850), the Dom (1858), the Grand Combin (1859), the Weisshorn (1861) and the Barre des \u00c9crins (1864); the ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865 marked the end of the golden age of alpinism. Karl Blodig (1859\u20131956) was among the first to successfully climb all the major 4,000\u00a0m peaks. He completed his series of ascents in 1911. Many of the big Alpine three-thousanders were climbed in the early 19th century, notably the Grossglockner (1800) and the Ortler (1804), although some of them were climbed only much later, such at Mont Pelvoux (1848), Monte Viso (1861) and La Meije (1877).\nThe first British Mont Blanc ascent by a man was in 1788; the first ascent by a woman was in 1808. By the mid-1850s Swiss mountaineers had ascended most of the peaks and were eagerly sought as mountain guides. Edward Whymper reached the top of the Matterhorn in 1865 (after seven attempts), and in 1938 the last of the six great north faces of the Alps was climbed with the first ascent of the Eiger \"Nordwand\" (north face of the Eiger).\nGeology and orogeny.\nImportant geological concepts were established as naturalists began studying the rock formations of the Alps in the 18th century. In the mid-19th century, the now-defunct idea of geosynclines was used to explain the presence of \"folded\" mountain chains. This theory was replaced in the mid-20th century by the theory of plate tectonics.\nThe formation of the Alps (the Alpine orogeny) was an episodic process that began about 300\u00a0million years ago. In the Paleozoic Era the Pangaean supercontinent consisted of a single tectonic plate; it broke into separate plates during the Mesozoic Era and the Tethys sea developed between Laurasia and Gondwana during the Jurassic Period. The Tethys was later squeezed between colliding plates causing the formation of mountain ranges called the Alpide belt, from Gibraltar through the Himalayas to Indonesia\u2014a process that began at the end of the Mesozoic and continues into the present. The formation of the Alps was a segment of this orogenic process, caused by the collision between the African and the Eurasian plates that began in the late Cretaceous Period.\nUnder extreme compressive stresses and pressure, marine sedimentary rocks were uplifted, forming characteristic recumbent folds, and thrust faults. As the rising peaks underwent erosion, a layer of marine flysch sediments was deposited in the foreland basin, and the sediments became involved in younger folds as the orogeny progressed. Coarse sediments from the continual uplift and erosion were later deposited in foreland areas north of the Alps. These regions in Switzerland and Bavaria are well-developed, containing classic examples of flysch, which is sedimentary rock formed during mountain building.\nThe Alpine orogeny occurred in ongoing cycles through to the Paleogene causing differences in folded structures, with a late-stage orogeny causing the development of the Jura Mountains. A series of tectonic events in the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods caused different paleogeographic regions. The Alps are subdivided by different lithology (rock composition) and nappe structures according to the orogenic events that affected them. The geological subdivision differentiates the Western, Eastern Alps, and Southern Alps: the Helveticum in the north, the Penninicum and Austroalpine system in the centre and, south of the Periadriatic Seam, the Southern Alpine system.\nAccording to geologist Stefan Schmid, because the Western Alps underwent a metamorphic event in the Cenozoic Era while the Austroalpine peaks underwent an event in the Cretaceous Period, the two areas show distinct differences in nappe formations. Flysch deposits in the Southern Alps of Lombardy probably occurred in the Cretaceous or later.\nPeaks in France, Italy and Switzerland lie in the \"Houilli\u00e8re zone\", which consists of basement with sediments from the Mesozoic Era. High \"massifs\" with external sedimentary cover are more common in the Western Alps and were affected by Neogene Period thin-skinned thrusting whereas the Eastern Alps have comparatively few high peaked massifs. Similarly the peaks in eastern Switzerland extending to western Austria (Helvetic nappes) consist of thin-skinned sedimentary folding that detached from former basement rock.\nIn simple terms, the structure of the Alps consists of layers of rock of European, African, and oceanic (Tethyan) origin. The bottom nappe structure is of continental European origin, above which are stacked marine sediment nappes, topped off by nappes derived from the African plate. The Matterhorn is an example of the ongoing orogeny and shows evidence of great folding. The tip of the mountain consists of gneisses from the African plate; the base of the peak, below the glaciated area, consists of European basement rock. The sequence of Tethyan marine sediments and their oceanic basement is sandwiched between rock derived from the African and European plates.\nThe core regions of the Alpine orogenic belt have been folded and fractured in such a manner that erosion produced the characteristic steep vertical peaks of the Swiss Alps that rise seemingly straight out of the foreland areas. Peaks such as Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn, and high peaks in the Pennine Alps, the Brian\u00e7onnais, and Hohe Tauern consist of layers of rock from the various orogenies including exposures of basement rock.\nDue to the ever-present geologic instability, earthquakes continue in the Alps to this day. Typically, the largest earthquakes in the alps have been between magnitude 6 and 7 on the Richter scale. Geodetic measurements show ongoing topographic uplift at rates of up to about 2.5\u00a0mm per year in the North, Western and Central Alps, and at ~1\u00a0mm per year in the Eastern and South-Western Alps. The underlying mechanisms that jointly drive the present-day uplift pattern are the isostatic rebound due to the melting of the last glacial maximum ice-cap or long-term erosion, detachment of the Western Alpine subducting slab, mantle convection as well as ongoing horizontal convergence between Africa and Europe, but their relative contributions to the uplift of the Alps are difficult to quantify and likely to vary significantly in space and time.\nMinerals.\nThe Alps are a source of minerals that have been mined for thousands of years. In the 8th to 6th centuries, BC during the Hallstatt culture, Celtic tribes mined copper; later the Romans mined gold for coins in the Bad Gastein area. Erzberg in Styria furnishes high-quality iron ore for the steel industry. Crystals, such as cinnabar, amethyst, and quartz, are found throughout much of the Alpine region. The cinnabar deposits in Slovenia are a notable source of cinnabar pigments.\nAlpine crystals have been studied and collected for hundreds of years and began to be classified in the 18th century. Leonhard Euler studied the shapes of crystals, and by the 19th-century crystal hunting was common in Alpine regions. David Friedrich Wiser amassed a collection of 8000 crystals that he studied and documented. In the 20th century Robert Parker wrote a well-known work about the rock crystals of the Swiss Alps; at the same period a commission was established to control and standardize the naming of Alpine minerals.\nGlaciers.\nIn the Miocene Epoch the mountains underwent severe erosion because of glaciation, which was noted in the mid-19th century by naturalist Louis Agassiz who presented a paper proclaiming the Alps were covered in ice at various intervals\u2014a theory he formed when studying rocks near his Neuch\u00e2tel home which he believed originated to the west in the Bernese Oberland. Because of his work he came to be known as the \"father of the ice-age concept\" although other naturalists before him put forth similar ideas.\nAgassiz studied glacier movement in the 1840s at the Unteraar Glacier where he found the glacier moved per year, more rapidly in the middle than at the edges. His work was continued by other scientists and now a permanent laboratory exists inside a glacier under the Jungfraujoch, devoted exclusively to the study of Alpine glaciers.\nGlaciers pick up rocks and sediment with them as they flow. This causes erosion and the formation of valleys over time. The Inn valley is an example of a valley carved by glaciers during the ice ages with a typical terraced structure caused by erosion. Eroded rocks from the most recent ice age lie at the bottom of the valley while the top of the valley consists of erosion from earlier ice ages. Glacial valleys have characteristically steep walls (reliefs); valleys with lower reliefs and talus slopes are remnants of glacial troughs or previously infilled valleys. Moraines, piles of rock picked up during the movement of the glacier, accumulate at edges, centre, and the terminus of glaciers.\nAlpine glaciers can be straight rivers of ice, long sweeping rivers, spread in a fan-like shape (Piedmont glaciers), and curtains of ice that hang from vertical slopes of the mountain peaks. The stress of the movement causes the ice to break and crack loudly, perhaps explaining why the mountains were believed to be home to dragons in the medieval period. The cracking creates unpredictable and dangerous crevasses, often invisible under new snowfall, which causes the greatest danger to mountaineers.\nGlaciers end in ice caves (the Rh\u00f4ne Glacier), by trailing into a lake or river, or by shedding snowmelt on a meadow. Sometimes a piece of glacier will detach or break resulting in flooding, property damage, and loss of life.\nHigh levels of precipitation cause the glaciers to descend to permafrost levels in some areas whereas in other, more arid regions, glaciers remain above about the level. The of the Alps covered by glaciers in 1876 had shrunk to by 1973, resulting in decreased river run-off levels. Forty percent of the glaciation in Austria has disappeared since 1850, and 30% of that in Switzerland.\nAlthough the Alpine topography shows marked glacial morphologies, the mechanisms by which glacial reshaping occurs are unclear. Numerical modeling suggests that glacial erosion propagates from low elevations to high elevations leading to an early increase of local relief followed by lowering of the mean orogen elevation.\nRivers and lakes.\nThe Alps provide lowland Europe with drinking water, irrigation, and hydroelectric power. Although the area is only about 11% of the surface area of Europe, the Alps provide up to 90% of water to lowland Europe, particularly to arid areas and during the summer months. Cities such as Milan depend on 80% of water from Alpine runoff. Water from the rivers is used in at least 550 hydroelectricity power plants, considering only those producing at least 10MW of electricity.\nMajor European rivers flow from the Alps, such as the Rhine, the Rh\u00f4ne, the Inn, and the Po, all of which have headwaters in the Alps and flow into neighbouring countries, finally emptying into the North Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Adriatic Sea and the Black Sea. Other rivers such as the Danube have major tributaries flowing into them that originate in the Alps.\nThe Rh\u00f4ne is second to the Nile as a freshwater source to the Mediterranean Sea; the river begins as glacial meltwater, flows into Lake Geneva, and from there to France where one of its uses is to cool nuclear power plants. The Rhine originates in a area in Switzerland and represents almost 60% of water exported from the country. Tributary valleys, some of which are complicated, channel water to the main valleys which can experience flooding during the snowmelt season when rapid runoff causes debris torrents and swollen rivers.\nThe rivers form lakes, such as Lake Geneva, a crescent-shaped lake crossing the Swiss border with Lausanne on the Swiss side and the town of Evian-les-Bains on the French side. In Germany, the medieval St. Bartholomew's chapel was built on the south side of the K\u00f6nigssee, accessible only by boat or by climbing over the abutting peaks.\nAdditionally, the Alps have led to the creation of large lakes in Italy. For instance, the Sarca, the primary inflow of Lake Garda, originates in the Italian Alps. The Italian Lakes are a popular tourist destination since the Roman Era for their mild climate.\nScientists have been studying the impact of climate change and water use. For example, each year more water is diverted from rivers for snowmaking in the ski resorts, the effect of which is yet unknown. Furthermore, the decrease of glaciated areas combined with a succession of winters with lower-than-expected precipitation may have a future impact on the rivers in the Alps as well as an effect on the water availability to the lowlands.\nClimate.\nThe Alps are a classic example of what happens when a temperate area at lower altitude gives way to higher-elevation terrain. Elevations around the world that have cold climates similar to those of the polar regions have been called Alpine. A rise from sea level into the upper regions of the atmosphere causes the temperature to decrease (see adiabatic lapse rate). The effect of mountain chains on prevailing winds is to carry warm air belonging to the lower region into an upper zone, where it expands in volume at the cost of a proportionate loss of temperature, often accompanied by precipitation in the form of snow or rain. The height of the Alps is sufficient to divide the weather patterns in Europe into a wet north and dry south because moisture is sucked from the air as it flows over the high peaks.\nThe severe weather in the Alps has been studied since the 18th century; particularly the weather patterns such as the seasonal foehn wind. Numerous weather stations were placed in the mountains early in the early 20th century, providing continuous data for climatologists. Some of the valleys are quite arid such as the Aosta Valley in Italy, the Maurienne in France, the Valais in Switzerland, and northern Tyrol.\nThe areas that are not arid and receive high precipitation experience periodic flooding from rapid snowmelt and runoff. The mean precipitation in the Alps ranges from a low of per year to per year, with the higher levels occurring at high altitudes. At altitudes between , snowfall begins in November and accumulates through to April or May when the melt begins. Snow lines vary from , above which the snow is permanent and the temperatures hover around the freezing point even during July and August. High-water levels in streams and rivers peak in June and July when the snow is still melting at the higher altitudes.\nThe Alps are split into five climatic zones, each with different vegetation. The climate, plant life, and animal life vary among the different sections or zones of the mountains. The lowest zone is the colline zone, which exists between , depending on the location. The montane zone extends from , followed by the sub-Alpine zone from . The Alpine zone, extending from tree line to the snow line, is followed by the glacial zone, which covers the glaciated areas of the mountain. Climatic conditions show variances within the same zones; for example, weather conditions at the head of a mountain valley, extending directly from the peaks, are colder and more severe than those at the mouth of a valley which tend to be less severe and receive less snowfall.\nVarious models of climate change have been projected into the 22nd century for the Alps, with an expectation that a trend toward increased temperatures will have an effect on snowfall, snowpack, glaciation, and river runoff. Significant changes, of both natural and anthropogenic origins, have already been diagnosed from observations, including a 5.6% reduction per decade in snow cover duration over the last 50\u2009years, which also highlights climate change adaptation needs due to impacts on the climate and regional socio-economic activities.<ref name=\"10.1038/s41558-022-01575-3\"></ref>\nEcology.\nFlora.\nThirteen thousand species of plants have been identified in the Alpine regions. Alpine plants are grouped by habitat and soil type which can be limestone or non-calcareous. The habitats range from meadows, bogs, and woodland (deciduous and coniferous) areas to soil-less scree and moraines, and rock faces and ridges. A natural vegetation limit with altitude is given by the presence of the chief deciduous trees\u2014oak, beech, ash and sycamore maple. These do not reach the same elevation, nor are they often found growing together, but their upper limit corresponds accurately enough to the change from a temperate to a colder climate that is further proved by a change in the presence of wild herbaceous vegetation. This limit usually lies about above the sea on the north side of the Alps, but on the southern slopes it often rises to , sometimes even to .\nAbove the forestry, there is often a band of dwarf pine trees (\"Pinus mugo\"), which is in turn superseded by \"Alpenrosen\", dwarf shrubs, typically \"Rhododendron ferrugineum\" (on acid soils) or \"Rhododendron hirsutum\" (on alkaline soils). Although Alpenrose prefers acidic soil, the plants are found throughout the region. Above the tree line is the area defined as \"alpine\" where in the alpine meadow plants are found that have adapted well to harsh conditions of cold temperatures, aridity, and high altitudes. The alpine area fluctuates greatly because of regional fluctuations in tree lines.\nAlpine plants such as the Alpine gentian grow in abundance in areas such as the meadows above the Lauterbrunnental. Gentians are named after the Illyrian king Gentius, and 40 species of the early-spring blooming flower grow in the Alps, in a range of . Writing about the gentians in Switzerland D. H. Lawrence described them as \"darkening the day-time, torch-like with the smoking blueness of Pluto's gloom.\" Gentians tend to \"appear\" repeatedly as the spring blooming takes place at progressively later dates, moving from the lower altitude to the higher altitude meadows where the snow melts much later than in the valleys. On the highest rocky ledges, the spring flowers bloom in the summer.\nAt these higher altitudes, the plants tend to form isolated cushions. In the Alps, several species of flowering plants have been recorded above , including \"Ranunculus glacialis\", \"Androsace alpina\" and \"Saxifraga biflora\". \"Eritrichium nanum\", commonly known as the King of the Alps, is the most elusive of the alpine flowers, growing on rocky ridges at . Perhaps the best known of the alpine plants is Edelweiss which grows in rocky areas and can be found at altitudes as low as and as high as . The plants that grow at the highest altitudes have adapted to conditions by specialization such as growing in rock screes that give protection from winds.\nThe extreme and stressful climatic conditions give way to the growth of plant species with secondary metabolites important for medicinal purposes. \"Origanum vulgare\", \"Prunella vulgaris\", \"Solanum nigrum\", and \"Urtica dioica\" are some of the more useful medicinal species found in the Alps.\nHuman interference has nearly exterminated the trees in many areas, and, except for the beech forests of the Austrian Alps, forests of deciduous trees are rarely found after the extreme deforestation between the 17th and 19th centuries. The vegetation has changed since the second half of the 20th century, as the high alpine meadows cease to be harvested for hay or used for grazing which eventually might result in a regrowth of the forest. In some areas, the modern practice of building ski runs by mechanical means has destroyed the underlying tundra from which the plant life cannot recover during the non-skiing months, whereas areas that still practice a natural \"piste\" type of ski slope building preserve the fragile underlayers.\nFauna.\nThe Alps are a habitat for 30,000 species of wildlife, ranging from the tiniest snow fleas to brown bears, many of which have made adaptations to the harsh cold conditions and high altitudes to the point that some only survive in specific micro-climates either directly above or below the snow line.\nThe largest mammal to live in the highest altitudes are the alpine ibex, which have been sighted as high as . The ibex live in caves and descend to eat the succulent alpine grasses. Classified as antelopes, chamois are smaller than ibex and found throughout the Alps, living above the tree line and are common in the entire alpine range. Areas of the eastern Alps are still home to brown bears. In Switzerland the canton of Bern was named for the bears but the last bear is recorded as having been killed in 1792 above Kleine Scheidegg by three hunters from Grindelwald.\nMany rodents such as voles live underground. Marmots live almost exclusively above the tree line as high as . They hibernate in large groups to provide warmth, and can be found in all areas of the Alps, in large colonies they build beneath the alpine pastures. Golden eagles and bearded vultures are the largest birds to be found in the Alps; they nest high on rocky ledges and can be found at altitudes of . The most common bird is the alpine chough which can be found scavenging at climber's huts or the Jungfraujoch, a high-altitude tourist destination.\nReptiles such as adders and vipers live up to the snow line; because they cannot bear the cold temperatures they hibernate underground and soak up the warmth on rocky ledges. The high-altitude Alpine salamanders have adapted to living above the snow line by giving birth to fully developed young rather than laying eggs. Brown trout can be found in the streams up to the snow line. Molluscs such as the wood snail live up the snow line. Popularly gathered as food, the snails are now protected.\nSeveral species of moths live in the Alps, some of which are believed to have evolved in the same habitat up to 120\u00a0million years ago, long before the Alps were created. Blue butterflies can commonly be seen drinking from the snowmelt; some species of blues fly as high as . The butterflies tend to be large, such as those from the swallowtail \"Parnassius\" family, with a habitat that ranges to . Twelve species of beetles have habitats up to the snow line; the most beautiful and formerly collected for its colours but now protected is \"Rosalia alpina\". Spiders, such as the large wolf spider, live above the snow line and can be seen as high as . Scorpions can be found in the Italian Alps.\nSome of the species of moths and insects show evidence of having been indigenous to the area from as long ago as the Alpine orogeny. In \u00c9mosson in Valais, Switzerland, dinosaur tracks were found in the 1970s, dating probably from the Triassic Period.\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nWhen the ice melted after the W\u00fcrm glaciation, Paleolithic settlements were established along the lake shores and in cave systems. Evidence of human habitation has been found in caves near the Vercors Cave System, close to Grenoble and Echirolles. In Austria, the Mondsee lake shows evidence of houses built on piles. Standing stones have been found in the Alpine areas of France and Italy. About 200,000 drawings and etchings have been documented, and are known as the Rock Drawings in Valcamonica.\nA mummy of a Neolithic human, known as \u00d6tzi, was discovered on the Similaun. His clothing lets modern people assume that he was an alpine farmer, while the location and manner of his death suggests that \u00d6tzi was traveling. Analysis of the mitochondrial DNA of \u00d6tzi, has shown that he belongs to the K1 subclade. His remains and personal belongings are on exhibit at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, South Tyrol, Italy.\nFrom the 13th to the 6th century BC much of the Alps was settled by the Germanic peoples, Lombards, Alemanni, Bavarii, and Franks. Celt tribes settled in modern-day Switzerland between 1500 and 1000 BC. The Raeti lived in the eastern regions, while the west was occupied by the Helvetii and the Allobroges settled in the Rh\u00f4ne valley and in Savoy. The Ligures and Adriatic Veneti lived in Northwest Italy and Triveneto respectively. The Celts mined salt in areas such as Salzburg, where evidence was found of the Hallstatt culture. By the 6th century BC the La T\u00e8ne culture was well established in the region, and became known for high quality Celtic art.\nBetween 430 and 400 BC prolonged warfare in the Alps resulted in the devastation of agricultural land and human settlements, ultimately triggering the enslavement of men, women, and children, goods had to be imported as a result. The Etruscan civilization responded to raids by the Massalia and acquired absolute control over the Alpine trade routes. Aggressors in modern-day Italy were dealt with and an alliance was formed with the Celts. The grip of the Etruscan settlements broke down, as the Roman political system expanded, so as to take control over Alpine trade routes that connected human settlements in the Alps with settlements in the Mediterranean.\nDuring the Second Punic War in 218 BC, the Carthage general Hannibal initiated one of the most celebrated achievements of any military force in ancient warfare, recorded as Hannibal crossing the Alps. The Roman people built roads along the Alpine mountain passes, which continued to be used through the medieval period. Roman road markers can still be found on the Alpine mountain passes.\nDuring the Gallic Wars in 58 BC Julius Caesar defeated the Helvetii. The Rhaetian continued to resist but their territory was eventually conquered when the Romans crossed the Danube valley and defeated the Brigantes. The Romans built settlements in the Alps. In towns such as Aosta, Martigny, Lausanne, and Partenkirchen remains of villas, arenas, and temples have been discovered.\nChristianity, feudalism, and Napoleonic wars.\nChristianity was established in the Alps by the Roman people. Monasteries and churches were constructed, even at high Alpine altitudes. The Franks expanded their Carolingian Empire, while the Baiuvarii introduced feudalism in the eastern Alps. The construction of castles in the Alps supported the growing number of dukedoms and kingdoms. Castello del Buonconsiglio in Trento, still has intricate frescoes, and excellent examples of Gothic art. The Ch\u00e2teau de Chillon is preserved as an example of medieval architecture. There are several important alpine saints and one such one is Saint Maurice. Much of the medieval period was a time of power struggles between competing dynasties such as the House of Savoy, the Visconti of Milan, and the House of Habsburg.\nThe Great St Bernard Hospice, built in the 9th or 10th centuries, at the summit of the Great Saint Bernard Pass was a shelter for humans and destination for pilgrims. In 1291, to protect themselves from incursions by the House of Habsburg, four Alpine cantons drew up the Federal Charter of 1291, which is considered to be a declaration of independence from neighboring kingdoms. After a series of battles fought in the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, more cantons joined the confederacy and by the 16th century, Switzerland was established as a sovereign state.\nIn the Alps, the War of the Spanish Succession fallout resulted in a 1713 treaty, part of the Peace of Utrecht, which relocated the Western Alps border along the watersheds. Historically, the Alps were used to determine the borders of political and administrative gangs, but the Peace of Utrecht was the first significant body of treaty that considered geographical conditions. The Alps were carved up and borders were agreed, so that enclaves in the Alps could be eliminated.\nDuring the Napoleonic Wars in the late 18th century and early 19th century, Napoleon annexed territory formerly controlled by the House of Habsburg, and the House of Savoy. In 1798, the Helvetic Republic was established, two years later an army across the Great St Bernard Pass. In 1799 the Russian imperial military engaged the revolutionary French army in the Alps, this episode has been recorded as significant achievement in mountain warfare. In October 1799 the troops commanded by Alexander Suvorov were surrounded in the Alps by much larger French troops. The Russian troops broke out, mauled the French troops, and retreated through the Panix Pass.\nAfter the fall of Napoleon, many alpine countries developed heavy protections to prevent further invasion. Thus, Savoy built a series of fortifications to protect the major alpine passes, such as the col du Mont-Cenis, which was crossed by Charlemagne to obliterate the Lombards.\nIn the 19th century, the monasteries built in the Alps to shelter humans became tourist destinations. The Benedictines had built monasteries in Lucerne, and Oberammergau. The Cistercians built their temple at Lake Constance. Meanwhile, the Augustinians maintained abbeys in Savoy and one in Interlaken.\nExploration.\nRadiocarbon-dated charcoal placed around 50,000 years ago was found in the \"Drachloch\" (Dragon's Hole) cave above the village of Vattis in the canton of St. Gallen, proving that the high peaks were visited by prehistoric people. Seven bear skulls from the cave may have been buried by the same prehistoric people. The peaks, however, were mostly ignored except for a few notable examples, and long left to the exclusive attention of the people of the adjoining valleys. The mountain peaks were seen as terrifying, the abode of dragons and demons, to the point that people blindfolded themselves to cross the Alpine passes. The glaciers remained a mystery and many still believed the highest areas to be inhabited by dragons.\nCharles VII of France ordered his chamberlain to climb Mont Aiguille in 1356. The knight reached the summit of Rocciamelone where he left a bronze triptych of three crosses, a feat which he conducted with the use of ladders to traverse the ice. In 1492, Antoine de Ville climbed Mont Aiguille, without reaching the summit, an experience he described as \"horrifying and terrifying.\" Leonardo da Vinci was fascinated by variations of light in the higher altitudes, and climbed a mountain\u2014scholars are uncertain which one; some believe it may have been Monte Rosa. From his description of a \"blue like that of a gentian\" sky it is thought that he reached a significantly high altitude. In the 18th century four Chamonix men almost made the summit of Mont Blanc but were overcome by altitude sickness and snowblindness.\nConrad Gessner was the first naturalist to ascend the mountains in the 16th century, to study them, writing that in the mountains he found the \"theatre of the Lord\". By the 19th century more naturalists began to arrive to explore, study and conquer the high peaks. Two men who first explored the regions of ice and snow were Horace-B\u00e9n\u00e9dict de Saussure (1740\u20131799) in the Pennine Alps, and the Benedictine monk of Disentis Placidus a Spescha (1752\u20131833). Born in Geneva, Saussure was enamoured with the mountains from an early age; he left a law career to become a naturalist and spent many years trekking through the Bernese Oberland, the Savoy, the Piedmont and Valais, studying the glaciers and geology, as he became an early proponent of the theory of rock upheaval. Saussure, in 1787, was a member of the third ascent of Mont Blanc\u2014today the summits of all the peaks have been climbed.\nThe Romantics and Alpinists.\nAlbrecht von Haller's poem \"Die Alpen\", published in 1732 described the mountains as an area of mythical purity. Jean-Jacques Rousseau presented the Alps as a place of allure and beauty, in his novel \"Julie, or the New Heloise\", published in 1761. Later the first wave of Romanticism such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and J. M. W. Turner came to admire the Alpine scenery; Wordsworth visited the area in 1790, writing of his experiences in \"The Prelude\" (1799). Schiller later wrote the play \"William Tell\" (1804), which tells the story of the legendary Swiss marksman William Tell as part of the greater Swiss struggle for independence from the Habsburg Empire in the early 14th century. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Alpine countries began to see an influx of poets, artists, and musicians, as visitors came to experience the sublime effects of monumental nature.\nIn 1816, Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary Shelley visited Geneva and all three were inspired by the scenery in their writings. During these visits Shelley wrote the poem \"Mont Blanc\", Byron wrote \"The Prisoner of Chillon\" and the dramatic poem \"Manfred\", and Mary Shelley, who found the scenery overwhelming, conceived the idea for the novel \"Frankenstein\" in her villa on the shores of Lake Geneva amid a thunderstorm. When Coleridge travelled to Chamonix, he declaimed, in defiance of Shelley, who had signed himself \"Atheos\" in the guestbook of the Hotel de Londres near Montenvers, \"Who would be, who could be an atheist in this valley of wonders\".\nBy the mid-19th century scientists began to arrive en masse to study the geology and ecology of the region.\nFrom the beginning of the 19th century, the tourism and mountaineering development of the Alps began. In the early years of the \"golden age of alpinism\" initially scientific activities were mixed with sport, for example by the physicist John Tyndall, with the first ascent of the Matterhorn by Edward Whymper being the highlight. In the later years, the \"silver age of alpinism\", the focus was on mountain sports and climbing. The first president of the Alpine Club, John Ball, is considered the discoverer of the Dolomites, which for decades were the focus of climbers like Paul Grohmann, Michael Innerkofler and Angelo Dibona.\nThe Nazis.\nIn autumn 1932, Adolf Hitler commissioned the first of a series of refurbishments, which eventually turned a mountain cottage, later named Berghof, into a fortified citadel. This domestic, but representative, fortification had two small bedrooms, and a full bathroom, planned by the Munich architect and NSDAP member Josef Neumaier. Guests, such as Rudolf Hess, stayed over, sleeping in tents or over the garage.\nThe Alps, Adolf Hitler, and improbable powerful organizations have been subject to crime fiction. The Alps acted as a geographical barrier to Italy, and the Alps for centuries were permeated with established smuggling routes, known as \"green line\". After World War II, members of the Schutzstaffel that feared prosecution as war criminals, known in modern English only as \"SS\", disappeared into a crowd of refugees. Massive numbers of refugees entered Italy illegally, by navigating the Alps.\nUndocumented migrants.\nSmugglers of humans claim that crossing the Alps is less dangerous, or deadly, than traveling 355\u00a0km on water between Tripoli and Lampedusa with a tramp ship (\"carretta del mare\") or a dinghy. Undocumented migrants, visa overstayers, false tourists, asylum seekers, and other clandestine humans, lose their lives crossing the Alps. The exact number of smuggled humans who die a brutal death in the Alps can only be estimated.\nLargest Alpine cities.\nThe largest city within the Alps is the city of Grenoble in France. Other larger and important cities within the Alps with over 100,000 inhabitants are in Tyrol with Bolzano/Bozen (Italy), Trento (Italy) and Innsbruck (Austria). Larger cities outside the Alps are Milan, Verona, Turin (Italy), Munich (Germany), Graz, Vienna, Salzburg (Austria), Ljubljana, Maribor, Kranj (Slovenia), Zurich, Geneva (Switzerland), Nice and Lyon (France).\nCities with over 100,000 inhabitants in the Alps are:\nAlpine people and culture.\nThe population of the region is 14\u00a0million spread across eight countries. On the rim of the mountains, on the plateaus, and on the plains the economy consists of manufacturing and service jobs whereas in the higher altitudes and the mountains farming is still essential to the economy. Farming and forestry continue to be mainstays of Alpine culture, industries that provide for export to the cities and maintain the mountain ecology.\nThe Alpine regions are multicultural and linguistically diverse. Dialects are common and vary from valley to valley and region to region. In the Slavic Alps alone 19 dialects have been identified. Some of the Romance dialects spoken in the French, Swiss and Italian alps of Aosta Valley derive from Arpitan, while the southern part of the western range is related to Occitan; the German dialects derive from Germanic tribal languages. Romansh, spoken by two percent of the population in southeast Switzerland, is an ancient Rhaeto-Romanic language derived from Latin, remnants of ancient Celtic languages and perhaps Etruscan.\nMuch of the Alpine culture is unchanged since the medieval period when skills that guaranteed survival in the mountain valleys and the highest villages became mainstays, leading to strong traditions of carpentry, woodcarving, baking, pastry-making, and cheesemaking.\nFarming has been a traditional occupation for centuries, although it became less dominant in the 20th century with the advent of tourism. Grazing and pasture land are limited because of the steep and rocky topography of the Alps. In mid-June, cows are moved to the highest pastures close to the snowline, where they are watched by herdsmen who stay in the high altitudes often living in stone huts or wooden barns during the summers. Villagers celebrate the day the cows are herded up to the pastures and again when they return in mid-September. The Almabtrieb, Alpabzug, Alpabfahrt, D\u00e9salpes (\"coming down from the alps\") is celebrated by decorating the cows with garlands and enormous cowbells while the farmers dress in traditional costumes.\nCheesemaking is an ancient tradition in most Alpine countries. A wheel of cheese from the Emmental in Switzerland can weigh up to , and the Beaufort in Savoy can weigh up to . Owners of the cows traditionally receive from the cheesemakers a portion about the proportion of the cows' milk from the summer months in the high alps. Haymaking is an important farming activity in mountain villages that have become somewhat mechanized in recent years, although the slopes are so steep that scythes are usually necessary to cut the grass. Hay is normally brought in twice a year, often also on festival days.\nIn the high villages, people live in homes built according to medieval designs that withstand cold winters. The kitchen is separated from the living area (called the \"stube\", the area of the home heated by a stove), and second-floor bedrooms benefit from rising heat. The typical Swiss chalet originated in the Bernese Oberland. Chalets often face south or downhill and are built of solid wood, with a steeply gabled roof to allow accumulated snow to slide off easily. Stairs leading to upper levels are sometimes built on the outside, and balconies are sometimes enclosed.\nFood is passed from the kitchen to the stube, where the dining room table is placed. Some meals are communal, such as fondue, where a pot is set in the middle of the table for each person to dip into. Other meals are still served traditionally on carved wooden plates. Furniture has been traditionally elaborately carved and in many Alpine countries, carpentry skills are passed from generation to generation.\nRoofs are traditionally constructed from Alpine rocks such as pieces of schist, gneiss, or slate. Such chalets are typically found in the higher parts of the valleys, as in the Maurienne valley in Savoy, where the amount of snow during the cold months is important. The inclination of the roof cannot exceed 40%, allowing the snow to stay on top, thereby functioning as insulation from the cold. In the lower areas where the forests are widespread, wooden tiles are traditionally used. Commonly made of Norway spruce, they are called \"tavaillon\".\nIn the German-speaking parts of the Alps (Austria, Bavaria, South Tyrol, Liechtenstein and Switzerland) and also Slovenia, there is a strong tradition of Alpine folk culture. Old traditions are carefully maintained among inhabitants of Alpine areas, even though this is seldom obvious to the visitor: many people are members of cultural associations where the Alpine folk culture is cultivated. At cultural events, traditional folk costume (in German \"Tracht\") is expected: typically lederhosen for men and dirndls for women. Visitors can get a glimpse of the rich customs of the Alps at public Volksfeste. Even when large events feature only a little folk culture, all participants take part with gusto. Good opportunities to see local people celebrating the traditional culture occur at the many fairs, wine festivals, and firefighting festivals which fill weekends in the countryside from spring to autumn. Alpine festivals vary from country to country. Frequently they include music (e.g. the playing of Alpenhorns), dance (e.g. Schuhplattler), sports (e.g. wrestling marches and archery), as well as traditions with pagan roots such as the lighting of fires on Walpurgis Night and Saint John's Eve. Many areas celebrate Fastnacht in the weeks before Lent. Folk costume also continues to be worn for most weddings and festivals.\nTourism.\nThe Alps are one of the more popular tourist destinations in the world with many resorts such as Oberstdorf, in Bavaria, Saalbach in Austria, Davos in Switzerland, Chamonix in France, and Cortina d'Ampezzo in Italy recording more than a million annual visitors. With over 120\u00a0million visitors a year, tourism is integral to the Alpine economy with much of it coming from winter sports, although summer visitors are also an important component.\nThe tourism industry began in the early 19th century when foreigners visited the Alps, travelled to the bases of the mountains to enjoy the scenery, and stayed at the spa-resorts. Large hotels were built during the Belle \u00c9poque; cog-railways, built early in the 20th century, brought tourists to ever-higher elevations, with the Jungfraubahn terminating at the Jungfraujoch, well above the eternal snow-line, after going through a tunnel in Eiger. During this period winter sports were slowly introduced: in 1882 the first figure skating championship was held in St. Moritz, and downhill skiing became a popular sport with English visitors early in the 20th century, as the first ski-lift was installed in 1908 above Grindelwald.\nIn the first half of the 20th century the Olympic Winter Games were held three times in Alpine venues: the 1924 Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France; the 1928 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland; and the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. During World War II the winter games were cancelled but after that time the Winter Games have been held in St. Moritz (1948), Cortina d'Ampezzo (1956), Innsbruck, Austria (1964 and 1976), Grenoble, France, (1968), Albertville, France, (1992), and Turin (2006). In 1930, the \"Lauberhorn Rennen\" (Lauberhorn Race), was run for the first time on the Lauberhorn above Wengen; the equally demanding Hahnenkamm was first run in the same year in Kitzb\u00fchl, Austria. Both races continue to be held each January on successive weekends. The Lauberhorn is the more strenuous downhill race at and poses danger to racers who reach within seconds of leaving the start gate.\nDuring the post-World War I period, ski lifts were built in Swiss and Austrian towns to accommodate winter visitors, and summer tourism continued to be important. By the mid-20th century the popularity of downhill skiing increased greatly as it became more accessible and in the 1970s several new villages were built in France devoted almost exclusively to skiing, such as Les Menuires. Until this point, Austria and Switzerland had been the traditional and more popular destinations for winter sports, and by the end of the 20th century and into the early 21st century, France, Italy, and Tyrol began to see increases in winter visitors. Since the 1980s tourism expansion and easy global access generate grave concerns regarding the loss of traditional Alpine culture and many uncertainties about sustainable development. As a likely result of climatic change, the number of high altitude ski resorts and piste km is in decline since 2015, with snow-making machines installed at many sites.\nTransportation.\nThe region is serviced by of roads used by six million vehicles per year. Train travel is well established in the Alps, with, for instance of track for every in a country such as Switzerland. Most of Europe's highest railways are located there. In 2007, the new L\u00f6tschberg Base Tunnel was opened, which circumvents the 100 years older L\u00f6tschberg Tunnel. With the opening of the Gotthard Base Tunnel on June 1, 2016, it bypasses the Gotthard Tunnel built in the 19th century and realizes the first flat route through the Alps.\nSome high mountain villages are car-free either because of inaccessibility or by choice. Wengen, and Zermatt (in Switzerland) are accessible only by cable car or cog-rail trains. Avoriaz (in France), is car-free, with other Alpine villages considering becoming car-free zones or limiting the number of cars for reasons of sustainability of the fragile Alpine terrain.\nThe lower regions and larger towns of the Alps are well-served by motorways and main roads, but higher mountain passes and byroads, which are amongst the highest in Europe, can be treacherous even in summer due to steep slopes. Many passes are closed in winter. Several airports around the Alps (and some within), as well as long-distance rail links from all neighbouring countries, afford large numbers of travellers easy access.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nWorks cited.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "11421146": "Margraviate of Austria\nSoutheastern frontier march of the Holy Roman Empire, c. 970\u20131156\nThe Margraviate of Austria (; ) was a medieval frontier march, centered along the river Danube, between the river Enns and the Vienna Woods (), within the territory of the modern Austrian provinces of Upper Austria and Lower Austria. It existed from c.\u2009970 to 1156.\nIt stemmed from the previous frontier structures, initially created for the defense of eastern Bavarian borders against the Avars, who were defeated and conquered during the reign of Charlemagne (d. 814). Throughout the Frankish period, the region was under jurisdiction of Eastern Frankish rulers, who held Bavaria and appointed frontier commanders (counts) in eastern regions.\nAt the beginning of the 10th century, the region was raided by Magyars. They were defeated in the Battle of Lechfeld (955) and gradual German reconquest of the region began. By about 970, newly retaken frontier regions along the river Danube were reorganized into a frontier county (margraviate) that became known as the Bavarian Eastern March () or (). The first known margrave was Burkhard, who is mentioned in sources since 970 several times as Margrave of Marcha orientalis.\nSince 976, it was governed by margraves from the Franconian noble House of Babenberg. The margraviate was protecting the eastern borders of the Holy Roman Empire, towards neighbouring Hungary. It became an Imperial State in its own right, when the Austrian margraves were elevated to Dukes of Austria in 1156.\nName.\nIn contemporary Latin sources, the entity was called: ' (\"Eastern march\"), , or . The Old High German name ' first appeared on a famous deed of donation issued by Emperor Otto III at in November 996. The phrase , that is, \"the region commonly called \", probably only referred to some estates around the manor of ; nevertheless the term is linguistic ancestor of the German name for Austria, .\nLater the march was also called the \"Margraviate of Austria\" () or the \"Bavarian Eastern March\" (, the second word being a German translation of , though no example of this usage in relation to Austria is known before the 19th century). The \"Bavarian\" designation is used in historiography in order to differentiate it from the Saxon Eastern March () in the northeast. During the period of 1938\u201345 the Nazi authorities tried to replace the term \"Austria\" with .\nGeography.\nThe march comprised the lands north and south of the Danube river, with the tributary in the west forming the border with the shire of the Bavarian stem duchy. The eastern frontier with the Hungarian settlement area in the Pannonian Basin ran along the Morava (\"March\") and Leitha rivers, with the borderland (the present-day region) beyond. In the north, the march bordered on the Bohemian duchy of the P\u0159emyslids, and the lands in the south belonged to the Dukes of Carinthia, also newly instated in 976. The early march corresponded closely to the modern region of Lower Austria.\nThe initial Babenberger residence was probably at on the former Roman , but maybe already Melk, where subsequent rulers resided. The original march coincided with the modern Wachau, but was shortly enlarged eastwards at least as far as the . Under Margrave Ernest the Brave (1055\u20131075), the colonisation of the northern up to the Thaya river and the Bohemian march of Moravia was begun, and the Hungarian March was merged into Austria. The margraves' residence later was moved down the Danube to until 1145, when Vienna became the official capital. The Babenbergs had a defense system of several castles built in the Wienerwald mountain range and along the Danube river, among them . The surrounding area was colonized and Christianized by the Bavarian Bishops of Passau, with ecclesiastical centres at the Benedictine abbey of , at Monastery and Abbey.\nThe early margraviate was populated by a mix of Slavic and native Romano-Germanic peoples who were apparently speaking Rhaeto-Romance languages, remnants of which remain today in parts of northern Italy (Friulian and Ladin) and in Switzerland (Romansh). In the Austrian Alps some valleys retained their Rhaeto-Romance speakers until the 17th century.\nHistory.\nBackground.\nThe first marches covering approximately the territory that would become Austria and Slovenia were the Avar March and the adjacent March of (the later March of Carinthia) in the south. Both were established in the late 8th century by Charlemagne upon the incorporation of the territory of the Agilolfing dukes of Bavaria against the invasions of the Avars. When the Avars disappeared in the 820s, they were replaced largely by West Slavs, who settled here within the state of Great Moravia. The March of Pannonia was set apart from the Duchy of Friuli in 828 and set up as a march against Moravia within the East Frankish of Bavaria. These march, already called , corresponded to a frontier along the Danube from the Traungau to and the river including the Vienna basin. By the 890s, the Pannonian march seems to have disappeared, along with the threat from Great Moravia, during the Hungarian invasions of Europe. Upon the defeat of Margrave Luitpold of Bavaria at the 907 Battle of Pressburg, all East Frankish lands beyond the Enns river were lost.\nMargraviate.\nIn 955, King Otto I of Germany had started the reconquest with his victory at the 955 Battle of Lechfeld. The obscurity of the period from circa 900 until 976 leads some to posit that a Pannonian or Austrian march existed against the Magyars, alongside the other marches which had been incorporated into Bavaria by 952 (Carniola, Carinthia, Istria, and Verona). However, much of Pannonia was still conquered by the Magyars. Otto I had a new Eastern March () erected and by about 960, he appointed Burchard as margrave. In 976, during a general restructuring of Bavaria upon the insurrection of Duke Henry II the Wrangler, Otto's son and successor Emperor Otto II deposed Burchard and appointed the Babenberg count Leopold the Illustrious from the House of Babenberg margrave in turn for his support. \nMargravial Austria reached its greatest height under Leopold III, a great friend of the church and founder of abbeys. He patronised towns and developed a great level of territorial independence. In 1139, Leopold IV inherited Bavaria. When his successor, the last margrave, Henry Jasomirgott, was deprived of Bavaria in 1156, Austria was elevated to a duchy independent from Bavaria by the of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. From 1192 the House of Babenberg also ruled over the neighbouring Duchy of Styria. The line became extinct with the death of Duke Frederick II of Austria at the 1246 Battle of the Leitha River. The heritage was finally asserted by the German king Rudolph of Habsburg against King Ottokar II of Bohemia in the 1278 Battle on the Marchfeld.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["4035865", "25845", "981", "11421146"], "permutation_1": ["981", "25845", "11421146", "4035865"], "permutation_2": ["4035865", "981", "25845", "11421146"], "permutation_3": ["25845", "11421146", "981", "4035865"]}
{"id": "4hop3__21483_551941_527723_24137", "docs_added": {"30784578": "Steven Segaloff\nAmerican rower\nSteven C. Segaloff (born July 21, 1970 in New Haven, Connecticut) is an American rowing cox. He finished 5th in the men's eight at the 1996 Summer Olympics.\nLife and career.\nSegaloff attended Cornell University, where he was active on the university's rowing team. He later attended the University of Chicago Law School where he graduated in 2000 with a J.D. He was an associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore from 2000 to 2004, and later became Vice President and General Counsel of National Financial Partners. From 2006 to 2013, Segaloff was Deputy General Counsel at Plainfield Asset Management and from 2013 to 2017 General Counsel at Genesys Global. In November 2017, Segaloff founded his own company Bellnote Partners LLC together with co-founder Carl Sheldon.\nSteven Segaloff was the cox in the United States men's eight, which became world champion in 1994 and won bronze medals in 1993 and 1995. Segaloff won gold at the Pan-American Games in 1995 with the men's eight and with the men's four. He participated in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, where his boat finished fifth.", "53825": "New Haven, Connecticut\nNew Haven is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is the third largest city in Connecticut after Bridgeport and Stamford, the largest city in the South Central Connecticut Planning Region, and the principal municipality of Greater New Haven, which had a total population of 864,835 in 2020.\nNew Haven was one of the first planned cities in the U.S. A year after its founding by English Puritans in 1638, eight streets were laid out in a four-by-four grid, creating the \"Nine Square Plan\". The central common block is the New Haven Green, a square at the center of Downtown New Haven. The Green is now a National Historic Landmark, and the \"Nine Square Plan\" is recognized by the American Planning Association as a National Planning Landmark.\nNew Haven is the home of Yale University, New Haven's biggest taxpayer and employer, and an integral part of the city's economy. Health care, professional and financial services and retail trade also contribute to the city's economic activity.\nThe city served as co-capital of Connecticut from 1701 until 1873, when sole governance was transferred to the more centrally located city of Hartford. New Haven has since billed itself as the \"Cultural Capital of Connecticut\" for its supply of established theaters, museums, and music venues. New Haven had the first public tree planting program in the U.S., producing a canopy of mature trees (including some large elms) that gave the city the nickname \"The Elm City\".\nHistory.\nPre-colonial foundation as an independent colony.\nBefore Europeans arrived, the New Haven area was the home of the Quinnipiac tribe of Native Americans, who lived in villages around the harbor and sustained an economy of local fisheries and the farming of maize. The area was briefly visited by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block in 1614. Dutch traders set up a small trading system of beaver pelts with the local inhabitants, but trade was sporadic and the Dutch did not settle permanently in the area.\nIn 1637, a small party of Puritans did a reconnaissance of the New Haven harbor area and wintered over. In April 1638, the main party of five hundred Puritans, who had left the Massachusetts Bay Colony under the leadership of Reverend John Davenport and London merchant Theophilus Eaton, sailed into the harbor. It was their hope to set up a theological community with the government more closely linked to the church than that in Massachusetts, and to exploit the area's potential as a port. The Quinnipiacs, who were under attack by neighboring Pequots, sold their land to the settlers in return for a pledge of protection.\nBy 1640, \"Quinnipiac's\" theocratic government and nine-square grid plan were in place, and the town was renamed New Haven, with 'haven' meaning harbor or port. However, the area to the north remained Quinnipiac until 1678, when it was renamed Hamden. The settlement became the headquarters of the New Haven Colony, distinct from the Connecticut Colony previously established to the north centering on Hartford. Reflecting its theocratic roots, the New Haven Colony forbade the establishment of other churches, whereas the Connecticut Colony permitted them.\nEconomic disaster struck New Haven in 1646, when the town sent its first fully loaded ship of local goods (the \"Great Shippe\") back to England. It never reached its destination, and its disappearance hindered New Haven's development as compared to the rising trade powers of Boston and New Amsterdam (modern day New York City).\nIn 1660, Colony founder John Davenport's wishes were fulfilled, and Hopkins School was founded in New Haven with money from the estate of Edward Hopkins.\nIn 1661, the Regicides who had signed the death warrant of Charles I of England were pursued by Charles II. Two of them, Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe, fled to New Haven for refuge. Davenport arranged for them to hide in the West Rock hills northwest of the town. A third judge, John Dixwell, later joined the others. None of the three were ever returned to England for trial; Dixwell died of old age in New Haven, the others likewise elsewhere in New England.\nAs part of the Connecticut Colony.\nIn 1664, New Haven became part of the Connecticut Colony when the two colonies were merged under political pressure from England. Seeking to establish a new theocracy elsewhere, some members of the New Haven Colony went on to establish Newark, New Jersey.\nNew Haven was made co-capital of Connecticut in 1701, a status it retained until 1873.\nIn 1716, the Collegiate School relocated from Old Saybrook to New Haven, establishing it as a center of learning. In 1718, in response to a large donation from East India Company merchant Elihu Yale, former Governor of Madras, the Collegiate School was renamed Yale College.\nFor over a century, New Haven citizens had fought in the colonial militia alongside regular British forces, including the French and Indian War. As the American Revolution approached, General David Wooster and other influential residents hoped that the conflict with the British parliament could be resolved short of rebellion. On April 23, 1775, Captain Benedict Arnold commanded the Second Company, Governor's Foot Guard, of New Haven to break into the powder house to arm themselves for a three-day march to Cambridge, Massachusetts, an event still celebrated in New Haven as Powder House Day. Other New Haven militia members were on hand to escort George Washington from his overnight stay in New Haven on his way to Cambridge. Contemporary reports, from both sides, remark on the New Haven volunteers' professional military bearing, including uniforms.\nOn July 5, 1779, 2,600 loyalists and British regulars under General William Tryon, governor of New York, landed in New Haven Harbor and raided the town of 3,500. A militia of Yale students had been preparing for battle, and former Yale president and Yale Divinity School professor Naphtali Daggett rode out to confront the Redcoats. Yale president Ezra Stiles recounted in his diary that while he moved furniture in anticipation of battle, he still couldn't quite believe the revolution had begun. New Haven was not torched as the invaders did with Danbury in 1777, or Fairfield and Norwalk a week after the New Haven raid, preserving many of the town's colonial features.\nPost-colonial period and industrialization.\nNew Haven was incorporated as a city in 1784, and Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Constitution and author of the \"Connecticut Compromise\", became the new city's first mayor.\nThe city struck fortune in the late 18th century with the inventions and industrial activity of Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate who remained in New Haven to develop the cotton gin and establish a gun-manufacturing factory in the northern part of the city near the Hamden town line. That area is still known as Whitneyville, and the main road through both towns is known as Whitney Avenue. The factory is now the Eli Whitney Museum, which has a particular emphasis on activities for children and exhibits pertaining to the A. C. Gilbert Company. His factory, along with that of Simeon North, and the lively clock-making and brass hardware sectors, contributed to making early Connecticut a powerful manufacturing economy; so many arms manufacturers sprang up that the state became known as \"The Arsenal of America\". It was in Whitney's gun-manufacturing plant that Samuel Colt invented the automatic revolver in 1836. Many other talented machinists and firearms designers would go on to found successful firearms manufacturing companies in New Haven, including Oliver Winchester and O.F. Mossberg & Sons.\nThe Farmington Canal, created in the early 19th century, was a short-lived transporter of goods into the interior regions of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and ran from New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts.\nNew Haven was to be the site of the first college for African Americans in the United States, but the plan was obstructed by efforts led by Yale Law School founder and former New Haven Mayor David Daggett, who went on to serve as a U.S. Senator and judge on Connecticut's highest court. Daggett denigrated African Americans, denied they were citizens, and presided over the trial of a woman persecuted for trying to admit an African American girl to her boarding school and, having that effort blocked, running a boarding school for African American girls.\nNew Haven was home to one of the important early events in the burgeoning anti-slavery movement when, in 1839, the trial of mutineering Mende tribesmen being transported as slaves on the Spanish slaveship \"Amistad\" was held in New Haven's United States District Court. There is a statue of Joseph Cinqu\u00e9, the informal leader of the slaves, beside City Hall. See \"Museums\" below for more information. Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech on slavery in New Haven in 1860, shortly before he secured the Republican nomination for President.\nThe American Civil War boosted the local economy with wartime purchases of industrial goods, including that of the New Haven Arms Company, which would later become the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. (Winchester would continue to produce arms in New Haven until 2006, and many of the buildings that were a part of the Winchester plant are now a part of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company Historic District). After the war, population grew and doubled by the start of the 20th century, most notably due to the influx of immigrants from southern Europe, particularly Italy. Today, roughly half the populations of East Haven, West Haven, and North Haven are Italian-American. Jewish immigration to New Haven has left an enduring mark on the city. Westville was the center of Jewish life in New Haven, though today many have fanned out to suburban communities such as Woodbridge and Cheshire. Lowell House, the city's first settlement, opened in 1900.\nPost-industrial era and urban redevelopment.\nNew Haven's expansion continued during the two World Wars, with most new inhabitants being African Americans from the American South, and Puerto Ricans. The city reached its peak population after World War II. The area of New Haven is only , encouraging further development of new housing after 1950 in adjacent, suburban towns. Moreover, as in other U.S. cities in the 1950s, New Haven began to suffer white flight of middle-class workers. One author suggested that aggressive redlining and rezoning made it difficult for residents to obtain financing for older, deteriorating urban housing stock, thereby condemning such structures to deterioration.\nIn 1954, then-mayor Richard C. Lee began some of the earliest major urban renewal projects in the United States. Certain sections of downtown New Haven were redeveloped to include museums, new office towers, a hotel, and large shopping complexes. Other parts of the city, particularly the Wooster Square and Fair Haven neighborhoods were affected by the construction of Interstate 95 along the Long Wharf section, Interstate 91, and the Oak Street Connector. The Oak Street Connector (Route 34), running between Interstate 95, downtown, and The Hill neighborhood, was originally intended as a highway to the city's western suburbs but was only completed as a highway to the downtown area, with the area to the west becoming a boulevard (See \"Redevelopment\" below).\nIn 1970, a series of criminal prosecutions against various members of the Black Panther Party took place in New Haven, inciting mass protests on the New Haven Green involving twelve thousand demonstrators and many well-known New Left political activists. (See \"Political Culture\" below for more information). From the 1960s through the early 1990s, some areas of New Haven continued to decline both economically and in terms of population despite attempts to resurrect certain neighborhoods through renewal projects. In conjunction with its declining population, New Haven experienced a steep rise in its crime rate.\nSince approximately 2000, many parts of downtown New Haven have been revitalized with new restaurants, nightlife, and small retail stores. In particular, the area surrounding the New Haven Green has experienced an influx of apartments and condominiums. In addition, two new supermarkets opened to serve downtown's growing residential population: a Stop & Shop opened just west of downtown, while Elm City Market, located one block from the Green, opened in 2011. The recent turnaround of downtown New Haven has received positive press from various periodicals.\nMajor projects include the current construction of a new campus for Gateway Community College downtown, and also a 32-story, 500-unit apartment/retail building called 360 State Street. The 360 State Street project is now occupied and is the largest residential building in Connecticut. A new boathouse and dock is planned for New Haven Harbor, and the linear park Farmington Canal Trail is set to extend into downtown New Haven within the coming year. Additionally, foundation and ramp work to widen I-95 to create a new harbor crossing for New Haven, with an extradosed bridge to replace the 1950s-era Q Bridge, has begun. The city still hopes to redevelop the site of the New Haven Coliseum, which was demolished in 2007.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 18 white firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no black firefighters scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. In the subsequent \"Ricci v. DeStefano\" decision the court found 5\u20134 that New Haven's decision to ignore the test results violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a result, a district court subsequently ordered the city to promote 14 of the white firefighters.\nIn 2010 and 2011, state and federal funds were awarded to Connecticut (and Massachusetts) to construct the Hartford Line, with a southern terminus at New Haven's Union Station and a northern terminus at Springfield's Union Station. According to the White House, \"This corridor [currently] has one train per day connecting communities in Connecticut and Massachusetts to the Northeast Corridor and Vermont. The vision for this corridor is to restore the alignment to its original route via the Knowledge Corridor in western Massachusetts, improving trip time and increasing the population base that can be served.\" Set for construction in 2013, the \"Knowledge Corridor high speed intercity passenger rail\" project will cost approximately $1\u00a0billion, and the ultimate northern terminus for the project is reported to be Montreal in Canada. Train speeds between will reportedly exceed and increase both cities' rail traffic exponentially.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 6.67%, is water.\nNew Haven's best-known geographic features are its large, shallow harbor, and two reddish basalt trap rock ridges which rise to the northeast and northwest of the city core. These trap rocks are known respectively as East Rock and West Rock, and both serve as extensive parks. West Rock has been tunneled through to make way for the east\u2013west passage of the Wilbur Cross Parkway (the only highway tunnel through a natural obstacle in Connecticut), and once served as the hideout of the \"Regicides\" (see: Regicides Trail). Most New Haveners refer to these men as \"The Three Judges\". East Rock features the prominent Soldiers and Sailors war monument on its peak as well as the \"Great/Giant Steps\" which run up the rock's cliffside.\nThe city is drained by three rivers; the West, Mill, and Quinnipiac, named in order from west to east. The West River discharges into West Haven Harbor, while the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers discharge into New Haven Harbor. Both harbors are embayments of Long Island Sound. In addition, several smaller streams flow through the city's neighborhoods, including Wintergreen Brook, the Beaver Ponds Outlet, Wilmot Brook, Belden Brook, and Prospect Creek. Not all of these small streams have continuous flow year-round.\nClimate.\nAccording to the K\u00f6ppen classification, New Haven experiences a humid subtropical climate (\"Cfa\"), bordering a hot-summer humid continental climate (\"Dfa\"). The city has hot, humid summers and cool to cold winters. From May to late September, the weather is typically hot and humid, with average temperatures exceeding on 70 days per year. In summer, the Bermuda High creates as southern flow of warm and humid air, with frequent (but brief) thundershowers. October to early December is normally mild to cool late in the season, while early spring (April) can be cool to warm. Winters are more variable, with cool to cold temperatures, mixed with warmer spells, with both rain and snow fall.\nWhile the weather patterns that affect New Haven result from a primarily offshore direction, thus reducing the marine influence of Long Island Sound, the location on Long Island Sound often influences the weather along the coastline compared to inland. During summer heat waves, temperatures may reach or higher on occasion with heat-index values of over . Tropical cyclones have struck New Haven in the past, including 1938 Hurricane (Long Island Express), Hurricane Carol in 1954, Hurricane Gloria in 1985. The hardiness zone is 7a.\nStreetscape.\nNew Haven has a long tradition of urban planning and a purposeful design for the city's layout. The city could be argued to have some of the first preconceived layouts in the country. Upon founding, New Haven was laid out in a grid plan of nine square blocks; the central square was left open, in the tradition of many New England towns, as the city green (a commons area). The city also instituted the first public tree planting program in America. As in other cities, many of the elms that gave New Haven the nickname \"Elm City\" perished in the mid-20th century due to Dutch elm disease, although many have since been replanted. The New Haven Green is currently home to three separate historic churches which speak to the original theocratic nature of the city. The Green remains the social center of the city today. It was named a National Historic Landmark in 1970.\nDowntown New Haven, occupied by nearly 7,000 residents, has a more residential character than most downtowns. The downtown area provides about half of the city's jobs and half of its tax base and in recent years has become filled with dozens of new upscale restaurants, in addition to shops and thousands of apartments and condominium units which subsequently help overall growth of the city.\nNeighborhoods.\nThe city has many distinct neighborhoods. In addition to Downtown, centered on the central business district and the Green, are the following neighborhoods: the west central neighborhoods of Dixwell and Dwight; the southern neighborhoods of The Hill, historic water-front City Point (or Oyster Point), and the harborside district of Long Wharf; the western neighborhoods of Beaver Hills, Edgewood, West River, Westville, Amity, and West Rock-Westhills; East Rock, Cedar Hill, Prospect Hill, and Newhallville in the northern side of town; the east central neighborhoods of Mill River and Wooster Square, an Italian-American neighborhood; Fair Haven, an immigrant community located between the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers; Quinnipiac Meadows and Fair Haven Heights across the Quinnipiac River; and facing the eastern side of the harbor, The Annex and East Shore (or Morris Cove).\nDemographics.\nCensus data.\n<templatestyles src=\"Module:Historical populations/styles.css\"/>\n2010 census.\nThe U.S. Census Bureau reports a 2010 population of 129,779, with 47,094 households and 25,854 families within the city of New Haven. The population density was . There were 52,941 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 42.6% White, 35.4% African American, 0.5% Native American, 4.6% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 12.9% from other races, and 3.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 27.4% of the population. Non-Hispanic Whites were 31.8% of the population in 2010, down from 69.6% in 1970. The city's Latino population is growing rapidly. Previous influxes among ethnic groups have been African-Americans in the postwar era, and Irish, Italian and (to a lesser degree) Slavic peoples in the prewar period.\nAs of the 2010 census, of the 47,094 households, 29.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 27.5% include married couples living together, 22.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 45.1% were non-families. 36.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.5% had someone living alone who was 65\u00a0years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40 and the average family size 3.19.\nThe ages of New Haven's residents were 25.4% under the age of 18, 16.4% from 18 to 24, 31.2% from 25 to 44, 16.7% from 45 to 64, and 10.2% who were 65\u00a0years of age or older. The median age was 29\u00a0years, which was significantly lower than the national average. There were 91.8 males per 100 females. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.6 males.\nThe median income for a household in the city was $29,604, and the median income for a family was $35,950. Median income for males was $33,605, compared with $28,424 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,393. About 20.5% of families and 24.4% of the population were living below the poverty line, including 32.2% of those under age 18 and 17.9% of those age 65 or over.\nOther data.\nIt is estimated that 14% of New Haven residents are pedestrian commuters, ranking it number four by highest percentage in the United States. This is primarily due to New Haven's small area and the presence of Yale University.\nNew Haven is noted for having the highest percentage of Italian American residents of any US city, and is noted for its local style of pizza.\nA study of the demographics of the New Haven metro area, based on age, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity, found that they were the closest of any American city to the national average.\nEconomy.\nNew Haven's economy originally was based in manufacturing, but the postwar period brought rapid industrial decline; the entire Northeast was affected, and medium-sized cities with large working-class populations, like New Haven, were hit particularly hard. Simultaneously, the growth and expansion of Yale University further affected the economic shift. Today, over half (56%) of the city's economy is now made up of services, in particular education and health care; Yale is the city's largest employer, followed by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital. Other large employers include Southern Connecticut State University, Assa Abloy lock manufacturing, the Knights of Columbus headquarters, Higher One, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Covidien and United Illuminating. Clothing stores Gant and Ann Taylor were founded in the city.\nIn 2017, New Haven was ranked by a Verizon study as one of the top 10 cities in America for launching tech startups, and top two in New England.\nIndustry sectors: Agriculture (.6%), Construction and Mining (4.9%), Manufacturing (2.9%), Transportation and Utilities (2.9%), Trade (21.7%), Finance and Real Estate (7.1%), Services (55.9%), Government (4.0%)\nHeadquarters.\nThe Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization and a Fortune 1000 company, is headquartered in New Haven. Amphenol, based in Greater New Haven (Wallingford), is a Fortune 100 company. Eight Courant 100 companies are based in Greater New Haven, with four headquartered in New Haven proper. New Haven-based companies traded on stock exchanges include NewAlliance Bank, the second largest bank in Connecticut and fourth-largest in New England (NYSE: NAL), Higher One Holdings (NYSE: ONE), a financial services firm, United Illuminating, the electricity distributor for southern Connecticut (NYSE: UIL), and Transpro Inc. (AMEX: TPR). The American division of Assa Abloy (one of the world's leading manufacturers of locks) is located in the city. The Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET) began operations in the city as the District Telephone Company of New Haven in 1878; the company remains headquartered in New Haven as a subsidiary of Frontier Communications and provides telephone service for all but two municipalities in Connecticut. SeeClickFix was founded and has been headquartered in the city since 2007. Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company (a candy-making division of the Hershey Company) was formerly located in the city. Achillion Pharmaceuticals and Alexion Pharmaceuticals were also formerly headquartered in New Haven.\nLaw and government.\nPolitical structure.\nNew Haven is governed via the mayor-council system. Connecticut municipalities (like those of neighboring states Massachusetts and Rhode Island) provide nearly all local services (such as fire and rescue, education, snow removal, etc.), as county government has been abolished since 1960.\nNew Haven County merely refers to a grouping of towns and a judicial district, not a governmental entity. New Haven is a member of the South Central Connecticut Regional Council of Governments (SCRCOG), a regional agency created to facilitate coordination between area municipal governments and state and federal agencies, in the absence of county government.\nJustin Elicker is the mayor of New Haven. He was sworn in as the 51st mayor of New Haven on January 1, 2020.\nThe city council, called the Board of Alders, consists of thirty members, each elected from single-member wards. Each of the 30 wards consists of slightly over 4,300 residents; redistricting takes place every ten years.\nThe city is overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2017, of the town's 83,694 voters, 66% were registered as Democrats (\u22124% since 2015), 4% were registered as Republicans (+1%), and 29% were unaffiliated (+3). The board of alders is dominated by Democrats; a Republican has not served as a New Haven alder since 2011.\nNew Haven is served by the New Haven Police Department, which had 443 sworn officers in 2011. The city is also served by the New Haven Fire Department.\nNew Haven lies within Connecticut's 3rd congressional district and has been represented by Rosa DeLauro since 1991. Martin Looney and Gary Holder-Winfield represent New Haven in the Connecticut State Senate, and the city lies within six districts (numbers 92 through 97) of the Connecticut House of Representatives.\nThe Greater New Haven area is served by the New Haven Judicial District Court and the New Haven Superior Court, both headquartered at the New Haven County Courthouse. The federal District Court for the District of Connecticut has a New Haven facility, the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse.\nPolitical history.\nNew Haven is the birthplace of former president George W. Bush, who was born when his father, former president George H. W. Bush, was living in New Haven while a student at Yale. In addition to being the site of the college educations of both Presidents Bush, as Yale students, New Haven was also the temporary home of former presidents William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, and Bill Clinton, as well as Secretary of State John Kerry. President Clinton met his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while the two were students at Yale Law School. Former vice presidents John C. Calhoun and Dick Cheney also studied in New Haven (although the latter did not graduate from Yale). Before the 2008 election, the last time there was not a person with ties to New Haven and Yale on either major party's ticket was 1968. James Hillhouse, a New Haven native, served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate in 1801.\nNew Haven voters overwhelmingly supported Al Gore in the 2000 election, Yale graduate John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. In the 2008 election, New Haven County was third among all Connecticut counties in campaign contributions, after Fairfield and Hartford counties. (Connecticut, in turn, was ranked 14th among all states in total campaign contributions.)\nNew Haven was the subject of \" Who Governs? Democracy and Power in An American City\", a very influential book in political science by preeminent Yale professor Robert A. Dahl, which includes an extensive history of the city and thorough description of its politics in the 1950s. New Haven's theocratic history is also mentioned several times by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic volume on 19th-century American political life, \"Democracy in America\". New Haven was the residence of conservative thinker William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1951, when he wrote his influential \"God and Man at Yale\". William Lee Miller's \"The Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society\" (1966) similarly explores the relationship between local politics in New Haven and national political movements, focusing on Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and urban renewal.\nGeorge Williamson Crawford, a Yale Law School graduate, served as the city's first black corporation counsel from 1954 to 1962, under Mayor Richard C. Lee.\nIn 1970, the New Haven Black Panther trials took place, the largest and longest trials in Connecticut history. Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale and ten other party members were tried for murdering an alleged informant. Beginning on May Day, the city became a center of protest for 12,000 Panther supporters, college students, and New Left activists (including Jean Genet, Benjamin Spock, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and John Froines), who amassed on the New Haven Green, across the street from where the trials were being held. Violent confrontations between the demonstrators and the New Haven Police occurred, and several bombs were set off in the area by radicals. The event became a rallying point for the New Left and critics of the Nixon Administration.\nDuring the summer of 2007, New Haven was the center of protests by anti-immigration groups who opposed the city's program of offering municipal ID cards, known as the Elm City Resident Card, to illegal immigrants. In 2008, the country of Ecuador opened a consulate in New Haven to serve the large Ecuadorean immigrant population in the area. It is the first foreign mission to open in New Haven since Italy opened a consulate (now closed) in the city in 1910.\nIn April 2009, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit over reverse discrimination brought by 20 white and Hispanic firefighters against the city. The suit involved the 2003 promotion test for the New Haven Fire Department. After the tests were scored, no blacks scored high enough to qualify for consideration for promotion, so the city announced that no one would be promoted. On June 29, 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the firefighters, agreeing that they were improperly denied promotion because of their race. The case, \"Ricci v. DeStefano\", became highly publicized and brought national attention to New Haven politics due to the involvement of then-Supreme Court nominee (and Yale Law School graduate) Sonia Sotomayor in a lower court decision.\nGarry Trudeau, creator of the political \"Doonesbury\" comic strip, attended Yale University. There he met fellow student and later Green Party candidate for Congress Charles Pillsbury, a long-time New Haven resident for whom Trudeau's comic strip is named. During his college years, Pillsbury was known by the nickname \"The Doones\". A theory of international law, which argues for a sociological normative approach in regards to jurisprudence, is named the New Haven Approach, after the city. Connecticut US senator Richard Blumenthal is a Yale graduate, as is former Connecticut US Senator Joe Lieberman who also was a New Haven resident for many years, before moving back to his hometown of Stamford.\nCrime.\nCrime increased in the 1990s, with New Haven having one of the ten highest violent crime rates per capita in the United States. In the late 1990s New Haven's crime began to stabilize. The city, adopting a policy of community policing, saw crime rates drop during the 2000s.\nViolent crime levels vary dramatically among New Haven's neighborhoods, with some areas having crime rates in line with the state of Connecticut average, and others having extremely high rates of crime. A 2011 New Haven Health Department report identifies these issues in greater detail.\nIn 2010, New Haven ranked as the 18th most dangerous city in the United States (albeit below the safety benchmark of 200.00 for the second consecutive year). However, according to a completely different analysis conducted by the \"24/7 Wall Street Blog\", in 2011 New Haven had risen to become the fourth most dangerous city in the United States, and was widely cited in the press as such.\nHowever, an analysis by the Regional Data Cooperative for Greater New Haven, Inc., has shown that due to issues of comparative denominators and other factors, such municipality-based rankings can be considered inaccurate. For example, two cities of identical population can cover widely differing land areas, making such analyses irrelevant. The research organization called for comparisons based on neighborhoods, blocks, or standard methodologies (similar to those used by Brookings, DiversityData, and other established institutions), not based on municipalities.\nEducation.\nColleges and universities.\nNew Haven is a notable center for higher education. Yale University, at the heart of downtown, is one of the city's best known features and its largest employer. New Haven is also home to Southern Connecticut State University, part of the Connecticut State University System, and Albertus Magnus College, a private institution. Gateway Community College has a campus in downtown New Haven, formerly located in the Long Wharf district; Gateway consolidated into one campus downtown into a new state-of-the-art campus (on the site of the old Macy's building) and was open for the Fall 2012 semester.\nThere are several institutions immediately outside of New Haven, as well. Quinnipiac University and the Paier College of Art are located just to the north, in the town of Hamden. The University of New Haven is located not in New Haven but in neighboring West Haven.\nPrimary and secondary schools.\nNew Haven Public Schools is the school district serving the city. Wilbur Cross High School and Hillhouse High School are New Haven's two largest public secondary schools.\nHopkins School, a private school, was founded in 1660 and is the fifth-oldest educational institution in the United States. New Haven is home to a number of other private schools as well as public magnet schools, including Metropolitan Business Academy, High School in the Community, Hill Regional Career High School, Co-op High School, New Haven Academy, Edgewood Magnet School, ACES Educational Center for the Arts, the Foote School and the Sound School, all of which draw students from New Haven and suburban towns. New Haven is also home to two Achievement First charter schools, Amistad Academy and Elm City College Prep, and to Common Ground, an environmental charter school.\nThe city is renowned for its progressive school lunch programs, and participation in statewide bussing efforts toward increased diversity in schools.\nCulture.\nCuisine.\nLivability.com named New Haven as the Best Foodie City in the country in 2014. There are dozens of Zagat-rated restaurants in New Haven, the most in Connecticut and the third most in New England (after Boston and Cambridge). More than 120 restaurants are located within two blocks of the New Haven Green. The city is home to an eclectic mix of ethnic restaurants and small markets specializing in various foreign foods. Represented cuisines include Malaysian, Ethiopian, Spanish, Belgian, French, Greek, Latin American, Mexican, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Cuban, Peruvian, Syrian/Lebanese, and Turkish.\nNew Haven's greatest culinary claim to fame may be its pizza, which has been claimed to be among the best in the country, or even in the world. New Haven-style pizza, called \"apizza\", made its debut at the iconic Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana (known as Pepe's) in 1925. Apizza is baked in coal- or wood-fired brick ovens, and is notable for its thin crust. Apizza may be red (with a tomato-based sauce) or white (with a sauce of garlic and olive oil), and pies ordered \"plain\" are made without the otherwise customary mozzarella (originally smoked mozzarella, known as \"scamorza\" in Italian). A white clam pie is a well-known specialty of the restaurants on Wooster Street in the Little Italy section of New Haven, including Pepe's and Sally's Apizza (which opened in 1938). Modern Apizza on State Street, which opened in 1934, is also well-known.\nA second New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Louis' Lunch, which is located in a small brick building on Crown Street and has been serving fast food since 1895. Though fiercely debated, the restaurant's founder Louis Lassen is credited by the Library of Congress with inventing the hamburger and steak sandwich. Louis' Lunch broils hamburgers, steak sandwiches and hot dogs vertically in original antique 1898 cast iron stoves using gridirons, patented by local resident Luigi Pieragostini in 1939, that hold the meat in place while it cooks.\nA third New Haven gastronomical claim to fame is Miya's, the first sustainable sushi restaurant in the world. Miya's, founded by Chef Yoshiko Lai in 1982, featured the first sustainable seafood-based sushi menu, the first plant-based sushi menu, and the first invasive species menu in the world. Second generation Miya's chef, Bun Lai, is the 2016 White House Champions of Change for Sustainable Seafood and a James Beard Foundation Award nominee. Chef Bun Lai is credited as the first chef in the world for implementing a sustainability paradigm to the cuisine of sushi.\nDuring weekday lunchtime, over 150 lunch carts and food trucks cater to diners around the city. The carts and food trucks cluster at four main points: on Long Wharf Drive, along the city's shoreline with quick access off Interstate 95, by Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital in the center of the Hospital Green (Cedar and York streets), by Yale's Trumbull College (Elm and York streets), and on the intersection of Prospect and Sachem streets by the Yale School of Management.\nPopular farmers' markets, managed by the local non-profit CitySeed, set up shop weekly in several neighborhoods, including Westville/Edgewood Park, Fair Haven, Upper State Street, Wooster Square, and Downtown/New Haven Green.\nA large grocery store, the Elm City Market, opened on 360 State Street in New Haven in early fall 2011 and served local produce and groceries to the community. Originally, the market was a member-owned co-op, but debt defaults in August 2014 forced a sale of the business. It is now an employee-owned business; the co-op's previous owners received no equity in the new business.\nIn the past several years, two separate Downtown food tour companies have started offering popular restaurant tours on weekends.\nTaste of New Haven Tours offers several different weekly restaurant/bar tours and a popular pizza, bike, and pints tour. Culinary Walking Tours offers monthly restaurant tours and sponsors an annual Elm City Iron Chef competition.\nTheatre and film.\nThe city hosts numerous theatres and production houses, including the Yale Repertory Theatre, the Long Wharf Theatre, and the Shubert Theatre. There is also theatre activity from the Yale School of Drama, which works through the Yale University Theatre and the student-run Yale Cabaret. Southern Connecticut State University hosts the Lyman Center for the Performing Arts. The shuttered Palace Theatre (opposite the Shubert Theatre) was renovated and reopened as the College Street Music Hall in May 2015. Smaller theatres include the Little Theater on Lincoln Street. Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School also has a theatre on College Street. The theatre is used for student productions, and is the home to weekly services to a local non-denominational church, the City Church New Haven.\nThe Shubert Theatre once premiered many major theatrical productions before their Broadway debuts. Productions that premiered at the Shubert include \"Oklahoma!\" (which was also written in New Haven), \"Carousel\", \"South Pacific\", \"My Fair Lady\", \"The King and I\", and \"The Sound of Music\", and the Tennessee Williams play \"A Streetcar Named Desire\".\nBow Tie Cinemas owns and operates the Criterion Cinemas, the first new movie theater to open in New Haven in over 30 years and the first luxury movie complex in the city's history. The Criterion has seven screens and opened in November 2004, showing a mix of upscale first run commercial and independent film.\nMuseums.\nNew Haven has a variety of museums, many of them associated with Yale. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library features an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible. There is also the Connecticut Children's Museum; the Knights of Columbus museum near that organization's world headquarters; the Peabody Museum of Natural History; the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments; the Eli Whitney Museum (across the town line in Hamden, Connecticut, on Whitney Avenue); the Yale Center for British Art, which houses the largest collection of British art outside the U.K., and the Yale University Art Gallery, the western hemisphere's oldest college art museum. New Haven is also home to the New Haven Museum and Historical Society on Whitney Avenue, which has a library of many primary source treasures dating from Colonial times to the present.\nArtspace on Orange Street is one of several contemporary art galleries around the city, showcasing the work of local, national, and international artists. Others include City Gallery and A. Leaf Gallery in the downtown area. Westville galleries include Kehler Liddell, Jennifer Jane Gallery, and The Hungry Eye. The Erector Square complex in the Fair Haven neighborhood houses, the Parachute Factory gallery along with numerous artist studios, and the complex serves as an active destination during City-Wide Open Studios held yearly in October.\nNew Haven is the home port of a life-size replica of the historical \"Freedom Schooner Amistad\", which is open for tours at Long Wharf pier at certain times during the summer. Also at Long Wharf pier is the \"Quinnipiack\" schooner, offering sailing cruises of the harbor area throughout the summer. The \"Quinnipiack\" also functions as a floating classroom for hundreds of local students.\nMusic.\nThe New Haven Green is the site of many free music concerts, especially during the summer months. These have included the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the July Free Concerts on the Green, and the New Haven Jazz Festival in August. The Jazz Festival, which began in 1982, is one of the longest-running free outdoor festivals in the U.S., until it was canceled for 2007. Headliners such as Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles and Celia Cruz have historically drawn 30,000 to 50,000 fans, filling up the New Haven Green to capacity. The New Haven Jazz Festival was revived in 2008 and has been sponsored since by Jazz Haven.\nNew Haven is home to the concert venue Toad's Place, and a new venue, College Street Music Hall. The city has retained an alternative art and music underground that has helped to influence post-punk era music movements such as indie, college rock and underground hip-hop.\nThe Yale School of Music contributes to the city's music scene by offering hundreds of free concerts throughout the year at venues in and around the Yale campus. Large performances are held in the 2,700-seat Woolsey Hall auditorium, which contains the world's largest symphonic organs, while chamber music and recitals are performed in Sprague Hall.\nHardcore band Hatebreed are from Wallingford, but got their start in New Haven under the name Jasta 14. The band Miracle Legion formed in New Haven in 1983. Folk musicians from New Haven include Loren Mazzacane Connors and Kath Bloom.\nThe Hillhouse Opera Company is a U.S. non-profit opera company based in New Haven that performs in the New Haven area. Founded in 2008 by Victoria Leigh Gardner, Nicole Rodriguez and Jim Coatsworth Hillhouse Opera Company has performed operas as well as opera scenes programs, master classes and concert series. In 2011, the Company professionally staged the works created through the Riverview Opera Project. The Riverview Opera Project created workshops for children and adolescents at Riverview Hospital, Connecticut's only state-funded psychiatric hospital for youth, and helped them to successfully create, produce, and perform four original operas.\nFestivals.\nIn addition to the Jazz Festival (described above), New Haven serves as the home city of the annual International Festival of Arts and Ideas. New Haven's Saint Patrick's Day parade, which began in 1842, is New England's oldest and draws the largest crowds of any one-day spectator event in Connecticut. The St. Andrew the Apostle Italian Festival has taken place in the historic Wooster Square neighborhood every year since 1900. Other parishes in the city celebrate the Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua and a carnival in honor of St. Bernadette Soubirous. New Haven celebrates Powder House Day every April on the New Haven Green to commemorate the city's entrance into the Revolutionary War. The annual Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival commemorates the 1973 planting of 72 Yoshino Japanese cherry blossom trees by the New Haven Historic Commission in collaboration with the New Haven Parks Department and residents of the neighborhood. The Festival now draws well over 5,000 visitors. The Film Fest New Haven has been held annually since 1995.\nNightlife.\nIn the past decade downtown has seen an influx of new restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Large crowds are drawn to the Crown Street area downtown on weekends where many of the restaurants and bars are located. Crown Street between State and High Streets has dozens of establishments, as do nearby Temple and College Streets. Away from downtown, Upper State Street has a number of restaurants and bars popular with local residents and weekend visitors.\nNewspapers and media.\nNew Haven is served by the daily \"New Haven Register\", the weekly \"alternative\" \"New Haven Advocate\" (which is run by Tribune, the corporation owning the \"Hartford Courant\"), the online daily \"New Haven Independent\", and the monthly \"Grand News Community Newspaper.\" Downtown New Haven is covered by an in-depth civic news forum, Design New Haven. The \"Register\" also backs \"PLAY\" magazine, a weekly entertainment publication. The city is also served by several student-run papers, including the \"Yale Daily News\", the weekly \"Yale Herald\" and a humor tabloid, \"Rumpus Magazine\".\nWTNH Channel 8, the ABC affiliate for Connecticut, WCTX Channel 59, the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the state, Connecticut Public Television station WEDY channel 65, a PBS affiliate, and WTXX Channel 34, the IntrigueTV affiliate, broadcast from New Haven. All New York City news and sports team stations broadcast to New Haven County.\nSports and athletics.\nNew Haven has a history of professional sports franchises dating back to the 19th century and has been the home to professional baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer teams\u2014including the New York Giants of the National Football League from 1973 to 1974, who played at the Yale Bowl. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, New Haven consistently had minor league hockey and baseball teams, which played at the New Haven Arena (built in 1926, demolished in 1972), New Haven Coliseum (1972\u20132002), and Yale Field (1928\u2013present).\nWhen John DeStefano, Jr., became mayor of New Haven in 1995, he outlined a plan to transform the city into a major cultural and arts center in the Northeast, which involved investments in programs and projects other than sports franchises. As nearby Bridgeport built new sports facilities, the brutalist New Haven Coliseum rapidly deteriorated. Believing the upkeep on the venue to be a drain of tax dollars, the DeStefano administration closed the Coliseum in 2002; it was demolished in 2007. New Haven's last professional sports team, the New Haven County Cutters, left in 2009. The DeStefano administration did, however, see the construction of the New Haven Athletic Center in 1998, a indoor athletic facility with a seating capacity of over 3,000. The NHAC, built adjacent to Hillhouse High School, is used for New Haven public schools athletics, as well as large-scale area and state sporting events; it is the largest high school indoor sports complex in the state.\nNew Haven was the host of the 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games; then-President Bill Clinton spoke at the opening ceremonies. The city is home to the Pilot Pen International tennis event, which takes place every August at the Connecticut Tennis Center, one of the largest tennis venues in the world. New Haven biannually hosts \"The Game\" between Yale and Harvard, the country's second-oldest college football rivalry. Numerous road races take place in New Haven, including the USATF 20K Championship during the New Haven Road Race.\nGreater New Haven is home to a number of college sports teams. The Yale Bulldogs play Division I college sports, as do the Quinnipiac Bobcats in neighboring Hamden. Division II athletics are played by Southern Connecticut State University and the University of New Haven (actually located in neighboring West Haven), while Albertus Magnus College athletes perform at the Division III level.\nNew Haven is home to many New York Yankees, New York Mets, & Boston Red Sox fans due to the proximity of New York City & Boston.\nWalter Camp, deemed the \"father of American football\", was a New Havener.\nThe New Haven Warriors rugby league team play in the AMNRL. They have a large number of Pacific Islanders playing for them. Their field is located at the West Haven High School's Ken Strong Stadium. They won the 2008 AMNRL Grand Final.\nStructures.\nArchitecture.\nNew Haven has many architectural landmarks dating from every important time period and architectural style in American history. The city has been home to a number of architects and architectural firms that have left their mark on the city including Ithiel Town and Henry Austin in the 19th century and Cesar Pelli, Warren Platner, Kevin Roche, Herbert Newman and Barry Svigals in the 20th. The Yale School of Architecture has fostered this important component of the city's economy. Cass Gilbert, of the Beaux-Arts school, designed New Haven's Union Station and the New Haven Free Public Library and was also commissioned for a City Beautiful plan in 1919. Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, Alexander Jackson Davis, Philip C. Johnson, Gordon Bunshaft, Louis Kahn, James Gamble Rogers, Frank Gehry, Charles Willard Moore, Stefan Behnisch, James Polshek, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen and Robert Venturi all have designed buildings in New Haven. Yale's 1950s-era Ingalls Rink, designed by Eero Saarinen, was included on the \"America's Favorite Architecture\" list created in 2007.\nSeveral residential homes in New Haven were designed by Alice Washburn, a noted female architect whose Colonial Revival style set a standard for homes in the region.\nMany of the city's neighborhoods are well-preserved as walkable \"museums\" of 19th- and 20th-century American architecture, particularly by the New Haven Green, Hillhouse Avenue and other residential sections close to Downtown New Haven. Overall, a large proportion of the city's land area is National (NRHP) historic districts. One of the best sources on local architecture is \"New Haven: Architecture and Urban Design\", by Elizabeth Mills Brown.\nThe five tallest buildings in New Haven are:\nHistoric points of interest.\nMany historical sites exist throughout the city, including 59 properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Of these, nine are among the 60 U.S. National Historic Landmarks in Connecticut. The New Haven Green, one of the National Historic Landmarks, was formed in 1638, and is home to three 19th-century churches. Below the First Church of Christ in New Haven (referred to as the Center Church on the Green) lies a 17th-century crypt, which is open to visitors. Some of the more famous burials include the first wife of Benedict Arnold and the aunt and grandmother of President Rutherford B. Hayes; Hayes visited the crypt while President in 1880. The Old Campus of Yale University is located next to the Green, and includes Connecticut Hall, Yale's oldest building and a National Historic Landmark. The Hillhouse Avenue area, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a part of Yale's campus, has been called a walkable museum, due to its 19th-century mansions and street scape; Charles Dickens is said to have called Hillhouse Avenue \"the most beautiful street in America\" when visiting the city in 1868.\nIn 1660, Edward Whalley (a cousin and friend of Oliver Cromwell) and William Goffe, two English Civil War generals who signed the death warrant of King Charles I, hid in a rock formation in New Haven after having fled England upon the restoration of Charles II to the English throne. They were later joined by a third regicide, John Dixwell. The rock formation, which is now a part of West Rock Park, is known as Judges' Cave, and the path leading to the cave is called the Regicides Trail.\nAfter the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, the Connecticut colonial government ordered the construction of Black Rock Fort (to be built on top of an older 17th-century fort) to protect the port of New Haven. In 1779, during the Battle of New Haven, British soldiers captured Black Rock Fort and burned the barracks to the ground. The fort was reconstructed in 1807 by the federal government (on orders from the Thomas Jefferson administration), and rechristened Fort Nathan Hale, after the Revolutionary War hero who had lived in New Haven. The cannons of Fort Nathan Hale were successful in defying British war ships during the War of 1812. In 1863, during the Civil War, a second Fort Hale was built next to the original, complete with bomb-resistant bunkers and a moat, to defend the city should a Southern raid against New Haven be launched. The United States Congress deeded the site to the state in 1921, and all three versions of the fort have been restored. The site is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and receives thousands of visitors each year.\nGrove Street Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark which lies adjacent to Yale's campus, contains the graves of Roger Sherman, Eli Whitney, Noah Webster, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Charles Goodyear and Walter Camp, among other notable burials. The cemetery is noted for its Egyptian Revival gateway, and is the oldest planned burial ground in the United States. The Union League Club of New Haven building, located on Chapel Street, is notable for not only being a historic Beaux-Arts building, but also is built on the site where Roger Sherman's home once stood; George Washington is known to have stayed at the Sherman residence while President in 1789 (one of three times Washington visited New Haven throughout his lifetime).\nTwo sites pay homage to the time President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft lived in the city, as both a student and later Professor at Yale: a plaque on Prospect Street marks the site where Taft's home formerly stood, and downtown's Taft Apartment Building (formerly the Taft Hotel) bears the name of the former president who resided in the building for eight years before becoming Chief Justice of the United States.\nLighthouse Point Park, a public beach run by the city, was a popular tourist destination during the Roaring Twenties, attracting luminaries of the period such as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. The park remains popular among New Haveners, and is home to the Five Mile Point Lighthouse, constructed in 1847, and the Lighthouse Point Carousel, constructed in 1916. Five Mile Point Light was decommissioned in 1877 following the construction of Southwest Ledge Light at the entrance of the harbor, which remains in service to this day. Both of the lighthouses and the carousel are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.\nOther historic sites in the city include the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, which stands at the summit of East Rock, the Marsh Botanical Garden, Wooster Square, Dwight Street, Louis' Lunch, and the Farmington Canal, all of which date back to the 19th century. Other historic parks besides the Green include Edgerton Park, Edgewood Park, and East Rock Park, each of which is included on the National Register of Historic Places.\nTransportation.\nRail.\nNew Haven has two railroad stations, connected to New York City and points along the Northeast Corridor by commuter rail, regional rail and inter-city rail. Service is provided by:\nThe city's main railroad station is the historic Beaux-Arts Union Station, which serves Metro-North, Hartford Line, and Shore Line East commuter trains. Approximately 175 trains serve Union Station on weekdays. Union Station is also served by four Amtrak lines: the \"Northeast Regional\" and the high-speed \"Acela Express\" provide service to New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston, and rank as the first and second busiest routes in the country; the New Haven\u2013Springfield Line provides service to Hartford and Springfield, Massachusetts; and the \"Vermonter\" provides service to both Washington, D.C., and Vermont, from the Canada\u2013US border.\nAn additional station, State Street Station, was opened in 2002, providing passengers easier access to downtown New Haven. State Street Station is currently serviced by Shore Line East and Hartford Line trains, plus some peak-hour Metro-North trips.\nBus.\nThe New Haven Division of Connecticut Transit (CT Transit), the state's bus system, is the second largest division in the state with 24 routes. All routes originate from the New Haven Green, making it the central transfer hub of the city. Service is provided to 19 different municipalities throughout Greater New Haven. Bus routes were formerly identified by letters, but as of October 8, 2017, all service was renamed using 200-series numbers, in accordance with a renumbering of CTtransit's statewide services.\nCT Transit's Union Station Shuttle provides free service from Union Station to the New Haven Green and several New Haven parking garages. Peter Pan and Greyhound bus lines have scheduled stops at Union Station, and connections downtown can be made via the Union Station Shuttle. A private company operates the New Haven/Hartford Express which provides commuter bus service to Hartford. The Yale University Shuttle provides free transportation around New Haven for Yale students, faculty, and staff.\nThe New Haven Division buses follow routes that had originally been covered by trolley service. Horse-drawn streetcars began operating in New Haven in the 1860s, and by the mid-1890s all the lines had become electric. In the 1920s and 1930s, some of the trolley lines began to be replaced by bus lines, with the last trolley route converted to bus in 1948. The City of New Haven is in the very early stages of considering the restoration of streetcar (light-rail) service, which has been absent since the postwar period.\nBicycle.\nBikeshare.\nOn February 21, 2018, New Haven officially launched its Bike New Haven bikeshare program. based on dockless technology powered by Noa Technologies At time of launch, the program features 10 docking stations and 100 bikes, spread throughout the urban core; there are plans to reach 30 bike stations and 300 bikes by the end of April 2018. The launch of the New Haven bikeshare program coincided with the launch of Yale University's own bikeshare program, which uses the same technology powered by Noa.\nBike lanes.\nIn 2004, the first bike lane in the city was added to Orange Street, connecting East Rock Park and the East Rock neighborhood to downtown. Since then, bike lanes have also been added to sections of Howard Ave, Elm St, Dixwell Avenue, Water Street, Clinton Avenue and State Street. The city has created recommended bike routes for getting around New Haven, including use of the Canal Trail and the Orange Street lane. As of the end of 2012, bicycle lanes have also been added in both directions on Dixwell Avenue along most of the street from downtown to the Hamden town line, as well as along Howard Avenue from Yale New Haven Hospital to City Point.\nThe city has plans to create two additional bike lanes connecting Union Station with downtown, and the Westville neighborhood with downtown. The city has added dozens of covered bike parking spots at Union Station, in order to facilitate more bike commuting to the station.\nFarmington Canal Greenway.\nThe Farmington Canal Trail is a rail trail that will eventually run continuously from downtown New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts. The scenic trail follows the path of the historic New Haven and Northampton Company and the Farmington Canal. Currently, there is a continuous stretch of the trail from downtown, through Hamden and into Cheshire, making bicycle commuting between New Haven and those suburbs possible. The trail is part of the East Coast Greenway, a proposed bike path that would link every major city on the East Coast from Florida to Maine.\nRoads.\nNew Haven lies at the intersection of Interstate 95 on the coast\u2014which provides access southwards and/or westwards to the western coast of Connecticut and to New York City, and eastwards to the eastern Connecticut shoreline, Rhode Island, and eastern Massachusetts\u2014and Interstate 91, which leads northward to the interior of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont and the Canada\u2013US border. I-95 is notorious for traffic jams increasing with proximity to New York City; on the east side of New Haven it passes over the Quinnipiac River via the Pearl Harbor Memorial, or \"Q Bridge\", which often presents a major bottleneck to traffic. I-91, however, is relatively less congested, except at the intersection with I-95 during peak travel times.\nThe Oak Street Connector (Connecticut Route 34) intersects I-91 at exit 1, just south of the I-95/I-91 interchange, and runs northwest for a few blocks as an expressway spur into downtown before emptying onto surface roads. The Wilbur Cross Parkway (Connecticut Route 15) runs parallel to I-95 west of New Haven, turning northwards as it nears the city and then running northwards parallel to I-91 through the outer rim of New Haven and Hamden, offering an alternative to the I-95/I-91 journey (restricted to non-commercial vehicles). Route 15 in New Haven is the site of the only highway tunnel in the state (officially designated as Heroes Tunnel), running through West Rock, home to West Rock Park and the Three Judges Cave.\nThe city also has several major surface arteries. U.S. Route 1 (Columbus Avenue, Union Avenue, Water Street, Forbes Avenue) runs in an east\u2013west direction south of downtown serving Union Station and leading out of the city to Milford, West Haven, East Haven and Branford. The main road from downtown heading northwest is Whalley Avenue (partly signed as Route 10 and Route 63) leading to Westville and Woodbridge. Heading north towards Hamden, there are two major thoroughfares, Dixwell Avenue and Whitney Avenue. To the northeast are Middletown Avenue (Route 17), which leads to the Montowese section of North Haven, and Foxon Boulevard (Route 80), which leads to the Foxon section of East Haven and to the town of North Branford. To the west is Route 34, which leads to the city of Derby. Other major intracity arteries are Ella Grasso Boulevard (Route 10) west of downtown, and College Street, Temple Street, Church Street, Elm Street, and Grove Street in the downtown area.\nTraffic safety is a major concern for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists in New Haven. In addition to many traffic-related fatalities in the city each year, since 2005, over a dozen Yale students, staff and faculty have been killed or injured in traffic collisions on or near the campus.\nAirport.\nTweed New Haven Airport is located within the city limits east of the business district, straddling the border with neighboring East Haven. Service to approximately 25 cities is provided by Avelo Airlines, which established its first East Coast base at the airport in 2021. Breeze Airways plans to begin operations at Tweed in December 2024, and will provide service to 10 destinations. The airport is currently planning a runway lengthening and new terminal on the East Haven side of the airport.\nBus service between Downtown New Haven and Tweed is available via the CT Transit New Haven Division.\nSeaport.\nNew Haven Harbor is home to the Port of New Haven, a deep-water seaport with three berths capable of hosting vessels and barges as well as the facilities required to handle break bulk cargo. The port has the capacity to load 200 trucks a day from the ground or via loading docks. Providence and Worcester Railroad provides freight rail transportation to the port, with the railroad operating a switch engine for yard movements, a private siding for loading and unloading, and trackage over the Tomlinson Lift Bridge toward the Northeast Corridor. Approximately of inside storage and of outside storage are available at the site. Five shore cranes with a 250-ton capacity and 26 forklifts, each with a 26-ton capacity, are also available.\nOn June 17, 2013, the city commissioned the \"Nathan Hale\", a port security vessel capable of serving search and rescue, firefighting, and constabulary roles.\nInfrastructure.\nHospitals and medicine.\nThe New Haven area supports several medical facilities that are considered some of the best hospitals in the country. There are two major medical centers downtown: Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital has four pavilions, including the Yale \u2013 New Haven Children's Hospital and the Smilow Cancer Hospital; the Hospital of Saint Raphael is several blocks north, and touts its excellent cardiac emergency care program. Smaller downtown health facilities are the Temple Medical Center located downtown on Temple Street, Connecticut Mental Health Center/ across Park Street from Y-NHH, and the Hill Health Center, which serves the working-class Hill neighborhood. A large Veterans Affairs hospital is located in neighboring West Haven. To the west in Milford is Milford Hospital, and to the north in Meriden is the MidState Medical Center.\nIn recent years, Yale and the City of New Haven have been working to build a medical and biotechnology research hub in the city and Greater New Haven region. The city, state and Yale together run Science Park, a large site three blocks northwest of Yale's Science Hill campus. This multi-block site, approximately bordered by Mansfield Street, Division Street, and Shelton Avenue, is the former home of Winchester's and Olin Corporation's 45 large-scale factory buildings. Currently, sections of the site are large-scale parking lots or abandoned structures, but there is also a large remodeled and functioning area of buildings (leased primarily by a private developer) with numerous Yale employees, financial service and biotech companies.\nA second biotechnology district is being planned for the median strip on Frontage Road, on land cleared for the never-built Route 34 extension. As of late 2009, a Pfizer drug-testing clinic, a medical laboratory building serving Yale \u2013 New Haven Hospital, and a mixed-use structure containing parking, housing and office space, have been constructed on this corridor. A former SNET telephone building at 300 George Street is being converted into lab space, and has been quite successful so far in attracting biotechnology and medical firms.\nPower supply facilities.\nElectricity for New Haven is generated by a 448\u00a0MW oil and gas-fired generating station located on the shore at New Haven Harbor. PPL Corporation operates a 220\u00a0MW peaking natural gas turbine plant in nearby Wallingford.\nNear New Haven there is the static inverter plant of the HVDC Cross Sound Cable.\nThere are three PureCell Model 400 fuel cells placed in the city of New Haven\u2014one at the New Haven Public Schools and newly constructed Roberto Clemente School, one at the mixed-use 360 State Street building, and one at City Hall. According to Giovanni Zinn of the city's Office of Sustainability, each fuel cell may save the city up to $1 million in energy costs over a decade. The fuel cells were provided by ClearEdge Power, formerly UTC Power. Additional fuel cells are located at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and at the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority (GNHWPCA). Ikea's New Haven facility also utilizes a 250\u00a0kW fuel cell and 940.8\u00a0kW solar array.\nNew Haven recently installed solar panels at 11 city schools with a combined power generation capacity of 1.8 MW. Owned and maintained by Greenskies, the panels allow New Haven to purchase electricity at a discounted rate through a power-purchasing agreement. The panels bring New Haven's solar capacity to 2.8 MW and will help New Haven meet its commitment to powering 100% of its municipal operations through clean energy, which it made in Summer 2017 and reaffirmed in the 2018 New Haven Climate and Sustainability Framework.\nIn popular culture.\nSeveral movies have been filmed in New Haven since 2000, including \"Mona Lisa Smile\" (2003), with Julia Roberts, \"The Life Before Her Eyes\" (2007), with Uma Thurman, and \"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull\" (2008) directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett and Shia LaBeouf. The filming of \"Crystal Skull\" involved an extensive chase sequence through the streets of New Haven. Several downtown streets were closed to traffic and received a \"makeover\" to look like streets of 1957, when the film is set. 500 locals were cast as extras for the film. In \"Everybody's Fine\" (2009), Robert De Niro has a close encounter in what is supposed to be the Denver train station; the scene was filmed in New Haven's Union Station.\n New Haven is mentioned in the song Peace Frog by the Doors, referencing a 1967 incident where vocalist Jim Morrison was arrested for \"attempting to incite a riot\" in the middle of a concert at the New Haven Arena.\nSister cities.\nNew Haven's sister cities are:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSome of these were selected because of historical connection\u2014Freetown because of the \"Amistad\" trial. Others, such as Amalfi and Afula, reflect ethnic groups in New Haven.\nIn 1990, the United Nations named New Haven a \"Peace Messenger City\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "34273": "Yale University\nPrivate university in New Haven, Connecticut, US\n \nYale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution.\nYale was established as the Collegiate School in 1701 by Congregationalist clergy of the Connecticut Colony. Originally restricted to instructing ministers in theology and sacred languages, the school's curriculum expanded, incorporating humanities and sciences by the time of the American Revolution. In the 19th century, the college expanded into graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first PhD in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887. Yale's faculty and student populations grew rapidly after 1890 due to the expansion of the physical campus and its scientific research programs.\nYale is organized into fifteen constituent schools, including the original undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and Yale Law School. While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each school's faculty oversees its curriculum and degree programs. In addition to a central campus in downtown New Haven, the university owns athletic facilities in western New Haven, a campus in West Haven, and forests and nature preserves throughout New England. As of 2023[ [update]], the university's endowment was valued at $, the third largest of any educational institution. The Yale University Library, serving all constituent schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States. Student athletes compete in intercollegiate sports as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I Ivy League conference.\nAs of \u00a02024[ [update]], 68 Nobel laureates, 5 Fields medalists, 4 Abel Prize laureates, and 3 Turing Award winners have been affiliated with Yale University. In addition, Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including 5 U.S. presidents, 10 Founding Fathers, 19 U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 31 living billionaires, 54 college founders and presidents, many heads of state, cabinet members and governors. Hundreds of members of Congress and many U.S. diplomats, 96 MacArthur Fellows, 263 Rhodes Scholars, 123 Marshall Scholars, 81 Gates Cambridge Scholars, 102 Guggenheim Fellows and 9 Mitchell Scholars have been affiliated with the university. Yale's current faculty include 67 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 55 members of the National Academy of Medicine, 8 members of the National Academy of Engineering, and 193 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.\nHistory.\nEarly history of Yale College.\nOrigins.\nYale traces its beginnings to \"An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School\", a would-be charter passed in New Haven by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut on October 9, 1701. The Act was an effort to create an institution to train ministers and lay leadership. Soon after, a group of ten Congregational ministers, Samuel Andrew, Thomas Buckingham, Israel Chauncy, Samuel Mather (nephew of Increase Mather), Rev. James Noyes II (son of James Noyes), James Pierpont, Abraham Pierson, Noadiah Russell, Joseph Webb, and Timothy Woodbridge, all Harvard alumni, met in the study of Reverend Samuel Russell, in Branford, to donate books to form the school's library. The group, led by James Pierpont, is now known as \"The Founders\".\nKnown from its origin as the \"Collegiate School\", the institution opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson, who is considered Yale's first president. Pierson lived in Killingworth. The school moved to Saybrook in 1703, when the first treasurer of Yale, Nathaniel Lynde, donated land and a building. In 1716, it moved to New Haven.\nMeanwhile, there was a rift forming at Harvard between its sixth president, Increase Mather, and the rest of the Harvard clergy, whom Mather viewed as increasingly liberal, ecclesiastically lax, and overly broad in Church polity. The feud caused the Mathers to champion the Collegiate School in the hope it would maintain the Puritan religious orthodoxy in a way Harvard had not. Rev. Jason Haven, minister at the First Church and Parish in Dedham, Massachusetts, had been considered for the presidency on account of his orthodox theology and \"Neatness dignity and purity of Style [which] surpass those of all that have been mentioned\", but was passed over due to his \"very Valetudinary and infirm State of Health\".\nNaming and development.\nIn 1718, at the behest of either Rector Samuel Andrew or the colony's Governor Gurdon Saltonstall, Cotton Mather contacted the Boston-born businessman Elihu Yale to ask for money to construct a new building for the college. Through the persuasion of Jeremiah Dummer, Yale, who had made a fortune in Madras while working for the East India Company as the first president of Fort St. George, donated nine bales of goods, which were sold for more than \u00a3560, a substantial sum of money. Cotton Mather suggested the school change its name to \"Yale College\". The name Yale is the Anglicized spelling of the Welsh name I\u00e2l, which had been used for the family estate at Plas yn I\u00e2l, near Llandegla, Wales.\nMeanwhile, a Harvard graduate working in England convinced 180 prominent intellectuals to donate books to Yale. The 1714 shipment of 500 books represented the best of modern English literature, science, philosophy and theology. It had a profound effect on intellectuals at Yale. Undergraduate Jonathan Edwards discovered John Locke's works and developed his \"new divinity\". In 1722 the rector and six friends, who had a study group to discuss the new ideas, announced they had given up Calvinism, become Arminians, and joined the Church of England. They were ordained in England and returned to the colonies as missionaries for the Anglican faith. Thomas Clapp became president in 1745, and while he attempted to return the college to Calvinist orthodoxy, did not close the library. Other students found Deist books in the library.\nCurriculum.\nYale College undergraduates follow a liberal arts curriculum with departmental majors and is organized into a social system of residential colleges.\nYale was swept up by the great intellectual movements of the period\u2014the Great Awakening and Enlightenment\u2014due to the religious and scientific interests of presidents Thomas Clap and Ezra Stiles. They were instrumental in developing the scientific curriculum while dealing with wars, student tumults, graffiti, \"irrelevance\" of curricula, desperate need for endowment and disagreements with the Connecticut legislature.\nSerious American students of theology and divinity, particularly in New England, regarded Hebrew as a classical language, along with Greek and Latin, and essential for study of the Old Testament in the original. Reverend Stiles, president from 1778 to 1795, brought with him his interest in Hebrew as a vehicle for studying ancient Biblical texts in their original language, requiring all freshmen to study Hebrew (in contrast to Harvard, where only upperclassmen were required to study it) and is responsible for the Hebrew phrase \u05d0\u05d5\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u05d5\u05ea\u05de\u05d9\u05dd (Urim and Thummim) on the Yale seal. A 1746 graduate of Yale, Stiles came to the college with experience in education, having played an integral role in founding Brown University. Stiles' greatest challenge occurred in 1779 when British forces occupied New Haven and threatened to raze the college. However, Yale graduate Edmund Fanning, secretary to the British general in command of the occupation, intervened and the college was saved. In 1803, Fanning was granted an honorary degree LL.D..\nStudents.\nAs the only college in Connecticut from 1701 to 1823, Yale educated the sons of the elite. Punishable offenses included cardplaying, tavern-going, destruction of college property, and acts of disobedience. Harvard was distinctive for the stability and maturity of its tutor corps, while Yale had youth and zeal.\nThe emphasis on classics gave rise to private student societies, open only by invitation, which arose as forums for discussions of scholarship, literature and politics. The first were debating societies: Crotonia in 1738, Linonia in 1753 and Brothers in Unity in 1768. Linonia and Brothers in Unity continue to exist; commemorations to them can be found with names given to campus structures, like Brothers in Unity Courtyard in Branford College.\n19th century.\nThe Yale Report of 1828 was a dogmatic defense of the Latin and Greek curriculum against critics who wanted more courses in modern languages, math and science. Unlike higher education in Europe, there was no national curriculum for U.S. colleges and universities. In the competition for students and financial support, college leaders strove to keep current with demands for innovation. At the same time, they realized a significant portion of students and prospective students demanded a classical background. The report meant the classics would not be abandoned. During this period, institutions experimented with changes in the curriculum, often resulting in a dual-track curriculum. In the decentralized environment of U.S. higher education, balancing change with tradition was a common challenge. A group of professors at Yale and New Haven Congregationalist ministers articulated a conservative response to the changes brought by Victorian culture. They concentrated on developing a person possessed of religious values strong enough to sufficiently resist temptations from within, yet flexible enough to adjust to the 'isms' (professionalism, materialism, individualism, and consumerism) tempting them from without. William Graham Sumner, professor from 1872 to 1909, taught in the emerging disciplines of economics and sociology to overflowing classrooms. Sumner bested President Noah Porter, who disliked the social sciences and wanted Yale to lock into its traditions of classical education. Porter objected to Sumner's use of a textbook by Herbert Spencer that espoused agnostic materialism because it might harm students.\nUntil 1887, the legal name of the university was \"The President and Fellows of Yale College, in New Haven\". In 1887, under an act passed by the Connecticut General Assembly, Yale was renamed \"Yale University\".\nSports and debate.\nThe Revolutionary War soldier Nathan Hale (Yale 1773) was the archetype of the Yale ideal in the early 19th\u00a0century: a manly yet aristocratic scholar, well-versed in knowledge and sports, and a patriot who \"regretted\" that he \"had but one life to lose\" for his country. Western painter Frederic Remington (Yale 1900) was an artist whose heroes gloried in the combat and tests of strength in the Wild West. The fictional, turn-of-the-20th-century Yale man Frank Merriwell embodied this same heroic ideal without racial prejudice, and his fictional successor Dink Stover in the novel \"Stover at Yale\" (1912) questioned the business mentality that had become prevalent at the school. Increasingly students turned to athletic stars as their heroes, especially since winning the big game became the goal of the student body, the alumni, and the team itself.\nAlong with Harvard and Princeton, Yale students rejected British concepts about 'amateurism' and constructed athletic programs that were uniquely American. The Harvard\u2013Yale football rivalry began in 1875. Between 1892, when Harvard and Yale met in one of the first intercollegiate debates, and in 1909 (year of the first Triangular Debate of Harvard/Yale/Princeton) the rhetoric, symbolism, and metaphors used in athletics were used to frame these debates. Debates were covered on front pages of college newspapers and emphasized in yearbooks, and team members received the equivalent of athletic letters for their jackets. There were rallies to send off teams to matches, but they never attained the broad appeal athletics enjoyed. One reason may be that debates do not have a clear winner, because scoring is subjective. With late 19th-century concerns about the impact of modern life on the body, athletics offered hope that neither the individual nor society was coming apart.\nIn 1909\u201310, football faced a crisis resulting from the failure of the reforms of 1905\u201306, which sought to solve the problem of serious injuries. There was a mood of alarm and mistrust, and, while the crisis was developing, the presidents of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton developed a project to reform the sport and forestall possible radical changes forced by government. Presidents Arthur Hadley of Yale, A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard, and Woodrow Wilson of Princeton worked to develop moderate reforms to reduce injuries. Their attempts, however, were reduced by rebellion against the rules committee and formation of the Intercollegiate Athletic Association. While the big three had attempted to operate independently of the majority, the changes pushed did reduce injuries.\nExpansion.\nStarting with the addition of the Yale School of Medicine in 1810, the college expanded gradually, establishing the Yale Divinity School in 1822, Yale Law School in 1822, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1847, the now-defunct Sheffield Scientific School in 1847, and the Yale School of Fine Arts in 1869. In 1887, under the presidency of Timothy Dwight V, Yale College was renamed to Yale University, and the former name was applied only to the undergraduate college. The university would continue to expand into the 20th and 21st centuries, adding the Yale School of Music in 1894, the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies in 1900, the Yale School of Public Health in 1915, the Yale School of Architecture in 1916, the Yale School of Nursing 1923, the Yale School of Drama in 1955, the Yale School of Management in 1976, and the Jackson School of Global Affairs in 2022. The Sheffield Scientific School would also reorganize its relationship with the university to teach only undergraduate courses.\nExpansion caused controversy about Yale's new roles. Noah Porter, a moral philosopher, was president from 1871 to 1886. During an age of expansion in higher education, Porter resisted the rise of the new research university, claiming an eager embrace of its ideals would corrupt undergraduate education. Historian George Levesque argues Porter was not a simple-minded reactionary, uncritically committed to tradition, but a principled and selective conservative. Levesque says he did not endorse everything old or reject everything new; rather, he sought to apply long-established ethical and pedagogical principles to a changing culture. Levesque concludes, noting he may have misunderstood some of the challenges, but he correctly anticipated the enduring tensions that have accompanied the emergence of the modern university.\n20th century.\nMedicine.\nMilton Winternitz led the Yale School of Medicine as its dean from 1920 to 1935. Dedicated to the new scientific medicine established in Germany, he was equally fervent about \"social medicine\" and the study of humans in their environment. He established the \"Yale System\" of teaching, with few lectures and fewer exams, and strengthened the full-time faculty system; he created the graduate-level Yale School of Nursing and the psychiatry department and built new buildings. Progress toward his plans for an Institute of Human Relations, envisioned as a refuge where social scientists would collaborate with biological scientists in a holistic study of humankind, lasted only a few years before resentful antisemitic colleagues drove him to resign.\nFaculty.\nBefore World War II, most elite university faculties counted among their numbers few, if any, Jews, blacks, women, or other minorities; Yale was no exception. By 1980, this condition had been altered dramatically, as numerous members of those groups held faculty positions. Almost all members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences\u2014and some members of other faculties\u2014teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually.\nWomen.\nIn 1793, Lucinda Foote passed the entrance exams for Yale College, but was rejected by the president on the basis of her gender. Women studied at Yale from 1892, in graduate-level programs at the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The first seven women to earn PhDs received their degrees in 1894: Elizabeth Deering Hanscom, Cornelia H. B. Rogers, Sara Bulkley Rogers, Margaretta Palmer, Mary Augusta Scott, Laura Johnson Wylie, and Charlotte Fitch Roberts. There is a portrait of them in Sterling Memorial Library, painted by Brenda Zlamany.\nIn 1966, Yale began discussions with its sister school Vassar College about merging to foster coeducation at the undergraduate level. Vassar, then all-female and part of the Seven Sisters\u2014elite higher education schools that served as sister institutions to the Ivy League when nearly all Ivy League institutions still only admitted men\u2014tentatively accepted, but then declined the invitation. Both schools introduced coeducation independently in 1969. Amy Solomon was the first woman to register as a Yale undergraduate; she was the first woman at Yale to join an undergraduate society, St. Anthony Hall. The undergraduate class of 1973 was the first to have women starting from freshman year; all undergraduate women were housed in Vanderbilt Hall.\nA decade into co-education, student assault and harassment by faculty became the impetus for the trailblazing lawsuit \"Alexander v. Yale\". In the 1970s, a group of students and a faculty member sued Yale for its failure to curtail sexual harassment, especially by male faculty. The case was partly built from a 1977 report authored by plaintiff Ann Olivarius, \"A report to the Yale Corporation from the Yale Undergraduate Women's Caucus\". This case was the first to use Title IX to argue and establish that sexual harassment of female students can be considered illegal sex discrimination. The plaintiffs were Olivarius, Ronni Alexander, Margery Reifler, Pamela Price, and Lisa E. Stone. They were joined by Yale classics professor John \"Jack\" J. Winkler. The lawsuit, brought partly by Catharine MacKinnon, alleged rape, fondling, and offers of higher grades for sex by faculty, including Keith Brion, professor of flute and director of bands, political science professor Raymond Duvall, English professor Michael Cooke, and coach of the field hockey team, Richard Kentwell. While unsuccessful in the courts, the legal reasoning changed the landscape of sex discrimination law and resulted in the establishment of Yale's Grievance Board and Women's Center. In 2011 a Title IX complaint was filed against Yale by students and graduates, including editors of Yale's feminist magazine \"Broad Recognition\", alleging the university had a hostile sexual climate. In response, the university formed a Title IX steering committee to address complaints of sexual misconduct. Afterwards, universities and colleges throughout the U.S. also established sexual harassment grievance procedures.\nClass.\nYale instituted policies in the early 20th century designed to maintain the proportion of white Protestants from notable families in the student body (see \"numerus clausus\") and eliminated such preferences, beginning with the class of 1970.\n21st century.\nIn 2006, Yale and Peking University (PKU) established a Joint Undergraduate Program in Beijing, an exchange program allowing Yale students to spend a semester living and studying with PKU honor students. In July 2012, the Yale University-PKU Program ended due to weak participation.\nIn 2007 outgoing Yale President Rick Levin characterized Yale's institutional priorities: \"First, among the nation's finest research universities, Yale is distinctively committed to excellence in undergraduate education. Second, in our graduate and professional schools, as well as in Yale College, we are committed to the education of leaders.\"\nIn 2009, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair picked Yale as one location\u2014the others being Britain's Durham University and Universiti Teknologi Mara\u2014for the Tony Blair Faith Foundation's United States Faith and Globalization Initiative. As of 2009, former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo is the director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and teaches an undergraduate seminar, \"Debating Globalization\". As of 2009, former presidential candidate and DNC chair Howard Dean teaches a residential college seminar, \"Understanding Politics and Politicians\". Also in 2009, an alliance was formed among Yale, University College London, and both schools' affiliated hospital complexes to conduct research focused on the direct improvement of patient care\u2014a field known as translational medicine. President Richard Levin noted that Yale has hundreds of other partnerships across the world, but \"no existing collaboration matches the scale of the new partnership with UCL\". In August 2013, a new partnership with the National University of Singapore led to the opening of Yale-NUS College in Singapore, a joint effort to create a new liberal arts college in Asia featuring a curriculum including Western and Asian traditions.\nIn 2017, having been suggested for decades, Yale University renamed Calhoun College, named for slave owner, anti-abolitionist, and white supremacist Vice President John C. Calhoun. It is now Hopper College, after Grace Hopper.\nIn 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd protests, the #CancelYale tag was used on social media to demand that Elihu Yale's name be removed from Yale University. Much of the support originated from right-wing pundits such as Mike Cernovich and Ann Coulter, who intended to satirize what they perceived as the excesses of cancel culture. Yale spent most of his professional career in the employ of the East India Company (EIC), serving as the governor of the Presidency of Fort St. George in modern-day Chennai. The EIC, including Yale himself, was involved in the Indian Ocean slave trade, though the extent of Yale's involvement in slavery remains debated.\nHis singularly large donation led critics to argue Yale University relied on money derived from slavery for its first scholarships and endowments.\nIn 2020, the U.S. Justice Department sued Yale for alleged discrimination against Asian and white candidates, through affirmative action admission policies. In 2021, under the new Biden administration, the Justice Department withdrew the lawsuit. The group, Students for Fair Admissions, later won a similar lawsuit against Harvard.\nIn April 2024, Yale students joined other campuses across the United States in protests against the Gaza war. The student protestors demanded that Yale University divest from military weapons companies with ties to Israel's war on Gaza. Over 50 people were arrested at protests in and around Beinecke Plaza, and protests continued during the summer and in the new academic year starting September 2024. Undergraduate students \"overwhelmingly\" voted in a December referendum to call for divestment. \nAlumni in politics.\nThe \"Boston Globe\" wrote in 2002 that \"if there's one school that can lay claim to educating the nation's top national leaders over the past three decades, it's Yale\". Yale alumni were represented on the Democratic or Republican ticket in every U.S. presidential election between 1972 and 2004. Yale-educated presidents since the end of the Vietnam War include Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, and major-party nominees include Hillary Clinton (2016), John Kerry (2004), Joseph Lieberman (vice president, 2000), and Sargent Shriver (vice president, 1972). Other alumni who have made serious bids for the presidency include Amy Klobuchar (2020), Tom Steyer (2020), Ben Carson (2016), Howard Dean (2004), Gary Hart (1984 and 1988), Paul Tsongas (1992), Pat Robertson (1988) and Jerry Brown (1976, 1980, 1992).\nSeveral explanations have been offered for Yale's representation since the end of the Vietnam War. Sources note the spirit of campus activism that has existed at Yale since the 1960s, and the intellectual influence of Reverend William Sloane Coffin on future candidates. Yale President Levin attributes the run to Yale's focus on creating \"a laboratory for future leaders\", an institutional priority that began during the tenure of Yale Presidents Alfred Whitney Griswold and Kingman Brewster. Richard H. Brodhead, former dean of Yale College and now president of Duke University, stated: \"We do give very significant attention to orientation to the community in our admissions, and there is a very strong tradition of volunteerism at Yale\". Yale historian Gaddis Smith notes \"an ethos of organized activity\" at Yale during the 20th century that led Kerry to lead the Yale Political Union's Liberal Party, George Pataki the Conservative Party, and Lieberman to manage the \"Yale Daily News\". Camille Paglia points to a history of networking and elitism: \"It has to do with a web of friendships and affiliations built up in school\". CNN suggests that George W. Bush benefited from preferential admissions policies for the \"son and grandson of alumni\", and for a \"member of a politically influential family\". Elisabeth Bumiller and James Fallows credit the culture of community that exists between students, faculty, and administration, which downplays self-interest and reinforces commitment to others.\nDuring the 1988 presidential election, George H. W. Bush (Yale '48) derided Michael Dukakis for having \"foreign-policy views born in Harvard Yard's boutique\". When challenged on the distinction between Dukakis's Harvard connection and his Yale background, he said that, unlike Harvard, Yale's reputation was \"so diffuse, there isn't a symbol, I don't think, in the Yale situation, any symbolism in it\" and said Yale did not share Harvard's reputation for \"liberalism and elitism\". In 2004 Howard Dean stated, \"In some ways, I consider myself separate from the other three (Yale) candidates of 2004. Yale changed so much between the class of '68 and the class of '71. My class was the first class to have women in it; it was the first class to have a significant effort to recruit African Americans. It was an extraordinary time, and in that span of time is the change of an entire generation\".\nAdministration and organization.\nLeadership.\nThe President and Fellows of Yale College, also known as the Yale Corporation, or board of trustees, is the governing body of the university and consists of thirteen standing committees with separate responsibilities outlined in the by-laws. The corporation has 19 members: three \"ex officio\" members, ten successor trustees, and six elected alumni fellows. The university has three major academic components: Yale College (the undergraduate program), the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the twelve professional schools.\nYale's former president Richard C. Levin was, at the time, one of the highest paid university presidents in the United States with a 2008 salary of $. Yale's succeeding president Peter Salovey ranks 40th with a 2020 salary of $.\nThe Yale Provost's Office and similar executive positions have launched several women into prominent university executive positions. In 1977, Provost Hanna Holborn Gray was appointed interim president of Yale and later went on to become president of the University of Chicago, being the first woman to hold either position at each respective school. In 1994, Provost Judith Rodin became the first permanent female president of an Ivy League institution at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2002, Provost Alison Richard became the vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge. In 2003, the dean of the Divinity School, Rebecca Chopp, was appointed president of Colgate University and later went on to serve as the president of Swarthmore College in 2009, and then the first female chancellor of the University of Denver in 2014. In 2004, Provost Dr. Susan Hockfield became the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2004, Dean of the Nursing school, Catherine Gilliss, was appointed the dean of Duke University's School of Nursing and vice chancellor for nursing affairs. In 2007, Deputy Provost H. Kim Bottomly was named president of Wellesley College.\nSimilar examples for men who have served in Yale leadership positions can also be found. In 2004, Dean of Yale College Richard H. Brodhead was appointed as the president of Duke University. In 2008, Provost Andrew Hamilton was confirmed to be the vice chancellor of the University of Oxford.\nStaff and labor unions.\nYale University staff are represented by several different unions. Clerical and technical workers are represented by Local 34, and service and maintenance workers are represented by Local 35, both of the same union affiliate UNITE HERE. Unlike similar institutions, Yale has consistently refused to recognize its graduate student union, Local 33 (another affiliate of UNITE HERE), citing claims that the union's elections were undemocratic and how graduate students are not employees; the move to not recognize the union has been criticized by the American Federation of Teachers. In addition, officers of the Yale University Police Department are represented by the Yale Police Benevolent Association, which affiliated in 2005 with the Connecticut Organization for Public Safety Employees. Yale security officers joined the International Union of Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America in late 2010, even though the Yale administration contested the election. In October 2014, after deliberation, Yale security decided to form a new union, the Yale University Security Officers Association, which has since represented the campus security officers.\nYale has a history of difficult and prolonged labor negotiations, often culminating in strikes. There have been at least eight strikes since 1968, and \"The New York Times\" wrote that Yale has a reputation as having the worst record of labor tension of any university in the U.S. Moreover, Yale has been accused by the AFL\u2013CIO of failing to treat workers with respect, as well as not renewing contracts with professors over involvement in campus labor issues. Yale has responded to strikes with claims over mediocre union participation and the benefits of their contracts.\nCampus.\nYale's central campus in downtown New Haven covers and comprises its main, historic campus and a medical campus adjacent to the Yale\u2013New Haven Hospital. In western New Haven, the university holds of athletic facilities, including the Yale Golf Course. In 2008, Yale purchased the 17-building, former Bayer HealthCare complex in West Haven, Connecticut, the buildings of which are now used as laboratory and research space. Yale also owns seven forests in Connecticut, Vermont, and New Hampshire\u2014the largest of which is the Yale-Myers Forest in Connecticut's Quiet Corner\u2014and nature preserves including Horse Island.\nYale is noted for its largely Collegiate Gothic campus as well as several iconic modern buildings commonly discussed in architectural history survey courses: Louis Kahn's Yale Art Gallery and Center for British Art, Eero Saarinen's Ingalls Rink and Ezra Stiles and Morse Colleges, and Paul Rudolph's Art & Architecture Building. Yale also owns and has restored many noteworthy 19th-century mansions along Hillhouse Avenue, which was considered the most beautiful street in America by Charles Dickens when he visited the United States in the 1840s. In 2011, \"Travel + Leisure\" listed the Yale campus as one of the most beautiful in the United States.\nMany of Yale's buildings were constructed in the Collegiate Gothic architecture style from 1917 to 1931, financed largely by Edward S. Harkness, including the Yale Drama School. Stone sculpture built into the walls of the buildings portray contemporary college personalities, such as a writer, an athlete, a tea-drinking socialite, and a student who has fallen asleep while reading. Similarly, the decorative friezes on the buildings depict contemporary scenes, like a policemen chasing a robber and arresting a prostitute (on the wall of the Law School), or a student relaxing with a mug of beer and a cigarette. The architect, James Gamble Rogers, faux-aged these buildings by splashing the walls with acid, deliberately breaking their leaded glass windows and repairing them in the style of the Middle Ages, and creating niches for decorative statuary but leaving them empty to simulate loss or theft over the ages. In fact, the buildings merely simulate Middle Ages architecture, for though they appear to be constructed of solid stone blocks in the authentic manner, most actually have steel framing as was commonly used in 1930. One exception is Harkness Tower, tall, which was originally a free-standing stone structure. It was reinforced in 1964 to allow the installation of the Yale Memorial Carillon.\nOther examples of the Gothic style are on the Old Campus by architects like Henry Austin, Charles C. Haight and Russell Sturgis. Several are associated with members of the Vanderbilt family, including Vanderbilt Hall, Phelps Hall, St. Anthony Hall (a commission for member Frederick William Vanderbilt), the Mason, Sloane and Osborn laboratories, dormitories for the Sheffield Scientific School (the engineering and sciences school at Yale until 1956) and elements of Silliman College, the largest residential college.\nThe oldest building on campus, Connecticut Hall (built in 1750), is in the Georgian style. Georgian-style buildings erected from 1929 to 1933 include Timothy Dwight College, Pierson College, and Davenport College, except the latter's east, York Street fa\u00e7ade, which was constructed in the Gothic style to coordinate with adjacent structures.\nThe Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, is one of the largest buildings in the world reserved exclusively for the preservation of rare books and manuscripts. The library includes a six-story above-ground tower of book stacks, filled with 180,000 volumes, that is surrounded by large translucent Vermont marble panels and a steel and granite truss. The panels act as windows and subdue direct sunlight while also diffusing the light in warm hues throughout the interior. Near the library is a sunken courtyard with sculptures by Isamu Noguchi that are said to represent time (the pyramid), the sun (the circle), and chance (the cube). The library is located near the center of the university in Hewitt Quadrangle, which is now more commonly referred to as \"Beinecke Plaza\".\nAlumnus Eero Saarinen, Finnish-American architect of such notable structures as the Gateway Arch in St.\u00a0Louis, Washington Dulles International Airport main terminal, Bell Labs Holmdel Complex and the CBS Building in Manhattan, designed Ingalls Rink, dedicated in 1959, as well as the residential colleges Ezra Stiles and Morse. These latter were modeled after the medieval Italian hill town of San Gimignano\u2014a prototype chosen for the town's pedestrian-friendly milieu and fortress-like stone towers. These tower forms at Yale act in counterpoint to the college's many Gothic spires and Georgian cupolas.\nThe athletic field complex is partially in New Haven, and partially in West Haven.\nNotable nonresidential campus buildings.\nNotable nonresidential campus buildings and landmarks include Battell Chapel, Beinecke Rare Book Library, Harkness Tower, Humanities Quadrangle, Ingalls Rink, Kline Biology Tower, Osborne Memorial Laboratories, Payne Whitney Gymnasium, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Sterling Hall of Medicine, Sterling Law Buildings, Sterling Memorial Library, Woolsey Hall, Yale Center for British Art, Yale University Art Gallery, Yale Art & Architecture Building, and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London.\nYale's secret society buildings (some of which are called \"tombs\") were built to be private yet unmistakable. A diversity of architectural styles is represented: Berzelius, Donn Barber in an austere cube with classical detailing (erected in 1908 or 1910); Book and Snake, Louis R. Metcalfe in a Greek Ionic style (erected in 1901); Elihu, architect unknown but built in a Colonial style (constructed on an early 17th-century foundation although the building is from the 18th century); Mace and Chain, in a late colonial, early Victorian style (built in 1823). (Interior moulding is said to have belonged to Benedict Arnold); Manuscript Society, King-lui Wu with Dan Kiley responsible for landscaping and Josef Albers for the brickwork intaglio mural. Building constructed in a mid-century modern style; Scroll and Key, Richard Morris Hunt in a Moorish- or Islamic-inspired Beaux-Arts style (erected 1869\u201370); Skull and Bones, possibly Alexander Jackson Davis or Henry Austin in an Egypto-Doric style utilizing Brownstone (in 1856 the first wing was completed, in 1903 the second wing, 1911 the Neo-Gothic towers in rear garden were completed); St. Elmo, (former tomb) Kenneth M. Murchison, 1912, designs inspired by Elizabethan manor. Current location, brick colonial; and Wolf's Head, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, erected 1923\u20131924, Collegiate Gothic.\nSustainability.\nYale's Office of Sustainability develops and implements sustainability practices at Yale. Yale is committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 10% below 1990 levels by 2020. As part of this commitment, the university allocates renewable energy credits to offset some of the energy used by residential colleges. Eleven campus buildings are candidates for LEED design and certification. Yale Sustainable Food Project initiated the introduction of local, organic vegetables, fruits, and beef to all residential college dining halls. Yale was listed as a Campus Sustainability Leader on the Sustainable Endowments Institute's College Sustainability Report Card 2008, and received a \"B+\" grade overall. Yale is a member of the Ivy Plus Sustainability Consortium, through which it has committed to best-practice sharing and the ongoing exchange of campus sustainability solutions along with other member institutions.\nRelationship with New Haven.\nYale is the largest taxpayer and employer in the City of New Haven, and has often buoyed the city's economy and communities. Yale, however, has consistently opposed paying a tax on its academic property. Yale's Art Galleries, along with many other university resources, are free and openly accessible. Yale also funds the New Haven Promise program, paying full tuition for eligible students from New Haven public schools.\nTown\u2013gown relations.\nYale has a complicated relationship with its home city; for example, thousands of students volunteer every year in myriad community organizations, but city officials, who decry Yale's exemption from local property taxes, have long pressed the university to do more to help. Under President Levin, Yale has financially supported many of New Haven's efforts to reinvigorate the city. Evidence suggests that the town and gown relationships are mutually beneficial. Still, the economic power of the university increased dramatically with its financial success amid a decline in the local economy.\nCampus safety.\nSeveral campus safety strategies have been pioneered at Yale. The first campus police force was founded at Yale in 1894, when the university contracted city police officers to exclusively cover the campus. Later hired by the university, the officers were originally brought in to quell unrest between students and city residents and curb destructive student behavior. In addition to the Yale Police Department, a variety of safety services are available including blue phones, a safety escort, and 24-hour shuttle service.\nIn the 1970s and 1980s, poverty and violent crime rose in New Haven, dampening Yale's student and faculty recruiting efforts. Between 1990 and 2006, New Haven's crime rate fell by half, helped by a community policing strategy by the New Haven Police and Yale's campus became the safest among peer schools.\nIn 2004, the national non-profit watchdog group Security on Campus filed a complaint with the U.S.\u00a0Department of Education, accusing Yale of under-reporting rape and sexual assaults.\nIn April 2021, Yale announced that it will require students to receive a COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of being on campus during the fall 2021 term.\nAcademics.\nAdmissions.\nUndergraduate admission to Yale College is considered \"most selective\" by \"U.S. News\". In 2022, Yale accepted 2,234 students to the Class of 2026 out of 50,015 applicants, for an acceptance rate of 4.46%. 98% of students graduate within six years.\nThrough its program of need-based financial aid, Yale commits to meet the full demonstrated financial need of all applicants, and the university is need-blind for both domestic and international applicants. Most financial aid is in the form of grants and scholarships that do not need to be paid back to the university, and the average need-based aid grant for the Class of 2017 was $. 15% of Yale College students are expected to have no parental contribution, and about 50% receive some form of financial aid. About 16% of the Class of 2013 had some form of student loan debt at graduation, with an average debt of $ among borrowers. For 2019, Yale ranked second in enrollment of recipients of the National Merit $2,500 Scholarship (140 scholars).\nHalf of all Yale undergraduates are women, more than 39% are ethnic minority U.S. citizens (19% are underrepresented minorities), and 10.5% are international students. 55% attended public schools and 45% attended private, religious, or international schools, and 97% of students were in the top 10% of their high school class. Every year, Yale College also admits a small group of non-traditional students through the Eli Whitney Students Program.\nCollections.\nYale University Library, which holds over 15\u00a0million volumes, is the second-largest university collection in the United States. The main library, Sterling Memorial Library, contains about 4\u00a0million volumes, and other holdings are dispersed at subject and location libraries.\nRare books are found in several Yale collections. The Beinecke Rare Book Library has a large collection of rare books and manuscripts. The Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library includes important historical medical texts, including an impressive collection of rare books, as well as historical medical instruments. The Lewis Walpole Library contains the largest collection of 18th\u2011century British literary works. The Elizabethan Club, technically a private organization, makes its Elizabethan folios and first editions available to qualified researchers through Yale.\nYale's museum collections are also of international stature. The Yale University Art Gallery, the country's first university-affiliated art museum, contains more than 200,000 works, including Old Masters and important collections of modern art, in the Swartwout and Kahn buildings. The latter, Louis Kahn's first large-scale American work (1953), was renovated and reopened in December 2006. The Yale Center for British Art, the largest collection of British art outside of the UK, grew from a gift of Paul Mellon and is housed in another Kahn-designed building.\nThe Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven is used by school children and contains research collections in anthropology, archaeology, and the natural environment.\nThe Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments, affiliated with the Yale School of Music, is perhaps the least-known of Yale's collections because its hours of opening are restricted.\nThe museums once housed the artifacts brought to the United States from Peru by Yale history professor Hiram Bingham in his Yale-financed expedition to Machu Picchu in 1912\u2014when the removal of such artifacts was legal. The artifacts were restored to Peru in 2012.\nRankings.\nThe \"U.S. News & World Report\" ranked Yale third among U.S. national universities for 2016, as it had for each of the previous sixteen years. Yale University is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education.\nInternationally, Yale was ranked 11th in the 2016 Academic Ranking of World Universities, tenth in the 2016\u201317 Nature Index for quality of scientific research output, and tenth in the 2016 CWUR World University Rankings. The university was also ranked sixth in the 2016 Times Higher Education (THE) Global University Employability Rankings and eighth in the Academic World Reputation Rankings. In 2019, it ranked 27th among the universities around the world by \"SCImago Institutions Rankings\".\nFaculty, research, and intellectual traditions.\nYale is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU) and is classified among \"R1: Doctoral Universities\u2014Very high research activity\". The National Science Foundation ranked Yale 15th among American universities for research and development expenditures in 2021 with $.\nYale's current faculty include 67 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 55 members of the National Academy of Medicine, 8 members of the National Academy of Engineering, and 187 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The college is, after normalization for institution size, the tenth-largest baccalaureate source of doctoral degree recipients in the United States, and the largest such source within the Ivy League. It also is a top 10 (ranked seventh) baccalaureate source (after normalization for the number of graduates) of some of the most notable scientists (Nobel, Fields, Turing prizes, or membership in National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, or National Academy of Medicine).\nYale's English and Comparative Literature departments were part of the New Criticism movement. Of the New Critics, Robert Penn Warren, W.K. Wimsatt, and Cleanth Brooks were all Yale faculty. Later, the Yale Comparative literature department became a center of American deconstruction. Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, taught at the department of comparative literature from the late 1970s to mid-1980s. Several other Yale faculty members were also associated with deconstruction, forming the so-called \"Yale School\". These included Paul de Man who taught in the Departments of Comparative Literature and French, J.\u00a0Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartman (both taught in the Departments of English and Comparative Literature), and Harold Bloom (English), whose theoretical position was always somewhat specific, and who ultimately took a very different path from the rest of this group. Yale's history department has also originated important intellectual trends. Historians C.\u00a0Vann Woodward and David Brion Davis are credited with beginning in the 1960s and 1970s an important stream of southern historians; likewise, David Montgomery, a labor historian, advised many of the current generation of labor historians in the country. Yale's Music School and department fostered the growth of Music Theory in the latter half of the 20th\u00a0century. The \"Journal of Music Theory\" was founded there in 1957; Allen Forte and David Lewin were influential teachers and scholars.\nSince the late 1960s, Yale produces social sciences and policy research through its Yale Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS).\nIn addition to eminent faculty members, Yale research relies heavily on the presence of roughly 1200 Postdocs from various national and international origin working in the multiple laboratories in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and professional schools of the university. The university progressively recognized this working force with the recent creation of the Office for Postdoctoral Affairs and the Yale Postdoctoral Association.\nCampus life.\nYale is a research university, with the majority of its students in the graduate and professional schools. Undergraduates, or Yale College students, come from a variety of ethnic, national, socioeconomic, and personal backgrounds. Of the 2010\u20132011 freshman class, 10% are non\u2011U.S. citizens, while 54% went to public high schools. The median family income of Yale students is $, with 57% of students coming from the top 10% highest-earning families and 16% from the bottom 60%.\nResidential colleges.\nYale's residential college system was established in 1933 by Edward S. Harkness, who admired the social intimacy of Oxford and Cambridge and donated significant funds to found similar colleges at Yale and Harvard. Though Yale's colleges resemble their English precursors organizationally and architecturally, they are dependent entities of Yale College and have limited autonomy. The colleges are led by a head and an academic dean, who reside in the college, and university faculty and affiliates constitute each college's fellowship. Colleges offer their own seminars, social events, and speaking engagements known as \"Master's Teas\", but do not contain programs of study or academic departments. All other undergraduate courses are taught by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and are open to members of any college.\nAll undergraduates are members of a college, to which they are assigned before their freshman year, and 85 percent live in the college quadrangle or a college-affiliated dormitory. While the majority of upperclassman live in the colleges, most on-campus freshmen live on the Old Campus, the university's oldest precinct.\nWhile Harkness' original colleges were Georgian Revival or Collegiate Gothic in style, two colleges constructed in the 1960s, Morse and Ezra Stiles Colleges, have modernist designs. All twelve college quadrangles are organized around a courtyard, and each has a dining hall, courtyard, library, common room, and a range of student facilities. The twelve colleges are named for important alumni or significant places in university history. In 2017, the university opened two new colleges near Science Hill.\nCalhoun College.\nSince the 1960s, John C. Calhoun's white supremacist beliefs and pro-slavery leadership had prompted calls to rename the college or remove its tributes to Calhoun. The racially motivated church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, led to renewed calls in the summer of 2015 for Calhoun College, one of 12 residential colleges at the time, to be renamed. In July 2015 students signed a petition calling for the name change. They argued in the petition that\u2014while Calhoun was respected in the 19th century as an \"extraordinary American statesman\"\u2014he was \"one of the most prolific defenders of slavery and white supremacy\" in the history of the United States. In August 2015, Yale President Peter Salovey addressed the Freshman Class of 2019 in which he responded to the racial tensions but explained why the college would not be renamed. He described Calhoun as \"a notable political theorist, a vice president to two different U.S. presidents, a secretary of war and of state, and a congressman and senator representing South Carolina\". He acknowledged that Calhoun also \"believed that the highest forms of civilization depend on involuntary servitude. Not only that, but he also believed that the races he thought to be inferior, black people in particular, ought to be subjected to it for the sake of their own best interests.\" Student activism about this issue increased in the fall of 2015, and included further protests sparked by controversy surrounding an administrator's comments on the potential positive and negative implications of students who wear Halloween costumes that are culturally sensitive. Campus-wide discussions expanded to include critical discussion of the experiences of women of color on campus, and the realities of racism in undergraduate life. The protests were sensationalized by the media and led to the labelling of some students as being members of Generation Snowflake.\nIn April 2016, Salovey announced that \"despite decades of vigorous alumni and student protests\", Calhoun's name will remain on the Yale residential college explaining that it is preferable for Yale students to live in Calhoun's \"shadow\" so they will be \"better prepared to rise to the challenges of the present and the future\". He claimed that if they removed Calhoun's name, it would \"obscure\" his \"legacy of slavery rather than addressing it\". \"Yale is part of that history\" and \"We cannot erase American history, but we can confront it, teach it and learn from it.\" One change that will be issued is the title of \"master\" for faculty members who serve as residential college leaders will be renamed to \"head of college\" due to its connotation of slavery.\nDespite this apparently conclusive reasoning, Salovey announced that Calhoun College would be renamed for groundbreaking computer scientist Grace Hopper in February 2017. This renaming decision received a range of responses from Yale students and alumni. In his 2019 book \"Assault on American Excellence\", former Dean of Yale Law School Anthony T. Kronman criticized the title and name changes and the lack of support from Salovey for the Christakises, who were targeted by the student activists. Other members of the university community disagreed with Kronman's positions.\nStudent organizations.\nIn 2024, Yale had 526 registered undergraduate student organizations, plus hundreds of others for graduate students.\nThe university hosts a variety of student journals, magazines, and newspapers. The \"Yale Literary Magazine\", founded in February 1836, is the oldest student literary magazine in the United States. Established in 1872, \"The Yale Record\" is the world's oldest college humor magazine. Newspapers include the \"Yale Daily News\", which was first published in 1878, and the weekly \"Yale Herald\", which was first published in 1986. The \"Yale Journal of Medicine & Law\" is a biannual magazine that explores the intersection of law and medicine.\nDwight Hall, an independent, non-profit community service organization, oversees more than 2,000 Yale undergraduates working on more than 70 community service initiatives in New Haven. The Yale College Council runs several agencies that oversee campus wide activities and student services. The Yale Dramatic Association and Bulldog Productions cater to the theater and film communities, respectively. In addition, the Yale Drama Coalition serves to coordinate between and provide resources for the various Sudler Fund sponsored theater productions which run each weekend. WYBC Yale Radio is the campus's radio station, owned and operated by students. While students used to broadcast on AM and FM frequencies, they now have an Internet-only stream.\nThe Yale College Council (YCC) serves as the campus's undergraduate student government. All registered student organizations are regulated and funded by a subsidiary organization of the YCC, known as the Undergraduate Organizations Funding Committee (UOFC). The Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS) serves as Yale's graduate and professional student government.\nThe Yale Political Union (YPU) is a debate society founded in 1934 to host student discussions on a wide variety of topics. It is advised by alumni political leaders such as John Kerry and George Pataki.\nThe Yale International Relations Association (YIRA) functions as the umbrella organization for the university's top-ranked Model UN team. YIRA also has a Europe-based offshoot, Yale Model Government Europe, other Model UN conferences such as YMUN, YMUN Korea, YMUN Taiwan and Yale Model African Union (YMAU), the Yale Review of International Studies (YRIS), and educational programs such as the Yale International Relations Leadership Institute and Hemispheres.\nThe campus includes several fraternities and sororities. The campus features at least 18 a\u00a0cappella groups, the most famous of which is The Whiffenpoofs, which from its founding in 1909 until 2018 was made up solely of senior men.\nThe Elizabethan Club, a social club, has a membership of undergraduates, graduates, faculty and staff with literary or artistic interests. Membership is by invitation. Members and their guests may enter the \"Lizzie's\" premises for conversation and tea. The club owns first editions of a Shakespeare Folio, several Shakespeare Quartos, and a first edition of Milton's \"Paradise Lost\", among other important literary texts.\nSecret societies.\nYale's secret societies include Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key, Wolf's Head, Book and Snake, Elihu, Berzelius, St.\u00a0Elmo, Manuscript, Brothers in Unity, Linonia, St. Anthony Hall, Shabtai, Myth and Sword, Daughters of Sovereign Government (DSG), Mace and Chain, ISO, Spade and Grave, and Sage and Chalice, among others. The two oldest existing honor societies are the Aurelian (1910) and the Torch Honor Society (1916).\nThese are akin to Harvard finals clubs, Princeton eating clubs, and senior societies at University of Pennsylvania.\nTraditions.\nYale seniors at graduation smash clay pipes underfoot to symbolize passage from their \"bright college years\", though in recent history the pipes have been replaced with \"bubble pipes\". (\"Bright College Years\", the university's alma mater, was penned in 1881 by Henry Durand, Class of 1881, to the tune of \"Die Wacht am Rhein\".) Yale's student tour guides tell visitors that students consider it good luck to rub the toe of the statue of Theodore Dwight Woolsey on Old Campus; however, actual students rarely do so. In the second half of the 20th century Bladderball, a campus-wide game played with a large inflatable ball, became a popular tradition but was banned by administration due to safety concerns. In spite of administration opposition, students revived the game in 2009, 2011, and 2014.\nAthletics.\nYale supports 35 varsity athletic teams that compete in the Ivy League Conference, the Eastern College Athletic Conference, and the New England Intercollegiate Sailing Association. Yale athletic teams compete intercollegiately at the NCAA Division\u00a0I level. Like other members of the Ivy League, Yale does not offer athletic scholarships.\nYale has numerous athletic facilities, including the Yale Bowl (the nation's first natural \"bowl\" stadium, and prototype for such stadiums as the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the Rose Bowl), located at The Walter Camp Field athletic complex, and the Payne Whitney Gymnasium, the second-largest indoor athletic complex in the world.\nIn 1970, the NCAA banned Yale from participating in all NCAA sports for two years, in reaction to Yale\u2014against the wishes of the NCAA\u2014playing its Jewish center Jack Langer in college games after Langer had played for Team United States at the 1969 Maccabiah Games in Israel with the approval of Yale President Kingman Brewster. The decision impacted 300 Yale students, every Yale student on its sports teams, over the next two years.\nIn 2016, the men's basketball team won the Ivy League Championship title for the first time in 54 years, earning a spot in the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. In the first round of the tournament, the Bulldogs beat the Baylor Bears 79\u201375 in the school's first-ever tournament win.\nIn May 2018, the men's lacrosse team defeated the Duke Blue Devils to claim their first-ever NCAA Division I Men's Lacrosse Championship, and were the first Ivy League school to win the title since the Princeton Tigers in 2001.\nYale crew is the oldest collegiate athletic team in America, and won Olympic Games Gold Medal for men's eights in 1924 and 1956. The Yale Corinthian Yacht Club, founded in 1881, is the oldest collegiate sailing club in the world. October 21, 2000, marked the dedication of Yale's fourth new boathouse in 157\u00a0years of collegiate rowing. The Gilder Boathouse is named to honor former Olympic rower Virginia Gilder\u00a0'79 and her father Richard Gilder\u00a0'54, who gave $ towards the $ project. Yale also maintains the Gales Ferry site where the heavyweight men's team trains for the Yale-Harvard Boat Race.\nIn 1896, Yale and Johns Hopkins played the first known ice hockey game in the United States. Since 2006, the school's ice hockey clubs have played a commemorative game.\nYale students claim to have invented Frisbee, by tossing empty Frisbie Pie Company tins.\nYale athletics are supported by the Yale Precision Marching Band. \"Precision\" is used here ironically; the band is a scatter-style band that runs wildly between formations rather than actually marching. The band attends every home football game and many away, as well as most hockey and basketball games throughout the winter.\nYale intramural sports are also a significant aspect of student life. Students compete for their respective residential colleges, fostering a friendly rivalry. The year is divided into fall, winter, and spring seasons, each of which includes about 10 different sports. About half the sports are coeducational. At the end of the year, the residential college with the most points (not all sports count equally) wins the Tyng Cup.\nSong.\nNotable among the songs commonly played and sung at events such as commencement, convocation, alumni gatherings, and athletic games is the alma mater, \"Bright College Years\". Despite its popularity, \"Boola Boola\" is not the official fight song, albeit being the origin of the university's unofficial motto. The official Yale fight song, \"Bulldog\" was written by Cole Porter during his undergraduate days and is sung after touchdowns during a football game. Additionally, two other songs, \"Down the Field\" by C.W. O'Conner, and \"Bingo Eli Yale\", also by Cole Porter, are still sung at football games. According to \"College Fight Songs: An Annotated Anthology\" published in 1998, \"Down the Field\" ranks as the fourth-greatest fight song of all time.\nMascot.\nThe school mascot is \"Handsome Dan\", the Yale bulldog, and the Yale fight song contains the refrain, \"Bulldog, bulldog, bow wow wow\". The school color, since 1894, is Yale Blue. Yale's Handsome Dan is believed to be the first college mascot in America, having been established in 1889.\nMental health.\nYale has faced significant criticism for its handling of student mental health on campus. Suicidal and depressed students say that Yale forced them to medically withdraw rather than provide them with academic accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and in 2018 the Ruderman Family Foundation ranked Yale as having the worst mental health policies in the Ivy League.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nDear Yale, I loved being here. I only wish I could've had some time. I needed time to work things out and to wait for new medication to kick in, but I couldn't do it in school, and I couldn't bear the thought of having to leave for a full year, or of leaving and never being readmitted. Love, Luchang.\nLuchang Wang, posted on Facebook in 2015 shortly before her death\nStudents at Yale say that the university's policies force them to hide their depression and avoid seeking help, for fear of being forced to leave. One prominent case was the suicide of Luchang Wang in 2015, who died by suicide after making a Facebook post saying that she needed time to deal with her mental health issues, but could not deal with being forced to medically withdraw for an entire year with an uncertain chance of being readmitted. Wang had previously withdrawn from school due to mental health issues, and was afraid of being forced to withdraw again, as a second readmission attempt would be considerably more difficult for her. A friend of Wang said that she routinely lied to her university therapist to avoid being kicked out, and another student said that many at Yale lie to their counselors as \"there's no clear standard established that says exactly what students will get involuntarily hospitalized or withdrawn for\". In response, the university convened a commission to evaluate their readmission policies after a mental health withdrawal, renaming the process to \"reinstatement\" as well as eliminating the $ reapplication fee.\nFor students that do seek help, waitlists for therapy can be months long, with individual counselling sessions only 30 minutes in length. In 2022, after a Washington Post article about their medical withdrawal policies, the school increased the number of mental health clinicians on campus from 51 to 60 as well as promised further changes. In 2023, after a lawsuit was filed against the school for what the plaintiffs described as discrimination, the university changed the name of a \"medical withdrawal\" to a \"medical leave of absence\" saying that the \"leave of absence\" terminology would allow students to remain on Yale's insurance while away from the school. The new policy also allowed for students on a leave of absence to participate in extracurricular clubs and visit campus, something a student on medical withdrawal was banned from doing. A representative of Yale also said that the criticism of their policies \"misrepresents our efforts and unwavering commitment to supporting our students, whose well-being and success are our primary focus\" and that \"the mental health of our students is a very, very high priority\".\nAfter the death of undergraduate student Rachael Shaw Rosenbaum by suicide, an organization called Elis for Rachael was formed, advocating for mental health-related reforms. The group has sued Yale, demanding changes.\nNotable people.\nBenefactors.\nYale has had many financial supporters, but some stand out by the magnitude or timeliness of their contributions. Among those who have made large donations commemorated at the university are: Elihu Yale, Jeremiah Dummer, the Vanderbilt family, the Harkness family (Edward, Anna, and William), the Beinecke family (Edwin, Frederick, and Walter), John William Sterling, Payne Whitney, Joseph Earl Sheffield, Paul Mellon, Charles B.\u00a0G. Murphy, Joseph Tsai, William K. Lanman, and Stephen Schwarzman. The Yale Class of 1954, led by Richard Gilder, donated $ in commemoration of their 50th\u00a0reunion. Charles B. Johnson, a 1954 graduate of Yale College, pledged a $ gift in 2013 to support the construction of two new residential colleges. The colleges have been named respectively in honor of Pauli Murray and Benjamin Franklin. A $ contribution by Stephen Adams enabled the Yale School of Music to become tuition-free and the Adams Center for Musical Arts to be built, while a $ contribution by David Geffen enabled the Yale School of Drama (renamed the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale) to become tuition-free as well.\nNotable alumni.\nYale has produced many distinguished alumni in various fields, in both the public and private sectors. According to 2020 data, around 71% of undergraduates join the workforce, while 17% attend graduate or professional schools. Yale graduates have been recipients of 263 Rhodes Scholarships, 123 Marshall Scholarships, 67 Truman Scholarships, 21 Churchill Scholarships, and 9 Mitchell Scholarships. The university is the 2nd largest producer of Fulbright Scholars, with 1,244 in its history and 89 MacArthur Fellows. The U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs ranked Yale fifth among research institutions producing the most 2020\u20132021 Fulbright Scholars. 31 living billionaires are alumni.\nOne of the most popular undergraduate majors is political science, with many going on to serve in government and politics. Former presidents who attended for undergrad include William Howard Taft, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush while former presidents Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton attended Yale Law School. Vice president JD Vance graduated from Yale Law School. Former vice president and influential antebellum era politician John C. Calhoun also graduated from Yale. Former world leaders include Italian prime minister Mario Monti, Turkish prime minister Tansu \u00c7iller, South Korean prime minister Lee Hong-koo, Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, German president Karl Carstens, Philippine president Jos\u00e9 Paciano Laurel, Latvian president Valdis Zatlers, Taiwanese premier Jiang Yi-huah, and Malawian president Peter Mutharika, among others. Prominent royals who graduated are Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, and Olympia Bonaparte, Princess Napol\u00e9on.\nAlumni have had considerable presence in U.S. government in all three branches. On the U.S. Supreme Court, 19 justices have been alumni, including current Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh. Alumni have been U.S. Senators, including current senators Michael Bennet, Richard Blumenthal, Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown, Chris Coons, Amy Klobuchar, Sheldon Whitehouse. Current and former cabinet members include Secretaries of State John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Cyrus Vance, and Dean Acheson; U.S. Secretaries of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, Robert Rubin, Nicholas F. Brady, Steven Mnuchin, and Janet Yellen; U.S. Attorneys General Nicholas Katzenbach, Edwin Meese, John Ashcroft, and Edward H. Levi; and many others. Peace Corps founder and American diplomat Sargent Shriver and public official and urban planner Robert Moses are Yale alumni.\nYale has produced numerous award-winning authors and influential writers, like Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Sinclair Lewis and Pulitzer Prize winners Stephen Vincent Ben\u00e9t, Thornton Wilder, Doug Wright, and David McCullough. Academy Award winning actors, actresses, and directors include Jodie Foster, Paul Newman, Meryl Streep, Elia Kazan, George Roy Hill, Lupita Nyong'o, Oliver Stone, and Frances McDormand. Alumni from Yale have also made notable contributions to both music and the arts. Leading American composer from the 20th century Charles Ives, Broadway composer Cole Porter, Grammy award winner David Lang, multi-Tony Award winner Composer and Musicologist Maury Yeston, and award-winning jazz pianist and composer Vijay Iyer all hail from Yale. Hugo Boss Prize winner Matthew Barney, famed American sculptor Richard Serra, President Barack Obama presidential portrait painter Kehinde Wiley, MacArthur Fellows and contemporary artists Tschabalala Self, Titus Kaphar, Richard Whitten, and Sarah Sze, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Garry Trudeau, and National Medal of Arts photorealist painter Chuck Close all graduated from Yale. Additional alumni include architect and Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Maya Lin, Pritzker Prize winner Norman Foster, and Gateway Arch designer Eero Saarinen. Journalists and pundits include Dick Cavett, Chris Cuomo, Anderson Cooper, William F. Buckley Jr., Blake Hounshell, and Fareed Zakaria.\nIn business, Yale has had numerous alumni and former students go on to become founders of influential business, like William Boeing (Boeing, United Airlines), Briton Hadden and Henry Luce (\"Time Magazine\"), Stephen A. Schwarzman (Blackstone Group), Frederick W. Smith (FedEx), Juan Trippe (Pan Am), Harold Stanley (Morgan Stanley), Bing Gordon (Electronic Arts), and Ben Silbermann (Pinterest). Other business people from Yale include former chairman and CEO of Sears Holdings Edward Lampert, former Time Warner president Jeffrey Bewkes, former PepsiCo chairperson and CEO Indra Nooyi, sports agent Donald Dell, and investor/philanthropist Sir John Templeton,\nAlumni distinguished in academia include literary critic and historian Henry Louis Gates, economists Irving Fischer, Mahbub ul Haq, and Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman; Nobel Prize in Physics laureates Ernest Lawrence and Murray Gell-Mann; Fields Medalist John G. Thompson; Human Genome Project leader and National Institutes of Health director Francis S. Collins; brain surgery pioneer Harvey Cushing; pioneering computer scientist Grace Hopper; influential mathematician and chemist Josiah Willard Gibbs; National Women's Hall of Fame inductee and biochemist Florence B. Seibert; Turing Award recipient Ron Rivest; inventors Samuel F.B. Morse and Eli Whitney; Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate John B. Goodenough; lexicographer Noah Webster; and theologians Jonathan Edwards and Reinhold Niebuhr.\nIn the sporting arena, alumni include baseball players Ron Darling and Craig Breslow who in the major leagues played with fellow Yale alum Ryan Lavarnway and baseball executives Theo Epstein and George Weiss; football players Calvin Hill, Gary Fenick, Amos Alonzo Stagg, and \"the Father of American Football\" Walter Camp; ice hockey players Chris Higgins and Olympian Helen Resor; Olympic figure skating champions Sarah Hughes and Nathan Chen; nine-time U.S. Squash men's champion Julian Illingworth; Olympic swimmer Don Schollander; Olympic rowers Josh West and Rusty Wailes; Olympic sailor Stuart McNay; Olympic runner Frank Shorter; and others.\nIn fiction and popular culture.\nYale University is a cultural referent as an institution that produces some of the most elite members of society and its grounds, alumni, and students have been prominently portrayed in fiction and U.S. popular culture. For example, Owen Johnson's novel \"Stover at Yale\" follows the college career of Dink Stover, and Frank Merriwell, the model for all later juvenile sports fiction, plays football, baseball, crew, and track at Yale while solving mysteries and righting wrongs. Yale University also is mentioned in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel \"The Great Gatsby\". The narrator, Nick Carraway, wrote a series of editorials for the \"Yale News\", and Tom Buchanan was \"one of the most powerful ends that ever played football\" for Yale.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "3613161": "David Montgomery (historian)\nAmerican historian\nDavid Montgomery (December 1, 1927 \u2013 December 2, 2011) was a Farnam Professor of History at Yale University. Montgomery was considered one of the foremost academics specializing in United States labor history and wrote extensively on the subject. He is credited, along with David Brody and Herbert Gutman, with founding the field of \"new labor history\" in the U.S. \n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC_right/styles.css\" />\nBiography.\nEarly years.\nMontgomery entered undergraduate school at Swarthmore College following a stint in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, from which he was honorably discharged as a staff sergeant. He graduated in 1950 with Highest Honors and a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science.\nOver the next 10 years, Montgomery worked as a machinist\u2014first in New York City and later in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Montgomery became involved in union activity as an active member of the United Electrical Workers, the International Association of Machinists, and the Teamsters where he held numerous positions including shop steward, legislative committee member, and local executive board member. Montgomery may have been repeatedly targeted by the FBI when he was a labor organizer among machinists in Saint Paul.\nMontgomery became a member of the Communist Party USA in 1951 or 1952 due to the party's positions on international issues, racial justice and social unionism. He was active with the party in New York City and briefly in St. Paul. He left the party around 1957.\nMontgomery's experience in the Communist Party clearly influenced his research interest in labor radicalism, among other issues, throughout his scholarly career.\nAcademic career.\nIn 1959, Montgomery entered graduate school at the University of Minnesota, from which he received his Ph.D. in 1962. The next year he was hired as an assistant professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, where he remained for the next 14 years. At the University of Pittsburgh, Montgomery wrote his first book, \"\", which was published in 1967. On sabbatical from that institution, Montgomery spent two years working in England with historian E. P. Thompson to establish the Centre for the Study of Social History at the University of Warwick. He subsequently held visiting teacher positions at Oxford University and a number of other universities in Brazil, Canada, and the Netherlands.\nOn his return to the United States, Montgomery returned to the University of Pittsburgh, becoming chair of the department. He was recruited by several other institutions, eventually accepting a position at Yale. Montgomery taught courses about the history of working people in the United States, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and immigration. In 1988, his book \",\" was published to wide acclaim. Noam Chomsky, the renowned professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and political activist, called the book one of the definitive works on the American labor struggle. The book was a Pulitzer Prize finalist nominee.\nFollowing the example of British historian E. P. Thompson, Montgomery encouraged a generation of labor historians to re-examine the core subject matter of labor history, thus defining the new labor history, which examines working-class culture, rather than simply their organizations. He was also influential through his editorship of the journal \"International Labor and Working-Class History.\"\nIn 2001, Montgomery published a book in collaboration with Professor Horace Huntley of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. The book, \"Black Workers' Struggle for Equality in Birmingham,\" uses oral histories to interpret and explore the involvement of African American workers in various unions and the organized labor movement for civil rights.\nDuring the 1990s, Montgomery wrote and spoke about academic freedom, calling for wider availability of information for research and in favor of a larger scope of academic freedom. He claimed that over the presidential administrations of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, access to government documents had been sharply reduced and that this has resulted in less academic freedom. Additionally, Montgomery criticized the Patriot Act and its provisions for surveillance of academics and librarians, arguing they impede academic freedom.\nHe also served as president of the Organization of American Historians (OAH) from 1999 to 2000.\nDeath and legacy.\nMontgomery died from complications of a brain hemorrhage at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, on December 2, 2011, one day after turning 84.\nIn the spring of 2012 the Executive Board of the Organization of American Historians approved a new book award in the field of labor and working class history to be named after David Montgomery. Fundraising was begun to build a $50,000 endowment for the prize, after which time the David Montgomery award is to be presented annually by the OAH in conjunction with the Labor and Working-Class History Association.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["3613161", "34273", "30784578", "53825"], "permutation_1": ["30784578", "53825", "3613161", "34273"], "permutation_2": ["3613161", "34273", "30784578", "53825"], "permutation_3": ["34273", "53825", "30784578", "3613161"]}
{"id": "4hop1__382240_434040_830682_68600", "docs_added": {"43354467": "Northtown (EP)\nNorthtown is the first EP by the American singer-songwriter Shamir Bailey, better known by his stage name, Shamir. The EP has elements of R&B, house and dance music. It was produced by Nick Sylvester, the founder of New York's Godmode label, and was released on June 6, 2014. It was rated as one of the best releases by a new artist in 2014.\nProduction.\nThe \"Northtown\" EP was produced by Nick Sylvester, founder of the Godmode label. Shortly after graduating from high school, Shamir emailed a demo tape to Godmode, hoping to find a label to release the demo tape. Sylvester called the music \"kind of like an R&B 'Yeezus'\". He contacted Shamir the day after hearing the tape and invited Shamir to New York City to make some \"real music\" as opposed to just releasing the demo tape.\nCritical reception.\n\"Northtown\" has received generally positive reviews from music critics.\n\"NME\", rated \"Northtown\" as \"one of 2014's most essential new EP's.\" In a review of the EP for NME, Rhian Daly wrote, \"The disco-worshipping, androgynous teen might hail from Las Vegas but on the strength of these five songs (three funky-house stompers, one stupendous ballad and a heart-rending cover of Lindi Ortega) it's fair to say his spiritual homeland is late-'80s Detroit and his god an ill-behaved hybrid of Grace Jones and Frankie Knuckles... If this is the house that Shamir built, I'm moving in.\"\nIn July 2014, Radio.com included \"Northtown\" in its \"New Music To Know: Best of 2014, So Far\" profile, noting that \"Shamir combines the honest songwriting of Taylor Swift with the theatrics of Lana Del Rey to make something that sounds far wiser than his 19 years\".\nFoster Kamer of \"Pigeons & Planes\" rated \"Northtown\" as \"2014's most exciting R&B Dance-Pop debut\".\nIn July 2014, \"Flavorwire named\" \"Northtown\"'s opening track one of its \"25 Best Songs of 2014 So Far\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "43354314": "Shamir (musician)\nAmerican singer and songwriter (born 1994)\nShamir Bailey (born November 7, 1994) is an American singer and songwriter from Las Vegas, Nevada. His debut extended play (EP), \"Northtown\", was released in June 2014 to positive reviews. In October 2014, he signed to XL Recordings and released the single \"On the Regular\". His debut LP \"Ratchet\" was released on May 19, 2015 in the United States. Since then he has released seven independent studio albums, \"Hope\" (2017), \"Revelations\" (2017), \"Resolution\" (2018), \"Be the Yee, Here Comes the Haw\" (2019), \"Cataclysm\" (2019), \"Shamir\" (2020), and \"Heterosexuality\" (2022).\nEarly life.\nShamir grew up in North Las Vegas, an area that he has called \"cookie-cutter suburban.\" He was raised as a Muslim but describes himself as \"more spiritual than religious, I don't believe in god per se, I kind of feel like god is the universe.\" Shamir is non-binary, informing an interviewer in 2015 that \"I don't identify as gay because I don't identify as male or female\". Although he does not have a preferred pronoun, he is comfortable with male pronouns, and \"never really got\" singular they.\nHis aunt was in the music business and lived with Shamir and his mother. Bass players and producers were guests at the family's home, helping his aunt with her songs. His parents and aunt introduced him to a wide range of music, including hip-hop, R&B, Outkast, Groove Theory, and singers like Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and Janis Joplin. At age nine, Shamir received an Epiphone guitar, and began writing music.\nAt age 16, he formed a punk band with a friend, but the band ended quickly when his partner froze on stage at their first gig. During his high school years, he recorded tracks for his first EP. Shortly after graduating from high school, he sent a demo tape to the Godmode label in New York City. The label founder Nick Sylvester signed him to the label.\nMusic career.\nShamir's debut EP, \"Northtown\", was released by Godmode in June 2014 and is named for the Northtown neighborhood where he grew up. Jules Muir, writing for the music blog \"Pigeons & Planes\" noted that Shamir \"continues to make a bigger name for himself with every new release and a unique new sound on each.\" Jamieson Cox of \"Pitchfork\" called the EP's opening track, \"If It Wasn't True\" \"a stunning opening salvo, one that plays on the tension between Shamir's slender vocal and lyrical naivet\u00e9 and grimy, threatening instrumental tones before devolving into a chaotic mess, swallowed by a haphazardly firing synth corroding in real-time.\" In July 2014, Flavorwire named Shamir's \"If It Wasn't True\" one of its \"25 Best Songs of 2014 So Far\". Radio.com also included Shamir in its \"New Music To Know: Best of 2014, So Far\" profile, noting that \"Shamir combines the honest songwriting of Taylor Swift with the theatrics of Lana Del Rey to make something that sounds far wiser than his 19 years.\"\nAfter signing to XL Recordings, he released the single \"On the Regular\" in October 2014 which went on to be used in a 2015 Android Wear commercial. In March 2015, he released \"Call It Off\" as a single in the debut album, \"Ratchet\", released on May 19, 2015. The accompanied music video was made and released as part of the 2015 YouTube Music Awards. \"Darker\" was the second single from \"Ratchet\"; the song was released in May 2015. In 2015, he toured with Years & Years, opening for their UK dates. In mid-March 2016, he served as the opening act for Troye Sivan's Blue Neighbourhood Tour. On April 17, 2017, Shamir released his second album, \"Hope\". He revealed he was dropped from XL Recordings and self-released the album.\nAfter \"Hope\" was released, Shamir broke with his management team and again considered quitting his music career. After a psychotic episode, he spent time in a psychiatric hospital, where he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He returned to Las Vegas, where he wrote and recorded most of his third album, \"Revelations\", in two weeks. Noting that the style of the album differed significantly from his previous work, he told a journalist: \"A lot of people think I'm crazy. I guess I kind of am. But I also know what's best for me, and that's more important than fame and money\".\nShamir was featured on \"Wussy Magazine\"'s \"Sex Issue\" in 2018. On March 9, 2018, Shamir released his fourth album, \"Resolution\" without any prior announcement. \"Resolution\" marks a continuation of Shamir's indie rock style, similar to \"Hope\" and \"Revelations\".\nIn 2020, Shamir released the self-titled full length album, \"Shamir.\" It was co-produced by Kyle Pulley, and many of the songs, including the single \"On My Own\" were recorded at Headroom Studios in Philadelphia. The album was met with critical acclaim and made year end lists for Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and NPR Music.\nShamir published his first book, \"But I'm a Painter\", with Bottlecap Press in 2021, a collection of essays about paintings he created over the previous six years.\nMusical style.\nShamir is known for having an androgynous countertenor voice. Radio.com wrote that Shamir's singing voice, \"like Joplin's, stops you in your tracks.\" He does not mind having his voice described as androgynous, but notes that \"countertenor\" is the correct term: \"It's not feminine, it's not masculine. It's a happy medium ... I feel like if the world was more like that, our problems would be gone.\"\nCritic Jamieson Cox, writing for Pitchfork Media, wrote: With a piercing countertenor somewhere between Prince masquerading as Camille and the cracking adolescent soul of the teenage Michael Jackson, the 19-year-old North Las Vegas native dismantles the expectations maintained for vocalists based on their gender, demanding instead that the focus be placed on their agile, fluttering performance.\nLizzie Plaugic of CMJ called Shamir's music \"amazingly unclassifiable,\" like a \"souped-up Vegas Strip disco with a self-conscious pop bent,\" and wrote that his voice \"limbers and stretches like a wad of pink Silly Putty dipped in glitter.\" In a 2020 \"Vulture\" interview, Shamir cited Taylor Swift as an inspiration and influence on his songwriting.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "785512": "Way Down\n\"Way Down\" is a song recorded by Elvis Presley. Recorded in October 1976, it was his last single released before his death on August 16, 1977. The song was written by Layng Martine Jr. and recorded by Presley at his home studio in Graceland on 29 October 1976.\nReleased as a single (with \"Pledging My Love\" on the B-side) on June 6, 1977, it was his latest single at the time of his death. It initially peaked at No. 31 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart dated August 6, 1977 and had fallen to No. 53 on the chart for the week ending August 27, 1977. Thereafter, it reversed direction and reached an even higher peak at No. 18 on 24 September \u2013 1 October 1977. \"Way Down\" reached No. 1 on the American Country chart the week he died. The single was certified platinum in the U.S. by the RIAA in 1999. \nOn the UK Singles Chart, after having climbed only four places to number 42 the week before Presley's death, the track rose to number four the following week and then hit number one in the week ending 3 September and stayed there for five weeks, just over seven years after his previous 16th UK number one single, \"The Wonder of You\", in August 1970. His previous single, \"Moody Blue\", had been a number one hit on the US Country charts earlier in 1977. \"Way Down\" was reissued in April 2005 and reached No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart.\nThe recording also featured J.D. Sumner singing the words \"way on down\" at the end of each chorus down to the note low C (C2). At the end of the song, this phrase is octaved, reaching a double low C (C1, three octaves below middle C). This note was first accomplished by Sumner in a 1966 recording of the hymn \"Blessed Assurance\".\nChart performance.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "573041": "Live in Las Vegas (Elvis Presley album)\nLive in Las Vegas is a four-disc box set by American singer and musician Elvis Presley, released in July 2001 on RCA Records, catalogue 07863 69354-2. It comprises live recordings from shows given by Presley in Las Vegas through every decade of his career.\nContent.\nDisc one comprises a complete show from August 24, 1969, and disc two a complete show from August 11, 1970. Discs three and four present recordings from shows over a time span from 1956 through 1975, not in chronological order.\nIn his review of the album, music critic Lindsay Planer stated:\nA vibrant and overwhelmingly energetic Presley is the focus of the first two discs - containing complete performances from August 24, 1969, and August 11, 1970, respectively. As one may well anticipate, the sets feature a healthy sampling of Presley's voluminous back catalogue. \"Hound Dog\", \"Heartbreak Hotel\", \"Love Me Tender\", and \"I Got a Woman\" are given a workout during each performance. As were the more current hits such as \"Suspicious Minds\", \"In the Ghetto\", and \"Can't Help Falling in Love\". Presley's knack for inimitable remakes is also displayed as he gains inspiration from concurrent chart-toppers such as \"Hey Jude\", \"Bridge over Troubled Water\", and \"Polk Salad Annie\". Unlike the first two discs, the final pair do not contain complete performances and likewise are not presented chronologically. For the sake of contrast, the four song mini-set documenting the final performance of Presley's first Vegas stand on May 6, 1956, begins disc four. What remains consistent - in both the brief 1956 set as well as on the remainder of the mid-'70s recordings - is Presley's impeccable taste in cover material.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "13060731": "Gerard Way\nAmerican singer (born 1977)\nGerard Arthur Way (born April 9, 1977) is an American singer, songwriter, and comic book writer. He is best known as the lead vocalist and co-founder of the rock band My Chemical Romance. He released his debut solo album, \"Hesitant Alien\", in 2014.\nWay co-created and wrote the comic series \"The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys\" and \"The Umbrella Academy\", the latter of which was later adapted into a popular Netflix series that ran for four seasons. He is also the founder of DC Comics' Young Animal imprint, and wrote the imprint's flagship series, \"Doom Patrol\".\nEarly life.\nWay was born in Summit, New Jersey, on April 9, 1977, the son of Donna Lee (\"n\u00e9e\" Rush) and Donald Way. He is of Italian and Scottish ancestry. Raised in Belleville, New Jersey, alongside brother Mikey Way, he first began singing publicly in the fourth grade, when he played the role of Peter Pan in a school musical production. His maternal grandmother, Elena Lee Rush, was a great creative influence who taught him to sing, paint, and perform from a young age; he has said that \"she has taught me everything I know\". While in elementary school, the glam metal band Bon Jovi was instrumental in forming his love of music.\nAt the age of 15, Way was held at gunpoint. As he said in an April 2008 \"Rolling Stone\" interview, \"I got held up with a .357 Magnum, had a gun pointed to my head and put on the floor, execution-style.\" He went on to say that \"no matter how ugly the world gets or how stupid it shows me it is, I always have faith [in it]\". At age 16, he appeared on an episode of \"Sally Jesse Raphael\" to discuss the controversy surrounding the publicizing of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer's crimes in comic books. Way attended Belleville High School, graduating in 1995. Deciding to pursue a career in the comic-book industry, he attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1999.\nMusic career.\n2001\u20132013: My Chemical Romance.\nAs teenagers, Gerard and his brother Mikey Way, who later became the bassist of My Chemical Romance, were influenced by artists including Iron Maiden, The Misfits, Danzig, Black Flag, Queen, Pulp, Alkaline Trio, Blur, Morrissey, and The Smiths. Way originally wanted to be a guitarist. His grandmother bought him his first guitar at the age of eight, and he played in short-lived bands such as Ray Gun Jones and Nancy Drew with future bandmate Ray Toro. When he was not successful (one band kicked him out due to his lack of skill with the guitar), he chose to concentrate on his art career.\nWay was working as an intern for Cartoon Network in New York City during the September 11, 2001 attacks. Seeing the effects of the attacks first-hand prompted Way to change his views on life in the following weeks. He told \"Spin\" magazine, \"I literally said to myself, 'Fuck art. I've gotta get out of the basement. I've gotta see the world. I've gotta make a difference.'\" To help deal with the emotional effects the attacks had on him, Way wrote the lyrics to the song \"Skylines and Turnstiles\", which became the first song by My Chemical Romance.\nWay has also contributed vocally to other bands' songs such as Every Time I Die's \"Kill the Music\", Head Automatica's \"Graduation Day\", Say Anything's \"In Defense of the Genre\", and The Oval Portrait's \"From My Cold Dead Hands\" and \"Barnabus Collins Has More Skeletons in His Closet Than Vincent Price\".\nIn interviews, Way has stated that music and his artwork were effective outlets for his longtime battles against depression, alcoholism, and prescription drug abuse. Using music to resolve personal battles has also led Way to create deeply personal songs such as \"Helena\", which he wrote in memory of his late grandmother.\nOn March 22, 2013, My Chemical Romance announced their break up.\n2014\u20132016: \"Hesitant Alien\".\nIn May 2014, Way launched his Tumblr-based website where he announced that he had signed to Warner Bros. Records as a solo artist and was nearing completion of his first solo album.\nFurther to this he announced a new song, \"Action Cat\", released later in June as a promotional single to his new album and his first solo shows at Reading and Leeds Festivals 2014. He later announced another solo performance that took place at Portsmouth's Wedgewood Rooms on August 20. On August 19, Way released a music video for the song \"No Shows\", released as the first single off the new album on August 19. The album, titled \"Hesitant Alien\", was released on September 30, 2014.\nWhen Way was asked why he chose to implement the Britpop genre into his music he stated that he enjoyed the energy and style of the music and its scene, and was urged to revive aspects of the genre in America.\nIn February and March 2015, Way performed as a solo artist with The Hormones on the main stage of the Australian 2015 Soundwave music festivals, and headlined an additional sideshow in Melbourne.\nIn early 2015, it was announced that he would perform at the Boston Calling Music Festival in May 2015.\nOn Record Store Day 2016, Way released two exclusive, unreleased tracks from \"Hesitant Alien\" titled \"Don't Try\" and \"Pinkish\".\n2018\u2013present: Later solo singles and reunion.\nOn October 26, 2018, Way released his first major solo single in over two years, titled \"Baby You're a Haunted House\". The single features Way's brother and former bandmate, Mikey Way, on bass. The official lyric video, featuring four skeleton-masked musicians performing the song, was released on YouTube on the same day.\nOn November 15, Way released another single, \"Getting Down the Germs\", which was co-written with former bandmate Ray Toro. The single \"gives a peek of where [Way] will be headed musically,\" according to a statement released by Way.\nOn December 14, Way released a third single, \"Dasher\", which features additional vocals from Lydia Night of The Regrettes. The single is a Christmas-themed story about a girl who falls in love with a reindeer as they await to be reunited after a long absence.\nOn January 24, 2019, Way released a cover of \"Hazy Shade of Winter\" by Simon & Garfunkel, once again in collaboration with Toro. The song was featured in the trailer for the Netflix television series adaptation of Way's \"The Umbrella Academy\", which was released the same day. On February 8, 2019, Way released a cover of \"Happy Together\" by The Turtles, again featuring Toro. The song also appears on \"The Umbrella Academy\".\nOn October 31, 2019, My Chemical Romance announced they would be reuniting with a date in Los Angeles on December 20 and a new merchandise line. They later announced a 2020 North American tour, as well as dates in Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. The tour was postponed to 2022, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nOn July 8, 2020, Way released an original song titled \"Here Comes the End\", which features singer Judith Hill and appears on the second season of \"The Umbrella Academy\".\nOn November 12, 2024, My Chemical Romance announced the Long Live The Black Parade Tour which would be touring North America in 2025. The tour is a celebration of their third album, \"The Black Parade\". It introduces new story lines that incorporate into the world-building of the original album.\nOther musical collaborations.\nIn 2008, Way and musical project Julien-K remixed a version of the song \"Sleep When I'm Dead\" by The Cure for their EP \"Hypnagogic States\". All profits gained from the sales of the EP go to funding the International Red Cross.\nIn early 2009, Way and Japanese singer Kyosuke Himuro co-produced the new theme song for \"\", the Blu-ray director's cut of the movie sequel to the popular video game, \"Final Fantasy VII\". He is also credited with writing the lyrics, and singing alongside Himuro. The song, titled \"Safe and Sound\", was released on iTunes on April 29, 2009. \"Safe and Sound\" is only heard on the Japanese release of the film; the English release uses Himuro's \"Calling\" (the original ending theme for \"Advent Children\") in place of it. He also contributed vocals for the vocal mix of the deadmau5 song \"Professional Griefers\".\nA longtime supporter of the British rock band LostAlone, Way is the executive producer of their second studio album \"I'm a UFO in This City\" (2012).\nWay contributed guest vocals to \"Falling in Love Will Kill You\" from Wrongchilde's debut solo album \"Gold Blooded\", a pseudonym project from Kill Hannah frontman Mat Devine.\nIn 2015, Way co-wrote and contributed backing vocals to the song \"Louder Than Your Love\" on Black Veil Brides frontman Andy Black's debut solo album \"The Shadow Side\".\nWay featured in \"R\u014dnin\" by \"Ibaraki\" in March 2022 alongside Trivium's lead vocalist and guitarist Matt Heafy.\nOther ventures.\n1993\u2013present: Writing.\nWay's first attempt at writing a comic was at the age of 16 in 1993, writing a comic book series called \"On Raven's Wings\", published by Hart D. Fisher's Boneyard Press. The series was cancelled after the second issue, however, due to the loss of its art team. Way was credited as Garry Way.\nIn 2007, Way began writing the comic-book miniseries \"The Umbrella Academy\". Its first volume, ', was first released by Dark Horse Comics in their Free Comic Book Day issue on May 5, 2007. Since then, an eight-page story has been published entitled \"Safe & Sound\", which appeared in a collection of stories entitled \"MySpace Dark Horse Presents Volume One\". The first official issue of \"The Umbrella Academy\" was released on September 19, 2007. The first issue sold out and consequently there was a second printing released on October 17, 2007. \"Apocalypse Suite\" also won the 2008 Eisner Award for Best Limited Series. The next installment of the series, ', was released on November 26, 2008, and, following speculation that Way had retired indefinitely from comics, a third installment entitled \"Hotel Oblivion\" was released in 2018\u20132019.\nWay and fellow artists Shaun Simon and Becky Cloonan co-created another comic-book series entitled \"The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys\", which Way announced at 2009 San Diego Comic-Con. At the 2012 New York Comic Con, the team announced that the first look at the series would be released on 2013's Free Comic Book Day. The series continued the concepts introduced in the My Chemical Romance .\nIn 2011, My Chemical Romance stated that Mikey and Gerard were working on another comic book project which they had kept under wraps since mid-2009. As of 2015 nothing of this project has emerged.\nOn December 21, 2013, Gerard Way stated that he and Gabriel B\u00e1 will be working on parts three and four of his comic book series \"Umbrella Academy\" beginning in the new year.\nIn a podcast interview on December 31, 2013, with Chris Thompson from Pop Culture Hound, Way discussed his new \"Umbrella Academy\" series in more detail and confirmed he would do two volumes back-to-back, with a couple of flashback issues in-between. In addition, he discussed his new comic series \"All Ages\" which first appeared as a series of images on his Twitter feed. Although the project doesn't have a publisher or an artist at this stage, he is actively working on the story of cats in high school who are discovering their place in the world.\nIn 2014, it was announced that Way will be making his debut in the Marvel Universe by writing for the alternate universe Spider-Man series \"Edge of Spider-Verse\". His story introduced Peni Parker, a Japanese-American student who pilots a bio-mechanical suit named SP//dr.\nOn March 21, 2024, Way announced a new comic book series \"Paranoid Gardens\", with the first issue releasing in July.\n2001\u2013present: Television.\nIn 2001, Way co-created a cartoon with Joe Boyle called \"The Breakfast Monkey\". They pitched it to Cartoon Network, but the network declined to pick up the concept on the grounds that it was too similar to the existing property \"Aqua Teen Hunger Force\".\nIn 2013, Way made his television directorial debut on The Hub original series \"The Aquabats! Super Show!\", co-directing and co-writing the season two finale \"The AntiBats!\" with series co-creators Christian Jacobs and Jason deVilliers. Additionally, Way's brother Mikey appears in the episode, playing the lead singer of a fictional death metal band called Asthma. The following year, Way, as part of the show's writing team, was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for \"Outstanding Writing in a Children's Series\".\nIn 2018, the character Peni Parker who he co-created appeared in \"\".\nWay served as co-executive producer on the television series adaptation of \"The Umbrella Academy\" for its entire run from 2019 to 2024.\nArtistry.\nSome have suggested Way's name to be synonymous with the emo genre. According to \"Alternative Press Magazine\", \"When people think of emo, the My Chemical Romance frontman usually comes to the front of mind. [...] Way\u2019s vocals ripple with emotional intensity and passion, leaning into darkness as much as hope.\" Vocally, Way was influenced by Queen and britpop music. Way's lyrics incorporate a narrative format. His live performances have been described as \"theatrical [and] soul-baring.\"\nPersonal life.\nWay struggled with alcoholism and prescription drug addiction for many years but as of 2007 was maintaining sobriety. In a November 2010 issue of \"Spin\" magazine, he said that having become a happier person and feeling more in control, he had been able to enjoy the occasional recreational drink.\nOn September 3, 2007, after a concert in Colorado, Way married Lyn-Z, bassist of Mindless Self Indulgence, backstage on the final date of the Projekt Revolution tour. A member of Live Nation's touring staff who was also an ordained minister performed the low-key ceremony. Their daughter was born on May 27, 2009. They live in Los Angeles.\nWay was raised Catholic, stating in 2006 that he was \"not Catholic anymore\", and in 2013 that he was a theist who \"had always acknowledged [he] received [...] artistic gifts from God\".\nIn 2014, Way began openly discussing his gender identity struggles online and in interviews. In a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) hosted by Way in October 2014, he stated: \"I have always been extremely sensitive to those that have gender identity issues as I feel like I have gone through it as well, if even on a smaller scale. I have always identified a fair amount with the female gender, and began at a certain point in MCR to express this through my look and performance style. So it's no surprise that all of my inspirations and style influences were pushing gender boundaries. Freddy [\"sic\"] Mercury, Bowie, Iggy, early glam, T-Rex. Masculinity to me has always made me feel like it wasn't right for me.\"\nIn January 2015, Way was featured in \"The Boyzine\", an independent zine published by SWMRS frontman Cole Becker. Way again discussed his gender identity, commenting:\"I never really subscribed to the archetype masculinity growing up, I had no interest in sports or anything like that. There was a time where I was called a girl so often that when I discovered the idea of transgenderism I considered myself to be more of a girl. So I identify with trans people and women a lot because I was a girl to a lot of people growing up.\" In June 2015, Way said on Twitter that he uses \"he\" and \"they\" pronouns.\nIn 2015, Way revealed on Reddit that he is a first cousin once removed of comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan. In October 2019, Rogan confirmed it on his podcast. He also said that, despite this, the two have never met.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "30270690": "Born This Way (song)\n2011 single by Lady Gaga\n\"Born This Way\" is a song by American singer Lady Gaga, and the lead single from her second studio album of the same name. Written by Gaga and Jeppe Laursen, who produced it along with Fernando Garibay and DJ White Shadow, the track was developed while Gaga was on the road with the Monster Ball Tour. Inspired by 1990s music which empowered women, minorities, and the LGBT community, Gaga explained that \"Born This Way\" was her freedom song. It was also inspired by Carl Bean and his song \"I Was Born This Way\", released in 1977. She sang part of the chorus at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards and announced it as the lead single from the album, released on February 11, 2011.\nThe song is backed by rumbling synth sounds, a humming bass and additional chorus percussion, with sole organ toward the end. The lyrics discuss the self-empowerment of the LGBT community and racial minorities. Critics positively reviewed the song, calling it a \"club-ready anthem\". In 2023, \"Rolling Stone\" named \"Born This Way\" the Most Inspirational LGBT Song of All Time. It reached number one in over 25 countries and was her third single to top the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart and the 1,000th song in that chart's history (since 1958) to reach number one. \"Born This Way\" has sold 8.2 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling singles of all time.\nNick Knight directed the accompanying music video, which was inspired by surrealist painters like Salvador Dal\u00ed and Francis Bacon. Gaga is depicted as giving birth to a new race during a prologue. After a series of dance sequences, the video concludes with the view of a city populated by this race. Critics noted the video's references to the work of Madonna, Michael Jackson and fashion designer Alexander McQueen, as well as Greek mythology and surrealism.\nGaga performed the song at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards after coming out of an incubating vessel. Shortly after, she added it to the setlist of the last leg of the Monster Ball Tour. \"Born This Way\" was later performed on television shows, such as \"Saturday Night Live\", \"Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve\" and \"Good Morning America\", many of the singer's tours, and it was notably part of her Super Bowl LI halftime show set. The song was treated with different remixes, including a \"Country Road\" version recorded by Gaga herself and another by Indian production duo Salim\u2013Sulaiman. It has been covered by artists such as Alice Cooper, Madonna, and Katy Perry.\nBackground.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nThe nexus of 'Born This Way' and the soul of the record reside in this idea that you were not necessarily born in one moment. You have your entire life to birth yourself into becoming the ultimate potential vision that you see for you. Who you are when you come out of your mother's womb is not necessarily who you will become. 'Born This Way' says your birth is not finite, your birth is infinite.\n\u2014Gaga talking about the meaning of \"Born This Way\".\nIn 2010, Lady Gaga was touring for her second world tour, the Monster Ball. At that time she started developing ideas for her second studio album, \"Born This Way\" (2011). The first song written and recorded for the album was the title track itself which she wrote in Liverpool and Manchester, England, described by Gaga as a \"magical message\" song. She wrote it in ten minutes and compared the process to an Immaculate Conception. DJ White Shadow, one of the producers of the track, credited Gaga for coming up with the idea and the theme behind the song. \"We recorded it around the world, on the road, in whatever was available. It sounds like it reads, but not like you think until you hear it,\" he added. Gaga wanted to record her own freedom song, and explained with \"Billboard\" her inspiration behind the song:\nI want to write my this-is-who-the-fuck-I-am anthem, but I don't want it to be hidden in poetic wizardry and metaphors. I want it to be an attack, an assault on the issue because I think, especially in today's music, everything gets kind of washy sometimes and the message gets hidden in the lyrical play. Harkening back to the early '90s, when Madonna, En Vogue, Whitney Houston and TLC were making very empowering music for women and the gay community and all kind of disenfranchised communities, the lyrics and the melodies were very poignant and very gospel and very spiritual and I said, 'That's the kind of record I need to make. That's the record that's going to shake up the industry.' It's not about the track. It's not about the production. It's about the song. Anyone could sing 'Born This Way'. It could've been anyone.\nIn May 2021, during the 10th anniversary of the album, Gaga revealed that it was inspired by Carl Bean and his song \"I Was Born This Way\", released in 1977. On her social media, she wrote, \"'Born This Way', my song and album, were inspired by Carl Bean, a gay black religious activist who preached, sung and wrote about being Born This Way.\"\nArtwork and"}, "descending_order": ["13060731", "30270690", "43354314", "785512", "43354467", "573041"], "permutation_1": ["43354314", "13060731", "43354467", "785512", "573041", "30270690"], "permutation_2": ["43354467", "30270690", "785512", "573041", "43354314", "13060731"], "permutation_3": ["573041", "785512", "43354314", "43354467", "30270690", "13060731"]}
{"id": "4hop3__414353_419859_22784_86234", "docs_added": {"294564": "French West Indies\nFrench territories in the Caribbean\nThe French West Indies or French Antilles (, ; ) are the parts of France located in the Antilles islands of the Caribbean:\nHistory.\nPierre Belain d'Esnambuc was a French trader and adventurer in the Caribbean, who established the first permanent French colony, Saint-Pierre, on the island of Martinique in 1635. Belain sailed to the Caribbean in 1625, hoping to establish a French settlement on the island of St. Christopher (St. Kitts). In 1626 he returned to France, where he won the support of Cardinal Richelieu to establish French colonies in the region. Richelieu became a shareholder in the Compagnie de Saint-Christophe, created to accomplish this with d'Esnambuc at its head. The company was not particularly successful and Richelieu had it reorganized as the Compagnie des \u00celes de l'Am\u00e9rique. In 1635 d'Esnambuc sailed to Martinique with one hundred French settlers to clear land for sugarcane plantations.\nAfter six months on Martinique, d'Esnambuc returned to St. Christopher, where he soon died prematurely in 1636. His nephew, Jacques Dyel du Parquet, inherited d'Esnambuc's authority over the French settlements in the Caribbean, in 1637 becoming governor of Martinique. He remained in Martinique and did not concern himself with the other islands.\nThe French permanently settled on Martinique and Guadeloupe after being kicked off Saint Kitts and Nevis (\"Saint-Christophe\" in French) by the British. Fort Royal (Fort-de-France) on Martinique was a major port for French warships in the region from which the French were able to explore the region. In 1638, Jacques Dyel du Parquet (1606\u20131658), nephew of Pierre Belain d'Esnambuc and first governor of Martinique, decided to have Fort Saint Louis built to protect the city against enemy attacks. From Fort Royal, Martinique, Du Parquet proceeded south in search for new territories and established the first settlement in Saint Lucia in 1643, and headed an expedition which established a French settlement in Grenada in 1649. Despite the long history of British rule, Grenada's French heritage is still evidenced by the number of French loanwords in Grenadian Creole, French-style buildings, cuisine and places name (For ex. Petit Martinique, Martinique Channel, etc.)\nIn 1642, the Compagnie des \u00celes de l'Am\u00e9rique received a twenty-year extension of its charter. The King would name the Governor General of the company, and the company the Governors of the various islands. By the late 1640s, in France Mazarin had little interest in colonial affairs, and the company languished. In 1651 it dissolved itself, selling its exploitation rights to various parties. The du Paquet family bought Martinique, Grenada, and Saint Lucia for 60,000 livres. The sieur d'Hou\u00ebl bought Guadeloupe, Marie-Galante, La Desirade and the Saintes. The Knights of Malta bought Saint Barth\u00e9lemy and Saint Martin, which were made dependencies of Guadeloupe. In 1665, the Knights sold the islands they had acquired to the newly formed (1664) Compagnie des Indes occidentales.\nDominica is a former French and British colony in the Eastern Caribbean, located about halfway between the French islands of Guadeloupe (to the north) and Martinique (to the south). Christopher Columbus named the island after the day of the week on which he spotted it, a Sunday (\"domingo\" in Spanish), 3 November 1493. In the hundred years after Columbus's landing, Dominica remained isolated. At the time it was inhabited by the Island Caribs, or Kalinago people, and over time more settled there after being driven from surrounding islands, as European powers entered the region. In 1690, French woodcutters from Martinique and Guadeloupe begin to set up timber camps to supply the French islands with wood and gradually become permanent settlers. France had a colony for several years, they imported slaves from West Africa, Martinique and Guadeloupe to work on its plantations. In this period, the Antillean Creole language developed. France formally ceded possession of Dominica to Great Britain in 1763. Great Britain established a small colony on the island in 1805. As a result, Dominicans speak English as an official language while Antillean creole is spoken as a secondary language and is well maintained due to its location between the French-speaking departments of Guadeloupe and Martinique.\nIn Trinidad, the occupying Spanish had contributed little towards advancements, despite the island's ideal location. Because it was considered underpopulated, Roume de St. Laurent, a Frenchman living in Grenada, was able to obtain a C\u00e9dula de Poblaci\u00f3n from the Spanish king Charles III, on 4 November 1783, allowing French planters with their slaves, free coloreds and mulattos from the French Antilles of Martinique, Grenada, Guadeloupe and Dominica to migrate to Trinidad. The Spanish gave many incentives to lure settlers to the island, including exemption from taxes for ten years and land grants in accordance to the terms set out in the Cedula. This exodus was also encouraged by the French Revolution. These new immigrants established the local communities of Blanchisseuse, Champs Fleurs, Paramin, Cascade, Carenage and Laventille, adding to the ancestry of Trinidadians and creating the creole identity; Spanish, French, and Patois were the languages spoken. Trinidad's population jumped from just under 1,400 in 1777, to over 15,000 by the end of 1789. In 1797, Trinidad became a British crown colony, with a French-speaking population.\nThe two official French overseas departments are Guadeloupe and Martinique. Saint Martin and Saint Barth\u00e9lemy, formerly attached to the department of Guadeloupe, have held separate status as \"overseas collectivities\" since 2007. These Caribbean \"D\u00e9partments et Collectivit\u00e9s d\u2019Outre Mer\" are also known as the French West Indies.\nFrench Caribbean.\nThe French Caribbean (or Francophone Caribbean) includes all the French-speaking countries in the region. It can also refer to any area that exhibits a combination of French and Caribbean cultural influences in music, cuisine, style, architecture, and so on. The Francophone Caribbean is a part of the wider French America, which includes all the French-speaking countries in the Americas.\nThe term varies in meaning by its usage and frame of reference. It is not used much in France, unless the speaker wants to refer to every French dependency in the Caribbean region. The term's more ambiguous than the term \"French West Indies\", which refers specifically to the islands that are French overseas departments, which means they have overall the same laws and regulations as departments on the mainland of France. Collectivities can be included too.\nThe following Caribbean regions are predominantly French-speaking and/or French Creole-speaking:\nFormer French West Indian islands.\nIn addition, some of the islands of the present and former British West Indies were once ruled by France. Among some of them, a French-based creole language is spoken, whereas in others the language is nearing extinction; specific words and expressions may vary among the islands.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "15915390": "Haut de la Garenne\nBuilding in Saint Martin, Jersey, in the Channel Islands\nThe Jersey Accommodation and Activity Centre is a building just north of Gorey in the parish of Saint Martin, Jersey, in the Channel Islands. It was formerly known as the Industrial School, the Jersey Home for Boys, and Haut de la Garenne. Its previous uses have included being an industrial school, a children's home, a military signal station, a television filming location, and a youth hostel. In 2008 it became the focus of the largest investigation into child abuse ever conducted in Jersey.\nHistory.\nHaut de la Garenne began in 1867 as an industrial school for \"young people of the lower classes of society and neglected children\". The construction of the school was funded at a cost of \u00a32,410 by the Assembly of Governor, Bailiff and Jurats in order to house and educate boys formerly looked after at the General Hospital in Saint Helier. On 22 June 1867, 45 boys were transferred by coach to the new institution, overseen by Jurats Neel and Aubin, Charles Simon, director of the hospital, and Mr. Higginbottom, master of the new school.\nBy 1900 it had become the Jersey Home for Boys and continued as a children's home for many years. In 1921 the States of Jersey took over the buildings and most of the powers of the Assembly of Governor, Bailiff and Jurats. During the German Occupation during the Second World War, the German military used the building as a signal station. Following the Liberation of 1945, the building continued as a children's home with responsibility being taken over by the Education Committee. On 17 March 1960 the States adopted an act changing the name of the institution to Haut de la Garenne. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s the home received both boys and girls, but as care policy developed the number of children in care was reduced from 1970 onwards. A new wing for staff accommodation was built on the western part of the site in 1970. After the home closed in 1986, the building was used to portray a police station in the TV detective series \"Bergerac\".\nThe Public Works Committee took over the building from the Education Committee in 1986. The building was put to a number of temporary uses while a permanent solution to using the building was considered. It was considered as a potential site for the Territorial Army unit. St. Michael's Preparatory School leased a dormitory block for a time, and the headmaster proposed leasing the whole site for educational and sporting purposes. In 1989 the dormitory wing was converted for use by the Education Committee as temporary respite care for children with special education needs. However the Public Works Committee decided in favour of selling the property in order to purchase a commercial site in Saint Helier for development as housing, or of agreeing a land swap with a hotel in Saint Helier whereby the hotel would develop Haut de la Garenne as a luxury hotel and thereby free the urban hotel site for housing development. The proposal for a luxury hotel development spurred parishioners of Saint Martin to call a Parish Assembly by means of a requ\u00eate. This Assembly, held in August 1989, voted to oppose a hotel development at Haut de la Garenne, but indicated that a proposal for a sheltered housing development might be acceptable.\nIn 1991 the States approved a scheme to retain the 1970 wing for respite care, convert the main building for sheltered housing, and construct new housing on the eastern part of the site. This decision was reversed, and in 1992 the Planning and Environment Committee took over administration of the site from Public Services, and the building was used for temporary accommodation for visiting groups of musicians and sportspeople, especially during festivals. Discussions continued on how to use the of available building floor area.\nOn 8 December 1998 the States voted to establish a trust to manage and operate Haut de la Garenne as a residential centre. On 22 October 2002 the States adopted a \"Law granting an Act of Incorporation to the Association called \"The Haut de la Garenne Trust\"\".\nThe States spent \u00a32.25m in 2003 to convert the building into a youth hostel, part of the Youth Hostels Association (England & Wales) (YHA). The youth hostel opened for business on 19 March 2004. The building was also used for occasional conferences.\nChild abuse investigation.\nPolice moved into the hostel in February 2008 as part of an investigation into historical child abuse. The investigation showed numerous instances of child abuse against past residents, and led to the conviction of a former resident and a former member of staff.\nInitial reports suggested that human remains and other evidence of torture and murder had been found. These reports were later denied by the police.\nThe hostel closed as the police investigation commenced and YHA indicated that they did not wish to re-use the premises. The building was subsequently used for accommodation for military units visiting Jersey.\nIn 2011 journalist Leah McGrath Goodman was banned from the UK for two years while doing research on the abuse allegations. Politicians such as John Hemming and Trevor Pitman attempted to get the ban lifted so she could finish her work and publish her findings. The ban was lifted in 2013.\nIn July 2013, a major inquiry into the allegations led by a senior UK judge was announced. In its report in July 2017 the inquiry recommended that Haut de la Garenne be demolished as it was a reminder of an \"unhappy past or shameful history\".\nCurrent use.\nIn April 2011 it was relaunched under a new branding as the Jersey Accommodation and Activity Centre.\nThe Jersey Accommodation and Activity Centre offers bed and breakfast accommodation as a hub for activity holidays in Jersey. The building is also intended to act as a learning centre, offering classes in business and administration, cookery, environmental studies and other subjects. The facility also provides meeting rooms for charities, sports clubs and associations, and acts as a venue for arts, crafts and dance. The facility is run jointly by two companies, Jersey Adventures and Jersey Odyssey.\nToponymy.\n\"Haut de la Garenne\" is French for \"top of the warren\". The building is situated on Mont de la Garenne, a hill overlooking Mont Orgueil where rabbits were hunted. This \"varenne\" of the King was a perquisite (privilege) of the Crown.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "46763": "Crimean War\nConflict on the Crimean Peninsula from 1853 to 1856\nThe Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont from October 1853 to February 1856. Geopolitical causes of the war included the \"Eastern question\" (the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the \"sick man of Europe\"), expansion of Imperial Russia in the preceding Russo-Turkish wars, and the British and French preference to preserve the Ottoman Empire to maintain the balance of power in the Concert of Europe.\nThe flashpoint was a dispute between France and Russia over the rights of Catholic and Orthodox minorities in Palestine. After the Sublime Porte refused Tsar Nicholas I's demand that the Empire's Orthodox subjects were to be placed under his protection, Russian troops occupied the Danubian Principalities in July 1853. The Ottomans declared war on Russia in October and halted the Russian advance at Silistria. Fearing the growth of Russian influence and compelled by public outrage over the annihilation of the Ottoman squadron at Sinop, Britain and France joined the war on the Ottoman side in March 1854.\nIn September 1854, after extended preparations, allied forces landed in Crimea in an attempt to capture Russia's main naval base in the Black Sea, Sevastopol. They scored an early victory at the Battle of the Alma. The Russians counterattacked in late October in what became the Battle of Balaclava and were repulsed, and a second counterattack at Inkerman ended in a stalemate. The front settled into the eleven-month-long Siege of Sevastopol, involving brutal conditions for troops on both sides. Smaller military actions took place in the Caucasus (1853\u20131855), the White Sea (July\u2013August 1854) and the North Pacific (1854\u20131855). The Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont entered on the allies' side in 1855.\nSevastopol ultimately fell following a renewed French assault on the Malakoff redoubt in September 1855. Isolated and facing a bleak prospect of invasion by the West if the war continued, Russia sued for peace in March 1856. Due to the conflict's domestic unpopularity, France and Britain welcomed the development. The Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 March 1856, ended the war. It forbade Russia to base warships in the Black Sea. The Ottoman vassal states of Wallachia and Moldavia became largely independent. Christians in the Ottoman Empire gained a degree of official equality, and the Orthodox Church regained control of the Christian churches in dispute.\nThe Crimean War was one of the first conflicts in which military forces used modern technologies such as explosive naval shells, railways and telegraphs. It was also one of the first to be documented extensively in written reports and in photographs. The war quickly symbolized logistical, medical and tactical failures and mismanagement. The reaction in Britain led to a demand for the professionalization of medicine, most famously achieved by Florence Nightingale, who gained worldwide attention for pioneering modern nursing while she treated the wounded.\nThe Crimean War also marked a turning point for the Russian Empire. It weakened the Imperial Russian Army, drained the treasury and undermined its influence in Europe. The humiliating defeat forced Russia's educated elites to identify the country's fundamental problems. It became a catalyst for reforms of Russia's social institutions, including the emancipation reform of 1861 which abolished serfdom in Russia, and overhauls in the justice system, local self-government, education and military service.\nEastern question.\nAs the Ottoman Empire steadily weakened during the 19th century, the Russian Empire stood poised to take advantage by expanding southward. In the 1850s, the British and the French Empires were allied with the Ottoman Empire and were determined to prevent that from happening. The historian A. J. P. Taylor argued that the war had resulted not from aggression, but from the interacting fears of the major players:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />In some sense the Crimean War was predestined and had deep-seated causes. Neither Nicholas I nor Napoleon III nor the British government could retreat from the conflict for prestige once it was launched. Nicholas needed a subservient Turkey for the sake of Russian security; Napoleon needed success for the sake of his domestic position; the British government needed an independent Turkey for the security of the Eastern Mediterranean... Mutual fear, not mutual aggression, caused the Crimean War.\nWeakening of the Ottoman Empire: 1820\u20131840s.\nIn the early 1800s, the Ottoman Empire suffered a number of existential challenges. The Serbian Revolution in 1804 resulted in the autonomy of the first Balkan Christian nation under the empire. The Greek War of Independence, which began in early 1821, provided further evidence of the empire's internal and military weakness, and the commission of atrocities by Ottoman military forces (see Chios massacre) further undermined the empire. The disbandment of the centuries-old Janissary corps by Sultan Mahmud II on 15 June 1826 (Auspicious Incident) helped the empire in the longer term but deprived it of its existing standing army in the short term. In 1827, the Anglo-Franco-Russian fleet destroyed almost all of the Ottoman naval forces at the Battle of Navarino. In 1830, Greece became independent after ten years of war and the Russo-Turkish War (1828\u201329). The Treaty of Adrianople (1829) granted Russian and Western European commercial ships free passage through the Black Sea straits. Also, Serbia received autonomy, and the Danubian Principalities (Moldavia and Wallachia) became territories under Russian protection.\nFrance took the opportunity to occupy Algeria, which had been under Ottoman rule, in 1830. In 1831, Muhammad Ali of Egypt, the most powerful vassal of the Ottoman Empire, declared independence. Ottoman forces were defeated in a number of battles, which forced Mahmud II to seek Russian military aid. A Russian army of 10,000 landed on the shores of the Bosphorus in 1833 and helped prevent the Egyptians from capturing Constantinople.\n\"The reasons for the Tsar's disquietude are not obscure. Not Turkey alone was threatened by the advance of Ibrahim. The rights secured to Russia by a succession of treaties were also directly jeopardized. The substitution of a virile Albanian dynasty at Constantinople in place of the effete Osmanlis was the last thing desired by the Power which wished, naturally enough, to command the gate into the Mediterranean\". Russia was satisfied with the weak government in Constantinople (Istanbul).\nAs a result, the Treaty of H\u00fcnk\u00e2r \u0130skelesi was signed and greatly benefited Russia. It provided for a military alliance between the Russian and the Ottoman Empires if one of them was attacked, and a secret additional clause allowed the Ottomans to opt out of sending troops but to close the Straits to foreign warships if Russia were under threat. Egypt remained nominally under Ottoman sovereignty but was \"de facto\" independent.\nIn 1838 in a situation similar to that of 1831, Muhammad Ali of Egypt was not happy about his lack of control and power in Syria, and he resumed military action. The Ottomans lost to the Egyptians at the Battle of Nezib on 24 June 1839 but were saved by Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia, who signed a convention in London on 15 July 1840 that granted Muhammad Ali and his descendants the right to inherit power in Egypt in exchange for the removal of Egyptian forces from Syria and Lebanon. Moreover, Muhammad Ali had to admit a formal dependence on the Ottoman sultan. After Muhammad Ali refused to obey the requirements of the convention, the allied Anglo-Austrian fleet blockaded the Nile Delta, bombarded Beirut and captured Acre. Muhammad Ali then accepted the convention's conditions.\nOn 13 July 1841, after the expiry of the Treaty of H\u00fcnk\u00e2r \u0130skelesi, the London Straits Convention was signed under pressure from the European countries. The new treaty deprived Russia of its right to block warships from passing into the Black Sea in case of war. Thus, the way to the Black Sea was open for British and French warships during a possible Russo-Ottoman conflict.\nRussian historians tend to view that history as evidence that Russia lacked aggressive plans. The Russian historian V. N. Vinogradov writes: \"The signing of the documents was the result of deliberate decisions: instead of bilateral (none of the great powers recognized this Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi), the new Treaty of London was obligatory for all, it closed the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. In the absence of expansion plans, this was a sound decision\".\nIn 1838, Britain lost interest in crushing the Ottoman Empire. On the contrary, after the conclusion of the trade treaty of 1838 (see Treaty of Balta Liman), Britain received unlimited access to the markets of the Ottoman Empire. \"Britain imposed on the Porte a Tariff Convention which in effect transformed the Ottoman Empire into a virtual free-trade zone. \nTherefore its trade interests pushed it to protect the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. In the long term, the Ottoman Empire lost the opportunity to modernize and industrialize, but in the short term, it gained the opportunity to receive the support of European powers (primarily Britain) in opposing the desire of the conquered peoples for self-determination and Russia, which sought to crush its influence in the Balkans and Asia.\nPublicly, European politicians made broad promises to the Ottomans. Lord Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary, said in 1839: \"All that we hear about the decay of the Turkish Empire, and its being a dead body or a sapless trunk, and so forth, is pure and unadulterated nonsense. Given 10 years of peace under European protection, coupled with internal reform, there seemed to him no reason why it should not become again a respectable Power\".\nOrlando Figes has claimed that \"The motives of the British in promoting liberal reforms were not just to secure the independence of the Ottoman Empire against Russia. They were also to promote the influence of Britain in Turkey\", also: \"to promote British free-trade interests (which may have sounded splendid but was arguably damaging to the Ottoman Empire)\".\n\"British exports to the Ottoman Empire, including Egypt and the Danubian principalities, increased nearly threefold from 1840 to 1851 (...) Thus it was very important, from the financial point of view, for Britain to prevent the Ottoman Empire from falling into other hands.\"\n\"From this moment (1838) the export of British manufactured goods to Turkey rose steeply. There was an elevenfold increase by 1850\".\nAssistance from Western European powers or Russia had twice saved the Ottoman Empire from destruction, but the Ottomans also lost their independence in foreign policy. Britain and France desired more than any other states to preserve the integrity of the Ottoman Empire because they did not want to see Russia gaining access to the Mediterranean Sea. Austria had the same fears.\nRussian expansionism.\nRussia, as a member of the Holy Alliance, had operated as the \"police of Europe\" to maintain the balance of power that had been established in the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Russia had assisted Austria's efforts in suppressing the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, and expected a free hand in settling its problems with the Ottoman Empire, the \"sick man of Europe\". However, Britain could not tolerate Russian dominance of Ottoman affairs, which would challenge its domination of the eastern Mediterranean.\nStarting with Peter the Great in the early 1700s, after centuries of Ottoman northward expansion and Crimean-Nogai raids, Russia began a southwards expansion across the sparsely-populated \"Wild Fields\" toward the warm water ports of the Black Sea, which does not freeze over, unlike the handful of ports controlled by Russia in the north. The goal was to promote year-round trade and a year-round navy. Pursuit of that goal brought the emerging Russian state into conflict with the Ukrainian Cossacks and then the Tatars of the Crimean Khanate and Circassians.\n\"The plan to develop Russia as a southern power had begun in earnest in 1776, when Catherine placed Potemkin in charge of New Russia (Novorossiya), the sparsely populated territories newly conquered from the Ottomans on the Black Sea's northern coastline, and ordered him to colonize the area\". \nWhen Russia conquered those groups and gained possession of their territories, the Ottoman Empire lost its buffer zone against Russian expansion, and both empires came into direct conflict. The conflict with the Ottoman Empire also presented a religious issue of importance, as Russia saw itself as the protector of history of the Eastern Orthodox Church under the Ottoman Orthodox Christians, who were legally treated as second-class citizens. The Ottoman Reform Edict of 1856, promulgated after the war, largely reversed much of the second-class status, most notably the tax that only non-Muslims paid.\nBritain's immediate fear was Russia's expansion at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. The British desired to preserve Ottoman integrity and were concerned that Russia might make advances toward British India or move toward Scandinavia or Western Europe. A distraction (in the form of the Ottoman Empire) on the Russian southwest flank would mitigate that threat. The Royal Navy also wanted to forestall the threat of a powerful Imperial Russian Navy. Taylor stated the British perspective:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The Crimean war was fought for the sake of Europe rather than for the Eastern question; it was fought against Russia, not in favour of Turkey... The British fought Russia out of resentment and supposed that her defeat would strengthen the European Balance of Power.\nBecause of \"British commercial and strategic interests in the Middle East and India\", the British joined the French, \"cement[ing] an alliance with Britain and... reassert[ing] its military power\". Among those who supported the British strategy were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In his articles for the \"New-York Tribune\" around 1853, Marx saw the Crimean War as a conflict between the democratic ideals of the west that started with the \"great movement of 1789\" against \"Russia and Absolutism\". He described the Ottoman Empire as a buffer against a pattern of expansionism by the Tsar. Marx and Engels also accused Lord Palmerston of playing along with the interests of Russia and being unserious in preparing for the conflict. Marx believed Palmerston to be bribed by Russia, and shared this belief with David Urquhart. Urquhart, for his part, was a British politician who was a major advocate for the Ottoman Empire.\nMikhail Pogodin, a professor of history at Moscow University, gave Nicholas I a summary of Russia's policy towards the Slavs in the war. Nicholas' answer was filled with grievances against the West. Nicholas shared Pogodin's sense that Russia's role as the protector of Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire was not understood and that Russia was unfairly treated by the West. Nicholas especially approved of the following passage:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />France takes Algeria from Turkey, and almost every year England annexes another Indian principality: none of this disturbs the balance of power; but when Russia occupies Moldavia and Wallachia, albeit only temporarily, that disturbs the balance of power. France occupies Rome and stays there several years during peacetime: that is nothing; but Russia only thinks of occupying Constantinople, and the peace of Europe is threatened. The English declare war on the Chinese, who have, it seems, offended them: no one has the right to intervene; but Russia is obliged to ask Europe for permission if it quarrels with its neighbour. England threatens Greece to support the false claims of a miserable Jew and burns its fleet: that is a lawful action; but Russia demands a treaty to protect millions of Christians, and that is deemed to strengthen its position in the East at the expense of the balance of power. We can expect nothing from the West but blind hatred and malice... (\"comment in the margin by Nicholas I\": 'This is the whole point').\nRussia was militarily weak, technologically backward and administratively incompetent. Despite its grand ambitions toward the south, it had not built its railway network in that direction, and its communications were poor. Its bureaucracy was riddled with graft, corruption and inefficiency and was unprepared for war. Its navy was weak and technologically backward. Its army, although very large, suffered from colonels who pocketed their men's pay, from poor morale, and from a technological deficit relative to Britain and France. By the war's end, the profound weaknesses of the Russian armed forces had become readily apparent, and the Russian leadership was determined to reform it.\nHowever, no matter how great the problems of Russia were, Russia believed those of the Ottomans were greater. \"In a one-to-one fight Nikolai (Tsar) had no doubt of beating the Ottoman armies and navy\". Russian foreign policy failed to understand the importance of Britain's trade interests and did not understand the changes in the situation after the conclusion of the Anglo-Ottoman Treaty in 1838 (see Treaty of Balta Liman). Russia attempted to \"honestly\" negotiate with the United Kingdom on the partition of the Ottoman Empire and made concessions in order to eliminate all objections from the United Kingdom.\n\"The Tsar Nicholas had always, as we have seen, been anxious to maintain a cordial understanding with England in regard to the Eastern Question, and early in the spring of 1853 he had a series of interviews with Sir George Hamilton Seymour, then British ambassador at St. Petersburg.\" Emperor Nicholas I assured that he did not intend to seize Constantinople and territories in the Balkans, he himself offered Britain to take over Egypt and Crete. Concessions at the conclusion of the London Straits Convention were made earlier in 1841. \"By signing the convention, the Russians had given up their privileged position in the Ottoman Empire and their control of the Straits, all in the hope of improving relations with Britain and isolating France\". But Britain after 1838 was interested in preserving the integrity of the Ottoman Empire and rejected all Russian proposals. \"The fall of the Ottoman Empire was not, however, a requirement of British policy in the East. A weak Ottoman state best suited British interests\".\nImmediate causes of war.\nFrench Emperor Napoleon III's ambition to restore France's grandeur initiated the immediate chain of events that led to France and Britain declaring war on Russia on 27 and 28 March 1854, respectively. He pursued Catholic support by asserting France's \"sovereign authority\" over the Christian population of Palestine, to the detriment of Russia (the sponsor of Eastern Orthodoxy). To achieve that, he in May 1851 appointed Charles, marquis de La Valette, a zealous leading member of the Catholic clericalists, as his ambassador to the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire.\nRussia disputed that attempted change in authority. Referring to two previous treaties (one from 1757 and the Treaty of K\u00fc\u00e7\u00fck Kaynarca from 1774), the Ottomans reversed their earlier decision, renounced the French treaty and declared that Russia was the protector of the Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire.\nNapoleon III responded with a show of force by sending the ship of the line \"Charlemagne\" to the Black Sea and thereby violated the London Straits Convention. The gunboat diplomacy show of force, together with money, induced Ottoman Sultan Abd\u00fclmecid I to accept a new treaty confirming France and the Catholic Church's supreme authority over Christian holy places, including the Church of the Nativity, which had been held by the Greek Orthodox Church.\nTsar Nicholas I then deployed his 4th and 5th Army Corps along the River Danube in Wallachia, as a direct threat to the Ottoman lands south of the river. He had Foreign Minister Count Karl Nesselrode undertake talks with the Ottomans. Nesselrode confided to Seymour:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"[The dispute over the holy places]\" had assumed a new character\u2014that the acts of injustice towards the Greek church which it had been desired to prevent had been perpetrated and consequently that now the object must be to find a remedy for these wrongs. The success of French negotiations at Constantinople was to be ascribed solely to intrigue and violence\u2014violence which had been supposed to be the ultima ratio of kings, being, it had been seen, the means which the present ruler of France was in the habit of employing in the first instance. \nThe agreement referred to by the French was in 1740. At present most historians (except for the new Russian Orthodox nationalists) accept that the question of the holy places was no more than a pretext for the Crimean War. As conflict emerged over the issue of the holy places, Nicholas I and Nesselrode began a diplomatic offensive, which they hoped would prevent either British or French interference in any conflict between Russia and the Ottomans and prevent both from forming an anti-Russian alliance.\nNicholas began courting Britain by means of conversations with Seymour in January and February 1853. Nicholas insisted that he no longer wished to expand the Russian Empire but that he had an obligation to the Christian communities in the Ottoman Empire.\nHe next dispatched a highly-abrasive diplomat, Prince Menshikov, on a special mission to the Ottoman Sublime Porte in February 1853. By previous treaties, the sultan had committed \"to protect the (Eastern Orthodox) Christian religion and its churches\". Menshikov demanded a Russian protectorate over all 12\u00a0million Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire with control of the Orthodox Church's hierarchy. A compromise was reached regarding Orthodox access to the Holy Land, but the Sultan, strongly supported by the British ambassador, Stratford Canning, 1st Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe, rejected the most sweeping demands.\nRussian historian Vinogradov V.N. point out that Menshikov's demands did not go beyond the limits of previous treaties. \"The agreement was reached on the administration of church rites of both clergy in respected temples and, secondly, that the tsar rejected the idea of expanding his right of patronage and, in fact, insisted on confirming the terms of the Kucuk-Kaynardzhiy treaty of 1774, which allowed giving advice to the Sultan, but did not oblige them to accept\".\n\"By the early 1850s Stratford Canning had become far more than an ambassador or adviser to the Porte. The 'Great Elchi', or Great Ambassador, as he was known in Constantinople, had a direct influence on the policies of the Turkish government. (...) His presence was a source of deep resentment among the Sultan's ministers, who lived in terror of a personal visit from the dictatorial ambassador\".\nNicholas fumed at \"the infernal dictatorship of this Redcliffe\" whose name and political ascendancy at the Porte personified for him the whole Eastern Question, The British and the French sent in naval task forces to support the Ottomans, as Russia had prepared to seize the Danubian Principalities.\nAll the calculations of the Russian emperor turned out to be erroneous. Britain refused his proposals, it was not possible to prevent the Anglo-French rapprochement, Austria opposed his policy, the Ottoman Empire showed intransigence. On the contrary, a favourable situation was developing for Britain. Britain had great naval power and a powerful economy, but did not have a strong land army. The alliance with France, which had a strong land army, made it possible to strike at Russia. \"With the help of French infantry, it was possible to overturn Russia's positions with one blow\"\nFirst hostilities.\nIn February 1853, the British government of Prime Minister Lord Aberdeen reappointed Lord Stratford as British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Having resigned the ambassadorship in January, he had been replaced by Colonel Rose as \"charg\u00e9 d'affaires\". Lord Stratford then turned around, sailed back to Constantinople, arriving there on 5 April 1853 and convinced the Sultan there to reject the Russian treaty proposal as compromising Ottoman independence. The Leader of the Opposition in the British House of Commons, Benjamin Disraeli, blamed Aberdeen's and Stratford's actions for making war inevitable, which started the process that would force the Aberdeen government to resign in January 1855 over the war.\nShortly after the Tsar had learned of the failure of Menshikov's diplomacy toward the end of June 1853, he sent armies under the commands of Field Marshal Ivan Paskevich and General Mikhail Gorchakov across the River Prut into the Ottoman-controlled Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. Fewer than half of the 80,000 Russian soldiers who crossed the Prut in 1853 survived. By far, nearly all of the deaths would result from sickness, rather than action, since the Russian Army still suffered from medical services that ranged from bad to none.\nRussia had obtained recognition from the Ottoman Empire of the Tsar's role as special guardian of the Orthodox Christians in Moldavia and Wallachia. Russia now used the Sultan's failure to resolve the issue of the protection of the Christian sites in the Holy Land as a pretext for Russian occupation of those Danubian provinces. Nicholas believed that the European powers, especially Austria, would not object strongly to the annexation of a few neighbouring Ottoman provinces, especially since Russia had assisted Austria's efforts in suppressing the Hungarian Revolution in 1849.\nThe United Kingdom, hoping to maintain the Ottoman Empire as a bulwark against the expansion of Russian power in Asia, sent a fleet to the Dardanelles, where it joined a fleet sent by France.\nBattle of Sinop.\nThe European powers continued to pursue diplomatic avenues. The representatives of the four Great Powers (the United Kingdom, France, Austria and Prussia) met in Vienna, where they drafted a note, which they hoped would be acceptable to both the Russians and the Ottomans. The peace terms arrived at by the four powers at the Vienna Conference (1853) were delivered to the Russians by Austrian Foreign Minister Count Karl von Buol on 5 December 1853. The note met with the approval of Nicholas I, but Abd\u00fclmecid I rejected the proposal since he felt that the document's poor phrasing left it open to many different interpretations. The United Kingdom, France and Austria united in proposing amendments to mollify the Sultan, but the court of St. Petersburg ignored their suggestions. The United Kingdom and France then set aside the idea of continuing negotiations, but Austria and Prussia did not believe that the rejection of the proposed amendments justified the abandonment of the diplomatic process.\nOn 23 November, a small Russian naval force discovered the Ottoman fleet harboured in Sinop and began a blockade. Once the Russian blockade was reinforced, a squadron of 6 Russian ships of the line supported by 5 smaller warships, assaulted the harbour on 30 November 1853. During Battle of Sinop, the Russian squadron destroyed a patrol squadron of 11 Ottoman warships\u2014mostly frigates\u2014while they were anchored in port under defence of the onshore artillery garrison. The Ottoman fleet suffered a crushing defeat. The Russian victory in the naval battle in Sinope was called \"the massacre of Sinope\". Although Russia and the Ottoman Empire were already at war, and there was no evidence of Russian atrocities, the phrase was used as propaganda in the West. The press in both United Kingdom and France used Sinop as the \"casus belli\" (\"cause of war\") to shape the public opinion in favour of war against Russia. By 28 March 1854, after Russia ignored an Anglo-French ultimatum to withdraw from the Danubian Principalities, the United Kingdom and France had both declared war.\nDardanelles.\nBritain was concerned about Russian activity and Sir John Burgoyne, a senior advisor to Lord Aberdeen, urged for the Dardanelles to be occupied and works of sufficient strength to be built to block any Russian move to capture Constantinople and gain access to the Mediterranean. The Corps of Royal Engineers sent men to the Dardanelles, and Burgoyne went to Paris and met with the British ambassador and the French emperor. Lord Cowley wrote on 8 February to Burgoyne, \"Your visit to Paris has produced a visible change in the Emperor's views, and he is making every preparation for a land expedition in case the last attempt at negotiation should break down\".\nBurgoyne and his team of engineers inspected and surveyed the Dardanelles area in February. They were fired on by Russian riflemen when they went to Varna. A team of sappers arrived in March, and major building works commenced on a seven-mile line of defence, which was designed to block the Gallipoli Peninsula. French sappers worked on half of the line, which was finished in May.\nPeace attempts.\nNicholas felt that because of Russian assistance in suppressing the Hungarian revolution of 1848, Austria would side with him or at the very least remain neutral. Austria, however, felt threatened by the Russian troops in the Balkans. On 27 February 1854, the United Kingdom and France demanded the withdrawal of Russian forces from the principalities. Austria supported them and, without declaring war on Russia, refused to guarantee its neutrality. Russia's rejection of the ultimatum proved to be the justification used by Britain and France to enter the war.\nRussia soon withdrew its troops from the Danubian Principalities, which were then occupied by Austria for the duration of the war. That removed the original grounds for war, but the British and the French continued with hostilities. Determined to address the Eastern Question by putting an end to the Russian threat to the Ottomans, the allies in August 1854 proposed the \"Four Points\" for ending the conflict in addition to the Russian withdrawal:\nThose points, particularly the third, would require clarification through negotiations, which Russia refused. The allies, including Austria, therefore agreed that Britain and France should take further military action to prevent further Russian aggression against the Ottomans. Britain and France agreed on the invasion of Crimea as the first step.\nBattles.\nDanube campaign.\nThe Danube campaign opened when the Russians occupied the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia in July 1853, which brought their forces to the north bank of the River Danube. In response, the Ottoman Empire also moved its forces up to the river, establishing strongholds at Vidin in the west and Silistra in the east, near the mouth of the Danube. The Ottoman move up the River Danube was also of concern to the Austrians, who moved forces into Transylvania in response. However, the Austrians had begun to fear the Russians more than the Ottomans. Indeed, like the British, the Austrians were now coming to see that an intact Ottoman Empire was necessary as a bulwark against the Russians. Accordingly, Austria resisted Russian diplomatic attempts to join the war but remained neutral during the Crimean War.\nAfter the Ottoman ultimatum in September 1853, forces under Ottoman General Omar Pasha crossed the Danube at Vidin and captured Calafat in October 1853. Simultaneously, in the east, the Ottomans crossed the Danube at Silistra and attacked the Russians at Olteni\u021ba. The resulting Battle of Olteni\u021ba was the first engagement since the declaration of war. The Russians counterattacked but were beaten back. On 31 December 1853, the Ottoman forces at Calafat moved against the Russian force at Chetatea or Cetate, a small village nine miles north of Calafat, and engaged it on 6 January 1854. The battle began when the Russians made a move to recapture Calafat. Most of the heavy fighting took place in and around Chetatea until the Russians were driven out of the village. Despite the setback at Chetatea, Russian forces on 28 January 1854 laid siege to Calafat. The siege would continue until May 1854 when it was lifted by the Russians. The Ottomans would also later beat the Russians in battle at Caracal.\nIn early 1854, the Russians again advanced by crossing the River Danube into the Turkish province of Dobruja. By April 1854, the Russians had reached the lines of Trajan's Wall, where they were finally halted. In the centre, the Russian forces crossed the Danube and laid siege to Silistra from 14 April with 60,000 troops. The defenders had 15,000 troops and supplies for three months. The siege was lifted on 23 June 1854. The British and the French could not then take the field for lack of equipment.\nIn the west, the Russians were dissuaded from attacking Vidin by the presence of the Austrian forces, which had swollen to 280,000 men. On 28 May 1854, a protocol of the Vienna Conference was signed by Austria and Russia. One of the aims of the Russian advance had been to encourage the Orthodox Christian Serbs and Bulgarians who were living under Ottoman rule to rebel. When the Russian troops crossed the River Pruth into Moldavia, the Orthodox Christians showed no interest in rising up against the Ottomans. Adding to Nicholas I's worries was the concern that Austria would enter the war against the Russians and attack his armies on the western flank. Indeed, after attempting to mediate a peaceful settlement between Russia and the Ottomans, the Austrians entered the war on the side of the Ottomans with an attack against the Russians in the Danubian Principalities which threatened to cut off the Russian supply lines. Accordingly, the Russians were forced to raise the siege of Silistra on 23 June 1854 and to begin abandoning the principalities. The lifting of the siege reduced the threat of a Russian advance into Bulgaria.\nIn June 1854, the Allied expeditionary force landed at Varna, a city on the Black Sea's western coast, but made little advance from its base there. Karl Marx was noted to have quipped that \"there they are, the French doing nothing and the British helping them as fast as possible\". In July 1854, the Ottomans, under Omar Pasha, crossed the Danube into Wallachia and on 7 July 1854 engaged the Russians in the city of Giurgiu and conquered it. The capture of Giurgiu by the Ottomans immediately threatened Bucharest in Wallachia with capture by the same Ottoman army. On 26 July 1854, Nicholas I, responding to an Austrian ultimatum, ordered the withdrawal of Russian troops from the principalities. Also, in late July 1854, following up on the Russian retreat, the French staged an expedition against the Russian forces still in Dobruja, but it was a failure.\nBy then, the Russian withdrawal was complete, except for the fortress towns of northern Dobruja, and Russia's place in the principalities was taken by the Austrians as a neutral peacekeeping force. There was little further action on that front after late 1854, and in September, the allied force boarded ships at Varna to invade Crimea.\nBlack Sea theatre.\nThe naval operations of the Crimean War commenced with the dispatch in mid-1853 of the French and the British fleets to the Black Sea region, to support the Ottomans and to dissuade the Russians from encroachment. By June 1853, both fleets had been stationed at Besikas Bay, outside the Dardanelles. With the Russian occupation of the Danube Principalities in July 1853, they moved to the Bosphorus, and on 3 January 1854, they entered the Black Sea.\nMeanwhile, the Russian Black Sea Fleet operated against Ottoman coastal traffic between Constantinople and the Caucasus ports, and the Ottoman fleet sought to protect the supply line. The clash came on 30 November 1853, when a Russian fleet attacked an Ottoman force in the harbour at Sinop and destroyed it at the Battle of Sinop. The battle outraged British public opinion, which called for war. There was little additional naval action until March 1854, when after the declaration of war, the British frigate was fired on outside Odessa Harbour. In response an Anglo-French fleet bombarded the port and caused much damage to the town. To show support for the Ottomans after the Battle of Sinop, on 22 December 1853, the Anglo-French squadron entered the Black Sea and the steamship HMS \"Retribution\" approached the Port of Sevastopol. Its commander received an ultimatum not to allow any ships in the Black Sea.\nIn June, the fleets transported the Allied expeditionary forces to Varna to support the Ottoman operations on the Danube. In September they again transported the armies, this time to Crimea. The Russian fleet then declined to engage the allies but preferred to maintain a \"fleet in being\", a strategy that failed when Sevastopol, the main port and the base of most of the Black Sea fleet, came under siege. The Russians were reduced to scuttling their warships as blockships after they had stripped them of their guns and men to reinforce batteries on shore. During the siege, the Russians lost four 110- or 120-gun, three-decker ships of the line, twelve 84-gun two-deckers and four 60-gun frigates in the Black Sea, as well as a large number of smaller vessels. During the rest of the campaign, the allied fleets remained in control of the Black Sea and ensured that the various fronts were kept supplied.\nIn May 1855, the allies successfully invaded Kerch and operated against Taganrog in the Sea of Azov. In September, they moved against Russian installations in the Dnieper estuary by attacking Kinburn in the first use of ironclad ships in naval warfare.\nCrimean campaign.\nThe Russians evacuated Wallachia and Moldavia in late July 1854. Therefore, the immediate cause of war had now been withdrawn, and the war might have then ended. However, war fever among the public in both Britain and France had been whipped up by the press in both countries to the degree that politicians found it untenable to propose immediately ending the war. The coalition government of George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen, fell on 30 January 1855 on a no-confidence vote, as Parliament voted to appoint a committee to investigate the mismanagement of the war.\nFrench and British officers and engineers were sent on 20 July on \"Fury\", a wooden \"Bulldog\"-class paddle sloop, to survey the harbour of Sevastopol and the coast near it. They managed to get close to the harbour mouth to inspect the formidable batteries. Returning, they reported that they believed that 15,000\u201320,000 troops were encamped. Ships were prepared to transport horses, and siege equipment was both manufactured and imported.\nThe Crimean campaign opened in September 1854. In seven columns, 360 ships sailed, each steamer towing two sailing ships. Anchoring on 13 September in the bay of Yevpatoria, the town surrendered, and 500 marines landed to occupy it. The town and the bay would provide a fallback position in case of disaster. The ships then sailed east to make the landing of the allied expeditionary force on the sandy beaches of Kalamita Bay, on the south-west coast of Crimea. The landing surprised the Russians, as they had expected a landing at Katcha. The last-minute change proved that Russia had known the original campaign plan. There was no sign of the enemy and so all of the invading troops landed on 14 September 1854. It took another four days to land all of the stores, equipment, horses and artillery.\nThe landing took place north of Sevastopol and so the Russians had arrayed their army in expectation of a direct attack. The allies advanced and on the morning of 20 September came up to the River Alma and engaged the Russian Army. The Russian position was strong, but after three hours, the allied frontal attack had driven the Russians out of their dug-in positions with losses of 6,000 men. The Battle of the Alma resulted in 3,300 Allied losses. Failing to pursue the retreating forces was one of many strategic errors made during the war, and the Russians themselves noted that if the allies had pressed south that day, they would have easily captured Sevastopol.\nBelieving the northern approaches to the city too well defended, especially because of the presence of a large star fort and the city being on the south side of Sevastopol Bay, Sir John Burgoyne, the engineer advisor, recommended for the allies attack to Sevastopol from the south. The joint commanders, Raglan and Saint-Arnaud, agreed. On 25 September, the whole army began to march southeast and encircled the city from the south after it had established port facilities at Balaclava for the British and at Kamiesch () for the French. The Russians retreated into the city.\nThe Allied armies moved without problems to the south, and the heavy artillery was brought ashore with batteries and connecting trenches built. By 10 October, some batteries were ready, and by 17 October, when the bombardment commenced\u2014126 guns were firing, 53 of them French. The fleet meanwhile engaged the shore batteries. The British bombardment worked better than that of the French, who had smaller-calibre guns. The fleet suffered high casualties during the day. The British wanted to attack that afternoon, but the French wanted to defer the attack.\nA postponement was agreed, but on the next day, the French were still not ready. By 19 October the Russians had transferred some heavy guns to the southern defences and had outgunned the allies.\nReinforcements for the Russians gave them the courage to send out probing attacks. The Allied lines, beginning to suffer from cholera as early as September, were stretched. The French, on the west, had less to do than the British on the east, with their siege lines and the large nine-mile open wing back to their supply base on the south coast.\nBattle of Balaclava.\nA large Russian assault on the allied supply base to the southeast at Balaclava was rebuffed on 25 October 1854. The Battle of Balaclava is remembered in Britain for the actions of two British units. At the start of the battle, a large body of Russian cavalry charged the 93rd Highlanders, who were posted north of the village of Kadikoi. Commanding them was Sir Colin Campbell. Rather than \"form square\", the traditional method of repelling cavalry, Campbell took the risky decision to have his Highlanders form a single line two men deep. Campbell had seen the effectiveness of the new Mini\u00e9 rifles with which his troops were armed at the Battle of Alma, a month earlier, and he was confident that his men could beat back the Russians. His tactics succeeded. From up on the ridge to the west, the \"Times\" correspondent William Howard Russell saw the Highlanders as a \"thin red streak topped with steel\", a phrase which soon became the \"Thin Red Line\".\nSoon afterward, a Russian cavalry movement was countered by the Heavy Brigade, which charged and fought hand to hand until the Russians retreated. That caused a more widespread Russian retreat, including a number of their artillery units. After the local commanders had failed to take advantage of the retreat, Lord Raglan sent out orders to move up and to prevent the withdrawal of naval guns from the recently captured redoubts on the heights. Raglan could see those guns because of his position on the hill. In the valley, that view was obstructed, and the wrong guns were in sight to the left. The local commanders ignored the demands, which led to the British aide-de-camp, Captain Louis Nolan, personally delivering the quickly-written and confusing order to attack the artillery. When Lord Lucan questioned to which guns the order referred, the aide-de-camp pointed to the first Russian battery that he could see and allegedly said \"There is your enemy, there are your guns\", because of his obstructed view, which were wrong. Lucan then passed the order to the Earl of Cardigan, which resulted in the Charge of the Light Brigade.\nIn that charge, Cardigan formed up his unit and charged the length of the Valley of the Balaclava, under fire from Russian batteries in the hills. The charge of the Light Brigade caused 278 casualties of the 700-man unit. The Light Brigade was memorialised in the famous poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, \"The Charge of the Light Brigade\". Although traditionally, the charge of the Light Brigade was looked upon as a glorious but wasted sacrifice of good men and horses, recent historians believe that the charge of the Light Brigade succeeded in at least some of its objectives. The aim of any cavalry charge is to scatter the enemy's lines and frighten the enemy off the battlefield. The Charge of the Light Brigade so unnerved the Russian cavalry, which had been routed by the Charge of the Heavy Brigade, that the Russians were set to full-scale flight.\nThe shortage of men led to the failure of the British and the French to follow up on the Battle of Balaclava, which led directly to the much bloodier Battle of Inkerman. On 5 November 1854, the Russians attempted to raise the siege at Sevastopol with an attack against the allies, which resulted in another allied victory.\nWinter of 1854\u20131855.\nWinter weather and a deteriorating supply of troops and materiel on both sides led to a halt in ground operations. Sevastopol remained invested by the allies, whose armies were hemmed in by the Imperial Russian Army in the interior. On 14 November, the \"Balaklava Storm\", a major weather event, sank 30 allied transport ships, including , which was carrying a cargo of winter clothing.\nThe storm and the heavy traffic caused the road from the coast to the troops to disintegrate into a quagmire, which required engineers to devote most of their time to its repair, including by quarrying stone. A tramway was ordered and arrived in January with a civilian engineering crew, but it took until March before it had become sufficiently advanced to be of any appreciable value. An electrical telegraph was also ordered, but the frozen ground delayed its installation until March, when communications from the base port of Balaklava to the British HQ was established. The pipe-and-cable-laying plough failed because of the hard frozen soil, but nevertheless of cable were laid.\nThe troops suffered greatly from cold and sickness, and the shortage of fuel led them to start dismantling their defensive gabions and fascines. In February 1855, the Russians attacked the allied base at Eupatoria, where an Ottoman army had built up and was threatening Russian supply routes. The Russians were defeated at the Battle of Eupatoria, leading to a change in their command.\nThe strain of directing the war had taken its toll on the health of Tsar Nicholas. Full of remorse for the disasters that he had caused, he caught pneumonia and died on 2 March.\nSiege of Sevastopol.\nThe allies had had time to consider the problem, and the French were brought around to agree that the key to the defence was the Malakoff. Emphasis of the siege at Sevastopol shifted to the British left against the fortifications on Malakoff Hill. In March, there was fighting by the French over a new fort being built by the Russians at Mamelon, on a hill in front of the Malakoff. Several weeks of fighting resulted in little change in the front line, and the Mamelon remained in Russian hands.\nIn April 1855, the allies staged a second all-out bombardment, which led to an artillery duel with the Russian guns, but no ground assault followed.\nOn 24 May 1855, 60 ships, containing 7,000 French, 5,000 Turkish and 3,000 British troops, set off for a raid on the city of Kerch, east of Sevastopol, in an attempt to open another front in Crimea and to cut off Russian supplies. When the allies landed the force at Kerch, the plan was to outflank the Russian Army. The landings were successful, but the force made little progress thereafter.\nMany more artillery pieces had arrived and had been dug into batteries. The first general assault of Sevastopol took place on 18 June 1855. There is a legend that the assault was scheduled for that date in favour of Napoleon III in the 40th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, but the legend is not confirmed by historians. However, the appearance of such a legend is undoubtedly symptomatic since the war in France was understood as a certain revanche for the defeat of 1812.\nIn June, a third bombardment was followed after two days by a successful attack on the Mamelon, but a follow-up assault on the Malakoff failed with heavy losses. Meanwhile, the garrison commander, Admiral Pavel Nakhimov, fell on 30 June 1855, and Raglan died on 28 June. Losses in those battles were so great that by agreement of military opponents short-term truces for removal of corpses were signed (these truces were described in the work of Leo Tolstoy \"Sevastopol Sketches\"). The assault was beaten back with heavy casualties and in an undoubted victory for Russia. It is worth mentioning that the Russian Siege of Sevastopol (panorama) depicts the moment of the assault of Sevastopol on 18 June 1855.\nIn August, the Russians again made an attack towards the base at Balaclava, which was defended by the French, newly arrived Sardinian and Ottoman troops. The resulting Battle of the Chernaya was a defeat for the Russians, who suffered heavy casualties.\nFor months, each side had been building forward rifle pits and defensive positions, which resulted in many skirmishes. Artillery fire aimed to gain superiority over the enemy guns. The final assault was made on 5 September, when another French bombardment (the sixth) was followed by an assault by the French Army on 8 September and resulted in the French capture of the Malakoff fort. The Russians failed to retake it and their defences collapsed. Meanwhile, the British assaulted the Great Redan, a Russian defensive battlement just south of the city of Sevastopol, a position that had been attacked repeatedly for months. Whether the British captured the Redan remains in dispute: Russian historians recognise only the loss of the Malakhov Kurgan, a key point of defence, claiming that all other positions were retained. What is agreed is that the Russians abandoned the positions, blew up their powder magazines and retreated to the north. The city finally fell on 9 September 1855, after a 337-day-long siege.\nBoth sides were now exhausted, and no further military operations were launched in Crimea before the onset of winter. The main objective of the siege was the destruction of the Russian fleet and docks and took place over the winter. On 28 February, multiple mines blew up the five docks, the canal, and three locks.\nAzov campaign.\nIn early 1855, the allied Anglo-French commanders decided to send an Anglo-French naval squadron into the Azov Sea to undermine Russian communications and supplies to besieged Sevastopol. On 12 May 1855, Anglo-French warships entered the Kerch Strait and destroyed the coast battery of the Kamishevaya Bay. Once through the Kerch Strait, British and French warships struck at every vestige of Russian power along the coast of the Sea of Azov. Except for Rostov and Azov, no town, depot, building or fortification was immune from attack, and Russian naval power ceased to exist almost overnight. This Allied campaign led to a significant reduction in supplies flowing to the besieged Russian troops at Sevastopol.\nOn 21 May 1855, the gunboats and armed steamers attacked the seaport of Taganrog, the most important hub near Rostov on Don. The vast amounts of food, especially bread, wheat, barley and rye, that were amassed in the city after the outbreak of war were prevented from being exported.\nThe Governor of Taganrog, Yegor Tolstoy, and Lieutenant-General Ivan Krasnov refused an allied ultimatum by responding, \"Russians never surrender their cities\". The Anglo-French squadron bombarded Taganrog for 6<templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1\u20442\u00a0hours and landed 300 troops near the Old Stairway in the centre of Taganrog, but they were thrown back by Don Cossacks and a volunteer corps.\nIn July 1855, the allied squadron tried to go past Taganrog to Rostov-on-Don by entering the River Don through the Mius River. On 12 July 1855 HMS\u00a0\"Jasper\" grounded near Taganrog thanks to a fisherman who moved buoys into shallow water. The Cossacks captured the gunboat with all of its guns and blew it up. The third siege attempt was made 19\u201331 August 1855, but the city was already fortified, and the squadron could not approach close enough for landing operations. The allied fleet left the Gulf of Taganrog on 2 September 1855, with minor military operations along the Azov Sea coast continuing until late 1855.\nCaucasus theatre.\nAs in the previous wars, the Caucasus front was secondary to what happened in the west. Perhaps because of better communications, western events sometimes influenced the east. The main events were the second capture of Kars and a landing on the Georgian coast. Several commanders on both sides were either incompetent or unlucky, and few fought aggressively.\n1853: There were four main events. 1. In the north, the Ottomans captured the border fort of Saint Nicholas in a surprise night attack (27/28 October). They then pushed about 20,000 troops across the Choloki river border. Being outnumbered, the Russians abandoned Poti and Redoubt Kali and drew back to Marani. Both sides remained immobile for the next seven months. 2. In the centre the Ottomans moved north from Ardahan to within cannon-shot of Akhaltsike and awaited reinforcements (13 November), but the Russians routed them. The claimed losses were 4,000 Turks and 400 Russians. 3. In the south about 30,000 Turks slowly moved east to the main Russian concentration at Gyumri or Alexandropol (November). They crossed the border and set up artillery south of town. Prince Vakhtang Orbeliani tried to drive them off and found himself trapped. The Ottomans failed to press their advantage; the remaining Russians rescued Orbeliani and the Ottomans retired west. Orbeliani lost about 1,000 men from 5,000. The Russians now decided to advance. The Ottomans took up a strong position on the Kars road and attacked-only to be defeated in the Battle of Ba\u015fgedikler, losing 6,000 men, half their artillery and all of their supply train. The Russians lost 1,300, including Prince Orbeliani. This was Prince Ellico Orbeliani, whose wife was later kidnapped by Imam Shamil at Tsinandali. 4. At sea the Turks sent a fleet east, which was destroyed by Admiral Nakhimov at Sinope.\n1854: The British and French declared war on 28 March. Early in the year on 3 January, the Anglo-French fleet appeared in the Black Sea, and the Russians abandoned the Black Sea Defensive Line from Anapa south. Nikolay Muravyov, who replaced Vorontsov, fearing an Anglo-French landing in conjunction with Shamil, 3rd Imam of Dagestan and the Persians, recommended withdrawal north of the Caucasus. For that purpose, he was replaced by Aleksandr Baryatinsky. When the allies chose a land attack on Sevastopol, any plan for a landing in the east was abandoned.\nIn the north, Georgiy Evseevich Eristov pushed southwest, fought two battles, forced the Ottomans back to Batumi, retired behind the Cholok river and suspended action for the rest of the year (June). In the far south, Wrangel pushed west, fought a battle and occupied Bayazit. In the centre. the main forces stood at Kars and Gyumri. Both slowly approached along the Kars-Gyumri road and faced each other, neither side choosing to fight (June\u2013July). On 4 August, Russian scouts saw a movement which they thought was the start of a withdrawal, the Russians advanced and the Ottomans attacked first. They were defeated and lost 8,000 men to the Russian 3,000. Also, 10,000 irregulars deserted to their villages. Both sides withdrew to their former positions. About then, the Persians made a semi-secret agreement to remain neutral in exchange for the cancellation of the indemnity from the previous war.\n1855: Siege of Kars: Up to May 1855, Ottomans forces in the east were reduced from 120,000 to 75,000, mostly by disease. The local Armenian population kept Muravyov well-informed about the Ottomans at Kars and he judged they had about five months of supplies. He therefore decided to control the surrounding area with cavalry and starve them out. He started in May and by June was south and west of the town. A relieving force fell back and there was a possibility of taking Erzurum, but Muravyov chose not to. In late September he learned of the fall of Sevastopol and a Turkish landing at Batum. This led him to reverse policy and try a direct attack. It failed, the Russians losing 8,000 men and the Turks 1,500 (29 September). The blockade continued and Kars surrendered on 28 November.\n1855: Georgian coast: Omar Pasha, the Turkish commander at Crimea had long wanted to land in Georgia, but the western powers vetoed it. When they relented in August most of the campaigning season was lost. In 8 September Turks landed at Batum, but the main concentration was at Sukhum Kale. This required a 100-mile march south through a country with poor roads. In essence, it was a military demonstration in order to frighten the Russian command and force it to lift the siege of the fortress of Kars. \"All luck depended on whether Muravyov (the Russian commander) would be scared or not\". But the Russian command did not see a serious threat, the Siege of Kars was continued. The Russians planned to hold the line of the Ingur river which separates Abkhazia from Georgia proper. Omar crossed the Ingur on 7 November and then wasted a great deal of time, the Russians doing little. By 2 December he had reached the Tskhenistsqali, the rainy season had started, his camps were submerged in mud and there was no bread. Learning of the fall of Kars he withdrew to the Ingur. The Russians did nothing and he evacuated to Batum in February of the following year.\nBaltic theatre.\nThe Baltic was a forgotten theatre of the Crimean War. Popularisation of events elsewhere overshadowed the significance of this theatre, which was close to Saint Petersburg, the Russian capital. In April 1854, an Anglo-French fleet entered the Baltic to attack the Russian naval base of Kronstadt and the Russian fleet that was stationed there. In August 1854, the combined British and French fleet returned to Kronstadt for another attempt. The outnumbered Russian Baltic Fleet confined its movements to the areas around its fortifications. At the same time, the British and French commanders Sir Charles Napier and Alexandre Ferdinand Parseval-Deschenes although they led the largest fleet assembled since the Napoleonic Wars, considered the Sveaborg fortress too well-defended to engage. Thus, shelling of the Russian batteries was limited to two attempts in 1854 and 1855, and initially, the attacking fleets limited their actions to blockading Russian trade in the Gulf of Finland. Naval attacks on other ports, such as the ones in the island of Hogland in the Gulf of Finland, proved more successful. Additionally, allies conducted raids on less fortified sections of the Finnish coast. These battles are known in Finland as the \u00c5land War.\nRussia depended on imports\u2014both for its domestic economy and for the supply of its military forces: the blockade forced Russia to rely on more expensive overland shipments from Prussia. The blockade seriously undermined the Russian export economy and helped shorten the war.\nThe burning of tar warehouses and ships led to international criticism, and in London the MP Thomas Milner Gibson demanded in the House of Commons that the First Lord of the Admiralty explain \"a system which carried on a great war by plundering and destroying the property of defenceless villagers\".\nIn fact, the operations in the Baltic sea were in the nature of binding forces. It was very important to divert Russian forces from the south or, more precisely, not to allow Nicholas to transfer to Crimea a huge army guarding the Baltic coast and the capital. This goal Anglo-French forces achieved. The Russian Army in Crimea was forced to act without superiority in forces.\nIn August 1854 a Franco-British naval force captured and destroyed the Russian Bomarsund fortress on \u00c5land Islands. In the August 1855, the Western Allied Baltic Fleet tried to destroy heavily defended Russian dockyards at Sveaborg outside Helsinki. More than 1,000 enemy guns tested the strength of the fortress for two days. Despite the shelling, the sailors of the 120-gun ship \"Rossiya\", led by Captain Viktor Poplonsky, defended the entrance to the harbour. The Allies fired over 20,000 shells but failed to defeat the Russian batteries. The British then built a massive new fleet of more than 350 gunboats and mortar vessels, which was known as the Great Armament, but the war ended before the attack was launched.\nPart of the Russian resistance was credited to the deployment of newly invented naval mines. Perhaps the most influential contributor to the development of naval mining was a Swede resident in Russia, the inventor and civil engineer Immanuel Nobel (the father of Alfred Nobel). Immanuel Nobel helped the Russian war effort by applying his knowledge of industrial explosives, such as nitroglycerin and gunpowder. An account given in 1860 by United States Army Major Richard Delafield dates modern naval mining to the Crimean War: \"Torpedo mines, if I may use this name given by Fulton to 'self-acting mines underwater', were among the novelties attempted by the Russians in their defences about Cronstadt and Sevastopol.\"\nFor the campaign of 1856, Britain and France planned an attack on the main base of the Russian Navy in the Baltic sea\u2014Kronstadt. The attack was to be carried out using armoured floating batteries. The use of the latter proved to be highly effective in the attack on Kinburn on the Black Sea in 1855. Undoubtedly, this threat contributed on the part of Russia the decision on the conclusion of peace on unfavourable terms.\nWhite Sea theatre.\nIn late 1854, a squadron of three British warships led by HMS\u00a0\"Miranda\" left the Baltic for the White Sea, where they shelled Kola (which was destroyed) and the Solovki.\nPacific theatre.\nMinor naval skirmishes also occurred in the Far East, where at Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula a British and French Allied squadron including under Rear Admiral David Price and a French force under Counter-Admiral Auguste Febvrier Despointes besieged a smaller Russian force under Rear Admiral Yevfimiy Putyatin. In September 1854, an Allied landing force was beaten back with heavy casualties, and the Allies withdrew. The victory at Petropavlovsk was for Russia in the words of the future Minister of War Dmitry Milyutin \"a ray of light among the dark clouds\". The Russians escaped under the cover of snow in early 1855 after Allied reinforcements arrived in the region.\nThe Anglo-French forces in the Far East also made several small landings on Sakhalin and Urup, one of the Kuril Islands.\nPiedmontese involvement.\nCamillo di Cavour, under orders of Victor Emmanuel\u00a0II of Piedmont-Sardinia, sent an expeditionary corps of 15,000 soldiers, commanded by General Alfonso La Marmora, to side with French and British forces during the war. This was an attempt at gaining the favour of the French, especially when the issue of uniting Italy would become an important matter. The deployment of Italian troops to Crimea, and the gallantry shown by them in the Battle of the Chernaya (16 August 1855) and in the Siege of Sevastopol, allowed the Kingdom of Sardinia to be among the participants at the peace conference at the end of the war, where it could address the issue of the \"Risorgimento\" to other European powers.\nGreece.\nGreece played a peripheral role in the war. When Russia attacked the Ottoman Empire in 1853, King Otto of Greece saw an opportunity to expand north and south into Ottoman areas that had large Greek Christian majorities. Greece did not coordinate its plans with Russia, did not declare war, and received no outside military or financial support. Greece, an Orthodox nation, had considerable support in Russia, but the Russian government decided it was too dangerous to help Greece expand its holdings. When the Russians invaded the Principalities, the Ottoman forces were tied down so Greece invaded Thessaly and Epirus. To block further Greek moves, the British and French occupied the main Greek port at Piraeus from April 1854 to February 1857, and effectively neutralized the Greek Army. The Greeks, gambling on a Russian victory, incited the large-scale Epirus Revolt of 1854 as well as uprisings in Ottoman Crete. The insurrections were failures that were easily crushed by the Ottomans' allied Egyptian Army. Greece was not invited to the peace conference and made no gains out of the war. The frustrated Greek leadership blamed the King for failing to take advantage of the situation; his popularity plunged and he was forced to abdicate in 1862.\nIn addition, a 1,000-strong Greek Volunteer Legion was formed in the Danubian Principalities in 1854 and later fought at Sevastopol.\nKiev Cossack revolt.\nA peasant revolt that began in the Vasylkiv county of Kiev Governorate (province) in February 1855 spread across the whole Kiev and Chernigov governorates, with peasants refusing to participate in corv\u00e9e labour and other orders of the local authorities and, in some cases, attacking priests who were accused of hiding a decree about the liberation of the peasants.\nEnd of the war.\nBritish position.\nDissatisfaction with the conduct of the war was growing with the public in Britain and other countries and was worsened by reports of fiascos, especially the devastating losses of the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava. On Sunday, 21 January 1855, a \"snowball riot\" occurred in Trafalgar Square near St Martin-in-the-Fields in which 1,500 people gathered to protest against the war by pelting cabs and pedestrians with snowballs. When the police intervened, the snowballs were directed at the constables. The riot was finally put down by troops and police acting with truncheons. In Parliament, the Conservatives demanded an accounting of all soldiers, cavalry and sailors sent to Crimea and accurate figures as to the number of casualties sustained by all British armed forces in Crimea, especially concerning the Battle of Balaclava. When Parliament passed a bill to investigate by the vote of 305 to 148, Aberdeen said he had lost a vote of no confidence and resigned as prime minister on 30 January 1855. The veteran former Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston became prime minister. Palmerston took a hard line and wanted to expand the war, foment unrest inside the Russian Empire and reduce the Russian threat to Europe permanently. Sweden\u2013Norway and Prussia were willing to join Britain and France, and Russia was isolated.\nPeace negotiations.\nFrance, which had sent far more soldiers to the war and suffered far more casualties than Britain had, wanted the war to end, as did Austria.\nNegotiations began in Paris in February 1856 and were surprisingly easy. France, under the leadership of Napoleon III, had no special interests in the Black Sea and so did not support the harsh British and Austrian proposals.\nPeace negotiations at the Congress of Paris resulted in the signing of the Treaty of Paris on 30 March 1856. In compliance with Article III, Russia restored to the Ottoman Empire the city and the citadel of Kars and \"all other parts of the Ottoman territory of which the Russian troop were in possession\". Russia returned the Southern Bessarabia to Moldavia. By Article IV, Britain, France, Sardinia and Ottoman Empire restored to Russia \"the towns and ports of Sevastopol, Balaklava, Kamish, Eupatoria, Kerch, Jenikale, Kinburn as well as all other territories occupied by the allied troops\". In conformity with Articles XI and XIII, the Tsar and the Sultan agreed not to establish any naval or military arsenal on the Black Sea coast. The Black Sea clauses weakened Russia, which no longer posed a naval threat to the Ottomans. The Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia were nominally returned to the Ottoman Empire, and the Austrian Empire was forced to abandon its annexation and to end its occupation of them, but they in practice became independent. The Treaty of Paris admitted the Ottoman Empire to the Concert of Europe, and the great powers pledged to respect its independence and territorial integrity.\nAftermath in Russia.\nSome members of the Russian intelligentsia saw defeat as a pressure to modernise their society. Grand Duke Constantine, a son of the Tsar, remarked:\nLong-term effects.\nOrlando Figes points to the long-term damage Russia suffered:\n\"The demilitarization of the Black Sea was a major blow to Russia, which was no longer able to protect its vulnerable southern coastal frontier against the British or any other fleet... The destruction of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Sevastopol and other naval docks was a humiliation. No compulsory disarmament had ever been imposed on a great power previously... The Allies did not really think that they were dealing with a European power in Russia. They regarded Russia as a semi-Asiatic state... In Russia itself, the Crimean defeat discredited the armed services and highlighted the need to modernize the country's defences, not just in the strictly military sense, but also through the building of railways, industrialization, sound finances and so on... The image many Russians had built up of their country\u2014the biggest, richest and most powerful in the world\u2014had suddenly been shattered. Russia's backwardness had been exposed... The Crimean disaster had exposed the shortcomings of every institution in Russia\u2014not just the corruption and incompetence of the military command, the technological backwardness of the army and navy, or the inadequate roads and lack of railways that accounted for the chronic problems of supply, but the poor condition and illiteracy of the serfs who made up the armed forces, the inability of the serf economy to sustain a state of war against industrial powers, and the failures of autocracy itself.\"\nSurprisingly, after the war, the Russian-French rapprochement came, which corresponded to the plans of both sides. France persuaded the Russians to support their claims to return to the territories before the Congress of Vienna, in exchange for ceasing to act as a guarantor of the Paris peace. Alexander II stated in response to his minister's remark: \"It would undoubtedly be more useful for our interests to have him among our allies if we could rely on him.\"\nThe Treaty of Paris stood until 1871, when Prussia defeated France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870\u201371. While Prussia and several other German states united to form a powerful German Empire in January 1871, the French deposed Emperor Napoleon III and proclaimed the French Third Republic (September 1870). During his reign, Napoleon, eager for the support of the United Kingdom, had opposed Russia over the Eastern Question. Russian interference in the Ottoman Empire did not in any significant manner threaten the interests of France (Kissinger uses Napoleon's pandering to journalists and public opinion on this subject\u2014at the expense of the true interests of France\u2014as an example of strategic frivolity), and France abandoned its opposition to Russia after the establishment of the republic. Encouraged by the new attitude of French diplomacy after the surrenders of the besieged French Army at Sedan and later Metz and supported by the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, Russia in October 1870 renounced the Black Sea clauses of the treaty agreed to in 1856. As the United Kingdom with Austria-Hungary could not enforce the clauses, Russia once again established a fleet in the Black Sea.\nAfter being defeated in the Crimean War, Russia feared that Russian Alaska would be easily captured in any future war with the British; therefore, Alexander II opted to sell the territory to the United States.\nA Greek tortoise named Timothy was found on a Portuguese ship by Captain John Guy Courtenay-Everard on in 1854. Serving as a mascot throughout the war, when she died in 2004 this made her the last living veteran of the Crimean war.\nHistorian Norman Rich argues that the war was not an accident, but was sought out by the determination of the British and French not to allow Russia an honourable retreat. Both insisted on a military victory to enhance their prestige in European affairs when a non-violent peaceful political solution was available. The war then wrecked the Concert of Europe, which had long kept the peace.\nTurkish historian Candan Badem wrote, \"Victory in this war did not bring any significant material gain, not even a war indemnity. On the other hand, the Ottoman treasury was nearly bankrupted due to war expenses\". Badem adds that the Ottomans achieved no significant territorial gains, lost the right to a navy in the Black Sea, and failed to gain status as a great power. Further, the war gave impetus to the union of the Danubian principalities and ultimately to their independence.\nThe treaty punished the defeated Russia, but in the long run, Austria lost the most from the war despite having barely taken part in it. Having abandoned its alliance with Russia, Austria remained diplomatically isolated following the war, which contributed to its disastrous defeats in the 1859 Franco-Austrian War that resulted in the cession of Lombardy to the Kingdom of Sardinia and later in the loss of the Habsburg rule of Tuscany and Modena, which meant the end of Austrian influence in peninsular Italy. Furthermore, Russia did not do anything to assist its former ally, Austria, in the 1866 Austro-Prussian War, when Austria lost Venetia and, more importantly, its influence in most German-speaking lands. The status of Austria as a great power, with the unifications of Germany and Italy, now became very precarious. It had to compromise with Hungary; the two countries shared the Danubian Empire. With France now hostile to Germany and gravitating towards Russia, and with Russia competing with the newly renamed Austro-Hungarian Empire for an increased role in the Balkans at the expense of the Ottoman Empire, the foundations were in place for building the diplomatic alliances that would shape the First World War.\nThe Treaty's guarantees to preserve Ottoman territories were broken 21 years later when Russia, exploiting nationalist unrest in the Balkans and seeking to regain lost prestige, once again declared war on the Ottoman Empire on 24 April 1877. In this later Russo-Turkish War the states of Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro gained international recognition of their independence and Bulgaria achieved its autonomy from direct Ottoman rule. Russia took over Southern Bessarabia, lost in 1856. The regions of Batum and Kars, as well as those inhabited by Adjarians (Muslim Georgians) and Armenians, were also annexed to Russia in the Caucasus. At the same time, \"protectors\" of the Ottoman Empire Britain received Cyprus as a colonial possession, while Austria-Hungary occupied and annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908. Finally, Ottoman rule in the Balkans ended after the First Balkan War of 1912, when the combined forces of the Balkan states defeated it.\nThe Crimean War marked the re-ascendancy of France to the position of pre-eminent power on the Continent, the continued decline of the Ottoman Empire and a period of crisis for Imperial Russia. As Fuller notes, \"Russia had been beaten on the Crimean Peninsula, and the military feared that it would inevitably be beaten again unless steps were taken to surmount its military weakness.\" To compensate for its defeat in the Crimean War, the Russian Empire then embarked in more intensive expansion in Asia, partially to restore national pride and partially to distract Britain on the world stage, intensifying the Great Game.\nThe war also marked the demise of the first phase of the Concert of Europe, the balance-of-power system that had dominated Europe since the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and had included France, Russia, Prussia, Austria and the United Kingdom. From 1854 to 1871, the Concert of Europe concept was weakened, leading to the crises that were the unifications of Germany and of Italy, before a resurgence of great power conferences.\nIn 1870, Prussia persuaded Russia to remain neutral in the Franco-Prussian war. Bismarck, having declared it impossible to keep 100\u00a0million Russians in a humiliated position without sovereign rights to their Black Sea coastline, supported Russia against the Treaty of Paris, and in return, Prussia achieved freedom of action against France in 1870\u201371 and inflicted a crushing defeat on it.\nAn envoy from India who visited the war front after arriving to Constantinople from a failed mission in England, Azimullah Khan observed exhaustion and fatigue in the British soldiers and set to exploit a perceived weak state of the British Empire upon his return which consequently planted the seeds for the Indian War of Independence.\nHistorical analysis.\nAccording to historian Shepard Clough, the war\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />was not the result of a calculated plan, nor even of hasty last-minute decisions made under stress. It was the consequence of more than two years of fatal blundering in slow-motion by inept statesmen who had months to reflect upon the actions they took. It arose from Napoleon's search for prestige; Nicholas's quest for control over the Straits; his na\u00efve miscalculation of the probable reactions of the European powers; the failure of those powers to make their positions clear; and the pressure of public opinion in Britain and Constantinople at crucial moments.\nThe view of \"diplomatic drift\" as the cause of the war was first popularised by A. W. Kinglake, who portrayed the British as victims of newspaper sensationalism and duplicitous French and Ottoman diplomacy.\nMore recently, historians Andrew Lambert and Winfried Baumgart have argued that Britain was following a geopolitical strategy in aiming to destroy the fledgling Russian Navy, which might challenge the Royal Navy for control of the seas, and that the war was also a joint European response to a century of Russian expansion not just southwards but also into Western Europe.\nCasualties.\nThe war undoubtedly became one of the bloodiest in the history of Europe at that time, but data on casualties vary greatly. The European states, Russia, France and Britain suffered the greatest losses. Sources agree on the definition of the losses of the last two, these are 95,615 dead on the part of France, 22,182 on the part of Britain and 2,166 dead Italians, Turkish losses range from 45,400 dead to 400,000. Data on losses among Russians also vary greatly. The minimum death toll is 73,125 dead, rising to 522,000. There are also data on 450,015 dead and killed. Historian Yevgeny Tarle described the war as a \"bloody massacre\".\nDocumentation.\nDocumentation of the war was provided by William Howard Russell, who wrote for \"The Times\" newspaper, and by Roger Fenton's photographs. News from war correspondents reached all of the nations involved in the war and kept the public citizenry of those nations better informed of the day-to-day events of the war than had been the case in any earlier war. The British public was very well informed on the day-to-day realities of the war. After the French extended the telegraph to the coast of the Black Sea in late 1854, news reached London in two days. When the British laid an underwater cable to Crimea in April 1855, news reached London in a few hours. The daily news reports energised public opinion, which brought down the Aberdeen government and carried Lord Palmerston into office as prime minister.\nLeo Tolstoy wrote a few short sketches on the Siege of Sevastopol, collected in \"Sevastopol Sketches\". The stories detail the lives of the Russian soldiers and citizens in Sevastopol during the siege. Because of this work, Tolstoy has been called the world's first war correspondent.\nCriticisms and reform.\nHistorian R. B. McCallum points out the war was enthusiastically supported by the British populace as it was happening, but the mood changed very dramatically afterwards. Pacifists and critics were unpopular but:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />in the end they won. Cobden and Bright were true to their principles of foreign policy, which laid down the absolute minimum of intervention in European affairs and a deep moral reprobation of war... When the first enthusiasm was passed, when the dead were mourned, the sufferings revealed, and the cost counted, when in 1870 Russia was able calmly to secure the revocation of the Treaty, which disarmed her in the Black Sea, the view became general of the war was stupid and unnecessary, and effected nothing... The Crimean war remained as a classic example... of how governments may plunge into war, how strong ambassadors may mislead weak prime ministers, how the public may be worked up into a facile fury, and how the achievements of the war may crumble to nothing. The Bright-Cobden criticism of the war was remembered and to a large extent accepted [especially by the Liberal Party]. Isolation from European entanglements seemed more than ever desirable.\nAs the memory of the \"Charge of the Light Brigade\" demonstrates, the war became an iconic symbol of logistical, medical and tactical failures and mismanagement. Public opinion in Britain was outraged at the logistical and command failures of the war; the newspapers demanded drastic reforms, and parliamentary investigations demonstrated the multiple failures of the army. The reform campaign was not well organised, and the traditional aristocratic leadership of the army pulled itself together, and blocked all serious reforms. No one was punished. The outbreak of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 shifted attention to the heroic defence of British interest by the army, and further talk of reform went nowhere. The demand for professionalisation was achieved by Florence Nightingale, who gained worldwide attention for pioneering and publicising modern nursing while treating the wounded. Another nurse, a Jamaican named Mary Seacole, also made an impact providing care for wounded and dying soldiers. \"The Times\" war correspondent William Howard Russell spoke highly of Seacole's skill as a healer, writing \"A more tender or skilful hand about a wound or a broken limb could not be found among our best surgeons.\"\nOutstanding achievements in battlefield surgery were done during the war of 1853\u201356. \"Nikolai Pirogov, who pioneered the system of field surgery that other nations came to only in the First World War\".\nThe Crimean War also saw the first tactical use of railways and other modern inventions, such as the electric telegraph, with the first \"live\" war reporting by Russell. Some credit Russell with prompting the resignation of the sitting British government through his reporting of the lacklustre condition of British forces deployed in Crimea. Additionally, the telegraph reduced the independence of British overseas possessions from their commanders in London due to such rapid communications. Newspaper readership informed public opinion in the United Kingdom and France as never before.\nThe Crimean War was a contributing factor in the Russian abolition of serfdom in 1861: Tsar Alexander\u00a0II (Nicholas I's son and successor) saw the military defeat of the Russian serf-army by free troops from Britain and France as proof of the need for emancipation. The Crimean War also led to the realisation by the Russian government of its technological inferiority, in military practices as well as weapons. Alexander also initiated the Great Reforms, which were aimed at strengthening and modernising the Russian state in the light of weaknesses revealed by the war.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotes and references.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nHistoriography and memory.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nContemporary sources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>", "1839335": "Princess Juliana International Airport\nAirport on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin, Sint Maarten\nPrincess Juliana International Airport () is the main airport on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin. The airport is located on the Dutch side of the island, in the country of Sint Maarten, close to the shore of Simpson Bay Lagoon. In 2015, the airport handled 1,829,543 passengers and around 60,000 aircraft movements. The airport serves as a hub for Winair and is the major gateway for the smaller Leeward Islands, including Anguilla, Saba, Saint Barth\u00e9lemy and Sint Eustatius. It is named after Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, who landed there while she was heir presumptive in 1944, the year after the airport opened. The airport has very low-altitude flyover landing approaches because one end of its runway is extremely close to the shore and Maho Beach. While Princess Juliana International is the primary aviation gateway to the island, there is also a smaller public-use airport on the French side, in the French Collectivity of Saint Martin, called Grand Case-Esp\u00e9rance Airport.\nHistory.\nFoundation and early years.\nThe airport began as a US military airstrip in 1942 during World War II. The following year, the first commercial flight landed on 3 December 1943. The future Queen Juliana visited the island using the airport in 1944. Eventually, the airport was named after her. In 1964 the airport was remodeled and relocated, with a new terminal building and control tower. The facilities were upgraded in 1985 and 2001.\nBecause of increased passenger traffic and the expected growth of passenger traffic in the near future, Princess Juliana International Airport is being heavily modernized following a three-phased masterplan, commissioned in 1997.\nPhase I was a short-term program to upgrade existing facilities and improve the level of service at various points. This included widening, strengthening and renovating the runway, increasing the bearing capacity of the taxiways, construction of a new apron and an upgrade of the (old) terminal. Phase I was completed in 2001.\nPhase II included the construction of a radar facility and a new air traffic control tower, the construction of a new and more modern, , terminal, capable of handling 2.5\u00a0million passengers per year, and the construction of a Runway End Safety Area (RESA) of , including a overrun, on both ends of its runway, to comply with ICAO rules. The new air traffic control tower and the radar station commenced operations on 29 March 2004, while the new terminal opened in late October 2006. The terminal has 4 jetways for large aircraft like 747s. If traffic develops as forecast, Phase III of the masterplan will be executed, consisting of an extension of the new terminal building and the construction of a full parallel taxiway system.\nIn 1994, the Kingdom of the Netherlands and France signed the Franco-Dutch treaty on Saint Martin border controls, which allows for joint Franco-Dutch border controls on so-called \"risk flights\", requiring arriving passengers to have valid travel papers for both sides of the island. After some delay, the treaty was ratified in November 2006 in the Netherlands, and subsequently entered into force on 1 August 2007. Implementation has been delayed for several years by the government of Sint Maarten.\nDevelopment since 2010.\nIn July 2016, KLM announced that, starting in October, it would serve the airport with direct flights from Amsterdam instead of the triangle route via Cura\u00e7ao. The previous triangle route used a Boeing 747. The new direct route would use an Airbus A330. This change ended the airport's last regularly scheduled Boeing 747 service. The 747 made its last appearance at the airport on 28 October 2016. Maho Beach was almost completely covered with tourists and plane-spotters who came to witness the last landing and departure of the aircraft. In September 2017, the 747 did make a brief comeback in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, operating some relief flights. At the same time KLM announced the return of the triangle route via Cura\u00e7ao, this time however operated by an Airbus A330. In September 2018, KLM officials confirmed that they hoped to resume direct flights between Amsterdam and St. Maarten by November 2019.\nOn 6 September 2017, the airport suffered significant damage when Hurricane Irma struck the island as a Category\u00a05 hurricane. Video from a Dutch military helicopter showed the roof had been blown off the terminal, the jetways were damaged, and there was a significant amount of sand (blown through the fences from Simpson Bay Beach) and flooding on the runway. The airport reopened on 10 October 2017 using temporary facilities while repair work commenced. Pavilions were in use during reconstruction of the main terminal. In December 2018, temporary arrival and departure facilities opened within the first level of the terminal building. The entire upper floor of the terminal and the four jet-bridges were out of commission until November 2023. The reconstructed check-in area opened in January 2024. On 15 October 2024 the new arrival hall has been reopened featuring improved baggage handling systems, streamlined immigration and customs processes.\nFacilities.\nRunway.\nThe airport has a single runway numbered 10/28, measuring . It was renumbered from 09/27 in late 2008.\nPilots guided by GNSS take a more efficient approach than those operating under VFR. Local airport rules prohibit aircraft from flying lower than \nArriving aircraft approach the island on the last section of the final approach for Runway 10, following a 3\u00b0 glide slope flying low over the famous Maho Beach. The proximity of Maho Beach to the runway has made the airport one of the world's favorite places among planespotters despite the dangers. In 2017 a New Zealand woman died from injuries sustained by jet blast from a departing aircraft. Tourists have been often criticised for dangerous behavior on the beach.\nApron.\nThe main apron measures with another on the eastern apron. For freight handling a dedicated apron of is available.\nTerminal.\nDesigned to handle some 2.5\u00a0million passengers annually, the new four-story terminal building offered (at least until the arrival of Hurricane Irma) of floor space and was fully air-conditioned. Available facilities included 46 check-in desks, 10 transit desks and 13 boarding gates. There were 20 immigration booths for arriving passengers and five exit-control booths for departing passengers. The building also featured 40 shops and food & beverage units\u2014some unique to St. Maarten\u2014promoted under the retail theme \"So Much More\".\nGeneral aviation.\nTo accommodate the growing international and local traffic of private aircraft, PJIA has a fixed-base operator building, offering office space and private lounges with dedicated customs.\nTower.\nSince official opening of the new control tower, PJIA air traffic controllers have two radar systems at their disposal with ranges of and . PJIA controllers manage 4,000 square NM of airspace, known as the Juliana TCA, around the airport. Besides providing approach, tower and ground control at PJIA, these controllers also provide approach control for Clayton J. Lloyd International Airport (Anguilla), L'Esp\u00e9rance Airport (French Saint Martin), Gustaf III Airport (Saint Barth\u00e9lemy), F.D. Roosevelt Airport (St. Eustatius) and Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport (Saba).\nNavigation.\nPJIA is equipped with VOR/DME and NDB. The airport's official operating hours are 07:00\u201321:00.\nAirlines and destinations.\nPassenger.\nThe following airlines provide daily or weekly service to the following destinations:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["15915390", "46763", "294564", "1839335"], "permutation_1": ["294564", "1839335", "46763", "15915390"], "permutation_2": ["15915390", "1839335", "294564", "46763"], "permutation_3": ["1839335", "15915390", "46763", "294564"]}
{"id": "4hop2__339729_20606_51791_85837", "docs_added": {"439229": "Allied invasion of Italy\n1943 military campaign of World War II resulting in the fall of the Kingdom of Italy\nThe Allied invasion of Italy was the Allied amphibious landing on mainland Italy that took place from 3 September 1943, during the Italian campaign of World War II. The operation was undertaken by General Sir Harold Alexander's 15th Army Group (comprising General Mark W. Clark's American Fifth Army and General Bernard Montgomery's British Eighth Army) and followed the successful Allied invasion of Sicily. The main invasion force landed on the west coast of Italy at Salerno on 9 September as part of Operation Avalanche, while two supporting operations took place in Calabria (Operation Baytown) and Taranto (Operation Slapstick).\nBackground.\nAllied plan.\nFollowing the defeat of the Axis powers in North Africa in May 1943, there was disagreement between the Allies about the next step. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill wanted to invade Italy, which in November 1942 he had called \"the soft underbelly of the axis\" (American General Mark W. Clark would later call it \"one tough gut\"). Churchill noted that Italian popular support for the war was declining and an invasion would remove Italy from the Axis, thus weakening Axis influence in the Mediterranean Sea and opening it to Allied traffic. This would allow the reduction of shipping capacity needed to supply Allied forces in the Middle East and Far East theaters at a time when the disposal of Allied shipping capacity was in crisis, permitting an increase of British and American supplies to the Soviet Union. In addition, it would tie down German forces in Italy. Joseph Stalin, the Soviet leader, had been strongly pressuring Churchill and Roosevelt to open a \"second front\" in Europe, which would lessen the German Army's focus on the Eastern Front, where the bulk of its forces were fighting in the largest armed conflict in history against the Soviet Red Army.\nHowever, U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall and much of the American staff wanted to avoid operations that might delay the main invasion of Europe, which had been planned as early as 1942, and which finally materialized as Operation Overlord in 1944. When it became clear that no cross-channel invasion of occupied France could be undertaken in 1943, both parties agreed to an invasion of Sicily, codenamed Operation Husky, with no commitment made to follow-up operations. After the highly successful outcome of the Sicilian campaign had become clear, both Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt, the U.S. President, accepted the necessity of continuing to engage the Axis before the start of the campaign in northwest Europe. Discussions had been ongoing since the Trident Conference held in Washington, D.C., in May, but it was not until late July, with the fall of Italian Fascist Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, that the Joint Chiefs of Staff instructed General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean theater, to go ahead.\nDespite the overwhelming success of the Sicilian campaign, a significant number of Axis forces managed to avoid capture and escape to the mainland. Contemporary Axis propaganda portrayed this as a success. In late July, the fascist government fell and Mussolini was removed as head of the Italian government, envoys of which soon began approaching the Allies to make peace. It was believed a quick invasion of Italy might hasten Italian surrender and produce quick military victories over the German troops trapped fighting in a hostile country. However, Italian (and more so German) resistance proved relatively strong, and fighting in Italy continued even after the fall of Berlin in April 1945. In addition, the invasion left the Allies in a position of supplying food and supplies to conquered territory, a burden that would otherwise have fallen on Germany. As well, Italy occupied by a hostile German army would have created additional problems for the German commander-in-chief, Albert Kesselring.\nThe Allies had originally planned to cross from the island of Sicily into the \"arch\" area (Taranto) of the Italian mainland, envisioning a limited invasion of the Italian \"boot\", whence they would advance up the western coast, anticipating a strong defense by both German and Italian forces. The overthrow of Mussolini made a more ambitious plan feasible, and the Allies decided to make their invasion two-pronged by combining the crossing of the British Eighth Army under General Sir Bernard Montgomery into the mainland with the simultaneous seizure of the port of Naples further north. Although the Americans were mindful of Napoleon's maxim that Italy, like a boot, should be entered from the top, the range limits of Allied fighter aircraft based in Sicily reduced their choices to two landing areas: one at the Volturno River basin to the north of Naples and the other south of Naples at Salerno (though separated from Naples by the mountainous Sorrento peninsula). They chose Salerno because it was closer to their air bases. Operation Baytown was the preliminary step in the plan in which the British Eighth Army would depart from the port of Messina, Sicily, across the narrow Straits and land near the tip of Calabria (the \"toe\" of Italy), on 3 September 1943. The short distance meant landing craft could launch from there directly, rather than be carried by ship. The British 5th Infantry Division (Major-general Gerard Bucknall) of XIII Corps, under Lieutenant-General Miles Dempsey, would land on the north side of the \"toe\" while its 1st Canadian Infantry Division (Major-General Guy Simonds) would land at Cape Spartivento on the south side. Montgomery was strongly opposed to Operation Baytown. He predicted it would be a waste of effort since it assumed the Germans would give battle in Calabria; if they failed to do so, the diversion would not work, and the only effect of the operation would be to place the Eighth Army south of the main landing at Salerno. He was proved correct; after Operation Baytown, the British Eighth Army moved 480\u00a0km north to the Salerno area against no opposition other than engineering obstacles.\nPlans for the use of Allied airborne forces took several forms, all of which were cancelled. The initial plan to land glider-borne troops in the mountain passes of the Sorrento Peninsula above Salerno was abandoned on 12 August. Six days later it was replaced by Operation Giant, in which two regiments of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division (Major General Matthew Ridgway) would seize and hold crossings over the Volturno River. This was at first expanded to include the entire division, including an amphibious landing by the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment, then deemed logistically unsupportable and reduced to a two-battalion drop at Capua to block the highway there. The Italian surrender on 3 September led to the cancellation of Operation Giant I and its replacement by Operation Giant II, a drop of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment on and Cerveteri airfields, northwest of Rome. This was intended to aid Italian forces in saving Rome, one of the most culturally significant cities in the western world, from German razing, a condition of the Italian armistice. Because the distance from the Allied beachheads precluded any substantial Allied support of the airborne troops, Brigadier General Maxwell D. Taylor, the acting assistant division commander (ADC) of the 82nd Airborne Division, was spirited into Rome to assess the willingness of Italian troops to cooperate with the Americans. Taylor's judgment was that the operation would be a trap and he advised cancellation, which occurred late on the afternoon of 8 September after pathfinders had already taken off aboard their troop carrier aircraft.\nThe main landings (Operation Avalanche) were scheduled to take place on 9 September, during which the main force would land around Salerno on the western coast. It would consist of the U.S. Fifth Army, under Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark, comprising the U.S. VI Corps under Major General Ernest J. Dawley, the British X Corps under Lieutenant-General Richard McCreery, with the 82nd Airborne Division in reserve, a total of eight divisions and two brigade-sized units. Its primary objectives were to seize the port of Naples to ensure resupply, and to cut across to the east coast, trapping Axis troops further south. The naval task force of warships, merchant ships and landing craft totaling 627 vessels came under the command of Vice Admiral Henry K. Hewitt. Following the disappointing air cover from land-based aircraft shown during the battle of Gela in the Sicily landings, Force V of and four escort carriers augmented the cruisers , , , and fourteen destroyers of Hewitt's command. Cover for the task force was provided by Force H under the command of Vice Admiral Algernon Willis, a group of four British battleships and two fleet carriers with destroyers, which was directly subordinate to the C\u2013in\u2013C Mediterranean Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham.\nIn the original planning, the great attraction of capturing the important port of Taranto in the \"heel\" of Italy had been evident and an assault had been considered but rejected because of the very strong defenses there. However, with the signing of the armistice with the Italians on 3 September, the picture changed. It was decided to carry the British 1st Airborne Division (Major-General George Hopkinson) to Taranto using British warships, seize the port and several nearby airfields and follow up by shipping in Lieutenant-General Charles Allfrey's British V Corps and a number of fighter squadrons. The airborne division, which was undergoing training exercises in two locations apart, was ordered on 4 September to embark on 8 September. With such short notice to create plans, Operation Slapstick was soon nicknamed Operation Bedlam.\nThe Avalanche plan (using less than half the troops landed during Operation Husky) was daring, considering possible resistance by six German divisions. The Fifth Army would be landing on a very broad front, using only three assault divisions (one American, the 36th, under Major General Fred L. Walker, in VI Corps, and two British: the 46th, under Major-General John Hawkesworth, and 56th (London), under Major-General Douglas Graham, in X Corps), and the two corps were widely separated, both in distance () and by the Sele River. Clark initially provided no troops to cover the river, offering the Germans an easy route to attack, and only belatedly landed two battalions to protect it. Furthermore, the terrain was highly favorable to the defender. Planning for the Salerno phase was accomplished in only forty-five days, rather than the months that might be expected. A U.S. Army Ranger force, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel William O. Darby, consisting of three U.S. Ranger battalions (the 1st, 3rd and 4th), and two British Commando units, under Brigadier Robert Laycock (consisting of No. 2 (Army) Commando and No. 41 (Royal Marine) Commando), was tasked with holding the mountain passes leading to Naples, but no plan existed for linking the Ranger force up with X Corps' follow-up units. Finally, although tactical surprise was unlikely, Clark ordered no naval preparatory bombardment or naval gunfire support take place, despite experience in the Pacific Theater demonstrating it was necessary. (Major General Walker, commanding the U.S. 36th \"Arrowhead\" Division, believed the defenders, from Traugott Herr's LXXVI Panzer Corps, were too scattered for it to be effective.) The element of surprise was further limited by belated discovery of naval minefields off Salerno requiring landing craft to spend two hours traveling from the transports to the landing beaches.\nOn the German side, Kesselring lacked the strength to push the Salerno landing back, and was refused two panzer divisions from northern Italy to assist him.\nOperation Avalanche was planned under the name Top Hat and supported by a deception plan, Operation Boardman, a false threat of an Allied invasion of the Balkans.\nAxis defensive organization.\nIn mid-August, the Germans had activated Army Group B under Erwin Rommel with responsibility for German troops in Italy as far south as Pisa. Army Command South under Albert Kesselring continued to be responsible for southern Italy and the German High Command formed a new army headquarters to be Army Command South's main field formation. The new German 10th Army headquarters, commanded by Heinrich von Vietinghoff, was activated on 22 August. The German 10th Army had two subordinate corps with a total of six divisions which were positioned to cover possible landing sites. Under Hermann Balck's XIV Panzer Corps was the Hermann G\u00f6ring Airborne Panzer Division (under Wilhelm Schmalz), 15th Panzergrenadier Division (Eberhard Rodt) and 16th Panzer Division (Rudolf Sieckenius); and under Traugott Herr's LXXVI Panzer Corps was 26th Panzer Division (Heinrich Freiherr von Luttwitz), 29th Panzergrenadier Division (Walter Fries) and 1st Parachute Division (Fritz-Hubert Graser). Von Vietinghoff specifically positioned the 16th Panzer Division in the hills above the Salerno plain.\nBattle.\nOperations in southern Italy.\nOn 3 September 1943, the British Eighth Army's XIII Corps, commanded by Lieutenant-General Miles Dempsey and composed of the 1st Canadian and British 5th Infantry Divisions, launched Operation Baytown under General Bernard Montgomery's direction. Opposition to the landings was light and the Italian coastal units surrendered almost immediately. Except to the Italian paratroopers of the 185th Infantry Regiment \"Nembo\" which was attached to the 211th Coastal Division had provided stiff resistance in the Aspromonte, but was able to overcome their resistance. Albert Kesselring and his staff did not believe the Calabria landings would be the main Allied point of attack, the Salerno region or possibly even north of Rome being more logical. He had already therefore ordered General Traugott Herr's LXXVI Panzer Corps to pull back from engagement with the Eighth Army, leaving only 29th Panzergrenadier Division's 15th Panzergrenadier Regiment in the 'toe' of Italy. By 3 September, most of this unit was in prepared positions at Bagnara Calabra, from the landings which it had orders to hold until 6 September. After this they were to withdraw to join the rest of the 29th Panzergrenadier Division which was concentrating at Castrovillari, to the rear. The Kr\u00fcger Battle Group (two battalions of 71st Panzergrenadier Regiment, 129th Reconnaissance Battalion and detachments of artillery and engineers) under 26th Panzer Division, would then stand at Nicotera, roughly up the coast from Bagnara.\nOn 4 September, the British 5th Infantry Division reached Bagnara Calabra, linked up with 1st Special Reconnaissance Squadron (which arrived by sea) and drove the 3rd Battalion, 15th Panzergrenadier Regiment from its position. On 5 September the allies flew above Soveria Mannelli (central Calabria) and bombed all along the downstream area of the town, where Nazi bases and warehouses stood. Fortunately, the urban area was barely damaged. On 7 September, contact was made with the Kr\u00fcger Battle Group. On 8 September, the 231st Independent Brigade Group, under Brigadier Robert \"Roy\" Urquhart, was landed by sea at Pizzo Calabro, behind the Nicotera defenses. They found themselves attacked from the north by a mobile force from 26th Panzer Division and from the south by the Kr\u00fcger Battle Group which was withdrawing from the Nicotera position. After an initial attack that made no headway, the Kr\u00fcger Battle Group veered away but the northern attack continued throughout the day before the whole German force withdrew at dusk.\nProgress was slow as demolished bridges, roadblocks and mines delayed the Eighth Army. The nature of the countryside in the toe of Italy made it impossible to by-pass obstacles and so the Allies' speed of advance was entirely dependent on the rate at which their engineers could clear obstructions. Thus, Montgomery's objections to the operation were proved correct: the Eighth Army could not tie down German units that refused battle and the main obstacle to their advance was the terrain and German demolitions of roads and bridges.\nBy 8 September, Kesselring had concentrated Heinrich von Vietinghoff's 10th Army, ready to make a rapid response to any Allied landing. In Calabria, Herr's LXXVI Panzer Corps had two divisions concentrated in the Castrovillari area. Its third division, 1st Parachute Division (\"1. Fallschirmj\u00e4ger-Division\"), was deployed toward Taranto. The rearguard in the toe was BattleGroup von Usedom, comprising a single battalion (1/67th Panzergrenadier Regiment) with detachments of artillery and engineers. Meanwhile, Balck's XIV Panzer Corps was positioned to face possible landings from the sea with 16th Panzer Division in the Gulf of Salerno, the Hermann G\u00f6ring Division near Naples and the 15th Panzergrenadier Division to the north in the Gulf of Gaeta.\nOn 8 September (before the main invasion), the armistice of Italy to the Allies was announced, first by General Eisenhower, then in the Badoglio Proclamation by the Italian government. Italian units ceased combat and the Navy sailed to Allied ports to surrender. The German forces in Italy were prepared for this and implemented Operation Achse to disarm Italian units and occupy important defensive positions.\nOperation Slapstick commenced on 9 September. The first echelon of the British 1st Airborne Division arrived on four British cruisers, a U.S. cruiser, and the British fast minelayer . The Italian battleships \"Andrea Doria\" and with two cruisers passed by, en route to surrender in Malta. There were no Germans in Taranto and so disembarkation was unopposed. The only casualties occurred when \"Abdiel\", at anchor, struck a mine and sank in minutes, with 168 killed and 126 injured. On 11 September, as patrols were sent further afield, there were some sharp encounters with elements of the German 1st Parachute Division. But 1st Parachute could do little but skirmish and fall back because most of its strength was attached to the 26th Panzer and Hermann G\u00f6ring Divisions at Salerno. Major-General George Frederick Hopkinson, General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the British 1st Airborne Division, was killed in one of these actions. By 11 September the ports of Bari and Brindisi, still under Italian control, were occupied.\nSalerno landings.\nOperation Avalanche\u2013the main invasion at Salerno by the American Fifth Army under Lieutenant General Mark Clark\u2013began on 9 September 1943, and in order to secure surprise, it was decided to assault without preliminary naval or aerial bombardment. However, as Admiral Henry Hewitt, the amphibious force commander, had predicted, tactical surprise was not achieved. As the first wave of Major General Fred L. Walker's U.S. 36th Infantry Division approached the Paestum shore at 03:30 a loudspeaker from the landing area proclaimed in English: \"Come on in and give up. We have you covered.\" The Allied troops attacked nonetheless.\nMajor General Rudolf Sieckenius, commander of the 16th Panzer Division had organised his forces into four mixed arms battle groups which he had placed roughly apart and between back from the beaches. The \"D\u0151rnemann\" group was just east of Salerno (and therefore were opposite Major General John Hawkesworth's British 46th Infantry Division when it landed), the \"Stempel\" battle group was between Pontecagnano and Battipaglia (and so faced Major General Douglas Graham's British 56th Infantry Division), the \"Holtey\" battle group was in a reserve role at Persano on the Sele river which formed the corps boundary between Lieutenant General Richard McCreery's British X Corps and Major General Ernest Dawley's U.S. VI Corps, while the \"von Doering\" battle group responsible for the Albanella to Rutino sector was south-east of Ogliastro, somewhat south of the U.S. 36th Division's beaches.\nThe British X Corps, composed of the British 46th and 56th Infantry Divisions and a light infantry force of U.S. Army Rangers and British Commandos of Brigadier Robert \"Lucky\" Laycock's 2nd Special Service Brigade, experienced mixed reactions to its landings. The U.S. Rangers met no opposition and with support from the guns of seized their mountain pass objectives while the Commandos, from No. 2 (Army) Commando and No. 41 (Royal Marine) Commando, were also unopposed and secured the high ground on each side of the road through Molina Pass on the main route from Salerno to Naples. At first light units of No. 2 Commando moved towards Salerno and pushed back a small force of tanks and armoured cars from the 16th Panzer Reconnaissance Battalion. The British Commandos captured the town of Salerno after some serious fighting that cost 40 (Royal Marine) Commando and 41 Commando nine killed and thirty-seven wounded.\nThe two British infantry divisions, however, met determined resistance and had to fight their way ashore with the help of naval bombardments. The depth and intensity of German resistance forced British commanders to concentrate their forces, rather than driving for a linkup with the Americans to the south.\nAt Paestum, the two lead battalions of the 36th (Texas) Division (from the 141st and 142nd Infantry Regiments) received stiff resistance from two companies of the \"von Doering\" group. German observers on Monte Soprano directed fire onto the landing craft. LST 336 took 18 hits, and some LCTs and DUKWs sheered away to avoid German shellfire. The division had not been in combat before and as a result of the Italian surrender, there was a general belief amongst the soldiers that the landings would be routine. The 141st Infantry lost cohesion and failed to gain any depth during the day which made the landing of supporting arms and stores impossible, leaving them without artillery and anti-tank guns. However, the 142nd Infantry fared better and with the support of the 143rd Infantry, the reserve formation which had landed by 08:00, were able to push forward. Minesweepers cleared an inshore channel shortly after 09:00; so by late morning destroyers could steam within of the shoreline to shell German positions on Monte Soprano. USS \"Philadelphia\" and \"Savannah\" focused their guns on concentrations of German tanks, beginning a barrage of naval shells which would total eleven-thousand tons before the Salerno beachhead was secured.\nBy the end of the first day the Fifth Army, although it had not gained all its objectives, had made a promising start: the British X Corps' two assault divisions had pushed between inland and the special forces had advanced north across the Sorrento Peninsula and were looking down on the Plain of Naples. To the south, the U.S. 36th Division had established itself in the plain to the right of the Sele river and the higher ground to a depth of , although the 141st Infantry was still stuck near the beach. However, the XIV Panzer Corps commander, Hermann Balck, had seen the 16th Panzer Division's battle groups perform as intended and he had ordered both the Hermann G\u00f6ring Division south to the battle and later in the day had been able to order 15th Panzergrenadier likewise. Meanwhile, to the south, the 29th Panzergrenadier Division from LXXVI Panzer Corps had also been directed to Salerno. Neither side had gained the initiative.\n\"Luftwaffe\" response.\n\"Luftwaffe\" planes began strafing and bombing the invasion beaches shortly after 04:00 on the morning of 9 September before X Corps seized the Montecorvino airfield inland later that day, destroying three dozen German planes. However, failure to capture the high ground inland left the airfield within easy range of German artillery and therefore unusable by Allied aircraft. On 10 September, German bombers began targeting Admiral Hewitt's flagship while the ship was serving as General Clark's headquarters. The flagship called thirty \"red alerts\" over a period of 36 hours in response to 450 \"Luftwaffe\" flying sorties. Admiral Hewitt reported: \"Air situation here critical.\" The Allied aircraft carriers had intended to withdraw on 10 September, but remained with the invasion so that their Supermarine Seafires could provide the air cover which invasion planners had expected to operate from Montecorvino.\nEighty-five Allied vessels were hit by German bombs off Salerno. Fritz X glide bombs dropped by Dornier Do 217s disabled USS \"Savannah\" and narrowly missed USS \"Philadelphia\" on the morning of 11 September. The following morning, Clark moved his headquarters ashore, and Hewitt transferred with his staff to the small amphibious force flagship so the large \"Ancon\" could retire to North Africa.\nConsolidation of the beachhead.\nThe Allies fought to expand their beachhead for three days while the Germans defended stubbornly to mask the build-up of their reinforcements for a counter-offensive. On 10 September, Clark visited the battlefield and judged that it was unlikely that X Corps would be able to push quickly east past Battipaglia to link with VI Corps. Since X Corps' main line of thrust was to be north towards Naples, he decided to move the VI Corps left hand boundary north of the Sele river and move the bulk of Major General Troy Middleton's U.S. 45th Division into the gap. In view of the enemy reinforcements approaching from the north he also ordered a battalion-sized mixed arms group to reinforce the Rangers the next day. Over the same period, German reinforcements filtered into the battlefield. Units, short of transport and subjected to other delays, arrived piecemeal and were formed into ad hoc battle groups for immediate action. By 13 September, all the immediately available reinforcements had arrived including additional elements from the 3rd Panzergrenadier Division which had been released by \"Generalfeldmarschall\" Kesselring from further north near Rome. By contrast, the Allied build-up was constrained by the limited transport available for the operation and the pre-determined schedule of the build-up based on how, during the planning phase, it had been anticipated the battle would develop. By 12 September, it had become clear that the Fifth Army had an acute shortage of infantry on the ground. That day, General Sir Harold Alexander, the 15th Army Group commander, reported to General Sir Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), in London: \"I am not satisfied with the situation at Avalanche. The build-up is slow and they are pinned down to a bridgehead that has not enough depth. Everything is being done to push follow-up units and material to them. I expect heavy German counter-attack to be imminent.\"\nBy 12 September, X Corps had taken a defensive posture because every battalion was committed and there were no reserves available to form an attack. In the south, the 36th Division made some progress but towards midday a counterattack by elements of the 29th Panzergrenadier Division overran the 1st Battalion, 142nd Infantry Regiment.\nGerman counterattacks.\nOn 13 September, the Germans launched their counteroffensive. While the Hermann G\u00f6ring battle groups attacked the northern flank of the beachhead, the main attack was on the boundary between the two Allied Corps which ran roughly from Battipaglia to the Tyrrhenian sea, with the greatest weight due to fall on the VI Corps side On the morning of 13 September, elements of Major General Walker's 36th Division attacked and captured Altavilla from the high ground behind Paestum, but a counterattack forced them to withdraw as darkness fell. During the afternoon, two German battlegroups, the Kleine Limburg and the Kr\u00fcger, had attacked Persano and overrun the 1st Battalion, 157th Infantry before crossing the Sele to engage the 2nd Battalion of the 143rd Infantry and virtually wipe it out.\nThe battle groups continued their strike south and south-west until reaching the confluence of the Sele and its large tributary the Calore, where it was stopped by artillery firing over open sights, naval gunfire and a makeshift infantry position manned by artillerymen, drivers, cooks and clerks and anyone else that Major General Walker could scrape together. Clark's staff formulated various evacuation plans: Operation Brass Rail envisioned Clark and his 5th Army headquarters staff leaving the beachhead to establish headquarters afloat aboard . Operation Sealion envisioned shifting British X Corps to Paestum with VI Corps, while the alternative Operation Seatrain envisioned shifting VI Corps to the X Corps sector. The navy protested that reversing the landing process would be impossible since loading beached landing craft would make them heavier and unable to withdraw from the beach. Advice from superiors and subordinates convinced Clark to continue fighting, and he later denied seriously considering evacuation.\nThe U.S. VI Corps had by this time lost the best part of three battalions, and so the forward units of both its divisions were withdrawn to reduce the length of the defensive line. The 45th Division consolidated at the Sele - Calore position while the 36th Division was on the high ground on the seaward side of the La Caso stream (which flowed into the Calore). The new perimeter was held with the assistance of Major General Matthew Ridgway's 82nd Airborne Division. Two battalions (roughly 1,300 paratroopers) of Colonel Reuben Tucker's 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR), after the cancellation of Giant II, had been assigned to execute the final version of Operation Giant I at Capua on the evening of 13 September. Instead, they jumped inside the beachhead, guided by Rebecca/Eureka beacons and moved immediately into the line on the right of VI Corps. The next night, with the crisis past, 2,100 paratroops of Colonel James Gavin's 505th PIR also parachuted into the beachhead and reinforced the two battalions of the 504th. A clear sign of the crisis passing was when, on the afternoon of 14 September, the final unit of 45th Division, the 180th Infantry Regiment, landed, Clark was able to place it in reserve rather than in the line. The 325th Glider Infantry Regiment, reinforced by the 3rd Battalion, 504th PIR, landed by sea on 15 September. A night drop of 600 paratroops of the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion to disrupt German movements behind the lines in the vicinity of Avellino was widely dispersed and failed, incurring significant casualties. In the X Corps sector the lead elements of Major General George Erskine's British 7th Armoured Division began to land, along with the 23rd Armoured Brigade.\nWith strong naval gunfire support from the Royal Navy and well-served by Fifth Army's artillery, the reinforced and reorganized infantry units defeated all German attempts on 14 September to find a weak spot in the lines. German losses, particularly in tanks, were severe. On 14 September and the following night, Tedder ordered every available aircraft to support the Fifth Army, including the strategic bomber force. Over 1,000 tons of bombs were dropped during the daylight hours.\nOn 15 September both the 16th Panzer and 29th Panzergrenadier Divisions went on the defensive, marking the end to the thrust towards Paestum. Further north the Schmalz group of the Hermann G\u00f6ering Division achieved surprise, attacking the 128th (Hampshire) Brigade (comprising three battalions, the 2nd, 1/4th and 5th, of the Hampshire Regiment), of the British 46th Division, on the high ground east of Salerno. The armoured column following up was intercepted and driven back, leaving the German infantry exposed.\nThe Allied bomber effort continued on 15 September, although slightly less intensively than the previous day, as did the naval bombardment. The arrival of the British battleships and , with guns, off the beaches provided the Allied troops with a morale boost, although \"Valiant\" was not required to shoot and \"Warspite\"'s 29 rounds were awe-inspiring but a minor contribution to the 2,592 naval rounds fired that day.\nOn 15 September, Kesselring reported to the \"Oberkommando der Wehrmacht\" that the Allied air and naval superiority had forced LXXVI Panzer Corps onto the defensive, and that a decisive success would depend on the attack by XIV Panzer Corps. If this failed, the 10th Army must break off the battle to avoid being 'mangled'.\nOn 16 September, the Schmalz group renewed its efforts on the X Corps front but with no more success, although No. 2 Commando suffered casualties, including 31-year-old Captain Henry Wellesley, the then-Duke of Wellington, who was killed. The Allied air forces and navies continued to batter enemy targets, although during an air attack by Dornier Do 217 K-2 bombers armed with Fritz X radio-controlled glide bombs, \"Warspite\" was hit and disabled, which required her to be towed to Malta for repair.\nEighth Army ordered to apply pressure.\nOn 9 September, Montgomery's formations had been strung out along the coastal roads in the 'toe' of Italy. The build-up across the Straits of Messina had proved slow; he was therefore short of transport and decided to halt his formations to reorganize before pushing on. However, General Alexander issued orders on 10 September that \"It is of the utmost importance that you maintain pressure upon the Germans so that they cannot remove forces from your front and concentrate them against Avalanche\". This message was further reinforced on 12 September by a personal visit from Alexander's Chief of Staff, Brigadier A. A. Richardson. Montgomery had no choice- while reorganizing the main body of his troops, he sent light forces up the coast which reached Castrovillari and Belvedere on 12 September, still some from the Salerno battlefield. On 14 September, he was in a position to start a more general advance, and by 16 September the British 5th Infantry Division had reached Sapri, beyond Belvedere, where forward patrols made contact with patrols from VI Corps' 36th Division.\nGerman withdrawal.\nOn 16 September, the overall commander of forces in the Salerno area, General von Vietinghoff, reported to Field Marshal Kesselring that the Allied air and naval superiority were decisive and that he didn't have the power to neutralize it. The 10th Army had succeeded in preventing troops from being cut off, and continuing the battle would invite heavy losses. The approach of the Eighth Army was also posing a threat. He recommended breaking off the battle, pivoting on Salerno to form a defensive line, preparatory to a withdrawal on 18/19 September. Kesselring's agreement reached von Vietinghoff early on 17 September.\nGeneral Hermann Balck, commanding XIV Panzer Corps - the principal armoured formation near Salerno - wrote that his tanks \u2018suffered heavily under Allied naval gunfire, with which [they] had nothing to counter'. This triggered an Axis forces retreat from areas which were covered by Allied naval gunfire.\nGeneral von Vietinghoff then reported to his superior that his attacks \u2018were unable to reach their objective owing to the fire from naval guns and low-flying aircraft'. Allied air and naval support lines, aided by the Italian partisan movement, proved far superior to the German support, and were able to aid the Allied advance to a substantial degree.\nSalerno mutiny.\nThe Salerno battle was also the site of the Salerno Mutiny instigated by about 500 men of the British X Corps, which had by this time suffered over 6,000 casualties, who, on 16 September, refused assignment to new units as battle casualty replacements. They had previously understood that they would be returning to their original units, from which they had been separated during the fighting in the North African campaign. Eventually, the corps commander, Lieutenant-General Richard McCreery, persuaded about half of the men to follow their orders. The remainder were court-martialled. Three NCOs who led the mutiny were sentenced to death but the sentence was not carried out and they were eventually allowed to rejoin units.\nFurther Allied advances.\nWith the Salerno beachhead secure, the Fifth Army began its attack northwest towards Naples on 19 September. On 20 September, Major General Ernest J. Dawley, the U.S. VI Corps commander, was relieved of his command by Clark and replaced by Major General John P. Lucas. The U.S. 82nd Airborne Division, after suffering serious casualties near Altavilla, was merged with British X Corps, joining the U.S. Army Rangers and the British 23rd Armoured Brigade on the Sorrento Peninsula to flank the German defenses at Nocera Inferiore, Sant'Antonio Abate, and Angri, which the British 46th Infantry Division attacked. The British 7th Armoured Division, passing through the 46th Division, was assigned the task of taking Naples, while the newly landed U.S. 3rd Infantry Division took Acerno on 22 September and Avellino on 28 September.\nThe Eighth Army made good progress from the \"toe\" in spite of German demolitions and linked with the British 1st Airborne Division at Taranto. Its left linked up with the Fifth Army's right on 16 September. The Eighth Army now concentrated its forces east of the Apennine Mountains and pushed north along the Adriatic coast through Bari. On 27 September, the Eighth Army captured the large airfield complex near Foggia, a major Allied objective.\nAt the same time British X Corps made good progress; they pushed through the mountain passes of Monti Lattari and captured a vital bridge over the Sarno River at Scafati. They surrounded Mount Vesuvius and prepared to advance on Naples. The Fascist troops occupying the city provoked a rebellion by the population which started on 27 September. With the swift advance by British X Corps and Naples in rebellion, the Germans were forced to evacuate. On 1 October, \"A\" Squadron of the 1st King's Dragoon Guards entered Naples, the first Allied unit to do so. The entire Fifth Army, now consisting of five American and three British divisions, reached the line of the Volturno River on 6 October. This provided a natural defensive barrier, securing Naples, along with the Campanian plain and the vital airfields on it, from a German counterattack.\nMeanwhile, on the Adriatic Coast, the Eighth Army advanced to a line from Campobasso to Larino and Termoli on the Biferno river.\nAftermath.\nThe 10th Army had come close to defeating the Salerno beachhead. The stubborn initial resistance by 16th Panzer Division's battlegroups and the Germans' ability to move land reinforcements more quickly than the Allies could land follow-up forces by sea or air nearly tipped the battle. The Fifth Army planners had concentrated the main weight of its forces in X Corps on its left-wing, in line with its major objective of advancing on Naples. However, this had left its right-wing too thinly manned to defend X Corps' right flank and left a particular weakness at the corps boundary. The Germans, aware of the limited time available to deal with the Salerno landings because of the inevitable arrival of the Eighth Army, were obliged to make hurried and uncoordinated attempts to force a quick decision, having failed to break through Allied lines and exploit the gains in the face of Allied air and naval superiority. It was at this time Adolf Hitler sided with the view of his Army Group commander in Northern Italy, Erwin Rommel, and decided that defending Italy south of Rome was not feasible. As a result, Kesselring was forbidden to call upon reserves from the Northern Army Group.\nKesselring's strategic arguments persuaded Hitler that the Allies should be kept away from German borders and prevented from gaining the oil resources of the Balkans. On 6 November, Hitler ordered Rommel to withdraw to Northern France and gave Kesselring command of the whole of Italy, instructing him that he keep Rome in German hands for as long as possible.\nBy early October 1943, the whole of southern Italy was in Allied hands. The Allied armies stood facing the Volturno Line, the first of a series of prepared defensive lines running across Italy from which the Germans chose to fight delaying actions, giving ground slowly and buying time to complete their preparation of the Winter Line, their strongest defensive line south of Rome. The next stage of the Italian campaign became a grinding and attritional slog against well-prepared defenses in terrain and weather conditions which favored defense. Weather conditions hampered the Allied advantages in mechanized equipment and air superiority. It took until mid-January 1944 to fight through three auxiliary defensive lines to reach the Gustav Line, the backbone of the Winter Line defenses, setting the scene for the four battles of Monte Cassino which took place between January and May 1944.\nClark's award.\nLieutenant General Mark W. Clark, the U.S. Fifth Army commander, was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest U.S. award for valor in combat, for his front-line leadership during this crisis. He was frequently seen in the most forward positions encouraging the troops.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "5171132": "Ottoman Tripolitania\nSemi-autonomous state affiliated with the Ottoman Empire (1551\u20131912)\nOttoman Tripolitania, also known as the Regency of Tripoli, was officially ruled by the Ottoman Empire from 1551 to 1912. It corresponded roughly to the northern parts of modern-day Libya in historic Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. It was initially established as an Ottoman province ruled by a pasha (governor) in Tripoli who was appointed from Constantinople, though in practice it was semi-autonomous due to the power of the local Janissaries. From 1711 to 1835, the Karamanli dynasty ruled the province as a \"de facto\" hereditary monarchy while remaining under nominal Ottoman suzerainty. In 1835, the Ottomans reestablished direct control over the region until its annexation by Italy in 1912.\nLike the Ottoman regencies in Tunis and Algiers, the Regency of Tripoli was a major base for the privateering activities of the North African corsairs, who also provided revenues for Tripoli. A remnant of the centuries of Turkish rule is the presence of a population of Turkish origin, and those of partial Turkish origin, the \"Kouloughlis\".\nHistory.\nOttoman conquest.\nBy the beginning of the 16th\u00a0century the Libyan coast had minimal central authority and its harbours were havens for unchecked bands of pirates. The Spaniards occupied Tripoli in 1510, but the Spaniards were more concerned with controlling the port than with the inconveniences of administering a colony. In 1530 the city, along with Malta and Gozo, was ceded by Charles\u00a0I of Spain to the Knights of St\u00a0John as compensation for their recent expulsion from the island of Rhodes at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. Christian rule lasted then until 1551, when Tripoli was besieged and conquered by famed Ottoman admirals Sinan Pasha and Turgut Reis. Declared as Bey and later Pasha of Tripoli, Turgut Reis received submission from the tribes of the interior and several cities like Misrata, Zuwara, Gharyan, and Gafsa in the next decade. These efforts contributed to cement the foundations of a statal structure in what is today Libya, but control from Constantinople remained loose at best, much like in the rest of the Barbary Coast of North Africa.\nUnder the Ottomans, the Maghreb was divided into three provinces, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. After 1565, administrative authority in Tripoli was vested in a Pasha directly appointed by the Sultan in Constantinople. The sultan supported the pasha with a corps of janissaries who he was dependent upon, which was in turn divided into a number of companies under the command of a junior officer or \"bey\". The janissaries quickly became the dominant force in Ottoman Libya and were also in charge of collecting taxes; however, Barbary corsairs were the ones who steadily provided income to Tripoli from privateering activities. As a self-governing military guild answerable only to their own laws and protected by a \"divan\" (a council of senior officers who advised the pasha), the janissaries soon reduced the pasha to a largely ceremonial role.\nIn 1611, the local chiefs of the area conducted a coup d'\u00e9tat and successfully appointed Suleiman Safar, their own leader, as \"dey\" (local chief). As a result, his successors continually held the title and even occasionally identified as pasha. As Pasha of Tripoli, Osman Saqizli managed to maintain political stability during the 1650s and 1660s. However, by the 1670s, the position of the dey experienced the succession of eight different leaders, leading to instability.260\nThomas Baker, an English consul stationed in Tripoli from 1679 to 1686, described a turbulent government, a dwindling treasury and an economy heavily reliant on piracy. Tripoli's fleet was the smallest among the Barbary States, with only 13 vessels compared to 20 in Tunis and 40 in Algiers.259 Besides piracy, the region's inland areas, consisting of ravines, mountains and inhospitable desert, forced a reliance on exports of salt, coastal slave raiding in Calabria and Morea, and tribute from the interior tribes. The 1676 peace treaty between Tripoli and English shipping had shifted most pirate activity towards the French, leading to French demands for peace in 1681. Driven by financial desperation, Tripoli violated these terms a year later by seizing a French merchant ship. The following dispute saw the French mortar-bombing Tripoli into submission in 1686.\nKaramanli dynasty and the Barbary Wars.\nDuring the 18th century, Ottoman power waned in North Africa, with the sultans ending the practice of sending pashas to Tripoli, Algiers and Tunis. The title of pasha began to assume its hereditary status.\nIn 1711, Ahmed Karamanli, an Ottoman cavalry officer and son of a Turkish officer and Libyan woman, seized power and founded the Karamanli dynasty, which would last 124 years. The 1790\u201395 Tripolitanian civil war occurred in those years.\nIn May 1801, Pasha Yusuf Karamanli demanded from the United States an increase in the tribute ($83,000) which it had paid since 1796 for the protection of their commerce and enslavement of crews by barbary pirates when the Treaty of Tripoli was signed. The demand was refused by third American President Thomas Jefferson, an American naval force was sent and blockaded Tripoli, and the desultory First Barbary War dragged on from 1801 until 3 June 1805. The Regency of Tripoli was defeated by the newly revived United States Navy.\nThe Second Barbary War (1815, also known as the Algerian War) was the second of the two wars fought between the United States and the Ottoman Turks' North African regencies of Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis, known collectively as the Barbary States.\nOn 5 September 1817, Yusuf Karamanli invited the leaders of the Libyan tribe of Al-Jawazi to his castle in Benghazi, following a dispute regarding tribute and an uprising against his rule. Consequently, the Pasha ordered the execution of all attendees, and chased down the other tribe members, which resulted in the massacre of at least 10,000 people, who eventually sought refuge in neighboring countries, especially Egypt. This was known as the Al-Jawazi massacre.\nReassertion of Ottoman authority.\nIn 1835 the government of Sultan Mahmud\u00a0II took advantage of local disturbances to reassert their direct authority. As decentralized Ottoman power had resulted in the virtual independence of Egypt as well as Tripoli, the coast and desert lying between them relapsed to anarchy, even after direct Ottoman control was resumed in Tripoli. The indigenous Senusiyya (or Sanusi) Movement, led by Islamic cleric Muhammad ibn Ali al-Sanusi, called on the countryside to resist Ottoman rule. The Grand Senussi established his headquarters in the oasis town of Jaghbub while his \"ikhwan\" (brothers) set up \"zawiyas\" (religious colleges or monasteries) across North Africa and brought some stability to regions not known for their submission to central authority. In line with the expressed instruction of the Grand Sanusi, these gains were made largely without any coercion.\nIt was one of the first Ottoman provinces to be reclassified from an eyalet to a vilayet after an administrative reform in 1865, and by 1867 it had been reformed into the Tripolitania Vilayet.\nThe Ottoman sultan Abdulhamid II twice sent his aide-de-camp Azmzade Sadik El Mueyyed to meet Sheikh Sanusi to cultivate positive relations and counter the West European scramble for Africa.\nThe highpoint of the Sanusi influence came in the 1880s under the Grand Senussi's son, Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi. With 146\u00a0lodges spanning the entire Sahara, he moved the Senussi capital to Kufra.\nOver a 75\u2011year period, the Ottoman Turks provided 33\u00a0governors and Libya remained part of the empire until Italy invaded for the second time in 1911.\nItalo-Turkish War.\nThe Italo-Turkish War was fought between the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Italy from September 29, 1911, to October 18, 1912.\nAs a result of this conflict, the Ottoman Turks ceded the provinces of Tripolitania, Fezzan, and Cyrenaica to Italy. These provinces together formed what became known as Libya.\nAdministrative divisions.\nBy the 19th century, the province of Tripoli, known officially as \"Tarablus al-Gharb\" ('Tripoli of the West') was organized into five \"sanjak\"s (districts):\nThese district names were reported by James Henry Skene in 1851 and five districts of the same name existed after the reforms of the 1860s that transformed the province officially into a \"vilayet\" (or in Arabic). Among these, Cyrenaica was made an independent \"sanjak\" in 1863 that was directly dependent on Istanbul, then it was assigned to Tripoli's supervision in 1871, and finally it was attached to Istanbul again in 1888.", "30997172": "Al-Berka\nAl-Berka (Arabic:\u0627\u0644\u0628\u0631\u0643\u0629) is a Basic People's Congress administrative division of Benghazi, Libya. As of the 2011 Libyan revolution, the area is simply known as a district of Benghazi after the Gaddafi era Basic People's Congresses were disbanded. \nHistory.\nAl-Berka is one of the oldest districts in Benghazi and has buildings which attest to both its Ottoman and Italian era routes. One such example is the Hadiya mosque built in the early 20th century.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4721": "British Empire\nTerritory ruled by the United Kingdom\nThe British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and colonisation attempts by Scotland during the 17th century. At its height in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it became the largest empire in history and, for a century, was the foremost global power. By 1913, the British Empire held sway over 412\u00a0million people, of the world population at the time, and by 1920, it covered , of the Earth's total land area. As a result, its constitutional, legal, linguistic, and cultural legacy is widespread. At the peak of its power, it was described as \"the empire on which the sun never sets\", as the sun was always shining on at least one of its territories.\nDuring the Age of Discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal and Spain pioneered European exploration of the globe, and in the process established large overseas empires. Envious of the great wealth these empires generated, England, France, and the Netherlands began to establish colonies and trade networks of their own in the Americas and Asia. A series of wars in the 17th and 18th centuries with the Netherlands and France left Britain the dominant colonial power in North America. Britain became a major power in the Indian subcontinent after the East India Company's conquest of Mughal Bengal at the Battle of Plassey in 1757.\nThe American War of Independence resulted in Britain losing some of its oldest and most populous colonies in North America by 1783. While retaining control of British North America (now Canada) and territories in and near the Caribbean in the British West Indies, British colonial expansion turned towards Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. After the defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars (1803\u20131815), Britain emerged as the principal naval and imperial power of the 19th century and expanded its imperial holdings. It pursued trade concessions in China and Japan, and territory in Southeast Asia. The Great Game and Scramble for Africa also ensued. The period of relative peace (1815\u20131914) during which the British Empire became the global hegemon was later described as (Latin for \"British Peace\"). Alongside the formal control that Britain exerted over its colonies, its dominance of much of world trade, and of its oceans, meant that it effectively controlled the economies of, and readily enforced its interests in, many regions, such as Asia and Latin America. It also came to dominate the Middle East. Increasing degrees of autonomy were granted to its white settler colonies, some of which were formally reclassified as Dominions by the 1920s. By the start of the 20th century, Germany and the United States had begun to challenge Britain's economic lead. Military, economic and colonial tensions between Britain and Germany were major causes of the First World War, during which Britain relied heavily on its empire. The conflict placed enormous strain on its military, financial, and manpower resources. Although the empire achieved its largest territorial extent immediately after the First World War, Britain was no longer the world's preeminent industrial or military power.\nIn the Second World War, Britain's colonies in East Asia and Southeast Asia were occupied by the Empire of Japan. Despite the final victory of Britain and its allies, the damage to British prestige and the British economy helped accelerate the decline of the empire. India, Britain's most valuable and populous possession, achieved independence in 1947 as part of a larger decolonisation movement, in which Britain granted independence to most territories of the empire. The Suez Crisis of 1956 confirmed Britain's decline as a global power, and the handover of Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997 symbolised for many the end of the British Empire, though fourteen overseas territories that are remnants of the empire remain under British sovereignty. After independence, many former British colonies, along with most of the dominions, joined the Commonwealth of Nations, a free association of independent states. Fifteen of these, including the United Kingdom, retain the same person as monarch, currently King Charles III.\nOrigins (1497\u20131583).\nThe foundations of the British Empire were laid when England and Scotland were separate kingdoms. In 1496, King Henry VII of England, following the successes of Spain and Portugal in overseas exploration, commissioned John Cabot to lead an expedition to discover a northwest passage to Asia via the North Atlantic. Cabot sailed in 1497, five years after the first voyage of Christopher Columbus, and made landfall on the coast of Newfoundland. He believed he had reached Asia, and there was no attempt to found a colony. Cabot led another voyage to the Americas the following year but did not return; it is unknown what happened to his ships.\nNo further attempts to establish English colonies in the Americas were made until well into the reign of Queen Elizabeth\u00a0I, during the last decades of the 16th century. In the meantime, Henry VIII's 1533 Statute in Restraint of Appeals had declared \"that this realm of England is an Empire\". The Protestant Reformation turned England and Catholic Spain into implacable enemies. In 1562, Elizabeth\u00a0I encouraged the privateers John Hawkins and Francis Drake to engage in slave-raiding attacks against Spanish and Portuguese ships off the coast of West Africa with the aim of establishing an Atlantic slave trade. This effort was rebuffed and later, as the Anglo-Spanish Wars intensified, Elizabeth\u00a0I gave her blessing to further privateering raids against Spanish ports in the Americas and shipping that was returning across the Atlantic, laden with treasure from the New World. At the same time, influential writers such as Richard Hakluyt and John Dee (who was the first to use the term \"British Empire\") were beginning to press for the establishment of England's own empire. By this time, Spain had become the dominant power in the Americas and was exploring the Pacific Ocean, Portugal had established trading posts and forts from the coasts of Africa and Brazil to China, and France had begun to settle the Saint Lawrence River area, later to become New France.\nAlthough England tended to trail behind Portugal, Spain, and France in establishing overseas colonies, it carried out its first modern colonisation, referred to as the Munster Plantations, in 16th century Ireland by settling it with English and Welsh Protestant settlers. England had already colonised part of the country following the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169. Several people who helped establish the Munster plantations later played a part in the early colonisation of North America, particularly a group known as the West Country Men.\nEnglish overseas possessions (1583\u20131707).\nIn 1578, Elizabeth I granted a patent to Humphrey Gilbert for discovery and overseas exploration. That year, Gilbert sailed for the Caribbean with the intention of engaging in piracy and establishing a colony in North America, but the expedition was aborted before it had crossed the Atlantic. In 1583, he embarked on a second attempt. On this occasion, he formally claimed the harbour of the island of Newfoundland, although no settlers were left behind. Gilbert did not survive the return journey to England and was succeeded by his half-brother, Walter Raleigh, who was granted his own patent by Elizabeth in 1584. Later that year, Raleigh founded the Roanoke Colony on the coast of present-day North Carolina, but lack of supplies caused the colony to fail.\nIn 1603, James VI of Scotland ascended (as James I) to the English throne and in 1604 negotiated the Treaty of London, ending hostilities with Spain. Now at peace with its main rival, English attention shifted from preying on other nations' colonial infrastructures to the business of establishing its own overseas colonies. The British Empire began to take shape during the early 17th century, with the English settlement of North America and the smaller islands of the Caribbean, and the establishment of joint-stock companies, most notably the East India Company, to administer colonies and overseas trade. This period, until the loss of the Thirteen Colonies after the American War of Independence towards the end of the 18th century, has been referred to by some historians as the \"First British Empire\".\nAmericas, Africa and the slave trade.\nEngland's early efforts at colonisation in the Americas met with mixed success. An attempt to establish a colony in Guiana in 1604 lasted only two years and failed in its main objective to find gold deposits. Colonies on the Caribbean islands of St Lucia\u00a0(1605) and Grenada\u00a0(1609) rapidly folded. The first permanent English settlement in the Americas was founded in 1607 in Jamestown by Captain John Smith, and managed by the Virginia Company; the Crown took direct control of the venture in 1624, thereby founding the Colony of Virginia. Bermuda was settled and claimed by England as a result of the 1609 shipwreck of the Virginia Company's flagship, while attempts to settle Newfoundland were largely unsuccessful. In 1620, Plymouth was founded as a haven by Puritan religious separatists, later known as the Pilgrims. Fleeing from religious persecution would become the motive for many English would-be colonists to risk the arduous trans-Atlantic voyage: Maryland was established by English Roman Catholics\u00a0(1634), Rhode Island\u00a0(1636) as a colony tolerant of all religions and Connecticut\u00a0(1639) for Congregationalists. England's North American holdings were further expanded by the annexation of the Dutch colony of New Netherland in 1664, following the capture of New Amsterdam, which was renamed New York. Although less financially successful than colonies in the Caribbean, these territories had large areas of good agricultural land and attracted far greater numbers of English emigrants, who preferred their temperate climates.\nThe British West Indies initially provided England's most important and lucrative colonies. Settlements were successfully established in St. Kitts\u00a0(1624), Barbados\u00a0(1627) and Nevis\u00a0(1628), but struggled until the \"Sugar Revolution\" transformed the Caribbean economy in the mid-17th century. Large sugarcane plantations were first established in the 1640s on Barbados, with assistance from Dutch merchants and Sephardic Jews fleeing Portuguese Brazil. At first, sugar was grown primarily using white indentured labour, but rising costs soon led English traders to embrace the use of imported African slaves. The enormous wealth generated by slave-produced sugar made Barbados the most successful colony in the Americas, and one of the most densely populated places in the world. This boom led to the spread of sugar cultivation across the Caribbean, financed the development of non-plantation colonies in North America, and accelerated the growth of the Atlantic slave trade, particularly the triangular trade of slaves, sugar and provisions between Africa, the West Indies and Europe.\nTo ensure that the increasingly healthy profits of colonial trade remained in English hands, Parliament decreed in 1651 that only English ships would be able to ply their trade in English colonies. This led to hostilities with the United Dutch Provinces\u2014a series of Anglo-Dutch Wars\u2014which would eventually strengthen England's position in the Americas at the expense of the Dutch. In 1655, England annexed the island of Jamaica from the Spanish, and in 1666 succeeded in colonising the Bahamas.\nIn 1670, Charles II incorporated by royal charter the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), granting it a monopoly on the fur trade in the area known as Rupert's Land, which would later form a large proportion of the Dominion of Canada. Forts and trading posts established by the HBC were frequently the subject of attacks by the French, who had established their own fur trading colony in adjacent New France.\nTwo years later, the Royal African Company was granted a monopoly on the supply of slaves to the British colonies in the Caribbean. The company would transport more slaves across the Atlantic than any other, and significantly grew England's share of the trade, from 33 per cent in 1673 to 74 per cent in 1683. The removal of this monopoly between 1688 and 1712 allowed independent British slave traders to thrive, leading to a rapid escalation in the number of slaves transported. British ships carried a third of all slaves shipped across the Atlantic\u2014approximately 3.5\u00a0million Africans\u2014until the abolition of the trade by Parliament in 1807 (see ). To facilitate the shipment of slaves, forts were established on the coast of West Africa, such as James Island, Accra and Bunce Island. In the British Caribbean, the percentage of the population of African descent rose from 25 per cent in 1650 to around 80 per cent in 1780, and in the Thirteen Colonies from 10 per cent to 40 per cent over the same period (the majority in the southern colonies). The transatlantic slave trade played a pervasive role in British economic life, and became a major economic mainstay for western port cities. Ships registered in Bristol, Liverpool and London were responsible for the bulk of British slave trading. For the transported, harsh and unhygienic conditions on the slaving ships and poor diets meant that the average mortality rate during the Middle Passage was one in seven.\nRivalry with other European empires.\nAt the end of the 16th century, England and the Dutch Empire began to challenge the Portuguese Empire's monopoly of trade with Asia, forming private joint-stock companies to finance the voyages\u2014the English, later British, East India Company and the Dutch East India Company, chartered in 1600 and 1602 respectively. The primary aim of these companies was to tap into the lucrative spice trade, an effort focused mainly on two regions: the East Indies archipelago, and an important hub in the trade network, India. There, they competed for trade supremacy with Portugal and with each other. Although England eclipsed the Netherlands as a colonial power, in the short term the Netherlands' more advanced financial system and the three Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th century left it with a stronger position in Asia. Hostilities ceased after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when the Dutch William of Orange ascended the English throne, bringing peace between the Dutch Republic and England. A deal between the two nations left the spice trade of the East Indies archipelago to the Netherlands and the textiles industry of India to England, but textiles soon overtook spices in terms of profitability.\nPeace between England and the Netherlands in 1688 meant the two countries entered the Nine Years' War as allies, but the conflict\u2014waged in Europe and overseas between France, Spain and the Anglo-Dutch alliance\u2014left the English a stronger colonial power than the Dutch, who were forced to devote a larger proportion of their military budget to the costly land war in Europe. The death of Charles II of Spain in 1700 and his bequeathal of Spain and its colonial empire to Philip V of Spain, a grandson of the King of France, raised the prospect of the unification of France, Spain and their respective colonies, an unacceptable state of affairs for England and the other powers of Europe. In 1701, England, Portugal and the Netherlands sided with the Holy Roman Empire against Spain and France in the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted for thirteen years.\nColonies and territories of Scotland (1629\u20131707).\nColonisation attempts by the Kingdom of Scotland predates the establishment of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and the British Empire. During the 17th century, the Kingdom of Scotland made attempts to establish trading schemes in Ireland and Canada. Nova Scotia, today a province of Canada, was a short lived scheme in the Mi'kmaq people territory. Additionally, there was a high number of Scots in Ireland, particularly in the region of Ulster, who settled there as planters.\nNorth America.\nThe first documented Scottish settlement in the Americas was of Nova Scotia in 1629. On 29 September 1621, the charter for the foundation of a colony was granted by James VI of Scotland to Sir William Alexander. Between 1622 and 1628, Sir William launched four attempts to send colonists to Nova Scotia; all failed for various reasons. A successful settlement of Nova Scotia was finally achieved in 1629. The colony's charter, in law, made Nova Scotia (defined as all land between Newfoundland and New England; i.e., The Maritimes) a part of mainland Scotland; this was later used to get around the English navigation acts.\nAs a country, Scotland engaged in two ventures in an attempt to establish colonies within English colonies during the 1680s in Carolina and East New Jersey. The attempt to establish themselves in Carolina was largely in part due to Scottish Presbyterians fleeing from the threat of religious persecution in Scotland, and were assisted in their efforts by Scottish merchants who were aiming to develop transatlantic trade which was not subjected to the English Navigation Acts. The Act restricted Scottish trade with English colonies. Scottish settlement attempts in Carolina began in 1682, and was eventually defeated by the dissolution of the Scottish settlement of Stewartstoun, which was established in 1684, by the Spanish in 1686.\nSouth America.\nIn 1695, the Parliament of Scotland granted a charter to the Company of Scotland, which established a settlement in 1698 on the Isthmus of Panama. Besieged by neighbouring Spanish colonists of New Granada, and affected by malaria, the colony was abandoned two years later. The Darien scheme was a financial disaster for Scotland: a quarter of Scottish capital was lost in the enterprise. The episode had major political consequences, helping to persuade the government of the Kingdom of Scotland of the merits of turning the personal union with England into a political and economic one under the Kingdom of Great Britain established by the Acts of Union 1707.\nBritish Empire (1707\u20131783).\nThe 18th century saw the newly united Great Britain rise to be the world's dominant colonial power, with France becoming its main rival on the imperial stage. Great Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and the Holy Roman Empire continued the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted until 1714 and was concluded by the Treaty of Utrecht. Philip V of Spain renounced his and his descendants' claim to the French throne, and Spain lost its empire in Europe. The British Empire was territorially enlarged: from France, Britain gained Newfoundland and Acadia, and from Spain, Gibraltar and Menorca. Gibraltar became a critical naval base and allowed Britain to control the Atlantic entry and exit point to the Mediterranean. Spain ceded the rights to the lucrative \"asiento\" (permission to sell African slaves in Spanish America) to Britain. With the outbreak of the Anglo-Spanish War of Jenkins' Ear in 1739, Spanish privateers attacked British merchant shipping along the Triangle Trade routes. In 1746, the Spanish and British began peace talks, with the King of Spain agreeing to stop all attacks on British shipping; however, in the 1750 Treaty of Madrid Britain lost its slave-trading rights in Latin America.\nIn the East Indies, British and Dutch merchants continued to compete in spices and textiles. With textiles becoming the larger trade, by 1720, in terms of sales, the British company had overtaken the Dutch. During the middle decades of the 18th century, there were several outbreaks of military conflict on the Indian subcontinent, as the English East India Company and its French counterpart, struggled alongside local rulers to fill the vacuum that had been left by the decline of the Mughal Empire. The Battle of Plassey in 1757, in which the British defeated the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies, left the British East India Company in control of Bengal and as a major military and political power in India. France was left control of its enclaves but with military restrictions and an obligation to support British client states, ending French hopes of controlling India. In the following decades the British East India Company gradually increased the size of the territories under its control, either ruling directly or via local rulers under the threat of force from the Presidency Armies, the vast majority of which was composed of Indian sepoys, led by British officers. The British and French struggles in India became but one theatre of the global Seven Years' War (1756\u20131763) involving France, Britain, and the other major European powers.\nThe signing of the Treaty of Paris of 1763 had important consequences for the future of the British Empire. In North America, France's future as a colonial power effectively ended with the recognition of British claims to Rupert's Land, and the ceding of New France to Britain (leaving a sizeable French-speaking population under British control) and Louisiana to Spain. Spain ceded Florida to Britain. Along with its victory over France in India, the Seven Years' War therefore left Britain as the world's most powerful maritime power.\nLoss of the Thirteen American Colonies.\nDuring the 1760s and early 1770s, relations between the Thirteen Colonies and Britain became increasingly strained, primarily because of resentment of the British Parliament's attempts to govern and tax American colonists without their consent. This was summarised at the time by the colonists' slogan \"No taxation without representation\", a perceived violation of the guaranteed Rights of Englishmen. The American Revolution began with a rejection of Parliamentary authority and moves towards self-government. In response, Britain sent troops to reimpose direct rule, leading to the outbreak of war in 1775. The following year, in 1776, the Second Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence proclaiming the colonies' sovereignty from the British Empire as the new United States of America. The entry of French and Spanish forces into the war tipped the military balance in the Americans' favour and after a decisive defeat at Yorktown in 1781, Britain began negotiating peace terms. American independence was acknowledged at the Peace of Paris in 1783.\nThe loss of such a large portion of British America, at the time Britain's most populous overseas possession, is seen by some historians as the event defining the transition between the first and second empires, in which Britain shifted its attention away from the Americas to Asia, the Pacific and later Africa. Adam Smith's \"Wealth of Nations\", published in 1776, had argued that colonies were redundant, and that free trade should replace the old mercantilist policies that had characterised the first period of colonial expansion, dating back to the protectionism of Spain and Portugal. The growth of trade between the newly independent United States and Britain after 1783 seemed to confirm Smith's view that political control was not necessary for economic success.\nThe war to the south influenced British policy in Canada, where between 40,000 and 100,000 defeated Loyalists had migrated from the new United States following independence. The 14,000 Loyalists who went to the Saint John and Saint Croix river valleys, then part of Nova Scotia, felt too far removed from the provincial government in Halifax, so London split off New Brunswick as a separate colony in 1784. The Constitutional Act 1791 created the provinces of Upper Canada (mainly English speaking) and Lower Canada (mainly French-speaking) to defuse tensions between the French and British communities, and implemented governmental systems similar to those employed in Britain, with the intention of asserting imperial authority and not allowing the sort of popular control of government that was perceived to have led to the American Revolution.\nTensions between Britain and the United States escalated again during the Napoleonic Wars, as Britain tried to cut off American trade with France and boarded American ships to impress men into the Royal Navy. The United States Congress declared war, the War of 1812, and invaded Canadian territory. In response, Britain invaded the US, but the pre-war boundaries were reaffirmed by the 1814 Treaty of Ghent, ensuring Canada's future would be separate from that of the United States.\nBritish Empire (1783\u20131815).\nExploration of the Pacific.\nSince 1718, transportation to the American colonies had been a penalty for various offences in Britain, with approximately one thousand convicts transported per year. Forced to find an alternative location after the loss of the Thirteen Colonies in 1783, the British government looked for an alternative, eventually turning to Australia. On his first of three voyages commissioned by the government, James Cook reached New Zealand in October 1769. He was the first European to circumnavigate and map the country. From the late 18th century, the country was regularly visited by explorers and other sailors, missionaries, traders and adventurers but no attempt was made to settle the country or establish possession. The coast of Australia had been discovered for Europeans by the Dutch in 1606, but there was no attempt to colonise it. In 1770, after leaving New Zealand, James Cook charted the eastern coast, claimed the continent for Britain, and named it New South Wales. In 1778, Joseph Banks, Cook's botanist on the voyage, presented evidence to the government on the suitability of Botany Bay for the establishment of a penal settlement, and in 1787 the first shipment of convicts set sail, arriving in 1788. Unusually, Australia was claimed through proclamation. Indigenous Australians were considered too uncivilised to require treaties, and colonisation brought disease and violence that together with the deliberate dispossession of land and culture were devastating to these peoples. Britain continued to transport convicts to New South Wales until 1840, to Tasmania until 1853 and to Western Australia until 1868. The Australian colonies became profitable exporters of wool and gold, mainly because of the Victorian gold rush, making its capital Melbourne for a time the richest city in the world.\nThe British also expanded their mercantile interests in the North Pacific. Spain and Britain had become rivals in the area, culminating in the Nootka Crisis in 1789. Both sides mobilised for war, but when France refused to support Spain it was forced to back down, leading to the Nootka Convention. The outcome was a humiliation for Spain, which practically renounced all sovereignty on the North Pacific coast. This opened the way to British expansion in the area, and a number of expeditions took place; firstly a naval expedition led by George Vancouver which explored the inlets around the Pacific North West, particularly around Vancouver Island. On land, expeditions sought to discover a river route to the Pacific for the extension of the North American fur trade. Alexander Mackenzie of the North West Company led the first, starting out in 1792, and a year later he became the first European to reach the Pacific overland north of the Rio Grande, reaching the ocean near present-day Bella Coola. This preceded the Lewis and Clark Expedition by twelve years. Shortly thereafter, Mackenzie's companion, John Finlay, founded the first permanent European settlement in British Columbia, Fort St. John. The North West Company sought further exploration and backed expeditions by David Thompson, starting in 1797, and later by Simon Fraser. These pushed into the wilderness territories of the Rocky Mountains and Interior Plateau to the Strait of Georgia on the Pacific Coast, expanding British North America westward.\nContinued conquest in India.\nThe East India Company fought a series of Anglo-Mysore wars in Southern India with the Sultanate of Mysore under Hyder Ali and then Tipu Sultan. Defeats in the First Anglo-Mysore war and stalemate in the Second were followed by victories in the Third and the Fourth. Following Tipu Sultan's death in the fourth war in the Siege of Seringapatam (1799), the kingdom became a protectorate of the company.\nThe East India Company fought three Anglo-Maratha Wars with the Maratha Confederacy. The First Anglo-Maratha War ended in 1782 with a restoration of the pre-war \"status quo\". The Second and Third Anglo-Maratha wars resulted in British victories. After the surrender of Peshwa Bajirao II on 1818, the East India Company acquired control of a large majority of the Indian subcontinent.\nWars with France.\nBritain was challenged again by France under Napoleon, in a struggle that, unlike previous wars, represented a contest of ideologies between the two nations. It was not only Britain's position on the world stage that was at risk: Napoleon threatened to invade Britain itself, just as his armies had overrun many countries of continental Europe.\nThe Napoleonic Wars were therefore ones in which Britain invested large amounts of capital and resources to win. French ports were blockaded by the Royal Navy, which won a decisive victory over a French Imperial Navy-Spanish Navy fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Overseas colonies were attacked and occupied, including those of the Netherlands, which was annexed by Napoleon in 1810. France was finally defeated by a coalition of European armies in 1815. Britain was again the beneficiary of peace treaties: France ceded the Ionian Islands, Malta (which it had occupied in 1798), Mauritius, St Lucia, the Seychelles, and Tobago; Spain ceded Trinidad; the Netherlands ceded Guiana, Ceylon and the Cape Colony, while the Danish ceded Heligoland. Britain returned Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, and R\u00e9union to France; Menorca to Spain; Danish West Indies to Denmark and Java and Suriname to the Netherlands.\nAbolition of slavery.\nWith the advent of the Industrial Revolution, goods produced by slavery became less important to the British economy. Added to this was the cost of suppressing regular slave rebellions. With support from the British abolitionist movement, Parliament enacted the Slave Trade Act in 1807, which abolished the slave trade in the empire. In 1808, Sierra Leone Colony was designated an official British colony for freed slaves. Parliamentary reform in 1832 saw the influence of the West India Committee decline. The Slavery Abolition Act, passed the following year, abolished slavery in the British Empire on 1 August 1834, finally bringing the empire into line with the law in the UK (with the exception of the territories administered by the East India Company and Ceylon, where slavery was ended in 1844). Under the Act, slaves were granted full emancipation after a period of four to six years of \"apprenticeship\". Facing further opposition from abolitionists, the apprenticeship system was abolished in 1838. The British government compensated slave-owners.\nBritain's imperial century (1815\u20131914).\nBetween 1815 and 1914, a period referred to as Britain's \"imperial century\" by some historians, around of territory and roughly 400\u00a0million people were added to the British Empire. Victory over Napoleon left Britain without any serious international rival, other than Russia in Central Asia. Unchallenged at sea, Britain adopted the role of global policeman, a state of affairs later known as the \"Pax Britannica\", and a foreign policy of \"splendid isolation\". Alongside the formal control it exerted over its own colonies, Britain's dominant position in world trade meant that it effectively controlled the economies of many countries, such as China, Argentina and Siam, which has been described by some historians as an \"Informal Empire\".\nBritish imperial strength was underpinned by the steamship and the telegraph, new technologies invented in the second half of the 19th century, allowing it to control and defend the empire. By 1902, the British Empire was linked together by a network of telegraph cables, called the All Red Line.\nEast India Company rule and the British Raj in India.\nThe East India Company drove the expansion of the British Empire in Asia. The company's army had first joined forces with the Royal Navy during the Seven Years' War, and the two continued to co-operate in arenas outside India: the eviction of the French from Egypt (1799), the capture of Java from the Netherlands (1811), the acquisition of Penang Island (1786), Singapore (1819) and Malacca (1824), and the defeat of Burma (1826).\nFrom its base in India, the company had been engaged in an increasingly profitable opium export trade to Qing China since the 1730s. This trade, illegal since it was outlawed by China in 1729, helped reverse the trade imbalances resulting from the British imports of tea, which saw large outflows of silver from Britain to China. In 1839, the confiscation by the Chinese authorities at Canton of 20,000 chests of opium led Britain to attack China in the First Opium War, and resulted in the seizure by Britain of Hong Kong Island, at that time a minor settlement, and other treaty ports including Shanghai.\nDuring the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the British Crown began to assume an increasingly large role in the affairs of the company. A series of acts of Parliament were passed, including the Regulating Act 1773, East India Company Act 1784 and the Charter Act 1813 which regulated the company's affairs and established the sovereignty of the Crown over the territories that it had acquired. The company's eventual end was precipitated by the Indian Rebellion in 1857, a conflict that had begun with the mutiny of sepoys, Indian troops under British officers and discipline. The rebellion took six months to suppress, with heavy loss of life on both sides. The following year the British government dissolved the company and assumed direct control over India through the Government of India Act 1858, establishing the British Raj, where an appointed governor-general administered India and Queen Victoria was crowned the Empress of India. India became the empire's most valuable possession, \"the Jewel in the Crown\", and was the most important source of Britain's strength.\nA series of serious crop failures in the late 19th century led to widespread famines on the subcontinent in which it is estimated that over 15\u00a0million people died. The East India Company had failed to implement any coordinated policy to deal with the famines during its period of rule. Later, under direct British rule, commissions were set up after each famine to investigate the causes and implement new policies, which took until the early 1900s to have an effect.\nNew Zealand.\nOn each of his three voyages to the Pacific between 1769 and 1777, James Cook visited New Zealand. He was followed by an assortment of Europeans and Americans which including whalers, sealers, escaped convicts from New South Wales, missionaries and adventurers. Initially, contact with the indigenous M\u0101ori people was limited to the trading of goods, although interaction increased during the early decades of the 19th century with many trading and missionary stations being set up, especially in the north. The first of several Church of England missionaries arrived in 1814 and as well as their missionary role, they soon become the only form of European authority in a land that was not subject to British jurisdiction: the closest authority being the New South Wales governor in Sydney. The sale of weapons to M\u0101ori resulted from 1818 on in the intertribal warfare of the Musket Wars, with devastating consequences for the M\u0101ori population.\nThe UK government finally decided to act, dispatching Captain William Hobson with instructions to take formal possession after obtaining native consent. There was no central M\u0101ori authority able to represent all New Zealand so, on 6 February 1840, Hobson and many M\u0101ori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi in the Bay of Islands; most other chiefs signing in stages over the following months. William Hobson declared British sovereignty over all New Zealand on 21 May 1840, over the North Island by cession and over the South Island by discovery (the island was sparsely populated and deemed terra nullius). Hobson became Lieutenant-Governor, subject to Governor Sir George Gipps in Sydney, with British possession of New Zealand initially administered from Australia as a dependency of the New South Wales colony. From 16 June 1840 New South Wales laws applied in New Zealand. This transitional arrangement ended with the Charter for Erecting the Colony of New Zealand on 16 November 1840. The Charter stated that New Zealand would be established as a separate Crown colony on 3 May 1841 with Hobson as its governor.\nRivalry with Russia.\nDuring the 19th century, Britain and the Russian Empire vied to fill the power vacuums that had been left by the declining Ottoman Empire, Qajar dynasty and Qing dynasty. This rivalry in Central Asia came to be known as the \"Great Game\". As far as Britain was concerned, defeats inflicted by Russia on Persia and Turkey demonstrated its imperial ambitions and capabilities and stoked fears in Britain of an overland invasion of India. In 1839, Britain moved to pre-empt this by invading Afghanistan, but the First Anglo-Afghan War was a disaster for Britain.\nWhen Russia invaded the Ottoman Balkans in 1853, fears of Russian dominance in the Mediterranean and the Middle East led Britain and France to enter the war in support of the Ottoman Empire and invade the Crimean Peninsula to destroy Russian naval capabilities. The ensuing Crimean War (1854\u20131856), which involved new techniques of modern warfare, was the only global war fought between Britain and another imperial power during the \"Pax Britannica\" and was a resounding defeat for Russia. The situation remained unresolved in Central Asia for two more decades, with Britain annexing Baluchistan in 1876 and Russia annexing Kirghizia, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. For a while, it appeared that another war would be inevitable, but the two countries reached an agreement on their respective spheres of influence in the region in 1878 and on all outstanding matters in 1907 with the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente. The destruction of the Imperial Russian Navy by the Imperial Japanese Navy at the Battle of Tsushima during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904\u20131905 limited its threat to the British.\nCape to Cairo.\nThe Dutch East India Company had founded the Dutch Cape Colony on the southern tip of Africa in 1652 as a way station for its ships travelling to and from its colonies in the East Indies. Britain formally acquired the colony, and its large Afrikaner (or Boer) population in 1806, having occupied it in 1795 to prevent its falling into French hands during the Flanders Campaign. British immigration to the Cape Colony began to rise after 1820, and pushed thousands of Boers, resentful of British rule, northwards to found their own\u2014mostly short-lived\u2014independent republics, during the Great Trek of the late 1830s and early 1840s. In the process the Voortrekkers clashed repeatedly with the British, who had their own agenda with regard to colonial expansion in South Africa and to the various native African polities, including those of the Sotho people and the Zulu Kingdom. Eventually, the Boers established two republics that had a longer lifespan: the South African Republic or Transvaal Republic (1852\u20131877; 1881\u20131902) and the Orange Free State (1854\u20131902). In 1902 Britain occupied both republics, concluding a treaty with the two Boer Republics following the Second Boer War (1899\u20131902).\nIn 1869 the Suez Canal opened under Napoleon III, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Indian Ocean. Initially the Canal was opposed by the British; but once opened, its strategic value was quickly recognised and became the \"jugular vein of the Empire\". In 1875, the Conservative government of Benjamin Disraeli bought the indebted Egyptian ruler Isma'il Pasha's 44 per cent shareholding in the Suez Canal for \u00a34\u00a0million (equivalent to \u00a3 in 2023). Although this did not grant outright control of the strategic waterway, it did give Britain leverage. Joint Anglo-French financial control over Egypt ended in outright British occupation in 1882. Although Britain controlled the Khedivate of Egypt into the 20th century, it was officially a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire and not part of the British Empire. The French were still majority shareholders and attempted to weaken the British position, but a compromise was reached with the 1888 Convention of Constantinople, which made the Canal officially neutral territory.\nWith competitive French, Belgian and Portuguese activity in the lower Congo River region undermining orderly colonisation of tropical Africa, the Berlin Conference of 1884\u201385 was held to regulate the competition between the European powers in what was called the \"Scramble for Africa\" by defining \"effective occupation\" as the criterion for international recognition of territorial claims. The scramble continued into the 1890s, and caused Britain to reconsider its decision in 1885 to withdraw from Sudan. A joint force of British and Egyptian troops defeated the Mahdist Army in 1896 and rebuffed an attempted French invasion at Fashoda in 1898. Sudan was nominally made an Anglo-Egyptian condominium, but a British colony in reality.\nBritish gains in Southern and East Africa prompted Cecil Rhodes, pioneer of British expansion in Southern Africa, to urge a \"Cape to Cairo\" railway linking the strategically important Suez Canal to the mineral-rich south of the continent. During the 1880s and 1890s, Rhodes, with his privately owned British South Africa Company, occupied and annexed territories named after him, Rhodesia.\nChanging status of the white colonies.\nThe path to independence for the white colonies of the British Empire began with the 1839 Durham Report, which proposed unification and self-government for Upper and Lower Canada, as a solution to political unrest which had erupted in armed rebellions in 1837. This began with the passing of the Act of Union in 1840, which created the Province of Canada. Responsible government was first granted to Nova Scotia in 1848, and was soon extended to the other British North American colonies. With the passage of the British North America Act, 1867 by the British Parliament, the Province of Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were formed into Canada, a confederation enjoying full self-government with the exception of international relations. Australia and New Zealand achieved similar levels of self-government after 1900, with the Australian colonies federating in 1901. The term \"dominion status\" was officially introduced at the 1907 Imperial Conference. As the dominions gained greater autonomy, they would come to be recognized as distinct realms of the empire with unique customs and symbols of their own. Imperial identity, through imagery such as patriotic artworks and banners, began developing into a form that attempted to be more inclusive by showcasing the empire as a family of newly birthed nations with common roots.\nThe last decades of the 19th century saw concerted political campaigns for Irish home rule. Ireland had been united with Britain into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland with the Act of Union 1800 after the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and had suffered a severe famine between 1845 and 1852. Home rule was supported by the British prime minister, William Gladstone, who hoped that Ireland might follow in Canada's footsteps as a Dominion within the empire, but his 1886 Home Rule bill was defeated in Parliament. Although the bill, if passed, would have granted Ireland less autonomy within the UK than the Canadian provinces had within their own federation, many MPs feared that a partially independent Ireland might pose a security threat to Great Britain or mark the beginning of the break-up of the empire. A second Home Rule bill was defeated for similar reasons. A third bill was passed by Parliament in 1914, but not implemented because of the outbreak of the First World War leading to the 1916 Easter Rising.\nWorld wars (1914\u20131945).\nBy the turn of the 20th century, fears had begun to grow in Britain that it would no longer be able to defend the metropole and the entirety of the empire while at the same time maintaining the policy of \"splendid isolation\". Germany was rapidly rising as a military and industrial power and was now seen as the most likely opponent in any future war. Recognising that it was overstretched in the Pacific and threatened at home by the Imperial German Navy, Britain formed an alliance with Japan in 1902 and with its old enemies France and Russia in 1904 and 1907, respectively.\nFirst World War.\nBritain's fears of war with Germany were realised in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War. Britain quickly invaded and occupied most of Germany's overseas colonies in Africa. In the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand occupied German New Guinea and German Samoa respectively. Plans for a post-war division of the Ottoman Empire, which had joined the war on Germany's side, were secretly drawn up by Britain and France under the 1916 Sykes\u2013Picot Agreement. This agreement was not divulged to the Sharif of Mecca, who the British had been encouraging to launch an Arab revolt against their Ottoman rulers, giving the impression that Britain was supporting the creation of an independent Arab state.\nThe British declaration of war on Germany and its allies committed the colonies and Dominions, which provided invaluable military, financial and material support. Over 2.5\u00a0million men served in the armies of the Dominions, as well as many thousands of volunteers from the Crown colonies. The contributions of Australian and New Zealand troops during the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign against the Ottoman Empire had a great impact on the national consciousness at home and marked a watershed in the transition of Australia and New Zealand from colonies to nations in their own right. The countries continue to commemorate this occasion on Anzac Day. Canadians viewed the Battle of Vimy Ridge in a similar light. The important contribution of the Dominions to the war effort was recognised in 1917 by British prime minister David Lloyd George when he invited each of the Dominion prime ministers to join an Imperial War Cabinet to co-ordinate imperial policy.\nUnder the terms of the concluding Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919, the empire reached its greatest extent with the addition of and 13\u00a0million new subjects. The colonies of Germany and the Ottoman Empire were distributed to the Allied powers as League of Nations mandates. Britain gained control of Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, parts of Cameroon and Togoland, and Tanganyika. The Dominions themselves acquired mandates of their own: the Union of South Africa gained South West Africa (modern-day Namibia), Australia gained New Guinea, and New Zealand Western Samoa. Nauru was made a combined mandate of Britain and the two Pacific Dominions.\nInter-war period.\nThe changing world order that the war had brought about, in particular the growth of the United States and Japan as naval powers, and the rise of independence movements in India and Ireland, caused a major reassessment of British imperial policy. Forced to choose between alignment with the United States or Japan, Britain opted not to renew its Anglo-Japanese Alliance and instead signed the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, where Britain accepted naval parity with the United States. This decision was the source of much debate in Britain during the 1930s as militaristic governments took hold in Germany and Japan helped in part by the Great Depression, for it was feared that the empire could not survive a simultaneous attack by both nations. The issue of the empire's security was a serious concern in Britain, as it was vital to the British economy.\nIn 1919, the frustrations caused by delays to Irish home rule led the MPs of Sinn F\u00e9in, a pro-independence party that had won a majority of the Irish seats in the 1918 British general election, to establish an independent parliament in Dublin, at which Irish independence was declared. The Irish Republican Army simultaneously began a guerrilla war against the British administration. The Irish War of Independence ended in 1921 with a stalemate and the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, creating the Irish Free State, a Dominion within the British Empire, with effective internal independence but still constitutionally linked with the British Crown. Northern Ireland, consisting of six of the 32 Irish counties which had been established as a devolved region under the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, immediately exercised its option under the treaty to retain its existing status within the United Kingdom.\nA similar struggle began in India when the Government of India Act 1919 failed to satisfy the demand for independence. Concerns over communist and foreign plots following the Ghadar conspiracy ensured that war-time strictures were renewed by the Rowlatt Acts. This led to tension, particularly in the Punjab region, where repressive measures culminated in the Amritsar Massacre. In Britain, public opinion was divided over the morality of the massacre, between those who saw it as having saved India from anarchy, and those who viewed it with revulsion. The non-cooperation movement was called off in March 1922 following the Chauri Chaura incident, and discontent continued to simmer for the next 25 years.\nIn 1922, Egypt, which had been declared a British protectorate at the outbreak of the First World War, was granted formal independence, though it continued to be a British client state until 1954. British troops remained stationed in Egypt until the signing of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty in 1936, under which it was agreed that the troops would withdraw but continue to occupy and defend the Suez Canal zone. In return, Egypt was assisted in joining the League of Nations. Iraq, a British mandate since 1920, gained membership of the League in its own right after achieving independence from Britain in 1932. In Palestine, Britain was presented with the problem of mediating between the Arabs and increasing numbers of Jews. The Balfour Declaration, which had been incorporated into the terms of the mandate, stated that a national home for the Jewish people would be established in Palestine, and Jewish immigration allowed up to a limit that would be determined by the mandatory power. This led to increasing conflict with the Arab population, who openly revolted in 1936. As the threat of war with Germany increased during the 1930s, Britain judged the support of Arabs as more important than the establishment of a Jewish homeland, and shifted to a pro-Arab stance, limiting Jewish immigration and in turn triggering a Jewish insurgency.\nThe right of the Dominions to set their own foreign policy, independent of Britain, was recognised at the 1923 Imperial Conference. Britain's request for military assistance from the Dominions at the outbreak of the Chanak Crisis the previous year had been turned down by Canada and South Africa, and Canada had refused to be bound by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. After pressure from the Irish Free State and South Africa, the 1926 Imperial Conference issued the Balfour Declaration of 1926, declaring Britain and the Dominions to be \"autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another\" within a \"British Commonwealth of Nations\". This declaration was given legal substance under the 1931 Statute of Westminster. The parliaments of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland were now independent of British legislative control, they could nullify British laws and Britain could no longer pass laws for them without their consent. Newfoundland reverted to colonial status in 1933, suffering from financial difficulties during the Great Depression. In 1937 the Irish Free State introduced a republican constitution renaming itself \"Ireland\".\nSecond World War.\nBritain's declaration of war against Nazi Germany in September 1939 included the Crown colonies and India but did not automatically commit the Dominions of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Newfoundland and South Africa. All soon declared war on Germany. While Britain continued to regard Ireland as still within the British Commonwealth, Ireland chose to remain legally neutral throughout the war.\nAfter the Fall of France in June 1940, Britain and the empire stood alone against Germany, until the German invasion of Greece on 7 April 1941. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill successfully lobbied President Franklin D. Roosevelt for military aid from the United States, but Roosevelt was not yet ready to ask Congress to commit the country to war. In August 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt met and signed the Atlantic Charter, which included the statement that \"the rights of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they live\" should be respected. This wording was ambiguous as to whether it referred to European countries invaded by Germany and Italy, or the peoples colonised by European nations, and would later be interpreted differently by the British, Americans, and nationalist movements. Nevertheless, Churchill rejected its universal applicability when it came to the self-determination of subject nations including the British Indian Empire. Churchill further added that he did not become Prime Minister to oversee the liquidation of the empire.\nFor Churchill, the entry of the United States into the war was the \"greatest joy\". He felt that Britain was now assured of victory, but failed to recognise that the \"many disasters, immeasurable costs and tribulations [which he knew] lay ahead\" in December 1941 would have permanent consequences for the future of the empire. The manner in which British forces were rapidly defeated in the Far East irreversibly harmed Britain's standing and prestige as an imperial power, including, particularly, the Fall of Singapore, which had previously been hailed as an impregnable fortress and the eastern equivalent of Gibraltar. The realisation that Britain could not defend its entire empire pushed Australia and New Zealand, which now appeared threatened by Japanese forces, into closer ties with the United States and, ultimately, the 1951 ANZUS Pact. The war weakened the empire in other ways: undermining Britain's control of politics in India, inflicting long-term economic damage, and irrevocably changing geopolitics by pushing the Soviet Union and the United States to the centre of the global stage.\nDecolonisation and decline (1945\u20131997).\nThough Britain and the empire emerged victorious from the Second World War, the effects of the conflict were profound, both at home and abroad. Much of Europe, a continent that had dominated the world for several centuries, was in ruins, and host to the armies of the United States and the Soviet Union, who now held the balance of global power. Britain was left essentially bankrupt, with insolvency only averted in 1946 after the negotiation of a US$3.75\u00a0billion loan from the United States, the last instalment of which was repaid in 2006. At the same time, anti-colonial movements were on the rise in the colonies of European nations. The situation was complicated further by the increasing Cold War rivalry of the United States and the Soviet Union. In principle, both nations were opposed to European colonialism. In practice, American anti-communism prevailed over anti-imperialism, and therefore the United States supported the continued existence of the British Empire to keep Communist expansion in check. At first, British politicians believed it would be possible to maintain Britain's role as a world power at the head of a re-imagined Commonwealth, but by 1960 they were forced to recognise that there was an irresistible \"wind of change\" blowing. Their priorities changed to maintaining an extensive zone of British influence and ensuring that stable, non-Communist governments were established in former colonies. In this context, while other European powers such as France and Portugal waged costly and unsuccessful wars to keep their empires intact, Britain generally adopted a policy of peaceful disengagement from its colonies, although violence occurred in Malaya, Kenya and Palestine. Between 1945 and 1965, the number of people under British rule outside the UK itself fell from 700 million to 5 million, 3 million of whom were in Hong Kong.\nInitial disengagement.\nThe pro-decolonisation Labour government, elected at the 1945 general election and led by Clement Attlee, moved quickly to tackle the most pressing issue facing the empire: Indian independence. India's major political party\u2014the Indian National Congress (led by Mahatma Gandhi) \u2014 had been campaigning for independence for decades, but disagreed with Muslim League (led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah) as to how it should be implemented. Congress favoured a unified secular Indian state, whereas the League, fearing domination by the Hindu majority, desired a separate Islamic state for Muslim-majority regions. Increasing civil unrest led Attlee to promise independence no later than 30 June 1948. When the urgency of the situation and risk of civil war became apparent, the newly appointed (and last) Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, hastily brought forward the date to 15 August 1947. The borders drawn by the British to broadly partition India into Hindu and Muslim areas left tens of millions as minorities in the newly independent states of India and Pakistan. The princely states were provided with a choice to either remain independent or join India or Pakistan. Millions of Muslims crossed from India to Pakistan and Hindus vice versa, and violence between the two communities cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Burma, which had been administered as part of British India until 1937 gained independence the following year in 1948 along with Sri Lanka (formerly known as British Ceylon). India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka became members of the Commonwealth, while Burma chose not to join. That same year, the British Nationality Act was enacted, in hopes of strengthening and unifying the Commonwealth: it provided British citizenship and right of entry to all those living within its jurisdiction.\nThe British Mandate in Palestine, where an Arab majority lived alongside a Jewish minority, presented the British with a similar problem to that of India. The matter was complicated by large numbers of Jewish refugees seeking to be admitted to Palestine following the Holocaust, while Arabs were opposed to the creation of a Jewish state. Frustrated by the intractability of the problem, attacks by Jewish paramilitary organisations and the increasing cost of maintaining its military presence, Britain announced in 1947 that it would withdraw in 1948 and leave the matter to the United Nations to solve. The UN General Assembly subsequently voted for a plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. It was immediately followed by the outbreak of a civil war between the Arabs and Jews of Palestine, and British forces withdrew amid the fighting. The British Mandate for Palestine officially terminated at midnight on 15 May 1948 as the State of Israel declared independence and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War broke out, during which the territory of the former Mandate was partitioned between Israel and the surrounding Arab states. Amid the fighting, British forces continued to withdraw from Israel, with the last British troops departing from Haifa on 30 June 1948.\nFollowing the surrender of Japan in the Second World War, anti-Japanese resistance movements in Malaya turned their attention towards the British, who had moved to quickly retake control of the colony, valuing it as a source of rubber and tin. The fact that the guerrillas were primarily Malaysian Chinese Communists meant that the British attempt to quell the uprising was supported by the Muslim Malay majority, on the understanding that once the insurgency had been quelled, independence would be granted. The Malayan Emergency, as it was called, began in 1948 and lasted until 1960, but by 1957, Britain felt confident enough to grant independence to the Federation of Malaya within the Commonwealth. In 1963, the 11 states of the federation together with Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo joined to form Malaysia, but in 1965 Chinese-majority Singapore was expelled from the union following tensions between the Malay and Chinese populations and became an independent city-state. Brunei, which had been a British protectorate since 1888, declined to join the union.\nSuez and its aftermath.\nIn the 1951 general election, the Conservative Party returned to power in Britain under the leadership of Winston Churchill. Churchill and the Conservatives believed that Britain's position as a world power relied on the continued existence of the empire, with the base at the Suez Canal allowing Britain to maintain its pre-eminent position in the Middle East in spite of the loss of India. Churchill could not ignore Gamal Abdul Nasser's new revolutionary government of Egypt that had taken power in 1952, and the following year it was agreed that British troops would withdraw from the Suez Canal zone and that Sudan would be granted self-determination by 1955, with independence to follow Sudan was granted independence on 1 January 1956.\nIn July 1956, Nasser unilaterally nationalised the Suez Canal. The response of Anthony Eden, who had succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister, was to collude with France to engineer an Israeli attack on Egypt that would give Britain and France an excuse to intervene militarily and retake the canal. Eden infuriated US President Dwight D. Eisenhower by his lack of consultation, and Eisenhower refused to back the invasion. Another of Eisenhower's concerns was the possibility of a wider war with the Soviet Union after it threatened to intervene on the Egyptian side. Eisenhower applied financial leverage by threatening to sell US reserves of the British pound and thereby precipitate a collapse of the British currency. Though the invasion force was militarily successful in its objectives, UN intervention and US pressure forced Britain into a humiliating withdrawal of its forces, and Eden resigned.\nThe Suez Crisis very publicly exposed Britain's limitations to the world and confirmed Britain's decline on the world stage and its end as a first-rate power, demonstrating that henceforth it could no longer act without at least the acquiescence, if not the full support, of the United States. The events at Suez wounded British national pride, leading one Member of Parliament (MP) to describe it as \"Britain's Waterloo\" and another to suggest that the country had become an \"American satellite\". Margaret Thatcher later described the mindset she believed had befallen Britain's political leaders after Suez where they \"went from believing that Britain could do anything to an almost neurotic belief that Britain could do nothing\", from which Britain did not recover until the successful recapture of the Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982.\nWhile the Suez Crisis caused British power in the Middle East to weaken, it did not collapse. Britain again deployed its armed forces to the region, intervening in Oman (1957), Jordan (1958) and Kuwait (1961), though on these occasions with American approval, as the new Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's foreign policy was to remain firmly aligned with the United States. Although Britain granted Kuwait independence in 1961, it continued to maintain a military presence in the Middle East for another decade. On 16 January 1968, a few weeks after the devaluation of the pound, Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his Defence Secretary Denis Healey announced that British Armed Forces troops would be withdrawn from major military bases East of Suez, which included the ones in the Middle East, and primarily from Malaysia and Singapore by the end of 1971, instead of 1975 as earlier planned. By that time over 50,000 British military personnel were still stationed in the Far East, including 30,000 in Singapore. The British granted independence to the Maldives in 1965 but continued to station a garrison there until 1976, withdrew from Aden in 1967, and granted independence to Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates in 1971.\nWind of change.\nMacmillan gave a speech in Cape Town, South Africa in February 1960 where he spoke of \"the wind of change blowing through this continent\". Macmillan wished to avoid the same kind of colonial war that France was fighting in Algeria, and under his premiership decolonisation proceeded rapidly. To the three colonies that had been granted independence in the 1950s\u2014Sudan, the Gold Coast and Malaya\u2014were added nearly ten times that number during the 1960s. Owing to the rapid pace of decolonisation during this period, the cabinet post of Secretary of State for the Colonies was abolished in 1966, along with the Colonial Office, which merged with the Commonwealth Relations Office to form the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) in October 1968.\nBritain's remaining colonies in Africa, except for self-governing Southern Rhodesia, were all granted independence by 1968. British withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of Africa was not a peaceful process. From 1952 the Kenya Colony saw the eight-year long Mau Mau rebellion, in which tens of thousands of suspected rebels were interned by the colonial government in detention camps to suppress the rebellion and over 1000 convicts executed, with records systematically destroyed. Throughout the 1960s, the British government took a \"No independence until majority rule\" policy towards decolonising the empire, leading the white minority government of Southern Rhodesia to enact the 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain, resulting in a civil war that lasted until the British-mediated Lancaster House Agreement of 1979. The agreement saw the British Empire temporarily re-establish the Colony of Southern Rhodesia from 1979 to 1980 as a transitionary government to a majority rule Republic of Zimbabwe. This was the last British possession in Africa.\nIn Cyprus, a guerrilla war waged by the Greek Cypriot organisation EOKA against British rule, was ended in 1959 by the London and Z\u00fcrich Agreements, which resulted in Cyprus being granted independence in 1960. The UK retained the military bases of Akrotiri and Dhekelia as sovereign base areas. The Mediterranean colony of Malta was amicably granted independence from the UK in 1964 and became the country of Malta, though the idea had been raised in 1955 of integration with Britain.\nMost of the UK's Caribbean territories achieved independence after the departure in 1961 and 1962 of Jamaica and Trinidad from the West Indies Federation, established in 1958 in an attempt to unite the British Caribbean colonies under one government, but which collapsed following the loss of its two largest members. Jamaica attained independence in 1962, as did Trinidad and Tobago. Barbados achieved independence in 1966 and the remainder of the eastern Caribbean islands, including the Bahamas, in the 1970s and 1980s, but Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands opted to revert to British rule after they had already started on the path to independence. The British Virgin Islands, The Cayman Islands and Montserrat opted to retain ties with Britain, while Guyana achieved independence in 1966. Britain's last colony on the American mainland, British Honduras, became a self-governing colony in 1964 and was renamed Belize in 1973, achieving full independence in 1981. A dispute with Guatemala over claims to Belize was left unresolved.\nBritish Overseas Territories in the Pacific acquired independence in the 1970s beginning with Fiji in 1970 and ending with Vanuatu in 1980. Vanuatu's independence was delayed because of political conflict between English and French-speaking communities, as the islands had been jointly administered as a condominium with France. Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu became Commonwealth realms.\nEnd of empire.\nBy 1981, aside from a scattering of islands and outposts, the process of decolonisation that had begun after the Second World War was largely complete. In 1982, Britain's resolve in defending its remaining overseas territories was tested when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, acting on a long-standing claim that dated back to the Spanish Empire. Britain's successful military response to retake the Falkland Islands during the ensuing Falklands War contributed to reversing the downward trend in Britain's status as a world power.\nThe 1980s saw Canada, Australia, and New Zealand sever their final constitutional links with Britain. Although granted legislative independence by the Statute of Westminster 1931, vestigial constitutional links had remained in place. The British Parliament retained the power to amend key Canadian constitutional statutes, meaning that an act of the British Parliament was required to make certain changes to the Canadian Constitution. The British Parliament had the power to pass laws extending to Canada at Canadian request. Although no longer able to pass any laws that would apply to Australian Commonwealth law, the British Parliament retained the power to legislate for the individual Australian states. With regard to New Zealand, the British Parliament retained the power to pass legislation applying to New Zealand with the New Zealand Parliament's consent. In 1982, the last legal link between Canada and Britain was severed by the Canada Act 1982, which was passed by the British parliament, formally patriating the Canadian Constitution. The act ended the need for British involvement in changes to the Canadian constitution. Similarly, the Australia Act 1986 (effective 3 March 1986) severed the constitutional link between Britain and the Australian states, while New Zealand's Constitution Act 1986 (effective 1 January 1987) reformed the constitution of New Zealand to sever its constitutional link with Britain.\nOn 1 January 1984, Brunei, Britain's last remaining Asian protectorate, was granted full independence. Independence had been delayed due to the opposition of the Sultan, who had preferred British protection.\nIn September 1982 the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, travelled to Beijing to negotiate with the Chinese Communist government, on the future of Britain's last major and most populous overseas territory, Hong Kong. Under the terms of the 1842 Treaty of Nanking and 1860 Convention of Peking, Hong Kong Island and Kowloon Peninsula had been respectively ceded to Britain \"in perpetuity\", but the majority of the colony consisted of the New Territories, which had been acquired under a 99-year lease in 1898, due to expire in 1997. Thatcher, seeing parallels with the Falkland Islands, initially wished to hold Hong Kong and proposed British administration with Chinese sovereignty, though this was rejected by China. A deal was reached in 1984\u2014under the terms of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, Hong Kong would become a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China. The handover ceremony in 1997 marked for many, including King Charles III, then Prince of Wales, who was in attendance, \"the end of Empire\", though many British territories that are remnants of the empire still remain.\nLegacy.\nBritain retains sovereignty over 14 territories outside the British Isles. In 1983, the British Nationality Act 1981 renamed the existing Crown Colonies as \"British Dependent Territories\", and in 2002 they were renamed the British Overseas Territories. Most former British colonies and protectorates are members of the Commonwealth of Nations, a voluntary association of equal members, comprising a population of around 2.2\u00a0billion people. The United Kingdom and 14 other countries, all collectively known as the Commonwealth realms, voluntarily continue to share the same person\u2014 King Charles III\u2014as their respective head of state. These 15 nations are distinct and equal legal entities: the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.\nDuring the colonial era, emphasis was given to study of the classical Greco-Roman heritage and their experience with empire, aiming to parse how that heritage could be applied to improve the future of the colonies. American hegemony, which throughout its early rise had challenged British claims of being the \"New Rome\", became the successor to British dominance in the mid-20th century; the two countries' historical ties and wartime collaboration supported a peaceful handoff of power after World War II. As for the United Kingdom itself, British views of the former Empire are more positive than is the case with other post-imperial nations; discourse around the former Empire has continued to impact the nation's present-day understanding of itself, as seen in the debate leading up to its decision to leave the European Union in 2016.\nDecades, and in some cases centuries, of British rule and emigration have left their mark on the independent nations that rose from the British Empire. The empire established the use of the English language in regions around the world. Today it is the primary language of up to 460\u00a0million people and is spoken by about 1.5 billion as a first, second or foreign language. It has also significantly influenced other languages. Individual and team sports developed in Britain, particularly football, cricket, lawn tennis, and golf were exported. Some sports were also invented or standardised in the former colonies, such as badminton, polo, and snooker in India. British missionaries who travelled around the globe often in advance of soldiers and civil servants spread Protestantism (including Anglicanism) to all continents. The British Empire provided refuge for religiously persecuted continental Europeans for hundreds of years. British educational institutions also remain popular in the present day, in part due to the importance of the English language and similarity of British curriculums to those in the former colonies.\nPolitical boundaries drawn by the British did not always reflect homogeneous ethnicities or religions, contributing to conflicts in formerly colonised areas. The British Empire was responsible for large migrations of peoples (see also: Commonwealth diaspora). Millions left the British Isles, with the founding settler colonist populations of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand coming mainly from Britain and Ireland. Millions of people moved between British colonies, with large numbers of South Asian people emigrating to other parts of the empire, such as Malaysia and Fiji, and Overseas Chinese people to Malaysia, Singapore and the Caribbean; about half of all modern immigration to the Commonwealth nations continues to occur between them. The demographics of the United Kingdom changed after the Second World War owing to immigration to Britain from its former colonies.\nIn the 19th century, innovation in Britain led to revolutionary changes in manufacturing, the development of factory systems, and the growth of transportation by railway and steamship. Debate has also occurred as to what extent the Industrial Revolution, originating from the United Kingdom, was facilitated by or dependent on imperialism. British colonial architecture, such as in churches, railway stations and government buildings, can be seen in many cities that were once part of the British Empire; Western technologies and architecture had been globalised in part due to the Empire's military and administrative requirements. Integration of former colonies into the global economy was also a major legacy. The British choice of system of measurement, the imperial system, continues to be used in some countries in various ways. The convention of driving on the left-hand side of the road has been retained in much of the former empire.\nThe Westminster system of parliamentary democracy has served as the template for the governments of many former colonies, and English common law for legal systems. It has been observed that almost every former colony that emerged as an independent democratic state is a former British colony, though this correlation greatly declines in strength after 30 years of an ex-colony's independence. International commercial contracts are often based on English common law. The British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council still serves as the highest court of appeal for twelve former colonies.\nInterpretations of Empire.\nHistorians' approaches to understanding the British Empire are diverse and evolving. Two key sites of debate over recent decades have been the impact of post-colonial studies, which seek to critically re-evaluate the history of imperialism, and the continued relevance of historians Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, whose work greatly influenced imperial historiography during the 1950s and 1960s. In addition, differing assessments of the empire's legacy remain relevant to debates over recent history and politics, such as the Anglo-American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Britain's role and identity in the contemporary world.\nHistorians such as Caroline Elkins have argued against perceptions of the British Empire as a primarily liberalising and modernising enterprise, criticising its widespread use of violence and emergency laws to maintain power. Common criticisms of the empire include the use of detention camps in its colonies, massacres of indigenous peoples, and famine-response policies. Some scholars, including Amartya Sen, assert that British policies worsened the famines in India that killed millions during British rule. Conversely, historians such as Niall Ferguson say that the economic and institutional development the British Empire brought resulted in a net benefit to its colonies. Other historians treat its legacy as varied and ambiguous. Public attitudes towards the empire within 21st-century Britain have been broadly positive although sentiment towards the Commonwealth has been one of apathy and decline.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["30997172", "4721", "439229", "5171132"], "permutation_1": ["5171132", "4721", "439229", "30997172"], "permutation_2": ["439229", "4721", "5171132", "30997172"], "permutation_3": ["439229", "5171132", "30997172", "4721"]}
{"id": "4hop1__29341_30907_482320_255237", "docs_added": {"5122699": "John Kerry\nAmerican politician and diplomat (born 1943)\nJohn Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician, and diplomat who served as the 68th United States secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 in the administration of Barack Obama. A member of the Forbes family and of the Democratic Party, he previously represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1985 to 2013 and later served as the first U.S. special presidential envoy for climate from 2021 to 2024. Kerry was the Democratic nominee for president of the United States in the 2004 election, narrowly losing to then-incumbent president George W. Bush.\nKerry grew up in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. In 1966, after graduating from Yale University, he enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve, ultimately attaining the rank of lieutenant. During the Vietnam War, Kerry served a brief tour in South Vietnam. While commanding a Swift boat, he sustained three wounds in combat with the Viet Cong, for which he earned three Purple Heart medals. Kerry was also awarded the Silver Star Medal and the Bronze Star Medal for conduct in separate military engagements. After completing his active military service, Kerry returned to the United States and became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. He gained national recognition as an anti-war activist, serving as a spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization. Kerry testified in the Fulbright Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where he described the United States government's policy in Vietnam as the cause of war crimes.\nIn 1972, Kerry entered electoral politics as a Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives in Massachusetts's 5th congressional district, losing to Republican Paul W. Cronin in the general election. He subsequently worked as a radio talk show host and as the executive director of an advocacy organization while attending law school. After a period in private legal practice, he was elected the 66th lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1982. In 1984, Kerry was elected to the United States Senate. In 2004, Kerry won the Democratic presidential nomination alongside Senator John Edwards. He lost the Electoral College and the popular vote by slim margins, winning 251 electors to Bush's 286 and 48.3% of the popular vote to Bush's 50.7%.\nIn January 2013, Kerry was nominated by President Obama to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and was subsequently confirmed by his Senate colleagues. He was U.S. secretary of state throughout the second term of the Obama administration from 2013 to 2017. During his tenure, he initiated the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks and negotiated agreements restricting the nuclear program of Iran, including the 2013 Joint Plan of Action and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In 2015, Kerry signed the Paris Agreement on climate change on behalf of the United States.\nIn January 2021, Kerry returned to government, becoming the first person to hold the position of U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, under President Joe Biden. On March 6, Kerry left this position to work on Biden's 2024 presidential campaign. Kerry was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Biden in May 2024.\nEarly life and education (1943\u20131966).\nJohn Forbes Kerry was born on December 11, 1943, at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado. He is the second of four children born to Richard John Kerry, a U.S. diplomat and lawyer, and Rosemary Forbes, a nurse and social activist. His father was raised Catholic (John's paternal grandparents were Austro-Hungarian Jewish immigrants who converted to Catholicism) and his mother was Episcopalian. He was raised with an elder sister Margaret, a younger sister Diana, and a younger brother Cameron. The children were raised in their father's Catholic faith, and John served as an altar boy.\nKerry was originally considered a military brat, until his father was discharged from the Army Air Corps in 1944. Kerry lived in Groton, Massachusetts his first year and Millis, Massachusetts afterwards before moving to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. at age seven, when his father took a position in the Department of the Navy's Office of General Counsel and soon became a diplomat in the State Department's Bureau of United Nations Affairs.\nAs members of the Forbes and Dudley\u2013Winthrop families, his maternal extended family enjoyed great wealth. Kerry's parents themselves were considered upper-middle class. They turned to his wealthy great-aunt, Clara Winthrop, who paid for his attendance at elite boarding schools, such as Institut Montana Zugerberg, in Zug, Switzerland. Through his maternal ancestry, Kerry also descends from Rev. James McGregor who was among the first 500 Scots-Irish immigrants to Boston Harbor in the 18th century.\nAt the age of ten, Kerry's father took a position as the U.S. Attorney for Berlin. When Kerry was twelve, he crossed into the Soviet Occupation Zone to visit Hitler's bunker and ride through the Brandenburg Gate. \nIn 1957, his father was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway, and Kerry was sent back to the United States to attend boarding school. He first attended the Fessenden School in Newton, Massachusetts, and later St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, where he learned skills in public speaking and began developing an interest in politics. Kerry founded the John Winant Society at St. Paul's to debate the issues of the day; the Society still exists there. In 1960, while at St. Paul's, he played bass in a minor rock band called The Electras with six of his classmates. The band had about five hundred copies of one album printed in 1961, which they sold some of at dances at the school; it was made available on streaming platforms many years later.\nIn 1962, Kerry attended Yale University, majoring in political science and residing in Jonathan Edwards College. By that year, his parents returned to Groton. While at Yale, Kerry briefly dated Janet Auchincloss, the younger half-sister of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Through Auchincloss, Kerry was invited to a day of sailing with then-President John F. Kennedy and his family.\nKerry played on the varsity Yale Bulldogs men's soccer team, earning his only letter in his senior year. He also played freshman and junior varsity hockey and, in his senior year, junior varsity lacrosse. In addition, he was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity and took flying lessons.\nIn his sophomore year, Kerry became the chairman of the Liberal Party of the Yale Political Union, and a year later he served as president of the union. Amongst his influential teachers in this period was Professor H. Bradford Westerfield, who was himself a former president of the Political Union. His involvement with the Political Union gave him an opportunity to be involved with important issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and the New Frontier program. He also became a member of Skull and Bones Society, and traveled to Switzerland through AIESEC Yale.\nUnder the guidance of the speaking coach and history professor Rollin G. Osterweis, Kerry won many debates against other college students from across the nation. In March 1965, as the Vietnam War escalated, he won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that was critical of U.S. foreign policy. In the speech he said, \"It is the spectre of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism and thus, it is self-defeating.\"\nKerry graduated from Yale with a bachelor of arts degree in 1966. Overall, he had below-average grades, graduating with a cumulative average of 76 over his four years. His freshman-year average was a 71, but he improved to an 81 average for his senior year. He never received an \"A\" during his time at Yale; his highest grade was an 89.\nMilitary service (1966\u20131970).\nDuty on USS \"Gridley\".\nOn February 18, 1966, Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserve. He began his active duty military service on August 19, 1966. After completing 16 weeks of Officer Candidate School at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island, Kerry received his officer's commission on December 16, 1966. During the 2004 election, Kerry posted his military records at his website, and permitted reporters to inspect his medical records. In 2005, Kerry released his military and medical records to the representatives of three news organizations, but has not authorized full public access to those records.\nDuring his tour on the guided missile frigate , Kerry requested duty in South Vietnam, listing as his first preference a position as the commander of a Fast Patrol Craft (PCF), also known as a \"Swift boat\". These boats have aluminum hulls and have little or no armor, but are heavily armed and rely on speed. \"I didn't really want to get involved in the war,\" Kerry said in a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. \"When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing.\" However, his second choice of billet was on a river patrol boat, or \"PBR\", which at the time was serving a more dangerous duty on the rivers of Vietnam.\nMilitary honors.\nDuring the night of December 2 and early morning of December 3, 1968, Kerry was in charge of a small boat operating near a peninsula north of Cam Ranh Bay together with a Swift boat (PCF-60). According to Kerry and the two crewmen who accompanied him that night, Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis, they surprised a group of Vietnamese men unloading sampans at a river crossing, who began running and failed to obey an order to stop. As the men fled, Kerry and his crew opened fire on the sampans and destroyed them, then rapidly left. During this encounter, Kerry received a shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow. It was for this injury that Kerry received his first Purple Heart Medal.\nKerry received his second Purple Heart for a wound received in action on the B\u1ed3 \u0110\u1ec1 River on February 20, 1969. The plan had been for the Swift boats to be accompanied by support helicopters. On the way up the Bo De, however, the helicopters were attacked. As the Swift boats reached the C\u1eeda L\u1edbn River, Kerry's boat was hit by a B-40 rocket (rocket propelled grenade round), and a piece of shrapnel hit Kerry's left leg, wounding him. Thereafter, enemy fire ceased and his boat reached the Gulf of Thailand safely. Kerry continues to have shrapnel embedded in his left thigh because the doctors that first treated him decided to remove the damaged tissue and close the wound with sutures rather than make a wide opening to remove the shrapnel. Although wounded like several others earlier that day, Kerry did not lose any time off from duty.\nSilver Star.\nEight days later, on February 28, 1969, came the events for which Kerry was awarded his Silver Star Medal. On this occasion, Kerry was in tactical command of his Swift boat and two other Swift boats during a combat operation. Their mission on the Duong Keo River included bringing an underwater demolition team and dozens of South Vietnamese Marines to destroy enemy sampans, structures and bunkers as described in the story \"The Death Of PCF 43\". Running into heavy small arms fire from the river banks, Kerry \"directed the units to turn to the beach and charge the Viet Cong positions\" and he \"expertly directed\" his boat's fire causing the enemy to flee while at the same time coordinating the insertion of the ninety South Vietnamese troops (according to the original medal citation signed by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt). Moving a short distance upstream, Kerry's boat was the target of a B-40 rocket round; Kerry charged the enemy positions and as his boat hove to and beached, a Viet Cong (\"VC\") insurgent armed with a rocket launcher emerged from a spider hole and ran. While the boat's gunner opened fire, wounding the VC in the leg, and while the other boats approached and offered cover fire, Kerry jumped from the boat to pursue the VC insurgent, subsequently killing him and capturing his loaded rocket launcher.\nKerry's commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander George Elliott, stated to Douglas Brinkley in 2003 that he did not know whether to court-martial Kerry for beaching the boat without orders or give him a medal for saving the crew. Elliott recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, and Zumwalt flew into An Thoi to personally award medals to Kerry and the rest of the sailors involved in the mission. The Navy's account of Kerry's actions is presented in the original signed by Zumwalt. The engagement was documented in an after-action report, a press release written on March 1, 1969, and a historical summary dated March 17, 1969.\nBronze Star.\nOn March 13, 1969, on the B\u00e1i H\u00e1p River, Kerry was in charge of one of five Swift boats that were returning to their base after performing an Operation Sealords mission to transport South Vietnamese troops from the garrison at C\u00e1i N\u01b0\u1edbc and MIKE Force advisors for a raid on a Vietcong camp located on the Rach Dong Cung canal. Earlier in the day, Kerry received a slight shrapnel wound in the buttocks from blowing up a rice bunker. Debarking some but not all of the passengers at a small village, the boats approached a fishing weir; one group of boats went around to the left of the weir, hugging the shore, and a group with Kerry's PCF-94 boat went around to the right, along the shoreline. A mine was detonated directly beneath the lead boat, PCF-3, as it crossed the weir to the left, lifting PCF-3 \"about 2\u20133 ft out of water\".\nJames Rassmann, a Green Beret advisor who was aboard Kerry's PCF-94, was knocked overboard when, according to witnesses and the documentation of the event, a mine or rocket exploded close to the boat. According to the documentation for the event, Kerry's arm was injured when he was thrown against a bulkhead during the explosion. PCF 94 returned to the scene and Kerry rescued Rassmann who was receiving sniper fire from the water. Kerry received the Bronze Star Medal with Combat \"V\" for \"heroic achievement\", for his actions during this incident; he also received his third Purple Heart.\nReturn from Vietnam.\nAfter Kerry's third qualifying wound, he was entitled per Navy regulations to reassignment away from combat duties. Kerry's preferred choice for reassignment was as a military aide in Boston, New York City or Washington, D.C. On April 11, 1969, he reported to the Brooklyn-based Atlantic Military Sea Transportation Service, where he would remain on active duty for the following year as a personal aide to an officer, Rear Admiral Walter Schlech. On January 1, 1970, Kerry was temporarily promoted to full lieutenant. Kerry had agreed to an extension of his active duty obligation from December 1969 to August 1970 in order to perform Swift Boat duty. John Kerry was on active duty in the United States Navy from August 1966 until January 1970. He continued to serve in the Naval Reserve until February 1978.\n\"Swiftboating\" controversy.\nWith the continuing controversy that had surrounded the military service of George W. Bush since the 2000 presidential election (when he was accused of having used his father's political influence to gain entrance to the Texas Air National Guard, thereby protecting himself from conscription into the United States Army, and possible service in the Vietnam War), John Kerry's contrasting status as a decorated Vietnam War veteran posed a problem for Bush's re-election campaign, which Republicans sought to counter by calling Kerry's war record into question. As the presidential campaign of 2004 developed, approximately 250 members of a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT, later renamed Swift Vets and POWs for Truth) opposed Kerry's campaign. The group held press conferences, ran ads and endorsed a book questioning Kerry's service record and his military awards. The group included several members of Kerry's unit, such as Larry Thurlow, who commanded a swift boat alongside of Kerry's, and Stephen Gardner, who served on Kerry's boat. The campaign inspired the widely used political pejorative '\"swiftboating,\" to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. Most of Kerry's former crewmates have stated that SBVT's allegations are false.\nAnti-war activism (1970\u20131971).\nAfter returning to the United States, Kerry moved to Waltham, Massachusetts and joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Then numbering about 20,000, VVAW was considered by some (including the administration of President Richard Nixon) to be an effective, if controversial, component of the antiwar movement. Kerry participated in the \"Winter Soldier Investigation\" conducted by VVAW of U.S. atrocities in Vietnam, and he appears in a film by that name that documents the investigation. According to Nixon Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, \"I didn't approve of what he did, but I understood the protesters quite well\", and he declined two requests from the Navy to court martial Reserve Lieutenant Kerry over his antiwar activity.\nOn April 22, 1971, Kerry appeared before a U.S. Senate committee hearing on proposals relating to ending the war. The day after this testimony, Kerry participated in a demonstration with thousands of other veterans in which he and other Vietnam War veterans threw their medals and service ribbons over a fence erected at the front steps of the United States Capitol building to dramatize their opposition to the war. Jack Smith, a Marine, read a statement explaining why the veterans were returning their military awards to the government. For more than two hours, almost 1,000 angry veterans tossed their medals, ribbons, hats, jackets, and military papers over the fence. Each veteran gave his or her name, hometown, branch of service and a statement. Kerry threw some of his own decorations and awards as well as some given to him by other veterans to throw. As Kerry threw his decorations over the fence, his statement was: \"I'm not doing this for any violent reasons, but for peace and justice, and to try and make this country wake up once and for all.\"\nKerry was arrested on May 30, 1971, during a VVAW march to honor American POWs held captive by North Vietnam. The march was planned as a multi-day event from Concord to Boston, and while in Lexington, participants tried to camp on the village green. At 2:30a.m., local and state police arrested 441 demonstrators, including Kerry, for trespassing. All were given the Miranda Warning and were hauled away on school buses to spend the night at the Lexington Public Works Garage. Kerry and the other protesters later paid a $5 fine, and were released. The mass arrests caused a community backlash and ended up giving positive coverage to the VVAW.\nEarly political career (1972\u20131985).\n1972 congressional election.\nIn 1970, Kerry had considered running for Congress in the Democratic primary against hawkish Democrat Philip J. Philbin of Massachusetts's 3rd congressional district, but deferred in favor of Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest and anti-war activist, who went on to defeat Philbin. In February 1972, Kerry's wife bought a house in Worcester, with Kerry intending to run against the 4th district's aging thirteen-term incumbent Democrat, Harold Donohue. The couple never moved in. After Republican Congressman F. Bradford Morse of the neighboring 5th district announced his retirement and then resignation to become Under-Secretary-General for Political and General Assembly Affairs at the United Nations, the couple instead rented an apartment in Lowell, so that Kerry could run to succeed him.\nIncluding Kerry, the Democratic primary race had 10 candidates, including attorney Paul J. Sheehy, State Representative Anthony R. DiFruscia, John J. Desmond and Robert B. Kennedy. Kerry ran a \"very expensive, sophisticated campaign\", financed by out-of-state backers and supported by many young volunteers. DiFruscia's campaign headquarters shared the same building as Kerry's. On the eve of the September 19 primary, police found Kerry's younger brother Cameron and campaign field director Thomas J. Vallely, breaking into where the building's telephone lines were located. They were arrested and charged with \"breaking and entering with the intent to commit grand larceny\", but the charges were dropped a year later. DiFruscia alleged that the two were trying to disrupt his get-out-the vote efforts. Vallely and Cameron Kerry maintained that they were only checking their own telephone lines because they had received an anonymous call warning that the Kerry lines would be cut.\nDespite the arrests, Kerry won the primary with 20,771 votes (27.56%). Sheehy came second with 15,641 votes (20.75%), followed by DiFruscia with 12,222 votes (16.22%), Desmond with 10,213 votes (13.55%) and Kennedy with 5,632 votes (7.47%). The remaining 10,891 votes were split amongst the other five candidates, with 1970 nominee Richard Williams coming last with just 1,706 votes (2.26%).\nIn the general election, Kerry was initially favored to defeat the Republican candidate, former State Representative Paul W. Cronin, and conservative Democrat Roger P. Durkin, who ran as an Independent. A week after the primary, one poll put Kerry 26-points ahead of Cronin. His campaign called for a national health insurance system, discounted prescription drugs for the unemployed, a jobs program to clean up the Merrimack River and rent controls in Lowell and Lawrence. A major obstacle, however, was the district's leading newspaper, the conservative \"The Sun\". The paper editorialized against him. It also ran critical news stories about his out-of-state contributions and his \"carpetbagging\", because he had only moved into the district in April. Subsequently, released \"Watergate\" Oval Office tape recordings of the Nixon White House showed that defeating Kerry's candidacy had attracted the personal attention of President Nixon. Kerry himself asserts that Nixon sent operatives to Lowell to help derail his campaign.\nThe race was the most expensive for Congress in the country that year and four days before the general election, Durkin withdrew and endorsed Cronin, hoping to see Kerry defeated. The week before, a poll had put Kerry 10 points ahead of Cronin, with Durkin at 13%. In the final days of the campaign, Kerry sensed that it was \"slipping away\" and Cronin emerged victorious by 110,970 votes (53.45%) to Kerry's 92,847 (44.72%). After his defeat, Kerry lamented in a letter to supporters that \"for two solid weeks, [\"The Sun\"] called me un-American, New Left antiwar agitator, unpatriotic, and labeled me every other 'un-' and 'anti-' that they could find. It's hard to believe that one newspaper could be so powerful, but they were.\" He later felt that his failure to respond directly to \"The Sun\"'s attacks cost him the race.\nLaw career.\nAfter Kerry's 1972 defeat, he and his wife bought a house in the Belvidere section of Lowell, Massachusetts, entering a decade which his brother Cameron later called \"the years in exile\". He spent some time working as a fundraiser for the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE), an international humanitarian organization. In September 1973, he entered Boston College Law School. While studying, Kerry worked as a talk radio host on WBZ and, in July 1974, was named executive director of Mass Action, a Massachusetts advocacy association.\nKerry received his juris doctor (J.D.) from Boston College in 1976. While in law school he had been a student prosecutor in the office of the District Attorney of Middlesex County, John J. Droney. After passing the bar exam and being admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1976, he went to work in that office as a full-time prosecutor and moved to Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.\nIn January 1977, Droney promoted him to First Assistant District Attorney, essentially making Kerry his campaign and media surrogate because Droney was afflicted with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease). As First Assistant, Kerry tried cases, which included winning convictions in a high-profile rape case and a murder. He also played a role in administering the office, including initiating the creation of special white-collar and organized crime units, creating programs to address the problems of rape and other crime victims and witnesses, and managing trial calendars to reflect case priorities. In 1978, Kerry launched a criminal investigation against Senator Edward Brooke, regarding \"misstatements\" in his first divorce trial. The inquiry ended with no charges being brought after investigators and prosecutors determined that Brooke's misstatements were pertinent to the case, but were not material enough to have affected the outcome.\nDroney's health was poor and Kerry had decided to run for his position in the 1978 election should Droney drop out. However, Droney was re-elected and his health improved; he went on to re-assume many of the duties that he had delegated to Kerry. Kerry thus decided to leave, departing in 1979 with assistant DA Roanne Sragow to set up their own law firm. Kerry also worked as a commentator for WCVB-TV and co-founded a bakery, Kilvert & Forbes Ltd., with businessman and former Kennedy aide K. Dun Gifford.\nLieutenant Governor of Massachusetts.\nIn the 1982 Massachusetts gubernatorial election, Lieutenant Governor Thomas P. O'Neill III declined to seek a third term, instead deciding to run for governor of Massachusetts. Kerry declared his candidacy, entering the primary election alongside Massachusetts Secretary of Environmental Affairs Evelyn Murphy, State Senator Samuel Rotondi, State Representative Lou Nickinello, and Lois Pines.\nKerry won the nomination with 325,890 votes (29%) to Murphy's 286,378 (25.48%), Rotondi's 228,086 (20.29%), Nickinello's 150,829 (13.42%) and Pines' 132,734 (11.81%). In the concurrent gubernatorial primary, former Governor Michael Dukakis defeated O'Neill and incumbent Governor Edward J. King. The Dukakis and Kerry ticket defeated the Republican ticket of John W. Sears and Leon Lombardi in the general election by 1,219,109 votes (61.92%) to 749,679 (38.08%).\nAs Lieutenant Governor, Kerry led meetings of the Massachusetts Governor's Council. Dukakis also delegated other tasks to Kerry, including serving as the state's liaison to the Federal government of the United States. He was also active on environmental issues, including combating acid rain.\n1984 U.S. Senate election.\nThe junior U.S. senator from Massachusetts, Paul Tsongas, announced in 1984 that he would be stepping down for health reasons. Kerry ran, and as in his 1982 race for Lieutenant Governor, he did not receive the endorsement of the party regulars at the state Democratic convention. Congressman James Shannon, a favorite of House Speaker Tip O'Neill, was the early favorite to win the nomination, and he \"won broad establishment support and led in early polling\". Again as in 1982, however, Kerry prevailed in a close primary.\nIn his general election campaign, Kerry promised to mix liberalism with tight budget controls. He defeated Republican Ray Shamie despite a nationwide landslide for the re-election of Republican President Ronald Reagan, for whom Massachusetts voted by a narrow margin. In his victory speech, Kerry asserted that his win meant that the people of Massachusetts \"emphatically reject the politics of selfishness and the notion that women must be treated as second-class citizens\".\nTsongas resigned on January 2, 1985, one day before the end of his term. Dukakis appointed Kerry to fill the vacancy, giving him seniority over other new senators who were sworn in on January 3, the scheduled start of their new terms.\nU.S. Senate (1985\u20132013).\nIran\u2013Contra hearings.\nOn April 18, 1985, a few months after taking his Senate seat, Kerry and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa traveled to Nicaragua and met the country's president, Daniel Ortega. Although Ortega had won internationally certified elections, the trip was criticized because Ortega and his leftist Sandinista government had strong ties to Cuba and the USSR and were accused of human rights abuses. The Sandinista government was opposed by the right-wing CIA-backed rebels known as the Contras. While in Nicaragua, Kerry and Harkin talked to people on both sides of the conflict. Through the senators, Ortega offered a cease-fire agreement in exchange for the U.S. dropping support of the Contras. The offer was denounced by the Reagan administration as a \"propaganda initiative\" designed to influence a House vote on a $14million Contra aid package, but Kerry said \"I am willing... to take the risk in the effort to put to test the good faith of the Sandinistas.\" The House voted down the Contra aid, but Ortega flew to Moscow to accept a $200million loan the next day, which in part prompted the House to pass a larger $27million aid package six weeks later.\nMeanwhile, Kerry's staff began their own investigations and, on October 14, issued a report that exposed illegal activities on the part of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who had set up a private network involving the National Security Council and the CIA to deliver military equipment to right-wing Nicaraguan rebels (Contras). In effect, North and certain members of the President's administration were accused by Kerry's report of illegally funding and supplying armed militants without the authorization of Congress. Kerry's staff investigation, based on a year-long inquiry and interviews with fifty unnamed sources, is said to raise \"serious questions about whether the United States has abided by the law in its handling of the contras over the past three years\".\nThe Kerry Committee report found that \"the Contra drug links included... payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies.\" The U.S. State Department paid over $806,000 to known drug traffickers to carry humanitarian assistance to the Contras. Kerry's findings provoked little reaction in the media and official Washington.\nThe Kerry report was a precursor to the Iran\u2013Contra affair. On May 4, 1989, North was convicted of charges relating to the Iran/Contra controversy, including three felonies. On September 16, 1991, however, North's convictions were overturned on appeal.\nGeorge H. W. Bush administration.\nOn November 15, 1988, at a businessmen's breakfast in East Lynn, Massachusetts, Kerry made a joke about then-President-elect George H. W. Bush and his running mate, saying \"if Bush is shot, the Secret Service has orders to shoot Dan Quayle.\" He apologized the following day.\nDuring their investigation of General Manuel Noriega, the \"de facto\" ruler of Panama, Kerry's staff found reason to believe that the Pakistan-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) had facilitated Noriega's drug trafficking and money laundering. This led to a separate inquiry into BCCI, and as a result, banking regulators shut down BCCI in 1991. In December 1992, Kerry and Senator Hank Brown, a Republican from Colorado, released \"The BCCI Affair\", a report on the BCCI scandal. The report showed that the bank was crooked and was working with terrorists, including Abu Nidal. It blasted the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, the Customs Service, the Federal Reserve Bank, as well as influential lobbyists and the CIA.\nKerry was criticized by some Democrats for having pursued his own party members, including former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, although Republicans said he should have pressed against some Democrats even harder. The BCCI scandal was later turned over to the Manhattan District Attorney's office.\nPrecursors to presidential bid.\nIn 1996, Kerry faced a difficult re-election fight against Governor William Weld, a popular Republican incumbent who had been re-elected in 1994 with 71% of the vote. The race was covered nationwide as one of the most closely watched Senate races that year. Kerry and Weld held several debates and negotiated a campaign spending cap of $6.9million at Kerry's Beacon Hill townhouse. Both candidates spent more than the cap, with each camp accusing the other of being first to break the agreement. During the campaign, Kerry spoke briefly at the 1996 Democratic National Convention. Kerry won re-election with 52 percent to Weld's 45 percent.\nIn the 2000 presidential election, Kerry found himself close to being chosen as the vice presidential running mate.\nA release from the presidential campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Al Gore listed Kerry on the short list to be selected as the vice-presidential nominee, along with North Carolina Senator John Edwards, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt, New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. Gore ultimately chose Lieberman.\n\"You get stuck in Iraq\" controversy.\nOn October 30, 2006, Kerry was a headline speaker at a campaign rally being held for Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. Speaking to an audience composed mainly of college students, Kerry said, \"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.\"\nThe day after he made the remark, leaders from both sides of the political spectrum criticized Kerry's remarks, which he said were a botched joke. Republicans including President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain and then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, said that Kerry's comments were insulting to American military forces fighting in Iraq. Democratic Representative Harold Ford Jr. called on Kerry to apologize.\nKerry initially stated: \"I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy\". Kerry also responded to criticism from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.\nKerry said that he had intended the remark as a jab at President Bush, and described the remarks as a \"botched joke\", having inadvertently left out the key word \"us\" (which would have been, \"If you don't, you get \"us\" stuck in Iraq\"), as well as leaving the phrase \"just ask President Bush\" off of the end of the sentence. In Kerry's prepared remarks, which he released during the ensuing media frenzy, the corresponding line was \"...you end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush\". He also said that from the context of the speech which, prior to the \"stuck in Iraq\" line, made several specific references to Bush and elements of his biography, that Kerry was referring to President Bush and not American troops in general.\nAfter two days of media coverage, citing a desire not to be a diversion, Kerry apologized to those who took offense at what he called the misinterpretation of his comment.\nAfghanistan and Pakistan.\nA \"Washington Post\" report in May 2011 stated that Kerry \"has emerged in the past few years as an important envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan during times of crisis\", as he undertook another trip to the two countries. The killing of Osama bin Laden \"has generated perhaps the most important crossroads yet\", the report continued, as the senator spoke at a press conference and prepared to fly from Kabul to Pakistan. Among matters discussed during the May visit to Pakistan, under the general rubric of \"recalibrating\" the bilateral relationship, Kerry sought and retrieved from the Pakistanis the tail-section of the U.S. helicopter which had had to be abandoned at Abbottabad during the bin Laden strike. In 2013, Kerry met with Pakistan's army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to discuss the peace process with the Taliban in Afghanistan.\nVoting record.\nOverall.\nMost analyses place Kerry's voting record on the left within the Senate Democratic caucus. During the 2004 presidential election he was portrayed as a staunch liberal by conservative groups and the Bush campaign, who often noted that in 2003 Kerry was rated the top Senate liberal by \"National Journal\". However, that rating was based only upon voting on legislation within that past year. In fact, in terms of career voting records, the \"National Journal\" found that Kerry is the 11th most liberal member of the Senate. Most analyses find that Kerry is at least slightly more liberal than the typical Democratic Senator. Kerry has stated that he opposes privatizing Social Security, supports abortion rights for adult women and minors, supports same-sex marriage, opposes capital punishment except for terrorists, supports most gun control laws, and is generally a supporter of trade agreements. In some of these, as in the case of abortion, Kerry distinguishes his personal views as in line with his Catholic faith, but believes that separation of church and state demands that he not legislate his religious beliefs upon those who do not share those beliefs. Kerry supported the North American Free Trade Agreement and Most Favored Nation status for China, but opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement.\nIn July 1997, Kerry joined his Senate colleagues in voting against ratification of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming without greenhouse gas emissions limits on nations deemed developing, including India and China. Since then, Kerry has attacked President Bush, charging him with opposition to international efforts to combat global warming.\nOn October 1, 2008, Kerry voted for Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, also known as the TARP bailout.\nIraq.\nIn the lead up to the Iraq War, Kerry said on October 9, 2002; \"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.\" Bush relied on that resolution in ordering the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Kerry also gave a January 23, 2003, speech to Georgetown University saying \"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator; leading an oppressive regime he presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.\" Kerry did, however, warn that the administration should exhaust its diplomatic avenues before launching war: \"Mr. President, do not rush to war, take the time to build the coalition, because it's not winning the war that's hard, it's winning the peace that's hard.\"\nAfter the invasion of Iraq, when no weapons of mass destruction were found, Kerry strongly criticized Bush, contending that he had misled the country: \"When the President of the United States looks at you and tells you something, there should be some trust.\"\nLibya.\nIn 2011, Kerry supported American military action in Libya.\nLeadership.\nKerry chaired the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs from 1991 to 1993. The committee's report, which Kerry endorsed, stated there was \"no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia\". In 1994 the Senate passed a resolution, sponsored by Kerry and fellow Vietnam veteran John McCain, that called for an end to the existing trade embargo against Vietnam; it was intended to pave the way for normalization. In 1995, President Bill Clinton normalized diplomatic relations with the country of Vietnam.\nKerry was the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 1987 to 1989. He was reelected to the Senate in 1990, 1996 (after winning re-election against the then-Governor of Massachusetts Republican William Weld), 2002, and 2008. In January 2009, Kerry replaced Joe Biden as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.\nAs a role model for campus leaders across the nation and strong advocate for global development, Kerry was honored by the Millennium Campus Network (MCN) as a Global Generation Award winner in 2011.\nCommittee assignments.\nDuring his tenure, Kerry served on four Senate committees and nine subcommittees:\nSeniority.\nFrom the beginning of the 113th United States Congress until his resignation, Kerry ranked as the 7th most senior U.S. Senator. Due to the longevity of Ted Kennedy's service, Kerry was the most senior \"junior Senator\" in the 111th United States Congress. On Tuesday, August 25, 2009, Kerry became the senior senator from Massachusetts following Ted Kennedy's death.\nSponsorship of legislation.\nAreas of concern in the bills Kerry introduced into the Senate included small business concerns, education, terrorism, veterans' and POW/MIA issues, and marine resource protection. A full list of Kerry's sponsored legislation was available on his Senate web site.\nDuring his Senate career, Kerry was primary sponsor of the following bills (excluding resolutions and amendments sponsored). This table does not count bills which Kerry co-sponsored.\nA chronological list of various bills and resolutions sponsored by Kerry follows.\n2004 presidential campaign.\nIn the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries, John Kerry defeated several Democratic rivals, including Sen. John Edwards (D-North Carolina), former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and retired Army General Wesley Clark. His victory in the Iowa caucuses is widely believed to be the tipping point where Kerry revived his sagging campaign in New Hampshire and the February 3, 2004, primary states like Arizona, South Carolina and New Mexico. Kerry then went on to win landslide victories in Nevada and Wisconsin. Kerry thus won the Democratic nomination to run for President of the United States against incumbent George W. Bush. On July 6, 2004, he announced his selection of John Edwards as his running mate. Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who was Kerry's 2004 campaign adviser, wrote an article in \"Time\" magazine claiming that after the election, Kerry had said that he wished he had never picked Edwards, and that the two have since stopped speaking to each other. In a subsequent appearance on ABC's \"This Week\", Kerry refused to respond to Shrum's allegation, calling it a \"ridiculous waste of time\".\nDuring his bid to be elected president in 2004, Kerry frequently criticized President George W. Bush for starting the Iraq War. While Kerry had initially voted in support of authorizing President Bush to use force in dealing with Saddam Hussein, he voted against an $87billion supplemental appropriations bill to pay for the subsequent war. His statement on March 16, 2004, \"I actually did vote for the $87billion before I voted against it\", helped the Bush campaign to paint him as a flip-flopper and has been cited as contributing to Kerry's defeat.\nOn November 3, 2004, Kerry conceded the race. Kerry won 59.03 million votes, or 48.3 percent of the popular vote; Bush won 62.04 million votes, or 50.7 percent of the popular vote. Kerry carried states with a total of 252 electoral votes. One Kerry elector voted for Kerry's running mate, Edwards, so in the final tally Kerry had 251 electoral votes to Bush's 286. He was the first Democrat since Michael Dukakis in 1988 to lose the popular vote in a presidential election, and until Kamala Harris's loss in 2024, he was the most recent Democrat to do so.\nSubsequent presidential-election activities.\nImmediately after the 2004 election, some Democrats mentioned Kerry as a possible contender for the 2008 Democratic nomination. His brother had said such a campaign was \"conceivable\", and Kerry himself reportedly said at a farewell party for his 2004 campaign staff, \"There's always another four years\".\nKerry established a separate political action committee, Keeping America's Promise, which declared as its mandate \"A Democratic Congress will restore accountability to Washington and help change a disastrous course in Iraq\", and raised money and channeled contributions to Democratic candidates in state and federal races. Through Keeping America's Promise in 2005, Kerry raised over $5.5million for other Democrats up and down the ballot. Through his campaign account and his political action committee, the Kerry campaign operation generated more than $10million for various party committees and 179 candidates for the U.S. House, Senate, state and local offices in 42 states focusing on the midterm elections during the 2006 election cycle. \"Cumulatively, John Kerry has done as much if not more than any other individual senator\", Hassan Nemazee, the national finance chairman of the DSCC said.\nOn January 10, 2008, Kerry endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama for president. He was mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate for Senator Obama, although fellow Senator Joe Biden was eventually chosen. After Biden's acceptance of the vice presidential nomination, speculation arose that John Kerry would be a candidate for Secretary of State in the Obama administration. However, Senator Hillary Clinton was offered the position.\nDuring the 2012 Obama reelection campaign, Kerry participated in one-on-one debate prep with the president, impersonating the Republican candidate Mitt Romney.\nSecretary of State (2013\u20132017).\nNomination and confirmation.\nOn December 15, 2012, several news outlets reported that President Barack Obama would nominate Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, after Susan Rice, widely seen as Obama's preferred choice, withdrew her name from consideration citing a politicized confirmation process following criticism of her response to the 2012 Benghazi attack. On December 21, Obama proposed the nomination, which received positive commentary. His confirmation hearing took place on January 24, 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the same panel where he first testified in 1971. The committee unanimously voted to approve him on January 29, 2013, and the same day the full Senate confirmed him on a vote of 94\u20133. In a letter to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Kerry announced his resignation from the Senate effective February 1.\nTenure.\nKerry was sworn in as Secretary of State on February 1, 2013.\nWhile serving as the Secretary of State, Kerry spoke in the French language on several occasions in his official capacity.\nAfter six months of rigorous diplomacy within the Middle East, Kerry was able to have Israeli and Palestinian negotiators agree to start the 2013\u20132014 Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace talks. Senior U.S. officials stated the two sides were able to meet on July 30, 2013, at the State Department without American mediators following a dinner the previous evening hosted by Kerry.\nOn September 27, 2013, he met with the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the P5+1 and Iran summit, which eventually led to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. It was the highest-level direct contact between the United States and Iran in the last six years, and made him the first U.S. Secretary of State to have met with his Iranian counterpart since 1979 Iranian Revolution.\nIn the State Department, Kerry quickly earned a reputation \"for being aloof, keeping to himself, and not bothering to read staff memos\". Career State Department officials complained that power became too centralized under Kerry's leadership, which slowed department operations when Kerry was on frequent overseas trips. Others in State described Kerry as having \"a kind of diplomatic attention deficit disorder\" as he shifted from topic to topic instead of focusing on long-term strategy. When asked whether he was traveling too much, he responded, \"Hell no. I'm not slowing down.\" Despite Kerry's early achievements, morale at State was lower than under Hillary Clinton, according to department employees. However, after Kerry's first six months in the State Department, a Gallup poll found he had high approval ratings among Americans as Secretary of State. After a year, another poll showed Kerry's favorability continued to rise. Less than two years into Kerry's term, the Foreign Policy Magazine's 2014 Ivory Tower survey of international relations scholars asked, \"Who was the most effective U.S. Secretary of State in the past 50 years?\"; John Kerry and Lawrence Eagleburger tied for 11th place out of the 15 confirmed Secretaries of State in that period.\nIn January 2014, having met with Vatican Secretary of State Archbishop Pietro Parolin, Kerry said: \"We touched on just about every major issue that we are both working on, that are issues of concern to all of us. First of all, we talked at great length about Syria, and I was particularly appreciative for the Archbishop's raising this issue, and equally grateful for the Holy Father's comments\u00a0\u2013 the Pope's comments yesterday regarding his support for the GenevaII process. We welcome that support. It is very important to have broad support, and I know that the Pope is particularly concerned about the massive numbers of displaced human beings and the violence that has taken over 130,000 lives.\"\nKerry expressed support for Israel's right to defend itself during the 2014 Israel\u2013Gaza conflict.\nKerry said the United States supported the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen because Saudi Arabia, an ally, was threatened \"very directly\" by the takeover of neighboring Yemen by the Houthis, but noted that the United States would not reflexively support Saudi Arabia's proxy wars against Iran.\nOn December 28, 2016, soon after United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 passed 14\u20130 with the U.S. abstaining, Kerry joined the rest of the U.N. Security Council in strongly criticizing Israel's settlement policies in a speech. His speech and criticisms met negative reactions from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while UK Prime Minister Theresa May distanced the UK from Kerry's strongly worded speech in what appeared to be an attempt to build bridges with the incoming Trump administration. Kerry's speech received positive reactions from Arab nations, but some criticized his remarks as too little, too late from the outgoing administration.\nSyria.\nFollowing the August 21, 2013, chemical weapons attack on the Ghouta suburbs of Damascus attributed to Syrian government forces, Kerry became a leading advocate for the use of military force against the Syrian government for what he called \"a despot's brutal and flagrant use of chemical weapons\".\nOn September 9, in response to a reporter's question about whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could avert a military strike, Kerry said \"He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that. But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done, obviously.\" This unscripted remark initiated a process that would lead to Syria agreeing to relinquish and destroy its chemical weapons arsenal, as Russia treated Kerry's statement as a serious proposal. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia would work \"immediately\" to convince Syria relinquish and destroy its large chemical weapons arsenal. Syria quickly welcomed this proposal and on September 14, the UN formally accepted Syria's application to join the convention banning chemical weapons, and separately, the U.S. and Russia agreed on a plan to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons by the middle of 2014, leading Kerry to declare on July 20, 2014: \"we struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out\". On September 28, the UN Security Council passed a resolution ordering the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons and condemning the August 21 Ghouta attack.\nLatin America.\nIn a speech before the Organization of American States in November 2013, Kerry remarked that the era of the Monroe Doctrine was over. He went on to explain, \"The relationship that we seek and that we have worked hard to foster is not about a United States declaration about how and when it will intervene in the affairs of other American states. It's about all of our countries viewing one another as equals, sharing responsibilities, cooperating on security issues, and adhering not to doctrine, but to the decisions that we make as partners to advance the values and the interests that we share.\"\nEnvironmentalism.\nIn April 2016, he signed the Paris Climate Accords at the United Nations in New York.\nOn November 11, 2016, Kerry became the first Secretary of State and highest-ranking U.S. official to date to visit Antarctica. Kerry spent two days on the continent meeting with researchers and staying overnight at McMurdo Station.\nIn 1994, Kerry led opposition to continued funding for the Integral Fast Reactor, which resulted in the end of funding for the project. However, in light of increasing concerns regarding climate change, in 2017 Kerry reversed his position on nuclear power, saying \"Given this challenge we face today, and given the progress of fourth generation nuclear: go for it. No other alternative, zero emissions.\"\nGlobal Connect initiative.\nIn September 2015, the U.S. Department of State unveiled a new initiative called \"Global Connect\" which sought to provide internet access to more than 1.5 billion people around the world within five years. In 2016, in partnership with OPIC, Kerry announced an investment of $171million to enable \"a low-cost and rapidly scalable wireless broadband network in India\". OPIC's financing is aimed at helping its Indian Partner, Tikona Digital Networks, to provide Internet through wireless technology.\nOut of government (2017\u20132021).\nKerry retired from his diplomatic work following the end of the Obama administration on January 20, 2017. He did not attend Donald Trump's inauguration on that day, and the following day took part in the 2017 Women's March in Washington, D.C.\nKerry has taken a strong stand against Trump policies and joined in filing a brief arguing against Trump's executive order banning entry of persons from seven Muslim countries. In November 2018, in a \"Guardian Live\" conversation with Andrew Rawnsley, sponsored by \"The Guardian\" at London's Central Hall, Kerry discussed several issues which have developed further since his tenure as Secretary of State, including migration into Europe and climate change.\nOn December 5, 2019, Kerry endorsed Joe Biden's bid for the Democratic nomination for president, saying \"He'll be ready on day one to put back together the country and the world that Donald Trump has broken apart\" and asserting that \"Joe will defeat Donald Trump next November. He's the candidate with the wisdom and standing to fix what Trump has broken, to restore our place in the world, and improve the lives of working people here at home.\"\nFollowing retirement from government service, Kerry signed an agreement with Simon & Schuster for publishing his planned memoirs, dealing with his life and career in government. In September 2018, he published \"Every Day Is Extra\".\nLeaked audiotape.\nOn April 25, 2021, \"The New York Times\" published content from a leaked audiotape of a three-hour taped conversation between economist Saeed Leylaz and Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. The taped conversation was connected to an oral history project, known as \"In the Islamic Republic the military field rules\", which documents the work of Iran's current administration. The tape was obtained by the London-based news channel Iran International.\nIn the tape, which the \"Times\" referred to as \"extraordinary\", Zarif reveals that then-Secretary of State Kerry told him that Israel attacked Iranian assets in Syria, \"at least 200 times\". Although the tape has not been verified, the spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry did not deny its validity.\nNineteen Republican senators signed a letter asking President Biden to investigate Zarif's claim. On April 27, 2021, Republicans called on Kerry to resign from the Biden administration's National Security Council. In a tweet, Kerry denied Zarif's account, writing, \"I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false. This never happened \u2014 either when I was Secretary of State or since.\"\nSpecial Presidential Envoy for Climate (2021\u20132024).\nOn November 23, 2020, President-elect Joe Biden's transition team announced that Kerry would be taking a full-time position in the administration, serving as a special envoy for climate; in this role he will be a principal on the National Security Council. Kerry assumed office on January 20, 2021, following Biden's inauguration.\nClimate cooperation with China.\nIn July 2023, John Kerry visited China for advance climate cooperation. The main achievement of the visit was some progress in the fields of: \"methane reduction commitments; reducing China's reliance on coal; China's objections to trade restrictions on solar panel and battery components; and climate finance.\" This was obtained despite many currently existing obstacles to cooperation. The visit was made in the middle of the 2023 Asia heat wave that set a new record of in Sanbu, Xinjiang, China, which Kerry mentioned in particular.\nClimate cooperation with India.\nAt the end of July 2023, John Kerry visited India. Among others he declared, the US will be committed to the target of delivering 100 billion dollars for climate action to low income countries and no future US president can retreat from climate commitment. He criticized Donald Trump for leaving the Paris agreement before.\nClimate cooperation with countries in the Middle East.\nIn June 2023, Kerry made visits to Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. In Israel, he emphasized the need for climate legislation to reach climate targets and reached an agreement about the renewal of \"Memorandum of understanding between Israel and the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Israel is one of the few developed countries which have still not approved a climate law and lags behind other OECD countries in climate action. Israeli environmental protection minister Idit Silman said that Israel intended to go to COP28 \"with an ambitious and applicable climate law and put the State of Israel on the same level as the developed countries of the OECD.\"\nDeparture.\nOn January 13, 2024, at least three sources close to Kerry revealed that he would step down as U.S. climate envoy by the upcoming spring. He told the \"Financial Times\" he planned to stay active in the climate finance space. He officially resigned from his position on March 6, 2024.\nPersonal and family life.\nAncestry.\nKerry's paternal ancestors came from the Fr\u00e4nkel family, which owned a textile factory in Neustadt, Upper Silesia (now Prudnik, Poland), founded by Samuel Fr\u00e4nkel. The Fr\u00e4nkels originated from Hotzenplotz, Austria (now Osoblaha, Czech Republic) and Z\u00fclz, Prussia (now Bia\u0142a Prudnicka, Poland). Kerry's paternal great-grandmother, Mathilda Fr\u00e4nkel, was born in Oberglogau (now G\u0142og\u00f3wek, near Prudnik) and married Benedikt Kohn from Bennisch (now Horn\u00ed Bene\u0161ov). His grandparents, shoe businessman Frederick A. \"Fred\" Kerry and musician Ida L\u00f6we, immigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the U.S. Fred, his wife, and his brother converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1901, and changed their names from Kohn to Kerry. Ida was of remote ancestry of Rabbi Sinai Loew of Worms, brother of Judah Loew ben Bezalel. Fred and Ida Kerry emigrated to the United States in 1905, living at first in Chicago and eventually moving to Brookline, Massachusetts, by 1915. According to \"The New York Times\", \"[the] brother and sister of John Kerry's paternal grandmother, Otto and Jenni Lowe, died in concentration camps\". Kerry's Jewish ancestry was publicly revealed during his 2004 presidential campaign; he has stated that he was unaware of it until a reporter informed him of it in 2003.\nKerry's maternal ancestors were of Scottish and English descent, and his maternal grandparents were James Grant Forbes II of the Forbes family and Margaret Tyndal Winthrop of the Dudley\u2013Winthrop family. Margaret's paternal grandfather Robert Charles Winthrop served as the 22nd Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Robert's father was Governor Thomas Lindall Winthrop. Thomas' father John Still Winthrop was a great-great-grandson of Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop and great-grandson of Governor Thomas Dudley. Through his mother, Kerry is a first cousin once removed of French politician Brice Lalonde.\nMarriages and children.\nKerry was married to Julia Thorne in 1970, and they had two daughters together: documentary filmmaker Alexandra Kerry (born September 5, 1973) and physician Vanessa Kerry (born December 31, 1976).\nAlexandra was born days before Kerry began law school. In 1982, Julia asked Kerry for a separation while she was suffering from severe depression. They were divorced on July 25, 1988, and the marriage was formally annulled in 1997. \"After 14 years as a political wife, I associated politics only with anger, fear and loneliness\", she wrote in \"A Change of Heart\", her book about depression. Thorne later married Richard Charlesworth, an architect, and moved to Bozeman, Montana, where she became active in local environmental groups such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Thorne supported Kerry's 2004 presidential run. She died of cancer on April 27, 2006.\nKerry and his second wife\u2014Portuguese-born businesswoman and philanthropist Teresa Heinz, the widow of Kerry's late Pennsylvania Republican Senate colleague John Heinz\u2014were introduced to each other by Heinz at an Earth Day rally in 1990. Early the following year, Senator Heinz was killed in a plane crash near Lower Merion. Teresa has three sons from her marriage to Heinz, Henry John IV, Andr\u00e9, and Christopher. Heinz and Kerry were married on May 26, 1995, in Nantucket, Massachusetts.\nNet worth.\nThe \"Forbes 400\" survey estimated in 2004 that Teresa Heinz Kerry had a net worth of $750million. However, estimates have frequently varied, ranging from around $165million to as high as $3.2billion, according to a study in the \"Los Angeles Times\". Regardless of which figure is correct, Kerry was the wealthiest U.S. Senator while serving in the Senate. Independent of Heinz, Kerry is wealthy in his own right, and is the beneficiary of at least four trusts inherited from Forbes family relatives, including his mother, Rosemary Forbes Kerry, who died in 2002. \"Forbes\" magazine (named for the Forbes family of publishers, unrelated to Kerry) estimated that if elected, and if Heinz family assets were included, Kerry would have been the third-richest U.S. president in history, when adjusted for inflation. This assessment was based on Heinz's and Kerry's combined assets, but the couple signed a prenuptial agreement that keeps their assets separate. Kerry's financial disclosure form for 2011 put his personal assets in the range of $230,000,000 to $320,000,000, including the assets of his spouse and any dependent children. This included slightly more than $3,000,000 worth of H. J. Heinz Company assets, which increased in value by over $600,000 in 2013 when Berkshire Hathaway announced their intention to purchase the company.\nIn April 2017, Kerry purchased an 18-acre property on the northwest corner of Martha's Vineyard overlooking Vineyard Sound in the town of Chilmark, Massachusetts. The property is located in Seven Gates Farm and according to property records, cost $11.75million for the seven bedroom home.\nReligious beliefs.\nKerry is a Roman Catholic, and is said to have carried a religious rosary, a prayer book, and a St. Christopher medal (the patron saint of travelers) when he campaigned. Discussing his faith, Kerry said: \"I thought of being a priest. I was very religious while at school in Switzerland. I was an altar boy and prayed all the time. I was very centered around the Mass and the church.\" He also said that the Letters of Paul (Apostle Paul) moved him the most, stating that they taught him to \"not feel sorry for myself\".\nKerry told \"Christianity Today\" in October 2004:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I'm a Catholic and I practice, but at the same time I have an open-mindedness to many other expressions of spirituality that come through different religions... I've spent some time reading and thinking about religion and trying to study it, and I've arrived at not so much a sense of the differences, but a sense of the similarities in so many ways.\nHe said that he believed that the Torah, the Quran, and the Bible all share a fundamental story which connects with readers.\nHealth.\nIn 2003, Kerry was diagnosed with and successfully treated for prostate cancer. On May 31, 2015, Kerry broke his right leg in a biking accident in Scionzier, France, and was flown to Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital for recovery. MGH Hip and Knee Replacement Orthopaedic Surgeon Dr. Dennis Burke, who had met Kerry in France and had accompanied him in the plane from France to Boston, set Kerry's right leg on Tuesday, June 2, in a four-hour operation.\nAthletics and sailing.\nIn addition to the sports he played at Yale, Kerry is described by \"Sports Illustrated\", among others, as an \"avid cyclist\", primarily riding on a road bike. Prior to his presidential bid, Kerry had participated in several long-distance rides. During his many campaigns, he was reported to have visited bicycle stores in both his home state and elsewhere. His staff requested recumbent stationary bikes for his hotel rooms. He has also been a snowboarder, windsurfer, and sailor.\nThe \"Boston Herald\" reported on July 23, 2010, that Kerry commissioned construction on a new $7million yacht (a Friendship 75) in New Zealand and moored it in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where the Friendship yacht company is based. The article claimed this allowed him to avoid paying Massachusetts taxes on the property including approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $500. On July 27, Kerry stated he would voluntarily pay $500,000 in Massachusetts taxes on his yacht.\nHonors.\nJohn Kerry was awarded:\nHonorary degrees.\nJohn Kerry has received several honorary degrees in recognition of his service to the United States, These include:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "128413": "Yadkinville, North Carolina\nYadkinville is a town in Yadkin County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 2,995 at the 2020 census. Located in the Piedmont Triad, it is the county seat and most populous city of Yadkin County.\nHistory.\nThe area was chosen as the county seat with the founding of Yadkin County in 1850. It was first known as Wilson, in honor of Louis D. Wilson, a legislator who died in the Mexican War. However, the name was changed to Yadkinville in 1852 after it was discovered that another area, Wilson, North Carolina, already had the name. At the time the county seat was established, there was only one house in town. Yadkinville was incorporated in 1857.\nThe first courthouse, a two-story brick building, was built in 1853 by William White of Hamptonville, North Carolina. The bricks were handmade on a farm north of town. The courthouse was torn down in 1958 and a new building was constructed.\nThe Second Yadkin County Jail was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.\nGeography.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , all land.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2020 census.\nAs of the 2020 United States census, there were 2,995 people, 1,161 households, and 599 families residing in the town.\n2000 census.\nAccording to the 2000 census, there were 2,818 people, 959 households, and 641 families residing in the town. The population density was . There were 1,026 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the town was 85.84% White, 6.53% African American, 0.04% Native American, 0.18% Asian, 6.32% from other races, and 1.10% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 18.81% of the population.\nThere were 959 households; 30.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 49.8% were married couples living together, 11.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 33.1% were non-families. 30.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 14.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.51, and the average family size was 3.10.\nIn the town, the population was spread out, with 23.0% under the age of 18, 8.1% from 18 to 24, 27.3% from 25 to 44, 20.4% from 45 to 64, and 21.3% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females, there were 91.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 85.6 males.\nThe median income for a household in the town was $31,250, and the median income for a family was $45,000. Males had a median income of $25,172 versus $25,273 for females. The per capita income for the town was $14,792. About 10.6% of families and 14.4% of the population were below the poverty line, including 19.1% of those under age 18 and 13.9% of those age 65 or over.\nArts and culture.\nYadkinville is known locally for its \"Harvest Festival\" and \"Grape Festival,\" which honors the Yadkin Valley Vineyards as well as other vineyards around North Carolina and Virginia.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1297662": "2004 United States presidential election\nPresidential elections were held in the United States on November 2, 2004. Incumbent Republican President George W. Bush and his running mate, incumbent Vice President Dick Cheney, were re-elected to a second term. They narrowly defeated the Democratic ticket of John Kerry, a senator from Massachusetts, and his running mate John Edwards, a senator from North Carolina.\nBush and Cheney were renominated by their party with no difficulty. Meanwhile, the Democrats engaged in a competitive primary. Kerry emerged as the early-front runner but was faced with serious opposition by former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who briefly surged ahead of Kerry in the polls. Kerry won the first set of primaries in January and re-emerged as the front-runner, and Dean dropped out in February. Kerry clinched his party's nomination in March after a series of primary victories over runner-up Edwards, who he ultimately selected to be his running mate.\nThe September 11 attacks in 2001 decisively reshaped Bush's foreign policy goals and garnered him near-universal support early in his term. However, by 2004 his handling of the war on terror attracted serious debate, particularly over his handling of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Bush presented himself as a decisive leader and attacked Kerry as a \"flip-flopper\". Kerry criticized Bush's conduct of the Iraq War, despite having voted for it himself. Domestic issues were debated as well, including the economy and jobs, health care, abortion, same-sex marriage, and embryonic stem cell research.\nBush won by a narrow margin of 35 electoral votes and took 50.7% of the popular vote. Bush swept the South and the Mountain states and took the crucial swing states of Ohio, Iowa, and New Mexico, the last two flipping Republican. Although Kerry flipped New Hampshire, Bush won both more electoral votes and states than in 2000. Ohio was the tipping-point state, and was considered to be the state that allowed Bush to win reelection. Some aspects of the election process were subject to controversy, although not to the degree seen in the 2000 presidential election. Bush won Florida by a 5% margin, a significant improvement over his razor-thin victory margin in the state four years earlier which led to a legal challenge in \"Bush v. Gore\". This remains the most recent presidential election in which the Republican candidate won Colorado, New Mexico, and Virginia.\nAt the time, Bush received the most popular votes in history, a record which would be broken in 2008. Bush's win was the only Republican popular vote victory during the eight elections from 1992 to 2020. As of 2025, Bush is the only Republican president since 1984 to have won re-election to a consecutive second term.\nBackground.\nGeorge W. Bush won the presidency in 2000 after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in \"Bush v. Gore\" remanded the case to the Florida Supreme Court, which declared there was not sufficient time to hold a recount without violating the U.S. Constitution. Just eight months into his presidency, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, suddenly transformed Bush into a wartime president. Bush's approval ratings surged to near 90%. Within a month, the forces of a coalition led by the United States entered Afghanistan, which had been sheltering Osama bin Laden, suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks. The Taliban had been removed by December, although a long reconstruction would follow.\nThe Bush administration then turned its attention to Iraq and argued the need to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq had become urgent. Among the stated reasons were that Saddam's regime had tried to acquire nuclear material and had not properly accounted for biological and chemical material it was known to have previously possessed. Both the possession of these weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and the failure to account for them, would violate the UN sanctions. The assertion about WMD was hotly advanced by the Bush administration from the beginning, but other major powers including China, France, Germany, and Russia remained unconvinced that Iraq was a threat and refused to allow passage of a UN Security Council resolution to authorize the use of force. Iraq permitted UN weapon inspectors in November 2002, who were continuing their work to assess the WMD claim when the Bush administration decided to proceed with war without UN authorization and told the inspectors to leave the country. The United States invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003, along with a \"coalition of the willing\" that consisted of additional troops from the United Kingdom, and to a lesser extent, from Australia and Poland. Within about three weeks, the invasion caused the collapse of both the Iraqi government and its armed forces; however, the U.S. and allied forces failed to find any weapon of mass destruction in Iraq. Nevertheless, on May 1, Bush landed on the aircraft carrier , in a Lockheed S-3 Viking, where he gave a speech announcing the end of \"major combat operations\" in the Iraq War.\nNominations.\nRepublican nomination.\nBush was able to ward off any serious challenge to the Republican nomination. Senator Lincoln Chafee from Rhode Island considered challenging Bush on an anti-war platform in New Hampshire but decided not to run after the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003. On March 10, 2004, Bush officially attained the number of delegates needed to be nominated at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. He accepted the nomination on September 2, 2004, and retained Vice President Dick Cheney as his running mate. During the convention and throughout the campaign, Bush focused on two themes: defending America against terrorism and building an ownership society. The ownership society included allowing people to invest some of their Social Security in the stock market, increasing home and stock ownership, and encouraging more people to buy their own health insurance.\nDemocratic Party nomination.\nDemocratic primaries.\nThe 2004 Democratic Party presidential primaries took place from January 14 to June 8, 2004, to select the Democratic Party's nominee for president. Before the primaries, Vermont governor Howard Dean was a favorite to win the nomination; however, Massachusetts senator John Kerry won victories in two early races: the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. These wins strengthened Kerry's previously weak campaign. By March 11, Kerry had received enough delegates to win the nomination. Other major candidates included North Carolina senator John Edwards and retired U.S. Army general Wesley Clark. Kerry asked Republican senator John McCain to be his running mate but McCain turned down his offer. On July 6, Kerry selected Edwards as his running mate, shortly before the 2004 Democratic National Convention was held later that month in Boston.\nDemocratic National Convention.\nHeading into the convention, the Kerry\u2013Edwards ticket unveiled its new slogan: a promise to make America \"stronger at home and more respected in the world\". Kerry made his Vietnam War experience the convention's prominent theme. The keynote address at the convention was delivered by Illinois state senator and U.S. Senate candidate and future president Barack Obama; the speech was well received, and it elevated Obama's status within the Democratic Party.\nOther nominations.\nThere were four other presidential tickets on the ballot in a number of states totaling enough electoral votes to have a theoretical possibility of winning a majority in the Electoral College. They were:\nIssues unique to the election.\nElectronic voting machines.\nAhead of the 2004 election, some states implemented electronic voting systems. Critics raised several issues about voting machines, particularly those made by Diebold Election Systems. Cybersecurity professionals found security vulnerabilities in Diebold machines. Voting machines made by several companies were also criticized for their lack of a paper trail, which would have made results easier to verify. Democrats also criticized various executives at Diebold, Inc. (the parent company of Diebold Election Systems) for their support of Bush's campaign, stating that it constituted a conflict of interest. Following these issues, California banned the use of Diebold's AccuVote TSX voting machines for elections in 2004.\nCampaign law changes.\nThe 2004 election was the first to be affected by the campaign finance reforms mandated by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. The act created restrictions on fundraising by political parties and candidates. A large number of independent 527 groups were created to bypass these restrictions. Named for a section of the Internal Revenue Code, these groups were able to raise large amounts of money for various political causes as long as they did not coordinate their activities with political campaigns. Examples of 527s include Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, MoveOn.org, the Media Fund, and America Coming Together. These groups were active throughout the campaign season, spending a record $556 million for all elections in 2004.\nThe Stand by Your Ad provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act required political advertisements on television to include a verbal disclaimer identifying the organization or campaign responsible for the advertisement. This provision was intended to force campaigns to take responsibility for negative advertisements. Campaign strategists criticized this requirement, stating that it would waste time and cause voters to be confused.\nGeneral election campaign.\nCampaign issues.\nBush focused his campaign on national security, presenting himself as a decisive leader and contrasted Kerry as a \"flip-flopper.\" This strategy was designed to convey to American voters the idea that Bush could be trusted to be tough on terrorism while Kerry would be \"uncertain in the face of danger.\" In the final months before the election, Kerry's campaign focused on domestic issues such as the economy and health care. Kerry's campaign managers believed that Kerry had an advantage on domestic issues. Bush's campaign also focused on increasing voter turnout among conservatives. According to one exit poll, people who voted for Bush cited the issues of terrorism and traditional values as the most important factors in their decision. Kerry supporters cited the war in Iraq, the economy and jobs, and health care.\nEconomy.\nTax cuts were passed in 2001 and 2003 under the Bush administration with Bush's support. Kerry voted against these tax cuts. During the 2004 campaign, Bush praised these tax cuts, stating that they helped to grow the economy. On the other hand, Kerry attacked Bush for failing to create jobs under his presidency. Kerry stated that he wanted to reduce the United States budget deficit by capping government spending while ending various tax breaks for businesses. Kerry also supported tax credits for businesses that hire additional workers. Bush attacked Kerry for his economic proposals, stating that they would cause Americans to pay higher taxes. Bush also attacked Kerry for previously supporting tax raises, such as a proposed increase on the federal gas tax.\nForeign policy.\nBush defended the Iraq War, arguing that it was necessary to stop terrorism. He also said that the United States had made progress stopping terrorism in other nations. Bush attacked Kerry for opposing the Iraq War after voting to authorize it in 2002, characterizing the shift as one of many flip-flops by Kerry. Kerry argued that Bush had misled the American public in pursuing the Iraq War, noting that no illegal weapons had been found in Iraq. He said that the Iraq War was a mistake and a diversion from terrorism in other nations such as Afghanistan. After the election, exit polls found that foreign policy concerns were the most important issues for voters.\nHealth care.\nHealth savings accounts (HSAs) were introduced in 2004 as part of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act, signed by Bush in December 2003. As part of his 2004 campaign, Bush supported the expansion of HSAs. He proposed tax cuts to help Americans purchase their own health insurance. He also proposed a plan that would allow small businesses to purchase health insurance in large groups. Kerry's health care proposals included government subsidies for businesses that provide health insurance and the expansion of government-run health care programs. Health policy experts stated that Bush's proposals would have a more limited impact than Kerry's proposals. Kerry also attacked Bush for his policy on stem cell research. In 2001, the Bush administration restricted embryonic stem cell research to existing stem cell lines. Kerry stated that this restriction was a barrier to conducting important research.\nSame-sex marriage.\nIn July 2004, Bush announced his support for a Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, shortly before the Senate voted on the amendment. Although Kerry stated that he opposed same-sex marriage, he also opposed the amendment, saying that the legality of same-sex marriage should be decided by individual states. The Senate vote failed on July 14.\nControversies.\nBush military service controversy.\nDuring the campaign, Bush was accused of failing to fulfill his required service in the Texas Air National Guard. A scandal occurred at CBS News after they aired a segment on \"60 Minutes Wednesday\", introducing what became known as the Killian documents. These documents were allegedly written by Jerry B. Killian, Bush's squadron commander, and they contained various allegations about Bush's service. Serious doubts about the documents' authenticity quickly emerged, leading CBS to appoint a review panel that eventually resulted in the firing of the news producer and other significant staffing changes. The Killian documents were eventually concluded to be forgeries.\nKerry military service controversy.\nKerry was accused by the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth of distorting his military service in Vietnam. The group challenged the legitimacy of each of the combat medals awarded to Kerry by the U.S. Navy, and the disposition of his discharge. The organization spent $22.4 million in advertisements against Kerry. After the election, political analysts described their advertising campaign as effective. The term swiftboating was used during the campaign to describe the organization's negative advertising, which Democrats saw as unfair. It was also used after the campaign to generally describe a harsh attack by a political opponent that is dishonest, personal and unfair.\nPresidential debates.\nThree presidential debates and one vice presidential debate were organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates, and held in the autumn of 2004.\nOsama bin Laden videotape.\nOn October 29, four days before the election, excerpts of a video of Osama bin Laden addressing the American people were broadcast on al Jazeera. In his remarks, bin Laden mentions the September 11 attacks, and taunted Bush over his response to them. In the days following the video's release, Bush's lead over Kerry increased by several points.\nElectoral College forecasts.\nElections analysts and political pundits issue probabilistic forecasts of the composition of the Electoral College. These forecasts use a variety of factors to estimate the likelihood of each candidate winning the Electoral College electors for that state. Most election predictors use the following ratings:\nBelow is a list of states considered by one or more forecast to be competitive; states that are deemed to be \"safe\" or \"solid\" by forecasters \"The Cook Political Report\", \"The New York Times\", and CNN.\n<templatestyles src=\"template:sticky header/styles.css\"/>\nResults.\nSource (Electoral and Popular Vote): Federal Elections Commission Electoral and Popular Vote Summary\nVoting age population: 215,664,000\nPercent of voting age population casting a vote for president: 56.70%\n(a) \"One faithless elector from Minnesota cast an electoral vote for John Edwards (written as John Ewards) for president.\"\n(b) \"In Montana, Karen Sanchirico was listed on the ballot as Nader's running mate, not Camejo. In Alabama, Jan D. Pierce was Nader's running mate. In New York, Nader appeared on two distinct tickets, one with Camejo and one with Pierce.\"\n(c) \"Because Arrin Hawkins, then aged 28, was constitutionally ineligible to serve as vice president, Margaret Trowe replaced her on the ballot in some states. James Harris replaced Calero on certain other states' ballots.\"\nResults by state.\nOf the 3,154 counties/districts/independent cities making returns, Bush won the popular vote in 2,568 (81.42%) while Kerry carried 586 (18.58%). The following table records the official vote tallies for each state as reported by the official Federal Election Commission report. The column labeled \"Margin\" shows Bush's margin of victory over Kerry (the margin is negative for states and districts won by Kerry).\nAlthough Guam has no votes in the Electoral College, it has held a straw poll for its presidential preference since 1980. In 2004, the results were Bush 21,490 (64.1%), Kerry 11,781 (35.1%), Nader 196 (0.58%) and Badnarik 67 (0.2%). Maine and Nebraska each allowed for their electoral votes to be split between candidates. In both states, two electoral votes were awarded to the winner of the statewide race and one electoral vote was awarded to the winner of each congressional district.\nClose states.\nRed font color denotes those won by Republican President George W. Bush; blue denotes states won by Democrat John Kerry.\nStates where margin of victory was under 1% (22 electoral votes):\nStates where margin of victory was more than 1% but less than 5% (93 electoral votes):\nStates where margin of victory was more than 5% but less than 10% (149 electoral votes):\nStatistics.\nCounties with highest percent of vote (Republican)\nCounties with highest percent of vote (Democratic)\nFinance.\nMoney spent\nSource: FEC\n2004 United States Electoral College.\nOne elector in Minnesota cast a ballot for president with the name of \"John Ewards\" [\"sic\"] written on it. The Electoral College officials certified this ballot as a vote for Edwards for president. The remaining nine electors cast ballots for Kerry. All ten electors in the state cast ballots for Edwards for vice president (Edwards's name was spelled correctly on all ballots for vice president). This was the first time in U.S. history that an elector had cast a vote for the same person to be both president and vice president. Electoral balloting in Minnesota was performed by secret ballot, and none of the electors admitted to casting the Edwards vote for president, so it may never be known who the faithless elector was. It is not even known whether the vote for Edwards was deliberate or unintentional; the Republican Secretary of State and several of the Democratic electors have expressed the opinion that this was an accident.\nStatistical analysis.\nDuring the campaign and as the results came in on the night of the election, there was much focus on Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. These three swing states were seen as evenly divided, and with each casting 20 electoral votes or more, they had the power to decide the election. As the final results came in, Kerry took Pennsylvania and then Bush took Florida, focusing all attention on Ohio.\nThe morning after the election, the winner was still undetermined. The result in Ohio would decide the winner, although the results in New Mexico and Iowa were also undetermined. Bush led in Ohio, but the state was still counting provisional ballots. In the afternoon of the day after the election, Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell announced that there were roughly 135,000 provisional ballots remaining. Kerry's campaign believed that it was statistically impossible to erase Bush's lead. Faced with this announcement, Kerry conceded defeat.\nBush became the first Republican to ever win without carrying New Hampshire, and the first to win the popular vote without Vermont and Illinois. This was the last time a president was re-elected to a consecutive term with a higher share of the electoral vote. Bush carried Colorado despite the state being Kerry's birth state. Bush simultaneously lost his own birth state of Connecticut, making this the only election since 1864 where neither candidate carried their birth state. This election was the first time since 1976 that New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, Illinois, Michigan, and California voted for the losing candidate in the popular vote, as well as the first since 1980 that Maryland did so, and the first since 1948 that Delaware did so. Bush's 2.4% popular vote margin is the smallest ever for a re-elected incumbent president, surpassing the 1812 election.\nBush won three states that have not voted Republican since: Virginia, Colorado, and New Mexico. Virginia had voted Republican in every election from 1968 to 2004 but conversely has voted Democratic in every election since 2008. In contrast, this is the last election in which the losing candidate won any of the following states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. This is also the last time a Republican was elected without carrying Maine's 2nd congressional district. This election is the only time in history that every Northeastern state voted Democratic and every former Confederate state voted Republican in the same election. Thus, Bush is the only candidate to win without carrying any Northeastern electoral votes. Furthermore, this was the last election where both major party tickets consisted entirely of white men. This is also the last election where both parties flipped states and is also the most recent year when an incumbent candidate from either party would flip any states, with Bush taking the two which he did not win in 2000, in both New Mexico and Iowa.\nUntil 2024[ [update]], this was the last time Nevada voted for the Republican presidential candidate, and the only presidential election since 1988 in which the Republican nominee won the popular vote with a majority, and it remains the only presidential election since 1984 in which the incumbent Republican president won a second consecutive term. Bush also became the only incumbent president to win consecutive re-election after previously losing the popular vote. Bush is the seventh Republican to have won re-election to a consecutive term, along with Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, William McKinley, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. The 2004 election had the highest turnout rate among eligible voters since 1968. This is one of only four U.S. presidential elections in which the winner did not carry any of the three Rust Belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin; the others were 2000, 1916 and 1884.\nThis was the first presidential election since 1988 where a candidate won a majority of the popular vote. This was the last time a Republican candidate won the national popular vote until Donald Trump in 2024. This remains the most recent presidential election in which both major party candidates flipped at least one state. In addition, this was one of only two elections in the 21st century in which a candidate from either party won fewer than 20 states, with the other being 2024, when Kamala Harris also won 19 states. This is the earliest presidential election of which all four of the presidential and vice presidential candidates of both major parties are still alive, and is the most recent to date in which both major party tickets did not include a woman or person of color. This along with the previous election would be the only ones between 1980 and 2024 where the winner won fewer than 300 electoral votes (or below 55% of the electoral college vote).\nVoter demographics.\nSource: \"CNN\" exit poll ()\nAftermath.\nThis is one of only two U.S. presidential elections, held since the Democrats and Republicans became the two major parties in U.S. politics, in which the winner did not carry any of the three Rust Belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin; the other was 2000, when Bush was first elected.\nVoting problems in Ohio.\nAfter the election, activists and election scholars criticized various issues with the election in Ohio. Long lines at polling places over seven hours were reported. An electronic voting machine erroneously gave thousands of extra votes to Bush. Professor Edward B. Foley stated that he believed that Ohio's voting problems did not affect the outcome.\nObjections and conspiracy theories.\nAfter the election, many blogs published false rumors claiming to show evidence that voter fraud had prevented Kerry from winning. Although the overall result of the election was not challenged by the Kerry campaign, Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb and Libertarian Party presidential candidate Michael Badnarik obtained a recount in Ohio. This recount was completed December 28, 2004, although on January 24, 2007, a jury convicted two Ohio elections officials of selecting precincts to recount where they already knew the hand total would match the machine total, thereby avoiding having to perform a full recount. Independent candidate Ralph Nader obtained a recount in 11 New Hampshire precincts that used Accuvote voting machines.\nAt the official counting of the electoral votes on January 6, an objection was made under the Electoral Count Act (now \u00a0\u00a7\u00a015) to Ohio's electoral votes. Because the motion was supported by at least one member of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the law required that the two houses separate to debate and vote on the objection. In the House of Representatives, the objection was supported by 31 Democrats. It was opposed by 178 Republicans, 88 Democrats and one independent. Not voting were 52 Republicans and 80 Democrats. Four people elected to the House had not yet taken office, and one seat was vacant. In the Senate, it was supported only by its maker, Barbara Boxer, with 74 senators opposed and 25 not voting. During the debate, no Senator argued that the outcome of the election should be changed by either court challenge or revote. Boxer claimed that she had made the motion not to challenge the outcome but \"to cast the light of truth on a flawed system which must be fixed now\".\nKerry would later state that \"the widespread irregularities make it impossible to know for certain that the [Ohio] outcome reflected the will of the voters\". In the same article, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said: \"I'm not confident that the election in Ohio was fairly decided... We know that there was substantial voter suppression, and the machines were not reliable. It should not be a surprise that the Republicans are willing to do things that are unethical to manipulate elections. That's what we suspect has happened.\"\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "16473614": "Lone Hickory, North Carolina\nLone Hickory is an unincorporated community in southern Yadkin County, North Carolina, United States, west of Courtney. It is located on Lone Hickory road, approximately one mile southeast of the road's western terminus at U.S. Route 21.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["5122699", "16473614", "1297662", "128413"], "permutation_1": ["1297662", "5122699", "16473614", "128413"], "permutation_2": ["5122699", "128413", "16473614", "1297662"], "permutation_3": ["5122699", "1297662", "128413", "16473614"]}
{"id": "4hop2__339729_22831_51791_16315", "docs_added": {"30997172": "Al-Berka\nAl-Berka (Arabic:\u0627\u0644\u0628\u0631\u0643\u0629) is a Basic People's Congress administrative division of Benghazi, Libya. As of the 2011 Libyan revolution, the area is simply known as a district of Benghazi after the Gaddafi era Basic People's Congresses were disbanded. \nHistory.\nAl-Berka is one of the oldest districts in Benghazi and has buildings which attest to both its Ottoman and Italian era routes. One such example is the Hadiya mosque built in the early 20th century.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "5171132": "Ottoman Tripolitania\nSemi-autonomous state affiliated with the Ottoman Empire (1551\u20131912)\nOttoman Tripolitania, also known as the Regency of Tripoli, was officially ruled by the Ottoman Empire from 1551 to 1912. It corresponded roughly to the northern parts of modern-day Libya in historic Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. It was initially established as an Ottoman province ruled by a pasha (governor) in Tripoli who was appointed from Constantinople, though in practice it was semi-autonomous due to the power of the local Janissaries. From 1711 to 1835, the Karamanli dynasty ruled the province as a \"de facto\" hereditary monarchy while remaining under nominal Ottoman suzerainty. In 1835, the Ottomans reestablished direct control over the region until its annexation by Italy in 1912.\nLike the Ottoman regencies in Tunis and Algiers, the Regency of Tripoli was a major base for the privateering activities of the North African corsairs, who also provided revenues for Tripoli. A remnant of the centuries of Turkish rule is the presence of a population of Turkish origin, and those of partial Turkish origin, the \"Kouloughlis\".\nHistory.\nOttoman conquest.\nBy the beginning of the 16th\u00a0century the Libyan coast had minimal central authority and its harbours were havens for unchecked bands of pirates. The Spaniards occupied Tripoli in 1510, but the Spaniards were more concerned with controlling the port than with the inconveniences of administering a colony. In 1530 the city, along with Malta and Gozo, was ceded by Charles\u00a0I of Spain to the Knights of St\u00a0John as compensation for their recent expulsion from the island of Rhodes at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. Christian rule lasted then until 1551, when Tripoli was besieged and conquered by famed Ottoman admirals Sinan Pasha and Turgut Reis. Declared as Bey and later Pasha of Tripoli, Turgut Reis received submission from the tribes of the interior and several cities like Misrata, Zuwara, Gharyan, and Gafsa in the next decade. These efforts contributed to cement the foundations of a statal structure in what is today Libya, but control from Constantinople remained loose at best, much like in the rest of the Barbary Coast of North Africa.\nUnder the Ottomans, the Maghreb was divided into three provinces, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. After 1565, administrative authority in Tripoli was vested in a Pasha directly appointed by the Sultan in Constantinople. The sultan supported the pasha with a corps of janissaries who he was dependent upon, which was in turn divided into a number of companies under the command of a junior officer or \"bey\". The janissaries quickly became the dominant force in Ottoman Libya and were also in charge of collecting taxes; however, Barbary corsairs were the ones who steadily provided income to Tripoli from privateering activities. As a self-governing military guild answerable only to their own laws and protected by a \"divan\" (a council of senior officers who advised the pasha), the janissaries soon reduced the pasha to a largely ceremonial role.\nIn 1611, the local chiefs of the area conducted a coup d'\u00e9tat and successfully appointed Suleiman Safar, their own leader, as \"dey\" (local chief). As a result, his successors continually held the title and even occasionally identified as pasha. As Pasha of Tripoli, Osman Saqizli managed to maintain political stability during the 1650s and 1660s. However, by the 1670s, the position of the dey experienced the succession of eight different leaders, leading to instability.260\nThomas Baker, an English consul stationed in Tripoli from 1679 to 1686, described a turbulent government, a dwindling treasury and an economy heavily reliant on piracy. Tripoli's fleet was the smallest among the Barbary States, with only 13 vessels compared to 20 in Tunis and 40 in Algiers.259 Besides piracy, the region's inland areas, consisting of ravines, mountains and inhospitable desert, forced a reliance on exports of salt, coastal slave raiding in Calabria and Morea, and tribute from the interior tribes. The 1676 peace treaty between Tripoli and English shipping had shifted most pirate activity towards the French, leading to French demands for peace in 1681. Driven by financial desperation, Tripoli violated these terms a year later by seizing a French merchant ship. The following dispute saw the French mortar-bombing Tripoli into submission in 1686.\nKaramanli dynasty and the Barbary Wars.\nDuring the 18th century, Ottoman power waned in North Africa, with the sultans ending the practice of sending pashas to Tripoli, Algiers and Tunis. The title of pasha began to assume its hereditary status.\nIn 1711, Ahmed Karamanli, an Ottoman cavalry officer and son of a Turkish officer and Libyan woman, seized power and founded the Karamanli dynasty, which would last 124 years. The 1790\u201395 Tripolitanian civil war occurred in those years.\nIn May 1801, Pasha Yusuf Karamanli demanded from the United States an increase in the tribute ($83,000) which it had paid since 1796 for the protection of their commerce and enslavement of crews by barbary pirates when the Treaty of Tripoli was signed. The demand was refused by third American President Thomas Jefferson, an American naval force was sent and blockaded Tripoli, and the desultory First Barbary War dragged on from 1801 until 3 June 1805. The Regency of Tripoli was defeated by the newly revived United States Navy.\nThe Second Barbary War (1815, also known as the Algerian War) was the second of the two wars fought between the United States and the Ottoman Turks' North African regencies of Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis, known collectively as the Barbary States.\nOn 5 September 1817, Yusuf Karamanli invited the leaders of the Libyan tribe of Al-Jawazi to his castle in Benghazi, following a dispute regarding tribute and an uprising against his rule. Consequently, the Pasha ordered the execution of all attendees, and chased down the other tribe members, which resulted in the massacre of at least 10,000 people, who eventually sought refuge in neighboring countries, especially Egypt. This was known as the Al-Jawazi massacre.\nReassertion of Ottoman authority.\nIn 1835 the government of Sultan Mahmud\u00a0II took advantage of local disturbances to reassert their direct authority. As decentralized Ottoman power had resulted in the virtual independence of Egypt as well as Tripoli, the coast and desert lying between them relapsed to anarchy, even after direct Ottoman control was resumed in Tripoli. The indigenous Senusiyya (or Sanusi) Movement, led by Islamic cleric Muhammad ibn Ali al-Sanusi, called on the countryside to resist Ottoman rule. The Grand Senussi established his headquarters in the oasis town of Jaghbub while his \"ikhwan\" (brothers) set up \"zawiyas\" (religious colleges or monasteries) across North Africa and brought some stability to regions not known for their submission to central authority. In line with the expressed instruction of the Grand Sanusi, these gains were made largely without any coercion.\nIt was one of the first Ottoman provinces to be reclassified from an eyalet to a vilayet after an administrative reform in 1865, and by 1867 it had been reformed into the Tripolitania Vilayet.\nThe Ottoman sultan Abdulhamid II twice sent his aide-de-camp Azmzade Sadik El Mueyyed to meet Sheikh Sanusi to cultivate positive relations and counter the West European scramble for Africa.\nThe highpoint of the Sanusi influence came in the 1880s under the Grand Senussi's son, Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi. With 146\u00a0lodges spanning the entire Sahara, he moved the Senussi capital to Kufra.\nOver a 75\u2011year period, the Ottoman Turks provided 33\u00a0governors and Libya remained part of the empire until Italy invaded for the second time in 1911.\nItalo-Turkish War.\nThe Italo-Turkish War was fought between the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Italy from September 29, 1911, to October 18, 1912.\nAs a result of this conflict, the Ottoman Turks ceded the provinces of Tripolitania, Fezzan, and Cyrenaica to Italy. These provinces together formed what became known as Libya.\nAdministrative divisions.\nBy the 19th century, the province of Tripoli, known officially as \"Tarablus al-Gharb\" ('Tripoli of the West') was organized into five \"sanjak\"s (districts):\nThese district names were reported by James Henry Skene in 1851 and five districts of the same name existed after the reforms of the 1860s that transformed the province officially into a \"vilayet\" (or in Arabic). Among these, Cyrenaica was made an independent \"sanjak\" in 1863 that was directly dependent on Istanbul, then it was assigned to Tripoli's supervision in 1871, and finally it was attached to Istanbul again in 1888.", "150184": "Ashkenazi Jews\nJewish diaspora of Central Europe\nAshkenazi Jews ( ; also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim) form a distinct subgroup of the Jewish diaspora, that emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium CE. They traditionally speak Yiddish, a language that originated in the 9th century, and largely migrated towards northern and eastern Europe during the late Middle Ages due to persecution. Hebrew was primarily used as a literary and sacred language until its 20th-century revival as a common language in Israel.\nAshkenazim adapted their traditions to Europe and underwent a transformation in their interpretation of Judaism. In the late 18th and 19th centuries, Jews who remained in or returned to historical German lands experienced a cultural reorientation. Under the influence of the Haskalah and the struggle for emancipation, as well as the intellectual and cultural ferment in urban centres, some gradually abandoned Yiddish in favor of German and developed new forms of Jewish religious life and cultural identity.\nThroughout the centuries, Ashkenazim made significant contributions to Europe's philosophy, scholarship, literature, art, music, and science.\nAs a proportion of the world Jewish population, Ashkenazim were estimated to be 3% in the 11th century, rising to 92% in 1930 near the population's peak. The Ashkenazi population was significantly diminished by the Holocaust carried out by Nazi Germany during World War II, which killed some six million Jews, affecting practically every European Jewish family. In 1933, prior to World War II, the estimated worldwide Jewish population was 15.3 million. Israeli demographer and statistician Sergio D. Pergola implied that Ashkenazim comprised 65\u201370% of Jews worldwide in 2000, while other estimates suggest more than 75%. As of 2013[ [update]], the population was estimated to be between 10 million and 11.2 million. \nGenetic studies indicate that Ashkenazim have both Levantine and European (mainly southern and eastern European) ancestry. These studies draw diverging conclusions about the degree and sources of European admixture, with some focusing on the European genetic origin in Ashkenazi maternal lineages, contrasting with the predominantly Middle Eastern genetic origin in paternal lineages.\nEtymology.\nThe name \"Ashkenazi\" derives from the biblical figure of Ashkenaz, the first son of Gomer, son of Japhet, son of Noah, and a Japhetic patriarch in the Table of Nations (). The name of Gomer has often been linked to the Cimmerians.\nThe Biblical \"Ashkenaz\" is usually derived from Assyrian (cuneiform \"A\u0161kuzai/I\u0161kuzai\"), a people who expelled the Cimmerians from the Armenian area of the Upper Euphrates; the name \"\" is identified with the Scythians. The intrusive \"n\" in the Biblical name is likely due to a scribal error confusing a \"vav\" <templatestyles src=\"Script/styles_hebrew.css\" />\u05d5\u200e with a \"nun\" <templatestyles src=\"Script/styles_hebrew.css\" />\u05e0\u200e.\nIn Jeremiah 51:27, Ashkenaz figures as one of three kingdoms in the far north, the others being Minni and Ararat (corresponding to Urartu), called on by God to resist Babylon. In Talmud (b. Yoma 10a; y. Megillah 71b) the name Gomer is rendered as \"Germania\", which elsewhere in rabbinical literature was identified with Germanikia in northwestern Syria, but later became associated with \"Germania\". In \"Genesis Rabbah\", Rabbi Berechiah mentions Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah as German tribes or as German lands. Ashkenaz is linked to Scandza/Scanzia, viewed as the cradle of Germanic tribes, as early as a 6th-century gloss to the Historia Ecclesiastica of Eusebius.\nIn the 10th-century \"History of Armenia\" of Yovhannes Drasxanakertc'i (1.15), Ashkenaz was associated with Armenia, as it was occasionally in Jewish usage, where its denotation extended at times to Adiabene, Khazaria, Crimea and areas to the east. His contemporary Saadia Gaon identified Ashkenaz with the \"Saquliba\" or Slavic territories, and such usage covered also the lands of tribes neighboring the Slavs, and Eastern and Central Europe. In modern times, Samuel Krauss identified the Biblical \"Ashkenaz\" with Khazaria.\nSometime in the Early Medieval period, the Jews of central and eastern Europe came to be called by this term. Conforming to the custom of designating areas of Jewish settlement with biblical names, Spain was denominated \"Sefarad\" (Obadiah 20), France was called \"Tsarefat\" (1 Kings 17:9), and Bohemia was called the \"Land of Canaan\". By the start of the high medieval period, Hai Gaon refers to questions that had been addressed to him from Ashkenaz, by which he undoubtedly means Germany, and Talmudic commentators like Rashi began to use \"Ashkenaz/Eretz Ashkenaz\" to designate Germany, earlier known as \"Loter\", where, especially in the Rhineland communities of Speyer, Worms and Mainz, the most important Jewish communities arose. Rashi uses \"leshon Ashkenaz\" (Ashkenazi language) to describe Yiddish, and Byzantium and Syrian Jewish letters referred to the Crusaders as Ashkenazim. During the 12th century, the word appears quite frequently. In the \"Mahzor Vitry\", the kingdom of Ashkenaz is referred to chiefly in regard to the ritual of the synagogue there, but occasionally also with regard to certain other observances. In the literature of the 13th century, references to the land and the language of Ashkenaz often occur. Examples include Solomon ben Aderet's Responsa (vol. i., No. 395); the Responsa of Asher ben Jehiel (pp.\u00a04, 6); his \"Halakot\" (Berakot i. 12, ed. Wilna, p.\u00a010); the work of his son Jacob ben Asher, \"Tur Orach Chayim\" (chapter 59); the Responsa of Isaac ben Sheshet (numbers 193, 268, 270). Given the close links between the Jewish communities of France and Germany following the Carolingian unification, the term Ashkenazi came to refer to the Jews of both medieval Germany and France.\nIn later times, the word Ashkenaz is used to designate southern and western Germany, the ritual of which sections differs somewhat from that of eastern Germany and Poland. Thus the prayer-book of Isaiah Horowitz, and many others, give the piyyutim according to the Minhag of Ashkenaz and Poland.\nHistory.\nLike other Jewish ethnic groups, the Ashkenazi originate from the Israelites and Hebrews of historical Israel and Judah. Ashkenazi Jews share a significant amount of ancestry with other Jewish populations and derive their ancestry mostly from populations in the Middle East, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe. Other than their origins in ancient Israel, the question of how Ashkenazi Jews came to exist as a distinct community is unknown, and has given rise to several theories.\nEarly Jewish communities in Europe.\nBeginning in the fourth century BCE, Jewish colonies sprang up in southern Europe, including the Aegean Islands, Greece, and Italy. Jews left ancient Israel for a number of causes, including a number of push and pull factors. More Jews moved into these communities as a result of wars, persecution, unrest, and for opportunities in trade and commerce.\nJews migrated to southern Europe from the Middle East voluntarily for opportunities in trade and commerce. Following Alexander the Great's conquests, Jews migrated to Greek settlements in the Eastern Mediterranean, spurred on by economic opportunities. Jewish economic migration to southern Europe is also believed to have occurred during the Roman period.\nIn 63 BCE, the Siege of Jerusalem saw the Roman Republic conquer Judea, and thousands of Jewish prisoners of war were brought to Rome as slaves. After gaining their freedom, they settled permanently in Rome as traders. It is likely that there was an additional influx of Jewish slaves taken to southern Europe by Roman forces after the capture of Jerusalem by the forces of Herod the Great with assistance from Roman forces in 37 BCE. It is known that Jewish war captives were sold into slavery after the suppression of a minor Jewish revolt in 53 BCE, and some were probably taken to southern Europe.\nRegarding Jewish settlements founded in southern Europe during the Roman era, E. Mary Smallwood wrote that \"no date or origin can be assigned to the numerous settlements eventually known in the west, and some may have been founded as a result of the dispersal of Palestinian Jews after the revolts of AD 66\u201370 and 132\u2013135, but it is reasonable to conjecture that many, such as the settlement in Puteoli attested in 4 BC, went back to the late republic or early empire and originated in voluntary emigration and the lure of trade and commerce.\"\nJewish\u2013Roman Wars.\nThe first and second centuries CE saw a series of unsuccessful large-scale Jewish revolts against Rome. The Roman suppression of these revolts led to wide-scale destruction, a very high toll of life and enslavement. The First Jewish-Roman War (66\u201373 CE) resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple. Two generations later, the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132\u2013136 CE) erupted. Judea's countryside was devastated, and many were killed, displaced or sold into slavery. Jerusalem was rebuilt as a Roman colony under the name of Aelia Capitolina, and the province of Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina. Jews were prohibited from entering the city on pain of death. Jewish presence in the region significantly dwindled after the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt.\nWith their national aspirations crushed and widespread devastation in Judea, despondent Jews migrated out of Judea in the aftermath of both revolts, and many settled in southern Europe. In contrast to the earlier Assyrian and Babylonian captivities, the movement was by no means a singular, centralized event, and a Jewish diaspora had already been established before.\nDuring both of these rebellions, many Jews were captured and sold into slavery by the Romans. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, 97,000 Jews were sold as slaves in the aftermath of the first revolt. In one occasion, Vespasian reportedly ordered 6,000 Jewish prisoners of war from Galilee to work on the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece. Jewish slaves and their children eventually gained their freedom and joined local free Jewish communities.\nLate antiquity.\nMany Jews were denied full Roman citizenship until Emperor Caracalla granted all free peoples this privilege in 212 CE. Jews were required to pay a poll tax until the reign of Emperor Julian in 363 CE. In the late Roman Empire, Jews were free to form networks of cultural and religious ties and enter into various local occupations. However, after Christianity became the official religion of Rome and Constantinople in 380 CE, Jews were increasingly marginalized.\nThe Synagogue in the Agora of Athens is dated to the period between 267 and 396 CE. The Stobi Synagogue in Macedonia was built on the ruins of a more ancient synagogue in the 4th century, while later in the 5th century, the synagogue was transformed into a Christian basilica. Hellenistic Judaism thrived in Antioch and Alexandria, and many of these Greek-speaking Jews would convert to Christianity.\nSporadic epigraphic evidence in gravesite excavations, particularly in Brigetio (Sz\u0151ny), Aquincum (\u00d3buda), Intercisa (Duna\u00fajv\u00e1ros), Triccinae (S\u00e1rv\u00e1r), Savaria (Szombathely), Sopianae (P\u00e9cs) in Hungary, and Mursa (Osijek) in Croatia, attest to the presence of Jews after the 2nd and 3rd centuries where Roman garrisons were established. There was a sufficient number of Jews in Pannonia to form communities and build a synagogue. Jewish troops were among the Syrian soldiers transferred there, and replenished from the Middle East. After 175 CE Jews and especially Syrians came from Antioch, Tarsus, and Cappadocia. Others came from Italy and the Hellenized parts of the Roman Empire. The excavations suggest they first lived in isolated enclaves attached to Roman legion camps and intermarried with other similar oriental families within the military orders of the region.\nRaphael Patai states that later Roman writers remarked that they differed little in either customs, manner of writing, or names from the people among whom they dwelt; and it was especially difficult to differentiate Jews from the Syrians. After Pannonia was ceded to the Huns in 433, the garrison populations were withdrawn to Italy, and only a few, enigmatic traces remain of a possible Jewish presence in the area some centuries later. No evidence has yet been found of a Jewish presence in antiquity in Germany beyond its Roman border, nor in Eastern Europe. In Gaul and Germany itself, with the possible exception of Trier and Cologne, the archeological evidence suggests at most a fleeting presence of very few Jews, primarily itinerant traders or artisans.\nEstimating the number of Jews in antiquity is a task fraught with peril due to the nature of and lack of accurate documentation. The number of Jews in the Roman Empire for a long time was based on the accounts of Syrian Orthodox bishop Bar Hebraeus who lived between 1226 and 1286 CE, who stated by the time of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, as many as six million Jews were already living in the Roman Empire, a conclusion which has been contested as highly exaggerated. The 13th-century author Bar Hebraeus gave a figure of 6,944,000 Jews in the Roman world. Salo Wittmayer Baron considered the figure convincing. The figure of seven million within and one million outside the Roman world in the mid-first century became widely accepted, including by Louis Feldman. However, contemporary scholars now accept that Bar Hebraeus based his figure on a census of total Roman citizens and thus included non-Jews, the figure of 6,944,000 being recorded in Eusebius' \"Chronicon\". Louis Feldman, previously an active supporter of the figure, now states that he and Baron were mistaken. Philo gives a figure of one million Jews living in Egypt. Brian McGing rejects Baron's figures entirely, arguing that we have no clue as to the size of the Jewish demographic in the ancient world. Sometimes the scholars who accepted the high number of Jews in Rome had explained it by Jews having been active in proselytising. The idea of ancient Jews trying to convert Gentiles to Judaism is nowadays rejected by several scholars. The Romans did not distinguish between Jews inside and outside of the land of Israel/Judaea. They collected an annual temple tax from Jews both in and outside of Israel. The revolts in and suppression of diaspora communities in Egypt, Libya and Crete during the Kitos War of 115\u2013117 CE had a severe impact on the Jewish diaspora.\nA substantial Jewish population emerged in northern Gaul by the Middle Ages, but Jewish communities existed in 465 CE in Brittany, in 524 CE in Valence, and in 533 CE in Orl\u00e9ans. Throughout this period and into the early Middle Ages, some Jews assimilated into the dominant Greek and Latin cultures, mostly through conversion to Christianity. King Dagobert I of the Franks expelled the Jews from his Merovingian kingdom in 629. Jews in former Roman territories faced new challenges as harsher anti-Jewish Church rulings were enforced.\nEarly Middle Ages.\nCharlemagne's expansion of the Frankish empire around 800, including northern Italy and Rome, brought on a brief period of stability and unity in Francia. This created opportunities for Jewish merchants to settle again north of the Alps. Charlemagne granted the Jews freedoms similar to those once enjoyed under the Roman Empire. In addition, Jews from southern Italy, fleeing religious persecution, began to move into Central Europe. Returning to Frankish lands, many Jewish merchants took up occupations in finance and commerce, including money lending, or usury. (Church legislation banned Christians from lending money in exchange for interest.) From Charlemagne's time to the present, Jewish life in northern Europe is well documented. By the 11th century, when Rashi of Troyes wrote his commentaries, Jews in what came to be known as \"Ashkenaz\" were known for their halakhic learning, and Talmudic studies. They were criticized by Sephardim and other Jewish scholars in Islamic lands for their lack of expertise in Jewish jurisprudence and general ignorance of Hebrew linguistics and literature. Yiddish emerged as a result of Judeo-Latin language contact with various High German vernaculars in the medieval period. It is a Germanic language written in Hebrew letters, and heavily influenced by Hebrew and Aramaic, with some elements of Romance and later Slavic languages.\nHigh and Late Middle Ages migrations.\nHistorical records show evidence of Jewish communities north of the Alps and Pyrenees as early as the 8th and 9th centuries. By the 11th century, Jewish settlers moving from southern European and Middle Eastern centers (such as Babylonian Jews and Persian Jews) and Maghrebi Jewish traders from North Africa who had contacts with their Ashkenazi brethren and had visited each other from time to time in each's domain appear to have begun to settle in the north, especially along the Rhine, often in response to new economic opportunities and at the invitation of local Christian rulers. Thus Baldwin V, Count of Flanders, invited Jacob ben Yekutiel and his fellow Jews to settle in his lands; and soon after the Norman conquest of England, William the Conqueror likewise extended a welcome to continental Jews to take up residence there. Bishop R\u00fcdiger Huzmann called on the Jews of Mainz to relocate to Speyer. In all of these decisions, the idea that Jews had the know-how and capacity to jump-start the economy, improve revenues, and enlarge trade seems to have played a prominent role. Typically, Jews relocated close to the markets and churches in town centres, where, though they came under the authority of both royal and ecclesiastical powers, they were accorded administrative autonomy.\nAccording to 16th-century mystic Rabbi Elijah of Chelm, Ashkenazi Jews lived in Jerusalem during the 11th century. The story is told that a German-speaking Jew saved the life of a young German man surnamed Dolberger. So when the knights of the First Crusade came to siege Jerusalem, one of Dolberger's family members who was among them rescued Jews in Palestine and carried them back to Worms to repay the favor. Further evidence of German communities in the holy city comes in the form of halakhic questions sent from Germany to Jerusalem during the second half of the 11th century.\nIn the 11th century, the \"Rabbinic mode of thought and life\" and the culture of the Babylonian Talmud that underlies it became established in southern Italy and then spread north to Ashkenaz. However, many traditions and customs from the Jerusalem Talmud and other Land of Israel rabbinic sources were known and practiced in Ashkenaz long before the 11th century - so long before that the sources of these practices were forgotten by 11th century Ashkenazi writers, and the practices regarded simply as \"minhag\".\nNumerous massacres of Jews occurred throughout Europe during the Christian Crusades. Inspired by the preaching of a First Crusade, crusader mobs in France and Germany perpetrated the Rhineland massacres of 1096, devastating Jewish communities along the Rhine River, including the SHuM cities of Speyer, Worms, and Mainz. The cluster of cities contain the earliest Jewish settlements north of the Alps, and played a major role in the formation of Ashkenazi Jewish religious tradition, along with Troyes and Sens in France. Nonetheless, Jewish life in Germany persisted, while some Ashkenazi Jews joined Sephardic Jewry in Spain. Expulsions from England (1290), France (1394), and parts of Germany (15th century), gradually pushed Ashkenazi Jewry eastward, to Poland (10th century), Lithuania (10th century), and Russia (12th century). Over this period of several hundred years, some have suggested, Jewish economic activity was focused on trade, business management, and financial services, due to several presumed factors: Christian European prohibitions restricting certain activities by Jews, preventing certain financial activities (such as \"usurious\" loans) between Christians, high rates of literacy, near-universal male education, and ability of merchants to rely upon and trust family members living in different regions and countries.\nIn Poland, Jews were granted special protection by the Statute of Kalisz of 1264. By the 15th century, the Ashkenazi Jewish communities in Poland were the largest Jewish communities of the Diaspora. This area, which eventually fell under the domination of Russia, Austria, and Prussia (Germany) following the Partitions of Poland, and was later largely regained by reborn Poland in the interbellum, would remain the main center of Ashkenazi Jewry until the Holocaust.\nThe answer to why there was so little assimilation of Jews in central and eastern Europe for so long would seem to lie in part in the probability that the alien surroundings in central and eastern Europe were not conducive, though there was some assimilation. Furthermore, Jews lived almost exclusively in shtetls, maintained a strong system of education for males, heeded rabbinic leadership, and had a very different lifestyle to that of their neighbours; all of these tendencies increased with every outbreak of antisemitism.\nIn parts of Eastern Europe, before the arrival of the Ashkenazi Jews from Central Europe, some non-Ashkenazi Jews were present who spoke Leshon Knaan and held various other Non-Ashkenazi traditions and customs. In 1966, the historian Cecil Roth questioned the inclusion of all Yiddish speaking Jews as Ashkenazim in descent, suggesting that upon the arrival of Ashkenazi Jews from central Europe to Eastern Europe, from the Middle Ages to the 16th century, there were a substantial number of non-Ashkenazim Jews already there who later abandoned their original Eastern European Jewish culture in favor of the Ashkenazi one. However, according to more recent research, mass migrations of Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews occurred to Eastern Europe, from Central Europe in the west, who due to high birth rates absorbed and largely replaced the preceding non-Ashkenazi Jewish groups of Eastern Europe (whose numbers the demographer Sergio Della Pergola considers to have been small). Genetic evidence also indicates that Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews largely descend from Ashkenazi Jews who migrated from central to eastern Europe and subsequently experienced high birthrates and genetic isolation.\nSome Jewish immigration from southern Europe to Eastern Europe continued into the early modern period. During the 16th century, as conditions for Italian Jews worsened, many Jews from Venice and the surrounding area migrated to Poland and Lithuania. During the 16th and 17th centuries, some Sephardi Jews and Romaniote Jews from throughout the Ottoman Empire migrated to Eastern Europe, as did Arabic-speaking Mizrahi Jews and Persian Jews.\nModern history.\nMaterial relating to the history of German Jews has been preserved in the communal accounts of certain communities on the Rhine, a \"Memorbuch\", and a \"Liebesbrief\", documents that are now part of the Sassoon Collection. Heinrich Graetz also added to the history of German Jewry in modern times in the abstract of his seminal work, \"History of the Jews\", which he entitled \"Volksth\u00fcmliche Geschichte der Juden\".\nIn an essay on Sephardi Jewry, Daniel Elazar at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs summarized the demographic history of Ashkenazi Jews in the last thousand years. He noted that at the end of the 11th century, 97% of world Jewry was Sephardic and 3% Ashkenazi; in the mid-17th century, \"Sephardim still outnumbered Ashkenazim three to two\"; by the end of the 18th century, \"Ashkenazim outnumbered Sephardim three to two, the result of improved living conditions in Christian Europe versus the Ottoman Muslim world.\" By 1930, Arthur Ruppin estimated that Ashkenazi Jews accounted for nearly 92% of world Jewry. These factors are sheer demography showing the migration patterns of Jews from Southern and Western Europe to Central and Eastern Europe.\nIn 1740, a family from Lithuania became the first Ashkenazi Jews to settle in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem.\nIn the generations after emigration from the west, Jewish communities in places like Poland, Russia, and Belarus enjoyed a comparatively stable socio-political environment. A thriving publishing industry and the printing of hundreds of biblical commentaries precipitated the development of the Hasidic movement as well as major Jewish academic centers. After two centuries of comparative tolerance in the new nations, massive westward emigration occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries in response to pogroms in the east and the economic opportunities offered in other parts of the world. Ashkenazi Jews have made up the majority of the American Jewish community since 1750.\nIn the context of the European Enlightenment, Jewish emancipation began in 18th century France and spread throughout Western and Central Europe. Disabilities that had limited the rights of Jews since the Middle Ages were abolished, including the requirements to wear distinctive clothing, pay special taxes, and live in ghettos isolated from non-Jewish communities and the prohibitions on certain professions. Laws were passed to integrate Jews into their host countries, forcing Ashkenazi Jews to adopt family names (they had formerly used patronymics). Newfound inclusion into public life led to cultural growth in the \"Haskalah\", or Jewish Enlightenment, with its goal of integrating modern European values into Jewish life. As a reaction to increasing antisemitism and assimilation following the emancipation, Zionism developed in central Europe. Other Jews, particularly those in the Pale of Settlement, turned to socialism. These tendencies would be united in Labor Zionism, the founding ideology of the State of Israel.\nThe Holocaust.\nOf the estimated 8.8 million Jews living in Europe at the beginning of World War II, the majority of whom were Ashkenazi, about 6 million \u2013 more than two-thirds \u2013 were systematically murdered in the Holocaust. These included 3 million of 3.3 million Polish Jews (91%); 900,000 of 1.5 million in Ukraine (60%); and 50\u201390% of the Jews of other Slavic nations, Germany, Hungary, and the Baltic states, and over 25% of the Jews in France. Sephardi communities suffered similar devastation in a few countries, including Greece, the Netherlands and the former Yugoslavia. As the large majority of the victims were Ashkenazi Jews, their percentage dropped from an estimate of 92% of world Jewry in 1930 to nearly 80% of world Jewry today. The Holocaust also effectively put an end to the dynamic development of the Yiddish language in the previous decades, as the vast majority of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, around 5 million, were Yiddish speakers. Many of the surviving Ashkenazi Jews emigrated to countries such as Israel, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and the United States after the war.\nFollowing the Holocaust, some sources place Ashkenazim today as making up approximately 83%\u201385% of Jews worldwide, while Sergio DellaPergola in a rough calculation of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, implies that Ashkenazi make up a notably lower figure, less than 74%. Other estimates place Ashkenazi Jews as making up about 75% of Jews worldwide.\nIsrael.\nFrom the 1880s onwards, Ashkenazi Jews from Russia, Poland and Germany immigrated to the Land of Israel in large numbers. By 1948, they comprised 80% of the Jewish population of Israel, shortly before the Jewish exodus from the Muslim world changed the demographic composition of Israeli society. Currently, Jews of mixed background are increasingly common, partly because of intermarriage between Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi, and partly because many do not see such historic markers as relevant to their life experiences as Jews.\nAshkenazi Jews have played a prominent role in the economy, media, and politics of Israel since its founding. During the first decades of Israel as a state, strong cultural conflict occurred between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews (mainly east European Ashkenazim). The roots of this conflict, which still exists to a much smaller extent in present-day Israeli society, are chiefly attributed to the concept of the \"melting pot\". That is to say, all Jewish immigrants who arrived in Israel were strongly encouraged to \"meltdown\" their own particular exilic identities within the general social \"pot\" in order to become Israeli.\nReligious Ashkenazi Jews living in Israel are obliged to follow the authority of the chief Ashkenazi rabbi in halakhic matters. In this respect, a religiously Ashkenazi Jew is an Israeli who is more likely to support certain religious interests in Israel, including certain political parties. These political parties result from the fact that a portion of the Israeli electorate votes for Jewish religious parties; although the electoral map changes from one election to another, there are generally several small parties associated with the interests of religious Ashkenazi Jews. The role of religious parties, including small religious parties that play important roles as coalition members, results in turn from Israel's composition as a complex society in which competing social, economic, and religious interests stand for election to the Knesset, a unicameral legislature with 120 seats.\nUnited States of America.\nAs of 2020, 66% of American Jews identify as Ashkenazic, compared to 4% who identify as Sephardic or Mizrahi, and 6% who claim mixed heritage. A disproportionate number of Ashkenazi Americans are religious compared to American Jews of other racial groups. They live in large populations in the states of New York, California, Florida, and New Jersey. The majority of American Ashkenazi Jewish voters vote for the Democratic Party; Orthodox Ashkenazim tend to support the Republican Party, while Conservative, Reform, and non denominational Ashkenazim tend to support the Democratic Party.\nDefinition.\nBy religion.\nReligious Jews have minhagim, customs, in addition to halakha, or religious law, and different interpretations of the law. Different groups of religious Jews in different geographic areas historically adopted different customs and interpretations. On certain issues, Orthodox Jews are required to follow the customs of their ancestors and do not believe they have the option of picking and choosing. For this reason, observant Jews at times find it important for religious reasons to ascertain who their household's religious ancestors are in order to know what customs their household should follow. These times include, for example, when two Jews of different ethnic background marry, when a non-Jew converts to Judaism and determines what customs to follow for the first time, or when a lapsed or less observant Jew returns to traditional Judaism and must determine what was done in his or her family's past. In this sense, \"Ashkenazic\" refers both to a family ancestry and to a body of customs binding on Jews of that ancestry. Reform Judaism, which does not necessarily follow those minhagim, did nonetheless originate among Ashkenazi Jews.\nIn a religious sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is any Jew whose family tradition and ritual follow Ashkenazi practice. Until the Ashkenazi community first began to develop in the Early Middle Ages, the centers of Jewish religious authority were in the Islamic world, at Baghdad and in Islamic Spain. Ashkenaz (Germany) was so distant geographically that it developed a \"minhag\" of its own. Ashkenazi Hebrew came to be pronounced in ways distinct from other forms of Hebrew.\nIn this respect, the counterpart of Ashkenazi is Sephardic, since most non-Ashkenazi Orthodox Jews follow Sephardic rabbinical authorities, whether or not they are ethnically Sephardic. By tradition, a Sephardic or Mizrahi woman who marries into an Orthodox or Haredi Ashkenazi Jewish family raises her children to be Ashkenazi Jews; conversely an Ashkenazi woman who marries a Sephardi or Mizrahi man is expected to take on Sephardic practice and the children inherit a Sephardic identity, though in practice many families compromise. A convert generally follows the practice of the beth din that converted him or her. With the integration of Jews from around the world in Israel, North America, and other places, the religious definition of an Ashkenazi Jew is blurring, especially outside Orthodox Judaism.\nNew developments in Judaism often transcend differences in religious practice between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. In North American cities, social trends such as the chavurah movement, and the emergence of \"post-denominational Judaism\" often bring together younger Jews of diverse ethnic backgrounds. In recent years, there has been increased interest in \"Kabbalah\", which many Ashkenazi Jews study outside of the Yeshiva framework. Another trend is the new popularity of ecstatic worship in the Jewish Renewal movement and the Carlebach style minyan, both of which are nominally of Ashkenazi origin. Outside of Haredi communities, the traditional Ashkenazi pronunciation of Hebrew has also drastically declined in favor of the Sephardi-based pronunciation of Modern Hebrew.\nBy culture.\nCulturally, an Ashkenazi Jew can be identified by the concept of \"Yiddishkeit\", which means \"Jewishness\" in the Yiddish language. \"Yiddishkeit\" is specifically the Jewishness of Ashkenazi Jews. Before the Haskalah and the emancipation of Jews in Europe, this meant the study of Torah and Talmud for men, and a family and communal life governed by the observance of Jewish Law for men and women. From the Rhineland to Riga to Romania, most Jews prayed in liturgical Ashkenazi Hebrew, and spoke Yiddish in their secular lives. But with modernization, \"Yiddishkeit\" now encompasses not just Orthodoxy and Hasidism, but a broad range of movements, ideologies, practices, and traditions in which Ashkenazi Jews have participated and somehow retained a sense of Jewishness. Although a far smaller number of Jews still speak Yiddish, \"Yiddishkeit\" can be identified in manners of speech, in styles of humor, in patterns of association. Broadly speaking, a Jew is one who associates culturally with Jews, supports Jewish institutions, reads Jewish books and periodicals, attends Jewish movies and theater, travels to Israel, visits historical synagogues, and so forth. It is a definition that applies to Jewish culture in general, and to Ashkenazi Yiddishkeit in particular.\nAs Ashkenazi Jews moved away from Europe, mostly in the form of aliyah to Israel, or immigration to North America, and other English-speaking areas such as South Africa; and Europe (particularly France) and Latin America, the geographic isolation that gave rise to Ashkenazim have given way to mixing with other cultures, and with non-Ashkenazi Jews who, similarly, are no longer isolated in distinct geographic locales. Hebrew has replaced Yiddish as the primary Jewish language for many Ashkenazi Jews, although many Hasidic and Hareidi groups continue to use Yiddish in daily life. (There are numerous Ashkenazi Jewish anglophones and Russian-speakers as well, although English and Russian are not originally Jewish languages.)\nFrance's blended Jewish community is typical of the cultural recombination that is going on among Jews throughout the world. Although France expelled its original Jewish population in the Middle Ages, by the time of the French Revolution, there were two distinct Jewish populations. One consisted of Sephardic Jews, originally refugees from the Inquisition and concentrated in the southwest, while the other community was Ashkenazi, concentrated in formerly German Alsace, and mainly speaking a German dialect similar to Yiddish. (The third community of Proven\u00e7al Jews living in Comtat Venaissin were technically outside France, and were later absorbed into the Sephardim.) The two communities were so separate and different that the National Assembly emancipated them separately in 1790 and 1791.\nBut after emancipation, a sense of a unified French Jewry emerged, especially when France was wracked by the Dreyfus affair in the 1890s. In the 1920s and 1930s, Ashkenazi Jews from Europe arrived in large numbers as refugees from antisemitism, the Russian revolution, and the economic turmoil of the Great Depression. By the 1930s, Paris had a vibrant Yiddish culture, and many Jews were involved in diverse political movements. After the Vichy years and the Holocaust, the French Jewish population was augmented once again, first by Ashkenazi refugees from Central Europe, and later by Sephardi immigrants and refugees from North Africa, many of them francophone.\nAshkenazi Jews did not record their traditions or achievements by text, instead these traditions were passed down orally from one generation to the next. The desire to maintain pre-Holocaust traditions relating to Ashkenazi culture has often been met with criticism by Jews in Eastern Europe. Reasoning for this could be related to the development of a new style of Jewish arts and culture developed by the Jews of Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s, which in conjunction with the decimation of European Ashkenazi Jews and their culture by the Nazi regime made it easier to assimilate to the new style of ritual rather than try to repair the older traditions. This new style of tradition was referred to as the \"Mediterranean Style\", and was noted for its simplicity and metaphorical rejuvenation of Jews abroad. This was intended to replace the Galut traditions, which were more sorrowful in practice.\nThen, in the 1990s, yet another Ashkenazi Jewish wave began to arrive from countries of the former Soviet Union and Central Europe. The result is a pluralistic Jewish community that still has some distinct elements of both Ashkenazi and Sephardic culture. But in France, it is becoming much more difficult to sort out the two, and a distinctly French Jewishness has emerged.\nBy ethnicity.\nIn an ethnic sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is one whose ancestry can be traced to the Jews who settled in Central Europe. For roughly a thousand years, the Ashkenazim were a reproductively isolated population in Europe, despite living in many countries, with little inflow or outflow from migration, conversion, or intermarriage with other groups, including other Jews. Human geneticists have argued that genetic variations have been identified that show high frequencies among Ashkenazi Jews, but not in the general European population, be they for patrilineal markers (Y-chromosome haplotypes) and for matrilineal markers (mitotypes). Since the middle of the 20th century, many Ashkenazi Jews have intermarried, both with members of other Jewish communities and non-Jews.\nCustoms, laws and traditions.\nThe \"Halakhic\" practices of (Orthodox) Ashkenazi Jews may differ from those of Sephardi Jews, particularly in matters of custom. Differences are noted in the \"Shulkhan Arukh\" itself, in the gloss of Moses Isserles. Well known differences in practice include:\nAshkenazic liturgy.\nThe term Ashkenazi also refers to the Nusach Ashkenaz, the liturgical tradition used by Ashkenazi Jews in their siddur (prayer book). A nusach is defined by a liturgical tradition's choice of prayers, the order of prayers, the text of prayers, and melodies used in the singing of prayers. Two other major forms of nusach among Ashkenazic Jews are Nusach Sefard (not to be confused with the Sephardic ritual), which is the general Polish Hasidic nusach, and Nusach Ari, used by those in Chabad.\nRelations with Sephardim.\nRelations between Ashkenazim and Sephardim have at times been tense and clouded by arrogance, snobbery and claims of racial superiority with both sides claiming the inferiority of the other, based upon such features as physical traits and culture.\nNorth African Sephardim and Berber Jews were often looked down upon by Ashkenazim as second-class citizens during the first decade after the creation of Israel. This has led to protest movements such as the Israeli Black Panthers led by Saadia Marciano, a Moroccan Jew. Research in 2010 revealed a genetic common ancestry of all Jewish populations. In some instances, Ashkenazi communities have accepted significant numbers of Sephardi newcomers, sometimes resulting in intermarriage and the possible merging between the two communities.\nNotable Ashkenazim.\nThough Ashkenazi Jews have never exceeded 3% of the American population, Jews account for 37% of the winners of the U.S. National Medal of Science, 25% of the American Nobel Prize winners in literature, and 40% of the American Nobel Prize winners in science and economics.\nGenetics.\nGenetic origins.\nEfforts to identify the origins of Ashkenazi Jews through DNA analysis began in the 1990s. There are three types of genetic origin testing, autosomal DNA (atDNA), mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), and Y-chromosomal DNA (Y-DNA). Autosomal DNA is a mixture from an individual's entire ancestry. Y-DNA shows a male's lineage along his paternal line. mtDNA shows any person's lineage only along their maternal line. Genome-wide association studies have also been used for genetic origin testing.\nLike most DNA studies of human migration patterns, the earliest studies on Ashkenazi Jews focused on the Y-DNA and mtDNA segments of the human genome. Both segments are unaffected by recombination (except for the ends of the Y chromosome \u2013 the pseudoautosomal regions known as PAR1 and PAR2), thus allowing tracing of direct maternal and paternal lineages.\nThese studies revealed that Ashkenazi Jews originate from an ancient (2000\u2013700 BCE) population of the Middle East who spread to Europe. Ashkenazic Jews display the homogeneity of a genetic bottleneck, meaning they descend from a larger population whose numbers were greatly reduced but recovered through a few founding individuals. Although the Jewish people, in general, were present across a wide geographical area as described, genetic research by Gil Atzmon of the Longevity Genes Project at Albert Einstein College of Medicine suggests \"that Ashkenazim branched off from other Jews around the time of the destruction of the First Temple, 2,500 years ago ... flourished during the Roman Empire but then went through a 'severe bottleneck' as they dispersed, reducing a population of several million to just 400 families who left Northern Italy around the year 1000 for Central and eventually Eastern Europe.\"\nVarious studies have drawn diverging conclusions about the degree and sources of the non-Levantine admixture in Ashkenazim, particularly the extent of the non-Levantine origin in maternal lineages, which is in contrast to the predominant Levantine genetic origin in paternal lineages. But all studies agree that both lineages have genetic overlap with the Fertile Crescent, albeit at differing rates. Collectively, Ashkenazi Jews are less genetically diverse than other Jewish ethnic divisions, due to their genetic bottleneck.\nMale lineages: Y-chromosomal DNA.\nMost genetic studies of Ashkenazi Jews conclude that the male lines were from the Middle East.\nA 2000 study by Hammer \"et al.\" found that the Y-chromosome of Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews contained mutations that are also common among Middle Eastern peoples, but uncommon among indigenous Europeans. This suggests that Ashkenazim male ancestors are mostly from the Middle East. Ashkenazim had less than 0.5% male genetic admixture per generation over an estimated 80 generations, with \"relatively minor contribution of European Y chromosomes to the Ashkenazim,\" and the total admixture estimate \"very similar to Motulsky's average estimate of 12.5%\". This supported the finding that \"Diaspora Jews from Europe, Northwest Africa, and the Near East resemble each other more closely than they resemble their non-Jewish neighbors.\" \"Past research found that 50%\u201380% of DNA from the Ashkenazi Y chromosome, which is used to trace the male lineage, originated in the Near East,\" Richards said. The population has subsequently spread out.\nA 2001 study by Nebel \"et al.\" showed that Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews share overall Near Eastern paternal ancestries. In comparison with data available from other relevant populations in the region, Jews were found to be more closely related to groups in the north of the Fertile Crescent. The study also found Eu 19 (R1a) chromosomes had elevated frequency among Ashkenazi Jews (13%), and they are very frequent in Central and Eastern Europeans (54\u201360%). They hypothesized that the differences among Ashkenazim could reflect low-level gene flow from surrounding European populations or genetic drift during isolation. A 2005 study by Nebel \"et al.\", found a similar level of 11.5% of male Ashkenazim belonging to R1a1a (M17+), the dominant Y-chromosome haplogroup in Central and Eastern Europeans. However, a 2017 study, of Ashkenazi Levites where the proportion reaches 50%, found a \"rich variation of haplogroup R1a outside of Europe which is phylogenetically separate from the typically European R1a branches\", and concludes that the particular R1a-Y2619 sub-clade is evidence for a local origin, and that this validates the \"Middle Eastern origin of the Ashkenazi Levite lineage\" which had previously been concluded based on a few samples.\nFemale lineages: Mitochondrial DNA.\nA 2006 study by Behar \"et al.\", of 1,000 units of haplogroup K (mtDNA), suggested that about 40% of today's Ashkenazim descend from just four women who were \"likely from a Hebrew/Levantine mtDNA pool\" originating in the Middle East in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. The rest of Ashkenazi mtDNA reportedly originated from about 150 women, most of whom were also likely of Middle Eastern origin. Specifically, although haplogroup K is common throughout western Eurasia, its global distribution makes it very unlikely that \"the four aforementioned founder lineages entered the Ashkenazi mtDNA pool via gene flow from a European host population\".\nA 2013 study of Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA by a team led by Martin B. Richards tested all 16,600 DNA units of mtDNA, and found that the four main female Ashkenazi founders had descent lines that were established in Europe 10,000 to 20,000 years in the past while most of the remaining minor founders also have a deep European ancestry. The study argued that the great majority of Ashkenazi maternal lineages were not brought from the Near East or the Caucasus, but instead assimilated within Europe, primarily of Italian and Old French origins. The study estimated that more than 80% of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry comes from women indigenous to (mainly prehistoric Western) Europe, and only 8% from the Near East, while the origin of the remainder is undetermined. According to the study this \"point to a significant role for the conversion of women in the formation of Ashkenazi communities.\" Karl Skorecki criticized the study, arguing that while it \"re-opened the question of the maternal origins of Ashkenazi Jewry, the phylogenetic analysis in the manuscript does not 'settle' the question.\"\nA 2014 study by Fern\u00e1ndez \"et al.\" found that Ashkenazi Jews display a frequency of haplogroup K in their maternal DNA, suggesting an ancient Near Eastern matrilineal origin, similar to the results of the Behar study in 2006. Fern\u00e1ndez noted that this observation clearly contradicts the results of the 2013 study led by Richards that suggested a European source for 3 exclusively Ashkenazi K lineages.\nAssociation and linkage studies (autosomal DNA).\nIn genetic epidemiology, a genome-wide association study (GWA study, or GWAS) is an examination of all or most of the genes (the genome) of different individuals of a particular species to see how much the genes vary from individual to individual. These techniques were originally designed for epidemiological uses, to identify genetic associations with observable traits.\nA 2006 study by Seldin \"et al.\" used over 5,000 autosomal SNPs to demonstrate European genetic substructure. The results showed \"a consistent and reproducible distinction between 'northern' and 'southern' European population groups\". Most northern, central, and eastern Europeans (Finns, Swedes, English, Irish, Germans, and Ukrainians) showed >90%, while most southern Europeans (Italians, Greeks, Portuguese, Spaniards) showed >85%. Both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews showed >85% membership in the \"southern\" group. Referring to the Jews clustering with southern Europeans, the authors state the results were \"consistent with a later Mediterranean origin of these ethnic groups\".\nA 2007 study by Bauchet \"et al.\" found that Ashkenazim were most closely clustered with Arabic North African populations than with the global population, and in the European structure analysis, they share similarities only with Greeks and Southern Italians, reflecting their east Mediterranean origins.\nA 2010 study of Jewish ancestry by Atzmon-Ostrer \"et al.\" identified two major groups: Middle Eastern Jews and European/Syrian Jews, by using \"principal component, phylogenetic, and identity by descent (IBD) analysis\". \"The IBD segment sharing and the proximity of European Jews to each other and to southern European populations suggested similar origins for European Jewry and refuted large-scale genetic contributions of Central and Eastern European and Slavic populations to the formation of Ashkenazi Jewry\", as the two groups share ancestors in the Middle East about 2500 years ago. The study examines genetic markers spread across the entire genome and finds that the Jewish groups (Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi) share large swaths of DNA, indicating close relationships, and that each studied Jewish group (Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Italian, Turkish, Greek and Ashkenazi) has its own genetic signature but is more closely related to the other Jewish groups than to their fellow non-Jewish countrymen. Atzmon's team found that the SNP markers in genetic segments of 3 million DNA letters or longer were 10 times more likely to be identical among Jews than non-Jews. Results of the analysis also tally with biblical accounts of the fate of the Jews. The study also found that with respect to non-Jewish European groups, the population most closely related to Ashkenazi Jews are modern-day Italians. The study speculated that this similarity may be due to inter-marriage and conversions during the Roman Empire. It was also found that any two Ashkenazi Jewish participants shared about as much DNA as fourth or fifth cousins.\nA 2010 study by Bray \"et al.\", using SNP microarray techniques and linkage analysis, found that when assuming Druze and Palestinian Arab populations to represent the reference to world Jewry ancestor genome, 35% to 55% of the modern Ashkenazi genome may be of European origin, and that European \"admixture is considerably higher than previous estimates by studies that used the Y chromosome\" with this reference point. The authors interpreted this linkage disequilibrium in the Ashkenazi Jewish population as matching signs \"of interbreeding or 'admixture' between Middle Eastern and European populations\". On the Bray \"et al.\" tree, Ashkenazi Jews were found to be a genetically more divergent population than Russians, Orcadians, French, Basques, Sardinians, Italians and Tuscans. The study also observed that Ashkenazim are more diverse than their Middle Eastern relatives, which was counterintuitive because Ashkenazim are supposed to be a subset, not a superset, of their assumed geographical source population. Bray \"et al.\" therefore suggest that these results reflect a history of mixing between genetically distinct populations in Europe. However, it is possible that Ashkenazim's high heterozygocity was due to a relaxation of marriage prescription in their ancestors, while the low heterozygocity in te Middle East is due to maintenance of FBD marriage there. Therefore, Ashkenazim distinctiveness as found in the Bray \"et al.\" study may come from their ethnic endogamy (ethnic inbreeding), which allowed them to \"mine\" their ancestral gene pool in the context of relative reproductive isolation from European neighbors, and not from clan endogamy (clan inbreeding). Consequently, their higher diversity compared to Middle Easterners stems from the latter's marriage practices, not necessarily from the former's admixture with Europeans. \nA 2010 genome-wide genetic study by Behar \"et al.\" examined the genetic relationships among all major Jewish groups, including Ashkenazim, and their genetic relationship with non-Jewish ethnic populations. It found that today's Jews (except Indian and Ethiopian Jews) are closely related to people from the Levant. The authors explained that \"the most parsimonious explanation for these observations is a common genetic origin, which is consistent with an historical formulation of the Jewish people as descending from ancient Hebrew and Israelite residents of the Levant\".\nA 2013 study by Behar \"et al.\" found evidence among Ashkenazim of mixed European and Levantine origins. The authors found Ashkenazi had the greatest affinity and shared ancestry firstly with other Jewish groups from southern Europe, Syria, and North Africa, and secondly with both southern Europeans (such as Italians) and modern Levantines (such as the Druze, Cypriots, Lebanese and Samaritans). The study found no affinity of Ashkenazim to northern Caucasus populations, and no more affinity to modern south Caucasus and eastern Anatolian populations (such as Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Georgians, and Turks) than found in other Jews or non-Jewish Middle Easterners (such as the Kurds, Iranians, Druze and Lebanese).\nA 2017 autosomal study by Xue, Shai Carmi \"et al.\" found an admixture of Middle-Eastern and European ancestry in Ashkenazi Jews: with the European component comprising \u224850%\u201370% (estimated at \"possibly 60%\") and largely being of a southern European source and a minority eastern European, and the remainder (estimated at possibly \u224840%) being Middle Eastern ancestry showing the strongest affinity to Levantine populations such as the Druze and Lebanese.\nA 2018 study, referencing the popular theory of Ashkenazi Jewish (AJ) origins in \"an initial settlement in Western Europe (Northern France and Germany), followed by migration to Poland and an expansion there and in the rest of Eastern Europe\", tested \"whether Ashkenazi Jews with recent origins in Eastern Europe are genetically distinct from Western European Ashkenazi\". The study concluded that \"Western AJ consist of two slightly distinct groups: one that descends from a subset of the original founders [who remained in Western Europe], and another that migrated there back from Eastern Europe, possibly after absorbing a limited degree of gene flow\".\nA 2022 study of genome data from the medieval Jewish cemetery of Erfurt found at least two related but genetically distinct Jewish groups: one closely related to Middle Eastern populations and especially similar to modern Ashkenazi Jews from France and Germany and modern Sephardic Jews from Turkey; the other group had a substantial contribution from Eastern European populations. But today Ashkenazi Jews from eastern Europe no longer exhibit this genetic variability, and instead, their genomes resemble a nearly even mixture of the two Erfurt groups (with about 60% from the first group and 40% from the second).\nThe Khazar hypothesis.\nIn the late 19th century, it was proposed that the core of Ashkenazi Jews were genetically descended from a hypothetical Khazarian Jewish diaspora who had migrated westward from modern Russia and Ukraine into modern France and Germany (as opposed to the currently held theory that Jews migrated from France and Germany into Eastern Europe). The hypothesis is not corroborated by historical sources, and is unsubstantiated by genetics, but it is still occasionally supported by scholars who have had some success in keeping the theory in the academic consciousness.\nThe theory has sometimes been used by Jewish authors such as Arthur Koestler as part of an argument against traditional forms of antisemitism (for example the claim that \"the Jews killed Christ\"), just as similar arguments have been advanced on behalf of the Crimean Karaites. Today, however, the theory is more often associated with antisemitism and anti-Zionism.\nA 2013 trans-genome study carried out by 30 geneticists, from 13 universities and academies, from nine countries, assembling the largest data set available to date, for assessment of Ashkenazi Jewish genetic origins found no evidence of Khazar origin among Ashkenazi Jews. The authors concluded:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Thus, analysis of Ashkenazi Jews together with a large sample from the region of the Khazar Khaganate corroborates the earlier results that Ashkenazi Jews derive their ancestry primarily from populations of the Middle East and Europe, that they possess considerable shared ancestry with other Jewish populations, and that there is no indication of a significant genetic contribution either from within or from north of the Caucasus region.\nThe authors found no affinity in Ashkenazim with north Caucasus populations, as well as no greater affinity in Ashkenazim to south Caucasus or Anatolian populations than that found in non-Ashkenazi Jews and non-Jewish Middle Easterners (such as the Kurds, Iranians, Druze and Lebanese). The greatest affinity and shared ancestry of Ashkenazi Jews were found to be (after those with other Jewish groups from southern Europe, Syria, and North Africa) with both southern Europeans and Levantines such as Druze, Cypriot, Lebanese and Samaritan groups.\nEast Asian ancestry.\nIn addition to the genetic contributions from neighboring Europeans, Near Easterners and North Africans, Ashkenazi Jews share some East Eurasian haplogroups, such as N9a, A, and M33c, with Chinese populations. This originates from their economic and cultural exchanges along the Silk Road.\nMedical genetics.\nThere are many references to Ashkenazi Jews in the literature of medical and population genetics. Indeed, much awareness of \"Ashkenazi Jews\" as an ethnic group or category stems from the large number of genetic studies of disease, including many that are well reported in the media, that have been conducted among Jews. Jewish populations have been studied more thoroughly than most other human populations, for a variety of reasons:\nThe result is a form of ascertainment bias. This has sometimes created an impression that Jews are more susceptible to genetic disease than other populations. Healthcare professionals are often taught to consider those of Ashkenazi descent to be at increased risk for colon cancer. People of Ashkenazi descent are at much higher risk of being a carrier for Tay\u2013Sachs disease, which is fatal in its homozygous form.\nGenetic counseling and genetic testing are often undertaken by couples where both partners are of Ashkenazi ancestry. Some organizations, most notably Dor Yeshorim, organize screening programs to prevent homozygosity for the genes that cause related diseases.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nOther references.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "46763": "Crimean War\nConflict on the Crimean Peninsula from 1853 to 1856\nThe Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont from October 1853 to February 1856. Geopolitical causes of the war included the \"Eastern question\" (the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the \"sick man of Europe\"), expansion of Imperial Russia in the preceding Russo-Turkish wars, and the British and French preference to preserve the Ottoman Empire to maintain the balance of power in the Concert of Europe.\nThe flashpoint was a dispute between France and Russia over the rights of Catholic and Orthodox minorities in Palestine. After the Sublime Porte refused Tsar Nicholas I's demand that the Empire's Orthodox subjects were to be placed under his protection, Russian troops occupied the Danubian Principalities in July 1853. The Ottomans declared war on Russia in October and halted the Russian advance at Silistria. Fearing the growth of Russian influence and compelled by public outrage over the annihilation of the Ottoman squadron at Sinop, Britain and France joined the war on the Ottoman side in March 1854.\nIn September 1854, after extended preparations, allied forces landed in Crimea in an attempt to capture Russia's main naval base in the Black Sea, Sevastopol. They scored an early victory at the Battle of the Alma. The Russians counterattacked in late October in what became the Battle of Balaclava and were repulsed, and a second counterattack at Inkerman ended in a stalemate. The front settled into the eleven-month-long Siege of Sevastopol, involving brutal conditions for troops on both sides. Smaller military actions took place in the Caucasus (1853\u20131855), the White Sea (July\u2013August 1854) and the North Pacific (1854\u20131855). The Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont entered on the allies' side in 1855.\nSevastopol ultimately fell following a renewed French assault on the Malakoff redoubt in September 1855. Isolated and facing a bleak prospect of invasion by the West if the war continued, Russia sued for peace in March 1856. Due to the conflict's domestic unpopularity, France and Britain welcomed the development. The Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 March 1856, ended the war. It forbade Russia to base warships in the Black Sea. The Ottoman vassal states of Wallachia and Moldavia became largely independent. Christians in the Ottoman Empire gained a degree of official equality, and the Orthodox Church regained control of the Christian churches in dispute.\nThe Crimean War was one of the first conflicts in which military forces used modern technologies such as explosive naval shells, railways and telegraphs. It was also one of the first to be documented extensively in written reports and in photographs. The war quickly symbolized logistical, medical and tactical failures and mismanagement. The reaction in Britain led to a demand for the professionalization of medicine, most famously achieved by Florence Nightingale, who gained worldwide attention for pioneering modern nursing while she treated the wounded.\nThe Crimean War also marked a turning point for the Russian Empire. It weakened the Imperial Russian Army, drained the treasury and undermined its influence in Europe. The humiliating defeat forced Russia's educated elites to identify the country's fundamental problems. It became a catalyst for reforms of Russia's social institutions, including the emancipation reform of 1861 which abolished serfdom in Russia, and overhauls in the justice system, local self-government, education and military service.\nEastern question.\nAs the Ottoman Empire steadily weakened during the 19th century, the Russian Empire stood poised to take advantage by expanding southward. In the 1850s, the British and the French Empires were allied with the Ottoman Empire and were determined to prevent that from happening. The historian A. J. P. Taylor argued that the war had resulted not from aggression, but from the interacting fears of the major players:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />In some sense the Crimean War was predestined and had deep-seated causes. Neither Nicholas I nor Napoleon III nor the British government could retreat from the conflict for prestige once it was launched. Nicholas needed a subservient Turkey for the sake of Russian security; Napoleon needed success for the sake of his domestic position; the British government needed an independent Turkey for the security of the Eastern Mediterranean... Mutual fear, not mutual aggression, caused the Crimean War.\nWeakening of the Ottoman Empire: 1820\u20131840s.\nIn the early 1800s, the Ottoman Empire suffered a number of existential challenges. The Serbian Revolution in 1804 resulted in the autonomy of the first Balkan Christian nation under the empire. The Greek War of Independence, which began in early 1821, provided further evidence of the empire's internal and military weakness, and the commission of atrocities by Ottoman military forces (see Chios massacre) further undermined the empire. The disbandment of the centuries-old Janissary corps by Sultan Mahmud II on 15 June 1826 (Auspicious Incident) helped the empire in the longer term but deprived it of its existing standing army in the short term. In 1827, the Anglo-Franco-Russian fleet destroyed almost all of the Ottoman naval forces at the Battle of Navarino. In 1830, Greece became independent after ten years of war and the Russo-Turkish War (1828\u201329). The Treaty of Adrianople (1829) granted Russian and Western European commercial ships free passage through the Black Sea straits. Also, Serbia received autonomy, and the Danubian Principalities (Moldavia and Wallachia) became territories under Russian protection.\nFrance took the opportunity to occupy Algeria, which had been under Ottoman rule, in 1830. In 1831, Muhammad Ali of Egypt, the most powerful vassal of the Ottoman Empire, declared independence. Ottoman forces were defeated in a number of battles, which forced Mahmud II to seek Russian military aid. A Russian army of 10,000 landed on the shores of the Bosphorus in 1833 and helped prevent the Egyptians from capturing Constantinople.\n\"The reasons for the Tsar's disquietude are not obscure. Not Turkey alone was threatened by the advance of Ibrahim. The rights secured to Russia by a succession of treaties were also directly jeopardized. The substitution of a virile Albanian dynasty at Constantinople in place of the effete Osmanlis was the last thing desired by the Power which wished, naturally enough, to command the gate into the Mediterranean\". Russia was satisfied with the weak government in Constantinople (Istanbul).\nAs a result, the Treaty of H\u00fcnk\u00e2r \u0130skelesi was signed and greatly benefited Russia. It provided for a military alliance between the Russian and the Ottoman Empires if one of them was attacked, and a secret additional clause allowed the Ottomans to opt out of sending troops but to close the Straits to foreign warships if Russia were under threat. Egypt remained nominally under Ottoman sovereignty but was \"de facto\" independent.\nIn 1838 in a situation similar to that of 1831, Muhammad Ali of Egypt was not happy about his lack of control and power in Syria, and he resumed military action. The Ottomans lost to the Egyptians at the Battle of Nezib on 24 June 1839 but were saved by Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia, who signed a convention in London on 15 July 1840 that granted Muhammad Ali and his descendants the right to inherit power in Egypt in exchange for the removal of Egyptian forces from Syria and Lebanon. Moreover, Muhammad Ali had to admit a formal dependence on the Ottoman sultan. After Muhammad Ali refused to obey the requirements of the convention, the allied Anglo-Austrian fleet blockaded the Nile Delta, bombarded Beirut and captured Acre. Muhammad Ali then accepted the convention's conditions.\nOn 13 July 1841, after the expiry of the Treaty of H\u00fcnk\u00e2r \u0130skelesi, the London Straits Convention was signed under pressure from the European countries. The new treaty deprived Russia of its right to block warships from passing into the Black Sea in case of war. Thus, the way to the Black Sea was open for British and French warships during a possible Russo-Ottoman conflict.\nRussian historians tend to view that history as evidence that Russia lacked aggressive plans. The Russian historian V. N. Vinogradov writes: \"The signing of the documents was the result of deliberate decisions: instead of bilateral (none of the great powers recognized this Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi), the new Treaty of London was obligatory for all, it closed the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. In the absence of expansion plans, this was a sound decision\".\nIn 1838, Britain lost interest in crushing the Ottoman Empire. On the contrary, after the conclusion of the trade treaty of 1838 (see Treaty of Balta Liman), Britain received unlimited access to the markets of the Ottoman Empire. \"Britain imposed on the Porte a Tariff Convention which in effect transformed the Ottoman Empire into a virtual free-trade zone. \nTherefore its trade interests pushed it to protect the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. In the long term, the Ottoman Empire lost the opportunity to modernize and industrialize, but in the short term, it gained the opportunity to receive the support of European powers (primarily Britain) in opposing the desire of the conquered peoples for self-determination and Russia, which sought to crush its influence in the Balkans and Asia.\nPublicly, European politicians made broad promises to the Ottomans. Lord Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary, said in 1839: \"All that we hear about the decay of the Turkish Empire, and its being a dead body or a sapless trunk, and so forth, is pure and unadulterated nonsense. Given 10 years of peace under European protection, coupled with internal reform, there seemed to him no reason why it should not become again a respectable Power\".\nOrlando Figes has claimed that \"The motives of the British in promoting liberal reforms were not just to secure the independence of the Ottoman Empire against Russia. They were also to promote the influence of Britain in Turkey\", also: \"to promote British free-trade interests (which may have sounded splendid but was arguably damaging to the Ottoman Empire)\".\n\"British exports to the Ottoman Empire, including Egypt and the Danubian principalities, increased nearly threefold from 1840 to 1851 (...) Thus it was very important, from the financial point of view, for Britain to prevent the Ottoman Empire from falling into other hands.\"\n\"From this moment (1838) the export of British manufactured goods to Turkey rose steeply. There was an elevenfold increase by 1850\".\nAssistance from Western European powers or Russia had twice saved the Ottoman Empire from destruction, but the Ottomans also lost their independence in foreign policy. Britain and France desired more than any other states to preserve the integrity of the Ottoman Empire because they did not want to see Russia gaining access to the Mediterranean Sea. Austria had the same fears.\nRussian expansionism.\nRussia, as a member of the Holy Alliance, had operated as the \"police of Europe\" to maintain the balance of power that had been established in the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Russia had assisted Austria's efforts in suppressing the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, and expected a free hand in settling its problems with the Ottoman Empire, the \"sick man of Europe\". However, Britain could not tolerate Russian dominance of Ottoman affairs, which would challenge its domination of the eastern Mediterranean.\nStarting with Peter the Great in the early 1700s, after centuries of Ottoman northward expansion and Crimean-Nogai raids, Russia began a southwards expansion across the sparsely-populated \"Wild Fields\" toward the warm water ports of the Black Sea, which does not freeze over, unlike the handful of ports controlled by Russia in the north. The goal was to promote year-round trade and a year-round navy. Pursuit of that goal brought the emerging Russian state into conflict with the Ukrainian Cossacks and then the Tatars of the Crimean Khanate and Circassians.\n\"The plan to develop Russia as a southern power had begun in earnest in 1776, when Catherine placed Potemkin in charge of New Russia (Novorossiya), the sparsely populated territories newly conquered from the Ottomans on the Black Sea's northern coastline, and ordered him to colonize the area\". \nWhen Russia conquered those groups and gained possession of their territories, the Ottoman Empire lost its buffer zone against Russian expansion, and both empires came into direct conflict. The conflict with the Ottoman Empire also presented a religious issue of importance, as Russia saw itself as the protector of history of the Eastern Orthodox Church under the Ottoman Orthodox Christians, who were legally treated as second-class citizens. The Ottoman Reform Edict of 1856, promulgated after the war, largely reversed much of the second-class status, most notably the tax that only non-Muslims paid.\nBritain's immediate fear was Russia's expansion at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. The British desired to preserve Ottoman integrity and were concerned that Russia might make advances toward British India or move toward Scandinavia or Western Europe. A distraction (in the form of the Ottoman Empire) on the Russian southwest flank would mitigate that threat. The Royal Navy also wanted to forestall the threat of a powerful Imperial Russian Navy. Taylor stated the British perspective:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The Crimean war was fought for the sake of Europe rather than for the Eastern question; it was fought against Russia, not in favour of Turkey... The British fought Russia out of resentment and supposed that her defeat would strengthen the European Balance of Power.\nBecause of \"British commercial and strategic interests in the Middle East and India\", the British joined the French, \"cement[ing] an alliance with Britain and... reassert[ing] its military power\". Among those who supported the British strategy were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In his articles for the \"New-York Tribune\" around 1853, Marx saw the Crimean War as a conflict between the democratic ideals of the west that started with the \"great movement of 1789\" against \"Russia and Absolutism\". He described the Ottoman Empire as a buffer against a pattern of expansionism by the Tsar. Marx and Engels also accused Lord Palmerston of playing along with the interests of Russia and being unserious in preparing for the conflict. Marx believed Palmerston to be bribed by Russia, and shared this belief with David Urquhart. Urquhart, for his part, was a British politician who was a major advocate for the Ottoman Empire.\nMikhail Pogodin, a professor of history at Moscow University, gave Nicholas I a summary of Russia's policy towards the Slavs in the war. Nicholas' answer was filled with grievances against the West. Nicholas shared Pogodin's sense that Russia's role as the protector of Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire was not understood and that Russia was unfairly treated by the West. Nicholas especially approved of the following passage:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />France takes Algeria from Turkey, and almost every year England annexes another Indian principality: none of this disturbs the balance of power; but when Russia occupies Moldavia and Wallachia, albeit only temporarily, that disturbs the balance of power. France occupies Rome and stays there several years during peacetime: that is nothing; but Russia only thinks of occupying Constantinople, and the peace of Europe is threatened. The English declare war on the Chinese, who have, it seems, offended them: no one has the right to intervene; but Russia is obliged to ask Europe for permission if it quarrels with its neighbour. England threatens Greece to support the false claims of a miserable Jew and burns its fleet: that is a lawful action; but Russia demands a treaty to protect millions of Christians, and that is deemed to strengthen its position in the East at the expense of the balance of power. We can expect nothing from the West but blind hatred and malice... (\"comment in the margin by Nicholas I\": 'This is the whole point').\nRussia was militarily weak, technologically backward and administratively incompetent. Despite its grand ambitions toward the south, it had not built its railway network in that direction, and its communications were poor. Its bureaucracy was riddled with graft, corruption and inefficiency and was unprepared for war. Its navy was weak and technologically backward. Its army, although very large, suffered from colonels who pocketed their men's pay, from poor morale, and from a technological deficit relative to Britain and France. By the war's end, the profound weaknesses of the Russian armed forces had become readily apparent, and the Russian leadership was determined to reform it.\nHowever, no matter how great the problems of Russia were, Russia believed those of the Ottomans were greater. \"In a one-to-one fight Nikolai (Tsar) had no doubt of beating the Ottoman armies and navy\". Russian foreign policy failed to understand the importance of Britain's trade interests and did not understand the changes in the situation after the conclusion of the Anglo-Ottoman Treaty in 1838 (see Treaty of Balta Liman). Russia attempted to \"honestly\" negotiate with the United Kingdom on the partition of the Ottoman Empire and made concessions in order to eliminate all objections from the United Kingdom.\n\"The Tsar Nicholas had always, as we have seen, been anxious to maintain a cordial understanding with England in regard to the Eastern Question, and early in the spring of 1853 he had a series of interviews with Sir George Hamilton Seymour, then British ambassador at St. Petersburg.\" Emperor Nicholas I assured that he did not intend to seize Constantinople and territories in the Balkans, he himself offered Britain to take over Egypt and Crete. Concessions at the conclusion of the London Straits Convention were made earlier in 1841. \"By signing the convention, the Russians had given up their privileged position in the Ottoman Empire and their control of the Straits, all in the hope of improving relations with Britain and isolating France\". But Britain after 1838 was interested in preserving the integrity of the Ottoman Empire and rejected all Russian proposals. \"The fall of the Ottoman Empire was not, however, a requirement of British policy in the East. A weak Ottoman state best suited British interests\".\nImmediate causes of war.\nFrench Emperor Napoleon III's ambition to restore France's grandeur initiated the immediate chain of events that led to France and Britain declaring war on Russia on 27 and 28 March 1854, respectively. He pursued Catholic support by asserting France's \"sovereign authority\" over the Christian population of Palestine, to the detriment of Russia (the sponsor of Eastern Orthodoxy). To achieve that, he in May 1851 appointed Charles, marquis de La Valette, a zealous leading member of the Catholic clericalists, as his ambassador to the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire.\nRussia disputed that attempted change in authority. Referring to two previous treaties (one from 1757 and the Treaty of K\u00fc\u00e7\u00fck Kaynarca from 1774), the Ottomans reversed their earlier decision, renounced the French treaty and declared that Russia was the protector of the Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire.\nNapoleon III responded with a show of force by sending the ship of the line \"Charlemagne\" to the Black Sea and thereby violated the London Straits Convention. The gunboat diplomacy show of force, together with money, induced Ottoman Sultan Abd\u00fclmecid I to accept a new treaty confirming France and the Catholic Church's supreme authority over Christian holy places, including the Church of the Nativity, which had been held by the Greek Orthodox Church.\nTsar Nicholas I then deployed his 4th and 5th Army Corps along the River Danube in Wallachia, as a direct threat to the Ottoman lands south of the river. He had Foreign Minister Count Karl Nesselrode undertake talks with the Ottomans. Nesselrode confided to Seymour:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"[The dispute over the holy places]\" had assumed a new character\u2014that the acts of injustice towards the Greek church which it had been desired to prevent had been perpetrated and consequently that now the object must be to find a remedy for these wrongs. The success of French negotiations at Constantinople was to be ascribed solely to intrigue and violence\u2014violence which had been supposed to be the ultima ratio of kings, being, it had been seen, the means which the present ruler of France was in the habit of employing in the first instance. \nThe agreement referred to by the French was in 1740. At present most historians (except for the new Russian Orthodox nationalists) accept that the question of the holy places was no more than a pretext for the Crimean War. As conflict emerged over the issue of the holy places, Nicholas I and Nesselrode began a diplomatic offensive, which they hoped would prevent either British or French interference in any conflict between Russia and the Ottomans and prevent both from forming an anti-Russian alliance.\nNicholas began courting Britain by means of conversations with Seymour in January and February 1853. Nicholas insisted that he no longer wished to expand the Russian Empire but that he had an obligation to the Christian communities in the Ottoman Empire.\nHe next dispatched a highly-abrasive diplomat, Prince Menshikov, on a special mission to the Ottoman Sublime Porte in February 1853. By previous treaties, the sultan had committed \"to protect the (Eastern Orthodox) Christian religion and its churches\". Menshikov demanded a Russian protectorate over all 12\u00a0million Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire with control of the Orthodox Church's hierarchy. A compromise was reached regarding Orthodox access to the Holy Land, but the Sultan, strongly supported by the British ambassador, Stratford Canning, 1st Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe, rejected the most sweeping demands.\nRussian historian Vinogradov V.N. point out that Menshikov's demands did not go beyond the limits of previous treaties. \"The agreement was reached on the administration of church rites of both clergy in respected temples and, secondly, that the tsar rejected the idea of expanding his right of patronage and, in fact, insisted on confirming the terms of the Kucuk-Kaynardzhiy treaty of 1774, which allowed giving advice to the Sultan, but did not oblige them to accept\".\n\"By the early 1850s Stratford Canning had become far more than an ambassador or adviser to the Porte. The 'Great Elchi', or Great Ambassador, as he was known in Constantinople, had a direct influence on the policies of the Turkish government. (...) His presence was a source of deep resentment among the Sultan's ministers, who lived in terror of a personal visit from the dictatorial ambassador\".\nNicholas fumed at \"the infernal dictatorship of this Redcliffe\" whose name and political ascendancy at the Porte personified for him the whole Eastern Question, The British and the French sent in naval task forces to support the Ottomans, as Russia had prepared to seize the Danubian Principalities.\nAll the calculations of the Russian emperor turned out to be erroneous. Britain refused his proposals, it was not possible to prevent the Anglo-French rapprochement, Austria opposed his policy, the Ottoman Empire showed intransigence. On the contrary, a favourable situation was developing for Britain. Britain had great naval power and a powerful economy, but did not have a strong land army. The alliance with France, which had a strong land army, made it possible to strike at Russia. \"With the help of French infantry, it was possible to overturn Russia's positions with one blow\"\nFirst hostilities.\nIn February 1853, the British government of Prime Minister Lord Aberdeen reappointed Lord Stratford as British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Having resigned the ambassadorship in January, he had been replaced by Colonel Rose as \"charg\u00e9 d'affaires\". Lord Stratford then turned around, sailed back to Constantinople, arriving there on 5 April 1853 and convinced the Sultan there to reject the Russian treaty proposal as compromising Ottoman independence. The Leader of the Opposition in the British House of Commons, Benjamin Disraeli, blamed Aberdeen's and Stratford's actions for making war inevitable, which started the process that would force the Aberdeen government to resign in January 1855 over the war.\nShortly after the Tsar had learned of the failure of Menshikov's diplomacy toward the end of June 1853, he sent armies under the commands of Field Marshal Ivan Paskevich and General Mikhail Gorchakov across the River Prut into the Ottoman-controlled Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. Fewer than half of the 80,000 Russian soldiers who crossed the Prut in 1853 survived. By far, nearly all of the deaths would result from sickness, rather than action, since the Russian Army still suffered from medical services that ranged from bad to none.\nRussia had obtained recognition from the Ottoman Empire of the Tsar's role as special guardian of the Orthodox Christians in Moldavia and Wallachia. Russia now used the Sultan's failure to resolve the issue of the protection of the Christian sites in the Holy Land as a pretext for Russian occupation of those Danubian provinces. Nicholas believed that the European powers, especially Austria, would not object strongly to the annexation of a few neighbouring Ottoman provinces, especially since Russia had assisted Austria's efforts in suppressing the Hungarian Revolution in 1849.\nThe United Kingdom, hoping to maintain the Ottoman Empire as a bulwark against the expansion of Russian power in Asia, sent a fleet to the Dardanelles, where it joined a fleet sent by France.\nBattle of Sinop.\nThe European powers continued to pursue diplomatic avenues. The representatives of the four Great Powers (the United Kingdom, France, Austria and Prussia) met in Vienna, where they drafted a note, which they hoped would be acceptable to both the Russians and the Ottomans. The peace terms arrived at by the four powers at the Vienna Conference (1853) were delivered to the Russians by Austrian Foreign Minister Count Karl von Buol on 5 December 1853. The note met with the approval of Nicholas I, but Abd\u00fclmecid I rejected the proposal since he felt that the document's poor phrasing left it open to many different interpretations. The United Kingdom, France and Austria united in proposing amendments to mollify the Sultan, but the court of St. Petersburg ignored their suggestions. The United Kingdom and France then set aside the idea of continuing negotiations, but Austria and Prussia did not believe that the rejection of the proposed amendments justified the abandonment of the diplomatic process.\nOn 23 November, a small Russian naval force discovered the Ottoman fleet harboured in Sinop and began a blockade. Once the Russian blockade was reinforced, a squadron of 6 Russian ships of the line supported by 5 smaller warships, assaulted the harbour on 30 November 1853. During Battle of Sinop, the Russian squadron destroyed a patrol squadron of 11 Ottoman warships\u2014mostly frigates\u2014while they were anchored in port under defence of the onshore artillery garrison. The Ottoman fleet suffered a crushing defeat. The Russian victory in the naval battle in Sinope was called \"the massacre of Sinope\". Although Russia and the Ottoman Empire were already at war, and there was no evidence of Russian atrocities, the phrase was used as propaganda in the West. The press in both United Kingdom and France used Sinop as the \"casus belli\" (\"cause of war\") to shape the public opinion in favour of war against Russia. By 28 March 1854, after Russia ignored an Anglo-French ultimatum to withdraw from the Danubian Principalities, the United Kingdom and France had both declared war.\nDardanelles.\nBritain was concerned about Russian activity and Sir John Burgoyne, a senior advisor to Lord Aberdeen, urged for the Dardanelles to be occupied and works of sufficient strength to be built to block any Russian move to capture Constantinople and gain access to the Mediterranean. The Corps of Royal Engineers sent men to the Dardanelles, and Burgoyne went to Paris and met with the British ambassador and the French emperor. Lord Cowley wrote on 8 February to Burgoyne, \"Your visit to Paris has produced a visible change in the Emperor's views, and he is making every preparation for a land expedition in case the last attempt at negotiation should break down\".\nBurgoyne and his team of engineers inspected and surveyed the Dardanelles area in February. They were fired on by Russian riflemen when they went to Varna. A team of sappers arrived in March, and major building works commenced on a seven-mile line of defence, which was designed to block the Gallipoli Peninsula. French sappers worked on half of the line, which was finished in May.\nPeace attempts.\nNicholas felt that because of Russian assistance in suppressing the Hungarian revolution of 1848, Austria would side with him or at the very least remain neutral. Austria, however, felt threatened by the Russian troops in the Balkans. On 27 February 1854, the United Kingdom and France demanded the withdrawal of Russian forces from the principalities. Austria supported them and, without declaring war on Russia, refused to guarantee its neutrality. Russia's rejection of the ultimatum proved to be the justification used by Britain and France to enter the war.\nRussia soon withdrew its troops from the Danubian Principalities, which were then occupied by Austria for the duration of the war. That removed the original grounds for war, but the British and the French continued with hostilities. Determined to address the Eastern Question by putting an end to the Russian threat to the Ottomans, the allies in August 1854 proposed the \"Four Points\" for ending the conflict in addition to the Russian withdrawal:\nThose points, particularly the third, would require clarification through negotiations, which Russia refused. The allies, including Austria, therefore agreed that Britain and France should take further military action to prevent further Russian aggression against the Ottomans. Britain and France agreed on the invasion of Crimea as the first step.\nBattles.\nDanube campaign.\nThe Danube campaign opened when the Russians occupied the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia in July 1853, which brought their forces to the north bank of the River Danube. In response, the Ottoman Empire also moved its forces up to the river, establishing strongholds at Vidin in the west and Silistra in the east, near the mouth of the Danube. The Ottoman move up the River Danube was also of concern to the Austrians, who moved forces into Transylvania in response. However, the Austrians had begun to fear the Russians more than the Ottomans. Indeed, like the British, the Austrians were now coming to see that an intact Ottoman Empire was necessary as a bulwark against the Russians. Accordingly, Austria resisted Russian diplomatic attempts to join the war but remained neutral during the Crimean War.\nAfter the Ottoman ultimatum in September 1853, forces under Ottoman General Omar Pasha crossed the Danube at Vidin and captured Calafat in October 1853. Simultaneously, in the east, the Ottomans crossed the Danube at Silistra and attacked the Russians at Olteni\u021ba. The resulting Battle of Olteni\u021ba was the first engagement since the declaration of war. The Russians counterattacked but were beaten back. On 31 December 1853, the Ottoman forces at Calafat moved against the Russian force at Chetatea or Cetate, a small village nine miles north of Calafat, and engaged it on 6 January 1854. The battle began when the Russians made a move to recapture Calafat. Most of the heavy fighting took place in and around Chetatea until the Russians were driven out of the village. Despite the setback at Chetatea, Russian forces on 28 January 1854 laid siege to Calafat. The siege would continue until May 1854 when it was lifted by the Russians. The Ottomans would also later beat the Russians in battle at Caracal.\nIn early 1854, the Russians again advanced by crossing the River Danube into the Turkish province of Dobruja. By April 1854, the Russians had reached the lines of Trajan's Wall, where they were finally halted. In the centre, the Russian forces crossed the Danube and laid siege to Silistra from 14 April with 60,000 troops. The defenders had 15,000 troops and supplies for three months. The siege was lifted on 23 June 1854. The British and the French could not then take the field for lack of equipment.\nIn the west, the Russians were dissuaded from attacking Vidin by the presence of the Austrian forces, which had swollen to 280,000 men. On 28 May 1854, a protocol of the Vienna Conference was signed by Austria and Russia. One of the aims of the Russian advance had been to encourage the Orthodox Christian Serbs and Bulgarians who were living under Ottoman rule to rebel. When the Russian troops crossed the River Pruth into Moldavia, the Orthodox Christians showed no interest in rising up against the Ottomans. Adding to Nicholas I's worries was the concern that Austria would enter the war against the Russians and attack his armies on the western flank. Indeed, after attempting to mediate a peaceful settlement between Russia and the Ottomans, the Austrians entered the war on the side of the Ottomans with an attack against the Russians in the Danubian Principalities which threatened to cut off the Russian supply lines. Accordingly, the Russians were forced to raise the siege of Silistra on 23 June 1854 and to begin abandoning the principalities. The lifting of the siege reduced the threat of a Russian advance into Bulgaria.\nIn June 1854, the Allied expeditionary force landed at Varna, a city on the Black Sea's western coast, but made little advance from its base there. Karl Marx was noted to have quipped that \"there they are, the French doing nothing and the British helping them as fast as possible\". In July 1854, the Ottomans, under Omar Pasha, crossed the Danube into Wallachia and on 7 July 1854 engaged the Russians in the city of Giurgiu and conquered it. The capture of Giurgiu by the Ottomans immediately threatened Bucharest in Wallachia with capture by the same Ottoman army. On 26 July 1854, Nicholas I, responding to an Austrian ultimatum, ordered the withdrawal of Russian troops from the principalities. Also, in late July 1854, following up on the Russian retreat, the French staged an expedition against the Russian forces still in Dobruja, but it was a failure.\nBy then, the Russian withdrawal was complete, except for the fortress towns of northern Dobruja, and Russia's place in the principalities was taken by the Austrians as a neutral peacekeeping force. There was little further action on that front after late 1854, and in September, the allied force boarded ships at Varna to invade Crimea.\nBlack Sea theatre.\nThe naval operations of the Crimean War commenced with the dispatch in mid-1853 of the French and the British fleets to the Black Sea region, to support the Ottomans and to dissuade the Russians from encroachment. By June 1853, both fleets had been stationed at Besikas Bay, outside the Dardanelles. With the Russian occupation of the Danube Principalities in July 1853, they moved to the Bosphorus, and on 3 January 1854, they entered the Black Sea.\nMeanwhile, the Russian Black Sea Fleet operated against Ottoman coastal traffic between Constantinople and the Caucasus ports, and the Ottoman fleet sought to protect the supply line. The clash came on 30 November 1853, when a Russian fleet attacked an Ottoman force in the harbour at Sinop and destroyed it at the Battle of Sinop. The battle outraged British public opinion, which called for war. There was little additional naval action until March 1854, when after the declaration of war, the British frigate was fired on outside Odessa Harbour. In response an Anglo-French fleet bombarded the port and caused much damage to the town. To show support for the Ottomans after the Battle of Sinop, on 22 December 1853, the Anglo-French squadron entered the Black Sea and the steamship HMS \"Retribution\" approached the Port of Sevastopol. Its commander received an ultimatum not to allow any ships in the Black Sea.\nIn June, the fleets transported the Allied expeditionary forces to Varna to support the Ottoman operations on the Danube. In September they again transported the armies, this time to Crimea. The Russian fleet then declined to engage the allies but preferred to maintain a \"fleet in being\", a strategy that failed when Sevastopol, the main port and the base of most of the Black Sea fleet, came under siege. The Russians were reduced to scuttling their warships as blockships after they had stripped them of their guns and men to reinforce batteries on shore. During the siege, the Russians lost four 110- or 120-gun, three-decker ships of the line, twelve 84-gun two-deckers and four 60-gun frigates in the Black Sea, as well as a large number of smaller vessels. During the rest of the campaign, the allied fleets remained in control of the Black Sea and ensured that the various fronts were kept supplied.\nIn May 1855, the allies successfully invaded Kerch and operated against Taganrog in the Sea of Azov. In September, they moved against Russian installations in the Dnieper estuary by attacking Kinburn in the first use of ironclad ships in naval warfare.\nCrimean campaign.\nThe Russians evacuated Wallachia and Moldavia in late July 1854. Therefore, the immediate cause of war had now been withdrawn, and the war might have then ended. However, war fever among the public in both Britain and France had been whipped up by the press in both countries to the degree that politicians found it untenable to propose immediately ending the war. The coalition government of George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen, fell on 30 January 1855 on a no-confidence vote, as Parliament voted to appoint a committee to investigate the mismanagement of the war.\nFrench and British officers and engineers were sent on 20 July on \"Fury\", a wooden \"Bulldog\"-class paddle sloop, to survey the harbour of Sevastopol and the coast near it. They managed to get close to the harbour mouth to inspect the formidable batteries. Returning, they reported that they believed that 15,000\u201320,000 troops were encamped. Ships were prepared to transport horses, and siege equipment was both manufactured and imported.\nThe Crimean campaign opened in September 1854. In seven columns, 360 ships sailed, each steamer towing two sailing ships. Anchoring on 13 September in the bay of Yevpatoria, the town surrendered, and 500 marines landed to occupy it. The town and the bay would provide a fallback position in case of disaster. The ships then sailed east to make the landing of the allied expeditionary force on the sandy beaches of Kalamita Bay, on the south-west coast of Crimea. The landing surprised the Russians, as they had expected a landing at Katcha. The last-minute change proved that Russia had known the original campaign plan. There was no sign of the enemy and so all of the invading troops landed on 14 September 1854. It took another four days to land all of the stores, equipment, horses and artillery.\nThe landing took place north of Sevastopol and so the Russians had arrayed their army in expectation of a direct attack. The allies advanced and on the morning of 20 September came up to the River Alma and engaged the Russian Army. The Russian position was strong, but after three hours, the allied frontal attack had driven the Russians out of their dug-in positions with losses of 6,000 men. The Battle of the Alma resulted in 3,300 Allied losses. Failing to pursue the retreating forces was one of many strategic errors made during the war, and the Russians themselves noted that if the allies had pressed south that day, they would have easily captured Sevastopol.\nBelieving the northern approaches to the city too well defended, especially because of the presence of a large star fort and the city being on the south side of Sevastopol Bay, Sir John Burgoyne, the engineer advisor, recommended for the allies attack to Sevastopol from the south. The joint commanders, Raglan and Saint-Arnaud, agreed. On 25 September, the whole army began to march southeast and encircled the city from the south after it had established port facilities at Balaclava for the British and at Kamiesch () for the French. The Russians retreated into the city.\nThe Allied armies moved without problems to the south, and the heavy artillery was brought ashore with batteries and connecting trenches built. By 10 October, some batteries were ready, and by 17 October, when the bombardment commenced\u2014126 guns were firing, 53 of them French. The fleet meanwhile engaged the shore batteries. The British bombardment worked better than that of the French, who had smaller-calibre guns. The fleet suffered high casualties during the day. The British wanted to attack that afternoon, but the French wanted to defer the attack.\nA postponement was agreed, but on the next day, the French were still not ready. By 19 October the Russians had transferred some heavy guns to the southern defences and had outgunned the allies.\nReinforcements for the Russians gave them the courage to send out probing attacks. The Allied lines, beginning to suffer from cholera as early as September, were stretched. The French, on the west, had less to do than the British on the east, with their siege lines and the large nine-mile open wing back to their supply base on the south coast.\nBattle of Balaclava.\nA large Russian assault on the allied supply base to the southeast at Balaclava was rebuffed on 25 October 1854. The Battle of Balaclava is remembered in Britain for the actions of two British units. At the start of the battle, a large body of Russian cavalry charged the 93rd Highlanders, who were posted north of the village of Kadikoi. Commanding them was Sir Colin Campbell. Rather than \"form square\", the traditional method of repelling cavalry, Campbell took the risky decision to have his Highlanders form a single line two men deep. Campbell had seen the effectiveness of the new Mini\u00e9 rifles with which his troops were armed at the Battle of Alma, a month earlier, and he was confident that his men could beat back the Russians. His tactics succeeded. From up on the ridge to the west, the \"Times\" correspondent William Howard Russell saw the Highlanders as a \"thin red streak topped with steel\", a phrase which soon became the \"Thin Red Line\".\nSoon afterward, a Russian cavalry movement was countered by the Heavy Brigade, which charged and fought hand to hand until the Russians retreated. That caused a more widespread Russian retreat, including a number of their artillery units. After the local commanders had failed to take advantage of the retreat, Lord Raglan sent out orders to move up and to prevent the withdrawal of naval guns from the recently captured redoubts on the heights. Raglan could see those guns because of his position on the hill. In the valley, that view was obstructed, and the wrong guns were in sight to the left. The local commanders ignored the demands, which led to the British aide-de-camp, Captain Louis Nolan, personally delivering the quickly-written and confusing order to attack the artillery. When Lord Lucan questioned to which guns the order referred, the aide-de-camp pointed to the first Russian battery that he could see and allegedly said \"There is your enemy, there are your guns\", because of his obstructed view, which were wrong. Lucan then passed the order to the Earl of Cardigan, which resulted in the Charge of the Light Brigade.\nIn that charge, Cardigan formed up his unit and charged the length of the Valley of the Balaclava, under fire from Russian batteries in the hills. The charge of the Light Brigade caused 278 casualties of the 700-man unit. The Light Brigade was memorialised in the famous poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, \"The Charge of the Light Brigade\". Although traditionally, the charge of the Light Brigade was looked upon as a glorious but wasted sacrifice of good men and horses, recent historians believe that the charge of the Light Brigade succeeded in at least some of its objectives. The aim of any cavalry charge is to scatter the enemy's lines and frighten the enemy off the battlefield. The Charge of the Light Brigade so unnerved the Russian cavalry, which had been routed by the Charge of the Heavy Brigade, that the Russians were set to full-scale flight.\nThe shortage of men led to the failure of the British and the French to follow up on the Battle of Balaclava, which led directly to the much bloodier Battle of Inkerman. On 5 November 1854, the Russians attempted to raise the siege at Sevastopol with an attack against the allies, which resulted in another allied victory.\nWinter of 1854\u20131855.\nWinter weather and a deteriorating supply of troops and materiel on both sides led to a halt in ground operations. Sevastopol remained invested by the allies, whose armies were hemmed in by the Imperial Russian Army in the interior. On 14 November, the \"Balaklava Storm\", a major weather event, sank 30 allied transport ships, including , which was carrying a cargo of winter clothing.\nThe storm and the heavy traffic caused the road from the coast to the troops to disintegrate into a quagmire, which required engineers to devote most of their time to its repair, including by quarrying stone. A tramway was ordered and arrived in January with a civilian engineering crew, but it took until March before it had become sufficiently advanced to be of any appreciable value. An electrical telegraph was also ordered, but the frozen ground delayed its installation until March, when communications from the base port of Balaklava to the British HQ was established. The pipe-and-cable-laying plough failed because of the hard frozen soil, but nevertheless of cable were laid.\nThe troops suffered greatly from cold and sickness, and the shortage of fuel led them to start dismantling their defensive gabions and fascines. In February 1855, the Russians attacked the allied base at Eupatoria, where an Ottoman army had built up and was threatening Russian supply routes. The Russians were defeated at the Battle of Eupatoria, leading to a change in their command.\nThe strain of directing the war had taken its toll on the health of Tsar Nicholas. Full of remorse for the disasters that he had caused, he caught pneumonia and died on 2 March.\nSiege of Sevastopol.\nThe allies had had time to consider the problem, and the French were brought around to agree that the key to the defence was the Malakoff. Emphasis of the siege at Sevastopol shifted to the British left against the fortifications on Malakoff Hill. In March, there was fighting by the French over a new fort being built by the Russians at Mamelon, on a hill in front of the Malakoff. Several weeks of fighting resulted in little change in the front line, and the Mamelon remained in Russian hands.\nIn April 1855, the allies staged a second all-out bombardment, which led to an artillery duel with the Russian guns, but no ground assault followed.\nOn 24 May 1855, 60 ships, containing 7,000 French, 5,000 Turkish and 3,000 British troops, set off for a raid on the city of Kerch, east of Sevastopol, in an attempt to open another front in Crimea and to cut off Russian supplies. When the allies landed the force at Kerch, the plan was to outflank the Russian Army. The landings were successful, but the force made little progress thereafter.\nMany more artillery pieces had arrived and had been dug into batteries. The first general assault of Sevastopol took place on 18 June 1855. There is a legend that the assault was scheduled for that date in favour of Napoleon III in the 40th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, but the legend is not confirmed by historians. However, the appearance of such a legend is undoubtedly symptomatic since the war in France was understood as a certain revanche for the defeat of 1812.\nIn June, a third bombardment was followed after two days by a successful attack on the Mamelon, but a follow-up assault on the Malakoff failed with heavy losses. Meanwhile, the garrison commander, Admiral Pavel Nakhimov, fell on 30 June 1855, and Raglan died on 28 June. Losses in those battles were so great that by agreement of military opponents short-term truces for removal of corpses were signed (these truces were described in the work of Leo Tolstoy \"Sevastopol Sketches\"). The assault was beaten back with heavy casualties and in an undoubted victory for Russia. It is worth mentioning that the Russian Siege of Sevastopol (panorama) depicts the moment of the assault of Sevastopol on 18 June 1855.\nIn August, the Russians again made an attack towards the base at Balaclava, which was defended by the French, newly arrived Sardinian and Ottoman troops. The resulting Battle of the Chernaya was a defeat for the Russians, who suffered heavy casualties.\nFor months, each side had been building forward rifle pits and defensive positions, which resulted in many skirmishes. Artillery fire aimed to gain superiority over the enemy guns. The final assault was made on 5 September, when another French bombardment (the sixth) was followed by an assault by the French Army on 8 September and resulted in the French capture of the Malakoff fort. The Russians failed to retake it and their defences collapsed. Meanwhile, the British assaulted the Great Redan, a Russian defensive battlement just south of the city of Sevastopol, a position that had been attacked repeatedly for months. Whether the British captured the Redan remains in dispute: Russian historians recognise only the loss of the Malakhov Kurgan, a key point of defence, claiming that all other positions were retained. What is agreed is that the Russians abandoned the positions, blew up their powder magazines and retreated to the north. The city finally fell on 9 September 1855, after a 337-day-long siege.\nBoth sides were now exhausted, and no further military operations were launched in Crimea before the onset of winter. The main objective of the siege was the destruction of the Russian fleet and docks and took place over the winter. On 28 February, multiple mines blew up the five docks, the canal, and three locks.\nAzov campaign.\nIn early 1855, the allied Anglo-French commanders decided to send an Anglo-French naval squadron into the Azov Sea to undermine Russian communications and supplies to besieged Sevastopol. On 12 May 1855, Anglo-French warships entered the Kerch Strait and destroyed the coast battery of the Kamishevaya Bay. Once through the Kerch Strait, British and French warships struck at every vestige of Russian power along the coast of the Sea of Azov. Except for Rostov and Azov, no town, depot, building or fortification was immune from attack, and Russian naval power ceased to exist almost overnight. This Allied campaign led to a significant reduction in supplies flowing to the besieged Russian troops at Sevastopol.\nOn 21 May 1855, the gunboats and armed steamers attacked the seaport of Taganrog, the most important hub near Rostov on Don. The vast amounts of food, especially bread, wheat, barley and rye, that were amassed in the city after the outbreak of war were prevented from being exported.\nThe Governor of Taganrog, Yegor Tolstoy, and Lieutenant-General Ivan Krasnov refused an allied ultimatum by responding, \"Russians never surrender their cities\". The Anglo-French squadron bombarded Taganrog for 6<templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1\u20442\u00a0hours and landed 300 troops near the Old Stairway in the centre of Taganrog, but they were thrown back by Don Cossacks and a volunteer corps.\nIn July 1855, the allied squadron tried to go past Taganrog to Rostov-on-Don by entering the River Don through the Mius River. On 12 July 1855 HMS\u00a0\"Jasper\" grounded near Taganrog thanks to a fisherman who moved buoys into shallow water. The Cossacks captured the gunboat with all of its guns and blew it up. The third siege attempt was made 19\u201331 August 1855, but the city was already fortified, and the squadron could not approach close enough for landing operations. The allied fleet left the Gulf of Taganrog on 2 September 1855, with minor military operations along the Azov Sea coast continuing until late 1855.\nCaucasus theatre.\nAs in the previous wars, the Caucasus front was secondary to what happened in the west. Perhaps because of better communications, western events sometimes influenced the east. The main events were the second capture of Kars and a landing on the Georgian coast. Several commanders on both sides were either incompetent or unlucky, and few fought aggressively.\n1853: There were four main events. 1. In the north, the Ottomans captured the border fort of Saint Nicholas in a surprise night attack (27/28 October). They then pushed about 20,000 troops across the Choloki river border. Being outnumbered, the Russians abandoned Poti and Redoubt Kali and drew back to Marani. Both sides remained immobile for the next seven months. 2. In the centre the Ottomans moved north from Ardahan to within cannon-shot of Akhaltsike and awaited reinforcements (13 November), but the Russians routed them. The claimed losses were 4,000 Turks and 400 Russians. 3. In the south about 30,000 Turks slowly moved east to the main Russian concentration at Gyumri or Alexandropol (November). They crossed the border and set up artillery south of town. Prince Vakhtang Orbeliani tried to drive them off and found himself trapped. The Ottomans failed to press their advantage; the remaining Russians rescued Orbeliani and the Ottomans retired west. Orbeliani lost about 1,000 men from 5,000. The Russians now decided to advance. The Ottomans took up a strong position on the Kars road and attacked-only to be defeated in the Battle of Ba\u015fgedikler, losing 6,000 men, half their artillery and all of their supply train. The Russians lost 1,300, including Prince Orbeliani. This was Prince Ellico Orbeliani, whose wife was later kidnapped by Imam Shamil at Tsinandali. 4. At sea the Turks sent a fleet east, which was destroyed by Admiral Nakhimov at Sinope.\n1854: The British and French declared war on 28 March. Early in the year on 3 January, the Anglo-French fleet appeared in the Black Sea, and the Russians abandoned the Black Sea Defensive Line from Anapa south. Nikolay Muravyov, who replaced Vorontsov, fearing an Anglo-French landing in conjunction with Shamil, 3rd Imam of Dagestan and the Persians, recommended withdrawal north of the Caucasus. For that purpose, he was replaced by Aleksandr Baryatinsky. When the allies chose a land attack on Sevastopol, any plan for a landing in the east was abandoned.\nIn the north, Georgiy Evseevich Eristov pushed southwest, fought two battles, forced the Ottomans back to Batumi, retired behind the Cholok river and suspended action for the rest of the year (June). In the far south, Wrangel pushed west, fought a battle and occupied Bayazit. In the centre. the main forces stood at Kars and Gyumri. Both slowly approached along the Kars-Gyumri road and faced each other, neither side choosing to fight (June\u2013July). On 4 August, Russian scouts saw a movement which they thought was the start of a withdrawal, the Russians advanced and the Ottomans attacked first. They were defeated and lost 8,000 men to the Russian 3,000. Also, 10,000 irregulars deserted to their villages. Both sides withdrew to their former positions. About then, the Persians made a semi-secret agreement to remain neutral in exchange for the cancellation of the indemnity from the previous war.\n1855: Siege of Kars: Up to May 1855, Ottomans forces in the east were reduced from 120,000 to 75,000, mostly by disease. The local Armenian population kept Muravyov well-informed about the Ottomans at Kars and he judged they had about five months of supplies. He therefore decided to control the surrounding area with cavalry and starve them out. He started in May and by June was south and west of the town. A relieving force fell back and there was a possibility of taking Erzurum, but Muravyov chose not to. In late September he learned of the fall of Sevastopol and a Turkish landing at Batum. This led him to reverse policy and try a direct attack. It failed, the Russians losing 8,000 men and the Turks 1,500 (29 September). The blockade continued and Kars surrendered on 28 November.\n1855: Georgian coast: Omar Pasha, the Turkish commander at Crimea had long wanted to land in Georgia, but the western powers vetoed it. When they relented in August most of the campaigning season was lost. In 8 September Turks landed at Batum, but the main concentration was at Sukhum Kale. This required a 100-mile march south through a country with poor roads. In essence, it was a military demonstration in order to frighten the Russian command and force it to lift the siege of the fortress of Kars. \"All luck depended on whether Muravyov (the Russian commander) would be scared or not\". But the Russian command did not see a serious threat, the Siege of Kars was continued. The Russians planned to hold the line of the Ingur river which separates Abkhazia from Georgia proper. Omar crossed the Ingur on 7 November and then wasted a great deal of time, the Russians doing little. By 2 December he had reached the Tskhenistsqali, the rainy season had started, his camps were submerged in mud and there was no bread. Learning of the fall of Kars he withdrew to the Ingur. The Russians did nothing and he evacuated to Batum in February of the following year.\nBaltic theatre.\nThe Baltic was a forgotten theatre of the Crimean War. Popularisation of events elsewhere overshadowed the significance of this theatre, which was close to Saint Petersburg, the Russian capital. In April 1854, an Anglo-French fleet entered the Baltic to attack the Russian naval base of Kronstadt and the Russian fleet that was stationed there. In August 1854, the combined British and French fleet returned to Kronstadt for another attempt. The outnumbered Russian Baltic Fleet confined its movements to the areas around its fortifications. At the same time, the British and French commanders Sir Charles Napier and Alexandre Ferdinand Parseval-Deschenes although they led the largest fleet assembled since the Napoleonic Wars, considered the Sveaborg fortress too well-defended to engage. Thus, shelling of the Russian batteries was limited to two attempts in 1854 and 1855, and initially, the attacking fleets limited their actions to blockading Russian trade in the Gulf of Finland. Naval attacks on other ports, such as the ones in the island of Hogland in the Gulf of Finland, proved more successful. Additionally, allies conducted raids on less fortified sections of the Finnish coast. These battles are known in Finland as the \u00c5land War.\nRussia depended on imports\u2014both for its domestic economy and for the supply of its military forces: the blockade forced Russia to rely on more expensive overland shipments from Prussia. The blockade seriously undermined the Russian export economy and helped shorten the war.\nThe burning of tar warehouses and ships led to international criticism, and in London the MP Thomas Milner Gibson demanded in the House of Commons that the First Lord of the Admiralty explain \"a system which carried on a great war by plundering and destroying the property of defenceless villagers\".\nIn fact, the operations in the Baltic sea were in the nature of binding forces. It was very important to divert Russian forces from the south or, more precisely, not to allow Nicholas to transfer to Crimea a huge army guarding the Baltic coast and the capital. This goal Anglo-French forces achieved. The Russian Army in Crimea was forced to act without superiority in forces.\nIn August 1854 a Franco-British naval force captured and destroyed the Russian Bomarsund fortress on \u00c5land Islands. In the August 1855, the Western Allied Baltic Fleet tried to destroy heavily defended Russian dockyards at Sveaborg outside Helsinki. More than 1,000 enemy guns tested the strength of the fortress for two days. Despite the shelling, the sailors of the 120-gun ship \"Rossiya\", led by Captain Viktor Poplonsky, defended the entrance to the harbour. The Allies fired over 20,000 shells but failed to defeat the Russian batteries. The British then built a massive new fleet of more than 350 gunboats and mortar vessels, which was known as the Great Armament, but the war ended before the attack was launched.\nPart of the Russian resistance was credited to the deployment of newly invented naval mines. Perhaps the most influential contributor to the development of naval mining was a Swede resident in Russia, the inventor and civil engineer Immanuel Nobel (the father of Alfred Nobel). Immanuel Nobel helped the Russian war effort by applying his knowledge of industrial explosives, such as nitroglycerin and gunpowder. An account given in 1860 by United States Army Major Richard Delafield dates modern naval mining to the Crimean War: \"Torpedo mines, if I may use this name given by Fulton to 'self-acting mines underwater', were among the novelties attempted by the Russians in their defences about Cronstadt and Sevastopol.\"\nFor the campaign of 1856, Britain and France planned an attack on the main base of the Russian Navy in the Baltic sea\u2014Kronstadt. The attack was to be carried out using armoured floating batteries. The use of the latter proved to be highly effective in the attack on Kinburn on the Black Sea in 1855. Undoubtedly, this threat contributed on the part of Russia the decision on the conclusion of peace on unfavourable terms.\nWhite Sea theatre.\nIn late 1854, a squadron of three British warships led by HMS\u00a0\"Miranda\" left the Baltic for the White Sea, where they shelled Kola (which was destroyed) and the Solovki.\nPacific theatre.\nMinor naval skirmishes also occurred in the Far East, where at Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula a British and French Allied squadron including under Rear Admiral David Price and a French force under Counter-Admiral Auguste Febvrier Despointes besieged a smaller Russian force under Rear Admiral Yevfimiy Putyatin. In September 1854, an Allied landing force was beaten back with heavy casualties, and the Allies withdrew. The victory at Petropavlovsk was for Russia in the words of the future Minister of War Dmitry Milyutin \"a ray of light among the dark clouds\". The Russians escaped under the cover of snow in early 1855 after Allied reinforcements arrived in the region.\nThe Anglo-French forces in the Far East also made several small landings on Sakhalin and Urup, one of the Kuril Islands.\nPiedmontese involvement.\nCamillo di Cavour, under orders of Victor Emmanuel\u00a0II of Piedmont-Sardinia, sent an expeditionary corps of 15,000 soldiers, commanded by General Alfonso La Marmora, to side with French and British forces during the war. This was an attempt at gaining the favour of the French, especially when the issue of uniting Italy would become an important matter. The deployment of Italian troops to Crimea, and the gallantry shown by them in the Battle of the Chernaya (16 August 1855) and in the Siege of Sevastopol, allowed the Kingdom of Sardinia to be among the participants at the peace conference at the end of the war, where it could address the issue of the \"Risorgimento\" to other European powers.\nGreece.\nGreece played a peripheral role in the war. When Russia attacked the Ottoman Empire in 1853, King Otto of Greece saw an opportunity to expand north and south into Ottoman areas that had large Greek Christian majorities. Greece did not coordinate its plans with Russia, did not declare war, and received no outside military or financial support. Greece, an Orthodox nation, had considerable support in Russia, but the Russian government decided it was too dangerous to help Greece expand its holdings. When the Russians invaded the Principalities, the Ottoman forces were tied down so Greece invaded Thessaly and Epirus. To block further Greek moves, the British and French occupied the main Greek port at Piraeus from April 1854 to February 1857, and effectively neutralized the Greek Army. The Greeks, gambling on a Russian victory, incited the large-scale Epirus Revolt of 1854 as well as uprisings in Ottoman Crete. The insurrections were failures that were easily crushed by the Ottomans' allied Egyptian Army. Greece was not invited to the peace conference and made no gains out of the war. The frustrated Greek leadership blamed the King for failing to take advantage of the situation; his popularity plunged and he was forced to abdicate in 1862.\nIn addition, a 1,000-strong Greek Volunteer Legion was formed in the Danubian Principalities in 1854 and later fought at Sevastopol.\nKiev Cossack revolt.\nA peasant revolt that began in the Vasylkiv county of Kiev Governorate (province) in February 1855 spread across the whole Kiev and Chernigov governorates, with peasants refusing to participate in corv\u00e9e labour and other orders of the local authorities and, in some cases, attacking priests who were accused of hiding a decree about the liberation of the peasants.\nEnd of the war.\nBritish position.\nDissatisfaction with the conduct of the war was growing with the public in Britain and other countries and was worsened by reports of fiascos, especially the devastating losses of the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava. On Sunday, 21 January 1855, a \"snowball riot\" occurred in Trafalgar Square near St Martin-in-the-Fields in which 1,500 people gathered to protest against the war by pelting cabs and pedestrians with snowballs. When the police intervened, the snowballs were directed at the constables. The riot was finally put down by troops and police acting with truncheons. In Parliament, the Conservatives demanded an accounting of all soldiers, cavalry and sailors sent to Crimea and accurate figures as to the number of casualties sustained by all British armed forces in Crimea, especially concerning the Battle of Balaclava. When Parliament passed a bill to investigate by the vote of 305 to 148, Aberdeen said he had lost a vote of no confidence and resigned as prime minister on 30 January 1855. The veteran former Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston became prime minister. Palmerston took a hard line and wanted to expand the war, foment unrest inside the Russian Empire and reduce the Russian threat to Europe permanently. Sweden\u2013Norway and Prussia were willing to join Britain and France, and Russia was isolated.\nPeace negotiations.\nFrance, which had sent far more soldiers to the war and suffered far more casualties than Britain had, wanted the war to end, as did Austria.\nNegotiations began in Paris in February 1856 and were surprisingly easy. France, under the leadership of Napoleon III, had no special interests in the Black Sea and so did not support the harsh British and Austrian proposals.\nPeace negotiations at the Congress of Paris resulted in the signing of the Treaty of Paris on 30 March 1856. In compliance with Article III, Russia restored to the Ottoman Empire the city and the citadel of Kars and \"all other parts of the Ottoman territory of which the Russian troop were in possession\". Russia returned the Southern Bessarabia to Moldavia. By Article IV, Britain, France, Sardinia and Ottoman Empire restored to Russia \"the towns and ports of Sevastopol, Balaklava, Kamish, Eupatoria, Kerch, Jenikale, Kinburn as well as all other territories occupied by the allied troops\". In conformity with Articles XI and XIII, the Tsar and the Sultan agreed not to establish any naval or military arsenal on the Black Sea coast. The Black Sea clauses weakened Russia, which no longer posed a naval threat to the Ottomans. The Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia were nominally returned to the Ottoman Empire, and the Austrian Empire was forced to abandon its annexation and to end its occupation of them, but they in practice became independent. The Treaty of Paris admitted the Ottoman Empire to the Concert of Europe, and the great powers pledged to respect its independence and territorial integrity.\nAftermath in Russia.\nSome members of the Russian intelligentsia saw defeat as a pressure to modernise their society. Grand Duke Constantine, a son of the Tsar, remarked:\nLong-term effects.\nOrlando Figes points to the long-term damage Russia suffered:\n\"The demilitarization of the Black Sea was a major blow to Russia, which was no longer able to protect its vulnerable southern coastal frontier against the British or any other fleet... The destruction of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Sevastopol and other naval docks was a humiliation. No compulsory disarmament had ever been imposed on a great power previously... The Allies did not really think that they were dealing with a European power in Russia. They regarded Russia as a semi-Asiatic state... In Russia itself, the Crimean defeat discredited the armed services and highlighted the need to modernize the country's defences, not just in the strictly military sense, but also through the building of railways, industrialization, sound finances and so on... The image many Russians had built up of their country\u2014the biggest, richest and most powerful in the world\u2014had suddenly been shattered. Russia's backwardness had been exposed... The Crimean disaster had exposed the shortcomings of every institution in Russia\u2014not just the corruption and incompetence of the military command, the technological backwardness of the army and navy, or the inadequate roads and lack of railways that accounted for the chronic problems of supply, but the poor condition and illiteracy of the serfs who made up the armed forces, the inability of the serf economy to sustain a state of war against industrial powers, and the failures of autocracy itself.\"\nSurprisingly, after the war, the Russian-French rapprochement came, which corresponded to the plans of both sides. France persuaded the Russians to support their claims to return to the territories before the Congress of Vienna, in exchange for ceasing to act as a guarantor of the Paris peace. Alexander II stated in response to his minister's remark: \"It would undoubtedly be more useful for our interests to have him among our allies if we could rely on him.\"\nThe Treaty of Paris stood until 1871, when Prussia defeated France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870\u201371. While Prussia and several other German states united to form a powerful German Empire in January 1871, the French deposed Emperor Napoleon III and proclaimed the French Third Republic (September 1870). During his reign, Napoleon, eager for the support of the United Kingdom, had opposed Russia over the Eastern Question. Russian interference in the Ottoman Empire did not in any significant manner threaten the interests of France (Kissinger uses Napoleon's pandering to journalists and public opinion on this subject\u2014at the expense of the true interests of France\u2014as an example of strategic frivolity), and France abandoned its opposition to Russia after the establishment of the republic. Encouraged by the new attitude of French diplomacy after the surrenders of the besieged French Army at Sedan and later Metz and supported by the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, Russia in October 1870 renounced the Black Sea clauses of the treaty agreed to in 1856. As the United Kingdom with Austria-Hungary could not enforce the clauses, Russia once again established a fleet in the Black Sea.\nAfter being defeated in the Crimean War, Russia feared that Russian Alaska would be easily captured in any future war with the British; therefore, Alexander II opted to sell the territory to the United States.\nA Greek tortoise named Timothy was found on a Portuguese ship by Captain John Guy Courtenay-Everard on in 1854. Serving as a mascot throughout the war, when she died in 2004 this made her the last living veteran of the Crimean war.\nHistorian Norman Rich argues that the war was not an accident, but was sought out by the determination of the British and French not to allow Russia an honourable retreat. Both insisted on a military victory to enhance their prestige in European affairs when a non-violent peaceful political solution was available. The war then wrecked the Concert of Europe, which had long kept the peace.\nTurkish historian Candan Badem wrote, \"Victory in this war did not bring any significant material gain, not even a war indemnity. On the other hand, the Ottoman treasury was nearly bankrupted due to war expenses\". Badem adds that the Ottomans achieved no significant territorial gains, lost the right to a navy in the Black Sea, and failed to gain status as a great power. Further, the war gave impetus to the union of the Danubian principalities and ultimately to their independence.\nThe treaty punished the defeated Russia, but in the long run, Austria lost the most from the war despite having barely taken part in it. Having abandoned its alliance with Russia, Austria remained diplomatically isolated following the war, which contributed to its disastrous defeats in the 1859 Franco-Austrian War that resulted in the cession of Lombardy to the Kingdom of Sardinia and later in the loss of the Habsburg rule of Tuscany and Modena, which meant the end of Austrian influence in peninsular Italy. Furthermore, Russia did not do anything to assist its former ally, Austria, in the 1866 Austro-Prussian War, when Austria lost Venetia and, more importantly, its influence in most German-speaking lands. The status of Austria as a great power, with the unifications of Germany and Italy, now became very precarious. It had to compromise with Hungary; the two countries shared the Danubian Empire. With France now hostile to Germany and gravitating towards Russia, and with Russia competing with the newly renamed Austro-Hungarian Empire for an increased role in the Balkans at the expense of the Ottoman Empire, the foundations were in place for building the diplomatic alliances that would shape the First World War.\nThe Treaty's guarantees to preserve Ottoman territories were broken 21 years later when Russia, exploiting nationalist unrest in the Balkans and seeking to regain lost prestige, once again declared war on the Ottoman Empire on 24 April 1877. In this later Russo-Turkish War the states of Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro gained international recognition of their independence and Bulgaria achieved its autonomy from direct Ottoman rule. Russia took over Southern Bessarabia, lost in 1856. The regions of Batum and Kars, as well as those inhabited by Adjarians (Muslim Georgians) and Armenians, were also annexed to Russia in the Caucasus. At the same time, \"protectors\" of the Ottoman Empire Britain received Cyprus as a colonial possession, while Austria-Hungary occupied and annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908. Finally, Ottoman rule in the Balkans ended after the First Balkan War of 1912, when the combined forces of the Balkan states defeated it.\nThe Crimean War marked the re-ascendancy of France to the position of pre-eminent power on the Continent, the continued decline of the Ottoman Empire and a period of crisis for Imperial Russia. As Fuller notes, \"Russia had been beaten on the Crimean Peninsula, and the military feared that it would inevitably be beaten again unless steps were taken to surmount its military weakness.\" To compensate for its defeat in the Crimean War, the Russian Empire then embarked in more intensive expansion in Asia, partially to restore national pride and partially to distract Britain on the world stage, intensifying the Great Game.\nThe war also marked the demise of the first phase of the Concert of Europe, the balance-of-power system that had dominated Europe since the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and had included France, Russia, Prussia, Austria and the United Kingdom. From 1854 to 1871, the Concert of Europe concept was weakened, leading to the crises that were the unifications of Germany and of Italy, before a resurgence of great power conferences.\nIn 1870, Prussia persuaded Russia to remain neutral in the Franco-Prussian war. Bismarck, having declared it impossible to keep 100\u00a0million Russians in a humiliated position without sovereign rights to their Black Sea coastline, supported Russia against the Treaty of Paris, and in return, Prussia achieved freedom of action against France in 1870\u201371 and inflicted a crushing defeat on it.\nAn envoy from India who visited the war front after arriving to Constantinople from a failed mission in England, Azimullah Khan observed exhaustion and fatigue in the British soldiers and set to exploit a perceived weak state of the British Empire upon his return which consequently planted the seeds for the Indian War of Independence.\nHistorical analysis.\nAccording to historian Shepard Clough, the war\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />was not the result of a calculated plan, nor even of hasty last-minute decisions made under stress. It was the consequence of more than two years of fatal blundering in slow-motion by inept statesmen who had months to reflect upon the actions they took. It arose from Napoleon's search for prestige; Nicholas's quest for control over the Straits; his na\u00efve miscalculation of the probable reactions of the European powers; the failure of those powers to make their positions clear; and the pressure of public opinion in Britain and Constantinople at crucial moments.\nThe view of \"diplomatic drift\" as the cause of the war was first popularised by A. W. Kinglake, who portrayed the British as victims of newspaper sensationalism and duplicitous French and Ottoman diplomacy.\nMore recently, historians Andrew Lambert and Winfried Baumgart have argued that Britain was following a geopolitical strategy in aiming to destroy the fledgling Russian Navy, which might challenge the Royal Navy for control of the seas, and that the war was also a joint European response to a century of Russian expansion not just southwards but also into Western Europe.\nCasualties.\nThe war undoubtedly became one of the bloodiest in the history of Europe at that time, but data on casualties vary greatly. The European states, Russia, France and Britain suffered the greatest losses. Sources agree on the definition of the losses of the last two, these are 95,615 dead on the part of France, 22,182 on the part of Britain and 2,166 dead Italians, Turkish losses range from 45,400 dead to 400,000. Data on losses among Russians also vary greatly. The minimum death toll is 73,125 dead, rising to 522,000. There are also data on 450,015 dead and killed. Historian Yevgeny Tarle described the war as a \"bloody massacre\".\nDocumentation.\nDocumentation of the war was provided by William Howard Russell, who wrote for \"The Times\" newspaper, and by Roger Fenton's photographs. News from war correspondents reached all of the nations involved in the war and kept the public citizenry of those nations better informed of the day-to-day events of the war than had been the case in any earlier war. The British public was very well informed on the day-to-day realities of the war. After the French extended the telegraph to the coast of the Black Sea in late 1854, news reached London in two days. When the British laid an underwater cable to Crimea in April 1855, news reached London in a few hours. The daily news reports energised public opinion, which brought down the Aberdeen government and carried Lord Palmerston into office as prime minister.\nLeo Tolstoy wrote a few short sketches on the Siege of Sevastopol, collected in \"Sevastopol Sketches\". The stories detail the lives of the Russian soldiers and citizens in Sevastopol during the siege. Because of this work, Tolstoy has been called the world's first war correspondent.\nCriticisms and reform.\nHistorian R. B. McCallum points out the war was enthusiastically supported by the British populace as it was happening, but the mood changed very dramatically afterwards. Pacifists and critics were unpopular but:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />in the end they won. Cobden and Bright were true to their principles of foreign policy, which laid down the absolute minimum of intervention in European affairs and a deep moral reprobation of war... When the first enthusiasm was passed, when the dead were mourned, the sufferings revealed, and the cost counted, when in 1870 Russia was able calmly to secure the revocation of the Treaty, which disarmed her in the Black Sea, the view became general of the war was stupid and unnecessary, and effected nothing... The Crimean war remained as a classic example... of how governments may plunge into war, how strong ambassadors may mislead weak prime ministers, how the public may be worked up into a facile fury, and how the achievements of the war may crumble to nothing. The Bright-Cobden criticism of the war was remembered and to a large extent accepted [especially by the Liberal Party]. Isolation from European entanglements seemed more than ever desirable.\nAs the memory of the \"Charge of the Light Brigade\" demonstrates, the war became an iconic symbol of logistical, medical and tactical failures and mismanagement. Public opinion in Britain was outraged at the logistical and command failures of the war; the newspapers demanded drastic reforms, and parliamentary investigations demonstrated the multiple failures of the army. The reform campaign was not well organised, and the traditional aristocratic leadership of the army pulled itself together, and blocked all serious reforms. No one was punished. The outbreak of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 shifted attention to the heroic defence of British interest by the army, and further talk of reform went nowhere. The demand for professionalisation was achieved by Florence Nightingale, who gained worldwide attention for pioneering and publicising modern nursing while treating the wounded. Another nurse, a Jamaican named Mary Seacole, also made an impact providing care for wounded and dying soldiers. \"The Times\" war correspondent William Howard Russell spoke highly of Seacole's skill as a healer, writing \"A more tender or skilful hand about a wound or a broken limb could not be found among our best surgeons.\"\nOutstanding achievements in battlefield surgery were done during the war of 1853\u201356. \"Nikolai Pirogov, who pioneered the system of field surgery that other nations came to only in the First World War\".\nThe Crimean War also saw the first tactical use of railways and other modern inventions, such as the electric telegraph, with the first \"live\" war reporting by Russell. Some credit Russell with prompting the resignation of the sitting British government through his reporting of the lacklustre condition of British forces deployed in Crimea. Additionally, the telegraph reduced the independence of British overseas possessions from their commanders in London due to such rapid communications. Newspaper readership informed public opinion in the United Kingdom and France as never before.\nThe Crimean War was a contributing factor in the Russian abolition of serfdom in 1861: Tsar Alexander\u00a0II (Nicholas I's son and successor) saw the military defeat of the Russian serf-army by free troops from Britain and France as proof of the need for emancipation. The Crimean War also led to the realisation by the Russian government of its technological inferiority, in military practices as well as weapons. Alexander also initiated the Great Reforms, which were aimed at strengthening and modernising the Russian state in the light of weaknesses revealed by the war.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotes and references.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nHistoriography and memory.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nContemporary sources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>"}, "descending_order": ["46763", "30997172", "150184", "5171132"], "permutation_1": ["150184", "30997172", "46763", "5171132"], "permutation_2": ["5171132", "30997172", "150184", "46763"], "permutation_3": ["5171132", "46763", "150184", "30997172"]}
{"id": "4hop2__339729_22831_51791_820357", "docs_added": {"15217384": "Francovich v Italy\nDecision of the European Court of Justice\nFrancovich v Italy (1991) C-6/90 was a decision of the European Court of Justice which established that European Union Member States could be liable to pay compensation to individuals who suffered a loss by reason of the Member State's failure to transpose an EU directive into national law. This principle is sometimes known as the principle of state liability or \"the rule in \"Francovich\"\" in European Union law.\nFacts.\nUnder the Insolvency Protection Directive 80/987/EC, EU Member States were expected to enact provisions in their national law to provide for a minimum level of insurance for employees who had wages unpaid if their employers went insolvent. Mr Francovich, who had worked in Vicenza for CDN Elettronica SnC, was owed 6 million Lira, and Mrs Bonifaci and 33 of her colleagues were owed 253\u00a0million Lira together after their company, Gaia Confezioni Srl, had gone bankrupt. The Directive was meant to be implemented by 1983, but five years later they had been paid nothing, as the company liquidators had informed them that no money was left. They brought a claim against the Italian state, arguing that it must pay damages to compensate for their losses instead, on account of a failure to implement the Directive.\nJudgment.\nThe European Court of Justice held that the Italian government had breached its obligations, and was liable to compensate the workers' loss resulting from the breach. The Court further held that the damages for such breaches should be available before national courts, and that to establish state liability on the basis of the failure to implement a directive, claimants must prove that the directive conferred specific rights on them, identifiable in its wording, and that there is a causal link between the state's failure to implement the directive and the loss suffered.\nEnforcement.\nThe court stipulated that national procedures should determine how each Member State's liability was to be enforced. In an analysis of 35 cases following \"Francovich v Italy (1991),\" Takis Tridimas has shown that the European Court of Justice takes one of three approaches to resolving disputes of state liability:\nIt has also been shown that the principle of state liability has primarily served commercial interests in the Union. There are several obstacles to state liability for other groups of rights (environmental, social, consumer) including the inability to claim an \u2018identifiable right\u2019 under the judgment\",\" struggling to sue as the losses are spread over many claimants, and an inability to prove the loss for an individual (environmental pollution).\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "5171132": "Ottoman Tripolitania\nSemi-autonomous state affiliated with the Ottoman Empire (1551\u20131912)\nOttoman Tripolitania, also known as the Regency of Tripoli, was officially ruled by the Ottoman Empire from 1551 to 1912. It corresponded roughly to the northern parts of modern-day Libya in historic Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. It was initially established as an Ottoman province ruled by a pasha (governor) in Tripoli who was appointed from Constantinople, though in practice it was semi-autonomous due to the power of the local Janissaries. From 1711 to 1835, the Karamanli dynasty ruled the province as a \"de facto\" hereditary monarchy while remaining under nominal Ottoman suzerainty. In 1835, the Ottomans reestablished direct control over the region until its annexation by Italy in 1912.\nLike the Ottoman regencies in Tunis and Algiers, the Regency of Tripoli was a major base for the privateering activities of the North African corsairs, who also provided revenues for Tripoli. A remnant of the centuries of Turkish rule is the presence of a population of Turkish origin, and those of partial Turkish origin, the \"Kouloughlis\".\nHistory.\nOttoman conquest.\nBy the beginning of the 16th\u00a0century the Libyan coast had minimal central authority and its harbours were havens for unchecked bands of pirates. The Spaniards occupied Tripoli in 1510, but the Spaniards were more concerned with controlling the port than with the inconveniences of administering a colony. In 1530 the city, along with Malta and Gozo, was ceded by Charles\u00a0I of Spain to the Knights of St\u00a0John as compensation for their recent expulsion from the island of Rhodes at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. Christian rule lasted then until 1551, when Tripoli was besieged and conquered by famed Ottoman admirals Sinan Pasha and Turgut Reis. Declared as Bey and later Pasha of Tripoli, Turgut Reis received submission from the tribes of the interior and several cities like Misrata, Zuwara, Gharyan, and Gafsa in the next decade. These efforts contributed to cement the foundations of a statal structure in what is today Libya, but control from Constantinople remained loose at best, much like in the rest of the Barbary Coast of North Africa.\nUnder the Ottomans, the Maghreb was divided into three provinces, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. After 1565, administrative authority in Tripoli was vested in a Pasha directly appointed by the Sultan in Constantinople. The sultan supported the pasha with a corps of janissaries who he was dependent upon, which was in turn divided into a number of companies under the command of a junior officer or \"bey\". The janissaries quickly became the dominant force in Ottoman Libya and were also in charge of collecting taxes; however, Barbary corsairs were the ones who steadily provided income to Tripoli from privateering activities. As a self-governing military guild answerable only to their own laws and protected by a \"divan\" (a council of senior officers who advised the pasha), the janissaries soon reduced the pasha to a largely ceremonial role.\nIn 1611, the local chiefs of the area conducted a coup d'\u00e9tat and successfully appointed Suleiman Safar, their own leader, as \"dey\" (local chief). As a result, his successors continually held the title and even occasionally identified as pasha. As Pasha of Tripoli, Osman Saqizli managed to maintain political stability during the 1650s and 1660s. However, by the 1670s, the position of the dey experienced the succession of eight different leaders, leading to instability.260\nThomas Baker, an English consul stationed in Tripoli from 1679 to 1686, described a turbulent government, a dwindling treasury and an economy heavily reliant on piracy. Tripoli's fleet was the smallest among the Barbary States, with only 13 vessels compared to 20 in Tunis and 40 in Algiers.259 Besides piracy, the region's inland areas, consisting of ravines, mountains and inhospitable desert, forced a reliance on exports of salt, coastal slave raiding in Calabria and Morea, and tribute from the interior tribes. The 1676 peace treaty between Tripoli and English shipping had shifted most pirate activity towards the French, leading to French demands for peace in 1681. Driven by financial desperation, Tripoli violated these terms a year later by seizing a French merchant ship. The following dispute saw the French mortar-bombing Tripoli into submission in 1686.\nKaramanli dynasty and the Barbary Wars.\nDuring the 18th century, Ottoman power waned in North Africa, with the sultans ending the practice of sending pashas to Tripoli, Algiers and Tunis. The title of pasha began to assume its hereditary status.\nIn 1711, Ahmed Karamanli, an Ottoman cavalry officer and son of a Turkish officer and Libyan woman, seized power and founded the Karamanli dynasty, which would last 124 years. The 1790\u201395 Tripolitanian civil war occurred in those years.\nIn May 1801, Pasha Yusuf Karamanli demanded from the United States an increase in the tribute ($83,000) which it had paid since 1796 for the protection of their commerce and enslavement of crews by barbary pirates when the Treaty of Tripoli was signed. The demand was refused by third American President Thomas Jefferson, an American naval force was sent and blockaded Tripoli, and the desultory First Barbary War dragged on from 1801 until 3 June 1805. The Regency of Tripoli was defeated by the newly revived United States Navy.\nThe Second Barbary War (1815, also known as the Algerian War) was the second of the two wars fought between the United States and the Ottoman Turks' North African regencies of Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis, known collectively as the Barbary States.\nOn 5 September 1817, Yusuf Karamanli invited the leaders of the Libyan tribe of Al-Jawazi to his castle in Benghazi, following a dispute regarding tribute and an uprising against his rule. Consequently, the Pasha ordered the execution of all attendees, and chased down the other tribe members, which resulted in the massacre of at least 10,000 people, who eventually sought refuge in neighboring countries, especially Egypt. This was known as the Al-Jawazi massacre.\nReassertion of Ottoman authority.\nIn 1835 the government of Sultan Mahmud\u00a0II took advantage of local disturbances to reassert their direct authority. As decentralized Ottoman power had resulted in the virtual independence of Egypt as well as Tripoli, the coast and desert lying between them relapsed to anarchy, even after direct Ottoman control was resumed in Tripoli. The indigenous Senusiyya (or Sanusi) Movement, led by Islamic cleric Muhammad ibn Ali al-Sanusi, called on the countryside to resist Ottoman rule. The Grand Senussi established his headquarters in the oasis town of Jaghbub while his \"ikhwan\" (brothers) set up \"zawiyas\" (religious colleges or monasteries) across North Africa and brought some stability to regions not known for their submission to central authority. In line with the expressed instruction of the Grand Sanusi, these gains were made largely without any coercion.\nIt was one of the first Ottoman provinces to be reclassified from an eyalet to a vilayet after an administrative reform in 1865, and by 1867 it had been reformed into the Tripolitania Vilayet.\nThe Ottoman sultan Abdulhamid II twice sent his aide-de-camp Azmzade Sadik El Mueyyed to meet Sheikh Sanusi to cultivate positive relations and counter the West European scramble for Africa.\nThe highpoint of the Sanusi influence came in the 1880s under the Grand Senussi's son, Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi. With 146\u00a0lodges spanning the entire Sahara, he moved the Senussi capital to Kufra.\nOver a 75\u2011year period, the Ottoman Turks provided 33\u00a0governors and Libya remained part of the empire until Italy invaded for the second time in 1911.\nItalo-Turkish War.\nThe Italo-Turkish War was fought between the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Italy from September 29, 1911, to October 18, 1912.\nAs a result of this conflict, the Ottoman Turks ceded the provinces of Tripolitania, Fezzan, and Cyrenaica to Italy. These provinces together formed what became known as Libya.\nAdministrative divisions.\nBy the 19th century, the province of Tripoli, known officially as \"Tarablus al-Gharb\" ('Tripoli of the West') was organized into five \"sanjak\"s (districts):\nThese district names were reported by James Henry Skene in 1851 and five districts of the same name existed after the reforms of the 1860s that transformed the province officially into a \"vilayet\" (or in Arabic). Among these, Cyrenaica was made an independent \"sanjak\" in 1863 that was directly dependent on Istanbul, then it was assigned to Tripoli's supervision in 1871, and finally it was attached to Istanbul again in 1888.", "30997172": "Al-Berka\nAl-Berka (Arabic:\u0627\u0644\u0628\u0631\u0643\u0629) is a Basic People's Congress administrative division of Benghazi, Libya. As of the 2011 Libyan revolution, the area is simply known as a district of Benghazi after the Gaddafi era Basic People's Congresses were disbanded. \nHistory.\nAl-Berka is one of the oldest districts in Benghazi and has buildings which attest to both its Ottoman and Italian era routes. One such example is the Hadiya mosque built in the early 20th century.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "46763": "Crimean War\nConflict on the Crimean Peninsula from 1853 to 1856\nThe Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont from October 1853 to February 1856. Geopolitical causes of the war included the \"Eastern question\" (the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the \"sick man of Europe\"), expansion of Imperial Russia in the preceding Russo-Turkish wars, and the British and French preference to preserve the Ottoman Empire to maintain the balance of power in the Concert of Europe.\nThe flashpoint was a dispute between France and Russia over the rights of Catholic and Orthodox minorities in Palestine. After the Sublime Porte refused Tsar Nicholas I's demand that the Empire's Orthodox subjects were to be placed under his protection, Russian troops occupied the Danubian Principalities in July 1853. The Ottomans declared war on Russia in October and halted the Russian advance at Silistria. Fearing the growth of Russian influence and compelled by public outrage over the annihilation of the Ottoman squadron at Sinop, Britain and France joined the war on the Ottoman side in March 1854.\nIn September 1854, after extended preparations, allied forces landed in Crimea in an attempt to capture Russia's main naval base in the Black Sea, Sevastopol. They scored an early victory at the Battle of the Alma. The Russians counterattacked in late October in what became the Battle of Balaclava and were repulsed, and a second counterattack at Inkerman ended in a stalemate. The front settled into the eleven-month-long Siege of Sevastopol, involving brutal conditions for troops on both sides. Smaller military actions took place in the Caucasus (1853\u20131855), the White Sea (July\u2013August 1854) and the North Pacific (1854\u20131855). The Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont entered on the allies' side in 1855.\nSevastopol ultimately fell following a renewed French assault on the Malakoff redoubt in September 1855. Isolated and facing a bleak prospect of invasion by the West if the war continued, Russia sued for peace in March 1856. Due to the conflict's domestic unpopularity, France and Britain welcomed the development. The Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 March 1856, ended the war. It forbade Russia to base warships in the Black Sea. The Ottoman vassal states of Wallachia and Moldavia became largely independent. Christians in the Ottoman Empire gained a degree of official equality, and the Orthodox Church regained control of the Christian churches in dispute.\nThe Crimean War was one of the first conflicts in which military forces used modern technologies such as explosive naval shells, railways and telegraphs. It was also one of the first to be documented extensively in written reports and in photographs. The war quickly symbolized logistical, medical and tactical failures and mismanagement. The reaction in Britain led to a demand for the professionalization of medicine, most famously achieved by Florence Nightingale, who gained worldwide attention for pioneering modern nursing while she treated the wounded.\nThe Crimean War also marked a turning point for the Russian Empire. It weakened the Imperial Russian Army, drained the treasury and undermined its influence in Europe. The humiliating defeat forced Russia's educated elites to identify the country's fundamental problems. It became a catalyst for reforms of Russia's social institutions, including the emancipation reform of 1861 which abolished serfdom in Russia, and overhauls in the justice system, local self-government, education and military service.\nEastern question.\nAs the Ottoman Empire steadily weakened during the 19th century, the Russian Empire stood poised to take advantage by expanding southward. In the 1850s, the British and the French Empires were allied with the Ottoman Empire and were determined to prevent that from happening. The historian A. J. P. Taylor argued that the war had resulted not from aggression, but from the interacting fears of the major players:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />In some sense the Crimean War was predestined and had deep-seated causes. Neither Nicholas I nor Napoleon III nor the British government could retreat from the conflict for prestige once it was launched. Nicholas needed a subservient Turkey for the sake of Russian security; Napoleon needed success for the sake of his domestic position; the British government needed an independent Turkey for the security of the Eastern Mediterranean... Mutual fear, not mutual aggression, caused the Crimean War.\nWeakening of the Ottoman Empire: 1820\u20131840s.\nIn the early 1800s, the Ottoman Empire suffered a number of existential challenges. The Serbian Revolution in 1804 resulted in the autonomy of the first Balkan Christian nation under the empire. The Greek War of Independence, which began in early 1821, provided further evidence of the empire's internal and military weakness, and the commission of atrocities by Ottoman military forces (see Chios massacre) further undermined the empire. The disbandment of the centuries-old Janissary corps by Sultan Mahmud II on 15 June 1826 (Auspicious Incident) helped the empire in the longer term but deprived it of its existing standing army in the short term. In 1827, the Anglo-Franco-Russian fleet destroyed almost all of the Ottoman naval forces at the Battle of Navarino. In 1830, Greece became independent after ten years of war and the Russo-Turkish War (1828\u201329). The Treaty of Adrianople (1829) granted Russian and Western European commercial ships free passage through the Black Sea straits. Also, Serbia received autonomy, and the Danubian Principalities (Moldavia and Wallachia) became territories under Russian protection.\nFrance took the opportunity to occupy Algeria, which had been under Ottoman rule, in 1830. In 1831, Muhammad Ali of Egypt, the most powerful vassal of the Ottoman Empire, declared independence. Ottoman forces were defeated in a number of battles, which forced Mahmud II to seek Russian military aid. A Russian army of 10,000 landed on the shores of the Bosphorus in 1833 and helped prevent the Egyptians from capturing Constantinople.\n\"The reasons for the Tsar's disquietude are not obscure. Not Turkey alone was threatened by the advance of Ibrahim. The rights secured to Russia by a succession of treaties were also directly jeopardized. The substitution of a virile Albanian dynasty at Constantinople in place of the effete Osmanlis was the last thing desired by the Power which wished, naturally enough, to command the gate into the Mediterranean\". Russia was satisfied with the weak government in Constantinople (Istanbul).\nAs a result, the Treaty of H\u00fcnk\u00e2r \u0130skelesi was signed and greatly benefited Russia. It provided for a military alliance between the Russian and the Ottoman Empires if one of them was attacked, and a secret additional clause allowed the Ottomans to opt out of sending troops but to close the Straits to foreign warships if Russia were under threat. Egypt remained nominally under Ottoman sovereignty but was \"de facto\" independent.\nIn 1838 in a situation similar to that of 1831, Muhammad Ali of Egypt was not happy about his lack of control and power in Syria, and he resumed military action. The Ottomans lost to the Egyptians at the Battle of Nezib on 24 June 1839 but were saved by Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia, who signed a convention in London on 15 July 1840 that granted Muhammad Ali and his descendants the right to inherit power in Egypt in exchange for the removal of Egyptian forces from Syria and Lebanon. Moreover, Muhammad Ali had to admit a formal dependence on the Ottoman sultan. After Muhammad Ali refused to obey the requirements of the convention, the allied Anglo-Austrian fleet blockaded the Nile Delta, bombarded Beirut and captured Acre. Muhammad Ali then accepted the convention's conditions.\nOn 13 July 1841, after the expiry of the Treaty of H\u00fcnk\u00e2r \u0130skelesi, the London Straits Convention was signed under pressure from the European countries. The new treaty deprived Russia of its right to block warships from passing into the Black Sea in case of war. Thus, the way to the Black Sea was open for British and French warships during a possible Russo-Ottoman conflict.\nRussian historians tend to view that history as evidence that Russia lacked aggressive plans. The Russian historian V. N. Vinogradov writes: \"The signing of the documents was the result of deliberate decisions: instead of bilateral (none of the great powers recognized this Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi), the new Treaty of London was obligatory for all, it closed the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. In the absence of expansion plans, this was a sound decision\".\nIn 1838, Britain lost interest in crushing the Ottoman Empire. On the contrary, after the conclusion of the trade treaty of 1838 (see Treaty of Balta Liman), Britain received unlimited access to the markets of the Ottoman Empire. \"Britain imposed on the Porte a Tariff Convention which in effect transformed the Ottoman Empire into a virtual free-trade zone. \nTherefore its trade interests pushed it to protect the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. In the long term, the Ottoman Empire lost the opportunity to modernize and industrialize, but in the short term, it gained the opportunity to receive the support of European powers (primarily Britain) in opposing the desire of the conquered peoples for self-determination and Russia, which sought to crush its influence in the Balkans and Asia.\nPublicly, European politicians made broad promises to the Ottomans. Lord Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary, said in 1839: \"All that we hear about the decay of the Turkish Empire, and its being a dead body or a sapless trunk, and so forth, is pure and unadulterated nonsense. Given 10 years of peace under European protection, coupled with internal reform, there seemed to him no reason why it should not become again a respectable Power\".\nOrlando Figes has claimed that \"The motives of the British in promoting liberal reforms were not just to secure the independence of the Ottoman Empire against Russia. They were also to promote the influence of Britain in Turkey\", also: \"to promote British free-trade interests (which may have sounded splendid but was arguably damaging to the Ottoman Empire)\".\n\"British exports to the Ottoman Empire, including Egypt and the Danubian principalities, increased nearly threefold from 1840 to 1851 (...) Thus it was very important, from the financial point of view, for Britain to prevent the Ottoman Empire from falling into other hands.\"\n\"From this moment (1838) the export of British manufactured goods to Turkey rose steeply. There was an elevenfold increase by 1850\".\nAssistance from Western European powers or Russia had twice saved the Ottoman Empire from destruction, but the Ottomans also lost their independence in foreign policy. Britain and France desired more than any other states to preserve the integrity of the Ottoman Empire because they did not want to see Russia gaining access to the Mediterranean Sea. Austria had the same fears.\nRussian expansionism.\nRussia, as a member of the Holy Alliance, had operated as the \"police of Europe\" to maintain the balance of power that had been established in the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Russia had assisted Austria's efforts in suppressing the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, and expected a free hand in settling its problems with the Ottoman Empire, the \"sick man of Europe\". However, Britain could not tolerate Russian dominance of Ottoman affairs, which would challenge its domination of the eastern Mediterranean.\nStarting with Peter the Great in the early 1700s, after centuries of Ottoman northward expansion and Crimean-Nogai raids, Russia began a southwards expansion across the sparsely-populated \"Wild Fields\" toward the warm water ports of the Black Sea, which does not freeze over, unlike the handful of ports controlled by Russia in the north. The goal was to promote year-round trade and a year-round navy. Pursuit of that goal brought the emerging Russian state into conflict with the Ukrainian Cossacks and then the Tatars of the Crimean Khanate and Circassians.\n\"The plan to develop Russia as a southern power had begun in earnest in 1776, when Catherine placed Potemkin in charge of New Russia (Novorossiya), the sparsely populated territories newly conquered from the Ottomans on the Black Sea's northern coastline, and ordered him to colonize the area\". \nWhen Russia conquered those groups and gained possession of their territories, the Ottoman Empire lost its buffer zone against Russian expansion, and both empires came into direct conflict. The conflict with the Ottoman Empire also presented a religious issue of importance, as Russia saw itself as the protector of history of the Eastern Orthodox Church under the Ottoman Orthodox Christians, who were legally treated as second-class citizens. The Ottoman Reform Edict of 1856, promulgated after the war, largely reversed much of the second-class status, most notably the tax that only non-Muslims paid.\nBritain's immediate fear was Russia's expansion at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. The British desired to preserve Ottoman integrity and were concerned that Russia might make advances toward British India or move toward Scandinavia or Western Europe. A distraction (in the form of the Ottoman Empire) on the Russian southwest flank would mitigate that threat. The Royal Navy also wanted to forestall the threat of a powerful Imperial Russian Navy. Taylor stated the British perspective:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The Crimean war was fought for the sake of Europe rather than for the Eastern question; it was fought against Russia, not in favour of Turkey... The British fought Russia out of resentment and supposed that her defeat would strengthen the European Balance of Power.\nBecause of \"British commercial and strategic interests in the Middle East and India\", the British joined the French, \"cement[ing] an alliance with Britain and... reassert[ing] its military power\". Among those who supported the British strategy were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In his articles for the \"New-York Tribune\" around 1853, Marx saw the Crimean War as a conflict between the democratic ideals of the west that started with the \"great movement of 1789\" against \"Russia and Absolutism\". He described the Ottoman Empire as a buffer against a pattern of expansionism by the Tsar. Marx and Engels also accused Lord Palmerston of playing along with the interests of Russia and being unserious in preparing for the conflict. Marx believed Palmerston to be bribed by Russia, and shared this belief with David Urquhart. Urquhart, for his part, was a British politician who was a major advocate for the Ottoman Empire.\nMikhail Pogodin, a professor of history at Moscow University, gave Nicholas I a summary of Russia's policy towards the Slavs in the war. Nicholas' answer was filled with grievances against the West. Nicholas shared Pogodin's sense that Russia's role as the protector of Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire was not understood and that Russia was unfairly treated by the West. Nicholas especially approved of the following passage:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />France takes Algeria from Turkey, and almost every year England annexes another Indian principality: none of this disturbs the balance of power; but when Russia occupies Moldavia and Wallachia, albeit only temporarily, that disturbs the balance of power. France occupies Rome and stays there several years during peacetime: that is nothing; but Russia only thinks of occupying Constantinople, and the peace of Europe is threatened. The English declare war on the Chinese, who have, it seems, offended them: no one has the right to intervene; but Russia is obliged to ask Europe for permission if it quarrels with its neighbour. England threatens Greece to support the false claims of a miserable Jew and burns its fleet: that is a lawful action; but Russia demands a treaty to protect millions of Christians, and that is deemed to strengthen its position in the East at the expense of the balance of power. We can expect nothing from the West but blind hatred and malice... (\"comment in the margin by Nicholas I\": 'This is the whole point').\nRussia was militarily weak, technologically backward and administratively incompetent. Despite its grand ambitions toward the south, it had not built its railway network in that direction, and its communications were poor. Its bureaucracy was riddled with graft, corruption and inefficiency and was unprepared for war. Its navy was weak and technologically backward. Its army, although very large, suffered from colonels who pocketed their men's pay, from poor morale, and from a technological deficit relative to Britain and France. By the war's end, the profound weaknesses of the Russian armed forces had become readily apparent, and the Russian leadership was determined to reform it.\nHowever, no matter how great the problems of Russia were, Russia believed those of the Ottomans were greater. \"In a one-to-one fight Nikolai (Tsar) had no doubt of beating the Ottoman armies and navy\". Russian foreign policy failed to understand the importance of Britain's trade interests and did not understand the changes in the situation after the conclusion of the Anglo-Ottoman Treaty in 1838 (see Treaty of Balta Liman). Russia attempted to \"honestly\" negotiate with the United Kingdom on the partition of the Ottoman Empire and made concessions in order to eliminate all objections from the United Kingdom.\n\"The Tsar Nicholas had always, as we have seen, been anxious to maintain a cordial understanding with England in regard to the Eastern Question, and early in the spring of 1853 he had a series of interviews with Sir George Hamilton Seymour, then British ambassador at St. Petersburg.\" Emperor Nicholas I assured that he did not intend to seize Constantinople and territories in the Balkans, he himself offered Britain to take over Egypt and Crete. Concessions at the conclusion of the London Straits Convention were made earlier in 1841. \"By signing the convention, the Russians had given up their privileged position in the Ottoman Empire and their control of the Straits, all in the hope of improving relations with Britain and isolating France\". But Britain after 1838 was interested in preserving the integrity of the Ottoman Empire and rejected all Russian proposals. \"The fall of the Ottoman Empire was not, however, a requirement of British policy in the East. A weak Ottoman state best suited British interests\".\nImmediate causes of war.\nFrench Emperor Napoleon III's ambition to restore France's grandeur initiated the immediate chain of events that led to France and Britain declaring war on Russia on 27 and 28 March 1854, respectively. He pursued Catholic support by asserting France's \"sovereign authority\" over the Christian population of Palestine, to the detriment of Russia (the sponsor of Eastern Orthodoxy). To achieve that, he in May 1851 appointed Charles, marquis de La Valette, a zealous leading member of the Catholic clericalists, as his ambassador to the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire.\nRussia disputed that attempted change in authority. Referring to two previous treaties (one from 1757 and the Treaty of K\u00fc\u00e7\u00fck Kaynarca from 1774), the Ottomans reversed their earlier decision, renounced the French treaty and declared that Russia was the protector of the Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire.\nNapoleon III responded with a show of force by sending the ship of the line \"Charlemagne\" to the Black Sea and thereby violated the London Straits Convention. The gunboat diplomacy show of force, together with money, induced Ottoman Sultan Abd\u00fclmecid I to accept a new treaty confirming France and the Catholic Church's supreme authority over Christian holy places, including the Church of the Nativity, which had been held by the Greek Orthodox Church.\nTsar Nicholas I then deployed his 4th and 5th Army Corps along the River Danube in Wallachia, as a direct threat to the Ottoman lands south of the river. He had Foreign Minister Count Karl Nesselrode undertake talks with the Ottomans. Nesselrode confided to Seymour:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"[The dispute over the holy places]\" had assumed a new character\u2014that the acts of injustice towards the Greek church which it had been desired to prevent had been perpetrated and consequently that now the object must be to find a remedy for these wrongs. The success of French negotiations at Constantinople was to be ascribed solely to intrigue and violence\u2014violence which had been supposed to be the ultima ratio of kings, being, it had been seen, the means which the present ruler of France was in the habit of employing in the first instance. \nThe agreement referred to by the French was in 1740. At present most historians (except for the new Russian Orthodox nationalists) accept that the question of the holy places was no more than a pretext for the Crimean War. As conflict emerged over the issue of the holy places, Nicholas I and Nesselrode began a diplomatic offensive, which they hoped would prevent either British or French interference in any conflict between Russia and the Ottomans and prevent both from forming an anti-Russian alliance.\nNicholas began courting Britain by means of conversations with Seymour in January and February 1853. Nicholas insisted that he no longer wished to expand the Russian Empire but that he had an obligation to the Christian communities in the Ottoman Empire.\nHe next dispatched a highly-abrasive diplomat, Prince Menshikov, on a special mission to the Ottoman Sublime Porte in February 1853. By previous treaties, the sultan had committed \"to protect the (Eastern Orthodox) Christian religion and its churches\". Menshikov demanded a Russian protectorate over all 12\u00a0million Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire with control of the Orthodox Church's hierarchy. A compromise was reached regarding Orthodox access to the Holy Land, but the Sultan, strongly supported by the British ambassador, Stratford Canning, 1st Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe, rejected the most sweeping demands.\nRussian historian Vinogradov V.N. point out that Menshikov's demands did not go beyond the limits of previous treaties. \"The agreement was reached on the administration of church rites of both clergy in respected temples and, secondly, that the tsar rejected the idea of expanding his right of patronage and, in fact, insisted on confirming the terms of the Kucuk-Kaynardzhiy treaty of 1774, which allowed giving advice to the Sultan, but did not oblige them to accept\".\n\"By the early 1850s Stratford Canning had become far more than an ambassador or adviser to the Porte. The 'Great Elchi', or Great Ambassador, as he was known in Constantinople, had a direct influence on the policies of the Turkish government. (...) His presence was a source of deep resentment among the Sultan's ministers, who lived in terror of a personal visit from the dictatorial ambassador\".\nNicholas fumed at \"the infernal dictatorship of this Redcliffe\" whose name and political ascendancy at the Porte personified for him the whole Eastern Question, The British and the French sent in naval task forces to support the Ottomans, as Russia had prepared to seize the Danubian Principalities.\nAll the calculations of the Russian emperor turned out to be erroneous. Britain refused his proposals, it was not possible to prevent the Anglo-French rapprochement, Austria opposed his policy, the Ottoman Empire showed intransigence. On the contrary, a favourable situation was developing for Britain. Britain had great naval power and a powerful economy, but did not have a strong land army. The alliance with France, which had a strong land army, made it possible to strike at Russia. \"With the help of French infantry, it was possible to overturn Russia's positions with one blow\"\nFirst hostilities.\nIn February 1853, the British government of Prime Minister Lord Aberdeen reappointed Lord Stratford as British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Having resigned the ambassadorship in January, he had been replaced by Colonel Rose as \"charg\u00e9 d'affaires\". Lord Stratford then turned around, sailed back to Constantinople, arriving there on 5 April 1853 and convinced the Sultan there to reject the Russian treaty proposal as compromising Ottoman independence. The Leader of the Opposition in the British House of Commons, Benjamin Disraeli, blamed Aberdeen's and Stratford's actions for making war inevitable, which started the process that would force the Aberdeen government to resign in January 1855 over the war.\nShortly after the Tsar had learned of the failure of Menshikov's diplomacy toward the end of June 1853, he sent armies under the commands of Field Marshal Ivan Paskevich and General Mikhail Gorchakov across the River Prut into the Ottoman-controlled Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. Fewer than half of the 80,000 Russian soldiers who crossed the Prut in 1853 survived. By far, nearly all of the deaths would result from sickness, rather than action, since the Russian Army still suffered from medical services that ranged from bad to none.\nRussia had obtained recognition from the Ottoman Empire of the Tsar's role as special guardian of the Orthodox Christians in Moldavia and Wallachia. Russia now used the Sultan's failure to resolve the issue of the protection of the Christian sites in the Holy Land as a pretext for Russian occupation of those Danubian provinces. Nicholas believed that the European powers, especially Austria, would not object strongly to the annexation of a few neighbouring Ottoman provinces, especially since Russia had assisted Austria's efforts in suppressing the Hungarian Revolution in 1849.\nThe United Kingdom, hoping to maintain the Ottoman Empire as a bulwark against the expansion of Russian power in Asia, sent a fleet to the Dardanelles, where it joined a fleet sent by France.\nBattle of Sinop.\nThe European powers continued to pursue diplomatic avenues. The representatives of the four Great Powers (the United Kingdom, France, Austria and Prussia) met in Vienna, where they drafted a note, which they hoped would be acceptable to both the Russians and the Ottomans. The peace terms arrived at by the four powers at the Vienna Conference (1853) were delivered to the Russians by Austrian Foreign Minister Count Karl von Buol on 5 December 1853. The note met with the approval of Nicholas I, but Abd\u00fclmecid I rejected the proposal since he felt that the document's poor phrasing left it open to many different interpretations. The United Kingdom, France and Austria united in proposing amendments to mollify the Sultan, but the court of St. Petersburg ignored their suggestions. The United Kingdom and France then set aside the idea of continuing negotiations, but Austria and Prussia did not believe that the rejection of the proposed amendments justified the abandonment of the diplomatic process.\nOn 23 November, a small Russian naval force discovered the Ottoman fleet harboured in Sinop and began a blockade. Once the Russian blockade was reinforced, a squadron of 6 Russian ships of the line supported by 5 smaller warships, assaulted the harbour on 30 November 1853. During Battle of Sinop, the Russian squadron destroyed a patrol squadron of 11 Ottoman warships\u2014mostly frigates\u2014while they were anchored in port under defence of the onshore artillery garrison. The Ottoman fleet suffered a crushing defeat. The Russian victory in the naval battle in Sinope was called \"the massacre of Sinope\". Although Russia and the Ottoman Empire were already at war, and there was no evidence of Russian atrocities, the phrase was used as propaganda in the West. The press in both United Kingdom and France used Sinop as the \"casus belli\" (\"cause of war\") to shape the public opinion in favour of war against Russia. By 28 March 1854, after Russia ignored an Anglo-French ultimatum to withdraw from the Danubian Principalities, the United Kingdom and France had both declared war.\nDardanelles.\nBritain was concerned about Russian activity and Sir John Burgoyne, a senior advisor to Lord Aberdeen, urged for the Dardanelles to be occupied and works of sufficient strength to be built to block any Russian move to capture Constantinople and gain access to the Mediterranean. The Corps of Royal Engineers sent men to the Dardanelles, and Burgoyne went to Paris and met with the British ambassador and the French emperor. Lord Cowley wrote on 8 February to Burgoyne, \"Your visit to Paris has produced a visible change in the Emperor's views, and he is making every preparation for a land expedition in case the last attempt at negotiation should break down\".\nBurgoyne and his team of engineers inspected and surveyed the Dardanelles area in February. They were fired on by Russian riflemen when they went to Varna. A team of sappers arrived in March, and major building works commenced on a seven-mile line of defence, which was designed to block the Gallipoli Peninsula. French sappers worked on half of the line, which was finished in May.\nPeace attempts.\nNicholas felt that because of Russian assistance in suppressing the Hungarian revolution of 1848, Austria would side with him or at the very least remain neutral. Austria, however, felt threatened by the Russian troops in the Balkans. On 27 February 1854, the United Kingdom and France demanded the withdrawal of Russian forces from the principalities. Austria supported them and, without declaring war on Russia, refused to guarantee its neutrality. Russia's rejection of the ultimatum proved to be the justification used by Britain and France to enter the war.\nRussia soon withdrew its troops from the Danubian Principalities, which were then occupied by Austria for the duration of the war. That removed the original grounds for war, but the British and the French continued with hostilities. Determined to address the Eastern Question by putting an end to the Russian threat to the Ottomans, the allies in August 1854 proposed the \"Four Points\" for ending the conflict in addition to the Russian withdrawal:\nThose points, particularly the third, would require clarification through negotiations, which Russia refused. The allies, including Austria, therefore agreed that Britain and France should take further military action to prevent further Russian aggression against the Ottomans. Britain and France agreed on the invasion of Crimea as the first step.\nBattles.\nDanube campaign.\nThe Danube campaign opened when the Russians occupied the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia in July 1853, which brought their forces to the north bank of the River Danube. In response, the Ottoman Empire also moved its forces up to the river, establishing strongholds at Vidin in the west and Silistra in the east, near the mouth of the Danube. The Ottoman move up the River Danube was also of concern to the Austrians, who moved forces into Transylvania in response. However, the Austrians had begun to fear the Russians more than the Ottomans. Indeed, like the British, the Austrians were now coming to see that an intact Ottoman Empire was necessary as a bulwark against the Russians. Accordingly, Austria resisted Russian diplomatic attempts to join the war but remained neutral during the Crimean War.\nAfter the Ottoman ultimatum in September 1853, forces under Ottoman General Omar Pasha crossed the Danube at Vidin and captured Calafat in October 1853. Simultaneously, in the east, the Ottomans crossed the Danube at Silistra and attacked the Russians at Olteni\u021ba. The resulting Battle of Olteni\u021ba was the first engagement since the declaration of war. The Russians counterattacked but were beaten back. On 31 December 1853, the Ottoman forces at Calafat moved against the Russian force at Chetatea or Cetate, a small village nine miles north of Calafat, and engaged it on 6 January 1854. The battle began when the Russians made a move to recapture Calafat. Most of the heavy fighting took place in and around Chetatea until the Russians were driven out of the village. Despite the setback at Chetatea, Russian forces on 28 January 1854 laid siege to Calafat. The siege would continue until May 1854 when it was lifted by the Russians. The Ottomans would also later beat the Russians in battle at Caracal.\nIn early 1854, the Russians again advanced by crossing the River Danube into the Turkish province of Dobruja. By April 1854, the Russians had reached the lines of Trajan's Wall, where they were finally halted. In the centre, the Russian forces crossed the Danube and laid siege to Silistra from 14 April with 60,000 troops. The defenders had 15,000 troops and supplies for three months. The siege was lifted on 23 June 1854. The British and the French could not then take the field for lack of equipment.\nIn the west, the Russians were dissuaded from attacking Vidin by the presence of the Austrian forces, which had swollen to 280,000 men. On 28 May 1854, a protocol of the Vienna Conference was signed by Austria and Russia. One of the aims of the Russian advance had been to encourage the Orthodox Christian Serbs and Bulgarians who were living under Ottoman rule to rebel. When the Russian troops crossed the River Pruth into Moldavia, the Orthodox Christians showed no interest in rising up against the Ottomans. Adding to Nicholas I's worries was the concern that Austria would enter the war against the Russians and attack his armies on the western flank. Indeed, after attempting to mediate a peaceful settlement between Russia and the Ottomans, the Austrians entered the war on the side of the Ottomans with an attack against the Russians in the Danubian Principalities which threatened to cut off the Russian supply lines. Accordingly, the Russians were forced to raise the siege of Silistra on 23 June 1854 and to begin abandoning the principalities. The lifting of the siege reduced the threat of a Russian advance into Bulgaria.\nIn June 1854, the Allied expeditionary force landed at Varna, a city on the Black Sea's western coast, but made little advance from its base there. Karl Marx was noted to have quipped that \"there they are, the French doing nothing and the British helping them as fast as possible\". In July 1854, the Ottomans, under Omar Pasha, crossed the Danube into Wallachia and on 7 July 1854 engaged the Russians in the city of Giurgiu and conquered it. The capture of Giurgiu by the Ottomans immediately threatened Bucharest in Wallachia with capture by the same Ottoman army. On 26 July 1854, Nicholas I, responding to an Austrian ultimatum, ordered the withdrawal of Russian troops from the principalities. Also, in late July 1854, following up on the Russian retreat, the French staged an expedition against the Russian forces still in Dobruja, but it was a failure.\nBy then, the Russian withdrawal was complete, except for the fortress towns of northern Dobruja, and Russia's place in the principalities was taken by the Austrians as a neutral peacekeeping force. There was little further action on that front after late 1854, and in September, the allied force boarded ships at Varna to invade Crimea.\nBlack Sea theatre.\nThe naval operations of the Crimean War commenced with the dispatch in mid-1853 of the French and the British fleets to the Black Sea region, to support the Ottomans and to dissuade the Russians from encroachment. By June 1853, both fleets had been stationed at Besikas Bay, outside the Dardanelles. With the Russian occupation of the Danube Principalities in July 1853, they moved to the Bosphorus, and on 3 January 1854, they entered the Black Sea.\nMeanwhile, the Russian Black Sea Fleet operated against Ottoman coastal traffic between Constantinople and the Caucasus ports, and the Ottoman fleet sought to protect the supply line. The clash came on 30 November 1853, when a Russian fleet attacked an Ottoman force in the harbour at Sinop and destroyed it at the Battle of Sinop. The battle outraged British public opinion, which called for war. There was little additional naval action until March 1854, when after the declaration of war, the British frigate was fired on outside Odessa Harbour. In response an Anglo-French fleet bombarded the port and caused much damage to the town. To show support for the Ottomans after the Battle of Sinop, on 22 December 1853, the Anglo-French squadron entered the Black Sea and the steamship HMS \"Retribution\" approached the Port of Sevastopol. Its commander received an ultimatum not to allow any ships in the Black Sea.\nIn June, the fleets transported the Allied expeditionary forces to Varna to support the Ottoman operations on the Danube. In September they again transported the armies, this time to Crimea. The Russian fleet then declined to engage the allies but preferred to maintain a \"fleet in being\", a strategy that failed when Sevastopol, the main port and the base of most of the Black Sea fleet, came under siege. The Russians were reduced to scuttling their warships as blockships after they had stripped them of their guns and men to reinforce batteries on shore. During the siege, the Russians lost four 110- or 120-gun, three-decker ships of the line, twelve 84-gun two-deckers and four 60-gun frigates in the Black Sea, as well as a large number of smaller vessels. During the rest of the campaign, the allied fleets remained in control of the Black Sea and ensured that the various fronts were kept supplied.\nIn May 1855, the allies successfully invaded Kerch and operated against Taganrog in the Sea of Azov. In September, they moved against Russian installations in the Dnieper estuary by attacking Kinburn in the first use of ironclad ships in naval warfare.\nCrimean campaign.\nThe Russians evacuated Wallachia and Moldavia in late July 1854. Therefore, the immediate cause of war had now been withdrawn, and the war might have then ended. However, war fever among the public in both Britain and France had been whipped up by the press in both countries to the degree that politicians found it untenable to propose immediately ending the war. The coalition government of George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen, fell on 30 January 1855 on a no-confidence vote, as Parliament voted to appoint a committee to investigate the mismanagement of the war.\nFrench and British officers and engineers were sent on 20 July on \"Fury\", a wooden \"Bulldog\"-class paddle sloop, to survey the harbour of Sevastopol and the coast near it. They managed to get close to the harbour mouth to inspect the formidable batteries. Returning, they reported that they believed that 15,000\u201320,000 troops were encamped. Ships were prepared to transport horses, and siege equipment was both manufactured and imported.\nThe Crimean campaign opened in September 1854. In seven columns, 360 ships sailed, each steamer towing two sailing ships. Anchoring on 13 September in the bay of Yevpatoria, the town surrendered, and 500 marines landed to occupy it. The town and the bay would provide a fallback position in case of disaster. The ships then sailed east to make the landing of the allied expeditionary force on the sandy beaches of Kalamita Bay, on the south-west coast of Crimea. The landing surprised the Russians, as they had expected a landing at Katcha. The last-minute change proved that Russia had known the original campaign plan. There was no sign of the enemy and so all of the invading troops landed on 14 September 1854. It took another four days to land all of the stores, equipment, horses and artillery.\nThe landing took place north of Sevastopol and so the Russians had arrayed their army in expectation of a direct attack. The allies advanced and on the morning of 20 September came up to the River Alma and engaged the Russian Army. The Russian position was strong, but after three hours, the allied frontal attack had driven the Russians out of their dug-in positions with losses of 6,000 men. The Battle of the Alma resulted in 3,300 Allied losses. Failing to pursue the retreating forces was one of many strategic errors made during the war, and the Russians themselves noted that if the allies had pressed south that day, they would have easily captured Sevastopol.\nBelieving the northern approaches to the city too well defended, especially because of the presence of a large star fort and the city being on the south side of Sevastopol Bay, Sir John Burgoyne, the engineer advisor, recommended for the allies attack to Sevastopol from the south. The joint commanders, Raglan and Saint-Arnaud, agreed. On 25 September, the whole army began to march southeast and encircled the city from the south after it had established port facilities at Balaclava for the British and at Kamiesch () for the French. The Russians retreated into the city.\nThe Allied armies moved without problems to the south, and the heavy artillery was brought ashore with batteries and connecting trenches built. By 10 October, some batteries were ready, and by 17 October, when the bombardment commenced\u2014126 guns were firing, 53 of them French. The fleet meanwhile engaged the shore batteries. The British bombardment worked better than that of the French, who had smaller-calibre guns. The fleet suffered high casualties during the day. The British wanted to attack that afternoon, but the French wanted to defer the attack.\nA postponement was agreed, but on the next day, the French were still not ready. By 19 October the Russians had transferred some heavy guns to the southern defences and had outgunned the allies.\nReinforcements for the Russians gave them the courage to send out probing attacks. The Allied lines, beginning to suffer from cholera as early as September, were stretched. The French, on the west, had less to do than the British on the east, with their siege lines and the large nine-mile open wing back to their supply base on the south coast.\nBattle of Balaclava.\nA large Russian assault on the allied supply base to the southeast at Balaclava was rebuffed on 25 October 1854. The Battle of Balaclava is remembered in Britain for the actions of two British units. At the start of the battle, a large body of Russian cavalry charged the 93rd Highlanders, who were posted north of the village of Kadikoi. Commanding them was Sir Colin Campbell. Rather than \"form square\", the traditional method of repelling cavalry, Campbell took the risky decision to have his Highlanders form a single line two men deep. Campbell had seen the effectiveness of the new Mini\u00e9 rifles with which his troops were armed at the Battle of Alma, a month earlier, and he was confident that his men could beat back the Russians. His tactics succeeded. From up on the ridge to the west, the \"Times\" correspondent William Howard Russell saw the Highlanders as a \"thin red streak topped with steel\", a phrase which soon became the \"Thin Red Line\".\nSoon afterward, a Russian cavalry movement was countered by the Heavy Brigade, which charged and fought hand to hand until the Russians retreated. That caused a more widespread Russian retreat, including a number of their artillery units. After the local commanders had failed to take advantage of the retreat, Lord Raglan sent out orders to move up and to prevent the withdrawal of naval guns from the recently captured redoubts on the heights. Raglan could see those guns because of his position on the hill. In the valley, that view was obstructed, and the wrong guns were in sight to the left. The local commanders ignored the demands, which led to the British aide-de-camp, Captain Louis Nolan, personally delivering the quickly-written and confusing order to attack the artillery. When Lord Lucan questioned to which guns the order referred, the aide-de-camp pointed to the first Russian battery that he could see and allegedly said \"There is your enemy, there are your guns\", because of his obstructed view, which were wrong. Lucan then passed the order to the Earl of Cardigan, which resulted in the Charge of the Light Brigade.\nIn that charge, Cardigan formed up his unit and charged the length of the Valley of the Balaclava, under fire from Russian batteries in the hills. The charge of the Light Brigade caused 278 casualties of the 700-man unit. The Light Brigade was memorialised in the famous poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, \"The Charge of the Light Brigade\". Although traditionally, the charge of the Light Brigade was looked upon as a glorious but wasted sacrifice of good men and horses, recent historians believe that the charge of the Light Brigade succeeded in at least some of its objectives. The aim of any cavalry charge is to scatter the enemy's lines and frighten the enemy off the battlefield. The Charge of the Light Brigade so unnerved the Russian cavalry, which had been routed by the Charge of the Heavy Brigade, that the Russians were set to full-scale flight.\nThe shortage of men led to the failure of the British and the French to follow up on the Battle of Balaclava, which led directly to the much bloodier Battle of Inkerman. On 5 November 1854, the Russians attempted to raise the siege at Sevastopol with an attack against the allies, which resulted in another allied victory.\nWinter of 1854\u20131855.\nWinter weather and a deteriorating supply of troops and materiel on both sides led to a halt in ground operations. Sevastopol remained invested by the allies, whose armies were hemmed in by the Imperial Russian Army in the interior. On 14 November, the \"Balaklava Storm\", a major weather event, sank 30 allied transport ships, including , which was carrying a cargo of winter clothing.\nThe storm and the heavy traffic caused the road from the coast to the troops to disintegrate into a quagmire, which required engineers to devote most of their time to its repair, including by quarrying stone. A tramway was ordered and arrived in January with a civilian engineering crew, but it took until March before it had become sufficiently advanced to be of any appreciable value. An electrical telegraph was also ordered, but the frozen ground delayed its installation until March, when communications from the base port of Balaklava to the British HQ was established. The pipe-and-cable-laying plough failed because of the hard frozen soil, but nevertheless of cable were laid.\nThe troops suffered greatly from cold and sickness, and the shortage of fuel led them to start dismantling their defensive gabions and fascines. In February 1855, the Russians attacked the allied base at Eupatoria, where an Ottoman army had built up and was threatening Russian supply routes. The Russians were defeated at the Battle of Eupatoria, leading to a change in their command.\nThe strain of directing the war had taken its toll on the health of Tsar Nicholas. Full of remorse for the disasters that he had caused, he caught pneumonia and died on 2 March.\nSiege of Sevastopol.\nThe allies had had time to consider the problem, and the French were brought around to agree that the key to the defence was the Malakoff. Emphasis of the siege at Sevastopol shifted to the British left against the fortifications on Malakoff Hill. In March, there was fighting by the French over a new fort being built by the Russians at Mamelon, on a hill in front of the Malakoff. Several weeks of fighting resulted in little change in the front line, and the Mamelon remained in Russian hands.\nIn April 1855, the allies staged a second all-out bombardment, which led to an artillery duel with the Russian guns, but no ground assault followed.\nOn 24 May 1855, 60 ships, containing 7,000 French, 5,000 Turkish and 3,000 British troops, set off for a raid on the city of Kerch, east of Sevastopol, in an attempt to open another front in Crimea and to cut off Russian supplies. When the allies landed the force at Kerch, the plan was to outflank the Russian Army. The landings were successful, but the force made little progress thereafter.\nMany more artillery pieces had arrived and had been dug into batteries. The first general assault of Sevastopol took place on 18 June 1855. There is a legend that the assault was scheduled for that date in favour of Napoleon III in the 40th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, but the legend is not confirmed by historians. However, the appearance of such a legend is undoubtedly symptomatic since the war in France was understood as a certain revanche for the defeat of 1812.\nIn June, a third bombardment was followed after two days by a successful attack on the Mamelon, but a follow-up assault on the Malakoff failed with heavy losses. Meanwhile, the garrison commander, Admiral Pavel Nakhimov, fell on 30 June 1855, and Raglan died on 28 June. Losses in those battles were so great that by agreement of military opponents short-term truces for removal of corpses were signed (these truces were described in the work of Leo Tolstoy \"Sevastopol Sketches\"). The assault was beaten back with heavy casualties and in an undoubted victory for Russia. It is worth mentioning that the Russian Siege of Sevastopol (panorama) depicts the moment of the assault of Sevastopol on 18 June 1855.\nIn August, the Russians again made an attack towards the base at Balaclava, which was defended by the French, newly arrived Sardinian and Ottoman troops. The resulting Battle of the Chernaya was a defeat for the Russians, who suffered heavy casualties.\nFor months, each side had been building forward rifle pits and defensive positions, which resulted in many skirmishes. Artillery fire aimed to gain superiority over the enemy guns. The final assault was made on 5 September, when another French bombardment (the sixth) was followed by an assault by the French Army on 8 September and resulted in the French capture of the Malakoff fort. The Russians failed to retake it and their defences collapsed. Meanwhile, the British assaulted the Great Redan, a Russian defensive battlement just south of the city of Sevastopol, a position that had been attacked repeatedly for months. Whether the British captured the Redan remains in dispute: Russian historians recognise only the loss of the Malakhov Kurgan, a key point of defence, claiming that all other positions were retained. What is agreed is that the Russians abandoned the positions, blew up their powder magazines and retreated to the north. The city finally fell on 9 September 1855, after a 337-day-long siege.\nBoth sides were now exhausted, and no further military operations were launched in Crimea before the onset of winter. The main objective of the siege was the destruction of the Russian fleet and docks and took place over the winter. On 28 February, multiple mines blew up the five docks, the canal, and three locks.\nAzov campaign.\nIn early 1855, the allied Anglo-French commanders decided to send an Anglo-French naval squadron into the Azov Sea to undermine Russian communications and supplies to besieged Sevastopol. On 12 May 1855, Anglo-French warships entered the Kerch Strait and destroyed the coast battery of the Kamishevaya Bay. Once through the Kerch Strait, British and French warships struck at every vestige of Russian power along the coast of the Sea of Azov. Except for Rostov and Azov, no town, depot, building or fortification was immune from attack, and Russian naval power ceased to exist almost overnight. This Allied campaign led to a significant reduction in supplies flowing to the besieged Russian troops at Sevastopol.\nOn 21 May 1855, the gunboats and armed steamers attacked the seaport of Taganrog, the most important hub near Rostov on Don. The vast amounts of food, especially bread, wheat, barley and rye, that were amassed in the city after the outbreak of war were prevented from being exported.\nThe Governor of Taganrog, Yegor Tolstoy, and Lieutenant-General Ivan Krasnov refused an allied ultimatum by responding, \"Russians never surrender their cities\". The Anglo-French squadron bombarded Taganrog for 6<templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1\u20442\u00a0hours and landed 300 troops near the Old Stairway in the centre of Taganrog, but they were thrown back by Don Cossacks and a volunteer corps.\nIn July 1855, the allied squadron tried to go past Taganrog to Rostov-on-Don by entering the River Don through the Mius River. On 12 July 1855 HMS\u00a0\"Jasper\" grounded near Taganrog thanks to a fisherman who moved buoys into shallow water. The Cossacks captured the gunboat with all of its guns and blew it up. The third siege attempt was made 19\u201331 August 1855, but the city was already fortified, and the squadron could not approach close enough for landing operations. The allied fleet left the Gulf of Taganrog on 2 September 1855, with minor military operations along the Azov Sea coast continuing until late 1855.\nCaucasus theatre.\nAs in the previous wars, the Caucasus front was secondary to what happened in the west. Perhaps because of better communications, western events sometimes influenced the east. The main events were the second capture of Kars and a landing on the Georgian coast. Several commanders on both sides were either incompetent or unlucky, and few fought aggressively.\n1853: There were four main events. 1. In the north, the Ottomans captured the border fort of Saint Nicholas in a surprise night attack (27/28 October). They then pushed about 20,000 troops across the Choloki river border. Being outnumbered, the Russians abandoned Poti and Redoubt Kali and drew back to Marani. Both sides remained immobile for the next seven months. 2. In the centre the Ottomans moved north from Ardahan to within cannon-shot of Akhaltsike and awaited reinforcements (13 November), but the Russians routed them. The claimed losses were 4,000 Turks and 400 Russians. 3. In the south about 30,000 Turks slowly moved east to the main Russian concentration at Gyumri or Alexandropol (November). They crossed the border and set up artillery south of town. Prince Vakhtang Orbeliani tried to drive them off and found himself trapped. The Ottomans failed to press their advantage; the remaining Russians rescued Orbeliani and the Ottomans retired west. Orbeliani lost about 1,000 men from 5,000. The Russians now decided to advance. The Ottomans took up a strong position on the Kars road and attacked-only to be defeated in the Battle of Ba\u015fgedikler, losing 6,000 men, half their artillery and all of their supply train. The Russians lost 1,300, including Prince Orbeliani. This was Prince Ellico Orbeliani, whose wife was later kidnapped by Imam Shamil at Tsinandali. 4. At sea the Turks sent a fleet east, which was destroyed by Admiral Nakhimov at Sinope.\n1854: The British and French declared war on 28 March. Early in the year on 3 January, the Anglo-French fleet appeared in the Black Sea, and the Russians abandoned the Black Sea Defensive Line from Anapa south. Nikolay Muravyov, who replaced Vorontsov, fearing an Anglo-French landing in conjunction with Shamil, 3rd Imam of Dagestan and the Persians, recommended withdrawal north of the Caucasus. For that purpose, he was replaced by Aleksandr Baryatinsky. When the allies chose a land attack on Sevastopol, any plan for a landing in the east was abandoned.\nIn the north, Georgiy Evseevich Eristov pushed southwest, fought two battles, forced the Ottomans back to Batumi, retired behind the Cholok river and suspended action for the rest of the year (June). In the far south, Wrangel pushed west, fought a battle and occupied Bayazit. In the centre. the main forces stood at Kars and Gyumri. Both slowly approached along the Kars-Gyumri road and faced each other, neither side choosing to fight (June\u2013July). On 4 August, Russian scouts saw a movement which they thought was the start of a withdrawal, the Russians advanced and the Ottomans attacked first. They were defeated and lost 8,000 men to the Russian 3,000. Also, 10,000 irregulars deserted to their villages. Both sides withdrew to their former positions. About then, the Persians made a semi-secret agreement to remain neutral in exchange for the cancellation of the indemnity from the previous war.\n1855: Siege of Kars: Up to May 1855, Ottomans forces in the east were reduced from 120,000 to 75,000, mostly by disease. The local Armenian population kept Muravyov well-informed about the Ottomans at Kars and he judged they had about five months of supplies. He therefore decided to control the surrounding area with cavalry and starve them out. He started in May and by June was south and west of the town. A relieving force fell back and there was a possibility of taking Erzurum, but Muravyov chose not to. In late September he learned of the fall of Sevastopol and a Turkish landing at Batum. This led him to reverse policy and try a direct attack. It failed, the Russians losing 8,000 men and the Turks 1,500 (29 September). The blockade continued and Kars surrendered on 28 November.\n1855: Georgian coast: Omar Pasha, the Turkish commander at Crimea had long wanted to land in Georgia, but the western powers vetoed it. When they relented in August most of the campaigning season was lost. In 8 September Turks landed at Batum, but the main concentration was at Sukhum Kale. This required a 100-mile march south through a country with poor roads. In essence, it was a military demonstration in order to frighten the Russian command and force it to lift the siege of the fortress of Kars. \"All luck depended on whether Muravyov (the Russian commander) would be scared or not\". But the Russian command did not see a serious threat, the Siege of Kars was continued. The Russians planned to hold the line of the Ingur river which separates Abkhazia from Georgia proper. Omar crossed the Ingur on 7 November and then wasted a great deal of time, the Russians doing little. By 2 December he had reached the Tskhenistsqali, the rainy season had started, his camps were submerged in mud and there was no bread. Learning of the fall of Kars he withdrew to the Ingur. The Russians did nothing and he evacuated to Batum in February of the following year.\nBaltic theatre.\nThe Baltic was a forgotten theatre of the Crimean War. Popularisation of events elsewhere overshadowed the significance of this theatre, which was close to Saint Petersburg, the Russian capital. In April 1854, an Anglo-French fleet entered the Baltic to attack the Russian naval base of Kronstadt and the Russian fleet that was stationed there. In August 1854, the combined British and French fleet returned to Kronstadt for another attempt. The outnumbered Russian Baltic Fleet confined its movements to the areas around its fortifications. At the same time, the British and French commanders Sir Charles Napier and Alexandre Ferdinand Parseval-Deschenes although they led the largest fleet assembled since the Napoleonic Wars, considered the Sveaborg fortress too well-defended to engage. Thus, shelling of the Russian batteries was limited to two attempts in 1854 and 1855, and initially, the attacking fleets limited their actions to blockading Russian trade in the Gulf of Finland. Naval attacks on other ports, such as the ones in the island of Hogland in the Gulf of Finland, proved more successful. Additionally, allies conducted raids on less fortified sections of the Finnish coast. These battles are known in Finland as the \u00c5land War.\nRussia depended on imports\u2014both for its domestic economy and for the supply of its military forces: the blockade forced Russia to rely on more expensive overland shipments from Prussia. The blockade seriously undermined the Russian export economy and helped shorten the war.\nThe burning of tar warehouses and ships led to international criticism, and in London the MP Thomas Milner Gibson demanded in the House of Commons that the First Lord of the Admiralty explain \"a system which carried on a great war by plundering and destroying the property of defenceless villagers\".\nIn fact, the operations in the Baltic sea were in the nature of binding forces. It was very important to divert Russian forces from the south or, more precisely, not to allow Nicholas to transfer to Crimea a huge army guarding the Baltic coast and the capital. This goal Anglo-French forces achieved. The Russian Army in Crimea was forced to act without superiority in forces.\nIn August 1854 a Franco-British naval force captured and destroyed the Russian Bomarsund fortress on \u00c5land Islands. In the August 1855, the Western Allied Baltic Fleet tried to destroy heavily defended Russian dockyards at Sveaborg outside Helsinki. More than 1,000 enemy guns tested the strength of the fortress for two days. Despite the shelling, the sailors of the 120-gun ship \"Rossiya\", led by Captain Viktor Poplonsky, defended the entrance to the harbour. The Allies fired over 20,000 shells but failed to defeat the Russian batteries. The British then built a massive new fleet of more than 350 gunboats and mortar vessels, which was known as the Great Armament, but the war ended before the attack was launched.\nPart of the Russian resistance was credited to the deployment of newly invented naval mines. Perhaps the most influential contributor to the development of naval mining was a Swede resident in Russia, the inventor and civil engineer Immanuel Nobel (the father of Alfred Nobel). Immanuel Nobel helped the Russian war effort by applying his knowledge of industrial explosives, such as nitroglycerin and gunpowder. An account given in 1860 by United States Army Major Richard Delafield dates modern naval mining to the Crimean War: \"Torpedo mines, if I may use this name given by Fulton to 'self-acting mines underwater', were among the novelties attempted by the Russians in their defences about Cronstadt and Sevastopol.\"\nFor the campaign of 1856, Britain and France planned an attack on the main base of the Russian Navy in the Baltic sea\u2014Kronstadt. The attack was to be carried out using armoured floating batteries. The use of the latter proved to be highly effective in the attack on Kinburn on the Black Sea in 1855. Undoubtedly, this threat contributed on the part of Russia the decision on the conclusion of peace on unfavourable terms.\nWhite Sea theatre.\nIn late 1854, a squadron of three British warships led by HMS\u00a0\"Miranda\" left the Baltic for the White Sea, where they shelled Kola (which was destroyed) and the Solovki.\nPacific theatre.\nMinor naval skirmishes also occurred in the Far East, where at Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula a British and French Allied squadron including under Rear Admiral David Price and a French force under Counter-Admiral Auguste Febvrier Despointes besieged a smaller Russian force under Rear Admiral Yevfimiy Putyatin. In September 1854, an Allied landing force was beaten back with heavy casualties, and the Allies withdrew. The victory at Petropavlovsk was for Russia in the words of the future Minister of War Dmitry Milyutin \"a ray of light among the dark clouds\". The Russians escaped under the cover of snow in early 1855 after Allied reinforcements arrived in the region.\nThe Anglo-French forces in the Far East also made several small landings on Sakhalin and Urup, one of the Kuril Islands.\nPiedmontese involvement.\nCamillo di Cavour, under orders of Victor Emmanuel\u00a0II of Piedmont-Sardinia, sent an expeditionary corps of 15,000 soldiers, commanded by General Alfonso La Marmora, to side with French and British forces during the war. This was an attempt at gaining the favour of the French, especially when the issue of uniting Italy would become an important matter. The deployment of Italian troops to Crimea, and the gallantry shown by them in the Battle of the Chernaya (16 August 1855) and in the Siege of Sevastopol, allowed the Kingdom of Sardinia to be among the participants at the peace conference at the end of the war, where it could address the issue of the \"Risorgimento\" to other European powers.\nGreece.\nGreece played a peripheral role in the war. When Russia attacked the Ottoman Empire in 1853, King Otto of Greece saw an opportunity to expand north and south into Ottoman areas that had large Greek Christian majorities. Greece did not coordinate its plans with Russia, did not declare war, and received no outside military or financial support. Greece, an Orthodox nation, had considerable support in Russia, but the Russian government decided it was too dangerous to help Greece expand its holdings. When the Russians invaded the Principalities, the Ottoman forces were tied down so Greece invaded Thessaly and Epirus. To block further Greek moves, the British and French occupied the main Greek port at Piraeus from April 1854 to February 1857, and effectively neutralized the Greek Army. The Greeks, gambling on a Russian victory, incited the large-scale Epirus Revolt of 1854 as well as uprisings in Ottoman Crete. The insurrections were failures that were easily crushed by the Ottomans' allied Egyptian Army. Greece was not invited to the peace conference and made no gains out of the war. The frustrated Greek leadership blamed the King for failing to take advantage of the situation; his popularity plunged and he was forced to abdicate in 1862.\nIn addition, a 1,000-strong Greek Volunteer Legion was formed in the Danubian Principalities in 1854 and later fought at Sevastopol.\nKiev Cossack revolt.\nA peasant revolt that began in the Vasylkiv county of Kiev Governorate (province) in February 1855 spread across the whole Kiev and Chernigov governorates, with peasants refusing to participate in corv\u00e9e labour and other orders of the local authorities and, in some cases, attacking priests who were accused of hiding a decree about the liberation of the peasants.\nEnd of the war.\nBritish position.\nDissatisfaction with the conduct of the war was growing with the public in Britain and other countries and was worsened by reports of fiascos, especially the devastating losses of the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava. On Sunday, 21 January 1855, a \"snowball riot\" occurred in Trafalgar Square near St Martin-in-the-Fields in which 1,500 people gathered to protest against the war by pelting cabs and pedestrians with snowballs. When the police intervened, the snowballs were directed at the constables. The riot was finally put down by troops and police acting with truncheons. In Parliament, the Conservatives demanded an accounting of all soldiers, cavalry and sailors sent to Crimea and accurate figures as to the number of casualties sustained by all British armed forces in Crimea, especially concerning the Battle of Balaclava. When Parliament passed a bill to investigate by the vote of 305 to 148, Aberdeen said he had lost a vote of no confidence and resigned as prime minister on 30 January 1855. The veteran former Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston became prime minister. Palmerston took a hard line and wanted to expand the war, foment unrest inside the Russian Empire and reduce the Russian threat to Europe permanently. Sweden\u2013Norway and Prussia were willing to join Britain and France, and Russia was isolated.\nPeace negotiations.\nFrance, which had sent far more soldiers to the war and suffered far more casualties than Britain had, wanted the war to end, as did Austria.\nNegotiations began in Paris in February 1856 and were surprisingly easy. France, under the leadership of Napoleon III, had no special interests in the Black Sea and so did not support the harsh British and Austrian proposals.\nPeace negotiations at the Congress of Paris resulted in the signing of the Treaty of Paris on 30 March 1856. In compliance with Article III, Russia restored to the Ottoman Empire the city and the citadel of Kars and \"all other parts of the Ottoman territory of which the Russian troop were in possession\". Russia returned the Southern Bessarabia to Moldavia. By Article IV, Britain, France, Sardinia and Ottoman Empire restored to Russia \"the towns and ports of Sevastopol, Balaklava, Kamish, Eupatoria, Kerch, Jenikale, Kinburn as well as all other territories occupied by the allied troops\". In conformity with Articles XI and XIII, the Tsar and the Sultan agreed not to establish any naval or military arsenal on the Black Sea coast. The Black Sea clauses weakened Russia, which no longer posed a naval threat to the Ottomans. The Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia were nominally returned to the Ottoman Empire, and the Austrian Empire was forced to abandon its annexation and to end its occupation of them, but they in practice became independent. The Treaty of Paris admitted the Ottoman Empire to the Concert of Europe, and the great powers pledged to respect its independence and territorial integrity.\nAftermath in Russia.\nSome members of the Russian intelligentsia saw defeat as a pressure to modernise their society. Grand Duke Constantine, a son of the Tsar, remarked:\nLong-term effects.\nOrlando Figes points to the long-term damage Russia suffered:\n\"The demilitarization of the Black Sea was a major blow to Russia, which was no longer able to protect its vulnerable southern coastal frontier against the British or any other fleet... The destruction of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Sevastopol and other naval docks was a humiliation. No compulsory disarmament had ever been imposed on a great power previously... The Allies did not really think that they were dealing with a European power in Russia. They regarded Russia as a semi-Asiatic state... In Russia itself, the Crimean defeat discredited the armed services and highlighted the need to modernize the country's defences, not just in the strictly military sense, but also through the building of railways, industrialization, sound finances and so on... The image many Russians had built up of their country\u2014the biggest, richest and most powerful in the world\u2014had suddenly been shattered. Russia's backwardness had been exposed... The Crimean disaster had exposed the shortcomings of every institution in Russia\u2014not just the corruption and incompetence of the military command, the technological backwardness of the army and navy, or the inadequate roads and lack of railways that accounted for the chronic problems of supply, but the poor condition and illiteracy of the serfs who made up the armed forces, the inability of the serf economy to sustain a state of war against industrial powers, and the failures of autocracy itself.\"\nSurprisingly, after the war, the Russian-French rapprochement came, which corresponded to the plans of both sides. France persuaded the Russians to support their claims to return to the territories before the Congress of Vienna, in exchange for ceasing to act as a guarantor of the Paris peace. Alexander II stated in response to his minister's remark: \"It would undoubtedly be more useful for our interests to have him among our allies if we could rely on him.\"\nThe Treaty of Paris stood until 1871, when Prussia defeated France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870\u201371. While Prussia and several other German states united to form a powerful German Empire in January 1871, the French deposed Emperor Napoleon III and proclaimed the French Third Republic (September 1870). During his reign, Napoleon, eager for the support of the United Kingdom, had opposed Russia over the Eastern Question. Russian interference in the Ottoman Empire did not in any significant manner threaten the interests of France (Kissinger uses Napoleon's pandering to journalists and public opinion on this subject\u2014at the expense of the true interests of France\u2014as an example of strategic frivolity), and France abandoned its opposition to Russia after the establishment of the republic. Encouraged by the new attitude of French diplomacy after the surrenders of the besieged French Army at Sedan and later Metz and supported by the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, Russia in October 1870 renounced the Black Sea clauses of the treaty agreed to in 1856. As the United Kingdom with Austria-Hungary could not enforce the clauses, Russia once again established a fleet in the Black Sea.\nAfter being defeated in the Crimean War, Russia feared that Russian Alaska would be easily captured in any future war with the British; therefore, Alexander II opted to sell the territory to the United States.\nA Greek tortoise named Timothy was found on a Portuguese ship by Captain John Guy Courtenay-Everard on in 1854. Serving as a mascot throughout the war, when she died in 2004 this made her the last living veteran of the Crimean war.\nHistorian Norman Rich argues that the war was not an accident, but was sought out by the determination of the British and French not to allow Russia an honourable retreat. Both insisted on a military victory to enhance their prestige in European affairs when a non-violent peaceful political solution was available. The war then wrecked the Concert of Europe, which had long kept the peace.\nTurkish historian Candan Badem wrote, \"Victory in this war did not bring any significant material gain, not even a war indemnity. On the other hand, the Ottoman treasury was nearly bankrupted due to war expenses\". Badem adds that the Ottomans achieved no significant territorial gains, lost the right to a navy in the Black Sea, and failed to gain status as a great power. Further, the war gave impetus to the union of the Danubian principalities and ultimately to their independence.\nThe treaty punished the defeated Russia, but in the long run, Austria lost the most from the war despite having barely taken part in it. Having abandoned its alliance with Russia, Austria remained diplomatically isolated following the war, which contributed to its disastrous defeats in the 1859 Franco-Austrian War that resulted in the cession of Lombardy to the Kingdom of Sardinia and later in the loss of the Habsburg rule of Tuscany and Modena, which meant the end of Austrian influence in peninsular Italy. Furthermore, Russia did not do anything to assist its former ally, Austria, in the 1866 Austro-Prussian War, when Austria lost Venetia and, more importantly, its influence in most German-speaking lands. The status of Austria as a great power, with the unifications of Germany and Italy, now became very precarious. It had to compromise with Hungary; the two countries shared the Danubian Empire. With France now hostile to Germany and gravitating towards Russia, and with Russia competing with the newly renamed Austro-Hungarian Empire for an increased role in the Balkans at the expense of the Ottoman Empire, the foundations were in place for building the diplomatic alliances that would shape the First World War.\nThe Treaty's guarantees to preserve Ottoman territories were broken 21 years later when Russia, exploiting nationalist unrest in the Balkans and seeking to regain lost prestige, once again declared war on the Ottoman Empire on 24 April 1877. In this later Russo-Turkish War the states of Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro gained international recognition of their independence and Bulgaria achieved its autonomy from direct Ottoman rule. Russia took over Southern Bessarabia, lost in 1856. The regions of Batum and Kars, as well as those inhabited by Adjarians (Muslim Georgians) and Armenians, were also annexed to Russia in the Caucasus. At the same time, \"protectors\" of the Ottoman Empire Britain received Cyprus as a colonial possession, while Austria-Hungary occupied and annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908. Finally, Ottoman rule in the Balkans ended after the First Balkan War of 1912, when the combined forces of the Balkan states defeated it.\nThe Crimean War marked the re-ascendancy of France to the position of pre-eminent power on the Continent, the continued decline of the Ottoman Empire and a period of crisis for Imperial Russia. As Fuller notes, \"Russia had been beaten on the Crimean Peninsula, and the military feared that it would inevitably be beaten again unless steps were taken to surmount its military weakness.\" To compensate for its defeat in the Crimean War, the Russian Empire then embarked in more intensive expansion in Asia, partially to restore national pride and partially to distract Britain on the world stage, intensifying the Great Game.\nThe war also marked the demise of the first phase of the Concert of Europe, the balance-of-power system that had dominated Europe since the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and had included France, Russia, Prussia, Austria and the United Kingdom. From 1854 to 1871, the Concert of Europe concept was weakened, leading to the crises that were the unifications of Germany and of Italy, before a resurgence of great power conferences.\nIn 1870, Prussia persuaded Russia to remain neutral in the Franco-Prussian war. Bismarck, having declared it impossible to keep 100\u00a0million Russians in a humiliated position without sovereign rights to their Black Sea coastline, supported Russia against the Treaty of Paris, and in return, Prussia achieved freedom of action against France in 1870\u201371 and inflicted a crushing defeat on it.\nAn envoy from India who visited the war front after arriving to Constantinople from a failed mission in England, Azimullah Khan observed exhaustion and fatigue in the British soldiers and set to exploit a perceived weak state of the British Empire upon his return which consequently planted the seeds for the Indian War of Independence.\nHistorical analysis.\nAccording to historian Shepard Clough, the war\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />was not the result of a calculated plan, nor even of hasty last-minute decisions made under stress. It was the consequence of more than two years of fatal blundering in slow-motion by inept statesmen who had months to reflect upon the actions they took. It arose from Napoleon's search for prestige; Nicholas's quest for control over the Straits; his na\u00efve miscalculation of the probable reactions of the European powers; the failure of those powers to make their positions clear; and the pressure of public opinion in Britain and Constantinople at crucial moments.\nThe view of \"diplomatic drift\" as the cause of the war was first popularised by A. W. Kinglake, who portrayed the British as victims of newspaper sensationalism and duplicitous French and Ottoman diplomacy.\nMore recently, historians Andrew Lambert and Winfried Baumgart have argued that Britain was following a geopolitical strategy in aiming to destroy the fledgling Russian Navy, which might challenge the Royal Navy for control of the seas, and that the war was also a joint European response to a century of Russian expansion not just southwards but also into Western Europe.\nCasualties.\nThe war undoubtedly became one of the bloodiest in the history of Europe at that time, but data on casualties vary greatly. The European states, Russia, France and Britain suffered the greatest losses. Sources agree on the definition of the losses of the last two, these are 95,615 dead on the part of France, 22,182 on the part of Britain and 2,166 dead Italians, Turkish losses range from 45,400 dead to 400,000. Data on losses among Russians also vary greatly. The minimum death toll is 73,125 dead, rising to 522,000. There are also data on 450,015 dead and killed. Historian Yevgeny Tarle described the war as a \"bloody massacre\".\nDocumentation.\nDocumentation of the war was provided by William Howard Russell, who wrote for \"The Times\" newspaper, and by Roger Fenton's photographs. News from war correspondents reached all of the nations involved in the war and kept the public citizenry of those nations better informed of the day-to-day events of the war than had been the case in any earlier war. The British public was very well informed on the day-to-day realities of the war. After the French extended the telegraph to the coast of the Black Sea in late 1854, news reached London in two days. When the British laid an underwater cable to Crimea in April 1855, news reached London in a few hours. The daily news reports energised public opinion, which brought down the Aberdeen government and carried Lord Palmerston into office as prime minister.\nLeo Tolstoy wrote a few short sketches on the Siege of Sevastopol, collected in \"Sevastopol Sketches\". The stories detail the lives of the Russian soldiers and citizens in Sevastopol during the siege. Because of this work, Tolstoy has been called the world's first war correspondent.\nCriticisms and reform.\nHistorian R. B. McCallum points out the war was enthusiastically supported by the British populace as it was happening, but the mood changed very dramatically afterwards. Pacifists and critics were unpopular but:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />in the end they won. Cobden and Bright were true to their principles of foreign policy, which laid down the absolute minimum of intervention in European affairs and a deep moral reprobation of war... When the first enthusiasm was passed, when the dead were mourned, the sufferings revealed, and the cost counted, when in 1870 Russia was able calmly to secure the revocation of the Treaty, which disarmed her in the Black Sea, the view became general of the war was stupid and unnecessary, and effected nothing... The Crimean war remained as a classic example... of how governments may plunge into war, how strong ambassadors may mislead weak prime ministers, how the public may be worked up into a facile fury, and how the achievements of the war may crumble to nothing. The Bright-Cobden criticism of the war was remembered and to a large extent accepted [especially by the Liberal Party]. Isolation from European entanglements seemed more than ever desirable.\nAs the memory of the \"Charge of the Light Brigade\" demonstrates, the war became an iconic symbol of logistical, medical and tactical failures and mismanagement. Public opinion in Britain was outraged at the logistical and command failures of the war; the newspapers demanded drastic reforms, and parliamentary investigations demonstrated the multiple failures of the army. The reform campaign was not well organised, and the traditional aristocratic leadership of the army pulled itself together, and blocked all serious reforms. No one was punished. The outbreak of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 shifted attention to the heroic defence of British interest by the army, and further talk of reform went nowhere. The demand for professionalisation was achieved by Florence Nightingale, who gained worldwide attention for pioneering and publicising modern nursing while treating the wounded. Another nurse, a Jamaican named Mary Seacole, also made an impact providing care for wounded and dying soldiers. \"The Times\" war correspondent William Howard Russell spoke highly of Seacole's skill as a healer, writing \"A more tender or skilful hand about a wound or a broken limb could not be found among our best surgeons.\"\nOutstanding achievements in battlefield surgery were done during the war of 1853\u201356. \"Nikolai Pirogov, who pioneered the system of field surgery that other nations came to only in the First World War\".\nThe Crimean War also saw the first tactical use of railways and other modern inventions, such as the electric telegraph, with the first \"live\" war reporting by Russell. Some credit Russell with prompting the resignation of the sitting British government through his reporting of the lacklustre condition of British forces deployed in Crimea. Additionally, the telegraph reduced the independence of British overseas possessions from their commanders in London due to such rapid communications. Newspaper readership informed public opinion in the United Kingdom and France as never before.\nThe Crimean War was a contributing factor in the Russian abolition of serfdom in 1861: Tsar Alexander\u00a0II (Nicholas I's son and successor) saw the military defeat of the Russian serf-army by free troops from Britain and France as proof of the need for emancipation. The Crimean War also led to the realisation by the Russian government of its technological inferiority, in military practices as well as weapons. Alexander also initiated the Great Reforms, which were aimed at strengthening and modernising the Russian state in the light of weaknesses revealed by the war.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotes and references.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nHistoriography and memory.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nContemporary sources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>"}, "descending_order": ["46763", "30997172", "5171132", "15217384"], "permutation_1": ["5171132", "15217384", "30997172", "46763"], "permutation_2": ["30997172", "46763", "5171132", "15217384"], "permutation_3": ["46763", "5171132", "30997172", "15217384"]}
{"id": "4hop2__339729_22831_51791_58575", "docs_added": {"202061": "Military history of Italy during World War II\n \nThe participation of Italy in the Second World War was characterized by a complex framework of ideology, politics, and diplomacy, while its military actions were often heavily influenced by external factors. Italy joined the war as one of the Axis Powers in 1940 (as the French Third Republic surrendered) with a plan to concentrate Italian forces on a major offensive against the British Empire in Africa and the Middle East, known as the \"parallel war\", while expecting the collapse of British forces in the European theatre. The Italians bombed Mandatory Palestine, invaded Egypt and occupied British Somaliland with initial success. However, the British counterattacked, eventually necessitating German support to prevent an Italian collapse in North Africa. As the war carried on and German and Japanese actions in 1941 led to the entry of the Soviet Union and United States, respectively, into the war, the Italian plan of forcing Britain to agree to a negotiated peace settlement was foiled.\nThe Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was aware that Fascist Italy was not ready for a long conflict, as its resources were reduced by successful but costly pre-war conflicts: the pacification of Libya (which was undergoing Italian settlement), intervention in Spain (where a friendly fascist regime had been installed), and the invasions of Ethiopia and Albania. However, imperial ambitions of the Fascist regime, which aspired to restore the Roman Empire in the Mediterranean (the \"Mare Nostrum\") resulted in Mussolini keeping Italy in the war, albeit as a country that was increasingly dependent upon German military support. \nWith the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia and the Balkans, Italy annexed Ljubljana, Dalmatia and Montenegro. Puppet regimes were also established in Croatia and Greece, which were occupied by Italian forces. Following Vichy France's collapse and the Case Anton, Italy occupied the French territories of Corsica and Tunisia. Italian forces had also achieved victories against insurgents in Yugoslavia and in Montenegro, and Italo-German forces had occupied parts of British-held Egypt on their push to El-Alamein after their victory at Gazala.\nHowever, Italy's conquests were always heavily contested, both by various insurgencies (most prominently the Greek resistance and Yugoslav partisans) and Allied military forces, which waged the Battle of the Mediterranean throughout and beyond Italy's participation. The country's imperial overstretch (opening multiple fronts in Africa, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and the Mediterranean) ultimately resulted in its defeat in the war, as the Italian empire collapsed after decisive defeats in the Eastern European and North African campaigns. In July 1943, following the Allied invasion of Sicily, Mussolini was arrested by order of King Victor Emmanuel III, provoking a civil war. Italy's military outside of the Italian peninsula collapsed, its occupied and annexed territories falling under German control. Under Mussolini's successor Pietro Badoglio, Italy capitulated to the Allies on 3 September 1943, although Mussolini would be rescued from captivity a week later by German forces without meeting resistance. \nOn 13 October 1943, the Kingdom of Italy officially became a co-belligerent of the Allies and formally declared war on its former Axis partner Germany. The northern half of the country was occupied by the Germans with the cooperation of Italian fascists, who formed a collaborationist puppet state (soldiers, police, and militia recruited for the Axis); the south was still controlled by monarchist forces, which fought for the Allied cause as the Italian Co-Belligerent Army and Italian resistance movement partisans (many of them former Royal Italian Army soldiers) of disparate political ideologies operated all over Italy. Unlike Germany and Japan, no war crimes tribunals were held for Italian military and political leaders, though the Italian resistance summarily executed some political members at the end of the war, including Mussolini on 28 April 1945.\nBackground.\nImperial ambitions.\nDuring the late 1920s, the Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini spoke with increasing urgency about imperial expansion, arguing that Italy needed an outlet for its \"surplus population\" and that it would therefore be in the best interests of other countries to aid in this expansion. The immediate aspiration of the regime was political \"hegemony in the Mediterranean\u2013Danubian\u2013Balkan region\", more grandiosely Mussolini imagined the conquest \"of an empire stretching from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Strait of Hormuz\". Balkan and Mediterranean hegemony was predicated by ancient Roman dominance in the same regions. There were designs for a protectorate over Albania and for the annexation of Dalmatia, as well as economic and military control of Yugoslavia and Greece. The regime also sought to establish protective patron\u2013client relationships with Austria, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, which all lay on the outside edges of its European sphere of influence. Although it was not among his publicly proclaimed aims, Mussolini wished to challenge the supremacy of Britain and France in the Mediterranean Sea, which was considered strategically vital, since the Mediterranean was Italy's only conduit to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.\nIn 1935, Italy initiated the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, \"a nineteenth-century colonial campaign waged out of due time\". The campaign gave rise to optimistic talk on raising a native Ethiopian army \"to help conquer\" Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The war also marked a shift towards a more aggressive Italian foreign policy and also \"exposed [the] vulnerabilities\" of the British and French. This in turn created the opportunity Mussolini needed to begin to realize his imperial goals. In 1936, the Spanish Civil War broke out. From the beginning, Italy played an important role in the conflict. Their military contribution was so vast, that it played a decisive role in the victory of the rebel forces led by Francisco Franco. Mussolini had engaged in \"a full-scale external war\" due to the insinuation of future Spanish subservience to the Italian Empire, and as a way of placing the country on a war footing and creating \"a warrior culture\". The aftermath of the war in Ethiopia saw a reconciliation of German-Italian relations following years of a previously strained relationship, resulting in the signing of a treaty of mutual interest in October 1936. Mussolini referred to this treaty as the creation of a Berlin-Rome Axis, which Europe would revolve around. The treaty was the result of increasing dependence on German coal following League of Nations sanctions, similar policies between the two countries over the conflict in Spain, and German sympathy towards Italy following European backlash to the Ethiopian War. The aftermath of the treaty saw the increasing ties between Italy and Germany, and Mussolini falling under Adolf Hitler's influence from which \"he never escaped\".\nIn October 1938, in the aftermath of the Munich Agreement, Italy demanded concessions from France. These included a free port at Djibouti, control of the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railroad, Italian participation in the management of Suez Canal Company, some form of French-Italian condominium over French Tunisia, and the preservation of Italian culture on Corsica with no French assimilation of the people. The French refused the demands, believing the true Italian intention was the territorial acquisition of Nice, Corsica, Tunisia, and Djibouti. On 30 November 1938, Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano addressed the Chamber of Deputies on the \"natural aspirations of the Italian people\" and was met with shouts of \"Nice! Corsica! Savoy! Tunisia! Djibouti! Malta!\" Later that day, Mussolini addressed the Fascist Grand Council \"on the subject of what he called the immediate goals of 'Fascist dynamism'.\" These were Albania; Tunisia; Corsica; the Ticino, a canton of Switzerland; and all \"French territory east of the River Var\", including Nice, but not Savoy.\nBeginning in 1939 Mussolini often voiced his contention that Italy required uncontested access to the world's oceans and shipping lanes to ensure its national sovereignty. On 4 February 1939, Mussolini addressed the Grand Council in a closed session. He delivered a long speech on international affairs and the goals of his foreign policy, \"which bears comparison with Hitler's notorious disposition, minuted by colonel Hossbach\". He began by claiming that the freedom of a country is proportional to the strength of its navy. This was followed by \"the familiar lament that Italy was a prisoner in the Mediterranean\". He called Corsica, Tunisia, Malta, and Cyprus \"the bars of this prison\", and described Gibraltar and Suez as the prison guards. To break British control, her bases on Cyprus, Gibraltar, Malta, and in Egypt (controlling the Suez Canal) would have to be neutralized. On 31 March, Mussolini stated that \"Italy will not truly be an independent nation so long as she has Corsica, Bizerta, Malta as the bars of her Mediterranean prison and Gibraltar and Suez as the walls.\" Fascist foreign policy took for granted that the democracies\u2014Britain and France\u2014would someday need to be faced down. Through armed conquest Italian North Africa and Italian East Africa\u2014separated by the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan\u2014would be linked, and the Mediterranean prison destroyed. Then, Italy would be able to march \"either to the Indian Ocean through the Sudan and Abyssinia, or to the Atlantic by way of French North Africa\".\nAs early as September 1938, the Italian military had drawn up plans to invade Albania. On 7 April, Italian forces landed in the country and within three days had occupied the majority of the country. Albania represented a territory Italy could acquire for \"'living space' to ease its overpopulation\" as well as the foothold needed to launch other expansionist conflicts in the Balkans. On 22 May 1939, Italy and Germany signed the Pact of Steel joining both countries in a military alliance. The pact was the culmination of German-Italian relations from 1936 and was not defensive in nature. Rather, the pact was designed for a \"joint war against France and Britain\", although the Italian hierarchy held the understanding that such a war would not take place for several years. However, despite the Italian impression, the pact made no reference to such a period of peace and the Germans proceeded with their plans to invade Poland.\nIndustrial strength.\nMussolini's Under-Secretary for War Production, Carlo Favagrossa, had estimated that Italy could not possibly be prepared for major military operations until at least October 1942. This had been made clear during the Italo-German negotiations for the Pact of Steel, whereby it was stipulated that neither signatory was to make war without the other earlier than 1943. Although considered a great power, the Italian industrial sector was relatively weak compared to other European major powers. Italian industry did not equal more than 15% of that of France or of Britain in militarily critical areas such as automobile production: the number of automobiles in Italy before the war was around 374,000, in comparison to around 2,500,000 in Britain and France. The lack of a stronger automotive industry made it difficult for Italy to mechanize its military. Italy still had a predominantly agricultural-based economy, with demographics more akin to a developing country (high illiteracy, poverty, rapid population growth and a high proportion of adolescents) and a proportion of GNP derived from industry less than that of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Sweden, in addition to the other great powers. In terms of strategic materials, in 1940, Italy produced 4.4 megatonnes (Mt) of coal, 0.01 Mt of crude oil, 1.2 Mt of iron ore and 2.1 Mt of steel. By comparison, Great Britain produced 224.3 Mt of coal, 11.9 Mt of crude oil, 17.7 Mt of iron ore, and 13.0 Mt of steel and Germany produced 364.8 Mt of coal, 8.0 Mt of crude oil, 29.5 Mt of iron ore and 21.5 Mt of steel. Most raw material needs could be fulfilled only through importation, and no effort was made to stockpile key materials before the entry into war. Approximately one quarter of the ships of Italy's merchant fleet were in allied ports at the outbreak of hostilities, and, given no forewarning, were immediately impounded.\nEconomy.\nBetween 1936 and 1939, Italy had supplied the Spanish Nationalist forces, fighting under Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War, with large number of weapons and supplies practically free. In addition to weapons, the \"Corpo Truppe Volontarie\" (\"Corps of Volunteer Troops\") had also been dispatched to fight for Franco. The financial cost of the war was between 6 and 8.5 billion lire, approximately 14 to 20 per cent of the country's annual expenditure. Adding to these problems was Italy's extreme debt position. When Benito Mussolini took office, in 1921, the government debt was 93 billion lire, un-repayable in the short to medium term. Only two years later this debt had increased to 405 billion lire.\nIn September 1939, Britain imposed a selective blockade of Italy. Coal from Germany, which was shipped out of Rotterdam, was declared contraband. The Germans promised to keep up shipments by train, over the Alps, and Britain offered to supply all of Italy's needs in exchange for Italian armaments. The Italians could not agree to the latter terms without shattering their alliance with Germany. On 2 February 1940, however, Mussolini approved a draft contract with the Royal Air Force to provide 400 Caproni aircraft, yet scrapped the deal on 8 February. British intelligence officer Francis Rodd believed that Mussolini was convinced to reverse policy by German pressure in the week of 2\u20138 February, a view shared by the British ambassador in Rome, Percy Loraine. On 1 March, the British announced that they would block all coal exports from Rotterdam to Italy. Italian coal was one of the most discussed issues in diplomatic circles in the spring of 1940. In April, Britain began strengthening the Mediterranean Fleet to enforce the blockade. Despite French uncertainty, Britain rejected concessions to Italy so as not to \"create an impression of weakness\". Germany supplied Italy with about one million tons of coal a month beginning in the spring of 1940, an amount that exceeded even Mussolini's demand of August 1939 that Italy receive six million tons of coal for its first twelve months of war.\nMilitary.\nThe Italian Royal Army (\"Regio Esercito\") was comparatively depleted and weak at the beginning of the war. Italian tanks were of poor quality and radios few in number. The bulk of Italian artillery dated to World War I. The primary fighter of the Italian Air Force (\"Regia Aeronautica\") was the Fiat CR.42 Falco, which, though an advanced biplane with excellent performance, was technically outclassed by monoplane fighters of other nations. Of the Regia Aeronautica's approximately 1,760 aircraft, only 900 could be considered in any way combat-worthy. The Italian Royal Navy (\"Regia Marina\") had several modern battleships but no aircraft carriers.\nItalian authorities were acutely aware of the need to modernize and were taking steps to meet the requirements of their own relatively advanced tactical principles. Almost 40% of the 1939 budget was allocated for military spending. Recognizing the Navy's need for close air support, the decision was made to build carriers. Three series of modern fighters, capable of meeting the best allied planes on equal terms, were in development, with a few hundred of each eventually being produced. The Carro Armato P40 tank, roughly equivalent to the M4 Sherman and Panzer IV medium tanks, was designed in 1940 (though no prototype was produced until 1942 and manufacture could not commence before the Armistice, owing in part to the lack of sufficiently powerful engines, which were themselves undergoing a development push; total Italian tank production for the war \u2013 about 3,500 \u2013 was less than the number of tanks used by Germany in its invasion of France). The Italians were pioneers in the use of self-propelled guns, both in close support and anti-tank roles. Their 75/46 fixed AA/AT gun, 75/32 gun, 90/53 AA/AT gun (an equally deadly but less famous peer of the German 88/55), 47/32 AT gun, and the 20 mm AA autocannon were effective, modern weapons. Also of note were the AB 41 and the Camionetta AS 42 armoured cars, which were regarded as excellent vehicles of their type. None of these developments, however, precluded the fact that the bulk of equipment was obsolete and poor. The relatively weak economy, lack of suitable raw materials and consequent inability to produce sufficient quantities of armaments and supplies were thus the key material reasons for Italian military failure.\nOn paper, Italy had one of the world's largest armies, but the reality was dramatically different. According to the estimates of Bierman and Smith, the Italian regular army could field only about 200,000 troops at the war's beginning. Irrespective of the attempts to modernize, the majority of Italian army personnel were lightly armed infantry lacking sufficient motor transport. Not enough money was budgeted to train the men in the services, such that the bulk of personnel received much of their training at the front, too late to be of use. Air units had not been trained to operate with the naval fleet and the majority of ships had been built for fleet actions, rather than the convoy protection duties in which they were primarily employed during the war. In any event, a critical lack of fuel kept naval activities to a minimum.\nSenior leadership was also a problem. Mussolini personally assumed control of all three individual military service ministries with the intention of influencing detailed planning. \"Comando Supremo\" (the Italian High Command) consisted of only a small complement of staff that could do little more than inform the individual service commands of Mussolini's intentions, after which it was up to the individual service commands to develop proper plans and execution. The result was that there was no central direction for operations; the three military services tended to work independently, focusing only on their fields, with little inter-service cooperation. Pay discrepancies existed for personnel who were of equal rank, but from different units.\nOutbreak of the Second World War.\nNazi Germany's invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, marked the beginning of World War II. Despite being an Axis power, Italy remained non-belligerent until June 1940.\nDecision to intervene.\nFollowing the German conquest of Poland, Mussolini hesitated to enter the war. General Sir Archibald Wavell, the head of Middle East Command, correctly predicted that Mussolini's pride would ultimately cause him to enter the war. Wavell would compare Mussolini's situation to that of someone at the top of a diving board: \"I think he must do something. If he cannot make a graceful dive, he will at least have to jump in somehow; he can hardly put on his dressing-gown and walk down the stairs again.\"\nInitially, the entry into the war appeared to be political opportunism though there was some provocation. The French and British, for their part had caused Italy a long list of grievances since during WWI through the extraction of political and economic concessions and the blockading of imports. Aware of Italy's material and planning deficiencies leading up to World War II, and believing that Italy's entry into the war on the side of Germany was inevitable, the English blockaded German coal imports from 1 March 1940 in an attempt to bring Italian industry to a standstill. The British and the French then began amassing their naval fleets (to a twelve-to-two superiority in capital ships over the Regia Marina) both in preparation and provocation. They thought wrongly that Italy could be knocked out early, underestimating its determination. Prior to this, from 10 September 1939, the Italians made several attempts to intermediate peace. While Hitler was open to it, the French were not responsive and the British only invited the Italians to change sides. For Mussolini, the risks of staying out of the war were becoming greater than those for entering, which led to a lack of consistency in planning, with principal objectives and enemies being changed with little regard for the consequences. Mussolini was well aware of the military and material deficiencies but thought the war would be over soon and did not expect to do much fighting.\nItaly enters the war: June 1940.\nOn 10 June 1940, as the French government fled to Bordeaux during the German invasion, declaring Paris an open city, Mussolini felt the conflict would soon end and declared war on Britain and France. As he said to the Army's Chief-of-Staff, Marshal Badoglio:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I only need a few thousand dead so that I can sit at the peace conference as a man who has fought.\nMussolini had the immediate war aim of expanding the Italian colonies in North Africa by taking land from the British and French colonies.\nAbout Mussolini's declaration of war in France, President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States said:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />On this tenth day of June 1940, the hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor.\nThe Italian entry into the war opened up new fronts in North Africa and the Mediterranean. After Italy entered the war, pressure from Nazi Germany led to the internment in the Campagna concentration camp of some of Italy's Jewish refugees.\nInvasion of France.\nIn June 1940, after initial success, the Italian offensive into southern France stalled at the fortified Alpine Line. On 24 June 1940, France surrendered to Germany. Italy occupied a swath of French territory along the Franco-Italian border. During this operation, Italian casualties amounted to 1,247 men dead or missing and 2,631 wounded. A further 2,151 Italians were hospitalised due to frostbite.\nLate in the Battle of Britain, Italy contributed an expeditionary force, the Corpo Aereo Italiano, which took part in the Blitz from October 1940 until April 1941, at which time the last elements of the force were withdrawn.\nIn November 1942, the Italian Royal Army occupied south-eastern Vichy France and Corsica as part of Case Anton. From December 1942, Italian military government of French departments east of the Rh\u00f4ne River was established, and continued until September 1943, when Italy quit the war. This had the effect of providing a \"de facto\" temporary haven for French Jews fleeing the Holocaust. In January 1943 the Italians refused to cooperate with the Nazis in rounding up Jews living in the occupied zone of France under their control and in March prevented the Nazis from deporting Jews in their zone. German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop complained to Mussolini that \"Italian military circles... lack a proper understanding of the Jewish question.\"\nThe Italian Navy established a submarine base at Bordeaux, code named BETASOM, and thirty-two Italian submarines participated in the Battle of the Atlantic. Plans to attack the harbour of New York City with CA class midget submarines in 1943 were disrupted when the submarine converted to carry out the attack, the , was sunk in May 1943. The armistice put a stop to further planning.\nNorth Africa.\nInvasion of Egypt.\nWithin a week of Italy's declaration of war on 10 June 1940, the British 11th Hussars had seized Fort Capuzzo in Libya. In an ambush east of Bardia, the British captured the Italian 10th Army Engineer-in-Chief, General Lastucci. On 28 June Marshal Italo Balbo, the Governor-General of Libya, was killed by friendly fire while landing in Tobruk. Mussolini ordered Balbo's replacement, General Rodolfo Graziani, to launch an attack into Egypt immediately. Graziani complained to Mussolini that his forces were not properly equipped for such an operation, and that an attack into Egypt could not possibly succeed; nevertheless, Mussolini ordered him to proceed. On 13 September, elements of the 10th Army retook Fort Capuzzo and crossed the border into Egypt. Lightly opposed, they advanced about to Sidi Barrani, where they stopped and began entrenching themselves in a series of fortified camps.\nAt this time, the British had only 36,000 troops available (out of about 100,000 under Middle Eastern command) to defend Egypt, against 236,000 Italian troops. The Italians, however, were not concentrated in one location. They were divided between the 5th army in the west and the 10th army in the east and thus spread out from the Tunisian border in western Libya to Sidi Barrani in Egypt. At Sidi Barrani, Graziani, unaware of the British lack of numerical strength, planned to build fortifications and stock them with provisions, ammunition, and fuel, establish a water pipeline, and extend the via Balbia to that location, which was where the road to Alexandria began. This task was being obstructed by British Royal Navy attacks on Italian supply ships in the Mediterranean. At this stage Italian losses remained minimal, but the efficiency of the British Royal Navy would improve as the war went on. Mussolini was fiercely disappointed with Graziani's sluggishness. However, according to Bauer he had only himself to blame, as he had withheld the trucks, armaments, and supplies that Graziani had deemed necessary for success. Wavell was hoping to see the Italians overextend themselves before his intended counter at Marsa Matruh.\nOne officer of Graziani wrote: \"We're trying to fight this... as though it were a colonial war... this is a European war... fought with European weapons against a European enemy. We take too little account of this in building our stone forts... We are not fighting the Ethiopians now.\" (This was a reference to the Second Italo-Abyssinian War where Italian forces had fought against a poorly equipped opponent.) Balbo had said \"Our light tanks, already old and armed only with machine guns, are completely out-classed. The machine guns of the British armoured cars pepper them with bullets which easily pierce their armour.\"\nItalian forces around Sidi Barrani had severe weaknesses in their deployment. Their five main fortifications were placed too far apart to allow mutual support against an attacking force, and the areas between were weakly patrolled. The absence of motorised transport did not allow for rapid reorganisation, if needed. The rocky terrain had prevented an anti-tank ditch from being dug and there were too few mines and 47\u00a0mm anti-tank guns to repel an armoured advance. By the summer of 1941, the Italians in North Africa had regrouped, retrained and rearmed into a much more effective fighting force, one that proved to be much harder for the British to overcome in encounters from 1941 to 1943.\n\"Afrika Korps\" intervention and final defeat.\nOn 8 December 1940, the British launched Operation Compass. Planned as an extended raid, it resulted in a force of British, Indian, and Australian troops cutting off the Italian 10th Army. Pressing the British advantage home, General Richard O'Connor succeeded in reaching El Agheila, deep in Libya (an advance of ) and taking some 130,000 prisoners. The Allies nearly destroyed the 10th Army, and seemed on the point of sweeping the Italians out of Libya altogether. Winston Churchill, however, directed the advance be stopped, initially because of supply problems and because of a new Italian offensive that had gained ground in Albania, and ordered troops dispatched to defend Greece. Weeks later the first troops of the German \"Afrika Korps\" started to arrive in North Africa (February 1941), along with six Italian divisions including the motorized Trento and armored Ariete.\nGerman General Erwin Rommel now became the principal Axis field commander in North Africa, although the bulk of his forces were consisted of Italian troops, and subordinated to the Italian command, Rommel's direction the Axis troops pushed the British and Commonwealth troops back into Egypt but were unable to complete the task because of the exhaustion and their extended supply lines which were under threat from the Allied enclave at Tobruk, which they failed to capture. After reorganising and re-grouping the Allies launched Operation Crusader in November 1941 which resulted in the Axis front line being pushed back once more to El Agheila by the end of the year.\nIn January 1942 the Axis struck back again, advancing to Gazala where the front lines stabilised while both sides raced to build up their strength. At the end of May, the \"German-Italian Panzer Army\", launched the Battle of Gazala where the British armoured divisions were soundly defeated. The Axis seemed on the verge of sweeping the British out of Egypt, but at the First Battle of El Alamein, the Allies had halted the Axis advance towards Alexandria. The Axis forces made a final attempt to break through during the Battle of Alam el Halfa but the Eighth Army, held firm. After a period of reinforcement and training the Allies assumed the offensive at the Second Battle of Alamein (October/November 1942) where they scored a decisive victory and the remains of the German-Italian Panzer Army were forced to engage in a fighting retreat for to the Libyan border with Tunisia.\nAfter the Operation Torch landings in the Vichy French territories of Morocco and Algeria (November 1942) British, American and French forces advanced east to engage the German-Italian forces in the Tunisia Campaign. By February, the Axis forces in Tunisia were joined by Rommel's forces, after their long withdrawal from El Alamein, which were re-designated the Italian First Army (under Giovanni Messe) when Rommel left to command the Axis forces to the north at the Battle of the Kasserine Pass. Despite the Axis success at Kasserine, the Allies were able to reorganise (with all forces under the unified direction of 18th Army Group commanded by General Sir Harold Alexander) and regain the initiative in April. The Allies completed the defeat of the Axis armies in North Africa in May 1943.\nEast Africa.\nIn addition to the well-known campaigns in the western desert during 1940, the Italians initiated operations in June 1940 from their East African colonies of Ethiopia, Italian Somaliland, and Eritrea.\nAs in Egypt, Italian forces (roughly 70,000 Italian soldiers and 180,000 native troops) outnumbered their British opponents. Italian East Africa, however, was isolated and far from the Italian mainland, leaving the forces there cut off from supply and thus severely limited in the operations they could undertake.\nInitial Italian attacks in East Africa took two different directions, one into Sudan and the other into Kenya. Then, in August 1940, the Italians advanced into British Somaliland. After suffering and inflicting few casualties, the British and Commonwealth garrison evacuated Somaliland, retreating by sea to Aden.\nThe Italian invasion of British Somaliland was one of the few successful Italian campaigns of World War II accomplished without German support. In Sudan and Kenya, Italy captured small territories around several border villages, after which the Italian Royal Army in East Africa adopted a defensive posture in preparation for expected British counterattacks.\nThe \"Regia Marina\" maintained a small squadron in the Italian East Africa area. The \"Red Sea Flotilla\", consisting of seven destroyers and eight submarines, was based at the port of Massawa in Eritrea. Despite a severe shortage of fuel, the flotilla posed a threat to British convoys traversing the Red Sea. However, Italian attempts to attack British convoys resulted in the loss of four submarines and one destroyer.\nOn 19 January 1941, the expected British counterattack arrived in the shape of the Indian 4th and Indian 5th Infantry Divisions, which made a thrust from Sudan. A supporting attack was made from Kenya by the South African 1st Division, the 11th African Division, and the 12th African Division. Finally, the British launched an amphibious assault from Aden to re-take British Somaliland.\nFought from February to March, the outcome of the Battle of Keren determined the fate of Italian East Africa. In early April, after Keren fell, Asmara and Massawa followed. The Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa also fell in April 1941. The Viceroy of Ethiopia, Amedeo, Duke of Aosta, surrendered at the stronghold of Amba Alagi in May. He received full military honours. The Italians in East Africa made a final stand around the town of Gondar in November 1941.\nWhen the port of Massawa fell to the British, the remaining destroyers were ordered on final missions in the Red Sea, some of them achieving small successes before being scuttled or sunk. At the same time, the last four submarines made an epic voyage around the Cape of Good Hope to Bordeaux in France. Some Italians, after their defeat, waged a guerilla war mainly in Eritrea and Ethiopia, that lasted until fall 1943. Notable among them was Amedeo Guillet.\nBalkans.\nInvasion of Albania.\nIn early 1939, while the world was focused on Adolf Hitler's aggression against Czechoslovakia, Mussolini looked to the Kingdom of Albania, across the Adriatic Sea from Italy. Italian forces invaded Albania on 7 April 1939 and swiftly took control of the small country. Even before the invasion, Albania had been politically dominated by Italy; after the invasion it was formally made a protectorate of Italy and the Italian king took the Albanian crown. Along with the intervention in the Spanish Civil War and the invasion of Abyssinia, the invasion of Albania was part of the Italian contribution to the disintegration of the collective security the League of Nations instituted after World War I. As such, it was part of the \"prelude to World War II\".\nInvasion of Greece.\nOn 28 October 1940, Italy started the Greco-Italian War by launching an invasion of the Kingdom of Greece from Albania. In part, the Italians attacked Greece because of the growing influence of Germany in the Balkans. Both Yugoslavia and Greece had governments friendly to Germany. Mussolini launched the invasion of Greece in haste after the Kingdom of Romania, a state which he perceived as lying within the Italian sphere of influence, allied itself with Germany. The order to invade Greece was given by Mussolini to Badoglio and Army Chief of Staff Mario Roatta on 15 October, with the expectation that the attack would commence within 12 days. Badoglio and Roatta were appalled given that, acting on his orders, they had demobilised 600,000 men three weeks prior. Given the expected requirement of at least 20 divisions to facilitate success, the fact that only eight divisions were currently in Albania, and the inadequacies of Albanian ports and connecting infrastructure, adequate preparation would require at least three months. Nonetheless, D-day was set at dawn on 28 October.\nThe initial Italian offensive was quickly contained, and the invasion soon ended in an embarrassing stalemate. Taking advantage of Bulgaria's decision to remain neutral, the Greek Commander-in-Chief, Lt Gen Alexandros Papagos, was able to establish numerical superiority by mid-November, prior to launching a counter-offensive that drove the Italians back into Albania. In addition, the Greeks were naturally adept at operating in mountainous terrain, while only six of the Italian Army's divisions, the Alpini, were trained and equipped for mountain warfare. Only when the Italians were able to establish numerical parity was the Greek offensive stopped. By then they had been able to penetrate deep into Albania.\nAn Italian \"Spring Offensive\" in March 1941, which tried to salvage the situation prior to German intervention, amounted to little in terms of territorial gains. At this point, combat casualties amounted to over 102,000 for the Italians (with 13,700 dead and 3,900 missing) and fifty thousand sick; the Greek suffered over 90,000 combat casualties (including 14,000 killed and 5,000 missing) and an unknown number of sick. While an embarrassment for the Italians, losses on this scale were devastating for the less numerous Greeks; additionally, the Greek Army had bled a significant amount of materiel. They were short on every area of equipment despite heavy infusion of British aid in February and March, with the army as a whole having only 1 month of artillery ammunition left by the start of April and insufficient arms and equipment to mobilize its reserves. Hitler later stated in hindsight that Greece would have been defeated with or without German intervention, and that even at the time he was of the opinion that the Italians alone would have conquered Greece in the forthcoming season.\nAfter British troops arrived in Greece in March 1941, British bombers operating from Greek bases could reach Romanian oil fields, vital to the German war effort. Hitler decided that a British presence in Greece presented a threat to Germany's rear and committed German troops to invade Greece via Yugoslavia (where a coup had deposed the German-friendly government). The Germans invaded on 6 April 1941, smashing through the skeleton garrisons opposing them with little resistance, while the Italians continued a slow advance in Albania and Epirus as the Greeks withdrew, with the country falling to the Axis by the end of the month. The Italian Army was still pinned down in Albania by the Greeks when the Germans began their invasion. Crucially, the bulk of the Greek Army (fifteen divisions out of twenty-one) was left facing the Italians in Albania and Epirus when the Germans intervened. Hitler commented that the Italians \"had so weakened [Greece] that its collapse had already become inevitable\" and credited them with having \"engaged the greater part of the Greek Army.\"\nInvasion of Yugoslavia.\nOn 6 April 1941, the \"Wehrmacht\" invasions of both Yugoslavia (Operation 25) and Greece (Operation Marita) began. Together with the rapid advance of German forces, the Italians attacked Yugoslavia in Dalmatia and finally pushed the Greeks out of Albania. On 17 April, Yugoslavia surrendered to the Germans and the Italians. On 30 April, Greece too surrendered to the Germans and Italians, and was divided into German, Italian, and Bulgarian sectors. The invasions ended with a complete Axis victory in May when Crete fell. On 3 May, during the triumphal parade in Athens to celebrate the Axis victory, Mussolini started to boast of an Italian Mare Nostrum in the Mediterranean.\nSome 28 Italian divisions participated in the Balkan invasions. The coast of Yugoslavia was occupied by the Italian Army, while the rest of the country was divided between the Axis forces (a German and Italian creation, the Independent State of Croatia was born, under the nominal sovereignty of Prince Aimone, Duke of Aosta, but actually governed by the Croatian leader Ante Paveli\u0107). The Italians assumed control of most of Greece with their 11th Army, while the Bulgarians occupied the northern provinces and the Germans the strategically most important areas. Italian troops would occupy parts of Greece and Yugoslavia until the Italian armistice with the Allies in September 1943.\nIn spring 1941, Italy created a Montenegrin client state and annexed most of the Dalmatian coast as the Governorship of Dalmatia (\"Governatorato di Dalmazia\"). A complicated four-way conflict between the puppet Montenegro regime, Montenegrin nationalists, Royalist remnants of the Yugoslav government, and Communist Partisans continued from 1941 to 1945.\nIn 1942, the Italian military commander in Croatia refused to hand over Jews in his zone to the Nazis.\nMediterranean.\nIn 1940, the Italian Royal Navy (\"Regia Marina\") could not match the overall strength of the British Royal Navy in the Mediterranean Sea. After some series of engagements, the Italian Navy declined to engage in a confrontation of capital ships. Since the British Royal Navy had as a principal task the supply and protection of convoys supplying Britain's outposts in the Mediterranean, the mere continued existence of the Italian fleet (the so-called \"fleet in being\" concept) caused problems for Britain, which had to use warships sorely needed elsewhere to protect Mediterranean convoys. On 11 November, Britain launched the first carrier strike of the war, using a squadron of Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers to attack Taranto. The raid left three Italian battleships crippled or destroyed for the loss of two British aircraft shot down.\nThe Italian navy found other ways to attack the British. The most successful involved the use of frogmen and manned torpedoes to attack ships in harbour. The 10th Light Flotilla, also known as \"Decima Flottiglia MAS\" or X\u00aa MAS, which carried out these attacks, sank or damaged 28 ships from September 1940 to the end of 1942. These included the battleships and (damaged in the harbour of Alexandria on 18 December 1941), and of merchant shipping. The X\u00aa MAS used a particular kind of torpedo, the SLC (\"Siluro a Lenta Corsa\"), whose crew was composed of two frogmen, and motorboats packed with explosives, called MTM (\"Motoscafo da Turismo Modificato\").\nOn 1942, Following the attacks on the two British battleships, the \"Regia Marina\" went on the offensive on the Royal Navy achieving some success at the Second Battle of Sirte in March, and Operation Vigorous and Operation Harpoon in June, the possibility of Italian dominance over the Mediterranean appeared more achievable. However, Mussolini's brief period of relative success did not last. The oil and supplies brought to Malta in August, at great cost, by Operation Pedestal, as well as the Allied landings in North Africa, Operation Torch, in November 1942, turned the fortunes of war against Italy. Axis forces were ejected from Libya and Tunisia six months after the Battle of El Alamein, while their supply lines were harassed day after day by the growing and overwhelming aerial and naval supremacy of the Allies. By the summer of 1943, the Allies were poised to invade the Italian homeland.\nEastern Front.\nIn July 1941, around 62,000 Italian troops of the Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia (, CSIR) left for the Eastern Front to aid in the German invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa). In July 1942, the Italian Royal Army () expanded the CSIR to a full army of about 200,000 men named the Italian Army in Russia (, ARMIR), also known as the 8th Army.\nFrom August 1942 to February 1943, the 8th Army took part in the decisive Battle of Stalingrad, where it suffered heavy losses (some 20,000 dead and 64,000 captured) when the Soviets isolated German forces by attacking the over-stretched Hungarian, Romanian, and Italian forces protecting the Germans' flanks. By the summer of 1943, Rome had withdrawn the remnants of the 8th Army to Italy. Many Italian POWs captured in the Soviet Union died in captivity due to harsh conditions in Soviet prison camps.\nThe Charge of the Savoia Cavalleria at Izbushensky was a clash between the Italian cavalry Regiment \"Savoia Cavalleria\" (3rd) and the Soviet 812th Rifle Regiment (304th Rifle Division) that took place on 24 August 1942, near the hamlet (khutor) of Izbushensky (\"\u0418\u0437\u0431\u0443\u0448\u0435\u043d\u0441\u043a\u0438\u0439\"), close to the junction between the Don and Khopyor rivers. Though a minor skirmish in the theatre of operation of the Eastern Front, the Izbushensky charge had great propaganda resonance in Italy and it is still remembered as one of the last significant cavalry charges in history.\nItalian campaign.\nAllied invasion of Sicily and fall of Mussolini.\nOn 10 July 1943, a combined force of American and British Commonwealth troops invaded Sicily, although they lost the island after weeks of bitter fighting, they succeeded in ferrying large numbers of German and Italian forces safely off Sicily to the Italian mainland. On 19 July, an Allied air raid on Rome destroyed both military and collateral civilian structures. With these two events, popular support for the war diminished in Italy.\nOn 25 July, the Grand Council of Fascism voted to limit the power of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and handed control of the Italian armed forces over to King Victor Emmanuel III. The next day, Mussolini met with the King, was dismissed as prime minister, and then imprisoned. A new Italian government, led by General Pietro Badoglio and Victor Emmanuel III, took over in Italy.\nAlthough they publicly declared that they would keep fighting alongside the Germans, the new Italian government began secret negotiations with the Allies to come over to the Allied side. Tensions between the Axis and the Italian military were rising following the failure to defend Sicily, with \"New York Times\" correspondent Milton Bracker noting that \"Italian hatred of the Germans unquestionably grew as the fighting spirit waned, and episodes between German and Italian soldiers and civilians before and after the armistice have shown pretty clearly a complete and incontrovertible end of all sympathy between the former Axis partners.\"\nArmistice with the Allies and German invasion.\nOn 3 September, a secret armistice was signed with the Allies at Fairfield Camp in Sicily. The armistice was publicly announced on 8 September. By then, the Allies were on the Italian mainland.\nOn 3 September, British troops crossed the short distance from Sicily to the 'toe' of Italy in Operation Baytown. Two more Allied landings took place on 9 September at Salerno (Operation Avalanche) and at Taranto (Operation Slapstick). The Italian surrender meant that the Allied landings at Taranto took place unopposed, with the troops simply disembarking from warships at the docks rather than assaulting the coastline.\nBecause of the time it took for the new Italian government to negotiate the armistice, the Germans had time to reinforce their presence in Italy and prepare for their defection. In the first weeks of August, they increased the number of divisions in Italy from two to seven and took control of vital infrastructure. Once the signing of the armistice was announced on 8 September, German troops quickly disarmed the Italian forces and took over critical defensive positions in Operation Achse. This included Italian-occupied southeastern France and the Italian-controlled areas in the Balkans. Only in Sardinia, Corsica, and in part of Apulia and Calabria were Italian troops able to hold their positions until the arrival of Allied forces. In the area of Rome, only one infantry division\u2014the Granatieri di Sardegna\u2014and some small armoured units fought with commitment, but by 11 September were overwhelmed by superior German forces.\nKing Victor Emmanuel III and his family, with Marshal Badoglio, General Mario Roatta, and others, abandoned Rome on 9 September. General Caroni, who was tasked with defending Rome, was given duplicitous orders to have his troops abandon Rome (something he did not want to do), and essentially to provide rear guard protection to the King and his entourage so they could flee to the Abruzzi hills, and later out to sea. They later landed at Brindisi. Most importantly, Badoglio never gave the \"OP 44\" order for the Italian people to rise up against the Germans until he knew it was too late to do any good; that is, he belatedly issued the order on 11 September. However, from the day of the announcement of the Armistice, when Italian citizens, military personnel and military units decided to rise up and resist on their own, they were sometimes quite effective against the Germans.\nAs part of the terms of the armistice, the Italian fleet was to sail to Malta for internment; as it did so, it came under air attack by German bombers, and on 9 September two German Fritz X guided bombs sank the Italian battleship off the coast of Sardinia. A \"Supermarina\" (Italian Naval Command) broadcast led the Italians to initially believe this attack was carried out by the British.\nOn the Greek island of Cephallonia, General Antonio Gandin, commander of the 12,000-strong Italian \"Acqui\" Division, decided to resist the German attempt to forcibly disarm his force. The battle raged from 13 to 22 September, when the Italians capitulated having suffered some 1,300 casualties. Following the surrender, the Germans proceeded to massacre thousands of the Italian prisoners.\nItalian troops captured by the Germans were given a choice to keep fighting with the Germans. About 94,000 Italians accepted and the remaining 710,000 were designated Italian military internees and were transported as forced labour to Germany. Some Italian troops that evaded German capture in the Balkans joined the Yugoslav (about 40,000 soldiers) and Greek Resistance (about 20,000). The same happened in Albania.\nAfter the German invasion, deportations of Italian Jews to Nazi death camps began. However, by the time the German advance reached the Campagna concentration camp, all the inmates had already fled to the mountains with the help of the local inhabitants. Rev. Aldo Brunacci of Assisi, under the direction of his bishop, Giuseppe Nicolini, saved all the Jews who sought refuge in Assisi. In October 1943 Nazis raided the Jewish ghetto in Rome. In November 1943 Jews of Genoa and Florence were deported to Auschwitz. It is estimated that 7,500 Italian Jews became victims of the Holocaust.\nCivil war and Italian declaration of war on Germany.\nAfter Mussolini had been stripped of power, he was imprisoned at Gran Sasso in the Apennine mountains. On 12 September 1943 he was rescued by the Germans in Operation Eiche (\"Oak\"). The Germans re-located him to northern Italy where he set up a new Fascist state, the Italian Social Republic (\"Repubblica Sociale Italiana\" or RSI). Many Italian personalities joined the RSI, like General Rodolfo Graziani. This led, within the context of the Italian campaign, to a civil war between the forces loyal to the Kingdom of Italy, now fighting on the Allied side, and the Fascists who collaborated with the Germans.\nOn 13 October 1943, the Kingdom of Italy, which was now based outside of Mussolini's control, formally became a co-belligerent of the Allies by declaring war on Nazi Germany. With Allied assistance some Italian troops in the south were re-organized into what were known as \"co-belligerent\" or \"royalist\" forces. In time, there was a co-belligerent army (Italian Co-Belligerent Army), navy (Italian Co-Belligerent Navy), and air force (Italian Co-Belligerent Air Force). These Italian forces fought alongside the Allies against the Germans for the rest of the war.\nAllied advance and liberation of Italy.\nThe Allied armies continued to advance through Italy despite increasing opposition from the Germans. The Allies soon controlled most of southern Italy, and Naples rose against and ejected the occupying German forces. The loyalist Italian government (sometimes referred to as the \"Kingdom of the South\") declared war on Germany on 13 October, aligning Italy within the Western Allies as a co-belligerent. Other Italian troops, loyal to Mussolini and his RSI, continued to fight alongside the Germans (among them the \"Esercito Nazionale Repubblicano\", the National Republican Army). From this point on, a large Italian resistance movement located in northern Italy fought a guerilla war against the German and RSI forces.\nWinston Churchill had long regarded southern Europe as the military weak spot of the continent (in World War I he had advocated the Dardanelles campaign, and during World War II he favoured the Balkans as an area of operations, for example in Greece in 1940). Calling Italy the \"soft underbelly\" of the Axis, Churchill had therefore advocated this invasion instead of a cross-channel invasion of occupied France. But Italy itself proved anything but a soft target: the mountainous terrain gave Axis forces excellent defensive positions, and it also partly negated the Allied advantage in motorized and mechanized units. The final Allied victory over the Axis in Italy did not come until the spring offensive of 1945, after Allied troops had breached the Gothic Line. Mussolini was captured and killed on 28 April 1945 by the Italian resistance while attempting to flee. The surrender of German and RSI forces in Italy occurred on 2 May, shortly before Germany finally surrendered ending World War II in Europe on 8 May.\nItaly and Japan after the armistice.\nJapan reacted with shock and outrage to the news of the surrender of Italy to the Allied forces in September 1943. Italian citizens residing in Japan and in Manchukuo were swiftly rounded up and summarily asked whether they were loyal to the King, who dishonoured their country by surrendering to the enemy, or with the Duce and the newly created Italian Social Republic, which vowed to continue fighting alongside the Germans. Those who sided with the King were interned in concentration camps and detained in dismal conditions until the end of the war, while those who opted for the Fascist dictator were allowed to go on with their lives, although under strict surveillance by the \"Kempeitai\".\nThe Italian concession of Tientsin was occupied by Japanese troops with no resistance from its garrison. The Social Republic of Italy later formally gave it to the Japanese puppet Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China.\nThe news of Italy's armistice did not reach the crew members of the three Italian submarines \"Giuliani\", \"Cappellini\" and \"Torelli\" travelling to Singapore, then occupied by Japan, to take a load of rubber, tin, and strategic materials bound for Italy and Germany's war industry. All the officers and sailors on board were arrested by the Japanese army, and after a few weeks of detention the vast majority of them chose to side with Japan and Germany. The \"Kriegsmarine\" assigned new officers to the three units, who were renamed as U-boat \"U.IT.23\", \"U.IT.24,\" and \"U.IT.25\", taking part in German war operations in the Pacific until the \"Giuliani\" was sunk by the British submarine HMS \"Tally-ho\" in February 1944 and the other two vessels were taken over by the Japanese Imperial Navy upon Germany's surrender in 1945.\nAlberto Tarchiani, an anti-fascist journalist and activist, was appointed as Ambassador to Washington by the cabinet of Badoglio, which acted as provisional head of the Italian government pending the occupation of the country by the Allied forces. On his suggestion, Italy issued a formal declaration of war on Japan on 14 July 1945.\nAs early as of May 1945, the Italian destroyer \"Carabiniere\" had been prepared and refitted with a new radar and camouflage scheme to operate in the Indian and Pacific Ocean against the Japanese Empire, in collaboration with the Allies. Departing under the command of Captain Fabio Tani, after a troublesome voyage the Italian crew reached their new base in Trincomalee. By August 1945, the Carabiniere had undertaken 38 missions of anti-aircraft and anti-submarine escort to British warships and SAR operations. They thoroughly impressed Admiral Arthur Power of the Eastern Fleet during combat and in defending the fleet against kamikaze attacks, and he offered captain Tani a golden watch with 38 rubies, one for each mission, as a prize for their valour. Captain Tani kindly declined and requested that an Italian POW for each ruby be released instead, which was granted by the Admiral.\nA further purpose of the Italian declaration of war on Japan was to persuade the Allies that the new government of Italy deserved to be invited to the San Francisco Peace Conference, as a reward for its co-belligerence. However, British Prime Minister Churchill and John Foster Dulles were resolutely against the idea, and so Italy's new government was left out of the Conference.\nItaly and Japan negotiated the resumption of their respective diplomatic ties after 1951, and later signed several bilateral agreements and treaties.\nCasualties.\nNearly four million Italians served in the Italian Army during the Second World War and nearly half a million Italians (including civilians) lost their lives between June 1940 and May 1945.\nThe official Italian government accounting of World War II 1940\u201345 losses listed the following data:\nPrisoner-of-war losses are included with military losses mentioned above.\nThe members in the Roll of Honor of the World War II (sic) amounted to a total of 319,207 deaths:\nCivilian losses totalled 153,147 (123,119 post armistice) including 61,432 (42,613 post armistice) in air attacks. A brief summary of data from this report can be found online.\nIn addition, deaths of African soldiers conscripted by Italy were estimated by the Italian military to be 10,000 in the 1940\u201341 East African Campaign.\nCivilian losses as a result of the fighting in Italian Libya were estimated by an independent Russian journalist to be 10,000.\nIncluded in total are 64,000 victims of Nazi reprisals and genocide, including 30,000 POWs and 8,500 Jews Russian sources estimated the deaths of 28,000 of the 49,000 Italian prisoners of war in the Soviet Union (1942\u20131954).\nThe genocide of Roma people killed 1,000 persons. Jewish Holocaust victims totalled 8,562 (including Libya).\nAfter the armistice with the Allies, some 650,000 members of the Italian armed forces who refused to side with the occupying Germans were interned in concentration and labour camps. Of these, around 50,000 died while imprisoned or in transit. A further 29,000 died in armed struggles against the Germans while resisting capture immediately following the armistice.\nAftermath.\nThe 1947 Treaty of Peace with Italy spelled the end of the Italian colonial empire, along with other border revisions. The 1947 Paris Peace Treaties compelled Italy to pay $360,000,000 (US dollars at 1938 prices) in war reparations: $125,000,000 to Yugoslavia, $105,000,000 to Greece, $100,000,000 to the Soviet Union, $25,000,000 to Ethiopia and $5,000,000 to Albania. Italy also agreed to pay \u00a31,765,000 to Greek nationals whose property in Italian territory had been destroyed or seized during the war. In the 1946 Italian constitutional referendum, the Italian monarchy was abolished, having been associated with the deprivations of the war and Fascist rule. Unlike in Germany and Japan, no war crimes tribunals were held for Italian military and political leaders, though the Italian resistance summarily executed some of them, including Mussolini, at the end of the war.\nControversies of historiography.\nAllied press reports of Italian military prowess in the Second World War were almost always dismissive. British wartime propaganda trumpeted the destruction of the Italian 10th Army by a significantly smaller British force during the early phase of the North African Campaign. The propaganda from this Italian collapse, which was designed to boost British morale during a bleak period of the war, left a lasting impression. The later exploits of Rommel and German accounts of events tended to disparage their Italian allies and downplay their contributions; these German accounts were used as a primary source for the Axis side by English-language historians after the war. Kenneth Macksey wrote in 1972 that after the split in the Italian state and the reinforcement of fascist Italy by German troops, \"the British threw out the \"Italian Chicken\" only to let in the \"German Eagle\"\", for example. Many military historians who contributed to this dismissive judgement, such as Basil Liddell Hart, were clearly influenced by German propaganda. Liddell Hart, who considered Italian people racially inferior to Germans, went so far as to express his appreciation for \"Generalfeldmarschall\" Albert Kesselring, who had committed atrocious war crimes during the German occupation of Italy, and even lobbied to have him released from prison.\nJames Sadkovich, Peter Haining, Vincent O'Hara, Ian Walker and others have attempted to reassess the performance of Italian forces. Many previous authors used only German or British sources, not considering the Italian ones, hampered by the few Italian sources being translated into English. Contemporary British reports ignored an action of Bir El Gobi, where a battalion of \"Giovani Fascisti\" held up the 11th Indian Infantry Brigade and destroyed a dozen tanks of the 22nd Armoured Brigade. Sadkovich, Walker, and others have found examples of actions where Italian forces were effective, yet rarely discussed by most histories. During the Tunisian campaign, where Italian units were involved in most encounters, such as the battles of Kasserine Pass, Mareth, Akarit, and Enfidaville, it was observed by General Alexander, \"...the Italians fought particularly well, outdoing the Germans in line with them\". Rommel also conceded praise on several occasions. Other times, German mistakes were blamed on Italians, or the Germans left the Italians in hopeless situations where failure was unavoidable. Questionable German advice, broken promises and security lapses had direct consequences at the Battle of Cape Matapan, in the convoy war and North Africa. According to Sadkovich, Rommel often retreated leaving immobile infantry units exposed, withdrew German units to rest even though the Italians had also been in combat, would deprive the Italians of their share of captured goods, ignore Italian intelligence, seldom acknowledged Italian successes and often resisted formulation of joint strategy.\nAlan J.Levine, an author who has also extensively worked with Italian sources, points out that while Allied efforts to choke off Rommel's supply lines were eventually successful and played the decisive role in the Allied victory in Africa, the Italians who defended it, especially navy commanders, were not feeble-minded or incompetent at all. He criticises Rommel for ignoring the good advice of Italians during the Crusader Offensive (although he also presents a positive picture of the Field Marshal in general), and in a review of Sadkovich's work, \"The Italian Navy in World War II\", criticises it for being unreliable and recommends Bragadin and the Italian official history instead. Gerhard L.Weinberg, in his 2011 George C. Marshall Lecture \"Military History \u2013 Some Myths of World War II\" (2011), complained that \"there is far too much denigration of the performance of Italy's forces during the conflict.\"\nIn addition, Italian 'cowardice' did not appear to be more prevalent than the level seen in any army, despite claims of wartime propaganda. Ian Walker wrote:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />...it is perhaps simplest to ask who is the most courageous in the following situations: the Italian \"carristi\", who goes into battle in an obsolete M14 tank against superior enemy armour and anti-tank guns, knowing they can easily penetrate his flimsy protection at a range where his own small gun will have little effect; the German panzer soldier or British tanker who goes into battle in a Panzer IV Special or Sherman respectively against equivalent enemy opposition knowing that he can at least trade blows with them on equal terms; the British tanker who goes into battle in a Sherman against inferior Italian armour and anti-tank guns, knowing confidently that he can destroy them at ranges where they cannot touch him. It would seem clear that, in terms of their motto \"Ferrea Mole, Ferreo Cuore\", the Italian \"carristi\" really had \"iron hearts\", even though as the war went on their \"iron hulls\" increasingly let them down.\nThe vast majority of historians attribute Italian military shortcomings to strategy and equipment. Italian equipment was generally substandard relative to Allied or German armies. More crucially, they lacked suitable quantities of equipment of all kinds and their high command did not take necessary steps to plan for most eventualities. This was compounded by Mussolini's assigning unqualified political favourites to key positions. Mussolini also dramatically overestimated the ability of the Italian military at times, sending them into situations where failure was likely, such as the invasion of Greece.\nHistorians have long debated why Italy's military and Fascist regime proved ineffective at an activity \u2014 war \u2014 that was central to their identity. MacGregor Knox explains that this \"was first and foremost a failure of Italy's military culture and military institutions.\" The explanation usually given is that Italy was unprepared for a global conflict as Fascist imperialism had diverted resources to wage wars in Libya, Ethiopia, Spain, and Albania during the 1930s: although successful, these campaigns drained resources that should have been destined to an effective re-armament. Donald Detwiler writes that \"Italy's entrance into the war showed very early that her military strength was only a hollow shell. Italy's military failures against France, Greece, Yugoslavia, and in the African Theatres of war shook Italy's new prestige mightily.\" James Sadkovich surmises that Italian failures were caused by inferior equipment, overextension, and inter-service rivalries. Its forces had \"more than their share of handicaps.\"\nNotes.\nFootnotes\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nItaly technically did not signed a surrend but an armistice, that implies that did not actually defeated but changed side.\nItaly had to pay at the end of the war for the actions made by the fascist regime.\nCitations\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "5171132": "Ottoman Tripolitania\nSemi-autonomous state affiliated with the Ottoman Empire (1551\u20131912)\nOttoman Tripolitania, also known as the Regency of Tripoli, was officially ruled by the Ottoman Empire from 1551 to 1912. It corresponded roughly to the northern parts of modern-day Libya in historic Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. It was initially established as an Ottoman province ruled by a pasha (governor) in Tripoli who was appointed from Constantinople, though in practice it was semi-autonomous due to the power of the local Janissaries. From 1711 to 1835, the Karamanli dynasty ruled the province as a \"de facto\" hereditary monarchy while remaining under nominal Ottoman suzerainty. In 1835, the Ottomans reestablished direct control over the region until its annexation by Italy in 1912.\nLike the Ottoman regencies in Tunis and Algiers, the Regency of Tripoli was a major base for the privateering activities of the North African corsairs, who also provided revenues for Tripoli. A remnant of the centuries of Turkish rule is the presence of a population of Turkish origin, and those of partial Turkish origin, the \"Kouloughlis\".\nHistory.\nOttoman conquest.\nBy the beginning of the 16th\u00a0century the Libyan coast had minimal central authority and its harbours were havens for unchecked bands of pirates. The Spaniards occupied Tripoli in 1510, but the Spaniards were more concerned with controlling the port than with the inconveniences of administering a colony. In 1530 the city, along with Malta and Gozo, was ceded by Charles\u00a0I of Spain to the Knights of St\u00a0John as compensation for their recent expulsion from the island of Rhodes at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. Christian rule lasted then until 1551, when Tripoli was besieged and conquered by famed Ottoman admirals Sinan Pasha and Turgut Reis. Declared as Bey and later Pasha of Tripoli, Turgut Reis received submission from the tribes of the interior and several cities like Misrata, Zuwara, Gharyan, and Gafsa in the next decade. These efforts contributed to cement the foundations of a statal structure in what is today Libya, but control from Constantinople remained loose at best, much like in the rest of the Barbary Coast of North Africa.\nUnder the Ottomans, the Maghreb was divided into three provinces, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. After 1565, administrative authority in Tripoli was vested in a Pasha directly appointed by the Sultan in Constantinople. The sultan supported the pasha with a corps of janissaries who he was dependent upon, which was in turn divided into a number of companies under the command of a junior officer or \"bey\". The janissaries quickly became the dominant force in Ottoman Libya and were also in charge of collecting taxes; however, Barbary corsairs were the ones who steadily provided income to Tripoli from privateering activities. As a self-governing military guild answerable only to their own laws and protected by a \"divan\" (a council of senior officers who advised the pasha), the janissaries soon reduced the pasha to a largely ceremonial role.\nIn 1611, the local chiefs of the area conducted a coup d'\u00e9tat and successfully appointed Suleiman Safar, their own leader, as \"dey\" (local chief). As a result, his successors continually held the title and even occasionally identified as pasha. As Pasha of Tripoli, Osman Saqizli managed to maintain political stability during the 1650s and 1660s. However, by the 1670s, the position of the dey experienced the succession of eight different leaders, leading to instability.260\nThomas Baker, an English consul stationed in Tripoli from 1679 to 1686, described a turbulent government, a dwindling treasury and an economy heavily reliant on piracy. Tripoli's fleet was the smallest among the Barbary States, with only 13 vessels compared to 20 in Tunis and 40 in Algiers.259 Besides piracy, the region's inland areas, consisting of ravines, mountains and inhospitable desert, forced a reliance on exports of salt, coastal slave raiding in Calabria and Morea, and tribute from the interior tribes. The 1676 peace treaty between Tripoli and English shipping had shifted most pirate activity towards the French, leading to French demands for peace in 1681. Driven by financial desperation, Tripoli violated these terms a year later by seizing a French merchant ship. The following dispute saw the French mortar-bombing Tripoli into submission in 1686.\nKaramanli dynasty and the Barbary Wars.\nDuring the 18th century, Ottoman power waned in North Africa, with the sultans ending the practice of sending pashas to Tripoli, Algiers and Tunis. The title of pasha began to assume its hereditary status.\nIn 1711, Ahmed Karamanli, an Ottoman cavalry officer and son of a Turkish officer and Libyan woman, seized power and founded the Karamanli dynasty, which would last 124 years. The 1790\u201395 Tripolitanian civil war occurred in those years.\nIn May 1801, Pasha Yusuf Karamanli demanded from the United States an increase in the tribute ($83,000) which it had paid since 1796 for the protection of their commerce and enslavement of crews by barbary pirates when the Treaty of Tripoli was signed. The demand was refused by third American President Thomas Jefferson, an American naval force was sent and blockaded Tripoli, and the desultory First Barbary War dragged on from 1801 until 3 June 1805. The Regency of Tripoli was defeated by the newly revived United States Navy.\nThe Second Barbary War (1815, also known as the Algerian War) was the second of the two wars fought between the United States and the Ottoman Turks' North African regencies of Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis, known collectively as the Barbary States.\nOn 5 September 1817, Yusuf Karamanli invited the leaders of the Libyan tribe of Al-Jawazi to his castle in Benghazi, following a dispute regarding tribute and an uprising against his rule. Consequently, the Pasha ordered the execution of all attendees, and chased down the other tribe members, which resulted in the massacre of at least 10,000 people, who eventually sought refuge in neighboring countries, especially Egypt. This was known as the Al-Jawazi massacre.\nReassertion of Ottoman authority.\nIn 1835 the government of Sultan Mahmud\u00a0II took advantage of local disturbances to reassert their direct authority. As decentralized Ottoman power had resulted in the virtual independence of Egypt as well as Tripoli, the coast and desert lying between them relapsed to anarchy, even after direct Ottoman control was resumed in Tripoli. The indigenous Senusiyya (or Sanusi) Movement, led by Islamic cleric Muhammad ibn Ali al-Sanusi, called on the countryside to resist Ottoman rule. The Grand Senussi established his headquarters in the oasis town of Jaghbub while his \"ikhwan\" (brothers) set up \"zawiyas\" (religious colleges or monasteries) across North Africa and brought some stability to regions not known for their submission to central authority. In line with the expressed instruction of the Grand Sanusi, these gains were made largely without any coercion.\nIt was one of the first Ottoman provinces to be reclassified from an eyalet to a vilayet after an administrative reform in 1865, and by 1867 it had been reformed into the Tripolitania Vilayet.\nThe Ottoman sultan Abdulhamid II twice sent his aide-de-camp Azmzade Sadik El Mueyyed to meet Sheikh Sanusi to cultivate positive relations and counter the West European scramble for Africa.\nThe highpoint of the Sanusi influence came in the 1880s under the Grand Senussi's son, Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi. With 146\u00a0lodges spanning the entire Sahara, he moved the Senussi capital to Kufra.\nOver a 75\u2011year period, the Ottoman Turks provided 33\u00a0governors and Libya remained part of the empire until Italy invaded for the second time in 1911.\nItalo-Turkish War.\nThe Italo-Turkish War was fought between the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Italy from September 29, 1911, to October 18, 1912.\nAs a result of this conflict, the Ottoman Turks ceded the provinces of Tripolitania, Fezzan, and Cyrenaica to Italy. These provinces together formed what became known as Libya.\nAdministrative divisions.\nBy the 19th century, the province of Tripoli, known officially as \"Tarablus al-Gharb\" ('Tripoli of the West') was organized into five \"sanjak\"s (districts):\nThese district names were reported by James Henry Skene in 1851 and five districts of the same name existed after the reforms of the 1860s that transformed the province officially into a \"vilayet\" (or in Arabic). Among these, Cyrenaica was made an independent \"sanjak\" in 1863 that was directly dependent on Istanbul, then it was assigned to Tripoli's supervision in 1871, and finally it was attached to Istanbul again in 1888.", "30997172": "Al-Berka\nAl-Berka (Arabic:\u0627\u0644\u0628\u0631\u0643\u0629) is a Basic People's Congress administrative division of Benghazi, Libya. As of the 2011 Libyan revolution, the area is simply known as a district of Benghazi after the Gaddafi era Basic People's Congresses were disbanded. \nHistory.\nAl-Berka is one of the oldest districts in Benghazi and has buildings which attest to both its Ottoman and Italian era routes. One such example is the Hadiya mosque built in the early 20th century.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "46763": "Crimean War\nConflict on the Crimean Peninsula from 1853 to 1856\nThe Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont from October 1853 to February 1856. Geopolitical causes of the war included the \"Eastern question\" (the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the \"sick man of Europe\"), expansion of Imperial Russia in the preceding Russo-Turkish wars, and the British and French preference to preserve the Ottoman Empire to maintain the balance of power in the Concert of Europe.\nThe flashpoint was a dispute between France and Russia over the rights of Catholic and Orthodox minorities in Palestine. After the Sublime Porte refused Tsar Nicholas I's demand that the Empire's Orthodox subjects were to be placed under his protection, Russian troops occupied the Danubian Principalities in July 1853. The Ottomans declared war on Russia in October and halted the Russian advance at Silistria. Fearing the growth of Russian influence and compelled by public outrage over the annihilation of the Ottoman squadron at Sinop, Britain and France joined the war on the Ottoman side in March 1854.\nIn September 1854, after extended preparations, allied forces landed in Crimea in an attempt to capture Russia's main naval base in the Black Sea, Sevastopol. They scored an early victory at the Battle of the Alma. The Russians counterattacked in late October in what became the Battle of Balaclava and were repulsed, and a second counterattack at Inkerman ended in a stalemate. The front settled into the eleven-month-long Siege of Sevastopol, involving brutal conditions for troops on both sides. Smaller military actions took place in the Caucasus (1853\u20131855), the White Sea (July\u2013August 1854) and the North Pacific (1854\u20131855). The Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont entered on the allies' side in 1855.\nSevastopol ultimately fell following a renewed French assault on the Malakoff redoubt in September 1855. Isolated and facing a bleak prospect of invasion by the West if the war continued, Russia sued for peace in March 1856. Due to the conflict's domestic unpopularity, France and Britain welcomed the development. The Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 March 1856, ended the war. It forbade Russia to base warships in the Black Sea. The Ottoman vassal states of Wallachia and Moldavia became largely independent. Christians in the Ottoman Empire gained a degree of official equality, and the Orthodox Church regained control of the Christian churches in dispute.\nThe Crimean War was one of the first conflicts in which military forces used modern technologies such as explosive naval shells, railways and telegraphs. It was also one of the first to be documented extensively in written reports and in photographs. The war quickly symbolized logistical, medical and tactical failures and mismanagement. The reaction in Britain led to a demand for the professionalization of medicine, most famously achieved by Florence Nightingale, who gained worldwide attention for pioneering modern nursing while she treated the wounded.\nThe Crimean War also marked a turning point for the Russian Empire. It weakened the Imperial Russian Army, drained the treasury and undermined its influence in Europe. The humiliating defeat forced Russia's educated elites to identify the country's fundamental problems. It became a catalyst for reforms of Russia's social institutions, including the emancipation reform of 1861 which abolished serfdom in Russia, and overhauls in the justice system, local self-government, education and military service.\nEastern question.\nAs the Ottoman Empire steadily weakened during the 19th century, the Russian Empire stood poised to take advantage by expanding southward. In the 1850s, the British and the French Empires were allied with the Ottoman Empire and were determined to prevent that from happening. The historian A. J. P. Taylor argued that the war had resulted not from aggression, but from the interacting fears of the major players:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />In some sense the Crimean War was predestined and had deep-seated causes. Neither Nicholas I nor Napoleon III nor the British government could retreat from the conflict for prestige once it was launched. Nicholas needed a subservient Turkey for the sake of Russian security; Napoleon needed success for the sake of his domestic position; the British government needed an independent Turkey for the security of the Eastern Mediterranean... Mutual fear, not mutual aggression, caused the Crimean War.\nWeakening of the Ottoman Empire: 1820\u20131840s.\nIn the early 1800s, the Ottoman Empire suffered a number of existential challenges. The Serbian Revolution in 1804 resulted in the autonomy of the first Balkan Christian nation under the empire. The Greek War of Independence, which began in early 1821, provided further evidence of the empire's internal and military weakness, and the commission of atrocities by Ottoman military forces (see Chios massacre) further undermined the empire. The disbandment of the centuries-old Janissary corps by Sultan Mahmud II on 15 June 1826 (Auspicious Incident) helped the empire in the longer term but deprived it of its existing standing army in the short term. In 1827, the Anglo-Franco-Russian fleet destroyed almost all of the Ottoman naval forces at the Battle of Navarino. In 1830, Greece became independent after ten years of war and the Russo-Turkish War (1828\u201329). The Treaty of Adrianople (1829) granted Russian and Western European commercial ships free passage through the Black Sea straits. Also, Serbia received autonomy, and the Danubian Principalities (Moldavia and Wallachia) became territories under Russian protection.\nFrance took the opportunity to occupy Algeria, which had been under Ottoman rule, in 1830. In 1831, Muhammad Ali of Egypt, the most powerful vassal of the Ottoman Empire, declared independence. Ottoman forces were defeated in a number of battles, which forced Mahmud II to seek Russian military aid. A Russian army of 10,000 landed on the shores of the Bosphorus in 1833 and helped prevent the Egyptians from capturing Constantinople.\n\"The reasons for the Tsar's disquietude are not obscure. Not Turkey alone was threatened by the advance of Ibrahim. The rights secured to Russia by a succession of treaties were also directly jeopardized. The substitution of a virile Albanian dynasty at Constantinople in place of the effete Osmanlis was the last thing desired by the Power which wished, naturally enough, to command the gate into the Mediterranean\". Russia was satisfied with the weak government in Constantinople (Istanbul).\nAs a result, the Treaty of H\u00fcnk\u00e2r \u0130skelesi was signed and greatly benefited Russia. It provided for a military alliance between the Russian and the Ottoman Empires if one of them was attacked, and a secret additional clause allowed the Ottomans to opt out of sending troops but to close the Straits to foreign warships if Russia were under threat. Egypt remained nominally under Ottoman sovereignty but was \"de facto\" independent.\nIn 1838 in a situation similar to that of 1831, Muhammad Ali of Egypt was not happy about his lack of control and power in Syria, and he resumed military action. The Ottomans lost to the Egyptians at the Battle of Nezib on 24 June 1839 but were saved by Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia, who signed a convention in London on 15 July 1840 that granted Muhammad Ali and his descendants the right to inherit power in Egypt in exchange for the removal of Egyptian forces from Syria and Lebanon. Moreover, Muhammad Ali had to admit a formal dependence on the Ottoman sultan. After Muhammad Ali refused to obey the requirements of the convention, the allied Anglo-Austrian fleet blockaded the Nile Delta, bombarded Beirut and captured Acre. Muhammad Ali then accepted the convention's conditions.\nOn 13 July 1841, after the expiry of the Treaty of H\u00fcnk\u00e2r \u0130skelesi, the London Straits Convention was signed under pressure from the European countries. The new treaty deprived Russia of its right to block warships from passing into the Black Sea in case of war. Thus, the way to the Black Sea was open for British and French warships during a possible Russo-Ottoman conflict.\nRussian historians tend to view that history as evidence that Russia lacked aggressive plans. The Russian historian V. N. Vinogradov writes: \"The signing of the documents was the result of deliberate decisions: instead of bilateral (none of the great powers recognized this Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi), the new Treaty of London was obligatory for all, it closed the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. In the absence of expansion plans, this was a sound decision\".\nIn 1838, Britain lost interest in crushing the Ottoman Empire. On the contrary, after the conclusion of the trade treaty of 1838 (see Treaty of Balta Liman), Britain received unlimited access to the markets of the Ottoman Empire. \"Britain imposed on the Porte a Tariff Convention which in effect transformed the Ottoman Empire into a virtual free-trade zone. \nTherefore its trade interests pushed it to protect the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. In the long term, the Ottoman Empire lost the opportunity to modernize and industrialize, but in the short term, it gained the opportunity to receive the support of European powers (primarily Britain) in opposing the desire of the conquered peoples for self-determination and Russia, which sought to crush its influence in the Balkans and Asia.\nPublicly, European politicians made broad promises to the Ottomans. Lord Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary, said in 1839: \"All that we hear about the decay of the Turkish Empire, and its being a dead body or a sapless trunk, and so forth, is pure and unadulterated nonsense. Given 10 years of peace under European protection, coupled with internal reform, there seemed to him no reason why it should not become again a respectable Power\".\nOrlando Figes has claimed that \"The motives of the British in promoting liberal reforms were not just to secure the independence of the Ottoman Empire against Russia. They were also to promote the influence of Britain in Turkey\", also: \"to promote British free-trade interests (which may have sounded splendid but was arguably damaging to the Ottoman Empire)\".\n\"British exports to the Ottoman Empire, including Egypt and the Danubian principalities, increased nearly threefold from 1840 to 1851 (...) Thus it was very important, from the financial point of view, for Britain to prevent the Ottoman Empire from falling into other hands.\"\n\"From this moment (1838) the export of British manufactured goods to Turkey rose steeply. There was an elevenfold increase by 1850\".\nAssistance from Western European powers or Russia had twice saved the Ottoman Empire from destruction, but the Ottomans also lost their independence in foreign policy. Britain and France desired more than any other states to preserve the integrity of the Ottoman Empire because they did not want to see Russia gaining access to the Mediterranean Sea. Austria had the same fears.\nRussian expansionism.\nRussia, as a member of the Holy Alliance, had operated as the \"police of Europe\" to maintain the balance of power that had been established in the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Russia had assisted Austria's efforts in suppressing the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, and expected a free hand in settling its problems with the Ottoman Empire, the \"sick man of Europe\". However, Britain could not tolerate Russian dominance of Ottoman affairs, which would challenge its domination of the eastern Mediterranean.\nStarting with Peter the Great in the early 1700s, after centuries of Ottoman northward expansion and Crimean-Nogai raids, Russia began a southwards expansion across the sparsely-populated \"Wild Fields\" toward the warm water ports of the Black Sea, which does not freeze over, unlike the handful of ports controlled by Russia in the north. The goal was to promote year-round trade and a year-round navy. Pursuit of that goal brought the emerging Russian state into conflict with the Ukrainian Cossacks and then the Tatars of the Crimean Khanate and Circassians.\n\"The plan to develop Russia as a southern power had begun in earnest in 1776, when Catherine placed Potemkin in charge of New Russia (Novorossiya), the sparsely populated territories newly conquered from the Ottomans on the Black Sea's northern coastline, and ordered him to colonize the area\". \nWhen Russia conquered those groups and gained possession of their territories, the Ottoman Empire lost its buffer zone against Russian expansion, and both empires came into direct conflict. The conflict with the Ottoman Empire also presented a religious issue of importance, as Russia saw itself as the protector of history of the Eastern Orthodox Church under the Ottoman Orthodox Christians, who were legally treated as second-class citizens. The Ottoman Reform Edict of 1856, promulgated after the war, largely reversed much of the second-class status, most notably the tax that only non-Muslims paid.\nBritain's immediate fear was Russia's expansion at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. The British desired to preserve Ottoman integrity and were concerned that Russia might make advances toward British India or move toward Scandinavia or Western Europe. A distraction (in the form of the Ottoman Empire) on the Russian southwest flank would mitigate that threat. The Royal Navy also wanted to forestall the threat of a powerful Imperial Russian Navy. Taylor stated the British perspective:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The Crimean war was fought for the sake of Europe rather than for the Eastern question; it was fought against Russia, not in favour of Turkey... The British fought Russia out of resentment and supposed that her defeat would strengthen the European Balance of Power.\nBecause of \"British commercial and strategic interests in the Middle East and India\", the British joined the French, \"cement[ing] an alliance with Britain and... reassert[ing] its military power\". Among those who supported the British strategy were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In his articles for the \"New-York Tribune\" around 1853, Marx saw the Crimean War as a conflict between the democratic ideals of the west that started with the \"great movement of 1789\" against \"Russia and Absolutism\". He described the Ottoman Empire as a buffer against a pattern of expansionism by the Tsar. Marx and Engels also accused Lord Palmerston of playing along with the interests of Russia and being unserious in preparing for the conflict. Marx believed Palmerston to be bribed by Russia, and shared this belief with David Urquhart. Urquhart, for his part, was a British politician who was a major advocate for the Ottoman Empire.\nMikhail Pogodin, a professor of history at Moscow University, gave Nicholas I a summary of Russia's policy towards the Slavs in the war. Nicholas' answer was filled with grievances against the West. Nicholas shared Pogodin's sense that Russia's role as the protector of Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire was not understood and that Russia was unfairly treated by the West. Nicholas especially approved of the following passage:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />France takes Algeria from Turkey, and almost every year England annexes another Indian principality: none of this disturbs the balance of power; but when Russia occupies Moldavia and Wallachia, albeit only temporarily, that disturbs the balance of power. France occupies Rome and stays there several years during peacetime: that is nothing; but Russia only thinks of occupying Constantinople, and the peace of Europe is threatened. The English declare war on the Chinese, who have, it seems, offended them: no one has the right to intervene; but Russia is obliged to ask Europe for permission if it quarrels with its neighbour. England threatens Greece to support the false claims of a miserable Jew and burns its fleet: that is a lawful action; but Russia demands a treaty to protect millions of Christians, and that is deemed to strengthen its position in the East at the expense of the balance of power. We can expect nothing from the West but blind hatred and malice... (\"comment in the margin by Nicholas I\": 'This is the whole point').\nRussia was militarily weak, technologically backward and administratively incompetent. Despite its grand ambitions toward the south, it had not built its railway network in that direction, and its communications were poor. Its bureaucracy was riddled with graft, corruption and inefficiency and was unprepared for war. Its navy was weak and technologically backward. Its army, although very large, suffered from colonels who pocketed their men's pay, from poor morale, and from a technological deficit relative to Britain and France. By the war's end, the profound weaknesses of the Russian armed forces had become readily apparent, and the Russian leadership was determined to reform it.\nHowever, no matter how great the problems of Russia were, Russia believed those of the Ottomans were greater. \"In a one-to-one fight Nikolai (Tsar) had no doubt of beating the Ottoman armies and navy\". Russian foreign policy failed to understand the importance of Britain's trade interests and did not understand the changes in the situation after the conclusion of the Anglo-Ottoman Treaty in 1838 (see Treaty of Balta Liman). Russia attempted to \"honestly\" negotiate with the United Kingdom on the partition of the Ottoman Empire and made concessions in order to eliminate all objections from the United Kingdom.\n\"The Tsar Nicholas had always, as we have seen, been anxious to maintain a cordial understanding with England in regard to the Eastern Question, and early in the spring of 1853 he had a series of interviews with Sir George Hamilton Seymour, then British ambassador at St. Petersburg.\" Emperor Nicholas I assured that he did not intend to seize Constantinople and territories in the Balkans, he himself offered Britain to take over Egypt and Crete. Concessions at the conclusion of the London Straits Convention were made earlier in 1841. \"By signing the convention, the Russians had given up their privileged position in the Ottoman Empire and their control of the Straits, all in the hope of improving relations with Britain and isolating France\". But Britain after 1838 was interested in preserving the integrity of the Ottoman Empire and rejected all Russian proposals. \"The fall of the Ottoman Empire was not, however, a requirement of British policy in the East. A weak Ottoman state best suited British interests\".\nImmediate causes of war.\nFrench Emperor Napoleon III's ambition to restore France's grandeur initiated the immediate chain of events that led to France and Britain declaring war on Russia on 27 and 28 March 1854, respectively. He pursued Catholic support by asserting France's \"sovereign authority\" over the Christian population of Palestine, to the detriment of Russia (the sponsor of Eastern Orthodoxy). To achieve that, he in May 1851 appointed Charles, marquis de La Valette, a zealous leading member of the Catholic clericalists, as his ambassador to the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire.\nRussia disputed that attempted change in authority. Referring to two previous treaties (one from 1757 and the Treaty of K\u00fc\u00e7\u00fck Kaynarca from 1774), the Ottomans reversed their earlier decision, renounced the French treaty and declared that Russia was the protector of the Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire.\nNapoleon III responded with a show of force by sending the ship of the line \"Charlemagne\" to the Black Sea and thereby violated the London Straits Convention. The gunboat diplomacy show of force, together with money, induced Ottoman Sultan Abd\u00fclmecid I to accept a new treaty confirming France and the Catholic Church's supreme authority over Christian holy places, including the Church of the Nativity, which had been held by the Greek Orthodox Church.\nTsar Nicholas I then deployed his 4th and 5th Army Corps along the River Danube in Wallachia, as a direct threat to the Ottoman lands south of the river. He had Foreign Minister Count Karl Nesselrode undertake talks with the Ottomans. Nesselrode confided to Seymour:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"[The dispute over the holy places]\" had assumed a new character\u2014that the acts of injustice towards the Greek church which it had been desired to prevent had been perpetrated and consequently that now the object must be to find a remedy for these wrongs. The success of French negotiations at Constantinople was to be ascribed solely to intrigue and violence\u2014violence which had been supposed to be the ultima ratio of kings, being, it had been seen, the means which the present ruler of France was in the habit of employing in the first instance. \nThe agreement referred to by the French was in 1740. At present most historians (except for the new Russian Orthodox nationalists) accept that the question of the holy places was no more than a pretext for the Crimean War. As conflict emerged over the issue of the holy places, Nicholas I and Nesselrode began a diplomatic offensive, which they hoped would prevent either British or French interference in any conflict between Russia and the Ottomans and prevent both from forming an anti-Russian alliance.\nNicholas began courting Britain by means of conversations with Seymour in January and February 1853. Nicholas insisted that he no longer wished to expand the Russian Empire but that he had an obligation to the Christian communities in the Ottoman Empire.\nHe next dispatched a highly-abrasive diplomat, Prince Menshikov, on a special mission to the Ottoman Sublime Porte in February 1853. By previous treaties, the sultan had committed \"to protect the (Eastern Orthodox) Christian religion and its churches\". Menshikov demanded a Russian protectorate over all 12\u00a0million Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire with control of the Orthodox Church's hierarchy. A compromise was reached regarding Orthodox access to the Holy Land, but the Sultan, strongly supported by the British ambassador, Stratford Canning, 1st Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe, rejected the most sweeping demands.\nRussian historian Vinogradov V.N. point out that Menshikov's demands did not go beyond the limits of previous treaties. \"The agreement was reached on the administration of church rites of both clergy in respected temples and, secondly, that the tsar rejected the idea of expanding his right of patronage and, in fact, insisted on confirming the terms of the Kucuk-Kaynardzhiy treaty of 1774, which allowed giving advice to the Sultan, but did not oblige them to accept\".\n\"By the early 1850s Stratford Canning had become far more than an ambassador or adviser to the Porte. The 'Great Elchi', or Great Ambassador, as he was known in Constantinople, had a direct influence on the policies of the Turkish government. (...) His presence was a source of deep resentment among the Sultan's ministers, who lived in terror of a personal visit from the dictatorial ambassador\".\nNicholas fumed at \"the infernal dictatorship of this Redcliffe\" whose name and political ascendancy at the Porte personified for him the whole Eastern Question, The British and the French sent in naval task forces to support the Ottomans, as Russia had prepared to seize the Danubian Principalities.\nAll the calculations of the Russian emperor turned out to be erroneous. Britain refused his proposals, it was not possible to prevent the Anglo-French rapprochement, Austria opposed his policy, the Ottoman Empire showed intransigence. On the contrary, a favourable situation was developing for Britain. Britain had great naval power and a powerful economy, but did not have a strong land army. The alliance with France, which had a strong land army, made it possible to strike at Russia. \"With the help of French infantry, it was possible to overturn Russia's positions with one blow\"\nFirst hostilities.\nIn February 1853, the British government of Prime Minister Lord Aberdeen reappointed Lord Stratford as British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Having resigned the ambassadorship in January, he had been replaced by Colonel Rose as \"charg\u00e9 d'affaires\". Lord Stratford then turned around, sailed back to Constantinople, arriving there on 5 April 1853 and convinced the Sultan there to reject the Russian treaty proposal as compromising Ottoman independence. The Leader of the Opposition in the British House of Commons, Benjamin Disraeli, blamed Aberdeen's and Stratford's actions for making war inevitable, which started the process that would force the Aberdeen government to resign in January 1855 over the war.\nShortly after the Tsar had learned of the failure of Menshikov's diplomacy toward the end of June 1853, he sent armies under the commands of Field Marshal Ivan Paskevich and General Mikhail Gorchakov across the River Prut into the Ottoman-controlled Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. Fewer than half of the 80,000 Russian soldiers who crossed the Prut in 1853 survived. By far, nearly all of the deaths would result from sickness, rather than action, since the Russian Army still suffered from medical services that ranged from bad to none.\nRussia had obtained recognition from the Ottoman Empire of the Tsar's role as special guardian of the Orthodox Christians in Moldavia and Wallachia. Russia now used the Sultan's failure to resolve the issue of the protection of the Christian sites in the Holy Land as a pretext for Russian occupation of those Danubian provinces. Nicholas believed that the European powers, especially Austria, would not object strongly to the annexation of a few neighbouring Ottoman provinces, especially since Russia had assisted Austria's efforts in suppressing the Hungarian Revolution in 1849.\nThe United Kingdom, hoping to maintain the Ottoman Empire as a bulwark against the expansion of Russian power in Asia, sent a fleet to the Dardanelles, where it joined a fleet sent by France.\nBattle of Sinop.\nThe European powers continued to pursue diplomatic avenues. The representatives of the four Great Powers (the United Kingdom, France, Austria and Prussia) met in Vienna, where they drafted a note, which they hoped would be acceptable to both the Russians and the Ottomans. The peace terms arrived at by the four powers at the Vienna Conference (1853) were delivered to the Russians by Austrian Foreign Minister Count Karl von Buol on 5 December 1853. The note met with the approval of Nicholas I, but Abd\u00fclmecid I rejected the proposal since he felt that the document's poor phrasing left it open to many different interpretations. The United Kingdom, France and Austria united in proposing amendments to mollify the Sultan, but the court of St. Petersburg ignored their suggestions. The United Kingdom and France then set aside the idea of continuing negotiations, but Austria and Prussia did not believe that the rejection of the proposed amendments justified the abandonment of the diplomatic process.\nOn 23 November, a small Russian naval force discovered the Ottoman fleet harboured in Sinop and began a blockade. Once the Russian blockade was reinforced, a squadron of 6 Russian ships of the line supported by 5 smaller warships, assaulted the harbour on 30 November 1853. During Battle of Sinop, the Russian squadron destroyed a patrol squadron of 11 Ottoman warships\u2014mostly frigates\u2014while they were anchored in port under defence of the onshore artillery garrison. The Ottoman fleet suffered a crushing defeat. The Russian victory in the naval battle in Sinope was called \"the massacre of Sinope\". Although Russia and the Ottoman Empire were already at war, and there was no evidence of Russian atrocities, the phrase was used as propaganda in the West. The press in both United Kingdom and France used Sinop as the \"casus belli\" (\"cause of war\") to shape the public opinion in favour of war against Russia. By 28 March 1854, after Russia ignored an Anglo-French ultimatum to withdraw from the Danubian Principalities, the United Kingdom and France had both declared war.\nDardanelles.\nBritain was concerned about Russian activity and Sir John Burgoyne, a senior advisor to Lord Aberdeen, urged for the Dardanelles to be occupied and works of sufficient strength to be built to block any Russian move to capture Constantinople and gain access to the Mediterranean. The Corps of Royal Engineers sent men to the Dardanelles, and Burgoyne went to Paris and met with the British ambassador and the French emperor. Lord Cowley wrote on 8 February to Burgoyne, \"Your visit to Paris has produced a visible change in the Emperor's views, and he is making every preparation for a land expedition in case the last attempt at negotiation should break down\".\nBurgoyne and his team of engineers inspected and surveyed the Dardanelles area in February. They were fired on by Russian riflemen when they went to Varna. A team of sappers arrived in March, and major building works commenced on a seven-mile line of defence, which was designed to block the Gallipoli Peninsula. French sappers worked on half of the line, which was finished in May.\nPeace attempts.\nNicholas felt that because of Russian assistance in suppressing the Hungarian revolution of 1848, Austria would side with him or at the very least remain neutral. Austria, however, felt threatened by the Russian troops in the Balkans. On 27 February 1854, the United Kingdom and France demanded the withdrawal of Russian forces from the principalities. Austria supported them and, without declaring war on Russia, refused to guarantee its neutrality. Russia's rejection of the ultimatum proved to be the justification used by Britain and France to enter the war.\nRussia soon withdrew its troops from the Danubian Principalities, which were then occupied by Austria for the duration of the war. That removed the original grounds for war, but the British and the French continued with hostilities. Determined to address the Eastern Question by putting an end to the Russian threat to the Ottomans, the allies in August 1854 proposed the \"Four Points\" for ending the conflict in addition to the Russian withdrawal:\nThose points, particularly the third, would require clarification through negotiations, which Russia refused. The allies, including Austria, therefore agreed that Britain and France should take further military action to prevent further Russian aggression against the Ottomans. Britain and France agreed on the invasion of Crimea as the first step.\nBattles.\nDanube campaign.\nThe Danube campaign opened when the Russians occupied the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia in July 1853, which brought their forces to the north bank of the River Danube. In response, the Ottoman Empire also moved its forces up to the river, establishing strongholds at Vidin in the west and Silistra in the east, near the mouth of the Danube. The Ottoman move up the River Danube was also of concern to the Austrians, who moved forces into Transylvania in response. However, the Austrians had begun to fear the Russians more than the Ottomans. Indeed, like the British, the Austrians were now coming to see that an intact Ottoman Empire was necessary as a bulwark against the Russians. Accordingly, Austria resisted Russian diplomatic attempts to join the war but remained neutral during the Crimean War.\nAfter the Ottoman ultimatum in September 1853, forces under Ottoman General Omar Pasha crossed the Danube at Vidin and captured Calafat in October 1853. Simultaneously, in the east, the Ottomans crossed the Danube at Silistra and attacked the Russians at Olteni\u021ba. The resulting Battle of Olteni\u021ba was the first engagement since the declaration of war. The Russians counterattacked but were beaten back. On 31 December 1853, the Ottoman forces at Calafat moved against the Russian force at Chetatea or Cetate, a small village nine miles north of Calafat, and engaged it on 6 January 1854. The battle began when the Russians made a move to recapture Calafat. Most of the heavy fighting took place in and around Chetatea until the Russians were driven out of the village. Despite the setback at Chetatea, Russian forces on 28 January 1854 laid siege to Calafat. The siege would continue until May 1854 when it was lifted by the Russians. The Ottomans would also later beat the Russians in battle at Caracal.\nIn early 1854, the Russians again advanced by crossing the River Danube into the Turkish province of Dobruja. By April 1854, the Russians had reached the lines of Trajan's Wall, where they were finally halted. In the centre, the Russian forces crossed the Danube and laid siege to Silistra from 14 April with 60,000 troops. The defenders had 15,000 troops and supplies for three months. The siege was lifted on 23 June 1854. The British and the French could not then take the field for lack of equipment.\nIn the west, the Russians were dissuaded from attacking Vidin by the presence of the Austrian forces, which had swollen to 280,000 men. On 28 May 1854, a protocol of the Vienna Conference was signed by Austria and Russia. One of the aims of the Russian advance had been to encourage the Orthodox Christian Serbs and Bulgarians who were living under Ottoman rule to rebel. When the Russian troops crossed the River Pruth into Moldavia, the Orthodox Christians showed no interest in rising up against the Ottomans. Adding to Nicholas I's worries was the concern that Austria would enter the war against the Russians and attack his armies on the western flank. Indeed, after attempting to mediate a peaceful settlement between Russia and the Ottomans, the Austrians entered the war on the side of the Ottomans with an attack against the Russians in the Danubian Principalities which threatened to cut off the Russian supply lines. Accordingly, the Russians were forced to raise the siege of Silistra on 23 June 1854 and to begin abandoning the principalities. The lifting of the siege reduced the threat of a Russian advance into Bulgaria.\nIn June 1854, the Allied expeditionary force landed at Varna, a city on the Black Sea's western coast, but made little advance from its base there. Karl Marx was noted to have quipped that \"there they are, the French doing nothing and the British helping them as fast as possible\". In July 1854, the Ottomans, under Omar Pasha, crossed the Danube into Wallachia and on 7 July 1854 engaged the Russians in the city of Giurgiu and conquered it. The capture of Giurgiu by the Ottomans immediately threatened Bucharest in Wallachia with capture by the same Ottoman army. On 26 July 1854, Nicholas I, responding to an Austrian ultimatum, ordered the withdrawal of Russian troops from the principalities. Also, in late July 1854, following up on the Russian retreat, the French staged an expedition against the Russian forces still in Dobruja, but it was a failure.\nBy then, the Russian withdrawal was complete, except for the fortress towns of northern Dobruja, and Russia's place in the principalities was taken by the Austrians as a neutral peacekeeping force. There was little further action on that front after late 1854, and in September, the allied force boarded ships at Varna to invade Crimea.\nBlack Sea theatre.\nThe naval operations of the Crimean War commenced with the dispatch in mid-1853 of the French and the British fleets to the Black Sea region, to support the Ottomans and to dissuade the Russians from encroachment. By June 1853, both fleets had been stationed at Besikas Bay, outside the Dardanelles. With the Russian occupation of the Danube Principalities in July 1853, they moved to the Bosphorus, and on 3 January 1854, they entered the Black Sea.\nMeanwhile, the Russian Black Sea Fleet operated against Ottoman coastal traffic between Constantinople and the Caucasus ports, and the Ottoman fleet sought to protect the supply line. The clash came on 30 November 1853, when a Russian fleet attacked an Ottoman force in the harbour at Sinop and destroyed it at the Battle of Sinop. The battle outraged British public opinion, which called for war. There was little additional naval action until March 1854, when after the declaration of war, the British frigate was fired on outside Odessa Harbour. In response an Anglo-French fleet bombarded the port and caused much damage to the town. To show support for the Ottomans after the Battle of Sinop, on 22 December 1853, the Anglo-French squadron entered the Black Sea and the steamship HMS \"Retribution\" approached the Port of Sevastopol. Its commander received an ultimatum not to allow any ships in the Black Sea.\nIn June, the fleets transported the Allied expeditionary forces to Varna to support the Ottoman operations on the Danube. In September they again transported the armies, this time to Crimea. The Russian fleet then declined to engage the allies but preferred to maintain a \"fleet in being\", a strategy that failed when Sevastopol, the main port and the base of most of the Black Sea fleet, came under siege. The Russians were reduced to scuttling their warships as blockships after they had stripped them of their guns and men to reinforce batteries on shore. During the siege, the Russians lost four 110- or 120-gun, three-decker ships of the line, twelve 84-gun two-deckers and four 60-gun frigates in the Black Sea, as well as a large number of smaller vessels. During the rest of the campaign, the allied fleets remained in control of the Black Sea and ensured that the various fronts were kept supplied.\nIn May 1855, the allies successfully invaded Kerch and operated against Taganrog in the Sea of Azov. In September, they moved against Russian installations in the Dnieper estuary by attacking Kinburn in the first use of ironclad ships in naval warfare.\nCrimean campaign.\nThe Russians evacuated Wallachia and Moldavia in late July 1854. Therefore, the immediate cause of war had now been withdrawn, and the war might have then ended. However, war fever among the public in both Britain and France had been whipped up by the press in both countries to the degree that politicians found it untenable to propose immediately ending the war. The coalition government of George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen, fell on 30 January 1855 on a no-confidence vote, as Parliament voted to appoint a committee to investigate the mismanagement of the war.\nFrench and British officers and engineers were sent on 20 July on \"Fury\", a wooden \"Bulldog\"-class paddle sloop, to survey the harbour of Sevastopol and the coast near it. They managed to get close to the harbour mouth to inspect the formidable batteries. Returning, they reported that they believed that 15,000\u201320,000 troops were encamped. Ships were prepared to transport horses, and siege equipment was both manufactured and imported.\nThe Crimean campaign opened in September 1854. In seven columns, 360 ships sailed, each steamer towing two sailing ships. Anchoring on 13 September in the bay of Yevpatoria, the town surrendered, and 500 marines landed to occupy it. The town and the bay would provide a fallback position in case of disaster. The ships then sailed east to make the landing of the allied expeditionary force on the sandy beaches of Kalamita Bay, on the south-west coast of Crimea. The landing surprised the Russians, as they had expected a landing at Katcha. The last-minute change proved that Russia had known the original campaign plan. There was no sign of the enemy and so all of the invading troops landed on 14 September 1854. It took another four days to land all of the stores, equipment, horses and artillery.\nThe landing took place north of Sevastopol and so the Russians had arrayed their army in expectation of a direct attack. The allies advanced and on the morning of 20 September came up to the River Alma and engaged the Russian Army. The Russian position was strong, but after three hours, the allied frontal attack had driven the Russians out of their dug-in positions with losses of 6,000 men. The Battle of the Alma resulted in 3,300 Allied losses. Failing to pursue the retreating forces was one of many strategic errors made during the war, and the Russians themselves noted that if the allies had pressed south that day, they would have easily captured Sevastopol.\nBelieving the northern approaches to the city too well defended, especially because of the presence of a large star fort and the city being on the south side of Sevastopol Bay, Sir John Burgoyne, the engineer advisor, recommended for the allies attack to Sevastopol from the south. The joint commanders, Raglan and Saint-Arnaud, agreed. On 25 September, the whole army began to march southeast and encircled the city from the south after it had established port facilities at Balaclava for the British and at Kamiesch () for the French. The Russians retreated into the city.\nThe Allied armies moved without problems to the south, and the heavy artillery was brought ashore with batteries and connecting trenches built. By 10 October, some batteries were ready, and by 17 October, when the bombardment commenced\u2014126 guns were firing, 53 of them French. The fleet meanwhile engaged the shore batteries. The British bombardment worked better than that of the French, who had smaller-calibre guns. The fleet suffered high casualties during the day. The British wanted to attack that afternoon, but the French wanted to defer the attack.\nA postponement was agreed, but on the next day, the French were still not ready. By 19 October the Russians had transferred some heavy guns to the southern defences and had outgunned the allies.\nReinforcements for the Russians gave them the courage to send out probing attacks. The Allied lines, beginning to suffer from cholera as early as September, were stretched. The French, on the west, had less to do than the British on the east, with their siege lines and the large nine-mile open wing back to their supply base on the south coast.\nBattle of Balaclava.\nA large Russian assault on the allied supply base to the southeast at Balaclava was rebuffed on 25 October 1854. The Battle of Balaclava is remembered in Britain for the actions of two British units. At the start of the battle, a large body of Russian cavalry charged the 93rd Highlanders, who were posted north of the village of Kadikoi. Commanding them was Sir Colin Campbell. Rather than \"form square\", the traditional method of repelling cavalry, Campbell took the risky decision to have his Highlanders form a single line two men deep. Campbell had seen the effectiveness of the new Mini\u00e9 rifles with which his troops were armed at the Battle of Alma, a month earlier, and he was confident that his men could beat back the Russians. His tactics succeeded. From up on the ridge to the west, the \"Times\" correspondent William Howard Russell saw the Highlanders as a \"thin red streak topped with steel\", a phrase which soon became the \"Thin Red Line\".\nSoon afterward, a Russian cavalry movement was countered by the Heavy Brigade, which charged and fought hand to hand until the Russians retreated. That caused a more widespread Russian retreat, including a number of their artillery units. After the local commanders had failed to take advantage of the retreat, Lord Raglan sent out orders to move up and to prevent the withdrawal of naval guns from the recently captured redoubts on the heights. Raglan could see those guns because of his position on the hill. In the valley, that view was obstructed, and the wrong guns were in sight to the left. The local commanders ignored the demands, which led to the British aide-de-camp, Captain Louis Nolan, personally delivering the quickly-written and confusing order to attack the artillery. When Lord Lucan questioned to which guns the order referred, the aide-de-camp pointed to the first Russian battery that he could see and allegedly said \"There is your enemy, there are your guns\", because of his obstructed view, which were wrong. Lucan then passed the order to the Earl of Cardigan, which resulted in the Charge of the Light Brigade.\nIn that charge, Cardigan formed up his unit and charged the length of the Valley of the Balaclava, under fire from Russian batteries in the hills. The charge of the Light Brigade caused 278 casualties of the 700-man unit. The Light Brigade was memorialised in the famous poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, \"The Charge of the Light Brigade\". Although traditionally, the charge of the Light Brigade was looked upon as a glorious but wasted sacrifice of good men and horses, recent historians believe that the charge of the Light Brigade succeeded in at least some of its objectives. The aim of any cavalry charge is to scatter the enemy's lines and frighten the enemy off the battlefield. The Charge of the Light Brigade so unnerved the Russian cavalry, which had been routed by the Charge of the Heavy Brigade, that the Russians were set to full-scale flight.\nThe shortage of men led to the failure of the British and the French to follow up on the Battle of Balaclava, which led directly to the much bloodier Battle of Inkerman. On 5 November 1854, the Russians attempted to raise the siege at Sevastopol with an attack against the allies, which resulted in another allied victory.\nWinter of 1854\u20131855.\nWinter weather and a deteriorating supply of troops and materiel on both sides led to a halt in ground operations. Sevastopol remained invested by the allies, whose armies were hemmed in by the Imperial Russian Army in the interior. On 14 November, the \"Balaklava Storm\", a major weather event, sank 30 allied transport ships, including , which was carrying a cargo of winter clothing.\nThe storm and the heavy traffic caused the road from the coast to the troops to disintegrate into a quagmire, which required engineers to devote most of their time to its repair, including by quarrying stone. A tramway was ordered and arrived in January with a civilian engineering crew, but it took until March before it had become sufficiently advanced to be of any appreciable value. An electrical telegraph was also ordered, but the frozen ground delayed its installation until March, when communications from the base port of Balaklava to the British HQ was established. The pipe-and-cable-laying plough failed because of the hard frozen soil, but nevertheless of cable were laid.\nThe troops suffered greatly from cold and sickness, and the shortage of fuel led them to start dismantling their defensive gabions and fascines. In February 1855, the Russians attacked the allied base at Eupatoria, where an Ottoman army had built up and was threatening Russian supply routes. The Russians were defeated at the Battle of Eupatoria, leading to a change in their command.\nThe strain of directing the war had taken its toll on the health of Tsar Nicholas. Full of remorse for the disasters that he had caused, he caught pneumonia and died on 2 March.\nSiege of Sevastopol.\nThe allies had had time to consider the problem, and the French were brought around to agree that the key to the defence was the Malakoff. Emphasis of the siege at Sevastopol shifted to the British left against the fortifications on Malakoff Hill. In March, there was fighting by the French over a new fort being built by the Russians at Mamelon, on a hill in front of the Malakoff. Several weeks of fighting resulted in little change in the front line, and the Mamelon remained in Russian hands.\nIn April 1855, the allies staged a second all-out bombardment, which led to an artillery duel with the Russian guns, but no ground assault followed.\nOn 24 May 1855, 60 ships, containing 7,000 French, 5,000 Turkish and 3,000 British troops, set off for a raid on the city of Kerch, east of Sevastopol, in an attempt to open another front in Crimea and to cut off Russian supplies. When the allies landed the force at Kerch, the plan was to outflank the Russian Army. The landings were successful, but the force made little progress thereafter.\nMany more artillery pieces had arrived and had been dug into batteries. The first general assault of Sevastopol took place on 18 June 1855. There is a legend that the assault was scheduled for that date in favour of Napoleon III in the 40th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, but the legend is not confirmed by historians. However, the appearance of such a legend is undoubtedly symptomatic since the war in France was understood as a certain revanche for the defeat of 1812.\nIn June, a third bombardment was followed after two days by a successful attack on the Mamelon, but a follow-up assault on the Malakoff failed with heavy losses. Meanwhile, the garrison commander, Admiral Pavel Nakhimov, fell on 30 June 1855, and Raglan died on 28 June. Losses in those battles were so great that by agreement of military opponents short-term truces for removal of corpses were signed (these truces were described in the work of Leo Tolstoy \"Sevastopol Sketches\"). The assault was beaten back with heavy casualties and in an undoubted victory for Russia. It is worth mentioning that the Russian Siege of Sevastopol (panorama) depicts the moment of the assault of Sevastopol on 18 June 1855.\nIn August, the Russians again made an attack towards the base at Balaclava, which was defended by the French, newly arrived Sardinian and Ottoman troops. The resulting Battle of the Chernaya was a defeat for the Russians, who suffered heavy casualties.\nFor months, each side had been building forward rifle pits and defensive positions, which resulted in many skirmishes. Artillery fire aimed to gain superiority over the enemy guns. The final assault was made on 5 September, when another French bombardment (the sixth) was followed by an assault by the French Army on 8 September and resulted in the French capture of the Malakoff fort. The Russians failed to retake it and their defences collapsed. Meanwhile, the British assaulted the Great Redan, a Russian defensive battlement just south of the city of Sevastopol, a position that had been attacked repeatedly for months. Whether the British captured the Redan remains in dispute: Russian historians recognise only the loss of the Malakhov Kurgan, a key point of defence, claiming that all other positions were retained. What is agreed is that the Russians abandoned the positions, blew up their powder magazines and retreated to the north. The city finally fell on 9 September 1855, after a 337-day-long siege.\nBoth sides were now exhausted, and no further military operations were launched in Crimea before the onset of winter. The main objective of the siege was the destruction of the Russian fleet and docks and took place over the winter. On 28 February, multiple mines blew up the five docks, the canal, and three locks.\nAzov campaign.\nIn early 1855, the allied Anglo-French commanders decided to send an Anglo-French naval squadron into the Azov Sea to undermine Russian communications and supplies to besieged Sevastopol. On 12 May 1855, Anglo-French warships entered the Kerch Strait and destroyed the coast battery of the Kamishevaya Bay. Once through the Kerch Strait, British and French warships struck at every vestige of Russian power along the coast of the Sea of Azov. Except for Rostov and Azov, no town, depot, building or fortification was immune from attack, and Russian naval power ceased to exist almost overnight. This Allied campaign led to a significant reduction in supplies flowing to the besieged Russian troops at Sevastopol.\nOn 21 May 1855, the gunboats and armed steamers attacked the seaport of Taganrog, the most important hub near Rostov on Don. The vast amounts of food, especially bread, wheat, barley and rye, that were amassed in the city after the outbreak of war were prevented from being exported.\nThe Governor of Taganrog, Yegor Tolstoy, and Lieutenant-General Ivan Krasnov refused an allied ultimatum by responding, \"Russians never surrender their cities\". The Anglo-French squadron bombarded Taganrog for 6<templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1\u20442\u00a0hours and landed 300 troops near the Old Stairway in the centre of Taganrog, but they were thrown back by Don Cossacks and a volunteer corps.\nIn July 1855, the allied squadron tried to go past Taganrog to Rostov-on-Don by entering the River Don through the Mius River. On 12 July 1855 HMS\u00a0\"Jasper\" grounded near Taganrog thanks to a fisherman who moved buoys into shallow water. The Cossacks captured the gunboat with all of its guns and blew it up. The third siege attempt was made 19\u201331 August 1855, but the city was already fortified, and the squadron could not approach close enough for landing operations. The allied fleet left the Gulf of Taganrog on 2 September 1855, with minor military operations along the Azov Sea coast continuing until late 1855.\nCaucasus theatre.\nAs in the previous wars, the Caucasus front was secondary to what happened in the west. Perhaps because of better communications, western events sometimes influenced the east. The main events were the second capture of Kars and a landing on the Georgian coast. Several commanders on both sides were either incompetent or unlucky, and few fought aggressively.\n1853: There were four main events. 1. In the north, the Ottomans captured the border fort of Saint Nicholas in a surprise night attack (27/28 October). They then pushed about 20,000 troops across the Choloki river border. Being outnumbered, the Russians abandoned Poti and Redoubt Kali and drew back to Marani. Both sides remained immobile for the next seven months. 2. In the centre the Ottomans moved north from Ardahan to within cannon-shot of Akhaltsike and awaited reinforcements (13 November), but the Russians routed them. The claimed losses were 4,000 Turks and 400 Russians. 3. In the south about 30,000 Turks slowly moved east to the main Russian concentration at Gyumri or Alexandropol (November). They crossed the border and set up artillery south of town. Prince Vakhtang Orbeliani tried to drive them off and found himself trapped. The Ottomans failed to press their advantage; the remaining Russians rescued Orbeliani and the Ottomans retired west. Orbeliani lost about 1,000 men from 5,000. The Russians now decided to advance. The Ottomans took up a strong position on the Kars road and attacked-only to be defeated in the Battle of Ba\u015fgedikler, losing 6,000 men, half their artillery and all of their supply train. The Russians lost 1,300, including Prince Orbeliani. This was Prince Ellico Orbeliani, whose wife was later kidnapped by Imam Shamil at Tsinandali. 4. At sea the Turks sent a fleet east, which was destroyed by Admiral Nakhimov at Sinope.\n1854: The British and French declared war on 28 March. Early in the year on 3 January, the Anglo-French fleet appeared in the Black Sea, and the Russians abandoned the Black Sea Defensive Line from Anapa south. Nikolay Muravyov, who replaced Vorontsov, fearing an Anglo-French landing in conjunction with Shamil, 3rd Imam of Dagestan and the Persians, recommended withdrawal north of the Caucasus. For that purpose, he was replaced by Aleksandr Baryatinsky. When the allies chose a land attack on Sevastopol, any plan for a landing in the east was abandoned.\nIn the north, Georgiy Evseevich Eristov pushed southwest, fought two battles, forced the Ottomans back to Batumi, retired behind the Cholok river and suspended action for the rest of the year (June). In the far south, Wrangel pushed west, fought a battle and occupied Bayazit. In the centre. the main forces stood at Kars and Gyumri. Both slowly approached along the Kars-Gyumri road and faced each other, neither side choosing to fight (June\u2013July). On 4 August, Russian scouts saw a movement which they thought was the start of a withdrawal, the Russians advanced and the Ottomans attacked first. They were defeated and lost 8,000 men to the Russian 3,000. Also, 10,000 irregulars deserted to their villages. Both sides withdrew to their former positions. About then, the Persians made a semi-secret agreement to remain neutral in exchange for the cancellation of the indemnity from the previous war.\n1855: Siege of Kars: Up to May 1855, Ottomans forces in the east were reduced from 120,000 to 75,000, mostly by disease. The local Armenian population kept Muravyov well-informed about the Ottomans at Kars and he judged they had about five months of supplies. He therefore decided to control the surrounding area with cavalry and starve them out. He started in May and by June was south and west of the town. A relieving force fell back and there was a possibility of taking Erzurum, but Muravyov chose not to. In late September he learned of the fall of Sevastopol and a Turkish landing at Batum. This led him to reverse policy and try a direct attack. It failed, the Russians losing 8,000 men and the Turks 1,500 (29 September). The blockade continued and Kars surrendered on 28 November.\n1855: Georgian coast: Omar Pasha, the Turkish commander at Crimea had long wanted to land in Georgia, but the western powers vetoed it. When they relented in August most of the campaigning season was lost. In 8 September Turks landed at Batum, but the main concentration was at Sukhum Kale. This required a 100-mile march south through a country with poor roads. In essence, it was a military demonstration in order to frighten the Russian command and force it to lift the siege of the fortress of Kars. \"All luck depended on whether Muravyov (the Russian commander) would be scared or not\". But the Russian command did not see a serious threat, the Siege of Kars was continued. The Russians planned to hold the line of the Ingur river which separates Abkhazia from Georgia proper. Omar crossed the Ingur on 7 November and then wasted a great deal of time, the Russians doing little. By 2 December he had reached the Tskhenistsqali, the rainy season had started, his camps were submerged in mud and there was no bread. Learning of the fall of Kars he withdrew to the Ingur. The Russians did nothing and he evacuated to Batum in February of the following year.\nBaltic theatre.\nThe Baltic was a forgotten theatre of the Crimean War. Popularisation of events elsewhere overshadowed the significance of this theatre, which was close to Saint Petersburg, the Russian capital. In April 1854, an Anglo-French fleet entered the Baltic to attack the Russian naval base of Kronstadt and the Russian fleet that was stationed there. In August 1854, the combined British and French fleet returned to Kronstadt for another attempt. The outnumbered Russian Baltic Fleet confined its movements to the areas around its fortifications. At the same time, the British and French commanders Sir Charles Napier and Alexandre Ferdinand Parseval-Deschenes although they led the largest fleet assembled since the Napoleonic Wars, considered the Sveaborg fortress too well-defended to engage. Thus, shelling of the Russian batteries was limited to two attempts in 1854 and 1855, and initially, the attacking fleets limited their actions to blockading Russian trade in the Gulf of Finland. Naval attacks on other ports, such as the ones in the island of Hogland in the Gulf of Finland, proved more successful. Additionally, allies conducted raids on less fortified sections of the Finnish coast. These battles are known in Finland as the \u00c5land War.\nRussia depended on imports\u2014both for its domestic economy and for the supply of its military forces: the blockade forced Russia to rely on more expensive overland shipments from Prussia. The blockade seriously undermined the Russian export economy and helped shorten the war.\nThe burning of tar warehouses and ships led to international criticism, and in London the MP Thomas Milner Gibson demanded in the House of Commons that the First Lord of the Admiralty explain \"a system which carried on a great war by plundering and destroying the property of defenceless villagers\".\nIn fact, the operations in the Baltic sea were in the nature of binding forces. It was very important to divert Russian forces from the south or, more precisely, not to allow Nicholas to transfer to Crimea a huge army guarding the Baltic coast and the capital. This goal Anglo-French forces achieved. The Russian Army in Crimea was forced to act without superiority in forces.\nIn August 1854 a Franco-British naval force captured and destroyed the Russian Bomarsund fortress on \u00c5land Islands. In the August 1855, the Western Allied Baltic Fleet tried to destroy heavily defended Russian dockyards at Sveaborg outside Helsinki. More than 1,000 enemy guns tested the strength of the fortress for two days. Despite the shelling, the sailors of the 120-gun ship \"Rossiya\", led by Captain Viktor Poplonsky, defended the entrance to the harbour. The Allies fired over 20,000 shells but failed to defeat the Russian batteries. The British then built a massive new fleet of more than 350 gunboats and mortar vessels, which was known as the Great Armament, but the war ended before the attack was launched.\nPart of the Russian resistance was credited to the deployment of newly invented naval mines. Perhaps the most influential contributor to the development of naval mining was a Swede resident in Russia, the inventor and civil engineer Immanuel Nobel (the father of Alfred Nobel). Immanuel Nobel helped the Russian war effort by applying his knowledge of industrial explosives, such as nitroglycerin and gunpowder. An account given in 1860 by United States Army Major Richard Delafield dates modern naval mining to the Crimean War: \"Torpedo mines, if I may use this name given by Fulton to 'self-acting mines underwater', were among the novelties attempted by the Russians in their defences about Cronstadt and Sevastopol.\"\nFor the campaign of 1856, Britain and France planned an attack on the main base of the Russian Navy in the Baltic sea\u2014Kronstadt. The attack was to be carried out using armoured floating batteries. The use of the latter proved to be highly effective in the attack on Kinburn on the Black Sea in 1855. Undoubtedly, this threat contributed on the part of Russia the decision on the conclusion of peace on unfavourable terms.\nWhite Sea theatre.\nIn late 1854, a squadron of three British warships led by HMS\u00a0\"Miranda\" left the Baltic for the White Sea, where they shelled Kola (which was destroyed) and the Solovki.\nPacific theatre.\nMinor naval skirmishes also occurred in the Far East, where at Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula a British and French Allied squadron including under Rear Admiral David Price and a French force under Counter-Admiral Auguste Febvrier Despointes besieged a smaller Russian force under Rear Admiral Yevfimiy Putyatin. In September 1854, an Allied landing force was beaten back with heavy casualties, and the Allies withdrew. The victory at Petropavlovsk was for Russia in the words of the future Minister of War Dmitry Milyutin \"a ray of light among the dark clouds\". The Russians escaped under the cover of snow in early 1855 after Allied reinforcements arrived in the region.\nThe Anglo-French forces in the Far East also made several small landings on Sakhalin and Urup, one of the Kuril Islands.\nPiedmontese involvement.\nCamillo di Cavour, under orders of Victor Emmanuel\u00a0II of Piedmont-Sardinia, sent an expeditionary corps of 15,000 soldiers, commanded by General Alfonso La Marmora, to side with French and British forces during the war. This was an attempt at gaining the favour of the French, especially when the issue of uniting Italy would become an important matter. The deployment of Italian troops to Crimea, and the gallantry shown by them in the Battle of the Chernaya (16 August 1855) and in the Siege of Sevastopol, allowed the Kingdom of Sardinia to be among the participants at the peace conference at the end of the war, where it could address the issue of the \"Risorgimento\" to other European powers.\nGreece.\nGreece played a peripheral role in the war. When Russia attacked the Ottoman Empire in 1853, King Otto of Greece saw an opportunity to expand north and south into Ottoman areas that had large Greek Christian majorities. Greece did not coordinate its plans with Russia, did not declare war, and received no outside military or financial support. Greece, an Orthodox nation, had considerable support in Russia, but the Russian government decided it was too dangerous to help Greece expand its holdings. When the Russians invaded the Principalities, the Ottoman forces were tied down so Greece invaded Thessaly and Epirus. To block further Greek moves, the British and French occupied the main Greek port at Piraeus from April 1854 to February 1857, and effectively neutralized the Greek Army. The Greeks, gambling on a Russian victory, incited the large-scale Epirus Revolt of 1854 as well as uprisings in Ottoman Crete. The insurrections were failures that were easily crushed by the Ottomans' allied Egyptian Army. Greece was not invited to the peace conference and made no gains out of the war. The frustrated Greek leadership blamed the King for failing to take advantage of the situation; his popularity plunged and he was forced to abdicate in 1862.\nIn addition, a 1,000-strong Greek Volunteer Legion was formed in the Danubian Principalities in 1854 and later fought at Sevastopol.\nKiev Cossack revolt.\nA peasant revolt that began in the Vasylkiv county of Kiev Governorate (province) in February 1855 spread across the whole Kiev and Chernigov governorates, with peasants refusing to participate in corv\u00e9e labour and other orders of the local authorities and, in some cases, attacking priests who were accused of hiding a decree about the liberation of the peasants.\nEnd of the war.\nBritish position.\nDissatisfaction with the conduct of the war was growing with the public in Britain and other countries and was worsened by reports of fiascos, especially the devastating losses of the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava. On Sunday, 21 January 1855, a \"snowball riot\" occurred in Trafalgar Square near St Martin-in-the-Fields in which 1,500 people gathered to protest against the war by pelting cabs and pedestrians with snowballs. When the police intervened, the snowballs were directed at the constables. The riot was finally put down by troops and police acting with truncheons. In Parliament, the Conservatives demanded an accounting of all soldiers, cavalry and sailors sent to Crimea and accurate figures as to the number of casualties sustained by all British armed forces in Crimea, especially concerning the Battle of Balaclava. When Parliament passed a bill to investigate by the vote of 305 to 148, Aberdeen said he had lost a vote of no confidence and resigned as prime minister on 30 January 1855. The veteran former Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston became prime minister. Palmerston took a hard line and wanted to expand the war, foment unrest inside the Russian Empire and reduce the Russian threat to Europe permanently. Sweden\u2013Norway and Prussia were willing to join Britain and France, and Russia was isolated.\nPeace negotiations.\nFrance, which had sent far more soldiers to the war and suffered far more casualties than Britain had, wanted the war to end, as did Austria.\nNegotiations began in Paris in February 1856 and were surprisingly easy. France, under the leadership of Napoleon III, had no special interests in the Black Sea and so did not support the harsh British and Austrian proposals.\nPeace negotiations at the Congress of Paris resulted in the signing of the Treaty of Paris on 30 March 1856. In compliance with Article III, Russia restored to the Ottoman Empire the city and the citadel of Kars and \"all other parts of the Ottoman territory of which the Russian troop were in possession\". Russia returned the Southern Bessarabia to Moldavia. By Article IV, Britain, France, Sardinia and Ottoman Empire restored to Russia \"the towns and ports of Sevastopol, Balaklava, Kamish, Eupatoria, Kerch, Jenikale, Kinburn as well as all other territories occupied by the allied troops\". In conformity with Articles XI and XIII, the Tsar and the Sultan agreed not to establish any naval or military arsenal on the Black Sea coast. The Black Sea clauses weakened Russia, which no longer posed a naval threat to the Ottomans. The Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia were nominally returned to the Ottoman Empire, and the Austrian Empire was forced to abandon its annexation and to end its occupation of them, but they in practice became independent. The Treaty of Paris admitted the Ottoman Empire to the Concert of Europe, and the great powers pledged to respect its independence and territorial integrity.\nAftermath in Russia.\nSome members of the Russian intelligentsia saw defeat as a pressure to modernise their society. Grand Duke Constantine, a son of the Tsar, remarked:\nLong-term effects.\nOrlando Figes points to the long-term damage Russia suffered:\n\"The demilitarization of the Black Sea was a major blow to Russia, which was no longer able to protect its vulnerable southern coastal frontier against the British or any other fleet... The destruction of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Sevastopol and other naval docks was a humiliation. No compulsory disarmament had ever been imposed on a great power previously... The Allies did not really think that they were dealing with a European power in Russia. They regarded Russia as a semi-Asiatic state... In Russia itself, the Crimean defeat discredited the armed services and highlighted the need to modernize the country's defences, not just in the strictly military sense, but also through the building of railways, industrialization, sound finances and so on... The image many Russians had built up of their country\u2014the biggest, richest and most powerful in the world\u2014had suddenly been shattered. Russia's backwardness had been exposed... The Crimean disaster had exposed the shortcomings of every institution in Russia\u2014not just the corruption and incompetence of the military command, the technological backwardness of the army and navy, or the inadequate roads and lack of railways that accounted for the chronic problems of supply, but the poor condition and illiteracy of the serfs who made up the armed forces, the inability of the serf economy to sustain a state of war against industrial powers, and the failures of autocracy itself.\"\nSurprisingly, after the war, the Russian-French rapprochement came, which corresponded to the plans of both sides. France persuaded the Russians to support their claims to return to the territories before the Congress of Vienna, in exchange for ceasing to act as a guarantor of the Paris peace. Alexander II stated in response to his minister's remark: \"It would undoubtedly be more useful for our interests to have him among our allies if we could rely on him.\"\nThe Treaty of Paris stood until 1871, when Prussia defeated France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870\u201371. While Prussia and several other German states united to form a powerful German Empire in January 1871, the French deposed Emperor Napoleon III and proclaimed the French Third Republic (September 1870). During his reign, Napoleon, eager for the support of the United Kingdom, had opposed Russia over the Eastern Question. Russian interference in the Ottoman Empire did not in any significant manner threaten the interests of France (Kissinger uses Napoleon's pandering to journalists and public opinion on this subject\u2014at the expense of the true interests of France\u2014as an example of strategic frivolity), and France abandoned its opposition to Russia after the establishment of the republic. Encouraged by the new attitude of French diplomacy after the surrenders of the besieged French Army at Sedan and later Metz and supported by the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, Russia in October 1870 renounced the Black Sea clauses of the treaty agreed to in 1856. As the United Kingdom with Austria-Hungary could not enforce the clauses, Russia once again established a fleet in the Black Sea.\nAfter being defeated in the Crimean War, Russia feared that Russian Alaska would be easily captured in any future war with the British; therefore, Alexander II opted to sell the territory to the United States.\nA Greek tortoise named Timothy was found on a Portuguese ship by Captain John Guy Courtenay-Everard on in 1854. Serving as a mascot throughout the war, when she died in 2004 this made her the last living veteran of the Crimean war.\nHistorian Norman Rich argues that the war was not an accident, but was sought out by the determination of the British and French not to allow Russia an honourable retreat. Both insisted on a military victory to enhance their prestige in European affairs when a non-violent peaceful political solution was available. The war then wrecked the Concert of Europe, which had long kept the peace.\nTurkish historian Candan Badem wrote, \"Victory in this war did not bring any significant material gain, not even a war indemnity. On the other hand, the Ottoman treasury was nearly bankrupted due to war expenses\". Badem adds that the Ottomans achieved no significant territorial gains, lost the right to a navy in the Black Sea, and failed to gain status as a great power. Further, the war gave impetus to the union of the Danubian principalities and ultimately to their independence.\nThe treaty punished the defeated Russia, but in the long run, Austria lost the most from the war despite having barely taken part in it. Having abandoned its alliance with Russia, Austria remained diplomatically isolated following the war, which contributed to its disastrous defeats in the 1859 Franco-Austrian War that resulted in the cession of Lombardy to the Kingdom of Sardinia and later in the loss of the Habsburg rule of Tuscany and Modena, which meant the end of Austrian influence in peninsular Italy. Furthermore, Russia did not do anything to assist its former ally, Austria, in the 1866 Austro-Prussian War, when Austria lost Venetia and, more importantly, its influence in most German-speaking lands. The status of Austria as a great power, with the unifications of Germany and Italy, now became very precarious. It had to compromise with Hungary; the two countries shared the Danubian Empire. With France now hostile to Germany and gravitating towards Russia, and with Russia competing with the newly renamed Austro-Hungarian Empire for an increased role in the Balkans at the expense of the Ottoman Empire, the foundations were in place for building the diplomatic alliances that would shape the First World War.\nThe Treaty's guarantees to preserve Ottoman territories were broken 21 years later when Russia, exploiting nationalist unrest in the Balkans and seeking to regain lost prestige, once again declared war on the Ottoman Empire on 24 April 1877. In this later Russo-Turkish War the states of Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro gained international recognition of their independence and Bulgaria achieved its autonomy from direct Ottoman rule. Russia took over Southern Bessarabia, lost in 1856. The regions of Batum and Kars, as well as those inhabited by Adjarians (Muslim Georgians) and Armenians, were also annexed to Russia in the Caucasus. At the same time, \"protectors\" of the Ottoman Empire Britain received Cyprus as a colonial possession, while Austria-Hungary occupied and annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908. Finally, Ottoman rule in the Balkans ended after the First Balkan War of 1912, when the combined forces of the Balkan states defeated it.\nThe Crimean War marked the re-ascendancy of France to the position of pre-eminent power on the Continent, the continued decline of the Ottoman Empire and a period of crisis for Imperial Russia. As Fuller notes, \"Russia had been beaten on the Crimean Peninsula, and the military feared that it would inevitably be beaten again unless steps were taken to surmount its military weakness.\" To compensate for its defeat in the Crimean War, the Russian Empire then embarked in more intensive expansion in Asia, partially to restore national pride and partially to distract Britain on the world stage, intensifying the Great Game.\nThe war also marked the demise of the first phase of the Concert of Europe, the balance-of-power system that had dominated Europe since the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and had included France, Russia, Prussia, Austria and the United Kingdom. From 1854 to 1871, the Concert of Europe concept was weakened, leading to the crises that were the unifications of Germany and of Italy, before a resurgence of great power conferences.\nIn 1870, Prussia persuaded Russia to remain neutral in the Franco-Prussian war. Bismarck, having declared it impossible to keep 100\u00a0million Russians in a humiliated position without sovereign rights to their Black Sea coastline, supported Russia against the Treaty of Paris, and in return, Prussia achieved freedom of action against France in 1870\u201371 and inflicted a crushing defeat on it.\nAn envoy from India who visited the war front after arriving to Constantinople from a failed mission in England, Azimullah Khan observed exhaustion and fatigue in the British soldiers and set to exploit a perceived weak state of the British Empire upon his return which consequently planted the seeds for the Indian War of Independence.\nHistorical analysis.\nAccording to historian Shepard Clough, the war\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />was not the result of a calculated plan, nor even of hasty last-minute decisions made under stress. It was the consequence of more than two years of fatal blundering in slow-motion by inept statesmen who had months to reflect upon the actions they took. It arose from Napoleon's search for prestige; Nicholas's quest for control over the Straits; his na\u00efve miscalculation of the probable reactions of the European powers; the failure of those powers to make their positions clear; and the pressure of public opinion in Britain and Constantinople at crucial moments.\nThe view of \"diplomatic drift\" as the cause of the war was first popularised by A. W. Kinglake, who portrayed the British as victims of newspaper sensationalism and duplicitous French and Ottoman diplomacy.\nMore recently, historians Andrew Lambert and Winfried Baumgart have argued that Britain was following a geopolitical strategy in aiming to destroy the fledgling Russian Navy, which might challenge the Royal Navy for control of the seas, and that the war was also a joint European response to a century of Russian expansion not just southwards but also into Western Europe.\nCasualties.\nThe war undoubtedly became one of the bloodiest in the history of Europe at that time, but data on casualties vary greatly. The European states, Russia, France and Britain suffered the greatest losses. Sources agree on the definition of the losses of the last two, these are 95,615 dead on the part of France, 22,182 on the part of Britain and 2,166 dead Italians, Turkish losses range from 45,400 dead to 400,000. Data on losses among Russians also vary greatly. The minimum death toll is 73,125 dead, rising to 522,000. There are also data on 450,015 dead and killed. Historian Yevgeny Tarle described the war as a \"bloody massacre\".\nDocumentation.\nDocumentation of the war was provided by William Howard Russell, who wrote for \"The Times\" newspaper, and by Roger Fenton's photographs. News from war correspondents reached all of the nations involved in the war and kept the public citizenry of those nations better informed of the day-to-day events of the war than had been the case in any earlier war. The British public was very well informed on the day-to-day realities of the war. After the French extended the telegraph to the coast of the Black Sea in late 1854, news reached London in two days. When the British laid an underwater cable to Crimea in April 1855, news reached London in a few hours. The daily news reports energised public opinion, which brought down the Aberdeen government and carried Lord Palmerston into office as prime minister.\nLeo Tolstoy wrote a few short sketches on the Siege of Sevastopol, collected in \"Sevastopol Sketches\". The stories detail the lives of the Russian soldiers and citizens in Sevastopol during the siege. Because of this work, Tolstoy has been called the world's first war correspondent.\nCriticisms and reform.\nHistorian R. B. McCallum points out the war was enthusiastically supported by the British populace as it was happening, but the mood changed very dramatically afterwards. Pacifists and critics were unpopular but:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />in the end they won. Cobden and Bright were true to their principles of foreign policy, which laid down the absolute minimum of intervention in European affairs and a deep moral reprobation of war... When the first enthusiasm was passed, when the dead were mourned, the sufferings revealed, and the cost counted, when in 1870 Russia was able calmly to secure the revocation of the Treaty, which disarmed her in the Black Sea, the view became general of the war was stupid and unnecessary, and effected nothing... The Crimean war remained as a classic example... of how governments may plunge into war, how strong ambassadors may mislead weak prime ministers, how the public may be worked up into a facile fury, and how the achievements of the war may crumble to nothing. The Bright-Cobden criticism of the war was remembered and to a large extent accepted [especially by the Liberal Party]. Isolation from European entanglements seemed more than ever desirable.\nAs the memory of the \"Charge of the Light Brigade\" demonstrates, the war became an iconic symbol of logistical, medical and tactical failures and mismanagement. Public opinion in Britain was outraged at the logistical and command failures of the war; the newspapers demanded drastic reforms, and parliamentary investigations demonstrated the multiple failures of the army. The reform campaign was not well organised, and the traditional aristocratic leadership of the army pulled itself together, and blocked all serious reforms. No one was punished. The outbreak of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 shifted attention to the heroic defence of British interest by the army, and further talk of reform went nowhere. The demand for professionalisation was achieved by Florence Nightingale, who gained worldwide attention for pioneering and publicising modern nursing while treating the wounded. Another nurse, a Jamaican named Mary Seacole, also made an impact providing care for wounded and dying soldiers. \"The Times\" war correspondent William Howard Russell spoke highly of Seacole's skill as a healer, writing \"A more tender or skilful hand about a wound or a broken limb could not be found among our best surgeons.\"\nOutstanding achievements in battlefield surgery were done during the war of 1853\u201356. \"Nikolai Pirogov, who pioneered the system of field surgery that other nations came to only in the First World War\".\nThe Crimean War also saw the first tactical use of railways and other modern inventions, such as the electric telegraph, with the first \"live\" war reporting by Russell. Some credit Russell with prompting the resignation of the sitting British government through his reporting of the lacklustre condition of British forces deployed in Crimea. Additionally, the telegraph reduced the independence of British overseas possessions from their commanders in London due to such rapid communications. Newspaper readership informed public opinion in the United Kingdom and France as never before.\nThe Crimean War was a contributing factor in the Russian abolition of serfdom in 1861: Tsar Alexander\u00a0II (Nicholas I's son and successor) saw the military defeat of the Russian serf-army by free troops from Britain and France as proof of the need for emancipation. The Crimean War also led to the realisation by the Russian government of its technological inferiority, in military practices as well as weapons. Alexander also initiated the Great Reforms, which were aimed at strengthening and modernising the Russian state in the light of weaknesses revealed by the war.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotes and references.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nHistoriography and memory.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nContemporary sources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>"}, "descending_order": ["46763", "202061", "5171132", "30997172"], "permutation_1": ["202061", "5171132", "30997172", "46763"], "permutation_2": ["46763", "30997172", "202061", "5171132"], "permutation_3": ["202061", "30997172", "46763", "5171132"]}
{"id": "4hop2__339729_20606_51791_52221", "docs_added": {"1898028": "Languages of Italy\n \nThe languages of Italy include Italian, which serves as the country's national language, in its standard and regional forms, as well as numerous local and regional languages, most of which, like Italian, belong to the broader Romance group. The majority of languages often labeled as regional are distributed in a continuum across the regions' administrative boundaries, with speakers from one locale within a single region being typically aware of the features distinguishing their own variety from others spoken nearby.\nThe official and most widely spoken language across the country is Italian, which started off based on the medieval Tuscan of Florence. In parallel, many Italians also communicate in one of the local languages, most of which, like Tuscan, are indigenous evolutions of Vulgar Latin. Some local languages do not stem from Latin, however, but belong to other Indo-European branches, such as Cimbrian (Germanic), Arb\u00ebresh (Albanian), Slavomolisano (Slavic) and Griko (Greek). Other non-indigenous languages are spoken by a substantial percentage of the population due to immigration.\nOf the indigenous languages, twelve are officially recognized as spoken by linguistic minorities: Albanian, Catalan, German, Greek, Slovene, Croatian, French, Franco-Proven\u00e7al, Friulian, Ladin, Occitan and Sardinian; at the present moment, Sardinian is regarded as the largest of such groups, with approximately one million speakers, even though the Sardophone community is overall declining. However, full bilingualism (\"bilinguismo perfetto\") is legally granted only to the three national minorities whose mother tongue is German, Slovene or French, and enacted in the regions of Trentino-Alto Adige, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and the Aosta Valley, respectively.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nAncient languages of Italy.\nNumerous languages were spoken in ancient Italy. These included Etruscan and the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages, consisting of Latino-Faliscan and Osco-Umbrian languages. Furthermore, Celtic languages were spoken in Cisalpine Gaul and ancient Greek was spoken in Magna Graecia. Latin emerged out of the Latino-Faliscan group and replaced the other languages spoken in Italy following the Romanization of the whole peninsula; it is the ancestor of all the Romance languages, the only living subgroup of the Italic languages.\nLanguage or dialect.\nAlmost all of the Romance languages spoken in Italy are native to the area in which they are spoken. Apart from Standard Italian, these languages are often referred to as \"dialetti\" \"dialects\", both colloquially and in scholarly usage; however, the term may coexist with other labels like \"minority languages\" or \"vernaculars\" for some of them. The label \"dialect\" may be understood erroneously to imply that the native languages spoken in Italy are \"dialects\" of Standard Italian in the prevailing English-language sense of \"varieties or variations of a language\". This is not the case in Italy, as the country's long-standing linguistic diversity does not actually stem from Standard Italian. Most of Italy's variety of Romance languages predate Italian and evolved locally from Vulgar Latin, independently of what would become the standard national language, long before the fairly recent spread of Standard Italian throughout Italy. In fact, Standard Italian itself can be thought of as either a continuation of, or a dialect heavily based on, the Florentine dialect of Tuscan.\nThe indigenous Romance languages of Italy are therefore classified as separate languages that evolved from Latin just like Standard Italian, rather than \"dialects\" or variations of the latter. Conversely, with the spread of Standard Italian throughout Italy in the 20th century, local varieties of Standard Italian have also developed throughout the peninsula, influenced to varying extents by the underlying local languages, most noticeably at the phonological level; though regional boundaries seldom correspond to isoglosses distinguishing these varieties, these variations of Standard Italian are commonly referred to as Regional Italian (\"italiano regionale\").\nTwelve languages have been legally granted official recognition as of 1999, but their selection to the exclusion of others is a matter of some controversy. Daniele Bonamore argues that many regional languages were not recognized in light of their communities' historical participation in the construction of the Standard Italian language: Giacomo da Lentini's and Cielo d'Alcamo's Sicilian, Guido Guinizelli's Bolognese, Jacopone da Todi's Umbrian, Neapolitan, Carlo Goldoni's Venetian and Dante's Tuscan are considered to be historical founders of the Standard Italian linguistic majority; outside of such epicenters are, on the other hand, Friulian, Ladin, Sardinian, Franco-Proven\u00e7al and Occitan, which are recognized as distinct languages. Michele Salazar found Bonamore's explanation \"new and convincing\".\nLegal status of Italian.\nItalian was first declared to be Italy's official language during the Fascist period, more specifically through the R.D.l., adopted on 15 October 1925, with the name of\" Sull'Obbligo della lingua italiana in tutti gli uffici giudiziari del Regno, salvo le eccezioni stabilite nei trattati internazionali per la citt\u00e0 di Fiume\".\nThe original Italian constitution does not explicitly express that Italian is the official national language. Since the constitution was penned, there have been some laws and articles written on the procedures of criminal cases passed that explicitly state that Italian should be used:\nHistorical linguistic minorities.\nRecognition by the Italian state.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The Republic safeguards linguistic minorities by means of appropriate measures.\nArt. 6 of the Italian Constitution was drafted by the Founding Fathers to show sympathy for the country's historical linguistic minorities, in a way for the newly founded Republic to let them become part of the national fabric and distance itself from the Italianization policies promoted earlier because of nationalism, especially during Fascism. Since 1934, Minister Francesco Ercole had excluded in fact from the school curriculum any language other than Italian, in accordance with the policy of linguistic nationalism.\nFor the Constitutional Court of the Italian Republic, Article 6 of the Constitution represents \"the overcoming of the closed notion of the 19th-century national State and a reversal of great political and cultural significance, compared to the nationalistic attitude manifested by Fascism\" as well as being \"one of the fundamental principles of the current constitutional system\".\nHowever, more than a half century passed before the Art. 6 was followed by any of the above-mentioned \"appropriate measures\". Italy applied in fact the Article for the first time in 1999, by means of the national law N.482/99. According to the linguist Tullio De Mauro, the Italian delay of over 50 years in implementing Article 6 was caused by \"decades of hostility to multilingualism\" and \"opaque ignorance\".\nBefore said legal framework entered into force, only four linguistic minorities (the French-speaking community in the Aosta Valley; the German-speaking community and, to a limited extent, the Ladin one in the Province of Bolzano; the Slovene-speaking community in the Province of Trieste and, with less rights, the Province of Gorizia) enjoyed some kind of acknowledgment and protection, stemming from specific clauses within international treaties. The other eight linguistic minorities were to be recognized only in 1999, including the Slovene-speaking minority in the Province of Udine and the Germanic populations (Walser, Mocheni and Cimbri) residing in provinces different from Bolzano. Some now-recognized minority groups, namely in Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Sardinia, already provided themselves with regional laws of their own. It has been estimated that less than 400.000 people, out of the two million people belonging to the twelve historical minorities (with Sardinian being the numerically biggest one), enjoyed state-wide protection.\nAround the 1960s, the Italian Parliament eventually resolved to apply the previously neglected article of the country's fundamental Charter. The Parliament thus appointed a \"Committee of three Sages\" to single out the groups that were to be recognized as linguistic minorities, and further elaborate the reason for their inclusion. The nominated people were Tullio de Mauro, Giovan Battista Pellegrini and Alessandro Pizzorusso, three notable figures who distinguished themselves with their life-long activity of research in the field of both linguistics and legal theory. Based on linguistic, historical as well as anthropological considerations, the experts eventually selected thirteen groups, corresponding to the currently recognized twelve with the further addition of the Sinti and Romani-speaking populations. The original list was approved, with the only exception of the nomadic peoples, who lacked the territoriality requisite and therefore needed a separate law. However, the draft was presented to the law-making bodies when the legislature was about to run its course, and had to be passed another time. The bill was met with resistance by all the subsequent legislatures, being reluctant to challenge the widely-held myth of \"Italian linguistic homogeneity\", and only in 1999 did it eventually pass, becoming a law. In the end, the historical linguistic minorities have been recognized by the Law no. 482/1999 (\"Legge 15 Dicembre 1999, n. 482, Art. 2, comma 1\").\nSome interpretations of said law seem to divide the twelve minority languages into two groups, with the first including the non-Latin speaking populations (with the exception of the Catalan-speaking one) and the second including only the Romance-speaking populations. Some other interpretations state that a further distinction is implied, considering only some groups to be \"national minorities\". Regardless of the ambiguous phrasing, all the twelve groups are technically supposed to be allowed the same measures of protection; furthermore, the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, signed and ratified by Italy in 1997, applies to all the twelve groups mentioned by the 1999 national law, therefore including the Friulians, the Sardinians, the Occitans, the Ladins etc., with the addition of the Romani.\nIn actual practice, not each of the twelve historical linguistic minorities is given the same consideration. All of them still bear strong social pressure to assimilate to Italian, and some of them do not even have a widely acknowledged standard to be used for official purposes. In fact, the discrimination lay in the urgent need to award the highest degree of protection only to the French-speaking minority in the Aosta Valley and the German one in South Tyrol, owing to international treaties. For example, the institutional websites are only in Italian with a few exceptions, like a French version of the Italian Chamber of Deputies. A bill proposed by former prime minister Mario Monti's cabinet formally introduced a differential treatment between the twelve historical linguistic minorities, distinguishing between those with a \"foreign mother tongue\" (the groups protected by agreements with Austria, France and Slovenia) and those with a \"peculiar dialect\" (all the others). The bill was later implemented, but deemed unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court.\nRecognition at the European level.\nItaly is a signatory of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, but has not ratified the treaty, and therefore its provisions protecting regional languages do not apply in the country.\nThe Charter does not, however, establish at what point differences in expression result in a separate language, deeming it an \"often controversial issue\", and citing the necessity to take into account, other than purely linguistic criteria, also \"psychological, sociological and political considerations\".\nConservation status.\nAccording to the UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, there are 31 endangered languages in Italy. The degree of endangerment is classified in different categories ranging from 'safe' (safe languages are not included in the atlas) to 'extinct' (when there are no speakers left).\nThe source for the languages' distribution is the Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger unless otherwise stated, and refers to Italy exclusively.\nClassification.\nAll living languages indigenous to Italy are part of the Indo-European language family.\nThey can be divided into Romance languages and non-Romance languages. The classification of the Romance languages of Italy is controversial, and listed here are two of the generally accepted classification systems.\nRomance languages.\nLoporcaro proposes a classification of Romance languages of Italy based on Pellegrini, who groups different Romance languages according to areal and some typological features. The following five linguistic areas can be identified:\nThe following classification is proposed by Maiden:\nGeographic distribution.\nNorthern Italy.\nThe Northern Italian languages are conventionally defined as those Romance languages spoken north of the La Spezia\u2013Rimini Line, which runs through the northern Apennine Mountains just to the north of Tuscany; however, the dialects of Occitan and Franco-Proven\u00e7al spoken in the extreme northwest of Italy (e.g. the Vald\u00f4tain in the Aosta Valley) are generally excluded. The classification of these languages is difficult and not agreed-upon, due both to the variations among the languages and to the fact that they share isoglosses of various sorts with both the Italo-Romance languages to the south and the Gallo-Romance languages to the northwest.\nAlemannic\nAlpine<br>Proven\u00e7al\nBavarian\nCimbrian\nEmilian-Romagnol\nFrancoproven\u00e7al\nFriulian\nLadin\nLigurian\nLombard\nM\u00f3cheno\nPiedmontese\nResian\nT\u00f6itschu\nVenetian\nOne common classification divides these languages into four groups:\nAny such classification runs into the basic problem that there is a dialect continuum throughout northern Italy, with a continuous transition of spoken dialects between e.g. Venetian and Ladin, or Venetian and Emilio-Romagnolo (usually considered Gallo-Italian).\nAll of these languages are considered innovative relative to the Romance languages as a whole, with some of the Gallo-Italian languages having phonological changes nearly as extreme as standard French (usually considered the most phonologically innovative of the Romance languages). This distinguishes them significantly from standard Italian, which is extremely conservative in its phonology (and notably conservative in its morphology).\nSouthern Italy and islands.\nApproximate distribution of the regional languages of Sardinia and Southern Italy according to the UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger:\nCorsican\nGallurese\nSassarese\nCatalan <br>\nSardinian <br>\nSardinian <br>\nMolise<br>Croatian\nFranco-Proven\u00e7al <br>\nAlbanian <br>\nSouthern Italian\nGriko<br>\nGriko<br>\nGardiol\nGallo-Italic\nSicilian\nOne common classification divides these languages into two groups:\nAll of these languages are considered conservative relative to the Romance languages as a whole, with Sardinian being the most conservative of them all.\nStandardised written forms.\nAlthough \"[al]most all Italian dialects were being written in the Middle Ages, for administrative, religious, and often artistic purposes\", use of local language gave way to stylized Tuscan, eventually labeled Italian. Local languages are still occasionally written, but only the following regional languages of Italy have a standardised written form. This may be widely accepted or used alongside more traditional written forms:\nNotes and references.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "5171132": "Ottoman Tripolitania\nSemi-autonomous state affiliated with the Ottoman Empire (1551\u20131912)\nOttoman Tripolitania, also known as the Regency of Tripoli, was officially ruled by the Ottoman Empire from 1551 to 1912. It corresponded roughly to the northern parts of modern-day Libya in historic Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. It was initially established as an Ottoman province ruled by a pasha (governor) in Tripoli who was appointed from Constantinople, though in practice it was semi-autonomous due to the power of the local Janissaries. From 1711 to 1835, the Karamanli dynasty ruled the province as a \"de facto\" hereditary monarchy while remaining under nominal Ottoman suzerainty. In 1835, the Ottomans reestablished direct control over the region until its annexation by Italy in 1912.\nLike the Ottoman regencies in Tunis and Algiers, the Regency of Tripoli was a major base for the privateering activities of the North African corsairs, who also provided revenues for Tripoli. A remnant of the centuries of Turkish rule is the presence of a population of Turkish origin, and those of partial Turkish origin, the \"Kouloughlis\".\nHistory.\nOttoman conquest.\nBy the beginning of the 16th\u00a0century the Libyan coast had minimal central authority and its harbours were havens for unchecked bands of pirates. The Spaniards occupied Tripoli in 1510, but the Spaniards were more concerned with controlling the port than with the inconveniences of administering a colony. In 1530 the city, along with Malta and Gozo, was ceded by Charles\u00a0I of Spain to the Knights of St\u00a0John as compensation for their recent expulsion from the island of Rhodes at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. Christian rule lasted then until 1551, when Tripoli was besieged and conquered by famed Ottoman admirals Sinan Pasha and Turgut Reis. Declared as Bey and later Pasha of Tripoli, Turgut Reis received submission from the tribes of the interior and several cities like Misrata, Zuwara, Gharyan, and Gafsa in the next decade. These efforts contributed to cement the foundations of a statal structure in what is today Libya, but control from Constantinople remained loose at best, much like in the rest of the Barbary Coast of North Africa.\nUnder the Ottomans, the Maghreb was divided into three provinces, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. After 1565, administrative authority in Tripoli was vested in a Pasha directly appointed by the Sultan in Constantinople. The sultan supported the pasha with a corps of janissaries who he was dependent upon, which was in turn divided into a number of companies under the command of a junior officer or \"bey\". The janissaries quickly became the dominant force in Ottoman Libya and were also in charge of collecting taxes; however, Barbary corsairs were the ones who steadily provided income to Tripoli from privateering activities. As a self-governing military guild answerable only to their own laws and protected by a \"divan\" (a council of senior officers who advised the pasha), the janissaries soon reduced the pasha to a largely ceremonial role.\nIn 1611, the local chiefs of the area conducted a coup d'\u00e9tat and successfully appointed Suleiman Safar, their own leader, as \"dey\" (local chief). As a result, his successors continually held the title and even occasionally identified as pasha. As Pasha of Tripoli, Osman Saqizli managed to maintain political stability during the 1650s and 1660s. However, by the 1670s, the position of the dey experienced the succession of eight different leaders, leading to instability.260\nThomas Baker, an English consul stationed in Tripoli from 1679 to 1686, described a turbulent government, a dwindling treasury and an economy heavily reliant on piracy. Tripoli's fleet was the smallest among the Barbary States, with only 13 vessels compared to 20 in Tunis and 40 in Algiers.259 Besides piracy, the region's inland areas, consisting of ravines, mountains and inhospitable desert, forced a reliance on exports of salt, coastal slave raiding in Calabria and Morea, and tribute from the interior tribes. The 1676 peace treaty between Tripoli and English shipping had shifted most pirate activity towards the French, leading to French demands for peace in 1681. Driven by financial desperation, Tripoli violated these terms a year later by seizing a French merchant ship. The following dispute saw the French mortar-bombing Tripoli into submission in 1686.\nKaramanli dynasty and the Barbary Wars.\nDuring the 18th century, Ottoman power waned in North Africa, with the sultans ending the practice of sending pashas to Tripoli, Algiers and Tunis. The title of pasha began to assume its hereditary status.\nIn 1711, Ahmed Karamanli, an Ottoman cavalry officer and son of a Turkish officer and Libyan woman, seized power and founded the Karamanli dynasty, which would last 124 years. The 1790\u201395 Tripolitanian civil war occurred in those years.\nIn May 1801, Pasha Yusuf Karamanli demanded from the United States an increase in the tribute ($83,000) which it had paid since 1796 for the protection of their commerce and enslavement of crews by barbary pirates when the Treaty of Tripoli was signed. The demand was refused by third American President Thomas Jefferson, an American naval force was sent and blockaded Tripoli, and the desultory First Barbary War dragged on from 1801 until 3 June 1805. The Regency of Tripoli was defeated by the newly revived United States Navy.\nThe Second Barbary War (1815, also known as the Algerian War) was the second of the two wars fought between the United States and the Ottoman Turks' North African regencies of Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis, known collectively as the Barbary States.\nOn 5 September 1817, Yusuf Karamanli invited the leaders of the Libyan tribe of Al-Jawazi to his castle in Benghazi, following a dispute regarding tribute and an uprising against his rule. Consequently, the Pasha ordered the execution of all attendees, and chased down the other tribe members, which resulted in the massacre of at least 10,000 people, who eventually sought refuge in neighboring countries, especially Egypt. This was known as the Al-Jawazi massacre.\nReassertion of Ottoman authority.\nIn 1835 the government of Sultan Mahmud\u00a0II took advantage of local disturbances to reassert their direct authority. As decentralized Ottoman power had resulted in the virtual independence of Egypt as well as Tripoli, the coast and desert lying between them relapsed to anarchy, even after direct Ottoman control was resumed in Tripoli. The indigenous Senusiyya (or Sanusi) Movement, led by Islamic cleric Muhammad ibn Ali al-Sanusi, called on the countryside to resist Ottoman rule. The Grand Senussi established his headquarters in the oasis town of Jaghbub while his \"ikhwan\" (brothers) set up \"zawiyas\" (religious colleges or monasteries) across North Africa and brought some stability to regions not known for their submission to central authority. In line with the expressed instruction of the Grand Sanusi, these gains were made largely without any coercion.\nIt was one of the first Ottoman provinces to be reclassified from an eyalet to a vilayet after an administrative reform in 1865, and by 1867 it had been reformed into the Tripolitania Vilayet.\nThe Ottoman sultan Abdulhamid II twice sent his aide-de-camp Azmzade Sadik El Mueyyed to meet Sheikh Sanusi to cultivate positive relations and counter the West European scramble for Africa.\nThe highpoint of the Sanusi influence came in the 1880s under the Grand Senussi's son, Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi. With 146\u00a0lodges spanning the entire Sahara, he moved the Senussi capital to Kufra.\nOver a 75\u2011year period, the Ottoman Turks provided 33\u00a0governors and Libya remained part of the empire until Italy invaded for the second time in 1911.\nItalo-Turkish War.\nThe Italo-Turkish War was fought between the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Italy from September 29, 1911, to October 18, 1912.\nAs a result of this conflict, the Ottoman Turks ceded the provinces of Tripolitania, Fezzan, and Cyrenaica to Italy. These provinces together formed what became known as Libya.\nAdministrative divisions.\nBy the 19th century, the province of Tripoli, known officially as \"Tarablus al-Gharb\" ('Tripoli of the West') was organized into five \"sanjak\"s (districts):\nThese district names were reported by James Henry Skene in 1851 and five districts of the same name existed after the reforms of the 1860s that transformed the province officially into a \"vilayet\" (or in Arabic). Among these, Cyrenaica was made an independent \"sanjak\" in 1863 that was directly dependent on Istanbul, then it was assigned to Tripoli's supervision in 1871, and finally it was attached to Istanbul again in 1888.", "30997172": "Al-Berka\nAl-Berka (Arabic:\u0627\u0644\u0628\u0631\u0643\u0629) is a Basic People's Congress administrative division of Benghazi, Libya. As of the 2011 Libyan revolution, the area is simply known as a district of Benghazi after the Gaddafi era Basic People's Congresses were disbanded. \nHistory.\nAl-Berka is one of the oldest districts in Benghazi and has buildings which attest to both its Ottoman and Italian era routes. One such example is the Hadiya mosque built in the early 20th century.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4721": "British Empire\nTerritory ruled by the United Kingdom\nThe British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and colonisation attempts by Scotland during the 17th century. At its height in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it became the largest empire in history and, for a century, was the foremost global power. By 1913, the British Empire held sway over 412\u00a0million people, of the world population at the time, and by 1920, it covered , of the Earth's total land area. As a result, its constitutional, legal, linguistic, and cultural legacy is widespread. At the peak of its power, it was described as \"the empire on which the sun never sets\", as the sun was always shining on at least one of its territories.\nDuring the Age of Discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal and Spain pioneered European exploration of the globe, and in the process established large overseas empires. Envious of the great wealth these empires generated, England, France, and the Netherlands began to establish colonies and trade networks of their own in the Americas and Asia. A series of wars in the 17th and 18th centuries with the Netherlands and France left Britain the dominant colonial power in North America. Britain became a major power in the Indian subcontinent after the East India Company's conquest of Mughal Bengal at the Battle of Plassey in 1757.\nThe American War of Independence resulted in Britain losing some of its oldest and most populous colonies in North America by 1783. While retaining control of British North America (now Canada) and territories in and near the Caribbean in the British West Indies, British colonial expansion turned towards Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. After the defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars (1803\u20131815), Britain emerged as the principal naval and imperial power of the 19th century and expanded its imperial holdings. It pursued trade concessions in China and Japan, and territory in Southeast Asia. The Great Game and Scramble for Africa also ensued. The period of relative peace (1815\u20131914) during which the British Empire became the global hegemon was later described as (Latin for \"British Peace\"). Alongside the formal control that Britain exerted over its colonies, its dominance of much of world trade, and of its oceans, meant that it effectively controlled the economies of, and readily enforced its interests in, many regions, such as Asia and Latin America. It also came to dominate the Middle East. Increasing degrees of autonomy were granted to its white settler colonies, some of which were formally reclassified as Dominions by the 1920s. By the start of the 20th century, Germany and the United States had begun to challenge Britain's economic lead. Military, economic and colonial tensions between Britain and Germany were major causes of the First World War, during which Britain relied heavily on its empire. The conflict placed enormous strain on its military, financial, and manpower resources. Although the empire achieved its largest territorial extent immediately after the First World War, Britain was no longer the world's preeminent industrial or military power.\nIn the Second World War, Britain's colonies in East Asia and Southeast Asia were occupied by the Empire of Japan. Despite the final victory of Britain and its allies, the damage to British prestige and the British economy helped accelerate the decline of the empire. India, Britain's most valuable and populous possession, achieved independence in 1947 as part of a larger decolonisation movement, in which Britain granted independence to most territories of the empire. The Suez Crisis of 1956 confirmed Britain's decline as a global power, and the handover of Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997 symbolised for many the end of the British Empire, though fourteen overseas territories that are remnants of the empire remain under British sovereignty. After independence, many former British colonies, along with most of the dominions, joined the Commonwealth of Nations, a free association of independent states. Fifteen of these, including the United Kingdom, retain the same person as monarch, currently King Charles III.\nOrigins (1497\u20131583).\nThe foundations of the British Empire were laid when England and Scotland were separate kingdoms. In 1496, King Henry VII of England, following the successes of Spain and Portugal in overseas exploration, commissioned John Cabot to lead an expedition to discover a northwest passage to Asia via the North Atlantic. Cabot sailed in 1497, five years after the first voyage of Christopher Columbus, and made landfall on the coast of Newfoundland. He believed he had reached Asia, and there was no attempt to found a colony. Cabot led another voyage to the Americas the following year but did not return; it is unknown what happened to his ships.\nNo further attempts to establish English colonies in the Americas were made until well into the reign of Queen Elizabeth\u00a0I, during the last decades of the 16th century. In the meantime, Henry VIII's 1533 Statute in Restraint of Appeals had declared \"that this realm of England is an Empire\". The Protestant Reformation turned England and Catholic Spain into implacable enemies. In 1562, Elizabeth\u00a0I encouraged the privateers John Hawkins and Francis Drake to engage in slave-raiding attacks against Spanish and Portuguese ships off the coast of West Africa with the aim of establishing an Atlantic slave trade. This effort was rebuffed and later, as the Anglo-Spanish Wars intensified, Elizabeth\u00a0I gave her blessing to further privateering raids against Spanish ports in the Americas and shipping that was returning across the Atlantic, laden with treasure from the New World. At the same time, influential writers such as Richard Hakluyt and John Dee (who was the first to use the term \"British Empire\") were beginning to press for the establishment of England's own empire. By this time, Spain had become the dominant power in the Americas and was exploring the Pacific Ocean, Portugal had established trading posts and forts from the coasts of Africa and Brazil to China, and France had begun to settle the Saint Lawrence River area, later to become New France.\nAlthough England tended to trail behind Portugal, Spain, and France in establishing overseas colonies, it carried out its first modern colonisation, referred to as the Munster Plantations, in 16th century Ireland by settling it with English and Welsh Protestant settlers. England had already colonised part of the country following the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169. Several people who helped establish the Munster plantations later played a part in the early colonisation of North America, particularly a group known as the West Country Men.\nEnglish overseas possessions (1583\u20131707).\nIn 1578, Elizabeth I granted a patent to Humphrey Gilbert for discovery and overseas exploration. That year, Gilbert sailed for the Caribbean with the intention of engaging in piracy and establishing a colony in North America, but the expedition was aborted before it had crossed the Atlantic. In 1583, he embarked on a second attempt. On this occasion, he formally claimed the harbour of the island of Newfoundland, although no settlers were left behind. Gilbert did not survive the return journey to England and was succeeded by his half-brother, Walter Raleigh, who was granted his own patent by Elizabeth in 1584. Later that year, Raleigh founded the Roanoke Colony on the coast of present-day North Carolina, but lack of supplies caused the colony to fail.\nIn 1603, James VI of Scotland ascended (as James I) to the English throne and in 1604 negotiated the Treaty of London, ending hostilities with Spain. Now at peace with its main rival, English attention shifted from preying on other nations' colonial infrastructures to the business of establishing its own overseas colonies. The British Empire began to take shape during the early 17th century, with the English settlement of North America and the smaller islands of the Caribbean, and the establishment of joint-stock companies, most notably the East India Company, to administer colonies and overseas trade. This period, until the loss of the Thirteen Colonies after the American War of Independence towards the end of the 18th century, has been referred to by some historians as the \"First British Empire\".\nAmericas, Africa and the slave trade.\nEngland's early efforts at colonisation in the Americas met with mixed success. An attempt to establish a colony in Guiana in 1604 lasted only two years and failed in its main objective to find gold deposits. Colonies on the Caribbean islands of St Lucia\u00a0(1605) and Grenada\u00a0(1609) rapidly folded. The first permanent English settlement in the Americas was founded in 1607 in Jamestown by Captain John Smith, and managed by the Virginia Company; the Crown took direct control of the venture in 1624, thereby founding the Colony of Virginia. Bermuda was settled and claimed by England as a result of the 1609 shipwreck of the Virginia Company's flagship, while attempts to settle Newfoundland were largely unsuccessful. In 1620, Plymouth was founded as a haven by Puritan religious separatists, later known as the Pilgrims. Fleeing from religious persecution would become the motive for many English would-be colonists to risk the arduous trans-Atlantic voyage: Maryland was established by English Roman Catholics\u00a0(1634), Rhode Island\u00a0(1636) as a colony tolerant of all religions and Connecticut\u00a0(1639) for Congregationalists. England's North American holdings were further expanded by the annexation of the Dutch colony of New Netherland in 1664, following the capture of New Amsterdam, which was renamed New York. Although less financially successful than colonies in the Caribbean, these territories had large areas of good agricultural land and attracted far greater numbers of English emigrants, who preferred their temperate climates.\nThe British West Indies initially provided England's most important and lucrative colonies. Settlements were successfully established in St. Kitts\u00a0(1624), Barbados\u00a0(1627) and Nevis\u00a0(1628), but struggled until the \"Sugar Revolution\" transformed the Caribbean economy in the mid-17th century. Large sugarcane plantations were first established in the 1640s on Barbados, with assistance from Dutch merchants and Sephardic Jews fleeing Portuguese Brazil. At first, sugar was grown primarily using white indentured labour, but rising costs soon led English traders to embrace the use of imported African slaves. The enormous wealth generated by slave-produced sugar made Barbados the most successful colony in the Americas, and one of the most densely populated places in the world. This boom led to the spread of sugar cultivation across the Caribbean, financed the development of non-plantation colonies in North America, and accelerated the growth of the Atlantic slave trade, particularly the triangular trade of slaves, sugar and provisions between Africa, the West Indies and Europe.\nTo ensure that the increasingly healthy profits of colonial trade remained in English hands, Parliament decreed in 1651 that only English ships would be able to ply their trade in English colonies. This led to hostilities with the United Dutch Provinces\u2014a series of Anglo-Dutch Wars\u2014which would eventually strengthen England's position in the Americas at the expense of the Dutch. In 1655, England annexed the island of Jamaica from the Spanish, and in 1666 succeeded in colonising the Bahamas.\nIn 1670, Charles II incorporated by royal charter the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), granting it a monopoly on the fur trade in the area known as Rupert's Land, which would later form a large proportion of the Dominion of Canada. Forts and trading posts established by the HBC were frequently the subject of attacks by the French, who had established their own fur trading colony in adjacent New France.\nTwo years later, the Royal African Company was granted a monopoly on the supply of slaves to the British colonies in the Caribbean. The company would transport more slaves across the Atlantic than any other, and significantly grew England's share of the trade, from 33 per cent in 1673 to 74 per cent in 1683. The removal of this monopoly between 1688 and 1712 allowed independent British slave traders to thrive, leading to a rapid escalation in the number of slaves transported. British ships carried a third of all slaves shipped across the Atlantic\u2014approximately 3.5\u00a0million Africans\u2014until the abolition of the trade by Parliament in 1807 (see ). To facilitate the shipment of slaves, forts were established on the coast of West Africa, such as James Island, Accra and Bunce Island. In the British Caribbean, the percentage of the population of African descent rose from 25 per cent in 1650 to around 80 per cent in 1780, and in the Thirteen Colonies from 10 per cent to 40 per cent over the same period (the majority in the southern colonies). The transatlantic slave trade played a pervasive role in British economic life, and became a major economic mainstay for western port cities. Ships registered in Bristol, Liverpool and London were responsible for the bulk of British slave trading. For the transported, harsh and unhygienic conditions on the slaving ships and poor diets meant that the average mortality rate during the Middle Passage was one in seven.\nRivalry with other European empires.\nAt the end of the 16th century, England and the Dutch Empire began to challenge the Portuguese Empire's monopoly of trade with Asia, forming private joint-stock companies to finance the voyages\u2014the English, later British, East India Company and the Dutch East India Company, chartered in 1600 and 1602 respectively. The primary aim of these companies was to tap into the lucrative spice trade, an effort focused mainly on two regions: the East Indies archipelago, and an important hub in the trade network, India. There, they competed for trade supremacy with Portugal and with each other. Although England eclipsed the Netherlands as a colonial power, in the short term the Netherlands' more advanced financial system and the three Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th century left it with a stronger position in Asia. Hostilities ceased after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when the Dutch William of Orange ascended the English throne, bringing peace between the Dutch Republic and England. A deal between the two nations left the spice trade of the East Indies archipelago to the Netherlands and the textiles industry of India to England, but textiles soon overtook spices in terms of profitability.\nPeace between England and the Netherlands in 1688 meant the two countries entered the Nine Years' War as allies, but the conflict\u2014waged in Europe and overseas between France, Spain and the Anglo-Dutch alliance\u2014left the English a stronger colonial power than the Dutch, who were forced to devote a larger proportion of their military budget to the costly land war in Europe. The death of Charles II of Spain in 1700 and his bequeathal of Spain and its colonial empire to Philip V of Spain, a grandson of the King of France, raised the prospect of the unification of France, Spain and their respective colonies, an unacceptable state of affairs for England and the other powers of Europe. In 1701, England, Portugal and the Netherlands sided with the Holy Roman Empire against Spain and France in the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted for thirteen years.\nColonies and territories of Scotland (1629\u20131707).\nColonisation attempts by the Kingdom of Scotland predates the establishment of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and the British Empire. During the 17th century, the Kingdom of Scotland made attempts to establish trading schemes in Ireland and Canada. Nova Scotia, today a province of Canada, was a short lived scheme in the Mi'kmaq people territory. Additionally, there was a high number of Scots in Ireland, particularly in the region of Ulster, who settled there as planters.\nNorth America.\nThe first documented Scottish settlement in the Americas was of Nova Scotia in 1629. On 29 September 1621, the charter for the foundation of a colony was granted by James VI of Scotland to Sir William Alexander. Between 1622 and 1628, Sir William launched four attempts to send colonists to Nova Scotia; all failed for various reasons. A successful settlement of Nova Scotia was finally achieved in 1629. The colony's charter, in law, made Nova Scotia (defined as all land between Newfoundland and New England; i.e., The Maritimes) a part of mainland Scotland; this was later used to get around the English navigation acts.\nAs a country, Scotland engaged in two ventures in an attempt to establish colonies within English colonies during the 1680s in Carolina and East New Jersey. The attempt to establish themselves in Carolina was largely in part due to Scottish Presbyterians fleeing from the threat of religious persecution in Scotland, and were assisted in their efforts by Scottish merchants who were aiming to develop transatlantic trade which was not subjected to the English Navigation Acts. The Act restricted Scottish trade with English colonies. Scottish settlement attempts in Carolina began in 1682, and was eventually defeated by the dissolution of the Scottish settlement of Stewartstoun, which was established in 1684, by the Spanish in 1686.\nSouth America.\nIn 1695, the Parliament of Scotland granted a charter to the Company of Scotland, which established a settlement in 1698 on the Isthmus of Panama. Besieged by neighbouring Spanish colonists of New Granada, and affected by malaria, the colony was abandoned two years later. The Darien scheme was a financial disaster for Scotland: a quarter of Scottish capital was lost in the enterprise. The episode had major political consequences, helping to persuade the government of the Kingdom of Scotland of the merits of turning the personal union with England into a political and economic one under the Kingdom of Great Britain established by the Acts of Union 1707.\nBritish Empire (1707\u20131783).\nThe 18th century saw the newly united Great Britain rise to be the world's dominant colonial power, with France becoming its main rival on the imperial stage. Great Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and the Holy Roman Empire continued the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted until 1714 and was concluded by the Treaty of Utrecht. Philip V of Spain renounced his and his descendants' claim to the French throne, and Spain lost its empire in Europe. The British Empire was territorially enlarged: from France, Britain gained Newfoundland and Acadia, and from Spain, Gibraltar and Menorca. Gibraltar became a critical naval base and allowed Britain to control the Atlantic entry and exit point to the Mediterranean. Spain ceded the rights to the lucrative \"asiento\" (permission to sell African slaves in Spanish America) to Britain. With the outbreak of the Anglo-Spanish War of Jenkins' Ear in 1739, Spanish privateers attacked British merchant shipping along the Triangle Trade routes. In 1746, the Spanish and British began peace talks, with the King of Spain agreeing to stop all attacks on British shipping; however, in the 1750 Treaty of Madrid Britain lost its slave-trading rights in Latin America.\nIn the East Indies, British and Dutch merchants continued to compete in spices and textiles. With textiles becoming the larger trade, by 1720, in terms of sales, the British company had overtaken the Dutch. During the middle decades of the 18th century, there were several outbreaks of military conflict on the Indian subcontinent, as the English East India Company and its French counterpart, struggled alongside local rulers to fill the vacuum that had been left by the decline of the Mughal Empire. The Battle of Plassey in 1757, in which the British defeated the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies, left the British East India Company in control of Bengal and as a major military and political power in India. France was left control of its enclaves but with military restrictions and an obligation to support British client states, ending French hopes of controlling India. In the following decades the British East India Company gradually increased the size of the territories under its control, either ruling directly or via local rulers under the threat of force from the Presidency Armies, the vast majority of which was composed of Indian sepoys, led by British officers. The British and French struggles in India became but one theatre of the global Seven Years' War (1756\u20131763) involving France, Britain, and the other major European powers.\nThe signing of the Treaty of Paris of 1763 had important consequences for the future of the British Empire. In North America, France's future as a colonial power effectively ended with the recognition of British claims to Rupert's Land, and the ceding of New France to Britain (leaving a sizeable French-speaking population under British control) and Louisiana to Spain. Spain ceded Florida to Britain. Along with its victory over France in India, the Seven Years' War therefore left Britain as the world's most powerful maritime power.\nLoss of the Thirteen American Colonies.\nDuring the 1760s and early 1770s, relations between the Thirteen Colonies and Britain became increasingly strained, primarily because of resentment of the British Parliament's attempts to govern and tax American colonists without their consent. This was summarised at the time by the colonists' slogan \"No taxation without representation\", a perceived violation of the guaranteed Rights of Englishmen. The American Revolution began with a rejection of Parliamentary authority and moves towards self-government. In response, Britain sent troops to reimpose direct rule, leading to the outbreak of war in 1775. The following year, in 1776, the Second Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence proclaiming the colonies' sovereignty from the British Empire as the new United States of America. The entry of French and Spanish forces into the war tipped the military balance in the Americans' favour and after a decisive defeat at Yorktown in 1781, Britain began negotiating peace terms. American independence was acknowledged at the Peace of Paris in 1783.\nThe loss of such a large portion of British America, at the time Britain's most populous overseas possession, is seen by some historians as the event defining the transition between the first and second empires, in which Britain shifted its attention away from the Americas to Asia, the Pacific and later Africa. Adam Smith's \"Wealth of Nations\", published in 1776, had argued that colonies were redundant, and that free trade should replace the old mercantilist policies that had characterised the first period of colonial expansion, dating back to the protectionism of Spain and Portugal. The growth of trade between the newly independent United States and Britain after 1783 seemed to confirm Smith's view that political control was not necessary for economic success.\nThe war to the south influenced British policy in Canada, where between 40,000 and 100,000 defeated Loyalists had migrated from the new United States following independence. The 14,000 Loyalists who went to the Saint John and Saint Croix river valleys, then part of Nova Scotia, felt too far removed from the provincial government in Halifax, so London split off New Brunswick as a separate colony in 1784. The Constitutional Act 1791 created the provinces of Upper Canada (mainly English speaking) and Lower Canada (mainly French-speaking) to defuse tensions between the French and British communities, and implemented governmental systems similar to those employed in Britain, with the intention of asserting imperial authority and not allowing the sort of popular control of government that was perceived to have led to the American Revolution.\nTensions between Britain and the United States escalated again during the Napoleonic Wars, as Britain tried to cut off American trade with France and boarded American ships to impress men into the Royal Navy. The United States Congress declared war, the War of 1812, and invaded Canadian territory. In response, Britain invaded the US, but the pre-war boundaries were reaffirmed by the 1814 Treaty of Ghent, ensuring Canada's future would be separate from that of the United States.\nBritish Empire (1783\u20131815).\nExploration of the Pacific.\nSince 1718, transportation to the American colonies had been a penalty for various offences in Britain, with approximately one thousand convicts transported per year. Forced to find an alternative location after the loss of the Thirteen Colonies in 1783, the British government looked for an alternative, eventually turning to Australia. On his first of three voyages commissioned by the government, James Cook reached New Zealand in October 1769. He was the first European to circumnavigate and map the country. From the late 18th century, the country was regularly visited by explorers and other sailors, missionaries, traders and adventurers but no attempt was made to settle the country or establish possession. The coast of Australia had been discovered for Europeans by the Dutch in 1606, but there was no attempt to colonise it. In 1770, after leaving New Zealand, James Cook charted the eastern coast, claimed the continent for Britain, and named it New South Wales. In 1778, Joseph Banks, Cook's botanist on the voyage, presented evidence to the government on the suitability of Botany Bay for the establishment of a penal settlement, and in 1787 the first shipment of convicts set sail, arriving in 1788. Unusually, Australia was claimed through proclamation. Indigenous Australians were considered too uncivilised to require treaties, and colonisation brought disease and violence that together with the deliberate dispossession of land and culture were devastating to these peoples. Britain continued to transport convicts to New South Wales until 1840, to Tasmania until 1853 and to Western Australia until 1868. The Australian colonies became profitable exporters of wool and gold, mainly because of the Victorian gold rush, making its capital Melbourne for a time the richest city in the world.\nThe British also expanded their mercantile interests in the North Pacific. Spain and Britain had become rivals in the area, culminating in the Nootka Crisis in 1789. Both sides mobilised for war, but when France refused to support Spain it was forced to back down, leading to the Nootka Convention. The outcome was a humiliation for Spain, which practically renounced all sovereignty on the North Pacific coast. This opened the way to British expansion in the area, and a number of expeditions took place; firstly a naval expedition led by George Vancouver which explored the inlets around the Pacific North West, particularly around Vancouver Island. On land, expeditions sought to discover a river route to the Pacific for the extension of the North American fur trade. Alexander Mackenzie of the North West Company led the first, starting out in 1792, and a year later he became the first European to reach the Pacific overland north of the Rio Grande, reaching the ocean near present-day Bella Coola. This preceded the Lewis and Clark Expedition by twelve years. Shortly thereafter, Mackenzie's companion, John Finlay, founded the first permanent European settlement in British Columbia, Fort St. John. The North West Company sought further exploration and backed expeditions by David Thompson, starting in 1797, and later by Simon Fraser. These pushed into the wilderness territories of the Rocky Mountains and Interior Plateau to the Strait of Georgia on the Pacific Coast, expanding British North America westward.\nContinued conquest in India.\nThe East India Company fought a series of Anglo-Mysore wars in Southern India with the Sultanate of Mysore under Hyder Ali and then Tipu Sultan. Defeats in the First Anglo-Mysore war and stalemate in the Second were followed by victories in the Third and the Fourth. Following Tipu Sultan's death in the fourth war in the Siege of Seringapatam (1799), the kingdom became a protectorate of the company.\nThe East India Company fought three Anglo-Maratha Wars with the Maratha Confederacy. The First Anglo-Maratha War ended in 1782 with a restoration of the pre-war \"status quo\". The Second and Third Anglo-Maratha wars resulted in British victories. After the surrender of Peshwa Bajirao II on 1818, the East India Company acquired control of a large majority of the Indian subcontinent.\nWars with France.\nBritain was challenged again by France under Napoleon, in a struggle that, unlike previous wars, represented a contest of ideologies between the two nations. It was not only Britain's position on the world stage that was at risk: Napoleon threatened to invade Britain itself, just as his armies had overrun many countries of continental Europe.\nThe Napoleonic Wars were therefore ones in which Britain invested large amounts of capital and resources to win. French ports were blockaded by the Royal Navy, which won a decisive victory over a French Imperial Navy-Spanish Navy fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Overseas colonies were attacked and occupied, including those of the Netherlands, which was annexed by Napoleon in 1810. France was finally defeated by a coalition of European armies in 1815. Britain was again the beneficiary of peace treaties: France ceded the Ionian Islands, Malta (which it had occupied in 1798), Mauritius, St Lucia, the Seychelles, and Tobago; Spain ceded Trinidad; the Netherlands ceded Guiana, Ceylon and the Cape Colony, while the Danish ceded Heligoland. Britain returned Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, and R\u00e9union to France; Menorca to Spain; Danish West Indies to Denmark and Java and Suriname to the Netherlands.\nAbolition of slavery.\nWith the advent of the Industrial Revolution, goods produced by slavery became less important to the British economy. Added to this was the cost of suppressing regular slave rebellions. With support from the British abolitionist movement, Parliament enacted the Slave Trade Act in 1807, which abolished the slave trade in the empire. In 1808, Sierra Leone Colony was designated an official British colony for freed slaves. Parliamentary reform in 1832 saw the influence of the West India Committee decline. The Slavery Abolition Act, passed the following year, abolished slavery in the British Empire on 1 August 1834, finally bringing the empire into line with the law in the UK (with the exception of the territories administered by the East India Company and Ceylon, where slavery was ended in 1844). Under the Act, slaves were granted full emancipation after a period of four to six years of \"apprenticeship\". Facing further opposition from abolitionists, the apprenticeship system was abolished in 1838. The British government compensated slave-owners.\nBritain's imperial century (1815\u20131914).\nBetween 1815 and 1914, a period referred to as Britain's \"imperial century\" by some historians, around of territory and roughly 400\u00a0million people were added to the British Empire. Victory over Napoleon left Britain without any serious international rival, other than Russia in Central Asia. Unchallenged at sea, Britain adopted the role of global policeman, a state of affairs later known as the \"Pax Britannica\", and a foreign policy of \"splendid isolation\". Alongside the formal control it exerted over its own colonies, Britain's dominant position in world trade meant that it effectively controlled the economies of many countries, such as China, Argentina and Siam, which has been described by some historians as an \"Informal Empire\".\nBritish imperial strength was underpinned by the steamship and the telegraph, new technologies invented in the second half of the 19th century, allowing it to control and defend the empire. By 1902, the British Empire was linked together by a network of telegraph cables, called the All Red Line.\nEast India Company rule and the British Raj in India.\nThe East India Company drove the expansion of the British Empire in Asia. The company's army had first joined forces with the Royal Navy during the Seven Years' War, and the two continued to co-operate in arenas outside India: the eviction of the French from Egypt (1799), the capture of Java from the Netherlands (1811), the acquisition of Penang Island (1786), Singapore (1819) and Malacca (1824), and the defeat of Burma (1826).\nFrom its base in India, the company had been engaged in an increasingly profitable opium export trade to Qing China since the 1730s. This trade, illegal since it was outlawed by China in 1729, helped reverse the trade imbalances resulting from the British imports of tea, which saw large outflows of silver from Britain to China. In 1839, the confiscation by the Chinese authorities at Canton of 20,000 chests of opium led Britain to attack China in the First Opium War, and resulted in the seizure by Britain of Hong Kong Island, at that time a minor settlement, and other treaty ports including Shanghai.\nDuring the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the British Crown began to assume an increasingly large role in the affairs of the company. A series of acts of Parliament were passed, including the Regulating Act 1773, East India Company Act 1784 and the Charter Act 1813 which regulated the company's affairs and established the sovereignty of the Crown over the territories that it had acquired. The company's eventual end was precipitated by the Indian Rebellion in 1857, a conflict that had begun with the mutiny of sepoys, Indian troops under British officers and discipline. The rebellion took six months to suppress, with heavy loss of life on both sides. The following year the British government dissolved the company and assumed direct control over India through the Government of India Act 1858, establishing the British Raj, where an appointed governor-general administered India and Queen Victoria was crowned the Empress of India. India became the empire's most valuable possession, \"the Jewel in the Crown\", and was the most important source of Britain's strength.\nA series of serious crop failures in the late 19th century led to widespread famines on the subcontinent in which it is estimated that over 15\u00a0million people died. The East India Company had failed to implement any coordinated policy to deal with the famines during its period of rule. Later, under direct British rule, commissions were set up after each famine to investigate the causes and implement new policies, which took until the early 1900s to have an effect.\nNew Zealand.\nOn each of his three voyages to the Pacific between 1769 and 1777, James Cook visited New Zealand. He was followed by an assortment of Europeans and Americans which including whalers, sealers, escaped convicts from New South Wales, missionaries and adventurers. Initially, contact with the indigenous M\u0101ori people was limited to the trading of goods, although interaction increased during the early decades of the 19th century with many trading and missionary stations being set up, especially in the north. The first of several Church of England missionaries arrived in 1814 and as well as their missionary role, they soon become the only form of European authority in a land that was not subject to British jurisdiction: the closest authority being the New South Wales governor in Sydney. The sale of weapons to M\u0101ori resulted from 1818 on in the intertribal warfare of the Musket Wars, with devastating consequences for the M\u0101ori population.\nThe UK government finally decided to act, dispatching Captain William Hobson with instructions to take formal possession after obtaining native consent. There was no central M\u0101ori authority able to represent all New Zealand so, on 6 February 1840, Hobson and many M\u0101ori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi in the Bay of Islands; most other chiefs signing in stages over the following months. William Hobson declared British sovereignty over all New Zealand on 21 May 1840, over the North Island by cession and over the South Island by discovery (the island was sparsely populated and deemed terra nullius). Hobson became Lieutenant-Governor, subject to Governor Sir George Gipps in Sydney, with British possession of New Zealand initially administered from Australia as a dependency of the New South Wales colony. From 16 June 1840 New South Wales laws applied in New Zealand. This transitional arrangement ended with the Charter for Erecting the Colony of New Zealand on 16 November 1840. The Charter stated that New Zealand would be established as a separate Crown colony on 3 May 1841 with Hobson as its governor.\nRivalry with Russia.\nDuring the 19th century, Britain and the Russian Empire vied to fill the power vacuums that had been left by the declining Ottoman Empire, Qajar dynasty and Qing dynasty. This rivalry in Central Asia came to be known as the \"Great Game\". As far as Britain was concerned, defeats inflicted by Russia on Persia and Turkey demonstrated its imperial ambitions and capabilities and stoked fears in Britain of an overland invasion of India. In 1839, Britain moved to pre-empt this by invading Afghanistan, but the First Anglo-Afghan War was a disaster for Britain.\nWhen Russia invaded the Ottoman Balkans in 1853, fears of Russian dominance in the Mediterranean and the Middle East led Britain and France to enter the war in support of the Ottoman Empire and invade the Crimean Peninsula to destroy Russian naval capabilities. The ensuing Crimean War (1854\u20131856), which involved new techniques of modern warfare, was the only global war fought between Britain and another imperial power during the \"Pax Britannica\" and was a resounding defeat for Russia. The situation remained unresolved in Central Asia for two more decades, with Britain annexing Baluchistan in 1876 and Russia annexing Kirghizia, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. For a while, it appeared that another war would be inevitable, but the two countries reached an agreement on their respective spheres of influence in the region in 1878 and on all outstanding matters in 1907 with the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente. The destruction of the Imperial Russian Navy by the Imperial Japanese Navy at the Battle of Tsushima during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904\u20131905 limited its threat to the British.\nCape to Cairo.\nThe Dutch East India Company had founded the Dutch Cape Colony on the southern tip of Africa in 1652 as a way station for its ships travelling to and from its colonies in the East Indies. Britain formally acquired the colony, and its large Afrikaner (or Boer) population in 1806, having occupied it in 1795 to prevent its falling into French hands during the Flanders Campaign. British immigration to the Cape Colony began to rise after 1820, and pushed thousands of Boers, resentful of British rule, northwards to found their own\u2014mostly short-lived\u2014independent republics, during the Great Trek of the late 1830s and early 1840s. In the process the Voortrekkers clashed repeatedly with the British, who had their own agenda with regard to colonial expansion in South Africa and to the various native African polities, including those of the Sotho people and the Zulu Kingdom. Eventually, the Boers established two republics that had a longer lifespan: the South African Republic or Transvaal Republic (1852\u20131877; 1881\u20131902) and the Orange Free State (1854\u20131902). In 1902 Britain occupied both republics, concluding a treaty with the two Boer Republics following the Second Boer War (1899\u20131902).\nIn 1869 the Suez Canal opened under Napoleon III, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Indian Ocean. Initially the Canal was opposed by the British; but once opened, its strategic value was quickly recognised and became the \"jugular vein of the Empire\". In 1875, the Conservative government of Benjamin Disraeli bought the indebted Egyptian ruler Isma'il Pasha's 44 per cent shareholding in the Suez Canal for \u00a34\u00a0million (equivalent to \u00a3 in 2023). Although this did not grant outright control of the strategic waterway, it did give Britain leverage. Joint Anglo-French financial control over Egypt ended in outright British occupation in 1882. Although Britain controlled the Khedivate of Egypt into the 20th century, it was officially a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire and not part of the British Empire. The French were still majority shareholders and attempted to weaken the British position, but a compromise was reached with the 1888 Convention of Constantinople, which made the Canal officially neutral territory.\nWith competitive French, Belgian and Portuguese activity in the lower Congo River region undermining orderly colonisation of tropical Africa, the Berlin Conference of 1884\u201385 was held to regulate the competition between the European powers in what was called the \"Scramble for Africa\" by defining \"effective occupation\" as the criterion for international recognition of territorial claims. The scramble continued into the 1890s, and caused Britain to reconsider its decision in 1885 to withdraw from Sudan. A joint force of British and Egyptian troops defeated the Mahdist Army in 1896 and rebuffed an attempted French invasion at Fashoda in 1898. Sudan was nominally made an Anglo-Egyptian condominium, but a British colony in reality.\nBritish gains in Southern and East Africa prompted Cecil Rhodes, pioneer of British expansion in Southern Africa, to urge a \"Cape to Cairo\" railway linking the strategically important Suez Canal to the mineral-rich south of the continent. During the 1880s and 1890s, Rhodes, with his privately owned British South Africa Company, occupied and annexed territories named after him, Rhodesia.\nChanging status of the white colonies.\nThe path to independence for the white colonies of the British Empire began with the 1839 Durham Report, which proposed unification and self-government for Upper and Lower Canada, as a solution to political unrest which had erupted in armed rebellions in 1837. This began with the passing of the Act of Union in 1840, which created the Province of Canada. Responsible government was first granted to Nova Scotia in 1848, and was soon extended to the other British North American colonies. With the passage of the British North America Act, 1867 by the British Parliament, the Province of Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were formed into Canada, a confederation enjoying full self-government with the exception of international relations. Australia and New Zealand achieved similar levels of self-government after 1900, with the Australian colonies federating in 1901. The term \"dominion status\" was officially introduced at the 1907 Imperial Conference. As the dominions gained greater autonomy, they would come to be recognized as distinct realms of the empire with unique customs and symbols of their own. Imperial identity, through imagery such as patriotic artworks and banners, began developing into a form that attempted to be more inclusive by showcasing the empire as a family of newly birthed nations with common roots.\nThe last decades of the 19th century saw concerted political campaigns for Irish home rule. Ireland had been united with Britain into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland with the Act of Union 1800 after the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and had suffered a severe famine between 1845 and 1852. Home rule was supported by the British prime minister, William Gladstone, who hoped that Ireland might follow in Canada's footsteps as a Dominion within the empire, but his 1886 Home Rule bill was defeated in Parliament. Although the bill, if passed, would have granted Ireland less autonomy within the UK than the Canadian provinces had within their own federation, many MPs feared that a partially independent Ireland might pose a security threat to Great Britain or mark the beginning of the break-up of the empire. A second Home Rule bill was defeated for similar reasons. A third bill was passed by Parliament in 1914, but not implemented because of the outbreak of the First World War leading to the 1916 Easter Rising.\nWorld wars (1914\u20131945).\nBy the turn of the 20th century, fears had begun to grow in Britain that it would no longer be able to defend the metropole and the entirety of the empire while at the same time maintaining the policy of \"splendid isolation\". Germany was rapidly rising as a military and industrial power and was now seen as the most likely opponent in any future war. Recognising that it was overstretched in the Pacific and threatened at home by the Imperial German Navy, Britain formed an alliance with Japan in 1902 and with its old enemies France and Russia in 1904 and 1907, respectively.\nFirst World War.\nBritain's fears of war with Germany were realised in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War. Britain quickly invaded and occupied most of Germany's overseas colonies in Africa. In the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand occupied German New Guinea and German Samoa respectively. Plans for a post-war division of the Ottoman Empire, which had joined the war on Germany's side, were secretly drawn up by Britain and France under the 1916 Sykes\u2013Picot Agreement. This agreement was not divulged to the Sharif of Mecca, who the British had been encouraging to launch an Arab revolt against their Ottoman rulers, giving the impression that Britain was supporting the creation of an independent Arab state.\nThe British declaration of war on Germany and its allies committed the colonies and Dominions, which provided invaluable military, financial and material support. Over 2.5\u00a0million men served in the armies of the Dominions, as well as many thousands of volunteers from the Crown colonies. The contributions of Australian and New Zealand troops during the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign against the Ottoman Empire had a great impact on the national consciousness at home and marked a watershed in the transition of Australia and New Zealand from colonies to nations in their own right. The countries continue to commemorate this occasion on Anzac Day. Canadians viewed the Battle of Vimy Ridge in a similar light. The important contribution of the Dominions to the war effort was recognised in 1917 by British prime minister David Lloyd George when he invited each of the Dominion prime ministers to join an Imperial War Cabinet to co-ordinate imperial policy.\nUnder the terms of the concluding Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919, the empire reached its greatest extent with the addition of and 13\u00a0million new subjects. The colonies of Germany and the Ottoman Empire were distributed to the Allied powers as League of Nations mandates. Britain gained control of Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, parts of Cameroon and Togoland, and Tanganyika. The Dominions themselves acquired mandates of their own: the Union of South Africa gained South West Africa (modern-day Namibia), Australia gained New Guinea, and New Zealand Western Samoa. Nauru was made a combined mandate of Britain and the two Pacific Dominions.\nInter-war period.\nThe changing world order that the war had brought about, in particular the growth of the United States and Japan as naval powers, and the rise of independence movements in India and Ireland, caused a major reassessment of British imperial policy. Forced to choose between alignment with the United States or Japan, Britain opted not to renew its Anglo-Japanese Alliance and instead signed the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, where Britain accepted naval parity with the United States. This decision was the source of much debate in Britain during the 1930s as militaristic governments took hold in Germany and Japan helped in part by the Great Depression, for it was feared that the empire could not survive a simultaneous attack by both nations. The issue of the empire's security was a serious concern in Britain, as it was vital to the British economy.\nIn 1919, the frustrations caused by delays to Irish home rule led the MPs of Sinn F\u00e9in, a pro-independence party that had won a majority of the Irish seats in the 1918 British general election, to establish an independent parliament in Dublin, at which Irish independence was declared. The Irish Republican Army simultaneously began a guerrilla war against the British administration. The Irish War of Independence ended in 1921 with a stalemate and the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, creating the Irish Free State, a Dominion within the British Empire, with effective internal independence but still constitutionally linked with the British Crown. Northern Ireland, consisting of six of the 32 Irish counties which had been established as a devolved region under the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, immediately exercised its option under the treaty to retain its existing status within the United Kingdom.\nA similar struggle began in India when the Government of India Act 1919 failed to satisfy the demand for independence. Concerns over communist and foreign plots following the Ghadar conspiracy ensured that war-time strictures were renewed by the Rowlatt Acts. This led to tension, particularly in the Punjab region, where repressive measures culminated in the Amritsar Massacre. In Britain, public opinion was divided over the morality of the massacre, between those who saw it as having saved India from anarchy, and those who viewed it with revulsion. The non-cooperation movement was called off in March 1922 following the Chauri Chaura incident, and discontent continued to simmer for the next 25 years.\nIn 1922, Egypt, which had been declared a British protectorate at the outbreak of the First World War, was granted formal independence, though it continued to be a British client state until 1954. British troops remained stationed in Egypt until the signing of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty in 1936, under which it was agreed that the troops would withdraw but continue to occupy and defend the Suez Canal zone. In return, Egypt was assisted in joining the League of Nations. Iraq, a British mandate since 1920, gained membership of the League in its own right after achieving independence from Britain in 1932. In Palestine, Britain was presented with the problem of mediating between the Arabs and increasing numbers of Jews. The Balfour Declaration, which had been incorporated into the terms of the mandate, stated that a national home for the Jewish people would be established in Palestine, and Jewish immigration allowed up to a limit that would be determined by the mandatory power. This led to increasing conflict with the Arab population, who openly revolted in 1936. As the threat of war with Germany increased during the 1930s, Britain judged the support of Arabs as more important than the establishment of a Jewish homeland, and shifted to a pro-Arab stance, limiting Jewish immigration and in turn triggering a Jewish insurgency.\nThe right of the Dominions to set their own foreign policy, independent of Britain, was recognised at the 1923 Imperial Conference. Britain's request for military assistance from the Dominions at the outbreak of the Chanak Crisis the previous year had been turned down by Canada and South Africa, and Canada had refused to be bound by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. After pressure from the Irish Free State and South Africa, the 1926 Imperial Conference issued the Balfour Declaration of 1926, declaring Britain and the Dominions to be \"autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another\" within a \"British Commonwealth of Nations\". This declaration was given legal substance under the 1931 Statute of Westminster. The parliaments of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland were now independent of British legislative control, they could nullify British laws and Britain could no longer pass laws for them without their consent. Newfoundland reverted to colonial status in 1933, suffering from financial difficulties during the Great Depression. In 1937 the Irish Free State introduced a republican constitution renaming itself \"Ireland\".\nSecond World War.\nBritain's declaration of war against Nazi Germany in September 1939 included the Crown colonies and India but did not automatically commit the Dominions of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Newfoundland and South Africa. All soon declared war on Germany. While Britain continued to regard Ireland as still within the British Commonwealth, Ireland chose to remain legally neutral throughout the war.\nAfter the Fall of France in June 1940, Britain and the empire stood alone against Germany, until the German invasion of Greece on 7 April 1941. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill successfully lobbied President Franklin D. Roosevelt for military aid from the United States, but Roosevelt was not yet ready to ask Congress to commit the country to war. In August 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt met and signed the Atlantic Charter, which included the statement that \"the rights of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they live\" should be respected. This wording was ambiguous as to whether it referred to European countries invaded by Germany and Italy, or the peoples colonised by European nations, and would later be interpreted differently by the British, Americans, and nationalist movements. Nevertheless, Churchill rejected its universal applicability when it came to the self-determination of subject nations including the British Indian Empire. Churchill further added that he did not become Prime Minister to oversee the liquidation of the empire.\nFor Churchill, the entry of the United States into the war was the \"greatest joy\". He felt that Britain was now assured of victory, but failed to recognise that the \"many disasters, immeasurable costs and tribulations [which he knew] lay ahead\" in December 1941 would have permanent consequences for the future of the empire. The manner in which British forces were rapidly defeated in the Far East irreversibly harmed Britain's standing and prestige as an imperial power, including, particularly, the Fall of Singapore, which had previously been hailed as an impregnable fortress and the eastern equivalent of Gibraltar. The realisation that Britain could not defend its entire empire pushed Australia and New Zealand, which now appeared threatened by Japanese forces, into closer ties with the United States and, ultimately, the 1951 ANZUS Pact. The war weakened the empire in other ways: undermining Britain's control of politics in India, inflicting long-term economic damage, and irrevocably changing geopolitics by pushing the Soviet Union and the United States to the centre of the global stage.\nDecolonisation and decline (1945\u20131997).\nThough Britain and the empire emerged victorious from the Second World War, the effects of the conflict were profound, both at home and abroad. Much of Europe, a continent that had dominated the world for several centuries, was in ruins, and host to the armies of the United States and the Soviet Union, who now held the balance of global power. Britain was left essentially bankrupt, with insolvency only averted in 1946 after the negotiation of a US$3.75\u00a0billion loan from the United States, the last instalment of which was repaid in 2006. At the same time, anti-colonial movements were on the rise in the colonies of European nations. The situation was complicated further by the increasing Cold War rivalry of the United States and the Soviet Union. In principle, both nations were opposed to European colonialism. In practice, American anti-communism prevailed over anti-imperialism, and therefore the United States supported the continued existence of the British Empire to keep Communist expansion in check. At first, British politicians believed it would be possible to maintain Britain's role as a world power at the head of a re-imagined Commonwealth, but by 1960 they were forced to recognise that there was an irresistible \"wind of change\" blowing. Their priorities changed to maintaining an extensive zone of British influence and ensuring that stable, non-Communist governments were established in former colonies. In this context, while other European powers such as France and Portugal waged costly and unsuccessful wars to keep their empires intact, Britain generally adopted a policy of peaceful disengagement from its colonies, although violence occurred in Malaya, Kenya and Palestine. Between 1945 and 1965, the number of people under British rule outside the UK itself fell from 700 million to 5 million, 3 million of whom were in Hong Kong.\nInitial disengagement.\nThe pro-decolonisation Labour government, elected at the 1945 general election and led by Clement Attlee, moved quickly to tackle the most pressing issue facing the empire: Indian independence. India's major political party\u2014the Indian National Congress (led by Mahatma Gandhi) \u2014 had been campaigning for independence for decades, but disagreed with Muslim League (led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah) as to how it should be implemented. Congress favoured a unified secular Indian state, whereas the League, fearing domination by the Hindu majority, desired a separate Islamic state for Muslim-majority regions. Increasing civil unrest led Attlee to promise independence no later than 30 June 1948. When the urgency of the situation and risk of civil war became apparent, the newly appointed (and last) Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, hastily brought forward the date to 15 August 1947. The borders drawn by the British to broadly partition India into Hindu and Muslim areas left tens of millions as minorities in the newly independent states of India and Pakistan. The princely states were provided with a choice to either remain independent or join India or Pakistan. Millions of Muslims crossed from India to Pakistan and Hindus vice versa, and violence between the two communities cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Burma, which had been administered as part of British India until 1937 gained independence the following year in 1948 along with Sri Lanka (formerly known as British Ceylon). India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka became members of the Commonwealth, while Burma chose not to join. That same year, the British Nationality Act was enacted, in hopes of strengthening and unifying the Commonwealth: it provided British citizenship and right of entry to all those living within its jurisdiction.\nThe British Mandate in Palestine, where an Arab majority lived alongside a Jewish minority, presented the British with a similar problem to that of India. The matter was complicated by large numbers of Jewish refugees seeking to be admitted to Palestine following the Holocaust, while Arabs were opposed to the creation of a Jewish state. Frustrated by the intractability of the problem, attacks by Jewish paramilitary organisations and the increasing cost of maintaining its military presence, Britain announced in 1947 that it would withdraw in 1948 and leave the matter to the United Nations to solve. The UN General Assembly subsequently voted for a plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. It was immediately followed by the outbreak of a civil war between the Arabs and Jews of Palestine, and British forces withdrew amid the fighting. The British Mandate for Palestine officially terminated at midnight on 15 May 1948 as the State of Israel declared independence and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War broke out, during which the territory of the former Mandate was partitioned between Israel and the surrounding Arab states. Amid the fighting, British forces continued to withdraw from Israel, with the last British troops departing from Haifa on 30 June 1948.\nFollowing the surrender of Japan in the Second World War, anti-Japanese resistance movements in Malaya turned their attention towards the British, who had moved to quickly retake control of the colony, valuing it as a source of rubber and tin. The fact that the guerrillas were primarily Malaysian Chinese Communists meant that the British attempt to quell the uprising was supported by the Muslim Malay majority, on the understanding that once the insurgency had been quelled, independence would be granted. The Malayan Emergency, as it was called, began in 1948 and lasted until 1960, but by 1957, Britain felt confident enough to grant independence to the Federation of Malaya within the Commonwealth. In 1963, the 11 states of the federation together with Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo joined to form Malaysia, but in 1965 Chinese-majority Singapore was expelled from the union following tensions between the Malay and Chinese populations and became an independent city-state. Brunei, which had been a British protectorate since 1888, declined to join the union.\nSuez and its aftermath.\nIn the 1951 general election, the Conservative Party returned to power in Britain under the leadership of Winston Churchill. Churchill and the Conservatives believed that Britain's position as a world power relied on the continued existence of the empire, with the base at the Suez Canal allowing Britain to maintain its pre-eminent position in the Middle East in spite of the loss of India. Churchill could not ignore Gamal Abdul Nasser's new revolutionary government of Egypt that had taken power in 1952, and the following year it was agreed that British troops would withdraw from the Suez Canal zone and that Sudan would be granted self-determination by 1955, with independence to follow Sudan was granted independence on 1 January 1956.\nIn July 1956, Nasser unilaterally nationalised the Suez Canal. The response of Anthony Eden, who had succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister, was to collude with France to engineer an Israeli attack on Egypt that would give Britain and France an excuse to intervene militarily and retake the canal. Eden infuriated US President Dwight D. Eisenhower by his lack of consultation, and Eisenhower refused to back the invasion. Another of Eisenhower's concerns was the possibility of a wider war with the Soviet Union after it threatened to intervene on the Egyptian side. Eisenhower applied financial leverage by threatening to sell US reserves of the British pound and thereby precipitate a collapse of the British currency. Though the invasion force was militarily successful in its objectives, UN intervention and US pressure forced Britain into a humiliating withdrawal of its forces, and Eden resigned.\nThe Suez Crisis very publicly exposed Britain's limitations to the world and confirmed Britain's decline on the world stage and its end as a first-rate power, demonstrating that henceforth it could no longer act without at least the acquiescence, if not the full support, of the United States. The events at Suez wounded British national pride, leading one Member of Parliament (MP) to describe it as \"Britain's Waterloo\" and another to suggest that the country had become an \"American satellite\". Margaret Thatcher later described the mindset she believed had befallen Britain's political leaders after Suez where they \"went from believing that Britain could do anything to an almost neurotic belief that Britain could do nothing\", from which Britain did not recover until the successful recapture of the Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982.\nWhile the Suez Crisis caused British power in the Middle East to weaken, it did not collapse. Britain again deployed its armed forces to the region, intervening in Oman (1957), Jordan (1958) and Kuwait (1961), though on these occasions with American approval, as the new Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's foreign policy was to remain firmly aligned with the United States. Although Britain granted Kuwait independence in 1961, it continued to maintain a military presence in the Middle East for another decade. On 16 January 1968, a few weeks after the devaluation of the pound, Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his Defence Secretary Denis Healey announced that British Armed Forces troops would be withdrawn from major military bases East of Suez, which included the ones in the Middle East, and primarily from Malaysia and Singapore by the end of 1971, instead of 1975 as earlier planned. By that time over 50,000 British military personnel were still stationed in the Far East, including 30,000 in Singapore. The British granted independence to the Maldives in 1965 but continued to station a garrison there until 1976, withdrew from Aden in 1967, and granted independence to Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates in 1971.\nWind of change.\nMacmillan gave a speech in Cape Town, South Africa in February 1960 where he spoke of \"the wind of change blowing through this continent\". Macmillan wished to avoid the same kind of colonial war that France was fighting in Algeria, and under his premiership decolonisation proceeded rapidly. To the three colonies that had been granted independence in the 1950s\u2014Sudan, the Gold Coast and Malaya\u2014were added nearly ten times that number during the 1960s. Owing to the rapid pace of decolonisation during this period, the cabinet post of Secretary of State for the Colonies was abolished in 1966, along with the Colonial Office, which merged with the Commonwealth Relations Office to form the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) in October 1968.\nBritain's remaining colonies in Africa, except for self-governing Southern Rhodesia, were all granted independence by 1968. British withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of Africa was not a peaceful process. From 1952 the Kenya Colony saw the eight-year long Mau Mau rebellion, in which tens of thousands of suspected rebels were interned by the colonial government in detention camps to suppress the rebellion and over 1000 convicts executed, with records systematically destroyed. Throughout the 1960s, the British government took a \"No independence until majority rule\" policy towards decolonising the empire, leading the white minority government of Southern Rhodesia to enact the 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain, resulting in a civil war that lasted until the British-mediated Lancaster House Agreement of 1979. The agreement saw the British Empire temporarily re-establish the Colony of Southern Rhodesia from 1979 to 1980 as a transitionary government to a majority rule Republic of Zimbabwe. This was the last British possession in Africa.\nIn Cyprus, a guerrilla war waged by the Greek Cypriot organisation EOKA against British rule, was ended in 1959 by the London and Z\u00fcrich Agreements, which resulted in Cyprus being granted independence in 1960. The UK retained the military bases of Akrotiri and Dhekelia as sovereign base areas. The Mediterranean colony of Malta was amicably granted independence from the UK in 1964 and became the country of Malta, though the idea had been raised in 1955 of integration with Britain.\nMost of the UK's Caribbean territories achieved independence after the departure in 1961 and 1962 of Jamaica and Trinidad from the West Indies Federation, established in 1958 in an attempt to unite the British Caribbean colonies under one government, but which collapsed following the loss of its two largest members. Jamaica attained independence in 1962, as did Trinidad and Tobago. Barbados achieved independence in 1966 and the remainder of the eastern Caribbean islands, including the Bahamas, in the 1970s and 1980s, but Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands opted to revert to British rule after they had already started on the path to independence. The British Virgin Islands, The Cayman Islands and Montserrat opted to retain ties with Britain, while Guyana achieved independence in 1966. Britain's last colony on the American mainland, British Honduras, became a self-governing colony in 1964 and was renamed Belize in 1973, achieving full independence in 1981. A dispute with Guatemala over claims to Belize was left unresolved.\nBritish Overseas Territories in the Pacific acquired independence in the 1970s beginning with Fiji in 1970 and ending with Vanuatu in 1980. Vanuatu's independence was delayed because of political conflict between English and French-speaking communities, as the islands had been jointly administered as a condominium with France. Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu became Commonwealth realms.\nEnd of empire.\nBy 1981, aside from a scattering of islands and outposts, the process of decolonisation that had begun after the Second World War was largely complete. In 1982, Britain's resolve in defending its remaining overseas territories was tested when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, acting on a long-standing claim that dated back to the Spanish Empire. Britain's successful military response to retake the Falkland Islands during the ensuing Falklands War contributed to reversing the downward trend in Britain's status as a world power.\nThe 1980s saw Canada, Australia, and New Zealand sever their final constitutional links with Britain. Although granted legislative independence by the Statute of Westminster 1931, vestigial constitutional links had remained in place. The British Parliament retained the power to amend key Canadian constitutional statutes, meaning that an act of the British Parliament was required to make certain changes to the Canadian Constitution. The British Parliament had the power to pass laws extending to Canada at Canadian request. Although no longer able to pass any laws that would apply to Australian Commonwealth law, the British Parliament retained the power to legislate for the individual Australian states. With regard to New Zealand, the British Parliament retained the power to pass legislation applying to New Zealand with the New Zealand Parliament's consent. In 1982, the last legal link between Canada and Britain was severed by the Canada Act 1982, which was passed by the British parliament, formally patriating the Canadian Constitution. The act ended the need for British involvement in changes to the Canadian constitution. Similarly, the Australia Act 1986 (effective 3 March 1986) severed the constitutional link between Britain and the Australian states, while New Zealand's Constitution Act 1986 (effective 1 January 1987) reformed the constitution of New Zealand to sever its constitutional link with Britain.\nOn 1 January 1984, Brunei, Britain's last remaining Asian protectorate, was granted full independence. Independence had been delayed due to the opposition of the Sultan, who had preferred British protection.\nIn September 1982 the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, travelled to Beijing to negotiate with the Chinese Communist government, on the future of Britain's last major and most populous overseas territory, Hong Kong. Under the terms of the 1842 Treaty of Nanking and 1860 Convention of Peking, Hong Kong Island and Kowloon Peninsula had been respectively ceded to Britain \"in perpetuity\", but the majority of the colony consisted of the New Territories, which had been acquired under a 99-year lease in 1898, due to expire in 1997. Thatcher, seeing parallels with the Falkland Islands, initially wished to hold Hong Kong and proposed British administration with Chinese sovereignty, though this was rejected by China. A deal was reached in 1984\u2014under the terms of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, Hong Kong would become a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China. The handover ceremony in 1997 marked for many, including King Charles III, then Prince of Wales, who was in attendance, \"the end of Empire\", though many British territories that are remnants of the empire still remain.\nLegacy.\nBritain retains sovereignty over 14 territories outside the British Isles. In 1983, the British Nationality Act 1981 renamed the existing Crown Colonies as \"British Dependent Territories\", and in 2002 they were renamed the British Overseas Territories. Most former British colonies and protectorates are members of the Commonwealth of Nations, a voluntary association of equal members, comprising a population of around 2.2\u00a0billion people. The United Kingdom and 14 other countries, all collectively known as the Commonwealth realms, voluntarily continue to share the same person\u2014 King Charles III\u2014as their respective head of state. These 15 nations are distinct and equal legal entities: the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.\nDuring the colonial era, emphasis was given to study of the classical Greco-Roman heritage and their experience with empire, aiming to parse how that heritage could be applied to improve the future of the colonies. American hegemony, which throughout its early rise had challenged British claims of being the \"New Rome\", became the successor to British dominance in the mid-20th century; the two countries' historical ties and wartime collaboration supported a peaceful handoff of power after World War II. As for the United Kingdom itself, British views of the former Empire are more positive than is the case with other post-imperial nations; discourse around the former Empire has continued to impact the nation's present-day understanding of itself, as seen in the debate leading up to its decision to leave the European Union in 2016.\nDecades, and in some cases centuries, of British rule and emigration have left their mark on the independent nations that rose from the British Empire. The empire established the use of the English language in regions around the world. Today it is the primary language of up to 460\u00a0million people and is spoken by about 1.5 billion as a first, second or foreign language. It has also significantly influenced other languages. Individual and team sports developed in Britain, particularly football, cricket, lawn tennis, and golf were exported. Some sports were also invented or standardised in the former colonies, such as badminton, polo, and snooker in India. British missionaries who travelled around the globe often in advance of soldiers and civil servants spread Protestantism (including Anglicanism) to all continents. The British Empire provided refuge for religiously persecuted continental Europeans for hundreds of years. British educational institutions also remain popular in the present day, in part due to the importance of the English language and similarity of British curriculums to those in the former colonies.\nPolitical boundaries drawn by the British did not always reflect homogeneous ethnicities or religions, contributing to conflicts in formerly colonised areas. The British Empire was responsible for large migrations of peoples (see also: Commonwealth diaspora). Millions left the British Isles, with the founding settler colonist populations of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand coming mainly from Britain and Ireland. Millions of people moved between British colonies, with large numbers of South Asian people emigrating to other parts of the empire, such as Malaysia and Fiji, and Overseas Chinese people to Malaysia, Singapore and the Caribbean; about half of all modern immigration to the Commonwealth nations continues to occur between them. The demographics of the United Kingdom changed after the Second World War owing to immigration to Britain from its former colonies.\nIn the 19th century, innovation in Britain led to revolutionary changes in manufacturing, the development of factory systems, and the growth of transportation by railway and steamship. Debate has also occurred as to what extent the Industrial Revolution, originating from the United Kingdom, was facilitated by or dependent on imperialism. British colonial architecture, such as in churches, railway stations and government buildings, can be seen in many cities that were once part of the British Empire; Western technologies and architecture had been globalised in part due to the Empire's military and administrative requirements. Integration of former colonies into the global economy was also a major legacy. The British choice of system of measurement, the imperial system, continues to be used in some countries in various ways. The convention of driving on the left-hand side of the road has been retained in much of the former empire.\nThe Westminster system of parliamentary democracy has served as the template for the governments of many former colonies, and English common law for legal systems. It has been observed that almost every former colony that emerged as an independent democratic state is a former British colony, though this correlation greatly declines in strength after 30 years of an ex-colony's independence. International commercial contracts are often based on English common law. The British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council still serves as the highest court of appeal for twelve former colonies.\nInterpretations of Empire.\nHistorians' approaches to understanding the British Empire are diverse and evolving. Two key sites of debate over recent decades have been the impact of post-colonial studies, which seek to critically re-evaluate the history of imperialism, and the continued relevance of historians Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, whose work greatly influenced imperial historiography during the 1950s and 1960s. In addition, differing assessments of the empire's legacy remain relevant to debates over recent history and politics, such as the Anglo-American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Britain's role and identity in the contemporary world.\nHistorians such as Caroline Elkins have argued against perceptions of the British Empire as a primarily liberalising and modernising enterprise, criticising its widespread use of violence and emergency laws to maintain power. Common criticisms of the empire include the use of detention camps in its colonies, massacres of indigenous peoples, and famine-response policies. Some scholars, including Amartya Sen, assert that British policies worsened the famines in India that killed millions during British rule. Conversely, historians such as Niall Ferguson say that the economic and institutional development the British Empire brought resulted in a net benefit to its colonies. Other historians treat its legacy as varied and ambiguous. Public attitudes towards the empire within 21st-century Britain have been broadly positive although sentiment towards the Commonwealth has been one of apathy and decline.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["1898028", "30997172", "5171132", "4721"], "permutation_1": ["5171132", "30997172", "4721", "1898028"], "permutation_2": ["1898028", "30997172", "5171132", "4721"], "permutation_3": ["30997172", "5171132", "4721", "1898028"]}
{"id": "4hop1__3496_5274_458768_33677", "docs_added": {"191890": "American Idol\nAmerican singing competition\nAmerican Idol is an American singing competition television series created by Simon Fuller, produced by Fremantle North America and 19 Entertainment, and distributed by Fremantle North America. It aired on Fox from June 11, 2002, to April 7, 2016, for 15 seasons. It was on hiatus for two years until March 11, 2018, when a revival of the series began airing on ABC.\nIt started as an addition to the \"Idol\" format that was based on \"Pop Idol\" from British television, in which the programme's first series, which was won by Will Young, ended over four months before the show began, as it later became one of the most successful shows in the history of American television. The concept of the series involves discovering recording stars from unsigned singing talents, with the winner determined by American viewers using phones, Internet platforms, and SMS text voting. The winners of the first twenty-two seasons, as chosen by viewers, are Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Hicks, Jordin Sparks, David Cook, Kris Allen, Lee DeWyze, Scotty McCreery, Phillip Phillips, Candice Glover, Caleb Johnson, Nick Fradiani, Trent Harmon, Maddie Poppe, Laine Hardy, Just Sam, Chayce Beckham, Noah Thompson, Iam Tongi, and Abi Carter.\n\"American Idol\" employs a select panel of judges who critique the contestants' performances. The original judges, for seasons one through eight, were record producer and music manager Randy Jackson, singer and choreographer Paula Abdul, and music executive and manager Simon Cowell. The judging panel for the last three seasons on Fox consisted of singers Keith Urban, Jennifer Lopez, and Harry Connick Jr. Season sixteen brought three new judges: singers Luke Bryan, Katy Perry, and Lionel Richie. Beginning in the twenty-third season, Underwood replaced Perry, alongside returning judges Bryan and Richie. The show has been hosted by television presenter Ryan Seacrest throughout its run, apart from the show's inaugural season when comedian Brian Dunkleman joined Seacrest as co-host.\nThe success of \"American Idol\" has been described as \"unparalleled in broadcasting history\". A rival TV executive said the series was \"the most impactful show in the history of television\". It became a recognized springboard for launching the career of many artists as bona fide stars. According to \"Billboard\" magazine, in its first ten years, \"\"Idol\" has spawned 345 \"Billboard\" chart-toppers and a platoon of pop idols, including Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Chris Daughtry, Fantasia, Ruben Studdard, Jennifer Hudson, Clay Aiken, Adam Lambert, and Jordin Sparks while remaining a TV ratings juggernaut.\" For an unprecedented eight consecutive years, from the 2003\u201304 television season through the 2010\u201311 season, either its performance show or result show was ranked number one in U.S. television ratings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\n\"American Idol\" was based on the British show \"Pop Idol\" created by Simon Fuller, which was in turn inspired by the New Zealand television singing competition \"Popstars\". Television producer Nigel Lythgoe saw a version in Australia and helped bring it over to Britain. Fuller was inspired by the idea from \"Popstars\" of employing a panel of judges to select singers in audition. He then added other elements, including telephone voting by the viewing public (which at the time was already in use in shows, such as the \"Eurovision Song Contest\"), the drama of backstories, and real-life soap opera unfolding in real time. \"Pop Idol\" debuted in Britain in 2001 with Lythgoe as showrunner\u200d\u2014\u200cthe executive producer and production leader\u200d\u2014\u200cand Simon Cowell as one of the judges, and was successful with the viewing public.\nIn 2001, Fuller, Cowell, and TV producer Simon Jones attempted to sell the \"Pop Idol\" format to the United States, but the idea was initially met with poor responses from all the television networks including UPN and Fox. However, Rupert Murdoch, head of Fox's parent company, was later persuaded to buy the series by his daughter, Elisabeth, who had seen the British show. Although Fox's executives wanted to change the format, Murdoch insisted that it should remain the same as the British one. One change was nevertheless made due to the presence of multiple time zones in the United States that made it impractical for the country to vote in the same time period, an additional half-hour results show was therefore added the day following the performance show. The show was renamed \"\" and debuted in the summer of 2002. Cowell was initially offered the job of showrunner but turned down the offer; Lythgoe then took over that position. Much to the surprise of Cowell and Fox, it became one of the biggest shows of the summer. With its successful launch in the summer, the show was then moved to January and expanded. The show grew into a phenomenon largely due to its personal engagement with the contestants by prompting the viewers to vote, and the presence of the acid-tongued Cowell as a judge. By 2004, it had become the most-watched show on American television, a position it then held for seven consecutive seasons until 2011.\nHowever, after a few years of sharp declining ratings starting in 2012, with rating falls of over 20% each season, the fifteenth season would be its last on Fox, ending its run in April 2016. In May 2017, ABC acquired the rights to the series and the program returned for the 2017\u201318 television season. The first season of the revived series, or the sixteenth season overall, started airing in March 2018. Seven seasons have been aired on ABC as of May 2024.\nJudges and hosts.\nJudges.\nThe show had originally planned on having four judges following the \"Pop Idol\" format; however, only three judges had been found by the time of the audition round in the first season, namely Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell. A fourth judge, radio DJ Stryker, was originally chosen but he dropped out citing \"image concerns.\" In the second season, New York radio personality Angie Martinez had been hired as a fourth judge but withdrew after only a few days of auditions, due to being uncomfortable with giving out criticism. The show decided to continue with the three judges format until the eighth season. All three original judges stayed on the judging panel for eight seasons.\nIn the eighth season, Latin Grammy Award-nominated singer-songwriter and record producer Kara DioGuardi was added as a fourth judge. Abdul left the show in 2009, after the eighth season, as a result of failing to agree to terms with the show producers. Emmy Award-winning talk show host Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul for the ninth season, but left in 2010 after just one season. DioGuardi was let go from \"American Idol\" in 2010 after two seasons, as producers favored a return to the three-person judges panel previously used prior to DioGuardi's appearance on the show. Cowell also left the show in 2010 to introduce the American version of his show \"The X Factor\" in 2011. Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth.\nJennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined the judging panel in the tenth season, but both left in 2012 after two seasons. Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. They were replaced by three new judges, Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj, and Keith Urban, who joined Jackson in the twelfth season. However, both Carey and Minaj left after one season. Jackson also departed the judges table after twelve seasons, but would return as the in-house mentor for the thirteenth season in 2014, after which he left the show permanently.\nUrban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. After a one-season hiatus, Lopez returned to \"American Idol\" for the thirteenth season, and was joined by former mentor Harry Connick Jr. After this, Lopez, Urban, and Connick Jr. remained on the show until its cancellation after the fifteenth season in 2016.\nWhen the show was revived by ABC in 2018, Katy Perry, Luke Bryan, and Lionel Richie were selected as judges, marking the sixteenth season of \"Idol\". Bryan and Richie have remained on the show since, while Perry left the show in May 2024 after seven seasons. On July 31, 2024, published reports announced former \"Idol\" winner Carrie Underwood as Perry's replacement, joining Bryan and Richie for the twenty-third season.\nGuest judges may occasionally be introduced. In the second season, guest judges such as Richie and Gladys Knight were used, and in the third season, Donna Summer, Quentin Tarantino, Gloria Estefan, and some of the mentors also joined as judges to critique the performances in the final rounds. Guest judges were sporadically used during the audition rounds: Gene Simmons, LL Cool J, Brandy, Mark McGrath, and Kenny Loggins in the fourth season; Carole Bayer Sager, Jewel, and Olivia Newton-John in the sixth season; Shania Twain, Neil Patrick Harris, Avril Lavigne, Mary J. Blige, Joe Jonas, Kristin Chenoweth, Victoria Beckham, and Perry in the ninth season (substituting in the vacant chair, before DeGeneres was hired); and Adam Lambert filled in for Urban at one audition location during the fourteenth season. In the ABC version, two instances occurred during the live shows: Abdul filled in for Bryan on one episode of the nineteenth season, while Alanis Morissette and Ed Sheeran filled in for Perry and Richie on an episode of the twenty-first season.\nHosts.\nThe first season was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman, following the format of \"Pop Idol\" of using two presenters. Dunkleman quit thereafter, resulting in Seacrest becoming the sole emcee starting with the second season in 2003.\nSeacrest has remained as sole host of \"American Idol\" ever since, with the exception of the two-year hiatus between 2016 and 2018 as well as April 8, 2019, during the seventeenth season, when Bobby Bones subbed for Seacrest after the latter fell ill. Dunkleman did, however, return for the initial in 2016 as a guest.\nCast timeline.\nAnnotations\nSelection process.\nIn a series of steps, the show selected the eventual winner out of many tens of thousands of contestants.\nContestant eligibility.\nThe eligible age-range for contestants is fifteen to twenty-eight years old. The initial age limit was sixteen to twenty-four in the first three seasons, but the upper limit was raised to twenty-eight in the fourth season, and the lower limit was reduced to fifteen in the tenth season. The contestants have to be legal U.S. residents, can not have advanced to particular stages of the competition in previous seasons, and must not have held a current recording or talent representation contract by the semi-final stage (in previous years by the audition stage).\nInitial auditions.\nFor the first eighteen seasons, contestants went through at least three sets of cuts. The first was a brief audition with a few other contestants in front of selectors which may include one of the show's producers. Although auditions can exceed 10,000 in each city, only a few hundred of these made it past the preliminary round of auditions. Successful contestants then sing in front of producers, where more may be cut. Only then can they proceed to audition in front of the judges, which is the only audition stage shown on television. Those selected by the judges are sent to Hollywood. Between 10 and 60 people in each city may make it to Hollywood (the average total is between 150 and 200).\nFrom the nineteenth season onwards, contestants request a Zoom interview and audition remotely for the show's producers. If the audition goes well, they will then invite the contestants to audition in front of the judges, in one of the audition cities.\nHollywood week.\nOnce in Hollywood, the contestants perform individually or in groups in a series of rounds. Until the tenth season, there were usually three rounds of eliminations in Hollywood. In the first round the contestants emerged in groups but performed individually. For the next round, the contestants put themselves in small groups and performed a song together. In the final round, the contestants performed solo with a song of their choice a cappella or accompanied by a band\u200d\u2014\u200cdepending on the season. In the second and third seasons, contestants were also asked to write original lyrics or melody in an additional round after the first round. In the seventh season, the group round was eliminated and contestants may, after a first solo performance and on judges approval, skip a second solo round and move directly to the final Hollywood round. In the twelfth season, the executive producers split up the females and males and chose the members to form the groups in the group round.\nIn the tenth and eleventh seasons, a further round was added in Las Vegas, where the contestants performed in groups based on a theme, followed by one final solo round to determine the semi-finalists. At the end of this stage of the competition, 24 to 36 contestants were selected to move on to the semi-final stage. In the twelfth season the Las Vegas round became a Sudden Death round, where the judges had to choose five guys and five girls each night (four nights) to make the top twenty. In the thirteenth season, the Las Vegas round was eliminated and a new round called \"Hollywood or Home\" was added, where if the judges were uncertain about some contestants, those contestants were required to perform soon after landing in Los Angeles, and those who failed to impress were sent back home before they reached Hollywood. In the fourteenth season, the \"Hollywood or Home\" round was dropped, and a Showcase round was added, where the contestants performed at the House of Blues or auditorium for the judges and a live audience, and these performances determine who makes into the Top 24. In the seventeenth and eighteenth seasons, the showcase round took place in Hawaii. From the nineteenth season onward, a showstopper round was used.\nAudience voting.\nFrom the semi-finals onward, the fate of the contestants is decided by public vote. During the contestant's performance as well as the recap at the end, a toll-free telephone number for each contestant was displayed on the screen. For a two-hour period after the episode ends (up to four hours for the finale) in each US time zone, viewers may call or send a text message to their preferred contestant's telephone number, and each call or text message was registered as a vote for that contestant. Viewers were allowed to vote as many times as they can within the two-hour voting window. However, the show reserves the right to discard votes by power dialers. One or more of the least popular contestants may be eliminated in successive weeks until a winner emerges. Over 110\u00a0million votes were cast in the first season, and by the tenth season the seasonal total had increased to nearly 750 million. Voting via text messaging was made available in the second season when AT&T Wireless joined as a sponsor of the show, and 7.5\u00a0million text messages were sent to \"American Idol\" that season. The number of text messages rapidly increased, reaching 178\u00a0million texts by the eighth season. Online voting was offered for the first time in the tenth season. The votes are counted and verified by Telescope Inc.\nSemi-finals.\nIn the first three seasons, the semi-finalists were split into different groups to perform individually in their respective night. In the first season, there were three groups of ten, with the top three contestants from each group making the finals. In the second and third seasons, there were four groups of eight, and the top two of each selected. These seasons also featured a wildcard round, where contestants who failed to qualify were given another chance. In the first season, only one wildcard contestant was chosen by the judges, giving a total of ten finalists. In the second and third seasons, each of the three judges championed one contestant with the public advancing a fourth into the finals, making 12 finalists in all.\nFrom the fourth through seventh and ninth seasons, the twenty-four semi-finalists were divided by gender in order to ensure an equal gender division in the top twelve. The men and women sang separately on consecutive nights, and the bottom two in each groups were eliminated each week until only six of each remained to form the top twelve.\nThe wildcard round returned in the eighth season, wherein there were three groups of twelve, with three contestants moving forward \u2013 the highest male, the highest female, and the next highest-placed singer \u2013 for each night, and four wildcards were chosen by the judges to produce a final 13. Starting in tenth season, the girls and boys perform on separate nights. In the tenth and eleventh seasons, five of each gender were chosen, and three wildcards were chosen by the judges to form a final 13. In the twelfth season, the top twenty semifinalists were split into gender groups, with five of each gender advancing to form the final 10. In the thirteenth season, there were thirty semifinalists, but only twenty semifinalists (ten for each gender) were chosen by the judges to perform on the live shows, with five in each gender based on the vote and three wildcards chosen by the judges composing the final 13. In the fourteenth season, the top 24 performed at The Fillmore Detroit, starting with the 12 males on one night and then the 12 females on the next night. The following week, the same order went for the top 16, with four males eliminated, followed by four females based on the vote. Then, on the first night of finals, a similar sequence from the thirteenth season was used to determine the final 12, with five of each gender based on the vote and two wildcards chosen by the judges. In the fifteenth season, the top 24 performed at Cathedral of Saint Vibiana in Los Angeles and were split into two groups of twelve and performed twice, one being a solo performance and one being a duet with a former Idol contestant. In each group, the judges chose 7 contestants to advance to the top 14 where the judges chose 4 to advance to the top 10 and remaining 6 contestants were chosen based on the vote. In the sixteenth season, the top 24 performed at the Academy in the Heart of LA, and the show repeated the process from the previous season. However, instead of Idol alumnus as duet partners, superstar celebrity singers were used as the duet partners. In the seventeenth season, the same process was repeated again. However, instead of a top 24, it's a top 20, the contestants performed at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, and performed solos in one episode, and performed the duets in two episodes. In the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the top 20 performed at their homes, and based on the vote, half of the top 20 would advance to the top 10, and the other half would be eliminated. However, a wild card was given to one of the bottom 10 to save them from elimination. In the nineteenth season, the show used a combination of the process from the sixteenth and fourteenth seasons. In the twentieth season, the show repeated the process from the previous season, but they used a top 20 instead of a top 16, and there were no all star duets. In the twenty-first season, the same process was repeated, but they started with a top 26 instead of a top 24. In the twenty-second season, the show repeated the process from the twentieth season.\nFinals.\nThe finals are broadcast in primetime from Los Angeles, in front of a live studio audience (except the eighteenth season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic). From 2002 to 2019 and from 2021 to 2022, the venue was CBS Television City. Starting in 2023, it changed to Red Studios. The finals lasted eight weeks in the first season. From the second to ninth and fourteenth seasons, the finals lasted eleven weeks. The tenth and eleventh seasons lasted for twelve weeks, while the twelfth season lasted for ten weeks. In the thirteenth season, the finals lasted thirteen weeks. The finals lasted seven weeks in the fifteenth season, and six weeks in the sixteenth season. Each finalist performs songs based on a weekly theme which may be a musical genre such as Motown, disco, or big band, songs by artists such as Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley or The Beatles, or more general themes such as \"Billboard\" number-one hits or songs from the contestant's year of birth. Contestants usually worked with a celebrity mentor related to the theme. From the tenth to twelfth seasons, Jimmy Iovine was brought in as a mentor for the season. Initially the contestants sang one song each week, but this was increased to two songs from top four or five onwards, then three songs for the top two or three.\nThe most popular contestants are usually not revealed in the results show. Instead, typically the three contestants (two in later rounds) who received the lowest number of votes was called to the center of the stage. One of these three was usually sent to safety; however the two remaining were not necessarily the bottom two. The contestant with the fewest votes was then revealed and eliminated from the competition. A montage of the eliminated contestant's time on the show was played and they gave their final performance (from the fourteenth season onward, the montage and the final performance were dropped). However, in the sixth season, during the series' first ever Idol Gives Back episode, no contestant was eliminated, but on the following week, two were sent home. Moreover, from the eighth to the fourteenth seasons, and the seventeenth season onward, the judges may overturn viewers' decision with a \"Judges' Save\" if they unanimously agreed to. \"The save\" could only be used once, and only up through the Top 5. In the eighth to tenth and fourteenth seasons, a double elimination then took place in the week following the activation of the save, but in the eleventh and thirteenth seasons, a regular single elimination took place. The save was not activated in the twelfth season and consequently, a non-elimination took place in the week after its expiration with the votes then carrying over into the following week.\nThe \"Fan Save\" was introduced in the fourteenth season. During the finals, viewers were given a five-minute window to vote for the contestants in danger of elimination by using their Twitter account to decide which contestant will move on to the next show, starting with the Top 8.\nSeason finale.\nDuring the original run of \"American Idol\" on Fox, the finale week consisted of a one-hour long final performance night and a two-hour last episode of the season that culminates in revealing the winner, both of which are broadcast live in the U.S. Eastern and Central time zones. For the first, third through sixth and fourteenth through fifteenth seasons it was broadcast from the Dolby Theatre, which has an audience capacity of approximately 3,400. The second-season finale took place at the Gibson Amphitheatre, which had an audience capacity of over 6,000. In the seventh through thirteenth seasons, the venue was at the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live, which holds an audience of over 7,000. Since the show's reboot on ABC, the venue remains the same throughout the entire show (excluding auditions), but was still two episodes in the sixteenth season, and then stretched to a single three-hour season finale that is annually aired live simultaneously in all U.S. territories, starting with the seventeenth season. The eighteenth-season finale was conducted virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nRewards for winner and finalists.\nThe winner usually receives a record deal with a major label, which may be for up to six albums, and secures a management contract with \"American Idol\"-affiliated 19 Management (which has the right of first refusal to sign all contestants), as well as various lucrative contracts. All winners prior to the ninth season reportedly earned at least $1\u00a0million in their first year as winner. At first the contract came with a $250,000-plus advance, but dropped to about $62,500 over the Fox years. All the runners-up of the first ten seasons, as well as some of other finalists, had also received record deals with major labels. However, starting in the eleventh season, the runner-up may only be guaranteed a single-only deal. BMG/Sony (first through ninth seasons), UMG (tenth through fifteenth seasons), and Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records (sixteenth through eighteenth seasons) had the right of first refusal to sign contestants for three months after the season's finale. In the fourteenth and fifteenth seasons, the winner was signed with Big Machine Records. Prominent music mogul Clive Davis also produced some of the selected contestants' albums, such as Kelly Clarkson, Clay Aiken, Fantasia Barrino and Diana DeGarmo. All top 10 (11 in the tenth and twelfth seasons, 5 in the fourteenth season, and 7 in the sixteenth season) finalists earn the privilege of going on a tour, where the participants may each earn a six-figure sum.\nSeason synopses.\nEach season premieres with the audition round, taking place in different cities. The audition episodes typically feature a mix of potential finalists, interesting characters and woefully inadequate contestants. Each successful contestant receives a golden or platinum ticket to proceed on to the next round in Hollywood. Based on their performances during the Hollywood round (Las Vegas round from the tenth through twelfth seasons), 24 to 36 contestants are selected by the judges to participate in the semifinals. From the semifinals onward the contestants perform their songs live, with the judges making their critiques after each performance. The contestants are voted for by the viewing public, and the outcome of the public votes is then revealed during a results segment. The results segment feature group performances by the contestants as well as guest performers. The Top-three results also features homecoming events for the Top 3 finalists. The season reaches its climax in a two-hour results finale show, where the winner of the season is revealed.\nWith the exception of the first two seasons, the contestants in the semifinals onward perform in front of a studio audience. They perform with a full band in the finals. The current musical director is Kris Pooley, who has been with the show since the sixteenth season. In previous seasons, the \"American Idol\" band was led by Rickey Minor (fourth through ninth and thirteenth through fifteenth seasons) and Ray Chew (tenth through twelfth seasons). Assistance has also been given by vocal coaches and song arrangers, such as Michael Orland and Debra Byrd to contestants behind the scene. Starting with the seventh season, contestants may perform with a musical instrument from the Hollywood rounds onward. In later seasons, the contestants were allowed to perform with a musical instrument in the auditions. During the first nine seasons, performances were usually aired live on Tuesday nights, followed by the results shows on Wednesdays, but moved to Wednesdays and Thursdays from the tenth through thirteenth seasons, with the tenth, eleventh and thirteenth-season finales aired on Tuesday and Wednesday. From the fourteenth season onward, there were no separate results shows. On the fourteenth season, the show aired on Wednesday nights, and on the fifteenth season, Thursday nights. Since the sixteenth season, the show has been airing on Sundays and Mondays.\n2002\u20132016: Fox.\nSeason 1 (2002).\nThe first season of \"American Idol\" debuted as a summer replacement show in June 2002 on the Fox network. It was co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell served as judges.\nIn the audition rounds, 121 contestants were selected from around 10,000 who attended the auditions. These were cut to 30 for the semifinal, with ten going on to the finals. One semifinalist, Delano Cagnolatti, was disqualified for lying to evade the show's age limit. One of the early favorites, Tamyra Gray, was eliminated at the top four, the first of several such shock eliminations that were to be repeated in later seasons. Christina Christian was hospitalized before the top six result show due to chest pains and palpitations, and she was eliminated while she was in the hospital. Jim Verraros was the first openly gay contestant on the show; his sexual orientation was revealed on his blog, however it was removed during the competition after a request from the show producers over concerns that it might be unfairly influencing votes.\nThe final showdown was between Justin Guarini, one of the early favorites, and Kelly Clarkson. Clarkson was not initially thought of as a contender, but impressed the judges with some good performances in the final rounds, such as her performance of Aretha Franklin's \"Natural Woman\", and Betty Hutton's \"Stuff Like That There\", and eventually won the crown on September 4, 2002.\nIn what was to become a tradition, Clarkson performed the coronation song during the finale, and released the song immediately after the season ended. The single, \"A Moment Like This\", went on to break a 38-year-old record held by The Beatles for the biggest leap to number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. Guarini did not release any song immediately after the show and remains the only runner-up not to do so. Both Clarkson and Guarini made a musical film, \"From Justin to Kelly\", which was released in 2003 but was widely panned. Clarkson has since become one of the most successful \"Idol\" contestants internationally, with worldwide album sales of more than 25\u00a0million.\nStarting September 30, 2006, this season was repackaged as \"\"American Idol Rewind\"\" and syndicated directly to stations in the U.S.\nSeason 2 (2003).\nFollowing the success of the first season, the second season was moved up to air in January 2003. The number of episodes increased, as did the show's budget and the charge for commercial spots. Dunkleman left the show, leaving Ryan Seacrest as the lone host. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Kristin Adams was a correspondent for this season.\nCorey Clark was disqualified during the finals for having an undisclosed police record; however, he later alleged that he and Paula Abdul had an affair while on the show and that this contributed to his expulsion. Clark also claimed that Abdul gave him preferential treatment on the show due to their affair. The allegations were dismissed by Fox after an independent investigation. Two semi-finalists were also disqualified that year \u2013 Jaered Andrews for an arrest on an assault charge, and Frenchie Davis for having previously modeled for an adult website.\nThe season finale drew more than 38 million viewers, marking \"Idol\"'s biggest audience ever for a single episode. Ruben Studdard emerged as the winner, beating Clay Aiken by a small margin. Out of a total of 24 million votes, Studdard finished just 134,000 votes ahead of Aiken. This slim margin of victory was controversial due to the large number of calls that failed to get through. In an interview prior to the fifth season, executive producer Nigel Lythgoe indicated that Aiken had led the fan voting from the wildcard week onward until the finale.\nBoth finalists found success after the show, but Aiken out-performed Studdard's coronation song \"Flying Without Wings\" with his single release from the show \"This Is the Night\", as well as in their subsequent album releases. The fourth-place finisher Josh Gracin also enjoyed some success as a country singer.\nSeason 3 (2004).\nThe third season premiered on January 19, 2004. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. One of the most talked-about contestants during the audition process was William Hung whose off-key rendition of Ricky Martin's \"She Bangs\" received widespread attention. His exposure on \"Idol\" landed him a record deal and surprisingly he became the third bestselling singer from that season.\nMuch media attention on the season had been focused on the three black singers, Fantasia Barrino, LaToya London, and Jennifer Hudson, dubbed the Three Divas. All three unexpectedly landed on the bottom three on the top seven result show, with Hudson controversially eliminated. Elton John, who was one of the mentors that season, called the results of the votes \"incredibly racist\". The prolonged stays of John Stevens and Jasmine Trias in the finals, despite negative comments from the judges, had aroused resentment, so much so that John Stevens reportedly received a death threat, which he dismissed as a joke 'blown out of proportion'.\nThe performance of \"Summertime\" by Barrino, later known simply as \"Fantasia\", at Top 8 was widely praised, and Simon Cowell considered it as his favorite \"Idol\" moment in the nine seasons he was on the show. Fantasia and Diana DeGarmo were the last two finalists, and Fantasia was crowned as the winner. Fantasia released as her coronation single \"I Believe\", a song co-written by the first season finalist Tamyra Gray, and DeGarmo released \"Dreams\".\nSeason 4 (2005).\nThe fourth season premiered on January 18, 2005. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This was the first full season of the series to be aired in high definition; the finale of the third season was also aired in high definition. The number of those attending the auditions by now had increased to over 100,000 from the 10,000 of the first season. The age limit was raised to 28 in this season, and among those who benefited from this new rule were Constantine Maroulis and Bo Bice, the two rockers of the show.\nThe top 12 finalists originally included Mario Vazquez, but he dropped out citing 'personal reasons' and was replaced by Nikko Smith. Later, an employee of Fremantle Media, which produces the show, sued the company for wrongful termination, claiming that he was dismissed after complaining about lewd behavior by Vazquez toward him during the show.\nDuring the top 11 week, due to a mix-up with the contestants' telephone number, voting was repeated on what was normally the result night, with the result reveal postponed until the following night.\nIn May 2005, Underwood was announced the winner, with Bice the runner-up. Both Underwood and Bice released the coronation song \"Inside Your Heaven\", with Underwood's version of the song making her the first country artist ever to debut at number-one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart. As of 2015, Underwood has become the most successful \"Idol\" contestant in the U.S., selling 16 million albums in the country, while selling a total of 65 million records worldwide.\nSeason 5 (2006).\nThe fifth season began on January 17, 2006. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. It remains the highest-rated season in the show's run so far. Two of the more prominent contestants during the Hollywood round were the Brittenum twins who were later disqualified for identity theft.\nChris Daughtry's performance of Fuel's \"Hemorrhage (In My Hands)\" on the show was widely praised and led to an invitation to join the band as Fuel's new lead singer, an invitation he declined. His performance of Live's version of \"I Walk the Line\" was well received by the judges but later criticized in some quarters for not crediting the arrangement to Live. He was eliminated at the top four in a shocking result.\nOn May 30, 2006, Taylor Hicks was named \"American Idol\", with Katharine McPhee the runner-up. \"Do I Make You Proud\" was released as Hicks' first single and McPhee's was \"My Destiny\".\nDespite being eliminated earlier in the season, Chris Daughtry (as lead of the band Daughtry) became the most successful recording artist from this season. Other contestants, such as Hicks, McPhee, Bucky Covington, Mandisa, Kellie Pickler, and Elliott Yamin have had varying levels of success.\nSeason 6 (2007).\nThe sixth season began on Tuesday, January 16, 2007. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The premiere drew a massive audience of 37.3\u00a0million viewers, peaking in the last half hour with more than 41\u00a0million viewers.\nTeenager Sanjaya Malakar was the season's most talked-about contestant for his unusual hairdo, and for managing to survive elimination for many weeks due in part to the weblog Vote for the Worst and satellite radio personality Howard Stern, who both encouraged fans to vote for him. However, on the Top 7 results, Sanjaya was voted off.\nThis season saw the first \"Idol Gives Back\" telethon-inspired event, which raised more than $76\u00a0million in corporate and viewer donations. No contestant was eliminated that week, but two (Phil Stacey and Chris Richardson) were eliminated the next.\nIn the May 23 season finale, Jordin Sparks was declared the winner with the runner-up being Blake Lewis. Sparks has had some success as a recording artist post-\"Idol\".\nThis season also saw the launch of the \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest which allows fans to vote for the \"coronation song\". Thousands of recordings of original songs were submitted by songwriters, and 20 entries selected for the public vote. The winning song, \"This Is My Now\", was performed by both finalists during the finale and released by Sparks on May 24, 2007.\nSeason 7 (2008).\nThe seventh season premiered on January 15, 2008, for a two-day, four-hour premiere. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. The media focused on the professional status of the seventh season contestants, the so-called 'ringers', many of whom, including Kristy Lee Cook, Brooke White, Michael Johns, and in particular Carly Smithson, had prior recording contracts. Contestant David Hernandez also attracted some attention due to his past employment as a stripper.\nFor the finals, \"American Idol\" debuted a new state-of-the-art set and stage on March 11, 2008, along with a new on-air look. David Cook's performance of \"Billie Jean\" on top-ten night was lauded by the judges, but provoked controversy when they apparently mistook the Chris Cornell arrangement to be David Cook's own even though the performance was introduced as Cornell's version. Cornell himself said he was 'flattered' and praised David Cook's performance. David Cook was taken to the hospital after the top-nine performance show due to heart palpitations and high blood pressure.\nDavid Archuleta's performance of John Lennon's \"Imagine\" was considered by many as one of the best of the season. Jennifer Lopez, who was brought in as a judge in the tenth season, called it a beautiful song-moment that she will never forget. Jason Castro's semi-final performance of \"Hallelujah\" also received considerable attention, and it propelled Jeff Buckley's version of the song to the top of the \"Billboard\" digital song chart. This was the first season in which contestants' recordings were released onto iTunes after their performances, and although sales information was not released so as not to prejudice the contest, leaked information indicated that contestants' songs frequently reached the top of iTunes sales charts.\n\"Idol Gives Back\" returned on April 9, 2008, and raised $64\u00a0million for charity.\nThe finalists were Cook and Archuleta. David Cook was announced the winner on May 21, 2008, the first rocker to win the show. Both Cook and Archuleta had some success as recording artists with both selling over a million albums in the U.S.\nThe \"American Idol\" Songwriter contest was also held this season. From ten of the most popular submissions, each of the final two contestants chose a song to perform, although neither of their selections was used as the \"coronation song\". The winning song, \"The Time of My Life\", was recorded by David Cook and released on May 22, 2008.\nSeason 8 (2009).\nThe eighth season premiered on January 13, 2009. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. This season featured the first major change to the judging panel; a fourth judge, Kara DioGuardi, was introduced. Mike Darnell, the president of alternative programming for Fox, stated that the season would focus more on the contestants' personal life.\nThis was also the first season without executive producer Nigel Lythgoe who left to focus on the international versions of his show \"So You Think You Can Dance\". The Hollywood round was moved to the Kodak Theatre for 2009 and was also extended to two weeks. \"Idol Gives Back\" was canceled for this season due to the global recession at the time.\nThere were 13 finalists this season, but two were eliminated in the first result show of the finals. A new feature introduced was the \"Judges' Save\", and Matt Giraud was saved from elimination at the top seven by the judges when he received the fewest votes. The next week, Lil Rounds and Anoop Desai were eliminated.\nThe two finalists were Kris Allen and Adam Lambert, both of whom had previously landed in the bottom three at the top five. Allen won the contest in the most controversial voting result since the second season. It was claimed, and then later retracted, that 38\u00a0million of the 100\u00a0million votes cast on the night came from Allen's home state of Arkansas alone, and that AT&T employees unfairly influenced the votes by giving lessons on power-texting at viewing parties in Arkansas.\nBoth Allen and Lambert released the coronation song, \"No Boundaries\" which was co-written by DioGuardi. This is the first season in which the winner failed to achieve gold album status.\nSeason 9 (2010).\nThe ninth season premiered on January 12, 2010. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Randy Jackson, Kara DioGuardi, and Simon Cowell returned as judges. Paula Abdul left the show and Ellen DeGeneres replaced Abdul at the start of Hollywood Week. One of the most prominent auditioners this season was General Larry Platt whose performance of \"Pants on the Ground\" became a viral hit song.\nCrystal Bowersox, who has Type-I diabetes, fell ill due to diabetic ketoacidosis on the morning of the girls performance night for the top 20 week and was hospitalized. The schedule was rearranged so the boys performed first and she could perform the following night instead; she later revealed that Ken Warwick, the show producer, wanted to disqualify her but she begged to be allowed to stay on the show.\nMichael Lynche was the lowest vote getter at top nine and was given the Judges' Save. The next week Katie Stevens and Andrew Garcia were eliminated. That week, Adam Lambert was invited back to be a mentor, the first \"Idol\" alum to do so. \"Idol Gives Back\" returned this season on April 21, 2010, and raised $45 million.\nA special tribute to Simon Cowell was presented in the finale for his final season with the show. Many figures from the show's past, including Paula Abdul, made an appearance.\nThe final two contestants were Lee DeWyze and Bowersox. DeWyze was declared the winner during the May 26 finale. No new song was used as coronation song this year; instead, the two finalists each released a cover song \u2013 DeWyze chose U2's \"Beautiful Day\", and Bowersox chose Patty Griffin's \"Up to the Mountain\". This is the first season where neither finalist achieved significant album sales.\nSeason 10 (2011).\nThe tenth season premiered on January 19, 2011. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Many changes were introduced this season, from the format to the personnel of the show. Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined Randy Jackson as judges following the departures of Simon Cowell (who left to launch the American version of \"The X Factor\"), Kara DioGuardi (whose contract was not renewed) and Ellen DeGeneres, who left the show on her own accord.\nRandy Jackson was the only judge from the ninth season to return for the tenth. Nigel Lythgoe returned as executive producer. Jimmy Iovine, chairman of the Interscope Geffen A&M label group, the new partner of \"American Idol\", acted as the in-house mentor in place of weekly guest mentors, although in later episodes special guest mentors such as Beyonc\u00e9, will.i.am and Lady Gaga were brought in.\nThe tenth season is the first to include online auditions where contestants could submit a 40-second video audition via Myspace. Karen Rodriguez was one such auditioner and reached the final rounds.\nOne of the more prominent contestants this year was Chris Medina, whose story of caring for his brain-damaged fianc\u00e9e received widespread coverage. Medina was cut in the Top 40 round. Casey Abrams, who suffers from ulcerative colitis, was hospitalized twice and missed the Top 13 result show. The judges used their one save on Abrams on the Top 11, and as a result this was the first season that 11 finalists went on tour instead of 10. In the following week, Naima Adedapo and Thia Megia were both eliminated.\nPia Toscano, one of the presumed favorites to advance far in the season, was unexpectedly eliminated on April 7, 2011, finishing in ninth place. Her elimination drew criticisms from some former \"Idol\" contestants, as well as actor Tom Hanks. After \"Idol\", Jennifer Lopez helped guide her career.\nThe two finalists in 2011 were Lauren Alaina and Scotty McCreery, both teenage country singers. McCreery won the competition on May 25, being the youngest male winner and the fourth male in a row to win \"American Idol\". McCreery released his first single, \"I Love You This Big\", as his coronation song, and Alaina released \"Like My Mother Does\". McCreery's debut album, \"Clear as Day\", became the first debut album by an \"Idol\" winner to reach No. 1 on the US \"Billboard\" 200 since Ruben Studdard's \"Soulful\" in 2003, and he became the youngest male artist to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200.\nSeason 11 (2012).\nThe eleventh season premiered on January 18, 2012. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez, and Randy Jackson returned as judges. One more finalist would join the Top 24 making it the Top 25, which was later revealed to be Jermaine Jones. However, on March 14, Jones was disqualified in 12th place for concealing arrests and outstanding warrants. Jones denied the accusation that he concealed his arrests.\nFinalist Phillip Phillips suffered from kidney pain and was taken to the hospital before the Top 13 results show, and later received medical procedure to alleviate a blockage caused by kidney stones. He was reported to have eight surgeries during his Idol run, and had considered quitting the show due to the pain. He underwent surgery to remove the stones and reconstruct his kidney soon after the season had finished.\nJessica Sanchez received the fewest votes during the Top 7 week, and the judges decided to use their \"save\" option on her, making her the first female recipient of the save. The following week, unlike previous seasons, Colton Dixon was the only contestant sent home. Sanchez later made the final two, the first season where a recipient of the save reached the finale.\nPhillips became the winner, beating Sanchez. During the finale, fifth season finalist Ace Young proposed marriage to third season runner-up Diana DeGarmo on stage \u2013 which she accepted.\nPhillips released \"Home\" as his coronation song, while Sanchez released \"Change Nothing\". Phillips' \"Home\" has since become the best selling of all coronation songs, with over 5 million copies sold.\nSeason 12 (2013).\nThe twelfth season premiered on January 16, 2013. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Randy Jackson returned as a judge. Judges Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler left the show after two seasons. Randy Jackson was the only judge from the eleventh season to return for the twelfth. This season's judging panel consisted of Randy Jackson, along with Mariah Carey, Keith Urban and Nicki Minaj.\nThis was the first season since the ninth season to have four judges on the panel. The pre-season buzz and the early episodes of the show were dominated by the feud between the judges Minaj and Carey after a video of their dispute was leaked to TMZ.\nThe top 10 contestants started with five males and five females, however, the males were eliminated consecutively in the first five weeks, with Lazaro Arbos the last male to be eliminated. For the first time in the show's history, the top 5 contestants were all female. It was also the first time that the judges' \"save\" was not used, the top four contestants were therefore given an extra week to perform again with their votes carried over with no elimination in the first week.\n23-year-old Candice Glover won the season with Kree Harrison taking the runner-up spot. Glover became the first female to win \"American Idol\" since Jordin Sparks, who won the show in 2007. Glover released \"I Am Beautiful\" as a single while Harrison released \"All Cried Out\" immediately after the show. Glover sold poorly with her debut album, and this is also the first season that the runner-up was not signed by a music label.\nTowards the end of the season, Randy Jackson, the last remaining of the original judges, announced he would no longer serve as a judge to pursue other business ventures. Both judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj also decided to leave after one season to focus on their music careers.\nSeason 13 (2014).\nThe thirteenth season premiered on January 15, 2014. Ryan Seacrest returned as host and Keith Urban returned as a judge. Urban was the only judge from the twelfth season to return as a judge for the thirteenth season. Randy Jackson returned, though Jackson moved from the judging panel to the role of in-mentor. Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj left the panel after one season. Former judge Jennifer Lopez and former mentor Harry Connick, Jr. joined Urban on the panel. Connick Jr. served as a mentor for \"Idol\" in 2010 and 2012. Also, Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick were replaced as executive producers by Per Blankens, Jesse Ignjatovic and Evan Pragger. Bill DeRonde replaced Warwick as a director of the audition episodes, while Louis J. Horvitz replaced Gregg Gelfand as a director of the show.\nThis was the first season where the contestants were permitted to perform in the final rounds songs they wrote themselves. In the Top 8, Sam Woolf received the fewest votes, but he was saved from elimination by the judges. The 500th episode of the series was the Top 3 performance night.\nCaleb Johnson was named the winner of the season, with Jena Irene as the runner-up. Johnson released \"As Long as You Love Me\" as his coronation single while Irene released \"We Are One\".\nSeason 14 (2015).\nThe fourteenth season premiered on January 7, 2015. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, and Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban and Harry Connick, Jr. returned for their respective fourth, third and second seasons as judges. Eighth season runner-up Adam Lambert filled in for Urban during the New York City auditions. Randy Jackson did not return as the in-house mentor and left the show permanently. Scott Borchetta replaced Jackson as the mentor.\nChanges this season include only airing one episode a week during the final ten. Coca-Cola ended their longtime sponsorship of the show and Ford Motor Company maintained a reduced role. The winner of the season also received a recording contract with Big Machine Records.\nNick Fradiani won the season, defeating Clark Beckham. Fradiani became the first winner from the Northeast region. Fradiani released \"Beautiful Life\" as his coronation single while Beckham released \"Champion\". Jax, the third place finalist, also released a single called \"Forcefield\".\nSeason 15 (2016).\nFox announced on May 11, 2015, that the fifteenth season would be the final season of \"American Idol\"; as such, the season was expected to have an additional focus on the program's alumni. Ryan Seacrest returned as host, with Harry Connick Jr., Keith Urban, and Jennifer Lopez all returning as judges. The fifteenth season premiered on January 6, 2016. The season was shortened by four weeks compared to previous years. During the finale episode, President Barack Obama praised the millions of young people that voted for contestants and pitched that they vote in the upcoming election. The farewell season concluded on April 7, 2016. Seacrest signed off by saying: \"And one more time\u2014this is so tough\u2014we say to you from Hollywood, goodnight America\", and then he added, \"for now.\"\nTrent Harmon won the season against runner-up La'Porsha Renae. Harmon released \"Falling\" co-written by Keith Urban as his coronation song. Renae's \"Battles\", third-place finisher Dalton Rapattoni's \"Strike A Match\" and fourth-place finisher MacKenzie Bourg's \"Roses\" were also released as singles.\n2018\u2013present: ABC revival.\nIn early 2017, \"Variety\" reported that Fremantle Media was in talks to revive the show for NBC or for its original network, Fox. A dispute between Fremantle and Core Media Group derailed these plans. In May 2017, ABC was making a bid to revive the program. ABC acquired the rights to the series, and \"American Idol\" returned for the 2017\u201318 television season.\nSeason 16 (2018).\nIn July 2017, it was announced that Ryan Seacrest would return as host, and by September 2017 it was revealed that Katy Perry, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie would serve as judges. The sixteenth season premiered on March 11, 2018. This was the first season of \"American Idol\" to air on ABC. The season was again shortened compared to the previous season to twelve weeks, with multiple elimination in the final rounds. Unlike previous seasons where only two finalists remained in the final episode, three finalists performed in the finale. On May 21, 2018, the season concluded with Maddie Poppe crowned the winner, beating Caleb Lee Hutchinson as runner-up and Gabby Barrett in third place. Her winning song was \"Going, Going, Gone\". Caleb Lee Hutchinson released \"Johnny Cash Heart\" as a single, while Gabby Barrett's song was \"Rivers Deep\".\nSeason 17 (2019).\nABC renewed the revival series for another season. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. The seventeenth season premiered on March 3, 2019. For the finale, the show no longer features separate performance and result shows. On May 19, 2019, the season concluded with three finalists, with Madison VanDenburg eliminated in third place after performing two songs, and the final two performing their last song. For the first time, there were no separate performance and grand finale shows this season. Laine Hardy was crowned the winner and Alejandro Aranda runner-up. Hardy released a single, \"Flame\", immediately after the win, but Aranda did not. However, Aranda later released a song he performed in the finale, \"Tonight\", under the name Scarypoolparty on June 28, 2019.\nSeason 18 (2020).\nOn May 13, 2019, the series was renewed for an eighteenth season and it premiered on February 16, 2020. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. For the first time, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, from the top 20 to the finale, the contestants performed in their own homes, while Ryan Seacrest hosted the show remotely in his own home in Los Angeles with the judges also in their respective homes. The season was also further truncated, with the top 5 performing in the finale. Each finalist also performed only two songs for the finale. On May 17, the season concluded, with Just Sam crowned as the winner, with Arthur Gunn finishing as the runner-up. \"Rise Up\", the song Just Sam performed for their audition and reprised on the finale, was released as their debut song.\nSeason 19 (2021).\nOn May 15, 2020, ABC renewed the series for a nineteenth season and it premiered on February 14, 2021. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. Later in October, it was announced that Bobby Bones will return as mentor. On May 23, the season concluded, with Chayce Beckham crowned the winner, with Willie Spence finishing as the runner-up. \"23\", the song Chayce Beckham wrote and performed for Top 4, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 20 (2022).\nOn May 13, 2021, ABC renewed the series for a twentieth season and it premiered on February 27, 2022. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On December 31, it was announced that Bones would not be returning as a mentor. On May 22, the season concluded, with Noah Thompson crowned as the winner, with HunterGirl finishing as the runner-up. \"One Day Tonight\", the song Noah Thompson performed for the Grand Finale, was released as his debut song.\nSeason 21 (2023).\nOn May 13, 2022, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-first season and it premiered on February 19, 2023. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. On May 21, the season concluded, with Iam Tongi crowned as the winner, with Megan Danielle finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 22 (2024).\nOn May 16, 2023, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-second season and it premiered on February 18, 2024. Seacrest returned as host, and Bryan, Perry and Richie returned as judges. In February 2024, Perry announced that the season would be her last. On May 20, the season concluded, with Abi Carter crowned as the winner, with Will Moseley finishing as the runner-up.\nSeason 23 (2025).\nOn May 10, 2024, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-third season; it was also announced the network was in-talks with \"high-profile stars\" to replace the outgoing Perry. On July 31, 2024, it was announced Seacrest would return as host, with Bryan and Richie returning as judges; Underwood was named as Perry's successor. The season premiered on March 9, 2025.\nReception.\nU.S. television ratings.\nSeasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of \"American Idol\". It holds the distinction of having the longest winning streak in the Nielsen annual television ratings; it became the highest-rated of all television programs in the United States overall for an unprecedented seven consecutive years, or eight consecutive (and total) years when either its performance or result show was ranked number one overall.\n\"Each U.S. network television season starts in late September and ends in late May, which coincides with the completion of May sweeps.\"\n\"American Idol\" premiered in June 2002 and became the surprise summer hit show of 2002. The first show drew 9.9\u00a0million viewers, giving Fox the best viewing figure for the 8.30\u00a0pm spot in over a year. The audience steadily grew, and by finale night, the audience had averaged 23\u00a0million, with more than 40\u00a0million watching some part of that show. That episode was placed third amongst all age groups, but more importantly it led in the 18\u201349 demographic, the age group most valued by advertisers.\nThe growth continued into the next season, starting with a season premiere of 26.5 million. The season attracted an average of 21.7\u00a0million viewers, and was placed second overall amongst the 18\u201349 age group. The finale night when Ruben Studdard won over Clay Aiken was also the highest-rated ever \"American Idol\" episode at 38.1\u00a0million for the final hour. By the third season, the show had become the top show in the 18\u201349 demographic<ref name=\"realitytvworld_5/24/2007\"></ref> a position it has held for all subsequent years up to and including the tenth season, and its competition stages ranked first in the nationwide overall ratings. By the fourth season, \"American Idol\" had become the most-watched series amongst all viewers on American TV for the first time, with an average viewership of 26.8\u00a0million. The show reached its peak in the fifth season with numbers averaging 30.6\u00a0million per episode, and this season remains the highest-rated of the series.\nThe sixth season premiered with the series' highest-rated debut episode and a few of its succeeding episodes rank among the most-watched episodes of \"American Idol.\" During this time, many television executives begun to regard the show as a programming force unlike any seen before, as its consistent dominance of up to two hours two or three nights a week exceeded the 30- or 60-minute reach of previous hits such as NBC's \"The Cosby Show\". The show was dubbed \"the Death Star\", and competing networks often rearranged their schedules in order to minimize losses. However, the sixth season also showed a steady decline in viewership over the course of the season. The season finale saw a drop in ratings of 16% from the previous year. The sixth season was the first season wherein the average results show rated higher than the competition stages (unlike in the previous seasons), and became the second-highest-rated of the series after the preceding season.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the seventh season. The premiere was down 11% among total viewers, and the results show in which Kristy Lee Cook was eliminated delivered its lowest-rated Wednesday show among the 18\u201334 demo since the first season in 2002. However, the ratings rebounded for the seventh-season finale with the excitement over the battle of the Davids, and improved over the sixth season as the series' third most watched finale. The strong finish of season seven also helped Fox become the most watched TV network in the country for the first time since its inception, a first ever in American television history for a non-Big Three major broadcast network. Overall ratings for the season were down 10% from the sixth season, which is in line with the fall in viewership across all networks due in part to the 2007\u20132008 Writers Guild of America strike.\nThe declining trend however continued into the eighth season, as total viewers numbers fell by 5\u201310% for early episodes compared to the seventh season, and by 9% for the finale. In the ninth season, \"Idol\"'s six-year extended streak of perfection in the ratings was broken, when NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics on February 17 beat \"Idol\" in the same time slot with 30.1\u00a0million viewers over \"Idol\"'s 18.4\u00a0million. Nevertheless, \"American Idol\" overall finished its ninth season as the most watched TV series for the sixth year running, breaking the previous record of five consecutive seasons achieved by CBS' \"All in the Family\" and NBC's \"The Cosby Show\".\nIn the tenth season, the total viewer numbers for the first week of shows fell 12\u201313%, and by up to 23% in the 18\u201349 demo compared to the ninth season. Later episodes, however, retained viewers better, and the season ended on a high with a significant increase in viewership for the finale \u2013 up 12% for the adults 18\u201349 demographic and a 21% increase in total viewers from the ninth-season finale. While the overall viewer number has increased this season, its viewer demographics have continued to age year on year \u2013 the median age this season was 47.2 compared to a median age of 32.1 in its first season. The demographics also became \"whiter\" over time and less diverse. Nevertheless, in the 2010\u201311 television season, Fox maintained its lead on over other networks with its seventh consecutive season of victory overall in the 18\u201349 demographic ratings in the United States.\nThe eleventh season, however, suffered a steep drop in ratings, a drop attributed by some to the arrival of new shows such as \"The Voice\" and \"The X Factor\". The ratings for the first two episodes of the eleventh season fell 16\u201321% in overall viewer numbers and 24\u201327% in the 18/49 demo, while the season finale fell 27% in total viewer number and 30% in the 18\u201349 demo. The average viewership for the season fell below 20 million viewers the first time since 2003, a drop of 23% in total viewers and 30% in the 18/49 demo. For the first time in eight years, \"American Idol\" lost the leading position in both the total viewers number and the 18/49 demo, coming in second to \"NBC Sunday Night Football\", although the strengths of \"Idol\" in its second year in the Wednesday-Thursday primetime slots helped Fox achieve the longest period of 18\u201349 demographic victory in the Nielsen ratings, standing at 8 straight years from 2004 to 2012.\nThe loss of viewers continued into the twelfth season, which saw the show hitting a number of series low in the 18\u201349 demo. The finale had 7.2 million fewer viewers than the previous season, and saw a drop of 44% in the 18\u201349 demo. The season viewers averaged at 13.3 million, a drop of 24% from the previous season. The thirteenth season suffered a huge decline in the 18\u201349 demographic, a drop of 28% from the twelfth season, and \"American Idol\" lost its Top 10 position in the Nielsen ratings by the end of the 2013\u201314 television season for the first time since its entry to the rankings in 2003 as a result, and never regained its Top 10 position by the series' end in 2016.\nThe continuing decline influenced further changes for the fourteenth season, including the loss of Coca-Cola as the show's major sponsor, and a decision to only broadcast one, two-hour show per week during the top 12 rounds (with results from the previous week integrated into the performance show, rather than having a separate results show). On May 11, 2015, prior to the fourteenth-season finale, Fox announced that the fifteenth season of \"American Idol\" would be its last. Despite these changes, the show's ratings would decline more sharply. The fourteenth-season finale was the lowest-rated finale ever, with an average of only 8.03 million viewers watching the finale. The show's ratings, however, rebounded in its final season and ended its run in 2016 as Fox's first-ever program to conclude its run without dropping from the Nielsen Top 30 most-watched television shows in each of its seasons.\nFor the revived series on ABC, the ratings were lower but remained stable compared to previous seasons on Fox. The finale of the seventeenth season was slightly more watched than the sixteenth.\nCritical reception.\nEarly reviews were mixed in their assessment. Ken Tucker of \"Entertainment Weekly\" considered that \"As TV, \"American Idol\" is crazily entertaining; as music, it's dust-mote inconsequential\". Others, however, thought that \"the most striking aspect of the series was the genuine talent it revealed\". It was also described as a \"sadistic musical bake-off\", and \"a romp in humiliation\". Other aspects of the show have attracted criticisms. The product placement in the show in particular was noted, and some critics were harsh about what they perceived as its blatant commercial calculations \u2013 Karla Peterson of \"The San Diego Union-Tribune\" charged that \"American Idol\" is \"a conniving multimedia monster\" that has \"absorbed the sin of our debauched culture and spit them out in a lump of reconstituted evil\". The decision to send the first season winner to sing the national anthem at the Lincoln Memorial on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks in 2002 was also poorly received by many. Lisa de Moraes of \"The Washington Post\" noted sarcastically that \"The terrorists have won\" and, with a sideswipe at the show's commercialism and voting process, that the decision as to who \"gets to turn this important site into just another cog in the 'Great \"American Idol\" Marketing Mandala' is in the hands of the millions of girls who have made \"American Idol\" a hit. Them and a handful of phone-redialer geeks who have been clocking up to 10,000 calls each week for their contestant of choice (but who, according to Fox, are in absolutely no way skewing the outcome).\"\nSome of the later writers about the show were more positive, Michael Slezak, again of \"Entertainment Weekly\", thought that \"for all its bloated, synthetic, product-shilling, money-making trappings, \"Idol\" provides a once-a-year chance for the average American to combat the evils of today's music business.\" Singer Sheryl Crow, who was later to act as a mentor on the show, however took the view that the show \"undermines art in every way and promotes commercialism\". Pop music critic Ann Powers nevertheless suggested that Idol has \"reshaped the American songbook\", \"led us toward a new way of viewing ourselves in relationship to mainstream popular culture\", and connects \"the classic Hollywood dream to the multicentered popular culture of the future.\" Others focused on the personalities in the show; Ramin Setoodeh of \"Newsweek\" accused judge Simon Cowell's cruel critiques in the show of helping to establish in the wider world a culture of meanness, that \"Simon Cowell has dragged the rest of us in the mud with him.\" Some such as singer John Mayer disparaged the contestants, suggesting that those who appeared on \"Idol\" are not real artists with self-respect.\nSome in the entertainment industry were critical of the star-making aspect of the show. Usher, a mentor on the show, bemoaning the loss of the \"true art form of music\", thought that shows like \"American Idol\" made it seem \"so easy that everyone can do it, and that it can happen overnight\", and that \"television is a lie\". Musician Michael Feinstein, while acknowledging that the show had uncovered promising performers, said that \"American Idol\" \"isn't really about music. It's about all the bad aspects of the music business \u2013 the arrogance of commerce, this sense of 'I know what will make this person a star; artists themselves don't know.' \" That \"American Idol\" is seen to be a fast track to success for its contestants has been a cause of resentment for some in the industry. LeAnn Rimes, commenting on Carrie Underwood winning Best Female Artist in Country Music Awards over Faith Hill in 2006, said that \"Carrie has not paid her dues long enough to fully deserve that award\". It is a common theme that has been echoed by many others. Elton John, who had appeared as a mentor in the show but turned down an offer to be a judge on \"American Idol\", commenting on talent shows in general, said that \"there have been some good acts but the only way to sustain a career is to pay your dues in small clubs\". \"American Idol\" revolutionized American pop culture and the pop idol process and has provided an opportunity for many to bypass the small club scene and allow a much larger audience to participate in and select the next potential chart topping performer.\nThe success of the show's alumni, however, has led to a more positive assessment of the show, and the show was described as having \"proven it has a valid way to pick talent and a proven way to sell records\". While the industry is divided on the show success, its impact is felt particularly strongly in the country music format. According to a CMT exec, reflecting on the success of Idol alumni in the country genre, \"if you want to try and get famous fast by going to a cattle call audition on TV, Idol reasonably remains the first choice for anyone\", and that country music and Idol \"go together well\".\n\"American Idol\" was nominated for the Emmy's Outstanding Reality Competition Program for nine years but never won. Director Bruce Gower won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Series in 2009, and the show won a Creative Arts Emmys each in 2007 and 2008, three in 2009, and two in 2011, as well as a Governor's Award in 2007 for its Idol Gives Back edition. It won the People's Choice Award, which honors the popular culture of the previous year as voted by the public, for favorite competition/reality show in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2012. It won the first Critics' Choice Television Award in 2011 for Best Reality Competition.\nIn 2013, TV Guide ranked the series No. 48 on its list of the 60 Best Series of All Time.\nGeographical, ethnic, and gender bias.\nThroughout the series, twelve of the seventeen \"Idol\" winners, including its first five, had come from the Southern United States. A large number of other finalists during the series' run have also hailed from the American South, including Clay Aiken, Kellie Pickler, and Chris Daughtry, who are all from North Carolina. In 2012, an analysis of the 131 contestants who have appeared in the finals of all seasons of the show up to that point found that 48% have some connection to the Southern United States.\nThe show itself was popular in the Southern United States, with households in the Southeastern United States 10% more likely to watch \"American Idol\" during the eighth season in 2009, and those in the East Central region, such as Kentucky, were 16 percent more likely to tune into the series. Data from Nielsen SoundScan, a music-sales tracking service, showed that of the 47\u00a0million CDs sold by \"Idol\" contestants through January 2010, 85 percent were by contestants with ties to the American South.\nTheories given for the success of Southerners on \"Idol\" have been: more versatility with musical genres, as the Southern U.S. is home to several music genre scenes; not having as many opportunities to break into the pop music business; text-voting due to the South having the highest percentage of cell-phone only households; and the strong heritage of music and singing, which is notable in the Bible Belt, where it is in church that many people get their start in public singing. Others also suggest that the Southern character of these contestants appeal to the South, as well as local pride. According to fifth season winner Taylor Hicks, who is from the state of Alabama, \"People in the South have a lot of pride ... So, they're adamant about supporting the contestants who do well from their state or region.\"\nFor five consecutive seasons, starting in the seventh season, the title was given to a white male who plays the guitar \u2013 a trend that \"Idol\" pundits call the \"White guy with guitar\" or \"WGWG\" factor. Just hours before the eleventh-season finale, where Phillip Phillips was named the winner, Richard Rushfield, author of the book \"American Idol: The Untold Story\", said, \"You have this alliance between young girls and grandmas and they see it, not necessarily as a contest to create a pop star competing on the contemporary radio, but as ... who's the nicest guy in a popularity contest\", he says, \"And that has led to this dynasty of four, and possibly now five, consecutive, affable, very nice, good-looking white boys.\"\nStart order bias.\nSome fans call the final performance of the night the \"pimp spot\" because it usually receives a big boost in votes, due to the recency effect. By performing first, a performer may benefit from the primacy effect, but any other early performance may be stifled. The second performance spot is sometimes called the \"un-pimp spot\" because it is the least beneficial.\nControversy.\nThe show was criticized in earlier seasons over the onerous contract contestants had to sign that gave excessive control to 19 Entertainment over their future careers and handed a large part of their future earnings to the management.\nIndividual contestants have generated controversy in this competition for their past actions or for being 'ringers' planted by the producers. A number of contestants have been disqualified for various reasons, such as for having an existing contract or undisclosed criminal record, although the show has also been accused of a double standard for disqualifying some but not others.\nVoting results have been a consistent source of controversy. The mechanism of voting has aroused considerable criticism, most notably in the second season when Ruben Studdard beat Clay Aiken in a close vote, and in the eighth season, when the massive increase in text votes fueled the texting controversy. Concerns about power voting have been expressed from the first season. Since 2004, votes also have been affected to a limited degree by online communities such as DialIdol and Vote for the Worst.\nCultural impact.\nTelevision.\nThe enormous success of the show and the revenue it generated were transformative for the Fox Broadcasting Company. \"American Idol\" and other shows such as \"Survivor\" and \"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?\" were credited for expanding reality television programming in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s, and \"Idol\" became the most watched non-scripted primetime television series, which it remained for almost a decade, from 2003 to 2012, breaking records on U.S. television (dominated by drama shows and sitcoms in the preceding decades). On several occasions, notably in 2003 and 2008, \"American Idol\" overtook the Academy Awards as the most-watched non-sports entertainment event on U.S. television, marking the most recent time as of 2025 that a live regular non-sports primetime series has garnered such viewership in the country.\nThe show pushed Fox to become the number one U.S. TV network in overall viewers in 2008 and among adults aged 18\u201349, the key demographic coveted by advertisers, for an unprecedented eight consecutive years from 2005 to 2012. Its success also helped lift the ratings of other shows that were scheduled around it such as \"House\" and \"Bones\", and \"Idol\", for years, was Fox's strongest platform primetime television program for promoting eventual hit shows of the 2010s (of the same network) such as \"Glee\", \"New Girl\" and \"Empire\". The show, its creator Simon Fuller claimed, \"saved Fox\".\nThe show's massive success in the mid-2000s to early 2010s spawned a number of imitating singing-competition shows, such as \"Rock Star\", \"Nashville Star\", \"The Voice\", \"Rising Star\", \"The Sing-Off\", and \"The X Factor\". The number of imitative singing shows on American television had reached 17 by 2016. Its format also served as a blueprint for non-singing TV shows such as \"Dancing with the Stars\" and \"So You Think You Can Dance\", most of which contribute to the current highly competitive reality TV landscape on American television.\nMusic.\nAs one of the most successful shows on U.S. television history, \"American Idol\" has had a strong impact not just on television, but also in the wider world of entertainment. It helped create a number of highly successful recording artists, such as Kelly Clarkson, Daughtry and Carrie Underwood, as well as others of varying notability. The alumni of the show's original run scored 13 Grammy Award wins out of 54 Grammy nominations up to its end in 2016, with Underwood and Clarkson receiving 10 wins combined.\nVarious \"American Idol\" alumni had success on various record charts around the world; in the U.S. they had achieved 345 number ones on the \"Billboard\" charts in its first 10 years, and 458 by its last year of broadcast in 2016, with 100 achieved by Kelly Clarkson alone. According to Fred Bronson, author of books on the Billboard charts, no other entity has ever created as many hit-making artists and bestselling albums and singles. In 2007, \"American Idol\" alums accounted for 2.1% of all music sales. Its alumni have a massive impact on radio; in 2007, \"American Idol\" had become \"a dominant force in radio\" according to Rich Meyer, president of the radio station monitoring research company Mediabase. By 2010, four winners each had more than a million radio spins, with Kelly Clarkson leading the field with over four million spins.\nAt the end of the show's original run on Fox in 2016, \"Idol\"'s contestants have sold more than 60 million albums in the U.S. and more than 100 million records globally, more than 175 of which are certified platinum or gold. Its participants have generated more than 450 Billboard No. 1 hits and sold more than 260 million digital downloads.\nFilm and theater.\nThe impact of \"American Idol\" was also strongly felt in musical theater, where many of \"Idol\" alumni have forged successful careers. The striking effect of former \"American Idol\" contestants on Broadway has been noted and commented on. The casting of a popular \"Idol\" contestant can lead to significantly increased ticket sales. Other alumni have gone on to work in television and films, the most notable being Jennifer Hudson who, on the recommendation of the \"Idol\" vocal coach Debra Byrd, won a role in \"Dreamgirls\" and eventually went on to win an Academy Award for her performance. She later became the show's first and only alumnus ever to win the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). In all, as of 2025, \"American Idol\" finalists resulted to 5 Grammy Award winners (Clarkson, Barrino, Hudson, Underwood and Mandisa), 2 Emmy Award winners (Clarkson and Hudson), and an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Tony Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Critics' Choice Award winner (Hudson).\nIn 2007, a musical based on the show, \"\", played off-Broadway. The musical closed after its official opening night.\nRevenue and commercial ventures.\nThe dominance of \"American Idol\" in the ratings had made it the most profitable show in U.S. TV for many years. The show was estimated to generate $900\u00a0million for the year 2004 through sales of TV ads, albums, merchandise and concert tickets. By the seventh season, the show was estimated to earn around $900\u00a0million from its ad revenue alone, not including ancillary sponsorship deals and other income. One estimate puts the total TV revenue for the first eight seasons of \"American Idol\" at $6.4\u00a0billion. Sponsors that bought fully integrated packages can expect a variety of promotions of their products on the show, such as product placement, adverts and product promotion integrated into the show, and various promotional opportunities. Other off-air promotional partners pay for the rights to feature \"Idol\" branding on their packaging, products and marketing programs. \"American Idol\" also partnered with Disney in its theme park attraction The American Idol Experience.\nAdvertising revenue.\n\"American Idol\" became the most expensive series on broadcast networks for advertisers starting the fourth season, and by the next season, it had broken the record in advertising rate for a regularly scheduled prime-time network series, selling over $700,000 for a 30-seconds slot, and reaching up to $1.3\u00a0million for the finale. Its ad prices reached a peak in the seventh season at $737,000. Estimated revenue more than doubled from $404\u00a0million in the third season to $870\u00a0million in the sixth season. While that declined from the eighth season onwards, it still earned significantly more than its nearest competitor, with advertising revenue topping $800\u00a0million annually the next few seasons. However, the sharp drop in ratings in the eleventh season also resulted in a sharp drop in advertising rate for the twelfth season, and the show lost its leading position as the costliest show for advertisers. By 2014, ad revenue from had fallen to $427 million where a 30-second spot went for less than $300,000. For the relaunched \"Idol\" on ABC, it has been reported that a 30-second spot may cost between $120,000 and $160,000.\nMedia sponsorship.\nFord Motor Company and Coca-Cola were two of the first sponsors of \"American Idol\" in its first season. The sponsorship deal cost around $10\u00a0million in the first season, rising to $35\u00a0million by the seventh season, and between $50 and $60 million in the tenth season. The third major sponsor AT&T Wireless joined in the second season but ended after the twelfth season, and Coca-Cola officially ended its sponsorship after the thirteenth season amidst the declining ratings of \"Idol\" in the mid-2010s. iTunes sponsored the show since the seventh season.\n\"American Idol\" prominent display of its sponsors' logo and products had been noted since the early seasons. By the sixth season, \"Idol\" showed 4,349 product placements according to Nielsen Media Research. The branded entertainment integration proved beneficial to its advertisers \u2013 promotion of AT&T text-messaging as a means to vote successfully introduced the technology into the wider culture, and Coca-Cola has seen its equity increased during the show.\nCoca-Cola's archrival PepsiCo declined to sponsor \"American Idol\" at the show's start. What the \"Los Angeles Times\" later called \"missing one of the biggest marketing opportunities in a generation\" contributed to Pepsi losing market share, by 2010 falling to third place from second in the United States. PepsiCo sponsored the American version of Cowell's \"The X Factor\" in hopes of not repeating its \"Idol\" mistake until its cancellation.\nFor the revived series on ABC, Macy's and Johnson & Johnson's Zyrtec signed on as the major sponsors of the show.\nAmerican Idol tour.\nThe top ten (eleven in the tenth season, five in the fourteenth season, and seven in the sixteenth season) toured at the end of every season except for the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons. In the twelfth season tour a semi-finalist who won a sing-off was also added to the tour. Kellogg's Pop-Tarts was the sponsor for the first seven seasons, and Guitar Hero was added for the seventh season tour. M&M's Pretzel Chocolate Candies was a sponsor of the ninth season tour. The fifth season tour was the most successful tour with gross of over $35\u00a0million. However no concert tour was organized in the fifteenth and seventeenth seasons, the only seasons not to have an associated tour. The sixteenth season tour featured the band In Real Life as an opener on select dates.\n\"Idol Gives Back\".\n\"Idol Gives Back\" was a special charity event started in season six featuring performances by celebrities and various fund-raising initiatives. This event was also held in seasons seven and nine and has raised nearly $185\u00a0million in total.\nMusic releases.\n\"American Idol\" has traditionally released studio recordings of contestants' performances as well as the winner's coronation single for sale. For the first five seasons, the recordings were released as a compilation album at the end of the season. All five of these albums reached the top ten in Billboard 200 which made \"American Idol\" the most successful soundtrack franchise of any motion picture or television program. Starting late in the fifth season, individual performances were released during the season as digital downloads, initially from the \"American Idol\" official website only. In the seventh season the live performances and studio recordings were made available during the season from iTunes when it joined as a sponsor. In the tenth season the weekly studio recordings were also released as compilation digital album straight after performance night.\n19 Recordings, a recording label owned by 19 Entertainment, currently hold the rights to phonographic material recorded by all the contestants. 19 Recordings originally partnered with Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) to promote and distribute the recordings through its labels RCA Records, Arista Records, J Records, and Jive Records. From 2005\u20132007, BMG partnered with Sony Music Entertainment to form a joint venture known as Sony BMG Music Entertainment. From 2008 to 2010, following their acquisition of BMG, Sony Music handled the distribution of \"American Idol\"'s music. In 2010, UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records replaced Sony as the music label for \"American Idol\".\nTie-ins.\n\"American Idol\" video games\nTheme park attraction.\nOn February 14, 2009, The Walt Disney Company debuted \"The American Idol Experience\" at its Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. In this live production, co-produced by 19 Entertainment, park guests chose from a list of songs and auditioned privately for Disney cast members. Those selected then performed on a stage in a 1000-seat theater replicating the \"Idol\" set. Three judges, whose mannerisms and style mimicked those of the real \"Idol\" judges, critiqued the performances. Audience members then voted for their favorite performer. There were several preliminary-round shows during the day that culminated in a \"finals\" show in the evening where one of the winners of the previous rounds that day was selected as the overall winner. The winner of the finals show received a \"Dream Ticket\" that granted them front-of-the-line privileges at any future \"American Idol\" audition. The attraction closed on August 30, 2014.\nOther broadcasts.\n\"American Idol\" is broadcast to over 100 nations worldwide. In most nations these are not live broadcasts and may be tape delayed by several days or weeks, except for other season finales that are aired live in several countries simulcast with the U.S. broadcast on Fox (2002\u20132016) and ABC (since 2018). In Canada, the first thirteen seasons of American Idol were aired live countrywide by CTV and/or CTV Two, in simulcast with Fox. CTV dropped \"Idol\" after its thirteenth season and in August 2014, Yes TV announced that it had picked up Canadian rights to \"American Idol\" beginning in its 2015 season. In 2017, it was announced the show would return to CTV Two for its sixteenth season. Since season nineteen, the show started airing on Citytv. In Slovakia, American Idol was broadcast on Jednotka.\nIn Latin America, the show is broadcast and subtitled by Sony Entertainment Television. In Southeast Asia, it is broadcast by Sony Channel every Monday and Tuesday nine or ten hours after since its revival. In Philippines, it is aired every Thursday and Friday nine or ten hours after its United States telecast; from 2004 to 2007 on ABC; 2008\u201311 on QTV, then GMA News TV; 2012\u201316, 2018\u201319 on ETC; and since 2024 on TV5. In Indonesia, it was aired on RCTI in the 2002 to 2003 season with the Indonesian subtitles, before Indonesian Idol was held in the 2004, aired after each episode ended, and in the 2011 to 2013 season it was broadcast by B-Channel (now RTV). In Australia, it aired a few hours after the U.S. telecast. It was aired on Network Ten from 2002 to 2008 and then again in 2013. Between 2008 and 2012 it aired on Fox8 and the thirteenth and fourteenth seasons (2014\u201315) it aired on digital channel, Eleven, a sister channel to Network Ten. Its final season (2016) aired on Fox8 hours after the original U.S. broadcast. The show enjoyed a lot of popularity in Australia throughout the 2000s before declining in the ratings. In the United Kingdom, episodes were aired one day after the U.S. broadcast on digital channel ITV2. In the twelfth season, the episodes aired on 5*. It was also aired in Ireland on TV3 two days after the telecast. In Brazil and Israel, the show airs two days after its original broadcast, and broadcast live during the season finale. In the instances where the airing is delayed, the shows may sometimes be combined into one episode to summarize the results. In Italy, the twelfth season was broadcast by La3. In Singapore, The show was broadcast on Mediacorp Channel 5 for the ninth and tenth seasons.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1071662": "Sony Music\nAmerican multinational music recording company\nSony Music Entertainment (SME), commonly known as Sony Music, is an American multinational music company owned by Sony Entertainment and managed by the American umbrella division of multinational conglomerate Sony Group Corporation. It is the recording division of Sony Music Group, with the other half being the publishing division, Sony Music Publishing.\nFounded in 1929 as American Record Corporation, it was acquired by the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1938 and renamed Columbia Recording Corporation. In 1966, the company was reorganized to become CBS Records. Sony bought the company in 1988 and renamed it SME in 1991. In 2004, Sony and Bertelsmann established a 50\u201350 joint venture known as Sony BMG to handle the operations of Sony Music and Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG), but Sony bought out Bertelsmann's stake four years later and reverted to using the 1991 company name. This buyout led to labels formerly under BMG ownership, including Arista, Jive, LaFace and J Records into former BMG and currently Sony's co-flagship record label, RCA Records, in 2011 and led to the relaunch of BMG as BMG Rights Management. Arista Records would later be revived in 2018.\nOn July 17, 2019, Sony announced a merger of Sony Music Entertainment and music publishing arm Sony/ATV to form the Sony Music Group. The merger was completed on August 1, 2019.\nAs of 2023[ [update]], Sony Music Entertainment is the second largest of the \"Big Three\" record companies, behind Universal Music Group and followed by Warner Music Group. Its music publishing division Sony Music Publishing (formerly Sony/ATV) is the largest music publisher in the world.\nHistory.\n1929\u20131938: American Record Corporation.\nThe American Record Corporation (ARC) was founded in 1929 through a merger of several record companies. The company grew over the next several years, acquiring other brands such as the Columbia Phonograph Company, including its Okeh Records subsidiary, in 1934.\n1938\u20131970: Columbia/CBS Records.\nIn 1938, ARC was acquired by the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) under the guidance of chief executive William S. Paley. The company was later renamed Columbia Recording Corporation, and changed again to Columbia Records Inc. in 1947. Edward Wallerstein, who served as the head of Columbia Records since the late 1930s, helped establish the company as a leader in the record industry by spearheading the successful introduction of the LP record. Columbia's success continued through the 1950s with the launch of Epic Records in 1953 and Date Records in 1958. By 1962, the Columbia Records productions unit was operating four plants around the United States located in Los Angeles, California; Terre Haute, Indiana; Bridgeport, Connecticut; and Pitman, New Jersey.\nColumbia's international arm was launched in 1962 under the name \"CBS Records\", as the company only owned the rights to the Columbia name in North America. In 1964, the company began acquiring record companies in other countries for its CBS Records International unit and established its own UK distribution outfit with the acquisition of Oriole Records.\nBy 1966, Columbia was renamed CBS Records and was a separate unit of the parent company, CBS-Columbia Group. In March 1968, CBS and Sony formed CBS/Sony Records, a Japanese business joint venture.\n1971\u20131991: CBS Records Group.\nIn 1971, CBS Records was expanded into its own \"CBS Records Group\", with Clive Davis as its administrative vice president and general manager. In the 1980s to the early 1990s, the company managed several successful labels, including CBS Associated Records, which signed artists including Ozzy Osbourne, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Electric Light Orchestra, Joan Jett, and Henry Lee Summer. In 1983, CBS expanded its music publishing business by acquiring the music publishing arm of MGM/UA Communications Co. CBS later sold the print music arm to Columbia Pictures. By 1987, CBS was the only \"big three\" American TV network to have a co-owned record company. With Sony being one of the developers behind the compact disc digital music media, a compact disc production plant was constructed in Japan under the joint venture, allowing CBS to begin supplying some of the first compact disc releases for the American market in 1983.\nIn 1986, CBS sold its music publishing division, CBS Songs, to SBK Entertainment. On November 17, 1987, Sony acquired CBS Records for US$2 billion. CBS Inc., now Paramount Global, retained the rights to the CBS name for music recordings but granted Sony a temporary license to use the CBS name. The sale was completed on January 5, 1988. CBS Corporation founded a new CBS Records in 2006, which was distributed by Sony through its RED subsidiary.\nIn 1989, CBS Records re-entered the music publishing business by acquiring Nashville-based Tree International Publishing.\n1991\u20132004: Sony Music Entertainment.\nSony renamed the record company Sony Music Entertainment (SME) on January 1, 1991, fulfilling the terms set under the 1988 buyout, which granted only a transitional license to the CBS trademark. The CBS Associated label was renamed Epic Associated. Also on January 1, 1991, to replace the CBS label, Sony reintroduced the Columbia label worldwide, which it previously held in the United States and Canada only, after it acquired the international rights to the trademark from EMI in 1990. Japan is the only country where Sony does not have rights to the Columbia name as it is controlled by Nippon Columbia, an unrelated company. Thus, Sony Music Entertainment Japan issues labels under Sony Records. The Columbia Records trademark's rightsholder in Spain was Bertelsmann Music Group, Germany, which Sony Music subsequently subsumed via a 2004 merger, and a subsequent 2008 buyout.\nIn 1995, Sony and pop singer Michael Jackson formed a joint venture which merged Sony's music publishing operations with Jackson's ATV Music to form Sony/ATV Music Publishing.\n2004\u20132008: Sony BMG.\n<br>\nIn August 2004, Sony entered a joint venture with an equal partner Bertelsmann, by merging Sony Music and Bertelsmann Music Group, Germany, to establish Sony BMG Music Entertainment. However, Sony continued to operate its Japanese music business independently from Sony BMG and BMG Japan was made part of the merger.\nThe merger made Columbia and Epic sister labels to RCA Records, which was once owned by CBS rival, NBC. It also started the process of bringing BMG's Arista Records back under common ownership with its former parent Columbia Pictures, a Sony division since 1989, and brought Arista founder Clive Davis back into the fold. As of 2017, Davis was still with Sony Music as a chief creative officer.\n2008\u2013present: Sony Music revival and restructuring.\nOn August 5, 2008, Sony Corporation of America (SCA) and Bertelsmann announced that Sony had agreed to acquire Bertelsmann's 50% stake in Sony BMG. The acquisition was completed on October 1, 2008. On July 1, 2009, SME and IODA announced a strategic partnership to leverage worldwide online retail distribution networks and complementary technologies to support independent labels and music rights holders. In March 2010, Sony Corp partnered with The Michael Jackson Company in a contract of more than $250 million, the largest deal in recorded music history.\nFrom 2009 to 2020, Sony owned 50% of Syco Entertainment, which operates some of the world's most successful reality TV formats, including \"Got Talent\" and \"The X Factor\" with Simon Cowell. Cowell acquired Sony's stake in 2020.\nDoug Morris, who was head of Warner Music Group, and later Universal Music, became chairman and CEO of Sony Music Entertainment on July 1, 2011. Sony Music underwent restructuring upon Morris's arrival; with some artists switching labels and other labels eliminated.\nIn June 2012, a consortium led by Sony/ATV acquired EMI Music Publishing, making Sony/ATV the world's largest music publisher at the time. This acquisition also reunited the common ownership of pre-1986 CBS Songs (as SBK Songs) catalog to Sony/ATV.\nRob Stringer became CEO of Sony Music Entertainment on April 1, 2017. He previously served as chairman and CEO of Columbia Records.\nSony has experienced many changes with its international labels. In February 2012, Sony Music reportedly closed its Filipino office due to piracy, and Ivory Music and Video had been handling distribution for its catalog a few months earlier in July 2011. In early 2018, their distribution deal with Ivory expired and SME resumed its operations in the Philippines, with the new offices still located in Ortigas Center, Pasig. In July 2013, Sony Music withdrew from the Greek market due to an economic crisis. Albums released by Sony Music in Greece from domestic and foreign artists would then be carried by Feelgood Records.\nIn June 2017, Sony announced that by March 2018 it would be producing vinyl records internally for the first time since ceasing its production in 1989. Reporting the decision, the BBC noted that, \"Sony's move comes a few months after it equipped its Tokyo studio with a cutting lathe, used to produce the master discs needed for manufacturing vinyl records\" but added that \"Sony is even struggling to find older engineers who know how to make records\".\nOn February 5, 2019, a group of 1970s-era musicians including David Johansen and John Waite filed lawsuits accusing Sony Music Entertainment and UMG Recordings, Inc. of improperly refusing to let them reclaim the rights to songs they had signed away earlier in their careers. The lawsuit cites U.S. copyright law, which gives artists who formerly bargained away their rights on unfavorable terms a chance to reclaim those rights by filing termination notices after 35 years. The plaintiffs claim that Sony and UMG have \"routinely and systematically\" ignored hundreds of notices, having taken the position that recordings are \"works made for hire\" and are therefore not subject to being reclaimed.\nIn April 2021, the Brazilian media company Grupo Globo sold its domestic record label Som Livre to Sony Music for an undisclosed amount. It was approved by the Administrative Council for Economic Defense on November 4, 2021.\nThe UK media company Somethin' Else was acquired outright by Sony Music in 2021, to form a Global Podcast Division, headed up by the Somethin' Else principles, Steve Ackerman and Jez Nelson. The new division was to have teams in New York, LA and London.\nIn 2022, Sony Music Entertainment acquired boutique branding and merchandising agency, Ceremony of Roses (CoR). CoR would handle SME's 'branding, design, media and events'. The newly acquired company would merge with Sony's existing merch division and continue under the CoR banner. The merger brought together artists like Adele, A$AP Rocky, and Lil Nas X under one merchandising house. According to Sony, the move will help expand their merchandising team and take artists' merch to the next level.\nIn January 2023, Sony Music and Alamo Records founder Todd Moscowitz launched Santa Anna, an artist and label services company.\nIn April 2024, it was announced Sony Music Entertainment's Global Podcast Division had acquired the Los Angeles-headquartered podcast production company, Neon Hum Media for an undisclosed amount.\nSony Music Canada.\nSony Music Canada was formed when Sony Music acquired Canadian assets of CBS Records in 1990 (itself formerly Columbia Records Canada in 1954).\nSony Music Canada is operated by Sony Canada, which evolved from General Distributors or Gendis, which had been founded in Winnipeg in 1954 by Albert D. Cohen, who had made a deal with Sony to market its transistor radios in the same year.\nSony Music UK.\nSony Music UK is owned and operated by Sony Music Entertainment in the United Kingdom. Since 2014, Jason Iley has been chairman and CEO of Sony Music UK. Though owned by Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Music UK has standalone operations in the UK to promote musicians within the UK.\nIn June 2017, it was announced that Sony would be merging its two independent distribution companies The Orchard and Red Essential.\nIn 2014, Sony had its best singles success of 33 years, with 11 number 1 singles. Sony Music artists won a total of five individual awards at the BRITs 2015, including Best Female Solo Artist for Paloma Faith, and Mark Ronson's \"Uptown Funk\", which picked up Best British Single. Several other of the label's artists \u2013 Foo Fighters, One Direction and Pharrell Williams \u2013 also collected awards.\nSony's performance at the BRITs 2015 was the label's best in nearly 20 years, winning a total of 5 awards. In 2017, Sony Music UK celebrated the most successful BRIT Awards in the company's history, winning seven of the 11 awards.\nSony Music UK has made key acquisitions including forming Insanity Records with Insanity Management. Craig David became the first artist to sign an album deal with Insanity Records. Sony Music UK signed Robbie Williams, who released his 11th album \"The Heavy Entertainment Show\" in 2016. Jason Iley commented that the agreement was \"a once in a lifetime signing with the biggest male solo artist of our generation\".\nSony Music UK incorporated the independent sales and distribution company Essential Music and Marketing \u2013 renamed to Red Essential. In August 2016, Sony Music acquired Ministry of Sound Recordings, home to London Grammar, DJ Fresh and Sigala.\nOn April 5, 2017, two of Sony Music UK's labels won awards at the annual Music Week Awards. Columbia Records was awarded A&R of the Year, and Syco was awarded Record Company of the Year.\nIn 2021, Sony agreed to buy Kobalt neighboring rights division and independent distribution company AWAL, from the Kobalt Music Group for $430 million.\nSony Music Russia.\nSony Music Entertainment Russia was the Russian music label of Sony Music Entertainment. The company opened its division in the Russian Federation in 1999. In 2000, the first contract was signed with the Russian group Bi-2. For 2021, experts estimated the company's share in the Russian recording market at approximately 15-20%. Sony Music Entertainment LLC's revenue in 2021 amounted to 2.56 billion rubles ($42.7 million). Net profit amounted to 132.9 million rubles ($2.22 million).\nOn March 10, 2022, in connection with Russian invasion of Ukraine, Sony Music Entertainment announced the suspension of operations and new releases in Russia, while Russian employees of Sony Music Group receive pay indefinitely. On September 8, Sony Music officially announced its final withdrawal from Russia. The company recalled all foreign catalogs from the Russian streaming services Yandex Music, Zvooq and VK Music, and tracks from AC/DC, Beyonc\u00e9, Britney Spears, Bring Me the Horizon and many other artists were removed. The Russian division is intended as a completely independent structure from Sony Music to represent only local musicians under the new brand Kiss Koala, which was later bought by the structures of former top managers of Warner Music Russia.\nCriticism and controversies.\nCD price fixing.\nBetween 1995 and 2000, music companies were found to have used illegal marketing agreements such as minimum advertised pricing to artificially inflate prices of compact discs. This was done in order to end price wars of the early 1990s among discounters such as Best Buy and Target. A settlement was reached in 2002 that included music publishers and distributors Sony Music, Warner Music, Bertelsmann Music Group, EMI Music and Universal Music. In restitution for price fixing, they agreed to pay a $67.4 million fine and distribute $75.7 million in CDs to public and non-profit groups but admitted no wrongdoing. It is estimated that customers were overcharged by nearly $500 million overall and up to $5 per album.\nGeorge Michael.\nBritish artist George Michael, signed to Columbia in the U.S. and Epic worldwide, advised Sony executives in 1990 that he would not be appearing in music videos to support his forthcoming album, \"Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1\". Michael then accused Sony of not promoting the album at all. He sued in the UK in 1992, asking to be released from his contract. Sony ultimately prevailed in the courts in 1994, but Michael's contract was bought out by other labels. Some 11 years later, Michael licensed tracks to Sony for release.\nMichael Jackson and Tommy Mottola.\nThe release of \"Invincible\" was preceded by a dispute between Michael Jackson and Sony Music Entertainment. Jackson had expected the licenses to the masters of his albums to revert to him sometime in the early 2000s, after which he would be able to promote the material however he pleased and keep the profits; however, clauses in the contract set the revert date years into the future. Jackson discovered that the attorney who had represented him in the deal had also been representing Sony. He was also concerned that for years Sony had been pressuring him to sell his share in its music catalog venture; he feared that Sony might have had a conflict of interest, since if Jackson's career failed, he would have had to sell his share of the catalog at a low price. Jackson sought an early exit from his contract.\nIn July 2002, Jackson alleged that the then-Sony Music chairman Tommy Mottola was a \"devil\" and \"racist\" who did not support his African-American artists, using them merely for his own gain. He charged that Mottola had called his colleague Irv Gotti a \"fat nigger\". Sony refused to renew Jackson's contract, and claimed that a $25 million promotional campaign had failed because Jackson refused to tour in the United States.\nProsecution of copyright infringement.\nIn May 2012, Sony Music filed charges against the website IsoHunt. The plaintiff's claims in the court document filed at the Supreme Court of British Columbia read: \"The IsoHunt Websites have been designed and are operated by the defendants with the sole purpose of profiting from rampant copyright infringement which defendants actively encourage, promote, authorize, induce, aid, abet, materially contribute to and commercially profit from.\" In February 2016, in a lawsuit filed at a California federal court, Sony Music Entertainment and its associated brands (Arista Records and LaFace Records, formerly owned by Bertelsmann Music Group) accused Belgian radio aggregator Radionomy (owned by Universal Music Group's parent Vivendi) of copyright infringement.\nKesha v. Dr. Luke and 2016 boycott.\nIn February 2016, 100,000 people signed an online petition in less than 24 hours, calling for a boycott of Sony Music and all other Sony-affiliated businesses after rape allegations against music producer Dr. Luke were made by musical artist Kesha. Kesha asked a New York City Supreme Court to free her from her contract with Sony Music, but the court denied the request, prompting a widespread public and media response.\nList of Sony Music Entertainment labels.\nGenre-limited record labels.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nOthers.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nPreviously affiliated labels.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "17356462": "The Right Stuff Records\nThe Right Stuff Records is an American reissue record label that was part of EMI, which is now owned by Universal Music Group and is based out of Santa Monica, California.\nThe label primarily released classic rock and R&B repertoire which included greatest hits collections, anthologies, boxed sets and compilations. The Right Stuff's repertoire was sourced from the various labels owned by EMI Records and also leased-in labels such as Dick Griffey's SOLAR (the Sound of Los Angeles Records), the post-1976 Philadelphia International Records, Hi Records, Tabu Records and Salsoul Records. The label also owned Leon Russell and Denny Cordell's Shelter Records and the New York\u2013based Laurie Records. The label also created many joint venture projects with outside brands such as Harley-Davidson, Hot Rod Magazine, Shape Magazine, and others. The label was started by former EMI and Capitol Records executive Tom Cartwright.\nSelected artists on reissues.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "28208": "Santa Monica, California\nCity in California, United States\nSanta Monica (; Spanish: \"Santa M\u00f3nica\") is a city in Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 U.S. census population was 93,076. Santa Monica is a popular resort town, owing to its climate, beaches, and hospitality industry. It has a diverse economy, hosting headquarters of companies such as Hulu, Activision Blizzard, Universal Music Group, Starz Entertainment, Lionsgate Studios, Illumination and The Recording Academy.\nSanta Monica traces its history to Rancho San Vicente y Santa M\u00f3nica, granted in 1839 to the Sep\u00falveda family of California. The rancho was later sold to John P. Jones and Robert Baker, who in 1875, along with his Californio heiress wife Arcadia Bandini de Stearns Baker, founded Santa Monica, which incorporated as a city in 1886. The city developed into a seaside resort during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the creation of tourist attractions such as Palisades Park, the Santa Monica Pier, Ocean Park, and the Hotel Casa del Mar.\nHistory.\nIndigenous.\nThe Tongva are Indigenous to the Santa Monica area. The village of Comicranga was established in the Santa Monica area. One of the village's notable residents was Victoria Reid, who was the daughter of the chief of the village. During the Spanish period, she was taken to Mission San Gabriel from her parents at the age of six.\nSpanish era.\nThe first non-indigenous group to set foot in the area was the party of explorer Gaspar de Portol\u00e1, which camped near the present-day intersection of Barrington and Ohio Avenues on August 3, 1769.\nThere are two different accounts of how the city's name came to be. One says it was named in honor of the feast day of Saint Monica (mother of Saint Augustine), but her feast day is May 4. Another version says it was named by Juan Cresp\u00ed on account of a pair of springs, the Kuruvungna Springs, that were reminiscent of the tears Saint Monica shed over her son's early impiety.\nMexican era.\nIn 1839, Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado granted Rancho San Vicente y Santa M\u00f3nica to Francisco Sep\u00falveda II, of the Sep\u00falveda family of California. As the definitions of the rancho grant were not precise, the Sep\u00falveda family came into conflict with the neighboring Rancho Boca de Santa M\u00f3nica, owned by Ysidro Reyes and Francisco M\u00e1rquez. A small Californio community grew up on Rancho San Vicente y Santa M\u00f3nica, made up primarily of vaqueros working on the rancho and their families.\nPost-conquest era.\nAfter the American conquest of California, Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which gave Mexicans and Californios living in state certain unalienable rights. U.S. government sovereignty in California began on February 2, 1848.\nIn the 1870s, the Los Angeles and Independence Railroad connected Santa Monica with Los Angeles, and a wharf out into the bay. The first town hall was an 1873 brick building, later a beer hall, and now part of the Santa Monica Hostel. By 1885, the town's first hotel was the Santa Monica Hotel.\nAmusement piers became popular in the first decades of the 20th century and the extensive Pacific Electric Railway brought people to the city's beaches from across the Greater Los Angeles Area.\nAround the start of the 20th century, a growing population of Asian Americans lived in and around Santa Monica and Venice. A Japanese fishing village was near the Long Wharf while small numbers of Chinese lived or worked in Santa Monica and Venice. The two ethnic minorities were often viewed differently by White Americans, who were often well-disposed toward the Japanese but condescending to the Chinese. The Japanese village fishermen were an integral economic part of the Santa Monica Bay community.\nDonald Wills Douglas Sr. built a plant in 1922 at Clover Field (Santa Monica Airport) for the Douglas Aircraft Company. In 1924, four Douglas-built planes took off from Clover Field to attempt the first aerial circumnavigation of the world. Two planes returned after covering in 175 days, and were greeted on their return September 23, 1924, by a crowd of 200,000. The Douglas Company (later McDonnell Douglas) kept facilities in the city until the 1970s.\nThe Great Depression hit Santa Monica deeply. One report gives citywide employment in 1933 of just 1,000. Hotels and office building owners went bankrupt. In the 1930s, corruption infected Santa Monica (along with neighboring Los Angeles). The federal Works Project Administration helped build several buildings, most notably City Hall. The main Post Office and Barnum Hall (Santa Monica High School auditorium) were also among other WPA projects.\nModern era.\nDouglas's business grew with the onset of World War II, employing as many as 44,000 people in 1943. To defend against air attack, set designers from the Warner Brothers Studios prepared elaborate camouflage that disguised the factory and airfield. The RAND Corporation began as a project of the Douglas Company in 1945, and spun off into an independent think tank on May 14, 1948. RAND acquired a campus across the street from the Civic Center and is still there today.\nThe completion of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in 1958 eliminated Belmar, the first African American community in the city, and the Santa Monica Freeway in 1966 decimated the Pico neighborhood that had been a leading African American enclave on the Westside.\nBeach volleyball is believed to have been developed by Duke Kahanamoku in Santa Monica during the 1920s.\nSanta Monica has two hospitals: Saint John's Health Center and Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center. Its cemetery is Woodlawn Memorial.\nSanta Monica has several local newspapers including \"Santa Monica Daily Press\", \"Santa Monica Mirror\", and \"Santa Monica Star\".\nGeography.\nSanta Monica rests on a mostly flat slope that angles down toward Ocean Avenue and toward the south. High bluffs separate the north side of the city from the beaches. Santa Monica borders the L.A. neighborhoods of Pacific Palisades to the north and Venice to the south. To the west, Santa Monica has a 3-mile coastline fronting Santa Monica Bay, and to the east of the city are the L.A. communities of West Los Angeles and Brentwood.\nClimate.\nSanta Monica has a coastal Mediterranean climate (K\u00f6ppen \"Csb\"). It receives an average of 310 days of sunshine a year. It is in USDA plant hardiness zone 11a. Because of its location, nestled on the vast and open Santa Monica Bay, morning fog is a common phenomenon in May, June, July and early August (caused by ocean temperature variations and currents). Like other inhabitants of the greater Los Angeles area, residents have a particular terminology for this phenomenon: the \"May Gray\", the \"June Gloom\" and even \"Fogust\". Overcast skies are common on June mornings, but usually the strong sun burns the fog off by noon. In the late winter/early summer, daily fog is a phenomenon too. It happens suddenly and it may last some hours or past sunset time. Nonetheless, it will sometimes stay cloudy and cool all day during June, even as other parts of the Los Angeles area experience sunny skies and warmer temperatures. At times, the sun can be shining east of 20th Street while the beach area is overcast. As a general rule, the beach temperature is from 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (3 to 6 degrees Celsius) cooler than it is inland during summer days, and 5 to 10 degrees warmer during winter nights.\nIt is also in September that the highest temperatures tend to be reached. It is winter, however, when the hot, dry winds of the Santa Anas are most common. In contrast, temperatures exceeding 10 degrees below average are rare.\nThe rainy season is from late October through late March. Winter storms usually approach from the northwest and pass quickly through the Southland. There is very little rain during the rest of the year. Yearly rainfall totals are unpredictable as rainy years are occasionally followed by droughts. There has never been any snow or frost, but there has been hail.\nSanta Monica usually enjoys cool breezes blowing in from the ocean, which tend to keep the air fresh and clean. Therefore, smog is less of a problem for Santa Monica than elsewhere around Los Angeles. However, from September through November, the Santa Ana winds sometimes blow from the east, bringing smoggy and hot inland air to the beaches.\nThe hottest temperature ever reported in Santa Monica was on November 1, 1966, while the lowest is on March 1, 1945, and again on March 21, 1952. The highest minimum temperature is on October 24, 2007, and the lowest maximum temperature is on 4 dates in February 2001 and again March 10, 2006. The snowiest months on record are January 1954 and March 1955, both with trace amounts. They are the only months to ever report snowfall. Many months have reported no rainfall at all. Conversely, the wettest month on record is January 1995 with a total of of rainfall. The wettest year on record is 1998, with a total of of rainfall; the driest is 1989, with a total of of rainfall.\nEnvironment.\nThe city first proposed its Sustainable City Plan in 1992 and in 1994, was one of the first cities in the nation to formally adopt a comprehensive sustainability plan, setting waste reduction and water conservation policies for both public and private sector through its Office of Sustainability and the Environment. Eighty-two percent of the city's public works vehicles run on alternative fuels, including most of the municipal bus system, making it among the largest of such fleets in the country. Santa Monica fleet vehicles and buses source their natural gas from Redeem, a Southern California-based supplier of renewable and sustainable natural gas obtained from non-fracked methane biogas generated from organic landfill waste.\nSanta Monica adopted a Community Energy Independence Initiative, with a goal of achieving complete energy independence by 2020 (vs. California's already ambitious 33% renewables goal). The city exceeded that aspiration when, in February 2019, it switched over to electricity from the Clean Power Alliance, with a citywide default of 100% renewably sourced energy. That same year, the Santa Monica City Council adopted a Climate Action and Adaptation Plan aimed at achieving an 80% cut in carbon emissions by 2030, and reaching community-wide carbon neutrality by 2050 or sooner.\nAn urban runoff facility (SMURFF), the first of its kind in the US, catches and treats of water each week that would otherwise flow into the bay via storm-drains and sells it back to end-users within the city for reuse as gray-water, while bioswales throughout the city allow rainwater to percolate into and replenish the groundwater. The groundwater supply plays an important role in the city's Sustainable Water Master Plan, whereby Santa Monica has set a goal of attaining 100% water independence by 2020. The city has numerous programs designed to promote water conservation among residents, including a rebate for those who convert lawns to drought-tolerant gardens that require less water.\nSanta Monica has also instituted a green building-code whereby merely constructing to code automatically renders a building equivalent to the US Green Building Council's LEED Silver standards. The city's Main Library is one of many LEED certified or LEED equivalent buildings in the city. It is built over a 200,000 gallon cistern that collects filtered stormwater from the roof. The water is used for landscape irrigation.\nSince 2009, Santa Monica has been developing the Zero Waste Strategic Operations Plan by which the city will set a goal of diverting at least 95% of all waste away from landfills, and toward recycling and composting, by 2030. The plan includes a food waste composting program, which diverts 3 million pounds of restaurant food waste away from landfills annually. As of 2013[ [update]], 77% of all solid waste produced citywide is diverted from landfills.\nEnvironmentally focused initiatives include curbside recycling, curbside composting bins (in addition to trash, yard-waste, and recycle bins), farmers' markets, community gardens, garden-share, an urban forest initiative, a hazardous materials home-collection service, and a green business certification.\nAs in other coastal beach communities, coastal erosion due to coastal infrastructure and high human usage is an increasing challenge, and will become worse due to sea level rise. Starting in 2016, local environmental groups began dune and beach restoration projects.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2020.\nThe 2020 United States census reported Santa Monica had a population of 93,076. This corresponds to density of 11,067.3 people per square mile. The racial makeup of Santa Monica was 63,383 (68.1%) white, 8,602 (9.2%) Asian, 3,776 (4.1%) Black or African American, 539 (0.6%) American Indian and Alaska Native, 123 (0.1%) Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, 5,347 (5.7%) some other race, and 11,306 (12.1%) people were of two or more races.\nIncluding all responses for people of two or more races, 73,996 (79.5%) were white alone or in combination with one or more other races, 11,864 (12.7%) were Asian alone or in combination with one or more other races, 5,459 (5.9%) were Black or African American alone or in combination, 1,877 (2.0%) were American Indian and Alaska Native alone or in combination, 415 (0.4%) were Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander alone or in combination, and 11,619 (12.5%) were some other race alone or in combination with one or more other races.\n13,544 (14.6%) were Hispanic or Latino of any race. Of those, 2,729 (2.9% of the total population) were white alone, 153 (0.2%) were Black or African American alone, 410 (0.4%) were American Indian and Alaska Native alone, 136 (0.1%) were Asian alone, 14 (0.0%) were Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, 4,542 (4.9%) were some other race alone, and 5,560 (6.0%) were two or more races.\nThe census reported that Santa Monica had 52,389 housing units. Of those, 47,438 (90.5%) were occupied. 12,856 (27.1%) of the occupied units were owner-occupied and 34,582 (72.9%) were renter-occupied. Of the vacant units, 2,540 (4.8% of total) were for rent, 230 (0.4%) were rented but not occupied, 183 (0.3%) were for sale only, 205 (0.4%) were sold but not occupied, 693 (1.3%) were for seasonal, recreational, or occasional use, and 1,100 (2.1%) were otherwise vacant.\nThe median household income between 2017 and 2021 was $99,847 (2021 dollars), with 10.6% of people living in poverty. 94.8% of households had a computer between 2017 and 2021, and 91.0% had broadband internet access.\n2010.\nThe 2010 United States Census reported Santa Monica had a population of 89,736. The population density was . The racial makeup of Santa Monica was 69,663 (77.6%) White (70.1% Non-Hispanic White), 3,526 (3.9%) African American, 338 (0.4%) Native American, 8,053 (9.0%) Asian, 124 (0.1%) Pacific Islander, 4,047 (4.5%) from other races, and 3,985 (4.4%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 11,716 persons (13.1%), with Mexican Americans, Spanish Americans, and Argentine Americans making up 64.2%, 6.4%, and 4.7% of the Hispanic population respectively.\nThe Census reported 87,610 people (97.6% of the population) lived in households, 1,299 (1.4%) lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 827 (0.9%) were institutionalized.\nThere were 46,917 households, out of which 7,835 (16.7%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 13,092 (27.9%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 3,510 (7.5%) had a female householder with no husband present, 1,327 (2.8%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 2,867 (6.1%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 416 (0.9%) same-sex married couples or partnerships. 22,716 households (48.4%) were made up of individuals, and 5,551 (11.8%) had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 1.87. There were 17,929 families (38.2% of all households); the average family size was 2.79.\nThe population was spread out, with 12,580 people (14.0%) under the age of 18, 6,442 people (7.2%) aged 18 to 24, 32,552 people (36.3%) aged 25 to 44, 24,746 people (27.6%) aged 45 to 64, and 13,416 people (15.0%) who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40.4 years. For every 100 females, there were 93.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 91.2 males.\nThere were 50,912 housing units at an average density of , of which 13,315 (28.4%) were owner-occupied, and 33,602 (71.6%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 1.1%; the rental vacancy rate was 5.1%. 30,067 people (33.5% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 57,543 people (64.1%) lived in rental housing units.\nAccording to the 2010 United States Census, Santa Monica had a median household income of $73,649, with 11.2% of the population living below the federal poverty line.\n2000.\nAs of the census of 2000, there were 84,084 people, 44,497 households, and 16,775 families in the city. The population density was . There were 47,863 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 78.29% White, 7.25% Asian, 3.78% African American, 0.47% Native American, 0.10% Pacific Islander, 5.97% from other races, and 4.13% from two or more races. 13.44% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.\nThere were 44,497 households, out of which 15.8% had children under the age of 18, 27.5% were married couples living together, 7.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 62.3% were non-families. 51.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 1.83 and the average family size was 2.80.\nThe city of Santa Monica is consistently among the most educated cities in the United States, with 23.8 percent of all residents holding graduate degrees.\nThe population was diverse in age, with 14.6% under 18, 6.1% from 18 to 24, 40.1% from 25 to 44, 24.8% from 45 to 64, and 14.4% 65 years or older. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females, there were 93.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 91.3 males.\nAccording to a 2009 estimate, the median income for a household in the city was $71,095, and the median income for a family was $109,410. Males had a median income of $55,689 versus $42,948 for females. The per capita income for the city was $42,874. 10.4% of the population and 5.4% of families were below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 9.9% of those under the age of 18 and 10.2% of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line.\nCrime.\nIn 2006, crime in Santa Monica affected 4.41% of the population, slightly lower than the national average crime rate that year of 4.48%. The majority of this was property crime, which affected 3.74% of Santa Monica's population in 2006; this was higher than the rates for Los Angeles County (2.76%) and California (3.17%), but lower than the national average (3.91%). These per-capita crime rates are computed based on Santa Monica's full-time population of about 85,000. However, the Santa Monica Police Department has suggested the actual per-capita crime rate is much lower, as tourists, workers, and beachgoers can increase the city's daytime population to between 250,000 and 450,000 people.\nHate crime has typically been minimal in Santa Monica, with only one reported incident in 2007. The city experienced a spike of anti-Islamic hate crime in 2001 after the September 11 attacks, but hate crime levels returned to their minimal 2000 levels by 2002.\nGang activity.\nThe Pico neighborhood of Santa Monica (south of the Santa Monica Freeway) experiences some gang activity. The city estimates there are about 50 gang members based in Santa Monica, although some community organizers dispute this claim. Gang activity has been prevalent for decades in the Pico neighborhood.\nIn October 1998, alleged Culver City 13 gang member Omar Sevilla of Culver City was killed. A couple of hours after the shooting of Sevilla, German tourist Horst Fietze was killed. Several days later Juan Martin Campos, a Santa Monica city employee, was shot and killed. Police believe this was a retaliatory killing in response to Sevilla's killing. Less than 24 hours later, Javier Cruz was wounded in a drive-by shooting outside his home on 17th and Michigan.\nIn 1998, there was a double homicide in the Westside Clothing store on Lincoln Boulevard. During the incident, Culver City gang members David \"Puppet\" Robles and Jesse \"Psycho\" Garcia entered the store masked and began opening fire, killing Anthony and Michael Juarez. Police say the incident was in retaliation for a shooting committed by the Santa Monica 13 gang days before the Juarez brothers were shot down.\nHomeless population.\nIn 2022, there were 826 homeless individuals in Santa Monica.\nEconomy.\nSanta Monica is home to the headquarters of many notable businesses, such as Beachbody, Fatburger, Hulu, Illumination, Otter Media, Lionsgate, Macerich, Miramax, CBS Media Ventures, the RAND Corporation, Saban Capital Group, The Recording Academy (which presents the annual Grammy Awards), TOMS Shoes, Universal Music Group, and ZipRecruiter. Atlantic Aviation is at the Santa Monica Airport. The National Public Radio member station KCRW is on the Santa Monica College campus. VCA Animal Hospitals is just outside the eastern city limit.\nA number of videogame development studios are based in Santa Monica, making it a major location for the industry. These include:\nIn addition, Santa Monica is part of Silicon Beach, and the area serves as the home of hundreds of venture capital funded startup companies.\nFormer Santa Monica businesses include Douglas Aircraft (now merged with Boeing), GeoCities (which in December 1996 was headquartered on the third floor of 1918 Main Street in Santa Monica), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and MySpace (now headquartered in Beverly Hills).\nTop employers.\nAccording to the city's 2022 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, the top employers in the city were:\nArts and culture.\nThe Santa Monica Looff Hippodrome (carousel) is a National Historic Landmark. It sits on the Santa Monica Pier, which was built in 1909. The La Monica Ballroom on the pier was once the largest ballroom in the US and the source for many New Year's Eve national network broadcasts.\nThe Santa Monica Civic Auditorium was an important music venue for several decades and hosted the Academy Awards in the 1960s. McCabe's Guitar Shop is a leading acoustic performance space as well as retail outlet. The \"Santa Monica Playhouse\" is a popular theater in the city.\nBergamot Station is a city-owned art gallery compound. The city is also home to the California Heritage Museum and the Angels Attic dollhouse and toy museum.\nThe New West Symphony is the resident orchestra of Barnum Hall. They are also resident orchestra of the Oxnard Performing Arts Center and the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza.\nSanta Monica hosts the annual Santa Monica Film Festival.\nThe city's oldest movie theater is the Majestic. Opened in 1912 and also known as the Mayfair Theatre, it has been closed since the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The Aero Theater (now operated by the American Cinematheque) and Criterion Theater were built in the 1930s and still show movies.\nNotable restaurants have included Madame Wu's Garden, Batterfish, Stout Burgers and Beers, and The Misfit.\nShopping districts.\nSanta Monica has three main shopping districts: Montana Avenue on the north side, the Downtown District in the city's core, and Main Street on the south end. Each has its own unique feel and personality. Montana Avenue is a stretch of luxury boutique stores, restaurants, and small offices that generally features more upscale shopping. The Main Street district offers an eclectic mix of clothing, restaurants, and other specialty retail.\nThe Downtown District is the home of the Third Street Promenade, a major outdoor pedestrian-only shopping district that stretches for three blocks between Wilshire Blvd. and Broadway. Third Street is closed to vehicles for those three blocks to allow people to stroll, congregate, shop and enjoy street performers.\nThe Santa Monica Place, featuring Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom in a three-level outdoor environment, is at the Promenade's southern end. After a period of redevelopment, the mall reopened in the fall of 2010 as a modern shopping, entertainment and dining complex with more outdoor space.\nPublic library system.\nThe Santa Monica Public Library consists of a Main Library in the downtown area, plus four neighborhood branches: Fairview, Montana Avenue, Ocean Park, and Pico Boulevard.\nSports.\nThe men's and women's marathon ran through parts of Santa Monica during the 1984 Summer Olympics. The Santa Monica Track Club has many prominent track athletes, including many Olympic gold medalists. Santa Monica is the home to Southern California Aquatics, which was founded by Olympic swimmer Clay Evans and Bonnie Adair. Santa Monica is also home to the Santa Monica Rugby Club, a semi-professional team that competes in the Pacific Rugby Premiership, the highest-level rugby union club competition in the United States.\nDuring the 2028 Summer Olympics, Santa Monica will host beach volleyball and surfing.\nParks and recreation.\nPalisades Park stretches out along the crumbling bluffs overlooking the Pacific and is a favorite walking area to view the ocean. It includes public art, a totem pole, camera obscura, benches, picnic areas, p\u00e9tanque courts, and restrooms.\nTongva Park occupies 6 acres between Ocean Avenue and Main Street, just south of Colorado Avenue. The park includes an overlook, amphitheater, playground, garden, fountains, picnic areas, and restrooms.\nThe Santa Monica Stairs, a long, steep staircase consisting of 152 wooden steps and 18 concrete steps in a straight path, that leads from north of San Vicente down into Santa Monica Canyon, is a popular spot for outdoor workouts. Some area residents have complained that the stairs have become too popular, and attract too many exercisers to the wealthy neighborhood of multimillion-dollar properties.\nIshihara Park opened to the public in 2017 and acts as a buffer between the Los Angeles Metro Rail and the surrounding residential community.\nGovernment.\nLocal government.\nSanta Monica is governed by the Santa Monica City Council, a Council-Manager governing body with seven members elected at-large. The mayor is Lana Negrete, and the Mayor Pro Tempore is Caroline Torosis. The other five council members are Jesse Zwick, Natalya Zernitskaya, Barry Snell, Dan Hall, and Ellis Raskin.\nRepresentation.\nIn the California State Legislature, Santa Monica is in the Senate District, represented by Democrat Ben Allen, and in the Assembly District, represented by Democrat Rick Zbur.\nIn the United States House of Representatives, Santa Monica is in California's congressional district, represented by Democrat Ted Lieu.\nEducation.\nPublic schools.\nThe Santa Monica\u2013Malibu Unified School District provides public education at the elementary and secondary levels. In addition to the traditional model of early education school houses, SMASH (Santa Monica Alternative School House) is \"a K\u20138 public school of choice with team teachers and multi-aged classrooms\". The district maintains eight elementary schools, three middle schools, and three high schools in Santa Monica.\nPrivate schools.\nPrivate schools in the city include Crossroads School and Saint Monica Catholic High School.\nAsahi Gakuen, a weekend Japanese supplementary school system, operates its Santa Monica campus (\u30b5\u30f3\u30bf\u30e2\u30cb\u30ab\u6821\uff65\u9ad8\u7b49\u90e8 \"Santamonika-k\u014d k\u014dt\u014dbu\") at Webster Middle in the Sawtelle neighborhood of Los Angeles. All high school classes in the Asahi Gakuen system are held at the Santa Monica campus.\nPost-secondary.\nSanta Monica College is a community college founded in 1929. Many SMC graduates transfer to the University of California system. It occupies and enrolls 30,000 students annually. The Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School, associated with the RAND Corporation, is the U.S.'s largest producer of public policy PhDs. The Art Institute of California \u2013 Los Angeles is also in Santa Monica near the Santa Monica Airport.\nUniversities and colleges within a radius from Santa Monica include Santa Monica College, Antioch University Los Angeles, Loyola Marymount University, Mount St. Mary's University, Pepperdine University, California State University, Northridge, California State University, Los Angeles, UCLA, USC, West Los Angeles College, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Occidental College (Oxy), Los Angeles City College, Los Angeles Southwest College, Los Angeles Valley College, and Emperor's College of Traditional Oriental Medicine.\nInfrastructure.\nTransportation.\nBicycles.\nSanta Monica has a bike action plan and launched a bicycle sharing system in November 2015. The city is traversed by the Marvin Braude Bike Trail. Santa Monica has received the Bicycle Friendly Community Award (Bronze in 2009, Silver in 2013) by the League of American Bicyclists. Local bicycle advocacy organizations include Santa Monica Spoke, a local chapter of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition. Santa Monica is thought to be one of the leaders for bicycle infrastructure and programming in Los Angeles County although cycling infrastructure in Los Angeles County in general remains very poor compared to other major cities.\nThe city implemented a 5-year and 20-year Bike Action Plan with a goal of attaining 14 to 35% bicycle transportation mode share by 2030 through the installation of enhanced bicycle infrastructure throughout the city. In 2023, Santa Monica scored near the 90th percentile of cities surveyed in the PeopleForBikes City Ratings, which measures the quality of a city's bike network.\nIn terms of number of bicycle accidents, Santa Monica ranks as one of the worst (#2) out of 102 California cities with population 50,000\u2013100,000, a ranking consistent with the city's composite ranking.\nIn 2007 and 2008, local police cracked down on Santa Monica Critical Mass rides that had become controversial, putting a damper on the tradition.\nHighways.\nThe Santa Monica Freeway (Interstate 10) begins in Santa Monica near the Pacific Ocean and heads east. The Santa Monica Freeway between Santa Monica and downtown Los Angeles has the distinction of being one of the busiest highways in all of North America. After traversing the Greater Los Angeles area, I-10 crosses seven more states, terminating at Jacksonville, Florida. In Santa Monica, there is a road sign designating this route as the Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway. State Route 2 (Santa Monica Boulevard) begins in Santa Monica, barely grazing State Route 1 at Lincoln Boulevard, and continues northeast across Los Angeles County, through the Angeles National Forest, crossing the San Gabriel Mountains as the Angeles Crest Highway, ending in Wrightwood. Santa Monica is also the western terminus of Historic U.S. Route 66. Close to the eastern boundary of Santa Monica, Sepulveda Boulevard reaches from Long Beach at the south, to the northern end of the San Fernando Valley. Just east of Santa Monica is Interstate 405, the San Diego Freeway, a major north\u2013south route in Los Angeles and Orange counties.\nMotorized vehicles.\nSanta Monica has purchased the first ZeroTruck all-electric medium-duty truck. The vehicle will be equipped with a Scelzi utility body, it is based on the Isuzu N series chassis, a UQM PowerPhase 100 advanced electric motor and is the only US built electric truck offered for sale in the United States in 2009.\nBus.\nThe city of Santa Monica runs its own bus service, the Big Blue Bus, which also serves much of West Los Angeles and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). A Big Blue Bus was featured prominently in the action movie \"Speed\".\nThe city of Santa Monica is also served by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority's (Metro) bus lines. Metro also complements Big Blue service, as when Big Blue routes are not operational overnight, Metro buses make many Big Blue Bus stops, in addition to MTA stops.\nLight rail.\nDesign and construction on the of the Expo Line from Culver City to Santa Monica started in September 2011, with service beginning on May 20, 2016. Santa Monica Metro stations include , , and . Travel time between Downtown Santa Monica station and 7th Street/Metro Center station in Downtown Los Angeles is approximately 46 minutes, while the travel time between the downtown Santa Monica station and the terminal Atlantic station in East Los Angeles is approximately 1 hour and 9 minutes.\nHistorical aspects of the Expo line route are noteworthy. It uses the former Los Angeles region's electric interurban Pacific Electric Railway's right-of-way that ran from the Exposition Park area of Los Angeles to Santa Monica. This route was called the Santa Monica Air Line and provided electric-powered freight and passenger service between Los Angeles and Santa Monica beginning in the 1920s. Passenger service was discontinued in 1953, but diesel-powered freight deliveries to warehouses along the route continued until March 11, 1988. The abandonment of the line spurred future transportation considerations and concerns within the community, and the entire right-of-way was purchased from Southern Pacific by Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The line was built in 1875 as the steam-powered Los Angeles and Independence Railroad to bring mining ore to ships in Santa Monica harbor and as a passenger excursion train to the beach.\nAirport and ports.\nThe city owns and operates a general aviation airport, Santa Monica Airport, which has been the site of several important aviation achievements. Commercial flights are available for residents at LAX, a few miles south of Santa Monica.\nLike other cities in Los Angeles County, Santa Monica is dependent upon the Port of Long Beach and the Port of Los Angeles for international ship cargo. In the 1890s, Santa Monica was once in competition with Wilmington, California, and San Pedro for recognition as the \"Port of Los Angeles\" (see History of Santa Monica, California).\nOther.\nSince the mid-1980s, various proposals have been made to extend the Purple Line subway to Santa Monica under Wilshire Boulevard. There are no current plans to complete the \"subway to the sea\", an estimated $5\u00a0billion project.\nIn August 2018, Santa Monica issued permits to Bird, Lime, Lyft, and Jump Bikes to operate dockless scooter-sharing systems in the city. As of April 2023, Lyft, Spin, Veo, and Wheels are licensed to provide micro-mobility transportation in city.\nEmergency services.\nTwo major hospitals are within the Santa Monica city limits, UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica and Saint John's Health Center. Four fire stations provide medical and fire response, staffed with six Paramedic Engines, a Truck company, a Hazardous Materials team and an Urban Search & Rescue team. Santa Monica Fire Department has its own Dispatch Center. Ambulance transportation is provided by McCormick Ambulance Services.\nLaw enforcement services are provided by the Santa Monica Police Department\nThe Los Angeles County Department of Health Services operates the Simms/Mann Health and Wellness Center in Santa Monica. The Department's West Area Health Office is in the Simms/Mann Center.\nInternet services.\nSanta Monica has a municipal wireless network which provides several free city Wi-Fi hotspots distributed around the city.\nIn popular culture.\nFilm and television.\nHundreds of moving pictures have been shot or set in part in Santa Monica.\nFilms.\nOne of the oldest exterior shots in Santa Monica is Buster Keaton's \"Spite Marriage\" (1929) which shows much of 2nd Street. The comedy \"It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World\" (1963) included several scenes shot in Santa Monica, including those along the California Incline, which led to the movie's treasure spot, \"The Big W\". The Sylvester Stallone film \"Rocky III\" (1982) shows Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed training to fight Clubber Lang by running on the Santa Monica Beach, and Stallone's \"Demolition Man\" (1993) includes Santa Monica settings. In \"Pee-wee's Big Adventure\" (1985), the theft of Pee-wee's bike occurs on the Third Street Promenade. Henry Jaglom's indie \"Someone to Love\" (1987), the last film in which Orson Welles appeared, takes place in Santa Monica's venerable Mayfair Theatre. \"Heathers\" (1988) used Santa Monica's John Adams Middle School for many exterior shots. \"The Truth About Cats & Dogs\" (1996) is set entirely in Santa Monica, particularly the Palisades Park area, and features a radio station that resembles KCRW at Santa Monica College. \"17 Again\" (2009) was shot at Samohi. Other films that show significant exterior shots of Santa Monica include \"Fletch\" (1985), \"Species\" (1995), \"Get Shorty\" (1995), and \"Ocean's Eleven\" (2001). Richard Rossi's biopic \"Aimee Semple McPherson\" opens and closes at the beach in Santa Monica. \"Iron Man\" features the Santa Monica pier and surrounding communities as Tony Stark tests his experimental flight suit.\nThe documentary \"Dogtown and Z-Boys\" (2001) and the related dramatic film \"Lords of Dogtown\" (2005) are both about the influential skateboarding culture of Santa Monica's Ocean Park neighborhood in the 1970s.\nSanta Monica (and in particular the Santa Monica Airport) was featured in Roland Emmerich's disaster film \"2012\" (2009). A magnitude 10.9 earthquake destroys the airport and the surrounding area as a group of survivors escape in a personal plane. The Santa Monica Pier and the whole city sinks into the Pacific Ocean after the earthquake.\nTelevision.\nA number of television series have been set in Santa Monica, including \"Baywatch\", \"Goliath\", \"Pacific Blue\" (1996\u20132000), \"Private Practice\" (2007\u20132013), and \"Three's Company\" (1977\u20131984), which was set in the Ocean Park neighborhood of Santa Monica. The Santa Monica pier is shown in the main theme of CBS series \"\". In \"Buffy the Vampire Slayer\", the main exterior set of the town of Sunnydale that includes the infamous \"sun sign\", was in Santa Monica in a lot on Olympic Boulevard.\nLiterature.\nHorace McCoy's 1935 novel \"They Shoot Horses, Don't They?\" is set at a dance marathon held in a ballroom on the Santa Monica Pier.\nRaymond Chandler's most famous character, private detective Philip Marlowe, frequently has a portion of his adventures in a place called \"Bay City\", which is modeled on Depression-era Santa Monica. In Marlowe's world, Bay City is \"a wide-open town\", where gambling and other crimes thrive due to a massively corrupt and ineffective police force.\nTennessee Williams lived (while working at MGM Studios) in a hotel on Ocean Avenue in the 1940s. At that location he wrote the play \"The Glass Menagerie\" (which premiered in 1944). His short story \"\" (1954) is set near Santa Monica Beach and mentions the clock visible in much of the city, high up on The Broadway Building, on Broadway near Second Street.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["1071662", "28208", "191890", "17356462"], "permutation_1": ["28208", "1071662", "17356462", "191890"], "permutation_2": ["17356462", "1071662", "28208", "191890"], "permutation_3": ["1071662", "17356462", "28208", "191890"]}
{"id": "4hop1__405751_4520_65397_52731", "docs_added": {"738686": "Separation of powers under the United States Constitution\n \nSeparation of powers is a political doctrine originating in the writings of Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu in \"The Spirit of the Laws\", in which he argued for a constitutional government with three separate branches, each of which would have defined authority to check the powers of the others. This philosophy heavily influenced the United States Constitution, according to which the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches of the United States government are kept distinct in order to prevent abuse of power. The American form of separation of powers is associated with a system of checks and balances.\nDuring the Age of Enlightenment, philosophers such as Montesquieu advocated the principle in their writings, whereas others, such as Thomas Hobbes, strongly opposed it. Montesquieu was one of the foremost supporters of separating the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. His writings considerably influenced the Founding Fathers of the United States, such as Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, who participated in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 which drafted the Constitution.\nSome U.S. states did not observe a strict separation of powers in the 18th century. In New Jersey, the governor also functioned as a member of the state's highest court and as the presiding officer of one house of the New Jersey Legislature. The president of Delaware was a member of the Court of Appeals; the presiding officers of the two houses of the state legislature also served in the executive department as vice presidents. In both Delaware and Pennsylvania, members of the executive council served at the same time as judges. On the other hand, many southern states explicitly required separation of powers. Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia all kept the branches of government \"separate and distinct.\"\nLegislative power.\nCongress has the sole power to legislate for the United States. Under the nondelegation doctrine, Congress may not delegate its lawmaking responsibilities to any other agency. In this vein, the Supreme Court held in the 1998 case \"Clinton v. City of New York\" that Congress could not delegate a \"line-item veto\" to the President, by powers vested in the government by the Constitution.\nWhere Congress does not make great and sweeping delegations of its authority, the Supreme Court has been less stringent. One of the earliest cases involving the exact limits of non-delegation was \"Wayman v. Southard\" 23 U.S. (10 Wet.) 1, 42 (1825). Congress had delegated to the courts the power to prescribe judicial procedure; it was contended that Congress had thereby unconstitutionally clothed the judiciary with legislative powers. While Chief Justice John Marshall conceded that the determination of rules of procedure was a legislative function, he distinguished between \"important\" subjects and mere details. Marshall wrote that \"a general provision may be made, and power is given to those who are to act under such general provisions, to fill up the details.\"\nMarshall's words and future court decisions gave Congress much latitude in delegating powers. It was not until the 1930s that the Supreme Court held a delegation of authority unconstitutional. In a case involving the creation of the National Recovery Administration called \"A.L.A. Schechter Poultry\", 295 U.S. 495 (1935), Congress could not authorize the president to formulate codes of \"fair competition.\" It was held that Congress must set some standards governing the actions of executive officers. The Court, however, has deemed that phrases such as \"just and reasonable,\" \"public interest\" and \"public convenience\" suffice.\nExecutive power.\nExecutive power is vested, with exceptions and qualifications, in the President. By law (Section 2.) the president becomes the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, Militia of several states when called into service, has power to make treaties and appointments to office \"with the Advice and Consent of the Senate,\" receive Ambassadors and Public Ministers, and \"take care that the laws be faithfully executed\" (Section 3.) By using these words, the Constitution does not require the president to personally enforce the law; rather, officers subordinate to the president may perform such duties. The Constitution empowers the president to ensure the faithful execution of the laws made by Congress and approved by the President. Congress may itself terminate such appointments, by impeachment, and restrict the president. Bodies such as the War Claims Commission (created by the War Claims Act of 1948), the Interstate Commerce Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission\u2014all quasi-judicial\u2014often have direct Congressional oversight.\nCongress often writes legislation to restrain executive officials to the performance of their duties, as laid out by the laws Congress passes. In \"Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha\" (1983), the Supreme Court decided (a) The prescription for legislative action in Art. I, \u00a7 1\u2014requiring all legislative powers to be vested in a Congress consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives\u2014and \u00a7 7\u2014requiring every bill passed by the House and Senate, before becoming law, to be presented to the president, and, if he disapproves, to be repassed by two-thirds of the Senate and House\u2014represents the Framers' decision that the legislative power of the Federal Government be exercised in accord with a single, finely wrought and exhaustively considered procedure. This procedure is an integral part of the constitutional design for the separation of powers. Further rulings clarified the case; even both Houses acting together cannot override Executive vetoes without a <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />2\u20443 majority. Legislation may always prescribe regulations governing executive officers.\nJudicial power.\nJudicial power\u2014the power to decide cases and controversies\u2014is vested in the Supreme Court and inferior courts established by Congress. The judges must be appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate, hold office during good behavior and receive compensations that may not be diminished during their continuance in office. If a court's judges do not have such attributes, the court may not exercise the judicial power of the United States. Courts exercising the judicial power are called \"constitutional courts.\"\nHowever, because Congress controls the budget, jurisdiction, and structure of the federal courts, the judiciary as a branch is better described as largely dependent on Congress rather than independent of it. Although the Constitution, not Congress, creates the Supreme Court, it is Congress that decides whether to create lower federal courts, how to arrange them, how many judges will be appointed to them, and whether to abolish them. Congress also has the power to grant jurisdiction to and withdraw jurisdiction from, lower federal courts. Moreover, although judges have the power to issue final judgments, they must rely on the executive for enforcement.\nCongress may also establish \"legislative courts,\" which do not take the form of judicial agencies or commissions, whose members do not have the same security of tenure or compensation as the constitutional court judges. Legislative courts may not exercise the judicial power of the United States. In \"Murray's Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co.\" (1856), the Supreme Court held that a legislative court may not decide \"a suit at the common law, or in equity, or admiralty,\" as such a suit is inherently judicial. Legislative courts may only adjudicate \"public rights\" questions (cases between the government and an individual and political determinations).\nChecks and balances.\n<templatestyles src = \"Column/styles.css\" />\nExecutive.\nThe president exercises a check over Congress through their power to veto bills, but Congress may override any veto (excluding the so-called \"pocket veto\") by a two-thirds majority in each house. When the two houses of Congress cannot agree on a date for adjournment, the president may settle the dispute. Either house or both houses may be called into emergency session by the president. The Vice President serves as president of the Senate, but they may only vote to break a tie.\nThe president, as noted above, appoints judges with the Senate's advice and consent. They also have the power to issue pardons and reprieves. Such pardons are not subject to confirmation by either the House of Representatives or the Senate, or even to acceptance by the recipient. The President is not mandated to carry out the orders of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court does not have any enforcement power; the enforcement power lies solely with the executive branch. Thus, the executive branch can place a check on the Supreme Court through refusal to execute the orders of the court. However the prestige of the Court makes that difficult to do.\nThe president is the civilian Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States. They have the authority to command them to take appropriate military action in the event of a sudden crisis. However, only the Congress is explicitly granted the power to declare war per se, as well as to raise, fund and maintain the armed forces. Congress also has the duty and authority to prescribe the laws and regulations under which the armed forces operate, such as the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and requires that all Generals and Admirals appointed by the president be confirmed by a majority vote of the Senate before they can assume their office.\nJudicial.\nCourts check both the executive branch and the legislative branch through judicial review. This concept is not written into the Constitution, but was envisioned by many of the Constitution's Framers (for example, \"The Federalist Papers\" mention it). The Supreme Court established a precedent for judicial review in \"Marbury v. Madison\". There were protests by some at this decision, born chiefly of political expediency, but political realities in the particular case paradoxically restrained opposing views from asserting themselves. For this reason, precedent alone established the principle that a court may strike down a law it deems unconstitutional.\nA common misperception is that the Supreme Court is the only court that may determine constitutionality; the power is exercised even by the inferior courts. But only Supreme Court decisions are binding across the nation. Decisions of a Court of Appeals, for instance, are binding only in the circuit over which the court has jurisdiction.\nThe power to review the constitutionality of laws may be limited by Congress, which has the power to set the jurisdiction of the courts. The only constitutional limit on Congress' power to set the jurisdiction of the judiciary relates to the Supreme Court; the Supreme Court may exercise only appellate jurisdiction except in cases involving states and cases affecting foreign ambassadors, ministers or consuls.\nThe Chief Justice presides in the Senate during a president's impeachment trial. The rules of the Senate, however, generally do not grant much authority to the presiding officer. Thus, the Chief Justice's role in this regard is a limited one.\nMcCulloch v. Maryland, decided in 1819, established two important principles, one of which explains that states cannot make actions to impede on valid constitutional exercises of power by the federal government. The other explains that Congress has the implied powers to implement the express powers written in the Constitution to create a functional national government. All three branches of the US government have certain powers and those powers relate to the other branches of government. One of these powers is called the express powers. These powers are expressly given, in the Constitution, to each branch of government. Another power is the implied powers. These powers are those that are necessary to perform expressed powers. There are also inherent and concurrent powers. Inherent powers are those that are not found in the Constitution yet the different branches of government can still exercise them. Concurrent powers are those that are given to both state and federal governments. There are also powers that are not lined out in the Constitution that are given to the federal government. These powers are then given to the states in a system called federalism.\nCongress is one of the branches of government so it has a lot of powers of its own that it uses to pass laws and establish regulations. These include express, implied, and concurrent powers. It uses its express powers to regulate bankruptcies, business between states and other nations, the armed forces, and the National Guard or militia. They also establish all laws necessary and proper for carrying out other powers. In addition to this Congress makes laws for naturalization. Implied powers are used to keep the regulation of taxes, the draft, immigration, protection of those with disabilities, minimum wage, and outlaw discrimination. Congress's inherent powers are used to control national borders, deal with foreign affairs, acquire new territories, defend the state from revolution, and decide the exclusion or establishment of aliens. Concurrent powers makes it so that both federal and state governments can create laws, deal with environmental protection, maintain national parks and prisons, and provide a police force.\nThe judicial branch of government holds powers as well. They have the ability to use express and concurrent powers to make laws and establish regulations. They use express powers to interpret laws and perform judicial review. Implied powers are used by this branch to declare laws that were previously passed by a lower court unconstitutional. They can also use express powers to declare laws that are in the process of being passed unconstitutional. Concurrent powers are used to make it so that state courts can conduct trials and interpret laws without the approval of federal courts and federal courts can hear appeals form lower state courts.\nThe executive branch also has powers of its own that they use to make laws and establish regulations. The powers that are used in this branch are express, implied, and inherent. The President uses express powers to approve and veto bills and to make treaties as well. The President is constitutionally obligated to make sure that laws are faithfully executed and uses their powers to do just this. He uses implied powers to issue executive orders and enter into treaties with foreign nations. The executive branch uses inherent powers to establish executive privilege, which means that they can enforce statutes and laws already passed by Congress. They can also enforce the Constitution and treaties that were previously made by other branches of government.\nThe system of checks and balances makes it so that no one branch of government has more power than another and cannot overthrow another. It creates a balance of power that is necessary for a government to function, if it is to function well. This, in most situations, makes it so that each branch is held to a certain standard of conduct. If a branch of the government thinks that what another branch is doing is unconstitutional, they can \"call them out\" so to say. Each branch is able to look at the other branches wrongdoing and change it to meet the needs of the people whom they serve. Humans as a whole have a history of abusing positions of power but the system of checks and balances makes it so much more difficult to do so. Also, as there is more than one person running each branch gives room for debate and discussion before decisions are made within a single branch. Even so, some laws have been made and then retracted because they were an abuse of the power given to that particular branch. The people that created these laws had been serving a selfish agenda when forming these laws instead of looking out for the welfare of those people that they were supposed to be protecting by making certain laws. While this is a horrible scenario, it does happen. That does not mean that it cannot be fixed though. Indeed, it can be, by another branch of government stepping up to right the wrongs that had been done.\nThe federal government is fully capable to intervene in affairs of Native Americans on reservations to some extent. Their ability to create and enforce treaties makes it so that they can interact with the Native Americans and build a treaty that works for both parties and make reservations for the Native Americans to live on and make it so that the people that would live on the reservation not be interrupted by the outside world and be able to live their lives as they please. This responsibility also falls on to the states as well. This happens because the federal government is the one that creates the treaties but the reservations are then put in the jurisdiction of the states. The states are then responsible for maintaining the relationships with the Native Americans on those reservations and to honor the treaties that were previously made by the federal government.\nEquality of the branches.\nThe Constitution does not explicitly indicate the pre-eminence of any particular branch of government. However, James Madison wrote in Federalist 51, regarding the ability of each branch to defend itself from actions by the others, that \"it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates.\"\nOne may claim that the judiciary has historically been the weakest of the three branches. In fact, its power to exercise judicial review\u2014its sole meaningful check on the other two branches\u2014is not explicitly granted by the U.S Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court exercised its power to strike down congressional acts as unconstitutional only twice prior to the Civil War: in \"Marbury v. Madison\" (1803) and \"Dred Scott v. Sandford\" (1857). The Supreme Court has since then made more extensive use of judicial review.\nThroughout America's history dominance of one of the three branches has essentially been a see-saw struggle between Congress and the president. Both have had periods of great power and weakness such as immediately after the Civil War when republicans had a majority in Congress and were able to pass major legislation and shoot down most of the president's vetoes. They also passed acts to essentially make the president subordinate to Congress, such as the Tenure of Office Act. Johnson's later impeachment also cost the presidency much political power. However the president has also exercised greater power largely during the 20th century. Both Roosevelts greatly expanded the powers of the president and wielded great power during their terms.\nThe first six presidents of the United States did not make extensive use of the veto power: George Washington only vetoed two bills, James Monroe one, and John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams none. James Madison, a firm believer in a strong executive, vetoed seven bills. None of the first six Presidents, however, used the veto to direct national policy. It was Andrew Jackson, the seventh President, who was the first to use the veto as a political weapon. During his two terms in office, he vetoed 12 bills\u2014more than all of his predecessors combined. Furthermore, he defied the Supreme Court in enforcing the policy of ethnically cleansing Native American tribes (\"Indian Removal\"); he stated (perhaps apocryphally), \"John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it!\"\nSome of Jackson's successors made no use of the veto power, while others used it intermittently. It was only after the Civil War that presidents began to use the power to truly counterbalance Congress. Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, vetoed several Reconstruction bills passed by the \"Radical Republicans.\" Congress, however, managed to override fifteen of Johnson's twenty-nine vetoes. Furthermore, it attempted to curb the power of the presidency by passing the Tenure of Office Act. The Act required Senate approval for the dismissal of senior Cabinet officials. When Johnson deliberately violated the Act, which he felt was unconstitutional (Supreme Court decisions later vindicated such a position), the House of Representatives impeached him; he was acquitted in the Senate by one vote.\nJohnson's impeachment was perceived to have done great damage to the presidency, which came to be almost subordinate to Congress. Some believed that the president would become a mere figurehead, with the Speaker of the House of Representatives becoming a \"de facto\" prime minister. Grover Cleveland, the first Democratic President following Johnson, attempted to restore the power of his office. During his first term, he vetoed over 400 bills\u2014twice as many bills as his 21 predecessors combined. He also began to suspend bureaucrats who were appointed as a result of the patronage system, replacing them with more \"deserving\" individuals. The Senate, however, refused to confirm many new nominations, instead demanding that Cleveland turn over the confidential records relating to the suspensions. Cleveland steadfastly refused, asserting, \"These suspensions are my executive acts ... I am not responsible to the Senate, and I am unwilling to submit my actions to them for judgment.\" Cleveland's popular support forced the Senate to back down and confirm the nominees. Furthermore, Congress finally repealed the controversial Tenure of Office Act that had been passed during the Johnson Administration. Overall, this meant that Cleveland's Administration marked the end of presidential subordination.\nSeveral 20th-century presidents have attempted to greatly expand the power of the presidency. Theodore Roosevelt, for instance, claimed that the president was permitted to do whatever was not explicitly prohibited by the law\u2014in direct contrast to his immediate successor, William Howard Taft. Franklin Delano Roosevelt held considerable power during the Great Depression. Congress had granted Franklin Roosevelt sweeping authority; in \"Panama Refining v. Ryan\", the Court for the first time struck down a Congressional delegation of power as violative of the doctrine of separation of powers. The aforementioned \"Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States\", another separation of powers case, was also decided during Franklin Roosevelt's presidency. In response to many unfavorable Supreme Court decisions, Roosevelt introduced a \"Court Packing\" plan, under which more seats would be added to the Supreme Court for the president to fill. Such a plan (which was defeated in Congress) would have seriously undermined the judiciary's independence and power.\nRichard Nixon used national security as a basis for his expansion of power. He asserted, for example, that \"the inherent power of the President to safeguard the security of the nation\" authorized him to order a wiretap without a judge's warrant. Nixon also asserted that \"executive privilege\" shielded him from all legislative oversight; furthermore, he impounded federal funds (that is to say, he refused to spend money that Congress had appropriated for government programs). In the specific cases aforementioned, however, the Supreme Court ruled against Nixon. This was also because of an ongoing criminal investigation into the Watergate tapes, even though they acknowledged the general need for executive privilege. Since then, Nixon's successors have sometimes asserted that they may act in the interests of national security or that executive privilege shields them from Congressional oversight. Though such claims have in general been more limited than Nixon's, one may still conclude that the presidency's power has been greatly augmented since the 18th and 19th centuries.\nViews on separation of powers.\nMany political scientists believe that separation of powers is a decisive factor in what they see as a limited degree of American exceptionalism. In particular, John W. Kingdon made this argument, claiming that separation of powers contributed to the development of a unique political structure in the United States. He attributes the unusually large number of interest groups active in the United States, in part, to the separation of powers; it gives groups more places to try to influence, and creates more potential group activity. He also cites its complexity as one of the reasons for lower citizen participation.\nJudicial independence.\nSeparation of powers has again become a current issue of some controversy concerning debates about judicial independence and political efforts to increase the accountability of judges for the quality of their work, avoiding conflicts of interest, and charges that some judges allegedly disregard procedural rules, statutes, and higher court precedents.\nMany legislators hold the view that separation of powers means that powers are shared among different branches; no one branch may act unilaterally on issues (other than perhaps minor questions), but must obtain some form of agreement across branches. That is, it is argued that \"checks and balances\" apply to the Judicial branch as well as to the other branches\u2014for example, in the regulation of attorneys and judges, and the establishment by Congress of rules for the conduct of federal courts, and by state legislatures for state courts. Although in practice these matters are delegated to the Supreme Court, the Congress holds these powers and delegates them to the Supreme Court only for convenience in light of the Supreme Court's expertise, but can withdraw that delegation at any time.\nOn the other side of this debate, many judges hold the view that separation of powers means that the Judiciary is independent and untouchable within the judicial sphere. In this view, separation of powers means that the Judiciary alone holds all powers relative to the judicial function and that the Legislative and Executive branches may not interfere in any aspect of the Judicial branch. An example of the second view at the state level is found in the Florida Supreme Court holding that only the Florida Supreme Court may license and regulate attorneys appearing before the courts of Florida, and only the Florida Supreme Court may set rules for procedures in the Florida courts. The State of New Hampshire also follows this system.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "198562": "Appropriation bill\nBill or law authorizing expenditure of government funds\nAn appropriation bill, also known as supply bill or spending bill, is a proposed law that authorizes the expenditure of government funds. It is a bill that sets money aside for specific spending. In some democracies, approval of the legislature is necessary for the government to spend money.\nIn a Westminster parliamentary system, the defeat of an appropriation bill in a parliamentary vote generally necessitates either the resignation of a government or the calling of a general election. One of the more famous examples of the defeat of a supply bill was the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, when the Senate, which was controlled by the opposition, refused to approve a package of appropriation and loan bills, prompting Governor-General Sir John Kerr to dismiss Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and appoint Malcolm Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister until the next election (where the Fraser government was elected).\nBy country.\nIndia.\nAn appropriation bill is a bill that authorizes the government to withdraw funds from the Consolidated Fund of India for use during the financial year. Although Appropriation Acts are not included in any official list of central laws, they technically remain on the books. Since 2016, appropriation bills in India include a sunset clause as result of which the Act is automatically repealed after its purpose is met. Appropriation Acts passed prior to 2016 were repealed by the enactment of \"The Appropriation Acts (Repeal) Act, 2015\" in April 2016.\nNew Zealand.\nIn New Zealand, an Appropriation Bill is the formal name for the annual Act of Parliament that gives legal effect to the New Zealand Budget, that is, the Government's taxing and spending policies for the forthcoming year (from 1 July to 30 June). Like other bills, it is enacted, following debate, by the House of Representatives, and assented to by the governor-general. The main Appropriation Bill is traditionally placed before the House for its first reading in May amid considerable media interest, an event known as the \"introduction of the Budget\". An Appropriation Bill is not sent to a select committee, a lengthy process undergone by most bills during which they are scrutinised in detail by the committee, which also receives public submissions relating to the bill. Instead, an expedited process is followed in which the Appropriation Bill essentially goes directly to its second reading for consideration by the committee of the whole House. Royal assent is granted after the formality of a third reading.\nThe main Appropriation Bill is formally called an \"Appropriation (Estimates) Bill\", or, after assented to, an \"Appropriation (Estimates) \"Act\"\". Supplementary Budgetary legislation in New Zealand includes an annual \"Appropriation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill\", which serves to validate taxation and spending incurred in the previous year which fell outside the previous year's Budget, and \"Imprest Supply Bills,\" typically several in a year, which grant interim authority to the Government to tax and spend.\nBoth Appropriation and Imprest Supply bills fall under the rubric of confidence and supply. A refusal by the House to pass such a Bill conventionally leads to either the resignation of the Government (unlikely, since there is usually no alternative Government immediately available) or to a dissolution of the House and a subsequent general election.\nPhilippines.\nIn the Philippines, the Congress which consists of the House of Representatives and the Senate is mandated to pass a General Appropriation Bill annually. If the Congress fails to pass a General Appropriation Bill for a fiscal year, the General Appropriation Act for the previous fiscal year would be used until a bill for the specific year is passed.\nUnited States.\nUnder the presidential system, the support of the Congress for the President's appropriations requests is not necessary for the separately-elected President to remain in office, but it can severely limit the President's ability to govern effectively.\nIn the United States, there are two types of appropriations. When Congress sets up particular programs, the legislation may itself set up the necessary appropriation mechanism, such as the social security program for which payment of benefits are \"mandatory\". A mandatory program does not need an additional authorisation for spending under the program to occur. An authorization bill can create programs and make known Congress's intended level of spending for programs that also require an appropriation. What distinguishes a mandatory program from a discretionary program is that after Congress enacts a law creating a mandatory program, the program may spend funds until the program expires based on a provision in law or until a subsequent law either terminates the program or reauthorizes it. Discretionary programs typically require annual appropriations legislation.\nAn appropriation bill is used for actually providing money for \"discretionary\" programs. Appropriations are generally done on an annual basis, but multi-year appropriations are occasionally passed. According to the US Constitution (Article I, Section 8, clause 12), Army appropriations cannot be for more than two years at a time. An annual appropriation requires that the funds appropriated to be obligated (spent) by the end of the fiscal year of the appropriation. Once the fiscal year ends, no more money can be spent via the prior year's appropriation. A new appropriation for the new fiscal year must be passed in order for continued spending to occur or passage of a special appropriations bill known as a continuing resolution, which generally permits continued spending for a short period of time, usually at prior year levels. The Anti-Deficiency Act makes void any attempt to spend money for which there is no current appropriation.\nAccording to the Origination Clause of the US Constitution, all bills for raising revenue, generally tax bills, must originate in the House of Representatives, similar to the Westminster system requirement for all money bills to originate in the lower house. Traditionally, appropriation bills originate in the House of Representatives. House appropriations bills begin with \"H.R.\", meaning \"House of Representatives.\" In reference to revenue bills, the Constitution also states that the \"Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.\" As with revenue bills, the Senate and House each drafts and considers its own appropriation bill. The Senate then cuts and pastes, substitutes the language of its version of a particular appropriation bill for the language of the House bill, and agrees to the bill as amended.\nThe United States House Committee on Appropriations and the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations have jurisdiction over appropriations bills. Both committees have twelve matching subcommittees tasked with working on one of the twelve annual regular appropriations bills. Other committees and lawmakers in Congress write legislation creating programs and reauthorizing old ones to continue. That legislation is called an authorization bill. Such legislation authorizes the programs to exist and expenditure of funds on them, but it cannot actually give them the money. That second step of granting the money is done in an appropriations bill. The appropriations committees have power because they can decide whether to fund the programs at the maximum level authorized, a lesser amount, or not at all.\nAppropriations bills in the United States can also come in the format of an omnibus spending bill, a continuing resolution, or a supplemental appropriation bill. If Congress has not enacted the regular appropriations bills by the start of a new fiscal year, it can pass a continuing resolution, which continues the pre-existing appropriations at the same levels as the previous fiscal year (or with minor modifications) for a set amount of time. An omnibus spending bill is simply a combination of multiple appropriations bills into one larger appropriations bill. Supplemental appropriations bills increase funding for activities that were already funded in previous appropriations bills or the provide new funding for unexpected expenses. For example, both the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War were funded with a variety of supplemental appropriations. Supplemental appropriations bills also provide funding for recovering from unexpected natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy (the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, 2013).\nAnnual appropriations are divided into 12 separate pieces of legislation:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "19468510": "United States House of Representatives\nLower house of the US Congress\nThe United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Article One of the U.S. Constitution to pass or defeat federal legislation, known as bills. Those that are also passed by the Senate are sent to the president for signature or veto. The House's exclusive powers include initiating all revenue bills, impeaching federal officers, and electing the president if no candidate receives a majority of votes in the Electoral College.\nMembers of the House serve a fixed term of two years, with each seat up for election before the start of the next Congress. Special elections also occur when a seat is vacated early enough. The House's composition was established by Article One of the United States Constitution. The House is composed of representatives who, pursuant to the Uniform Congressional District Act, sit in single member congressional districts allocated to each state on the basis of population as measured by the United States census, with each district having at least a single representative, provided that that state is entitled to them. Since its inception in 1789, all representatives have been directly elected. Although suffrage was initially limited, it gradually widened, particularly after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment and the civil rights movement. \nSince 1913, the number of voting representatives has been at 435 pursuant to the Apportionment Act of 1911. The Reapportionment Act of 1929 capped the size of the House at 435. However, the number was temporarily increased from 1959 until 1963 to 437 following the admissions of Alaska and Hawaii to the Union.\nIn addition, five non-voting delegates represent the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories of Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. A non-voting resident commissioner, serving a four-year term, represents the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. As of the 2020 census, the largest delegation was California, with 52 representatives. Six states have only one representative apiece: Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming.\nThe House meets in the south wing of the United States Capitol. The rules of the House generally address a two-party system, with a majority party in government, and a minority party in opposition. The presiding officer is the speaker of the House, who is elected by the members thereof. Other floor leaders are chosen by the Democratic Caucus or the Republican Conference, depending on whichever party has the most voting members.\nHistory.\n18th century.\nUnder the Articles of Confederation, the Congress of the Confederation was a unicameral body with equal representation for each state, which meant that any state could veto most actions. \nAfter eight years of a more limited confederal government under the Articles, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and other Founding Fathers initiated the Constitutional Convention, which convened in Philadelphia from May 25 to September 17, 1787, and received the Confederation Congress's sanction to \"amend the Articles of Confederation\". All states except Rhode Island agreed to send delegates.\nCongress's structure was a contentious issue among the founders during the convention. Edmund Randolph's Virginia Plan called for bicameral legislature with proportional representation in the House and equal state representation in the Senate.\nThe House is commonly referred to as the lower house and the Senate the upper house, although the United States Constitution does not use that terminology. Both houses' approval is necessary for the passage of legislation. The Virginia Plan drew the support of delegates from several large states, including Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and called for representation based on population. The smaller states, however, favored the New Jersey Plan, which called for a unicameral Congress with equal representation for the states.\nThe Convention ultimately reached the Connecticut Compromise or Great Compromise, under which the House of Representatives would provide representation proportional to each state's population, and the Senate would provide equal representation amongst the states. In 1788, the Constitution was ratified, and it was implemented on March 4, 1789. \nLess than a month later, on April 1, 1789, the U.S. House convened for the first time in New York City, which was then the nation's capital. In 1790, the capital was moved back to Philadelphia, and the House met there from 1790 until 1800 when construction of the new national capitol in Washington, D.C. was completed.\n19th century.\nDuring the first half of the 19th century, the House was frequently in conflict with the U.S. Senate over regionally divisive issues, including slavery. The North was much more populous than the South, and therefore dominated the House of Representatives. However, the North held no such advantage in the Senate, where the equal representation of states prevailed.\nRegional conflict was most pronounced over the issue of slavery. One example of a provision repeatedly supported by the House but blocked by the Senate was the Wilmot Proviso, which sought to ban slavery in the land gained during the Mexican\u2013American War. Conflict over slavery and other issues persisted until the Civil War (1861\u20131865), which began soon after several southern states attempted to secede from the Union. The Civil War culminated in the South's defeat and in the abolition of slavery. Since all southern senators except Andrew Johnson resigned their seats at the beginning of the war, the Senate did not hold the balance of power between North and South during the war.\nDuring the Reconstruction that followed, the Republican Party held large majorities, which many Americans associated with the Union's victory in the Civil War and the ending of slavery. The Reconstruction period ended in about 1877; the ensuing era, known as the Gilded Age, was marked by sharp political divisions in the electorate. The Democratic Party and Republican Party each held majorities in the House at various times.\nThe late 19th and early 20th centuries also saw a dramatic increase in the power of the speaker of the House. The rise of the speaker's influence began in the 1890s, during the tenure of Republican Thomas Brackett Reed. \"Czar Reed\", as he was nicknamed, attempted to put into effect his view that \"The best system is to have one party govern and the other party watch.\" The leadership structure of the House also developed during approximately the same period, with the positions of majority leader and minority leader being created in 1899. While the minority leader was the head of the minority party, the majority leader remained subordinate to the speaker.\n20th century.\nThe speakership reached its zenith during the term of Republican Joseph Gurney Cannon, from 1903 to 1911. The speaker's powers included chairmanship of the influential Rules Committee and the ability to appoint members of other House committees. However, these powers were curtailed in the \"Revolution of 1910\" because of the efforts of Democrats and dissatisfied Republicans who opposed Cannon's heavy-handed tactics.\nThe Democratic Party dominated the House of Representatives during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration between 1933 and 1945, often winning over two-thirds of the seats. Both Democrats and Republicans were in power at various times during the next decade. The Democratic Party maintained control of the House from 1955 until 1995. In the mid-1970s, members passed major reforms that strengthened the power of subscommittees at the expense of committee chairs and allowed party leaders to nominate committee chairs. These actions were taken to undermine the seniority system, and to reduce the ability of a small number of senior members to obstruct legislation they did not favor. There was also a shift from the 1990s to greater control of the legislative program by the majority party; the power of party leaders (especially the speaker) grew considerably. \nAccording to historian Julian E. Zelizer, the majority Democrats minimized the number of staff positions available to the minority Republicans, kept them out of decision-making, and gerrymandered their home districts. Republican Newt Gingrich argued American democracy was being ruined by the Democrats' tactics and that the GOP had to destroy the system before it could be saved. Cooperation in governance, says Zelizer, would have to be put aside until they deposed Speaker Wright and regained power. Gingrich brought an ethics complaint which led to Wright's resignation in 1989. Gingrich gained support from the media and good government forces in his crusade to persuade Americans that the system was, in Gingrich's words, \"morally, intellectually and spiritually corrupt\". Gingrich followed Wright's successor, Democrat Tom Foley, as speaker after the Republican Revolution of 1994 gave his party control of the House.\nGingrich attempted to pass a major legislative program, the Contract with America and made major reforms of the House, notably reducing the tenure of committee chairs to three two-year terms. Many elements of the Contract did not pass Congress, were vetoed by President Bill Clinton, or were substantially altered in negotiations with Clinton. After Republicans held control in the 1996 election, however, Clinton and the Gingrich-led House agreed on the first balanced federal budget in decades, along with a substantial tax cut.\n21st century.\nRepublicans held on to the House until 2006, when the Democrats won control and Nancy Pelosi was subsequently elected by the House as the first female speaker. \nRepublicans retook the House in 2010 elections with the largest shift of political power between the parties since the 1938 elections. Republicans held the House until Democrats retook it in the 2018 elections, which became the largest shift of power to the Democrats since the 1970s. In the 2022 elections, Republicans took back control of the House, winning a slim majority.\nIn November 2024, House speaker Mike Johnson announced that the House would have women-only spaces following the election of Sarah McBride\nMembership, qualifications, and apportionment.\nApportionments.\nUnder Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, seats in the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states by population, as determined by the census conducted every ten years. Each state is entitled to at least one representative, however small its population.\nThe only constitutional rule relating to the size of the House states: \"The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative.\" Congress regularly increased the size of the House to account for population growth until it fixed the number of voting House members at 435 in 1911. In 1959, upon the admission of Alaska and Hawaii, the number was temporarily increased to 437 (seating one representative from each of those states without changing existing apportionment), and returned to 435 four years later, after the reapportionment consequent to the 1960 census.\nThe Constitution does not provide for the representation of the District of Columbia or of territories. The District of Columbia and the territories of Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are each represented by one non-voting delegate. Puerto Rico elects a resident commissioner, but other than having a four-year term, the resident commissioner's role is identical to the delegates from the other territories. The five delegates and resident commissioner may participate in debates; before 2011, they were also allowed to vote in committees and the Committee of the Whole when their votes would not be decisive.\nRedistricting.\nStates entitled to more than one representative are divided into single-member districts. This has been a federal statutory requirement since 1967 pursuant to the act titled An Act For the relief of Doctor Ricardo Vallejo Samala and to provide for congressional redistricting. Before that law, general ticket representation was used by some states.\nStates typically redraw district boundaries after each census, though they may do so at other times, such as the 2003 Texas redistricting. Each state determines its own district boundaries, either through legislation or through non-partisan panels. Malapportionment is unconstitutional and districts must be approximately equal in population (see \"Wesberry v. Sanders\"). Additionally, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits redistricting plans that are intended to, or have the effect of, discriminating against racial or language minority voters. Aside from malapportionment and discrimination against racial or language minorities, federal courts have allowed state legislatures to engage in gerrymandering to benefit political parties or incumbents. In a 1984 case, \"Davis v. Bandemer\", the Supreme Court held that gerrymandered districts could be struck down based on the Equal Protection Clause, but the Court did not articulate a standard for when districts are impermissibly gerrymandered. However, the Court overruled Davis in 2004 in \"Vieth v. Jubelirer\", and Court precedent holds gerrymandering to be a political question. According to calculations made by Burt Neuborne using criteria set forth by the American Political Science Association, only about 40 seats, less than 10% of the House membership, are chosen through a genuinely contested electoral process, given partisan gerrymandering.\nQualifications.\nArticle I, Section 2 of the Constitution sets three qualifications for representatives. Each representative must: (1) be at least twenty-five (25) years old; (2) have been a citizen of the United States for the past seven years; and (3) be (at the time of the election) an inhabitant of the state they represent. Members are not required to live in the districts they represent, but they traditionally do. The age and citizenship qualifications for representatives are less than those for senators. The constitutional requirements of Article I, Section 2 for election to Congress are the maximum requirements that can be imposed on a candidate. Therefore, Article I, Section 5, which permits each House to be the judge of the qualifications of its own members does not permit either House to establish additional qualifications. Likewise, a state could not establish additional qualifications. William C. C. Claiborne served in the House below the minimum age of 25.\nDisqualification: under the Fourteenth Amendment, a federal or state officer who takes the requisite oath to support the Constitution, but later engages in rebellion or aids the enemies of the United States, is disqualified from becoming a representative. This post\u2013Civil War provision was intended to prevent those who sided with the Confederacy from serving. However, disqualified individuals may serve if they gain the consent of two-thirds of both houses of Congress.\nElections.\nElections for representatives are held in every even-numbered year, on Election Day the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Pursuant to the Uniform Congressional District Act, representatives must be elected from single-member districts. After a census is taken (in a year ending in 0), the year ending in 2 is the first year in which elections for U.S. House districts are based on that census (with the Congress based on those districts starting its term on the following January 3). As there is no legislation at the federal level mandating one particular system for elections to the House, systems are set at the state level. As of 2022, first-past-the-post or plurality voting is used in 46 states, electing 412 representatives, ranked-choice or instant-runoff voting in two states (Alaska and Maine), electing 3 representatives, and two-round system in two states (Georgia and Louisiana), electing 20 representatives. Elected representatives serve a two-year term, with no term limit.\nIn most states, major party candidates for each district are nominated in partisan primary elections, typically held in spring to late summer. In some states, the Republican and Democratic parties choose their candidates for each district in their political conventions in spring or early summer, which often use unanimous voice votes to reflect either confidence in the incumbent or the result of bargaining in earlier private discussions. Exceptions can result in so-called floor fights\u2014convention votes by delegates, with outcomes that can be hard to predict. Especially if a convention is closely divided, a losing candidate may contend further by meeting the conditions for a primary election. The courts generally do not consider ballot access rules for independent and third party candidates to be additional qualifications for holding office and no federal statutes regulate ballot access. As a result, the process to gain ballot access varies greatly from state to state, and in the case of a third party in the United States may be affected by results of previous years' elections.\nIn 1967, Congress passed the Uniform Congressional District Act, which requires all representatives to be elected from single-member-districts. Following the \"Wesberry v. Sanders\" decision, Congress was motivated by fears that courts would impose at-large plurality districts on states that did not redistrict to comply with the new mandates for districts roughly equal in population, and Congress also sought to prevent attempts by southern states to use such voting systems to dilute the vote of racial minorities. Several states have used multi-member districts in the past, although only two states (Hawaii and New Mexico) used multi-member districts in 1967. Louisiana is unique in that it holds an all-party primary election on the general Election Day with a subsequent runoff election between the top two finishers (regardless of party) if no candidate received a majority in the primary. The states of Washington and California use a similar (though not identical) system to that used by Louisiana.\nSeats vacated during a term are filled through special elections, unless the vacancy occurs closer to the next general election date than a pre-established deadline. The term of a member chosen in a special election usually begins the next day, or as soon as the results are certified.\nNon-voting delegates.\nHistorically, many territories have sent non-voting delegates to the House. While their role has fluctuated over the years, today they have many of the same privileges as voting members, have a voice in committees, and can introduce bills on the floor, but cannot vote on the ultimate passage of bills. Presently, the District of Columbia and the five inhabited U.S. territories each elect a delegate. A seventh delegate, representing the Cherokee Nation, has been formally proposed but has not yet been seated. An eighth delegate, representing the Choctaw Nation is guaranteed by treaty but has not yet been proposed. Additionally, some territories may choose to also elect shadow representatives, though these are not official members of the House and are separate individuals from their official delegates.\nTerms.\nRepresentatives and delegates serve for two-year terms, while a resident commissioner (a kind of delegate) serves for four years. A term starts on January 3 following the election in November. The U.S. Constitution requires that vacancies in the House be filled with a special election. The term of the replacement member expires on the date that the original member's would have expired.\nThe Constitution permits the House to expel a member with a two-thirds vote. In the history of the United States, only six members have been expelled from the House; in 1861, three were removed for supporting the Confederate states' secession: Democrats John Bullock Clark of Missouri, John William Reid of Missouri, and Henry Cornelius Burnett of Kentucky. Democrat Michael Myers of Pennsylvania was expelled after his criminal conviction for accepting bribes in 1980, Democrat James Traficant of Ohio was expelled in 2002 following his conviction for corruption, and Republican George Santos was expelled in 2023 after he was implicated in fraud by both a federal indictment and a House Ethics Committee investigation.\nThe House also has the power to formally censure or reprimand its members; censure or reprimand of a member requires only a simple majority, and does not remove that member from office.\nComparison to the Senate.\nAs a check on the regional, popular, and rapidly changing politics of the House, the Senate has several distinct powers. For example, the \"advice and consent\" powers (such as the power to approve treaties and confirm members of the Cabinet) are a sole Senate privilege. The House, however, has the exclusive power to initiate bills for raising revenue, to impeach officials, and to choose the president if a presidential candidate fails to get a majority of the Electoral College votes. Both House and Senate confirmation is now required to fill a vacancy if the vice presidency is vacant, according to the provisions of the Twenty-fifth Amendment. The Senate and House are further differentiated by term lengths and the number of districts represented: the Senate has longer terms of six years, fewer members (currently one hundred, two for each state), and (in all but seven delegations) larger constituencies per member.\nSalary and benefits.\nSalaries.\nSince December 2014, the annual salary of each representative is $174,000, the same as it is for each member of the Senate. The speaker of the House and the majority and minority leaders earn more: $223,500 for the speaker and $193,400 for their party leaders (the same as Senate leaders). A cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) increase takes effect annually unless Congress votes not to accept it. Congress sets members' salaries; however, the Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits a change in salary (but not COLA) from taking effect until after the next election of the whole House. Representatives are eligible for retirement benefits after serving for five years. Outside pay is limited to 15% of congressional pay, and certain types of income involving a fiduciary responsibility or personal endorsement are prohibited. Salaries are not for life, only during active term.\nTitles.\nRepresentatives use the prefix \"The Honorable\" before their names. A member of the House is referred to as a \"representative\", \"congressman\", or \"congresswoman\".\nRepresentatives are usually identified in the media and other sources by party and state, and sometimes by congressional district, or a major city or community within their district. For example, Democratic representative Nancy Pelosi, who represents California's 11th congressional district within San Francisco, may be identified as \"D\u2013California\", \"D\u2013California\u201311\" or \"D\u2013San Francisco\".\n\"Member of congress\" is occasionally abbreviated as either \"MOC\" or \"MC\" (similar to MP). However, the abbreviation \"Rep.\" for Representative is more common, as it avoids confusion as to whether they are a member of the House or the Senate.\nPension.\nAll members of Congress are automatically enrolled in the Federal Employees Retirement System, a pension system also used for federal civil servants, except the formula for calculating Congress members' pension results in a 70% higher pension than other federal employees based on the first 20 years of service. They become eligible to receive benefits after five years of service (two and one-half terms in the House). The FERS is composed of three elements:\nMembers of Congress may retire with full benefits at age 62 after five years of service, at age 50 after 20 years of service, and at any age after 25 years of service. With an average age of 58, the US House of Representatives is older than comparable chambers in Russia and the other G7 nations.\nTax deductions.\nMembers of Congress are permitted to deduct up to $3,000 of living expenses per year incurred while living away from their district or home state.\nHealth benefits.\nBefore 2014, members of Congress and their staff had access to essentially the same health benefits as federal civil servants; they could voluntarily enroll in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), an employer-sponsored health insurance program, and were eligible to participate in other programs, such as the Federal Flexible Spending Account Program (FSAFEDS).\nHowever, Section 1312(d)(3)(D) of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) provided that the only health plans that the federal government can make available to members of Congress and certain congressional staff are those created under the ACA or offered through a health care exchange. The Office of Personnel Management promulgated a final rule to comply with Section 1312(d)(3)(D). Under the rule, effective January 1, 2014, members and designated staff are no longer able to purchase FEHBP plans as active employees. However, if members enroll in a health plan offered through a Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) exchange, they remain eligible for an employer contribution toward coverage, and members and designated staff eligible for retirement may enroll in a FEHBP plan upon retirement.\nThe ACA and the final rule do not affect members' or staffers' eligibility for Medicare benefits. The ACA and the final rule also do not affect members' and staffers' eligibility for other health benefits related to federal employment, so members and staff are eligible to participate in FSAFEDS (which has three options within the program), the Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program, and the Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program.\nThe Office of the Attending Physician at the U.S. Capitol provides members with health care for an annual fee. The attending physician provides routine exams, consultations, and certain diagnostics, and may write prescriptions (although the office does not dispense them). The office does not provide vision or dental care.\nMembers (but not their dependents, and not former members) may also receive medical and emergency dental care at military treatment facilities. There is no charge for outpatient care if it is provided in the National Capital Region, but members are billed at full reimbursement rates (set by the Department of Defense) for inpatient care. (Outside the National Capital Region, charges are at full reimbursement rates for both inpatient and outpatient care).\nPersonnel, mail and office expenses.\nHouse members are eligible for a Member's Representational Allowance (MRA) to support them in their official and representational duties to their district. The MRA is calculated based on three components: one for personnel, one for official office expenses and one for official or franked mail. The personnel allowance is the same for all members; the office and mail allowances vary based on the members' district's distance from Washington, D.C., the cost of office space in the member's district, and the number of non-business addresses in their district. These three components are used to calculate a single MRA that can fund any expense\u2014even though each component is calculated individually, the franking allowance can be used to pay for personnel expenses if the member so chooses. In 2011 this allowance averaged $1.4\u00a0million per member, and ranged from $1.35 to $1.67\u00a0million.\nThe Personnel allowance was $944,671 per member in 2010. Each member may employ no more than 18 permanent employees. Members' employees' salary is capped at $168,411 as of 2009.\nTravel allowance.\nBefore being sworn into office, each member-elect and one staffer can be paid for one round trip between their home in their congressional district and Washington, D.C., for organization caucuses. Members are allowed \"a sum for travel based on the following formula: 64 times the rate per mile ... multiplied by the mileage between Washington, DC, and the furthest point in a Member's district, plus 10%.\" As of January 2012[ [update]] the rate ranges from based on distance ranges between D.C. and the member's district.\nOfficers.\nMember officials.\nThe party with a majority of seats in the House is known as the majority party. The next-largest party is the minority party. The speaker, committee chairs, and some other officials are generally from the majority party; they have counterparts (for instance, the \"ranking members\" of committees) in the minority party.\nThe Constitution provides that the House may choose its own speaker. Although not explicitly required by the Constitution, every speaker has been a member of the House. The Constitution does not specify the duties and powers of the speaker, which are instead regulated by the rules and customs of the House. Speakers have a role both as a leader of the House and the leader of their party (which need not be the majority party; theoretically, a member of the minority party could be elected as speaker with the support of a fraction of members of the majority party). Under the Presidential Succession Act (1947), the speaker is second in the line of presidential succession after the vice president.\nThe speaker is the presiding officer of the House but does not preside over every debate. Instead, they delegate the responsibility of presiding to other members in most cases. The presiding officer sits in a chair in the front of the House chamber. The powers of the presiding officer are extensive; one important power is that of controlling the order in which members of the House speak. No member may make a speech or a motion unless they have first been recognized by the presiding officer. Moreover, the presiding officer may rule on a \"point of order\" (a member's objection that a rule has been breached); the decision is subject to appeal to the whole House.\nSpeakers serve as chairs of their party's steering committee, which is responsible for assigning party members to other House committees. The speaker chooses the chairs of standing committees, appoints most of the members of the Rules Committee, appoints all members of conference committees, and determines which committees consider bills.\nEach party elects a floor leader, who is known as the majority leader or minority leader. The minority leader heads their party in the House, and the majority leader is their party's second-highest-ranking official, behind the speaker. Party leaders decide what legislation members of their party should either support or oppose.\nEach party also elects a Whip, who works to ensure that the party's members vote as the party leadership desires. The majority whip in the House of Representatives is Tom Emmer, who is a member of the Republican Party. The minority whip is Katherine Clark, who is a member of the Democratic Party. The whip is supported by chief deputy whips\nAfter the whips, the next ranking official in the House party's leadership is the party conference chair (styled as the Republican conference chair and Democratic caucus chair).\nAfter the conference chair, there are differences between each party's subsequent leadership ranks. After the Democratic caucus chair is the campaign committee chair (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee), then the co-chairs of the Steering Committee. For the Republicans it is the chair of the House Republican Policy Committee, followed by the campaign committee chairman (styled as the National Republican Congressional Committee).\nThe chairs of House committees, particularly influential standing committees such as Appropriations, Ways and Means, and Rules, are powerful but not officially part of the House leadership hierarchy. Until the post of majority leader was created, the chair of Ways and Means was the \"de facto\" majority leader.\nLeadership and partisanship.\nWhen the presidency and Senate are controlled by a different party from the one controlling the House, the speaker can become the \"de facto\" \"leader of the opposition\". Some notable examples include Tip O'Neill in the 1980s, Newt Gingrich in the 1990s, John Boehner in the early 2010s, and Nancy Pelosi in the late 2000s and again in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Since the speaker is a partisan officer with substantial power to control the business of the House, the position is often used for partisan advantage.\nIn the instance when the presidency and both Houses of Congress are controlled by one party, the speaker normally takes a low profile and defers to the president. For that situation the House minority leader can play the role of a \"de facto\" \"leader of the opposition\", often more so than the Senate minority leader, due to the more partisan nature of the House and the greater role of leadership.\nNon-member officials.\nThe House is also served by several officials who are not members. The House's chief such officer is the clerk, who maintains public records, prepares documents, and oversees junior officials, including pages until the discontinuation of House pages in 2011. The clerk also presides over the House at the beginning of each new Congress pending the election of a speaker. Another officer is the chief administrative officer, responsible for the day-to-day administrative support to the House of Representatives. This includes everything from payroll to foodservice.\nThe position of chief administrative officer (CAO) was created by the 104th Congress following the 1994 mid-term elections, replacing the positions of doorkeeper and director of non-legislative and financial services (created by the previous congress to administer the non-partisan functions of the House). The CAO also assumed some of the responsibilities of the House Information Services, which previously had been controlled directly by the Committee on House Administration, then headed by Representative Charlie Rose of North Carolina, along with the House \"Folding Room\".\nThe chaplain leads the House in prayer at the opening of the day. The sergeant at arms is the House's chief law enforcement officer and maintains order and security on House premises. Finally, routine police work is handled by the United States Capitol Police, which is supervised by the Capitol Police Board, a body to which the sergeant at arms belongs, and chairs in even-numbered years.\nProcedure.\nDaily procedures.\nLike the Senate, the House of Representatives meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. At one end of the chamber of the House is a rostrum from which the speaker, Speaker pro tempore, or (when in Committee of the Whole House) the chair presides. The lower tiers of the rostrum are used by clerks and other officials. A table in front of the rostrum is used by the official reporters. Members' seats are arranged in the chamber in a semicircular pattern facing the rostrum and are divided by a wide central aisle. By tradition, Democrats sit on the left of the center aisle, while Republicans sit on the right, facing the presiding officer's chair. Sittings are normally held on weekdays; meetings on Saturdays and Sundays are rare. Sittings of the House are generally open to the public; visitors must obtain a House Gallery pass from a congressional office. Sittings are broadcast live on television and have been streamed live on C-SPAN since March 19, 1979, and on \"HouseLive\", the official streaming service operated by the Clerk, since the early 2010s.\nThe procedure of the House depends not only on the rules, but also on a variety of customs, precedents, and traditions. In many cases, the House waives some of its stricter rules (including time limits on debates) by unanimous consent. A member may block a unanimous consent agreement, but objections are rare. The presiding officer, the speaker of the House enforces the rules of the House, and may warn members who deviate from them. The speaker uses a gavel to maintain order. Legislation to be considered by the House is placed in a box called the hopper.\nIn one of its first resolutions, the U.S. House of Representatives established the Office of the Sergeant at Arms. In an American tradition adopted from English custom in 1789 by the first speaker of the House, Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania, the Mace of the United States House of Representatives is used to open all sessions of the House. It is also used during the inaugural ceremonies for all presidents of the United States. For daily sessions of the House, the sergeant at arms carries the mace ahead of the speaker in procession to the rostrum. It is placed on a green marble pedestal to the speaker's right. When the House is in committee, the mace is moved to a pedestal next to the desk of the Sergeant at Arms.\nThe Constitution provides that a majority of the House constitutes a quorum to do business. Under the rules and customs of the House, a quorum is always assumed present unless a quorum call explicitly demonstrates otherwise. House rules prevent a member from making a point of order that a quorum is not present unless a question is being voted on. The presiding officer does not accept a point of order of no quorum during general debate, or when a question is not before the House.\nDuring debates, a member may speak only if called upon by the presiding officer. The presiding officer decides which members to recognize, and can therefore control the course of debate. All speeches must be addressed to the presiding officer, using the words \"Mr. Speaker\" or \"Madam Speaker\". Only the presiding officer may be directly addressed in speeches; other members must be referred to in the third person. In most cases, members do not refer to each other only by name, but also by state, using forms such as \"the gentleman from Virginia\", \"the distinguished gentlewoman from California\", or \"my distinguished friend from Alabama\".\nThere are 448 permanent seats on the House Floor and four tables, two on each side. These tables are occupied by members of the committee that have brought a bill to the floor for consideration and by the party leadership. Members address the House from microphones at any table or \"the well\", the area immediately in front of the rostrum.\nPassage of legislation.\nUnder the U.S. Constitution, the House of Representatives determines the rules according to which it passes legislation. Any of the rules can be changed with each new Congress, but in practice each new session amends a standing set of rules built up over the history of the body in an early resolution published for public inspection. Before legislation reaches the floor of the House, the Rules Committee normally passes a rule to govern debate on that measure (which then must be passed by the full House before it becomes effective). For instance, the committee determines if amendments to the bill are permitted. An \"open rule\" permits all germane amendments, but a \"closed rule\" restricts or even prohibits amendment. Debate on a bill is generally restricted to one hour, equally divided between the majority and minority parties. Each side is led during the debate by a \"floor manager\", who allocates debate time to members who wish to speak. On contentious matters, many members may wish to speak; thus, a member may receive as little as one minute, or even thirty seconds, to make their point.\nWhen debate concludes, the motion is put to a vote. In many cases, the House votes by voice vote; the presiding officer puts the question, and members respond either \"yea!\" or \"aye!\" (in favor of the motion) or \"nay!\" or \"no!\" (against the motion). The presiding officer then announces the result of the voice vote. A member may, however, challenge the presiding officer's assessment and \"request the yeas and nays\" or \"request a recorded vote\". The request may be granted only if it is seconded by one-fifth of the members present. Traditionally, however, members of Congress second requests for recorded votes as a matter of courtesy. Some votes are always recorded, such as those on the annual budget.\nA recorded vote may be taken in one of three different ways. One is electronically. Members use a personal identification card to record their votes at 46 voting stations in the chamber. Votes are usually held in this way. A second mode of recorded vote is by teller. Members hand in colored cards to indicate their votes: green for \"yea\", red for \"nay\", and orange for \"present\" (i.e., to abstain). Teller votes are normally held only when electronic voting breaks down. Finally, the House may conduct a roll call vote. The Clerk reads the list of members of the House, each of whom announces their vote when their name is called. This procedure is only used rarely (and usually for ceremonial occasions, such as for the election of a speaker) because of the time consumed by calling over four hundred names.\nVoting traditionally lasts for, at most, fifteen minutes, but it may be extended if the leadership needs to \"whip\" more members into alignment. The 2003 vote on the prescription drug benefit was open for three hours, from 3:00 to 6:00\u00a0a.m., to receive four additional votes, three of which were necessary to pass the legislation. The 2005 vote on the Central American Free Trade Agreement was open for one hour, from 11:00\u00a0p.m. to midnight. An October 2005 vote on facilitating refinery construction was kept open for forty minutes.\nPresiding officers may vote like other members. They may not, however, vote twice in the event of a tie; rather, a tie vote defeats the motion.\nCommittees and caucuses.\nThe House uses committees and their subcommittees for a variety of purposes, including the review of bills and the oversight of the executive branch. The appointment of committee members is formally made by the whole House, but the choice of members is actually made by the political parties. Generally, each party honors the preferences of individual members, giving priority on the basis of seniority. Historically, membership on committees has been in rough proportion to the party's strength in the House, with two exceptions: on the Rules Committee, the majority party fills nine of the thirteen seats; and on the Ethics Committee, each party has an equal number of seats. However, when party control in the House is closely divided, extra seats on committees are sometimes allocated to the majority party. In the 109th Congress, for example, the Republicans controlled about 53% of the House, but had 54% of the Appropriations Committee members, 55% of the members on the Energy and Commerce Committee, and 58% of the members on the Judiciary Committee.\nThe largest committee of the House is the Committee of the Whole, which, as its name suggests, consists of all members of the House. The Committee meets in the House chamber; it may consider and amend bills, but may not grant them final passage. Generally, the debate procedures of the Committee of the Whole are more flexible than those of the House itself. One advantage of the Committee of the Whole is its ability to include otherwise non-voting members of Congress.\nMost committee work is performed by twenty standing committees, each of which has jurisdiction over a specific set of issues, such as Agriculture or Foreign Affairs. Each standing committee considers, amends, and reports bills that fall under its jurisdiction. Committees have extensive powers with regard to bills; they may block legislation from reaching the floor of the House. Standing committees also oversee the departments and agencies of the executive branch. In discharging their duties, standing committees have the power to hold hearings and to subpoena witnesses and evidence.\nThe House also has one permanent committee that is not a standing committee, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and occasionally may establish temporary or advisory committees, such as the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. This latter committee, created in the 110th Congress and reauthorized for the 111th, has no jurisdiction over legislation and must be chartered anew at the start of every Congress. The House also appoints members to serve on joint committees, which include members of the Senate and House. Some joint committees oversee independent government bodies; for instance, the Joint Committee on the Library oversees the Library of Congress. Other joint committees serve to make advisory reports; for example, there exists a Joint Committee on Taxation. Bills and nominees are not referred to joint committees. Hence, the power of joint committees is considerably lower than those of standing committees.\nEach House committee and subcommittee is led by a chairman (always a member of the majority party). From 1910 to the 1970s, committee chairs were powerful. Woodrow Wilson in his classic study, suggested:Power is nowhere concentrated; it is rather deliberately and of set policy scattered amongst many small chiefs. It is divided up, as it were, into forty-seven seigniories, in each of which a Standing Committee is the court-baron and its chairman lord-proprietor. These petty barons, some of them not a little powerful, but none of them within the reach of the full powers of rule, may at will exercise almost despotic sway within their own shires, and may sometimes threaten to convulse even the realm itself.\nFrom 1910 to 1975 committee and subcommittee chairmanship was determined purely by seniority; members of Congress sometimes had to wait 30 years to get one, but their chairship was independent of party leadership. The rules were changed in 1975 to permit party caucuses to elect chairs, shifting power upward to the party leaders. In 1995, Republicans under Newt Gingrich set a limit of three two-year terms for committee chairs. The chairman's powers are extensive; he controls the committee/subcommittee agenda, and may prevent the committee from dealing with a bill. The senior member of the minority party is known as the Ranking Member. In some committees like Appropriations, partisan disputes are few.\nLegislative functions.\nMost bills may be introduced in either House of Congress. However, the Constitution states, \"All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.\" Because of the Origination Clause, the Senate cannot initiate bills imposing taxes. This provision barring the Senate from introducing revenue bills is based on the practice of the British Parliament, in which only the House of Commons may originate such measures. Furthermore, congressional tradition holds that the House of Representatives originates appropriation bills.\nAlthough it cannot originate revenue bills, the Senate retains the power to amend or reject them. Woodrow Wilson wrote the following about appropriations bills:\n[T]he constitutional prerogative of the House has been held to apply to all the general appropriations bills, and the Senate's right to amend these has been allowed the widest possible scope. The upper house may add to them what it pleases; may go altogether outside of their original provisions and tack to them entirely new features of legislation, altering not only the amounts but even the objects of expenditure, and making out of the materials sent them by the popular chamber measures of an almost totally new character.\nThe approval of the Senate and the House of Representatives is required for a bill to become law. Both Houses must pass the same version of the bill; if there are differences, they may be resolved by a conference committee, which includes members of both bodies. For the stages through which bills pass in the Senate, see Act of Congress.\nThe president may veto a bill passed by the House and Senate. If they do, the bill does not become law unless each House, by a two-thirds vote, votes to override the veto.\nChecks and balances.\nThe Constitution provides that the Senate's \"advice and consent\" is necessary for the president to make appointments and to ratify treaties. Thus, with its potential to frustrate presidential appointments, the Senate is more powerful than the House.\nThe Constitution empowers the House of Representatives to impeach federal officials for \"Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors\" and empowers the Senate to try such impeachments. The House may approve \"articles of impeachment\" by a simple majority vote; however, a two-thirds vote is required for conviction in the Senate. A convicted official is automatically removed from office and may be disqualified from holding future office under the United States. No further punishment is permitted during the impeachment proceedings; however, the party may face criminal penalties in a normal court of law.\nIn U.S. history, the House of Representatives has impeached seventeen officials, seven who were convicted. Another, Richard Nixon, resigned after the House Judiciary Committee passed articles of impeachment but before a formal impeachment vote by the full House. Only three U.S. presidents have ever been impeached: Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump in 2019 and in 2021. The trials of Johnson, Clinton, and Trump all ended in acquittal; in Johnson's case, the Senate fell one vote short of the two-thirds majority required for conviction.\nUnder the Twelfth Amendment, the House has the power to elect the president if no presidential candidate receives a majority of votes in the Electoral College. The Twelfth Amendment requires the House to choose from the three candidates with the highest numbers of electoral votes. The Constitution provides that \"the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote\". It is rare for no presidential candidate to receive a majority of electoral votes. In U.S. history, the House has only had to choose a president twice. In the 1800 election, which was held before adoption of the Twelfth Amendment, it elected Thomas Jefferson over Aaron Burr. In the 1824 election, it elected John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson and William H. Crawford. If no vice presidential candidate receives a majority of the electoral votes, the Senate elects the vice president from the two candidates with the highest numbers of electoral votes.\nLatest election results and party standings.\nAs of \u00a01, 2025[ [update]]\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources and further reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nSurveys.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "26942239": "David Vladeck\nDavid C. Vladeck (born June 6, 1951) is an American lawyer and the former director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection of the Federal Trade Commission, an independent agency of the United States government. He was appointed by the chairman of the FTC, Jon Leibowitz, on April 14, 2009, shortly after Leibowitz became chairman. He served in that position until December 31, 2012, when he returned to the Georgetown University Law Center.\nEarly life and education.\nVladeck is a native of New York City. He comes from a family of lawyers. His father, Stephen Vladeck, founded a worker's rights firm in 1948, which his wife, Judith, joined in 1957. Vladeck's sister, Anne, is a partner at the same firm, while his nephew, Stephen, is a law professor at the University of Texas School of Law. Vladeck\u2019s brother, Bruce, headed the Health Care Financing Administration, now called the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, under President Bill Clinton.\nVladeck received his B.A. from New York University in 1972, and graduated with a J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1976. He received an L.L.M. the from Georgetown Law Center in 1977. While a student at New York University, Vladeck played on the school\u2019s basketball team\nCareer.\nBefore joining the faculty of the Georgetown University Law Center, Vladeck spent nearly 30 years as a lawyer at the Public Citizen Litigation Group, the litigation arm of Public Citizen, an advocacy organization founded by Ralph Nader. He served as the group\u2019s director for 10 years. While at the Public Citizen Litigation Group, Vladeck argued a number of cases in front of the United States Supreme Court, including cases about the First Amendment, civil rights and labor law. He also argued more than 60 cases in front of federal courts of appeal and state courts of last resort.\nVladeck was a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center for seven years before his appointment to head the Bureau of Consumer Protection. While at Georgetown, he served as the co-director of the Institute for Public Representation, leading the Institute's work in civil rights. He taught courses in federal courts, civil procedure, and government processes and co-directed the Institute for Public Representation, a legal clinic.\nPolicy priorities.\nVladeck\u2019s appointment to head the Bureau of Consumer Protection was lauded by consumer advocates, who felt that the bureau had shown a pro-business bias under commissioners appointed by George W. Bush in areas such as consumer financial services and online privacy. Since taking office, Vladeck has made clear that he intends to make significant changes to the Bureau\u2019s approach in a few key areas.\nTechnology and privacy.\nSince the FTC started to regulate online privacy issues, in the mid-1990s, its focus has been on whether consumers are provided with proper notice about what information may be collected from them and on whether they are given some choice about how it is collected and used. This philosophy was laid out in the fair information practice principles (FIPs)\", published in a 1998 FTC report to Congress about online privacy. The Bureau of Consumer Protection has traditionally taken the position that as long as consumers are provided with notice through company privacy policies, collection and use of consumer data is acceptable; and that the bureau should only intervene when a company\u2019s information practices cause concrete, economic harm to consumers.\nVladeck has stated that he doesn\u2019t believe this existing model succeeds in protecting consumers\u2019 privacy online. He has advocated a new framework that is broader than just economic interests, and that doesn\u2019t rely solely on privacy policies to protect consumers online. In a recent interview with the New York Times, Vladeck argued that, \"I don\u2019t believe that most consumers either read [privacy policies], or, if they read them, really understand it [sic]. Second of all, consent in the face of these kinds of quote disclosures, I\u2019m not sure that consent really reflects a volitional, knowing act.\"\nVladeck\u2019s approach to online privacy was seen in his handling of FTC litigation against Sears in In the Matter of Sears Holdings Management Corporation. In June 2009, shortly after Vladeck assumed office, the Bureau of Consumer Protection settled a case against Sears. The company had offered consumers $10 to download software that tracked their internet browsing. The software collected information such as medical prescriptions and financial information. The software contained a privacy policy with detailed disclosures about the type of information to be collected and how it would be used, and consumers suffered no economic harm when they downloaded it. Nevertheless, the FTC sued the company for its practice. Vladeck stated that \"under the harm framework, we couldn\u2019t have brought that case,\" but that because \"there\u2019s a huge dignity interest wrapped up in having somebody looking at your financial records when they have no business doing that,\" the commission was justified in suing.\nFinancial regulation.\nConsumer advocates have criticized the FTC in recent years for its lack of active regulation of financial services providers, including companies providing and servicing subprime mortgages in the years leading up to the financial crisis of 2007-2010. As \"Mother Jones\" magazine noted during the Bush Administration, the FTC \"brought an average of one subprime lending case a year (in 2004 and 2005 there weren't any), even as the industry was experiencing record growth and complaints mounted about abusive practices leading to home foreclosures.\"\nAdvertising and marketing.\nIn an October 2009 speech to its national advertising division, Vladeck set forth his plan for the Bureau of Consumer Protection's regulation of advertising and marketing practices. He stated that the bureau would have a renewed focus on national advertising, going after large companies that advertise widely and put forth deceptive or unsubstantiated claims, not just small companies perpetrating direct fraud. He also indicated the bureau would particularly focus on food advertising, health claims in advertising and advertising and marketing practices directed at children.\nAdditionally, since Vladeck took office, the bureau revised its endorsement guides, guidelines to advertisers who use endorsements and testimonials. Previously, the guides \u2013 which were last revised in 1980 - only required product testimonials claiming exceptional results to have a disclaimer that said \"Results Not Typical\". Under the new guidelines, using such testimonials will now require advertisers to \"clearly and conspicuously disclose the generally expected results consumers can expect in the depicted circumstances.\" The guidelines also \u2013 somewhat controversially \u2013 require bloggers making an endorsement to disclose their \"material connections\" to the product\u2019s manufacturer or seller.\nA positive response to the new rules and laws regarding endorsements and testimonials is an increased level of website compliance standards being adopted that includes the third-party verification of the testimonials businesses present on their websites. These companies, such as testimonialshield.com, collect the data regarding a customer's transaction and experience with a company and with a combined technology and sometimes even personal interviews with the customers to determine the authenticity of the testimonials. Once the testimonials, reviews and/or results are verified, the company can include them in their profiles and add a 'trust mark' similar to that of Verisign, the Better Business Bureau, or Good Housekeeping. The presence of this seal or trust mark helps consumers determine how much weight they should give to the testimonials they are reading before making a decision to support a business.\nPersonal life.\nVladeck is married and has two sons, both of whom pitched for their college baseball teams. One is also a Georgetown Law graduate.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["19468510", "26942239", "198562", "738686"], "permutation_1": ["26942239", "738686", "198562", "19468510"], "permutation_2": ["19468510", "738686", "198562", "26942239"], "permutation_3": ["198562", "738686", "19468510", "26942239"]}
{"id": "4hop1__405751_4520_65397_93848", "docs_added": {"738686": "Separation of powers under the United States Constitution\n \nSeparation of powers is a political doctrine originating in the writings of Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu in \"The Spirit of the Laws\", in which he argued for a constitutional government with three separate branches, each of which would have defined authority to check the powers of the others. This philosophy heavily influenced the United States Constitution, according to which the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches of the United States government are kept distinct in order to prevent abuse of power. The American form of separation of powers is associated with a system of checks and balances.\nDuring the Age of Enlightenment, philosophers such as Montesquieu advocated the principle in their writings, whereas others, such as Thomas Hobbes, strongly opposed it. Montesquieu was one of the foremost supporters of separating the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. His writings considerably influenced the Founding Fathers of the United States, such as Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, who participated in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 which drafted the Constitution.\nSome U.S. states did not observe a strict separation of powers in the 18th century. In New Jersey, the governor also functioned as a member of the state's highest court and as the presiding officer of one house of the New Jersey Legislature. The president of Delaware was a member of the Court of Appeals; the presiding officers of the two houses of the state legislature also served in the executive department as vice presidents. In both Delaware and Pennsylvania, members of the executive council served at the same time as judges. On the other hand, many southern states explicitly required separation of powers. Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia all kept the branches of government \"separate and distinct.\"\nLegislative power.\nCongress has the sole power to legislate for the United States. Under the nondelegation doctrine, Congress may not delegate its lawmaking responsibilities to any other agency. In this vein, the Supreme Court held in the 1998 case \"Clinton v. City of New York\" that Congress could not delegate a \"line-item veto\" to the President, by powers vested in the government by the Constitution.\nWhere Congress does not make great and sweeping delegations of its authority, the Supreme Court has been less stringent. One of the earliest cases involving the exact limits of non-delegation was \"Wayman v. Southard\" 23 U.S. (10 Wet.) 1, 42 (1825). Congress had delegated to the courts the power to prescribe judicial procedure; it was contended that Congress had thereby unconstitutionally clothed the judiciary with legislative powers. While Chief Justice John Marshall conceded that the determination of rules of procedure was a legislative function, he distinguished between \"important\" subjects and mere details. Marshall wrote that \"a general provision may be made, and power is given to those who are to act under such general provisions, to fill up the details.\"\nMarshall's words and future court decisions gave Congress much latitude in delegating powers. It was not until the 1930s that the Supreme Court held a delegation of authority unconstitutional. In a case involving the creation of the National Recovery Administration called \"A.L.A. Schechter Poultry\", 295 U.S. 495 (1935), Congress could not authorize the president to formulate codes of \"fair competition.\" It was held that Congress must set some standards governing the actions of executive officers. The Court, however, has deemed that phrases such as \"just and reasonable,\" \"public interest\" and \"public convenience\" suffice.\nExecutive power.\nExecutive power is vested, with exceptions and qualifications, in the President. By law (Section 2.) the president becomes the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, Militia of several states when called into service, has power to make treaties and appointments to office \"with the Advice and Consent of the Senate,\" receive Ambassadors and Public Ministers, and \"take care that the laws be faithfully executed\" (Section 3.) By using these words, the Constitution does not require the president to personally enforce the law; rather, officers subordinate to the president may perform such duties. The Constitution empowers the president to ensure the faithful execution of the laws made by Congress and approved by the President. Congress may itself terminate such appointments, by impeachment, and restrict the president. Bodies such as the War Claims Commission (created by the War Claims Act of 1948), the Interstate Commerce Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission\u2014all quasi-judicial\u2014often have direct Congressional oversight.\nCongress often writes legislation to restrain executive officials to the performance of their duties, as laid out by the laws Congress passes. In \"Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha\" (1983), the Supreme Court decided (a) The prescription for legislative action in Art. I, \u00a7 1\u2014requiring all legislative powers to be vested in a Congress consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives\u2014and \u00a7 7\u2014requiring every bill passed by the House and Senate, before becoming law, to be presented to the president, and, if he disapproves, to be repassed by two-thirds of the Senate and House\u2014represents the Framers' decision that the legislative power of the Federal Government be exercised in accord with a single, finely wrought and exhaustively considered procedure. This procedure is an integral part of the constitutional design for the separation of powers. Further rulings clarified the case; even both Houses acting together cannot override Executive vetoes without a <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />2\u20443 majority. Legislation may always prescribe regulations governing executive officers.\nJudicial power.\nJudicial power\u2014the power to decide cases and controversies\u2014is vested in the Supreme Court and inferior courts established by Congress. The judges must be appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate, hold office during good behavior and receive compensations that may not be diminished during their continuance in office. If a court's judges do not have such attributes, the court may not exercise the judicial power of the United States. Courts exercising the judicial power are called \"constitutional courts.\"\nHowever, because Congress controls the budget, jurisdiction, and structure of the federal courts, the judiciary as a branch is better described as largely dependent on Congress rather than independent of it. Although the Constitution, not Congress, creates the Supreme Court, it is Congress that decides whether to create lower federal courts, how to arrange them, how many judges will be appointed to them, and whether to abolish them. Congress also has the power to grant jurisdiction to and withdraw jurisdiction from, lower federal courts. Moreover, although judges have the power to issue final judgments, they must rely on the executive for enforcement.\nCongress may also establish \"legislative courts,\" which do not take the form of judicial agencies or commissions, whose members do not have the same security of tenure or compensation as the constitutional court judges. Legislative courts may not exercise the judicial power of the United States. In \"Murray's Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co.\" (1856), the Supreme Court held that a legislative court may not decide \"a suit at the common law, or in equity, or admiralty,\" as such a suit is inherently judicial. Legislative courts may only adjudicate \"public rights\" questions (cases between the government and an individual and political determinations).\nChecks and balances.\n<templatestyles src = \"Column/styles.css\" />\nExecutive.\nThe president exercises a check over Congress through their power to veto bills, but Congress may override any veto (excluding the so-called \"pocket veto\") by a two-thirds majority in each house. When the two houses of Congress cannot agree on a date for adjournment, the president may settle the dispute. Either house or both houses may be called into emergency session by the president. The Vice President serves as president of the Senate, but they may only vote to break a tie.\nThe president, as noted above, appoints judges with the Senate's advice and consent. They also have the power to issue pardons and reprieves. Such pardons are not subject to confirmation by either the House of Representatives or the Senate, or even to acceptance by the recipient. The President is not mandated to carry out the orders of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court does not have any enforcement power; the enforcement power lies solely with the executive branch. Thus, the executive branch can place a check on the Supreme Court through refusal to execute the orders of the court. However the prestige of the Court makes that difficult to do.\nThe president is the civilian Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States. They have the authority to command them to take appropriate military action in the event of a sudden crisis. However, only the Congress is explicitly granted the power to declare war per se, as well as to raise, fund and maintain the armed forces. Congress also has the duty and authority to prescribe the laws and regulations under which the armed forces operate, such as the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and requires that all Generals and Admirals appointed by the president be confirmed by a majority vote of the Senate before they can assume their office.\nJudicial.\nCourts check both the executive branch and the legislative branch through judicial review. This concept is not written into the Constitution, but was envisioned by many of the Constitution's Framers (for example, \"The Federalist Papers\" mention it). The Supreme Court established a precedent for judicial review in \"Marbury v. Madison\". There were protests by some at this decision, born chiefly of political expediency, but political realities in the particular case paradoxically restrained opposing views from asserting themselves. For this reason, precedent alone established the principle that a court may strike down a law it deems unconstitutional.\nA common misperception is that the Supreme Court is the only court that may determine constitutionality; the power is exercised even by the inferior courts. But only Supreme Court decisions are binding across the nation. Decisions of a Court of Appeals, for instance, are binding only in the circuit over which the court has jurisdiction.\nThe power to review the constitutionality of laws may be limited by Congress, which has the power to set the jurisdiction of the courts. The only constitutional limit on Congress' power to set the jurisdiction of the judiciary relates to the Supreme Court; the Supreme Court may exercise only appellate jurisdiction except in cases involving states and cases affecting foreign ambassadors, ministers or consuls.\nThe Chief Justice presides in the Senate during a president's impeachment trial. The rules of the Senate, however, generally do not grant much authority to the presiding officer. Thus, the Chief Justice's role in this regard is a limited one.\nMcCulloch v. Maryland, decided in 1819, established two important principles, one of which explains that states cannot make actions to impede on valid constitutional exercises of power by the federal government. The other explains that Congress has the implied powers to implement the express powers written in the Constitution to create a functional national government. All three branches of the US government have certain powers and those powers relate to the other branches of government. One of these powers is called the express powers. These powers are expressly given, in the Constitution, to each branch of government. Another power is the implied powers. These powers are those that are necessary to perform expressed powers. There are also inherent and concurrent powers. Inherent powers are those that are not found in the Constitution yet the different branches of government can still exercise them. Concurrent powers are those that are given to both state and federal governments. There are also powers that are not lined out in the Constitution that are given to the federal government. These powers are then given to the states in a system called federalism.\nCongress is one of the branches of government so it has a lot of powers of its own that it uses to pass laws and establish regulations. These include express, implied, and concurrent powers. It uses its express powers to regulate bankruptcies, business between states and other nations, the armed forces, and the National Guard or militia. They also establish all laws necessary and proper for carrying out other powers. In addition to this Congress makes laws for naturalization. Implied powers are used to keep the regulation of taxes, the draft, immigration, protection of those with disabilities, minimum wage, and outlaw discrimination. Congress's inherent powers are used to control national borders, deal with foreign affairs, acquire new territories, defend the state from revolution, and decide the exclusion or establishment of aliens. Concurrent powers makes it so that both federal and state governments can create laws, deal with environmental protection, maintain national parks and prisons, and provide a police force.\nThe judicial branch of government holds powers as well. They have the ability to use express and concurrent powers to make laws and establish regulations. They use express powers to interpret laws and perform judicial review. Implied powers are used by this branch to declare laws that were previously passed by a lower court unconstitutional. They can also use express powers to declare laws that are in the process of being passed unconstitutional. Concurrent powers are used to make it so that state courts can conduct trials and interpret laws without the approval of federal courts and federal courts can hear appeals form lower state courts.\nThe executive branch also has powers of its own that they use to make laws and establish regulations. The powers that are used in this branch are express, implied, and inherent. The President uses express powers to approve and veto bills and to make treaties as well. The President is constitutionally obligated to make sure that laws are faithfully executed and uses their powers to do just this. He uses implied powers to issue executive orders and enter into treaties with foreign nations. The executive branch uses inherent powers to establish executive privilege, which means that they can enforce statutes and laws already passed by Congress. They can also enforce the Constitution and treaties that were previously made by other branches of government.\nThe system of checks and balances makes it so that no one branch of government has more power than another and cannot overthrow another. It creates a balance of power that is necessary for a government to function, if it is to function well. This, in most situations, makes it so that each branch is held to a certain standard of conduct. If a branch of the government thinks that what another branch is doing is unconstitutional, they can \"call them out\" so to say. Each branch is able to look at the other branches wrongdoing and change it to meet the needs of the people whom they serve. Humans as a whole have a history of abusing positions of power but the system of checks and balances makes it so much more difficult to do so. Also, as there is more than one person running each branch gives room for debate and discussion before decisions are made within a single branch. Even so, some laws have been made and then retracted because they were an abuse of the power given to that particular branch. The people that created these laws had been serving a selfish agenda when forming these laws instead of looking out for the welfare of those people that they were supposed to be protecting by making certain laws. While this is a horrible scenario, it does happen. That does not mean that it cannot be fixed though. Indeed, it can be, by another branch of government stepping up to right the wrongs that had been done.\nThe federal government is fully capable to intervene in affairs of Native Americans on reservations to some extent. Their ability to create and enforce treaties makes it so that they can interact with the Native Americans and build a treaty that works for both parties and make reservations for the Native Americans to live on and make it so that the people that would live on the reservation not be interrupted by the outside world and be able to live their lives as they please. This responsibility also falls on to the states as well. This happens because the federal government is the one that creates the treaties but the reservations are then put in the jurisdiction of the states. The states are then responsible for maintaining the relationships with the Native Americans on those reservations and to honor the treaties that were previously made by the federal government.\nEquality of the branches.\nThe Constitution does not explicitly indicate the pre-eminence of any particular branch of government. However, James Madison wrote in Federalist 51, regarding the ability of each branch to defend itself from actions by the others, that \"it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates.\"\nOne may claim that the judiciary has historically been the weakest of the three branches. In fact, its power to exercise judicial review\u2014its sole meaningful check on the other two branches\u2014is not explicitly granted by the U.S Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court exercised its power to strike down congressional acts as unconstitutional only twice prior to the Civil War: in \"Marbury v. Madison\" (1803) and \"Dred Scott v. Sandford\" (1857). The Supreme Court has since then made more extensive use of judicial review.\nThroughout America's history dominance of one of the three branches has essentially been a see-saw struggle between Congress and the president. Both have had periods of great power and weakness such as immediately after the Civil War when republicans had a majority in Congress and were able to pass major legislation and shoot down most of the president's vetoes. They also passed acts to essentially make the president subordinate to Congress, such as the Tenure of Office Act. Johnson's later impeachment also cost the presidency much political power. However the president has also exercised greater power largely during the 20th century. Both Roosevelts greatly expanded the powers of the president and wielded great power during their terms.\nThe first six presidents of the United States did not make extensive use of the veto power: George Washington only vetoed two bills, James Monroe one, and John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams none. James Madison, a firm believer in a strong executive, vetoed seven bills. None of the first six Presidents, however, used the veto to direct national policy. It was Andrew Jackson, the seventh President, who was the first to use the veto as a political weapon. During his two terms in office, he vetoed 12 bills\u2014more than all of his predecessors combined. Furthermore, he defied the Supreme Court in enforcing the policy of ethnically cleansing Native American tribes (\"Indian Removal\"); he stated (perhaps apocryphally), \"John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it!\"\nSome of Jackson's successors made no use of the veto power, while others used it intermittently. It was only after the Civil War that presidents began to use the power to truly counterbalance Congress. Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, vetoed several Reconstruction bills passed by the \"Radical Republicans.\" Congress, however, managed to override fifteen of Johnson's twenty-nine vetoes. Furthermore, it attempted to curb the power of the presidency by passing the Tenure of Office Act. The Act required Senate approval for the dismissal of senior Cabinet officials. When Johnson deliberately violated the Act, which he felt was unconstitutional (Supreme Court decisions later vindicated such a position), the House of Representatives impeached him; he was acquitted in the Senate by one vote.\nJohnson's impeachment was perceived to have done great damage to the presidency, which came to be almost subordinate to Congress. Some believed that the president would become a mere figurehead, with the Speaker of the House of Representatives becoming a \"de facto\" prime minister. Grover Cleveland, the first Democratic President following Johnson, attempted to restore the power of his office. During his first term, he vetoed over 400 bills\u2014twice as many bills as his 21 predecessors combined. He also began to suspend bureaucrats who were appointed as a result of the patronage system, replacing them with more \"deserving\" individuals. The Senate, however, refused to confirm many new nominations, instead demanding that Cleveland turn over the confidential records relating to the suspensions. Cleveland steadfastly refused, asserting, \"These suspensions are my executive acts ... I am not responsible to the Senate, and I am unwilling to submit my actions to them for judgment.\" Cleveland's popular support forced the Senate to back down and confirm the nominees. Furthermore, Congress finally repealed the controversial Tenure of Office Act that had been passed during the Johnson Administration. Overall, this meant that Cleveland's Administration marked the end of presidential subordination.\nSeveral 20th-century presidents have attempted to greatly expand the power of the presidency. Theodore Roosevelt, for instance, claimed that the president was permitted to do whatever was not explicitly prohibited by the law\u2014in direct contrast to his immediate successor, William Howard Taft. Franklin Delano Roosevelt held considerable power during the Great Depression. Congress had granted Franklin Roosevelt sweeping authority; in \"Panama Refining v. Ryan\", the Court for the first time struck down a Congressional delegation of power as violative of the doctrine of separation of powers. The aforementioned \"Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States\", another separation of powers case, was also decided during Franklin Roosevelt's presidency. In response to many unfavorable Supreme Court decisions, Roosevelt introduced a \"Court Packing\" plan, under which more seats would be added to the Supreme Court for the president to fill. Such a plan (which was defeated in Congress) would have seriously undermined the judiciary's independence and power.\nRichard Nixon used national security as a basis for his expansion of power. He asserted, for example, that \"the inherent power of the President to safeguard the security of the nation\" authorized him to order a wiretap without a judge's warrant. Nixon also asserted that \"executive privilege\" shielded him from all legislative oversight; furthermore, he impounded federal funds (that is to say, he refused to spend money that Congress had appropriated for government programs). In the specific cases aforementioned, however, the Supreme Court ruled against Nixon. This was also because of an ongoing criminal investigation into the Watergate tapes, even though they acknowledged the general need for executive privilege. Since then, Nixon's successors have sometimes asserted that they may act in the interests of national security or that executive privilege shields them from Congressional oversight. Though such claims have in general been more limited than Nixon's, one may still conclude that the presidency's power has been greatly augmented since the 18th and 19th centuries.\nViews on separation of powers.\nMany political scientists believe that separation of powers is a decisive factor in what they see as a limited degree of American exceptionalism. In particular, John W. Kingdon made this argument, claiming that separation of powers contributed to the development of a unique political structure in the United States. He attributes the unusually large number of interest groups active in the United States, in part, to the separation of powers; it gives groups more places to try to influence, and creates more potential group activity. He also cites its complexity as one of the reasons for lower citizen participation.\nJudicial independence.\nSeparation of powers has again become a current issue of some controversy concerning debates about judicial independence and political efforts to increase the accountability of judges for the quality of their work, avoiding conflicts of interest, and charges that some judges allegedly disregard procedural rules, statutes, and higher court precedents.\nMany legislators hold the view that separation of powers means that powers are shared among different branches; no one branch may act unilaterally on issues (other than perhaps minor questions), but must obtain some form of agreement across branches. That is, it is argued that \"checks and balances\" apply to the Judicial branch as well as to the other branches\u2014for example, in the regulation of attorneys and judges, and the establishment by Congress of rules for the conduct of federal courts, and by state legislatures for state courts. Although in practice these matters are delegated to the Supreme Court, the Congress holds these powers and delegates them to the Supreme Court only for convenience in light of the Supreme Court's expertise, but can withdraw that delegation at any time.\nOn the other side of this debate, many judges hold the view that separation of powers means that the Judiciary is independent and untouchable within the judicial sphere. In this view, separation of powers means that the Judiciary alone holds all powers relative to the judicial function and that the Legislative and Executive branches may not interfere in any aspect of the Judicial branch. An example of the second view at the state level is found in the Florida Supreme Court holding that only the Florida Supreme Court may license and regulate attorneys appearing before the courts of Florida, and only the Florida Supreme Court may set rules for procedures in the Florida courts. The State of New Hampshire also follows this system.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "198562": "Appropriation bill\nBill or law authorizing expenditure of government funds\nAn appropriation bill, also known as supply bill or spending bill, is a proposed law that authorizes the expenditure of government funds. It is a bill that sets money aside for specific spending. In some democracies, approval of the legislature is necessary for the government to spend money.\nIn a Westminster parliamentary system, the defeat of an appropriation bill in a parliamentary vote generally necessitates either the resignation of a government or the calling of a general election. One of the more famous examples of the defeat of a supply bill was the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, when the Senate, which was controlled by the opposition, refused to approve a package of appropriation and loan bills, prompting Governor-General Sir John Kerr to dismiss Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and appoint Malcolm Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister until the next election (where the Fraser government was elected).\nBy country.\nIndia.\nAn appropriation bill is a bill that authorizes the government to withdraw funds from the Consolidated Fund of India for use during the financial year. Although Appropriation Acts are not included in any official list of central laws, they technically remain on the books. Since 2016, appropriation bills in India include a sunset clause as result of which the Act is automatically repealed after its purpose is met. Appropriation Acts passed prior to 2016 were repealed by the enactment of \"The Appropriation Acts (Repeal) Act, 2015\" in April 2016.\nNew Zealand.\nIn New Zealand, an Appropriation Bill is the formal name for the annual Act of Parliament that gives legal effect to the New Zealand Budget, that is, the Government's taxing and spending policies for the forthcoming year (from 1 July to 30 June). Like other bills, it is enacted, following debate, by the House of Representatives, and assented to by the governor-general. The main Appropriation Bill is traditionally placed before the House for its first reading in May amid considerable media interest, an event known as the \"introduction of the Budget\". An Appropriation Bill is not sent to a select committee, a lengthy process undergone by most bills during which they are scrutinised in detail by the committee, which also receives public submissions relating to the bill. Instead, an expedited process is followed in which the Appropriation Bill essentially goes directly to its second reading for consideration by the committee of the whole House. Royal assent is granted after the formality of a third reading.\nThe main Appropriation Bill is formally called an \"Appropriation (Estimates) Bill\", or, after assented to, an \"Appropriation (Estimates) \"Act\"\". Supplementary Budgetary legislation in New Zealand includes an annual \"Appropriation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill\", which serves to validate taxation and spending incurred in the previous year which fell outside the previous year's Budget, and \"Imprest Supply Bills,\" typically several in a year, which grant interim authority to the Government to tax and spend.\nBoth Appropriation and Imprest Supply bills fall under the rubric of confidence and supply. A refusal by the House to pass such a Bill conventionally leads to either the resignation of the Government (unlikely, since there is usually no alternative Government immediately available) or to a dissolution of the House and a subsequent general election.\nPhilippines.\nIn the Philippines, the Congress which consists of the House of Representatives and the Senate is mandated to pass a General Appropriation Bill annually. If the Congress fails to pass a General Appropriation Bill for a fiscal year, the General Appropriation Act for the previous fiscal year would be used until a bill for the specific year is passed.\nUnited States.\nUnder the presidential system, the support of the Congress for the President's appropriations requests is not necessary for the separately-elected President to remain in office, but it can severely limit the President's ability to govern effectively.\nIn the United States, there are two types of appropriations. When Congress sets up particular programs, the legislation may itself set up the necessary appropriation mechanism, such as the social security program for which payment of benefits are \"mandatory\". A mandatory program does not need an additional authorisation for spending under the program to occur. An authorization bill can create programs and make known Congress's intended level of spending for programs that also require an appropriation. What distinguishes a mandatory program from a discretionary program is that after Congress enacts a law creating a mandatory program, the program may spend funds until the program expires based on a provision in law or until a subsequent law either terminates the program or reauthorizes it. Discretionary programs typically require annual appropriations legislation.\nAn appropriation bill is used for actually providing money for \"discretionary\" programs. Appropriations are generally done on an annual basis, but multi-year appropriations are occasionally passed. According to the US Constitution (Article I, Section 8, clause 12), Army appropriations cannot be for more than two years at a time. An annual appropriation requires that the funds appropriated to be obligated (spent) by the end of the fiscal year of the appropriation. Once the fiscal year ends, no more money can be spent via the prior year's appropriation. A new appropriation for the new fiscal year must be passed in order for continued spending to occur or passage of a special appropriations bill known as a continuing resolution, which generally permits continued spending for a short period of time, usually at prior year levels. The Anti-Deficiency Act makes void any attempt to spend money for which there is no current appropriation.\nAccording to the Origination Clause of the US Constitution, all bills for raising revenue, generally tax bills, must originate in the House of Representatives, similar to the Westminster system requirement for all money bills to originate in the lower house. Traditionally, appropriation bills originate in the House of Representatives. House appropriations bills begin with \"H.R.\", meaning \"House of Representatives.\" In reference to revenue bills, the Constitution also states that the \"Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.\" As with revenue bills, the Senate and House each drafts and considers its own appropriation bill. The Senate then cuts and pastes, substitutes the language of its version of a particular appropriation bill for the language of the House bill, and agrees to the bill as amended.\nThe United States House Committee on Appropriations and the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations have jurisdiction over appropriations bills. Both committees have twelve matching subcommittees tasked with working on one of the twelve annual regular appropriations bills. Other committees and lawmakers in Congress write legislation creating programs and reauthorizing old ones to continue. That legislation is called an authorization bill. Such legislation authorizes the programs to exist and expenditure of funds on them, but it cannot actually give them the money. That second step of granting the money is done in an appropriations bill. The appropriations committees have power because they can decide whether to fund the programs at the maximum level authorized, a lesser amount, or not at all.\nAppropriations bills in the United States can also come in the format of an omnibus spending bill, a continuing resolution, or a supplemental appropriation bill. If Congress has not enacted the regular appropriations bills by the start of a new fiscal year, it can pass a continuing resolution, which continues the pre-existing appropriations at the same levels as the previous fiscal year (or with minor modifications) for a set amount of time. An omnibus spending bill is simply a combination of multiple appropriations bills into one larger appropriations bill. Supplemental appropriations bills increase funding for activities that were already funded in previous appropriations bills or the provide new funding for unexpected expenses. For example, both the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War were funded with a variety of supplemental appropriations. Supplemental appropriations bills also provide funding for recovering from unexpected natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy (the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, 2013).\nAnnual appropriations are divided into 12 separate pieces of legislation:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "19468510": "United States House of Representatives\nLower house of the US Congress\nThe United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Article One of the U.S. Constitution to pass or defeat federal legislation, known as bills. Those that are also passed by the Senate are sent to the president for signature or veto. The House's exclusive powers include initiating all revenue bills, impeaching federal officers, and electing the president if no candidate receives a majority of votes in the Electoral College.\nMembers of the House serve a fixed term of two years, with each seat up for election before the start of the next Congress. Special elections also occur when a seat is vacated early enough. The House's composition was established by Article One of the United States Constitution. The House is composed of representatives who, pursuant to the Uniform Congressional District Act, sit in single member congressional districts allocated to each state on the basis of population as measured by the United States census, with each district having at least a single representative, provided that that state is entitled to them. Since its inception in 1789, all representatives have been directly elected. Although suffrage was initially limited, it gradually widened, particularly after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment and the civil rights movement. \nSince 1913, the number of voting representatives has been at 435 pursuant to the Apportionment Act of 1911. The Reapportionment Act of 1929 capped the size of the House at 435. However, the number was temporarily increased from 1959 until 1963 to 437 following the admissions of Alaska and Hawaii to the Union.\nIn addition, five non-voting delegates represent the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories of Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. A non-voting resident commissioner, serving a four-year term, represents the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. As of the 2020 census, the largest delegation was California, with 52 representatives. Six states have only one representative apiece: Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming.\nThe House meets in the south wing of the United States Capitol. The rules of the House generally address a two-party system, with a majority party in government, and a minority party in opposition. The presiding officer is the speaker of the House, who is elected by the members thereof. Other floor leaders are chosen by the Democratic Caucus or the Republican Conference, depending on whichever party has the most voting members.\nHistory.\n18th century.\nUnder the Articles of Confederation, the Congress of the Confederation was a unicameral body with equal representation for each state, which meant that any state could veto most actions. \nAfter eight years of a more limited confederal government under the Articles, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and other Founding Fathers initiated the Constitutional Convention, which convened in Philadelphia from May 25 to September 17, 1787, and received the Confederation Congress's sanction to \"amend the Articles of Confederation\". All states except Rhode Island agreed to send delegates.\nCongress's structure was a contentious issue among the founders during the convention. Edmund Randolph's Virginia Plan called for bicameral legislature with proportional representation in the House and equal state representation in the Senate.\nThe House is commonly referred to as the lower house and the Senate the upper house, although the United States Constitution does not use that terminology. Both houses' approval is necessary for the passage of legislation. The Virginia Plan drew the support of delegates from several large states, including Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and called for representation based on population. The smaller states, however, favored the New Jersey Plan, which called for a unicameral Congress with equal representation for the states.\nThe Convention ultimately reached the Connecticut Compromise or Great Compromise, under which the House of Representatives would provide representation proportional to each state's population, and the Senate would provide equal representation amongst the states. In 1788, the Constitution was ratified, and it was implemented on March 4, 1789. \nLess than a month later, on April 1, 1789, the U.S. House convened for the first time in New York City, which was then the nation's capital. In 1790, the capital was moved back to Philadelphia, and the House met there from 1790 until 1800 when construction of the new national capitol in Washington, D.C. was completed.\n19th century.\nDuring the first half of the 19th century, the House was frequently in conflict with the U.S. Senate over regionally divisive issues, including slavery. The North was much more populous than the South, and therefore dominated the House of Representatives. However, the North held no such advantage in the Senate, where the equal representation of states prevailed.\nRegional conflict was most pronounced over the issue of slavery. One example of a provision repeatedly supported by the House but blocked by the Senate was the Wilmot Proviso, which sought to ban slavery in the land gained during the Mexican\u2013American War. Conflict over slavery and other issues persisted until the Civil War (1861\u20131865), which began soon after several southern states attempted to secede from the Union. The Civil War culminated in the South's defeat and in the abolition of slavery. Since all southern senators except Andrew Johnson resigned their seats at the beginning of the war, the Senate did not hold the balance of power between North and South during the war.\nDuring the Reconstruction that followed, the Republican Party held large majorities, which many Americans associated with the Union's victory in the Civil War and the ending of slavery. The Reconstruction period ended in about 1877; the ensuing era, known as the Gilded Age, was marked by sharp political divisions in the electorate. The Democratic Party and Republican Party each held majorities in the House at various times.\nThe late 19th and early 20th centuries also saw a dramatic increase in the power of the speaker of the House. The rise of the speaker's influence began in the 1890s, during the tenure of Republican Thomas Brackett Reed. \"Czar Reed\", as he was nicknamed, attempted to put into effect his view that \"The best system is to have one party govern and the other party watch.\" The leadership structure of the House also developed during approximately the same period, with the positions of majority leader and minority leader being created in 1899. While the minority leader was the head of the minority party, the majority leader remained subordinate to the speaker.\n20th century.\nThe speakership reached its zenith during the term of Republican Joseph Gurney Cannon, from 1903 to 1911. The speaker's powers included chairmanship of the influential Rules Committee and the ability to appoint members of other House committees. However, these powers were curtailed in the \"Revolution of 1910\" because of the efforts of Democrats and dissatisfied Republicans who opposed Cannon's heavy-handed tactics.\nThe Democratic Party dominated the House of Representatives during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration between 1933 and 1945, often winning over two-thirds of the seats. Both Democrats and Republicans were in power at various times during the next decade. The Democratic Party maintained control of the House from 1955 until 1995. In the mid-1970s, members passed major reforms that strengthened the power of subscommittees at the expense of committee chairs and allowed party leaders to nominate committee chairs. These actions were taken to undermine the seniority system, and to reduce the ability of a small number of senior members to obstruct legislation they did not favor. There was also a shift from the 1990s to greater control of the legislative program by the majority party; the power of party leaders (especially the speaker) grew considerably. \nAccording to historian Julian E. Zelizer, the majority Democrats minimized the number of staff positions available to the minority Republicans, kept them out of decision-making, and gerrymandered their home districts. Republican Newt Gingrich argued American democracy was being ruined by the Democrats' tactics and that the GOP had to destroy the system before it could be saved. Cooperation in governance, says Zelizer, would have to be put aside until they deposed Speaker Wright and regained power. Gingrich brought an ethics complaint which led to Wright's resignation in 1989. Gingrich gained support from the media and good government forces in his crusade to persuade Americans that the system was, in Gingrich's words, \"morally, intellectually and spiritually corrupt\". Gingrich followed Wright's successor, Democrat Tom Foley, as speaker after the Republican Revolution of 1994 gave his party control of the House.\nGingrich attempted to pass a major legislative program, the Contract with America and made major reforms of the House, notably reducing the tenure of committee chairs to three two-year terms. Many elements of the Contract did not pass Congress, were vetoed by President Bill Clinton, or were substantially altered in negotiations with Clinton. After Republicans held control in the 1996 election, however, Clinton and the Gingrich-led House agreed on the first balanced federal budget in decades, along with a substantial tax cut.\n21st century.\nRepublicans held on to the House until 2006, when the Democrats won control and Nancy Pelosi was subsequently elected by the House as the first female speaker. \nRepublicans retook the House in 2010 elections with the largest shift of political power between the parties since the 1938 elections. Republicans held the House until Democrats retook it in the 2018 elections, which became the largest shift of power to the Democrats since the 1970s. In the 2022 elections, Republicans took back control of the House, winning a slim majority.\nIn November 2024, House speaker Mike Johnson announced that the House would have women-only spaces following the election of Sarah McBride\nMembership, qualifications, and apportionment.\nApportionments.\nUnder Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, seats in the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states by population, as determined by the census conducted every ten years. Each state is entitled to at least one representative, however small its population.\nThe only constitutional rule relating to the size of the House states: \"The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative.\" Congress regularly increased the size of the House to account for population growth until it fixed the number of voting House members at 435 in 1911. In 1959, upon the admission of Alaska and Hawaii, the number was temporarily increased to 437 (seating one representative from each of those states without changing existing apportionment), and returned to 435 four years later, after the reapportionment consequent to the 1960 census.\nThe Constitution does not provide for the representation of the District of Columbia or of territories. The District of Columbia and the territories of Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are each represented by one non-voting delegate. Puerto Rico elects a resident commissioner, but other than having a four-year term, the resident commissioner's role is identical to the delegates from the other territories. The five delegates and resident commissioner may participate in debates; before 2011, they were also allowed to vote in committees and the Committee of the Whole when their votes would not be decisive.\nRedistricting.\nStates entitled to more than one representative are divided into single-member districts. This has been a federal statutory requirement since 1967 pursuant to the act titled An Act For the relief of Doctor Ricardo Vallejo Samala and to provide for congressional redistricting. Before that law, general ticket representation was used by some states.\nStates typically redraw district boundaries after each census, though they may do so at other times, such as the 2003 Texas redistricting. Each state determines its own district boundaries, either through legislation or through non-partisan panels. Malapportionment is unconstitutional and districts must be approximately equal in population (see \"Wesberry v. Sanders\"). Additionally, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits redistricting plans that are intended to, or have the effect of, discriminating against racial or language minority voters. Aside from malapportionment and discrimination against racial or language minorities, federal courts have allowed state legislatures to engage in gerrymandering to benefit political parties or incumbents. In a 1984 case, \"Davis v. Bandemer\", the Supreme Court held that gerrymandered districts could be struck down based on the Equal Protection Clause, but the Court did not articulate a standard for when districts are impermissibly gerrymandered. However, the Court overruled Davis in 2004 in \"Vieth v. Jubelirer\", and Court precedent holds gerrymandering to be a political question. According to calculations made by Burt Neuborne using criteria set forth by the American Political Science Association, only about 40 seats, less than 10% of the House membership, are chosen through a genuinely contested electoral process, given partisan gerrymandering.\nQualifications.\nArticle I, Section 2 of the Constitution sets three qualifications for representatives. Each representative must: (1) be at least twenty-five (25) years old; (2) have been a citizen of the United States for the past seven years; and (3) be (at the time of the election) an inhabitant of the state they represent. Members are not required to live in the districts they represent, but they traditionally do. The age and citizenship qualifications for representatives are less than those for senators. The constitutional requirements of Article I, Section 2 for election to Congress are the maximum requirements that can be imposed on a candidate. Therefore, Article I, Section 5, which permits each House to be the judge of the qualifications of its own members does not permit either House to establish additional qualifications. Likewise, a state could not establish additional qualifications. William C. C. Claiborne served in the House below the minimum age of 25.\nDisqualification: under the Fourteenth Amendment, a federal or state officer who takes the requisite oath to support the Constitution, but later engages in rebellion or aids the enemies of the United States, is disqualified from becoming a representative. This post\u2013Civil War provision was intended to prevent those who sided with the Confederacy from serving. However, disqualified individuals may serve if they gain the consent of two-thirds of both houses of Congress.\nElections.\nElections for representatives are held in every even-numbered year, on Election Day the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Pursuant to the Uniform Congressional District Act, representatives must be elected from single-member districts. After a census is taken (in a year ending in 0), the year ending in 2 is the first year in which elections for U.S. House districts are based on that census (with the Congress based on those districts starting its term on the following January 3). As there is no legislation at the federal level mandating one particular system for elections to the House, systems are set at the state level. As of 2022, first-past-the-post or plurality voting is used in 46 states, electing 412 representatives, ranked-choice or instant-runoff voting in two states (Alaska and Maine), electing 3 representatives, and two-round system in two states (Georgia and Louisiana), electing 20 representatives. Elected representatives serve a two-year term, with no term limit.\nIn most states, major party candidates for each district are nominated in partisan primary elections, typically held in spring to late summer. In some states, the Republican and Democratic parties choose their candidates for each district in their political conventions in spring or early summer, which often use unanimous voice votes to reflect either confidence in the incumbent or the result of bargaining in earlier private discussions. Exceptions can result in so-called floor fights\u2014convention votes by delegates, with outcomes that can be hard to predict. Especially if a convention is closely divided, a losing candidate may contend further by meeting the conditions for a primary election. The courts generally do not consider ballot access rules for independent and third party candidates to be additional qualifications for holding office and no federal statutes regulate ballot access. As a result, the process to gain ballot access varies greatly from state to state, and in the case of a third party in the United States may be affected by results of previous years' elections.\nIn 1967, Congress passed the Uniform Congressional District Act, which requires all representatives to be elected from single-member-districts. Following the \"Wesberry v. Sanders\" decision, Congress was motivated by fears that courts would impose at-large plurality districts on states that did not redistrict to comply with the new mandates for districts roughly equal in population, and Congress also sought to prevent attempts by southern states to use such voting systems to dilute the vote of racial minorities. Several states have used multi-member districts in the past, although only two states (Hawaii and New Mexico) used multi-member districts in 1967. Louisiana is unique in that it holds an all-party primary election on the general Election Day with a subsequent runoff election between the top two finishers (regardless of party) if no candidate received a majority in the primary. The states of Washington and California use a similar (though not identical) system to that used by Louisiana.\nSeats vacated during a term are filled through special elections, unless the vacancy occurs closer to the next general election date than a pre-established deadline. The term of a member chosen in a special election usually begins the next day, or as soon as the results are certified.\nNon-voting delegates.\nHistorically, many territories have sent non-voting delegates to the House. While their role has fluctuated over the years, today they have many of the same privileges as voting members, have a voice in committees, and can introduce bills on the floor, but cannot vote on the ultimate passage of bills. Presently, the District of Columbia and the five inhabited U.S. territories each elect a delegate. A seventh delegate, representing the Cherokee Nation, has been formally proposed but has not yet been seated. An eighth delegate, representing the Choctaw Nation is guaranteed by treaty but has not yet been proposed. Additionally, some territories may choose to also elect shadow representatives, though these are not official members of the House and are separate individuals from their official delegates.\nTerms.\nRepresentatives and delegates serve for two-year terms, while a resident commissioner (a kind of delegate) serves for four years. A term starts on January 3 following the election in November. The U.S. Constitution requires that vacancies in the House be filled with a special election. The term of the replacement member expires on the date that the original member's would have expired.\nThe Constitution permits the House to expel a member with a two-thirds vote. In the history of the United States, only six members have been expelled from the House; in 1861, three were removed for supporting the Confederate states' secession: Democrats John Bullock Clark of Missouri, John William Reid of Missouri, and Henry Cornelius Burnett of Kentucky. Democrat Michael Myers of Pennsylvania was expelled after his criminal conviction for accepting bribes in 1980, Democrat James Traficant of Ohio was expelled in 2002 following his conviction for corruption, and Republican George Santos was expelled in 2023 after he was implicated in fraud by both a federal indictment and a House Ethics Committee investigation.\nThe House also has the power to formally censure or reprimand its members; censure or reprimand of a member requires only a simple majority, and does not remove that member from office.\nComparison to the Senate.\nAs a check on the regional, popular, and rapidly changing politics of the House, the Senate has several distinct powers. For example, the \"advice and consent\" powers (such as the power to approve treaties and confirm members of the Cabinet) are a sole Senate privilege. The House, however, has the exclusive power to initiate bills for raising revenue, to impeach officials, and to choose the president if a presidential candidate fails to get a majority of the Electoral College votes. Both House and Senate confirmation is now required to fill a vacancy if the vice presidency is vacant, according to the provisions of the Twenty-fifth Amendment. The Senate and House are further differentiated by term lengths and the number of districts represented: the Senate has longer terms of six years, fewer members (currently one hundred, two for each state), and (in all but seven delegations) larger constituencies per member.\nSalary and benefits.\nSalaries.\nSince December 2014, the annual salary of each representative is $174,000, the same as it is for each member of the Senate. The speaker of the House and the majority and minority leaders earn more: $223,500 for the speaker and $193,400 for their party leaders (the same as Senate leaders). A cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) increase takes effect annually unless Congress votes not to accept it. Congress sets members' salaries; however, the Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits a change in salary (but not COLA) from taking effect until after the next election of the whole House. Representatives are eligible for retirement benefits after serving for five years. Outside pay is limited to 15% of congressional pay, and certain types of income involving a fiduciary responsibility or personal endorsement are prohibited. Salaries are not for life, only during active term.\nTitles.\nRepresentatives use the prefix \"The Honorable\" before their names. A member of the House is referred to as a \"representative\", \"congressman\", or \"congresswoman\".\nRepresentatives are usually identified in the media and other sources by party and state, and sometimes by congressional district, or a major city or community within their district. For example, Democratic representative Nancy Pelosi, who represents California's 11th congressional district within San Francisco, may be identified as \"D\u2013California\", \"D\u2013California\u201311\" or \"D\u2013San Francisco\".\n\"Member of congress\" is occasionally abbreviated as either \"MOC\" or \"MC\" (similar to MP). However, the abbreviation \"Rep.\" for Representative is more common, as it avoids confusion as to whether they are a member of the House or the Senate.\nPension.\nAll members of Congress are automatically enrolled in the Federal Employees Retirement System, a pension system also used for federal civil servants, except the formula for calculating Congress members' pension results in a 70% higher pension than other federal employees based on the first 20 years of service. They become eligible to receive benefits after five years of service (two and one-half terms in the House). The FERS is composed of three elements:\nMembers of Congress may retire with full benefits at age 62 after five years of service, at age 50 after 20 years of service, and at any age after 25 years of service. With an average age of 58, the US House of Representatives is older than comparable chambers in Russia and the other G7 nations.\nTax deductions.\nMembers of Congress are permitted to deduct up to $3,000 of living expenses per year incurred while living away from their district or home state.\nHealth benefits.\nBefore 2014, members of Congress and their staff had access to essentially the same health benefits as federal civil servants; they could voluntarily enroll in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), an employer-sponsored health insurance program, and were eligible to participate in other programs, such as the Federal Flexible Spending Account Program (FSAFEDS).\nHowever, Section 1312(d)(3)(D) of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) provided that the only health plans that the federal government can make available to members of Congress and certain congressional staff are those created under the ACA or offered through a health care exchange. The Office of Personnel Management promulgated a final rule to comply with Section 1312(d)(3)(D). Under the rule, effective January 1, 2014, members and designated staff are no longer able to purchase FEHBP plans as active employees. However, if members enroll in a health plan offered through a Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) exchange, they remain eligible for an employer contribution toward coverage, and members and designated staff eligible for retirement may enroll in a FEHBP plan upon retirement.\nThe ACA and the final rule do not affect members' or staffers' eligibility for Medicare benefits. The ACA and the final rule also do not affect members' and staffers' eligibility for other health benefits related to federal employment, so members and staff are eligible to participate in FSAFEDS (which has three options within the program), the Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program, and the Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program.\nThe Office of the Attending Physician at the U.S. Capitol provides members with health care for an annual fee. The attending physician provides routine exams, consultations, and certain diagnostics, and may write prescriptions (although the office does not dispense them). The office does not provide vision or dental care.\nMembers (but not their dependents, and not former members) may also receive medical and emergency dental care at military treatment facilities. There is no charge for outpatient care if it is provided in the National Capital Region, but members are billed at full reimbursement rates (set by the Department of Defense) for inpatient care. (Outside the National Capital Region, charges are at full reimbursement rates for both inpatient and outpatient care).\nPersonnel, mail and office expenses.\nHouse members are eligible for a Member's Representational Allowance (MRA) to support them in their official and representational duties to their district. The MRA is calculated based on three components: one for personnel, one for official office expenses and one for official or franked mail. The personnel allowance is the same for all members; the office and mail allowances vary based on the members' district's distance from Washington, D.C., the cost of office space in the member's district, and the number of non-business addresses in their district. These three components are used to calculate a single MRA that can fund any expense\u2014even though each component is calculated individually, the franking allowance can be used to pay for personnel expenses if the member so chooses. In 2011 this allowance averaged $1.4\u00a0million per member, and ranged from $1.35 to $1.67\u00a0million.\nThe Personnel allowance was $944,671 per member in 2010. Each member may employ no more than 18 permanent employees. Members' employees' salary is capped at $168,411 as of 2009.\nTravel allowance.\nBefore being sworn into office, each member-elect and one staffer can be paid for one round trip between their home in their congressional district and Washington, D.C., for organization caucuses. Members are allowed \"a sum for travel based on the following formula: 64 times the rate per mile ... multiplied by the mileage between Washington, DC, and the furthest point in a Member's district, plus 10%.\" As of January 2012[ [update]] the rate ranges from based on distance ranges between D.C. and the member's district.\nOfficers.\nMember officials.\nThe party with a majority of seats in the House is known as the majority party. The next-largest party is the minority party. The speaker, committee chairs, and some other officials are generally from the majority party; they have counterparts (for instance, the \"ranking members\" of committees) in the minority party.\nThe Constitution provides that the House may choose its own speaker. Although not explicitly required by the Constitution, every speaker has been a member of the House. The Constitution does not specify the duties and powers of the speaker, which are instead regulated by the rules and customs of the House. Speakers have a role both as a leader of the House and the leader of their party (which need not be the majority party; theoretically, a member of the minority party could be elected as speaker with the support of a fraction of members of the majority party). Under the Presidential Succession Act (1947), the speaker is second in the line of presidential succession after the vice president.\nThe speaker is the presiding officer of the House but does not preside over every debate. Instead, they delegate the responsibility of presiding to other members in most cases. The presiding officer sits in a chair in the front of the House chamber. The powers of the presiding officer are extensive; one important power is that of controlling the order in which members of the House speak. No member may make a speech or a motion unless they have first been recognized by the presiding officer. Moreover, the presiding officer may rule on a \"point of order\" (a member's objection that a rule has been breached); the decision is subject to appeal to the whole House.\nSpeakers serve as chairs of their party's steering committee, which is responsible for assigning party members to other House committees. The speaker chooses the chairs of standing committees, appoints most of the members of the Rules Committee, appoints all members of conference committees, and determines which committees consider bills.\nEach party elects a floor leader, who is known as the majority leader or minority leader. The minority leader heads their party in the House, and the majority leader is their party's second-highest-ranking official, behind the speaker. Party leaders decide what legislation members of their party should either support or oppose.\nEach party also elects a Whip, who works to ensure that the party's members vote as the party leadership desires. The majority whip in the House of Representatives is Tom Emmer, who is a member of the Republican Party. The minority whip is Katherine Clark, who is a member of the Democratic Party. The whip is supported by chief deputy whips\nAfter the whips, the next ranking official in the House party's leadership is the party conference chair (styled as the Republican conference chair and Democratic caucus chair).\nAfter the conference chair, there are differences between each party's subsequent leadership ranks. After the Democratic caucus chair is the campaign committee chair (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee), then the co-chairs of the Steering Committee. For the Republicans it is the chair of the House Republican Policy Committee, followed by the campaign committee chairman (styled as the National Republican Congressional Committee).\nThe chairs of House committees, particularly influential standing committees such as Appropriations, Ways and Means, and Rules, are powerful but not officially part of the House leadership hierarchy. Until the post of majority leader was created, the chair of Ways and Means was the \"de facto\" majority leader.\nLeadership and partisanship.\nWhen the presidency and Senate are controlled by a different party from the one controlling the House, the speaker can become the \"de facto\" \"leader of the opposition\". Some notable examples include Tip O'Neill in the 1980s, Newt Gingrich in the 1990s, John Boehner in the early 2010s, and Nancy Pelosi in the late 2000s and again in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Since the speaker is a partisan officer with substantial power to control the business of the House, the position is often used for partisan advantage.\nIn the instance when the presidency and both Houses of Congress are controlled by one party, the speaker normally takes a low profile and defers to the president. For that situation the House minority leader can play the role of a \"de facto\" \"leader of the opposition\", often more so than the Senate minority leader, due to the more partisan nature of the House and the greater role of leadership.\nNon-member officials.\nThe House is also served by several officials who are not members. The House's chief such officer is the clerk, who maintains public records, prepares documents, and oversees junior officials, including pages until the discontinuation of House pages in 2011. The clerk also presides over the House at the beginning of each new Congress pending the election of a speaker. Another officer is the chief administrative officer, responsible for the day-to-day administrative support to the House of Representatives. This includes everything from payroll to foodservice.\nThe position of chief administrative officer (CAO) was created by the 104th Congress following the 1994 mid-term elections, replacing the positions of doorkeeper and director of non-legislative and financial services (created by the previous congress to administer the non-partisan functions of the House). The CAO also assumed some of the responsibilities of the House Information Services, which previously had been controlled directly by the Committee on House Administration, then headed by Representative Charlie Rose of North Carolina, along with the House \"Folding Room\".\nThe chaplain leads the House in prayer at the opening of the day. The sergeant at arms is the House's chief law enforcement officer and maintains order and security on House premises. Finally, routine police work is handled by the United States Capitol Police, which is supervised by the Capitol Police Board, a body to which the sergeant at arms belongs, and chairs in even-numbered years.\nProcedure.\nDaily procedures.\nLike the Senate, the House of Representatives meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. At one end of the chamber of the House is a rostrum from which the speaker, Speaker pro tempore, or (when in Committee of the Whole House) the chair presides. The lower tiers of the rostrum are used by clerks and other officials. A table in front of the rostrum is used by the official reporters. Members' seats are arranged in the chamber in a semicircular pattern facing the rostrum and are divided by a wide central aisle. By tradition, Democrats sit on the left of the center aisle, while Republicans sit on the right, facing the presiding officer's chair. Sittings are normally held on weekdays; meetings on Saturdays and Sundays are rare. Sittings of the House are generally open to the public; visitors must obtain a House Gallery pass from a congressional office. Sittings are broadcast live on television and have been streamed live on C-SPAN since March 19, 1979, and on \"HouseLive\", the official streaming service operated by the Clerk, since the early 2010s.\nThe procedure of the House depends not only on the rules, but also on a variety of customs, precedents, and traditions. In many cases, the House waives some of its stricter rules (including time limits on debates) by unanimous consent. A member may block a unanimous consent agreement, but objections are rare. The presiding officer, the speaker of the House enforces the rules of the House, and may warn members who deviate from them. The speaker uses a gavel to maintain order. Legislation to be considered by the House is placed in a box called the hopper.\nIn one of its first resolutions, the U.S. House of Representatives established the Office of the Sergeant at Arms. In an American tradition adopted from English custom in 1789 by the first speaker of the House, Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania, the Mace of the United States House of Representatives is used to open all sessions of the House. It is also used during the inaugural ceremonies for all presidents of the United States. For daily sessions of the House, the sergeant at arms carries the mace ahead of the speaker in procession to the rostrum. It is placed on a green marble pedestal to the speaker's right. When the House is in committee, the mace is moved to a pedestal next to the desk of the Sergeant at Arms.\nThe Constitution provides that a majority of the House constitutes a quorum to do business. Under the rules and customs of the House, a quorum is always assumed present unless a quorum call explicitly demonstrates otherwise. House rules prevent a member from making a point of order that a quorum is not present unless a question is being voted on. The presiding officer does not accept a point of order of no quorum during general debate, or when a question is not before the House.\nDuring debates, a member may speak only if called upon by the presiding officer. The presiding officer decides which members to recognize, and can therefore control the course of debate. All speeches must be addressed to the presiding officer, using the words \"Mr. Speaker\" or \"Madam Speaker\". Only the presiding officer may be directly addressed in speeches; other members must be referred to in the third person. In most cases, members do not refer to each other only by name, but also by state, using forms such as \"the gentleman from Virginia\", \"the distinguished gentlewoman from California\", or \"my distinguished friend from Alabama\".\nThere are 448 permanent seats on the House Floor and four tables, two on each side. These tables are occupied by members of the committee that have brought a bill to the floor for consideration and by the party leadership. Members address the House from microphones at any table or \"the well\", the area immediately in front of the rostrum.\nPassage of legislation.\nUnder the U.S. Constitution, the House of Representatives determines the rules according to which it passes legislation. Any of the rules can be changed with each new Congress, but in practice each new session amends a standing set of rules built up over the history of the body in an early resolution published for public inspection. Before legislation reaches the floor of the House, the Rules Committee normally passes a rule to govern debate on that measure (which then must be passed by the full House before it becomes effective). For instance, the committee determines if amendments to the bill are permitted. An \"open rule\" permits all germane amendments, but a \"closed rule\" restricts or even prohibits amendment. Debate on a bill is generally restricted to one hour, equally divided between the majority and minority parties. Each side is led during the debate by a \"floor manager\", who allocates debate time to members who wish to speak. On contentious matters, many members may wish to speak; thus, a member may receive as little as one minute, or even thirty seconds, to make their point.\nWhen debate concludes, the motion is put to a vote. In many cases, the House votes by voice vote; the presiding officer puts the question, and members respond either \"yea!\" or \"aye!\" (in favor of the motion) or \"nay!\" or \"no!\" (against the motion). The presiding officer then announces the result of the voice vote. A member may, however, challenge the presiding officer's assessment and \"request the yeas and nays\" or \"request a recorded vote\". The request may be granted only if it is seconded by one-fifth of the members present. Traditionally, however, members of Congress second requests for recorded votes as a matter of courtesy. Some votes are always recorded, such as those on the annual budget.\nA recorded vote may be taken in one of three different ways. One is electronically. Members use a personal identification card to record their votes at 46 voting stations in the chamber. Votes are usually held in this way. A second mode of recorded vote is by teller. Members hand in colored cards to indicate their votes: green for \"yea\", red for \"nay\", and orange for \"present\" (i.e., to abstain). Teller votes are normally held only when electronic voting breaks down. Finally, the House may conduct a roll call vote. The Clerk reads the list of members of the House, each of whom announces their vote when their name is called. This procedure is only used rarely (and usually for ceremonial occasions, such as for the election of a speaker) because of the time consumed by calling over four hundred names.\nVoting traditionally lasts for, at most, fifteen minutes, but it may be extended if the leadership needs to \"whip\" more members into alignment. The 2003 vote on the prescription drug benefit was open for three hours, from 3:00 to 6:00\u00a0a.m., to receive four additional votes, three of which were necessary to pass the legislation. The 2005 vote on the Central American Free Trade Agreement was open for one hour, from 11:00\u00a0p.m. to midnight. An October 2005 vote on facilitating refinery construction was kept open for forty minutes.\nPresiding officers may vote like other members. They may not, however, vote twice in the event of a tie; rather, a tie vote defeats the motion.\nCommittees and caucuses.\nThe House uses committees and their subcommittees for a variety of purposes, including the review of bills and the oversight of the executive branch. The appointment of committee members is formally made by the whole House, but the choice of members is actually made by the political parties. Generally, each party honors the preferences of individual members, giving priority on the basis of seniority. Historically, membership on committees has been in rough proportion to the party's strength in the House, with two exceptions: on the Rules Committee, the majority party fills nine of the thirteen seats; and on the Ethics Committee, each party has an equal number of seats. However, when party control in the House is closely divided, extra seats on committees are sometimes allocated to the majority party. In the 109th Congress, for example, the Republicans controlled about 53% of the House, but had 54% of the Appropriations Committee members, 55% of the members on the Energy and Commerce Committee, and 58% of the members on the Judiciary Committee.\nThe largest committee of the House is the Committee of the Whole, which, as its name suggests, consists of all members of the House. The Committee meets in the House chamber; it may consider and amend bills, but may not grant them final passage. Generally, the debate procedures of the Committee of the Whole are more flexible than those of the House itself. One advantage of the Committee of the Whole is its ability to include otherwise non-voting members of Congress.\nMost committee work is performed by twenty standing committees, each of which has jurisdiction over a specific set of issues, such as Agriculture or Foreign Affairs. Each standing committee considers, amends, and reports bills that fall under its jurisdiction. Committees have extensive powers with regard to bills; they may block legislation from reaching the floor of the House. Standing committees also oversee the departments and agencies of the executive branch. In discharging their duties, standing committees have the power to hold hearings and to subpoena witnesses and evidence.\nThe House also has one permanent committee that is not a standing committee, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and occasionally may establish temporary or advisory committees, such as the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. This latter committee, created in the 110th Congress and reauthorized for the 111th, has no jurisdiction over legislation and must be chartered anew at the start of every Congress. The House also appoints members to serve on joint committees, which include members of the Senate and House. Some joint committees oversee independent government bodies; for instance, the Joint Committee on the Library oversees the Library of Congress. Other joint committees serve to make advisory reports; for example, there exists a Joint Committee on Taxation. Bills and nominees are not referred to joint committees. Hence, the power of joint committees is considerably lower than those of standing committees.\nEach House committee and subcommittee is led by a chairman (always a member of the majority party). From 1910 to the 1970s, committee chairs were powerful. Woodrow Wilson in his classic study, suggested:Power is nowhere concentrated; it is rather deliberately and of set policy scattered amongst many small chiefs. It is divided up, as it were, into forty-seven seigniories, in each of which a Standing Committee is the court-baron and its chairman lord-proprietor. These petty barons, some of them not a little powerful, but none of them within the reach of the full powers of rule, may at will exercise almost despotic sway within their own shires, and may sometimes threaten to convulse even the realm itself.\nFrom 1910 to 1975 committee and subcommittee chairmanship was determined purely by seniority; members of Congress sometimes had to wait 30 years to get one, but their chairship was independent of party leadership. The rules were changed in 1975 to permit party caucuses to elect chairs, shifting power upward to the party leaders. In 1995, Republicans under Newt Gingrich set a limit of three two-year terms for committee chairs. The chairman's powers are extensive; he controls the committee/subcommittee agenda, and may prevent the committee from dealing with a bill. The senior member of the minority party is known as the Ranking Member. In some committees like Appropriations, partisan disputes are few.\nLegislative functions.\nMost bills may be introduced in either House of Congress. However, the Constitution states, \"All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.\" Because of the Origination Clause, the Senate cannot initiate bills imposing taxes. This provision barring the Senate from introducing revenue bills is based on the practice of the British Parliament, in which only the House of Commons may originate such measures. Furthermore, congressional tradition holds that the House of Representatives originates appropriation bills.\nAlthough it cannot originate revenue bills, the Senate retains the power to amend or reject them. Woodrow Wilson wrote the following about appropriations bills:\n[T]he constitutional prerogative of the House has been held to apply to all the general appropriations bills, and the Senate's right to amend these has been allowed the widest possible scope. The upper house may add to them what it pleases; may go altogether outside of their original provisions and tack to them entirely new features of legislation, altering not only the amounts but even the objects of expenditure, and making out of the materials sent them by the popular chamber measures of an almost totally new character.\nThe approval of the Senate and the House of Representatives is required for a bill to become law. Both Houses must pass the same version of the bill; if there are differences, they may be resolved by a conference committee, which includes members of both bodies. For the stages through which bills pass in the Senate, see Act of Congress.\nThe president may veto a bill passed by the House and Senate. If they do, the bill does not become law unless each House, by a two-thirds vote, votes to override the veto.\nChecks and balances.\nThe Constitution provides that the Senate's \"advice and consent\" is necessary for the president to make appointments and to ratify treaties. Thus, with its potential to frustrate presidential appointments, the Senate is more powerful than the House.\nThe Constitution empowers the House of Representatives to impeach federal officials for \"Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors\" and empowers the Senate to try such impeachments. The House may approve \"articles of impeachment\" by a simple majority vote; however, a two-thirds vote is required for conviction in the Senate. A convicted official is automatically removed from office and may be disqualified from holding future office under the United States. No further punishment is permitted during the impeachment proceedings; however, the party may face criminal penalties in a normal court of law.\nIn U.S. history, the House of Representatives has impeached seventeen officials, seven who were convicted. Another, Richard Nixon, resigned after the House Judiciary Committee passed articles of impeachment but before a formal impeachment vote by the full House. Only three U.S. presidents have ever been impeached: Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump in 2019 and in 2021. The trials of Johnson, Clinton, and Trump all ended in acquittal; in Johnson's case, the Senate fell one vote short of the two-thirds majority required for conviction.\nUnder the Twelfth Amendment, the House has the power to elect the president if no presidential candidate receives a majority of votes in the Electoral College. The Twelfth Amendment requires the House to choose from the three candidates with the highest numbers of electoral votes. The Constitution provides that \"the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote\". It is rare for no presidential candidate to receive a majority of electoral votes. In U.S. history, the House has only had to choose a president twice. In the 1800 election, which was held before adoption of the Twelfth Amendment, it elected Thomas Jefferson over Aaron Burr. In the 1824 election, it elected John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson and William H. Crawford. If no vice presidential candidate receives a majority of the electoral votes, the Senate elects the vice president from the two candidates with the highest numbers of electoral votes.\nLatest election results and party standings.\nAs of \u00a01, 2025[ [update]]\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources and further reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nSurveys.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "26942239": "David Vladeck\nDavid C. Vladeck (born June 6, 1951) is an American lawyer and the former director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection of the Federal Trade Commission, an independent agency of the United States government. He was appointed by the chairman of the FTC, Jon Leibowitz, on April 14, 2009, shortly after Leibowitz became chairman. He served in that position until December 31, 2012, when he returned to the Georgetown University Law Center.\nEarly life and education.\nVladeck is a native of New York City. He comes from a family of lawyers. His father, Stephen Vladeck, founded a worker's rights firm in 1948, which his wife, Judith, joined in 1957. Vladeck's sister, Anne, is a partner at the same firm, while his nephew, Stephen, is a law professor at the University of Texas School of Law. Vladeck\u2019s brother, Bruce, headed the Health Care Financing Administration, now called the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, under President Bill Clinton.\nVladeck received his B.A. from New York University in 1972, and graduated with a J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1976. He received an L.L.M. the from Georgetown Law Center in 1977. While a student at New York University, Vladeck played on the school\u2019s basketball team\nCareer.\nBefore joining the faculty of the Georgetown University Law Center, Vladeck spent nearly 30 years as a lawyer at the Public Citizen Litigation Group, the litigation arm of Public Citizen, an advocacy organization founded by Ralph Nader. He served as the group\u2019s director for 10 years. While at the Public Citizen Litigation Group, Vladeck argued a number of cases in front of the United States Supreme Court, including cases about the First Amendment, civil rights and labor law. He also argued more than 60 cases in front of federal courts of appeal and state courts of last resort.\nVladeck was a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center for seven years before his appointment to head the Bureau of Consumer Protection. While at Georgetown, he served as the co-director of the Institute for Public Representation, leading the Institute's work in civil rights. He taught courses in federal courts, civil procedure, and government processes and co-directed the Institute for Public Representation, a legal clinic.\nPolicy priorities.\nVladeck\u2019s appointment to head the Bureau of Consumer Protection was lauded by consumer advocates, who felt that the bureau had shown a pro-business bias under commissioners appointed by George W. Bush in areas such as consumer financial services and online privacy. Since taking office, Vladeck has made clear that he intends to make significant changes to the Bureau\u2019s approach in a few key areas.\nTechnology and privacy.\nSince the FTC started to regulate online privacy issues, in the mid-1990s, its focus has been on whether consumers are provided with proper notice about what information may be collected from them and on whether they are given some choice about how it is collected and used. This philosophy was laid out in the fair information practice principles (FIPs)\", published in a 1998 FTC report to Congress about online privacy. The Bureau of Consumer Protection has traditionally taken the position that as long as consumers are provided with notice through company privacy policies, collection and use of consumer data is acceptable; and that the bureau should only intervene when a company\u2019s information practices cause concrete, economic harm to consumers.\nVladeck has stated that he doesn\u2019t believe this existing model succeeds in protecting consumers\u2019 privacy online. He has advocated a new framework that is broader than just economic interests, and that doesn\u2019t rely solely on privacy policies to protect consumers online. In a recent interview with the New York Times, Vladeck argued that, \"I don\u2019t believe that most consumers either read [privacy policies], or, if they read them, really understand it [sic]. Second of all, consent in the face of these kinds of quote disclosures, I\u2019m not sure that consent really reflects a volitional, knowing act.\"\nVladeck\u2019s approach to online privacy was seen in his handling of FTC litigation against Sears in In the Matter of Sears Holdings Management Corporation. In June 2009, shortly after Vladeck assumed office, the Bureau of Consumer Protection settled a case against Sears. The company had offered consumers $10 to download software that tracked their internet browsing. The software collected information such as medical prescriptions and financial information. The software contained a privacy policy with detailed disclosures about the type of information to be collected and how it would be used, and consumers suffered no economic harm when they downloaded it. Nevertheless, the FTC sued the company for its practice. Vladeck stated that \"under the harm framework, we couldn\u2019t have brought that case,\" but that because \"there\u2019s a huge dignity interest wrapped up in having somebody looking at your financial records when they have no business doing that,\" the commission was justified in suing.\nFinancial regulation.\nConsumer advocates have criticized the FTC in recent years for its lack of active regulation of financial services providers, including companies providing and servicing subprime mortgages in the years leading up to the financial crisis of 2007-2010. As \"Mother Jones\" magazine noted during the Bush Administration, the FTC \"brought an average of one subprime lending case a year (in 2004 and 2005 there weren't any), even as the industry was experiencing record growth and complaints mounted about abusive practices leading to home foreclosures.\"\nAdvertising and marketing.\nIn an October 2009 speech to its national advertising division, Vladeck set forth his plan for the Bureau of Consumer Protection's regulation of advertising and marketing practices. He stated that the bureau would have a renewed focus on national advertising, going after large companies that advertise widely and put forth deceptive or unsubstantiated claims, not just small companies perpetrating direct fraud. He also indicated the bureau would particularly focus on food advertising, health claims in advertising and advertising and marketing practices directed at children.\nAdditionally, since Vladeck took office, the bureau revised its endorsement guides, guidelines to advertisers who use endorsements and testimonials. Previously, the guides \u2013 which were last revised in 1980 - only required product testimonials claiming exceptional results to have a disclaimer that said \"Results Not Typical\". Under the new guidelines, using such testimonials will now require advertisers to \"clearly and conspicuously disclose the generally expected results consumers can expect in the depicted circumstances.\" The guidelines also \u2013 somewhat controversially \u2013 require bloggers making an endorsement to disclose their \"material connections\" to the product\u2019s manufacturer or seller.\nA positive response to the new rules and laws regarding endorsements and testimonials is an increased level of website compliance standards being adopted that includes the third-party verification of the testimonials businesses present on their websites. These companies, such as testimonialshield.com, collect the data regarding a customer's transaction and experience with a company and with a combined technology and sometimes even personal interviews with the customers to determine the authenticity of the testimonials. Once the testimonials, reviews and/or results are verified, the company can include them in their profiles and add a 'trust mark' similar to that of Verisign, the Better Business Bureau, or Good Housekeeping. The presence of this seal or trust mark helps consumers determine how much weight they should give to the testimonials they are reading before making a decision to support a business.\nPersonal life.\nVladeck is married and has two sons, both of whom pitched for their college baseball teams. One is also a Georgetown Law graduate.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["26942239", "19468510", "738686", "198562"], "permutation_1": ["26942239", "198562", "19468510", "738686"], "permutation_2": ["198562", "738686", "26942239", "19468510"], "permutation_3": ["26942239", "738686", "19468510", "198562"]}
{"id": "4hop1__405751_4520_65397_52251", "docs_added": {"738686": "Separation of powers under the United States Constitution\n \nSeparation of powers is a political doctrine originating in the writings of Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu in \"The Spirit of the Laws\", in which he argued for a constitutional government with three separate branches, each of which would have defined authority to check the powers of the others. This philosophy heavily influenced the United States Constitution, according to which the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches of the United States government are kept distinct in order to prevent abuse of power. The American form of separation of powers is associated with a system of checks and balances.\nDuring the Age of Enlightenment, philosophers such as Montesquieu advocated the principle in their writings, whereas others, such as Thomas Hobbes, strongly opposed it. Montesquieu was one of the foremost supporters of separating the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. His writings considerably influenced the Founding Fathers of the United States, such as Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, who participated in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 which drafted the Constitution.\nSome U.S. states did not observe a strict separation of powers in the 18th century. In New Jersey, the governor also functioned as a member of the state's highest court and as the presiding officer of one house of the New Jersey Legislature. The president of Delaware was a member of the Court of Appeals; the presiding officers of the two houses of the state legislature also served in the executive department as vice presidents. In both Delaware and Pennsylvania, members of the executive council served at the same time as judges. On the other hand, many southern states explicitly required separation of powers. Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia all kept the branches of government \"separate and distinct.\"\nLegislative power.\nCongress has the sole power to legislate for the United States. Under the nondelegation doctrine, Congress may not delegate its lawmaking responsibilities to any other agency. In this vein, the Supreme Court held in the 1998 case \"Clinton v. City of New York\" that Congress could not delegate a \"line-item veto\" to the President, by powers vested in the government by the Constitution.\nWhere Congress does not make great and sweeping delegations of its authority, the Supreme Court has been less stringent. One of the earliest cases involving the exact limits of non-delegation was \"Wayman v. Southard\" 23 U.S. (10 Wet.) 1, 42 (1825). Congress had delegated to the courts the power to prescribe judicial procedure; it was contended that Congress had thereby unconstitutionally clothed the judiciary with legislative powers. While Chief Justice John Marshall conceded that the determination of rules of procedure was a legislative function, he distinguished between \"important\" subjects and mere details. Marshall wrote that \"a general provision may be made, and power is given to those who are to act under such general provisions, to fill up the details.\"\nMarshall's words and future court decisions gave Congress much latitude in delegating powers. It was not until the 1930s that the Supreme Court held a delegation of authority unconstitutional. In a case involving the creation of the National Recovery Administration called \"A.L.A. Schechter Poultry\", 295 U.S. 495 (1935), Congress could not authorize the president to formulate codes of \"fair competition.\" It was held that Congress must set some standards governing the actions of executive officers. The Court, however, has deemed that phrases such as \"just and reasonable,\" \"public interest\" and \"public convenience\" suffice.\nExecutive power.\nExecutive power is vested, with exceptions and qualifications, in the President. By law (Section 2.) the president becomes the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, Militia of several states when called into service, has power to make treaties and appointments to office \"with the Advice and Consent of the Senate,\" receive Ambassadors and Public Ministers, and \"take care that the laws be faithfully executed\" (Section 3.) By using these words, the Constitution does not require the president to personally enforce the law; rather, officers subordinate to the president may perform such duties. The Constitution empowers the president to ensure the faithful execution of the laws made by Congress and approved by the President. Congress may itself terminate such appointments, by impeachment, and restrict the president. Bodies such as the War Claims Commission (created by the War Claims Act of 1948), the Interstate Commerce Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission\u2014all quasi-judicial\u2014often have direct Congressional oversight.\nCongress often writes legislation to restrain executive officials to the performance of their duties, as laid out by the laws Congress passes. In \"Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha\" (1983), the Supreme Court decided (a) The prescription for legislative action in Art. I, \u00a7 1\u2014requiring all legislative powers to be vested in a Congress consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives\u2014and \u00a7 7\u2014requiring every bill passed by the House and Senate, before becoming law, to be presented to the president, and, if he disapproves, to be repassed by two-thirds of the Senate and House\u2014represents the Framers' decision that the legislative power of the Federal Government be exercised in accord with a single, finely wrought and exhaustively considered procedure. This procedure is an integral part of the constitutional design for the separation of powers. Further rulings clarified the case; even both Houses acting together cannot override Executive vetoes without a <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />2\u20443 majority. Legislation may always prescribe regulations governing executive officers.\nJudicial power.\nJudicial power\u2014the power to decide cases and controversies\u2014is vested in the Supreme Court and inferior courts established by Congress. The judges must be appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate, hold office during good behavior and receive compensations that may not be diminished during their continuance in office. If a court's judges do not have such attributes, the court may not exercise the judicial power of the United States. Courts exercising the judicial power are called \"constitutional courts.\"\nHowever, because Congress controls the budget, jurisdiction, and structure of the federal courts, the judiciary as a branch is better described as largely dependent on Congress rather than independent of it. Although the Constitution, not Congress, creates the Supreme Court, it is Congress that decides whether to create lower federal courts, how to arrange them, how many judges will be appointed to them, and whether to abolish them. Congress also has the power to grant jurisdiction to and withdraw jurisdiction from, lower federal courts. Moreover, although judges have the power to issue final judgments, they must rely on the executive for enforcement.\nCongress may also establish \"legislative courts,\" which do not take the form of judicial agencies or commissions, whose members do not have the same security of tenure or compensation as the constitutional court judges. Legislative courts may not exercise the judicial power of the United States. In \"Murray's Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co.\" (1856), the Supreme Court held that a legislative court may not decide \"a suit at the common law, or in equity, or admiralty,\" as such a suit is inherently judicial. Legislative courts may only adjudicate \"public rights\" questions (cases between the government and an individual and political determinations).\nChecks and balances.\n<templatestyles src = \"Column/styles.css\" />\nExecutive.\nThe president exercises a check over Congress through their power to veto bills, but Congress may override any veto (excluding the so-called \"pocket veto\") by a two-thirds majority in each house. When the two houses of Congress cannot agree on a date for adjournment, the president may settle the dispute. Either house or both houses may be called into emergency session by the president. The Vice President serves as president of the Senate, but they may only vote to break a tie.\nThe president, as noted above, appoints judges with the Senate's advice and consent. They also have the power to issue pardons and reprieves. Such pardons are not subject to confirmation by either the House of Representatives or the Senate, or even to acceptance by the recipient. The President is not mandated to carry out the orders of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court does not have any enforcement power; the enforcement power lies solely with the executive branch. Thus, the executive branch can place a check on the Supreme Court through refusal to execute the orders of the court. However the prestige of the Court makes that difficult to do.\nThe president is the civilian Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States. They have the authority to command them to take appropriate military action in the event of a sudden crisis. However, only the Congress is explicitly granted the power to declare war per se, as well as to raise, fund and maintain the armed forces. Congress also has the duty and authority to prescribe the laws and regulations under which the armed forces operate, such as the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and requires that all Generals and Admirals appointed by the president be confirmed by a majority vote of the Senate before they can assume their office.\nJudicial.\nCourts check both the executive branch and the legislative branch through judicial review. This concept is not written into the Constitution, but was envisioned by many of the Constitution's Framers (for example, \"The Federalist Papers\" mention it). The Supreme Court established a precedent for judicial review in \"Marbury v. Madison\". There were protests by some at this decision, born chiefly of political expediency, but political realities in the particular case paradoxically restrained opposing views from asserting themselves. For this reason, precedent alone established the principle that a court may strike down a law it deems unconstitutional.\nA common misperception is that the Supreme Court is the only court that may determine constitutionality; the power is exercised even by the inferior courts. But only Supreme Court decisions are binding across the nation. Decisions of a Court of Appeals, for instance, are binding only in the circuit over which the court has jurisdiction.\nThe power to review the constitutionality of laws may be limited by Congress, which has the power to set the jurisdiction of the courts. The only constitutional limit on Congress' power to set the jurisdiction of the judiciary relates to the Supreme Court; the Supreme Court may exercise only appellate jurisdiction except in cases involving states and cases affecting foreign ambassadors, ministers or consuls.\nThe Chief Justice presides in the Senate during a president's impeachment trial. The rules of the Senate, however, generally do not grant much authority to the presiding officer. Thus, the Chief Justice's role in this regard is a limited one.\nMcCulloch v. Maryland, decided in 1819, established two important principles, one of which explains that states cannot make actions to impede on valid constitutional exercises of power by the federal government. The other explains that Congress has the implied powers to implement the express powers written in the Constitution to create a functional national government. All three branches of the US government have certain powers and those powers relate to the other branches of government. One of these powers is called the express powers. These powers are expressly given, in the Constitution, to each branch of government. Another power is the implied powers. These powers are those that are necessary to perform expressed powers. There are also inherent and concurrent powers. Inherent powers are those that are not found in the Constitution yet the different branches of government can still exercise them. Concurrent powers are those that are given to both state and federal governments. There are also powers that are not lined out in the Constitution that are given to the federal government. These powers are then given to the states in a system called federalism.\nCongress is one of the branches of government so it has a lot of powers of its own that it uses to pass laws and establish regulations. These include express, implied, and concurrent powers. It uses its express powers to regulate bankruptcies, business between states and other nations, the armed forces, and the National Guard or militia. They also establish all laws necessary and proper for carrying out other powers. In addition to this Congress makes laws for naturalization. Implied powers are used to keep the regulation of taxes, the draft, immigration, protection of those with disabilities, minimum wage, and outlaw discrimination. Congress's inherent powers are used to control national borders, deal with foreign affairs, acquire new territories, defend the state from revolution, and decide the exclusion or establishment of aliens. Concurrent powers makes it so that both federal and state governments can create laws, deal with environmental protection, maintain national parks and prisons, and provide a police force.\nThe judicial branch of government holds powers as well. They have the ability to use express and concurrent powers to make laws and establish regulations. They use express powers to interpret laws and perform judicial review. Implied powers are used by this branch to declare laws that were previously passed by a lower court unconstitutional. They can also use express powers to declare laws that are in the process of being passed unconstitutional. Concurrent powers are used to make it so that state courts can conduct trials and interpret laws without the approval of federal courts and federal courts can hear appeals form lower state courts.\nThe executive branch also has powers of its own that they use to make laws and establish regulations. The powers that are used in this branch are express, implied, and inherent. The President uses express powers to approve and veto bills and to make treaties as well. The President is constitutionally obligated to make sure that laws are faithfully executed and uses their powers to do just this. He uses implied powers to issue executive orders and enter into treaties with foreign nations. The executive branch uses inherent powers to establish executive privilege, which means that they can enforce statutes and laws already passed by Congress. They can also enforce the Constitution and treaties that were previously made by other branches of government.\nThe system of checks and balances makes it so that no one branch of government has more power than another and cannot overthrow another. It creates a balance of power that is necessary for a government to function, if it is to function well. This, in most situations, makes it so that each branch is held to a certain standard of conduct. If a branch of the government thinks that what another branch is doing is unconstitutional, they can \"call them out\" so to say. Each branch is able to look at the other branches wrongdoing and change it to meet the needs of the people whom they serve. Humans as a whole have a history of abusing positions of power but the system of checks and balances makes it so much more difficult to do so. Also, as there is more than one person running each branch gives room for debate and discussion before decisions are made within a single branch. Even so, some laws have been made and then retracted because they were an abuse of the power given to that particular branch. The people that created these laws had been serving a selfish agenda when forming these laws instead of looking out for the welfare of those people that they were supposed to be protecting by making certain laws. While this is a horrible scenario, it does happen. That does not mean that it cannot be fixed though. Indeed, it can be, by another branch of government stepping up to right the wrongs that had been done.\nThe federal government is fully capable to intervene in affairs of Native Americans on reservations to some extent. Their ability to create and enforce treaties makes it so that they can interact with the Native Americans and build a treaty that works for both parties and make reservations for the Native Americans to live on and make it so that the people that would live on the reservation not be interrupted by the outside world and be able to live their lives as they please. This responsibility also falls on to the states as well. This happens because the federal government is the one that creates the treaties but the reservations are then put in the jurisdiction of the states. The states are then responsible for maintaining the relationships with the Native Americans on those reservations and to honor the treaties that were previously made by the federal government.\nEquality of the branches.\nThe Constitution does not explicitly indicate the pre-eminence of any particular branch of government. However, James Madison wrote in Federalist 51, regarding the ability of each branch to defend itself from actions by the others, that \"it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates.\"\nOne may claim that the judiciary has historically been the weakest of the three branches. In fact, its power to exercise judicial review\u2014its sole meaningful check on the other two branches\u2014is not explicitly granted by the U.S Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court exercised its power to strike down congressional acts as unconstitutional only twice prior to the Civil War: in \"Marbury v. Madison\" (1803) and \"Dred Scott v. Sandford\" (1857). The Supreme Court has since then made more extensive use of judicial review.\nThroughout America's history dominance of one of the three branches has essentially been a see-saw struggle between Congress and the president. Both have had periods of great power and weakness such as immediately after the Civil War when republicans had a majority in Congress and were able to pass major legislation and shoot down most of the president's vetoes. They also passed acts to essentially make the president subordinate to Congress, such as the Tenure of Office Act. Johnson's later impeachment also cost the presidency much political power. However the president has also exercised greater power largely during the 20th century. Both Roosevelts greatly expanded the powers of the president and wielded great power during their terms.\nThe first six presidents of the United States did not make extensive use of the veto power: George Washington only vetoed two bills, James Monroe one, and John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams none. James Madison, a firm believer in a strong executive, vetoed seven bills. None of the first six Presidents, however, used the veto to direct national policy. It was Andrew Jackson, the seventh President, who was the first to use the veto as a political weapon. During his two terms in office, he vetoed 12 bills\u2014more than all of his predecessors combined. Furthermore, he defied the Supreme Court in enforcing the policy of ethnically cleansing Native American tribes (\"Indian Removal\"); he stated (perhaps apocryphally), \"John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it!\"\nSome of Jackson's successors made no use of the veto power, while others used it intermittently. It was only after the Civil War that presidents began to use the power to truly counterbalance Congress. Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, vetoed several Reconstruction bills passed by the \"Radical Republicans.\" Congress, however, managed to override fifteen of Johnson's twenty-nine vetoes. Furthermore, it attempted to curb the power of the presidency by passing the Tenure of Office Act. The Act required Senate approval for the dismissal of senior Cabinet officials. When Johnson deliberately violated the Act, which he felt was unconstitutional (Supreme Court decisions later vindicated such a position), the House of Representatives impeached him; he was acquitted in the Senate by one vote.\nJohnson's impeachment was perceived to have done great damage to the presidency, which came to be almost subordinate to Congress. Some believed that the president would become a mere figurehead, with the Speaker of the House of Representatives becoming a \"de facto\" prime minister. Grover Cleveland, the first Democratic President following Johnson, attempted to restore the power of his office. During his first term, he vetoed over 400 bills\u2014twice as many bills as his 21 predecessors combined. He also began to suspend bureaucrats who were appointed as a result of the patronage system, replacing them with more \"deserving\" individuals. The Senate, however, refused to confirm many new nominations, instead demanding that Cleveland turn over the confidential records relating to the suspensions. Cleveland steadfastly refused, asserting, \"These suspensions are my executive acts ... I am not responsible to the Senate, and I am unwilling to submit my actions to them for judgment.\" Cleveland's popular support forced the Senate to back down and confirm the nominees. Furthermore, Congress finally repealed the controversial Tenure of Office Act that had been passed during the Johnson Administration. Overall, this meant that Cleveland's Administration marked the end of presidential subordination.\nSeveral 20th-century presidents have attempted to greatly expand the power of the presidency. Theodore Roosevelt, for instance, claimed that the president was permitted to do whatever was not explicitly prohibited by the law\u2014in direct contrast to his immediate successor, William Howard Taft. Franklin Delano Roosevelt held considerable power during the Great Depression. Congress had granted Franklin Roosevelt sweeping authority; in \"Panama Refining v. Ryan\", the Court for the first time struck down a Congressional delegation of power as violative of the doctrine of separation of powers. The aforementioned \"Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States\", another separation of powers case, was also decided during Franklin Roosevelt's presidency. In response to many unfavorable Supreme Court decisions, Roosevelt introduced a \"Court Packing\" plan, under which more seats would be added to the Supreme Court for the president to fill. Such a plan (which was defeated in Congress) would have seriously undermined the judiciary's independence and power.\nRichard Nixon used national security as a basis for his expansion of power. He asserted, for example, that \"the inherent power of the President to safeguard the security of the nation\" authorized him to order a wiretap without a judge's warrant. Nixon also asserted that \"executive privilege\" shielded him from all legislative oversight; furthermore, he impounded federal funds (that is to say, he refused to spend money that Congress had appropriated for government programs). In the specific cases aforementioned, however, the Supreme Court ruled against Nixon. This was also because of an ongoing criminal investigation into the Watergate tapes, even though they acknowledged the general need for executive privilege. Since then, Nixon's successors have sometimes asserted that they may act in the interests of national security or that executive privilege shields them from Congressional oversight. Though such claims have in general been more limited than Nixon's, one may still conclude that the presidency's power has been greatly augmented since the 18th and 19th centuries.\nViews on separation of powers.\nMany political scientists believe that separation of powers is a decisive factor in what they see as a limited degree of American exceptionalism. In particular, John W. Kingdon made this argument, claiming that separation of powers contributed to the development of a unique political structure in the United States. He attributes the unusually large number of interest groups active in the United States, in part, to the separation of powers; it gives groups more places to try to influence, and creates more potential group activity. He also cites its complexity as one of the reasons for lower citizen participation.\nJudicial independence.\nSeparation of powers has again become a current issue of some controversy concerning debates about judicial independence and political efforts to increase the accountability of judges for the quality of their work, avoiding conflicts of interest, and charges that some judges allegedly disregard procedural rules, statutes, and higher court precedents.\nMany legislators hold the view that separation of powers means that powers are shared among different branches; no one branch may act unilaterally on issues (other than perhaps minor questions), but must obtain some form of agreement across branches. That is, it is argued that \"checks and balances\" apply to the Judicial branch as well as to the other branches\u2014for example, in the regulation of attorneys and judges, and the establishment by Congress of rules for the conduct of federal courts, and by state legislatures for state courts. Although in practice these matters are delegated to the Supreme Court, the Congress holds these powers and delegates them to the Supreme Court only for convenience in light of the Supreme Court's expertise, but can withdraw that delegation at any time.\nOn the other side of this debate, many judges hold the view that separation of powers means that the Judiciary is independent and untouchable within the judicial sphere. In this view, separation of powers means that the Judiciary alone holds all powers relative to the judicial function and that the Legislative and Executive branches may not interfere in any aspect of the Judicial branch. An example of the second view at the state level is found in the Florida Supreme Court holding that only the Florida Supreme Court may license and regulate attorneys appearing before the courts of Florida, and only the Florida Supreme Court may set rules for procedures in the Florida courts. The State of New Hampshire also follows this system.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "198562": "Appropriation bill\nBill or law authorizing expenditure of government funds\nAn appropriation bill, also known as supply bill or spending bill, is a proposed law that authorizes the expenditure of government funds. It is a bill that sets money aside for specific spending. In some democracies, approval of the legislature is necessary for the government to spend money.\nIn a Westminster parliamentary system, the defeat of an appropriation bill in a parliamentary vote generally necessitates either the resignation of a government or the calling of a general election. One of the more famous examples of the defeat of a supply bill was the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, when the Senate, which was controlled by the opposition, refused to approve a package of appropriation and loan bills, prompting Governor-General Sir John Kerr to dismiss Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and appoint Malcolm Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister until the next election (where the Fraser government was elected).\nBy country.\nIndia.\nAn appropriation bill is a bill that authorizes the government to withdraw funds from the Consolidated Fund of India for use during the financial year. Although Appropriation Acts are not included in any official list of central laws, they technically remain on the books. Since 2016, appropriation bills in India include a sunset clause as result of which the Act is automatically repealed after its purpose is met. Appropriation Acts passed prior to 2016 were repealed by the enactment of \"The Appropriation Acts (Repeal) Act, 2015\" in April 2016.\nNew Zealand.\nIn New Zealand, an Appropriation Bill is the formal name for the annual Act of Parliament that gives legal effect to the New Zealand Budget, that is, the Government's taxing and spending policies for the forthcoming year (from 1 July to 30 June). Like other bills, it is enacted, following debate, by the House of Representatives, and assented to by the governor-general. The main Appropriation Bill is traditionally placed before the House for its first reading in May amid considerable media interest, an event known as the \"introduction of the Budget\". An Appropriation Bill is not sent to a select committee, a lengthy process undergone by most bills during which they are scrutinised in detail by the committee, which also receives public submissions relating to the bill. Instead, an expedited process is followed in which the Appropriation Bill essentially goes directly to its second reading for consideration by the committee of the whole House. Royal assent is granted after the formality of a third reading.\nThe main Appropriation Bill is formally called an \"Appropriation (Estimates) Bill\", or, after assented to, an \"Appropriation (Estimates) \"Act\"\". Supplementary Budgetary legislation in New Zealand includes an annual \"Appropriation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill\", which serves to validate taxation and spending incurred in the previous year which fell outside the previous year's Budget, and \"Imprest Supply Bills,\" typically several in a year, which grant interim authority to the Government to tax and spend.\nBoth Appropriation and Imprest Supply bills fall under the rubric of confidence and supply. A refusal by the House to pass such a Bill conventionally leads to either the resignation of the Government (unlikely, since there is usually no alternative Government immediately available) or to a dissolution of the House and a subsequent general election.\nPhilippines.\nIn the Philippines, the Congress which consists of the House of Representatives and the Senate is mandated to pass a General Appropriation Bill annually. If the Congress fails to pass a General Appropriation Bill for a fiscal year, the General Appropriation Act for the previous fiscal year would be used until a bill for the specific year is passed.\nUnited States.\nUnder the presidential system, the support of the Congress for the President's appropriations requests is not necessary for the separately-elected President to remain in office, but it can severely limit the President's ability to govern effectively.\nIn the United States, there are two types of appropriations. When Congress sets up particular programs, the legislation may itself set up the necessary appropriation mechanism, such as the social security program for which payment of benefits are \"mandatory\". A mandatory program does not need an additional authorisation for spending under the program to occur. An authorization bill can create programs and make known Congress's intended level of spending for programs that also require an appropriation. What distinguishes a mandatory program from a discretionary program is that after Congress enacts a law creating a mandatory program, the program may spend funds until the program expires based on a provision in law or until a subsequent law either terminates the program or reauthorizes it. Discretionary programs typically require annual appropriations legislation.\nAn appropriation bill is used for actually providing money for \"discretionary\" programs. Appropriations are generally done on an annual basis, but multi-year appropriations are occasionally passed. According to the US Constitution (Article I, Section 8, clause 12), Army appropriations cannot be for more than two years at a time. An annual appropriation requires that the funds appropriated to be obligated (spent) by the end of the fiscal year of the appropriation. Once the fiscal year ends, no more money can be spent via the prior year's appropriation. A new appropriation for the new fiscal year must be passed in order for continued spending to occur or passage of a special appropriations bill known as a continuing resolution, which generally permits continued spending for a short period of time, usually at prior year levels. The Anti-Deficiency Act makes void any attempt to spend money for which there is no current appropriation.\nAccording to the Origination Clause of the US Constitution, all bills for raising revenue, generally tax bills, must originate in the House of Representatives, similar to the Westminster system requirement for all money bills to originate in the lower house. Traditionally, appropriation bills originate in the House of Representatives. House appropriations bills begin with \"H.R.\", meaning \"House of Representatives.\" In reference to revenue bills, the Constitution also states that the \"Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.\" As with revenue bills, the Senate and House each drafts and considers its own appropriation bill. The Senate then cuts and pastes, substitutes the language of its version of a particular appropriation bill for the language of the House bill, and agrees to the bill as amended.\nThe United States House Committee on Appropriations and the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations have jurisdiction over appropriations bills. Both committees have twelve matching subcommittees tasked with working on one of the twelve annual regular appropriations bills. Other committees and lawmakers in Congress write legislation creating programs and reauthorizing old ones to continue. That legislation is called an authorization bill. Such legislation authorizes the programs to exist and expenditure of funds on them, but it cannot actually give them the money. That second step of granting the money is done in an appropriations bill. The appropriations committees have power because they can decide whether to fund the programs at the maximum level authorized, a lesser amount, or not at all.\nAppropriations bills in the United States can also come in the format of an omnibus spending bill, a continuing resolution, or a supplemental appropriation bill. If Congress has not enacted the regular appropriations bills by the start of a new fiscal year, it can pass a continuing resolution, which continues the pre-existing appropriations at the same levels as the previous fiscal year (or with minor modifications) for a set amount of time. An omnibus spending bill is simply a combination of multiple appropriations bills into one larger appropriations bill. Supplemental appropriations bills increase funding for activities that were already funded in previous appropriations bills or the provide new funding for unexpected expenses. For example, both the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War were funded with a variety of supplemental appropriations. Supplemental appropriations bills also provide funding for recovering from unexpected natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy (the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, 2013).\nAnnual appropriations are divided into 12 separate pieces of legislation:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "19468510": "United States House of Representatives\nLower house of the US Congress\nThe United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Article One of the U.S. Constitution to pass or defeat federal legislation, known as bills. Those that are also passed by the Senate are sent to the president for signature or veto. The House's exclusive powers include initiating all revenue bills, impeaching federal officers, and electing the president if no candidate receives a majority of votes in the Electoral College.\nMembers of the House serve a fixed term of two years, with each seat up for election before the start of the next Congress. Special elections also occur when a seat is vacated early enough. The House's composition was established by Article One of the United States Constitution. The House is composed of representatives who, pursuant to the Uniform Congressional District Act, sit in single member congressional districts allocated to each state on the basis of population as measured by the United States census, with each district having at least a single representative, provided that that state is entitled to them. Since its inception in 1789, all representatives have been directly elected. Although suffrage was initially limited, it gradually widened, particularly after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment and the civil rights movement. \nSince 1913, the number of voting representatives has been at 435 pursuant to the Apportionment Act of 1911. The Reapportionment Act of 1929 capped the size of the House at 435. However, the number was temporarily increased from 1959 until 1963 to 437 following the admissions of Alaska and Hawaii to the Union.\nIn addition, five non-voting delegates represent the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories of Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. A non-voting resident commissioner, serving a four-year term, represents the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. As of the 2020 census, the largest delegation was California, with 52 representatives. Six states have only one representative apiece: Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming.\nThe House meets in the south wing of the United States Capitol. The rules of the House generally address a two-party system, with a majority party in government, and a minority party in opposition. The presiding officer is the speaker of the House, who is elected by the members thereof. Other floor leaders are chosen by the Democratic Caucus or the Republican Conference, depending on whichever party has the most voting members.\nHistory.\n18th century.\nUnder the Articles of Confederation, the Congress of the Confederation was a unicameral body with equal representation for each state, which meant that any state could veto most actions. \nAfter eight years of a more limited confederal government under the Articles, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and other Founding Fathers initiated the Constitutional Convention, which convened in Philadelphia from May 25 to September 17, 1787, and received the Confederation Congress's sanction to \"amend the Articles of Confederation\". All states except Rhode Island agreed to send delegates.\nCongress's structure was a contentious issue among the founders during the convention. Edmund Randolph's Virginia Plan called for bicameral legislature with proportional representation in the House and equal state representation in the Senate.\nThe House is commonly referred to as the lower house and the Senate the upper house, although the United States Constitution does not use that terminology. Both houses' approval is necessary for the passage of legislation. The Virginia Plan drew the support of delegates from several large states, including Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and called for representation based on population. The smaller states, however, favored the New Jersey Plan, which called for a unicameral Congress with equal representation for the states.\nThe Convention ultimately reached the Connecticut Compromise or Great Compromise, under which the House of Representatives would provide representation proportional to each state's population, and the Senate would provide equal representation amongst the states. In 1788, the Constitution was ratified, and it was implemented on March 4, 1789. \nLess than a month later, on April 1, 1789, the U.S. House convened for the first time in New York City, which was then the nation's capital. In 1790, the capital was moved back to Philadelphia, and the House met there from 1790 until 1800 when construction of the new national capitol in Washington, D.C. was completed.\n19th century.\nDuring the first half of the 19th century, the House was frequently in conflict with the U.S. Senate over regionally divisive issues, including slavery. The North was much more populous than the South, and therefore dominated the House of Representatives. However, the North held no such advantage in the Senate, where the equal representation of states prevailed.\nRegional conflict was most pronounced over the issue of slavery. One example of a provision repeatedly supported by the House but blocked by the Senate was the Wilmot Proviso, which sought to ban slavery in the land gained during the Mexican\u2013American War. Conflict over slavery and other issues persisted until the Civil War (1861\u20131865), which began soon after several southern states attempted to secede from the Union. The Civil War culminated in the South's defeat and in the abolition of slavery. Since all southern senators except Andrew Johnson resigned their seats at the beginning of the war, the Senate did not hold the balance of power between North and South during the war.\nDuring the Reconstruction that followed, the Republican Party held large majorities, which many Americans associated with the Union's victory in the Civil War and the ending of slavery. The Reconstruction period ended in about 1877; the ensuing era, known as the Gilded Age, was marked by sharp political divisions in the electorate. The Democratic Party and Republican Party each held majorities in the House at various times.\nThe late 19th and early 20th centuries also saw a dramatic increase in the power of the speaker of the House. The rise of the speaker's influence began in the 1890s, during the tenure of Republican Thomas Brackett Reed. \"Czar Reed\", as he was nicknamed, attempted to put into effect his view that \"The best system is to have one party govern and the other party watch.\" The leadership structure of the House also developed during approximately the same period, with the positions of majority leader and minority leader being created in 1899. While the minority leader was the head of the minority party, the majority leader remained subordinate to the speaker.\n20th century.\nThe speakership reached its zenith during the term of Republican Joseph Gurney Cannon, from 1903 to 1911. The speaker's powers included chairmanship of the influential Rules Committee and the ability to appoint members of other House committees. However, these powers were curtailed in the \"Revolution of 1910\" because of the efforts of Democrats and dissatisfied Republicans who opposed Cannon's heavy-handed tactics.\nThe Democratic Party dominated the House of Representatives during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration between 1933 and 1945, often winning over two-thirds of the seats. Both Democrats and Republicans were in power at various times during the next decade. The Democratic Party maintained control of the House from 1955 until 1995. In the mid-1970s, members passed major reforms that strengthened the power of subscommittees at the expense of committee chairs and allowed party leaders to nominate committee chairs. These actions were taken to undermine the seniority system, and to reduce the ability of a small number of senior members to obstruct legislation they did not favor. There was also a shift from the 1990s to greater control of the legislative program by the majority party; the power of party leaders (especially the speaker) grew considerably. \nAccording to historian Julian E. Zelizer, the majority Democrats minimized the number of staff positions available to the minority Republicans, kept them out of decision-making, and gerrymandered their home districts. Republican Newt Gingrich argued American democracy was being ruined by the Democrats' tactics and that the GOP had to destroy the system before it could be saved. Cooperation in governance, says Zelizer, would have to be put aside until they deposed Speaker Wright and regained power. Gingrich brought an ethics complaint which led to Wright's resignation in 1989. Gingrich gained support from the media and good government forces in his crusade to persuade Americans that the system was, in Gingrich's words, \"morally, intellectually and spiritually corrupt\". Gingrich followed Wright's successor, Democrat Tom Foley, as speaker after the Republican Revolution of 1994 gave his party control of the House.\nGingrich attempted to pass a major legislative program, the Contract with America and made major reforms of the House, notably reducing the tenure of committee chairs to three two-year terms. Many elements of the Contract did not pass Congress, were vetoed by President Bill Clinton, or were substantially altered in negotiations with Clinton. After Republicans held control in the 1996 election, however, Clinton and the Gingrich-led House agreed on the first balanced federal budget in decades, along with a substantial tax cut.\n21st century.\nRepublicans held on to the House until 2006, when the Democrats won control and Nancy Pelosi was subsequently elected by the House as the first female speaker. \nRepublicans retook the House in 2010 elections with the largest shift of political power between the parties since the 1938 elections. Republicans held the House until Democrats retook it in the 2018 elections, which became the largest shift of power to the Democrats since the 1970s. In the 2022 elections, Republicans took back control of the House, winning a slim majority.\nIn November 2024, House speaker Mike Johnson announced that the House would have women-only spaces following the election of Sarah McBride\nMembership, qualifications, and apportionment.\nApportionments.\nUnder Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, seats in the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states by population, as determined by the census conducted every ten years. Each state is entitled to at least one representative, however small its population.\nThe only constitutional rule relating to the size of the House states: \"The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative.\" Congress regularly increased the size of the House to account for population growth until it fixed the number of voting House members at 435 in 1911. In 1959, upon the admission of Alaska and Hawaii, the number was temporarily increased to 437 (seating one representative from each of those states without changing existing apportionment), and returned to 435 four years later, after the reapportionment consequent to the 1960 census.\nThe Constitution does not provide for the representation of the District of Columbia or of territories. The District of Columbia and the territories of Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are each represented by one non-voting delegate. Puerto Rico elects a resident commissioner, but other than having a four-year term, the resident commissioner's role is identical to the delegates from the other territories. The five delegates and resident commissioner may participate in debates; before 2011, they were also allowed to vote in committees and the Committee of the Whole when their votes would not be decisive.\nRedistricting.\nStates entitled to more than one representative are divided into single-member districts. This has been a federal statutory requirement since 1967 pursuant to the act titled An Act For the relief of Doctor Ricardo Vallejo Samala and to provide for congressional redistricting. Before that law, general ticket representation was used by some states.\nStates typically redraw district boundaries after each census, though they may do so at other times, such as the 2003 Texas redistricting. Each state determines its own district boundaries, either through legislation or through non-partisan panels. Malapportionment is unconstitutional and districts must be approximately equal in population (see \"Wesberry v. Sanders\"). Additionally, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits redistricting plans that are intended to, or have the effect of, discriminating against racial or language minority voters. Aside from malapportionment and discrimination against racial or language minorities, federal courts have allowed state legislatures to engage in gerrymandering to benefit political parties or incumbents. In a 1984 case, \"Davis v. Bandemer\", the Supreme Court held that gerrymandered districts could be struck down based on the Equal Protection Clause, but the Court did not articulate a standard for when districts are impermissibly gerrymandered. However, the Court overruled Davis in 2004 in \"Vieth v. Jubelirer\", and Court precedent holds gerrymandering to be a political question. According to calculations made by Burt Neuborne using criteria set forth by the American Political Science Association, only about 40 seats, less than 10% of the House membership, are chosen through a genuinely contested electoral process, given partisan gerrymandering.\nQualifications.\nArticle I, Section 2 of the Constitution sets three qualifications for representatives. Each representative must: (1) be at least twenty-five (25) years old; (2) have been a citizen of the United States for the past seven years; and (3) be (at the time of the election) an inhabitant of the state they represent. Members are not required to live in the districts they represent, but they traditionally do. The age and citizenship qualifications for representatives are less than those for senators. The constitutional requirements of Article I, Section 2 for election to Congress are the maximum requirements that can be imposed on a candidate. Therefore, Article I, Section 5, which permits each House to be the judge of the qualifications of its own members does not permit either House to establish additional qualifications. Likewise, a state could not establish additional qualifications. William C. C. Claiborne served in the House below the minimum age of 25.\nDisqualification: under the Fourteenth Amendment, a federal or state officer who takes the requisite oath to support the Constitution, but later engages in rebellion or aids the enemies of the United States, is disqualified from becoming a representative. This post\u2013Civil War provision was intended to prevent those who sided with the Confederacy from serving. However, disqualified individuals may serve if they gain the consent of two-thirds of both houses of Congress.\nElections.\nElections for representatives are held in every even-numbered year, on Election Day the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Pursuant to the Uniform Congressional District Act, representatives must be elected from single-member districts. After a census is taken (in a year ending in 0), the year ending in 2 is the first year in which elections for U.S. House districts are based on that census (with the Congress based on those districts starting its term on the following January 3). As there is no legislation at the federal level mandating one particular system for elections to the House, systems are set at the state level. As of 2022, first-past-the-post or plurality voting is used in 46 states, electing 412 representatives, ranked-choice or instant-runoff voting in two states (Alaska and Maine), electing 3 representatives, and two-round system in two states (Georgia and Louisiana), electing 20 representatives. Elected representatives serve a two-year term, with no term limit.\nIn most states, major party candidates for each district are nominated in partisan primary elections, typically held in spring to late summer. In some states, the Republican and Democratic parties choose their candidates for each district in their political conventions in spring or early summer, which often use unanimous voice votes to reflect either confidence in the incumbent or the result of bargaining in earlier private discussions. Exceptions can result in so-called floor fights\u2014convention votes by delegates, with outcomes that can be hard to predict. Especially if a convention is closely divided, a losing candidate may contend further by meeting the conditions for a primary election. The courts generally do not consider ballot access rules for independent and third party candidates to be additional qualifications for holding office and no federal statutes regulate ballot access. As a result, the process to gain ballot access varies greatly from state to state, and in the case of a third party in the United States may be affected by results of previous years' elections.\nIn 1967, Congress passed the Uniform Congressional District Act, which requires all representatives to be elected from single-member-districts. Following the \"Wesberry v. Sanders\" decision, Congress was motivated by fears that courts would impose at-large plurality districts on states that did not redistrict to comply with the new mandates for districts roughly equal in population, and Congress also sought to prevent attempts by southern states to use such voting systems to dilute the vote of racial minorities. Several states have used multi-member districts in the past, although only two states (Hawaii and New Mexico) used multi-member districts in 1967. Louisiana is unique in that it holds an all-party primary election on the general Election Day with a subsequent runoff election between the top two finishers (regardless of party) if no candidate received a majority in the primary. The states of Washington and California use a similar (though not identical) system to that used by Louisiana.\nSeats vacated during a term are filled through special elections, unless the vacancy occurs closer to the next general election date than a pre-established deadline. The term of a member chosen in a special election usually begins the next day, or as soon as the results are certified.\nNon-voting delegates.\nHistorically, many territories have sent non-voting delegates to the House. While their role has fluctuated over the years, today they have many of the same privileges as voting members, have a voice in committees, and can introduce bills on the floor, but cannot vote on the ultimate passage of bills. Presently, the District of Columbia and the five inhabited U.S. territories each elect a delegate. A seventh delegate, representing the Cherokee Nation, has been formally proposed but has not yet been seated. An eighth delegate, representing the Choctaw Nation is guaranteed by treaty but has not yet been proposed. Additionally, some territories may choose to also elect shadow representatives, though these are not official members of the House and are separate individuals from their official delegates.\nTerms.\nRepresentatives and delegates serve for two-year terms, while a resident commissioner (a kind of delegate) serves for four years. A term starts on January 3 following the election in November. The U.S. Constitution requires that vacancies in the House be filled with a special election. The term of the replacement member expires on the date that the original member's would have expired.\nThe Constitution permits the House to expel a member with a two-thirds vote. In the history of the United States, only six members have been expelled from the House; in 1861, three were removed for supporting the Confederate states' secession: Democrats John Bullock Clark of Missouri, John William Reid of Missouri, and Henry Cornelius Burnett of Kentucky. Democrat Michael Myers of Pennsylvania was expelled after his criminal conviction for accepting bribes in 1980, Democrat James Traficant of Ohio was expelled in 2002 following his conviction for corruption, and Republican George Santos was expelled in 2023 after he was implicated in fraud by both a federal indictment and a House Ethics Committee investigation.\nThe House also has the power to formally censure or reprimand its members; censure or reprimand of a member requires only a simple majority, and does not remove that member from office.\nComparison to the Senate.\nAs a check on the regional, popular, and rapidly changing politics of the House, the Senate has several distinct powers. For example, the \"advice and consent\" powers (such as the power to approve treaties and confirm members of the Cabinet) are a sole Senate privilege. The House, however, has the exclusive power to initiate bills for raising revenue, to impeach officials, and to choose the president if a presidential candidate fails to get a majority of the Electoral College votes. Both House and Senate confirmation is now required to fill a vacancy if the vice presidency is vacant, according to the provisions of the Twenty-fifth Amendment. The Senate and House are further differentiated by term lengths and the number of districts represented: the Senate has longer terms of six years, fewer members (currently one hundred, two for each state), and (in all but seven delegations) larger constituencies per member.\nSalary and benefits.\nSalaries.\nSince December 2014, the annual salary of each representative is $174,000, the same as it is for each member of the Senate. The speaker of the House and the majority and minority leaders earn more: $223,500 for the speaker and $193,400 for their party leaders (the same as Senate leaders). A cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) increase takes effect annually unless Congress votes not to accept it. Congress sets members' salaries; however, the Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits a change in salary (but not COLA) from taking effect until after the next election of the whole House. Representatives are eligible for retirement benefits after serving for five years. Outside pay is limited to 15% of congressional pay, and certain types of income involving a fiduciary responsibility or personal endorsement are prohibited. Salaries are not for life, only during active term.\nTitles.\nRepresentatives use the prefix \"The Honorable\" before their names. A member of the House is referred to as a \"representative\", \"congressman\", or \"congresswoman\".\nRepresentatives are usually identified in the media and other sources by party and state, and sometimes by congressional district, or a major city or community within their district. For example, Democratic representative Nancy Pelosi, who represents California's 11th congressional district within San Francisco, may be identified as \"D\u2013California\", \"D\u2013California\u201311\" or \"D\u2013San Francisco\".\n\"Member of congress\" is occasionally abbreviated as either \"MOC\" or \"MC\" (similar to MP). However, the abbreviation \"Rep.\" for Representative is more common, as it avoids confusion as to whether they are a member of the House or the Senate.\nPension.\nAll members of Congress are automatically enrolled in the Federal Employees Retirement System, a pension system also used for federal civil servants, except the formula for calculating Congress members' pension results in a 70% higher pension than other federal employees based on the first 20 years of service. They become eligible to receive benefits after five years of service (two and one-half terms in the House). The FERS is composed of three elements:\nMembers of Congress may retire with full benefits at age 62 after five years of service, at age 50 after 20 years of service, and at any age after 25 years of service. With an average age of 58, the US House of Representatives is older than comparable chambers in Russia and the other G7 nations.\nTax deductions.\nMembers of Congress are permitted to deduct up to $3,000 of living expenses per year incurred while living away from their district or home state.\nHealth benefits.\nBefore 2014, members of Congress and their staff had access to essentially the same health benefits as federal civil servants; they could voluntarily enroll in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), an employer-sponsored health insurance program, and were eligible to participate in other programs, such as the Federal Flexible Spending Account Program (FSAFEDS).\nHowever, Section 1312(d)(3)(D) of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) provided that the only health plans that the federal government can make available to members of Congress and certain congressional staff are those created under the ACA or offered through a health care exchange. The Office of Personnel Management promulgated a final rule to comply with Section 1312(d)(3)(D). Under the rule, effective January 1, 2014, members and designated staff are no longer able to purchase FEHBP plans as active employees. However, if members enroll in a health plan offered through a Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) exchange, they remain eligible for an employer contribution toward coverage, and members and designated staff eligible for retirement may enroll in a FEHBP plan upon retirement.\nThe ACA and the final rule do not affect members' or staffers' eligibility for Medicare benefits. The ACA and the final rule also do not affect members' and staffers' eligibility for other health benefits related to federal employment, so members and staff are eligible to participate in FSAFEDS (which has three options within the program), the Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program, and the Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program.\nThe Office of the Attending Physician at the U.S. Capitol provides members with health care for an annual fee. The attending physician provides routine exams, consultations, and certain diagnostics, and may write prescriptions (although the office does not dispense them). The office does not provide vision or dental care.\nMembers (but not their dependents, and not former members) may also receive medical and emergency dental care at military treatment facilities. There is no charge for outpatient care if it is provided in the National Capital Region, but members are billed at full reimbursement rates (set by the Department of Defense) for inpatient care. (Outside the National Capital Region, charges are at full reimbursement rates for both inpatient and outpatient care).\nPersonnel, mail and office expenses.\nHouse members are eligible for a Member's Representational Allowance (MRA) to support them in their official and representational duties to their district. The MRA is calculated based on three components: one for personnel, one for official office expenses and one for official or franked mail. The personnel allowance is the same for all members; the office and mail allowances vary based on the members' district's distance from Washington, D.C., the cost of office space in the member's district, and the number of non-business addresses in their district. These three components are used to calculate a single MRA that can fund any expense\u2014even though each component is calculated individually, the franking allowance can be used to pay for personnel expenses if the member so chooses. In 2011 this allowance averaged $1.4\u00a0million per member, and ranged from $1.35 to $1.67\u00a0million.\nThe Personnel allowance was $944,671 per member in 2010. Each member may employ no more than 18 permanent employees. Members' employees' salary is capped at $168,411 as of 2009.\nTravel allowance.\nBefore being sworn into office, each member-elect and one staffer can be paid for one round trip between their home in their congressional district and Washington, D.C., for organization caucuses. Members are allowed \"a sum for travel based on the following formula: 64 times the rate per mile ... multiplied by the mileage between Washington, DC, and the furthest point in a Member's district, plus 10%.\" As of January 2012[ [update]] the rate ranges from based on distance ranges between D.C. and the member's district.\nOfficers.\nMember officials.\nThe party with a majority of seats in the House is known as the majority party. The next-largest party is the minority party. The speaker, committee chairs, and some other officials are generally from the majority party; they have counterparts (for instance, the \"ranking members\" of committees) in the minority party.\nThe Constitution provides that the House may choose its own speaker. Although not explicitly required by the Constitution, every speaker has been a member of the House. The Constitution does not specify the duties and powers of the speaker, which are instead regulated by the rules and customs of the House. Speakers have a role both as a leader of the House and the leader of their party (which need not be the majority party; theoretically, a member of the minority party could be elected as speaker with the support of a fraction of members of the majority party). Under the Presidential Succession Act (1947), the speaker is second in the line of presidential succession after the vice president.\nThe speaker is the presiding officer of the House but does not preside over every debate. Instead, they delegate the responsibility of presiding to other members in most cases. The presiding officer sits in a chair in the front of the House chamber. The powers of the presiding officer are extensive; one important power is that of controlling the order in which members of the House speak. No member may make a speech or a motion unless they have first been recognized by the presiding officer. Moreover, the presiding officer may rule on a \"point of order\" (a member's objection that a rule has been breached); the decision is subject to appeal to the whole House.\nSpeakers serve as chairs of their party's steering committee, which is responsible for assigning party members to other House committees. The speaker chooses the chairs of standing committees, appoints most of the members of the Rules Committee, appoints all members of conference committees, and determines which committees consider bills.\nEach party elects a floor leader, who is known as the majority leader or minority leader. The minority leader heads their party in the House, and the majority leader is their party's second-highest-ranking official, behind the speaker. Party leaders decide what legislation members of their party should either support or oppose.\nEach party also elects a Whip, who works to ensure that the party's members vote as the party leadership desires. The majority whip in the House of Representatives is Tom Emmer, who is a member of the Republican Party. The minority whip is Katherine Clark, who is a member of the Democratic Party. The whip is supported by chief deputy whips\nAfter the whips, the next ranking official in the House party's leadership is the party conference chair (styled as the Republican conference chair and Democratic caucus chair).\nAfter the conference chair, there are differences between each party's subsequent leadership ranks. After the Democratic caucus chair is the campaign committee chair (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee), then the co-chairs of the Steering Committee. For the Republicans it is the chair of the House Republican Policy Committee, followed by the campaign committee chairman (styled as the National Republican Congressional Committee).\nThe chairs of House committees, particularly influential standing committees such as Appropriations, Ways and Means, and Rules, are powerful but not officially part of the House leadership hierarchy. Until the post of majority leader was created, the chair of Ways and Means was the \"de facto\" majority leader.\nLeadership and partisanship.\nWhen the presidency and Senate are controlled by a different party from the one controlling the House, the speaker can become the \"de facto\" \"leader of the opposition\". Some notable examples include Tip O'Neill in the 1980s, Newt Gingrich in the 1990s, John Boehner in the early 2010s, and Nancy Pelosi in the late 2000s and again in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Since the speaker is a partisan officer with substantial power to control the business of the House, the position is often used for partisan advantage.\nIn the instance when the presidency and both Houses of Congress are controlled by one party, the speaker normally takes a low profile and defers to the president. For that situation the House minority leader can play the role of a \"de facto\" \"leader of the opposition\", often more so than the Senate minority leader, due to the more partisan nature of the House and the greater role of leadership.\nNon-member officials.\nThe House is also served by several officials who are not members. The House's chief such officer is the clerk, who maintains public records, prepares documents, and oversees junior officials, including pages until the discontinuation of House pages in 2011. The clerk also presides over the House at the beginning of each new Congress pending the election of a speaker. Another officer is the chief administrative officer, responsible for the day-to-day administrative support to the House of Representatives. This includes everything from payroll to foodservice.\nThe position of chief administrative officer (CAO) was created by the 104th Congress following the 1994 mid-term elections, replacing the positions of doorkeeper and director of non-legislative and financial services (created by the previous congress to administer the non-partisan functions of the House). The CAO also assumed some of the responsibilities of the House Information Services, which previously had been controlled directly by the Committee on House Administration, then headed by Representative Charlie Rose of North Carolina, along with the House \"Folding Room\".\nThe chaplain leads the House in prayer at the opening of the day. The sergeant at arms is the House's chief law enforcement officer and maintains order and security on House premises. Finally, routine police work is handled by the United States Capitol Police, which is supervised by the Capitol Police Board, a body to which the sergeant at arms belongs, and chairs in even-numbered years.\nProcedure.\nDaily procedures.\nLike the Senate, the House of Representatives meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. At one end of the chamber of the House is a rostrum from which the speaker, Speaker pro tempore, or (when in Committee of the Whole House) the chair presides. The lower tiers of the rostrum are used by clerks and other officials. A table in front of the rostrum is used by the official reporters. Members' seats are arranged in the chamber in a semicircular pattern facing the rostrum and are divided by a wide central aisle. By tradition, Democrats sit on the left of the center aisle, while Republicans sit on the right, facing the presiding officer's chair. Sittings are normally held on weekdays; meetings on Saturdays and Sundays are rare. Sittings of the House are generally open to the public; visitors must obtain a House Gallery pass from a congressional office. Sittings are broadcast live on television and have been streamed live on C-SPAN since March 19, 1979, and on \"HouseLive\", the official streaming service operated by the Clerk, since the early 2010s.\nThe procedure of the House depends not only on the rules, but also on a variety of customs, precedents, and traditions. In many cases, the House waives some of its stricter rules (including time limits on debates) by unanimous consent. A member may block a unanimous consent agreement, but objections are rare. The presiding officer, the speaker of the House enforces the rules of the House, and may warn members who deviate from them. The speaker uses a gavel to maintain order. Legislation to be considered by the House is placed in a box called the hopper.\nIn one of its first resolutions, the U.S. House of Representatives established the Office of the Sergeant at Arms. In an American tradition adopted from English custom in 1789 by the first speaker of the House, Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania, the Mace of the United States House of Representatives is used to open all sessions of the House. It is also used during the inaugural ceremonies for all presidents of the United States. For daily sessions of the House, the sergeant at arms carries the mace ahead of the speaker in procession to the rostrum. It is placed on a green marble pedestal to the speaker's right. When the House is in committee, the mace is moved to a pedestal next to the desk of the Sergeant at Arms.\nThe Constitution provides that a majority of the House constitutes a quorum to do business. Under the rules and customs of the House, a quorum is always assumed present unless a quorum call explicitly demonstrates otherwise. House rules prevent a member from making a point of order that a quorum is not present unless a question is being voted on. The presiding officer does not accept a point of order of no quorum during general debate, or when a question is not before the House.\nDuring debates, a member may speak only if called upon by the presiding officer. The presiding officer decides which members to recognize, and can therefore control the course of debate. All speeches must be addressed to the presiding officer, using the words \"Mr. Speaker\" or \"Madam Speaker\". Only the presiding officer may be directly addressed in speeches; other members must be referred to in the third person. In most cases, members do not refer to each other only by name, but also by state, using forms such as \"the gentleman from Virginia\", \"the distinguished gentlewoman from California\", or \"my distinguished friend from Alabama\".\nThere are 448 permanent seats on the House Floor and four tables, two on each side. These tables are occupied by members of the committee that have brought a bill to the floor for consideration and by the party leadership. Members address the House from microphones at any table or \"the well\", the area immediately in front of the rostrum.\nPassage of legislation.\nUnder the U.S. Constitution, the House of Representatives determines the rules according to which it passes legislation. Any of the rules can be changed with each new Congress, but in practice each new session amends a standing set of rules built up over the history of the body in an early resolution published for public inspection. Before legislation reaches the floor of the House, the Rules Committee normally passes a rule to govern debate on that measure (which then must be passed by the full House before it becomes effective). For instance, the committee determines if amendments to the bill are permitted. An \"open rule\" permits all germane amendments, but a \"closed rule\" restricts or even prohibits amendment. Debate on a bill is generally restricted to one hour, equally divided between the majority and minority parties. Each side is led during the debate by a \"floor manager\", who allocates debate time to members who wish to speak. On contentious matters, many members may wish to speak; thus, a member may receive as little as one minute, or even thirty seconds, to make their point.\nWhen debate concludes, the motion is put to a vote. In many cases, the House votes by voice vote; the presiding officer puts the question, and members respond either \"yea!\" or \"aye!\" (in favor of the motion) or \"nay!\" or \"no!\" (against the motion). The presiding officer then announces the result of the voice vote. A member may, however, challenge the presiding officer's assessment and \"request the yeas and nays\" or \"request a recorded vote\". The request may be granted only if it is seconded by one-fifth of the members present. Traditionally, however, members of Congress second requests for recorded votes as a matter of courtesy. Some votes are always recorded, such as those on the annual budget.\nA recorded vote may be taken in one of three different ways. One is electronically. Members use a personal identification card to record their votes at 46 voting stations in the chamber. Votes are usually held in this way. A second mode of recorded vote is by teller. Members hand in colored cards to indicate their votes: green for \"yea\", red for \"nay\", and orange for \"present\" (i.e., to abstain). Teller votes are normally held only when electronic voting breaks down. Finally, the House may conduct a roll call vote. The Clerk reads the list of members of the House, each of whom announces their vote when their name is called. This procedure is only used rarely (and usually for ceremonial occasions, such as for the election of a speaker) because of the time consumed by calling over four hundred names.\nVoting traditionally lasts for, at most, fifteen minutes, but it may be extended if the leadership needs to \"whip\" more members into alignment. The 2003 vote on the prescription drug benefit was open for three hours, from 3:00 to 6:00\u00a0a.m., to receive four additional votes, three of which were necessary to pass the legislation. The 2005 vote on the Central American Free Trade Agreement was open for one hour, from 11:00\u00a0p.m. to midnight. An October 2005 vote on facilitating refinery construction was kept open for forty minutes.\nPresiding officers may vote like other members. They may not, however, vote twice in the event of a tie; rather, a tie vote defeats the motion.\nCommittees and caucuses.\nThe House uses committees and their subcommittees for a variety of purposes, including the review of bills and the oversight of the executive branch. The appointment of committee members is formally made by the whole House, but the choice of members is actually made by the political parties. Generally, each party honors the preferences of individual members, giving priority on the basis of seniority. Historically, membership on committees has been in rough proportion to the party's strength in the House, with two exceptions: on the Rules Committee, the majority party fills nine of the thirteen seats; and on the Ethics Committee, each party has an equal number of seats. However, when party control in the House is closely divided, extra seats on committees are sometimes allocated to the majority party. In the 109th Congress, for example, the Republicans controlled about 53% of the House, but had 54% of the Appropriations Committee members, 55% of the members on the Energy and Commerce Committee, and 58% of the members on the Judiciary Committee.\nThe largest committee of the House is the Committee of the Whole, which, as its name suggests, consists of all members of the House. The Committee meets in the House chamber; it may consider and amend bills, but may not grant them final passage. Generally, the debate procedures of the Committee of the Whole are more flexible than those of the House itself. One advantage of the Committee of the Whole is its ability to include otherwise non-voting members of Congress.\nMost committee work is performed by twenty standing committees, each of which has jurisdiction over a specific set of issues, such as Agriculture or Foreign Affairs. Each standing committee considers, amends, and reports bills that fall under its jurisdiction. Committees have extensive powers with regard to bills; they may block legislation from reaching the floor of the House. Standing committees also oversee the departments and agencies of the executive branch. In discharging their duties, standing committees have the power to hold hearings and to subpoena witnesses and evidence.\nThe House also has one permanent committee that is not a standing committee, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and occasionally may establish temporary or advisory committees, such as the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. This latter committee, created in the 110th Congress and reauthorized for the 111th, has no jurisdiction over legislation and must be chartered anew at the start of every Congress. The House also appoints members to serve on joint committees, which include members of the Senate and House. Some joint committees oversee independent government bodies; for instance, the Joint Committee on the Library oversees the Library of Congress. Other joint committees serve to make advisory reports; for example, there exists a Joint Committee on Taxation. Bills and nominees are not referred to joint committees. Hence, the power of joint committees is considerably lower than those of standing committees.\nEach House committee and subcommittee is led by a chairman (always a member of the majority party). From 1910 to the 1970s, committee chairs were powerful. Woodrow Wilson in his classic study, suggested:Power is nowhere concentrated; it is rather deliberately and of set policy scattered amongst many small chiefs. It is divided up, as it were, into forty-seven seigniories, in each of which a Standing Committee is the court-baron and its chairman lord-proprietor. These petty barons, some of them not a little powerful, but none of them within the reach of the full powers of rule, may at will exercise almost despotic sway within their own shires, and may sometimes threaten to convulse even the realm itself.\nFrom 1910 to 1975 committee and subcommittee chairmanship was determined purely by seniority; members of Congress sometimes had to wait 30 years to get one, but their chairship was independent of party leadership. The rules were changed in 1975 to permit party caucuses to elect chairs, shifting power upward to the party leaders. In 1995, Republicans under Newt Gingrich set a limit of three two-year terms for committee chairs. The chairman's powers are extensive; he controls the committee/subcommittee agenda, and may prevent the committee from dealing with a bill. The senior member of the minority party is known as the Ranking Member. In some committees like Appropriations, partisan disputes are few.\nLegislative functions.\nMost bills may be introduced in either House of Congress. However, the Constitution states, \"All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.\" Because of the Origination Clause, the Senate cannot initiate bills imposing taxes. This provision barring the Senate from introducing revenue bills is based on the practice of the British Parliament, in which only the House of Commons may originate such measures. Furthermore, congressional tradition holds that the House of Representatives originates appropriation bills.\nAlthough it cannot originate revenue bills, the Senate retains the power to amend or reject them. Woodrow Wilson wrote the following about appropriations bills:\n[T]he constitutional prerogative of the House has been held to apply to all the general appropriations bills, and the Senate's right to amend these has been allowed the widest possible scope. The upper house may add to them what it pleases; may go altogether outside of their original provisions and tack to them entirely new features of legislation, altering not only the amounts but even the objects of expenditure, and making out of the materials sent them by the popular chamber measures of an almost totally new character.\nThe approval of the Senate and the House of Representatives is required for a bill to become law. Both Houses must pass the same version of the bill; if there are differences, they may be resolved by a conference committee, which includes members of both bodies. For the stages through which bills pass in the Senate, see Act of Congress.\nThe president may veto a bill passed by the House and Senate. If they do, the bill does not become law unless each House, by a two-thirds vote, votes to override the veto.\nChecks and balances.\nThe Constitution provides that the Senate's \"advice and consent\" is necessary for the president to make appointments and to ratify treaties. Thus, with its potential to frustrate presidential appointments, the Senate is more powerful than the House.\nThe Constitution empowers the House of Representatives to impeach federal officials for \"Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors\" and empowers the Senate to try such impeachments. The House may approve \"articles of impeachment\" by a simple majority vote; however, a two-thirds vote is required for conviction in the Senate. A convicted official is automatically removed from office and may be disqualified from holding future office under the United States. No further punishment is permitted during the impeachment proceedings; however, the party may face criminal penalties in a normal court of law.\nIn U.S. history, the House of Representatives has impeached seventeen officials, seven who were convicted. Another, Richard Nixon, resigned after the House Judiciary Committee passed articles of impeachment but before a formal impeachment vote by the full House. Only three U.S. presidents have ever been impeached: Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump in 2019 and in 2021. The trials of Johnson, Clinton, and Trump all ended in acquittal; in Johnson's case, the Senate fell one vote short of the two-thirds majority required for conviction.\nUnder the Twelfth Amendment, the House has the power to elect the president if no presidential candidate receives a majority of votes in the Electoral College. The Twelfth Amendment requires the House to choose from the three candidates with the highest numbers of electoral votes. The Constitution provides that \"the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote\". It is rare for no presidential candidate to receive a majority of electoral votes. In U.S. history, the House has only had to choose a president twice. In the 1800 election, which was held before adoption of the Twelfth Amendment, it elected Thomas Jefferson over Aaron Burr. In the 1824 election, it elected John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson and William H. Crawford. If no vice presidential candidate receives a majority of the electoral votes, the Senate elects the vice president from the two candidates with the highest numbers of electoral votes.\nLatest election results and party standings.\nAs of \u00a01, 2025[ [update]]\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources and further reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nSurveys.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "26942239": "David Vladeck\nDavid C. Vladeck (born June 6, 1951) is an American lawyer and the former director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection of the Federal Trade Commission, an independent agency of the United States government. He was appointed by the chairman of the FTC, Jon Leibowitz, on April 14, 2009, shortly after Leibowitz became chairman. He served in that position until December 31, 2012, when he returned to the Georgetown University Law Center.\nEarly life and education.\nVladeck is a native of New York City. He comes from a family of lawyers. His father, Stephen Vladeck, founded a worker's rights firm in 1948, which his wife, Judith, joined in 1957. Vladeck's sister, Anne, is a partner at the same firm, while his nephew, Stephen, is a law professor at the University of Texas School of Law. Vladeck\u2019s brother, Bruce, headed the Health Care Financing Administration, now called the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, under President Bill Clinton.\nVladeck received his B.A. from New York University in 1972, and graduated with a J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1976. He received an L.L.M. the from Georgetown Law Center in 1977. While a student at New York University, Vladeck played on the school\u2019s basketball team\nCareer.\nBefore joining the faculty of the Georgetown University Law Center, Vladeck spent nearly 30 years as a lawyer at the Public Citizen Litigation Group, the litigation arm of Public Citizen, an advocacy organization founded by Ralph Nader. He served as the group\u2019s director for 10 years. While at the Public Citizen Litigation Group, Vladeck argued a number of cases in front of the United States Supreme Court, including cases about the First Amendment, civil rights and labor law. He also argued more than 60 cases in front of federal courts of appeal and state courts of last resort.\nVladeck was a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center for seven years before his appointment to head the Bureau of Consumer Protection. While at Georgetown, he served as the co-director of the Institute for Public Representation, leading the Institute's work in civil rights. He taught courses in federal courts, civil procedure, and government processes and co-directed the Institute for Public Representation, a legal clinic.\nPolicy priorities.\nVladeck\u2019s appointment to head the Bureau of Consumer Protection was lauded by consumer advocates, who felt that the bureau had shown a pro-business bias under commissioners appointed by George W. Bush in areas such as consumer financial services and online privacy. Since taking office, Vladeck has made clear that he intends to make significant changes to the Bureau\u2019s approach in a few key areas.\nTechnology and privacy.\nSince the FTC started to regulate online privacy issues, in the mid-1990s, its focus has been on whether consumers are provided with proper notice about what information may be collected from them and on whether they are given some choice about how it is collected and used. This philosophy was laid out in the fair information practice principles (FIPs)\", published in a 1998 FTC report to Congress about online privacy. The Bureau of Consumer Protection has traditionally taken the position that as long as consumers are provided with notice through company privacy policies, collection and use of consumer data is acceptable; and that the bureau should only intervene when a company\u2019s information practices cause concrete, economic harm to consumers.\nVladeck has stated that he doesn\u2019t believe this existing model succeeds in protecting consumers\u2019 privacy online. He has advocated a new framework that is broader than just economic interests, and that doesn\u2019t rely solely on privacy policies to protect consumers online. In a recent interview with the New York Times, Vladeck argued that, \"I don\u2019t believe that most consumers either read [privacy policies], or, if they read them, really understand it [sic]. Second of all, consent in the face of these kinds of quote disclosures, I\u2019m not sure that consent really reflects a volitional, knowing act.\"\nVladeck\u2019s approach to online privacy was seen in his handling of FTC litigation against Sears in In the Matter of Sears Holdings Management Corporation. In June 2009, shortly after Vladeck assumed office, the Bureau of Consumer Protection settled a case against Sears. The company had offered consumers $10 to download software that tracked their internet browsing. The software collected information such as medical prescriptions and financial information. The software contained a privacy policy with detailed disclosures about the type of information to be collected and how it would be used, and consumers suffered no economic harm when they downloaded it. Nevertheless, the FTC sued the company for its practice. Vladeck stated that \"under the harm framework, we couldn\u2019t have brought that case,\" but that because \"there\u2019s a huge dignity interest wrapped up in having somebody looking at your financial records when they have no business doing that,\" the commission was justified in suing.\nFinancial regulation.\nConsumer advocates have criticized the FTC in recent years for its lack of active regulation of financial services providers, including companies providing and servicing subprime mortgages in the years leading up to the financial crisis of 2007-2010. As \"Mother Jones\" magazine noted during the Bush Administration, the FTC \"brought an average of one subprime lending case a year (in 2004 and 2005 there weren't any), even as the industry was experiencing record growth and complaints mounted about abusive practices leading to home foreclosures.\"\nAdvertising and marketing.\nIn an October 2009 speech to its national advertising division, Vladeck set forth his plan for the Bureau of Consumer Protection's regulation of advertising and marketing practices. He stated that the bureau would have a renewed focus on national advertising, going after large companies that advertise widely and put forth deceptive or unsubstantiated claims, not just small companies perpetrating direct fraud. He also indicated the bureau would particularly focus on food advertising, health claims in advertising and advertising and marketing practices directed at children.\nAdditionally, since Vladeck took office, the bureau revised its endorsement guides, guidelines to advertisers who use endorsements and testimonials. Previously, the guides \u2013 which were last revised in 1980 - only required product testimonials claiming exceptional results to have a disclaimer that said \"Results Not Typical\". Under the new guidelines, using such testimonials will now require advertisers to \"clearly and conspicuously disclose the generally expected results consumers can expect in the depicted circumstances.\" The guidelines also \u2013 somewhat controversially \u2013 require bloggers making an endorsement to disclose their \"material connections\" to the product\u2019s manufacturer or seller.\nA positive response to the new rules and laws regarding endorsements and testimonials is an increased level of website compliance standards being adopted that includes the third-party verification of the testimonials businesses present on their websites. These companies, such as testimonialshield.com, collect the data regarding a customer's transaction and experience with a company and with a combined technology and sometimes even personal interviews with the customers to determine the authenticity of the testimonials. Once the testimonials, reviews and/or results are verified, the company can include them in their profiles and add a 'trust mark' similar to that of Verisign, the Better Business Bureau, or Good Housekeeping. The presence of this seal or trust mark helps consumers determine how much weight they should give to the testimonials they are reading before making a decision to support a business.\nPersonal life.\nVladeck is married and has two sons, both of whom pitched for their college baseball teams. One is also a Georgetown Law graduate.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["26942239", "738686", "19468510", "198562"], "permutation_1": ["198562", "26942239", "738686", "19468510"], "permutation_2": ["198562", "26942239", "738686", "19468510"], "permutation_3": ["738686", "26942239", "19468510", "198562"]}
{"id": "4hop1__405751_4520_65397_37154", "docs_added": {"738686": "Separation of powers under the United States Constitution\n \nSeparation of powers is a political doctrine originating in the writings of Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu in \"The Spirit of the Laws\", in which he argued for a constitutional government with three separate branches, each of which would have defined authority to check the powers of the others. This philosophy heavily influenced the United States Constitution, according to which the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches of the United States government are kept distinct in order to prevent abuse of power. The American form of separation of powers is associated with a system of checks and balances.\nDuring the Age of Enlightenment, philosophers such as Montesquieu advocated the principle in their writings, whereas others, such as Thomas Hobbes, strongly opposed it. Montesquieu was one of the foremost supporters of separating the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. His writings considerably influenced the Founding Fathers of the United States, such as Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, who participated in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 which drafted the Constitution.\nSome U.S. states did not observe a strict separation of powers in the 18th century. In New Jersey, the governor also functioned as a member of the state's highest court and as the presiding officer of one house of the New Jersey Legislature. The president of Delaware was a member of the Court of Appeals; the presiding officers of the two houses of the state legislature also served in the executive department as vice presidents. In both Delaware and Pennsylvania, members of the executive council served at the same time as judges. On the other hand, many southern states explicitly required separation of powers. Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia all kept the branches of government \"separate and distinct.\"\nLegislative power.\nCongress has the sole power to legislate for the United States. Under the nondelegation doctrine, Congress may not delegate its lawmaking responsibilities to any other agency. In this vein, the Supreme Court held in the 1998 case \"Clinton v. City of New York\" that Congress could not delegate a \"line-item veto\" to the President, by powers vested in the government by the Constitution.\nWhere Congress does not make great and sweeping delegations of its authority, the Supreme Court has been less stringent. One of the earliest cases involving the exact limits of non-delegation was \"Wayman v. Southard\" 23 U.S. (10 Wet.) 1, 42 (1825). Congress had delegated to the courts the power to prescribe judicial procedure; it was contended that Congress had thereby unconstitutionally clothed the judiciary with legislative powers. While Chief Justice John Marshall conceded that the determination of rules of procedure was a legislative function, he distinguished between \"important\" subjects and mere details. Marshall wrote that \"a general provision may be made, and power is given to those who are to act under such general provisions, to fill up the details.\"\nMarshall's words and future court decisions gave Congress much latitude in delegating powers. It was not until the 1930s that the Supreme Court held a delegation of authority unconstitutional. In a case involving the creation of the National Recovery Administration called \"A.L.A. Schechter Poultry\", 295 U.S. 495 (1935), Congress could not authorize the president to formulate codes of \"fair competition.\" It was held that Congress must set some standards governing the actions of executive officers. The Court, however, has deemed that phrases such as \"just and reasonable,\" \"public interest\" and \"public convenience\" suffice.\nExecutive power.\nExecutive power is vested, with exceptions and qualifications, in the President. By law (Section 2.) the president becomes the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, Militia of several states when called into service, has power to make treaties and appointments to office \"with the Advice and Consent of the Senate,\" receive Ambassadors and Public Ministers, and \"take care that the laws be faithfully executed\" (Section 3.) By using these words, the Constitution does not require the president to personally enforce the law; rather, officers subordinate to the president may perform such duties. The Constitution empowers the president to ensure the faithful execution of the laws made by Congress and approved by the President. Congress may itself terminate such appointments, by impeachment, and restrict the president. Bodies such as the War Claims Commission (created by the War Claims Act of 1948), the Interstate Commerce Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission\u2014all quasi-judicial\u2014often have direct Congressional oversight.\nCongress often writes legislation to restrain executive officials to the performance of their duties, as laid out by the laws Congress passes. In \"Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha\" (1983), the Supreme Court decided (a) The prescription for legislative action in Art. I, \u00a7 1\u2014requiring all legislative powers to be vested in a Congress consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives\u2014and \u00a7 7\u2014requiring every bill passed by the House and Senate, before becoming law, to be presented to the president, and, if he disapproves, to be repassed by two-thirds of the Senate and House\u2014represents the Framers' decision that the legislative power of the Federal Government be exercised in accord with a single, finely wrought and exhaustively considered procedure. This procedure is an integral part of the constitutional design for the separation of powers. Further rulings clarified the case; even both Houses acting together cannot override Executive vetoes without a <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />2\u20443 majority. Legislation may always prescribe regulations governing executive officers.\nJudicial power.\nJudicial power\u2014the power to decide cases and controversies\u2014is vested in the Supreme Court and inferior courts established by Congress. The judges must be appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate, hold office during good behavior and receive compensations that may not be diminished during their continuance in office. If a court's judges do not have such attributes, the court may not exercise the judicial power of the United States. Courts exercising the judicial power are called \"constitutional courts.\"\nHowever, because Congress controls the budget, jurisdiction, and structure of the federal courts, the judiciary as a branch is better described as largely dependent on Congress rather than independent of it. Although the Constitution, not Congress, creates the Supreme Court, it is Congress that decides whether to create lower federal courts, how to arrange them, how many judges will be appointed to them, and whether to abolish them. Congress also has the power to grant jurisdiction to and withdraw jurisdiction from, lower federal courts. Moreover, although judges have the power to issue final judgments, they must rely on the executive for enforcement.\nCongress may also establish \"legislative courts,\" which do not take the form of judicial agencies or commissions, whose members do not have the same security of tenure or compensation as the constitutional court judges. Legislative courts may not exercise the judicial power of the United States. In \"Murray's Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co.\" (1856), the Supreme Court held that a legislative court may not decide \"a suit at the common law, or in equity, or admiralty,\" as such a suit is inherently judicial. Legislative courts may only adjudicate \"public rights\" questions (cases between the government and an individual and political determinations).\nChecks and balances.\n<templatestyles src = \"Column/styles.css\" />\nExecutive.\nThe president exercises a check over Congress through their power to veto bills, but Congress may override any veto (excluding the so-called \"pocket veto\") by a two-thirds majority in each house. When the two houses of Congress cannot agree on a date for adjournment, the president may settle the dispute. Either house or both houses may be called into emergency session by the president. The Vice President serves as president of the Senate, but they may only vote to break a tie.\nThe president, as noted above, appoints judges with the Senate's advice and consent. They also have the power to issue pardons and reprieves. Such pardons are not subject to confirmation by either the House of Representatives or the Senate, or even to acceptance by the recipient. The President is not mandated to carry out the orders of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court does not have any enforcement power; the enforcement power lies solely with the executive branch. Thus, the executive branch can place a check on the Supreme Court through refusal to execute the orders of the court. However the prestige of the Court makes that difficult to do.\nThe president is the civilian Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States. They have the authority to command them to take appropriate military action in the event of a sudden crisis. However, only the Congress is explicitly granted the power to declare war per se, as well as to raise, fund and maintain the armed forces. Congress also has the duty and authority to prescribe the laws and regulations under which the armed forces operate, such as the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and requires that all Generals and Admirals appointed by the president be confirmed by a majority vote of the Senate before they can assume their office.\nJudicial.\nCourts check both the executive branch and the legislative branch through judicial review. This concept is not written into the Constitution, but was envisioned by many of the Constitution's Framers (for example, \"The Federalist Papers\" mention it). The Supreme Court established a precedent for judicial review in \"Marbury v. Madison\". There were protests by some at this decision, born chiefly of political expediency, but political realities in the particular case paradoxically restrained opposing views from asserting themselves. For this reason, precedent alone established the principle that a court may strike down a law it deems unconstitutional.\nA common misperception is that the Supreme Court is the only court that may determine constitutionality; the power is exercised even by the inferior courts. But only Supreme Court decisions are binding across the nation. Decisions of a Court of Appeals, for instance, are binding only in the circuit over which the court has jurisdiction.\nThe power to review the constitutionality of laws may be limited by Congress, which has the power to set the jurisdiction of the courts. The only constitutional limit on Congress' power to set the jurisdiction of the judiciary relates to the Supreme Court; the Supreme Court may exercise only appellate jurisdiction except in cases involving states and cases affecting foreign ambassadors, ministers or consuls.\nThe Chief Justice presides in the Senate during a president's impeachment trial. The rules of the Senate, however, generally do not grant much authority to the presiding officer. Thus, the Chief Justice's role in this regard is a limited one.\nMcCulloch v. Maryland, decided in 1819, established two important principles, one of which explains that states cannot make actions to impede on valid constitutional exercises of power by the federal government. The other explains that Congress has the implied powers to implement the express powers written in the Constitution to create a functional national government. All three branches of the US government have certain powers and those powers relate to the other branches of government. One of these powers is called the express powers. These powers are expressly given, in the Constitution, to each branch of government. Another power is the implied powers. These powers are those that are necessary to perform expressed powers. There are also inherent and concurrent powers. Inherent powers are those that are not found in the Constitution yet the different branches of government can still exercise them. Concurrent powers are those that are given to both state and federal governments. There are also powers that are not lined out in the Constitution that are given to the federal government. These powers are then given to the states in a system called federalism.\nCongress is one of the branches of government so it has a lot of powers of its own that it uses to pass laws and establish regulations. These include express, implied, and concurrent powers. It uses its express powers to regulate bankruptcies, business between states and other nations, the armed forces, and the National Guard or militia. They also establish all laws necessary and proper for carrying out other powers. In addition to this Congress makes laws for naturalization. Implied powers are used to keep the regulation of taxes, the draft, immigration, protection of those with disabilities, minimum wage, and outlaw discrimination. Congress's inherent powers are used to control national borders, deal with foreign affairs, acquire new territories, defend the state from revolution, and decide the exclusion or establishment of aliens. Concurrent powers makes it so that both federal and state governments can create laws, deal with environmental protection, maintain national parks and prisons, and provide a police force.\nThe judicial branch of government holds powers as well. They have the ability to use express and concurrent powers to make laws and establish regulations. They use express powers to interpret laws and perform judicial review. Implied powers are used by this branch to declare laws that were previously passed by a lower court unconstitutional. They can also use express powers to declare laws that are in the process of being passed unconstitutional. Concurrent powers are used to make it so that state courts can conduct trials and interpret laws without the approval of federal courts and federal courts can hear appeals form lower state courts.\nThe executive branch also has powers of its own that they use to make laws and establish regulations. The powers that are used in this branch are express, implied, and inherent. The President uses express powers to approve and veto bills and to make treaties as well. The President is constitutionally obligated to make sure that laws are faithfully executed and uses their powers to do just this. He uses implied powers to issue executive orders and enter into treaties with foreign nations. The executive branch uses inherent powers to establish executive privilege, which means that they can enforce statutes and laws already passed by Congress. They can also enforce the Constitution and treaties that were previously made by other branches of government.\nThe system of checks and balances makes it so that no one branch of government has more power than another and cannot overthrow another. It creates a balance of power that is necessary for a government to function, if it is to function well. This, in most situations, makes it so that each branch is held to a certain standard of conduct. If a branch of the government thinks that what another branch is doing is unconstitutional, they can \"call them out\" so to say. Each branch is able to look at the other branches wrongdoing and change it to meet the needs of the people whom they serve. Humans as a whole have a history of abusing positions of power but the system of checks and balances makes it so much more difficult to do so. Also, as there is more than one person running each branch gives room for debate and discussion before decisions are made within a single branch. Even so, some laws have been made and then retracted because they were an abuse of the power given to that particular branch. The people that created these laws had been serving a selfish agenda when forming these laws instead of looking out for the welfare of those people that they were supposed to be protecting by making certain laws. While this is a horrible scenario, it does happen. That does not mean that it cannot be fixed though. Indeed, it can be, by another branch of government stepping up to right the wrongs that had been done.\nThe federal government is fully capable to intervene in affairs of Native Americans on reservations to some extent. Their ability to create and enforce treaties makes it so that they can interact with the Native Americans and build a treaty that works for both parties and make reservations for the Native Americans to live on and make it so that the people that would live on the reservation not be interrupted by the outside world and be able to live their lives as they please. This responsibility also falls on to the states as well. This happens because the federal government is the one that creates the treaties but the reservations are then put in the jurisdiction of the states. The states are then responsible for maintaining the relationships with the Native Americans on those reservations and to honor the treaties that were previously made by the federal government.\nEquality of the branches.\nThe Constitution does not explicitly indicate the pre-eminence of any particular branch of government. However, James Madison wrote in Federalist 51, regarding the ability of each branch to defend itself from actions by the others, that \"it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates.\"\nOne may claim that the judiciary has historically been the weakest of the three branches. In fact, its power to exercise judicial review\u2014its sole meaningful check on the other two branches\u2014is not explicitly granted by the U.S Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court exercised its power to strike down congressional acts as unconstitutional only twice prior to the Civil War: in \"Marbury v. Madison\" (1803) and \"Dred Scott v. Sandford\" (1857). The Supreme Court has since then made more extensive use of judicial review.\nThroughout America's history dominance of one of the three branches has essentially been a see-saw struggle between Congress and the president. Both have had periods of great power and weakness such as immediately after the Civil War when republicans had a majority in Congress and were able to pass major legislation and shoot down most of the president's vetoes. They also passed acts to essentially make the president subordinate to Congress, such as the Tenure of Office Act. Johnson's later impeachment also cost the presidency much political power. However the president has also exercised greater power largely during the 20th century. Both Roosevelts greatly expanded the powers of the president and wielded great power during their terms.\nThe first six presidents of the United States did not make extensive use of the veto power: George Washington only vetoed two bills, James Monroe one, and John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams none. James Madison, a firm believer in a strong executive, vetoed seven bills. None of the first six Presidents, however, used the veto to direct national policy. It was Andrew Jackson, the seventh President, who was the first to use the veto as a political weapon. During his two terms in office, he vetoed 12 bills\u2014more than all of his predecessors combined. Furthermore, he defied the Supreme Court in enforcing the policy of ethnically cleansing Native American tribes (\"Indian Removal\"); he stated (perhaps apocryphally), \"John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it!\"\nSome of Jackson's successors made no use of the veto power, while others used it intermittently. It was only after the Civil War that presidents began to use the power to truly counterbalance Congress. Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, vetoed several Reconstruction bills passed by the \"Radical Republicans.\" Congress, however, managed to override fifteen of Johnson's twenty-nine vetoes. Furthermore, it attempted to curb the power of the presidency by passing the Tenure of Office Act. The Act required Senate approval for the dismissal of senior Cabinet officials. When Johnson deliberately violated the Act, which he felt was unconstitutional (Supreme Court decisions later vindicated such a position), the House of Representatives impeached him; he was acquitted in the Senate by one vote.\nJohnson's impeachment was perceived to have done great damage to the presidency, which came to be almost subordinate to Congress. Some believed that the president would become a mere figurehead, with the Speaker of the House of Representatives becoming a \"de facto\" prime minister. Grover Cleveland, the first Democratic President following Johnson, attempted to restore the power of his office. During his first term, he vetoed over 400 bills\u2014twice as many bills as his 21 predecessors combined. He also began to suspend bureaucrats who were appointed as a result of the patronage system, replacing them with more \"deserving\" individuals. The Senate, however, refused to confirm many new nominations, instead demanding that Cleveland turn over the confidential records relating to the suspensions. Cleveland steadfastly refused, asserting, \"These suspensions are my executive acts ... I am not responsible to the Senate, and I am unwilling to submit my actions to them for judgment.\" Cleveland's popular support forced the Senate to back down and confirm the nominees. Furthermore, Congress finally repealed the controversial Tenure of Office Act that had been passed during the Johnson Administration. Overall, this meant that Cleveland's Administration marked the end of presidential subordination.\nSeveral 20th-century presidents have attempted to greatly expand the power of the presidency. Theodore Roosevelt, for instance, claimed that the president was permitted to do whatever was not explicitly prohibited by the law\u2014in direct contrast to his immediate successor, William Howard Taft. Franklin Delano Roosevelt held considerable power during the Great Depression. Congress had granted Franklin Roosevelt sweeping authority; in \"Panama Refining v. Ryan\", the Court for the first time struck down a Congressional delegation of power as violative of the doctrine of separation of powers. The aforementioned \"Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States\", another separation of powers case, was also decided during Franklin Roosevelt's presidency. In response to many unfavorable Supreme Court decisions, Roosevelt introduced a \"Court Packing\" plan, under which more seats would be added to the Supreme Court for the president to fill. Such a plan (which was defeated in Congress) would have seriously undermined the judiciary's independence and power.\nRichard Nixon used national security as a basis for his expansion of power. He asserted, for example, that \"the inherent power of the President to safeguard the security of the nation\" authorized him to order a wiretap without a judge's warrant. Nixon also asserted that \"executive privilege\" shielded him from all legislative oversight; furthermore, he impounded federal funds (that is to say, he refused to spend money that Congress had appropriated for government programs). In the specific cases aforementioned, however, the Supreme Court ruled against Nixon. This was also because of an ongoing criminal investigation into the Watergate tapes, even though they acknowledged the general need for executive privilege. Since then, Nixon's successors have sometimes asserted that they may act in the interests of national security or that executive privilege shields them from Congressional oversight. Though such claims have in general been more limited than Nixon's, one may still conclude that the presidency's power has been greatly augmented since the 18th and 19th centuries.\nViews on separation of powers.\nMany political scientists believe that separation of powers is a decisive factor in what they see as a limited degree of American exceptionalism. In particular, John W. Kingdon made this argument, claiming that separation of powers contributed to the development of a unique political structure in the United States. He attributes the unusually large number of interest groups active in the United States, in part, to the separation of powers; it gives groups more places to try to influence, and creates more potential group activity. He also cites its complexity as one of the reasons for lower citizen participation.\nJudicial independence.\nSeparation of powers has again become a current issue of some controversy concerning debates about judicial independence and political efforts to increase the accountability of judges for the quality of their work, avoiding conflicts of interest, and charges that some judges allegedly disregard procedural rules, statutes, and higher court precedents.\nMany legislators hold the view that separation of powers means that powers are shared among different branches; no one branch may act unilaterally on issues (other than perhaps minor questions), but must obtain some form of agreement across branches. That is, it is argued that \"checks and balances\" apply to the Judicial branch as well as to the other branches\u2014for example, in the regulation of attorneys and judges, and the establishment by Congress of rules for the conduct of federal courts, and by state legislatures for state courts. Although in practice these matters are delegated to the Supreme Court, the Congress holds these powers and delegates them to the Supreme Court only for convenience in light of the Supreme Court's expertise, but can withdraw that delegation at any time.\nOn the other side of this debate, many judges hold the view that separation of powers means that the Judiciary is independent and untouchable within the judicial sphere. In this view, separation of powers means that the Judiciary alone holds all powers relative to the judicial function and that the Legislative and Executive branches may not interfere in any aspect of the Judicial branch. An example of the second view at the state level is found in the Florida Supreme Court holding that only the Florida Supreme Court may license and regulate attorneys appearing before the courts of Florida, and only the Florida Supreme Court may set rules for procedures in the Florida courts. The State of New Hampshire also follows this system.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "198562": "Appropriation bill\nBill or law authorizing expenditure of government funds\nAn appropriation bill, also known as supply bill or spending bill, is a proposed law that authorizes the expenditure of government funds. It is a bill that sets money aside for specific spending. In some democracies, approval of the legislature is necessary for the government to spend money.\nIn a Westminster parliamentary system, the defeat of an appropriation bill in a parliamentary vote generally necessitates either the resignation of a government or the calling of a general election. One of the more famous examples of the defeat of a supply bill was the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, when the Senate, which was controlled by the opposition, refused to approve a package of appropriation and loan bills, prompting Governor-General Sir John Kerr to dismiss Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and appoint Malcolm Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister until the next election (where the Fraser government was elected).\nBy country.\nIndia.\nAn appropriation bill is a bill that authorizes the government to withdraw funds from the Consolidated Fund of India for use during the financial year. Although Appropriation Acts are not included in any official list of central laws, they technically remain on the books. Since 2016, appropriation bills in India include a sunset clause as result of which the Act is automatically repealed after its purpose is met. Appropriation Acts passed prior to 2016 were repealed by the enactment of \"The Appropriation Acts (Repeal) Act, 2015\" in April 2016.\nNew Zealand.\nIn New Zealand, an Appropriation Bill is the formal name for the annual Act of Parliament that gives legal effect to the New Zealand Budget, that is, the Government's taxing and spending policies for the forthcoming year (from 1 July to 30 June). Like other bills, it is enacted, following debate, by the House of Representatives, and assented to by the governor-general. The main Appropriation Bill is traditionally placed before the House for its first reading in May amid considerable media interest, an event known as the \"introduction of the Budget\". An Appropriation Bill is not sent to a select committee, a lengthy process undergone by most bills during which they are scrutinised in detail by the committee, which also receives public submissions relating to the bill. Instead, an expedited process is followed in which the Appropriation Bill essentially goes directly to its second reading for consideration by the committee of the whole House. Royal assent is granted after the formality of a third reading.\nThe main Appropriation Bill is formally called an \"Appropriation (Estimates) Bill\", or, after assented to, an \"Appropriation (Estimates) \"Act\"\". Supplementary Budgetary legislation in New Zealand includes an annual \"Appropriation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill\", which serves to validate taxation and spending incurred in the previous year which fell outside the previous year's Budget, and \"Imprest Supply Bills,\" typically several in a year, which grant interim authority to the Government to tax and spend.\nBoth Appropriation and Imprest Supply bills fall under the rubric of confidence and supply. A refusal by the House to pass such a Bill conventionally leads to either the resignation of the Government (unlikely, since there is usually no alternative Government immediately available) or to a dissolution of the House and a subsequent general election.\nPhilippines.\nIn the Philippines, the Congress which consists of the House of Representatives and the Senate is mandated to pass a General Appropriation Bill annually. If the Congress fails to pass a General Appropriation Bill for a fiscal year, the General Appropriation Act for the previous fiscal year would be used until a bill for the specific year is passed.\nUnited States.\nUnder the presidential system, the support of the Congress for the President's appropriations requests is not necessary for the separately-elected President to remain in office, but it can severely limit the President's ability to govern effectively.\nIn the United States, there are two types of appropriations. When Congress sets up particular programs, the legislation may itself set up the necessary appropriation mechanism, such as the social security program for which payment of benefits are \"mandatory\". A mandatory program does not need an additional authorisation for spending under the program to occur. An authorization bill can create programs and make known Congress's intended level of spending for programs that also require an appropriation. What distinguishes a mandatory program from a discretionary program is that after Congress enacts a law creating a mandatory program, the program may spend funds until the program expires based on a provision in law or until a subsequent law either terminates the program or reauthorizes it. Discretionary programs typically require annual appropriations legislation.\nAn appropriation bill is used for actually providing money for \"discretionary\" programs. Appropriations are generally done on an annual basis, but multi-year appropriations are occasionally passed. According to the US Constitution (Article I, Section 8, clause 12), Army appropriations cannot be for more than two years at a time. An annual appropriation requires that the funds appropriated to be obligated (spent) by the end of the fiscal year of the appropriation. Once the fiscal year ends, no more money can be spent via the prior year's appropriation. A new appropriation for the new fiscal year must be passed in order for continued spending to occur or passage of a special appropriations bill known as a continuing resolution, which generally permits continued spending for a short period of time, usually at prior year levels. The Anti-Deficiency Act makes void any attempt to spend money for which there is no current appropriation.\nAccording to the Origination Clause of the US Constitution, all bills for raising revenue, generally tax bills, must originate in the House of Representatives, similar to the Westminster system requirement for all money bills to originate in the lower house. Traditionally, appropriation bills originate in the House of Representatives. House appropriations bills begin with \"H.R.\", meaning \"House of Representatives.\" In reference to revenue bills, the Constitution also states that the \"Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.\" As with revenue bills, the Senate and House each drafts and considers its own appropriation bill. The Senate then cuts and pastes, substitutes the language of its version of a particular appropriation bill for the language of the House bill, and agrees to the bill as amended.\nThe United States House Committee on Appropriations and the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations have jurisdiction over appropriations bills. Both committees have twelve matching subcommittees tasked with working on one of the twelve annual regular appropriations bills. Other committees and lawmakers in Congress write legislation creating programs and reauthorizing old ones to continue. That legislation is called an authorization bill. Such legislation authorizes the programs to exist and expenditure of funds on them, but it cannot actually give them the money. That second step of granting the money is done in an appropriations bill. The appropriations committees have power because they can decide whether to fund the programs at the maximum level authorized, a lesser amount, or not at all.\nAppropriations bills in the United States can also come in the format of an omnibus spending bill, a continuing resolution, or a supplemental appropriation bill. If Congress has not enacted the regular appropriations bills by the start of a new fiscal year, it can pass a continuing resolution, which continues the pre-existing appropriations at the same levels as the previous fiscal year (or with minor modifications) for a set amount of time. An omnibus spending bill is simply a combination of multiple appropriations bills into one larger appropriations bill. Supplemental appropriations bills increase funding for activities that were already funded in previous appropriations bills or the provide new funding for unexpected expenses. For example, both the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War were funded with a variety of supplemental appropriations. Supplemental appropriations bills also provide funding for recovering from unexpected natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy (the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, 2013).\nAnnual appropriations are divided into 12 separate pieces of legislation:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "8087628": "Egypt\nCountry in Northeast Africa and Southwest Asia\nEgypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip of Palestine and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west; the Gulf of Aqaba in the northeast separates Egypt from Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Cairo is the capital, largest city, and leading cultural center, while Alexandria is the second-largest city and an important hub of industry and tourism. With over 107 million inhabitants, Egypt is the third-most populous country in Africa and 14th-most populated in the world.\nEgypt has one of the longest histories of any country, tracing its heritage along the Nile Delta back to the 6th\u20134th millennia BCE. Considered a cradle of civilisation, Ancient Egypt saw some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, organised religion and central government. Egypt was an early and important centre of Christianity, later adopting Islam from the seventh century onwards. Cairo became the capital of the Fatimid Caliphate in the tenth century and of the subsequent Mamluk Sultanate in the 13th century. Egypt then became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1517, until its local ruler Muhammad Ali established modern Egypt as an autonomous Khedivate in 1867. The country was then occupied by the British Empire along with Sudan and gained independence in 1922 as a monarchy.\nFollowing the 1952 revolution, Egypt declared itself a republic. For a brief period between 1958 and 1961 Egypt merged with Syria to form the United Arab Republic. Egypt fought several armed conflicts with Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, and occupied the Gaza Strip intermittently until 1967. In 1978, Egypt signed the Camp David Accords, which recognised Israel in exchange for its withdrawal from the occupied Sinai. After the Arab Spring, which led to the 2011 Egyptian revolution and overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, the country faced a protracted period of political unrest; its first democratic election in 2012 resulted in the short-lived, Muslim Brotherhood-aligned government of Mohamed Morsi, which was overthrown by the military after mass protests in 2013. The current government is a semi-presidential republic led by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who was elected in 2014 but is widely regarded as authoritarian.\nEgypt is a developing country with the second-largest economy in Africa. It is considered to be a regional power in the Middle East, North Africa and the Muslim world, and a middle power worldwide. Islam is the official religion and Arabic is official language. Egypt is a founding member of the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Arab League, the African Union, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, World Youth Forum, and a member of BRICS.\nNames.\nThe English name \"Egypt\" is derived from the Ancient Greek \" (\"), via Middle French \"Egypte\" and Latin \"\". It is reflected in early Greek Linear B tablets as \"a-ku-pi-ti-yo\". The adjective \"aig\u00fdpti-\"/\"aig\u00fdptios\" was borrowed into Coptic as \"\", and from there into Arabic as \", back formed into \" (), whence English \"Copt\". Prominent Ancient Greek historian and Geographer, Strabo, provided a folk etymology stating that \"'\" (Aig\u00fdptios) had originally evolved as a compound from \"'\" (), meaning \"Below the Aegean\".\n\" (; \") is the Classical Quranic Arabic and modern official name of Egypt, while \"\" (; ) is the local pronunciation in Egyptian Arabic. The current name of Egypt, Misr/Misir/Misru, stems from the Ancient Semitic name for it. The term originally connoted \"Civilisation\" or \"Metropolis\". Classical Arabic ' (Egyptian Arabic ') is directly cognate with the Biblical Hebrew \"Mi\u1e63r\u00e1y\u012bm\" (\u05de\u05b4\u05e6\u05b0\u05e8\u05b7\u05d9\u05b4\u05dd / \u05de\u05b4\u05e6\u05b0\u05e8\u05b8\u05d9\u05b4\u05dd), meaning \"the two straits\", a reference to the predynastic separation of Upper and Lower Egypt. Also mentioned in several Semitic languages as \"Mesru\", \"Misir\" and \"Masar\". The oldest attestation of this name for Egypt is the Akkadian \"mi-i\u1e63-ru\" (\"mi\u1e63ru\") related to \"mi\u1e63ru/mi\u1e63irru/mi\u1e63aru\", meaning \"border\" or \"frontier\". The Neo-Assyrian Empire used the derived term , \"Mu-\u1e63ur\".\nThe ancient Egyptian name of the country was km-m-t:O49 (\ud80c\udd8e \ud80c\udd53 \ud80c\udfcf\ud80c\ude96) , which means black land, likely referring to the fertile black soils of the Nile flood plains, distinct from the \"deshret\" (\u27e8\u27e9), or \"red land\" of the desert. This name is commonly vocalised as \"Kemet\", but was probably pronounced in ancient Egyptian. The name is realised as ' (, ) in the Coptic stage of the Egyptian language, and appeared in early Greek as ('). Another name was \u27e8\u27e9 \"land of the riverbank\". The names of Upper and Lower Egypt were \"Ta-Sheme'aw\" (\u27e8\u27e9) \"sedgeland\" and \"Ta-Mehew\" (\u27e8\u27e9) \"northland\", respectively.\nHistory.\nPrehistory and Ancient Egypt.\nThere is evidence of rock carvings along the Nile terraces and in desert oases. In the 10th millennium BCE, a culture of hunter-gatherers and fishers was replaced by a grain-grinding culture. Climate changes or overgrazing around 8000 BCE began to desiccate the pastoral lands of Egypt, forming the Sahara. Early tribal peoples migrated to the Nile River where they developed a settled agricultural economy and more centralised society.\nBy about 6000 BCE, a Neolithic culture took root in the Nile Valley. During the Neolithic era, several predynastic cultures developed independently in Upper and Lower Egypt. The Badarian culture and the successor Naqada series are generally regarded as precursors to dynastic Egypt. The earliest known Lower Egyptian site, Merimda, predates the Badarian by about seven hundred years. Contemporaneous Lower Egyptian communities coexisted with their southern counterparts for more than two thousand years, remaining culturally distinct, but maintaining frequent contact through trade. The earliest known evidence of Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions appeared during the predynastic period on Naqada III pottery vessels, dated to about 3200 BCE.\nA unified kingdom was founded c.\u20093150 BCE by King Menes, leading to a series of dynasties that ruled Egypt for the next three millennia. Egyptian culture flourished during this long period and remained distinctively Egyptian in its religion, arts, language and customs. The first two ruling dynasties of a unified Egypt set the stage for the Old Kingdom period, c.\u20092700\u20132200 BCE, which constructed many pyramids, most notably the Third Dynasty pyramid of Djoser and the Fourth Dynasty Giza pyramids.\nThe First Intermediate Period ushered in a time of political upheaval for about 150 years. Stronger Nile floods and stabilisation of government, however, brought back renewed prosperity for the country in the Middle Kingdom c.\u20092040 BCE, reaching a peak during the reign of Pharaoh Amenemhat III. A second period of disunity heralded the arrival of the first foreign ruling dynasty in Egypt, that of the Semitic Hyksos. The Hyksos invaders took over much of Lower Egypt around 1650 BCE and founded a new capital at Avaris. They were driven out by an Upper Egyptian force led by Ahmose I, who founded the Eighteenth Dynasty and relocated the capital from Memphis to Thebes.\nThe New Kingdom c.\u20091550\u20131070 BCE began with the Eighteenth Dynasty, marking the rise of Egypt as an international power that expanded during its greatest extension to an empire as far south as Tombos in Nubia, and included parts of the Levant in the east. This period is noted for some of the most well known Pharaohs, including Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti, Tutankhamun and Ramesses II. The first historically attested expression of monotheism came during this period as Atenism. Frequent contacts with other nations brought new ideas to the New Kingdom. The country was later invaded and conquered by Libyans, Nubians and Assyrians, but native Egyptians eventually drove them out and regained control of their country.\nIn 525\u00a0BCE, the Achaemenid Empire, led by Cambyses II, began their conquest of Egypt, eventually capturing the pharaoh Psamtik III at the battle of Pelusium. Cambyses II then assumed the formal title of pharaoh, but ruled Egypt from his home of Susa in Persia (modern Iran), leaving Egypt under the control of a satrapy. The entire Twenty-seventh Dynasty of Egypt, from 525 to 402 BCE, save for Petubastis III, was an entirely Achaemenid-ruled period, with the Achaemenid emperors all being granted the title of pharaoh. A few temporarily successful revolts against the Achaemenids marked the fifth century BCE, but Egypt was never able to permanently overthrow the Achaemenids.\nThe Thirtieth Dynasty was the last native ruling dynasty during the Pharaonic epoch. It fell to the Achaemenids again in 343 BCE after the last native Pharaoh, King Nectanebo II, was defeated in battle. This Thirty-first Dynasty of Egypt, however, did not last long, as the Achaemenids were toppled several decades later by Alexander the Great. The Macedonian Greek general of Alexander, Ptolemy I Soter, founded the Ptolemaic dynasty.\nPtolemaic and Roman Egypt.\nThe Ptolemaic Kingdom was a powerful Hellenistic state, extending from southern Syria in the east, to Cyrene to the west, and south to the frontier with Nubia. Alexandria became the capital city and a centre of Greek culture and trade. To gain recognition by the native Egyptian populace, they named themselves as the successors to the Pharaohs. The later Ptolemies took on Egyptian traditions, had themselves portrayed on public monuments in Egyptian style and dress, and participated in Egyptian religious life.\nThe last ruler from the Ptolemaic line was Cleopatra VII, who committed suicide following the burial of her lover Mark Antony, after Octavian had captured Alexandria and her mercenary forces had fled.\nThe Ptolemies faced rebellions of native Egyptians and were involved in foreign and civil wars that led to the decline of the kingdom and its annexation by Rome.\nChristianity was brought to Egypt by Saint Mark the Evangelist in the 1st century. Diocletian's reign (284\u2013305 CE) marked the transition from the Roman to the Byzantine era in Egypt, when a great number of Egyptian Christians were persecuted. The New Testament had by then been translated into Egyptian. After the Council of Chalcedon in CE 451, a distinct Egyptian Coptic Church was firmly established.\nMiddle Ages (7th century \u2013 1517).\nThe Byzantines were able to regain control of the country after a brief Sasanid Persian invasion early in the 7th century amidst the Byzantine\u2013Sasanian War of 602\u2013628 during which they established a new short-lived province for ten years known as Sasanian Egypt, until 639\u201342, when Egypt was invaded and\nconquered by the Islamic caliphate by the Muslim Arabs. When they defeated the Byzantine armies in Egypt, the Arabs brought Islam to the country. Some time during this period, Egyptians began to blend in their new faith with indigenous beliefs and practices, leading to various Sufi orders that have flourished to this day. These earlier rites had survived the period of Coptic Christianity.\nIn 639 an army was sent in Egypt by the second caliph, Umar, under the command of Amr ibn al-As. They defeated a Roman army at the battle of Heliopolis. Amr next proceeded in the direction of Alexandria, which surrendered to him by a treaty signed on 8 November 641. Alexandria was regained for the Byzantine Empire in 645 but was retaken by Amr in 646. In 654 an invasion fleet sent by Constans II was repulsed.\nThe Arabs founded the capital of Egypt called Fustat, which was later burned down during the Crusades. Cairo was later built in the year 986 to grow to become the largest and richest city in the Arab caliphate, second only to Baghdad.\nThe Abbasid period was marked by new taxations, and the Copts revolted again in the fourth year of Abbasid rule. At the beginning of the 9th century the practice of ruling Egypt through a governor was resumed under Abdallah ibn Tahir, who decided to reside at Baghdad, sending a deputy to Egypt to govern for him. In 828 another Egyptian revolt broke out, and in 831 the Copts joined with native Muslims against the government. Eventually the power loss of the Abbasids in Baghdad led for general upon general to take over rule of Egypt, yet being under Abbasid allegiance, the Tulunid dynasty (868\u2013905) and Ikhshidid dynasty (935\u2013969) were among the most successful to defy the Abbasid Caliph.\nMuslim rulers remained in control of Egypt for the next six centuries, with Cairo as the seat of the Fatimid Caliphate. With the end of the Ayyubid dynasty, the Mamluks, a Turco-Circassian military caste, took control about 1250. By the late 13th century, Egypt linked the Red Sea, India, Malaya, and East Indies. The mid-14th-century Black Death killed about 40% of the country's population.\nEarly modern period: Ottoman Egypt (1517\u20131867).\nEgypt was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1517, after which it became a province of the Ottoman Empire. The defensive militarisation damaged its civil society and economic institutions. The weakening of the economic system combined with the effects of plague left Egypt vulnerable to foreign invasion. Portuguese traders took over their trade. Between 1687 and 1731, Egypt experienced six famines. The 1784 famine cost it roughly one-sixth of its population. Egypt was always a difficult province for the Ottoman Sultans to control, due in part to the continuing power and influence of the Mamluks, the Egyptian military caste who had ruled the country for centuries. Egypt remained semi-autonomous under the Mamluks until it was invaded by the French forces of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798. After the French were defeated by the British, a three-way power struggle ensued between the Ottoman Turks, Egyptian Mamluks who had ruled Egypt for centuries, and Albanian mercenaries in the service of the Ottomans. \nAfter the French were expelled, power was seized in 1805 by Muhammad Ali Pasha, an Albanian military commander of the Ottoman army in Egypt. Muhammad Ali massacred the Mamluks and established a dynasty that was to rule Egypt until the revolution of 1952. The introduction in 1820 of long-staple cotton transformed its agriculture into a cash-crop monoculture before the end of the century, concentrating land ownership and shifting production towards international markets. Muhammad Ali annexed Northern Sudan (1820\u20131824), Syria (1833), and parts of Arabia and Anatolia; but in 1841 the European powers, fearful lest he topple the Ottoman Empire itself, forced him to return most of his conquests to the Ottomans. His military ambition required him to modernise the country: he built industries, a system of canals for irrigation and transport, and reformed the civil service. He constructed a military state with around four percent of the populace serving the army to raise Egypt to a powerful positioning in the Ottoman Empire in a way showing various similarities to the Soviet strategies (without communism) conducted in the 20th century.\nMuhammad Ali Pasha evolved the military from one that convened under the tradition of the corv\u00e9e to a great modernised army. He introduced conscription of the male peasantry in 19th century Egypt, and took a novel approach to create his great army, strengthening it with numbers and in skill. Education and training of the new soldiers became mandatory; the new concepts were furthermore enforced by isolation. The men were held in barracks to avoid distraction of their growth as a military unit to be reckoned with. The resentment for the military way of life eventually faded from the men and a new ideology took hold, one of nationalism and pride. It was with the help of this newly reborn martial unit that Muhammad Ali imposed his rule over Egypt. The policy that Mohammad Ali Pasha followed during his reign explains partly why the numeracy in Egypt compared to other North-African and Middle-Eastern countries increased only at a remarkably small rate, as investment in further education only took place in the military and industrial sector. Muhammad Ali was succeeded briefly by his son Ibrahim (in September 1848), then by a grandson Abbas I (in November 1848), then by Said (in 1854), and Isma'il (in 1863) who encouraged science and agriculture and banned slavery in Egypt.\nEgypt under the Muhammad Ali dynasty remained nominally an Ottoman province. It was granted the status of an autonomous vassal state or \"Khedivate\" (1867\u20131914) in 1867. The Suez Canal, built in partnership with the French, was completed in 1869. Its construction was financed by European banks. Large sums also went to patronage and corruption. New taxes caused popular discontent. In 1875 Isma'il avoided bankruptcy by selling all Egypt's shares in the canal to the British government. Within three years this led to the imposition of British and French controllers who sat in the Egyptian cabinet, and, \"with the financial power of the bondholders behind them, were the real power in the Government\", Other circumstances like epidemic diseases (cattle disease in the 1880s), floods and wars drove the economic downturn and increased Egypt's dependency on foreign debt even further.\nLocal dissatisfaction with the Khedive and with European intrusion led to the formation of the first nationalist groupings in 1879, with Ahmed \u02bbUrabi a prominent figure. After increasing tensions and nationalist revolts, the United Kingdom invaded Egypt in 1882, crushing the Egyptian army at the Battle of Tell El Kebir and militarily occupying the country. Following this, the Khedivate became a \"de facto\" British protectorate under nominal Ottoman sovereignty. In 1899 the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium Agreement was signed: the Agreement stated that Sudan would be jointly governed by the Khedivate of Egypt and the United Kingdom. However, actual control of Sudan was in British hands only. In 1906, the Denshawai incident prompted many neutral Egyptians to join the nationalist movement.\nSultanate and Kingdom of Egypt.\nIn 1914 the Ottoman Empire entered World War I in alliance with the Central Empires; Khedive Abbas II (who had grown increasingly hostile to the British in preceding years) decided to support the motherland in war. Following such decision, the British forcibly removed him from power and replaced him with his brother Hussein Kamel. Hussein Kamel declared Egypt's independence from the Ottoman Empire, assuming the title of Sultan of Egypt. Shortly following independence, Egypt was declared a protectorate of the United Kingdom.\nAfter World War I, Saad Zaghlul and the Wafd Party led the Egyptian nationalist movement to a majority at the local Legislative Assembly. When the British exiled Zaghlul and his associates to Malta on 8 March 1919, the country arose in its first modern revolution. The revolt led the UK government to issue a unilateral declaration of Egypt's independence on 22 February 1922. Following independence from the United Kingdom, Sultan Fuad I assumed the title of King of Egypt; despite being nominally independent, the Kingdom was still under British military occupation and the UK still had great influence over the state. The new government drafted and implemented a constitution in 1923 based on a parliamentary system. The nationalist Wafd Party won a landslide victory in the 1923\u20131924 election and Saad Zaghloul was appointed as the new prime minister. In 1936, the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty was concluded and British troops withdrew from Egypt, except for the Suez Canal. The treaty did not resolve the question of Sudan, which, under the terms of the existing Anglo-Egyptian Condominium Agreement of 1899, stated that Sudan should be jointly governed by Egypt and Britain, but with real power remaining in British hands.\nBritain used Egypt as a base for Allied operations throughout the region, especially the battles in North Africa against Italy and Germany. Its highest priorities were control of the Eastern Mediterranean, and especially keeping the Suez Canal open for merchant ships and for military connections with India and Australia. When the war began in September 1939, Egypt declared martial law and broke off diplomatic relations with Germany. It broke diplomatic relations with Italy in 1940, but never declared war, even when the Italian army invaded Egypt. The Egyptian army did no fighting. In June 1940 the King dismissed Prime Minister Aly Maher, who got on poorly with the British. A new coalition Government was formed with the Independent Hassan Pasha Sabri as prime minister.\nFollowing a ministerial crisis in February 1942, the ambassador Sir Miles Lampson, pressed Farouk to have a Wafd or Wafd-coalition government replace Hussein Sirri Pasha's government. On the night of 4 February 1942, British troops and tanks surrounded Abdeen Palace in Cairo and Lampson presented Farouk with an ultimatum. Farouk capitulated, and Nahhas formed a government shortly thereafter.\nMost British troops were withdrawn to the Suez Canal area in 1947 (although the British army maintained a military base in the area), but nationalist, anti-British feelings continued to grow after the War. Anti-monarchy sentiments further increased following the disastrous performance of the Kingdom in the First Arab-Israeli War. The 1950 election saw a landslide victory of the nationalist Wafd Party and the King was forced to appoint Mostafa El-Nahas as new prime minister. In 1951 Egypt unilaterally withdrew from the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 and ordered all remaining British troops to leave the Suez Canal.\nAs the British refused to leave their base around the Suez Canal, the Egyptian government cut off the water and refused to allow food into the Suez Canal base, announced a boycott of British goods, forbade Egyptian workers from entering the base and sponsored guerrilla attacks. On 24 January 1952, Egyptian guerrillas staged a fierce attack on the British forces around the Suez Canal, during which the Egyptian Auxiliary Police were observed helping the guerrillas. In response, on 25 January, General George Erskine sent out British tanks and infantry to surround the auxiliary police station in Ismailia. The police commander called the Interior Minister, Fouad Serageddin, Nahas's right-hand man, to ask if he should surrender or fight. Serageddin ordered the police to fight \"to the last man and the last bullet\". The resulting battle saw the police station levelled and 43 Egyptian policemen killed together with 3 British soldiers. The Ismailia incident outraged Egypt. The next day, 26 January 1952 was \"Black Saturday\", as the anti-British riot was known, that saw much of downtown Cairo which the Khedive Ismail the Magnificent had rebuilt in the style of Paris, burned down. Farouk blamed the Wafd for the Black Saturday riot, and dismissed Nahas as prime minister the next day. He was replaced by Aly Maher Pasha.\nOn 22\u201323 July 1952, the Free Officers Movement, led by Muhammad Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser, launched a coup d'\u00e9tat (Egyptian Revolution of 1952) against the king. Farouk I abdicated the throne to his son Fouad II, who was, at the time, a seven-month-old baby. The Royal Family left Egypt some days later and the Council of Regency, led by Prince Muhammad Abdel Moneim was formed. The council, however, held only nominal authority and the real power was actually in the hands of the Revolutionary Command Council, led by Naguib and Nasser. Popular expectations for immediate reforms led to the workers' riots in Kafr Dawar on 12 August 1952. Following a brief experiment with civilian rule, the Free Officers abrogated the monarchy and the 1923 constitution and declared Egypt a republic on 18 June 1953. Naguib was proclaimed as president, while Nasser was appointed as the new prime minister.\nRepublican Egypt under Nasser (1952\u20131970).\nFollowing the 1952 Revolution by the Free Officers Movement, the rule of Egypt passed to military hands and all political parties were banned. On 18 June 1953, the Egyptian Republic was declared, with General Muhammad Naguib as the first President of the Republic, serving in that capacity for a little under one and a half years. Republic of Egypt (1953\u20131958) was declared.\nNaguib was forced to resign in 1954 by Gamal Abdel Nasser\u00a0\u2013 a Pan-Arabist and the real architect of the 1952 movement\u00a0\u2013 and was later put under house arrest. After Naguib's resignation, the position of president was vacant until the election of Nasser in 1956. In October 1954, Egypt and the United Kingdom agreed to abolish the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium Agreement of 1899 and grant Sudan independence; the agreement came into force on 1 January 1956. Nasser assumed power as president in June 1956 and began dominating the history of modern Egypt. British forces completed their withdrawal from the occupied Suez Canal Zone on 13 June 1956. He nationalised the Suez Canal on 26 July 1956; his hostile approach towards Israel and economic nationalism prompted the beginning of the Second Arab-Israeli War (Suez Crisis), in which Israel (with support from France and the United Kingdom) occupied the Sinai peninsula and the Canal. The war came to an end because of US and USSR diplomatic intervention and the \"status quo\" was restored.\nIn 1958, Egypt and Syria formed a sovereign union known as the United Arab Republic. The union was short-lived, ending in 1961 when Syria seceded. During most of its existence, the United Arab Republic was also in a loose confederation with North Yemen (or the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen), known as the United Arab States. In the early 1960s, Egypt became fully involved in the North Yemen Civil War. Despite several military moves and peace conferences, the war sank into a stalemate. In mid May 1967, the Soviet Union issued warnings to Nasser of an impending Israeli attack on Syria. Although the chief of staff Mohamed Fawzi verified them as \"baseless\", Nasser took three successive steps that made the war virtually inevitable: on 14 May he deployed his troops in Sinai near the border with Israel, on 19 May he expelled the UN peacekeepers stationed in the Sinai Peninsula border with Israel, and on 23 May he closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. On 26 May Nasser declared, \"The battle will be a general one and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel\".\nThis prompted the beginning of the Third Arab Israeli War (Six-Day War) in which Israel attacked Egypt, and occupied Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, which Egypt had occupied since the 1948 Arab\u2013Israeli War. During the 1967 war, an Emergency Law was enacted, and remained in effect until 2012, with the exception of an 18-month break in 1980/81. Under this law, police powers were extended, constitutional rights suspended and censorship legalised. At the time of the fall of the Egyptian monarchy in the early 1950s, less than half a million Egyptians were considered upper class and rich, four million middle class and 17 million lower class and poor. Fewer than half of all primary-school-age children attended school, most of them being boys. Nasser's policies changed this. Land reform and distribution, the dramatic growth in university education, and government support to national industries greatly improved social mobility and flattened the social curve. From academic year 1953\u201354 through 1965\u201366, overall public school enrolments more than doubled. Millions of previously poor Egyptians, through education and jobs in the public sector, joined the middle class. Doctors, engineers, teachers, lawyers, journalists, constituted the bulk of the swelling middle class in Egypt under Nasser. During the 1960s, the Egyptian economy went from sluggish to the verge of collapse, the society became less free, and Nasser's appeal waned considerably.\nEgypt under Sadat and Mubarak (1971\u20132011).\n In 1970, President Nasser died and was succeeded by Anwar Sadat. During his period, Sadat switched Egypt's Cold War allegiance from the Soviet Union to the United States, expelling the Soviet advisors in 1972. Egypt was renamed as Arab Republic of Egypt in 1971. Sadat launched the Infitah economic reform policy, while clamping down on religious and secular opposition. In 1973, Egypt, along with Syria, launched the Fourth Arab-Israeli War (Yom Kippur War), a surprise attack to regain part of the Sinai territory Israel had captured 6 years earlier. In 1975, Sadat shifted Nasser's economic policies and sought to use his popularity to reduce government regulations and encourage foreign investment through his programme of Infitah. Through this policy, incentives such as reduced taxes and import tariffs attracted some investors, but investments were mainly directed at low risk and profitable ventures like tourism and construction, abandoning Egypt's infant industries. Because of the elimination of subsidies on basic foodstuffs, it led to the 1977 Egyptian Bread Riots. Sadat made a historic visit to Israel in 1977, which led to the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from Sinai. In return, Egypt recognised Israel as a legitimate sovereign state. Sadat's initiative sparked enormous controversy in the Arab world and led to Egypt's expulsion from the Arab League, but it was supported by most Egyptians. Sadat was assassinated by an Islamic extremist in October 1981. \nHosni Mubarak came to power after the assassination of Sadat in a referendum in which he was the only candidate. He became another leader to dominate the Egyptian history. Hosni Mubarak reaffirmed Egypt's relationship with Israel yet eased the tensions with Egypt's Arab neighbours. Domestically, Mubarak faced serious problems. Mass poverty and unemployment led rural families to stream into cities like Cairo where they ended up in crowded slums, barely managing to survive. On 25 February 1986, the Security Police started rioting, protesting against reports that their term of duty was to be extended from 3 to 4 years. Hotels, nightclubs, restaurants and casinos were attacked in Cairo and there were riots in other cities. A day time curfew was imposed. It took the army 3 days to restore order. 107 people were killed.\nIn the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, terrorist attacks in Egypt became numerous and severe, and began to target Christian Copts, foreign tourists and government officials. In the 1990s an Islamist group, Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, engaged in an extended campaign of violence, from the murders and attempted murders of prominent writers and intellectuals, to the repeated targeting of tourists and foreigners. Serious damage was done to the largest sector of Egypt's economy\u2014tourism\u2014and in turn to the government, but it also devastated the livelihoods of many of the people on whom the group depended for support. During Mubarak's reign, the political scene was dominated by the National Democratic Party, which was created by Sadat in 1978. It passed the 1993 Syndicates Law, 1995 Press Law, and 1999 Nongovernmental Associations Law which hampered freedoms of association and expression by imposing new regulations and draconian penalties on violations. As a result, by the late 1990s parliamentary politics had become virtually irrelevant and alternative avenues for political expression were curtailed as well. Cairo grew into a metropolitan area with a population of over 20 million.\nOn 17 November 1997, 62 people, mostly tourists, were massacred near Luxor. In late February 2005, Mubarak announced a reform of the presidential election law, paving the way for multi-candidate polls for the first time since the 1952 movement. However, the new law placed restrictions on the candidates, and led to Mubarak's easy re-election victory. Voter turnout was less than 25%. Election observers also alleged government interference in the election process. After the election, Mubarak imprisoned Ayman Nour, the runner-up.\nHuman Rights Watch's 2006 report on Egypt detailed serious human rights violations under Mubarak's rule, including routine torture, arbitrary detentions and trials before military and state security courts. In 2007, Amnesty International released a report alleging that Egypt had become an international centre for torture, where other nations send suspects for interrogation, often as part of the War on Terror. Egypt's foreign ministry quickly issued a rebuttal to this report. Constitutional changes voted on 19 March 2007 prohibited parties from using religion as a basis for political activity, allowed the drafting of a new anti-terrorism law, authorised broad police powers of arrest and surveillance, and gave the president power to dissolve parliament and end judicial election monitoring. In 2009, Dr. Ali El Deen Hilal Dessouki, Media Secretary of the National Democratic Party (NDP), described Egypt as a \"pharaonic\" political system, and democracy as a \"long-term goal\". Dessouki also stated that \"the real centre of power in Egypt is the military\".\nRevolution, political crisis and transition (2011\u2013present).\nOn 25 January 2011, widespread protests began against Mubarak's government. On 11 February 2011, Mubarak resigned and fled Cairo. Jubilant celebrations broke out in Cairo's Tahrir Square at the news. The Egyptian military then assumed the power to govern. Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, became the \"de facto\" interim head of state. On 13 February 2011, the military dissolved the parliament and suspended the constitution.\nA constitutional referendum was held on 19 March 2011. On 28 November 2011, Egypt held its first parliamentary election since the previous regime had been in power. Turnout was high and there were no reports of major irregularities or violence.\nMohamed Morsi, who was affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, was elected president on 24 June 2012. On 30 June 2012, Mohamed Morsi was sworn in as Egypt's president. On 2 August 2012, Egypt's prime minister Hisham Qandil announced his 35-member cabinet comprising 28 newcomers, including four from the Muslim Brotherhood. Liberal and secular groups walked out of the constituent assembly because they believed that it would impose strict Islamic practices, while Muslim Brotherhood backers threw their support behind Morsi. On 22 November 2012, President Morsi issued a temporary declaration immunising his decrees from challenge and seeking to protect the work of the constituent assembly.\nThe move led to massive protests and violent action throughout Egypt. On 5 December 2012, tens of thousands of supporters and opponents of President Morsi clashed, in what was described as the largest violent battle between Islamists and their foes since the country's revolution. Mohamed Morsi offered a \"national dialogue\" with opposition leaders but refused to cancel the December 2012 constitutional referendum. On 3 July 2013, after a wave of public discontent with autocratic excesses of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood government, the military removed Morsi from office, dissolved the Shura Council and installed a temporary interim government.\nOn 4 July 2013, 68-year-old Chief Justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt Adly Mansour was sworn in as acting president over the new government following the removal of Morsi. The new Egyptian authorities cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters, jailing thousands and forcefully dispersing pro-Morsi and pro-Brotherhood protests. Many of the Muslim Brotherhood leaders and activists have either been sentenced to death or life imprisonment in a series of mass trials. On 18 January 2014, the interim government instituted a new constitution following a referendum approved by an overwhelming majority of voters (98.1%). 38.6% of registered voters participated in the referendum a higher number than the 33% who voted in a referendum during Morsi's tenure.\nIn the elections of June 2014, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi won with a percentage of 96.1%. On 8 June 2014, Abdel Fatah el-Sisi was officially sworn in as Egypt's new president. Under President el-Sisi, Egypt has implemented a rigorous policy of controlling the border to the Gaza Strip, including the dismantling of tunnels between the Gaza strip and Sinai. In April 2018, El-Sisi was re-elected by a landslide in election with no real opposition. In April 2019, Egypt's parliament extended presidential terms from four to six years. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was also allowed to run for a third term in the next election in 2024.\nUnder El-Sisi Egypt is said to have returned to authoritarianism. New constitutional reforms have been implemented, meaning strengthening the role of military and limiting the political opposition. The constitutional changes were accepted in a referendum in April 2019. In December 2020, final results of the parliamentary election confirmed a clear majority of the seats for Egypt's Mostaqbal Watan (Nation's Future) Party, which strongly supports president El-Sisi. The party even increased its majority, partly because of new electoral rules.\nGeography.\nEgypt lies primarily between latitudes 22\u00b0 and 32\u00b0N, and longitudes 25\u00b0 and 35\u00b0E. At , it is the world's 30th-largest country. Due to the extreme aridity of Egypt's climate, population centres are concentrated along the narrow Nile Valley and Delta, meaning that about 99% of the population uses about 5.5% of the total land area. 98% of Egyptians live on 3% of the territory.\nEgypt is bordered by Libya to the west, the Sudan to the south, and the Gaza Strip and Israel to the east. A transcontinental nation, it possesses a land bridge (the Isthmus of Suez) between Africa and Asia, traversed by a navigable waterway (the Suez Canal) that connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Indian Ocean by way of the Red Sea.\nApart from the Nile Valley, the majority of Egypt's landscape is desert, with a few oases scattered about. Winds create prolific sand dunes that peak at more than high. Egypt includes parts of the Sahara desert and of the Libyan Desert.\nSinai peninsula hosts the highest mountain in Egypt, Mount Catherine at 2,642 metres. The Red Sea Riviera, on the east of the peninsula, is renowned for its wealth of coral reefs and marine life.\nTowns and cities include Alexandria, the second largest city; Aswan; Asyut; Cairo, the modern Egyptian capital and largest city; El Mahalla El Kubra; Giza, the site of the Pyramid of Khufu; Hurghada; Luxor; Kom Ombo; Port Safaga; Port Said; Sharm El Sheikh; Suez, where the south end of the Suez Canal is located; Zagazig; and Minya. Oases include Bahariya, Dakhla, Farafra, Kharga and Siwa. Protectorates include Ras Mohamed National Park, Zaranik Protectorate and Siwa.\nOn 13 March 2015, plans for a proposed new capital of Egypt were announced.\nClimate.\nMost of Egypt's rain falls in the winter months. South of Cairo, rainfall averages only around per year and at intervals of many years. On a very thin strip of the northern coast the rainfall can be as high as , mostly between October and March. Snow falls on Sinai's mountains and some of the north coastal cities such as Damietta, Baltim and Sidi Barrani, and rarely in Alexandria. A very small amount of snow fell on Cairo on 13 December 2013, the first time in many decades. Frost is also known in mid-Sinai and mid-Egypt.\nEgypt has an unusually hot, sunny and dry climate. Average high temperatures are high in the north but very to extremely high in the rest of the country during summer. The cooler Mediterranean winds consistently blow over the northern sea coast, which helps to get more moderated temperatures, especially at the height of the summertime. The Khamaseen is a hot, dry wind that originates from the vast deserts in the south and blows in the spring or in the early summer. It brings scorching sand and dust particles, and usually brings daytime temperatures over and sometimes over in the interior, while the relative humidity can drop to 5% or even less.\nPrior to the construction of the Aswan Dam, the Nile flooded annually, replenishing Egypt's soil. This gave Egypt a consistent harvest throughout the years.\nEgypt's hot and arid climate is increasingly strained by climate change, leading to extreme temperatures, droughts, floods, and rising sea levels. As a highly vulnerable nation, these environmental shifts threaten food security, water availability, public health, and economic stability.\nBiodiversity.\nEgypt signed the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity on 9 June 1992, and became a party to the convention on 2 June 1994. It has subsequently produced a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, which was received by the convention on 31 July 1998. Where many CBD National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans neglect biological kingdoms apart from animals and plants,\nThe plan stated that the following numbers of species of different groups had been recorded from Egypt: algae (1483 species), animals (about 15,000 species of which more than 10,000 were insects), fungi (more than 627 species), monera (319 species), plants (2426 species), protozoans (371 species). For some major groups, for example lichen-forming fungi and nematode worms, the number was not known. Apart from small and well-studied groups like amphibians, birds, fish, mammals and reptiles, the many of those numbers are likely to increase as further species are recorded from Egypt. For the fungi, including lichen-forming species, for example, subsequent work has shown that over 2200 species have been recorded from Egypt, and the final figure of all fungi actually occurring in the country is expected to be much higher. For the grasses, 284 native and naturalised species have been identified and recorded in Egypt.\nGovernment.\nThe House of Representatives, whose members are elected to serve five-year terms, specialises in legislation. Elections were held between November 2011 and January 2012, which were later dissolved.\nAfter a wave of public discontent with the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Mohamed Morsi, on 3 July 2013 then-General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi announced the removal of Morsi from office and the suspension of the constitution. A 50-member constitution committee was formed for modifying the constitution, which was later published for public voting and was adopted on 18 January 2014.\nThe next parliamentary election was announced to be held within 6 months of the constitution's ratification on 18 January 2014, and were held in two phases, from 17 October to 2 December 2015. Originally, the parliament was to be formed before the president was elected, but interim president Adly Mansour pushed the date. The 2014 Egyptian presidential election took place on 26\u201328 May. Official figures showed a turnout of 25,578,233 or 47.5%, with Abdel Fattah el-Sisi winning with 23.78 million votes, or 96.9% compared to 757,511 (3.1%) for Hamdeen Sabahi.\nIn 2024, as part of its Freedom in the World report, Freedom House rated political rights in Egypt at 6 (with 40 representing the most free and 0 the least), and civil liberties at 12 (with 60 being the highest score and 0 the lowest), which gave it the freedom rating of \"Not Free\". According to the 2023 V-Dem Democracy indices Egypt is the eighth least democratic country in Africa. The 2023 edition of The Economist Democracy Index categorises Egypt as an \"authoritarian regime\", with a score of 2.93.\nEgypt has the oldest continuous parliamentary tradition in the Arab world. The first popular assembly was established in 1866. It was disbanded as a result of the British occupation of 1882, and the British allowed only a consultative body to sit. In 1923, however, after the country's independence was declared, a new constitution provided for a parliamentary monarchy.\nForeign relations.\nEgypt\u2019s foreign policy is shaped by its strategic geographical position, historical legacy, and diplomatic influence in Africa, the Mediterranean, and Southwest Asia. As a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement and the United Nations, Egypt has maintained a non-aligned stance while playing a pivotal role in regional diplomacy. Cairo, historically a crossroads of commerce and culture, remains a center of intellectual and political influence in the region.\nThe United States has been a key partner, providing Egypt with US$1.3 billion in annual military assistance as of 2015. In 1989, Egypt was designated a major non-NATO ally, but relations soured following the 2013 Egyptian coup d'\u00e9tat, as the Obama administration criticized Egypt\u2019s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and suspended joint military exercises. Under President Donald Trump, relations improved, with Abdel Fattah el-Sisi\u2019s 2017 visit to the White House marking the first by an Egyptian president in eight years.\nRelations with Russia strengthened after Morsi\u2019s removal, with both nations expanding military cooperation and trade relations. Similarly, relations with China have deepened, culminating in the establishment of a \"comprehensive strategic partnership\" in 2014.\nIn 2024 Egypt and the European Union elevated their relationship to a \"strategic and comprehensive partnership\", emphasizing political cooperation, and economic collaboration. Additionally, both sides are working on deepening trade relations under the Association Agreement, supporting Egypt\u2019s economic stability, and strengthening counterterrorism efforts.\nEgypt remains an influential mediator in Middle Eastern conflicts, particularly in brokering ceasefires in Gaza and facilitating the Israeli\u2013Palestinian peace process. It is also a Member State of the African Union and the Arab League, hosting the Arab League headquarters in Cairo. The Arab League temporarily moved to Tunis in 1978 in protest of Egypt\u2019s Egypt\u2013Israel peace treaty, but returned to Cairo in 1989. Egypt has also cultivated strong economic ties with Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both of which have provided billions of dollars in financial assistance.\nMilitary.\nThe Egyptian Armed Forces constitute Egypt\u2019s military establishment, comprising the Egyptian Army, Navy, Air Force, and Air Defense Forces under the direct supervision of the Chief of Staff, with their headquarters at the State Strategic Command Center, commonly known as the Octagon, in the New Administrative Capital. The military primarily oversees external defense but also plays a domestic role, assisting police in protecting vital infrastructure during emergencies and counterterrorism operations. They also participate in foreign peacekeeping missions and engage in bilateral and multinational military exercises.\nThe military wields significant political influence, operating autonomously and remaining exempt from many civilian laws. A significant amount of military information is not made publicly available, including budget information, the names of the general officers and the military's size (which is considered a state secret).\nIn addition, the military is a major driver of Egypt\u2019s economic landscape, engaging in infrastructure development, consumer goods production, and real estate holdings through the National Service Projects Organization. The defense industry is also well-established, manufacturing small arms, armored vehicles, and naval vessels, while maintaining licensed production agreements with countries such as Germany and the United States.\nWith an active personnel strength of 438,500 and 479,000 reservists, it is one of the largest and best-equipped militaries in the region. The military operates a diverse arsenal consisting of modern Western, Soviet-era, and domestically produced equipment, sourced primarily from China, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and the United States. Recent efforts have focused on modernization and procurement of advanced weaponry. Egypt is believed to be the second country in the region to possess spy satellites, launching EgyptSat 1 in 2007, followed by EgyptSat 2 in 2014. In 2023 it launched MisrSat-2, followed by Horus-1 in 2025, both high-resolution spy satellites.\nConscription is mandatory for men aged 18\u201330, with service obligations ranging from 14 to 36 months, depending on educational level, followed by a nine-year reserve duty. Voluntary enlistment is possible from age 16 for men and 17 for women.\nLaw.\nThe legal system is based on Islamic and civil law (particularly Napoleonic codes); and judicial review by a Supreme Court, which accepts compulsory International Court of Justice jurisdiction only with reservations.\nIslamic jurisprudence is the principal source of legislation. Sharia courts and qadis are run and licensed by the Ministry of Justice. The personal status law that regulates matters such as marriage, divorce and child custody is governed by Sharia. In a family court, a woman's testimony is worth half of a man's testimony.\nOn 26 December 2012, the Muslim Brotherhood attempted to institutionalise a controversial new constitution. It was approved by the public in a referendum held 15\u201322 December 2012 with 64% support, but with only 33% electorate participation. It replaced the 2011 Provisional Constitution of Egypt, adopted following the revolution.\nThe Penal code was unique as it contains a \"Blasphemy Law\". The present court system allows a death penalty including against an absent individual tried \"in absentia\". Several Americans and Canadians were sentenced to death in 2012.\nOn 18 January 2014, the interim government successfully institutionalised a more secular constitution. The president is elected to a four-year term and may serve 2 terms. The parliament may impeach the president. Under the constitution, there is a guarantee of gender equality and absolute freedom of thought. The military retains the ability to appoint the national Minister of Defence for the next two full presidential terms since the constitution took effect. Under the constitution, political parties may not be based on \"religion, race, gender or geography\".\nHuman rights.\nThe National Council for Human Rights was established in 2003, but it has faced criticism from activists who argue it serves as a government propaganda tool to justify human rights violations and repressive laws such as the Emergency Law.\nEgypt has been ranked among the worst countries for religious freedom, with widespread discrimination against minorities such as Coptic Christians, Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds, and other Muslim sects. A 2009 report by Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life ranked Egypt fifth worst globally for religious freedom, while the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has placed Egypt on its watch list due to state-tolerated violations. A 2010 Pew survey found that 84% of Egyptians supported the death penalty for apostasy, 77% backed amputations for theft, and 82% endorsed stoning for adultery.\nSince the 2013 Egyptian coup d'\u00e9tat, political repression has intensified, with mass arrests and harsh crackdowns on dissent. During the August 2013 sit-in dispersal, 595 protesters were killed, making 14 August 2013 the deadliest day in Egypt\u2019s modern history. Since then, an estimated 60,000 political prisoners remain behind bars.\nEgypt has also drawn international condemnation for mass death sentences, including a 2014 ruling sentencing 529 people to death in a single hearing. The United Nations and human rights groups have condemned these trials as gross violations of international law.\nHomosexuality remains de facto criminalized, with 95% of Egyptians opposing its acceptance, according to a 2013 Pew survey. A poll by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, based on assessments from specialists in women\u2019s rights, ranked Cairo as the worst megacity for women, evaluating cities on sexual harassment, healthcare access, harmful cultural practices, and economic opportunities.\nFreedom of the press.\nReporters Without Borders ranked Egypt in their 2017 World Press Freedom Index at No. 160 out of 180 nations. At least 18 journalists were imprisoned in Egypt, as of August\u00a02015[ [update]]. A new anti-terror law was enacted in August 2015 that threatens members of the media with fines ranging from about US$25,000 to $60,000 for the distribution of wrong information on acts of terror inside the country \"that differ from official declarations of the Egyptian Department of Defence\".\nAdministrative divisions.\nEgypt is divided into 27 governorates. The governorates are further divided into regions. The regions contain towns and villages. Each governorate has a capital, sometimes carrying the same name as the governorate.\nEconomy.\nThe economy of Egypt is the second-largest in Africa and ranks 39th worldwide as of 2024. It is a major emerging market economy, marked by its membership in organizations like the African Union, Arab League, BRICS, and its participation in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). The Egyptian economy has evolved significantly since the early 2000s, transitioning toward a market-oriented system through fiscal and monetary reforms, privatization efforts, and foreign investment incentives. These measures have contributed to macroeconomic stability and improved unemployment and poverty rates.\nEgypt\u2019s industrial base is diverse, encompassing chemical production, electronics, mining, steel, automotive manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and textiles. The chemical industry is one of Egypt\u2019s largest, comprising plastics, rubber, paper, detergents, paints, fertilizers, and glass. Petrochemicals alone contribute around 12% of industrial output, valued at approximately $7 billion annually. With projected exports of $9 billion in 2024, the government supports the sector through infrastructure development, technology investments, and trade agreements. In electronics and home appliances, Egypt has positioned itself as a manufacturing hub through initiatives such as \"Egypt Makes Electronics,\" with many international companies setting up factories in the country, including Electrolux, Samsung, Hisense, Beko, and Haier. Egypt is Africa\u2019s top steel producer, ranking 20th globally, with 9.8 million tons in 2022 and exports tripling to 1.54 million tons in 2023.\nEgypt's automotive industry, led by state-owned El Nasr Automotive Manufacturing Company and private firms like Ghabbour Group and MCV, has expanded through partnerships with global manufacturers, producing a range of passenger and commercial vehicles for both local and export markets. The government\u2019s 2024\u20132030 strategy aims to increase production to 500,000 vehicles annually, boost exports, and establish local electric vehicle manufacturing by 2025, integrating EVs into public transportation and fostering an automotive hub for regional and international markets.\nEgypt's gold mining industry has expanded rapidly, driven by untapped reserves and government-led reforms aimed at modernizing the sector. The launch of international bid rounds marked a shift towards private sector participation, attracting major players such as AngloGold Ashanti and Alexander Nubia International. The Sukari mine, Egypt\u2019s first large-scale modern gold operation, became the centerpiece of these efforts, contributing significantly to production. The government has since introduced structural reforms to increase mining\u2019s GDP share to 5\u20136% by 2030, including digitization initiatives and investment-friendly policies. These measures have fueled a surge in gold exports, reaching $2.17 billion in 2024, nearly double the previous year, with Egypt aiming to rank among the world's top 10 gold exporters by 2027.\nEgypt\u2019s agricultural sector remains essential to its economy, though its share of GDP and employment has declined over time. Egypt produces substantial quantities of wheat, maize, sugarcane, fruits, vegetables, fodder, and rice, yet remains reliant on wheat and maize imports, primarily from Ukraine and Russia, despite yield improvements since 1970. This dependency stems from high domestic demand, driven by subsidies and a culinary preference for bread, as well as Egypt\u2019s limited arable land and its emphasis on high-value export crops. The Aswan High Dam, completed in 1971, significantly improved irrigation stability. As of 2010, 3.6 million hectares were cultivated, with the government targeting 4.8 million hectares by 2030. Major initiatives include the New Delta and Toshka Project, designed to convert desert areas into farmland using advanced irrigation techniques, wastewater treatment, groundwater and water desalination. Efforts to deregulate agriculture have improved price alignment with global markets, but climate change and water scarcity continue to pose long-term challenges.\nEgypt is among the world\u2019s top five recipients of remittances, which reached $23.7 billion in the first 10 months of 2024, a 45.3% increase from the previous year. These inflows are crucial for Egypt\u2019s foreign reserves and household incomes. Since 1979, Egypt has received substantial United States foreign aid, averaging $1.5 billion annually, with approximately $200 million allocated to economic assistance and the remainder directed toward military aid for procuring weapon systems from American suppliers.\nOne of Egypt's most significant economic events in recent years was the currency flotation in 2024, which led to a 38% depreciation of the national currency, the Egyptian pound, after securing over $50 billion in international financing. This action, along with strategic agreements with the IMF, World Bank, EU, and Gulf states, improved Egypt\u2019s credit outlook. The government also implemented fiscal measures to raise the tax-to-revenue ratio and accelerate the privatization of state-owned companies to strengthen public finances. As a result, in the final quarter of 2024, private investment in Egypt exceeded public investment for the second consecutive quarter, accounting for more than half of the total investment volume. Private investment rose by 35.4% year-on-year, while public investment declined by 25.7%. This shift represents a significant rebalancing of Egypt's economic landscape, marking a notable departure from the dominance of public investments in the country's recent economic history.\nTourism.\nTourism is one of the most important sectors in Egypt's economy. 2024 saw a record 15.7 million tourists, surpassing 14.9 million in 2023. This growth, driven by government efforts to enhance security and tourism support, reflects a strong recovery from the pandemic-induced decline of 2020. Tourism revenues have also surged, reaching $14.1 billion, reflecting steady improvement over previous years.\nEgypt\u2019s tourism strategy aims to attract 30 million tourists by 2028, with a focus on infrastructure improvements, high-profile projects like the Grand Egyptian Museum, and enhancing visitor experiences. In 2024, the country\u2019s top tourism markets included Germany, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.\nThe Giza Necropolis is one of Egypt's best-known tourist attractions; it is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still in existence.\nEgypt's beaches on the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, which extend to over , are also popular tourist destinations; the Gulf of Aqaba beaches, Safaga, Sharm el-Sheikh, Hurghada, Luxor, Dahab, Ras Sidr and Marsa Alam are popular sites.\nEnergy.\nEgypt has a diversified energy sector based primarily on coal, oil, natural gas, and hydropower. Coal deposits in northeastern Sinai produce around annually. Egypt's oil production is concentrated in the Western Desert, the Gulf of Suez, and the Nile Delta, with peak crude oil output reaching approximately in 1993 before declining to by 2008. This decline transformed Egypt into a net oil importer by 2008\u20132009, prompting a strategic shift toward natural gas.\nNatural gas has since become crucial to Egypt\u2019s economy, attracting substantial foreign investment and governmental prioritization of petrochemical industries and gas exports. In 2009, around 38% of domestically produced natural gas was allocated for export. However, rising domestic demand led Egypt to prioritize local consumption over exports by 2014, significantly reducing gas available for international markets.\nIn 2015, Eni discovered the Zohr gas field, the largest natural gas reserve in the Mediterranean, with approximately 30 trillion cubic feet of gas. Production commenced in December 2017, reaching 2.7 billion cubic feet per day (bcf/d) by 2019, significantly improving Egypt\u2019s energy prospects. However, recent technical issues have reduced output from Zohr, prompting Egypt to secure additional gas imports from Cyprus to maintain exports to Europe through its LNG terminals. New drilling operations are planned to recover Zohr's production capacity.\nInternational oil companies, notably BP, have invested heavily in Egypt's natural gas development. In 2015, BP committed $12 billion primarily toward the West Nile Delta project, currently producing nearly 1 bcf/d, alongside other significant fields such as Atoll (300 million cubic feet per day) and North Damietta, with production from the Qattameya discovery beginning in 2020.\nEgypt is currently constructing its first nuclear power facility, the El Dabaa Nuclear Power Plant, in the northern coastal region, financed by a US$25 billion loan from Russia.\nTransport.\nTransport in Egypt is primarily concentrated around Cairo, following the Nile River\u2019s settlement patterns. The country\u2019s railway network is operated by Egyptian National Railways, with its main line running from Alexandria to Aswan. In 2021, Egypt launched a $4.5 billion high-speed rail project to connect Ain Sokhna, Mersa Matruh, and Alexandria, later expanding to include routes linking Greater Cairo to Aswan and Luxor to Hurghada and Safaga.\nThe Cairo Metro currently operates three lines, with a fourth line under construction and plans for additional expansions in the future. Meanwhile, two monorail lines are also being built in the city, along with a metro system in Alexandria.\nEgypt has also undertaken major road infrastructure expansion through the National Roads Project, increasing the total length of main roads by nearly 30% from 23,500\u00a0km in 2014 to 30,500\u00a0km in 2024. Alongside constructing new highways, thousands of kilometers of roads have been upgraded, leading to improvements in Egypt\u2019s Road Quality Index, which rose from 118th place in 2015 to 18th place in 2024.\nEgypt\u2019s aviation sector is led by EgyptAir, the country\u2019s flag carrier and largest airline, founded in 1932 by Talaat Harb. Now state-owned, EgyptAir operates from its Cairo International Airport hub, with scheduled passenger and cargo services to over 75 destinations across the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The airline's current fleet consists of 80 aircraft.\nThe Suez Canal, an artificial sea-level waterway, connects the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, enabling direct shipping between Europe and Asia without navigating around Africa. In 2023 it generated a record $9.4 billion in revenue for Egypt. Opened in November 1869, the canal runs from Port Said in the north to Port Tawfiq in the south, with Ismailia situated west of its midpoint. The canal is deep and wide as of 2010[ [update]], consisting of a northern access channel, a main section, and a southern access channel. The Ballah By-Pass and the Great Bitter Lake provide passing points along the canal, which operates without locks, allowing seawater to flow freely. Expansions completed in 2015 increased its daily capacity from 49 to 97 ships, reducing transit times and boosting global maritime trade.\nOn 26 August 2014, Egypt proposed the New Suez Canal, a parallel shipping lane aimed at increasing traffic capacity. The project was completed in July 2015, and the official inauguration took place on 6 August 2015, marked by international attendance and military flyovers.\nWater supply and sanitation.\nEgypt's water supply is heavily dependent on the Nile River, which provides approximately 90% of the country\u2019s total water resources, with an annual share of 55 billion cubic meters, unchanged since 1954. An additional 0.5 billion cubic meters comes from non-renewable groundwater sources. However, national demand exceeds 90 billion cubic meters annually, creating a persistent water deficit. As a result, Egypt's per capita water share fell to 570 cubic meters in 2018, well below the 1,000 cubic meter international water scarcity threshold. To address this, the government has prioritized efficient water management, particularly in response to population growth and agricultural expansion.\nDespite these challenges, water access has significantly improved. Between 1990 and 2010, piped water coverage rose from 89% to 100% in urban areas and from 39% to 93% in rural areas, eliminating open defecation in rural regions and achieving near-universal access to an improved water source. By 2015, 90% of the population had access to safely managed drinking water, increasing to 96.9% by 2019. Similarly, proper sanitation coverage expanded from 50% in 2015 to 66.2% in 2019, while the percentage of treated wastewater relative to total wastewater rose from 50% to 68.7% in the same period, reaching 74% in 2022. However, gaps in sanitation infrastructure have historically led to health concerns, with a 2007 report estimating 17,000 child deaths annually from diarrheal diseases linked to poor sanitation.\nEgypt has made significant investments in wastewater treatment infrastructure as part of its broader water management strategy. In 2021, the Bahr El Baqar Wastewater Treatment Plant was completed, becoming the largest in the world at the time, with a capacity of 5 million cubic meters per day. The treated water from this facility is allocated to irrigating 342,000 acres under the Sinai Peninsula Development Plan. In 2023, Egypt inaugurated the New Delta Wastewater Treatment Plant, surpassing Bahr El Baqar as the largest wastewater facility globally, with a capacity of 7.5 million cubic meters per day. A key component of Egypt\u2019s agricultural expansion strategy, the plant supports the New Delta reclamation project while also reducing pollution in Lake Mariout and the Mediterranean Sea.\nGiven Egypt\u2019s arid climate and lack of appreciable rainfall, agriculture is entirely dependent on irrigation. The Nile River, regulated by the Aswan High Dam, releases an annual average of 55 billion cubic meters, of which 46 billion cubic meters are diverted into irrigation canals. This irrigation sustains 33,600 square kilometers (13,000 square miles) of agricultural land in the Nile Valley and Nile Delta, producing an average of 1.8 crops per year.\nDemographics.\nEgypt is the most populated country in the Arab world and the third most populous on the African continent, with about 95 million inhabitants as of 2017[ [update]]. Its population grew rapidly from 1970 to 2010 due to medical advances and increases in agricultural productivity enabled by the Green Revolution. Egypt's population was estimated at 3 million when Napoleon invaded the country in 1798. The great majority of its people live near the banks of the Nile River, an area of about , where the only arable land is found. The large regions of the Sahara desert, which constitute most of Egypt's territory, are sparsely inhabited. About 43% of Egypt's residents live across the country's urban areas, with most spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria and other major cities in the Nile Delta.\nEgypt's people are highly urbanised, being concentrated along the Nile (notably Cairo and Alexandria), in the Delta and near the Suez Canal. Egyptians are divided demographically into those who live in the major urban centres and the fellahin, or farmers, that reside in rural villages. The total inhabited area constitutes only 77,041 km\u00b2, putting the physiological density at over 1,200 people per km2, similar to Bangladesh.\nWhile emigration was restricted under Nasser, thousands of Egyptian professionals were dispatched abroad in the context of the Arab Cold War. Egyptian emigration was liberalised in 1971, under President Sadat, reaching record numbers after the 1973 oil crisis. An estimated 2.7 million Egyptians live abroad. Approximately 70% of Egyptian migrants live in Arab countries (923,600 in Saudi Arabia, 332,600 in Libya, 226,850 in Jordan, 190,550 in Kuwait with the rest elsewhere in the region) and the remaining 30% reside mostly in Europe and North America (318,000 in the United States, 110,000 in Canada and 90,000 in Italy). The process of emigrating to non-Arab states has been ongoing since the 1950s.\nEthnic groups.\nEthnic Egyptians are by far the largest ethnic group in the country, constituting 99.7% of the total population. Ethnic minorities include the Abazas, Turks, Greeks, Bedouin Arab tribes living in the eastern deserts and the Sinai Peninsula, the Berber-speaking Siwis (Amazigh) of the Siwa Oasis, and the Nubian communities clustered along the Nile. There are also tribal Beja communities concentrated in the southeasternmost corner of the country, and a number of Dom clans mostly in the Nile Delta and Faiyum who are progressively becoming assimilated as urbanisation increases.\nEgypt hosts a migrant population of over 9 million, constituting 8.7% of the country\u2019s total population, according to the International Organization for Migration. These migrants originate from 133 countries, with the largest groups being Sudanese (4 million), Syrians (1.5 million), Yemenis (1 million), and Libyans (1 million), collectively making up 80% of all international migrants in Egypt.\nLanguages.\nThe official language of Egypt is Literary Arabic. The spoken languages are: Egyptian Arabic (68%), Sa'idi Arabic (29%), Eastern Egyptian Bedawi Arabic (1.6%), Sudanese Arabic (0.6%), Domari (0.3%), Nobiin (0.3%), Beja (0.1%), Siwi and others. Additionally, Greek, Armenian and Italian, and more recently, African languages like Amharic and Tigrigna are the main languages of immigrants.\nThe main foreign languages taught in schools, by order of popularity, are English, French, German and Italian.\nHistorically Egyptian was spoken, the latest stage of which is Coptic Egyptian. Spoken Coptic was mostly extinct by the 17th century but may have survived in isolated pockets in Upper Egypt as late as the 19th century. It remains in use as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. It forms a separate branch among the family of Afroasiatic languages.\nReligion.\nIslam is the state religion of Egypt, and the country has the largest Muslim population in the Arab world and the world's sixth largest Muslim population, accounting for five percent of all Muslims worldwide. Egypt also has the largest Christian population in the Middle East and North Africa. Official data about religion is lacking due to social and political sensitivities. An estimated 85\u201390% are identified as Muslim, 10\u201315% as Coptic Christians, and 1% as other Christian denominations; other estimates place the Christian population as high as 15\u201320%.\nEgypt was an early and leading centre of Christianity into late antiquity; the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria was founded in the first century and remains the largest church in the country. With the arrival of Islam in the seventh century, the country was gradually Islamised into a majority-Muslim country. It is unknown when Muslims reached a majority, variously estimated from c.\u20091000 CE to as late as the 14th century. Egypt emerged as a centre of politics and culture in the Muslim world. Under Anwar Sadat, Islam became the official state religion and Sharia the main source of law.\nThe majority of Egyptian Muslims adhere to the Sunni branch of Islam. Nondenominational Muslims form roughly 12% of the population. There is also a Shi'a minority. The Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs estimates the Shia population at 1 to 2.2 million and could measure as much as 3 million. The Ahmadiyya population is estimated at less than 50,000, whereas the Salafi (ultra-conservative Sunni) population is estimated at five to six million. Cairo is famous for its numerous mosque minarets and has been dubbed \"The City of 1,000 Minarets\". The city also hosts Al-Azhar University, which is considered the preeminent institution of Islamic higher learning and jurisprudence; founded in the late tenth century, it is by some measures the second oldest continuously operating university in the world. It is estimated that 15 million Egyptians follow native Sufi orders, with Sufi leadership asserting that the numbers are much greater, as many Egyptian Sufis are not officially registered with a Sufi order. At least 305 people were killed during a November 2017 attack on a Sufi mosque in Sinai.\nOf the Christian population in Egypt over 90% belong to the native Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, an Oriental Orthodox Christian Church. Other native Egyptian Christians are adherents of the Coptic Catholic Church, the Evangelical Church of Egypt and various other Protestant denominations. Non-native Christian communities are largely found in the urban regions of Cairo and Alexandria, such as the Syro-Lebanese, who belong to Greek Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Maronite Catholic denominations.\nThe Egyptian government recognises only three religions: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Other faiths and minority Muslim sects, such as the small Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith and Ahmadiyya communities, are not recognised by the state and face persecution by the government, which labels these groups a threat to Egypt's national security. Individuals, particularly Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00eds and atheists, wishing to include their religion (or lack thereof) on their mandatory state issued identification cards are denied this ability, and were put in the position of either not obtaining required identification or lying about their faith. A 2008 court ruling allowed members of unrecognised faiths to obtain identification and leave the religion field blank.\nEducation.\nIn 2022, Egypt's adult literacy rate was 74.5%, compared to 71.1% in 2017. Literacy is lowest among those over 60 years of age, at 35.1%, and highest among youth between 15 and 24 years of age, at 92.2%.A European-style education system was first introduced in Egypt by the Ottomans in the early 19th century to nurture a class of loyal bureaucrats and army officers. Under British occupation, investment in education was curbed drastically, and secular public schools, which had previously been free, began to charge fees.\nIn the 1950s, President Nasser phased in free education for all Egyptians. The Egyptian curriculum influenced other Arab education systems, which often employed Egyptian-trained teachers. Demand soon outstripped the level of available state resources, causing the quality of public education to deteriorate. Today this trend has culminated in poor teacher\u2013student ratios (often around one to fifty) and persistent gender inequality.\nBasic education, which includes six years of primary and three years of preparatory school, is a right for Egyptian children from the age of six. After grade 9, students are tracked into one of two strands of secondary education: general or technical schools. General secondary education prepares students for further education, and graduates of this track normally join higher education institutes based on the results of the Thanaweya Amma, the leaving exam. In 2025 Egypt introduced a new Baccalaureate Certificate System which will replace the Thanaweya Amma starting 2026.\nTechnical secondary education has two strands, one lasting three years and a more advanced education lasting five. Graduates of these schools may have access to higher education based on their results on the final exam, but this is generally uncommon.\nThe QS World University Rankings 2025 includes 15 Egyptian universities, with Cairo University ranked highest among them. The American University in Cairo follows, improving its position to 410th place. Several Egyptian universities have advanced in rankings compared to the previous year, reflecting ongoing improvements in higher education.\nThe country is currently opening new research institutes with the aim of modernising scientific research and development; the most recent example is Zewail City of Science and Technology. Egypt was ranked 86th in the Global Innovation Index in 2024.\nHealth.\nAs of 2024, Egypt's average life expectancy stands at 75 years, with 73.8 years for males and 76.2 years for females. Healthcare access has significantly improved in both urban and rural areas, with immunization programs now covering 98% of the population. Life expectancy has risen from 45 years in the 1960s to its current level, reflecting advancements in medical services and disease prevention. The infant mortality rate has also declined sharply, dropping from 101\u2013132 deaths per 1,000 live births in the 1970s and 1980s to 50\u201360 per 1,000 in 2000, and further to 16\u201318 per 1,000 in 2024.\nThe Ministry of Health and Population oversees most public hospitals, while the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research manages university hospitals, offering free medical services. Other ministries operate hospitals for employees, and the Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Interior run facilities that require out-of-pocket payments for non-service members.\nThe private sector provides about 60% of healthcare services, including for-profit and nonprofit organizations, private hospitals, pharmacies, and independent practitioners. Numerous nongovernmental organizations also offer healthcare, including religious and charitable institutions. As of 2021, Egypt had 1,145 private hospitals, a 23.69% increase since 2011. Private healthcare facilities in Egypt are generally of high quality.\nEgypt grants refugees and asylum-seekers access to public healthcare on equal terms with citizens, allowing them to receive care at primary health facilities either free or at low cost.\nA 2008 report by the World Health Organisation estimated that 91.1% of Egypt's girls and women aged 15 to 49 have been subjected to genital mutilation. Government measures have reduced the practice among younger generations. By 2014, rates had dropped to 10.4% in urban areas and 15.9% in rural areas among girls aged 1\u201314, compared to 87.2% among women aged 15\u201349. Legislative reforms, awareness campaigns, and stricter law enforcement contributed to this decline. In 2016, penalties for performing the practice were increased, with prison sentences of up to 15 years for practitioners and up to 3 years for those who facilitate the procedure.\nLargest cities.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nCulture.\nEgypt is a recognised cultural trendsetter of the Arabic-speaking world. Contemporary Arabic and Middle-Eastern culture is heavily influenced by Egyptian literature, music, film and television. Egypt gained a regional leadership role during the 1950s and 1960s, giving a further enduring boost to the standing of Egyptian culture in the Arabic-speaking world.\nEgyptian identity evolved in the span of a long period of occupation to accommodate Islam, Christianity and Judaism; and a new language, Arabic, and its spoken descendant, Egyptian Arabic which is also based on many Ancient Egyptian words.\nThe work of early 19th century scholar Rifa'a al-Tahtawi renewed interest in Egyptian antiquity and exposed Egyptian society to Enlightenment principles. Tahtawi co-founded with education reformer Ali Mubarak a native Egyptology school that looked for inspiration to medieval Egyptian scholars, such as Suyuti and Maqrizi, who themselves studied the history, language and antiquities of Egypt.\nEgypt's renaissance peaked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries through the work of people like Muhammad Abduh, Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed, Muhammad Loutfi Goumah, Tawfiq el-Hakim, Louis Awad, Qasim Amin, Salama Moussa, Taha Hussein and Mahmoud Mokhtar. They forged a liberal path for Egypt expressed as a commitment to personal freedom, secularism and faith in science to bring progress.\nArts.\nThe Egyptians were one of the first major civilisations to codify design elements in art and architecture. Egyptian blue, also known as calcium copper silicate, is a pigment used by Egyptians for thousands of years. It is considered to be the first synthetic pigment. The wall paintings done in the service of the Pharaohs followed a rigid code of visual rules and meanings. Egyptian civilisation is renowned for its colossal pyramids, temples and monumental tombs.\nWell-known examples are the Pyramid of Djoser designed by ancient architect and engineer Imhotep, the Sphinx, and the temple of Abu Simbel. Modern and contemporary Egyptian art can be as diverse as any works in the world art scene, from the vernacular architecture of Hassan Fathy and Ramses Wissa Wassef, to Mahmoud Mokhtar's sculptures, to the distinctive Coptic iconography of Isaac Fanous. The Cairo Opera House serves as the main performing arts venue in the Egyptian capital.\nLiterature.\nEgyptian literature traces its beginnings to ancient Egypt and is some of the earliest known literature. Indeed, the Egyptians were the first culture to develop literature as we know it today, that is, the book. It is an important cultural element in the life of Egypt. Egyptian novelists and poets were among the first to experiment with modern styles of Arabic literature, and the forms they developed have been widely imitated throughout the Arab world. The first modern Egyptian novel \"Zaynab\" by Muhammad Husayn Haykal was published in 1913 in the Egyptian vernacular. Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz was the first Arabic-language writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Egyptian women writers include Nawal El Saadawi, well known for her feminist activism, and Alifa Rifaat who also writes about women and tradition.\nVernacular poetry is perhaps the most popular literary genre among Egyptians, represented by the works of Ahmed Fouad Negm (Fagumi), Salah Jaheen and Abdel Rahman el-Abnudi.\nMedia.\nEgyptian media are highly influential throughout the Arab World, attributed to large audiences and increasing freedom from government control. Freedom of the media is guaranteed in the constitution; however, many laws still restrict this right.\nCinema.\nEgyptian cinema became a regional force with the coming of sound. In 1936, Studio Misr, financed by industrialist Talaat Harb, emerged as the leading Egyptian studio, a role the company retained for three decades. For over 100 years, more than 4000 films have been produced in Egypt, three quarters of the total Arab production. Egypt is considered the leading country in the field of cinema in the Arab world. Actors from all over the Arab world seek to appear in the Egyptian cinema for the sake of fame. The Cairo International Film Festival has been rated as one of 11 festivals with a top class rating worldwide by the International Federation of Film Producers' Associations.\nThe number of cinemas increased with the emergence of talking films, and reached 395 in 1958. This number began to decline after the establishment of television in 1960 and the establishment of the public sector in cinemas in 1962, and reached 297 in 1965, then to 141 in 1995 due to the circulation of films through video equipment though the boom of the film industry in this period. Due to laws and procedures that encouraged investment in the establishment of private cinemas, they increased again, especially in commercial centres, until their number reached 200 in 2001 and 400 in 2009. Over a period of more than a hundred years, Egyptian cinema has presented more than four thousand films.\nMusic.\nEgyptian music is a rich mixture of indigenous, Mediterranean, African and Western elements. It has been an integral part of Egyptian culture since antiquity. The ancient Egyptians credited one of their gods Hathor with the invention of music, which Osiris in turn used as part of his effort to civilise the world. Egyptians used music instruments since then.\nContemporary Egyptian music traces its beginnings to the creative work of people such as Abdu al-Hamuli, Almaz and Mahmoud Osman, who influenced the later work of Sayed Darwish, Umm Kulthum, Mohammed Abdel Wahab and Abdel Halim Hafez. Prominent contemporary Egyptian pop singers include Amr Diab and Mohamed Mounir.\nDances.\nToday, Egypt is often considered the home of belly dance. Egyptian belly dance has two main styles \u2013 raqs baladi and raqs sharqi. There are also numerous folkloric and character dances that may be part of an Egyptian-style belly dancer's repertoire, as well as the modern shaabi street dance which shares some elements with raqs baladi.\nMuseums.\nEgypt is home to one of the world's oldest civilizations. It has engaged with numerous cultures and nations throughout its history and has experienced a vast array of eras, from the prehistoric age to modern times, encompassing periods such as ancient Egypt, Ptolemaic, Roman, Medieval, Ottoman, and the Alawiyya dynasty.\nNotable museums in Egypt include the Egyptian Museum, which boasts over 120,000 items; the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, home to 50,000 artifacts from various eras, with the remains of 22 ancient Egyptian kings and queens relocated there in 2021 during the Pharaohs' Golden Parade; and the Abdeen Palace Museum.\nThe Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) is an under construction museum that will house the largest collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts in the world, it has been described as the world's largest archaeological museum. The museum is sited on of land approximately from the Giza Necropolis and is part of a new master plan for the plateau. It is slated to open the 3rd of July 2025.\nFestivals.\nEgypt celebrates many festivals and religious carnivals, also known as \"mulid\". They are usually associated with a particular Coptic or Sufi saint, but are often celebrated by Egyptians irrespective of creed or religion.\nThe ancient spring festival of Sham en Nisim (Coptic: \u03ec\u2cb1\u2c99\u2018\u2c9b\u2c9b\u2c93\u2ca5\u2c93\u2c99 \"shom en nisim\") has been celebrated by Egyptians for thousands of years, typically between the Egyptian months of Paremoude (April) and Pashons (May), following Easter Sunday.\nCuisine.\nEgyptian cuisine relies heavily on legume and vegetable dishes. Although food in Alexandria and the coast of Egypt tends to use a great deal of fish and other seafood, for the most part Egyptian cuisine is based on foods that grow out of the ground. Red meat in particular has been less available for the majority of Egyptians throughout history due to the limited arable land in the largely desert country. With the Nile\u2019s fertile banks primarily used to cultivate crops for consumption rather than for animal feed and grazing, a great number of vegetarian dishes have been developed as a result.\nSome consider kushari (a mixture of rice, lentils, and macaroni) to be the national dish. In addition, ful medames (mashed fava beans) is one of the most popular dishes. Fava bean is also used in making falafel (also known as \"ta'miya\"), which may have originated in Egypt and spread to other parts of the Middle East. Garlic fried with coriander is added to molokhiya, a popular green soup made from finely chopped jute leaves, sometimes with chicken or rabbit.\nSports.\nFootball is the most popular national sport of Egypt. The Cairo Derby is one of the fiercest derbies in Africa, and the BBC picked it as one of the 7 toughest derbies in the world. Al Ahly is the most successful club of the 20th century in the African continent according to CAF, closely followed by their rivals Zamalek SC. They are known as the \"African Club of the Century\". With twenty titles, Al Ahly is currently the world's most successful club in terms of international trophies, surpassing Italy's A.C. Milan and Argentina's Boca Juniors, both having eighteen.\nThe Egyptian national football team, known as the Pharaohs, won the African Cup of Nations seven times, including three times in a row in 2006, 2008, and 2010. Considered the most successful African national team and one which has reached the top 10 of the FIFA world rankings, Egypt has qualified for the FIFA World Cup three times. Two goals from star player Mohamed Salah in their last qualifying game took Egypt through to the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The Egyptian Youth National team Young Pharaohs won the Bronze Medal of the 2001 FIFA youth world cup in Argentina. Egypt was 4th place in the football tournament in the 1928 and the 1964 Olympics.\nSquash and tennis are other popular sports in Egypt. The Egyptian squash team has been competitive in international championships since the 1930s. Amr Shabana, Ali Farag and Ramy Ashour are Egypt's best players and all were ranked the world's number one squash player. Egypt has won the Squash World Championships five times, with the last title being in 2019.\nIn 1999, Egypt hosted the IHF World Men's Handball Championship, and hosted it again in 2021. In 2001, the national handball team achieved its best result in the tournament by reaching fourth place. Egypt has won in the African Men's Handball Championship five times, being the best team in Africa. In addition to that, it also championed the Mediterranean Games in 2013, the Beach Handball World Championships in 2004 and the Summer Youth Olympics in 2010.\nAmong all African nations, the Egypt national basketball team holds the record for best performance at the Basketball World Cup and at the Summer Olympics. Further, the team has won a record number of 16 medals at the African Championship.\nEgypt has taken part in the Summer Olympic Games since 1912 and has hosted including the first Mediterranean Games in 1951, the 1991 All-Africa Games, the 2009 FIFA U-20 World Cup and the 1953, 1965 and 2007 editions of the Pan Arab Games.\nEgypt featured a national team in beach volleyball that competed at the 2018\u20132020 CAVB Beach Volleyball Continental Cup in both the women's and the men's section.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "26942239": "David Vladeck\nDavid C. Vladeck (born June 6, 1951) is an American lawyer and the former director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection of the Federal Trade Commission, an independent agency of the United States government. He was appointed by the chairman of the FTC, Jon Leibowitz, on April 14, 2009, shortly after Leibowitz became chairman. He served in that position until December 31, 2012, when he returned to the Georgetown University Law Center.\nEarly life and education.\nVladeck is a native of New York City. He comes from a family of lawyers. His father, Stephen Vladeck, founded a worker's rights firm in 1948, which his wife, Judith, joined in 1957. Vladeck's sister, Anne, is a partner at the same firm, while his nephew, Stephen, is a law professor at the University of Texas School of Law. Vladeck\u2019s brother, Bruce, headed the Health Care Financing Administration, now called the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, under President Bill Clinton.\nVladeck received his B.A. from New York University in 1972, and graduated with a J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1976. He received an L.L.M. the from Georgetown Law Center in 1977. While a student at New York University, Vladeck played on the school\u2019s basketball team\nCareer.\nBefore joining the faculty of the Georgetown University Law Center, Vladeck spent nearly 30 years as a lawyer at the Public Citizen Litigation Group, the litigation arm of Public Citizen, an advocacy organization founded by Ralph Nader. He served as the group\u2019s director for 10 years. While at the Public Citizen Litigation Group, Vladeck argued a number of cases in front of the United States Supreme Court, including cases about the First Amendment, civil rights and labor law. He also argued more than 60 cases in front of federal courts of appeal and state courts of last resort.\nVladeck was a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center for seven years before his appointment to head the Bureau of Consumer Protection. While at Georgetown, he served as the co-director of the Institute for Public Representation, leading the Institute's work in civil rights. He taught courses in federal courts, civil procedure, and government processes and co-directed the Institute for Public Representation, a legal clinic.\nPolicy priorities.\nVladeck\u2019s appointment to head the Bureau of Consumer Protection was lauded by consumer advocates, who felt that the bureau had shown a pro-business bias under commissioners appointed by George W. Bush in areas such as consumer financial services and online privacy. Since taking office, Vladeck has made clear that he intends to make significant changes to the Bureau\u2019s approach in a few key areas.\nTechnology and privacy.\nSince the FTC started to regulate online privacy issues, in the mid-1990s, its focus has been on whether consumers are provided with proper notice about what information may be collected from them and on whether they are given some choice about how it is collected and used. This philosophy was laid out in the fair information practice principles (FIPs)\", published in a 1998 FTC report to Congress about online privacy. The Bureau of Consumer Protection has traditionally taken the position that as long as consumers are provided with notice through company privacy policies, collection and use of consumer data is acceptable; and that the bureau should only intervene when a company\u2019s information practices cause concrete, economic harm to consumers.\nVladeck has stated that he doesn\u2019t believe this existing model succeeds in protecting consumers\u2019 privacy online. He has advocated a new framework that is broader than just economic interests, and that doesn\u2019t rely solely on privacy policies to protect consumers online. In a recent interview with the New York Times, Vladeck argued that, \"I don\u2019t believe that most consumers either read [privacy policies], or, if they read them, really understand it [sic]. Second of all, consent in the face of these kinds of quote disclosures, I\u2019m not sure that consent really reflects a volitional, knowing act.\"\nVladeck\u2019s approach to online privacy was seen in his handling of FTC litigation against Sears in In the Matter of Sears Holdings Management Corporation. In June 2009, shortly after Vladeck assumed office, the Bureau of Consumer Protection settled a case against Sears. The company had offered consumers $10 to download software that tracked their internet browsing. The software collected information such as medical prescriptions and financial information. The software contained a privacy policy with detailed disclosures about the type of information to be collected and how it would be used, and consumers suffered no economic harm when they downloaded it. Nevertheless, the FTC sued the company for its practice. Vladeck stated that \"under the harm framework, we couldn\u2019t have brought that case,\" but that because \"there\u2019s a huge dignity interest wrapped up in having somebody looking at your financial records when they have no business doing that,\" the commission was justified in suing.\nFinancial regulation.\nConsumer advocates have criticized the FTC in recent years for its lack of active regulation of financial services providers, including companies providing and servicing subprime mortgages in the years leading up to the financial crisis of 2007-2010. As \"Mother Jones\" magazine noted during the Bush Administration, the FTC \"brought an average of one subprime lending case a year (in 2004 and 2005 there weren't any), even as the industry was experiencing record growth and complaints mounted about abusive practices leading to home foreclosures.\"\nAdvertising and marketing.\nIn an October 2009 speech to its national advertising division, Vladeck set forth his plan for the Bureau of Consumer Protection's regulation of advertising and marketing practices. He stated that the bureau would have a renewed focus on national advertising, going after large companies that advertise widely and put forth deceptive or unsubstantiated claims, not just small companies perpetrating direct fraud. He also indicated the bureau would particularly focus on food advertising, health claims in advertising and advertising and marketing practices directed at children.\nAdditionally, since Vladeck took office, the bureau revised its endorsement guides, guidelines to advertisers who use endorsements and testimonials. Previously, the guides \u2013 which were last revised in 1980 - only required product testimonials claiming exceptional results to have a disclaimer that said \"Results Not Typical\". Under the new guidelines, using such testimonials will now require advertisers to \"clearly and conspicuously disclose the generally expected results consumers can expect in the depicted circumstances.\" The guidelines also \u2013 somewhat controversially \u2013 require bloggers making an endorsement to disclose their \"material connections\" to the product\u2019s manufacturer or seller.\nA positive response to the new rules and laws regarding endorsements and testimonials is an increased level of website compliance standards being adopted that includes the third-party verification of the testimonials businesses present on their websites. These companies, such as testimonialshield.com, collect the data regarding a customer's transaction and experience with a company and with a combined technology and sometimes even personal interviews with the customers to determine the authenticity of the testimonials. Once the testimonials, reviews and/or results are verified, the company can include them in their profiles and add a 'trust mark' similar to that of Verisign, the Better Business Bureau, or Good Housekeeping. The presence of this seal or trust mark helps consumers determine how much weight they should give to the testimonials they are reading before making a decision to support a business.\nPersonal life.\nVladeck is married and has two sons, both of whom pitched for their college baseball teams. One is also a Georgetown Law graduate.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["26942239", "738686", "198562", "8087628"], "permutation_1": ["738686", "198562", "26942239", "8087628"], "permutation_2": ["8087628", "738686", "26942239", "198562"], "permutation_3": ["26942239", "738686", "8087628", "198562"]}
{"id": "4hop1__828190_475952_41885_9426", "docs_added": {"10618215": "Karin Thomas\nSwiss cross-country skeir\nKarin Thomas (born 3 October 1961 in Brusio) is a Swiss cross-country skier who competed from 1982 to 1988. She finished sixth in the 4 \u00d7 5\u00a0km relay at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo and fourth in that same event at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.\nAt the 1985 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in Seefeld, Thomas finished 15th in the 10\u00a0km event and 18th in the 20\u00a0km event. Her best World Cup finish was third in a 20\u00a0km event in Italy in 1986.\nCross-country skiing results.\nAll results are sourced from the International Ski Federation (FIS).\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "25845": "Rhine\nMajor river in Western Europe\nThe Rhine ( ) is one of the major European rivers. The river begins in the Swiss canton of Graub\u00fcnden in the southeastern Swiss Alps. It forms part of the Swiss-Liechtenstein border, then part of the Swiss-Austrian border. From Lake Constance downstream, it forms part of the Swiss-German border. After that the Rhine defines much of the Franco-German border. It then flows in a mostly northerly direction through the German Rhineland. Finally in Germany, the Rhine turns into a predominantly westerly direction and flows into the Netherlands where it eventually empties into the North Sea. It drains an area of 9,973\u00a0km2.\nIts name derives from the Gaulish \"R\u0113nos\". There are two German states named after the river, North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, in addition to several districts (e.g. Rhein-Sieg). The departments of Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin in Alsace (France) are also named after the river. Some adjacent towns are named after it, such as Rheinau, Stein am Rhein, Rheineck, Rheinfelden (CH) and Rheinfelden (D).\nThe International Commission for the Hydrology of the Rhine Basin (CHR) and EUWID contend that the river could experience a massive decrease in volume, or even dry up completely in case of drought, within the next 30 to 80 years, as a result of the climate crisis.\nThe Rhine is the second-longest river in Central and Western Europe (after the Danube), at about , with an average discharge of about .\nThe Rhine and the Danube comprised much of the Roman Empire's northern inland boundary, and the Rhine has been a vital navigable waterway bringing trade and goods deep inland since those days. The various castles and defenses built along it attest to its prominence as a waterway in the Holy Roman Empire. Among the largest and most important cities on the Rhine are Cologne, Rotterdam, D\u00fcsseldorf, Duisburg, Strasbourg, Arnhem, and Basel.\nName.\nThe variants of the name of the Rhine (Latin Rhenus; French Rhin, Italian Reno, Romansh Rain or Rein, Dutch Rijn, Alemannic Ry, Ripuarian Rhing) in modern languages are all derived from the Gaulish name ', which was adapted in Roman-era geography (1st century BC) as Latin ', and as Greek (\"\").\nThe spelling with \"Rh-\" in English \"Rhine\" as well as in German ' and French ' is due to the influence of Greek orthography, while the vocalization \"-i-\" is due to the Proto-Germanic adoption of the Gaulish name as *\"R\u012bnaz\", via Old Frankish giving Old English ', Old High German ', early Middle Dutch (c.\u20091200) ' (then also spelled ' or ').\nThe modern German diphthong ' (also used in Romansh) ' is a Central German development of the early modern period, with the Alemannic name ' keeping the older vocalism. In Alemannic, the deletion of the ending \"-n\" in pausa is a recent development; the form ' is largely preserved in Lucernese dialects. ' in Ripuarian is diphthongized, as is ' in Palatine. While Spanish has adopted the Germanic vocalism ', Italian, Occitan, and Portuguese have retained the Latin '.\nThe Gaulish name \"R\u0113nos\" (Proto-Celtic or pre-Celtic \"*Reinos\") belongs to a class of river names built from the PIE root \"*rei-\" \"to move, flow, run\", also found in other names such as the Reno in Italy.\nThe grammatical gender of the Celtic name (as well as of its Greek and Latin adaptation) is masculine, and the name remains masculine in German, Dutch, French, Spanish and Italian. The Old English river name was variously inflected as masculine or feminine; and its Old Icelandic adoption was inflected as feminine.\nGeography.\nThe length of the Rhine is conventionally measured in \"Rhine-kilometers\" (\"Rheinkilometer\"), a scale introduced in 1939 that runs from the 0\u00a0km datum at Old Rhine Bridge in the city of Konstanz, at the western end of Lake Constance, to the Hook of Holland at 1,036.20\u00a0km.\nThe river is significantly shortened from its natural course due to a number of canal projects completed in the 19th and 20th centuries. The \"total length of the Rhine\", to the inclusion of Lake Constance and the Alpine Rhine is more difficult to measure objectively; it was cited as by the Dutch Rijkswaterstaat in 2010.\nIts course is conventionally divided as follows:\nHeadwaters and sources.\nSources.\nThe Rhine carries its name without distinctive accessories only from the confluence of the Rein Anteriur/Vorderrhein and Rein Posteriur/Hinterrhein next to Reichenau in Tamins. Above this point is the extensive catchment area of the headwaters of the Rhine. This area belongs almost exclusively to the Swiss canton of Grisons (), ranging from Saint-Gotthard Massif in the west via one valley lying in the canton of Ticino and Sondrio (Lombardy, Italy) in the south to the Fl\u00fcela Pass in the east. The Rhine is one of four major rivers taking their source in the Gotthard region, along with the Ticino (drainage basin of the Po), Rh\u00f4ne and Reuss (Rhine basin). The Witenwasserenstock is the triple watershed between the Rhine, Rh\u00f4ne and Po.\nTraditionally, Lake Toma near the Oberalp Pass in the Gotthard region is seen as the source of the Anterior Rhine and the Rhine as a whole. The Posterior Rhine rises in the Rheinwald below the Rheinwaldhorn.\nAnterior Rhine and Posterior Rhine.\nThe source of the river is generally considered north of \"Lai da Tuma/Tomasee\" on \"Rein Anteriur/Vorderrhein\", although its southern tributary \"Rein da Medel\" is actually longer before its confluence with the Anterior Rhine near Disentis.\nThe Anterior Rhine (, ) springs from \"Lai da Tuma/Tomasee\", near the Oberalp Pass and passes the impressive \"Ruinaulta\" formed by the largest visible rock slide in the alps, the Flims Rockslide.\nThe Posterior Rhine (, ) starts from the Paradies Glacier, near the \"Rheinwaldhorn\". One of its tributaries, the \"Reno di Lei\", drains the \"Valle di Lei\" on politically Italian territory. After three main valleys separated by the two gorges, \"Roflaschlucht\" and \"Viamala\", it reaches Reichenau in Tamins.\nThe Anterior Rhine arises from numerous source streams in the upper Surselva and flows in an easterly direction. One source is \"Lai da Tuma\" () with the \"Rein da Tuma\", which is usually indicated as source of the Rhine, flowing through it.\nInto it flow tributaries from the south, some longer, some equal in length, such as the \"Rein da Medel\", the \"Rein da Maighels\", and the \"Rein da Curnera\". The Cadlimo Valley in the canton of Ticino is drained by the \"Reno di Medel\", which crosses the geomorphologic Alpine main ridge from the south. All streams in the source area are partially, sometimes completely, captured and sent to storage reservoirs for the local hydro-electric power plants.\nThe culminating point of the Anterior Rhine's drainage basin is the Piz Russein of the T\u00f6di massif of the Glarus Alps at above sea level. It starts with the creek \"Aua da Russein\" (lit.: \"Water of the Russein\").\nIn its lower course, the Anterior Rhine flows through a gorge named \"Ruinaulta\" (Flims Rockslide). The whole stretch of the Anterior Rhine to the Alpine Rhine confluence next to Reichenau in Tamins is accompanied by a long-distance hiking trail called \"Senda Sursilvana\".\nThe Posterior Rhine flows first east-northeast, then north. It flows through the three valleys named Rheinwald, Schams and Domleschg-Heinzenberg. The valleys are separated by the Rofla Gorge and Viamala Gorge. Its sources are located in the Adula Alps (Rheinwaldhorn, Rheinquellhorn, and G\u00fcferhorn).\nThe Avers Rhine joins from the south. One of its headwaters, the \"Reno di Lei\" (stowed in the Lago di Lei), is partially located in Italy.\nNear Sils the Posterior Rhine is joined by the Albula, from the east, from the Albula Pass region. The Albula draws its water mainly from the Landwasser with the Dischmabach as the largest source stream, but almost as much from the Gelgia, which comes down from the Julier Pass.\nNumerous larger and smaller tributary rivers bear the name of the \"Rhine\" or equivalent in various Romansh idioms, including \"Rein\" or \"Ragn\", including:\nAlpine Rhine.\nNext to Reichenau in Tamins the Anterior Rhine and the Posterior Rhine join and form the Alpine Rhine. The river makes a distinctive turn to the north near Chur. This section is nearly 86\u00a0km long, and descends from a height of 599 meters to 396 meters. It flows through a wide glacial Alpine valley known as the Rhine Valley (). Near Sargan a natural dam, only a few meters high, prevents it from flowing into the open Sztal valley and then through Lake Walen and Lake Zurich into the Aare. The Alpine Rhine begins in the westernmost part of the Swiss canton of Graub\u00fcnden, and later forms the border between Switzerland to the west and Liechtenstein and later Austria to the east.\nAs an effect of human work, it empties into Lake Constance on Austrian territory and not on the border that follows its old natural river bed called \"Alter Rhein\" (lit.\u2009'Old Rhine').\nThe mouth of the Rhine into Lake Constance forms an inland delta. The delta is delimited in the west by the \"Alter Rhein\" and in the east by the modern canalized section of the Alpine Rhine (). Most of the delta is a nature reserve and bird sanctuary. It includes the Austrian towns of Gai\u00dfau, H\u00f6chst and Fu\u00dfach. The natural Rhine originally branched into at least two arms and formed small islands by precipitating sediments. In the local Alemannic dialect, the singular is pronounced \"Isel\" and this is also the local pronunciation of \"Esel\" (\"Donkey\"). Many local fields have an official name containing this element.\nA regulation of the Rhine was called for, with an upper canal near Diepoldsau and a lower canal at Fu\u00dfach, in order to counteract the constant flooding and strong sedimentation in the western Rhine Delta. The Dornbirner Ach had to be diverted, too, and it now flows parallel to the canalized Rhine into the lake. Its water has a darker color than the Rhine; the latter's lighter suspended load comes from higher up the mountains. It is expected that the continuous input of sediment into the lake will silt up the lake. This has already happened to the former Lake Tuggenersee.\nThe cut-off Old Rhine at first formed a swamp landscape. Later an artificial ditch of about two km was dug. It was made navigable to the Swiss town of Rheineck.\nLake Constance.\nLake Constance consists of three bodies of water: the Obersee (\"upper lake\"), the Untersee (\"lower lake\"), and a connecting stretch of the Rhine, called the Seerhein (\"Lake Rhine\"). The lake is situated in Germany, Switzerland and Austria near the Alps. Specifically, its shorelines lie in the German states of Bavaria and Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg, the Austrian state of Vorarlberg, and the Swiss cantons of Thurgau and St. Gallen. The Rhine flows into it from the south following the Swiss-Austrian border. It is located at approximately .\nObersee.\nThe flow of cold, grey mountain water continues for some distance into the lake. The cold water flows near the surface and at first does not mix with the warmer, green waters of Upper Lake. But then, at the so-called \"Rheinbrech\", the Rhine water abruptly falls into the depths because of the greater density of cold water. The flow reappears on the surface at the northern (German) shore of the lake, off the island of Lindau. The water then follows the northern shore until Hagnau am Bodensee. A small fraction of the flow is diverted off the island of Mainau into Lake \u00dcberlingen. Most of the water flows via the \"Constance hopper\" into the \"Rheinrinne\" (\"Rhine Gutter\") and Seerhein. Depending on the water level, this flow of the Rhine water is clearly visible along the entire length of the lake.\nThe Rhine carries very large amounts of debris into the lake\u00a0\u2013 over annually. In the mouth region, it is therefore necessary to permanently remove gravel by dredging. The large sediment loads are partly due to the extensive land improvements upstream.\nThree countries border the Obersee, namely Switzerland in the south, Austria in the southeast and the German states of Bavaria in the northeast and Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg in the north and northwest.\nSeerhein.\nThe Seerhein is only long. It connects the Obersee with the 30\u00a0cm lower Untersee. Distance markers along the Rhine measure the distance from the bridge in the old city center of Konstanz.\nFor most of its length, the Seerhein forms the border between Germany and Switzerland. The exception is the old city center of Konstanz, on the Swiss side of the river.\nThe Seerhein emerged in the last thousands of years, when erosion caused the lake level to be lowered by about 10 meters. Previously, the two lakes formed a single lake, as the name still suggests.\nUntersee.\nLike in the Obersee, the flow the Rhine can be traced in the Untersee. Here, too, the river water is hardly mixed with the lake water. The northern parts of the Untersee (Lake Zell and Gnadensee) remain virtually unaffected by the flow. The river traverses the southern, which, in isolation, is sometimes called \"Rhinesee\" (\"Lake Rhine\"). The \"Schweizerische Schifffahrtsgesellschaft Untersee und Rhein\" (URh) offers regular boat trips on Untersee.\nBesides the \"Seerhein\", the Radolfzeller Aach is the main tributary of \"Untersee\". It adds large amounts of water from the Danube system to the \"Untersee\" via the Danube Sinkhole.\nReichenau Island was formed at the same time as the Seerhein, when the water level fell to its current level.\nLake Untersee is part of the border between Switzerland and Germany, with Germany on the north bank and Switzerland on the south, except both sides are Swiss in Stein am Rhein, where the High Rhine flows out of the lake.\nHigh Rhine.\nThe High Rhine () begins in Stein am Rhein at the western end of the Untersee. Now flowing generally westwards, it passes over the Rhine Falls () below Schaffhausen before being joined\u00a0\u2013 near Koblenz in the canton of Aargau\u00a0\u2013 by its major tributary, the Aare. The Aare more than doubles the Rhine's water discharge, to an average of slightly more than , and provides more than a fifth of the discharge at the Dutch border. The Aare also contains the waters from the summit of Finsteraarhorn, the highest point of the Rhine basin.\nBetween Eglisau and Basel, the vast majority of its length, the High Rhine forms the border between Germany and Switzerland. Only for brief distances at its extremities does the river run entirely within Switzerland; at the eastern end it separates the bulk of the canton of Schaffhausen and the German exclave of B\u00fcsingen am Hochrhein on the northern bank from cantons of Z\u00fcrich and Thurgau, while at the western end it bisects the canton of Basel-Stadt. Here, at the Rhine knee, the river turns north and leaves Switzerland altogether.\nThe High Rhine is characterized by numerous dams. On the few remaining natural sections, there are still several rapids. Over its entire course from Lake Constance to the Swiss border at Basel the river descends from .\nThere are passenger boat lines on the lower High Rhine and between Schaffhausen and Kreuzlingen.\nUpper Rhine.\nIn the center of Basel, the first major city in the course of the stream, is the Rhine knee, a major bend, where the overall direction of the Rhine changes from west to north. Here the High Rhine ends. Legally, the Central Bridge is the boundary between High and Upper Rhine. The river now flows north as Upper Rhine through the Upper Rhine Plain, which is about 300\u00a0km long and up to 40\u00a0km wide. The most important tributaries in this area are the Ill below of Strasbourg, the Neckar in Mannheim and the Main across from Mainz. In Mainz, the Rhine leaves the Upper Rhine Valley and flows through the Mainz Basin.\nThe southern half of the Upper Rhine forms the border between France (Alsace) and Germany (Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg). The northern part forms the border between the German states of Rhineland-Palatinate in the west on the one hand, and Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg and Hesse on the other hand, in the east and north. A curiosity of this border line is that the parts of the city of Mainz on the right bank of the Rhine were given to Hesse by the occupying forces in 1945.\nThe Upper Rhine was a significant cultural landscape in Central Europe already in antiquity and during the Middle Ages. Today, the Upper Rhine area hosts many important manufacturing and service industries, particularly in the centers Basel, Strasbourg and Mannheim-Ludwigshafen. Strasbourg is the seat of the European Parliament, and so one of the three European capitals is located on the Upper Rhine.\nThe Upper Rhine region was changed significantly by a Rhine straightening program in the 19th century. The rate of flow was increased and the ground water level fell significantly. Dead branches were removed by construction workers and the area around the river was made more habitable for humans on flood plains as the rate of flooding decreased sharply. On the French side, the Grand Canal d'Alsace was dug, which carries a significant part of the river water, and all of the traffic. In some places, there are large compensation pools, for example, the huge \"Bassin de compensation de Plobsheim\" in Alsace.\nThe Upper Rhine has undergone significant human change since the 19th century. While it was slightly modified during the Roman occupation, it was not until the emergence of engineers such as Johann Gottfried Tulla that significant modernization efforts changed the shape of the river. Earlier work under Frederick the Great surrounded efforts to ease shipping and construct dams to serve coal transportation. Tulla is considered to have domesticated the Upper Rhine, a domestication that served goals such as reducing stagnant bogs that fostered waterborne diseases, making regions more habitable for human settlement, and reduce high frequency of floods. Not long before Tulla went to work on widening and straightening the river, heavy floods caused significant loss of life. Four diplomatic treaties were signed among German state governments and French regions dealing with the changes proposed along the Rhine, one was \"the Treaty for the Rectification of the Rhine flow from Neuberg to Dettenheim\"(1817), which surrounded states such as Bourbon France and the Bavarian Palatinate. Loops, oxbows, branches and islands were removed along the Upper Rhine so that there would be uniformity to the river. The engineering of the Rhine was not without protest, farmers and fishermen had grave concerns about valuable fishing areas and farmland being lost. While some areas lost ground, other areas saw swamps and bogs be drained and turned into arable land. Johann Tulla had the goal of shortening and straightening the Upper Rhine. Early engineering projects the Upper Rhine also had issues, with Tulla's project at one part of the river creating rapids, after the Rhine cut down from erosion to sheer rock. Engineering along the Rhine eased flooding and made transportation along the river less cumbersome. These state projects were part of the advanced and technical progress going on in the country alongside the industrial revolution. For the German state, making the river more predictable was to ensure development projects could easily commence.\nThe section of the Upper Rhine downstream from Mainz is also known as the \"Island Rhine\". Here a number of river islands occur, locally known as \"Rheinauen\".\nMiddle Rhine.\nThe Rhine is the longest river in Germany. It is here that the Rhine encounters some more of its main tributaries, such as the Neckar, the Main and, later, the Moselle, which contributes an average discharge of more than . Northeastern France drains to the Rhine via the Moselle; smaller rivers drain the Vosges and Jura Mountains uplands. Most of Luxembourg and a very small part of Belgium also drain to the Rhine via the Moselle. As it approaches the Dutch border, the Rhine has an annual mean discharge of and an average width of .\nBetween Bingen am Rhein and Bonn, the Middle Rhine flows through the Rhine Gorge, a formation which was created by erosion. The rate of erosion equaled the uplift in the region, such that the river was left at about its original level while the surrounding lands raised. The gorge is quite deep and is the stretch of the river which is known for its many castles and vineyards. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (2002) and known as \"the Romantic Rhine\", with more than 40\u00a0castles and fortresses from the Middle Ages and many quaint and lovely country villages.\nThe Mainz Basin ends in Bingen am Rhein; the Rhine continues as \"Middle Rhine\" into the Rhine Gorge in the Rhenish Slate Mountains. In this sections the river falls from 77.4\u00a0m above sea level to 50.4\u00a0m. On the left, is located the mountain ranges of Hunsr\u00fcck and Eifel, on the right Taunus and Westerwald. According to geologists, the characteristic narrow valley form was created by erosion by the river while the surrounding landscape was lifted (see water gap).\nMajor tributaries in this section are the Lahn and the Moselle. They join the Rhine near Koblenz, for the right and left respectively. Almost the entire length of the Middle Rhine runs in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate.\nThe dominant economic sectors in the Middle Rhine area are viniculture and tourism. The Rhine Gorge between R\u00fcdesheim am Rhein and Koblenz is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Near Sankt Goarshausen, the Rhine flows around the famous rock Lorelei. With its outstanding architectural monuments, the slopes full of vines, settlements crowded on the narrow river banks and scores of castles lined up along the top of the steep slopes, the Middle Rhine Valley can be considered the epitome of the Rhine romanticism.\nLower Rhine.\nIn Bonn, where the Sieg flows into the Rhine, the Rhine enters the North German Plain and turns into the Lower Rhine. The Lower Rhine falls from 50\u00a0m to 12\u00a0m. The main tributaries on this stretch are the Ruhr and the Lippe. Like the Upper Rhine, the Lower Rhine used to meander until engineering created a solid river bed. Because the levees are some distance from the river, at high tide the Lower Rhine has more room for widening than the Upper Rhine.\nThe Lower Rhine flows through North Rhine-Westphalia. Its banks are usually heavily populated and industrialized, in particular the agglomerations Cologne, D\u00fcsseldorf and Ruhr area. Here the Rhine flows through the largest conurbation in Germany, the Rhine-Ruhr region. One of the most important cities in this region is Duisburg with the largest river port in Europe (Duisport). The region downstream of Duisburg is more agricultural. In Wesel, 30\u00a0km downstream of Duisburg, is located the western end of the second east\u2013west shipping route, the Wesel-Datteln Canal, which runs parallel to the Lippe. Between Emmerich and Cleves the Emmerich Rhine Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in Germany, crosses the river. Near Krefeld, the river crosses the Uerdingen line, the line which separates the areas where Low German and High German are spoken. The Rhine River is crossed by several ferries, including the one between Bad Honnef and Rolandseck, where the Lohfelderf\u00e4hre district is situated.\nUntil the early 1980s, industry was a major source of water pollution. Although many plants and factories can be found along the Rhine up into Switzerland, it is along the Lower Rhine that the bulk of them are concentrated, as the river passes the major cities of Cologne, D\u00fcsseldorf and Duisburg. Duisburg is the home of Europe's largest inland port and functions as a hub to the sea ports of Rotterdam, Antwerp and Amsterdam. The Ruhr, which joins the Rhine in Duisburg, is nowadays a clean river, thanks to a combination of stricter environmental controls, a transition from heavy industry to light industry and cleanup measures, such as the reforestation of Slag and brownfields. The Ruhr currently provides the region with drinking water. It contributes to the Rhine. Other rivers in the Ruhr Area include the Emscher.\nDelta.\nThe Dutch name for Rhine is \"Rijn\". The Rhine turns west and enters the Netherlands, where, together with the rivers Meuse and Scheldt, it forms the extensive Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta, with the largest river delta in Europe. Crossing the border into the Netherlands at Spijk, close to Nijmegen and Arnhem, the Rhine is at its widest, although the river then splits into three main distributaries: the Waal, Nederrijn (\"Nether Rhine\") and IJssel.\nFrom here, the situation becomes more complicated, as the Dutch name \"Rijn\" no longer coincides with the main flow of water. Two-thirds of the water flow volume of the Rhine flows farther west, through the Waal and then, via the Merwede and Nieuwe Merwede (De Biesbosch), merging with the Meuse, through the Hollands Diep and Haringvliet estuaries, into the North Sea. The Beneden Merwede branches off, near Hardinxveld-Giessendam and continues as the Noord, to join the Lek, near the village of Kinderdijk, to form the Nieuwe Maas; then flows past Rotterdam and continues via Het Scheur and the Nieuwe Waterweg, to the North Sea. The Oude Maas branches off, near Dordrecht, farther down rejoining the Nieuwe Maas to form Het Scheur.\nThe other third of the water flows through the Pannerdens Kanaal and redistributes in the IJssel and Nederrijn. The IJssel branch carries one ninth of the water flow of the \"Rhine\" north into the IJsselmeer (a former bay), while the Nederrijn carries approximately two-ninths of the flow west along a route parallel to the Waal. However, at Wijk bij Duurstede, the Nederrijn changes its name and becomes the Lek. It flows farther west, to rejoin the Noord into the Nieuwe Maas and to the North Sea.\nThe name \"Rijn\", from here on, is used only for smaller streams farther to the north, which together formed the main river Rhine in Roman times. Though they retained the name, these streams no longer carry water from the Rhine, but are used for draining the surrounding land and polders. From Wijk bij Duurstede, the old north branch of the Rhine is called Kromme Rijn (\"Bent Rhine\") past Utrecht, first Leidse Rijn (\"Rhine of Leiden\") and then, Oude Rijn (\"Old Rhine\"). The latter flows west into a sluice at Katwijk, where its waters can be discharged into the North Sea. This branch once formed the line along which the Limes Germanicus were built. During periods of lower sea levels within the various ice ages, the Rhine took a left turn, creating the Channel River, the course of which now lies below the English Channel.\nThe Rhine-Meuse Delta, the most important natural region of the Netherlands begins near Millingen aan de Rijn, close to the Dutch-German border with the division of the Rhine into Waal and Nederrijn. The region between the Dutch-German border and Rotterdam, where the Waal, Lek, and Meuse run more or less parallel, is colloquially known as the \"Great Rivers\". Since the Rhine contributes most of the water, the shorter term \"Rhine Delta\" is commonly used. However, this name is also used for the river delta where the Rhine flows into Lake Constance, so it is clearer to call the larger one \"Rhine-Meuse delta\", or even \"Rhine\u2013Meuse\u2013Scheldt delta\", as the Scheldt ends in the same delta.\nThe shape of the Rhine delta is determined by two bifurcations: first, at Millingen aan de Rijn, the Rhine splits into Waal and Pannerdens Kanaal, which changes its name to Nederrijn at Angeren, and second near Arnhem, the IJssel branches off from the Nederrijn. This creates three main flows, two of which change names rather often. The largest and southern main branch begins as Waal and continues as Boven Merwede (\"Upper Merwede\"), Beneden Merwede (\"Lower Merwede\"), Noord (\"the North\"), Nieuwe Maas (\"New Meuse\"), Het Scheur (\"the Rip\") and Nieuwe Waterweg (\"New Waterway\"). The middle flow begins as Nederrijn, then changes into Lek, then joins the Noord, thereby forming Nieuwe Maas. The northern flow keeps the name IJssel until it flows into Lake IJsselmeer. Three more flows carry significant amounts of water: the Nieuwe Merwede (\"New Merwede\"), which branches off from the southern branch where it changes from Boven to Beneden Merwede; the Oude Maas (\"Old Meuse\"), which branches off from the southern branch where it changes from Beneden Merwede into Noord, and Dordtse Kil, which branches off from Oude Maas.\nBefore the St. Elizabeth's flood (1421), the Meuse flowed just south of today's line Merwede-Oude Maas to the North Sea and formed an archipelago-like estuary with Waal and Lek. This system of numerous bays, estuary-like extended rivers, many islands and constant changes of the coastline, is hard to imagine today. From 1421 to 1904, the Meuse and Waal merged further upstream at Gorinchem to form Merwede. For flood protection reasons, the Meuse was separated from the Waal through a lock and diverted into a new outlet called \"Bergse Maas\", then Amer and then flows into the former bay Hollands Diep.\nThe northwestern part of the estuary (around Hook of Holland), is still called \"Maasmond\" (\"Meuse Mouth\"), ignoring the fact that it now carries only water from the Rhine. This might explain the confusing naming of the various branches.\nThe hydrography of the current delta is characterized by the delta's main arms, disconnected arms (Hollandse IJssel, Linge, Vecht, etc.) and smaller rivers and streams. Many rivers have been closed (\"dammed\") and now serve as drainage channels for the numerous polders. The construction of Delta Works changed the Delta in the second half of the 20th century fundamentally. Currently Rhine water runs into the sea, or into former marine bays now separated from the sea, in five places, namely at the mouths of the Nieuwe Merwede, Nieuwe Waterway (Nieuwe Maas), Dordtse Kil, Spui and IJssel.\nThe Rhine-Meuse Delta is a tidal delta, shaped not only by the sedimentation of the rivers, but also by tidal currents. This meant that high tide formed a serious risk because strong tidal currents could tear huge areas of land into the sea. Before the construction of the Delta Works, tidal influence was palpable up to Nijmegen, and even today, after the regulatory action of the Delta Works, the tide acts far inland. At the Waal, the most landward tidal influence can be detected between Brakel and Zaltbommel.\nGeologic history.\nAlpine orogeny.\nThe Rhine flows from the Alps to the North Sea Basin. The geography and geology of its present-day watershed has been developing since the Alpine orogeny began.\nIn southern Europe, the stage was set in the Triassic Period of the Mesozoic Era, with the opening of the Tethys Ocean, between the Eurasian and African tectonic plates, between about 240\u00a0MBP and 220\u00a0MBP (million years before present). The present Mediterranean Sea descends from this somewhat larger Tethys sea. At about 180\u00a0MBP, in the Jurassic Period, the two plates reversed direction and began to compress the Tethys floor, causing it to be subducted under Eurasia and pushing up the edge of the latter plate in the Alpine Orogeny of the Oligocene and Miocene Periods. Several microplates were caught in the squeeze and rotated or were pushed laterally, generating the individual features of Mediterranean geography: Iberia pushed up the Pyrenees; Italy, the Alps, and Anatolia, moving west, the mountains of Greece and the islands. The compression and orogeny continue today, as shown by the ongoing raising of the mountains a small amount each year and the active volcanoes.\nIn northern Europe, the North Sea Basin had formed during the Triassic and Jurassic periods and continued to be a sediment receiving basin since. In between the zone of Alpine orogeny and North Sea Basin subsidence, highlands resulting from an earlier orogeny (Variscan) remained, such as the Ardennes, Eifel and Vosges.\nFrom the Eocene onward, the ongoing Alpine orogeny caused a north\u2013south rift system to develop in this zone. The main elements of this rift are the Upper Rhine Graben, in southwest Germany and eastern France and the Lower Rhine Embayment, in northwest Germany and the southeastern Netherlands. By the time of the Miocene, a river system had developed in the Upper Rhine Graben, that continued northward and is considered the first Rhine river. At that time, it did not yet carry discharge from the Alps; instead, the watersheds of the Rhone and Danube drained the northern flanks of the Alps.\nStream capture.\nThe watershed of the Rhine reaches into the Alps today, but it did not start out that way. In the Miocene period, the watershed of the Rhine reached south, only to the Eifel and Westerwald hills, about north of the Alps. The Rhine then had the Sieg as a tributary, but not yet the Moselle. The northern Alps were then drained by the Danube.\nThrough stream capture, the Rhine extended its watershed southward. By the Pliocene period, the Rhine had captured streams down to the Vosges Mountains, including the Main and the Neckar. The northern Alps were then drained by the Rhone. By the early Pleistocene period, the Rhine had captured most of its current Alpine watershed from the Rh\u00f4ne, including the Aare. Since that time, the Rhine has added the watershed above Lake Constance (Vorderrhein, Hinterrhein, Alpenrhein; captured from the Rh\u00f4ne), the upper reaches of the Main, beyond Schweinfurt and the Moselle in the Vosges Mountains, captured during the Saale Ice-age from the Meuse, to its watershed.\nAround 2.5\u00a0million years ago (ending 11,600 years ago) the Ice Ages began. Since approximately 600,000\u00a0years ago, six major glacial periods have occurred, in which sea level dropped as much as and much of the continental margins were exposed. In the Early Pleistocene, the Rhine followed a course to the northwest, through the present North Sea. During the so-called Anglian glaciation (~450,000\u00a0yr\u00a0BP, marine oxygen isotope stage\u00a012), the northern part of the present North Sea was blocked by the ice and a large lake developed, that overflowed through the English Channel. This caused the Rhine's course to be diverted through the English Channel. Since then, during glacial times, the river mouth was located offshore of Brest, France and rivers, like the River Thames and the Seine, became tributaries to the Rhine. During interglacials, when sea level rose to approximately the present level, the Rhine built deltas in what is now the Netherlands.\nThe most recent glacial period ran from ~74,000 (BP = Before Present), until the end of the Pleistocene (~11,600\u00a0BP). In northwest Europe, it saw two very cold phases, peaking around 70,000\u00a0BP and around 29,000\u201324,000\u00a0BP. The last phase slightly predates the global last ice age maximum (Last Glacial Maximum). During this time, the lower Rhine flowed roughly west through the Netherlands and extended to the southwest, through the English Channel and finally, to the Atlantic Ocean. The English Channel, the Irish Channel and most of the North Sea were dry land, mainly because sea level was approximately lower than today.\nMost of the Rhine's current course was not under the ice during the last Ice Age; although, its source must still have been a glacier. A tundra, with Ice Age flora and fauna, stretched across middle Europe, from Asia to the Atlantic Ocean. Such was the case during the Last Glacial Maximum, ca. 22,000\u201314,000\u00a0yr\u00a0BP, when ice-sheets covered Scandinavia, the Baltics, Scotland and the Alps, but left the space between as open tundra. Loess (wind-blown topsoil dust) arose from the south and North Sea plain settling on the slopes of the Alps, Urals and the Rhine Valley, rendering the valleys facing the prevailing winds especially fertile.\nEnd of the last glacial period.\nAs northwest Europe slowly began to warm from 22,000 years ago onward, frozen subsoil and expanded alpine glaciers began to thaw and fall-winter snow covers melted in spring. Much of the discharge was routed to the Rhine and its downstream extension. Rapid warming and changes of vegetation, to open forest, began about 13,000\u00a0BP. By 9000\u00a0BP, Europe was fully forested. With globally shrinking ice-cover, ocean water levels rose and the English Channel and North Sea re-inundated. Meltwater, adding to the ocean and land subsidence, drowned the former coasts of Europe transgressionally.\nAbout 11000 years ago, the Rhine estuary was in the Strait of Dover. There remained some dry land in the southern North Sea, known as Doggerland, connecting mainland Europe to Britain. About 9000 years ago, that last divide was overtopped / dissected. Humans were already resident in the area when these events happened.\nSince 7500 years ago the situation of tides, currents and land-forms has resembled the present. Rates of sea level rise dropped such that natural sedimentation by the Rhine and coastal processes widely compensate for transgression by the sea. In the southern North Sea, due to ongoing tectonic subsidence, the coastline and sea bed are sinking at the rate of about per century (1\u00a0meter or 39\u00a0inches in last 3000\u00a0years).\nAbout 7000\u20135000 BP, a general warming encouraged migration of all former ice-locked areas, including up the Danube and down the Rhine by peoples to the east. A sudden massive expansion of the Black Sea as the Mediterranean Sea burst into it through the Bosporus may have occurred about 7500\u00a0BP.\nHolocene delta.\nAt the beginning of the Holocene (~11,700 years ago), the Rhine occupied its Late-Glacial valley. As a meandering river, it reworked its ice-age floodplain. As sea-level rise continued in the Netherlands, the formation of the Holocene Rhine-Meuse delta began (~8,000\u00a0years ago). Coeval absolute sea-level rise and tectonic subsidence have strongly influenced delta evolution. Other factors of importance to the shape of the delta are the local tectonic activities of the Peel Boundary Fault, the substrate and geomorphology, as inherited from the Last Glacial period and the coastal-marine dynamics, such as barrier and tidal inlet formations.\nSince ~3000 yr BP (= years Before Present), human impact is seen in the delta. As a result of increasing land clearance (Bronze Age agriculture), in the upland areas (central Germany), the sediment load of the Rhine has strongly increased and delta growth has sped up. This has caused increased flooding and sedimentation, ending peat formation in the delta. In the geologically recent past the main process distributing sediment across the delta has been the shifting of river channels to new locations on the floodplain (termed avulsion). Over the past 6000\u00a0years, approximately 80\u00a0avulsions have occurred. Direct human impact in the delta began with the mining of peat for salt and fuel from Roman times onward. This was followed by embankment of the major distributaries and damming of minor distributaries, which took place in the 11\u201313th century AD. Thereafter, canals were dug, bends were straightened and groynes were built to prevent the river's channels from migrating or silting up.\nAt present, the branches Waal and Nederrijn-Lek discharge to the North Sea through the former Meuse estuary, near Rotterdam. The river IJssel branch flows to the north and enters the IJsselmeer (formerly the Zuider Zee), initially a brackish lagoon but a freshwater lake since 1932. The discharge of the Rhine is divided into three branches: the Waal (6/9 of total discharge), the Nederrijn \u2013 Lek (2/9 of total discharge) and the IJssel (1/9 of total discharge). This discharge distribution has been maintained since 1709 by river engineering works including the digging of the Pannerdens Kanaal and the installation, in the 20th century, of a series of weirs on the Nederrijn.\nMilitary and cultural history.\nAntiquity.\nThe Rhine was not known to Herodotus and first enters the historical period in the 1st century BC in Roman-era geography. At that time, it formed the boundary between Gaul and Germania. \"It is estimated that Germanic tribes have been inhabiting the area since 2000 BCE.\" [no source]\nThe Upper Rhine had been part of the areal of the late Hallstatt culture since the 6th century BC, and by the 1st century BC, the areal of the La T\u00e8ne culture covered almost its entire length, forming a contact zone with the Jastorf culture, i.e. the locus of early Celtic-Germanic cultural contact.\nIn Roman geography, the Rhine formed the boundary between \"Gallia\" and \"Germania\" by definition; e.g. Maurus Servius Honoratus, \"Commentary on the Aeneid of Vergil\" (8.727) \"(Rhenus) fluvius Galliae, qui Germanos a Gallia dividit\" \"(The Rhine is a) river of Gaul, which divides the Germanic people from Gaul.\"\nIn Roman geography, the Rhine and Hercynia Silva were considered the boundary of the civilized world; as it was a wilderness, the Romans were eager to explore it. This view is typified by \"Res Gestae Divi Augusti\", a long public inscription of Augustus, in which he boasts of his exploits; including, sending an expeditionary fleet north of the Rheinmouth, to Old Saxony and Jutland, which he claimed no Roman had ever done before.\nAugustus ordered his stepson Roman general Drusus to establish 50 military camps along the Rhine, starting the Germanic Wars in 12 BC. At this time, the plain of the Lower Rhine was the territory of the Ubii. The first urban settlement, on the grounds of what is today Downtown Cologne, along the Rhine, was \"Oppidum Ubiorum\", which was founded in 38\u00a0BC by the Ubii. Cologne became acknowledged, as a city by the Romans in AD\u00a050, by the name of \"Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium\".\nFrom the death of Augustus in AD 14 until after AD 70, Rome accepted as her Germanic frontier the water-boundary of the Rhine and upper Danube. Beyond these rivers she held only the fertile plain of Frankfurt, opposite the Roman border fortress of Moguntiacum (Mainz), the southernmost slopes of the Black Forest and a few scattered bridge-heads. The northern section of this frontier, where the Rhine is deep and broad, remained the Roman boundary until the empire fell. The southern part was different. The upper Rhine and upper Danube are easily crossed. The frontier which they form is inconveniently long, enclosing an acute-angled wedge of foreign territory between the modern Baden and W\u00fcrttemberg. The Germanic populations of these lands seem in Roman times to have been scanty, and Roman subjects from the modern Alsace-Lorraine had drifted across the river eastwards.\nThe Romans kept eight legions in five bases along the Rhine. The number was reduced to four as more units were moved to the Danube. The actual number of legions present at any base or in all, depended on whether a state or threat of war existed. Between about AD\u00a014 and 180, the assignment of legions was as follows:\nFor the army of Germania Inferior, two legions at Vetera (Xanten), \"I Germanica\" and \"XX Valeria\" (Pannonian troops); two legions at oppidum Ubiorum (\"town of the Ubii\"), which was renamed to Colonia Agrippina, descending to Cologne, \"V Alaudae\", a Celtic legion recruited from Gallia Narbonensis and \"XXI\", possibly a Galatian legion from the other side of the empire.\nFor the army of Germania Superior: one legion, \"II Augusta\", at Argentoratum (Strasbourg); and one, \"XIII Gemina\", at Vindonissa (Windisch). Vespasian had commanded II\u00a0Augusta, before he became emperor. In addition, were a double legion, XIV and XVI, at Moguntiacum (Mainz).\nThe two original military districts of Germania Inferior and Germania Superior, came to influence the surrounding tribes, who later respected the distinction in their alliances and confederations. For example, the upper Germanic peoples combined into the Alemanni. For a time, the Rhine ceased to be a border, when the Franks crossed the river and occupied Roman-dominated Celtic Gaul, as far as Paris.\nGermanic tribes crossed the Rhine in the Migration period, by the 5th century establishing the kingdoms of Francia on the Lower Rhine, Burgundy on the Upper Rhine and Alemannia on the High Rhine. This \"Germanic Heroic Age\" is reflected in medieval legend, such as the which tells of the hero Siegfried killing a dragon on the Drachenfels (Siebengebirge) (\"dragons rock\"), near Bonn at the Rhine and of the Burgundians and their court at Worms, at the Rhine and Kriemhild's golden treasure, which was thrown into the Rhine by Hagen.\nMedieval and modern history.\nBy the 6th century, the Rhine was within the borders of Francia. In the 9th, it formed part of the border between Middle and Eastern Francia, but in the 10th century, it was fully within the Holy Roman Empire, flowing through Swabia, Franconia and Lower Lorraine. The mouths of the Rhine, in the county of Holland, fell to the Burgundian Netherlands in the 15th century; Holland remained contentious territory throughout the European wars of religion and the eventual collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, when the length of the Rhine fell to the First French Empire and its client states. The Alsace on the left banks of the Upper Rhine was sold to Burgundy by Archduke Sigismund of Austria in 1469 and eventually fell to France in the Thirty Years' War. The numerous historic castles in Rhineland-Palatinate attest to the importance of the river as a commercial route.\nSince the Peace of Westphalia, the Upper Rhine formed a contentious border between France and Germany. Establishing \"natural borders\" on the Rhine was a long-term goal of French foreign policy, since the Middle Ages, though the language border was \u2013 and is \u2013 far more to the west. French leaders, such as Louis XIV and Napoleon Bonaparte, tried with varying degrees of success to annex lands west of the Rhine. The Confederation of the Rhine was established by Napoleon, as a French client state, in 1806 and lasted until 1814, during which time it served as a significant source of resources and military manpower for the First French Empire. In 1840, the Rhine crisis, prompted by French prime minister Adolphe Thiers's desire to reinstate the Rhine as a natural border, led to a diplomatic crisis and a wave of nationalism in Germany. \nThe Rhine became an important symbol in German nationalism during the formation of the German state in the 19th century (see Rhine romanticism).\nAt the end of World War I, the Rhineland was subject to the Treaty of Versailles. This decreed that it would be occupied by the allies, until 1935 and after that, it would be a demilitarized zone, with the German army forbidden to enter. The Treaty of Versailles and this particular provision, in general, caused much resentment in Germany. The Allies' troops left the Rhineland in 1930 and, following the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, the German army re-occupied it in 1936, which proved an enormously popular action in Germany. Although the Allies could probably have prevented the reoccupation, Britain and France were not inclined to do so, a feature of their policy of appeasement to Hitler.\nIn World War II, it was recognized that the Rhine would present a formidable natural obstacle to the invasion of Germany, by the Western Allies. The Rhine bridge at Arnhem, immortalized in the book, \"A Bridge Too Far\" and the film, was a central focus of the battle of Arnhem, during the failed Operation Market Garden of September 1944. The bridges at Nijmegen, over the Waal distributary of the Rhine, were also an objective of Operation Market Garden. In a separate operation, the Ludendorff Bridge, crossing the Rhine at Remagen, became famous, when U.S. forces were able to capture it intact \u2013 much to their own surprise \u2013 after the Germans failed to demolish it. This also became the subject of a film, \"The Bridge at Remagen\".\n\"Seven Days to the River Rhine\" was a Warsaw Pact war plan for an invasion of Western Europe during the Cold War.\nUntil 1932, the generally accepted length of the Rhine was . In 1932 the German encyclopedia Knaurs Lexikon stated the length as , presumably a typographical error. \nAfter this number was placed into the authoritative Brockhaus Enzyklop\u00e4die, it became generally accepted and found its way into numerous textbooks and official publications. The error was discovered in 2010, and the Dutch Rijkswaterstaat confirms the length at .\nLists of features.\nCities on the Rhine.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCountries and borders.\nDuring its course from the Alps to the North Sea, the Rhine passes through four countries and constitutes six different country borders. On the various parts:\nFormer distributaries.\n\"Order: panning north to south through the Western Netherlands\":\nCanals.\n\"Order: upstream to downstream\":\nNotes and references.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "27889300": "Brusio spiral viaduct\nRailway viaduct\nThe Brusio spiral viaduct (or Brusio circular viaduct; , ) is a single-track nine-arched stone spiral railway viaduct on the Bernina Railway. It was opened on 1 July 1908.\nA key structure of the World Heritage Site-listed Bernina Railway, it is located near Brusio, in the Canton of Graub\u00fcnden, Switzerland, and was built to limit the railway's gradient at that location within its specified maximum of 7%. It is considered to be one of the architectural highlights of the Rhaetian Railway.\nLocation.\nThe Brusio spiral viaduct forms part of the Bernina Railway section between Brusio and Campascio railway stations. It is just south of Brusio, and approximately from St. Moritz railway station.\nHistory.\nDuring the construction of the Bernina Railway, its engineers decided that its route and features ought to follow and adapt to the natural landscape to the maximum extent, avoiding unnecessary complexity wherever possible. They also decided to avoid the construction of a rack-and-pinion railway due to a desire for the line to be suitable for both passenger and freight traffic; the adoption of a rack system would have made it impossible to run heavy trains, effectively preventing the line's use by freight trains. It was also desirable for the line to serve valley locations, and thus for the route to vary in height above the valley floor. It was such decisions that drove the construction of the Brusio spiral viaduct.\nA spiral viaduct was required immediately south of Brusio to limit the railway's grade to the required maximum of 7%, so that the train would not slip on the way up, or be uncontrollable on the way down. The construction of a viaduct on this site had not been originally planned for; instead, a spiral tunnel was at one point intended to be constructed; however, local geological factors discouraged the boring of such a tunnel. Therefore, the line's engineers decided to construct a 360 degree curve with a radius, rising up from the valley floor, the viaduct forms a part of that curve.\nThe spiral viaduct is long, has a horizontal radius of curvature of , a longitudinal slope of 7 percent, and is made up of nine spans, each in length. The spiral configuration maximises the rate of elevation in comparison to a conventional curve, while also avoiding the inconveniences of a switchback alternative. Wherever reasonable, local materials were sourced for its construction.\nOn 1 July 1908, the viaduct was opened in conjunction with the opening of the Tirano\u2013Poschiavo section of the Bernina Railway. In 1943, the whole of the Bernina Railway was taken over by the Rhaetian Railway; this company continues to both own and operate services across the spiral viaduct to the present day. The services the spiral viaduct carries facilitate not only local trade purposes but tourism as well. Since 2008, the spiral viaduct, along with the rest of the route, has been recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "981": "Alps\nMajor mountain range in central Europe\nThe Alps () are some of the highest and most extensive mountain ranges in Europe, stretching approximately across eight Alpine countries (from west to east): Monaco, France, Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria and Slovenia.\nThe Alpine arch extends from Nice on the western Mediterranean to Trieste on the Adriatic and Vienna at the beginning of the Pannonian Basin. The mountains were formed over tens of millions of years as the African and Eurasian tectonic plates collided. Extreme shortening caused by the event resulted in marine sedimentary rocks rising by thrusting and folding into high mountain peaks such as Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn.\nMont Blanc spans the French\u2013Italian border, and at is the highest mountain in the Alps. The Alpine region area contains 82 peaks higher than .\nThe altitude and size of the range affect the climate in Europe; in the mountains, precipitation levels vary greatly and climatic conditions consist of distinct zones. Wildlife such as ibex live in the higher peaks to elevations of , and plants such as edelweiss grow in rocky areas in lower elevations as well as in higher elevations.\nEvidence of human habitation in the Alps goes back to the Palaeolithic era. A mummified man (\"\u00d6tzi\"), determined to be 5,000 years old, was discovered on a glacier at the Austrian\u2013Italian border in 1991.\nBy the 6th century BC, the Celtic La T\u00e8ne culture was well established. Hannibal notably crossed the Alps with a herd of elephants, and the Romans had settlements in the region. In 1800, Napoleon crossed one of the mountain passes with an army of 40,000. The 18th and 19th centuries saw an influx of naturalists, writers, and artists, in particular, the Romanticists, followed by the golden age of alpinism as mountaineers began to ascend the peaks of the Alps.\nThe Alpine region has a strong cultural identity. Traditional practices such as farming, cheesemaking, and woodworking still thrive in Alpine villages. However, the tourist industry began to grow early in the 20th century and expanded significantly after World War II, eventually becoming the dominant industry by the end of the century.\nThe Winter Olympic Games have been hosted in the Swiss, French, Italian, Austrian and German Alps. As of 2010,[ [update]] the region is home to 14\u00a0million people and has 120\u00a0million annual visitors.\nEtymology and toponymy.\nThe English word \"Alps\" comes from the Latin \"Alpes\".\nThe Latin word \"Alpes\" could possibly come from the adjective \"albus\" (\"white\"), or could possibly come from the Greek goddess Alphito, whose name is related to \"alphita\", the \"white flour\"; \"alphos\", a dull white leprosy; and finally the Proto-Indo-European word *alb\u02b0\u00f3s. Similarly, the river god Alpheus is also supposed to derive from the Greek \"alphos\" and means whitish.\nIn his commentary on the \"Aeneid\" of Virgil, the late fourth-century grammarian Maurus Servius Honoratus says that all high mountains are called \"Alpes\" by Celts.\nAccording to the \"Oxford English Dictionary\", the Latin \"Alpes\" might derive from a pre-Indo-European word *\"alb\" \"hill\"; \"Albania\" is a related derivation. Albania, the name of the region known as the country of Albania, has been used as a name for several mountainous areas across Europe.\nIn Roman times, \"Albania\" was a name for the eastern Caucasus, while in the English languages \"Albania\" (or \"Albany\") was occasionally used as a name for Scotland, although it is more likely derived from the Latin word \"albus\", the colour white.\nIn modern languages the term \"alp\", \"alm\", \"albe\" or \"alpe\" refers to a grazing pastures in the alpine regions below the glaciers, not the peaks.\nAn \"alp\" refers to a high mountain pasture, typically near or above the tree line, where cows and other livestock are taken to be grazed during the summer months and where huts and hay barns can be found, sometimes constituting tiny hamlets. Therefore, the term \"the Alps\", as a reference to the mountains, is a misnomer. The term for the mountain peaks varies by nation and language: words such as \"Horn\", \"Kogel\", \"Kopf\", \"Gipfel\", \"Spitze\", \"Stock\", and \"Berg\" are used in German-speaking regions; \"Mont\", \"Pic\", \"T\u00eate\", \"Pointe\", \"Dent\", \"Roche\", and \"Aiguille\" in French-speaking regions; and \"Monte\", \"Picco\", \"Corno\", \"Punta\", \"Pizzo\", or \"Cima\" in Italian-speaking regions.\nGeography.\nThe Alps are a crescent shaped geographic feature of central Europe that ranges in an arc (curved line) from east to west and is in width. The mean height of the mountain peaks is . The range stretches from the Mediterranean Sea north above the Po basin, extending through France from Grenoble, and stretching eastward through mid and southern Switzerland. The range continues onward toward Vienna, Austria, and southeast to the Adriatic Sea and Slovenia.\nTo the south it dips into northern Italy and to the north extends to the southern border of Bavaria in Germany. In areas like Chiasso, Switzerland, and Allg\u00e4u, Bavaria, the demarcation between the mountain range and the flatlands are clear; in other places such as Geneva, the demarcation is less clear.\nThe Alps are found in the following countries: Austria (28.7% of the range's area), Italy (27.2%), France (21.4%), Switzerland (13.2%), Germany (5.8%), Slovenia (3.6%), Liechtenstein (0.08%) and Monaco (0.001%).\nThe highest portion of the range is divided by the glacial trough of the Rh\u00f4ne valley, from Mont Blanc to the Matterhorn and Monte Rosa on the southern side, and the Bernese Alps on the northern. The peaks in the easterly portion of the range, in Austria and Slovenia, are smaller than those in the central and western portions.\nThe variances in nomenclature in the region spanned by the Alps make classification of the mountains and subregions difficult, but a general classification is that of the Eastern Alps and Western Alps with the divide between the two occurring in eastern Switzerland according to geologist Stefan Schmid, near the Spl\u00fcgen Pass.\nThe highest peaks of the Western Alps and Eastern Alps, respectively, are Mont Blanc, at , and Piz Bernina, at . The second-highest major peaks are Monte Rosa, at , and Ortler, at , respectively.\nA series of lower mountain ranges run parallel to the main chain of the Alps, including the French Prealps in France and the Jura Mountains in Switzerland and France. The secondary chain of the Alps follows the watershed from the Mediterranean Sea to the Wienerwald, passing over many of the highest and most well-known peaks in the Alps. From the Colle di Cadibona to Col de Tende it runs westwards, before turning to the northwest and then, near the Colle della Maddalena, to the north. Upon reaching the Swiss border, the line of the main chain heads approximately east-northeast, a heading it follows until its end near Vienna.\nThe northeast end of the Alpine arc, directly on the Danube, which flows into the Black Sea, is the Leopoldsberg near Vienna. In contrast, the southeastern part of the Alps ends on the Adriatic Sea in the area around Trieste towards Duino and Barcola.\nPasses.\nThe Alps have been crossed for war and commerce, and by pilgrims, students, and tourists. Crossing routes by road, train, or foot are known as \"passes\", and usually consist of depressions in the mountains in which a valley leads from the plains and hilly pre-mountainous zones. Merchant traffic was supported by pack animals such as mules. In the late Middle Ages heavy carts and sleighs were in use on the alpine passes.\nIn the medieval period hospices were established by religious orders at the summits of many of the main passes. The most important passes are the Col de l'Iseran (the highest), the Col Agnel, the Brenner Pass, the Mont-Cenis, the Great St. Bernard Pass, the Col de Tende, the Gotthard Pass, the Semmering Pass, the Simplon Pass, and the Stelvio Pass.\nCrossing the Italian-Austrian border, the Brenner Pass separates the \u00d6tztal Alps and Zillertal Alps and has been in use as a trading route since the 14th century. The lowest of the Alpine passes at is the Semmering crossing from Lower Austria to Styria. It has been in continuous use since the 12th century when a hospice was built there. A railroad with a tunnel long was built along the route of the pass in the mid-19th century. With a summit of , the Great St Bernard Pass is one of the highest in the Alps, crossing the Italian-Swiss border east of the Pennine Alps along the flanks of Mont Blanc. The pass was used by Napoleon Bonaparte to cross 40,000 troops in 1800.\nThe Mont Cenis pass has been a major commercial and military road between Western Europe and Italy. The pass was crossed by many troops on their way to the Italian peninsula. From Constantine I, Pepin the Short and Charlemagne to Henry IV, Napol\u00e9on and more recently the German Gebirgsj\u00e4gers during World War II. \nIn the 18th century the principal passes of the Alps were modernized by engineers to speed up passenger and freight transport. The Mont Cenis pass has been supplanted by the Fr\u00e9jus Rail Tunnel opening in 1871, while the Fr\u00e9jus Road Tunnel opened 1980. Railway lines could not be built in the Alps without tunnels and bridges. Apart from the Mont Cenis railway tunnel the Semmering railway tunnel and the Gotthard railway tunnel were built between 1854 and 1882. By the early 19th century eight trans-alpine railway lines had been put into operation.\nThe Saint Gotthard Pass crosses from Central Switzerland to Ticino. In 1882 the Saint Gotthard Railway Tunnel was opened connecting Lucerne in Switzerland, with Milan in Italy. 98 years later followed Gotthard Road Tunnel ( long) connecting the A2 motorway in G\u00f6schenen on the north side with Airolo on the south side, exactly like the railway tunnel.\nOn 1 June 2016 the world's longest railway tunnel, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, was opened, which connects Erstfeld in canton of Uri with Bodio in canton of Ticino by two single tubes of .\nIt is the first tunnel that traverses the Alps on a flat route.\nFrom 11 December 2016, it has been part of the regular railway timetable and used hourly as standard ride between Basel/Lucerne/Zurich and Bellinzona/Lugano/Milan.\nThe highest pass in the alps is the Col de l'Iseran in Savoy (France) at , followed by the Stelvio Pass in northern Italy at ; the road was built in the 1820s.\nHighest mountains.\nThe Union Internationale des Associations d'Alpinisme (UIAA) has defined a list of 82 \"official\" Alpine summits that reach at least . The list includes not only mountains, but also subpeaks with little prominence that are considered important mountaineering objectives. Below are listed the 29 \"four-thousanders\" with at least of prominence.\nWhile Mont Blanc was first climbed in 1786 and the Jungfrau in 1811, most of the Alpine four-thousanders were climbed during the second half of the 19th century, notably Piz Bernina (1850), the Dom (1858), the Grand Combin (1859), the Weisshorn (1861) and the Barre des \u00c9crins (1864); the ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865 marked the end of the golden age of alpinism. Karl Blodig (1859\u20131956) was among the first to successfully climb all the major 4,000\u00a0m peaks. He completed his series of ascents in 1911. Many of the big Alpine three-thousanders were climbed in the early 19th century, notably the Grossglockner (1800) and the Ortler (1804), although some of them were climbed only much later, such at Mont Pelvoux (1848), Monte Viso (1861) and La Meije (1877).\nThe first British Mont Blanc ascent by a man was in 1788; the first ascent by a woman was in 1808. By the mid-1850s Swiss mountaineers had ascended most of the peaks and were eagerly sought as mountain guides. Edward Whymper reached the top of the Matterhorn in 1865 (after seven attempts), and in 1938 the last of the six great north faces of the Alps was climbed with the first ascent of the Eiger \"Nordwand\" (north face of the Eiger).\nGeology and orogeny.\nImportant geological concepts were established as naturalists began studying the rock formations of the Alps in the 18th century. In the mid-19th century, the now-defunct idea of geosynclines was used to explain the presence of \"folded\" mountain chains. This theory was replaced in the mid-20th century by the theory of plate tectonics.\nThe formation of the Alps (the Alpine orogeny) was an episodic process that began about 300\u00a0million years ago. In the Paleozoic Era the Pangaean supercontinent consisted of a single tectonic plate; it broke into separate plates during the Mesozoic Era and the Tethys sea developed between Laurasia and Gondwana during the Jurassic Period. The Tethys was later squeezed between colliding plates causing the formation of mountain ranges called the Alpide belt, from Gibraltar through the Himalayas to Indonesia\u2014a process that began at the end of the Mesozoic and continues into the present. The formation of the Alps was a segment of this orogenic process, caused by the collision between the African and the Eurasian plates that began in the late Cretaceous Period.\nUnder extreme compressive stresses and pressure, marine sedimentary rocks were uplifted, forming characteristic recumbent folds, and thrust faults. As the rising peaks underwent erosion, a layer of marine flysch sediments was deposited in the foreland basin, and the sediments became involved in younger folds as the orogeny progressed. Coarse sediments from the continual uplift and erosion were later deposited in foreland areas north of the Alps. These regions in Switzerland and Bavaria are well-developed, containing classic examples of flysch, which is sedimentary rock formed during mountain building.\nThe Alpine orogeny occurred in ongoing cycles through to the Paleogene causing differences in folded structures, with a late-stage orogeny causing the development of the Jura Mountains. A series of tectonic events in the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods caused different paleogeographic regions. The Alps are subdivided by different lithology (rock composition) and nappe structures according to the orogenic events that affected them. The geological subdivision differentiates the Western, Eastern Alps, and Southern Alps: the Helveticum in the north, the Penninicum and Austroalpine system in the centre and, south of the Periadriatic Seam, the Southern Alpine system.\nAccording to geologist Stefan Schmid, because the Western Alps underwent a metamorphic event in the Cenozoic Era while the Austroalpine peaks underwent an event in the Cretaceous Period, the two areas show distinct differences in nappe formations. Flysch deposits in the Southern Alps of Lombardy probably occurred in the Cretaceous or later.\nPeaks in France, Italy and Switzerland lie in the \"Houilli\u00e8re zone\", which consists of basement with sediments from the Mesozoic Era. High \"massifs\" with external sedimentary cover are more common in the Western Alps and were affected by Neogene Period thin-skinned thrusting whereas the Eastern Alps have comparatively few high peaked massifs. Similarly the peaks in eastern Switzerland extending to western Austria (Helvetic nappes) consist of thin-skinned sedimentary folding that detached from former basement rock.\nIn simple terms, the structure of the Alps consists of layers of rock of European, African, and oceanic (Tethyan) origin. The bottom nappe structure is of continental European origin, above which are stacked marine sediment nappes, topped off by nappes derived from the African plate. The Matterhorn is an example of the ongoing orogeny and shows evidence of great folding. The tip of the mountain consists of gneisses from the African plate; the base of the peak, below the glaciated area, consists of European basement rock. The sequence of Tethyan marine sediments and their oceanic basement is sandwiched between rock derived from the African and European plates.\nThe core regions of the Alpine orogenic belt have been folded and fractured in such a manner that erosion produced the characteristic steep vertical peaks of the Swiss Alps that rise seemingly straight out of the foreland areas. Peaks such as Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn, and high peaks in the Pennine Alps, the Brian\u00e7onnais, and Hohe Tauern consist of layers of rock from the various orogenies including exposures of basement rock.\nDue to the ever-present geologic instability, earthquakes continue in the Alps to this day. Typically, the largest earthquakes in the alps have been between magnitude 6 and 7 on the Richter scale. Geodetic measurements show ongoing topographic uplift at rates of up to about 2.5\u00a0mm per year in the North, Western and Central Alps, and at ~1\u00a0mm per year in the Eastern and South-Western Alps. The underlying mechanisms that jointly drive the present-day uplift pattern are the isostatic rebound due to the melting of the last glacial maximum ice-cap or long-term erosion, detachment of the Western Alpine subducting slab, mantle convection as well as ongoing horizontal convergence between Africa and Europe, but their relative contributions to the uplift of the Alps are difficult to quantify and likely to vary significantly in space and time.\nMinerals.\nThe Alps are a source of minerals that have been mined for thousands of years. In the 8th to 6th centuries, BC during the Hallstatt culture, Celtic tribes mined copper; later the Romans mined gold for coins in the Bad Gastein area. Erzberg in Styria furnishes high-quality iron ore for the steel industry. Crystals, such as cinnabar, amethyst, and quartz, are found throughout much of the Alpine region. The cinnabar deposits in Slovenia are a notable source of cinnabar pigments.\nAlpine crystals have been studied and collected for hundreds of years and began to be classified in the 18th century. Leonhard Euler studied the shapes of crystals, and by the 19th-century crystal hunting was common in Alpine regions. David Friedrich Wiser amassed a collection of 8000 crystals that he studied and documented. In the 20th century Robert Parker wrote a well-known work about the rock crystals of the Swiss Alps; at the same period a commission was established to control and standardize the naming of Alpine minerals.\nGlaciers.\nIn the Miocene Epoch the mountains underwent severe erosion because of glaciation, which was noted in the mid-19th century by naturalist Louis Agassiz who presented a paper proclaiming the Alps were covered in ice at various intervals\u2014a theory he formed when studying rocks near his Neuch\u00e2tel home which he believed originated to the west in the Bernese Oberland. Because of his work he came to be known as the \"father of the ice-age concept\" although other naturalists before him put forth similar ideas.\nAgassiz studied glacier movement in the 1840s at the Unteraar Glacier where he found the glacier moved per year, more rapidly in the middle than at the edges. His work was continued by other scientists and now a permanent laboratory exists inside a glacier under the Jungfraujoch, devoted exclusively to the study of Alpine glaciers.\nGlaciers pick up rocks and sediment with them as they flow. This causes erosion and the formation of valleys over time. The Inn valley is an example of a valley carved by glaciers during the ice ages with a typical terraced structure caused by erosion. Eroded rocks from the most recent ice age lie at the bottom of the valley while the top of the valley consists of erosion from earlier ice ages. Glacial valleys have characteristically steep walls (reliefs); valleys with lower reliefs and talus slopes are remnants of glacial troughs or previously infilled valleys. Moraines, piles of rock picked up during the movement of the glacier, accumulate at edges, centre, and the terminus of glaciers.\nAlpine glaciers can be straight rivers of ice, long sweeping rivers, spread in a fan-like shape (Piedmont glaciers), and curtains of ice that hang from vertical slopes of the mountain peaks. The stress of the movement causes the ice to break and crack loudly, perhaps explaining why the mountains were believed to be home to dragons in the medieval period. The cracking creates unpredictable and dangerous crevasses, often invisible under new snowfall, which causes the greatest danger to mountaineers.\nGlaciers end in ice caves (the Rh\u00f4ne Glacier), by trailing into a lake or river, or by shedding snowmelt on a meadow. Sometimes a piece of glacier will detach or break resulting in flooding, property damage, and loss of life.\nHigh levels of precipitation cause the glaciers to descend to permafrost levels in some areas whereas in other, more arid regions, glaciers remain above about the level. The of the Alps covered by glaciers in 1876 had shrunk to by 1973, resulting in decreased river run-off levels. Forty percent of the glaciation in Austria has disappeared since 1850, and 30% of that in Switzerland.\nAlthough the Alpine topography shows marked glacial morphologies, the mechanisms by which glacial reshaping occurs are unclear. Numerical modeling suggests that glacial erosion propagates from low elevations to high elevations leading to an early increase of local relief followed by lowering of the mean orogen elevation.\nRivers and lakes.\nThe Alps provide lowland Europe with drinking water, irrigation, and hydroelectric power. Although the area is only about 11% of the surface area of Europe, the Alps provide up to 90% of water to lowland Europe, particularly to arid areas and during the summer months. Cities such as Milan depend on 80% of water from Alpine runoff. Water from the rivers is used in at least 550 hydroelectricity power plants, considering only those producing at least 10MW of electricity.\nMajor European rivers flow from the Alps, such as the Rhine, the Rh\u00f4ne, the Inn, and the Po, all of which have headwaters in the Alps and flow into neighbouring countries, finally emptying into the North Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Adriatic Sea and the Black Sea. Other rivers such as the Danube have major tributaries flowing into them that originate in the Alps.\nThe Rh\u00f4ne is second to the Nile as a freshwater source to the Mediterranean Sea; the river begins as glacial meltwater, flows into Lake Geneva, and from there to France where one of its uses is to cool nuclear power plants. The Rhine originates in a area in Switzerland and represents almost 60% of water exported from the country. Tributary valleys, some of which are complicated, channel water to the main valleys which can experience flooding during the snowmelt season when rapid runoff causes debris torrents and swollen rivers.\nThe rivers form lakes, such as Lake Geneva, a crescent-shaped lake crossing the Swiss border with Lausanne on the Swiss side and the town of Evian-les-Bains on the French side. In Germany, the medieval St. Bartholomew's chapel was built on the south side of the K\u00f6nigssee, accessible only by boat or by climbing over the abutting peaks.\nAdditionally, the Alps have led to the creation of large lakes in Italy. For instance, the Sarca, the primary inflow of Lake Garda, originates in the Italian Alps. The Italian Lakes are a popular tourist destination since the Roman Era for their mild climate.\nScientists have been studying the impact of climate change and water use. For example, each year more water is diverted from rivers for snowmaking in the ski resorts, the effect of which is yet unknown. Furthermore, the decrease of glaciated areas combined with a succession of winters with lower-than-expected precipitation may have a future impact on the rivers in the Alps as well as an effect on the water availability to the lowlands.\nClimate.\nThe Alps are a classic example of what happens when a temperate area at lower altitude gives way to higher-elevation terrain. Elevations around the world that have cold climates similar to those of the polar regions have been called Alpine. A rise from sea level into the upper regions of the atmosphere causes the temperature to decrease (see adiabatic lapse rate). The effect of mountain chains on prevailing winds is to carry warm air belonging to the lower region into an upper zone, where it expands in volume at the cost of a proportionate loss of temperature, often accompanied by precipitation in the form of snow or rain. The height of the Alps is sufficient to divide the weather patterns in Europe into a wet north and dry south because moisture is sucked from the air as it flows over the high peaks.\nThe severe weather in the Alps has been studied since the 18th century; particularly the weather patterns such as the seasonal foehn wind. Numerous weather stations were placed in the mountains early in the early 20th century, providing continuous data for climatologists. Some of the valleys are quite arid such as the Aosta Valley in Italy, the Maurienne in France, the Valais in Switzerland, and northern Tyrol.\nThe areas that are not arid and receive high precipitation experience periodic flooding from rapid snowmelt and runoff. The mean precipitation in the Alps ranges from a low of per year to per year, with the higher levels occurring at high altitudes. At altitudes between , snowfall begins in November and accumulates through to April or May when the melt begins. Snow lines vary from , above which the snow is permanent and the temperatures hover around the freezing point even during July and August. High-water levels in streams and rivers peak in June and July when the snow is still melting at the higher altitudes.\nThe Alps are split into five climatic zones, each with different vegetation. The climate, plant life, and animal life vary among the different sections or zones of the mountains. The lowest zone is the colline zone, which exists between , depending on the location. The montane zone extends from , followed by the sub-Alpine zone from . The Alpine zone, extending from tree line to the snow line, is followed by the glacial zone, which covers the glaciated areas of the mountain. Climatic conditions show variances within the same zones; for example, weather conditions at the head of a mountain valley, extending directly from the peaks, are colder and more severe than those at the mouth of a valley which tend to be less severe and receive less snowfall.\nVarious models of climate change have been projected into the 22nd century for the Alps, with an expectation that a trend toward increased temperatures will have an effect on snowfall, snowpack, glaciation, and river runoff. Significant changes, of both natural and anthropogenic origins, have already been diagnosed from observations, including a 5.6% reduction per decade in snow cover duration over the last 50\u2009years, which also highlights climate change adaptation needs due to impacts on the climate and regional socio-economic activities.<ref name=\"10.1038/s41558-022-01575-3\"></ref>\nEcology.\nFlora.\nThirteen thousand species of plants have been identified in the Alpine regions. Alpine plants are grouped by habitat and soil type which can be limestone or non-calcareous. The habitats range from meadows, bogs, and woodland (deciduous and coniferous) areas to soil-less scree and moraines, and rock faces and ridges. A natural vegetation limit with altitude is given by the presence of the chief deciduous trees\u2014oak, beech, ash and sycamore maple. These do not reach the same elevation, nor are they often found growing together, but their upper limit corresponds accurately enough to the change from a temperate to a colder climate that is further proved by a change in the presence of wild herbaceous vegetation. This limit usually lies about above the sea on the north side of the Alps, but on the southern slopes it often rises to , sometimes even to .\nAbove the forestry, there is often a band of dwarf pine trees (\"Pinus mugo\"), which is in turn superseded by \"Alpenrosen\", dwarf shrubs, typically \"Rhododendron ferrugineum\" (on acid soils) or \"Rhododendron hirsutum\" (on alkaline soils). Although Alpenrose prefers acidic soil, the plants are found throughout the region. Above the tree line is the area defined as \"alpine\" where in the alpine meadow plants are found that have adapted well to harsh conditions of cold temperatures, aridity, and high altitudes. The alpine area fluctuates greatly because of regional fluctuations in tree lines.\nAlpine plants such as the Alpine gentian grow in abundance in areas such as the meadows above the Lauterbrunnental. Gentians are named after the Illyrian king Gentius, and 40 species of the early-spring blooming flower grow in the Alps, in a range of . Writing about the gentians in Switzerland D. H. Lawrence described them as \"darkening the day-time, torch-like with the smoking blueness of Pluto's gloom.\" Gentians tend to \"appear\" repeatedly as the spring blooming takes place at progressively later dates, moving from the lower altitude to the higher altitude meadows where the snow melts much later than in the valleys. On the highest rocky ledges, the spring flowers bloom in the summer.\nAt these higher altitudes, the plants tend to form isolated cushions. In the Alps, several species of flowering plants have been recorded above , including \"Ranunculus glacialis\", \"Androsace alpina\" and \"Saxifraga biflora\". \"Eritrichium nanum\", commonly known as the King of the Alps, is the most elusive of the alpine flowers, growing on rocky ridges at . Perhaps the best known of the alpine plants is Edelweiss which grows in rocky areas and can be found at altitudes as low as and as high as . The plants that grow at the highest altitudes have adapted to conditions by specialization such as growing in rock screes that give protection from winds.\nThe extreme and stressful climatic conditions give way to the growth of plant species with secondary metabolites important for medicinal purposes. \"Origanum vulgare\", \"Prunella vulgaris\", \"Solanum nigrum\", and \"Urtica dioica\" are some of the more useful medicinal species found in the Alps.\nHuman interference has nearly exterminated the trees in many areas, and, except for the beech forests of the Austrian Alps, forests of deciduous trees are rarely found after the extreme deforestation between the 17th and 19th centuries. The vegetation has changed since the second half of the 20th century, as the high alpine meadows cease to be harvested for hay or used for grazing which eventually might result in a regrowth of the forest. In some areas, the modern practice of building ski runs by mechanical means has destroyed the underlying tundra from which the plant life cannot recover during the non-skiing months, whereas areas that still practice a natural \"piste\" type of ski slope building preserve the fragile underlayers.\nFauna.\nThe Alps are a habitat for 30,000 species of wildlife, ranging from the tiniest snow fleas to brown bears, many of which have made adaptations to the harsh cold conditions and high altitudes to the point that some only survive in specific micro-climates either directly above or below the snow line.\nThe largest mammal to live in the highest altitudes are the alpine ibex, which have been sighted as high as . The ibex live in caves and descend to eat the succulent alpine grasses. Classified as antelopes, chamois are smaller than ibex and found throughout the Alps, living above the tree line and are common in the entire alpine range. Areas of the eastern Alps are still home to brown bears. In Switzerland the canton of Bern was named for the bears but the last bear is recorded as having been killed in 1792 above Kleine Scheidegg by three hunters from Grindelwald.\nMany rodents such as voles live underground. Marmots live almost exclusively above the tree line as high as . They hibernate in large groups to provide warmth, and can be found in all areas of the Alps, in large colonies they build beneath the alpine pastures. Golden eagles and bearded vultures are the largest birds to be found in the Alps; they nest high on rocky ledges and can be found at altitudes of . The most common bird is the alpine chough which can be found scavenging at climber's huts or the Jungfraujoch, a high-altitude tourist destination.\nReptiles such as adders and vipers live up to the snow line; because they cannot bear the cold temperatures they hibernate underground and soak up the warmth on rocky ledges. The high-altitude Alpine salamanders have adapted to living above the snow line by giving birth to fully developed young rather than laying eggs. Brown trout can be found in the streams up to the snow line. Molluscs such as the wood snail live up the snow line. Popularly gathered as food, the snails are now protected.\nSeveral species of moths live in the Alps, some of which are believed to have evolved in the same habitat up to 120\u00a0million years ago, long before the Alps were created. Blue butterflies can commonly be seen drinking from the snowmelt; some species of blues fly as high as . The butterflies tend to be large, such as those from the swallowtail \"Parnassius\" family, with a habitat that ranges to . Twelve species of beetles have habitats up to the snow line; the most beautiful and formerly collected for its colours but now protected is \"Rosalia alpina\". Spiders, such as the large wolf spider, live above the snow line and can be seen as high as . Scorpions can be found in the Italian Alps.\nSome of the species of moths and insects show evidence of having been indigenous to the area from as long ago as the Alpine orogeny. In \u00c9mosson in Valais, Switzerland, dinosaur tracks were found in the 1970s, dating probably from the Triassic Period.\nHistory.\nPrehistory.\nWhen the ice melted after the W\u00fcrm glaciation, Paleolithic settlements were established along the lake shores and in cave systems. Evidence of human habitation has been found in caves near the Vercors Cave System, close to Grenoble and Echirolles. In Austria, the Mondsee lake shows evidence of houses built on piles. Standing stones have been found in the Alpine areas of France and Italy. About 200,000 drawings and etchings have been documented, and are known as the Rock Drawings in Valcamonica.\nA mummy of a Neolithic human, known as \u00d6tzi, was discovered on the Similaun. His clothing lets modern people assume that he was an alpine farmer, while the location and manner of his death suggests that \u00d6tzi was traveling. Analysis of the mitochondrial DNA of \u00d6tzi, has shown that he belongs to the K1 subclade. His remains and personal belongings are on exhibit at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, South Tyrol, Italy.\nFrom the 13th to the 6th century BC much of the Alps was settled by the Germanic peoples, Lombards, Alemanni, Bavarii, and Franks. Celt tribes settled in modern-day Switzerland between 1500 and 1000 BC. The Raeti lived in the eastern regions, while the west was occupied by the Helvetii and the Allobroges settled in the Rh\u00f4ne valley and in Savoy. The Ligures and Adriatic Veneti lived in Northwest Italy and Triveneto respectively. The Celts mined salt in areas such as Salzburg, where evidence was found of the Hallstatt culture. By the 6th century BC the La T\u00e8ne culture was well established in the region, and became known for high quality Celtic art.\nBetween 430 and 400 BC prolonged warfare in the Alps resulted in the devastation of agricultural land and human settlements, ultimately triggering the enslavement of men, women, and children, goods had to be imported as a result. The Etruscan civilization responded to raids by the Massalia and acquired absolute control over the Alpine trade routes. Aggressors in modern-day Italy were dealt with and an alliance was formed with the Celts. The grip of the Etruscan settlements broke down, as the Roman political system expanded, so as to take control over Alpine trade routes that connected human settlements in the Alps with settlements in the Mediterranean.\nDuring the Second Punic War in 218 BC, the Carthage general Hannibal initiated one of the most celebrated achievements of any military force in ancient warfare, recorded as Hannibal crossing the Alps. The Roman people built roads along the Alpine mountain passes, which continued to be used through the medieval period. Roman road markers can still be found on the Alpine mountain passes.\nDuring the Gallic Wars in 58 BC Julius Caesar defeated the Helvetii. The Rhaetian continued to resist but their territory was eventually conquered when the Romans crossed the Danube valley and defeated the Brigantes. The Romans built settlements in the Alps. In towns such as Aosta, Martigny, Lausanne, and Partenkirchen remains of villas, arenas, and temples have been discovered.\nChristianity, feudalism, and Napoleonic wars.\nChristianity was established in the Alps by the Roman people. Monasteries and churches were constructed, even at high Alpine altitudes. The Franks expanded their Carolingian Empire, while the Baiuvarii introduced feudalism in the eastern Alps. The construction of castles in the Alps supported the growing number of dukedoms and kingdoms. Castello del Buonconsiglio in Trento, still has intricate frescoes, and excellent examples of Gothic art. The Ch\u00e2teau de Chillon is preserved as an example of medieval architecture. There are several important alpine saints and one such one is Saint Maurice. Much of the medieval period was a time of power struggles between competing dynasties such as the House of Savoy, the Visconti of Milan, and the House of Habsburg.\nThe Great St Bernard Hospice, built in the 9th or 10th centuries, at the summit of the Great Saint Bernard Pass was a shelter for humans and destination for pilgrims. In 1291, to protect themselves from incursions by the House of Habsburg, four Alpine cantons drew up the Federal Charter of 1291, which is considered to be a declaration of independence from neighboring kingdoms. After a series of battles fought in the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, more cantons joined the confederacy and by the 16th century, Switzerland was established as a sovereign state.\nIn the Alps, the War of the Spanish Succession fallout resulted in a 1713 treaty, part of the Peace of Utrecht, which relocated the Western Alps border along the watersheds. Historically, the Alps were used to determine the borders of political and administrative gangs, but the Peace of Utrecht was the first significant body of treaty that considered geographical conditions. The Alps were carved up and borders were agreed, so that enclaves in the Alps could be eliminated.\nDuring the Napoleonic Wars in the late 18th century and early 19th century, Napoleon annexed territory formerly controlled by the House of Habsburg, and the House of Savoy. In 1798, the Helvetic Republic was established, two years later an army across the Great St Bernard Pass. In 1799 the Russian imperial military engaged the revolutionary French army in the Alps, this episode has been recorded as significant achievement in mountain warfare. In October 1799 the troops commanded by Alexander Suvorov were surrounded in the Alps by much larger French troops. The Russian troops broke out, mauled the French troops, and retreated through the Panix Pass.\nAfter the fall of Napoleon, many alpine countries developed heavy protections to prevent further invasion. Thus, Savoy built a series of fortifications to protect the major alpine passes, such as the col du Mont-Cenis, which was crossed by Charlemagne to obliterate the Lombards.\nIn the 19th century, the monasteries built in the Alps to shelter humans became tourist destinations. The Benedictines had built monasteries in Lucerne, and Oberammergau. The Cistercians built their temple at Lake Constance. Meanwhile, the Augustinians maintained abbeys in Savoy and one in Interlaken.\nExploration.\nRadiocarbon-dated charcoal placed around 50,000 years ago was found in the \"Drachloch\" (Dragon's Hole) cave above the village of Vattis in the canton of St. Gallen, proving that the high peaks were visited by prehistoric people. Seven bear skulls from the cave may have been buried by the same prehistoric people. The peaks, however, were mostly ignored except for a few notable examples, and long left to the exclusive attention of the people of the adjoining valleys. The mountain peaks were seen as terrifying, the abode of dragons and demons, to the point that people blindfolded themselves to cross the Alpine passes. The glaciers remained a mystery and many still believed the highest areas to be inhabited by dragons.\nCharles VII of France ordered his chamberlain to climb Mont Aiguille in 1356. The knight reached the summit of Rocciamelone where he left a bronze triptych of three crosses, a feat which he conducted with the use of ladders to traverse the ice. In 1492, Antoine de Ville climbed Mont Aiguille, without reaching the summit, an experience he described as \"horrifying and terrifying.\" Leonardo da Vinci was fascinated by variations of light in the higher altitudes, and climbed a mountain\u2014scholars are uncertain which one; some believe it may have been Monte Rosa. From his description of a \"blue like that of a gentian\" sky it is thought that he reached a significantly high altitude. In the 18th century four Chamonix men almost made the summit of Mont Blanc but were overcome by altitude sickness and snowblindness.\nConrad Gessner was the first naturalist to ascend the mountains in the 16th century, to study them, writing that in the mountains he found the \"theatre of the Lord\". By the 19th century more naturalists began to arrive to explore, study and conquer the high peaks. Two men who first explored the regions of ice and snow were Horace-B\u00e9n\u00e9dict de Saussure (1740\u20131799) in the Pennine Alps, and the Benedictine monk of Disentis Placidus a Spescha (1752\u20131833). Born in Geneva, Saussure was enamoured with the mountains from an early age; he left a law career to become a naturalist and spent many years trekking through the Bernese Oberland, the Savoy, the Piedmont and Valais, studying the glaciers and geology, as he became an early proponent of the theory of rock upheaval. Saussure, in 1787, was a member of the third ascent of Mont Blanc\u2014today the summits of all the peaks have been climbed.\nThe Romantics and Alpinists.\nAlbrecht von Haller's poem \"Die Alpen\", published in 1732 described the mountains as an area of mythical purity. Jean-Jacques Rousseau presented the Alps as a place of allure and beauty, in his novel \"Julie, or the New Heloise\", published in 1761. Later the first wave of Romanticism such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and J. M. W. Turner came to admire the Alpine scenery; Wordsworth visited the area in 1790, writing of his experiences in \"The Prelude\" (1799). Schiller later wrote the play \"William Tell\" (1804), which tells the story of the legendary Swiss marksman William Tell as part of the greater Swiss struggle for independence from the Habsburg Empire in the early 14th century. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Alpine countries began to see an influx of poets, artists, and musicians, as visitors came to experience the sublime effects of monumental nature.\nIn 1816, Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary Shelley visited Geneva and all three were inspired by the scenery in their writings. During these visits Shelley wrote the poem \"Mont Blanc\", Byron wrote \"The Prisoner of Chillon\" and the dramatic poem \"Manfred\", and Mary Shelley, who found the scenery overwhelming, conceived the idea for the novel \"Frankenstein\" in her villa on the shores of Lake Geneva amid a thunderstorm. When Coleridge travelled to Chamonix, he declaimed, in defiance of Shelley, who had signed himself \"Atheos\" in the guestbook of the Hotel de Londres near Montenvers, \"Who would be, who could be an atheist in this valley of wonders\".\nBy the mid-19th century scientists began to arrive en masse to study the geology and ecology of the region.\nFrom the beginning of the 19th century, the tourism and mountaineering development of the Alps began. In the early years of the \"golden age of alpinism\" initially scientific activities were mixed with sport, for example by the physicist John Tyndall, with the first ascent of the Matterhorn by Edward Whymper being the highlight. In the later years, the \"silver age of alpinism\", the focus was on mountain sports and climbing. The first president of the Alpine Club, John Ball, is considered the discoverer of the Dolomites, which for decades were the focus of climbers like Paul Grohmann, Michael Innerkofler and Angelo Dibona.\nThe Nazis.\nIn autumn 1932, Adolf Hitler commissioned the first of a series of refurbishments, which eventually turned a mountain cottage, later named Berghof, into a fortified citadel. This domestic, but representative, fortification had two small bedrooms, and a full bathroom, planned by the Munich architect and NSDAP member Josef Neumaier. Guests, such as Rudolf Hess, stayed over, sleeping in tents or over the garage.\nThe Alps, Adolf Hitler, and improbable powerful organizations have been subject to crime fiction. The Alps acted as a geographical barrier to Italy, and the Alps for centuries were permeated with established smuggling routes, known as \"green line\". After World War II, members of the Schutzstaffel that feared prosecution as war criminals, known in modern English only as \"SS\", disappeared into a crowd of refugees. Massive numbers of refugees entered Italy illegally, by navigating the Alps.\nUndocumented migrants.\nSmugglers of humans claim that crossing the Alps is less dangerous, or deadly, than traveling 355\u00a0km on water between Tripoli and Lampedusa with a tramp ship (\"carretta del mare\") or a dinghy. Undocumented migrants, visa overstayers, false tourists, asylum seekers, and other clandestine humans, lose their lives crossing the Alps. The exact number of smuggled humans who die a brutal death in the Alps can only be estimated.\nLargest Alpine cities.\nThe largest city within the Alps is the city of Grenoble in France. Other larger and important cities within the Alps with over 100,000 inhabitants are in Tyrol with Bolzano/Bozen (Italy), Trento (Italy) and Innsbruck (Austria). Larger cities outside the Alps are Milan, Verona, Turin (Italy), Munich (Germany), Graz, Vienna, Salzburg (Austria), Ljubljana, Maribor, Kranj (Slovenia), Zurich, Geneva (Switzerland), Nice and Lyon (France).\nCities with over 100,000 inhabitants in the Alps are:\nAlpine people and culture.\nThe population of the region is 14\u00a0million spread across eight countries. On the rim of the mountains, on the plateaus, and on the plains the economy consists of manufacturing and service jobs whereas in the higher altitudes and the mountains farming is still essential to the economy. Farming and forestry continue to be mainstays of Alpine culture, industries that provide for export to the cities and maintain the mountain ecology.\nThe Alpine regions are multicultural and linguistically diverse. Dialects are common and vary from valley to valley and region to region. In the Slavic Alps alone 19 dialects have been identified. Some of the Romance dialects spoken in the French, Swiss and Italian alps of Aosta Valley derive from Arpitan, while the southern part of the western range is related to Occitan; the German dialects derive from Germanic tribal languages. Romansh, spoken by two percent of the population in southeast Switzerland, is an ancient Rhaeto-Romanic language derived from Latin, remnants of ancient Celtic languages and perhaps Etruscan.\nMuch of the Alpine culture is unchanged since the medieval period when skills that guaranteed survival in the mountain valleys and the highest villages became mainstays, leading to strong traditions of carpentry, woodcarving, baking, pastry-making, and cheesemaking.\nFarming has been a traditional occupation for centuries, although it became less dominant in the 20th century with the advent of tourism. Grazing and pasture land are limited because of the steep and rocky topography of the Alps. In mid-June, cows are moved to the highest pastures close to the snowline, where they are watched by herdsmen who stay in the high altitudes often living in stone huts or wooden barns during the summers. Villagers celebrate the day the cows are herded up to the pastures and again when they return in mid-September. The Almabtrieb, Alpabzug, Alpabfahrt, D\u00e9salpes (\"coming down from the alps\") is celebrated by decorating the cows with garlands and enormous cowbells while the farmers dress in traditional costumes.\nCheesemaking is an ancient tradition in most Alpine countries. A wheel of cheese from the Emmental in Switzerland can weigh up to , and the Beaufort in Savoy can weigh up to . Owners of the cows traditionally receive from the cheesemakers a portion about the proportion of the cows' milk from the summer months in the high alps. Haymaking is an important farming activity in mountain villages that have become somewhat mechanized in recent years, although the slopes are so steep that scythes are usually necessary to cut the grass. Hay is normally brought in twice a year, often also on festival days.\nIn the high villages, people live in homes built according to medieval designs that withstand cold winters. The kitchen is separated from the living area (called the \"stube\", the area of the home heated by a stove), and second-floor bedrooms benefit from rising heat. The typical Swiss chalet originated in the Bernese Oberland. Chalets often face south or downhill and are built of solid wood, with a steeply gabled roof to allow accumulated snow to slide off easily. Stairs leading to upper levels are sometimes built on the outside, and balconies are sometimes enclosed.\nFood is passed from the kitchen to the stube, where the dining room table is placed. Some meals are communal, such as fondue, where a pot is set in the middle of the table for each person to dip into. Other meals are still served traditionally on carved wooden plates. Furniture has been traditionally elaborately carved and in many Alpine countries, carpentry skills are passed from generation to generation.\nRoofs are traditionally constructed from Alpine rocks such as pieces of schist, gneiss, or slate. Such chalets are typically found in the higher parts of the valleys, as in the Maurienne valley in Savoy, where the amount of snow during the cold months is important. The inclination of the roof cannot exceed 40%, allowing the snow to stay on top, thereby functioning as insulation from the cold. In the lower areas where the forests are widespread, wooden tiles are traditionally used. Commonly made of Norway spruce, they are called \"tavaillon\".\nIn the German-speaking parts of the Alps (Austria, Bavaria, South Tyrol, Liechtenstein and Switzerland) and also Slovenia, there is a strong tradition of Alpine folk culture. Old traditions are carefully maintained among inhabitants of Alpine areas, even though this is seldom obvious to the visitor: many people are members of cultural associations where the Alpine folk culture is cultivated. At cultural events, traditional folk costume (in German \"Tracht\") is expected: typically lederhosen for men and dirndls for women. Visitors can get a glimpse of the rich customs of the Alps at public Volksfeste. Even when large events feature only a little folk culture, all participants take part with gusto. Good opportunities to see local people celebrating the traditional culture occur at the many fairs, wine festivals, and firefighting festivals which fill weekends in the countryside from spring to autumn. Alpine festivals vary from country to country. Frequently they include music (e.g. the playing of Alpenhorns), dance (e.g. Schuhplattler), sports (e.g. wrestling marches and archery), as well as traditions with pagan roots such as the lighting of fires on Walpurgis Night and Saint John's Eve. Many areas celebrate Fastnacht in the weeks before Lent. Folk costume also continues to be worn for most weddings and festivals.\nTourism.\nThe Alps are one of the more popular tourist destinations in the world with many resorts such as Oberstdorf, in Bavaria, Saalbach in Austria, Davos in Switzerland, Chamonix in France, and Cortina d'Ampezzo in Italy recording more than a million annual visitors. With over 120\u00a0million visitors a year, tourism is integral to the Alpine economy with much of it coming from winter sports, although summer visitors are also an important component.\nThe tourism industry began in the early 19th century when foreigners visited the Alps, travelled to the bases of the mountains to enjoy the scenery, and stayed at the spa-resorts. Large hotels were built during the Belle \u00c9poque; cog-railways, built early in the 20th century, brought tourists to ever-higher elevations, with the Jungfraubahn terminating at the Jungfraujoch, well above the eternal snow-line, after going through a tunnel in Eiger. During this period winter sports were slowly introduced: in 1882 the first figure skating championship was held in St. Moritz, and downhill skiing became a popular sport with English visitors early in the 20th century, as the first ski-lift was installed in 1908 above Grindelwald.\nIn the first half of the 20th century the Olympic Winter Games were held three times in Alpine venues: the 1924 Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France; the 1928 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland; and the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. During World War II the winter games were cancelled but after that time the Winter Games have been held in St. Moritz (1948), Cortina d'Ampezzo (1956), Innsbruck, Austria (1964 and 1976), Grenoble, France, (1968), Albertville, France, (1992), and Turin (2006). In 1930, the \"Lauberhorn Rennen\" (Lauberhorn Race), was run for the first time on the Lauberhorn above Wengen; the equally demanding Hahnenkamm was first run in the same year in Kitzb\u00fchl, Austria. Both races continue to be held each January on successive weekends. The Lauberhorn is the more strenuous downhill race at and poses danger to racers who reach within seconds of leaving the start gate.\nDuring the post-World War I period, ski lifts were built in Swiss and Austrian towns to accommodate winter visitors, and summer tourism continued to be important. By the mid-20th century the popularity of downhill skiing increased greatly as it became more accessible and in the 1970s several new villages were built in France devoted almost exclusively to skiing, such as Les Menuires. Until this point, Austria and Switzerland had been the traditional and more popular destinations for winter sports, and by the end of the 20th century and into the early 21st century, France, Italy, and Tyrol began to see increases in winter visitors. Since the 1980s tourism expansion and easy global access generate grave concerns regarding the loss of traditional Alpine culture and many uncertainties about sustainable development. As a likely result of climatic change, the number of high altitude ski resorts and piste km is in decline since 2015, with snow-making machines installed at many sites.\nTransportation.\nThe region is serviced by of roads used by six million vehicles per year. Train travel is well established in the Alps, with, for instance of track for every in a country such as Switzerland. Most of Europe's highest railways are located there. In 2007, the new L\u00f6tschberg Base Tunnel was opened, which circumvents the 100 years older L\u00f6tschberg Tunnel. With the opening of the Gotthard Base Tunnel on June 1, 2016, it bypasses the Gotthard Tunnel built in the 19th century and realizes the first flat route through the Alps.\nSome high mountain villages are car-free either because of inaccessibility or by choice. Wengen, and Zermatt (in Switzerland) are accessible only by cable car or cog-rail trains. Avoriaz (in France), is car-free, with other Alpine villages considering becoming car-free zones or limiting the number of cars for reasons of sustainability of the fragile Alpine terrain.\nThe lower regions and larger towns of the Alps are well-served by motorways and main roads, but higher mountain passes and byroads, which are amongst the highest in Europe, can be treacherous even in summer due to steep slopes. Many passes are closed in winter. Several airports around the Alps (and some within), as well as long-distance rail links from all neighbouring countries, afford large numbers of travellers easy access.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nWorks cited.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["25845", "981", "10618215", "27889300"], "permutation_1": ["25845", "27889300", "981", "10618215"], "permutation_2": ["981", "25845", "10618215", "27889300"], "permutation_3": ["27889300", "25845", "981", "10618215"]}
{"id": "4hop1__377963_344284_86983_516763", "docs_added": {"193703": "Alaska Purchase\n1867 sale by Russia to the United States\nThe Alaska Purchase was the purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire by the United States for a sum of $7.2\u00a0million in 1867 (equivalent to $\u00a0million in 2023). On May 15 of that year, the United States Senate ratified a bilateral treaty that had been signed on March 30, and American sovereignty became legally effective across the territory on October 18.\nDuring the first half of the 18th century, Russia had established a colonial presence in parts of North America, but few Russians ever settled in Alaska. Alexander\u00a0II of Russia, having faced a catastrophic defeat in the Crimean War, began exploring the possibility of selling the state's Alaskan possessions, which, in any future war, would be difficult to defend from the United Kingdom. To this end, William H. Seward, the U.S. Secretary of State at the time, entered into negotiations with Russian diplomat Eduard de\u00a0Stoeckl towards the United States' acquisition of Alaska after the American Civil War. Seward and Stoeckl agreed to a treaty for the sale on March 30, 1867.\nAt an original cost of $0.02 per acre ($ per acre in 2023), the United States had grown by . Reactions to the Alaska Purchase among Americans were mostly positive, as many believed that Alaska would serve as a base to expand American trade in Asia. Some opponents labeled the purchase as \"Seward's Folly\" or \"Seward's Icebox\" as they contended that the United States had acquired useless land. Nearly all Russian settlers left Alaska in the aftermath of the purchase; Alaska would remain sparsely populated until the Klondike Gold Rush began in 1896. Originally organized as the Department of Alaska, the area was renamed the District of Alaska in 1884 and the Territory of Alaska in 1912, ultimately becoming the modern-day State of Alaska in 1959.\nHistory.\nRussian America was settled by , merchants and fur trappers who expanded through Siberia. They arrived in Alaska in 1732, and in 1799 the Russian-American Company (RAC) received a charter to hunt for fur. No colony was established, but the Russian Orthodox Church sent missionaries to the natives and built churches. About 700 Russians enforced sovereignty in a territory over twice as large as Texas. In 1821, Tsar Alexander\u00a0I issued an edict declaring Russia's sovereignty over the North American Pacific coast north of the 51st parallel north. The edict also forbade foreign ships to approach within 100 Italian miles (115 miles or 185\u00a0km) of the Russian claim. US Secretary of State John Quincy Adams strongly protested the edict, which potentially threatened both the commerce and expansionary ambitions of the United States. Seeking favorable relations with the U.S., Alexander agreed to the Russo-American Treaty of 1824. In the treaty, Russia limited its claims to lands north of parallel 54\u00b040\u2032 north and also agreed to open Russian ports to U.S. ships.\nBy the 1850s, a population of once 300,000 sea otters was almost extinct, and Russia needed money after being defeated by France and Britain in the Crimean War. The California Gold Rush showed that if gold were discovered in Alaska, Americans and Canadians would overwhelm the Russian presence in what one scholar later described as \"Siberia's Siberia\". However, the principal reason for the sale was that the hard-to-defend colony would be easily conquered by British forces based in neighboring Canada in any future conflict, and Russia did not wish to see its archrival being next door just across the Bering Sea. Therefore, Emperor Alexander\u00a0II decided to sell the territory. The Russian government discussed the proposal in 1857 and 1858 and offered to sell the territory to the United States, hoping that its presence in the region would offset the plans of Britain. However, no deal was reached, as the risk of an American Civil War was a more pressing concern in Washington.\nGrand Duke Konstantin, a younger brother of the Tsar, began to press for the handover of Russian America to the United States in 1857. In a memorandum to Foreign Minister Alexander Gorchakov he stated that <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nKonstantin's letter was shown to his brother, Tsar Alexander II, who wrote \"this idea is worth considering\" on the front page. Supporters of Konstantin's proposal to immediately withdraw from North America included Admiral Yevfimy Putyatin and the Russian minister to the United States, Eduard de\u00a0Stoeckl. Gorchakov agreed with the necessity of abandoning Russian America but argued for a gradual process leading to its sale. He found a supporter in the naval minister and former chief manager of the Russian-American Company, Ferdinand von\u00a0Wrangel. Wrangel pressed for some proceeds to be invested in the economic development of Kamchatka and the Amur Basin. The Emperor eventually sided with Gorchakov, deciding to postpone negotiations until the end of the RAC's patent, set to expire in 1861.\nOver the winter of 1859\u20131860, Stoeckl held meetings with United States officials, though he had been instructed not to initiate discussions about the sale of the RAC assets. Communicating primarily with Assistant Secretary of State John Appleton and California Senator William M. Gwin, Stoeckl reported the interest expressed by the Americans in acquiring Russian America. While President James Buchanan kept these hearings informal, preparations were made for further negotiations. Stoeckl reported a conversation in which he asked \"in passing\" what price the U.S. government might pay for the Russian colony and Senator Gwin replied that they \"might go as far as $5,000,000\", a figure Gorchakov found far too low. Stoeckl informed Appleton and Gwin of this, the latter saying that his Congressional colleagues in Oregon and California would support a larger figure. Buchanan's increasingly unpopular presidency forced the matter to be shelved until a new presidential election. With the oncoming American Civil War, Stoeckl proposed a renewal of the RAC's charter. Two of its ports were to be open to foreign traders and commercial agreements with Peru and Chile to be signed to give \"a fresh jolt\" to the company.\nRussia continued to see an opportunity to weaken British power by causing British Columbia, including the Royal Navy base at Esquimalt, to be surrounded or annexed by American territory. Following the Union victory in the Civil War in 1865, the Tsar instructed Stoeckl to re-enter into negotiations with William H. Seward in the beginning of March 1867. President Andrew Johnson was busy with negotiations about Reconstruction, and Seward had alienated a number of Republicans, so both men believed that the purchase would help divert attention from domestic issues. The negotiations concluded after an all-night session with the signing of the treaty at 04:00 on March 30, 1867. The purchase price was set at $7.2\u00a0million (equivalent to $\u00a0million in 2023), or about 2 cents per acre ($4.74/km2).\nAmerican ownership.\nThe Russian name for the Alaska Peninsula was \"Alyaska\" (\"\u0410\u043b\u044f\u0441\u043a\u0430\") or \"Alyeska\", from an Aleut word, \"alashka\" or \"alaesksu\", meaning \"great land\" or \"mainland\". The United States chose the name \"Alaska\" to refer to the area purchased from Russia.\nSeward told the nation that, according to Russian estimates, Alaska had about 60,000 inhabitants. This included about 10,500 who were under the direct government of the Russian fur company: about 8,000 indigenous people and 2,500 people of Russian or mixed Russian and indigenous descent (for example, having a Russian father and a native mother). The remaining 50,000 or so were Inuit or Alaska Natives living outside of Russia's jurisdiction.\nSeward also said that the Russians were settled at 23 trading posts, placed on accessible islands and at points along the coast. At smaller trading posts, typically only four or five Russians were stationed: their job was to collect furs from the natives for storage and then for shipment when the company's boats arrived to take the furs away. There were two larger towns. One was New Archangel (now named Sitka), established in 1804 to handle the valuable trade in the skins of sea otters; in 1867, it had 116 small log cabins and 968 residents. The other was St. Paul, in the Pribilof Islands, which had 100 homes and 283 residents, and was the center of the seal fur industry.\nSeward and many other Americans expected that Asia would become an important market for U.S. products, and that Alaska would serve as a base for American trade with Asia and globally, and for the extension of American power into the Pacific.\nSenator Charles Sumner, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sponsored the Senate bill authorizing the U.S. to approve the treaty to acquire the territory. He not only agreed about the benefit to trade, but also said he expected the territory to be valuable on its own; having studied the records of explorers, he believed it contained valuable animals and forests. He compared the acquisition to contemporary European colonial acquisitions, such as the French conquest of Algeria. The United States Senate approved the treaty by a vote of 37 to 2.\nPublic opinion favors the purchase.\nMany Americans believed in 1867 that the purchase process had been corrupt, but W. H. Dall in 1872 wrote that \"there can be no doubt that the feelings of a majority of the citizens of the United States are in favor of it.\" The notion that the purchase was unpopular among Americans is, a scholar wrote 120 years later, \"one of the strongest historical myths in American history. It persists despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, and the efforts of the best historians to dispel it\", likely in part because it fits American and Alaskan writers' view of the territory as distinct and filled with self-reliant pioneers.\nA majority of newspapers either supported the purchase or were neutral. A review of dozens of contemporary newspapers found general support for the purchase, especially in California; most of 48 major newspapers supported the purchase. Public opinion was not universally positive; to some the purchase was known as \"Seward's folly\", \"Walrussia\", or \"Seward's icebox\". Editorials contended that taxpayer money had been wasted on a \"polar bear garden\". Nonetheless, most newspaper editors argued that the U.S. would probably derive great economic benefits from the purchase, such as considerable mineral resources that previous geological explorations of the region suggested were available there; friendship with Russia was important; and it would facilitate the acquisition of British Columbia. Forty-five percent of supportive newspapers cited the increased potential for annexing British Columbia in their support, and \"The New York Times\" stated that, consistent with Seward's reason, Alaska would increase American trade with East Asia.\nThe principal urban newspaper that opposed the purchase was the \"New York Tribune\", published by Seward opponent Horace Greeley. The ongoing controversy over Reconstruction spread to other acts, including the Alaska purchase. Some opposed the United States obtaining its first non-contiguous territory, seeing it as a colony; others saw no need to pay for land that they expected the country to obtain through manifest destiny. Historian Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer summarized the minority opinion of some American newspaper editors who opposed the purchase:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Already, so it was said, we were burdened with territory we had no population to fill. The Indians within the present boundaries of the republic strained our power to govern aboriginal peoples. Could it be that we would now, with open eyes, seek to add to our difficulties by increasing the number of such peoples under our national care? The purchase price was small; the annual charges for administration, civil and military, would be yet greater, and continuing. The territory included in the proposed cession was not contiguous to the national domain. It lay away at an inconvenient and a dangerous distance. The treaty had been secretly prepared, and signed and foisted upon the country at one o'clock in the morning. It was a dark deed done in the night\u2026 The \"New York World\" said that it was a \"sucked orange.\" It contained nothing of value but furbearing animals, and these had been hunted until they were nearly extinct. Except for the Aleutian Islands and a narrow strip of land extending along the southern coast the country would be not worth taking as a gift\u2026 Unless gold were found in the country much time would elapse before it would be blessed with Hoe printing presses, Methodist chapels and a metropolitan police. It was \"a frozen wilderness.\"\nTransfer ceremony.\nThe transfer ceremony took place in Sitka on October 18, 1867. Russian and American soldiers paraded in front of the governor's house; the Russian flag was lowered and the American flag raised amid peals of artillery.\nA description of the events was published in Finland six years later. It was written by a blacksmith named Thomas Ahllund, who had been recruited to work in Sitka:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />We had not spent many weeks at Sitka when two large steam ships arrived there, bringing things that belonged to the American crown, and a few days later the new governor also arrived in a ship together with his soldiers. The wooden two-story mansion of the Russian governor stood on a high hill, and in front of it in the yard at the end of a tall spar flew the Russian flag with the double-headed eagle in the middle of it. Of course, this flag now had to give way to the flag of the United States, which is full of stripes and stars. On a predetermined day in the afternoon, a group of soldiers came from the American ships, led by one who carried the flag. Marching solemnly, but without accompaniment, they came to the governor's mansion, where the Russian troops were already lined up and waiting for the Americans. Now they started to pull the [Russian double-headed] eagle down, but\u2014whatever had gone into its head\u2014it only came down a little bit, and then entangled its claws around the spar so that it could not be pulled down any further. A Russian soldier was therefore ordered to climb up the spar and disentangle it, but it seems that the eagle cast a spell on his hands, too\u2014for he was not able to arrive at where the flag was, but instead slipped down without it. The next one to try was not able to do any better; only the third soldier was able to bring the unwilling eagle down to the ground. While the flag was brought down, music was played and cannons were fired off from the shore, and then, while the other flag was hoisted, the Americans fired off their cannons from the ships equally many times. After that American soldiers replaced the Russian ones at the gates of the fence surrounding the Kolosh [i.e. Tlingit] village.\nAfter the flag transition was completed, Captain of 2nd Rank Aleksei Alekseyevich Peshchurov said, \"General Rousseau, by authority from His Majesty, the Emperor of Russia, I transfer to the United States the territory of Alaska.\" General Lovell Rousseau accepted the territory. (Peshchurov had been sent to Sitka as commissioner of the Russian government in the transfer of Alaska.) A number of forts, blockhouses and timber buildings were handed over to the Americans. The troops occupied the barracks; General Jefferson C. Davis established his residence in the governor's house, and most of the Russian citizens went home, leaving a few traders and priests who chose to remain.\nAftermath.\nAfter the transfer, a number of Russian citizens remained in Sitka, but nearly all of them very soon decided to return to Russia, which was still possible at the expense of the Russian-American Company. Ahllund's story \"corroborates other accounts of the transfer ceremony, and the dismay felt by many of the Russians and creoles, jobless and in want, at the rowdy troops and gun-toting civilians who looked on Sitka as merely one more western frontier settlement.\" Ahllund gives a vivid account of what life was like for civilians in Sitka under US rule and helps to explain why hardly any Russian subject wanted to stay there. Moreover, Ahllund's article is the only known description of the return voyage on the \"Winged Arrow\", a ship that was specially purchased to transport the Russians back to their native country. \"The over-crowded vessel, with crewmen who got roaring drunk at every port, must have made the voyage a memorable one.\" Ahllund mentions stops at the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands, Tahiti, Brazil, London, and finally Kronstadt, the port for St. Petersburg, where they arrived on August 28, 1869.\nAmerican settlers who shared Sumner's belief in the riches of Alaska rushed to the territory but found that much capital was required to exploit its resources, many of which could also be found closer to markets in the contiguous United States. Most soon left, and by 1873, Sitka's population had declined from about 2,500 to a few hundred. The United States acquired an area over twice as large as Texas, but it was not until the great Klondike Gold Rush in 1896 that Alaska generally came to be seen as a valuable addition to U.S. territory.\nThe seal fishery was one of the chief considerations that induced the United States to purchase Alaska. It provided considerable revenue by the lease of the privilege of taking seals, an amount that was eventually more than the price paid for Alaska. From 1870 to 1890, the seal fisheries yielded 100,000 skins a year. The company to which the administration of the fisheries was entrusted by a lease from the US government paid a rental of $50,000 per annum and in addition thereto <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />$2.62+1\u20442 per skin for the total number taken. The skins were transported to London to be dressed and prepared for world markets. The business grew so large that the earnings of English laborers after the acquisition of Alaska by the United States amounted by 1890 to $12,000,000.\nHowever, exclusive US control of this resource was eventually challenged, and the Bering Sea Controversy resulted when the United States seized over 150 sealing ships flying the British flag, based out of the coast of British Columbia. The conflict between the United States and Britain was resolved by an arbitration tribunal in 1893. The waters of the Bering Sea were deemed to be international waters, contrary to the US contention that they were an internal sea. The US was required to make a payment to Britain, and both nations were required to follow regulations developed to preserve the resource.\nFinancial return.\nThe purchase of Alaska has been referenced as a \"bargain basement deal\" and as the principal positive accomplishment of the otherwise much-maligned presidency of Andrew Johnson.\nEconomist David R. Barker has argued that the US federal government has not earned a positive financial return on the purchase of Alaska. According to Barker, tax revenue and mineral and energy royalties to the federal government have been less than federal costs of governing Alaska plus interest on the borrowed funds used for the purchase.\nJohn M. Miller has taken the argument further by contending that US oil companies that developed Alaskan petroleum resources did not earn enough profits to compensate for the risks that they incurred.\nOther economists and scholars, including Scott Goldsmith and Terrence Cole, have criticized the metrics used to reach those conclusions by noting that most contiguous Western states would fail to meet the bar of \"positive financial return\" using the same criteria and by contending that looking at the increase in net national income, instead of only US Treasury revenue, would paint a much more accurate picture of the financial return of Alaska as an investment.\nAlaska Day.\nAlaska Day celebrates the formal transfer of Alaska from Russia to the United States, which took place on October 18, 1867, according to the Gregorian calendar which came into effect in Alaska the day following the transfer, replacing the Julian calendar, which was used by the Russians (the Julian calendar in the 19th century was 12 days behind the Gregorian calendar). Alaska Day is a holiday for all state workers.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1399249": "Weardale\nOpen valley in County Durham, England\nWeardale is a dale, or valley, on the east side of the Pennines in County Durham, England. Large parts of Weardale fall within the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) \u2013 the second-largest AONB in England and Wales. The upper dale is surrounded by high fells (up to O.D. at Burnhope Seat) and heather grouse moors. The River Wear flows through Weardale before reaching Bishop Auckland and then Durham, meeting the sea at Sunderland.\nThe Wear Valley local government district covered the upper part of the dale, including Weardale, between 1974 and 2009, when it was abolished on County Durham's becoming a unitary authority. (From 1894 to 1974 there was a Weardale Rural District.) Upper Weardale is in the parliamentary constituency of North West Durham. The dale's principal settlements include St John's Chapel and the towns of Crook, Stanhope and Wolsingham.\nLocal climate.\nWeardale's winters are typically harsh and prolonged with regular snow, nowadays taken advantage of by skiers using a ski run at Swinhope Head.\nWildlife and ecology.\nWildlife includes an important population of black grouse, along with the more usual upland birds. Sea-trout and salmon run the River Wear whilst adders (snakes) are sometimes encountered on the moors. With regard to flora, some species-rich meadows remain, and the wood cranesbill (\"Geranium sylvaticum\") and meadow cranesbill (\"G. pratense\") are easy to spot in summer and the mountain pansy (\"Viola lutea\") is a characteristic plant of the shorter grass round the upper dale. Also round the upper dale, in late spring damp places are bright with yellow marsh marigolds, of a variety (Caltha palustris minor) that is rather smaller than the ordinary marsh marigold (Caltha palustris). The tiny but beautiful spring sandwort (\"Minuartia verna\") may be seen around old lead workings, enabled by its high tolerance of lead to colonise ground where contamination inhibits other species.\nHistory and historical associations.\nPast occupation or activity by man is attested by evidence such as the Heatheryburn Bronze Age collection of gold and other objects, now in the British Museum; altars placed by Roman officers who took hunting trips out from forts in present-day County Durham; and the use from Norman times of Frosterley Marble, a black fossiliferous layer of limestone occurring near that village, as an ornamental material in Durham Cathedral and many other churches and public buildings.\nThe small towns of Stanhope and Wolsingham appear to have existed as Anglo-Saxon settlements before the Norman Conquest of 1066. The Normans extended farming in this part of the dale, and later in the Middle Ages the upper dale was cleared for \"vaccaries\" \u2013 farms for pasturing cattle. The Bishops of Durham owned the mineral rights and the Church retained them throughout the effective life of the lead industry, miners and companies being lessees.\nIn 1327 Edward III led his first military campaign in Weardale. The so-called Weardale campaign against the Scots was a military failure but led to the politically important Treaty of Edinburgh\u2013Northampton. The campaign was graphically described by a participant, the chronicler Jean Le Bel.\nIn the 18th century John Wesley visited the dale on a number of occasions and it became a Methodist stronghold. High House Chapel near Ireshopeburn has been claimed to be the Methodist chapel with the longest history of continuous use in the world and contains the Weardale Museum (not to be confused with the Lead Mining Museum at Killhope), which includes a room devoted to Methodist and Wesley memorabilia.\nAs a youth between the world wars the poet W. H. Auden walked amid the wild countryside and the relics of the lead-mining industry in and around Weardale and found them a lifelong source of inspiration. One place he visited, Rookhope, is also the setting of a border ballad, 'The Rookhope Ryde', which describes in some detail how in 1569 Weardale men drove out a party of cattle-raiders who had come down from the Roman wall area.\nAmong modern works 'The Last Ballad', by Helen Cannam, is a lively historical novel set in the dale in the early 19th century.\nMining history.\nWeardale was historically important for lead mining and there is a lead-mining museum incorporating the preserved Park Level Mine at Killhope (pronounced \"Killup\").\nThe first documented evidence of mining in the Northern Pennines dates from the 12th century and records the presence of silver mines in the areas of what are now Alston Moor, just west of Weardale, and Northumberland. Weardale was at that time forested and belonged to the Bishops of Durham, who used part of it as a hunting preserve. The villages of Eastgate and Westgate mark the former eastern and western entrances to this forest preserve (King, 1982).\nLead mining in Weardale reached its greatest levels during the 18th and 19th centuries, when the London Lead and Beaumont Companies dominated mining throughout the region, e.g. at the Cornish Hush Mine. During the 1880s declining prices for lead forced both companies to give up their leases in the area, though the Weardale Lead Company continued lead mining and smelting until 1931. According to Dunham (1990) 28 separate lead-smelting operations were active in the region during the height of mining in the 19th century but by 1919 the last major commercial mine had closed.\nBesides lead, silver and fluorspar were extracted from Weardale. Large amounts of ironstone were taken, especially from the Rookhope area, during the Industrial Revolution to supply ironworks at Consett and other sites in County Durham. Local deposits of other minerals were also found on occasion. Ganister (hard sandstone) and dolerite (whinstone, basalt) were also quarried.\nThe lead-mining industry occasioned the coming and going of much of the population. Cornish miners, used to tin-mining, were one group who came to find similar work in the Pennine ore-field. Many later left Weardale for better-paid jobs in 19th-century coal mines in the North East or emigrated to the New World.\nFluorspar.\nA major by-product of lead-mining was various crystals including the decorative coloured fluorspar (fluorite), for which no industrial use was known until the later 19th century. Thereafter it was used in part of the steel-making process and also in the manufacture of non-stick frying pans, CFCs for aerosols and other products. It is not a precious stone but fine samples are prized by collectors. Because of europium impurities fluorite from this region glows with a bluish light under ultraviolet excitation, and the characteristic glow of fluorspar samples from this region are responsible for the word fluorescence to describe that phenomenon. Weardale fluorite is considered by collectors to be amongst the finest, and therefore most valued, in the world. Mines such as Frazers Hush, Boltsburn, Heights, Cambokeels, Blackdene, West Pastures, Greenlaws, Billings Hill and Groverake are legendary for their fine fluorite specimens. Until 2016 some of the finest green fluorite was mined at Rogerley Mine. Mineralised veins in a nearby limestone quarry were then opened up to create the Diana Maria Mine, which produces fine green fluorite specimens and the occasional purple.\nThe North of England Lead Mining Museum at Killhope has a huge working water wheel, known as the Killhope Wheel. It was installed in the 1870s to power the crushing of grit in tanks in an adjacent building so as to complete the separation of lead ore from worthless stone. The museum also exhibits a fine collection of local minerals, as well as 'spar boxes' \u2013 display cases made by miners to show crystal specimens they had found.\nEconomy other than mining.\nAfter the closing of the lead mines there were few sources of income for the local population left in the upper dale.\nIn the lower dale round Stanhope and Frosterley, however, carboniferous limestone was quarried on a large scale from the 1840s, when rail links with Teesside and Consett enabled it to be carried to these and other places for use in the iron- and steel-making processes there. These places included Wolsingham in the lower dale, Tow Law on its fringes and Witton Park further down the dale. Of these, only a business at Tow Law persists (2009) as a going concern.\nLimestone quarrying continued into and beyond the 1960s, a relatively recent and large-scale development being the quarry serving the Blue Circle cement works near Eastgate, set up in the 1960s. This site has now been decommissioned and the major industry in Weardale is now cattle- and sheep-farming. Only one mine, the Rogerley Mine, is currently being prospected on a very small scale for mineral specimens.\nWeardale had a railway as far as Wearhead in three stages opened in 1847, 1862 and 1895, but the section of the line above Eastgate closed between 1961 and 1968 in another series of three closures owing to the decline of the lead industry. The remaining line was kept open by cement traffic and excursions until 1993, after which it was eventually taken over by the Weardale Railway. Passenger services recommenced briefly in 2004 but in 2005 the project went into administration. Trains began running again in 2006 under a new ownership structure. The line between Bishop Auckland and Wolsingham was reopened in May 2010. Both heritage (steam and diesel loco hauled) and community (railbus) services are worked. During the first part of 2011 it is anticipated that coal traffic will start loaded at a new terminal in Wolsingham. It will be trucked there from an opencast at nearby Tow Law. The connection to Network Rail has seen a number of through excursions during 2010, although for daily passenger traffic a separate platform called Bishop Auckland West is used. It is on the site of the former West Junction when Bishop Auckland was a triangular station. The heritage line was taken over by The Auckland Project in 2020.\nCurrently there is a regular Monday to Saturday bus service provided by Weardale Motor Services from Bishop Auckland and Crook to Cowshill at the head of the dale; it is possible at certain times of day to take the bus further on to the Killhope Lead Mining Museum and to return by bus from it at the times of the year when it is open.\nThere is a modest tourist industry, and inn/hotel, B&B and self-catering are among the types of accommodation available; there are some caravan sites. There are opportunities for pony-trekking and mountain biking as well as much scope for the walker.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "363227": "Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes\nValley within Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska, United States\nThe Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes is a valley within Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska which is filled with ash flow from the eruption of Novarupta on June 6\u20138, 1912. Following the eruption, thousands of fumaroles vented steam from the ash. Robert F. Griggs, who explored the volcano's aftermath for the National Geographic Society in 1916, gave the valley its name, saying that \"the whole valley as far as the eye could reach was full of hundreds, no thousands\u2014literally, tens of thousands\u2014of smokes curling up from its fissured floor.\"\nPrior to the eruption, the area now called the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes was an unremarkable and unnamed portion of the Ukak River valley. Although never permanently inhabited by humans, it served as a pass for the Alutiiq people, as well as animals such as grizzly bears.\nThe 1912 eruption was the largest eruption by volume in the 20th century, erupting a magma volume of about . As many as 14 major earthquakes between formula_1 6 to 7, and over 100 earthquakes greater than formula_1 5, resulted from the collapse of the caldera at Mount Katmai and movement within the magmatic plumbing system.\nThe ash-filled valley covers a area. The ash can be up to deep. In places deep canyons have been cut by the River Lethe, allowing observers to see the ash flow strata. Since the ash has cooled, most of the fumaroles are now extinct and despite its name the valley is no longer filled with 'smoke' (i.e. steam). Vegetation still does not grow in the valley. The signs of volcanic activity are still visible on nearby hills.\nKatmai's most recent eruption was in 1927, but there have been non-eruptive events as recently as 2003. The Alaska Volcano Observatory still monitors Katmai's activity as part of the Katmai Cluster, where there are five active stratovolcanos within of Katmai.\nVisitors to the valley most commonly arrive via bus along the road from Brooks Camp, which is the only road in Katmai Park. The valley is a source of creative exploration by photographers and naturalists.\nGeology.\nBasement rocks in the area consist of the Late Jurassic Naknek Formation, which is composed of siltstones, and arkosic sandstones 1.7\u20132\u00a0km thick deposited in a marine shelf and submarine fan delta environment during the Oxfordian-Tithonian. Some 20 dioritic and granodioritic Tertiary plutons pierce the formation. Most prevalent though are the Quaternary stratovolcanoes along the Aleutian Arc associated with the Aleutian subduction zone.\nThe 1912 Novarupta eruption was characterized by three main episodes spanning 60 hours. Episode I included both a rhyolitic ignimbrite and a simultaneous Plinian dispersal of rhyolitic tephra fallout. The ignimbrite consisted of 9 separate packages of pumiceous pyroclastic flow deposits, radiating outward 9\u00a0km, and which filled 11\u00a0km3 of the valley to a depth of 100\u2013200 m in the upper portion and 35 m in the lower over the span of 16 hours. It is indurated in the upper valley while nonwelded in the lower. The ignimbrite is noted for its fumaroles, phreatic craters, welded tuff, and flattened fiamme. At the same time, a Plinian dispersal of 8.8\u00a0km3 of rhyolitic tephra occurred depositing layers A and B. Episode II consisted of a second Plinian dispersal, but one consisting of dacite tephra, depositing 4.8\u00a0km3 of layers C and D. Episode III was also a Plinian dispersal of dacite tephra depositing 3.4\u00a0km3 of layers F and G.\nThe explosion from the eruption was heard as far away as Fairbanks and Juneau, while earthquakes continued until mid-Aug. Ball lightning near the ground was noted in addition to regular thunder and lightning, rare in South Alaska, while severe static disrupted wireless transmissions. Volcanic dust reached Wisconsin on June 8, Algeria on June 19 and California on June 21. Fields of pumice were seen floating in Katmai Bay, 241\u00a0km to the southwest, in 1913. Griggs noted 1000 fumarolic plumes over 500 feet high in 1916. In 1917, diffuse steam emanations were still evident and temperatures were 97\u00a0\u00b0C just 1 m below the surface. In 1918, Jasper Sayre and Paul Hagelbarger noted 86 vents with temperatures greater than 190\u00a0\u00b0C, the hottest being 432\u00a0\u00b0C. The steam was measured to be 99.5% water vapor with some acidic gases of HCl, CO2, H2S and HF. Only a few hundred emanations were seen by 1929, and just 10 were left by 1940. \nAstronaut training.\nThe Katmai Peninsula in general, and the valley in particular, were used by NASA and the USGS to geologically train the Apollo astronauts in recognizing volcanic features, landforms and materials, especially fumaroles and vents. Two separate groups of astronauts trained here, the first in June\u2013July 1965 and a second group in August 1966. Their field exercises included simulating a lunar mission. \"Playing the Moon game\", involved pairing up astronauts and placing them in a location with very little prior information. They then planned traverses and collected representative samples. They communicated with their geologist instructors via radio. Astronauts who would use this training on the Moon included Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin, Apollo 12's Alan Bean, Apollo 14's Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 15's James Irwin, Apollo 16's Charlie Duke, and Apollo 17's Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt. Notable geologist instructors included Garniss Curtis and Gene Shoemaker.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1940400": "Lafayette C. Baker\nUnion Army officer\nLafayette Curry Baker (October 13, 1826 \u2013 July 3, 1868) was a United States investigator and spy, serving the Union Army during the American Civil War and under Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson.\nEarly life.\nBaker was born in Stafford, New York, on October 13, 1826. He became a mechanic, moved to Michigan in 1839, returned to New York in 1848, moved to California in 1853, and was a San Francisco vigilante in 1856. He moved to the District of Columbia in 1861.\nAmerican Civil War.\nBaker's exploits are mainly known through his book \"A History of the Secret Service\" which he published in 1867 after his fall from grace. During the early months of the Civil War, he spied for General Winfield Scott on Confederate forces in Virginia. Despite numerous scrapes, he returned to Washington, D.C., with information that Scott evidently thought valuable enough to raise him to the rank of captain. As Provost Marshal of Washington, D.C., from September 12, 1862, to November 7, 1863, Baker ran the National Detective Bureau also sometimes known as the \"National Detective Police Department.\" He was appointed colonel of 1st D.C. Cavalry, May 5, 1863. According to Glenn Hastedt \"Although his accomplishments were many, Baker operated with little regard for warrants or the constitutional rights of those he pursued. He is also reported to have employed brutal interrogation techniques in order to obtain information.\"\nBaker owed his appointment largely to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, but suspected the secretary of corruption and was eventually demoted for tapping his telegraph lines and packed off to New York.\nLincoln assassination investigation.\nBaker was recalled to Washington after the assassination of President Lincoln in 1865. Within two days of his arrival in Washington, Baker's agents in Maryland had made four arrests and had the names of two more conspirators, including the actual presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth. Before the month was out, Booth along with David Herold were found holed up in a barn and Booth was himself shot and killed by Sgt. Boston Corbett. Baker received a generous share of the $100,000 reward offered to the person who apprehended the president's killer. President Andrew Johnson nominated Baker for appointment to the grade of brigadier general of volunteers, April 26, 1865, but the United States Senate never confirmed the appointment. Baker was mustered out of the volunteers on January 15, 1866.\nFiring and death.\nThe following year, Baker was sacked from his position as government spymaster. President Johnson accused him of spying on him, a charge Baker admitted in his book which he published in response. He also announced that he had had Booth's diary in his possession which was being suppressed by the Department of War and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. When the diary was eventually produced, Baker claimed that eighteen vital pages were missing. It was suggested by Otto Eisenschiml in his book, \"Why Was Lincoln Murdered?,\" that these would implicate Stanton in the assassination. However, this notion has been proven as speculation by author Edward Steers Jr. and based on non-reputable sources.\nOn July 3, 1868, Baker retired to home complaining of soreness from a gun wound during a hunting trip. He had been out drinking with Wally Pollack, his brother-in-law, and came home feeling sick, passing away later that night, reportedly from meningitis.\nA widely criticized 1977 book, \"The Lincoln Conspiracy\" by conspiracy theorists David W. Balsiger and Charles E. Sellier, alleges that Baker was poisoned by high-placed conspirators, including Stanton, who supported John Wilkes Booth's plan to kidnap Abraham Lincoln in 1864 and early 1865. The conspirators supposedly planned to have Lincoln impeached in his absence. The authors speculate that the conspirators were concerned that Baker could link them to the planned kidnapping, which might lead to accusations that they were conspirators in Lincoln's assassination. The authors believe the conspirators did not support Booth after March 1865. Academic historians have treated the book with hostility and derision, having many objections based on errors and misuse of sources in the book.\nInterment.\nBaker is buried in Forest Hills Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.\nIn popular culture.\nBaker was portrayed by Patton Oswalt in the 2024 Apple TV+ miniseries series \"Manhunt\"\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["1399249", "193703", "363227", "1940400"], "permutation_1": ["363227", "1399249", "193703", "1940400"], "permutation_2": ["1399249", "363227", "193703", "1940400"], "permutation_3": ["193703", "1399249", "363227", "1940400"]}
{"id": "4hop1__93206_74386_444296_179769", "docs_added": {"193703": "Alaska Purchase\n1867 sale by Russia to the United States\nThe Alaska Purchase was the purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire by the United States for a sum of $7.2\u00a0million in 1867 (equivalent to $\u00a0million in 2023). On May 15 of that year, the United States Senate ratified a bilateral treaty that had been signed on March 30, and American sovereignty became legally effective across the territory on October 18.\nDuring the first half of the 18th century, Russia had established a colonial presence in parts of North America, but few Russians ever settled in Alaska. Alexander\u00a0II of Russia, having faced a catastrophic defeat in the Crimean War, began exploring the possibility of selling the state's Alaskan possessions, which, in any future war, would be difficult to defend from the United Kingdom. To this end, William H. Seward, the U.S. Secretary of State at the time, entered into negotiations with Russian diplomat Eduard de\u00a0Stoeckl towards the United States' acquisition of Alaska after the American Civil War. Seward and Stoeckl agreed to a treaty for the sale on March 30, 1867.\nAt an original cost of $0.02 per acre ($ per acre in 2023), the United States had grown by . Reactions to the Alaska Purchase among Americans were mostly positive, as many believed that Alaska would serve as a base to expand American trade in Asia. Some opponents labeled the purchase as \"Seward's Folly\" or \"Seward's Icebox\" as they contended that the United States had acquired useless land. Nearly all Russian settlers left Alaska in the aftermath of the purchase; Alaska would remain sparsely populated until the Klondike Gold Rush began in 1896. Originally organized as the Department of Alaska, the area was renamed the District of Alaska in 1884 and the Territory of Alaska in 1912, ultimately becoming the modern-day State of Alaska in 1959.\nHistory.\nRussian America was settled by , merchants and fur trappers who expanded through Siberia. They arrived in Alaska in 1732, and in 1799 the Russian-American Company (RAC) received a charter to hunt for fur. No colony was established, but the Russian Orthodox Church sent missionaries to the natives and built churches. About 700 Russians enforced sovereignty in a territory over twice as large as Texas. In 1821, Tsar Alexander\u00a0I issued an edict declaring Russia's sovereignty over the North American Pacific coast north of the 51st parallel north. The edict also forbade foreign ships to approach within 100 Italian miles (115 miles or 185\u00a0km) of the Russian claim. US Secretary of State John Quincy Adams strongly protested the edict, which potentially threatened both the commerce and expansionary ambitions of the United States. Seeking favorable relations with the U.S., Alexander agreed to the Russo-American Treaty of 1824. In the treaty, Russia limited its claims to lands north of parallel 54\u00b040\u2032 north and also agreed to open Russian ports to U.S. ships.\nBy the 1850s, a population of once 300,000 sea otters was almost extinct, and Russia needed money after being defeated by France and Britain in the Crimean War. The California Gold Rush showed that if gold were discovered in Alaska, Americans and Canadians would overwhelm the Russian presence in what one scholar later described as \"Siberia's Siberia\". However, the principal reason for the sale was that the hard-to-defend colony would be easily conquered by British forces based in neighboring Canada in any future conflict, and Russia did not wish to see its archrival being next door just across the Bering Sea. Therefore, Emperor Alexander\u00a0II decided to sell the territory. The Russian government discussed the proposal in 1857 and 1858 and offered to sell the territory to the United States, hoping that its presence in the region would offset the plans of Britain. However, no deal was reached, as the risk of an American Civil War was a more pressing concern in Washington.\nGrand Duke Konstantin, a younger brother of the Tsar, began to press for the handover of Russian America to the United States in 1857. In a memorandum to Foreign Minister Alexander Gorchakov he stated that <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nKonstantin's letter was shown to his brother, Tsar Alexander II, who wrote \"this idea is worth considering\" on the front page. Supporters of Konstantin's proposal to immediately withdraw from North America included Admiral Yevfimy Putyatin and the Russian minister to the United States, Eduard de\u00a0Stoeckl. Gorchakov agreed with the necessity of abandoning Russian America but argued for a gradual process leading to its sale. He found a supporter in the naval minister and former chief manager of the Russian-American Company, Ferdinand von\u00a0Wrangel. Wrangel pressed for some proceeds to be invested in the economic development of Kamchatka and the Amur Basin. The Emperor eventually sided with Gorchakov, deciding to postpone negotiations until the end of the RAC's patent, set to expire in 1861.\nOver the winter of 1859\u20131860, Stoeckl held meetings with United States officials, though he had been instructed not to initiate discussions about the sale of the RAC assets. Communicating primarily with Assistant Secretary of State John Appleton and California Senator William M. Gwin, Stoeckl reported the interest expressed by the Americans in acquiring Russian America. While President James Buchanan kept these hearings informal, preparations were made for further negotiations. Stoeckl reported a conversation in which he asked \"in passing\" what price the U.S. government might pay for the Russian colony and Senator Gwin replied that they \"might go as far as $5,000,000\", a figure Gorchakov found far too low. Stoeckl informed Appleton and Gwin of this, the latter saying that his Congressional colleagues in Oregon and California would support a larger figure. Buchanan's increasingly unpopular presidency forced the matter to be shelved until a new presidential election. With the oncoming American Civil War, Stoeckl proposed a renewal of the RAC's charter. Two of its ports were to be open to foreign traders and commercial agreements with Peru and Chile to be signed to give \"a fresh jolt\" to the company.\nRussia continued to see an opportunity to weaken British power by causing British Columbia, including the Royal Navy base at Esquimalt, to be surrounded or annexed by American territory. Following the Union victory in the Civil War in 1865, the Tsar instructed Stoeckl to re-enter into negotiations with William H. Seward in the beginning of March 1867. President Andrew Johnson was busy with negotiations about Reconstruction, and Seward had alienated a number of Republicans, so both men believed that the purchase would help divert attention from domestic issues. The negotiations concluded after an all-night session with the signing of the treaty at 04:00 on March 30, 1867. The purchase price was set at $7.2\u00a0million (equivalent to $\u00a0million in 2023), or about 2 cents per acre ($4.74/km2).\nAmerican ownership.\nThe Russian name for the Alaska Peninsula was \"Alyaska\" (\"\u0410\u043b\u044f\u0441\u043a\u0430\") or \"Alyeska\", from an Aleut word, \"alashka\" or \"alaesksu\", meaning \"great land\" or \"mainland\". The United States chose the name \"Alaska\" to refer to the area purchased from Russia.\nSeward told the nation that, according to Russian estimates, Alaska had about 60,000 inhabitants. This included about 10,500 who were under the direct government of the Russian fur company: about 8,000 indigenous people and 2,500 people of Russian or mixed Russian and indigenous descent (for example, having a Russian father and a native mother). The remaining 50,000 or so were Inuit or Alaska Natives living outside of Russia's jurisdiction.\nSeward also said that the Russians were settled at 23 trading posts, placed on accessible islands and at points along the coast. At smaller trading posts, typically only four or five Russians were stationed: their job was to collect furs from the natives for storage and then for shipment when the company's boats arrived to take the furs away. There were two larger towns. One was New Archangel (now named Sitka), established in 1804 to handle the valuable trade in the skins of sea otters; in 1867, it had 116 small log cabins and 968 residents. The other was St. Paul, in the Pribilof Islands, which had 100 homes and 283 residents, and was the center of the seal fur industry.\nSeward and many other Americans expected that Asia would become an important market for U.S. products, and that Alaska would serve as a base for American trade with Asia and globally, and for the extension of American power into the Pacific.\nSenator Charles Sumner, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sponsored the Senate bill authorizing the U.S. to approve the treaty to acquire the territory. He not only agreed about the benefit to trade, but also said he expected the territory to be valuable on its own; having studied the records of explorers, he believed it contained valuable animals and forests. He compared the acquisition to contemporary European colonial acquisitions, such as the French conquest of Algeria. The United States Senate approved the treaty by a vote of 37 to 2.\nPublic opinion favors the purchase.\nMany Americans believed in 1867 that the purchase process had been corrupt, but W. H. Dall in 1872 wrote that \"there can be no doubt that the feelings of a majority of the citizens of the United States are in favor of it.\" The notion that the purchase was unpopular among Americans is, a scholar wrote 120 years later, \"one of the strongest historical myths in American history. It persists despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, and the efforts of the best historians to dispel it\", likely in part because it fits American and Alaskan writers' view of the territory as distinct and filled with self-reliant pioneers.\nA majority of newspapers either supported the purchase or were neutral. A review of dozens of contemporary newspapers found general support for the purchase, especially in California; most of 48 major newspapers supported the purchase. Public opinion was not universally positive; to some the purchase was known as \"Seward's folly\", \"Walrussia\", or \"Seward's icebox\". Editorials contended that taxpayer money had been wasted on a \"polar bear garden\". Nonetheless, most newspaper editors argued that the U.S. would probably derive great economic benefits from the purchase, such as considerable mineral resources that previous geological explorations of the region suggested were available there; friendship with Russia was important; and it would facilitate the acquisition of British Columbia. Forty-five percent of supportive newspapers cited the increased potential for annexing British Columbia in their support, and \"The New York Times\" stated that, consistent with Seward's reason, Alaska would increase American trade with East Asia.\nThe principal urban newspaper that opposed the purchase was the \"New York Tribune\", published by Seward opponent Horace Greeley. The ongoing controversy over Reconstruction spread to other acts, including the Alaska purchase. Some opposed the United States obtaining its first non-contiguous territory, seeing it as a colony; others saw no need to pay for land that they expected the country to obtain through manifest destiny. Historian Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer summarized the minority opinion of some American newspaper editors who opposed the purchase:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Already, so it was said, we were burdened with territory we had no population to fill. The Indians within the present boundaries of the republic strained our power to govern aboriginal peoples. Could it be that we would now, with open eyes, seek to add to our difficulties by increasing the number of such peoples under our national care? The purchase price was small; the annual charges for administration, civil and military, would be yet greater, and continuing. The territory included in the proposed cession was not contiguous to the national domain. It lay away at an inconvenient and a dangerous distance. The treaty had been secretly prepared, and signed and foisted upon the country at one o'clock in the morning. It was a dark deed done in the night\u2026 The \"New York World\" said that it was a \"sucked orange.\" It contained nothing of value but furbearing animals, and these had been hunted until they were nearly extinct. Except for the Aleutian Islands and a narrow strip of land extending along the southern coast the country would be not worth taking as a gift\u2026 Unless gold were found in the country much time would elapse before it would be blessed with Hoe printing presses, Methodist chapels and a metropolitan police. It was \"a frozen wilderness.\"\nTransfer ceremony.\nThe transfer ceremony took place in Sitka on October 18, 1867. Russian and American soldiers paraded in front of the governor's house; the Russian flag was lowered and the American flag raised amid peals of artillery.\nA description of the events was published in Finland six years later. It was written by a blacksmith named Thomas Ahllund, who had been recruited to work in Sitka:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />We had not spent many weeks at Sitka when two large steam ships arrived there, bringing things that belonged to the American crown, and a few days later the new governor also arrived in a ship together with his soldiers. The wooden two-story mansion of the Russian governor stood on a high hill, and in front of it in the yard at the end of a tall spar flew the Russian flag with the double-headed eagle in the middle of it. Of course, this flag now had to give way to the flag of the United States, which is full of stripes and stars. On a predetermined day in the afternoon, a group of soldiers came from the American ships, led by one who carried the flag. Marching solemnly, but without accompaniment, they came to the governor's mansion, where the Russian troops were already lined up and waiting for the Americans. Now they started to pull the [Russian double-headed] eagle down, but\u2014whatever had gone into its head\u2014it only came down a little bit, and then entangled its claws around the spar so that it could not be pulled down any further. A Russian soldier was therefore ordered to climb up the spar and disentangle it, but it seems that the eagle cast a spell on his hands, too\u2014for he was not able to arrive at where the flag was, but instead slipped down without it. The next one to try was not able to do any better; only the third soldier was able to bring the unwilling eagle down to the ground. While the flag was brought down, music was played and cannons were fired off from the shore, and then, while the other flag was hoisted, the Americans fired off their cannons from the ships equally many times. After that American soldiers replaced the Russian ones at the gates of the fence surrounding the Kolosh [i.e. Tlingit] village.\nAfter the flag transition was completed, Captain of 2nd Rank Aleksei Alekseyevich Peshchurov said, \"General Rousseau, by authority from His Majesty, the Emperor of Russia, I transfer to the United States the territory of Alaska.\" General Lovell Rousseau accepted the territory. (Peshchurov had been sent to Sitka as commissioner of the Russian government in the transfer of Alaska.) A number of forts, blockhouses and timber buildings were handed over to the Americans. The troops occupied the barracks; General Jefferson C. Davis established his residence in the governor's house, and most of the Russian citizens went home, leaving a few traders and priests who chose to remain.\nAftermath.\nAfter the transfer, a number of Russian citizens remained in Sitka, but nearly all of them very soon decided to return to Russia, which was still possible at the expense of the Russian-American Company. Ahllund's story \"corroborates other accounts of the transfer ceremony, and the dismay felt by many of the Russians and creoles, jobless and in want, at the rowdy troops and gun-toting civilians who looked on Sitka as merely one more western frontier settlement.\" Ahllund gives a vivid account of what life was like for civilians in Sitka under US rule and helps to explain why hardly any Russian subject wanted to stay there. Moreover, Ahllund's article is the only known description of the return voyage on the \"Winged Arrow\", a ship that was specially purchased to transport the Russians back to their native country. \"The over-crowded vessel, with crewmen who got roaring drunk at every port, must have made the voyage a memorable one.\" Ahllund mentions stops at the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands, Tahiti, Brazil, London, and finally Kronstadt, the port for St. Petersburg, where they arrived on August 28, 1869.\nAmerican settlers who shared Sumner's belief in the riches of Alaska rushed to the territory but found that much capital was required to exploit its resources, many of which could also be found closer to markets in the contiguous United States. Most soon left, and by 1873, Sitka's population had declined from about 2,500 to a few hundred. The United States acquired an area over twice as large as Texas, but it was not until the great Klondike Gold Rush in 1896 that Alaska generally came to be seen as a valuable addition to U.S. territory.\nThe seal fishery was one of the chief considerations that induced the United States to purchase Alaska. It provided considerable revenue by the lease of the privilege of taking seals, an amount that was eventually more than the price paid for Alaska. From 1870 to 1890, the seal fisheries yielded 100,000 skins a year. The company to which the administration of the fisheries was entrusted by a lease from the US government paid a rental of $50,000 per annum and in addition thereto <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />$2.62+1\u20442 per skin for the total number taken. The skins were transported to London to be dressed and prepared for world markets. The business grew so large that the earnings of English laborers after the acquisition of Alaska by the United States amounted by 1890 to $12,000,000.\nHowever, exclusive US control of this resource was eventually challenged, and the Bering Sea Controversy resulted when the United States seized over 150 sealing ships flying the British flag, based out of the coast of British Columbia. The conflict between the United States and Britain was resolved by an arbitration tribunal in 1893. The waters of the Bering Sea were deemed to be international waters, contrary to the US contention that they were an internal sea. The US was required to make a payment to Britain, and both nations were required to follow regulations developed to preserve the resource.\nFinancial return.\nThe purchase of Alaska has been referenced as a \"bargain basement deal\" and as the principal positive accomplishment of the otherwise much-maligned presidency of Andrew Johnson.\nEconomist David R. Barker has argued that the US federal government has not earned a positive financial return on the purchase of Alaska. According to Barker, tax revenue and mineral and energy royalties to the federal government have been less than federal costs of governing Alaska plus interest on the borrowed funds used for the purchase.\nJohn M. Miller has taken the argument further by contending that US oil companies that developed Alaskan petroleum resources did not earn enough profits to compensate for the risks that they incurred.\nOther economists and scholars, including Scott Goldsmith and Terrence Cole, have criticized the metrics used to reach those conclusions by noting that most contiguous Western states would fail to meet the bar of \"positive financial return\" using the same criteria and by contending that looking at the increase in net national income, instead of only US Treasury revenue, would paint a much more accurate picture of the financial return of Alaska as an investment.\nAlaska Day.\nAlaska Day celebrates the formal transfer of Alaska from Russia to the United States, which took place on October 18, 1867, according to the Gregorian calendar which came into effect in Alaska the day following the transfer, replacing the Julian calendar, which was used by the Russians (the Julian calendar in the 19th century was 12 days behind the Gregorian calendar). Alaska Day is a holiday for all state workers.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2794443": "Andrew Johnson National Cemetery\nReconstruction-era historic cemetery\nThe Andrew Johnson National Cemetery is a United States National Cemetery on the grounds of the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site in Greeneville, Tennessee. Established in 1906, the cemetery was built around the resting place of Andrew Johnson, the 17th President of the United States, and holds more than 2,000 graves.\nHistory.\nAmidst some kind of dispute with his neighbors in 1847, Johnson wrote, \"If I should happen to die among the damn spirits that infest Greeneville, my last request before death would be for some friend I would bequeath the last dollar to some Negro to pay\u2014to take my dirty stinking carcass after death out on some mountain peak, and there leave it to be devoured by the vultures and wolves or make a fire sufficiently large to consume the smallest particle that it might pass off and smoke and ride upon the wind in triumph over the God-forsaken and hell-deserving, money-loving, hypocritical, backbiting, Sunday-praying scoundrels of the town of Greeneville.\" It seems that Johnson more or less kept this vow. Andrew Johnson acquired twenty-three acres outside Greeneville on \"Signal Hill\" in 1852. According to Robert W. Winston's \"Plebian and Patriot\" (1928), \"Though little given to sentiment, he pointed out this spot to a friend, saying that there he wished to rest and to take his final sleep. Searching out the owner, he acquired this property, and took a deed to the same.\"\nIt became known as Signal Hill due to being an excellent place for soldiers to signal to friendly forces. When Johnson died, he was buried on the property on August 3, 1875. The funeral was performed by Freemasons. On June 5, 1878, a tall marble statue was placed by Johnson's grave. The monument was considered so dominant that the place came to be known as \"Monument Hill\". \nAndrew Johnson's daughter Martha Johnson Patterson willed on September 2, 1898, that the land become a park. She further pushed in 1900 to make the site a national cemetery, so that instead of the Johnson family maintaining it, the federal government would. The United States Congress chose to make the site a National Cemetery in 1906, and by 1908 the United States War Department took control of it. By 1939 there were 100 total graves in the cemetery. On May 23, 1942, control of the cemetery went to the National Park Service.\nWhen the National Park Service was given jurisdiction of the cemetery in 1942, they ruled to allow no more interments, in order to preserve the historic nature of the cemeteries. Due to efforts by the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution, the cemetery once again accepted new interments, making the national cemetery one of the few controlled by the National Park Service to contain soldiers of the World Wars, Spanish\u2013American War, Korean War, Vietnam War, and the Gulf War. It stopped accepting new burials in 2019, leaving Andersonville National Cemetery as the only National Cemetery under the United States Department of the Interior to accept new burials.\nJohnson monument.\nAt the time of Johnson's death in 1875, a Knoxville paper wrote that the burial place was called Johnson's Hill, located about southeast of town, and could be seen \"the right of the railroad as you approach Greeneville from the west.\"\nWhen the area was made into a cemetery following the death of Andrew Johnson, two of Andrew Johnson's sons were reinterred: Charles Johnson, who had originally been buried in Nashville, Tennessee, and Robert Johnson, originally buried elsewhere in Greeneville. Several other members of the Johnson family, including grandchildren, would later be buried in the cemetery. Amongst these are his daughter Martha and her husband, former Tennessee United States Senator David T. Patterson.\nThe -tall monument was made in Philadelphia and was paid for by the three surviving Johnson children, Martha, Mary, and Frank. The marble monument depicts the United States Constitution, an eagle, and the Bible. The cost was said to be US$ with the carving of the eagle costing US$ on its own. The base, granite \"with a plinth die,\" is square. The monument was dedicated in 1878. Planned speakers for the dedication ceremony were former United States and Confederate States congressman George W. Jones and biographer of First Ladies Laura C. Holloway.\nJohnson's grave marker is inscribed \"his faith in the people never wavered.\" One newspaper account of Andrew Johnson's life, published in 1891, stated \"There is something singularly enigmatic in the epitaph, for no one ever knew precisely what is meant by 'His faith in the people never wavered.'\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />It is supposed that they were well-satisfied that their work would be the only monument ever erected to the man. Of one thing we may feel quite sure, unless there is a great change in the feelings of the American people Andrew Johnson is one dead American to whose memory no public monument of any great value will ever be reared.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "47585932": "The Detour (TV series)\n2016 American comedy television series\nThe Detour is an American sitcom that was created by Jason Jones and Samantha Bee about a family vacation road trip that quickly devolves out of control. It stars Jones himself, Natalie Zea, Ashley Gerasimovich, Liam Carroll, Daniella Pineda, Mary Grill, and Laura Benanti. The series aired on TBS from April 11, 2016, to August 20, 2019. The show was renewed for a second season on April 6, 2016, five days prior to the series premiere. The second season premiered on February 21, 2017. On April 25, 2017, TBS renewed the series for a third season.\nOn May 11, 2018, the series was renewed for a fourth season, which premiered on June 18, 2019. On September 4, 2019, TBS canceled the series after four seasons.\nPlot.\nThe series follows Nate Parker, Jr. (Jason Jones), his wife Robin Randall (Natalie Zea), and their kids, preteen twins Delilah (Ashley Gerasimovich) and Jared (Liam Carroll), as they drive from their home in Syracuse, New York, to Florida for a family vacation. The trip experiences several dramatic delays such as car trouble, run-ins with law enforcement, unforeseen medical mishaps, and intervening locals. Nate had caused some professional trouble before leaving Syracuse and has ulterior motives for the Florida trip, which fuels flashbacks and a framing device involving several law-enforcement agencies and an interrogation into his unspecified crimes.\nIn season 2, the family settles in New York City as Nate finds a new career but more trouble as pieces of Robin's past resurface, including her relationship with her father, wanted felon J.R. Randall (James Cromwell). The framing device presents the couple being interrogated by the United States Postal Inspection Service as an attempt to get at J.R., led by the overzealous (and very pregnant) Agent Edie (Laura Benanti).\nIn season 3, the family flees to Alaska. This time the framing device involves Nate and Robin discussing their case with their lawyer, Joe Delicious (Max Casella). Jared becomes mayor of the town they settle in, Nate works on a fishing boat, and Robin becomes a stripper. \nIn season 4, Delilah flees the rest of the Parkers as they try to track her down. This takes them to Tibet, Japan, New Zealand, and eventually back home to New York where she has apparently been the entire time. The season, and the series, ends with Nate apparently having gone off the grid, as he checks months of voice mail messages left for him. He then climbs into a van, which is immediately riddled with bullets and explodes; since the series was canceled shortly after the episode aired, Nate's fate is left unknown.\nDevelopment.\nTBS ordered the pilot, written by Jason Jones and Samantha Bee, in October 2014. The show is based on the real life couple's own experience with family vacations.\nIt was picked up for ten episodes in February 2015. On April 6, 2016, the show was renewed for a second season before the premiere.\nBroadcast.\nIn Canada, \"The Detour\" premiered on April 21, 2016 on The Comedy Network. In Latin America it premiered on June 9, 2016 on TBS. It premiered on Comedy Central India on October 5, 2016.\nIt is available in Australia on streaming service Stan as of January 2018.\nReception.\nOn Rotten Tomatoes, the first season has an approval rating of 78% based on 23 reviews, with an average rating of 6.9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, \"Sometimes raunchy, but often honest and endearing, \"The Detour\" brings the laughs as the story tries to find its way.\" On Metacritic, the first season holds a score of 69 out of 100, based on 19 critics.\nOn Rotten Tomatoes, season two has an approval rating of 100% based on 5 reviews, with an average rating of 6.9/10. On Metacritic, season two has a weighted average score 77 out of 100, based on 4 critics, indicating \"generally favorable reviews\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "135195": "Greeneville, Tennessee\nCounty seat of Greene County, Tennessee, United States\nGreeneville is a town in and the county seat of Greene County, Tennessee, United States. The population as of the 2020 census was 15,479. The town was named in honor of Revolutionary War hero Nathanael Greene, and it is the second oldest town in Tennessee. It is the only town with this spelling in the United States, although there are numerous U.S. towns named \"Greenville\". The town was the capital of the short-lived State of Franklin in the 18th-century history of East Tennessee.\nGreeneville is known as the town where United States President Andrew Johnson began his political career when elected to be an alderman and transitioned from his trade as a tailor. He and his family lived there for most of his adult years. It was an area of strong abolitionist and Unionist views and yeoman farmers, an environment that influenced Johnson's outlook.\nThe Greeneville Historic District was established in 1974.\nThe U.S. Navy was named in honor of the town.\nGreeneville is part of the Johnson City-Kingsport-Bristol, TN-VA Combined Statistical Area \u2013 commonly known as the \"Tri-Cities\" region.\nGeography.\nGreeneville lies in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. These hills are part of the Appalachian Ridge-and-Valley Province, which is characterized by fertile river valleys flanked by narrow, elongate ridges. Greeneville is located roughly halfway between Bays Mountain to the northwest and the Bald Mountains\u2014 part of the main Appalachian crest\u2014 to the southeast. The valley in which Greeneville is situated is part of the watershed of the Nolichucky River, which passes a few miles south of the town.\nSeveral federal and state highways now intersect in Greeneville, as they were built to follow old roads and trails. U.S. Route 321 follows Main Street through the center of the town and connects Greeneville to Newport to the southwest. U.S. Route 11E (Andrew Johnson Highway), which connects Greeneville with Morristown to the west, intersects U.S. 321 in Greeneville and the merged highway proceeds northeast to Johnson City. Tennessee State Route 107, which also follows Main Street and Andrew Johnson Hwy, Greeneville to Erwin to the east and to the Del Rio area to the south. Tennessee State Route 70 (Lonesome Pine Trail) connects Greeneville with Interstate 81, and Rogersville to the north and Asheville, North Carolina to the south. Tennessee State Route 172 (Baileyton Road) connects Greeneville with Interstate 81 and Baileyton to the north.\nTennessee State Route 93 (Kingsport Highway) connects Greeneville to Interstate 81, Fall Branch and Kingsport to the north.\nAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , all land.\nHistory.\nEarly history.\nNative Americans were hunting and camping in the Nolichucky Valley as early as the Paleo-Indian period (c. 10,000 B.C.). A substantial Woodland period (1000 B.C. - 1000 A.D.) village existed at the Nolichucky's confluence with Big Limestone Creek (now part of Davy Crockett Birthplace State Park). By the time the first Euro-American settlers arrived in the area in the late 18th century, the Cherokee claimed the valley as part of their hunting grounds. The Great Indian Warpath passed just northwest of modern Greeneville, and the townsite is believed to have once been the juncture of two lesser Native American trails.\nThe permanent European settlement of Greene County began in 1772. Jacob Brown, a North Carolina merchant, leased a large stretch of land from the Cherokee, located between the upper Lick Creek watershed and the Nolichucky River, in what is now the northeastern corner of the county. The \"Nolichucky Settlement\" initially aligned itself with the Watauga Association as part of Washington County, North Carolina. After voting irregularities in a local election, however, an early Nolichucky settler named Daniel Kennedy (1750\u20131802) led a movement to form a separate county, which was granted in 1783.\nThe county was named after Nathanael Greene, reflecting the loyalties of the numerous Revolutionary War veterans who settled in the Nolichucky Valley, especially from Pennsylvania and Virginia. The first county court sessions were held at the home of Robert Kerr, who lived at \"Big Spring\" (near the center of modern Greeneville). Kerr donated for the establishment of the county seat, most of which was located in the area currently bounded by Irish, College, Church, and Summer streets. \"Greeneville\" was officially recognized as a town in 1786.\nState of Franklin.\nIn 1784, North Carolina attempted to resolve its debts by giving the U.S. Congress its lands west of the Appalachian Mountains, including Greene County, abandoning responsibility for the area to the federal government. In response, delegates from Greene and neighboring counties convened at Jonesborough and resolved to break away from North Carolina and establish an independent state. The delegates agreed to meet again later that year to form a constitution, which was rejected when presented to the general delegation in December. Reverend Samuel Houston (not to be confused with the later governor of Tennessee and Texas) had presented a draft constitution that restricted the election of lawyers and other professionals. Houston's draft met staunch opposition, especially from Reverend Hezekiah Balch (1741\u20131810) (who was later instrumental in the creation of Tusculum College). John Sevier was elected governor, and other executive offices were filled.\nA petition for statehood for what would have become known as the State of Franklin (named in honor of Benjamin Franklin) was drawn at the delegates session in May 1785. The delegates submitted a petition for statehood to Congress, which failed to gain the requisite votes needed for admission to the Union. The first state legislature of Franklin met in December 1785 in a crude log courthouse in Greeneville, which had been named the capital city the previous August. During this session, the delegates finally approved a constitution that was based on, and quite similar to, the North Carolina state constitution. However, the Franklin movement began to collapse soon thereafter, with North Carolina reasserting its control of the area the following spring.\nIn 1897, at the Tennessee Centennial Exposition in Nashville, a log house that had been moved from Greeneville was displayed as the capitol where the State of Franklin's delegates met in the 1780s. There is, however, nothing to verify that this building was the actual capitol. In the 1960s, the capitol was reconstructed, based largely on the dimensions given in historian J. G. M. Ramsey's \"Annals of Tennessee\".\nGreeneville and the abolitionist movement.\nGreene County, like much of East Tennessee, was home to a strong abolitionist movement in the early 19th century. This movement was likely influenced by the relatively large numbers of Quakers who migrated to the region from Pennsylvania in the 1790s. The Quakers considered slavery to be in violation of Biblical Scripture and were active in the region's abolitionist movement throughout the antebellum period. One such Quaker was Elihu Embree (1782\u20131820), who published the nation's first abolitionist newspaper, \"The Emancipator\", at nearby Jonesborough.\nWhen Embree's untimely death in 1820 effectively ended publication of \"The Emancipator\", several of Embree's supporters turned to Ohio abolitionist Benjamin Lundy, who had started publication of his own antislavery newspaper, \"The Genius of Universal Emancipation\", in 1821. Anticipating that a southern-based abolitionist movement would be more effective, Lundy purchased Embree's printing press and moved to Greeneville in 1822. Lundy remained in Greeneville for two years before moving to Baltimore. He would later prove influential in the career of William Lloyd Garrison, whom he hired as an associate editor in 1829.\nGreenevillians involved in the abolitionist movement included Hezekiah Balch, who freed his slaves at the Greene County Courthouse in 1807. Samuel Doak, the founder of Tusculum College, followed in 1818. Valentine Sevier (1780\u20131854), a nephew of John Sevier who served as Greene County Court Clerk, freed his slaves in the 1830s and offered to pay for their passage to Liberia, which had been formed as a colony for freed slaves. Francis McCorkle, the pastor of Greeneville's Presbyterian Church, was a leading member of the Manumission Society of Tennessee.\nCivil War.\nIn June 1861, on the eve of the Civil War, thirty counties of the pro-Union East Tennessee Convention met in Greeneville to discuss strategy after state voters had elected to join the Confederate States of America. The convention sought to create a separate state in East Tennessee that would remain with the United States. The state government in Nashville rejected the convention's request, however, and East Tennessee was occupied by Confederate forces shortly thereafter. Thomas Dickens Arnold, a Greeneville resident and former congressman who attended the convention, advocated the use of violent force to allow East Tennessee to break away from Tennessee, and taunted other members of the convention who advocated a more peaceful set of resolutions.\nSeveral conspirators involved in the pro-Union East Tennessee bridge burnings lived near what is now Mosheim, and managed to destroy the railroad bridge over Lick Creek in western Greene County on the night of November 8, 1861. Two of the conspirators, Jacob Hensie and Henry Fry, were executed in Greeneville on November 30, 1861.\nA portion of James Longstreet's army wintered in Greeneville following the failed Siege of Knoxville in late 1863. Confederate general John Hunt Morgan was killed in Greeneville during a raid by Union soldiers led by Alvan Cullem Gillem on September 4, 1864.\nAndrew Johnson.\nAndrew Johnson, the 17th President of the United States, spent much of his active life in Greeneville. In 1826, Johnson arrived in Greeneville after fleeing an apprenticeship in Raleigh. Johnson chose to remain in Greeneville after learning that the town's tailor was planning to retire. Johnson purchased the tailor shop, which he moved from Main Street to its present location at the corner of Depot and College streets. Johnson married a local girl, Eliza McCardle, in 1827. The two were married by Mordecai Lincoln (1778\u20131851), who was Greene County's Justice of the Peace. He was a cousin of Abraham Lincoln, under whom Johnson would serve as vice president.\nIn the late 1820s, a local artisan named Blackstone McDannel often stopped by Johnson's tailor shop to debate issues of the day, especially the Indian Removal, which Johnson opposed. Johnson and McDannel decided to debate the issue publicly. The interest sparked by this debate led Johnson, McDannel, and several others to form a local debate society. The experience and influence Johnson gained in debating local issues helped him get elected to the Greeneville City Council in 1829. He was elected mayor of Greeneville in 1834, although he resigned after just a few months in office to pursue a position in the Tennessee state legislature, which he attained the following year. As Johnson rose through the ranks of political office in state and national government, he used his influence to help Greeneville constituents obtain government positions, among them his long-time supporter, Sam Milligan, who was appointed to the Court of Claims in Washington, D.C.\nWhilst Andrew Johnson was away from home, during his vice-presidency, both Union and Confederate armies often used his home as a place to stay and rest during their travel. Soldiers left graffiti on the walls of Johnson's home. Confederate soldiers left notes on the walls expressing their displeasure, to put it delicately, of Johnson. Evidence of this can still be seen at the Andrew Johnson home. Andrew Johnson had to almost completely renovate his home after he returned home from Washington, D.C.\nThe Andrew Johnson National Historic Site, located in Greeneville, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1963. Contributing properties include Johnson's tailor shop at the corner of Depot and College streets. The site also maintains Johnson's house on Main Street and the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery (atop Monument Hill to the south). A replica of Johnson's birth home and a life-size statue of Johnson have been placed across the street from the visitor center and tailor shop.\nIndian Wars.\nBuffalo Soldiers originally were members of the 10th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army, formed on September 21, 1866, at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. This nickname was given to the Black Cavalry by Native American tribes who fought in the Indian Wars. The term eventually became synonymous with all of the African-American regiments formed in 1866. Greeneville was home to at least four men who bravely served the country as \"Buffalo Soldiers\".\nGeorge Clem School.\nIn 1887, with assistance from the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the George Clem School was organized as Greeneville College. In 1932, the Greeneville Board of Education leased the property to provide public education for Negroes. Three years later, George Clem was appointed principal. Consisting of grades one through ten, the school was renamed Greeneville College High School. In 1937, the 11th grade was added. A year later, the school became an accredited four-year school. In 1939, the city purchased the school and renamed it the George Clem School. A decade later, the original building was demolished and the present building was erected in 1950. The school closed in 1965 when the public schools desegregated, and it became the location of the Greeneville City Schools Central Office. The George Clem School is often overlooked when talking about Greeneville history. Topics such as Sam Doak, the death of General Morgan, and Andrew Johnson are often the focal points when learning about Greeneville. The George Clem School is something the town should promote and be proud of. This history shows the accomplishments of the black community in Greeneville through the years. There is now a non profit organization in Greeneville by the name of George Clem Multicultural Alliance that helps honor the history of the school. The George Clem Multicultural Alliance is a non-profit 501(c)(3), public benefit, & exclusively charitable organization dedicated to supporting civic pride & cultural diversity awareness through various means within Wesley Heights community, and Greeneville/Greene County at large \nMagnavox.\nFrom 1947 to 2005, Magnavox\u2014an electronics manufacturer best known for its television sets\u2014operated its main three facilities in Greeneville. Magnavox was at one time the largest employer of Greeneville, employing more than 5,000 workers. Eight years after the first plant opened, Magnavox workers voted to form a union through the IBEW. In 1974, the facilities and the Magnavox company were acquired by the electronics giant Philips. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, the Greeneville facility saw a fluctuation and drops in employment. In 1997, Phillips sold its facilities to Knoxville-based company Five Rivers Electronic Innovations. In 2005, Five Rivers closed the former Magnavox plant after declaring bankruptcy. Before its shuttering, the Five Rivers facility was the site of the last television manufactured in the United States, which is now on display in the Greeneville-Greene County History Museum.\n2011 tornado outbreak.\nOn April 27, 2011, the rural community of Camp Creek south of Greeneville was severely affected by an EF3 tornado in the 2011 Super Outbreak. Six people were killed and 220 were injured by the tornado that either damaged or destroyed over 175 homes. Two hours later, Horse Creek, southeast of Greeneville, was also hit by an EF3 tornado, with the path travelling alongside and later crossing the earlier Camp Creek event as it moved into Washington County. Another 60-65 homes were either damaged or destroyed, and around 25 farms sustained heavy structural damage. Two more people were killed by that tornado, with an estimated 70 more being injured. A total of seven were killed in Greene County, with an eighth fatality in Washington County.\nDowntown revitalization.\nIn 2018, town officials, with the cooperation of a development and urban design firm, began efforts towards the redevelopment of the central business district of Greeneville. The project is projected to operate in several phases, projects proposed include: a farmer's market pavilion, a greenway along Richland Creek, an alley park, improved access for pedestrians and cyclists, parking garages, and the conversion of Depot Street into a street fair area. In October 2021, construction work began on a complete street-approach to Depot Street between Main Street and Irish Street in downtown Greeneville with enhanced pedestrian access. The project was completed in November 2023.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"US Census population/styles.css\"/>\n2020 census.\nAs of the 2020 United States census, there were 15,479 people, 6,075 households, and 3,549 families residing in the town.\n2010 census.\nAs of the 2010 census, there were 15,062 people; 6,478 households; 7,399 housing units; and 3,845 families in the town. The population density was . The racial makeup of the city was 89.1% White, 5.6% African American, 0.2% Native American, 0.8% Asian, 0.0% Pacific Islander, 2.3% from other races, and 2% from two or more races. Hispanics or Latinos of any race were 4.4% of the population.\nThere were 6,506 households, out of which 24.8% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 40.2% were married couples living together, 14.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 40.6% were non-families. 36.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 17.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.2 and the average family size was 2.86.\nThe age distribution was 21.2% under 18 and 21% who were 65 or older. The median age was 42.6 years. The median income for a household in the city was $51,692. The per capita income for the city was $24,376. About 13.9% of the population was below the poverty line.\nEconomy.\nTop employers.\nAccording to Greeneville Forward, a long-term growth plan published for the town in 2017, the top employers in the town are:\nManufacturing remained as the top employing industry in Greeneville until the 1990s, after Magnavox, once the town's largest employer, shuttered its facilities in the town.\nRetail is a major employer in Greeneville. The largest shopping center in Greeneville is Greeneville Commons which contains several national retailers. As of 2017, grocery stores in Greeneville include three Food City Supermarkets, two Ingles Markets, Dollar General Market, Sav-Mor Foods (a grocery store owned by Ingles Markets), Publix and Save-A-Lot. Walmart and Lowe's also have stores in Greeneville.\nArts and culture.\nFestivals and fairs.\nThere has been a fair in some form in Greene County since 1870 when the Farmers and Mechanics Association held its first exposition. The present Greene County Fair Association was incorporated in 1949. The Greene County Fair is recognized statewide as one of the best fairs of its size. In 2021, the Fair received the First Runner-Up Award in the AAA Division. In 2015, the Fair was recognized as the AAA Division Champion Fair in the state of Tennessee by the Tennessee Association of Fairs. In 2005, we were honored to receive the Tennessee Association of Fairs highest award, the \u201cChampion of Champions\u201d fair trophy, and in 2006, the Fair received the \u201cChampion of Champions Premier Fair\u201d award.\nThe town is home to the Street Dance on Davis celebration, which is held annually on the weekend before Aug. 8, in remembrance of Aug. 8, 1863, the date when Andrew Johnson freed his personal slaves at his home in Greeneville. This street dance is a celebration that includes live music, dancing in the streets, kids zones, and most importantly open dialogue that supports black history. In recent years, The George Clem Multicultural Alliance has been the host of this celebration. Although the celebration started as primarily involving the local African-American community, the event has expanded to celebrate the African-American community of East Tennessee.\nThe fair was also an inspiration for The Band Perry's song \"Walk Me Down The Middle\", which was featured on their eponymous debut album.\nSports.\nGreeneville is home to the Greeneville Flyboys, a collegiate summer baseball team of the Appalachian League, which was started in 2021. The team's home stadium is Pioneer Park on the campus of Tusculum College.\nProfessional baseball was first played in Greeneville by the Greeneville Burley Cubs in the Appalachian League in 1921. They remained in the league through 1925 and returned for a second stretch from 1938 to 1942. The Burley Cubs won the league championship in 1925 and 1938. They were followed in the same league by the Greeneville Astros, who played in the city from 2004 to 2017. They won the Appalachian League championship in 2004 and 2015. The Houston Astros, parent club of Greeneville, withdrew their affiliate from the Appalachian League after the 2017 season. The circuit's vacancy was filled by the Cincinnati Reds, who placed a Rookie-level affiliate in Greeneville known as the Greeneville Reds. In conjunction with a contraction of Minor League Baseball beginning with the 2021 season, the Appalachian League was reorganized as a collegiate summer baseball league, and the Reds were replaced by the Flyboys, a new franchise in the revamped league designed for rising college freshmen and sophomores.\nParks and recreation.\nThe Town of Greeneville Parks and Recreation Department maintains:\nGovernment.\nMunicipal.\nGreeneville is administered through a mayor/city council/city manager form of government. It previously had a mayor/board of aldermen/administrator form of government until April 18, 2023, when the then board of mayor and aldermen voted to change the \ntown's charter.\nThe town has a mayor and four city council members, along with the city manager who is the chief administrative officer and is in charge of supervising all town employees and is required to develop an annual budget and present it to the mayor and council members.\nThe following is a list of current officials as of April 2023:\nState.\nGreeneville is represented in the Tennessee House of Representatives in the 5th district, by Representative David Hawk, a Republican.\nIn the Tennessee State Senate, Greeneville is represented by the 1st district, by Senator Steve Southerland, also a Republican.\nFederal.\nGreeneville is represented in the United States House of Representatives by Republican Diana Harshbarger of the 1st congressional district.\nEducation.\nGreeneville is home to Walters State Niswonger Campus, which was expanded in 2019.\nTusculum University is located in nearby Tusculum.\nThe Greeneville City School District, the school district for areas in the city limits, operates:\nMedia.\nTelevision.\nGreeneville is part of both the and the . One station has Greeneville listed as its city of license (WEMT-Fox Tri-Cities). WGRV (AM) also has a television station on Comcast Cable channel 18. The channel simulcasts WGRV's live newscasts and other live programs and shows local events.\nRadio.\nGreeneville has three radio stations: WGRV (AM), WIKQ-FM, and WSMG-AM.\nNewspaper.\nThe Greeneville and Greene County area are served by \"The Greeneville Sun\", a daily newspaper published Monday through Saturday. \"The Greeneville Sun\" also publishes a free newspaper, \"The Greeneville Neighbor News\", which spotlights arts and entertainment.\nInfrastructure.\nHealthcare.\nGreeneville has one hospital, which is part of Ballad Health.\nGreeneville also has many nursing facilities, including: Life Care Center of Greeneville, Laughlin Healthcare Center, Signature Healthcare of Greeneville, Morning Pointe, Wellington Place owned by Brookdale Senior Living, Maxim Healthcare Services and Comcare.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["47585932", "135195", "193703", "2794443"], "permutation_1": ["47585932", "2794443", "135195", "193703"], "permutation_2": ["193703", "47585932", "135195", "2794443"], "permutation_3": ["2794443", "47585932", "193703", "135195"]}
{"id": "4hop1__166471_49925_13759_736921", "docs_added": {"37857": "Reformation\n16th-century movement in Western Christianity\nThe Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation and the European Reformation, was a major theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the papacy and the authority of the Catholic Church. Following the start of the Renaissance, the Reformation marked the beginning of Protestantism. It is considered one of the events that signified the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the early modern period in Europe. The end of the Reformation era is disputed among modern scholars.\nPrior to Martin Luther and other Protestant Reformers, there were earlier reform movements within Western Christianity. The Reformation, however, is usually considered to have started with the publication of the \"Ninety-five Theses\", authored by Martin Luther in 1517. Four years later, in January 1521, Luther was excommunicated by Pope Leo X. In May 1521, at the Diet of Worms, Luther was condemned by the Holy Roman Empire, which officially banned citizens from defending or propagating Luther's ideas. Luther survived after being declared an outlaw due to the protection of Elector Frederick the Wise.\nIn general, the Reformers argued that salvation in Christianity was a completed status based on faith in Jesus alone and not a process that could involve good works, as in the Catholic view. Protestantism also introduced new ecclesiology. The spread of Gutenberg's printing press provided the means for the rapid dissemination of religious materials in the vernacular. The initial movement in Germany diversified, and nearby other reformers such as Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin with different theologies arose.\nThe Counter-Reformation comprised the Catholic response to the Reformation, and largely affirmed Catholic positions that had been subject to critique by reformers.\nTerminology.\nIn the 16th-century context, the term mainly covers four major movements: Lutheranism, Calvinism, the Radical Reformation, and the Catholic Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Since the late 20th century, historians often use the plural of the term to emphasize that the Reformation was not a uniform and coherent historical phenomenon but the result of parallel movements. \nAnglican theologian Alister McGrath explains the term \"Reformation\" as \"an interpretative category\u2014a way of mapping out a slice of history in which certain ideas, attitudes, and values were developed, explored, and applied\". Historian John Bossy criticized the term Reformation for \"wrongly implying that bad religion was giving way to good,\" but also because it has \"little application to actual social behaviour and little or no sensitivity to thought, feeling or culture.\" A French scholar has noted \"no Reformation term is indisputable\" and that \"Reformation studies has revealed that \u201cProtestants\u201d and \u201cCatholics\u201d were not as homogenous as once thought.\" \nSpecific terminology includes:\nSeveral aspects of the Reformation, such as changes in the arts, music, rituals, and communities are frequently presented in specialised studies.\nThe historian Peter Marshall emphasizes that the \"call for 'reform' within Christianity is about as old as the religion itself, and in every age there have been urgent attempts to bring it about\". Charlemagne employed a \"rhetoric of reform\". Medieval examples include the Cluniac Reform in the 10th\u201311th centuries, and the 11th-century Gregorian Reform, both striving against lay influence over church affairs. When demanding a church reform, medieval authors mainly adopted a conservative and utopian approach, expressing their admiration for a previous \"golden age\" or \"apostolic age\" when the Church had allegedly been perfect and free of abuses.\nWhen considered as a historical time period, both the starting and ending date of the Reformation have always been debated. The most commonly used starting date is 31 October 1517\u2014the day when the German theologian Martin Luther (d. 1546) allegedly nailed up a copy of his disputation paper on indulgences and papal power known as the \"Ninety-five Theses\" to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg in Electoral Saxony. Calvinist historians often propose that the Reformation started when the Swiss priest Huldrych Zwingli (d. 1531) first preached against abuses in the Church in 1516. The end date of the Reformation is even more disputed: considered as political/martial strife, 25 September 1555 (when the Peace of Augsburg was accepted), 23 May 1618 and 24 October 1648 (when the Thirty Years' War began and ended, respectively) are the most commonly mentioned terminuses. The Reformation has always been presented as one of the most crucial episodes of the early modern period, or even regarded as the event separating the modern era from the Middle Ages.\nThe term Protestant, though initially purely political in nature, later acquired a broader sense, referring to a member of any Western church that subscribed to the main Reformation (or anti-Catholic) principles. Six princes of the Holy Roman Empire and rulers of fourteen Imperial Free Cities, who issued a protest (or dissent) against the edict of the Diet of Speyer (1529), were the first individuals to be called Protestants. The edict reversed concessions made to the Lutherans with the approval of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V three years earlier.\nBackground.\nCalamities.\nEurope experienced a period of dreadful calamities from the early 14th century. These culminated in a devastating pandemic known as the Black Death, which killed about one-third of Europe's population. Around 1500, the population of Europe was about 60\u201385 million people\u2014no more than 75 percent of the mid-14th-century demographic maximum. Due to a shortage of workforce, the landlords began to restrict the rights of their tenants which led to rural revolts that often ended with a compromise.\nThe constant fear of unexpected death was mirrored by popular artistic motifs, such as the allegory of ('dance of death'). The fear also contributed to the growing popularity of Masses for the dead. Already detectable among early Christians, these ceremonies indicated a widespread belief in purgatory\u2014a transitory state for souls that needed purification before entering heaven. Fear of malevolent magical practice was also growing, and witch hunts intensified.\nAt the end of the 15th century, the sexually transmitted infection known as syphilis spread throughout Europe for the first time. Syphilis destroyed its victims' looks with ulcers and scabs before killing them. Along with the French invasion of Italy, syphilis contributed to the success of the charismatic preacher Girolamo Savonarola (d. 1498) who called for a moral renewal in Florence. He was arrested and executed for heresy, but his meditations remained a popular reading.\nLate Medieval Christianity.\nLay community.\nHistorian John Bossy (as summarized by Eamon Duffy) emphasized that \"medieval Christianity had been fundamentally concerned with the creation and maintenance of peace in a violent world. 'Christianity' in medieval Europe denoted neither an ideology nor an institution, but a community of believers whose religious ideal\u2014constantly aspired to if seldom attained\u2014was peace and mutual love.\"\nThe Catholic Church taught that entry into heaven required dying in a state of grace. Based on Christ's parable on the Last Judgement, the Church considered the performance of good works by the faithful, such as feeding the hungry and visiting the sick, as an important co-condition of salvation. \nVillagers and urban laypeople were frequently members of confraternities (such as the Archconfraternity of the Gonfalone), mutual-support guilds associated with a saint, or religious fraternities (such as the Third Order of Saint Francis). The faithful made pilgrimages to saints' shrines, but the proliferation in the saints' number undermined their reputation. There was a strong non-theological Biblical awareness, especially of the Gospels and Psalms.\nNew religious movements promoted the deeper involvement of laity in religious practices. The communal fraternities of the Brethren of the Common Life did not encourage lay brothers to become priests and often placed their houses under the protection of urban authorities. They were closely associated with the , a new method of Catholic spirituality with a special emphasis on the education of laypeople. A leader of the movement the Dutch Wessel Gansfort (d. 1489) attacked abuses of indulgences.\nChurch buildings were richly decorated with paintings, sculptures, and stained glass windows. While Romanesque and Gothic art made a clear distinction between the supernatural and the human, Renaissance artists depicted God and the saints in a more human way. Historian Caroline Walker Bynum has written of 'a sort of religious materialism' in the period: 'a frenzied conviction that the divine tended to erupt into matter'.\nSources of authority.\nThe sources of religious authority included the Bible and its authoritative commentaries, apostolic tradition, decisions by ecumenical councils, scholastic theology, and papal authority. Catholics regarded the Vulgate as the Bible's authentic Latin translation. Commentators applied several methods of interpretations to resolve contradictions within the Bible. Apostolic tradition verified religious practices with unclear Biblical foundations or which required deduction, such as infant baptism. The ecumenical councils' decisions were binding to all Catholics. The crucial elements of mainstream Christianity had been first summarised in the Nicene Creed in 325. Its western text contained a unilateral addition which contributed to the schism between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. The Creed contained the dogma of Trinity about one God uniting three equal persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Church authorities acknowledged that an individual might exceptionally receive direct revelations from God but maintained that a genuine revelation could not challenge traditional religious principles. Preaching was an important part of bishops' and priests' responsibilities.\nClergy.\nWestern Christianity displayed a remarkable unity. This was the outcome of the Gregorian Reform that established papal supremacy over the Catholic Church, and achieved the legal separation of the Catholic clergy from laity. Clerical celibacy was reinforced through the prohibition of clerical marriage; ecclesiastical courts were granted exclusive jurisdiction over clerics, and also over matrimonial causes. Priests were ordained by bishops in accordance with the principle of apostolic succession\u2014a claim to the uninterrupted transmission of their consecrating power from Christ's Apostles through generations of bishops. Bishops, abbots, abbesses, and other prelates might possess remarkable wealth. Some of the ecclesiastic leaders also functioned as local secular princes, such as the prince-bishops in Kingdom of Germany and the English County Palatine of Durham, and the Grand Masters of the Teutonic Knights in their Baltic . Other prelates might be regents or the power behind the throne. Believers were expected to pay the tithe (one tenth of their income) to the Church. Pluralism\u2014the practice of holding multiple Church offices (or benefices)\u2014was not unusual. This led to non-residence, and the absent priests' deputies were often poorly educated and underpaid.\nThe clergy consisted of two major groups, the regular clergy and the secular clergy. Regular clerics lived under a monastic rule within the framework of a religious order; secular clerics were responsible for pastoral care. The Church was a hierarchical organisation. The pope was elected by high-ranking clergymen, the cardinals, and assisted by the professional staff of the Roman Curia. Secular clerics were organised into territorial units known as dioceses, each ruled by a bishop or archbishop. Each diocese was divided into parishes headed by parish priests who administered most sacraments to the faithful. These were sacred rites thought to transfer divine grace to humankind. The Council of Florence declared baptism, confirmation, marriage, extreme unction, penance, the Eucharist, and priestly ordination as the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. Women were not ordained priests but could live as nuns in convents after taking the three monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.\nPapacy.\nThe authority of the papacy was based on a well-organised system of communication and bureaucracy. The popes claimed the power of binding and loosing that Christ granted to Peter the Apostle (d. c. 66), and offered indulgence\u2014the reduction of the penance in both this world and the purgatory\u2014to sinners from an allegedly inexhaustible treasury of merit. The popes also granted dispensations to institutions or individuals, exempting them from certain provisions of canon law (or ecclesiastic law). \nFrom 1309 to 1417, the papacy was in turmoil: first a Pope was arrested by French troops and the papal court moved to Avignon, then various election controversies resulted in the Western Schism (1378-1417) leading to, at the end, three rival claimant Popes. At the Council of Constance, one of the three popes resigned, his two rivals were deposed, and the newly elected Martin V (r.\u20091417\u00a0\u2013\u00a01431) was acknowledged as the legitimate pope throughout Catholic Europe.\nThe Council of Constance declared that the popes owed obedience to the ecumenical councils. This idea known as conciliarism was condemned by Pope Pius II (r.\u20091458\u00a0\u2013\u00a01467) in a papal bull, but ecclesiastic and secular leaders often referred to it during their conflicts with the papacy. Relationships between the papacy and powerful Catholic rulers were regulated in special agreements known as concordats, limiting papal authority.\nAs princes of the Papal States in Italy, the popes were deeply involved in the power struggles of the peninsula. In this respect, the Renaissance popes were not dissimilar to secular rulers. Pope Alexander VI (r.\u20091492\u00a0\u2013\u00a01503) appointed his relatives, among them his own illegitimate sons to high offices. Pope Julius II (r.\u20091503\u00a0\u2013\u00a01513) took up arms to recover papal territories lost during his predecessors' reign. In the Age of Exploration, Pope Alexander VI claimed the right to distribute the newly discovered lands between Spain and Portugal, and his decision was confirmed in the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. The Spanish and Portuguese conquests and developing trade networks contributed to the global expansion of Catholicism. \nThe popes were generous patrons of art and architecture. Julius II ordered the demolition of the ruined 4th-century St. Peter's Basilica in preparation for the building of a new Renaissance basilica.\nPartial and failed institutional reforms.\nThe necessity of a church reform ('in head and limbs') was frequently discussed at the ecumenical councils from the late 13th century. However, most stakeholders\u2014popes, prelates and kings\u2014preferred the because they did not want to lose privileges or revenues. The system of papal dispensations was a principal obstacle to the implementation of reform measures, as the Holy See regularly granted immunities to those who did not want to execute them.\nWithin regular clergy, the so-called \"congregations of strict observance\" spread. These were monastic communities that returned to the strict interpretation of their order's rule. Reformist bishops tried to discipline their clergy through regular canonical visitations but their attempts mainly failed due to the resistance of autonomous institutions such as cathedral chapters. Neither could they exercise authority over non-resident clerics who had received their benefice from the papacy. On the eve of the Reformation, the Fifth Council of the Lateran was the last occasion when efforts to introduce a far-reaching reform from above could have achieved but it was dissolved in 1517 without making decisions on the issues that would soon come to the fore.\nHumanism.\nA new intellectual movement known as Humanism emerged in the Late Middle Ages. The Humanists' slogan ('back to the sources!') demonstrated their enthusiasm for Classical texts and textual criticism. The rise of the Ottoman Empire led to the mass immigration of Byzantine scholars to Western Europe, and many of them brought manuscripts previously unknown to western scholarship. This led to the rediscovery of the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato (347/348 BC). Plato's ideas about an ultimate reality lying beyond visible reality posed a serious challenge to scholastic theologians' rigorous definitions. Textual criticism called into question the reliability of some of the fundamental texts of papal privilege: humanist scholars, like Nicholas of Cusa (d. 1464) proved that one of the basic documents of papal authority, the allegedly 4th-century \"Donation of Constantine\" was a medieval forgery.\nAs the manufacturing of paper from rags and the printing machine with movable type were spreading in Europe, books could be bought at a reasonable price from the 15th century. Demand for religious literature was especially high. The German inventor Johannes Gutenberg (d. 1468) first published a two-volume printed version of the Vulgata in the early 1450s. High and Low German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Czech and Catalan translations of the Bible were published between 1466 and 1492; in France, the Bible's abridged French versions gained popularity. Laypeople who read the Bible could challenge their priests' sermons, as it happened already in 1515.\nCompleted by Jerome (d. 420), the Vulgate contained the Septuagint version of the Old Testament. The systematic study of Biblical manuscripts revealed that Jerome had sometimes misinterpreted his sources of translation. A series of Latin-Greek editions of the New Testament was completed by the Dutch humanist Erasmus (d. 1536). These new Latin translations challenged some scriptural proof texts for some Catholic dogmas.\nDissidents.\nAfter Arianism\u2014a Christological doctrine condemned as heresy at ecumenical councils\u2014disappeared in the late 7th century, no major disputes menaced the theological unity of the Western Church. Religious enthusiasts could organise their followers into nonconformist groups but they disbanded after their founder died. The Waldensians were a notable exception. Due to their efficient organisation, they survived not only the death of their founder Peter Waldo (d. c. 1205), but also a series of anti-heretic crusades. They rejected the clerics' monopoly of public ministry, and allowed all trained members of their community, men and women alike, to preach.\nThe Western Schism reinforced a general desire for church reform. The Oxford theologian John Wycliffe (d. 1384) was one of the most radical critics. He attacked pilgrimages, the veneration of saints, and the doctrine of transubstantiation. He regarded the Church as an exclusive community of those chosen by God to salvation, and argued that the state could seize the corrupt clerics' endowments. Known as Lollards, Wycliffe's followers rejected images, clerical celibacy and the by crusading lords. The Parliament of England passed a law against heretics, but Lollard communities survived the purges.\nWycliffe's theology had a marked impact on the Prague academic Jan Hus (d. 1415). He delivered popular sermons against the clerics' wealth and temporal powers, for which he was summoned to the Council of Constance. Although the German king Sigismund of Luxemburg (r.\u20091410\u00a0\u2013\u00a01437) had granted him safe conduct, Hus was sentenced to death for heresy and burned at the stake on 6 July 1415. His execution led to a nationwide religious movement in Bohemia, and the papacy called for a series of crusades against Hus's followers. The moderate Hussites, mainly Czech aristocrats and academics, were known as Utraquists for they taught that the Eucharist was to be administered ('in both kinds') to the laity. The most radical Hussites, called Taborites after their new town of T\u00e1bor, held their property in common. Their millenarianism shocked the Utraquists who destroyed them in the Battle of Lipany in 1434. By this time, the remaining Catholic communities in Bohemia were almost exclusively German-speaking. The lack of a Hussite church hierarchy enabled the Czech aristocrats and urban magistrates to assume control of the Hussite clergy from the 1470s. The radical Hussites set up their own Church known as the Union of Bohemian Brethren. They rejected the separation of clergy and laity, and condemned all forms of violence and oath taking.\nMarshall writes that the Lollards, Hussites and conciliarist theologians \"collectively give the lie to any suggestion that torpor and complacency were the hallmarks of religious life in the century before Martin Luther.\" Historians customarily refer to Wycliffe and Hus as \"Forerunners of the Reformation\". The two reformers' emphasis on the Bible is often regarded as an early example of one of the basic principles of the Reformation\u2014the idea ('by the Scriptures alone'), although prominent scholastic theologians were also convinced that Scripture, interpreted reasonably and in accord with the Church and the Fathers, contained all knowledge necessary for salvation.\nBeginnings.\nThe Reformation in Germanic countries was instigated by Martin Luther, however historians note that many of his ideas were pre-dated by Wycliff, Huss, Erasmus, Zwingli and others, both heretic and orthodox. Historian Peter Marshall has noted \"In recent decades, scholars have become increasingly acclimatized to the idea that the Reformation was in important respects a continuation and intensification of trends within later medieval Catholicism, rather than simply a wholesale rejection of it.\"\nLuther and the \"Ninety-five Theses\".\nPope Leo X (r.\u20091513\u00a0\u2013\u00a01521) decided to complete the construction of the new St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. As the sale of certificates of indulgences had been a well-established method of papal fund raising, he announced new indulgences in the papal bull in 1515. On the advice of the banker Jakob Fugger (d. 1525), he appointed the pluralist prelate Albert of Brandenburg (d. 1545) to supervise the sale campaign in Germany. The Dominican friar Johann Tetzel (d. 1519), a leading figure in the campaign, applied unusually aggressive marketing methods. A slogan attributed to him famously claimed that \"As soon as the coin into the box rings, a soul from purgatory to heaven springs\". Frederick the Wise, Prince-elector of Saxony (r.\u20091486\u00a0\u2013\u00a01525) forbade the campaign because the suspended the sale of previous indulgences, depriving him of revenues that he had spent on his collection of relics.\nThe campaign's vulgarity shocked many serious-minded believers, among them Martin Luther, a theology professor at the University of Wittenberg in Saxony. Born into a middle-class family, Luther entered an Augustinian monastery after a heavy thunderstorm dreadfully reminded him the risk of sudden death and eternal damnation, but his anxiety about his sinfulness did not abate. His studies on the works of the Late Roman theologian Augustine of Hippo (d. 430) convinced him that those whom God chose as his elect received a gift of faith independently of their acts. He first denounced the idea of justification through human efforts in his ('Disputation against Scholastic Theology') in September 1517.\nOn 31 October 1517, Luther addressed a letter to Albert of Brandenburg, stating that the clerics preaching the St. Peter's indulgences were deceiving the faithful, and attached his \"Ninety-five Theses\" to it. He questioned the efficacy of indulgences for the dead, although also stated \"If ... indulgences were preached according to the spirit and intention of the pope, all ... doubts would be readily resolved\". Archbishop Albert ordered the theologians at the University of Mainz to examine the document. Tetzel, and the theologians Konrad Wimpina (d. 1531) and Johann Eck (d. 1543) were the first to associate some of Luther's propositions with Hussitism. The case was soon forwarded to the Roman Curia for judgement. Pope Leo remained uninterested, and mentioned the case as \"a quarrel among friars\".\nNew theology.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nLuther on the Christian struggles toward God\nChristians should be exhorted to seek earnestly to follow Christ, their Head, through penalties, deaths, hells. And let them thus be more confident of entering heaven through many tribulations rather than through a false assurance of peace.\nMartin Luther, \"Ninety-five Theses\"\nAs the historian Lyndal Roper notes, the \"Reformation proceeded by a set of debates and arguments\". Luther presented his views in public at the observant Augustinians' assembly in Heidelberg on 26 April 1518. Here he explained his \"theology of the Cross\" about a loving God who had become frail to save fallen humanity, contrasting it with what he saw as the scholastic \"theology of glory\" that in his view celebrated erudition and human acts. It is uncertain when Luther's concept of justification by faith alone\u2014a central element of his theology\u2014crystallised. He would later attribute it to his \"tower experience\" (1519), when he comprehended that God could freely declare even sinners righteous while he was thinking about the words of Paul the Apostle (d. 64 or 65)\u2014\"\".\nUrged by Luther's opponents, Pope Leo appointed the jurist Girolamo Ghinucci (d. 1541) and the theologian Sylvester Mazzolini (d. 1527) to inspect Luther's teaching. Mazzolini argued that Luther had questioned papal authority by attacking the indulgences, while Luther concluded that only a fundamental reform could put an end to the abuse of indulgences. Pope Leo did not excommunicate Luther because Leo did not want to alienate Luther's patron Frederick the Wise. Instead, he appointed Cardinal Thomas Cajetan (d. 1534) to convince Luther to withdraw some of his theses. Cajetan met with Luther at Augsburg in October 1518. The historian Berndt Hamm says that the meeting was the \"historical point at which the opposition between the Reformation and Catholicism first emerged\", as Cajetan thought that believers accepting Luther's views of justification would no more obey clerical guidance.\nLuther first expressed his sympathy for Jan Hus at a disputation in Leipzig in June 1519. His case was reopened at the Roman Curia. Cajetan, Eck and other papal officials drafted the papal bull ('Arise, O Lord') which was published on 15 June 1520. It condemned Luther's forty-one theses, and offered a sixty-day-long grace period to him to recant. Luther's theology quickly developed. In a Latin treatise \"On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church\", he stated that only baptism and the Eucharist could be regarded as sacraments, and priests were not members of a privileged class but servants of the community (hence they became called ministers from the Latin word for servant). His German manifesto \"To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation\" associated the papacy with the Antichrist, and described the Holy See as \"the worst whorehouse of all whorehouses\" in reference to the funds flowing to the Roman Curia. It also challenged the Biblical justification of clerical celibacy. Luther's study \"On the Freedom of a Christian\" consolidated his thoughts about the believers' inner freedom with their obligation to care for their neighbours although he rejected the traditional teaching about good works. The study is a characteristic example of Luther's enthusiasm for paradoxes.\nThe papal nuncio Girolamo Aleandro (d. 1542) ordered the burning of Luther's books. In response, Luther and his followers burned the papal bull along with a copy of the \u2014the fundamental document of medieval ecclesiastic law\u2014at Wittenberg. The papal bull excommunicating Luther was published on 3 January 1521. The newly elected Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (r.\u20091519\u00a0\u2013\u00a01556) wanted to outlaw Luther at the Diet of Worms, but could not make the decision alone. The Holy Roman Empire was a confederation of autonomous states, and authority rested with the Imperial Diets where the Imperial Estates assembled. Frederick the Wise vetoed the imperial ban against Luther, and Luther was summoned to Worms to defend his case at the Diet in April 1521. Here he refused to recant stating that only arguments from the Bible could convince him that his works contained errors.\nAfter Luther and his supporters left the Diet, those who remained sanctioned the imperial ban, threatening Luther's supporters with imprisonment and confiscation of their property. To save Luther's life but also to hide his involvement, Frederick arranged Luther's abduction on 4 May. During his ten-month-long staged captivity at Frederick's castle of Wartburg, Luther translated the New Testament to High German. The historian Diarmaid MacCulloch describes the translation as an \"extraordinary achievement that has shaped the German language ever since\", adding that \"Luther's gift was for seizing the emotion with sudden, urgent phrases\". The translation would be published at the 1522 Leipzig Book Fair along with Luther's treatise \"On Monastic Vows\" that laid the theological foundations of the dissolution of monasteries. Luther also composed religious hymns in Wartburg. They would be first published in collections in 1524. During Luther's absence, his co-workers, primarily Philip Melanchthon (d. 1560) and Andreas Karlstadt (d. 1541) assumed the leadership of Reformation in Wittenberg. Melanchthon consolidated Luther's thoughts into a coherent theological work titled ('Common Places').\nSpread.\nRoper argues that \"the most important reason why Luther did not meet with Hus's fate was technology: the new medium of print\". Luther was publishing his views in short but pungent treatises that gained unexpected popularity: he was responsible for about one-fifth of all works printed in Germany in the first third of the 16th century. German printing presses were scattered in many urban centers which prevented their control by central authorities. Statistical analysis indicates a significant correlation between the presence of a printing press in a German city and the adoption of Reformation.\nReformation spread through the activities of enthusiastic preachers such as Johannes Oecolampadius (d. 1531) and Konrad K\u00fcrsner (d. 1556) in Basel, Sebastian Hofmeister (d. 1533) in Schaffhausen, and Matth\u00e4us Zell (d. 1548) and Martin Bucer (d. 1551) in Strasbourg. They were called \"Evangelicals\" due to their insistence on teaching in accordance with the Gospels (or ). Luther and many of his followers worked with the artist Lucas Cranach the Elder (d. 1553) who had a keen sense of visualising their message. He produced Luther's idealised portrait setting a template for further popular images printed on the covers of books. Cranach's woodcuts together with itinerant preachers' explanations helped the mainly illiterate people to understand Luther's teaching. The illustrated pamphlets were carried from place to place typically by peddlers and merchants. Laypeople started to discuss various aspects of religion in both private and public all over Germany.\nThe self-governing free imperial cities were the first centers of the Reformation. The Evangelical preachers emphasized that many of the well-established church practices had no precedent in the Bible. They offered the Eucharist to the laity in both kinds, and denied the clerics' monopolies, which resonated with popular anti-clericalism. It was not unusual that their supporters attacked clerics and church buildings. Violent iconoclasm was common.In some cities such as Strasbourg and Ulm, the urban magistrates supported the Reformation; in the cities of the Hanseatic League the affluent middle classes enforced changes in church life. Cities located closer to the most important ideological centers of the Reformation\u2014Wittenberg and Basel\u2014adopted its ideas more likely than other towns. This indicates the significance either of student networks, or of neighbours who had rejected Catholicism.\nThe sociologist Steven Pfaff underlines that \"ecclesiastical and liturgical reform was not simply a religious question ... since the sort of reforms demanded by Evangelicals could not be accommodated within existing institutions, prevailing customs, or established law\". After their triumph, the reformers expelled their leading opponents, dissolved the monasteries and convents, secured the urban magistrates' control of the appointment of priests, and established new civic institutions. Evangelical town councils usually prohibited begging but established a common chest for poverty relief by expropriating the property of dissolved ecclesiastic institutions. The funds were used for the daily support of orphans, old people and the sick, but also for low-interest loans to the impoverished to start a business. Luther was convinced that only educated people could effectively serve both God and the community. Under his auspices, public schools and libraries were opened in many towns offering education to more children than the traditional monastic and cathedral schools.\nResistance and oppression.\nResistance to Evangelical preaching was significant in Flanders, the Rhineland, Bavaria and Austria. Here the veneration of local saints was strong, and statistical analysis indicates that cities where indigenous saints' shrines served as centers of vivid communal cults less likely adopted Reformation. Likewise, cities with an episcopal see or monasteries more likely resisted Evangelical proselytism. \nLuther's ideas were rejected by most representatives of the previous generation of Humanists. Erasmus stated that Luther's \"unrestrained enthusiasm carries him beyond what is right\". Jacob van Hoogstraaten (d. 1527) compared Luther's theology of salvation \"as if Christ takes to himself the most foul bride and is unconcerned about her cleanliness\". Luther's works were burned in most European countries. Emperor Charles initiated the execution of the first Evangelical martyrs, the Augustinian monks Jan van Essen and Hendrik Vos. They were burned in Brussels on 1 July 1523. Charles was determined to protect the Catholic Church, but the Ottoman Turks' expansion towards Central Europe often thwarted him. The Spanish Inquisition prevented the spread of Evangelical literature in that country, and suppressed the spiritual movement of the ('Illuminists') who put a special emphasis on personal faith. Some Italian men of letters, such as the Venetian nobleman Gasparo Contarini (d. 1542) and the Augustinian canon Peter Martyr Vermigli (d. 1562) expressed ideas resembling Luther's theology of salvation but did not quickly break with Catholicism. They were part of a group known as . \nThe English king Henry VIII (r.\u20091509\u00a0\u2013\u00a01547) commissioned a team of theologians to defend the Catholic dogmas against Luther's attacks. Their treatise titled \"The Assertion of the Seven Sacraments\" was published under Henry's name, and the grateful Pope awarded him with the title Defender of the Faith. In Scotland, the first Evangelical preacher Patrick Hamilton (d. 1528) was burned for heresy. In France, the theologians of the Sorbonne stated that Luther \"vomited up a doctrine of pestilence\". Guillaume Bri\u00e7onnet (d. 1534), Bishop of Meaux, also condemned Luther but employed reform-minded clerics like Jacques Lef\u00e8vre d'\u00c9taples (d. c. 1536) and William Farel (d. 1565) to renew religious life in his diocese. They enjoyed the protection of Marguerite of Angoul\u00eame (d. 1549), the well-educated sister of the French king Francis I (r.\u20091515\u00a0\u2013\u00a01547). The Parlement of Paris only took actions against them after Francis was captured in the Battle of Pavia in 1525, forcing many of them into exile.\nCorrespondence between Luke of Prague (d. 1528), leader of the Bohemian Brethren, and Luther made it clear that their theologies were incompatible even if their views about justification were similar. In Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland, Luther's theology spread in the local German communities. King Louis of Bohemia and Hungary (r.\u20091516\u00a0\u2013\u00a01526) ordered the persecution of Evangelical preachers although his wife Mary of Austria (d. 1558) favoured the reformers. Sigismund I the Old, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania (r.\u20091506\u00a0\u2013\u00a01548) banned the import of Evangelical literature. Christian II, who ruled the Kalmar Union of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway (r.\u20091513\u00a0\u2013\u00a01523), was sympathetic towards the Reformation but his despotic methods led to revolts. He was replaced by his uncle Frederick I in Denmark and Norway (r.\u20091523\u00a0\u2013\u00a01533), and by a local aristocrat Gustav I Vasa in Sweden (r.\u20091523\u00a0\u2013\u00a01560).\nAlternatives.\nSaxon radicals and rebellious knights.\nAndreas Karlstadt accelerated the implementation of Reformation in Wittenberg. On Christmas Day 1521, he administered the Eucharist in common garment; the next day he announced his engagement to a fifteen-year-old noble girl Anna von Mochau. He proclaimed that images were examples of \"devilish deceit\" which led to the mass destruction of religious art. Enthusiasts began swarming to Wittenberg. The Zwickau prophets, who had been incited by the radical preacher Thomas M\u00fcntzer (d. 1525), claimed that they had received revelations from God. They rejected transubstantiation and attacked infant baptism. Luther defended art as a proof of the beauty of the Creation, maintained that Christ's Body and Blood were physically present in the Eucharist, and regarded infant baptism as a sign of membership in the Christian community. To put an end to the anarchy, Frederick the Wise released Luther in March 1522. Luther achieved the Zwickau prophets' removal from Wittenberg, calling them fanatics. Karlstadt voluntarily left Wittenberg for Orlam\u00fcnde where the local congregation elected him its minister. Luther visited most parishes in the region to prevent radical reforms, but he was often received by verbal or physical abuses. When he wanted to dismiss Karlstadt, the parishioners referred to his own words about the congregations' right to freely elect their ministers, and Karlstadt called him a \"perverter of the Scriptures\". Karlstadt was expelled from Electoral Saxony without a trial on Luther's initiative.\nLuther condemned violence but some of his followers took up arms. Franz von Sickingen (d. 1523), an imperial knight from the Rhineland, formed an alliance with his peers against Richard von Greiffenklau, Archbishop-elector of Trier (r.\u20091511\u00a0\u2013\u00a01531), allegedly to lead the Archbishop's subjects \"to evangelical, light laws and Christian freedom\". Sickingen had demanded the restitution of monastic property to the grantors' descendants, stating that the secularisation of church property would also improve the poor peasants' situation. Sickingen and his associates attacked the archbishopric but failed at the siege of Trier. Sickingen was mortally wounded while defending his Nanstein Castle against the Archbishop's troops. Luther denounced Sickingen's violent acts. According to his \"theory of two kingdoms\", true Christians had to submit themselves to princely authority.\nZwingli.\nThe Swiss Humanist priest Huldrych Zwingli would claim that he \"began to preach the Gospel of Christ in 1516 long before anyone in our region had ever heard of Luther\". He came to prominence when attended a meal of sausages in Z\u00fcrich during Lent 1522, breaching the rules of fasting. He held disputations with the urban magistrates' authorization to discuss changes in church life, and always introduced them with the magistrates' support. In 1524, all images were removed from the churches, and fasting and clerical celibacy were abolished. Two years later, a German communion service replaced the Latin liturgy of the Mass, and the Eucharist (or Lord's Supper) was administered on a plain wooden table instead of an embellished altar. Two new institutions were organised in Z\u00fcrich: the (a public school for Biblical studies), and the Marriage and Morals Court (a legal court and moral police consisting of two laymen and two clerics). Both would be copied in other towns. Zwingli's interpretation of the Eucharist differed from both Catholic theology and Luther's teaching. He denied Christ's presence in the sacramental bread and wine, and regarded the Eucharist as a commemorative ceremony in honor of the crucified Jesus. The disagreement caused a bitter pamphlet war between Luther and Zwingli. They both rejected intermediary Eucharistic formulas coined by Bucer.\nSwiss Brethren.\nZwingli's cautious \"Magisterial Reformation\" outraged the more radical reformers, among them Conrad Grebel (d. 1526), a Z\u00fcrich patrician's son who had fallen out with his family for marrying a low born girl. The radicals summarized their theology in a letter to M\u00fcntzer in 1524. They identified the Church as an exclusive community of the righteous, and demanded its liberation from the state. They deplored all religious practices that had no Biblical foundations, and endorsed believers' (or adult) baptism. \nIn January 1525, a former Catholic priest George Blaurock (d. 1529) asked Grebel to rebaptize him, and after his request was granted they rebaptized fifteen other people. For this practice, they were called Anabaptists ('rebaptizers'). As a featuring element of Donatism and other heretic movements, rebaptism had been a capital offence since the Late Roman period. After the magistrates had some radicals imprisoned, Blaurock called Zwingli the Antichrist. The town council enacted a law that threatened rebaptizers with capital punishment, and the Anabaptist Felix Manz (d. 1527) was condemned to death and drowned in the Limmat River. He was the first victim of religious persecution by reformist authorities. The purge convinced many Anabaptists that they were the true heirs to early Christians who had suffered martyrdom for their faith. The most radicals took inspiration from the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation for apocalyptic prophesies. Some of them burnt the Bible reciting St Paul's words, \"the letter kills\". In St. Gallen, Anabaptist women cut their hair short to avoid arousing sexual passion, while a housemaid Frena Bumenin proclaimed herself the New Messiah before announcing that she would give birth to the Antichrist.\nAccording to Dr Kenneth R. Davis, \"the Anabaptists can best be understood as, apart from their own creativity, a radicalization and Protestantization not of the Magisterial Reformation but of the lay-oriented, ascetic reformation of which Erasmus is the principle mediator.\"\nPeasants' War.\nMacCulloch says that the Reformation \"injected an extra element of instability\" into the relationship between the peasants and their lords, as it raised \"new excitement and bitterness against established authority\". Public demonstrations in the Black Forest area indicated a general discontent among the southern German peasantry in May 1524. The Anabaptist preacher Balthasar Hubmaier (d. 1528) was one of the peasant leaders, but most participants never went beyond traditional anti-clericalism. In early 1525, the movement spread towards Upper Swabia. The radical preacher Cristopher Schappler and the pamphleteer Sebastian Lotzer summarized the Swabian peasants' demand in a manifesto known as \"Twelve Articles\". The peasants wanted to control their ministers' election and to supervise the use of church revenues, but also demanded the abolition of the tithe on meat. They reserved the right to present further demands against non-Biblical seigneurial practices but promised to abandon any of their demands that contradicted the Bible, and appointed fourteen \"arbitrators\" to clarify divine law on the relationship between peasants and landlords. The arbitrators approached Luther, Zwingli, Melanchthon and other leaders of the Reformation for advice but none of them answered. Luther wrote a treatise, equally blaming the landlords for the oppression of the peasantry and the rebels for their arbitrary acts.\nGeorg Truchsess von Waldburg (d. 1531), commander of the army of the aristocratic Swabian League, achieved the dissolution of the peasant armies either by force or through negotiations. By this time the peasant movements reached Franconia and Th\u00fcringia. The Franconian peasants formed alliances with artisans and petty nobles such as Florian Geyer (d. 1525) against the patricians and the Prince-Bishopric of W\u00fcrzburg but Truchsess forced them into submission. In Th\u00fcringia, M\u00fcntzer convinced 300 radicals that they were invincible but they were annihilated at Frankenhausen by Philip the Magnanimous, Landgrave of Hesse (r.\u20091509\u00a0\u2013\u00a01567) and George, Duke of Saxony (r.\u20091500\u00a0\u2013\u00a01539). M\u00fcntzer who had hidden in an attic before the battle was discovered and executed. News of atrocities by peasant bands and meetings with disrespectful peasants during a preaching tour outraged Luther while he was writing his treatise \"Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants\". In it, he urged the German princes to \"smite, slay, and slab\" the rebels. Moderate observers felt aggrieved at his cruel words. They regarded as an especially tasteless act that Luther married Katharina von Bora (d. 1552), a former nun while the punitive actions against the peasantry were still in process. Further peasant movements began in other regions in Central Europe but they were pacified through concessions or suppressed by force before the end of 1525.\nConsolidation.\nPrincely Reformation in Germany.\nThe Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach (r.\u20091510\u00a0\u2013\u00a01525) was the first prince to formally abandon Catholicism. The Teutonic Order held Royal Prussia in fief of Poland. After defeats in a war against Poland and Lithuania demoralised the Knights, Albert transformed the region into the hereditary Duchy of Prussia in April 1525. As the secularisation of Prussia represented an open rebellion against Catholicism, it was followed by the establishment of the first Evangelical state church. In August, Albert's brothers, Casimir (r.\u20091515\u00a0\u2013\u00a01527) and George (r.\u20091536\u00a0\u2013\u00a01543) instructed the priests in Brandenburg-Kulmbach and Brandenburg-Ansbach to pray the doctrine of justification by faith alone. The Reformation was officially introduced in Electoral Saxony under John the Constant (r.\u20091525\u00a0\u2013\u00a01532) on Christmas Day 1525. Electoral Saxony's conversion facilitated the adoption of the Reformation in smaller German states, such as Mansfeld and Hessen. Philip of Hessen founded the first Evangelical university at his capital Marburg in 1527.\nAt the Diet of Speyer in 1526, the German princes agreed that they would \"live, govern, and act in such a way as everyone trusted to justify before God and the Imperial Majesty\". In practice, they sanctioned the principle ('whose realm, their religion'), acknowledging the princes' right to determine their subjects' religious affiliation. Fully occupied with the War of the League of Cognac against France and its Italian allies, Emperor Charles had appointed his brother Ferdinand I, Archduke of Austria (r.\u20091521\u00a0\u2013\u00a01564) to represent him in Germany. They both opposed the compromise, but Ferdinand was brought into succession struggles in Bohemia and Hungary after their brother-in-law King Louis died in the Battle of Moh\u00e1cs. In 1527, Charles's mutinous troops sacked Rome and took Pope Clement VII (r.\u20091523\u00a0\u2013\u00a01534) under custody. Luther stated that \"Christ reigns in such a way that the emperor who persecutes Luther for the pope is forced to destroy the pope for Luther\".\nAfter his experiences with radical communities, Luther no more wrote of the congregations' right to elect their ministers (or pastors). Instead, he expected that princes acting as \"emergency bishops\" would prevent the disintegration of the Church. Close cooperation between clerics and princely officials at church visitations paved the way for the establishment of the new church system. In Electoral Saxony, princely decrees enacted the Evangelical ideas. Liturgy was simplified, the church courts' jurisdiction over secular cases was abolished, and state authorities took control of church property. The Evangelical equivalent to bishop was created with the appointment of a former Catholic priest Johannes Bugenhagen (d. 1558) as superintendent in 1533. The church visitations convinced Luther that the villagers' knowledge of the Christian faith was imperfect. To deal with the situation, he completed two cathecisms\u2014the \"Large Catechism\" for the education of priests, and the \"Small Catechism\" for children. Records from Brandenburg-Ansbach indicates that Evangelical pastors often attacked traditional communal activities such as church fairs and spinning bees for debauchery.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nEvangelical Imperial Estates on their protestation at the Diet of Speyer\n\"In matters concerning God's honor and our soul's salvation everyone must stand before God and answer by himself, nobody can excuse himself in that place by the actions of decisions of others whether they be a minority or majority.\"\nFive imperial princes and representatives of fourteen imperial cities, \"Protestation at Speyer\" (1529)\nTaking advantage of Emperor Charles' victories in Italy, Ferdinand I achieved the reinforcement of the imperial ban against Luther at the Diet of Speyer in 1529. In response, five imperial princes and fourteen imperial cities presented a formal . They were mocked as \"Protestants\", and this appellation would be quickly applied to all followers of the new theologies. To promote Protestant unity, Philip the Magnanimous organised a colloquy (or theological debate) between Luther, Melanchton, Zwingli and Oecolampadius at Marburg early in October 1529, but they could not coin a common formula on the Eucharist. During the discussion, Luther remarked that \"Our spirit has nothing in common with your spirit\", expressing the rift between the two mainstream versions of the Reformation. Zwingli's followers started to call themselves the \"Reformed\", as they regarded themselves as the true reformers.\nStalemate in Switzerland.\nIn 1526, the villagers of the autonomous Graub\u00fcnden region in Switzerland agreed that each village could freely choose between Protestantism and Catholicism, setting a precedent for the coexistence of the two denominations in the same jurisdiction. Religious affiliation in the Mandated Territories (lands jointly administered by the Swiss cantons) became the subject of much controversy between Protestant and Catholic cantons. The Protestant cantons concluded a military alliance early in 1529, the Catholic cantons in April. After a bloodless armed conflict, the Mandated communities were granted the right to choose between the two religions by a majority vote of the male citizens. Zwingli began an intensive proselityzing campaign which led to the conversion of most Mandated communities to Protestantism. He set up a council of clergymen and lay delegates for church administration, thus creating the forerunners of presbyteries. Z\u00fcrich imposed an economic blockade on the Catholic cantons but the Catholics routed Z\u00fcrich's army in 1531. The Catholics' victory stopped the Protestant expansion in Switzerland. \nZwingli was killed in the battlefield, and succeeded by a former monk Heinrich Bullinger (d. 1575) in Z\u00fcrich. Bullinger developed Zwingli's Eucharistic formula in an attempt to reach a compromise with Luther, saying that the faithful made spiritual contact with God during the commemorative ceremony.\n\"Schleitheim Articles\".\nThe historian Carter Lindberg states that the \"Peasants' War was a formative experience for many leaders of Anabaptism\". Hans Hut (d. 1527) continued M\u00fcntzer's apocalyticism but others rejected all forms of violence. \nThe pacifist Michael Sattler (d. 1527) took the chair at an Anabaptist assembly at Schleitheim in February 1527. Here the participants adopted an anti-militarist program now known as the \"Schleitheim Articles\". The document ordered the believers' separation from the evil world, and prohibited oath-taking, bearing of arms and holding of civic offices. Facing Ottoman expansionism, the Austrian authorities considered this pacifism as a direct threat to their country's defense. Sattler was quickly captured and executed. During his trial, he stated that \"If the Turks should come, we ought not to resist them. For Thou shalt not kill.\"\nTotal segregation was alien to H\u00fcbmaier who tried to achieve a peaceful coexistence with non-Anabaptists. Expelled from Z\u00fcrich, he settled in the Moravian domains of Count Leonhard von Liechtenstein at Nikolsburg (now Mikulov, Czech Republic). He baptised infants on the parents' request for which hard-line Anabaptists regarded him as an evil compromiser. He was sentenced to death and burned at the stake for heresy on Ferdinand I's orders. His execution inaugurated a period of intensive purge against rebaptisers. His followers relocated to Austerlitz (now Slavkov u Brna, Czech Republic) where refugees from Tyrol joined them. After the Tyrolian Jakob Hutter (d. 1536) assumed the leadership of the community, they began to held their goods in common. The Bohemian Brethren symphatised with the Hutterites which facilitated their survival in Moravia.\nConfessions.\nBack in Germany in January 1530, Charles V asked the Protestants to summarize their theology at the following Diet in Augsburg. As the imperial ban prevented Luther from attending the Diet, Melanchthon completed the task. Melanchthon sharply condemned Anabaptist ideas and adopted a reconciliatory tone towards Catholicism but did not fail to emphasize the most featuring elements of Evangelical theology, such as justification by faith alone. The twenty-eight articles of the \"Augsburg Confession\" were presented at the Diet on 25 June. Four south German Protestant cities\u2014Strasbourg, Constance, Lindau, and Memmingen\u2014adopted a separate confessional document, the \"Tetrapolitan Confession\" because they were influenced by Zwingli's Eucharistic theology. On Charles's request, Eck and other Catholic theologians completed a response to the \"Augsburg Confession\", called ('refutation'). Charles ordered the Evangelical theologians to admit that their argumentation had been completely refuted. Instead, Melanchthon wrote a detailed explanation for the Evangelical articles of faith, known as the \"Apology of the Augsburg Confession\".\nCharles wanted to attack the Protestant princes and cities but the Catholic princes did not support him fearing that his victory would strengthen his power. The Diet passed a law prohibiting further religious innovations and ordering the Protestants to return to Catholicism until 15 April 1531. Luther had previously questioned the princes' right to resist imperial power, but by then he had concluded that a defensive war for religious purposes could be regarded as a just war. The Schmalkaldic League\u2014the Protestant Imperial Estates' defensive alliance\u2014was signed by five princes and fourteen cities on 27 February 1531. As a new Ottoman invasion prevented the Habsburgs from wage war against the Protestants, a peace treaty was signed at Nuremberg in July 1532.\nRoyal Reformation in Scandinavia.\nRelationship between the papacy and the Scandinavian kingdoms was tense, as both Frederick I of Denmark and Norway, and Gustav I of Sweden appointed their own candidates to vacant episcopal sees. In 1526, the Danish Parliament prohibited the bishops to seek confirmation from the Holy See, and declared all fees payable for their confirmation as royal revenue. The former Hospitaller knight Hans Tausen (d. 1561) delivered Evangelical sermons in Viborg under royal protection from 1526. Four years later, the Parliament rejected the Catholic prelates' demand to condemn Evangelical preaching. After Frederick's death the bishops and conservative aristocrats prevented the election of his openly Protestant son Christian as his successor. Christopher, Count of Oldenburg (r.\u20091526\u00a0\u2013\u00a01566) took up arms on the deposed Christian II's behalf, but the war known as Count's Feud ended with the victory of Frederick's son who ordered the arrest of the Catholic bishops. Christian III (r.\u20091534\u00a0\u2013\u00a01559) was crowned king by Bugenhagen. Bugenhagen also ordained seven superintendents to lead the Church of Denmark. Christian declared the \"Augsburg Confession\" as the authoritative articles of faith in 1538, but pilgrimages to the most popular shrines continued, and the Eucharistic liturgy kept Catholic elements, such as kneeling.\nIn the Danish dependencies of Norway and Iceland, the Reformation required vigorous governmental interventions. The last Catholic Archbishop of Nidaros in Norway Olav Engelbrektsson (d. 1538) was a staunch opponent of the changes, but was succeeded by the Evangelical Gjeble Pederss\u00f8n (d. 1557) as superintendent. In Iceland, J\u00f3n Arason, Bishop of H\u00f3lar (d. 1550)\u2014the last Nordic Catholic bishop\u2014took up arms to prevent the Reformation, but he was captured and executed by representatives of royal authority.\nGustav I of Sweden appointed the Evangelical preacher Laurentius Andreae (d. 1552) as his chancellor, and the Evangelical scholar Olaus Petri (d. 1552) as a minister at Stockholm. Petri translated the Gospels to Swedish. On his advice, Gustav dissolved a Catholic printing house that published popular anti-Protestant literature under the auspices of Hans Brask (d. 1538), Bishop of Link\u00f6ping. Gustav also expelled the radical German pastor Melchior Hoffman (d. c. 1543) from Sweden for iconoclastic propaganda. The royal treasury needed extra funds to repay the loans borrowed from the Hanseatic League to finance the war against Christian II. Gustav persuaded the legislative assembly to secularise church property by threatening the delegates with his abdication. The peasantry remained very cautious about changes in church life. This together with heavy taxation led to uprisings. To appease the rebels, Gustav declared that he had not sanctioned the changes, and dismissed Andreae in 1531, Petri in 1533. He continued the transformation of church life in Sweden and Finland after the Reformation was fully introduced in Denmark. He was assisted by two Evangelical theologians Georg Norman (d. 1552/1553) and Mikael Agricola (d. 1557). In 1539, Norman was appointed as supertindent of the Church of Sweden, and Gustav took the title of \"Supreme Defender of the Church\".\nCatholic reform.\nBeginnings.\nThe religious upheaval in Germany and the sack of Rome convinced many Catholics that their Church was in need of a profound reform. Pope Paul III (r.\u20091534\u00a0\u2013\u00a01549) appointed prominent representatives of the Catholic reform movement as cardinals, among them Contarini, Reginald Pole (d. 1558), and Giovanni Pietro Caraffa (d. 1559). They completed a report condemning the corruption of church administration and the waste of church revenues. Contarini, Pole and other were ready to make concessions to the Protestants but their liberalism shocked Caraffa and other conservative prelates.\nNegotiations between moderate Catholic and Protestant theologians were not unusual. In 1541, Bucer and the Catholic theologian Johann Gropper (d. 1559) drafted a compromise formula on justification. The draft was discussed along with other issues at a colloquy during the Diet of Regensburg but no compromise was reached, not least due to opposition by both Luther and the Holy See. Contarini, who represented the papacy at the Diet, died in 1541; many such as Vermigli fled from Italy to avoid persecution. Hermann of Wied, Archbishop-elector of Cologne (r.\u20091515\u00a0\u2013\u00a01546) completed a reform program with Bucer's assistance, criticising prayers to the saints and traditional Eucharistic theology, and proposing sermons about justification by faith. The canons of the Cologne Cathedral requested Gropper to write a critical response to it, and achieved Hermann's deposal by the Roman Curia.\nNew Orders.\nThe spread of new monastic orders was an important element of the Catholic reform movement. Most new orders placed great value on pastoral care. Among them, the Society of Jesus (or Jesuits) became the most influential. Its founder Ignatius of Loyola (d. 1556) was born to a Basque noble family. He chose a military career but abandoned it after being wounded during a siege. He started to write a devotional guide, the \"Spiritual Exercises\", during his ascetic retreat at a cave. His mysticism arouse the Spanish Inquisition's suspicion but the supported him. Paul III sanctioned the establishment of the Jesuits on Contarini's influence in 1540. The new order quickly developed: when Loyola died, the Society had about 1,000 members; in less than a decade, it numbered around 3,500. The maintenance of a well organised schooling system was the Jesuits' most prominent feature. Their Roman collegium prepared future priests to discuss and reject Protestant theologies primarily in Germany, Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary.\nCouncil of Trent.\nPaul III decided to convoke the nineteenth ecumenical council to handle the crisis caused by the Reformation. The Council of Trent met in a series of sessions from December 1545 to 1548, 1521 to 1522, and 1562 to 1563. The topics dealt with included the Creed, the Sacraments including transubstantiation and ordination, justification, and improvement in the quality of priests by diocesan seminaries and annual canonical visitations. The council reaffirmed that apostolic tradition was as authentic a source of faith as the Bible, and emphasized the importance of good works in salvation, rejecting two important elements of Luther's theology. Before being closed in December 1563, the Council mandate the papacy to revise liturgical books and complete a new catechism. Carlo Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan (d. 1582) adopted a more practical approach. He completed a handbook covering everyday details of church life, including the delivery of sermons, arrangement of church interiors, and hearing confessions. After the council, papal authority was reinforced through the establishment of central offices known as congregations. One of them became responsible for the list of forbidden literature. All church officials and university teachers were required to take a Tridentine confessional oath that included an oath of \"true obedience\" to the papacy.\nLindberg suggests that (following Trent) the \"spirituality of Catholic reform was the ascetic, subjective, and personal piety\", as expressed in public processions, the \"perpetual\" adoration of the Eucharist, and the reaffirmed veneration of Mary the Virgin and the saints.\nNew waves.\nEnglish reformation under Henry VIII.\nIn England, reformist clerics such as Thomas Bilney (d. 1531) and Robert Barnes (d. 1540) spread Luther's theology among Cambridge and Oxford scholars and students. The young priest William Tyndale (d. 1536) translated the New Testament to English using Erasmus's Latin-Greek edition. By around 1535, more than 15,000 copies of his translation had been distributed in secret. Tyndale's biographer David Daniell (d. 2016) writes that the translation \"gave the English language a plain prose style of the very greatest importance\", and his \"influence has been greater than any other writer in English\".\nThe Lord Chancellor Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (d. 1530) had strong links to the Roman Curia, he was unable to achieve the annulment of the marriage of Henry VIII and the middle-aged Catherine of Aragon (d. 1536). They had needed a papal dispensation to marry because Catherine was the widow of Henry's brother Arthur, Prince of Wales (d. 1502). As she had not produced a male heir, Henry became convinced that their incestuous marriage drew the wrath of God.\nHenry charged a group of scholars including Thomas Cranmer (d. 1556) with collecting arguments in favour of the annulment. They concluded that the English kings had always had authority over the clergy, and the Book of Leviticus forbade marriage between a man and his brother's widow in all circumstances. In 1530, the Parliament limited the jurisdiction of church courts. Wolsey had meanwhile lost Henry's favour and died, but More tried to convince Henry to abandon his plan about the annulment of his marriage. In contrast, Cranmer and Henry's new chief advisor Thomas Cromwell (d. 1540) argued that the marriage could be annulled without papal interference. Henry who had fallen in love with Catherine's lady-in-waiting Anne Boleyn (d. 1536) decided to marry her even if the marriage could lead to a total break with the papacy. During a visit in Germany, Cranmer married but kept his marriage in secret. On his return to England, Henry appointed him as the new Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Holy See confirmed the appointment.\nThe links between the English Church and the papacy were severed by Acts of Parliament. In April 1533, the Act of Appeals decreed that only English courts had jurisdiction in cases of last wills, marriages and grants to the Church, emphasizing that \"this realm of England is an Empire\". A special church court annulled the marriage of Henry and Catherine, and declared their only daughter Mary (d. 1558) illegitimate in May 1533. Pope Clement VII did not sanction the judgement and excommunicated Henry. Ignoring the papal ban, Henry married Anne, and she gave birth to a daughter Elizabeth (d. 1603). Anne was a staunch supporter of the Reformation, and mainly her nominees were appointed to the vacant bishoprics between 1532 and 1536. In 1534, the Act of Supremacy declared the king the \"only supreme head of the Church of England\". Many of those who refused to swear a special oath of loyalty to the king\u201465 from about 400 defendants\u2014were executed. More and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester (d. 1535) were among the most prominent victims. Cromwell gradually convinced Henry that a \"purification\" of church life was needed. The number of feast days was reduced by about 75 per cent, pilgrimages were forbidden, all monasteries were dissolved and their property was seized by the Crown.\nThe Parliament of Ireland passed similar acts but they could only be fully implemented in the lands under direct English rule. Resistance against the Reformation was vigorous. In 1534, the powerful Lord Thomas FitzGerald (d. 1537) staged a revolt. Although it was crushed, thereafter Henry's government did not introduce drastic changes in the Church of Ireland. In England, the dissolution of monasteries caused a popular revolt known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. The \"pilgrims\" demanded the dismissal of \"heretic\" royal advisors but they were overcame by royalist forces. The principal articles of faith of the Church of England were summarized in the \"Six Articles\" in 1539. It reaffirmed several elements of traditional theology, such as transubstantiation and clerical celibacy.\nAs Anne Boleyn did not give birth to a son, she lost Henry's favour. She was executed for adultery, and Elizabeth was declared a bastard. Henry's only son Edward (d. 1553) was born to Henry's third wife Jane Seymour (d. 1537). In 1543, an Act of Parliament returned Mary and Elizabeth to the line of the succession behind Edward. Henry attacked Scotland to enforce the marriage of Edward and the infant Mary, Queen of Scots (r.\u20091542\u00a0\u2013\u00a01567) but her mother Mary of Guise (d. 1560) reinforced Scotland's traditional alliance with France. The priest George Wishart (d. 1546) was the first to preach Zwinglian theology in Scotland. After he was burned for heresy, his followers, among them John Knox (d. 1572), assassinated Cardinal David Beaton, Archbishop of St Andrews (d. 1546), but French troops crushed their revolt.\nM\u00fcnster.\nHaving been banished from Sweden, Hoffman was wandering in southern Germany and the Low Countries. He turned Anabaptist but suspended adult baptism to avoid persecution. He denied that Christ had become flesh, and preached that 144,000 elect were to gather in Strasbourg to witness Christ's return in 1533. His followers known as Melchiorites swarmed into the city, presenting an enormous challenge for its charity provisions. Hoffman also came to Strasbourg, but the authorities arrested him. After the deadline for Christ's return passed uneventfully, many disappointed Melchiorites accepted the leadership of a charismatic Dutch baker Jan Matthijszoon (d. 1534). He blamed Hoffman for the suspension of adult baptism, and proclaimed the city of M\u00fcnster as the New Jerusalem. Although M\u00fcnster was an episcopal see, the town council had installed a Protestant pastor Bernhard Rothmann (d. c. 1535) in clear defiance to the new prince-bishop Franz von Waldeck (r.\u20091532\u00a0\u2013\u00a01553). Those who expected a radical social transformation from the Reformation flocked to M\u00fcnster. The radicals assumed full control of the town in February 1534.\nBishop Franz and his allies, among them Philip of Hessen, attacked M\u00fcnster but could not capture it. Under Matthijszoon's rule, private property and the use of money was outlawed in the town. Believing that God would protect him, Matthijszoon made a sortie against the enemy, but he was killed. Another charismatic Dutchman, John of Leiden (d. 1536)\u2014a former tailor\u2014succeeded him. Leiden announced that he was receiving revelations from God, and proclaimed himself \"king of righteousness\" and \"the ruler of the new Zion\". Church and state were united, and all sinners were executed. Leiden legalized polygyny, and ordered all women who were twelve or older to marry. The protracted siege demoralized the defenders, and M\u00fcnster fell through treason on 25 June 1535. After the fall of M\u00fcnster, most Anabaptist groups adopted a pacifist approach under the leadership of a former priest Menno Simons (d. 1561). He associated the Anabaptist communities with the New Jerusalem. His followers would be known as Mennonites. Nearly all Anabaptist communities were destroyed in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, but moderate Anabaptist groups survived in East Frisia, and were mainly tolerated in England.\nCalvin and the \"Institutes of the Christian Religion\".\nThe future reformer John Calvin (d. 1564) was destined to a church career by his father, a lay administrator of the Bishopric of Noyon in France. He studied theology at the Sorbonne, and law at Orl\u00e9ans and Bourges. He read treatises by Lef\u00e8vre and Lef\u00e8vre's disciples at the newly established , and abandoned Catholicism under the influence of his Protestant friends, particularly the physician Nicolas Cop (d. 1540). The persecution of French Protestants intensified after the so-called Affair of the Placards. In October 1534, placards (or posters) attacking the Mass were placed at many places, including the door to the royal bedchamber in Ch\u00e2teau d'Amboise. In retaliation, twenty-four Protestants were executed, and many intellectuals had to leave France.\nCalvin was one of the religious refugees. He settled in Basel and completed the first version of his principal theological treatise, the \"Institutes of the Christian Religion\" in 1536. He would be rewriting and expanding it several times until 1559. As the historian Carlos Eire writes, \"Calvin's text was blessed with a lawyer's penchant for precision, a humanist's love for poetic expression and rhetorical flourishes, and a theologian's respect for paradox\". With Eire's words, Calvin \"revived the jealous God of the Old Testament\". He warned King Francis that the persecution of the faithful would incur the wrath of God upon him but sharply distanced moderate Protestants from Anabaptists. Already the first edition of the \"Institutes\" contained references to two distinguishing elements of Calvin's theology, both traceable back to Augustine: his conviction that the original sin had completely corrupted human nature, and his strong belief in \"double predestination\". In his view, only strict social and ecclesiastic control could prevent sins and crimes, and God did not only decide who were saved but also those who were destined to damnation.\nIn 1536, Farel convinced Calvin to settle in Geneva. Their attempts to implement radical reforms in discipline brought them into conflicts with those who feared that the new measures would lead to clerical despotism. After they refused to acknowledge the urban magistrates' claim to intervene in the process of excommunication, they were banished from the town. Calvin moved to Strasbourg where Bucer made a profound impact on him. Under Bucer's influence, Calvin adopted an intermediate position on the Eucharist between Luther and Zwingli, denying Christ's presence in it but acknowledging that the rite included a real spiritual communion with Christ.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nCalvin on the \"double pedestrination\"\nNo one who wishes to be thought religious dares simply deny predestination, by which God adopts some to hope of life, and sentences others to eternal death...For all are not created in an equal condition; rather eternal life is fore-ordained for some, eternal damnation for others.\nJohn Calvin, \"Institutes of the Christian Religion\" (1559)\nAfter Calvin and Farel left Geneva, no pastors were able to assume the leadership of the local Protestant community. Fearing of a Catholic restoration, the urban magistrates convinced Calvin to come back to Geneva in 1541. Months after his return, the town council enacted \"The Ecclesiastical Ordinances\", a detailed regulation summarizing Calvin's proposals for church administration. The \"Ordinances\" established four church offices. The pastors were responsible for pastoral care and discipline; the doctors instructed believers in the faith; the elders (or presbyters) were authorized to \"watch over the life of each person\" and to report those who lived a \"disorderly\" life to the pastors; and deacons were appointed to administer the town's charity. All townspeople were obliged to regularly attend church services. Calvin established a special court called the consistory to hear cases of moral lapse such as blasphemy, adultery, disrespect to authorities, gossiping, witchcraft and participation in rites considered superstitious by church authorities. The consistory was composed of the pastors, the elders, and an urban magistrate, and the townspeople were encouraged to report sinful acts to it. First-time offenders mainly received lenient sentences such as fines, but repeat offenders were banished from the town or executed. Resistance against the \"Ordinances\" was significant. Many continued visit shrines and pray to saints, while many patricians insisted on liberal traditional customs for which Calvin called them \"Libertines\".\nReformation in Britain.\nHenry VIII died on 27 January 1547. His nine-year-old son Edward VI (r.\u20091547\u00a0\u2013\u00a01553) succeeded him, and Edward's maternal uncle Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset (d. 1552) assumed power as Lord Protector. Somerset halted the persecution of religious dissidents, making England a safe haven for religious refugees from all over Europe. They established their own congregations, served by prominent pastors, such as the Polish Jan \u0141aski (d. 1560) and the Spanish Casiodoro de Reina (d. 1594). Most of them adhered to Reformed theology. Cranmer introduced further religious reforms: images were removed from the churches, the doctrine of purgatory was rejected, and all endowments for prayers for the dead (or chantries) were confiscated. With the introduction of Cranmer's \"Book of Common Prayer\", the Mass was replaced by a vernacular liturgy.\nMarshall notes, that it is \"safe to say that the greater part of the population disliked what was taking place\". The liturgical changes caused popular revolts in Devon and Cornwall and other places but they were quickly suppressed, just like the riot against the dissolution of chantries in East Yorkshire. Even in Norfolk, where the peasants adopted a Protestant rhetoric, they assembled under the banners of their parish saints. Somerset's opponents take advantage of the unrest to get rid of him. He was replaced by John Dudley (d. 1553) who was made Duke of Northumberland. Cranmer continued the liturgical reforms, and the new version of the \"Book of Common Prayer\" rejected the dogma of transubstantiation. He completed the \"Forty-two Articles\", a new confessional document combining elements of Reformed and Evangelical theologies.\nEdward died of tuberculosis on 6 July 1553. He had designated his Protestant relative Jane Grey (d. 1554) as his heir to prevent the succession of his Catholic sister Mary, but most English remained loyal to the Tudor dynasty. Initially, Mary I (r.\u20091553\u00a0\u2013\u00a01558) took advantage of her royal prerogatives to dismiss married clergy, appoint Catholic priests to bishoprics, and restore the Mass. She had to make concessions to landowners who had seized church property to achieve the restoration of papal supremacy by the Parliament in November 1554. Cranmer was forced to sign six documents condemning his own acts but withdrew his recantations while being burned for heresy in public in March 1556. Reginald Pole was appointed as the new archbishop of Canterbury, but he was accused of heresy after his old enemy Carafa had been elected pope as Paul IV (r.\u20091555\u00a0\u2013\u00a01559). The restoration of the altars and images gained popular support in many places, but recatholisation faced significant resistance\u2014around 300 Protestants were burned, and about 1,000 were forced into exile during Mary's reign. Her marriage with Philip II of Spain was unpopular, and she died childless on 17 November 1558.\nMary's sister and successor Elizabeth I (r.\u20091558\u00a0\u2013\u00a01603) sought a ('middle way') between religious extremists. Her first Parliament restored the royal leadership of the Church of England, and introduced a modified version of the \"Book of Common Prayer\". The Anglican liturgy retained elements of Catholic ceremonies, such as priestly vestments, and contained ambiguous sentences about the Eucharist, suggesting the real presence of Jesus's Blood and Body for conservatives, and a memorial service for reformers. Elizabeth supervised the revision of the Anglican articles of faith in person. The subsequent \"Thirty-nine Articles\" were formulated in a way that adherents to the major mainstream Protestant theologies could accept them. However, the most resolute Protestants were determined to purify the Church of England from the remnants of Catholic ceremonies, hence they were called Puritans. They were especially influential at the universities. Many of them rejected the authority of bishops, the Presbyterians emphasized the equal status of all priests, whereas the Congregationalists wanted to strengthen the position of local communities in church administration.\nEngland's recatholisation contributed to the triumph of Reformation in Scotland. James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran (d. 1575), heir presumptive to Queen Mary of the Scots, assumed the leadership of the Protestant lords. Incited by Knox's passionate sermons, anti-Catholic sentiments led to a popular revolt of elementary force in 1559, causing the destruction of monasteries and friaries.\nServetus and the \"Restoration of Christianity\".\nThe first radicals who rejected the dogma of Trinity were put on trial in Augsburg in 1527. A scholar from Navarre Michael Servetus (d. 1553) adopted antitrinitarian theology in the 1530s. MacCulloch proposes that Servetus rejected the Trinity, a dogma extremely offensive to Jews and Muslims, because he wanted to present Christianity as a universal religion. After studying medicine and anatomy in Paris, Servetus became the court physician of the elderly Catholic archbishop of Vienne in southern France. While in Vienne, he sent the first (unpublished) versions of his theological work, the \"Restoration of Christianity\" to Calvin. He disrespectfully described the Trinity as a three-headed Cerberus, attacked infant baptism, and denied original sin. He also wrote insulting comments on Calvin's \"Institutes\". The \"Restoration\" was published anonymously in Lyon in 1553, but the Catholic Inquisition identified Servetus as its author by using documents from Calvin's personal files. Servetus fled from France but attended a church service delivered by Calvin in Geneva. He was recognised and arrested, and the urban authorities sentenced him to death with Calvin's consent. He was burned at the stake on 27 October 1553.\nBucer, Melanchthon and other leading Protestant theologians agreed with Servetus's execution. Only the Basel-based schoolmaster and Bible translator Sebastian Castellio (d. 1563) condemned it in a manifesto for religious toleration. He also addressed a letter to Calvin, echoing Erasmus his posthumous benefactor, stating \"To burn a heretic is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man\". Erasmus was a Trinitarian himself, but had noted that the theological formulation had developed from the time of the Apostles, which fueled many subsequent antitrinitarians who took this to mean it that the idea was unbiblical. \nAntitrinitarian theology survived among Italian exiles in Basel. Lelio Sozzini (d. 1562), a scholar from Siena, argued that Biblical texts calling Jesus \"Son of God\" did not refer to his divinity but to his faultless humanity. His nephew, Fausto Sozzini (d. 1604) rejected original sin and the theory of satisfaction (the concept that Christ's sufferings brought about atonement to God the Father for the original sin). Their followers became known as Socinians.\nAfter Servetus's execution Calvin strengthened his position as the leading figure of Reformed Protestantism. In Geneva, the Libertines rose up but they were quickly overcame, and forced into exile or executed. The confiscation of the property of the wealthy Ami Perrin (d. 1561) and his family provided the city with funds to create an academy. It served both as a preparatory school for local youths and as a seminary for Reformed ministers. Calvin's chief assistant Theodore Beza (d. 1605) was appointed as its first rector. The academy quickly developed into a principal center of theologian training for students from all over Europe, earning Geneva the nickname \"the Protestant Rome\". It was especially popular among French Protestants.\nWars of religion and tolerance.\nSchmalkaldic Wars.\nScandals and internal conflicts weakened the Protestants' position in Germany in the early 1540s. Philip the Magnanimous committed bigamy by secretly marrying a lady-in-waiting of his court although his wife was still alive. Bucer, Luther, and Melanchthon had discretely sanctioned the bigamious marriage allegedly to prevent adultery. In 1542, Philip and John the Constant's successor, John Frederick I (r.\u20091532\u00a0\u2013\u00a01547) invaded the Duchy of Braunschweig-Wolfenb\u00fcttel which brought disapproval from other princes. Disputes over lands renewed the old rivalry between the Ernestine and Albertine branches of the Wettin dynasty of Saxony. Taking advantage of the situation, Emperor Charles built a broad coalition of Catholic and Evangelical princes against Hesse and Electoral Saxony. The coalition included the Albertine duke Maurice of Saxony (r.\u20091541\u00a0\u2013\u00a01553). During the ensuing Schmalkaldic War, Charles and his allies won a decisive victory, and Maurice was rewarded with John Frederick's title of elector.\nThe triumphant Charles V regulated religious issues with an imperial edict known as the \"Augsburg Interim\". The \"Interim\" sanctioned clerical marriage and the communion in both kinds in Protestant territories, but denied further concessions. Maurice issued an alternative regulation called the \"Leipzig Interim\" for Saxony which ordered the clergy to wear surplices. Melanchthon supported the \"Leipzig Interim\", stating that such issues were \"matters indifferent\" but uncompromising Lutheran theologians such as Nicolaus von Amsdorf (d. 1565) and Matthias Flacius (d. 1575) rejected all concessions to imperial demands. Different views on justification and the Eucharist caused further heated debates between Melanchton's followers, known as Philippists, and their opponents, called Gnesio-Lutherans ('authentic Lutherans') in the 1550s. The \"Augsburg Interim\" was only implemented in the southern German Protestant cities. This led to the expulsion of recalcitrant clerics, including Bucer from Strasbourg. Alarmed by Charles's triumph, Calvin and Bullinger agreed on a consensual Eucharistic formula, now known as ('Consensus of Z\u00fcrich'), emphasising that Christ \"makes us participants of himself\" in the Lord's Supper, but also stating that God \"uses the ministry of the sacraments\" without infusing divine power into them. Luther had died in 1546 but his followers rejected the \"Consensus\". The rift between Evangelical and Reformed Protestants widened to the extent that Reformed refugees faced an unfriendly reception at Evangelical countries. In Bohemia, Hussite and Evangelical aristocrats and townspeople rose up against King Ferdinand I. Although Ferdinand crushed the revolt, he had to sanction religious plurality in Moravia as a reward for the Moravian Estates' loyalty during the Bohemian revolt.\nDistrusting Emperor Charles, Maurice brokered a coalition of Evangelical princes, and promised four prince-bishoprics to King Henry II of France (r.\u20091547\u00a0\u2013\u00a01559) for financial support. Maurice and his allies invaded the Habsburgs' domains, forcing Charles to flee. Signed on 10 August 1552, the Peace of Passau prescribed that the religious issues were to be discussed at the following Imperial Diet. The Diet was opened at Augsburg on 5 February 1555. Already exhausted, Charles appointed Ferdinand to represent him. Ferdinand's negotiations with the Evangelical princes ended with the Peace of Augsburg on 25 September. The document reaffirmed the principle , but the Imperial Estates could only choose between Catholicism and the \"Augsburg Confession\". Evangelical imperial free cities had to tolerate the existence of Catholic communities within their walls, and prince-bishoprics could not be secularised in case the bishop abandoned the Catholic faith. Charles, who did not sign the peace treaty, abdicated, ceding his imperial title to Ferdinand, and his vast empire to his son Philip II of Spain (r.\u20091556\u00a0\u2013\u00a01598).\nFrench Wars of Religion.\nMany French Protestants did not risk to profess their faith in public. They were known as Nicodemites after Nicodemus, a Pharisee who visited Jesus in secret. Calvin condemned this practice describing those who attended the Mass as soldiers \"in the army of Antichrist\". Under his influence, the French Protestants started to stay away from Catholic church services. They were called Huguenots for uncertain reason. The poet Cl\u00e9ment Marot (d. 1544) provided them with popular stirring songs by translating forty-nine Psalms to French. Francis I promised to exterminate heresy in France in a peace treaty with Charles V in 1544. Next year, Waldensians were massacred in the Luberon region. In 1547, Henry II established a special court for heresy cases, named ('the burning chamber'). The lawyer Jean Crespin (d. 1572) completed a catalogue of martyrs to commemorate the victims of the purges, and it gained immense popularity in the Protestant communities all over Europe. After around 1555, prominent French aristocrats converted to Protestantism, including Marguerite of Angoul\u00eame's daughter, Jeanne d'Albret, (d. 1572), Jeanne's husband Antoine de Bourbon (d. 1562), and Gaspard II de Coligny (d. 1572), admiral of France. Their patronage encouraged less distinguished Huguenots to express their faith in public. In 1559, delegates from seventy-two congregations attended the first synod of the Reformed Church of France, representing about 1.5\u20132 million believers. The synod adopted the \"Gallican Confession\", a confessional document drated by Calvin.\nFully preoccupied with a new war against Emperor Charles, Henry II did not take severe measures against the Huguenot nobility. After his sudden death after an accident, his eldest son Francis II (r.\u20091559\u00a0\u2013\u00a01560) ascended the throne. His wife, Mary, Queen of Scots was the niece of Francis, Duke of Guise (d. 1563) and Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine (d. 1574), two leaders of the most resolute Catholic faction of the nobility. The queen mother Catherine de' Medici (d. 1589) distrusted them but the persecution of Huguenots intensified under their influence. When Francis died by an ear infection, Calvin considered his fate as divine deliverance. Francis was succeeded by his brother Charles IX (r.\u20091560\u00a0\u2013\u00a01574) under Catherine's regency. She enacted the Huguenots' right to freely attend church services and hold public assemblies because she wanted to avoid a civil war along religious lines.\nUncompromising Catholics and Huguenots considered their confrontation inevitable. The first of the French Wars of Religion\u2014a series of armed conflicts between Catholics and Huguenots\u2014began after Guise's retainers massacred more than fifty Huguenots at Vassy on 1 March 1562. As Antoine de Bourbon had returned to Catholicism, his brother Louis I, Prince of Cond\u00e9 (d. 1569) assumed the leadership of a Huguenot revolt. They concluded a treaty with England in September 1562. To achieve a reconciliation, Catherine de'Medici married off her daughter Margaret of Valois (d. 1615) to the Protestant son of Jeanne d'Albret and Antoine de Bourbon, Henry de Bourbon, King of Navarre (r.\u20091572\u00a0\u2013\u00a01610). Mutual mistrust between Catholics and Huguenots, and the Parisians' determination to cleanse their city of heresy led to the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre after the wedding. On 24 August 1572, a fanatic mob slaughtered 2,000\u20133,000 Protestants in Paris, and by early October further 6,000\u20137,000 Huguenots fell victim to pogroms in other cities and towns. Many Huguenots returned to the Catholic Church or fled from France, and those who remained gathered in southern and southern-west France and continued the armed resistance. Known as \"Malcontents\", moderate Catholics concluded that only concessions to the Huguenots could restore peace.\nCharles IX died in May 1574 leaving an almost empty treasury to his brother Henry III (r.\u20091574\u00a0\u2013\u00a01567). Henry adopted a moderate religious policy but the uncompromising Catholics established the Catholic League in 1576. They entered into a secret alliance with Philip II of Spain to prevent the spread of Protestantism. In 1589, the monk Jacques Cl\u00e9ment mortally wounded King Henry. He named Henry de Bourbon as his heir, but the League and many cities refused to obey to a Huguenot king. Henry IV secured the support of moderate Catholics by converting to Catholicism. He defeated his French opponents and their Spanish allies, and put an end to the civil war early in 1598. He enacted many of the demands of the Huguenots, about fifteen per cent of the population, in the Edict of Nantes. Among others, they were allowed to attend religious services in many places, and their right to hold public offices was confirmed.\nRevolt in the Netherlands.\nMore Protestants fell victim to persecution in the seventeen provinces of Habsburg Netherlands than in any other country between 1523 and 1555. The ruthless persecution prevented the establishment of Evangelical congregations although Luther's ideas were widely discussed in Flemish communities. Reformed theology spread among the Walloons through individuals' correspondence with Calvin and the Genevan academy from the 1540s. Nicodemism was not unusual but uncompromising Protestants disturbed Catholic ceremonies. The preacher Guido de Bres (d. 1567) established the first permanent Reformed congregations. He was a main contributor to the \"Belgic Confession\", a confessional document based on the \"Gallican Confession\", first published in Walloon in 1561, and in Dutch in 1562. The \"Confession\" sharply criticised the Anapabtists, and emphasized the importance of church discipline.\nIn 1566, 300 nobles requested Philip II's governor Margaret of Parma (d. 1586) to moderate anti-heretic legislation. Although the petitioners were mocked as \"beggars\", Margaret was open to a compromise. Protestant refugees returned from abroad, and religious enthusiasts stirred up public demonstrations. On the night of 20\u201321 August 1566, a Protestant mob sacked the Antwerp Cathedral, introducing a popular iconoclastic movement that spread all over the Netherlands. In 1567, Philip appointed Fernando \u00c1lvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba (d. 1582) to crush the riots. Alba arrived at the head of a 20,000-strong army, and introduced a reign of terror, leading to the execution of thousands of people. A prominent aristocrat William the Silent, Prince of Orange (d. 1584) assumed the leadership of the resistance. His \"Sea Beggars\"\u2014a squadron of privateers\u2014seized the provinces of Holland and Zeeland by 1572, although the Reformed communities were in the minority in most towns.\nPhilip II's government faced bankruptcy and his unpaid Spanish troops sacked Antwerp in 1576. This led to a general revolt against Spanish rule. The Catholic aristocrat Philippe III de Cro\u00ff, Duke of Aarschot (d. 1595), made an alliance with William the Silent but rivalry between Catholics and Protestants did not abate. In 1581, the northern provinces united under William's leadership, and renounced allegiance to Philip. In the south, Margaret of Parma's son Alessandro Farnese crushed the revolts, forcing about 100,000 Protestants to seek refugee in the north. Developed from the union of seven northern provinces, the Dutch Republic remained under the loose leadership of the House of Orange. The Reformed pastors were eager to transform the whole society along their ideas. They failed because William preferred a more tolerant approach, and significant Protestant groups associated church discipline with Catholicism. As a consequence, Evangelical, Annabaptist and Catholic communities survived in the Dutch Republic. Heterodox theologies could also spread, such as the views of Jacobus Arminius (d. 1609) who argued that an individual could resist divine grace. Although Arminianism was rejected at the international Synod of Dort in 1619, it continued to influence Protestant theologians.\nEdict of Torda.\nAfter King Louis's death at Moh\u00e1cs, two claimants John Z\u00e1polya (r.\u20091526\u00a0\u2013\u00a01540) and Ferdinand I of Habsburg (r.\u20091526\u00a0\u2013\u00a01564) competed for the Hungarian throne. They were Catholic but neither of them risked to alienate potential supporters by anti-Protestant purges. The Transylvanian Saxon leader Markus Pemfflinger (d. 1537) promoted Evangelical preaching in the Saxon metropolis Hermanstadt (Sibiu, Romania) from around 1530. Evangelical teaching spread among ethnic Hungarians, Slovaks, and Croats after Protestant aristocrats started to appoint Evangelical preachers to the churches under their patronage in the 1530s. After Z\u00e1polya's death, the Ottomans conquered central Hungary, his widow Isabella Jagiellon (d. 1559) assumed the regency for their infant son John Sigismund Z\u00e1polya (r.\u20091540\u00a0\u2013\u00a01571) in eastern Hungary under Ottoman suzerainty, and Ferdinand ruled Royal Hungary in the north and west. Often in need of funds, Ferdinand seized church revenues, while Isabella and her treasurer the Catholic bishop George Martinuzzi (d. 1551) secularised the estates of the Transylvanian bishopric. The Transylvanian Saxons adopted the \"Augsburg Confession\" in 1544; five years later, five free royal boroughs accepted an Evangelical confession in Royal Hungary.\nTwo former Catholic priests M\u00e1ty\u00e1s D\u00e9vai B\u00edr\u00f3 (d. 1547) and Mih\u00e1ly Szt\u00e1rai (d. 1575) were among the first Hungarian pastors to teach Zwinglian Eucharistic theology. \"Sacramentarianism\" (the denial of Christ's presence in the Eucharist) and rebaptism were outlawed by the Diet in Royal Hungary in 1548. John Sigismund was open to religious innovations. Under the influence of his court chaplain Ferenc D\u00e1vid (d. 1579), he adhered to Reformed theology from 1562, and accepted antitrinitarian views during the last years of his life. The Edict of Torda legalised three Protestant denominations\u2014Evangelical, Reformed and Unitarian\u2014in eastern Hungary in 1568. Eastern Hungary transformed into the autonomous Principality of Transylvania under Ottoman suzerainty in 1570. The coexistence of four officially recognised churches\u2014Catholicism and the three legalised Protestant denominations\u2014remained a lasting feature of religious politics in Transylvania. The most radical antitrinitarians rejected the New Testament and held Saturday (or Sabbath) as weekly holiday; hence they were called Sabbatarians.\nWarsaw Confederation.\nAs the Bohemian Brethren were famed for their diligence, many Polish aristocrats eagerly settled them on their estates. Ethnic Poles became receptive to Protestant ideas, especially to Calvin's theology from the 1540s. The Jan Tarnowski (d. 1561) entered into correspondence with Calvin in 1540; in 1542, Jan \u0141aski (d. 1560) converted although his uncle (and namesake) had been the Primate of Poland. In 1548, Sigismund the Old's tolerant son Sigismund II Augustus (r.\u20091548\u00a0\u2013\u00a01572) ascended the throne. Two years later, the first synod of the Polish Reformed Church assembled at Pi\u0144cz\u00f3w. Proposals for the introduction of vernacular liturgy and communion in both kinds, and the abolition of clerical celibacy were forwarded by Sigismund Augustus to the Holy See but Pope Paul IV (r.\u20091555\u00a0\u2013\u00a01559) rejected them. The Catholic prelates tried to put Protestant nobles and married priests on trial for heresy but the legislative assembly, or Sejm suspended such persecutions on the initiative of the Protestant Marshal of the Sejm Rafa\u0142 Leszczy\u0144ski and Tarnowski in 1552. In 1556, \u0141aski organised a synod in the hope of reuniting all non-Lutheran Protestants but failed. At the meeting, Piotr of Goni\u0105dz (d. 1573) openly attacked infant baptism and the doctrine of Trinity. The antitrinitarian Polish Brethren established their own church, known as Minor Church in contrast with the Reformed Major Church. From 1565, Polish nobles could no more be persecuted on religious grounds which allowed them to freely choose between competing theologies. By this time, around one-fifth of the nobility had converted to the Reformed faith, and most secular members of the Senate were Protestant. Relationship between Poland and Lithuania was redefined by the 1569 Union of Lublin which created the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth. After Sigismund Augustus died, the Sejm passed the Warsaw Confederation prescribing that only candidates who promised to protect religious freedom could be elected king.\nCounter-Reformation and regional conflicts.\nThe continuous expansion of Protestantism stopped in Germany after the Peace of Augsburg. The Bavarian duke Albert V (r.\u20091550\u00a0\u2013\u00a01579) took the lead of recatholicisation. He overcame the opposition of Evangelical nobles, and exiled all clerics who refused to take the Tridentine oath. With Albert's support, the Jesuits opened a college in Ingolstadt that accepted Evangelical and Hussite students. Emperor Ferdinand I's eldest son and successor, Maximilian II (r.\u20091564\u00a0\u2013\u00a01576) pursued a tolerant religious policy but his brothers, Ferdinand II of the Tyrol (r.\u20091564\u00a0\u2013\u00a01595) and Charles II of Inner Austria (r.\u20091564\u00a0\u2013\u00a01590) were determined to subdue their Protestant subjects. After the predominantly Evangelical Estates of Inner Austria who controlled taxation extracted concessions from Charles II, he promoted Catholicism by appointing Catholics to state offices even if he needed to hire Bavarian and Tyrolian nobles.\nInterreligious conflicts led to wars in many regions of Central Europe. The Cologne War broke out after Gebhard Truchsess von Waldburg, Archbishop-elector of Cologne (r.\u20091577\u00a0\u2013\u00a01583), abandoned Catholicism and married his Protestant lover Agnes von Mansfeld-Eisleben (d. 1637) in 1582. The war ended with the victory of his Catholic opponent Ernest (r.\u20091583\u00a0\u2013\u00a01612), a younger son of Albert V. The Strasbourg Bishops' War began when both the Catholic and Protestant canons of the Strasbourg Cathedral elected their own candidate to the see of Strasbourg in 1592. At the end, the Protestant candidate Johann Georg von Brandenburg (d. 1624) renounced in favor of his opponent Charles of Lorraine (r.\u20091592\u00a0\u2013\u00a01607).\nCharles II's son and successor Ferdinand II (r.\u20091590\u00a0\u2013\u00a01637) set up \"reformation commissions\"\u2014a group of clerics and state officials led by a senior clergyman\u2014to visit the Inner Austrian parishes between 1598 and 1601. The commissioners seized and destroyed Evangelical churches, burned Protestant books and expelled Evangelical priests, often with the support of the local (mainly Slovenian) peasantry. His cousin Emperor Rudolf II (r.\u20091576\u00a0\u2013\u00a01612) introduced anti-Protestant measures in Royal Hungary and Transylvania, provoking a rebellion. The Ottomans supported the rebels whose leader, the Reformed aristocrat Stephen Bocskai was proclaimed prince of Transylvania (r.\u20091605\u00a0\u2013\u00a01606). Rudolph appointed his brother Matthias to conduct negotiations with Bocskai, and the peace treaty sanctioned the freedom of the Evangelical and Reformed Churches in Royal Hungary in 1606. Rudolph was forced to cede Hungary, Austria and Moravia to Matthias in 1608, and to confirm religious freedom in Bohemia in 1609.\nReformation outside Germany.\nThe Reformation also spread widely throughout Europe, starting with Bohemia, in the Czech lands, and, over the next few decades, to other countries.\nNordic countries.\nAll of Scandinavia ultimately adopted Lutheranism over the course of the 16th century, as the monarchs of Denmark (who also ruled Norway and Iceland) and Sweden (who also ruled Finland) converted to that faith.\nIceland.\nLuther's influence had already reached Iceland before King Christian's decree. The Germans fished near Iceland's coast, and the Hanseatic League engaged in commerce with the Icelanders. These Germans raised a Lutheran church in Hafnarfj\u00f6r\u00f0ur as early as 1533. Through German trade connections, many young Icelanders studied in Hamburg. In 1538, when the kingly decree of the new Church ordinance reached Iceland, bishop \u00d6gmundur and his clergy denounced it, threatening excommunication for anyone subscribing to the German \"heresy\". In 1539, the King sent a new governor to Iceland, Klaus von Mervitz, with a mandate to introduce reform and take possession of church property. Von Mervitz seized a monastery in Vi\u00f0ey with the help of his sheriff, Dietrich of Minden, and his soldiers. They drove the monks out and seized all their possessions, for which they were promptly excommunicated by \u00d6gmundur.\nGreat Britain.\nEngland.\nThe English Reformation is a complex historical series of events and reversals, whose nature and effect has been debated by historians. The results of the reformation included an established church with a \"Prayer Book consciously aligned with Swiss theology...(but) the most elaborate liturgy of any Protestant Church in Europe\" practiced in Cathedrals, with plain, sermon-centred services in parish churches, politically imposed by a \"literate Protestant elite\".\nAccording to political historian Gregory Slysz \"The dissolution of the monasteries [...] brought social catastrophe to England\" for the next 50 or so years, due to the closure of the numerous associated urban almshouses for poor relief and hospitals, worsened by spiraling inflation and a doubling of the population. Popular revolts by grassroots Catholics against the changes, such as the Prayer Book Rebellion in the South and the Pilgrimage of Grace and Bigod's rebellion in the North, were ruthlessly put down by government forces with the loss of thousands of lives.\nEnglish North America.\nThe most famous emigration to America was the migration of Puritan separatists from the Anglican Church of England. They fled first to Holland, and then later to America to establish the English colony of Massachusetts in New England, which later became one of the original United States. These Puritan separatists were also known as \"the Pilgrims\". After establishing a colony at Plymouth (which became part of the colony of Massachusetts) in 1620, the Puritan pilgrims received a charter from the King of England that legitimised their colony, allowing them to do trade and commerce with merchants in England, in accordance with the principles of mercantilism. \nThe Pilgrims held radical Protestant disapproval of Christmas, and its celebration was outlawed in Boston from 1659 to 1681. The ban was revoked in 1681 by the English-appointed governor Edmund Andros, who also revoked a Puritan ban on festivities on Saturday nights. Nevertheless, it was not until the mid-19th century that celebrating Christmas became fashionable in the Boston region.\nWales.\nBishop Richard Davies and dissident Protestant cleric John Penry introduced Calvinist theology to Wales. In 1588, the Bishop of Llandaff published the entire Bible in the Welsh language. The translation had a significant impact upon the Welsh population and helped to firmly establish Protestantism among the Welsh people. The Welsh Protestants used the model of the Synod of Dort of 1618\u20131619. Calvinism developed through the Puritan period, following the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II, and within Wales' Calvinistic Methodist movement. However few copies of Calvin's writings were available before the mid-19th century.\nScotland.\nThe Reformation in Scotland's case culminated ecclesiastically in the establishment of a church along reformed lines, and politically in the triumph of English influence over that of France. John Knox is regarded as the leader of the Scottish reformation.\nThe Reformation Parliament of 1560 repudiated the pope's authority by the \"Papal Jurisdiction Act 1560\", forbade the celebration of the Mass and approved a Protestant Confession of Faith. It was made possible by a revolution against French hegemony under the regime of the regent Mary of Guise, who had governed Scotland in the name of her absent daughter Mary, Queen of Scots (then also Queen of France).\nAlthough Protestantism triumphed relatively easily in Scotland, the exact form of Protestantism remained to be determined. The 17th century saw a complex struggle between Presbyterianism (particularly the Covenanters) and Episcopalianism. The Presbyterians eventually won control of the Church of Scotland, which went on to have an important influence on Presbyterian churches worldwide, but Scotland retained a relatively large Episcopalian minority.\nFrance.\nCatholicism remained the official state religion, and the fortunes of French Protestants gradually declined over the next century, culminating in Louis XIV's Edict of Fontainebleau (1685), which revoked the Edict of Nantes and made Catholicism the sole legal religion of France, leading some Huguenots to live as Nicodemites. In response to the Edict of Fontainebleau, Frederick William I, Elector of Brandenburg declared the Edict of Potsdam (October 1685), giving free passage to Huguenot refugees and tax-free status to them for ten years.\nIn the late 17th century, 150,000\u2013200,000 Huguenots fled to England, the Netherlands, Prussia, Switzerland, and the English and Dutch overseas colonies. A significant community in France remained in the C\u00e9vennes region. A separate Protestant community, of the Lutheran faith, existed in the newly conquered province of Alsace, its status not affected by the Edict of Fontainebleau.\nSpain.\nIn the early 16th century, Spain had a different political and cultural milieu from its Western and Central European neighbours in several respects, which affected the mentality and the reaction of the nation towards the Reformation. Spain, which had only recently managed to complete the reconquest of the Peninsula from the Moors in 1492, had been preoccupied with converting the Muslim and Jewish populations of the newly conquered regions through the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition in 1478. The rulers of the nation stressed political, cultural, and religious unity, and by the time of the Lutheran Reformation, the Spanish Inquisition was already 40 years old and had the capability of quickly persecuting any new movement that the leaders of the Catholic Church perceived or interpreted to be religious heterodoxy. Charles V did not wish to see Spain or the rest of Habsburg Europe divided, and in light of continual threat from the Ottomans, preferred to see the Catholic Church reform itself from within. This led to a Counter-Reformation in Spain in the 1530s. During the 1520s, the Spanish Inquisition had created an atmosphere of suspicion and sought to root out any religious thought seen as suspicious. As early as 1521, the Pope had written a letter to the Spanish monarchy warning against allowing the unrest in Northern Europe to be replicated in Spain. Between 1520 and 1550, printing presses in Spain were tightly controlled and any books of Protestant teaching were prohibited.\nBetween 1530 and 1540, Protestantism in Spain was still able to gain followers clandestinely, and in cities such as Seville and Valladolid adherents would secretly meet at private houses to pray and study the Bible. Protestants in Spain were estimated at between 1000 and 3000, mainly among intellectuals who had seen writings such as those of Erasmus. Notable reformers included Juan Gil and Juan P\u00e9rez de Pineda who subsequently fled and worked alongside others such as Francisco de Enzinas to translate the Greek New Testament into the Spanish language, a task completed by 1556. Protestant teachings were smuggled into Spain by Spaniards such as Juli\u00e1n Hern\u00e1ndez, who in 1557 was condemned by the Inquisition and burnt at the stake. Under Philip II, conservatives in the Spanish church tightened their grip, and those who refused to recant such as Rodrigo de Valer were condemned to life imprisonment. On May 21, 1559, sixteen Spanish Lutherans were burnt at the stake; 14 were strangled before being burnt, while two were burnt alive. In October another 30 were executed. Spanish Protestants who were able to flee the country were to be found in at least a dozen cities in Europe, such as Geneva, where some of them embraced Calvinist teachings. Those who fled to England were given support by the Church of England.\nThe Kingdom of Navarre, although by the time of the Protestant Reformation a minor principality territoriality restricted to southern France, had French Huguenot monarchs, including Henry IV of France and his mother, Jeanne III of Navarre, a devout Calvinist.\nUpon the arrival of the Protestant Reformation, Calvinism reached some Basques through the translation of the Bible into the Basque language by Joanes Leizarraga. As Queen of Navarre, Jeanne III commissioned the translation of the New Testament into Basque and B\u00e9arnese for the benefit of her subjects.\nItaly.\nWord of the Protestant reformers reached Italy in the 1520s but never caught on. Its development was stopped by the Counter-Reformation, the Inquisition and popular disinterest. Not only was the Church highly aggressive in seeking out and suppressing heresy, but there was a shortage of Protestant leadership. No-one made a new Protestant translation of the Bible into Italian to compete with the existing Catholic vernacular translations; few tracts were written. No core of Protestantism emerged. The few preachers who did take an interest in \"Lutheranism\", as it was called in Italy, were suppressed, or went into exile to northern countries where their message was well received. As a result, the Reformation exerted almost no lasting influence in Italy, except for strengthening the Catholic Church and pushing for an end to ongoing abuses during the Counter-Reformation.\nSome Protestants left Italy and became notable activists of the Eastern European Reformation, mainly in the Polish\u2013Lithuanian Commonwealth (e.g. Giorgio Biandrata, Bernardino Ochino, Giovanni Alciato, Giovanni Battista Cetis, Fausto Sozzini, Francesco Stancaro and Giovanni Valentino Gentile some of whom propagated Nontrinitarianism there and were chief instigators of the movement of Polish Brethren.) Some also fled to England and Switzerland, including Peter Vermigli.\nIn 1532, the Waldensians, who had been already present centuries before the Reformation, aligned themselves and adopted the Calvinist theology. The Waldensian Church survived in the Western Alps through many persecutions and remains a Protestant church in Italy.\nSlovenia.\nPrimo\u017e Trubar is notable for consolidating the Slovene language and is considered to be the key figure of Slovenian cultural history, in many aspects a major Slovene historical personality. He was the key figure of the Protestant Church of the Slovene Lands, as he was its founder and its first superintendent. The first books in Slovene, \"Catechismus\" and \"Abecedarium\", were written by Trubar.\nGreece.\nThe Protestant teachings of the Western Church were also briefly adopted within the Eastern Orthodox Church through the Greek Patriarch Cyril Lucaris in 1629 with the publishing of the \"Confessio\" (Calvinistic doctrine) in Geneva. Motivating factors in their decision to adopt aspects of the Reformation included the historical rivalry and mistrust between the Greek Orthodox and the Catholic Churches along with their concerns of Jesuit priests entering Greek lands in their attempts to propagate the teachings of the Counter-Reformation to the Greek populace. He subsequently sponsored Maximos of Gallipoli's translation of the New Testament into the Modern Greek language and it was published in Geneva in 1638. Upon Lucaris's death in 1638, the conservative factions within the Eastern Orthodox Church held two synods: the Synod of Constantinople (1638) and Synod of Ia\u0219i (1642) criticising the reforms and, in the 1672 convocation led by Dositheos, they officially condemned the Calvinistic doctrines.\nIn 2019, Christos Yannaras told Norman Russell that although he had participated in the Zo\u00eb movement, he had come to regard it as Crypto-Protestant.\nSpread.\nThe Reformation spread throughout Europe beginning in 1517, reaching its peak between 1545 and 1620. The greatest geographical extent of Protestantism occurred at some point between 1545 and 1620. In 1620, the Battle of White Mountain defeated Protestants in Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) who sought to have the 1609 Letter of Majesty upheld.\nThe Thirty Years' War began in 1618 and brought a drastic territorial and demographic decline when the House of Habsburg introduced counter-reformational measures throughout their vast possessions in Central Europe. Although the Thirty Years' War concluded with the Peace of Westphalia, the French Wars of the Counter-Reformation continued, as well as the expulsion of Protestants in Austria.\nAccording to a 2020 study in the \"American Sociological Review\", the Reformation spread earliest to areas where Luther had pre-existing social relations, such as mail correspondents, and former students, as well as where he had visited. The study argues that these social ties contributed more to the Reformation's early breakthroughs than the printing press.\nConclusion and legacy.\nThere is no universal agreement on the exact or even the approximate date the Reformation ended. Various interpretations emphasise different dates, entire periods, or argue that the Reformation never really ended. However, there are a few popular interpretations. The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 officially ended the religious struggle between the two groups and made the legal division of Christianity permanent within the Holy Roman Empire, allowing rulers to choose either Lutheranism or Catholicism as the official confession of their state. It could be considered to end with the enactment of the confessions of faith. Other suggested ending years relate to the Counter-Reformation or the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. From one Catholic perspective, the Second Vatican Council ended the Counter-Reformation.\nThirty Years' War: 1618\u20131648.\nThe Reformation and Counter-Reformation era conflicts are termed the European wars of religion. In particular, the Thirty Years' War (1618\u201348) devastated much of Germany, killing between 25 and 40% of its population. The Catholic House of Habsburg and its allies fought against the Protestant princes of Germany, supported at various times by Denmark, Sweden and France. The Habsburgs, who ruled Spain, Austria, the Crown of Bohemia, Hungary, Slovene Lands, the Spanish Netherlands and much of Germany and Italy, were staunch defenders of the Catholic Church.\nTwo main tenets of the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War, were:\nThe treaty also effectively ended the Papacy's pan-European political power. Pope Innocent X declared the treaty \"null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, empty of meaning and effect for all times\" in his apostolic brief \"Zelo Domus Dei\". European sovereigns, Catholic and Protestant alike, ignored his verdict.\nConsequences of the Reformation.\nIn nations that remained Catholic, or reverted to it, remaining Protestants sometimes lived as crypto-Protestants, also called Nicodemites, contrary to the urging of John Calvin, who wanted them to live their faith openly. Some crypto-Protestants have been identified as late as the 19th century after immigrating to Latin America. \nIn Britain from the Elizabethan period, dissenters called Recusants included both Catholic families and English Dissenters (Quakers, Ranters, Diggers, Grindletonians, etc.): almost the entire Irish population were recusants from the imposed Protestant Church of Ireland.\nTravel and migration between countries became more difficult. \"In 1500, a Christian could travel from one end of Europe to another without fear of persecution; by 1600, every form of Christianity was illegal somewhere in Europe.\" Two prolonged series of conflicts, the French Wars of Religion (1562\u20131598) and the Thirty Years' War (1618\u20131648) resulted in between six and sixteen million deaths.\nAs well as wars, most countries and colonies of Europe enacted discriminatory legislation, these only winding down in the late 1700s Age of Enlightenment. For example, the Popery Acts (1699 and 1704) disallowed Irish Catholic schooling and purchase of land, and changed inheritance law; it was repealed by the 1778 and 1791 Catholic Relief Acts. The Quebec Act (1774) re-allowed Catholics to worship and hold public office, but was one of the Intolerable Acts that precipitated the American Revolutionary War. In the countries of the Holy Roman Empire, the Patent of Toleration (1781, 1782) allowed religious toleration for non-Catholic Christians and Jews. In France, the Edict of Toleration (1787) proposed the non-persecution of non-Catholics and Jews. However vestiges of Reformation-period legal discrimination continued: for example, currently, a Roman Catholic, or someone married to a Roman Catholic, may not be crowned the British Monarch.\nRadical Reformation.\nIn parts of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, a majority sympathised with the Radical Reformation despite intense persecution. Although the surviving proportion of the European population that rebelled against Catholic, Lutheran and Zwinglian churches was small, Radical Reformers wrote profusely and the literature on the Radical Reformation is disproportionately large, partly as a result of the proliferation of the Radical Reformation teachings in the United States.\nDespite significant diversity among the early Radical Reformers, some \"repeating patterns\" emerged among many Anabaptist groups. Many of these patterns were enshrined in the \"Schleitheim Confession\" (1527) and include believers' (or adult) baptism, memorial view of the Lord's Supper, belief that Scripture is the final authority on matters of faith and practice, emphasis on the New Testament and the Sermon on the Mount, interpretation of Scripture in community, separation from the world and a two-kingdom theology, pacifism and nonresistance, communal ownership and economic sharing, belief in the freedom of the will, non-swearing of oaths, \"yieldedness\" (\"Gelassenheit\") to one's community and to God, the ban (i.e., shunning), salvation through divinization (\"Verg\u00f6ttung\") and ethical living, and discipleship (\"Nachfolge Christi\").\nLiteracy.\nThe Protestant Reformation was a triumph of literacy and the new printing press. Luther's translation of the Bible into High German (the New Testament was published in 1522; the Old Testament was published in parts and completed in 1534) was also decisive for the German language and its evolution from Early New High German to Modern Standard German. Luther's translation of the Bible promoted the development of non-local forms of language and exposed all speakers to forms of German from outside their own area. The publication of Luther's Bible was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy in early modern Germany, and stimulated as well the printing and distribution of religious books and pamphlets. From 1517 onward, religious pamphlets flooded Germany and much of Europe.\nBy 1530, over 10,000 publications are known, with a total of ten million copies. The Reformation was thus a media revolution. Luther strengthened his attacks on Rome by depicting a \"good\" against \"bad\" church. From there, it became clear that print could be used for propaganda in the Reformation for particular agendas, although the term propaganda derives from the Catholic \"Congregatio de Propaganda Fide\" (\"Congregation for Propagating the Faith\") from the Counter-Reformation. Reform writers used existing styles, cliches and stereotypes which they adapted as needed. Especially effective were writings in German, including Luther's translation of the Bible, his Smaller Catechism for parents teaching their children, and his Larger Catechism, for pastors.\nIllustrations in the German Bible and in many tracts popularised Luther's ideas. Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472\u20131553), the great painter patronised by the electors of Wittenberg, was a close friend of Luther, and he illustrated Luther's theology for a popular audience. He dramatised Luther's views on the relationship between the Old and New Testaments, while remaining mindful of Luther's careful distinctions about proper and improper uses of visual imagery.\nOutcomes.\nProtestants have to some extent developed their own culture, with major contributions in education, the humanities and sciences, the political and social order, the economy and the arts and many other fields. Various outcomes of the Reformation have been suggested by scholars: improved human capital formation, the disputed Protestant work ethic, improved economic development, the modern state, and \"dark\" outcomes:\nHuman capital formation.\nClaims include:\nProtestant ethic.\nClaims include:\nEconomic development.\nClaims include:\nModern states.\nClaims include:\nWorld demographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nToday, classical Protestantism (including Anglicans) has between 300 and 625 million worldwide adherents, up to one quarter of all Christians.\nAnd general Protestantism\u2014broadly defined to also include Evangelical, Pentecostal, non-conformist and non-denominationalists\u2014constitutes the second-largest form of Christianity (after Catholicism), with between 850,000 and 1.17 billion adherents worldwide (between 40% and 45% of all Christians) divided into an estimated 45,000 denominations.\nOther outcomes.\nOther claims include:\nHistoriography.\nMargaret C. Jacob argues that there has been a dramatic shift in the historiography of the Reformation. Until the 1960s, historians focused their attention largely on the great leaders and theologians of the 16th century, especially Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli. Their ideas were studied in depth. However, the rise of the new social history in the 1960s led to looking at history from the bottom up, not from the top down. Historians began to concentrate on the values, beliefs and behavior of the people at large. She finds, \"in contemporary scholarship, the Reformation is now seen as a vast cultural upheaval, a social and popular movement, textured and rich because of its diversity.\"\nFor example, historian John Bossy characterized the Reformation as a period where Christianity was re-cast not as \"a community sustained by ritual acts, but as a teaching enforced by institutional structures,\" for Catholics as well as Protestants; and sin was re-cast from the seven deadly sins \u2014wrong because antisocial\u2014 to transgressions of the Ten Commandments \u2014wrong as affronts to God.\nMusic and art.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nPainting and sculpture\nBuilding\nLiterature\nMusical forms\nLiturgies\nHymnals\nSecular music\nPartly due to Martin Luther's love for music, music became important in Lutheranism. The study and practice of music was encouraged in Protestant majority countries. Songs such as the Lutheran hymns or the Calvinist Psalter became tools for the spread of Protestant ideas and beliefs, as well as identity flags. Similar attitudes developed among Catholics, who in turn encouraged the creation and use of music for religious purposes.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\nSurveys.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nTheology.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nPrimary sources in translation.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nHistoriography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "6188253": "Egidio Vagnozzi\nItalian cardinal\nEgidio Vagnozzi (26 February 1906 \u2013 26 December 1980) was an Italian cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as the second president of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See from 1968 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1967.\nBiography.\nEgidio Vagnozzi was born in Rome to Francesco and Pasqua (n\u00e9e Jachetti) Vagnozzi, and studied at the Minor Seminary, Pontifical Roman Seminary, and Pontifical Lateran University (from where he obtained doctorates in philosophy, theology, and canon law). Ordained a priest by Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val on 22 December 1928, Vagnozzi, at age 22, required a dispensation to be ordained, not having yet reached the canonical age. He then finished his studies in 1930.\nIn 1930, he also became a staff member of the Secretariat of State in the Roman Curia, and was raised to the rank of Privy Chamberlain of His Holiness on 1 May 1932. Before becoming counselor of the Portuguese nunciature in 1942, he was a staff member of the apostolic delegation to the United States in 1932. Vagnozzi was counselor of the French nunciature from 1945 to 1947, and became a Domestic Prelate of His Holiness on 23 December 1945. He was an official of the delegation for the establishment of diplomatic relations with India for a year until becoming charg\u00e9 d'affaires of the Holy See's mission to the Indian government in New Delhi from June to August 1948.\nOn 9 March 1949, Vagnozzi was appointed Apostolic Delegate to the Philippines and Titular Archbishop of Myra. He received his episcopal consecration on the following 22 May from Cardinal Adeodato Giovanni Piazza, OCD, with Archbishops Francesco Borgongini Duca and Roberto Ronca serving as co-consecrators. Following the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the Philippines government, he was appointed the first Apostolic Nuncio to the Philippines on 9 April 1951. Vagnozzi was named Apostolic Delegate to the United States on 16 December 1958. He attended the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965.\nPope Paul VI created him cardinal deacon of S. Giuseppe in via Trionfale in the consistory of 26 June 1967, and President of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See on 13 January 1968. After ten years' as a cardinal deacon, Vagnozzi exercised his right to become a cardinal priest, and his deaconry was elevated \"pro hac vice\" on 5 March 1973. He was one of the cardinal electors who participated in the conclaves of August and October 1978, which selected Popes John Paul I and John Paul II respectively. He was also Chamberlain of the College of Cardinals from 30 June 1979 until his death.\nVagnozzi died in Rome, at age 74. After a funeral Mass presided by John Paul II in the Lateran Basilica, he was buried in the Campo Verano. His remains were later transferred to his cardinalitial church in March 1983.\nCriticism.\nAs the Vatican in modern times came under the criticism of the liberal press for reactionary policies, so was Vagnozzi accused in a 1967 press article for using his influence at the Vatican so as to permit only conservative US priests to become bishops: \"His influence is thought to be heavily responsible for the conservative cast of those bishops appointed (in the United States) in recent years\".\nVagnozzi opposed the Marian apparition of Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces, rejecting its Marian visionary Teresita Castillo, along with six Filipino local bishops who declared it \"Non-Supernatural\" in 1956. On 11 December 2015, the Vatican confirmed \"the definitive nature of the 11 April 1951 decree by which the phenomena of Lipa were declared to lack supernatural origin.\"\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "306519": "Wittenberg (district)\nWittenberg is a district () in the east of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Neighboring districts are (from west clockwise) Anhalt-Bitterfeld, the district-free city of Dessau-Ro\u00dflau, the districts of Potsdam-Mittelmark, Teltow-Fl\u00e4ming and Elbe-Elster in Brandenburg, and the district of Nordsachsen in Saxony. The capital and largest city is Wittenberg, famous for its association with the influential religious reformer Martin Luther and containing a UNESCO World Heritage Site.\nHistory.\nIn 1994, the district was merged with the district of Jessen and a small part of the district of Gr\u00e4fenhainichen. In 2007, 27 municipalities from the former district Anhalt-Zerbst were added to the district of Wittenberg.\nGeography.\nThe area of the district is . The main rivers in the district are the Elbe and its tributary, the Schwarze Elster.\nCoat of arms.\nThe coat of arms shows two swords, which is the symbol of a field marshal in the Holy Roman Empire. This title was bestowed upon the counts of Saxony, who therefore added the symbol to their coat of arms. The center of the principality of Saxony was located in the area now covered by the district.\nTowns and municipalities.\nThe district of Wittenberg consists of the following towns:\nAfter the resolution of 6 October 2005, as part of municipal reform, the (then) 27 towns and municipalities of the former Verwaltungsgemeinschaften of Coswig and W\u00f6rlitzer Winkel, formerly in the Anhalt-Zerbst district, were assigned to Wittenberg district on 1 July 2007.\nExternal links.\n Media related to at Wikimedia Commons\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "73513": "Mary, mother of Jesus\nMother of Jesus\nMary was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Joseph and the mother of Jesus. She is an important figure of Christianity, venerated under various titles such as virgin or queen, many of them mentioned in the Litany of Loreto. The Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, and Lutheran churches believe that Mary, as mother of Jesus, is the Mother of God. The Church of the East historically regarded her as Christotokos, a term still used in Assyrian Church of the East liturgy. Other Protestant views on Mary vary, with some holding her to have lesser status. She has the highest position in Islam among all women and is mentioned numerous times in the Quran, including in a chapter named after her. She is also revered in the Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed Faith and the Druze Faith.\nThe synoptic Gospels name Mary as the mother of Jesus. The gospels of Matthew and Luke describe Mary as a virgin who was chosen by God to conceive Jesus through the Holy Spirit. After giving birth to Jesus in Bethlehem, she and her husband Joseph raised him in the city of Nazareth in Galilee, and she was in Jerusalem at his crucifixion and with the apostles after his ascension. Although her later life is not accounted in the Bible, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and some Protestant traditions believe that her body was raised into heaven at the end of her earthly life, which is known in Western Christianity as the Assumption of Mary and in Eastern Christianity as the Dormition of the Mother of God.\nMary has been venerated since early Christianity, and is often considered to be the holiest and greatest saint. There is a certain diversity in the Mariology and devotional practices of major Christian traditions. The Catholic Church holds distinctive Marian dogmas, namely her Immaculate Conception and her bodily Assumption into heaven. Many Protestants hold less exalted views of Mary's role, often based on a perceived lack of biblical support for many traditional Christian dogmas pertaining to her.\nThe multiple forms of Marian devotions include various prayers and hymns, the celebration of several Marian feast days in liturgy, the veneration of images and relics, the construction of churches dedicated to her and pilgrimages to Marian shrines. Many Marian apparitions and miracles attributed to her intercession have been reported by believers over the centuries. She has been a traditional subject in arts, notably in Byzantine art, medieval art and Renaissance art.\nNames and titles.\nMary's name in the original manuscripts of the New Testament was based on her original Aramaic name , transliterated as or . The English name \"Mary\" comes from the Greek , a shortened form of the name . Both and appear in the New Testament.\nIn Christianity.\nIn Christianity, Mary is commonly referred to as the Virgin Mary, in accordance with the belief that the Holy Spirit impregnated her, thereby conceiving her first-born son Jesus miraculously, without sexual relations with her betrothed Joseph, \"until her son [Jesus] was born\". The word \"until\" has inspired considerable analysis on whether Joseph and Mary produced siblings after the birth of Jesus or not. Among her many other names and titles are the Blessed Virgin Mary (often abbreviated to \"BVM\" after the Latin ), Saint Mary (occasionally), the Mother of God (primarily in Western Christianity), the (primarily in Eastern Christianity), Our Lady (Medieval ), and Queen of Heaven (; see also here). The title \"queen of heaven\" had previously been used as an epithet for a number of goddesses, such as Isis, or Ishtar.\nTitles in use vary among Anglicans, Lutherans and other Protestants, as well as Mormons, Catholics, Orthodox and other Christians.\nThe three main titles for Mary used by the Orthodox are ( or \"God-bearer\"), () which means ever-virgin, as confirmed in the Second Council of Constantinople in 553, and () meaning \"all-holy\". Catholics use a wide variety of titles for Mary, and these titles have in turn given rise to many artistic depictions.\nThe title , which means \"God-bearer\", was recognized at the Council of Ephesus in 431. The direct equivalents of title in Latin are and , although the phrase is more often loosely translated into Latin as (\"Mother of God\"), with similar patterns for other languages used in the Latin Church. However, this same phrase in Greek (), in the abbreviated form , is an indication commonly attached to her image in Byzantine icons. The Council stated that the Church Fathers \"did not hesitate to speak of the holy Virgin as the Mother of God\".\nSome Marian titles have a direct scriptural basis. For instance, the title \"Queen Mother\" has been given to Mary, as she was the mother of Jesus, sometimes referred to as the \"King of Kings\" due to his ancestral descent from King David. This is also based on the Hebrew tradition of the \"Queen-Mother\", the Gebirah or \"Great Lady\". Other titles have arisen from reported miracles, special appeals, or occasions for calling on Mary.\nIn Islam.\nIn Islam, Mary is known as Maryam (), mother of Isa (, , lit.\u2009'Jesus, son of Mary'). She is often referred to by the honorific title , meaning \"Our Lady\"; this title is in parallel to (\"Our Lord\"), used for the prophets. A related term of endearment is , meaning \"she who confirms the truth\" and \"she who believes sincerely completely\". Another title for Mary is , which signifies both constant submission to God and absorption in prayer and invocation in Islam. She is also called , meaning \"one who has been purified\" and representing her status as one of two humans in creation to not be touched by Satan at any point, the other being Jesus. In the Quran, she is described both as \"the daughter of Imran\" and \"the sister of Aaron\", alluding to Miriam from the Hebrew Bible. However, the title of \"the sister of Aaron\" is confirmed to be metaphorical (which is a common figure of speech in Arabic) as per a Hadith from the Islamic prophet Muhammad explaining Mary was indeed named after Miriam. \nLife in ancient sources.\nNew Testament.\nThe canonical Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are the primary sources of historical information about Mary. They are almost contemporary sources, as the synoptic Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are generally considered dating from around AD 66\u201390, while the gospel of John dates from AD 90\u2013110. They provide limited information about Mary, as they primarily focus on the teaching of Jesus and on his apostles. The historical reliability of the Gospels and historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles are subject to debate, as it was common practice in early Christian writings to mix historical facts with legendary stories.\nThe earliest New Testament account of Mary is in the epistle to the Galatians, which was written before the gospels. She is referred to as \"a woman\" and is not named: \"But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law\" (Galatians 4:4).\nMary is mentioned several times in the canonical Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles:\nIn the Book of Revelation, also part of the New Testament, the \"woman clothed with the sun\" (Revelation 12:1, 12:5\u20136) is sometimes identified as Mary.\nGenealogy.\nThe New Testament tells little of Mary's early history. The Gospel of Matthew gives a genealogy for Jesus by his father's paternal line, only identifying Mary as the wife of Joseph. John 19:25 states that Mary had a sister; semantically it is unclear if this sister is the same as Mary of Clopas, or if she is left unnamed. Jerome identifies Mary of Clopas as the sister of Mary, mother of Jesus. According to the early 2nd century historian Hegesippus, Mary of Clopas was likely Mary's sister-in-law, understanding Clopas (Cleophas) to have been Joseph's brother.\nAccording to the writer of Luke, Mary was a relative of Elizabeth, wife of the priest Zechariah of the priestly division of Abijah, who was herself part of the lineage of Aaron and so of the Tribe of Levi. Some of those who believe that the relationship with Elizabeth was on the maternal side, believe that Mary, like Joseph, was of the royal Davidic line and so of the Tribe of Judah, and that the genealogy of Jesus presented in Luke 3 from Nathan, is in fact the genealogy of Mary, while the genealogy from Solomon given in Matthew 1 is that of Joseph. (Aaron's wife Elisheba was of the tribe of Judah, so all their descendants are from both Levi and Judah.)\nAnnunciation.\nMary resided in \"her own house\" in Nazareth in Galilee, possibly with her parents, and during her betrothal\u2014the first stage of a Jewish marriage. Jewish girls were considered marriageable at the age of twelve years and six months, though the actual age of the bride varied with circumstances. The marriage was preceded by the betrothal, after which the bride legally belonged to the bridegroom, though she did not live with him till about a year later, when the marriage was celebrated.\nThe angel Gabriel announced to her that she was to be the mother of the promised Messiah by conceiving him through the Holy Spirit, and, after initially expressing incredulity at the announcement, she responded, \"I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done unto me according to your word.\" Joseph planned to quietly divorce her, but was told her conception was by the Holy Spirit in a dream by \"an angel of the Lord\"; the angel told him to not hesitate to take her as his wife, which Joseph did, thereby formally completing the wedding rites.\nSince the angel Gabriel had told Mary that Elizabeth\u2014having previously been barren\u2014was then miraculously pregnant, Mary hurried to see Elizabeth, who was living with her husband Zechariah in \"the hill country..., [in] a city of Juda\". Mary arrived at the house and greeted Elizabeth who called Mary \"the mother of my Lord\", and Mary spoke the words of praise that later became known as the from her first word in the Latin version. After about three months, Mary returned to her own house.\nBirth of Jesus.\nAccording to the gospel of Luke, a decree of the Roman Emperor Augustus required that Joseph return to his hometown of Bethlehem to register for a Roman census. While he was there with Mary, she gave birth to Jesus; but because there was no place for them in the inn, she used a manger as a cradle. It is not told how old Mary was at the time of the Nativity, but attempts have been made to infer it from the age of a typical Jewish mother of that time. Mary Joan Winn Leith represents the view that Jewish girls typically married soon after the onset of puberty, while according to Amram Tropper, Jewish females generally married later in Palestine and the Western Diaspora than in Babylonia. Some scholars hold the view that among them it typically happened between their mid and late teen years or late teens and early twenties. After eight days, the boy was circumcised according to Jewish law and named \"Jesus\" (, ), which means \"Yahweh is salvation\".\nAfter Mary continued in the \"blood of her purifying\" another 33 days, for a total of 40 days, she brought her burnt offering and sin offering to the Temple in Jerusalem (Luke 2:22), so the priest could make atonement for her. They also presented Jesus\u00a0\u2013 \"As it is written in the law of the Lord, Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord\" (Luke 2:23; Exodus 13:2; 23:12\u201315; 22:29; 34:19\u201320; Numbers 3:13; 18:15). After the prophecies of Simeon and the prophetess Anna in Luke 2:25\u201338, the family \"returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth\".\nAccording to the gospel of Matthew, magi coming from Eastern regions arrived at Bethlehem where Jesus and his family were living, and worshiped him. Joseph was then warned in a dream that King Herod wanted to murder the infant, and the family fled by night to Egypt and stayed there for some time. After Herod's death in 4\u00a0BC, they returned to Nazareth in Galilee, rather than Bethlehem, because Herod's son Archelaus was the ruler of Judaea.\nMary is involved in the only event in Jesus' adolescent life that is recorded in the New Testament. At the age of 12, Jesus, having become separated from his parents on their return journey from the Passover celebration in Jerusalem, was found in the Temple among the religious teachers.\nMinistry of Jesus.\nMary was present when, at her suggestion, Jesus worked his first miracle during a wedding at Cana by turning water into wine. Subsequently, there are events when Mary is mentioned along with the Jesus' brothers. According to Epiphanius, Origen and Eusebius, these \"brothers\" would be sons of Joseph from a previous marriage. This view is still the official position of the Eastern Orthodox churches. Following Jerome, those would be actually Jesus' cousins, children of Mary's sister. This remains the official Roman Catholic position. For Helvidius, those would be full siblings of Jesus, born to Mary and Joseph after the firstborn Jesus. This has been the most common Protestant position.\nThe hagiography of Mary and the Holy Family can be contrasted with other material in the Gospels. These references include an incident which can be interpreted as Jesus rejecting his family in the New Testament: \"And his mother and his brothers arrived, and standing outside, they sent in a message asking for him ... And looking at those who sat in a circle around him, Jesus said, 'These are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother'.\"\nMary is also depicted as being present in a group of women at the crucifixion standing near the disciple whom Jesus loved along with Mary of Clopas and Mary Magdalene, to which list Matthew 27:56 adds \"the mother of the sons of Zebedee\", presumably the Salome mentioned in Mark 15:40.\nAfter the Ascension of Jesus.\nIn Acts 1:12\u201326, especially verse 14, Mary is the only one other than the eleven apostles to be mentioned by name who abode in the upper room, when they returned from Mount Olivet. Her presence with the apostles during the Pentecost is not explicit, although it has been held as a fact by Christian tradition.\nFrom this time, she disappears from the biblical accounts, although it is held by Catholics that she is again portrayed as the heavenly woman in the Book of Revelation.\nHer death is not recorded in the scriptures, but Orthodox tradition, tolerated also by Catholics, has her first dying a natural death, known as the Dormition of Mary, and then, soon after, her body itself also being assumed (taken bodily) into Heaven. Belief in the corporeal assumption of Mary is a dogma of the Catholic Church, in the Latin and Eastern Catholic Churches alike, and is believed as well by the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Church, and parts of the Anglican Communion and Continuing Anglican movement.\nLater writings.\nAccording to the apocryphal Gospel of James, Mary was the daughter of Joachim and Anne. Before Mary's conception, Anne had been barren and was far advanced in years. Mary was given to service as a consecrated virgin in the Temple in Jerusalem when she was three years old. This was in spite of the patent impossibility of its premise that a girl could be kept in the Temple of Jerusalem along with some companions.\nSome unproven apocryphal accounts, such as the apocryphal Gospel of James, state that at the time of her betrothal to Joseph, Mary was 12\u201314 years old and suggests she was 16 during her pregnancy. Her age during her pregnancy has varied up to 17 in apocryphal sources. In a large part, apocryphal texts are historically unreliable. According to ancient Jewish custom, Mary technically could have been betrothed at about 12, but some scholars hold the view that in Judea it typically happened later.\nHyppolitus of Thebes says that Mary lived for 11 years after the death of her son Jesus, dying in 41 AD.\nThe earliest extant biographical writing on Mary is \"Life of the Virgin\", attributed to the 7th-century saint Maximus the Confessor, which portrays her as a key element of the early Christian Church after the death of Jesus.\nReligious perspectives.\nChristian.\nChristian Marian perspectives include a great deal of diversity. While some Christians such as Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have well established Marian traditions, Protestants at large pay scant attention to Mariological themes. Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutherans venerate the Virgin Mary. This veneration especially takes the form of prayer for intercession with her Son, Jesus Christ. Additionally, it includes composing poems and songs in Mary's honor, painting icons or carving statues of her, and conferring titles on Mary that reflect her position among the saints.\nCatholic.\nIn the Catholic Church, Mary is accorded the title \"Blessed\" (, , ) in recognition of her assumption to Heaven and her capacity to intercede on behalf of those who pray to her. There is a difference between the usage of the term \"blessed\" as pertaining to Mary and its usage as pertaining to a beatified person. \"Blessed\" as a Marian title refers to her exalted state as being the greatest among the saints; for a person who has been declared beatified, on the other hand, \"blessed\" simply indicates that they may be venerated despite not being canonized. Catholic teachings make clear that Mary is not considered divine and prayers to her are not answered by her, but rather by God through her intercession. The four Catholic dogmas regarding Mary are: her status as , or Mother of God; her perpetual virginity; the Immaculate Conception; and her bodily Assumption into Heaven.\nThe Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus has a more central role in Roman Catholic teachings and beliefs than in any other major Christian group. Not only do Roman Catholics have more theological doctrines and teachings that relate to Mary, but they have more feasts, prayers, devotional and venerative practices than any other group. The \"Catechism of the Catholic Church\" states: \"The Church's devotion to the Blessed Virgin is intrinsic to Christian worship.\"\nFor centuries, Catholics have performed acts of consecration and entrustment to Mary at personal, societal and regional levels. These acts may be directed to the Virgin herself, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and to the Immaculate Conception. In Catholic teachings, consecration to Mary does not diminish or substitute the love of God, but enhances it, for all consecration is ultimately made to God.\nFollowing the growth of Marian devotions in the 16th century, Catholic saints wrote books such as \"Glories of Mary\" and \"True Devotion to Mary\" that emphasized Marian veneration and taught that \"the path to Jesus is through Mary\". Marian devotions are at times linked to Christocentric devotions (such as the Alliance of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary).\nMajor Marian devotions include: Seven Sorrows of Mary, Rosary and scapular, Miraculous Medal and Reparations to Mary. The months of May and October are traditionally \"Marian months\" for Roman Catholics; the daily rosary is encouraged in October and in May Marian devotions take place in many regions. Popes have issued a number of Marian encyclicals and Apostolic Letters to encourage devotions to and the veneration of the Virgin Mary.\nCatholics place high emphasis on Mary's roles as protector and intercessor and the \"Catechism\" refers to Mary as \"honored with the title 'Mother of God', to whose protection the faithful fly in all their dangers and needs\". Key Marian prayers include: , , , , , and the .\nMary's participation in the processes of salvation and redemption has also been emphasized in the Catholic tradition, but they are not doctrines. Pope John Paul II's 1987 encyclical began with the sentence: \"The Mother of the Redeemer has a precise place in the plan of salvation.\"\nIn the 20th century, both popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI emphasized the Marian focus of the Catholic Church. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) suggested a redirection of the whole church towards the program of Pope John Paul II in order to ensure an authentic approach to Christology via a return to the \"whole truth about Mary,\" writing:\n\"It is necessary to go back to Mary if we want to return to that 'truth about Jesus Christ,' 'truth about the Church' and 'truth about man.'\"\nThere is significant diversity in the Marian doctrines attributed to her primarily by the Catholic Church. The key Marian doctrines held primarily in Catholicism can be briefly outlined as follows:\nThe acceptance of these Marian doctrines by Roman Catholics and other Christians can be summarized as follows:\nThe title \"Mother of God\" () for Mary was confirmed by the First Council of Ephesus, held at the Church of Mary in 431. The Council decreed that Mary is the Mother of God because her son Jesus is one person who is both God and man, divine and human. This doctrine is widely accepted by Christians in general, and the term \"Mother of God\" had already been used within the oldest known prayer to Mary, the , which dates to around 250 AD.\nThe Virgin birth of Jesus was an almost universally held belief among Christians from the 2nd until the 19th century. It is included in the two most widely used Christian creeds, which state that Jesus \"was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary\" (the Nicene Creed, in what is now its familiar form) and the Apostles' Creed. The Gospel of Matthew describes Mary as a virgin who fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14, The authors of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke consider Jesus' conception not the result of intercourse, and assert that Mary had \"no relations with man\" before Jesus' birth. This alludes to the belief that Mary conceived Jesus through the action of God the Holy Spirit, and not through intercourse with Joseph or anyone else.\nThe doctrines of the Assumption or Dormition of Mary relate to her death and bodily assumption to heaven. Roman Catholic Church has dogmatically defined the doctrine of the Assumption, which was done in 1950 by Pope Pius XII in . Whether Mary died or not is not defined dogmatically, however, although a reference to the death of Mary is made in . In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Assumption of the Virgin Mary is believed, and celebrated with her Dormition, where they believe she died.\nCatholics believe in the Immaculate Conception of Mary, as proclaimed by Pope Pius IX in 1854, namely that she was filled with grace from the very moment of her conception in her mother's womb and preserved from the stain of original sin. The Latin Church has a liturgical feast by that name, kept on 8 December. Orthodox Christians reject the Immaculate Conception dogma principally because their understanding of ancestral sin (the Greek term corresponding to the Latin \"original sin\") differs from the Augustinian interpretation and that of the Catholic Church.\nThe Perpetual Virginity of Mary asserts Mary's real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made Man. The term Ever-Virgin (Greek ) is applied in this case, stating that Mary remained a virgin for the remainder of her life, making Jesus her biological and only son, whose conception and birth are held to be miraculous. The Orthodox Churches hold the position articulated in the Protoevangelium of James that Jesus' brothers and sisters were Joseph's children from a marriage prior to that of Mary, which had left him widowed. Roman Catholic teaching follows the Latin father Jerome in considering them Jesus' cousins.\nEastern Orthodox.\nEastern Orthodox Christianity includes a large number of traditions regarding the Ever-Virgin Mary, the . The Orthodox believe that she was and remained a virgin before and after Christ's birth. The (hymns to the Theotokos) are an essential part of the Divine Services in the Eastern Church and their positioning within the liturgical sequence effectively places the in the most prominent place after Christ. Within the Orthodox tradition, the order of the saints begins with: the , Angels, Prophets, Apostles, Fathers and Martyrs, giving the Virgin Mary precedence over the angels. She is also proclaimed as the \"Lady of the Angels\".\nThe views of the Church Fathers still play an important role in the shaping of Orthodox Marian perspective. However, the Orthodox views on Mary are mostly doxological, rather than academic: they are expressed in hymns, praise, liturgical poetry, and the veneration of icons. One of the most loved Orthodox Akathists (standing hymns) is devoted to Mary and it is often simply called the \"Akathist Hymn\". Five of the twelve Great Feasts in Orthodoxy are dedicated to Mary. The Sunday of Orthodoxy directly links the Virgin Mary's identity as Mother of God with icon veneration.\nA number of Orthodox feasts are connected with the miraculous icons of the .\nThe Orthodox view Mary as \"superior to all created beings\", although not divine. As such, the designation of Saint to Mary as Saint Mary is not appropriate. The Orthodox does not venerate Mary as conceived immaculate. Gregory of Nazianzus, Archbishop of Constantinople in the 4th century AD, speaking on the Nativity of Jesus Christ argues that \"Conceived by the Virgin, who first in body and soul was purified by the Holy Ghost, He came forth as God with that which He had assumed, One Person in two Natures, Flesh and Spirit, of which the latter defined the former.\" The Orthodox celebrate the Dormition of the Theotokos, rather than Assumption.\nThe Protoevangelium of James, an extra-canonical book, has been the source of many Orthodox beliefs on Mary. The account of Mary's life presented includes her consecration as a virgin at the temple at age three. The high priest Zachariah blessed Mary and informed her that God had magnified her name among many generations. Zachariah placed Mary on the third step of the altar, whereby God gave her grace. While in the temple, Mary was miraculously fed by an angel, until she was 12 years old. At that point, an angel told Zachariah to betroth Mary to a widower in Israel, who would be indicated. This story provides the theme of many hymns for the Feast of Presentation of Mary, and icons of the feast depict the story. The Orthodox believe that Mary was instrumental in the growth of Christianity during the life of Jesus, and after his Crucifixion, and Orthodox theologian Sergei Bulgakov has written: \"The Virgin Mary is the centre, invisible, but real, of the Apostolic Church.\"\nTheologians from the Orthodox tradition have made prominent contributions to the development of Marian thought and devotion.\nJohn Damascene (c.\u2009650\u00a0\u2013 c.\u2009750) was one of the greatest Orthodox theologians. Among other Marian writings, he proclaimed the essential nature of Mary's heavenly Assumption or Dormition and her meditative role.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />It was necessary that the body of the one who preserved her virginity intact in giving birth should also be kept incorrupt after death. It was necessary that she, who carried the Creator in her womb when he was a baby, should dwell among the tabernacles of heaven.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />From her we have harvested the grape of life; from her we have cultivated the seed of immortality. For our sake she became Mediatrix of all blessings; in her God became man, and man became God.\nMore recently, Sergei Bulgakov expressed the Orthodox sentiments towards Mary as follows:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Mary is not merely the instrument, but the direct positive condition of the Incarnation, its human aspect. Christ could not have been incarnate by some mechanical process, violating human nature. It was necessary for that nature itself to say for itself, by the mouth of the most pure human being: \"Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to Thy word.\"\nProtestant.\nProtestants in general reject the veneration and invocation of the Saints. They share the belief that Mary is the mother of Jesus and \"blessed among women\" (Luke 1:42) but they generally do not agree that Mary is to be venerated. She is considered to be an outstanding example of a life dedicated to God. As such, they tend not to accept certain church doctrines such as her being preserved from sin. Theologian Karl Barth wrote that \"the heresy of the Catholic Church is its Mariology\".\nSome early Protestants venerated Mary. Martin Luther wrote that: \"Mary is full of grace, proclaimed to be entirely without sin. God's grace fills her with everything good and makes her devoid of all evil.\" However, as of 1532, Luther stopped celebrating the feast of the Assumption of Mary and also discontinued his support of the Immaculate Conception. John Calvin remarked, \"It cannot be denied that God in choosing and destining Mary to be the Mother of his Son, granted her the highest honor.\" However, Calvin firmly rejected the notion that Mary can intercede between Christ and man.\nAlthough Calvin and Huldrych Zwingli honored Mary as the Mother of Christ in the 16th century, they did so less than Martin Luther. Thus the idea of respect and high honor for Mary was not rejected by the first Protestants; however, they came to criticize the Roman Catholics for venerating Mary. Following the Council of Trent in the 16th century, as Marian veneration became associated with Catholics, Protestant interest in Mary decreased. During the Age of the Enlightenment, any residual interest in Mary within Protestant churches almost disappeared, although Anglicans and Lutherans continued to honor her.\nIn the 20th century, some Protestants reacted in opposition to the Catholic dogma of the Assumption of Mary. The tone of the Second Vatican Council began to mend the ecumenical differences, and Protestants began to show interest in Marian themes. In 1997 and 1998, ecumenical dialogues between Catholics and Protestants took place, but, to date, the majority of Protestants disagree with Marian veneration and some view it as a challenge to the authority of Scripture.\nAnglican.\nThe various churches that form the Anglican Communion and the Continuing Anglican movement have different views on Marian doctrines and venerative practices given that there is no single church with universal authority within the Communion and that the mother church (the Church of England) understands itself to be both \"Catholic\" and \"Reformed\". Thus unlike the Protestant churches at large, the Anglican Communion includes segments which still retain some veneration of Mary.\nMary's special position within God's purpose of salvation as \"God-bearer\" is recognized in a number of ways by some Anglican Christians. All the member churches of the Anglican Communion affirm in the historic creeds that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, and celebrates the feast days of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. This feast is called in older prayer books the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 2 February. The Annunciation of our Lord to the Blessed Virgin on 25 March was from before the time of Bede until the 18th century New Year's Day in England. The Annunciation is called the \"Annunciation of our Lady\" in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Anglicans also celebrate in the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin on 31 May, though in some provinces the traditional date of 2 July is kept. The feast of the St. Mary the Virgin is observed on the traditional day of the Assumption, 15 August. The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin is kept on 8 September.\nThe Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary is kept in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, on 8 December. In certain Anglo-Catholic parishes this feast is called the Immaculate Conception. Again, the Assumption of Mary is believed in by most Anglo-Catholics, but is considered a pious opinion by moderate Anglicans. Protestant-minded Anglicans reject the celebration of these feasts.\nPrayers and venerative practices vary greatly. For instance, as of the 19th century, following the Oxford Movement, Anglo-Catholics frequently pray the Rosary, the , , and other litanies and anthems of Mary reminiscent of Catholic practices. Conversely, low church Anglicans rarely invoke the Blessed Virgin except in certain hymns, such as the second stanza of \"Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones\".\nThe Anglican Society of Mary was formed in 1931 and maintains chapters in many countries. The purpose of the society is to foster devotion to Mary among Anglicans. High church Anglicans espouse doctrines that are closer to Roman Catholics, and retain veneration for Mary, such as Anglican pilgrimages to Our Lady of Lourdes, which have taken place since 1963, and pilgrimages to Our Lady of Walsingham, which have taken place for hundreds of years.\nHistorically, there has been enough common ground between Roman Catholics and Anglicans on Marian issues that in 2005, a joint statement called \"Mary: grace and hope in Christ\" was produced through ecumenical meetings of Anglicans and Roman Catholic theologians. This document, informally known as the \"Seattle Statement\", is not formally endorsed by either the Catholic Church or the Anglican Communion, but is viewed by its authors as the beginning of a joint understanding of Mary.\nLutheran.\nDespite Martin Luther's harsh polemics against his Roman Catholic opponents over issues concerning Mary and the saints, theologians appear to agree that Luther adhered to the Marian decrees of the ecumenical councils and dogmas of the church. He held fast to the belief that Mary was a perpetual virgin and Mother of God. Special attention is given to the assertion that Luther, some 300 years before the dogmatization of the Immaculate Conception by Pope Pius IX in 1854, was a firm adherent of that view. Others maintain that Luther in later years changed his position on the Immaculate Conception, which, at that time was undefined in the church, maintaining however the sinlessness of Mary throughout her life. For Luther, early in his life, the Assumption of Mary was an understood fact, although he later stated that the Bible did not say anything about it and stopped celebrating its feast. Important to him was the belief that Mary and the saints do live on after death. \"Throughout his career as a priest-professor-reformer, Luther preached, taught, and argued about the veneration of Mary with a verbosity that ranged from childlike piety to sophisticated polemics. His views are intimately linked to his Christocentric theology and its consequences for liturgy and piety.\"\nLuther, while revering Mary, came to criticize the \"Papists\" for blurring the line between high admiration of the grace of God wherever it is seen in a human being, and religious service given to another creature. He considered the Roman Catholic practice of celebrating saints' days and making intercessory requests addressed especially to Mary and other departed saints to be idolatry. His final thoughts on Marian devotion and veneration are preserved in a sermon preached at Wittenberg only a month before his death:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Therefore, when we preach faith, that we should worship nothing but God alone, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, as we say in the Creed: 'I believe in God the Father almighty and in Jesus Christ,' then we are remaining in the temple at Jerusalem. Again,'This is my beloved Son; listen to him.' 'You will find him in a manger'. He alone does it. But reason says the opposite:\nWhat, us? Are we to worship only Christ? Indeed, shouldn't we also honor the holy mother of Christ? She is the woman who bruised the head of the serpent. Hear us, Mary, for thy Son so honors thee that he can refuse thee nothing. Here Bernard went too far in his \"Homilies on the Gospel: Missus est Angelus\". God has commanded that we should honor the parents; therefore I will call upon Mary. She will intercede for me with the Son, and the Son with the Father, who will listen to the Son. So you have the picture of God as angry and Christ as judge; Mary shows to Christ her breast and Christ shows his wounds to the wrathful Father. That's the kind of thing this comely bride, the wisdom of reason cooks up: Mary is the mother of Christ, surely Christ will listen to her; Christ is a stern judge, therefore I will call upon St. George and St. Christopher. No, we have been by God's command baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, just as the Jews were circumcised.\nCertain Lutheran churches such as the Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church continue to venerate Mary and the saints in the same manner that Roman Catholics do, and hold all Marian dogmas as part of their faith.\nMethodist.\nMethodists do not have any additional teachings on the Virgin Mary except from what is mentioned in Scripture and the ecumenical Creeds. As such, Methodists generally accept the doctrine of the virgin birth, but reject the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. John Wesley, the principal founder of the Methodist movement within the Church of England, believed that Mary \"continued a pure and unspotted virgin\", thus upholding the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary. Contemporary Methodism holds that Mary was a virgin before, during, and immediately after the birth of Christ. In addition, some Methodists also hold the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary as a pious opinion.\nNontrinitarian.\nNontrinitarians, such as Unitarians, Christadelphians, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Latter Day Saints also acknowledge Mary as the biological mother of Jesus Christ, but most reject any immaculate conception and do not recognize Marian titles such as \"Mother of God\". The Latter Day Saint movement's view affirms the virgin birth of Jesus and Christ's divinity, but only as a separate being than God the Father. The Book of Mormon refers to Mary by name in prophecies and describes her as \"most beautiful and fair above all other virgins\" and as a \"precious and chosen vessel.\"\nIn nontrinitarian groups that are also Christian mortalists, Mary is not seen as an intercessor between humankind and Jesus, whom mortalists would consider \"asleep\", awaiting resurrection.\nJewish.\nThe issue of the parentage of Jesus in the Talmud also affects Jewish views of Mary. However, the Talmud does not mention Mary by name, and is considerate rather than only polemic. The story about Panthera is also found in the , the literary origins of which can not be traced with any certainty, and given that it is unlikely to go before the 4th century, the time is too late to include authentic remembrances of Jesus. \"The Blackwell Companion to Jesus\" states that the has no historical facts and was perhaps created as a tool for warding off conversions to Christianity. The tales from the did impart a negative picture of Mary to ordinary Jewish readers. The circulation of the was widespread among European and Middle Eastern Jewish communities since the 9th century. The name Panthera may be a distortion of the term (\"virgin\") and Raymond E. Brown considers the story of Panthera a fanciful explanation of the birth of Jesus that includes very little historical evidence. Robert Van Voorst states that because is a medieval document with its lack of a fixed form and orientation towards a popular audience, it is \"most unlikely\" to have reliable historical information. Stacks of the copies of the Talmud were burnt upon a court order after the 1240 Disputation for allegedly containing material defaming the character of Mary.\nIslamic.\nThe Virgin Mary holds a singularly exalted place in Islam, and she is considered by the Quran to have been the greatest woman in the history of humankind. The Islamic scripture recounts the Divine Promise given to Mary as being: \"\"O Mary! Surely Allah has selected you, purified you, and chosen you over all women of the world\" ( 3:42).\nMary is often referred to by Muslims by the honorific title (\"Our Lady\"). She is mentioned in the Quran as the daughter of Imran.\nMoreover, Mary is the only woman named in the Quran and she is mentioned or referred to in the scripture a total of 50 times. Mary holds a singularly distinguished and honored position among women in the Quran. A (chapter) in the Quran is titled \"Maryam\" (Mary), the only in the Quran named after a woman, in which the story of Mary (Maryam) and Jesus (Isa) is recounted according to the view of Jesus in Islam.\nBirth.\nIn a narration of hadith from Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq, he mentions that Allah revealed to Imran, \"I will grant you a boy, blessed, one who will cure the blind and the leper and one who will raise the dead by My permission. And I will send him as an apostle to the Children of Israel.\" Then Imran related the story to his wife, Hannah, the mother of Mary. When she became pregnant, she conceived it was a boy, but when she gave birth to a girl, she stated \"Oh my Lord! Verily I have delivered a female, and the male is not like the female, for a girl will not be a prophet,\" to which Allah replies in the Quran, \"Allah knows better what has been delivered\" (3:36). When Allah bestowed Jesus to Mary, he fulfilled his promise to Imran.\nMotherhood.\nMary was declared (uniquely along with Jesus) to be a \"Sign of God\" to humanity; as one who \"guarded her chastity\"; an \"obedient one\"; and dedicated by her mother to Allah whilst still in the womb; uniquely (amongst women) \"Accepted into service by God\"; cared for by (one of the prophets as per Islam) Zakariya (Zacharias); that in her childhood she resided in the Temple and uniquely had access to Al-Mihrab (understood to be the Holy of Holies), and was provided with heavenly \"provisions\" by God.\nMary is also called a \"Chosen One\"; a \"Purified One\"; a \"Truthful one\"; her child conceived through \"a Word from God\"; and \"chosen you above the women of the worlds(the material and heavenly worlds)\".\nThe Quran relates detailed narrative accounts of Maryam (Mary) in two places, 3:35-47 and 19:16-34. These state beliefs in both the Immaculate Conception of Mary and the virgin birth of Jesus. The account given in Surah Maryam 19 is nearly identical with that in the Gospel according to Luke, and both of these (Luke, Sura 19) begin with an account of the visitation of an angel upon Zakariya (Zecharias) and \"Good News of the birth of Yahya (John)\", followed by the account of the annunciation. It mentions how Mary was informed by an angel that she would become the mother of Jesus through the actions of God alone.\nIn the Islamic tradition, Mary and Jesus were the only children who could not be touched by Satan at the moment of their birth, for God imposed a veil between them and Satan. According to the author Shabbir Akhtar, the Islamic perspective on Mary's Immaculate Conception is compatible with the Catholic doctrine of the same topic. \n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"O People of the Book! Do not go to extremes regarding your faith; say nothing about Allah except the truth. The Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, was no more than a messenger of Allah and the fulfilment of His Word through Mary and a spirit \u02f9created by a command\u02fa from Him. So believe in Allah and His messengers and do not say, \"Trinity.\" Stop!\u2014for your own good. Allah is only One God. Glory be to Him! He is far above having a son! To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. And Allah is sufficient as a Trustee of Affairs.\nThe Quran says that Jesus was the result of a virgin birth. The most detailed account of the annunciation and birth of Jesus is provided in Suras 3 and 19 of the Quran, where it is written that God sent an angel to announce that she could shortly expect to bear a son, despite being a virgin.\nDruze Faith.\nThe Druze faith holds the Virgin Mary, known as \"Sayyida Maryam\", in high regard. Although the Druze religion is distinct from mainstream Islam and Christianity, it incorporates elements from both and honors many of their figures, including the Virgin Mary. The Druze revere Mary as a holy and pure figure, embodying virtue and piety. She is respected not only for her role as the mother of Messiah Jesus but also for her spiritual purity and dedication to God. In regions where Druze and Christians coexist, such as parts of Lebanon, Syria and Israel, the veneration of Mary often reflects a blend of traditions. Shared pilgrimage sites and mutual respect for places like the Church of Saidet et Tall\u00e9 in Deir el Qamar, the Our Lady of Lebanon shrine in Harrisa, the Our Lady of Saidnaya Monastery in Saidnaya, and the Stella Maris Monastery in Haifa exemplify this.\nHistorical records and writings by authors like Pierre-Marie Martin and Glenn Bowman show that Druze leaders and community members have historically shown deep reverence for Marian sites. They often sought her intercession before battles or during times of need, demonstrating a cultural and spiritual integration of Marian veneration into their religious practices.\nBah\u00e1'\u00ed Faith.\nThe Bah\u00e1'\u00ed Faith venerates Mary as the mother of Jesus. The , the primary theological work of the Bah\u00e1'\u00ed religion, describes Mary as \"that most beauteous countenance,\" and \"that veiled and immortal Countenance.\" The Bah\u00e1'\u00ed writings claim Jesus Christ was \"conceived of the Holy Ghost\" and assert that in the Bah\u00e1'\u00ed Faith \"the reality of the mystery of the Immaculacy of the Virgin Mary is confessed.\"\nBiblical scholars.\nThe statement found in that Joseph did not have sexual relations with Mary before she gave birth to Jesus has been debated among scholars, with some saying that she did not remain a virgin and some saying that she was a perpetual virgin. Other scholars contend that the Greek word (\"until\") denotes a state up to a point, but does not mean that the state ended after that point, and that Matthew 1:25 does not confirm or deny the virginity of Mary after the birth of Jesus. According to Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman, the Hebrew word , meaning young woman of childbearing age, was translated into Greek as , which often, though not always, refers to a young woman who has never had sex. In Isaiah 7:14, it is commonly believed by Christians to be the prophecy of the Virgin Mary referred to in Matthew 1:23. While Matthew and Luke give differing versions of the virgin birth, John quotes the uninitiated Philip and the disbelieving Jews gathered at Galilee referring to Joseph as Jesus' father.\nOther biblical verses have also been debated; for example, the reference made by Paul the Apostle that Jesus was made \"of the seed of David according to the flesh\" (Romans 1:3) meaning that he was a descendant of David through Joseph.\nPre-Christian Rome.\nFrom the early stages of Christianity, belief in the virginity of Mary and the virgin conception of Jesus, as stated in the gospels, holy and supernatural, was used by detractors, both political and religious, as a topic for discussions, debates, and writings, specifically aimed to challenge the divinity of Jesus and thus Christians and Christianity alike. In the 2nd century, as part of his anti-Christian polemic \"The True Word\", the pagan philosopher Celsus contended that Jesus was actually the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier named Panthera. The Church Father Origen dismissed this assertion as a complete fabrication in his apologetic treatise \"Against Celsus\". How far Celsus sourced his view from Jewish sources remains a subject of discussion.\nChristian devotions.\nHistory.\n2nd century.\nJustin Martyr was among the first to draw a parallel between Eve and Mary. This derives from his comparison of Adam and Jesus. In his \"Dialogue with Trypho\", written sometime between 155 and 167, he explains:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />He became man by the Virgin, in order that the disobedience which proceeded from the serpent might receive its destruction in the same manner in which it derived its origin. For Eve, who was a virgin and undefiled, having conceived the word of the serpent, brought forth disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy, when the angel Gabriel announced the good tidings to her that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her, and the power of the Highest would overshadow her: wherefore also the Holy Thing begotten of her is the Son of God; and she replied, 'Be it unto me according to thy word.\" And by her has He been born, to whom we have proved so many scriptures refer, and by whom God destroys both the serpent and those angels and men who are like him; but works deliverance from death to those who repent of their wickedness and believe upon Him.\nIt is possible that the teaching of Mary as the New Eve was part of the apostolic tradition rather than merely Justin Martyr's own creation, according to Serafim Sepp\u00e4l\u00e4. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon, also takes up this parallel, in \"Against Heresies\", written about the year 182:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />In accordance with this design, Mary the Virgin is found obedient, saying, \"Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to your word.\" Luke 1:38 But Eve was disobedient; for she did not obey when as yet she was a virgin. ... having become disobedient, was made the cause of death, both to herself and to the entire human race; so also did Mary, having a man betrothed [to her], and being nevertheless a virgin, by yielding obedience, become the cause of salvation, both to herself and the whole human race. And on this account does the law term a woman betrothed to a man, the wife of him who had betrothed her, although she was as yet a virgin; thus indicating the back-reference from Mary to Eve...For the Lord, having been born \"the First-begotten of the dead,\" Revelation 1:5 and receiving into His bosom the ancient fathers, has regenerated them into the life of God, He having been made Himself the beginning of those that live, as Adam became the beginning of those who die. 1 Corinthians 15:20\u201322 Wherefore also Luke, commencing the genealogy with the Lord, carried it back to Adam, indicating that it was He who regenerated them into the Gospel of life, and not they Him. And thus also it was that the knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. For what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the virgin Mary set free through faith.\nDuring the second century, the Gospel of James was also written. According to Stephen J. Shoemaker, \"its interest in Mary as a figure in her own right and its reverence for her sacred purity mark the beginnings of Marian piety within early Christianity\".\n3rd to 5th centuries.\nDuring the Age of Martyrs and at the latest in the fourth century, the majority of the most essential ideas of Marian devotion already appeared in some form \u2013 in the writings of the Church Fathers, apocrypha and visual arts. The lack of sources makes it unclear whether the devotion to Mary played a role in liturgical use during the first centuries of Christianity. In the 4th century, Marian devotion in a liturgical context becomes evident.\nThe earliest known Marian prayer (the , or \"Beneath Thy Protection\") is from the 3rd century (perhaps 270), and its text was rediscovered in 1917 on a papyrus in Egypt. According to some sources, Theonas of Alexandria consecrated one of the first holy places dedicated to Mary during the late 3rd century. An even earlier place has been found in Nazareth, dated to the previous century by some scholars. Following the Edict of Milan in 313, by the 5th century artistic images of Mary began to appear in public and larger churches were being dedicated to Mary, such as the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. At the Council of Ephesus in 431, Mary was officially declared the \"Theotokos\", meaning \"God-bearer\" or \"Mother of God\". The term had possibly been used for centuries or at least since the early 300s, when it seems to have already been in established use.\nThe Council of Ephesus was long thought to have been held at a church in Ephesus which had been dedicated to Mary about a hundred years before. Though, recent archeological surveys indicate that St. Mary's Church in Ephesus did not exist at the time of the Council or, at least, the building was not dedicated to Mary before 500. The Church of the Seat of Mary in Judea was built shortly after the introduction of Marian liturgy at the council of Ephesus, in 456, by a widow named Ikelia.\nAccording to the 4th-century heresiologist Epiphanius of Salamis, the Virgin Mary was worshipped as a mother goddess in the Christian sect of Collyridianism, which was found throughout Arabia sometime during the 300s AD. Collyridianism had women performing priestly acts, and made bread offerings to the Virgin Mary. The group was condemned as heretical by the Roman Catholic Church and was preached against by Epiphanius of Salamis, who wrote about the group in his writings titled Panarion.\nByzantium.\nDuring the era of the Byzantine Empire, Mary was venerated as the virginal Mother of God and as an intercessor.\nEphesus is a cultic centre of Mary, the site of the first church dedicated to her and the rumoured place of her death. Ephesus was previously a centre for worship of Artemis, a virgin goddess; the Temple of Artemis there is regarded as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The cult of Mary was furthered by Queen Theodora in the 6th century. According to William E. Phipps, in the book \"Survivals of Roman Religion\", \"Gordon Laing argues convincingly that the worship of Artemis as both virgin and mother at the grand Ephesian temple contributed to the veneration of Mary.\"\nMiddle Ages.\nThe Middle Ages saw many legends about Mary, her parents, and even her grandparents. Mary's popularity increased dramatically from the 12th century, linked to the Roman Catholic Church's designation of Mary as Mediatrix.\nPost-Reformation.\nOver the centuries, devotion and veneration to Mary has varied greatly among Christian traditions. For instance, while Protestants show scant attention to Marian prayers or devotions, of all the saints whom the Orthodox venerate, the most honored is Mary, who is considered \"more honorable than the Cherubim and more glorious than the Seraphim\".\nOrthodox theologian Sergei Bulgakov wrote: \"Love and veneration for the Virgin is the soul of Orthodox piety. A faith in Christ which does not include [...] His mother is another faith, another Christianity from that of the Orthodox Church.\"\nAlthough the Catholics and the Orthodox may honor and venerate Mary, they do not view her as divine, nor do they worship her. Roman Catholics view Mary as subordinate to Christ, but uniquely so, in that she is seen as above all other creatures. Similarly, Bulgakov wrote that the Orthodox view Mary as \"superior to all created beings\" and \"ceaselessly pray for her intercession\". However, she is not considered a \"substitute for the One Mediator\" who is Christ. \"Let Mary be in honor, but let worship be given to the Lord\", he wrote. Similarly, Catholics do not worship Mary as a divine being, but rather \"hyper-venerate\" her. In Roman Catholic theology, the term is reserved for Marian veneration, for the worship of God, and for the veneration of other saints and angels. The definition of the three level hierarchy of , and goes back to the Second Council of Nicaea in 787.\nDevotions to artistic depictions of Mary vary among Christian traditions. There is a long tradition of Catholic Marian art and no image permeates Catholic art as does the image of Madonna and Child. The icon of the Virgin with Christ is, without doubt, the most venerated icon in the Orthodox Church. Both Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians venerate images and icons of Mary, given that the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 permitted their veneration with the understanding that those who venerate the image are venerating the reality of the person it represents, and the 842 Synod of Constantinople confirming the same. According to Orthodox piety and traditional practice, however, believers ought to pray before and venerate only flat, two-dimensional icons, and not three-dimensional statues.\nThe Anglican position towards Mary is in general more conciliatory than that of Protestants at large and in a book he wrote about praying with the icons of Mary, Rowan Williams, former archbishop of Canterbury, said: \"It is not only that we cannot understand Mary without seeing her as pointing to Christ; we cannot understand Christ without seeing his attention to Mary.\"\nOn 4 September 1781, 11 families of arrived from the Gulf of California and established a city in the name of King Carlos III. The small town was named (after our Lady of the Angels), a city that today is known simply as Los Angeles. In an attempt to revive the custom of religious processions within the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, in September 2011 the Queen of Angels Foundation, and founder Mark Anchor Albert, inaugurated an annual Grand Marian Procession in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles' historic core. This yearly procession, held on the last Saturday of August and intended to coincide with the anniversary of the founding of the City of Los Angeles, begins at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels and concludes at the parish of La Iglesia de Nuestra Se\u00f1ora Reina de los Angeles which is part of the Los Angeles Plaza Historic District, better known as \"La Placita\".\nFeasts.\nThe earliest feasts that relate to Mary grew out of the cycle of feasts that celebrated the Nativity of Jesus. Given that according to the Gospel of Luke (Luke 2:22\u201340), 40 days after the birth of Jesus, along with the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, Mary was purified according to Jewish customs. The Feast of the Purification began to be celebrated by the 5th century, and became the \"Feast of Simeon\" in Byzantium.\nIn the 7th and 8th centuries, four more Marian feasts were established in Eastern Christianity. In the West, a feast dedicated to Mary, just before Christmas was celebrated in the Churches of Milan and Ravenna in Italy in the 7th century. The four Roman Marian feasts of Purification, Annunciation, Assumption and Nativity of Mary were gradually and sporadically introduced into England by the 11th century.\nOver time, the number and nature of feasts (and the associated Titles of Mary) and the venerative practices that accompany them have varied a great deal among diverse Christian traditions. Overall, there are significantly more titles, feasts and venerative Marian practices among Roman Catholics than any other Christians traditions. Some such feasts relate to specific events, such as the Feast of Our Lady of Victory, based on the 1571 victory of the Papal States in the Battle of Lepanto.\nDifferences in feasts may also originate from doctrinal issues\u2014the Feast of the Assumption is such an example. Given that there is no agreement among all Christians on the circumstances of the death, Dormition or Assumption of Mary, the feast of assumption is celebrated among some denominations and not others. While the Roman Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of the Assumption on 15 August, some Eastern Catholics celebrate it as Dormition of the, and may do so on 28 August, if they follow the Julian calendar. The Eastern Orthodox also celebrate it as the Dormition of the , one of their 12 Great Feasts. Protestants do not celebrate this, or any other Marian feasts.\nRelics.\nThe veneration of Marian relics used to be common practice before the Reformation. It was later largely surpassed by the veneration of Marian images.\nBodily relics.\nAs Mary's body is believed by most Christians to have been taken up into the glory of heaven, her bodily relics have been limited to hair, nails and breast milk.\nAccording to John Calvin's 1543 \"Treatise on Relics\", her hair was exposed for veneration in several churches, including in Rome, Saint-Flour, Cluny and Nevers.\nIn this book, Calvin criticized the veneration of the Holy Milk due to the lack of biblical references to it and the doubts about the veracity of such relics:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />With regard to the milk, there is not perhaps a town, a convent, or nunnery, where it is not shown in large or small quantities. Indeed, had the Virgin been a wet-nurse her whole life, or a dairy, she could not have produced more than is shown as hers in various parts. How they obtained all this milk they do not say, and it is superfluous here to remark that there is no foundation in the Gospels for these foolish and blasphemous extravagances.\nAlthough the veneration of Marian bodily relics is no longer a common practice today, there are some remaining traces of it, such as the Chapel of the Milk Grotto in Bethlehem, named after Mary's milk.\nClothes.\nClothes which are believed to have belonged to Mary include the Cincture of the Theotokos kept in the Vatopedi monastery and her Holy Girdle kept in Mount Athos.\nOther relics are said to have been collected during later Marian apparitions, such as her robe, veil, and part of her belt which were kept in Blachernae church in Constantinople after she appeared there during the 10th century. These relics, now lost, are celebrated by the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic Churches as the Intercession of the Theotokos.\nFew other objects are said to have been touched or given by Mary during apparitions, notably a 1531 image printed on a \"tilma\", known as Our Lady of Guadalupe, belonging to Juan Diego.\nPlaces.\nPlaces where Mary is believed to have lived include the Basilica della Santa Casa in Loreto, Marche, and the House of the Virgin Mary in Ephesus.\nEastern Christians believe that she died and was put in the Tomb of the Virgin Mary near Jerusalem before the Assumption.\nThe belief that Mary's house was in Ephesus is recent, as it was claimed in the 19th century based on the visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich, an Augustinian nun in Germany. It has since been named as the House of the Virgin Mary by Roman Catholic pilgrims who consider it the place where Mary lived until her assumption. The Gospel of John states that Mary went to live with the Disciple whom Jesus loved, traditionally identified as John the Evangelist and John the Apostle. Irenaeus and Eusebius of Caesarea wrote in their histories that John later went to Ephesus, which may provide the basis for the early belief that Mary also lived in Ephesus with John.\nThe apparition of Our Lady of the Pillar in the first century was believed to be a bilocation, as it occurred in Spain while Mary was living in Ephesus or Jerusalem. The pillar on which she was standing during the apparition is believed to be kept in the Cathedral-Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar in Zaragoza and is therefore venerated as a relics, as it was in physical contact with Mary.\nIn arts.\nIconography.\nIn paintings, Mary is traditionally portrayed in blue. This tradition can trace its origin to the Byzantine Empire, from c.\u2009500 AD, where blue was \"the colour of an empress\". A more practical explanation for the use of this colour is that in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, the blue pigment was derived from the rock lapis lazuli, a stone of greater value than gold, which was imported from Afghanistan. Beyond a painter's retainer, patrons were expected to purchase any gold or lapis lazuli to be used in the painting. Hence, it was an expression of devotion and glorification to swathe the Virgin in gowns of blue. Transformations in visual depictions of Mary from the 13th to 15th centuries mirror her \"social\" standing within the Church and in society.\nTraditional representations of Mary include the crucifixion scene, called . While not recorded in the Gospel accounts, Mary cradling the dead body of her son is a common motif in art, called a \"piet\u00e0\" or \"pity\".\nIn the Egyptian, Eritrean, and Ethiopian tradition, Mary has been portrayed in story and paint for centuries. Beginning in the 1600s, however, highland Ethiopians began portraying Mary performing a variety of miracles for the faithful, including paintings of her giving water to a thirsty dog, healing monks with her breast milk, and saving a man eaten by a crocodile. Over 1,000 such stories about her exist in this tradition, and about one hundred of those have hundreds of paintings each, in various manuscripts, adding up to thousands of paintings.\nCinematic portrayals.\nMary has been portrayed in various films and on television, including:\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["6188253", "37857", "73513", "306519"], "permutation_1": ["306519", "37857", "73513", "6188253"], "permutation_2": ["6188253", "73513", "306519", "37857"], "permutation_3": ["306519", "73513", "37857", "6188253"]}
{"id": "4hop1__288060_344284_86983_516763", "docs_added": {"193703": "Alaska Purchase\n1867 sale by Russia to the United States\nThe Alaska Purchase was the purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire by the United States for a sum of $7.2\u00a0million in 1867 (equivalent to $\u00a0million in 2023). On May 15 of that year, the United States Senate ratified a bilateral treaty that had been signed on March 30, and American sovereignty became legally effective across the territory on October 18.\nDuring the first half of the 18th century, Russia had established a colonial presence in parts of North America, but few Russians ever settled in Alaska. Alexander\u00a0II of Russia, having faced a catastrophic defeat in the Crimean War, began exploring the possibility of selling the state's Alaskan possessions, which, in any future war, would be difficult to defend from the United Kingdom. To this end, William H. Seward, the U.S. Secretary of State at the time, entered into negotiations with Russian diplomat Eduard de\u00a0Stoeckl towards the United States' acquisition of Alaska after the American Civil War. Seward and Stoeckl agreed to a treaty for the sale on March 30, 1867.\nAt an original cost of $0.02 per acre ($ per acre in 2023), the United States had grown by . Reactions to the Alaska Purchase among Americans were mostly positive, as many believed that Alaska would serve as a base to expand American trade in Asia. Some opponents labeled the purchase as \"Seward's Folly\" or \"Seward's Icebox\" as they contended that the United States had acquired useless land. Nearly all Russian settlers left Alaska in the aftermath of the purchase; Alaska would remain sparsely populated until the Klondike Gold Rush began in 1896. Originally organized as the Department of Alaska, the area was renamed the District of Alaska in 1884 and the Territory of Alaska in 1912, ultimately becoming the modern-day State of Alaska in 1959.\nHistory.\nRussian America was settled by , merchants and fur trappers who expanded through Siberia. They arrived in Alaska in 1732, and in 1799 the Russian-American Company (RAC) received a charter to hunt for fur. No colony was established, but the Russian Orthodox Church sent missionaries to the natives and built churches. About 700 Russians enforced sovereignty in a territory over twice as large as Texas. In 1821, Tsar Alexander\u00a0I issued an edict declaring Russia's sovereignty over the North American Pacific coast north of the 51st parallel north. The edict also forbade foreign ships to approach within 100 Italian miles (115 miles or 185\u00a0km) of the Russian claim. US Secretary of State John Quincy Adams strongly protested the edict, which potentially threatened both the commerce and expansionary ambitions of the United States. Seeking favorable relations with the U.S., Alexander agreed to the Russo-American Treaty of 1824. In the treaty, Russia limited its claims to lands north of parallel 54\u00b040\u2032 north and also agreed to open Russian ports to U.S. ships.\nBy the 1850s, a population of once 300,000 sea otters was almost extinct, and Russia needed money after being defeated by France and Britain in the Crimean War. The California Gold Rush showed that if gold were discovered in Alaska, Americans and Canadians would overwhelm the Russian presence in what one scholar later described as \"Siberia's Siberia\". However, the principal reason for the sale was that the hard-to-defend colony would be easily conquered by British forces based in neighboring Canada in any future conflict, and Russia did not wish to see its archrival being next door just across the Bering Sea. Therefore, Emperor Alexander\u00a0II decided to sell the territory. The Russian government discussed the proposal in 1857 and 1858 and offered to sell the territory to the United States, hoping that its presence in the region would offset the plans of Britain. However, no deal was reached, as the risk of an American Civil War was a more pressing concern in Washington.\nGrand Duke Konstantin, a younger brother of the Tsar, began to press for the handover of Russian America to the United States in 1857. In a memorandum to Foreign Minister Alexander Gorchakov he stated that <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nKonstantin's letter was shown to his brother, Tsar Alexander II, who wrote \"this idea is worth considering\" on the front page. Supporters of Konstantin's proposal to immediately withdraw from North America included Admiral Yevfimy Putyatin and the Russian minister to the United States, Eduard de\u00a0Stoeckl. Gorchakov agreed with the necessity of abandoning Russian America but argued for a gradual process leading to its sale. He found a supporter in the naval minister and former chief manager of the Russian-American Company, Ferdinand von\u00a0Wrangel. Wrangel pressed for some proceeds to be invested in the economic development of Kamchatka and the Amur Basin. The Emperor eventually sided with Gorchakov, deciding to postpone negotiations until the end of the RAC's patent, set to expire in 1861.\nOver the winter of 1859\u20131860, Stoeckl held meetings with United States officials, though he had been instructed not to initiate discussions about the sale of the RAC assets. Communicating primarily with Assistant Secretary of State John Appleton and California Senator William M. Gwin, Stoeckl reported the interest expressed by the Americans in acquiring Russian America. While President James Buchanan kept these hearings informal, preparations were made for further negotiations. Stoeckl reported a conversation in which he asked \"in passing\" what price the U.S. government might pay for the Russian colony and Senator Gwin replied that they \"might go as far as $5,000,000\", a figure Gorchakov found far too low. Stoeckl informed Appleton and Gwin of this, the latter saying that his Congressional colleagues in Oregon and California would support a larger figure. Buchanan's increasingly unpopular presidency forced the matter to be shelved until a new presidential election. With the oncoming American Civil War, Stoeckl proposed a renewal of the RAC's charter. Two of its ports were to be open to foreign traders and commercial agreements with Peru and Chile to be signed to give \"a fresh jolt\" to the company.\nRussia continued to see an opportunity to weaken British power by causing British Columbia, including the Royal Navy base at Esquimalt, to be surrounded or annexed by American territory. Following the Union victory in the Civil War in 1865, the Tsar instructed Stoeckl to re-enter into negotiations with William H. Seward in the beginning of March 1867. President Andrew Johnson was busy with negotiations about Reconstruction, and Seward had alienated a number of Republicans, so both men believed that the purchase would help divert attention from domestic issues. The negotiations concluded after an all-night session with the signing of the treaty at 04:00 on March 30, 1867. The purchase price was set at $7.2\u00a0million (equivalent to $\u00a0million in 2023), or about 2 cents per acre ($4.74/km2).\nAmerican ownership.\nThe Russian name for the Alaska Peninsula was \"Alyaska\" (\"\u0410\u043b\u044f\u0441\u043a\u0430\") or \"Alyeska\", from an Aleut word, \"alashka\" or \"alaesksu\", meaning \"great land\" or \"mainland\". The United States chose the name \"Alaska\" to refer to the area purchased from Russia.\nSeward told the nation that, according to Russian estimates, Alaska had about 60,000 inhabitants. This included about 10,500 who were under the direct government of the Russian fur company: about 8,000 indigenous people and 2,500 people of Russian or mixed Russian and indigenous descent (for example, having a Russian father and a native mother). The remaining 50,000 or so were Inuit or Alaska Natives living outside of Russia's jurisdiction.\nSeward also said that the Russians were settled at 23 trading posts, placed on accessible islands and at points along the coast. At smaller trading posts, typically only four or five Russians were stationed: their job was to collect furs from the natives for storage and then for shipment when the company's boats arrived to take the furs away. There were two larger towns. One was New Archangel (now named Sitka), established in 1804 to handle the valuable trade in the skins of sea otters; in 1867, it had 116 small log cabins and 968 residents. The other was St. Paul, in the Pribilof Islands, which had 100 homes and 283 residents, and was the center of the seal fur industry.\nSeward and many other Americans expected that Asia would become an important market for U.S. products, and that Alaska would serve as a base for American trade with Asia and globally, and for the extension of American power into the Pacific.\nSenator Charles Sumner, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sponsored the Senate bill authorizing the U.S. to approve the treaty to acquire the territory. He not only agreed about the benefit to trade, but also said he expected the territory to be valuable on its own; having studied the records of explorers, he believed it contained valuable animals and forests. He compared the acquisition to contemporary European colonial acquisitions, such as the French conquest of Algeria. The United States Senate approved the treaty by a vote of 37 to 2.\nPublic opinion favors the purchase.\nMany Americans believed in 1867 that the purchase process had been corrupt, but W. H. Dall in 1872 wrote that \"there can be no doubt that the feelings of a majority of the citizens of the United States are in favor of it.\" The notion that the purchase was unpopular among Americans is, a scholar wrote 120 years later, \"one of the strongest historical myths in American history. It persists despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, and the efforts of the best historians to dispel it\", likely in part because it fits American and Alaskan writers' view of the territory as distinct and filled with self-reliant pioneers.\nA majority of newspapers either supported the purchase or were neutral. A review of dozens of contemporary newspapers found general support for the purchase, especially in California; most of 48 major newspapers supported the purchase. Public opinion was not universally positive; to some the purchase was known as \"Seward's folly\", \"Walrussia\", or \"Seward's icebox\". Editorials contended that taxpayer money had been wasted on a \"polar bear garden\". Nonetheless, most newspaper editors argued that the U.S. would probably derive great economic benefits from the purchase, such as considerable mineral resources that previous geological explorations of the region suggested were available there; friendship with Russia was important; and it would facilitate the acquisition of British Columbia. Forty-five percent of supportive newspapers cited the increased potential for annexing British Columbia in their support, and \"The New York Times\" stated that, consistent with Seward's reason, Alaska would increase American trade with East Asia.\nThe principal urban newspaper that opposed the purchase was the \"New York Tribune\", published by Seward opponent Horace Greeley. The ongoing controversy over Reconstruction spread to other acts, including the Alaska purchase. Some opposed the United States obtaining its first non-contiguous territory, seeing it as a colony; others saw no need to pay for land that they expected the country to obtain through manifest destiny. Historian Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer summarized the minority opinion of some American newspaper editors who opposed the purchase:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Already, so it was said, we were burdened with territory we had no population to fill. The Indians within the present boundaries of the republic strained our power to govern aboriginal peoples. Could it be that we would now, with open eyes, seek to add to our difficulties by increasing the number of such peoples under our national care? The purchase price was small; the annual charges for administration, civil and military, would be yet greater, and continuing. The territory included in the proposed cession was not contiguous to the national domain. It lay away at an inconvenient and a dangerous distance. The treaty had been secretly prepared, and signed and foisted upon the country at one o'clock in the morning. It was a dark deed done in the night\u2026 The \"New York World\" said that it was a \"sucked orange.\" It contained nothing of value but furbearing animals, and these had been hunted until they were nearly extinct. Except for the Aleutian Islands and a narrow strip of land extending along the southern coast the country would be not worth taking as a gift\u2026 Unless gold were found in the country much time would elapse before it would be blessed with Hoe printing presses, Methodist chapels and a metropolitan police. It was \"a frozen wilderness.\"\nTransfer ceremony.\nThe transfer ceremony took place in Sitka on October 18, 1867. Russian and American soldiers paraded in front of the governor's house; the Russian flag was lowered and the American flag raised amid peals of artillery.\nA description of the events was published in Finland six years later. It was written by a blacksmith named Thomas Ahllund, who had been recruited to work in Sitka:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />We had not spent many weeks at Sitka when two large steam ships arrived there, bringing things that belonged to the American crown, and a few days later the new governor also arrived in a ship together with his soldiers. The wooden two-story mansion of the Russian governor stood on a high hill, and in front of it in the yard at the end of a tall spar flew the Russian flag with the double-headed eagle in the middle of it. Of course, this flag now had to give way to the flag of the United States, which is full of stripes and stars. On a predetermined day in the afternoon, a group of soldiers came from the American ships, led by one who carried the flag. Marching solemnly, but without accompaniment, they came to the governor's mansion, where the Russian troops were already lined up and waiting for the Americans. Now they started to pull the [Russian double-headed] eagle down, but\u2014whatever had gone into its head\u2014it only came down a little bit, and then entangled its claws around the spar so that it could not be pulled down any further. A Russian soldier was therefore ordered to climb up the spar and disentangle it, but it seems that the eagle cast a spell on his hands, too\u2014for he was not able to arrive at where the flag was, but instead slipped down without it. The next one to try was not able to do any better; only the third soldier was able to bring the unwilling eagle down to the ground. While the flag was brought down, music was played and cannons were fired off from the shore, and then, while the other flag was hoisted, the Americans fired off their cannons from the ships equally many times. After that American soldiers replaced the Russian ones at the gates of the fence surrounding the Kolosh [i.e. Tlingit] village.\nAfter the flag transition was completed, Captain of 2nd Rank Aleksei Alekseyevich Peshchurov said, \"General Rousseau, by authority from His Majesty, the Emperor of Russia, I transfer to the United States the territory of Alaska.\" General Lovell Rousseau accepted the territory. (Peshchurov had been sent to Sitka as commissioner of the Russian government in the transfer of Alaska.) A number of forts, blockhouses and timber buildings were handed over to the Americans. The troops occupied the barracks; General Jefferson C. Davis established his residence in the governor's house, and most of the Russian citizens went home, leaving a few traders and priests who chose to remain.\nAftermath.\nAfter the transfer, a number of Russian citizens remained in Sitka, but nearly all of them very soon decided to return to Russia, which was still possible at the expense of the Russian-American Company. Ahllund's story \"corroborates other accounts of the transfer ceremony, and the dismay felt by many of the Russians and creoles, jobless and in want, at the rowdy troops and gun-toting civilians who looked on Sitka as merely one more western frontier settlement.\" Ahllund gives a vivid account of what life was like for civilians in Sitka under US rule and helps to explain why hardly any Russian subject wanted to stay there. Moreover, Ahllund's article is the only known description of the return voyage on the \"Winged Arrow\", a ship that was specially purchased to transport the Russians back to their native country. \"The over-crowded vessel, with crewmen who got roaring drunk at every port, must have made the voyage a memorable one.\" Ahllund mentions stops at the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands, Tahiti, Brazil, London, and finally Kronstadt, the port for St. Petersburg, where they arrived on August 28, 1869.\nAmerican settlers who shared Sumner's belief in the riches of Alaska rushed to the territory but found that much capital was required to exploit its resources, many of which could also be found closer to markets in the contiguous United States. Most soon left, and by 1873, Sitka's population had declined from about 2,500 to a few hundred. The United States acquired an area over twice as large as Texas, but it was not until the great Klondike Gold Rush in 1896 that Alaska generally came to be seen as a valuable addition to U.S. territory.\nThe seal fishery was one of the chief considerations that induced the United States to purchase Alaska. It provided considerable revenue by the lease of the privilege of taking seals, an amount that was eventually more than the price paid for Alaska. From 1870 to 1890, the seal fisheries yielded 100,000 skins a year. The company to which the administration of the fisheries was entrusted by a lease from the US government paid a rental of $50,000 per annum and in addition thereto <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />$2.62+1\u20442 per skin for the total number taken. The skins were transported to London to be dressed and prepared for world markets. The business grew so large that the earnings of English laborers after the acquisition of Alaska by the United States amounted by 1890 to $12,000,000.\nHowever, exclusive US control of this resource was eventually challenged, and the Bering Sea Controversy resulted when the United States seized over 150 sealing ships flying the British flag, based out of the coast of British Columbia. The conflict between the United States and Britain was resolved by an arbitration tribunal in 1893. The waters of the Bering Sea were deemed to be international waters, contrary to the US contention that they were an internal sea. The US was required to make a payment to Britain, and both nations were required to follow regulations developed to preserve the resource.\nFinancial return.\nThe purchase of Alaska has been referenced as a \"bargain basement deal\" and as the principal positive accomplishment of the otherwise much-maligned presidency of Andrew Johnson.\nEconomist David R. Barker has argued that the US federal government has not earned a positive financial return on the purchase of Alaska. According to Barker, tax revenue and mineral and energy royalties to the federal government have been less than federal costs of governing Alaska plus interest on the borrowed funds used for the purchase.\nJohn M. Miller has taken the argument further by contending that US oil companies that developed Alaskan petroleum resources did not earn enough profits to compensate for the risks that they incurred.\nOther economists and scholars, including Scott Goldsmith and Terrence Cole, have criticized the metrics used to reach those conclusions by noting that most contiguous Western states would fail to meet the bar of \"positive financial return\" using the same criteria and by contending that looking at the increase in net national income, instead of only US Treasury revenue, would paint a much more accurate picture of the financial return of Alaska as an investment.\nAlaska Day.\nAlaska Day celebrates the formal transfer of Alaska from Russia to the United States, which took place on October 18, 1867, according to the Gregorian calendar which came into effect in Alaska the day following the transfer, replacing the Julian calendar, which was used by the Russians (the Julian calendar in the 19th century was 12 days behind the Gregorian calendar). Alaska Day is a holiday for all state workers.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "363227": "Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes\nValley within Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska, United States\nThe Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes is a valley within Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska which is filled with ash flow from the eruption of Novarupta on June 6\u20138, 1912. Following the eruption, thousands of fumaroles vented steam from the ash. Robert F. Griggs, who explored the volcano's aftermath for the National Geographic Society in 1916, gave the valley its name, saying that \"the whole valley as far as the eye could reach was full of hundreds, no thousands\u2014literally, tens of thousands\u2014of smokes curling up from its fissured floor.\"\nPrior to the eruption, the area now called the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes was an unremarkable and unnamed portion of the Ukak River valley. Although never permanently inhabited by humans, it served as a pass for the Alutiiq people, as well as animals such as grizzly bears.\nThe 1912 eruption was the largest eruption by volume in the 20th century, erupting a magma volume of about . As many as 14 major earthquakes between formula_1 6 to 7, and over 100 earthquakes greater than formula_1 5, resulted from the collapse of the caldera at Mount Katmai and movement within the magmatic plumbing system.\nThe ash-filled valley covers a area. The ash can be up to deep. In places deep canyons have been cut by the River Lethe, allowing observers to see the ash flow strata. Since the ash has cooled, most of the fumaroles are now extinct and despite its name the valley is no longer filled with 'smoke' (i.e. steam). Vegetation still does not grow in the valley. The signs of volcanic activity are still visible on nearby hills.\nKatmai's most recent eruption was in 1927, but there have been non-eruptive events as recently as 2003. The Alaska Volcano Observatory still monitors Katmai's activity as part of the Katmai Cluster, where there are five active stratovolcanos within of Katmai.\nVisitors to the valley most commonly arrive via bus along the road from Brooks Camp, which is the only road in Katmai Park. The valley is a source of creative exploration by photographers and naturalists.\nGeology.\nBasement rocks in the area consist of the Late Jurassic Naknek Formation, which is composed of siltstones, and arkosic sandstones 1.7\u20132\u00a0km thick deposited in a marine shelf and submarine fan delta environment during the Oxfordian-Tithonian. Some 20 dioritic and granodioritic Tertiary plutons pierce the formation. Most prevalent though are the Quaternary stratovolcanoes along the Aleutian Arc associated with the Aleutian subduction zone.\nThe 1912 Novarupta eruption was characterized by three main episodes spanning 60 hours. Episode I included both a rhyolitic ignimbrite and a simultaneous Plinian dispersal of rhyolitic tephra fallout. The ignimbrite consisted of 9 separate packages of pumiceous pyroclastic flow deposits, radiating outward 9\u00a0km, and which filled 11\u00a0km3 of the valley to a depth of 100\u2013200 m in the upper portion and 35 m in the lower over the span of 16 hours. It is indurated in the upper valley while nonwelded in the lower. The ignimbrite is noted for its fumaroles, phreatic craters, welded tuff, and flattened fiamme. At the same time, a Plinian dispersal of 8.8\u00a0km3 of rhyolitic tephra occurred depositing layers A and B. Episode II consisted of a second Plinian dispersal, but one consisting of dacite tephra, depositing 4.8\u00a0km3 of layers C and D. Episode III was also a Plinian dispersal of dacite tephra depositing 3.4\u00a0km3 of layers F and G.\nThe explosion from the eruption was heard as far away as Fairbanks and Juneau, while earthquakes continued until mid-Aug. Ball lightning near the ground was noted in addition to regular thunder and lightning, rare in South Alaska, while severe static disrupted wireless transmissions. Volcanic dust reached Wisconsin on June 8, Algeria on June 19 and California on June 21. Fields of pumice were seen floating in Katmai Bay, 241\u00a0km to the southwest, in 1913. Griggs noted 1000 fumarolic plumes over 500 feet high in 1916. In 1917, diffuse steam emanations were still evident and temperatures were 97\u00a0\u00b0C just 1 m below the surface. In 1918, Jasper Sayre and Paul Hagelbarger noted 86 vents with temperatures greater than 190\u00a0\u00b0C, the hottest being 432\u00a0\u00b0C. The steam was measured to be 99.5% water vapor with some acidic gases of HCl, CO2, H2S and HF. Only a few hundred emanations were seen by 1929, and just 10 were left by 1940. \nAstronaut training.\nThe Katmai Peninsula in general, and the valley in particular, were used by NASA and the USGS to geologically train the Apollo astronauts in recognizing volcanic features, landforms and materials, especially fumaroles and vents. Two separate groups of astronauts trained here, the first in June\u2013July 1965 and a second group in August 1966. Their field exercises included simulating a lunar mission. \"Playing the Moon game\", involved pairing up astronauts and placing them in a location with very little prior information. They then planned traverses and collected representative samples. They communicated with their geologist instructors via radio. Astronauts who would use this training on the Moon included Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin, Apollo 12's Alan Bean, Apollo 14's Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 15's James Irwin, Apollo 16's Charlie Duke, and Apollo 17's Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt. Notable geologist instructors included Garniss Curtis and Gene Shoemaker.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1940400": "Lafayette C. Baker\nUnion Army officer\nLafayette Curry Baker (October 13, 1826 \u2013 July 3, 1868) was a United States investigator and spy, serving the Union Army during the American Civil War and under Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson.\nEarly life.\nBaker was born in Stafford, New York, on October 13, 1826. He became a mechanic, moved to Michigan in 1839, returned to New York in 1848, moved to California in 1853, and was a San Francisco vigilante in 1856. He moved to the District of Columbia in 1861.\nAmerican Civil War.\nBaker's exploits are mainly known through his book \"A History of the Secret Service\" which he published in 1867 after his fall from grace. During the early months of the Civil War, he spied for General Winfield Scott on Confederate forces in Virginia. Despite numerous scrapes, he returned to Washington, D.C., with information that Scott evidently thought valuable enough to raise him to the rank of captain. As Provost Marshal of Washington, D.C., from September 12, 1862, to November 7, 1863, Baker ran the National Detective Bureau also sometimes known as the \"National Detective Police Department.\" He was appointed colonel of 1st D.C. Cavalry, May 5, 1863. According to Glenn Hastedt \"Although his accomplishments were many, Baker operated with little regard for warrants or the constitutional rights of those he pursued. He is also reported to have employed brutal interrogation techniques in order to obtain information.\"\nBaker owed his appointment largely to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, but suspected the secretary of corruption and was eventually demoted for tapping his telegraph lines and packed off to New York.\nLincoln assassination investigation.\nBaker was recalled to Washington after the assassination of President Lincoln in 1865. Within two days of his arrival in Washington, Baker's agents in Maryland had made four arrests and had the names of two more conspirators, including the actual presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth. Before the month was out, Booth along with David Herold were found holed up in a barn and Booth was himself shot and killed by Sgt. Boston Corbett. Baker received a generous share of the $100,000 reward offered to the person who apprehended the president's killer. President Andrew Johnson nominated Baker for appointment to the grade of brigadier general of volunteers, April 26, 1865, but the United States Senate never confirmed the appointment. Baker was mustered out of the volunteers on January 15, 1866.\nFiring and death.\nThe following year, Baker was sacked from his position as government spymaster. President Johnson accused him of spying on him, a charge Baker admitted in his book which he published in response. He also announced that he had had Booth's diary in his possession which was being suppressed by the Department of War and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. When the diary was eventually produced, Baker claimed that eighteen vital pages were missing. It was suggested by Otto Eisenschiml in his book, \"Why Was Lincoln Murdered?,\" that these would implicate Stanton in the assassination. However, this notion has been proven as speculation by author Edward Steers Jr. and based on non-reputable sources.\nOn July 3, 1868, Baker retired to home complaining of soreness from a gun wound during a hunting trip. He had been out drinking with Wally Pollack, his brother-in-law, and came home feeling sick, passing away later that night, reportedly from meningitis.\nA widely criticized 1977 book, \"The Lincoln Conspiracy\" by conspiracy theorists David W. Balsiger and Charles E. Sellier, alleges that Baker was poisoned by high-placed conspirators, including Stanton, who supported John Wilkes Booth's plan to kidnap Abraham Lincoln in 1864 and early 1865. The conspirators supposedly planned to have Lincoln impeached in his absence. The authors speculate that the conspirators were concerned that Baker could link them to the planned kidnapping, which might lead to accusations that they were conspirators in Lincoln's assassination. The authors believe the conspirators did not support Booth after March 1865. Academic historians have treated the book with hostility and derision, having many objections based on errors and misuse of sources in the book.\nInterment.\nBaker is buried in Forest Hills Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.\nIn popular culture.\nBaker was portrayed by Patton Oswalt in the 2024 Apple TV+ miniseries series \"Manhunt\"\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "9810573": "Dale (landform)\nOpen valley\nA dale is a valley, especially an open, gently-sloping ground between low hills with a stream flowing through it. It is used most frequently in the North of England and the Southern Uplands of Scotland; the term \"fell\" commonly refers to mountains or hills that flank a dale. As with many other words, \"dale\" was preserved by Viking influence in Northern England.\nIt appears in various contexts, such as up hill and down dale \"over every hill and dale\", and \"up all hills, down all dales.\nEtymology.\nThe word \"dale\" comes from the Old English word \"d\u00e6l\", from which the word \"dell\" also derived. It is related to Old Norse word \"dalr\" (and the modern Icelandic word \"dalur\", etc.), which may have influenced its survival in northern England. The Germanic origin is assumed to be *\"dala-\". \"Dal-\" in various combinations is common in placenames in Norway. Modern English valley and French vall\u00e9e are claimed to be related to dale. A distant relative of \"dale\" is currency unit dollar, stemming from German \"thaler\" or \"daler\", short for joachimsthaler coins manufactured in the town of Joachimsthal in Bohemia.\nThe word is perhaps related to Welsh \"dol\" (meadow, pasture, valley), Russian \"dol\" (valley, reverse side) and Serbian/Croatian/Bulgarian/Russian \"dolina\" (basin, \"doline\" is a geological term for certain surface depressions in karst areas). The uses are semantic equivalents to many words and phrases, suggesting a common Indo-European affinity. Vale and thalweg are also related.\nUses.\nThe following are several examples of major dales that have the name dale. The river name is usually appended with \"-dale\". There are also many smaller dales; this is not an exhaustive list (see dale (place name element) for more).\nThe name Wuppertal (North Rhine-Westphalia) is similar in form.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "17446945": "Russia\u2013Syria relations\nBilateral relations\nRussia\u2013Syria relations (; ) are the bilateral relations between Russia and Syria. Russia has an embassy in Damascus and Syria has an embassy in Moscow. Russia enjoys a historically strong, stable, and friendly relationship with Syria, as it did with most countries within the Arab World up until the Arab Spring. Russia's only Mediterranean naval base for its Black Sea Fleet is located in the Syrian port city of Tartus. Today the relationship is unclear after Fall of the Assad regime, Russia was allowed to keep their bases in Syria.\nDiplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the First Syrian Republic were established in July 1944, and an agreement was signed in February 1946 ensuring Soviet support for Syrian independence ahead of the evacuation of French troops in April 1946. During World War II, both countries found themselves on the Allied side, fighting against the Axis powers.\nIn 1971, under an agreement with President Hafez al-Assad, the Soviet Union opened its naval military base in Tartus, a facility the former Soviet republic continues to use to this day. On 8 October 1980, Syria and the Soviet Union signed a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation. The treaty runs for twenty years and has automatic five-year extensions unless one of the parties terminates the agreement. It provides for regular consultations on bilateral and multilateral issues of interest, coordination of responses in the event of a crisis, and military cooperation, and remains in force to this day. In January 1992, the Syrian government recognized the Russian Federation as the legal successor to the Soviet Union.\nRussia in 2011 and 2012 used its veto power in the United Nations Security Council against resolutions promoted by Western and Arab countries with the intention of preventing possible sanctions or military intervention against the Syrian government, and Russia continued supplying large amounts of arms that Syria's government had earlier contracted to buy and which were used to fight Western-backed rebels. On 30 September 2015, Russia began a military intervention in the Syrian Civil War in support of the Syrian government, consisting of intensive air and cruise missile strikes against several terrorist groups, including ISIS and the Al-Nusra Front (Al-Qaeda's official affiliate in Syria).\nIn February 2022, the Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad announced that Syria supports the decision of its ally Russia to recognise the two breakaway regions of Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. In March 2022, Syria was the only Middle Eastern country (and one of 5 countries in the world) to vote against United Nations General Assembly Resolution ES-11/1, denouncing the Russian invasion of Ukraine and demanding a full withdrawal of Russian forces. On 29 June 2022, Syria announced that it will recognize the \"independence and sovereignty\" of the two breakaway regions of Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. On 20 July 2022, Syria announced its formal breaking of diplomatic ties with Ukraine, in response to a similar move by Ukraine.\nWhen the Assad regime collapsed on 8 December 2024, Assad fled to Russia to seek asylum while Russian troops began to pull back from the country.\n"}, "descending_order": ["193703", "17446945", "363227", "1940400", "9810573"], "permutation_1": ["1940400", "9810573", "193703", "363227", "17446945"], "permutation_2": ["363227", "193703", "9810573", "1940400", "17446945"], "permutation_3": ["193703", "17446945", "363227", "9810573", "1940400"]}
{"id": "4hop3__616279_608613_21563_4107", "docs_added": {"9687589": "Arrondissement of Mouscron\nThe Arrondissement of Mouscron (; ) is a former arrondissement in the Walloon province of Hainaut, Belgium. It is not a judicial arrondissement. Its municipalities are a part of the Judicial Arrondissement of Tournai.\nThe arrondissement was created in 1963 after several municipalities were transferred from the Dutch-speaking province of West Flanders to French-speaking Hainaut following the language laws of 1962. In 2019 it was merged into the new Arrondissement of Tournai-Mouscron.\nMunicipalities.\nThe Administrative Arrondissement of Mouscron consists of the following municipalities and former municipalities (with their Dutch name):\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "14272652": "Renaud Denauw\nRenaud Denauw (born 28 November 1936 in Mouscron), also known as \"Renaud\", is a Belgian comic book artist. He is best known for his collaboration with writer Jean Dufaux in the \"Jessica Blandy\" comic book.\nProfessional biography.\nRenaud was hired for \"Spirou\" magazine in 1975 as an illustrator. Quickly developing a reputation for drawing sensual women (such as the eponymous heroine in \"Aymone\" from 1975 to 1977), he also used the pseudonym \"Sylvain\" to draw the adult comic \"Merline\". After a stint drawing funny stories aimed at children (\"Myrtille, Vidpoche et Cabochard\", 1978), he moved over to rival comic book publishing house \"Tintin\" magazine in 1981 and illustrated \"Platon, Torloche et Coquinette\", another children's series. After drawing caricatured characters for a longer period, Renaud refined his depiction of realistic personages, and finally was chosen to collaborate with Belgian colleague Jean Dufaux on the new \"Jessica Blandy\" comic book in 1987. The series, centered on the eponymous, sexy-but-innerly-broken femme fatale was successful, and Dufaux and Renaud are still collaborating after 24 issues. Other works by Renaud include \"Les Enfants de la Salamandre\" from 1988 to 1990, \"Santiag\" in 1991, and \"Venus H.\" in 2005, all with Dufaux.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1121030": "Institute of technology\nType of institution offering tertiary education\nAn institute of technology (also referred to as technological university, technical university, university of technology, polytechnic university) is an institution of tertiary education that specializes in engineering, technology, applied science, and natural sciences.\nInstitutes of technology versus polytechnics.\nThe institutes of technology and polytechnics have been in existence since at least the 18th century, but became popular after World War II with the expansion of engineering and applied science education, associated with the new needs created by industrialization. The world's first institution of technology, the Berg-Schola (today its legal successor is the University of Miskolc), was founded by the Court Chamber of Vienna in Selmecb\u00e1nya, Kingdom of Hungary (now Bansk\u00e1 \u0160tiavnica, Slovakia), in 1735 in order to train specialists of precious metal and copper mining according to the requirements of the industrial revolution in Hungary. The oldest German Institute of Technology is the Braunschweig University of Technology, founded in 1745 as \"Collegium Carolinum\". The French \"\u00c9cole Polytechnique\" was founded in 1794. In some cases, polytechnics or institutes of technology are engineering schools or technical colleges.\nIn several countries, like Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Turkey and Taiwan, institutes of technology are institutions of higher education and have been accredited to award academic degrees and doctorates. Famous examples are the Istanbul Technical University, ETH Zurich, Delft University of Technology, RWTH Aachen and National Taiwan University of Science and Technology all considered universities.\nIn countries like Iran, Finland, Malaysia, Portugal, Singapore or the United Kingdom, there is often a significant and confused distinction between polytechnics and universities. In the UK, a binary system of higher education emerged consisting of universities (research orientation) and polytechnics (engineering and applied science and professional practice orientation). Polytechnics offered university equivalent degrees mainly in STEM subjects from bachelor's, master's and PhD that were validated and governed at the national level by the independent UK Council for National Academic Awards. In 1992, UK polytechnics were designated as universities which meant they could award their own degrees. The CNAA was disbanded. The UK's first polytechnic, the Royal Polytechnic Institution (now the University of Westminster), was founded in 1838 in Regent Street, London. In Ireland the term \"institute of technology\" is the more favored synonym of a \"regional technical college\" though the latter is the legally correct term; however, Dublin Institute of Technology was a university in all but name as it can confer degrees in accordance with law; Cork Institute of Technology and other Institutes of Technology have delegated authority from HETAC to make awards to and including master's degree level\u2014Level 9 of Ireland's National Framework for Qualifications (NFQ)\u2014for all areas of study and Doctorate level in a number of others. In 2018, Ireland passed the Technological Universities Act, which allowed a number of Institutes of Technology to transform into Technological Universities.\nIn a number of countries, although being today generally considered similar institutions of higher learning across many countries, polytechnics and institutes of technology used to have a quite different statute among each other, its teaching competences and organizational history. In many cases, \"polytechnic\" were elite technological universities concentrating on applied science and engineering and may also be a former designation for a vocational institution, before it has been granted the exclusive right to award academic degrees and can be truly called an \"institute of technology\". A number of polytechnics providing higher education is simply a result of a formal upgrading from their original and historical role as intermediate technical education schools. In some situations, former polytechnics or other non-university institutions have emerged solely through an administrative change of statutes, which often included a name change with the introduction of new designations like \"institute of technology\", \"polytechnic university\", \"university of applied sciences\" or \"university of technology\" for marketing purposes. Such emergence of so many upgraded polytechnics, former vocational education and technical schools converted into more university-like institutions has caused concern where the lack of specialized intermediate technical professionals lead to industrial skill shortages in some fields, being also associated to an increase of the graduate unemployment rate. This is mostly the case in those countries, where the education system is not controlled by the state and any institution can grant degrees. Evidence have also shown a decline in the general quality of teaching and graduate's preparation for the workplace, due to the fast-paced conversion of that technical institutions to more advanced higher level institutions. Mentz, Kotze and Van der Merwe argue that all the tools are in place to promote the debate on the place of technology in higher education in general and in universities of technology specifically and they posit several questions for the debate.\nInstitutes by country.\nArgentina.\nIn Argentina, the main higher institution devoted to the study of technology is the National Technological University which has \"Regional Faculties\" throughout Argentina. The Buenos Aires Institute of Technology (ITBA) and Balseiro Institute are other recognized institutes of technology.\nAustralia.\nDuring the 1970s to early 1990s, the term was used to describe state owned and funded technical schools that offered both vocational and higher education. They were part of the College of Advanced Education system. In the 1990s most of these merged with existing universities or formed new ones of their own. These new universities often took the title University of Technology, for marketing rather than legal purposes. AVCC report The most prominent such university in each state founded the Australian Technology Network a few years later.\nSince the mid-1990s, the term has been applied to some technically minded technical and further education (TAFE) institutes. A recent example is the Melbourne Polytechnic rebranding and repositioning in 2014 from Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE. These primarily offer vocational education, although some like Melbourne Polytechnic are expanding into higher education offering vocationally oriented applied bachelor's degrees. This usage of the term is most prevalent historically in NSW and the ACT. The new terminology is apt given that this category of institution are becoming very much like the institutes of the 1970s\u20131990s period.\nIn 2009, the old college system in Tasmania and TAFE Tasmania have started a 3-year restructure to become the Tasmanian Polytechnic www.polytechnic.tas.edu.au, Tasmanian Skills Institute www.skillsinstitute.tas.edu.au and Tasmanian Academy www.academy.tas.edu.au\nIn the higher education sector, there are seven designated universities of technology in Australia (though, note, not all use the phrase \"university of technology\", such as the Universities of Canberra and South Australia, which used to be Colleges of Advanced Education before transitioning into fully-fledged universities with the ability \u2013 most important of all \u2013 to confer doctorates):\nAustria.\nThese institutions are entitled to confer habilitation and doctoral degrees and focus on research.\nThese institutions focus only on research.\nSeveral universities have faculties of technology that are entitled to confer habilitation and doctoral degrees and which focus on research.\nFachhochschule is a German type of tertiary education institution and adopted later in Austria and Switzerland. They do not focus exclusively on technology, but may also offer courses in social science, medicine, business and design. They grant bachelor's degrees and master's degrees and focus more on teaching than research and more on specific professions than on science.\nIn 2010, there were 20 in Austria\nBangladesh.\nThere are some public engineering universities in Bangladesh:\nThere are some general, technological and specialized universities in Bangladesh offer engineering programs:\nThere are some private engineering universities in Bangladesh:\nThere is only one international engineering university in Bangladesh:\nThere are numerous private and other universities as well as science and technology universities providing engineering education. Most prominent are:\nThere are numerous government-funded as well as private polytechnic institutes, engineering colleges and science and technology institutes providing engineering education. Most prominent are:\nBelgium and the Netherlands.\nIn the Netherlands, there are four universities of technology, jointly known as 4TU:\nIn Belgium and in the Netherlands, \"Hogescholen\" or \"Hautes \u00e9coles\" (also translated into \"colleges\", \"university colleges\" or \"universities of applied science\") are applied institutes of higher education that do not award doctorates. They are generally limited to Bachelor-level education, with degrees called professional bachelors, and only minor Master's programmes. The hogeschool thus has many similarities to the \"Fachhochschule\" in the German language areas and to the \"ammattikorkeakoulu\" in Finland. A list of all \"hogescholen\" in the Netherlands, including some which might be called polytechnics, can be found at the end of this list.\nBrazil.\n\"Federal:\"\n\"Service academy:\"\n\"Private:\"\n\"State:\"\nCambodia.\nIn Cambodia, there are institutes of technology/polytechnic institutes and Universities that offer instruction in a variety of programs that can lead to: certificates, diplomas and degrees. Institutes of technology/polytechnic institutes and universities tend to be independent institutions.\nCanada.\nIn Canada, there are affiliate schools, colleges, and institutes of technology/polytechnic institutes that offer instruction in a variety of programs that can lead to the bestowment of apprenticeships, citations, certificates, diplomas, and associate's degrees upon successful completion. Affiliate schools are polytechnic divisions attached to a national university and offer select technical and engineering transfer programs. Colleges, institutes of technology/polytechnic institutes, and universities tend to be independent institutions.\nCredentials are typically conferred at the undergraduate level; however, university-affiliated schools like the \u00c9cole de technologie sup\u00e9rieure and the \u00c9cole Polytechnique de Montr\u00e9al (both of which are located in Quebec), also offer graduate and postgraduate programs, in accordance with provincial higher education guidelines. Canadian higher education institutions, at all levels, undertake directed and applied research with financing allocated through public funding, private equity, or industry sources.\nSome of Canada's most well-known colleges and polytechnic institutions also partake in collaborative institute-industry projects, leading to technology commercialization, made possible through the scope of Polytechnics Canada, a national alliance of eleven leading research-intensive colleges and institutes of technology.\nChina.\nChina's modern higher education began in 1895 with the Imperial Tientsin University which was a polytechnic plus a law department. Liberal arts were not offered until three years later at Capital University. To this day, about half of China's elite universities remain essentially polytechnical. Harbin Institute of Technology is among the best engineering school in China and the world.\nCroatia.\nIn Croatia there are many polytechnic institutes and colleges that offer a polytechnic education. The law about polytechnic education in Croatia was passed in 1997.\nEcuador.\nEPN is known for research and education in the applied science, astronomy, atmospheric physics, engineering and physical sciences. The Geophysics Institute monitors the country's seismic, tectonic and volcanic activity in the continental territory and in the Gal\u00e1pagos Islands.\nOne of the oldest observatories in South America is the Quito Astronomical Observatory. It was founded in 1873 and is located 12 minutes south of the Equator in Quito, Ecuador. The Quito Astronomical Observatory is the National Observatory of Ecuador and is located in the Historic Center of Quito and is managed by the National Polytechnic School.\nThe Nuclear Science Department at EPN is the only one in Ecuador and has the large infrastructure, related to irradiation facilities like cobalt-60 source and electron beam processing.\nFinland.\nUniversities of technology are categorised as universities, are allowed to grant B.Sc. (Tech.), Diplomi-insin\u00f6\u00f6ri M.Sc. (Tech.), Lic.Sc. (Tech.), Ph.D. and D.Sc. (Tech.) degrees and roughly correspond to Instituts de technologie of French-speaking areas and Technische Universit\u00e4t of Germany in prestige. In addition to universities of technology, some universities, e.g. University of Oulu and \u00c5bo Akademi University, are allowed to grant the B.Sc. (tech.), M.Sc. (tech.) and D.Sc. (Tech.) degrees.\nUniversities of technology are academically similar to other (non-polytechnic) universities. Prior to Bologna process, M.Sc. (Tech.) required 180 credits, whereas M.Sc. from a normal university required 160 credits. The credits between universities of technology and normal universities are comparable.\nSome Finnish universities of technology are:\nPolytechnic schools are distinct from academic universities in Finland. \"Ammattikorkeakoulu\" is the common term in Finland, as is the Swedish alternative \"yrkesh\u00f6gskola\" \u2013 their focus is on studies leading to a degree (for instance \"insin\u00f6\u00f6ri\", engineer; in international use, Bachelor of Engineering) in kind different from but in level comparable to an academic bachelor's degree awarded by a university. Since 2006 the polytechnics have offered studies leading to master's degrees (Master of Engineering). After January 1, 2006, some Finnish ammattikorkeakoulus switched the English term \"polytechnic\" to the term \"university of applied sciences\" in the English translations of their legal names. The ammattikorkeakoulu has many similarities to the \"hogeschool\" in Belgium and in the Netherlands and to the \"Fachhochschule\" in the German language areas.\nSome recognized Finnish polytechnics are:\nA complete list may be found in List of polytechnics in Finland.\nFrance and Francophone regions.\nCollegiate universities grouping several engineering schools or multi-site clusters of French grandes \u00e9coles provide sciences and technology curricula as autonomous higher education engineering institutes. They include:\nThey provide science and technology master's degrees and doctoral degrees.\nThe universities of technology () are public institutions awarding degrees and diplomas that are accredited by the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research. Although called \"universities\", the universities of technology are in fact non-university institutes (\"\u00e9coles ext\u00e9rieures aux universit\u00e9s\"), as defined by Chapter I, Section II (Articles 34 through 36) of French law 84-52 of 26 January 1984 regarding higher education (the \"loi Savary\").\nThey possess the advantage of combining all the assets of the engineering \"Grandes \u00c9coles\" and those of universities as they develop simultaneously and coherently three missions: Education, Research, Transfer of technology.\nThey maintain close links with the industrial world both on national and international levels and they are reputed for their ability to innovate, adapt and provide an education that matches the ever-changing demands of industry.\nThis network includes three institutions:\n'Polytech institutes', embedded as a part of eleven French universities provide both undergraduate and graduate engineering curricula.\nIn the French-speaking part of Switzerland exists also the term \"haute \u00e9cole specialis\u00e9e\" for a type of institution called \"Fachhochschule\" in the German-speaking part of the country. (see below).\nHigher education systems, that are influenced by the French education system set at the end of the 18th century, use a terminology derived by reference to the French \"\u00c9cole polytechnique\". Such terms include \"\u00c9coles Polytechniques\" (Algeria, Belgium, Canada, France, Switzerland, Tunisia), Escola Polit\u00e9cnica (Brasil, Spain), Polytechnicum (Eastern Europe).\nIn French language, higher education refers to \"\u00e9coles polytechniques\", providing science and engineering curricula:\nGermany.\n were first founded in the early 1970s. They do not focus exclusively on technology, but may also offer courses in social science, medicine, business and design. They grant bachelor's degrees and master's degrees and focus more on teaching than research and more on specific professions than on science.\nIn 2009/10, there existed about 200 in Germany. See the for a list.\n\"Technische Universit\u00e4t\" (abbreviation: \"TU\") is the common term for universities of technology. These institutions can grant habilitation and doctoral degrees and focus on research.\nThe nine largest and most renowned \"Technische Universit\u00e4ten\" in Germany have formed TU9 German Institutes of Technology as community of interests. Technische Universit\u00e4ten normally have faculties or departements of natural sciences and often of economics but can also have units of cultural and social sciences and arts. RWTH Aachen, TU Dresden and TU M\u00fcnchen also have a faculty of medicine associated with university hospitals (Klinikum Aachen, University Hospital Dresden, Rechts der Isar Hospital).\nThere are 20 universities of technology in Germany with about 290,000 students enrolled. The three states of Bremen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Schleswig-Holstein do not have a \"Technische Universit\u00e4t\". Saxony and Lower Saxony have the highest counts of \"TUs\", while in Saxony three out of four universities are universities of technology.\nGreece.\nGreece has Technical Universities (also known as Polytechnic Universities) with 5 years of study legally equivalent to Bachelor's and master's degree 300 ECTS, ISCED 7 and has the full professional rights of the Engineer. and had Technological Educational Institutes (TEIs) (1982\u20132019) also known as Higher Educational Institute of Technology, Technological Institute, Institute of Technology (provides at least 4-year undergraduate degree qualification \u03c0\u03c4\u03c5\u03c7\u03af\u03bf, Latinised version: Ptychion, in line with the Bologna Process legally equivalent to Bachelor's honours degree 240 ECTS, ISCED 6. Previously it was three and a half years studies from 1983 to 1995, 210 ECTS). All the Technical Universities and Technological Educational Institutes are Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) with university title (UT) and degree awarding powers (DAPs). TEIs existed from 1983 to 2019; they were reformed between 2013 and 2019 and their departments incorporated into existing higher education institutions (HEIs).\nThe two Polytechnic Universities (Technical Universities) in Greece (Greek: \u03a0\u03bf\u03bb\u03c5\u03c4\u03b5\u03c7\u03bd\u03b5\u03af\u03bf) are the National Technical University of Athens and the Technical University of Crete. However, many other universities have a faculty of engineering that provides an equivalent diploma of engineerings with an integrated master and the full professional rights as well.\nMany TEIs that got dismantled created engineering faculty with 5 years of study and 300 ECTS, ISCED 6. But those faculty are not under the general term of Polytechnics nor they have an integrated master's degree yet waiting evaluation to be characterised as equivalent. These have been named School of Engineers for the time being and not Technical Universities or Polytechnic.\nIn Greece, all Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are public university owned and government-funded, with free education undergraduate programmes that can be attended without any payment of tuition fee. About 1 out of 4 (one-fourth of) HEIs postgraduate programmes are offered free without any payment of tuition fee, especially about a 30% percentage of students can be entitled without tuition fee to attend all the HEIs statutory tuition fee postgraduate programmes after they be assessed on an individual basis of determined criteria as set out in the Ministry of Education.\nHong Kong.\nThe first polytechnic in Hong Kong is The Hong Kong Polytechnic, established in 1972 through upgrading the Hong Kong Technical College (Government Trade School before 1947). The second polytechnic, the City Polytechnic of Hong Kong, was founded in 1984. These polytechnics awards diplomas, higher diplomas, as well as academic degrees. Like the United Kingdom, the two polytechnics were granted university status in 1994 and renamed The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the City University of Hong Kong respectively. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, a university with a focus in applied science, engineering and business, was founded in 1991.\nHungary.\nThe world's first Institute of Technology the Berg-Schola (Bergschule) established in Selmecb\u00e1nya, Kingdom of Hungary, by the Court Chamber of Vienna in 1735 providing Further education to train specialists of precious metal and copper mining. In 1762 the institute ranked up to be Academia providing Higher Education courses. After the Treaty of Trianon the institute had to be moved to Sopron.\nIndia.\nThere are Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Information Technology, and National Institutes of Technology in India which are autonomous public institutions. These institutions are Institutes of National Importance, and hence each of the institutions are autonomous. All Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Information Technology, and National Institutes of Technology have their own councils which are headed by President of India. The activities of these institutions are generally governed by the institutes alone, but sometimes they are bound to follow the directives of Ministry of Education (India) and are answerable to Ministry of Education (India) and President of India. Some departments of some of these institutions are bound to follow certain guidelines of National Board of Accreditation (NBA) if they receive the accreditation from NBA. However, unlike other institutions, it is not mandatory for these institutes to follow guidelines of All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and NBA completely.\nThe authority controlling technical education, other than the Institutes of National Importance, in India is All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and National Board of Accreditation (NBA).\nIndonesia.\nThere are four public institutes of technology in Indonesia that are owned by the government of Indonesia. Other than that, there are hundreds of other institutes that are owned by private or other institutions.\nFour public institutes are:\nPublic state-owned polytechnics also available and provides vocational education offers either three-year Diploma degrees, which is similar to an associate degree or four-year bachelor's degree in applied sciences (). The more advanced vocational Master's are also available and doctoral degrees are still in progress.\nSome notable polytechnics in Indonesia includes State Polytechnic of Jakarta, State Polytechnic of Bandung, State Polytechnic of Malang, State Electronics Polytechnic of Surabaya, and State Naval and Shipbuilding Polytechnic of Surabaya. These polytechnics are known to be departed from Indonesian prestigious universities and institute of technologies, e.g. the State Polytechnic of Jakarta was departed from the University of Indonesia while both Surabaya Polytechnics were departed from Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology.\nIran.\nThere are 18 technological universities in Iran.\nIreland.\nAn \"Institute of Technology\" was formerly referred to as Regional Technical College (RTCs) system. The abbreviation IT is now widely used to refer to an Institute of Technology. These institutions offer sub-degree, degree and masters level studies. Unlike the Irish university system an Institute of Technology also offers sub-degree programmes such as 2-year Higher Certificate programme in various academic fields of study. Some institutions have \"delegated authority\" that allows them to make doctoral awards in their own name, after authorisation by the Quality and Qualifications Ireland.\nDublin Institute of Technology developed separately from the Regional Technical College system and after several decades of association with the University of Dublin it acquired the authority to confer its own degrees before becoming a member ofTU Dublin.\nThe approval of Ireland's first Technological University, TU Dublin was announced in July 2018 and the new university established on 01 January 2019. It is the result of a merger of three of the ITs in the County Dublin area - Dublin Institute of Technology, IT Tallaght and IT Blanchardstown. Several Technological Universities have since been set up in the country. Munster TU was established 01 January 2021 through a merger of Cork IT and IT Tralee (Kerry). The was the third such university, established in October 2021 out of Limerick IT and Athlone IT. The Atlantic Technological University was formally established on 01 April 2022 out of Galway-Mayo IT, IT Sligo, and Letterkenny IT. As a fifth such institution, the South East Technological University was established on 01 May 2022 out of Carlow IT and Waterford IT. As of May 2023, the only remaining Institutes of Technology in Ireland are Dundalk IT and the Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology.\nThe Technological Higher Education Association is the representative body for the various Institutes of Technology in Ireland.\nItaly.\nIn Italy, the term \"technical institute\" generally refers to a secondary school which offers a five-year course granting the access to the university system.\nIn higher education, \"Politecnico\" refers to a technical university awarding bachelor, master and PhD degrees in engineering. Historically there were two \"Politecnici\", one in each of the two largest industrial cities of the north:\nA third \"Politecnico\" was added in the south in 1990:\nIn 2003 the Libera Universit\u00e0 di Ancona becomes:\nHowever, many other universities have a faculty of engineering.\nIn 2003, the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (Italy) and the Ministry of Economy and Finance (Italy) jointly established the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology), headquartered in Genoa with 10 laboratories around Italy, which however focuses on research, not entirely in the fields of engineering and does not offer undergraduate degrees.\nJapan.\nIn Japan, an is a type of university that specializes in the sciences. See also the Imperial College of Engineering, which was the forerunner of the University of Tokyo's engineering faculty.\nKenya.\nIn Kenya, Technical Universities are special Universities that focus on technical and engineering courses and offer certifications in the same from Artisan, Craft, Diploma, Higher Diploma, Degree, Masters and Doctorate levels. They are former national polytechnics and are the only institutions of learning that offer the complete spectrum of tertiary education programs.\nThey Include\nMacau.\nThe first polytechnic in Macau is the Polytechnic Institute of the University of East Asia which was established in 1981, as an institute of a private university. In 1991, following the splitting of the University of East Asia into three (University of Macau, Macao Polytechnic Institute, Asia International Open University), a public and independent Polytechnic Institute, Macao Polytechnic Institute, was officially established. The first private technology university Macau University of Science and Technology is established in 2000. Macao Polytechnic Institute has renamed Macao Polytechnic University in 2022.\nMalaysia.\nPolytechnics in Malaysia have been in operation since 1969. The institutions provide courses for bachelor's degree & Bachelor of Science (BSc), Advanced Diploma, Diploma and Special Skills Certificate. The first polytechnic in Malaysia, Politeknik Ungku Omar, was established by the Ministry of Education in 1969 with the help of UNESCO and the amount of RM24.5 million from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).\nAt present, Malaysia has 36 polytechnics all over the country providing engineering, agriculture, commerce, hospitality and design courses.\nThe following is a list of the polytechnics in Malaysia in order of establishment:\nThere are four technical universities in Malaysia and all are belongs to Malaysian Technical University Network: \nMauritius.\nThe only technical university in Mauritius is the University of Technology, Mauritius with its main campus situated in La Tour Koenig, Pointe aux Sables.\nMexico.\nIn Mexico there are different Institutes and Colleges of Technology. Most of them are public institutions.\nThe National Technological Institute of Mexico (in Spanish: , TecNM) is a Mexican public university system created on 23 July 2014 by presidential decree with the purpose to unify 263 public institutes of technology that had been created since 1948 and are found all around Mexico.\nAnother important institute of technology in Mexico is the National Polytechnic Institute (\"\"), which is located in the northern region of Mexico City.\nNew Zealand.\nNew Zealand polytechnics are established under the Education Act 1989 as amended and are typically considered state-owned tertiary institutions along with universities, colleges of education and w\u0101nanga; there is today often much crossover in courses and qualifications offered between all these types of Tertiary Education Institutions. Some have officially taken the title 'institute of technology' which is a term recognized in government strategies equal to that of the term 'polytechnic'. One has opted for the name 'Universal College of Learning' (UCOL) and another 'Unitec New Zealand'. These are legal names but not recognized terms like 'polytechnic' or 'institute of technology'. Many if not all now grant at least bachelor-level degrees. Some colleges of education or institutes of technology are privately owned, however, the qualification levels vary widely.\nSince the 1990s, there has been consolidation in New Zealand's state-owned tertiary education system. In the polytechnic sector: Wellington Polytechnic amalgamated with Massey University. The Central Institute of Technology explored a merger with the Waikato Institute of Technology, which was abandoned, but later, after financial concerns, controversially amalgamated with Hutt Valley Polytechnic, which in turn became Wellington Institute of Technology. Some smaller polytechnics in the North Island, such as Waiarapa Polytechnic, amalgamated with UCOL. (The only other amalgamations have been in the colleges of education.)\nThe Auckland University of Technology is the only polytechnic to have been elevated to university status; while Unitec has had repeated attempts blocked by government policy and consequent decisions; Unitec has not been able to convince the courts to overturn these decisions.\nIn mid-February 2019, the Minister of Education Minister Chris Hipkins proposed merging the country's sixteen polytechnics into a \"NZ Institute of Skills and Technology\" in response to deficits and a decline in domestic enrollments. This was commenced with branding changes to 20 establishments in 2022 in preparation of their merger into Te P\u016bkenga\nNigeria.\nVirtually, every state in Nigeria has a polytechnic university operated by either the federal or state government. In Rivers State for example, there are two state-owned polytechnic universities; Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa Polytechnic, Bori City and the Rivers State College of Arts and Science, Port Harcourt. The former was established on 13 May 1988 while the latter\u2013though founded in 1984\u2013was approved by the NBTE in 2006. The first private polytechnic university in the state is the Eastern Polytechnic, established in 2008.\nPakistan.\nThe polytechnic institutes in Pakistan offer Diploma in Engineering spanning three years in different engineering branches. This diploma is known as Diploma of Associate Engineering (DAE). Students are admitted to the diploma program based on their results in the 10th grade standardized exams. The main purpose of the diploma offered in polytechnic institutes is to train people in various trades.\nThese institutes are located throughout Pakistan and started in the early 1950s.\nAfter successfully completion of diploma at a polytechnic, students can either get employment or enroll in Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) and Bachelor of Engineering (BE) degree programs.\nUniversities of Engineering & Technology in Pakistan offer undergraduate (BE/BS/BSc Engineering) and postgraduate (ME/MS/MSc Engineering and PhD) degree programs in engineering. BE/BS/BSc Engineering is a professional degree in Pakistan. It is a four-year full-time program after HSSC (higher secondary school certificate).\nPalestine.\nUniversity College of Applied Sciences (UCAS) is a technical college in Gaza founded in 1998. The College offers undergraduate degrees in several unique specializations such as education technology, technological management and planning, and geographic information systems\nPoland.\nPolitechnika (translated as a \"technical university\" or \"university of technology\") is the designation of a technical university in Poland. Here are some of the larger polytechnics in Poland:\nOther polytechnic universities:\nPortugal.\nTill recently, there was a Technical University of Lisbon (UTL). It included several of the most prestigious schools, including, an engineering school (Instituto Superior Tecnico) and one of the most ancient business schools in the world (ISEG Lisbon). But UTL merged with the University of Lisbon. In this field, here are also a number of non-university higher educational institutions which are called polytechnic institutes since the 1970s. Some of these institutions existed since the 19th century with different designations (industrial and commercial institutes, agricultural managers, elementary teachers and nurses schools, etc.). In theory, the polytechnics higher education system is aimed to provide a more practical training and be profession-oriented, while the university higher education system is aimed to have a stronger theoretical basis and be highly research-oriented. The polytechnics are also oriented to provide shorter length studies aimed to respond to local needs. The Portuguese polytechnics can then be compared to the US community colleges.\nSince the implementation of Bologna Process in Portugal in 2007, the polytechnics offer the 1st cycle (licentiate degree) and 2nd cycle (master's degree) of higher studies. Until 1998, the polytechnics only awarded bachelor () degrees (three-year short-cycle degrees) and were not authorized to award higher degrees. They however granted post-bachelor diplomas in specialized higher studies (DESE, ), that could be obtained after the conclusion of a two-year second cycle of studies and were academical equivalent to the university's licentiate degrees (\"\"). After 1998, they started to be allowed to confer their own licentiate degrees, which replaced the DESE diplomas.\nSingapore.\nPolytechnics in Singapore do not offer bachelor's, master's degrees or doctorate. However, Polytechnics in Singapore offer three-year diploma courses in fields ranging from applied sciences to business, information technology, humanities, social sciences, and other vocational fields such as engineering and nursing. There are five polytechnics in Singapore: Singapore Polytechnic, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Temasek Polytechnic, Nanyang Polytechnic and Republic Polytechnic.\nThe Polytechnic diploma certification in Singapore is equivalent to an associate degree obtainable at the community colleges in the United States. A Polytechnic diploma in Singapore is also known to be parallel and sometimes equivalent to the first years at a bachelor's degree-granting institution, thus, Polytechnic graduates in Singapore have the privilege of being granted transfer credits or module exemptions when they apply to a local or overseas universities, depending on the university's policies on transfer credits.\nThe only university in Singapore with the term \"institute of technology\", most notably the Singapore Institute of Technology were developed in 2009 as an option for Polytechnic graduates who desire to pursue a bachelor's degree. Other technological universities in Singapore includes the Nanyang Technological University and the Singapore University of Technology and Design.\nSlovakia.\nThe world's first institution of technology or technical university with tertiary technical education is the Bansk\u00e1 Akad\u00e9mia in Bansk\u00e1 \u0160tiavnica, Slovakia, founded in 1735, Academy since December 13, 1762 established by queen Maria Theresa in order to train specialists of silver and gold mining and metallurgy in neighbourhood. Teaching started in 1764. Later the department of Mathematics, Mechanics and Hydraulics and department of Forestry were settled. University buildings are still at their place today and are used for teaching. University has launched the first book of electrotechnics in the world.\nSouth Africa.\nIn South Africa, there was a division between universities and technikons (polytechnics), as well between institutions servicing particular racial and language groupings.\nBy the mid-2000s, former technikons have either been merged with traditional universities to form comprehensive universities or have become universities of technology; however, the universities of technology have not to date acquired all of the traditional rights and privileges of a university (such as the ability to confer a wide range of degrees).\nTaiwan.\nThe question of Taiwanese college education is, the students either from high school (the aims is to go to normal college) or tech high school(the aims is to go to work or technology university), almost all of the students take the same test(the score can go to two kinds of school), and the school would not care what kind of high school you are from.\nThailand.\nMost of Thailand's institutes of technology were developed from technical colleges, in the past could not grant bachelor's degrees; today, however, they are university level institutions, some of which can grant degrees to the doctoral level. Examples are Pathumwan Institute of Technology (developed from Pathumwan Technical School), King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang (Nondhaburi Telecommunications Training Centre) and King Mongkut's Institute of Technology North Bangkok (Thai-German Technical School).\nThere are two former institutes of technology, which already changed their name to \"University of Technology\": Rajamangala University of Technology (formerly Institute of Technology and Vocational Education) and King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi (Thonburi Technology Institute).\nInstitutes of technology with different origins are Asian Institute of Technology, which developed from SEATO Graduate School of Engineering and Sirindhorn International Institute of Technology, an engineering school of Thammasat University. Suranaree University of Technology is the only government-owned technological university in Thailand that was established (1989) as such; while Mahanakorn University of Technology is the most well known private technological institute. Technology/Technical colleges in Thailand is associated with bitter rivalries which erupts into frequent off-campus brawls and assassinations of students in public locations that has been going on for nearly a decade, with innocent bystanders also commonly among the injured and the military under martial law still unable to stop them from occurring.\nTurkey.\nIn Turkey, with historical roots extending back to the Ottoman Empire, Istanbul Technical University is recognized as the oldest technical university, established in 1773. Notably, Karadeniz Technical University in Trabzon was established in 1955. Middle East Technical University in Ankara followed closely, founded in 1956. More recent developments include the transformation of Y\u0131ld\u0131z University into Y\u0131ld\u0131z Technical University, along with the establishment of Gebze Technical University in Kocaeli, and \u0130zmir Institute of Technology in \u0130zmir. Additionally, the technical education landscape broadened with the founding of Bursa Technical University in Bursa in 2010.\nUnited Kingdom.\nInstitutes of Technology\nThe UK Government defines institutes of technology as \"Business-led Institutes of Technology [that] offer higher level technical education to help close skills gaps in key STEM areas\". They deliver qualifications from level 3 (T-levels) to level 7 (master's degrees). The government is investing \u00a3300 million in developing a network of 21 institutes of technology across England, with 19 open as of September 2023[ [update]] and two further institutes expected to open in September 2024.\nPolytechnics\nPolytechnics were tertiary education teaching institutions in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The comparable institutions in Scotland were collectively referred to as central institutions.\nFrom 1965 to 1992, UK polytechnics operated under the binary system of education along with universities. Polytechnics offered diplomas and degrees (bachelor's, master's, PhD) validated at the national level by the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA). Initially they concentrated on engineering and applied science degree courses and other STEM subjects similar to technological universities in the US and continental Europe. Polytechnics were associated with innovations including women's studies, the academic study of communications and media, sandwich degrees and the rise of management and business studies.\nBritain's first polytechnic, the Royal Polytechnic Institution later known as the Polytechnic of Central London (now the University of Westminster) was established in 1838 at Regent Street in London and its goal was to educate and popularize engineering and scientific knowledge and inventions in Victorian Britain \"at little expense\". The London Polytechnic led a mass movement to create numerous polytechnic institutes across the UK in the late 19th century. Most polytechnic institutes were established at the center of major metropolitan cities and their focus was on engineering, applied science and technology education.\nThe designation \"institute of technology\" was occasionally used by polytechnics (Bolton), Central Institutions (Dundee, Robert Gordon's) and for the Cranfield Institute of Technology (now Cranfield University), most of which later adopted the designation university and there were two \"institutes of science and technology\": UMIST and UWIST (part of the University of Wales). Loughborough University was called Loughborough University of Technology from 1966 to 1996, the only institution in the UK to have had such a designation. The University of Strathclyde was the Royal Technical College from 1912 to 1956 and then the Royal College of Science and Technology from 1956 until granted university status in 1964.\nPolytechnics were granted university status under the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. This meant that polytechnics could confer degrees without the oversight of the national CNAA organization. These institutions are sometimes referred to as post-1992 universities.\nTechnical colleges\nIn 1956, some colleges of technology received the designation college of advanced technology. They became universities in 1966 meaning they could award their own degrees.\nInstitutions called \"technical institutes\" or \"technical schools\" that were formed in the early 20th century provided further education between high school and university or polytechnic. Most technical institutes have been merged into regional colleges and some have been designated university colleges if they are associated with a local university.\nUnited States.\nPolytechnic institutes in the USA are technological universities, many dating back to the mid-19th century. A handful of American universities include the phrases \"Institute of Technology\", \"Polytechnic Institute\", \"Polytechnic University\" or similar phrasing in their names; these are generally research-intensive universities with a focus on engineering, science and technology. Conversely, schools dubbed \"technical colleges\" or \"technical institutes\" generally provide post-secondary training in technical and mechanical fields, focusing on training vocational skills primarily at a community college level, parallel and sometimes equivalent to the first two years at a bachelor's degree-granting institution.\nSome of America's earliest institutes of technology include Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1824), Rochester Institute of Technology (1829), Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute (1854), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1861), and Worcester Polytechnic Institute (1865).\nVenezuela.\nInstitutes of technology in Venezuela were developed in the 1950s as an option for post-secondary education in technical and scientific courses, after the \"polytechnic\" French concepts. At that time, technical education was considered essential for the development of a sound middle class economy.\nNowadays, most of the \"Institutos de Tecnolog\u00eda\" are privately run businesses, with varying degrees of quality.\nMost of these institutes award diplomas after three or three and a half years of education. The institute of technology implementation (IUT, from ) began with the creation of the first IUT at Caracas, the capital city of Venezuela, called IUT. Dr. Federico Rivero Palacio adopted the French \"Institut Universitaire de Technologie\"s system, using French personnel and study system based on three-year periods, with research and engineering facilities at the same level as the main national universities to obtain French equivalent degrees. This IUT is the first and only one in Venezuela having French equivalent degrees accepted, implementing this system and observing the high-level degrees some other IUTs were created in \nVenezuela, regardless of this the term IUT was not used appropriately resulting in some institutions with mediocre quality and no equivalent degree in France. Later, some private institutions sprang up using IUT in their names, but they are not regulated by the original French system and award lower quality degrees.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2287895": "Late Middle Ages\nPeriod of European history between AD 1300 and 1500\nThe late Middle Ages or late medieval period was the period of European history lasting from 1300 to 1500 AD. The late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern period (and in much of Europe, the Renaissance).\nAround 1350, centuries of prosperity and growth in Europe came to a halt. A series of famines and plagues, including the Great Famine of 1315\u20131317 and the Black Death, reduced the population to around half of what it had been before the calamities. Along with depopulation came social unrest and endemic warfare. France and England experienced serious peasant uprisings, such as the Jacquerie and the Peasants' Revolt, as well as over a century of intermittent conflict, the Hundred Years' War. To add to the many problems of the period, the unity of the Catholic Church was temporarily shattered by the Western Schism. Collectively, those events are sometimes called the crisis of the late Middle Ages.\nDespite the crises, the 14th century was also a time of great progress in the arts and sciences. Following a renewed interest in ancient Greek and Roman texts that took root in the High Middle Ages, the Italian Renaissance began. The absorption of Latin texts had started before the Renaissance of the 12th century through contact with Arabs during the Crusades, but the availability of important Greek texts accelerated with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks, when many Byzantine scholars had to seek refuge in the West, particularly Italy.\nCombined with this influx of classical ideas was the invention of printing, which facilitated the dissemination of the printed word and democratized learning. Those two things would later lead to the Reformation. Toward the end of the period, the Age of Discovery began. The expansion of the Ottoman Empire cut off trading possibilities with the East. Europeans were forced to seek new trading routes, leading to the Spanish expedition under Christopher Columbus to the Americas in 1492 and Vasco da Gama's voyage to Africa and India in 1498. Their discoveries strengthened the economy and power of European nations.\nThe changes brought about by these developments have led many scholars to view this period as the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern history and of early modern Europe. However, the division is somewhat artificial, since ancient learning was never entirely absent from European society. As a result, there was developmental continuity between the ancient age (via classical antiquity) and the modern age. Some historians, particularly in Italy, prefer not to speak of the late Middle Ages at all but rather see the high period of the Middle Ages transitioning to the Renaissance and the modern era.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistoriography and periodization.\nThe term \"late Middle Ages\" refers to one of the three periods of the Middle Ages, along with the early Middle Ages and the High Middle Ages. Leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodization in his \"History of the Florentine People\" (1442). Flavio Biondo used a similar framework in \"Decades of History from the Deterioration of the Roman Empire\" (1439\u20131453). Tripartite periodization became standard after the German historian Christoph Cellarius published \"Universal History Divided into an Ancient, Medieval, and New Period\" (1683).\nFor 18th-century historians studying the 14th and 15th centuries, the central theme was the Renaissance, with its rediscovery of ancient learning and the emergence of an individual spirit. The heart of this rediscovery lies in Italy, where, in the words of Jacob Burckhardt, \"Man became a spiritual individual and recognized himself as such.\" This proposition was later challenged, and it was argued that the 12th century was a period of greater cultural achievement.\nAs economic and demographic methods were applied to the study of history, the trend was increasingly to see the late Middle Ages as a period of recession and crisis. Belgian historian Henri Pirenne continued the subdivision of Early, High, and late Middle Ages in the years around World War I. Yet it was his Dutch colleague, Johan Huizinga, who was primarily responsible for popularising the pessimistic view of the late Middle Ages, with his book \"The Autumn of the Middle Ages\" (1919). To Huizinga, whose research focused on France and the Low Countries rather than Italy, despair and decline were the main themes, not rebirth.\nModern historiography on the period has reached a consensus between the two extremes of innovation and crisis. It is now generally acknowledged that conditions were vastly different north and south of the Alps, and the term \"late Middle Ages\" is often avoided entirely within Italian historiography. The term \"Renaissance\" is still considered useful for describing certain intellectual, cultural, or artistic developments but not as the defining feature of an entire European historical epoch. The period from the early 14th century up until\u00a0\u2013 and sometimes including\u00a0\u2013 the 16th century is rather seen as characterized by other trends: demographic and economic decline followed by recovery, the end of Western religious unity and the subsequent emergence of the nation-state, and the expansion of European influence onto the rest of the world.\nHistory.\nThe limits of Christian Europe were still being defined in the 14th and 15th centuries. While the Grand Duchy of Moscow was beginning to repel the Mongols, and the Iberian kingdoms completed the Reconquista of the peninsula and turned their attention outwards, the Balkans fell under the dominance of the Ottoman Empire. Meanwhile, the remaining nations of the continent were locked in almost constant international or internal conflict.\nThe situation gradually led to the consolidation of central authority and the emergence of the nation state. The financial demands of war necessitated higher levels of taxation, resulting in the emergence of representative bodies\u00a0\u2013 most notably the English Parliament. The growth of secular authority was further aided by the decline of the papacy with the Western Schism and the coming of the Protestant Reformation.\nNorthern Europe.\nAfter the failed union of Sweden and Norway of 1319\u20131365, the pan-Scandinavian Kalmar Union was instituted in 1397. The Swedes were reluctant members of the Danish-dominated union from the start. In an attempt to subdue the Swedes, King Christian II of Denmark had large numbers of the Swedish aristocracy killed in the Stockholm Bloodbath of 1520. Yet this measure only led to further hostilities, and Sweden broke away for good in 1523. Norway, on the other hand, became an inferior party of the union and remained united with Denmark until 1814.\nIceland benefited from its relative isolation and was the last Scandinavian country to be struck by the Black Death. Meanwhile, the Norse colony in Greenland died out, probably under extreme weather conditions in the 15th century. These conditions might have been the effect of the Little Ice Age.\nNorthwest Europe.\nThe death of Alexander III of Scotland in 1286 threw the country into a succession crisis, and the English king, Edward I, was brought in to arbitrate. Edward claimed overlordship over Scotland, leading to the Wars of Scottish Independence. The English were eventually defeated, and the Scots were able to develop a stronger state under the Stewarts.\nFrom 1337, England's attention was largely directed towards France in the Hundred Years' War. Henry V's victory at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 briefly paved the way for a unification of the two kingdoms, but his son Henry VI soon squandered all previous gains. The loss of France led to discontent at home. Soon after the end of the war in 1453, the dynastic struggles of the Wars of the Roses (c. 1455\u20131485) began, involving the rival dynasties of the House of Lancaster and House of York.\nThe war ended in the accession of Henry VII of the House of Tudor, who continued the work started by the Yorkist kings of building a strong, centralized monarchy. While England's attention was thus directed elsewhere, the Hiberno-Norman lords in Ireland were becoming gradually more assimilated into Irish society, and the island was allowed to develop virtual independence under English overlordship.\nWestern Europe.\nThe French House of Valois, which followed the House of Capet in 1328, was at its outset marginalized in its own country, first by the English invading forces of the Hundred Years' War and later by the powerful Duchy of Burgundy. The emergence of Joan of Arc as a military leader changed the course of war in favour of the French, and the initiative was carried further by King Louis XI.\nMeanwhile, Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, met resistance in his attempts to consolidate his possessions, particularly from the Swiss Confederation formed in 1291. When Charles was killed in the Burgundian Wars at the Battle of Nancy in 1477, the Duchy of Burgundy was reclaimed by France. At the same time, the County of Burgundy and the wealthy Burgundian Netherlands came into the Holy Roman Empire under Habsburg control, setting up conflict for centuries to come.\nCentral Europe.\nBohemia prospered in the 14th century, and the Golden Bull of 1356 made the king of Bohemia first among the imperial electors, but the Hussite revolution threw the country into crisis. The Holy Roman Empire passed to the House of Habsburg in 1438, where it remained until its dissolution in 1806. Yet in spite of the extensive territories held by the Habsburgs, the Empire itself remained fragmented, and much real power and influence lay with the individual principalities. In addition, financial institutions, such as the Hanseatic League and the Fugger family, held great power, on both economic and political levels.\nThe Kingdom of Hungary experienced a golden age during the 14th century. In particular the reigns of the Angevin kings Charles Robert (1308\u201342) and his son Louis the Great (1342\u201382) were marked by success. The country grew wealthy as the main European supplier of gold and silver. Louis the Great led successful campaigns from Lithuania to Southern Italy, and from Poland to Northern Greece.\nHe had the greatest military potential of the 14th century with his enormous armies (often over 100,000 men). Meanwhile, Poland's attention was turned eastwards, as the Commonwealth with Lithuania created an enormous entity in the region. The union, and the conversion of Lithuania, also marked the end of paganism in Europe.\nLouis did not leave a son as heir after his death in 1382. Instead, he named as his heir the young prince Sigismund of Luxemburg. The Hungarian nobility did not accept his claim, and the result was an internal war. Sigismund eventually achieved total control of Hungary and established his court in Buda and Visegr\u00e1d. Both palaces were rebuilt and improved, and were considered the richest of the time in Europe. Inheriting the throne of Bohemia and the Holy Roman Empire, Sigismund continued conducting his politics from Hungary, but he was kept busy fighting the Hussites and the Ottoman Empire, which was becoming a menace to Europe in the beginning of the 15th century.\nKing Matthias Corvinus of Hungary led the largest army of mercenaries of the time, the Black Army of Hungary, which he used to conquer Moravia and Austria and to fight the Ottoman Empire. After Italy, Hungary was the first European country where the Renaissance appeared. However, the glory of the Kingdom ended in the early 16th century, when the King Louis II of Hungary was killed in the Battle of Moh\u00e1cs in 1526 against the Ottoman Empire. Hungary then fell into a serious crisis and was invaded, ending its significance in central Europe during the medieval era.\nEastern Europe.\nThe state of Kievan Rus' fell during the 13th century in the Mongol invasion. The Grand Duchy of Moscow rose in power thereafter, winning a great victory against the Golden Horde at the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380. The victory did not end Tartar rule in the region, however, and its immediate beneficiary was the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which extended its influence eastwards.\nUnder the reign of Ivan the Great (1462\u20131505), Moscow became a major regional power, and the annexation of the vast Republic of Novgorod in 1478 laid the foundations for a Russian national state. After the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Russian princes started to see themselves as the heirs of the Byzantine Empire. They eventually took on the imperial title of Tzar, and Moscow was described as the Third Rome.\nSoutheast Europe.\nThe Byzantine Empire had for a long time dominated the eastern Mediterranean in politics and culture. By the 14th century, however, it had almost entirely collapsed into a tributary state of the Ottoman Empire, centered on the city of Constantinople and a few enclaves in Greece. With the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Byzantine Empire was permanently extinguished.\nThe Bulgarian Empire was in decline by the 14th century, and the ascendancy of Serbia was marked by the Serbian victory over the Bulgarians in the Battle of Velbazhd in 1330. By 1346, the Serbian king Stefan Du\u0161an had been proclaimed emperor. Yet Serbian dominance was short-lived; the Serbian army led by the Lazar Hrebeljanovic was defeated by the Ottoman Army at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, where most of the Serbian nobility was killed and the south of the country came under Ottoman occupation, as much of southern Bulgaria had become Ottoman territory in the Battle of Maritsa 1371. Northern remnants of Bulgaria were finally conquered by 1396, Serbia fell in 1459, Bosnia in 1463, and Albania was finally subordinated in 1479 only a few years after the death of Skanderbeg. Belgrade, a Hungarian domain at the time, was the last large Balkan city to fall under Ottoman rule, in the siege of Belgrade of 1521. By the end of the medieval period, the entire Balkan peninsula was annexed by, or became vassal to, the Ottomans.\nSouthwest Europe.\nAvignon was the seat of the papacy from 1309 to 1376. With the return of the Pope to Rome in 1378, the Papal State developed into a major secular power, culminating in the morally corrupt papacy of Alexander VI. Florence grew to prominence amongst the Italian city-states through financial business, and the dominant Medici family became important promoters of the Renaissance through their patronage of the arts. Other city-states in northern Italy also expanded their territories and consolidated their power, primarily Milan, Venice, and Genoa. The War of the Sicilian Vespers had by the early 14th century divided southern Italy into an Aragon Kingdom of Sicily and an Anjou Kingdom of Naples. In 1442, the two kingdoms were effectively united under Aragonese control.\nThe 1469 marriage of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon and the 1479 death of John II of Aragon led to the creation of modern-day Spain. In 1492, Granada was captured from the Moors, thereby completing the Reconquista. Portugal had during the 15th century\u00a0\u2013 particularly under Henry the Navigator\u00a0\u2013 gradually explored the coast of Africa, and in 1498, Vasco da Gama found the sea route to India. The Spanish monarchs met the Portuguese challenge by financing the expedition of Christopher Columbus to find a western sea route to India, leading to the discovery of the Americas in 1492.\nLate medieval European society.\nAround 1300\u20131350, the Medieval Warm Period gave way to the Little Ice Age. The colder climate resulted in agricultural crises, the first of which is known as the Great Famine of 1315\u20131317. The demographic consequences of this famine, however, were not as severe as the plagues that occurred later in the century, particularly the Black Death. Estimates of the death rate caused by this epidemic range from one third to as much as sixty percent. By around 1420, the accumulated effect of recurring plagues and famines had reduced the population of Europe to perhaps no more than a third of what it was a century earlier. The effects of natural disasters were exacerbated by armed conflicts; this was particularly the case in France during the Hundred Years' War. It took 150 years for the European population to regain similar levels of 1300.\nAs the European population was severely reduced, land became more plentiful for the survivors, and labour was consequently more expensive. Attempts by landowners to forcibly reduce wages, such as the English 1351 Statute of Laborers, were doomed to fail. These efforts resulted in nothing more than fostering resentment among the peasantry, leading to rebellions such as the French Jacquerie in 1358 and the English Peasants' Revolt in 1381. The long-term effect was the virtual end of serfdom in Western Europe. In Eastern Europe, on the other hand, landowners were able to exploit the situation to force the peasantry into even more repressive bondage.\nThe upheavals caused by the Black Death left certain minority groups particularly vulnerable, especially the Jews, who were often blamed for the calamities. Anti-Jewish pogroms were carried out all over Europe; in February 1349, 2,000 Jews were murdered in Strasbourg. States were also guilty of discrimination against the Jews. Monarchs gave in to the demands of the people, and the Jews were expelled from England in 1290, from France in 1306, from Spain in 1492, and from Portugal in 1497.\nWhile the Jews were suffering persecution, one group that probably experienced increased empowerment in the late Middle Ages was women. The great social changes of the period opened up new possibilities for women in the fields of commerce, learning, and religion. Yet at the same time, women were also vulnerable to incrimination and persecution, as belief in witchcraft increased.\nThe accumulation of social, environmental, and health-related problems also led to an increase in interpersonal violence in most parts of Europe. Population increase, religious intolerance, famine, and disease led to an increase in violent acts in vast parts of medieval society. One exception to this was North-Eastern Europe, whose population managed to maintain low levels of violence due to a more organized society resulting from extensive and successful trade.\nUp until the mid-14th century, Europe had experienced steadily increasing urbanization. Cities were also decimated by the Black Death, but the role of urban areas as centres of learning, commerce, and government ensured continued growth. By 1500, Venice, Milan, Naples, Paris, and Constantinople each probably had more than 100,000 inhabitants. Twenty-two other cities were larger than 40,000; most of these were in Italy and the Iberian peninsula, but there were also some in France, the Empire, and the Low Countries, as well as London in England.\nMilitary history.\nThrough battles such as Courtrai (1302), Bannockburn (1314), and Morgarten (1315), it became clear to the great territorial princes of Europe that the military advantage of the feudal cavalry was lost and that a well equipped infantry was preferable. Through the Welsh Wars, the English became acquainted with, and adopted, the highly efficient longbow. Once properly managed, this weapon gave them a great advantage over the French in the Hundred Years' War.\nThe introduction of gunpowder affected the conduct of war significantly. Though employed by the English as early as the Battle of Cr\u00e9cy in 1346, firearms initially had little effect in the field of battle. It was through the use of cannons as siege weapons that major change was brought about; the new methods would eventually change the architectural structure of fortifications.\nChanges also took place within the recruitment and composition of armies. The use of the national or feudal levy was gradually replaced by paid troops of domestic retinues or foreign mercenaries. The practice was associated with Edward III of England and the condottieri of the Italian city-states. All over Europe, Swiss mercenaries were in particularly high demand. At the same time, the period also saw the emergence of the first permanent armies. It was in Valois France, under the heavy demands of the Hundred Years' War, that the armed forces gradually assumed a permanent nature.\nParallel to the military developments emerged also a constantly more elaborate chivalric code of conduct for the warrior class. This newfound ethos can be seen as a response to the diminishing military role of the aristocracy, and it gradually became almost entirely detached from its military origin. The spirit of chivalry was given expression through the new (secular) type of chivalric orders; the first of these was the Order of St. George, founded by Charles I of Hungary in 1325, while the best known was probably the English Order of the Garter, founded by Edward III in 1348.\nChristian conflict and reform.\nThe Papal Schism.\nThe French crown's increasing dominance over the Papacy culminated in the transference of the Holy See to Avignon in 1309. When the Pope returned to Rome in 1377, this led to the election of different popes in Avignon and Rome, resulting in the Western Schism (1378\u20131417). The Schism divided Europe along political lines; while France, her ally Scotland, and the Spanish kingdoms supported the Avignon Papacy, France's enemy England stood behind the pope in Rome, together with Portugal, Scandinavia, and most of the German princes.\nAt the Council of Constance (1414\u20131418), the Papacy was once more united in Rome. Even though the unity of the Western Church was to last for another hundred years, and though the Papacy was to experience greater material prosperity than ever before, the Great Schism had done irreparable damage. The internal struggles within the Church had impaired her claim to universal rule and promoted anti-clericalism among the people and their rulers, paving the way for reform movements.\nProtestant Reformation.\nThough many of the events were outside the traditional time period of the Middle Ages, the end of the unity of the Western Church (the Protestant Reformation) was one of the distinguishing characteristics of the medieval period. The Catholic Church had long fought against heretic movements, but during the late Middle Ages, it started to experience demands for reform from within. The first of these came from Oxford professor John Wycliffe in England. Wycliffe held that the Bible should be the only authority in religious questions, and he spoke out against transubstantiation, celibacy, and indulgences. In spite of influential supporters among the English aristocracy, such as John of Gaunt, the movement was not allowed to survive. Though Wycliffe himself was left unmolested, his supporters, the Lollards, were eventually suppressed in England.\nThe marriage of Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia established contacts between the two nations and brought Lollard ideas to her homeland. The teachings of the Czech priest Jan Hus were based on those of John Wycliffe, yet his followers, the Hussites, were to have a much greater political impact than the Lollards. Hus gained a great following in Bohemia, and in 1414, he was requested to appear at the Council of Constance to defend his cause. When he was burned as a heretic in 1415, it caused a popular uprising in the Czech lands. The subsequent Hussite Wars fell apart due to internal quarrels and did not result in religious or national independence for the Czechs, but both the Catholic Church and the German element within the country were weakened.\nMartin Luther, a German monk, started the German Reformation by posting 95 theses on the castle church of Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. The immediate provocation spurring this act was Pope Leo X's renewal of the indulgence for the building of the new St. Peter's Basilica in 1514. Luther was challenged to recant his heresy at the Diet of Worms in 1521. When he refused, he was placed under the ban of the Empire by Charles V. Receiving the protection of Frederick the Wise, he was then able to translate the Bible into German.\nTo many secular rulers, the Protestant Reformation was a welcome opportunity to expand their wealth and influence. The Catholic Church met the challenges of the reforming movements with what has been called the Catholic Reformation, or Counter-Reformation. Europe became split into northern Protestant and southern Catholic parts, resulting in the Religious Wars of the 16th and 17th centuries.\nTrade and commerce.\nThe increasingly dominant position of the Ottoman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean presented an impediment to trade for the Christian nations of the west, who in turn started looking for alternatives. Portuguese and Spanish explorers found new trade routes\u00a0\u2013 south of Africa to India, as well as across the Atlantic Ocean to America. As Genoese and Venetian merchants opened up direct sea routes with Flanders, the Champagne fairs lost much of their importance.\nAt the same time, English wool export shifted from raw wool to processed cloth, resulting in losses for the cloth manufacturers of the Low Countries. In the Baltic and North Sea, the Hanseatic League reached the peak of their power in the 14th century but started going into decline in the fifteenth.\nIn the late 13th and early 14th centuries, a process took place\u00a0\u2013 primarily in Italy but partly also in the Empire\u00a0\u2013 that historians have termed a \"commercial revolution\". Among the innovations of the period were new forms of partnership and the issuing of insurance, both of which contributed to reducing the risk of commercial ventures; the bill of exchange and other forms of credit that circumvented the canonical laws for gentiles against usury and eliminated the dangers of carrying bullion; and new forms of accounting, in particular double-entry bookkeeping, which allowed for better oversight and accuracy.\nWith the financial expansion, trading rights became more jealously guarded by the commercial elite. Towns saw the growing power of guilds, while on a national level, special companies would be granted monopolies on particular trades, like the English wool Staple. The beneficiaries of these developments would accumulate immense wealth. Families like the Fuggers in Germany, the Medicis in Italy, and the de la Poles in England and individuals like Jacques C\u0153ur in France would help finance the wars of kings, achieving great political influence in the process.\nThough there is no doubt that the demographic crisis of the 14th century caused a dramatic fall in production and commerce in \"absolute\" terms, there has been a vigorous historical debate over whether the decline was greater than the fall in population. While the older orthodoxy held that the artistic output of the Renaissance was a result of greater opulence, more recent studies have suggested that there might have been a so-called \"depression of the Renaissance\". In spite of convincing arguments for the case, the statistical evidence is simply too incomplete for a definite conclusion to be made.\nArts and sciences.\nIn the 14th century, the predominant academic trend of scholasticism was challenged by the humanist movement. Though primarily an attempt to revitalise the classical languages, the movement also led to innovations within the fields of science, art, and literature, helped by impulses from Byzantine scholars who had to seek refuge in the west after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.\nIn science, classical authorities like Aristotle were challenged for the first time since antiquity. Within the arts, humanism took the form of the Renaissance. Though the 15th-century Renaissance was a highly localised phenomenon\u00a0\u2013 limited mostly to the city-states of northern Italy\u00a0\u2013 artistic developments were taking place also further north, particularly in the Netherlands.\nPhilosophy, science and technology.\nThe predominant school of thought in the 13th century was the Thomistic reconciliation of the teachings of Aristotle with Christian theology. The Condemnation of 1277, enacted at the University of Paris, placed restrictions on ideas that could be interpreted as heretical, restrictions that had implication for Aristotelian thought. An alternative was presented by William of Ockham, following the manner of the earlier Franciscan John Duns Scotus, who insisted that the world of reason and the world of faith had to be kept apart. Ockham introduced the principle of parsimony\u00a0\u2013 or Occam's razor\u00a0\u2013 whereby a simple theory is preferred to a more complex one and speculation on unobservable phenomena is avoided. This maxim is, however, often misquoted. Occam was referring to his nominalism in this quotation. Essentially saying the theory of absolutes, or metaphysical realism, was unnecessary to make sense of the world.\nThis new approach liberated scientific speculation from the dogmatic restraints of Aristotelian science and paved the way for new approaches. Particularly within the field of theories of motion, great advances were made, when such scholars as Jean Buridan, Nicole Oresme, and the Oxford Calculators challenged the work of Aristotle. Buridan developed the theory of \"impetus\" as the cause of the motion of projectiles, which was an important step towards the modern concept of inertia. The works of these scholars anticipated the heliocentric worldview of Nicolaus Copernicus.\nCertain technological inventions of the period\u00a0\u2013 whether of Arab or Chinese origin or unique European innovations\u00a0\u2013 were to have great influence on political and social developments, in particular gunpowder, the printing press, and the compass. The introduction of gunpowder to the field of battle not only affected military organisation but also helped advance the nation-state. Gutenberg's movable type printing press made possible not only the Reformation but also a dissemination of knowledge that would lead to a gradually more egalitarian society. The compass, along with other innovations such as the cross-staff, the mariner's astrolabe, and advances in shipbuilding, enabled the navigation of the World Oceans and the early phases of colonialism. Other inventions had a greater impact on everyday life, such as eyeglasses and the weight-driven clock.\nVisual arts and architecture.\nA precursor to Renaissance art can be seen already in the early 14th-century works of Giotto. Giotto was the first painter since antiquity to attempt the representation of three-dimensional reality and endow his characters with true human emotions. The most important developments, however, came in 15th-century Florence. The affluence of the merchant class allowed extensive patronage of the arts, and foremost among the patrons were the Medici.\nThe period saw several important technical innovations, like the principle of linear perspective found in the work of Masaccio and later described by Brunelleschi. Greater realism was also achieved through the scientific study of anatomy, championed by artists like Donatello. This can be seen particularly well in his sculptures, inspired by the study of classical models. As the centre of the movement shifted to Rome, the period culminated in the High Renaissance masters da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael.\nThe ideas of the Italian Renaissance were slow to cross the Alps into northern Europe, but important artistic innovations were made also in the Low Countries. Though not\u00a0\u2013 as previously believed\u00a0\u2013 the inventor of oil painting, Jan van Eyck was a champion of the new medium and used it to create works of great realism and minute detail. The two cultures influenced each other and learned from each other, but painting in the Netherlands remained more focused on textures and surfaces than the idealized compositions of Italy.\nIn northern European countries, Gothic architecture remained the norm, and the Gothic cathedral was further elaborated. In Italy, on the other hand, architecture took a different direction, also here inspired by classical ideals. The crowning work of the period was the Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, with Giotto's clock tower, Ghiberti's baptistery gates, and Brunelleschi's cathedral dome of unprecedented proportions.\nLiterature.\nThe most important development of late medieval literature was the ascendancy of the vernacular languages. The vernacular had been in use in England since the 8th century and France since the 11th century, where the most popular genres had been the chanson de geste, troubadour lyrics, and romantic epics, or the romance. Though Italy was later in evolving a native literature in the vernacular language, it was here that the most important developments of the period were to come.\nDante Alighieri's \"Divine Comedy\", written in the early 14th century, merged a medieval worldview with classical ideals. Another promoter of the Italian language was Boccaccio with his \"Decameron\". The application of the vernacular did not entail a rejection of Latin, and both Dante and Boccaccio wrote prolifically in Latin as well as Italian, as would Petrarch later (whose \"Canzoniere\" also promoted the vernacular and whose contents are considered the first modern lyric poems). Together, the three poets established the Tuscan dialect as the norm for the modern Italian language.\nThe new literary style spread rapidly and in France, influenced such writers as Eustache Deschamps and Guillaume de Machaut. In England, Geoffrey Chaucer helped establish Middle English as a literary language with his \"Canterbury Tales\", which contained a wide variety of narrators and stories (including some translated from Boccaccio). The spread of vernacular literature eventually reached as far as Bohemia and the Baltic, Slavic, and Byzantine worlds.\nMusic.\nMusic was an important part of both secular and spiritual culture, and in the universities, it made up part of the \"quadrivium\" of the liberal arts. From the early 13th century, the dominant sacred musical form had been the motet, a composition with text in several parts. From the 1330s and onwards emerged the polyphonic style, which was a more complex fusion of independent voices. Polyphony had been common in the secular music of the Proven\u00e7al troubadours. Many of these had fallen victim to the 13th-century Albigensian Crusade, but their influence reached the papal court at Avignon.\nThe main representatives of the new style, often referred to as \"ars nova\" as opposed to \"ars antiqua\", were the composers Philippe de Vitry and Guillaume de Machaut. In Italy, where the Proven\u00e7al troubadours had also found refuge, the corresponding period goes under the name of trecento, and the leading composers were Giovanni da Cascia, Jacopo da Bologna, and Francesco Landini. A prominent reformer of Orthodox Church music from the first half of the 14th century was John Kukuzelis; he also introduced a system of notation widely used in the Balkans in the following centuries.\nTheatre.\nIn the British Isles, plays were produced in some 127 different towns during the Middle Ages. These vernacular Mystery plays were written in cycles of a large number of plays: York (48 plays), Chester (24), Wakefield (32), and Unknown (42). A larger number of plays survive from France and Germany in this period, and some type of religious drama was performed in nearly every European country in the late Middle Ages. Many of these plays contained comedy, devils, villains, and clowns.\nMorality plays emerged as a distinct dramatic form around 1400 and flourished until 1550, an example being \"The Castle of Perseverance\", which depicts mankind's progress from birth to death. Another famous morality play is \"Everyman\". Everyman receives Death's summons, struggles to escape, and finally resigns himself to necessity. Along the way, he is deserted by Kindred, Goods, and Fellowship \u2013 only Good Deeds goes with him to the grave.\nAt the end of the late Middle Ages, professional actors began to appear in England and Europe. Richard III and Henry VII both maintained small companies of professional actors. Their plays were performed in the Great Hall of a nobleman's residence, often with a raised platform at one end for the audience and a \"screen\" at the other for the actors. Also important were Mummers' plays, performed during the Christmas season, and court masques. These masques were especially popular during the reign of Henry VIII who had a House of Revels built and an Office of Revels established in 1545.\nThe end of medieval drama came about due to a number of factors, including the weakening power of the Catholic Church, the Protestant Reformation, and the banning of religious plays in many countries. Elizabeth I forbid all religious plays in 1558, and the great cycle plays had been silenced by the 1580s. Similarly, religious plays were banned in the Netherlands in 1539, the Papal States in 1547, and Paris in 1548. The abandonment of these plays destroyed the international theatre that had thereto existed and forced each country to develop its own form of drama. It also allowed dramatists to turn to secular subjects and the reviving interest in Greek and Roman theatre provided them with the perfect opportunity.\nAfter the Middle Ages.\nAfter the end of the late Middle Ages period, the Renaissance spread unevenly over continental Europe from the southern European region. The intellectual transformation of the Renaissance is viewed as a bridge between the Middle Ages and the Modern era. Europeans would later begin an era of world discovery. Combined with the influx of classical ideas was the invention of printing which facilitated dissemination of the printed word and democratized learning. These two things would lead to the Protestant Reformation. Europeans also discovered new trading routes, as was the case with Columbus' travel to the Americas in 1492, and Vasco da Gama's circumnavigation of Africa and India in 1498. Their discoveries strengthened the economy and power of European nations.\nOttomans and Europe.\nBy the end of the 15th century, the Ottoman Empire had advanced all over Southeast Europe, eventually conquering the Byzantine Empire and extending control over the Balkan states. Hungary was the last bastion of the Latin Christian world in the East, and fought to keep its rule over a period of two centuries. After the death of the young king Vladislaus I of Hungary during the Battle of Varna in 1444 against the Ottomans, the Kingdom was placed in the hands of Count John Hunyadi, who became Hungary's regent-governor (1446\u20131453). Hunyadi was considered one of the most relevant military figures of the 15th century: Pope Pius II awarded him the title of \"Athleta Christi\", or Champion of Christ, for being the only hope of resisting the Ottomans from advancing to Central and Western Europe.\nHunyadi succeeded during the siege of Belgrade in 1456 against the Ottomans, the biggest victory against that empire in decades. This battle became a real crusade against the Muslims, as the peasants were motivated by the Franciscan friar Saint John of Capistrano, who came from Italy predicating him holy war. The effect that it created in that time was one of the main factors that helped in achieving the victory. However the premature death of the Hungarian lord left Pannonia defenseless and in chaos. In an extremely unusual event for the Middle Ages, Hunyadi's son, Matthias, was elected as king of Hungary by the Hungarian nobility. For the first time, a member of an aristocratic family (and not from a royal family) was crowned.\nKing Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (1458\u20131490) was one of the most prominent figures of the period, directing campaigns to the West, conquering Bohemia in answer to the pope's call for help against the Hussite Protestants. Also, in resolving political hostilities with the German emperor Frederick III of Habsburg, he invaded his western domains. Matthew organized the Black Army of mercenary soldiers; it was considered as the biggest army of its time. Using this powerful tool, the Hungarian king led wars against the Turkish armies and stopped the Ottomans during his reign. After the death of Matthew, and with end of the Black Army, the Ottoman Empire grew in strength and Central Europe was defenseless. At the Battle of Moh\u00e1cs, the forces of the Ottoman Empire annihilated the Hungarian army and Louis II of Hungary drowned in the Csele Creek while trying to escape. The leader of the Hungarian army, P\u00e1l Tomori, also died in the battle. This is considered to be one of the final battles of medieval times.\nTimeline.\n\"Dates are approximate, consult particular articles for details\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Legend/styles.css\" />\u00a0<templatestyles src=\"Legend/styles.css\" />\u00a0 Middle Ages themes <templatestyles src=\"Legend/styles.css\" />\u00a0 Other themes\n14th century\n<templatestyles src=\"Plainlist/styles.css\"/>\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nLithuania defeats Golden Horde. Principality of Kiev becomes part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania\n15th century\n<templatestyles src=\"Plainlist/styles.css\"/>\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["1121030", "2287895", "14272652", "9687589"], "permutation_1": ["2287895", "1121030", "14272652", "9687589"], "permutation_2": ["2287895", "1121030", "9687589", "14272652"], "permutation_3": ["14272652", "2287895", "9687589", "1121030"]}
{"id": "nq_-1446769669686008214", "docs_added": {"2990278": "Learner's permit\nRestricted license\nA driver's permit, learner's permit, student permit, learner's license or provisional license is a restricted license that is given to a person who is learning to drive, but has not yet satisfied the prerequisite to obtain a driver's license. Having a learner's permit for a certain length of time is usually one of the requirements (along with driver's education and a road test) for applying for a full driver's license. To get a learner's permit, one must typically pass a written permit test, take a basic competency test in the vehicle, or both.\nAustralia.\nLaws regarding learner's permits in Australia differ between each state. However, all states require a number of hours supervised driving to be undertaken and for the permit to be held for a set period. The age to get a Learner Permit is 16 in all states and territories except the ACT where it is 15 and 9 months. When a person is on their learner's permit, they have to log 50\u2013120 hours depending on the state they are in and must obtain at least 5-20 night hours. They can be supervised or taught in their log book hours by any person/persons holding a full license. They must sign the log book for allocated hours. Learner drivers must display an 'L' plate on their car and have a 0% Blood alcohol content(BAC). Some states, do provide online applications to log these hours digitally.\nBelgium.\nA provisional learners license can be obtained after passing a theoretical exam less than three years prior. The minimum age for a learners permit is 17 years. The learner needs to be accompanied by a designated person with a valid driving license. The vehicle needs to bear a clearly visible, predesignated \"learners\" sign, sporting the letter \"L\".\nIf the learner goes to a driving school and follows 20 hours of lessons, he or she gets another learner's permit. With this, he or she can drive with maximum two people who have had their driver's license for at least 8 years, or the learner can drive by him/herself, but with some restrictions: the learner cannot drive between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays; and the learner cannot drive on the evenings before a legal holiday, or the evening of the holiday itself.\nCanada.\nThe minimum age to get a learner's licence in Canada varies from 14 in Alberta to 16 in all other provinces, with the minimum age being 15 in the territories.\nOntario.\nA G1 Licence is issued to new drivers at the age of 16 after completing a written test. G1 license restrictions include the following:\nNova Scotia.\nA beginner's permit (L) is issued to new drivers in Nova Scotia who are 16 years of age or older, after the person passes a written test. The L license restrictions include:\nAlberta.\nA Class 7 licence is issued to those who are 14 years of age or older and complete a knowledge test and eye exam. They are then put into a graduated driver licensing program with restrictions. These restrictions include:\nDrivers with the Class 7 GDL licence must hold said license for one year before upgrading at which point a driver will be able take a road test if they are 16 years of age or older. If they pass, they become eligible to upgrade their licence to a Class 5 GDL. A Class 5 GDL licence carries some of the same restrictions as the Class 7 licence, but no longer requires a fully licensed Class 5 non-GDL driver in the passenger seat. Once the person becomes 18 and holds the Class 5 GDL license for at least 2 years, they can transition their licence to a full class 5 licence without having to take a road test again.\nFrance.\nIn France, there is a graduated driver licensing program for people between the ages of 15 and 17 and half, for the B driving licence. There are some restrictions: for instance, a fully qualified driver must accompany the learner.\nAt age 18, the learner's permit can apply to a normal driving license, that it can pass more easily due to its previous experience; additionally, the length of the probation period (or \"permis probatoire\") is lowered to two years.\nThis graduated driver licensing is valid only within France; thus one cannot use it to cross borders.\nFor people over 18, there is a system similar to Graduated driver licensing, but the rules are slightly different: for instance there is no reduction from three to two years for the probation licence.\nFurthermore, once receiving a full driving license for the first time, the following restrictions apply for two or three years, known as \"permis probatoire\":\nSome training to road traffic safety might help to recover points.\nGermany.\nGermany does not issue a Learner's Permit and does not allow driving lessons other than with a fully licensed driving instructor. The minimum age for a Class B driving license for private cars is 18 years. However, obtaining a provisional driving license is possible for anyone aged 17 after receiving full training in a driving school and passing both the regular theory and on-the-road test. Until the young drivers reach the age of 18, they must be accompanied in the car by an experienced license holder. This regulation is called \"BF17\" (Begleitetes Fahren, accompanied driving), see Graduated driver licensing.\nHong Kong.\nIn Hong Kong, any person aged 18 or above can apply for a Learner's Driving License for private cars, light goods vehicle and motorcycles. For other types of vehicle, the age required is 21 and the applicant must have a valid private car or light goods vehicle driving license for 3 years. Unlike other jurisdictions, a learner must be supervised by an approved driving instructor instead of an ordinary fully licensed driver, or attending an approved driving school to learn to drive (except motorcycles, which learners can drive on their own, but motorcycle learners must pass a motorcycle course from an approved driving school before they can learn to drive on road). L-plate is also required when the learner is practicing.\nIndia.\nIn India, the minimum age at which a provisional licence is valid is 18 (motorcycle/scooter). When driving under a provisional license, the learner must be accompanied by a driver who holds a full driving license. The supervisor has to be in view of the road and be in a position to control the vehicle. The provisional license is available only after passing the theory test. A full licence can be acquired only after passing the driving test. Once the learner has passed the theory test, they may take the practical driving test. Once the practical driving test has been taken and passed, a full driving licence will be automatically issued. While it is possible to take both tests immediately after each other, most learner drivers take a period between taking the theory and applying for a practical test to carry out driving lessons, either with their supervisor or a professional Driving school.\nThe vehicle being driven by the learner must also be fitted with L-plates on both the back and front of the vehicle. This tells other road users that the vehicle is being operated by a driver without their full license and that they may make mistakes easily and that the driver may not be fully competent yet. The L-plate consists of a white square plate with a large red L in the middle.\nIreland.\nIn Ireland, the learner may perform a theory test at the age of 16 which tests their knowledge of traffic situations and road signs. Upon passing this test the learner will receive a learner's permit which permits them to drive on the road accompanied by a full licensed driver who has had their license for more than two years. The only restrictions are that the learner driver cannot drive on motorways and must visibly display 'L' plates at all times. They must have held their learner's permit for 6 months before they can apply to perform road test to obtain their full license. This is known as the 'six-month rule'.\nItaly.\nIn Italy, any person aged 14 or above can apply for a driving license (\"patente di guida\"). For B licences, obtainable from 18 years old, learner has to perform a theory test which tests their knowledge of traffic situations, road signs, insurance, sanctions, etc. Upon passing this test (the learner has two opportunities to pass it), the learner will receive a learner's permit (\"foglio rosa\", literally pink sheet, given its color) which allows them to drive on the road, if accompanied by a driver which had their license for more than ten years. There are no restrictions on the horsepower of the car (there will be during the first year of full license). The learner can drive on motorways and must display 'P' (standing for \"Principiante\", beginner) stickers, both in the front and in the back of the vehicle. After receiving the \"foglio rosa\", they have 6 months to perform a road test to obtain the full license; should the learner be unable to pass the road test in 6 months (two opportunities to pass it, spaced one month apart), they have to pay for another \"foglio rosa.\"\nNew Zealand.\nLearner licence.\nIn New Zealand, any eligible person 16 years or over can sit a learner licence test for a class 1 vehicle (car) or class 6 vehicle (motorbike), which is a theory multiple choice test on road rules. Once they have passed the learner licence test and received their licence in the mail, they may drive with an adult who has had their full licence of the same class for at least two years (a 'supervisor'). They may carry passengers with a supervisor in the car, but learner motorcyclists may not carry a pillion passenger. They must display L plates at all times when driving and may observe the posted speed limits.\nRestricted licence.\nAfter at least 6 months have passed, they must pass a practical test to receive their restricted license. On a restricted license, the learner may only drive between 5\u00a0am - 10pm, with no passengers other than their dependent children, spouse or someone for whom they are the primary caregiver; they may drive at any time when accompanied by a supervisor. Learners who sit the practical test in an automatic car are only legally allowed to drive an automatic while on the restricted licence. If a driver has successfully completed an approved defensive driving course, the wait time between passing the restricted licence practical test and taking the full licence practical test is reduced from 18 months to 12 months.\nNorway.\nIn Norway, the learner may drive as long the learner is over 16 years of age, have passed a basic course in the rules of the road and first aid, and a person 25 or above who has had their driver's license for more than 5 years is present.\nSingapore.\nIn Singapore, any persons aged 18 or above may obtain a provisional driving licence for a fee of S$25.00 after passing the Basic Theory Test. The provisional driving licence is valid for 6 months if the PDL licence is obtained before 1 December 2017. From 1 December 2017, the validity of a PDL licence is 2 years from the date of payment, with no change of cost. It permits the holder to drive on public roads (with a few exceptions) in the presence of a Certified Driving Instructor. A car driven by a learner must display an L-plate on the front and rear of the car. Passing the Final Theory Test enables a learner to apply for the Practical Driving Test and it is valid for 2 years. A valid provisional driving licence, passed FTT and a photo ID must be presented to be allowed to take the practical test. Should a learner's provisional driving licence expire before the date of their practical test, he or she will have to renew it at the same cost. Expired PDL are not accepted and taking the practical tests will be rejected.\nA Qualified Driving Licence (QDL) is awarded to a person who has passed the practical test and made a one-time payment of S$50.00. Any person who has possessed a QDL for a period of less than a year is required to display a probation plate at the top right of their front and rear windscreens. The probation plate is made of a reflective material and consists of an orange triangle on a yellow background. Failure to do so may cause the offending driver to receive a fine for the first time and then subsequently revoked from driving.\nSee Driving licence in Singapore for detailed requirements of each class of licence.\nSouth Africa.\nA South African learner's license consists of three sections with the following criteria required:\nThere are primarily three codes to choose from:\nThe following documents will need to be presented when applying for a learners license:\nIn South Africa, any person who is of the minimum required age and holds a valid ID document may sit a learner's licence exam. The minimum required age varies by vehicle class and has the following minimum age restrictions:\nThe Learner's Licence exam is a 64 question multiple choice exam with questions spread over three sections: Rules of the road (28 questions); Signs, signals and road markings (28 questions), and vehicle controls (8 questions).\n The holder of a learner's licence is allowed to drive only when supervised by a licensed driver. If the category of vehicle being driven requires a professional driving permit, the licensed driver must also hold a professional driving permit. South African Learners must carry their Learner's Licence with them whenever they are driving a vehicle and have L plates on the rear window. The Learner's Licence is valid for 24 months.\nSweden.\nIn Sweden, the minimum age is 16 years old to get a basic car learner's permit; 17 years and six months are required for more advanced light vehicle combinations and up to 23 years for heavy vehicle combinations. K\u00f6rkortslag 4kap 2\u00a7 A Swedish Learner's permit does not require a test, but only allows practising with a teacher. The teacher, including a private teacher such as a parent, must also have a permit. After a successful test, a real driver's license is given with a probationary period of two years. During this period, serious traffic violations that would lead to a suspension of the driver's license such as excessive speeding or gross reckless driving would instead revoke the driver's license. Restoration of the driver's license requires all tests to be retaken.\nThailand.\nIn Thailand, the minimum age is 18 years old to obtain a temporary driving licence for cars and motorcycles, valid for 2 years. For motorcycles 110 cc or smaller, the minimum age is 15. A temporary driving licence holder may drive without supervision, but cannot apply for an International Driving Permit.\nAfter holding the temporary driving licence for at least 1 year, the licence holder may apply for a full 5-year driving licence for the same type of vehicle (2-year car => 5-year car or 2-year motorcycle to 5-year motorcycle). A medical certificate and a physical evaluation of visual and reaction time are required. This process is commonly called \"two to five\" meaning a conversion of a two-year to a five-year licence, as opposed to a renewal of a full licence, \"five to five\". In the event a temporary small motorcycle licence is set to expire while the holder is younger than 18, the new licence will be a two-year temporary licence.\nIf the temporary licence has expired for one year, a written examination is required. In case of three years or longer, a practical exam and a lecture are also required.\nUnited Kingdom.\nIn the United Kingdom, the minimum age at which a provisional licence is valid is 17 (16 for driving a tractor, riding a moped or those receiving Disability Mobility Allowance). When driving under a provisional licence, the learner must be accompanied by a driver who has held a full driving licence for three years, and who is 21 or over. The supervisor has to be in view of the road, however the Road Traffic Act 1988 states that the supervisor does not have to be in the passenger seat, although the passenger in the front seat does have to be over the age of 15. A full licence can be acquired as soon as the provisional licence is received, unlike many other countries where applicants must wait a minimum of 6\u201312 months before getting a full license. The provisional licence is available without taking a test, although to get a full, unrestricted licence, the applicant must take a written 'Theory' test containing fifty multiple choice questions and a fourteen-clip hazard perception test, both of which are done on a computer at one of the many DVSA (Driving and Vehicle Standards Agency) Test centres. Once the learner has passed the theory test, they may take the practical driving test; however the practical driving test has to be passed within 2 years of completing the theory test, as the theory test certificate expires 2 years after receiving it. Once the practical driving test has been passed, a full driving licence will be automatically issued. One can take the practical test immediately after the theory test, but most learner drivers take some time between them to take driving lessons, usually with a professional driving instructor.\nA vehicle being driven by a learner driver must be fitted with L-plates on both the back and front of the vehicle. These tell other road users that the vehicle is being operated by a driver without a full licence and that they may make mistakes easily and that the driver may not be fully competent yet. The L-plate consists of a white square plate (often tied to the vehicle or attached by magnets) with a large red L in the middle. (In Wales a D-plate (D for \"dysgwr\", Welsh for \"learner\") may be used instead of an L-plate.) If the vehicle is operated by multiple named drivers (as specified by the car insurance policy), then the L-plate should be removed while the car is being driven by a holder of a full licence. When the learner has passed the test, they can display a non-compulsory 'P' plate, which shows that they have just passed their test, and so may not have much experience on the road. The P plate has a white background, with a green 'P'.\nIn the UK, provisional licence holders are not allowed to drive on motorways unless accompanied by a driving instructor and in a car fitted with dual controls.\nAfter gaining a full licence, the driver is subject to a probationary period: six or more penalty points accumulated within two years of passing the test would lead to a revocation of the licence, and both tests would need to be retaken.\nIn Northern Ireland for one year after the passing of a driving test, the driver is defined as a \"restricted driver\" who must not exceed and must display an \"R-plate\" consisting of an amber sans-serif R on a white background.\nUnited States.\nIn the United States, all states and Washington D.C. have graduated driver's license programs for teenage drivers. Although the specific requirements vary by state, in a typical program a minor must first obtain a learner's permit and meet specific requirements to qualify for an intermediate driver's license, before ultimately becoming eligible for a full driver's license.\nLearner's permits.\nFor a minor to receive a learner's permit, sometimes called an \"instructional permit\", states typically require that the minor have at least 6 practice hours before getting the permit and signed permission from a parent or guardian. In the state of New Hampshire, a permit is not given but the young driver may begin to drive with a parent or guardian, or an adult 25 years of age, at the age of 15 and a half.\nTypically, a driver operating with a learner's permit must be accompanied by an adult licensed driver who is at least 21 years of age or older and in the passenger seat of the vehicle at all times.\nAfter a legally defined period of driving supervised with a permit, usually between six and twelve months, and upon reaching the requisite age, the holder of a learner's permit can apply for a provisional license. Obtaining a provisional license allows certain restrictions to be lifted from the driver, such as the times that they are allowed to drive, and the number of people allowed in the car.\nSome states require the permit holder to document specific hours of driving under the permit before qualifying for an intermediate license, such as fifty hours of practice.\nIntermediate license.\nAn intermediate or provisional license allows the driver to drive a vehicle without supervision by a licensed driver. Driving is typically permitted during a limited range of mostly daylight hours, as well as to and from school, work and religious activities. Some states may require a road test before allowing a learner's permit holder to obtain an intermediate license.\nTo qualify for a provisional license the applicant must typically be at least the age of 16 and must have previously held a learner's permit for at least six months. These requirements vary by state. For example, in Florida the prior period for holding a learner's permit is twelve months.\nIn many states, the period of driving on a learner's permit is shortened if the applicant is above the age of eighteen. For example, in Oklahoma if a driver is 18 or older a learner's permit must only be held for one month before the driver qualifies for an intermediate license. Some states allow drivers over the age of twenty-one to bypass the entire graduated licensing process. For example, in Colorado, a driver over the age of twenty-one may apply for and pass the tests for a permit and a full driver's license on the same day and, if successful in passing the tests, may obtain a full driver's license as soon as the driver passes a scheduled driving test.\nIntermediate drivers are normally restricted in their transportation of passengers, especially minor passengers, without supervision.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "39527321": "Driver's license\nDocument allowing one to drive a motorized vehicle\nA driver's license, driving licence, or driving permit is a legal authorization, or the official document confirming such an authorization, for a specific individual to operate one or more types of motorized vehicles\u2014such as motorcycles, cars, trucks, or buses\u2014on a public road. Such licenses are often plastic and the size of a credit card.\nIn most international agreements, the wording \"driving permit\" is used, for instance in the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic. In American English, the terms \"driver license\" or \"driver's license\" are used. In Australian English, Canadian English and New Zealand English, the terms \"driver licence\" or \"driver's licence\" are used while in British English the term is \"driving licence\". In some countries the term \"driving license\" is used.\nThe laws relating to the licensing of drivers vary between jurisdictions. In some jurisdictions, a permit is issued after the recipient has passed a driving test, while in others a person acquires their permit or a learner's permit before beginning to drive. Different categories of permit often exist for different types of motor vehicles, particularly large trucks and passenger vehicles. The difficulty of the driving test varies considerably between jurisdictions, as do factors such as age and the required level of competence and practice.\nHistory.\nKarl Benz, inventor of the modern car, received a written \"Genehmigung\" (permit) from the Grand Ducal authorities to operate his car on public roads in 1888 after residents complained about the noise and smell of his \"Motorwagen\". Up until the start of the 20th century, European authorities issued similar permits to drive motor vehicles \"ad hoc,\" if at all.\nMandatory licensing for drivers in the United Kingdom came into force on 1 January 1904 after the Motor Car Act 1903 received royal assent. Every car owner had to register their vehicle with their local government authority and be able to prove registration of their vehicle on request. The minimum qualifying age was set at 17. The \"driving licence\" gave its holder 'freedom of the road' with a maximum speed limit. Compulsory testing was introduced in 1934, with the passing of the Road Traffic Act.\nPrussia, then a kingdom within the German Empire, introduced compulsory licensing on 29 September 1903. A test on mechanical aptitude had to be passed and the \"Dampfkessel\u00fcberwachungsverein\" (\"steam boiler supervision association\") was charged with conducting these tests. In 1910, the German imperial government mandated the licensing of drivers on a national scale, establishing a system of tests and driver's education requirements that was adopted in other countries.\nOther countries in Europe also introduced driving tests during the twentieth century, the last of them being Belgium where, until as recently as 1977, it was possible to purchase and hold a permit without having to undergo a driving test.\nAs traffic-related fatalities soared in North America, public outcry provoked legislators to begin studying the French and German statutes as models. On 1 August 1910, North America's first licensing law for motor vehicles went into effect in the U.S. state of New York, though it initially applied only to professional chauffeurs. In July 1913, the state of New Jersey became the first to require \"all\" drivers to pass a mandatory examination before being licensed.\nIn 1909, the Convention with Respect to the International Circulation of Motor Vehicles recognized the need for qualifications, examination, and authorization for international driving.\nThe notion of an \"International Driving Permit\" was first mooted in an international convention held in Paris in 1926.\nIn 1949, the United Nations hosted the Geneva Convention on Road Traffic that standardised rules on roads, occupants, rules, signs, driver's permits and such. It specified that national \"driving permits\" should be pink and that an \"International Driving Permit\" for driving in a number of countries should have grey covers with white pages and that \"The entire last page shall be drawn up in French\".\nIn 1968, the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic, ratified in 1977 and further updated in 2011, further modernised these agreements.\nIts main regulations about drivers permits are in Annex 6 (Domestic Driving Permit) and Annex 7 (International Driving Permit). The currently active version of those is in force in each contracting party no later than \"29 March 2011\" (Article 43).\nArticle 41 of the convention describes key requirements:\nIn 2018, ISO/IEC standard 18013 was published which established guidelines for the design format and data content of an ISO-compliant driving licence (IDL). The design approach is to establish a secure domestic driving permit (DDP) and accompanying booklet for international use, instead of the international driving permit (IDP) paper document. The main ideology is a minimum acceptable set of requirements with regards to content and layout of the data elements, with sufficient freedom afforded to the issuing authorities of driving licences to meet domestic needs. The ISO standard specifies requirements for a card that is aligned with the UN Conventions on Road Traffic. This standard however has no official mandate or recognition from the WP.1 of UNECE as a replacement for the current IDP standards as described in the 1949 and 1968 Conventions.\nThe specifications of the layout of the booklet is defined in Annex G of ISO/IEC 18013-1:2018. There are two options; a booklet with some personalisation or a booklet with no personalisation. The booklet shall be marginally larger than an ID-1 size card, with an insert pocket for storage of the card, and for convenient carrying of the booklet. The front cover should include the logo of the UN or the issuing country and the words \"Translation of Driving Licence\" and \"Traduction du Permis de Conduire \".\nUse for identification purposes.\nMany countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, have no national identification cards. Since many people do have driving permits, they are often accepted as proof of identity. In some territories, non-drivers can apply for identification-only cards with a similar format to a driving permit. Most identity cards and driving permits are credit card size\u2014the \"ID-1\" size and shape defined in ISO/IEC 7810.\nAsia.\nA Hong Kong Driving Licence carries the same number as the holder's ID card, but has no photograph. As such, it is not a legal document for proof of age for purchase of alcohol. Upon control, both must be presented. Plans to make the newly phased in Smart ID contain driver licensing information have been shelved.\nSimilarly, the Saudi Arabian government require all drivers to carry an ID card in addition to a driving permit and present them whenever requested. In Saudi Arabia using a permit instead is only permitted if the request is made for on-site inspection/identification purposes, especially at checkpoints. Expatriates may be requested to present their visas as well.\nIn India, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore, driving permit cards are widely used as identification.\nEurope.\nMany European countries require drivers to produce their permit on demand when driving. Some European countries require adults to carry proof of identity at all times, but a driving permit is not valid for identification in every European country.\nIn the United Kingdom, most drivers are not required to carry their \"Driving Licence\". A driver may be required by a constable or vehicle examiner to produce this, but may provide it at a specified police station within seven days; the police issue a form for this purpose.\nIn Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Spain and Sweden, the driving permit number is listed along with the bearer's national identification number. Banks and public authorities use the same number for customer databases, making the permit fully useful for identification purposes.\nNorth America.\nIn Canada, Mexico, and the United States, driving permits are issued by the provinces or states, respectively, (or either country's territories), and do not look the same nationwide. They are also used as a \"de facto\" or government-issued identification document for the holder.\nThe American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators provides a standard for the design of driving permits and identification cards issued by AAMVA member jurisdictions, which include all 50 US states, the District of Columbia, and Canadian territories and provinces. The newest card design standard released is the 2020 AAMVA DL/ID Card Design Standard (CDS). The AAMVA standard generally follows part 1 and part 2 of ISO/IEC 18013-1 (ISO compliant driving license). The ISO standard in turn specifies requirements for a card that is aligned with the UN Conventions on Road Traffic, namely the Geneva Convention on Road Traffic and the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic.\nMost government issuers of driving permits also provide a government-issued identification card with similar attributes to those residents within their jurisdictions who do not have or maintain a valid driving permit, making it easier for them to do things such as open a bank account and perform any other activities that require official identification. Identification cards serve as government-issued photo ID but do not enable a person to operate a motor vehicle, a fact typically noted on the ID via the phrase 'Not a driver's licence' or similar wording. This type of photo ID is referred to as a Photo Card in some jurisdictions (for example, the Ontario Photo Card).\nIn Canada and the United States, the abbreviation DLN is commonly used for a driver's license number. Five states in the northern United States (Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Vermont and Washington) and two provinces in Canada (British Columbia and Manitoba) also offer an \"enhanced driver's license\" (EDL), which is a driving permit that has an embedded RFID chip and is accepted at the federal level in lieu of a passport for land and sea (but not air) border crossings between the US and Canada. The EDL program was also previously offered in Ontario and Quebec, but is no longer offered there.\nIn the Dominican Republic, the driving permit number is the same as the citizen's ID number.\nSouth America.\nIn Venezuela, the driving permit number is the same as the citizen's ID number.\nPermits for different categories of vehicles.\nIn the United States, New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Ireland and sometimes Canada, people who drive commercially are required to have permits. The cost of taking the tests and examinations usually means that an employer will subsidize their drivers.\nAfrica.\nEgypt.\nEgyptian citizens are entitled to a driver's licence once they have reached the age of 18. To obtain their licences, applicants must pass a driving test as well as several computer test. To pass, all a person had to do was drive six metres forward and then reverse six metres. The test was updated to make it more difficult; now the applicant has to get 8 out of 10 answers correct in a computer test, then pass a forward and reverse S-track test in addition to an assessment of parking skills.\nGhana.\nDriver's licensing in Ghana is conducted by the nation's Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority. The legal driving age is 18.\nKenya.\nThe legal driving age is 18 years old. The permit must include:\nMorocco.\nThe legal driving age of Moroccan citizens is 21.\nNigeria.\nIn Nigeria, the minimum age to qualify for a drivers licence is 18. The applicant would first attend training at an accredited driving school. Then, the driving school will present the applicant to a Vehicle Inspection Officer (VIO) for a driving test. Upon passing the driving test the applicant would obtain a certificate of proficiency from the VIO. The applicant then completes a drivers license application form at the Drivers Licence Centre (DLC) or downloads the form online. Afterwards he pays a licence fee online or at the Bank and presents his application form to the Board of Internal Revenue (BIR) Officer and VIO at the DLC for endorsement. After all these procedures he goes to the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) Officer at the DLC for biometric data capture. He is given a temporary drivers licence which is valid for 60 days. He picks up the original drivers licence at the BIR Office after 60 days.\nSouth Africa.\nThe minimum driving age in South Africa is 17, when drivers may drive with an adult who holds a valid driving licence, after passing a learner's theory test. At 18, a driving licence can be obtained after passing the road test. Small motorcycles may be driven from the age of 16. To obtain a permit, applicants must pass a written or computer-based test to obtain a learner's licence, and then pass a road test to obtain the driving license. Categories for permits include CODE B (normal vehicles), CODE C1 (LDV), CODE EC (heavy trucks), CODE A (motorcycle).\nThe learners licence theory test will contain three sets of questions with multiple answer options; test-takers will have to select the correct answer. Some Driving Licence Test Centres use computers for the test, whereas others require test-takers to complete the test using a test paper and pen.\nTanzania.\nDriving licences are issued by the Tanzania Revenue Authority. The legal driving age for motorcycles is 16 and for other motor vehicles is 18.\nZimbabwe.\nZimbabwean drivers licences are issued by the Vehicle Inspection Department (VID) which is an arm of the government under the Ministry of Transport & Infrastructural Development. Drivers can be licensed for class 4 vehicles at the age of sixteen and eighteen for class 2 vehicles. Public transport vehicles are in class 1 and the minimum age is twenty five. A theory based learners licence which has 25 questions is the first step. The questions for this test include diagrams, road rules and road signs and has to be answered in under eight minutes. After passing the test, the candidate gets a provisional learners license which enables the candidate to drive under supervision from a driving instructor or anyone with a full driving licence.\nAfter the theory test learner drivers have to start practical driving lessons covering key driving skills. To qualify for a driving test one must have completed thirty lessons.\nSkills tested in the driving test include:\nAsia.\nHong Kong.\nMinimum age for holding a driving permit is 18 for private cars, light goods vehicle, motorcycles and motortricycles. For commercial vehicles the age is 21.\nDrivers are legally obliged to carry a valid driving licence whilst driving and this must be produced if required to do so by a police officer.\nPeople older than 70 have to undergo strict medical tests in order to obtain a permit that has limited validity and requires renewal after a certain period.\nIndia.\nThe minimum driving age in India is 16 to drive any kind of gearless motorcycle like scooters and mopeds, and 18 for cars, three wheelers (with automatic or manual transmissions) and motorcycles with gear like motorcycles or scooters with manual transmissions.\nUnlike certain countries which issue driving licenses based on the engine capacity of vehicles, transmission is the only criteria for issuing licenses in India.\nEvery state and union territory have Regional Transport Offices (RTO/RTA) which issue their own driving licenses to people living in their jurisdictions. Drivers are legally obliged to carry a valid driving license in India while operating a vehicle, and it must be produced if required to do so by a police officer.\nPeople applying for a driving license for the first time, or adding a class of vehicle in their existing license have to apply for a learner's license (LL) first, which is valid for six months. This legally certifies LL holders as valid drivers as long as they drive only for training and have a licensed driver accompanying them. Driving a vehicle on public roads without a licensed driver or a trainer is an offence which attracts fines.\nAfter the training, people apply for a permanent driving license test at their nearest RTOs. This can be done anytime before the expiry of the LL. A person is given a total of three attempts in these six months, and if one fails the third attempt, they have to go through the application of a new license all over again.\nIn India, people aged 50 or more, have to undergo strict medical tests in order to obtain a permit that has limited validity and requires renewal every five years. A Commercial Driving License is valid for 3 years and then requires to be renewed.\nIndia introduced the universal smart card driving license in October"}, "descending_order": ["2990278", "39527321"], "permutation_1": ["39527321", "2990278"], "permutation_2": ["39527321", "2990278"], "permutation_3": ["2990278", "39527321"]}
{"id": "nq_2631758144006095110", "docs_added": {"7732906": "Three seconds rule\nRule in basketball\nThe three seconds rule (also referred to as the three-second rule or three in the key, often termed as lane violation) requires that in basketball, a player shall not remain in their opponent\u2019s foul lane for more than three consecutive seconds while that player's team is in control of a live ball in the frontcourt and the game clock is running. The countdown starts when one foot enters the restricted area and resets when both feet leave the area.\nThe three-second rule was introduced in 1936 and was expressed as such: no offensive player, with or without the ball, could remain in the key, for three seconds or more.\nThe three-second rule came about in part following a game at Madison Square Garden between the University of Kentucky (UK) and New York University (NYU) in 1935, won by NYU 23\u201322. The University of Kentucky team did not take their own referee, a common practice at the time, despite advice to the UK coach Adolph Rupp from Notre Dame coach George Keogan, who had lost to NYU the week prior and who warned Rupp of the discrepancies in officiating between the Midwest and the East. UK was unable to run its normal offense (which consisted of using screens) without being called for a foul. NYU's Irving Terjesen and Irwin Klein combined to guard one of UK's major players, Leroy Edwards, keeping him to a mere 6 points (the lowest output of his career). The \"New York Post\" reacted with alarm: \"The score says that NYU is the best college basketball team in the country and that the East still is supreme. But if Frank Lane, the referee from the Midwest, had worked the game, it's safe to assume big Leroy Edwards would have been given a fantastic number of foul shots. Minor mayhem was committed on the person of Edwards by Terjesen and Klein. Something will have to be done or the game will become entirely too rough.\"\nWithin the FIBA rules, an allowance is made for players who either receive the ball prior to being within the key for 3 seconds, or for those players who are leaving (or attempting to leave) the keyway. \nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1643014": "Rules of basketball\nRules governing the game of basketball\nThe rules of basketball are the rules and regulations that govern the play, officiating, equipment and procedures of basketball. While many of the basic rules are uniform throughout the world, variations do exist. Most leagues or governing bodies in North America, the most important of which are the National Basketball Association and NCAA, formulate their own rules. In addition, the Technical Commission of the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) determines rules for international play; most leagues outside North America use the complete FIBA ruleset.\nOriginal rules.\nOn 15 January 1892, James Naismith published his rules for the game of \"Basket Ball\" that he invented: The original game played under these rules was quite different from the one played today as there was no dribbling, dunking, three-pointers, or shot clock, and goal tending was legal.\nNaismith's original 1892 manuscript of the rules of basketball, one of the most expensive manuscripts in existence, is publicly displayed at Allen Fieldhouse on the campus of the University of Kansas. Naismith was the first coach in the history of Kansas Jayhawks men's basketball.\nPlayers, substitutes, teams and teammates.\nNaismith's original rules did not specify how many players were to be on the court. In 1900, five players became standard, and players that were substituted were not allowed to re-enter the game. Players were allowed to re-enter a game once from 1921, and twice from 1934; such restrictions on substitutions were abolished in 1945 when substitutions became unlimited. Coaching was originally prohibited during the game, but from 1949, coaches were allowed to address players during a time-out.\nOriginally a player was disqualified on his second foul. This limit became four fouls in 1911 and five fouls in 1945, still the case in most forms of basketball where the normal length of the game (before any overtime periods) is 40 minutes. When the normal length is 48 minutes (this is the case with the National Basketball Association in the United States and Canada) a player is accordingly disqualified on his sixth foul.\nShot clock and time limits.\nThe first time restriction on possession of the ball was introduced in 1933, where teams were required to advance the ball over the center line within ten seconds of gaining possession. This rule remained until 2000, when FIBA reduced the requirement to eight seconds, the NBA following suit in 2001. The NCAA retains the 10-second rule for men's play, and adopted this rule for women's play starting with the 2013\u201314 season. U.S. high schools, whose rules are drafted by NFHS, also use the 10-second rule for both sexes.\nWhile a team is inbounding the basketball, they have 5 seconds to do so. This rule is intact no matter where a team is inbounding the ball, whether it is under the net or from the sidelines. If they fail to release the basketball after 5 seconds, it will be counted as a turnover and possession will go to the other team.\nIn 1936 the three-second rule was introduced. This rule prohibits offensive players from remaining near their opponents' basket for longer than three seconds (the precise \"restricted area\" is also known as the \"lane\" or the \"key\"). A game central to this rule's introduction was that between the University of Kentucky and New York University. Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp did not take one of his referees with him, despite being warned of discrepancies in officiating between the Midwest and East by Notre Dame coach George Keogan, and the game became especially rough. Because of this game and others, Kentucky All-American center Leroy Edwards is generally recognized as the player responsible for the three-second rule.\nWhile the rule was originally adopted to reduce roughness in the area between big men, it is now considered to prevent tall offensive players from gaining an advantage by waiting close to the basket. When the NBA started to allow zone defense in 2001, a three-second rule for defensive players was also introduced.\nThe shot clock was first introduced by the NBA in 1954, to increase the speed of play. Teams were then required to attempt a shot within 24 seconds of gaining possession, and the shot clock would be reset when the ball touched the basket's rim or the backboard, or the opponents gained possession. FIBA adopted a 30-second shot clock two years later, resetting the clock when a shot was attempted. Women's basketball adopted a 30-second clock in 1971. The NCAA adopted a 45-second shot clock for men while continuing with the 30-second clock for women in 1985. The men's shot clock was then reduced to 35 seconds in 1993, and further reduced to 30 seconds in 2015. FIBA reduced the shot clock to 24 seconds in 2000, and changed the clock's resetting to when the ball touched the rim of the basket. Originally, a missed shot where the shot clock expired while the ball is in the air constituted a violation. In 2003 the rule was changed so that the ball remains live in this situation, as long as it touched the rim. If the ball touches the rim and slightly bounces over the basketball hoop it will be called as a loose ball.\nFouls, free throws and violations.\nDribbling was not part of the original game, but was introduced in 1901. At the time, a player could only bounce the ball once, and could not shoot after he had dribbled. The definition of dribbling became the \"continuous passage of the ball\" in 1909, allowing more than one bounce, and a player who had dribbled was then allowed to shoot.\nRunning with the ball ceased to be considered a foul in 1922, and became a violation, meaning that the only penalty was loss of possession. Striking the ball with the fist has also become a violation. From 1931, if a closely guarded player withheld the ball from play for five seconds, play was stopped and resumed with a jump ball; such a situation has since become a violation by the ball-carrier. Goaltending became a violation in 1944, and offensive goaltending in 1958.\nFree throws were introduced shortly after basketball was invented. In 1895, the free throw line was officially placed from the backboard, prior to which most gymnasiums placed one from the backboard. From 1924, players that received a foul were required to shoot their own free throws. One free throw shot is awarded to a player who was fouled while making a successful field goal attempt. If the field goal attempt is unsuccessful, two free throw shots are awarded (three if the player was attempting a three-point field goal). If an offensive player is fouled while not in the act of shooting, or if a player is fouled in a loose-ball situation, the penalty varies by level of play and the number of fouls accumulated by the opposing team in a given period.\nA player has ten seconds to attempt a free throw. If the player does not attempt a free throw within ten seconds of receiving the ball, the free throw attempt is lost, and a free throw violation is called. A free throw violation also occurs if a free throw misses the backboard, rim, and basket. If a free throw violation is assessed on the last free throw awarded to a player in a given situation, possession automatically reverts to the opposing team.\nA charge is physical contact between an offensive player and a defensive player. In order to draw an offensive charge the defensive player must establish legal guarding positioning in the path of the offensive player. If contact is made, the officials would issue an offensive charge. No points will be allowed and the ball is turned over. The defensive player may not draw an offensive charge in the \"restricted zone\" (see below for more details).\nBlocking is physical contact between the offensive player and the defensive player. Blocking fouls are issued when a defensive player interferes with the path of the offensive player in the shooting motion. Blocking fouls are easily called when the defensive player is standing in the \"restricted zone\".\nRestricted zone: In 1997, the NBA introduced an arc of a radius around the basket, in which an offensive foul for charging could not be assessed. This was to prevent defensive players from attempting to draw an offensive foul on their opponents by standing underneath the basket. FIBA adopted this arc with a radius in 2010.\nIf a foul by a player is interpreted as unnecessary, a flagrant 1 foul will be assessed. The opposing team will then be rewarded with 2 free throws and possession of the ball. If a foul by a player is interpreted as both unnecessary and excessive, a flagrant 2 foul will be assessed. The opposing team will then be rewarded with two free throws and possession of the ball. With a flagrant 2 foul, the player that committed the foul will not only be automatically ejected, but fined at least $2,000 as well\nA technical foul can given to a team in many different ways. A technical foul can be given when a team calls more time outs than they have, delaying the game, have too many players on the court, verbally disrespect or curse, or hang on the rim. With a technical foul, the opposing team will be rewarded with a free throw, and possession of the ball as well. If a player, or coach gets two technical fouls in one game, it will result in an automatic ejection.\nEquipment.\nInitially, basketball was played with an \"ordinary association football (soccer ball), although the sport now uses its own ball. The goal is placed above the court. Originally a basket was used (thus \"basket-ball\"), so the ball had to be retrieved after each made shot. Today a hoop with an open-bottom hanging net is used instead.\nIn the Men's leagues, such as the NBA, men's college basketball, and high school, they use a size seven basketball. This is a ball with a 29.5 inch circumference weighing 22 oz.\nIn the Women's basketball leagues, such as the WNBA, women's college basketball, and high school, they use a size 6 ball. This ball is slightly smaller than the size 7 ball, having a 28.5 inch circumference, and weighing 20 oz.\nOfficiating and procedures.\nOriginally, there was one umpire to judge fouls and one referee to judge the ball; the tradition of calling one official the \"referee\" and the other one or two the \"umpires\" has remained (the NBA, however, uses different terminology, referring to the lead official as \"crew chief\" and the others as \"referees\"). Today, both classes of officials have equal rights to control all aspects of the game. The NBA added a third official in 1988, and FIBA did so afterward, using it for the first time in international competition in 2006. The use of video evidence to inform referee's decisions has always been banned, except in the case of determining whether or not the last shot of a period was attempted before time expired. This exception was introduced by the NBA in 2002 and adopted by FIBA in 2006. The NCAA, however, has permitted instant replay for timing, the value of a field goal (two or three points), shot clock violations, and for purposes of disqualifying players because of unsportsmanlike conduct. The NBA changed its rules starting in 2007 to allow officials the ability to view instant replay with plays involving flagrant fouls, similar to the NCAA. In Italy's Serie A, an American football-style coach's challenge is permitted to challenge (at the next dead ball) an official's call on any situation similar to the NCAA.\nThe center jump ball that was used to restart a game after every successful field goal was eliminated in 1938, in favor of the ball being given to the non-scoring team from behind the end line where the goal was scored, in order to make play more continuous. The jump ball was still used to start the game and every period, and to restart the game after a held ball. However, the NBA stopped using the jump ball to start the second through fourth quarters in 1975, instead using a quarter-possession system where the loser of the jump ball takes the ball from the other end to start the second and third periods, while the winner of that jump ball takes the ball to start the fourth period from the other end of the court.\nIn 1976, the NBA introduced a rule to allow teams to advance the ball to the center line following any legal time-out in the final two minutes of the game. FIBA followed suit in 2006.\nIn 1981, the NCAA adopted the alternating possession system for all jump ball situations except the beginning of the game, and in 2003, FIBA adopted a similar rule, except for the start of the third period and overtime. In 2004, the rule was changed in FIBA that the arrow applies for all situations after the opening tap.\nInternational rules of basketball.\nThe most recent international rules of basketball were approved 2 February 2014 by FIBA and became effective 1 October of that year.\nThere are eight rules encompassing 50 articles, covering equipment and facilities, regulations regarding teams, players, captains and coaches, playing regulations, violations, fouls and their penalties, special situations, and the officials and table officials. The rules also cover officials' signals, the scoresheet, protest procedure, classification of teams and television timeouts.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "7196947": "Trent Tucker Rule\nRule in basketball\nThe Trent Tucker Rule is a basketball rule that disallows any regular shot to be taken on the court if the ball is put into play with under 0.3 seconds left in game or shot clock. The rule was adopted in the 1990\u201391 NBA season and named after New York Knicks player Trent Tucker, and officially adopted in FIBA play starting in 2010. When the WNBA was established in 1997, this rule was adopted too.\nRule.\nNamed after New York Knicks player Trent Tucker, the Trent Tucker Rule is a basketball rule that disallows any regular shot to be taken on the court if the ball is put into play with under 0.3 seconds left in game or shot clock. The Official Rules of the National Basketball Association state\nNO LESS THAN :00.3 must expire on the game clock and shot clock when a ball is thrown inbounds and then hit instantly out-of-bounds. If under :00.3 expires in such a situation, the timer will be instructed to deduct AT LEAST :00.3 from the game clock and shot clock. If, in the judgment of the official, the play took longer than :00.3, he will instruct the timer to deduct more time. If under :00.3 remain on the game clock when this situation occurs, the period is over. If under 0.3 remain on the shot clock when this situation occurs, a shot clock violation is called.\nThe game clock and shot clock must show at least .3 in order for a player to secure possession of the ball on a rebound or throw-in to attempt a field goal. Instant replay shall be utilized if the basket is successful on this type of play and the game clock runs to 0.0 or the shot clock expires on a made basket and the officials are not reasonably certain that the ball was released prior to the expiration of the shot clock. The only type of field goal which may be scored if the game clock and/or shot clock are at 0.2 or 0.1 is a \"tip-in\" or \"high lob\".\nArticle 16.2.5 of the 2010 FIBA Official Rules states:\nThe game clock must indicate 0.3 (three tenths of a second) or more for a player to gain control of the ball on a throw-in or on a rebound after the last or only free throw in order to attempt a shot for a field goal. If the game clock indicates 0.2 or 0.1 the only type of a valid field goal made is by tapping or directly dunking the ball.\nIncident.\nThe rule was born out of a game between the Knicks and the Chicago Bulls on January 15, 1990, at Madison Square Garden. The game was tied at 106 with one-tenth of a second left in regulation and the Knicks in possession. During a time-out called by the Knicks, both teams prepared for what was seen as the only possible way the Knicks could win in regulation: an alley oop tap-in from out of bounds by Patrick Ewing.\nWhen play resumed, the Knicks player throwing the ball in, Mark Jackson, saw the alley-oop play get broken up. He proceeded to throw the ball inbounds to Tucker, who was the only player open. Tucker then turned around and hit a three-point jump shot before the buzzer, giving the Knicks the win: 109\u2013106. Replays showed that the clock was not started until Tucker's shot was already midair and coming down towards the basket.\nProtest.\nThe Bulls, led by first-year head coach Phil Jackson, later filed an official protest with the NBA about the play. By their estimate, the play took closer to 0.4 seconds. However, timekeeper Bob Billings and referee Ronnie Nunn, who were working that game, claimed everything went perfectly fine. The protest was disallowed.\nVice president of operations Rod Thorn was the only NBA executive to side with the Bulls (incidentally, Thorn was once the general manager of the Bulls). Thorn argued that it was physically impossible for a player to receive an inbounds pass and release it for a shot in less than a tenth of a second. He pointed out that tests in European basketball leagues, which had counted down the final minute of a period in tenths of seconds for many years (the NBA had just adopted it for 1989\u201390), proved that a catch-and-shoot takes at least three-tenths of a second.\nRule implementation.\nNBA.\nAlthough the Bulls lost the protest, the dispute became the backbone for the time requirements of the new rule. Teams with the possession of the ball with less than 00.3 left also have the option of trying a Hail Mary shot like the one that the Knicks were going to try before Tucker's shot, or to simply let the clock run to zero.\nAt the start of the 1989\u201390 season, the NBA had adopted a rule from FIBA making game clocks register tenths of seconds in the final minute of a period. Madison Square Garden, like the majority of NBA venues at the time, used an American Sign & Indicator scoreboard and timing system. During the first weeks of the season, it was evident the manufacturer's scoreboards would have frequent calibration flaws with tenths in the final minute. In some cases, the clock would be very inconsistent in timing tenths, while in other cases after calibration, the clock would actually \"freeze\" at one-tenth of a second before the \"00.0\" appeared, triggering the final horn.\nFurther changes in 1991 were designed to eliminate the problem with the AS&I units with a new directive for 1991\u201392 to add shot clocks with duplicate game time. At that point, most venues purchased new scoreboards from White Way Sign, Fair-Play, or Daktronics, because of the calibration consistency of the new units.\nVery few NBA teams purchased the AS&I (or later, Trans-Lux) units when the new rule was adopted in 1991. The last NBA arena to use the manufacturer's unit was the Charlotte Coliseum, which installed a successor Trans-Lux unit for the 2001\u201302 season (the Hornets' last in Charlotte, but the arena closed after the 2004\u201305 season, the Bobcats' inaugural season, after its replacement, the Spectrum Center, opened (with a new Daktronics unit). By 2011, all NBA venues used either a Daktronics or OES system.\nIn 2002, the NBA instituted new rules regarding the end of period indicators. An LED light strip on the backboard and the scorer's table replaced the traditional electric red light behind the backboard, and a shot clock visible to all three viewable sides was mandated.\nVenues using Daktronics units installed new four-sided shot clocks with red indicator lights on the sides of the shot time to further assist the electric light. By 2004, shot clocks were available with a perimeter light strip around the clock that also lit up when the clock read \"00.0\". Today, see-through shot clock units have light strips that surround the shot clock to turn on upon the clock registering 0.0.\nIn recent years, timekeeping rules have changed with the implementation of a system where the blowing of an official's whistle stops the clock at the instant of the whistle, along with a rule change where the on-court official (not an official at the scorer's table) starts the clock by pressing a button attached to the official's belt.\nOn December 20, 2006, New York Knicks forward David Lee scored a game-winning basket with only 0.1 left on the clock. The shot counted because Lee deflected in the inbounds pass into the basket (just like what was foreseen by the Knicks and Bulls in their game years before). This was the first occurrence of a team winning an NBA game with 0.1 left since Trent Tucker, and coincidentally from the same team: the New York Knicks. Furthermore, this took place after the NBA adopted the Precision Time Systems unit, where officials, not the timer, start the clock. Michael Jordan, Charles Oakley and Patrick Ewing, all of whom participated in the original Trent Tucker game, were in attendance at the David Lee game in Madison Square Garden.\nThe NBA in 2016 adopted an official timekeeper sponsorship with Tissot, which had the aim of unifying all game timekeeping tasks, with the official clock connected to the scoreboard system and shot clocks all being manufactured by the Swiss timekeeper. All NBA venues since now utilize identical Tissot timekeeping systems.\nOther organizations.\nWhen the WNBA was established in 1997, this rule was adopted.\nIn 2004, FIBA adopted a rule where the system would be mandatory in international competitions. In 2010, FIBA instituted Article 16.2.5 to officially institute the Trent Tucker Rule in international basketball.\nAnother example of this rule being invoked occurred at the end of a game between the University of South Florida and Florida Gulf Coast University on December 17, 2013, when FGCU appeared to tie the game at 68 on a Chase Fieler shot off a full-court inbounds pass with 0.3 seconds remaining in double overtime. Replays showed that Fieler got the shot off before the 0.3 expired, but the equivalent NCAA rule (Rule 5, Section 18, Article 1) was invoked to waive the Fieler basket, giving USF the win. However, under the FIBA and NBA interpretation, the restrictions only apply to 0.2 or 0.1, as the ball was put in play at 0.3.\n3x3 basketball also has this rule.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "72163": "American Basketball Association\nProfessional basketball league (1967\u20131976)\nThe American Basketball Association (ABA) was a major professional basketball major league that operated for nine seasons from 1967 to 1976. The upstart ABA operated in direct competition with the more established National Basketball Association throughout its existence; the second of two leagues established in the 1960s after the American Basketball League, the ABA was the most successful rival to the NBA. \nThe league, as first thought of by Dennis Murphy, started with eleven teams with the Indiana Pacers, Kentucky Colonels, Minnesota Muskies, New Jersey Americans, Pittsburgh Pipers in the Eastern Division and the Anaheim Amigos, Dallas Chaparrals, Denver Rockets, Houston Mavericks, New Orleans Buccaneers, Oakland Oaks in the Western Division. George Mikan served as the first league commissioner and came up with the idea for the three-point shot to go along with a 30-second shot-clock; echoing the NHL, the league named a Most Valuable Player for the entire postseason rather than for just the Finals. Select investors believed they could play their way into getting an NBA franchise by way of merger while Mikan did not initially want to get into a bidding war with the NBA for select players. \nWhile the first years of the ABA saw uneven team management (the first two champions immediately relocated after winning the championship), the offense-oriented league managed to attract select talent from players that were either ignored by the NBA due to perceived talent issues or because they were not eligible to play in the league. Stars that arose from these circumstances included Connie Hawkins, Roger Brown, and Doug Moe, who each had been blackballed from the NBA due to unfounded allegations of point-shaving, Spencer Haywood, who entered the league as a \"hardship exemption\" after wanting to turn pro after being a sophomore in college, and Larry Brown, who was thought to be too small to play in the NBA. The league never had a consistent national television contract but attracted loyal followings in select cities, most notably in Indianapolis, Denver, San Antonio, Uniondale, and Kentucky. The Pacers would win the most championships in league history, winning three with stars such as Mel Daniels, the first player with multiple MVP awards. The NBA engaged in talks for a merger as early as 1970, but an antitrust lawsuit filed by the NBA Players Association curtailed the plans for several years. The league went after select NBA stars such as Rick Barry and Billy Cunningham to go along with luring players with a select plan of payment by annuity to go along with luring respected NBA referees to the league. In the later years of the league, other stars would arise such as Dan Issel, Artis Gilmore, George Gervin, and Julius Erving. By 1976, the league was down to nine teams, with only six surviving long enough to be involved with merger talks. The ABA merged into the National Basketball Association (NBA) in 1976, resulting in four ABA teams (Pacers, Nuggets, Spurs, Nets) joining the NBA. The final game was played on May 13, 1976, as the New York Nets defeated the Denver Nuggets for the final ABA championship. In 1979, adopting the practice of the ABA, the NBA introduced the 3-point shot.\nHistory.\nIn 1965, Dennis Murphy, a marketing executive and sports fan, had come up with wanting to make a football team in Anaheim, California, which led to a group sponsoring a doubleheader game in the city with the American Football League. But the war that the AFL had with the National Football League soon would come to a close with a merger. Not wanting to waste the effort of people who had some money and liked sports, Murphy came up with the idea of making a second basketball league, as it happened to be his favorite sport.\nMurphy soon talked with Bill Sharman, who had coached in the last \"second basketball league\" with the American Basketball League (1961-62) and they came up with the name of the league. While Sharman could not get involved with the ABA at the time due to coaching matters, he suggested talking to George Mikan along with suggesting the use of the three-point play (an ABL staple). The eventual meeting with Mikan led to interest along with the mention of other names interested in business. \nEventually, an array of investors were lined up in several cities: Art Kim in Anaheim, Arthur J. Brown in New York, the DeVoe family in Indiana, Gabe Rubin in Pittsburgh, T. C. Morrow in Houston, Joe Gregory in Kentucky, Ken Davidson in Oakland, Charlie Smither in New Orleans, Robert Folsom in Dallas, and Larry Shields in Minnesota. Mikan agreed to be commissioner and spearheaded the use of a red-white-blue ball to go along with the three point play. The first organizational meeting of the ABA took place on December 20, 1966, at the Beverly Hills Hilton.\nThe ABA was conceived at a time stretching from 1960 through the mid-1970s when numerous upstart leagues were challenging, with varying degrees of success, the established major professional sports leagues in the United States. Basketball was seen as particularly vulnerable to a challenge; its major league, the National Basketball Association, was the youngest of the Big Four major leagues, having only played 21 seasons to that point, and was still fending off contemporary challenging leagues (it had been less than five years since the American Basketball League (ABL) shut down); the league, often considered third or fourth in coverage when compared to baseball or football, had just 12 teams at the time the ABA was founded. According to one of the owners of the Indiana Pacers, its goal was to force a merger with the more established league. Potential investors were told that they could get an ABA team for half of what it cost to get an NBA expansion team at the time. When the merger occurred, ABA officials said their investment would more than double.\nThe ABA distinguished itself from its older counterpart with a more wide-open, flashy style of offensive play, as well as differences in rules \u2014 a 30-second shot clock (as opposed to the NBA's 24-second clock, though the ABA did switch to the 24 second shot clock for the 1975\u201376 season) and use of a three-point field goal arc, pioneered in the earlier ABL. Also, the ABA used a colorful red, white and blue ball, instead of the NBA's traditional orange ball. The ABA also had several \"regional\" franchises, such as the Virginia Squires and Carolina Cougars, that played \"home\" games in several cities.\nThe league's practice of luring players with money would spur a war with the NBA. Under the \"Dolgoff Plan\" (as first used by the Indiana Pacers), teams would pay a player a certain amount of money over a certain amount of years as an annuity (for example, Jim Ard signed a $1.4 million contract with the Nets that saw him paid $250,000 in total from 1970 to 1974 while the team would put $8,000 a year for ten years where Ard would receive $1.15 million paid to him over the course of 24 years, starting in 1989). Various players such as Dan Issel and Rick Mount would be paid in this manner, much to the consternation of jilted executives in the NBA, who even believed the league was paying off agents to help players agree to these contracts, which in select cases was correct. Both leagues went as far as spying to keep tabs on signings.\nIn the 1973\u201374 season, the ABA also adopted the no-disqualification foul rule: instead of fouling out after six infractions, when a player is charged with his seventh or succeeding fouls, the opposing team retains possession and the offended team attempts any free throw.\nThe ABA also went after four of the best referees in the NBA: Earl Strom, John Vanak, Norm Drucker and Joe Gushue, getting them to \"jump\" leagues by offering them far more in money and benefits. In Earl Strom's memoir \"Calling the Shots\", Strom conveys both the heady sense of being courted by a rival league with money to burn \u2014 and also the depression that set in the next year when he began refereeing in the ABA, with less prominent players performing in inadequate arenas, in front of very small crowds. Nevertheless, the emergence of the ABA boosted the salaries of referees just as it did the salaries of players.\nHowever, ABA teams like the Nets, Colonels, Pacers, Spurs, Nuggets and Stars, especially in latest seasons, registered higher attendance on average than most NBA teams at that time (excluding the Lakers, Knicks, Celtics, SuperSonics and Bucks).\nThe freewheeling style of the ABA eventually caught on with fans, but the lack of a national television contract and protracted financial losses would spell doom for the ABA as an independent circuit. In 1976, its last year of existence, the ABA pioneered the now-popular slam dunk contest at its all-star game in Denver.\nThe league succeeded in forcing a merger with the NBA in the 1976 offseason. Four ABA teams were absorbed into the older league: the New York Nets, Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, and San Antonio Spurs. As part of the merger agreement, the four teams were not permitted to participate in the 1976 NBA draft. The merger was particularly hard on the Nets; the New York Knicks were firmly established in their arena, Madison Square Garden, and would not permit the Nets to share dates there. For drawing audience away from the Knicks, the Nets were forced to pay $4.3M to the Knicks organization. The Nets offered league superstar Julius Erving instead but the Knicks declined. The Nets had to settle for an arena in Piscataway, New Jersey, and, to meet expenses, were forced to sell the contract of Erving to the Philadelphia 76ers.\nTwo other clubs, the Kentucky Colonels and the Spirits of St. Louis, were disbanded upon the merger, with each getting a buyout: the Colonels received a one-time buyout that owner John Y. Brown, Jr. used to purchase the NBA's Buffalo Braves, while the Spirits owners negotiated a cut of the other ABA teams' television revenues in perpetuity. This deal netted the ownership group of the Spirits over $300M over nearly four decades due to a large increase in television revenues. In 2014, the NBA and the Spirits ownership agreed to phase out future payments in exchange for a one-time payment of $500M, making the total value for the deal over $800M. The seventh remaining team, the Virginia Squires, received nothing, as they had ceased operations shortly before the merger. The players from the Colonels, Spirits, and Squires were made available to NBA teams through a dispersal draft; the four teams absorbed by the NBA were allowed to choose players from this draft.\nOne of the more significant long-term contributions of the ABA to professional basketball was to tap into markets in the southeast that had been collegiate basketball hotbeds (including North Carolina, Virginia, and Kentucky). The NBA was focused on the urban areas of the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast. At the time, it showed no interest in placing a team south of Washington, D.C., other than the Atlanta metropolitan area where the NBA's Hawks franchise relocated from St. Louis in"}, "descending_order": ["1643014", "7196947", "72163", "7732906"], "permutation_1": ["7732906", "1643014", "7196947", "72163"], "permutation_2": ["72163", "7196947", "7732906", "1643014"], "permutation_3": ["7732906", "1643014", "72163", "7196947"]}
{"id": "nq_9160648621472984761", "docs_added": {"37033510": "Bates Motel (TV series)\n2013 American drama thriller television series\nBates Motel is an American psychological horror drama television series based on characters from the 1959 novel \"Psycho\" by Robert Bloch that aired from March 18, 2013, to April 24, 2017. It was developed by Carlton Cuse, Kerry Ehrin, and Anthony Cipriano for the cable network A&E.\nA \"contemporary prequel\" to Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film \"Psycho\", it depicts the lives of Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore) and his mother Norma (Vera Farmiga) prior to the events portrayed in the film, albeit in a different fictional town (White Pine Bay, Oregon, as opposed to Fairvale, California) and in a modern-day setting. However, the final season loosely adapts the plot of the novel \"Psycho\".\nMax Thieriot and Olivia Cooke both starred as part of the main cast throughout the series's run. After recurring in the first season, N\u00e9stor Carbonell was added to the main cast from season two onward. Both Nicola Peltz and Kenny Johnson had main cast roles at different points throughout the series\u2019s run.\nThe series begins in Arizona with the death of Norma's husband, after which Norma purchases the Seafairer motel located in a coastal Oregon town so that she and Norman can start a new life. Subsequent seasons follow Norman as his mental illness becomes dangerous, and Norma as she struggles to protect her son, and those around him, from himself. The series was filmed outside Vancouver in Aldergrove, British Columbia, along with other locations within the Fraser Valley of British Columbia.\nA&E chose to skip a pilot of the series, opting to go straight-to-series by ordering a 10-episode first season. \"Bates Motel\" is the longest-running original scripted drama series in the channel's history. The series's lead actors, Vera Farmiga and Freddie Highmore, received particular praise for their performances in the series, with the former receiving a Primetime Emmy Award nomination and winning a Saturn Award for Best Actress on Television. \"Bates Motel\" also won three People's Choice Awards for Favorite Cable TV Drama, and for Favorite Cable TV Actress (Farmiga) and Actor (Highmore).\nSeries overview.\nSeason 1.\nThe first season follows Norma and Norman Bates as they buy a motel after Norman's father dies. On one of the first nights of the two owning the motel, the former owner breaks in and rapes Norma. Norman knocks the attacker out, and Norma stabs him to death. She decides it is best not to call the police and to cover up the murder. She and Norman dispose of the body. He complicates the cover-up by keeping a belt that belonged to the victim. When the town sheriff and his deputy notice that a man has gone missing, Norma and Norman must keep them from digging too far.\nSeason 2.\nThe second season follows the aftermath of Norman's teacher's murder, as her mysterious past comes to light. Meanwhile, Norma finds herself making dangerous decisions in order to keep the motel running and preventing the impending bypass. Bradley's search for her father's killer leads to the extremes, and Dylan learns the disturbing truth about his parentage.\nSeason 3.\nThe third season focuses on Norman's waning deniability about what is happening to him, and the lengths he will go to, to gain control of his fragile psyche. The dramatic events of last season leave Norma more aware of her son's mental fragility and fearful of what he is capable of. Meanwhile, Sheriff Romero begins to distance himself from the Bates family after he suspects Norma is lying to him about her husband's death.\nSeason 4.\nThe fourth season follows Norma as she becomes increasingly fearful of Norman, going to great lengths to find him the professional help he needs. This complicates their once unbreakable trust as Norman struggles to maintain his grip on reality. Meanwhile, Sheriff Romero once again finds himself drawn into Norma and Norman's lives. He agrees to marry Norma because his insurance will enable her to place Norman in an expensive psychiatric hospital.\nSeason 5.\nThe fifth season begins two years after the death of Norma. Publicly happy and well-adjusted, Norman struggles at home, where his blackouts are increasing and \"Mother\" threatens to take him over completely. Meanwhile, Dylan and Emma find themselves drawn back into Norman's world, and Romero hungers for revenge against his stepson.\nProduction.\nDevelopment.\n On July 5, 1987, a made-for-television film written and directed by Richard Rothstein titled \"Bates Motel\", a direct sequel to \"Psycho\" aired on NBC. Starring Bud Cort, Lori Petty and Moses Gunn respectively as mentally disturbed youth Alex West, teenage runaway Willie and local handyman Henry Watson running the titular motel after Norman Bates passes away, it was intended to be a pilot for a proposed TV series that was to feature supernatural elements. However, the series was not picked up by the network.\nIn 2012, A&E was developing a television series also titled \"Bates Motel\" that would serve as a \"contemporary prequel\" to the Alfred Hitchcock film \"Psycho\". The first script was written by Anthony Cipriano. Carlton Cuse and Kerry Ehrin joined the project in March as executive producers and head writers. Cuse has cited the drama series \"Twin Peaks\" as a key inspiration for \"Bates Motel\": \"We pretty much ripped off \"Twin Peaks\"... If you wanted to get that confession, the answer is yes. I loved that show. They only did 30 episodes. Kerry [Ehrin] and I thought we'd do the 70 that are missing\". A&E gave \"Bates Motel\" a straight-to-series order in July. Chris Bacon was hired to score the music for the series in January 2013.\nCasting.\nThe casting for the series started in August 2012. Vera Farmiga was the first to be cast in the leading role of Norma Louise Bates. Freddie Highmore was cast as Norman Bates in September. The same month, Max Thieriot was cast as Norman's half-brother, Dylan Massett. Shortly after, Nicola Peltz was cast as Bradley Martin, a possible love interest for Norman. Olivia Cooke was the final main cast member to join the series, in the role of Emma Decody, Norman's best friend. Nestor Carbonell was cast in a recurring role as Sheriff Alex Romero in the first season, but was upgraded to the main cast at the beginning of the second season. Kenny Johnson, who recurred as Norma's brother Caleb Calhoun in the second season, was promoted to a series regular for the third season. Rihanna later appeared in the iconic role of Marion Crane for the fifth and final season.\nFilming.\nA replica of the original Bates Motel set from the film \"Psycho\" was built on location at approximately 1054 272 Street in Aldergrove, British Columbia, where portions of the series were filmed. The original house and motel are located in Universal Studios, Hollywood, Los Angeles. Additional filming for the series took place in multiple areas in Metro Vancouver, including Steveston, Coquitlam, Horseshoe Bay, West Vancouver and Fort Langley. In February 2017, after filming was completed for the series, the Bates Motel exterior set in Aldergrove was demolished.\nReception.\nCritical response.\nThe first season received positive reviews from critics. On Metacritic, the season holds a score of 66 out of 100, based on 34 critics. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the season has an 84% rating with an average score of 7.11/10, based on 43 reviews. The site's critical consensus reads, \"\"Bates Motel\" utilizes mind manipulation and suspenseful fear tactics, on top of consistently sharp character work and wonderfully uncomfortable familial relationships\".\nThe second season also received positive reviews from critics. On Metacritic the season had a score of 67 out of 100, based on 11 critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the season has a 90% rating with an average score of 8.02/10, based on 21 reviews. The site's consensus reads, \"\"Bates Motel\" reinvents a classic thriller with believable performances and distinguished writing\".\nThe third season of \"Bates Motel\" received a score of 72 out of 100 on Metacritic. Rotten Tomatoes reported a 95% rating from 21 reviews. The site's consensus reads, \"\"Bates Motel\" further blurs lines around TV's creepiest taboo mother/son relationship, uncomfortably darkening its already fascinating tone\".\nThe fourth season of \"Bates Motel\" was met with critical acclaim. Rotten Tomatoes reported a 100% positive rating from 17 reviews. The site's consensus reads, \"\"Bates Motel\" fulfills its menacing potential in a fourth season that confidently careens toward the mother-son duo's ghastly destiny\". Alan Sepinwall of Uproxx considered \"Bates Motel\" to have only become a good series midway through season four due to obtaining a better narrative purpose and \"tragic grandeur\" with the season's latter episodes.\nThe fifth and final season of \"Bates Motel\" received a score of 81 out of 100 on Metacritic. Rotten Tomatoes reported a 100% rating from 21 reviews. The site's consensus reads, \"\"Bates Motel\"'s final season brings the franchise full circle, with a satisfyingly creepy conclusion to the trials and tribulations of Norman Bates\".\nInternational broadcast.\nIn Canada, the series airs only on the U.S. network A&E, which is available through most Canadian cable and satellite companies. In Australia, the series premiered on Fox8 on May 26, 2013. In the UK and Ireland, it premiered on Universal Channel on April 2, 2014 and then on BBC One on February 23, 2021. In Jamaica, it premiered on CVM TV on August 11, 2014. In the Middle East, it premiered on OSN First HD in mid-2014. The second season premiered on January 5, 2015. In the Philippines, \"Bates Motel\" began airing on Jack TV on August 12, 2013. In South Africa, the series premiered on MNet on June 21, 2013. The series premiered in India on Colors Infinity on November 6, 2015. As of May 2019 Netflix has licensed worldwide distribution for at least 30 countries.\nMerchandising.\nNBCUniversal partnered with Hot Topic, the American retailer of pop culture merchandise, to introduce a collection of clothing and accessories inspired by \"Bates Motel\". The merchandise, including items such as bathrobes and bloody shower curtains, became available at Hot Topic's website and select stores on March 18, 2014. As of 2018, the merchandise is no longer available through Hot Topic.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "19596319": "Norma Bates (Psycho)\nNorma Bates (n\u00e9e\u00a0Spool or Calhoun, also known simply as Mrs. Bates) is a fictional character created by American author Robert Bloch in his 1959 thriller novel \"Psycho\". She is the deceased mother and victim of serial killer Norman Bates, who had recreated her in his mind as a murderous alternate personality.\nAlthough an important character to the \"Psycho\" story, Norma is deceased from the beginning of the films. She is not depicted as a living character until the prequel \"\" (1990), where she is portrayed by Olivia Hussey. Vera Farmiga later portrayed Norma in the television series \"Bates Motel\" (2013\u20132017).\nCharacter overview.\nBoth the 1959 novel, and its 1960 film adaptation explain that after the death of her husband, Norma (whose maiden name is never revealed in the novels) raises her son Norman with cruelty: she forbids him to have a life away from her, and teaches him that sexual intercourse is sinful and that all women (except herself) are whores. The novel also suggests that their relationship may have been incestuous.\nFor many years, Norma and Norman live together in the (fictional) small town of Fairvale, California \"as if there is no one else in the world\". When Norman is a teenager, his mother meets Joe Considine (Chet Rudolph in \"Psycho IV: The Beginning\") and plans to marry. Considine convinces Norma to open a motel. Norman grows furiously jealous, believing that Norma has abandoned him for her fianc\u00e9, and murders them both with strychnine. He then stages it like murder-suicide, making it look as if Norma had killed Considine and then herself.\nUnable to bear the loss of his mother, Norman steals Norma's corpse and mummifies it in the fruit cellar, and speaks to it as if his mother were still alive. He also speaks to himself in her voice and frequently dresses in her clothes; in his own mind, he \"becomes\" his mother in order to escape the awareness of her death and the guilt of having murdered her. The \"Mother\" personality is as possessive and cruel as Norma had been in life; \"Mother\" dominates and belittles him, forbids him to have friends, and kills any woman whom he feels attracted to. When Norman regains consciousness, he discovers the crime he is convinced his mother has committed, and destroys the evidence.\n\"Psycho\" (novel and film).\nOne of \"Mother\"'s victims is Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), who flees to the Bates Motel after stealing money from her employer. When she checks into the motel, Norman (Anthony Perkins) is smitten, and invites her to have dinner with him. This arouses \"Mother\"'s ire, and she threatens to kill Marion if Norman lets her into the house. He defies her and has dinner in the motel office with Marion, who takes pity on him and gently suggests that he put his mother in a mental institution. He angrily rejects the suggestion, however, and insists that his mother is perfectly sane. After Marion retires to her room, Norman becomes \"Mother\" and kills Marion in the shower. When Norman regains consciousness, he disposes of Marion's corpse in a nearby swamp, covering up what he believes to be his mother's crime.\nMarion's employer hires private investigator Arbogast (Martin Balsam) to find her, and he goes to the motel and questions Norman. Norman mentions that Marion had spoken with his mother, but he refuses to let Arbogast see her. Suspicious, Arbogast goes to the house, where \"Mother\" kills him as well. Marion's sister Lila (Vera Miles), and boyfriend, Sam Loomis (John Gavin), soon arrive, suspecting Norman of killing Marion for the money. Lila discovers Mrs. Bates' corpse while searching the house; moments later, Norman attacks her as \"Mother\", only to be subdued by Sam. Norman is then arrested and institutionalized, and the \"Mother\" persona takes complete, permanent control of his mind.\nFilm sequels.\n\"Psycho II\".\nIn the film \"Psycho II\" (unrelated to Bloch's novel of the same name), 22 years later, Norman Bates, now supposedly cured, is released from the institution and returns home. He soon receives notes and phone calls supposedly from Mrs. Bates. Norman takes a job at a local diner and befriends Emma Spool (Claudia Bryar), the cook, and a waitress named Mary Samuels (Meg Tilly). Norman offers Mary a room in his house, and she reluctantly accepts. At about this time, a series of mysterious murders are committed by a woman with a knife to people who come to the motel and the house.\nNorman's sanity begins to unravel as he starts to believe that his mother is committing the murders. His psychiatrist, Dr. Bill Raymond (Robert Loggia), shows him Mrs. Bates' corpse and reveals to him that Mary Samuels is actually Mary Loomis, Sam Loomis' daughter, and is plotting with her mother, Lila, to drive him crazy again in order to get him recommitted; they both dress up as Norman's mother and appear through the window of her bedroom. Mary believes that the murderer is hiding in Norman's house, and when Norman explains to Mary that the murderer might be his \"real\" mother, she speculates that he might have been adopted.\nThe murderer eventually kills Lila. When Mary and Norman return to the house, Norman receives a phone call from Dr. Raymond; in his mind, however, the phone call is from his mother. Mary, disturbed, tries to convince Norman to stop answering the phone by dressing up as his mother, complete with a butcher knife. Mary accidentally kills Dr. Raymond, who has come to the house to catch Mary, and Norman tries to hide her from the police. Mary discovers Lila's corpse hidden in a pile of coal, and, convinced Norman is the murderer, tries to kill him. The police intervene just in time however, and shoot her dead.\nThat night, Mrs. Spool visits Norman and tells him that she is his real mother, and that Norma Bates was actually his aunt; Spool had been put in a mental institution shortly after giving birth to Norman, and her sister, Norma, had adopted him and told him that he was her son. Spool then reveals that \"she\" had committed the murders in order to protect Norman. He bludgeons her to death with a shovel, and carries her corpse up to Mrs. Bates' room, where the \"Mother\" personality takes control of his mind once again.\n\"Psycho III\".\nOne month later, a reporter named Tracy Venable (Roberta Maxwell) latches on to the history of the Bates/Spool families; her research leads her to the story of a love triangle between Norman's father, John, and the Spool sisters, Norma and Emma. Emma killed John in a jealous rage after Norma stole him away from her, and abducted the young Norman, convincing herself he was the child she had with John. Emma was arrested and institutionalized, and Norman was returned to his mother.\nBy this point in the series, Norman has begun murdering young women again under the control of the \u201cMother\u201d personality. He finds some hope for redemption when he meets and falls in love with a young woman named Maureen Coyle (Diana Scarwid), but \"Mother\" eventually wins out and kills her. Tracy finds Norman and tells him the truth about his parentage, and Norman destroys Mrs. Spool's corpse, attempting to break free of \"Mother\"'s control. He is arrested and sent back to the institution, but proclaims that he is finally free.\n\"Psycho IV: The Beginning\".\n\"\", the fourth and final film in the series, retcons the revelations of the second and third film, supplying that Norman's father was stung to death by bees, removing all references to Emma Spool and retelling much of Norman's and his mother's past from the original film. It is implied in the film that Mrs. Bates suffered from schizophrenia, which Norman inherits. Norman has been released from the institution and is now married. When Norman finds out that his wife, Connie (Donna Mitchell), is pregnant, he decides to kill her to prevent another of his \"cursed\" line from entering the world. He relents after his wife professes her love for him, however, and decides to rid himself of the past once and for all by burning down his mother's house. During this act, he sees visions of his mother mocking and tormenting him, but perseveres and destroys the house. At the end of the film, he is finally free of his mother's voice, which demands to be let out.\nTelevision.\n\"Bates Motel\" (film).\nThe television spin-off movie and series pilot changes the backstory between Norman Bates' parents (here named Jake and Gloria Bates) prior to the events of \"Psycho\". In this continuity, Mrs. Bates killed her husband because she thought he was cheating on her. She then lost her mind and spent all her time staring out her bedroom window, wearing black funeral clothes while waiting for him to return. Twenty-seven years after the events of the original film, Norman (Kurt Paul) dies of old age in the asylum, leaving his motel and house to his friend and fellow inmate, Alex West (Bud Cort). Alex comes to believe that the motel is haunted by Mrs. Bates' ghost. He eventually discovers that the \"haunting\" is a ruse perpetrated by bank manager Tom Fuller (Gregg Henry), who is trying to scare Alex into selling him the motel so he can renovate it. The remains of Norman's parents were found buried on the grounds of the motel. When recovering the remains of Mrs. Bates, the sheriff said that the body \"was never found\", which seems to conflict with the original \"Psycho\", where Mrs. Bates' corpse is present in the basement where Norman is finally captured by Sam Loomis.\n\"Bates Motel\" (TV series).\nNorma Bates is a main character in the A&E psychological horror drama television series \"Bates Motel\", a contemporary prequel to the 1960 film \"Psycho\", set in the present day. Norma is portrayed in the series by Vera Farmiga. She is extremely possessive and protective of her son Norman and does everything she can to keep him to herself. This, along with several other traumas Norman suffered as a child, results in his developing an alternate personality, \"Mother\", who kills anyone whom she believes poses a threat to him or gets in the way of their relationship.\nOn the show, Norma's middle name is Louise. Her parents' names are revealed to be Ray and Francine \"Frannie\" Calhoun, and she describes her life with them as having been unhappy; her father was an abusive alcoholic while her mother was \"sedated all the time.\" She was born and raised in Akron, Ohio. As an adult, Norma owns and drives around in a light-green Mercedes-Benz W116 as her personal means of transportation throughout the series. The vehicle is later inherited by Norman who takes over ownership of the car in the final season after her death.\nIn the pilot episode, Norma buys a motel in the coastal town of White Pine Bay, Oregon, and moves there with Norman (Freddie Highmore) following the death of her husband Sam Bates (David Cubitt) in Arizona. The motel's former owner, Keith Summers (W. Earl Brown) breaks into the Bates' house and rapes Norma. Norman intervenes and subdues Summers, but Norma kills him in a fit of rage. She and Norman then dispose of the body. She later reveals that Sam was an abusive alcoholic and that Norman had killed him while in a dissociative state; she bought the motel and moved them away to protect him. A later episode reveals that Sam had raped Norma in a drunken rage after she tried to leave him, and that six-year-old Norman had witnessed the assault; it is implied that this trauma fractured Norman's psyche.\nIn this continuity, Norma has another son, Dylan Massett (Max Thieriot), who was conceived when she was raped as a teenager by her older brother, Caleb Calhoun (Kenny Johnson). Norma used her pregnancy to escape from her troubled home life; she married her then-boyfriend, John Massett, and passed off her unborn child as his own. She would later divorce John to marry Sam, becoming estranged from Dylan and favoring Norman, her son with Sam, instead.\nWhen Norman's sanity begins to deteriorate, Norma marries the town sheriff, Alex Romero (Nestor Carbonell), so she can use his insurance coverage to pay for Norman to be treated in a mental institution. While the marriage is at first merely a financial arrangement, they eventually fall in love. After Norman is released from the institution and finds out that Norma is married, he grows insanely jealous and tries to kill himself and Norma by flooding the house with carbon monoxide while his mother sleeps. Romero arrives at the house in time to revive Norman, but finds that Norma is already dead. Romero finds out what happened and swears revenge, but is arrested for perjury before he can do anything. Meanwhile, Norman cannot bear losing his mother, so he digs up her corpse and assumes her personality to preserve the illusion of her being alive.\nTwo years later, Norman is running the motel and living alone in the house with Norma's corpse, which he keeps frozen and preserved in the cellar. Romero, who is in prison for perjury, sends a hitman to kill Norman, but \"Mother\" takes control and kills the assassin. Caleb learns of Norma's death and comes after Norman, so \"Mother\" helps Norman take him hostage, but cannot bring herself to kill him. The Bates' neighbor Chick Hogan (Ryan Hurst) accidentally runs Caleb over, and \"Mother\" helps him and Norman dispose of the body. When Norman falls for Madeline Loomis (Isabelle McNally), a lonely housewife who bears an uncanny resemblance to Norma, and whose husband Sam (Austin Nichols) is cheating on her, \"Mother\" becomes jealous and acts out by taking over Norman's mind and making him have sex with a man at a gay bar while dressed in Norma's clothes. Norman finally begins to suspect that \"Mother\" is not real, and she confirms that he created her in his mind to deal with things that he could not, such as his abusive father.\nWhen Sam's mistress Marion Crane (Rihanna) checks into the motel, Norman fears that \"Mother\" will kill her, and tells her to leave and never come back. Sam soon arrives at the motel looking for Marion, and \"Mother\" convinces Norman to stab him to death in the shower.\nDylan comes to see Norman after learning of Norma's death, and they get into a fight that ends with Norman assaulting his half-brother at \"Mother\"'s instigation. Terrified of what he might do, Norman calls 911 and confesses to murdering Sam. After Sheriff Jane Greene (Brooke Smith) finds the bodies of Norman's other victims, \"Mother\" takes control of Norman's mind and tries to make sure that he escapes punishment.\nWhen Romero\u2014who had earlier escaped from prison\u2014takes Norman captive, \"Mother\" urges Norman to kill him, but not before he confronts Norman with the reality that he killed his mother. After Norman finally admits to himself that he killed Norma, \"Mother\" appears to him and tells him she is leaving, as there is no longer anything she can protect him from. Norman later invites Dylan to a \"family dinner\" with Norma's corpse at the head of the table. When Dylan tells Norman that Norma is dead, Norman attacks him, forcing Dylan to shoot him in self-defense. As he dies, Norman sees a vision of his mother embracing him.\nCharacterization.\nNorma Bates is the fictional counterpart to Augusta Gein, murderer Ed Gein's mother; a domineering, fanatical woman who preached to her sons about the innate immorality of the world and her belief that all women (apart from herself) were evil and instruments of the devil.\nNorma is not strictly a character in the novel by Bloch, and her presence is indicated only as a voice and a corpse in the first three \"Psycho\" films.\nFor \"Psycho\" (1960), Alfred Hitchcock hired six uncredited people to play the mother. Norma Bates was played by Mitzi Koestner, Anna Dore, and Margo Epper as body doubles; and voiced by Virginia Gregg, Jeanette Nolan, and Paul Jasmin (a friend of Anthony Perkins). The voices were thoroughly mixed, except for the last speech, which is all Gregg's.\nNorma Bates was introduced as a living character in \"\". Olivia Hussey was directly offered the role.\nPortrayals.\nVirginia Gregg, Jeanette Nolan, and Paul Jasmin voiced the corpse of Norma Bates in Hitchcock's 1960 film adaptation of Bloch's novel. Only Gregg did Norma's voice in \"Psycho II\" and \"Psycho III\". Alice Hirson provided the voice of Norma's corpse in \"\". John Kassir voiced Norma's silhouette in a 1990 Oatmeal Crisp cereal commercial featuring Anthony Perkins reprising his role as Norman Bates. Rose Marie voiced Norma's corpse in Gus Van Sant's 1998 version of \"Psycho\". Olivia Hussey portrayed Norma as a living character in \"Psycho IV\". Vera Farmiga portrayed Norma as a living character in the TV series \"Bates Motel\". For her performance, Farmiga was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in 2013, and won a Saturn Award in 2014 and a People's Choice Award in 2017.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "50662": "Norman Bates\nFictional character from Psycho and Bates Motel\nNorman Bates is a fictional character created by American author Robert Bloch as the main protagonist in his 1959 horror novel \"Psycho\". He has an alter, Mother, who takes the form of his abusive mother, and later victim, Norma, who in his daily life runs the Bates Motel.\nHe was portrayed by Anthony Perkins in the 1960 version of \"Psycho\" directed by Alfred Hitchcock and in the \"Psycho\" franchise. He was also portrayed by Vince Vaughn in the 1998 version of \"Psycho\", and by Freddie Highmore in the television series \"Bates Motel\" (2013\u20132017).\nUnlike the franchise produced by Universal Studios, Norman is not the principal antagonist in Bloch's subsequent novels and is succeeded by copycat killers who assume Norman's identity after his death in \"Psycho II\" (1982), although he does return and in the licensed continuation novel \"Psycho: Sanitarium\" (2016) by Chet Williamson. There is a wide-ranging assumption that the character was directly inspired by the Wisconsin murderer Ed Gein. With \"Psycho\" being optioned for film adaptation as a direct result of media attention on Gein, Bloch later revealed he was inspired more by the circumstances surrounding Gein's case\u2014the idea that \"the man next door may be a monster unsuspected even in the gossip-ridden microcosm of small-town life.\" Years later, when the full details of Gein's crimes were revealed, he was struck by \"how closely the imaginary character I'd created resembled the real Ed Gein both in overt act and apparent motivation.\"\nCharacter overview.\nBoth the 1959 novel and its 1960 film adaptation explain that Norman suffered severe emotional abuse as a child at the hands of his mother, Norma, who preached to him that sexual intercourse was sinful and that all women (except herself) were whores. The novel also suggests that their relationship may have been incestuous.\nAfter Norman's father died, Norman and his mother lived alone together \"as if there was no one else in the world\" until Norman was a teenager, when his mother met Joe Considine (Chet Rudolph in \"Psycho IV: The Beginning\") and planned to marry. Considine eventually convinced Norma to open a motel. Driven over the edge with jealousy, Norman murdered both of them with strychnine. After committing the murders, Norman forged his mother's suicide note to make it look like she had killed Considine and then herself. After a brief hospitalization for shock, he developed a split personality, assuming his mother's personality to repress his awareness of her death and thus escape the guilt of murdering her. He inherited his mother's house\u2014where he kept her corpse in the fruit cellar\u2014and the motel in the fictional small town of Fairvale, California.\nNorman's \"Mother\" personality is as cruel and possessive as the real Norma had been in life, frequently berating him and forbidding him to have a life outside of her. As \"Mother\", he dresses in Norma's clothes and talks to himself in her voice, and he also speaks to her corpse as if it is alive. \"Mother\" also kills women whom Norman feels attracted to, and anyone else who threatens the illusion of her existence. Norman passes out when \"Mother\" takes control; after \"Mother\" commits a murder, Norman awakens and destroys the evidence, convinced that \"she\" alone is responsible for the crime.\nBloch sums up Norman's multiple personalities in his stylistic form of puns: \"Norman\", a child needing his mother; \"Norma\", a controlling, mean-spirited parent figure; and \"Normal\", a functional adult who goes through the motions of day-to-day life.\n\"Psycho\" (novel and film).\nIn Bloch's 1959 novel and the 1960 Hitchcock film, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), a young woman on the run after stealing money from her employer, checks into the motel one night. Norman is smitten with her, and shyly asks her to have dinner with him in the house. \"Mother\" flies into a rage and threatens to kill Marion if Norman lets her in the house. Norman defies her and eats dinner with Marion anyway, but lashes out at her when she suggests that he institutionalize his mother. When Marion goes to her room to shower, Norman spies on her through a peephole he drilled in the wall. \"Mother\" takes control and stabs Marion to death (he beheads her in the novel). When Norman awakes to discover what he believes his mother has done, he sinks Marion's car\u2014with her corpse and the money in the trunk\u2014into a nearby swamp. As \"Mother\", he also murders Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam), a private detective hired by Marion's employer, days later.\nNorman is finally caught when Marion's sister Lila (Vera Miles) and boyfriend, Sam Loomis (John Gavin), arrive at the motel looking for her. When Norman figures out what they want, he knocks Sam out and goes running after Lila, who has reached the house and found Mrs. Bates' corpse. He attacks her as \"Mother\", but Sam, after coming to, overpowers him, and Norman is finally arrested for murdering Marion and two other missing women. Norman is declared insane and sent to an institution, where \"Mother\" takes complete, and permanent, control of his mind: he becomes his mother.\nNovel sequels.\n\"Psycho II\".\nIn Bloch's 1982 sequel to his first novel, \"Psycho II\", Norman escapes from the psychiatric hospital by killing one of two visiting nuns and donning her habit. He steals their van and kills then rapes the corpse of the second nun. Norman plans to find and kill both Sam Loomis and his wife Lila (Lila Crane sister of Mary or Marion Crane) who he believes are responsible for his incarceration but first he needs to fake his death. \nHe notices a hitchhiker and decides to kill him and fake his own death. Unbeknown to Norman the hitchhiker is planning to attack this nun and steal her van. Norman tries to attack his passenger but is overpowered. This in turn causes a fiery accident where the hitchhiker escapes, but Norman dies. Meanwhile, Dr. Adam Claiborne, who discovered Norman's corpse, assumes his personality and goes on a killing spree.\n\"Psycho House\".\nIn Bloch's 1991 sequel to his second novel, \"Psycho House\", Norman appears only as a novelty animatronic on display in the Bates Motel, which has been converted into a tourist attraction.\n\"Danganronpa Kirigiri\".\nIn the second volume of Takekuni Kitayama's 2013 ' light novel series, a prequel to the 2010 video game ', the events of \"Psycho\" and \"Psycho House\" are depicted as having taken place in the past of the world of \"Danganronpa\". Twenty years after Norman's death, the reinvented Bates Motel operates as a tourist attraction, now known as the Norman Hotel. It eventually closes, however, following a series of mysterious suicides and murders taking place in its vicinity, said to be committed by Norman's ghost.\nBy the time of the present day narrative of the novel, the hotel is used by the Victims Catharsis Committee (VCC) for their Duel Noir program, intended for victims of crimes to get revenge against the criminals who wronged them. In the novel, Kyoko Kirigiri and her assistant Yui Samidare find themselves participants of the Duel Noir, with an LCD screen of Norman's image (an evolution of his animatronic form, initially mistaken for a \"talking painting\") uttering lines recorded in the original Norman's voice to speak on the behalf the VCC. After explaining the game's rules, Norman leads a maid to her death via a burning gun-trap situated under his painting, before announcing that he has to leave to go find his mother. He then \"leaves\" the painting, and the rest of the Duel Noir is hosted by Norman's \"family\".\n\"Psycho: Sanitarium\".\nIn Chet Williamson's 2016 prequel to the second novel, \"\", Dr. Felix Reed tries to bring Norman out of a catatonic state. \"Sanitar"}, "descending_order": ["19596319", "37033510", "50662"], "permutation_1": ["19596319", "50662", "37033510"], "permutation_2": ["19596319", "50662", "37033510"], "permutation_3": ["37033510", "19596319", "50662"]}
{"id": "nq_7099476635664167392", "docs_added": {"21247": "Neil Armstrong\nAmerican astronaut and lunar explorer (1930\u20132012)\nNeil Alden Armstrong (August 5, 1930\u00a0\u2013 August 25, 2012) was an American astronaut and aeronautical engineer who, in 1969, became the first person to walk on the Moon. He was also a naval aviator, test pilot, and university professor.\nArmstrong was born and raised in Wapakoneta, Ohio. He entered Purdue University, studying aeronautical engineering, with the U.S. Navy paying his tuition under the Holloway Plan. He became a midshipman in 1949 and a naval aviator the following year. He saw action in the Korean War, flying the Grumman F9F Panther from the aircraft carrier . After the war, he completed his bachelor's degree at Purdue and became a test pilot at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) High-Speed Flight Station at Edwards Air Force Base in California. He was the project pilot on Century Series fighters and flew the North American X-15 seven times. He was also a participant in the U.S. Air Force's Man in Space Soonest and X-20 Dyna-Soar human spaceflight programs.\nArmstrong joined the NASA Astronaut Corps in the second group, which was selected in 1962. He made his first spaceflight as command pilot of Gemini 8 in March 1966, becoming NASA's first civilian astronaut to fly in space. During this mission with pilot David Scott, he performed the first docking of two spacecraft; the mission was aborted after Armstrong used some of his re-entry control fuel to stabilize a dangerous roll caused by a stuck thruster. During training for Armstrong's second and last spaceflight as commander of Apollo 11, he had to eject from the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle moments before a crash.\nOn July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Apollo 11 Lunar Module (LM) pilot Buzz Aldrin became the first people to land on the Moon, and the next day they spent two and a half hours outside the Lunar Module \"Eagle\" spacecraft while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the Apollo Command Module \"Columbia\". When Armstrong first stepped onto the lunar surface, he famously said: \"That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.\" It was broadcast live to an estimated 530 million viewers worldwide. Apollo 11 was a major U.S. victory in the Space Race, by fulfilling a national goal proposed in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy \"of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth\" before the end of the decade. Along with Collins and Aldrin, Armstrong was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon and received the 1969 Collier Trophy. President Jimmy Carter presented him with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, he was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1979, and with his former crewmates received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.\nAfter he resigned from NASA in 1971, Armstrong taught in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati until 1979. He served on the Apollo 13 accident investigation and on the Rogers Commission, which investigated the Space Shuttle \"Challenger\" disaster. In 2012, Armstrong died because of complications resulting from coronary bypass surgery, at the age of 82.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nEarly life and education.\nArmstrong was born near Wapakoneta, Ohio, on August 5, 1930, the son of Viola Louise (n\u00e9e Engel) and Stephen Koenig Armstrong. He was of German, English, Scots-Irish, and Scottish descent. He is a descendant of Clan Armstrong. He had a younger sister, June, and a younger brother, Dean. His father was an auditor for the Ohio state government, and the family moved around the state repeatedly, living in 16 towns over the next 14 years. Armstrong's love for flying grew during this time, having started at the age of two when his father took him to the Cleveland Air Races. When he was five or six, he experienced his first airplane flight in Warren, Ohio, when he and his father took a ride in a Ford Trimotor (also known as the \"Tin Goose\").\nThe family's last move was in 1944 and took them back to Wapakoneta, where Armstrong attended Blume High School and took flying lessons at the Wapakoneta airfield. He earned a student flight certificate on his 16th birthday, then soloed in August, all before he had a driver's license. He was an active Boy Scout and earned the rank of Eagle Scout. As an adult, he was recognized by the Scouts with their Distinguished Eagle Scout Award and Silver Buffalo Award. While flying toward the Moon on July 18, 1969, he sent his regards to attendees at the National Scout jamboree in Idaho. Among the few personal items that he carried with him to the Moon and back was a World Scout Badge.\nAt age 17, in 1947, Armstrong began studying aeronautical engineering at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana; he was the second person in his family to attend college. Armstrong was also accepted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), but he resolved to go to Purdue after watching a football game between the Purdue Boilermakers and the Ohio State Buckeyes at the Ohio Stadium in 1945 in which quarterback Bob DeMoss led the Boilermakers to a sound victory over the highly regarded Buckeyes. An uncle who attended MIT had also advised him that he could receive a good education without going all the way to Cambridge, Massachusetts. His college tuition was paid for under the Holloway Plan. Successful applicants committed to two years of study, followed by two years of flight training and one year of service as an aviator in the U.S. Navy, then completion of the final two years of their bachelor's degree. Armstrong did not take courses in naval science, nor did he join the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps.\nNavy service.\nArmstrong's call-up from the Navy arrived on January 26, 1949, requiring him to report to Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida for flight training with class 5-49. After passing the medical examinations, he became a midshipman on February 24, 1949. Flight training was conducted in a North American SNJ trainer, in which he soloed on September 9, 1949. On March 2, 1950, he made his first aircraft carrier landing on , an achievement he considered comparable to his first solo flight. He was then sent to Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Texas for training on the Grumman F8F Bearcat, culminating in a carrier landing on . On August 16, 1950, Armstrong was informed by letter that he was a fully qualified naval aviator. His mother and sister attended his graduation ceremony on August 23, 1950.\nArmstrong was assigned to Fleet Aircraft Service Squadron7 (FASRON 7) at NAS San Diego (now known as NAS North Island). On November 27, 1950, he was assigned to VF-51, an all-jet squadron, becoming its youngest officer, and made his first flight in a jet, a Grumman F9F Panther, on January 5, 1951. He was promoted to ensign on June 5, 1951, and made his first jet carrier landing on two days later. On June 28, 1951, \"Essex\" had set sail for Korea, with VF-51 aboard to act as ground-attack aircraft. VF-51 flew ahead to Naval Air Station Barbers Point in Hawaii, where it conducted fighter-bomber training before rejoining the ship at the end of July.\nOn August 29, 1951, Armstrong saw action in the Korean War as an escort for a photo reconnaissance plane over Songjin. Five days later, on September 3, he flew armed reconnaissance over the primary transportation and storage facilities south of the village of Majon-ni, west of Wonsan. According to Armstrong, he was making a low bombing run at when of his wing was torn off after it collided with a cable that was strung across the hills as a booby trap. He was flying above the ground when he hit it. While there was heavy anti-aircraft fire in the area, none hit Armstrong's aircraft. An initial report to the commanding officer of \"Essex\" said that Armstrong's F9F Panther was hit by anti-aircraft fire. The report indicated he was trying to regain control and collided with a pole, which sliced off of the Panther's right wing. Further perversions of the story by different authors added that he was only from the ground and that of his wing was sheared off.\nArmstrong flew the plane back to friendly territory, but because of the loss of the aileron, ejection was his only safe option. He intended to eject over water and await rescue by Navy helicopters, but his parachute was blown back over land. A jeep driven by a roommate from flight school picked him up; it is unknown what happened to the wreckage of his aircraft, F9F-2 BuNo \"125122\".\nIn all, Armstrong flew 78missions over Korea for a total of 121hours in the air, a third of them in January 1952, with the final mission on March 5, 1952. Of 492 U.S. Navy personnel killed in the Korean War, 27 of them were from \"Essex\" on this war cruise. Armstrong received the Air Medal for 20 combat missions, two gold stars for the next 40, the Korean Service Medal and Engagement Star, the National Defense Service Medal, and the United Nations Korea Medal.\nArmstrong's regular commission was terminated on February 25, 1952, and he became an ensign in the United States Navy Reserve. On completion of his combat tour with \"Essex\", he was assigned to a transport squadron, VR-32, in May 1952. He was released from active duty on August 23, 1952, but remained in the reserve, and was promoted to lieutenant (junior grade) on May 9, 1953. As a reservist, he continued to fly, first with VF-724 at Naval Air Station Glenview in Illinois, and then, after moving to California, with VF-773 at Naval Air Station Los Alamitos. He remained in the reserve for eight years before resigning his commission on October 21, 1960.\nCollege years.\nAfter his service with the Navy, Armstrong returned to Purdue. His previously earned good but not outstanding grades now improved, lifting his final Grade Point Average (GPA) to a respectable but not outstanding 4.8 out of 6.0. He pledged the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, and lived in its fraternity house. He wrote and co-directed two musicals as part of the all-student revue. The first was a version of \"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs\", co-directed with his girlfriend Joanne Alford from the Alpha Chi Omega sorority, with songs from the 1937 Walt Disney film, including \"Someday My Prince Will Come\"; the second was titled \"The Land of Egelloc\" (\"college\" spelled backward), with music from Gilbert and Sullivan but new lyrics. \nArmstrong was chairman of the Purdue Aero Flying Club, and flew the club's aircraft, an Aeronca and a couple of Pipers, which were kept at nearby Aretz Airport in Lafayette, Indiana. Flying the Aeronca to Wapakoneta in 1954, he damaged it in a rough landing in a farmer's field, and it had to be hauled back to Lafayette on a trailer. He was a baritone player in the Purdue All-American Marching Band. Ten years later he was made an honorary member of Kappa Kappa Psi national band honorary fraternity. Armstrong graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering in January 1955. In 1970, he completed his Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). He would eventually be awarded honorary doctorates by several universities.\nArmstrong met Janet Elizabeth Shearon, who was majoring in home economics, at a party hosted by Alpha Chi Omega. According to the couple, there was no real courtship, and neither could remember the exact circumstances of their engagement. They were married on January 28, 1956, at the Congregational Church in Wilmette, Illinois. When he moved to Edwards Air Force Base, he lived in the bachelor quarters of the base, while Janet lived in the Westwood district of Los Angeles. After one semester, they moved into a house in Antelope Valley, near Edwards AFB. Janet did not finish her degree, a fact she regretted later in life. The couple had three children. In June 1961, their daughter Karen was diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, a malignant tumor of the middle part of her brain stem. X-ray treatment slowed its growth, but her health deteriorated to the point where she could no longer walk or talk. She died of pneumonia, related to her weakened health, on January 28, 1962, aged two.\nTest pilot.\nFollowing his graduation from Purdue, Armstrong became an experimental research test pilot. He applied at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) High-Speed Flight Station at Edwards Air Force Base. NACA had no open positions, and forwarded his application to the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland, where Armstrong made his first test flight on March 1, 1955. Armstrong's stint at Cleveland lasted only a couple of months before a position at the High-Speed Flight Station became available, and he reported for work there on July 11, 1955.\nOn his first day, Armstrong was tasked with piloting chase planes during releases of experimental aircraft from modified bombers. He also flew the modified bombers, and on one of these missions had his first flight incident at Edwards. On March 22, 1956, he was in a Boeing B-29 Superfortress, which was to air-drop a Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket. He sat in the right-hand co-pilot seat while pilot in command, Stan Butchart sat in the left-hand pilot seat flying the B-29.\nAs they climbed to , the number-four engine stopped and the propeller began windmilling (rotating freely) in the airstream. Hitting the switch that would stop the propeller's spinning, Butchart watched it slow, then resume spinning even faster than the others; if it spun too fast, it would break apart. Their aircraft needed to hold an airspeed of to launch its Skyrocket payload, and the B-29 could not land with the Skyrocket attached to its belly. Armstrong and Butchart brought the aircraft into a nose-down attitude to increase speed, then launched the Skyrocket. At the instant of launch, the number-four engine propeller disintegrated. Pieces of it damaged the number-three engine and hit the number-two engine. Butchart and Armstrong were forced to shut down the damaged number-three engine, along with the number-one engine, because of the torque it created. They made a slow, circling descent from using only the number-two engine, and landed safely.\nArmstrong served as project pilot on Century Series fighters, including the North American F-100 Super Sabre A and C variants, the McDonnell F-101 Voodoo, the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, the Republic F-105 Thunderchief and the Convair F-106 Delta Dart. He also flew the Douglas DC-3, Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star, North American F-86 Sabre, McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, Douglas F5D-1 Skylancer, Boeing B-29 Superfortress, Boeing B-47 Stratojet and Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker, and was one of eight elite pilots involved in the Paresev paraglider research vehicle program. Over his career, he flew more than 200 different models of aircraft. His first flight in a rocket-powered aircraft was on August 15, 1957, in the Bell X-1B, to an altitude of . On landing, the poorly designed nose landing gear failed, as had happened on about a dozen previous flights of the Bell X-1B. He flew the North American X-15 seven times, including the first flight with the Q-ball system, the first flight of the number3 X-15 airframe, and the first flight of the MH-96 adaptive flight control system. He became an employee of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) when it was established on October 1, 1958, absorbing NACA.\nArmstrong was involved in several incidents that went down in Edwards folklore or were chronicled in the memoirs of colleagues. During his sixth X-15 flight on April 20, 1962, Armstrong was testing the MH-96 control system when he flew to a height of over (the highest he flew before Gemini 8). He held up the aircraft nose during its descent to demonstrate the MH-96's g-limiting performance, and the X-15 ballooned back up to around . He flew past the landing field at Mach3 at over in altitude, and ended up south of Edwards. After sufficient descent, he turned back toward the landing area, and landed. It was the longest X-15 flight in both flight time and length of the ground track.\nFellow astronaut Michael Collins wrote that of the X-15 pilots Armstrong \"had been considered one of the weaker stick-and-rudder men, but the very best when it came to understanding the machine's design and how it operated\". Many of the test pilots at Edwards praised Armstrong's engineering ability. Milt Thompson said he was \"the most technically capable of the early X-15 pilots\". Bill Dana said Armstrong \"had a mind that absorbed things like a sponge\". Those who flew for the Air Force tended to have a different opinion, especially people like Chuck Yeager and Pete Knight, who did not have engineering degrees. Knight said that pilot-engineers flew in a way that was \"more mechanical than it is flying\", and gave this as the reason why some pilot-engineers got into trouble: Their flying skills did not come naturally. Armstrong made seven flights in the X-15 between November 30, 1960, and July 26, 1962. He reached a top speed of Mach 5.74 () in the X-15-1, and left the Flight Research Center with a total of 2,400 flying hours.\nOn April 24, 1962, Armstrong flew for the only time with Yeager. Their job, flying a T-33, was to evaluate Smith Ranch Dry Lake in Nevada for use as an emergency landing site for the X-15. In his autobiography, Yeager wrote that he knew the lake bed was unsuitable for landings after recent rains, but Armstrong insisted on flying out anyway. As they attempted a touch-and-go, the wheels became stuck and they had to wait for rescue. As Armstrong told the story, Yeager never tried to talk him out of it and they made a first successful landing on the east side of the lake. Then Yeager told him to try again, this time a bit slower. On the second landing, they became stuck, provoking Yeager to fits of laughter.\nOn May 21, 1962, Armstrong was involved in the \"Nellis Affair\". He was sent in an F-104 to inspect Delamar Dry Lake in southern Nevada, again for emergency landings. He misjudged his altitude and did not realize that the landing gear had not fully extended. As he touched down, the landing gear began to retract; Armstrong applied full power to abort the landing, but the ventral fin and landing gear door struck the ground, damaging the radio and releasing hydraulic fluid. Without radio communication, Armstrong flew south to Nellis Air Force Base, past the control tower, and waggled his wings, the signal for a no-radio approach. The loss of hydraulic fluid caused the tailhook to release, and upon landing, he caught the arresting wire attached to an anchor chain, and dragged the chain along the runway.\nIt took thirty minutes to clear the runway and rig another arresting cable. Armstrong telephoned Edwards and asked for someone to collect him. Milt Thompson was sent in an F-104B, the only two-seater available, but a plane Thompson had never flown. With great difficulty, Thompson made it to Nellis, where a strong crosswind caused a hard landing and the left main tire suffered a blowout. The runway was again closed to clear it, and Bill Dana was sent to Nellis in a T-33, but he almost landed long. The Nellis base operations office then decided that to avoid any further problems, it would be best to find the three NASA pilots ground transport back to Edwards.\nAstronaut career.\nIn June 1958, Armstrong was selected for the U.S. Air Force's Man in Space Soonest program, but the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) canceled its funding on August 1, 1958, and on November 5, 1958, it was superseded by Project Mercury, a civilian project run by NASA. As a NASA civilian test pilot, Armstrong was ineligible to become one of its astronauts at this time, as selection was restricted to military test pilots. In November 1960, he was chosen as part of the pilot consultant group for the X-20 Dyna-Soar, a military space plane under development by Boeing for the U.S. Air Force, and on March 15, 1962, he was selected by the U.S. Air Force as one of seven pilot-engineers who would fly the X-20 when it got off the design board.\nIn April 1962, NASA sought applications for the second group of NASA astronauts for Project Gemini, a proposed two-man spacecraft. This time, selection was open to qualified civilian test pilots. Armstrong visited the Seattle World's Fair in May 1962 and attended a conference there on space exploration that was co-sponsored by NASA. After he returned from Seattle on June 4, he applied to become an astronaut. His application arrived about a week past the June 1, 1962, deadline, but Dick Day, a flight simulator expert with whom Armstrong had worked closely at Edwards, saw the late arrival of the application and slipped it into the pile before anyone noticed. At Brooks Air Force Base at the end of June, Armstrong underwent a medical exam that many of the applicants described as painful and at times seemingly pointless.\nNASA's Director of Flight Crew Operations, Deke Slayton, called Armstrong on September 13, 1962, and asked whether he would be interested in joining the NASA Astronaut Corps as part of what the press dubbed \"the New Nine\"; without hesitation, Armstrong said yes. The selections were kept secret until three days later, although newspaper reports had circulated since earlier that year that he would be selected as the \"first civilian astronaut\". Armstrong was one of two civilian pilots selected for this group; the other was Elliot See, another former naval aviator. NASA selected the second group that, compared with the Mercury Seven astronauts, were younger, and had more impressive academic credentials. Collins wrote that Armstrong was by far the most experienced test pilot in the Astronaut Corps.\nGemini program.\nGemini 5.\nOn February 8, 1965, Armstrong and Elliot See were picked as the backup crew for Gemini 5, with Armstrong as commander, supporting the prime crew of Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad. The mission's purpose was to practice space rendezvous and to develop procedures and equipment for a seven-day flight, all of which would be required for a mission to the Moon. With two other flights (Gemini 3 and Gemini 4) in preparation, six crews were competing for simulator time, so Gemini5 was postponed. It finally lifted off on August 21. Armstrong and See watched the launch at Cape Kennedy, then flew to the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston. The mission was generally successful, despite a problem with the fuel cells that prevented a rendezvous. Cooper and Conrad practiced a \"phantom rendezvous\", carrying out the maneuver without a target.\nGemini 8.\nThe crews for Gemini8 were assigned on September 20, 1965. Under the normal rotation system, the backup crew for one mission became the prime crew for the third mission after, but Slayton designated David Scott as the pilot of Gemini8. Scott was the first member of the third group of astronauts, who was selected on October 18, 1963, to receive a prime crew assignment. See was designated to command Gemini 9. Henceforth, each Gemini mission was commanded by a member of Armstrong's group, with a member of Scott's group as the pilot. Conrad would be Armstrong's backup this time, and Richard F. Gordon Jr. his pilot. Armstrong became the first American civilian in space. (Valentina Tereshkova of the Soviet Union had become the first civilian\u2014and first woman\u2014nearly three years earlier aboard Vostok 6 when it launched on June 16, 1963.) Armstrong would also be the last of his group to fly in space, as See died in a T-38 crash on February 28, 1966, that also took the life of crewmate Charles Bassett. They were replaced by the backup crew of Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan, while Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin moved up from the backup crew of Gemini 10 to become the backup for Gemini 9, and would eventually fly Gemini 12.\nGemini 8 launched on March 16, 1966. It was the most complex mission yet, with a rendezvous and docking with an uncrewed Agena target vehicle, and the planned second American spacewalk (EVA) by Scott. The mission was planned to last 75hours and 55orbits. After the Agena lifted off at 10:00:00 EST, the Titan II rocket carrying Armstrong and Scott ignited at 11:41:02 EST, putting them into an orbit from which they chased the Agena. They achieved the first-ever docking between two spacecraft. Contact with the crew was intermittent due to the lack of tracking stations covering their entire orbits. While out of contact with the ground, the docked spacecraft began to roll, and Armstrong attempted to correct this with the Gemini's Orbit Attitude and Maneuvering System (OAMS). Following the earlier advice of Mission Control, they undocked, but the roll increased dramatically until they were turning about once per second, indicating a problem with Gemini's attitude control. Armstrong engaged the Reentry Control System (RCS) and turned off the OAMS. Mission rules dictated that once this system was turned on, the spacecraft had to reenter at the next possible opportunity. It was later thought that damaged wiring caused one of the thrusters to stick in the on position.\nA few people in the Astronaut Office, including Walter Cunningham, felt that Armstrong and Scott \"had botched their first mission\". There was speculation that Armstrong could have salvaged the mission if he had turned on only one of the two RCS rings, saving the other for mission objectives. These criticisms were unfounded; no malfunction procedures had been written, and it was possible to turn on only both RCS rings, not one or the other. Gene Kranz wrote, \"The crew reacted as they were trained, and they reacted wrong because we trained them wrong.\" The mission planners and controllers had failed to realize that when two spacecraft were docked, they must be considered one spacecraft. Kranz considered this the mission's most important lesson. Armstrong was depressed that the mission was cut short, canceling most mission objectives and robbing Scott of his EVA. The Agena was later reused as a docking target by Gemini 10. Armstrong and Scott received the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, and the Air Force awarded Scott the Distinguished Flying Cross as well. Scott was promoted to lieutenant colonel, and Armstrong received a $678 raise in pay to $21,653 a year (), making him NASA's highest-paid astronaut.\nGemini 11.\nIn Armstrong's final assignment in the Gemini program, he was the back-up Command Pilot for Gemini 11. Having trained for two flights, Armstrong was quite knowledgeable about the systems and took on a teaching role for the rookie backup pilot, William Anders. The launch was on September 12, 1966, with Conrad and Gordon on board, who successfully completed the mission objectives, while Armstrong served as a capsule communicator (CAPCOM).\nFollowing the flight, President Lyndon B. Johnson asked Armstrong and his wife to take part in a 24-day goodwill tour of South America. Also on the tour, which took in 11countries and 14major cities, were Dick Gordon, George Low, their wives, and other government officials. In Paraguay, Armstrong greeted dignitaries in their local language, Guarani; in Brazil he talked about the exploits of the Brazilian-born aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont.\nApollo program.\nOn January 27, 1967\u2014the day of the Apollo 1 fire\u2014Armstrong was in Washington, D.C., with Cooper, Gordon, Lovell and Scott Carpenter for the signing of the United Nations Outer Space Treaty. The astronauts chatted with the assembled dignitaries until 18:45, when Carpenter went to the airport, and the others returned to the Georgetown Inn, where they each found messages to phone the MSC. During these calls, they learned of the deaths of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee in the fire. Armstrong and the group spent the rest of the night drinking scotch and discussing what had happened.\nOn April 5, 1967, the same day the Apollo1 investigation released its final report, Armstrong and 17 other astronauts gathered for a meeting with Slayton. The first thing Slayton said was, \"The guys who are going to fly the first lunar missions are the guys in this room.\" According to Cernan, only Armstrong showed no reaction to the statement. To Armstrong it came as no surprise\u2014the room was full of veterans of Project Gemini, the only people who could fly the lunar missions. Slayton talked about the planned missions and named Armstrong to the backup crew for Apollo 9, which at that stage was planned as a medium Earth orbit test of the combined lunar module and command and service module.\nThe crew was officially assigned on November 20, 1967. For crewmates, Armstrong was assigned Lovell and Aldrin, from Gemini 12. After design and manufacturing delays of the lunar module (LM), Apollo 8 and9 swapped prime and backup crews. Based on the normal crew rotation, Armstrong would command Apollo 11, with one change: Collins on the Apollo8 crew began experiencing trouble with his legs. Doctors diagnosed the problem as a bony growth between his fifth and sixth vertebrae, requiring surgery. Lovell took his place on the Apollo8 crew, and, when Collins recovered, he joined Armstrong's crew.\nTo give the astronauts practice piloting the LM on its descent, NASA commissioned Bell Aircraft to build two Lunar Landing Research Vehicles (LLRV), later augmented with three Lunar Landing Training Vehicles (LLTV). Nicknamed the \"Flying Bedsteads\", they simulated the Moon's one-sixth gravity using a turbofan engine to support five-sixths of the craft's weight. On May 6, 1968, above the ground, Armstrong's controls started to degrade and the LLRV began rolling. He ejected safely before the vehicle struck the ground and burst into flames. Later analysis suggested that if he had ejected half a second later, his parachute would not have opened in time. His only injury was from biting his tongue. The LLRV was completely destroyed. Even though he was nearly killed, Armstrong maintained that without the LLRV and LLTV, the lunar landings would not have been successful, as they gave commanders essential experience in piloting the lunar landing craft.\nIn addition to the LLRV training, NASA began lunar landing simulator training after Apollo 10 was completed. Aldrin and Armstrong trained for a variety of scenarios that could develop during a real lunar landing. They also received briefings from geologists at NASA.\nApollo 11.\nAfter Armstrong served as backup commander for Apollo8, Slayton offered him the post of commander of Apollo 11 on December 23, 1968, as Apollo8 orbited the Moon. According to Armstrong's 2005 biography, Slayton told him that although the planned crew was Commander Armstrong, Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin, and Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, he was offering Armstrong the chance to replace Aldrin with Jim Lovell. After thinking it over for a day, Armstrong told Slayton he would stick with Aldrin, as he had no difficulty working with him and thought Lovell deserved his own command. Replacing Aldrin with Lovell would have made Lovell the lunar module pilot, unofficially the lowest ranked member, and Armstrong could not justify placing Lovell, the commander of Gemini 12, in the number3 position of the crew. The crew of Apollo 11 was assigned on January 9, 1969, as Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin, with Lovell, Anders, and Fred Haise as the backup crew.\nAccording to Chris Kraft, a March 1969 meeting among Slayton, George Low, Bob Gilruth, and Kraft determined that Armstrong would be the first person on the Moon, in part because NASA management saw him as a person who did not have a large ego. A press conference on April 14, 1969, gave the design of the LM cabin as the reason for Armstrong's being first; the hatch opened inwards and to the right, making it difficult for the LM pilot, on the right-hand side, to exit first. At the time of their meeting, the four men did not know about the hatch consideration. The first knowledge of the meeting outside the small group came when Kraft wrote his book. Methods of circumventing this difficulty existed, but it is not known if these were considered at the time. Slayton added, \"Secondly, just on a pure protocol basis, I figured the commander ought to be the first guy out... I changed it as soon as I found they had the time line that showed that. Bob Gilruth approved my decision.\"\nVoyage to the Moon.\nA Saturn V rocket launched Apollo 11 from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on July 16, 1969, at 13:32:00 UTC (09:32:00 EDT local time). Armstrong's wife Janet and two sons watched from a yacht moored on the Banana River. During the launch, Armstrong's heart rate peaked at 110beats per minute. He found the first stage the loudest, much noisier than the Gemini8 Titan II launch. The Apollo command module was relatively roomy compared with the Gemini spacecraft. None of the Apollo 11 crew suffered space sickness, as some members of previous crews had. Armstrong was especially glad about this, as he had been prone to motion sickness as a child and could experience nausea after long periods of aerobatics.\nApollo 11's objective was to land safely on the Moon, rather than to touch down at a precise location. Three minutes into the lunar descent, Armstrong noted that craters were passing about two seconds too early, which meant the Lunar Module \"Eagle\" would probably touch down several miles (kilometres) beyond the planned landing zone. As the \"Eagle\"'s landing radar acquired the surface, several computer error alarms sounded. The first was a code 1202 alarm, and even with their extensive training, neither Armstrong nor Aldrin knew what this code meant. They promptly received word from CAPCOM Charles Duke in Houston that the alarms were not a concern; the 1202 and 1201 alarms were caused by executive overflows in the lunar module guidance computer. In 2007, Aldrin said the overflows were caused by his own counter-checklist choice of leaving the docking radar on during the landing process, causing the computer to process unnecessary radar data. When it did not have enough time to execute all tasks, the computer dropped the lower-priority ones, triggering the alarms. Aldrin said he decided to leave the radar on in case an abort was necessary when re-docking with the Apollo command module; he did not realize it would cause the processing overflows.\nWhen Armstrong noticed they were heading toward a landing area that seemed unsafe, he took manual control of the LM and attempted to find a safer area. This took longer than expected, and longer than most simulations had taken. For this reason, Mission Control was concerned that the LM was running low on fuel. On landing, Aldrin and Armstrong believed they had 40seconds of fuel left, including the 20seconds' worth which had to be saved in the event of an abort. During training, Armstrong had, on several occasions, landed with fewer than 15seconds of fuel; he was also confident the LM could survive a fall of up to . Post-mission analysis showed that at touchdown there were 45 to 50seconds of propellant burn time left.\nThe landing on the surface of the Moon occurred several seconds after 20:17:40 UTC on July 20, 1969. One of three probes attached to three of the LM's four legs made contact with the surface, a panel light in the LM illuminated, and Aldrin called out, \"Contact light.\" Armstrong shut the engine off and said, \"Shutdown.\" As the LM settled onto the surface, Aldrin said, \"Okay, engine stop\"; then they both called out some post-landing checklist items. After a 10-second pause, Duke acknowledged the landing with, \"We copy you down, \"Eagle\".\" Armstrong confirmed the landing to Mission Control and the world with the words, \"Houston, Tranquility Base here. The \"Eagle\" has landed.\" Aldrin and Armstrong celebrated with a brisk handshake and pat on the back. They then returned to the checklist of contingency tasks, should an emergency liftoff become necessary. After Armstrong confirmed touch down, Duke re-acknowledged, adding a comment about the flight crew's relief: \"Roger, Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot.\" During the landing, Armstrong's heart rate ranged from 100 to 150beats per minute.\nFirst Moon walk.\nThe flight plan called for a crew rest period before leaving the module, but Armstrong asked for this to be moved to earlier in the evening, Houston time. When he and Aldrin were ready to go outside, \"Eagle\" was depressurized, the hatch was opened, and Armstrong made his way down the ladder. At the bottom of the ladder, while standing on a Lunar Module landing pad, Armstrong said, \"I'm going to step off the LM now\". He turned and set his left boot on the lunar surface at 02:56 UTC July 21, 1969, then said, \"That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.\" The exact time of Armstrong's first step on the Moon is unclear.\nArmstrong prepared his famous epigram on his own. In a post-flight press conference, he said that he chose the words \"just prior to leaving the LM.\" In a 1983 interview in \"Esquire\" magazine, he explained to George Plimpton: \"I always knew there was a good chance of being able to return to Earth, but I thought the chances of a successful touch down on the moon surface were about even money\u2014fifty\u2013fifty... Most people don't realize how difficult the mission was. So it didn't seem to me there was much point in thinking of something to say if we'd have to abort landing.\" In 2012, his brother Dean Armstrong said that Neil showed him a draft of the line months before the launch. Historian Andrew Chaikin, who interviewed Armstrong in 1988 for his book \"A Man on the Moon\", disputed that Armstrong claimed to have conceived the line during the mission.\nRecordings of Armstrong's transmission do not provide evidence for the indefinite article \"a\" before \"man\", though NASA and Armstrong insisted for years that static obscured it. Armstrong stated he would never make such a mistake, but after repeated listenings to recordings, he eventually conceded he must have dropped the \"a\". He later said he \"would hope that history would grant me leeway for dropping the syllable and understand that it was certainly intended, even if it was not said\u2014although it might actually have been\". There have since been claims and counter-claims about whether acoustic analysis of the recording reveals the presence of the missing \"a\"; Peter Shann Ford, an Australian computer programmer, conducted a digital audio analysis and claims that Armstrong did say \"a man\", but the \"a\" was inaudible due to the limitations of communications technology of the time. Ford and James R. Hansen, Armstrong's authorized biographer, presented these findings to Armstrong and NASA representatives, who conducted their own analysis. Armstrong found Ford's analysis \"persuasive\". Linguists David Beaver and Mark Liberman wrote of their skepticism of Ford's claims on the blog Language Log. A 2016 peer-reviewed study again concluded Armstrong had included the article. NASA's transcript continues to show the \"a\" in parentheses.\nWhen Armstrong made his proclamation, Voice of America was rebroadcast live by the BBC and many other stations worldwide. An estimated 530million people viewed the event, 20 percent out of a world population of approximately 3.6billion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n Q: Did you misspeak?\nA: There isn't any way of knowing.\nQ: Several sources say you did.\nA: I mean, there isn't any way of \"my\" knowing. When I listen to the tape, I can't hear the 'a', but that doesn't mean it wasn't there, because that was the fastest VOX ever built. There was no mike-switch \u2014 it was a voice-operated key or VOX. In a helmet you find you lose a lot of syllables. Sometimes a short syllable like 'a' might not be transmitted. However, when I listen to it, I can't hear it. But the 'a' is implied, so I'm happy if they just put it in parentheses.\n \"Omni\", June 1982, p. 126\nAbout 19minutes after Armstrong's first step, Aldrin joined him on the surface, becoming the second human to walk on the Moon. They began their tasks of investigating how easily a person could operate on the lunar surface. Armstrong unveiled a plaque commemorating the flight, and with Aldrin, planted the flag of the United States. Although Armstrong had wanted the flag to be draped on the flagpole, it was decided to use a metal rod to hold it horizontally. However, the rod did not fully extend, leaving the flag with a slightly wavy appearance, as if there were a breeze. Shortly after the flag planting, President Richard Nixon spoke to them by telephone from his office. He spoke for about a minute, after which Armstrong responded for about thirty seconds. In the Apollo 11 photographic record, there are only five images of Armstrong partly shown or reflected. The mission was planned to the minute, with the majority of photographic tasks performed by Armstrong with the single Hasselblad camera.\nAfter helping to set up the Early Apollo Scientific Experiment Package, Armstrong went for a walk to what is now known as East Crater, east of the LM, the greatest distance traveled from the LM on the mission. His final task was to remind Aldrin to leave a small package of memorial items to Soviet cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov, and Apollo1 astronauts Grissom, White and Chaffee. The Apollo 11 EVA lasted two and a half hours. Each of the subsequent five landings was allotted a progressively longer EVA period; the crew of Apollo 17 spent over 22hours exploring the lunar surface. In a 2010 interview, Armstrong explained that NASA limited their Moon walk because they were unsure how the space suits would cope with the Moon's extremely high temperature.\nReturn to Earth.\nAfter they re-entered the LM, the hatch was closed and sealed. While preparing for liftoff, Armstrong and Aldrin discovered that, in their bulky space suits, they had broken the ignition switch for the ascent engine; using part of a pen, they pushed in the circuit breaker to start the launch sequence. The \"Eagle\" then continued to its rendezvous in lunar orbit, where it docked with \"Columbia\", the command and service module. The three astronauts returned to Earth and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, to be picked up by the .\nAfter being released from an 18-day quarantine to ensure that they had not picked up any infections or diseases from the Moon, the crew was feted across the United States and around the world as part of a 38-day \"Giant Leap\" tour. \nThe tour began on August 13, when the three astronauts spoke and rode in ticker-tape parades in their honor in New York and Chicago, with an estimated six million attendees. On the same evening an official state dinner was held in Los Angeles to celebrate the flight, attended by members of Congress, 44governors, the Chief Justice of the United States, and ambassadors from 83nations. President Nixon and Vice President Agnew presented each astronaut with a Presidential Medal of Freedom.\nAfter the tour Armstrong took part in Bob Hope's 1969 USO show, primarily to Vietnam. In May 1970, Armstrong traveled to the Soviet Union to present a talk at the 13th annual conference of the International Committee on Space Research; after arriving in Leningrad from Poland, he traveled to Moscow where he met Premier Alexei Kosygin. Armstrong was the first westerner to see the supersonic Tupolev Tu-144 and was given a tour of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, which he described as \"a bit Victorian in nature\". At the end of the day, he was surprised to view a delayed video of the launch of Soyuz 9 as it had not occurred to Armstrong that the mission was taking place, even though Valentina Tereshkova had been his host and her husband, Andriyan Nikolayev, was on board.\nLife after Apollo.\nTeaching.\nShortly after Apollo 11, Armstrong stated that he did not plan to fly in space again. He was appointed Deputy Associate Administrator for Aeronautics for the Office of Advanced Research and Technology at ARPA, served in the position for a year, then resigned from it and NASA in 1971. He accepted a teaching position in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati, having chosen Cincinnati over other universities, including his \"alma mater\" Purdue, because Cincinnati had a small aerospace department, and said he hoped the faculty there would not be annoyed that he came straight into a professorship with only a USC master's degree. He began his master's degree while stationed at Edwards years before, and completed it after Apollo 11 by presenting a report on various aspects of Apollo, instead of a thesis on the simulation of hypersonic flight.\nAt Cincinnati, Armstrong was University Professor of Aerospace Engineering. He took a heavy teaching load, taught core classes, and created two graduate-level classes: aircraft design and experimental flight mechanics. He was considered a good teacher, and a tough grader. His research activities during this time did not involve his work at NASA, as he did not want to give the appearance of favoritism; he later regretted the decision. After teaching for eight years, Armstrong resigned in 1980. When the university changed from an independent municipal university to a state school, bureaucracy increased. He did not want to be a part of the faculty collective bargaining group, so he decided to teach half-time. According to Armstrong, he had the same amount of work but received half his salary. In 1979, less than 10% of his income came from his university salary. Employees at the university did not know why he left.\nNASA commissions.\nIn 1970, after an explosion aboard Apollo 13 aborted its lunar landing, Armstrong was part of Edgar Cortright's investigation of the mission. He produced a detailed chronology of the flight. He determined that a 28-volt thermostat switch in an oxygen tank, which was supposed to have been replaced with a 65-volt version, led to the explosion. Cortright's report recommended the entire tank be redesigned at a cost of $40million. Many NASA managers, including Armstrong, opposed the recommendation, since only the thermostat switch had caused the problem. They lost the argument, and the tanks were redesigned.\nIn 1986, President Ronald Reagan asked Armstrong to join the Rogers Commission investigating the Space Shuttle \"Challenger\" disaster. Armstrong was made vice chairman of the commission and held private interviews with contacts he had developed over the years to help determine the cause of the disaster. He helped limit the committee's recommendations to nine, believing that if there were too many, NASA would not act on them.\nArmstrong was appointed to a fourteen-member commission by President Reagan to develop a plan for American civilian spaceflight in the 21st century. The commission was chaired by former NASA administrator Dr. Thomas O. Paine, with whom Armstrong had worked during the Apollo program. The group published a book titled \"Pioneering the Space Frontier: The Report on the National Commission on Space\", recommending a permanent lunar base by 2006, and sending people to Mars by 2015. The recommendations were largely ignored, overshadowed by the \"Challenger\" disaster.\nArmstrong and his wife attended the memorial service for the victims of the Space Shuttle \"Columbia\" disaster in 2003, at the invitation of President George W. Bush.\nBusiness activities.\nAfter Armstrong retired from NASA in 1971, he acted as a spokesman for several businesses. The first company to successfully approach him was Chrysler, for whom he appeared in advertising starting in January 1979. Armstrong thought they had a strong engineering division, and they were in financial difficulty. He later acted as a spokesman for other American companies, including General Time Corporation and the Bankers Association of America. He acted as a spokesman for only American companies.\nIn addition to his duties as a spokesman, he also served on the board of directors of several companies. The first company board Armstrong joined was Gates Learjet, chairing their technical committee. He flew their new and experimental jets and even set a climb and altitude record for business jets. Armstrong became a member of Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company's board in 1973. They were interested in nuclear power and wanted to increase the company's technical competence. He served on the board of Taft Broadcasting, also based in Cincinnati. Armstrong joined the board of solid rocket booster Thiokol in 1989, after previously serving on the Rogers Commission which found that the Space Shuttle \"Challenger\" was destroyed due to a defect in the Thiokol-manufactured solid rocket boosters. When Armstrong left the University of Cincinnati, he became the chairman of Cardwell International Ltd., a company that manufactured drilling rigs. He served on additional aerospace boards, first United Airlines in 1978, and later Eaton Corporation in 1980. He was asked to chair the board of directors for a subsidiary of Eaton, AIL Systems. He chaired the board through the company's 2000 merger with EDO Corporation, until his retirement in 2002.\nNorth Pole expedition.\nIn 1985, professional expedition leader Mike Dunn organized a trip to take men he deemed the \"greatest explorers\" to the North Pole. The group included Armstrong, Edmund Hillary, Hillary's son Peter, Steve Fossett, and Patrick Morrow. They arrived at the Pole on April 6, 1985. He did not inform the media of the trip, preferring to keep it private.\nPublic profile.\nArmstrong's family described him as a \"reluctant American hero\". He kept a low profile later in his life, leading to the belief that he was a recluse. Recalling Armstrong's humility, John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, told CNN: \"[Armstrong] didn't feel that he should be out huckstering himself. He was a humble person, and that's the way he remained after his lunar flight, as well as before.\" Armstrong turned down most requests for interviews and public appearances. Michael Collins said in his book \"Carrying the Fire\" that when Armstrong moved to a dairy farm to become a college professor, it was like he \"retreated to his castle and pulled up the drawbridge\". Armstrong found this amusing, and said, \"...those of us that live out in the hinterlands think that people that live inside the Beltway are the ones that have the problems.\"\nAndrew Chaikin says in \"A Man on the Moon\" that Armstrong kept a low profile but was not a recluse, citing his participation in interviews, advertisements for Chrysler, and hosting a cable television series. Between 1991 and 1993, he hosted \"First Flights with Neil Armstrong\", an aviation history documentary series on A&E. In 2010, Armstrong voiced the character of Dr. Jack Morrow in \"\", an animated educational sci-fi adventure film initiated by JPL/NASA through a grant from Jet Propulsion Lab.\nArmstrong guarded the use of his name, image, and famous quote. When it was launched in 1981, MTV wanted to use his quote in its station identification, with the American flag replaced with the MTV logo, but he refused the use of his voice and likeness. He sued Hallmark Cards in 1994, when they used his name, and a recording of the \"one small step\" quote, in a Christmas ornament without his permission. The lawsuit was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, which Armstrong donated to Purdue.\nFor many years, he wrote letters congratulating new Eagle Scouts on their accomplishment, but decided to quit the practice in the 1990s because he felt the letters should be written by people who knew the scout. (In 2003, he received 950congratulation requests.) This contributed to the myth of his reclusiveness. Armstrong used to autograph everything except first day covers. Around 1993, he found out his signatures were being sold online, and that most of them were forgeries, and stopped giving autographs.\nPersonal life.\nSome former astronauts, including Glenn and Apollo 17's Harrison Schmitt, sought political careers after leaving NASA. Armstrong was approached by groups from both the Democratic and Republican parties but declined the offers. He supported states' rights and opposed the U.S. acting as the \"world's policeman\".\nWhen Armstrong applied at a local Methodist church to lead a Boy Scout troop in the late 1950s, he gave his religious affiliation as \"deist\". His mother later said that his religious views caused her grief and distress in later life, as she was a Christian. Upon his return from the Moon, Armstrong gave a speech in front of the U.S. Congress in which he thanked them for giving him the opportunity to see some of the \"grandest views of the Creator\". In the early 1980s, he was the subject of a hoax claiming that he converted to Islam after hearing the call to prayer while walking on the Moon. Indonesian singer Suhaemi wrote a song called \"Gema Suara Adzan di Bulan\" (\"The Resonant Sound of the Call to Prayer on the Moon\") which described Armstrong's supposed conversion, and the song was widely discussed by Jakarta news outlets in 1983. Similar hoax stories were seen in Egypt and Malaysia. In March 1983, the U.S. State Department responded by issuing a message to embassies and consulates in Muslim countries saying that Armstrong had not converted to Islam. The hoax surfaced occasionally for the next three decades. Part of the confusion arose from the similarity between the names of the country of Lebanon, which has a majority Muslim population, and Armstrong's longtime residence in Lebanon, Ohio.\nIn 1972, Armstrong visited the Scottish town of Langholm, the traditional seat of Clan Armstrong. He was made the first freeman of the burgh, and happily declared the town his home. To entertain the crowd, the Justice of the Peace read from an unrepealed archaic 400-year-old law that required him to hang any Armstrong found in the town.\nArmstrong flew light aircraft for pleasure. He enjoyed gliders and before the Moon flight had earned a gold badge with two diamonds from the International Gliding Commission. He continued to fly engineless aircraft well into his 70s.\nWhile working on his farm in November 1978, Armstrong jumped off the back of his grain truck and caught his wedding ring in its wheel, tearing the tip off his left ring finger. He collected the severed tip, packed it in ice, and had surgeons reattach it at a nearby hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. In February 1991, he suffered a mild heart attack while skiing with friends at Aspen, Colorado.\nArmstrong and his first wife, Janet, separated in 1990 and divorced in 1994 after 38 years of marriage. He met his second wife, Carol Held Knight, at a golf tournament in 1992, when they were seated together at breakfast. She said little to Armstrong, but he called her two weeks later to ask what she was doing. She replied that she was cutting down a cherry tree, and he arrived at her house 35 minutes later to help. They were married in Ohio on June 12, 1994, and had a second ceremony at San Ysidro Ranch in California. They lived in Indian Hill, Ohio. Through his marriage to Carol, he was the father-in-law of future New York Mets general manager Brodie Van Wagenen.\nIn May 2005, Armstrong became involved in a legal dispute with Mark Sizemore, his barber of 20years. After cutting Armstrong's hair, Sizemore sold some of it to a collector for $3,000 without Armstrong's knowledge or permission. Armstrong threatened legal action against Sizemore unless he returned the hair or donated the proceeds to a charity of Armstrong's choosing. Sizemore, unable to retrieve the hair, donated the proceeds to charity.\nIllness and death.\nOn August 7, 2012, Armstrong underwent bypass surgery at Mercy Faith\u2013Fairfield Hospital in Fairfield, Ohio, to relieve coronary artery disease. Although he was reportedly recovering well, he developed complications and died on August 25. President Barack Obama issued a statement memorializing Armstrong as \"among the greatest of American heroes\u2014not just of his time, but of all time\", and added that Armstrong had carried the aspirations of the United States' citizens and had delivered \"a moment of human achievement that will never be forgotten.\"\nArmstrong's family released a statement describing him as a \"reluctant American hero [who had] served his nation proudly, as a navy fighter pilot, test pilot, and astronaut\u00a0... While we mourn the loss of a very good man, we also celebrate his remarkable life and hope that it serves as an example to young people around the world to work hard to make their dreams come true, to be willing to explore and push the limits, and to selflessly serve a cause greater than themselves. For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.\"\nBuzz Aldrin called Armstrong \"a true American hero and the best pilot I ever knew\", and said he was disappointed that they would not be able to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing together in 2019. Michael Collins said, \"He was the best, and I will miss him terribly.\" NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said, \"As long as there are history books, Neil Armstrong will be included in them, remembered for taking humankind's first small step on a world beyond our own\".\nA tribute was held for Armstrong on September 13, at Washington National Cathedral, whose Space Window depicts the Apollo 11 mission and holds a sliver of Moon rock amid its stained-glass panels. In attendance were Armstrong's Apollo 11 crewmates, Collins and Aldrin; Gene Cernan, the Apollo 17 mission commander and last man to walk on the Moon; and former senator and astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth. In his eulogy, Charles Bolden praised Armstrong's \"courage, grace, and humility\". Cernan recalled Armstrong's low-fuel approach to the Moon: \"When the gauge says empty, we all know there's a gallon or two left in the tank!\" Diana Krall sang the song \"Fly Me to the Moon\". Collins led prayers. David Scott spoke, possibly for the first time, about an incident during their Gemini\u00a08 mission: minutes before the hatch was to be sealed, a small chip of dried glue fell into the latch of his harness and prevented it from being buckled, threatening to abort the mission. Armstrong then called on Conrad to solve the problem, which he did, and the mission proceeded. \"That happened because Neil Armstrong was a team player\u2014he always worked on behalf of the team.\" Congressman Bill Johnson from Armstrong's home state of Ohio led calls for President Barack Obama to authorize a state funeral in Washington D.C. Throughout his lifetime, Armstrong shunned publicity and rarely gave interviews. Mindful that Armstrong would have objected to a state funeral, his family opted to have a private funeral in Cincinnati. On September 14, Armstrong's cremated remains were scattered in the Atlantic Ocean from the . Flags were flown at half-staff on the day of Armstrong's funeral.\nIn July 2019, after observations of the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing, \"The New York Times\" reported on details of a medical malpractice suit Armstrong's family had filed against Mercy Health\u2013Fairfield Hospital, where he died. When Armstrong appeared to be recovering from his bypass surgery, nurses removed the wires connected to his temporary pacemaker. He began to bleed internally and his blood pressure dropped. Doctors took him to the hospital's catheterization laboratory, and only later began operating. Two of the three physicians who reviewed the medical files during the lawsuit called this a serious error, saying surgery should have begun immediately; experts the \"Times\" talked to, while qualifying their judgement by noting that they were unable to review the specific records in the case, said that taking a patient directly to the operating room under those circumstances generally gave them the highest chance of survival.\nThe family ultimately settled for $6\u00a0million in 2014. Letters included with the 93\u00a0pages of documents sent to the \"Times\" by an unknown person show that his sons intimated to the hospital, through their lawyers, that they might discuss what happened to their father publicly at the 45th anniversary observances in 2014. The hospital, fearing the bad publicity that would result from being accused of negligently causing the death of a revered figure such as Armstrong, agreed to pay as long as the family never spoke about the suit or the settlement. Armstrong's wife, Carol, was not a party to the lawsuit. She reportedly felt that her husband would have been opposed to taking legal action.\nLegacy.\nWhen Pete Conrad of Apollo 12 became the third man to walk on the Moon, on November 19, 1969, his first words referenced Armstrong. The shorter of the two, when Conrad stepped from the LM onto the surface he proclaimed \"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me.\"\nArmstrong received many honors and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom (with distinction) from President Nixon, the Cullum Geographical Medal from the American Geographical Society, and the Collier Trophy from the National Aeronautic Association (1969); the NASA Distinguished Service Medal and the Dr. Robert H. Goddard Memorial Trophy (1970); the Sylvanus Thayer Award by the United States Military Academy (1971); the Congressional Space Medal of Honor from President Jimmy Carter (1978); the Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy from the National Aeronautic Association (2001); and a Congressional Gold Medal (2011).\nArmstrong was elected as member into the National Academy of Engineering in 1978 for contributions to aerospace engineering, scientific knowledge, and exploration of the universe as an experimental test pilot and astronaut. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2001.\nArmstrong and his Apollo 11 crewmates were the 1999 recipients of the Langley Gold Medal from the Smithsonian Institution. On April 18, 2006, he received NASA's Ambassador of Exploration Award. The Space Foundation named Armstrong as a recipient of its 2013 General James E. Hill Lifetime Space Achievement Award. Armstrong was also inducted into the Aerospace Walk of Honor, the International Space Hall of Fame, National Aviation Hall of Fame, and the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame. He was awarded his Naval Astronaut badge in a ceremony on board the aircraft carrier on March 10, 2010, in a ceremony attended by Lovell and Cernan.\nThe lunar crater Armstrong, from the Apollo 11 landing site, and asteroid 6469 Armstrong are named in his honor. There are more than a dozen elementary, middle and high schools named for Armstrong in the United States, and many places around the world have streets, buildings, schools, and other places named for him or Apollo. The Armstrong Air and Space Museum, in Armstrong's hometown of Wapakoneta, and the Neil Armstrong Airport in New Knoxville, Ohio, are named after him. The mineral armstrongite is named after him, and the mineral armalcolite is named, in part, after him.\nIn October 2004 Purdue University named its new engineering building Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering; the building was dedicated on October 27, 2007, during a ceremony at which Armstrong was joined by fourteen other Purdue astronauts. The NASA Dryden Flight Research Center was renamed the NASA Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center in 2014. In September 2012, the U.S. Navy named the first \"Armstrong\"-class vessel . Delivered to the Navy on September 23, 2015, it is a modern oceanographic research platform supporting a wide range of activities by academic groups. In 2019, the College of Engineering at Purdue University celebrated the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's walk on the Moon by launching the Neil Armstrong Distinguished Visiting Fellows Program, which brings highly accomplished scholars and practitioners to the college to catalyze collaborations with faculty and students.\nArmstrong's authorized biography, \"\", was published in 2005. For many years, he turned down biography offers from authors such as Stephen Ambrose and James A. Michener but agreed to work with James R. Hansen after reading one of Hansen's other biographies. He recalled his initial concerns about the Apollo 11 mission, when he had believed there was only a 50% chance of landing on the Moon. \"I was elated, ecstatic and extremely surprised that we were successful\". A film adaptation of the book, starring Ryan Gosling and directed by Damien Chazelle, was released in October 2018.\nIn July 2018, Armstrong's sons put his collection of memorabilia up for sale, including his Boy Scout cap, and various flags and medals flown on his space missions. A series of auctions held November 1\u20133, 2018, realized $5,276,320 (~$ in 2023). As of July 2019[ [update]], the auction sales totaled $16.7million. Two fragments of wood from the propeller and four pieces of fabric from the wing of the 1903 \"Wright Flyer\" that Armstrong took to the Moon fetched between $112,500 and $275,000 each. Armstrong's wife, Carol, has not put any of his memorabilia up for sale.\nArmstrong donated his papers to Purdue. Along with posthumous donations by his widow Carol, the collection consists of over 450boxes of material. In May 2019, she donated two pieces of fabric from the \"Wright Flyer\", along with his correspondence related to them.\nIn a 2010 \"Space Foundation\" survey, Armstrong was ranked as the number-one most popular space hero; and in 2013, \"Flying\" magazine ranked him number one on its list of 51 Heroes of Aviation. The press often asked Armstrong for his views on the future of spaceflight. In 2005, he said that a human mission to Mars would be easier than the lunar challenge of the 1960s. In 2010, he made a rare public criticism of the decision to cancel the Ares I launch vehicle and the Constellation Moon landing program. In an open letter also signed by fellow Apollo veterans Lovell and Cernan, he said, \"For The United States, the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature\". On November 18, 2010, aged 80, he said in a speech during the \"Science & Technology Summit\" in the Hague, Netherlands, that he would offer his services as commander on a mission to Mars if he were asked.\nThe planetarium at Altoona Area High School in Altoona, Pennsylvania is named after Armstrong and is home to a Space Race museum. A campsite in Camp Sandy Beach at Yawgoog Scout Reservation in Rockville, Rhode Island, is named in his honor, a nod to his Scouting career.\nArmstrong was named the class exemplar for the Class of 2019 at the U.S. Air Force Academy.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["21247"], "permutation_1": ["21247"], "permutation_2": ["21247"], "permutation_3": ["21247"]}
{"id": "nq_-90069278949046872", "docs_added": {"31330546": "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (film)\n2011 film based on John le Carr\u00e9's novel\nTinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a 2011 Cold War spy film directed by Tomas Alfredson. The screenplay was written by Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan, based on John le Carr\u00e9's 1974 novel of the same name. The film stars an ensemble cast including Gary Oldman as George Smiley, with Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ciar\u00e1n Hinds, David Dencik and Kathy Burke. It is set in London in the early 1970s and follows the hunt for a Soviet double agent at the top of the British secret service.\nThe film was produced through the British company Working Title Films and financed by France's StudioCanal. It premiered in competition at the 68th Venice International Film Festival. A critical and commercial success, it was the highest-grossing film at the British box office for three consecutive weeks. It won the BAFTA Award for Outstanding British Film. The film also received three Oscar nominations: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, and for Oldman, Best Actor.\nThe novel had previously been adapted into the award-winning 1979 BBC television series of the same name with Alec Guinness playing the lead role of Smiley.\nPlot.\nIn 1973, \"Control\", head of British intelligence (\"The Circus\"), sends field agent Jim Prideaux to Budapest to meet a Hungarian general and potential defector, who has offered to identify a mole installed by Soviet spymaster Karla amongst the Circus' senior leadership. Prideaux realises the meeting is a trap, attempts to leave and is shot in the back. Control and his deputy, George Smiley, are forced to retire and Control dies shortly after. Sir Percy Alleline becomes the new Chief, Bill Haydon his deputy, and Roy Bland and Toby Esterhase his lieutenants. In a flashback, we see that despite Control's and Smiley's suspicions, the four had begun handling a high level Soviet source (\"Operation Witchcraft\"); Alleline later begins sharing Witchcraft intelligence with the Americans. \nAlleline and Bland meet with Permanent Undersecretary Oliver Lacon, the senior civil servant responsible for the Circus, to discuss the ongoing cost of a secret safe house to meet the Witchcraft source. After the meeting, field agent Ricki Tarr, currently in hiding due to being connected to several deaths in Istanbul, telephones Lacon to inform him of a mole within the Circus. Aware that Control had a similar theory, Lacon asks Smiley to investigate. Smiley recruits Peter Guillam and retired Special Branch Inspector Mendel to assist him.\nAfter setting up a base in the Hotel Islay, Smiley has Guillam steal personnel records and copies of the Circus' slush fund accounts. He discovers several Control loyalists were ousted after Prideaux's shooting, as well as a record of payment made to \"Mr. Ellis\", one of Prideaux's identities, \"after\" the shooting. In Oxford, Smiley interviews analyst Connie Sachs. Sachs had discovered evidence that Soviet cultural attach\u00e9 Alexei Polyakov was actually a military officer, and suspected his true role was to run a mole in London; Alleline had scoffed at her findings and sacked her. \nBack in London, Smiley discovers Tarr in his house. Tarr tells how he was assigned to trail Boris, a Russian trade delegate in Istanbul who was offering to defect, but whom he quickly guessed was actually KGB. After Tarr witnessed Boris assault his wife and fellow agent Irina, he and Irina began an affair. Irina offered to reveal the identity of a top-level mole in exchange for asylum in the UK. Hours after Tarr cabled London about the existence of a double agent the local station chief was murdered and Irina abducted. Smiley sends Guillam to the Circus archive to steal the duty officer's logbook for the night Tarr contacted London. Guillam, who had been Tarr's boss, is unexpectedly brought before Circus leadership and told that Tarr, who has been detected flying into Amsterdam, is a traitor who has been bribed by the Soviets. Guillam returns to Smiley's house and, discovering for the first time that Tarr is there, punches him, but Smiley finds that the logbook pages for the relevant night have been removed, supporting Tarr's story.\nThat night, Smiley recounts his only meeting with Karla to Guillam. Whilst working under the name \"Gerstmann\" in 1955, Karla was captured and traded to Russia by the Americans. Believing he would likely be executed upon his return, Smiley travelled to Delhi to recruit him. However, his constant urging for Karla to think of his wife only revealed Smiley's weakness: his love for his wife, Ann. A chainsmoker, Karla listened silently, stole a lighter given to George by Ann, and returned to Russia.\nSmiley contacts another sacked loyalist, former duty officer Jerry Westerby, who tells him of how Prideaux's shooting sent Control into shock. Hoping to find George, Westerby had telephoned Ann; Haydon then arrived and took charge. Guillam wonders how Haydon could have learned of the emergency, before Smiley informs him Haydon was having an affair with Ann. Smiley interviews Prideaux, who is working as a French teacher at a prep school. Prideaux explains that his Budapest mission was to identify the mole and relay one of five code-names to Control. Alleline was \"Tinker\", Haydon \"Tailor\", Bland \"Soldier\", Esterhase \"Poorman\", and Smiley \"Beggarman\". However, he was captured and tortured by the KGB, during which he witnessed Irina's execution. During his interrogation, Karla personally visited and asked how close Control was to identifying the mole before trading Prideaux back to the Circus.\nSmiley realises that Witchcraft is actually a KGB ruse. The four Witchcraft lead officers believe Polyakov is trading sensitive Russian military and political intelligence for trivial British material. In reality Polyakov is trading false or insignificant intelligence and the mole is leaking substantive British intelligence. Smiley informs Lacon and the Minister that the true object of Witchcraft is to lure the CIA into sharing US intelligence, which the mole can then leak to Karla.\nTo draw out the mole, Smiley and Guillam send Tarr to the Paris Station to cable the Circus. To ensure his compliance, Smiley agrees to Tarr's request to trade the mole for Irina, despite knowing she is dead. Smiley and Guillam surprise Esterhase as he leaves the Circus and drive him to an airstrip where they threaten to deport him until he provides the address of the safe house. Smiley and Guillam wait at the safe house for the mole to alert Polyakov that Tarr is about to blow their cover. The mole is revealed to be Haydon, and Smiley arrests him at gunpoint. \nThe Circus holds Haydon at its training and debriefing facility, Sarratt. Smiley informs him he will be traded for British operatives held in the Soviet Union, and agrees to settle several of Haydon's sexual relationships with both women and men. Haydon informs him that Karla ordered him to seduce Ann to cloud Smiley's judgement. He also confirms that Prideaux, a long-time friend (and, it is hinted, lover), suspected Haydon was the mole and tipped him off before his Hungary mission. Haydon was able to inform Karla and prevent Prideaux being killed by the KGB. Prideaux, however, blames Haydon for allowing his torture. \nPrideaux infiltrates Sarratt with a hunting rifle and shoots his friend underneath his eye, which forms a bloody teardrop that Prideaux watches from a distance before Haydon collapses. Ann returns home, and Smiley returns to the Circus as its Chief.\nCast.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>* Gary Oldman as George Smiley (\"Beggarman\")\nProduction.\nDevelopment.\nThe project was initiated by Peter Morgan when he wrote a draft of the screenplay, which he offered to Working Title Films to produce. Morgan dropped out as the writer for personal reasons but still served as an executive producer. Following Morgan's departure as writer, Working Title hired Peter Straughan and Bridget O'Connor to redraft the script. Park Chan-wook considered directing the film, but ultimately turned it down. Tomas Alfredson was confirmed to direct on 9 July 2009. The production is his first English language film. The film was backed financially by France's StudioCanal and had a budget corresponding to $21 million. The film is dedicated to O'Connor, who died of cancer during production.\nCasting.\nThe director cast Gary Oldman in the role of George Smiley, and described the actor as having \"a great face\" and \"the quiet intensity and intelligence that's needed\". Many actors were connected to the other roles at various points, but only days before filming started, Oldman was still the only lead actor who officially had been contracted. David Thewlis was in talks for a role early on. Michael Fassbender was in talks at one point to star as Ricki Tarr, but the shooting schedule conflicted with his work on '; Tom Hardy was cast instead. On 17 September 2010, Mark Strong was confirmed to have joined the cast. Jared Harris was cast but had to drop out because of scheduling conflicts with '; he was replaced by Toby Jones. John le Carr\u00e9 appears in a cameo as a guest in a party scene.\nFilming.\nPrincipal photography took place between 7 October and 22 December 2010. Most of the film was shot in London. Studio scenes were shot at Inglis Barracks, a former army barracks in Mill Hill. Exterior shots of \"The Circus\" were at Blythe House in West Kensington. The Merlin safe house scenes were filmed at Empress Coach Works in Cambridge Heath. Some exterior scenes were filmed on Hampstead Heath and in Hampstead Ponds, where Smiley is shown swimming. Some exterior shots were filmed in Kensington Gore, and interior scenes were filmed in Queen Alexandra's House and the physics department of Imperial College London, all in South Kensington.\nThe production filmed in Budapest for five days. Exterior shots included scenes at Fisherman's Bastion. The caf\u00e9 scene in which Jim Prideaux is shot was filmed in the interior hall of \"P\u00e1rizsi Udvar Hotel\". The events which take place in Czechoslovakia in the novel were moved to Hungary, because of the country's 20% rebate for film productions.\nThe production filmed in Istanbul for nine days, shortly before Christmas.\nThe production reunited Alfredson with cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema and editor Dino Jons\u00e4ter, with whom he had made his previous film \"Let the Right One In\".\nPost-production and music.\nThe film took six months to edit. The final song in the film, Julio Iglesias' rendition of the French song \"La Mer\", set against a visual montage of various characters and subplots being resolved as Smiley strides into Circus headquarters to assume command, was chosen because it was something the team thought George Smiley would listen to when he was alone; Alfredson described the song as \"everything that the world of MI6 isn't\". A scene where Smiley listens to the song was filmed, but eventually cut to avoid giving it too much significance.\nHeard at a Circus office party, sung along to by the guests, is \"The Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World\", composed by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, and performed by Sammy Davis Jr., from the British spy spoof \"Licensed to Kill\" (1965). At the same office Christmas function, the Circus staff sing the official \"State Anthem of the USSR\", conducted by a figure dressed as Father Christmas but wearing a Lenin mask. \"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)\", an album featuring Alberto Iglesias's score, was released by Silva Screen Records on 14 October 2011.\nRelease and reception.\nThe film premiered in competition at the 68th Venice International Film Festival on 5 September 2011. StudioCanal UK distributed the film in the United Kingdom, where it was released on 16 September 2011. The US rights were acquired by Universal Pictures, which owns Working Title, and they passed the rights to their subsidiary Focus Features. Focus planned to give the film a wide release in the United States on 9 December 2011 but pushed it to January 2012, when it was given an 800 screen release.\nThe film was released in France on 8 February 2012 under the title \"La Taupe\" (meaning \"The Mole\").\nCritical response.\n\"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy\" received critical acclaim. Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 83% based on 229 reviews, with an average rating of 7.80/10. The site's critics' consensus states: \"\"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy\" is a dense puzzle of anxiety, paranoia, and espionage that director Tomas Alfredson pieces together with utmost skill.\" Metacritic calculated an average critic score of 85/100 based on 42 reviews, indicating \"universal acclaim\".\nJonathan Romney of \"The Independent\" wrote, \"The script is a brilliant feat of condensation and restructuring: writers Peter Straughan and the late Bridget O'Connor realise the novel is overtly about information and its flow, and reshape its daunting complexity to highlight that\". David Gritten of \"The Daily Telegraph\" declared the film \"a triumph\" and gave it a five star rating, as did his colleague, Sukhdev Sandhu. Stateside, Peter Travers of \"Rolling Stone\" wrote, \"As Alfredson directs the expert script by Peter Straughan and Bridget O'Connor, the film emerges as a tale of loneliness and desperation among men who can never disclose their secret hearts, even to themselves. It's easily one of the year's best films.\" M. Enois Duarte of \"High-Def Digest\" also praised the film as a \"brilliant display of drama, mystery and suspense, one which regards its audience with intelligence\".\nWriting in \"The Atlantic\", le Carr\u00e9 admirer James Parker favourably contrasted Smiley with the James Bond franchise but found this \"Tinker Tailor\" adaptation \"problematic\" compared with the 1979 BBC mini-series. He wrote: \"To strip down or minimalize le Carr\u00e9, however, is to sacrifice the almost Tolkienesque grain and depth of his created world: the decades-long backstory, the lingo, the arcana, the liturgical repetitions of names and functions\".\nKeith Uhlich of \"Time Out New York\" named \"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy\" the fourth-best film of 2011, calling it \"a visually stunning adaptation with a stellar cast.\" In 2020, Uhlich named it the ninth-best film of the 2010s.\nBox office.\nThe film topped the British box office chart for three consecutive weeks and earned $80,630,608 worldwide.\nPossible sequel.\nWhile doing press for Working Title's \"Les Mis\u00e9rables\" film adaptation, producer Eric Fellner stated that fellow producer Tim Bevan was working with writer Straughan and director Alfredson on developing a sequel to \"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy\". Fellner did not specify whether or not the sequel would be based on \"The Honourable Schoolboy\" or \"Smiley's People\", the two remaining Smiley novels in Le Carr\u00e9's Karla trilogy. While doing press for \"Dawn of the Planet of the Apes\" in 2014, Oldman stated that talk of a sequel, an adaptation of \"Smiley's People\", had since disappeared; while also stressing that he would still like to see the film produced.\nIn July 2016, Oldman said that a sequel was in its early stages, stating, \"There is a script, but I don't know when we will shoot.\" It was reported at the time that a script based on \"Smiley's People\" had been \"greenlit\" by Working Title Films.\nIn December 2021, Alfredson said that a film sequel to the 2011 film was unlikely; the rights having reverted to Le Carr\u00e9's estate, who were planning to reboot Smiley on television. Alfredson expressed an interest in directing Oldman in a future TV miniseries adaptation of \"Smiley's People\" but he thought that the moment had likely passed. In an interview with the \"Radio Times\" in September 2024, producer Douglas Urbanski said that, \"We loved \"Tinker\" and we started to do prep for Gary to do \"Smiley\u2019s People\", and suddenly there was an unexpected rights issue. We've reached out, including again recently, to Le Carr\u00e9\u2019s sons and \u2014 the damnedest thing \u2014 they have no interest in Gary playing Smiley again. I don\u2019t know why.\"\nHowever, in March 2025, it was announced that a new TV adaptation of several Le Carr\u00e9 novels entitled \"A Legacy of Spies\" had begun production, effectively ending hope of a film sequel.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "638069": "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy\n1974 spy novel by John le Carr\u00e9\nTinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a 1974 spy novel by the author and former spy John le Carr\u00e9. It follows the endeavours of the taciturn, ageing spymaster George Smiley to uncover a Soviet mole in the British Secret Intelligence Service. The novel has received critical acclaim for its complex social commentary\u2014and, at the time, relevance, following the defection of Kim Philby. It was followed by \"The Honourable Schoolboy\" in 1977 and \"Smiley's People\" in 1979. The three novels together make up the \"Karla Trilogy\", named after Smiley's long-time nemesis Karla, the head of Soviet foreign intelligence and the trilogy's overarching antagonist.\nThe novel has been adapted into both a television series and a film, and remains a staple of the spy fiction genre. In 2022, the novel was included on the \"Big Jubilee Read\" list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II.\nPlot.\nBackground.\nAs the tension of the Cold War is peaking in 1973, George Smiley, former senior official in Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (known as \"the Circus\" because its London office is at Cambridge Circus), is living unhappily in forced retirement, following the failure of an operation codenamed Testify in Czechoslovakia which ended in the capture and torture of agent Jim Prideaux. Control, chief of the Circus, had suspected that one of the five senior intelligence officers at the Circus was a Soviet mole, and had assigned them code names for Prideaux to relay back to the Circus, derived from the English children's rhyme \"Tinker, Tailor\":<poem>Tinker, tailor,\nsoldier, sailor,\nrich man, poor man,\nbeggarman, thief.</poem>\nThe failure resulted in the dismissal of Control, Smiley, and allies such as Connie Sachs and Jerry Westerby, and their replacement by a new guard consisting of Percy Alleline, Toby Esterhase, Bill Haydon, and Roy Bland. Control has since died, and Smiley's former prot\u00e9g\u00e9, Peter Guillam, has been demoted to the \"scalphunters\".\nGuillam unexpectedly approaches Smiley and takes him to the house of Under-Secretary Oliver Lacon, the civil servant who oversees the Circus. There they meet Ricki Tarr, an agent recently declared \"persona non grata\" due to suspicion of having defected. Tarr defends himself by explaining that he was informed of a Soviet mole at the highest level of the Circus \u2013 codenamed Gerald \u2013 by Irina, the wife of a trade delegate, while in Hong Kong. Irina claimed that the mole, Gerald, reports to a Soviet official stationed at the embassy in London called Polyakov. Shortly after Tarr relayed this to the Circus, Irina was forcibly returned to the Soviet Union, leading Tarr to suspect that the mole was real, and now knew his identity. Tarr went into hiding, resurfacing to contact Guillam.\nLacon reasons that neither Smiley nor Guillam can be the mole, due to their respective dismissal and demotion, and so requests that Smiley investigate the presence of the mole in total secrecy to avoid another PR scandal for both the Government and the Circus. Smiley cautiously agrees, and forms a team consisting of himself, Guillam, Tarr, and retired Scotland Yard Inspector Mendel. Smiley is also given access to Circus documents, and begins by examining Alleline's restructuring, discovering the ousting of Jerry Westerby and Connie Sachs, as well as slush fund payments to Jim Prideaux.\nSmiley begins the hunt.\nSmiley visits Sachs, discovering that she confronted Alleline about her discovery that Polyakov was actually a Soviet Colonel called Gregor Viktorov, but he ordered her to drop the subject. She also mentions rumours of a secret Soviet facility for training moles, and makes allusions to Prideaux and Bill Haydon's relationship being more than just platonic friendship.\nSmiley examines Operation Witchcraft, an operation in which Soviet intelligence was obtained through a key source known as \"Merlin\", which was treated with suspicion by both Smiley and Control. Alleline obtained ministerial support to circumvent Control's authority, and his post-Testify promotion supporters Haydon, Esterhase, and Bland have sponsored it. Smiley also learns that this \"Magic Circle\" has obtained a safe house somewhere in London where they obtain information from a Merlin emissary posted in London under a diplomatic cover, who \u2013 Smiley concludes \u2013 is Polyakov himself.\nSmiley suspects that the Circus does not realise the flow of information is going the other way, with the mole \"Gerald\" passing important British secrets (\"gold dust\") in return for low-grade Soviet material (\"chicken feed\"), which would make \"Witchcraft\" simply a cover for the mole.\nKarla.\nSmiley also discovers that the log from the night Tarr reported in from Hong Kong has been removed, and Guillam starts to suffer from paranoia as a result of their operation. Smiley tells Guillam that he suspects a Soviet intelligence officer named Karla is linked in some way to the operation, and reveals what he knows about him. Karla is believed to have followed his father into espionage, getting his start during the Spanish Civil War posing as a White Russian \u00e9migr\u00e9 in the forces of General Francisco Franco, recruiting foreign, mainly German, operatives. After this the Circus lost track of Karla, but he resurfaced during Operation Barbarossa, directing partisan operations behind German lines. Smiley explains his belief that somewhere in the gap between these two conflicts, Karla travelled to England and recruited Gerald.\nSmiley points out that Karla is fiercely loyal to both the Soviet Union and communism, highlighting Karla's current rank despite his internment in a gulag by the Stalinist regime, and reveals that Karla turned down an offer from Smiley in India to defect, even though his return to the USSR in 1955 was to face a likely execution. During his attempt to obtain Karla's defection, Smiley plied him with cigarettes and promises that they could get Karla's family out to the West safely. Smiley suspects that this only revealed his own weakness, his love for his unfaithful wife, Ann. Smiley offered Karla his lighter, a present from Ann, to light a cigarette, but Karla rose and left with it.\nMerlin and Testify.\nSmiley suspects a link between Merlin and the botched Operation Testify. Sam Collins, who was duty officer that night, tells Smiley that Control ordered him to relay the report of the Czech operation only to him, but that when he did so, Control froze up, and that Bill Haydon's sudden arrival was the only reason the hierarchy didn't fall apart that night. Smiley then visits Max, a Czech operative who served as a legman for Prideaux on the operation, who tells Smiley that Prideaux gave him instructions to leave Czechoslovakia any way he could if Prideaux didn't surface at the rendezvous at the appointed time. Smiley next visits Jerry Westerby, who tells Smiley about the trip to Prague when a young army conscript insisted that the Russians were in the woods waiting for Prideaux a full day before he was ambushed.\nFinally, Smiley tracks down Prideaux. Prideaux tells him Control believed there was a mole in the Circus, and had whittled it down to five men, Alleline (Tinker), Haydon (Tailor), Bland (Soldier), Esterhase (Poorman), and Smiley himself (Beggarman), and that his orders were to obtain the identity from a defector in Czech intelligence who knew. He tells Smiley he almost didn't make the rendezvous with Max because he noticed he was being tailed, and that when he arrived to meet the defector, he was ambushed, taking two bullets to his right shoulder. During his captivity, both Polyakov and Karla interrogated him, focusing solely on the extent and status of Control's investigation. Prideaux suggests that the Czech defector was a plant, contrived by Karla to engineer Control's downfall through Testify's failure, all conceived to protect the mole.\nCatching the mole.\nSmiley confronts Toby Esterhase, stating that he is aware that Esterhase has been posing as a Russian mole, with Polyakov as his handler, in order to provide cover for Merlin's emissary Polyakov. Smiley compels Esterhase into revealing the location of the safe house, through making him realise that not only is there a real Soviet mole embedded in the SIS, but also that Polyakov has not been \"turned\" to work in British interest pretending to run the \"mole\" Esterhase, and in fact remains Karla's agent. Tarr is sent to Paris, where he passes a coded message to Alleline about \"information crucial to the well-being of the Service\". This triggers an emergency meeting between Gerald and Polyakov at the safe house, where Smiley and Guillam are lying in wait.\nHaydon is revealed to be the mole, and his interrogation reveals that he had been recruited several decades ago by Karla and became a full-fledged Soviet spy partly for political reasons, partly in frustration at Britain's rapidly declining influence on the world stage, particularly on account of the failings at Suez. He is expected to be exchanged with the Soviet Union for several of the agents he betrayed, but is killed shortly before he is due to leave England. Although the identity of his killer is not explicitly revealed, it is strongly implied to be Prideaux, due to the method of execution echoing the way he euthanises an injured owl earlier in the book, Prideaux's implied threat to execute a driver in Czechoslovakia in the same way that Haydon is killed, and a sense Smiley has of someone with Prideaux's background observing some of his later interrogations. Smiley is appointed temporary head of the Circus to deal with the fallout, and is still head at the start of the second book of \"The Karla Trilogy\", \"The Honourable Schoolboy\".\nBackground.\n\"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy\" is the fifth of le Carr\u00e9's spy novels to feature the character of George Smiley (the first four being: \"Call for the Dead\", \"A Murder of Quality\", \"The Spy Who Came in from the Cold\", and \"The Looking Glass War\") and the fictionalised intelligence agency of \"the Circus.\" Two of the characters, Peter Guillam and Inspector Mendel, first appeared in \"Call for the Dead\", while Control appeared in \"The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.\" With \"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy\", le Carr\u00e9 returned to the world of spy fiction after his non-espionage novel, \"The Na\u00efve and Sentimental Lover\", was panned by critics.\nWhen \"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy\" was published in 1974, revelations exposing the presence of Soviet double agents in Britain were still fresh in public memory. Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, and Kim Philby, later known as members of the Cambridge Five, had been exposed as KGB spies. The five had risen to very senior positions in the British diplomatic service. \nJohn le Carr\u00e9, whose real name was David Cornwell, worked as an intelligence officer for MI5 and MI6 (SIS) in the 1950s and early 1960s. Senior SIS officer Kim Philby's defection to the USSR in 1963, and the consequent compromising of British agents, was a factor in the 1964 termination of Cornwell's intelligence career. Le Carr\u00e9 also drew from the paranoid atmosphere created by CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton, who after Philby's defection became convinced that there were other moles operating at the highest levels of Western intelligence agencies.\nThe title alludes to the nursery rhyme and counting game Tinker Tailor.\nThemes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"It's scarce wonder that Smiley has become almost as legendary a figure as [Kim] Philby, for \"Tinker, Tailor\" with all its outward verisimilitude, constructs a potent and appealing myth for the class-ridden and post-imperial \"angst\" of Britain in the 1970s.\"\nDavid Stafford\n\"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy\" is set against a theme of decline in British influence on the world stage after the Second World War, with the USSR and the USA emerging as the dominant superpowers during the Cold War. Mark Fisher said the notion of \"postcolonial melancholia\" hangs over the novel, arguing that both the protagonists and antagonists are motivated by what they see as Britain's \"irreversible decline.\" These themes are particularly found in the character of Bill Haydon, who is modelled off the upper-class double agent Kim Philby. After his unmasking and capture, Haydon voices both a latent hostility towards the United States and a mourning of Britain's lack of \"relevance or moral viability in world affairs.\" The novel is emblematic of a British \"rottenness,\" according to critic David Monaghan, and le Carr\u00e9 locates it with a failure of the British ruling class itself, which has become directionless and self-seeking.\nCentral to the novel is the theme of betrayal. Melvyn Bragg wrote that le Carr\u00e9 sought to illustrate that \"the public or institutional default is always more excusable than the personal betrayal of faith.\" Haydon's betrayal of the Circus to Karla comes as a reaction to a postwar world that \"[deprived] him of the Empire he was trained to rule.\" Monaghan notes that le Carr\u00e9 (in \"Smiley's People\") refers to Haydon as a \"born deceiver,\" who betrays his colleague (Smiley), his lover (Ann and/or Prideaux) and his country. Nevertheless, Haydon's exact motivations are left vague \u2013 unlike Philby, who espoused a deep ideological commitment to communism.\"\nHistorian David A.T. Stafford considered Haydon's eventual capture to be a mythologised reimagining of the Philby affair. He noted that, \"far from receiving his just desserts,\" the real-life mole ended up alive and well in Moscow, thanks to the incompetence of his superiors and the wilful ignorance of his colleagues. \"That Philby was protected by a conspiracy of class is true enough, but that he was unmasked by a Smiley is not... \"Tinker Tailor\" is a fantasy; George Smiley a myth.\" In this sense, Stafford considers Smiley and Haydon to exist as classic foils to each other: \n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nTom Maddox wrote that Smiley's conflict with the Circus, past and present, represents the idealistic virtues of the Second World War that are \"at odds\" with the inhumanity, sophistry, and careerism of the spying profession. \"The secret service seeks to dispense with that humanity, the consensus on high being that humane virtues have outlasted whatever limited usefulness they might have had. So Smiley comes and goes, comes and goes.\" Fisher noted Smiley's characterisation as an outsider to the affairs the Circus, representing an archetypical Englishness that is both \"stolid\" and \"voyeuristic\". Fisher likens Smiley in the novel to both King Arthur \u2014 a \"perpetually cuckolded\" figure \"returning to save his ailing kingdom\" \u2014 as well as T. S. Eliot's figure of J. Alfred Prufrock, who is at once self-conscious and \"pathologically self-blinding\" to his weaknesses.\nJargon.\n\"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy\" employs spy jargon that is presented as the authentic insider-speak of British Intelligence. Le Carr\u00e9 noted that, with the exception of a few terms like \"mole\" and \"legend\", this jargon was his own invention. In some cases, terms used in the novel have subsequently entered espionage parlance. For example, the terms \"mole\", implying a long-term spy, and \"honey trap\", implying a ploy in which an attractive person lures another into revealing information, were first introduced in this novel, and have only subsequently entered general usage.\nThe television adaptation of \"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy\" also uses the term \"burrower\" for a researcher recruited from a university, a term taken from the novel's immediate sequel \"The Honourable Schoolboy\".\nMoscow Centre.\nMoscow Centre is a nickname used by John le Carr\u00e9 for the Moscow central headquarters of the KGB, especially those departments concerned with foreign espionage and counterintelligence. It arises from use by Soviet officers themselves, and Le Carr\u00e9 likely just used the nickname to gain greater credibility for his books.\nThe part of Moscow Centre most often referred to in Le Carr\u00e9's novels is the fictional Thirteenth Directorate headed by Karla, the code name for a case officer who has risen and fallen from political favour several times and was at one point \"blown\" by the British in the 1950s. Karla and George Smiley meet while Karla is in prison in Delhi, with Smiley trying to persuade Karla to defect during an interrogation in which Karla gives nothing away. Karla refuses these advances and eventually returns to favour in the USSR, masterminding the Witchcraft/Source Merlin operations supporting the mole Gerald in the Circus. Karla possesses a cigarette lighter given to Smiley by his wife, which he took during Smiley's interrogation of him.\nCritical response.\nIn a review for \"The New York Times\" written upon the novel's release in 1974, critic Richard Locke called \"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy\" \"fluently written,\" noting that \"it is full of vivid character sketches of secret agents and bureaucrats from all levels of British society, and the dialogue catches their voices well.\" He praised the novel's realism, calling the detailing of \"the day to day activities of the intelligence service at home and abroad\" convincing. He noted that the \"scale and complexity of this novel are much greater than in any of Le Carr\u00e9's previous books,\" while the \"characterisation too has become much richer.\"\nAn article published in in-house Central Intelligence Agency journal \"Studies in Intelligence\", presumably written by agents under pseudonyms, called it \"one of the most enduring renderings of the profession\". It does question the \"organisational compression\" involved in the form of a large organisation, which the SIS would be, being reduced to a handful of senior operatives playing operational roles, but admits that this \"works very well at moving the story along in print.\" However, the idea that a major counter-intelligence operation could be run without the knowledge of counter-intelligence professionals, an allusion to Smiley's investigation progressing in an undetected manner, is deemed an \"intellectual stretch.\"\nJohn Powers of NPR has called it the greatest spy story ever told, noting that it \"offers the seductive fantasy of entering a secret world, one imagined with alluring richness.\" Le Carr\u00e9 himself considered the novel to be among his best works.\nIn other media.\nTelevision.\nA TV adaptation of \"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy\" was made by the BBC in 1979. It is a seven-part serial and was released in September of that year. The series was directed by John Irvin, produced by Jonathan Powell, and stars Alec Guinness as George Smiley, with Ian Richardson as Bill Haydon. Ricki Tarr was played by Hywel Bennett. In the US, syndicated broadcasts and DVD releases compressed the seven-part UK episodes into six, by shortening scenes and altering the narrative sequence.\nRadio.\nIn 1988, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a dramatisation, by Rene Basilico, of \"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy\" in seven weekly half-hour episodes, produced by John Fawcett-Wilson. It is available as a BBC audiobook in CD and audio cassette formats. Notably, Bernard Hepton portrays George Smiley. Nine years earlier, he had portrayed Toby Esterhase in the television adaptation.\nIn 2009, BBC Radio 4 also broadcast new dramatisations, by Shaun McKenna, of the eight George Smiley novels by John le Carr\u00e9, featuring Simon Russell Beale as Smiley. \"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy\" was broadcast as three one-hour episodes, from Sunday 29 November to"}, "descending_order": ["638069", "31330546"], "permutation_1": ["638069", "31330546"], "permutation_2": ["31330546", "638069"], "permutation_3": ["638069", "31330546"]}
{"id": "nq_-486666742702414275", "docs_added": {"20692605": "Rat in Mi Kitchen\n1987 single by UB40\n\"Rat in Mi Kitchen\" is a song written and performed by British reggae and pop group UB40. It features Herb Alpert on trumpet and is the sixth track on their album 1986 \"Rat in the Kitchen\". Released as a single on 5 January 1987, it reached number 12 on the UK Singles Chart later the same month, staying on the chart for seven weeks.\nAlthough \"Rat in Mi Kitchen\" is attributed to the whole group, like many UB40 songs, it was written by Astro. At the time, lead singer Ali Campbell had moved into a new home in Balsall Heath, Birmingham and was troubled by rodents. When asked by Astro if he had any ideas for new songs he replied, \"Oh God, I don't care about the album for a minute, I've got a rat in the kitchen!\" Astro, who sings lead vocals on the song, wrote the track in response.\nThe sleeve artwork is by Bob Linney.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "14941280": "Ratatouille (film)\n2007 film by Brad Bird\nRatatouille ( ) is a 2007 American animated comedy-drama film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. The eighth film produced by Pixar, it was written and directed by Brad Bird and produced by Brad Lewis, from an original idea by Jan Pinkava, who was credited for conceiving the film's story with Bird and Jim Capobianco. The film stars the voices of Patton Oswalt, Lou Romano, Ian Holm, Janeane Garofalo, Peter O'Toole, Brian Dennehy, Peter Sohn and Brad Garrett. The title refers to the French dish ratatouille, and also references the species of the main character, a rat. Set mostly in Paris, the plot follows a young rat Remy (Oswalt) who dreams of becoming a chef at Auguste Gusteau's (Garrett) restaurant and tries to achieve his goal by forming an unlikely alliance with the restaurant's garbage boy Alfredo Linguini (Romano).\nDevelopment for \"Ratatouille\" began in 2000 when Pinkava wrote the original concepts of the film, although he was never formally named the director of the film. In 2005, following Pinkava's departure from Pixar for lacking confidence in the story development, Bird was approached to direct the film and revise the story. Bird and some of the film's crew members also visited Paris for inspiration. To create the food animation used in the film, the crew consulted chefs from both France and the United States. Lewis interned at Thomas Keller's The French Laundry restaurant, where Keller developed the confit byaldi, a dish used in the film. Michael Giacchino composed the Paris-inspired music for the film.\n\"Ratatouille\" premiered on June 22, 2007, at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, California, with its general release on June 29, in the United States. The film became a critical and commercial success, grossing $623.7 million worldwide. It finished its theatrical run as the sixth highest-grossing film of 2007 and the year's second highest-grossing animated film (behind \"Shrek the Third\"). The film received widespread acclaim for its screenplay, animation, humor, voice acting, and Giacchino's score. It also won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and was nominated for several more, including Best Original Screenplay. \"Ratatouille\" was later voted one of the 100 greatest motion pictures of the 21st century by a 2016 poll of international critics conducted by the BBC.\nPlot.\nRemy, a young rat with heightened senses of taste and smell, dreams of becoming a chef like his human idol, the late Auguste Gusteau. Conversely, the rest of his colony, including his older brother \u00c9mile and his father, Django, the clan leader, only eat for sustenance and are wary of humans. The rats live in an elderly woman's attic outside Paris, but when the woman discovers them, they are forced to evacuate, and Remy is separated. Encouraged by an imaginary Gusteau, he explores until he finds himself on the roof of Gusteau's namesake restaurant.\nRemy sees the restaurant's new garbage boy, Alfredo Linguini, struggling to fix a soup he ruined and steps in to help. Linguini notices Remy but keeps his presence secret from Skinner, Gusteau's former sous-chef and new owner. When Skinner confronts Linguini about the soup, it unexpectedly becomes a hit. Colette Tatou, the restaurant's only female chef, persuades Skinner to keep Linguini and support Gusteau's motto, \"Anyone can cook.\" Skinner demands Linguini replicate the soup but spots Remy, ordering Linguini to take him outside and kill him. Alone, Linguini realizes Remy understands him and persuades Remy to assist with cooking.\nRemy controls Linguini's movements like a marionette by pulling on his hair while hiding under his toque. They recreate the soup and continue cooking at the restaurant. Colette begrudgingly trains Linguini but steadily appreciates him heeding her advice. Later, Remy finds \u00c9mile and reunites with the clan. After Remy tells Django that he intends to stay at the restaurant, Django shows him a group of exterminated rats to convince him that humans are dangerous, but Remy ignores his warnings and leaves.\nMeanwhile, Skinner discovers a letter from Linguini's late mother stating that Linguini is Gusteau's son and thereby the rightful owner of the restaurant. Skinner is shocked and enraged about this revelation, as Gusteau's will stated that he would inherit ownership of the restaurant only if no biological heir appeared two years after the latter's death. After his lawyer verifies that Linguini is Gusteau's heir, Skinner hides the evidence in an envelope. Remy escapes with this, and shows it to Linguini, who then fires Skinner and discontinues a line of frozen food that Skinner had started. The restaurant thrives as Remy's recipes become popular, and Linguini's life improves as he develops a romantic relationship with Colette. Food critic Anton Ego, whose previous negative review of the restaurant indirectly led to Gusteau's death, announces to Linguini that he will review the restaurant again the following day. After Linguini takes credit for Remy's cooking at a press conference, he and Remy have a falling out. As revenge, Remy leads his clan to raid the restaurant's pantries. Linguini arrives to apologize, but upon discovering the raid, he furiously expels Remy and his clan from the restaurant.\nThe next day, Skinner captures Remy, who is quickly freed by Django and \u00c9mile. After returning to the restaurant, he and Linguini reconcile, and Linguini reveals Remy and his cooking techniques to his staff, who all immediately quit. Reminded of Gusteau's motto, Colette returns to help the clan cook under Remy's direction while Linguini waits tables. Skinner and a health inspector attempt to interfere, but the rats lock them in the pantry. Remy creates a variation of ratatouille, which reminds Ego of his mother's cooking. Delighted, Ego asks to meet the chef and is stunned when introduced to Remy. The next day, he writes a review, stating that he has come to understand Gusteau's motto and describing Remy without revealing that he is a rat.\nAlthough the rats imprisoned Skinner and the health inspector, the authorities learned of the rats in the kitchen and Gusteau's is shut down, stripping Ego of his job and credibility. Remy, Linguini, and Colette open a bistro called La Ratatouille, which a now-happier Ego invests in and frequents. The rat colony settles into the bistro's attic as their new home.\nVoice cast.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nProduction.\nJan Pinkava came up with the concept in 2000, creating the original design, sets and characters and core storyline, but he was never formally named the director of the film. By 2004, Pixar added Bob Peterson as a co-director and he was given exclusive control of the story. After three months and lacking confidence in the story development, Pixar management turned to \"The Incredibles\" director Brad Bird to direct the film, just as Pinkava departed Pixar in 2005 while Peterson left the film to return to work on \"Up\". Bird was attracted to the film because of the outlandishness of the concept and the conflict that drove it: that rats feared kitchens, yet a rat wanted to work in one. Bird was also delighted that the film could be made a highly physical comedy, with the character of Linguini providing endless fun for the animators. Bird rewrote the story, with a change in emphasis. He killed off Gusteau, gave larger roles to Skinner and Colette, and also changed the appearance of the rats to be less anthropomorphic.\nBecause \"Ratatouille\" is intended to be a romantic, lush vision of Paris, giving it an identity distinct from the studio's previous films, director Brad Bird, producer Brad Lewis and some of the crew spent a week in the city to properly understand its environment, taking a motorcycle tour and eating at five top restaurants. There are also many water-based sequences in the film, one of which is set in the sewers and is more complex than the blue whale scene in \"Finding Nemo\". One scene has Linguini wet after jumping into the Seine to fetch Remy. A Pixar employee (Shade/Paint department coordinator Kesten Migdal) jumped into Pixar's swimming pool wearing a chef's uniform and apron to see which parts of the suit stuck to his body and which became translucent from water absorption.\nA challenge for the filmmakers was creating computer-generated images of food that would appear delicious. Gourmet chefs in both the U.S. and France were consulted, and animators attended cooking classes at San Francisco-area culinary schools to understand the workings of a commercial kitchen. Sets/Layout department manager Michael Warch, a culinary-academy-trained professional chef before working at Pixar, helped teach and consult animators as they worked. He also prepared dishes used by the Art, Shade/Paint, Effects and Sets Modeling departments. Renowned chef Thomas Keller allowed producer Brad Lewis to intern in his French Laundry kitchen. For the film's climax, Keller suggested a fancy, layered version of the title dish for the rat characters to cook, called \"confit byaldi\". The same sub-surface light scattering technique that was used on the skin in \"The Incredibles\" was used on fruits and vegetables, while new programs gave an organic texture and movement to the food. Completing the illusion were music, dialogue, and abstract imagery representing the characters' mental sensations while appreciating food. The visual flavor metaphors were created by animator Michel Gagn\u00e9 inspired by the work of Oskar Fischinger and Norman McLaren. To create a realistic compost pile, the Art Department photographed fifteen different kinds of produce, such as apples, berries, bananas, mushrooms, oranges, broccoli, and lettuce, in the process of rotting.\nThe cast members strove to make their French accents authentic yet understandable. John Ratzenberger notes that he often segued into an Italian accent. Ian Holm was cast as the character of Skinner after Bird saw him in \"The Lord of the Rings\" trilogy. According to Pixar designer Jason Deamer, \"Most of the characters were designed while Jan [Pinkava] was still directing\u2026 He has a real eye for sculpture.\" According to Pinkava, the critic Anton Ego was designed to resemble a vulture. To save time, human characters were designed and animated without toes. Dana Carvey was originally approached for a role but he declined as he was busy raising kids.\nRat expert Debbie Ducommun (a.k.a. the \"Rat Lady\") was consulted on rat habits and characteristics. Along with Ducommun's insight a vivarium containing pet rats sat in a hallway for more than a year so animators could study the movement of the animals' fur, noses, ears, paws, and tails as they ran.\nPromotional material for Intel credits their platform for a 30 percent performance improvement in rendering software. They used \"Ratatouille\" in some of their marketing materials.\nThe film was animated with traditional techniques rather than motion capture. Bird noted this in the credits because he felt there was a trend of using real-time performance capture in animated films instead of the frame by frame methodology he \"love[s] & was proud that we had used\" on the movie.\nSoundtrack.\n\"Ratatouille\" is the second Pixar film to be scored by Michael Giacchino after \"The Incredibles\". It is also the second Pixar film not to be scored by Randy or Thomas Newman. The scores feature a wide range of instrumentation and are influenced by various music genres. Giacchino wrote two themes for Remy, one about him with the rat colony and the other about his hopes and dreams. He also wrote a buddy theme for both Remy and Linguini that plays when they are together. In addition to the score, Giacchino wrote the main theme song, \"Le Festin\", about Remy and his dream to be a chef. French artist Camille (who was 29 at the time of the film's release) was hired to perform \"Le Festin\" after Giacchino listened to her music and realized she was perfect for the song; as a result, the song is sung in French in almost all versions of the film. The soundtrack album was released by Walt Disney Records on June 26, 2007.\nRatatouille (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) track listing \nRelease.\nTheatrical.\n\"Ratatouille\" was initially scheduled for release on June 9, 2006, but was later pushed back to June 29, 2007. This shift was reportedly made to accommodate the 2006 date for \"Cars\".\n\"Ratatouille\"'s world premiere was on June 22, 2007, at Los Angeles' Kodak Theatre. The commercial release was one week later, with the short film \"Lifted\" preceding \"Ratatouille\" in theaters. Earlier in the year, it had received an Academy Award nomination. A test screening of the film was shown at the Harkins Cine Capri Theater in Scottsdale, Arizona on June 16, 2007, at which a Pixar representative was present to collect viewer feedback. Disney CEO Bob Iger announced an upcoming theatrical re-release of the film in 3D at the Disney shareholders meeting in March 2014.\nMarketing.\nThe trailer for \"Ratatouille\" debuted with the release of \"Cars\", its immediate predecessor. It depicts an original scene where Remy is caught red-handed on the cheese trolley in the restaurant's dining area, sampling the cheese and barely escaping the establishment, intercut with separate scenes of the rat explaining directly to the audience why he is taking such risks. Similar to most of Pixar's teaser trailers, the scene was not present in the final film release.\nA second trailer was released on March 23, 2007. The Ratatouille \"Big Cheese Tour\" began on May 11, 2007, with cooking demonstrations and a film preview. Voice actor Lou Romano attended the San Francisco leg of the tour for autograph signings.\nDisney and Pixar were working to bring a French-produced \"Ratatouille\"-branded wine to Costco stores in August 2007, but abandoned plans because of complaints from the California Wine Institute, citing standards in labelling that restrict the use of cartoon characters to avoid attracting under-age drinkers. Moreover, both companies faced other challenges trying to lure audiences, as several stores had been overflowing with merchandise themed to other newly released films like \"Spider-Man 3\", \"Shrek the Third\" and \"Transformers\", making it tougher to persuade parents to spend an additional cost between $7.99 to $19.99 on a plush rat.\nIn the United Kingdom, in place of releasing a theatrical trailer, a commercial featuring Remy and Emile was released in cinemas before its release to discourage obtaining unlicensed copies of films. Also, in the United Kingdom, the main characters were used for a commercial for the Nissan Note, with Remy and Emile watching an original commercial for it made for the \"Surprisingly Spacious\" ad campaign and also parodying it, respectively.\nDisney/Pixar was concerned that audiences, particularly children, would not be familiar with the word \"ratatouille\" and its pronunciation. The title was, therefore, also spelled phonetically within trailers and on posters. For similar reasons, in the American release of the film, on-screen text in French was printed in English, such as the title of Gusteau's cookbook and the sign telling kitchen staff to wash their hands, though, in international versions such as the British English release and the US Spanish-language DVD release, these are rendered in French. In Canada, the film was released theatrically with text in English, but on DVD, the majority of the text (including Gusteau's will) was in French.\nHome media.\n\"Ratatouille\" was released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on Blu-ray and DVD in North America on November 6, 2007. A new animated short film featuring Remy and Emile entitled \"Your Friend the Rat\" was included as a special feature, in which the two rats attempt to entreat the viewer, a human, to welcome rats as their friends, demonstrating the benefits and misconceptions of rats towards humanity through several historical examples. The eleven-minute short uses 3-D animation, 2-D animation, live action and even stop-motion animation, a first for Pixar.\nThe disc also includes a CGI short entitled \"Lifted\", which was screened before the film during its theatrical run. It depicts an adolescent extraterrestrial attempting to kidnap a sleeping human. Throughout the sequence, he is graded by an adult extraterrestrial in a manner reminiscent of a driver's licensing exam road test. The entire short contains no dialogue, which is typical of Pixar Shorts not based on existing properties. Also included among the special features are deleted scenes, a featurette featuring Brad Bird discussing filmmaking and chef Thomas Keller discussing culinary creativity entitled \"Fine Food and Film\", and four easter eggs. Although the Region A Blu-ray edition has a French audio track, the Region 1 DVD does not, except for some copies sold in Canada.\nThe DVD release on November 6, 2007, earned 4,919,574 units (equivalent to US$) in its first week (November 6\u201311, 2007) during which it topped the DVD charts. In total it sold 12,531,266 units (US$) becoming the second-best-selling animated DVD of 2007, both in units sold and sales revenue, behind \"Happy Feet\". In 2014 the film was re-rendered in 3D and in July of that year was released on Blu-ray 3D in the UK, France, and India. In 2019, \"Ratatouille\" was released on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray.\nPlagiarized film.\n\"If\" magazine described \"Ratatoing\", a 2007 Brazilian computer graphics cartoon by V\u00eddeo Brinquedo, as a \"ripoff\" of \"Ratatouille\". Marco Aur\u00e9lio Can\u00f4nico of the Brazilian newspaper \"Folha de S.Paulo\" described \"Ratatoing\" as a derivative of \"Ratatouille\". Can\u00f4nico discussed whether \"Ratatoing\" was similar enough to \"Ratatouille\" to warrant a lawsuit for copyright violation. The Brazilian Ministry of Culture posted Marco Aur\u00e9lio Can\u00f4nico's article on its website. To date no sources have been found to indicate that Pixar took legal action.\nReception.\nBox office.\nIn its opening weekend in North America, \"Ratatouille\" opened in 3,940 theaters and debuted at number one with $47.2 million, the lowest Pixar opening since \"A Bug's Life\". When the film opened, it topped at the box office ahead of 20th Century Fox's \"Live Free or Die Hard\". \"Ratatouille\" was the first non-sequel film to reach the number one spot since \"Disturbia\" debuted two months earlier. The film only stayed in its position for a few days before being taken by \"Transformers\". In France, where the film is set, the film broke the record for the biggest debut for an animated film and dethroned \"Titanic\" for the most consecutive weeks at the top of the box office. In the United Kingdom, the film debuted at number one with sales over \u00a34 million. The film has grossed $206.4 million in the United States and Canada and a total of $623.7 million worldwide, making it the seventh-highest-grossing Pixar film.\nCritical response.\nThe review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported approval rating with an average rating of based on reviews. The site's consensus reads: \"Fast-paced and stunningly animated, \"Ratatouille\" adds another delightfully entertaining entry\u2014and a rather unlikely hero\u2014to the Pixar canon.\" On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 96 out of 100 based on 37 reviews, the highest of any Pixar film (tied with \"Toy Story\") and the 46th highest-rated film on the site. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade \"A\" on scale of A+ to F.\nA. O. Scott of \"The New York Times\" called \"Ratatouille\" \"a nearly flawless piece of popular art, as well as one of the most persuasive portraits of an artist ever committed to film\"; echoing the character Anton Ego in the film, he ended his review with a simple \"thank you\" to the creators of the film. Wally Hammond of \"Time Out\" gave the film five out of five stars, saying \"A test for tiny tots, a mite nostalgic and as male-dominated as a modern kitchen it may be, but these are mere quibbles about this delightful addition to the Pixar pantheon.\" Andrea Gronvall of the \"Chicago Reader\" gave the film a positive review, saying \"Brad Bird's second collaboration with Pixar is more ambitious and meditative than his Oscar-winning \"The Incredibles\".\" Owen Gleiberman of \"Entertainment Weekly\" gave the film a B, saying \"\"Ratatouille\" has the Pixar technical magic without, somehow, the full Pixar flavor. It's Brad Bird's genial dessert, not so much incredible as merely sweetly edible.\" Peter Travers of \"Rolling Stone\" gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, saying \"What makes \"Ratatouille\" such a hilarious and heartfelt wonder is the way Bird contrives to let it sneak up on you. And get a load of that score from Michael Giacchino, a perfect complement to a delicious meal.\" James Berardinelli of \"ReelViews\" gave the film three out of four stars, saying \"For parents looking to spend time in a theater with their kids or adults who want something lighter and less testosterone-oriented than the usual summer fare, \"Ratatouille\" offers a savory main course.\" Christy Lemire of the Associated Press gave the film a positive review, saying \"\"Ratatouille\" is free of the kind of gratuitous pop-culture references that plague so many movies of the genre; it tells a story, it's very much of our world but it never goes for the cheap, easy gag.\" Justin Chang of \"Variety\" gave the film a positive review, saying \"The master chefs at Pixar have blended all the right ingredients\u2014abundant verbal and visual wit, genius slapstick timing, a soupcon of Gallic sophistication\u2014to produce a warm and irresistible concoction.\"\nMichael Phillips of the \"Chicago Tribune\" gave the film four out of four stars, saying \"The film may be animated, and largely taken up with rats, but its pulse is gratifyingly human. And you have never seen a computer-animated feature with this sort of visual panache and detail.\" Rafer Guzman of \"Newsday\" gave the film three out of four stars, saying \"So many computer-animated movies are brash, loud and popping with pop-culture comedy, but \"Ratatouille\" has the warm glow of a favorite book. The characters are more than the sum of their gigabyte-consuming parts \u2013 they feel handcrafted.\" Roger Moore of the \"Orlando Sentinel\" gave the film three out of five stars, saying \"Has Pixar lost its magic recipe? \"Ratatouille\" is filled with fairly generic animated imagery, a few modest chases, a couple of good gags, not a lot of laughs.\" Scott Foundas of \"LA Weekly\" gave the film a positive review, saying \"Bird has taken the raw ingredients of an anthropomorphic-animal kiddie matinee and whipped them into a heady brew about nothing less than the principles of artistic creation.\" Colin Covert of the \"Star Tribune\" gave the film four out of four stars, saying \"It's not just the computer animation that is vibrantly three-dimensional. It's also the well-rounded characters\u2026 I defy you to name another animated film so overflowing with superfluous beauty.\" Steven Rea of \"The Philadelphia Inquirer\" gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, saying \"With \"Ratatouille\", Bird once again delivers not just a great, witty story, but dazzling visuals as well.\" Bill Muller of \"The Arizona Republic\" gave the film four-and-a-half stars out of five, saying \"Like the burbling soup that plays a key part in \"Ratatouille\", the movie is a delectable blend of ingredients that tickles the palette and leaves you hungry for more.\"\nRene Rodriguez of the \"Miami Herald\" gave the film three out of four stars, saying \"\"Ratatouille\" is the most straightforward and formulaic picture to date from Pixar Animation Studios, but it is also among the most enchanting and touching.\" Jack Mathews of the \"New York Daily News\" gave the film four out of four stars, saying \"The Pixar magic continues with Brad Bird's \"Ratatouille\", a gorgeous, wonderfully inventive computer-animated comedy.\" Stephen Whitty of the \"Newark Star-Ledger\" gave the film three out of four stars, saying \"Fresh family fun. Although there are those slightly noxious images of rodents scampering around a kitchen, the movie doesn't stoop to kid-pandering jokes based on backtalk and bodily gases.\" David Ansen of \"Newsweek\" gave the film a positive review, saying \"A film as rich as a sauce b\u00e9arnaise, as refreshing as a raspberry sorbet, and a lot less predictable than the damn food metaphors and adjectives all us critics will churn out to describe it. OK, one more and then I'll be done: it's yummy.\" Peter Hartlaub of the \"San Francisco Chronicle\" gave the film four out of four stars, saying \"\"Ratatouille\" never overwhelms, even though it's stocked with action, romance, historical content, family drama and serious statements about the creation of art.\" Richard Corliss of \"Time\" gave the film a positive review, saying \"From the moment Remy enters, crashing, to the final happy fadeout, \"Ratatouille\" parades the brio and depth that set Pixar apart from and above other animation studios.\" Roger Ebert of the \"Chicago Sun-Times\" gave the film four out of four stars, saying \"A lot of animated movies have inspired sequels, notably \"Shrek\", but Brad Bird's \"Ratatouille\" is the first one that made me positively desire one.\" Peter Howell of the \"Toronto Star\" gave the film four out of four stars, saying \"Had Bird gone the safe route, he would have robbed us of a great new cartoon figure in Remy, who like the rest of the film is rendered with animation that is at once fanciful and life-like. It's also my pick for Pixar's best.\"\nJoe Morgenstern of \"The Wall Street Journal\" gave the film a positive review, saying \"The characters are irresistible, the animation is astonishing and the film, a fantasy version of a foodie rhapsody, sustains a level of joyous invention that hasn't been seen in family entertainment since \"The Incredibles\".\" Kenneth Turan of the \"Los Angeles Times\" gave the film four-and-a-half stars out of five, saying \"Brad Bird's \"Ratatouille\" is so audacious you have to fall in love with its unlikely hero.\" Claudia Puig of \"USA Today\" gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, saying \"\"Ratatouille\" is delicious fun sure to be savored by audiences of all ages for its sumptuous visuals, clever wit and irresistibly inspiring tale.\" Miriam Di Nunzio of the \"Chicago Sun-Times\" gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, saying \"\"Ratatouille\" will make you wonder why animation needs to hide behind the mantle of 'it's for children, but grownups will like it, too.' This one's for Mom and Dad, and yep, the kids will like it, too.\" Michael Booth of \"The Denver Post\" gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, saying \"Writer and director Brad Bird keeps \"Ratatouille\" moving without resorting to the cute animal jokes or pop-culture wisecracking that ruined so many other recent animated films.\" Tom Long of \"The Detroit News\" gave the film an A, saying \"\"Ratatouille\" has the technical genius, emotional core and storytelling audacity to lift it into the ranks of [the best] Pixar films, the cr\u00e8me de la cr\u00e8me of modern animation.\" Liam Lacey of \"The Globe and Mail\" gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, saying \"No sketchy backgrounds here\u2014\"Ratatouille\"'s scenes feel like deep-focus camera shots. The textures, from the gleam of copper pans to the cobblestone streets, are almost palpable.\" Desson Thomson of \"The Washington Post\" gave the film a positive review, saying \"\"Ratatouille\" doesn't center on the over-familiar surfaces of contemporary life. It harks back to Disney's older era when cartoons seemed part of a more elegant world with less edgy characters.\"\nAccolades.\n\"Ratatouille\" won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 80th Academy Awards and was nominated for four others: Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Original Screenplay, losing to \"Atonement\", \"The Bourne Ultimatum\" (for both Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing), and \"Juno\", respectively. With five Oscar nominations, the film broke the record for an animated feature film, surpassing the four nominations each of \"Aladdin\", \"Monsters, Inc.\", \"Finding Nemo\", and \"The Incredibles\". As of 2013, \"Ratatouille\" is tied with \"Up\" and \"Toy Story 3\" for the second-most Oscar nominations for an animated film, behind \"Beauty and the Beast\" and \"WALL-E\" (six).\nFurthermore, \"Ratatouille\" was nominated for 13 Annie Awards including twice in the Best Animated Effects, where it lost to \"Surf's Up\", and three times in the Best Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production for Janeane Garofalo, Ian Holm, and Patton Oswalt, where Ian Holm won the award. It won the Best Animated Feature Award from multiple associations including the Chicago Film Critics, the National Board of Review, the Annie Awards, the Broadcast Film Critics, the British Academy of Film and Television (BAFTA), and the Golden Globes.\nLegacy.\nVideo game.\nA primary video game adaptation of the film, titled \"Ratatouille\", was released on June 26, 2007 for Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Java ME, and mobile phones. A PlayStation 3 version was released on October 23, 2007.\nA Nintendo DS exclusive game, titled \"\", was released in October 2007.\n\"Ratatouille\" is also among the films represented in \"\", released in March 2012 for Xbox 360.\nRemy is featured in the video game \"Kingdom Hearts III\". He appears as the head chef for Scrooge McDuck's bistro and participates with Sora in cooking minigames. He is addressed only as \"Little Chef\" in the game, as he does not speak and cannot reveal his name to the characters.\nRemy, Linguini and Colette appear as playable characters in the world builder game \"Disney Magic Kingdoms\", in addition to attractions based on Gusteau's Kitchen and Remy's Ratatouille Adventure. In the game, the characters are involved in new storylines that serve as a continuation of the events of the film.\nIn the video game \"Disney Dreamlight Valley\", Remy appears as one of the characters that the player meets during the progress of the story, being the owner of the valley's restaurant, \"Chez Remy\".\nTheme park attraction.\nA Disney theme park attraction based on the film has been constructed in Walt Disney Studios Park, Disneyland Paris. is based upon scenes from the film and uses trackless ride technology. In the attraction, riders \"shrink down to the size of a rat\".\nAt the 2017 D23 Expo, Disney announced the attraction would be built at the France Pavilion in Epcot's World Showcase which opened on October 1, 2021, during the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney World and the 39th anniversary of Epcot.\nUnofficial musical.\nIn late 2020, users of the social media app TikTok crowdsourced the creation of a musical based on the film. A virtual concert presentation of it, produced by Seaview Productions, streamed for 72 hours on TodayTix beginning January 1, 2021 to benefit The Actors Fund in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is directed by \"Six\" co-creator and co-director Lucy Moss from a script adaptation by Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley, both of whom co-executive produced the concert with Jeremy O. Harris. The cast included Kevin Chamberlin as Gusteau, Andrew Barth Feldman as Linguini, Titus Burgess as Remy, Adam Lambert as Emile, Wayne Brady as Django, Priscilla Lopez as Mabel, Ashley Park as Colette, Andr\u00e9 De Shields as Anton Ego, Owen Tabaka as Young Anton Ego and Mary Testa as Skinner. The concert raised over $1.9 million for The Actors Fund.\nReferences in popular culture.\nThe film has often been referenced in popular culture since its release, being mentioned or parodied on shows such as \"Saturday Night Live\", \"My Name Is Earl\", \"The Simpsons\", \"Breaking Bad\", \"Key & Peele\", \"Orange Is the New Black\", \"Teen Titans Go!\", \"Difficult People\", \"The Good Place\", \"Once Upon a Time\", \"Brooklyn Nine-Nine\", and \"Ted Lasso\", as well as in the films \"The Five-Year Engagement\" (2012), \"The Suicide Squad\" (2021), \"\" (2023), and in comedian John Mulaney's comedy special \"New in Town\".\nA parody of \"Ratatouille\" is a significant plot thread in the 2022 science-fiction film \"Everything Everywhere All at Once\". In the middle of the film, the main character Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) attempts to explain the multiverse and the concept of \"verse-jumping\" (temporarily linking one\u2019s consciousness to another version of themselves in a different universe, and accessing all the emotions, memories, and skills in the process) to her family using the Pixar film as an analogy, only to misremember it as being about a raccoon and being titled \"Raccacoonie\". Later, in one of several parallel universes, Evelyn is a \"teppanyaki\" chef who works with another \"teppanyaki\" chef named Chad (Harry Shum Jr.) who is indeed being puppeteered by the anthropomorphic Raccacoonie (voiced by Randy Newman) who is hiding under Chad's chef hat, much like Remy and Linguini; during the film's climactic montage, Evelyn exposes Raccacoonie and he is taken away by animal control, before she has a change of heart and helps Chad rescue Raccacoonie. Reportedly inspired by producer Jonathan Wang's father's habit of misremembering the names of popular films, the running joke was described by \"IGN\" as \"one of the film's highlights\", while Alison Herman of \"The Ringer\" noted a thematic resonance as both films were about \"the virtues of creativity within material constraints\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3286811": "Rat in the Kitchen\nRat in the Kitchen is the seventh album by UB40, released in July 1986. This album contained two UK hits, \"Sing Our Own Song\" (UK"}, "descending_order": ["20692605", "14941280", "3286811"], "permutation_1": ["3286811", "14941280", "20692605"], "permutation_2": ["3286811", "20692605", "14941280"], "permutation_3": ["14941280", "3286811", "20692605"]}
{"id": "nq_6916874456878908637", "docs_added": {"496570": "Vince Carter\nAmerican basketball player (born 1977)\nVincent Lamar Carter Jr. (born January 26, 1977) is an American former professional basketball player who played for 22 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA). He primarily played the shooting guard and small forward positions, but occasionally played power forward later in his NBA career. An eight-time All-Star and a two-time All-NBA Team selection, he played a record 22 seasons in the NBA, tied with LeBron James for the most seasons played in league history. He is also the only player to have played in the NBA in four different decades. In 2024, Carter was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.\nCarter entertained crowds with his leaping ability and slam dunks, earning him nicknames such as \"Vinsanity\", \"Air Canada\" (a play on the Canadian airline of the same name), and \"Half Man, Half Amazing\". He has been ranked as the greatest dunker of all time by numerous players, journalists, and by the NBA.\nHis Dunk of Death against France during the 2000 Summer Olympics is considered one of the most famous of all time. In addition to his dunking prowess, Carter was a prolific three-point shooter, making the tenth most three-point field goals in league history.\nA high school McDonald's All-American, Carter played college basketball for three years with the North Carolina Tar Heels and twice advanced to the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament. He was selected with the fifth overall pick in the 1998 NBA draft by the Golden State Warriors, who traded him to the Toronto Raptors. Carter emerged as a global star in Toronto, winning the 1999 NBA Rookie of the Year Award and the Slam Dunk Contest at the 2000 NBA All-Star Weekend. He represented the United States in the 2000 Summer Olympics, where he led the team in scoring and captured a gold medal. In December 2004, Carter was traded to the New Jersey Nets, where he continued his offensive success. He also played for the Orlando Magic, Phoenix Suns, Dallas Mavericks, Memphis Grizzlies, Sacramento Kings, and Atlanta Hawks. He received the Twyman\u2013Stokes Teammate of the Year Award in 2016. Off the court, Carter established the Embassy of Hope Foundation, helping children and their families in Florida, New Jersey and Ontario. He was recognized in 2000 as Child Advocate of the Year by the Children's Home Society, and received the Florida Governor's Points of Light award in 2007 for his philanthropy in his home state. Carter was inducted into the Florida Sports Hall of Fame in 2023.\nEarly life.\nBorn in Daytona Beach, Florida, Carter is the son of Michelle and Vincent Carter Sr. His parents divorced when he was seven. His mother remarried several times.\nCarter attended Mainland High School in Daytona Beach. He played football as a quarterback until a broken wrist in his freshman year forced him to switch to volleyball. In volleyball, he was named the Volusia County Player of the Year as a junior and averaged 24 kills per match; for comparison, none of his teammates averaged more than one. He was also offered a saxophone scholarship to attend Bethune\u2013Cookman University in Daytona Beach.\nHe led Mainland's basketball team to its first Class 6A state title in 56 years, and was a 1995 McDonald's All-American. On January 31, 2012, he was designated one of the 35 greatest McDonald's All-Americans.\nIn his senior year he averaged 22 points, 11.4 rebounds, 4.5 assists and 3.5 blocks per game. Carter's career totals at Mainland are 2,299 points, 1,042 rebounds, 356 assists and 178 steals. He was contacted by 77 NCAA Division I schools but ultimately chose North Carolina over Florida.\nCollege.\nCarter enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1995. He is a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity.\nHe played three seasons of college basketball for the North Carolina Tar Heels under Dean Smith and later Bill Guthridge. During the 1997\u201398 season, he was a member of new coach Guthridge's \"Six Starters\" system that also featured Antawn Jamison, Shammond Williams, Ed Cota, Ademola Okulaja, and Makhtar N'Diaye. During his sophomore and junior seasons, Carter helped North Carolina to consecutive ACC men's basketball tournament titles and Final Four appearances. He finished the 1997\u201398 season with a 15.6 points per game average and was named second-team All-American, First-Team All-ACC, and to the fan's guide third-annual Coaches ACC All-Defensive Team. In May 1998 after his junior year, Carter declared for the 1998 NBA draft, following his classmate Jamison, who had declared earlier that spring.\nDuring his NBA career, Carter continued his coursework at North Carolina, and in August 2000, he graduated with a degree in Afro-American studies, squeezing in attendance at May 2001 graduation ceremonies at North Carolina before leaving to make a Raptors' playoff game in Philadelphia.\nProfessional career.\nToronto Raptors (1998\u20132004).\nCarter was initially drafted by the Golden State Warriors with the fifth overall pick in the 1998 NBA draft. He was then immediately traded to the Toronto Raptors for the fourth overall pick, Antawn Jamison on draft night. The Raptors had struggled in their first three years as a franchise. Carter was instrumental in leading the Raptors to their first-ever playoff appearance in 2000 before going on to lead them to a 47-win season and their first-ever playoff series win in 2001, advancing them to the Eastern Conference Semifinals.\nDue to the 1998\u201399 NBA lockout, Carter did not begin playing in the NBA until February 1999. Carter quickly became a fan favorite with a soaring offensive game that earned him the nickname \"Air Canada\". He won the NBA Rookie of the Year Award after averaging 18.3 points and throwing down countless highlight-reel dunks. Carter ascended to full-fledged stardom in his second season\u2014he averaged 25.7 points per game (fourth-highest in the league) and lifted Toronto to its first playoff appearance in franchise history. He subsequently earned his first NBA All-Star selection and was named to the All-NBA Third Team. During the 2000 NBA All-Star Weekend, Carter showcased arguably the most memorable Slam Dunk Contest event in its history. He won the contest by performing an array of dunks including a 360\u00b0 windmill, a between-the-legs bounce dunk, and an \"elbow in the rim\" dunk (also known as a \"cookie jar\" dunk or the \"honey dip\"). Carter and his second cousin once removed, Tracy McGrady, formed a formidable one-two punch as teammates in Toronto between 1998 and 2000. However, McGrady left in free agency to the Orlando Magic in August 2000, leaving Carter as the Raptors' franchise player.\nIn 2000\u201301, his third season, Carter averaged a career-high 27.6 points per game, made the All-NBA Second Team, and was voted in as a starter for the 2001 NBA All-Star Game. The Raptors finished the regular season with a then franchise-record 47 wins. In the playoffs, the Raptors beat the New York Knicks 3\u20132 in the first round and advanced to the Eastern Conference Semifinals to face off against the Philadelphia 76ers. Carter and 76ers star Allen Iverson both dominated in a seven-game series that see-sawed back and forth. Carter scored 50 points in Game 3 and set an NBA playoff record for most three-point field goals made in one game. In Game 7, Carter missed a potential game-winning shot with 2.0 seconds remaining. Iverson said of the series in July 2011: \"It was incredible. (Carter) had great games at home and I had some great games at home, but both of us were just trying to put our teams on our back and win basketball games. It is great just having those memories and being a part of something like that.\"\nIn August 2001, Carter signed a six-year contract extension worth as much as $94 million. Carter missed the final 22 games of the 2001\u201302 regular season due to injury. He started in 60 games and averaged 24.7 points per game. On December 7, 2001, Carter recorded 42 points, 15 rebounds, 6 assists and 5 steals against the Denver Nuggets. He joined Charles Barkley (1988) as just the second player ever to finish a game with 40 points, 15 rebounds, five steals and five assists, dating back to the 1973\u201374 season, when the league began officially tracking steals. He was voted into the 2002 NBA All-Star Game, but he could not participate due to injury. Without Carter during the playoffs, the Raptors were defeated in five games by the Detroit Pistons in the first round.\nFollowing off-season surgery, Carter only managed 43 games during the 2002\u201303 season. In February 2003, Carter gave up his starting spot in the 2003 NBA All-Star Game to Michael Jordan to allow Jordan to make his final start as an All-Star. Carter played in 73 games during the 2003\u201304 season, but the Raptors fell three games short of making the playoffs.\nTrade to the Nets.\nDuring the 2004 off-season, general manager Glen Grunwald and the entire coaching staff were fired. Following trade rumours all season long, on December 17, 2004, new general manager Rob Babcock traded Carter to the New Jersey Nets for Alonzo Mourning, Aaron Williams, Eric Williams and two first round draft picks.\nIn his first game back in Toronto, on April 15, 2005, Carter was heavily booed and jeered by Raptors fans. Carter would finish with 39 points in a 101\u201390 New Jersey victory. Carter continued to receive similar treatment for years to come in the town that once embraced him. Despite this, he thrived on many occasions in Toronto as a Net. On January 8, 2006, after a missed free throw by the Raptors, Carter hit a long three pointer at the other end with 0.1 seconds left to seal a 105\u2013104 win to shock the Toronto crowd. Afterwards Carter, who finished with 42 points, referred to it among his greatest shots ever saying \"That's definitely number one. The atmosphere, the emotion, the hostility in the arena, it was a fun game.\" On November 21, 2008, Carter's late game heroics sent the game into overtime where he would hit another game winner doing so on an inbounds alley-oop dunk with 1.5 seconds left in a 129\u2013127 victory. Carter scored 39 points and regarding the continued booing he insisted he held no grudges to the fans \"I know, deep down, that's just sports, that's the way it goes. I root for my team and I'm a terrible fan.\"\nIn November 2011, Carter, along with Tracy McGrady and Charles Oakley, addressed the Toronto audience in an interview on \"Off the Record with Michael Landsberg\". When asked about being booed in Toronto, Carter said, \"They watched myself and Tracy grow up. And when we left they still got to see (us) flourish and become (who we are). For me, I looked at it as, a young child growing up into a grown man and moving on. And I get it. Leaving, hurt a lot of people. It hurt me because I tell you what... I accomplished a lot, I learned a lot, I became the person and player of who I am today because of that experience, through the coaches, players, and everything else. I get it... but regardless I still love the city. I have friends there and my heart is still there because that's where it all started.\" Later in the interview, when asked about any words to the Toronto fans, Carter said, \"I appreciate the fans and whether you cheer for me, boo me, or hate me, I still love you. Toronto's one of the best kept secrets... puts one of the best products on the floor and one of the top places to play in.\"\nOn November 6, 2012, in an interview with TSN Radio 1050, Carter reiterated his love for the city and his appreciation for the Toronto Raptors organization. The next day, Sam Mitchell and Rob Babcock revealed on Sportsnet 590, The Fan that the night before Carter was traded to New Jersey, Carter phoned Mitchell to express his desire to stay in Toronto. However, Babcock said it was too late and the trade had already been verbally agreed upon. Looking back on it, Mitchell feels he should have personally contacted the MLSE chairman, Larry Tanenbaum, but was reluctant because he did not want to break the chain of command.\nRaptors general manager Masai Ujiri referred to Carter in April 2014 as \"one of the symbols of the Toronto Raptors.\" To this day, Carter remains as one of the Raptors' elite scorers in franchise history having amassed 9,420 points and is Toronto's all-time leader in points per game, box plus/minus and player efficiency rating during his <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />6+1\u20442-year run in Toronto.\nOn November 19, 2014, nearly a decade after the trade, as a part of the Raptors' 20th anniversary celebration, the team paid tribute to Carter with a video montage during the first quarter of the Raptors\u2013Grizzlies game. Leading up to the game, questions were raised about how Raptors fans would receive the planned video tribute. As the sellout crowd watched the video tribute featuring highlights of Carter's high-flying Raptors days, what began as the usual booing turned into an overwhelmingly positive standing ovation. An emotional Carter used his warm-up shirt to wipe tears running down his face as he pointed to his heart and waved to the fans in appreciation. He later stated, \"It was a great feeling, I couldn't write it any better.\"\nNew Jersey Nets (2004\u20132009).\nCarter was acquired by the New Jersey Nets on December 17, 2004, playing five seasons for them before departing in June 2009. Carter produced some of his highest numbers with the Nets, surpassing his 23.4 points per game with the Raptors to average 23.6 points per game over his tenure in New Jersey. He missed just 11 games in his four full seasons and helped lead the Nets to three straight playoff runs between 2005 and 2007.\nCarter joined a Nets team with Jason Kidd and Richard Jefferson as the leading players. However, the trio never got to play together at full strength during the 2004\u201305 season. Carter and Kidd carried a shallow roster on a 15\u20134 run to end the season to make the playoffs.\nIn the 2005\u201306 season, the Carter-Kidd duo co-led the Nets to 49 wins, an Atlantic Division title, and the No. 3 seed in the playoffs. Carter helped lead the Nets to the second round of the playoffs before losing to the eventual NBA champions Miami Heat in five games. Carter averaged 29.6 points, 7.0 rebounds and 5.3 assists in 11 playoff games. Carter was named an Eastern Conference All-Star in 2006. On November 7, 2005, Carter threw down a very memorable dunk against the Miami Heat, over defensive stalwart, Alonzo Mourning. On December 23, 2005, Carter set an NBA record for the most free throws made in a quarter (4th quarter) with 16 against Miami. He tied his career-high of 51 points in the same game.\nIn the 2006\u201307 season, Carter was named as a reserve to the 2007 NBA All-Star Game, marking his eighth All-Star appearance. In a 120\u2013114 overtime win over the Washington Wizards on April 7, 2007, Carter and Kidd became the first teammates in over 18 years to record triple-doubles in the same game since the Chicago Bulls' Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen achieved this feat against the Los Angeles Clippers in 1989. Carter finished with 46 points, a career-high 16 rebounds, and 10 assists. Kidd finished with 10 points, tied a career high with 16 rebounds, and tied a season high with 18 assists. Carter finished the 2006\u201307 season playing all 82 games, averaging over 25 points with a 21 PER.\nIn July 2007, Carter re-signed with the Nets to a four-year, $61.8 million contract.\nDuring the 2007\u201308 season, Kidd was traded to the Dallas Mavericks. Carter was credited for becoming a leader following the All-Star break. He became captain of the Nets, and in 2008\u201309, he and teammate Devin Harris were the highest-scoring starting backcourt in the league. On November 21, 2008, Carter scored a season-high 39 points, including a game winning two-handed reverse dunk, as the Nets battled back from an 18-point deficit to defeat the Toronto Raptors 129\u2013127 in overtime at the Air Canada Centre. He hit a 29-foot, game tying three-pointer to send the game into overtime and then scored the winning basket in the extra period. On February 3, 2009, Carter recorded his fifth career triple-double with 15 points, 12 assists and 10 rebounds in a 99\u201385 win over the Milwaukee Bucks.\nOrlando Magic (2009\u20132010).\nOn June 25, 2009, Carter was traded, along with Ryan Anderson, to the Orlando Magic in exchange for Rafer Alston, Tony Battie and Courtney Lee. Orlando hoped Carter would provide center Dwight Howard with a perimeter scorer who can create his own shot\u2014something the Magic had lacked when they were defeated in the 2009 NBA Finals by the Los Angeles Lakers. On February 8, 2010, Carter had a season-high 48 points, 34 in the second half, when the Magic rallied from a 17-point deficit to defeat the New Orleans Hornets 123\u2013117. Carter helped the Magic reach the Eastern Conference Finals, where they were defeated 4\u20132 by the Boston Celtics.\nPhoenix Suns (2010\u20132011).\nOn December 18, 2010, Carter was acquired by the Phoenix Suns along with Marcin Gortat, Mickael Pietrus, and a first-round draft pick in 2011 NBA draft in exchange for Jason Richardson, Hedo Turkoglu, and Earl Clark. On January 17, 2011, Carter recorded 29 points and 12 rebounds in a 129\u2013121 win over the New York Knicks. He reached 20,000 career points during the game, becoming the 37th NBA player to reach that plateau.\nOn December 9, 2011, following the conclusion of the NBA lockout, Carter was waived by the Suns, meaning the team only had to pay him $4 million of the $18 million he was due for the 2011\u201312 season. Carter appeared in 51 games with 41 starts, averaging 13.5 points while shooting 42 percent.\nDallas Mavericks (2011\u20132014).\nOn December 12, 2011, Carter signed a three-year contract with the defending NBA champion Dallas Mavericks. This move reunited Carter with former Nets teammate Jason Kidd. On April 20, 2012, against the Golden State Warriors, Carter became the eighth player in NBA history with 1,500 3-pointers when he made one in the closing minutes.\nWhile known early on in his career for his circus dunks, Carter became known for his 3-point shooting with the Mavericks. On February 13, 2013, in a 123\u2013100 win over the Sacramento Kings, Carter scored 26 points to pass Larry Bird on the NBA's career scoring list, moving him into 29th place. Carter turned aside a Sacramento rally in the third quarter by going 5 of 7 from long range and scoring 17 of Dallas' last 21 points in the period. He ended the night with 21,796 career points for 29th on the all-time list, five ahead of Bird. He also became the 11th NBA player with at least 1,600 3-pointers. He finished the season ranked 27th on the NBA's all-time scoring list with 22,223 career points. His 162 3-pointers tied his career high for 3s made in a season (162-of-397, .408, with Toronto in 2000\u201301). Over the course of the season, he advanced from 17th place to 11th place on the NBA's all-time 3-point field goals made list (passing Nick Van Exel, Tim Hardaway, Eddie Jones, Glen Rice, Jason Richardson and Kobe Bryant), finishing the year with 1,663 career 3-pointers.\nPrior to the 2013\u201314 season, Carter established himself as the Mavericks' sixth man, after the departure of Jason Terry. He averaged just 10.5 points and shot 37.6% from the field during the first 22 games of the season due to increased responsibilities and pressure to be the team's lone scoring punch off of the bench. He saw his numbers improve in December, averaging 12.5 points and shooting 44.3% from the field during an 18-game stretch. On March 16, 2014, against the Oklahoma City Thunder, Carter raised his career total to 23,010 points, becoming the 27th NBA player to pass the 23,000-point mark with a 3-pointer with 2:17 left in the third quarter. In Game 3 of the Mavericks' first-round playoff series against the San Antonio Spurs, Carter drilled the game-winning 3-pointer with no time remaining on the clock to give the eighth-seeded Mavericks a 109\u2013108 win and a 2\u20131 series edge over the top-seeded Spurs. The Mavericks went on to lose the series in seven games.\nMemphis Grizzlies (2014\u20132017).\n2014\u201315 season.\nOn July 12, 2014, Carter signed a multi-year deal with the Memphis Grizzlies. On November 13, 2014, he made a game winning alley-oop assist from the sideline to teammate Courtney Lee at the buzzer to win the game 111\u2013110 over the Sacramento Kings. On December 17, 2014, Carter scored a season-high 18 points in a 117\u2013116 triple overtime win over the San Antonio Spurs. Carter moved into 25th in all-time NBA scoring during the game, passing Robert Parish (23,334).\n2015\u201316 season.\nCarter appeared in just one of the Grizzlies' first 12 games of the 2015\u201316 season. On February 24, 2016, with nine points scored against the Los Angeles Lakers, Carter passed Charles Barkley (23,757) for 24th in career points scored. Two days later, he scored a season-high 19 points in a 112\u201395 win over the Lakers. For the latter half of April and the whole first round playoff series against the Spurs, Carter was inserted in the starting lineup and played well. In Game 1 against the Spurs, Carter scored a team-high 16 points in a 106\u201374 loss. The Grizzlies went on to lose the series in four games. After finishing second behind Tim Duncan in the 2014\u201315 season, Carter was awarded with the Twyman\u2013Stokes Teammate of the Year Award for the 2015\u201316 season. The award recognizes the player deemed the best teammate based on selfless play, on- and off-court leadership as a mentor and role model to other NBA players, and commitment and dedication to team.\n2016\u201317 season.\nOn November 1, 2016, Carter played in his 1,278th NBA game, tying him with A.C. Green for 25th on the NBA's career list. He also became the 24th player in NBA history to surpass 24,000 career points. On November 8, he scored 20 points against the Denver Nuggets and became the oldest player in the NBA to post a 20-point game since Michael Jordan scored 25 for the Washington Wizards in April 2003, at age 40. It was also Carter's first 20-point game since April 30, 2014. On November 12, Carter made seven field goals against the Milwaukee Bucks to pass Gary Payton (8,708) for 21st in NBA history. Carter also passed Charles Oakley for 24th on the NBA's career games played list with 1,283. On November 14, in a win over the Utah Jazz, Carter had his second 20-point game of the season, joining Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing as the only players in NBA history to put up 20 points and 5+ rebounds off the bench at the age of 39, with Carter being the oldest at 39 years and 287 days. Carter missed seven games in early December with a right hip flexor strain. On January 11, Carter hit his 1,989th career three-pointer to move ahead of Jason Kidd and into fifth on the all-time list. On February 1, in a game against the Denver Nuggets, Carter hit his 2,000th career three-pointer, making him only the fifth player to ever reach that mark. On February 6 against San Antonio, Carter joined Karl Malone, Dikembe Mutombo, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Robert Parish as the only 40-year-old players to record at least four blocks in a game. On February 15, in a game against the New Orleans Pelicans, Carter passed Allen Iverson for 23rd on the NBA all-time scoring list. On March 13, Carter made his first start of the season and made all eight of his shots, including six from beyond the arc, to score a season-high 24 points and lead the Grizzlies past the Milwaukee Bucks 113\u201393. He became the first 40-year-old in NBA history to hit six triples in one game. At 40 years, 46 days old, Carter also became the oldest player to start an NBA game since Juwan Howard in April 2013. On March 29 against the Indiana Pacers, Carter passed Ray Allen for 22nd on the NBA all-time scoring list. In the Grizzlies' regular-season finale on April 12 against the Dallas Mavericks, Carter played in his 1,347th game and passed Kobe Bryant for 13th in regular-season games played. On April 22, Carter became the first 40-year-old to make three or more 3-pointers in a playoff game during Game 4 of the Grizzlies' first-round series against the San Antonio Spurs.\nSacramento Kings (2017\u20132018).\nOn July 10, 2017, Carter signed a one-year, $8 million contract with the Sacramento Kings. On August 18, 2017, during the Players Voice Awards, Carter was named by the NBA Players Association as the Most Influential Veteran. Carter missed seven games early in the season with a kidney stone. On December 27, 2017, Carter scored a season-high 24 points in a 109\u201395 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers. It was the first time in NBA history that a 40-plus-year-old reserve scored at least 20 points in a game. He shot 10-of-12 from the field in 30 minutes off the bench, with his 83 percent shooting marking the second highest percentage of his career. On January 28, 2018, against the San Antonio Spurs, Carter and Manu Gin\u00f3bili scored 21 and 15 points respectively; it was the first game in NBA history where two players over the age of 40 each scored at least 15 points. On March 19, 2018, in a 106\u201390 loss to the Detroit Pistons, Carter had seven points to move past Patrick Ewing into 22nd place on the NBA's career scoring list. At the season's end, he was named the recipient of the NBPA's Backbone Award and Most Respected Award, as part of the Players Voice Awards.\nAtlanta Hawks (2018\u20132020).\n2018\u201319 season.\nOn August 24, 2018, Carter signed with the Atlanta Hawks. In his debut for the Hawks on October 17, 2018, Carter started at forward and scored 12 points in a 126\u2013107 loss to the New York Knicks, becoming the second oldest player in NBA history to start a season opener at 41 years and 264 days old. Only Robert Parish (42 years and 65 days old) was an older opening-night NBA starter than Carter. On November 21, he scored 14 points off the bench in a 124\u2013108 loss to the Toronto Raptors, and became the 22nd player in NBA history to reach 25,000 career points. The milestone moment, which happened in the final seconds of the game, was made even more memorable for coming via a slam dunk and also for coming against his original team who joined in congratulating him on the court. On December 29, he scored an equal team-high 21 points in 111\u2013108 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers. It was his first game with 20 points for Atlanta and became the oldest player in history to lead or tie for the team lead in scoring. He also became the oldest player in NBA history to score 20+ points at 41 years and 337 days old, breaking Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's record by 6 days. On February 7, 2019, against the Raptors, Carter passed Jerry West for 21st on the NBA's all-time scoring list. On March 1, 2019, he logged the second-most minutes for the Hawks in a 168\u2013161 quadruple-overtime loss to the Chicago Bulls. At 42, Carter became the oldest player in NBA history to play at least 45 minutes in a game. On March 4, he scored 21 points, all on 3-pointers, in a 114\u2013113 loss to the Miami Heat. He thus surpassed Reggie Miller for 20th on the all-time scoring list, passed Jamal Crawford for sixth on the all-time 3-point field goals made list, became the oldest player to shoot seven 3-pointers, and broke his own record of being the oldest player to score 20+ points in a game at 42 years old. On March 31, against the Milwaukee Bucks, Carter passed Karl Malone for fifth place on the all-time games played list with his 1,477th game.\n2019\u201320 season.\nIn June 2019, Carter stated that he was planning to retire at the end of the 2019\u201320 NBA season. On September 20, 2019, Carter re-signed with the Hawks and played his first game on October 24, 2019, making his 22nd season official. Four of Carter's teammates were born after he was drafted in 1998. On December 10, 2019, he became the fifth player in NBA history to play at least 1,500 games. On January 4, 2020, during a 116\u2013111 win over the Indiana Pacers, Carter became the only player in NBA history to have played in four different decades. On January 22, 2020, Carter moved past Alex English for 19th on the NBA all-time scoring list. On January 31, 2020, Carter moved up to 3rd place in all-time NBA games played with 1,523 passing Dirk Nowitzki in the process. On March 11, 2020, Carter returned to the floor in the final seconds of a game against the New York Knicks, making a three-pointer. That game became Carter's final game; the NBA suspended the season that day due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Carter officially announced his retirement from the NBA on June 25, 2020, at the age of 43.\nNational team career.\nCarter played for head coach Kelvin Sampson on the United States men's national under-19 team at the 1995 FIBA Under-19 Basketball World Cup in Athens. He and Samaki Walker tied for the team lead in blocks in the team's eight games.\nDuring the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Carter led the U.S. in scoring averaging 14.8 points a game. He also performed one of the most memorable dunks of his career when he jumped over French center Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Weis. Teammate Jason Kidd said \"It was one of the best plays I've ever seen.\" The French media later dubbed it \"le dunk de la mort\" (\"the Dunk of Death\"). The U.S. team went on to win the gold medal that year. Carter admitted he channeled his frustrations in his personal life and Tracy McGrady leaving the Raptors before the Olympics. The dunk is widely considered one of the greatest and most famous of all time.\nCarter replaced Kobe Bryant on the USA roster for the 2003 FIBA Americas Tournament while Bryant was undergoing surgeries on his knee and shoulder. He wore Bryant's jersey number 8. Bryant was supposed to take his spot back in time for the 2004 Olympics, but would later withdraw due to allegations of sexual assault. Carter was offered the Olympic spot but chose instead to take time off during the summer to rest and heal, as well as to get married.\nOther pursuits.\nCarter opened a restaurant named for himself in Daytona Beach in 2010. His mother operated the restaurant. They sold it in January 2017 for $4.3 million .\nCarter signed a sponsorship deal with Puma prior to his first NBA season, and his first signature shoe, the Puma Vinsanity, was released. However Carter broke his contract with Puma prematurely, citing the \"shoes were hurting his feet\" and played out the rest of the 1999\u20132000 NBA season in various brands. Prior to the 2000 Summer Olympics, Carter signed with Nike as a 'signature athlete' and his first signature Nike Shox shoe, a Nike Shox BB4 PE, debuted and released publicly in 2000 to coincide with the Olympic games. Nike released five other signature Shox models bearing Carter's initials. During his final season, Nike commemorated Carter's 22 year NBA career by publicly re-releasing his first Nike signature shoe, the Shox BB4.\nOn September 17, 2020, ESPN announced that Carter had signed a multi-year contract with them, serving as an NBA and college basketball analyst. In July 2023, it was reported that ESPN will not renew Carter's contract during a series of big-name layoffs for the network. On October 24, 2023, Carter was reported to have joined YES Network as a part-time analyst for Brooklyn Nets games.\nVince Carter also works as a part-time Hawks tv Analyst.\nCarter was part of a coalition that, along with several private equity executives, his former teammate Tracy McGrady, and Jozy Altidore, purchased a minority stake in the National Football League's Buffalo Bills from the Pegula family in December 2024.\nAwards and achievements.\nCarter is the only player in NBA history to have appeared in a game in four different decades. Carter holds fourth place on the list of the oldest players to compete in the NBA. He is one of six players in NBA history to average at least 20 points, 4 rebounds and 3 assists per game in 10 straight seasons. He is also one of six players in league history to record 24,000 points, 6,000 rebounds, 2,500 assists, 1,000 steals and 1,000 3-point field goals. Carter currently holds the record for the most game-winning 3 point buzzer beaters in NBA history.\nOn November 2, 2024, Carter's jersey was retired by the Raptors, making him the first Raptors player to have his jersey retired by the franchise.\nOn January 25, 2025, Carter's jersey was retired by the Nets.\nPersonal life.\nCarter married Ellen Rucker, a chiropractor, in July 2004; the couple divorced in 2006. They have one daughter together. Carter is now married to Sondi Carter, an NASM trainer. They have a son and a daughter.\nCarter has donated to his high school, Mainland High School, and he established charitable foundation, The Embassy of Hope, upon being drafted into the NBA in 1998. On February 3, 2007, a statue of Carter was unveiled at Mainland.\nCarter visited with the Duquesne University men's basketball team in Pittsburgh as a show of support after five of its players were shot in September 2006.\nCarter is also the second cousin of NBA player Tracy McGrady, whose grandmother was the sister of Carter's step-great-grandfather. They were teammates with the Raptors in 1998\u20132000. Both players were unaware of the relation until a family reunion in 1997.\nCareer statistics.\nCollege.\n\"Source\"\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["496570"], "permutation_1": ["496570"], "permutation_2": ["496570"], "permutation_3": ["496570"]}
{"id": "nq_1942414039609292120", "docs_added": {"1212890": "Microchip implant (animal)\nImplant used in animals\nA microchip implant is an identifying integrated circuit placed under the skin of an animal. The chip, about the size of a large grain of rice, uses passive radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology, and is also known as a PIT (passive integrated transponder) tag. Standard pet microchips are typically 11\u201313\u00a0mm long (approximately <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1\u20442 inch) and 2\u00a0mm in diameter.\nExternally attached microchips such as RFID ear tags are commonly used to identify farm and ranch animals, with the exception of horses. Some external microchips can be read with the same scanner used with implanted chips.\nAnimal shelters, animal control officers and veterinarians routinely look for microchips to return lost pets quickly to their owners, avoiding expenses for housing, food, medical care, outplacing and euthanasia. Many shelters place chips in all outplaced animals.\nMicrochips are also used by kennels, breeders, brokers, trainers, registries, rescue groups, humane societies, clinics, farms, stables, animal clubs and associations, researchers, and pet stores.\nUsage.\nSince their first use in the mid-1980s, microchips have allowed innovative investigations into numerous biological traits of animals. The tiny, coded markers implanted into individual animals allow assessment of growth rates, movement patterns, and survival patterns for many species in a manner more reliable than traditional approaches of externally marking animals for identification. Microchips have also been used to confirm the identity of pets and protected species that have been illegally removed from the wild.\nMicrochips can be implanted by a veterinarian or at a shelter. After checking that the animal does not already have a chip, the vet or technician injects the chip with a syringe and records the chip's unique ID. No anesthetic is required, as it is a simple procedure and causes little discomfort; the pain is minimal and short-lived. In dogs and cats, chips are usually inserted below the skin at the back of the neck between the shoulder blades on the dorsal midline. According to one reference, continental European pets get the implant in the left side of the neck. The chip can often be felt under the skin. Thin layers of connective tissue form around the implant and hold it in place.\nHorses are microchipped on the left side of the neck, halfway between the poll and withers and approximately one inch below the midline of the mane, into the nuchal ligament.\nBirds are implanted in their breast muscles. Proper restraint is necessary so the operation requires either two people (an avian veterinarian and a veterinary technician) or general anesthesia. Studies on horses show swelling and increased sensitivity take approximately three days to resolve. Humans report swelling and bruising at the time of implant, two to four weeks for scar tissue to form and itching and pinching sensations for up to two years. A test scan ensures correct operation.\nSome shelters and vets designate themselves as the primary contact to remain informed about possible problems with the animals they place. The form is sent to a registry, who may be the chip manufacturer, distributor or an independent entity such as a pet recovery service. Some countries have a single official national database. For a fee, the registry typically provides 24-hour, toll-free telephone service for the life of the pet. Some veterinarians leave registration to the owner, usually done online, but a chip without current contact information is essentially useless.\nThe owner receives a registration certificate with the chip ID and recovery service contact information. The information can also be imprinted on a collar tag worn by the animal. Like an automobile title, the certificate serves as proof of ownership and is transferred with the animal when it is sold or traded; an animal without a certificate could be stolen. There are some privacy concerns regarding the use of microchips.\nAuthorities and shelters examine strays for chips, providing one of the aforementioned recovery services with the ID number, description and location so that the recovery service may notify the owner, a contact, or veterinarians in the area. If the pet is wearing the collar tag, the finder does not need a chip reader to contact the registry because a rescuer can simply read the ID number and phone number (or website) to provide to the registry. An owner can also report a missing pet to the recovery service, as vets look for chips in new animals and check with the recovery service to see if it has been reported lost or stolen.\nMany veterinarians scan an animal's chip on every visit to verify correct operation. Some use the chip ID as their database index and print it on receipts, test results, vaccination certifications and other records.\nSome veterinary tests and procedures require positive identification of the animal, and a microchip may be acceptable for this purpose as an alternative to a tattoo.\nSome pet doors can be programmed to be activated by the microchips of specific animals, allowing only certain animals to use the door.\nAdvantages of data collection.\nPets.\nThere are multiple reasons for the use of the microchips on pets as a documentation device, which are also advantages of microchips regarding information collection. The three major reasons for microchip implantation are , recording, domestication and showing proof of ownership. For example, with a feline microchip, delocalization shows that a registered cat is one that society is aware of and the cat has a position in the social order of animals. Recording shows that the microchip helps authorized people review and monitor cats in a certain region by referring to the database; thus the registry and the implanted microchips transform cats into social objects.\nLivestock.\nDue to the advantages of microchips, there are many concrete applications of RFID in the agri-food sector covering the majority of usual foods, such as all kinds of meats as well as various vegetables, fruits. The feature of RFID, namely its traceability, makes it possible for the increased security and confidence of customers. As one of the most popular livestock around the world, the health condition of pigs is vital to farmer's income and inevitably influence customers' health. It is challenging to monitor the pigs' health condition individually by using traditional approaches. It is common for diseases to spread from a single pig to nearly all the pigs living in the same pigsty. By adopting the technology of microchips to measure the drinking behavior of individual pigs housed in a group, it is possible to identify a pig's health and productivity state. This kind of behavior is a good indicator of a pig's overall health. Compared to traditional visual observations to determine the pig's health state, RFID-based monitoring of pig drinking behavior is a feasible and more efficient option.\nWildlife.\nUsing microchips in wild animals in biology began with fisheries studies to determine the efficacy of this method for measuring fish movement. Later, studies that use microchips to track wild animals expanded over the years, including researches on mammals, reptiles, birds, and amphibians. Compared with previous marking and tagging techniques used to identify wild animals before the advent of microchips, such as ear tags and color-coded leg bands, microchips are visually less obvious and less likely to be detected by prey and predators. Due to the fact that traditional identifications are on the exterior of the animal, tags can be lost, scars can heal and tattoos can fade.\nOther useful and significant information can be collected by microchips. Chipped wild animals that are recaptured can provide information on growth rate and change of location, as well as other valuable data such as age structure, sex ratios, and longevity of individuals in the wild. Other researches on small mammals like rats and mice also adopt this technology to determine body temperature of terminally ill animals. As microchips are internal, permanent, durable under harsh environments, and have little influence on animals, more scholars have employed microchip implantation to collect useful data on wildlife researches.\nComponents of a microchip.\nA microchip implant is a passive RFID device. Lacking an internal power source, it remains inert until it is powered by the scanner or another power source. While the chip itself only interacts with limited frequencies, the device also has an antenna that is optimized for a specific frequency, but is not selective. It may receive, generate current with, and reradiate stray electromagnetic waves. The radio-waves emitted by the scanner activate the chip, making the chip transmit the identification number to the scanner, and the scanner displays the number on screen. The microchip is enclosed in a biocompatible glass cylinder and includes an identifying integrated circuit placed under the skin of an animal. Relevant standards for the chips are ISO 11784 and ISO 11785.\nMost implants contain three elements: a 'chip' or integrated circuit, a coil inductor, possibly with a ferrite core, and a capacitor. The chip contains unique identification data and electronic circuits to encode that information. The coil acts as the secondary winding of a transformer, receiving power inductively coupled to it from the scanner. The coil and capacitor together form a resonant LC circuit tuned to the frequency of the scanner's oscillating magnetic field to produce power for the chip. The chip then transmits its data back through the coil to the scanner. The way the chip communicates with the scanner is a method called backscatter. It becomes part of the electromagnetic field and modulates it in a manner that communicates the ID number to the scanner.\nThese components are encased in biocompatible soda lime or borosilicate glass and hermetically sealed. Leaded glass should not be used for pet microchips and consumers should only accept microchips from reliable sources. The glass is also sometimes coated with polymers. Parylene\u00a0C (chlorinated poly-dimethylbenzene) has become a common coating. Plastic pet microchips have been registered in the international registry since 2012 under Datamars manufacturer code 981 and are being implanted in pets. The patent suggests it is a silicone filled polyester sheath, but the manufacturer does not disclose the exact composition.\nUse by country.\nSome countries require microchips in imported animals to match vaccination records. Microchip tagging may also be required for CITES-regulated international trade in certain endangered animals: for example, Asian Arowana are tagged to limit import to captive-bred fish. Birds that are not banded and cross international borders as pets or for trade are microchipped so that each bird is uniquely identifiable.\nAustralia.\nMicrochips are legally required in the state of New South Wales, Australia.\nBecause the ability to trace livestock from property of birth to slaughter is critical to the safety of red meat, the Australian red meat industry has implemented a national system known as National Livestock Identification System to ensure the quality and safety of beef, lamb, sheep meat and goat meat. There are weaknesses in the current microchipping system in Australia. According to several pieces of researches in 2015, reclaim rates were significantly higher for animals with microchips than those without microchips, which is based on the statistical analysis of the raw data of dogs and cats living in Australia as well as microchipped animals. To determine the character and the frequency of inaccurate microchip data used for locating owners of stray pets, the researchers also analyzed admission data for stray dogs and cats entering shelters called RSPCA-Queensland (QLD). The results show that the problem of microchip data may reduce the possibility that a pet's owner will be contacted to reclaim the animal. It is necessary that the current microchipping system in Australia be perfect and that microchip owners update their data frequently.\nFrance.\nSince 1999, all dogs older than four months must be permanently identified with a microchip (or a tattoo, though the latter is not accepted if the animal is to leave the country).\nCats are not required to be microchipped, though 2019 recorded increased support for mandatory chipping. Instead, since 1 January 2012, all cats older than seven months require mandatory registration in the European Union database.\nIsrael.\nDogs and cats imported to Israel\u00a0are required to be microchipped with an ISO 11784/11785 compliant 15 digit pet microchip.\nJapan.\nJapan requires an ISO 11784 and 11785 compliant microchip implant for dogs and cats handled by breeders and pet shops, as well as for all imported dogs and cats. Additionally, microchipping is mandatory for certain invasive species that threaten Japan\u2019s ecosystems or agriculture, as well as for special animals classified as dangerous to human life, health, or property.\nThe Act on Welfare and Management of Animals (Act No. 105 of 1973) requires owners and pet sellers to register microchipped dogs and cats with the Ministry of the Environment database and update registration details as needed. When transferring ownership of a registered dog or cat, the Registration Certificate must accompany the animal. The Act prohibits microchip removal unless it poses a risk to the animal's health or falls under other exceptional cases.\nThe ISO 11784 standard defines a 15-digit microchip code, split into a 3-digit country code and a 12-digit National ID Code. The Japan Veterinary Medical Association introduced a system in 1995 that includes Japan\u2019s numeric country code (392), followed by a 2-digit animal code, a 2-digit distributor code, and a unique 8-digit identification number.\nNew Zealand.\nAll dogs first registered after 1 July 2006 must be microchipped. Farmers protested that farm dogs should be exempt, drawing a parallel to the Dog Tax War of 1898. Farm dogs were exempted from microchipping in an amendment to the legislation passed in June 2006. A National Animal Identification and Tracing scheme in New Zealand is currently being developed for tracking livestock.\nUnited Kingdom.\nIn April 2012, Northern Ireland became the first part of the United Kingdom to require microchipping of individually licensed dogs.\nAs of 6 April 2016, all dogs in England, Scotland and Wales must be microchipped.\nAll pet cats in England must be microchipped by 10 June 2024. Owners found not to have microchipped their cat will have 21 days to have one implanted, or may face a fine of up to \u00a3500. \nUnited States.\nMicrochipping of pets and other animals is voluntary except for some legislation mandating microchipping as a means of identifying animals who have been identified as being dangerous. Though, California law requires any animal control agency, shelter or rescue to only release a cat or dog, including to the owner, if they are microchipped or will be within 30 days. In 1994, the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry (LDAF) issued a regulation requiring permanent identification (in the form of a brand, lip tattoo or electronic identification) of all horses tested for equine infectious anemia. According to the LDAF and the state veterinarian, this requirement made contributed to better determining the owners of horses displaced during Hurricane Katrina in fall 2005.\nThe United States uses the National Animal Identification System for farm and ranch animals, which excludes dogs and cats. In most species, except horses, an external eartag is typically used in lieu of an implant microchip. Eartags with microchips or simply stamped with a visible number can be used. Both use ISO fifteen-digit microchip numbers with the U.S. country code of 840.\nCross-compatibility and standards issues.\nIn most countries, pet ID chips adhere to an international standard to promote compatibility between chips and scanners. In the United States, however, three proprietary types of chips compete along with the international standard. Scanners distributed to United States shelters and veterinarians well into 2006 could each read at most three of the four types. Scanners with quad-read capability are now available and are increasingly considered required equipment. Older scanner models will be in use for some time, so United States pet owners must still choose between a chip with good coverage by existing scanners and one compatible with the international standard. The four types include:\nMany references in print state that the incompatibilities between different chip types are a matter of \"frequency\". One may find claims that early ISO adopters in the United States endangered their customers' pets by giving them ISO chips that work at a \"different frequency\" from the local shelter's scanner, or that the United States government considered forcing an incompatible frequency change. These claims were little challenged by manufacturers and distributors of ISO chips, although later evidence suggests the claims were disinformation. All chips operate at the scanner's frequency. Although ISO chips are optimized for 134.2 kHz, in practice they are readable at 125\u00a0kHz and the \"125 kHz\" chips are readable at 134.2\u00a0kHz. Confirmation comes from government filings that indicate the supposed \"multi-frequency\" scanners now commonly available are really single-frequency scanners operating at 125, 134.2 or 128\u00a0kHz. In particular, the United States HomeAgain scanner didn't change excitation frequency when ISO-read capability was added; it's still a single frequency, 125\u00a0kHz scanner.\nFor users requiring shelter-grade certainty, this table is not a substitute for testing the scanner with a set of specimen chips. One study cites problems with certain Trovan chips on the Datamars Black Label scanner. In general, the study found none of the tested scanners to read all four standards without some deficiency, but it predates the most recent scanner models.\nReported adverse reactions.\nAdverse event reporting for animal microchips has been inconsistent. RFID chips are used in animal research, and at least three studies conducted since the 1990s have reported tumors at the site of implantation in laboratory mice and rats. The UK's Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) assumed the task of adverse event reporting for animal microchips there in April 2014. Mandatory adverse event reporting went into effect in the UK in February 2015. The first report was issued for the period of April 2014 through December 2015. Mandatory microchip implant of dogs went into effect in April 2016. Data sets for 2016 through 2018 have become available. Adverse reactions to microchip implants may include infection, rejection, mass and tumor formation or death, but the risk of adverse reactions is very low. Sample sizes, in rodents and dogs in particular, have been small, and so conclusive evidence has been limited. \nNoted veterinary associations have responded with continued support for the microchip implant procedures as reasonably safe for cats and dogs, pointing to rates of serious complications on the order of one in a million in the UK, which has a system for tracking such adverse reactions and has chipped over 3.7 million pet dogs. A 2011 study found no safety concerns for microchipped animals with RFID chips undergoing MRI at one Tesla magnetic field strength. In 2011 a microchip-associated fibrosarcoma was reported found in the neck of a 9-year old, neutered-male cat. Histological examination was consistent with postinjection sarcoma, but all prior vaccinations occurred in the hindlegs.\nThe microchip is implanted in the subcutaneous tissues causing an inflammatory response until scar tissue develops around the microchip. Studies on horses are used as the basis for short inflammatory response claims, while procedures on done on small kittens and puppies. People have reported swelling and bruising at the time of the implant with itching and pinching sensations for up to two years. The broader impacts on inflammatory disorders and cancer have not been determined and most of the health risks that were defined in the FDA Guidance developed for human implants should be considered. Adverse event reporting in the US can be made by the pet owner or a veterinarian to the FDA.\nThe estimate for the total cat and dog population of the UK is 16 million with 8.5 million dogs subject to mandatory microchip implant. The population of dogs implanted prior to mandatory adverse event reporting February 2015 was between 60% (February 2013) and 86% (April 2016). Approximately 95% are reported to be implanted as of April 2017.\nPrivacy.\nUnauthorized reading of microchips can present a risk to privacy and can potentially provide information to identify or track packages, consumers, carriers, or even owners of different animals. Several prototype systems are being developed to combat unauthorized reading, including RFID signal interruption, as well as the possibility of legislation. Hundreds of scientific papers have been published on this matter since 2002. Different countries have responded differently to these issues.\nAs early as in 1997, some scholars believed that microchip implantation was technically possible, but it was suggested that it was the time to consider strategies for preventing potentially grievous intrusion into personal privacy. It is possible that microchips implanted on animals can also lead to privacy issues or information breaches, which can lead to serious social problems.\nA common misconception is that the chip can be used for location tracking of the animal, which is false.\nThe microchip ownership question.\nThe widespread adoption of microchip identification may lead to ownership disputes occurring more frequently since sometimes microchip ownership information is irrelevant according to the ownership laws. This can occur when the owner is not the one to whom the microchip ownership information belongs. This is a significant problem because client confidentiality rules generally prohibit veterinarians from divulging information about a pet without the client's permission. Furthermore, veterinarians are required to get permission from the person who registered the chip to perform a surgery on a microchipped animal, even if the animal is experiencing a severe medical emergency. The problem can be more complicated if animals with microchips are abandoned or stolen.\nProtecting privacy.\nThe first method of protecting microchip privacy is by regularly updating information. Stray animals with incorrect microchip details are less likely to be reclaimed and when compared to pets with correct microchip details, the time taken to retrieve the pets is longer, and sometimes reuniting is impossible. Therefore, it is wise to update microchip information regularly, especially when owners move or change their phone numbers. According to research, email reminders may increase the frequency of pet owners updating their microchip information. By increasing the pet owners' updating frequency of the pets' data, the reclaim percentages of stray animals will increase and reduce the number of pets euthanized in shelters every year.\nAnother method of protection is by using cryptography. Rolling codes and challenge\u2013response authentication (CRA) are commonly used to foil monitor-repetition of the messages between the tag and reader; as any messages that have been recorded would prove to be unsuccessful on repeat transmission. It is possible that some novel RFID authentication protocols for microchip ownership transfer can be adapted to protect users' privacy, which meets three key requirements for secure microchip ownership transfer. The three requirements include: new owner privacy (only the new owner should be able to identify and control the microchip), old owner privacy (past interactions between the microchip and its previous owner should not be traceable by the new owner) as well as authorization recovery (the new owner should be able to transfer its authorization rights to the previous owner in some special cases). These features can protect owners' privacy to some extent.\nManufacturers and registers.\nIn the United States, the history of some tag manufacturers dates back more than 30 years. Several of the major tag manufacturers are listed below:\nSome RFID-USA Registers includes:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "23199107": "Pet recovery service\nService to reunite lost pets with their owners\nThe goal of a pet recovery service is to reunite owners with their lost or stolen pets.\nPet recovery.\nWithout identification tags.\nA wide variety of pet recovery services exist, including online services to search for lost pets. Less traditional services for searching for lost pets include the use of a bloodhound, a pet detective, or sites that offer a bulk-calling computer that can quickly alert neighbors by phone.\nWith identification tags.\nExternal identification.\nForms of external identification include collar tags with identifying information, or QR codes with pet information or pet recovery service information. The pet could be tracked through a service toll-free number or web address on the tag; the service accesses the pet and owner information in a database via a number or QR code. Some pet identification tags include the owner's address or phone number, which can be used to reunite the pet with its owner. There are also registry database services based on tattoo registries.\nElectronic tracking devices.\nRecovery service providers use collar-attached electronic tracking devices to reunite the pet with its owner. The contract may also include recovery services, which eliminates any need to rely on a stranger encountering the pet. However, at least one device also calls for help from anyone nearby. This depends on whether the device is GPS, radio, or Bluetooth.\nMicrochip implant.\nSince the early 1990s, advocates have promoted the under-skin I.D. tag or microchip implant as a collar-free solution for pet recovery. Veterinary services, animal shelters, and some individuals have chip scanners. In the U.S., such services are unregulated, and several types of chips have emerged with only some adhering to the pertinent ISO standards, ISO 11784 and ISO 11785. Originally, each type had its own scanner with no ability to read or even detect other types. However, there is a trend toward universal scanners that can read all types. Unlike the identifying collar tags mentioned above, the appropriate database keeper cannot always be determined from the ID number, complicating the task of returning the pet to its owner.\nMetasearch engines.\nAs an aid to the pet finder in this situation, chip registry metasearch engines have been established. Two that have been available at least since 2003 are Europetnet, which has a large number of participating European registries, and Petmaxx, a worldwide registry service. In 2009, the metasearch engine, sponsored by the American Animal Hospital Association, was put online. Most of the major U.S. registries are now participants.\nPets are reunited with their owners by the stray pet's code, whose information is accessed via a database. The services are only accessed where chip registry services have decided to interface with metasearch engine services.\nSuccessful metasearch engines connect to all the available registries and can help the pet finder or dog warden find the one registry that has an owner record for a found stray. A potential downfall is that if the pet's information is not registered with all databases, a thief can steal the animal using the secure and tamper-proof' ID device. Then, they can register the stolen pet with another database and sell the animal, transferring an apparent clear title in the form of a login account at, or registration document from, the second registry.\nA drawback of metasearch engines is that many shelters do not have the resources to search registry sites for owner information once they access the chip number. The chip number may simply be entered in the paperwork, never contacting the owner.\nMicrochip Registration Database.\nTo ensure lost pets are reunited with their owners, it is best to have them microchipped and to register them with the chip manufacturer and/or one of the chip-agnostic recovery Pet recovery services. An implantable chip is more secure than a collar tag because the chip cannot be moved between pets or lost, as can a collar tag. A typical pet microchip registration costs $25 to $100 per year, and it is incumbent upon the owner to maintain the accuracy of the database in the event of a move or change in contact information.\u00a0To remind pet owners to check and update their information, the American Animal Hospital Association and the American Veterinary Medical Association have established August 15 as Check a Chip Day.\nRegistering and keeping the owner's contact information up-to-date is a problem facing the pet microchip industry. Without up-to-date information, a lost pet is less likely to be returned to its owner.\u00a0According to an Ohio State University study, the main reasons owners aren't found for lost pets included incorrect or disconnected phone numbers (35.4%), the owner's failure to return phone calls or respond to letters (24.3%), unregistered microchips (9.8%), or microchips registered in a database that differed from the manufacturer (17.2%). At a subscription cost to the owner that is typically annual, each microchip manufacturer maintains their registration database. However, these registration databases only hold information related to the chips they manufacture. This requires a pet finder that does not know who the manufacturer is to search multiple sources to report a found pet.\u00a0There are free registration databases available, such as those at Veripet's Rabies Reader Page and Found Animals Microchip Registry are chip manufacture agnostic.\nA recovery database of last resort at the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) provides a lookup tool that will redirect a user to the manufacturer's recovery desk. However, they do not provide owner information or notifications to them. AAHA works only with those manufacturers and recovery services that provide a hotline where a pet finder can report a found pet. \nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "5350187": "Chips (dog)\nUS Military dog (1940\u20131946)\nChips (1940\u20131946) was a trained sentry dog for United States Army, and reputedly the most decorated war dog from World War II. Chips was a German Shepherd-Collie-Malamute mix owned by Edward J. Wren of Pleasantville, New York. He was bred by C.C. Moore, and was the son of Margot Jute, a half collie, half German shepherd, and Husky, a malamute.\nBiography.\nC.C. Moore eventually gave Chips to the Wren family. Chips immediately grew attached to Wren's daughter, Gail, that he was often seen following her to school every day and laying underneath her desk. During playtime with other children, Chips was known to intervene, pulling the girls away if he thought they were in danger.\nDuring the war, private citizens like Wren donated their dogs for duty. Chips shipped out to the War Dog Training Center, Front Royal, Virginia, in 1942 for training as a sentry dog. He was one of four dogs assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, France and Germany. His handler was Pvt. John P. Rowell. Chips served as a sentry dog for the Roosevelt-Churchill conference in 1943. On July 10, 1943, Chips and his handler were pinned down on the beach by an Italian machine-gun team. Chips broke from his handler and jumped into the pillbox, attacking the gunners. The four crewmen were forced to leave the pillbox and surrendered to US troops. \"There was an awful lot of noise,\" Rowell said. \"Then I saw one fellow come out the door with Chips at his throat. I called him off before he could kill the man.\" In the fight, he sustained a scalp wound and powder burns. Later that day, he helped take ten Italians prisoner.\nFor his actions during the war, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star and Purple Heart; however, these awards were later revoked due to an Army policy preventing official commendation of animals. His unit unofficially awarded him a theater ribbon with an arrowhead for an assault landing, and battle stars for each of his eight campaigns. \nIn 2018, Chips was posthumously awarded the PDSA Dickin Medal for his efforts during the war. In 2019, Chips was posthumously awarded the Animals in War & Peace Medal of Bravery.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18489249": "Sergeant Chip\n\"Sergeant Chip\" is a science fiction novella by American writer Bradley Denton, originally published in \"The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction\" issue of September 2004. It was the winner of the 2005 Sturgeon Award, and was nominated for the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Novella.\nPlot summary.\nThe story is told from the point of view of Chip, a specially trained military dog that has been implanted with a microchip that allows him to communicate with his trainer, Captain Dial. The two of them put on many military demonstrations until they are called to active duty in the war. In the war they are caught in an unexpected ambush and eventually come to realize who the \"real\" enemy is.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18389302": "Greatest American Dog\nGreatest American Dog is an American reality television series on CBS. It debuted on July 10, 2008 and was hosted by Jarod Miller with judges Victoria Stilwell, Allan Reznik, and Wendy Diamond. The winner was given the title of \"Greatest American Dog\" and a prize of $250,000.\nEpisode format.\nEach episode had a theme, such as \"teamwork\" or \"loyalty,\" that was tested through two different challenges.\nThe winner of the first challenge, the \"Dog Bone Challenge,\" receives deluxe accommodations within the Canine Academy (similar to the \"Head of Household\" suite on CBS' \"Big Brother\"). In addition, for the first four weeks, the winner of the challenge got to send one of the other teams to the \"Dog House,\" a much smaller building with few amenities. For the remaining weeks, the winner received a \"leg up,\" some form of assistance that would help the contestant in the second challenge.\nIn that second challenge, the \"Best in Show Challenge,\" the teams are evaluated by the judges. The judges then choose one or more winners (except for Week 1), and place three teams in the \"bottom three.\" Of those three, the judges then choose the team they feel had the worst performance; that team is then \"expelled\" from Canine Academy.\nEpisode progress.\n1 - In episode 5, Teresa & Leroy won the Dog Bone Challenge, but gave it to Bill & Star. In episode 6, Bill & Star won, but returned the favor, giving it to Teresa & Leroy. \n2 - In episode 10, JD & Galaxy were eliminated after a preliminary interview, and did not take part in the final obstacle course/interview.\n<templatestyles src=\"Legend/styles.css\" />\u00a0 (WINNER) The owner/dog won the series and was crowned Greatest American Dog.\n<templatestyles src=\"Legend/styles.css\" />\u00a0 (WIN) The owner/dog won that episode's Best In Show Challenge.\n<templatestyles src=\"Legend/styles.css\" />\u00a0 (LOW) The owner/dog was selected as one of the bottom entries in the Elimination Challenge, but was not expelled.\n<templatestyles src=\"Legend/styles.css\" />\u00a0 (EX) The owner/dog lost that week's Elimination Challenge and was expelled from the competition.\n<templatestyles src=\"Legend/styles.css\" />\u00a0 (IN) The owner/dog neither won nor lost that week's Elimination Challenge. They also were not nominated for expulsion.\nEpisode guide.\nHere's To Man and Woman's Best Friend!\nOriginal Air Date: July 10, 2008\nThe twelve competing dogs and their owners arrive at Canine Academy and meet each other for the first time. The theme for this episode was 'The Basics'.\nDog Bone Challenge: \"Doggy Musical Chairs\"\n Similar to the human version of musical chairs, the dogs and their owners had to walk around a line of pedestals (the \"chairs\") while music was playing. There was a white line circling the chairs that the owners were not allowed to cross. The dogs were permitted to walk wherever they chose. When the music stopped, the owner had to direct their dog to get up onto a chair and sit. There were fewer chairs than contestants, so the last dog standing was out of the challenge. JD & Galaxy won this challenge, and placed David & Elvis in the Dog House.\nBest in Show Challenge: \"The Talent Show\"\n A chance to demonstrate the dogs' basic skills, the contestants and their dogs had to perform a themed skit in groups of four. The judges evaluated individual performances and how well the owner interacted with their dog.\nThe bottom three were Brandy & Beacon, Beth Joy & Bella Starlet, and Michael & Ezzie. Beth Joy was told her performance was disappointing when she lost control over Bella Starlet. Brandy was chastised for physically manipulating Beacon when Beacon wouldn't listen to Brandy's commands. Michael was told that his own performance overshadowed and overwhelmed Ezzie, who was having difficulty focusing.\nHe's a Farter, Not a Fighter.\nOriginal Air Date: July 17, 2008\nThings grow a little tense at Canine Academy when Elvis has a small fight with Tillman and bites his eye. Elvis' owner, David, seems very passive about his dog's actions. Star suffers an injury to her neck and ear, and she has to be brought into an emergency vet to be stitched up. The cause of the injury seems to be unknown, though the vet suggests it may have been a feral cat. Star recovers with a bit of rest and relaxation. The theme for this week's competitions was 'Obedience'.\nDog Bone Challenge: \"Doggy Boot Camp\"\n The dogs and their owners formed a \"drill line\", and Jarod gave a command to be performed in a certain time limit. The owners and dogs that didn't successfully complete the command within the allotted amount of time were out. The commands required were 'come', 'sit', 'stay' as they walked a circle around the dog, 'shake' with the dog's right paw, 'back up', 'circle right', and finally, 'circle left' followed by 'circle right. Travis & Presley won this challenge, and put JD & Galaxy in the Dog House.\nBest in Show Challenge: \"\""}, "descending_order": ["23199107", "5350187", "18489249", "1212890", "18389302"], "permutation_1": ["23199107", "1212890", "5350187", "18389302", "18489249"], "permutation_2": ["23199107", "18489249", "18389302", "1212890", "5350187"], "permutation_3": ["18389302", "5350187", "18489249", "1212890", "23199107"]}
{"id": "nq_4938033218617022183", "docs_added": {"22385": "Oort cloud\nDistant planetesimals in the Solar System\nThe Oort cloud (pronounced or ), sometimes called the \u00d6pik\u2013Oort cloud, is theorized to be a vast cloud of icy planetesimals surrounding the Sun at distances ranging from 2,000 to 200,000 AU (0.03 to 3.2 light-years). The concept of such a cloud was proposed in 1950 by the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, in whose honor the idea was named. Oort proposed that the bodies in this cloud replenish and keep constant the number of long-period comets entering the inner Solar System\u2014where they are eventually consumed and destroyed during close approaches to the Sun.\nThe cloud is thought to encompass two regions: a disc-shaped inner Oort cloud aligned with the solar ecliptic (also called its Hills cloud) and a spherical outer Oort cloud enclosing the entire Solar System. Both regions lie well beyond the heliosphere and are in interstellar space. The innermost portion of the Oort cloud is more than a thousand times as distant from the Sun as the Kuiper belt, the scattered disc and the detached objects\u2014three nearer reservoirs of trans-Neptunian objects.\nThe outer limit of the Oort cloud defines the cosmographic boundary of the Solar System. This area is defined by the Sun's Hill sphere, and hence lies at the interface between solar and galactic gravitational dominion. The outer Oort cloud is only loosely bound to the Solar System and its constituents are easily affected by the gravitational pulls of passing stars, the Milky Way itself and the cloud's own microgravity. These forces served to moderate and render more circular the highly eccentric orbits of material ejected from the inner Solar System during its early phases of development. The circular orbits of material in the Oort disc are largely thanks to this galactic gravitational torquing. By the same token, galactic interference in the motion of Oort bodies occasionally dislodges comets from their orbits within the cloud, sending them into the inner Solar System. Based on their orbits, most but not all of the short-period comets appear to have come from the Oort disc. Other short-period comets may have originated from the far larger spherical cloud.\nAstronomers hypothesize that the material presently in the Oort cloud formed much closer to the Sun, in the protoplanetary disc, and was then scattered far into space through the gravitational influence of the giant planets. No direct observation of the Oort cloud is possible with present imaging technology. Nevertheless, the cloud is thought to be the source that replenishes most long-period and Halley-type comets, which are eventually consumed by their close approaches to the Sun after entering the inner Solar System. The cloud may also serve the same function for many of the centaurs and .\nDevelopment of theory.\nBy the early 20th century, astronomers had identified two main types of comets: short-period comets (also called \"ecliptic\" comets) and long-period comets (also called \"nearly isotropic\" comets). Ecliptic comets have relatively small orbits aligned near the ecliptic plane and are not found much farther than the Kuiper cliff around 50 AU from the Sun (the orbit of Neptune averages about 30 AU and 177P/Barnard has aphelion around 48 AU). Long-period comets, on the other hand, travel in very large orbits thousands of AU from the Sun and are isotropically distributed. This means long-period comets appear from every direction in the sky, both above and below the ecliptic plane. The origin of these comets was not well understood, and many long-period comets were initially assumed to be on parabolic trajectories, making them one-time visitors to the Sun from interstellar space.\nIn 1907, Armin Otto Leuschner suggested that many of the comets then thought to have parabolic orbits in fact moved along extremely large elliptical orbits that would return them to the inner Solar System after long intervals during which they were invisible to Earth-based astronomy. In 1932, the Estonian astronomer Ernst \u00d6pik proposed a reservoir of long-period comets in the form of an orbiting cloud at the outermost edge of the Solar System. Dutch astronomer Jan Oort revived this basic idea in 1950 to resolve a paradox about the origin of comets. The following facts are not easily reconcilable with the highly elliptical orbits in which long-period comets are always found:\nOort reasoned that comets with orbits that closely approach the Sun cannot have been doing so since the condensation of the protoplanetary disc, more than 4.5 billion years ago. Hence long-period comets could not have formed in the current orbits in which they are always discovered and must have been held in an outer reservoir for nearly all of their existence.\nOort also studied tables of ephemerides for long-period comets and discovered that there is a curious concentration of long-period comets whose farthest retreat from the Sun (their aphelia) cluster around 20,000\u00a0AU. This suggested a reservoir at that distance with a spherical, isotropic distribution. He also proposed that the relatively rare comets with orbits of about 10,000\u00a0AU probably went through one or more orbits into the inner Solar System and there had their orbits drawn inward by the gravity of the planets.\nStructure and composition.\nThe Oort cloud is thought to occupy a vast space somewhere between from the Sun to as far out as or even . The region can be subdivided into a spherical outer Oort cloud with a radius of some and a torus-shaped inner Oort cloud with a radius of .\nThe inner Oort cloud is sometimes known as the Hills cloud, named for Jack G. Hills, who proposed its existence in 1981. Models predict the inner cloud to be the much denser of the two, having tens or hundreds of times as many cometary nuclei as the outer cloud. The Hills cloud is thought to be necessary to explain the continued existence of the Oort cloud after billions of years.\nBecause it lies at the interface between the dominion of Solar and galactic gravitation, the objects comprising the outer Oort cloud are only weakly bound to the Sun. This in turn allows small perturbations from nearby stars or the Milky Way itself to inject long-period (and possibly Halley-type) comets inside the orbit of Neptune. This process ought to have depleted the sparser, outer cloud and yet long-period comets with orbits well above or below the ecliptic continue to be observed. The Hills cloud is thought to be a secondary reservoir of cometary nuclei and the source of replenishment for the tenuous outer cloud as the latter's numbers are gradually depleted through losses to the inner Solar System.\nThe outer Oort cloud may have trillions of objects larger than , and billions with diameters of . This corresponds to an absolute magnitude of more than 11. On this analysis, \"neighboring\" objects in the outer cloud are separated by a significant fraction of 1 AU, tens of millions of kilometres. The outer cloud's total mass is not known, but assuming that Halley's Comet is a suitable proxy for the nuclei composing the outer Oort cloud, their combined mass would be roughly , or five Earth masses.\nFormerly the outer cloud was thought to be more massive by two orders of magnitude, containing up to 380 Earth masses,\nbut improved knowledge of the size distribution of long-period comets has led to lower estimates. No estimates of the mass of the inner Oort cloud have been published as of 2023.\nIf analyses of comets are representative of the whole, the vast majority of Oort-cloud objects consist of ices such as water, methane, ethane, carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide.\nHowever, the discovery of the object 1996 PW, an object whose appearance was consistent with a D-type asteroid in an orbit typical of a long-period comet, prompted theoretical research that suggests that the Oort cloud population consists of roughly one to two percent asteroids. Analysis of the carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios in both the long-period and Jupiter-family comets shows little difference between the two, despite their presumably vastly separate regions of origin. This suggests that both originated from the original protosolar cloud, a conclusion also supported by studies of granular size in Oort-cloud comets and by the recent impact study of Jupiter-family comet Tempel 1.\nIn 2020 researchers discovered an unexpected spiral-shaped pattern in the inner part of the Oort Cloud. This discovery sheds light on how gravity shapes the outer edges of the Solar System.\nOrigin.\nThe Oort cloud is thought to have developed after the formation of planets from the primordial protoplanetary disc approximately 4.6\u00a0billion years ago. The most widely accepted hypothesis is that the Oort cloud's objects initially coalesced much closer to the Sun as part of the same process that formed the planets and minor planets. After formation, strong gravitational interactions with young gas giants, such as Jupiter, scattered the objects into extremely wide elliptical or parabolic orbits that were subsequently modified by perturbations from passing stars and giant molecular clouds into long-lived orbits detached from the gas giant region.\nRecent research has been cited by NASA hypothesizing that a large number of Oort cloud objects are the product of an exchange of materials between the Sun and its sibling stars as they formed and drifted apart and it is suggested that many\u2014possibly the majority\u2014of Oort cloud objects did not form in close proximity to the Sun. Simulations of the evolution of the Oort cloud from the beginnings of the Solar System to the present suggest that the cloud's mass peaked around 800\u00a0million years after formation, as the pace of accretion and collision slowed and depletion began to overtake supply.\nModels by Julio \u00c1ngel Fern\u00e1ndez suggest that the scattered disc, which is the main source for periodic comets in the Solar System, might also be the primary source for Oort cloud objects. According to the models, about half of the objects scattered travel outward toward the Oort cloud, whereas a quarter are shifted inward to Jupiter's orbit, and a quarter are ejected on hyperbolic orbits. The scattered disc might still be supplying the Oort cloud with material. A third of the scattered disc's population is likely to end up in the Oort cloud after 2.5\u00a0billion years.\nComputer models suggest that collisions of cometary debris during the formation period play a far greater role than was previously thought. According to these models, the number of collisions early in the Solar System's history was so great that most comets were destroyed before they reached the Oort cloud. Therefore, the current cumulative mass of the Oort cloud is far less than was once suspected. The estimated mass of the cloud is only a small part of the 50\u2013100 Earth masses of ejected material.\nGravitational interaction with nearby stars and galactic tides modified cometary orbits to make them more circular. This explains the nearly spherical shape of the outer Oort cloud. On the other hand, the Hills cloud, which is bound more strongly to the Sun, has not acquired a spherical shape. Recent studies have shown that the formation of the Oort cloud is broadly compatible with the hypothesis that the Solar System formed as part of an embedded cluster of 200\u2013400 stars. These early stars likely played a role in the cloud's formation, since the number of close stellar passages within the cluster was much higher than today, leading to far more frequent perturbations.\nIn June 2010 Harold F. Levison and others suggested on the basis of enhanced computer simulations that the Sun \"captured comets from other stars while it was in its birth cluster.\" Their results imply that \"a substantial fraction of the Oort cloud comets, perhaps exceeding 90%, are from the protoplanetary discs of other stars.\" In July 2020 Amir Siraj and Avi Loeb found that a captured origin for the Oort Cloud in the Sun's birth cluster could address the theoretical tension in explaining the observed ratio of outer Oort cloud to scattered disc objects, and in addition could increase the chances of a captured Planet Nine.\nComets.\nComets are thought to have two separate points of origin in the Solar System. Short-period comets (those with orbits of up to 200\u00a0years) are generally accepted to have emerged from either the Kuiper belt or the scattered disc, which are two linked flat discs of icy debris beyond Neptune's orbit at 30\u00a0AU and jointly extending out beyond 100\u00a0AU. Very long-period comets, such as C/1999 F1 (Catalina), whose orbits last for millions of years, are thought to originate directly from the outer Oort cloud. Other comets modeled to have come directly from the outer Oort cloud include C/2006 P1 (McNaught), C/2010 X1 (Elenin), Comet ISON, C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring), C/2017 K2, and C/2017 T2 (PANSTARRS). The orbits within the Kuiper belt are relatively stable, so very few comets are thought to originate there. The scattered disc, however, is dynamically active and is far more likely to be the place of origin for comets. Comets pass from the scattered disc into the realm of the outer planets, becoming what are known as centaurs. These centaurs are then sent farther inward to become the short-period comets.\nThere are two main types of short-period comets: Jupiter-family comets (with orbits smaller than 5 AU) and Halley-family comets. Halley-family comets, named after Halley's Comet, are distinct because, even though they are short-period comets, they are thought to come from the Oort Cloud rather than the scattered disc. Based on their orbits, it is suggested they were long-period comets that were captured by the gravity of the giant planets and sent into the inner Solar System. This process may have also created the present orbits of a significant fraction of the Jupiter-family comets, although the majority of such comets are thought to have originated in the scattered disc.\nOort noted that the number of returning comets was far less than his model predicted, and this issue, known as \"cometary fading\", has yet to be resolved. No dynamical process is known to explain the smaller number of observed comets than Oort estimated. Hypotheses for this discrepancy include the destruction of comets due to tidal stresses, impact or heating; the loss of all volatiles, rendering some comets invisible, or the formation of a non-volatile crust on the surface. Dynamical studies of hypothetical Oort cloud comets have estimated that their occurrence in the outer-planet region would be several times higher than in the inner-planet region. This discrepancy may be due to the gravitational attraction of Jupiter, which acts as a kind of barrier, trapping incoming comets and causing them to collide with it, just as it did with Comet Shoemaker\u2013Levy 9 in 1994. An example of a typical dynamically old comet with an origin in the Oort cloud could be C/2018 F4.\nTidal effects.\nMost of the comets seen close to the Sun seem to have reached their current positions through gravitational perturbation of the Oort cloud by the tidal force exerted by the Milky Way. Just as the Moon's tidal force deforms Earth's oceans, causing the tides to rise and fall, the galactic tide also distorts the orbits of bodies in the outer Solar System. In the charted regions of the Solar System, these effects are negligible compared to the gravity of the Sun, but in the outer reaches of the system, the Sun's gravity is weaker and the gradient of the Milky Way's gravitational Galactic Center compresses it along the other two axes; these small perturbations can shift orbits in the Oort cloud to bring objects close to the Sun. The point at which the Sun's gravity concedes its influence to the galactic tide is called the tidal truncation radius. It lies at a radius of 100,000 to 200,000 au, and marks the outer boundary of the Oort cloud.\nSome scholars theorize that the galactic tide may have contributed to the formation of the Oort cloud by increasing the perihelia (smallest distances to the Sun) of planetesimals with large aphelia (largest distances to the Sun). The effects of the galactic tide are quite complex, and depend heavily on the behaviour of individual objects within a planetary system. Cumulatively, however, the effect can be quite significant: up to 90% of all comets originating from the Oort cloud may be the result of the galactic tide. Statistical models of the observed orbits of long-period comets argue that the galactic tide is the principal means by which their orbits are perturbed toward the inner Solar System.\nStellar perturbations and stellar companion hypotheses.\nBesides the galactic tide, the main trigger for sending comets into the inner Solar System is thought to be interaction between the Sun's Oort cloud and the gravitational fields of nearby stars or giant molecular clouds. The orbit of the Sun through the plane of the Milky Way sometimes brings it in relatively close proximity to other stellar systems. For example, it is hypothesized that 70,000 years ago Scholz's Star passed through the outer Oort cloud (although its low mass and high relative velocity limited its effect). During the next 10\u00a0million years the known star with the greatest possibility of perturbing the Oort cloud is Gliese 710. This process could also scatter Oort cloud objects out of the ecliptic plane, potentially also explaining its spherical distribution.\nIn 1984, physicist Richard A. Muller postulated that the Sun has an as-yet undetected companion, either a brown dwarf or a red dwarf, in an elliptical orbit within the Oort cloud. This object, known as Nemesis, was hypothesized to pass through a portion of the Oort cloud approximately every 26\u00a0million years, bombarding the inner Solar System with comets. However, to date no evidence of Nemesis has been found, and many lines of evidence (such as crater counts), have thrown its existence into doubt. Recent scientific analysis no longer supports the idea that extinctions on Earth happen at regular, repeating intervals. Thus, the Nemesis hypothesis is no longer needed to explain current assumptions.\nA somewhat similar hypothesis was advanced by astronomer John J. Matese of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2002. He contends that more comets are arriving in the inner Solar System from a particular region of the postulated Oort cloud than can be explained by the galactic tide or stellar perturbations alone, and that the most likely cause would be a Jupiter-mass object in a distant orbit. This hypothetical gas giant was nicknamed Tyche. The WISE mission, an all-sky survey using parallax measurements in order to clarify local star distances, was capable of proving or disproving the Tyche hypothesis. In 2014, NASA announced that the WISE survey had ruled out any object as they had defined it.\nFuture exploration.\nSpace probes have yet to reach the area of the Oort cloud. \"Voyager 1\", the fastest and farthest of the interplanetary space probes currently leaving the Solar System, will reach the Oort cloud in about 300 years and would take about 30,000 years to pass through it. However, around 2025, the radioisotope thermoelectric generators on \"Voyager 1\" will no longer supply enough power to operate any of its scientific instruments, preventing any further exploration by \"Voyager 1.\" The currently escaping the Solar System have either already stopped functioning (\"Pioneer 10\", \"Pioneer 11\") or are predicted to also stop functioning before they reach the Oort cloud (\"Voyager 2\", \"New Horizons\").\nIn the 1980s, there was a concept for a probe that could reach 1,000 AU in 50 years, called \"TAU\"; among its missions would be to look for the Oort cloud.\nIn the 2014 Announcement of Opportunity for the Discovery program, an observatory to detect the objects in the Oort cloud (and Kuiper belt) called the \"Whipple Mission\" was proposed. It would monitor distant stars with a photometer, looking for transits up to 10,000 AU away. The observatory was proposed for halo orbiting around L2 with a suggested 5-year mission. It was also suggested that the Kepler space telescope could have been capable of detecting objects in the Oort cloud.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExplanatory notes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "413430": "Jan Oort\nDutch astronomer (1900\u20131992)\nJan Hendrik Oort ( or ; 28 April 1900 \u2013 5 November 1992) was a Dutch astronomer who made significant contributions to the understanding of the Milky Way and who was a pioneer in the field of radio astronomy. \"The New York Times\" called him \"one of the century's foremost explorers of the universe\"; the European Space Agency website describes him as \"one of the greatest astronomers of the 20th century\" and states that he \"revolutionised astronomy through his ground-breaking discoveries.\" In 1955, Oort's name appeared in \"Life\" magazine's list of the 100 most famous living people. He has been described as \"putting the Netherlands in the forefront of postwar astronomy\".\nOort determined that the Milky Way rotates and overturned the idea that the Sun was at its center. He also postulated the existence of the mysterious invisible dark matter in 1932, which is believed to make up roughly 84.5% of the total mass in the Universe and whose gravitational pull causes \"the clustering of stars into galaxies and galaxies into connecting strings of galaxies\". He discovered the galactic halo, a group of stars orbiting the Milky Way but outside the main disk. Additionally Oort is responsible for a number of important insights about comets, including the realization that their orbits \"implied there was a lot more solar system than the region occupied by the planets.\"\nThe Oort cloud, the Oort constants, Oort Limit, an impact crater on Pluto (Oort), and the asteroid 1691 Oort were all named after him.\nEarly life and education.\nOort was born in Franeker, a small town in the Dutch province of Friesland, on April 28, 1900. He was the second son of Abraham Hermanus Oort, a physician, who died on May 12, 1941, and Ruth Hannah Faber, who was the daughter of Jan Faber and Henrietta Sophia Susanna Schaaii, and who died on November 20, 1957. Both of his parents came from families of clergymen, with his paternal grandfather, a Protestant clergyman with liberal ideas, who \"was one of the founders of the more liberal Church in Holland\" and who \"was one of the three people who made a new translation of the Bible into Dutch.\" The reference is to Henricus Oort (1836\u20131927), who was the grandson of a famous Rotterdam preacher and, through his mother, Dina Maria Blom, the grandson of theologian Abraham Hermanus Blom, a \"pioneer of modern biblical research\". Several of Oort's uncles were pastors, as was his maternal grandfather. \"My mother kept up her interests in that, at least in the early years of her marriage\", he recalled. \"But my father was less interested in Church matters.\"\nIn 1903 Oort's parents moved to Oegstgeest, near Leiden, where his father took charge of the Endegeest Psychiatric Clinic. Oort's father, \"was a medical director in a sanitorium for nervous illnesses. We lived in the director's house of the sanitorium, in a small forest which was very nice for the children, of course, to grow up in.\" Oort's younger brother, John, became a professor of plant diseases at the University of Wageningen. In addition to John, Oort had two younger sisters and an elder brother who died of diabetes when he was a student.\nOort attended primary school in Oegstgeest and secondary school in Leiden, and in 1917 went to Groningen University to study physics. He later said that he had become interested in science and astronomy during his high-school years, and conjectured that his interest was stimulated by reading Jules Verne. His one hesitation about studying pure science was the concern that it \"might alienate one a bit from people in general\", as a result of which \"one might not develop the human factor sufficiently.\" But he overcame this concern and ended up discovering that his later academic positions, which involved considerable administrative responsibilities, afforded a good deal of opportunity for social contact.\nOort chose Groningen partly because a well known astronomer, Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn, was teaching there, although Oort was unsure whether he wanted to specialize in physics or astronomy. After studying with Kapteyn, Oort decided on astronomy. \"It was the personality of Professor Kapteyn which decided me entirely\", he later recalled. \"He was quite an inspiring teacher and especially his elementary astronomy lectures were fascinating.\" Oort began working on research with Kapteyn early in his third year. According to Oort one professor at Groningen who had considerable influence on his education was physicist Frits Zernike.\nAfter taking his final exam in 1921, Oort was appointed assistant at Groningen, but in September 1922, he went to the United States to do graduate work at Yale and to serve as an assistant to Frank Schlesinger of the Yale Observatory.\nCareer.\nAt Yale, Oort was responsible for making observations with the Observatory's zenith telescope. \"I worked on the problem of latitude variation\", he later recalled, \"which is quite far away from the subjects I had so far been studying.\" He later considered his experience at Yale useful as he became interested in \"problems of fundamental astronomy that [he] felt was capitalized on later, and which certainly influenced [his] future lectures in Leiden.\" Personally, he \"felt somewhat lonesome in Yale\", but also said that \"some of my very best friends were made in these years in New Haven.\"\nEarly discoveries.\nIn 1924, Oort returned to the Netherlands to work at Leiden University, where he served as a research assistant, becoming Conservator in 1926, Lecturer in 1930, and Professor Extraordinary in 1935. In 1926, he received his doctorate from Groningen with a thesis on the properties of high-velocity stars. The next year, Swedish astronomer Bertil Lindblad proposed that the rate of rotation of stars in the outer part of the galaxy decreased with distance from the galactic core, and Oort, who later said that he believed it was his colleague Willem de Sitter who had first drawn his attention to Lindblad's work, realized that Lindblad was correct and that the truth of his proposition could be demonstrated observationally. Oort provided two formulae that described galactic rotation; the two constants that figured in these formulae are now known as \"Oort's constants\". Oort \"argued that just as the outer planets appear to us to be overtaken and passed by the less distant ones in the solar system, so too with the stars if the Galaxy really rotated\", according to the \"Oxford Dictionary of Scientists\". He \"was finally able to calculate, on the basis of the various stellar motions, that the Sun was some 30,000 light-years from the center of the Galaxy and took about 225 million years to complete its orbit. He also showed that stars lying in the outer regions of the galactic disk rotated more slowly than those nearer the center. The Galaxy does not therefore rotate as a uniform whole but exhibits what is known as 'differential rotation'.\"\nThese early discoveries by Oort about the Milky Way overthrew the Kapteyn system, named after his mentor, which had envisioned a galaxy that was symmetrical around the Sun. As Oort later noted, \"Kapteyn and his co-workers had not realized that the absorption in the galactic plane was as bad as it turned out to be.\" Until Oort began his work, he later recalled, \"the Leiden Observatory had been concentrating entirely on positional astronomy, meridian circle work and some proper motion work. But no astrophysics or anything that looked like that. No structure of the galaxy, no dynamics of the galaxy. There was no one else in Leiden who was interested in these problems in which I was principally interested, so the first years I worked more or less by myself in these projects. De Sitter was interested, but his main line of research was celestial mechanics; at that time the expanding universe had moved away from his direct interest.\" As the European Space Agency states, Oort \"sh[ook] the scientific world by demonstrating that the Milky Way rotates like a giant 'Catherine Wheel'.\" He showed that all the stars in the galaxy were \"travelling independently through space, with those nearer the center rotating much faster than those further away.\"\nThis breakthrough made Oort famous in the world of astronomy. In the early 1930s he received job offers from Harvard and Columbia University, but chose to stay at Leiden, although he did spend half of 1932 at the Perkins Observatory, in Delaware, Ohio.\nIn 1934, Oort became assistant to the director of Leiden Observatory; the next year he became General Secretary of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a post he held until 1948; in 1937 he was elected to the Royal Academy. In 1939, he spent half a year in the U.S., and became interested in the Crab Nebula, concluding in a paper, written with American astronomer Nicholas Mayall, that it was the result of a supernova explosion.\nNazi invasion of Netherlands.\nIn 1940, Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands. Soon after, the occupying regime dismissed all Jewish professors from Leiden University and other universities. \"Among the professors who were dismissed\", Oort later recalled, \"was a very famous \u2026 professor of law by the name of Meyers. On the day when he got the letter from the authorities that he could no longer teach his classes, the dean of the faculty of law went into his class \u2026 and delivered a speech in which he started by saying, 'I won't talk about his dismissal and I shall leave the people who did this, below us, but will concentrate on the greatness of the man dismissed by our aggressors.'\"\nThis speech (26 November 1940) made such an impression on all his students that on leaving the auditorium they defiantly sang the anthem of the Netherlands and went on strike. Oort was present for the lecture and was greatly impressed. This occasion formed the beginning of the active resistance in Holland. The speech by Rudolph Cleveringa, the dean of the faculty of Law and former graduate student of professor Meijers, was widely circulated during the rest of the war by the resistance groups. Oort was in a little group of professors in Leiden who came together regularly and discussed the problems the university faced in view of the German occupation. Most of the members of this group were put in hostage camps soon after the speech by Cleveringa. Oort refused to collaborate with the occupiers, \"and so we went down to live in the country for the rest of the war.\" Resigning from the Royal Academy, from his professorial post at Leiden, and from his position at the Observatory, Oort took his family to Hulshorst, a quiet village in the province of Gelderland, where they sat out the war. In Hulshorst, he began writing a book on stellar dynamics.\nOort's radio astronomy.\nBefore the war was over, he initiated, in collaboration with a Utrecht University student, Hendrik van de Hulst, a project that eventually succeeded, in 1951, in detecting the 21-centimeter radio emission from interstellar hydrogen spectral line at radio frequencies. Oort and his colleagues also made the first investigation of the central region of the Galaxy, and discovered that \"the 21-centimeter radio emission passed un-absorbed through the gas clouds that had hidden the center from optical observation. They found a huge concentration of mass there, later identified as mainly stars, and also discovered that much of the gas in the region was moving rapidly outward away from the center.\" In June 1945, after the end of the war, Oort returned to Leiden, took over as director of the Observatory, and became Full Professor of Astronomy. During this immediate postwar period, he led the Dutch group that built radio telescopes at Radio Kootwijk, Dwingeloo, and Westerbork and used the 21-centimeter line to map the Milky Way, including the large-scale spiral structure, the Galactic Center, and gas cloud motions. Oort was helped in this project by the Dutch telecommunications company, PTT, which, he later explained, \"had under their care all the radar equipment that was left behind by the Germans on the coast of Holland. This radar equipment consisted in part of reflecting telescopes of 7 1/2 meter aperture... Our radio astronomy was really started with the aid of one of these instruments\u2026 it was in Kootwijk that the first map of the Galaxy was made.\" For a brief period, before the completion of the Jodrell Bank telescope, the Dwingeloo instrument was the largest of its kind on Earth.\nIt has been written that \"Oort was probably the first astronomer to realize the importance\" of radio astronomy. \"In the days before radio telescopes,\" one source notes, \"Oort was one of the few scientists to realise the potential significance of using radio waves to search the heavens. His theoretical research suggested that vast clouds of hydrogen lingered in the spiral arms of the Galaxy. These molecular clouds, he predicted, were the birthplaces of stars.\" These predictions were confirmed by measurements made at the new radio observatories at Dwingeloo and Westerbork. Oort later said that \"it was Grote Reber's work which first impressed me and convinced me of the unique importance of radio observations for surveying the galaxy.\" Just before the war, Reber had published a study of galactic radio emissions. Oort later commented, \"The work of Grote Reber made it quite clear [radio astronomy] would be a very important tool for investigating the Galaxy, just because it could investigate the whole disc of the galactic system unimpeded by absorption.\" Oort's work in radio astronomy is credited by colleagues with putting the Netherlands in the forefront of postwar astronomy. Oort also investigated the source of the light from the Crab Nebula, finding that it was polarized, and probably produced by synchrotron radiation, confirming a hypothesis by Iosif Shklovsky.\nComet studies.\nOort went on to study comets, which he formulated a number of revolutionary hypotheses. He hypothesized that the Solar System is surrounded by a massive cloud consisting of billions of comets, many of them \"long-period\" comets that originate in a cloud far beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto. This cloud is now known as the Oort Cloud. He also realized that these external comets, from beyond Pluto, can \"become trapped into tighter orbits by Jupiter, and become periodic comets, like Halley's comet.\" According to one source, \"Oort was one of the few people to have seen Comet Halley on two separate apparitions. At the age of 10, he was with his father on the shore at Noordwijk, Netherlands, when he first saw the comet. In 1986, 76 years later, he went up in a plane and was able to see the famous comet once more.\"\nIn 1951 Oort and his wife spent several months in Princeton and Pasadena, an interlude that led to a paper by Oort and Lyman Spitzer on the acceleration of interstellar clouds by O-type stars. He went on to study high-velocity clouds. Oort served as director of the Leiden Observatory until 1970. After his retirement, he wrote comprehensive articles on the galactic center and on superclusters and published several papers on the quasar absorption lines, supporting Yakov Zel'dovich's pancake model of the universe. He also continued researching the Milky Way and other galaxies and their distribution until shortly before his death at 92.\nOne of Oort's strengths, according to one source, was his ability to \"translate abstruse mathematical papers into physical terms,\" as exemplified by his translation of the difficult mathematical terms of Lindblad's theory of differential galactic rotation into a physical model. Similarly, he \"derived the existence of the comet cloud on the outskirts of the Solar System from the observations, using the mathematics needed in dynamics, but then deduced the origin of this cloud using general physical arguments and a minimum of mathematics.\"\nPersonal life.\nIn 1927, Oort married Johanna Maria (Mieke) Graadt van Roggen (190"}, "descending_order": ["22385", "413430"], "permutation_1": ["22385", "413430"], "permutation_2": ["413430", "22385"], "permutation_3": ["22385", "413430"]}
{"id": "nq_3726025565157976907", "docs_added": {"538890": "Devil's food cake\nMoist, airy, rich chocolate layer cake\nDevil's food cake is a moist, rich chocolate layer cake. \nBecause of differing recipes and changing ingredient availability over the 20th century, it is difficult to precisely qualify what distinguishes devil's food from the more standard chocolate cake. However, it traditionally has more chocolate than a regular chocolate cake, making it darker in color and with a heavier texture. \nDevil's food cake was invented in the United States in the early 20th century.\nIngredients.\nDevil's food cake traditionally uses unsweetened chocolate baking squares in lieu of unsweetened cocoa powder. However, contemporary recipes typically use cocoa powder for its convenience over the more traditional chocolate baking squares. Also, because of its reduced amount of cocoa butter, cocoa powder has a more intense chocolate flavor than unsweetened chocolate. Moreover, coffee is frequently added as a liquid to enhance the chocolate flavor. Some recipes use hot or boiling water as the cake's main liquid, rather than milk. Its antithetical counterpart, the angel food cake, is a very light white cake that uses stiffly beaten egg whites and no dairy.\nDevil's food cake is sometimes distinguished from other chocolate cakes by the use of additional baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), which raises the pH level and makes the cake a deeper and darker mahogany color. Devil's food cake incorporates butter (or a substitute), flour, and less egg than other chocolate cakes.\nPresentation.\nThe cake is often paired with a rich chocolate frosting. \nHistory.\nRecipes for devil's food cakes appeared in two cookbooks published in 1902. Chocolate cake had become popular in the late 19th century, eventually leading toward development of devil's food cake.\nThe name probably had several sources of inspiration, including the culinary term \"deviled\" to describe flavorful foods like deviled eggs and the contrast of this dark, dense, flavorful cake with the light and airy angel food cake. The name has inspired humorous comments; one of the first printed recipes declares it to be \"Fit for Angels\", and another early recipe recommends topping it with divinity frosting.\nThe first commercial cake mix for devil's food cake was marketed by P. Duff and Sons, Inc. of Pennsylvania in the 1930s.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "575594": "Milk chocolate\nSolid chocolate containing added milk\nMilk chocolate is a form of solid chocolate containing cocoa, sugar and milk. It is the most consumed type of chocolate, and is used in a wide diversity of bars, tablets and other confectionery products. Milk chocolate contains smaller amounts of cocoa solids than dark chocolates do, and (as with white chocolate) contains milk solids. While its taste (akin to chocolate milk) has been key to its popularity, milk chocolate was historically promoted as a healthy food, particularly for children.\nMajor milk chocolate producers include Ferrero, Hershey, Mondelez, Mars and Nestl\u00e9; collectively these supply over half of the world's chocolate. Four-fifths of all milk chocolate is sold in the United States and Europe, and increasing amounts are consumed in both China and Latin America.\nChocolate was originally sold and consumed as a beverage in pre-Columbian times, and upon its introduction to Western Europe. The word \"chocolate\" arrived in the English language about 1600, but initially described dark chocolate. The first use of the term \"milk chocolate\" was for a beverage brought to London from Jamaica in 1687, but it was not until the Swiss inventor Daniel Peter successfully combined cocoa and condensed milk in 1875 that the milk chocolate bar was invented. Switzerland developed as the centre of milk chocolate production, particularly after the development of the conche by Rodolphe Lindt, and was increasingly exporting to an international market. Milk chocolate became mainstream at the beginning of the twentieth century following the launch of Milka, Cadbury Dairy Milk and the Hershey bar, inducing a dramatic increase in world cocoa consumption.\nTo provide ethical assurances on cocoa harvesting for consumers, Fair Trade and UTZ Certified chocolate was established in the 21st century.\nHistory.\nThe word \"chocolate\" was first used in English in 1604. The first instance of \"milk chocolate\" appeared soon after, referring to a drink of chocolate combined with milk. In 1687, Hans Sloane, an Irish physician and collector, introduced the beverage to London after seeing the people of Jamaica enjoying the drink. The preparation was promoted for its medicinal properties, and was manufactured by Nicholas Sanders and William White, and was joined by other milk chocolates around the city. From there, milk chocolate spread, first to France, where the pharmacist to Louis XVI, Sulpice Debauve, introduced the drink to the Court, and then further afield, reaching as far as the United States by 1834. \nEarly attempts to make eating milk chocolate were foiled by the substantial water content of milk which did not willingly mix with cocoa butter (a fat); efforts at combining the two produced chocolates that were an \"oily and milky mess\". In Dresden in the German Confederation, Jordan & Timaeus were developing a mechanism to produce hard chocolate using steam power. On 23 May 1839, they advertised a solid chocolate containing fresh milk, calling it \"steam chocolate\" (). However, that version of milk chocolate did not become successful and when major companies like Fry's of Bristol and Lindt of Z\u00fcrich started producing eating chocolate in the 1840s, they only made dark chocolate.\nIn 1875, the Swiss entrepreneur and chocolatier Daniel Peter, based in Vevey and related to the Cailler family, first successfully combined cocoa mass, cocoa butter, and sugar with condensed milk (recently created by his neighbour and friend Henri Nestl\u00e9) to produce solidified milk chocolate. However, this was not meant to be eaten, but it was meant to be used for chocolate milk drinks; milk chocolate as we know it today was only created a decade later. In 1887, the first eating milk chocolate brand, Gala Peter, was finally launched. Daniel Peter called his product 'Gala' after the Greek word meaning 'milk'. Milk chocolate also benefited from another recent Swiss invention, Rodolphe Lindt's conche, which allowed the creation of a smoother chocolate.\nNot only did milk soften the bitterness of chocolate and refined its taste, but it also lowered its production cost due to a lower cocoa content. As a consequence, Peter's recipe leaked to other nearby manufacturers: Cailler and Kohler. In 1898, Cailler opened its new factory at Broc, where milk chocolate began to be produced on a large scale. Peter also opened a larger factory at Orbe in 1901, before merging with Kohler. The same year, Suchard of Neuch\u00e2tel launched the Milka brand; Carl Russ-Suchard had previously developed a first milk bar in 1896. The Swiss chocolate industry also expanded in the late nineteenth century with the establishment of new companies, such as Frey and Tobler. From these developments, Switzerland soon dominated the chocolate market. Production increased dramatically, and by 1905, the country was producing of chocolate, a vast proportion of it exported.\nMeanwhile, there were other developments outside Switzerland. Swiss dominance was challenged in 1905 by a product from England, Cadbury Dairy Milk. Although there had been other milk chocolates produced outside Switzerland before \u2013 Cadbury themselves had produced one in 1897 \u2013 they suffered from low sales. In contrast, Dairy Milk quickly rose in prominence and, by the 1920s, was the bestselling chocolate in the UK. Simultaneously, in 1900, Milton Hershey had introduced the first Hershey bar, which revolutionised the popularity of milk chocolate in the United States. Although initially only available in Pennsylvania, by 1906 it was sold across the country. Popularity blossomed, particularly following World War I, when the United States Army issued chocolate bars to troops, for many their first taste of milk chocolate. By 1911, Peter's milk chocolate recipe represented half of the world's chocolate consumption. Milk chocolate became the standard of what the public thought chocolate should be.\nAs a result of the increasing popularity of chocolate, especially among the working and middle-class, cocoa consumption began to grow extraordinarily; global demand grew 800 percent between 1880 and 1900. To meet these demands, cocoa production expanded, notably in West Africa, where the Forastero variety began to be mass cultivated in the early twentieth century. Although considered inferior to the Criollo variety, the Forastero type bean is more suited for the manufacture of milk chocolate and is cheaper to produce owing to its higher yields. Countries in West Africa eventually dominated world production of cocoa. Conversely, milk became the critical ingredient. Contrary to cocoa and sugar, milk spoils quickly, therefore it cannot be stored for long periods of time. This favored the implantation of large factories (as well as new populations of workers) in the countryside, where abundant fresh milk supplies are readily available. The Cailler factory of Broc and the Hershey factory of Derry Township are typical examples. The popularity of milk chocolate and the wide availability of milk also favoured the creation in the 1930s of a new variety of chocolate containing even more milk: white chocolate.\nOver the decades, milk chocolate manufacture spread worldwide and new brands appeared. In 1910, Arthur and George Ensor created the first milk chocolate in Canada, using milk from Jersey cows. At the same time, Belgian chocolate production also expanded rapidly. From small beginnings in the 1870s, by the 1920s, there were ninety chocolate manufacturers around Brussels alone. In 1926, Meiji brought out their bar, the first example to be made in Japan. Milk chocolate swiftly dominated chocolate sales in most markets. It even found a place during World War II, when US troops carried D Ration chocolate, nicknamed Logan Bars after Quartermaster Paul Logan, as an emergency supply. At the same time, new ways of presenting chocolate appeared, from different shapes, like Cadbury Buttons, to the profusion of boxed varieties that became a feature of Belgian chocolate.\nAt the same time, the number of independent manufacturers declined sharply. The first consolidations in the industry were in Switzerland, where the takeover of Lindt by Spr\u00fcngli took place in 1899, and Nestl\u00e9 had already emerged as the largest manufacture in the country by 1929. However, pace quickened in the latter half of the century. During the last three decades of the twentieth century, there were over 200 takeovers in the industry. By 2001, over half the global chocolate market was held by 17 companies. By 2013, the top four manufacturers, Mondelez, Mars, Nestl\u00e9 and Ferrero, comprised 49 percent of the sales.\nIn 2018, the global market for milk chocolate was worth $63.2\u00a0billion, and is expected to approach $73\u00a0billion by 2024. Consumption is dominated by the United States and Europe, which between them consumed over 80 percent of global production. However, the new century saw expansion in different markets. For example, between 2000 and 2013, the areas that saw the highest growth included the Middle East and Africa (where retail value rose 239 percent), Latin America (up 228 percent). Even in China and Japan, which traditionally are places of very low milk consumption, milk chocolate sales increased at the start of the twenty-first century. Between 1999 and 2003, Chinese chocolate imports rose from $17.7\u00a0million to $50\u00a0million. By 2007, over 38 percent of chocolate sales in China were milk chocolate. By 2018, the value of sales by Japanese chocolatier Meiji was approaching that of the top producers in Europe, and the total sales by the group had surpassed the total for all confectionery sales by Hershey, putting the American company outside a top five ranking.\nAlthough dark chocolate regained some popularity in the late twentieth century, milk chocolate remains the most preferred and consumed type of chocolate. Some chocolate consumers, who perceive it as saccharine and lacking in chocolate flavor, hold it in poor regard; chocolate maker John Scharffenberger for instance characterized the cocoa content as only being \"food coloring\". \nNutrition.\nMilk chocolate is 51% carbohydrates, 38% fat, 8% protein, and 2% water (table). In a reference amount of , milk chocolate supplies 565 calories of food energy, and is a rich source (20% or more of the Daily Value, DV) of vitamin B12 (31% DV), riboflavin (25% DV), and dietary minerals, such as phosphorus (30% DV) (table). Milk chocolate has moderate content (10\u201319% DV) of thiamine and several minerals.\nManufacturing and marketing.\nWhile all milk chocolate contains cocoa, milk and sugar, the proportion of these ingredients varies between countries and brands, which in turn affects its taste. For example, Belgian chocolate is known for its mild milky flavor, while some Russian brands have a strong cocoa taste. Cost is the main reason for the introduction of cocoa butter replacements like coconut and palm oil. However, there are also regulatory reasons. In 1973, for example, the European Union decreed that chocolate must have a minimum of 35 percent dry cocoa solids. China has also introduced legislation to require locally produced milk chocolate to contain 25 percent cocoa butter.\nMilk chocolate has been presented as a health food since Cadbury first advertised Sloane's Milk Chocolate for its medicinal properties in the nineteenth century. In the 1920s, the Baby Ruth bar was touted as a health food for children by Allan Roy Dafoe. Advertisements pronounced that chocolate bars combined both a source of essential energy and the \"perfectly balanced food\" of milk.\nCocoa butter was claimed to reduce tooth decay. Chocolate was claimed to produce calming effects, reducing stress, and producing a similar feeling to falling in love.\nProcessing.\nMilk chocolate is manufactured from cocoa, milk and sugar. It is the manufacturing process, rather than the raw ingredients, which is most responsible for each brand's flavor. \nThe ingredient which defines the product as chocolate, cocoa bean, is mainly grown in Southeast Asia, South America, and West Africa, particularly the Ivory Coast, which supplies 40 percent of the total global cocoa market. Once the cocoa pods are harvested, the seeds, known as \"beans\", are removed and fermented, then dried. They are then taken to a processing plant where they are cleaned and roasted. The beans are then ground, usually in a two-stage process, first with an impact mill to liquify the cocoa, and then a ball mill. Milk chocolate usually contains a much larger proportion of cocoa butter than the one that is naturally present in cocoa liquor; unlike dark chocolate, a large part of non-fat cocoa solids is going to be replaced by milk solids. Therefore, cocoa butter has to be produced in parallel by separating cocoa liquor into cocoa butter and cocoa powder. Milk chocolate has a minimum cacao content of 10% in the US, and has been produced with as much as 70% cacao.\nAt this stage, the two other key ingredients come into the process: milk and sugar. Milk ingredients are complex and critical in delivering the properties and taste to milk chocolate. Milk-origin (terroir) and associated farming have become an important marketing topic. Milk substitutes like rice milk are also used to create lactose-free milk-like chocolate. Milk is often added in powdered form, particularly in German, French, and Belgian milk chocolate, as excess water would damage the flowing properties of the liquid chocolate. Spray dried full-fat milk powder is normally used, but alternatives include anhydrous full fat or skimmed milk powders, and the choice affects the overall flavor. Condensed milk is preferred by some manufacturers, particularly where milk production is seasonal. In most of Europe, milk chocolate must contain at least 3.5% milkfat. \nSugar, the last major ingredient, is added at the same time as the milk powder, either in a roll refiner or conche. Sugar is an international commodity, with production of sugar cane led by Brazil, India, Thailand, China and Australia. Sugar beet is also used. Sometimes the milk and sugar are mixed separately before being added to the liquid cocoa mass and cocoa butter. About 45 to 50% of most milk chocolate is sugar, by weight. \nThe liquid chocolate is then poured into moulds and formed into bars or any other shape.\nChocolate crumb.\nThis is the original method developed by Daniel Peter to make milk chocolate. It consists of mixing cocoa liquor with sweetened condensed milk and drying it into a hard, dry, brittle powder resembling bread crumbs. The powder is then refined with the additional cocoa butter.\nBritish milk chocolate derives its characteristic, slightly cooked flavor by using a dehydrated blend of milk, sugar, and cocoa called chocolate crumb. Originally developed because milk production was high during the summer but chocolate demand was highest during the Christmas shopping season, the cocoa and sugar preserve the milk fats better than full-cream milk powder. The process of making chocolate crumb usually produces a Maillard reaction, resulting in a subtle \"cooked\", caramel flavor.\nThe Hershey process.\nThe actual Hershey process is a trade secret, but experts speculate that the milk is partially lipolyzed, producing butyric acid, and then the milk is pasteurized, stabilizing it for use. The resulting milk chocolate has been described by experts as \"tangy\", \"sour\", and \"acidified\".\nNational preferences.\nMilk chocolate developed in different places, using different processes and locally available technology, and the end result is that milk chocolate produced in different countries has different characteristic flavor profiles. For example, British milk chocolate tastes slightly cooked or baked, American milk chocolate tastes more acidic, Swiss milk chocolate has a fresh milk flavor, and Belgian milk chocolate has more cocoa flavor and less milk flavor than the Swiss milk chocolate. This is primarily due to the different approaches to preparing and incorporating milk into the chocolate. \nNo matter what the flavor is, consumers prefer the style that they are accustomed to and dislike less familiar flavors. Multinational chocolate producers adapt their products to the style preferred locally. When that hasn't been done, the product generally sells poorly. For example, the Hershey process gives that brand's milk chocolate a particular taste, which is common and expected in the US, so some rival manufacturers now add butyric acid to their milk chocolates. Cadbury's attempted to introduce their Cadbury Dairy Milk recipe, using the chocolate crumb process, to the former East Germany, which was accustomed to the flavor profile of milk chocolate made from powdered milk, and to the US, which was accustomed to the flavor profile of milk chocolate made through the Hershey's process, and in both cases the unfamiliar flavor proved less popular than they expected. \nMilk chocolate combination bars.\nAt the beginning of the twentieth century, bars which combined milk chocolate with other sweet ingredients appeared on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1904, Cailler launched its Branche, a praline-filled and branch-looking bar. Other Swiss chocolatiers, Theodor Tobler and Emil Baumann, invented Toblerone in 1908 which contained almonds, honey and nougat. In the United States, the Goo Goo Cluster was first introduced in 1912 which added caramel, marshmallow and peanuts to the list of ingredients. These were soon followed, in 1914, by Fry's Turkish Delight in the UK. Shortly afterwards, Clark introduced the Clark Bar, which has been called the first combination bar, in 1917. In 1920, Otto Schnering of the Curtiss Candy Company created the Baby Ruth bar. By 1925, it was the most popular bar in the US. Soon afterwards, two other brands that would become global giants followed, the Mars Bar in 1932 and, three years later, Rowntree's introduced the Kit Kat. By 2014, 650 Kit Kat bars were being consumed each second. Combination bars came to dominate the confectionery market with sales surpassing $140\u00a0billion in 2018. As of 2023, milk chocolate was most commonly paired globally with caramel flavours and almonds.\nEthical issues.\nEthical issues have been intrinsically linked to chocolate in general since the early days. Many of the early chocolatiers, including Cadbury, Fry's, Rowntree's and Terry's, were founded by Quakers who saw the wellbeing of their workers part of their business ethic. The companies were pioneers in social welfare, providing a safe working environment, high quality housing and other benefits to employees that were ahead of many of the industrial norms. Cadbury, for example, provided paid holidays, insurance and night schools for workers, as well as constructing Bournville in Birmingham, UK. However, the working conditions of many in the wider chocolate supply chain remained poor. Slavery, and later bonded labour, was often employed on the plantations that provided the sugar used to make chocolate. Even after the abolition of slavery, the working conditions in many plantations was still poor, with child labour being frequent and unreported. In 1975, the first in a series of International Cocoa Agreements tried to set what were termed \"fair labour conditions\" and eliminate child labour.\nRising consumer awareness, as well as greater corporate and employee interest, led to increasing voluntary action to address human rights issues. Fundamental to this has been the rise of Fair Trade and UTZ Certified chocolate. Initially launched by Stichting Max Havelaar in the Netherlands in 1988, the Fair Trade movement expanded into the mainstream in the following decades, with cocoa second to coffee in terms of sales and volume by 2011. Much of this is driven by the use of Fair Trade ingredients by major brands. For example, in Germany, major supermarket Lidl commenced promoting their own brand milk chocolate with their own Fair Trade label in 2006. Similarly, in the UK, two of the best selling milk chocolate bars, Cadburys Dairy Milk and Nestl\u00e9's Kit Kat were marketed with a Fair Trade label starting in 2009 and 2010 respectively.\nReferences.\nBibliography.\nBooks.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nArticles.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "7089": "Chocolate\nFood produced from cacao seeds\nChocolate is a food made from roasted and ground cocoa beans that can be a liquid, solid, or paste, either on its own or as a flavoring in other foods. The cacao tree has been used as a source of food for at least 5,300 years, starting with the Mayo-Chinchipe culture in what is present-day Ecuador. Later, Mesoamerican civilizations consumed cacao beverages, of which one, chocolate, was introduced to Europe in the 16th century.\nThe seeds of the cacao tree (\"Theobroma cacao\") have an intense bitter taste and must be fermented to develop the flavor. After fermentation, the seeds are dried, cleaned, and roasted. The shell is removed to produce nibs, which are then ground to cocoa mass, unadulterated chocolate in rough form. Once the cocoa mass is liquefied by heating, it is called chocolate liquor. The liquor may also be cooled and processed into its two components: cocoa solids and cocoa butter. Baking chocolate, also called bitter chocolate, contains cocoa solids and cocoa butter in varying proportions without any added sugar. Powdered baking cocoa, which contains more fiber than cocoa butter, can be processed with alkali to produce Dutch cocoa. Much of the chocolate consumed today is in the form of sweet chocolate, a combination of cocoa solids, cocoa butter, and added vegetable oils and sugar. Milk chocolate is sweet chocolate that additionally contains milk powder. White chocolate contains cocoa butter, sugar, and milk, but no cocoa solids.\nChocolate is one of the most popular food types and flavors in the world, and many foodstuffs involving chocolate exist, particularly desserts, including cakes, pudding, mousse, brownies, and chocolate chip cookies. Many candies are filled with or coated with sweetened chocolate. Chocolate bars, either made of solid chocolate or other ingredients coated in chocolate, are eaten as snacks. Gifts of chocolate molded into different shapes (such as eggs, hearts, and coins) are traditional on certain Western holidays, including Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day, and Hanukkah. Chocolate is also used in cold and hot beverages, such as chocolate milk and hot chocolate, and in some alcoholic drinks, such as cr\u00e8me de cacao.\nAlthough cocoa originated in the Americas, West African countries, particularly Ivory Coast and Ghana, are the leading producers of cocoa in the 21st century, accounting for some 60% of the world cocoa supply. A 2020 report estimated that more than 1.5 million children are involved in the farming of cocoa in Ivory Coast and Ghana. Child slavery and trafficking associated with the cocoa trade remain major concerns. A 2018 report argued that international attempts to improve conditions for children were doomed to failure because of persistent poverty, the absence of schools, increasing world cocoa demand, more intensive farming of cocoa, and continued exploitation of child labor.\nEtymology.\nCocoa is a variant of cacao, likely arising from a confusion with the word coco. Through cacao, it is ultimately derived from \"kakaw(a)\", but whether that word originates in Nahuatl or a Mixe-Zoquean language is the subject of substantial linguistic debate. Chocolate is a Spanish loanword, first recorded in English in 1604, and first recorded in Spanish in 1579. The word for chocolate drink in early Nahuatl texts is \"cacahuatl\" meaning \"cacao water\", which chocolate does not immediately derive from.\nDespite theories that chocolate is derived from \"xocoatl\" meaning \"bitter drink\" or \"chocolatl\" meaning \"hot water\" and uncertainty around the Nahuatl origin, there is a consensus that it likely derives from \"chicolatl\". Whether \"chicolatl\" means \"cacao beater\", however, is contested, due to difficulty knowing what chico means.\nThe term \"chocolatier\", for a chocolate confection maker, is recorded from 1859.\nHistory.\nEvidence for the domestication of the cacao tree exists as early as 5300 BP in South America, in present-day southeast Ecuador by the Mayo-Chinchipe culture, before it was introduced to Mesoamerica. It is unknown when chocolate was first consumed as opposed to other cacao-based drinks, and there is evidence the Olmecs, the earliest known major Mesoamerican civilization, fermented the sweet pulp surrounding the cacao beans into an alcoholic beverage. Chocolate was extremely important to several Mesoamerican societies, and cacao was considered a gift from the gods by the Mayans and the Aztecs. The cocoa bean was used as a currency across civilizations and was used in ceremonies, as a tribute to leaders and gods and as a medicine. Chocolate in Mesoamerica was a bitter drink, flavored with additives such as vanilla, earflower and chili, and was capped with a dark brown foam created by pouring the liquid from a height between containers.\nWhile Spanish conquistador Hern\u00e1n Cort\u00e9s may have been the first European to encounter chocolate when he observed it in the court of Moctezuma II in 1520, it proved to be an acquired taste, and it took until 1585 for the first official recording of a shipment of cocoa beans to Europe. Chocolate was believed to be an aphrodisiac and medicine, and spread across Europe in the 17th century, sweetened, served warm and flavored with familiar spices. It was initially primarily consumed by the elite, with expensive cocoa supplied by colonial plantations in the Americas. In the 18th century, it was considered southern European, aristocratic and Catholic and was still produced in a similar way to the way it had been produced by the Aztecs.Starting in the 18th century, chocolate production was improved. In the 19th century, engine-powered milling was developed, and in 1828, Coenraad Johannes van Houten received a patent for a process making Dutch cocoa. This removed cocoa butter from chocolate liquor (the product of milling), and permitted large scale production of chocolate. Other developments in the 19th century, including the \"melanger\" (a mixing machine), modern milk chocolate, the conching process to make chocolate smoother and change the flavor meant a worker in 1890 could produce fifty times more chocolate with the same labor than they could before the Industrial Revolution, and chocolate became a food to be eaten rather than drunk. As production moved from the Americas to Asia and Africa, mass markets in Western nations for chocolate opened up.\nIn the early 20th century, British chocolate producers including Cadbury and Fry's faced controversy over the labor conditions in the Portuguese cacao industry in Africa. A 1908 report by a Cadbury agent described conditions as \"de facto slavery.\" While conditions somewhat improved with a boycott by chocolate makers, slave labor among African cacao growers again gained public attention in the early 21st century. During the 20th century, chocolate production further developed, with development of the tempering technique to improve the snap and gloss of chocolate and the addition of lecithin to improve texture and consistency. White and couverture chocolate were developed in the 20th century and the bean-to-bar trade model began.\nTypes.\nSeveral types of chocolate can be distinguished. Pure, unsweetened chocolate, often called \"baking chocolate\", contains primarily cocoa solids and cocoa butter in varying proportions. Much of the chocolate consumed today is in the form of sweet chocolate, which combines chocolate with sugar.\nEating chocolate.\nThe traditional types of chocolate are dark, milk and white. All of them contain cocoa butter, which is the ingredient defining the physical properties of chocolate (consistency and melting temperature). Plain (or dark) chocolate, as it name suggests, is a form of chocolate that is similar to pure cocoa liquor, although is usually made with a slightly higher proportion of cocoa butter. It is simply defined by its cocoa percentage. In milk chocolate, the non-fat cocoa solids are partly or mostly replaced by milk solids. In white chocolate, they are all replaced by milk solids, hence its ivory color.\nOther forms of eating chocolate exist, these include raw chocolate (made with unroasted beans) and ruby chocolate. An additional popular form of eating chocolate, gianduja, is made by incorporating nut paste (typically hazelnut) to the chocolate paste.\nOther types.\nOther types of chocolate are used in baking and confectionery. These include baking chocolate (often unsweetened), couverture chocolate (used for coating), compound chocolate (a lower-cost alternative) and modeling chocolate. Modeling chocolate is a chocolate paste made by melting chocolate and combining it with corn syrup, glucose syrup, or golden syrup.\nCacao.\nChocolate is made from cocoa beans, the dried and fermented seeds of the cacao tree (\"Theobroma cacao\"), a small, 4\u20138 m tall (15\u201326\u00a0ft tall) evergreen tree native to the deep tropical region of the Americas.\nRecent genetic studies suggest the most common genotype of the plant originated in the Amazon basin and was gradually transported by humans throughout South and Central America. Early forms of another genotype have also been found in what is now Venezuela. The scientific name, \"Theobroma\", means \"food of the gods\". The fruit, called a cocoa pod, is ovoid, long and wide, ripening yellow to orange, and weighing about when ripe.\nCacao trees are small, understory trees that need rich, well-drained soils. They naturally grow within 20\u00b0 of either side of the equator because they need about 2000\u00a0mm of rainfall a year, and temperatures in the range of . Cacao trees cannot tolerate a temperature lower than .\nGenome.\nThe sequencing in 2010 of the genome of the cacao tree may allow yields to be improved. Due to concerns about global warming effects on lowland climate in the narrow band of latitudes where cocoa is grown (20 degrees north and south of the equator), the commercial company Mars, Incorporated and the University of California, Berkeley, are conducting genomic research in 2017\u201318 to improve the survivability of cacao plants in hot climates.\nVarieties.\nThe three main varieties of cocoa beans used in chocolate are criollo, forastero, and trinitario.\nProcessing.\nCocoa pods are harvested by cutting them from the tree using a machete, or by knocking them off the tree using a stick. It is important to harvest the pods when they are fully ripe, because if the pod is unripe, the beans will have a low cocoa butter content, or low sugar content, reducing the ultimate flavor.\nFermentation.\nThe beans (which are sterile within their pods) and their surrounding pulp are removed from the pods and placed in piles or bins to ferment. Micro-organisms, present naturally in the environment, ferment the pectin-containing material. Yeasts produce ethanol, lactic acid bacteria produce lactic acid, and acetic acid bacteria produce acetic acid. In some cocoa-producing regions an association between filamentous fungi and bacteria (called \"cocobiota\") acts to produce metabolites beneficial to human health when consumed. The fermentation process, which takes up to seven days, also produces several flavor precursors, that eventually provide the chocolate taste.\nAfter fermentation, the beans must be dried to prevent mold growth. Climate and weather permitting, this is done by spreading the beans out in the sun from five to seven days. In some growing regions (for example, Tobago), the dried beans are then polished for sale by \"dancing the cocoa\": spreading the beans onto a floor, adding oil or water, and shuffling the beans against each other using bare feet.\nIn an alternative process known as moist incubation, the beans are dried without fermentation. The nibs are then removed and hydrated in an acidic solution. They are heated for 72 hours and dried again. Gas chromatography/mass spectrometry showed that the incubated chocolate had higher levels of Strecker aldehydes, and lower levels of pyrazines.\nGrinding and blending.\nThe dried beans are then transported to a chocolate manufacturing facility. The beans are cleaned (removing twigs, stones, and other debris), roasted, and graded. Next, the shell of each bean is removed to extract the nib. The nibs are ground and liquefied, resulting in pure chocolate liquor. The liquor can be further processed into cocoa solids and cocoa butter.\nProducers of high-quality, small-batch chocolate argue that mass production produces bad-quality chocolate. Some mass-produced chocolate contains much less cocoa (as low as 7% in many cases), and fats other than cocoa butter. Vegetable oils and artificial vanilla flavor are often used in cheaper chocolate to mask poorly fermented and/or roasted beans.\nConching and refining.\nThe penultimate process is called conching. A conche is a container filled with metal beads, which act as grinders. The refined and blended chocolate mass is kept in a liquid state by frictional heat. Chocolate before conching has an uneven and gritty texture. The conching process produces cocoa and sugar particles smaller than the tongue can detect (typically around 20 \u03bcm) and reduces rough edges, hence the smooth feel in the mouth. The length of the conching process determines the final smoothness and quality of the chocolate. High-quality chocolate is conched for about 72\u00a0hours, and lesser grades about four to six hours. After the process is complete, the chocolate mass is stored in tanks heated to about until final processing.\nTempering.\nAfter conching, chocolate is tempered. This process aims to create a crystallize a small amount of fat in a particularly stable formation. Around this small amount of crystals, the rest of the fats crystallize, creating a glossy chocolate, with a crisp break. \nShaping.\nChocolate is molded in different shapes for different uses:\nStorage.\nChocolate is very sensitive to temperature and humidity. Ideal storage temperatures are between , with a relative humidity of less than 50%. If refrigerated or frozen without containment, chocolate can absorb enough moisture to cause a whitish discoloration, the result of fat or sugar crystals rising to the surface. Various types of \"blooming\" effects can occur if chocolate is stored or served improperly.\nChocolate bloom is caused by storage temperature fluctuating or exceeding , while sugar bloom is caused by temperature below or excess humidity. To distinguish between different types of bloom, one can rub the surface of the chocolate lightly, and if the bloom disappears, it is fat bloom. Moving chocolate between temperature extremes, can result in an oily texture. Although visually unappealing, chocolate suffering from bloom is safe for consumption and taste is unaffected. Bloom can be reversed by retempering the chocolate or using it for any use that requires melting the chocolate.\nChocolate is generally stored away from other foods, as it can absorb different aromas. Ideally, chocolates are packed or wrapped, and placed in proper storage with the correct humidity and temperature. Additionally, chocolate is frequently stored in a dark place or protected from light by wrapping paper. The glossy shine, snap, aroma, texture, and taste of the chocolate can show the quality and whether it was stored well.\nHealth effects.\nNutrition.\nOne hundred grams of milk chocolate supplies 540 calories. It is 59% carbohydrates (52% as"}, "descending_order": ["538890", "575594", "7089"], "permutation_1": ["575594", "7089", "538890"], "permutation_2": ["7089", "575594", "538890"], "permutation_3": ["575594", "538890", "7089"]}
{"id": "nq_8192163520121594104", "docs_added": {"82161": "Hermaphroditus\nSon of Aphrodite and Hermes in Greek mythology\nIn Greek mythology, Hermaphroditus (; , ) was a child of Aphrodite and Hermes. According to Ovid, he was born a remarkably beautiful boy whom the naiad Salmacis attempted to rape and prayed to be united with forever. A god, in answer to her prayer, merged their two forms into one and transformed him into a hermaphrodite, he being considered the origin of the name. His name is compounded of his parents' names, Hermes and Aphrodite. He was one of the Erotes.\nBecause Hermaphroditus was a child of Hermes, and consequently a great-grandchild of Atlas (Hermes's mother Maia was the daughter of Atlas), he is sometimes called Atlantiades ().\nSymbolism.\nHermaphroditus, the two-sexed child of Aphrodite and Hermes (Venus and Mercury), had long been a symbol of androgyny or effeminacy, and was portrayed in Greco-Roman art as a female figure with male genitals.\nTheophrastus's account also suggests a link between Hermaphroditus and the institution of marriage. The reference to the fourth day of the month is telling: this is the luckiest day to have a wedding. association with marriage seems to have been that, by embodying both masculine and feminine qualities, he symbolized the coming together of men and women in sacred union. Another factor linking Hermaphroditus to weddings was his parents' role in protecting and blessing brides.\nHermaphroditus's name is derived from those of their parents Hermes and Aphrodite. All three of these gods figure largely among erotic and fertility figures, and all possess distinctly sexual overtones. Sometimes, Hermaphroditus is referred to as Aphroditus.\nMythology.\nOvid's account relates that Hermaphroditus was nursed by naiads in the caves of Mount Ida, a sacred mountain in Phrygia (present day Turkey). At the age of fifteen, he grew bored with his surroundings and traveled to the cities of Lycia and Caria. It was in the woods of Caria, near Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum, Turkey) that he encountered the nymph Salmacis, in her pool. She was overcome by lust for the boy, who was very beautiful but still young, and tried to flirt with him, but was rejected. When he thought she had left, Hermaphroditus undressed and entered the waters of the empty pool. Salmacis sprang out from behind a tree and jumped into the pool. She wrapped herself around the youth, forcibly kissing him and touching his breast, attempting to rape him. While he struggled, she called out to the gods that they should never part. Her wish was granted, and their bodies blended into one form, \"a creature of both sexes\". Hermaphroditus prayed to Hermes and Aphrodite that anyone else who bathed in the pool would be similarly transformed, and his wish was granted.\nHungarian classical philologist K\u00e1roly Ker\u00e9nyi wrote: \"In this form the story was certainly not ancient\". He related it to the Greek myths involving male youths (\"ephebes\"), noting the legends of Narcissus and Hyacinth, who had archaic hero-cults, and also those involving Hymen (Hymenaios).\nDiodorus Siculus, in his work \"Library of History\", mentions that some say that Hermaphroditus is a god and appears at certain times among men, but there are some who declare that such creatures of two sexes are monstrosities, and coming rarely into the world as they do have the quality of presaging the future, sometimes for evil and sometimes for good.\nIn a description found on the remains of a wall in Halicarnassus, Hermaphroditus' mother, Aphrodite, names Salmacis as the nymph who nursed and took care of an infant Hermaphroditus after being placed in her care, a very different version than the one presented by Ovid.\nThe satirical author Lucian of Samosata also implies that Hermaphroditus was born like that, rather than becoming later in life against his will, and blames it on the identity of the child's father, Hermes.\nCult and worship.\nThe oldest traces of the cult in Greek countries are found in Cyprus. Here, according to Macrobius (\"Saturnalia\", iii. 8), there was a bearded statue of a male Aphrodite, called Aphroditus by Aristophanes. Philochorus in his \"Atthis\" (ap. Macrobius \"loc. cit.\") further identified this divinity, at whose sacrifices men and women exchanged garments, with the Moon. A terracotta plaque from the 7th century BC depicting Aphroditos, which was found in Perachora, suggests it was an archaic Greek cult.\nThe deification and the origins of the cult of Hermaphroditus beings stem from Eastern religions, where the hermaphrodite nature expressed the idea of a primitive being that united both sexes. This double sex also attributed to Dionysus and Priapus\u00a0\u2013 the union in one being of the two principles of generation and conception\u00a0\u2013 denotes extensive fertilizing and productive powers.\nThis Cyprian Aphrodite is the same as the later Hermaphroditos, which simply means Aphroditos in the form of a herma, and first occurs in the \"Characters\" (16) of Theophrastus. After its introduction at Athens (probably in the 5th century BC), the importance of this deity seems to have declined. It appears no longer as the object of a special cult, but limited to the homage of certain sects, expressed by superstitious rites of obscure significance.\nWe find in Alciphron that there was at Athens a temple of Hermaphroditus. The passage proposes that he might be considered as the deity who presided over married people; the strict union between husband and wife being aptly represented by a deity, who was male and female inseparably blended together.\nIn \"Greek Anthology\", at the chapter in which describe the statues in the Baths of Zeuxippus, it also mentions and describes a statue of Hermaphroditus.\nLiterature.\nThe earliest mention of Hermaphroditus in Greek literature is by the philosopher Theophrastus (3rd century BC), in his book \"The Characters\", XVI The Superstitious Man, in which he portrays various types of eccentric people.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Also on the fourth and seventh days of each month he will order his servants to mull wine, and go out and buy myrtle-wreaths, frankincense, and smilax; and, on coming in, will spend the day in crowning the Hermaphrodites.\nThe first mention of Hermes and Aphrodite as Hermaphroditus's parents was by the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (1st century BC) in his book \"Bibliotheca historica\", book IV, 4.6.5.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Hermaphroditus, as he has been called, who was born of Hermes and Aphrodite and received a name which is a combination of those of both his parents. Some say that this Hermaphroditus is a god and appears at certain times among men, and that he is born with a physical body which is a combination of that of a man and that of a woman, in that he has a body which is beautiful and delicate like that of a woman, but has the masculine quality and vigour of a man. But there are some who declare that such creatures of two sexes are monstrosities, and coming rarely into the world as they do they have the quality of presaging the future, sometimes for evil and sometimes for good.\nThe only full narration of his myth is that of Ovid's \"Metamorphoses\", IV.274\u2013388 (8 AD), where the emphasis is on the feminine snares of the lascivious water-nymph Salmacis and her compromising of Hermaphroditus' erstwhile budding manly strength, detailing his bashfulness and the engrafting of their bodies.\nA rendering of the story into an \"epyllion\", published anonymously in 1602, was later (1640) attributed by some to Francis Beaumont.\nAusonius, in his \"Epigramata de diversis rebus / Epigrams on various matters\" (4th century), also tells of Hermaphroditus' parentage and union with the nymph Salmacis.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />On Hermaphroditus and his Nature\u2014By Mercury begotten, conceived by Cythera, Hermaphroditus, compound alike in name and frame, combining either sex, complete in neither, neutral in love, unable to enjoy either passion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />On the Union of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus\u2014The nymph Salmacis grew one with the mate she desired. Ah, happy maid, if she is conscious of a man's embrace. And twice happy thou, O youth, united with a lovely bride, if one being may still be two.\nIn the \"Palatine Anthology\", IX.783 (980 AD), there is a reference to a sculpture of Hermaphroditus which was placed in a bath for both sexes. The passage IX.317 is in dialogue form, based on the dialogue between Hermaphroditus and Silenus. The latter claims that he has had sexual intercourse with Hermaphroditus three times. Hermaphroditus complains and objects to the fact by invoking Hermes in an oath, while Silenus invokes Pan for the reliability of his allegations.\nAlgernon Charles Swinburne's poem \"\" in \"Poems and Ballads\" is subscribed \"Au Mus\u00e9e du Louvre, Mars 1863\", leaving no doubt that it was the Borghese Hermaphroditus that had inspired his ode.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "82162": "Salmacis\nNymph in Greek mythology\nSalmacis () was an atypical Naiad nymph of Greek mythology. She rejected the ways of the virginal Greek goddess Artemis in favour of vanity and idleness.\nMythology.\nOvid's version.\nSalmacis' attempted rape of Hermaphroditus is narrated in the fourth book of Ovid's \"Metamorphoses\" (see also Dercetis).\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nOne day, Hermaphroditus went swimming in his pool. Upon seeing him, Salmacis was struck with love for him, approached him and confessed her love to him; but he was not interested, and demanded she leave. She did so, but her passion took her back, unable to stay away from him. As Hermaphroditus emerged from the pool, she threw herself at him, and forcibly kissed him as he tried to escape. Salmacis then cried to the gods and begged them to let them stay together forever; and the gods answered by fusing them together for all time, into a deity that had both male and female parts. She thus becomes one with Hermaphroditus and he curses the fountain to have the same effect on every other person who would bathe there.\nOther versions.\nIn a description found on the remains of a wall in Halicarnassus, Hermaphroditus' mother Aphrodite names Salmacis as the nymph who nursed and took care of an infant Hermaphroditus after his parents put him in her care, a very different version than the one presented by Ovid.\nLucian of Samosata also implies that Hermaphroditus was born like that, rather than becoming later in life against his will, and blames it on the identity of the boy's father Hermes.\nSalmacis fountain.\nSalmacis was the name of a fountain or spring located in modern-day Bodrum, Turkey. According to some classical authors, the water had the reputation of making men effeminate and soft. This legend lies at the heart of Ovid's tale of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus.\nAncient art.\nA fresco in Room 10 of the \"Casa della Venere in Conchiglia\" (House of Venus in the Shell) in Pompeii depicts Eros standing in between Hermaphroditus and Salmacis. The fresco is possibly the earliest (before 79 AD) and the only ancient artwork of the water nymph before her union with Hermaphroditus.\nPost-Classical reception.\nLiterature.\nFrancis Beaumont, a poet and playwright, wrote a poem \"Salmacis and Hermaphroditus\" based on Ovid's work. The poem was published anonymously in London in 1602.\nAlgernon Charles Swinburne's 1863 poem \"Hermaphroditus\", based on the Bernini sculpture of the same name in the Louvre, makes mention of Salmacis in the final stanza.\nA novel of short stories by Italian writer Mario Soldati called \"Salmace\" (Salmacis), a title that spans the entire collection. In the story it tells of the transformation of a man into a woman, in a highly metaphorical context.\nSculpture.\nA sculpture by Fran\u00e7ois-Joseph Bosio, \"La nymphe Salmacis\" from 1826, can be seen on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris.\nA sculpture by Sir Thomas Brock of Salmacis (aka \"The Bather Surprised\") was designed in 1868. It was modelled and exhibited at the Royal Academy, London in 1869. A variety of porcelain replicas were made from 1875 and an example was exhibited at the Paris Exhibition of 1878.\nThe \"Fontana Greca\" (\"Greek Fountain\") is a fountain from the Renaissance period located in Gallipoli, southern Italy. The fountain has bas-reliefs depicting three metamorphoses in Greek mythology. The center bas-relief shows Eros flying beside Aphrodite, while Hermaphroditus and Salmacis are shown below laying together and embracing.\nPainting.\nA painting of Salmacis in 1877 by French artist Charles Landelle was one of the most admired works at the Paris Exhibition according to The Art Journal of 1878. The painting depicts a startled Salmacis seated among reeds, clutching her drapery to her chest in alarm.\nMusic.\nThe British progressive rock band Genesis wrote and performed a song entitled \"Fountain of Salmacis\" on their 1971 album \"Nursery Cryme\". It tells the story of Salmacis' attempted rape of Hermaphroditus. At the end of the song, the lyrics state that Salmacis and Hermaphroditus were \"joined as one\" and forever live beneath the lake from which the fountain appears.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "7318197": "Salmacis (fountain)\nAncient fountain or spring\nSalmacis or Salmakis was the name of a fountain or spring located in modern-day Bodrum, Turkey. According to some classical authors, the water had the reputation of making men effeminate, soft, and 'woman like'. Ovid famously recounts the myth in his story about Hermaphroditus and the nymph of the spring Salmacis.\nHistory.\nSalmacis was a fountain, located near the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. In classical times, it had:\nthe slanderous repute, for what reason I do not know, of making effeminate all who drink from it. It seems that the effeminacy of man is laid to the charge of the air or of the water; yet it is not these, but rather riches and wanton living, that are the cause of effeminacy. \u2014Strabo \"Geography XIV.2.16\"\nThis was illustrated by Hellenic sculptors, who produced several works depicting a person of dual-gender. The power of the spring was rejected by other Romans, such as the architect Vitruvius\nthere is a mistaken idea that this spring infects those who drink of it... it cannot be that the water makes men effeminate. \u2014Vitruvius \"De architectura\" 2.8.12\nIn Book IV of his poem \"Metamorphoses\", Ovid recounts the myth of how the fountain came to be so in the story of the nymph Salmacis (after whom the fountain is, in this account, named), her attempted rape of Hermaphroditus, and his resultant change into an intersex being. Scholars such as K\u00e1roly Ker\u00e9nyi have asserted that Ovid's account was not a classical one and that the story was in fact invented by him.\nThe Salmakis inscription.\nIn 1995, the so-called 'Salmakis Inscription' was discovered by Turkish authorities on the promontory of Kaplan Kalesi, which juts out into the sea to the south-west of Bodrum harbour.\nThe inscription is a poem sixty lines long, partly damaged but mainly well preserved, and was cut into an ancient wall sometime during the Hellenistic period. It is written in elegiac verse and the general theme is one of civilization. The first lines form the poet's invocation of the goddess Aphrodite, early in Aphrodite's story we encounter her son Hermaphroditus and the water nymph Salmacis:\nThe inscription also contains a list of famous authors born in Halikarnassos. First on the list being the Greek historian Herodotos. It is now being housed in the Museum of Underwater Archaeology at Bodrum Castle.\nMusic.\nThe progressive rock band Genesis tells the story in \"The Fountain of Salmacis\", a track from their 1971 album \"Nursery Cryme\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "60710863": "Salmacis (disambiguation)\nSalmacis or Salmakis (), was a naiad in Greek mythology.\nSalmacis or Salmakis may also refer to:\nTopics referred to by the same term\n<templatestyles src=\"Dmbox/styles.css\" />\n This page lists associated with the title .", "79568766": "Salmacis (genus)\nSalmacis is the genus of sea urchins in the family Temnopleuridae. Members of \"Salmacis\" are found primarily in tropical and subtropical marine waters across the Indo-Pacific region, including coastal areas of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, India, Australia, and parts of East Africa. Some habitats include shallow waters of seagrass meadows, sandy substrates, and coral reefs. They can be found at depths ranging from intertidal zones to 50 meters below sea level. \nLike other sea urchins in the class Echinoidea, \"Salmacis\" have an omnivorous diet that comprises of algae and soft-bodied organisms like sea pens and jellyfish. Their bodies are covered with short, thick spines, and pedicellariae to deter predators. They are dioecious with separate male and female sexes. \"Salmacis\" sea urchins reproduce through external fertilization, releasing sperm and eggs into their surrounding environments. Their gonads serve both reproduction and nutrient storage functions. \nSpecies.\nThese are species according to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and World Register of Marine Species. Species like \"Salmacis sphaeroides\" and \"Salmacis bicolor\" are distributed across the Indo-Pacific Ocean, scattered across coastal areas in Southern China, Southern Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Singapore. \"Salmacis virgulata\" was found and recorded in Sri Lanka. \"Salmacis belli\" can be found along the coasts of Northern Australia.", "43739513": "Salmacis bicolor\nSpecies of sea urchin\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Taxobox/core/styles.css\" />\nSalmacis bicolor is a species of sea urchin in the Temnopleuroida family Temnopleuridae found in the western Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. the name derives from Salmacis (Ancient Greek: '\u03a3\u03b1\u03bb\u03bc\u03b1\u03ba\u03af\u03c2'), a nymph of Greek mythology, and latin 'bicolor' (two-coloured).\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "60710886": "Salmacis (Caria)\nTown of ancient Caria\nSalmacis or Salmakis () was a town of ancient Caria. While the famed fountain appears in Strabo, the town is only mentioned in inscriptions. It was a \"polis\" (city-state) and a member of the Delian League.\nIts site is unlocated.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "39767096": "Diabolik Lovers\nJapanese visual novel franchise\n is a Japanese otome game franchise by . Its first entry was released in October 2012 for the PlayStation Portable system. The franchise has released seven games with the first two having been remastered for the PlayStation Vita and released as \"Limited V Editions\". The seventh game was released in March 2019 playable on Nintendo Switch. The franchise has brought forth two 12-episode anime television adaptations by Zexcs, which aired from September to December 2013, and September to December 2015. The first series was followed by an original video animation (OVA), which was included in \"Diabolik Lovers: Dark Fate\" in February 2015. It has been made into various manga, anime, drama CDs, music CDs and fanbooks. Three stage plays also ran in August 2015, August 2016, and January 2018.\nIn February 2020, Rejet announced and launched a new project happening within the same universe as Diabolik Lovers, titled Carnelian Blood (Japanese: \"\u30ab\u30fc\u30cd\u30ea\u30a2\u30f3\u30d6\u30e9\u30c3\u30c9\", Hepburn: \"K\u0101nerian Buraddo\") featuring thea 5-man unit called EROSION.\nGameplay.\nPlayers take on the role as Yui Komori (\u5c0f\u68ee \u30e6\u30a4, \"Komori Yui\", - default name), who can choose from a variety of male characters as her love interest. In \"Diabolik Lovers\", every playable character's route is split into three sections: Dark, Maniac and Ecstasy. Each of these three sections is split into a prologue, ten subsections, and an epilogue. There are three possible endings for each character based on her choices.\nThe games were first brought out on PSP, by the third game they were continued in PS Vita / PS TV format, the first two games were soon also brought out in this format. In 2017 it was announced the first three games would be brought out on PlayStation 4. In 2018, a new game titled \"Diabolik Lovers: Chaos Lineage\" was announced and released in March 2019 on the Nintendo Switch.\nThus far seven games have been released:\nPlot.\nThe main heroine, Yui Komori, is just a normal teenage girl in high school until her father, a priest, travels overseas for work. As a result, Yui is sent to a new town and arrives alone at a mansion which will be her new home. Nobody greets her, however, the door swings open on its own accord. Yui finds a handsome young man sleeping with no heartbeat on a couch. To her shock, he awakens, and five other young men gradually appear. Yui discovers that all six of them are brothers, but by three different mothers, and that they were all vampires from the very beginning.\nAfter living with the Sakamakis for a month, Yui starts to have strange dreams and apparitions regarding a mysterious \"Eve\". One night, on their way to school, the brothers and Yui get involved in an unexplainable fiery car crash. The next day, four vampire brothers come to the house and kidnap her. What will happen with the Sakamakis? Will she come back?\n Protagonist:\n The main character of the game and anime (name is changeable in the games)\n Yui Komori (\u5c0f\u68ee \u30e6\u30a4, \"Komori Yui\")\n Voiced by:\n Rie Suegara (Japanese), \n Maggie Flecknoe (English)\n 17 years old. Second year student at Reitei Academy High School. 158cm tall. Platinum blonde hair, pink eyes. The protagonist of this work. A Christian who aspires to be a nun, she always carries a rosary given to her by her father. Ayato teases her about her small breasts, but he praises her legs and the taste of blood. Since childhood, she has been able to see ghosts and has encountered psychic phenomena such as poltergeists, but she has not paid much attention to them, saying that she is just a little strange. When her father is transferred overseas, she ends up staying with an acquaintance, but is welcomed as a \"sacrificial bride\" by the Sakamaki family, whose siblings are all vampires. In the second anime and some routes in \"MORE, BLOOD\", she is abducted by the Mukami brothers, so she lives with the Mukami family. As a baby, Richter transplanted Cordelia's heart into her, giving her the \"finest blood\" and unconsciously attracting vampires. As the daughter of the Demon King, Cordelia's high magical power means she can be resurrected as long as her heart remains, so in some routes of the game and the TV anime, her soul waits for an opportunity to take over Yui's body. Also, because she has Cordelia's heart, she is qualified to become \"Eve,\" and it is said that the vampire chosen by her can awaken as \"Adam.\" She is cheerful, bright, optimistic, but has a strong personality. In the first series, she was often swayed by the other person or the atmosphere of the situation, but in \"MORE, BLOOD,\" there are more scenes where she expresses her own will. Her father, Seiji Komori, a vampire hunter, is not her biological father but her adoptive father, but Yui herself did not know this fact for a long time.\n The Sakamaki brothers are the sons of Karlheinz, but from three different mothers. The oldest sons, Sh\u016b and Reiji, were conceived by Karlheinz's second wife, Beatrix. The triplets, named Ayato, Kanato, and Laito, were born from Karlheinz's first wife, Cordelia. The youngest, Subaru, came from Karlheinz's third wife, Christa. Even though they are brothers, they don't get along with each other, and they seem rather distant due to the way they were brought up.\nVoiced by: K\u014dsuke Toriumi (Japanese); Ty Mahany (English)\n(Child) Voiced by: Kahoru Sasajima (Japanese); Krystal LaPorte (English)\n Shu is the eldest son of the Sakamaki family, the current master of the mansion, and the first son of Beatrix. Sh\u016b grew up being given too much-unwanted attention from his mother. Due to Cordelia's hostilities towards Beatrix to be Karlheinz's best wife, she put all the pressures on the young Shu. He is one of the brothers who seem to have any prior knowledge of Yui's arrival, mentioning \"that person\" had contacted him asking to have her stay with them as a guest. According to the students of the school, Sh\u016b is the owner of the music room and can always be found sleeping there. Shu needs to use a lot of persuasion in order to get him awake and do something for himself. Sh\u016b loves music despite being apathetic and lazy. His only friend was a human boy named Edgar, who died in a fire, set on his village by Reiji. Shu was unable to save him, so he thought that his life was limited from humans. Despite Sh\u016b being the eldest, he's never responsible for looking after his brothers and the house. Instead, he mostly pushes these duties onto Reiji.\nVoiced by: Katsuyuki Konishi (Japanese); David Wald (English)\n(Child) Voiced by: Yuka Nishigaki (Japanese); Nancy Novotny (English)\n Reiji is the second son of the Sakamaki family and the second son of Beatrix. He is very formal and is generally the most composed aside from Sh\u016b. Although Sh\u016b is his only full-blood brother, he despises him for being the supposed favorite of their mother. It was also due to Beatrix neglecting him throughout his childhood because of Cordelia's hostilities. He eventually took his anger out by setting fire to Edgar's village when Shu refused to listen to their mother. When it seemed that Edgar's death wasn't enough to impress his mother and made Sh\u016b withdrawn, Reiji took out his anger again by hiring a vampire hunter to assassinate Beatrix. He later regretted this when she died at peace, happy to be freed from Cordelia's harassment and to be able to witness her son's mark of adulthood. He values rules and demands that others follow them, even though many of his decrees are odd and self-made. Reiji chooses to be the role model of the house even though he is the second son. Although Reiji has a very polite attitude and almost always acts like a gentleman, he is a man of very harsh words. Along with his passion for experimenting and making drugged potions, he loves to collect kitchenware.\nVoiced by: Hikaru Midorikawa (Japanese); Chris Patton (English)\n(Child) Voiced by: Hiroko Ushida (Japanese); Shannon Emerick (English)\n Ayato is the third son of the Sakamaki family, the eldest triplet, and the first son of Cordelia. He is the lead male protagonist serving as the storyline's hero. As a child, Ayato was similarly put pressure upon to be the best, just as Sh\u016b was. However, unlike Shu, he never received love from his mother. He was abused by her (both physically and verbally) to the point where she attempted to drown him if he was not the best. Therefore, he grew up always having to be the best; causing him to develop a self-centered, arrogant, and overconfident personality. He refers to himself most of the time as \"Ore-sama\". Due to never receiving any type of love from his mother. He is the first of the Sakamakis to appear at the beginning of the first episode of the anime's first season, as well as the first one to drink Yui's blood. He is also very good at playing basketball, and his favorite food is takoyaki. Prior to the start of the series, Ayato and his triplet brothers killed their mother. He stabbed Cordelia and drank her blood, claiming it to be the best.\nVoiced by: Y\u016bki Kaji (Japanese); Corey Hartzog (English)\n(Child) Voiced by: Kaori Mizuhashi (Japanese); Tiffany Grant (English)\n Kanato is the fourth son of the Sakamaki family, the second oldest of the triplets, and the second son of Cordelia. He is usually referred to as the \"problem triplet\". As a child, he received little attention from his mother. Very often, Cordelia would have sexual encounters with different men right in front of him. Due to being neglected, he often played alone and talked to his dolls, usually to his precious Teddy which he takes with him everywhere. However, there were occasions when his mother would request him to sing for her. She nicknamed him her \"little songbird\", because of his beautiful voice. Kanato tends to cry often and gets violently angry when he doesn't get his demands. He speaks politely, but is extremely sadistic and tends to display violent outbursts. He is also shown to be abusive. Kanato is also obsessed with the dead to the point where he prefers them to the living. Prior to the start of the series, he and his triplet brothers killed their mother. Kanato burned her body and placed her cremated remains in his Teddy.\nVoiced by: Daisuke Hirakawa (Japanese); Blake Shepard (English)\n(Child) Voiced by: Yuko Sasamoto (Japanese); Luci Christian (English)\n Laito is the fifth son of the Sakamaki family, the youngest triplet, and the third son of Cordelia. He was sexually abused by his mother and began seeing her as a lover rather than a parent. When Karlheinz found out about the unusual relationship between them, he locked him in the basement. Later, Cordelia went to see him and told him that she was now having sexual relations with someone else and had only been using Laito for pleasure. The overall shock and the situation ended up with Laito becoming perverted and not having a clear understanding of love. He is always cheerful and loves to joke but is similar to Ayato when teasing Yui. However, his personality suddenly changes when something goes against his wishes, usually when Yui is too defiant around him. However, Laito has a phobia of insects, specifically spiders. Prior to the start of the series, Laito and his triplet brothers killed their mother. He pushed Cordelia off the balcony after pretending to help her fend off Ayato who had stabbed her and drank her blood earlier on. In terms of manipulation and scheming, he is arguably the worst of all the brothers. Intelligent, quick thinking, and skillful in his lies, he is the only brother that actively attempts to drive the MC insane. Highly dangerous, avoid.\nVoiced by: Takashi Kond\u014d (Japanese); Jessie James Grelle (English)\n Subaru is the sixth and youngest son of the Sakamaki family and the only son of Christa. He is usually alone and never cares about whats happening around him, due to how he was brought up. His mother became mentally unstable after he was born, which made his relationship with her very complicated. Christa kept denouncing him as her son (both physically and verbally), and was constantly pressuring him to kill her, which was something he could not bring himself to do. This caused Subaru to see himself as filthy and unwanted, thus resorting to violence to vent out his anger and frustrations. He even goes as far as to break everything when he is extremely angered. However, Subaru manages to compress this side when he is around Yui, though he is still prone to outbursts. He is a delinquent type who loves to damage things, but there is a tsundere and gentle side of him that only Yui can see. He happens to care about Yui when he encouraged her to escape the mansion while she still had the chance. When Yui chose to stay in order to find the answers to her questions, he reluctantly complied with her decision by giving her his silver knife to protect herself. It is also hinted that Subaru is in love with her, though he denies such a possibility.\nVoiced by: Tomoaki Maeno\n Kino is said to be an illegitimate child of Karlheinz. He made his first appearance in the sixth franchise of the series, \"Diabolik Lovers, Lost Eden\". He was abandoned as an infant in a land called \"Rothenberg\" and was raised by a family of ghouls. However, living among the ghouls was not easy for Kino as he was discriminated against, bullied, and shunned. Everything changed for him one day when his vampire powers were awakened, which made Kino convinced that he was the illegitimate son of Karlheinz. Using his powers, he made the ghouls obey him and he decided to kidnap Yui in order to become Adam with her as Eve.\nThe Mukami brothers were new characters who debuted in the second version of the franchise, \"Diabolik Lovers More, Blood\". Unlike the Sakamaki brothers, they are not blood-related to one another. They were originally humans who were later turned into vampires by Karlheinz, who serves as their benefactor. The Mukami brothers made their first anime appearances in the OVA of \"Diabolik Lovers\" and they appeared as new characters in the second season of the anime.\nVoiced by: Takahiro Sakurai (Japanese); Adam Gibbs (English)\n Ruki is the eldest son of the Mukami family and is known as the 'Brains' of the group. When he was still a human, Ruki was the son of an aristocrat. As a child, he was spoiled and arrogant until his family went bankrupt. He became an orphan after his father committed suicide, while his mother ran away with her secret lover. This caused Ruki to distrust people since his mother never came back for him, even when she told him in a letter that she still loves him. Ruki ended up in the orphanage where he was bullied by the other orphans and mistreated by"}, "descending_order": ["82162", "7318197", "60710863", "79568766", "43739513", "60710886", "82161", "39767096"], "permutation_1": ["79568766", "82162", "39767096", "82161", "43739513", "7318197", "60710886", "60710863"], "permutation_2": ["60710863", "82162", "82161", "7318197", "39767096", "79568766", "43739513", "60710886"], "permutation_3": ["7318197", "39767096", "82162", "43739513", "79568766", "82161", "60710886", "60710863"]}
{"id": "nq_998343663695069946", "docs_added": {"2462414": "Don't You (Forget About Me)\n1985 single by Simple Minds\n\"Don't You (Forget About Me)\" is a song by the Scottish rock band Simple Minds, released as a single in 1985. It was written and composed by the record producer Keith Forsey and the guitarist Steve Schiff for the film \"The Breakfast Club\" (1985). Simple Minds initially declined to record it, preferring to record their own material, but accepted after several other acts also declined.\n\"Don't You (Forget About Me)\" became a breakout hit for Simple Minds, an iconic song and a 1980s anthem. The single reached No. 1 in the United States and Canada, becoming Simple Minds' biggest hit in the United States. It also reached No. 7 on the UK Singles Chart and reached the top ten in charts around the world.\nRecording.\n\"Don't You (Forget About Me)\" was written by Steve Schiff and Keith Forsey for the film \"The Breakfast Club\" (1985). Forsey and Schiff were inspired by a scene in which an introvert and a school bully bond while no one else is watching. Forsey said, \"It was: don't forget, when we're back in the classroom, you're not just a bad guy and we've got other things in common.\"\nSimple Minds initially declined to record \"Don't You (Forget About Me)\", as they felt they should only record their own material. Their guitarist, Charlie Burchill, said they felt it did not suit them as \"we had delusions of being ultra-hip\". Their manager, Bruce Findlay, believed it would be successful in the United States. He arranged a private screening of \"The Breakfast Club\" in an effort to change their minds, but they still declined. Their lead vocalist, Jim Kerr, said later: \"We couldn't give a toss about teenage American schoolkids.\"\nForsey offered \"Don't You (Forget About Me)\" to Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music, who declined as he was working on his album \"Boys and Girls\" (1985). Ferry said later: \"It was just bad timing ... Keith Forsey sent me a demo of the song and it sounded like a hit to me.\" The record label, A&M, suggested Corey Hart, who had a hit at the time with \"Sunglasses at Night\", but Forsey did not think he was the right singer. Forsey's frequent collaborator Billy Idol also declined.\nKerr's wife, the songwriter Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, liked the song and urged him to record it. Simple Minds agreed to try it after spending a few days with Forsey and becoming friends. They were impressed by Forsey's work in German experimental music, such as Amon D\u00fc\u00fcl II, and his work with Giorgio Moroder, including \"I Feel Love\" by Donna Summer.\nKerr added the \"hey hey hey\" to the introduction and the \"la la la\" to the ending, intending to write new lyrics, but Forsey insisted on keeping them. Burchill added power chords, and said later: \"It was almost a caricature \u2013 I associated powerchords with American AOR. But it worked.\" The \"Financial Times\" wrote that the chords \"[helped] turn Forsey's sweet paean to teenage longing into a rousing, stadium-sized anthem\".\nSimple Minds did not anticipate the song's success. In 2016, Burchill said: \"When I listen to it now, it\u2019s obviously a brilliant, well-crafted pop song. I\u2019m embarrassed we dissed it so much.\"\nRelease and critical reception.\n\"Don't You (Forget About Me)\" was played during the opening and closing credits of \"The Breakfast Club\" (1985). It was included on the film's soundtrack. \"Don't You (Forget About Me)\" was released as a single in February 1985 in the United States and reached No. 1 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 in May 1985. The song reached No. 1 in Canada in June 1985. It is the band's only number-one hit on the US Top Rock Tracks chart, staying atop that chart for three weeks. The song became Simple Minds' breakout hit, as well as its biggest American hit.\n\"Cashbox\" said that \"though the lyric theme is a simple enough declaration, the lead vocals and vivid orchestration make the tune complex and moving\". The song was included on the band's greatest hits compilation album, \"Glittering Prize 81/92\" (1992). It soon became a fixture of the band's live sets, with an extended audience participation section during its inclusion on the 2015 tour to promote the band's \"Big Music\" album.\nJohn Leland of \"Spin\" described the song as \"a romantic and melancholy dance track\" that \"cuts ice both in the living room and on the dance floor\". The song has become iconic, and has been described by AmericanSongwriter.com as \"an \u201880s masterpiece\" and \"an American teen anthem\".\nCover versions.\nIn February 2021, indie folk band Boy & Bear along with Annie Hamilton covered \"Don't You (Forget About Me)\" for Australian youth radio station Triple J's \"Like a Version\". The cover placed 92nd in Triple J's first Like a Version Hottest 100. Billy Idol also covered the song as an add-on track to his \"Greatest Hits\" album in 2001.\nMusic video.\nThe music video \u2013 filmed inside Knebworth House, Hertfordshire, England \u2013 was directed by Daniel Kleinman. It takes place in a darkened room with a chandelier, a rocking horse, a jukebox, and television sets displaying scenes from \"The Breakfast Club\". The room gets increasingly cluttered with random objects as the video progresses until the last minute. The video was published on YouTube on 3 December 2010; as of February 2025, it had been viewed more than 358 million times.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nPersonnel.\nSimple Minds\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2684783": "Don't Forget About Us\n2005 single by Mariah Carey\n\"Don't Forget About Us\" is a song by American R&B singer-songwriter Mariah Carey. It was written by Carey, Jermaine Dupri, Bryan-Michael Cox and Johnt\u00e1 Austin, and produced by Carey, Dupri and Cox. On October 10, 2005, it was released as the lead single from the reissue of her tenth studio album, \"The Emancipation of Mimi:\" \"Ultra Platinum Edition\" (2005). The song is influenced by R&B and hip hop soul music genres, and lyrically chronicles the emotions felt by the protagonist after the loss of their relationship. Carey explained that the true meaning of the song is to be interpreted by the listener, therefore not disclosing its entire meaning publicly.\nThe song received generally positive reviews from music critics, with many heavily comparing it to Carey's previous single \"We Belong Together\". Several reviewers felt the song's similarity marked Carey's lack of creativity with it, while others embraced its radio-friendly formula. \"Don't Forget About Us\" became Carey's seventeenth chart topping single on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100, tying the record for most number-one singles by a solo artist set by Elvis Presley 36 years before. Internationally, the song topped the charts in Finland, and reached the top-ten in Hungary.\nCarey performed the song at the 33rd Annual American Music Awards, and during the half-time of the Thanksgiving game between the Detroit Lions and the Atlanta Falcons. Additionally, the song was included on the set-lists of Carey's The Adventures of Mimi and Angels Advocate Tours. The song's music video chronicles the two time frames, Carey in the present, as well as the past memories she shared with her ex-lover that continue to haunt her. \"Don't Forget About Us\" was nominated for two awards at the 49th annual Grammy Awards held on February 11, 2007.\nBackground and release.\nAfter being branded Carey's \"comeback album\" by music critics, and becoming the highest selling album of her career post-\"Glitter\" (2001), \"The Emancipation of Mimi\" inspired Carey to return to the studio, in hopes of writing and producing new material for her next studio album. During a writing session with Jermaine Dupri, Carey wrote \"Don't Forget About Us\" as a possible single for her next album, reminiscent of the material on \"The Emancipation of Mimi\". After hearing the unfinished version of the song, L.A. Reid, CEO at the time of Carey's label Island Records, was very satisfied with the song. He convinced Carey to continue writing and producing new songs, and suggested on re-releasing the album, which had already sold over four million units in the United States alone. Carey agreed to the idea of re-releasing \"The Emancipation of Mimi\", feeling eager to release the song, as well as other material to her fans, instead of making them wait for a brand new album. In an interview with MTV News, Carey discussed the decision of releasing the song immediately, as well as the re-release of the album:\n'Don't Forget About Us' was a song that Jermaine [Dupri] and I started writing and didn't finish, and L.A. Reid heard it. He was excited about it and he was like, 'We should re-release the album. I agreed because were trying to figure out what to do with the song because we loved it so much, and we didn't want to wait until the next album to send it to radio.\nAfter completing the song, Carey announced on October 13, 2005, via her official website, that she would be re-releasing \"The Emancipation of Mimi\". Additionally, she explained how the album would contain four new songs, and would be promoted internationally by the new single, \"Don't Forget About Us\". The song was released throughout the globe as the fifth official single from \"The Emancipation of Mimi\", and the first from the re-release, tentatively titled, \"Ultra Platinum Edition\". The song was first serviced to American contemporary hit, rhythmic contemporary, and urban contemporary radio stations on October 10, 2005. In Australia, a CD single was issued on December 5, 2005. The following Monday, on December 12, a CD single was issued in the United Kingdom. On January 27, 2006, a CD was released in Austria and Germany. A release in Italy followed on February 6 and in Taiwan on February 17. On January 29, 2021, an EP was issued.\nComposition.\n\"Don't Forget About Us\" is a mid-tempo song lasting three minutes and fifty-three seconds, while drawing influence from pop and R&B with downtempo beats music genres. Written by Carey, Jermaine Dupri, Bryan-Michael Cox and Johnt\u00e1 Austin, and produced by the former three, the song drew comparisons to Carey's \"We Belong Together\". According to Michael Paoletta from \"Billboard\", the song features a similar tempo, lyrical style, instrumentation and production as the latter song, and incorporates a reminiscent vocal performance from Carey. The song is in the key of B\u266d major and has a \"moderately slow\" tempo of 72 beats per minute. Carey's vocal range spans three octaves and six semitones from the low-note of D3 to the high-note of A\u266d6. Lyrically, the song describes the potency of a \"first love\", and features a protagonist pleading to her lover to \"not forget about them\". Critics noted that the song's lyrics both let go of a lover, as well as cherishing their memory. Carey sings, \"You just let it die / With no goodbyes\", indicating a relationship that has long decayed, and how she has let it drift away, while also adding, \"There's only one me and you / And how we used to shine / No matter what you go through / We are one, that's a fact that you can't deny\", indicating that while they are no longer together, she will continue to cherish the memory of them and how strong their love was. According to Carey, she refrained from giving away too much of the song's lyrical meaning, in order to allow fans to possibly interpret the song in their own way:\nI try not to get too specific so that people can apply the lyrics to their own lives. When I was growing up and listening to the radio and I would hear a song that reminded me of a certain person or a situation or whatever, I would want to be able to completely connect it to that moment. And then if I heard someone explaining it and making it into something totally different, it ruined it for me. So I kind of like to keep it open for people's imaginations. It evokes something different depending on who listens to it and at what time. \"Don't Forget About Us\" could give you a good, happy memory, or you could be miserable, crying, listening to it over and over. All in all, I think it's good to have music you can live vicariously through, and that's what a lot of people have told me this record has been for them.\nCritical reception.\n\"Don't Forget About Us\" garnered generally positive reviews from music critics, though many compared it to, and felt it shared several similarities with Carey's previous single, \"We Belong Together\". Bill Lamb from About.com rated the song four out of five stars, who while noting the song's careful formula, complimented Carey's more mature and lower range vocals: \"Mariah is clearly settling into a more mature style and lower range vocals than in her early career.\" Additionally, Lamb commented that although not as \"strong\" as \"We Belong Together\", the song was marginally better than another single from \"The Emancipation of Mimi\", \"Shake It Off\". \"Billboard\"'s Michael Paoletta drew heavy comparisons to \"We Belong Together\", noting the song's similar tempo, lyrical style, instrumentation and vocal stamp. He commented that although \"Don't Forget About Us\" was \"satisfying\" on its own, it suggested that Carey had hit a creative wall. Andre Meyer from CBC News described the song as \"stronger\" than anything Carey released from 2001 to 2005, and wrote \"[It] cops the jittery R&B vibe that made Destiny's Child so potent.\" Reviewers from \"The New Yorker\" and \"Music Week\" were both taken aback by the single, calling it \"beautiful\" and \"gentle\", respectively. Todd Martens from the \"Los Angeles Times\" compared it heavily to Carey's 2008 single \"Bye Bye\", describing their piano melody as \"a close match\". In 2007, \"Don't Forget About Us\" was nominated for two Grammy Awards, in the \"Best Female R&B Vocal Performance\" and \"Best R&B Song\" categories, although not winning either.\nChart performance.\n\"Don't Forget About Us\" was released as the fourth international single from \"The Emancipation of Mimi\" (2005), and the first from its re-release, the \"Ultra Platinum Edition\". The song reached the top of the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 in its eleventh week, spending two consecutive weeks at the position. \"Don't Forget About Us\" became Carey's 17th chart-topping single in the United States, tying the record set by Elvis Presley for most number-one singles by a solo artist (Carey has since surpassed this record with \"Touch My Body\" in 2008 and \"All I Want for Christmas is You\" in 2019.) Currently, the only act to hold more US number-one singles than Carey are The Beatles, who gained twenty throughout their career while Carey has accumulated 19 to date. \"Don't Forget About Us\" stayed in the top forty for eighteen weeks and reached number one on other \"Billboard\" component charts, including the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. The song was certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), denoting shipments of over 1,000,000 units.\nOutside the United States, the song achieved moderate international charting. In Australia, \"Don't Forget About Us\" debuted at its peak position of number twelve on the singles chart, during the week of December 18, 2005. In its second week, the song stalled at number twelve, before beginning its eleven-week descent on the chart. In Finland, \"Don't Forget About Us\" peaked at number one, becoming Carey's second number-one single in that country and first since \"Anytime You Need a Friend\" (1994). On the Italian singles charts, the song charted for only one week, peaking at number eleven. In both the Wallonian and Flemish territories in Belgium, the song peaked at numbers two and one, although plummeting outside the top-fifty the following week. On the Dutch Top 40 chart, \"Don't Forget About Us\" debuted at number ninety-two during the week dated February 2, 2006. Spending one week at its peak position of number four, the song dropped to thirty-two the following week. In New Zealand, it peaked at number twelve, and spent a total of four weeks fluctuating in the singles chart. Similarly on February 26, 2006, the song debuted and peaked at number nineteen on the Swiss Singles Chart, and spent a total of five weeks on the chart. On the UK Singles Chart week dated December 12, 2005, \"Don't Forget About Us\" began its seven-week run at its peak of number eleven.\nMusic video.\nBackground.\nFilmed in Los Angeles, the music video reunited Carey with Paul Hunter, director of the video for her 1997 single, \"Honey\". Since its release, Carey claimed it to be one of her favorite videos, due to its complex scenery and fun nature. She explained that she had wanted to work with Hunter again for some time, and was happy to be able to film another music video alongside him. In an interview with MTV News, Carey described her feelings regarding the video, as well as sentiments towards the video's director, Hunter: \"But I was so happy to work with him again 'cause ever since 'Honey' I've been trying to relive the splendor of that moment. It's more of just a plain beauty piece with sentimental overtones, but it was great to work with Paul again.\" Following a tale of love and separation, the video alternates between two different time frames. The first of these involves a tearful Carey in the present, while the second invokes memories of a relationship with a former lover (played by Dolce & Gabbana model Christian Monzon). When questioned regarding a possible relationship with Monzon, Carey said \"Erm, how do we play this? OK, he's a very nice guy, he's been in a fabulous Dolce & Gabbana advert - did you see it? And we've had some nice conversations and, um, a nice time. OK, I'll say he definitely did a very good job in the video.\" Additionally, Carey and Hunter placed several secrets within the video's scenery, that would be intended for the \"die-hard fans\". Following the video's completion, it premiered on MTV and several other music video channels on November 1, 2005. Aside from the video's script, Carey channeled Marilyn Monroe, one of her icons growing up. During a pool scene, Carey re-enacts a part from Monroe's film \"Something's Got to Give\" (1962). In an interview with MTV News, Carey spoke of the re-enactment:\nThat shot was totally and completely inspired by 'Something's Got to Give,' Marilyn Monroe's last movie that never got finished. It's an homage to her, because I've never seen anyone re-create it. So many people have emulated so many of Marilyn's classic moments, but it's just that I'm a big fan of hers, and I thought it was really pretty at night with the pool. No one could ever be as fabulous as Marilyn was, but it's in honor and homage to her.\nSynopsis.\nThe music video chronicles two alternative time frames, with the first of Carey in the present, tearful and remorseful their separation, while the other of several different past memories in which she shared with her lover. The video begins with Carey wearing a long brown blouse, laying on a sofa in an elegantly furnished home. As the song begins, she stands up and walks around the living room, while remembering and lamenting her failed relationship. As the first memory of Carey and her lover together on a soccer field is shown, she is once again shown in the present, however clothed in a large white sweater while tears trickle down her cheek. As the memory continues of that night on the soccer field, they are seen together, caressing each other and holding each other in a tight embrace. Carey, in the present, makes her way into a heated pool, where she lays her leg on the deck, re-enacting a famed scene from Marilyn Monroe's unreleased film, \"Something's Got to Give\" (1962). The next memory is of the pair together in the same pool, however in happier times. During the song's bridge, the scenes alternate from Carey at her home in the present, to the duo holding each other intimately in a car. The video ends with Carey alone in the car, while wearing her lover's jacket.\nChart performance.\n\"Don't Forget About Us\" music video peaked at #1 on Billboard's Hot Videoclip Tracks chart.\nRemixes.\nThe main remix of \"Don't Forget About Us\" was produced by Jermaine Dupri and is known as the Mr. Dupri mix. It features guest appearances from rappers Juelz Santana, Krayzie Bone and Layzie Bone. The Mr. Dupri mix was added to iTunes Music Store for download, while several dance remixes (by Ralphi Rosario & Craig J., Quentin Harris and Tony Moran & Warren Rigg) were produced and made available for sale at other download retailers. In January 2006, a new remix titled the Desert Storm remix, produced by DJ Clue (who also remixed \"We Belong Together\" and \"Shake It Off\") featuring Styles P and Fabolous, was released to U.S. radio. This remix appeared on DJ Clue's album \"Fidel Cashflow 2006\". A video was also helmed for the Desert Storm mix and can be found on Clue's official MySpace page; it has shots of Carey, Styles P, DJ Clue and Fabolous in the studio and enjoying themselves.\nLive performances.\nCarey performed \"Don't Forget About Us\" on several televised appearances, as well on all of her tours following its release. On November 15, 2005, the \"Chicago Tribune\" announced that Carey would perform during the half-time on the Thanksgiving game between the Detroit Lions and the Atlanta Falcons. Airing on the 24th, Carey performed \"Shake It Off\", as well as her newly released single from the album's re-release, \"Don't Forget About Us\". On November 22, 2005, Carey opened the 33rd annual American Music Awards with a performance of \"Don't Forget About Us\", held at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Appearing on stage in a \"sequined, silver, spaghetti-strap gown slit to the waist\", Carey completed the song before accepting the first award of the evening. Dave West from Digital Spy described it as a \"blistering performance\", and claimed Carey \"wowed\" the crowd with her live rendition of the song. Two months later, she celebrated the new year on television, placing as the featured performer at the Times Square Ball drop on New Year's Eve in New York. The special, titled Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest, aired on ABC at 10\u00a0pm on December 31, and featured Carey on stage wearing a short sparkling dress, and performing a selection of the album's singles.\nOn Carey's 2006 The Adventures of Mimi Tour stop at Madison Square Garden, she sang \"Don't Forget About Us\" while wearing a sparkling bikini top and black leggings. She introduced the song as a \"thank you\" to fans for \"making this my 17th number one single\". Four years later during Carey's Angels Advocate Tour in 2010, she had not performed the song on the first few runs of the tour. At the show in Phoenix, she told the crowd that she had forgotten the song until that night: \"I had forgotten about this song the whole tour and I don't know why. Funny I should forget it, considering the title.\" Dressed in a \"form-fitting short dress with a flared, tutu-like bottom\" for the first portion of the night, Carey completed the song as the fourth on the set-list.\nFormats and track listings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCredits and personnel.\nCredits are adapted from \"The Emancipation of Mimi\" liner notes.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "23894696": "Don't You Forget About Me (film)\nDon't You Forget About Me is a 2009 Canadian documentary film about screenwriter, director, and producer John Hughes. Directed by Matt Austin, the film was named after the 1985 song of the same name by Simple Minds, which in turn was the theme song for Hughes' film \"The Breakfast Club\". The film specifically focused on Hughes' fade from prominence in the early 1990s.\nBackground.\nThe documentary details the journey of a group of young filmmakers who go in search of the reclusive icon, documenting their search through interviews of the people with whom Hughes had worked and fans of his films. Those interviewed include Ilan Mitchell-Smith, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Kelly Le Brock, Mia Sara, Alan Ruck, Kevin Smith, Roger Ebert, and Jim Kerr of the band Simple Minds. Filming began in 2006.\nHome media.\nThe film was completed in 2008, but did not find a distributor for over a year.\nWhen Hughes died of a heart attack, aged 59, on August 6, 2009, a bidding war broke out for the film. It was announced on August 11, 2009, that the film would be distributed by Alliance Films. The film aired on the TV channel Encore for a brief time as well.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "36805210": "Don't Forget Me (Smash song)\n2012 single by the cast of Smash\n\"Don't Forget Me\" is an original song introduced in the fifteenth episode of the first season of the musical TV series \"Smash\", entitled \"Bombshell\". It was written by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, but in the show's fictional universe, it was written by the songwriting team of Tom Levitt (Christian Borle) and Julia Houston (Debra Messing) for their Marilyn Monroe musical \"Bombshell\".\nIn the episode, the song is sung by Karen Cartwright (Katharine McPhee) as Marilyn Monroe during a Boston preview for the musical after having just taken over the role from Rebecca Duvall (Uma Thurman), who has been felled by illness.\nThe song is reprised by Ivy Lynn (Megan Hilty) in the twelfth episode of Season 2, \"Opening Night\", as part of the performance of \"Bombshell's\" opening night on Broadway opening, with Ivy playing the lead of Marilyn.\nThe song was initially released as a single from iTunes and Amazon.com's MP3 store and is currently available on the cast album \"Bombshell\".\nProduction.\nThe song is about Marilyn Monroe's legacy, how she will inspire people, and make the world a better place through her tragic 'cautionary tale'. It has a tempo of quarter = 138 and is described as \"Moderately flowing\". The song ranges from F#3 to Eb5. It starts off in the key of E Major, but has a key change after the first chorus to F Major and another at the end of the bridge to G-flat Major.\nWithin the context of the series, the song is written by the songwriting duo as a finale song in under 3 hours after a reprise of Let Me Be Your Star in a suicide scene was deemed too depressing as the final number. After all the drama that went on beforehand, \"Karen walks out onstage [after managing to memorize the song in record time] and brings down the house with 'Don\u2019t Forget Me'. As the song ends, \"we see Ivy back in the dressing room with a bottle of pills\". Chris Rovzar of Vanity Fair suggests the following, \"we don\u2019t hear the final response from the Bombshell audience, but the way they reacted during the key change in \u201cDon\u2019t Forget Me\u201d suggests they were poised to give a standing ovation\". The song ends with the camera spinning in a circle around Karen as she \"triumphant[ly] flail[s]...her arm[s in the air]\".\nCritical reception.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\u201cDon\u2019t Forget Me\u201d, a final energetic ballad that led into a \u201cLet Me Be Your Star\u201d reprise [is an example of how the show's best element has always been its original music]. Even though I was furious that it was McPhee singing it and not Megan Hilty...the song moved me, and I thought it was a fitting way to end a musical about the life of Marilyn Monroe. She pleads for the audience to remember her good qualities, how hard she strived, and not how hard she suffered. She wants to be a legend. A tall order, but as Marilyn is the textbook definition of legend in our culture, it doesn't feel stretched, and even the fade-in of a large projection of her face comes at just the right moment. It\u2019s sappy and overstated, sure, but so is much of the best work on Broadway, and I know I would have applauded like mad for that finale had I been in the audience...[Karen] brings it home, and it\u2019s magical. This is one of Tom and Julia\u2019s best songs yet, [and is worth] 4.5 out of 5 Jazz Hands.\nRachel Syme, \"'Smash' finale recap: Let Megan Hilty be your star\", Los Angeles Times.\nChris Rovzar of Vanity Fair comments that \"the lyrics were terrible and the composition spotty\", and questions whether this was because within the context of the episode, \"Tom and Julia supposedly did write it in just three hours\", or because Shaiman and Wittman had genuine faith on the song. While he says that Karen \"hit [the song] out of the park\", he suggests that some lyrics were less than believable, such as \"help for the downtrodden\u201d, which he argues was never \"one of Marilyn\u2019s signature messages\".\nThough he gave the show as a whole much praise, even stating that \"[he'd] buy tickets for it tomorrow if the show actually existed\", Michael Slezak of TV Line gave \"Don't Forget Me\" a negative review, describing the \"final ballad [that] Tom and Julia cook...up for Karen\" as \"downright embarrassing\". He described the music as in the style of \"rejected Disney princess theme songs\", and also criticized the out-of-place and cheesy lyrics, such as, \u201dwhen you sing happy birthday to someone you love/or see diamonds you wish were all free/ Please say that you won\u2019t, I pray that you don\u2019t forget me\u201d. He claims that the song requires a rewrite.\nPerezHilton.com described Don't Forget Me as a \"breathtaking finale performance\".\nJJ of TV Is My Pacifier said of the song, \"the orchestration was amazing, the lyrics worked, and it really tied into Marilyn and the music of 'Bombshell'. I couldn't have imagined a better finale\".\nIdolhead wrote in his blog that the song is \"one for the ages\", and speculated it would be up for an award, along with \u201cLet Me Be Your Star\u201d, the unofficial theme song of the show.\nNathaniel Rogers of Thefilmexperience.net describes the song as \"the second worst original song in a generally sensational musical score\", and described it as a \"weak song\" that sounds like the \"interchangeable anthemic ballads that they always end American Idol with\". He gave the song a C\u2212 grade.\nJonathan Elliott of CinemaBlend.com describes the song as a \"nice capper on the season\".\nPat Cerasaro of broadwayworld.com describes \"Don't Forget Me\" as the \"spine-tingling new swan song epilogue for the show-within-the-show\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "22077240": "Don't Forget (Demi Lovato song)\n2009 single by Demi Lovato\n\"Don't Forget\" is a song by American singer Demi Lovato, from her debut album of the same name. It was written by Lovato and the Jonas Brothers, who co-produced the song with John Fields. It was released as the album's third and final single on March 17, 2009, through Hollywood Records. The inspiration of the song came from Lovato falling in love with someone who later left her. According to Lovato, it is one of the songs on the album that she most relates to. Musically, \"Don't Forget\" is a midtempo glam rock ballad that features Lovato singing with breathy falsetto vocals. An accompanying music video was released on March 20, 2009. In 2023, the song was re-recorded for her first remix album \"Revamped\".\nUpon the release of the album, \"Don't Forget\" was well-received from music critics, who noted the transition from her \"tween sound\" to more mature material. The song achieved moderate commercial success, reaching number forty-one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. It also reached number seventy-six on the Canadian Hot 100. Lovato has performed the song numerous times including on \"The Ellen DeGeneres Show\".\nBackground and composition.\n\"Don't Forget\" was written by Lovato along with the Jonas Brothers, who produced it with John Fields. The song features Dorian Crozier and Michael Bland on drums, and Fields on bass, guitars and keyboards. Nick Jonas also played the guitar and percussion on the song. The song is registered as \"Did You Forget\" with the Broadcast Music, Inc. Lovato has stated that \"Don't Forget\" is one of the songs on \"Don't Forget\" that she relates to the most, and that she felt \"a lot of emotion while recording it\". In an interview with PopEater, she elaborated, \"Everyone goes through the experience of falling in love, but then the other person just walks away, and goes somewhere else. I went through an experience like that and wanted to write about it. I got over it, and now a year later I don't have those feelings about that person anymore.\" The song and \"La La Land\" were included as bonus tracks on European editions of her sophomore album \"Here We Go Again\".\n\"Don't Forget\" is a midtempo glam rock ballad sung with vulnerable and breathy vocals in a falsetto tone. According to the sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, the song is set in common time with a metronome of 92 beats per minute. It is composed in the key of E major and Lovato's vocal range spans from the note of C\u266f4 to the note of E5. The song includes a \"rocking\" instrumental and a heavy guitar break. Ed Masley of \"The Arizona Republic\" compared the track to songs by Green Day. Lyrically, \"Don't Forget\" is about one of Lovato's old love interests who left her just as she was falling in love with him. The theme is demonstrated in lyrical lines such as, \"Did you forget that I was even alive? Did you forget everything we ever had?\"\nMusic video.\n\"Don't Forget\" was directed by Robert Hales. According to Lovato, different video treatments had been written, but she rejected them as she wanted to come up with the idea herself. She said, \"They had treatments [for the video], but I was just like, 'No, scratch them.' I want to come up with the idea. I want to show you the colors, I want to show you everything. This is art to me and I don't want it to be somebody else's decision.\" In an interview with PopEater, Lovato said of the video:\n\"It was actually really freezing cold [in the rain]. You could see your breath. And I was in the rain for only a short time \u2013 my whole band was out there for an hour-and-a-half. It was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do on a shoot. But it went by so quickly. I had a body suit on underneath my clothes, so there's a little fun fact for you. I was trying not to break my focus pretty much the entire shoot, because I"}, "descending_order": ["2462414", "2684783", "23894696", "36805210", "22077240"], "permutation_1": ["23894696", "2462414", "2684783", "22077240", "36805210"], "permutation_2": ["23894696", "2462414", "36805210", "22077240", "2684783"], "permutation_3": ["2684783", "36805210", "23894696", "2462414", "22077240"]}
{"id": "nq_4022670427899821671", "docs_added": {"35166850": "Fifty Shades of Grey\n2011 erotic romance novel by E.L. James\nFifty Shades of Grey is a 2011 erotic romance novel by British author E. L. James. It became the first instalment in the \"Fifty Shades\" novel series that follows the deepening relationship between a college graduate, Anastasia Steele, and a young business magnate, Christian Grey. It contains explicitly erotic scenes featuring elements of sexual practices involving BDSM (bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, and sadism/masochism).\nOriginally self-published as an ebook and print-on-demand in June 2011, the publishing rights to \"Fifty Shades of Grey\" were acquired by Vintage Books in March 2012, topping best-seller lists around the world. It has been translated into 52 languages and set a record as the fastest-selling paperback of all time in the United Kingdom. Critical reception of the book, however, has tended towards the negative, with the quality of its prose generally seen as poor, while its portrayal of BDSM has been a target for criticism from a variety of perspectives. Universal Pictures and Focus Features produced an American film adaptation, which was released on 13 February 2015, and was also panned upon release, though it was a box office success.\nThe second and third volumes of the original trilogy, \"Fifty Shades Darker\" and \"Fifty Shades Freed\", were published in 2012. The trilogy had sold over 150 million copies worldwide by October 2017. A version of the novel from Christian's point of view, ', was published in June 2015 as the fourth book, followed by ' in November 2017 and \"\" in June 2021.\nPlot.\n21-year-old Anastasia \"Ana\" Steele is an English literature major at the Washington State University's branch campus in Vancouver, Washington. Her best friend, Katherine \"Kate\" Kavanagh, writes for the college newspaper. Due to an illness, Kate cannot interview Christian Grey, a wealthy Seattle entrepreneur. Taking Kate's place, Ana finds the 27-year-old Christian both attractive and intimidating. She stumbles through the interview and believes it went poorly. Ana, not expecting to meet Christian again, is surprised when he appears at the hardware store where she works and purchases various items. When Ana mentions that Kate would like a photo for her article, Christian offers to arrange a photo session.\nThe next day Ana, along with Kate and their photographer friend, Jos\u00e9 Rodriguez, arrive at Christian's hotel for the photo shoot. Later, Christian asks Ana out for coffee. When he asks if she is dating someone, Ana replies that she is single. After claiming he is not romantic, Christian abruptly ends the date, leaving Ana to believe she is not attractive enough for him. Later, Christian sends Ana a first edition copy of \"Tess of the d'Urbervilles\". That night, Ana goes out with her friends and ends up drunk dialing Christian, who says he is coming to pick her up. When Ana goes outside for some fresh air, Jos\u00e9 attempts to kiss her but is stopped by Christian's arrival. Ana leaves with Christian, but not before she discovers that Kate has been flirting with Christian's brother, Elliot. Ana awakens to find herself in Christian's hotel room. He assures her nothing happened but scolds her for her careless behavior. Christian wants to have a sexual relationship with Ana, but she must first fill out some paperwork. He later goes back on this statement to make out with her in the elevator.\nChristian flies Ana to Seattle in his helicopter. At his penthouse, Christian makes Ana sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) regarding their time together. He also mentions other paperwork, but first takes her to his playroom filled with BDSM objects and gear. Christian informs her that the second contract will be about dominance and submission, and there will be no romantic relationship, only a sexual one. The contract even forbids Ana from touching Christian or making eye contact with him. At this point, Christian realises that Ana is a virgin. Not wanting her first sexual experience to be a BDSM experience, he has conventional sex with her and sleeps in her bed. The following morning, Christian's adoptive mother Grace arrives and is surprised to meet Ana, having never seen her son with a woman. Christian lost his virginity at age 15 to one of his mother's friends, Elena Lincoln, and his previous BDSM relationships failed due to incompatibility. In his first BDSM relationship, he was the submissive. Christian and Ana plan to meet again, and he takes Ana home, where she discovers several job offers.\nOver the next few days, Ana receives many packages from Christian. This includes a laptop to replace her broken one and research the BDSM lifestyle in consideration of the contract, which they discuss. Ana becomes overwhelmed by the potential BDSM arrangement and having a non-romantic sexual relationship. Ana leaves and does not see Christian again until her college graduation, where he is the keynote speaker. During this time, Ana agrees to sign the contract. She and Christian meet to discuss it and go over Ana's hard and soft limits. Christian spanks Ana for the first time, and the experience leaves her both enticed and slightly confused. This confusion is exacerbated by Christian's lavish gifts, and the fact that he brings her to meet his family. The two continue with the arrangement without Ana having yet signed the contract. After landing a job with Seattle Independent Publishing (SIP), Ana further bristles under the NDA's restrictions and her complex relationship with Christian. The tension between Ana and Christian comes to a head after Ana asks Christian to punish her in order to show her how extreme a BDSM relationship could be. Christian complies, beating her with a belt. Realizing they are incompatible, a devastated Ana breaks up with Christian and returns to the apartment she shares with Kate.\nBackground and publication.\nThe \"Fifty Shades\" trilogy was developed from a \"Twilight\" fan fiction series originally titled \"Master of the Universe\" and published by James episodically on fan fiction websites under the pen name \"Snowqueen Icedragon\". The piece featured characters named after \"Twilight\" author Stephenie Meyer's characters in \"Twilight\", Edward Cullen and Bella Swan. After comments concerning the sexual nature of the material, James removed the story and published it on her own website, FiftyShades.com. Later she rewrote \"Master of the Universe\" as an original piece, with the principal characters renamed Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele, and removed it from her website before publication. Meyer commented on the series, saying \"that's really not my genre, not my thing... Good on her \u2013 she's doing well. That's great!\"\nThis reworked and extended version of \"Master of the Universe\" was split into three parts. The first, titled \"Fifty Shades of Grey\", was released as an e-book and a print on demand paperback in May 2011 by The Writers' Coffee Shop, a virtual publisher based in Australia. The second volume, \"Fifty Shades Darker\", was released in September 2011; and the third, \"Fifty Shades Freed\", followed in January 2012. The Writers' Coffee Shop had a restricted marketing budget and relied largely on book blogs for early publicity, but sales of the novel were boosted by word-of-mouth recommendation. The book's erotic nature and perceived demographic of its fan base as being composed largely of married women over thirty led to the book being dubbed \"Mommy Porn\" by some news agencies. The book has also reportedly been popular among teenage girls and college women. By the release of the final volume in January 2012, news networks in the United States had begun to report on the \"Fifty Shades\" trilogy as an example of viral marketing and of the rise in popularity of female erotica, attributing its success to the discreet nature of e-reading devices. Due to the heightened interest in the series, the license to the \"Fifty Shades\" trilogy was picked up by Vintage Books for re-release in a new and revised edition in April 2012. The attention that the series has garnered has also helped to spark a renewed interest in erotic literature. Many other erotic works quickly became best-sellers following \"Fifty Shades\"' success, while other popular works, such as Anne Rice's \"The Sleeping Beauty\" trilogy, have been reissued (this time without pseudonyms) to meet the higher demand.\nOn 1 August 2012, Amazon UK announced that it had sold more copies of \"Fifty Shades of Grey\" than it had any individual book in the \"Harry Potter\" series, although worldwide, at that time, the \"Harry Potter\" series had sold more than 450 million copies, compared with \"Fifty Shades of Grey\"'s sales of 60 million copies.\nReception.\n\"Fifty Shades of Grey\" has topped best-seller lists around the world, including those of the United Kingdom and the United States. The series had sold over 125 million copies worldwide by June 2015, while by October 2017 it had sold more than 150 million copies worldwide. The series has been translated into 52 languages, and set a record in the United Kingdom as the fastest-selling paperback of all time.\nCritical response.\nIt has received mixed to negative reviews, as most critics noted the poor literary qualities of the work. Salman Rushdie said about the book: \"I've never read anything so badly written that got published. It made \"Twilight\" look like \"War and Peace\".\" Maureen Dowd described the book in \"The New York Times\" as being written \"like a Bront\u00eb devoid of talent\", and said it was \"dull and poorly written\". Jesse Kornbluth of \"The Huffington Post\" said: \"As a reading experience, \"Fifty Shades\"\u00a0... is a sad joke, puny of plot\".\nPrinceton professor April Alliston wrote, \"Though no literary masterpiece, \"Fifty Shades\" is more than parasitic fan fiction based on the recent \"Twilight\" vampire series.\" \"Entertainment Weekly\" writer Lisa Schwarzbaum gave the book a \"B+\" rating and praised it for being \"in a class by itself\". British author Jenny Colgan in \"The Guardian\" wrote \"It is jolly, eminently readable and as sweet and safe as BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism) erotica can be without contravening the trade descriptions act\" and also praised the book for being \"more enjoyable\" than other \"literary erotic books\". \"The Daily Telegraph\" noted that the book was \"the definition of a page-turner\", noting that the book was both \"troubling and intriguing\". A reviewer for the \"Ledger-Enquirer\" described the book as guilty fun and escapism, and that it \"also touches on one aspect of female existence [female submission]. And acknowledging that fact \u2013 maybe even appreciating it \u2013 shouldn't be a cause for guilt.\" \"The New Zealand Herald\" stated that the book \"will win no prizes for its prose\" and that \"there are some exceedingly awful descriptions,\" although it was also an easy read; \"(If you only) can suspend your disbelief and your desire to \u2013 if you'll pardon the expression \u2013 slap the heroine for having so little self respect, you might enjoy it.\" \"The Columbus Dispatch\" stated that, \"Despite the clunky prose, James does cause one to turn the page.\" \"Metro News Canada\" wrote that \"suffering through 500 pages of this heroine's inner dialogue was torturous, and not in the intended, sexy kind of way\". Jessica Reaves, of the \"Chicago Tribune\", wrote that the \"book's source material isn't great literature\", noting that the novel is \"sprinkled liberally and repeatedly with asinine phrases\", and described it as \"depressing\".\nThe book garnered some accolades. In December 2012, it won both \"Popular Fiction\" and \"Book of the Year\" categories in the UK National Book Awards. In that same month, \"Publishers Weekly\" named E. L. James the 'Publishing Person of the Year', a decision whose criticism in the \"Los Angeles Times\" and the \"New York Daily News\" was referred to by and summarised in \"The Christian Science Monitor\". Earlier, in April 2012, when E. L. James was listed as one of \"Time\" magazine's \"100 Most Influential People in the World\", Richard Lawson of \"The Atlantic Wire\" criticised her inclusion due to the trilogy's fan fiction beginnings.\nControversy.\n\"Fifty Shades of Grey\" has attracted criticism due to its depictions of BDSM, with many BDSM participants stating that the book confuses the practice with \"abuse\", and presents it as a pathology to be overcome, as well as showing incorrect and possibly dangerous BDSM techniques.\nCoinciding with the release of the book and its surprising popularity, injuries related to BDSM and sex toy use spiked dramatically. In the year after the novel's publishing in 2012, injuries requiring Emergency Room visits increased by over 50% from 2010 (the year before the book was published). This is speculated to be due to people unfamiliar with both the proper use of these toys and the safe practice of bondage and other \"kinky\" sexual fetishes in attempting to recreate what they had read.\nThere has also been criticism against the fact that BDSM is a part of the book. Archbishop Dennis Schnurr of Cincinnati said in an early February 2015 letter, \"The story line is presented as a romance; however, the underlying theme is that bondage, dominance, and sadomasochism are normal and pleasurable.\" The feminist anti-pornography organization Stop Porn Culture called for a boycott of the movie based on the book because of its sex scenes involving bondage and violence. By contrast, Timothy Laurie and Jessica Kean argue that \"film fleshes out an otherwise legalistic concept like 'consent' into a living, breathing, and at times, uncomfortable interpersonal experience,\" and \"dramatises the dangers of unequal negotiation and the practical complexity of identifying one's limits and having them respected.\"\nSeveral critics and scientists have expressed concern that the nature of the main couple's relationship is not BDSM at all, but rather is characteristic of an abusive relationship. In 2013, social scientist Professor Amy E. Bonomi published a study wherein multiple professionals read and assessed the books for characteristics of intimate partner violence, or IPV, using the CDC's standards for emotional abuse and sexual violence. The study found that nearly every interaction between Ana and Christian was emotionally abusive in nature, including stalking, intimidation, and isolation. The study group also observed pervasive sexual violence within the CDC's definition, including Christian's use of alcohol to circumvent Ana's ability to consent, and that Ana exhibits classic signs of an abused woman, including constant perceived threat, stressful managing, and altered identity.\nA second study in 2014 was conducted to examine the health of women who had read the series, compared with a control group that had never read any part of the novels. The results showed a correlation between having read at least the first book and exhibiting signs of an eating disorder, having romantic partners that were emotionally abusive and/or engaged in stalking behavior, engaging in binge drinking in the last month, and having 5 or more sexual partners before age 24. The authors could not conclude whether women already experiencing these \"problems\" were drawn to the series, or if the series influenced these behaviors to occur after reading by creating underlying context. The study's lead researcher contends that the books romanticize dangerous behavior and \"perpetuate dangerous abuse standards.\" The study was limited in that only women up to age 24 were studied, and no distinction was made among the reader sample between women who enjoyed the series and those that had a strong negative opinion of it, having only read it out of curiosity due to the media hype or other obligation.\nAt the beginning of the media hype, Dr. Drew and sexologist Logan Levkoff discussed on \"The Today Show\" whether the book perpetuated violence against women; Levkoff said that while that is an important subject, this trilogy had nothing to do with it\u00a0\u2013 this was a book about a consensual relationship. Dr. Drew commented that the book was \"horribly written\" in addition to being \"disturbing\" but stated that \"if the book enhances women's real-life sex lives and intimacy, so be it.\"\nCensorship.\n\"Fifty Shades of Grey\" has often been challenged, banned, and removed in the United States. The book landed on the American Library Association's Top 10 List of Banned and Challenged Books in 2012 (4), 2013 (4), and 2015 (2) because it is sexually explicit and unsuited for the age group; has nudity and offensive language; and for religious viewpoints. Challengers also stated the book was \"poorly written\", and they were concerned \"a group of teenagers will want to try [BDSM].\" Ultimately, the book became the eighth-most banned book between 2010 and 2019.\nIn March 2012, branches of the public library in Brevard County, Florida, removed copies of \"Fifty Shades of Grey\" from their shelves, with an official statement that it did not meet the selection criteria for the library and that reviews for the book had been poor. A representative for the library stated that it was due to the book's sexual content and that other libraries had declined to purchase copies for their branches. Deborah Caldwell-Stone of the American Library Association commented that \"If the only reason you don't select a book is that you disapprove of its content, but there is demand for it, there's a question of whether you're being fair. In a public library there is usually very little that would prevent a book from being on the shelf if there is a demand for the information.\" Brevard County public libraries later made their copies available to their patrons due to public demand.\nIn Maca\u00e9, Brazil, Judge Raphael Queiroz Campos ruled in January 2013 that bookstores throughout the city must either remove the series entirely from their shelves or ensure that the books are wrapped and placed out of the reach of minors. The judge stated that he was prompted to make such an order after seeing children reading them, basing his decision on a law stating that \"magazines and publications whose content is improper or inadequate for children and adolescents can only be sold if sealed and with warnings regarding their content\".\nIn February 2015, the Malaysian Home Ministry banned the \"Fifty Shades of Grey\" books shortly after banning its film adaptation after permitting them for three years in local bookstores, citing morality-related reasons.\nMedia.\nFilm adaptation.\nA film adaptation of the book was produced by Focus Features, Michael De Luca Productions, and Trigger Street Productions, with Universal Pictures and Focus Features securing the rights to the trilogy in March 2012. Universal is also the film's distributor. Charlie Hunnam was originally cast in the role of Christian Grey alongside Dakota Johnson in the role of Anastasia Steele, but Hunnam gave up the part in October 2013, with Jamie Dornan announced for the role on 23 October.\nThe film was released on 13 February 2015, and although popular at the box office, critical reactions were mixed to negative.\nFilm soundtrack.\nE. L. James announced the film's soundtrack would be released on 10 February 2015. Prior to the soundtrack's release, the first single, \"Earned It\", by The Weeknd, was released on 24 December 2014. On 7 January 2015, the second single, \"Love Me like You Do\" by Ellie Goulding was released. Australian singer Sia released the soundtrack's third single, \"Salted Wound\", on 27 January 2015.\nClassical album.\nAn album of songs selected by E. L. James was released on 11 September 2012 by EMI Classics under the title \"Fifty Shades of Grey: The Classical Album\", and reached number four on the US \"Billboard\" classical music albums chart in October 2012. A \"Seattle P-I\" reviewer favourably wrote that the album would appeal both to fans of the series and to \"those who have no intention of reading any of the Grey Shades\".\nParodies.\nThe \"Fifty Shades of Grey\" trilogy has inspired many parodies in print, in film, online, and on stage. In November 2012, Universal Studios attempted to prevent the release of \"Fifty Shades of Grey: A XXX Adaptation\", a pornographic film based on the novel, citing copyright and trademark infringement. Smash Pictures, the porn producer, later responded to the lawsuit with a counterclaim that \"much or all\" of the \"Fifty Shades\" material was placed in the public domain in its original \"Twilight\"-based form, but later capitulated and stopped distribution of their film.\nOn stage.\nStage productions include:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "40218034": "Fifty Shades of Grey (film)\n2015 film by Sam Taylor-Johnson\nFifty Shades of Grey is a 2015 erotic romantic drama film directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson from a screenplay by Kelly Marcel. Produced by Focus Features, Michael De Luca Productions, and Trigger Street Productions, it is based on E. L. James' 2011 novel of the same name, and serves as the first installment in the \"Fifty Shades\" film series. Starring Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Jennifer Ehle and Marcia Gay Harden, the film's story follows Anastasia \"Ana\" Steele, a college graduate, who begins a sadomasochistic relationship with young business magnate Christian Grey.\nDevelopment of the film commenced in March 2012, when Universal and Focus Features secured the rights to the trilogy following a bidding war. After Marcel was hired to write the film's screenplay, multiple directors, including Joe Wright, Patty Jenkins, Bill Condon, Bennett Miller, and Steven Soderbergh, were attached to the film. Taylor-Johnson was confirmed as the director in June 2013. She cited \"9\u00bd Weeks\" (1986), \"Last Tango in Paris\" (1972), and \"Blue Is the Warmest Colour\" (2013) as her inspirations for the film. The main cast joined the project between October and December 2013. Principal photography commenced in December 2013 and concluded in February 2014. Reshoots involving scenes between Dornan and Johnson took place in Vancouver during the week of October 2014. Danny Elfman was hired to compose the film's score.\n\"Fifty Shades of Grey\" premiered at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival on February 11, 2015, and was released in IMAX formats on February 13, by Universal Pictures. Despite receiving generally unfavorable reviews from critics, it was an immediate box office success, breaking numerous box office records and earning $569.7 million worldwide against a budget of $40 million. The soundtrack album was also successful; \"Love Me Like You Do\", by English singer Ellie Goulding, was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, while \"Earned It\", by Canadian singer the Weeknd, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 88th Academy Awards.\nThe film was the most awarded at the 36th Golden Raspberry Awards, winning five of six nominations, including Worst Picture (tied with \"Fantastic Four\") and both leading roles. \"Fifty Shades of Grey\" was succeeded by two sequels: \"Fifty Shades Darker\", and \"Fifty Shades Freed\", released in 2017 and 2018, respectively, both of which received similar negative critical reception but commercial success.\nPlot.\nTwenty-one year old Anastasia \"Ana\" Steele is an English literature major at Washington State University Vancouver in Vancouver, Washington. When her roommate, Kate Kavanagh, catches a cold and is unable to interview Christian Grey, a twenty-seven year old billionaire entrepreneur for the college newspaper, Ana agrees to take Kate's place. At Christian's Seattle headquarters, she stumbles her way through the meeting. Christian, who is that year's WSU commencement speaker, takes an interest in her, and she in him. Soon after, he visits the hardware store where Ana works and offers to do a photo shoot to accompany the article she had interviewed him for.\nChristian asks Ana out for coffee, but leaves abruptly after she confesses to being a romantic, saying he is not the man for her. He later sends her first edition copies of two Thomas Hardy novels, including \"Tess of the d'Urbervilles\", as a gift, with a quote from the latter book about the dangers of relationships on an accompanying card. Ana and her friends celebrate graduation at a local bar. After drinking too much, she calls Christian, saying she is returning the books, and berating him for his behavior towards her. He goes to the bar to find her, arriving just as her photographer friend, Jos\u00e9 Rodriquez, attempts to kiss her against her will. Ana, suddenly sick, throws up and passes out. The next morning, she wakes up in Christian's hotel room, relieved that nothing happened between them.\nAfter the two make out in an elevator, and he takes her for a ride in his helicopter, a romance starts to develop. He insists, however, that she sign a non-disclosure agreement preventing her from revealing details about their relationship. He explains that he is a dominant who engages in sexual bondage relationships, but only as defined in a contract between the participants. Ana reveals that she is a virgin. While considering the agreement and negotiating her own terms, and after briefly visiting his \"Red Room,\" a place stocked with a bed and a variety of whips and shackles, she and Christian spend the night together.\nThe next morning, after making pancakes and meeting Christian's adoptive mother, the two go for a drive, during which Christian explains that he was introduced to his dominant practices at age fifteen by a woman Ana dubs \"Mrs. Robinson\". His parents know nothing about this, even though \"Mrs. Robinson\" was and still is a friend of the family.\nChristian bestows a series of gifts and favors upon Ana, including a new car and a laptop. After she and Kate move to Seattle, he insists that she go over his contract before moving forward. After looking into it in some detail, Ana initially says no, but is persuaded otherwise and finds herself willingly giving her consent.\nDuring dinner at his parents' home, Ana suddenly mentions she is leaving the next day to visit her mother in Georgia. This makes Christian angry, especially when she says she wants more than the one-sided relationship he's proposing. She then goes to Georgia, visits a lounge for cocktails, and is shocked when Christian shows up. He meets her mother, takes her air gliding, then returns to Seattle to tend to a business emergency.\nAfter returning home, Ana and Christian have a night in his \"Red Room\". She consents to what he wants, but he remains emotionally distant, upsetting her. While still considering the contract, and in an effort to understand Christian's psychology, Ana asks him to demonstrate the worst punishment he would inflict on her for rule-breaking. He whips her with his belt, making her count each stroke out loud.\nCrushed, she declares her love for him, but says his behavior is unacceptable. He replies that he is too screwed up to have the relationship that she wants. Devastated and depressed, Ana leaves Christian, and he promises to send her a check for the car he sold without her consent. As he goes after her, Ana orders him to stop. Christian tries to plead with her, saying her name, and Ana cuts him off by saying his own name, turning his plea into a farewell as the elevator doors close.\nProduction.\nDevelopment.\nBy early 2012, several Hollywood studios were keen to obtain film rights to \"The New York Times\" bestselling \"Fifty Shades\" trilogy of novels. Warner Bros., Sony, Paramount, Universal, and Mark Wahlberg's production company submitted bids for the film rights. Universal Pictures and Focus Features secured the rights to the trilogy in March 2012. Author James sought to retain some control during the movie's creative process. James chose \"The Social Network\" producers Michael De Luca and Dana Brunetti to produce the film.\nAlthough \"American Psycho\" writer Bret Easton Ellis publicly expressed his desire to write the screenplay for \"Fifty Shades of Grey\", Kelly Marcel, screenwriter of \"Saving Mr. Banks\", was hired for the job. Patrick Marber was brought in by Taylor-Wood to polish the screenplay, specifically to do some \"character work\". Universal hired Mark Bomback for script doctoring. Mark Bridges served as the costume designer. \"Entertainment Weekly\" estimated the film's budget as \"$40 million-or-so\".\nDirection.\nBy May 9, 2013, the studio was considering Joe Wright to direct, but this proved unworkable due to Wright's schedule. Other directors who had been under consideration included Patty Jenkins, Bill Condon, Bennett Miller, and Steven Soderbergh. In June 2013, E. L. James announced Sam Taylor-Johnson would direct the film adaptation. Johnson was paid over US$2 million for directing the film.\n\"9\u00bd Weeks\", \"Last Tango in Paris\", and \"Blue Is the Warmest Colour\" were all cited by Taylor-Johnson as inspirations for the film.\nIn an interview in June 2017, Taylor-Johnson cited difficulties working with author E. L. James, causing her to leave the series. She said: \"I can never say I regret it because that would just finish me off. With the benefit of hindsight would I go through it again? Of course I wouldn't. I'd be mad.\"\nCasting.\nBret Easton Ellis stated that Robert Pattinson had been James' first choice for the role of Christian Grey, but James felt that casting Pattinson and his \"Twilight\" co-star Kristen Stewart in the film would be \"weird\". Ian Somerhalder and Chace Crawford both expressed interest in the role of Christian. Somerhalder later admitted if he had been considered, the filming process would ultimately have conflicted with his shooting schedule for The CW's series \"The Vampire Diaries\". On September 2, 2013, James revealed that Charlie Hunnam and Dakota Johnson had been cast as Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele, respectively. The short list of other actresses considered for the role of Anastasia included Alicia Vikander, Imogen Poots, Elizabeth Olsen, Shailene Woodley, and Felicity Jones. Keeley Hazell auditioned for an unspecified role. Lucy Hale also auditioned for the film. Emilia Clarke was also offered the role of Anastasia but turned down the part because of the nudity required. Taylor-Johnson would give every actress who auditioned for the role of Anastasia four pages to read of a monologue from Ingmar Bergman's \"Persona\".\nThe studio originally wanted Ryan Gosling for Christian, but he was not interested in the role. Garrett Hedlund was also considered, but he could not connect with the character. Stephen Amell said he would not have wanted to play the role of Grey because \"I actually didn't find him to be that interesting ... nothing about Christian Grey really spoke to me.\" Hunnam initially turned down the role of Christian but later reconsidered it, following a meeting with studio heads. Hunnam said of the audition process: \"I felt really intrigued and excited about it so I went and read the first book to get a clearer idea of who this character was, and I felt even more excited at the prospect of bringing him to life. We [Taylor-Johnson and I] kind of both suggested I do a reading with Dakota, who was her favorite, and as soon as we got in the room and I started reading with Dakota I knew that I definitely wanted to do it. There's just like a tangible chemistry between us. It felt exciting and fun and weird and compelling.\" In response to the negative reaction that the casting drew from fans, producer Dana Brunetti said: \"There is a lot that goes into casting that isn't just looks. Talent, availability, their desire to do it, chemistry with other actor, etc. So if your favorite wasn't cast, then it is most likely due to something on that list. Keep that in mind while hating and keep perspective.\"\nDuring October 2013, actress Jennifer Ehle was in talks for the role of Anastasia's mother Carla. On October 12, 2013, Universal Pictures announced that Hunnam had exited the film due to conflicts with the schedule of his FX series \"Sons of Anarchy\". Alexander Skarsg\u00e5rd, Jamie Dornan, Christian Cooke, Theo James, Fran\u00e7ois Arnaud, Scott Eastwood, Luke Bracey, and Billy Magnussen were at the top of the list to replace Hunnam as Christian Grey. Finally, on October 23, 2013, Dornan was cast as Christian Grey. On October 31, 2013, Victor Rasuk was cast as Jos\u00e9 Rodriguez, Jr. On November 22, 2013, Eloise Mumford was cast as Kate Kavanagh. On December 2, 2013, singer Rita Ora was cast as Christian's younger sister Mia. Ora originally wanted to work on the soundtrack. On December 3, 2013, Marcia Gay Harden was cast as Christian's mother, Grace.\nFilming.\nIn September, filming was scheduled to start on November 5, 2013, in Vancouver, British Columbia. The following month, producer Michael De Luca announced filming would begin on November 13, 2013. Principal photography was again delayed and eventually started on December 1, 2013. Scenes were filmed in the Gastown district of Vancouver. Bentall 5 was used as the Grey Enterprises building.\nThe University of British Columbia serves as Washington State University Vancouver, from which Ana graduates. The Fairmont Hotel Vancouver was used as the Heathman Hotel. The film was also shot at the North Shore Studios. The production officially ended on February 21, 2014. Reshoots involving scenes between Dornan and Johnson took place in Vancouver during the week of October 13, 2014. The film was shot under the working title \"\"The Adventures of Max and Banks\".\" Uncredited screenwriter Mark Bomback said he \"had never been on a project with that much secrecy around it...The set was on lockdown\".\nThe film was the last project worked on by prolific Academy Award-winning editor Anne V. Coates before her death in 2018.\nIn an alternative ending, both Ana and Christian experience flashbacks. Christian jogs in the rain, while Ana sobs in her apartment. Christian encounters a gift Ana gave him with the note: \"This reminded me of a happy time. \u2014Ana\".\nMusic.\nThe film's soundtrack was released on February 10, 2015. \"Earned It\", by Canadian singer the Weeknd, was released as the lead single on December 24, 2014. The second single, \"Love Me like You Do\", by English singer Ellie Goulding, was released on January 7, 2015. Both singles reached the top three of the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. The promotional single, \"Salted Wound\", by Australian singer Sia, was released on January 27, 2015.\nAs of May 2018, the soundtrack has sold 516,000 copies in the United States.\nRelease.\nTheatrical.\nIn February 2013, Universal chairman Adam Fogelson said the film \"could be ready to release ... as early as next summer.\" The studio initially announced an August 1, 2014, release. However, in November 2013, it was pushed back to February 13, 2015, in time for Valentine's Day. \"Fifty Shades of Grey\" was first screened at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival on February 11, 2015. The film was released in 75 IMAX screens across the US on February 13, 2015.\nMarketing.\nOn January 25, 2014, more than a year prior to release, Universal displayed posters with the phrase, \"Mr. Grey will see you now\", in five locations across the United States.\nOn July 9, 2014, the book's author, E. L. James, said on Twitter that the film's trailer would be released on July 24, 2014. Beyonc\u00e9 debuted a teaser for the trailer on her Instagram account five days before the trailer's release. On July 24, Dornan and Johnson were on \"The Today Show\" to present part of the trailer appropriate for morning television; the full trailer, which contained more racy scenes, was released later the same day on the internet (200 days before its initial theatrical release). The trailer featured a new version of \"Crazy in Love\" by Beyonc\u00e9, which was scored and arranged by her frequent collaborator Boots. The trailer was viewed 36.4 million times in the week after its July 24 release. This made it the most viewed trailer on YouTube in 2014, until it was surpassed in October by the trailer for \"\". However, in mid-December the trailer reached 93 million views and was again the most viewed of 2014. The"}, "descending_order": ["35166850", "40218034"], "permutation_1": ["35166850", "40218034"], "permutation_2": ["35166850", "40218034"], "permutation_3": ["40218034", "35166850"]}
{"id": "nq_-3401407261038960654", "docs_added": {"3298895": "Flora of India\nPlants native to India\nThe flora of India is one of the richest in the world due to the wide range of climate, topology and habitat in the country. There are estimated to be over 18,000 species of flowering plants in India, which constitute some 6-7 percent of the total plant species in the world. India is home to more than 50,000 species of plants, including a variety of endemics. The use of plants as a source of medicines has been an integral part of life in India from the earliest times. There are more than 3000 Indian plant species officially documented as possessing into eight main floristic regions : Western Himalayas, Eastern Himalayas, Assam, Indus plain, Ganges plain, the Deccan, Malabar and the Andaman Islands.\nForests and wildlife resources.\nIn 1992, 743,534\u00a0km2 of land in the country was forested of which 92 percent was government land. This amounts to 22.7 percent land coverage, compared to the recommended 33 percent of the National Forest Policy Resolution 1952. The majority of trees are broad-leaved deciduous, with one-sixth \"sal\" and one-tenth teak. Coniferous types are found in the northern high altitude regions and largely comprise pines, junipers and \"deodars\". India's forest cover ranges from the tropical rainforest of the Andaman Islands, Western Ghats, and Northeast India to the coniferous forest of the Himalaya. Between these extremes lie the sal-dominated moist deciduous forest of eastern India; teak-dominated dry deciduous forest of central and southern India; and the babul-dominated thorn forest of the central Deccan and western Gangetic plain. Pine, fir, spruce, cedar, larch and cypress are the timber-yielding plants widely prevalent throughout the hilly regions of India.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "69939072": "Medical ethnobotany of India\nHerbal medicine practiced in India\nThe medical ethnobotany of India is the study of Indian medicinal plants and their traditional uses. Plants have been used in the Indian subcontinent for treatment of disease and health maintenance for thousands of years, and remain important staples of health and folk medicine for millions. Indians today utilize plants for both primary medical care (principally in Rural and undeserved areas) and as supplementary treatment alongside modern medical science. It is estimated that 70% of rural Indians use traditional plant based remedies for primary healthcare needs. This reliance of plants for medicine is consistent with trends widely observed in the developing world, where between 65% and 80% of people use medicinal plant remedies.\nHerbal medicine in India is largely guided by folk medicine, both in codified cultural practices shared widely (Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani), and highly localized practices unique to individual tribes or tribal groups (Adivasi). Between 3,000 and 5,000 species of medicinal plants grow in India with roughly 1,000 threatened with extinction. Of these, more than 2,400 plant species have been documented for medicinal use.\nHerbal Ayurveda.\nAyurveda practitioners believe certain plants can restore balance distorted by disease. The vast majority (90%) of Ayurvedic remedies are plant based.\nAlthough firmly rooted in folk medicine, Ayurvedic herbal remedies have been evaluated by laboratory and clinical studies to evaluate treatment efficacy. Some plants used in Ayurveda have biologically active secondary metabolites with potential value. Other remedies do not have established therapeutic value, and some may have deleterious health effects.\nAt least 700 plants have been identified from Ayurvedic medicinal systems. Although more than 12,000 Sanskrit plant names have been identified in classical Ayurvedic texts (including samhitas and nighantus) there is great difficulty in establishing exact botanical identities of many referenced species. Plants are prepared according to tradition, utilizing specific plant parts as indicated in historical texts. Ayurvedic belief stipulates that certain plant parts (e.g. leaf, flower, root) have specific properties key to treating disease.\nPlant properties in Ayurveda.\nAyurvedic medicine is guided by a complex set of cultural, religious, and textual practices. Despite diversity in its application and practice, it operates as a codified system of folk medicine with a coherent methodology. Broadly speaking, Ayurvedic practitioners evaluate plants for medical use by examining 5 purported physical and energetic properties:\nHerbal Preparations in Ayurveda.\nProcessing herbs.\nAyurvedic practitioners process plants with the goal of enhancing absorption. Shelf life and ease of production are additional concerns in herbal preparations. Some common herbal preparations include herbal paste (\"kalka\"), powder (\"curna\"), decoction (\"kasaya\"), teas (\"phanta\"), jams (\"paka\"), medicated wines (\"arista\"), pills (\"vati\"), and herbal oils (\"taila\").\nMixed herbal remedies and synergism.\nAyurvedic treatments are usually mixtures of multiple herbs (polyherbal formulations). Ayurvedic practitioners believe that certain herbs, when combined, have complementary effects which can enhance treatment efficacy; this concept is called synergism. The Ayurvedic text \"Sarangdhar Samhita\" (c. 1300 AD) emphasizes the importance of synergism. One common Ayurvedic remedy (trikatu) is prepared by combining ginger, long pepper, and black pepper as an aid for digestion or gastric distress. Ayurvedic practitioners believe that such combinations can enhance absorption. A 2014 review proposed several mechanisms that may be the basis for therapeutic herbal synergism.\nSafety and Medical Efficacy.\nAyurvedic medicine and drug interactions.\nHerbal preparations in Ayurveda can impact the absorption (or bioavailability) of pharmaceuticals. Because Ayurveda is often used by practitioners to supplement conventional modern medicine, the interactive effects of Ayurvedic treatments can medically significant. For instance, medicinal plant remedies can interfere with the cytochrome enzyme system (CYP), a network of liver enzymes extremely important in drug metabolism. Inhibiting or potentiating CYP enzymes is the most common adverse effect of herbal remedies on medication absorption. Potentiation of CYP can cause medication activity to drop low beyond the point of therapeutic effect, while inhibition of the CYP system can cause medication levels to spike dangerously high.\nSome Ayurvedic medicinal plants (\"Silybum marianum, Cannabis\" spp.) are CYP3A4 inhibitors. A commonly used antifungal medication, ketoconazole, is processed by the CYP3A4 enzyme. Use of this ketoconazole with any CYP3A4 inhibitor is potentially dangerous and a cause for medical concern. There are countless other herb-pharmaceutical interactions with potentially serious effects.\nResponsible Ayurvedic practitioners must take into account how herbal medications can interact with other drugs, or even other concurrent consumed herbals.\nQuality control.\nWhile some preparations may be of high quality, many herbal medicines and supplements are not subject to rigorous quality control. Herbal concoctions may contain little-to-nothing of the herb advertised, or may even be contaminated with heavy metals or other toxic substances. This is not an issue relegated to Ayurvedic practice, but is a global phenomenon, even in developed countries.\nRecognizing the key importance of herbal medications to healthcare in the developing world, the World Health Organization (WHO) has proposed quality control mechanisms for marketed medicinal plant medicines, including Ayurveda. This includes DNA barcoding to ensure contents of herbal preparations match advertised/labelled species. An important milestone was reached in 2019, when 65% of WHO member states had a documented registration system for herbal medicines, a significant improvement over the previous two decades.\nResearch into efficacy.\nIn 2021, a systemic review into Ayurvedic treatments for sinusitis determined the necessity of further rigorous clinical studies before conclusions about safety and efficacy could be reached. A major challenge in assessing Ayurvedic herbal medicines is substantial variation in quality between remedies. Multiple reviews on Ayurveda determined that standardization of quality and herbal contents is required for research. This includes research into herbal contents, therapeutic efficacy, chemical profiling of medicines, and identification of actual therapeutic modes of action (i.e., how the medicines actually work).\nAnother review found that Ayurvedic herbs could be the basis for research into neuroprotective compounds.\nEthnobotany by region.\nIndia is home to speakers of between 453 and 780 languages with many different cultures and subcultures present across 28 states and 8 union territories. This diversity is reflected in complex regional variation in the usage of herbal medicines. While Ayurveda and other elements of folk medicine are practiced nationally, the tribal peoples of India (Adivasi) have uses for medicinal plants unique to themselves or their geographic locale.\nAt least 50 million people belong to Adivasi communities, constituting at least 427 tribal groups (with some much higher estimates). Much regional variation in plant use can be attributed to the ethnobotany practiced by Adivasi in rural India. Local variations in climate, ecology, and culture determine the availability and use of medicinal plant species.\nEastern Ghats Range.\nThe Eastern Ghat Mountain range begins in the state of Odisha, traveling south through Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, terminating finally in Tamil Nadu. The Eastern Ghats, and the accompanying western portion of the central Deccan plateau, are characterized by a tropical savanna climate. Severe dry seasons allow for a landscape dominated by grasslands with sparse trees (savanna ecosystem) or tropical deciduous forests.\nThese mountains have been home to many tribal peoples since ancient times. In 2017, over 200 tribes were reported in the regions of the Eastern Ghats and Deccan plateau. A summary of ethnobotanical surveys identified 1,800 species of medicinal plants occurring in these regions of India, with 782 species actually used. Medicinal plants are used in codified indigenous healthcare practices, such as Ayurveda, as well as local practices unique to tribes or tribal groupings. Of the ethnic or tribal groups in this region, 54 are reported to utilize plants for their primary medical needs, though only 40 have been surveyed for exact plant species used.\nMedicinal plant taxonomy.\nThe 782 medicinal plants used in this region belong to 132 families. Overwhelmingly, identified plants belonged to the legume, dogbane, orchid, nightshade, and coffee families. Legumes (Fabaceae), the largest single family, accounted for 67 species. The most prolific genera were \"Cassia\" (Fabaceae) and \"Solanum\" (Solanaceae), each containing 11 species. By plant habit, utilized plants were herbs (41%), trees (24%), shrubs (22%) and lianas/vines (13%).\n75 species of plants used for medicine in the region are unique to the Eastern Ghats.\nLocal plants and their uses.\nOf 782 utilized plants, only 28 species were used by all assessed tribal communities. Plant species were most frequently utilized for issues relating to the stomach and skin disease, with 120 species being used as primary treatments in either of these problem categories.\n\"Abrus precatorius\" was the medicinal plant most widely cited in ethnobotanical surveys of the region. Although parts of the plant are extremely toxic and hazardous when ingested, leaves of this species are utilized for treatment of bronchitis, eczema, hepatitis, skin disease, gynecological disease and in treatment of venomous snake bites. \"Aegle marmelos\", or Bael, is a tree with religious significance utilized for treatment of gastrointestinal and skin disease. Although used throughout India as a treatment for jaundice, the plant creat (Hindi: kaalmegha) (\"Andrographis paniculata\") is used in the Eastern Ghats as an anti-malarial.\nTribal communities in this region are noted for the reverence paid to trees in religious practice.\nWestern Ghats and West Coast.\nThe Western Ghat Mountain range begins in the southeastern corner of Gujarat, traversing the states of Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, and Kerala. The western portion of these mountains, and the accompanying coastal regions, receive among the highest annual rainfalls of any part of India.The Malabar coast (from Goa to the southernmost part of peninsular India) receives over 250\u00a0cm of rain annually. These areas are characterized by a tropical monsoon/tropical wet climate. Coastal areas and much of the mountain slopes contain tropical evergreen and moist deciduous forests, with rain forests in Kerala.\nBecause of the rain shadow effect, eastern slopes of the Western Ghats and the accompanying portions of the Deccan Plateau are very dry, receiving <40\u00a0cm a year. This dry area, affecting eastern Gujarat, Maharasthra, and Karnataka, is classified as semi-arid steppe climate. These areas are qualify as tropical thorny woodland and dry deciduous forest.\nThe Western Ghats region is a global biodiversity hotspot, with more than 1500 endemic plant species. Though only 5% of India's landmass, the region contains about a third of India's plant species. As many as 35% of plant species here are endemic.\nTribal agriculture has been practiced in the Western Ghats for 4000 years. Tribal communities are usually focused in mountain areas, though some live in lowlands not far from cities, with at least 40 indigenous groups identified. Ethnobotanical surveys have found 2100 medicinal plants growing in this region, with at least 1116 used locally.\nAt least 50 medicinal plants unique to the Western Ghats and west coast region are threatened with extinction.\nMedicinal plant taxonomy.\nA 2017 survey found 31 species of shrubs and herbaceous plants used for purported anti-malarial properties. These plants belong to 23 different families, the most important being the legume (4 species), mint (3 species), coffee (2 species) and nightshade (2 species) families.\nLocal plants and their uses.\n104 plant species are used for treatment of fevers and malaria (inclusive of the 31 species specifically used for malaria).\nNortheast India.\nNortheast India (officially North Eastern Region, NER) is a complex region of eight Indian states and 45 million people. The region borders five countries: Nepal, Bhutan, China (Tibetan Autonomous Region), Myanmar, and Bangladesh. Geographically, Northeast India is bounded on the north by Eastern Himalayan mountains, the east by the Purvanchal/Patkai mountain ranges, and the southwest by the Gangetic plain. The northernmost states of Sikkim and Aryunachal Pradesh are formed by Himalayan valleys. The rugged eastern states (Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoram) are formed by the Patkai mountains and a series of steep hill ranges. Likewise, Meghalaya is a hilly state stretching across the northern border of Bangladesh. Assam is largely the river valley of the broad Bramaputra river.\nClimatically, Northeast India is largely defined by a subtropical climate with massive annual rainfalls. The flat sweep of the Gangetic plain ending in the Himalayas ensures that monsoons are particularly intense; the state of Meghalaya receives more rain than anywhere else on earth (>1200\u00a0cm per year).\nNortheast India is one of the most ethnically diverse regions in the world. These states contain 130 tribes with 300 distinct subtribes, over 200 ethnic groups, and 220 spoken languages. Many of India's tribal peoples are concentrated here, with the hilly states of Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Nagaland being 90% Adivasi by population. The largest state by population, Assam contains 30 million people, of which a minority are Adivasi.\nAt least 4,000 plant species have been documented in Northeast India with others likely undiscovered. The region is among the most biodiverse in India, containing half of all Indian species diversity and more than 25% of Indian endemic plants. 1,953 plants are used by tribal peoples of this region, accounting for 80% of all ethnomedicinal plants documented in India.\nMedicinal plant taxonomy.\nAt least 37 members of the ginger family (Zingiberaceae) have been identified as medicinal plants in NER, 88% of which were found in Arunachal Pradesh. A 2012 survey found the Dimasa tribe (Assam) used non-flowering plants like ferns and cycads. NER has over 80 species of \"Rhododendron\", with multiple documented ethnomedicinal uses.\nLocal plants and their uses.\nBecause NER is one of the most ethnically and botanically diverse places on the planet, broadly characterizing the utilization of medicinal plants here is difficult. Research into the indigenous use of plants in NER has been conducted since the 1970s. One of the most widely cited species in surveys, \"Ageratum conyzoides\" (flowers, leaves, roots and whole plant) is used for throat pain, helminth infections, arthritis, fever, malaria treatment, dysentery, and liver disease. Studies have identified this plant as carcinogenic. \"Mimosa pudica\" (sensitive plant) is used as treatment for skin infections, helminths, urological disease, toothaches and as a contraceptive. The rhizome of \"Acorus calamus\" (calamus, or Vac\u0101 in Sanskrit) is documented as a treatment for cough, cold, snake bite, asthma, rheumatic fever, and hemorrhoids. Though calamus is used in NER folk medicine (and in Ayurveda), this plant is considered extremely carcinogenic. \"Andrographis paniculata\" has been cited for use in stomach pain, malaria, and jaundice. Another plant widely referenced in ethnobotanical surveys, \"Callicarpa arborea\" is used for skin disease, leukorrhea, and treating scorpion stings.\nThe Meithei Manipuri people produce herbal vapors for the treatment of 41 diseases, using both single plant species and multi-species concoctions. \"Rhododendron arboretum\" is used to treat diarrhea, dysentery, throat pain, headaches, and fish bones stuck in throat.\nWestern Himalayas.\nThe Western Himalayas region consists of the states of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and the union territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh. The Central (Great) Himalayas are mostly within Nepal though a portion lie within Uttarkand. These states forms part of the foothills of the largest mountains on Earth. Climatically, much of the region is defined by a polar or tundra type climate, but southern portions of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand are humid subtropical. Vegetation includes alpine shrubs and meadows, subalpine conifer forests, Himalyan broadleaf dry forests, and subtropical deciduous and pine forests. A portion of dry grassland (the Bhabar) is found in lower Uttarakhand. Predominant trees include chir pine, blue pine, deodar, fir, and juniper.\nThere is substantial ethnic diversity in this region. At the broadest level, these Himalayan regions contain Indic, Tibetan-Burman, and Afghan-Persian speaking peoples.\nIn the Western Himalayas, Ladakh contains the nomadic mountain Changpas with agricultural Laddakhis, Dardi, and Balti peoples inhabiting valleys. Kashmir Valley (Jammu & Kashmir) and the Pirpanjal valley (Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh) are inhabited by Kashmiris, Gujjars, and Bakkarwal peoples. The Central Himalayas (Uttarakhand) contain the agirucltural Paharis in valley regions and the Tibetan-speaking Bhotiya peoples in the mountains. The Paharis are a diverse group are also found in Kashmir.\nBetween 4,000 and 5,000 plants are reported in the Western and Central Himalayas. Surveys have identified 1,338 medicinal plant species specifically from the state of Uttarakhand, 948 species from Jammu & Kashmir, and 643 species from Himachal Pradesh.\nMedicinal plant taxonomy.\nA review found 109 different families of medicinal plants in the former state of Jammu & Kashmir.\nLocal plants and their uses.\nPlants in this region most frequently used in medicinal preparations include \"Terminalia chebula, Terminlia bellirica, Emblica officinalis, Glycyrrhiza glabra\" (liquorice), \"Justicia adhatoda, Withania somnifera\", and \"Cyperus rotundus\".\nThe rhizome \"Curcuma domestica\" (turmeric) is used for cuts, burns, and scalds. Fruits of the \"Piper nigrum\" species (black pepper) are popularly used for colds and coughs. The fruits from \"Trachyspermum ammi\" (ajawain) and plants from the genus \"Ferula\" are commonly used to treat gastrointenstinal disorders and in some cases, whooping cough.\nIndo-Gangetic Region and central India.\nThe Indo-Gangetic Region and central Indian region consists of the 13 states of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and Chandigarh. These are the most populous region of India, with a combined total of almost 900 million people. Geographically, the area is defined by Outer Himalays (Siwalik Mountains) to the north, the sprawling Indo-Gangetic plain in the middle, and the more rugged central India. Central India consists of hills, a portion of the Deccan plateau, and the Aravalli and Satpura mountains. Flat coastal predominates in most of West Bengal. The Western border with Pakistan features the Thar desert, more than half of which lies within Rajasthan.\nThe dense population of the Indo-Gangetic Region ensures that much of the land is taken up sprawling urban areas and intensive agriculture. The region is climatically diverse, featuring desert, semi-arid areas, coastal areas and the central plain. Multiple forest ecosystems are found here, including tropical wet, tropical moist deciduous forests, tropical semi-evergreen, dry deciduous, and tropical thorn forests in the northern Deccan, Gangetic plains, and in semi-arid regions.\nThe vast majority of the people are speakers of Hindi languages. Some 90 scheduled tribes are found in these 13 states, including the Bhil and Gond peoples, the two largest Adivasi groups in India, together making up 70% of all members of scheduled tribes. Other tribes surveyed for medicinal plants include the Baiga, Bharia, Halba, Kaul, Korku, Maria, and Sahariya peoples.\nAround half of the flowering plants of India are found in these states (11,000-12,000 species). A 2017 survey identified 528 plant species used for medicine in this region. Another study records 610 species used by the tribal people of Rajasthan alone, though this includes food and shelter plants.\nMedicinal plant taxonomy.\nThe 528 medicinal plants used in this region belong to 112 families, the most important being the legume (74 species), mallow (30 species), Asteraceae (29 species), mint (24 species), and dogbane (21 species) families.\nLocal plants and their uses.\nLeaves are the plant part most frequently utilized. \"Azadirachta indica\" is a frequently cited species in ethnobotanical surveys, and used for the most diverse array of treatments. Local uses include treatment for snake bite, scorpion stings, skin disease, wounds, malaria, eczema, diabetes, even leprosy and tuberculosis.\nAndaman and Nicobar Islands.\nThe Andaman and Nicboar Islands are a union territory located southeast of continental India, consisting of two island chains. These islands have a tropical wet/monsoon climate with tropical rainforest vegetation. The more northerly Andaman Islands have some mixed deciduous forest, with a landscape of steep hills and valleys. Though dominated by a unique rainforest ecosystem, some Nicobar Islands are predominantly grassland and mangrove forests are found throughout coastal areas of both island chains. The islands are home to at least 2650 species of vascular plants and 150 plant families, with around 300 endemic species.\nThe indigenous inhabitants of the Andaman islands, the Andamanese, number in total less than 500 people. Surviving tribes include the Great Andamanese, the Jarawa, the Onge, and the Sentinelese. The majority of the population is now constituted of people from the Indian mainland (Tamil, Telugu, Oriya, Malayali, North Indian) as well as Bengali and Malayali peoples. Some 2000 Karen people inhabit the city of Mayabunder in Middle Andaman island.\nThe Nicobarese consist of some 22,000 people who share ancestry with Southeast Asians. On the island of Great Nicobar, the Nichobarese share the island with the Shompen people, a semi-nomadic tribe of hunter-gatherers confined to the island interior. About 200 Shompen people have been documented.\nA 2009 study documented 289 plant species used for medicinal purposes by the indigenous peoples of both the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Another study found 150 plant species used for 47 unique treatments by the people of Car Nicobar, the northernmost Nicobar island.\nLocal plants and their uses.\nThe indigenous Andamanese have lived a mixed agricultural/hunter-gatherer lifestyle for tens of thousands of years. Food crops consist of rice, coconuts, area, fruit, palm oil and cashews. Turmeric is an important spice used both in medicine and in cooking. The Great Andamanese chew and spray leaves of \"Polyalthia jenkinsii\" in order to deter bee attacks during honey gathering.\n\"Alstonia macrophylla\" is the plant most widely cited from ethnobotanical studies of both island chains.The bark, root, and leaves of this tree are used in the treatment of fever, gastric disorders, swelling, bone fractures, urinary tract infections, and skin diseases. \"Ocimum sanctum\" (Holy Basil) is documented as a plant used for cough and cold treatment. The ginger plant \"Zingiber squarrosum\" has petioles that are chewed to relieve thirst.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "37469142": "Biogeographic classification of India\nBiogeographic classification of India is the division of India according to biogeographic characteristics. Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species (biology), organisms, and ecosystems in geographic space and through geological time. India has a rich heritage of natural diversity. India ranks fourth in Asia and tenth in the world amongst the top 17 mega-diverse countries in the world. India harbours nearly 11% of the world's floral diversity comprising over 17500 documented flowering plants, 6200 endemic species, 7500 medicinal plants and 246 globally threatened species in only 2.4% of world's land area. India is also home to four biodiversity hotspots\u2014Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Eastern Himalaya, Indo-Burma region, and the Western Ghats. Hence the importance of biogeographical study of India's natural heritage.\nThe first initiative to classify the forests of India was done by Champion in 1936 and revised by Seth in 1968. This was followed by pioneering work on India's biogeography by MS Mani in 1974. Numerous schemes divide India into biogeographic regions as part of global schemes based on varying parameters, e.g. the Global 200 scheme of the Worldwide Fund for Nature. In addition, ongoing research focusing on particular taxa have included biogeographic aspects particular to the taxa under study and the area under consideration.\nRogers and Panwar of the Wildlife Institute of India outlined a scheme to divide India zoogeographically in 1988 while planning a protected area network for India. Similarly the Forest Survey of India has issued an atlas of forest vegetation types in 2011 based on Champion & Seth (1968). However, there is no official scheme mandated by the Government of India, as has been issued by the European Environment Agency in the case of the European Union.\nBiogeographic realms.\nAt the broadest level, referred to as realm in Udvardy (1975), all of India falls in the Indomalayan realm, with the exception of the high Himalayas, which fall in the Palearctic realm.\nMost of India falls in the \"Indian Subcontinent\" bioregion of the Indomalayan realm, which covers most of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka. The Hindu Kush, Karakoram, Himalaya, and Patkai ranges bound the bioregion on the northwest, north, and northeast; these ranges were formed by the collision of the northward-drifting Indian subcontinent with Asia beginning 45 million years ago. The Hindu Kush, Karakoram, and Himalaya are a major biogeographic boundary between the subtropical and tropical flora and fauna of the Indian subcontinent and the temperate-climate Palearctic realm.\nThe Nicobar islands on the other hand fall in the \"Sundaland\" bioregion of the Indo-Malayan realm.\nThe Himalayas proper form the southern limit of the Palearctic in South Asia, and here the Palearctic temperate forests transition to the subtropical and tropical forests of Indomalaya, creating a rich and diverse mix of plant and animal species.\nWWF habitat classification.\nBased on Olson et al. (2001), the Worldwide Fund for Nature divided the land area of world into 14 terrestrial biomes or habitat types, based on vegetation, which are further subdivided into a total of 867 terrestrial ecoregions, which are exemplars of the concerned biome or habitat type. The classification also includes seven fresh-water biomes and 5 marine biomes. Each biome contains many ecoregions that are examples of that type of habitat. The purpose of this classification scheme is to identify ecoregions that are conservation priorities. These priority regions are referred to collectively as the WWF's Global 200.\nOnly two terrestrial ecoregions from India \u2013 the Western Ghats and the Eastern Himalayas \u2013 figure in the Global 200 priority list of the WWF.\nTerrestrial biomes of India.\nThe following 11 terrestrial biomes are found in India:\nEcoregions of India.\nThe ecoregions of India, with details of states/union territories they occur in, and the concerned biome and realm are given in the table below. \nICFRE classification of the Forest types of India.\nThe first proper classification of forest types of India was done by Champion in 1936 and revised by S.K. Seth in 1968. It was further revised by Mathur in 2000. Champion and Seth (1968) classified the Indian forest using temperature and rainfall data into five major forest groups and 16 type groups (climatic types) and over 200 subgroup types. Although this classification was widely accepted, as time passed it was found to have certain drawbacks. The purpose of the classification by Champion was primarily forest use, specifically timber extraction. As time passed, the nature of Indian forestry changed to forest conservation, with new emphasis on the increasing role of forests in environment amelioration and climate change mitigation/adaptation. The classification into over 200 subgroups created problems of needless complexity for forest managers.\nThe Forest Survey of India (FSI), under the aegis of ICFRE, published the \"Atlas Forest Type of India\" in 2011. The forest type atlas contained forest type maps for India which were digitised for the first time. The forest type maps were prepared on 1;50,000 scale according to the Champion & Seth classification (1968) of the country and included States and UTs and districts. The output of this mapping exercise covers 178 out of 200 forest types described in the Champion & Seth classification (1968). Ground-proofing, further survey and reclassification actions are intended by the ICFRE to simplify this classification even further.\nBiogeographic zones.\nRogers and Panwar of the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) outlined a scheme to divide India zoogeographically in 1986 while planning a protected area network for India.\nThe scheme divided India into 10 biogeographic zones, and each zone is further subdivided into biogeographic provinces, which total 27 in number.\n1. Trans Himalayan zone.\n2. Himalayan zone\n3. Desert zone.\n4. Semiarid zone.\n5. Western ghat zone.\n6. Deccan plateau zone.\n7. Gangetic plain zone.\n8. North east zone.\n9. Coastal zone.\n10. Islands\nThe Himalayan ranges immediately north of the Great Himalayan range are called the Trans-Himalayas. It comprises three biogeographic provinces \u2013 Ladakh mountains, Tibetan plateau and Himalayan Sikkim. It accounts for ~5.6% of the country's landmass. This region mostly lies between and is very cold and arid. The only vegetation is a sparse alpine steppe. Extensive areas consist of bare rock and glaciers.\nThe Trans-Himalayan region with its sparse vegetation has the richest wild sheep and goat community in the world. The snow leopard, black and brown bears, wolf, marmots, marbled cat, ibex, and kiang is found here, as are the migratory Black-necked Cranes.\nThe Himalayas consist of the youngest and loftiest mountain chains in the world. The long Himalayan mountain arc have a unique biodiversity owing to their high altitude, steep gradient and rich temperate flora; biogeographically, they form part of the Palearctic realm. The Himalayas have three biogeographical provinces \u2013 Northwest Himalayas, West Himalayas, Central Himalayas and East Himalayas, which together constitute about 6.4% of the country's area.\nTropical rainforests predominate in the Eastern Himalayas while dense subtropical and alpine forests are typical in the Central and Western Himalayas. Oak, chestnut, conifer, ash, pine, and deodar are abundant in Himalayas. Important animals living in the Himalayan ranges include wild sheep, mountain goats, ibex, musk deer and serow. Red panda, black bear, dholes, wolves, martens, weasels, leopard and snow leopard are also found here. However carnivores are scarce and often locally threatened.\nThis region consists of two biogeographical provinces. The larger is the Thar or Great Indian Desert, adjoining Pakistan and which comprises Rajasthan and parts of Punjab and Haryana. The Indian part of the Thar desert occupies . The climate is characterised by very hot and dry summer and cold winter. Rainfall is less than 70\u00a0cm. The plants are mostly xerophytic. Babul, Kikar, and wild date palm grow in areas of moderate rainfall. The Indian Bustard, a highly endangered bird is found here. Camels, gazelles, foxes, spiny-tailed lizards and snakes are found in hot and arid parts of the desert.\nThe Rann of Kutch, which lies in Gujarat, is the second biogeographical province. The Rann is a large area of salt marsh that spans the border between Pakistan and India. The larger part is located mostly in Gujarat (primarily the Kutch district). It is divided into the Great Rann and Little Rann, each with distinct characteristics and fauna. The Rann of Kutch is the only large flooded grasslands zone in the Indo-Malayan region. The area has desert on one side and the sea on the other enables various ecosystems, including mangroves and desert vegetation. Its grassland and deserts are home to forms of wildlife that have adapted to its often harsh conditions. These include endemic and endangered animal and plant species, such as the Indian wild ass. The Rann is home to many resident and migratory bird populations including the greater flamingo, lesser flamingo, lesser florican and the houbara bustard. The Little Rann is home to the world's largest population of Indian wild ass. Other mammals found in the Rann include the Indian wolf, desert fox, chinkara, nilgai, blackbuck and others.\nAdjoining the desert are the semi-arid areas, a transitional zone between the desert and the denser forests of the Western Ghats. The natural vegetation is thorn forest. This region is characterised by discontinuous vegetation cover with open areas of bare soil and soil-water deficit throughout the year.\nThorny shrubs, grasses and some bamboos are present in some regions. A few species of xerophytic herbs and some ephemeral herbs are found in this semi-arid tract. 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{"id": "nq_-7501833780057394635", "docs_added": {"250309": "Automotive industry in the United Kingdom\n \nThe automotive industry in the United Kingdom is now best known for premium and sports car marques including: Aston Martin, McLaren, Bentley, Rolls-Royce, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mini and Lotus. Specialised sports car companies include: Ariel, BAC, Morgan, Caterham, AC Cars, Gordan Murray, TVR, Noble, Radical, Ginetta, Ultima Sports, Westfield, Lister, Arash and David Brown. Volume car manufacturers with a major presence in the UK include: Nissan, Toyota, Mini and Vauxhall. Commercial vehicle manufacturers active in the UK include Alexander Dennis, Dennis Eagle, IBC Vehicles, Leyland Trucks, TEVVA and the London Electric Vehicle Company.\nIn 2018 the UK automotive manufacturing sector had a turnover of \u00a382\u00a0billion, generated \u00a318.6\u00a0billion in value to the UK economy and produced around 1.5\u00a0million passenger vehicles and 85,000 commercial vehicles. In that year around 168,000 people were directly employed in automotive manufacturing in the UK, with a further 823,000 people employed in automotive supply, retail and servicing.\nThe UK is a major centre for engine manufacturing, and in 2018 around 2.71\u00a0million engines were produced in the country. The UK has a significant presence in auto racing and the UK motorsport industry currently employs around 38,500 people, comprises around 4,500 companies and has an annual turnover of around \u00a36\u00a0billion.\nThe origins of the UK automotive industry date back to the final years of the 19th century. By the 1950s, the UK was the second-largest manufacturer of cars in the world (after the United States), and the largest exporter. However, in subsequent decades the industry experienced considerably lower growth than competitor nations such as France, Germany and Japan, and by 2008 the UK was the 12th-largest producer of cars measured by volume. Since the early 1990s, many British car marques have been invested in by international companies including BMW (Mini and Rolls-Royce), Tata (Jaguar and Land Rover) and Volkswagen Group (Bentley).\nFamous and iconic British cars include the Aston Martin DB5, Aston Martin V8 Vantage, Bentley 4\u00bd Litre, Jaguar E-Type, Land Rover Defender, Lotus Esprit, McLaren F1, MGB, original two-door Mini, Range Rover, Rolls-Royce Phantom III and Rover P5. Notable British car designers include David Bache, Dick Burzi, Laurence Pomeroy, John Polwhele Blatchley, Ian Callum, Colin Chapman, Alec Issigonis, Charles Spencer King and Gordon Murray.\nHistory.\n1880 to 1900.\nThe inception of the British motor industry can be traced back to the mid-1880s when there were several key developments. One development was when Frederick Simms, a London-based consulting engineer, became friends with Gottlieb Daimler, who had, in 1885, patented a successful design for a high-speed petrol engine. Simms acquired the British rights to Daimler's engine and associated patents and from 1891 successfully sold launches using these Cannstatt-made motors from Eel Pie Island in the Thames. In 1893 he formed \"The Daimler Motor Syndicate Limited\" for his various Daimler-related enterprises.\nIn June 1895, Simms and his friend Evelyn Ellis promoted motor cars in the United Kingdom by bringing a Daimler-engined \"Panhard & Levassor\" to England and in July it completed, without police intervention, the first British long-distance motorcar journey from Southampton to Malvern.\nSimms' documented plans to manufacture Daimler motors and Daimler Motor Carriages (in Cheltenham) were taken over, together with his company and its Daimler licences, by London company-promoter H J Lawson. Lawson contracted to buy \"The Daimler Motor Syndicate Limited\" and all its rights and on 14 January 1896 formed and in February successfully floated in London \"The Daimler Motor Company Limited\". It then purchased from a friend of Lawson a disused cotton mill in Coventry for car engine and chassis manufacture where, it is claimed, the UK's first serial production car was made.\nGeorge Lanchester produced one of the first British cars between 1895 and 1896 having a single-cylinder 1306cc engine, he went on to sell the first car with disc brakes. In 1891 Richard Stephens, a mining engineer from South Wales, returned from a commission in Michigan to establish a bicycle works in Clevedon, Somerset. Whilst in the United States, he had seen the developments in motive power and by 1897 he had produced his first car. This was entirely of his own design and manufacture, including the two-cylinder engine, apart from the wheels which he bought from Starley in Coventry. This was probably the first all-British car and Stephens set up a production line, manufacturing in all, twelve vehicles, including four- and six-seater cars and hackneys, and nine-seater buses.\nEarly motor vehicle development in the UK had been effectively stopped by a series of Locomotive Acts introduced during the 19th century which severely restricted the use of mechanically propelled vehicles on the public highways. Following intense advocacy by motor vehicle enthusiasts, including Harry J. Lawson of Daimler, the worst restrictions of these acts, (the need for each vehicle to be accompanied by a crew of three, and a speed limit in towns), was lifted by the Locomotives on Highways Act 1896. Under this regulation, \"light locomotives\" (those vehicles under 3\u00a0tons unladen weight) were exempt from the previous restrictions, and a higher speed limit \u2013 was set for them. To celebrate the new freedoms Lawson organised the Emancipation Run held on 14 November 1896, the day the new Act came into force. This occasion has been commemorated since 1927 by the annual London to Brighton Veteran Car Run.\n1900 to 1939.\nThe early British vehicles of the late-nineteenth century relied mainly upon developments from Germany and France. By 1900 however, the first all-British 4-wheel car had been designed and built by Herbert Austin as manager of The Wolseley Sheep Shearing Machine Company. In 1901, backed by (Vickers Limited) brothers 'Colonel Tom' and Albert Vickers [la], Austin started what became Wolseley Motors in Birmingham and was the UK's largest car manufacturer until Ford overtook them in 1913.\nThe great bulk of the pioneering car producers, many of them from the bicycle industry, got off to a shaky start. Of the 200 British makes of car that had been launched up until 1913, only about 100 of the firms were still in existence. In 1910, UK vehicle production was 14,000 units. By 1913, Henry Ford had built a new factory in Manchester and was the leading UK carmaker, building 7,310 cars that year, followed by Wolseley at 3,000, Humber (making cars since 1898 in Coventry) at 2,500, Rover (Coventry car maker since 1904) at 1,800 and Sunbeam (producing cars since 1901) at 1,700, with the plethora of smaller producers bringing the 1913 total up to about 16,000 vehicles. Car production virtually came to an end during the war years 1914\u20131918, although the requirements of war production led to the development of new mass-production techniques in the motor industry.\nBy 1922, there were 183 motor companies in the UK, and by 1929, following the slump years, there were 58 companies remaining. In 1929, production was dominated by Morris (founded by William Morris in 1910 in Oxford) and Austin (founded by Herbert Austin in Birmingham in 1905 after he left Wolseley) which between them produced around 60% of total UK output. Singer (Coventry motorcycle manufacturer started building cars in 1905) followed in third place that year with 15% of production.\nIn 1932, the UK overtook France to become Europe's largest car producer (a position which it retained until 1955). In 1937, the UK produced 379,310 passenger cars and 113,946 commercial vehicles. To celebrate the granting of his peerage, William Morris upon becoming Viscount Nuffield, reorganised his motor vehicle companies in 1938, which by then included not only Morris Motors and MG, but also Wolseley and Riley (bicycle company founded in Coventry in 1890 and making cars since 1906), into the Nuffield Organization. In 1939, the top producers were Morris: 27%, Austin: 24%, Ford: 15%, Standard (founded in Coventry in 1903): 13%, Rootes (which had acquired Humber and Sunbeam): 11%, Vauxhall (building cars since 1903, acquired by GM in 1925): 10%.\n1939 to 1955.\nDuring the Second World War, car production in the UK gave way to commercial and military vehicle production, and many motor vehicle plants were converted to aircraft and aero engine production. Following the war, the UK Government had nationalised the steel industry; where priority was given to supplying foreign-revenue-raising export businesses. In 1947, steel was available only to businesses which exported at least 75% of their production. This, coupled with the inevitably limited competition from continental Europe, and with demand for new vehicles in America and in Australia being greater than the American industry alone could supply, resulted in British vehicle exports reaching record levels and the UK became the world's largest motor vehicle exporter. In 1937, the UK provided 15% of world vehicle exports. By 1950, a year in which 75% of British car production and 60% of its commercial vehicle production was exported, the UK provided 52% of the world's exported vehicles.\nThis situation remained until the mid-1950s, by which time the American industry production had caught up with American demand, and European production was recovering. By 1952, the American-owned producers in the UK (Ford and GM's Vauxhall) had between them a 29% share of the British market, which exceeded the share of either of the UK's two top domestically owned manufacturers. It was in that context that Viscount Nuffield agreed to the merger of his company, the Nuffield Organization, with Austin, to form the British Motor Corporation (BMC). Thus BMC, comprising Austin, Morris, MG, Riley and Wolseley was formed in 1952 and commanded a 40% share of the British market. German production was increasing yearly, and by 1953 it had exceeded that of France, and by 1956 it had overtaken that of the UK.\n1955 to 1968.\nBy 1955 five companies produced 90% of the UK's motor vehicle output: BMC, Ford, Rootes, Standard-Triumph and Vauxhall. Of the dozen or so smaller producers Rover and Jaguar were strong niche producers. By 1960 the UK had dropped from being the world's second largest motor vehicle producer into third place. Labour-intensive methods, and wide model ranges hindered opportunities to reduce manufacturing costs \u2013 the UK's unit costs were higher than those of their major Japanese, European and American competitors. Although rationalisation of motor vehicle companies had started, full integration did not occur. BMC continued to produce vehicles under the marque names of its incorporated companies, many of which competed with each other. Standard-Triumph's attempts to reduce costs by embracing a modern volume production strategy almost led to their bankruptcy in 1960, the result was that they were purchased by the commercial vehicle manufacturing company Leyland Motors. In 1966, BMC and Jaguar came together, to form British Motor Holdings (BMH). Leyland had achieved some sales success with Leyland-Triumph and in 1967 it acquired Rover. By 1966 the UK had slipped to become the world's fourth largest motor vehicle producer. Following a gradual process which had begun in 1964, Chrysler UK (CUK) had fully acquired Rootes by 1967.\nIn the context of BMC's wide, complex, and expensive-to-produce model range, Ford's conventionally designed Cortina challenging for the number one spot in the domestic market, and the heavy reliance of the British economy on motor vehicle production, in 1968 the Government brokered the merger of the successful Leyland-Triumph-Rover and the struggling BMH, to form Europe's fourth-largest car maker, the British Leyland Motor Corporation (BLMC). The new company announced its intention to invest in a new volume car range, and to equip its factories with the latest capital-intensive production methods.\nBMC's Mini, designed by Alec Issigonis, had revolutionized the small car market in 1959, and the car remained among the UK's best selling cars for more than 20 years after its launch, the last version finally rolling off the production line on 4 October 2000 after a run of 41 years. The Rootes Group launched the similar-sized Hillman Imp four years later, but by the end of the 1960s Ford and Vauxhall had yet to launch a comparable product, and even with foreign imports slowly starting to gain ground on the British market, Italy's Fiat 500 was one of the few comparable alternatives to the virtual monopoly of the Mini and Hillman Imp in this sector of the market.\nAlso designed by Alec Issigonis was the Morris Minor, which was heavily updated in 1956 having originally gone into production in 1948. It earned a reputation for low running costs, good reliability and competitive pricing, and continued to sell well throughout the 1960s in spite of the popularity of BMC's 1100/1300 range which was launched in 1962, The Morris Minor was also the first British car to reach one million in production in 1961 with this record number reached a special model of the Morris Minor was created and sent to all of the main dealerships under the name \"Morris Million\".\nFord's competitor in this sector was the Anglia, which featured unconventional styling but was still one of the country's most successful cars from its launch in 1959 up to the end of production in 1967, after which it was replaced by the Escort. Other British competitors in this sector were the Vauxhall Viva and Hillman Minx.\nLarger family cars enjoyed strong sales in the 1960s, namely the Ford Cortina (launched in 1962), Austin/Morris 1800 (1964) and Vauxhall Victor (1957). Later in the 1960s, the Rootes Group launched a new competitor in this growing sector of the market - the Hillman Hunter.\nThe Rover P6, launched in 1963 and the first winner of the European Car of the Year award, was arguably the most popular luxury model in the UK during the 1960s.\nThe iconic Jaguar E-Type sports car, designed by Malcolm Sayer, with a top speed of and the choice of a coupe or roadster bodystyle, was launched in 1961 and would remain in production until 1975. Cheaper sports cars also enjoyed strong sales during the 1960s, including the MG B and Triumph Spitfire which were launched in the early part of the decade, and the Ford Capri which was launched just before the decade's end.\nThe 1960s saw a slow but sure increase in the popularity of foreign cars on the British market. Volkswagen of West Germany had imported the iconic Beetle to Britain since 1953; this car was first launched in 1937 as a \"people's car\" for the German market under the Nazi regime. Its arrival on the UK market less than a decade after the end of World War II was met with hostility, with many examples being vandalised soon after being distributed, but it quickly became popular, with nearly 10,000 being sold in 1959. Volkswagen also began importing examples of its people carrier and van models, and by 1963 had sold 100,000 cars in Britain.Renault of France had actually built UK market versions of its cars at a site in Acton, West London, from 1902 until 1962, but its popularity actually increased after the end of UK production, helped by the arrival of the Renault 4 minicar in 1961 and the world's first production hatchback model, the Renault 16, in 1965. By the end of the decade, it had launched a smaller hatchback model, the Renault 6, and a mid-range saloon, the Renault 12, and was continuing to grow in popularity. Renault's French rival Peugeot also enjoyed success in the 1960s with its 404 saloon and even more so with its successor, the 504, which was launched in 1968. This set the scene for even more sales for foreign carmakers on the UK market during the next two decades, as their market share continued to grow.\nJapanese cars also started to appear on the UK market during the 1960s, although they were a rare on British roads until exploding in popularity during the early 1970s. The Daihatsu Compagno was the first Japanese car to be sold in Britain when imports began during 1964. This car was not popular with British buyers and was withdrawn from sale within a few years, although Daihatsu would return to the UK market in the early 1980s. A year later, Toyota became the second Japanese carmaker to import cars to Britain. It was followed shortly afterwards by Nissan (which used the Datsun brand for the UK market) and Mazda. Honda was also enjoying great success on the motorcycle market by this stage, although it didn't start importing passenger cars to the UK until 1972.\n1968 to 1987.\nBy 1968, UK motor vehicle production was dominated by four companies: BLMC, Chrysler (UK), Ford, and Vauxhall (GM). The Rootes Group had taken on the name Chrysler UK after its takeover by the American car giant Chrysler, which had also taken over French carmaker Simca.\nThe national champion, BLMC (British Leyland from 1968), was handicapped in its attempts to modernise by internal rivalries. Unattractive new products (particularly the Austin Allegro and Morris Marina) which were widely criticised by the motoring press, retention of legacy marques and models, labour disputes, quality issues, supplier problems and inefficient use of new equipment thwarted the dream of efficient high volume production. Increased overseas competition and high unit costs led to lowered profits, which in turn jeopardised investment plans. Although the cars continued to sell well in Britain, they were less popular on overseas markets. As well as that, the company often produced several cars to compete in the same market sector. For instance, it produced four competitors for the Ford Cortina at the same time - the Morris Marina, Austin Maxi, Triumph Dolomite and the Princess.\nJapanese cars, particularly the Datsun badged cars built by Nissan enjoyed a strong surge in popularity during the first half of the 1970s, while French carmaker Renault and West German carmaker Volkswagen also enjoyed an upturn on the British market, helped by the arrival of well-received new cars, particularly the Renault 5 in 1972 and the Volkswagen Golf in 1974.\nThe fortunes of foreign carmakers on the British market were also assisted by the fact that most British manufacturers adopted the hatchback bodystyle, mostly featuring front-wheel drive, considerably later than their continental rivals. For instance, the arrival of the front-wheel drive Volkswagen Golf hatchback in 1974 came four years before any of the four British-based carmakers had launched an equivalent car. By the time the first small British-built hatchback, the Vauxhall Chevette, was launched in 1975, the French Renault 5 had already been in production for three years. However, British Leyland's larger Austin Maxi had been sold with a hatchback and front-wheel drive since its 1969 launch, although it sold similar-sized cars like the Morris Marina and Triumph Dolomite alongside it as a rear-wheel drive saloon alternative, with the Dolomite being sold further upmarket than the Marina. For buyers wanting six-cylinder and larger four-cylinder engines, the Princess was launched in 1975. Chrysler launched the Alpine for this market sector in 1975, featuring front wheel drive and a hatchback, but kept the Hunter in production alongside it until 1979 for buyers who still preferred rear-wheel drive and a saloon or estate bodystyle.\nAt the luxury end of the market, British Leyland was actually one of the first manufacturers in the world to put a hatchback on an upmarket car when it launched the Rover SD1 in 1976. This car signalled the beginning of rationalisation at British Leyland, with the SD1 replacing two model ranges - the Rover P6 and Triumph 2000/2500.\nThe popularity of Nissan's range of Datsun-badged cars in the 1970s was largely down to their low prices, cheap running costs, good equipment levels and a reputation for better reliability than most British cars, although these cars also went on to gain a reputation for being prone to rust.\nBLMC's share of the UK market dropped from 40% to 32% between 1971 and 1973, with its new Morris Marina and Austin Allegro family cars selling well on the British market but not proving popular on many export markets, with the motoring media being critical of the styling of these new models as well as questions regarding the level of quality.\nBy 1974, the UK's position as a world motor vehicle manufacturer had dropped to sixth place. In 1974, both BLMC and Chrysler UK appealed to the UK Government for financial help. The Government rejected the idea of a merger between the two companies, and instead Chrysler UK received a loan and BLMC was subjected to a series of studies to determine its future. The Government's official BLMC enquiry, led by Lord Ryder, suggested that BLMC's strategy was sound, but required huge state investment to improve productivity by providing mechanisation and improving labour relations.\nDespite the effective nationalisation of BLMC as British Leyland (BL) in 1975, the recovery never happened. Chrysler sold its European interests (including those in the UK) to Peugeot in 1978, to allow it to concentrate on its own difficulties in the United States. The UK interests were renamed Peugeot-Talbot, with production of the Chrysler-developed cars continuing, with the last Rootes-developed car, the Avenger, being discontinued in 1981. Peugeot also developed a saloon version of the Alpine called the Solara, and also launched the larger Tagora, which had been in development by Chrysler when it sold its European operations. It also replaced the entry-level Sunbeam with the Peugeot based Samba in 1981.\nAs in most other developed countries, the 1970s saw major changes to the cars produced in the UK. Front-wheel drive, which had been pioneered by BMC on several new models between 1959 and 1965, now became a common feature on family cars after decades of producing only rear-wheel drive models. The hatchback bodystyle, which had debuted in Europe on the French Renault 16 in 1965, became more popular, with many of Britain's best-selling cars being available with a hatchback by the early-1980s.\nMany Ford and Vauxhall models were also being produced at their parent company's continental factories by 1980. Ford had switched Capri and Granada production to Germany by this stage, while production of its new Fiesta supermini was divided between Britain, West Germany and a new plant in Spain from its 1976 launch. General Motors had not only decided to make its Vauxhall and Opel badged cars mechanically identical during the 1970s, but it had also imported some of its Vauxhall-badged cars from Opel factories in West Germany and Belgium, and its Corsa supermini (Vauxhall Nova in the UK) was solely assembled at a factory in Zaragoza, Spain, which opened in 1982. British Leyland's overseas outposts in countries like Italy (where cars were produced under the Innocenti brand) were gradually closed down or sold to other carmakers, so by the 1980s; it was entirely a British-based operation.\nBy the end of the 1970s, Ford, Peugeot-Talbot and Vauxhall (GM) were well-integrated with their parent companies' other European operations. BL stood alone in the UK as an increasingly junior player. As part of the drive for increased productivity in the late-1970s, BL reduced its workforce and number of plants, and strived to centralise its management activities. The city of Coventry suffered particularly badly, with many thousands becoming unemployed after the closure of the Triumph car factory in the city in 1980.\nIn 1979, BL struck a collaboration deal with Honda to share the development and production of a new mid-sized car (Triumph Acclaim/Honda Ballade), which was launched in 1981. The new car combined Honda engine and transmission designs with a BL body, as did its successor model - the Rover 200 Series - in 1984. The next plan was to work on a new luxury car together, the end product being the Rover 800 Series, which arrived in 1986.\nAlthough UK politics changed in 1979 with the election of the Conservative Party, the UK Government continued to support BL with funds for the development of a new mass-market model range (Mini Metro, Maestro, Montego and another Honda collaboration the Rover 800), which were all launched between 1980 and 1986. The Metro was the most successful of these cars.\nCar assembly, with the exception of Jaguar, was concentrated into two central plants \u2013 Longbridge and Cowley. In July 1986, BL was renamed the Rover Group.\nBy the mid-1980s, front-wheel drive was now the standard on mass market cars, with most new models having a hatchback bodystyle as at least an option. Although Ford had adopted front-wheel drive for its new Spanish built Fiesta supermini in 1976 and the third generation Escort in 1980, it had curiously retained rear-wheel drive for its larger Sierra (the Cortina replacement) in 1982, although the Sierra did feature a hatchback bodystyle and was not available as a saloon until 1987. In 1983, it recognised the continuing demand for smaller and medium-sized family saloons by introducing the Orion, which was based on the Escort floorpan.\nThe supermini sector had expanded rapidly since the early-1970s. BMC's Mini had remained popular beyond its twentieth anniversary, but successor organisation British Leyland had started work on a more modern and practical alternative by the mid-1970s, the final result being the Austin Metro in 1980 - the new car featured more modern styling and a hatchback bodystyle. Chrysler Europe had axed the long-running Hillman Imp (launched by the Rootes Group in 1963) in 1976 and replaced it with the Chrysler Sunbeam hatchback a year later. General Motors had already adopted this bodystyle with the Vauxhall Chevette (which was also available as a saloon or estate) and Ford with the Fiesta. Comparable foreign products like the Fiat 127, Renault 5 and Volkswagen Polo were also proving popular in the UK.\nFord had now divided its European operations between its British factories and other European plants in Spain, Belgium and West Germany. General Motors had started importing some of its West German and Belgian built Opel products to the UK to be badged as Vauxhalls, and by 1983 its Nova supermini (badged as the Opel Corsa on the continent) was built solely in its Spanish factory. Peugeot was dividing production of most of the Talbot badged vehicles between the Ryton plant near Coventry (the Linwood plant in Scotland closed in 1981) and its French factories by the early-1980s, and started producing its own models at Coventry in 1985 after deciding to axe the Talbot marque due to falling sales.\nForeign carmakers continued to gain ground on the British market during the 1980s, with the likes of Renault, Peugeot, Citroen (France), Volvo (Sweden), Volkswagen (West Germany) and Fiat (Italy) proving particularly popular.\nThe Russian-built Lada, first sold in the UK in 1974, also sold well, despite its outdated Fiat-sourced design; with buyers mostly being attracted by its low price. By the late-1980s, with the four-wheel drive Niva and a front-wheel drive hatchback, the Samara, complementing the long-running Riva, Lada sales in Britain had amounted to more than 30,000 a year (some 1.5% of the new car market), but tailed off after 1990 as a result of growing competition and a lack of new model launches. Imports to Britain finally ceased in 1997 due to Lada's difficulties in meeting emissions requirements. Skoda also enjoyed similarly decent sales of its well-priced rear-engined saloon cars during the 1970s and 1980s, going from strength to strength in the 1990s following its takeover by Volkswagen and the launch of new model ranges with modern technology and styling. Zastava's Yugo-badged cars, based on Fiat designs from the 1970s, also sold reasonably well in Britain during the 1980s, but the carmaker was forced to halt imports in 1992 due to sanctions imposed on Yugoslavia as a result of the civil war there. Polish carmaker FSO imported its version of the Fiat 125 to Britain from 1975, later launching a hatchback model (the Polonez) alongside it. However, by 1998, Skoda was the only Eastern European carmaker still exporting cars to Britain, now competing with budget-priced Asian cars from the likes of Daewoo, Kia, Hyundai and Proton.\nNissan had axed the Datsun brand by 1984 and used its own name on all cars, and in 1986 opened a factory in Britain near Sunderland, which produced the mid-range Bluebird hatchbacks and saloons, although it was the Japanese-built Micra which was the company's best-selling car in Britain during the 1980s.\nThe decade also saw the arrival of purpose-built people carriers on the British market, starting with the Japanese Mitsubishi Space Wagon in 1984, and then the market-leading Renault Espace in 1985, but by the end of the decade this type of vehicle still had only a very small share of the British market and there were still no British-built people carriers available, although a few seven-seater estate models including Austin Rover's Montego were being produced.\nThe decade also saw a fall in demand for sports cars, perhaps due to the rising popularity of \"hot hatchbacks\" (high performance versions of hatchback cars), and so a number of manufacturers pulled out of the sports car market. British Leyland finished production of its MG and Triumph sports cars early in the decade, with no replacement. General Motors had launched coupe versions of its Cavalier mid-range model in the 1970s, but did not produce any equivalent models of the MK2 Cavalier which arrived in 1981. It did, however, continue to offer the German-built Opel Manta to British buyers until the end of production in 1988, replacing it with the Calibra (also built in Germany) a year later. Ford had enjoyed success in the 1970s with its Capri coupe, but this declined in popularity after 1980 and when production ended in 1986, there was no direct replacement.\nAs well as the rebranding of the former Rootes Group and its eventual integration into Peugeot, the 1980s also saw the disappearance of several long-established car brands. Production of MG sports cars finished when the Abingdon factory closed in 1980, although the brand was quickly revived on higher performance versions of the Metro, Maestro and Montego. 1980 also saw the closure of the Triumph factory at Canley, Coventry, although the marque survived until 1984 - the same year that the Morris marque was discontinued after more than seventy years. The Morris Ital's successor, the Montego, was sold under the Austin and MG brands, while the Triumph Acclaim's successor was sold as the Rover 200 Series. By 1988, however, the Austin marque had also been phased out, with the former Austin-badged products now being incorporated into the Rover brand.\nGeneral Motors enjoyed an upturn in Britain during the 1980s, as its Vauxhall-badged cars increased their market share and the company's image also improved. At the beginning of 1980, it replaced the Viva with a new front-wheel drive range of hatchback and estates - the Astra, which was built in Britain and also in Opel factories on the continent. The MK2 Cavalier was launched in 1981, and became the company's best selling car of the decade. Its replacement for the Chevette was the Nova, a rebadged version of the Spanish built Opel Corsa, which was launched in 1983. The MK2 Astra was voted European Car of the Year shortly after its launch in 1984, as was the flagship MK2 Carlton (Opel Omega on the continent) two years later.\n1987 to 2001.\nIn July 1986, Nissan became the first Japanese carmaker to set up a production facility in Europe, when it opened a new plant in Sunderland. The plant initially produced the Bluebird and from 1990 its successor, the Primera, with the MK2 Micra joining it in 1992. Toyota opened a new plant in Burnaston near Derby at the beginning of 1992.\nPeugeot started production of the Peugeot 309 hatchback at Ryton (originally a Rootes Group factory) in October 1985, followed by the Peugeot 405 two years later. During the 1990s, production of the 306 and 206 also began at Ryton.\nHonda's venture with Austin Rover/Rover Group saw a number of different designs shared between the two marques. The venture came to an end in February 1994 when British Aerospace sold Rover Group to the German carmaker BMW for \u00a3800 million. The takeover meant that, for the first time in 112 years, the United Kingdom no longer had a British-owned volume car maker. BMW's ownership of the Rover Group saw the development of several newer, more upmarket models, giving the British brand an image to match that of its parent company. BMW also revived the MG marque in 1995 on a new affordable sports car, the MGF, as well as strengthening Land Rover's position in the off-roader market. In March 2000 BMW controversially announced the break-up of the Rover Group. It retained the rights to the Mini marque, while selling Land Rover to Ford. The MG and Rover marques were sold to the Phoenix Consortium, who branded the remains of the group as MG Rover and concentrated all production at the Longbridge plant. After the split from Rover, Honda continued making the Civic range in the UK at a new plant in Swindon.\nFord acquired Aston Martin for an undisclosed sum in September 1987 and Jaguar for US$2.38 billion in November 1989. Production of the new small Jaguar, the X type, started at Halewood in late 2000. By the end of the century, Ford had also acquired Land Rover.\nIn 1998 Vickers plc put Rolls-Royce Motors, including Bentley, up for auction. Volkswagen Group won the auction with a bid of US$780 million, but Rolls-Royce plc, which had the right to block a transfer of the Rolls-Royce name to non-British owners, agreed to sell the rights to BMW for US$65 million. It was subsequently agreed that control of the Rolls-Royce marque would pass from Volkswagen to BMW in 2003.\nIn 1995, Ford finally entered the decade-old people carrier market with its Galaxy, which was built in Portugal alongside the identical Volkswagen Sharan and Seat Alhambra as part of a venture between Ford and Volkswagen. Vauxhall entered this sector of the market a year later with the American-built Sintra, but this was not popular with British buyers and was discontinued after just three years when the smaller, German-built Zafira was launched, and proved far more popular than Vauxhall's original entry into the MPV market.\nThe affordable sports car market enjoyed a revival in the 1990s after going into virtual hibernation in the 1980s. Sparked by the popularity of the Japanese-built Mazda MX-5 after its launch in 1989, Rover began development on a new sports car in the early 1990s, finally launching the MG F two-seater roadster in 1995, 15 years after the demise of the last volume MG sports cars. The 1996 Lotus Elise also enjoyed relatively strong sales in this market sector, as did the Vauxhall VX220 (based on the Elise) which was launched in 2000. Ford, which had exited the sports car market by 1987 with the demise of the Capri to concentrate on faster versions of its best-selling hatchbacks and saloons, returned to this market sector in 1994 with the American-built Probe, and then enjoyed more success with its smaller Puma between 1997 and 2002.\n2001 to 2011.\nIn May 2000 Ford announced that passenger car assembly as its Ford Dagenham plant would cease in 2002, ending 90 years of Ford passenger car assembly in the UK. At the same time Ford announced that it would invest US$500\u00a0million in the expansion of a diesel engine factory at the site, making Dagenham its largest diesel engine center worldwide and creating about 500 new jobs to offset the 1,900 lost in vehicle assembly for a total loss of 1,400. In December 2004 Ford announced a further investment of \u00a3169\u00a0million in the Dagenham plant, increasing annual output to one million diesel engines.\nThe closure of Vauxhall's Luton car assembly plant in March 2003 left Ellesmere Port as the sole Vauxhall assembly plant remaining in the UK. General Motors also retained the former Bedford works in Luton for producing vans such as the Vivaro and the Movano as well as Renault and Nissan badged variants. In April 2007, it was confirmed that the Ellesmere Port would produce the next generation Astra from 2010.\nLosses at Jaguar led to closure of the company's Browns Lane plant in Coventry in 2004. Spare capacity at Halewood allowed Land Rover Freelander production to be transferred there in 2006.\nMG Rover spent the early part of the 2000s investigating possible ventures with other carmakers in order to develop a new range of cars. Proposed links with foreign organisations including Malaysian carmaker Proton failed to materialise, and by late 2004 Chinese carmaker SAIC Motor had shown an interest in taking over the Longbridge-based firm \u2013 which was now hundreds of millions of pounds in debt. Talks broke down and the firm went into receivership in April 2005 with the loss of more than 6,000 jobs. Three months later, the firm's assets were purchased by another Chinese carmaker \u2013 Nanjing Automobile \u2013 and Longbridge partially re-opened over the summer of 2007 with an initial workforce of around 250 preparing to restart production of the MG TF which was relaunched in August 2008.\nIn April 2006 Peugeot closed its Ryton plant and moved 206 production to Slovakia. In 2007, Ford sold Aston Martin to a British-led Consortium backed by Middle East investors, retaining a small stake in the company and agreeing to continue the supply of components including engines. In 2008 Ford sold Jaguar Land Rover to Tata Motors of India for \u00a31.15\u00a0billion. In November 2009, Dutch sportscar maker Spyker Cars announced that it would be moving production from Zeewolde to Whitley, Coventry, and UK production began in February 2010.\nIn March 2010 McLaren Automotive unveiled its MP4-12C model, alongside plans to produce around 4,000 cars per year at its Woking factory by the middle of the decade. At the Paris Motor Show in September 2010 Lotus Cars unveiled five new models due to go on sale by 2016, alongside plans for an investment of \u00a3770\u00a0million over 10 years, the complete redevelopment of its Hethel factory and an increase in production from under 3,000 cars per year to 6,000 to 7,000. In December 2010 it was announced that Renault had sold its remaining 25% shareholding in its eponymous Formula 1 team to Lotus Cars, and that the team would be renamed Lotus Renault in 2011.\n2011 to 2019.\nIn January 2011 BMW announced that it would be extending the Mini range with the launch of two new two-door sports crossover vehicles based on the Mini Paceman concept car, with a coupe version to enter production in 2011 and a roadster in 2012. In March 2011 Jaguar Land Rover announced that it would be hiring an additional 1,500 staff at its Halewood plant, and signed over \u00a32\u00a0billion of supply contracts with UK-based companies, to enable production of its new Range Rover Evoque model. In April 2011 the MG Motor subsidiary of SAIC Motor announced that mass production had resumed at the Longbridge plant, as the first MG 6 to be produced in the United Kingdom came off the production line. In May 2011 Jaguar unveiled plans to build the C-X75 petrol-electric hybrid supercar in the UK from 2013, with production to be in association with Williams Grand Prix Engineering; Jaguar announced the cancellation of the project in December 2012 due to the ongoing global economic crisis.\nIn May 2011, Aston Martin Lagonda confirmed that it was planning to revive the Lagonda marque, with the launch of two or three new models. In an interview with Reuters in the same month, Carl-Peter Forster, the Chief Executive of Tata Motors, revealed that Jaguar Land Rover would be investing over \u00a35\u00a0billion in product development over the succeeding five years.\nIn June, Nissan announced that the replacement for its Qashqai model would be designed and built in the UK, in a total investment of \u00a3192\u00a0million safeguarding around 6,000 jobs. In June BMW announced an investment of \u00a3500\u00a0million in the UK over the subsequent three years as part of an expansion of the Mini range to seven models. In September 2011, Jaguar Land Rover confirmed that it would be investing \u00a3355\u00a0million in the construction of a new engine plant near Wolverhampton, to manufacture a new family of four-cylinder petrol and diesel engines. Later in the same month it was announced that the Jensen marque would be revived, with a new version of the Interceptor to be built by CPP Holdings at the former Jaguar factory Browns Lane in Coventry. In November, Toyota announced plans to make the UK its sole European manufacturing base for hatchback versions of its next C-segment family car, resulting in the investment of over \u00a3100\u00a0million in its Burnaston plant and the creation of around 1,500 new jobs.\nIn September 2013 it was announced that a new National Automotive Innovation Campus would be built at the University of Warwick's main campus at a cost of \u00a3100 million, with \u00a345 million to be contributed by Jaguar Land Rover.\nIn the half-year from January to June 2014, the UK had its best year in new car sales in 9 years. 1.28 million new cars were sold during the period, a rise of 10% compared to the same period in 2013. In 2014, more than 1.5 million cars were produced, the highest since 2007.\nThe Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) figures show a total of 2.31 million new cars were registered in 2019, down 2.4% from the year before. It was the third consecutive year of decline, and the SMMT expects that trend to continue in 2020.\nIn the year 2019, the best selling vehicle in the UK was Ford Fiesta, followed by Volkswagen Golf, Ford Transit, Ford Focus, and Vauxhall Corsa.\nIn 2019, Honda announced that its Swindon plant will close by 2021.\nIn June 2019, Ford announced that it would close its Ford Bridgend Engine Plant by September 2020 due to a lack of demand for the \"Dragon\" engine produced there. The plant was closed on 25 September 2020.\nFrom 2020.\nIn March 2021, Aston Martin announced that their electric sports models would be manufactured at their car plant in Gaydon, Warwickshire.\nAssembly plants.\nThere are numerous small companies manufacturing a small number of cars such as David Brown Automotive, Lister Cars, Lightning Car Company and Atalanta Motors.\nCar design.\nThe UK has a strong design and technical base, with several foreign companies basing some of their research and development resource in the UK, including:\nIndependent designers and design companies include:\nMotorsport.\nIt has been estimated that there are about 4,000 companies in the UK involved in the manufacturing industry related to motorsport.\nFormula One motor racing has made its home in the UK, with seven of the ten teams competing in the 2024 season based in or having their European headquarters in England:\nFormula One engine suppliers:\nOther major motorsports teams and organisations:\nInactive marques.\nCurrently inactive British automotive marques include:\nAllard,\nAlvis,\nArmstrong Siddeley,\nAustin,\nAutovia,\nDaimler,\nDeLorean,\nGilbern,\nGordon-Keeble,\nHealey,\nHillman,\nHumber,\nJensen,\nJowett,\nLanchester,\nLea-Francis,\nMorris,\nNapier,\nReliant,\nRiley,\nRover,\nSinger,\nStandard,\nSterling,\nSunbeam,\nSunbeam-Talbot,\nTalbot,\nTriumph,\nTVR,\nVanden Plas,\nWolseley Motors.\nDealership groups.\nThere has been significant consolidation of car dealerships in the UK, leading to several large and notable dealership groups. As of June 2021, Sytner Group is the largest with a turnover of \u00a34.92 billion.\nCar market.\nDespite the loss of mass-market British marques, car models that are built in the UK are generally popular in the UK sales charts, examples being the Nissan Qashqai.\nAs of 2014[ [update]] 2.45 million cars were sold in the UK, with the Volkswagen Group having a 20.8% share, Ford Motor Company having 13.2% and General Motors having 11.3%. Subcompact and compact cars were the most popular sizes although SUVs were gaining a significant foothold. The Fiat 500 was the best selling A-segment product, Ford Fiesta the best selling in the B-segment, Ford Focus best selling in the C-segment and BMW 3 Series best selling in the D-segment.\nIn 2019, the best selling car model in the UK was Ford Fiesta followed by Volkswagen Golf and Ford Focus.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nstyle=\"width:100%\" class=\"wraplinks\""}, "descending_order": ["250309"], "permutation_1": ["250309"], "permutation_2": ["250309"], "permutation_3": ["250309"]}
{"id": "nq_-6724298500307671701", "docs_added": {"22934": "Probability\nBranch of mathematics concerning chance and uncertainty\nProbability is a branch of mathematics and statistics concerning events and numerical descriptions of how likely they are to occur. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and 1; the larger the probability, the more likely an event is to occur. This number is often expressed as a percentage (%), ranging from 0% to 100%. A simple example is the tossing of a fair (unbiased) coin. Since the coin is fair, the two outcomes (\"heads\" and \"tails\") are both equally probable; the probability of \"heads\" equals the probability of \"tails\"; and since no other outcomes are possible, the probability of either \"heads\" or \"tails\" is 1/2 (which could also be written as 0.5 or 50%).\nThese concepts have been given an axiomatic mathematical formalization in \"probability theory\", which is used widely in areas of study such as statistics, mathematics, science, finance, gambling, artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer science, game theory, and philosophy to, for example, draw inferences about the expected frequency of events. Probability theory is also used to describe the underlying mechanics and regularities of complex systems.\nEtymology.\nThe word \"probability\" derives from the Latin , which can also mean \"probity\", a measure of the authority of a witness in a legal case in Europe, and often correlated with the witness's nobility. In a sense, this differs much from the modern meaning of \"probability\", which in contrast is a measure of the weight of empirical evidence, and is arrived at from inductive reasoning and statistical inference.\nInterpretations.\nWhen dealing with random experiments \u2013 i.e., experiments that are random and well-defined \u2013 in a purely theoretical setting (like tossing a coin), probabilities can be numerically described by the number of desired outcomes, divided by the total number of all outcomes. This is referred to as theoretical probability (in contrast to empirical probability, dealing with probabilities in the context of real experiments). For example, tossing a coin twice will yield \"head-head\", \"head-tail\", \"tail-head\", and \"tail-tail\" outcomes. The probability of getting an outcome of \"head-head\" is 1 out of 4 outcomes, or, in numerical terms, 1/4, 0.25 or 25%. However, when it comes to practical application, there are two major competing categories of probability interpretations, whose adherents hold different views about the fundamental nature of probability:\nHistory.\nThe scientific study of probability is a modern development of mathematics. Gambling shows that there has been an interest in quantifying the ideas of probability throughout history, but exact mathematical descriptions arose much later. There are reasons for the slow development of the mathematics of probability. Whereas games of chance provided the impetus for the mathematical study of probability, fundamental issues are still obscured by superstitions.\nAccording to Richard Jeffrey, \"Before the middle of the seventeenth century, the term 'probable' (Latin \"probabilis\") meant \"approvable\", and was applied in that sense, univocally, to opinion and to action. A probable action or opinion was one such as sensible people would undertake or hold, in the circumstances.\" However, in legal contexts especially, 'probable' could also apply to propositions for which there was good evidence.\nThe sixteenth-century Italian polymath Gerolamo Cardano demonstrated the efficacy of defining odds as the ratio of favourable to unfavourable outcomes (which implies that the probability of an event is given by the ratio of favourable outcomes to the total number of possible outcomes).\nAside from the elementary work by Cardano, the doctrine of probabilities dates to the correspondence of Pierre de Fermat and Blaise Pascal (1654). Christiaan Huygens (1657) gave the earliest known scientific treatment of the subject. Jakob Bernoulli's \"Ars Conjectandi\" (posthumous, 1713) and Abraham de Moivre's \"Doctrine of Chances\" (1718) treated the subject as a branch of mathematics. See Ian Hacking's \"The Emergence of Probability\" and James Franklin's \"The Science of Conjecture\" for histories of the early development of the very concept of mathematical probability.\nThe theory of errors may be traced back to Roger Cotes's \"Opera Miscellanea\" (posthumous, 1722), but a memoir prepared by Thomas Simpson in 1755 (printed 1756) first applied the theory to the discussion of errors of observation. The reprint (1757) of this memoir lays down the axioms that positive and negative errors are equally probable, and that certain assignable limits define the range of all errors. Simpson also discusses continuous errors and describes a probability curve.\nThe first two laws of error that were proposed both originated with Pierre-Simon Laplace. The first law was published in 1774, and stated that the frequency of an error could be expressed as an exponential function of the numerical magnitude of the error\u00a0\u2013 disregarding sign. The second law of error was proposed in 1778 by Laplace, and stated that the frequency of the error is an exponential function of the square of the error. The second law of error is called the normal distribution or the Gauss law. \"It is difficult historically to attribute that law to Gauss, who in spite of his well-known precocity had probably not made this discovery before he was two years old.\"\nDaniel Bernoulli (1778) introduced the principle of the maximum product of the probabilities of a system of concurrent errors.\nAdrien-Marie Legendre (1805) developed the method of least squares, and introduced it in his \"Nouvelles m\u00e9thodes pour la d\u00e9termination des orbites des com\u00e8tes\" (\"New Methods for Determining the Orbits of Comets\"). In ignorance of Legendre's contribution, an Irish-American writer, Robert Adrain, editor of \"The Analyst\" (1808), first deduced the law of facility of error,\nformula_1\nwhere formula_2 is a constant depending on precision of observation, and formula_3 is a scale factor ensuring that the area under the curve equals 1. He gave two proofs, the second being essentially the same as John Herschel's (1850). Gauss gave the first proof that seems to have been known in Europe (the third after Adrain's) in 1809. Further proofs were given by Laplace (1810, 1812), Gauss (1823), James Ivory (1825, 1826), Hagen (1837), Friedrich Bessel (1838), W.F. Donkin (1844, 1856), and Morgan Crofton (1870). Other contributors were Ellis (1844), De Morgan (1864), Glaisher (1872), and Giovanni Schiaparelli (1875). Peters's (1856) formula for \"r\", the probable error of a single observation, is well known.\nIn the nineteenth century, authors on the general theory included Laplace, Sylvestre Lacroix (1816), Littrow (1833), Adolphe Quetelet (1853), Richard Dedekind (1860), Helmert (1872), Hermann Laurent (1873), Liagre, Didion and Karl Pearson. Augustus De Morgan and George Boole improved the exposition of the theory.\nIn 1906, Andrey Markov introduced the notion of Markov chains, which played an important role in stochastic processes theory and its applications. The modern theory of probability based on measure theory was developed by Andrey Kolmogorov in 1931.\nOn the geometric side, contributors to \"The Educational Times\" included Miller, Crofton, McColl, Wolstenholme, Watson, and Artemas Martin. See integral geometry for more information.\nTheory.\nLike other theories, the theory of probability is a representation of its concepts in formal terms\u00a0\u2013 that is, in terms that can be considered separately from their meaning. These formal terms are manipulated by the rules of mathematics and logic, and any results are interpreted or translated back into the problem domain.\nThere have been at least two successful attempts to formalize probability, namely the Kolmogorov formulation and the Cox formulation. In Kolmogorov's formulation (see also probability space), sets are interpreted as events and probability as a measure on a class of sets. In Cox's theorem, probability is taken as a primitive (i.e., not further analyzed), and the emphasis is on constructing a consistent assignment of probability values to propositions. In both cases, the laws of probability are the same, except for technical details.\nThere are other methods for quantifying uncertainty, such as the Dempster\u2013Shafer theory or possibility theory, but those are essentially different and not compatible with the usually-understood laws of probability.\nApplications.\nProbability theory is applied in everyday life in risk assessment and modeling. The insurance industry and markets use actuarial science to determine pricing and make trading decisions. Governments apply probabilistic methods in environmental regulation, entitlement analysis, and financial regulation.\nAn example of the use of probability theory in equity trading is the effect of the perceived probability of any widespread Middle East conflict on oil prices, which have ripple effects in the economy as a whole. An assessment by a commodity trader that a war is more likely can send that commodity's prices up or down, and signals other traders of that opinion. Accordingly, the probabilities are neither assessed independently nor necessarily rationally. The theory of behavioral finance emerged to describe the effect of such groupthink on pricing, on policy, and on peace and conflict.\nIn addition to financial assessment, probability can be used to analyze trends in biology (e.g., disease spread) as well as ecology (e.g., biological Punnett squares). As with finance, risk assessment can be used as a statistical tool to calculate the likelihood of undesirable events occurring, and can assist with implementing protocols to avoid encountering such circumstances. Probability is used to design games of chance so that casinos can make a guaranteed profit, yet provide payouts to players that are frequent enough to encourage continued play.\nAnother significant application of probability theory in everyday life is reliability. Many consumer products, such as automobiles and consumer electronics, use reliability theory in product design to reduce the probability of failure. Failure probability may influence a manufacturer's decisions on a product's warranty.\nThe cache language model and other statistical language models that are used in natural language processing are also examples of applications of probability theory.\nMathematical treatment.\nConsider an experiment that can produce a number of results. The collection of all possible results is called the sample space of the experiment, sometimes denoted as formula_4. The power set of the sample space is formed by considering all different collections of possible results. For example, rolling a die can produce six possible results. One collection of possible results gives an odd number on the die. Thus, the subset {1,3,5} is an element of the power set of the sample space of dice rolls. These collections are called \"events\". In this case, {1,3,5} is the event that the die falls on some odd number. If the results that actually occur fall in a given event, the event is said to have occurred.\nA probability is a way of assigning every event a value between zero and one, with the requirement that the event made up of all possible results (in our example, the event {1,2,3,4,5,6}) is assigned a value of one. To qualify as a probability, the assignment of values must satisfy the requirement that for any collection of mutually exclusive events (events with no common results, such as the events {1,6}, {3}, and {2,4}), the probability that at least one of the events will occur is given by the sum of the probabilities of all the individual events.\nThe probability of an event \"A\" is written as formula_5, formula_6, or formula_7. This mathematical definition of probability can extend to infinite sample spaces, and even uncountable sample spaces, using the concept of a measure.\nThe \"opposite\" or \"complement\" of an event \"A\" is the event [not \"A\"] (that is, the event of \"A\" not occurring), often denoted as formula_8, formula_9, or formula_10; its probability is given by \"P\"(not \"A\") = 1 \u2212 \"P\"(\"A\"). As an example, the chance of not rolling a six on a six-sided die is 1 \u2013 (chance of rolling a six) = 1 \u2212 = . For a more comprehensive treatment, see Complementary event.\nIf two events \"A\" and \"B\" occur on a single performance of an experiment, this is called the intersection or joint probability of \"A\" and \"B\", denoted as formula_11\nIndependent events.\nIf two events, \"A\" and \"B\" are independent then the joint probability is\nformula_12\nFor example, if two coins are flipped, then the chance of both being heads is formula_13\nMutually exclusive events.\nIf either event \"A\" or event \"B\" can occur but never both simultaneously, then they are called mutually exclusive events.\nIf two events are mutually exclusive, then the probability of \"both\" occurring is denoted as formula_14 andformula_15If two events are mutually exclusive, then the probability of \"either\" occurring is denoted as formula_16 andformula_17\nFor example, the chance of rolling a 1 or 2 on a six-sided die is formula_18\nNot (necessarily) mutually exclusive events.\nIf the events are not (necessarily) mutually exclusive thenformula_19Rewritten,formula_20\nFor example, when drawing a card from a deck of cards, the chance of getting a heart or a face card (J, Q, K) (or both) is formula_21 since among the 52 cards of a deck, 13 are hearts, 12 are face cards, and 3 are both: here the possibilities included in the \"3 that are both\" are included in each of the \"13 hearts\" and the \"12 face cards\", but should only be counted once.\nThis can be expanded further for multiple not (necessarily) mutually exclusive events. For three events, this proceeds as follows:formula_22It can be seen, then, that this pattern can be repeated for any number of events.\nConditional probability.\n\"Conditional probability\" is the probability of some event \"A\", given the occurrence of some other event \"B\". Conditional probability is written formula_23, and is read \"the probability of \"A\", given \"B\"\". It is defined by\nformula_24\nIf formula_25 then formula_23 is formally undefined by this expression. In this case formula_27 and formula_28 are independent, since formula_29 However, it is possible to define a conditional probability for some zero-probability events, for example by using a \u03c3-algebra of such events (such as those arising from a continuous random variable).\nFor example, in a bag of 2 red balls and 2 blue balls (4 balls in total), the probability of taking a red ball is formula_30 however, when taking a second ball, the probability of it being either a red ball or a blue ball depends on the ball previously taken. For example, if a red ball was taken, then the probability of picking a red ball again would be formula_31 since only 1 red and 2 blue balls would have been remaining. And if a blue ball was taken previously, the probability of taking a red ball will be formula_32\nInverse probability.\nIn probability theory and applications, \"Bayes' rule\" relates the odds of event formula_33 to event formula_34 before (prior to) and after (posterior to) conditioning on another event formula_35 The odds on formula_33 to event formula_37 is simply the ratio of the probabilities of the two events. When arbitrarily many events formula_27 are of interest, not just two, the rule can be rephrased as \"posterior is proportional to prior times likelihood\", formula_39 where the proportionality symbol means that the left hand side is proportional to (i.e., equals a constant times) the right hand side as formula_27 varies, for fixed or given formula_28 (Lee, 2012; Bertsch McGrayne, 2012). In this form it goes back to Laplace (1774) and to Cournot (1843); see Fienberg (2005).\nRelation to randomness and probability in quantum mechanics.\nIn a deterministic universe, based on Newtonian concepts, there would be no probability if all conditions were known (Laplace's demon) (but there are situations in which sensitivity to initial conditions exceeds our ability to measure them, i.e. know them). In the case of a roulette wheel, if the force of the hand and the period of that force are known, the number on which the ball will stop would be a certainty (though as a practical matter, this would likely be true only of a roulette wheel that had not been exactly levelled \u2013 as Thomas A. Bass' Newtonian Casino revealed). This also assumes knowledge of inertia and friction of the wheel, weight, smoothness, and roundness of the ball, variations in hand speed during the turning, and so forth. A probabilistic description can thus be more useful than Newtonian mechanics for analyzing the pattern of outcomes of repeated rolls of a roulette wheel. Physicists face the same situation in the kinetic theory of gases, where the system, while deterministic \"in principle\", is so complex (with the number of molecules typically the order of magnitude of the Avogadro constant ) that only a statistical description of its properties is feasible.\nProbability theory is required to describe quantum phenomena. A revolutionary discovery of early 20th century physics was the random character of all physical processes that occur at sub-atomic scales and are governed by the laws of quantum mechanics. The objective wave function evolves deterministically but, according to the Copenhagen interpretation, it deals with probabilities of observing, the outcome being explained by a wave function collapse when an observation is made. However, the loss of determinism for the sake of instrumentalism did not meet with universal approval. Albert Einstein famously in a letter to Max Born: \"I am convinced that God does not play dice\". Like Einstein, Erwin Schr\u00f6dinger, who discovered the wave function, believed quantum mechanics is a statistical approximation of an underlying deterministic reality. In some modern interpretations of the statistical mechanics of measurement, quantum decoherence is invoked to account for the appearance of subjectively probabilistic experimental outcomes.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "24104134": "Conditional probability\nProbability of an event occurring, given that another event has already occurred\nIn probability theory, conditional probability is a measure of the probability of an event occurring, given that another event (by assumption, presumption, assertion or evidence) is already known to have occurred. This particular method relies on event A occurring with some sort of relationship with another event B. In this situation, the event A can be analyzed by a conditional probability with respect to B. If the event of interest is A and the event B is known or assumed to have occurred, \"the conditional probability of A given B\", or \"the probability of A under the condition B\", is usually written as P(\"A\"|\"B\") or occasionally P\"B\"(\"A\"). This can also be understood as the fraction of probability B that intersects with A, or the ratio of the probabilities of both events happening to the \"given\" one happening (how many times A occurs rather than not assuming B has occurred): formula_1.\nFor example, the probability that any given person has a cough on any given day may be only 5%. But if we know or assume that the person is sick, then they are much more likely to be coughing. For example, the conditional probability that someone sick is coughing might be 75%, in which case we would have that P(Cough) = 5% and P(Cough|Sick) = 75 %. Although there is a relationship between A and B in this example, such a relationship or dependence between A and B is not necessary, nor do they have to occur simultaneously.\nP(\"A\"|\"B\") may or may not be equal to P(\"A\"), i.e., the unconditional probability or absolute probability of A. If P(\"A\"|\"B\") = P(\"A\"), then events A and B are said to be \"independent\": in such a case, knowledge about either event does not alter the likelihood of each other. P(\"A\"|\"B\") (the conditional probability of A given B) typically differs from P(\"B\"|\"A\"). For example, if a person has dengue fever, the person might have a 90% chance of being tested as positive for the disease. In this case, what is being measured is that if event B (\"having dengue\") has occurred, the probability of A (\"tested as positive\") given that B occurred is 90%, simply writing P(\"A\"|\"B\") = 90%. Alternatively, if a person is tested as positive for dengue fever, they may have only a 15% chance of actually having this rare disease due to high false positive rates. In this case, the probability of the event B (\"having dengue\") given that the event A (\"testing positive\") has occurred is 15% or P(\"B\"|\"A\") = 15%. It should be apparent now that falsely equating the two probabilities can lead to various errors of reasoning, which is commonly seen through base rate fallacies.\nWhile conditional probabilities can provide extremely useful information, limited information is often supplied or at hand. Therefore, it can be useful to reverse or convert a conditional probability using Bayes' theorem: formula_2. Another option is to display conditional probabilities in a conditional probability table to illuminate the relationship between events.\nDefinition.\nConditioning on an event.\nKolmogorov definition.\nGiven two events A and B from the sigma-field of a probability space, with the unconditional probability of B being greater than zero (i.e., P(\"B\") > 0), the conditional probability of A given B (formula_3) is the probability of \"A\" occurring if \"B\" has or is assumed to have happened. \"A\" is assumed to be the set of all possible outcomes of an experiment or random trial that has a restricted or reduced sample space. The conditional probability can be found by the quotient of the probability of the joint intersection of events A and B, that is, formula_4, the probability at which \"A\" and \"B\" occur together, and the probability of B:\nformula_1.\nFor a sample space consisting of equal likelihood outcomes, the probability of the event \"A\" is understood as the fraction of the number of outcomes in \"A\" to the number of all outcomes in the sample space. Then, this equation is understood as the fraction of the set formula_6 to the set \"B\". Note that the above equation is a definition, not just a theoretical result. We denote the quantity formula_7 as formula_8 and call it the \"conditional probability of A given B.\"\nAs an axiom of probability.\nSome authors, such as de Finetti, prefer to introduce conditional probability as an axiom of probability:\nformula_9.\nThis equation for a conditional probability, although mathematically equivalent, may be intuitively easier to understand. It can be interpreted as \"the probability of \"B\" occurring multiplied by the probability of \"A\" occurring, provided that \"B\" has occurred, is equal to the probability of the \"A\" and \"B\" occurrences together, although not necessarily occurring at the same time\". Additionally, this may be preferred philosophically; under major probability interpretations, such as the subjective theory, conditional probability is considered a primitive entity. Moreover, this \"multiplication rule\" can be practically useful in computing the probability of formula_6 and introduces a symmetry with the summation axiom for Poincar\u00e9 Formula:\nformula_11\nThus the equations can be combined to find a new representation of the : \nformula_12\nformula_13\nAs the probability of a conditional event.\nConditional probability can be defined as the probability of a conditional event formula_14. The Goodman\u2013Nguyen\u2013Van Fraassen conditional event can be defined as:\nformula_15 and formula_16 represent states or elements of \"A\" or \"B.\" \nIt can be shown that\nformula_17\nwhich meets the Kolmogorov definition of conditional probability. \nConditioning on an event of probability zero.\nIf formula_18, then according to the definition, formula_19 is undefined.\nThe case of greatest interest is that of a random variable Y, conditioned on a continuous random variable X resulting in a particular outcome x. The event formula_20 has probability zero and, as such, cannot be conditioned on.\nInstead of conditioning on X being \"exactly\" x, we could condition on it being closer than distance formula_21 away from x. The event formula_22 will generally have nonzero probability and hence, can be conditioned on.\nWe can then take the limit\n<templatestyles src=\"Numbered block/styles.css\" />\nFor example, if two continuous random variables X and Y have a joint density formula_23, then by L'H\u00f4pital's rule and Leibniz integral rule, upon differentiation with respect to formula_21:\nformula_25\nThe resulting limit is the conditional probability distribution of Y given X and exists when the denominator, the probability density formula_26, is strictly positive.\nIt is tempting to \"define\" the undefined probability formula_27 using limit (1), but this cannot be done in a consistent manner. In particular, it is possible to find random variables X and W and values x, w such that the events formula_28 and formula_29 are identical but the resulting limits are not:\nformula_30\nThe Borel\u2013Kolmogorov paradox demonstrates this with a geometrical argument.\nConditioning on a discrete random variable.\nLet X be a discrete random variable and its possible outcomes denoted V. For example, if X represents the value of a rolled dice then V is the set formula_31. Let us assume for the sake of presentation that X is a discrete random variable, so that each value in V has a nonzero probability.\nFor a value x in V and an event A, the conditional probability\nis given by formula_32.\nWriting\nformula_33\nfor short, we see that it is a function of two variables, x and A.\nFor a fixed A, we can form the random variable formula_34. It represents an outcome of formula_32 whenever a value x of X is observed.\nThe conditional probability of A given X can thus be treated as a random variable Y with outcomes in the interval formula_36. From the law of total probability, its expected value is equal to the unconditional probability of A.\nPartial conditional probability.\nThe partial conditional probability\nformula_37\nis about the probability of event \nformula_38 given that each of the condition events\nformula_39 has occurred to a degree\nformula_40 (degree of belief, degree of experience) that might be different from 100%. Frequentistically, partial conditional probability makes sense, if the conditions are tested in experiment repetitions of appropriate length \nformula_41. Such \nformula_41-bounded partial conditional probability can be defined as the conditionally expected average occurrence of event\nformula_38 in testbeds of length \nformula_41 that adhere to all of the probability specifications\nformula_45, i.e.:\nformula_46\nBased on that, partial conditional probability can be defined as\nformula_47\nwhere formula_48\nJeffrey conditionalization\nis a special case of partial conditional probability, in which the condition events must form a partition:\nformula_49\nExample.\nSuppose that somebody secretly rolls two fair six-sided dice, and we wish to compute the probability that the face-up value of the first one is 2, given the information that their sum is no greater than 5.\n\"Probability that\" \"D\"1\u00a0=\u00a02\nTable 1 shows the sample space of 36 combinations of rolled values of the two dice, each of which occurs with probability 1/36, with the numbers displayed in the red and dark gray cells being \"D\"1 + \"D\"2.\n\"D\"1\u00a0=\u00a02 in exactly 6 of the 36 outcomes; thus \"P\"(\"D\"1 = 2)\u00a0=\u00a0<templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />6\u204436\u00a0=\u00a0<templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />1\u20446:\n\"Probability that\" \"D\"1\u00a0+\u00a0\"D\"2\u00a0\u2264\u00a05\nTable 2 shows that \"D\"1\u00a0+\u00a0\"D\"2\u00a0\u2264\u00a05 for exactly 10 of the 36 outcomes, thus \"P\"(\"D\"1\u00a0+\u00a0\"D\"2\u00a0\u2264\u00a05)\u00a0=\u00a0<templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />10\u204436:\n\"Probability that\" \"D\"1\u00a0=\u00a02 \"given that\" \"D\"1\u00a0+\u00a0\"D\"2\u00a0\u2264\u00a05 \nTable 3 shows that for 3 of these 10 outcomes, \"D\"1\u00a0=\u00a02.\nThus, the conditional probability P(\"D\"1\u00a0=\u00a02\u00a0|\u00a0\"D\"1+\"D\"2\u00a0\u2264\u00a05)\u00a0=\u00a0<templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />3\u204410\u00a0=\u00a00.3:\nHere, in the earlier notation for the definition of conditional probability, the conditioning event \"B\" is that \"D\"1\u00a0+\u00a0\"D\"2\u00a0\u2264\u00a05, and the event \"A\" is \"D\"1\u00a0=\u00a02. We have formula_50 as seen in the table.\nUse in inference.\nIn statistical inference, the conditional probability is an update of the probability of an event based on new information. The new information can be incorporated as follows:\nThis approach results in a probability measure that is consistent with the original probability measure and satisfies all the Kolmogorov axioms. This conditional probability measure also could have resulted by assuming that the relative magnitude of the probability of \"A\" with respect to \"X\" will be preserved with respect to \"B\" (cf. a Formal Derivation below).\nThe wording \"evidence\" or \"information\" is generally used in the Bayesian interpretation of probability. The conditioning event is interpreted as evidence for the conditioned event. That is, \"P\"(\"A\") is the probability of \"A\" before accounting for evidence \"E\", and \"P\"(\"A\"|\"E\") is the probability of \"A\" after having accounted for evidence \"E\" or after having updated \"P\"(\"A\"). This is consistent with the frequentist interpretation, which is the first definition given above.\nExample.\nWhen Morse code is transmitted, there is a certain probability that the \"dot\" or \"dash\" that was received is erroneous. This is often taken as interference in the transmission of a message. Therefore, it is important to consider when sending a \"dot\", for example, the probability that a \"dot\" was received. This is represented by: formula_54 In Morse code, the ratio of dots to dashes is 3:4 at the point of sending, so the probability of a \"dot\" and \"dash\" are formula_55. If it is assumed that the probability that a dot is transmitted as a dash is 1/10, and that the probability that a dash is transmitted as a dot is likewise 1/10, then Bayes's rule can be used to calculate formula_56. \nformula_57 \nformula_58 \nformula_59 \nNow, formula_60 can be calculated: \nformula_61\nStatistical independence.\nEvents \"A\" and \"B\" are defined to be statistically independent if the probability of the intersection of A and B is equal to the product of the probabilities of A and B: \nformula_62\nIf \"P\"(\"B\") is not zero, then this is equivalent to the statement that\nformula_63\nSimilarly, if \"P\"(\"A\") is not zero, then\nformula_64\nis also equivalent. Although the derived forms may seem more intuitive, they are not the preferred definition as the conditional probabilities may be undefined, and the preferred definition is symmetrical in \"A\" and \"B\". Independence does not refer to a disjoint event. \nIt should also be noted that given the independent event pair [A B] and an event C, the pair is defined to be conditionally independent if the product holds true: \nformula_65\nThis theorem could be useful in applications where multiple independent events are being observed. \nIndependent events vs. mutually exclusive events\nThe concepts of mutually independent events and mutually exclusive events are separate and distinct. The following table contrasts results for the two cases (provided that the probability of the conditioning event is not zero).\nIn fact, mutually exclusive events cannot be statistically independent (unless both of them are impossible), since knowing that one occurs gives information about the other (in particular, that the latter will certainly not occur).\n\"These fallacies should not be confused with Robert K. Shope's 1978 \"conditional fallacy\", which deals with counterfactual examples that beg the question.\"\nCommon fallacies.\nAssuming conditional probability is of similar size to its inverse.\nIn general, it cannot be assumed that \"P\"(\"A\"|\"B\")\u00a0\u2248\u00a0\"P\"(\"B\"|\"A\"). This can be an insidious error, even for those who are highly conversant with statistics. The relationship between \"P\"(\"A\"|\"B\") and \"P\"(\"B\"|\"A\") is given by Bayes' theorem:\nformula_66\nThat is, \"P\"(\"A\"|\"B\")\u00a0\u2248\u00a0\"P\"(\"B\"|\"A\") only if \"P\"(\"B\")/\"P\"(\"A\")\u00a0\u2248\u00a01, or equivalently, \"P\"(\"A\")\u00a0\u2248\u00a0\"P\"(\"B\").\nAssuming marginal and conditional probabilities are of similar size.\nIn general, it cannot be assumed that \"P\"(\"A\")\u00a0\u2248\u00a0\"P\"(\"A\"|\"B\"). These probabilities are linked through the law of total probability:\nformula_67\nwhere the events formula_68 form a countable partition of formula_69.\nThis fallacy may arise through selection bias. For example, in the context of a medical claim, let \"S\"\"C\" be the event that a sequela (chronic disease) \"S\" occurs as a consequence of circumstance (acute condition) \"C\". Let \"H\" be the event that an individual seeks medical help. Suppose that in most cases, \"C\" does not cause \"S\" (so that \"P\"(\"S\"\"C\") is low). Suppose also that medical attention is only sought if \"S\" has occurred due to \"C\". From experience of patients, a doctor may therefore erroneously conclude that \"P\"(\"S\"\"C\") is high. The actual probability observed by the doctor is \"P\"(\"S\"\"C\"|\"H\").\nOver- or under-weighting priors.\nNot taking prior probability into account partially or completely is called \"base rate neglect\". The reverse, insufficient adjustment from the prior probability is \"conservatism\".\nFormal derivation.\nFormally, \"P\"(\"A\"\u00a0|\u00a0\"B\") is defined as the probability of \"A\" according to a new probability function on the sample space, such that outcomes not in \"B\" have probability 0 and that it is consistent with all original probability measures.\nLet \u03a9 be a discrete sample space with elementary events {\"\u03c9\"}, and let \"P\" be the probability measure with respect to the \u03c3-algebra of \u03a9. Suppose we are told that the event \"B\"\u00a0\u2286\u00a0\u03a9 has occurred. A new probability distribution (denoted by the conditional notation) is to be assigned on {\"\u03c9\"} to reflect this. All events that are not in \"B\" will have null probability in the new distribution. For events in \"B\", two conditions must be met: the probability of \"B\" is one and the relative magnitudes of the probabilities must be preserved. The former is required by the axioms of probability, and the latter stems from the fact that the new probability measure has to be the analog of \"P\" in which the probability of \"B\" is one - and every event that is not in \"B\", therefore, has a null probability. Hence, for some scale factor \"\u03b1\", the new distribution must satisfy:\nSubstituting 1 and 2 into 3 to select \"\u03b1\":\nformula_73\nSo the new probability distribution is\nNow for a general event \"A\",\nformula_76\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "172069": "Odds\nRatio of the probability of an event happening versus not happening\nIn probability theory, odds provide a measure of the probability of a particular outcome. Odds are commonly used in gambling and statistics. For example for an event that is 40% probable, one could say that the odds are"}, "descending_order": ["22934", "24104134", "172069"], "permutation_1": ["22934", "24104134", "172069"], "permutation_2": ["22934", "24104134", "172069"], "permutation_3": ["24104134", "22934", "172069"]}
{"id": "nq_8871621576322140311", "docs_added": {"629693": "Due Process Clause\nClauses in the 5th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution\nA Due Process Clause is found in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which prohibit the deprivation of \"life, liberty, or property\" by the federal and state governments, respectively, without due process of law.\nThe U.S. Supreme Court interprets these clauses to guarantee a variety of protections: procedural due process (in civil and criminal proceedings); substantive due process (a guarantee of some fundamental rights); a prohibition against vague laws; incorporation of the Bill of Rights to state governments; and equal protection under the laws of the federal government.\nText.\nThe clause in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nThe clause in Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nBackground.\nClause 39 of Magna Carta provided:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nThe phrase \"due process of law\" first appeared in a statutory rendition of Magna Carta in 1354 during the reign of Edward III of England, as follows:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />No man of what state or condition he be, shall be put out of his lands or tenements nor taken (taken to mean arrested or deprived of liberty by the state), nor disinherited, nor put to death, without he be brought to answer by due process of law.\nDrafting.\nNew York was the only state that asked Congress to add \"due process\" language to the U.S. Constitution. New York ratified the U.S. Constitution and proposed the following amendment in 1788: <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />[N]o Person ought to be taken imprisoned or disseized of his freehold, or be exiled or deprived of his Privileges, Franchises, Life, Liberty or Property but by due process of Law.\nIn response to this proposal from New York, James Madison drafted a due process clause for Congress. Madison cut out some language and inserted the word \"without\", which had not been proposed by New York. Congress then adopted the exact wording that Madison proposed after Madison explained that the due process clause would not be sufficient to protect various other rights:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nInterpretation.\nScope.\nThe Supreme Court has interpreted the Due Process Clauses in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment identically, as Justice Felix Frankfurter once explained in a concurring opinion:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />To suppose that 'due process of law' meant one thing in the Fifth Amendment and another in the Fourteenth is too frivolous to require elaborate rejection.\nIn 1855, the Supreme Court explained that, to ascertain whether a process is due process, the first step is to \"examine the constitution itself, to see whether this process be in conflict with any of its provisions\". In the same 1855 case, the Supreme Court said, <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The words, \"due process of law\", were undoubtedly intended to convey the same meaning as the words, \"by the law of the land\", in Magna Charta.\nIn the 1884 case of \"Hurtado v. California\", the Court said:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Due process of law in the [Fourteenth Amendment] refers to that law of the land ... in each state which derives its authority from the inherent and reserved powers of the state, exerted within the limits of those fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions, and the greatest security for which resides in the right of the people to make their own laws, and alter them at their pleasure.\nDue process also applies to the creation of taxing districts, as taxation is a deprivation of property. Due process typically requires public hearings prior to the creation of a taxing district.\n\"State\".\nDue process applies to U.S. territories, although they are not States.\n\"Person\".\nThe Due Process Clauses apply to both natural persons, including citizens and non-citizens, as well as to \"legal persons\" (that is, corporate personhood). The Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause was first applied to corporations in 1893 by the Supreme Court in \"Noble v. Union River Logging R. Co.\" \"Noble\" was preceded by \"Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad\" in 1886. The Due Process Clauses apply to non-citizens within the United States \u2013 no matter whether their presence may be or is \"unlawful, involuntary or transitory\" \u2013 although the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that non-citizens can be stopped, detained, and denied past immigration officials at points of entry (e.g. at a port or airport) without the protection of the Due Process Clause because, while technically on U.S. soil, they are not considered to have entered the United States.\n\"Life\".\nIn \"Bucklew v. Precythe\", 587 U.S. 119 (2019), the Supreme Court held that the Due Process Clause expressly allows the death penalty in the United States because \"the Fifth Amendment, added to the Constitution at the same time as the Eighth, expressly contemplates that a defendant may be tried for a 'capital' crime and 'deprived of life' as a penalty, so long as proper procedures are followed\".\n\"Liberty\".\nThe U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted the term \"liberty\" in the Due Process Clauses broadly:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nState actor.\nThe prohibitions of the due process clauses apply only to the actions of state actors and not against private citizens. However, \"[p]rivate persons, jointly engaged with state officials in the prohibited action, are acting 'under color' of law... To act 'under color' of law does not require that the accused be an officer of the State. It is enough that he is a willful participant in joint activity with the State or its agents\".\nProcedural due process.\nProcedural due process requires government officials to follow fair procedures before depriving a person of life, liberty, or property. When the government seeks to deprive a person of one of those interests, procedural due process requires the government to afford the person, at minimum, notice, an opportunity to be heard, and a decision made by a neutral decisionmaker.\nThis protection extends to all government proceedings that can result in an individual's deprivation, whether civil or criminal in nature, from parole violation hearings to administrative hearings regarding government benefits and entitlements to full-blown criminal trials. The article \"Some Kind of Hearing\" written by Judge Henry Friendly created a list of basic due process rights \"that remains highly influential, as to both content and relative priority\". These rights, which apply equally to civil due process and criminal due process, are:\nCivil procedural due process.\nProcedural due process is essentially based on the concept of \"fundamental fairness\". For example, in 1934, the United States Supreme Court held that due process is violated \"if a practice or rule offends some principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental\". As construed by the courts, it includes an individual's right to be adequately notified of charges or proceedings, the opportunity to be heard at these proceedings, and that the person or panel making the final decision over the proceedings be impartial in regards to the matter before them.\nTo put it more simply, where an individual is facing a deprivation of life, liberty, or property, procedural due process mandates that they are entitled to adequate notice, a hearing, and a neutral judge.\nThe Supreme Court has formulated a balancing test to determine the rigor with which the requirements of procedural due process should be applied to a particular deprivation, for the obvious reason that mandating such requirements in the most expansive way for even the most minor deprivations would bring the machinery of government to a halt. The Court set out the test as follows: \"[I]dentification of the specific dictates of due process generally requires consideration of three distinct factors: first, the private interest that will be affected by the official action; second, the risk of an erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards; and, finally, the Government's interest, including the function involved and the fiscal and administrative burdens that the additional or substitute procedural requirement would entail.\"\nProcedural due process has also been an important factor in the development of the law of personal jurisdiction, in the sense that it is inherently unfair for the judicial machinery of a state to take away the property of a person who has no connection to it whatsoever. A significant portion of U.S. constitutional law is therefore directed to what kinds of connections to a state are enough for that state's assertion of jurisdiction over a nonresident to comport with procedural due process.\nThe requirement of a neutral judge has introduced a constitutional dimension to the question of whether a judge should recuse themself from a case. Specifically, the Supreme Court has ruled that in certain circumstances, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires a judge to recuse themself on account of a potential or actual conflict of interest. For example, in \"Caperton v. A. T. Massey Coal Co.\" (2009), the Court ruled that a justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia could not participate in a case involving a major donor to his election to that court.\nCriminal procedural due process.\nIn criminal cases, many of these due process protections overlap with procedural protections provided by the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees reliable procedures that protect innocent people from being executed, which would be an obvious example of cruel and unusual punishment.\nAn example of criminal due process rights is the case \"Vitek v. Jones\", 445 U.S. 480 (1980). The due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires certain procedural protections for state prisoners who may be transferred involuntarily to a state mental hospital for treatment of a mental disease or defect, such protections including written notice of the transfer, an adversary hearing before an independent decision-maker, written findings, and effective and timely notice of such rights. As established by the district court and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in \"Vitek v. Jones\", these due process rights include:\nSubstantive due process.\nBy the middle of the 19th century, \"due process of law\" was interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court to mean that \"it was not left to the legislative power to enact any process which might be devised. The due process article is a restraint on the legislative as well as on the executive and judicial powers of the government, and cannot be so construed as to leave Congress free to make any process 'due process of law' by its mere will.\"\nThe term \"substantive due process\" (SDP) is commonly used in two ways: first to identify a particular line of case law, and second to signify a particular attitude toward judicial review under the Due Process Clause. The term \"substantive due process\" began to take form in 1930s legal casebooks as a categorical distinction of selected due process cases, and by 1950 had been mentioned twice in Supreme Court opinions. SDP involves liberty-based due process challenges which seek certain outcomes instead of merely contesting procedures and their effects; in such cases, the Supreme Court recognizes a constitutionally-based \"liberty\" which then renders laws seeking to limit said \"liberty\" either unenforceable or limited in scope. Critics of SDP decisions typically assert that those liberties ought to be left to the more politically accountable branches of government.\nCourts have viewed the due process clause, and sometimes other clauses of the Constitution, as embracing those fundamental rights that are \"implicit in the concept of ordered liberty\". Just what those rights are is not always clear, nor is the Supreme Court's authority to enforce such unenumerated rights clear. Some of those rights have long histories or \"are deeply rooted\" in American society.\nThe courts have largely abandoned the Lochner era approach (c. 1897-1937) when substantive due process was used to strike down minimum wage and labor laws in order to protect freedom of contract. Since then, the Supreme Court has decided that numerous other freedoms that do not appear in the plain text of the Constitution are nevertheless protected by the Constitution. If these rights were not protected by the federal courts' doctrine of substantive due process, they could nevertheless be protected in other ways; for example, it is possible that some of these rights could be protected by other provisions of the state or federal constitutions, and alternatively they could be protected by legislatures.\nThe Court focuses on three types of rights under substantive due process in the Fourteenth Amendment, which originated in \"United States v. Carolene Products Co.\", 304 U.S. 144 (1938), footnote 4. Those three types of rights are:\nThe Court usually looks first to see if there is a fundamental right, by examining if the right can be found deeply rooted in American history and traditions. Where the right is not a fundamental right, the court applies a rational basis test: if the violation of the right can be rationally related to a legitimate government purpose, then the law is held valid. If the court establishes that the right being violated is a fundamental right, it applies strict scrutiny. This test inquires into whether there is a compelling state interest being furthered by the violation of the right, and whether the law in question is narrowly tailored to address the state interest.\nPrivacy, which is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, was at issue in \"Griswold v. Connecticut\" (1965), wherein the Court held that criminal prohibition of contraceptive devices for married couples violated federal, judicially enforceable privacy rights. The right to contraceptives was found in what the Court called the \"penumbras\", or shadowy edges, of certain amendments that arguably refer to certain privacy rights. The penumbra-based rationale of \"Griswold\" has since been discarded; the Supreme Court now uses the Due Process Clause as a basis for various unenumerated privacy rights. Although it has never been the majority view, some have argued that the Ninth Amendment (addressing unenumerated rights) could be used as a source of fundamental judicially enforceable rights, including a general right to privacy, as discussed by Justice Goldberg concurring in \"Griswold\".\nVoid for vagueness.\nThe courts have generally determined that laws which are too vague for the average citizen to understand deprive citizens of their rights to due process. If an average person cannot determine who is regulated, what conduct is prohibited, or what punishment may be imposed by a law, courts may find that law to be void for vagueness. See \"Coates v. Cincinnati\", where the word \"annoying\" was deemed to lack due process insertion of fair warning.\nIncorporation of the Bill of Rights.\nIncorporation is the legal doctrine by which the Bill of Rights, either in full or in part, is applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause. The basis for incorporation is substantive due process regarding substantive rights enumerated elsewhere in the Constitution, and procedural due process regarding procedural rights enumerated elsewhere in the Constitution.\nIncorporation started in 1897 with a takings case, continued with \"Gitlow v. New York\" (1925), which was a First Amendment case, and accelerated in the 1940s and 1950s. Justice Hugo Black famously favored the jot-for-jot incorporation of the entire Bill of Rights. Justice Felix Frankfurter, however\u2014joined later by Justice John M. Harlan\u2014felt that the federal courts should only apply those sections of the Bill of Rights that were \"fundamental to a scheme of ordered liberty\". It was the latter course that the Warren Court of the 1960s took, although almost all of the Bill of Rights has now been incorporated jot-for-jot against the states. The latest Incorporation is the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment; see Timbs v. Indiana, 586 U.S. ____ (2019).\nThe role of the incorporation doctrine in applying the guarantees of the Bill of Rights to the states is just as notable as the use of due process to define new fundamental rights that are not explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution's text. In both cases, the question has been whether the right asserted is \"fundamental\", so that, just as not all proposed \"new\" constitutional rights are afforded judicial recognition, not all provisions of the Bill of Rights have been deemed sufficiently fundamental to warrant enforcement against the states.\nSome people, such as Justice Black, have argued that the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment would be a more appropriate textual source for the incorporation doctrine. The Court has not taken that course, and some point to the treatment given to the Privileges or Immunities Clause in the 1873 \"Slaughter-House Cases\" as a reason why. Although the \"Slaughter-House\" Court did not expressly preclude application of the Bill of Rights to the states, the clause largely ceased to be invoked in opinions of the Court following the \"Slaughter-House Cases\", and when incorporation did begin, it was under the rubric of due process. Scholars who share Justice Black's view, such as Akhil Amar, argue that the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, like Senator Jacob Howard and Congressman John Bingham, included a Due Process Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment for the following reason: \"By incorporating the rights of the Fifth Amendment, the privileges or immunities clause would ... have prevented states from depriving 'citizens' of due process. Bingham, Howard, and company wanted to go even further by extending the benefits of state due process to aliens.\"\nThe Supreme Court has consistently held that Fifth Amendment due process means substantially the same as Fourteenth Amendment due process, and therefore the original meaning of the former is relevant to the incorporation doctrine of the latter. When the Bill of Rights was originally proposed by Congress in 1789 to the states, various substantive and procedural rights were \"classed according to their affinity to each other\" instead of being submitted to the states \"as a single act to be adopted or rejected in the gross\", as James Madison put it. Roger Sherman explained in 1789 that each amendment \"may be passed upon distinctly by the States, and any one that is adopted by three fourths of the legislatures may become a part of the Constitution\". Thus, the states were allowed to reject the Sixth Amendment, for example, while ratifying all of the other amendments including the Due Process Clause; in that case, the rights in the Sixth Amendment would not have been incorporated against the federal government. The doctrine of incorporating the content of other amendments into \"due process\" was thus an innovation, when it began in 1925 with the \"Gitlow\" case, and this doctrine remains controversial today.\nReverse incorporation of equal protection.\nIn \"Bolling v. Sharpe\" 347 U.S. 497 (1954), the Supreme Court held that \"the concepts of equal protection and due process, both stemming from our American ideal of fairness, are not mutually exclusive.\" The Court thus interpreted the Fifth Amendment's due process clause to include an equal protection element. In \"Lawrence v. Texas\" the Supreme Court added: \"Equality of treatment and the due process right to demand respect for conduct protected by the substantive guarantee of liberty are linked in important respects, and a decision on the latter point advances both interests.\"\nLevels of scrutiny.\nWhen a law or other act of government is challenged as a violation of individual liberty under the due process clause, courts nowadays primarily use two forms of scrutiny, or judicial review, which is used by the Judicial Branch. This inquiry balances the importance of the governmental interest being served and the appropriateness of the government's method of implementation against the resulting infringement of individual rights. If the governmental action infringes upon a fundamental right, the highest level of review\u2014strict scrutiny\u2014is used. To pass strict scrutiny review, the law or act must be narrowly tailored to further a compelling government interest.\nWhen the governmental restriction restricts liberty in a manner that does not implicate a fundamental right, rational basis review is used. Here a legitimate government interest is enough to pass this review. There is also a middle level of scrutiny, called intermediate scrutiny, but it is primarily used in Equal Protection cases rather than in Due Process cases.\nRemedies.\nThe Court held in 1967 (in \"Chapman v. California\") that \"we cannot leave to the States the formulation of the authoritative ... remedies designed to protect people from infractions by the States of federally guaranteed rights\".\nCriticism.\nSubstantive due process.\nCritics of a substantive due process often claim that the doctrine began, at the federal level, with the infamous 1857 slavery case of \"Dred Scott v. Sandford\". However, other critics contend that substantive due process was not used by the federal judiciary until after the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted in 1869. Advocates of a substantive due process who assert that the doctrine was employed in \"Dred Scott\" claim that it was employed incorrectly. Additionally, the first appearance of a substantive due process as a concept arguably appeared earlier in the case of \"Bloomer v. McQuewan\", 55 U.S. 539 (1852), so that Chief Justice Taney would not have been entirely breaking ground in his \"Dred Scott\" opinion when he pronounced the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional because, among other reasons, an \"act of Congress that deprived a citizen of his liberty or property merely because he came himself or brought his property into a particular territory of the United States, and who had committed no offence against the laws, could hardly be dignified with the name of due process of law\". Dissenting Justice Curtis disagreed with Taney about what \"due process\" meant in \"Dred Scott\".\nCriticisms of the doctrine continue as in the past. Critics argue that judges are making determinations of policy and morality that properly belong with legislators (i.e. \"legislating from the bench\"), or argue that judges are reading views into the Constitution that are not really implied by the document, or argue that judges are claiming the power to expand the liberty of some people at the expense of other people's liberty (e.g. as in the Dred Scott case), or argue that judges are addressing substance instead of process.\nOliver Wendell Holmes Jr., a realist, worried that the Court was overstepping its boundaries, and the following is from one of his last dissents:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I have not yet adequately expressed the more than anxiety that I feel at the ever increasing scope given to the Fourteenth Amendment in cutting down what I believe to be the constitutional rights of the States. As the decisions now stand, I see hardly any limit but the sky to the invalidating of those rights if they happen to strike a majority of this Court as for any reason undesirable. I cannot believe that the Amendment was intended to give us carte blanche to embody our economic or moral beliefs in its prohibitions. Yet I can think of no narrower reason that seems to me to justify the present and the earlier decisions to which I have referred. Of course the words \"due process of law\", if taken in their literal meaning, have no application to this case; and while it is too late to deny that they have been given a much more extended and artificial signification, still we ought to remember the great caution shown by the Constitution in limiting the power of the States, and should be slow to construe the clause in the Fourteenth Amendment as committing to the Court, with no guide but the Court's own discretion, the validity of whatever laws the States may pass.\nOriginalists, such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who rejects substantive due process doctrine, and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who has also questioned the legitimacy of the doctrine, call a substantive due process a \"judicial usurpation\" or an \"oxymoron\". Both Scalia and Thomas have occasionally joined Court opinions that mention the doctrine, and have in their dissents often argued over how substantive due process should be employed based on Court precedent.\nMany non-originalists, like Justice Byron White, have also been critical of a substantive due process. As propounded in his dissents in \"Moore v. East Cleveland\" and \"Roe v. Wade\", as well as his majority opinion in \"Bowers v. Hardwick\", White argued that the doctrine of a substantive due process gives the judiciary too much power over the governance of the nation and takes away such power from the elected branches of government. He argued that the fact that the Court has created new substantive rights in the past should not lead it to \"repeat the process at will\". In his book \"Democracy and Distrust\", non-originalist John Hart Ely criticized \"substantive due process\" as a glaring non-sequitur. Ely argued the phrase was a contradiction-in-terms, like the phrase \"green pastel redness\".\nOriginalism is usually linked to opposition against substantive due process rights, and the reasons for that can be found in the following explanation that was endorsed unanimously by the Supreme Court in a 1985 case:\n\"[W]e must always bear in mind that the substantive content of the [due process] clause is suggested neither by its language nor by preconstitutional history; that content is nothing more than the accumulated product of judicial interpretation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.\"\nOriginalists do not necessarily oppose protection of the rights heretofore protected using substantive due process; rather, most originalists believe that such rights should be identified and protected through legislation, through passing amendments to the constitution, or via other existing provisions of the Constitution.\nThe perceived scope of the Due Process Clause has changed over time. For instance, even though many of the Framers of the Bill of Rights believed that slavery violated the fundamental natural rights of African-Americans:\n\"[a] theory that declared slavery to be a violation of the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment ... requires nothing more than a suspension of reason concerning the origin, intent, and past interpretation of the clause\".\nDue process clauses in state constitutions.\nNo state or federal constitution in the U.S. had ever before utilized any \"due process\" wording, prior to 1791 when the federal Bill of Rights was ratified.\nNew York.\nIn New York, a statutory bill of rights was enacted in 1787, and it contained four different due process clauses. Alexander Hamilton commented on the language of that New York bill of rights: \"The words 'due process' have a precise technical import, and are only applicable to the process and proceedings of the courts of justice; they can never be referred to an act of the legislature.\"\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "585092": "Substantive due process\nLegal principle\nSubstantive due process is a principle in United States constitutional law that allows courts to establish and protect substantive laws and certain fundamental rights from government interference, even if they are unenumerated elsewhere in the U.S. Constitution. Courts have asserted that such protections stem from the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibit the federal and state governments, respectively, from depriving any person of \"liberty ... without due process of law.\" Substantive due process demarcates the line between acts that courts deem subject to government regulation or legislation and those they consider beyond the reach of governmental interference. Whether the Fifth or Fourteenth Amendments were intended to serve that function continues to be a matter of scholarly as well as judicial discussion and dissent. In his concurrence in the 2022 landmark decision \"Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization\", Justice Clarence Thomas called on the Supreme Court to reconsider all of its rulings that were based on substantive due process. \nSubstantive due process is to be distinguished from procedural due process. The distinction arises from the words \"of law\" in the phrase \"due process of law\". Procedural due process protects individuals from the coercive power of government by ensuring that adjudication processes, under valid laws, are fair and impartial. Such protections, for example, include sufficient and timely notice of why a party is required to appear before a court or other governmental body, the right to an impartial trier of fact and trier of law, and the right to give testimony and present relevant evidence at hearings. In contrast, substantive due process protects individuals against majoritarian policy enactments that exceed the limits of governmental authority: courts may find that a majority's enactment is not law and cannot be enforced as such, even if the processes of enactment and enforcement were actually fair. \nThe term was first used explicitly in 1930s legal casebooks as a categorical distinction of selected due process cases, and by 1952 Supreme Court opinions had mentioned it twice. The term \"substantive due process\" itself is commonly used in two ways: to identify a particular line of case law and to signify a particular political attitude toward judicial review under the two due process clauses.\nMuch substantive due process litigation involves legal challenges to the validity of unenumerated rights and seeks particular outcomes instead of merely contesting procedures and their effects. In successful cases, the Supreme Court recognizes a constitutionally based liberty and considers laws that seek to limit that liberty to be unenforceable or limited in scope. Critics of substantive due process decisions usually assert that such decisions should be left to the purview of more politically-accountable branches of government.\nConceptual basics.\nThe courts have viewed the Due Process Clause and sometimes other clauses of the Constitution as embracing the fundamental rights that are \"implicit in the concept of ordered liberty\". The rights have not been clearly identified and the Supreme Court's authority to enforce the unenumerated rights is unclear. Some of the rights have been said to be \"deeply rooted\" in American history and tradition; that phrase was used for rights related to the institution of the family.\nThe courts have largely abandoned the Lochner era approach (c. 1897\u20131937), when substantive due process was used to strike down minimum wage and labor laws to protect freedom of contract. Since then, the Supreme Court has decided that the Constitution protects numerous other freedoms, even if they are not in the text. If the federal courts' doctrine of substantive due process did not protect them, they could nevertheless be protected in other ways; for example, other provisions of the state or federal constitutions or legislatures protect some rights.\nToday, the Supreme Court provides special protection for three types of rights under substantive due process in the Fourteenth Amendment \u2013 an approach which originated in \"United States v. Carolene Products Co.\", 304 U.S. 144 (1938), footnote 4:\nThe Supreme Court usually looks first to see whether the right is a fundamental right by examining whether it is deeply rooted in American history and traditions. If the right is not a fundamental right, the court applies a rational basis test: if the violation of the right can be rationally related to a legitimate government purpose, the law is then held valid. If the court establishes that the right being violated is a fundamental right, it applies strict scrutiny and asks whether the law is necessary to achieve a compelling state interest and whether the law is narrowly tailored to address that interest.\nHistory of jurisprudence.\nEarly in American judicial history, various jurists attempted to form theories of natural rights and natural justice to limit the power of government, especially on property and the rights of persons. Opposing \"vested rights\" were other jurists, who argued that the written constitution was the supreme law of the State and that judicial review could look only to that document, not to the \"unwritten law\" of \"natural rights\". Opponents also argued that the \"police power\" of government allowed legislatures to regulate the holding of property in the public interest, subject only to specific prohibitions of the written constitution.\nEarly origins.\nThe phrase \"substantive due process\" was not used until the 20th century, but the concept arguably existed in the 19th century. The idea was a way to import natural law norms into the Constitution; prior to the American Civil War, the state courts were the site of the struggle. Critics of substantive due process claim that the doctrine began, at the federal level, with the infamous 1857 slavery case of \"Dred Scott v. Sandford\". Advocates of substantive due process acknowledge that the doctrine was employed in \"Dred Scott\" but claim that it was employed incorrectly. Indeed, abolitionists and others argued that both before and after \"Dred Scott\", the Due Process Clause actually prohibited the federal government from recognizing slavery. Also, the first appearance of substantive due process, as a concept, had appeared in \"Bloomer v. McQuewan\", 55 U.S. 539 (1852).\nThe \"vested rights\" jurists saw the \"law of the land\" and \"due process\" clauses of state constitutions as restrictions on the substantive content of legislation. They were sometimes successful in arguing that certain government infringements were prohibited, regardless of procedure. For example, in 1856, the New York Court of Appeals held in \"Wynehamer v. New York\" that \"without 'due process of law', no act of legislation can deprive a man of his property, and that in civil cases an act of the legislature alone is wholly inoperative to take from a man his property\". However, in 1887 the U.S. Supreme Court subsequently rejected the rationale of \"Wynehamer\". Other antebellum cases on due process include \"Murray's Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co.\", which dealt with procedural due process, but the Supreme Court subsequently characterized the rationale of \"Murray\", in the case of \"Hurtado v. California\", as not providing \"an indispensable test\" of due process.\nAnother important pre-Civil War milestone in the history of due process was Daniel Webster's argument to the Supreme Court as counsel in \"Dartmouth College v. Woodward\" that the Due Process Clause forbids bills of attainder and various other types of depriving legislation. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court declined in the case to address that aspect of Webster's argument, the New Hampshire Supreme Court having already rejected it.\nRoger Taney, in his \"Dred Scott\" opinion, pronounced without elaboration that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because an \"act of Congress that deprived a citizen of his liberty or property merely because he came himself or brought his property into a particular territory of the United States, and who had committed no offence against the laws, could hardly be dignified with the name of due process of law\". In the case, neither Taney nor the dissenting Benjamin Robbins Curtis mentioned or relied upon the Court's previous discussion of due process in \"Murray\", and Curtis disagreed with Taney about what \"due process\" meant.\n\"Lochner\" era.\nFollowing the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause prompted substantive due process interpretations to be urged on the Supreme Court as a limitation on state legislation. Initially, however, the Supreme Court rejected substantive due process as it came to be understood, including in the seminal \"Slaughter-House Cases\". Beginning in the 1870s through the late 1880s, the Supreme Court hinted in dicta that various state statutes challenged under a different constitutional provision may have been invalidated under the due process clause. The first case to invalidate a state government economic regulation under this theory was \"Allgeyer v. Louisiana\" in 1897 which interpreted the word \"liberty\" in the due process clause to mean economic liberty. The Supreme Court would go on to impose on both federal and state legislation a firm judicial hand on property and economics right until the Great Depression in the 1930s.\nThe Court typically invalidated statutes during the \"Lochner\" era (named after \"Lochner v. New York\") by declaring the statutes in violation of the right to contract. The Court invalidated state laws prohibiting employers from insisting, as a condition of employment, that their employees agree not to join a union. The Court also declared a state minimum wage law for women unconstitutional. Because many of the first applications protected the rights of corporations and employers to be free of governmental regulation, some scholars believe that substantive due process developed as a consequence of the Court's desire to accommodate 19th-century railroads and trusts.\nLater development.\nThe end of the \"Lochner\" era came in 1937 with the Supreme Court's holding in \"West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish\". In that case, the Court upheld the state of Washington's \"Minimum Wages for Women\" act, reasoning that the Constitution permitted the restriction of liberty of contract by state law where such restriction protected the community, health and safety, or vulnerable groups.\nAlthough economic due process restrictions on legislation were largely abandoned by the courts, substantive due process rights continue to be successfully asserted today in non-economic legislation that affects intimate issues like bodily integrity, marriage, religion, childbirth, child-rearing, and sexuality.\nPrivacy, which is not mentioned in the Constitution, was at issue in \"Griswold v. Connecticut\", when the Court held, in 1965, that criminal prohibition of contraceptive devices for married couples violated federal, judicially enforceable privacy rights. The right to contraceptives was found in what the Court called the \"penumbras\", or shadow edges, of certain amendments that arguably refer to certain privacy rights, such as the First Amendment, which protects freedom of expression; the Third Amendment, which protects homes from being taken for use by soldiers; and the Fourth Amendment, which provides security against unreasonable searches. The penumbra-based rationale of \"Griswold\" has since been discarded; the"}, "descending_order": ["629693", "585092"], "permutation_1": ["629693", "585092"], "permutation_2": ["629693", "585092"], "permutation_3": ["629693", "585092"]}
{"id": "nq_-3182539626890716082", "docs_added": {"9772281": "Waybury Inn\nThe Waybury Inn is an inn at 457 East Main Street in Middlebury, Vermont, United States. The inn was built in 1810, and is one of the oldest operating traveler's accommodations in the state. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. It is well known for its use in exterior shots of the \"Newhart\" television series.\nDescription.\nThe Waybury Inn is located on the north side of East Main Street (Vermont Route 125), near the eastern end of East Middlebury village. It is set near the westernmost end of one of the major routes across the Green Mountains in central Vermont. It consists of a <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />2+1\u20442-story gable-roofed main block, from which a two-story block extends to the rear. A single-story porch, covered by a hip roof, extends across the front and around to one side. The interior is arranged in a central hall plan, with large rooms, extending the full depth of the main block, on either side of the main staircase.\nHistory.\nThe inn was built in 1810 by John Foot (or Foote). The pass to the east had opened as a toll road (turnpike) in 1808, and Foot sought to capitalize on the traffic it would bring. However, the turnpike never brought a high volume of traffic, and efforts to develop a glassworks in the village also cramped growth in the area. Moderate growth in the village by 1850 prompted its second proprietor, Royal Farr, to expand the premises in 1867 by adding the ell to the rear. This included a ballroom, and Farr added other amenities to make the inn a local site for social events. The inn was variously known as the Glen House and Green Mountain House before being given its present name in the 20th century. The only period of time in which the inn was closed was during World War II.\nThe inn maintains a tradition in which, in room 9, there is an antique desk with a secret drawer. Following the lead of a couple who found the drawer in 1987, guests often put notes in the drawer.\nThe Waybury Inn was also used as a location for exterior shots on the Bob Newhart television series, \"Newhart\", from 1982 to 1990. Featured as the Stratford Inn, the Waybury Inn was painted white for the show. After the show went off the air in 1990, the inn was repainted green to match the nearby Green Mountains.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "145389": "Bob Newhart\nAmerican comedian and actor (1929\u20132024)\nGeorge Robert Newhart (September 5, 1929 \u2013 July 18, 2024) was an American comedian and actor. Newhart was known for his deadpan and stammering delivery style. Beginning his career as a stand-up comedian, he transitioned his career to acting in television. He received numerous accolades, including three Grammy Awards, an Emmy Award, and a Golden Globe Award. He received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2002.\nNewhart came to prominence in 1960 when his record album of comedic monologues, \"The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart\", became a bestseller and reached number one on the \"Billboard\" pop album chart and won two Grammy Awards for Album of the Year, and Best New Artist. That same year he released his follow-up album, \"The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back!\" (1960), which was also a success, and the two albums held the \"Billboard\" number one and number two spots simultaneously. He later released several additional comedy albums. \nNewhart hosted a short-lived NBC variety show, \"The Bob Newhart Show\" (1961), before starring as Chicago psychologist Robert Hartley on \"The Bob Newhart Show\" from 1972 to 1978. For the latter, he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Male TV Star. He then starred as Vermont innkeeper Dick Loudon on the series \"Newhart\" from 1982 to 1990, where he received three nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. He also starred in two short-lived sitcoms, \"Bob\" (1992\u20131993) and \"George and Leo\" (1997\u20131998).\nNewhart also acted in the films \"Hell Is for Heroes\" (1962), \"Hot Millions\" (1968), \"Catch-22\" (1970), \"Cold Turkey\" (1971), \"In & Out\" (1997), and \"Elf\" (2003), and voiced Bernard in the Disney animated film \"The Rescuers\" (1977) and its sequel (1990). Newhart played Professor Proton on the CBS sitcom \"The Big Bang Theory\" from 2013 to 2018, for which he received his first-ever career Emmy Award, for the Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series. He also reprised his role in \"The Big Bang Theory\" prequel spin-off series \"Young Sheldon\" (2017\u20132020).\nEarly life and education.\nGeorge Robert Newhart was born on September 5, 1929, in Oak Park, Illinois. His parents were Julia Pauline (\"n\u00e9e\" Burns; 1901\u20131994), a housewife, and George David Newhart (1899\u20131987), a part-owner of a plumbing supply business. His mother was of Irish descent, while his father was of German and Irish descent. He went by his middle name, \"Bob,\" to avoid confusion with his father. The family name Newhart is of German origin (\"Neuhart\").<ref name=\"imdb/title/5984620\"></ref> One of his grandmothers was from St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. He had three sisters.\nNewhart was educated at Catholic schools in the Chicago area, including St. Catherine of Siena Grammar School in Oak Park, and attended St. Ignatius College Prep (high school), graduating in 1947. He then enrolled at Loyola University Chicago, from which he graduated in 1952 with a bachelor's degree in business management. Newhart was drafted into the U.S. Army and, until his discharge, in 1954, served as a U.S.-based clerk during the Korean War. He briefly attended Loyola University Chicago School of Law, but did not complete a degree, in part, he said, because he had been asked to behave unethically during an internship.\nCareer.\n1958\u20131971: Comedy albums and stardom.\nAfter the war, Newhart worked for United States Gypsum as an accountant. He later said that his motto, \"That's close enough,\" and his habit of adjusting petty cash imbalances with his own money showed that he lacked the temperament of an accountant. In 1958, Newhart became an advertising copywriter for Fred A. Niles, a major independent film and television producer in Chicago. There, he and a co-worker entertained each other with long telephone calls about absurd scenarios, which they later recorded and sent to radio stations as audition tapes. When the co-worker ended his participation by taking a job in New York, Newhart continued the recordings alone, developing routines.\nDan Sorkin, a radio station disc jockey, who later became the announcer-sidekick on Newhart's NBC series, introduced Newhart to the head of talent at Warner Bros. Records. Based solely on those recordings, the label signed him in 1959, only a year after it had come into existence. Newhart expanded his material into a stand-up routine that he began to perform at nightclubs. He became famous mostly on the strength of his audio releases, in which he played a solo \"straight man\". Newhart's routine was to portray one end of a conversation (usually a phone call), playing the comedic straight man while implying what the other person was saying. Newhart's 1960 comedy album \"The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart\" was the first comedy album to make number one on the \"Billboard\" charts and peaked at number two in the UK Albums Chart. It won two Grammy Awards, Album of the Year, and Best New Artist.\nNewhart told a 2005 interviewer for PBS's \"American Masters\" that his favorite stand-up routine was \"Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue\", which appears on this album. In the routine, a slick promoter has to deal with Lincoln's reluctance to agree to efforts to boost his image. Chicago TV director and future comedian Bill Daily, who was Newhart's castmate on \"The Bob Newhart Show\", suggested the routine to him. A follow-up album, \"The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back!\", was released six months later and won Best Comedy Performance \u2013 Spoken Word that year. His subsequent comedy albums include \"Behind the Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart\" (1961), \"The Button-Down Mind on TV\" (1962), \"Bob Newhart Faces Bob Newhart\" (1964), \"The Windmills Are Weakening\" (1965), \"This Is It\" (1967), \"Best of Bob Newhart\" (1971), and \"Very Funny Bob Newhart\" (1973). Years later, he released \"Bob Newhart Off the Record\" (1992), \"The Button-Down Concert\" (1997), and \"Something Like This\" (2001), an anthology of his 1960s Warner Bros. albums. On December 10, 2015, publicist and comedy album collector Jeff Abraham revealed that a \"lost\" Newhart track from 1965 about Paul Revere existed on a one-of-a-kind acetate, which he owns. The track made its world premiere on episode 163 of the \"Comedy on Vinyl\" podcast.\nNewhart's success in stand-up led to his own short-lived NBC variety show in 1961, \"The Bob Newhart Show\". The show lasted only a single season, but it earned Newhart a Primetime Emmy Award nomination and a Peabody Award. The Peabody Board cited him as \"a person whose gentle satire and wry and irreverent wit waft a breath of fresh and bracing air through the stale and stuffy electronic corridors. A merry marauder, who looks less like St. George than a choirboy, Newhart has wounded, if not slain, many of the dragons that stalk our society. In a troubled and apprehensive world, Newhart has proved once again that laughter is the best medicine.\" In the mid-1960s, Newhart was one of the initial three co-hosts of the variety show \"The Entertainers\" (1964), with Carol Burnett and Caterina Valente, appeared on \"The Dean Martin Show\" 24 times and on \"The Ed Sullivan Show\" eight times. He appeared in a 1963 episode of \"The Alfred Hitchcock Hour\", \"How to Get Rid of Your Wife\"; and on \"The Judy Garland Show\". He also appeared on series such as \"Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre\", \"Captain Nice\", and \"Insight\". Newhart guest-hosted \"The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson\" 87 times, and hosted \"Saturday Night Live\" twice, in 1980 and 1995. In 1964, he appeared at the Royal Variety Performance in London, before Queen Elizabeth II.\nIn 1962, Newhart filmed \"An Evening with Bob Newhart\", thought to be the first pay-per-view television special, for Canadian-based Telemeter.\n1972\u20131978: \"The Bob Newhart Show\".\nNewhart starred in two long-running sitcoms. In 1972, soon after he guest-starred on \"The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour\", he was approached by his agent and his managers, producer Grant Tinker, and actress Mary Tyler Moore (the husband/wife team who founded MTM Enterprises), to work on a series called \"The Bob Newhart Show\", to be written by David Davis and Lorenzo Music. He was very interested in the starring role of psychologist Bob Hartley, with Suzanne Pleshette playing his wry, loving wife, Emily, and Bill Daily as neighbor and friend Howard Borden.\n\"The Bob Newhart Show\" was a part of the CBS comedy lineup on Saturday Night consisting of \"All in the Family\", \"M*A*S*H\", \"The Mary Tyler Moore Show\", and \"The Carol Burnett Show\". The series was an immediate hit. The show eventually referenced what made Newhart's name in the first place; apart from the first few episodes, it used an opening-credits sequence featuring Newhart answering a telephone in his office. According to co-star Marcia Wallace, the entire cast got along well, and Newhart became close friends with both Wallace and co-star Suzanne Pleshette.\nIn addition to Wallace as Bob's wisecracking, man-chasing receptionist Carol Kester, the cast included Peter Bonerz as amiable orthodontist Jerry Robinson; Jack Riley as Elliot Carlin, the most misanthropic of Hartley's patients; character actor and voice artist John Fiedler as milquetoast Emil Petersen; and Pat Finley as Bob's sister, Ellen Hartley, a love interest for Howard Borden. Future \"Newhart\" regular Tom Poston had a briefly recurring role as Cliff \"Peeper\" Murdock, veteran stage actor Barnard Hughes appeared as Bob's father for three episodes spread over two seasons, and Martha Scott appeared in several episodes as Bob's mother.\nBy 1977, the show's ratings were declining and Newhart wanted to end it, but was under contract to do one more season. The show's writers tried to rework the sitcom by adding a pregnancy, but Newhart objected: \"I told the creators I didn't want any children, because I didn't want it to be a show about 'How stupid Daddy is, but we love him so much, let's get him out of the trouble he's gotten himself into'.\" Nevertheless, the staff wrote an episode that they hoped would change Newhart's mind. Newhart read the script and he agreed it was very funny. He then asked, \"Who are you going to get to play Bob?\" Coincidentally, Newhart's wife gave birth to their daughter Jenny late in the year, which caused him to miss several episodes.\nIn the last episode of the fifth season, not only was Bob's wife, Emily, pregnant, but his receptionist, Carol, was, too. In the first show of the sixth season, Bob revealed his dream of the pregnancies and that neither Emily nor Carol was really pregnant. Marcia Wallace spoke of Newhart's amiable nature on set: \"He's very low key, and he didn't want to cause trouble. I had a dog by the name of Maggie that I used to bring to the set. And whenever there was a line that Bob didn't like\u2014he didn't want to complain too much\u2014so, he'd go over, get down on his hands and knees, and repeat the line to the dog, which invariably yawned; and he'd say, \"See, I told you it's not funny!\". Wallace also commented on the show's lack of Emmy recognition: \"People think we were nominated for many an Emmy, people presume we won Emmys, all of us, and certainly Bob, and certainly the show. Nope, never!\" Newhart discontinued the series in 1978 after six seasons and 142 episodes. Wallace said of its ending, \"It was much crying and sobbing. It was so sad. We really did get along. We really had great times together.\"\nOf Newhart's other long-running sitcom, \"Newhart\", Wallace said: \"But some of the other great comedic talents who had a brilliant show, when they tried to do it twice, it didn't always work. And that's what... but like Bob, as far as I'm concerned, Bob is like the Fred Astaire of comics. He just makes it look so easy, and he's not as in-your-face as some might be. And so, you just kind of take it for granted, how extraordinarily funny and how he wears well.\" She was later reunited with Newhart twice, once in a reprise of her role as Carol on \"Murphy Brown\" in 1994, and on an episode of Newhart's short-lived sitcom, \"George & Leo\", in 1997.\nAlthough primarily a television star, Newhart appeared in a number of popular films, beginning with the 1959 war story \"Hell Is for Heroes\" (where he did his one-sided telephone act in a bunker). In 1968, Newhart played an annoying software specialist in the film \"Hot Millions\". His films include 1970's Alan Jay Lerner musical \"On a Clear Day You Can See Forever\", the 1971 Norman Lear comedy \"Cold Turkey\", Mike Nichols's war satire \"Catch-22\", the 1977 Disney animated feature \"The Rescuers\" and its 1990 sequel \"The Rescuers Down Under\" as the voice of Bernard, and he played the president of the United States in the comedy \"First Family\" (1980).\n1982\u20131990: \"Newhart\".\nBy 1982, Newhart was interested in a new sitcom. After he had discussions with Barry Kemp and CBS, the show \"Newhart\" was created, in which Newhart played Vermont innkeeper and TV talk show host Dick Loudon. Mary Frann was cast as his wife, Joanna. Jennifer Holmes was originally cast as Leslie Vanderkellen, but left after former daytime soap star Julia Duffy joined the cast as Dick's inn maid and spoiled rich girl, Stephanie Vanderkellen. Peter Scolari (who had been a fan of Newhart's since he was 17) was also cast as Dick's manipulative TV producer, Michael Harris, in six of the eight seasons. Steven Kampmann, who was a neighbor for a while, was cast as Kirk Devane for two years, at a cafe he owned. Character actor Tom Poston played the role of handyman George Utley, earning three Primetime Emmy Award nominations as Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 1984, 1986, and 1987. Like \"The Bob Newhart Show\", \"Newhart\" was an immediate hit, and again, like the show before it, it was also nominated for Primetime Emmy Awards but failed to win any. During the time Newhart was working on the show, in 1985, his smoking habit finally caught up to him, and he was taken to the emergency room for secondary polycythemia. The doctors ordered him to stop smoking.\nIn 1987, ratings began to drop. \"Newhart\" ended in 1990 after eight seasons and 182 episodes. The last episode ended with a scene in which Newhart wakes up in bed with Suzanne Pleshette, who played Emily, his wife from \"The Bob Newhart Show\". He realizes (in a satire of a famous plot element in the television series \"Dallas\" a few years earlier) that the entire eight-year \"Newhart\" series had been a single nightmare of Dr. Bob Hartley's, which Emily attributes to eating Japanese food before he went to bed. Recalling Mary Frann's buxom figure and proclivity for wearing sweaters, Bob closes the segment and the series by telling Emily, \"You really should wear more sweaters\" before the typical closing notes of the old \"Bob Newhart Show\" theme played over the fadeout. The twist ending was later chosen by \"TV Guide\" as the best finale in television history. With the exception of the series finale, Newhart simply said \"meow\" in the MTM Productions closing logo on all episodes. The finale's logo used a sound clip of the two brothers named Darryl shouting \"QUIET!!!\" in unison; prior to this, only their brother Larry ever spoke a word while they remained silent.\n1991\u20132012: Established career.\nIn addition to stand-up comedy, Newhart became a dedicated character actor in film and television. Newhart played a beleaguered school principal in \"In & Out\" (1997), acted in the Will Ferrell Christmas comedy film \"Elf\" (2003), and made a cameo appearance as a sadistic but appreciative CEO at the end of the comedy \"Horrible Bosses\" (2011). He appeared on \"It's Garry Shandling's Show\" and \"Committed\", reprised his role as Dr. Bob Hartley on \"Murphy Brown\", and appeared as himself on \"The Simpsons\". Newhart had a role on \"NCIS\" as Ducky's mentor and predecessor, a retired forensic pathologist, who was discovered to have Alzheimer's disease.\nIn 1992, Newhart returned to television with a series about a cartoonist called \"Bob\". The ensemble cast included Lisa Kudrow, but the show did not develop a strong audience and was cancelled shortly after the start of its second season, despite good critical reviews. On \"The Tonight Show\" following the cancellation, Newhart joked he had now done shows called \"The Bob Newhart Show\", \"Newhart\", and \"Bob\" so that his next show was going to be called \"The\". In 1997, Newhart returned again with \"George & Leo\" on CBS with Judd Hirsch and Jason Bateman (Newhart's first name being George); the show was cancelled during its first season. In 1995, Newhart was approached by Showtime to make the first comedy special of his 35-year career, \"Off the Record\", which consisted of him performing material from his first and second albums in front of an audience in Pasadena, California.\nIn 2003, Newhart guest-starred on three episodes of \"ER\" in a rare dramatic role that earned him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination, his first in nearly 20 years. In 2005, he began a recurring role in \"Desperate Housewives\" as Morty, the on-again/off-again boyfriend of Sophie (Lesley Ann Warren), Susan Mayer's (Teri Hatcher) mother. In 2009, he received another Primetime Emmy nomination for reprising his role as Judson in \"\". On August 27, 2006, at the 58th Primetime Emmy Awards, hosted by Conan O'Brien, Newhart was placed in a supposedly airtight glass prison that contained three hours of air. If the Emmys went over the time of three hours, he would die. This gag was an acknowledgment of the common frustration that award shows usually run on past their allotted time (usually three hours). Newhart \"survived\" his containment to help O'Brien present the award for Outstanding Comedy Series (which went to \"The Office\"). During an episode of \"Jimmy Kimmel Live!\", Newhart made a comedic cameo with members of the ABC show \"Lost\" lampooning an alternate ending to the series finale. In 2011, he appeared in a small but pivotal role as a doctor in Lifetime's anthology film on breast cancer, \"Five\".\n2013\u20132020: \"The Big Bang Theory\" and final roles.\nIn 2013, Newhart appeared in an episode of the sixth season of \"The Big Bang Theory\" playing the aged Professor Proton (Arthur Jeffries), a former science TV show host turned children's party entertainer, for which he was awarded a Primetime Emmy Award. It was Newhart's first Emmy. At that year's Emmy ceremony, Newhart appeared as a presenter with \"The Big Bang Theory\" star Jim Parsons and received a standing ovation. He continued to play the character periodically through the show's 12th and final season and on its spinoff \"Young Sheldon\". On December 19, 2014, the 85-year-old Newhart made a surprise appearance on the final episode of \"The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson\", where he was revealed to be the person inside Secretariat, Ferguson's on-set pantomime horse. The show then ended with a scene parodying the \"Newhart\" series finale, with Ferguson and Drew Carey reprising their roles from \"The Drew Carey Show\". In June 2015, Newhart appeared on another series finale, that of \"Hot in Cleveland\", playing the father-in-law of Joy Scroggs (Jane Leeves). It marked a reunion with Betty White, who was a cast member during the second season of \"Bob\" 23 years earlier. The finale ends with their characters getting married.\nComedic style.\nNewhart was known for his deadpan delivery and a slight stammer that he incorporated early on into the persona around which he built a successful career. The hesitant stammer was his natural speaking style \u2013 \"Truly, that's ... the ... way I talk\" \u2013 and he used it to build tension in the audience, \"Tension is very important to comedy. And the release of the tension \u2013 \"that's\" the laugh.\"\nOn his TV shows, although he got his share of funny lines, he worked often in the Jack Benny tradition of being the \"straight man\" while the sometimes rather bizarre cast members surrounding him got the laughs. But Newhart said, \"I was not influenced by Jack Benny\", and cited George Gobel and Bob and Ray as his initial writing and performance inspirations.\nSeveral of his routines involved hearing half of a conversation as he spoke to someone on the phone. In a bit called \"King Kong\", a rookie security guard at the Empire State Building seeks guidance as to how to deal with an ape that is \"between 18 and 19 stories high, depending on whether there's a 13th floor or not.\" He assured his boss he has looked in the guards' manual \"under 'ape' and 'ape's toes'.\" His other famous routines included \"The Driving Instructor\", \"The Mrs. Grace L. Ferguson Airline (and Storm Door Company)\", \"Introducing Tobacco to Civilization\", \"Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue\", \"Defusing a Bomb\" (in which an uneasy police chief tries to walk a new and nervous patrolman through defusing a live shell discovered on a beach), \"The Retirement Party\", \"Ledge Psychology\", \"The Khrushchev Landing Rehearsal\", and \"A Friend with a Dog.\"\nIn a 2012 podcast interview with Marc Maron, comedian Shelley Berman accused Newhart of plagiarizing his improvisational telephone routine style (although not any actual material of Berman's). However, in interviews both years before and after Berman's comments, Newhart never took credit for originating the telephone concept, which he noted was done earlier by Berman and\u00a0\u2014 predating Berman\u00a0\u2014 Nichols and May, George Jessel (in his well-known sketch \"Hello Mama\"), and in the 1913 recording \"Cohen on the Telephone\". Starting in the 1940s, Arlene Harris also built a long radio and TV career around her one-sided telephone conversations, and the technique was later also used by Lily Tomlin, Ellen DeGeneres, and others.\nPersonal life.\nFamily life.\nOn January 12, 1963, Newhart married Virginia Lillian \"Ginnie\" Quinn (December 9, 1940 \u2013 April 23, 2023). She was a daughter of character actor Bill Quinn, and met Newhart via an introduction by comedian Buddy Hackett. The couple had four children: Robert (born 1963), Timothy (born 1967), Jennifer (born 1971), and Courtney (born 1977), followed by 10 grandchildren. Both Catholics, the couple raised their children in that faith. Bob was a member of the Church of the Good Shepherd and the related Catholic Motion Picture Guild in Beverly Hills, California. Ginnie died at age 82 on April 23, 2023.\nNewhart was the uncle of actor and comedian Paul Brittain.\nThe Newhart and Rickles families were close, often vacationing together. Don Rickles and Newhart appeared together on \"The Tonight Show with Jay Leno\" on January 24, 2005, the Monday following Johnny Carson's death, reminiscing about their many appearances on Carson's show. The two also appeared together on the television sitcom \"Newhart\" and for previous episodes of \"The Tonight Show\", where Newhart or Rickles were guest hosts. The friendship was memorialized in \"Bob & Don: A Love Story,\" a 2023 short documentary film by Judd Apatow, released by \"The New Yorker\", featuring interviews, as well as home videos, with both families.\nFor over 25 years, Newhart's family lived in a mansion in Bel Air. The house was designed by Wallace Neff in a French Country style. The , five-bedroom home featured formal gardens, a lagoon-style pool with waterfall, and guest apartment. Newhart sold the property to developers in May 2016 for $14.5 million. The new property owners razed the mansion and sold the empty lot for $17.65 million in 2017.\nInterests.\nIn 1995, Newhart was one of several investors in Rotijefco (a blend of his children's names), which bought radio station KKSB (AM 1290\u00a0kHz) in Santa Barbara, California. Its format was changed to adult standards and its call sign to KZBN (his initials). In 2005, Rotijefco sold the station to Santa Barbara Broadcasting, which changed its call sign to KZSB and format to news and talk radio.\nNewhart was an early home-computer hobbyist, purchasing the Commodore PET after its 1977 introduction. In 2001, he wrote, \"Later, I moved up to the 64 KB model and thought that was silly because it was more memory than I would ever possibly need.\"\nHealth and death.\nIn 1985, Newhart was hospitalized for secondary polycythemia, a condition attributed to his years of heavy smoking. He recovered after several weeks and eventually quit smoking.\nNewhart died from complications of several short illnesses at his home in Los Angeles on July 18, 2024, at the age of 94. Upon his death, President Joe Biden released a statement which read, \"Today, we mourn the loss of Bob Newhart, a comedy legend and beloved performer who kept Americans laughing for decades.\" Those who paid tributes to Newhart included Reese Witherspoon, James Woods, Julie Bowen, Carol Burnett, Conan O'Brien, Alec Baldwin, Judd Apatow, Kaley Cuoco, Mayim Bialik, Kunal Nayyar, Iain Armitage, Al Franken, Mark Hamill, and Jamie Lee Curtis.\nHe is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills).\nBibliography.\nOn September 20, 2006, Hyperion Books released Newhart's first book \"I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This\". The book is primarily a memoir but also features comic bits. Transcripts of many of Newhart's classic routines are woven into the text. Actor David Hyde Pierce said, \"The only difference between Bob Newhart on stage and Bob Newhart offstage is that there is no stage\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "145388": "Newhart\nAmerican television sitcom (1982\u20131990)\nNewhart is an American television sitcom that aired on CBS from October 25, 1982, to May 21, 1990, with a total of 184 half-hour episodes spanning eight seasons. The series stars Bob Newhart and Mary Frann as an author and his wife, respectively; who own and operate the Stratford Inn in rural Vermont. The small town is home to many eccentric characters. \"TV Guide\", TV Land, and A&E named the \"Newhart\" series finale as one of the most memorable in television history. The theme music for \"Newhart\" was composed by Henry Mancini.\nPremise.\nBob Newhart plays Dick Loudon, an author of do-it-yourself and travel books. He and his wife Joanna move from New York City to a small town in rural Vermont to operate the 200-year-old Stratford Inn.\nDick and Joanna initially run the inn with the help of sweet-natured but simple handyman George Utley and Leslie Vanderkellen, a bright, cheerful Dartmouth College student and heiress who takes a job as a maid to find out what it is like to be \"normal\". Next door to the inn is the Minuteman Caf\u00e9, owned by Kirk Devane, a pathological liar. Leslie leaves before season two to continue her studies abroad, to be replaced by her cousin Stephanie, who, unlike Leslie, is vain, lazy, and spoiled. Brothers Larry, Darryl and Darryl take over the Minuteman Cafe when Kirk leaves after season two.\nNear the end of season two, Dick becomes the host of a local television show, \"Vermont Today\", where he interviews an assortment of bizarre and colorful guests. His vapid, neurotic producer, Michael Harris, falls in love with Stephanie, their relationship providing a satire of 1980s excess. The final episode of the series reveals that the entire series was a dream of Dr. Robert Hartley, Newhart's character in \"The Bob Newhart Show\".\nCast.\nMain.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>*Bob Newhart as Dick Loudon, owner of the Stratford Inn, author of do-it-yourself books, as well as the host of \"Vermont Today\"\nRecurring.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>*William Lanteau as Chester Wanamaker, the town's fussbudget mayor (1982\u201390)\nReception.\n\"Newhart\" was a solid ratings winner, finishing its first six seasons in the Nielsen top 25. Despite not finishing in the top 30 for its last two seasons, Bob Newhart stated in an interview with the Archive of American Television that CBS was satisfied enough with the show's ratings to renew it for a ninth season in 1990. However, Newhart, who was anxious to move on to other projects, declined the offer, promising CBS that he would develop a new series for the network, which he was under contract to do. This resulted in the 1992 series \"Bob\", which lasted two seasons.\nAwards.\nNominations.\nEmmy Awards.\nThe show was nominated for 25 Emmy Awards but never won.\nGolden Globe Awards.\n\"Newhart\" earned six nominations for Golden Globe Awards.\nOther awards.\nNewhart was nominated for one Casting Society of America award and four nominations for TV Land Awards. \"Newhart\" won a total of four Viewers for Quality Television Awards.\nHome media.\n20th Century Fox released season one of \"Newhart\" on DVD in Region 1 on February 26, 2008.\nIn November 2013, Shout! Factory announced it had acquired the rights to the series. It has since released the remainder of the series in individual season sets.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "147114": "The Bob Newhart Show\nAmerican TV sitcom (1972\u20131978)\nThe Bob Newhart Show is an American sitcom television series produced by MTM Enterprises that aired on CBS from September 16, 1972, to April 1, 1978, with a total of 142 half-hour episodes over six seasons. Comedian Bob Newhart portrays a psychologist whose interactions with his wife, friends, patients, and colleagues lead to humorous situations and dialogue. The show was filmed before a live audience.\nPremise.\nThe show centers on Robert \"Bob\" Hartley (Newhart), a Chicago psychologist, his work and home life, with his supportive, though occasionally sarcastic, wife Emily (Suzanne Pleshette), and their friendly but mildly pesky neighbor, airline navigator Howard Borden (Bill Daily). The medical building where Bob's practice is located also houses Jerry Robinson (Peter Bonerz), an orthodontist whose office is on the same floor, and their receptionist, Carol Kester (Marcia Wallace), as well as a number of other doctors who appear on the show occasionally.\nBob's three most frequently seen regular patients are cynical, mean-spirited and neurotic Elliot Carlin (Jack Riley), milquetoast former US Marine cook Emil Peterson (John Fiedler), and quiet, reserved Lillian Bakerman (Florida Friebus), an older woman who spends most of her sessions knitting."}, "descending_order": ["145389", "145388", "147114", "9772281"], "permutation_1": ["145389", "9772281", "147114", "145388"], "permutation_2": ["145388", "9772281", "147114", "145389"], "permutation_3": ["145388", "9772281", "145389", "147114"]}
{"id": "nq_4146499940065106666", "docs_added": {"3698466": "Bad (U2 song)\n1984 song by U2\n\"Bad\" is a song by Irish rock band U2 and the seventh track on their 1984 album \"The Unforgettable Fire\". Thematically, the song is about heroin addiction, though lead vocalist Bono has given varying accounts of who was the inspiration behind his lyrics. \"Bad\" is considered a fan favourite and is one of U2's most frequently performed songs in concert. The band's 12-minute performance of the song at the Live Aid charity concert in 1985 was a breakthrough moment for them.\nA live version of the song appears on U2's 1985 EP \"Wide Awake in America\"; this rendition became popular on album-oriented rock radio stations. In the United States, the song peaked at number 19 on the \"Billboard\" Top Rock Tracks chart. The album version of the song featured on the trailer of the 2009 film \"Brothers\" and in the opening and closing sequences of the 2004 film \"Taking Lives\".\nHistory.\n\"Bad\" originated from a guitar riff that the Edge improvised during a jam session at Slane Castle, where U2 were recording their 1984 album \"The Unforgettable Fire.\" The basic track was completed in three takes. Of its immediate and live nature, the Edge said, \"There's one moment where [drummer] Larry [Mullen Jr.] puts down brushes and takes up the sticks and it creates this pause which has an incredibly dramatic effect.\" Producer Brian Eno added the sequencer arpeggios that accompany the song.\nThe early 1980s recession had led to a high number of heroin addicts in inner city Dublin. In concert, lead vocalist Bono frequently introduced the song as a song about Dublin. The Edge and the album's producers, Eno and Daniel Lanois, were focused on the music and were less interested in the lyrics. Bono said that he left the song unfinished.\nDuring the 3 December 1984 concert at Radio City Music Hall in New York City for the Unforgettable Fire Tour, Bono said the song was about heroin and that he wrote it for a friend and also for himself; in discussing this comment during a 17 December radio interview, Bono said, \"Well, I think I said I wrote the song for a friend of mine; I also wrote it for myself because you can be addicted to anything. And, you know, that song's not just about heroin: it's about a lot of things. None of our songs, really, are just about one thing.\"\nThere are other versions of the story from Bono himself. His account from a 1987 concert in Chicago during the Joshua Tree Tour indicate \"Bad\" is about a friend of his who died of a heroin overdose and also about the conditions that make such events likely to be repeated. Bono once commented in another concert (in the UK) about people lying in gutters with \"needles hangin' outta their fuckin' arms while the rich live indifferently to the suffering of the less fortunate.\" At Eriksberg, Gothenburg in Sweden 1987, he said: \"I wrote the words about a friend of mine; his name was Gareth Spaulding, and on his 21st birthday he and his friends decided to give themselves a present of enough heroin into his veins to kill him. This song is called 'Bad.'\"\nDuring a 26 July 2011 concert in Pittsburgh during the U2 360\u00b0 Tour, Bono introduced a performance of \"Bad\" as a song written for a \"very special man, who is here in your city, who grew up on Cedarwood Road. We wrote this song about him and we play it for him tonight.\" He was referring to Andy Rowen, whom the song was written about in 1984 and who was present at the show. Rowen is the brother of Bono's Lypton Village friend Guggi and Peter Rowen, who is featured on the sleeve artwork for the band's albums \"Boy\" (1980) and \"War\" (1983).\nLive performances.\n\"Bad\" is one of the band's most performed songs. Translating the elaborate and complex textures of the new studio-recorded tracks to live performance proved to be a serious challenge when the Unforgettable Fire Tour commenced. One solution was programmed sequencers, which the band had previously been reluctant to use. Sequencers were prominently used on \"Bad\".\nThe studio version of \"Bad\" was criticised as being \"unfinished\", \"fuzzy\" and \"unfocused\", but the band found that it made more sense on stage. \"Rolling Stone\", for example, critical of the album version, described its live performance as a \"show stopper\".\nA staple of U2's concert tours of the 1980s, \"Bad\" was also frequently performed during the first four legs of the 1992\u20131993 Zoo TV Tour. Although not played until the fourth leg of the PopMart Tour of 1997 and 1998, it returned to the normal set list for 2001's Elevation Tour and saw occasional performances during the Vertigo Tour of 2005 and 2006, sometimes even appearing as the closing song for shows. It made very sporadic appearances on the U2 360\u00b0 Tour and has featured occasionally on the 2015 Innocence + Experience Tour.\nThe song once again returned to the normal setlist for both the Joshua Tree Tours 2017 and 2019, typically being played early on in the set with other pre-\"The Joshua Tree\" era hits. The Experience + Innocence Tour however (which took place in 2018 between the 2017 and 2019 legs of \"The Joshua Tree\" anniversary tours) did not feature a single performance of the song, making it the first tour in U2's history where the song was not performed.\nBono is known for singing a wide variety of snippets during performances of \"Bad\". Lyrics from over 50 different songs have been included in \"Bad\", ranging from brief quotes of a single line through to multiple verses. These snippets are typically sung after the line \"I'm not sleeping\" and Bono has included up to six different excerpts in a single performance of \"Bad\". Performances without at least one snippet are very rare.\nLive Aid.\nU2 participated in the Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium for Ethiopian famine relief on 13 July 1985. They played a 12-minute version of \"Bad\", which was extended by snippets of Lou Reed's \"Satellite of Love\" and \"Walk on the Wild Side\", and The Rolling Stones' \"Ruby Tuesday\" and \"Sympathy for the Devil\". During the performance, Bono leaped down off the stage to embrace and dance with a fan. In 2005 the girl with whom he danced, who was at the front to see Wham!, revealed that he actually saved her life at the time. She was being crushed by the throngs of people pushing forwards; Bono saw this, and gestured frantically at the ushers to help her. They did not understand what he was saying, and so he jumped down to help her himself. Bono's rescue of and dance with the girl was captured on the TV broadcast sent around the world. The performance was so long that the band were only able to play two of the three songs in their set, leaving out \"Pride (In the Name of Love)\", which was supposed to end the band's performance. The concert turned out to be a breakthrough moment for the band, showing a television audience of millions the personal connection that Bono could make with audiences. A week later, Bono realized that the dance with the fan became a key image of Live Aid. All of U2's albums re-entered the UK Albums Chart after their performance.\nDiscography.\n\"Bad\" is the first track on the 1985 EP \"Wide Awake in America\", this being a live version recorded at Birmingham's NEC Arena on November 12, 1984 during sound check. This version includes prerecorded rhythm tracks. There are no other snippets of songs on this version for copyright reasons. Three other versions of \"Bad\" have been officially released by the band. An edit of the version from \"The Unforgettable Fire\" appears on the 1998 compilation \"The Best of 1980\u20131990\"; with the exception of the hidden version of \"October\", \"Bad\" is the only non-single to appear on the compilation. In addition to the live performance included on \"Wide Awake in America\", a live version from 1987's Joshua Tree Tour appears in the rockumentary \"Rattle and Hum\" and a version from 2001's Elevation Tour appears in the concert film \"\" (with a snippet of \"40\" at the end and therefore credited as \"Bad / '40'\"). For the release of the 2004 digital box set \"The Complete U2\", another live version of \"Bad\" was included on the live album \"Live from the Point Depot\".\nAn acoustic version of \"Bad\" with lyrical changes is included on U2's 2023 album \"Songs of Surrender\".\nReferences.\nFootnotes\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography", "20945040": "List of cover versions of U2 songs\nThis list shows cover versions of songs originally by the Irish rock band U2 that have been recorded and released.\n\"40\".\n\"40\" is the tenth and final track from U2's 1983 album, \"War\". It is the final single from the album, released solely in Germany in 1983. The song was recorded right at the end of the recording sessions for \"War\". Bassist Adam Clayton had already left the studio, and the three remaining band members decided they did not have a good song to end the album. Bono noted that \"We spent ten minutes writing this song, ten minutes recording it, ten minutes mixing it, ten minutes playing it back, and that's got nothing to do with why it's called '40'.\"\nAcrobat.\n\"Acrobat\" is the eleventh track from U2's 1991 album \"Achtung Baby\".\nAll I Want Is You.\n\"All I Want Is You\" is the 17th song on U2's 1988 album, \"Rattle and Hum\" and was released in 1989 as the album's fourth and final single. It is the closing song from the movie \"Rattle and Hum\".\nAn Cat Dubh.\n\"An Cat Dubh\" is the third track from U2's debut album, \"Boy\". It is frequently paired with the following song from the same album, \"Into the Heart\".\nAngel of Harlem.\n\"Angel of Harlem\" is the second single from U2's 1988 album, \"Rattle and Hum\". It peaked at #9 on the UK singles chart. It is an homage to Billie Holiday.\nBad.\n\"Bad\" is the seventh track from U2's 1984 album, \"The Unforgettable Fire\". Often considered a fan favorite, it is U2's tenth most frequently performed song in concert. The song is about a heroin addiction.\nBeautiful Day.\n\"Beautiful Day\" is the lead single from U2's 2000 album, \"All That You Can't Leave Behind\". It was a huge commercial success, helping to launch the album to multi-platinum status, and is one of U2's biggest hits to date.\nBreathe.\n\"Breathe\" is the tenth track from U2's 2009 album \"No Line on the Horizon\". Longtime U2 collaborator and producer Brian Eno cited \"Breathe\" as \"the best thing (U2) have ever recorded\" during an interview with \"Q\" magazine.\nBullet the Blue Sky.\n\"Bullet the Blue Sky\" is the fourth track from U2's 1987 album, \"The Joshua Tree\". The song was originally written about the United States' military intervention during the 1980s in the El Salvador Civil War.\nCity of Blinding Lights.\n\"City of Blinding Lights\" is the fifth track and third single from the group's 2004 album \"How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb\". The song tells the story of U2's first arrival in New York City in 1980, with Bono remarking it was an \"amazing, magical time in our life, when we didn't know how powerful it was not to know.\"\nDesire.\n\"Desire\" is the lead single from U2's 1988 album, \"Rattle and Hum\". It was their first #1 single in the UK and their first #1 on the newly instated Modern Rock Tracks chart.\nDrowning Man.\n\"Drowning Man\" is the fifth track on U2's 1983 album, \"War\". Its sound is a departure from the other tracks in \"War\".\nThe Electric Co..\n\"The Electric Co.\" is the tenth track from U2's debut album, \"Boy\". When performed live it is frequently preceded by the unrecorded song, \"The Cry\".\nElevation.\n\"Elevation\" is the third track and third single release from U2's 2000 album, \"All That You Can't Leave Behind\". Featuring a thunderous beat, a variety of sound effects on the central guitar riff, and an easy rhyming lyric for the audience to shout along with, it was highly effective in that concert-starting role and became a hit in the United States and the United Kingdom.\nEven Better Than the Real Thing.\n\"Even Better Than the Real Thing\" is the second song from U2's 1991 album, \"Achtung Baby\" and was released in 1992 as the fourth single from the album.\nExit.\nExit is the 10th track of U2's \"Joshua Tree\", released in 1987.\nThe Fly.\n\"The Fly\" is the seventh song on U2's 1991 album, \"Achtung Baby\" and was released as the album's first single. It has been described as \"the sound of four men chopping down the Joshua Tree.\" The song's subject is that of a phone call from someone in Hell who enjoys being there and telling the person on the other line what he has learned. \"The Fly\" was an introduction to the sonic and electronic experimentation that would dominate U2's 1990s work.\nGet on Your Boots.\n\"Get on Your Boots\" is the lead single and sixth track from \"No Line on the Horizon\".\nGloria.\n\"Gloria\" was the second single and opening track from U2's 1981 album, \"October\".\nGod Part II.\n\"God Part II\" is the fourteenth track from U2's 1988 album, \"Rattle and Hum\". The song is a departure from the sound of the album's other studio recordings, and is an introduction to the darker sound the band would adopt for the release of their next album, \"Achtung Baby\".\nGrace.\n\"Grace\" is the final track from U2's 2000 album, \"All That You Can't Leave Behind\".\nHeartland.\n\"Heartland\" is the thirteenth track from U2's 1988 album, \"Rattle and Hum\". Unlike the other studio tracks from the album, \"Heartland\" was left over from \"The Joshua Tree\" sessions.\nHold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me.\n\"Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me\" is a single by U2 from the \"Batman Forever\" soundtrack album, released in 1995. It was also included on the compilation album, \"The Best of 1990-2000\". As well as all the covers, \"Weird Al\" Yankovic parodied the song as \"Cavity Search\" for his 1996 album \"Bad Hair Day\".\nI Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For.\n\"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For\" is the second track from U2's 1987 album \"The Joshua Tree\", and was released as the album's second single. The song grew from another song called \"Under the Weather Girls\", from which Larry Mullen Jr.'s drum track was used as a foundation. \"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For\" is the most frequently covered U2 song.\nI Will Follow.\n\"I Will Follow\" is the opening track from U2's debut album, \"Boy\". It was written by Bono about the death of his mother, who died of a brain hemorrhage at the funeral of her father.\nI'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight.\n\"I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight\" is the third single and fifth track from the 2009 album \"No Line on the Horizon\". The track underwent several name changes during the album sessions, known first as \"Diorama\" and then \"Crazy Tonight\" before the final selection. Several of the song's lyrics were influenced by Barack Obama's presidential campaign. The song was used in television commercials for a new Blackberry application, called the \"U2 Mobile App\", which was developed as part of Research in Motion's sponsorship of the U2 360\u00b0 Tour.\nIn a Little While.\n\"In a Little While\" is the sixth track from U2's 2000 album \"All That You Can't Leave Behind\". While originally about a hangover, Bono later stated that the song's connection to Joey Ramone\u2014being the last song he heard before his death in 2001\u2014has given it a deeper religious meaning, and he now refers to it as a Gospel song\". \"In a Little While\" was played often throughout the Elevation Tour, and was frequently snippeted inside \"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For\" during the Vertigo Tour.\nIn God's Country.\n\"In God's Country\" is the seventh track and fourth single from U2's 1987 album, \"The Joshua Tree\". A live version of the song appears in the U2 rockumentary, \"Rattle and Hum\".\nLike a Song....\n\"Like a Song...\" is the fourth track from U2's 1983 album, \"War\". It was only played live once, on 26 February 1983 in Dundee, Scotland.\nLove Is Blindness.\n\"Love Is Blindness\" is the twelfth and final song from U2's 1991 album, \"Achtung Baby\". Much of the album relates to love gone wrong, in one form or another; the lyrics to \"Love Is Blindness\" reflect this theme, juxtaposing love and violent imagery.\nLove Rescue Me.\n\"Love Rescue Me\" is the eleventh track from U2's 1988 album, \"Rattle and Hum\". It is a collaboration between the band and Bob Dylan, who also provides vocals to the recording.\nMagnificent.\n\"Magnificent\" is the second track and single from \"No Line on the Horizon\". The track was originally titled \"French Disco\", but was renamed during the recording process.\nMiss Sarajevo.\n\"Miss Sarajevo\" is the only single from the 1995 album \"Original Soundtracks 1\" by U2, under the pseudonym Passengers. Luciano Pavarotti makes a guest vocal appearance, singing the opera solo. It also appears on the compilation album, \"The Best of 1990\u20132000\".\nMLK.\n\"MLK\" is the tenth and final track of U2's 1984 album, \"The Unforgettable Fire\". A lullaby to honor Martin Luther King Jr., it is a short, pensive piece with simple lyrics.\nMoment of Surrender.\n\"Moment of Surrender\" is the third track from \"No Line on the Horizon\". The song tells the story of a heroin addict's spiritual awakening at an automated teller machine.\nMothers of the Disappeared.\n\"Mothers of the Disappeared\" is the eleventh and final track from U2's 1987 album, \"The Joshua Tree\".\nMysterious Ways.\n\"Mysterious Ways\" is the eighth track on U2's 1991 album, \"Achtung Baby\", and was released as the album's second single.\nNew Year's Day.\n\"New Year's Day\" is the third song and lead single from U2's 1983 album, \"War\". The song is driven by Adam Clayton's distinctive bassline and The Edge's keyboard. It was the band's first hit single, breaking the top ten in the UK and charting on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 for the first time in their career. In 2004, \"Rolling Stone\" magazine placed the single at number 427 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.\nNo Line on the Horizon.\n\"No Line on the Horizon\" is the opening and title track from the 2009 album \"No Line on the Horizon\".\nNorth and South of the River.\n\"North and South of the River\" is a B-side to the 1997 single \"Staring at the Sun\".\nNumb.\n\"Numb\" is the third track from U2's 1993 album, \"Zooropa\", and was released as the album's first single.\nOctober.\n\"October\" is the seventh and title track from U2's 1981 album, \"October\". It is a departure from U2's classic sound, as it is a quiet, almost instrumental piece. It was included as a hidden track on \"The Best of 1980\u20131990\".\nOne.\n\"One\" is the third song from U2's 1991 album, \"Achtung Baby\", and was released as a single in 1992. Tensions during the recording of the album almost prompted U2 to break-up until the band rallied around the writing of \"One\". It is widely considered to be one of the band's greatest songs and is consistently featured in lists of the greatest songs of all time, including \"Rolling Stone\"'s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, where it placed #36, and #1 on \"Q Magazine\"'s list of the 1001 Greatest Songs of All-Time.\nOne Tree Hill.\n\"One Tree Hill\" is the ninth track and final single from U2's 1987 album, \"The Joshua Tree\". The single was released as a single exclusively in New Zealand in 1988, where it reached number one. The title of the song refers to One Tree Hill, a volcanic peak in Auckland, New Zealand.\nPride (In the Name of Love).\n\"Pride (In the Name of Love)\" is the second song on U2's 1984 album, \"The Unforgettable Fire\" and was released as the album's first single. Written about Martin Luther King Jr., it is one of the band's most recognized songs.\nPromenade.\n\"Promenade\" is the fifth track on U2's 1984 album, \"The Unforgettable Fire\".\nRed Hill Mining Town.\n\"Red Hill Mining Town\" is the sixth track from U2's 1987 album, \"The Joshua Tree\".\nRunning to Stand Still.\n\"Running to Stand Still\" is the fifth track from U2's 1987 album, \"The Joshua Tree\". It is a soft, slow, keyboard-based song about a heroin-addicted woman from the Ballymun Seven Towers area of Dublin.\nSeconds.\n\"Seconds\" is the second track on U2's 1983 album, \"War\". The track contains a clip from the 1982 documentary \"Soldier Girls\", and is the first song by the band not sung solely by Bono; The Edge sings the first two stanzas.\nSo Cruel.\n\"So Cruel\" is the sixth track from U2's 1991 album, \"Achtung Baby\".\nSometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own.\n\"Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own\" is the second single from U2's 2004 album, \"How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb\". It was released in the United Kingdom in February 2005, and debuted at #1 on the UK Singles Chart. The song won Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and Song of the Year at the 2006 Grammy Awards.\nStay (Faraway, So Close!).\n\"Stay (Faraway, So Close!)\" is the fifth track from U2's 1993 album, \"Zooropa\", and was released as the album's third single on November 22, 1993. It was released on the soundtrack for the Wim Wenders film, \"Faraway, So Close!\". While speaking with \"Rolling Stone\", Bono noted that \"Stay (Faraway, So Close!)\" is one of his personal favourite, and one of their most underrated, U2 songs.\nStuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of.\n\"Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of\" is a single release from U2's 2000 album, \"All That You Can't Leave Behind\". It won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal in 2002.\nSunday Bloody Sunday.\n\"Sunday Bloody Sunday\" is the opening track and third single from U2's 1983 album, \"War\". The song is noted for its militaristic drumbeat, simple but harsh guitar, and melodic harmonies. One of U2's most overtly political songs, its lyrics describe the horror felt by an observer of The Troubles in Northern Ireland.\nSweetest Thing.\n\"Sweetest Thing\", sometimes titled \"The Sweetest Thing\", is a B-side to the \"Where the Streets Have No Name\" single. It was re-recorded and released as a single for the 1998 compilation album \"The Best of 1980-1990\". The song was written by Bono as an apology to his wife for forgetting her birthday during the creation of \"The Joshua Tree\".\nTomorrow.\n\"Tomorrow\" is the sixth track on 1981's \"October\" album.\nTryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World.\n\"Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World\" is the ninth track on the 1991 album, \"Achtung Baby\". The song is a lighthearted account of a drunken journey home.\nTwo Hearts Beat as One.\n\"Two Hearts Beat as One\" is the seventh track on U2's 1983 album, \"War\". It was released as the album's second single but only in the US, UK and Australia.\nUltraviolet (Light My Way).\n\"Ultraviolet (Light My Way)\" is the tenth track from U2's 1991 album \"Achtung Baby\".\nThe Unforgettable Fire.\n\"The Unforgettable Fire\" is the fourth track from the 1984 album of the same name, and was released in 1985 as the album's second and last single. The title is a reference to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan in World War II.\nUnknown Caller.\n\"Unknown Caller\" is the fourth track from the 2009 album \"No Line on the Horizon\". According to The Edge, \"the idea is that the narrator is in an altered state, and his phone starts talking to him\".\nUntil the End of the World.\n\"Until the End of the World\" is the fourth track from U2's 1991 album, \"Achtung Baby\". The song is reputed to describe a conversation between Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot.\nVertigo.\n\"Vertigo\" is the lead single and opening track for the 2004 album \"How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb\". The track was an international hit, winning three Grammy awards at the 2005 event and being featured in an iPod commercial.\nThe Wanderer.\n\"The Wanderer\" is the tenth and final track on the 1993 album \"Zooropa\". The song features Johnny Cash on lead vocals and tells the story of a man searching for God in the ruins of a post-apocalyptic world. The song has only been performed live once, as a posthumous tribute to Johnny Cash, with Bono singing lead vocals.\nWake Up Dead Man.\n\"Wake Up Dead Man\" is the closing track from the 1997 album \"Pop\". The title was first revealed in 1993, as part of it was superimposed on the cover of the album \"Zooropa\".\nWalk On.\n\"Walk On\" is the fourth single and track from the album \"All That You Can't Leave Behind\". Written about and dedicated to Aung San Suu Kyi, the track is banned in Burma, and anyone who has possession of either the single of the song or the album could face a prison sentence lasting between three and twenty years. The title for \"All That You Can't Leave Behind\" stems from lyrics in the song.\nWhen Love Comes to Town.\n\"When Love Comes to Town\" was a collaboration between U2 and B.B. King, released as a single for the album \"Rattle and Hum\".\nWhere the Streets Have No Name.\n\"Where the Streets Have No Name\" is the third single from the 1987 album \"The Joshua Tree\". The track's signature is a repeating guitar arpeggio utilizing a delay effect that is played at the beginning and end of the song. The song's frequent chord and time changes caused problems in playing the song correctly; the difficulty was so great that producer Brian Eno attempted to erase the track. Drummer Larry Mullen Jr. later said of the song, \"It took so long to get that song right, it was difficult for us to make any sense of it. It only became a truly great song through playing live. On the record, musically, it's not half the song it is live.\"\nWho's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses.\n\"Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses\" was released in 1992 as the fifth and final single for the 1991 album \"Achtung Baby\".\nWith or Without You.\n\"With or Without You\" is the lead single from U2's 1987 album, \"The Joshua Tree\". It has since become highly acclaimed as one of the band's most popular songs. Released as a single in March 1987, it became the group's first American #1 hit.\nZoo Station.\n\"Zoo Station\" is the first track on U2's 1991 album \"Achtung Baby\".\n1. <templatestyles src=\"Citation/styles.css\"/>^ On this release, the title of \"Drowning Man\" was changed to \"Drowning Man (Drowning)\".\n2. <templatestyles src=\"Citation/styles.css\"/>^ This cover of \"Even Better Than the Real Thing\" was released as the \"Julian Beeston Mix\".\n3. <templatestyles src=\"Citation/styles.css\"/>^ This cover was in Serbian language and entitled \"Model donjeg ve\u0161a\" (transl. \"Lingerie Model\").\n4. <templatestyles src=\"Citation/styles.css\"/>^ The songs \"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For\" and \"Sunday Bloody Sunday\" were combined on this track.\n5. <templatestyles src=\"Citation/styles.css\"/>^ Live version recorded in a 2005 BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge; track was not released until November 2009.\n6. <templatestyles src=\"Citation/styles.css\"/>^ This cover of \"Discoth\u00e8que\" was released as the \"Suspiria Mix\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "7815059": "Sunday Bloody Sunday\n1983 song by U2\n\"Sunday Bloody Sunday\" is a song by Irish rock band U2. It is the opening track from their 1983 album \"War\" and was released as the album's third single on 21 March 1983 in the Netherlands and West Germany. \"Sunday Bloody Sunday\" is noted for its militaristic drumbeat, harsh guitar, and melodic harmonies. One of U2's most overtly political songs, its lyrics describe the horror felt by an observer of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, mainly focusing on the 1972 Bloody Sunday incident in Derry where British troops shot and killed unarmed civil rights protesters. Along with \"New Year's Day\", the song helped U2 reach a wider listening audience. It was generally well received by critics on the album's release.\nThe song has remained a staple of U2's live concerts. During its earliest performances, the song created controversy. Lead singer Bono reasserted the song's anti-sectarian-violence message to his audience for many years. Today, it is considered one of U2's signature songs, and is one of the band's most performed tracks. Critics rate it among the best political protest songs, and it has been covered by over a dozen artists. In 2004, it was ranked 268th on \"Rolling Stone\"'s list of \"The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time\".\nWriting and recording.\n\"Sunday Bloody Sunday\" grew from a guitar riff and lyric written by the Edge in 1982. While newlyweds Bono and Ali Hewson honeymooned in Jamaica, the Edge worked in Ireland on music for the band's upcoming album. Following an argument with his girlfriend Aislinn O'Sullivan, and a period of doubt in his own song-writing abilities, the Edge\u2014\"feeling depressed... channelled [his] fear and frustration and self-loathing into a piece of music.\" This early draft did not yet have a title or chorus melody, but did contain a structural outline and theme. After Bono had reworked the lyrics, the band recorded the song at Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin. During the sessions, producer Steve Lillywhite encouraged drummer Larry Mullen Jr. to use a click track, but Mullen was firmly against the idea. A chance meeting with Andy Newmark of Sly & the Family Stone \u2013 a drummer who used a click track religiously \u2013 changed Mullen's mind. The opening drum pattern soon developed into the song's hook. A local violinist, Steve Wickham, approached the Edge one morning at a bus stop and asked if U2 had any need for a violin on their next album. Wickham spent half a day in the studio recording an electric violin track that became the final instrumental contribution to the song.\nThe direct impetus for the lyrics was an encounter with Provisional IRA supporters in New York City. As a promotional gimmick, U2 manager Paul McGuinness had made arrangements for the band to appear in the 1982 St. Patrick's Day parade. However, he later found that there was a possibility that Bobby Sands, an IRA hunger striker who had starved to death the previous year, would be the parade's honorary marshal. As they felt that the IRA's tactics were prolonging the fighting in Northern Ireland, McGuinness and the band members mutually decided they should withdraw from the parade. McGuinness met with one of the parade's organizers in a New York bar to arrange the cancellation, and ended up in a heated debate about the IRA. McGuinness recalled, \"He kept telling me to keep my voice down. The place was full of New York policemen \u2013 Irish cops \u2013 and he thought I was going to get us killed.\"\nDrummer Mullen said of the song in 1983:\nWe're into the politics of people, we're not into politics. Like you talk about Northern Ireland, 'Sunday Bloody Sunday,' people sort of think, 'Oh, that time when 13 Catholics were shot by British soldiers'; that's not what the song is about. That's an incident, the most famous incident in Northern Ireland and it's the strongest way of saying, 'How long? How long do we have to put up with this?' I don't care who's who \u2013 Catholics, Protestants, whatever. You know people are dying every single day through bitterness and hate, and we're saying why? What's the point? And you can move that into places like El Salvador and other similar situations \u2013 people dying. Let's forget the politics, let's stop shooting each other and sit around the table and talk about it... There are a lot of bands taking sides saying politics is crap, etc. Well, so what! The real battle is people dying, that's the real battle.\nComposition.\n\"Sunday Bloody Sunday\" is played at a tempo of 103 beats per minute in a time signature. The song opens with a militaristic drumbeat and electric violin part; the aggressive snare drum rhythm closely resembles a beat used to keep a military band in step. The distinctive drum sound was achieved by recording Mullen's drumwork at the base of a staircase, producing a more natural reverb. It is followed by the Edge's repeating arpeggios (see notation at left). The riff, which follows a Bbm\u2013Db\u2013F#6 chord progression, establishes the minor chord territory of the piece. As the song progresses, the lyrics and guitar become more furious. The guitar riff has been described as the \""}, "descending_order": ["3698466", "20945040", "7815059"], "permutation_1": ["7815059", "3698466", "20945040"], "permutation_2": ["7815059", "20945040", "3698466"], "permutation_3": ["20945040", "3698466", "7815059"]}
{"id": "nq_5682011496559537358", "docs_added": {"168892": "Miranda v. Arizona\n1966 U.S. Supreme Court case establishing the use of the Miranda warning\n1966 United States Supreme Court case\nMiranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that law enforcement in the United States must warn a person of their constitutional rights before interrogating them, or else the person's statements cannot be used as evidence at their trial. Specifically, the Court held that under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the government cannot use a person's statements made in response to an interrogation while in police custody as evidence at the person's criminal trial unless they can show that the person was informed of the right to consult with a lawyer before and during questioning, and of the right against self-incrimination before police questioning, and that the defendant not only understood these rights but also voluntarily waived them before answering questions.\n\"Miranda\" was viewed by many as a radical change in American criminal law, since the Fifth Amendment was traditionally understood only to protect Americans against formal types of compulsion to confess, such as threats of contempt of court. It has had a significant impact on law enforcement in the United States, by making what became known as the \"Miranda\" warning part of routine police procedure to ensure that suspects were informed of their rights, which would become known as \"\"Miranda\" rights\". The concept of \"Miranda warnings\" quickly caught on across American law enforcement agencies, who came to call the practice \"Mirandizing\".\nPursuant to the U.S. Supreme Court decision \"Berghuis v. Thompkins\" (2010), criminal suspects who are aware of their right to silence and to an attorney but choose not to \"unambiguously\" invoke them may find any subsequent voluntary statements treated as an implied waiver of their rights, and used as or as part of evidence. \nBackground.\nLegal.\nIn 1951 \"Legal Aid in the United States\", a report in the Survey of the Legal Profession series, was published by the American Bar Association. It identified large gaps in the availability of legal services in both civil and criminal cases for those unable to afford a lawyer. By the early 1960s, in response to the report, efforts by various bar associations to expand legal aid for defendants had resulted in a substantial increase in services albeit still with large areas of the country underserved.\nIn the civil realm, it led to the creation of the Legal Services Corporation under the Great Society program of Lyndon B. Johnson. \"Escobedo v. Illinois\", a case which closely foreshadowed \"Miranda,\" provided for the presence of counsel during police interrogation.\nFactual.\nOn March 13, 1963, Ernesto Miranda was arrested by the Phoenix Police Department officers Carroll Cooley and Wilfred Young, based on circumstantial evidence linking him to the kidnapping and rape of an 18-year-old woman 10 days earlier. After two hours of interrogation by police officers, Miranda signed a confession to the rape charge on forms that included the typed statement: \"I do hereby swear that I make this statement voluntarily and of my own free will, with no threats, coercion, or promises of immunity, and with full knowledge of my legal rights, understanding any statement I make may be used against me.\"\nHowever, at no time was Miranda told of his right to counsel. Before being presented with the form on which he was asked to write out the confession that he had already given orally, he was not advised of his right to remain silent, nor was he informed that his statements during the interrogation would be used against him. At trial, when prosecutors offered Miranda's written confession as evidence, his court-appointed lawyer, Alvin Moore, objected that because of these facts, the confession was not truly voluntary and should be excluded. Moore's objection was overruled, and based on this confession and other evidence, Miranda was convicted of rape and kidnapping. He was sentenced to 20\u201330 years of imprisonment on each charge, with sentences to run concurrently. Moore filed Miranda's appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court, claiming that Miranda's confession was not fully voluntary and should not have been admitted into the court proceedings. The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed the trial court's decision to admit the confession in \"State v. Miranda\", 401 P.2d 721 (Ariz. 1965). In affirmation, the Arizona Supreme Court heavily emphasized the fact that Miranda did not specifically request an attorney.\nAttorney John Paul Frank, former law clerk to Justice Hugo Black, represented Miranda in his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Gary K. Nelson represented Arizona.\nSupreme Court decision.\nOn June 13, 1966, the Supreme Court issued a 5\u20134 decision in Miranda's favor that overturned his conviction and remanded his case back to Arizona for retrial.\nOpinion of the Court.\nFive justices formed the majority and joined an opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren. The Court ruled that because of the coercive nature of the custodial interrogation by police (Warren cited several police training manuals that had not been provided in the arguments), no confession could be admissible under the Fifth Amendment self-incrimination clause and Sixth Amendment right to an attorney unless a suspect has been made aware of his rights and the suspect has then waived them:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The person in custody must, prior to interrogation, be clearly informed that he has the right to remain silent, and that anything he says will be used against him in court; he must be clearly informed that he has the right to consult with a lawyer and to have the lawyer with him during interrogation, and that, if he is indigent, a lawyer will be appointed to represent him.\nThus, Miranda's conviction was overturned. The Court also made clear what must happen if a suspect chooses to exercise their rights:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />If the individual indicates in any manner, at any time prior to or during questioning, that he wishes to remain silent, the interrogation must cease ... If the individual states that he wants an attorney, the interrogation must cease until an attorney is present. At that time, the individual must have an opportunity to confer with the attorney and to have him present during any subsequent questioning.\nWarren also pointed to the existing procedures of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which required informing a suspect of his right to remain silent and his right to counsel, provided free of charge if the suspect was unable to pay. If the suspect requested counsel, \"the interview is terminated.\" Warren included the FBI's four-page brief in his opinion.\nClark's concurrence in part, dissent in part.\nIn a separate concurrence in part, dissent in part, Justice Tom C. Clark argued that the Warren Court went \"too far too fast.\" Instead, Justice Clark would use the \"totality of the circumstances\" test enunciated by Justice Goldberg in \"Haynes v. Washington\". Under this test, the court would:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />consider in each case whether the police officer prior to custodial interrogation added the warning that the suspect might have counsel present at the interrogation and, further, that a court would appoint one at his request if he was too poor to employ counsel. In the absence of warnings, the burden would be on the State to prove that counsel was knowingly and intelligently waived or that in the totality of the circumstances, including the failure to give the necessary warnings, the confession was clearly voluntary.\nHarlan's dissent.\nIn dissent, Justice John Marshall Harlan II wrote that \"nothing in the letter or the spirit of the Constitution or in the precedents squares with the heavy-handed and one-sided action that is so precipitously taken by the Court in the name of fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities.\" Harlan closed his remarks by quoting former Justice Robert H. Jackson: \"This Court is forever adding new stories to the temples of constitutional law, and the temples have a way of collapsing when one story too many is added.\"\nWhite's dissent.\nJustice Byron White took issue with the court having announced a new constitutional right when it had no \"factual and textual bases\" in the Constitution or previous opinions of the Court for the rule announced in the opinion. He stated: \"The proposition that the privilege against self-incrimination forbids in-custody interrogation without the warnings specified in the majority opinion and without a clear waiver of counsel has no significant support in the history of the privilege or in the language of the Fifth Amendment.\" White did not believe the right had any basis in English common law.\nWhite further warned of the dire consequences of the majority opinion:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I have no desire whatsoever to share the responsibility for any such impact on the present criminal process.\nIn some unknown number of cases, the Court's rule will return a killer, a rapist or other criminal to the streets and to the environment which produced him, to repeat his crime whenever it pleases him. As a consequence, there will not be a gain, but a loss, in human dignity.\nSubsequent developments.\nRetrial.\nMiranda was retried in 1967 after the original case against him was thrown out. This time the prosecution, instead of using the confession, introduced other evidence and called witnesses. One witness was Twila Hoffman, a woman with whom Miranda was living at the time of the offense; she testified that he had told her of committing the crime. Miranda was convicted in 1967 and sentenced to serve 20 to 30 years. The Supreme Court of Arizona affirmed, and the United States Supreme Court denied review. Miranda was paroled in 1972. After his release, he returned to his old neighborhood and made a modest living autographing police officers' \"Miranda cards\" that contained the text of the warning for reading to arrestees. Miranda was stabbed to death during an argument in a bar on January 31, 1976. A suspect was arrested, but due to a lack of evidence against him, he was released.\nAnother three defendants whose cases had been tied in with Miranda's \u2013 an armed robber, a stick-up man, and a bank robber \u2013 either made plea bargains to lesser charges or were found guilty again despite the exclusion of their confessions.\nReaction.\nThe \"Miranda\" decision was widely criticized when it came down, as many felt it was unfair to inform suspected criminals of their rights, as outlined in the decision. Richard Nixon and conservatives denounced \"Miranda\" for undermining the efficiency of the police, and argued the ruling would contribute to an increase in crime. Nixon, upon becoming president, promised to appoint judges who would reverse the philosophy that he viewed as \"soft on crime.\" Many supporters of law enforcement were angered by the decision's negative view of police officers.\nMiranda warning.\nAfter the \"Miranda\" decision, the nation's police departments were required to inform arrested persons or suspects of their rights under the ruling prior to custodial interrogation or their answers would not be admissible in court. Such information is called a Miranda warning. Since it is usually required that the suspects be asked if they understand their rights, courts have also ruled that any subsequent waiver of Miranda rights must be knowing, intelligent, and voluntary.\nMany American police departments have pre-printed Miranda waiver forms that a suspect must sign and date (after hearing and reading the warnings again) if an interrogation is to occur.\nData from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports show a sharp reduction in the clearance rate of violent and property crimes after \"Miranda\". However, according to other studies from the 1960s and 1970s, \"contrary to popular belief, Miranda had little, if any, effect on detectives' ability to solve crimes.\"\nLegal developments.\nThe federal Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 purported to overrule \"Miranda\" for federal criminal cases and restore the \"totality of the circumstances\" test that had prevailed previous to \"Miranda\". The validity of this provision of the law, which is still codified at 18 U.S.C. \u00a7\u00a03501, was not ruled on for another 30 years because the Justice Department never attempted to rely on it to support the introduction of a confession into evidence at any criminal trial.\n\"Miranda\" was undermined by several subsequent decisions that seemed to grant exceptions to the Miranda warnings, challenging the ruling's claim to be a necessary corollary of the Fifth Amendment. The exceptions and developments that occurred over the years included:\n\"United States v. Garibay\" (1998) clarified an important matter regarding the scope of \"Miranda\". Defendant Jose Garibay barely spoke English and clearly showed a lack of understanding; indeed, \"the agent admitted that he had to rephrase questions when the defendant appeared confused.\" Because of the defendant's low I.Q. and poor English-language skills, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that it was a \"clear error\" when the district court found that Garibay had \"knowingly and intelligently waived his Miranda rights.\" The court investigated his waiver and discovered that it was missing all items for which they were looking: he never signed a waiver, he only received his warnings verbally and in English, and no interpreter was provided although they were available. With an opinion that stressed \"the requirement that a defendant 'knowingly and intelligently' waive his Miranda rights,\" the Court reversed Garibay's conviction and remanded his case.\n\"Miranda\" survived a strong challenge in \"Dickerson v. United States\", 530 U.S. 428 (2000), when the validity of Congress's overruling of \"Miranda\" through \u00a7\u00a03501 was tested. At issue was whether the Miranda warnings were actually compelled by the Constitution, or were rather merely measures enacted as a matter of judicial policy. In \"Dickerson\", the Court, speaking through Chief Justice Rehnquist, upheld \"Miranda\" 7\u20132 and stated that \"the warnings have become part of our national culture\". In dissent, Justice Scalia argued that \"Miranda\" warnings were not constitutionally required. He cited several cases demonstrating a majority of the then-current court, counting himself, and Justices Kennedy, O'Connor, and Thomas, as well as Rehnquist (who had just delivered a contrary opinion), \"[were] on record as believing that a violation of Miranda is not a violation of the Constitution.\"\nOver time, interrogators began to devise techniques to honor the \"letter\" but not the \"spirit\" of Miranda. In the case of \"Missouri v. Seibert\", 542 U.S. 600 (2004), the Supreme Court halted one of the more controversial practices. Missouri police had been deliberately withholding Miranda warnings and questioning suspects until they obtained confessions, then providing the warnings, getting waivers, and eliciting confessions again. Justice Souter wrote for the plurality: \"Strategists dedicated to draining the substance out of \"Miranda\" cannot accomplish by training instructions what \"Dickerson\" held Congress could not do by statute.\"\n\"Berghuis v. Thompkins\" (2010) was a ruling in which the Supreme Court held that a suspect's \"ambiguous or equivocal\" statement, or lack of statements, does not mean that police must end an interrogation. At least one scholar has argued that \"Thompkins\" effectively gutted \"Miranda\". In \"The Right to Remain Silent\", Charles Weisselberg wrote that \"the majority in \"Thompkins\" rejected the fundamental underpinnings of \"Miranda v. Arizona\"'s prophylactic rule and established a new one that fails to protect the rights of suspects\" and that \n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />But in \"Thompkins\", neither Michigan nor the Solicitor General were able to cite any decision in which a court found that a suspect had given an implied waiver after lengthy questioning. Thompkins persevered for almost three hours before succumbing to his interrogators. In finding a waiver on these facts, \"Thompkins\" gives us an implied waiver doctrine on steroids.\nIn \"Vega v. Tekoh\" (2022), the Supreme Court ruled 6\u20133 that police officers could not be sued under a particular statutory cause of action for failing to administer the Miranda warning, ruling that not every \"Miranda\" violation is a deprivation of a constitutional right. In dissent, three justices held that the court had \"repeatedly and emphatically\" determined that the \"Miranda\" decision established a constitutional right, and would have allowed such lawsuits. According to pundits, the ruling \"Vega v. Tekoh\" \"makes it easier for police to obtain coerced confessions \u2013 by continuing to ask questions even if someone doesn't want to speak\" and \"guts a major pathway for incentivizing police to provide a Miranda warning and ensuring their accountability.\"\nEffect on law enforcement.\n\"Miranda\"'s impact on law enforcement remains in dispute. Many legal scholars believe that police have adjusted their practices in response to \"Miranda\" and that its mandates have not hampered police investigations. Others argue that the \"Miranda\" rule has resulted in a lower rate of conviction, with a possible reduction in the rate of confessions of between four and sixteen percent. Some scholars argue that Miranda warnings have reduced the rate at which the police solve crimes, while others question their methodology and conclusions.\nIn popular culture.\nThe 2023 film Miranda's Victim directed by Michelle Danner explores the origins of the Miranda warning and the ultimate decision of the Supreme Court in favour of Miranda.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n is available from: Cornell CourtListener Findlaw Google\u00a0Scholar Justia Library\u00a0of\u00a0Congress Oyez (oral argument audio) ", "612011": "Ernesto Miranda\nAmerican criminal and subject of a United States Supreme Court case\nErnesto Arturo Miranda (March 9, 1941 \u2013 January 31, 1976) was an American laborer whose criminal conviction was set aside in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case \"Miranda v. Arizona\", which ruled that criminal suspects must be informed of their right against self-incrimination and their right to consult with an attorney before being questioned by police. This warning is known as a \"Miranda\" warning. Miranda had been convicted of kidnapping, rape, and armed robbery charges based on his confession under police interrogation.\nAfter the Supreme Court decision invalidated Miranda's initial conviction, the state of Arizona tried him again. At the second trial, with his confession excluded from evidence, he was convicted. He was sentenced to 20\u201330 years in prison, but was paroled in 1972. After his release, he returned to his old neighborhood and made a modest living autographing police officers' \"Miranda cards\" that contained the text of the warning for reading to arrestees. Miranda was stabbed to death during an argument in a bar in Phoenix, Arizona on January 31, 1976. A Mexican man, Eseziquiel Moreno Perez, was charged with the murder of Miranda, but fled to Mexico and has never been located.\nEarly life.\nErnesto Arturo Miranda was born in Mesa, Arizona, on March 9, 1941. Miranda began getting in trouble when he was in grade school. Shortly after his mother died, his father remarried. Miranda and his father did not get along very well; he kept his distance from his brothers and stepmother as well. Miranda's first criminal conviction was during his eighth-grade year. The following year, he was convicted of burglary and sentenced to a year in reform school.\nIn 1956, about a month after his release from the Arizona State Industrial School for Boys (ASISB), he ran afoul of the law once more and was returned to ASISB. Upon his second release from reform school, he relocated to Los Angeles, California. Within months of his arrival in L.A., Miranda was arrested (but not convicted) on suspicion of armed robbery and for some sex offences. After two and a half years in custody, the 18-year-old Miranda was extradited back to Arizona.\nHe drifted through the southern U.S. for a few months, spending time in jail in Texas for living on the street without money or a place to live, and was arrested in Nashville, Tennessee, for driving a stolen car. Miranda was sentenced to one year and a day in the federal prison system because he had driven the stolen vehicle across state lines. He spent his sentence in Chillicothe, Ohio, and later in Lompoc, California.\nFor the next couple of years, Miranda kept out of jail, working at various jobs, until he became a laborer on the night loading dock for the Phoenix Produce Company. At that time he started living with Twila Hoffman, a 29-year-old mother of a boy and a girl by another man, from whom she could not afford to obtain a divorce.\nConfession without rights; \"Miranda v. Arizona\".\nOn March 13, 1963, Miranda's truck was spotted and license plates recognized by the brother of an 18-year-old kidnapping and rape victim, Lois Ann Jameson (the victim had given the brother a description). With his description of the car and a partial license plate number, Phoenix Police Department officers Carroll Cooley and Wilfred Young confronted Miranda, who voluntarily accompanied them to the police station and participated in a police lineup. At the time, Miranda was a person of interest, but not formally in custody.\nAfter the lineup, when Miranda asked how he did, the police implied that he was positively identified, at which point he was placed under arrest, and taken to an interrogation room. After two hours of interrogation, some of which regarded another offense for which Miranda was separately tried and convicted, Miranda hand-wrote a confession to the kidnapping and rape of Jameson. At the top of each sheet was the printed certification that \"this statement has been made voluntarily and of my own free will, with no threats, coercion or promises of immunity and with full knowledge of my legal rights, understanding any statement I make can and will be used against me.\" After confessing to the officers, Miranda was taken to meet the victim for positive voice identification. Asked by officers in her presence whether this was the victim, he said: \"That's the girl.\" The victim stated that the sound of Miranda's voice matched that of the culprit.\nDespite the printed statement on top of the sheets that Miranda used to write his confession, \"with full knowledge of my legal rights,\" he was not informed of his right to have an attorney present, nor of his right to remain silent when he was arrested or before his interrogation. 73-year-old Alvin Moore was assigned to represent him at his trial. The trial was conducted in mid-June 1963 before Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Yale McFate.\nMoore objected to entering the confession by Miranda as evidence during the trial but was overruled. Mostly because of the confession, Miranda was convicted of rape and kidnapping and sentenced to 20 to 30 years in prison on both charges. Moore appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court, but the conviction was upheld there.\nFiling as a pauper, Miranda submitted his plea for a writ of \"certiorari\", or request for review of his case to the U.S. Supreme Court in June 1965. After Alvin Moore was unable to continue representing Miranda because of health reasons, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Robert J. Corcoran asked John J. Flynn, a criminal defense attorney, to serve \"pro bono\", along with his partner, John P. Frank, and associates Paul G. Ulrich and Robert A. Jensen of the law firm Lewis & Roca in Phoenix to represent Miranda. They wrote a 2,500-word petition for \"certiorari\" arguing that Miranda's Fifth Amendment rights had been violated, and they submitted it to the United States Supreme Court.\n\"Miranda v. Arizona\".\nIn November 1965, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Miranda's case, \"Miranda v. Arizona\", along with three other similar cases to clear all confusion created by the decision in \"Escobedo v. Illinois\". That previous case had ruled that: \nUnder the circumstances of this case, where a police investigation is no longer a general inquiry into an unsolved crime but has begun to focus on a particular suspect in police custody who has been refused an opportunity to consult with his counsel and who has not been warned of his constitutional right to keep silent, the accused has been denied the assistance of counsel in violation of the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, and no statement extracted by the police during the interrogation may be used against him at a trial. \"Crooker v. California\", 357 U.S. 433, and \"Cicenia v. Lagay\", 357 U.S. 504, distinguished, and, to the extent that they may be inconsistent with the instant case, they are not controlling. 479\u2013492.\nIn January 1966, Flynn and Frank submitted their argument stating that Miranda's Sixth Amendment right to counsel had been violated by the Phoenix Police Department. Two weeks later the State of Arizona responded by asserting that Miranda's rights had not been violated. The first day of the case was on the last day of February 1966. Because of the three companion cases and other information, the case had a second day of oral arguments on March 1, 1966.\nJohn Flynn for Miranda outlined the case and then stated that Miranda had not been advised of his right to remain silent when he had been arrested and questioned, adding the Fifth Amendment argument to his case. Flynn contended that an emotionally disturbed man like Miranda, who had a limited education, should not be expected to know his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.\nGary Nelson represented the State of Arizona arguing that this was not a Fifth Amendment issue but just an attempt to expand the Sixth Amendment \"Escobedo\" decision. He urged the justices to clarify their position, but not to push the limits of \"Escobedo\" too far. He then told the court that forcing police to advise suspects of their rights would seriously obstruct public safety.\nThe second day concerned arguments from related cases. Thurgood Marshall, the former NAACP attorney, was the last to argue. In his capacity as the Solicitor General, he presented the Johnson administration's view of the case: that the government did not have the resources to appoint a lawyer for every indigent person who was accused of a crime.\nChief Justice Earl Warren wrote the opinion in \"Miranda v. Arizona\". The decision was in favor of Miranda. It stated that:\nThe person in custody must, prior to interrogation, be clearly informed that he has the right to remain silent, and that anything he says will be used against him in court; he must be clearly informed that he has the right to consult with a lawyer and to have the lawyer with him during interrogation, and that, if he is indigent, a lawyer will be appointed to represent him.\nThe opinion was released on June 13, 1966. Because of the decision, police departments throughout the U.S. started to issue \"Miranda\" warning cards for their officers to recite. The Supreme Court did not mandate a specific wording and, although word choice is similar, the exact language used varies between jurisdictions. A generic admonition might look like this:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />You have the right to remain silent. If you give up that right, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney and to have an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided to you.\nLife after \"Miranda v. Arizona\".\nThe Supreme Court invalidated Miranda's conviction, which was tainted by the use of the confession that had been obtained through improper interrogation. The state of Arizona retried him. At the second trial, his confession was not introduced into evidence, but he was convicted again, on March 1, 1967, based on testimony given by his estranged common-law wife. He was sentenced to 20 to 30 years in prison.\nMiranda was paroled in 1972. After his release, he started selling autographed \"Miranda\" warning cards for $1.50. Over the next few years, Miranda was arrested numerous times for minor driving offenses and eventually lost his license. He was arrested for the possession of a gun but the charges were dropped. However, because this violated his parole, he was sent back to Arizona State Prison for another year before being released.\nDeath.\nOn January 31, 1976, a fight erupted at the Amapola Bar at 233 South 2nd Street in downtown Phoenix in which Miranda was stabbed. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center. He was 34. Several Miranda cards were found on his person. Miranda was buried in the City of Mesa Cemetery in Mesa, Arizona. The person suspected of handing the knife to the man who murdered Miranda invoked his Fifth Amendment rights and refused to talk to police. He was released and was not charged in Miranda's murder. The man suspected of murdering Miranda, then-23-year-old Eseziquiel Moreno Perez, was formally charged with murder on February 4, 1976. However, he has never been apprehended as he fled to Mexico following the murder and has never been found.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3113796": "Dickerson v. United States\n2000 United States Supreme Court case\nDickerson v. United States, 530 U.S. 428 (2000), upheld the requirement that the Miranda warning be read to criminal suspects and struck down a federal statute that purported to overrule \"Miranda v. Arizona\" (1966).\n\"Dickerson\" is regarded as a significant example of a rare departure by the Court from the principle of party presentation. The Court noted that neither party in the case advocated on behalf of the constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. \u00a7 3501, the specific statute at issue in the case. Accordingly, it invited Paul Cassell, a former law clerk to Antonin Scalia and Warren E. Burger, to argue that perspective. Cassell was then a professor at the University of Utah law school; he was later appointed to, and subsequently resigned from, a federal district court judgeship in that state.\nBackground.\nIn \"Miranda v. Arizona\", the Supreme Court held that statements of criminal suspects made while they are in custody and subject to interrogation by police may not be admitted in court unless the suspect first had certain warnings read to them beforehand. By now, these warnings are familiar to most Americans: that the suspect has the right to remain silent during the interrogation, that anything they say to the police may be used against them in a court of law, that they have the right to legal counsel, and that if they cannot afford legal counsel a lawyer will be provided for them.\nIn 1968, two years after the \"Miranda\" decision, Congress passed a law that purported to overrule it as part of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. This statute, 18 U.S.C. \u00a7 3501, directed federal trial judges to admit statements of criminal defendants if they were made voluntarily, without regard to whether they had received the \"Miranda\" warnings. Under \u00a7 3501, voluntariness depended on such things as (1) the time between arrest and arraignment, (2) whether the defendant knew the crime for which they had been arrested, (3) whether they had been told that they did not have to talk to the police and that any statement could be used against them, (4) whether the defendant knew prior to questioning that they had the right to the assistance of counsel, and (5) whether they actually had the assistance of counsel during questioning. However, the \"presence or absence of any of\" these factors \"need not be conclusive on the issue of voluntariness of the confession.\" Because \u00a7 3501 was an act of Congress, it applied only to federal criminal proceedings and criminal proceedings in the District of Columbia.\nCharles Dickerson had been arrested for bank robbery and for using a firearm during a crime of violence, both federal crimes. He moved to suppress statements he made to the FBI because he had not received the \"Miranda\" warnings before he spoke to the FBI. The district court suppressed the statements, and so the government appealed. The Fourth Circuit reversed the district court, reasoning that \u00a7 3501 had supplanted the requirement that the police give the \"Miranda\" warnings because \"Miranda\" was not a constitutional requirement and therefore Congress could overrule that decision by legislation. The Supreme Court then agreed to hear the case.\nOpinion of the Court.\nChief Justice Rehnquist wrote the majority opinion, and began by briefly describing the historical backdrop against which the \"Miranda\" ruling had emerged. A suspect's confession had always been inadmissible if it had been the result of coercion or otherwise given involuntarily. This was true in England, from where American law inherited that rule.\nHowever, as time went on, the Supreme Court recognized that the Fifth Amendment was an independent source of protection for statements made by criminal defendants in the course of police interrogation. \"In \"Miranda\", we noted that the advent of modern custodial police interrogation brought with it an increased concern about confessions obtained by coercion.\" Custodial police interrogation by its very nature \"isolates and pressures the individual\" so that he might eventually be worn down and confess to crimes he did not commit in order to end the ordeal. In \"Miranda\", the Court had adopted the now-famous four warnings to protect against this particular evil.\nCongress, in response, enacted \u00a7 3501. That statute clearly was designed to overrule \"Miranda\" because it expressly focused solely on voluntariness of the confession as a touchstone for admissibility. Did Congress have the authority to pass such a law? On the one hand, the Court's power to craft nonconstitutional supervisory rules over the federal courts exists only in the absence of a specific statute passed by Congress. However, if on the other hand the \"Miranda\" rule was constitutional, Congress could not overrule it, because the Court alone is the final arbiter of what the Constitution requires. As evidence of the fact that the \"Miranda\" rule was constitutional in nature, the Court pointed out that many of its subsequent decisions applying and limiting the requirement arose in decisions from state courts, over which the Court lacked the power to impose supervisory nonconstitutional rules. Furthermore, although the Court had previously invited legislative involvement in the effort to devise prophylactic measures for protecting criminal defendants against overbearing tactics of the police, it had consistently held that these measures must not take away from the protections \"Miranda\" had afforded.\nFinally, 34 years after the original decision, the Court was loath to overrule \"Miranda\". Typically, the Court overrules constitutional decisions only when their doctrinal underpinnings have eroded. The Court felt that this was not the case in \"Miranda\". \"If anything, our subsequent cases have reduced the impact of the \"Miranda\" rule on legitimate law enforcement while reaffirming the decision's core ruling that unwarned statements may not be used as evidence in the prosecution's case in chief.\" The \"Miranda\" rule did not displace the voluntariness inquiry.\nDissent.\nJustice Scalia, joined by Justice Thomas, disagreed with the majority's decision not to overrule \"Miranda\". He disputed the notion that \"Miranda\" was a constitutional rule, pointing to several cases in which the Court had declined to exclude evidence despite the absence of warnings.\nJustice Scalia described the majority's decision as an unprincipled compromise between justices who believed \"Miranda\" was a constitutional requirement and those who disagreed. He noted that the majority did not state outright that the Miranda warning is a constitutional requirement, but merely that it is \"constitutionally based.\" Justice Scalia further criticized the majority for implying that Congress has no power to override judicially imposed safeguards of constitutional rights.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n is available from: Cornell CourtListener Google\u00a0Scholar Justia Library\u00a0of\u00a0Congress Oyez (oral argument audio) ", "27581738": "Berghuis v. Thompkins\n2010 United States Supreme Court case\nBerghuis v. Thompkins, 560 U.S. 370 (2010), is a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held that, unless and until a criminal suspect explicitly states that they are relying on their right to remain silent, their voluntary statements may be used in court and police may continue to question them. The mere act of remaining silent is not sufficient to imply the suspect has invoked their rights even when the suspect actually intended their silence to have that effect. Furthermore, a voluntary reply even after lengthy silence can be construed as waiving the right to remain silent.\nThe Court was split, 5\u20134. The dissent, authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, argued that \"Miranda v. Arizona\" and other previous cases had required the waiver of a constitutional right to be much clearer, especially because of the \"compelling influence\" that an interrogation causes after police have spent several hours pressuring a suspect.\nMany considered \"Berghuis\" the latest in a line of cases eroding \"Miranda\", perhaps \"turning the clocks back\" on safeguards for people being investigated by the police. At least one scholar argued that \"Berghuis\" effectively gutted \"Miranda\". The opinion"}, "descending_order": ["612011", "168892", "3113796", "27581738"], "permutation_1": ["3113796", "612011", "168892", "27581738"], "permutation_2": ["3113796", "612011", "168892", "27581738"], "permutation_3": ["168892", "612011", "3113796", "27581738"]}
{"id": "nq_-7308331956020958300", "docs_added": {"1361602": "Chevrolet HHR\nCompact station wagon\nThe Chevrolet HHR (an initialism for Heritage High Roof) is a retro-styled, high-roofed, five-door, five-passenger, front-wheel drive wagon designed by Bryan Nesbitt and launched by the American automaker Chevrolet at the 2005 Los Angeles Auto Show as a 2006 model.\nThe HHR shares the GM Delta platform with the Chevrolet Cobalt, Pontiac G5, and Saturn Ion. Chevrolet also marketed a panel van variant of the HHR beginning in 2007. Assembled in Ramos Arizpe, Mexico and marketed throughout North America, production of the HHR ended in May 2011. The HHR was replaced in the U.S. by the Chevrolet Captiva Sport, a rebadged version of the Opel Antara. However, the Captiva Sport was only available as a fleet vehicle and was not available new to the general public.\nDesign.\nThe vehicle's design was inspired by the late-1940s/early 1950s Chevrolet cars and trucks, specifically the 1947 Chevrolet Suburban and Advance Design pickups, with large, square fender flares and a hemispherical grille. The design of the HHR has been credited to Bryan Nesbitt who was a former designer at Chrysler where he was the lead designer of the Chrysler PT Cruiser. Nesbitt was recruited by GM to join its design staff and served for a time as the chief designer of the Chevrolet brand. The HHR had a cargo-carrying capacity of . All models had a flat-load floor (passenger models have 60/40 split bench) and fold-flat front passenger seat. For the 2007 model year, it was available in four trim levels; LS, LT, 2LT, and Special Edition. A panel van variant was also made available in 2007 for only the LT trim and became available on all trim levels in 2008. A \"Half Panel\" (RPO code AA5) rear quarter window delete option was available in the 2008 to 2010 model years.\nStandard and optional features.\nEvery HHR came well-equipped with many standard features. These included power windows and door locks (front for the HHR Panel Van and front and rear for the standard HHR), dual front SRS airbags, a Driver Information Center, an A/M-F/M stereo radio with a single-disc CD/MP3 player and an auxiliary audio input jack, a four-speaker audio system, a tilt-adjustable steering wheel, keyless entry, cloth seating surfaces, a folding rear bench seat (for standard HHR models only), manually-adjustable dual (front) bucket seats, a compact spare tire and wheel, air conditioning, and a five-speed manual transmission. Upper trim levels added features such as a multifunction steering wheel, a cruise control system, aluminum-alloy wheels (which were also polished on some models), a remote vehicle starter system (for vehicles equipped with a four-speed automatic transmission only), a single-pane power moonroof, a leather-wrapped steering wheel, the OnStar in-vehicle telematics system, front side seat-mounted SRS airbags, XM satellite radio, a Bluetooth hands-free telephone system which also included OnStar, and an ABS braking system.\nThe HHR could also be ordered with many luxury amenities (depending upon the trim level selected), such as a power-adjustable front driver's seat, a Pioneer seven-speaker premium audio system with an external amplifier and rear cargo area-mounted subwoofer, luxury leather-trimmed seating surfaces with dual heated front seats, front-mounted fog lamps, power-adjustable and heated exterior side mirrors, and a six-disc, in-dash CD/MP3 changer with USB integration.\nHHR Panel Van.\nBetween 2007 and 2011, Chevrolet offered a four-door panel van version of the HHR. Initially offered in LS, 1LT, and 2LT models with either a 2.2-liter or a 2.4-liter EcoTec Inline four-cylinder gasoline engine and a five-speed manual transmission, the HHR Panel Van featured a rear cargo management system in place of the standard HHR's rear split bench seat, deletion of the rear seatbelts and side SRS airbags, a plastic cargo floor in place of the standard HHR's rear carpeting, the deletion of the rear carpeted floor mats (HHR Panel Vans still included front passenger area carpeting and carpeted floor mats), and plastic panels in place of the standard HHR's rear door and quarter windows (the rear tailgate window of the standard HHR remained in place, and could still be ordered with a rear window defroster). The rear exterior door handles were removed, though the rear doors could still be opened from the interior of the vehicle. The HHR Panel Van can be distinguished from a standard HHR by a 'PANEL' emblem on the left side of the rear tailgate.\nFor the 2009 model year, Chevrolet introduced a Panel Van version of the HHR SS Turbocharged model, which included a 2.0L EcoTec Turbocharged Inline Four-Cylinder (I4) gasoline engine and a five-speed manual transmission. This model was only offered for a single model year, having been discontinued in 2010 along with the standard HHR SS Turbocharged model.\nAssembly and sales.\nThe HHR was assembled in Ramos Arizpe, Mexico, and was available for sale throughout North America. The HHR was also exported to Japan by way of the motor vehicles business unit of Mitsui. First year sales exceeded 93,000 through June 2006. The HHR was partially sold in Europe and was replaced by the Chevrolet Orlando. In early 2009, the HHR was discontinued from the Mexican lineup due to poor sales.\nSS Turbocharged.\nIn October 2006, Cheryl Catton, director of car marketing and retail integration for Chevy, confirmed that a high-performance variant of the HHR would be built. The vehicle was expected to be released with SS moniker for the 2008 model year and use the Ecotec LNF turbocharged engine found in the Pontiac Solstice GXP and Saturn Sky Red Line.\nOn August 16, 2007, Chevrolet officially revealed the 2008 Chevrolet HHR SS Turbocharged at the Woodward Dream Cruise in Birmingham, Michigan. It was created by GM's Performance Division and introduced as a 2008 model in the fall of 2007. The SS Turbocharged features a turbocharged Ecotec LNF I4 engine and intercooler that produces ( with the optional 4-speed automatic), race-tuned high-performance suspension, five-speed manual transmission with short-throw shifter, standard four-wheel antilock disc brakes, ground effects with unique front and rear fascias, aggressive black cross-mesh grille, liftgate-mounted aero spoiler, an analog A-pillar-mounted titanium boost gauge, leather-wrapped steering wheel with mounted audio controls, and unique high-polished aluminum wheels.\nChevrolet also introduced the HHR SS Panel Concept on October 30, 2007, at the 2007 SEMA Show. This was made into a production model for the 2009 model year.\nThe SS model was removed from the market after the 2010 model year due to the shuttering of the GM Performance Division, also known as the GM High Performance Vehicle Operations (HPVO) Group. In addition, GM phased out all GM badges from the front doors for the 2010.5 model year, including the Chevrolet HHR.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2010, Chevrolet announced that the HHR would be discontinued after the 2011 model year, with the last HHRs available in dealerships starting in late January to early February. HHRs were also available for fleet order until May 2011.\nEngines.\nFlex-Fuel (E85) was added to the 2.2 & 2.4 engines for the 2009 model year; these were the first four-cylinder Flex-Fuel engines from GM in North America.\nSafety.\nIn Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) tests the HHR received a \"Good\" overall score in the frontal offset crash test, and an \"Acceptable\" score in side impacts on models equipped with side curtain airbags. Side curtain airbags became standard for 2008 models. However, side torso airbags were never made available.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2306734": "HHR\nHHR may stand for:\nTopics referred to by the same term\n<templatestyles src=\"Dmbox/styles.css\" />\n This page lists associated with the title .", "40616334": "Historical horse racing\nElectronic gambling device for wagering on previously-held horse races.\nHistorical horse racing (HHR), originally known as Instant Racing, is an electronic gambling product that allows players to bet on replays of horse races or dog races that have already been run, using terminals that typically resemble slot machines.\nHHR premiered in Arkansas in 2000. It now operates in several U.S. states and Malta. It was created to offer slot machine-like gameplay in jurisdictions that allow parimutuel wagering but not slot machines. A portion of the game's revenue is typically directed to racing purses, which has been credited with revitalizing the declining sport of horse racing in some markets.\nThe primary providers of historical racing machines are Exacta Systems (a subsidiary of Churchill Downs, Inc.), PariMax (a division of the Stronach Group), and Ainsworth Gaming Technology.\nGameplay.\nIn the earliest incarnations of Instant Racing machines, gameplay begins when a player deposits their wager, and a race is randomly selected from a video library of over 60,000 previous races. Identifying information such as the location and date of the race, and the names of the horses and jockeys, is not shown. The player is able to view \"Skill Graph\" charts from the Daily Racing Form, showing information such as the jockeys' and trainers' winning percentages. Based on this handicapping information, the player picks the projected order of finish. Most players use the \"handi helper\", or \"auto-cap\" feature, which allows the machine to automatically make the selections on the player's behalf.\nPayouts are based on traditional pari-mutuel processes. The player's wager is divvied up into several \"betting pools\" for different winning possibilities, such as picking the winner of the race, picking the top three finishers in exact order, or any of the three selections finishing first and second. The machine then shows a replay of all or a portion of the race. If the player achieved a particular type of \"win\", they receive the money from that pool, while the money in each of the other pools continues to accumulate until another bettor wins it.\nEarly versions of Instant Racing terminals closely resembled self-serve wagering terminals. Later terminals began to mimic slot machines, with symbols on spinning reels corresponding to the results of the player's wager, and the video of the race occupying only a small portion of the display. Some versions show a computer-animated re-enactment of the race rather than a video.\nHistory.\nThe idea of historical race wagering was conceived by Eric Jackson, general manager of Oaklawn Park. He brought the idea to three major companies in January 1997, but found no takers. Later in the year, he met with Ted Mudge, president of AmTote, who liked the idea and asked Jackson to present it to experts at a February 1998 racing industry gathering in Maryland. The project gathered momentum from there. The Arkansas General Assembly took steps in 1999 to authorize Instant Racing by removing the requirement that simulcast races be shown live. A test deployment was launched in January 2000 at Oaklawn Park and Southland Greyhound Park, with 50 machines at each track. The machines proved popular and Jackson reported that as many as a dozen other tracks were pursuing approval to install the machines within two months of the test.\nBy U.S. state.\nAlabama.\nHistorical horse racing machines are in operation at three former greyhound racing tracks in Alabama, Birmingham Race Course Casino, Greene County Entertainment, and Victoryland.\nThe state attorney general opined in 2001 and 2008 that HHR machines could be legal under existing parimutuel wagering laws. HHR machines were first installed in 2019 at Birmingham Race Course. They came into broader use after unfavorable court rulings forced the removal of electronic bingo machines at some facilities, arriving in 2022 at the Greene County track, and then in 2023 at Victoryland.\nIdaho.\nThe Idaho Legislature legalized Instant Racing in 2013, and machines were soon installed at Les Bois Park, Greyhound Park, and the Double Down Bar & Grill in Idaho Falls. State legislators then enacted a ban on the machines in early 2015, claiming they had been misled about the game's nature, but the ban was vetoed by Governor Butch Otter. However, the Coeur d'Alene Tribe, which operates a casino that competes with the racetracks, successfully sued to invalidate Otter's veto, and the ban went into effect in September 2015, resulting in the shutdown of the state's historical racing parlors. A ballot initiative to re-legalize the machines, Proposition 1, was rejected by voters in 2018.\nKansas.\nKansas legislators enacted a historical racing law in 2022, authorizing one license for a facility in the Wichita area with up to 1,000 machines. The license was granted to the proposed Golden Circle project, to open at the former Wichita Greyhound Park in Park City in 2025.\nKentucky.\nThe Kentucky Horse Racing Commission modified its definition of parimutuel wagering in July 2010 to allow Instant Racing, and at the same time asked a court to review whether the change was legal. The court approved the changes and anti-gambling activists appealed the decision. The anti-gambling activists' appeal reached the Kentucky Supreme Court, which ruled in February 2014 that the Horse Racing Commission could authorize parimutuel wagering on historical races, but remanded the case for further proceedings to determine whether the terminals meet the definition of parimutuel wagering. In 2020, the Supreme Court finally ruled that at least the Exacta Systems product was not parimutuel. The next year, however, state legislators updated the definition of parimutuel wagering to explicitly allow historical horse racing, citing its importance to the state's racing industry.\nEven while the legal fight unfolded, Kentucky Downs installed Instant Racing terminals in September 2011, Ellis Park followed suit a year later, and the Red Mile opened a historical racing parlor in partnership with Keeneland in September 2015. Derby City Gaming, a standalone historical racing parlor, opened in 2018. As of 2021, development was underway on a historical racing parlor at Turfway Park and on a second Derby City Gaming location.\nIn 2020 Churchill Downs opened the Gaming, Racing, Hotel in Oak Grove, KY.\nLouisiana.\nIn 2021, Louisiana lawmakers authorized historical racing at off-track betting parlors, with up to 50 machines per location.\nNebraska.\nNebraska has seen several attempts to legalize the machines. The Nebraska Legislature voted to authorize the machines in 2012, but the bill was vetoed by Governor Dave Heineman. The legislature then approved a state constitutional amendment in 2014 to allow historical racing, but it was struck from the ballot by the Nebraska Supreme Court based on a technicality. The state racing commission attempted in 2018 to approve the machines, but backed off after Attorney General Doug Peterson argued that the move was unconstitutional.\nNew Hampshire.\nIn 2021, New Hampshire legalized historic horse racing machines at charitable gaming facilities. By 2023, machines were up and running at eight locations. The largest operation in the state, The Brook, has 505 machines and accounts for 41% of the state's HHR revenue.\nOregon.\nThe Oregon Racing Commission approved Instant Racing machines at the state's racetracks in April 2003. Twenty units were installed at Multnomah Greyhound Park the next month. The terminals were moved to Portland Meadows in October. They were removed in November 2003 at the direction of the tracks' parent company, Magna Entertainment. The Commission in 2006 approved a request from Magna to bring the game back to Portland Meadows, but then reversed itself a year later under pressure from Attorney General Hardy Myers, who believed the machines to be illegal.\nThe state enacted a new law legalizing Instant Racing in June 2013, and the game was relaunched at Portland Meadows in February 2015. Portland Meadows closed in 2019.\nAnother horse track, Grants Pass Downs, sought to open a historical racing parlor with 225 machines. Their application was denied after the state Department of Justice determined that the latest generation of machines were games of chance rather than parimutuel betting, and therefore would violate the state constitution's prohibitions against casinos and private lotteries.\nTexas.\nThe Texas Racing Commission adopted rules in August 2014 to allow historical wagering at the state's horse and dog tracks. However, in November 2014, a judge struck down the new rules, finding that historical wagering was a new type of wagering not authorized by existing statutes. The decision was appealed, but the Commission, under strong pressure from state legislators, repealed the historical wagering rules before the appeal could be decided.\nVirginia.\nVirginia enacted a law to allow historical wagering in April 2018, in an effort to make it economically viable to reopen the state's only horse track, Colonial Downs. The racetrack's historical racing parlor opened in April 2019, with additional machines to follow at several off-track betting parlors around the state, branded as Rosie's Gaming Emporium.\nWyoming.\nHistorical horse racing is offered at off-track betting (OTB) parlors owned by the state's 3 active racetracks. As of 2023, there were a total of 2,486 HHR machines operating at 43 parlors, with an annual handle of $1.7 billion.\nHHR machines were first installed at Wyoming's four OTB parlors beginning in July 2003, after approval by the Wyoming Pari-Mutuel Commission. The machines' legality was soon called into question by the state Attorney General, and they were removed in 2005 following a court ruling. The Wyoming Supreme Court ultimately ruled them illegal in 2006, calling the game \"a slot machine that attempts to mimic traditional pari-mutuel wagering\". In 2013, the state legislature re-legalized HHR. By December 2016, machines were in operation at 14 betting parlors across the state. The game has been credited with reviving the state's horse racing industry, which grew from zero live races in 2010 to 467 races in 2023.\nBy country.\nMalta.\nHHR machines were installed in 2024 at Izibingo, a bingo parlor in St. Paul's Bay operated by the Malta National Lottery. It was the first expansion of the game beyond the United States.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "7916078": "Home for Human Rights\nHome for Human Rights (HHR) is one of the oldest human rights organisations in Sri Lanka. Founded by the late Francis Xavier (LL.B., 1976, Called to the Bars of Sri Lanka and Ontario, Canada) (July 25 1933-June 10 2016), HHR has sought to address human rights violations against the marginalized and the oppressed population of Sri Lanka since 1977. HHR\u2019s mandate is to document and advocate against recognised human rights violations as set out in the International Bill of Rights.\nHHR history can be traced back to the instrumental activism of Francis Xavier, Kandiah Kandasamy and Seelan Kadirgamar. They operated under the guidance of S. Kathiravelpillai, member of parliament for Kopay. HHR was converted into a charitable trust in 1991 by Francis Xavier and in 1995, Sherine Xavier commenced her tenure as executive director. Under Sherine's guidance from 1995 to 2001 and 2006 to 2015, HHR grew to be one of the largest human rights organisation in Sri Lanka. The trust is managed by 5 trustees. \nHHR was located in Colombo and had branch offices in Jaffna, Batticaloa, Akkaraipattu, Trincomalee, Vavuniya, Mannar, Killinochi, Mullaithivu and Hatton.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "6899017": "Funny Farm (film)\n1988 film by George Roy Hill\nFunny Farm is a 1988 American comedy film starring Chevy Chase and Madolyn Smith. The film was adapted from a 1985 comedic novel of the same name by Jay Cronley. It was the final film directed by George Roy Hill before his death in 2002.\nPlot.\nAndy Farmer (Chase) is a New York City sports writer who moves with his wife, Elizabeth (Smith), to the seemingly charming town of Redbud, Vermont, so he can write a novel. They do not get along well with the residents, and other quirks arise such as being given exorbitant funeral bills for a long-dead man buried on their land years before they acquired the house.\nMarital troubles soon arise from the quirkiness of Redbud as well as the fact that Elizabeth was critical of Andy's manuscript, while writing her own manuscripts for children's books. Andy's publisher comes to town to personally see the manuscript of the novel after letters informing him of his deadline go unanswered. To avoid having to return the advance that the publisher gave him, Andy takes one of Elizabeth's manuscripts and passes it off as his own. After Elizabeth receives a call from Andy's publisher praising the work on \"his children's book\", she leaves Andy out of anger.\nThey soon decide to divorce and sell their home. To expedite the sale, the Farmers offer the town's residents a $15,000 donation to Redbud and $50 cash each if they help make a good impression on their prospective home buyers. To that end, the citizens remake Redbud into a perfect Norman Rockwell-style town. Their charade dazzles a pair of prospective buyers, who make the Farmers an offer on the house; however, Andy declines to sell, realizing that he genuinely enjoys small-town living.\nHe and Elizabeth decide to stay together in Redbud, much to the chagrin of the locals, who are now angry that they lost their promised money. Though the mayor does not hold the Farmers liable for the $15,000, as the sale of their house did not occur, Andy decides to pay everyone in Redbud their $50, which helps improve his standing among the townspeople. The film ends with Andy taking a job as a sportswriter for the Redbud newspaper, and Elizabeth, now pregnant with their first child, having written multiple children's stories.\nCast.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>* Chevy Chase as Andy Farmer\nProduction.\nScreenwriter Jeffrey Boam said he \"loved\" the book. \"It was exactly the kind of movie I always wanted to write,\u201d said Boam. \u201cIt needed a lot of work because it wasn\u2019t told in the fashion that could be filmed, but I loved the idea of working with Chevy. He was a comedy hero of mine and still is.\u201d\nBoam says the tone of the film changed from what he expected when director George Roy Hill signed. \"George wanted to do a much classier version than I ever imagined it to be,\" said Boam. \"I imagined it to be a little cruder, more low-brow humor, rougher and more like the movies Chevy was doing at the time, but George was a classy guy and he wasn\u2019t going to do that. He does what he does. He made the movie classy, and I think a lot of Chevy\u2019s fans were let down because it wasn\u2019t as raucous and vulgar as they might have expected.\"\nFilming.\nThe movie was filmed between August and November 1987 on location in Vermont, mostly in Townshend, Vermont. The New-York apartment at the beginning of the movie is located at the Arthrop Building, 2211 Broadway. The house bought by Andy and Elizabeth is on Fire Pond Road, Grafton, Vermont.\nReception.\n\"Funny Farm\" received mixed reviews at the time of its release. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 64% rating, based on 22 reviews, with an average rating of 5.1/10.\nVincent Canby, in his review for \"The New York Times\", called the film \"good-natured even when it's not funny,\" and went on to say that its best jokes are recycled from other, better, films. In a negative review for the \"Los Angeles Times\", Michael Wilmington said \"\"Funny Farm\" \u2013 a weak-fish-out-of-water comedy about a New York City couple who see their rural paradise turned into a rustic hell\u2013is a movie with a doubly deceptive title. This movie isn't about a farm, and it isn't very funny, either.\" In a staff review, \"Variety\" said, \"As pleasant yuppie comedies go, this is about par.\"\nHowever, film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel were strong champions of the film, praising it on \"The Oprah Winfrey Show\", \"The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson\", and \"At the Movies\". Ebert called the film a \"small miracle,\" while Siskel said it was \"the best film Chase has made\" and compared it to the films of Preston Sturges. Siskel and Ebert collectively praised the script's numerous laugh-out-loud moments, the strong direction, the beautiful cinematography, and editing which consistently ends scenes at just the right moment.\nThe film grossed $25 million on a $19 million budget, making it a modest box office success, but was seen as an overall disappointment especially considering Chevy Chase's popularity as a comic actor in the 1980s with a handful of box office hits. It was released during a very busy summer movie season. The Tom Hanks comedy \"Big\", now considered a classic comedy, opened the same day and became one of the year's highest grossing films while \"Crocodile Dundee II\" was in its second week of release and also became one of the year's biggest hits. Other releases throughout the summer, including \"Coming to America\", \"Who Framed Roger Rabbit\", and \"Die Hard\", all were very high-grossing films, giving \"Funny Farm\" a slim chance of high box-office results in comparison.\nWith the success of \"National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation\" the following year, \"Funny Farm\" eventually gained a cult following, and is now regarded by critics and Chevy Chase fans as one of his best films.\nThen-U.S. President Ronald Reagan viewed this film at Camp David on June 11, 1988.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "39848": "Chevrolet\nAmerican automobile division of General Motors\nChevrolet ( ) is an American automobile division of the manufacturer General Motors (GM). In North America, Chevrolet produces and sells a wide range of vehicles, from subcompact automobiles to medium-duty commercial trucks. Due to the prominence and name recognition of Chevrolet as one of General Motors' global marques, 'Chevrolet', 'Chevy' or 'Chev' is used at times as a synonym for General Motors or its products, one example being the GM LS1 engine, commonly known by the name or a variant thereof of its progenitor, the Chevrolet small-block engine.\nLouis Chevrolet (1878\u20131941), Arthur Chevrolet (1884\u20131946) and ousted General Motors founder William C. Durant (1861\u20131947) started the company on November 3, 1911 as the Chevrolet Motor Car Company. Durant used the Chevrolet Motor Car Company to acquire a controlling stake in General Motors with a reverse merger occurring on May 2, 1918, and propelled himself back to the GM presidency. After Durant's second ousting in 1919, Alfred Sloan, with his maxim \"a car for every purse and purpose\", picked the Chevrolet brand to become the volume leader in the General Motors family, selling mainstream vehicles to compete with Henry Ford's Model T in 1919 and overtaking Ford as the best-selling car in the United States by 1929 with the Chevrolet International.\nChevrolet-branded vehicles are sold in most automotive markets worldwide. In Oceania, Chevrolet was represented by Holden Special Vehicles, having returned to the region in 2018 after a 50-year absence with the launching of the Camaro and Silverado pickup truck (HSV was partially and formerly owned by GM subsidiary Holden, which GM retired in 2021). In 2021, General Motors Specialty Vehicles took over the distribution and sales of Chevrolet vehicles in Oceania, starting with the Silverado. In 2005, Chevrolet was relaunched in Europe, primarily selling vehicles built by GM Daewoo of South Korea with the tagline \"Daewoo has grown up enough to become Chevrolet\", a move rooted in General Motors' attempt to build a global brand around Chevrolet. With the reintroduction of Chevrolet to Europe, GM intended Chevrolet to be a mainstream value brand, while GM's traditional European standard-bearers, Opel of Germany and Vauxhall of the United Kingdom, were to be moved upmarket. However, GM reversed this move in late 2013, announcing that the brand would be withdrawn from Europe from 2016 onward, with the exception of the Camaro and Corvette. Chevrolet vehicles were to continue to be marketed in the CIS states, including Russia. After General Motors fully acquired GM Daewoo in 2011 to create GM Korea, the last usage of the Daewoo automotive brand was discontinued in its native South Korea and succeeded by Chevrolet.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nOn November 8, 1911, the Chevrolet Motor Car Company was incorporated. It was founded by Swiss race car driver and automotive engineer Louis Chevrolet with his brother Arthur Chevrolet, William C. Durant and investment partners William Little (maker of the Little automobile), former Buick owner James H. Whiting, Edwin R. Campbell (son-in-law of Durant) and in 1912 R. S. McLaughlin CEO of General Motors in Canada. Former Buick officers were also employed, including Curtis R. Hatheway as secretary.\nDurant was dismissed from his senior management position at General Motors in 1910, a company that he had founded in 1908. In 1904 he had taken over the Flint Wagon Works and Buick Motor Company of Flint, Michigan. He also incorporated the Mason and Little companies. As head of Buick, Durant had hired Louis Chevrolet to drive Buicks in promotional races. Durant planned to use Chevrolet's reputation as a racer as the foundation for his new automobile company. The first factory location was in Flint, Michigan at the corner of Wilcox and Kearsley Street, now known as \"Chevy Commons\" at coordinates , along the Flint River, across the street from Kettering University.\nOne of the technical advancements Chevrolet benefited from was the implementation of an overhead valve engine from the very beginning, as the company was developed by the former owner of Buick, which had patented the overhead valve and cross-flow cylinder design as being more efficient than the conventional use of the flathead engine.\nActual design work for the first Chevy, the costly Series C Classic Six, was drawn up by Etienne Planche, following instructions from Louis. The first C prototype was ready months before Chevrolet was actually incorporated. However, the first actual production was not until the 1913 model. So in essence there were no 1911 or 1912 production models, only one pre-production model was made and fine tuned throughout the early part of 1912. Then in the fall of that year the new 1913 model was introduced at the New York auto show.\nChevrolet first used the \"bowtie emblem\" logo in 1914 on the H series models (Royal Mail and Baby Grand) and The L Series Model (Light Six). It may have been designed from wallpaper Durant once saw in a French hotel room. More recent research by historian Ken Kaufmann presents a case that the logo is based on a logo of the \"Coalettes\" coal company. An example of this logo as it appeared in an advertisement for Coalettes appeared in the Atlanta Constitution on November 12, 1911. Others claim that the design was a stylized Swiss cross, in tribute to Chevrolet's home country. Over time, Chevrolet used several different iterations of the bowtie logo at the same time, often using blue for passenger cars, gold for trucks, and an outline (often in red) for cars that had performance packages. Chevrolet eventually unified all vehicle models with the gold bowtie in 2004, for both brand cohesion as well as to differentiate itself from Ford (with its blue oval logo) and Dodge (who has often used red for its imaging), its two primary domestic rivals.\nLouis Chevrolet had differences with Durant over design and in 1914 sold Durant his share in the company. By 1916, Chevrolet was profitable enough with successful sales of the cheaper Series 490 to allow Durant to repurchase a controlling interest in General Motors. After the deal was completed in 1918, Durant became president of General Motors, and Chevrolet was merged into GM as a separate division. In 1919, Chevrolet's factories were located at Flint, Michigan; branch assembly locations were sited in Tarrytown, N.Y., Norwood, Ohio, St. Louis, Missouri, Oakland, California, Ft. Worth, Texas, and Oshawa, Ontario General Motors of Canada Limited. McLaughlin's were given GM Corporation stock for the proprietorship of their Company article September 23, 1933 Financial Post page 9. In the 1918 model year, Chevrolet introduced the Series D, a V8-powered model in four-passenger roadster and five-passenger tourer models. Sales were poor and it was dropped in 1919.\nBeginning also in 1919, GMC commercial grade trucks were rebranded as Chevrolet, and using the same chassis of Chevrolet passenger cars and building light-duty trucks, sharing an almost identical appearance with GMC products.\nUntil 1921, Chevrolet Corporate headquarters were located at 57th and Broadway in New York City until April when the office was relocated to the General Motors Building at Cadillac Place in Detroit. In January 1921 a General Motors management survey recommended that the Chevrolet Division be cancelled, but Alfred P. Sloan Jr. recommended that the division be saved and William S. Knudsen, a former Ford employee who oversaw production of the Model T, was made Vice President of Operations and performance improved In May 1925 the Chevrolet Export Boxing plant at Bloomfield, New Jersey was repurposed from a previous owner where Knock-down kits for Chevrolet, Oakland, Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac passenger cars, and both Chevrolet and G. M. C. truck parts are crated and shipped by railroad to the docks at Weehawken, New Jersey for overseas GM assembly factories.\nChevrolet continued into the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s competing with Ford, and after the Chrysler Corporation formed Plymouth in 1928, Plymouth, Ford, and Chevrolet were known as the \"Low-priced three\". In 1929 they introduced the famous \"Stovebolt\" overhead-valve inline six-cylinder engine, giving Chevrolet a marketing edge over Ford, which was still offering a lone flathead four (\"A Six at the price of a Four\"). In 1933 Chevrolet launched the Standard Six, which was advertised in the United States as the cheapest six-cylinder car on sale. During the Great Depression the Chevrolet Master introduced a streamlined appearance, showing Art Deco influences and before and after the World War II era, the Chevrolet Deluxe and Chevrolet Fleetline found many buyers.\nChevrolet had a great influence on the American automobile market during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1953 it produced the Corvette, a two-seater sports car with a fiberglass body. In 1957 Chevy introduced its first fuel injected engine, the Rochester Ramjet option on Corvette and Chevrolet Bel Air passenger cars, priced at $484 ($"}, "descending_order": ["1361602", "2306734", "40616334", "7916078", "6899017", "39848"], "permutation_1": ["40616334", "1361602", "39848", "7916078", "2306734", "6899017"], "permutation_2": ["39848", "1361602", "6899017", "7916078", "40616334", "2306734"], "permutation_3": ["2306734", "39848", "6899017", "7916078", "1361602", "40616334"]}
{"id": "nq_-6510458506750611707", "docs_added": {"1216": "Athens\nCapital and largest city of Greece\nAthens ( ) is the capital and largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica region and is the southernmost capital on the European mainland. With its urban area's population numbering over 3.6 million, it is the eighth largest urban area in the European Union. The Municipality of Athens (also City of Athens), which constitutes a small administrative unit of the entire urban area, had a population of 643,452 (2021) within its official limits, and a land area of .\nAthens is one of the world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years, and its earliest human presence beginning somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennia BC. According to Greek mythology the city was named after Athena, the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom, but modern scholars generally agree that the goddess took her name after the city. Classical Athens was one of the most powerful city-states in ancient Greece. It was a centre for democracy, the arts, education and philosophy, and was highly influential throughout the European continent, particularly in Ancient Rome. For this reason, it is often regarded as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy in its own right independently from the rest of Greece.\nIn modern times, Athens is a large cosmopolitan metropolis and central to economic, financial, industrial, maritime, political and cultural life in Greece. It is a Beta (+) \u2013 \nstatus global city according to the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, and is one of the biggest economic centers in Southeastern Europe. It also has a large financial sector, and its port Piraeus is both the 2nd busiest passenger port in Europe, and the 13th largest container port in the world. The Athens metropolitan area extends beyond its administrative municipal city limits as well as its urban agglomeration, with a population of 3,638,281 (2021) over an area of .\nThe heritage of the Classical Era is still evident in the city, represented by ancient monuments, and works of art, the most famous of all being the Parthenon, considered a key landmark of early Western culture. The city also retains Roman, Byzantine and a smaller number of Ottoman monuments, while its historical urban core features elements of continuity through its millennia of history. Athens is home to two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Acropolis of Athens and the medieval Daphni Monastery. Athens is also home to several museums and cultural institutions, such as the National Archeological Museum, featuring the world's largest collection of ancient Greek antiquities, the Acropolis Museum, the Museum of Cycladic Art, the Benaki Museum, and the Byzantine and Christian Museum. Athens was the host city of the first modern-day Olympic Games in 1896, and 108 years later it hosted the 2004 Summer Olympics, making it one of five cities to have hosted the Summer Olympics on multiple occasions.\nEtymology and names.\nIn Ancient Greek, the name of the city was (\"Ath\u00eanai\", in Classical Attic), which is a plural word. In earlier Greek, such as Homeric Greek, the name had been current in the singular form though, as (\"Ath\u1e17n\u0113\"). It was possibly rendered in the plural later on, like those of (\"Th\u00eabai\") and (\"\u039cuk\u00eanai\"). The root of the word is probably not of Greek or Indo-European origin, and is possibly a remnant of the Pre-Greek substrate of Attica. In antiquity, it was debated whether Athens took its name from its patron goddess Athena (Attic , \"Ath\u0113n\u00e2\", Ionic , \"Ath\u1e17n\u0113\", and Doric , \"Ath\u0101\u0301n\u0101\") or Athena took her name from the city. Modern scholars now generally agree that the goddess takes her name from the city, because the ending -\"ene\" is common in names of locations, but rare for personal names.\nAccording to the ancient Athenian founding myth, Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war, competed against Poseidon, the God of the Seas, for patronage of the yet-unnamed city; they agreed that whoever gave the Athenians the better gift would become their patron and appointed Cecrops, the king of Athens, as the judge. According to the account given by Pseudo-Apollodorus, Poseidon struck the ground with his trident and a salt water spring welled up. In an alternative version of the myth from Vergil's poem \"Georgics\", Poseidon instead gave the Athenians the first horse. In both versions, Athena offered the Athenians the first domesticated olive tree. Cecrops accepted this gift and declared Athena the patron goddess of Athens. Eight different etymologies, now commonly rejected, have been proposed since the 17th century. Christian Lobeck proposed as the root of the name the word (\"\u00e1thos\") or (\"\u00e1nthos\") meaning \"flower\", to denote Athens as the \"flowering city\". Ludwig von D\u00f6derlein proposed the stem of the verb , stem \u03b8\u03b7- (\"th\u00e1\u014d\", \"th\u0113-\", \"to suck\") to denote Athens as having fertile soil. Athenians were called cicada-wearers () because they used to wear pins of golden cicadas. A symbol of being autochthonous (earth-born), because the legendary founder of Athens, Erechtheus was an autochthon or of being musicians, because the cicada is a \"musician\" insect. In classical literature, the city was sometimes referred to as the City of the Violet Crown, first documented in Pindar's \u1f30\u03bf\u03c3\u03c4\u03ad\u03c6\u03b1\u03bd\u03bf\u03b9 \u1f08\u03b8\u1fb6\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9 (\"iost\u00e9phanoi Ath\u00e2nai\"), or as (\"t\u00f2 klein\u00f2n \u00e1sty\", \"the glorious city\").\nDuring the medieval period, the name of the city was rendered once again in the singular as . Variant names included Setines, Satine, and Astines, all derivations involving false splitting of prepositional phrases. King Alphonse X of Castile gives the pseudo-etymology 'the one without death/ignorance'. In Ottoman Turkish, it was called \u0622\u062a\u064a\u0646\u0627\u200e \"\u0100t\u012bn\u0101\", and in modern Turkish, it is \"Atina\".\nHistory.\nAntiquity.\nThe oldest known human presence in Athens is the Cave of Schist, which has been dated to between the 11th and 7th millennia BC. Athens has been continuously inhabited for at least 5,000 years (3000 BC). By 1400\u00a0BC, the settlement had become an important centre of the Mycenaean civilization, and the Acropolis was the site of a major Mycenaean fortress, whose remains can be recognised from sections of the characteristic Cyclopean walls. Unlike other Mycenaean centers, such as Mycenae and Pylos, it is not known whether Athens suffered destruction in about 1200\u00a0BC, an event often attributed to a Dorian invasion, and the Athenians always maintained that they were pure Ionians with no Dorian element. However, Athens, like many other Bronze Age settlements, went into economic decline for around 150 years afterwards. Iron Age burials, in the Kerameikos and other locations, are often richly provided for and demonstrate that from 900\u00a0BC onwards Athens was one of the leading centres of trade and prosperity in the region.\nBy the sixth century BC, widespread social unrest led to the reforms of Solon. These would pave the way for the eventual introduction of democracy by Cleisthenes in 508\u00a0BC. Athens had by this time become a significant naval power with a large fleet, and helped the rebellion of the Ionian cities against Persian rule. In the ensuing Greco-Persian Wars Athens, together with Sparta, led the coalition of Greek states that would eventually repel the Persians, defeating them decisively at Marathon in 490\u00a0BC, and crucially at Salamis in 480\u00a0BC. However, this did not prevent Athens from being captured and sacked twice by the Persians within one year, after a heroic but ultimately failed resistance at Thermopylae by Spartans and other Greeks led by King Leonidas, after both Boeotia and Attica fell to the Persians.\nThe decades that followed became known as the Golden Age of Athenian democracy, during which time Athens became the leading city of Ancient Greece, with its cultural achievements laying the foundations for Western civilization. The playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides flourished in Athens during this time, as did the historians Herodotus and Thucydides, the physician Hippocrates, and the philosopher Socrates. Guided by Pericles, who promoted the arts and fostered democracy, Athens embarked on an ambitious building program that saw the construction of the Acropolis of Athens (including the Parthenon), as well as empire-building via the Delian League. Originally intended as an association of Greek city-states to continue the fight against the Persians, the league soon turned into a vehicle for Athens's own imperial ambitions. The resulting tensions brought about the Peloponnesian War (431\u2013404\u00a0BC), in which Athens was defeated by its rival Sparta.\nBy the mid-4th century BC, the northern Greek kingdom of Macedon was becoming dominant in Athenian affairs. In 338\u00a0BC the armies of Philip II defeated an alliance of some of the Greek city-states including Athens and Thebes at the Battle of Chaeronea. Later, under Rome, Athens was given the status of a free city because of its widely admired schools. In the second century AD, the Roman emperor Hadrian, himself an Athenian citizen, ordered the construction of a library, a gymnasium, an aqueduct which is still in use, several temples and sanctuaries, a bridge and financed the completion of the Temple of Olympian Zeus.\nIn the early 4th century AD, the Eastern Roman Empire began to be governed from Constantinople, and with the construction and expansion of the imperial city, many of Athens's works of art were taken by the emperors to adorn it. The Empire became Christianized, and the use of Latin declined in favour of exclusive use of Greek; in the Roman imperial period, both languages had been used. In the later Roman period, Athens was ruled by the emperors continuing until the 13th century, its citizens identifying themselves as citizens of the Roman Empire (\"\"Rhomaioi\"\"). The conversion of the empire from paganism to Christianity greatly affected Athens, resulting in reduced reverence for the city. Ancient monuments such as the Parthenon, Erechtheion and the Hephaisteion (Theseion) were converted into churches. As the empire became increasingly anti-pagan, Athens became a provincial town and experienced fluctuating fortunes.\nThe city remained an important center of learning, especially of Neoplatonism\u2014with notable pupils including Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil of Caesarea and emperor Julian (r.\u2009355\u00a0\u2013\u00a0363)\u2014and consequently a center of paganism. Christian items do not appear in the archaeological record until the early 5th century. The sack of the city by the Herules in 267 and by the Visigoths under their king Alaric I (r.\u2009395\u00a0\u2013\u00a0410) in 396, however, dealt a heavy blow to the city's fabric and fortunes, and Athens was henceforth confined to a small fortified area that embraced a fraction of the ancient city. The emperor Justinian I (r.\u2009527\u00a0\u2013\u00a0565) banned the teaching of philosophy by pagans in 529, an event whose impact on the city is much debated, but is generally taken to mark the end of the ancient history of Athens. Athens was sacked by the Slavs in 582, but remained in imperial hands thereafter, as highlighted by the visit of the emperor Constans II (r.\u2009641\u00a0\u2013\u00a0668) in 662/3 and its inclusion in the Theme of Hellas.\nMiddle Ages.\nThe city was threatened by Saracen raids in the 8th\u20139th centuries\u2014in 896, Athens was raided and possibly occupied for a short period, an event which left some archaeological remains and elements of Arabic ornamentation in contemporary buildings\u2014but there is also evidence of a mosque existing in the city at the time. In the great dispute over Byzantine Iconoclasm, Athens is commonly held to have supported the iconophile position, chiefly due to the role played by Empress Irene of Athens in the ending of the first period of Iconoclasm at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. A few years later, another Athenian, Theophano, became empress as the wife of Staurakios (r. 811\u2013812).\nInvasion of the empire by the Turks after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, and the ensuing civil wars, largely passed the region by and Athens continued its provincial existence unharmed. When the Byzantine Empire was rescued by the resolute leadership of the three Komnenos emperors Alexios, John and Manuel, Attica and the rest of Greece prospered. Archaeological evidence tells us that the medieval town experienced a period of rapid and sustained growth, starting in the 11th century and continuing until the end of the 12th century.\nThe Agora (marketplace) had been deserted since late antiquity, began to be built over, and soon the town became an important centre for the production of soaps and dyes. The growth of the town attracted the Venetians, and various other traders who frequented the ports of the Aegean, to Athens. This interest in trade appears to have further increased the economic prosperity of the town.\nThe 11th and 12th centuries were the Golden Age of Byzantine art in Athens. Almost all of the most important Middle Byzantine churches in and around Athens were built during these two centuries, and this reflects the growth of the town in general. However, this medieval prosperity was not to last. In 1204, the Fourth Crusade conquered Athens and the city was not recovered from the Latins before it was taken by the Ottoman Turks. It did not become Greek in government again until the 19th century.\nFrom 1204 until 1458, Athens was ruled by Latins in three separate periods, following the Crusades. The \"Latins\", or \"Franks\", were western Europeans and followers of the Latin Church brought to the Eastern Mediterranean during the Crusades. Along with rest of Byzantine Greece, Athens was part of the series of feudal fiefs, similar to the Crusader states established in Syria and on Cyprus after the First Crusade. This period is known as the \"Frankokratia\".\nOttoman Athens.\nThe first Ottoman attack on Athens, which involved a short-lived occupation of the town, came in 1397, under the Ottoman generals Yaqub Pasha and Timurtash. Finally, in 1458, Athens was captured by the Ottomans under the personal leadership of Sultan Mehmed II. As the Ottoman Sultan rode into the city, he was greatly struck by the beauty of its ancient monuments and issued a \"firman\" (imperial edict) forbidding their looting or destruction, on pain of death. The Parthenon was converted into the main mosque of the city.\nUnder Ottoman rule, Athens was denuded of any importance and its population severely declined, leaving it as a \"small country town\" (Franz Babinger). From the early 17th century, Athens came under the jurisdiction of the Kizlar Agha, the chief black eunuch of the Sultan's harem. The city had originally been granted by Sultan Ahmed I (r.\u20091603\u00a0\u2013\u00a01617) to Basilica, one of his favourite concubines, who hailed from the city, in response of complaints of maladministration by the local governors. After her death, Athens came under the purview of the Kizlar Agha.\nThe Turks began a practice of storing gunpowder and explosives in the Parthenon and Propylaea. In 1640, a lightning bolt struck the Propylaea, causing its destruction. In 1687, during the Morean War, the Acropolis was besieged by the Venetians under Francesco Morosini, and the temple of Athena Nike was dismantled by the Ottomans to fortify the Parthenon. A shot fired during the bombardment of the Acropolis caused a powder magazine in the Parthenon to explode (26 September), and the building was severely damaged, giving it largely the appearance it has today. The Venetian occupation of Athens lasted for six months, and both the Venetians and the Ottomans participated in the looting of the Parthenon. One of its western pediments was removed, causing even more damage to the structure. During the Venetian occupation, the two mosques of the city were converted into Catholic and Protestant churches, but on 9 April 1688 the Venetians abandoned Athens again to the Ottomans.\nModern history.\nIn 1822, a Greek insurgency captured the city, but it fell to the Ottomans again in 1826 (though Acropolis held till June 1827). Again the ancient monuments suffered badly. The Ottoman forces remained in possession until March 1833, when they withdrew.\nFollowing the Greek War of Independence and the establishment of the Greek Kingdom, Athens was chosen to replace Nafplio as the second capital of the newly independent Greek state in 1834, largely because of historical and sentimental reasons. At the time, after the extensive destruction it had suffered during the war of independence, it was reduced to a town of about 4,000 people (less than half its earlier population) in a loose swarm of houses along the foot of the Acropolis. The first King of Greece, King Otto of Bavaria, commissioned the architects Stamatios Kleanthis and Eduard Schaubert to design a modern city plan fit for the capital of a state.\nThe first modern city plan consisted of a triangle defined by the Acropolis, the ancient cemetery of Kerameikos and the new palace of the Bavarian king (now housing the Greek Parliament), so as to highlight the continuity between modern and ancient Athens. Neoclassicism, the international style of this epoch, was the architectural style through which Bavarian, French and Greek architects such as Hansen, Klenze, Boulanger or Kaftantzoglou designed the first important public buildings of the new capital. In 1896, Athens hosted the first modern Olympic Games. During the 1920s a number of Greek refugees, expelled from Asia Minor after the Greco-Turkish War and Population exchange between Greece and Turkey, swelled Athens's population; nevertheless it was mostly after World War II and the Civil War ended, during the 1950s and 1960s, that the population of the city exploded, and Athens experienced its greatest expansion.\nIn the 1980s, it became evident that smog from factories and an ever-increasing fleet of automobiles, as well as a lack of adequate free space due to congestion, had evolved into the city's most important challenge. The Acropolis of Athens was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, for its group of ancient Greek monumental ruins, including architectural masterpieces such as the Parthenon. A series of anti-pollution measures taken by the city's authorities in the 1990s, combined with a substantial improvement of the city's infrastructure (including the Attiki Odos motorway, the expansion of the Athens Metro, and the new Athens International Airport), considerably alleviated pollution and transformed Athens into a much more functional city. In 2004, Athens hosted the 2004 Summer Olympics. Further urban improvements began in the 2020s along the coastal zone, including the Hellenikon Park development and the Faliro Delta upgrade, adding to the Stavros Niarchos Centre.\nGeography.\nAthens sprawls across the central plain of Attica that is often referred to as the Athens Basin or the Attica Basin (). The basin is bounded by four large mountains: Mount Aigaleo to the west, Mount Parnitha to the north, Mount Pentelicus to the northeast and Mount Hymettus to the east. Beyond Mount Aegaleo lies the Thriasian plain, which forms an extension of the central plain to the west. The Saronic Gulf lies to the southwest. Mount Parnitha is the tallest of the four mountains (), and has been declared a national park. The Athens urban area spreads over from Agios Stefanos in the north to Varkiza in the south. The city is located in the north temperate zone, 38 degrees north of the equator.\nAthens is built around a large number of hills. Lycabettus is one of the tallest hills of the city proper and provides a view of the entire Attica Basin. The meteorology of Athens is deemed to be one of the most complex in the world because its mountains cause a temperature inversion phenomenon which, along with the Greek government's difficulties controlling industrial pollution, was responsible for the air pollution problems the city has faced. This issue is not unique to Athens; for instance, Los Angeles and Mexico City also suffer from similar atmospheric inversion problems.\nThe Cephissus river, the Ilisos and the Eridanos stream are the historical rivers of Athens.\nEnvironment.\nBy the late 1970s, the pollution of Athens had become so destructive that according to the then Greek Minister of Culture, Constantine Trypanis, \"...the carved details on the five the caryatids of the Erechtheum had seriously degenerated, while the face of the horseman on the Parthenon's west side was all but obliterated.\" A series of measures taken by the authorities of the city throughout the 1990s resulted in the improvement of air quality; the appearance of smog (or \"nefos\" as the Athenians used to call it) has become less common.\nMeasures taken by the Greek authorities throughout the 1990s have improved the quality of air over the Attica Basin. Nevertheless, air pollution still remains an issue for Athens, particularly during the hottest summer days. In late June 2007, the Attica region experienced a number of brush fires, including a blaze that burned a significant portion of a large forested national park in Mount Parnitha, considered critical to maintaining a better air quality in Athens all year round. Damage to the park has led to worries over a stalling in the improvement of air quality in the city.\nThe major waste management efforts undertaken in the last decade (particularly the plant built on the small island of Psytalia) have greatly improved water quality in the Saronic Gulf, and the coastal waters of Athens are now accessible again to swimmers.\nParks and zoos.\nParnitha National Park is punctuated by well-marked paths, gorges, springs, torrents and caves dotting the protected area. Hiking and mountain-biking in all four mountains are popular outdoor activities for residents of the city. The National Garden of Athens was completed in 1840 and is a green refuge of 15.5 hectares in the centre of the Greek capital. It is to be found between the Parliament and Zappeion buildings, the latter of which maintains its own garden of seven hectares. Parts of the City Centre have been redeveloped under a masterplan called the \"Unification of Archeological Sites of Athens\", which has also gathered funding from the EU to help enhance the project. The landmark Dionysiou Areopagitou Street has been pedestrianised, forming a scenic route. The route starts from the Temple of Olympian Zeus at Vasilissis Olgas Avenue, continues under the southern slopes of the Acropolis near Plaka, and finishes just beyond the Temple of Hephaestus in Thiseio. The route in its entirety provides visitors with views of the Parthenon and the Agora (the meeting point of ancient Athenians), away from the busy City Centre.\nThe hills of Athens also provide green space. Lycabettus, Philopappos hill and the area around it, including Pnyx and Ardettos hill, are planted with pines and other trees, with the character of a small forest rather than typical metropolitan parkland. Also to be found is the Pedion tou Areos (\"Field of Mars\") of 27.7 hectares, near the National Archaeological Museum. Athens' largest zoo is the Attica Zoological Park, a private zoo located in the suburb of Spata. The zoo is home to around 2000 animals representing 400 species, and is open 365 days a year. Smaller zoos exist within public gardens or parks, such as the zoo within the National Garden of Athens.\nClimate.\nAthens has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (K\u00f6ppen climate classification: \"Csa\"). The climate in Athens can be considered warmer than some cities that are similar or even less distant from the equator such as Seoul, Melbourne, Buenos Aires, Cape Town and Norfolk (Virginia, US). According to the meteorological station near the city center which is operated by the National Observatory of Athens, the downtown area has simple mean annual temperature of while parts of the urban agglomeration may reach up to , being affected by the urban heat island effect. Athens receives about of precipitation per year, largely concentrated during the colder half of the year with the remaining rainfall falling sparsely, mainly during thunderstorms. Fog is rare in the city center, but somewhat more frequent in areas to the east, close to mount Hymettus.\nThe southern section of the Athens metropolitan area (i.e., Elliniko, Athens Riviera) lies in the transitional zone between Mediterranean (\"Csa\") and hot semi-arid climate (\"BSh\"), with its port-city of Piraeus being the most extreme example, receiving just per year. The areas to the south generally see less extreme temperature variations as their climate is moderated by the Saronic gulf. The northern part of the city (i.e., Kifissia), owing to its higher elevation, features moderately lower temperatures and slightly increased precipitation year-round. The generally dry climate of the Athens basin compared to the precipitation amounts seen in a typical Mediterranean climate is due to the rain shadow effect caused by the Pindus mountain range and the Dirfys and Parnitha mountains, substantially drying the westerly and northerly winds respectively.\nSnowfall is not very common. It usually does not cause heavy disruption to daily life, in contrast to the northern parts of the city, where blizzards occur on a somewhat more regular basis. The most recent examples include the snowstorms of 16 February 2021 and 24 January 2022, when the entire urban area was blanketed in snow.\nAthens may get particularly hot in the summer, owing partly to the strong urban heat island effect characterizing the city. In fact, Athens has been referred to as the hottest city in mainland Europe, and is the first city in Europe to appoint a chief heat officer to deal with severe heat waves. Temperatures of 47.5\u00b0C have been reported in several locations of the metropolitan area, including within the urban agglomeration. Metropolitan Athens was until 2021 the holder of the World Meteorological Organization record for the highest temperature ever recorded in Europe with which was recorded in the areas of Elefsina and Tatoi on 10 July 1977.\nAdministration.\nAthens became the capital of Greece in 1834, following Nafplion, which was the provisional capital from 1829. The municipality (city) of Athens is also the capital of the Attica region. The term \"Athens\" can refer either to the municipality of Athens, to Greater Athens or urban area, or to the entire Athens Metropolitan Area.\nThe large city centre () of the Greek capital falls directly within the Municipality of Athens (), which is the largest in population size in Greece and forms the core of the Athens urban area, followed by the Municipality of Piraeus, which forms a significant city centre on its own within the Athens urban area and it is the second largest in population size within it.\nAthens Urban Area.\nThe Athens Urban Area (), also known as Urban Area of the Capital () or Greater Athens (), today consists of 40 municipalities: 35 of them divided in four regional units (Central Athens, North Athens, West Athens, South Athens), and a further 5 municipalities which make up the regional unit of Piraeus. The Athens urban area spans over , with a population of 3,059,764 people as of 2021.\nAthens metropolitan area.\nThe Athens metropolitan area spans within the Attica region and includes a total of 58 municipalities, which are organized in seven regional units (those outlined above, along with East Attica and West Attica), having reached a population of 3,638,281 according to the 2021 census. Athens and Piraeus municipalities serve as the two metropolitan centres of the Athens Metropolitan Area. There are also some inter-municipal centres serving specific areas. For example, Kifissia and Glyfada serve as inter-municipal centres for northern and southern suburbs respectively.\nThe Athens Metropolitan Area consists of 58 densely populated municipalities, sprawling around the Municipality of Athens (the City Centre) in virtually all directions. For the Athenians, all the urban municipalities surrounding the City Centre are called suburbs. According to their geographic location in relation to the City of Athens, the suburbs are divided into four zones; the northern suburbs (including Agios Stefanos, Dionysos, Ekali, Nea Erythraia, Kifissia, Kryoneri, Maroussi, Pefki, Lykovrysi, Metamorfosi, Nea Ionia, Nea Filadelfeia, Irakleio, Vrilissia, Melissia, Penteli, Chalandri, Agia Paraskevi, Gerakas, Pallini, Galatsi, Psychiko and Filothei); the southern suburbs (including Alimos, Nea Smyrni, Moschato, Tavros, Agios Ioannis Renti, Kallithea, Piraeus, Agios Dimitrios, Palaio Faliro, Elliniko, Glyfada, Lagonisi, Saronida, Argyroupoli, Ilioupoli, Varkiza, Voula, Vari and Vouliagmeni); the eastern suburbs (including Zografou, Dafni, Vyronas, Kaisariani, Cholargos and Papagou); and the western suburbs (including Peristeri, Ilion, Egaleo, Koridallos, Agia Varvara, Keratsini, Perama, Nikaia, Drapetsona, Chaidari, Petroupoli, Agioi Anargyroi, Ano Liosia, Aspropyrgos, Eleusina, Acharnes and Kamatero).\nThe Athens city coastline, extending from the major commercial port of Piraeus to the southernmost suburb of Varkiza for some , is also connected to the City Centre by tram.\nIn the northern suburb of Maroussi, the upgraded main Olympic Complex (known by its Greek acronym OAKA) dominates the skyline. The area has been redeveloped according to a design by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, with steel arches, landscaped gardens, fountains, futuristic glass, and a landmark new blue glass roof which was added to the main stadium. A second Olympic complex, next to the sea at the beach of Palaio Faliro, also features modern stadia, shops and an elevated esplanade. Work is underway to transform the grounds of the old Athens Airport \u2013 named Elliniko \u2013 in the southern suburbs, into one of the largest landscaped parks in Europe, to be named the Hellenikon Metropolitan Park.\nMany of the southern suburbs (such as Alimos, Palaio Faliro, Elliniko, Glyfada, Voula, Vouliagmeni and Varkiza) known as the Athens Riviera, host a number of sandy beaches, most of which are operated by the Greek National Tourism Organisation and require an entrance fee. Casinos operate on both Mount Parnitha (Regency Casino Mont Parnes), some from downtown Athens (accessible by car or cable car), and the nearby town of Loutraki (accessible by car via the Athens \u2013 Corinth National Highway, or the Athens Suburban Railway).\nTwin towns \u2013 sister cities.\nThe concept of a partner city is used under different names in different countries, but they mean the same thing, that two cities in different countries assist each other as partners. Athens has quite a number of partners, whether as a \"twin\", a \"sister\", or a \"partner.\"\nDemographics.\nThe Municipality of Athens has an official population of 643,452 people (in 2021). According to the 2021 Population and Housing Census, The four regional units that make up the former Athens prefecture have a combined population of 2,611,713 . They together with the regional unit of Piraeus (sometimes referred to as Greater Piraeus) make up the dense Athens Urban Area or Greater Athens which reaches a total population of 3,059,764 inhabitants (in 2021).\nThe municipality (Center) of Athens is the most populous in Greece, with a population of 643,452 people (in 2021) and an area of , forming the core of the Athens Urban Area within the Attica Basin. The incumbent Mayor of Athens is Charis Doukas of PASOK. The municipality is divided into seven municipal districts which are mainly used for administrative purposes.\nFor the Athenians the most popular way of dividing the downtown is through its neighbourhoods such as Pagkrati, Ampelokipoi, Goudi, Exarcheia, Patisia, Ilisia, Petralona, Plaka, Anafiotika, Koukaki, Kolonaki and Kypseli, each with its own distinct history and characteristics.\nRomani people are concentrated in Acharnes, Ano Liosia, Agia Varvara, Zefeiri and Kamatero.\nThere is a large Albanian community in Athens.\nMetropolitan Area.\nThe Athens Metropolitan Area, with an area of and inhabited by 3,744,059 people in 2021, consists of the Athens Urban Area with the addition of the towns and villages of East and West Attica, which surround the dense urban area of the Greek capital. It actually sprawls over the whole peninsula of Attica, which is the best part of the region of Attica, excluding the islands.\nSafety.\nAthens ranks in the lowest percentage for the risk on frequency and severity of terrorist attacks according to the EU Global Terrorism Database (EIU 2007\u20132016 calculations). The city also ranked 35th in Digital Security, 21st on Health Security, 29th on Infrastructure Security and 41st on Personal Security globally in a 2017 The Economist Intelligence Unit report. It also ranks as a very safe city (39th globally out of 162 cities overall) on the ranking of the safest and most dangerous countries. As November 2024 the crime index from Numbeo places Athens at 55.40 (moderate), while its safety index is at 44.60. According to a Mercer 2019 Quality of Living Survey, Athens ranks 89th on the Mercer Quality of Living Survey ranking.\nEconomy.\nAthens is the financial capital of Greece. According to data from 2014, Athens as a metropolitan economic area produced US$130\u00a0billion as GDP in PPP, which consists of nearly half of the production for the whole country. Athens was ranked 102nd in that year's list of global economic metropolises, while GDP per capita for the same year was 32,000 US dollars.\nAthens is one of the major economic centres in south-eastern Europe and is considered a regional economic power. The port of Piraeus, where big investments by COSCO have already been delivered during the recent decade, the completion of the new Cargo Centre in Thriasion, the expansion of the Athens Metro and the Athens Tram, as well as the Hellenikon metropolitan park redevelopment in Elliniko and other urban projects, are the economic landmarks of the upcoming years.\nProminent Greek companies such as Hellas Sat, Hellenic Aerospace Industry, Mytilineos Holdings, Titan Cement, Hellenic Petroleum, Papadopoulos E.J., Folli Follie, Jumbo S.A., OPAP, and Cosmote have their headquarters in the metropolitan area of Athens. Multinational companies such as Ericsson, Sony, Siemens, Motorola, Samsung, Microsoft, Teleperformance, Novartis, Mondelez and Coca-Cola also have their regional research and development headquarters in the city. The banking sector is represented by National Bank of Greece, Alpha Bank, Eurobank, and Piraeus Bank, while the Bank of Greece is also situated in the City Centre. The Athens Stock Exchange was severely hit by the Greek government-debt crisis and the decision of the government to proceed into capital controls during summer 2015. As a whole the economy of Athens and Greece was strongly affected, while data showed a change from long recession to growth of 1.4% from 2017 onwards.\nTourism is also a leading contributor to the economy of the city, as one of Europe's top destinations for city-break tourism, and also the gateway for excursions to both the islands and other parts of the mainland. Greece attracted 26.5\u00a0million visitors in 2015, 30.1\u00a0million visitors in 2017, and over 33\u00a0million in 2018, making Greece one of the most visited countries in Europe and the world, and contributing 18% to the country's GDP. Athens welcomed more than 5\u00a0million tourists in 2018, and 1.4\u00a0million were \"city-breakers\"; this was an increase by over a million city-breakers since 2013.\nTourism.\nAthens has been a destination for travellers since antiquity. Over the 2000s, the city's infrastructure and social amenities have improved, in part because of its successful bid to stage the 2004 Olympic Games. \nThe Greek Government, aided by the EU, has funded major infrastructure projects such as the state-of-the-art Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport, the expansion of the Athens Metro system, and the new Attiki Odos Motorway. \nIn recent years, Athens has become more dynamic with the addition of numerous new bars and caf\u00e9s and a growing presence of street art and graffiti, enhancing its urban edge and adding more touristic options alongside the city's archaeological sites and museums.\nTransport.\nAthens is the country's major transportation hub. The city has Greece's largest airport and its largest port; Piraeus, too, is the largest container transport port in the Mediterranean, and the largest passenger port in Europe.\nAthens is a major national hub for Intercity (Ktel) and international buses, as well as for domestic and international rail transport. Public transport is serviced by a variety of transportation means, making up the country's largest mass transit system. Transport for Athens operates a large bus and trolleybus fleet, the city's Metro, a Suburban Railway service and a tram network, connecting the southern suburbs to the city centre.\nBus transport.\nOSY () (Odikes Sygkoinonies S.A.), a subsidiary company of OASA (Athens urban transport organisation), is the main operator of buses and trolleybuses in Athens. As of 2017, its network consists of around 322 bus lines, spanning the Athens Metropolitan Area, and making up a fleet of 2,375 buses and trolleybuses. Of those 2,375, 619 buses run on compressed natural gas, making up the largest fleet of natural gas-powered buses in Europe, and 354 are electric-powered (trolleybuses). All of the 354 trolleybuses are equipped to run on diesel in case of power failure.\nInternational links are provided by a number of private companies. National and regional bus links are provided by KTEL from two InterCity Bus Terminals; Kifissos Bus Terminal A and Liosion Bus Terminal B, both located in the north-western part of the city. \"Kifissos\" provides connections towards Peloponnese, North Greece, West Greece and some Ionian Islands, whereas \"Liosion\" is used for most of Central Greece. Both of these terminals will be replaced by a new Intercity Bus Terminal under construction in Eleonas due to be completed by 2027.\nRailways.\nAthens is the hub of the country's national railway system (OSE), connecting the capital with major cities across Greece and abroad (Istanbul, Sofia, Belgrade and Bucharest).\nThe Athens Suburban Railway, referred to as the \"Proastiakos\", connects Athens International Airport to the city of Kiato, west of Athens, via Larissa station, the city's central rail station and the port of Piraeus. The length of Athens's commuter rail network extends to , and is expected to stretch to by 2010.\nThe Athens Metro is operated by STASY S.A. () (Statheres Sygkoinonies S.A.), a subsidiary company of OASA (Athens urban transport organisation), which provides public transport throughout the Athens Urban Area. While its main purpose is transport, it also houses Greek artifacts found during the construction of the system. The Athens Metro runs three metro lines, namely Line 1 (Green Line), Line 2 (Red Line) and Line 3 (Blue Line) lines, of which the first was constructed in 1869, and the other two largely during the 1990s, with the initial new sections opened in January 2000. Line 1 mostly runs at ground level and the other two (Line 2 & 3) routes run entirely underground. A fleet of 42 trains, using 252 carriages, operates on the network, with a daily occupancy of 1,353,000 passengers.\n\"Line 1\" (Green Line) serves 24 stations, and is the oldest line of the Athens metro network. It runs from Piraeus station to Kifissia station and covers a distance of . There are transfer connections with the Blue Line 3 at Monastiraki station and with the Red Line 2 at Omonia and Attiki stations. \"Line 2\" (Red Line) runs from Anthoupoli station to Elliniko station and covers a distance of . The line connects the western suburbs of Athens with the southeast suburbs, passing through the center of Athens. The Red Line has transfer connections with the Green Line 1 at Attiki and Omonia stations. There are also transfer connections with the Blue Line 3 at Syntagma station and with the tram at Syntagma, Syngrou Fix and Neos Kosmos stations. \"Line 3\" (Blue Line) runs from Dimotiko Theatro station, through the central Monastiraki and Syntagma stations to Doukissis Plakentias avenue in the northeastern suburb of Halandri. It then ascends to ground level and continues to Athens International Airport Eleftherios Venizelos using the suburban railway infrastructure, extending its total length to . The spring 2007 extension from Monastiraki westwards to Egaleo connected some of the main night life hubs of the city, namely those of Gazi (Kerameikos station) with Psirri (Monastiraki station) and the city centre (Syntagma station).The new stations Maniatika, Piraeus and Dimotiko Theatro, were completed on 10 October 2022, connecting the biggest port of Greece, the Port of Piraeus, with Athens International Airport, the biggest airport of Greece.\nThe Athens Tram is operated by STASY S.A. (Statheres Sygkoinonies S.A.), a subsidiary company of Transport for Athens (OASA). It has a fleet of 35 Sirio type vehicles and 25 Alstom Citadis type vehicles which serve 48 stations, employ 345 people with an average daily occupancy of 65,000 passengers. The tram network spans a total length of and covers ten Athenian suburbs. The network runs from Syntagma Square to the southwestern suburb of Palaio Faliro, where the line splits in two branches; the first runs along the Athens coastline toward the southern suburb of Voula, while the other heads toward Piraeus. The network covers the majority of the Athens coastline.\nAthens International Airport.\nAthens is served by the Athens International Airport (ATH), located near the town of Spata, in the eastern Messoghia plain, some east of center of Athens. The airport, awarded the \"European Airport of the Year 2004\" Award, is intended as an expandable hub for air travel in southeastern Europe and was constructed in 51 months, costing 2.2\u00a0billion euros. It employs a staff of 14,000.\nFerry.\nThe Port of Piraeus is the largest port in Greece and one of the largest in Europe. Rafina and Lavrio act as alternative ports of Athens, connects the city with numerous Greek islands of the Aegean Sea, Evia while also serving the cruise ships that arrive.\nMotorways.\nTwo main motorways of Greece begin in Athens, namely the A1/E75, heading north towards Greece's second largest city, Thessaloniki; and the border crossing of Evzones and the A8/E94 heading west, towards Greece's third largest city, Patras, which incorporated the GR-8A. Before their completion much of the road traffic used the GR-1 and the GR-8.\nAthens' Metropolitan Area is served by the Attiki Odos toll motorway network: its main section, the A6, extends from the western industrial suburb of Elefsina to Athens International Airport; while two beltways, namely the Aigaleo Beltway (A65) and the Hymettus Beltway (A62) serve parts of western and eastern Athens respectively. The span of the Attiki Odos in all its length is , making it the largest metropolitan motorway network in all of Greece.\nEducation.\nLocated on Panepistimiou Street, the old campus of the University of Athens, the National Library, and the Athens Academy form the \"Athens Trilogy\" built in the mid-19th century. The largest and oldest university in Athens is the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Most of the functions of NKUA along National Technical University of Athens have been transferred to a campus in the eastern suburb of Zografou. The National Technical University of Athens old campus is located on Patision Street.\nThe University of West Attica is the second largest university in Athens. The seat of the university is located in the western area of Athens, where the philosophers of Ancient Athens delivered lectures. All the activities of UNIWA are carried out in the modern infrastructure of the three University Campuses within the metropolitan region of Athens (Egaleo Park, Ancient Olive Groove and Athens), which offer modern teaching and research spaces, entertainment and support facilities for all students. Other universities that lie within Athens are the Athens University of Economics and Business, the Panteion University, the Agricultural University of Athens and the University of Piraeus.\nThere are overall ten state-supported Institutions of Higher (or Tertiary) education located in the Athens Urban Area, these are by chronological order: Athens School of Fine Arts (1837), National Technical University of Athens (1837), National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (1837), Agricultural University of Athens (1920), Athens University of Economics and Business (1920), Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences (1927), University of Piraeus (1938), Harokopio University of Athens (1990), School of Pedagogical and Technological Education (2002), University of West Attica (2018). There are also several other private \"colleges\", as they called formally in Greece, as the establishment of private universities is prohibited by the constitution. Many of them are accredited by a foreign state or university such as the American College of Greece and the Athens Campus of the University of Indianapolis.\nCulture.\nArchaeological hub and museums.\nThe city is a world centre of archaeological research. Alongside national academic institutions, such as the Athens University and the Archaeological Society, it is home to multiple archaeological museums, taking in the National Archaeological Museum, the Cycladic Museum, the Epigraphic Museum, the Byzantine & Christian Museum, as well as museums at the ancient Agora, Acropolis, Kerameikos, and the Kerameikos Archaeological Museum. The city is also the setting for the Demokritos laboratory for Archaeometry, alongside regional and national archaeological authorities forming part of the Greek Department of Culture.\nAthens hosts 17 Foreign Archaeological Institutes which promote and facilitate research by scholars from their home countries. As a result, Athens has more than a dozen archaeological libraries and three specialized archaeological laboratories, and is the venue of several hundred specialized lectures, conferences and seminars, as well as dozens of archaeological exhibitions each year. At any given time, hundreds of international scholars and researchers in all disciplines of archaeology are to be found in the city.\nAthens' most important museums include:\nArchitecture.\nAthens incorporates architectural styles ranging from Greco-Roman and Neoclassical to Modern. They are often to be found in the same areas, as Athens is not marked by a uniformity of architectural style. A visitor will quickly notice the absence of tall buildings: Athens has very strict height restriction laws in order to ensure the Acropolis Hill is visible throughout the city. Despite the variety in styles, there is evidence of continuity in elements of the architectural environment throughout the city's history.\nFor the greatest part of the 19th century Neoclassicism dominated Athens, as well as some deviations from it such as Eclecticism, especially in the early 20th century. Thus, the Old Royal Palace was the first important public building to be built, between 1836 and 1843. Later in the mid and late 19th century, Theophil Freiherr von Hansen and Ernst Ziller took part in the construction of many neoclassical buildings such as the Athens Academy and the Zappeion Hall. Ziller also designed many private mansions in the centre of Athens which gradually became public, usually through donations, such as Schliemann's Iliou Melathron.\nBeginning in the 1920s, modern architecture including Bauhaus and Art Deco began to exert an influence on almost all Greek architects, and buildings both public and private were constructed in accordance with these styles. Localities with a great number of such buildings include Kolonaki, and some areas of the centre of the city; neighbourhoods developed in this period include Kypseli.\nIn the 1950s and 1960s during the extension and development of Athens, other modern movements such as the International style played an important role. The centre of Athens was largely rebuilt, leading to the demolition of a number of neoclassical buildings. The architects of this era employed materials such as glass, marble and aluminium, and many blended modern and classical elements. After World War II, internationally known architects to have designed and built in the city included Walter Gropius, with his design for the US Embassy, and, among others, Eero Saarinen, in his postwar design for the east terminal of the Ellinikon Airport.\nUrban sculpture.\nAcross the city numerous statues or busts are to be found. Apart from the neoclassicals by Leonidas Drosis at the Academy of Athens (Plato, Socrates, Apollo and Athena), others in notable categories include the statue of Theseus by Georgios Fytalis at Thiseion; depictions of philhellenes such as Lord Byron, George Canning, and William Gladstone; the equestrian statue of Theodoros Kolokotronis by Lazaros Sochos in front of the Old Parliament; statues of Ioannis Kapodistrias, Rigas Feraios and Adamantios Korais at the university; of Evangelos Zappas and Konstantinos Zappas at the Zappeion; Ioannis Varvakis at the National Garden; the\" Woodbreaker\" by Dimitrios Filippotis; the equestrian statue of Alexandros Papagos in the Papagou district; and various busts of fighters of Greek independence at the Pedion tou Areos. A significant landmark is also the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Syntagma.\nEntertainment and performing arts.\nAthens is home to 148 theatrical stages, more than any other city in the world, including the ancient Odeon of Herodes Atticus, home to the Athens Festival, which runs from May to October each year. In addition to a large number of multiplexes, Athens plays host to open air garden cinemas. The city also supports music venues, including the Athens Concert Hall (\"Megaro Moussikis\"), which attracts world class artists. The Athens Planetarium, located in Andrea Syngrou Avenue, in Palaio Faliro is one of the largest and best equipped digital planetaria in the world. The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, inaugurated in 2016, will house the National Library of Greece and the Greek National Opera. In 2018 Athens was designated as the World Book Capital by UNESCO.\nRestaurants, tavernas and bars can be found in the entertainment hubs in Plaka and the Trigono areas of the historic centre, the inner suburbs of Gazi and Psyrri are especially busy with nightclubs and bars, while Kolonaki, Exarchia, Kypseli, Metaxourgeio, Koukaki and Pangrati offer more of a cafe and restaurant scene. The coastal suburbs of Microlimano, Alimos and Glyfada include many tavernas, beach bars and busy summer clubs.\nThe most successful songs during the period 1870\u20131930 were the Athenian serenades (\u0391\u03b8\u03b7\u03bd\u03b1\u03ca\u03ba\u03ad\u03c2 \u03ba\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03ac\u03b4\u03b5\u03c2), based on the Heptanesean kant\u00e1dhes (\u03ba\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03ac\u03b4\u03b5\u03c2 'serenades'; sing.: \u03ba\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03ac\u03b4\u03b1) and the songs performed on stage (\u03b5\u03c0\u03b9\u03b8\u03b5\u03c9\u03c1\u03b7\u03c3\u03b9\u03b1\u03ba\u03ac \u03c4\u03c1\u03b1\u03b3\u03bf\u03cd\u03b4\u03b9\u03b1 'theatrical revue songs') in revues, musical comedies, operettas and nocturnes that were dominating Athens' theatre scene.\nIn 1922, following the Greek-Turkish war, Greek genocide and later population exchange suffered by the Greek population of Asia Minor, many ethnic Greeks fled to Athens. They settled in poor neighbourhoods and brought with them Rebetiko music, making it also popular in Greece, and which later became the base for the La\u00efko music. Other forms of song popular today in Greece are elafrolaika, entechno, dimotika, and skyladika. Greece's most notable, and internationally famous, composers of Greek song, mainly of the entechno form, are Manos Hadjidakis and Mikis Theodorakis. Both composers have achieved fame abroad for their composition of film scores.\nThe renowned American-born Greek soprano Maria Callas spent her teenage years in Athens, where she settled in 1937. Her professional opera career started in 1940 in Athens, with the Greek National Opera. In 2018, the city's municipal Olympia Theatre was renamed to \"Olympia City Music Theatre 'Maria Callas'\" and in 2023, the Municipality inaugurated the Maria Callas Museum, housing it in a neoclassical building on 44 Mitropoleos street.\nSports.\nAthens has a long tradition in sports and sporting events, serving as home to the most important clubs in Greek sport and housing a large number of sports facilities. The city has also been host to sports events of international importance.\nAthens has hosted the Summer Olympic Games twice, in 1896 and 2004. The 2004 Summer Olympics required the development of the Athens Olympic Stadium, which has since gained a reputation as one of the most beautiful stadiums in the world, and one of its most interesting modern monuments. The biggest stadium in the country, it hosted two finals of the UEFA Champions League, in 1994 and 2007. Other major stadiums are the Karaiskakis Stadium located in the nearby city of Piraeus, a sports and entertainment complex, host of the 1971 UEFA Cup Winners' Cup Final, and Agia Sophia Stadium located in Nea Filadelfeia, host of the 2024 UEFA Europa Conference League final.\nThe EuroLeague final has been hosted twice in 1985 and in 1993 at the Peace and Friendship Stadium, most known as SEF, a large indoor arena, and the third time in 2007 at the Olympic Indoor Hall. Events in other sports such as athletics, volleyball, water polo etc., have been hosted in the capital's venues.\nGreater Athens is home to three widely supported and successful multi-sport clubs, Panathinaikos, originated in the city of Athens, Olympiacos, originated in the port city of Piraeus and AEK, originated in the suburban town of Nea Filadelfeia. In football, Olympiacos is the dominant force at the national level and the only Greek club to have won a European competition, the 2023\u201324 UEFA Europa Conference League, Panathinaikos made it to the 1971 European Cup Final, while AEK Athens is the other member of the big three. These clubs also have successful basketball teams; Panathinaikos and Olympiacos are considered among the top powers in Europe, having won the EuroLeague seven and three times respectively, whilst AEK Athens was the first Greek team to win a European trophy in any team sport.\nOther notable clubs within the region are Athinaikos, Panionios, Atromitos, Apollon, Panellinios, Egaleo F.C., Ethnikos Piraeus, Maroussi BC and Peristeri B.C. Athenian clubs have also had domestic and international success in other sports.\nThe Athens area encompasses a variety of terrain, notably hills and mountains rising around the city, and the capital is the only major city in Europe to be bisected by a mountain range. Four mountain ranges extend into city boundaries and thousands of kilometres of trails criss-cross the city and neighbouring areas, providing exercise and wilderness access on foot and bike.\nBeyond Athens and across the prefecture of Attica, outdoor activities include skiing, rock climbing, hang gliding and windsurfing. Numerous outdoor clubs serve these sports, including the Athens Chapter of the Sierra Club, which leads over 4,000 outings annually in the area.\nAthens was awarded the 2004 Summer Olympics on 5 September 1997 in Lausanne, Switzerland, after having lost a previous bid to host the 1996 Summer Olympics, to Atlanta, United States. It was to be the second time Athens would host the games, following the inaugural event of 1896. After an unsuccessful bid in 1990, the 1997 bid was radically improved, including an appeal to Greece's Olympic history. In the last round of voting, Athens defeated Rome with 66 votes to 41. Prior to this round, the cities of Buenos Aires, Stockholm and Cape Town had been eliminated from competition, having received fewer votes. Although the heavy cost was criticized, estimated at $1.5\u00a0billion, Athens was transformed into a more functional city that enjoys modern technology both in transportation and in modern urban development. The games welcomed over 10,000 athletes from all 202 countries.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["1216"], "permutation_1": ["1216"], "permutation_2": ["1216"], "permutation_3": ["1216"]}
{"id": "nq_-4589258112107821910", "docs_added": {"25971859": "Visa requirements for British citizens\nEntry restrictions by the authorities of other states placed on citizens of the United Kingdom\nVisa requirements for British citizens are administrative entry restrictions by the authorities of other states placed on citizens of the United Kingdom.\nAs of 2025, British citizens have visa-free or visa on arrival access to 186 countries and territories, ranking the British passport 6th in the world according to the Henley Passport Index.\nAdditionally, the World Tourism Organisation also published a report on 15 January 2016 ranking the passport 1st in the world (tied with Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and Singapore) in terms of travel freedom, with the mobility index of 160 (out of 215 with no visa weighted by: 1, visa on arrival weighted by 0.7, e-Visa weighted by 0.5 and traditional visa weighted by 0).\nThe United Kingdom left the European Union on 31 January 2020 and thus lost the freedom of movement to EU countries on 31 December 2020. However, UK citizens are still eligible for visa-free access for short-term visits to the Schengen Area.\nVisa requirements for other classes of British nationals such as British Nationals (Overseas), British Overseas Citizens, British Overseas Territories Citizens, British Protected Persons or British Subjects are different.\nHistory.\nVisa requirements for British citizens were lifted by many European nations in the few years after World War II. The first changes occurred in 1947. These were removed by France on 1 January 1947.\nThis was then quickly followed by Belgium on 15 February 1947, Luxembourg 15 February 1947, Norway on 1 March 1947, Denmark on 22 March 1947, Sweden on 1 April 1947, Netherlands on 15 April 1947, Switzerland on 24 June 1947 Liechtenstein on 24 June 1947 and Iceland on 1 July 1947.\nThe requirement was lifted by Italy on 1 January 1948, Monaco (8 November 1948), Austria (15 May 1955), Paraguay (27 November 1966), United States (1 July 1988), Poland (1 July 1992), Bulgaria (March 1997), Romania (1 January 2001), Serbia and Montenegro (31 May 2003), Ukraine (1 May 2005), Georgia (1 June 2006), Moldova (1 January 2007), Kyrgyzstan (27 July 2012), Armenia (10 January 2013), Kazakhstan (15 July 2014), Indonesia (13 June 2015), Vietnam (1 July 2015) Belarus (12 February 2017), Cape Verde (1 January 2019), Uzbekistan (1 February 2019), Turkey (2 March 2020) and Oman (December 2020).\nElectronic visas for British citizens were introduced: India (15 August 2015), Djibouti (18 February 2018), Malawi (October 2019) and Mongolia (November 2021). In April 2021, India announced that it would stop issuing Electronic visas for British citizens from August 2021, however this was reinstated in December 2022.\nHonduras cancelled a visa-free regime for British citizens as a reciprocal measure in August 2024. Similarly, Namibia will introduce visas for British citizens for reciprocity reasons, starting April 2025.\nVisa requirements.\n<templatestyles src=\"template:sticky header/styles.css\"/>\nCommon Travel Area.\nThe United Kingdom, together with its Crown Dependencies of Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man and the Republic of Ireland make up a Common Travel Area where:\nHowever, there are occasionally checks on coaches and trains moving between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. British citizens living in Ireland have many of the same rights and entitlements as an Irish citizen. Citizens of third countries must have passports and, if required, visas to travel between the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland.\nBritish visas don't enable travel to Ireland for people without agreement with Ireland, and vice versa. Passengers travelling between the Common Travel Area and the Schengen Area are subject to systematic passport/identity checks.\nBritish Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories.\n<templatestyles src=\"template:sticky header/styles.css\"/>\nTerritories and disputed areas.\n<templatestyles src=\"template:row hover highlight/styles.css\"/><templatestyles src=\"template:sticky header/styles.css\"/>\nNon-ordinary passports.\nHolders of exclusive categories of British passports have this visa-free access, to: China , Kuwait , Mongolia , Qatar and the United Arab Emirates . Holders of diplomatic or service passports of any country have visa-free access to Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe. Holders of British official and diplomatic passports require a visa for South Africa.\nTravel consequences of Brexit.\nOn 23 June 2016, a majority of the British electorate who voted, did so to leave the European Union in a nationwide referendum.\nIn March 2017, the UK sent notification of their intention to leave the EU to the European Council through Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. British citizens ceased to be EU citizens upon the UK's departure from the EU thus forfeiting the rights of citizens.\nThe UK withdrew from the EU on 31 January 2020, but British citizens retained the right of freedom of movement until the transitional period ended on 31 December 2020.\nFrom 1 January 2021, when EU law ceased to apply to the United Kingdom, British citizens are afforded visa-free visits to the Schengen Area, for 90 days in any 180-day period. British citizens also enjoy visa-free entry to Bulgaria and Romania.\nFrom sometime in 2025, most visa-exempt travellers seeking entry to the EU and EEA must apply and pay for travel authorisation through ETIAS. This was confirmed on 12 September 2018 and has no exception, yet agreed, for British citizens. This excludes British-Irish travel which is governed by laws that pre-date the European Community.\nWhen in a non-EU country where there is no British embassy, British citizens no longer have the right to consular protection from the embassy of any other EU country present in that country.\nConsular protection of British citizens abroad.\nWhen in a country where there is no British embassy, British citizens may get help from the embassy of any other commonwealth country present in that country. There are also informal arrangements with some other countries, including New Zealand and Australia, to help British nationals in some countries.\nSee also List of diplomatic missions of the United Kingdom.\nReferences and notes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "23287": "Passport\nDocuments for international travel issued by national governments\nA passport is an official travel document issued by a government that certifies a person's identity and nationality for international travel. A passport allows its bearer to enter and temporarily reside in a foreign country, access local aid and protection, and obtain consular assistance from their government. In addition to facilitating travel, passports are a key mechanism for border security and regulating migration; they may also serve as official identification for various domestic purposes. \nState-issued travel documents have existed in some form since antiquity; the modern passport was universally adopted and standardized in 1920. The passport takes the form of a booklet bearing the official name and emblem of the issuing government and containing the biographical information of the individual, including their full name, photograph, place and date of birth, and signature. A passport does not create any rights in the country being visited nor impose any obligation on the issuing country; rather, it provides certification to foreign government officials of the holder's identity and right to travel, with pages available for inserting entry and exit stamps and travel visas\u2014endorsements that allow the individual to enter and temporarily reside in a country for a period of time and under certain conditions.\nSince 1998, many countries have transitioned to biometric passports, which contain an embedded microchip to facilitate authentication and safeguard against counterfeiting. As of July 2024, over 150 jurisdictions issue such \"e-passports\"; previously issued non-biometric passports usually remain valid until expiration.\nEligibility for a passport varies by jurisdiction, although citizenship is a common prerequisite. However, a passport may be issued to individuals who do not have the status or full rights of citizenship, such as American or British nationals. Likewise, certain classes of individuals, such as diplomats and government officials, may be issued special passports that provide certain rights and privileges, such as immunity from arrest or prosecution. \nWhile passports are typically issued by national governments, certain subnational entities are authorised to issue passports to citizens residing within their borders. Additionally, other types of official documents may serve a similar role to passports but are subject to different eligibility requirements, purposes, or restrictions. \n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nHistory.\nEtymology and origin.\nEtymological sources show that the term \"passport\" may derive from a document required by some medieval Italian states in order for an individual to pass through the physical harbor (Italian \"passa porto\", \"to pass the harbor\") or gate (Italian \"passa porte\", \"to pass the gates\") of a walled city or jurisdiction. Such documents were issued by local authorities to foreign travellers\u2014as opposed to local citizens, as is the modern practice\u2014and generally contained a list of towns and cities the document holder was permitted to enter or pass through. On the whole, documents were not required for travel to seaports, which were considered open trading points, but documents were required to pass harbor controls and travel inland from seaports. The transition from private to state control over movement was an essential aspect of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Communal obligations to provide poor relief were an important source of the desire for controls on movement.:10\nAntecedents.\nOne of the earliest known references to paperwork that served an analogous role to a passport is found in the Hebrew Bible. Nehemiah 2:7\u20139, dating from approximately 450\u00a0BC, states that Nehemiah, an official serving King Artaxerxes I of Persia, asked permission to travel to Judea; the king granted leave and gave him a letter \"to the governors beyond the river\" requesting safe passage for him as he traveled through their lands.\nThe ancient Indian political text Arthashastra (third century BCE) mentions passes issued at the rate of one \"masha\" per pass to enter and exit the country, and describes the duties of the (lit.\u2009'Superintendent of Seals') who must issue sealed passes before a person could enter or leave the countryside.\nPassports were an important part of the Chinese bureaucracy as early as the Western Han (202 BC \u2013 9 AD), if not in the Qin dynasty. They required such details as age, height, and bodily features. These passports () determined a person's ability to move throughout imperial counties and through points of control. Even children needed passports, but those of one year or less who were in their mother's care may not have needed them.\nIn the medieval Islamic Caliphate, a form of passport was the \"bara'a\", a receipt for taxes paid. Only people who paid their \"zakah\" (for Muslims) or \"jizya\" (for dhimmis) taxes were permitted to travel to different regions of the Caliphate; thus, the \"bara'a\" receipt was a \"basic passport\".\nIn the 12th century, the Republic of Genoa issued a document called \"Bulletta\", which was issued to the nationals of the Republic who were traveling to the ports of the emporiums and the ports of the Genoese colonies overseas, as well as to foreigners who entered them.\nKing Henry V of England is credited with having invented what some consider the first British passport in the modern sense, as a means of helping his subjects prove who they were in foreign lands. The earliest reference to these documents is found in a 1414 Act of Parliament. In 1540, granting travel documents in England became a role of the Privy Council of England, and it was around this time that the term \"passport\" was used. In 1794, issuing British passports became the job of the Office of the Secretary of State. In the Holy Roman Empire, the 1548 Imperial Diet of Augsburg required the public to hold imperial documents for travel, at the risk of permanent exile.\nIn 1791, Louis XVI masqueraded as a valet during his Flight to Varennes as passports for the nobility typically included a number of persons listed by their function but without further description.:31\u201332\nA Pass-Card Treaty of October 18, 1850 among German states standardized information including issuing state, name, status, residence, and description of bearer. Tramping journeymen and jobseekers of all kinds were not to receive pass-cards.:92\u201393\nModern development.\nA rapid expansion of railway infrastructure and wealth in Europe beginning in the mid-nineteenth century led to large increases in the volume of international travel and a consequent unique dilution of the passport system for approximately thirty years prior to World War I. The speed of trains, as well as the number of passengers that crossed multiple borders, made enforcement of passport laws difficult. The general reaction was the relaxation of passport requirements. In the later part of the nineteenth century and up to World War I, passports were not required, on the whole, for travel within Europe, and crossing a border was a relatively straightforward procedure. Consequently, comparatively few people held passports.\nDuring World War I, European governments introduced border passport requirements for security reasons, and to control the emigration of people with useful skills. These controls remained in place after the war, becoming a standard, though controversial, procedure. British tourists of the 1920s complained, especially about attached photographs and physical descriptions, which they considered led to a \"nasty dehumanisation\". The British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act was passed in 1914, clearly defining the notions of citizenship and creating a booklet form of the passport.\nIn 1920, the League of Nations held a conference on passports, the Paris Conference on Passports & Customs Formalities and Through Tickets. Passport guidelines and a general booklet design resulted from the conference, which was followed up by conferences in 1926 and 1927. The League of Nations issued Nansen passports to stateless refugees from 1922 to 1938.\nWhile the United Nations held a travel conference in 1963, no passport guidelines resulted from it. Passport standardization came about in 1980, under the auspices of the ICAO. ICAO standards include those for machine-readable passports. Such passports have an area where some of the information otherwise written in textual form is written as strings of alphanumeric characters, printed in a manner suitable for optical character recognition. This enables border controllers and other law enforcement agents to process these passports more quickly, without having to input the information manually into a computer. ICAO publishes Doc 9303 \"Machine Readable Travel Documents\", the technical standard for machine-readable passports. A more recent standard is for biometric passports. These contain biometrics to authenticate the identity of travellers. The passport's critical information is stored on a tiny RFID computer chip, much like information stored on smartcards. Like some smartcards, the passport booklet design calls for an embedded contactless chip that is able to hold digital signature data to ensure the integrity of the passport and the biometric data.\nHistorically, legal authority to issue passports is founded on the exercise of each country's executive discretion. Certain legal tenets follow, namely: first, passports are issued in the name of the state; second, no person has a legal right to be issued a passport; third, each country's government, in exercising its executive discretion, has complete and unfettered discretion to refuse to issue or to revoke a passport; and fourth, that the latter discretion is not subject to judicial review. However, legal scholars including A.J. Arkelian have argued that evolutions in both the constitutional law of democratic countries and the international law applicable to all countries now render those historical tenets both obsolete and unlawful.\nTypes.\nGovernments around the world issue a variety of passports for different purposes. The most common variety are ordinary passports issued to individual citizens and other nationals. In the past, certain countries issued collective passports or family passports. Today, passports are typically issued to individual travellers rather than groups. Aside from ordinary passports issued to citizens by national governments, there are a variety of other types of passports by governments in specific circumstances.\nWhile individuals are typically only permitted to hold one passport, certain governments permit citizens to hold more than one ordinary passport. Individuals may also simultaneously hold an ordinary passport and an official or diplomatic passport.\nEmergency passport.\nEmergency passports (also called temporary passports) are issued to persons with urgent need to travel who do not have passports, e.g. someone abroad whose passport has been lost or stolen who needs to travel home within a few days, someone whose passport expires abroad, or someone who urgently needs to travel abroad who does not have a passport with sufficient validity. These passports are intended for very short durations, e.g. to allow immediate one-way travel back to the home country. Laissez-passer are also used for this purpose. Uniquely, the United Kingdom issues emergency passports to citizens of certain Commonwealth states who lose their passports in non-Commonwealth countries where their home state does not maintain a diplomatic or consular mission.\nDiplomatic and official passports.\nPursuant to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, and the immunity afforded to officials of a foreign state under customary international law, diplomats and other individuals travelling on government business are entitled to reduced scrutiny at border checkpoints when travelling overseas. Consequently, such individuals are typically issued special passports indicating their status. These passports come in three distinct varieties:\n Typically issued to accredited diplomats, senior consular staff, heads of state or government, and to senior foreign ministry employees. Individuals holding diplomatic passports are usually entitled to certain degrees of immunity from border control inspections, depending on their home countries and their countries of entry.\n Issued to senior government officials travelling on state business who are not eligible for diplomatic passports. Holders of official passports are typically entitled to similar immunity from border control inspections. In the United States of America, official and service passports are two distinct categories of passport, with official passports being issued to senior government officials while service passports are issued to government contractors.\n Issued to Chinese citizens holding senior positions in state-owned companies. While public affairs passports do not usually entitle their bearers to exemption from searches at border checkpoints, they are subject to more liberal visa policies in several countries primarily in Africa and Asia (see: Visa requirements for Chinese citizens).\nPassports without right of abode.\nUnlike most countries, the United Kingdom and the Republic of China issue various categories of passports to individuals without the right of abode in their territory. In the United Kingdom's case, these passports are typically issued to individuals connected with a former British colony while, in the ROC's case, these passports are the result of the legal distinction between ROC nationals with and without residence in the area it administers. In both cases, holders of such passports are able to obtain residence on an equal footing with foreigners by applying for indefinite leave to remain (UK) or a resident certificate (ROC).\nRepublic of China (Taiwan).\nA Republic of China citizen who does not have household registration () in the area administered by the ROC is classified as a National Without Household Registration (NWOHR; ) and is subject to immigration controls when clearing ROC border controls, does not have automatic residence rights, and cannot vote in Taiwanese elections. However, they are exempt from conscription. Most individuals with this status are children born overseas to ROC citizens who do hold household registration. Additionally, because the ROC observes the principle of \"jus sanguinis\", members of the overseas Chinese community are also regarded as citizens. During the Cold War, both the ROC and PRC governments actively sought the support of overseas Chinese communities in their attempts to secure the position as the legitimate sole government of China. The ROC also encouraged overseas Chinese businessmen to settle in Taiwan to facilitate economic development and regulations concerning evidence of ROC nationality by descent were particularly lax during the period, allowing many overseas Chinese the right to settle in Taiwan. About 60,000 NWOHRs currently hold Taiwanese passports with this status.\nUnited Kingdom.\nThe United Kingdom issues several similar but distinct passports which correspond to the country's several categories of nationality. Full British citizens are issued a standard British passport. British citizens resident in the Crown Dependencies may hold variants of the British passport which confirm their Isle of Man, Jersey, or Guernsey identity. Many of the other categories of nationality do not grant bearers right of abode in the United Kingdom itself. \nBritish National (Overseas) passports are issued to individuals connected to Hong Kong prior to its return to China. British Overseas Citizen passports are primarily issued to individuals who did not acquire the citizenship of the colony they were connected to when it obtained independence (or their stateless descendants). British Overseas Citizen passports are also issued to certain categories of Malaysian nationals in Penang and Malacca, and individuals connected to Cyprus as a result of the legislation granting independence to those former British colonies. British Protected Person passports are issued to otherwise stateless people connected to a former British protectorate. British subject passports are issued to otherwise stateless individuals connected to British India or to certain categories of Irish citizens (though, in the latter case, they do convey right of abode). \nAdditionally, individuals connected to a British overseas territory are accorded British Overseas Territories citizenship and may hold passports issued by the governments of their respective territory. All overseas territory citizens are also now eligible for full British citizenship. Each territory maintains its own criteria for determining whom it grants right of abode. Consequently, individuals holding BOTC passports are not necessarily entitled to enter or reside in the territory that issued their passport. Most countries distinguish between BOTC and other classes of British nationality for border control purposes. For instance, only Bermudian passport holders with an endorsement stating that they possess right of abode or belonger status in Bermuda are entitled to enter America without an electronic travel authorisation.\nBorder control policies in many jurisdictions distinguish between holders of passports with and without right of abode, including NWOHRs and holders of the various British passports that do not confer right of abode upon the bearer. Certain jurisdictions may additionally distinguish between holders of such British passports with and without indefinite leave to remain in the United Kingdom. NWOHRs do not, for instance, have access to the Visa Waiver Program, or to visa free access to the Schengen Area or Japan. Other countries, such as India which allows all Chinese nationals to apply for eVisas, do not make such a distinction. Notably, while Singapore does permit visa free entry to all categories of British passport holders, it reduces length of stay for British nationals without right of abode in the United Kingdom, but does not distinguish between ROC passport holders with and without household registration.\nUntil 31 January 2021, holders of British National (Overseas) passports were able to use their UK passports for immigration clearance in Hong Kong and to seek consular protection from overseas Chinese diplomatic missions. This was a unique arrangement as it involved a passport issued by one state conferring right of abode (or, more precisely right to land) in and consular protection from another state. Since that date, the Chinese and Hong Kong governments have prohibited the use of BN(O) passports as travel documents or proof of identity and it; much like British Overseas Citizen, British Protected Person, or ROC NWOHR passports; is not associated with right of abode in any territory. BN(O)s who do not possess Chinese (or any other) nationality are required to use a Document of Identity for Visa Purposes for travel. This restriction disproportionally affects ease of travel for permanent residents of Indian, Pakistani, and Nepali ethnicity, who were not granted Chinese nationality in 1997. As an additional consequence, Hongkongers seeking early pre-retirement withdrawals from the Mandatory Provident Fund pension scheme may not use BN(O) passports for identity verification.\nLatvia and Estonia.\nSimilarly, non-citizens in Latvia and in Estonia are individuals, primarily of Russian or Ukrainian ethnicity, who are not citizens of Latvia or Estonia, but who have settled during the Soviet occupation, and thus have the right to a special non-citizen passport issued by the government as well as some other specific rights. Approximately two thirds of them are ethnic Russians, followed by ethnic Belarusians, ethnic Ukrainians, ethnic Poles and ethnic Lithuanians. According to the UN Special Rapporteur, the citizenship and naturalization laws in Latvia \"are seen by the Russian community as discriminatory practices\". Per Russian visa policy, holders of the Estonian alien's passport or the Latvian non-citizen passport are entitled to visa free entry to Russia, in contrast to Estonian and Latvian citizens who must obtain an electronic visa.\nRegional and subnational passports.\nChina.\nThe People's Republic of China (PRC) authorises its Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau to issue passports to their permanent residents with Chinese nationality under the \"one country, two systems\" arrangement. Visa policies imposed by foreign authorities on Hong Kong and Macau permanent residents holding such passports are different from those holding ordinary passports of the People's Republic of China. A Hong Kong Special Administrative Region passport (HKSAR passport) and Macau Special Administrative Region passport (MSAR passport) gain visa-free access to many more countries than ordinary PRC passports.\nOn 1 July 2011, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China launched a trial issuance of e-passports for individuals conducting public affairs work overseas on behalf of the Chinese government. The face, fingerprints, and other biometric features of the passport holder is digitized and stored in pre-installed contactless smart chip, along with \"the passport owner's name, sex and personal photo as well as the passport's term of validity and [the] digital certificate of the chip\". Ordinary biometric passports were introduced by the Ministry of Public Security on 15 May 2012. As of January 2015, all new passports issued by China are biometric e-passports, and non-biometric passports are no longer issued.\nIn 2012, over 38 million Chinese citizens held ordinary passports, comprising only 2.86 percent of the total population at the time. In 2014, China issued 16 million passports, ranking first in the world, surpassing the United States (14 million) and India (10 million). The number of ordinary passports in circulation rose to 120 million by October 2016, which was approximately 8.7 percent of the population. As of April 2017 to date, China had issued over 100 million biometric ordinary passports.\nKingdom of Denmark.\nThe three constituent countries of the Danish Realm have a common nationality. Denmark proper is a member of the European Union, but Greenland and Faroe Islands are not. Danish citizens residing in Greenland or Faroe Islands can choose between holding a Danish EU passport and a Greenlandic or Faroese non-EU Danish passport.\nAs of 21 September 2022, Danish citizens had visa-free or visa on arrival access to 188 countries and territories, thus ranking the Danish passport fifth in the world (tied with the passports of Austria, the Netherlands, and Sweden) according to the Henley Passport Index. According to the World Tourism Organization 2016 report, the Danish passport is first in the world (tied with Finland, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Singapore, and the United Kingdom) in terms of travel freedom, with the mobility index of 160 (out of 215 with no visa weighted by 1, visa on arrival weighted by 0.7, eVisa by 0.5 and traditional visa weighted by 0).\nSerbian Coordination Directorate Passports in Kosovo.\nUnder Serbian law, people born or otherwise legally settled in Kosovo are considered Serbian nationals and as such they are entitled to a Serbian passport. However, these passports are not issued directly by the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs but by the Serbian Coordination Directorate for Kosovo and Metohija instead. These particular passports do not allow the holder to enter the Schengen Area without a visa.\nAs of August 2023, Serbian citizens had visa-free or visa on arrival access to 138 countries and territories, ranking the Serbian passport 38th overall in terms of travel freedom according to the Henley Passport Index. The Serbian passport is one of the 5 passports with the most improved rating globally since 2006, in terms of the number of countries that its holders may visit without a visa.\nAmerican Samoa.\nAlthough all U.S. citizens are also U.S. nationals, the reverse is not true. As specified in \u00a0\u00a7\u00a01408, a person whose only connection to the United States is through birth in an outlying possession (which is defined in \u00a0\u00a7\u00a01101 as American Samoa and Swains Island, the latter of which is administered as part of American Samoa), or through descent from a person so born, acquires U.S. nationality but not the citizenship. This was formerly the case in a few other current or former U.S. overseas possessions, i.e. the Panama Canal Zone and Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. The passport issued to non-citizen nationals contains the endorsement code 9 which states: \"THE BEARER IS A UNITED STATES NATIONAL AND NOT A UNITED STATES CITIZEN.\" on the annotations page. Non-citizen nationals may reside and work in the United States without restrictions, and may apply for citizenship under the same rules as resident aliens. Like resident aliens, they are not presently allowed by any U.S. state to vote in federal or state elections.\nPassports issued by entities without sovereign territory.\nSeveral entities without a sovereign territory issue documents described as passports, most notably Iroquois League, the Aboriginal Provisional Government in Australia and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Such documents are not necessarily accepted for entry into a country.\nDetails and specifications.\nCriteria for issuance.\nEach country sets its own conditions for the issue of passports. Under the law of most countries, passports are government property, and may be limited or revoked at any time, usually on specified grounds, and possibly subject to judicial review. In many countries, surrender of one's passport is a condition of granting bail in lieu of imprisonment for a pending criminal trial due to the risk of the person leaving the country. When passport holders apply for a new passport (commonly, due to expiration of the previous passport, insufficient validity for entry to some countries or lack of blank pages), they may be required to surrender the old passport for invalidation. In some circumstances an expired passport is not required to be surrendered or invalidated (for example, if it contains an unexpired visa).\nRequirements for passport applicants vary significantly from country to country, with some states imposing stricter measures than others. For example, Pakistan requires applicants to be interviewed before a Pakistani passport will be granted. When applying for a passport or a national ID card, all Pakistanis are required to sign an oath declaring Mirza Ghulam Ahmad to be an impostor prophet and all Ahmadis to be non-Muslims. In contrast, individuals holding British National (Overseas) status are legally entitled to hold a passport in that capacity.\nCountries with conscription or national service requirements may impose restrictions on passport applicants who have not yet completed their military obligations. For example, in Finland, male citizens aged 18\u201330 years must prove that they have completed, or are exempt from, their obligatory military service to be granted an unrestricted passport; otherwise a passport is issued valid only until the end of their 28th year, to ensure that they return to carry out military service. Other countries with obligatory military service, such as South Korea and Syria, have similar requirements, e.g. South Korean passport and Syrian passport.\nValidity.\nPassports have a limited validity, usually between 5 and 10 years. Many countries require passports to be valid for a minimum of six months beyond the planned date of departure, as well as having at least two to four blank pages. It is recommended that a passport be valid for at least six months from the departure date as many airlines deny boarding to passengers whose passport has a shorter expiry date, even if the destination country does not have such a requirement for incoming visitors.\nThere is an increasing trend for adult passports to be valid for ten years, such as a United Kingdom passport, United States Passport, New Zealand Passport (after 30 November 2015) or Australian passport.\nSome countries issue passports that valid for longer than 10 years, which ICAO does not recommend due to the security concerns and even some countries including all member states of the European Union do not accept passports older than 10 years.\nCover designs.\nPassport booklets from almost all countries around the world display the national coat of arms of the issuing country on the front cover. The United Nations keeps a record of national coats of arms, but displaying a coat of arms is not an internationally recognised requirement for a passport.\nThere are several groups of countries that have, by mutual agreement, adopted common designs for their passports:\nRequest page.\nPassports sometimes contain a message, usually near the front, requesting that the passport's bearer be allowed to pass freely, and further requesting that, in the event of need, the bearer be granted assistance. The message is sometimes made in the name of the government or the head of state, and may be written in more than one language, depending on the language policies of the issuing authority.\nLanguages.\nIn 1920, an international conference on passports and through tickets held by the League of Nations recommended that passports be issued in the French language, historically the language of diplomacy, and one other language. Currently, the ICAO recommends that passports be issued in English, French, and Spanish; or in the national language of the issuing country and in either English, French, or Spanish. Many European countries use their national language, along with English and French.\nSome additional language combinations are:\nLimitations on use.\nA passport is merely an identity document that is widely recognised for international travel purposes, and the possession of a passport does not in itself entitle a traveller to enter any country other than the country that issued it, and sometimes not even then, as with holders of the British Overseas citizen passport. Many countries normally require visitors to obtain a visa. Each country has different requirements or conditions for the grant of visas, such as for the visitor not being likely to become a public charge for financial, health, family, or other reasons, and the holder not having been convicted of a crime or considered likely to commit one. Where a country does not recognise another, or is in dispute with it, entry may be prohibited to holders of passports of the other party to the dispute, and sometimes to others who have, for example, visited the other country; examples are listed below. A country that issues a passport may also restrict its validity or use in specified circumstances, such as use for travel to certain countries for political, security, or health reasons.\nMany nations implement border controls restricting the entry of people of certain nationalities or who have visited certain countries. For instance, Georgia refuses entry to holders of passports issued by the Republic of China. Similarly, since April 2017, nationals of Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and Iran have been banned from entering the parts of eastern Libya under the control of the Tobruk government. The Pakistani passports explicitly mention that these passports are valid in all countries except Israel. The majority of Arab countries, as well as Iran and Malaysia, ban Israeli citizens; however, exceptional entry to Malaysia is possible with approval from the Ministry of Home Affairs. Certain countries may also restrict entry to those with Israeli stamps or visas in their passports. As a result of tension over the former Republic of Artsakh dispute, Azerbaijan currently forbids entry to Armenian citizens as well as to individuals with proof of travel to Artsakh.\nBetween September 2017 and January 2021, the United States of America did not issue new visas to nationals of Iran, North Korea, Libya, Somalia, Syria, or Yemen pursuant to restrictions imposed by the Trump administration, which were subsequently repealed by the Biden administration on 20 January 2021. While in force, the restrictions were conditional and could be lifted if the countries affected meet the required security standards specified by the Trump administration, and dual citizens of these countries could still enter if they presented a passport from a non-designated country.\nValue.\nOne method by which to rank the value of a passport is to calculate its mobility score (MS). The mobility score of a passport is the number of countries that allow the holder of that passport to enter for general tourism visa-free, visa-on-arrival, eTA, or eVisa issued within 3 days. As of 2023, the strongest passport in the world is the Singaporean passport. \nHowever, another way to determine passport mobility score is the number of countries it allows holders to live and work in. For example, by this measure, the Irish passport would be most powerful because it allows the holder to live in all European Union/European Economic Area countries, as well as Switzerland and the United Kingdom, as the Irish passport is the"}, "descending_order": ["23287", "25971859"], "permutation_1": ["23287", "25971859"], "permutation_2": ["23287", "25971859"], "permutation_3": ["23287", "25971859"]}
{"id": "nq_-8234567811705777337", "docs_added": {"8645414": "Life in the Fast Lane\n\"Life in the Fast Lane\" is a song written by Joe Walsh, Glenn Frey and Don Henley, and recorded by American rock band Eagles for the band's fifth studio album \"Hotel California\" (1976). It was the third single released from this album, and peaked at No. 11 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100.\nContent.\nThe song tells the story of a couple who take their excessive lifestyle to the edge. On \"In the Studio with Redbeard\", Glenn Frey revealed that the title came to him one day when he was riding on the freeway with a drug dealer known as \"The Count\". Frey asked the dealer to slow down and the response was, \"What do you mean? It's life in the fast lane!\" In that same interview, Frey indicated that the song's central riff was played by Walsh while the band was warming up in rehearsals and Walsh was told to \"keep that; it's a song\". Don Henley recalled that the \"song actually sprang from the opening guitar riff. One day, at rehearsal, Joe [Walsh] just busted out that crazy riff and I said 'What the hell is that? We've got to figure out to make a song out of that.\" Henley and Frey, the primary lyricists for the band, then wrote the lyrics for the song.\nCritical reception.\n\"Cash Box\" said that \"with the influence of six-stringer Joe Walsh, the Eagles are harder and funkier than ever here.\" \"Record World\" said that it's \"the album's most hard-edged rocker, dominated by a Walsh-signature guitar line.\" In 2016, the editors of \"Rolling Stone\" rated \"Life in the Fast Lane\" as the Eagles' eighth-greatest song. In 2017, \"Billboard\" ranked the song number four on their list of the 15 greatest Eagles songs, and in 2019, \"Rolling Stone\" ranked the song number eight on their list of the 40 greatest Eagles songs.\nPersonnel.\nPartial credits from liner notes.\nCovers.\nIn 2007, Swedish country and pop singer Jill Johnson recorded the song on her tenth studio album \"Music Row\".\nThe song was used as the soundtrack for the roller coaster \"Eagles' Life in the Fast Lane\", which opened at Hard Rock Park in May 2008.\nOn July 25, 2019 the rock band Hinder released their cover of the song as a non album single.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "31697337": "Fast Lane (Bad Meets Evil song)\n\"Fast Lane\" is the lead single by hip hop duo Bad Meets Evil, a group composed of Royce da 5'9\" and Eminem, from their first EP \"\". The single was produced by Eminem, Supa Dups, and Jason \"JG\" Gilbert, and released on May\u00a03,\u00a02011 by Shady Records. It features uncredited vocals by Sly Jordan on the chorus. A music video was created by director James Larese of music video direction group Syndrome. The music video features animated visuals and kinetic typography, with cameo appearances by Mr. Porter and Slaughterhouse. Fans and critics considered it a return to Eminem's Slim Shady alter ego. Texas rapper Chamillionaire released a remix.\nThe song was well received compared to the rest of the EP and was considered a highlight of \"Hell: The Sequel\". Critics favored the song for its change from Eminem's theme in \"Recovery\". \"Rolling Stone\" called it \"1999-style\". Bad Meets Evil performed this song at the 2011 Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival and the Lollapalooza music festival.\nBackground.\nBad Meets Evil first formed in 1998. The group's first single under the name was \"Nuttin' to Do\" / \"Scary Movies\". However, the group went their own separate ways in late 2002. Royce da 5'9\" and Eminem have since collaborated on other songs, but not under the name \"Bad Meets Evil\". In late 2010, Eminem and Royce da 5'9\" began collaborating as Bad Meets Evil after 11 years of inactivity within the group. \"Fast Lane\" was released as the lead single for their then-upcoming extended play, titled \"Hell: The Sequel\". The song was released May\u00a03,\u00a02011 by Shady Records.\n\"Fast Lane\" was recorded by Mike Strange at Effigy Studios, in Ferndale, Michigan. Recorded a few months before its release, the song was written by Eminem, and Sly \"Pyper\" Jordan (from \"Seduction\" and \"Kush\"), who also sings the chorus to the song. According to an interview with MTV, Eminem requested that Sly perform the chorus, after hearing Dr. Dre's \"Kush\". Supa Dups and Jason \"JG\" Gilbert produced the song and Eminem and Mike Strange mixed the song. JG and Supa Dups also sample their own vocals. According to Supa Dups, he was asked to make a beat with JG, without knowing it was for Bad Meets Evil. He said that \"[They] didn't even have Eminem in mind [when they made the beat].\" According to this interview with \"Mixtape Daily\", Supa Dups had little knowledge about the project, but simply submitted the beat to Eminem:\nI didn't even know the project was coming out. I didn't know what the beat was for; I just knew Eminem asked me for the files and I sent it to them.\u00a0... When I saw Eminem in L.A. for Grammy weekend, Eminem said, 'Yeah, he ripped the track.' Later on that day, I met Royce, and Royce was like, 'Yeah, download that track man. We ripped that track. That's the first single.' I was like, 'What?' But until then, I still wasn't sure.\nMonths after recording the song, on April\u00a028,\u00a02011, when it leaked onto the Internet, Supa Dups was impressed by the finished version, \"I was like, 'Damn, this record is crazy.'\" He was impressed by the song, lyrically, and was proud to have participated in the project. \n\"Fast Lane\" is a midwestern hip hop song. It has two main parts to the song. The first half of the four-minute song begins with a verse performed by Royce da 5'9\", followed by Eminem's verse. After the chorus, the second half has two verses by each rapper, followed by the chorus for the final time.\nCritical reception.\n\"Fast Lane\" was received favorably by critics. Upon the release on the EP, \"\", \"Billboard\" editor Jason Lipshutz published a track-by-track review. According to Lipshutz, \"Fast Lane\" is \"G-funk on steroids, with sing-song refrain breaking up crushing mic-trading bout between Royce da 5'9\" and Eminem.\" He also referred to \"Fast Lane\" as one of the highlight songs of the album. \"Rolling Stone\" gave a positive review. According to Jon Dolan of \"Rolling Stone\", \"Eminem kicks 'Fast Lane' 1999-style, reconnecting with the hungry young lunatic who sounded like he only had a stanza to blow us away or it was back to the auto plant.\" Dolan also commented on the infamous lyric \"I hope that I don't sound too heinous when I say this, Nicki Minaj, but I wanna stick my penis in your anus,\" saying that Eminem has been much more heinous before. According to Kyle Anderson of \"Entertainment Weekly\", Royce da 5'9\" performs extremely well on the \"hard-hitting\" song, even calling him a \"lyrical beast\". Although music website \"Consequence of Sound\" gave a rather mixed review on the EP as a whole, editor Winston Robbins favored \"Fast Lane\" and said that it is \"hands down one of the best hip-hop tracks of 2011\" and that the rapping is \"second to none\".\nMusic video.\nThe music video was directed by James Larese of collective group Syndrome, a group that also directed videos for two other Eminem songs: \"3 a.m.\" and \"Crack a Bottle\". A 40-second video teaser was released on May\u00a027,\u00a02011, on Eminem's YouTube channel, which shows the part of the video during the first time the chorus plays, confirming Sly Jordan's appearance in the video and the use of cartoon animation. In an interview with Bootleg Kev, Royce da 5'9\" revealed that a lot of the ideas for the animated visuals featured in the music video were Eminem's ideas. The video was first expected to release on May\u00a031,\u00a02011. However, the date was delayed. The video premiered on June\u00a08,\u00a02011, at noon EST on VEVO and Bad Meets Evil's official website.\nThe music video features animated visuals of the lyrics and kinetic typography of some lyrics, with the duo rapping in a warehouse-like setting. Royce da 5'9\" and Eminem both interact with the animations and occasionally hold and use them as actual objects. When transitioning between rappers, Eminem and Royce push each other out when it is their turn. Notable scenes include a cartoon blonde girl who gets 'drowned' by Eminem, inside a fish-bowl and then decapitated. Another scene includes Bad Meets Evil riding a green animated car, crashing into several obstacles, during the chorus. Sly Jordan appears in the video, singing the chorus. \nThe music video features cameo appearances from American rapper and producer Mr. Porter of D12, who lip syncs part of the chorus, and members of hip hop supergroup Slaughterhouse near the end of the video. Near the end of the video, Royce and Eminem try to stand in front of each other for attention. The video ends with them being pushed out of the way by the Bad Meets Evil logo. The video became notable for its humorous content. There's an \"Director's Cut\" version to the music video in where instead of holding words when talking about Nicki Minaj Eminem can be seen as holding a sausage and a hot dog bun.\nLive performances.\nEminem and Royce da 5'9\" made their debut live performance as Bad Meets Evil for \"Fast Lane\" and \"Lighters\" at the 2011 Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival. According to James Montgomery of MTV, \"what stood out the most about Em[inem]'s performance was the sheer tenacity with which he attacked it.\" Other than Royce, he was also accompanied by his hypeman Mr. Porter of D12 and performed wearing a black Bad Meets Evil T-shirt, under a black hoodie. The duo's performance was complemented by the \"Fast Lane\" music video playing in the background. \"Fast Lane\" was performed with Porter on the second day of Lollapalooza 2011, which took place in Chicago. The song was referred to by Gil Kaufman of MTV as a \"low-rider anthem\". Prior to the performance, Eminem changed into the Bad Meets Evil T-shirt.\nRemixes and appearances in other media.\nTexas rapper Chamillionaire recorded a remix of the song which was released on May\u00a08,\u00a02011. The song was not officially released to iTunes, however. The remix features two added verses by Chamillionaire between Eminem's and Royce Da 5'9\"'s verses; one before the first time the chorus plays, and another verse after the chorus. He also replaces Sly Jordan with a modified chorus with different lyrics. The remix is five and a half minutes long.\nThe track was featured on both the soundtracks of the 2011 film \"Real Steel\", and on 2K Sports' NBA 2K12. The track was also used for HBO's \"Entourage\" season 8 trailer and the Extended First Look trailer for \"Fast & Furious 6\". The song was featured in the \"Final Fantasy XV\" trailer \"Ride Together'\nCredits and personnel.\nCredits adapted from \"Hell: The Sequel\" album digital booklet.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1531204": "Life on the Fast Lane\n\"Life on the Fast Lane\", known as \"Jacques to Be Wild\" in the United Kingdom, is the ninth episode of the American animated television series \"The Simpsons\". It originally aired on Fox in the United States on March 18, 1990. It was written by John Swartzwelder and directed by David Silverman. Albert Brooks (in his second of ten appearances) guest starred as Jacques, a French bowling instructor, with him being credited as \"A. Brooks\".\nThe episode deals with how Homer's thoughtlessness precipitates Marge's infatuation with her bowling instructor Jacques, leading to a marriage crisis between her and Homer. In the original plan for the episode, Brooks (who improvised much of his dialogue) was to voice a Swedish tennis coach called Bj\u00f6rn, with the episode to be titled \"Bj\u00f6rn to Be Wild\".\nThe episode features a parody of the film \"An Officer and a Gentleman\" and won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour) in 1990.\nThe character of Jacques would return in the season 34 episode \"Pin Gal\", with Brooks reprising his role.\nPlot.\nAfter forgetting Marge's 34th birthday, Homer rushes to the Springfield Mall, where he buys a bowling ball with his inscribed name for himself and disguises it as her gift. At her birthday dinner, Marge is pleased with Bart and Lisa's gifts for her\u2014a bottle of French perfume and a macaroni-and-glue portrait of her as the \"Mona Lisa\" respectively. As Homer presents the bowling ball to her, it breaks through the bottom of its box and squashes her birthday cake. Offended, Marge calls Homer out for giving her a gift for himself, pointing out that she has never gone bowling in her life and that the ball is inscribed with his name.\nDetermined to learn how to bowl to spite Homer, Marge visits Barney's Bowl-A-Rama. While there, she meets a French bowling instructor named Jacques, who develops an infatuation with her and offers to give her lessons. After several lessons, Jacques and Marge agree to meet for brunch, which goes well until they see Helen Lovejoy, the gossipy preacher's wife, who seems delighted to find Marge with a man other than her husband. After deflecting Helen's prying by feigning a discussion of bowling theory, Jacques asks Marge to meet him the next day at his apartment, causing her to faint. While unconscious, she sees herself dancing with Jacques in his luxurious, bowling-themed apartment. Regaining consciousness after her romantic fantasy, Marge accepts Jacques's invitation.\nMeanwhile, Homer finds the personalized bowling glove Jacques gave Marge and realizes he may lose her to another man. Soon Bart realizes Lisa's suspicion that their parents are drifting apart is true. Bart advises Homer to keep quiet about Marge's suspected affair to avoid making things worse.\nMarge leaves for her rendezvous with Jacques but remembers her lifetime commitment to Homer during the drive. She comes to a fork in the road, between the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant and Jacques's apartment. After agonizing over her decision, Marge surprises a distraught Homer at the plant and kisses him warmly. An ecstatic Homer abandons his work post for ten minutes and takes Marge to the backseat of his car.\nProduction.\nThe episode was written by John Swartzwelder and directed by David Silverman. When the episode was originally planned, it called for Albert Brooks to voice \"Bj\u00f6rn\", a Swedish tennis instructor, but Brooks thought it would be funnier to make the character French and so the change was made. The title was originally to be \"Bjorn to Be Wild\", thus accounting for the episode's alternate title \"Jacques to Be Wild\". Brooks improvised almost all his dialogue, producing over three hours of material. Marge's laugh during her bowling lesson was an ad-libbed, natural laugh by Julie Kavner, who was laughing at something Albert Brooks had just said. The line \"four onion rings!\" is only one of many lines Brooks ad-libbed and blew by losing Jacques's French accent. An extended audio clip of Albert Brooks's unused dialogue was made available on Disc Three of \"The Simpsons The Complete First Season\" DVD.\nThe sequence in which the family throws the pizza box away was specifically designed by John Swartzwelder to look surreal, with the family panning into each other. The moon was designed to resemble a bowling ball in the scene in which Jacques drops Marge home. The restaurant that Jacques and Marge visit is called \"Shorty's\"; it was originally intended that a chef's hat would be shown moving around in the background, implying that the owner was short, but the concept was dropped as it seemed to be too much of a silly idea. The episode's conclusion is a reference to \"An Officer and a Gentleman\", which David Silverman had to watch first, so that he knew how to set the scene out. Homer's line, \"too exciting\", when he sees the lingerie store was written by James L. Brooks. During Marge's phone conversation with Patty and Selma, Maggie can be seen sucking her pacifier repeatedly, a concept dropped in later episodes as it was deemed too much of a distraction from the dialogue.\nFirst appearances.\nThe episode features the first appearance of the bowling alley Barney's Bowlarama. The original backstory for Barney's Bowlarama was that it was owned by Barney Gumble. Over time it changed to Barney just being an employee, as the writers could not imagine Barney owning anything. It was later revealed that Barney's uncle was the owner. The exterior of the Bowlarama was designed by No Doubt member Eric Stefani. The episode also marks the first appearances of Lenny Leonard and Helen Lovejoy.\nCultural references.\nMarge's dream resembles a dance number from \"The Gay Divorcee\". The end scene, in which Marge walks into the power plant, and Homer carries her away, is a reference to the film \"An Officer and a Gentleman\", and features an instrumental of the song \"Up Where We Belong\". The Eagles song \"Life in the Fast Lane\" inspired the episode title.\nReception.\nIn its original broadcast, \"Life on the Fast Lane\" finished 11th in ratings for the week of March 12\u201319, 1990, with a Nielsen rating of 17.5, equivalent to approximately 16.1 million viewing households. It was the highest-rated show on Fox that week, beating \"Married... with Children\".\nSince airing, the episode has received mostly positive reviews from television critics. Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, the authors of the book \"I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide\", called it \"a very good, very assured episode that has seen some viewers (particularly female ones) tearing out their hair at the conclusion\". Nathan Rabin of \"The A.V. Club\" praised the episode, stating: \"There would be many funnier and faster episodes of \"The Simpsons\" but few can match \"Life on the Fast Lane\" for emotional depth and characterization.\" IGN named Albert Brooks' guest performance in this episode, along with his four other appearances, the best guest appearance in the show's history.\nIn a DVD review of the first season David B. Grelck rated this episode a 4(of 5), placing it along with \"Homer's Night Out\" as his favorites of the season. Colin Jacobson at DVD Movie Guide said in a review that it was \"another good but not great episode\" and added that \"Albert Brooks seriously enlivened 'Life [on the Fast Lane]'... Jacques becomes funny not so much due to the lines themselves; it's Brooks' readings that make them work.\" Another DVD review from The Digital Bits called it \"one of the first season's best loved episodes\".\nThis episode won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming One Hour or Less) in 1990, defeating fellow \"Simpsons\" episode \"Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire\", and becoming the first \"The Simpsons\" episode to win the award.\nIn a 2000 \"Entertainment Weekly\" article, Matt Groening ranked this episode as his second favorite episode of all time, behind \"Bart the Daredevil\". \"Entertainment Weekly\" placed the episode twenty-first on their top 25 \"The Simpsons\" episode list, calling it \"a showcase for the series' bedrock of character and heart.\" The \"Orlando Sentinel\"'s Gregory Hardy named it the fifteenth best episode of the show with a sports theme. The episode's reference to \"An Officer and a Gentleman\" was named the 23rd greatest film reference in the history of the show by \"Total Film\"'s Nathan Ditum. \"Simpsons\" co-developer Sam Simon named it his favorite episode of all time in 2009.\nLegacy.\nThe March 15, 2004 edition of the Dear Abby column was pulled, as it had emerged that one of the letters was a fake. A newspaper editor noticed that the problem cited in the letter was identical to the plot of \"Life on the Fast Lane\". Kathie Kerr, a spokeswoman for the Universal Press Syndicate, said \"it did sound too similar not to be a hoax\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "42408672": "Fast Life (Kool G Rap song)\n\"Fast Life\" is the second single from American hip hop artist Kool G Rap's 1995 album \"4,5,6\", featuring Nas. Released with the song \"4,5,6\" as a B-side, it later also featured on the compilation album \"Greatest Hits\" (2002).\nBackground.\nProduced by Buckwild, \"Fast Life\" is a track that glorifies the criminal lifestyle with Kool G Rap and Nas Escobar portraying themselves as powerful and wealthy cocaine kingpins, boasting of their luxurious possessions and ruthless efficiency. The Mafioso theme of \"Fast Life\" is set early as the song opens with a sound bite from the 1983 film \"Scarface\" (Al Pacino's Tony Montana saying \"The time has come, we gotta expand, the whole operation. Distribution, New York, to Chicago, L.A. We gotta set our own market, and enforce it.\") and Nas later references such mob figures as Lucky Luciano, Bugsy Siegel and Frankie Yale. G Rap and Nas go line for line in the third and final verse of the song which \"Complex\" has described as \"mind-blowing\". The song's chorus goes as follows:\nLivin the fast life, in fast cars\nEverywhere we go, people know who we are\nA team from out of Queens with the American Dream\nSo we're plottin' up a scheme to get the seven figure C.R.E.A.M.\nSpeaking of his collaboration with fellow Queens rapper Nas in a 2014 interview, Kool G Rap stated:<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"Fast Life\" was looked at as a passing of the torch to Nas, because before I had been shopping him around. He recorded his whole demo in my studio. By the time we did \"Fast Life\" together, Nas had already started to make his entry into the game. That was the first time we had rapped together on a song, and the timing made it a passing of the torch. Before that, I set up a meeting with Lyor Cohen and Kevin Liles at Def Jam to talk about Nas. Kevin Liles was the one who said that he sounds too much like a G Rap, and so Def Jam passed. I knew I had some influence on him but I knew he had his own identity.\nMusic video.\nThe music video for \"Fast Life\" was directed by Brian \"Black\" Luvar and shows Kool G Rap and Nas \"Escobar\" living lavishly as they plot the construction of a mythical \"Fast Life Hotel and Casino\".\nSamples.\n\"Fast Life\" samples the following songs:\nAnd was later sampled on:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "32416274": "Fast Lane (Bilal song)\n\"Fast Lane\" was the third single released in 2001 by American R&B singer-songwriter Bilal, from his debut studio album, \"1st Born Second\". The song peaked at No. 41 on the \"Billboard\" R&B singles chart. The music video for the remix featuring Dr. Dre and Jadakiss was directed by Sanaa Hamri.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "32525332": "Fast Lanes and Country Roads\n\"Fast Lanes and Country Roads\" is a song written by Roger Murrah and Steve Dean, and recorded by American country music artist Barbara Mandrell. It was released in November 1985 as the second single from the album \"Get to the Heart\". The song reached number 4 on the \"Billboard\" hot Country Singles & Tracks chart.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "32933268": "Livin' in the Fast Lane\nLivin' in the Fast Lane is the fourth studio album by the American hip hop group The Sugarhill Gang, released in 1984 on Sugar Hill Records.\nTrack listing.\nSamples and notes", "1233560": "Clare Torry\nBritish singer (born 1947)\nClare H. Torry (born 29 November 1947) is a British singer, known for performing the improvised, wordless vocals on the song \"The Great Gig in the Sky\" on Pink Floyd's 1973 album \"The Dark Side of the Moon\". She sang the theme of the 1977 film \"OCE\" in the same style, and also covered the Dolly Parton single \"Love Is Like a Butterfly\" for the opening titles of the BBC TV series \"Butterflies\", which ran for four series between 1978 and 1983.\nEarly life.\nClare Torry was born in November 1947 in Marylebone, London, to Geoffrey Napier Torry (1916\u20131979), who combined careers as Lieutenant-Commander in the Fleet Air Arm and Flight Lieutenant in the RAF, and his wife Dorothy W. Singer (1916\u20132017), who was secretary to six BBC Directors-General.\nCareer.\nIn the 1960s Torry began a career as a singer, mostly performing covers of popular songs which included session work at Abbey Road Studios. She later worked as a staff songwriter for EMI.\nIn January 1973, Pink Floyd were finishing work on \"The Dark Side of the Moon\" at Abbey Road, and a female singer was needed to add vocals to an instrumental composition by Richard Wright to be called \"The Great Gig in the Sky\". Engineer Alan Parsons remembered having been impressed by Torry's voice, and she was booked for a session on Sunday 21 January.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"They simply said, 'Who shall we get to sing this?' And I said, 'Well, I know a great singer.' I just knew her through one album of hit cover versions she'd done \u2013 you know, the cover albums that proliferated in the early 1970s. They were always done in a day. And I was very impressed with her. There was a bit of direction given: they said, 'Sorry, we've got no words, no melody line, just a chord sequence \u2013 just see what you can do with it.' She was only there for a couple of hours. As I remember, she did two or three tracks, from which we assembled the best bits for a master version. But somewhere in the archives are the bits we didn't use, and I'm sure it would make for an interesting remix version one day.\" \u2013 Alan Parsons.\nOn 4 November 1973, Torry sang \"The Great Gig in the Sky\" at the Rainbow Theatre in London. She sang it with Pink Floyd again at their 1990 concert at Knebworth, and with Roger Waters at some of his 1980s solo shows. She also contributed to Waters' 1986 soundtrack \"When the Wind Blows\" and to his 1987 album \"Radio K.A.O.S.\".\nTorry performed as a session singer on 1970s UK TV adverts, and as a live backing vocalist with Kevin Ayers, Olivia Newton-John, Shriekback, The Alan Parsons Project (for whom she also sang lead vocal on one track on 1979's \"Eve\"), Procol Harum mainman Gary Brooker, Matthew Fisher, Cerrone, Meat Loaf (a duet on the song \"Nowhere Fast\", and the hit \"Modern Girl\"), Johnny Mercer and Doctors of Madness.\nShe performed Dolly Parton's \"Love Is Like a Butterfly\" as the theme music to the 1970s Wendy Craig/Geoffrey Palmer, Carla Lane sitcom \"Butterflies\". The song was released as a single in 1981. Torry also released \"Love for Living\" in 1969, which was produced by Ronnie Scott and Robin Gibb. She sang the theme of the 1977 film \"OCE\" in the same style as \"The Great Gig in the Sky\".\nIn the 1970s she appeared on the French disco composer Cerrone's \"Angelina\", the Alan Parsons Project's \"Don't Hold Back\", and albums by Olivia Newton-John and Serge Gainsbourg. Her voice can be heard singing \"Love to Love You Baby\" (originally by Donna Summer) during the opening scene of the cult BBC \"Play for Today\" production of \"Abigail's Party\" in 1977. Torry sang backing vocals on the track \"The War Song\" from Culture Club's \"Waking Up with the House on Fire\" album in 1984, as well as on the track \"Yellowstone Park\" on the Tangerine Dream album \"Le Parc\" the following year.\nTorry is also credited on the 1987 album \"En Dejlig Torsdag\" (\"A Lovely Thursday\") by the Danish pop rock band TV-2, where she sings in a fashion similar to \"The Great Gig in the Sky\" at the end of the tracks \"Stjernen I Mit Liv\" (\"The Star in my Life\") and \"I Baronessens Seng\" (\"In the Bed of the Baroness\").\nOn 20 October 2010, Torry was presented with a BASCA Gold Badge Award in recognition of her unique contribution to music.\nLawsuit.\nIn 2004, Torry sued Pink Floyd and EMI for songwriting royalties on the basis that her contribution to \"The Great Gig in the Sky\" constituted co-authorship with keyboardist Richard Wright. In 1973, as a session singer, she was paid only the standard flat fee of \u00a330 for Sunday studio work (the equivalent of \u00a3400 in 2022). She said in 1998, \"If I'd known then what I know now, I would have done something about organising copyright or publishing.\" In 2005, an out-of-court settlement was reached in Torry's favour, although the terms of the settlement were not disclosed. All releases after 2005 carry an additional credit for \"Vocal composition by Clare Torry\" in the \"Great Gig in the Sky\" segment of the booklet or liner notes.\nLater work.\nIn February 2006, Torry released \"Heaven in the Sky\", a collection of her early pop recordings from the 1960s and 1970s. In 2011, she released a collaboration with musician and composer John Fyffe.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "915306": "Better Off Dead (film)\n1985 American black comedy film\nBetter Off Dead is a 1985 American teen black comedy film written and directed by Savage Steve Holland. It stars John Cusack, David Ogden Stiers, Diane Franklin and Kim Darby. The film was released in August 1985.\nInitially met with mixed reviews on release, it has since developed a cult following for its unconventionally surreal and absurdist humor.\nPlot.\nIn the town of Greendale, Northern California, high school student Lane Meyer's two main interests are skiing and his girlfriend of six months, Beth. Shortly before Christmas, Beth dumps him for the handsome and popular captain of the ski team, Roy Stalin.\nRoy is an arrogant bully who unfairly rejects Lane at ski team tryouts. Beth also criticizes Lane's car, an old station wagon. Although Lane also owns a 1967 Camaro, he has not been able to get it running and it sits dilapitated in the driveway.\nLane lives in a suburban development with his mother Jenny, a ditzy housewife who routinely concocts creepy (and creeping) family meals; his genius little brother Badger, who never speaks but at the age of \"almost 8\" can build powerful lasers and attract trashy women from \"How-to\" books; and his lawyer father, Al, who daily tries to stop the menacing paperboy, Johnny, from breaking his garage door windows with thrown newspapers.\nFurthermore, Johnny claims that the Meyers owe him two dollars for newspapers, and persistently hounds Lane, yelling \"I want my two dollars!\" Lane also regularly encounters two Japanese drag racers, one who only speaks in Japanese and the other who learned to speak English by listening to Howard Cosell.\nLane cannot move past Beth's rejection, so decides that death is the only way out of his misery. He makes several half-hearted attempts at suicide, which all comically fail. With the help of his best friend, Charles de Mar (who in lieu of not being able to get \"real drugs\" in their \"bodaciously small town,\" constantly inhales everyday substances like Jell-O, snow, and nitrous oxide from a whipped cream can), Lane tries to ski the K-12, the highest peak in town, in hopes of getting Beth back, but wipes out.\nLane is further embarrassed when he gets fired from his humiliating fast food job at Pig Burgers in front of Roy and Beth, who are there on a date. To top it all, he increasingly begins to suffer from neurotic hallucinations owing to the mounting frustrations in his life.\nAs Lane attempts to either end his life or win back his ex-girlfriend, he gradually gets to know a new girl: a French foreign-exchange student named Monique, who has a crush on him. She is staying with Lane's overbearing neighbor Mrs. Smith, who continually tries to force Monique into being a girlfriend for her socially awkward son Ricky.\nThe Smiths are so annoying that Monique pretends she cannot speak English. She is a Los Angeles Dodgers fan, who turns out to be an excellent auto mechanic and skier. Monique both helps Lane fix his Camaro and tries to build his confidence.\nWhen Roy insults Monique, Lane challenges him to a ski race down the K-12, with the winner to be captain of the ski team. She helps Lane prepare for the race, which he ultimately wins despite losing a ski and being pursued by Johnny. Beth rushes to embrace Lane at the finish line, but he rejects her and after besting Ricky (who attempts to keep Lane from rescuing Monique from the restraints of his mother) in a ski-pole swordfight, drives off with Monique in his Camaro.\nLane and Monique are last seen kissing on home plate at Dodger Stadium, with Johnny bicycling towards them, while in a mid-credit scene Badger launches a homemade space shuttle from his room through the roof of the house.\nCast.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nProduction.\nParts of the film were shot in Alta, Brighton, and Snowbird, in Utah. The Meyers home is located at 1636 Virginia Avenue, in Glendale, CA. Across the street, at 1633 Virginia, is the home of the Smith family and French exchange student Monique Junot. Lane's high school is Hollywood High School, located at 1521 North Highland Avenue, in Los Angeles, CA. Pig Burgers was filmed at Sandy's Char Burger at 6223 Lankershim Blvd. The restaurant has since gone out of business, but the building still sports the burger signage. The exterior of the school dance sequence was shot at Anderson W. Clark Magnet High School in La Crescenta, CA. The street on which Lane is consistently challenged by the Japanese drag racers is located near the foothills of Monrovia, CA. Several other driving scenes were shot in the Los Angeles suburbs of Duarte and Sierra Madre.\nThe hand-drawn animation in the movie was animated by Savage Steve Holland's collaborator"}, "descending_order": ["8645414", "31697337", "1531204", "42408672", "32416274", "32525332", "32933268", "1233560", "915306"], "permutation_1": ["32416274", "1531204", "8645414", "31697337", "915306", "42408672", "32525332", "32933268", "1233560"], "permutation_2": ["915306", "1233560", "32933268", "32525332", "31697337", "1531204", "8645414", "32416274", "42408672"], "permutation_3": ["915306", "32525332", "42408672", "32933268", "1531204", "8645414", "32416274", "31697337", "1233560"]}
{"id": "nq_4525608975737028945", "docs_added": {"158595": "Rupert Grint\nEnglish actor (born 1988)\nRupert Alexander Lloyd Grint (; born 24 August 1988) is an English actor. He rose to fame for his role as Ron Weasley in the \"Harry Potter\" film series, for which he was cast at age eleven, having previously acted only in school plays and his local theatre group. Grint portrayed Weasley in all eight films in the series, beginning with \"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone\" (2001) and concluding with \"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows \u2013 Part 2\" (2011). Since then, he has continued to work in film, television, and theatre.\nBeginning in 2002, Grint began to work outside of the \"Harry Potter\" franchise, with a co-leading role in \"Thunderpants\". He starred in the dramedy \"Driving Lessons\" (2006) and the drama \"Cherrybomb\" (2009) and co-starred in the comedy \"Wild Target\" (2010). After the \"Harry Potter\" series concluded, he appeared in the films \"Into the White\" (2012), \"Charlie Countryman\" (2013), \"CBGB\" (2013), \"Moonwalkers\" (2015), and \"Knock at the Cabin\" (2023). Grint made his stage debut in 2013 in \"Mojo\" at the Harold Pinter Theatre. He executive-produced and starred in the television series \"Snatch\", based on the film of the same name. He has also starred in the black comedy series \"Sick Note\", the mystery thriller miniseries \"The ABC Murders\", and the psychological horror series \"Servant\".\nEarly life.\nGrint was born on 24 August 1988 in Harlow, Essex, to Nigel Grint, a dealer in racing memorabilia, and Joanne Grint (n\u00e9e Parsons). He is the eldest of five siblings. He has said that his earliest goal in life was to become an ice cream man. He grew up in Watton-at-Stone, Hertfordshire, and was educated at Richard Hale School, in Hertford. Grint was raised a Catholic and said he \"feared God\" as a child.\nWhile in school, he took an avid interest in theatre. He began performing in school productions and joined the Top Hat Stage and Screen School, a local theatre group that cast him as a fish in \"Noah's Ark\" and a donkey in a nativity play. He continued participating in school plays as he moved into secondary school. Nonetheless, he had never acted professionally prior to the \"Harry Potter\" series. He left school at sixteen to focus on his acting career, saying he \"didn't really like school that much\".\nCareer.\n1999\u20132011: \"Harry Potter\" and worldwide recognition.\nStarting in 1999, casting began for the film adaptation of \"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone\", the best-selling novel by J. K. Rowling. Rowling insisted the cast be British and assisted Susie Figgis and director Chris Columbus in casting the roles. Grint, a fan of the book series, chose to audition for the role of Ron Weasley, one of Harry Potter's best friends at Hogwarts. Having seen a \"Newsround\" report about the open casting, he sent in a video of himself rapping about how he wished to receive the role, and the casting team asked for a meeting with him. In August 2000, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Grint were selected to play Harry, Hermione Granger, and Ron. Grint is the oldest member of the trio. The release of \"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone\" in 2001 was Grint's debut screen performance. Breaking records for opening-day sales and opening-weekend takings, it was the year's highest-grossing film. With a total of US$974\u00a0million in its theatrical run, it stands as the series' second most commercially successful entry. It was critically well-received, scoring mainly positive reviews. However, a number of critics found the adaption's faithfulness to the book both its best and worst quality. Grint won a Satellite Award in the category of Outstanding New Talent, and a Young Artist Award for Most Promising Young Newcomer.\nA year later, Grint again starred as Ron in \"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\" (2002). It opened to positive reviews and critics generally enjoyed the lead actors' performances. Both \"Los Angeles Times\" and \"New York Magazine\" observed that Grint and his peers had matured between films, with the latter pointing out that Grint had become \"more proficient\" and said they missed \"the amateurish ardour\" the actor and Watson carried in \"Philosopher's Stone\". \"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban\" (2004) was released on 31 May in the UK. The film sees all three of its lead characters hover on the brink of adolescence, \"and while they look braver and more capable than before, the dangers they face seem far more grave and their vulnerability more intense.\" Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n took over direction for \"Prisoner of Azkaban,\" which remains the lowest-grossing \"Harry Potter\" film with US$795\u00a0million in revenue. Nonetheless, it was the second highest-grossing movie of 2004, behind \"Shrek 2\".\nIn 2005, Grint reprised his role for the fourth film in the series\u00a0\u2013 \"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire\". The adaptation, unlike previous films, explored romantic elements and included more humour. In a 2005 interview with IGN, all three lead actors singled out humour as a reason for the film's success. It was directed by Mike Newell, whom Grint characterised as \"really loud and not afraid to swear at you, but he was really cool\". \"Goblet of Fire\" is one of the series' best-reviewed instalments, and is noted for its characters' maturity and sophistication, darker and more complex plotline, and the quality of the screenplay and lead actors' performances.\n\"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix\", the fifth film in the \"Harry Potter\" franchise, was released to cinemas in 2007. A huge financial success, it set a record worldwide opening-weekend gross of US$394\u00a0million, superseding \"Spider-Man 3\". It was directed by a new filmmaker, David Yates, who directed all of the subsequent \"Potter\" films. Grint said the laid-back director was \"really good\" and helped keep the material fresh. Grint and his \"Harry Potter\" co-stars left imprints of their hands, feet and wands in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood.\nOn 15 July 2009, the series' sixth instalment, \"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince\", was released and again set box office records. In its theatrical run, it earned US$933\u00a0million ticket sales. It is also one of the most positively reviewed Harry Potter films, with critics praising its \"emotionally satisfying\" story, direction, cinematography, visual design and music. Grint observed a change in Ron in this entry, pointing out that his once insecure, often overshadowed character started to become more secure and even began to show a dark side. He found it fun to personify a more emotional Ron. Between 2009 and 2010, Grint's work received three award nominations, including one win\u2014an Otto Award from the German magazine \"Bravo\".\nDespite the previous films' successes, the franchise's future was put into question when the three lead actors had reservations about signing on for the final two films. However, by March 2007, Grint agreed to return for the last installments. For financial and scripting reasons, the final book was divided into two films, shot back-to-back, with filming concluding in June 2010. After completing the final film, Grint said: \"I mean it literally has been my childhood, and suddenly it all came down to really just one random scene, with us jumping through a fireplace, and then it was over. ...it's very odd. Because suddenly it was all over, just like that. It was really emotional for all of us, realising that we're never going to be doing this again.\"\n\"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows \u2013 Part 1\" (2010) was released in November and grossed over US$950 million. It set several box office records and received mostly favourable reviews. Grint's portrayal of Ron again earned him critical praise. Reviewing the adaption for \"Slate\", Dana Stevens called all three of the leads \"terrific\". Although he disliked the film, Joe Morgenstern of \"The Wall Street Journal\" wrote that \"Grint has grown up to be a skilful actor who knows the value of a slow burn\". Grint's performance brought him nominations from the MTV Movie Awards and National Movie Awards for Best Fight and Performance of the Year in 2011. He reprised his role for the seventh time in \"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows \u2013 Part 2\", the final \"Harry Potter\" instalment. It resumed from where the previous film left off, and included a lot of action, whereas \"Part 1\" had focused more on character development. Grint, along with the film, was critically acclaimed: Ann Hornaday of \"The Washington Post\" wrote, \"Who could have predicted that Radcliffe, Grint and Watson would turn out to be good actors?\". The film broke several box office records, including biggest midnight release, biggest first-day opening, and biggest opening-weekend. \"Deathly Hallows \u2013 Part 2\" became the fourth highest-grossing film of all time.\n\"Harry Potter\" author J. K. Rowling gave a speech at the world premiere of \"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows \u2013 Part 2\" on 7 July 2011 in London. She said that there were seven \"Harry Potter\" film series cast members whom she called \"The Big Seven\"; Grint was one of them, with Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Tom Felton, Matthew Lewis, Evanna Lynch and Bonnie Wright.\n2002\u20132011: Concurrent film work during \"Harry Potter\".\nIn 2002, Grint starred in his first non-\"Harry Potter\" film, \"Thunderpants\", which revolves around Patrick (played by Bruce Cook) whose remarkable capacity for flatulence scores him a job as an astronaut. In this film, Grint played the co-lead role of Alan, an anosmic boy who is Patrick's only friend. It was generally ignored by critics and audiences. Most critics who did take notice of it did not respond well to it, with one writing: \"This film should be shown in prisons so that inmates have a good reason to never return.\" Grint also appeared in \"Driving Lessons\", a comedy drama released in 2006, starring opposite Julie Walters. It met with a mixed reception by critics, but his portrayal of an oppressed teenage boy was generally praised. \"Alt Film Guide\"'s Andre Soares wrote: \"Grint, on the other hand, is a revelation . . . [He] displays an innate naturalness mixed with personal charisma that turn a potentially pathetic Christian freak into a humorous, thoroughly likable \u2013 if more than a little awkward \u2013 young man\".\nIn July 2008, it was announced that Grint would star in the drama film \"Cherrybomb\" with Robert Sheehan and Kimberley Nixon. Grint found shooting this film very different from the \"Harry Potter\" films, as he had to adjust to doing a dozen scenes per day. Grint's character\u2014Malachy, a worker at Belfast\u2014goes to great lengths to impress his boss's daughter, with whom he is infatuated. This film, like his next project, involved him playing violent roles. Despite premiering at the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival, the film was initially unable to find a distributor. An online campaign by Grint's fans was credited with helping to secure a distribution deal in the UK in 2010.\nJonathan Lynn directed Grint in \"Wild Target\", a 2010 comedy thriller, where he starred with Emily Blunt and Bill Nighy. A remake of the 1993 French film \"Cible Emouvante\", it was made on a relatively small budget of US$8\u00a0million. It was a commercial failure, earning only US$3.4\u00a0million, and garnered mostly negative reviews in the media, which criticised it for dishonouring the original film and wasting the comedic potential of its cast. However, Grint also attracted some positive notice: \"It's nice to see Rupert Grint perform well in a role other than that of Ron Weasley, and it's clear that he's got a career ahead of him.\"\nIn January 2011, Grint made a cameo appearance on the BBC popular comedy show \"Come Fly with Me,\" starring comedy duo Matt Lucas and David Walliams (Little Britain). In March 2011, he was cast as the lead character in the small-budget anti-war Norwegian film \"Into the White\", directed by Petter N\u00e6ss. Principal photography started in April, and the film, which was shot on location, was released in 2012. It is based on a real incident that took place on 27 April 1940, when German Luftwaffe pilot Horst Schopis's bomber was shot down at Grotli by a Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm Blackburn Skua, which then crash-landed. The several German and British crew members found shelter by chance during a harsh winter there.\nIn August 2011, Grint did a photo shoot with his friend and \"Harry Potter\" co-star Tom Felton in Los Angeles for the autumn/winter collection of the fashion label Band of Outsiders. In September 2011, it was announced that Grint would voice a character in the along with David Tennant, Stephen Mangan and Jim Broadbent; it was released in May 2014. Grint also appears in the music video for Ed Sheeran's song \"Lego House\", released on 20 October 2011.\n2012\u2013present: Further work, theatre, and television.\nIn March 2012, the \"Visit Britain\" TV ad was released, featuring Grint alongside Julie Walters, Michelle Dockery and Stephen Fry, promoting holidaying at home in the UK. Later that month, \"Variety\" reported that Grint had been cast alongside Chlo\u00eb Grace Moretz in \"The Drummer\", a biopic film about drummer Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. That day, \"The Hollywood Reporter\" confirmed it and announced that filming would begin 15 June 2012 in California and Savannah, Georgia.\nOn 25 July 2012, Grint carried the 2012 London Olympic torch during the Olympic Torch Relay, part of the London 2012 Summer Olympics. He told the BBC News that it was an \"overwhelming\" experience that he \"hoped to remember forever\", and told \"The Daily Telegraph,\" \"It was amazing, it was really overwhelming. It's just such an honour to be a part of this. I'm really proud\". In October 2012, he narrated \"We Are Aliens\", a 25-minute 3D Planetarium Fulldome film about the possibility of other intelligent life in the universe.\nOn 13 February 2013, \"The Hollywood Reporter\"'s Live Feed announced that Grint would star in a television pilot for CBS called \"Super Clyde\". It did not become a series. In July 2013, it was confirmed that Grint would make his stage debut in the second run of Jez Butterworth's black comedy \"Mojo\", with Grint playing Sweets, a hood who \"pops amphetamines like Smarties\" and \"does a sort of double act, full of comic menace\". The play, which also starred Brendan Coyle, Ben Whishaw and Daniel Mays, was based on real-life events, and ran from 26 October 2013 to 8 February 2014 at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London. Grint won the WhatsOnStage Award for Best London Newcomer for his role.\nIn September 2013, \"The Hollywood Reporter\" confirmed that Grint would star in an adaptation of Macbeth called \"Enemy of Man\", also featuring Sean Bean, Charles Dance, Jason Flemyng, James D'Arcy, Neil Maskell and Joe Gilgun, and directed by Vincent Regan. Filming began in January 2014 in the United Kingdom. In June 2014, it was announced that Grint would make his Broadway debut as Frank Finger in the play \"It's Only a Play\" at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, appearing with Matthew Broderick, Nathan Lane, Stockard Channing, and Megan Mullally. It ran from 28 August 2014 to 4 January 2015.\nSince 2019, Grint has starred as Julian Pearce in the Apple TV+ psychological horror series \"Servant\". The series has been critically praised. In December 2021, the show was renewed for its fourth and final season.\nGrint starred in the 2022 Netflix anthology series \"Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities\" and in M. Night Shyamalan's 2023 thriller film \"Knock at the Cabin\". He also reunited with multiple cast members of the \"Harry Potter\" film series for an HBO Max special, \"\", which premiered on 1 January 2022.\nPersonal life.\nGrint has been in a relationship with actress Georgia Groome since 2011. They have a daughter, born in May 2020. He joined Instagram in November 2020, posting a photo of himself holding his newborn daughter. He reached one million followers within four hours and one minute of creating his account, breaking the previous Guinness World Records title for the fastest time to reach one million followers on the platform.\nAs Grint's earliest ambition was to be an ice cream man, he bought an ice cream van with the money he earned from the \"Harry Potter\" series and sold ice cream to local customers.\nHe took part in the 2012 Summer Olympics torch relay, carrying the flame through Hendon in northwest London to outside Middlesex University.\nGrint is a keen football fan and an avid supporter of Tottenham Hotspur.\nPhilanthropy.\nGrint has supported various charitable organisations, including donating personal items to charity auctions. He participated in the Wacky Rally in 2010 with James and Oliver Phelps, which raised money for Britain's Royal National Lifeboat Institution. He was one of more than 40 people to produce designs for the Chrysalis Collection for Keech Hospice Care in Luton. His piece, a painted butterfly, was auctioned on eBay in March 2010. In May 2011, with other celebrities, he took part in the \"Make Mine Milk\" ad campaign to promote daily milk drinking. His ads were seen on posters and the sides of thousands of buses across the United Kingdom. Since 2011, he has supported the Little Star Award for Cancer Research UK. \"I think that it's wonderful that Cancer Research UK is helping to bring a little bit of magic to the children's lives in this way,\" he said.\nTax affairs.\nIn 2016, Grint lost an appeal against HMRC's decision to block his attempt to change his accounting date. This move was intended to reduce his tax liability by deferring income into a lower tax year. At that time, the actor was calculated to have earned around \u00a324 million from the Harry Potter franchise. However, HMRC successfully argued that the change was motivated by tax avoidance rather than legitimate business reasons.\nIn 2019, HMRC brought another case against Grint. He was ordered to pay an additional \u00a31.8 million in tax after losing the legal battle with HMRC. The tax authority argued that a \u00a34.5 million sum he received should be classified as income rather than as a capital asset which is subject to much lower tax rate. This ruling increased his tax liability for the 2011\u201312 tax year. Grint later lost his appeal claim and was ordered to pay \u00a31.8 million of tax liability and legal costs.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "19156567": "Ron Weasley\nFictional character of Harry Potter series\nRonald Bilius Weasley is a fictional character in the \"Harry Potter\" series of novels by J. K. Rowling. He is introduced in \"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone\" as a first-year student on his way to the wizarding school Hogwarts. During the school year, Ron befriends Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. Being the only member of the trio who was raised in wizarding society, he provides insight into wizarding customs and traditions. Along with Harry and Hermione, he is a member of Gryffindor House at Hogwarts and is present for most of the action throughout the series. Ron is portrayed by Rupert Grint in all eight \"Harry Potter\" films.\nCreation and development.\nRon was one of the first \"Harry Potter\" characters that Rowling created. Although Ron and Hermione form a romantic bond in the series and eventually have children, Rowling confessed in a 2014 interview that she wrote the relationship as \"a form of wish fulfilment\". She said the characters are fundamentally incompatible in some ways, but that their relationship might function with \"a bit of counselling\".\nAppearances.\nNovels.\n\"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone\".\nRon is introduced in the first novel in the series, \"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone\" (1997). He and his family encounter Harry Potter at King's Cross station and help him find the Hogwarts Express. Once aboard the train, Ron and Harry meet Hermione Granger, whom they initially dislike. At Hogwarts, all three students are assigned to Gryffindor House. After Ron and Harry save Hermione from a troll, they develop a friendship with her. When the trio seeks the Philosopher's Stone, Ron uses his skill at Wizard's Chess to allow Harry and Hermione to proceed safely through a dangerous, life-sized chess game. At the last dinner of the school year, the Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore rewards Ron's chess skill by giving him fifty House points, which helps Gryffindor win the House Cup.\n\"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\".\nRon returns in \"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\" (1998). During the summer after his first year at Hogwarts, Ron writes to Harry several times. He receives no answer because his letters are intercepted by Dobby the house-elf. Ron becomes so concerned that he and his brothers Fred and George fly to Harry's house in their father's enchanted car. Harry spends the next month at the Weasleys' home. When Harry and Ron are unable to board the train to Hogwarts, they take the flying car instead. Ron receives a Howler from his mother, who berates him for taking the car.\nLater in the novel, Ron and Harry use Polyjuice Potion to disguise themselves as they infiltrate the Slytherin dormitory and attempt to gather information about the Chamber of Secrets. During a journey into the Forbidden Forest, Ron is forced to encounter his worst nightmare: spiders. The giant arachnids nearly devour Ron and Harry, but the enchanted car rescues them. Ron and Harry then enter the Chamber to save Ron's sister Ginny, who was kidnapped. After Harry rescues her, both boys are given awards for their service to Hogwarts.\n\"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban\".\nIn \"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban\" (1999), Ron's pet rat Scabbers goes missing. Ron, Harry and Hermione eventually discover him hiding in Hagrid's hut. When Scabbers runs off again, Ron chases him to the Whomping Willow, where he is snatched by a large black dog and dragged into a tunnel. Ron and his friends follow the tunnel to the Shrieking Shack. The dog turns out to be Sirius Black, who explains that Scabbers is actually the Death Eater Peter Pettigrew. As Ron returns to Hogwarts with Harry, Hermione, Sirius and Remus Lupin, Pettigrew knocks Ron unconscious and escapes. Ron is forced to remain in the hospital wing of Hogwarts while Harry and Hermione travel back in time to rescue Sirius and the hippogriff Buckbeak.\n\"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire\".\nThe Weasleys invite Harry and Hermione to the Quidditch World Cup in \"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire\" (2000). Ron is in awe when he sees his favourite Quidditch player, Viktor Krum. He is even more excited when Krum comes to Hogwarts to participate in the Triwizard Tournament. At Christmas time, Ron attends the Yule Ball with Padma Patil. He becomes very upset when he sees that Hermione's date to the Ball is Krum, and the two have a heated argument. In the second task of the Tournament, Harry must rescue Ron from the depths of the Great Lake in Hogwarts.\n\"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix\".\nIn \"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix\" (2003), Ron is made a Gryffindor prefect. His brother Percy congratulates him and advises him to become an ally of Dolores Umbridge, the new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor appointed by the Ministry of Magic. Ron, however, does not support Umbridge's policy of refusing to teach students practical defensive magic. He, Harry and Hermione form the group Dumebledore's Army, which provides a venue for students to practise defensive spellcasting. Ron also joins the Gryffindor Quidditch team as Keeper and helps Gryffindor win the Quidditch Cup. Near the end of the novel, Ron battles Death Eaters at the Department of Mysteries alongside Harry, Hermione, Ginny, Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood. He is injured during the fight, but makes a full recovery.\n\"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince\".\nRon returns as Quidditch Keeper in \"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince\" (2005). However, he performs poorly at Quidditch after learning that Hermione may have kissed Krum. He becomes upset when he observes his younger sister Ginny kissing a boy, and Ginny reacts by pointing out that Ron has never been kissed. To bolster Ron's confidence for an upcoming Quidditch match, Harry pretends to give him a luck potion. Believing he has actually taken the potion, Ron performs well and Gryffindor wins the match. During the ensuing celebration, Ron kisses Lavender Brown. Hermione becomes jealous and begins to ignore Ron, who gradually becomes dissatisfied with his relationship with Lavender.\nIn March, Ron eats chocolates containing a love potion. Horace Slughorn administers an antidote, then kindly offers Ron some mead. Unbeknownst to Slughorn, the mead is poisoned; Harry saves Ron's life by forcing a bezoar down his throat. Ron is taken to the hospital wing, where he is visited by a panic-stricken Hermione. After recovering, Ron reconciles with Hermione and breaks up with Lavender. Later in the novel, Death Eaters enter Hogwarts. Ron, Hermione, Ginny and other students and staff fight them. Snape kills Dumbledore during the battle, after which Ron and Hermione vow to help Harry find and destroy Voldemort's Horcruxes. Rowling said that before this novel, Ron is \"quite immature\". She said the events of \"Half-Blood Prince\" help the character to \"grow up emotionally\" and \"make himself worthy of Hermione\".\n\"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows\".\nIn \"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows\" (2007), Ron and his friends use Polyjuice Potion to impersonate employees of the Ministry of Magic. They then infiltrate the Ministry and retrieve a Horcrux in the possession of Dolores Umbridge. Fearing the locket containing the Horcrux might be lost or stolen, Harry requests that someone wear it at all times. Wearing the locket has a profound effect on Ron, who lashes out at Harry and Hermione and abandons them. Ron immediately regrets his decision to leave, but is captured by Snatchers and cannot return. Eventually he reunites with his companions with the help of the Deluminator he inherited from Dumbledore. He finds Harry attempting to recover the Sword of Gryffindor from an icy pool and rescues him from drowning. Harry forgives Ron for leaving and insists that he use the sword to destroy the locket.\nThe trio are captured by Snatchers but are rescued by the house-elf Dobby, who dies during the escape. Eventually, the trio returns to Hogwarts, hoping to find the last unknown Horcrux shown in Harry's vision. Having lost the Sword of Gryffindor to Griphook the goblin, Ron gets an idea to procure more Basilisk fangs and manages to speak enough Parseltongue to open the Chamber of Secrets, where Hermione destroys the Horcrux in Helga Hufflepuff's cup. He begins to worry about the fate of Hogwarts' elves. Upon hearing this, Hermione drops the basilisk fangs she was carrying and kisses him for the first time. He also takes part in the Battle of Hogwarts, witnessing the death of his brother Fred, and teams up with Neville to defeat Fenrir Greyback.\nIn the epilogue of \"Deathly Hallows\", which is set nineteen years after Voldemort's death, Ron and Hermione are sending their daughter Rose Granger-Weasley off to her first year at Hogwarts. They also have a younger son named Hugo. In interviews following the release of the novel, Rowling gave differing accounts of Ron's life after the events of the series. On one occasion she said Ron and Harry work for the Ministry of Magic as Aurors. In a later interview, she said that Ron works at the joke shop Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes with his brother George.\n\"Harry Potter and the Cursed Child\".\n\"Harry Potter and the Cursed Child\" is a play written by Jack Thorne from an original story by Thorne, J.K. Rowling and John Tiffany. The plot occurs nineteen years after the events of \"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows\". In the play, Ron and Hermione send their daughter Rose on the train to Hogwarts. Hermione is now the Minister for Magic, while Ron manages Weasley's Wizard Wheezes with his brother George. In the second act, Harry's son Albus Severus and Draco Malfoy's son Scorpius travel through time, and their actions change Ron and Hermione's relationship during their time at Hogwarts. Ron falls in love with Padma Patil at the Yule Ball, with the result that Ron and Hermione never marry. However, this alternate timeline is eventually erased, and the original timeline is restored.\nIn 2016, Paul Thornley portrayed Ron Weasley in the stage debut of the play at the Palace Theatre in London. For his performance, Thornley was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Play at the 2017 WhatsOnStage Awards. Thornley reprised the role in 2018 at the Lyric Theater on Broadway.\nPortrayal in films.\nRupert Grint portrays Ron Weasley in all eight \"Harry Potter\" films. He auditioned after seeing a segment on the children's news programme, \"Newsround\", inviting children to apply for the role. Grint sent in a photo, a self-written script and a rap explaining his suitability for the part. Rowling was supportive of the casting, calling Grint perfect for the role. Grint's performance in \"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone\" earned him the Satellite Award for Outstanding New Talent and the Young Artist Award for Most Promising Young Newcomer. In a 2020 article, Nathan Sharp of \"Screen Rant\" described him as the most \"natural\" child actor in the early films, and \"excellent from minute one\". Grint commented on playing Ron in the series: \"The line between Ron Weasley and me got thinner with each film\".\nCharacterisation.\nOutward appearance.\nIn the first novel, Ron is described as \"tall, thin and gangling, with freckles, big hands and feet, and a long nose\". He has the trademark red hair of the Weasleys, and is one of Harry's tallest schoolmates, even outgrowing some of his older brothers. Rowling has stated that Ron has blue eyes.\nPersonality.\nRon is known for his humour, loyalty, readiness to defend his friends and his love of food. In an interview, Rowling described Ron as very funny but insensitive and immature. As his first exercise with the actors who portray the central trio, Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n, who directed the third film in the series, \"Prisoner of Azkaban\", assigned them to write an autobiographical essay about their character, written in the first person, spanning birth to the discovery of the magical world, and including the character's emotional experience. Of Rupert Grint's essay, Cuar\u00f3n recalls, \"Rupert didn't deliver the essay. When I questioned why he didn't do it, he said, 'I'm Ron; Ron wouldn't do it.' So I said, 'Okay, you do understand your character.'\" Commenting on Ron's character development in the final book, Rowling explained that \"Ron is the most immature of the three main characters, but in part seven he grows up. He was never strong footed, people see him mostly as Harry's friend; his mother had actually wanted a girl and in the last book he finally has to acknowledge his weaknesses. But it's exactly that which makes Ron a man.\"\nRon proves his bravery and magical ability several times, such as by playing 'real wizard's chess' in the first book, entering into the Forbidden Forest with Harry during the second book despite his arachnophobia, producing a full-corporeal Patronus Charm in the fifth book and even, in the seventh book, getting basilisk fangs from the Chamber of Secrets by mimicking Parseltongue without understanding it.\nSome of Ron's qualities serve as foils to Harry's. Whereas Harry is an orphan with more gold than he needs, Ron comes from a loving but poor family. Many of his possessions are hand-me-downs. Harry is famous but would prefer to avoid the spotlight; Ron, in comparison, is often perceived as a mere lackey and sometimes becomes jealous of the recognition Harry receives. Overshadowed by his many siblings and the fame and achievements of his friends, Ron's inferiority complex and need to prove himself are the main thrusts of his character arc. As the books progress, he matures from an insecure boy to a competent young man capable of strategy and leadership.\nMagical abilities and skills.\nRon is given his brother Charlie's old, chipped wand, which is made out of ash and has a unicorn hair sticking out of the end. He holds the wand together with Spellotape after nearly breaking it in half at the start of \"Chamber of Secrets\", but it malfunctions dreadfully after this, backfiring spells, making strange noises, and emitting objects from the wrong end. Ron's new wand is fourteen inches, willow and unicorn hair, which he procures before the start of his third year at Hogwarts. Ron's talents are rarely shown, but he, like the other DA members, survives a violent encounter with adult Death Eaters in \"Order of the Phoenix\", and it is implied that during the Death Eater assault in \"Half-Blood Prince\" he held his own quite well because he was being helped by Felix Felicis, the good luck potion. In \"Deathly Hallows\", Ron loses his original wand, and takes Peter Pettigrew's wand for his own. Following this, Ron begins to demonstrate more aptitude and general knowledge, along with a sudden spurt in maturity after a terrible row with Harry. For a while, he effectively leads the trio in the hunt for the Horcruxes while Harry suffers a major depression.\nReception.\nThe entertainment website \"IGN\" selected Ron as the third best \"Harry Potter\" character, writing that his status as comic relief makes him \"instantly endearing\". The \"IGN\" writers observed that \"unlike most sidekicks, Ron isn't a coward or a simpleton, nor is he content to live in Harry's shadow ... Ron overcomes his shortcomings with faithfulness and perseverance\". \"Empire\" magazine included Ron's friendship with Harry as one of the 33 best friendships in film.\nIn popular culture.\nIn 2003, the British charity organisation Comic Relief performed a spoof story called \"Harry Potter and the Secret Chamberpot of Azerbaijan\", in which Jennifer Saunders appeared as both Ron and J. K. Rowling.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "469706": "Chris Rankin\nNew Zealand\u2013born British actor\nChris Rankin is a New Zealand\u2013born British actor, director, and producer who is best known for playing Percy Weasley in the \"Harry Potter film franchise\".\nEarly life.\nRankin was adopted. Rankin lived in Rothesay Bay until he was six, attending Kristin School in Albany. He and his parents subsequently moved to Norfolk in"}, "descending_order": ["19156567", "469706", "158595"], "permutation_1": ["19156567", "469706", "158595"], "permutation_2": ["469706", "19156567", "158595"], "permutation_3": ["158595", "19156567", "469706"]}
{"id": "nq_-5961938308008610407", "docs_added": {"32262767": "Better Call Saul\nAmerican legal crime drama television series (2015\u20132022)\nBetter Call Saul is an American legal crime drama television series created by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould for AMC. Part of the \"Breaking Bad\" franchise, it is a spin-off of Gilligan's previous series, \"Breaking Bad\" (2008\u20132013), to which it serves primarily as a prequel, with some scenes taking place during and after the events of \"Breaking Bad\". \"Better Call Saul\" premiered on AMC on February 8, 2015, and ended on August 15, 2022, after six seasons consisting of 63 episodes.\nSet primarily in the early to mid-2000s in Albuquerque, New Mexico, several years before \"Breaking Bad\", \"Better Call Saul\" examines the ethical decline of Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk), an aspiring lawyer and former con artist who becomes the egocentric criminal-defense attorney Saul Goodman, and Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks), a former corrupt police officer who becomes a fixer and enforcer for drug traffickers. Other main characters include Jimmy's romantic interest and colleague Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), his brother and rival Chuck McGill (Michael McKean), Chuck's law partner Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian), drug dealer Nacho Varga (Michael Mando), drug lord Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), and cartel enforcer Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton). In addition to the primary storyline, \"Better Call Saul\" includes black-and-white flashforwards set in 2010, after the events of \"Breaking Bad\", which explore the consequences of Saul's actions across both series. Odenkirk, Banks, and Esposito reprise their roles from \"Breaking Bad\", as do many others in guest appearances.\nGilligan, who created and developed \"Breaking Bad\", and Gould, who wrote the \"Breaking Bad\" episode \"Better Call Saul\", began considering a Saul Goodman spin-off in 2009. Because Saul's role in \"Breaking Bad\" had expanded beyond the writing staff's plans, Gilligan felt he could be explored further. He and Gould considered making a half-hour legal comedy featuring Saul and his various clients, but settled on an hour-long tragedy showing how he develops into the character seen in \"Breaking Bad\". \"Better Call Saul\"'s development began during the production of \"Breaking Bad\"'s final season in 2013, with Gilligan and Gould serving as co-showrunners and numerous production staff returning. Gilligan left \"Better Call Saul\" early in the third season\u2014making Gould the sole showrunner for the remainder of its run\u2014though he returned to help write the final season.\n\"Better Call Saul\" received critical acclaim, with praise for its acting, characters, writing, direction, and cinematography. Many reviewers have considered it a worthy successor to \"Breaking Bad\"\u2014some deeming it superior to its predecessor\u2014and one of the greatest television series of all time. It has garnered many accolades, including 2 Peabody Award nominations, 53 Primetime and Creative Arts Emmy Award nominations, 19 Writers Guild of America Award nominations, 20 Critics' Choice Television Award nominations, 9 Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, and 6 Golden Globe Award nominations. At the time of its airing, the series premiere held the record for the highest-rated scripted series premiere in basic cable history.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nPremise.\n\"Better Call Saul\" is a spin-off of \"Breaking Bad\", a popular crime drama television series that ran from 2008 to 2013. It is primarily a prequel that focuses on Jimmy McGill, a former con artist aiming to gain respectability as a public defender, and chronicles his gradual transformation into his eventual \"Breaking Bad\" persona of Saul Goodman, the flamboyant criminal lawyer with ties to the drug cartel. Most of the show takes place over a two-year period before the events of \"Breaking Bad\", spanning approximately 2002 to 2004.\nJimmy is inspired by his older brother Chuck McGill to leave his Chicago-area conman past, when he was known as \"Slippin' Jimmy\". He initially works in the mailroom at his brother's Albuquerque law firm, Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill (HHM), where managing partner Howard Hamlin becomes his nemesis. While at HHM Jimmy befriends Kim Wexler, a fellow mailroom employee who completes law school and becomes one of the firm's associates, and their friendship later turns romantic. Jimmy is motivated by Chuck's success to finish college and complete a Juris Doctor degree through a correspondence law school, the fictitious University of American Samoa.\nAfter attaining admission to the bar but being denied employment at HHM, Jimmy's pursuits focus on low-paying clients, including working as a public defender. He later begins to build a practice in elder law, which leads to a prolonged lawsuit against a nursing home chain he discovers is defrauding its clients. He and Chuck begin working together on a class-action suit, which Chuck quickly turns over to HHM, squeezing out Jimmy. Jimmy begins to unravel due to Chuck's constant belittling, sabotage, and vindictive behavior toward him. Jimmy's life and career begin to intersect with the illegal narcotics trade and feature characters and story arcs that continue into \"Breaking Bad\".\nAmong these arcs is the uneasy relationship between rival members of a drug cartel. On one side is Gus Fring, a fried chicken entrepreneur whose restaurant chain is a front business for his narcotics distribution. On the other are the Salamancas, a Mexican crime family who claim to have begun the drug trade in New Mexico. They are led by Hector Salamanca, and later by his nephew Lalo Salamanca. Those caught up in the conflict between Gus and the Salamancas include Ignacio \"Nacho\" Varga, a Salamanca associate who wants to protect his father from harm, and Mike Ehrmantraut, a former Philadelphia police officer who becomes a fixer for Gus but also has ties to Jimmy. As his interactions with criminals continue, Jimmy takes on the persona of the colorful Saul Goodman, and he starts to draw on his conman past while his work as an attorney goes from questionable to unethical to illegal.\nIn addition to selected scenes that take place within the \"Breaking Bad\" timeline in 2008, the show includes flashforwards, shown in black and white, to events following \"Breaking Bad\". Taking place in 2010, these flashforwards show Jimmy living as a fugitive under the identity of Gene Takavic, the manager of a Cinnabon store in Omaha, Nebraska. The flashforwards constitute the opening scenes of the first five season premieres, and make up nearly the entirety of the episodes towards the end of the series.\nProduction.\nConception.\nThe character of Saul Goodman first appeared during \"Breaking Bad\"'s second season, in an episode that was also titled \"Better Call Saul\". Bob Odenkirk, who portrayed Saul Goodman, had never seen the series prior to his appearance. The character was originally intended to appear in only four episodes, but soon became much more developed than the staff had planned. He would eventually stay on the series and become central to its narrative. As \"Breaking Bad\" continued its run, the character would grow in popularity with the audience. Odenkirk speculated this was because he is \"the program's least hypocritical figure\", and \"is good at his job\".\nVince Gilligan, who created and developed \"Breaking Bad\", and Peter Gould, who wrote the episode with Goodman's first appearance, considered a Saul Goodman spinoff as early as 2009. Gould noted that over the course of \"Breaking Bad\", there were several \"what ifs\u201d their team considered, such as if the show won a Primetime Emmy Award, or if people would buy \"Los Pollos Hermanos\" T-shirts. The staff did not expect these events to come to fruition, but after they did, they started considering a spin-off featuring Saul as a thought experiment. With the growth of Saul's character, the writers saw ways to explore the character further. While filming the \"Breaking Bad\" episode \"Full Measure\", Gilligan asked Odenkirk his thoughts on a spinoff. In July 2012, Gilligan publicly hinted at the idea, stating that he liked \"the idea of a lawyer show in which the main lawyer will do anything it takes to stay out of court\", including settling on the courthouse steps.\nDevelopment.\nIn April 2013, \"Better Call Saul\" was confirmed to be in development by Gilligan and Gould. In July 2013, before the second half of \"Breaking Bad\"'s final season aired, Gilligan said he and Gould were still working out ideas for the spin-off, but a deal had not yet been made. Netflix was one of many interested distributors, but ultimately a deal was made between AMC and the \"Breaking Bad\" production company Sony Pictures Television.\nAs Sony and AMC began to commit to a spinoff, Gilligan and Gould worked on what it would be about. They initially considered making it a half-hour show where Saul would see various clients \u2013 celebrities in guest roles \u2013 in his strip mall office, similarly to \"Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist\", but they had no idea how to write for this type of format. They eventually fell back to planning for hour-long episodes. Gilligan described \"Breaking Bad\" as being \"25-percent humor, 75-percent drama\", and speculated that they would reverse that for \"Better Call Saul\". While the intent was to add more humor, the show remained heavy with dramatic elements, with Odenkirk calling the first season \"85 percent drama, 15 percent comedy.\" Gould would call the comic element of \"Better Call Saul\" and its predecessor \"Breaking Bad\" the \"secret sauce\" to both series, saying that it made their dramatic elements stronger and vice versa.\nGilligan and Gould initially believed that Saul Goodman was insufficient to carry the show by himself, with Gilligan thinking the character was \"great flavoring\" for a show but not the substance. Eventually they came to realize that Saul, in the \"Breaking Bad\" timeframe, was a man who had come to accept himself, and recognized the potential of telling the story of how Saul got to be that person. While several of the characters are lawyers in the show, Gilligan and Gould did not want to write a legal show, but instead a crime show, but one that would necessitate some legal elements. To help in these areas, the writers spoke to real lawyers and spent time observing cases at Los Angeles Superior Court, observing that the bulk of the activity in these cases was downtime while waiting for others to complete actions.\nWriting.\nGilligan and Gould began as co-showrunners for the series. Former \"Breaking Bad\" writers Thomas Schnauz and Gennifer Hutchison joined the writing staff, with Schnauz serving as co-executive producer and Hutchison as supervising producer. Also joining the initial writing staff were Bradley Paul and former \"Breaking Bad\" writer's assistant Gordon Smith.\nHaving learned several lessons from \"Breaking Bad\" related to foreshadowing without writing the foresight, Gilligan and Gould gave themselves more flexibility in how \"Better Call Saul\"'s plot would develop over its run. From the beginning they had no firm idea where it would end up outside the connection to \"Breaking Bad\". For example, Gilligan and Gould had already committed to the \"Better Call Saul\" title in the beginning, so that in following this route, they believed they had to quickly get from Jimmy McGill to Saul Goodman, or they would otherwise disappoint their audience. However, as they wrote the show, they realized \"we don't want to get to Saul Goodman \u2026 and that's the tragedy\". Rhea Seehorn's performance as Kim Wexler during the first season also influenced this decision. Impressed with Seehorn and her character, the writers subsequently decided to put more focus on the Jimmy\u2013Kim relationship starting in the second season, in addition to further slowing Jimmy's transition into Saul Goodman for the remainder of the series. Gilligan compared this to the impact Aaron Paul's acting had on \"Breaking Bad\"'s eventual storyline.\nIn writing for \"Better Call Saul\", Gilligan and Gould recognized they were including overlaps with \"Breaking Bad\", and had ideas of characters that they would include, such as Gus Fring, though on no set timetable within the show's development. Gilligan described the writing approach as if developing two separate shows, one that centered on Jimmy/Saul, Kim, Chuck, and Howard, and a second on the more familiar \"Breaking Bad\" characters like Mike and Gus. Where possible, they had written in minor \"Breaking Bad\" characters in smaller parts or as Easter eggs to fans, but Gilligan preferred to include such major \"Breaking Bad\" characters as Walter or Jesse only if this seemed unconstrained and satisfactory to both the production team and the audiences.\nBecause of the closeness to the \"Breaking Bad\" storyline, a writer would be tasked at the start of each season to rewatch all 62 episodes of the show and verify that the scripts for the \"Better Call Saul\" season introduced no conflicts. As the show continued, the show's \"brain trust\" consisting of script coordinators Ariel Levine and Kathleen Williams-Foshee reviewed each script to help maintain the continuity with \"Breaking Bad\", including tracking minor character traits and assuring small details from the previous show were kept correct if brought up again.\nGilligan left the \"Better Call Saul\" writing staff early in the third season to focus on other projects, resulting in Gould becoming sole showrunner. This transition had been planned since the show's debut. Upon his departure, Gilligan expressed his hopes to return to the writers room during the show's final season. He remained involved in the fourth and fifth seasons, but had little to do with developing the show's contents during this period. Instead, Gilligan reduced his role to being a \"director for hire\", having directed an episode during each season when he was not on the writing staff. Gilligan went on to laud Gould for maintaining the \"Better Call Saul\"'s high quality, stating the series got better even after he left. Gould would bring Gilligan back to the writers room for the sixth and final season, calling it \"wonderful to have him there, so we can finish this show that we started together.\"\nCasting.\nStarring cast.\nBob Odenkirk confirmed he would reprise Saul Goodman in the starring role when the series was first announced, but his character would be introduced as lawyer Jimmy McGill. In January 2014, it was announced that Jonathan Banks would reprise his \"Breaking Bad\" role as Mike Ehrmantraut and be a series regular.\nNew cast members included Michael McKean as McGill's elder brother Chuck McGill. McKean previously guest-starred in an episode of Odenkirk's \"Mr. Show\" and Gilligan's \"X-Files\" episode \"Dreamland\". Rhea Seehorn auditioned and got the role of Kimberly \"Kim\" Wexler in April 2014, her character being described as \"prestigious attorney ... whose hard life is complicated by her romantic entanglements with somebody else at the firm\". In May 2014, Patrick Fabian was cast on the show as Howard Hamlin, a \"Kennedy-esque lawyer who's winning at life\". After impressing Gilligan and Gould with his audition tape and screen test, Michael Mando was cast as the \"smart and calculating criminal\" Ignacio \"Nacho\" Varga. Mando's character had been previously mentioned but not seen in the \"Breaking Bad\" episode \"Better Call Saul\".\nGoing into the third season, Giancarlo Esposito was added to the main cast as Gus Fring, a drug kingpin who previously served as one of \"Breaking Bad\"'s main antagonists. Esposito was previously a starring cast member in \"Breaking Bad\" for the same role. McKean would leave the series at season's end due to his character being written out, but would make appearances in the fourth and sixth seasons. Tony Dalton made his first appearance as Lalo Salamanca in the fourth season, and would be promoted to the main cast for the fifth. Similar to Nacho, Lalo had been a character mentioned only by name in the same \"Breaking Bad\" episode \"Better Call Saul\".\nReturn appearances from \"Breaking Bad\" cast members.\nBefore the second season, Gilligan confirmed that more \"Breaking Bad\" characters would appear on the spin-off, but remained vague on which ones were likely to be seen. By the next season, Gilligan said that the show had been on long enough that any reuse of \"Breaking Bad\" characters would require more than \"just a cameo or an Alfred Hitchcock walkthrough\", and that their appearances would need to be essential to the story.\n\"Breaking Bad\" lead actors Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul regularly said throughout the series run that they would be open to reprising their respective roles as Walter White and Jesse Pinkman on \"Better Call Saul\". However, both maintained that they would only appear if Gilligan found a sufficiently good reason to bring them on the show. Both would eventually appear in the final season. Dean Norris, a \"Breaking Bad\" starring cast member who portrayed Hank Schrader, stated that he could not be part of \"Better Call Saul\" in the beginning due to his involvement in the CBS series \"Under the Dome\". However, he was able to reprise his role as a guest star in the fifth season. Plans were initially made for Betsy Brandt to reprise her role as Hank's wife Marie Schrader in a cameo in the second season, but the writer's room objected, considering the idea to be distracting for audiences. Brandt would eventually reprise the role in the final season.\nOther \"Breaking Bad\" cast members spoke of the potential of being on \"Better Call Saul\". Before the series began, Anna Gunn mentioned a talk with Gilligan over possible guest appearances as Skyler White. Bill Burr was set to return as Patrick Kuby in the fifth season, but scheduling fell through due to him needing to attend to a personal matter. After the series ended, Gould mentioned his desire to bring back the remaining \"Breaking Bad\" characters for the finale, but he and the writing staff could not find a proper way to have them fit into the story.\nFilming.\nPrincipal photography for \"Better Call Saul\"'s six seasons took place from June 2, 2014, to February 9, 2022. Like its predecessor, \"Better Call Saul\" is set in and around Albuquerque, New Mexico, with filming primarily taking place at Albuquerque Studios. Gilligan directed the pilot. Additional filming was done in March 2022, after principal photography for the series ended, for the opening teaser of the season six episode \"Point and Shoot\". With several crew members but no cast members on hand, the scene was filmed in Leo Carrillo State Beach, California. This was the only time the series was filmed outside of New Mexico.1:00:01\u20131:01:29\nNotable exterior locations include the Twisters restaurant used previously in \"Breaking Bad\" for Gus's Los Pollos Hermanos, a parking lot kiosk at the Albuquerque Convention Center for where Mike worked in the first few seasons, the Old Bernalillo County Courthouse as the local courthouse, and two nearby office buildings in the North Valley, including Northrop Grumman's, that collectively are used for the HHM office spaces. Jimmy's back office is located in an actual nail salon, which the producers accommodated by working with the owners. The Salamanca's restaurant is a real business in the South Valley that production modified slightly for the show, but which otherwise remained open. The scenes set in Omaha are filmed at Cottonwood Mall in Albuquerque; production worked with Cinnabon to bring in the period-specific equipment and service items for the segments, and the extras in the store during these scenes are Cinnabon employees. The New Mexico Film Office reported that the first four seasons of \"Better Call Saul\" brought over US$ into the state, and they have hired 1,600 crew for each season and a total of 11,300 extras.\n\"Better Call Saul\" employs \"Breaking Bad\"'s signature time jumps. Notably, the opening episode for the first five seasons started with a black and white flash-forward to a period in the years after the finale of \"Breaking Bad\". Here, Saul has been relocated to Omaha, Nebraska, as \"Gene\", a manager of a Cinnabon store, and remains paranoid about anyone discovering his past identity. This was foreshadowed in the penultimate episode of \"Breaking Bad\", \"Granite State\", in which Saul tells Walter: \"If I'm lucky, a month from now, best-case scenario, I'm managing a Cinnabon in Omaha.\"\nThe show's director of photography was Arthur Albert for the first two seasons, and Marshall Adams starting with season 3. Additionally, Paul Donachie served as a cinematographer on episodes \"Namaste\" (2020), \"Carrot and Stick\" (2022) and \"Hit and Run\" (2022). Seasons 1 and 2 were filmed mainly on RED Dragon cameras. Starting with season 3, Panasonic VariCam Pure were incorporated due to their extra low-light sensitivity. This allowed the crew to shoot extra wide exterior shots at night as well as during the day, and to shoot on sets in near total darkness, such as nighttime in Chuck's unelectrified house. For scenes requiring to film from cramped spaces, a Panasonic Lumix GH4 camera was used. In season 4, three RED and two VariCam Pure cameras were used. For seasons 5 and 6, mostly Arri ALEXA LF was used.\nTitle sequences.\nEach episode's title sequence features a different low-quality image that recalls Saul Goodman's days on \"Breaking Bad\". This includes the inflatable Statue of Liberty balloon that sat atop Saul's office, a drawer of burner phones kept in his desk, and a bus stop bench that advertised his business. Gould and Gilligan were inspired by the poor quality of early VHS tapes and the notoriously low production values of 1980s public-access television, and from the fact that Saul Goodman's ads on \"Breaking Bad\" were done in a similar style. They intended for the title sequences to appear \"purposefully shitty\" in order to stand out from its contemporaries, which generally had increased visual quality and production standards. Some of the title sequences were put together from unused footage from \"Breaking Bad\", but others were filmed specifically to create new ones. The title sequences were put together by assistant editor Curtis Thurber, and scored by Little Barrie guitarist Barrie Cadogan. When Cadogan was putting the music together, he was told the producers wanted a piece of music that would be cut abruptly at 15 seconds.\nAs every season except for the last has ten episodes each, the title credits for every season's corresponding episode number would reuse the same image. However, beginning with the second season, each of the episode's title sequences would continue to decline in picture quality by intermittently flashing black and white, and continue to lose color with each passing season. This caused many to theorize that this symbolized Jimmy McGill's storyline gradually transitioning to that of his post-\"Breaking Bad\" alter-ego Gene Takavic, whose scenes were entirely in black and white.\nWith the final season featuring thirteen episodes instead of the usual ten, the title sequences would take a new format. During \"Nippy\", the title sequence features Saul Goodman's \"World's Greatest Lawyer\" mug falling off his desk and shattering on the floor, as was typical during a season's tenth episode. However, the title image and music prematurely stops and is replaced by a blue screen, recreating the effects of a home video recording on a VCR, and then displayed the show's title and creator credits. This is also the first episode to take place entirely after the events of \"Breaking Bad\". The remaining three title sequences retain the blue background, but briefly flash to an image previously unseen in the intro, with a distorted version of the theme song playing underneath. They then revert to the blue background again and display the title and creator credits. Before the show resumes, they again briefly flash to another new image that will be seen later on in the episodes.\nEpisodes.\n\"Better Call Saul\" had its series premiere on February 8, 2015, and aired for six seasons until its series finale on August 15, 2022. Its episodes are split between two main timelines. The primary timeline begins in 2002, six years before the first episode of \"Breaking Bad\". During this period, where a majority of the series takes place, Saul Goodman mainly practices as a lawyer in Albuquerque, New Mexico under his birthname Jimmy McGill.\nThe secondary timeline takes place in 2010, following events of \"Breaking Bad\"'s finale, where Saul has fled Albuquerque and hides in Omaha, Nebraska under the alias Gene Takavic. This later timeline would be shown only in the cold open in the first five season premieres, but would be fully explored in the last four episodes of the series.\nSeason 1 (2015).\nThe first season was planned to be released in 2014 but was delayed. The first teaser trailer debuted on AMC on August 10, 2014, and confirmed its premiere date of February 2015. On November 20, 2014, AMC announced the series would have a two-night premiere; the first episode aired on Sunday, February 8, 2015, at 10:00 pm (ET), and then moved into its regular time slot the following night, airing new episodes Mondays at 10:00 pm until the season concluded on April 6, 2015.\nIn 2002, Jimmy schemes to represent Craig Kettleman, accused of embezzlement, leading to encounters with psychotic drug lord Tuco Salamanca and his lieutenant Nacho. Jimmy also cares for his brother Chuck, who is housebound with electromagnetic hypersensitivity. While pursuing elder law, Jimmy learns of seniors being defrauded by the Sandpiper retirement community. As the class action lawsuit against Sandpiper grows, Chuck suggests giving it to his law firm, Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill. Jimmy receives a small of counsel fee and a share of any future settlement, but is blocked from participation. Jimmy learns Chuck sabotaged his legal career out of resentment. After the death of an old friend, Jimmy finds success when Davis & Main, another firm HHM brought in to assist with the Sandpiper case, offers to hire him.\nIn 2010, Gene manages a Cinnabon by day, but in the evening reminisces about his life as Saul by watching a VHS tape of his old television advertisements.\nSeason 2 (2016).\nPrior to the series' launch, on June 19, 2014, AMC renewed the series for a second season of 13 episodes to premiere in early 2016, which was later reduced to 10 episodes. The season premiered on February 15, 2016, and concluded on April 18, 2016.\nIn 2002, Jimmy works as an associate at D&M, but quits after his ostentatious legal style doesn't mesh with the firm's corporate demeanor. Kim is demoted by Chuck's partner, Howard Hamlin, because of Jimmy's actions. She secures banking firm Mesa Verde as an HHM client, although Howard denies her credit. Kim quits HHM and opens a shared private practice with Jimmy. Jimmy sabotages Chuck's work for Mesa Verde, which drops HHM and hires Kim, but Chuck discovers this and tricks Jimmy into confessing. Nacho wants to hire Mike Ehrmantraut to kill Tuco, but Mike instead removes him from the Salamanca organization by engineering his imprisonment. Hector Salamanca, cartel elder and Tuco's uncle, confronts Mike. Mike attempts to assassinate Hector, but is mysteriously interrupted.\nIn 2010, Gene accidentally locks himself in the dumpster room when closing out the Cinnabon for the night. Instead of alerting police, he spends the night waiting for the janitor to open the door.\nSeason 3 (2017).\nAMC announced on March 15, 2016, that \"Better Call Saul\" was renewed for a 10-episode third season, which premiered April 10, 2017, and concluded on June 19, 2017. \nIn 2003, the results of the disciplinary hearing have Jimmy's law license suspended and Chuck's hypersensitivity condition is revealed to be psychosomatic. After Jimmy sabotages Chuck's insurance, Howard urges him to retire, but Chuck sues HHM in spite. Howard buys him out of the firm, leading Chuck to commit suicide. Gus prevents Hector's assassination, and Mike attacks Hector's trucks to steal $250,000 on Gus's orders. To launder the money, Gus arranges for Mike's hire as a contracted security consultant at Madrigal. Hector plans to take over the business of Nacho's father, so his son attempts to kill Hector by sabotaging his angina medication. Hector suffers a stroke during a confrontation with cartel lieutenant Juan Bolsa, which renders him comatose.\nIn 2010, Gene points mall security guards towards a shoplifter during his lunch break. Later, a stressed Gene suddenly collapses during his work.\nSeason 4 (2018).\nFollowing the third season's end on June 27, 2017, AMC renewed the series for a 10-episode fourth season, which premiered on August 6, 2018, and concluded on October 8, 2018. \nIn 2003, Jimmy regains his outgoing demeanor after Howard shoulders the blame for Chuck's death. Jimmy manages a cell phone store but earns more by reselling prepaid phones to criminals. A year later, his law license reinstatement is denied over lack of remorse for Chuck. After faking mourning, he successfully appeals and practices as \"Saul Goodman\". Gus learns Nacho attempted to kill Hector and blackmails him into undermining the Salamancas. Mike escorts engineers who evaluate Gus's industrial laundry site as a potential underground meth lab. Gus hires Werner Ziegler to oversee construction, but Mike is ordered to kill Werner when he goes AWOL to spend time with his wife. Hector recovers from his stroke, but is mute and can only move his right index finger. His nephew, Lalo Salamanca, arrives to run Hector's business, and learns some details of Gus's construction project.\nIn 2010, Gene is hospitalized after his collapse and later discharged. He becomes uneasy when a taxi driver with an Albuquerque Isotopes air freshener seems to recognize him.\nSeason 5 (2020).\nThe series was renewed for a fifth season on July 28, 2018, just prior to the airing of the fourth season. The fifth season was not expected to air until 2020; according to AMC's Sarah Barnett, the delay was \"driven by talent needs\". The 10-episode fifth season would start airing with a special Sunday broadcast on February 23, 2020, with following episodes to air on Mondays until the season concluded on April 20, 2020. \nIn 2004, Jimmy's law practice as Saul Goodman draws him into Albuquerque's drug trade and he is conflicted when Howard offers him a position at HHM. Kim balances her Mesa Verde and \"pro bono\" work with her own feelings for Jimmy, and finds herself employing similar conman-style tactics. Jimmy and Kim later devise a plan to ruin Howard to settle the Sandpiper case. Lalo's presence in Albuquerque forces Gus to suspend construction of his meth lab. Nacho and Mike become pawns in the feud between the Salamancas and Gus. After Lalo is arrested for murder, he hires Jimmy to represent him and arrange bail, which almost kills Jimmy. After an unsuccessful attempt on Lalo's life by Gus's hired assassins after his release, Lalo deduces that Nacho has betrayed him.\nIn 2010, during another lunch break, Gene is approached by the taxi driver, Jeff, and his friend Buddy. Jeff reveals he recognized Gene as Saul Goodman from when he previously lived in Albuquerque. Gene admits he is living with a secret identity.\nSeason 6 (2022).\nAMC renewed the series for a sixth season on January 16, 2020, with a scheduled premiere in 2021. Showrunner Peter Gould confirmed it would be the show's final season and consist of 13 episodes rather than the usual 10. Production experienced long delays due to COVID-19 and star Bob Odenkirk needing several weeks to fully recover from a heart attack he experienced on set. The sixth and final season was split into two halves. The first half premiered on April 18, 2022 and concluded on May 23, 2022. The first two episodes of the season would air back to back. The last half of the season premiered on July 11, 2022 and concluded on August 15, 2022.\nIn 2004, Nacho attempts to flee from the Salamancas after the attempt on Lalo's life, but after Gus falsely implicates him, Nacho sacrifices himself in exchange for his father's safety. Jimmy and Kim smear Howard's reputation, thereby forcing a settlement of the Sandpiper case. Howard confronts them, but is murdered by Lalo. After forcing Kim to act as a diversion, Lalo ambushes Gus and accesses the construction site of Gus's meth lab. Gus kills Lalo with a hidden gun. Mike makes Howard's death appear as a suicide, and oversees the burial of Howard and Lalo beneath the lab. A traumatized Kim quits the law and divorces Jimmy. Some time later, Jimmy has fully transformed into Saul Goodman, setting the groundwork for his appearance in \"Breaking Bad\".\nIn 2008, in another series of flashbacks that take place during the events of \"Breaking Bad\", it is revealed that Saul had deduced early on that Walter White was the mysterious \"Heisenberg\" who is producing the high-quality crystal meth in the New Mexico area. Armed with this knowledge, and despite Mike's warnings, Saul decides to recruit Walter and Jesse Pinkman as his full-time clients, figuring it would be good for business.\nIn 2010, Gene approaches Jeff and Buddy with an offer to rob a department store. After reaching out to Kim, who now lives in Florida, Gene devises a scheme to obtain financial identification of rich single men at bars he can sell for profit. When the scheme goes wrong, Buddy quits the operation, Jeff is arrested, and Gene is eventually caught. He is extradited to Albuquerque for the trial and feigns testimony implicating Kim so she can be summoned to court. Jimmy confesses to Kim and those at the trial about his crimes during the events of \"Breaking Bad\" and \"Better Call Saul\", as well as his role in Chuck's death. He is subsequently sentenced to 86 years in prison. Jimmy is recognized as Saul in prison and gains popularity with the inmates. Kim visits him and they share a cigarette before parting again.\nRelease.\nBroadcast.\n\"Better Call Saul\" would air on cable network AMC. The series premiere drew in 4.4 million and 4 million in the 18\u201349 and 25\u201354 demographics, respectively, and received an overall viewership of 6.9 million. This was the record for the highest-rated scripted series premiere in basic cable history, until it was surpassed later the same year by another AMC series, \"Fear the Walking Dead\".\nStreaming.\nIn December 2013, Netflix announced that the entire first season would be available for streaming in the U.S. after the airing of the first-season finale, and in Latin America and Europe each episode would be available a few days after the episode airs in the U.S. However, the first season was not released on Netflix in the U.S. until February 1, 2016. Internationally, episodes of the second season became available the day after they aired in the U.S.\nNetflix would be the exclusive video-on-demand provider for the series and made the content available in all its territories, except for Australia and New Zealand. In Australia, \"Better Call Saul\" premiered on the streaming service Stan on February 9, 2015, acting as the service's flagship program. In New Zealand, the show was exclusive to the video-on-demand service Lightbox before moving to Neon in 2020 when both services were merged. The episodes were available for viewing within three days of broadcast in the U.S.\nIn the United Kingdom and Ireland, the series was acquired by Netflix on December 16, 2013, and the first episode premiered on February 9, 2015, with the second episode released the following day. Every subsequent episode was released each week thereafter. In Ireland, the series began airing on Irish TV network TG4 on October 18, 2022. In India, the series was broadcast on Colors Infinity within 24 hours of the U.S. broadcast.\nDuring the final season's run in 2022, each episode would be available to stream the day they premiered on AMC+, AMC's streaming service which first launched in June 2020. The sixth season premiere resulted in the biggest day of new subscriber sign-ups for AMC+, and by the mid-season finale episodic viewership on the streaming service rose by 61%. Upon the release of the series finale, the app experienced an outage, causing many users to be logged out. AMC later reported that first-day viewing numbers for the finale on AMC+ was four times as big as the season premiere, and called the series' final season the highest acquisition driver in the history of the streaming service.\nHome media.\nEach season would be released on Blu-ray and DVD. A limited edition Blu-ray set for the first season was also released with 3D packaging and a postcard vinyl of the \"Better Call Saul\" theme song by Junior Brown. The complete series was issued on Blu-ray and DVD in region 1 on December 6, 2022, which spanned 19 discs and included 70 hours of bonus features.\nReception.\nCritical response.\n\"Better Call Saul\" received critical acclaim and is considered to be an outstanding example of how to successfully produce a prequel and spinoff work that defies expectations. Many critics have called \"Better Call Saul\" a worthy successor to \"Breaking Bad\" and some have even deemed it superior to its predecessor. In September 2019, \"The Guardian\" ranked the show at No. 48 on its list of the 100 best TV shows of the 21st century, describing it as \"A supremely measured character piece that has steadily improved as its central tragedy has materialised.\" In 2021, \"Empire\" ranked \"Better Call Saul\" at No. 27 on their list of The 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time. Also in 2021, it was voted the 23rd-best TV series of the 21st century by the BBC, as picked by 206 TV experts from around the world. In September 2022, \"Rolling Stone\" listed \"Better Call Saul\" as the 32nd greatest TV show of all time, in its updated list from 2016.\nThe first season has a 97% approval rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 8.1/10 based on 291 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, \"\"Better Call Saul\" is a quirky, dark character study that manages to stand on its own without being overshadowed by the series that spawned it.\" Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a \"generally favorable\" score of 78 based on 43 reviews.\nThe second season has a 97% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average score of 8.7/10 based on 182 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, \"\"Better Call Saul\" continues to tighten its hold on viewers with a batch of episodes that inject a surge of dramatic energy while showcasing the charms of its talented lead.\" On Metacritic, it has a score of 85 out of 100, based on 18 critics, indicating \"universal acclaim\".\nThe third season has a 98% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average score of 8.75/10 based on 175 reviews. The website's critical consensus is, \"\"Better Call Saul\" shows no signs of slipping in season 3, as the introduction of more familiar faces causes the inevitable transformation of its lead to pick up exciting speed.\" On Metacritic, it has a score of 87 out of 100, based on 18 critics, indicating \"universal acclaim\".\nThe fourth season has a 99% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average score of 8.9/10 based on 185 reviews. The website's critical consensus states, \"Well-crafted and compelling as ever, \"Better Call Saul\" deftly balances the show it was and the one it will inevitably become.\" On Metacritic, it has a score of 87 out of 100, based on 16 reviews, indicating \"universal acclaim\".\nThe fifth season has a 99% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average score of 8.9/10 based on 185 reviews. The website's critical consensus is, \"Grounded by Bob Odenkirk's endlessly nuanced, lived-in performance, \"Better Call Saul\"'s fifth season is a darkly funny, vividly realized master class in tragedy.\" On Metacritic, it has a score of 92 out of 100 based on 16 critics, indicating \"universal acclaim\".\nThe sixth season has a 99% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average score of 9.4/10 based on 182 reviews. The website's critical consensus is, \"\"Better Call Saul\" remains as masterfully in control as Jimmy McGill keeps insisting he is in this final season, where years of simmering storytelling come to a scintillating boil.\" On Metacritic, the season has a score of 94 out of 100 based on 20 critics, indicating \"universal acclaim\".\nComparisons to \"Breaking Bad\".\nAfter the airing of the series finale, Stuart Jeffries of \"The Guardian\" said that the series had surprisingly surpassed its predecessor in quality, saying: \"Over six series, \"Better Call Saul\" evolved into a more profound and beautiful drama about human corruption than its predecessor. It mutated into something visually more sumptuous than \"Breaking Bad\", while never, for a moment, losing its verbal dexterity and moral compass\". Craig Elvy of \"Screen Rant\" also opined that the series was better than its predecessor, saying: \"Jimmy McGill's spinoff leaves a very familiar legacy \u2013 sustained and enthusiastic praise from audiences and critics, capped by an ending that satisfies across the board.\" He went on to say: \"When \"Better Call Saul\" began, many would've hoped the spinoff could either escape \"Breaking Bad\"'s shadow, or somehow enhance Walt and Jesse's story with illuminating new details. Few dared dream \"Better Call Saul\" would achieve both, and the sheer ambition to create a spinoff that wholly embraces its predecessor whilst also existing in a totally different realm exemplifies why \"Better Call Saul\" has an ever-so-slight edge over \"Breaking Bad\".\" Jeremy Urquhart of \"Collider\" made a comparison between the quality of both series, saying: \"\"Breaking Bad\" succeeds as a crime-thriller tragedy with a fast-paced plot, and \"Better Call Saul\" works as a slower-paced, character-focused drama (with some dark comedy)\". He said the list \"doesn't aim to argue that one is better than the other. It's a matter of personal preference, but it's hard to deny that there are certain things \"Better Call Saul\" does better, but also some areas where it isn't quite as great as its parent show.\"\nAccolades.\n\"Better Call Saul\" received 53 Emmy Award nominations, with zero wins, which is the record for the most nominations without a win. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest shows of all time to never win an Emmy. It received seven nominations for Outstanding Drama Series, Bob Odenkirk received six nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, Jonathan Banks and Giancarlo Esposito were each nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (four times for Banks and twice for Esposito), Rhea Seehorn received two nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, and Michael McKean was nominated for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series. The series also received eight nominations for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series and one nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series.\nFranchise.\n\"Better Call Saul\" has its own set of official multimedia spin-offs and related media within the \"Breaking Bad\" franchise. This includes a talk show, several web series and digital shorts, comic books, and an insider podcast.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["32262767"], "permutation_1": ["32262767"], "permutation_2": ["32262767"], "permutation_3": ["32262767"]}
{"id": "nq_6204046156930868571", "docs_added": {"1147077": "Fourth Anglo-Mysore War\n1799\u201399 conflict in the Kingdom of Mysore\nThe Fourth Anglo-Mysore War was a conflict in South India between the Kingdom of Mysore against the British East India Company and the Hyderabad Deccan in 1798\u201399.\nThis was the last of the four Anglo-Mysore Wars. The British captured the capital of Mysore. The ruler Tipu Sultan was killed in the battle. Britain took indirect control of Mysore, restoring the Wadiyar dynasty to the Mysore throne (with a British commissioner to advise him on all issues). Tipu Sultan's young heir, Fateh Ali, was sent into exile. The Kingdom of Mysore became a princely state in a subsidiary alliance with British India covering parts of present Kerala\u2013Karnataka and ceded Coimbatore, Dakshina Kannada and Uttara Kannada to the British.\nBackground.\nNapoleon Bonaparte's landing in Ottoman Egypt in 1798 was intended to further the capture of the British possessions in India, and the Kingdom of Mysore was a key to that next step, as the ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan, sought France as an ally and his letter to Napoleon resulted in the following reply, \"You have already been informed of my arrival on the borders of the Red Sea, with an innumerable and invincible army, full of the desire of releasing and relieving you from the iron yoke of England.\" Additionally, General Malartic, French Governor of Mauritius, issued the Malartic Proclamation seeking volunteers to assist Tipu. Horatio Nelson ended any possibility of help from Napoleon after the Battle of the Nile. However, Lord Wellesley had already set in motion a response to prevent any alliance between Tipu Sultan and France.\nInvasion and British victory.\nThree armies, one from Bombay and two British (one of which contained a division that was commanded by Colonel Arthur Wellesley, the future 1st Duke of Wellington), marched into Mysore in 1799 and besieged the capital, Srirangapatnam, after some engagements with Tipu. On 8 March, a forward force managed to hold off an advance by Tipu at the Battle of Seedaseer.\nOne notable military advance championed by Tipu Sultan was the use of mass attacks with iron-cased rocket brigades in the army. The effect of the Mysorean rockets on the British during the Third and Fourth Mysore Wars was sufficiently impressive to inspire William Congreve to develop the Congreve rockets for Napoleonic Wars.\nDuring the war, rockets were used on several occasions. One of these involved Colonel Arthur Wellesley. At the Battle of Sultanpet Tope, Wellesley's assault on the first day was soundly repulsed by Tipu's Diwan, Purnaiah. Quoting Forrest,\nAt this point (near the village of Sultanpet, Figure 5) there was a large tope, or grove, which gave shelter to Tipu's rocketmen and had obviously to be cleaned out before the siege could be pressed closer to Srirangapattana island. The commander chosen for this operation was Col. Wellesley, but advancing towards the tope after dark on the 5 April 1799, he was set upon with rockets and musket-fires, lost his way and, as Beatson politely puts it, had to \"postpone the attack\" until a more favourable opportunity should offer.\nThe following day, Wellesley launched a fresh attack with a larger force, and took the whole position without losing a single man. On 22 April 1799, twelve days before the main battle, rocketeers worked their way around to the rear of the British encampment, then \"threw a great number of rockets at the same instant\" to signal the beginning of an assault by 6,000 Indian infantry and a corps of Frenchmen, all directed by Mir Golam Hussain and Mohomed Hulleen Mir Miran. The rockets had a range of about 1,000 yards. Some burst in the air like shells. Others, called ground rockets, would rise again on striking the ground and bound along in a serpentine motion until their force was spent. According to one British observer, a young English officer named Bayly: \"So pestered were we with the rocket boys that there was no moving without danger from the destructive missiles ...\". He continued:\nThe rockets and musketry from 20,000 of the enemy were incessant. No hail could be thicker. Every illumination of blue lights was accompanied by a shower of rockets, some of which entered the head of the column, passing through to the rear, causing death, wounds, and dreadful lacerations from the long bamboos of twenty or thirty feet which are invariably attached to them.\nDuring the decisive British attack on Seringapatam on 2 May 1799, with the help of Marathas and Nizam, a British shot struck a magazine of rockets within Tipu Sultan's fort, causing it to explode and send a towering cloud of black smoke with cascades of exploding white light rising up from the battlements. On the afternoon of 4 May, when the final attack on the fort was led by Baird, he was met by \"furious musket and rocket fire\", but this did not help much; in about an hour's time the fort was taken; perhaps within another hour Tipu had been shot (the precise time of his death is not known), and the war was effectively over. When the British were on the verge of victory the French allies reportedly told Tipu to flee, but Tipu refused and famously said \"Better to live one day as a tiger than a thousand years as a sheep\". The death of Tipu Sultan led British General George Harris to exclaim \"now India is ours\".\nAftermath.\nThe victors, rather than partitioning the country, forced Tipu's family into exile and restored control of Mysore to the Wadiyars.\nMany members of the East India Company believed that Umdat ul-Umara, the Nawab of Carnatic, secretly provided assistance to Tipu Sultan during the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War; and they immediately sought his deposition after the end of the conflict.\nThe territory of the Nawab of Savanur was split among the English and Maratha forces.\nThe spot where Tipu's body was discovered under the eastern gate has been fenced off by the Archaeological Survey of India, and a plaque erected. The gate was later demolished during the 19th century to lay a wide road.\nIn popular culture.\nThe war, specifically the Battle of Mallavelly and the siege of Seringapatam, with many of the key protagonists, is covered in the historical novel \"Sharpe's Tiger\" by Bernard Cornwell.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nWorks cited.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "13500868": "Mir Sadiq\nMinister of Tipu Sultan\nMir Sadiq was a courtier who held the post of a minister in the cabinet of Tipu Sultan of Mysore and is famous for his betrayal of Tipu Sultan to the British.\nFourth Anglo-Mysore War.\nIn the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War in 1798\u201399, he betrayed Tipu Sultan during the Siege of Srirangapatana, paving the way for a British victory. During the siege, although the invading English troops were starving, Sadiq withdrew his troops, allowing the British to commence their attack on the fort. He betrayed Tipu, killing Tipu loyalist Ghazi Khan and later arranged to have Tipu trapped behind locked doors. Sadiq was killed by some of the dismayed Mysorean troops immediately following the defeat as he attempted to go over to welcome the British.\nDeath and legacy.\nFollowing his death, Sadiq's body was mutilated, exhumed and defiled for over two weeks by the angered general public, including women and children, dismayed at his betrayal of Tipu Sultan, forcing the administration to impose \"strong measures\". Even today, tourists pelt the spot where Mir Sadiq was killed. \nMir Sadiq's mausoleum, also located in Srirangapatna, has regularly been assaulted by shoes thrown by visitors over the years. Presently, it is in a severe state of disrepair, rarely visited, and its lands have been encroached. \nMuhammad Iqbal, the notable poet of Indian subcontinent, had condemned Mir Jafar and Mir Sadiq as follows:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nTranslation:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"Jafar of Bengal and Sadiq of the Deccan:<br>A stigma on humanity, on religion, and the country.\"\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "78443197": "Siege of Seringapatam (1639)\nThe Siege of Seringapatam in 1639 was a conflict between the Bijapur Sultanate's forces, led by Randaula Khan and the Mysorean army commanded by Kanthirava Narasaraja I. The Bijapur army had laid siege to the Seringapatam Fort, but Kanthirava Narasaraja I mounted a daring night attack on their encampment. The surprise assault overwhelmed the Bijapur forces, resulting in their Defeat. Following this victory, the Mysorean army triumphantly returned to the Srirangapatna Fort.\nBackground.\nKanthirava Narasaraja I incitement of Elenge Hanuma of Basavapatna and other Wodeyars of Ikkeri against their liege lord, Virabhadra Nayaka, led to a brief but intense disturbance in the region. However, the Ikkeri Nayaka swiftly quelled the rebellion, maintaining his control. Undeterred, Kenge Hanuma traveled to Bijapur, seeking the Sultan's aid. Meanwhile, Channama, a fugitive Wodeyar from Nagamangala, recently conquered by Chamaraja Wodeyar VI, also sought refuge with the Sultan. In response, the Sultan dispatched his most reputed general, Randaula Khan, leading an army of forty thousand men, with the mission to restore Kenge Hanuma to power and, if possible, seize Srirangapatna from the Wodeyars.\nPlanning.\nRandaula Khan after receiving the Sultan's orders, focused his efforts on the conquest of Srirangapatna, recognizing that capturing the city would be crucial for weakening the Wodeyars' hold over their territories. Aware that seizing the capital would not be an easy task, he carefully planned his approach, considering various strategies to bring the ruling forces under control. Khan reasoned that once Srirangapatna fell it would serve as a stronghold from which they could gradually annex the surrounding regions. His plan was to strike decisively, ensuring that the fall of the capital would lead to the eventual collapse of the Mysore Kingdom facilitating Bijapur's expansion.\nRandaula Khan, in a council of war held in his tent, briefed the Wazirs on the strong resolve and fortitude of Kanthirava Narasaraja I, as well as the unwavering loyalty of his generals and ministers. This crucial information, likely gathered from Channaiah, Khan emphasized the strength of the Wodeyar leadership to ensure his forces were prepared for battle.\nReview of The Army.\nInstructing the Wazirs, Randaula Khan expressed his intention to review the forces that various chieftains had assembled for the battlefield. Among them was Shahaji who commanded a substantial army, consisting of 6,000 horsemen, 7,000 to 8,000 foot soldiers, and 10 elephants. This formidable force was a key component of the overall strength that Khan planned to deploy in the campaign against Srirangapatna.\nMarch of Bijapur Army.\nAfter reviewing his forces, Randaula Khan ordered his entire army to march toward Srirangapatna. The army advanced through Channapatna, devastating the surrounding villages along the way, looting whatever valuables they could find. As they neared the city of Srirangapatna, their march became a path of destruction, further weakening the region's defenses before the siege.\nUpon learning of the Bijapur army's encampment near Srirangapatna, Kanthirava Narasaraja I swiftly made extensive preparations to confront the enemy. he fortified the city, rallied his generals and ministers, and mobilized his forces to defend the capital.\nDiplomacy.\nTremendous preparations were made on both sides as the conflict loomed. Randaula Khan seeking to negotiate before the battle, sent his envoys to the court of Kanthirava of Mysore. The envoys delivered a message, urging the king to surrender and avoid further bloodshed, offering terms of peace in exchange for his cooperation. They warned that if Kanthirava Narasaraja I refused, the consequences would be dire for his kingdom.\nThe envoy's told king as follows:\n\"Obedient to the orders of the Sultan of Bijapur, we took possession of many kingdoms in the Karnataka. Hearing the news of your prowess, we felt happy. Making friendship with and taking treaty from you, we will proceed with your army for further conquests. These are the words of our lord.\"\nUpon hearing the envoys' message, Kanthirava Narasaraja gave a spirited and defiant reply:\n\"We do not pay tribute nor agree to make friendship with vou either. However if you want to know our stuff, ask your lord to go to war with us together with all his forces, Has he come to lay siege to our city thinking that he would accord the same treatment as he had accorded to the poor kings of the surrounding kingdoms? His prowess is dried up.\"\nThe envoy's were send back to their back to their camp.\nRandaula Khan asked the envoys who had appeared before him as follows:\n\"What is the opinion of the king, Peace or War ?\"\nWhen the envoys returned and relayed Kanthirava's response, Randaula Khan's anger grew. Furious at the rejection of his terms, he swiftly convened a council of war with his Wazirs. the decision was made to abandon any further attempts at negotiation. Randaula Khan resolved that the only remaining option was to storm the fort of Srirangapatna planning a direct assault to break the resistance and secure victory by force.\nSiege.\nBeginning of The Siege Operatios.\nThe decision to storm the fort was swiftly executed. Randaula Khan's Wazirs quickly mobilized their forces and surrounded the fort of Srirangapatna. The air was thick with the chaos of war-elephants trumpeted, war-drums beat, and trumpets blared, creating a deafening uproar that filled the battlefield. The sounds of impending conflict reverberated across the land, signaling the doom that loomed over the fort.\nAdvise of Hanumappa Nayaka.\nUpon learning of the commander's firm resolution, Hanumappa Nayaka met with Randaula Khan and said:\n\"Why do you persist on laying siege to the town ? Make peace (honourably).\"\nBy this time, Hanumappa Nayaka recognized the futility of waging war against the determined Mysorean army. He urged caution, advising against further conflict, but his words were ignored by those around him. Randaula Khan resolute in his decision, disregarded the counsel and hastened to launch the assault.\nStrength of Bijapur Army.\nThe besieging army was a vast and diverse force, numbering between 40,000 and 50,000 horsemen and 500 to 1,000 elephants. It was divided into two main sections: the first, the original Bijapur army led by Randaula Khan and Shahaji and the second, a coalition of forces from various Karnataka chieftains, commanded by Hanumappa Nayaka. This formidable alliance was determined to overpower the defenses of Srirangapatna and bring the city under their control.\nStrength of Mysore Army.\nThe Mysore army was composed of a diverse array of contingents from various regions, including the chiefs of Eura, Channapatna, Maddur, Satyagala, Heggadadevanakote, Channarayapatna, Kikkert, Bukana Kere, Piriyapatna, Talakad, Malavalli, and Nagamangala. In addition to these regional forces, there were also troops raised by the general Nanjarajendra in charge of Srirangapatna and Mysore.\nBijapur Army Laid Siege To The Cities of Seringapatam and Mysore.\nOn January 18, 1639, Randaula Khan's forces laid siege to both the forts of Srirangapatna and Mysore simultaneously. However, the attack was met with fierce resistance, and the Bijapur army was repulsed with heavy losses. On the first day, the defeated forces retreated, encamping at Palya. In addition to the main army, several smaller divisions of the Bijapur forces were dispersed across the surrounding areas of Mysore and Srirangapatna.\nGeneral Nanjarajendra seized the opportunity presented by the precarious position of the besieging forces and launched a series of devastating night attacks. A section of the Mysore army targeted the Bijapur camp at Arakere and cut off the noses of those who fell into their hands, while another struck at Hosaholalu and yet another surprised the Muslims at Yadavagiri (Melukote). These raids, marked by brutal cruelty, inflicted severe losses on the Bijapur army in several encampments. Despite facing repeated setbacks and strong opposition from his own men, Randaula Khan remained steadfast in his determination, refusing to alter his plans for the siege.\nRandaula Khan, determined to breach the fort, appointed his most reputed generals to key positions, ensuring the siege intensified. The assault on Srirangapatna grew fiercer as the Khans and Wazirs launched a coordinated attack. Yakalas Khan, Mustafa Khan, and others scaled the ramparts from one side, while Karithi Khan, Shahaji, and Afzal Khan tackled the walls from another.\nWitnessing the determined efforts of the Bijapur forces, Nanjarajendra swiftly ordered his generals to take action against the besieging army. The Mysore generals and their troops fought with great courage, engaging the enemy fiercely. They inflicted heavy casualties, slaughtering those who fell into their hands, and successfully repulsed the remaining Bijapur forces from the surrounding areas of the fort.\nThe brutal slaughter and defeat inflicted by the Mysorean forces shattered the Bijapur army's hopes of making any significant progress in the kingdom of Mysore. In the face of this dire situation, Randaula Khan summoned his most prominent generals for a council. They deliberated on their next course of action, strategizing how to overcome the setbacks:\n\"It is impossible to prolong the war against Kanthirava Narasaraja who is very powerful. It is right that we should make peace with him some how or other.\"\nChannaiah of Nagamangala, who had played a key role in instigating the invasion of Mysore found himself increasingly bewildered by the mounting difficulties of the campaign. Fearing disgrace if Randaula Khan's proposals for peace with the king of Mysore were accepted, Channaiah appealed to the commander-in-chief, urging him not to seek a settlement. He said:\n\"Do not make peace today. I will get into the fort of Srirangapatna, understand the secrecy and send word to you to get into the fort.\"\nOn Saturday, January 19, 1639, Channaiah entered the fort and immediately sent word to Randaula Khan, urging him to rush into the fort and join the battle. Randaula Khan eager to seize the opportunity and strike at the enemy, entered the fort with his forces, ready to engage in combat. With swift action, he launched an attack.\nNanjarajendra met the besieging forces head-on in a fierce and brutal battle, where hundreds of Muslims either lost their noses or perished. The Bijapur army, shaken by the heavy losses and unable to maintain their position, fled the battlefield in disarray. This marked a victory for the king of Mysore, as the fort was freed from the clutches of the Bijapuris. The Mysore army, now victorious, took up positions around the fort, ensuring that no further attacks from the aggressors.\nNight Attack on Bijapur Army.\nAfter suffering heavy losses in both men and materials, the Bijapur army retreated and encamped a few miles away, about three miles from the city. Weakened and demoralized by their defeat, they regrouped at a safe distance.\nGeneral Nanjarajendra informed King Kanthirava Narasaraja I of the events at the fort and urged him to seize the golden opportunity to drive the Bijapur forces out before dawn. Recognizing the strategic moment, Kanthirava personally led his army to the battlefield. He divided his forces into two sections: one under Nanjarajendra and the other under Lingendra, positioning them on either side of the Bijapur encampment. On January 20, 1639, Kanthirava led the charge.\nWhen Nanjarajendra launched a night attack on the Bijapur camp, it caught Randaula Khan off guard, but as a resourceful and enterprising general, he quickly regained his composure. Mobilizing the scattered elements of his army and rousing his soldiers from their deep slumber, he prepared to face the overwhelming Mysore forces. At this critical moment Randaula Khan found himself at a crossroads either to face total annihilation or master the situation. The Khans and Wazirs, in desperation fought valiantly to repel the Mysorean onslaught. The battlefield became a scene of chaos and confusion, with arrows flying and the sounds of battle echoing through the night, leaving thousands on both sides wounded or dead.\n\"The Muslims cried out \"Thinking that we have suffered enough at the siege of the city, you have come to attack us, yet we are quite prepared to give you battle and take off your heads.\"\nDespite fierce resistance, the Bijapur forces were ultimately overwhelmed by the superior might of the Mysore army. Fortune favored the Mysoreans as they routed the Muslim forces, sending them into full retreat. The battlefield was littered with the bodies of the fallen, marking a disastrous defeat for the Muslims. Kanthirava Narasaraja I returned triumphantly to the city with the remnants of his victorious army. The spoils of war were presented before the king, who, filled with joy at the success, rewarded the prominent chiefs and warriors with generous gifts in recognition of their bravery and contributions to the victory.\nAftermath.\nRandaula Khan having lost hundreds of his best soldiers, as well as trained horses and elephants on the battlefield, could not bear the weight of his defeat and the shame it brought. In great agony and distress, he returned to Hanumappa Nayaka and expressed his sorrow :\n\"Oh Nayak! what you have said before is true, since my departure from Vijayapur( Bijapur) up to this day, may, ever since my birth up to this day I have never seen a hero of this type.\"\nOn January 21, Randaula Khan realizing the futility of continuing the siege, sought peace with Kanthirava Narasaraja I after receiving a direct order from Bijapur to return. Following the advice of Kenge-Hanumappa Nayaka, he arranged a truce through two of Kanthirava's agents, Kaveri-Hebbaruva and Minchu-Hebbaruva. The terms stipulated that the territory south of the Cauvery River would remain under the undisturbed control of Mysore while the revenue from the land north of the river would belong to Bijapur after necessary administrative expenses. Kanthirava agreed to the truce, recognizing that it ensured the territorial integrity of Mysore and spared him from the risk of another prolonged siege. In mid-February, following the terms of the truce, Randaula Khan lifted the siege of Seringapatam. having secured an agreement with Kanthirava Narasaraja I the Bijapur forces began to withdraw. The end of the siege marked the conclusion of a failed campaign for Randaula Khan, as he retreated with his forces, leaving Mysore intact and its sovereignty preserved. Randaula Khan returned to Bijapur burdened by the calamity that had befallen him and his army.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "258701": "Srirangapatna\nSrirangapatna or Srirangapattana is a town and headquarters of one of the seven Taluks of Mandya district, in the Indian State of Karnataka. It gets its name from the Ranganthaswamy temple consecrated around 984 CE. Later, under the British rule, the city was renamed to Seringapatam. Located near the city of Mandya, it is of religious, cultural and historic importance.\nThe monuments on the island town of Srirangapatna have been nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the application is pending on the tentative list of UNESCO.\nHistory.\nSrirangapatna has since time immemorial been an urban center and place of pilgrimage. During the Vijayanagar empire, it became the seat of a major viceroyalty, from where several nearby vassal states of the empire, such as Mysore and Talakad, were overseen. When perceiving the decline of the Vijayanagar empire, the rulers of Mysore ventured to assert independence, Srirangapatna was their first target. Raja Wodeyar I vanquished Rangaraya, the then viceroy of Srirangapatna, in 1610 and celebrated the \"Navaratri\" festival in the town that year. It came to be accepted in time that two things demonstrated control and signified sovereignty over the Kingdom of Mysore by any claimant to the throne, including the successful holding of the 10-day-long \"Navaratri\" festival, dedicated to Chamundeshwari, patron goddess of Mysore and control of the fort of Srirangapatna, the fortification nearest to the capital city of Mysore.\nSrirangapatna remained part of the Kingdom of Mysore from 1610 to after India's independence in 1947; as the fortress closest to the capital city of Mysore, it was the last bastion and defence of the kingdom in case of invasion.\nHyder and Tipu.\nSrirangapatna became the capital of Mysore under Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan. When Tipu finally dispensed with the charade of deference to the Wodeyar Maharaja who was actually his captive, and proclaimed the \"Khudadad State\" under his own kingship, though the then incumbent Wodeyar scion Chamaraja Wodeyar IX was still officially the king of Mysore.\nDuring Tipu Sultan's wars against the British, Kodavas, and Malabar rajas; he rounded up entire communities of Nairs, Kodavas, and Mangalorean Catholics in the conquered regions and deported them to Srirangapatna, where they were held in bondage until they received freedom from captivity as a result of Tipu's defeat by the British in 1799.\nTreaty of Seringapatam, 1792.\nThe Treaty of Seringapatam (also called Srirangapatna), signed 18 March 1792, ended the Third Anglo-Mysore War. Its signatories included Lord Cornwallis on behalf of the British East India Company, representatives of the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Maratha Empire, and Tipu Sultan, the ruler of Mysore.\nBattle of Seringapatam, 1799.\nSrirangapatna was the scene of the last and decisive battle of the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, fought in 1799 between Tipu Sultan, ruler of Mysore, and a combined force of 50,000 men provided equally by the Nizam of Hyderabad and the East India Company, under the overall command of General George Harris.\nAt the battle's climax, Tipu Sultan was killed within the fort of Seringapatam, betrayed by one of his own confidants. The spot where he fell is today marked by a memorial. Although the joint forces of the victorious army plundered Seringapatam and ransacked Tipu's palace, much of the site of the battle is still intact, including the ramparts, the Water Gate, the area where British prisoners were held, and the site of the destroyed palace.\nApart from the usual gold and cash, innumerable other valuables were shipped to England, including \"objets d'art\" and personal possessions of Tipu Sultan such as his rich clothing, shoes, sword, and firearms. Most of these remain in the British Royal Collection and in the Victoria and Albert Museum, the latter of which holds Tipu's Tiger, an automaton of a tiger on top of a British soldier. The sword of Tipu Sultan was purchased at a Sotheby's auction by Vijay Mallya, a liquor baron from Karnataka.\nBritish composer Harriet Wainwright composed a work for chorus (\"Seringapatam\") about the battle.\nLocation.\nAlthough situated only from Mysore city, Srirangapatna lies in the neighbouring district of Mandya. The entire town is enclosed by the river Kaveri to form a river island, the northern half of which is shown in the adjacent image. While the main river flows on the eastern side of the island, the \"Paschima Vaahini\" segment of the same river flows to its west. The town is easily accessible by train from Bengaluru and Mysore and is also well-connected by road, lying as it does just off the Bangalore-Mysore National Highway 275. The highway passes through this town and special care was taken to minimize any impact on the monuments.\nReligious significance.\nThe town takes its name from the celebrated Ranganathaswamy temple which dominates the town, making Srirangapatna one of the most important Vaishnavite centers of pilgrimage in South India. The temple was built by the Ganga dynasty rulers of the area in the 9th century; the structure was strengthened and improved upon architecturally some three centuries later. Thus, the temple is a medley of the Hoysala and Vijayanagar styles of temple architecture.\nTradition holds that all the islands formed in the Kaveri River are consecrated to Sri Ranganathaswamy (PrabhaVishnu mentioned in Vishnu Sahasranama) and large temples have been built in very ancient times dedicated to that deity on the three largest islands. The Srirangapatna temple is one of the three temples of the God Ranganatha (Adi Ranga) that are situated in the natural islands formed in the Kaveri river. They are:\nThe presence of the Kaveri River is in itself considered auspicious and sanctifying. The \"Paschima Vaahini\" section of the Kaveri at Srirangapatna is considered especially sacred; the pious come from far and wide to immerse the ashes of the departed and perform obsequies to their ancestors in these waters.\nDemographics.\nAccording to the 2011 India Census Data, Srirangapatna had a population of 155,130 persons. Males constitute 50.06% and females constitute 49.93% of the total population. 9.80% of the population are under 6 years of age.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nGeography.\nSrirangapatna is at . It has an average elevation of above mean sea-level.\nPlaces of interest.\nThe town is famous for a very ancient temple dedicated to Sri Ranganathaswamy, a form of Lord Vishnu. There is also Kalyani Siddhi Vinayaka Temple in front of the Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple. Other temples in Srirangapatna include the Lakshminarasimha Swamy Temple, Jyothi Mahaswara Temple, Bidhcotta Ganesha Temple, Panduranga Swamy Temple, the Sathyanarayana Swamy Temple, the Anjunaya Swamy Temple, the Ayyapa Temple, the Gangadhareswara Swamy Temple, and RaganathaNagara Ganesha Temple, Lakshmi Temple, Sri Raghavendra Swamy Mutt on Old Post Office Road, surrounding Srirangapatna in fort 8 Ganesh & Anjunaya temples. The Karighatta (Black Hill) and its temple of Lord Srinivasa is a few kilometres from the town. The deity is Kari-giri-vasa (one who resides on the black hill). The renowned Nimishambha Temple is about 2\u00a0km from the town. Srirangapatna also hosts the summer palace of Tipu Sultan and his mausoleum.\nSri Ranganathaswamy Temple.\nThe Ranganthaswamy Temple \u2013 usually referred to as \"Sri Ranganathaswamy\" \u2013 is dedicated to Ranganatha, a manifestation of Vishnu. It is one of the five important pilgrimage sites along the river Kaveri for devotees of Ranganatha. These five sacred sites are together known as \"Pancharanga Kshetrams\" in Southern India. Since Srirangapatna is the first temple starting from upstream, the deity is known as Adi Ranga (lit; \"first Ranga\"), and the town of Srirangapatna, which derives its name from the temple, is on an island in the river Kaveri.\nDaria Daulat Bagh.\nThe \"Dariya Daulat Palace\" (Summer Palace) is set amidst beautiful gardens called Daria Daulat Bagh. Tippu Sultan built this palace in 1784. The palace is built in the Indo-Saracenic style is mostly made of teakwood. The palace has a rectangular plan and is built on a raised platform.\nOther attractions in Srirangapatna include the \"Jama Masjid\" (a Mosque) and the Dariya Daulat Gardens. The mosque has stone Arabic inscriptions which mention the 99 titles given to the almighty Allah, and the Farsi inscription which mentions that the Masjid was built in AD 1782 by Tipu Sultan.\nTipu Sultan Gumbaz.\nThe \"Gumbaz\" is an impeccably detailed mausoleum and houses the remains of Tipu Sultan, his father Hyder Ali and his mother Fatima Begum among beautifully manicured gardens. Various tombs of other relatives surround the \"gumbaz\", some with small signs offering guidance on which specific individuals are buried here. The outer \"gumbaz\" columns are made of amphibolite, a very dark rock that exudes a somber richness. Handcrafted door frames covered in a deep lacquer finish lead into an inner tomb illuminated only by natural light. All visitors are welcome inside, and even encouraged to enter by the friendly doormen.\nWellesley Bridge.\nWellesley Bridge was erected by Kingdom of Mysore's Dewan, Purnaiah on the Kaveri river in 1804. It was named after the then Governor General Marquis of Wellesley. The bridge is built of stone pillars and stone corbels and surrounded by stone girders. The bridge is very strong and has survived the heavy traffic of many years.\nKarighatta viewpoint.\nThe Karighatta viewpoint gives good panorama of Mysore and Srirangapatna cities from a height of 3,000 feet. Karighatta is a hill a few kilometres outside the 'island' town of Srirangapatna. The name Karighatta translates to \"Black Hill\" in Kannada. The hill supports the dry scrub jungle and many tamarind and gooseberry trees are found around the temple. A small river, Lokapavani, a tributary of Kaveri flows by the hill. The main entrance to the temple, with huge wooden doors opens into a large quadrangle, which is the main shrine for Vaikunta Srinivasa in black stone, flanked by Yoga Srinivasa (without his consort) and Bhoga Srinivasa idols. The hill may be climbed by stone steps (450 in number). A winding paved road is used for vehicular transport. The stone steps lead to a flat hilltop where the temple stands. The hillock has a superb panoramic view of Srirangapatna and Mysore. The beautiful landscape around the hill and the confluence of the Kaveri and Lokapavani rivers can be seen from atop the hill.\nNimishamba Temple.\nThe famous Nimishamba (the incarnation of Parvathi, the goddess wife of Lord Shiva) temple is on the bank of the Lokapavani river. This temple too can be clearly seen from the top of the Karighatta hill. It is a belief that Parvathi will clear all the problems and troubles of her devotees within a minute (\"nimisha\" in Sanskrit), and hence the name.\n"}, "descending_order": ["13500868", "78443197", "258701", "1147077"], "permutation_1": ["258701", "13500868", "1147077", "78443197"], "permutation_2": ["13500868", "258701", "78443197", "1147077"], "permutation_3": ["258701", "1147077", "78443197", "13500868"]}
{"id": "nq_-3686792176816625030", "docs_added": {"700610": "National Museum of Natural History\nNatural history museum in Washington, D.C.\nThe National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. With 4.4 million visitors in 2023, it was the third most-visited museum in the United States. \nOpened in 1910, the museum on the National Mall was one of the first Smithsonian buildings constructed exclusively to hold the national collections and research facilities. The main building has an overall area of with of exhibition and public space and houses over 1,000 employees.\nThe museum's collections contain over 146 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts, the largest natural history collection in the world. It is also home to about 185 professional natural history scientists\u2014the largest group of scientists dedicated to the study of natural and cultural history in the world.\nHistory.\n1846\u20131911.\nThe United States National Museum was founded in 1846 as part of the Smithsonian Institution. The museum was initially housed in the Smithsonian Institution Building, which is better known today as the Smithsonian Castle. A formal exhibit hall opened in 1858. The growing collection led to the construction of a new building, the National Museum Building (known today as the Arts and Industries Building). Covering a then-enormous , it was built in just 15 months at a cost of $310,000. It opened in March 1881.\nCongress authorized construction of a new building on June 28, 1902. On January 29, 1903, a special committee composed of members of Congress and representatives from the Smithsonian's board of regents published a report asking Congress to fund a much larger structure than originally planned. The regents began considering sites for the new building in March, and by April 12 settled on a site on the north side of B Street NW between 9th and 12th Streets. The D.C. architectural firm of Hornblower & Marshall was chosen to design the structure. Testing of the soil for the foundations was set for July 1903, with construction expected to take three years.\nThe Natural History Building (as the National Museum of Natural History was originally known) opened its doors to the public on March 17, 1910, in order to provide the Smithsonian Institution with more space for collections and research. The building was not fully completed until June 1911. The structure cost $3.5 million (about $85 million in inflation-adjusted 2012) dollars. The Neoclassical style building was the first structure constructed on the north side of the National Mall as part of the 1901 McMillan Commission plan. In addition to the Smithsonian's natural history collection, it also housed the American history, art, and cultural collections.\n1981\u20132003.\nBetween 1981 and 2003, the National Museum of Natural History had 11 permanent and acting directors. The directors included: Richard S. Fiske (1980-1985); James C. Tyler (acting, 1985 and 1988); and Robert S. Hoffmann (1985-1988).\nFrank Talbot, ichthyologist and former director of the Australian Museum and California Academy of Sciences, served as director from 1989 until 1994. He was the first (and as of 2024 the only) Australian to ever be appointed to this role. \nTwo acting directors (Donald J. Ortner, 1994-1996, and David L. Pawson in 1996) served before Robert W. Fri was named the museum's director in 1996. One of the largest donations in Smithsonian history was made during Fri's tenure. Kenneth E. Behring donated $20 million in 1997 to modernize the museum. Fri resigned in 2001 after disagreeing with Smithsonian leadership over the reorganization of the museum's scientific research programs.\nJ. Dennis O'Connor, provost of the Smithsonian Institution (where he oversaw all science and research programs) was named acting director of the museum on July 25, 2001. Eight months later, O'Conner resigned to become the vice president of research and dean of the graduate school at the University of Maryland. Douglas Erwin, a paleontologist at the National Museum of Natural History, was appointed interim director in June 2002.\n2003\u20132007.\nIn January 2003, the Smithsonian announced that Cristi\u00e1n Samper, a Colombian with an M.Sc. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, would become the museum's permanent director on March 31, 2003. Samper (who holds dual citizenship with Colombia and the United States) founded the Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute and ran the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute after 2001. Smithsonian officials said Samper's administrative experience proved critical in his appointment. Under Samper's direction, the museum opened the $100 million Behring Hall of Mammals in November 2003, received $60 million in 2004 for the Sant Hall of Oceans, and received a $1 million gift from Tiffany & Co. for the purchase of precious gems for the National Gem Collection.\nOn March 25, 2007, Lawrence M. Small, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and the organization's highest-ranking appointed official, resigned abruptly after public reports of lavish spending.\n2007\u20132012.\nOn March 27, 2007, Samper was appointed Acting Secretary of the Smithsonian. Paul G. Risser, former chancellor of the University of Oklahoma, was named acting director of the Museum of Natural History on March 29.\nIn May 2007, Robert Sullivan, the former associate director in charge of exhibitions at the National Museum of Natural History, charged that Samper and Smithsonian Undersecretary for Science David Evans (Samper's supervisor) ordered \"last minute\" changes in the exhibit \"Arctic: A Friend Acting Strangely\" to tone down the role of human beings in the discussion of global warming, and to make global warming seem more uncertain than originally depicted. Samper denied that he knew of any scientific objections to the changes, and said that no political pressure had been applied to the Smithsonian to make the changes. In November 2007, \"The Washington Post\" reported that an interagency group of scientists from the Department of the Interior, NASA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and National Science Foundation believed that, despite Samper's denial, the museum \"acted to avoid criticism from congressional appropriators and global-warming skeptics in the Bush administration\". The changes were discussed as early as mid-August 2005, and Dr. Waleed Abdalati, manager of NASA's Cryospheric Sciences Program, noted at the time that \"There was some discussion of the political sensitivities of the exhibit.\"\nAlthough the exhibit was due to open in October 2005, the \"Post\" reported that Samper ordered a six-month delay to allow for even further changes. The newspaper also reported that it had obtained a memo drafted by Samper shortly after October 15, 2005, in which Samper said the museum should not \"replicate\" work by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A few weeks later, a NOAA climate researcher advised a superior that the delay was due to \"the debate within the administration and the science community over the existence and cause of global warming\". During the delay, Samper asked high-level officials in other government agencies and departments to review the script for the exhibit, ordered his museum staff to make additional changes, and rearranged the sequence of the exhibit panels so that the discussion of climate change was not immediately encountered by museum visitors. Shortly before the exhibit opened in April 2006, officials at NOAA and the United States Department of Commerce expressed to their superiors their opinion that the exhibit had been changed to accommodate political concerns. In an interview with \"The Washington Post\" in November 2007, Samper said he felt the exhibit displayed a scientific certainty that did not exist, and expressed his belief that the museum should present evidence on both sides and let the public make up its own mind.\nThe issue became more heated after the press reported that Samper gave permission for the museum to accept a $5 million donation from American Petroleum Institute that would support the museum's soon-to-be-opened Hall of Oceans. Two members of the Smithsonian Institution's Board of Regents (which had final say on accepting the donation) questioned whether the donation was a conflict of interest. Before the board could consider the donation, the donor withdrew the offer.\nRisser resigned as acting director of the museum on January 22, 2008, in order to return to his position at the University of Oklahoma. No new acting director was named at that time. Six weeks later, the Smithsonian regents chose Georgia Tech president G. Wayne Clough as the new Secretary. Samper stepped down to return to his position as Director of the National Museum of Natural History.\nIn June 2008, the Victoria and Roger Sant family donated $15 million to endow the new Ocean Hall at the museum. The museum celebrated the 50th anniversary of its acquisition of the Hope Diamond in August 2009 by giving the gemstone its own exhibit and a new setting. In March 2010, the museum opened its $21 million human evolution hall.\nIn January 2012, Samper said he was stepping down from the National Museum of Natural History to become president and chief executive officer of the Wildlife Conservation Society. Two months later, the museum announced it had received a $35 million gift to renovate its dinosaur hall, and a month later the Sant family donated another $10 million to endow the director's position. On July 25, 2012, Kirk Johnson, vice president of research and collections at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, was named Samper's successor effective October 29, 2012. By 2013, as Sant Director, Johnson oversaw a museum with 460 employees and a $68 million budget. A four-year strategic plan was released in 2021. The museum's Mall building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2023.\nResearch and collections.\nResearch in the museum is divided into seven departments: anthropology, botany, entomology, invertebrate zoology, mineral sciences, paleobiology, vertebrate zoology.\nThe NMNH represents 90% of the Smithsonian Institution's collections and forms one of the largest, most comprehensive natural history collection in the world. The Smithsonian gives an approximate number for artifacts and specimens of 146 million. More specifically, the collections include 30 million insects, 4.5 million plants preserved in the Museum's herbarium, and 7 million fish stored in liquid-filled jars. The National Collection of Amphibians and Reptiles has more than tripled from 190,000 specimen records 1970 to over 580,000 specimen records in 2020. Of the 2 million cultural artifacts, 400,000 are photographs housed in the National Anthropological Archives. Through off-site active loan and exchange programs, the museum's collections can be accessed. As a result, 3.5 million specimens are out on loan every year. The rest of the collections not on display are stored in the non-public research areas of the museum and at the Museum Support Center, located in Suitland, Maryland. Other facilities include a marine science center in Ft. Pierce, Florida and field stations in Belize, Alaska, and Kenya.\nThe museum is estimated to hold more than 5000 Native American remains that have not been repatriated. Some of these may belong to the Seminole Tribe of Florida.\nOne collection of nearly a million specimens of birds, reptiles, and mammals kept at the museum has been maintained by the Biological Survey unit of the U.S. Geological Survey. This division had started in 1885 as an economic ornithology unit of the Agriculture Department. Clarence Birdseye and Clinton Hart Merriam had worked in this organization. As of February 2018, the unit's funding is planned to be cut, and it is not clear what would happen to the collection.\nExhibitions.\nHall of Geology, Gems, and Minerals.\nThe National Gem and Mineral Collection is one of the most significant collections of its kind in the world. There are currently over 15,000 individual gems in the collection, as well as 350,000 minerals and 300,000 samples of rock and ore specimens. Additionally, the Smithsonian's National Gem and Mineral Collection houses approximately 45,000 meteorite specimens, including examples of every known type of meteorite, and is considered to be one of the most comprehensive collections of its kind in the world. The collection includes some of the most famous pieces of gems and minerals, including the Hope Diamond and the Star of Asia (one of the largest sapphires in the world), and the Carmen L\u00facia Ruby, one of the largest and most valuable Burmese rubies in the world.\nThe collection is displayed in the Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems and Minerals, one of the many galleries in the Museum of Natural History. Some of the most important donors, besides Hooker, are Washington Roebling, the man who built the Brooklyn Bridge, who gave 16,000 specimens to the collection; Frederick A. Canfield, who donated 9,000 specimens to the collection; and Isaac Lea, who donated the basis of the museum's collection of 1312 gems and minerals.\nHall of Human Origins.\nThe David H. Koch \"Hall of Human Origins\" opened on March 17, 2010, marking the museum's 100th anniversary. The hall is named for David H. Koch, who contributed $15 million to the $20.7 million exhibit.\nThe Hall is \"dedicated to the discovery and understanding of human origins,\" and occupies of exhibit space. This exhibit includes 76 humans skulls, each of a different species, eons apart. Each of these species is a human, signified by the \"\"Homo\"\" genus name. One species that can be found in this gallery is the \"Homo heidelbergensis\", which lived 200,000\u2013700,000 years ago. In addition, there is a female skull from \"Homo floresiensis\", a human species that possibly only went extinct just 17,000 years ago. The exhibit includes an interactive human family tree that follows six million years of evolution, and a \"Changing the World\" gallery that focuses on issues surrounding climate change and humans' impact on the world. \nThe Hall's core concept idea is \"What Does It Mean To Be Human\", and focuses on milestones of human evolution such as walking upright, bigger brains, and symbolic thought.\nAlso covered is the Smithsonian's significant research on the geological and climate changes which occurred in East Africa during significant periods of Human Evolution. \nThe exhibit highlights an actual fossil Neanderthal and replicas created by famed paleoartist, John Gurche. \nThe exhibit has been criticized for downplaying the significance of human-caused global warming.\nThe exhibit also provides a complementary web site, which provides diaries and podcasts directly from related fields of research. \nThe companion book, \"What Does It Mean To Be Human\", was written by Richard (Rick) Potts, the curator, and Christopher Sloan. The exhibit was designed by Reich + Petch.\nDeep Time Exhibit/Fossil Hall.\nThe Hall of Dinosaurs has fossilized skeletons and cast models, including a \"Tyrannosaurus rex\" cast facing a \"Triceratops\" cast. This \"Triceratops\" exhibit shows the first accurate dinosaur skeleton in virtual motion, achieved through the use of scanning and digital technology.\" The collection consists of 46 \"complete and important specimens\" of dinosaurs.\nIn May 2012, billionaire David H. Koch donated $35 million toward the cost of a $45 million upgrade to the 30-year-old, dinosaur hall. The hall closed in April 2014 and reopened in June 2019.\nIn June 2013, the Smithsonian obtained a 50-year lease on a \"T. rex\" fossil skeleton owned by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. It is the first \"T. rex\" skeleton to be displayed at the museum, which until now has only had the cast of a skull. The specimen, known as the , was found on Corps-owned land in the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge in Montana in 1988. It has since been on display at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana (which helped excavate the fossil). The \"Wankel rex\" (whose skeleton is 85 percent complete) was to be unveiled at the Museum of Natural History on National Fossil Day, October 16, 2013, and was supposed to be on display until the dinosaur hall exhibit closed for renovation in the spring of 2014. The long skeleton is the centerpiece of the dinosaur hall since it re-opened in 2019. The Museum of the Rockies (which did not own the skeleton but was the repository for it) has about a dozen \"T. rex\" specimens, including one which is eighty percent complete. Only about six museums in the United States have a \"T. rex\" skeleton. The Museum of the Rockies is a Smithsonian affiliate museum, and had long promised to find a \"T. rex\" for the Smithsonian to display.\nDue to the 2013 federal government shutdown, the fossil did not arrive in Washington, D.C. Smithsonian officials said it remained in storage in Montana, and would not arrive at the Smithsonian until late spring 2014. Packed up in 16 crates, the \"T. rex\", named \"Nation's T. rex\" by the Smithsonian, traveled from the Museum of the Rockies and arrived at the National Museum of Natural History on April 15, 2014. The \"T. rex\" was displayed in the Rex Room, while specialists performed a conservation assessment and the Smithsonian Digitization Program scanned each bone, to create a 3-D model for research. The Nation's T. rex is the centerpiece of the new fossil hall, which opened in 2019.\nHall of Mammals.\nThe Behring Hall of Mammals was designed by Reich + Petch. The mammal specimens are presented as works of modern art within minimal environmentals. Visitors discover mammal's evolutionary adaptions to hugely diverse contexts.\nThe museum has the largest collection of vertebrate specimens in the world, nearly twice the size of the next largest mammal collections, including historically important collections from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its collection was initiated by C. Hart Merriam and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (later the Department of the Interior), which expanded it in the 1890s-1930s.\nInsect Zoo.\nThe O. Orkin Insect Zoo features live insects and exhibits about insects and entomologists. Different habitats have been created to show the type of insects that live in different environments and how they have adapted to a freshwater pond, house, mangrove swamp, desert, and rain forest. The zoo is sponsored by Orkin, a pest control company.\nOcean Hall.\nThe Sant Ocean Hall opened on September 27, 2008, and is the largest renovation of the museum since it opened in 1910. The hall includes 674 marine specimens and models drawn from the over 80 million specimens in the museum's total collection, the largest in the world. The hall is named for the Roger Sant family, who donated $15 million to endow the new hall and other related programs.\nThe collection includes: a North Atlantic right whale, a giant Lion's mane jellyfish model, a aquarium containing live marine fish and corals, one female giant squid displayed in the center of the hall and a male displayed off to the side, an adult coelenterate, and a \"Basilosaurus\".\nThe museum also provides the Smithsonian Ocean Portal, a complementary web site that provides regularly updated, original content from the museum's research, collections, and Sant Ocean Hall as well as content provided by more than 20 collaborating organizations, including Archive, Census of Marine Life, Consortium for Ocean Leadership, Encyclopedia of Life, INDUCT, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, National Geographic, NOAA, New England Aquarium, Ocean Conservancy, Oceania, Pew Charitable Trusts, Sea Web, Save Our Seas, Scrips Institution of Oceanography, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, World Heritage Marine Programmer.\nAfrican Voices.\nThis exhibit and associated website \"examines the diversity, dynamism, and global influence of Africa's peoples and cultures over time in the realms of family, work, community, and the natural environment.\"\nButterflies + Plants: Partners In Evolution.\nThe Butterflies + Plants is a live butterfly pavilion which allows \"visitors to observe the many ways in which butterflies and other animals have evolved, adapted, and diversified together with their plant partners over tens of millions of years.\" The exhibit was designed by Reich + Petch.\nBone Hall.\nThis exhibit displays a \"variety of vertebrate skeletons grouped by their evolutionary relationships.\"\nQ?rius.\nOpened since 2013, this exhibit is the museum's interactive and educational area. Using microscopes and touch screens, the area hosts various interactive activities and contains a \"collection zone\" that houses over 6000 different specimens and artifacts visitors are able personally handle. The area also hosts various events such as allowing visitors to meet and discuss with Smithsonian scientists and hosting school groups.\nFormer exhibits.\nWestern Cultures Hall.\n\"This hall explores some examples from various cultures in the western world including northern Iraq, ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome and the recent discovery of the Iceman, a Copper Age mummy found in an Italian glacier.\" This exhibit was closed on September 26, 2010.\nKorea Gallery.\nThe Korea Gallery was a special showcase to celebrate Korean traditions and examine its unique influence and complex role in the world today.\nThe exhibit expressed the continuity of the past by highlighting enduring features of Korean culture over 2,600 years. The exhibit used the Smithsonian ceramics collection as well as a rich selection of photographs, ritual objects and traditional Korean carpentry to communicate and connect to both the local Korean community and an international audience. Traditional art forms, such as ceramics and calligraphy, along with mythological figures, language, large feature photographs and illustrations spoke to a range of shared historical memories which connected Koreans at home and abroad.\nPersonal stories of modern Koreans, as told in their own voices, provide a context to discuss some of the many issues that face the divided country today. Korea's incredible transformation from 'The Hermit Kingdom' to a world power is traced through its impact on the arts, the economy and popular culture. The exhibit was designed by Reich + Petch. This exhibit closed in 2017.\nFacility.\nIn the lower level, there is a bird exhibit, Urban Bird Habitat Garden, with all the migratory and native birds to Washington, D.C.\nThe Global Volcanism Program is housed in the department of Mineral Sciences.\nThe museum frequently hosts sleepovers through the Smithsonian Associates for children ages 8\u201312.\nBaird Auditorium.\nBeneath the building's rotunda is the Baird Auditorium, named for the second Secretary of the Smithsonian Spencer Fullerton Baird. The Baird Auditorium was completed in 1909, designed and built by the R. Guastavino Company under the direction of Rafael Guastavino, Jr. using Catalan vault tile ceiling. The American Institute of Architects calls the Baird Auditorium the museum's \"greatest interior space.\" According to architectural scholar Dr. John Ochsendorf, the Baird Auditorium's \"daring geometry\" in tile construction by the Guastavino company \"spans 90 feet (27 meters) with a remarkable shallow dome in acoustical tile, and could only have been built by a company with decades of experience in tile vaulting.\"\nBaird Auditorium Events.\nThe Baird Auditorium has a long history of performances and events. The Baird was the location of the astronomical 'Great Debate,' also called the 'Shapley\u2013Curtis Debate,' on April 26, 1920 on the topics of spiral nebulae and the size of the universe. Merle Travis gave a country guitar music concert in the Baird Auditorium on October 23, 1976. In early February 1977, Muddy Waters performed in the Baird as part of the Smithsonian Institution's blues series presented by the Division of Performing Arts.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2574869": "National Museum (Prague)\nCzech museum institution\nThe National Museum (NM) (Czech: \"N\u00e1rodn\u00ed muzeum\") is a public museum dedicated to natural scientific and historical collections of the Czech Republic, its history, culture and people, among others. The museum was founded in 1818 by Ka\u0161par Maria \u0160ternberg. Historian Franti\u0161ek Palack\u00fd was also strongly involved in the foundation of the museum.\nThe National Museum houses nearly 14 million items from the areas of natural history, history, arts, music and librarianship, which are located in dozens of museum buildings. \nThe main hall of the National Museum is located on Wenceslas Square in downtown Prague. Built in neo-renaissance style in 1891, the building underwent significant restoration from 2011 to 2018 to mark the centennial of the Czech and Czechoslovak declaration of independence. Due to its dominance over the busiest intersection of Prague, the National Museum building carries a significant national importance. As such, it frequently serves as a focal point for protests, rallies, gatherings and public events.\nOrigins.\nEven before the French Revolution, some royal and private collections of art, science and culturally relevant items were made available to the public. The beginnings of the museum can be seen as far back as 1796 when the private Society of Patriotic Friends of the Arts was founded by Count Casper Sternberk-Manderschied and a group of other prominent nobles. The avowed purpose of the society was \"the renewed promotion of art and taste\". In 1800, the group founded the Academy of Fine Arts, which trained students in progressive forms of art and history.\nHistory and timeline.\nThe National Museum in Prague was founded on April 15, 1818. It was founded by Count Sternberk, the first president of the Society of the Patriotic Museum who served as the trustee and operator of the museum. The early focus of the museum was natural sciences, partially because Count Sternberk was a botanist, mineralogist, and eminent phytopaleontologist, but also because of the natural science slant of the times, as perpetrated by Emperor Joseph II of Austria.\nThe museum was originally located in the Sternberg Palace. When the venue became too small to house the museum's collections, the museum relocated to the Nostitz Palace. That too had insufficient capacity, which led to the construction of a new museum building in Wenceslas Square.\nThe museum did not acquire historical objects until the 1830s and 1840s, when Romanticism arose. The institution of the museum was increasingly seen as a center for Czech nationalism. Serving as historian and secretary of the National Museum in 1841, Franti\u0161ek Palack\u00fd tried to balance natural science and history, as he described in his Treatise of 1841. However, it was not until nearly a century later that the National Museum's historical treasures equaled its collection of natural science artifacts.\nThe museum brought about an intellectual shift in Prague. The Bohemian nobility had, until this time, been prominent, both politically and fiscally, in scholarly and scientific groups. However, the National Museum was created to serve all the inhabitants of the land, lifting the stranglehold the nobility had had on knowledge. This was further accelerated by the historian Franti\u0161ek Palack\u00fd, who in 1827 suggested that the museum publish separate journals in German and Czech. Previously, the vast majority of scholarly journals were written in German, but within a few years the German journal had ceased publication, while the Czech journal continued for more than a century.\nIn 1949, the national government took over the museum and detailed the museum's role and leadership in the Museum and Galleries Act of 1959. In May 1964, the Museum was turned into an organization of five professionally autonomous components, which included the Museum of Natural Science, the Historical Museum, the Naprstek Museum of Asia, African, and American Cultures, the National Museum Library, and the Central Office of Museology. A sixth autonomous unit, the Museum of Czech Music, was established in 1976.\nBuildings.\nMain building.\nThe Main Building of the National Museum (Historical Building) is located on the upper end of Wenceslas Square and was built by prominent Czech neo-renaissance architect Josef Schulz between 1885 and 1891. Prior to the museum being constructed, there had been several noblemen's palaces located at this site. With the construction of a permanent building for the museum, a great deal of work, which had previously been devoted to ensuring that the collections would remain intact, was now put toward collecting new materials.\nThe building was damaged during World War II in 1945 by a bomb, but the collections were not damaged due to their removal to secured storage sites. The museum was reopened after intensive repairs in 1947, and in 1960, exterior night floodlighting was installed, which followed a general repair of the facade that had taken place in previous years.\nDuring the 1968 Warsaw Pact intervention, the main facade was severely damaged by strong Soviet machine-gun and automatic submachine-gun fire. The shots made numerous holes in sandstone pillars and plaster, destroyed stone statues and reliefs, and also caused damage in some of the depositories. Despite the general facade repair made between 1970 - 1972 the damage still can be seen due to the use of lighter sandstone to repair the bullet holes.\nThe main museum building was also damaged during the construction of the Prague Metro in 1972 and 1978. The opening of the North-South Highway in 1978 on two sides of the building resulted in the museum being cut off from city infrastructure. This also led to the building suffering from excessive noise levels, a dangerously high level of dust and constant vibrations from heavy road traffic.\nDue to major reconstruction, the museum was closed between 7 July 2011 and 28 October 2018. Seven million items had to be relocated to the museum's depositories, in what was described as the biggest moving of museum collections in Czech history. In February 2019, the museum's dome, which also serves as a view of Prague, was opened for the first time. The eastern courtyard was also opened and was for the first time roofed, during reconstruction. In November 2019, the underground corridor connecting the Historical Building to the New Museum Building became accessible.\nThe museum was partially opened on 28 October 2018. The first permanent exhibition opened to visitors in 2020.\nPermanent exhibitions:\nNew building.\nThe New Building of the National Museum (former Feder\u00e1ln\u00ed Shrom\u00e1\u017ed\u011bn\u00ed Building) is located next to the Main Building of the National Museum. The former Prague Stock Exchange was built in 1937. The building was extended in 1968\u20131973 for meetings of the Federal Assembly (parliament), the bridge girder was used there and at that time it was the largest hung glass wall in Czechoslovakia. Between 1995 and 2009 it was used by the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.\nIn 2000, the Ministry of Culture declared the building a cultural monument. In 2009, the building was assigned to the National Museum for its permanent extension and is used for short-term exhibitions. \nIn 2019, the building was connected to the historical building through a tunnel. In 2021, the permanent exhibition History of the 20th Century was opened here.\nOther buildings.\nIn addition to the Historical and New Buildings, the National Museum also includes these buildings:\nCollections and departments.\nThe National Museum currently contains several million items of material in three main parts: the Natural History Museum, the Historical Museum and the Library.\nNatural History Museum.\nIn 2010, the museum moved their collections to Prague 10, Horn\u00ed Po\u010dernice. It has departments of mineralogy, paleontology, mycology, botany, entomology, zoology and anthropology, as well as scientific laboratories.\nIt is also the home of the Czech bird ringing scheme, and a member of the European Union for Bird Ringing (EURING).\nThe Historical Museum.\nMedieval collections.\nThe medieval collection includes jewelry, panel painting, wooden sculpture, and weapons (also such as used in the Hussite movement of the 15th century). In addition to their historical value, many of the objects held by this department contain a high artistic value. Examples of precious objects include: a silver tiara of a duke from the twelfth century; Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque jewelry; liturgical objects from the Medieval period, which include several chalices, the reliquary of St Eligius in the shape of mitre; Gothic and Renaissance glazed tiles and paving stones; precious embroidery of Rosenberg antependium dated about 1370; and fine Bohemian porcelain and glass collection from before the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as collections of painted portraits and miniature painting.\nArchives.\nThe archives contain rare charts and manuscripts of Czech history from the 11th to the 20th century; many of the ancient ones have been digitalized. The collection of personal legacy contains written sources of famous personalities of Czech history, and the collection of seals and seal-sticks include about 3,000 pieces.\nIn popular culture.\nThe museum has featured as Vatican City, in the 2004 film \"EuroTrip\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "6639878": "National Museums of Kenya\nKenyan state corporation\nThe National Museums of Kenya (NMK; ) is a state corporation that manages museums, sites and monuments in Kenya. It carries out heritage research, and has expertise in subjects ranging from palaeontology, archeology, ethnography and biodiversity research and conservation. Its headquarters and the National Museum (Nairobi National Museum) are located on Museum Hill, near Uhuru Highway between Central Business District and Westlands in Nairobi. The National Museum of Kenya was founded by the East Africa Natural History Society (E.A.N.H.S.) in 1910; the society's main goal has always been to conduct an ongoing critical scientific examination of the natural attributes of the East African habitat. The museum houses collections, and temporary and permanent exhibits. Today the National Museum of Kenya manages over 22 regional museums, many sites, and monuments across the country.\nNairobi National Museum of Kenya.\nNatural History Museum of Kenya.\nThe East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society was founded in 1910\u201311 by persons with an interest in nature in British East Africa. The group included two canons of the Church Missionary Society: The Rev. Harry Leakey (father of Louis Leakey) and The Rev. Kenneth St. Aubyn Rogers; some government officials: C. W. Hobley and John Ainsworth, doctors, dentists, big-game hunters and plantation owners. In 1911 they established the Natural History Museum and library with an honorary curator. Aladina Visram put up the money for a one-story, two-room building.\nIn 1914 they could afford a paid curator. They brought in Arthur Loveridge, a herpetologist, who arrived in March 1914. Loveridge concentrated on collections, with the members volunteering to contribute specimens, labour and funds. They also ran the museum while Loveridge fought for the British in German East Africa. He returned for a brief stay after the war, only to go to America, where he eventually became a Harvard University professor.\nCoryndon Museum.\nThe next curator was A. F. J. Gedye. The museum moved to a new building at the corner of Government Road and Kirk Road. Among the new volunteers for the society were Sir Robert Coryndon, Governor of Kenya. At his unexpected death in 1925, Lady Cory"}, "descending_order": ["2574869", "6639878", "700610"], "permutation_1": ["6639878", "700610", "2574869"], "permutation_2": ["2574869", "6639878", "700610"], "permutation_3": ["2574869", "6639878", "700610"]}
{"id": "nq_6923211314475638094", "docs_added": {"5316019": "That'll Be the Day (film)\nThat'll Be the Day is a 1973 British coming of age drama film directed by Claude Whatham, written by Ray Connolly, and starring David Essex, Rosemary Leach and Ringo Starr. Set primarily in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it tells the story of Jim MacLaine (Essex), a British teenager raised by his single mother (Leach). Jim rejects society's conventions and pursues a hedonistic and sexually loose lifestyle, harming others and damaging his close relationships. The cast also featured several prominent musicians who lived through the era portrayed, including Starr, Billy Fury, Keith Moon and John Hawken. The film's success led to a sequel, \"Stardust\", that followed the life of Jim MacLaine through the 1960s and 1970s.\nPlot.\nIn an urban area in early 1940s England, a young child, Jim MacLaine, lives with his mother Mary and grandfather. His seaman father returns, spends time with him, and works in the family's grocery shop. However, he finds himself unable to settle down and soon leaves again for good, abandoning his wife and son, and Mary continues to run the shop and raise Jim on her own.\nIn the late 1950s. Jim is now a very bright but bored schoolboy in his final year at the local secondary school. His mother wants him to do well on his final exams, qualify for university, and have many opportunities\u2014but Jim is far less enthusiastic about continuing his education, preferring to draw, write poetry, listen to rock n' roll, and chase girls\u2014unsuccessfully. Instead of going with his friend Terry to take his exams, he runs away to the coast to work as a deckchair attendant, disappointing and upsetting his mother. He moves on to a barman job at a holiday camp, where he befriends the experienced barman Mike, who helps him hook up with willing women for his first sexual experiences. Jim is also drawn to the music and lifestyle of the resident singer, Stormy Tempest, and his drummer, J.D. Clover.\nMike and Jim next get jobs at a funfair, supplementing their meager pay by short-changing customers. Jim quickly becomes a heartless fairground Romeo, having one-nighters with a wide variety of women, including a young schoolgirl whom he rapes. He lies to Mike about the encounter, but Mike sees through it and berates him. Shortly afterwards, Mike short-changes a gang member and is attacked by the whole gang. Jim sees Mike being beaten, but instead of helping him, Jim hurries away, pretending he saw nothing, and has a tryst with another fair worker. The severely injured Mike is hospitalized, and Jim gets a promotion that was supposed to be Mike's.\nJim contacts Terry, who is now at university, but discovers that Terry and the girls there look down on his lifestyle and musical tastes. After two years gone, Jim decides to return home, finding his resentful mother struggling to run the grocery shop and care for her father, who is now an invalid. Jim helps his mother with the shop and starts dating Terry's sister Jeanette over the objections of her mother and Terry. Unlike all his previous dates, Jim does not have sex with Jeanette, even though she is willing to do so out of love for him. Jim and Jeanette marry, with Terry and her mother wrongly assuming she must be pregnant. Jim, angry at Terry and ambivalent about losing his freedom, has sex with Terry's girlfriend Jean the night before his wedding.\nJim and Jeanette live with his mother and grandfather. Jim pretends to be going to night school, but is secretly spending his nights at rock n' roll shows. Jeanette gets pregnant and they have a son. Jean and Terry plan to get engaged, and Jean makes suggestive remarks to Jim in front of Jeanette.\nAfter talking with friends in a band, Jim leaves home, repeating his father's pattern. Jeanette cries, but his mum is unsurprised. The film ends as Jim buys a secondhand guitar.\nCast.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nProduction.\nDevelopment.\nDavid Puttnam and his producing partner Sandy Lieberson met with Nat Cohen of EMI Films who agreed to provide half the budget. The other half, \u00a3100,000, was obtained from Ronco Records on the condition that the film include 40 songs from Ronco's catalog of old hits, which they could then sell on TV as a soundtrack album. According to \"Filmink\" the film:\nWasn\u2019t an obvious slam dunk \u2013 Puttnam had some credits, but they included only a mild success (Melody) and a disaster (The Pied Piper), the story was downbeat, and the lead was not a big name at the time (David Essex). But Cohen could recognise Puttnam\u2019s talent, not to mention the opportunities for a killer soundtrack \u2013 always a factor at a company like EMI \u2013 and the fact that the script had sex in it, thus it might be another \"A Kind of Loving\" or \"Poor Cow\".\nWriting.\nAccording to screenwriter Ray Connolly, the film was Puttnam's idea, who had worked in advertising and recently moved into film production. Connolly says Puttnam was inspired by Harry Nilsson's song \"1941\", in which an early-1940s father deserts his young son, who subsequently joins a circus; Puttnam suggested changing the circus to a fair.\nPuttnam hired Connolly, a journalist friend, to write the script. Connolly worked on it in the evenings, and said they would \"ransack our own lives as we created the fictional character of Jim Maclaine, and steal moments from our favourite films, a bit from East of Eden here, something from Francois Truffaut\u2019s 'The 400 Blows' there.\"\nPuttnam offered the directing job to Michael Apted, who turned it down. Director Claude Watham was given the job when Puttnam was impressed with period detail of his TV movie \"Cider with Rosie\". He also liked the fact that Watham was not that interested in rock 'n roll, and thought Watham would provide an objective counterbalance to Puttnam and Connolly.\nCasting.\nConnolly said that he cast David Essex, then starring in a West End production of \"Godspell\", in an effort to make the selfish Jim MacLaine character more likeable, because Essex \"was so good-looking and likeable an audience would forgive him anything.\"\nRingo Starr was cast as Mike after Connolly, who had never been to a holiday camp, consulted him and former Beatles road manager Neil Aspinall about their Butlins memories. Aspinall also helped to put together the camp band that appeared in the film. Several roles were played by prominent musicians who had lived through the film's era, including Starr, Billy Fury, Keith Moon of the Who, and John Hawken of the Nashville Teens.\nFilming.\nFilming began on October 23, 1972, on the Isle of Wight, which still had a late-1950s look in the early 1970s. Essex received a seven-week break from his \"Godspell\" role to film the picture.\nPuttnam clashed with Watham during filming, saying the director did not understand all the script's subtext. When Watham fell ill, Alan Parker directed for two days.\nSoundtrack.\nThe tie-in soundtrack to \"That'll Be the Day\" was released by Ronco and listed as a 'various artists' album rather than the official soundtrack. It spent seven weeks at the #1 position on the Official Albums Chart Top 50. However, beginning with the week ending 18 August 1973, all compilations listed as 'various artists' were removed from the chart, with only those billed as 'official soundtracks' (to films such as \"A Clockwork Orange\" and \"Cabaret\") remaining, causing \"That'll Be the Day\" to be excluded from the chart countdown.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nRelease.\nThe film was a hit at the box office (by 1985 it had earned an estimated profit of \u00a3406,000). Nat Cohen, who invested in the film, said it made more than 50% profit on top of its cost. It was one of the most popular movies of 1973 at the British box office.\nConnolly said \"At the time, I was astonished by its success. A sixth form drop out, who throws his school books into a river when he should be sitting his A-level history, writes poetry in the rain while hiring out deck chairs, and lets down just about absolutely everyone was hardly an obvious subject. But, on reflection, I can now see that there was nothing else like it at the time. And the music soundtrack was fantastic.\"\nU.S. release.\nThe film was initially acquired by Continental Releasing, a unit of the Walter Reade Organization, but after disappointing test engagements in Boston, Indianapolis, and Austin, they chose to shelve the film. Based on a well-received screening at Filmex in Los Angeles, programmer Jerry Harvey, partnering with Richard Chase and Kenneth Greenstone, created a small company, Mayfair Film Group, to take over distribution.\nReception.\nThe \"Los Angeles Times\" called it \"a very special, strange and fascinating movie.\"\nAccording to Anne Billson in the \"Time Out Film Guide\", the film was a \"hugely overrated dip into the rock 'n' roll nostalgia bucket, ... \" also commenting \"Youth culture my eye: they're all at least a decade too old. But good tunes, and worth catching for Billy Fury's gold lam\u00e9 act.\"\nAwards and nominations.\nAt the 27th British Academy Film Awards in 1973, the film received two nominations. Rosemary Leach for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and David Essex for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles.\nSequels.\nEssex returned as Jim Maclaine the following year, in the 1974 sequel, \"Stardust\", which continues the story into the early 1970s.\nAn independent radio drama recording project, \"That'll be the Stardust!\", was released in 2008. The story follows the musical journey of Jim Maclaine's son, Jimmy Maclaine Jr.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "5321761": "Stardust (1974 film)\nStardust is a 1974 British musical drama film directed by Michael Apted and starring David Essex, Adam Faith, and Larry Hagman. It is the sequel to the 1973 film \"That'll Be the Day\", which introduced the characters of Jim MacLaine and his street-smart friend Mike Menary. It chronicles Jim's rise and fall as an international rock star during the 1960s and early 1970s, with Mike as his personal manager. It features a number of pop/rock performers, including Essex, Faith, Keith Moon, Marty Wilde, Dave Edmunds, Paul Nicholas and Edd Byrnes.\nPlot.\nOn the evening of the Kennedy assassination, Jim MacLaine visits his friend Mike Menary at the funfair where Mike works. Jim tells Mike he's joined a touring rock group called the Stray Cats and invites Mike to come along as their road manager, pointing out that Mike could make millions if the group succeeds. Mike accepts and proves to be a shrewd operator, arranging a better van, accommodations, and a recording session for the group. Privately, Mike tells Jim that arrogant singer/ guitarist Johnny must go in order for the band to be a success. Largely through Mike's efforts, the Stray Cats have their first hit single with a song sung by Jim, even though it was released as the B-side to a song sung by Johnny. Jim becomes the new center of attention for fans and press, causing the jealous Johnny to leave the band.\nThe Stray Cats embark on a successful tour of the US, where they meet their new manager, Porter Lee Austin, a wealthy Texan who has bought a majority financial interest in Jim and the group. The other Stray Cats, especially drummer J.D., are frustrated at being ignored while Jim, promoted by Porter Lee and Mike, becomes the focus of media attention. Jim, supported by his new girlfriend Danielle, objects to Porter Lee's treatment of him and his music as a commercial commodity.\nJim's mother suddenly dies, and Jim, Danielle and Mike return to England for her funeral. There, Jim sees his wife Jeanette (whom he abandoned, but never bothered to divorce) and his young son. Jeanette wants nothing further to do with Jim and is living with another man, who has stepped into the father role for Jim's son. The funeral is mobbed by Jim's fans and Danielle is upset that Jim never told her he was married.\nBack in the USA, J.D. and the other Stray Cats inform Jim they are severing ties with him, leaving him as a solo act with no close friends except Mike and Danielle. Jim embarks on an ambitious project to compose and sing a progressive rock opera glorifying women, in honor of his late mother. When Danielle clashes with Porter Lee and then insinuates Mike is sexually attracted to Jim, Mike arranges for her to catch Jim having sex with another woman, causing her to walk out. Jim's rock opera, broadcast live to a worldwide audience of millions, is a huge success, but Jim, tired of his rock star life, moves to an isolated castle in Spain and becomes a recluse. Mike, who by now is acting as Jim's handler and caretaker, lives with him, but old resentments between the two soon surface.\nAfter two years, Porter Lee pushes Jim to come out of seclusion in order to make money to cover unpaid taxes and avoid being forgotten by his public. A major live television interview is planned, but on the day of the interview, the mentally fragile and drug-addled Jim refuses to come out of his room. Mike, whose friendship with Jim has deteriorated, coldly orders him to come out and do his job. Jim finally emerges and starts to do the interview, but gives rude responses and then starts to laugh uncontrollably. Mike, the only one to realize that Jim has overdosed on drugs, rushes to call an ambulance, but Jim dies on the way to the hospital.\nCast.\nRay Winstone is seen briefly as an uncredited extra in an early club performance scene in his first film appearance.\nProduction.\nDevelopment.\nScreenwriter Ray Connolly, who developed both \"That'll Be the Day\" and \"Stardust\" with producer David Puttnam, wrote about the making of \"Stardust\" in 2017.\nConnolly said he and Puttnam were thinking about a sequel to \"That'll Be the Day\" even before the latter film was released, and they went on holiday to Italy to plan it. \"This time we knew we were going to make a film about rock,\" wrote Connolly. \"It was the story of young Britain in the Sixties.\"\nPuttnam wanted to set the story in the early sixties while Connolly wanted it to go until the seventies. They compromised and the story encompassed the whole sixties.\nThe film originally had the title of \"Sooner or Later\".\n\"That'll Be the Day\" was directed by Claude Whatham but he and Puttnam clashed during filming so it was decided to get a new director. The film was offered to Alan Parker who had worked with Puttnam in advertising but Parker decided to make \"The Evacuees\" instead. The job went to Michael Apted who had been the first choice to direct \"That'll Be the Day\" and had recently begun work in features with \"Triple Echo\".\nApted said \"Stardust\" is \"about the media, success, drugs, isolation, and a lot of other things... We merely put up the idea that pop heroes are often created by other people, not themselves, and the whole awful business is usually deceiving and self destructive.\"\nFinance came from Nat Cohen of EMI Films, who had helped finance the original, and Columbia Pictures.\nCasting.\nDavid Essex, Rosalind Ayres, and Keith Moon all reprised their roles from \"That'll Be the Day\". Karl Howman also appears in both films, though his character name is Johnny in \"That'll Be the Day\" and 'Stevie' in \"Stardust\", and it is not made clear if Paul Nicholas's 'Johnny' in \"Stardust\" is the same character as the one originally played by Howman. After making \"That'll Be the Day\" Essex had become a pop star himself with the record \"Rock On\".\nConnolly wrote that the role of the band's American manager was originally written as an Italian-American from the Bronx with Tony Curtis in mind, but when Curtis proved too expensive, native Texan Larry Hagman was cast and the part was rewritten as a Texan. Hagman credited his work in \"Stardust\" with helping him develop his later character of oil baron J.R. Ewing on the TV series \"Dallas\".\nAccording to Connolly, Adam Faith was cast after Ringo Starr, who had played \"Mike\" in \"That'll Be the Day\", declined to appear in the sequel because \"having lived through the experience in reality as a member of the Beatles he wasn't keen to revisit it.\" Michael Brooks wrote that Starr declined because of \"an uncomfortable resemblance between a key subplot and the real-life story of Pete Best's departure from the Beatles.\"\nFilming.\nFilming began on 18 February 1974. Location filming was done in Britain, Spain (Castillo de La Calahorra), and the United States. Essex had recently become a real-life rock star with his 1973 hit song \"Rock On\", and was mobbed by a large crowd of his actual fans while filming the funeral scene at St. Bernard's Church in Northolt, London.\nMusician Dave Edmunds recorded the new music used in the movie \"virtually as a one-man band\".\nConnolly said \"For David Essex, it can't have been easy to play a rock star as his own rock fame was growing by the day. But it wasn't easy for Keith Moon either, who would now be central to our fictional band. With The Who he was used to fan adoration as he played to stadiums, but to us he was just another actor playing a small part \u2013 which didn't always sit well with his ego.\"\nReception.\nBox office.\nThe film was a hit at the box office and by 1985 had earned an estimated \u00a3525,000 in profit.\nCritical.\nEssex wrote in his memoirs that he did not feel \"Stardust\" was as \"truthful\" as \"That'll Be the Day\" which he felt \"had been a very British film whereas I think with \"Stardust\" the producers had one eye on doing well in America, which may have been partly why we went to film there. It was a good movie, but it ended up being a little bit mid-Atlantic.\"\nAwards and nominations.\nBAFTA Writers' Guild of Great Britain for Best Original British Screenplay WINNER: Ray Connolly.\nBAFTA Best Supporting Actor NOMINATED: Adam Faith.\nSoundtrack.\nThe \"Stardust\" soundtrack album was released in October 1974 on Ronco Records to coincide with the opening. Some of the later songs in the film were performed by the artists in the film's fictional Stray Cats themselves.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nLegacy.\nThe film is the sequel to the 1973 film \"That'll Be the Day\", in which Essex played the younger Jim MacLaine throughout the 1950s and early 1960s.\nAn independent radio drama recording project, \"That'll be the Stardust!\", was released in 2008. The story follows the musical journey of Jim MacLaine's son, Jimmy MacLaine Jr.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "11598796": "That'll Be the Day (album)\nThat'll Be The Day is the second and final studio album from Buddy Holly. Decca, Holly's first major record label, after failing to produce a hit single from Holly's early recordings, packaged these 1956 tunes after he had some success with recordings from the Brunswick and Coral labels, especially the previously released single \"That'll Be the Day\". This is the last album released before his death in a plane crash on February 3, 1959, and is rare among collectors.\nBackground.\nRecordings were done in three different sessions typically running just 3 hours long, January, July and November 1956 at the Bradley Film and Recording Studio at 804 16th Avenue South in Nashville, Tennessee. From these sessions a single was released on April 16, 1956 (D 29854), \"Blue Days, Black Nights\" / \"Love Me\". A second single \"Modern Don Juan / You Are My One Desire\" (D 30166) was released December 24, 1956. Low sales convinced Decca to shelve the remaining tracks.\nWhen Buddy Holly found new fame with his re-recording of \"That'll Be the Day\" with his band the Crickets, Decca began to issue Holly's recordings from these sessions as singles, which culminated in a full-length LP as well as an accompanying EP.\nThe Decca 1956 Nashville recordings were repackaged several times. Instruments and background vocals were added with later releases as late as 1984. The mid-1970s British album \"The Nashville Sessions\" is the best of the vinyl editions according to Allmusic.\nThe album reached no. 5 on the UK album chart in 1961 in a re-release. The album was re-released in 1967 under the title \"The Great Buddy Holly\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "78329809": "Night and Day (upcoming film)\nBritish comedy film \n \nNight and Day is an upcoming British/German film adaptation of the Virginia Woolf novel of the same name. It has an ensemble cast including Haley Bennett, Timothy Spall, Jennifer Saunders, Jack Whitehall, Sally Phillips, and Lily Allen.\nSynopsis.\nSet in Britain at the turn of the 20th century, a female astronomer tries to avoid the patriarchal attitudes of the day.\nProduction.\nThe Virginia Woolf novel \"Night & Day\" is adapted for this project by Justine Waddell. The film is directed by Tina Gharavi. It is produced by FilmHedge and producers include Christopher Figg, Meg Thomson and German co-producers GLISK.\nAn ensemble cast is led by Haley Bennett, Timothy Spall and Lily Allen, and also includes Jennifer Saunders, Jack Whitehall and Sally Phillips.\nPrincipal photography began in Newcastle upon Tyne in late 2024, and was completed in February 2025, ahead of an intended autumn release.\nFilming locations included the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne, Common Room of the Great North, Ryhope Engines Museum, Tanfield Railway and Beamish Museum. Additional filming took place in Cologne, Germany.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "422776": "That'll Be the Day\n1957 single by the Crickets\n\"That'll Be the Day\" is a song written by Buddy Holly and Jerry Allison. It was first recorded by Buddy Holly and the Three Tunes in 1956 and was re-recorded in 1957 by Holly and his new band, the Crickets. The 1957 recording achieved widespread success. Holly's producer, Norman Petty, was credited as a co-writer, although he did not contribute to the composition.\nMany other versions have been recorded. It was the first song recorded (as a demonstration disc) by the Quarrymen, a skiffle group from Liverpool that evolved into the Beatles.\nThe 1957 recording was certified gold (for over a million US sales) by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 1969. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998. It was placed in the National Recording Registry, a list of sound recordings that \"are culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States\", in 2005.\nBackground.\nIn June 1956, Holly along with his older brother Larry as well as Allison and Sonny Curtis went to see the film \"The Searchers\", starring John Wayne, in which Wayne repeatedly used the phrase \"that'll be the day\". This line of dialogue inspired the young musicians.\nBuddy Holly and the Three Tunes' version.\nThe song was first recorded by Buddy Holly and the Three Tunes for Decca Records at Bradley Studios in Nashville, on July 22, 1956. Decca, displeased with Holly's previous two singles, did not issue recordings from this session. After the song was re-recorded by the Crickets in 1957 and became a hit, Decca released the original recording as a single (Decca D30434) on September 2, 1957, with \"Rock Around with Ollie Vee\" as the B-side. It was also the title track of the 1958 album \"That'll Be the Day\". Despite Holly's newfound stardom, the single did not chart.\nThe Crickets' version.\nHolly's contract with Decca prohibited him from re-recording any of the songs recorded in the 1956 Nashville sessions for five years, even if Decca never released them. To evade this restriction, the producer Norman Petty credited the Crickets as the artist on his re-recording of \"That'll Be the Day\" for Brunswick Records. Brunswick was a subsidiary of Decca. Once the cat was out of the bag, Decca re-signed Holly to another of its subsidiaries, Coral Records, so he ended up with two recording contracts. Recordings with the Crickets were to be issued by Brunswick, and the recordings under Holly's name were to be on Coral, although the Crickets played on several of them.\nThe second recording of the song was made on February 25, 1957, seven months after the first, at the Norman Petty studios in Clovis, New Mexico, and issued by Brunswick on July 27, 1957. This version is on the debut album by the Crickets, \"The \"Chirping\" Crickets\", issued on November 27, 1957. The recording was made with everyone performing and without additional overdubs. The B-side of the record, \"I'm Looking for Someone to Love\" was recorded at the same session with the same backup singers.\nThe Brunswick recording of \"That'll Be the Day\" is considered a classic of rock and roll. It was ranked number 39 on \"Rolling Stone\"'s list of the \"500 Greatest Songs of All Time\".\nChart performance.\nThe Brunswick single was a number-one hit on \"Billboard\" magazine's Best Sellers in Stores chart in 1957. It went to number two on \"Billboard\"'s R&B singles chart. The song peaked at number 1 in the UK Singles Chart in November 1957 and stayed in that position for three weeks.\nOn December 20, 1969, a reissue of the single by Coral Records was awarded a \"gold single\" by the RIAA.\nOn September 20, 1986, the song appeared on the UK Singles Chart at number 85 and left the chart a week later.\nPersonnel.\nJuly 22, 1956, Bradley Studios, Nashville \nFebruary 25, 1957, Norman Petty Recording Studio\nLinda Ronstadt version.\nBackground.\nLinda Ronstadt recorded \"That'll Be the Day\" for her 1976 Grammy Award-winning platinum album \"Hasten Down the Wind\", produced by Peter Asher and issued by Asylum Records. Her version reached number 11 on both the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and the \"Cash Box\" Top 100 and number 27 on the \"Billboard\" Country Singles chart. In Canada, her version peaked at number 2 on the singles chart and was the 35th biggest hit of 1976. It also made the adult contemporary charts in the United States and Canada. This recording is included on the album \"Linda Ronstadt's Greatest Hits\" (1976) and on the 2011 tribute album \"\".\nChart performance.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "66084062": "Day of Days (film)\nDay of Days is a 2016 American drama film directed by Kim Bass and starring Tom Skerritt and Claudia Zevallos. The film is loosely based on Bass's grandfather, Clarence Bass.\nProduction.\nThe film was shot in Los Angeles in 12 days from late February to early March 2015. Filming wrapped in April 2015.\nRelease.\nThe film premiered on November 4, 2016, at the 11th Women's International Film & Arts Festival in Miami.\nAccolades.\nSkerritt and Zevallos won best actor awards at the Women's International Film & Arts Festival.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "19345494": "Long Live Rock\nSong by The Who\n\"Long Live Rock\" is a 1979 single by The Who, written by Pete Townshend and recorded in 1972. A different version of the song was performed by Billy Fury's character in the film \"That'll Be the Day\" (a film which featured Who drummer Keith Moon). \nThe original Who recording of the song was not released until the 1974 rarities album \"Odds & Sods\". It was subsequently released as a single in 1979.\nBackground.\n\"Long Live Rock\" was to have been included in \"Rock Is Dead\u2014Long Live Rock!\", a 1972 Who album which was also to have had an accompanying television special, before the album was shelved. Pete Townshend said of the song:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Well there are dozens of these self conscious hymns to the last fifteen years appearing now and here's another one. This was featured briefly in the film for which Keith made his acting debut, \"That'll Be The Day\". Billy Fury sang it. This is most definitely the definitive version. I had an idea once for a new album about the history of The Who called \"Rock Is Dead\u2014Long Live Rock!\". That idea later blossomed into \"Quadrophenia\".\nThe lyrics of the song describe a concert at the Rainbow Theatre.\nRelease.\nFollowing its appearance on \"Odds & Sods\", the song saw a 1974 single release in Israel, Italy (where it was backed with \"Pure and Easy\") and Japan (where it was backed with \"Put the Money Down\"). \"Long Live Rock\" also was featured during the credits of the seminal 1979 Who documentary, \"The Kids Are Alright\". Following this appearance, the song was released as a single in Britain, America, and many other countries. The single reached number 48 in Britain, as well as number 54 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and number 66 on the \"Cashbox\" charts.\n\"Record World\" said that \"All the elements of the patented Who sound are here, and the song is commercial enough to match last year's 'Won't Get Fooled Again.'\"\nA live version recorded by the Who at the BBC was released on their album \"BBC Sessions\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "42173929": "There Will Come a Day (film)\n2013 film directed by Giorgio Diritti\nThere Will Come a Day () is a 2013 Italian drama film directed by Giorgio Diritti. It premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. For her performance Jasmine Trinca won the Nastro d'Argento for Best Actress.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "63020922": "Days (2020 film)\n2020 film\nDays () is a 2020 Taiwanese drama film directed by Tsai Ming-liang. Typical of slow cinema and many Tsai films, \"Days\" is minimalist, slowly paced, and features little dialogue, without subtitles. Lee Kang-sheng plays Kang, and Non is portrayed by Anong Houngheuangsy, a Laotian immigrant to Thailand in his first film role.\n\"Days\" was selected to compete for the Golden Bear in the main competition section at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Teddy Award.\nPlot.\nMinimalist long takes of daily life show the middle-aged and middle class Kang (Lee), and the younger Non (Houngheuangsy). Kang lives alone, relaxing in his big house with a view of a goldfish pond in his backyard. Non lives in a spartan apartment. His day begins with religious worship at an altar. He then completes chores, namely the washing of vegetables. Kang travels to the city, seeking treatment for pain in his head and neck. After an acupuncture session, he schedules a massage at the parlor where Non works. Kang pays Non after the full body massage ends, and also gives him a gift, a small music box. Kang watches Non use the box, then shares a meal with him at the fast food restaurant nearby. Kang returns to his home where he tends to his fish and sleeps alone. In the street one night, Non sits on a bench and takes the music box out of his backpack. He plays it again, but it can hardly be heard over the roadway noise.\nProduction.\nPrincipal photography took place starting in 2014, during and after Tsai Ming-liang, Lee Kang-sheng, Claude Wang, and a cinematographer attended a theatre tour in Europe, followed by medical treatment in Hong Kong for Lee, which was also filmed. The film's opening scene was shot in Tsai's living room in Taiwan. In 2017, Tsai met Houngheuangsy and the two maintained contact via videotelephony, through which Tsai recognized Houngheuangsy's skill in cooking. Some earlier scenes featuring Lee were not used, and Tsai traveled to Bangkok to film on location, including scenes of Houngheuangsy making food. Tsai discussed with his cinematographer about ways to incorporate the captured footage into a film. The film underwent a long-term post-production in Taiwan. In May and June 2019, Tsai secured funding from the Public Television Service to complete post-production. Prior to the release of \"Days\", Tsai Ming-liang discussed the film without naming it, stating that he was working without a concept for film in mind, adding only that it was to feature Lee Kang-sheng and another actor.\nRelease.\n\"Days\" was selected to compete for the Golden Bear in the main competition section at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival. It won the jury Teddy Award at the 70th Berlinale.\nIts premiere in the United States was scheduled for April 2020, at the Museum of Modern Art. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, that showing was cancelled. The film was shown at the 2020 New York Film Festival.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18522143": "Ray Connolly\nBritish writer\nRay Connolly (born 4 December 1940) is a British writer. He is best known for his journalism and for writing the screenplays for the films \"That'll Be the Day\" and its sequel \"Stardust\", for which he won a Writers' Guild of Great Britain Best Screenplay award.\nEarly life.\nConnolly was born and brought up in Lancashire. He was educated at West Park Catholic Grammar School (St. Helens), Ormskirk Grammar School, and the London School of Economics (LSE), where he read social anthropology. There, he edited the LSE magazine \"Clare Market Review\" and was an associate editor of the student film magazine \"Motion\".\nCareer.\nAfter entering journalism as a graduate trainee at the \"Liverpool Daily Post\", Connolly then moved to the \"London Evening Standard\" where he interviewed, among others, many 1960s and 1970s rock stars and cultural icons, including the Beatles, Muhammad Ali and Elvis Presley. Many of his interviews with the Beatles are collected in \"The Ray Connolly Beatles Archive\", while other interviews are collected in \"Stardust Memories \u2013 Talking About My Generation\". He was due to interview John Lennon on the day the ex-Beatle was murdered, an event he wrote about in the BBC radio play \"Unimaginable\". In 2018, he published the biography, \"Being John Lennon \u2013 A Restless Life\".\nHe has written many articles for the \"Daily Mail\", as well as \"The Sunday Times\", \"The Times\", \"The Daily Telegraph\" and \"The"}, "descending_order": ["5316019", "5321761", "11598796", "78329809", "422776", "66084062", "19345494", "42173929", "63020922", "18522143"], "permutation_1": ["422776", "66084062", "42173929", "63020922", "5316019", "5321761", "19345494", "78329809", "18522143", "11598796"], "permutation_2": ["5316019", "5321761", "78329809", "422776", "19345494", "66084062", "42173929", "11598796", "63020922", "18522143"], "permutation_3": ["18522143", "422776", "66084062", "42173929", "5316019", "78329809", "19345494", "11598796", "5321761", "63020922"]}
{"id": "nq_2265055189082030896", "docs_added": {"51389757": "Lake Nyos disaster\n1986 limnic eruption in Cameroon\nOn 21 August 1986, a limnic eruption at Lake Nyos in northwestern Cameroon killed 1,746 people and 3,500 livestock.\nThe eruption triggered the sudden release of about 100,000\u2013300,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2). The gas cloud initially rose at nearly and then, being heavier than air, descended onto nearby villages, suffocating people and livestock within of the lake.\nA degassing system has since been installed at the lake, with the aim of reducing the concentration of CO2 in the waters and therefore the risk of further eruptions. Along with the Lake Monoun disaster two years earlier, it is one of only two recorded limnic eruptions in history.\nEruption and gas release.\nWhat triggered the catastrophic outgassing is not known. Most geologists suspect a landslide, but some believe that a small volcanic eruption may have occurred on the bed of the lake. A third possibility is that cool rainwater falling on one side of the lake triggered the overturn. Others still believe there was a small earthquake, but because witnesses did not report feeling any tremors on the morning of the disaster, this hypothesis is unlikely. The event resulted in the supersaturated deep water rapidly mixing with the upper layers of the lake, where the reduced pressure allowed the stored CO2 to effervesce out of solution.\nIt is believed that about of gas was released. The normally blue waters of the lake turned a deep red after the outgassing, due to iron-rich water from the deep rising to the surface and being oxidised by the air. The level of the lake dropped by about a metre and trees near the lake were knocked down.\nScientists concluded from evidence that a column of water and foam formed at the surface of the lake, spawning a wave of at least that swept the shore on one side.\nSince carbon dioxide is 1.5 times the density of air, the cloud hugged the ground and moved down the valleys, where there were various villages. The mass was about thick, and travelled downward at . For roughly , the gas cloud was concentrated enough to suffocate many people in their sleep in the villages of Nyos, Kam, Cha, and Subum. About 4,000 inhabitants fled the area, and many of these developed respiratory problems, lesions, and paralysis as a result of the gas cloud.\nIt is a possibility that other volcanic gases were released along with the CO2, as some survivors reported a smell of gunpowder or rotten eggs, which indicates that sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide were present at concentrations above their odour thresholds. However, CO2 was the only gas detected in samples of lake water, suggesting that this was the predominant gas released and as such the main cause of the incident.\nEffects on survivors.\nReporters in the area described the scene as \"looking like the aftermath of a neutron bomb.\" One survivor, Joseph Nkwain from Subum, described himself when he awoke after the gases had struck:<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I could not speak. I became unconscious. I could not open my mouth because then I smelled something terrible ... I heard my daughter snoring in a terrible way, very abnormal ... When crossing to my daughter's bed ... I collapsed and fell. I was there till nine o'clock in the morning (of Friday, the next day) ... until a friend of mine came and knocked at my door ... I was surprised to see that my trousers were red, had some stains like honey. I saw some ... starchy mess on my body. My arms had some wounds ... I didn't really know how I got these wounds ... I opened the door ... I wanted to speak, my breath would not come out ... My daughter was already dead ... I went into my daughter's bed, thinking that she was still sleeping. I slept till it was 4.30 in the afternoon ... on Friday (the same day). (Then) I managed to go over to my neighbours' houses. They were all dead ... I decided to leave ... (because) most of my family was in Wum ... I got my motorcycle ... A friend whose father had died left with me (for) Wum ... As I rode ... through Nyos I didn't see any sign of any living thing ... (When I got to Wum), I was unable to walk, even to talk ... my body was completely weak.Following the eruption, many survivors were treated at the main hospital in Yaound\u00e9, the country's capital. It was believed that many of the victims had been poisoned by sulphur-based gases. Poisoning by these gases would lead to burning pains in the eyes and nose, coughing and signs of asphyxiation similar to being strangled.\nInterviews with survivors and pathologic studies indicated that victims rapidly lost consciousness and that death was caused by CO2 asphyxiation. At nonlethal levels, CO2 can produce sensory hallucinations, such that many people exposed to CO2 report the odor of sulfuric compounds when none are present. Skin lesions found on survivors represent pressure sores, and in a few cases exposure to a heat source, but there is no evidence of chemical burns or of flash burns from exposure to hot gases.\nDe-gassing.\nThe scale of the disaster led to much study on how a recurrence could be prevented. Several researchers proposed the installation of degassing columns from rafts in the middle of the lake. The principle is to slowly vent the CO2 by lifting heavily saturated water from the bottom of the lake through a pipe, initially by using a pump, but only until the release of gas inside the pipe naturally lifts the column of effervescing water, making the process self-sustaining.\nStarting from 1995, feasibility studies were successfully conducted, and the first permanent degassing tube was installed at Lake Nyos in 2001. Two additional pipes were installed in 2011. In 2019 it was determined that the degassing had reached an essentially steady state and that a single one of the installed pipes would be able to self-sustain the degassing process into the future, indefinitely maintaining the CO2 at a safe level, without any need for external power.\nSimilar danger suspected at Lake Kivu.\nFollowing the Lake Nyos disaster, scientists investigated other African lakes to see if a similar phenomenon could happen elsewhere. In 2005, Lake Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2,000\u00a0times larger than Lake Nyos, was also found to be supersaturated, and geologists found evidence that outgassing events around the lake happened about every thousand years.\nHowever, a study undertaken in 2018 and released in 2020 found flaws in the 2005 study, including a possible bias in the conversion of concentrations to partial pressures, to an overestimation of concentrations, or to a problem of calibration of sensors at high pressure. The 2020 study found that when these errors were accounted for, the risk of a gas eruption at Lake Kivu did not seem to be increasing over time.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "238025": "Lake Nyos\nCrater lake in the Northwest Region of Cameroon\nLake Nyos ( ) is a crater lake in the Northwest Region of Cameroon, located about northwest of Yaound\u00e9, the capital. Nyos is a deep lake high on the flank of an inactive volcano in the Oku volcanic plain along the Cameroon line of volcanic activity. A volcanic dam impounds the lake waters.\nA pocket of magma lies beneath the lake and leaks carbon dioxide (CO2) into the water, changing it into carbonic acid. Nyos is one of only three lakes known to be saturated with carbon dioxide in this way, and therefore prone to limnic eruptions (the others being Lake Monoun, also in Cameroon, and Lake Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda).\nIn 1986, possibly as the result of a landslide, Lake Nyos suddenly emitted a large cloud of CO2, which suffocated 1,746\u00a0people and 3,500 livestock in nearby towns and villages, the most notable one being Chah, which was abandoned after the incident. The limnic eruption not only devastated human and livestock populations but also had a profound impact on the diverse aquatic life, including tilapia, crabs, snails, and frogs, leading to a significant loss of biodiversity in and around the lake.\nThough not completely unprecedented, it was the first known large-scale asphyxiation caused by a natural event. To prevent a recurrence, a degassing tube that siphons water from the bottom layers to the top, allowing the carbon dioxide to leak in safe quantities, was installed in 2001. Two additional tubes were installed in 2011.\nToday, the lake also poses a threat because its natural wall is weakening. A geological tremor could cause this natural levee to give way, allowing water to rush into downstream villages all the way into Nigeria and allowing large amounts of carbon dioxide to escape.\nGeography.\nLake Nyos lies within the Oku Volcanic Field, located near the northern boundary of the Cameroon Volcanic Line, a zone of volcanoes and other tectonic activity that extends southwest to the Mt. Cameroon stratovolcano. The field consists of volcanic maars and basaltic scoria cones.\nFormation and geologic history.\nLake Nyos is located south of the dirt road from Wum, about to the west, to Nkamb\u00e9 in the east. Villages along the road in the vicinity of the lake include Cha, Nyos, Munji, Djingbe, and Subum. The lake is from the Nigerian border to the north, and lies on the northern slopes of the Massif du Mbam, drained by streams running north, then northwest, to the Katsina-Ala River in Nigeria which is part of the Benue River basin.\nLake Nyos fills a roughly circular maar in the Oku Volcanic Field, an explosion crater caused when a lava flow interacted violently with groundwater. The maar is believed to have formed in an eruption a maximum of 12,000\u00a0years ago, and is 1,800\u00a0m (5,900\u00a0ft) across and 208\u00a0m (682\u00a0ft) deep. The area has been volcanically active for millions of years\u2014after South America and Africa were split apart by plate tectonics about 110\u00a0million years ago, West Africa also experienced rifting, although to a lesser degree. The rift is known as the Mb\u00e9r\u00e9 Rift Valley, and crustal extension has allowed magma to reach the surface along a line extending through Cameroon. Mount Cameroon also lies on this fault line. Lake Nyos is surrounded by old lava flows and pyroclastic deposits.\nAlthough Nyos is situated within an extinct volcano, magma still exists beneath it. Approximately directly below the lake resides a pool of magma, which releases carbon dioxide and other gases; the gases then travel upward through the earth. The fumes then dissolve in the natural springs encircling the lake, ultimately rising to the surface of the water and leaching into the lake. But with advanced in technology now there are machinery placed at the bottom of the lake to remove the gases, so as to make the inhabitants of the area free from danger. \nThe lake waters are held in place by a natural dam composed of volcanic rock. At its narrowest point, the wall measures high and wide.\nGas saturation.\nLake Nyos is one of only three lakes in the world known to be saturated with carbon dioxide\u2014the others are Lake Monoun, also in Cameroon, and Lake Kivu on the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda. A magma chamber beneath the region is an abundant source of carbon dioxide, which seeps up through the lake bed, charging the waters of Lake Nyos with an estimated 90\u00a0million tonnes of CO2.\nLake Nyos is thermally stratified, with layers of warm, less dense water near the surface floating on the colder, denser water layers near the lake's bottom. Over long periods, carbon dioxide gas seeping into the cold water at the lake's bottom is dissolved in great amounts.\nMost of the time, the lake is stable and the CO2 remains in solution in the lower layers. However, over time, the water becomes supersaturated, and if an event such as an earthquake or landslide occurs, large amounts of CO2 may suddenly come out of solution.\n1986 disaster.\nAlthough a sudden outgassing of CO2 had occurred at Lake Monoun in 1984, a similar threat from Lake Nyos was not anticipated. However, on August 21, 1986, a limnic eruption occurred at Lake Nyos, triggering the sudden release of about 100,000\u2013300,000 tons (some sources state as much as 1.6 million tonnes) of CO2. This gas cloud rose at nearly and spilled over the northern lip of the lake into a valley running roughly east\u2013west from Cha to Subum. It then rushed down two valleys branching off to the north, displacing all of the air and suffocating 1,746\u00a0people within of the lake, mostly rural villagers, as well as 3,500 livestock. The villages most affected were Cha, Nyos, and Subum.\nScientists concluded from evidence that a fountain of water and foam formed at the surface of the lake. The huge amount of water rising suddenly caused much turbulence in the water, spawning a wave of at least that would scour the shore of one side.\nIt is not known what triggered the catastrophic outgassing. Most geologists suspect a landslide, but some believe that a small volcanic eruption may have occurred on the bed of the lake. A third possibility is that cool rainwater falling on one side of the lake triggered the overturn. Others still believe there was a small earthquake, but as witnesses did not report feeling any tremors on the morning of the disaster, this hypothesis is unlikely. Whatever the cause, the event resulted in the rapid mixing of the supersaturated deep water with the upper layers of the lake, where the reduced pressure allowed the stored CO2 to effervesce out of solution.\nIt is believed that about of gas was released. The normally blue waters of the lake turned a deep red after the outgassing, due to iron-rich water from the deep rising to the surface and being oxidised by the air. The level of the lake dropped by about a metre and trees near the lake were knocked down.\nDegassing.\nThe scale of the 1986 disaster led to much study on how a recurrence could be prevented. Estimates of the rate of carbon dioxide entering the lake suggested that outgassings could occur every 10\u201330\u00a0years, though a recent study shows that release of water from the lake, caused by erosion of the natural barrier that keeps in the lake's water, could in turn reduce pressure on the lake's carbon dioxide and cause a gas escape much sooner.\nSeveral researchers independently proposed the installation of degassing columns from rafts in the lake. These use a pump to initially lift water from the bottom of the lake, heavily saturated with CO2, until the loss of pressure begins releasing the gas from the diphasic fluid, at which point the process becomes self-powered. In 1992 at Monoun, and in 1995 at Nyos, a French team directed by Michel Halbwachs demonstrated the feasibility of this approach. In 2001, the U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance funded a permanent installation at Nyos.\nIn 2011, two additional pipes were installed by Michel Halbwachs and his French-Cameroonian team to assure the complete degassing of Lake Nyos.\nFollowing the disaster, scientists investigated other African lakes to see if a similar phenomenon could happen elsewhere. Lake Kivu, 2,000 times larger than Lake Nyos, was also found to be supersaturated, and geologists found evidence for outgassing events around the lake about every thousand years. The eruption of nearby Mount Nyiragongo in 2002 sent lava flowing into the lake, raising fears that a gas eruption could be triggered, but it was not, as the flow of lava stopped well before it got near the bottom layers of the lake, where the gas is maintained in solution by the water pressure.\nWeakening dam.\nIn 2005, Isaac Njilah, a geologist at the University of Yaound\u00e9, suggested that the natural dam of volcanic rock that keeps in the lake's waters could collapse in the near future. Erosion has worn the dam away, causing holes and pockets to develop in the dam's upper layer, and water already passes through the lower section. Meanwhile, landslides have reduced dam strength on the outside. Seismic activity caused by the lake's volcanic foundation could thus cause the lake wall to give way, resulting in up to 50\u00a0million m3 (1.8\u00a0billion ft3) of water flooding downhill into areas of the Northwest Province and the Nigerian states of Taraba and Benue.\nThe Cameroonian government, speaking through Gregory Tanyi-Leke of the Institute of Mining and Geological Research, acknowledges the weakening wall, but denies that it presents any immediate threat. A United Nations team led by Olaf Van Duin and Nisa Nurmohamed of the Netherlands' Ministry of Transport and Public Works inspected the dam over three days in September 2005, and confirmed that the natural lip had weakened. Van Duin believed that the dam would breach within the next 10 to 20 years.\nOne possible means of averting such a catastrophe would be to strengthen the lake wall, though this would take much time and money. Engineers could also introduce a channel to allow excess water to drain; if the water level were lowered by about , the pressure on the wall would be reduced significantly.\nReturn of population.\nDespite the risks from carbon dioxide and collapse of the lake's retaining wall, the area is being resettled. Settlers cite the wish to return to ancestral lands (although some are newcomers) and the great fertility of the land as reasons for their return.\nIn popular culture.\n\"\" [Nyos: The ceremony of innocence] (2016), a novel by Basileios Drolias focusing on the lake Nyos disaster.\n\"Stikvallei\" [Choke Valley] (2013), a non-fiction account of the lake Nyos disaster by Frank Westerman.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1953160": "Limnic eruption\nType of natural disaster\nA limnic eruption, also known as a lake overturn, is a very rare type of natural hazard in which dissolved carbon dioxide (CO2) suddenly erupts from deep lake waters, forming a gas cloud capable of asphyxiating wildlife, livestock, and humans. Scientists believe earthquakes, volcanic activity, and other explosive events can serve as triggers for limnic eruptions as the rising CO2 displaces water. Lakes in which such activity occurs are referred to as limnically active lakes or exploding lakes. Some features of limnically active lakes include:\nInvestigations of the Lake Monoun and Lake Nyos casualties led scientists to classify limnic eruptions as a distinct type of hazard event, even though they can be indirectly linked to volcanic eruptions.\nHistorical occurrences.\nDue to the largely invisible nature of the underlying cause (CO2 gas) behind limnic eruptions, it is difficult to determine to what extent, and when, eruptions have occurred in the past. The Roman historian Plutarch reports that in 406BC, Lake Albano surged over the surrounding hills, despite there being no rain nor tributaries flowing into the lake to account for the rise in water level. The ensuing flood destroyed fields and vineyards before eventually pouring into the sea. This event is thought to have been caused by volcanic gases, trapped in sediment at the bottom of the lake and gradually building up until suddenly releasing, causing the water to overflow.\nIn recent history, this phenomenon has been observed twice. The first recorded limnic eruption occurred in Cameroon at Lake Monoun in 1984, causing asphyxiation and death of 37 people living nearby. A second, deadlier eruption happened at neighboring Lake Nyos in 1986, releasing over 80 million m3 of CO2, killing around 1,700 people and 3,000 livestock, again by asphyxiation.\nA third lake, the much larger Lake Kivu, rests on the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, and contains massive amounts of dissolved CO2. Sediment samples taken from the lake showed an event caused living creatures in the lake to go extinct around every 1,000 years, and caused nearby vegetation to be swept back into the lake. Limnic eruptions can be detected and quantified on a CO2 concentration scale by taking air samples of the affected region.The Messel pit fossil deposits of Messel, Germany, show evidence of a limnic eruption there in the early Eocene. Among the victims are perfectly preserved insects, frogs, turtles, crocodiles, birds, anteaters, insectivores, early primates, and paleotheres.\nCauses.\nFor a lake to undergo a limnic eruption, the water must be nearly saturated with gas. CO2 was the primary component in the two observed cases, Lake Nyos and Lake Monoun. In Lake Kivu's case, scientists, including lake physicist Alfred Johny W\u00fcest, were also concerned about the concentrations of methane. CO2 may originate from volcanic gas emitted from under the lake, or from decomposition of organic material.\nBefore a lake becomes saturated, it behaves like an unopened carbonated soft drink: the CO2 is dissolved in the water. In both lakes and soft drinks, CO2 dissolves much more readily at higher pressure due to Henry's law. When the pressure is released, the CO2 comes out of solution as bubbles of gas, which rise to the surface. CO2 also dissolves more readily in cooler water, so very deep lakes can dissolve very large amounts of CO2 since pressure increases, and temperature decreases, with depth. A small increase in water temperature can lead to the release of a large amount of CO2.\nOnce a lake is saturated, it is very unstable and it gives off a smell of rotten eggs and gunpowder, but a trigger is needed to set off an eruption. In the case of the 1986 Lake Nyos eruption, landslides were the suspected triggers, but a volcanic eruption, an earthquake, or even wind and rain storms can be potential triggers. Limnic eruptions can also be caused by gradual gas saturation at specific depths triggering spontaneous gas development. Regardless of cause, the trigger pushes gas-saturated water higher in the lake, where the reduced pressure is insufficient to keep gas in solution. The buoyancy from the resulting bubbles lifts the water even higher, releasing yet more bubbles. This process forms a column of gas, at which point the water at the bottom is pulled up by suction, and it too loses CO2 in a runaway process. This eruption discharges the gas into the air and can displace enough water to form a tsunami.\nLimnic eruptions are exceptionally rare for several reasons. First, a CO2 source must exist; regions with volcanic activity are most at risk. Second, the vast majority of lakes are holomictic (their layers mix regularly), preventing a buildup of dissolved gases. Only meromictic lakes are stratified, allowing CO2 to remain dissolved. It is estimated only one meromictic lake exists for every 1,000 holomictic lakes. Finally, a lake must be very deep in order to have sufficiently pressurized water that can dissolve large amounts of CO2.\nConsequences.\nOnce an eruption occurs, a large CO2 cloud forms above the lake and expands to the surrounding region. Because CO2 is denser than air, it has a tendency to sink to the ground, simultaneously displacing breathable air, resulting in asphyxia. CO2 can make human bodily fluids highly acidic and potentially cause CO2 poisoning. As victims gasp for air, they actually accelerate asphyxia by inhaling CO2.\nAt Lake Nyos, the gas cloud descended into a nearby village where it settled, killing nearly everyone; casualties as far as were reported. A change in skin color on some bodies led scientists to hypothesize the gas cloud may have contained dissolved acid such as hydrogen chloride, though this hypothesis is disputed. Many victims were found with blisters on their skin, thought to have been caused by pressure ulcers, which were likely caused by low blood oxygen levels in those asphyxiated by carbon dioxide. Nearby vegetation was largely unaffected, except any growing immediately adjacent to the lake. There, vegetation was damaged or destroyed by a high tsunami caused by the violent eruption.\nDegassing.\nEfforts are underway to develop a solution for removing the gas from these lakes and to prevent a build-up which could lead to another disaster. A team led by French scientist Michel Halbwachs began experimenting at Lake Monoun and Lake Nyos in 1990 using siphons to degas the waters of these lakes in a controlled manner. The team positioned a pipe vertically in the lake with its upper end above the water surface. Water saturated with CO2 enters the bottom of the pipe and rises to the top. The lower pressure at the surface allows the gas to come out of solution. Only a small amount of water must be mechanically pumped initially through the pipe to start the flow. As saturated water rises, the CO2 comes out of solution and forms bubbles. The natural buoyancy of the bubbles draws the water up the pipe at high velocity resulting in a fountain at the surface. The degassifying water acts like a pump, drawing more water into the bottom of the pipe, and creating a self-sustaining flow. This is the same process which leads to a natural eruption, but in this case it is controlled by the size of the pipe.\nEach pipe has a limited pumping capacity and several would be required for both Lake Monoun and Lake Nyos to degas a significant fraction of the deep lake water and render the lakes safe. The deep lake waters are slightly acidic due to the dissolved CO2 which causes corrosion to the pipes and electronics, necessitating ongoing maintenance. There is some concern that CO2 from the pipes could settle on the surface of the lake forming a thin layer of unbreathable air and thus potentially causing problems for wildlife.\nIn January 2001, a single pipe was installed by the French-Cameroonian team on Lake Nyos, and two more pipes were installed in 2011 with funding support from the United Nations Development Programme. A pipe was installed at Lake Monoun in 2003 and two more were added in 2006. These three pipes are thought to be sufficient to prevent an increase in CO2 levels, removing approximately the same amount of gas that naturally enters at the lake bed. In January 2003, an 18-month project was approved to fully degas Lake Monoun, and the lake has since been rendered safe.\nThere is some evidence that Lake Michigan in the United States spontaneously degasses on a much smaller scale each fall.\nLake Kivu risks.\nLake Kivu is not only about 1,700 times larger than Lake Nyos, but is also located in a far more densely populated area, with over two million people living along its shores. The part within the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a site of active armed conflict and low state capacity for the DRC government, which impedes both studies and any subsequent mitigating actions. Lake Kivu has not reached a high level of CO2 saturation yet; if the water were to become heavily saturated, a limnic eruption would pose a great risk to human and animal life, potentially killing millions. \nTwo significant changes in Lake Kivu's physical state have brought attention to a possible limnic eruption: the high rates of methane dissociation and a rising surface temperature. Research investigating historical and present-day temperatures show Lake Kivu's surface temperature is increasing by about 0.12\u00a0\u00b0C per decade. Lake Kivu is in close proximity to potential triggers: Mount Nyiragongo (an active volcano which erupted in January 2002 and May 2021), an active earthquake zone, and other active volcanoes.\nWhile the lake could be degassed in a manner similar to Lake Monoun and Lake Nyos, due to the size of Lake Kivu and the volume of gas it contains, such an operation would be expensive, running into the millions of dollars. A scheme initiated in 2010 to use methane trapped in the lake as a fuel source to generate electricity in Rwanda has led to a degree of CO2 degassing. During the procedure for extracting the flammable methane gas used to fuel power stations on the shore, some CO2 is removed in a process known as catalyst scrubbing. It is unclear whether enough gas will be removed to eliminate the danger of a limnic eruption at Lake Kivu.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2772805": "Lake Monoun\nLake in West Province, Cameroon\nLake Monoun is a crater lake (maar) in West Province, Cameroon, that lies in the Oku Volcanic Field. On August 15, 1984, a limnic eruption occurred at the lake, which resulted in the release of a large amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) that killed 37\u00a0people. At first, the deaths remained unexplained, and causes such as terrorism were suspected. Further investigation and a similar event two years later at Lake Nyos led to the currently accepted explanation.\nDisaster.\nSeveral people reported hearing a loud noise on August 15, 1984, around 22:30. A gas cloud reportedly emanated from a crater in the eastern part of the lake. The resulting deaths of 37 residents in a low-lying area are believed to have occurred between 03:00 and dawn. The victims were said to have skin burns, which reports later clarified as \"skin damage\" such as discoloration. Survivors reported that the whitish, smoke-like cloud smelled bitter and acidic. Vegetation was flattened around the eastern part of the lake, probably by a large wave of up to height.\nAlthough Lake Monoun is near the center of a volcanic field that includes at least 34 recent craters, the subsequent investigation found that the event was not caused by an eruption or sudden ejection of volcanic gas from the lake. Rather, emission of carbon dioxide in a limnic eruption is thought to be to blame. The cloud's smell and skin damage to victims were not fully explained. Some theories attribute the skin problems to a combination of preexisting conditions and routine postmortem effects like livor mortis, another medical interpretation says the body's metabolic rate was reduced inducing a severely restricted circulation in capillary vessels of the skin, resulting in necrosis, although there is no clear consensus.\nAmong the victims were some of the riders in a truck carrying twelve people. The truck's engine stopped working as it became starved of oxygen, and the people inside the truck got out and were killed. Two people sitting on top of the truck survived, because their elevated position allowed them to breathe \u2013 carbon dioxide is heavier than air (oxygen and nitrogen) which causes it to stay close to the ground.\nTwo years later, on 21 August 1986, a similar and much more deadly event occurred at Lake Nyos, about north-northwest, killing 1,746 people and more than 3,000 livestock. Along with Lake Nyos and Lake Kivu, Lake Monoun is one of three lakes in the world known to have high concentrations of gas dissolved deep below the surface and which have the right conditions for a limnic eruption.\nDegassing.\nIn March and April\u00a01992 preliminary test were conducted at Lake Monoun using the gas lift method as known in the petroleum industry. Initially a pump (or preferably a compressed gas injection) is needed to pull water from the bottom, but as carbon dioxide begins to come out of solution it creates buoyancy in the water in the pipes, allowing a self-sustaining process without the need for external energy supply.\nDue to the very limited funds for the project and construction basically by hand, the solution was the use of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) pipes. The material has a specific gravity of 0.96\u00a0kg/L which means an almost neutral buoyancy in water. The HDPE plastic is flexible, not brittle, and resistive to chemical and weathering alteration as proven material for natural gas distribution networks.\nThe pipe could be easily soldered electrically in the field from standard segments, and deployed with just the help of a few rubber boats plus floats. With some ballast, the pipe hangs freely from an anchored raft like a pendulum.\nUnfortunately, the CO2-rich, oxygen-depleted water from the depth is a challenge for steel fittings: Corrosion occurred and formed siderite which removed iron from the steel.\nIn February\u00a02003, a venting pipe was inserted into the lake, in an effort to prevent the disaster from recurring. In the initial degassing phase, an fountain developed from the water tapped at depth.(p9) However, a study found in 2005 that gas was not being removed from the lake quickly enough to ensure that the disaster could never happen again. It was recommended to lower the inlet of the existing pipe down to and the addition of a second pipe in order to release more carbon dioxide. On the other hand, the deep lake water is rich in iron(II) ions, which after a while transforms into limonite. As the lake is a fishing ground for local villagers, the effect of a higher iron intake rate in the upper water layer on fishlife needed consideration before scaling up the degassing rate.(p283)\nIn December\u00a02013, the degassing pipe was upgraded with a small solar-power driven rotary pump, since it had lost its self-lift capability due to the bubbling effect in the riser as a significant amount of CO2 had been removed from the bottom layers. The new system is able to lift c.\u2009100\u00a0m\u00b3 of bottom water to the surface per day. That degassing capability is unfortunately less than the natural inflow of CO2-rich water, therefore two more of these solar pumps are needed to avoid a long-term build up of higher and dangerous levels of CO2 in the stratified water levels.(p31)\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "30720747": "Oku Volcanic Field\nThe Oku Volcanic Field or Oku Massif is a group of volcanoes based on a swell in the Cameroon Volcanic Line, located in the Oku region of the Western High Plateau of Cameroon.\nThe Mount Oku stratovolcano rises to 3,011\u00a0m above sea level.\nThe massif has a diameter of almost 100\u00a0km and contains four major stratovolcanoes: Mount Oku, Mount Babanki 15\u00a0km SW of Oku, Nyos and Nkambe.\nRocks in the massif have ages from 24.9 to 22.1 million years ago, but more recent activity has occurred. \nThe massif is composed of rhyolitic and trachytic rock, and contains many maars and basaltic cinder cones.\nThe Oku Volcanic Field includes two crater lakes, Lake Nyos to the north and Lake Monoun to the south.\nOn 15 August 1984, an earthquake and landslide triggered a major release of carbon dioxide from Lake Monoun, killing several people. \nLake Nyos is inside a maar formed by an explosion about 400 years ago, and is about 1,800\u00a0m wide and 208\u00a0m deep. There is a low-temperature reservoir of free carbon dioxide below the lake bottom, which seeps into the lake through a volcanic pipe.\nOn 21 August 1986, Lake Nyos released a massive amount of carbon dioxide which killed at least 1,700 people by suffocation, possibly triggered by a force 5 earthquake along the Foumban Shear Zone, which runs under the massif.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "24951996": "Chah, Cameroon\nVillage in Cameroon\nChah, or Cha, is a village in the Northwest Province of Cameroon that was largely abandoned after the Lake Nyos disaster of 1986, when an eruption of carbon dioxide from nearby Lake Nyos killed many of its inhabitants. The village's population in 2005 was 593, 147 of which were men, and 446 were women.\nThe village's infrastructure consists of at least seven kilometers of road, two bridges, and seven culverts.\nThere are concerns about the stability of the natural rock wall that holds back the lake water. Regardless, the area was resettled after the disaster and reportedly has highly fertile soil.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "268988": "Donner Party\n19th-century group of American emigrants who became trapped\nThe Donner Party, sometimes called the Donner\u2013Reed Party, was a group of American pioneers who migrated to California in a wagon train from the Midwest. Delayed by a multitude of mishaps, they spent the winter of 1846\u20131847 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada. Some of the migrants resorted to cann"}, "descending_order": ["51389757", "238025", "1953160", "2772805", "30720747", "24951996", "268988"], "permutation_1": ["51389757", "2772805", "1953160", "30720747", "268988", "238025", "24951996"], "permutation_2": ["1953160", "24951996", "51389757", "30720747", "2772805", "238025", "268988"], "permutation_3": ["238025", "1953160", "51389757", "30720747", "268988", "2772805", "24951996"]}
{"id": "nq_-2148560302635310074", "docs_added": {"12224": "Great Pyramid of Giza\nLargest pyramid in the Giza Necropolis, Egypt\nThe Great Pyramid of Giza is the largest Egyptian pyramid. It served as the tomb of pharaoh Khufu, who ruled during the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom. Built c.\u20092600 BC, over a period of about 26 years, the pyramid is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the only wonder that has remained largely intact. It is the most famous monument of the Giza pyramid complex, which is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site \"Memphis and its Necropolis\". It is situated at the northeastern end of the line of the three main pyramids at Giza.\nInitially standing at , the Great Pyramid was the world's tallest human-made structure for more than 3,800 years. Over time, most of the smooth white limestone casing was removed, which lowered the pyramid's height to the current ; what is seen today is the underlying core structure. The base was measured to be about square, giving a volume of roughly , which includes an internal hillock. The dimensions of the pyramid were high, a base length of , with a \"seked\" of palms (a slope of 51\u00b050'40\").\nThe Great Pyramid was built by quarrying an estimated 2.3 million large blocks, weighing 6 million tonnes in total. The majority of the stones are not uniform in size or shape, and are only roughly dressed. The outside layers were bound together by mortar. Primarily local limestone from the Giza Plateau was used for its construction. Other blocks were imported by boat on the Nile: white limestone from Tura for the casing, and blocks of granite from Aswan, weighing up to 80 tonnes, for the \"King's Chamber\" structure.\nThere are three known chambers inside of the Great Pyramid. The lowest was cut into the bedrock, upon which the pyramid was built, but remained unfinished. The so-called Queen's Chamber and King's Chamber, which contain a granite sarcophagus, are above ground, within the pyramid structure. Hemiunu, Khufu's vizier, is believed by some to be the architect of the Great Pyramid. Many varying scientific and alternative hypotheses attempt to explain the exact construction techniques, but, as is the case for other such structures, there is no definite consensus.\nThe funerary complex around the pyramid consisted of two mortuary temples connected by a causeway (one close to the pyramid and one near the Nile); tombs for the immediate family and court of Khufu, including three smaller pyramids for Khufu's wives; an even smaller \"satellite pyramid\"; and five buried solar barques.\nPurpose.\nThe Great Pyramid of Giza was the tomb of pharaoh Khufu, and still contains his granite sarcophagus. It had, like other tombs of Egyptian elites, four main purposes:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Make your grave well furnished and prepare thy place in the west.Look, death counts little for us. Look, life is valued highly by us.The house of the dead (the tomb) is for life.\nIn ancient Egypt, high social status was considered absolutely positive, and the monumental social inequalities were symbolized by gigantic pyramids versus smaller mastabas. The sizes of tombs were regulated officially, with their allowed dimensions written down in royal decrees. In the Old Kingdom only kings and queens could have a pyramid tomb. Architectural layout and funeral equipment were also sanctioned, and were, like access to material and workers, at the discretion of the king.\nThe Great Pyramid's internal chambers lack inscriptions and decorations, the norm for Egyptian tombs of the fourth to late fifth dynasty, apart from work-gang graffiti that include Khufu's names. Constructed around 2600 BC, it predates the custom of inscribing pyramids with text by over 200 years.\nThe pyramid complex of Khufu included two temples that were lavishly decorated and inscribed. The pyramid temple was dedicated to the Sed festival, celebrating Khufu's 30th jubilee. Surviving scenes portray Khufu, officials, priests and other characters performing rituals. The valley temple remains largely unexcavated, but blocks reused by Amenemhat I depict, for instance, nautical scenes and personifications of the estates of Khufu (e.g. the estate \"Khufu is beautiful\"). The mortuary cult of Khufu which operated in these temples for hundreds of years indicates that Khufu was successfully interred in the Great Pyramid. That the funeral was carried out by Khufu's son and successor Djedefre is evidenced by the presence of his cartouches on the blocks that sealed the boat pits next to the pyramid.\nThe Great Pyramid was likely looted as early as the First Intermediate Period and may have been reused afterwards. Arab accounts tell stories of mummies and treasures being found inside the pyramid. For instance, Al-Maqrizi (1364\u20131442) reports the discovery of three shrouded bodies, a sarcophagus filled with gold, and a corpse in golden armour with a sword of inestimable value and a ruby as large as an egg.\nAttribution to Khufu.\nHistorically the Great Pyramid had been attributed to Khufu based on the words of authors of classical antiquity, first and foremost Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus. During the Middle Ages other people were credited with the construction of the pyramid as well, for example Joseph from the Book of Genesis, Nimrod, or the legendary king Saurid ibn Salhouk.\nIn 1837 four additional relieving chambers were found above the King's Chamber after tunnelling to them. The chambers, previously inaccessible, were covered in hieroglyphs of red paint. The workers who were building the pyramid had marked the blocks with the names of their gangs, which included the pharaoh's name (e.g.: \"The gang, The white crown of Khnum-Khufu is powerful\"). The names of Khufu were spelled out on the walls over a dozen times. Another of these graffiti was found by Goyon on an exterior block of the 4th layer of the pyramid. The inscriptions are comparable to those found at other sites of Khufu, such as the alabaster quarry at Hatnub or the harbour at Wadi al-Jarf, and are present in pyramids of other pharaohs as well.\nThroughout the 20th century the cemeteries next to the pyramid were excavated. Family members and high officials of Khufu were buried in the East Field south of the causeway, and the West Field, including the wives, children and grandchildren of Khufu, Hemiunu, Ankhaf and (the funerary cache of) Hetepheres I, mother of Khufu. As Hassan puts it: \"From the early dynastic times, it was always the custom for the relatives, friends and courtiers to be buried in the vicinity of the king they had served during life. This was quite in accordance with the Egyptian idea of the Hereafter.\"\nThe cemeteries were actively expanded until the 6th dynasty and used less frequently afterwards. The earliest pharaonic name of seal impressions is that of Khufu, the latest of Pepi II. Worker graffiti were written on some of the stones of the tombs as well; for instance, \"Mddw\" (Horus name of Khufu) on the mastaba of Chufunacht, probably a grandson of Khufu.\nSome inscriptions in the chapels of the mastabas (like the pyramid, their burial chambers were usually bare of inscriptions) mention Khufu or his pyramid. For instance, an inscription of Mersyankh III states that \"Her mother [is the] daughter of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt Khufu.\" Most often these references are part of a title, for example, Snnw-ka, \"Chief of the Settlement and Overseer of the Pyramid City of Akhet-Khufu\" or Nykahap, \"priest of Khufu who presides over the pyramid Akhet-Khufu\". Several tomb owners have a king's name as part of their own name (e.g. Chufudjedef, Chufuseneb, Merichufu). The earliest pharaoh alluded to in that manner at Giza is Snefru (Khufu's father).\nIn 1936 Hassan uncovered a stela of Amenhotep II near the Great Sphinx of Giza, which implies the two larger pyramids were still attributed to Khufu and Khafre in the New Kingdom. It reads: \"He yoked the horses in Memphis, when he was still young, and stopped at the Sanctuary of Hor-em-akhet (the Sphinx). He spent a time there in going round it, looking at the beauty of the Sanctuary of Khufu and Khafra the revered.\"\nIn 1954 two boat pits, one containing the Khufu ship, were discovered buried at the south foot of the pyramid. The cartouche of Djedefre was found on many of the blocks that covered the boat pits. As the successor and eldest son he would have presumably been responsible for the burial of Khufu. The second boat pit was examined in 1987; excavation work started in 2010. Graffiti on the stones included 4 instances of the name \"Khufu\", 11 instances of \"Djedefre\", a year (in reign, season, month and day), measurements of the stone, various signs and marks, and a reference line used in construction, all done in red or black ink.\nDuring excavations in 2013 the Diary of Merer was found at Wadi al-Jarf. It documents the transportation of white limestone blocks from Tura to the Great Pyramid, which is mentioned by its original name Akhet Khufu (with a pyramid determinative) dozens of times. It details that the stones were accepted at She Akhet-Khufu (\"the pool of the pyramid Horizon of Khufu\") and Ro-She Khufu (\"the entrance to the pool of Khufu\"), which were under supervision of Ankhhaf, the half brother and vizier of Khufu, and the owner of the largest mastaba of the Giza East Field.\nAge.\nThe Great Pyramid has been determined to be about 4,600 years old by two principal approaches: indirectly, through its attribution to Khufu and his chronological age, based on archaeological and textual evidence; and directly, via radiocarbon dating of organic material found in the pyramid and included in its mortar.\nHistorical chronology.\nIn the past the Great Pyramid was dated by its attribution to Khufu alone, putting the construction of the Great Pyramid within his reign, hence dating the pyramid was a matter of dating Khufu and the 4th dynasty. The relative sequence and synchronicity of events is the focal point of this method.\nAbsolute calendar dates are derived from an interlocked network of evidence, the backbone of which are the lines of succession known from ancient king lists and other texts. The reign lengths from Khufu to known points in the earlier past are summated, bolstered with genealogical data, astronomical observations, and other sources. As such, the historical chronology of Egypt is primarily a political chronology, thus independent from other types of archaeological evidence like stratigraphies, material culture, or radiocarbon dating.\nThe majority of recent chronological estimates date Khufu and his pyramid between 2700 and 2500 BC.\nRadiocarbon dating.\nMortar was used generously in the Great Pyramid's construction. In the mixing process ashes from fires were added to the mortar, organic material that could be extracted and radiocarbon dated. A total of 46 samples of the mortar were taken in 1984 and 1995, making sure they were clearly inherent to the original structure and could not have been incorporated at a later date. The results were calibrated to 2871\u20132604 BC. The old wood problem is thought to be mainly responsible for the 100\u2013300 year offset, since the age of the organic material was determined, not when it was last used. A reanalysis of the data gave a completion date for the pyramid between 2620 and 2484 BC, based on the younger samples.\nIn 1872 Waynman Dixon opened the lower pair of \"Air-Shafts\", previously closed at both ends, by chiseling holes into the walls of the Queen's Chamber. One of the objects found within was a cedar plank, which came into possession of James Grant, a friend of Dixon. After inheritance it was donated to the Museum of Aberdeen in 1946; however, it had broken into pieces and was filed incorrectly. Lost in the vast museum collection, it was only rediscovered in 2020, when it was radiocarbon dated to 3341\u20133094 BC. Being over 500 years older than Khufu's chronological age, Abeer Eladany suggests that the wood originated from the centre of a long-lived tree or had been recycled for many years prior to being deposited in the pyramid.\nHistory of dating Khufu and the Great Pyramid.\nCirca 450 BC Herodotus attributed the Great Pyramid to Cheops (Hellenization of Khufu), yet erroneously placed his reign following the Ramesside period. Manetho, around 200 years later, composed an extensive list of Egyptian kings, which he divided into dynasties, assigning Khufu to the 4th. However, after phonetic changes in the Egyptian language and consequently the Greek translation, \"Cheops\" had transformed into \"Souphis\" (and similar versions).\nGreaves, in 1646, reported the great difficulty of ascertaining a date for the pyramid's construction based on the lacking and conflicting historic sources. Because of the differences in spelling, he did not recognize Khufu on Manetho's king list (as transcribed by Africanus and Eusebius), hence he relied on Herodotus' incorrect account. Summating the duration of lines of succession, Greaves concluded 1266 BC to be the beginning of Khufu's reign.\nTwo centuries later, some of the gaps and uncertainties in Manetho's chronology had been cleared by discoveries such as the King Lists of Turin, Abydos, and Karnak. The names of Khufu found within the Great Pyramid's relieving chambers in 1837 helped to make clear that Cheops and Souphis are one and the same. Thus the Great Pyramid was recognized to have been built in the 4th dynasty. The dating among Egyptologists still varied by multiple centuries (around 4000\u20132000 BC), depending on methodology, preconceived religious notions (such as the biblical deluge) and which source they thought was more credible.\nEstimates significantly narrowed in the 20th century, most being within 250 years of each other, around the middle of the third millennium BC. The newly developed radiocarbon dating method confirmed that the historic chronology was approximately correct. It is still not a perfectly accurate method due to larger margins of error, calibration uncertainties and the problem of inbuilt age (time between growth and final usage) in plant material, including wood. Astronomical alignments have also been suggested to coincide with the time of construction.\nEgyptian chronology continues to be refined and data from multiple disciplines have started to be factored in, such as luminescence dating, radiocarbon dating, and dendrochronology. For instance, Ramsey et al. included over 200 radiocarbon samples in their model.\nHistoriographical record.\nClassical antiquity.\nHerodotus.\nThe ancient Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BC, is one of the first major authors to mention the pyramid. In the second book of his work \"The Histories\", he discusses the history of Egypt and the Great Pyramid. This report was created more than 2000 years after the structure was built, meaning that Herodotus obtained his knowledge mainly from a variety of indirect sources, including officials and priests of low rank, local Egyptians, Greek immigrants, and Herodotus's own interpreters. Accordingly, his explanations present themselves as a mixture of comprehensible descriptions, personal descriptions, erroneous reports, and fantastical legends; as a result, many of the speculative errors and confusions about the monument can be traced back to Herodotus and his work.\nHerodotus writes that the Great Pyramid was built by Khufu (Hellenized as Cheops) who, he erroneously relays, ruled after the Ramesside Period (the 19th dynasty and the 20th dynasty). Khufu was a tyrannical king, Herodotus claims, which may explain the Greek's view that such buildings can only come about through cruel exploitation of the people. Herodotus states that gangs of 100,000 labourers worked on the building in three-month shifts, taking 20 years to build. In the first ten years a wide causeway was erected, which, according to Herodotus, was almost as impressive as the construction of the pyramids themselves. It measured nearly long and wide, and elevated to a height of , consisting of stone polished and carved with figures.\nUnderground chambers were made on the hill where the pyramids stand. These were intended to be burial places for Khufu himself and were supplied with water by a channel brought in from the Nile. Herodotus later states that at the Pyramid of Khafre (beside the Great Pyramid) the Nile flows through a built passage to an island in which Khufu is buried. Hawass interprets this to be a reference to the \"Osiris Shaft\", which is located at the causeway of Khafre, south of the Great Pyramid.\nHerodotus described an inscription on the outside of the pyramid, which, according to his translators, indicated the amount of radishes, garlic and onions that the workers would have eaten while working on the pyramid. This could be a note of restoration work that Khaemweset, son of Rameses II, had carried out. Apparently, Herodotus' companions and interpreters could not read the hieroglyphs or deliberately gave him false information.\nDiodorus Siculus.\nBetween 60 and 56 BC, the ancient Greek historian Diodorus Siculus visited Egypt and later dedicated the first book of his \"Bibliotheca historica\" to the land, its history, and its monuments, including the Great Pyramid. Diodorus's work was inspired by historians of the past, but he also distanced himself from Herodotus, who Diodorus claims tells marvellous tales and myths. Diodorus presumably drew his knowledge from the lost work of Hecataeus of Abdera, and like Herodotus, he also places the builder of the pyramid, \"Chemmis\", after Ramses III. According to his report, neither Chemmis (Khufu) nor Cephren (Khafre) were buried in their pyramids, but rather in secret places, for fear that the people ostensibly forced to build the structures would seek out the bodies for revenge. With this assertion, Diodorus strengthened the connection between pyramid building and slavery.\nAccording to Diodorus, the cladding of the pyramid was still in excellent condition at the time, whereas the uppermost part of the pyramid was formed by a platform high. About the construction of the pyramid he notes that it was built with the help of ramps since no lifting tools had yet been invented. Nothing was left of the ramps, as they were removed after the pyramids were completed. He estimated the number of workers necessary to erect the Great Pyramid at 360,000 and the construction time at 20 years. Similar to Herodotus, Diodorus also claims that the side of the pyramid is inscribed with writing that \"[set] forth [the price of] vegetables and purgatives for the workmen there were paid out over sixteen hundred talents.\"\nStrabo.\nThe Greek geographer, philosopher, and historian Strabo visited Egypt around 25 BC, shortly after Egypt was annexed by the Romans. In his work \"Geographica\", he argues that the pyramids were the burial place of kings, but he does not mention which king was buried in the structure. Strabo also mentions: \"At a moderate height in one of the sides is a stone, which may be taken out; when that is removed, there is an oblique passage to the tomb.\" This statement has generated much speculation, as it suggests that the pyramid could be entered at this time.\nPliny the Elder.\nThe Roman writer Pliny the Elder, writing in the first century AD, argued that the Great Pyramid had been raised, either \"to prevent the lower classes from remaining unoccupied\", or as a measure to prevent the pharaoh's riches from falling into the hands of his rivals or successors. Pliny does not speculate as to the pharaoh in question, explicitly noting that \"accident [has] consigned to oblivion the names of those who erected such stupendous memorials of their vanity\".\nIn pondering how the stones could be transported to such a vast height he gives two explanations: That either vast mounds of nitre and salt were heaped up against the pyramid, which were then melted away with water redirected from the river. Or, that \"bridges\" were constructed, their bricks afterwards distributed for erecting houses, arguing that the level of the river is too low for canals to bring water up to the pyramid. Pliny also recounts how \"in the interior of the largest Pyramid there is a well, eighty-six cubits [] deep, which communicates with the river, it is thought\". He also describes a method discovered by Thales of Miletus for ascertaining the pyramid's height by measuring its shadow.\nLate antiquity and the Middle Ages.\nDuring late antiquity, a misinterpretation of the pyramids as \"Joseph's granary\" began to gain in popularity. The first textual evidence of this connection is found in the travel narratives of the female Christian pilgrim Egeria, who records that on her visit between 381 and 384 AD, \"in the twelve-mile stretch between Memphis and Babylonia [= Old Cairo] are many pyramids, which Joseph made in order to store corn.\" Ten years later the usage is confirmed in the anonymous travelogue of seven monks who set out from Jerusalem to visit the famous ascetics in Egypt, wherein they report that they \"saw Joseph's granaries, where he stored grain in biblical times\".\nThis late 4th-century usage is further confirmed in the geographical treatise \"Cosmographia\", written by Julius Honorius around 376 AD, which explains that the Pyramids were called the \"granaries of Joseph\" (). This reference from Julius is important, as it indicates that the identification was starting to spread out from pilgrim's travelogues. In 530 AD, Stephanos of Byzantium added more to this idea when he wrote in his \"Ethnica\" that the word \"pyramid\" was connected to the Greek word (), meaning wheat.\nIn the seventh century AD, the Rashidun Caliphate conquered Egypt, ending several centuries of Romano-Byzantine rule. A few centuries later, in 832 AD, the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun (786\u2013833) is said to have tunnelled into the side of the structure and discovered the ascending passage and its connecting chambers. Around this time a Coptic legend gained popularity that claimed the antediluvian king Surid Ibn Salhouk had built the Great Pyramid. One legend in particular relates how, three hundred years prior to the Great Flood, Surid had a terrifying dream of the world's end, and so he ordered the construction of the pyramids so that they might house all the knowledge of Egypt and survive into the present.\nThe most notable account of this legend was given by al-Masudi (896\u2013956) in his \"Akbar al-zaman\", alongside imaginative tales about the pyramid, such as the story of a man who fell three hours down the pyramid's well and the tale of an expedition that discovered bizarre finds in the structure's inner chambers. \"Al-zaman\" also contains a report of al-Ma'mun's entering the pyramid and discovering a vessel containing a thousand coins, which just happened to cover the cost of opening the pyramid. (Some speculate that this story is true, but that the coins were planted by Al-Ma'mun to appease his workers, who were likely frustrated that they had found no treasure.)\nIn 987 AD, the Arab bibliographer Ibn al-Nadim relates a fantastical tale in his \"al-Fihrist\" about a man who journeyed into the main chamber of a pyramid, which Bayard Dodge argues is the Great Pyramid. According to Ibn al-Nadim, the person in question saw a statue of a man holding a tablet and a woman holding a mirror. Supposedly, between the statues was a \"stone vessel [with] a gold cover\". Inside the vessel was \"something like pitch\", and when the explorer reached into the vessel \"a gold receptacle happened to be inside\". The receptacle, when taken from the vessel, was filled with \"fresh blood\", which quickly dried up. Ibn al-Nadim's work also claims that the bodies of a man and woman were discovered inside the pyramid in the \"best possible state of preservation\".\nThe author al-Kaisi, in his work the \"Tohfat Alalbab,\" retells the story of al-Ma'mun's entry but with the additional discovery of \"an image of a man in green stone\", which when opened revealed a body dressed in jewel-encrusted gold armour. Al-Kaisi claims to have seen the case from which the body was taken, and asserts that it was located at the king's palace in Cairo. He also writes that he entered into the pyramid and discovered many preserved bodies. Another attempt to enter the pyramid in search of treasure is recorded during the vizierate of al-Afdal Shahanshah (1094\u20131121), but it was abandoned after a member of the party was lost in the passages.\nThe Arab polymath Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi (1163\u20131231) studied the pyramid with great care, and in his \"Account of Egypt\", he praises them as works of engineering genius. In addition to measuring the structure, alongside the other pyramids at Giza, al-Baghdadi also writes that the structures were surely tombs, although he thought the Great Pyramid was used for the burial of Agathodaimon or Hermes. Al-Baghdadi ponders whether the pyramid pre-dated the Great Flood as described in Genesis, and even briefly entertained the idea that it was a pre-Adamic construction. A few centuries later, the Islamic historian Al-Maqrizi (1364\u20131442) compiled lore about the Great Pyramid in his \"Al-Khitat\". In addition to reasserting that Al-Ma'mun breached the structure in 820 AD, Al-Maqrizi's work also discusses the sarcophagus in the coffin chambers, explicitly noting that the pyramid was a grave.\nBy the Late Middle Ages, the Great Pyramid had gained a reputation as a haunted structure. Others feared entering because it was home to animals like bats.\nConstruction.\nPreparation of the site.\nA hillock forms the base on which the pyramid stands. It was cut back into steps and only a strip around the perimeter was leveled, which has been measured to be horizontal and flat to within . The bedrock reaches a height of almost above the pyramid base at the location of the Grotto.\nAlong the sides of the base platform a series of holes are cut in the bedrock. Lehner hypothesizes that they held wooden posts used for alignment. Edwards, among others, suggested the use of water for evening the base, although it is unclear how practical and workable such a system would be.\nMaterials.\nThe Great Pyramid consists of an estimated 2.3\u00a0million blocks. Approximately 5.5\u00a0million tonnes of limestone, 8,000\u00a0tonnes of granite, and 500,000\u00a0tonnes of mortar were used in the construction.\nMost of the blocks were quarried at Giza just south of the pyramid, an area now known as the Central Field. They are a particular type of nummulitic limestone formed of the fossils of prehistoric shell creatures, whose small disc form can still be seen in some of the pyramid's blocks upon close inspection. Other fossils have been found in the blocks and other structures on the site, including fossilized shark teeth. The white limestone used for the casing was transported by boat across the Nile from the Tura quarries of the Eastern Desert plateau, about south-east of the Giza plateau. In 2013, rolls of papyrus called the Diary of Merer were discovered, written by a supervisor of the deliveries of limestone from Tura to Giza in the 27th year of Khufu's reign.\nThe granite stones in the pyramid were transported from Aswan, more than south. The largest, weighing 25 to 80 tonnes, form the ceilings of the \"King's chamber\" and the \"relieving chambers\" above it. Ancient Egyptians cut stone into rough blocks by hammering grooves into natural stone faces, inserting wooden wedges, then soaking these with water. As the water was absorbed, the wedges expanded, breaking off workable chunks. Once the blocks were cut, they were carried by boat on the Nile to the pyramid and used a now dry offshoot of the river to transport blocks closer to the site.\nWorkforce.\nThe ancient Greeks believed that slave labour was used, but modern discoveries made at nearby workers' camps associated with construction at Giza suggest that it was built by thousands of conscript labourers.\nWorker graffiti found at Giza suggest haulers were divided into \"zau\" (singular \"za\"), groups of 40 men, consisting of four sub-units that each had an \"Overseer of Ten\".\nAs to the question of how over two million blocks could have been cut within Khufu's lifetime, stonemason Franck Burgos conducted an archaeological experiment based on an abandoned quarry of Khufu discovered in 2017. Within it, an almost completed block and the tools used for cutting it had been uncovered: hardened arsenic copper chisels, wooden mallets, ropes and stone tools. In the experiment replicas of these were used to cut a block weighing about 2.5 tonnes (the average block size used for the Great Pyramid). It took four workers 4 days (with each working 6 hours a day) to excavate it. The initially slow progress speeded up six times when the stone was wetted with water. Based on the data, Burgos extrapolates that about 3,500 quarry-men could have produced the 250 blocks/day needed to complete the Great Pyramid in 27 years.\nA construction management study conducted in 1999, in association with Mark Lehner and other Egyptologists, had estimated that the total project required an average workforce of about 13,200 people and a peak workforce of roughly 40,000.\nSurveys and design.\nThe first precise measurements of the pyramid were made by Egyptologist Flinders Petrie in 1880\u20131882, published as \"The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh\". Many of the casing-stones and inner chamber blocks of the Great Pyramid fit together with high precision, with joints, on average, only wide. In contrast, core blocks were only roughly shaped, with rubble inserted between larger gaps. Mortar was used to bind the outer layers together and fill gaps and joints.\nThe block height and weight tends to get progressively smaller towards the top. Petrie measured the lowest layer to be high, whereas the layers towards the summit barely exceed .\nThe accuracy of the pyramid's perimeter is such that the four sides of the base have an average error of only in length and the finished base was squared to a mean corner error of only 12\u00a0seconds of arc.\nThe completed design dimensions are measured to have originally been high by long at each of the four sides of its base. Ancient Egyptians used seked \u2013 how much run for one cubit of rise \u2013 to describe slopes. For the Great Pyramid a seked of palms was chosen, a ratio of 14\u00a0up to 11\u00a0in.\nSome Egyptologists suggest this slope was chosen because the ratio of perimeter to height (1760/280 cubits) equals 2\u03c0 to an accuracy of better than 0.05\u00a0percent (corresponding to the well-known approximation of \u03c0 as 22/7). Verner wrote, \"We can conclude that although the ancient Egyptians could not precisely define the value of \u03c0, in practice they used it\". Petrie concluded: \"but these relations of areas and of circular ratio are so systematic that we should grant that they were in the builder's design\". Others have argued that the ancient Egyptians had no concept of pi and would not have thought to encode it in their monuments and that the observed pyramid slope may be based on the seked choice alone.\nAlignment to the cardinal directions.\nThe sides of the Great Pyramid's base are closely aligned to the four geographic (not magnetic) cardinal directions, deviating on average 3 minutes and 38 seconds of arc, or about a tenth of a degree. Several methods have been proposed for how the ancient Egyptians achieved this level of accuracy:\nConstruction theories.\nMany alternative, often contradictory, theories have been proposed regarding the pyramid's construction techniques. One mystery of the pyramid's construction is its planning. John Romer suggests that they used the same method that had been used for earlier and later constructions, laying out parts of the plan on the ground at a 1-to-1 scale. He writes that \"such a working diagram would also serve to generate the architecture of the pyramid with precision unmatched by any other means\".\nThe basalt blocks of the pyramid temple show \"clear evidence\" of having been cut with some kind of saw with an estimated cutting blade of in length. Romer suggests that this \"super saw\" may have had copper teeth and weighed up to . He theorizes that such a saw could have been attached to a wooden trestle support and possibly used in conjunction with vegetable oil, cutting sand, emery or pounded quartz to cut the blocks, which would have required the labour of at least a dozen men to operate it.\nCasing.\nAt completion, the Great Pyramid was cased entirely in white limestone. Precisely worked blocks were placed in horizontal layers and carefully fitted together with mortar, their outward faces cut at a slope and smoothed to a high degree. Together they created four uniform surfaces, angled at 51\u00b050'40\" (a seked of palms). Unfinished casing blocks of the pyramids of Menkaure and Henutsen at Giza suggest that the front faces were smoothed only after the stones were laid, with chiselled seams marking correct positioning and where the superfluous rock would have to be trimmed off.\nThe height of the horizontal layers is not uniform but varies considerably. The highest of the 203 remaining courses are towards the bottom, the first layer being the tallest at . Towards the top, layers tend to be only slightly over in height, with stones weighing around . An irregular pattern is noticeable when looking at the sizes in sequence, where layer height declines steadily only to rise sharply again.\nSo-called \"backing stones\" supported the casing, which were (unlike core blocks), precisely dressed as well and bound to the casing with mortar. Now, these stones give the structure its visible appearance, following the partial dismantling of the pyramid in the Middle Ages. Amidst earthquakes in northern Egypt, workers stripped away many of the outer casing stones, which were said to have been carted away by Bahri Sultan An-Nasir Nasir-ad-Din al-Hasan in 1356 for use in nearby Cairo.\nLater explorers reported massive piles of rubble at the base of the pyramids left over from the continuing collapse of the casing stones, which were subsequently cleared away during continuing excavations of the site. Today a few of the casing stones from the lowest course can be seen \"in situ\" on each side, with the best preserved on the north below the entrances, excavated by Vyse in 1837.\nThe mortar was chemically analyzed and contains organic inclusions (mostly charcoal), samples of which were radiocarbon dated to 2871\u20132604 BC. It has been theorized that the mortar enabled the masons to set the stones exactly by providing a level bed.\nAlthough it has been suggested that some or all of the casing stones were made from a type of concrete that was cast in place, rather than quarried and moved, archaeological evidence and petrographic analysis indicate this was not the case.\nPetrie noted in 1880 the four sides of the pyramid to be \"very distinctly hollowed\" and that \"each side has a sort of groove specially down the middle of the face\", which he reasoned was a result of increased casing thickness in these areas. Under certain lighting conditions and with image enhancement the faces can appear to be split, leading to speculation that the pyramid had been intentionally constructed eight-sided. Laser scanning and photogrammetrical surveys concluded the concavities of the four sides to be the result of the removal of the casing stones, which damaged the underlying blocks that form the outer surface today.\nPyramidion and missing tip.\nThe pyramid was once topped by a capstone known as a pyramidion. The material from which it was made is subject to much speculation; limestone, granite or basalt are commonly proposed, while in popular culture it is often solid gold, gilded or electrum. All known 4th dynasty \"pyramidia\" (of the Red Pyramid, Satellite Pyramid of Khufu (G1-d) and Queen's Pyramid of Menkaure (G3-a)) are of white limestone and were not gilded. Only from the 5th dynasty onward is there evidence of gilded capstones; for instance, a scene on the causeway of Sahure speaks of the \"white gold pyramidion of the pyramid Sahure's Soul Shines\".\nThe Great Pyramid's pyramidion was already lost in classical antiquity, as Pliny the Elder and later authors report a platform on its summit. Over time more stones were removed from the peak, and nowadays the pyramid is about shorter than it was when intact, with about of material missing from the top.\nIn 1874 a mast was installed on the top by the Scottish astronomer David Gill who, while returning from observing a rare Venus transit, was invited to survey Egypt and began by surveying the Great Pyramid. His measurements of the pyramid were accurate to within 1\u00a0mm. The mast was damaged in 2019 by a man who evaded security and climbed the pyramid; however, as the mast was periodically changed due to erosion and so was considered a modern object, the trespasser did not violate Egypt's strict laws regarding antiquities.\nInterior.\nThe internal structure consists of three main chambers (the King's, Queen's and Subterranean Chambers), the Grand Gallery and various corridors and shafts. None of the interior walls were decorated or inscribed, as was the norm for tombs of the 4th dynasty, apart from the marks and names of work-gangs left on blocks of the relieving chambers.\nThere are two entrances into the pyramid: the original and a forced passage, which meet at a junction. From there, one passage descends into the Subterranean Chamber, while the other ascends to the Grand Gallery. From the beginning of the gallery three paths can be taken:\nBoth the King's and Queen's Chamber have a pair of small \"air-shafts\". Above the King's Chamber are a series of five relieving chambers.\nEntrances.\nOriginal entrance.\nThe original entrance is on the north side, east of the centreline of the pyramid. Before the removal of the casing in the Middle Ages, the pyramid was entered through a hole in the 19th layer of masonry, approximately above the pyramid's base level. The height of that layer \u2013 \u2013 corresponds to the size of the entrance tunnel that is commonly called the Descending Passage. According to Strabo (64\u201324 BC) a movable stone could be raised to enter this sloping corridor; however, it is not known if it was a later addition or original.\nA row of double chevrons diverts weight away from the entrance. Several of these chevron blocks are now missing, as indicated by the slanted faces on which they once rested.\nNumerous, mostly modern, graffiti is cut into the stones around the entrance. Most notable is a large, square text of hieroglyphs carved in honor of Frederick William IV, by Karl Richard Lepsius's Prussian expedition to Egypt in 1842.\nNorth Face Corridor.\nIn 2016 the ScanPyramids team detected a cavity behind the entrance chevrons using muography, which was confirmed in 2019 to be a corridor at least long, and running horizontal or sloping upwards (thus not parallel to the Descending Passage).\nIn February 2023 the North Face Corridor was explored with an endoscopic camera, revealing a horizontal tunnel with a length of and a transverse section of about . Its ceiling is formed by large chevrons, like those visible above the original entrance and also similar to relieving chambers.\nRobbers' Tunnel.\nToday tourists enter the Great Pyramid via the Robbers' Tunnel, which was long ago cut straight through the masonry of the pyramid. The entrance was forced into the 6th and 7th layer of the casing, about above the base. After running more or less straight and horizontal for it turns sharply left to encounter the blocking stones in the Ascending Passage. It is possible to enter the Descending Passage from this point but access is usually forbidden.\nThe origin of this Robbers' Tunnel is the subject of much scholarly discussion. According to tradition the opening was made around 820\u00a0AD by Caliph al-Ma'mun's workmen with a battering ram. The digging dislodged the stone in the ceiling of the Descending Passage that hid the entrance to the Ascending Passage, and the noise of that stone falling, then sliding down the Descending Passage alerted them to the need to turn left. Unable to remove these stones, the workmen tunnelled upwards beside them through the softer limestone of the Pyramid until they reached the Ascending Passage.\nDue to historical and archaeological discrepancies, many scholars (with Antoine de Sacy perhaps being the first) contend that this story is apocryphal. They argue that it is much more likely that the tunnel had been carved shortly after the pyramid was initially sealed. This tunnel, the scholars continue, was then resealed (likely during the Ramesside Restoration), and it was this plug that al-Ma'mun's ninth-century expedition cleared away. This theory is furthered by the report of patriarch Dionysius I Telmaharoyo, who claimed that before al-Ma'mun's expedition, there already existed a breach in the pyramid's north face that extended into the structure before hitting a dead end. This suggests that some sort of robber's tunnel predated al-Ma'mun, and that the caliph enlarged it and cleared it of debris.\nDescending Passage.\nFrom the original entrance, a passage descends through the masonry of the pyramid and then into the bedrock beneath it, ultimately leading to the Subterranean Chamber.\nIt has a slanted height of 4 Egyptian feet (1.20 m; 3.9\u00a0ft) and a width of . Its angle of 26\u00b026'46\" corresponds to a ratio of 1 to 2 (rise over run).\nAfter , the lower end of the Ascending Passage is reached; a in the ceiling, which is blocked by granite stones and might have originally been concealed. To circumvent these hard stones, a short tunnel was excavated that meets the end of the Robbers' Tunnel. This was expanded over time and fitted with stairs.\nThe passage continues to descend for another , now through bedrock instead of the pyramid superstructure. Lazy guides used to block off this part with rubble to avoid having to lead people down and back up the long shaft, until around 1902 when Covington installed a padlocked iron grill-door to stop this practice. Near the end of this section, on the west wall, is the connection to the vertical shaft that leads up to the Grand Gallery.\nA horizontal shaft connects the end of the Descending Passage to the Subterranean Chamber, It has a length of , width of and height of . A is located towards the end of the western wall, slightly larger than the tunnel, the ceiling of which is irregular and undressed.\nSubterranean Chamber.\nThe Subterranean Chamber, or \"Pit\", is the lowest of the three main chambers and the only one dug into the bedrock beneath the pyramid.\nLocated about below base level, it measures roughly north-south by east-west, with an approximate height of .\nThe western half of the room, apart from the ceiling, is unfinished, with trenches left behind by the quarry-men running east to west. A niche was cut into the northern half of the west wall. The only access, through the Descending Passage, lies on the eastern end of the north wall.\nAlthough seemingly known in antiquity, according to Herodotus and later authors, its existence had been forgotten in the Middle Ages until rediscovery in 1817, when Giovanni Caviglia cleared the rubble blocking the Descending Passage.\nOpposing the entrance, a blind corridor runs straight south for and continues with a slight bend another , measuring about squared. A Greek or Roman character was found on its ceiling with the light of a candle, suggesting that the chamber had indeed been accessible during Classical antiquity.\nIn the middle of the eastern half is a large hole called a Pit Shaft or Perring's Shaft. The uppermost part may have ancient origins, about squared in width and in depth, diagonally aligned with the chamber. Caviglia and Salt enlarged it to the depth of about . In 1837 Vyse directed the shaft to be sunk to a depth of , in hopes of discovering the chamber encompassed by water that Herodotus alluded to. It is slightly narrower in width at about . No chamber was discovered after Perring and his workers had spent one and a half years penetrating the bedrock to the then water level of the Nile, further down.\nThe rubble produced during this operation was deposited throughout the chamber. Petrie, visiting in 1880, found the shaft to be partially filled with rainwater that had rushed down the Descending Passage. In 1909, when the Edgar brothers' surveying activities were encumbered by the material, they moved the sand and smaller stones back into the shaft, leaving the upper part clear. The deep, modern shaft is sometimes mistaken to be part of the original design.\nLudwig Borchardt suggested that the Subterranean Chamber was originally planned to be the burial place for pharaoh Khufu, but that it was abandoned during construction in favour of a chamber higher up in the pyramid.\nAscending Passage.\nThe Ascending Passage connects the Descending Passage to the Grand Gallery. It is long and of the same width and height as the shaft from which it originates, although its angle is slightly lower at 26\u00b06'.\nThe lower end of the shaft is plugged by three granite stones, which were slid down from the Grand Gallery to seal the tunnel. They are , and long respectively. The uppermost is heavily damaged, hence it is shorter. The Robbers' Tunnel terminates slightly below the stones, so a short tunnel was dug around them to access the Descending Passage, since the surrounding limestone is considerably softer and easier to work.\nMost of the joints between the blocks of the walls run perpendicular to the floor, with two exceptions. Firstly, those in the lower third of the corridor are vertical. Secondly, the three girdle stones that are inserted near the middle (about 10 cubits apart) presumably stabilize the tunnel.\nWell Shaft and Grotto.\nThe Well Shaft (also known as the Service Shaft or Vertical Shaft) links the lower end of the Grand Gallery to the bottom of the Descending Passage, about further down.\nIt takes a winding and indirect course. The upper half goes through the nucleus masonry of the pyramid. It runs vertical at first for , then slightly angles southwards for about the same distance, until it hits bedrock approximately above the pyramid's base level. Another vertical section descends further; it is partially lined with masonry that has been broken through to a cavity known as the Grotto. The lower half of the Well Shaft goes through the bedrock at an angle of about 45\u00b0 for before a steeper section, long, leads to its lowest point. The final section of connects it to the Descending Passage, running almost horizontally. The builders evidently had trouble aligning the lower exit.\nThe purpose of the shaft is commonly explained as a ventilation shaft for the Subterranean Chamber and as an escape shaft for the workers who slid the blocking stones of the Ascending Passage into place.\nThe Grotto is a natural limestone cave that was likely filled with sand and gravel before construction, before being hollowed out by looters. A granite block rests in it that likely originated from the portcullis that once sealed the King's Chamber.\nQueen's Chamber.\nThe Horizontal Passage links the Grand Gallery to the Queen's Chamber. Five pairs of holes at the start suggest the tunnel was once concealed with slabs that lay flush with the gallery floor. The passage is wide and high for most of its length, but near the chamber there is a step in the floor, after which the passage increases to high. Half of the west wall consists of two layers that have atypically continuous vertical joints. Dormion suggests the entrances to magazines laid here and have been filled in.\nThe Queen's Chamber is exactly halfway between the north and south faces of the pyramid. It measures north-south, east-west, and has a pointed roof that apexes at tall. At the eastern end of the chamber is a niche high. The original depth of the niche was , but it has since been deepened by treasure hunters.\nShafts were discovered in the north and south walls of the Queen's Chamber in 1872 by British engineer Waynman Dixon, who believed shafts similar to those in the King's Chamber must also exist. The shafts were not connected to the outer faces of the pyramid or the Queen's Chamber; their purpose is unknown. In one shaft Dixon discovered a ball of diorite, a bronze hook of unknown purpose and a piece of cedar wood. The first two objects are now in the British Museum. The latter was lost until 2020 when it was found at the University of Aberdeen. It has since been radiocarbon dated to 3341\u20133094 BC. The northern shaft's angle of ascent fluctuates and at one point turns 45 degrees to avoid the Great Gallery. The southern shaft is perpendicular to the pyramid's slope.\nThe shafts in the Queen's Chamber were explored in 1993 by the German engineer Rudolf Gantenbrink using a crawler robot he designed, \"Upuaut 2\". After a climb of , he discovered that one of the shafts was blocked by a limestone \"door\" with two eroded copper \"handles\". The National Geographic Society created a similar robot, which, in September 2002, drilled a small hole in the southern door only to find another stone slab behind it. The northern passage, which was difficult to navigate because of its twists and turns, was also found to be blocked by a slab.\nResearch continued in 2011 with the Djedi Project, which used a fibre-optic \"micro snake camera\" that could see around corners. With this, they were able to penetrate the first door of the southern shaft through the hole drilled in 2002, and view all the sides of the small chamber behind it. They discovered hieroglyphic characters written in red paint. Egyptian mathematics researcher Luca Miatello stated that the markings read \"121\" \u2013 the length of the shaft in cubits. The Djedi team were also able to scrutinize the inside of the two copper \"handles\" embedded in the door, which they now believe to be for decorative purposes. They additionally found the reverse side of the \"door\" to be finished and polished, which suggests that it was not put there just to block the shaft from debris, but rather for a more specific reason.\nGrand Gallery.\nThe Grand Gallery continues the slope of the Ascending Passage towards the King's Chamber, extending from the 23rd to the 48th course (of stones), a rise of . It has been praised as a \"truly spectacular example of stonemasonry\". It is high and long. Its walls are made out of polished limestone. The base is wide, but after two courses \u2013 at a height of \u2013 the blocks of stone in the walls are corbelled inwards by on each side.\nThere are seven of these steps, so, at the top, the Grand Gallery is only wide. It is roofed by slabs of stone laid at a slightly steeper angle than the floor so that each stone fits into a slot cut into the top of the gallery, like the teeth of a ratchet. The purpose was to have each block supported by the wall of the Gallery, rather than resting on the block beneath it, in order to prevent cumulative pressure.\nAt the upper end of the Gallery, on the eastern wall, is a hole near the roof that opens into a short tunnel by which access can be gained to the lowest of the relieving chambers.\nThe floor of the Grand Gallery has a shelf or step on either side, wide, leaving a lower ramp wide between them. There are 56 slots on the shelves, with 28 on each side. On each wall, 25 niches have been cut above the slots. The purpose of these slots is not known, but the central gutter in the floor of the Gallery, which is the same width as the Ascending Passage, has led to speculation that the blocking stones were stored in the Grand Gallery and the slots held wooden beams to restrain them from sliding down the passage. Jean-Pierre Houdin theorized that they held a timber frame that was used in combination with a trolley to pull the heavy granite blocks up the pyramid.\nAt the top of the gallery, there is a step onto a small horizontal platform where a tunnel leads through the Antechamber, once blocked by portcullis stones, into the King's Chamber.\nThe Big Void.\nIn 2017, scientists from the ScanPyramids project discovered a large cavity above the Grand Gallery using muon radiography, which they called the \"ScanPyramids Big Void\". A research team, under the supervision of Professor Morishima Kunihiro at Nagoya University, used special nuclear emulsion detectors. Its length is at least and its cross-section is similar to that of the Grand Gallery. Its existence was confirmed by independent detection with three different technologies: nuclear emulsion films, scintillator hodoscopes, and gas detectors. The purpose of the cavity is unknown and it is not accessible. Zahi Hawass speculates it may have been a gap used in the construction of the Grand Gallery, but the Japanese research team state that the void is completely different from previously identified construction spaces.\nTo verify and pinpoint the void, a team from Kyushu University, Tohoku University, the University of Tokyo and the Chiba Institute of Technology planned to rescan the structure with a newly developed muon detector in 2020. Their work was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.\nAntechamber.\nThe last line of defence against intrusion was a small chamber designed to house portcullis blocking stones, called the Antechamber. It is cased almost entirely in granite and is situated between the upper end of the Grand Gallery and the King's Chamber. Three slots for portcullis stones line the east and west wall of the chamber. Each of them is topped with a semi-circular groove for a log, around which ropes could be spanned.\nThe granite portcullis stones were approximately thick and were lowered into position by ropes, which were tied through four holes at the top of the blocks. A corresponding set of four vertical grooves are on the south wall of the chamber, recesses that make space for the ropes.\nThe Antechamber has a design flaw: the space above them can be accessed, thus all but the last block can be circumvented. This was exploited by looters who punched a hole through the ceiling of the tunnel behind, gaining access to the King's Chamber. Later on, all three portcullis stones were broken and removed. Fragments of these blocks can be found in various locations in the pyramid (the Pit Shaft, the Original Entrance, the Grotto and the recess before the Subterranean Chamber).\nKing's Chamber.\nThe King's Chamber is the upmost of the three main chambers of the pyramid. It is faced entirely with granite and measures east-west by north-south. Its flat ceiling is about 11 cubits and 5 digits () above the floor, formed by nine slabs of stone weighing in total about 400 tons. All the roof beams show cracks due to the chamber having settled .\nThe walls consist of five courses of blocks that are uninscribed, as was the norm for burial chambers of the 4th dynasty. The stones are precisely fitted together. The facing surfaces are dressed to varying degrees, with some displaying remains of lifting bosses not entirely cut away. The back sides of the blocks were only roughly hewn to shape, as was usual with Egyptian hard-stone facade blocks, presumably to save work.\nSarcophagus.\nThe only surviving object in the King's Chamber is a sarcophagus made of a single, hollowed-out granite block. When it was rediscovered in the Early Middle Ages, it was found broken open and any contents had already been removed. It is of the form common for early Egyptian sarcophagi, rectangular in shape with grooves to slide the now missing lid into place with three small holes for pegs to fix it. The coffer was not perfectly smoothed, displaying tool marks matching those of copper saws and tubular hand-drills.\nThe internal dimensions of the sarcophagus are roughly by , the external by , with a height of . The walls have a thickness of about . The sarcophagus is too large to fit around the corner between the Ascending and Descending Passages, which indicates that it must have been placed in the chamber before the roof was put in place.\nAir shafts.\nIn the north and south walls of the King's Chamber are two narrow shafts, commonly known as \"air shafts\". They face each other and are located approximately above the floor, from the eastern wall, with a width of and a height of . Both start out horizontally for the length of the granite blocks they go through before changing to an upwards direction.\nThe southern shaft ascends at an angle of 45\u00b0 with a slight curve westwards. One ceiling stone was found to be distinctly unfinished, which Gantenbrink called a \"Monday morning block\". The northern shaft changes angle several times, shifting the path to the west, perhaps to avoid the Big Void. The builders apparently had trouble calculating the right angles, resulting in parts of the shaft being narrower. Now, they both commute to the exterior. Whether they originally penetrated the outer casing is unknown.\nThe purpose of these shafts is not clear: they were long believed by Egyptologists to be shafts for ventilation, but this idea has now been widely abandoned in favour of the shafts serving a ritualistic purpose associated with the ascension of the king's spirit to the heavens.\nThe idea that the shafts point towards stars or areas of the northern and southern skies has been largely dismissed as the northern shaft follows a dog-leg course through the masonry and the southern shaft has a bend of approximately , indicating no intention to have them point to any celestial objects.\nIn 1992, as part of the Upuaut project, a ventilation system was installed in both air shafts of the King's Chamber.\nRelieving chambers.\nAbove the roof of the King's Chamber are five compartments, named (from lowest upwards) \"Davison's Chamber\", \"Wellington's Chamber\", \"Nelson's Chamber\", \"Lady Arbuthnot's Chamber\", and \"Campbell's Chamber\".\nThey were presumably intended to safeguard the King's Chamber from the possibility of the roof collapsing under the weight of stone above, hence they are referred to as \"relieving chambers\".\nThe granite blocks that divide the chambers have flat bottom sides but roughly shaped top sides, giving all five chambers an irregular floor, but a flat ceiling, with the exception of the uppermost chamber, which has a pointed limestone roof.\nNathaniel Davison is credited with the discovery of the lowest of these chambers in 1763, although a French merchant named Maynard informed him of its existence. It can be reached through an ancient passage that originates from the top of the south wall of the Grand Gallery. The upper four chambers were discovered in 1837 by Howard Vyse after discovering a crack in the ceiling of the first chamber. This allowed the insertion of a long reed, which, with the employment of gunpowder and boring rods, opened a tunnel upwards through the masonry. As no access shafts existed for the upper four chambers \u2013 unlike Davison's Chamber \u2013 they were completely inaccessible until this point.\nNumerous graffiti of red ochre paint were found covering the limestone walls of all four newly discovered chambers. Apart from levelling lines and indication marks for masons, multiple hieroglyphic inscriptions spell out the names of work-gangs. Those names, which were also found in other Egyptian pyramids like that of Menkaure and Sahure, usually included the name of the pharaoh for whom they were working. The blocks must have received the inscriptions before the chambers became inaccessible during construction. Their orientation, often sideways or upside down, and their sometimes being partially covered by blocks, seems to indicate that the stones were inscribed before being laid.\nThe inscriptions, correctly deciphered only decades after discovery, read as follows:\nPyramid complex.\nThe Great Pyramid is surrounded by a complex of several buildings, including small pyramids.\nTemples and causeway.\nThe Pyramid Temple, which stood on the east side of the pyramid and measured north to south and east to west, has almost entirely disappeared. Only some of the black basalt paving remains. There are only a few remnants of the causeway that linked the pyramid with the valley and the Valley Temple. The Valley Temple is buried beneath the village of Nazlet el-Samman; basalt paving and limestone walls have been found but the site has not been excavated.\nEast cemetery.\nThe tomb of Queen Hetepheres I, sister-wife of Sneferu and mother of Khufu, lies east of the Great Pyramid. Discovered by accident by the Reisner expedition, the burial was intact, but the carefully sealed coffin proved to be empty.\nSubsidiary pyramids.\nOn the southern end of the east side are four subsidiary pyramids The three that remain standing to almost full height are popularly known as the Queens' Pyramids (G1-a, G1-b and G1-c). The fourth, smaller satellite pyramid (G1-d), is so ruined that its existence was not suspected until the first course of stones and, later, the remains of the capstone were discovered during excavations in 1991\u20131993.\nBoats.\nThree boat-shaped pits are located east of the pyramid. They are large enough in size and shape to have held complete boats, though so shallow that any superstructure, if there ever was one, must have been removed or disassembled.\nTwo additional boat pits, long and rectangular in shape, were found south of the pyramid, still covered with slabs of stone weighing up to 15 tons.\nThe first of these was discovered in May 1954 by the Egyptian archaeologist Kamal el-Mallakh. Inside were 1,224 pieces of wood, the longest in length, the shortest . These were entrusted to a boat builder, Haj Ahmed Yusuf, who worked out how the pieces fitted together. The entire process, including conservation and straightening of the warped wood, took fourteen years. The result is a cedar-wood boat long, its timbers held together by ropes, which was originally housed in the Giza Solar boat museum, a special boat-shaped, air-conditioned museum beside the pyramid. The boat is now in the Grand Egyptian Museum.\nDuring construction of this museum in the 1980s, the second sealed boat pit was discovered. It was left unopened until 2011 when excavation began on the boat.\nPyramid town.\nFlanking the Giza pyramid complex is a cyclopean stone wall, the Wall of the Crow. Mark Lehner discovered a worker's town outside the wall, otherwise known as \"The Lost City\", dated by pottery styles, seal impressions and stratigraphy to have been constructed and occupied during the reigns of Khafre (2520\u20132494 BC) and Menkaure (2490\u20132472 BC). In the early 21st century, Lehner and his team made several discoveries, including what appears to have been a thriving port, suggesting the town and associated living quarters, which consisted of barracks called \"galleries\", may not have been for the pyramid workers after all, but rather for the soldiers and sailors who used the port. In light of this new discovery, as to where then the pyramid workers may have lived, Lehner suggested the alternative possibility they may have camped on the ramps he believes were used to construct the pyramids, or possibly at nearby quarries.\nIn the early 1970s, the Australian archaeologist Karl Kromer excavated a mound in the South Field of the plateau. It contained artefacts including mudbrick seals of Khufu, which Kromer identified with an artisans' settlement. Mudbrick buildings just south of Khufu's Valley Temple contained mud sealings of Khufu and have been suggested to be a settlement serving the cult of Khufu after his death. A worker's cemetery used at least between Khufu's reign and the end of the Fifth Dynasty was discovered south of the Wall of the Crow by Hawass in 1990.\nLooting.\nAuthors Bob Brier and Hoyt Hobbs claim that \"all the pyramids were robbed\" by the New Kingdom, when the construction of royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings began. Joyce Tyldesley states that the Great Pyramid itself \"is known to have been opened and emptied by the Middle Kingdom\", before the Arab caliph Al-Ma'mun entered the pyramid around 820 AD.\nI. E. S. Edwards discusses Strabo's mention that the pyramid \"a little way up one side has a stone that may be taken out, which being raised up there is a sloping passage to the foundations\". Edwards suggested that the pyramid was entered by robbers after the end of the Old Kingdom and sealed and then reopened more than once until Strabo's door was added. He adds: \"If this highly speculative surmise be correct, it is also necessary to assume either that the existence of the door was forgotten or that the entrance was again blocked with facing stones\", in order to explain why al-Ma'mun could not find the entrance. Scholars such as Gaston Maspero and Flinders Petrie have noted that evidence for a similar door has been found at the Bent Pyramid of Dashur.\nHerodotus visited Egypt in the 5th century BC and recounts a story that he was told concerning vaults under the pyramid built on an island where the body of Khufu lies. Edwards notes that the pyramid had \"almost certainly been opened and its contents plundered long before the time of Herodotus\" and that it might have been closed again during the Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt when other monuments were restored. He suggests that the story told to Herodotus could have been the result of almost two centuries of telling and retelling by pyramid guides.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["12224"], "permutation_1": ["12224"], "permutation_2": ["12224"], "permutation_3": ["12224"]}
{"id": "nq_4779943362827487014", "docs_added": {"718792": "List of prime ministers of Elizabeth II\nFrom becoming queen on 6 February 1952, Elizabeth II was head of state of 32 independent states; at the time of her death, there were 15 states, called Commonwealth realms. Within the Westminster system in each realm, the Queen's government was headed by a prime minister. Appointment and dismissal of prime ministers were common reserve powers that could be exercised by Elizabeth or her governors-general.\nElizabeth had 179N1 individuals serve as her realms' prime ministers throughout her reign, the first new appointment being Dudley Senanayake as Prime Minister of Ceylon and the final being Liz Truss as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, whom she appointed only two days before her death; some of these individuals served multiple non-consecutive terms in office (within the same state) as prime minister. Several of her prime ministers from various realms were appointed for life to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom.\nThis list does not cover Commonwealth nations that were not Commonwealth realms at any point during Elizabeth's reign, nor holders of offices of prime minister in colonies or sub-national entities such as states or provinces.\nList of prime ministers.\nAntigua and Barbuda.\nAntigua and Barbuda became independent on 1 November 1981 with Vere Bird as the first prime minister. Bird had previously been Premier of Antigua.\nAustralia.\nRobert Menzies was the incumbent prime minister when Elizabeth became queen.\nThe Bahamas.\nThe Bahamas became independent on 10 July 1973 with Lynden Pindling as the first prime minister. Pindling had previously been the prime minister of the self-governing Commonwealth of the Bahama Islands.\nBarbados.\nBarbados became independent on 30 November 1966 with Errol Barrow as the first prime minister. Barrow had previously been Premier of Barbados.\nBarbados abolished the monarchy on 30 November 2021. Mottley remained in office as the republic's first prime minister.\nBelize.\nBelize became independent on 21 September 1981 with George Cadle Price as the first prime minister. Price had previously been Premier of Belize.\nCanada.\nLouis St. Laurent was the incumbent prime minister when Elizabeth became queen.\nCeylon.\nD. S. Senanayake was the incumbent prime minister of Ceylon when Elizabeth became queen.\nCeylon abolished the monarchy on 22 May 1972 and became the \"Republic of Sri Lanka\". Bandaranaike remained in office as the republic's first prime minister until 23 July 1977.\nFiji.\nFiji became independent on 10 October 1970 with Kamisese Mara as the first prime minister. Mara had previously been Chief Minister of Fiji.\nFollowing the 1987 Fijian coups d'\u00e9tat (which resulted in a vacancy in the premiership until December 1987), on 7 October 1987, the new ruling regime declared the nation to have become the Republic of Fiji. Fiji's relationship with the monarchy after this transition is complex (see Monarchy of Fiji).\nGambia.\nThe Gambia became independent on 18 February 1965 with Dawda Jawara as the first prime minister. Jawara had previously been prime minister of the self-governing Gambia.\nThe Gambia abolished the monarchy on 24 April 1970, via referendum. Jawara became President of the Gambia on the same day as the post of prime minister was abolished.\nGhana.\nGhana became independent on 15 August 1957, with Kwame Nkrumah as its first prime minister. Nkrumah had previously been prime minister of the self-governing Gold Coast.\nGhana abolished the monarchy on 1 July 1960, via referendum. Nkrumah became President of Ghana on the same day as the post of prime minister was abolished.\nGrenada.\nGrenada became independent on 7 February 1974 with Eric Gairy as the first prime minister. Gairy had previously been Premier of Grenada.\nGuyana.\nGuyana became independent on 26 May 1966, with Forbes Burnham as its first prime minister. Burnham had previously been Premier of British Guiana.\nGuyana abolished the monarchy on 23 February 1970. Burnham remained in office as the republic's first prime minister until 6 October 1980.\nJamaica.\nJamaica became independent on 6 August 1962 with Alexander Bustamante as the first prime minister. Bustamante had previously been Premier of Jamaica.\nKenya.\nKenya became independent on 12 December 1963, with Jomo Kenyatta becoming the first prime minister. Kenyatta had previously been prime minister of self-governing Kenya.\nKenya abolished the monarchy on 12 December 1964. Kenyatta became President of Kenya as the post of prime minister was abolished.\nMalawi.\nMalawi became independent on 6 July 1964, with Hastings Banda as prime minister. Banda had previously been prime minister of self-governing Nyasaland.\nMalawi abolished the monarchy on 6 July 1966. Banda became President of Malawi as the post of prime minister was abolished.\nMalta.\nThe Crown Colony of Malta became independent as the State of Malta on 21 September 1964 with George Borg Olivier as prime minister. Olivier had previously been the colony's prime minister.\nMalta abolished the monarchy on 13 December 1974 and became the current Republic of Malta, a republic within the Commonwealth. Mintoff remained in office as the republic's first prime minister until 22 December 1984.\nMauritius.\nMauritius became independent on 12 March 1968, with Seewoosagur Ramgoolam becoming the first prime minister. Ramgoolam had previously been Chief Minister of Mauritius.\nMauritius abolished the monarchy on 12 March 1992. Jugnauth remained in office as the republic's prime minister until 15 December 1995.\nNew Zealand.\nSidney Holland was the incumbent prime minister when Elizabeth became queen.\nReference\nNigeria.\nThe Federation of Nigeria became independent on 1 October 1960, with Abubakar Tafawa Balewa becoming the first prime minister. Balewa had previously been Chief Minister of the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria.\nNigeria became the Federal Republic of Nigeria on 1 October 1963. Balewa remained in office as the republic's prime minister until his overthrow and assassination in the 1966 Nigerian coup d'\u00e9tat on 15 January 1966.\nPakistan.\nKhawaja Nazimuddin was the incumbent prime minister when Elizabeth became queen.\nPakistan abolished the monarchy on 23 March 1956. Ali remained in office as the republic's first prime minister until 12 September 1956.\nPapua New Guinea.\nPapua New Guinea became independent on 16 September 1975 with Michael Somare as the first prime minister. Somare had previously been Chief Minister of Papua New Guinea.\nRhodesia.\nSee below.\nSaint Kitts and Nevis.\nSaint Kitts and Nevis became independent on 19 September 1983 with Kennedy Simmonds as the first prime minister. Simmonds had previously been Premier of Saint Kitts and Nevis.\nSaint Lucia.\nSaint Lucia became independent on 22 February 1979 with John Compton as the first prime minister. Compton had previously been Premier of Saint Lucia.\nSaint Vincent and the Grenadines.\nSaint Vincent and the Grenadines became independent on 27 October 1979 with Milton Cato as the first prime minister. Cato had previously been Premier of Saint Vincent.\nSierra Leone.\nSierra Leone became independent on 27 April 1961, with Milton Margai as the first prime minister. Margai had previously been Prime Minister of the Protectorate of Sierra Leone.\nSiaka Stevens assumed the role of prime minister following his party's narrow victory in the 1967 general election. However, immediately after taking office, Stevens was deposed by the National Reformation Council in a coup d'\u00e9tat and placed under house arrest. Military rule persisted until an April 1968 counter-coup restored Stevens' premiership.\nSierra Leone became the Republic of Sierra Leone on 19 April 1971. Stevens left the office of prime minister two days later and became President of Sierra Leone. The office of the prime minister was later abolished on 15 June 1978.\nSolomon Islands.\nThe Solomon Islands became independent on 7 July 1978 with Peter Kenilorea as the first prime minister.\nSouth Africa.\nDaniel Fran\u00e7ois Malan was the incumbent prime minister of the Union of South Africa when Elizabeth became queen.\nFollowing a referendum, South Africa abolished the monarchy on 31 May 1961, becoming the Republic of South Africa. Verwoerd remained in office as the republic's first prime minister until his assassination on 6 September 1966.\nTanganyika.\nTanganyika became independent on 9 December 1961, with Julius Nyerere as its first prime minister. Nyerere had previously been the prime minister of self-governing Tanganyika.\nTanganyika abolished the monarchy on 9 December 1962. The post of prime minister was also abolished.\nTrinidad and Tobago.\nTrinidad and Tobago became independent on 31 August 1962, with Eric Williams as its first prime minister. Williams had previously been Chief Minister and Premier of Trinidad and Tobago.\nTrinidad and Tobago abolished the monarchy on 1 August 1976. Williams remained in office as the republic's first prime minister until 29 March 1981.\nTuvalu.\nTuvalu became independent on 1 October 1978 with Toaripi Lauti as the first prime minister. Lauti had previously been Chief Minister of Tuvalu.\nUganda.\nUganda became independent on 9 October 1962 with Milton Obote as the first prime minister. Obote had previously been the prime minister of self-governing Uganda.\nUganda abolished the monarchyN8 on 9 October 1963. Obote remained in office as the republic's first prime minister until 15 April 1966.\nUnited Kingdom.\nWinston Churchill was the incumbent prime minister when Elizabeth became queen. \nAnomalous cases.\nGrenada (1979\u20131984).\nMaurice Bishop held \"de facto\" government control for most of the People's Revolutionary Government period (from 13 March 1979 until 14 October 1983). On 14 October 1983 Bishop was deposed by Bernard Coard and Bishop was killed on 19 October. Coard held power only briefly before military government was declared. After the invasion of Grenada by the United States, the pre-revolutionary system of government and the office of Prime Minister were restored on 4 December 1984. The Grenadian government acknowledges Bishop as a former prime minister, but not Coard nor any other individual who held \"de facto\" or \"de jure\" power in this period.\nRhodesia (1965\u20131970).\nIan Smith was Prime Minister of Rhodesia following a unilateral declaration of independence on 11 November 1965. Although Rhodesia considered Elizabeth II to be \"Queen of Rhodesia\", this title was not accepted by her. Acting in his vice-regal capacity and under direction from the UK government, the Governor of Southern Rhodesia, Humphrey Gibbs, dismissed the prime minister and his government but this action was ignored by Smith. The state remained unrecognised by the United Kingdom and the wider international community. Following a referendum, Rhodesia declared itself a republic on 2 March 1970. Smith remained in office throughout this period.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "37822488": "Monarchy of Pakistan\nPakistan's head of state from 1947 to 1956\nFrom 1947 to 1956, the Dominion of Pakistan was a self-governing country within the Commonwealth of Nations that shared a monarch with the United Kingdom and the other Dominions of the Commonwealth. The monarch's constitutional roles in Pakistan were mostly delegated to a vice-regal representative, the governor-general of Pakistan.\nThe dominion was created by the Indian Independence Act 1947, which divided British India into two independent sovereign states of India and Pakistan. The monarchy was abolished on 23 March 1956, when Pakistan became a republic within the Commonwealth with a president as its head of state.\nHistory.\nReign of George VI (1947\u20131952).\nUnder the Indian Independence Act 1947, British India was to be divided into the independent sovereign states of India and Pakistan. From 1947 to 1952, King George VI was the sovereign of Pakistan, with Pakistan sharing the sovereign with the United Kingdom and the other Dominions of the Commonwealth of Nations.\nTo mark the independence of Pakistan, the King sent a message of congratulations to its people, which was read by Lord Mountbatten in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on 14 August 1947. In his message, the King said in \"achieving your independence by agreement, you have set an example to all freedom-loving people throughout the world\". He told the Pakistani people to be \"assured always of my sympathy and support as I watch your continuing efforts to advance the cause of humanity\".\nThe King appointed Mohammad Ali Jinnah as the governor-general of Pakistan and authorised him to exercise and perform all the powers and duties as his representative in Pakistan. Mohammad Ali Jinnah took the following oath of office:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"I, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, do solemnly affirm true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of Pakistan as by law established and that I will be faithful to His Majesty King George VI, in the office of governor general of Pakistan.\"\nJinnah died of tuberculosis on 11 September 1948, while in office. The King confirmed the appointment of Sir Khwaja Nazimuddin as the next governor-general by a Royal decree which said:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"On the advice of the Prime Minister of Pakistan, His Majesty the King is pleased to appoint Khwaja Nazimuddin as acting governor-general of Pakistan in the vacancy occasioned by the sad demise of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah.\"\nIn 1951, Sir Khwaja Nazimuddin resigned from the post of governor-general to become the new prime minister. The King appointed Sir Ghulam Mohammed as the third governor-general of Pakistan.\nKing George VI died in his sleep in the early hours of 6 February 1952. The King's death was deeply mourned in Pakistan. In view of the King's death, all government offices in Pakistan remained closed on 7 February. All places of amusement and business-houses closed, and the government cancelled all official engagements. Most Pakistani newspapers were issued with black borders on 7 February. On 15 February, the day of the funeral, a national two minutes' silence was observed throughout Pakistan, and a salute of 56 guns was fired, one for each year of the King's life. All Pakistani flags were flown at half-mast till the day of the funeral.\nIn the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, the Dominion's federal legislature, Prime Minister Sir Khawaja Nazimuddin said that the King's reign will always be remembered by Pakistanis as \"the period during which the Muslims of the Indo-Pakistan Subcontinent carved out a homeland for themselves\".\nReign of Elizabeth II (1952\u20131956).\nFollowing George VI's death on 6 February 1952, his elder daughter Princess Elizabeth became the new monarch of Pakistan. She was proclaimed Queen throughout her realms, including in Pakistan, where she was honoured with a 21-gun salute on 8 February.\nAndrew Michie wrote in 1952 that \"Elizabeth II embodies in her own person many monarchies\", as she was Queen of the United Kingdom, but was also equally Queen of Pakistan. He added that it was \"now possible for Elizabeth II to be, in practice as well as theory, equally Queen in all her realms\". \nDuring her coronation in 1953, Elizabeth II was crowned as Queen of Pakistan and other independent Commonwealth realms. In her Coronation Oath, the Queen promised \"to govern the Peoples of\u00a0\u2026 Pakistan\u00a0\u2026 according to their respective laws and customs\". The Queen's coronation gown was embroidered with the floral emblems of each Commonwealth nation, and it featured the three emblems of Pakistan: wheat, in oat-shaped diamante and fronds of golden crystal; cotton, made in silver with leaves of green silk; and jute, embroidered in green silk and golden thread.\nThe Standard of Pakistan at the Coronation was borne by Mirza Abol Hassan Ispahani. Major-General Mohd. Yusuf Khan served as the head of Pakistan's Coronation Contingent. Pakistani naval vessels HMPS \"Zulfiqar\" and HMPS \"Jhelum\" took part in the Coronation Review of the fleet at Spithead on 15 June 1953, which cost approximately 81,000 rupees.\nEighty seats were reserved for Pakistanis in the Abbey for the Coronation. Prime Minister Mohammad Ali Bogra, also attended the Coronation on 2 June, along with his wife and two sons, after which he attended the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference from 3 June to 9 June 1953, in London.\nThe Government of Pakistan spent approximately 482,000 rupees for the Queen's Coronation. Prime Minister Bogra justified the expenditure by saying that Pakistan being a member of the Commonwealth \"has to fall in line with other sister Dominions on such occasions\".\nIn 1953, Governor-General Sir Ghulam Muhammad dismissed Prime Minister Sir Khawaja Nazimuddin for attempting to equalise the power of West and East Pakistan. The prime minister attempted to reverse this decision by pleading to the Queen, but she refused to intervene. Citing this incident, Akhilesh Pillalamarri of \"The Diplomat\" wrote that \"She deliberately kept from interfering in the country and her governors-general were presidents of Pakistan in all but name.\"\nAt the 1955 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference, the Prime Minister of Pakistan informed fellow Commonwealth leaders that Pakistan would be adopting a republican constitution, but desired Pakistan to remain a member of the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth leaders issued a declaration on 4 February, in which it was said:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The Government of Pakistan have informed the other Governments of the Commonwealth of the intention of the Pakistan people that under the new Constitution which is about to be adopted, Pakistan shall become a sovereign independent Republic. The Government of Pakistan, have, however, declared and affirmed Pakistan's desire to continue her full membership of the Commonwealth of Nations and her acceptance of the Queen as the symbol of the free association of its independent member nations, and as such the Head of the Commonwealth.\nIn 1955, the Pakistani Government recommended to the Queen that Major-General Iskander Mirza should succeed Sir Ghulam Muhammad as the next governor-general, the Queen's representative in Pakistan. On 19 September, it was officially announced that the Queen had appointed Iskander Mirza to be the governor-general, with effect from 6 October 1955. Mirza took office after the Royal sign-manual from the Queen was read out.\nThe Queen also congratulated the retiring governor-general, Sir Ghulam Mohammad, on the manner in which he carried out his duties as the governor-general.\nAbolition.\nThe Pakistani monarchy was abolished on the adoption of a republican constitution on 23 March 1956. Pakistan became a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations. The Queen sent a message to the new president Major-General Mirza, in which she said: \"I have followed with close interest the progress of your country since its establishment ... It is a source of great satisfaction to me to know that your country intends to remain within the Commonwealth. I am confident that Pakistan and other countries of the Commonwealth will continue to thrive and to benefit from their mutual association\".\nThe Queen visited Pakistan as Head of the Commonwealth in 1961 and 1997, accompanied by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.\nPakistan left the Commonwealth in 1972 over the issue of the former East Pakistan province becoming independent as Bangladesh. It rejoined in 1989, then was suspended from the Commonwealth twice: firstly from 18 October 1999 to 22 May 2004 and secondly from 22 November 2007 to 22 May 2008.\nTitle.\nBefore 1953, the monarch's title was same throughout all realms and territories. It was agreed at the Commonwealth Economic Conference in London in December 1952 that each of the Queen's realms, including Pakistan, could adopt its own royal titles for the monarch. The Queen's official title in Pakistan, per the official proclamation in \"The Gazette of Pakistan\" on 29 May 1953, was \"Elizabeth the Second, Queen of the United Kingdom and of Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth\".\nAs Pakistan was a Muslim-majority country, the phrases \"by the Grace of God\" and \"Defender of the Faith\" were omitted. The title \"Defender of the Faith\" reflected the Sovereign's position as the supreme governor of the Church of England, who is thus formally superior to the archbishop of Canterbury.\nConstitutional role.\nPakistan was one of the realms of the Commonwealth of Nations that shared the same person as Sovereign and head of state.\nEffective with the Indian Independence Act 1947, no British government minister could advise the sovereign on any matters pertaining to Pakistan, meaning that on all matters of the Dominion of Pakistan, the monarch was advised solely by Pakistani ministers of the Crown. All Pakistani bills required Royal assent. The Pakistani monarch was represented in the Dominion by the governor-general of Pakistan, who was appointed by the monarch on the advice of the Pakistani Government.\nThe Crown and Government.\nThe Pakistani monarch and the federal legislature constituted the Parliament of Pakistan. All executive powers of Pakistan rested with the sovereign. All laws in Pakistan were enacted only with the granting of Royal Assent, done by the governor-general on behalf of the sovereign. The governor-general was also responsible for summoning, proroguing, and dissolving the Federal Legislature. The governor-general had the power to choose and appoint the Council of Ministers and could dismiss them under his discretion. All Pakistani ministers of the Crown held office at the pleasure of the governor-general.\nThe Crown and Foreign affairs.\nPakistani ambassadors and representatives to foreign countries were accredited by the monarch in his or her capacity as the Sovereign of Pakistan and Pakistani envoys sent abroad required royal approval. The letters of credence and letters of recall were formerly issued by the monarch.\nThe Crown and the Courts.\nWithin the Commonwealth realms, the sovereign is responsible for rendering justice for all her subjects, and is thus traditionally deemed the \"fount of justice\". In Pakistan, criminal offences were legally deemed to be offences against the sovereign and proceedings for indictable offences were brought in the sovereign's name in the form of \"The Crown versus [Name]\". Hence, the common law held that the sovereign \"can do no wrong\"; the monarch cannot be prosecuted in his or her own courts for criminal offences. The governor-general of Pakistan was also exempted from any proceedings against him in any Pakistani court.\nVice-regal residences.\nThe representative of the Pakistani monarch officially resided at Governor-General's House, in the city of Karachi. All four governors-general lived there until 1956, when the monarchy was abolished, and the residence was renamed President's House.\nAll oath taking ceremonies were held at the Darbar Hall of Governor-General's House. The Hall also contains a throne which was made for King Edward VII during his tour of India as Prince of Wales in 1876, and was also used by Queen Mary during the Delhi Durbar in 1911. All governors-general took salutes at the terrace of the house on national days as the contingents of guards marched past.\nCultural role.\nThe Crown and Honours.\nWithin the Commonwealth realms, the monarch is deemed the fount of honour. Similarly, the monarch, as Sovereign of Pakistan, conferred awards and honours in Pakistan in his or her name. Most of them were awarded on the advice of \"His Majesty's Pakistan Ministers\" (or \"Her Majesty's Pakistan Ministers\").\nThe Crown and the Defence Force.\nThe Crown sat at the pinnacle of the Pakistan Defence Force. It was reflected in Pakistan's naval vessels, which bore the prefix \"HMPS\", i.e., \"Her Majesty's Pakistan Ship\" (or \"His Majesty's Pakistan Ship\" during the reign of George VI). The Pakistan Navy and the Pakistan Air Force were known as Royal Pakistan Navy and Royal Pakistan Air Force respectively. The prefix \"Royal\" was dropped when the Pakistani monarchy was abolished.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2152548": "List of prime ministers of the United Kingdom\nThe prime minister of the United Kingdom is the principal minister of the crown of His Majesty's Government, and the head of the British Cabinet. \nThere is no specific date for when the office of prime minister first appeared, as the role was not created but rather evolved over time through a merger of duties. The term was regularly, if informally, used by Robert Walpole by the 1730s. It was used in the House of Commons as early as 1805, and it was certainly in parliamentary use by the 1880s, although did not become the official title until 1905, when Arthur Balfour was prime minister. \nHistorians generally consider Robert Walpole, who led the government of the Kingdom of Great Britain for over twenty years from 1721, to be the first prime minister. Walpole is also the longest-serving British prime minister by this definition. The first prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was William Pitt the Younger at its creation on 1 January 1801. The first to use the title in an official act was Benjamin Disraeli who signed the 1878 Treaty of Berlin as \"Prime Minister of Her Britannic Majesty\".\nIn 1905, the post of prime minister was officially given recognition in the order of precedence, with the incumbent Henry Campbell-Bannerman the first officially referred to as \"prime minister\". The first prime minister of the current United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland upon its creation in 1922 (when 26 Irish counties seceded and created the Irish Free State) was Andrew Bonar Law, although the country was not renamed officially until 1927, when Stanley Baldwin was the serving prime minister.\nThe incumbent prime minister is Keir Starmer, who assumed the office on 5 July 2024.<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nBefore the Kingdom of Great Britain.\nBefore the Union of England and Scotland in 1707, the Treasury of England was led by the Lord High Treasurer. By the late Tudor period, the Lord High Treasurer was regarded as one of the Great Officers of State, and was often (though not always) the dominant figure in government: Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset (lord high treasurer, 1547\u20131549), served as lord protector to his young nephew King Edward\u00a0VI; William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (lord high treasurer, 1572\u20131598), was the dominant minister to Queen Elizabeth\u00a0I; Burghley's son Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, succeeded his father as Chief Minister to Elizabeth (1598\u20131603) and was eventually appointed by King James\u00a0I as lord high treasurer (1608\u20131612).\nBy the late Stuart period, the Treasury was often run not by a single individual (i.e., the lord high treasurer) but by a commission of lords of the Treasury, led by the first lord of the Treasury. The last lords high treasurer, Sidney Godolphin, 1st Earl of Godolphin (1702\u20131710) and Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford (1711\u20131714), ran the government of Queen Anne.\nFrom 1707 to 1721.\nFollowing the succession of George\u00a0I in 1714, the arrangement of a commission of lords of the Treasury (as opposed to a single lord high treasurer) became permanent. For the next three years, the government was headed by Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend, who was appointed Secretary of State for the Northern Department. Subsequently, Lords Stanhope and Sunderland ran the government jointly, with Stanhope managing foreign affairs and Sunderland domestic. Stanhope died in February 1721 and Sunderland resigned two months later; Townshend and Robert Walpole were then invited to form the next government. From that point, the holder of the office of first lord also usually (albeit unofficially) held the status of prime minister. It was not until the Edwardian era that the title prime minister was constitutionally recognised. The prime minister still holds the office of first lord by constitutional convention, the only exceptions being the Earl of Chatham and the Marquess of Salisbury.\nSince 1721.\nPrime ministers.\n<templatestyles src=\"Seplist/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"template:sticky header/styles.css\"/>\nDisputed prime ministers.\nDue to the gradual evolution of the post of prime minister, the title is applied to early prime ministers only retrospectively; this has sometimes given rise to academic dispute. William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath and James Waldegrave, 2nd Earl Waldegrave are sometimes listed as prime ministers. Bath was invited to form a ministry by George II when Henry Pelham resigned in 1746, as was Waldegrave in 1757 after the dismissal of William Pitt the Elder, who dominated the affairs of government during the Seven Years' War. Neither was able to command sufficient parliamentary support to form a government; Bath stepped down after two days and Waldegrave after four. Modern academic consensus does not consider either man to have held office as prime minister; they are therefore listed separately.\n<templatestyles src=\"Plainlist/styles.css\"/>\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nWorks cited.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "16660639": "Monarchy of Papua New Guinea\nThe monarchy of Papua New Guinea is a system of government in which a hereditary monarch is the sovereign and head of state of Papua New Guinea. The current Papua New Guinean monarch and head of state, since 8 September 2022, is King Charles III. As sovereign, he is the personal embodiment of the Papua New Guinean Crown. Although the person of the sovereign is equally shared with 14 other independent countries within the Commonwealth of Nations, each country's monarchy is separate and legally distinct. As a result, the current monarch is officially titled \"King of Papua New Guinea\" and, in this capacity, he and other members of the royal family undertake public and private functions domestically and abroad as representatives of Papua New Guinea. However, the King is the only member of the royal family with any constitutional role.\nAll executive authority is vested in the monarch, and royal approval is required for letters patent and Orders in Council to have legal effect. But the authority for these acts stems from the country's populace, in which sovereignty is vested, and the monarch's direct participation in any of these areas of governance is limited. Most of the powers are exercised by the elected members of parliament, the ministers of the Crown generally drawn from amongst them, and the judges and justices of the peace. Other powers vested in the Crown, such as dismissal of a prime minister, are significant but are treated only as reserve powers and as an important security part of the role of the monarchy.\nThe Crown today primarily functions as a guarantor of continuous and stable governance and a nonpartisan safeguard against the abuse of power. While some powers are exercisable only by the sovereign, most of the monarch's operational and ceremonial duties are exercised by his representative, the governor-general of Papua New Guinea.\nHistory.\nThe first European attempt at colonisation was made in 1793 by Lieutenant John Hayes, a British naval officer, near Manokwari, now in Papua province, Indonesia. It was the Dutch, however, who claimed the western half of the island as part of the Dutch East Indies in 1828; their control remained nominal until 1898, when their first permanent administrative posts were set up at Fakfak and Manokwari.\nIn 1884, Germany formally took possession of the northeast quarter of the island and it became known as German New Guinea. In 1884, a British protectorate was proclaimed over Papua \u2013 the southern coast of New Guinea. The protectorate, called British New Guinea, was annexed outright on 4 September 1888 and possession passed to the newly federated Commonwealth of Australia in 1902 and British New Guinea became the Australian Territory of Papua, with Australian administration beginning in 1906. During the First World War, Australian forces displaced the German authorities on New Guinea, and the arrangement was formalized in 1921, when Australian control of the northeastern quadrant of the island was mandated by the League of Nations.\nIn 1945, Australia combined its administration of Papua and that of the former mandate into the Territory of Papua and New Guinea, which it administered from Canberra via Port Moresby. From 1946, Australia managed the New Guinea (eastern) half as a United Nations trust territory. General elections for a House of Assembly were held in 1964, 1968, and 1972; self-government was achieved on 1 December 1973, and full independence from Australia on 16 September 1975.\nRoad to independent monarchy.\nIn February 1974, a year after self-government and discussions gathered momentum on the question for a date for independence, Queen Elizabeth II of Australia visited Papua New Guinea. In a speech before a crowd of 25,000 people, the Queen said, \"The movement towards independence has been gaining speed in recent years and the decisive moment is not far off\". She continued: \"As Queen of Australia I can assure you of continuing friendship and assistance as you set out on the path of independent nationhood\". Chief Minister Michael Somare in his speech reaffirmed Papua New Guinea's desire and hope to join the Commonwealth of Nations upon independence. However, there was no indication of a continuing role for the Queen in independent Papua New Guinea when, in April 1975, it was decided that the head of state was to be a citizen of the country, who would be chosen by secret ballot.\nOn 5 May 1975, it was announced that Papua New Guinea would join the Commonwealth upon independence, with Somare aspiring to make the new nation a republic. However on 19 May, it was suddenly announced that the Cabinet would propose to the Constituent Assembly that the Queen become head of state. The Cabinet statement stated that continued ties with the Queen would give a \"sense of security to a significant section of the community\", as the early years of independence would be \"years of adjustment and settling down\", with the position to be reviewed after three years. Though the decision delighted some people in centres and villages, protests were lodged by university students and some opposition members. In the House of Assembly, Somare urged politicians not to shame the country by using the Queen as a political football. He said that the Queen's position as head of state would not undermine the country's sovereignty or independence, and the framework would help the country in its dealings with other members of the Commonwealth. The government also wished to retain all the traditional knighthoods and decorations. Groups from various parts of the country voiced their support for Somare's decision.\nOn 5 June 1975, the Constituent Assembly rejected by 57 votes to 26 an amendment to the draft constitution which would have made Papua New Guinea a republic upon independence. On 15 August 1975, the Constituent Assembly formally adopted the Constitution, invited the Queen to become head of state and asked her to accept Parliament's nomination of John Guise as governor-general of Papua New Guinea. According to the Queen's then-private secretary, Martin Charteris, the Queen was \"both tickled and touched\" and she accepted the"}, "descending_order": ["37822488", "2152548", "718792", "16660639"], "permutation_1": ["37822488", "2152548", "718792", "16660639"], "permutation_2": ["37822488", "16660639", "2152548", "718792"], "permutation_3": ["2152548", "37822488", "16660639", "718792"]}
{"id": "nq_3721783344189538747", "docs_added": {"7436762": "Term limits in the United States\nIn the context of the politics of the United States, term limits restrict the number of terms of office an officeholder may serve. At the federal level, the president of the United States can serve a maximum of two four-year terms, with this being limited by the Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution that came into force on February 27, 1951. Some state government offices are also term-limited, including executive, legislative, and judicial offices. Analogous measures exist at the city and county level across the U.S., though many details involving local governments in that country vary depending on the specific location.\nTerm limits are also referred to as rotation in office. That specific terminology is often associated with the Founding Father and later president Thomas Jefferson given his use of it in his political arguments.\nHistorical background.\nConstitution.\nTerm limits date back to the American Revolution and prior to that, to the democracies and republics of antiquity. The Council of 500 in ancient Athens rotated its entire membership annually, as did the ephorate in ancient Sparta.\nThe ancient Roman Republic featured a system of elected magistrates \u2014 tribunes of the plebs, aediles, quaestors, praetors, and consuls \u2014 who served a single term of one year, with re-election to the same magistracy forbidden for ten years \"(see cursus honorum)\". According to historian Garrett Fagan, office holding in the Roman Republic was based on \"limited tenure of office\" which ensured that \"authority circulated frequently\", helping to prevent corruption. An additional benefit of the or \"run of offices\" was to bring the \"most experienced\" politicians to the upper echelons of power-holding in the ancient republic. Many of the founders of the United States were educated in the classics, and quite familiar with rotation in the office during antiquity. The debates of that day reveal a desire to study and profit from the object lessons offered by ancient democracy.\nPrior to independence, several colonies had already experimented with term limits. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut of 1639, for example, prohibited the colonial governor from serving consecutive terms by setting terms at one year's length, and holding \"that no person be chosen Governor above once in two years.\" Shortly after independence, the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 set maximum service in the Pennsylvania General Assembly at \"four years in seven.\" Benjamin Franklin's influence is seen not only in that he chaired the constitutional convention which drafted the Pennsylvania constitution, but also because it included, virtually unchanged, Franklin's earlier proposals on executive rotation. Pennsylvania's plural executive was composed of twelve citizens elected for the term of three years, followed by a mandatory vacation of four years.\nThe Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1781, established term limits for the delegates of the Continental Congress, mandating in Article V that \"no person shall be capable of being a delegate for more than three years in any term of six years.\"\nOn October 2, 1789, the Continental Congress appointed a committee of thirteen to examine forms of government for the impending union of the states. Among the proposals was that from the state of Virginia, written by Thomas Jefferson, urging a limitation of tenure, \"to prevent every danger which might arise to American freedom by continuing too long in office the members of the Continental Congress.\" The committee made recommendations, which as regards congressional term limits were incorporated unchanged into the Articles of Confederation (1781\u20131789). The fifth Article stated that \"no person shall be capable of being a delegate [to the continental congress] for more than three years in any term of six years.\"\nTerm limits in the Constitution.\nIn contrast to the Articles of Confederation, the federal constitution convention at Philadelphia omitted mandatory term limits from the U.S. Constitution of 1789. At the convention, some delegates spoke passionately against term limits such as Rufus King, who said \"that he who has proved himself to be most fit for an Office, ought not to be excluded by the constitution from holding it.\" The Electoral College, it was believed by some delegates at the convention, could have a role to play in limiting unfit officers from continuing.\nWhen the states ratified the Constitution (1787\u20131788), several leading statesmen regarded the lack of mandatory limits to tenure as a dangerous defect, especially, they thought, as regards the presidency and the Senate. Richard Henry Lee viewed the absence of legal limits to tenure, together with certain other features of the Constitution, as \"most highly and dangerously oligarchic.\" Both Jefferson and George Mason advised limits on re-election to the Senate and to the Presidency, because, said Mason, \"nothing is so essential to the preservation of a Republican government as a periodic rotation.\" The historian Mercy Otis Warren warned that \"there is no provision for a rotation, nor anything to prevent the perpetuity of office in the same hands for life; which by a little well-timed bribery, will probably be done.\"\nPresidential term limits 1789\u20131952.\n says George Washington did not set the informal precedent for a two-term limit for the Presidency. He only meant he was too worn out to personally continue in office. It was Thomas Jefferson who made it a principle in 1808. He made many statements calling for term limits in one form or another.\nThe two-term limit tradition was maintained unofficially for 132 years. It was unsuccessfully challenged by Ulysses Grant in 1880, Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, and Woodrow Wilson in 1920. Franklin D. Roosevelt successfully ran for a third term in 1940, citing the outbreak of World War II. The two Roosevelts are the only presidents to run for a third term in a general election; Grant and Wilson aimed to do so but failed to gain their parties' nominations. Franklin Roosevelt was re-elected in 1944 for a fourth term amidst the United States' engagement in World War II but died shortly afterwards in office. The Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified in 1951, formally establishing in law the two-term limit\u2014although it did not apply to the incumbent Harry S. Truman, Franklin Roosevelt's successor. Truman declined to run for a third term in 1952.\nThe fact that \"perpetuity in office\" was not approached until the 20th century is due in part to the influence of rotation in office as a popular 19th-century concept. \"Ideas are, in truth, forces,\" and rotation in office enjoyed such normative support, especially at the local level, that it altered political reality.\nDuring the Civil War, the Constitution of the Confederate States limited its president to a single six-year term. Only Jefferson Davis served as Confederate president, but he did not complete a full term in office before surrendering to the Union.\nEra of incumbency.\nThe practice of nomination rotation for the House of Representatives began to decline after the Civil War. It took a generation or so before the direct primary system, civil service reforms, and the ethic of professionalism worked to eliminate rotation in office as a common political practice. By the turn of the 20th century the era of incumbency was coming into full swing.\nA total of eight presidents served two full terms and declined a third. Three presidents served one full term and refused a second. After World War II, however, an officeholder class had developed to the point that congressional tenure rivaled that of the U.S. Supreme Court, where tenure is for life.\nTerm limits movement.\nA movement in favor of term limits took hold in the early 1990s, and reached its apex in 1992 to 1994, a period when seventeen states enacted term limits through state legislation or state constitutional amendments.\nMany of the laws enacted limited terms for both the state legislature and in the state's delegation to Congress. As they pertain to Congress, these laws were struck down as unconstitutional by U.S. Supreme Court in \"U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton\" (1995), in which the court ruled, on a 5\u20134 vote, that state governments cannot limit the terms of members of the national government.\nWhere rotation in the legislative branch has withstood court challenges, term limits continue to garner popular support. As of 2002, the advocacy group \"U.S. Term Limits\" found that in the seventeen states where state legislators served in rotation, public support for term limits ranged from 60 to 78 percent.\nFederal term limits.\nTerm limits at the federal level are restricted to the executive branch and some agencies. Judicial appointments at the federal level are made for life and are not subject to election or to term limits. The U.S. Congress remains (since the \"Thornton\" decision of 1995) without electoral limits.\nPresident.\nGeorge Washington's decision in 1796 not to run for a third term has often been given credit as the start of a tradition that no president should ever run for a third term. Washington wanted to retire when his first term ended in 1792, but all his advisors begged him to stand for re-election. By 1796, however, he insisted on retiring, as he felt exhausted and disgusted by virulent personal attacks on his integrity. His Farewell Address very briefly mentioned why he would not run for a third term and goes on to give a great deal of political advice, but it does not mention term limits. After his death, his refusal to run was explained in terms of a \"no-third-tradition.\" argues, \"The argument for term limits has a solid and respectable pedigree. Contrary to popular belief, however, that pedigree does not begin with George Washington.\" The second president, John Adams, lost re-election in 1800 to Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson himself declined re-election to a third term, attributing the precedent to Washington.\nIn the 1780s, about half the states provided term limits for governors. The Constitutional Convention of 1787 discussed the issue and decided not to institute presidential term limits. \"The matter was fairly discussed in the Convention,\" Washington wrote in 1788, \"and to my full convictions <...> I can see no propriety in precluding ourselves from the services of any man, who on some great emergency shall be deemed universally, most capable of serving the Public,\" even after serving two terms. The Constitution, Washington explained, retained sufficient checks against political corruption and stagnant leadership without a presidential term limits provision. Jefferson, however, strongly endorsed a policy of term limits. He rejected calls from supporters that he run for a third term in 1808, telling several state legislatures in 1807-1808 that he needed to support \"the sound precedent set by [his] illustrious predecessor.\"\nIn 1861, the Confederate States of America adopted a six-year term for their president and vice president and barred the president from seeking re-election. That innovation was endorsed by many American politicians after the Civil War, most notably by Rutherford B. Hayes in his inaugural address. Ulysses Grant was urged to run for a third term in 1876, but he refused. He did try to win the 1880 nomination but was defeated in part because of popular anti-third-term sentiment. Theodore Roosevelt had already served over seven years and in 1912, after a four-year hiatus, ran for a third term. He was criticized for doing so, and attempted assassin John Schrank stated that his motivation for shooting Roosevelt was preventing a third term. The 1912 election was ultimately won by Woodrow Wilson.\nFranklin D. Roosevelt (president, 1933\u20131945) was the only president to be elected more than twice, having won a third term in 1940 and a fourth term in 1944 (though he died in office three months into his fourth term). This gave rise to a successful move to formalize the traditional two-term limit by amending the U.S. Constitution. As ratified in 1951, the Twenty-Second Amendment provides that \"no person shall be elected to the office of President more than twice.\" The new amendment explicitly did not apply to the incumbent president, Harry S. Truman. However, Truman declined to seek re-election to a third term in 1952.\nCongress.\nReformers during the early 1990s used the initiative and referendum to put congressional term limits on the ballot in 24 states. Voters in eight of these states approved the congressional term limits by an average electoral margin of two to one. It was an open question whether states had the constitutional authority to enact these limits. In May 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5\u20134 in \"U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton\", 514 U.S. 779 (1995), that states cannot impose term limits upon their federal representatives or senators.\nIn the 1994 U.S. elections, part of the \"Contract With America\" Republican platform included legislation for term limits in Congress. After winning the majority, a Republican congressman brought a constitutional amendment to the House floor that proposed limiting members of the Senate to two six-year terms and members of the House to six two-year terms. However, this rate of rotation was so slow (the life-tenured Supreme Court averages about 16 years) that the congressional version of term limits garnered little support among the populist backers of term limits, including U.S. Term Limits, the largest private organization pushing for congressional term limits. The bill got only a bare majority (227\u2013204), falling short of the two-thirds majority (290) needed for constitutional amendments. Three other term limit amendment bills failed to get more than 200 votes.\nDefeated in Congress and overridden by the Supreme Court, the federal term limit movement was brought to a halt. The term limits intended simultaneously to reform state legislatures (as distinguished from the federal congressional delegations) remain in force, however, in fifteen states.\nIn 2007, Larry J. Sabato revived the debate over term limits by arguing in \"A More Perfect Constitution\" that the success and popularity of term limits at the state level suggests that they should be adopted at the federal level as well. He specifically put forth the idea of congressional term limits and suggested a national constitutional convention be used to accomplish the amendment, since the Congress would be unlikely to propose and adopt any amendment that limits its own power.\nSome state legislators have also expressed their opinions on term limits. It is confirmed that in the following five states\u2014and there may be others\u2014state lawmakers approved resolutions asking Congress to propose a federal constitutional amendment to limit the number of terms which members of Congress may serve:\nSupreme Court.\nLegal scholars have discussed whether or not to impose term limits on the Supreme Court of the United States. Currently, Supreme Court justices are appointed for life \"during good behavior.\" A sentiment has developed, among certain scholars, that the Supreme Court may not be accountable in a way that is most in line with the spirit of checks and balances. Equally, scholars have argued that life tenure has taken on a new meaning in a modern context. Changes in medical care have markedly raised life expectancy and therefore have allowed justices to serve for longer than ever before. Steven G. Calabresi and James Lindgren, professors of law at Northwestern University, argued that because vacancies in the court are occurring with less frequency and justices served on average 26.1 years between 1971 and 2006, the \"efficacy of the democratic check that the appointment process provides on the Court's membership\" is reduced. There have been several similar proposals to implement term limits for the nation's highest court, including Professor of Law at Duke University Paul Carrington's \"Supreme Court Renewal Act of 2005.\"\nMany of the proposals center around a term limit for justices that would be 10, 18 years to 25 years in length. (Larry Sabato, Professor of Political Science at the University of Virginia, suggested between 15 and 18 years.) The staggered term limits of 18 years proposed by and would allow for a new appointment to the Court every two years, which in effect would allow every president at least two appointments. Carrington has argued that such a measure would not require a constitutional amendment as the \"Constitution doesn't even mention life tenure; it merely requires that justices serve during 'good behavior'.\" The idea was endorsed among Judges, as John Roberts supported term limits before he was appointed to the Supreme Court as chief justice. Calabresi, Lindgren, and Carrington have also proposed that when justices have served out their proposed 18-year term they should be able to sit on other Federal Courts until retirement, death, or removal.\nFairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind Poll measured American voters' attitudes towards various proposed Supreme Court reforms, including implementing term limits. The 2010 poll found that a majority of Americans were largely unaware of a proposal to impose a term limit of 18 years, as 82% reported they had heard little or nothing at all. Notwithstanding a lack of awareness, 52% of Americans approved of limiting terms to 18 years, while 35% disapproved. When asked how old is too old for a Supreme Court judge to serve if he seems healthy, 48% said \"no limit as long as he is healthy\", while 31% agreed that anyone over the age of 70 is too old.\nSome state lawmakers have officially expressed to Congress a desire for a federal constitutional amendment to limit terms of Supreme Court justices as well as of judges of federal courts below the Supreme Court level. While there might be others, below are three known examples:\nState term limits.\nTerm limits for state officials have existed since colonial times. The Pennsylvania Charter of Liberties of 1682, and the colonial frame of government of the same year, both authored by William Penn, provided for triennial rotation of the provincial council\u2014the upper house of the colonial legislature. The Delaware Constitution of 1776 limited the governor to a single three-year term; currently, the governor of Delaware can serve two four-year terms.\nGubernatorial term limits.\nGovernors of 37 states and 4 territories are subject to various term limits, while the governors of 13 states, Puerto Rico, and the mayor of Washington, D.C., may serve an unlimited number of terms. Each state's gubernatorial term limits are prescribed by its state constitution, with the exception of Wyoming, whose limits are found in its statutes. Territorial term limits are prescribed by its constitution in the Northern Mariana Islands, the Organic Acts in Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and by statute in American Samoa.\nUniquely, Virginia prohibits its governors from serving consecutive terms, although former governors are eligible to serve again as governor after a specified period (currently, 4 years) out of office. Several other states formerly had this \"no succession\" rule (which was part of Virginia's original constitution in 1776), but all have eliminated the prohibition except Virginia by 2000 (including Mississippi, which repealed it in 1986, and Kentucky, which repealed it in 1992).\nThe governors of the following states and territories are limited to two consecutive terms, but are eligible to run again after four years out of office: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, West Virginia, American Samoa, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.\nEquivalently, the governors of Indiana and Oregon are limited to serving 8 out of any 12 years. Conversely, the governors of Montana and Wyoming are limited to two terms, serving 8 out of any 16 years.\nFinally, the governors of the following states and territory are limited to two terms during their respective lifetime: Arkansas, California, Delaware, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Dakota, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Oklahoma. Former governor of California Jerry Brown, however, served four non-consecutive terms because his first two terms were before limits were passed in California, and the limits did not apply to individuals' prior terms.\nThe governors of New Hampshire and Vermont may serve unlimited two-year terms. The governors (or equivalent) in the following states, district, and territory may serve unlimited four-year terms: Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The governor of Utah was previously limited to serving three terms, but all term limit laws have since been repealed by the legislature.\nIn 2022, voters in North Dakota approved a constitutional amendment that limits the governor to no more than two four-year terms. The amendment only applies to individuals elected after 2023.\nState legislatures with term limits.\nSeventeen state legislatures currently have term limits. The earliest state legislative term limit was enacted in 1990, and the most recent was enacted in 2022. Term limits only went into effect years after they were enacted.\nOverturned or repealed state legislative term limits.\nLegislative term limits have been repealed or overturned in six states. Term limits for state legislatures were adopted by Idaho and Utah in 1994, but repealed by their respective legislatures in 2002 (Idaho) and 2003 (Utah). Term limits adopted in four states were struck down as unconstitutional by the state supreme courts in those states: in Massachusetts, Washington and Wyoming, the court ruled that term limits could not be enacted by statute, and could only be enacted by an amendment to the state constitution; the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that the Oregon initiative establishing term limits violated the single-subject rule.\nMunicipal term limits.\nSome localities impose term limits for local office. Among the 20 most populous U.S. cities:\nA two-term limit was imposed on New York City Council members and citywide elected officials (except for district attorneys) in New York City after a 1993 referendum (see the Charter of the City of New York, \u00a7\u00a01138). On November 3, 2008, however, when Michael Bloomberg was in his second term of mayor, the City Council approved the extension of the two-term limit to a three-term limit; one year later, he was elected to a third term. The two-term limit was reinstated after a referendum in 2010.\nNegative impacts.\nResearch studies have shown that legislative term limits increase legislative polarization, reduce the legislative skills of politicians, reduce the legislative productivity of politicians, weaken legislatures vis-\u00e0-vis the executive, and reduce voter turnout. Parties respond to the implementation of term limits by recruiting candidates for office on more partisan lines. States that implement term limits in the state legislatures are associated with also developing more powerful House speakers.\nTerm limits have not proven to reduce campaign spending, reduce the gender gap in political representation, increase the diversity of law-makers, or increase the constituent service activities of law-makers. Term limits have been linked to lower growth in revenues and expenditures.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "505825": "Term limit\nLegal restriction limiting the number of terms an officeholder may serve\nA term limit is a legal restriction on the number of terms a person may serve in a particular elected office. When term limits are found in presidential and semi-presidential systems they act as a method of curbing the potential for monopoly, where a leader effectively becomes \"president for life\". This is intended to protect a republic Term limits may be a lifetime limit on the number of terms an officeholder may serve, or a limit on the number of consecutive terms.\nAccording to a 2020 analysis, nearly one in four incumbents who face term limits seek to circumvent the term limits through various strategies, including constitutional amendments, working with the judiciary to reinterpret the term limits, let a placeholder govern for the incumbent, and cancelling or delaying elections.\nHistory.\nEurope.\nTerm limits date back to Ancient Greece and the Roman Republic, as well as the Republic of Venice. In ancient Athenian democracy, many officeholders were limited to a single term. Council members were allowed a maximum of two terms. The position of Strategos could be held for an indefinite number of terms. In the Roman Republic, a law was passed imposing a limit of a single term on the office of censor. The annual magistrates, including the tribune of the plebs, the aedile, the quaestor, the praetor, and the consul, were forbidden reelection until a number of years had passed. The office of dictator was nearly unrestricted with the exception that it was limited to a single six-month term. Successive Roman leaders weakened this restriction until Julius Caesar became a perpetual dictator and ended the republic.\nTerm limits returned in medieval Europe through the Novgorod Republic, the Pskov Republic, the Republic of Genoa, and the Republic of Florence.\nThe first modern constitutional term limit was established in the French First Republic by the Constitution of 1795, which established five-year terms to the French Directory and banned consecutive terms. Napoleon ended the practice of term limits in 1799 in much the same way as Julius Caesar had. The French Constitution of 1848 reestablished term limits, but this was abolished by Napoleon's nephew, Napoleon III.\nMany post-Soviet republics established presidential systems with five-year term limits after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The President of Russia is allowed a maximum of two consecutive terms, but the 2020 amendments to the Constitution of Russia reset incumbent president Vladimir Putin's term count, allowing him to stand for two additional terms. The President of Belarus was limited to two terms, but the limit was abolished in 2004.\nUnited States.\nA predecessor of modern term limits in the Americas dates back to the 1682 Pennsylvania Charter of Liberties and the colonial frame of government of the same year, authored by William Penn and providing for triennial rotation of the Provincial Council, the upper house of the colonial legislature. Presidents of the United States typically honored an informal tradition of only serving two terms in office, but this limit was not enshrined into law until the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1951 after Franklin D. Roosevelt had been elected to an unprecedented third and fourth terms.\nLatin America.\nAs the countries of Latin America modeled presidential republics after the government of the United States in the 19th century, they established term limits for their presidents based on the two-term precedent of the United States. In response to presidents overstaying their term, some of these term limits were eventually replaced by a limit of one term without reelection.\nIn Mexico, Porfirio D\u00edaz evaded term limits, running for eight terms before being forced into exile in 1911. A new constitution in 1917 established a one term limit. After \u00c1lvaro Obreg\u00f3n violated this law and ran for a second term, he was assassinated. Currently, members of the Congress of Mexico cannot be reelected consecutively under article 50 and 59 of the Constitution of Mexico, and the President of Mexico is limited to a single six-year term, called the sexenio.\nThe President of Argentina was limited to one consecutive six-year term, but the Constitution of Argentina was amended in 1994, loosening the term limit to a maximum of two consecutive four-year terms.\nIn 1997, the Constitution of Brazil was amended, loosening the term limit for the President of Brazil from one five-year term to two four-year terms.\nIn 2004, the term limit for the President of Colombia was increased from one term to two terms before reverting to one term in 2015.\nThe 2009 Venezuelan constitutional referendum abolished term limits in Venezuela.<ref name=\"BBC 16/2\"></ref>\nAsia.\nFollowing the 1911 Revolution, Prime Minister of the Imperial Cabinet Yuan Shikai became the second President of the Republic of China. He was initially subject to a maximum of two five-year terms, but the term was then lengthened to ten years and the term limit was removed.\nIn 1948, the Temporary Provisions against the Communist Rebellion abolished the term limit for the President of the Republic of China and established Chiang Kai-shek as the country's military leader. The term limit was restored after the provisions were repealed in 1991.\nThe President of South Korea was initially permitted to serve a maximum of two four-year terms when the office was created in 1948, but the term limit was removed in 1954 so that Syngman Rhee could run for a third term. After Rhee was elected to a fourth term, the First Republic of Korea was overthrown. The two term limit was restored, but it was expanded to three terms in 1969 and abolished again in 1972. A one seven-year term limit was established in 1981, which was reduced to five years in 1988.\nUnder the original Constitution of Indonesia, there were no presidential or vice-presidential term limits, but since the first amendment in 1999 holders of both offices are limited to two terms each.\nThe Philippines established term limits following independence from the United States, but they were abolished by Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s. Term limits were restored in the 1987 constitution, after Marcos was deposed in the People Power Revolution. The President is limited to one six-year term.\nBetween 1982 and 2018, the Constitution of China stipulated that the president, vice president, premier and vice premiers could not serve more than two consecutive terms, though there was no term limit for the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, who usually represented the paramount leader of China. In March 2018, the National People's Congress passed a set of constitutional amendments, including abolishing the term limits for the president and vice president, as well as enhancing the central role of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), allowing CCP leader Xi Jinping to continue as paramount leader indefinitely.\nThe President of Tajikistan was initially limited to one five-year term under the 1994 Constitution of Tajikistan. This was increased to one seven-year term in 1999 and to two seven-year terms in 2003. The term limit was reset for President Emomali Rahmon in 2006, and the term limit was abolished in 2016.\nThe Prime Minister of Pakistan was limited to one five-year term until the limit was abolished in 2011.\nThe Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia is subjected to a term limit. Once elected, he is only allowed to serve for a single five-year term and cannot renew for a second term consecutively. This rule makes Malaysia among two constitutional monarchies in the world that is subjected to a term limit, the other being Andorra (with the President of France serving as one of its co-princes).\nSub-Saharan Africa.\nLiberia briefly limited its presidents to an eight-year term between 1944 and 1951. As the countries of sub-Saharan Africa were decolonised in the mid-20th century, most of the new governments established presidential systems, but term limits were rarely established. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Rwanda, and Togo were the only countries to establish them, but they were abolished soon afterward. After the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989-90 and ensuing wave of democratization in Eastern Europe, many African engaged in similar political democratizations and established term limits.\nThe President of Uganda was limited to two five-year terms in 1995. President Yoweri Museveni had previously served two terms, but these were not counted toward the new two term limit. The term limit was abolished in 2005, allowing Museveni to continue as president.\nIn Kenya, the 2010 constitution limits the president to a maximum of two five-year terms just like county governors. Before the promulgation of the 2010 constitution, term limits did not exist. The first president, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta ruled for 15 years and died in office. His vice president, Daniel Moi took over in 1978 and ruled for 24 years before Mwai Kibaki took over. Kibaki ruled for ten years, in a tenure that was characterized by major political reforms leading to the 2010 constitution. Immediate former President Uhuru Kenyatta was the first president under the new law, a position he served for two terms of 5 years each and was succeeded by his deputy William Ruto in September 2022. A member of President Ruto's United Democratic Alliance party revealed plans to scrap the term limits on 7 November 2022 but the leadership dismissed him saying that was his personal opinion which he was entitled to.\nThe 1999 constitution of Nigeria limits the President at the Federal level, and Governors at the state level to serving two four-year terms. This has been strictly followed since 1999.\nThe 2010 constitution of Niger limited the President to two five-year terms. Mahamadou Issoufou was the only president to step down after being term limited.\nIn Sub-Saharan Africa, only South Africa (since 1994) Ghana (since 1993), Kenya (since 1964), and Nigeria (since 1999) have experienced a peaceful transition of power from one president to another after the expiry of term limits. Some countries have either scrapped the requirement or do not have it in their laws.\nMiddle East and North Africa.\nThe 2019 Egyptian constitutional referendum included amendments to expand the presidential term from four to six years and allow President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to stand for a third term over the constitutional limit of two terms.\nTerm limits were one of the major demands of protesters during the Arab Spring.\nMechanism.\nTerm limits are an element of constitutionalism that serves to limit the negative effects of democracy.\nTerm limits may take the form of consecutive term limits or lifetime term limits. With consecutive term limits, an officeholder can only serve a certain number of terms before they have to stop running for that office. After a set period of time, the clock resets on the limit, and the officeholder may run for election to their original office and serve up to the limit again. With lifetime limits, once an officeholder has served up to the limit, they may never again run for election to that office. Lifetime limits are much more restrictive than consecutive limits.\nCountries that operate a parliamentary system of government are less likely to employ term limits on their leaders. This is because such leaders rarely have a set \"term\" at all: rather, they serve as long as they have the confidence of the parliament, a period which could potentially last for life. Many parliaments can be dissolved for snap elections which means some parliaments can last for mere months while others can continue until their expiration dates. Nevertheless, such countries may impose term limits on the holders of other offices\u2014in republics, for example, a ceremonial presidency may have a term limit, especially if the office holds reserve powers.\nDue in part to a lack of legal term limits in African countries, Mo Ibrahim created the Ibrahim Prize with an associated cash prize to incentivize African leaders to promote human rights and democratic transfer of power.\nViolation of term limits.\nMany presidents have tried to overstay their respective term limits by various methods. According to one analysis, nearly one in four incumbents who faced term limits sought to circumvent the term limits. The most common way in which they attempt this is through constitutional amendments (in particular, when the incumbent's party controls the legislature). Other strategies including getting the judiciary to re-interpret term limit provisions; letting a placeholder succeed the incumbent while the incumbent still governs in practice; write a new constitution; or delay/cancel elections.\nBetween 1960 and 2010, more than one quarter of term-limited presidents successfully extended or violated their term limits to stay in power, and the enforcement of term limits is recognized as one of the great challenges in democratic development. Term limits typically receive greater domestic and international recognition than other mechanisms of democracy, and attempts to violate term limits are typically met with strong resistance by a country's population and on the world stage. The violation of term limits is strongly correlated with democratic backsliding and the erosion of human rights.\nWhether a president seeks to subvert term limits may be affected by how much wealth can be gained from the office, opportunities for acquiring wealth after leaving office, what constraints are in place to enforce term limits, how much control leader has over other branches of government or a political party, precedent in the region, and the likelihood of facing criminal prosecution upon leaving office. Presidents are more likely to be successful in violating term limits if they control the other branches of government, whether through their political parties or through insufficient checks and balances. Though violation of term limits is more common in less democratic countries, political opposition, foreign governments, and the citizenry can still enforce term limits in nondemocratic countries.\nA president may attempt to circumvent term limits indirectly by extending their rule without an additional term. This may be done by extending the length of the term or postponing elections. In some cases, a president may circumvent term limits by officially stepping down from office but maintaining \"de facto\" control of the government.\n1.<templatestyles src=\"Citation/styles.css\"/>^ In a monarchical country where the head of government isn't also the head"}, "descending_order": ["505825", "7436762"], "permutation_1": ["7436762", "505825"], "permutation_2": ["505825", "7436762"], "permutation_3": ["505825", "7436762"]}
{"id": "nq_4796792221069941826", "docs_added": {"2281524": "India women's national cricket team\nIndia Women's cricket team\nThe India women's national cricket team, also known as Women in Blue, represents India in international cricket. It is governed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India, and is a full member of the International Cricket Council with Test, ODI and T20I status. They are the reigning Asian Games gold medalists.\nThe team has played 41 Test matches, winning 8, losing 6 and drawing 27. They played their first international match on 31 October 1976 in a Test against the West Indies at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore.\nThe team has played 322 ODI matches, winning 176, losing 140, tying 2 and with 4 ending in a no-result. As of June 2024, India is ranked fourth in the ICC Women's ODI and T20I Team Rankings on 104 rating points. India has reached the Cricket World Cup final on two occasions, losing to Australia by 98 runs in 2005 and losing to England by 9 runs in 2017. They have won the ODI Asia Cup 4 times in 2004, 2005-06, 2006, 2008.\nThe team has played 199 T20I matches, winning 108, losing 84, tying 1 and with 6 ending in a no-result. As of June 2024, India is ranked third in the ICC Women's ODI and T20I Team Rankings on 263 rating points. India has reached the finals of the T20 World Cup once, losing to Australia by 85 runs in 2020. They have won the T20I Asia Cup 3 times in 2012, 2016, 2022. In addition, they have won a gold medal at the 2022 Asian Games, and a silver medal at the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Smriti Mandhana is the present vice captain of the Indian Women's National Cricket Team.\nHistory.\nThe British brought cricket to India in the early 1700s, with the first cricket match played in 1721. It was played and adopted by Kolis of Gujarat because they were sea pirates and outlaws who always looted the British ships, so the East India Company tried to manage the Kolis in cricket and been successful. The first Indian cricket club was established by the Parsi community in Bombay, in 1848; the club played their first match against the Europeans in 1877. In 1911, an Indian men's cricket team was formed and toured England, where they played English county teams. The India men's team made their Test debut against England in 1932. The first women's Test was played between England and Australia in 1934. \nWomen's cricket arrived in India much later; the Women's Cricket Association of India (WCAI) was formed in 1973. The Indian women's team played their first Test match in 1976, against the West Indies. India recorded its first-ever Test win in November 1978 against West Indies under Shantha Rangaswamy's captaincy at the Moin-ul-Haq Stadium in Patna. \nThe WCAI, the governing body for women's cricket, was affiliated to the International Women's Cricket Council. As part of the International Cricket Council's initiative to develop women's cricket, the Women's Cricket Association of India was merged with the Board of Control for Cricket in India in 2006/07.\nIn 2021, the BCCI announced that Ramesh Powar would become the Head Coach of the Indian Women's Cricket Team. In 2022, Indian Women script history by winning 1st series on England soil in 23 years.\nGoverning body.\nThe Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is the governing body for the Indian cricket team and first-class cricket in India. The Board has been operating since 1928 and represents India at the International Cricket Council. It is amongst the richest sporting organisations in the world. It sold media rights for India's matches from 2006 to 2010 for US$612,000,000. It manages the Indian team's sponsorships, its future tours and team selection. The International Cricket Council (ICC) determines India's upcoming matches through its future tours program.\nSelection Committee.\nOn 26 September 2020, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced the appointment of All-India Women's Selection Committee.\nNeetu David, former left-arm spinner, heads the five-member selection committee.\nSponsorship.\nThe current sponsor of the team is Dream11 from July 2023. The team was sponsored by Byju's from September 2019 to March 2023. OPPO's sponsorship was to run from 2017 until 2022, but was handed over to BYJU's on 5 September 2019. Previously, the Indian team was sponsored by Star India from 2014 to 2017, Sahara India Pariwar from 2002 to 2013.\nNike had been a long time kit supplier to team India having acquired the contract in 2005, with two extensions for a period of five years each time; in 2011 and 2016 respectively. Nike ended its contract in September 2020 and MPL Sports Apparel & Accessories, a subsidiary of online gaming platform Mobile Premier League replaced Nike as the kit manufacturer in October 2020.\nOn 30 August 2019, following the conclusion of the Expression of Interest process for Official partners\u2019 Rights, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced that Sporta Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (Dream11), LafargeHolcim (ACC Cement and Ambuja Cement) and Hyundai Motor India Ltd. have acquired the Official partners' Rights for the BCCI International and Domestic matches during 2019\u201323.\nPaytm acquired the title sponsorship for all matches played by the team within India in 2015 and extended the same in 2019 until 2023. Star India and Airtel have been title sponsors previously.\nInternational grounds.\nAll stadiums of india \nForthcoming fixtures.\nThe recent results and forthcoming fixtures of India in international cricket:\nCaptains.\nMithali Raj\nSmriti Mandhana\nCurrent squad.\nThis lists all the active players who played for India in the last 12 months or were named in the recent ODI or T20I squads. Uncapped players are listed in \"italics\". Updated on 29 October 2024\nPlayers also receive a match fee of () per Test match, () per ODI, and () per T20I. The BCCI adopted a pay equity policy in match fees for men's and women's teams on 27 October 2022.\nStatistics.\nTest cricket.\nMost Test runs for India\nMost Test wickets for India\n\"Players in bold text are still active with India.\"\nOne Day Internationals.\nMost ODI runs for India\nMost ODI wickets for India\n\"Players in bold text are still active with India.\"\nTwenty20 Internationals.\nMost WT20I runs for India\nMost WT20I wickets for India\n\"Players in bold text are still active with India.\"\n\u2022 Highest team total: 201/5 v UAE, 21 July 2024 at Rangiri Dambulla International Stadium, Sri Lanka\n\u2022 Highest individual score: 103, Harmanpreet Kaur v New Zealand, 9 November 2018 at Providence Stadium, Guyana\n\u2022 Best innings bowling: 5/11, Jhulan Goswami v Australia, 23 March 2012 at ACA\u2013VDCA Cricket Stadium, Visakhapatnam\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "24317363": "List of India women Test cricketers\nTest cricket is the longest form of cricket. The women's variant of the game includes four innings to be completed over four days of play with eleven players in each side. The first women's Test was played between England and Australia in 1934. However, India did not play Test cricket until 1973 when the Women's Cricket Association of India was formed. The Indian women's team played their first Test match in 1976, against the West Indies. The Women's Cricket Association of India was merged with the Board of Control for Cricket in India in 2006 as part of the International Cricket Council's initiative to develop women's cricket.\nIndia have played 41 Tests, starting with their first Test in 1976. They first won a Test in Patna (1976), in front of over 25,000 spectators, against the West Indies but did not win again until 2002, when they won against South Africa. The team has remained unbeaten since 2006, over the course of three Test matches.\nTwo of India's players, Diana Edulji and Sudha Shah, have featured in more than 20 Test matches. Ten other players have played in ten or more Test matches. Sandhya Agarwal is India's all-time leading run scorer, and is ranked sixth among players from all countries. Among the top ten run scorers of all time, she has the fourth-highest average. Sandhya Agarwal and Mithali Raj, with scores of 190 and 214 respectively, were record holders for the most runs scored in an innings. Former captains Diana Edulji and Shubhangi Kulkarni are third and sixth in terms of most wickets taken in a career while Neetu David has the best bowling figures in an innings, having taken 8 wickets, conceding 53 runs in England's second innings in the hundredth women's Test.\nSince the team was formed, 94 women have represented India in Test cricket. This list includes all players who have played at least one Test match and is arranged in the order of debut appearance. Where more than one player won their first Test cap in the same Test match, those players are listed alphabetically by last name at the time of debut.\n\"Statistics are correct as of 1 July 2024.\"\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2727091": "Women's cricket\nBat-and-ball game played by women\nWomen's cricket is the team sport of cricket when played by women. Its \nrules are almost identical to those in the game played by men, the main change being the use of a smaller ball. Women's cricket is beginning to be played at professional level in 11 of the 12 full members of the International Cricket Council (ICC), and is played worldwide, especially in Commonwealth nations.\nThe first recorded cricket match between women was held in England on 26 July 1745. The game continued to be played socially by women until clubs for women were formed in the late 1800s. In 1926, the creation of the Women's Cricket Association (WCA) in England began the process of formalising the game and organising international matches. Like many women's sports, the further development of women's cricket was hampered by sexism and a lack of structural support.\nAlthough women have historically played Test cricket and first class cricket, the focus of the women's game in the last 50 years has been mostly on limited overs cricket. The introduction of Twenty20 cricket (T20) in 2003 created more opportunities for the growth of the women's game. As well as competing against each other in tours, national teams also compete in several tournaments, including the Cricket World Cup and the T20 World Cup. Women's cricket has also been part of several multi-sport events.\nIn domestic cricket, many countries have T20 cricket and List A cricket competitions that are run either alongside or separately from men's competitions. Grass roots cricket is growing, especially in England and Australia, although many barriers still remain. Cricket boards often organise competitions that use new formats that are intended to appeal to women. Cricket for women with disabilities is also growing, especially in South Asia.\nHistory.\nThe first recorded cricket match between women was reported in \"The Reading Mercury\" on 26 July 1745; the match was contested \"between eleven maids of Bramley and eleven maids of Hambledon, all dressed in white\". The first known women's cricket club the White Heather Club was formed in 1887 in Yorkshire. Three years later, a team known as the Original English Lady Cricketers toured England, reportedly making substantial profits before the manager absconded with the money.\nIn Australia, a women's cricket league was set up in 1894 and Port Elizabeth, South Africa, had a women's cricket team named the Pioneers Cricket Club. In Canada, a women's cricket team in Victoria played at Beacon Hill Park.\nIn India, cricket teams for women existed as early as the 1920s. Delhi Ladies Cricket Club beat the men's Marylebone Cricket Club in a half-day game on their 1926\u201327 tour of India, one of the only matches they lost on the tour. Because it was a women's team, the game is omitted from records of the tour. During the 1950s and 1960s, cricket was strongest in the urban centres Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. The most-notable club in this period is Albees in Mumbai; many Albees players were female family members of prominent men's Test cricketers.\nIn 1958, the International Women's Cricket Council (IWCC) was formed to co-ordinate women's cricket around the world, taking over from the English Women's Cricket Association (WCA), which had been working in a \"de facto\" role since its creation 32 years earlier. In 2005, the IWCC was merged with the International Cricket Council (ICC) to form a unified body to manage and develop cricket.\nLaws and gameplay.\nLanguage.\nMuch of the language of cricket is heavily gendered; terms such as maiden over, nightwatchman, and third man are not officially sanctioned but remain in colloquial use. In 2021, the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) amended the rulebook, the \"Laws of Cricket\", to replace the term \"batsman\" with the term \"batter\" to better reflect the modern game. There was some derision in parts of the cricketing and wider press but others responded that the term \"batter\" had been in widespread use through much of the 18th and 19th centuries.\nRule modifications.\nIn \"The Laws of Cricket\", the only explicit difference between men's and women's cricket is the ball size. According to \"The Laws of Cricket\":\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Clause 4.6.1 Women\u2019s cricketWeight: from 4.94 ounces/140 g to 5.31 ounces/151 gCircumference: from 8.25 in/21.0 cm to 8.88 in/22.5 cm.\nFor comparison, the ball in the men's game should weigh between , and be between in circumference. Many tournaments and forms of cricket, however, have additional differences in rules between women's and men's games.\nTest cricket.\nIn the 2023 ICC rules, the main differences from the men's games are:\nOne Day International cricket.\nBy the June 2023 ICC rules for One Day International (ODI) matches, the main differences are:\nTwenty20 International cricket.\nBy the June 2023 ICC rules, the main differences are:\nClothing and equipment.\nInitially, like men, women played cricket in clothes that were similar to their everyday wear. With changes in womenswear in the late Victorian period, clothes for middle-and-upper-class women to undertake physical activity became more available. The Rational Dress Society had an outfit for cricket in its 1883 catalogue.\nDuring the interwar period, women's sportswear became more available and the Women's Cricket Association (WCA) encountered something they named \"the clothing problem\". The debate about what women should wear when playing cricket was intense; a debate about it can be found in the minutes of every Annual General Meeting of the WCA from its foundation until its last AGM before World War II. There was tension between the needs of female players who wished to wear comfortable, practical clothing, and the need to appear as \"respectable\" women to the public and to the male establishment who owned the cricket grounds. There was also anxiety about women cross-dressing and the need to maintain gender roles while playing sport.\nPhotographs in the British press in the early 20th century often showed women playing cricket with bare legs and in bathing costumes but most played in more-practical clothing. Rules about women playing in white dresses and skirts were imposed on high-level women's cricket but in local games, it was common to play in flannels of any colour.\nFollowing England's first tour of Australia and New Zealand, the England, Australia and New Zealand teams adopted the white divided skirts as part of their uniforms. England continued to play in skirts until 1997. Diving for the ball in a skirt risked injury and friction burns. The move to trousers eliminated this danger for women players, and the tan lines between the bottom of the skirts and the socks. The New Zealand team were given a sewing pattern and fabric, and were expected to make their uniforms or have them made.\nAccording to the 2023 ICC rules, the rules on men's and women's attire in international cricket are identical. The only gender-specific clothing rule allows cricketers to wear hijab in ICC events provided it does not obscure any logos and names on the playing uniform. For Test matches, scarves must be black or white but for ODIs and T20s, they can be black or the same colour as the team cap but they cannot be white.\nAppropriate equipment has long been an issue for women in cricket. Players have often had to use poorly fitting small men's or juniors equipment, which impeded performance. England wicket keeper Betty Snowball avoided this problem by having her gloves and pads custom made. Many women players prefer smaller, lighter bats. Labeling of equipment has been exclusionary; equipment for children has been labelled as \"boys\" but this has begun to change. Present and former cricketers, such as Lydia Greenway, Ellyse Perry and Heather Knight, have been involved with leading changes in the design of equipment for women. The brands Kookaburra, SM Cricket, Viking, Gray-Nicolls and JPGavan all now produce equipment intended for women. The brands NEXX and Lacuna Sports have been launched in the UK to provide clothing and equipment to women who play cricket.\nInternational cricket.\nWomen's cricket has been played internationally since the inaugural women's Test match between England's and Australia's women's teams in December 1934. The following year, New Zealand joined them. in 2007 Netherlands became the tenth women's Test nation in their debut against South Africa. A total of 145 women's Test matches have been played.\nWomen's One Day Internationals (ODIs) were introduced in 1973 at the inaugural Women's Cricket World Cup. The 1,000th women's ODI took place in 2016. Australia has dominated the format, having claimed the World Cup six times and won 80% of their matches.\nIn 2004, a shorter-still format, the Twenty20 International (T20I) was introduced; matches are restricted to twenty overs per side. Initially, women's T20 cricket was played little at international level; four matches were played by the end of 2006. The following three years saw a rapid growth in women's T20 Internationals; six matches were played in 2007, ten in 2008 and thirty in 2009, which also saw the first ICC Women's World Twenty20. In April 2018, the ICC granted its members full women's T20 International status.\nIn November 2021, the ICC retrospectively applied first-class and List A status to women's cricket, aligning it with the men's game.\nIn July 2023, the ICC announced equal prize money will be available for ICC global events, meaning future Women's Cricket World Cup and Women's T20 World Cup competitions will have the same prizes for winners and runners up as male competitions.\nInternational rankings.\nThe ICC maintains rankings of the 13 teams with ODI status and all teams who play T20I matches. As of \u00a02023[ [update]], Australia top both tables.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nThe ICC also maintains individual player rankings in ODI and T20I based on batting, bowling and all-round performance.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Table alignment/tables.css\" />\nSeries trophies.\nThe men's game has a long history of perpetual trophies but there are two only in women's cricket: The Women's Ashes and The Rose Bowl.\nIn 1998, the Women's Cricket Association (WCA) created a set of Ashes to be contested by Australia and England. The Australia and England men's teams play for their own set of Ashes. In 2013, it changed from being a Test series to a series of ODIs, T20Is and a Test to better reflect the formats of cricket women regularly play.\nThe Rose Bowl is an ODI series played between Australia and New Zealand, and has been contested since the 1984\u201385 season, the most-recent being in 2020.\nBefore the start of the 2023\u201324 series, the Pakistan captain Nida Dar and South Africa captain Laura Wolvaardt revealed an as-yet-unnamed new trophy for their teams to contest.\nTournaments.\nAsia Cup.\nThe Asia Cup began in 2004 as an ODI competition between members of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC). It initially ran every two years until 2008, then reformed in 2012 as a T20 tournament. The ACC intend to continue to run in it biannually, although on several occasions it has run every four years. The change to T20 cricket allowed the ACC to include more Associate nations in the tournament.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Table alignment/tables.css\" />\nCricket World Cup.\nThe first ever Cricket World Cup was the Women's Cricket World Cup organised in 1973 by the WCA; it was based on an idea of cricketer Rachael Heyhoe Flint and businessman Jack Hayward. After the success of the Women's Cricket World Cup, the men's tournament took place two years later.\nSeven teams competed in the inaugural tournament, which took place in England over five and a half weeks. Each ODI match was 60 overs and every team played each other in a round-robin league format. Subsequent tournaments were hampered by lack of funds for women's teams, meaning their scheduling was inconsistent for many years. The 1997 World Cup was the first to be played with 50 overs and a knock-out stage.\nSince the inaugural tournament, there have been 12 World Cups with the 13th planned for 2025 in India.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Table alignment/tables.css\" />\nEuropean Cricket Championship.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Table alignment/tables.css\" />\nKwibuka T20 Tournament.\nOriginally called the \"Kwibuka Cricket for Peace Women's T20 Tournament\", the Kwibuka T20 Tournament is an annual T20 tournament that is played in Rwanda. It was founded in 2014 to mark the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide and to promote peace through cricket. It is unusual among women's tournaments because there is no male equivalent. African nations including Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda, and the hosts Rwanda compete in the tournament. The Brazilian and German teams have also taken part.\nThe word 'Kwibuka' means \"to remember\" in Kinyarwanda, the Rwandan national language, and is the title of annual commemorations of the genocide.\nT20 World Cup.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Table alignment/tables.css\" />\nAt multi-sport events.\nFollowing the introduction of T20 cricket, cricket has been included at several multi-sport events; the women's game is often added after the successful establishment of a men's tournament. As of \u00a02023[ [update]], five different major games have held women's cricket medal events; a sixth \u2013 the African Games \u2013 is scheduled for early 2024 and a seventh \u2013 the Olympics \u2013 is scheduled for 2028.\nAfrican Games.\nThe 2023 African Games in Accra, Ghana will mark the game's debut in the African Games.\nAsian Games.\nCricket made its debut at the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, China, with men's and women's T20 cricket matches. It returned for the 2014 Asian Games Cricket was removed from the 2018 Asian Games to reduce the burden on the Indonesian organisers.\nThe 2022 Asian Games were delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic but cricket returned when the Games were held in September 2023. Eight teams competed, including India who sent a team to the games for the first time and went home with their first gold medal.\nCommonwealth Games.\nIn August 2019, the Commonwealth Games Foundation announced the addition of women's cricket to the 2022 Commonwealth Games. The matches were held at Edgbaston, and included eight teams competing in a T20 format during July and August 2022. Only a women's tournament was part of the Games.\nOlympic Games.\nWomen's cricket has never been included in the Olympic Games. There was hope T20 cricket would be included in the 2028 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. It was on the shortlist for inclusion but was not chosen for the 28-sport provisional list, making its inclusion unlikely. The ultimate decision was made in October 2023 at a meeting of the International Olympic Committee Executive board by the nod of inclusion of cricket in 2028.\nWith the 2032 Summer Olympic Games being hosted in Brisbane, Australia, the governing body Cricket Australia have also have noted their intention to have the game included.\nPacific Games.\nMen's cricket has been part of the Pacific Games since 1979 and a women's competition was introduced for the 2015 Pacific Games in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. It appeared again at the 2019 Pacific Games but was dropped for the 2023 games.\nSouth Asian Games.\nWomen's cricket made its debut at the 2019 South Asian Games in Pokhara, Nepal, in the T20 format. The Maldives set one of the lowest scores in International Women's Cricket, all out for 8 runs.\nSoutheast Asian Games.\nCricket made its debut at the 2017 Southeast Asian Games in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It did not appear in another Southeast Asian Games until the 2023 Games.\nUnusually among modern multi-sport events, the SEA Games do not keep to just the T20 format. For the 2017 tournament, women only played T20 but for the 2023 tournament they competed in 6s, T10, T20 and 50-over competitions and each had medals available.\nDomestic.\nThe majority of high-level women's domestic cricket in ICC Full Member countries consists of 50-over and Twenty20 competitions.\nAfghanistan.\nSince the 2021 Taliban offensive and the Fall of Kabul in 2021, cricket for women is in practice banned due to the Taliban's policies on women.\nAustralia.\nEight state-based teams play 50-over cricket in the Women's National Cricket League, which has run since the 1996\u201397 season. Since the 2015\u201316 season, eight city-based franchises have played T20 cricket in the Women's Big Bash League.\nBangladesh.\nThe Bangladesh Women's National Cricket League has been played variously as a 50-over and a Twenty20 competition.\nEngland.\nEight regional teams compete in the 50-over Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy and the Twenty20 Charlotte Edwards Cup, while eight city-based teams compete in The Hundred, a 100-ball cricket competition. The English counties play in the Women's Twenty20 Cup.\nPreviously, the English counties played in the Women's County Championship, while six semi-professional teams played in the Women's Cricket Super League.\nTo grow women's participation in the game, including those who have never played cricket, in 2017, the England and Wales Cricket Board created a format called softball cricket. It uses a modified scoring system, has 6-to-8 players per team and lasts just over an hour. It has a more-relaxed playing style than hardball cricket; for example underarm bowling is allowed and more-complicated rules such as leg before wicket are not included. Conventional cricket played by women is occasionally called \"women's hardball cricket\" to distinguish it from softball cricket.\nIndia.\nSeveral domestic women's cricket competitions exist in India. State teams play for the 50-over Women's Senior One Day Trophy and the Women's Senior T20 Trophy, while composite teams play for the 50-over Senior Women's Challenger Trophy and the Women's Senior T20 Challenger Trophy. Domestic first-class women's cricket was last played in India in the form of the Senior Women's Cricket Inter Zonal Three Day Game, which ended after the 2017\u201318 season. The domestic red-ball game for women has been revived in the 2023-24 season with the Senior Women's Inter-Zonal Multi-Day Trophy. A total of six zonal teams competed in a knockout format.\nIn 2018, women's franchise cricket in India began with the Women's T20 Challenge, which began as a two-team competition. The following year, the competition was expanded to a three-team tournament. The Women's Premier League, a five-team franchise T20 competition, was created in 2023 to replace the T20 Challenge.\nIreland.\nThe Women's Super Series in Ireland in contested by three teams. From 2021, the competition has been split into separate 50-over and Twenty20 sections.\nNew Zealand.\nSix regional-based teams compete in the 50-over Hallyburton Johnstone Shield, which has existed since the 1935\u201336 season, and the Twenty20 Super Smash, which began in the 2007\u201308 season.\nPakistan.\nThe 50-over Pakistan Women's One Day Cup has run since the 2017\u201318 season while the PCB Women's Twenty20 Tournament began in the 2019\u201320 season. Previously, state and departmental teams competed in the National Women's Cricket Championship, the Women's Cricket Challenge Trophy and the Departmental T20 Women's Championship.\nSouth Africa.\nProvincial teams play in the 50-over CSA Women's Provincial Programme, previously the CSA Women's Provincial One-Day Tournament, which has run since the 1995\u201396 season, and in the CSA Women's Provincial T20 Competition. which began during the 2012\u201313 season. Since 2019, composite teams have played in the Women's T20 Super League.\nIn August 2023, Cricket South Africa announced a new structure for domestic cricket. It will be composed of six teams that will have increased funding to professionally contract more players and hire full-time coaching staff.\nSri Lanka.\nThe 50-over competition is the Sri Lanka Women's Division One Tournament. Several Twenty20 competitions have taken place, including the Super Provincial T20 Tournament and the Super 4 Twenty20 Competition.\nWest Indies.\nThe nations that make up the West Indies have competed in the Women's Super50 Cup since 1975 and in the Women's Twenty20 Blaze since 2012.\nIn 2022, Cricket West Indies and the Caribbean Premier League jointly launched two women's competitions: a T10 cricket competition called The 6ixty and the Women's Caribbean Premier League, both with three teams that are aligned with men's sides. The 6ixty was partly inspired by the women's exhibition T10 matches that were played just before the 2019 Caribbean Premier League playoff matches.\nZimbabwe.\nThe 50-over competition is the Fifty50 Challenge and the Twenty20 competition is the Women's T20 Cup, both of which are competed for by four teams that are aligned with men's sides.\nDisability cricket.\nBlind cricket.\nWomen are known to have been playing blind cricket in Australia since at least the 1940s, when they competed with and against men.\nEngland and Nepal have had women's international teams since at least November 2014, when Nepal beat England 3-0 in a three game series. In 2018, England toured the West Indies and won the series 4\u20131.\nThe first international series played in Pakistan was held in January and February 2019. The Pakistan Blind Cricket Council formed a national women's team in 2018 that played the Nepalese blind women's team in five T20 games. The Pakistani team were publicly supported by Sana Mir and other professional cricketers. Nepal won the series 4\u20130.\nIn 2019, the Cricket Association for the Blind in India created a blind cricket league for women consisting of teams from seven states. Odisha won the inaugural tournament, beating Karnataka 218/8 (20.0) to Karnataka's 131/8 (20.0). The 2020 and 2021 tournaments were cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It expanded to 14 states for the 2022 tournament, which was won by Karnataka. The 2023 tournament had 18 teams. Odisha regained the title.\nIndia formed a national team in 2020 but had to cancel its intended 2021 tour of England because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Their first tour was in Nepal in April 2023. Nepal won that series 3\u20131.\nThe 2023 IBSA World Games in Birmingham, England, included cricket for the first time and India was the first country to announce it would be sending a team. England and Australia also sent teams to the Games; it was the Australian team's international debut. The Pakistani team was unable to participate due to lack of funds. India was the first team to reach the finals by winning their first three matches and won all four matches of their group games. Australia won the other place with a higher net run rate than England. India beat Australia in the final and were publicly praised by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.\nRecords.\nCricket values records and statistics. Women's records have often been overlooked, especially when a women's record precedes or exceeds a men's record. For example, Belinda Clark made the first double century in ODI cricket in the 1997 World Cup, 23 years earlier than Sachin Tendulkar's 200* in 2010. Betty Wilson became the first player to score a century and take ten wickets in a Test match in 1958. Ian Botham did not achieve this until 1980.\nTest cricket.\nAmong Test nations, Australia holds the record for the most wins, having won 21 of their 77 Test matches.\nThe all-time-leading women's Test batter is Denise Annetts of Australia with a Test batting average 81.90. As of 2023[ [update]], she is third behind Don Bradman's famous 99.94 and Saud Shakeel's current 87.50.\nThe player with the highest bowling average is Australian Betty Wilson with an average of 11.80. This puts her second to the 10.75 of George Lohmann.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "71799767": "Women's"}, "descending_order": ["24317363", "2727091", "71799767", "2281524"], "permutation_1": ["2281524", "2727091", "71799767", "24317363"], "permutation_2": ["71799767", "24317363", "2281524", "2727091"], "permutation_3": ["24317363", "71799767", "2727091", "2281524"]}
{"id": "nq_3129423419355668193", "docs_added": {"1308626": "Knockin' on Heaven's Door\n1973 single by Bob Dylan\n\"Knockin' on Heaven's Door\" is a song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, written for the soundtrack of the 1973 film \"Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid\". Released as a single two months after the film's premiere, it became a worldwide hit, reaching the Top 10 in several countries. The song became one of Dylan's most popular and most covered post-1960s compositions, spawning covers from Eric Clapton, Guns N' Roses, Randy Crawford, and more.\nDescribed by Dylan biographer Clinton Heylin as \"an exercise in splendid simplicity\", the song features two short verses, the lyrics of which comment directly on the scene in the film for which it was written: the death of a frontier lawman (Slim Pickens) who refers to his wife (Katy Jurado) as \"Mama\".\nIt was ranked number 190 in 2004 by \"Rolling Stone\" magazine, in their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and number 192 in 2010, but excluded from the revised list in 2021.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nOther Bob Dylan versions.\nAccording to his website, Dylan has performed the song in concert 460 times between its live debut in 1974 and its last outing in 2003. Some of these versions have appeared on Dylan's live and \"Bootleg Series\" albums including:\nEric Clapton and Arthur Louis versions.\nIn January 1975 Eric Clapton played on Arthur Louis's recording of \"Knockin' on Heaven's Door\" which was arranged in a cross-over reggae style. After the recording sessions with Louis, Clapton recorded his own version of the song which was released as a single in August 1975 two weeks after Louis's version. This version was released on '. Clapton's version made it to No. 38 on the UK charts, but the single was less successful in the U.S. where it failed to chart on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 (although it reached on No. 109 on \"Cashbox's\" Looking Ahead chart). Clapton's 1996 boxed set ' features a performance of the song recorded in London in April 1977. There were also performances of the song included on the \"Journeyman\" (1990) and the \"One More Car, One More Rider\" (2003) world tours. Several Clapton compilation albums also feature the song.\nGuns N' Roses versions.\nIn 1987, American hard rock band Guns N' Roses started performing the song. A live version of the song was released on the 12-inch single of \"Welcome to the Jungle\" the same year. They recorded and released a studio version in 1990 for the soundtrack of the film \"Days of Thunder\" that reached No. 18 on the US \"Billboard\" Album Rock Tracks chart and No. 56 on Canada's \"RPM\" 100 Hit Tracks chart.\nThis studio recording was slightly modified for the band's 1991 album \"Use Your Illusion II\", discarding the responses in the second verse. Released as the second single from the album, it reached No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart and the New Zealand Singles Chart. Elsewhere, the single topped the charts of Portugal, Belgium, and the Netherlands; it was the best-selling song of 1992 in the latter country. In Ireland, where the song also reached No. 1, it became Guns N' Roses' third (and to date last) number-one single as well as their ninth consecutive top-five hit.\nTheir performance of the song at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in 1992 was used as the B-side for the single release and was also included on their \"Live Era '87\u2013'93\" album, released in 1999. Another version was released on the video \"Use Your Illusion World Tour - 1992 in Tokyo II\". The music video for this version of the song was directed by Andy Morahan.\nPersonnel.\nGuns N' Roses\nGuest musicians\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nDunblane tribute.\nIn 1996 and with the consent of Dylan, Scottish musician Ted Christopher wrote a new verse for \"Knockin' on Heaven's Door\" in memory of the schoolchildren and teacher killed in the Dunblane school massacre. This has been, according to some sources, one of the few times Dylan has officially authorized anybody to add or change the lyrics to one of his songs.\nThis version of the song, featuring children from the village singing the chorus with the guitarist and producer of Dylan's album \"Infidels\" (1983), Mark Knopfler, was released on December 9, 1996, in the United Kingdom and reached No. 1 on the UK and Scottish Singles Charts, as well as No. 6 in Iceland and Ireland. The proceeds went to charities for children.\nThe song was featured on the compilation album \"Hits 97\", where all royalties from the song were given to three charities.\nSampled version.\nGabrielle's single \"Rise\" (2000) sampled from this song. Dylan liked \"Rise\" so much that he allowed Gabrielle to use the sample for free, while receiving a co-writer credit for providing the song's chord progression and vocal sample.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3602484": "Knockin' on Heaven's Door (disambiguation)\n\"Knockin' on Heaven's Door\" is a 1973 song written by Bob Dylan.\nKnocking on Heaven's Door may also refer to:\nTopics referred to by the same term\n<templatestyles src=\"Dmbox/styles.css\" />\n This page lists associated with the title .", "77317678": "Somebody's Knocking at Your Door\nAmerican spiritual\n\"Somebody's Knocking at Your Door\", sometimes given as \"Somebody's Knocking\" and \"Somebody's Knockin ' at Yo' Door\", is a spiritual. The song's music and text has no known author, but originated among enslaved African-Americans on Plantation complexes in the Southern United States sometime in the early 19th century.\nPublications and arrangements.\n\"Sombebody's Knocking at Your Door\" has been published numerous times; including publication within 54 different hymnals catalogued at Hymnary.org. The Hampton Institute (now Hampton University), a historically black college included the spiritual in its 1874 anthology of spirituals edited by Thomas P. Fenner, \"Religious Folk Songs of the Negro: As Sung on the Plantations\", which was subsequently republished in 1909. John Wesley Work Jr., director of the Fisk Jubilee Singers of Fisk University, created one of the earliest known choral arrangements of the spiritual that was written sometime in the first years of the 20th century. Because he never registered a copyright, he lost claim to the rights of this arrangement. John Bunyan Herbert wrote an arrangement for men's chorus which was published in \"Rodeheaver Collection for Male Voices: One Hundred and Sixty Quartets and Choruses for Men\" (1916).\nOne of the more well known arrangements of the spiritual for solo voice dates to the year 1919. It was written by the Canadian-American composer Robert Nathaniel Dett. Dett's arrangement for solo voice was popularized by Edward Boatner who sang the arrangement in concerts and church services throughout the United States. Dett also wrote SSA (1921) and SATB (1939) choral arrangements of \"Somebody's Knocking at Your Door\". Norman L. Merrifield (1906-1977) published a men's chorus arrangement in 1942, and Clarence Cameron White published a mixed chorus arrangement in 1955.\nLyrics.\nSomebody's knockin' at your door;<br>\nSomebody's knockin' at your door;<br>\nO sinner, why don't you answer?<br>\nSomebody's knockin' at your door.\nKnocks like Jesus,<br>\nSomebody's knockin' at your door.<br>\nKnocks like Jesus,<br>\nSomebody's knockin' at your door.<br>\nO sinner, why don't you answer?<br>\nSomebody's knockin' at your door.\nCan't you hear him?<br>\nSomebody's knockin' at your door.<br>\nCan't you hear him?<br>\nSomebody's knockin' at your door.<br>\nO sinner, why don't you answer?<br>\nSomebody's knockin' at your door.\nJesus calls you,<br>\nSomebody's knockin' at your door.<br>\nJesus calls you,<br>\nSomebody's knockin' at your door.<br>\nO sinner, why don't you answer?<br>\nSomebody's knockin' at your door.\nCan't you trust him?<br>\nSomebody's knockin' at your door.<br>\nCan't you trust him?<br>\nSomebody's knockin' at your door.<br>\nO sinner, why don't you answer?<br>\nSomebody's knockin' at your door.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "12196203": "Arthur Louis\nArthur Louis (21 June 1945 \u2013 24 December 2014) was a British rock, blues and reggae cross-over musician. His surname is pronounced as \"lu\u02d0\u026as (Lewis)\" and he held British nationality. He released three solo albums and was responsible for introducing the work of musician Mike Oldfield to Virgin Records.\nEarly life.\nBorn in Jamaica, Louis moved to Brooklyn with his family at a young age. In his late teens he attended Michigan State University where he joined and toured with the band Terminal Stations, in Brazil and Germany.\nCareer.\nAt the beginning of his career Louis toured with terminal stations. He recorded his debut album \"Knockin' on Heaven's Door\" in 1974, which featured Eric Clapton and Gene Chandler. The title song, a reggae blues version of Bob Dylan's \"Knockin' on Heaven's Door\" was released as a single in July 1975, a week before Eric Clapton released his own interpretation of Louis's arrangement, of the same song. Louis's release received attention but was over shadowed by Clapton's, which featured Louis's \"Someone Like You\" as the B-side. Louis's album Knocking on Heaven's Door, eventually climbed to #6 in International charts.\nIn 1991 the German record label Discovery Sounds licensed and re-mastered his debut album, Knockin' on heaven's door and the subsequent release revived interest in his music. Later renewed interest from Japan prompted the release of his second album Back From Palookaville (1998).\nBy 2006 Louis was making concert appearances in Europe once more, which re-established him in countries such as Italy and Spain. In December 2008, he appeared on BBC Radio 2's Paul Jones Show. In 2009 he released his third album Black Cat, a retrospective album which included new songs such as the title track \"Black Cat\". In the same year he played with his band at the London launch of 'Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues'. On 23 August the same year he appeared in London again with Bobby Tench, Jim Cregan and Roger Chapman.\nMusical style and influence.\nLouis's use of modern blues rock has been compared with Taj Mahal and Peter Brown's review of the album \"Black Cat\" (2009), stated that Louis was \"the personification of easy electric blues\" and that he brought \"new energy and expression to the form\".\nHe was an established reggae, blues and rock cross-over artist and his interpretation of Bob Dylan's song \"Knockin' on Heaven's Door\" brought him international attention. When writing about the re-release of Louis's \"Knockin' on Heaven's door\" in 1991, journalist Phil Parker mentioned Louis's influence on Clapton's reggae interpretations. Other songs which exemplify his work in this genre are, his version of Dylan's \"I shall be released\" and \"If I ever needed you\" co-written with Scott English, both from Back from Palookaville.\nDiscography.\nKnocking on Heaven's Door (Arthur Louis arrangement).\nArthur Louis's arrangement of the Bob Dylan song \"Knockin' on Heaven's Door\" first appeared on Louis's album \"Knockin' on Heaven's Door\" (1974)\nSomeone like You (Arthur Louis song).\nLouis's version of this song originally appeared on his album \"Knockin' on Heaven's Door\" (1974) \nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "42562344": "Knocking on Heaven's Door (2014 film)\nKnocking on Heaven's Door is a 2014 Nigerian musical romantic drama film written by Vivian Chiji, produced by Emem Isong and directed by Desmond Elliot, starring Majid Michel, Adesua Etomi and Blossom Chukwujekwu. The film premi\u00e8red on 18 April 2014 at Silverbird Galleria, Victoria Island, Lagos.\nIt tells a story of the marital relationship between Debbie (Adesua Etomi) and Moses (Blossom Chukwujekwu), and how an untold story from Moses' past tries to jeopardize their seemingly flawless union. The story takes an intriguing turn when a music producer Thomas Dacosta (Majid Michel) enters into their lives.\nPlot.\nDebby (Adesua Etomi) and Moses (Blossom Chukwujekwu) are a married couple; both are vibrant gospel singers, but Moses constantly hits Debby, such that he has made her suffer a miscarriage four consecutive times already. It gets worse as Debby becomes the much more successful gospel artiste in the music industry. Debby refuses to let anyone know about the violent marriage, not wanting her husband to be judged, and trying everything possible to improve on herself, waiting on God's miracle.\nShe meets Thomas (Majid Michel), a secular music producer, an ardent smoker, who claims he is an addict. Thomas wants Debby to be signed in his label, an offer she vehemently refuses, but Thomas won't back off. Moses starts noticing Debby and Thomas together and he starts to get jealous, sighting Debby's new fire when they make love, even though Debby has assured that there's nothing to be worried about; Moses becomes more violent regardless. Debby leaves home to Wunmi's (Leelee Byoma) place; Debby's closest friend, the family's doctor, and a church member who has become aware of what's going on. Debby eventually returns to Moses, after his endless apologies.\nOn their way back from a media interview, Moses accuses Debby of patronizing him during the interview; when Debby apologizes to avoid a fight, he accuses her of pitying him. After a heated argument, he drops Debby in the middle of the road. Thomas sees Debby walking and he teases her until she agrees to accept a ride to his home. In his home, Thomas convinces Debby to change from gospel to inspirational music and join his label. After the formal discussions, Thomas shows Debby around his house and they both get cozy with each other. Thomas brings up the issue of her violent husband revealing that he knows. He asks her why she's still with him, and she explains that she's worried about what the church and the society would think, as she's a role model to millions around the world. Thomas advises her to think about herself, do what she thinks is right and move on; he warns her that Moses might end up killing her. When they're about to leave to sign the record deal, Thomas kisses her; she feels disgusted and slaps him, Thomas apologizes.\nDebby signs the record deal, with an appointment for 8am the next morning. Thomas takes her home very late in the night, telling her to forget the kiss ever happened. Debby enters the house to pack her belongings, but Moses again pleads for a last chance. She forgives him and tells him about the record deal and her appointment for next morning. Debby wakes up at 7:15am, only to find all her clothes socked in water in the bathtub, and Moses nowhere to be found. She puts on Moses shirt and trousers, so she can meet up with the appointment.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "7570669": "Knocking at Your Back Door\n\"Knocking at Your Back Door\" is a song by the English hard rock band Deep Purple, the first track of the album \"Perfect Strangers\", which was released in October 1984. The song was written by Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan and Roger Glover. The track received heavy airplay at the time, playing on heavy rotation. It was used by the Seattle SuperSonics in their lineup intro during home games.\nBackground.\nThe song is lyrically about anal sex, as it uses various sexual innuendos throughout the song. Ian Gillan commented:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />There's this guy named Redbeard, from a radio station down in Texas. He phoned me up after it had been played on every radio station in America and said, \"Is this what I think it's about?\" And I said, \"Yeah.\" And he said, \"It's amazing, every radio station in America is playing a song written about anal sex and they don't even realize what's going on.\" And I was like, well it's not in-your-face anal sex, it's just a joke. It just came about with the lyrics. It's no big deal. But it's a humorous thing and not meant to be offensive. And I think it was just an afterthought. It certainly wasn't what inspired the song.\nAfter receiving considerable airplay, the song was released commercially in the US in December 1984, while in the UK, it was released as the second single from the \"Perfect Strangers\" album in June 1985.\n\"Knocking at Your Back Door\" was a permanent part of the band's live set until 1994 and sporadically since then. Live albums that include the track are: \"Nobody's Perfect\" (1988), \"In the Absence of Pink\" (1991), \"Come Hell or High Water\" (DVD, 1994), \"Live in Europe 1993\" (2007), and \"Live at Montreux 2011\" (2011)\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2769244": "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now\n1984 song by the Smiths\n\"Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now\" is a song by English rock band the Smiths. Released as a single in May 1984, it reached No. 10 on the UK Singles Chart, making it the band's first top ten single. It was later included on the November 1984 compilation album \"Hatful of Hollow\" and the March 1987 compilation album \"Louder Than Bombs\". The song is listed as one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.\nBackground.\nThe music was written by Johnny Marr in an hour in a New York hotel room on 2 January 1984, using a red Gibson ES-355 guitar that was bought for him that day by Seymour Stein. After finishing the song, he wrote the music for B-side \"Girl Afraid\" the same evening. Marr considers the two songs \"a pair\".\nThe song is notable for marking the beginning of producer Stephen Street's working relationship with the band. As one of his first roles as \"in-house engineer\" at Island Records' Fallout Shelter studios, Street engineered the session. He was aware of the band and excited by the prospect, saying in a HitQuarters interview, \"I'd seen them just shortly beforehand on Top of the Pops doing 'This Charming Man', and like most other people around that time who were into music I was really excited by them.\" Although not contacted for the subsequent recording \"William, It Was Really Nothing\", Street was asked to engineer the Smiths' next album, \"Meat Is Murder\", with Morrissey and Marr producing for the first time.\nThe cover features Viv Nicholson, who became famous in 1961 in the UK for winning a large amount of money on the football pools and then rapidly squandering it. The song's title was inspired by Sandie Shaw's 1969 single \"Heaven Knows I'm Missing Him Now\".\nThe band's performance of the song on Channel 4's \"Earsay\" on 31 March 1984 features mixed footage of the band playing in a studio and footage of Morrissey walking around some wasteland located next door to the Hewart Studios (now Capital Studios) in Wandsworth London where Earsay was recorded, with daffodil flowers in his hands and unidentified foliage in the back pocket of his jeans.\nCultural references.\nJournalist Andrew Collins borrowed the song's title for the name of his autobiographical book \"Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now: My Difficult Student 80s\", published in 2004. The title of \"Girl Afraid\" is taken from the 1943 film \"Old Acquaintance\", starring Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins. Hopkins's character Mildred Watson Drake is a successful author who writes a novel titled \"Girl Afraid\".\nEtchings on vinyl.\nBritish 7-inch: SMITHS INDEED / ILL FOREVER\nBritish 12-inch: SMITHS PRESUMABLY / FOREVER ILL\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "15941858": "Keep A-Knockin'\n\"Keep A-Knockin' (But You Can't Come In)\" is a popular song that has been recorded by a variety of musicians over the years. The lyrics concern a lover at the door who will not be admitted; some versions because someone else is already there, but in most others because the knocking lover has behaved badly.\nEarly versions are sometimes credited to Perry Bradford and J. Mayo Williams. Variations were recorded by James \"Boodle It\" Wiggins in 1928, Lil Johnson in 1935, Milton Brown in 1936 and Louis Jordan in 1939. A similar lyrical theme appears in \"Open the Door, Richard\" from 1946, but from the viewpoint of the one knocking.\nWiggins' version was entitled \"Keep Knockin' An You Can't Get In\", which was recorded in Chicago, Illinois, in around February 1928 and released by Paramount Records (12662) that year.\nIn 1957, when Little Richard recorded it as an uptempo rock and roll song, \"Keep A-Knockin'\" reached number two on the U.S. R&B charts and number eight on the U.S. pop charts. This version is usually credited to Penniman (Little Richard's legal name), Williams, and Bert Mays. Little Richard re-recorded the song four times, on the albums \"Little Richard's Greatest Hits\" (1965), \"Little Richard Live\" (1976), \"Shake It All About\" (1992), and the soundtrack to the film \"Why Do Fools Fall in Love\" (1998). The \"Shake It All About\" recording features a much simpler arrangement (the only instruments are vocals and piano), and spoken interludes of Little Richard exchanging knock-knock jokes with a group of children.\nRecognition and influence.\n\"Rolling Stone\" magazine later ranked \"Keep A-Knockin'\" at number 442 in its list of the \"500 Greatest Songs of All Time\". An answer song titled \"I Hear You Knocking\", written by Dave Bartholomew and Pearl King, was recorded by Smiley Lewis in 1955. The drum part on Little Richard's song, played by Charles Connor, also inspired later songs. Eddie Cochran's \"Somethin' Else\" features an identical drum beat, played by Earl Palmer, as does John Bonham's introduction to the Led Zeppelin song \"Rock and Roll\". The version of the song recorded by Louis Jordan was featured in the 2015 videogame \"Fallout 4\", as part of the in-game radio station \"Diamond City Radio\".\nLittle Richard's version of the song has made numerous appearances in popular culture. It is featured in the \"Full House\" episode \"Too Little Richard Too Late\", performed by Little Richard himself. A version with alternate lyrics was recorded for as the opening theme of the NBC TV series \"Friday Night Videos\". Film appearances include \"Up in Smoke\", \"Christine\", and the theatrical trailer for \"Home Alone\".\nCover versions.\nSwedish rock band the Shanes recorded a version of the song in August 1964. Backed by \"Come On Sally\", a song written by the group's lead guitarist Staffan Berggren, it was released as a single that same month. It was their first vocal single following three the Shadows-inspired instrumental singles. It nonetheless became a chart hit, reaching number eight on \"Tio i Topp\" on 29 August 1964, staying there for two weeks. Both sides of the single are included on the group's debut album \"Let Us Show You\" released in October 1964.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2323537": "Too Much Heaven\n1978 single by Bee Gees\n\"Too Much Heaven\" is a song by the Bee Gees, which was the band's contribution to the \"Music for UNICEF\" fund. They performed it at the Music for UNICEF Concert on 9 January 1979. The song later found its way to the group's thirteenth original album, \"Spirits Having Flown\". It hit No. 1 in both the US and Canada. In the United States, the song was the first single out of three from the album to interrupt a song's stay at #1. \"Too Much Heaven\" knocked \"Le Freak\" off the top spot for two weeks before \"Le Freak\" returned to #1 again. \"Too Much Heaven\" also rose to the top three in the UK. In the US, it would become the fourth of six consecutive No. 1s, equaling the record set by Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley, and the Beatles for the most consecutive No. 1 songs. The six Bee Gee songs are \"How Deep Is Your Love\", \"Stayin' Alive\", \"Night Fever\", \"Too Much Heaven\", \"Tragedy\" and \"Love You Inside Out\". The songs spanned the years of 1977, 1978 and 1979.\nRobin Gibb reportedly said on the Bee Gees' interview for \"Billboard\" in 2001 that this track was one of his favourite songs of the Bee Gees.\nBackground and recording.\nBarry Gibb, Robin Gibb and Maurice Gibb wrote this track with \"Tragedy\" in an afternoon off from the making the \"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band\" movie; that same evening, the Gibbs wrote \"Shadow Dancing\" for Andy Gibb (but that song was later credited to all four Gibbs)\nThe recording process was the longest of all the tracks on \"Spirits Having Flown\" as there are nine layers of three-part harmony, creating 27 voices, though the high falsetto voices are the most pronounced in the final mix:\nImbued with their falsetto style, it is also notable for being one of two songs on the album featuring the Chicago horn section (Lee Loughnane, James Pankow, and Walter Parazaider); the other track that features the Chicago members is \"Stop (Think Again)\", in return for the brothers' appearance on the Chicago song \"Little Miss Lovin'\". On its demo version, Barry begins with count-in. This track does have some backing vocals. The demo lacks the full orchestral feel of the final song.\nRelease.\n\"Too Much Heaven\" was released nine months after \"Night Fever\". The single \"Too Much Heaven\" was released in the late autumn of 1978 and started a slow ascent up the music charts. In the first week of 1979, preceding the Music for UNICEF Concert, the single first topped the charts in both the United States and Canada. In the United Kingdom, the single peaked at number three late in 1978. In the summer of 1978, the Gibb brothers announced their latest project at a news conference at the United Nations in New York City. All of the publishing royalties on their next single would go into UNICEF, to celebrate the International Year of the Child, which was designated to be 1979. The song earned over $7 million in publishing royalties.\nThe Bee Gees were later invited to the White House, where President Jimmy Carter thanked the group for their donation. At the ceremony, the brothers presented Carter with one of their black satin tour jackets. In later years, the brothers performed the song with only Barry's guitar and keyboards, with all three singing in their normal range. This version was part of a medley the brothers did as part of their 1989 \"One For All\" tour, and is also included on the \"Tales from the Brothers Gibb\" box set alongside the original version.\n\"Too Much Heaven\" also reached No. 2 in \"Cash Box\" charts in six weeks between 30 December 1978 and 3 February 1979 behind Chic's \"Le Freak\".\nReception.\n\"Cash Box\" said it is \"gentle and silky with the famous falsettos rising upwards.\" \"Record World\" called it a \"flowing ballad, with [the Bee Gees'] trademark falsettos and a light touch.\"\nBrian Wilson of the Beach Boys spoke positively of the song, stating, \"I was really loved and impressed with the harmonies they achieved on that record. I'm very very proud of those guys; they're exceptionally good at harmony. They\u2019re a very heavy duty harmony group.\"\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nNana version.\nIn 1997, Nana covered the hit for his album \"Father\". Compared to the original, this version is increasingly listening to rap passages while retaining much of the original's lyrics. Nana is responsible for the rap, while Van der Toorn sings the lyrics and chorus of the original. In German-speaking countries, this cover version was a top ten success. In Germany, this version was also awarded with Gold.\nMusic video.\nThe music video plays both in a sky setting and in a detached house. In a family home, the coexistence of a large family is the focus. In parallel, Nana mimics the song in the sky and beamed to the extended family. In the course of the video, the parents argue in the video, but find themselves together again in the end.\nTrack listing.\nCD maxi\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "11555193": "I'm Gonna Knock on Your Door\n1959 Isley Brothers song\n\"I'm Gonna Knock on Your Door\", written by Aaron Schroeder and Sid Wayne, is a song that was originally released by the Isley Brothers in 1959 and became a hit for teenage American actor Eddie Hodges in 1961. The song peaked at #12 at \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart, and became a #1 hit in Canada, Australia, Sweden, and the Netherlands.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "22482721": "Holes in the Floor of Heaven\n\"Holes in the Floor of Heaven\" is a song co-written and recorded by American country music artist Steve Wariner. It was released in March 1998 as the lead-off single from his album \"Burnin' the Roadhouse Down\", and was his first solo single in three years. It peaked at number 2 in both the United States and Canada. The song, written by Wariner with Billy Kirsch, won the award for Song of the Year in 1998 from both the Country Music Association (CMA) and the Academy of Country Music (ACM). In 2005, Steve Wariner re-recorded a new version of this song for his second studio album that he released on his own SelecTone Records titled \"This Real Life\". The re-recorded version was not released as a single. \nContent.\nTold in first-person, the protagonist recalls the deaths of his grandmother (\"\"One day shy of eight years old\") and his young wife, and the sadness he felt upon each passing. Each time, the man recalls how a cold rain reminds him of his beloved ancestors crying down from Heaven, wishing they could still be with him, experiencing and sharing various joys in his life (\"There's holes in the floor of Heaven/and her tears are pouring down/That's how I know she's watching/wishing she could be here now\"\").\nIn the case of the young man's wife (who died from pregnancy complications giving birth to their daughter), the point is driven home in the final verse of the song, which depicts his now 23-year-old daughter's wedding day. At the end of the ceremony, it begins to rain, making the father of the bride very sad; the daughter picks up on this and comforts him by saying the rain is her late mother's tears of joy.\nCritical reception.\nThom Owens from AllMusic described the song as an \"affecting ballad\". \"Billboard\" wrote, \"Speaking of great comebacks, Wariner is enjoying an exceptional year, having co-written recent hits for Garth Brooks and Clint Black\u2014not to mention his own No. 1 duet with Anita Cochran on \"What If I Said\". After asking to be released from his Arista contract, he signed a deal with Capitol, and this is the first single from his upcoming album. Wariner is in better voice than ever, and it shows on this sweet and pretty ballad, which he co-wrote with Billy Kirsch. Here's hoping radio gives Wariner the same warm reception singing his own tune that it has been giving him as a songwriter and duet partner.\"\nIn 2019, \"Rolling Stone\" ranked \"Holes in the Floor of Heaven\" No. 28 on its list of the 40 Saddest Country Songs of All Time.\nMusic video.\nThe music video was directed by Michael Salomon. It shows the singer in a living room, while shadows portray the song's storyline. Wariner is sitting the whole time. In the end, \"Holes in the floor of heaven\" appear, each one giving off a blue light.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "29298536": "Days of Thunder (soundtrack)\nFilm soundtrack\nDays of Thunder is the soundtrack from the film of the same name, released in 1990 in the US by DGC Records, in Japan by CBS/Sony and internationally by Epic Records.\nBackground.\n\"The Last Note of Freedom\" was co-written by Hans Zimmer, Billy Idol and David Coverdale. \nMaria McKee's \"Show Me Heaven\" was released as a single alongside the movie and reached number one in the music charts of the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands and Norway.\nThe album is also notable for the inclusion of Guns N' Roses' cover of Bob Dylan's \"Knockin' on Heaven's Door\", a year before the song was released with a slightly different mix on the 1991 album \"Use Your Illusion II\". The version recorded for the soundtrack featured these spoken word responses in the second verse, which are omitted from the later album recording:\n\"Mama put my guns in the ground (It's wasn't their fault)\"\n\"I can't shoot them anymore (How were they even supposed to know?)\"\n\"That cold black cloud is coming down (All things can be healed in time)\"\n\"Feels like I'm knockin' on Heaven's door (Why, why do which you're doing?)\"\nThe Cher song \"Trail of Broken Hearts\" was released as a B-side on the single \"Love And Understanding\" and belongs to the recording sessions of her 1989 album \"Heart of Stone\". \nThe song \"Gimme Some Lovin'\" is credited to Terry Reid, but the version in the movie is actually from The Spencer Davis Group. \"Gimme Some Lovin'\" also featured on Reid's 1991 solo album, \"The Driver\", along with an alternate version of \"The Last Note"}, "descending_order": ["3602484", "77317678", "1308626", "12196203", "42562344", "7570669", "2769244", "15941858", "2323537", "11555193", "22482721", "29298536"], "permutation_1": ["22482721", "77317678", "12196203", "29298536", "3602484", "11555193", "2769244", "15941858", "1308626", "2323537", "7570669", "42562344"], "permutation_2": ["2769244", "7570669", "11555193", "42562344", "22482721", "12196203", "29298536", "2323537", "15941858", "1308626", "77317678", "3602484"], "permutation_3": ["12196203", "2323537", "15941858", "2769244", "11555193", "29298536", "3602484", "22482721", "7570669", "77317678", "42562344", "1308626"]}
{"id": "nq_6313383988446833860", "docs_added": {"30685": "The Chronicles of Narnia\nSeries of children's fantasy novels by C. S. Lewis\nThe Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven portal fantasy novels by British author C.\u00a0S. Lewis. Illustrated by Pauline Baynes and originally published between 1950 and 1956, the series is set in the fictional realm of Narnia, a fantasy world of magic, mythical beasts, and talking animals. It narrates the adventures of various children who play central roles in the unfolding history of the Narnian world. Except in \"The Horse and His Boy\", the protagonists are all children from the real world who are magically transported to Narnia, where they are sometimes called upon by the lion Aslan to protect Narnia from evil. The books span the entire history of Narnia, from its creation in \"The Magician's Nephew\" to its eventual destruction in \"The Last Battle\".\n\"The Chronicles of Narnia\" is considered a classic of children's literature and is Lewis's best-selling work, having sold 120 million copies in 47 languages. The series has been adapted for radio, television, the stage, film, and video games.\nBackground and conception.\nAlthough Lewis originally conceived what would become \"The Chronicles of Narnia\" in 1939 (the picture of a Faun with parcels in a snowy wood has a history dating to 1914), he did not finish writing the first book \"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\" until 1949. \"The Magician's Nephew\", the penultimate book to be published, but the last to be written, was completed in 1954. Lewis did not write the books in the order in which they were originally published, nor were they published in their current chronological order of presentation. The original illustrator, Pauline Baynes, created pen and ink drawings for the \"Narnia\" books that are still used in the editions published today. Lewis was awarded the 1956 Carnegie Medal for \"The Last Battle\", the final book in the saga. The series was first referred to as \"The Chronicles of Narnia\" by fellow children's author Roger Lancelyn Green in March 1951, after he had read and discussed with Lewis his recently completed fourth book \"The Silver Chair\", originally entitled \"Night under Narnia\".\nLewis described the origin of \"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\" in an essay entitled \"It All Began with a Picture\":\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The \"Lion\" all began with a picture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself: \"Let's try to make a story about it.\"\nShortly before the start of World War II, many children were evacuated to the English countryside in anticipation of attacks on London and other major urban areas by Nazi Germany. As a result, on 2 September 1939, three school girls named Margaret, Mary and Katherine came to live at The Kilns in Risinghurst, Lewis's home three miles east of Oxford city centre. Lewis later suggested that the experience gave him a new appreciation of children and in late September he began a children's story on an odd sheet of paper which has survived as part of another manuscript:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nThis book is about four children whose names were Ann, Martin, Rose and Peter. But it is most about Peter who was the youngest. They all had to go away from London suddenly because of Air Raids, and because Father, who was in the Army, had gone off to the War and Mother was doing some kind of war work. They were sent to stay with a kind of relation of Mother's who was a very old professor who lived all by himself in the country.\nIn \"It All Began with a Picture\" C. S. Lewis continues:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />At first, I had very little idea how the story would go. But then suddenly Aslan came bounding into it. I think I had been having a good many dreams of lions about that time. Apart from that, I don't know where the Lion came from or why he came. But once he was there, he pulled the whole story together, and soon he pulled the six other Narnian stories in after him.\nAlthough Lewis pleaded ignorance about the source of his inspiration for Aslan, Jared Lobdell, digging into Lewis's history to explore the making of the series, suggests Charles Williams's 1931 novel \"The Place of the Lion\" as a likely influence.\nThe manuscript for \"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\" was complete by the end of March 1949.\nName.\nThe name \"Narnia\" is based on Narni, Italy, written in Latin as \"Narnia\". Green wrote:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />When Walter Hooper asked where he found the word 'Narnia', Lewis showed him \"Murray's Small Classical Atlas\", ed. G.B. Grundy (1904), which he acquired when he was reading the classics with Mr [William T.] Kirkpatrick at Great Bookham [1914\u20131917]. On plate 8 of the Atlas is a map of ancient Italy. Lewis had underscored the name of a little town called Narnia, simply because he liked the sound of it. Narnia\u00a0\u2013\u00a0or 'Narni' in Italian\u00a0\u2013\u00a0is in Umbria, halfway between Rome and Assisi.\nPublication history.\n\"The Chronicles of Narnia's\" seven books have been in continuous publication since 1956, selling over 100 million copies in 47 languages and with editions in Braille.\nThe first five books were originally published in the United Kingdom by Geoffrey Bles. The first edition of \"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\" was released in London on 16 October 1950. Although three more books, \"Prince Caspian\", \"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader\" and \"The Horse and His Boy\", were already complete, they were not released immediately at that time, but instead appeared (along with \"The Silver Chair\") one at a time in each of the subsequent years (1951\u20131954). The last two books (\"The Magician's Nephew\" and \"The Last Battle\") were published in the United Kingdom originally by The Bodley Head in 1955 and 1956.\nIn the United States, the publication rights were first owned by Macmillan Publishers, and later by HarperCollins. The two issued both hardcover and paperback editions of the series during their tenure as publishers, while at the same time Scholastic, Inc. produced paperback versions for sale primarily through direct mail order, book clubs, and book fairs. HarperCollins also published several one-volume collected editions containing the full text of the series. As noted below (see Reading order), the first American publisher, Macmillan, numbered the books in publication sequence, whereas HarperCollins, at the suggestion of Lewis's stepson, opted to use the series' internal chronological order when they won the rights to it in 1994. Scholastic switched the numbering of its paperback editions in 1994 to mirror that of HarperCollins.\nBooks.\nThe seven books that make up \"The Chronicles of Narnia\" are presented here in order of original publication date:\n\"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\" (1950).\n\"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\", completed by the end of March 1949 and published by Geoffrey Bles in the United Kingdom on 16 October 1950, tells the story of four ordinary children: Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie, Londoners who were evacuated to the English countryside following the outbreak of World War II. They discover a wardrobe in Professor Digory Kirke's house that leads to the magical land of Narnia. The Pevensie children help Aslan, a talking lion, save Narnia from the evil White Witch, who has reigned for a century of perpetual winter with no Christmas. The children become kings and queens of this new-found land and establish the Golden Age of Narnia, leaving a legacy to be rediscovered in later books.\n\"Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia\" (1951).\nCompleted after Christmas 1949 and published on 15 October 1951, \"Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia\" tells the story of the Pevensie children's second trip to Narnia, a year (on Earth) after their first. They are drawn back by the power of Susan's horn, blown by Prince Caspian to summon help in his hour of need. Narnia as they knew it is no more, as 1,300 years have passed, their castle is in ruins, and all Narnians have retreated so far within themselves that only Aslan's magic can wake them. Caspian has fled into the woods to escape his uncle, Miraz, who has usurped the throne. The children set out once again to save Narnia.\n\"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader\" (1952).\nWritten between January and February 1950 and published on 15 September 1952, \"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader\" sees Edmund and Lucy Pevensie, along with their priggish cousin, Eustace Scrubb, return to Narnia, three Narnian years (and one Earth year) after their last departure. Once there, they join Caspian's voyage on the ship \"Dawn Treader\" to find the seven lords who were banished when Miraz took over the throne. This perilous journey brings them face to face with many wonders and dangers as they sail toward Aslan's country at the edge of the world.\n\"The Silver Chair\" (1953).\nCompleted at the beginning of March 1951 and published 7 September 1953, \"The Silver Chair\" is the first Narnia book not involving the Pevensie children, focusing instead on Eustace. Several months after \"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader\", Aslan calls Eustace back to Narnia along with his classmate Jill Pole. They are given four signs to aid them in the search for Prince Caspian's son Rilian, who disappeared ten years earlier on a quest to avenge his mother's death. Fifty years have passed in Narnia since the events from \"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader\"; Eustace is still a child, but Caspian, barely an adult in the previous book, is now an old man. Eustace and Jill, with the help of Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle, face danger and betrayal on their quest to find Rilian.\n\"The Horse and His Boy\" (1954).\nBegun in March and completed at the end of July 1950, \"The Horse and His Boy\" was published on 6 September 1954. The story takes place during the reign of the Pevensies in Narnia, an era which begins and ends in the last chapter of \"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\". The protagonists, a young boy named Shasta and a talking horse named Bree, both begin in bondage in the country of Calormen. By \"chance\", they meet and plan their return to Narnia and freedom. Along the way they meet Aravis and her talking horse Hwin, who are also fleeing to Narnia.\n\"The Magician's Nephew\" (1955).\nCompleted in February 1954\nand published by Bodley Head in London on 2 May 1955, \"The Magician's Nephew\" serves as a prequel and presents Narnia's origin story: how Aslan created the world and how evil first entered it. Digory Kirke and his friend Polly Plummer stumble into different worlds by experimenting with magic rings given to them by Digory's uncle. In the dying world of Charn they awaken Queen Jadis, and another world turns out to be the beginnings of the Narnian world (where Jadis later becomes the White Witch). The story is set in 1900, when Digory was a 12-year-old boy. He is a middle-aged professor by the time he hosts the Pevensie children in \"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\" 40 years later.\n\"The Last Battle\" (1956).\nCompleted in March 1953 and published 4 September 1956, \"The Last Battle\" chronicles the end of the world of Narnia. Approximately two hundred Narnian years after the events of \"The Silver Chair\", Jill and Eustace return to save Narnia from the ape Shift, who tricks Puzzle the donkey into impersonating the lion Aslan, thereby precipitating a showdown between the Calormenes and King Tirian. This leads to the end of Narnia as it is known throughout the series, but allows Aslan to lead the characters to the \"true\" Narnia.\nReading order.\nFans of the series often have strong opinions about the order in which the books should be read. The issue revolves around the placement of \"The Magician's Nephew\" and \"The Horse and His Boy\" in the series. Both are set significantly earlier in the story of Narnia than their publication order and fall somewhat outside the main story arc connecting the others. The reading order of the other five books is not disputed.\nWhen first published, the books were not numbered. The first American publisher, Macmillan, enumerated them according to their original publication order, while some early British editions specified the internal chronological order. When HarperCollins took over the series rights in 1994, they adopted the internal chronological order. To make the case for the internal chronological order, Lewis's stepson, Douglas Gresham, quoted Lewis's 1957 reply to a letter from an American fan who was having an argument with his mother about the order:\nI think I agree with your [chronological] order for reading the books more than with your mother's. The series was not planned beforehand as she thinks. When I wrote \"The Lion\" I did not know I was going to write any more. Then I wrote \"P. Caspian\" as a sequel and still didn't think there would be any more, and when I had done \"The Voyage\" I felt quite sure it would be the last, but I found I was wrong. So perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone read them. I'm not even sure that all the others were written in the same order in which they were published.\nIn the 2005 HarperCollins adult editions of the books, the publisher cites this letter to assert Lewis's preference for the numbering they adopted by including this notice on the copyright page:\nAlthough \"The Magician's Nephew\" was written several years after C. S. Lewis first began \"The Chronicles of Narnia\", he wanted it to be read as the first book in the series. HarperCollins is happy to present these books in the order in which Professor Lewis preferred.\nPaul Ford cites several scholars who have weighed in against this view and continues, saying, \"Most scholars disagree with this decision and find it the least faithful to Lewis's deepest intentions.\" Scholars and readers who appreciate the original order believe that Lewis was simply being gracious to his youthful correspondent and that he could have changed the books' order in his lifetime had he so desired. They maintain that much of the magic of Narnia comes from the way the world is gradually presented in \"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\"\u2014that the mysterious wardrobe, as a narrative device, is a much better introduction to Narnia than \"The Magician's Nephew\", where the word \"Narnia\" appears in the first paragraph as something already familiar to the reader. Moreover, they say, it is clear from the texts themselves that \"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\" was intended to be read first. When Aslan is first mentioned in \"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\", for example, the narrator says that \"None of the children knew who Aslan was, any more than you do\"\u2014which is nonsensical if one has already read \"The Magician's Nephew\". Other similar textual examples are also cited.\nDoris Meyer, author of \"C. S. Lewis in Context\" and \"Bareface: A Guide to C.S. Lewis's Last Novel\", writes that rearranging the stories chronologically \"lessens the impact of the individual stories\" and \"obscures the literary structures as a whole\". Peter Schakel devotes an entire chapter to this topic in his book \"Imagination and the Arts in C. S. Lewis: Journeying to Narnia and Other Worlds\", and in \"Reading with the Heart: The Way into Narnia\" he writes:\nThe only reason to read \"The Magician's Nephew\" first [\u2026] is for the chronological order of events, and that, as every story teller knows, is quite unimportant as a reason. Often the early events in a sequence have a greater impact or effect as a flashback, told after later events which provide background and establish perspective. So it is [\u2026] with the \"Chronicles\". The artistry, the archetypes, and the pattern of Christian thought all make it preferable to read the books in the order of their publication.\nMain characters.\nAslan.\nAslan, the Great Lion, is the titular lion of \"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\", and his role in Narnia is developed throughout the remaining books. He is also the only character to appear in all seven books. Aslan is a talking lion, the King of Beasts, son of the Emperor-Over-the-Sea. He is a wise, compassionate, magical authority (both temporal and spiritual) who serves as mysterious and benevolent guide to the human children who visit, as well as being the guardian and saviour of Narnia. C. S. Lewis described Aslan as an alternative version of Jesus as the form in which he may have appeared in an alternative reality. In his book \"Miracles\", C.S. Lewis argues that the possible existence of other worlds with other sentient life-forms should not deter or detract from being Christian:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />[The universe] may be full of lives that have been redeemed in modes suitable to their condition, of which we can form no conception. It may be full of lives that have been redeemed in the very same mode as our own. It may be full of things quite other than life in which God is interested though we are not.\nPevensie family.\nThe four Pevensie siblings are the main human protagonists of \"The Chronicles of Narnia\". Varying combinations of some or all of them appear in five of the seven novels. They are introduced in \"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\" (although their surname is not revealed until \"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader\"), and eventually become Kings and Queens of Narnia reigning as a tetrarchy. Although introduced in the series as children, the siblings grow up into adults while reigning in Narnia. They go back to being children once they get back to their own world, but feature as adults in \"The Horse and His Boy\" during their Narnian reign.\nAll four appear in \"The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe\" and \"Prince Caspian\"; in the latter, however, Aslan tells Peter and Susan that they will not return, as they are getting too old. Susan, Lucy, and Edmund appear in \"The Horse and His Boy\"\u2014Peter is said to be away fighting giants on the other side of Narnia. Lucy and Edmund appear in \"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader\", where Aslan tells them, too, that they are getting too old. Peter, Edmund, and Lucy appear as Kings and Queens in Aslan's Country in \"The Last Battle\"; Susan does not. Asked by a child in 1958 if he would please write another book entitled \"Susan of Narnia\" so that the entire Pevensie family would be reunited, C. S. Lewis replied: \"I am so glad you like the Narnian books and it was nice of you to write and tell me. There's no use just asking me to write more. When stories come into my mind I have to write them, and when they don't I can't!\"\nLucy Pevensie.\nLucy is the youngest of the four Pevensie siblings. Of all the Pevensie children, Lucy is the closest to Aslan, and of all the human characters who visit Narnia, Lucy is perhaps the one who believes in Narnia the most. In \"The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe\", she initiates the story by entering Narnia through the wardrobe, and (with Susan) witnesses Aslan's execution and resurrection. She is named Queen Lucy the Valiant. In \"Prince Caspian\", she is the first to see Aslan when he comes to guide them. In \"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader\", it is Lucy who breaks the spell of invisibility on the Dufflepuds. As an adult in \"The Horse and His Boy\", she helps fight the Calormenes at Anvard. Although a minor character in \"The Last Battle\", much of the closing chapter is seen from her point of view.\nEdmund Pevensie.\nEdmund is the second child to enter Narnia in \"The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe\", where he falls under the White Witch's spell from eating the Turkish delight she gives him. Instantiating the book's Christian theme of betrayal, repentance, and subsequent redemption via blood sacrifice, he betrays his siblings to the White Witch, but quickly realizes her true nature and her evil intentions, and is redeemed by the sacrifice of Aslan's life. He is named King Edmund the Just. In \"Prince Caspian\" and \"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader\", he supports Lucy; in \"The Horse and His Boy\", he leads the Narnian delegation to Calormen and, later, the Narnian army breaking the siege at Anvard.\nSusan Pevensie.\nIn \"The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe\", Susan accompanies Lucy to see Aslan die and rise again. She is named Queen Susan the Gentle. In \"Prince Caspian\", however, she is the last of the four to believe and follow Lucy when the latter is called by Aslan to guide them. As an adult queen in \"The Horse and His Boy\", she is courted by Prince Rabadash of Calormen, but refuses his marriage proposal, and his angry response leads the story to its climax. In \"The Last Battle\", she has stopped believing in Narnia and remembers it only as a childhood game, though Lewis mentioned in a letter to a fan that he thought she may eventually believe again: \"The books don't tell us what happened to Susan\u2026 But there is plenty of time for her to mend, and perhaps she will get to Aslan's country in the end\u2014in her own way.\"\nPeter Pevensie.\nPeter is the eldest of the Pevensies. In \"The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe\", he kills Maugrim, a talking wolf, to save Susan, and leads the Narnian army against the White Witch. Aslan names him High King, and he is known as Peter the Magnificent. In \"Prince Caspian\", he duels the usurper King Miraz to restore Caspian's throne. In \"The Last Battle\", it is Peter whom Aslan entrusts with the duty of closing the door on Narnia for the final time.\nEustace Scrubb.\nEustace Clarence Scrubb is a cousin of the Pevensies, and a classmate of Jill Pole at their school Experiment House. He is portrayed at first as a brat and a bully, but comes to improve his nasty behaviour when his greed turns him into a dragon for a while. His distress at having to live as a dragon causes him to reflect upon how horrible he has been, and his subsequent improved character is rewarded when Aslan changes him back into a boy. In the later books, Eustace comes across as a much nicer person, although he is still rather grumpy and argumentative. Nonetheless, he becomes a hero along with Jill Pole when the pair succeed in freeing the lost Prince Rilian from the clutches of an evil witch. He appears in \"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader\", \"The Silver Chair\", and \"The Last Battle\".\nJill Pole.\nJill Pole is a schoolmate of Eustace Scrubb. She appears in \"The Silver Chair\", where she is the viewpoint character for most of the action, and returns in \"The Last Battle\". In \"The Silver Chair\", Eustace introduces her to the Narnian world, where Aslan gives her the task of memorising a series of signs that will help her and Eustace on their quest to find Caspian's lost son. In \"The Last Battle\", she and Eustace accompany King Tirian in his ill-fated defence of Narnia against the Calormenes.\nProfessor Digory Kirke.\nDigory Kirke is the nephew referred to in the title of \"The Magician's Nephew\". He first appears as a minor character in \"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\", known only as \"The Professor\", who hosts the Pevensie children when they are evacuated from London and defends Lucy's story of having found a country in the back of the wardrobe. In \"The Magician's Nephew\", the young Digory, thanks to his uncle's magical experimentation, inadvertently brings Jadis from her dying homeworld of Charn to the newly created world of Narnia; to rectify his mistake, Aslan sends him to fetch a magical apple which will protect Narnia and heal his dying mother. He returns in \"The Last Battle\".\nPolly Plummer.\nPolly Plummer appears in \"The Magician's Nephew\" and \"The Last Battle\". She is the next-door neighbour of the young Digory Kirke. She is tricked by a wicked magician (who is Digory's uncle) into touching a magic ring which transports her to the Wood between the Worlds and leaves her there stranded. The wicked uncle persuades Digory to follow her with a second magic ring that has the power to bring her back. This sets up the pair's adventures into other worlds, and they witness the creation of Narnia as described in \"The Magician's Nephew\". She appears at the end of \"The Last Battle\".\nTumnus.\nTumnus the Faun, called \"Mr Tumnus\" by Lucy, is featured prominently in \"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\" and also appears in \"The Horse and His Boy\" and \"The Last Battle\". He is the first creature Lucy meets in Narnia, as well as the first Narnian to be introduced in the series; he invites her to his home with the intention of betraying her to Jadis, but quickly repents and befriends her. In \"The Horse and His Boy\", he devises the Narnian delegation's plan of escape from Calormen. He returns for a brief dialogue at the end of \"The Last Battle\". Lewis's initial inspiration for the entire series was a mental image of a faun in a snowy wood; Tumnus is that faun.\nCaspian.\nCaspian is first introduced in the book titled after him, as the young nephew and heir of King Miraz. Fleeing potential assassination by his uncle, he becomes leader of the Old Narnian rebellion against the Telmarine occupation. With the help of the Pevensies, he defeats Miraz's army and becomes King Caspian X of Narnia. In \"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader\", he leads an expedition out into the eastern ocean to find Seven Lords, whom Miraz had exiled, and ultimately to reach Aslan's Country. In \"The Silver Chair\", he makes two brief appearances as an old, dying man, but at the end is resurrected in Aslan's Country.\nTrumpkin.\nTrumpkin the Dwarf is the narrator of several chapters of \"Prince Caspian\"; he is one of Caspian's rescuers and a leading figure in the \"Old Narnian\" rebellion, and accompanies the Pevensie children from the ruins of Cair Paravel to the Old Narnian camp. In \"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader\", we learn that Caspian has made him his Regent in Narnia while he is away at sea, and he appears briefly in this role (now elderly and very deaf) in \"The Silver Chair\".\nReepicheep.\nReepicheep the Mouse is the leader of the Talking Mice of Narnia in \"Prince Caspian\". Utterly fearless, infallibly courteous, and obsessed with honour, he is badly wounded in the final battle but healed by Lucy and Aslan. In \"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader\", his role is greatly expanded; he becomes a visionary as well as a warrior, and ultimately his willing self-exile to Aslan's Country breaks the enchantment on the last three of the Lost Lords, thus achieving the final goal of the quest. Lewis identified Reepicheep as \"specially\" exemplifying the latter book's theme of \"the spiritual life\". Reepicheep makes one final cameo appearance at the end of \"The Last Battle\", in Aslan's Country.\nPuddleglum.\nPuddleglum the Marsh-wiggle guides Eustace and Jill on their quest in \"The Silver Chair\". Though always comically pessimistic, he provides the voice of reason and as such intervenes critically in the climactic enchantment scene.\nShasta / Cor.\nShasta, later known as Cor of Archenland, is the principal character in \"The Horse and His Boy\". Born the eldest son and heir of King Lune of Archenland, and elder twin of Prince Corin, Cor was kidnapped as an infant and raised as a fisherman's son in Calormen. With the help of the talking horse Bree, Shasta escapes from being sold into slavery and makes his way northward to Narnia. On the journey his companion Aravis learns of an imminent Calormene surprise attack on Archenland; Shasta warns the Archenlanders in time and discovers his true identity and original name. At the end of the story he marries Aravis and becomes King of Archenland.\nAravis.\nAravis, daughter of Kidrash Tarkaan, is a character in \"The Horse and His Boy\". Escaping a forced betrothal to the loathsome Ahoshta, she joins Shasta on his journey and inadvertently overhears a plot by Rabadash, crown prince of Calormen, to invade Archenland. She later marries Shasta, now known as Prince Cor, and becomes queen of Archenland at his side.\nBree.\nBree (Breehy-hinny-brinny-hoohy-hah) is Shasta's mount and mentor in \"The Horse and His Boy\". A Talking Horse of Narnia, he wandered into Calormen as a foal and was captured. He first appears as a Calormene nobleman's war-horse; when the nobleman buys Shasta as a slave, Bree organises and carries out their joint escape. Though friendly, he is also vain and a braggart until his encounter with Aslan late in the story.\nTirian.\nThe last King of Narnia is the viewpoint character for much of \"The Last Battle\". Having rashly killed a Calormene for mistreating a Narnian Talking Horse, he is imprisoned by the villainous ape Shift but released by Eustace and Jill. Together they fight faithfully to the last and are welcomed into Aslan's Kingdom.\nAntagonists.\nJadis, the White Witch.\nJadis, commonly known during her rule of Narnia as the White Witch, is the main villain of \"The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe\" and \"The Magician's Nephew\"\u2014the only antagonist to appear in more than one Narnia book. In \"The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe\", she is the witch responsible for the freezing of Narnia resulting in the Hundred Year Winter; she turns her enemies into statues and kills Aslan on the Stone Table, but is killed by him in battle after his resurrection. In \"The Magician's Nephew\", she is wakened from a magical sleep by Digory in the dead world of Charn and inadvertently brought to Victorian London before being transported to Narnia, where she steals an apple to grant her the gift of immortality.\nMiraz.\nKing Miraz is the lead villain of \"Prince Caspian\". Prior to the book's opening he has killed King Caspian IX, father of the titular Prince Caspian, and usurped his throne as king of the Telmarine colonizers in Narnia. He raises Caspian as his heir, but seeks to kill him after his own son is born. As the story progresses he leads the Telmarine war against the Old Narnian rebellion; he is defeated in single combat by Peter and then murdered by one of his own lords.\nLady of the Green Kirtle.\nThe Lady of the Green Kirtle is the lead villain of \"The Silver Chair\", and is also referred to in that book as \"the Queen of Underland\" or simply as \"the Witch\". She rules an underground kingdom through magical mind-control. Prior to the events of \"The Silver Chair\", she has murdered Caspian's Queen and then seduced and abducted his son Prince Rilian. She encounters the protagonists on their quest and sends them astray. Confronted by them later, she attempts to enslave them magically; when that fails, she attacks them in the form of a serpent and is killed.\nRabadash.\nPrince Rabadash, heir to the throne of Calormen, is the primary antagonist of \"The Horse and His Boy\". Hot-headed, arrogant, and entitled, he brings Queen Susan of Narnia\u2014along with a small retinue of Narnians, including King Edmund\u2014to Calormen in the hope that Susan will marry him. When the Narnians realize that Rabadash may force Susan to accept his marriage proposal, they spirit Susan out of Calormen by ship. Incensed, Rabadash launches a surprise attack on Archenland with the ultimate intention of raiding Narnia and taking Susan captive. His plan is foiled when Shasta and Aravis warn the Archenlanders of his impending strike. After being captured by Edmund, Rabadash blasphemes against Aslan. Aslan then temporarily transforms him into a donkey as punishment.\nShift the Ape.\nShift is the most prominent villain of \"The Last Battle\". He is an elderly Talking Ape\u2014Lewis does not specify what kind of ape, but Pauline Baynes' illustrations depict him as a chimpanzee. He persuades the na\u00efve donkey Puzzle to pretend to be Aslan (wearing a lion-skin) in order to seize control of Narnia, and proceeds to cut down the forests, enslave the other Talking Beasts, and invite the Calormenes to invade. He loses control of the situation due to over-indulging in alcohol, and is eventually swallowed up by the evil Calormene god Tash.\nNarnian geography.\n\"The Chronicles of Narnia\" describes the world in which Narnia exists as one major landmass encircled by an ocean. Narnia's capital sits on the eastern edge of the landmass on the shores of the Great Eastern Ocean. This ocean contains the islands explored in \"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader\". On the main landmass Lewis places the countries of Narnia, Archenland, Calormen, and Telmar, along with a variety of other areas that are not described as countries. The author also provides glimpses of more fantastic locations that exist in and around the main world of Narnia, including an edge and an underworld.\nInfluences.\nLewis's life.\nLewis's early life has parallels with \"The Chronicles of Narnia\". At the age of seven, he moved with his family to a large house on the edge of Belfast. Its long hallways and empty rooms inspired Lewis and his brother to invent make-believe worlds whilst exploring their home, an activity reflected in Lucy's discovery of Narnia in \"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\". Like Caspian and Rilian, Lewis lost his mother at an early age, spending much of his youth in English boarding schools similar to those attended by the Pevensie children, Eustace Scrubb, and Jill Pole. During World War II many children were evacuated from London and other urban areas because of German air raids. Some of these children, including one named Lucy (Lewis's goddaughter) stayed with him at his home The Kilns near Oxford, just as the Pevensies stayed with The Professor in \"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\".\nInfluences from mythology and cosmology.\nDrew Trotter, president of the Center for Christian Study, noted that the producers of the film \"\" felt that the books' plots adhere to the archetypal \"monomyth\" pattern as detailed in Joseph Campbell's \"The Hero with a Thousand Faces\".\nLewis was widely read in medieval Celtic literature, an influence reflected throughout the books, and most strongly in \"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.\" The entire book imitates one of the immrama, a type of traditional Old Irish tale that combines elements of Christianity and Irish mythology to tell the story of a hero's sea journey to the Otherworld.\n\"Planet Narnia\".\nMichael Ward's 2008 book \"Planet Narnia\" proposes that each of the seven books related to one of the seven moving heavenly bodies or \"planets\" known in the Middle Ages according to the Ptolemaic geocentric model of cosmology (a theme to which Lewis returned habitually throughout his work). At that time, each of these heavenly bodies was believed to have certain attributes, and Ward contends that these attributes were deliberately but subtly used by Lewis to furnish elements of the stories of each book:\nIn \"The Lion\" [the child protagonists] become monarchs under sovereign Jove; in \"Prince Caspian\" they harden under strong Mars; in \"The \"Dawn Treader\"\" they drink light under searching Sol; in \"The Silver Chair\" they learn obedience under subordinate Luna; in \"The Horse and His Boy\" they come to love poetry under eloquent Mercury; in \"The Magician's Nephew\" they gain life-giving fruit under fertile Venus; and in \"The Last Battle\" they suffer and die under chilling Saturn.\nLewis's interest in the literary symbolism of medieval and Renaissance astrology is more overtly referenced in other works such as his study of medieval cosmology \"The Discarded Image\", and in his early poetry as well as in \"Space Trilogy\". Narnia scholar Paul F. Ford finds Ward's assertion that Lewis intended \"The Chronicles\" to be an embodiment of medieval astrology implausible, though Ford addresses an earlier (2003) version of Ward's thesis (also called \"Planet Narnia\", published in the \"Times Literary Supplement\"). Ford argues that Lewis did not start with a coherent plan for the books, but Ward's book answers this by arguing that the astrological associations grew in the writing:\nJupiter was... [Lewis's] favourite planet, part of the \"habitual furniture\" of his mind... \"The Lion\" was thus the first example of that \"idea that he wanted to try out\". \"Prince Caspian\" and \"The \"Dawn Treader\"\" naturally followed because Mars and Sol were both already connected in his mind with the merits of the Alexander technique... at some point after commencing \"The Horse and His Boy\" he resolved to treat all seven planets, for seven such treatments of his idea would mean that he had \"worked it out to the full\".\nA quantitative analysis on the imagery in the different books of \"The Chronicles\" gives mixed support to Ward's thesis: \"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader\", \"The Silver Chair\", \"The Horse and His Boy\", and \"The Magician's Nephew\" do indeed employ concepts associated with, respectively, Sol, Luna, Mercury, and Venus, far more often than chance would predict, but \"The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe\", \"Prince Caspian\", and \"The Last Battle\" fall short of statistical correlation with their proposed planets.\nInfluences from literature.\nGeorge MacDonald's \"Phantastes\" (1858) influenced the structure and setting of \"The Chronicles\". It was a work that was \" a great balm to the soul\".\nPlato was an undeniable influence on Lewis's writing of \"The Chronicles\". Most clearly, Digory explicitly invokes Plato's name at the end of \"The Last Battle\", to explain how the old version of Narnia is but a shadow of the newly revealed \"true\" Narnia. Plato's influence is also apparent in \"The Silver Chair\" when the Queen of the Underland attempts to convince the protagonists that the surface world is not real. She echoes the logic of Plato's Cave by comparing the sun to a nearby lamp, arguing that reality is only that which is perceived in the immediate physical vicinity.\nThe White Witch in \"The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe\" shares many features, both of appearance and character, with the villainous Duessa of Edmund Spenser's \"Faerie Queene\", a work Lewis studied in detail. Like Duessa, she falsely styles herself Queen; she leads astray the erring Edmund with false temptations; she turns people into stone as Duessa turns them into trees. Both villains wear opulent robes and deck their conveyances out with bells. In \"The Magician's Nephew\" Jadis takes on echoes of Satan from John Milton's \"Paradise Lost\": she climbs over the wall of the paradisal garden in contempt of the command to enter only by the gate, and proceeds to tempt Digory as Satan tempted Eve, with lies and half-truths. Similarly, the Lady of the Green Kirtle in \"The Silver Chair\" recalls both the snake-woman Errour in \"The Faerie Queene\" and Satan's transformation into a snake in \"Paradise Lost\".\nLewis read Edith Nesbit's children's books as a child and was greatly fond of them. He described \"The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe\" around the time of its completion as \"a children's book in the tradition of E. Nesbit\". \"The Magician's Nephew\" in particular bears strong resemblances to Nesbit's \"The Story of the Amulet\" (1906). This novel focuses on four children living in London who discover a magic amulet. Their father is away and their mother is ill, as is the case with Digory. They manage to transport the queen of ancient Babylon to London and she is the cause of a riot; likewise, Polly and Digory transport Queen Jadis to London, sparking a very similar incident.\nMarsha Daigle-Williamson argues that Dante's \"Divine Comedy\" had a significant impact on Lewis's writings. In the Narnia series, she identifies this influence as most apparent in \"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader\" and \"The Silver Chair\". Daigle-Williamson identifies the plot of \"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader\" as a Dantean journey with a parallel structure and similar themes. She likewise draws numerous connections between \"The Silver Chair\" and the events of Dante's \"Inferno\".\nColin Duriez, writing on the shared elements found in both Lewis's and J. R. R. Tolkien's works, highlights the thematic similarities between Tolkien's poem \"Imram\" and Lewis's \"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader\".\nInfluences on other works.\n\"The Chronicles of Narnia\" is considered a classic of children's literature.\nInfluences on literature.\n\"The Chronicles of Narnia\" has been a significant influence on both adult and children's fantasy literature in the post-World War II era. In 1976, the scholar Susan Cornell Poskanzer praised Lewis for his \"strangely powerful fantasies\". Poskanzer argued that children could relate to \"Narnia\" books because the heroes and heroines were realistic characters, each with their own distinctive voice and personality. Furthermore, the protagonists become powerful kings and queens who decide the fate of kingdoms, while the adults in the \"Narnia\" books tended to be buffoons, which by inverting the normal order of things was pleasing to many youngsters. However, Poskanzer criticized Lewis for what she regarded as scenes of gratuitous violence, which she felt were upsetting to children. Poskanzer also noted Lewis presented his Christian message subtly enough as to avoid boring children with overt sermonizing.\nExamples include:\nPhilip Pullman's fantasy series, \"His Dark Materials\", is seen as a response to \"The Chronicles\". Pullman is a self-described atheist who wholly rejects the spiritual themes that permeate \"The Chronicles\", yet his series nonetheless addresses many of the same issues and introduces some similar character types, including talking animals. In another parallel, the first books in each series \u2013 Pullman's \"Northern Lights\" and \"The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe\" \u2013 both open with a young girl hiding in a wardrobe.\nBill Willingham's comic book series \"Fables\" makes reference at least twice to a king called \"The Great Lion\", a thinly veiled reference to Aslan. The series avoids explicitly referring to any characters or works that are not in the public domain.\nThe novel \"Bridge to Terabithia\" by Katherine Paterson has Leslie, one of the main characters, reveal to Jesse her love of Lewis's books, subsequently lending him \"The Chronicles of Narnia\" so that he can learn how to behave like a king. Her book also features the island name \"Terabithia\", which sounds similar to Terebinthia, a Narnian island that appears in \"Prince Caspian\" and \"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader\". Katherine Paterson herself acknowledges that Terabithia is likely to be derived from Terebinthia:\nI thought I had made it up. Then, rereading \"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader\" by C. S. Lewis, I realized that I had probably gotten it from the island of Terebinthia in that book. However, Lewis probably got that name from the terebinth tree in the Bible, so both of us pinched from somewhere else, probably unconsciously.\"\nScience-fiction author Greg Egan's short story \"Oracle\" depicts a parallel universe in which an author nicknamed Jack (Lewis's nickname) has written novels about the fictional \"Kingdom of Nesica\", and whose wife is dying of cancer, paralleling the death of Lewis's wife Joy Davidman. Several Narnian allegories are also used to explore issues of religion and faith versus science and knowledge.\nLev Grossman's \"New York Times\" best-seller \"The Magicians\" is a contemporary dark fantasy about an unusually gifted young man obsessed with Fillory, the magical land of his favourite childhood books. Fillory is a thinly veiled substitute for Narnia, and clearly the author expects it to be experienced as such. Not only is the land home to many similar talking animals and mythical creatures, it is also accessed through a grandfather clock in the home of an uncle to whom five English children are sent during World War II. Moreover, the land is ruled by two Aslan-like rams named Ember and Umber, and terrorised by The Watcherwoman. She, like the White Witch, freezes the land in time. The book's plot revolves heavily around a place very like the \"wood between the worlds\" from \"The Magician's Nephew\", an interworld waystation in which pools of water lead to other lands. This reference to \"The Magician's Nephew\" is echoed in the title of the book.\nJ. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, has said that she was a fan of the works of Lewis as a child, and cites the influence of \"The Chronicles\" on her work: \"I found myself thinking about the wardrobe route to Narnia when Harry is told he has to hurl himself at a barrier in King's Cross Station\u00a0\u2013 it dissolves and he's on platform Nine and Three-Quarters, and there's the train for Hogwarts.\" Nevertheless, she is at pains to stress the differences between Narnia and her world: \"Narnia is literally a different world\", she says, \"whereas in the Harry books you go into a world within a world that you can see if you happen to belong. A lot of the humour comes from collisions between the magic and the everyday worlds. Generally there isn't much humour in the Narnia books, although I adored them when I was a child. I got so caught up I didn't think CS Lewis was especially preachy. Reading them now I find that his subliminal message isn't very subliminal.\" \"New York Times\" writer Charles McGrath notes the similarity between Dudley Dursley, the obnoxious son of Harry's neglectful guardians, and Eustace Scrubb, the spoiled brat who torments the main characters until he is redeemed by Aslan.\nThe comic book series \"Pakkins' Land\" by Gary and Rhoda Shipman in which a young child finds himself in a magical world filled with talking animals, including a lion character named King Aryah, has been compared favorably to the \"Narnia\" series. The Shipmans have cited the influence of C.S. Lewis and the \"Narnia\" series in response to reader letters.\nInfluences on popular culture.\nAs with any popular long-lived work, contemporary culture abounds with references to the lion Aslan, travelling via wardrobe and direct mentions of \"The Chronicles\". Examples include:\nCharlotte Staples Lewis, a character first seen early in the fourth season of the TV series \"Lost\", is named in reference to C. S. Lewis. \"Lost\" producer Damon Lindelof said that this was a clue to the direction the show would take during the season. The book \"Ultimate Lost and Philosophy\", edited by William Irwin and Sharon Kaye, contains a comprehensive essay on \"Lost\" plot motifs based on \"The Chronicles\".\nThe second SNL Digital Short by Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell features a humorous nerdcore hip hop song titled \"Chronicles of Narnia (Lazy Sunday)\", which focuses on the performers' plan to see \"The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\" at a cinema. It was described by \"Slate\" magazine as one of the most culturally significant \"Saturday Night Live\" skits in many years, and an important commentary on the state of rap. Swedish Christian power metal band Narnia, whose songs are mainly about the \"Chronicles of Narnia\" or the Bible, feature Aslan on all their album covers. The song \"Further Up, Further In\" from the album \"Room to Roam\" by Scottish-Irish folk-rock band The Waterboys is heavily influenced by \"The Chronicles of Narnia\". The title is taken from a passage in \"The Last Battle\", and one verse of the song describes sailing to the end of the world to meet a king, similar to the ending of \"Voyage of the Dawn Treader\". C. S. Lewis is explicitly acknowledged as an influence in the liner notes of the 1990 compact disc.\nDuring interviews, the primary creator of the Japanese anime and gaming series \"Digimon\" has said that he was inspired and influenced by \"The Chronicles of Narnia\".\nIts influence extends even to fan fiction: under the pen name Edonohana, Rachel Manija Brown wrote \"No Reservations: Narnia\", which imagined Anthony Bourdain exploring Narnia and its cuisine in the style of his \"No Reservations\" TV show and book. Bourdain himself praised the fic's writing and \"frankly a bit frightening\" attention to detail.\nChristian themes.\nLewis had authored a number of works on Christian apologetics and other literature with Christian-based themes before writing the \"Narnia\" books. The character Aslan is widely accepted by literary academia as being based on Jesus Christ. Lewis did not initially plan to incorporate Christian theological concepts into his \"Narnia\" stories. Lewis maintained that the \"Narnia\" books were not allegorical, preferring to term their Christian aspects a \"supposition\".\n\"The Chronicles\" have, consequently, a large Christian following, and are widely used to promote Christian ideas. However, some Christians object that \"The Chronicles\" promote \"soft-sell paganism and occultism\" due to recurring pagan imagery and themes.\nCriticism.\nConsistency.\nGertrude Ward noted that \"When Lewis wrote \"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\", he clearly meant to create a world where there were no human beings at all. As the titles of Mr. Tumnus' books testify, in this world human beings are creatures of myth, while its common daily reality includes fauns and other creatures which are myth in our world. This worked well for the first volume of the series, but for later volumes Lewis thought up plots which required having more human beings in this world. In \"Prince Caspian\" he still kept the original structure and explained that more humans had arrived from our world at a later time, overrunning Narnia. However, later on he gave in and changed the entire concept of this world\u00a0\u2013\u00a0there have always been very many humans in this world, and Narnia is just one very special country with a lot of talking animals and fauns and dwarves etc. In this revised world, with a great human empire to the south of Narnia and human principality just next door, the White Witch would not have suspected Edmund of being a dwarf who shaved his beard\u00a0\u2013\u00a0there would be far more simple and obvious explanations for his origin. And in fact, in this revised world it is not entirely clear why were the four Pevensie children singled out for the Thrones of Narnia, over so many other humans in the world. [\u2026] Still, we just have to live with these discrepancies, and enjoy each Narnia book on its own merits.\"\nAccusations of gender stereotyping.\nIn later years, both Lewis and the \"Chronicles\" have been criticised (often by other authors of fantasy fiction) for gender role stereotyping, though other authors have defended Lewis in this area. Most allegations of sexism centre on the description of Susan Pevensie in \"The Last Battle\" when Lewis writes that Susan is \"no longer a friend of Narnia\" and interested \"in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations\".\nPhilip Pullman, inimical to Lewis on many fronts, calls the \"Narnia\" stories \"monumentally disparaging of women\". His interpretation of the Susan passages reflects this view:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Susan, like Cinderella, is undergoing a transition from one phase of her life to another. Lewis didn't approve of that. He didn't like women in general, or sexuality at all, at least at the stage in his life when he wrote the Narnia books. He was frightened and appalled at the notion of wanting to grow up.\nIn fantasy author Neil Gaiman's short story \"The Problem of Susan\" (2004), an elderly woman, Professor Hastings, deals with the grief and trauma of her entire family's death in a train crash. Although the woman's maiden name is not revealed, details throughout the story strongly imply that this character is the elderly Susan Pevensie. The story is written for an adult audience and deals with issues of sexuality and violence and through it Gaiman presents a critique of Lewis's treatment of Susan, as well as the problem of evil as it relates to punishment and salvation.\nLewis supporters cite the positive roles of women in the series, including Jill Pole in \"The Silver Chair\", Aravis Tarkheena in \"The Horse and His Boy\", Polly Plummer in \"The Magician's Nephew,\" and particularly Lucy Pevensie in \"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\". Alan Jacobs, an English professor at Wheaton College, asserts that Lucy is the most admirable of the human characters and that generally the girls come off better than the boys throughout the series (Jacobs, 2008: 259). In her contribution to \"The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy\", Karin Fry, an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, notes that \"the most sympathetic female characters in \"The Chronicles\" are consistently the ones who question the traditional roles of women and prove their worth to Aslan through actively engaging in the adventures just like the boys.\" Fry goes on to say:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nNathan Ross notes that \"Much of the plot of 'Wardrobe' is told exclusively from the point of view of Susan and Lucy. It is the girls who witness Aslan being killed and coming back to life \u2013 a unique experience from which the boys are excluded. Throughout, going through many highly frightening and shocking moments, Susan and Lucy behave with grown up courage and responsibility. Their experiences are told in full, over several chapters, while what the boys do at the same time \u2013 preparing an army and going into battle \u2013 is relegated to the background. This arrangement of material clearly implies that what girls saw and did was the more important. Given the commonly held interpretation \u2013 that Aslan is Jesus Christ and that what the girls saw was a no less than a reenacting of the Crucifixion \u2013 this order of priorities makes perfect sense\".\nTaking a different stance altogether, Monika B. Hilder provides a thorough examination of the feminine ethos apparent in each book of the series, and proposes that critics tend to misread Lewis's representation of gender. As she puts it \"...we assume that Lewis is sexist when he is in fact applauding the 'feminine' heroic. To the extent that we have not examined our own chauvinism, we demean the 'feminine' qualities and extol the 'masculine' \u2013 not noticing that Lewis does the opposite.\"\nAccusations of racism.\nIn addition to sexism, Pullman and others have also accused the Narnia series of fostering racism. Over the alleged racism in \"The Horse and His Boy\", newspaper editor Kyrie O'Connor wrote:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />While the book's storytelling virtues are enormous, you don't have to be a bluestocking of political correctness to find some of this fantasy anti-Arab, or anti-Eastern, or anti-Ottoman. With all its stereotypes, mostly played for belly laughs, there are moments you'd like to stuff this story back into its closet.\nGregg Easterbrook, writing in \"The Atlantic\", stated that \"the Calormenes, are unmistakable Muslim stand-ins\", while novelist Philip Hensher raises specific concerns that a reader might gain the impression that Islam is a \"Satanic cult\". In rebuttal to this charge, at an address to a C. S. Lewis conference, Devin Brown argued that there are too many dissimilarities between the Calormene religion and Islam, particularly in the areas of polytheism and human sacrifice, for Lewis's writing to be regarded as critical of Islam.\nNicholas Wanberg has argued, echoing claims by Mervyn Nicholson, that accusations of racism in the books are \"an oversimplification\", but he asserts that the stories employ beliefs about human aesthetics, including equating dark skin with ugliness, that have been traditionally associated with racist thought.\nCritics also argue whether Lewis's work presents a positive or negative view of colonialism. Nicole DuPlessis favors the anticolonial view, claiming \"the negative effects of colonial exploitations and the themes of animals' rights and responsibility to the environment are emphasized in Lewis's construction of a community of living things. Through the negative examples of illegitimate rulers, Lewis constructs the 'correct' relationship between humans and nature, providing examples of rulers like Caspian who fulfil their responsibilities to the environment.\" Clare Etcherling counters with her claim that \"those 'illegitimate' rulers are often very dark-skinned\" and that the only \"legitimate rulers are those sons and daughters of Adam and Eve who adhere to Christian conceptions of morality and stewardship \u2013 either white English children (such as Peter) or Narnians who possess characteristics valued and cultivated by the British (such as Caspian).\"\nAdaptations.\nTelevision.\nVarious books from \"The Chronicles of Narnia\" have been adapted for television over the years.\n\"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\" was first adapted in 1967. Comprising ten episodes of thirty minutes each, the screenplay was written by Trevor Preston, and directed by Helen Standage.\n\"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\" was adapted again in 1979, this time as an animated cartoon co-produced by Bill Melendez and the Children's Television Workshop, with a screenplay by David D. Connell.\nBetween 1988 and 1990, the first four books (as published) were adapted by the BBC as three TV serials. They were also aired in America on the PBS/Disney show WonderWorks. They were nominated for a total of 16 awards, including an Emmy for \"Outstanding Children's Program\" and a number of BAFTA awards including Best Children's Programme (Entertainment/Drama) in 1988, 1989 and 1990.\nFilm.\nWalden Media.\nSceptical that any cinematic adaptation could render the more fantastical elements and characters of the story realistically, Lewis never sold the film rights to the \"Narnia\" series. In answering a letter with a question posed by a child in 1957, asking if the Narnia series could please be on television, C. S. Lewis wrote back: \"They'd be no good on TV. Humanised beasts can't be presented to the \"eye\" without at once becoming either hideous or ridiculous. I wish the idiots who run the film world [would] realize that there are stories which are for the \"ear\" alone.\"\nThe first novel adapted was \"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\". Released in December 2005, ' was produced by Walden Media, distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, and directed by Andrew Adamson, with a screenplay by Ann Peacock, Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus. The second novel adapted was '. Released in 2008, it was co-produced by Walden Media and Walt Disney Pictures, co-written and directed by Andrew Adamson, with Screenwriters including Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely. In December 2008, Disney pulled out of financing the remainder of the \"Chronicles of Narnia\" film series. However, Walden Media and 20th Century Fox eventually co-produced \"\", which was released in December 2010.\nIn May 2012, producer Douglas Gresham confirmed that Walden Media's contract with the C.S. Lewis Estate had expired, and that there was a moratorium on producing any \"Narnia\" films outside of Walden Media. On 1 October 2013, it was announced that the C.S. Lewis Company had entered into an agreement with the Mark Gordon Company to jointly develop and produce \"\". On 26 April 2017, Joe Johnston was hired to direct the film. In October, Johnston said filming is expected to begin in late 2018. In November 2018, these plans were halted because Netflix had begun developing adaptations of the entire series.\nNetflix.\nOn 3 October 2018, the C.S. Lewis Company announced that Netflix had acquired the rights to new film and television series adaptations of the \"Narnia\" books. According to \"Fortune\", this was the first time that rights to the entire \"Narnia\" catalogue had been held by a single company. Entertainment One, which had acquired production rights to a fourth \"Narnia\" film, also joined the series. Mark Gordon, Douglas Gresham and Vincent Sieber were announced as executive producers.\nRadio.\nThe BBC produced dramatisations of all seven novels starting in the late 1980s and running into the 90s starring Maurice Denham as Professor Kirke. They were Originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4 In the UK. BBC Audiobooks released both audio cassette and compact disc versions of the series.\nBetween 1998 and 2002, Focus on the Family produced radio dramatisations by Paul McCusker of the entire series through its Radio Theatre programme. Over one hundred performers took part including Paul Scofield as the storyteller and David Suchet as Aslan. Accompanied by an original orchestral score and cinema-quality digital sound design, the series was hosted by Lewis's stepson Douglas Gresham and ran for just over 22 hours. Recordings of the entire adaptation were released on compact disc between 1999 and 2003.\nStage.\nMany stage adaptations of \"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\" have been produced over the years.\nIn 1984, Vanessa Ford Productions presented \"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\" at London's Westminster Theatre. Adapted by Glyn Robbins, the play was directed by Richard Williams and designed by Marty Flood. The production was later revived at Westminster and The Royalty Theatre and went on tour until 1997. Productions of other tales from \"The Chronicles\" were also staged, including \"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader\" (1986), \"The Magician's Nephew\" (1988) and \"The Horse and His Boy\" (1990).\nIn 1997, Trumpets Inc., a Filipino Christian theatre and musical production company, produced a musical rendition of \"The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe\" that Douglas Gresham, Lewis's stepson (and co-producer of the Walden Media film adaptations), has openly declared that he feels is the closest to Lewis's intent. The book and lyrics were written by Jaime del Mundo and Luna Inocian, while the music was composed by Lito Villareal.\nThe Royal Shakespeare Company premiered \"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\" in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1998. The novel was adapted as a musical production by Adrian Mitchell, with music by Shaun Davey. The show was originally directed by Adrian Noble and designed by Anthony Ward, with the revival directed by Lucy Pitman-Wallace. Well received by audiences, the production was periodically re-staged by the RSC for several years afterwards.\nIn 2022, The Logos Theater, of Taylors, South Carolina, created a stage adaptation of \"The Horse and His Boy\", with later performances at the Museum of the Bible and Ark Encounter.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["30685"], "permutation_1": ["30685"], "permutation_2": ["30685"], "permutation_3": ["30685"]}
{"id": "nq_-7678719629465919133", "docs_added": {"5994090": "Jaren Jackson\nAmerican basketball player (born 1967)\nJaren Walter Jackson Sr. (born October 27, 1967) is an American professional basketball coach and former player who is an assistant coach for the Incarnate Word Cardinals of the Southland Conference. A shooting guard born in New Orleans, Louisiana, Jackson played at Georgetown University from 1985 to 1989 and graduated with a bachelor's degree in finance. He was never drafted into the National Basketball Association (NBA) but played 13 seasons for multiple teams. He is best known for his tenure with the San Antonio Spurs, who he helped win their first NBA championship in 1999.\nCareer.\nTraveling swingman (1989\u20131997).\nUpon graduating, Jackson was not drafted, but was first signed as a free agent by the New Jersey Nets in 1989. That year he played in only 28 games, and the following season would play in the Continental Basketball Association and the World Basketball League. He had a very short stint with the Golden State Warriors before signing with the Los Angeles Clippers for whom he played just 34 games in the 1992\u201393 season. The following year, he was signed and played just 29 games for the Portland Trail Blazers, but he was waived by Portland and picked up by the Philadelphia 76ers, where he started his first NBA game on December 17, 1994. Jackson would again be waived and wouldn't return to action until the following year for another very short stint with the Houston Rockets before being signed by the Washington Bullets prior to the 1996\u201397 season.\nIt was with the Bullets that Jackson played his longest NBA season, as he played in 75 games for the season as backup to Calbert Cheaney, with an average of 5 points a game and a career-high 53 three-point field goals.\nSan Antonio Spurs (1997\u20132001).\nIn the offseason, following a playoff loss to the eventual champion Chicago Bulls, Jackson signed with the San Antonio Spurs, who had suffered a lottery season the previous year but featured superstar David Robinson and the first pick in the 1997 draft, Tim Duncan. The 1997\u201398 season would prove to be a personal best for Jackson, as he started in 45 of 82 games and averaged a career-high 8.8 points a game and a new career high of 112 three-pointers for the year. Jackson also saw his most significant playoff action, as the Spurs won in the first round of the playoffs before losing in the conference semifinals. Jackson started in 8 of 9 playoff games and increased his scoring average to 10.2 points for the postseason.\nThe following year would be shortened to 50 games as a result of a league lockout, but the Spurs would continue to use Jackson as its main back up shooting guard behind veteran Mario Elie. Jackson would play in 47 games, starting in 13 and averaged 6.4 points a game. The Spurs would win the number one seed in the playoffs led by Robinson and Duncan, and open the playoffs with a 3\u20131 first-round win over the Minnesota Timberwolves, before dominating and sweeping the Los Angeles Lakers in 4 games of the conference semifinals. Against the Lakers Jackson played well, scoring 22 points in game 3 followed by 20 points in game 4 to close the series in which he hit 6 three-point shots. The Spurs would next faced Portland in the conference finals, but were once again dominant, with teammate Sean Elliott hitting a crucial three-point shot to win game 2 and Jackson scoring 19 points in game 3. The Spurs completed another sweep, and would face the New York Knicks in the NBA Finals. Jackson scored 17 points in his first Finals game, and the Spurs would win both games in San Antonio before heading to New York. Despite a win by the Knicks at home in game 3, the Spurs proved simply too dominating, and would win the next two games in Madison Square Garden to win the series and the NBA Championship. Jackson scored 11 points in the title clinching 5th game, and averaged 8.2 points throughout the title run.\nJackson would once again serve as the main backup at shooting guard for the defending champion Spurs the following season, playing in 81 games and starting in 12. The Spurs would end up losing in the first round of the playoffs to the Phoenix Suns mostly due to a season-ending injury to Duncan, and Jackson only played two games in the series. In the 2000\u201301 season, the Spurs won the best record in the league before losing in the conference finals, but Jackson only played in 16 games for the season and did not play in the postseason as the team had brought in younger guards such as Derek Anderson.\nRetirement.\nJackson was signed to play for the Orlando Magic for the latter portion of the 2001\u201302 season, and played in 9 regular season games and 3 playoff games before retiring.\nCoaching career.\nJackson coached in the Continental Basketball Association (CBA) for the Gary Steelheads during the 2005\u201306 season and Pittsburgh Xplosion during the 2006\u201307 season.\nJackson had served as assistant coach of Fort Wayne Mad Ants with their first season in NBA Development League (D-League) before coaching their second season. Jackson returned to the Fort Wayne Mad Ants for the 2014\u201315 season.\nSince retiring as a player, Jackson has held several basketball coaching positions at both the college and minor league level. He has been the head coach of the Saint John Millrats of the National Basketball League of Canada.\nJackson was named the head coach of the National Basketball League of Canada's Ottawa SkyHawks on November 25, 2013.\nOn January 19, 2021, the Westchester Knicks announced that they had hired Jackson as assistant coach.\nOn May 5, 2023, the University of the Incarnate Word announced that Jackson is being added as an assistant coach by new head coach Shane Heirman.\nPersonal life.\nJackson married fellow Hoya Terri Carmichael Jackson, the director of operations at the Women's National Basketball Players Association. They are the parents of Jaren Jackson Jr., who played college basketball for Michigan State before being selected 4th overall in the 2018 NBA draft by the Memphis Grizzlies.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "52901890": "Jaren Jackson Jr.\nAmerican basketball player (born 1999)\nJaren Walter Jackson Jr. ( ; born September 15, 1999), nicknamed \"the Block Panther\", \"The Alliteration\", and also known by his initials JJJ, is an American professional basketball player for the Memphis Grizzlies of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played college basketball for the Michigan State Spartans. Jackson was selected by Memphis with the fourth overall pick of the 2018 NBA draft. In 2023, he was named to his first NBA All-Star team, later winning Defensive Player of the Year that same season. Jackson is renowned for his defensive dominance, particularly his exceptional rim protection; he has led the league in blocks per game for two consecutive seasons.\nEarly life.\nJaren Walter Jackson Jr. was born on September 15, 1999, in Plainfield, New Jersey.\nJaren started his high school career with Park Tudor School in Indianapolis. He played varsity for three years, where he averaged 10 points, 6 rebounds and 3 blocks per game. Jackson won two IHSAA state basketball championships while at Park Tudor. He was teammates with future Xavier University standout and future professional basketball player Trevon Bluiett. He then transferred to La Lumiere School in La Porte, Indiana for his senior year, where he met Jordan Poole and started for their varsity squad.\nRecruiting.\nJackson was appraised for being one of the top players in the 2017 graduating class. Scout.com ranked Jackson the fifth-best player nationally, first at his position and second overall in the Midwest region. 247Sports ranked him 7th nationally, being 4th in his position. ESPN ranked him 8th in the ESPN 100, being 2nd in his position and 2nd regionally. \nJackson was recruited by a number of notable programs, including Michigan State, Notre Dame, Butler, Indiana, Purdue, Maryland, and several more. He was invited to partake in the McDonald's All-American Game played on March 29, 2017.\nCollege career.\nOn September 15, 2016, Jaren Jackson Jr. announced his intentions to play for Tom Izzo at Michigan State. He signed the letter of intent on November 9, 2016. Jackson made his collegiate debut on November 10, 2017, recording 13 points and a season-high 13 rebounds in a blowout 98\u201366 win over North Florida. Four days later, he recorded a then-season-high 19 points in an 88\u201381 loss to #1-ranked Duke. On December 5, Jackson put up 11 points and a career-high 8 blocks in a 62\u201352 win over Rutgers. Four days later, he recorded 17 points and another career-high 13 rebounds in a blowout 88\u201363 win over Southern Utah. On January 22, 2018, Jackson recorded a then-season-high 21 points to go with 11 rebounds and 6 blocks in an 87\u201374 win over Illinois. On February 13, he put up a career-high 27 points in a blowout 87\u201357 win over Minnesota. At the end of the regular season for Michigan State, he was named both the Big Ten's Defensive Player of the Year, Freshman of the Year, Big Ten's All-Freshman Team, and the All-Big Ten's Third Team. On April 2, Jackson declared his entry into the 2018 NBA draft, where he was considered a potential top-tier lottery selection.\nProfessional career.\nMemphis Grizzlies (2018\u2013present).\n2018\u20132021: early years.\nOn June 21, 2018, Jackson was selected with the fourth overall pick by the Memphis Grizzlies in the 2018 NBA draft. On July 1, 2018, he signed a multi-year, rookie-scale contract with the Grizzlies. On March 29, 2019, Jackson was shut down for the remainder of the season due to a deep bruise to his right thigh.\nOn December 13, 2019, Jackson scored a career-high 43 points, including 9 three-pointers (which tied a franchise record set by Mike Miller in 2007) in a 127\u2013114 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks. On January 30, 2020, Jackson was suspended for one game without pay for leaving the bench during an altercation between the Grizzlies and the New York Knicks. On January 28, Jackson recorded a career-high 7 blocks in a 104\u201396 win over the Denver Nuggets. On August 4, 2020, Jackson suffered a torn meniscus in his left knee in a 99\u2013109 loss to the New Orleans Pelicans hosted in the Bubble and was expected to miss the remainder of the 2019\u201320 season.\nOn December 16, 2020, the Grizzlies announced that they had exercised the team option on Jackson. On April 21, 2021, Jackson made his return, putting up 15 points, 8 rebounds, and 4 blocks in a loss to the Los Angeles Clippers. Two days later, Jackson scored a season-high 23 points in a 130\u2013128 win over the Portland Trail Blazers. After a series of play-in tournament wins, the Grizzlies qualified for the playoffs for the first time since 2017. They faced the top-seeded Utah Jazz during their first round series. On May 31, Jackson scored a postseason career-high 21 points in a 120\u2013113 Game 4 loss. The Grizzlies would eventually lose the series in five games.\n2021\u20132023: Defensive Player of the Year and All-Star selection.\nOn October 18, 2021, Jackson signed a four-year, $105 million extension with the Grizzlies. On January 9, 2022, Jackson scored 21 points and tied a career-high with 12 rebounds in a 127\u2013119 win over the Los Angeles Lakers. On April 16, during Game 1 of the first round of the playoffs, Jackson logged 12 points and seven blocks in a 130\u2013117 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves. His seven blocks set a Grizzlies franchise record for most blocks in a playoff game, surpassing Marc Gasol's 6 on May 13, 2013. The Grizzlies eventually defeated the Timberwolves in six games, with Jackson recording 18 points, 14 rebounds and two blocks in a 114\u2013106 Game 6 win. During the Grizzlies' second-round series, they faced the Golden State Warriors. On May 1, Jackson scored a playoff career-high 33 points, alongside ten rebounds, in a 117\u2013116 Game 1 loss. The Grizzlies wound up losing the series in six games to the Warriors, who went on to win the NBA Finals. Jackson finished the 2021\u201322 season leading the NBA in blocks per game at 2.3 and finished with the most blocks that season with 177 blocks, 40 more than the second-place finisher. For his efforts, he was named to the NBA All-Defensive First Team and finished fifth in Defensive Player of the Year voting.\nOn June 30, 2022, Jackson underwent surgery to repair a stress fracture in his right foot and was ruled out for four-to-six months. After missing the first 14 games of the 2022\u201323 season, he made his season debut on November 15, recording seven points, six rebounds and five blocks in a 113\u2013102 loss to the New Orleans Pelicans. On December 12, Jackson recorded a career-high eight blocks, alongside 15 points, seven rebounds and two assists, in a 128\u2013103 win over the Atlanta Hawks. On January 5, 2023, he scored a season-high 31 points, alongside ten rebounds and three blocks, in a 123\u2013115 win over the Orlando Magic. On February 2, Jackson was selected to his first NBA All-Star Game as a reserve forward for the Western Conference. On April 5, Jackson scored a season-high 40 points, along with nine rebounds, three assists and four blocks in a 138\u2013131 overtime loss against the New Orleans Pelicans. On 9 April, Jackson finished the regular season as the league leader in blocks for the second year in a row, averaging a career-high 3 blocks per game. On April 16, in the opening game of the playoffs Jackson scored a game-high 31 points on 13-of-21 shooting from the field in a 128\u2013112 loss against the Los Angeles Lakers. Memphis lost the series in six games. During the playoffs, Jackson was named for the first time the Defensive Player of the Year, and was named for the second consecutive time to the NBA All-Defensive First team.\nNational team career.\nJackson was a member of the United States national team that competed in the 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup. They finished fourth in that tournament.\nPersonal life.\nHe is the son of former professional basketball coach and former NBA player Jaren Jackson and WNBPA executive director Terri Jackson.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "42991393": "Justin Jackson (basketball, born 1990)\nAmerican basketball player (born 1990)\nJustin LeShayne Jackson (born October 13, 1990) is an American professional basketball player for Club Atl\u00e9tico Goes of the Liga Uruguaya de B\u00e1squetbol. He played college basketball for the Cincinnati Bearcats.\nHigh school career.\nJackson began his high school career at Eau Gallie High School, in Melbourne, Florida. Under Coach Brandon Palmer, Jackson starred on the varsity team, as a freshman and sophomore, leading the Commodores to a district championship in his sophomore year, over Vero Beach High School and its legendary coach, Chuck Loewendick.\nAs a high school junior, in the 2008\u201309 season, Jackson attended Montverde Academy, in Montverde, Florida, where averaged 15.0 points, 12.3 rebounds, and 3.1 blocks per game, for coach Kevin Sutton. He was named to the Florida Association of Basketball Coaches (FABC) and Florida Sports Writer's Association (FSWA) State All-Independent teams.\nIn November 2009, Jackson signed a National Letter of Intent to play college basketball for the University of Cincinnati.\nAs a high school senior, in the 2009\u201310 season, Jackson attended Arlington Country Day School, in Jacksonville, Florida, where he helped the Apaches to the FHSAA Class 2A finals, and a record of 21\u20136.\nCollege career.\nIn his freshman season at Cincinnati, Jackson played in 35 games off the bench, while averaging 2.5 points and 2.5 rebounds, in 12.9 minutes per game, while shooting 52.7 percent from the field (39 of 74).\nIn his sophomore season, Jackson played in 37 games, with 20 starts, averaging 5.1 points and 4.2 rebounds, in 21.1 minutes per game. He led Cincinnati with 61 blocks, and ranked fifth in the Big East, averaging 1.7 blocks per game.\nIn his junior season, Jackson played in 30 games with, 22 starts, averaging 3.8 points and 5.1 rebounds, in 18.8 minutes per game. He also ranked eighth in the Big East, averaging 1.4 blocks.\nIn his senior season, Jackson was named the AAC Defensive Player of the Year, while also earning second-team All-AAC and District 25 second-team All-American honors. In 34 games (all starts), he averaged 11.1 points, 7.3 rebounds, and 2.9 blocks, in 27.8 minutes per game. He finished his career with 219 total blocks, ranking the fourth most in school history.\nProfessional career.\nAfter going undrafted in the 2014 NBA draft, Jackson joined the Charlotte Hornets for the 2014 NBA Summer League. On August 4, 2014, he agreed to terms with Nea Kifissia of Greek Basket League. However, he was released by the club a month later, before appearing in an official game for them.\nOn November 1, 2014, Jackson was selected by the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, with the 18th overall pick, in the 2014 NBA Development League draft. He was later traded to the Texas Legends on draft night.\nOn August 17, 2015, Jackson signed with Bisons Loimaa of the Finnish Korisliiga. On January 7, 2016, he signed with Czarni S\u0142upsk of the Polish Basketball League. On July 25, 2016, he re-signed with Czarni Slupsk. On January 9, 2017, he parted ways with the club. On January 20, 2017, he signed with Greek club Aris Thessaloniki.\nOn October 8, 2019, he has signed with Atomer\u0151m\u0171 SE of the NB I/A. Jackson averaged 7.8 points, 6.4 rebounds, 1.4 steals and 1.3 blocks per game. On August 4, 2020, he re-signed with the team. In 2021, Jackson joined Urunday Universitario of the Uruguayan league, and averaged 13.3 points, 6.3 rebounds, and 1.9 assists per game. On January 21, 2022, Jackson signed with CS Dinamo Bucure\u0219ti of the Romanian Liga Na\u021bional\u0103.\nPersonal.\nJackson is the son of Shauna and Larry Jackson, and he has two brothers, LaTray Green and Corbin Jackson, and a sister, Shaulya Murray. Jackson's youngest brother, Corbin, played Division II college basketball at the Florida Institute of Technology, under coach Billy Mims.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "63585059": "Marreon Jackson\nAmerican basketball player\nMarreon Jamar Jackson (born October 29, 1998) is an American professional basketball player. He played college basketball for the Toledo Rockets and the Arizona State Sun Devils.\nHigh school career.\nJackson grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and initially played football before switching to basketball. He attended Garfield Heights High School alongside later Toledo teammate Willie Jackson. As a senior, Jackson averaged 23.2 points, seven assists and seven rebounds per game. He led Garfield Heights to a 22\u20135 record and the Division I regional championship, and he was named to the Cleveland.com First Team. Jackson committed to playing college basketball for Toledo in February 2016 over offers from Kent State, Cleveland State, Buffalo and Eastern Kentucky.\nCollege career.\nJackson began his college career with the Toledo Rockets. He averaged eight points per game as a freshman. He was named to the Mid-American Conference (MAC) All-Freshman Team. In April 2018, Jackson collapsed on the hardwood after running a drill and was rushed to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with a heart condition and permitted to continue playing basketball. As a sophomore, he averaged 11.7 points, 4.2 assists, and 1.4 steals per game and was named honorable mention all-conference. After the season, he had shoulder surgery. On February 25, 2020, he had a career-high 37 points in a 93\u201381 win against Central Michigan. Jackson averaged 19.8 points and 5.4 assists per game as a junior, both of which were second-highest in the MAC. He was named to the Second Team All-MAC. Following the season he declared for the 2020 NBA draft. On April 27, 2020, Jackson announced he was returning to Toledo, citing \"unfinished business.\" As a senior, he averaged 18.1 points, 6.1 rebounds and 5.9 assists per game, earning MAC Player of the Year and First Team All-MAC honors. After the season, he transferred to Arizona State. On February 7, 2022, Jackson scored 16 points and surpassed the 2,000 point mark in a 91\u201379 loss to Arizona.\nProfessional career.\nOn July 29, 2022, Jackson signed with Fenerbah\u00e7e Koleji of the Turkish Basketball Second League.\nOn July 19, 2023, Jackson signed with CSO Voluntari of the Romanian Liga Na\u021bional\u0103.\nAfter a stint in Estonia with Kalev/Cramo, Jackson moved to Greek club Lavrio. In 6 games, he averaged 4.2 points per contest.\nIn August 2024, Jackson signed with \u00de\u00f3r \u00deorl\u00e1ksh\u00f6fn of the Icelandic \u00darvalsdeild karla.\nPersonal life.\nJackson is the son of Lawanda and Herman Jackson. His older brother Marquis Jackson played basketball at Ohio Christian University. His second cousin Demario McCall is a cornerback at Ohio State.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "68810633": "K. J. Jackson\nAmerican basketball player\nKaelin Nolan Jackson (born March 27, 1998) is an American professional basketball player for Soproni KC of the Nemzeti Bajnoks\u00e1g I/A. He played college basketball for Temple College and UMBC.\nHigh school career.\nJackson attended Hightower High School and played basketball and football. As a senior wide receiver in 2015, he helped the Hurricanes finish with an undefeated season. On the basketball court, Jackson was named district MVP as a senior and led the team to a 32\u20135 record. He committed to play football at West Texas A&M on February 6, 2016. However, Jackson ultimately reconsidered and opted to play college basketball instead. His only option was to play junior college basketball, so he committed to Temple College after its coach Kirby Johnson noticed him while recruiting another player.\nCollege career.\nJackson averaged a team-leading 19.5 points per game as a freshman. He was recruited by UMBC, but decided to return to Temple for his sophomore season. UMBC did not have a scholarship for him at the time. As a sophomore, Jackson finished fifth in the nation with 25.8 points per game. He became Temple\u2019s all-time scoring leader with 1,404 points. Jackson committed to the Retrievers after the season. He watched UMBC upset Virginia in the NCAA Tournament to become the first 16 seed to beat a 1 seed while at a Buffalo Wild Wings, wearing UMBC apparel.\nOn December 8, 2018, he scored a UMBC career-high 31 points in a 91\u201376 win against Drexel. Jackson averaged 12.8 points, 3.8 rebounds, and 3.1 assists per game as a junior. He was named to the Second Team All-America East. As a senior, Jackson averaged 13.8 points, 4.4 rebounds, 4.2 assists, and 1.7 steals per game. He was again named to the Second Team All-America East.\nProfessional career.\nOn August 15, 2020, Jackson signed his first professional contract with CSU Sibiu of the Liga Na\u021bional\u0103. He averaged 11.5 points, 3.8 assists, 2.8 rebounds, and 1.3 steals per game. On August 4, 2021, Jackson signed with CSA Steaua Bucure\u0219ti.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "38983061": "Joe Jackson (basketball)\nAmerican professional basketball player (born 1992)\nJoseph Nathaniel Jackson (born February 8, 1992) is an American professional basketball player who last played for the Northern Arizona Suns of the NBA G League. He played college basketball for the University of Memphis where he was named the 2013 Conference USA Player of the Year.\nEarly life.\nJackson was born in Memphis, Tennessee to parents Lachaundra Jackson and Joseph Burns. Due to his parents struggles financially and living in a difficult area where Jackson was constantly getting into trouble and not attending school, he and his two younger sisters moved in with his grandmother, Lillie Cox. As a seventh grader, Jackson was rarely attending school, but after moving in with his grandmother, his life began to turn around during eight grade.\nHigh school career.\nJackson was a consensus top 15 recruit coming out of White Station High School in Memphis, Tennessee. As a senior in 2009\u201310, he averaged 29.3 points, 6.2 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 2.8 steals per game. He also finished his four-year prep career having scored 3,451 points (23.2 per game) and amassed the second-highest points total in the history of Shelby-Metro area high school basketball. Jackson was named the 2009\u201310 Tennessee Mr. Basketball for Class AAA; he was also named a McDonald's High School All-American as well as a first-team \"Parade\" All-American. In the 2010 McDonald's All-American Game, Jackson recorded two points, two assists and one rebound in 12 minutes of playing time.\nCollege career.\nJackson struggled to adapt to the pace and size of college basketball in his freshman season and through the midpoint of his sophomore season despite his solid statistics \u2013 9.9 points and 3.1 assists in 2010\u201311 followed by 11.0 points and 3.8 assists in 2011\u201312. The Tigers won the Conference USA tournament his freshman year, then won both the regular season and conference tournament championships in his sophomore campaign. Jackson was named the MVP for both the 2011 and the 2012 Conference tournaments.\nIn 2012\u201313, his junior season, Jackson averaged 13.6 points, 4.8 assists, 3.3 rebounds and 1.7 steals for a Memphis team that went undefeated in conference play (16\u20130), qualified for the 2013 NCAA tournament as the number six seed (advancing to the Round of 32) and finished with an overall record of 31\u20135. He surpassed the 1,000-point mark for his career, was an All-Conference First Team selection and was honored as the Conference USA Player of the Year.\nOn February 13, 2014, he was named one of the 30 finalists for Naismith College Player of the Year award.\nProfessional career.\nAfter going undrafted in the 2014 NBA draft, Jackson joined the Memphis Grizzlies for the 2014 NBA Summer League. On September 26, 2014, he signed with the Phoenix Suns. However, he was later waived by the Suns on October 14, 2014. On November 2, 2014, he was acquired by the Bakersfield Jam as an affiliate player. On April 16, 2015, he was named the D-League's Most Improved Player for the 2014\u201315 season after improving from 6.0 points per game during December to 17.7 points per game during March. On the season, he averaged 13.9 points, 3.5 rebounds, 4.9 assists and 1.5 steals in 38 games.\nIn July 2015, Jackson was selected with the 14th pick of the 2015 KBL draft by the Goyang Orion Orions, signing with them afterwards. As a rookie in the 2015\u201316 KBL season, Jackson mostly came off the bench behind another American player Aaron Haynes who is a veteran scorer in KBL. Initially, Jackson played limited minutes, but as the season continued, he began to see some more playing time. By the end of the season, he averaged 18.56 minutes a game (PPG 14.4, APG 4.4). His team advanced to the KBL finals in the playoffs against Jeonju KCC Egis (regular season champions), and won the championship.\nOn May 23, 2016, Jackson signed with Chinese club Luoyang Zhonghe for the 2016 NBL season. On August 16, 2016, Jackson signed with Israeli club Maccabi Rishon LeZion. He was released by Maccabi after appearing in only two games.\nOn February 27, 2017, Jackson signed with the Northern Arizona Suns of the NBA Development League.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "64661807": "Ron Jackson Jr.\nAmerican basketball player\nRonald Jackson Jr. (born May 2, 1997) is an American professional basketball player for Basket Torino of the A2 \u2014 Lega Nazionale Pallacanestro. He played college basketball for North Carolina A&T after transferring from Hillsborough Community College.\nHigh school career.\nJackson attended Fleming Island High School in Fleming Island, Florida. He tried out for his high school basketball team as a junior, but was cut. He ended up making the team as a senior.\nCollege career.\nJackson walked on to the basketball team at Hillsborough Community College as a redshirt-freshman. As a sophomore, Jackson averaged 13.5 points and 10.5 rebounds per game. He transferred to North Carolina A&T after coach Willie Jones noticed him at a camp and reviewed his footage from Hillsborough. He averaged 7.5 points and 4.6 rebounds per game as a junior. On February 17, 2020, Jackson scored a career-high 28 points and collected eight rebounds in a 77\u201360 win over North Carolina Central. As a senior, Jackson averaged 15.0 points and 10.4 rebounds per game, earning first-team All-MEAC honors. He was named MEAC defensive player of the week on two occasions, and finished second in the conference with 15 double-doubles during his senior season.\nProfessional career.\nOn July 20, 2020, Jackson signed with BG G\u00f6ttingen of the Basketball Bundesliga. He subsequently joined Instituto Atl\u00e9tico Central C\u00f3rdoba of La Liga Argentina de B\u00e1squet, averaging 8.0 points and 4.5 rebounds per game. On August 17, 2021, Jackson signed with KK Roga\u0161ka of the Premier A Slovenian Basketball League.\nPersonal life.\nJackson is the son of Ronald and Ellen Jackson. His father served in the United States Marine Corps for 21 years, and his mother was also in the Corps. Jackson's grandmother died from cancer in October 2013. His mother died from multiple sclerosis in 2016.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "46337644": "Traevon Jackson\nAmerican basketball player\nTraevon Jackson (born December 11, 1992) is an American professional basketball player who last played for the Norrk\u00f6ping Dolphins of the Swedish Basketball League. He played college basketball for the Wisconsin Badgers. Jackson's father, Jim, played in the National Basketball Association for 14 seasons.\nHigh school career.\nJackson attended Westerville South High School where he finished as the school's all-time leading scorer. As a junior, he averaged 19 points, 8 rebounds, 6 assists and 4 steals while leading his team to a 20\u20130 regular-season record. For his efforts, he was named the Ohio Capital Conference Player of the Year as well as second-team all-state. In his senior season, he averaged 18.3 points, 7.0 rebounds, 4.4 assists and 3.3 steals per game while being named conference player of the year.\nCollege career.\nJackson played college basketball for Wisconsin, averaging 7.7 points, 2.6 rebounds and 2.8 assists in 109 games (84 starts). Jackson would take the starting job at point guard as a sophomore, leading the Badgers to a five seed in the NCAA tournament. In his junior season, Jackson averaged 10.7 points, 4.0 assists, and 3.8 rebounds per game on a Wisconsin team that would capture a two seed and make an appearance at the final four, where Wisconsin would lose to 8th seeded Kentucky 74\u201373 after Aaron Harrison drained a 3 to seal the game. Jackson then attempted a last second jump shot, which would have won the game if it went in, rolled off the rim. As a senior, Jackson was the starting point guard for the Badgers until a foot injury against Rutgers sidelined him in January. He later returned during the NCAA tournament in a reserve role and ended up with averages of 8.1 points and 2.6 assists per game.\nProfessional career.\nIowa Energy.\nAfter going undrafted in the 2015 NBA draft, Jackson joined the Washington Wizards for the 2015 NBA Summer League. In six games for the Wizards, he averaged 4.3 points, 2.0 rebounds and 2.2 assists in 16.0 minutes per game. On January 26, 2016, he was acquired by the Iowa Energy of the NBA Development"}, "descending_order": ["5994090", "52901890", "42991393", "63585059", "68810633", "38983061", "64661807", "46337644"], "permutation_1": ["52901890", "42991393", "64661807", "68810633", "5994090", "38983061", "46337644", "63585059"], "permutation_2": ["64661807", "63585059", "42991393", "38983061", "68810633", "52901890", "5994090", "46337644"], "permutation_3": ["68810633", "63585059", "52901890", "64661807", "42991393", "38983061", "46337644", "5994090"]}
{"id": "nq_-5831078951228718778", "docs_added": {"209798": "Tigris\u2013Euphrates river system\nRiver system in the Middle East\nThe Tigris\u2013Euphrates river system is a large river system in Western Asia that flows into the Persian Gulf. Its primary rivers are the Tigris and Euphrates, along with smaller tributaries.\nFrom their sources and upper courses in the Armenian highlands of eastern Turkey, being Lake Hazar for the Tigris and Karasu along with the Murat River for the Euphrates, the two rivers descend through valleys and gorges to the uplands of Syria and northern Iraq and then to the alluvial plain of central Iraq. Other tributaries join the Tigris from sources in the Zagros Mountains to the east. The rivers flow in a south-easterly direction through the central plain and combine at Al-Qurnah to form the Shatt al-Arab and discharge into the Persian Gulf. The rivers and their tributaries drain an area of , including almost the entire area of Iraq as well as portions of Turkey, Syria, Iran and Kuwait.\nThe region has historical importance as part of the Fertile Crescent, where Mesopotamian civilization first emerged.\nGeography.\nThe Tigris\u2013Euphrates Basin is shared between Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Kuwait. Many tributaries of the Tigris river originate in Iran, and the Shatt al-Arab, formed by the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, makes up a portion of the Iran\u2013Iraq border, with Kuwait's Bubiyan Island being part of its delta. Since the 1960s and in the 1970s, when Turkey began the GAP project in earnest, water disputes have regularly occurred in addition to the associated dam's effects on the environment. In addition, Syrian and Iranian dam construction has also contributed to political tension within the basin, particularly during drought.\nThe ecoregion is characterized by two large rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. The high mountains in the upper watershed receive more rain and snow than the lower watershed, which has a hot and arid subtropical climate. Annual snow melt from the mountains brings spring floods, and sustains permanent and seasonal marshes in the lowlands.\nThe plain between the two rivers is known as Mesopotamia. As part of the larger Fertile Crescent, it saw the earliest emergence of literate urban civilization in the Uruk period. For this reason, it is often described as a \"Cradle of Civilization\".\nThere is a large floodplain in the lower basin where the Euphrates, Tigris, and Karun rivers converge to create the Mesopotamian Marshes, which include permanent lakes, marshes, and riparian forests. The hydrology of these vast marshes is extremely important to the ecology of the entire upper Persian Gulf.\nHistory.\nSome of the first civilizations emerged from the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. From ancient times empires arose and fell in the river basin, including Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia, Assyria, and the Abbasid Caliphate. Being part of the Fertile Crescent, the river system is recognized as the site of one of the world's first agricultural centers, with archeological sites containing preserved grain dating up to 12,500 years ago. The river system was used by major cities including Ur and Babylon to promote trade and the sharing of cultures. As a result of its invention of the qanat system thousands of years ago which uses gravity to transport water through subterranean tunnels, Iran has a history as an agricultural nation, despite its aridity.\nEcology.\nThe most abundant fishes are species of barbs (\"Barbus\"), some of which can reach up to two meters in length. Some species have been important food sources for residents for thousands of years. Specifically, the Mangar fish has been harvested for food in the Tigris-Euphrates basin. Many species move seasonally between the river and the marshes for spawning, feeding, and overwintering. The Hilsa shad (\"Tenualosa ilisha\") is an important food fish that lives in the coastal waters and spawns in the lower reaches of the basin. Other ocean species occasionally visit the lower reaches of the rivers; bull sharks (\"Carcharhinus leucas\") used to swim up the Tigris as far as Baghdad.\nEndemic fish species in the lower basin include \"Glyptothorax steindachneri\" and \"Hemigrammocapoeta elegans\", and as well as two cave fishes, \"Caecocypris basimi\" and the Iraq blind barb (\"Typhlogarra widdowsoni\"), from a cave habitat near Haditha on the Euphrates.\nOne-third of the fish species in the upper watersheds are endemic, including species of \"Aphanius, Glyptothorax, Cobitis, Orthrias\", and \"Schistura\". Two blind fish species, the Iran cave barb (\"Iranocypris typhlops\") and the Zagros blind loach (\"Eidinemacheilus smithi\"), are endemic to cave systems in Iran's upper Karun River watershed. The Batman River loach (\"Paraschistura chrysicristinae\") is a Critically Endangered fish species endemic to the Batman and Ambar rivers, Turkish tributaries of the Tigris. The species is endangered by drought, habitat destruction, and habitat fragmentation from the construction of the Batman Dam. It had not been observed since 1974 and was feared extinct until a 2021 expedition netted 14 fish living above the Batman Dam.\nMesopotamian Marshes.\nThe Mesopotamian Marshes in southern Iraq were historically the largest wetland ecosystem of Western Eurasia. The aquatic vegetation includes reeds, rushes, and papyrus, which support numerous species. Areas around the Tigris and the Euphrates are very fertile. Marshy land is home to water birds, some stopping here while migrating, and some spending the winter in these marshes living off the lizards, snakes, frogs, and fish. Other animals found in these marshes are water buffalo, two endemic rodent species, antelopes and gazelles and small animals such as the jerboa and several other mammals. The wetland birds Basra reed warbler (\"Acrocephalus griseldis\") and Iraq babbler (\"Argya altirostris\") are endemic to the Mesopotamian Marshes. The Basra reed warbler is endangered. Another wetland endemic species, Bunn's short-tailed bandicoot rat (\"Nesokia bunnii\"), is possibly extinct.\nTheir drainage began in the 1950s, to reclaim land for agriculture and oil exploration. Saddam Hussein extended this work in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as part of ecological warfare against the Marsh Arabs, a rebellious group of people in Baathist Iraq. However, with the breaching of the dikes by local communities after the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the ending of a four-year drought that same year, the process has been reversed and the marshes have experienced a substantial rate of recovery. The permanent wetlands now cover more than 50% of pre-1970s levels, with a remarkable regrowth of the Hammar and Hawizeh Marshes and some recovery of the Central Marshes.\nEcological threats.\nIraq suffers from desertification and soil salination due in large part to thousands of years of agricultural activity. Water and plant life are sparse. Saddam Hussein's government water-control projects drained the inhabited marsh areas east of An Nasiriyah by drying up or diverting streams and rivers. Shi'a Muslims were displaced under the Ba'athist regime. The destruction of the natural habitat poses serious threats to the area's wildlife populations. There are also inadequate supplies of potable water.\nThe marshlands were an extensive natural wetland ecosystem, which developed over thousands of years in the Tigris\u2013Euphrates basin and once covered 15\u201320,000 square kilometers. In the 1980s, this ecoregion was put in grave danger during the Iran\u2013Iraq War. After the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq's President Saddam Hussein initiated a drainage project on these marshes, leading to degradation of ecosystem services that caused economic and social issues for civilians. The Mesopotamian Marshes, which were inhabited by the Marsh Arabs, were almost completely drained. Although they had started to recover after the fall of Ba'athist Iraq in 2003, drought, intensive dam construction and irrigation schemes upstream have caused them to dry up once more. According to the United Nations Environmental Program and the AMAR Charitable Foundation, between 84% and 90% of the marshes have been destroyed since the 1970s. In 1994, 60 percent of the wetlands were destroyed by Hussein's regime \u2013 drained to permit military access and greater political control of the native Marsh Arabs. Canals, dykes and dams were built routing the water of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers around the marshes, instead of allowing water to move slowly through the marshland. After part of the Euphrates was dried up due to re-routing its water to the sea, a dam was built so water could not back up from the Tigris and sustain the former marshland. Some marshlands were burned and pipes buried underground helped to carry away water for quicker drying.\nRiparian entities have constructed dams along the Tigris\u2013Euphrates river system as a method of water management in response to droughts. Turkey, for example, is in control of an estimated 45% of the system's water sources due to its dam constructions for water quantity and hydroelectric power.\nThe drying of the marshes led to the disappearance of the salt-tolerant vegetation; the plankton rich waters that fertilized surrounding soils; 52 native fish species; the wild boar, red fox, buffalo and water birds of the marsh habitat.\nClimate change also affects the environmental and social well-being. Climate change and human interaction have directly impacted the Tigris\u2013Euphrates river system, leading to a negative trend in water storage capabilities in the river basin. The combination of diminishing water levels in the Tigris\u2013Euphrates river system and rising sea levels indicates the potential for rapid seawater intrusion in the river basin. This is especially concerning as the demand for clean water increases while the water supply decreases. Currently, the Middle East and North Africa are acknowledged as the most water scarce region in the world, with 61% of the population living in areas with high or very high water stress. As climate change worsens and population grows, water scarcity in the region is expected to worsen with 100% of people living in the Middle East and North Africa living in areas with high water stress by 2050.\nWater dispute.\nThe issue of water rights became a point of contention for Iraq, Turkey and Syria beginning in the 1960s when Turkey implemented a public-works project (the GAP project) aimed at harvesting the water from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers through the construction of 22 dams, for irrigation and hydroelectric energy purposes. Although the water dispute between Turkey and Syria was more problematic, the GAP project was also perceived as a threat by Iraq. In 1983, the Joint Technical Committee (JTC) was established to solve ongoing data controversies between Turkey, Syria, and Iraq but stopped meeting in the early 1990s after only passing two bilateral agreements. The tension between Turkey and Iraq about the issue was increased by the effect of Syria and Turkey's participation in the UN embargo against Iraq following the Gulf War. However, the issue had never become as significant as the water dispute between Turkey and Syria.\nThe 2008 drought in Iraq sparked new negotiations between Iraq and Turkey over trans-boundary river flows. Although the drought affected Turkey, Syria and Iran as well, Iraq complained regularly about reduced water flows. Iraq particularly complained about the Euphrates River because of the large number of dams on the river. Turkey agreed to increase the flow several times, beyond its means in order to supply Iraq with water. Iraq has seen significant declines in water storage and crop yields because of the drought. To make matters worse, Iraq's water infrastructure has suffered from years of conflict and neglect.\nIn 2008, Turkey, Iraq and Syria agreed to restart the Joint Trilateral Committee on water for the three nations for better water resources management. Turkey, Iraq and Syria signed a memorandum of understanding on September 3, 2009, in order to strengthen communication within the Tigris\u2013Euphrates Basin and to develop joint water-flow-monitoring stations. On September 19, 2009, Turkey formally agreed to increase the flow of the Euphrates River to 450 to 500 m3/s, but only until October 20, 2009. In exchange, Iraq agreed to trade petroleum with Turkey and help curb Kurdish militant activity in their border region. One of Turkey's last large GAP dams on the Tigris \u2013 the Ilisu Dam \u2013 is strongly opposed by Iraq and is the source of political strife. The Southeastern Anatolia Project (Turkish acronym: GAP) continues to be a source of tension in the region. GAP is a massive hydroelectric project, consisting of 21 dams and 19 hydroelectric facilities. In 2020, Iraqi authorities complained that the Il\u0131su Dam had decreased the Tigris river inflows and caused water shortages in Iraqi plains.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "10221": "Euphrates\nRiver in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria\nThe Euphrates ( ; see below) is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia (lit.\u2009'the land between the rivers'). Originating in Turkey, the Euphrates flows through Syria and Iraq to join the Tigris in the Shatt al-Arab in Iraq, which empties into the Persian Gulf.\nThe Euphrates is the fifteenth-longest river in Asia and the longest in Western Asia, at about , with a drainage area of that covers six countries.\nEtymology.\nThe term \"Euphrates\" derives from the Greek \"Euphr\u00e1t\u0113s\" (), adapted from , itself from . The Elamite name is ultimately derived from cuneiform \ud808\udf13\ud808\udd12\ud808\ude63; read as \"Buranun\" in Sumerian and \"Purattu\" in Akkadian; many cuneiform signs have a Sumerian pronunciation and an Akkadian pronunciation, taken from a Sumerian word and an Akkadian word that mean the same. The Akkadian \"Purattu\" has been perpetuated in Semitic languages (cf. \"al-Fur\u0101t\"; \"P\u01ddr\u0101\u1e6f\", \"P\u01ddr\u0101\u1e6f\") and in other nearby languages of the time (cf. Hurrian \"Puranti\", Sabarian \"Uruttu\"). The Elamite, Akkadian, and possibly Sumerian forms are suggested to be from an unrecorded substrate language. Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov suggest the proto-Sumerian \"*burudu\" \"copper\" (Sumerian \"urudu\") as an origin, with an explanation that Euphrates was the river by which copper ore was transported in rafts, since Mesopotamia was the center of copper metallurgy during the period.\nThe Euphrates is called \"Yeprat\" in Armenian (), \"Perat\" in modern Hebrew (), in Turkish and in Kurdish. The Mandaic name is (), and is often mentioned as (pronounced ) in Mandaean scriptures such as the \"Ginza Rabba\". In Mandaean scriptures, the Euphrates is considered to be the earthly manifestation of the heavenly yardna or flowing river (similar to the Yazidi concept of Lalish being the earthly manifestation of its heavenly counterpart, or the \u2018Sacred House\u2019 Kaaba in Mecca being the earthly manifestation of the heavenly Al-Bayt Al-Mamur).\nThe earliest references to the Euphrates come from cuneiform texts found in Shuruppak and pre-Sargonic Nippur in southern Iraq and date to the mid-3rd millennium BCE. In these texts, written in Sumerian, the Euphrates is called \"Buranuna\" (logographic: UD.KIB.NUN). The name could also be written KIB.NUN.(NA) or dKIB.NUN, with the prefix \"d\" indicating that the river was a divinity. In Sumerian, the name of the city of Sippar in modern-day Iraq was also written UD.KIB.NUN, indicating a historically strong relationship between the city and the river.\nCourse.\nThe Euphrates is the longest river of Western Asia. It emerges from the confluence of the Kara Su or Western Euphrates () and the Murat Su or Eastern Euphrates () upstream from the town of Keban in southeastern Turkey. Daoudy and Frenken put the length of the Euphrates from the source of the Murat River to the confluence with the Tigris at , of which is in Turkey, in Syria and in Iraq. The same figures are given by Isaev and Mikhailova. The length of the Shatt al-Arab, which connects the Euphrates and the Tigris with the Persian Gulf, is given by various sources as .\nBoth the Kara Su and the Murat Su rise northwest from Lake Van at elevations of and amsl, respectively. At the location of the Keban Dam, the two rivers, now combined into the Euphrates, have dropped to an elevation of amsl. From Keban to the Syrian\u2013Turkish border, the river drops another over a distance of less than . Once the Euphrates enters the Upper Mesopotamian plains, its grade drops significantly; within Syria the river falls while over the last stretch between H\u012bt and the Shatt al-Arab the river drops only .\nDischarge.\nThe Euphrates receives most of its water in the form of rainfall and melting snow, resulting in peak volumes during the months April through May. Discharge in these two months accounts for 36 percent of the total annual discharge of the Euphrates, or even 60\u201370 percent according to one source, while low runoff occurs in summer and autumn. The average natural annual flow of the Euphrates has been determined from early- and mid-twentieth century records as at Keban, at H\u012bt and at Hindiya. However, these averages mask the high inter-annual variability in discharge; at Birecik, just north of the Syro\u2013Turkish border, annual discharges have been measured that ranged from a low volume of in 1961 to a high of in 1963.\nThe discharge regime of the Euphrates has changed dramatically since the construction of the first dams in the 1970s. Data on Euphrates discharge collected after 1990 show the impact of the construction of the numerous dams in the Euphrates and of the increased withdrawal of water for irrigation. Average discharge at H\u012bt after 1990 has dropped to per second ( per year). The seasonal variability has equally changed. The pre-1990 peak volume recorded at H\u012bt was per second, while after 1990 it is only per second. The minimum volume at H\u012bt remained relatively unchanged, rising from per second before 1990 to per second afterward.\nTributaries.\nIn Syria, three rivers add their water to the Euphrates; the Sajur, the Balikh and the Khabur. These rivers rise in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains along the Syro\u2013Turkish border and add comparatively little water to the Euphrates. The Sajur is the smallest of these tributaries; emerging from two streams near Gaziantep and draining the plain around Manbij before emptying into the reservoir of the Tishrin Dam. The Balikh receives most of its water from a karstic spring near 'Ayn al-'Arus and flows due south until it reaches the Euphrates at the city of Raqqa. In terms of length, drainage basin and discharge, the Khabur is the largest of these three. Its main karstic springs are located around Ra's al-'Ayn, from where the Khabur flows southeast past Al-Hasakah, where the river turns south and drains into the Euphrates near Busayrah. Once the Euphrates enters Iraq, there are no more natural tributaries to the Euphrates, although canals connecting the Euphrates basin with the Tigris basin exist.\nDrainage basin.\nThe drainage basins of the Kara Su and the Murat River cover an area of and , respectively. Estimates of the area of the Euphrates drainage basin vary widely; from a low to a high . Recent estimates put the basin area at , and . The greater part of the Euphrates basin is located in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. According to both Daoudy and Frenken, Turkey's share is 28 percent, Syria's is 17 percent and that of Iraq is 40 percent. Isaev and Mikhailova estimate the percentages of the drainage basin lying within Turkey, Syria and Iraq at 33, 20 and 47 percent respectively. Some sources estimate that approximately 15 percent of the drainage basin is located within Saudi Arabia, while a small part falls inside the borders of Kuwait. Finally, some sources also include Jordan in the drainage basin of the Euphrates; a small part of the eastern desert () drains toward the east rather than to the west.\nClimate change.\nIn 2021, the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources reported that the Euphrates river could dry out by 2040 due to climate change and droughts.\nNatural history.\nThe Euphrates flows through a number of distinct vegetation zones. Although millennia-long human occupation in most parts of the Euphrates basin has significantly degraded the landscape, patches of original vegetation remain. The steady drop in annual rainfall from the sources of the Euphrates toward the Persian Gulf is a strong determinant for the vegetation that can be supported. In its upper reaches the Euphrates flows through the mountains of Southeast Turkey and their southern foothills which support a xeric woodland. Plant species in the moister parts of this zone include various oaks, pistachio trees, and \"Rosaceae\" (rose/plum family). The drier parts of the xeric woodland zone supports less dense oak forest and \"Rosaceae\". Here can also be found the wild variants of many cereals, including einkorn wheat, emmer, oat and rye.\nSouth of this zone lies a zone of mixed woodland-steppe vegetation. Between Raqqa and the Syro\u2013Iraqi border the Euphrates flows through a steppe landscape. This steppe is characterised by white wormwood (\"Artemisia herba-alba\") and Amaranthaceae. Throughout history, this zone has been heavily overgrazed due to the practicing of sheep and goat pastoralism by its inhabitants. Southeast of the border between Syria and Iraq starts true desert. This zone supports either no vegetation at all or small pockets of \"Chenopodiaceae\" or \"Poa sinaica\". Although today nothing of it survives due to human interference, research suggests that the Euphrates Valley would have supported a riverine forest. Species characteristic of this type of forest include the Oriental plane, the Euphrates poplar, the tamarisk, the ash and various wetland plants.\nAmong the fish species in the Tigris\u2013Euphrates basin, the family of the Cyprinidae are the most common, with 34 species out of 52 in total. Among the Cyprinids, the mangar has good recreational fishing qualities, leading the British to nickname it the \"Tigris salmon.\" The Euphrates softshell turtle is an endangered soft-shelled turtle that is limited to the Tigris\u2013Euphrates river system.\nThe Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs from the 1st millennium BCE depict lion and bull hunts in fertile landscapes. Sixteenth to nineteenth century European travellers in the Syrian Euphrates basin reported on an abundance of animals living in the area, many of which have become rare or even extinct. Species like gazelle, onager and the now-extinct Arabian ostrich lived in the steppe bordering the Euphrates valley, while the valley itself was home to the wild boar. Carnivorous species include the wolf, the golden jackal, the red fox, the leopard and the lion. The Syrian brown bear can be found in the mountains of Southeast Turkey. The presence of Eurasian beaver has been attested in the bone assemblage of the prehistoric site of Tell Abu Hureyra in Syria, but the beaver has never been sighted in historical times.\nRiver.\nThe Hindiya Barrage on the Iraqi Euphrates, based on plans by British civil engineer William Willcocks and finished in 1913, was the first modern water diversion structure built in the Tigris\u2013Euphrates river system. The Hindiya Barrage was followed in the 1950s by the Ramadi Barrage and the nearby Abu Dibbis Regulator, which serve to regulate the flow regime of the Euphrates and to discharge excess flood water into the depression that is now Lake Habbaniyah. Iraq's largest dam on the Euphrates is the Haditha Dam; a earth-fill dam creating Lake Qadisiyah. Syria and Turkey built their first dams in the Euphrates in the 1970s. The Tabqa Dam in Syria was completed in 1973 while Turkey finished the Keban Dam, a prelude to the immense Southeastern Anatolia Project, in 1974. Since then, Syria has built two more dams in the Euphrates, the Freedom Dam and the Tishrin Dam, and plans to build a fourth dam \u2013 the Halabiye Dam \u2013 between Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor. The Tabqa Dam is Syria's largest dam and its reservoir (Lake Assad) is an important source of irrigation and drinking water. It was planned that should be irrigated from Lake Assad, but in 2000 only had been realized. Syria also built three smaller dams on the Khabur and its tributaries.\nWith the implementation of the Southeastern Anatolia Project (\"\", or \"GAP\") in the 1970s, Turkey launched an ambitious plan to harness the waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates for irrigation and hydroelectricity production and provide an economic stimulus to its southeastern provinces. GAP affects a total area of and approximately 7\u00a0million people; representing about 10 percent of Turkey's total surface area and population, respectively. When completed, GAP will consist of 22 dams \u2013 including the Keban Dam \u2013 and 19 power plants and provide irrigation water to of agricultural land, which is about 20 percent of the irrigable land in Turkey. C. of this irrigated land is located in the Euphrates basin. By far the largest dam in GAP is the Atat\u00fcrk Dam, located c. northwest of \u015eanl\u0131urfa. This dam was completed in 1992; thereby creating a reservoir that is the third-largest lake in Turkey. With a maximum capacity of , the Atat\u00fcrk Dam reservoir is large enough to hold the entire annual discharge of the Euphrates. Completion of GAP was scheduled for 2010 but has been delayed because the World Bank has withheld funding due to the lack of an official agreement on water sharing between Turkey and the downstream states on the Euphrates and the Tigris.\nApart from barrages and dams, Iraq has also created an intricate network of canals connecting the Euphrates with Lake Habbaniyah, Lake Tharthar, and Abu Dibbis reservoir; all of which can be used to store excess floodwater. Via the Shatt al-Hayy, the Euphrates is connected with the Tigris. The largest canal in this network is the Main Outfall Drain or so-called \"Third River;\" constructed between 1953 and 1992. This canal is intended to drain the area between the Euphrates and the Tigris south of Baghdad to prevent soil salinization from irrigation. It also allows large freight barges to navigate up to Baghdad.\nEnvironmental and social effects.\nThe construction of the dams and irrigation schemes on the Euphrates has had a significant impact on the environment and society of each riparian country. The dams constructed as part of GAP \u2013 in both the Euphrates and the Tigris basins \u2013 have affected 382 villages and almost 200,000 people have been resettled elsewhere. The largest number of people was displaced by the building of the Atat\u00fcrk Dam, which alone affected 55,300 people. A survey among those who were displaced showed that the majority were unhappy with their new situation and that the compensation they had received was considered insufficient. The flooding of Lake Assad led to the forced displacement of c. 4,000 families, who were resettled in other parts of northern Syria as part of a now abandoned plan to create an \"Arab belt\" along the borders with Turkey and Iraq.\nApart from the changes in the discharge regime of the river, the numerous dams and irrigation projects have also had other effects on the environment. The creation of reservoirs with large surfaces in countries with high average temperatures has led to increased evaporation; thereby reducing the total amount of water that is available for human use. Annual evaporation from reservoirs has been estimated at in Turkey, in Syria and in Iraq. Water quality in the Iraqi Euphrates is low because irrigation water tapped in Turkey and Syria flows back into the river, together with dissolved fertilizer chemicals used on the fields. The salinity of Euphrates water in Iraq has increased as a result of upstream dam construction, leading to lower suitability as drinking water. The many dams and irrigation schemes, and the associated large-scale water abstraction, have also had a detrimental effect on the ecologically already fragile Mesopotamian Marshes and on freshwater fish habitats in Iraq.\nThe inundation of large parts of the Euphrates valley, especially in Turkey and Syria, has led to the flooding of many archaeological sites and other places of cultural significance. Although concerted efforts have been made to record or save as much of the endangered cultural heritage as possible, many sites are probably lost forever. The combined GAP projects on the Turkish Euphrates have led to major international efforts to document the archaeological and cultural heritage of the endangered parts of the valley. Especially the flooding of Zeugma with its unique Roman mosaics by the reservoir of the Birecik Dam has generated much controversy in both the Turkish and international press. The construction of the Tabqa Dam in Syria led to a large international campaign coordinated by UNESCO to document the heritage that would disappear under the waters of Lake Assad. Archaeologists from numerous countries excavated sites ranging in date from the Natufian to the Abbasid period, and two minarets were dismantled and rebuilt outside the flood zone. Important sites that have been flooded or affected by the rising waters of Lake Assad include Mureybet, Emar and Abu Hureyra. A similar international effort was made when the Tishrin Dam was constructed, which led, among others, to the flooding of the important Pre-Pottery Neolithic B site of Jerf el Ahmar. An archaeological survey and rescue excavations were also carried out in the area flooded by Lake Qadisiya in Iraq. Parts of the flooded area have recently become accessible again due to the drying up of the lake, resulting not only in new possibilities for archaeologists to do more research, but also providing opportunities for looting, which has been rampant elsewhere in Iraq in the wake of the 2003 invasion.\nReligion.\nIslam.\nIn Islamic tradition, a hadith of Muhammad states that the Last Hour will not occur until the Euphrates River uncovers a mountain of gold, over which people will fight. Ninety-nine out of every one hundred individuals engaged in this conflict will perish, with each person hoping to be the one who secures the treasure. The hadith also advises that whoever finds this gold should refrain from taking any of it. This event is considered one of the minor signs of the approaching Day of Judgment.\nChristianity.\nIn the Christian Bible, the Euphrates River is mentioned in Revelation 16:12, in the final book of the New Testament. The author, John of Patmos, writes about the Euphrates river drying up as part of a series of events that foretell the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.\nThe river Phrath mentioned in Genesis 2:14 is also identified as the Euphrates.\nHistory.\nPalaeolithic to Chalcolithic periods.\nThe early occupation of the Euphrates basin was limited to its upper reaches; that is, the area that is popularly known as the Fertile Crescent. Acheulean stone artifacts have been found in the Sajur basin and in the El Kowm oasis in the central Syrian steppe; the latter together with remains of \"Homo erectus\" that were dated to 450,000 years old. In the Taurus Mountains and the upper part of the Syrian Euphrates valley, early permanent villages such as Abu Hureyra \u2013 at first occupied by hunter-gatherers but later by some of the earliest farmers, Jerf el Ahmar, Mureybet and Neval\u0131 \u00c7ori became established from the eleventh millennium BCE onward. In the absence of irrigation, these early farming communities were limited to areas where rainfed agriculture was possible, that is, the upper parts of the Syrian Euphrates as well as Turkey. Late Neolithic villages, characterized by the introduction of pottery in the early 7th millennium BCE, are known throughout this area. Occupation of lower Mesopotamia started in the 6th millennium and is generally associated with the introduction of irrigation, as rainfall in this area is insufficient for dry agriculture. Evidence for irrigation has been found at several sites dating to this period, including Tell es-Sawwan. During the 5th millennium BCE, or late Ubaid period, northeastern Syria was dotted by small villages, although some of them grew to a size of over . In Iraq, sites like Eridu and Ur were already occupied during the Ubaid period. Clay boat models found at Tell Mashnaqa along the Khabur indicate that riverine transport was already practiced during this period. The Uruk period, roughly coinciding with the 4th millennium BCE, saw the emergence of truly urban settlements across Mesopotamia. Cities like Tell Brak and Uruk grew to over in size and displayed monumental architecture. The spread of southern Mesopotamian pottery, architecture and sealings far into Turkey and Iran has generally been interpreted as the material reflection of a widespread trade system aimed at providing the Mesopotamian cities with raw materials. Habuba Kabira on the Syrian Euphrates is a prominent example of a settlement that is interpreted as an Uruk colony.\nAncient history.\nDuring the Jemdet Nasr (3600\u20133100 BCE) and Early Dynastic periods (3100\u20132350 BCE), southern Mesopotamia experienced a growth in the number and size of settlements, suggesting strong population growth. These settlements, including Sumero-Akkadian sites like Sippar, Uruk, Adab and Kish, were organized in competing city-states. Many of these cities were located along canals of the Euphrates and the Tigris that have since dried up, but that can still be identified from remote sensing imagery. A similar development took place in Upper Mesopotamia, Subartu and Assyria, although only from the mid 3rd millennium and on a smaller scale than in Lower Mesopotamia. Sites like Ebla, Mari and Tell Leilan grew to prominence for the first time during this period.\nLarge parts of the Euphrates basin were for the first time united under a single ruler during the Akkadian Empire (2335\u20132154 BC) and Ur III empires, which controlled \u2013 either directly or indirectly through vassals \u2013 large parts of modern-day Iraq and northeastern Syria. Following their collapse, the Old Assyrian Empire (1975\u20131750 BCE) and Mari asserted their power over northeast Syria and northern Mesopotamia, while southern Mesopotamia was controlled by city-states like Isin, Kish and Larsa before their territories were absorbed by the newly emerged state of Babylonia under Hammurabi in the early to mid 18th century BCE.\nIn the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE, the Euphrates basin was divided between Kassite Babylon in the south and Mitanni, Assyria and the Hittite Empire in the"}, "descending_order": ["209798", "10221"], "permutation_1": ["209798", "10221"], "permutation_2": ["10221", "209798"], "permutation_3": ["10221", "209798"]}
{"id": "nq_5036783153145393270", "docs_added": {"2462414": "Don't You (Forget About Me)\n1985 single by Simple Minds\n\"Don't You (Forget About Me)\" is a song by the Scottish rock band Simple Minds, released as a single in 1985. It was written and composed by the record producer Keith Forsey and the guitarist Steve Schiff for the film \"The Breakfast Club\" (1985). Simple Minds initially declined to record it, preferring to record their own material, but accepted after several other acts also declined.\n\"Don't You (Forget About Me)\" became a breakout hit for Simple Minds, an iconic song and a 1980s anthem. The single reached No. 1 in the United States and Canada, becoming Simple Minds' biggest hit in the United States. It also reached No. 7 on the UK Singles Chart and reached the top ten in charts around the world.\nRecording.\n\"Don't You (Forget About Me)\" was written by Steve Schiff and Keith Forsey for the film \"The Breakfast Club\" (1985). Forsey and Schiff were inspired by a scene in which an introvert and a school bully bond while no one else is watching. Forsey said, \"It was: don't forget, when we're back in the classroom, you're not just a bad guy and we've got other things in common.\"\nSimple Minds initially declined to record \"Don't You (Forget About Me)\", as they felt they should only record their own material. Their guitarist, Charlie Burchill, said they felt it did not suit them as \"we had delusions of being ultra-hip\". Their manager, Bruce Findlay, believed it would be successful in the United States. He arranged a private screening of \"The Breakfast Club\" in an effort to change their minds, but they still declined. Their lead vocalist, Jim Kerr, said later: \"We couldn't give a toss about teenage American schoolkids.\"\nForsey offered \"Don't You (Forget About Me)\" to Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music, who declined as he was working on his album \"Boys and Girls\" (1985). Ferry said later: \"It was just bad timing ... Keith Forsey sent me a demo of the song and it sounded like a hit to me.\" The record label, A&M, suggested Corey Hart, who had a hit at the time with \"Sunglasses at Night\", but Forsey did not think he was the right singer. Forsey's frequent collaborator Billy Idol also declined.\nKerr's wife, the songwriter Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, liked the song and urged him to record it. Simple Minds agreed to try it after spending a few days with Forsey and becoming friends. They were impressed by Forsey's work in German experimental music, such as Amon D\u00fc\u00fcl II, and his work with Giorgio Moroder, including \"I Feel Love\" by Donna Summer.\nKerr added the \"hey hey hey\" to the introduction and the \"la la la\" to the ending, intending to write new lyrics, but Forsey insisted on keeping them. Burchill added power chords, and said later: \"It was almost a caricature \u2013 I associated powerchords with American AOR. But it worked.\" The \"Financial Times\" wrote that the chords \"[helped] turn Forsey's sweet paean to teenage longing into a rousing, stadium-sized anthem\".\nSimple Minds did not anticipate the song's success. In 2016, Burchill said: \"When I listen to it now, it\u2019s obviously a brilliant, well-crafted pop song. I\u2019m embarrassed we dissed it so much.\"\nRelease and critical reception.\n\"Don't You (Forget About Me)\" was played during the opening and closing credits of \"The Breakfast Club\" (1985). It was included on the film's soundtrack. \"Don't You (Forget About Me)\" was released as a single in February 1985 in the United States and reached No. 1 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 in May 1985. The song reached No. 1 in Canada in June 1985. It is the band's only number-one hit on the US Top Rock Tracks chart, staying atop that chart for three weeks. The song became Simple Minds' breakout hit, as well as its biggest American hit.\n\"Cashbox\" said that \"though the lyric theme is a simple enough declaration, the lead vocals and vivid orchestration make the tune complex and moving\". The song was included on the band's greatest hits compilation album, \"Glittering Prize 81/92\" (1992). It soon became a fixture of the band's live sets, with an extended audience participation section during its inclusion on the 2015 tour to promote the band's \"Big Music\" album.\nJohn Leland of \"Spin\" described the song as \"a romantic and melancholy dance track\" that \"cuts ice both in the living room and on the dance floor\". The song has become iconic, and has been described by AmericanSongwriter.com as \"an \u201880s masterpiece\" and \"an American teen anthem\".\nCover versions.\nIn February 2021, indie folk band Boy & Bear along with Annie Hamilton covered \"Don't You (Forget About Me)\" for Australian youth radio station Triple J's \"Like a Version\". The cover placed 92nd in Triple J's first Like a Version Hottest 100. Billy Idol also covered the song as an add-on track to his \"Greatest Hits\" album in 2001.\nMusic video.\nThe music video \u2013 filmed inside Knebworth House, Hertfordshire, England \u2013 was directed by Daniel Kleinman. It takes place in a darkened room with a chandelier, a rocking horse, a jukebox, and television sets displaying scenes from \"The Breakfast Club\". The room gets increasingly cluttered with random objects as the video progresses until the last minute. The video was published on YouTube on 3 December 2010; as of February 2025, it had been viewed more than 358 million times.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nPersonnel.\nSimple Minds\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "23894696": "Don't You Forget About Me (film)\nDon't You Forget About Me is a 2009 Canadian documentary film about screenwriter, director, and producer John Hughes. Directed by Matt Austin, the film was named after the 1985 song of the same name by Simple Minds, which in turn was the theme song for Hughes' film \"The Breakfast Club\". The film specifically focused on Hughes' fade from prominence in the early 1990s.\nBackground.\nThe documentary details the journey of a group of young filmmakers who go in search of the reclusive icon, documenting their search through interviews of the people with whom Hughes had worked and fans of his films. Those interviewed include Ilan Mitchell-Smith, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Kelly Le Brock, Mia Sara, Alan Ruck, Kevin Smith, Roger Ebert, and Jim Kerr of the band Simple Minds. Filming began in 2006.\nHome media.\nThe film was completed in 2008, but did not find a distributor for over a year.\nWhen Hughes died of a heart attack, aged 59, on August 6, 2009, a bidding war broke out for the film. It was announced on August 11, 2009, that the film would be distributed by Alliance Films. The film aired on the TV channel Encore for a brief time as well.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "36805210": "Don't Forget Me (Smash song)\n2012 single by the cast of Smash\n\"Don't Forget Me\" is an original song introduced in the fifteenth episode of the first season of the musical TV series \"Smash\", entitled \"Bombshell\". It was written by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, but in the show's fictional universe, it was written by the songwriting team of Tom Levitt (Christian Borle) and Julia Houston (Debra Messing) for their Marilyn Monroe musical \"Bombshell\".\nIn the episode, the song is sung by Karen Cartwright (Katharine McPhee) as Marilyn Monroe during a Boston preview for the musical after having just taken over the role from Rebecca Duvall (Uma Thurman), who has been felled by illness.\nThe song is reprised by Ivy Lynn (Megan Hilty) in the twelfth episode of Season 2, \"Opening Night\", as part of the performance of \"Bombshell's\" opening night on Broadway opening, with Ivy playing the lead of Marilyn.\nThe song was initially released as a single from iTunes and Amazon.com's MP3 store and is currently available on the cast album \"Bombshell\".\nProduction.\nThe song is about Marilyn Monroe's legacy, how she will inspire people, and make the world a better place through her tragic 'cautionary tale'. It has a tempo of quarter = 138 and is described as \"Moderately flowing\". The song ranges from F#3 to Eb5. It starts off in the key of E Major, but has a key change after the first chorus to F Major and another at the end of the bridge to G-flat Major.\nWithin the context of the series, the song is written by the songwriting duo as a finale song in under 3 hours after a reprise of Let Me Be Your Star in a suicide scene was deemed too depressing as the final number. After all the drama that went on beforehand, \"Karen walks out onstage [after managing to memorize the song in record time] and brings down the house with 'Don\u2019t Forget Me'. As the song ends, \"we see Ivy back in the dressing room with a bottle of pills\". Chris Rovzar of Vanity Fair suggests the following, \"we don\u2019t hear the final response from the Bombshell audience, but the way they reacted during the key change in \u201cDon\u2019t Forget Me\u201d suggests they were poised to give a standing ovation\". The song ends with the camera spinning in a circle around Karen as she \"triumphant[ly] flail[s]...her arm[s in the air]\".\nCritical reception.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\u201cDon\u2019t Forget Me\u201d, a final energetic ballad that led into a \u201cLet Me Be Your Star\u201d reprise [is an example of how the show's best element has always been its original music]. Even though I was furious that it was McPhee singing it and not Megan Hilty...the song moved me, and I thought it was a fitting way to end a musical about the life of Marilyn Monroe. She pleads for the audience to remember her good qualities, how hard she strived, and not how hard she suffered. She wants to be a legend. A tall order, but as Marilyn is the textbook definition of legend in our culture, it doesn't feel stretched, and even the fade-in of a large projection of her face comes at just the right moment. It\u2019s sappy and overstated, sure, but so is much of the best work on Broadway, and I know I would have applauded like mad for that finale had I been in the audience...[Karen] brings it home, and it\u2019s magical. This is one of Tom and Julia\u2019s best songs yet, [and is worth] 4.5 out of 5 Jazz Hands.\nRachel Syme, \"'Smash' finale recap: Let Megan Hilty be your star\", Los Angeles Times.\nChris Rovzar of Vanity Fair comments that \"the lyrics were terrible and the composition spotty\", and questions whether this was because within the context of the episode, \"Tom and Julia supposedly did write it in just three hours\", or because Shaiman and Wittman had genuine faith on the song. While he says that Karen \"hit [the song] out of the park\", he suggests that some lyrics were less than believable, such as \"help for the downtrodden\u201d, which he argues was never \"one of Marilyn\u2019s signature messages\".\nThough he gave the show as a whole much praise, even stating that \"[he'd] buy tickets for it tomorrow if the show actually existed\", Michael Slezak of TV Line gave \"Don't Forget Me\" a negative review, describing the \"final ballad [that] Tom and Julia cook...up for Karen\" as \"downright embarrassing\". He described the music as in the style of \"rejected Disney princess theme songs\", and also criticized the out-of-place and cheesy lyrics, such as, \u201dwhen you sing happy birthday to someone you love/or see diamonds you wish were all free/ Please say that you won\u2019t, I pray that you don\u2019t forget me\u201d. He claims that the song requires a rewrite.\nPerezHilton.com described Don't Forget Me as a \"breathtaking finale performance\".\nJJ of TV Is My Pacifier said of the song, \"the orchestration was amazing, the lyrics worked, and it really tied into Marilyn and the music of 'Bombshell'. I couldn't have imagined a better finale\".\nIdolhead wrote in his blog that the song is \"one for the ages\", and speculated it would be up for an award, along with \u201cLet Me Be Your Star\u201d, the unofficial theme song of the show.\nNathaniel Rogers of Thefilmexperience.net describes the song as \"the second worst original song in a generally sensational musical score\", and described it as a \"weak song\" that sounds like the \"interchangeable anthemic ballads that they always end American Idol with\". He gave the song a C\u2212 grade.\nJonathan Elliott of CinemaBlend.com describes the song as a \"nice capper on the season\".\nPat Cerasaro of broadwayworld.com describes \"Don't Forget Me\" as the \"spine-tingling new swan song epilogue for the show-within-the-show\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "22077240": "Don't Forget (Demi Lovato song)\n2009 single by Demi Lovato\n\"Don't Forget\" is a song by American singer Demi Lovato, from her debut album of the same name. It was written by Lovato and the Jonas Brothers, who co-produced the song with John Fields. It was released as the album's third and final single on March 17, 2009, through Hollywood Records. The inspiration of the song came from Lovato falling in love with someone who later left her. According to Lovato, it is one of the songs on the album that she most relates to. Musically, \"Don't Forget\" is a midtempo glam rock ballad that features Lovato singing with breathy falsetto vocals. An accompanying music video was released on March 20, 2009. In 2023, the song was re-recorded for her first remix album \"Revamped\".\nUpon the release of the album, \"Don't Forget\" was well-received from music critics, who noted the transition from her \"tween sound\" to more mature material. The song achieved moderate commercial success, reaching number forty-one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. It also reached number seventy-six on the Canadian Hot 100. Lovato has performed the song numerous times including on \"The Ellen DeGeneres Show\".\nBackground and composition.\n\"Don't Forget\" was written by Lovato along with the Jonas Brothers, who produced it with John Fields. The song features Dorian Crozier and Michael Bland on drums, and Fields on bass, guitars and keyboards. Nick Jonas also played the guitar and percussion on the song. The song is registered as \"Did You Forget\" with the Broadcast Music, Inc. Lovato has stated that \"Don't Forget\" is one of the songs on \"Don't Forget\" that she relates to the most, and that she felt \"a lot of emotion while recording it\". In an interview with PopEater, she elaborated, \"Everyone goes through the experience of falling in love, but then the other person just walks away, and goes somewhere else. I went through an experience like that and wanted to write about it. I got over it, and now a year later I don't have those feelings about that person anymore.\" The song and \"La La Land\" were included as bonus tracks on European editions of her sophomore album \"Here We Go Again\".\n\"Don't Forget\" is a midtempo glam rock ballad sung with vulnerable and breathy vocals in a falsetto tone. According to the sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, the song is set in common time with a metronome of 92 beats per minute. It is composed in the key of E major and Lovato's vocal range spans from the note of C\u266f4 to the note of E5. The song includes a \"rocking\" instrumental and a heavy guitar break. Ed Masley of \"The Arizona Republic\" compared the track to songs by Green Day. Lyrically, \"Don't Forget\" is about one of Lovato's old love interests who left her just as she was falling in love with him. The theme is demonstrated in lyrical lines such as, \"Did you forget that I was even alive? Did you forget everything we ever had?\"\nMusic video.\n\"Don't Forget\" was directed by Robert Hales. According to Lovato, different video treatments had been written, but she rejected them as she wanted to come up with the idea herself. She said, \"They had treatments [for the video], but I was just like, 'No, scratch them.' I want to come up with the idea. I want to show you the colors, I want to show you everything. This is art to me and I don't want it to be somebody else's decision.\" In an interview with PopEater, Lovato said of the video:\n\"It was actually really freezing cold [in the rain]. You could see your breath. And I was in the rain for only a short time \u2013 my whole band was out there for an hour-and-a-half. It was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do on a shoot. But it went by so quickly. I had a body suit on underneath my clothes, so there's a little fun fact for you. I was trying not to break my focus pretty much the entire shoot, because I was really in that zone \u2013 thinking a lot about the position I was in a year ago... thinking about the situation and how much I wanted to get all that emotion off my chest.\"\nSteve Helling of \"People\" magazine wrote that Lovato shows her mature side in the video, saying that \"it's hard not to notice that the 16-year-old \"Camp Rock\" star is growing up.\" The video begins in a tour bus with Lovato's band. She is seen sitting next to a window in the back of the bus, where she precedes to sing the first lines. As the song progresses, she walks out of the bus in the rain, holding an umbrella. She walks out of the parking lot and into an amusement park, where she stands in front of a carousel in the rain as she continues to sing. After the second chorus, Lovato and her band perform in the rain with the water altering colors in the background. As the last verse approaches, she is back on the tour bus. A single tear rolls down her cheek and the video ends.\nLive performances.\nLovato performed \"Don't Forget\" on \"The Ellen DeGeneres Show\" on April 14, 2009. Also in April 2009, the song was performed as part of the \"iTunes Live from London\" series. The full performances were released as an iTunes Store-exclusive extended play featuring recorded live versions of the tracks. In May 2009, Lovato performed the song at a Walmart concert, which was later released as part of a live album entitled \"\" (2009). The release featured recorded live versions of the performers on a CD, and the full performances on a DVD.\nDuring the summer of 2008, Lovato performed the song in both of her Warm Up Tour and the Jonas Brothers' Burnin' Up Tour, for the latter she served as the opening act. Later in 2009, the song was performed during her Summer Tour 2009. While reviewing a show in Glendale, Arizona, Ed Masley of \"The Arizona Republic\" wrote that the song \"survived the transformation to an unplugged ballad, making the most of Lovato's most vulnerable vocal performance of the night.\" In 2010, she performed the song during her South American tour. Lovato also performed the song during her set at the Jonas Brothers Live in Concert World Tour 2010. Scott Mervis of \"Pittsburgh Post-Gazette\" wrote that Lovato performed a \"high-energy, high-volume\" version of the song. In September 2011, Lovato performed the song during the revue concert An Evening with Demi Lovato. Lovato also performed an acoustic medley of \"Don't Forget\" and \"Catch Me\" at the Vevo Certified SuperFanFest in 2014.\nCritical reception.\nThe song was well-received from music critics. Ed Masley of \"The Arizona Republic\" included \"Don't Forget\" on his \"Top 10 from the Disney girls\" list at number two, and wrote, \"She really sells this epic glam-rock ballad with her choked-up vocals, [...] She wrote it with the Jonas Brothers, one of whom has clearly been enjoying Green Day's latest work. But truthfully, this would have been among the more compelling anthems on '21st Century Breakdown'.\" Judy Coleman of \"The Boston Globe\" wrote, \"Lovato has already mastered the limited range of skills required of today's pop starlets: the vulnerable-kitten verse, the banshee-shriek chorus, the stiffly sexy whispered asides. She rhymes 'we used to be so strong' and 'our love is like a song' without irony\". Michael Menachem of \"Billboard\" wrote that Lovato, like Miley Cyrus before her, \"has also stepped away briefly from the tween sound with her album's title track, 'Don't Forget'.\" Menachem wrote, \"She may be reaching a new level with a poised vocal performance, as she too is looking to be taken seriously.\" Joey Guerra of \"The Houston Chronicle\" called the track an \"age-appropriate blueprint laid out by Hilary Duff and [Miley] Cyrus\".\nChart performance.\nDue to strong digital sales when the album was released, \"Don't Forget\" debuted on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 at number sixty-eight on October 11, 2008 and fell off the chart the following week. On April 4, 2009, it re-entered the chart at number eighty-four. The song steadily ascended the chart for three weeks, before eventually reaching a peak of number forty-one on its fifth week on the chart. It was Lovato's best performing solo song on the chart until \"Here We Go Again\" reached number fifteen on August 8, 2009. As of October 2017, it has sold 1.1 million copies in the nation. In Canada, \"Don't Forget\" debuted on the Canadian Hot 100 at number eighty-two on May 2, 2009. The next week, it reached seventy-six, which became its peak. The song also reached number sixty-two on the now defunct Pop 100 chart.\nCredits and personnel.\nRecording and management\nPersonnel\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCredits adapted from \"Don't Forget\" liner notes.\nCertifications.\n! scope=\"col\" | Region\n! scope=\"col\" | Certification!! scope=\"col\" data-sort-type=\"number\" | Certified units/sales\n! scope=\"row\" | United States (RIAA)\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "7017021": "Don't Forget to Remember\n\"Don't Forget to Remember\", also called \"Don't Forget to Remember Me\", is a country ballad recorded by the Bee Gees, from the album \"Cucumber Castle\". The song was written by Barry and Maurice Gibb. It was produced by the band with Robert Stigwood.\nRecording.\nThe song's genre is country, like much of what Maurice and Barry wrote together without input from their brother Robin, but all three brothers have written in the medium at other times, most notably the Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton hit \"Islands in the Stream\", and its parent album \"Eyes That See in the Dark\".\nThe song was recorded on 7 May 1969, the same day as the unreleased track \"Who Knows What a Room Is\". Barry Gibb's lead vocal is in a lower register than usual. Peter Mason, Robin's intended replacement in the group, originally sang harmony vocals on the song, as Mason explains, \"I did some harmonies, I remember doing three songs, there was 'Don't Forget to Remember' and I put the harmony down on that and two other songs. [I don't know] whether it's a tryout, although he'd said before that he wanted me, because we sat and sang together.\"\nMason also explained: \"When I sit and listen to 'Don't Forget to Remember' I can't really tell whether it's me or not. He ran the tracks and said, 'Can you put a harmony to that?'\". The song also sticks out in Mason's memory.\nStructure.\nThe song features Barry Gibb singing at a lower pitch than usual. The song's lyrics follow the country-song tradition of romantic laments with its tearful first-person lyrics about a man haunted by a failed love affair he can't put out of his mind. Its melody matches the yearning quality of the lyrics, especially on the chorus, which underpins the forlorn wish \"Don't forget to remember me/And the love that used to be\" with glorious runs of ascending notes. On paper, the song seems applicable to the group's usual pop style but their recording uses country-music elements to carry it into that genre, a prominent acoustic guitar cuts through the background orchestration and Barry Gibb adds a Nashville-inspired twang to his vocal.\nRelease.\nMaurice's reaction when the song was released was \"The thing is that it is Jim Reeves-ish it's rather like 'Oh Lonesome Me' and that sort of song and you'll never forget the melody. It wasn't a deliberate dedication to Jim Reeves - it's just worked out that way\". Maurice also explains, \"We know we don't want to split up, maybe Colin will want to leave sometime in the future, but we all have different things we've involved in\". The single covers of the song, (in all countries) features the three remaining Bee Gees after the departure of Robin Gibb.\n\"Record World\" called it a \"country-flavored ballad\" that's \"another solid winner for the Bee Gees.\"\nThe song was re-released in CD by RSO Records as a part in the EP of the same name (1987).\nPersonnel.\nCredits from Bee Gees historian and sessionographer Joseph Brennan.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCertifications.\n! scope=\"col\" | Region\n! scope=\"col\" | Certification!! scope=\"col\" data-sort-type=\"number\" | Certified units/sales\n! scope=\"row\" | New Zealand (RMNZ)\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18767391": "Don't Forget\n2008 studio album by Demi Lovato\nDon't Forget is the debut studio album by American singer Demi Lovato. It was released on September 23, 2008, by Hollywood Records. She started working on the album in September 2007, while filming the Disney Channel original movie \"Camp Rock\". Lovato co-wrote most of the songs with the Jonas Brothers, who produced the album along with John Fields. Other songwriters include Kara DioGuardi, Jason Reeves and Rooney frontman Robert Schwartzman. \"Don't Forget\" features primarily a power pop and rock sound, with the lyrical content addressing adolescent topics including heartbreak and independence.\nThe album was met with generally positive reviews from critics, many of whom noted distinctive similarities with the works of the Jonas Brothers. \"Don't Forget\" debuted at number two on the US \"Billboard\" 200 and was eventually certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It has sold over 540,000 copies in the country. Elsewhere, \"Don't Forget\" reached the top 10 on the Canadian Albums Chart and reached the top 40 in Spain and New Zealand.\n\"Get Back\" was released as the lead single from the album and reached number 43 on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100. \"La La Land\" was the second single from the album, peaking at number 52 in the United States and inside the top 40 in Ireland and the United Kingdom. The third single, its title track, reached number 41 in the US. \"Don't Forget\" was further promoted by the tour .\nBackground.\nAt 15 years old, Lovato was discovered by Disney Channel during an open call audition in her hometown of Dallas, Texas and made her debut on the short series \"As the Bell Rings\" in 2007. Lovato subsequently auditioned for a role on the television series \"Jonas\", but did not get the part. Instead, Lovato received the lead role in the musical film \"Camp Rock\" after she impressed network executives. Later, Lovato auditioned for a role on the series \"Sonny with a Chance\", which Lovato also received. For \"Camp Rock\", Lovato submitted an audition tape and Gary Marsh, Disney's president of entertainment, asked her to sing. Lovato recalled that \"They kind of put me on the spot. I don't mind it. When people put me on the spot, it's kind of like, 'Hey, I'm not going to get nervous. I'm just going to do what I do.' So I did what I did.\" Lovato performed Christina Aguilera's \"Ain't No Other Man\" and Hollywood Records senior vice president Bob Cavallo said that their \"jaws just dropped\". The stunt resulted in Lovato receiving the lead role in \"Camp Rock\", and a record deal with the label in early 2008.\nLovato enlisted her \"Camp Rock\" co-stars the Jonas Brothers to work with her on the album. Lovato said that it was \"important\" to include them on the album as the singer \"would love to have their input anytime\". Lovato felt that she needed help with the writing process as she tended to write songs that were \"a little bit more intense and less catchy\". With the album, Lovato wanted to establish herself as a musician; Lovato did not just want to be known as \"the girl from \"Camp Rock\"\". Lovato explained that her goal was to have fun with the album and that she would include deeper themes on her sophomore effort, stating: \"You won't necessarily find a lot of [dark songs] on the album, but hopefully you will on the next album. It's my first one, so I wanted it to be fun \u2014 stuff you can drive around in your car to and jam out to.\"\nDevelopment.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"Writing songs is what I turn to when I'm really upset or in a really good mood. Sometimes people listen to my music and they're like, 'Wow, that's intense. Go to therapy.' But you know, it's a result of how much I've been through. Just because you're on Disney Channel and you always have a smile on your face, they think you're perfect, and it's obvious that nobody's life really is.\"\n\u2014Demi Lovato on her songwriting\nIn September 2007, Lovato began writing the songs with the Jonas Brothers, during the filming of \"Camp Rock\". In early 2008, they co-wrote ten songs in a week during the band's Look Me in the Eyes Tour. Lovato said, \"I wrote it with them and they helped me. They obviously knew the situation, and then we got on the bus one night \u2014 songs just started pouring out.\" Before the tour's European leg, they went to the studio where the band co-produced the songs with John Fields. Speaking of the experience of co-producing, Nick Jonas said: \"Being able to co-produce was really cool and definitely something we'll be doing a lot more of.\" Nick also complimented working with Lovato. The album was recorded in ten and a half days in Fields' home studio in May 2008.\nThe inspiration behind \"Get Back\", a Jonas-penned track, was Lovato not wanting to write a mean or heartbroken song as she felt that there was enough of them. Instead, Lovato wanted to write about getting back together with an old boyfriend. \"It's kind of a fun, upbeat song and it's kind of just fun to sing to the person that I wrote it about\", Lovato said of the song. \"La La Land\" was written by Lovato and the Jonas Brothers about \"the pressures of fame\". Lovato said, \"You get to Hollywood and a lot of times people can try to shape you and mould you into what they want you to be. The song is just about keeping it real and trying to stay yourself when you're out in Hollywood\". \"Don't Forget\", was written by Lovato and the Jonas Brothers, the song is about Lovato's experience of falling in love with someone who \"just walks away and goes somewhere else\". \"I went through an experience like that and wanted to write about it. I got over it, and now a year later I don't have those feelings about that person anymore\", Lovato said. Musical influences for the album included Paramore, Kelly Clarkson, Christina Aguilera, Billy Gillman, Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight.\nThe album's final track listing consisted of six songs co-written by the Jonas Brothers, including the duet \"On the Line\". The remainder of the album was produced by Fields. Lovato enlisted Rooney frontman Robert Coppola Schwartzman for the track \"Party\", stating that Lovato put their \"musical input and lyrics\" into the song and Schwartzman helped Lovato, mainly on the hook. Lovato wrote the song \"Trainwreck\" alone and co-wrote most of the remaining tracks, except for \"The Middle\", written by Fields, Kara DioGuardi and Jason Reeves, and \"Until You're Mine\", written by Andy Dodd and Adam Watts.\nComposition.\nThe songs of \"Don't Forget\" draws from power pop and rock music genres. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic wrote that it includes \"bright, sugary, snappy power pop, fueled by big, fuzzy guitars and big, muscular hooks.\" As most of the album was co-written and co-produced by the Jonas Brothers, critics noted a similar sound between the artists. Erlewine noted that, unlike the Jonas Brothers' album \"A Little Bit Longer\", the album does not attempt to draw an audience broader than the tween demographic, calling it \"pure, unapologetic bubblegum\". The lyrics of the songs deal with teen issues, such as being independent or heartbroken. Digital Spy's Nick Levine wrote that recurring themes include; \"staying true to yourself, making up and breaking up, [and] lusting over someone unattainable.\" The opening track, \"La La Land\", is about Lovato feeling \"out of place\" in Hollywood, demonstrated in the verses, \"Who said I can't wear my Converse with my dress?\", and \"I'm not a supermodel, I still eat McDonald's.\"\nThe next track, \"Get Back\", is a guitar-driven upbeat 1980s power pop song. The track speaks of wanting to get back together with an old boyfriend. \"On the Line\", a duet with the Jonas Brothers, is a breakup song described as bubblegum with a \"fizzy\" singalong hook. \"Don't Forget\", shows a transition from the album's tween pop into more mature glam rock. The song is a midtempo power ballad and features Lovato singing with breathy vocals in a falsetto tone. According to Joey Guerra of \"Houston Chronicle\", \"Trainwreck\" and \"Gonna Get Caught\" include Beatles-esque melodies. \"Trainwreck\" contains references to medication. \"Two Worlds Collide\" is about a young couple who finds strength from their shared dreams. The ninth track, \"The Middle\", is about Lovato being eager to go for a ride with a guy, and willing to \"crash\" and \"fall\" just for the thrill of it. In \"Until You're Mine\", Lovato is desperate to \"fill an emotional vacancy with a boy\". Michael Slezak of \"Entertainment Weekly\" wrote that the closing track, \"Believe in Me\", includes \"platitudes that might as well have been penned by \"Dora the Explorer\".\"\nPromotion.\nAs a part of promotion, Lovato performed tracks from the album on several televised appearances and occasions. Lovato performed \"Get Back\" for the first time at the 2008 Disney Channel Games on May 3, 2008. Later, Lovato performed the same song in \"Good Morning America\" and \"The Ellen DeGeneres Show\". Later on January 19, 2009, she performed \"Get Back\" and \"La La Land\" at the event on January 19, 2009"}, "descending_order": ["2462414", "23894696", "36805210", "22077240", "7017021", "18767391"], "permutation_1": ["36805210", "23894696", "18767391", "7017021", "2462414", "22077240"], "permutation_2": ["7017021", "2462414", "22077240", "23894696", "18767391", "36805210"], "permutation_3": ["7017021", "22077240", "36805210", "2462414", "23894696", "18767391"]}
{"id": "nq_-8776899623429883235", "docs_added": {"746": "Azerbaijan\nCountry in Eastern Europe and West Asia\nAzerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a transcontinental and landlocked country at the boundary of West Asia and Eastern Europe. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia's republic of Dagestan to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia and Turkey to the west, and Iran to the south. Baku is the capital and largest city.\nThe territory of what is now Azerbaijan was ruled first by Caucasian Albania and later by various Persian empires. Until the 19th century, it remained part of Qajar Iran, but the Russo-Persian wars of 1804\u20131813 and 1826\u20131828 forced the Qajar Empire to cede its Caucasian territories to the Russian Empire; the treaties of Gulistan in 1813 and Turkmenchay in 1828 defined the border between Russia and Iran. The region north of the Aras was part of Iran until it was conquered by Russia in the 19th century, where it was administered as part of the Caucasus Viceroyalty.\nBy the late 19th century, an Azerbaijani national identity emerged when the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic proclaimed its independence from the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic in 1918, a year after the Russian Empire collapsed, and became the first secular democratic Muslim-majority state. In 1920, the country was conquered and incorporated into the Soviet Union as the Azerbaijan SSR. The modern Republic of Azerbaijan proclaimed its independence on 30 August 1991, shortly before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In September 1991, the ethnic Armenian majority of the Nagorno-Karabakh region formed the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh, which became \"de facto\" independent with the end of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1994, although the region and seven surrounding districts remained internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. Following the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020, the seven districts and parts of Nagorno-Karabakh were returned to Azerbaijani control. An Azerbaijani offensive in 2023 ended the Republic of Artsakh and resulted in the flight of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians.\nAzerbaijan is a unitary semi-presidential republic. It is one of six independent Turkic states and an active member of the Organization of Turkic States and the T\u00dcRKSOY community. Azerbaijan has diplomatic relations with 182 countries and holds membership in 38 international organizations, including the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the Non-Aligned Movement, the OSCE, and the NATO PfP program. It is one of the founding members of GUAM, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and the OPCW. Azerbaijan is an observer state of the World Trade Organization.\nThe vast majority of the country's population (97%) is nominally Muslim. The Constitution of Azerbaijan does not declare an official religion, and all major political forces in the country are secular. Azerbaijan is a developing country and ranks 89th on the Human Development Index. The ruling New Azerbaijan Party, in power since 1993, has been accused of authoritarianism under presidents Heydar Aliyev and his son Ilham Aliyev, and worsening the country's human rights record, including increasing restrictions on civil liberties, particularly on press freedom, and political repression.\nEtymology.\nThe term \"Azerbaijan\" derives from \"Atropates\", a Persian satrap under the Achaemenid Empire who was reinstated as the satrap of Media under Alexander the Great. The original etymology of this name is thought to have its roots in the once-dominant Zoroastrianism. In the Avesta's \"Frawardin Yasht\" (\"Hymn to the Guardian Angels\"), there is a mention of , which translates from Avestan as \"we worship the \"fravashi\" of the holy Atropatene\". The name \"Atropates\" is the Greek transliteration of an Old Iranian, probably Median, compounded name with the meaning \"Protected by the (Holy) Fire\" or \"The Land of the (Holy) Fire\". The Greek name was mentioned by Diodorus Siculus and Strabo. Over the span of millennia, the name evolved to (Middle Persian), then to , , (New Persian) and present-day \"Azerbaijan\".\nThe name \"Azerbaijan\" was first adopted by the government of Musavat in 1918 after the collapse of the Russian Empire, when the independent Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was established. Until then, the designation had been used exclusively to identify the adjacent region of contemporary northwestern Iran, while the area of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was formerly referred to as \"Arran\" and \"Shirvan\". On that basis Iran protested the newly adopted country name.\nDuring Soviet rule, the country was also spelled in Latin from the Russian transliteration as ' (Russian: ). The country's name was also spelled in Cyrillic script from 1940 to 1991 as '.\nHistory.\nAntiquity.\nThe earliest evidence of human settlement in the territory of Azerbaijan dates back to the late Stone Age and is related to the Guruchay culture of Azykh Cave. Early settlements included the Scythians during the 9th century BC. Following the Scythians, Iranian Medes came to dominate the area to the south of the Aras river. The Medes forged a vast empire between 900 and 700\u00a0BC, which was integrated into the Achaemenid Empire around 550\u00a0BC. The area was conquered by the Achaemenids leading to the spread of Zoroastrianism.\nFrom the Sasanid period to the Safavid period.\nThe Sasanian Empire turned Caucasian Albania into a vassal state in 252, while King Urnayr officially adopted Christianity as the state religion in the 4th century. Despite Sassanid rule, Caucasian Albania remained an entity in the region until the 9th century, while fully subordinate to Sassanid Iran, and retained its monarchy. Despite being one of the chief vassals of the Sasanian emperor, the Albanian king had only a semblance of authority, and the Sasanian marzban (military governor) held most civil, religious, and military authority.\nIn the first half of the 7th century, Caucasian Albania, as a vassal of the Sasanians, came under nominal Muslim rule with the Muslim conquest of Persia. The Umayyad Caliphate repulsed both the Sasanians and Byzantines from the South Caucasus and turned Caucasian Albania into a vassal state after Christian resistance led by King Juansher was suppressed in 667. The power vacuum left by the decline of the Abbasid Caliphate was filled by numerous local dynasties such as the Sallarids, Sajids, and Shaddadids. At the beginning of the 11th century, the territory was gradually seized by the waves of migrating Oghuz Turks from Central Asia, who adopted a Turkoman ethnonym at the time. The first of these Turkic dynasties established was the Seljuk Empire, which entered the area by 1067.\nThe pre-Turkic population spoke several Indo-European and Caucasian languages, among them Armenian and an Iranian language, Old Azeri, which was gradually replaced by a Turkic language, the early precursor of the Azerbaijani language of today. Some linguists have also stated that the Tati dialects of Iranian Azerbaijan and the Republic of Azerbaijan, like those spoken by the Tats, are descended from Old Azeri.\nLocally, the possessions of the subsequent Seljuk Empire were ruled by Eldiguzids, technically vassals of the Seljuk sultans, but sometimes \"de facto\" rulers themselves. Under the Seljuks, local poets such as Nizami Ganjavi and Khaqani gave rise to a blossoming of Persian literature in the region.\nShirvanshahs, the local dynasty of Arabic origin that was later Persianized, became a vassal state of Timurid Empire of Timur and assisted him in his war with the ruler of the Golden Horde Tokhtamysh. Following Timur's death, two independent and rival Turkoman states emerged: Qara Qoyunlu and Aq Qoyunlu. The Shirvanshahs returned, maintaining for numerous centuries to come a high degree of autonomy as local rulers and vassals as they had done since 861. In 1501, the Safavid dynasty of Iran subdued the Shirvanshahs and gained its possessions. In the course of the next century, the Safavids converted the formerly Sunni population to Shia Islam, as they did with the population in what is modern-day Iran. The Safavids allowed the Shirvanshahs to remain in power under Safavid suzerainty until 1538, when Safavid King Tahmasp I completely deposed them and made the area into the Safavid province of Shirvan. The Sunni Ottomans briefly managed to occupy present-day Azerbaijan as a result of the Ottoman\u2013Safavid War of 1578\u20131590; by the early 17th century, they were ousted by Safavid Iranian ruler Abbas I. In the wake of the demise of the Safavid dynasty, Baku and its environs were briefly occupied by the Russians as a consequence of the Russo-Persian War of 1722\u20131723. Remainder of present Azerbaijan was occupied by the Ottomans from 1722 to 1736. Despite brief intermissions such as these by Safavid Iran's neighboring rivals, the land remained under Iranian rule from the earliest advent of the Safavids up to the course of the 19th century.\nModern history.\nAfter the Safavids, the area was ruled by the Iranian Afsharid dynasty. After the death of Nader Shah in 1747, many of his former subjects capitalized on the eruption of instability. Numerous khanates with various forms of autonomy emerged. The rulers of these khanates were directly related to the ruling dynasties of Iran and were vassals and subjects of the Iranian shah. The khanates exercised control over their affairs via international trade routes between Central Asia and the West.\nThereafter, the area was under the successive rule of the Iranian Zands and Qajars. From the late 18th century, Imperial Russia switched to a more aggressive geo-political stance towards Iran and the Ottoman Empire. Russia actively tried to gain possession of the Caucasus region which was, for the most part, in the hands of Iran. In 1804, the Russians invaded and sacked the Iranian town of Ganja, sparking the Russo-Persian War of 1804\u20131813. The militarily superior Russians ended the war with a victory. Following Qajar Iran's loss, it was forced to concede suzerainty over most of the khanates, along with Georgia and Dagestan to the Russian Empire, per the Treaty of Gulistan.\nThe area to the north of the Aras River was Iranian territory until Russia occupied it in the 19th century. About a decade later, in violation of the Gulistan treaty, the Russians invaded Iran's Erivan Khanate. This sparked the final bout of hostilities between the two, the Russo-Persian War of 1826\u20131828. The resulting Treaty of Turkmenchay forced Qajar Iran to cede sovereignty over the Erivan Khanate, the Nakhchivan Khanate and the remainder of the Talysh Khanate. After the incorporation of all Caucasian territories from Iran into Russia, the border between the two was set at the Aras River.\nDespite the Russian conquest, throughout the entire 19th century, preoccupation with Iranian culture, literature, and language remained widespread among Shia and Sunni intellectuals in the Russian-held cities of Baku, Ganja and Tiflis (Tbilisi, now Georgia). Within the same century, in post-Iranian Russian-held East Caucasia, an Azerbaijani national identity emerged at the end of the 19th century. As a result of the Russian conquest, the Azerbaijanis are nowadays parted between two nations: Iran and Azerbaijan.\nAfter the collapse of the Russian Empire during World War I, the short-lived Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic was declared, constituting the present-day republics of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia. It was followed by the March Days massacres that took place between 30 March and 2 April 1918 in Baku and adjacent areas of the Baku Governorate. When the republic dissolved in May 1918, the leading Musavat party declared independence as the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR), adopting the name of \"Azerbaijan\", a name that prior to the proclamation of the ADR was solely used to refer to the adjacent northwestern region of contemporary Iran. The ADR was the first modern parliamentary republic in the Muslim world. Among the important accomplishments of the Parliament was the extension of suffrage to women, making ADR the first Muslim nation to grant women equal political rights with men. Baku State University, first modern university founded in the Muslim East, was established during this period.\nIndependent Azerbaijan lasted only 23 months until the Bolshevik 11th Soviet Red Army invaded it, establishing the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic on 28 April 1920. Although the bulk of the newly formed Azerbaijani army was engaged in putting down an Armenian revolt that had broken out in Karabakh, Azerbaijanis did not surrender their brief independence of 1918\u201320 quickly or easily. As many as 20,000 Azerbaijani soldiers died resisting what was effectively a Russian reconquest. Within the ensuing early Soviet period, the Azerbaijani national identity was forged.\nOn 13 October 1921, the Soviet republics of Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia signed an agreement with Turkey known as the Treaty of Kars. The previously independent Republic of Aras would also become the Nakhchivan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within the Azerbaijan SSR by the treaty of Kars. On the other hand, Armenia was awarded the region of Zangezur and Turkey agreed to return Gyumri (then known as Alexandropol).\nDuring World War II, Azerbaijan played a crucial role in the strategic energy policy of the Soviet Union, with 80 percent of the Soviet Union's oil on the Eastern Front being supplied by Baku. By decree of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union in February 1942, the commitment of more than 500 workers and employees of the oil industry of Azerbaijan were awarded orders and medals. Operation Edelweiss carried out by the German Wehrmacht targeted Baku because of its importance as the energy (petroleum) dynamo of the USSR. A fifth of all Azerbaijanis fought in the Second World War from 1941 to 1945. Approximately 681,000 people (with over 100,000 women) went to the front, while the total population of Azerbaijan was 3.4\u00a0million at the time. Some 250,000 people from Azerbaijan were killed on the front. More than 130 Azerbaijanis were named heroes of the Soviet Union. Azerbaijani Major-General Azi Aslanov was twice awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union.\nIndependence.\nFollowing the politics of \"glasnost\" initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev, civil unrest and ethnic strife grew in various regions of the Soviet Union, including Nagorno-Karabakh, an autonomous region of the Azerbaijan SSR. The disturbances in Azerbaijan, in response to Moscow's indifference to an already heated conflict, resulted in calls for independence and secession, which culminated in the Black January events in Baku. Later in 1990, the Supreme Council of the Azerbaijan SSR dropped the words \"Soviet Socialist\" from the title, adopted the \"Declaration of Sovereignty of the Azerbaijan Republic\" and restored the flag of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic as the state flag. As a consequence of the failed 1991 Soviet coup attempt in Moscow, the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan adopted a Declaration of Independence on 18 October 1991 which was affirmed by a nationwide referendum in December, while the Soviet Union officially ceased to exist on 26 December. The country celebrates its Day of Restoration of Independence on 18 October.\nThe early years of independence were overshadowed by the First Nagorno-Karabakh war with the ethnic Armenian majority of Nagorno-Karabakh backed by Armenia. By the end of the hostilities in 1994, Armenians controlled 14\u201316 percent of Azerbaijani territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh. During the war many atrocities and pogroms by both sides were committed including the massacres at Malibeyli, Gushchular and Garadaghly and the Khojaly massacre, along with the Baku pogrom, the Maraga massacre and the Kirovabad pogrom. Furthermore, an estimated 30,000 people were killed and more than a million people were displaced (more than 800,000 Azerbaijanis and 300,000 Armenians). Four United Nations Security Council resolutions (822, 853, 874, and 884) demand for \"the immediate withdrawal of all Armenian forces from all occupied territories of Azerbaijan.\" Many Russians and Armenians fled Azerbaijan as refugees during the 1990s. According to the 1970 census, there were 510,000 ethnic Russians and 484,000 Armenians in Azerbaijan.\nAliyev family rule, 1993\u2013present.\nIn 1993, democratically elected President Abulfaz Elchibey was overthrown by a military insurrection led by Colonel Surat Huseynov, which resulted in the rise to power of the former leader of Soviet Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev. In 1994, Huseynov, by that time the prime minister, attempted another military coup against Heydar Aliyev, but he was arrested and charged with treason. In 1995 another coup was attempted against Aliyev, this time by the commander of the Russian OMON special police unit, Rovshan Javadov. The coup was averted, resulting in the death of Javadov and disbanding of Azerbaijan's OMON units. At the same time, the country was tainted by rampant corruption in the governing bureaucracy. In October 1998, Aliyev was re-elected for a second term.\nIlham Aliyev, Heydar Aliyev's son, became chairman of the New Azerbaijan Party as well as President of Azerbaijan when his father died in 2003. He was re-elected to a third term as president in October 2013. In April 2018, Aliyev secured his fourth consecutive term in the election that was boycotted by the main opposition parties as fraudulent. On 27 September 2020, clashes in the unresolved Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resumed along the Nagorno-Karabakh Line of Contact. Both the armed forces of Azerbaijan and Armenia reported military and civilian casualties. The Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement and the end of the six-week war between Azerbaijan and Armenia was widely celebrated in Azerbaijan, as they made significant territorial gains. Despite the much improved economy, particularly with the exploitation of the Azeri\u2013Chirag\u2013Guneshli oil field and Shah Deniz gas field, the Aliyev family rule has been criticized with election fraud, high levels of economic inequality and domestic corruption. In September 2023, Azerbaijan launched an offensive against the breakaway Republic of Artsakh in Nagorno-Karabakh that resulted in the dissolution and reintegration of Artsakh on 1 January 2024 and the flight of nearly all ethnic Armenians from the region.\nGeography.\nAzerbaijan is located in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia, straddling West Asia and Eastern Europe. It lies between latitudes 38\u00b0 and 42\u00b0 N, and longitudes 44\u00b0 and 51\u00b0 E. The perimeter of Azerbaijan's land borders is , of which are with Armenia, with Iran, 480\u00a0kilometers with Georgia, with Russia and with Turkey. The coastline stretches for , and the length of the widest area of the Azerbaijani section of the Caspian Sea is . The country has a landlocked exclave, the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.\nThree physical features dominate Azerbaijan: the Caspian Sea, whose shoreline forms a natural boundary to the east; the Greater Caucasus mountain range to the north; and the extensive flatlands at the country's center. There are three mountain ranges: the Greater and Lesser Caucasus, and the Talysh Mountains, together covering approximately 40% of the country. The highest peak is Mount Bazard\u00fcz\u00fc , while the lowest point lies in the Caspian Sea . Nearly half of all the mud volcanoes on Earth are concentrated in Azerbaijan, these volcanoes were among nominees for the New 7 Wonders of Nature.\nThe main water sources are surface waters. Only 24 of the 8,350 stream are greater than in length. All the streams drain into the Caspian Sea. The largest lake is Sarysu at , and the longest river is Kur at , which is transboundary with Armenia. Azerbaijan has several islands along the Caspian sea, mostly located in the Baku Archipelago.\nSince independence in 1991, the government has taken measures to preserve the environment of Azerbaijan. National protection of the environment accelerated after 2001 when the state budget increased through revenues provided by the Baku\u2013Tbilisi\u2013Ceyhan pipeline. Within four years, protected areas doubled and now make up eight percent of the country's territory. Since 2001 the government has set up seven large reserves and almost doubled the sector of the budget earmarked for environmental protection.\nLandscape.\nAzerbaijan is home to a wide variety of landscapes. Over half of the land consists of mountain ridges, crests, highlands, and plateaus which rise up to levels of 400\u20131,000\u00a0meters (including the middle and lower lowlands), in some places (Talis, Jeyranchol-Ajinohur and Langabiz-Alat foreranges) up to 100\u2013120\u00a0meters, and others from 0\u201350\u00a0meters and up (Qobustan, Absheron). The rest of Azerbaijan's terrain consists of plains and lowlands. Elevations within the Caucasus region vary from about \u221228\u00a0meters at the Caspian Sea shoreline up to 4,466\u00a0meters (Bazard\u00fcz\u00fc peak).\nThe climate is influenced particularly by cold arctic air masses of Scandinavian anticyclone, temperate air masses of Siberian anticyclone, and Central Asian anticyclone. Azerbaijan's diverse landscape affects the ways air masses enter the country. The Greater Caucasus protects the country from direct influences of cold air masses coming from the north. That leads to the formation of subtropical climate on most foothills and plains of the country. Meanwhile, plains and foothills are characterized by high solar radiation rates.\nNine out of eleven existing climate zones are present in Azerbaijan. Both the absolute minimum temperature ( ) and the absolute maximum temperature were observed in Julfa and Ordubad\u2014regions of Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. The maximum annual precipitation falls in Lankaran () and the minimum in Absheron ().\nRivers and lakes form the principal part of the water systems of Azerbaijan, they were formed over a long geological timeframe and changed significantly throughout that period. This is particularly evidenced by remnants of ancient rivers found throughout the country. The water systems are continually changing under the influence of natural forces and human-introduced industrial activities. Artificial rivers (canals) and ponds are a part of Azerbaijan's water systems. In terms of water supply, Azerbaijan is below the average in the world with approximately per year of water per square kilometer. All big water reservoirs are built on Kur. The hydrography of Azerbaijan basically belongs to the Caspian Sea basin.\nThe Kura and Aras are the major rivers in Azerbaijan. They run through the Kura-Aras lowland. The rivers that directly flow into the Caspian Sea originate mainly from the north-eastern slope of the Major Caucasus and Talysh Mountains and run along the Samur\u2013Devechi and Lankaran lowlands.\nYanar Dag, translated as \"burning mountain\", is a natural gas fire which blazes continuously on a hillside on the Absheron Peninsula on the Caspian Sea near Baku, which itself is known as the \"land of fire.\" Flames jet out into the air from a thin, porous sandstone layer. It is a tourist attraction to visitors to the Baku area.\nBiodiversity.\nThe first reports on the richness and diversity of animal life in Azerbaijan can be found in travel notes of Eastern travelers. Animal carvings on architectural monuments, ancient rocks, and stones survived up to the present times. The first information on flora and fauna of Azerbaijan was collected during the visits of naturalists to Azerbaijan in the 17th century.\nThere are 106 species of mammals, 97 species of fish, 363 species of birds, 10 species of amphibians, and 52 species of reptiles which have been recorded and classified in Azerbaijan. The national animal of Azerbaijan is the Karabakh horse, a mountain-steppe racing and riding horse endemic to Azerbaijan. The Karabakh horse has a reputation for its good temper, speed, elegance, and intelligence. It is one of the oldest breeds, with ancestry dating to the ancient world, but today the horse is an endangered species.\nAzerbaijan's flora consists of more than 4,500 species of higher plants. Due to the unique climate in Azerbaijan, the flora is much richer in the number of species than the flora of the other republics of the South Caucasus. Sixty-six percent of the species growing in the whole Caucasus can be found in Azerbaijan. The country lies within four ecoregions: Caspian Hyrcanian mixed forests, Caucasus mixed forests, Eastern Anatolian montane steppe, and Azerbaijan shrub desert and steppe.\nAzerbaijan had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 6.55/10, ranking it 72nd globally out of 172 countries. Forest cover is around 14.% of the total land area, equivalent to 1,131,770 hectares (ha) of forest in 2020, up from 944,740 hectares (ha) in 1990. In 2020, naturally regenerating forest covered 826,200 hectares (ha) and planted forest covered 305,570 hectares (ha). Of the naturally regenerating forest 0% was reported to be primary forest (consisting of native tree species with no clearly visible indications of human activity) and around 33% of the forest area was found within protected areas. In 2015, 100% of the forest area was reported to be under public ownership, 0% private ownership and 0% with ownership listed as other or unknown.\nGovernment and politics.\nAzerbaijan's government functions as an authoritarian regime in practice; although it regularly holds elections, these are marred by electoral fraud and other unfair election practices. The government has been ruled by the Aliyev political family and the New Azerbaijan Party (\"Yeni Az\u0259rbaycan Partiyas\u0131\", YAP) established by Heydar Aliyev continuously since 1993. It is categorised as \"not free\" by Freedom House, who ranked it 7/100 on Global Freedom Score in 2024, calling its regime authoritarian.\nThe structural formation of the political system was completed by the adoption of the constitution on 12 November 1995. According to Article 23 of the constitution, the state symbols are the flag, the coat of arms, and the national anthem. The state power is limited only by law for internal issues, but international affairs are also limited by international agreements' provisions.\nThe Constitution of Azerbaijan states that it is a presidential republic with three branches of power \u2013 executive, legislative, and judicial. The legislative power is held by the unicameral National Assembly and the Supreme National Assembly in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. The Parliament of Azerbaijan, called Milli Majlis, consists of 125 deputies elected based on majority vote, with a term of five years for each elected member. The elections are held every five years, on the first Sunday of November. The Parliament is not responsible for the formation of the government, but the constitution requires the approval of the Cabinet of Ministers by Milli Majlis. The New Azerbaijan Party, and independents loyal to the ruling government, currently hold almost all of the Parliament's 125 seats. During the 2010 Parliamentary election, the opposition parties, Musavat and Azerbaijani Popular Front Party, failed to win a single seat. European observers found numerous irregularities in the run-up to the election and on election day.\nThe executive power is held by the president, who is elected for a seven-year term by direct elections, and the prime minister. The president is authorized to form the Cabinet, a collective executive body accountable to both the president and the National Assembly. The Cabinet consists primarily of the prime minister, his deputies, and ministers. The 8th Government of Azerbaijan is the administration in its current formation. The president does not have the right to dissolve the National Assembly but has the right to veto its decisions. To override the presidential veto, the parliament must have a majority of 95 votes. The judicial power is vested in the Constitutional Court, Supreme Court, and the Economic Court. The president nominates the judges in these courts.\nAzerbaijan's system of governance nominally can be called two-tiered. The top or highest tier of the government is the executive power headed by president. The local executive authority is merely a continuation of executive power. The provision determines the legal status of local state administration on local executive authority (\"Yerli Icra Hakimiyati\"), adopted 16 June 1999. In June 2012, the president approved a regulation which granted additional powers to local executive authorities, strengthening their dominant position in local affairs The Security Council is the deliberative body under the president, and he organizes it according to the constitution. It was established on 10 April 1997. The administrative department is not a part of the president's office but manages the financial, technical and pecuniary activities of both the president and his office.\nForeign relations.\nThe short-lived Azerbaijan Democratic Republic succeeded in establishing diplomatic relations with six countries, sending diplomatic representatives to Germany and Finland. The process of international recognition of Azerbaijan's independence from the collapsing Soviet Union lasted roughly one year. The most recent country to recognize Azerbaijan was Bahrain, on 6 November 1996. Full diplomatic relations, including mutual exchanges of missions, were first established with Turkey, Pakistan, the United States, Iran and Israel. Azerbaijan has placed a particular emphasis on its \"special relationship\" with Turkey.\nAzerbaijan has diplomatic relations with 158 countries so far and holds membership in 38 international organizations. It holds observer status in the Non-Aligned Movement and World Trade Organization and is a correspondent at the International Telecommunication Union. On 9 May 2006 Azerbaijan was elected to membership in the newly established Human Rights Council by the United Nations General Assembly. The term of office began on 19 June 2006. Azerbaijan was first elected as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council in 2011 with the support of 155 countries.\nForeign policy priorities include, first of all, the restoration of its territorial integrity; elimination of the consequences of occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven other regions of Azerbaijan surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh; integration into European and Euro-Atlantic structure; contribution to international security; cooperation with international organizations; regional cooperation and bilateral relations; strengthening of defense capability; promotion of security by domestic policy means; strengthening of democracy; preservation of ethnic and religious tolerance; scientific, educational, and cultural policy and preservation of moral values; economic and social development; enhancing internal and border security; and migration, energy, and transportation security policy.\nAzerbaijan is an active member of international coalitions fighting international terrorism, and was one of the first countries to offer support after the September 11 attacks. The country is an active member of NATO's Partnership for Peace program, contributing to peacekeeping efforts in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Azerbaijan is also a member of the Council of Europe since 2001 and maintains good relations with the European Union. The country may eventually apply for EU membership.\nOn 1 July 2021, the US Congress advanced legislation that will have an impact on the military aid that Washington has sent to Azerbaijan since 2012. This was because the packages to Armenia, instead, are significantly smaller.\nAzerbaijan has been harshly criticized for bribing foreign officials and diplomats to promote its causes abroad and legitimize its elections at home, a practice termed caviar diplomacy. The Azerbaijani laundromat money laundering operation involved the bribery of foreign politicians and journalists to serve the Azerbaijani government's public relations interests.\nMilitary.\nThe National Army of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was created on 26 June 1918. When Azerbaijan gained independence after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Armed Forces of the Republic of Azerbaijan were created according to the law on the armed forces of 9 October 1991. The original date of the establishment of the short-lived National Army is celebrated as Army Day (26 June). As of 2021, Azerbaijan had 126,000 active personnel in its armed forces. There are also 17,000 paramilitary troops and 330,00 reserve personnel. The armed forces have three branches: the Land Forces, the Air Forces and the Navy. Additionally the armed forces embrace several military sub-groups that can be involved in state defense when needed. These are the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the State Border Service, which includes the Coast Guard as well. The Azerbaijani National Guard is a paramilitary force that operates as a semi-independent entity of the Special State Protection Service, an agency subordinate to the president.\nAzerbaijan adheres to the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe and has signed all major international arms and weapons treaties. Azerbaijan closely cooperates with NATO in programs such as Partnership for Peace and Individual Partnership Action Plan/pfp and ipa. Azerbaijan has deployed 151 of its peacekeeping forces in Iraq and another 184 in Afghanistan.\nAzerbaijan spent $2.24\u00a0billion on its defence budget as of 2020[ [update]], which amounted to 5.4% of its total GDP, and some 12.7% of general government expenditure. Azerbaijani defense industry manufactures small arms, artillery systems, tanks, armors and night vision devices, aviation bombs, UAVs/unmanned aerial vehicle, various military vehicles and military planes and helicopters.\nHuman rights and freedom.\nThe constitution claims to guarantee freedom of speech, but this is denied in practice. After several years of decline in press and media freedom, in 2014, the media environment deteriorated rapidly under a governmental campaign to silence any opposition and criticism, even while the country led the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (May\u2013November 2014). Spurious legal charges and impunity in violence against journalists have remained the norm. All foreign broadcasts are banned in the country. According to the 2013 Freedom House Freedom of the Press report, Azerbaijan's press freedom status is \"not free\", and Azerbaijan ranks 177th out of 196 countries. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America are banned in Azerbaijan. Discrimination against LGBT people in Azerbaijan is widespread.\nChristianity is officially recognized. All religious communities are required to register to be allowed to meet, under the risk of imprisonment. This registration is often denied. \"Racial discrimination contributes to the country's lack of religious freedom, since many of the Christians are ethnic Armenian or Russian, rather than Azeri Muslim\".\nDuring the last few years, three journalists were killed and several prosecuted in trials described as unfair by international human rights organizations. Azerbaijan had the largest number of journalists imprisoned in Europe in 2015, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, and is the 5th most censored country in the world, ahead of Iran and China. Some critical journalists have been arrested for their coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in Azerbaijan.\nA report by an Amnesty International researcher in October 2015 points to \"...the severe deterioration of human rights in Azerbaijan over the past few years. Sadly Azerbaijan has been allowed to get away with unprecedented levels of repression and in the process almost wipe out its civil society.\" Amnesty's 2015/16 annual report on the country stated \"... persecution of political dissent continued. Human rights organizations remained unable to resume their work. At least 18 prisoners of conscience remained in detention at the end of the year. Reprisals against independent journalists and activists persisted both in the country and abroad, while their family members also faced harassment and arrests. International human rights monitors were barred and expelled from the country. Reports of torture and other ill-treatment persisted.\"\n\"The Guardian\" reported in April 2017 that \"Azerbaijan's ruling elite operated a secret $2.9bn (\u00a32.2bn) scheme to pay prominent Europeans, buy luxury goods and launder money through a network of opaque British companies ... Leaked data shows that the Azerbaijani leadership, accused of serial human rights abuses, systemic corruption and rigging elections, made more than 16,000 covert payments from 2012 to 2014. Some of this money went to politicians and journalists, as part of an international lobbying operation to deflect criticism of Azerbaijan's president, Ilham Aliyev, and to promote a positive image of his oil-rich country.\" There was no suggestion that all recipients were aware of the source of the money as it arrived via a disguised route.\nAdministrative divisions.\nThere are 14 economic regions; 66 rayons (, singular ) and 11 cities (, singular ) under the direct authority of the republic. Moreover, Azerbaijan includes the Autonomous Republic () of Nakhchivan. The President of Azerbaijan appoints the governors of these units, while the government of Nakhchivan is elected and approved by the parliament of Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>* Baku Economic Region\nEconomy.\nAfter gaining independence in 1991, Azerbaijan became a member of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Islamic Development Bank, and the Asian Development Bank. The banking system consists of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan, commercial banks, and non-banking credit organizations. The National (now Central) Bank was created in 1992 based on the Azerbaijan State Savings Bank, an affiliate of the former State Savings Bank of the USSR. The Central Bank serves as Azerbaijan's central bank, empowered to issue the national currency, the Azerbaijani manat, and to supervise all commercial banks. Two major commercial banks are UniBank and the state-owned International Bank of Azerbaijan, run by Abbas Ibrahimov.\nPushed up by spending and demand growth, the 2007 Q1 inflation rate reached 16.6%. Nominal incomes and monthly wages climbed 29% and 25% respectively against this figure, but price increases in the non-oil industry encouraged inflation. Azerbaijan shows some signs of the so-called \"Dutch disease\" because of its fast-growing energy sector, which causes inflation and makes non-energy exports more expensive.\nIn the early 2000s, chronically high inflation was brought under control. This led to the launch of a new currency, the new Azerbaijani manat, on 1 January 2006, to cement the economic reforms and erase the vestiges of an unstable economy.\nAzerbaijan is also ranked 57th in the Global Competitiveness Report for 2010\u20132011, above other CIS countries. By 2012 the GDP of Azerbaijan had increased 20-fold from its 1995 level.\nEnergy and natural resources.\nTwo-thirds of Azerbaijan is rich in oil and natural gas. The oil industry dates back to the ancient period. Arabian historian and traveler Ahmad Al-Baladhuri discusses the economy of the Absheron Peninsula in antiquity, mentioning its oil in particular. There are many pipelines in Azerbaijan. The goal of the Southern Gas Corridor, which connects the giant Shah Deniz gas field in Azerbaijan to Europe, is to reduce European Union's dependency on Russian gas.\nThe region of the Lesser Caucasus accounts for most of the country's gold, silver, iron, copper, titanium, chromium, manganese, cobalt, molybdenum, complex ore and antimony. In September 1994, a 30-year contract was signed between the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) and 13\u00a0oil companies, among them Amoco, BP, ExxonMobil, Lukoil and Equinor. Western oil companies have been able to tap deepwater oilfields untouched by the Soviet exploitation. International academics consider Azerbaijan as one of the most important oil exploration and development regions. The State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan was established as an extra-budgetary fund to ensure macroeconomic stability, transparency in the management of oil revenue, and safeguarding of resources for future generations.\nAccess to biocapacity is less than world average. In 2016, Azerbaijan had 0.8 global hectares of biocapacity per person within its territory, half the world average of 1.6 global hectares per person. In 2016 Azerbaijan used 2.1 global hectares of biocapacity per person\u00a0\u2013 their ecological footprint of consumption. This means they use more biocapacity than Azerbaijan contains. As a result, Azerbaijan is running a biocapacity deficit.\nAzeriqaz, a sub-company of SOCAR, intends to ensure full gasification of the country by 2021.\nAzerbaijan was one of the sponsors of the east\u2013west and north\u2013south energy transport corridors. Baku\u2013Tbilisi\u2013Kars railway line connects the Caspian region with Turkey. The Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline and Trans Adriatic Pipeline deliver natural gas from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz gas to Turkey and Europe. Azerbaijan extended the agreement on development of ACG until 2050 according to the amended PSA signed on 14 September 2017 by SOCAR and co-ventures (BP, Chevron, Inpex, Equinor, ExxonMobil, TP, ITOCHU and ONGC Videsh).\nAgriculture.\nAzerbaijan has the largest agricultural basin in the region. About 54.9 percent of Azerbaijan is agricultural land. At the beginning of 2007 there were 4,755,100\u00a0hectares of used agricultural area. In the same year the total wood resources counted 136\u00a0million m3. Agricultural scientific research institutes are focused on meadows and pastures, horticulture and subtropical crops, green vegetables, viticulture and wine-making, cotton growing and medicinal plants. In some areas it is profitable to grow grain, potatoes, sugar beets, cotton and tobacco. Livestock, dairy products, and wine and spirits are also important farm products. The Caspian fishing industry concentrates on the dwindling stocks of sturgeon and beluga. In 2002 the Azerbaijani merchant marine had 54 ships.\nSome products previously imported from abroad have begun to be produced locally. Among them are Coca-Cola by Coca-Cola Bottlers LTD., beer by Baki-Kastel, parquet by Nehir and oil pipes by EUPEC Pipe Coating Azerbaijan.\nTourism.\nThe country was a well-known tourist spot in the 1980s. The fall of the Soviet Union and the First Nagorno-Karabakh War during the 1990s damaged the tourist industry and the image of Azerbaijan as a tourist destination. It was not until the 2000s that the tourism industry began to recover, and the country has since experienced a high rate of growth in the number of tourist visits and overnight stays. In recent years, Azerbaijan has also become a popular destination for religious, spa, and health care tourism. During winter, the Shahdag Mountain Resort offers skiing with state of the art facilities.\nThe government has set development as an elite tourist destination as a top priority. It is a national strategy to make tourism a major, if not the single largest, contributor to the Azerbaijani economy. These activities are regulated by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Azerbaijan. There are 63 countries which have a visa-free score.\nE-visa \u2013 for a visit of foreigners of visa-required countries to the Republic of Azerbaijan. According to the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report 2015 of the World Economic Forum, Azerbaijan holds 84th place.\nAccording to a report by the World Travel and Tourism Council, Azerbaijan was among the top ten countries showing the strongest growth in visitor exports between 2010 and 2016, In addition, Azerbaijan placed first (46.1%) among countries with the fastest-developing travel and tourism economies, with strong indicators for inbound international visitor spending in 2016.\nTransportation.\nThe convenient location of Azerbaijan on the crossroad of major international traffic arteries, such as the Silk Road and the south\u2013north corridor, highlights the strategic importance of the transportation sector for the country's economy. The transport sector includes roads, railways, aviation, and maritime transport. It is also an important economic hub in the transportation of raw materials. The Baku\u2013Tbilisi\u2013Ceyhan pipeline (BTC) became operational in May 2006 and extends more than through the territories of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey. The BTC is designed to transport up to 50\u00a0million tons of crude oil annually and carries oil from the Caspian Sea oilfields to global markets. The South Caucasus Pipeline, also stretching through the territory of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey, became operational at the end of 2006 and offers additional gas supplies to the European market from the Shah Deniz gas field. Shah Deniz is expected to produce up to 296\u00a0billion cubic meters of natural gas per year. Azerbaijan also plays a major role in the EU-sponsored Silk Road Project.\nIn 2002, the government established the Ministry of Transport with a broad range of policy and regulatory functions. In the same year, the country became a member of the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic. Priorities are upgrading the transport network and improving transportation services to better facilitate the development of other sectors of the economy. The 2012 construction of Kars\u2013Tbilisi\u2013Baku railway was meant to improve transportation between Asia and Europe by connecting the railways of China and Kazakhstan in the east to the European railway system in the west via Turkey. In 2010 Broad-gauge railways and electrified railways stretched for and respectively. By 2010, there were 35 airports and one heliport.\nScience and technology.\nIn the 21st century, a new oil and gas boom helped improve the situation in the science and technology sectors. The government launched a campaign aimed at modernization and innovation. The government estimates that profits from the information technology and communication industry will grow and become comparable to those from oil production. Azerbaijan has a large and steadily growing Internet sector. In 2012, rapid growth was forecast for at least five more years. Azerbaijan was ranked 95th in the Global Innovation Index in 2024.\nThe country has been making progress in developing its telecoms sector. The Ministry of Communications & Information Technologies and an operator through its role in Aztelekom are both policy-makers and regulators. Public payphones are available for local calls and require the purchase of a token from the telephone exchange or some shops and kiosks. Tokens allow a call of indefinite duration. As of 2009[ [update]], there were 1,397,000 main telephone lines and 1,485,000 internet users. There are four GSM providers: Azercell, Bakcell, Azerfon (Nar Mobile), Nakhtel mobile network operators and one CDMA.\nIn the 21st century several prominent Azerbaijani geodynamics and geotectonics scientists, inspired by the fundamental works of Elchin Khalilov and others, designed hundreds of earthquake prediction stations and earthquake-resistant buildings that now constitute the bulk of The Republican Center of Seismic Service. The Azerbaijan National Aerospace Agency launched its first satellite AzerSat 1 into orbit on 7 February 2013 from Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana at orbital positions 46\u00b0 East. The satellite covers Europe and a significant part of Asia and Africa and serves the transmission of TV and radio broadcasting as well as the Internet. The launching of a satellite into orbit is Azerbaijan's first step in realizing its goal of becoming a nation with its own space industry, capable of successfully implementing more projects in the future.\nDemographics.\nAs of March 2022, 52.9% of the population of 10,164,464 is urban, with the remaining 47.1% being rural. In January 2019, the 50.1% of the total population was female. The sex ratio in the same year was 0.99 males per female. The 2011 population growth-rate was 0.85%, compared to 1.09% worldwide. A significant factor restricting population growth is a high level of migration. In 2011 Azerbaijan saw a migration of \u22121.14/1,000 people.\nThe Azerbaijani diaspora is found in 42 countries and in turn there are many centers for ethnic minorities inside Azerbaijan, including the German cultural society \"Karelhaus\", Slavic cultural center, Azerbaijani-Israeli community, Kurdish cultural center, International Talysh Association, Lezgin national center \"Samur\", Azerbaijani-Tatar community, Crimean Tatars society, etc.\nIn total, Azerbaijan has 78 cities, 63 city districts, and one special legal status city. 261 urban-type settlements and 4248 villages follow these.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\nEthnicity.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nThe ethnic composition of the population according to the 2009 population census: 91.6% Azerbaijanis, 2.0% Lezgins, 1.4% Armenians (almost all Armenians live in the break-away region of Nagorno-Karabakh), 1.3% Russians, 1.3% Talysh, 0.6% Avars, 0.4% Turkish people, 0.3% Tatars, 0.3% Tats, 0.2% Ukrainians, 0.1% Tsakhurs, 0.1% Georgians, 0.1% Jews, 0.1% Kurds, other 0.2%.\nLanguages.\nThe official language is Azerbaijani, a Turkic language. Approximately 92% of the national population speak it as their mother tongue. Russian and Armenian (only in Nagorno-Karabakh) are still spoken in Azerbaijan. Each is the mother tongue of around 1.5% of the national population. In 1989, Armenian was the majority language in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, spoken by about 76% of the regional population. After the first Nagorno-Karabakh war, native speakers of Armenian composed around 95% of the regional population.\nA dozen other minority languages are spoken natively, including Avar, Budukh, Georgian, Juhuri, Khinalug, Kryts, Lezgin, Rutul, Talysh, Tat, Tsakhur, and Udi. All these are spoken only by small minority populations, some of which are tiny and decreasing.\nReligion.\nAzerbaijan is considered the most secular Muslim-majority country. Around 97% of the population are Muslims. Around 55\u201365% of Muslims are estimated to be Shia, while 35\u201345% of Muslims are Sunnis. Other faiths are practised by the country's various ethnic groups. Under article 48 of its constitution, Azerbaijan is a secular state and ensures religious freedom. In a 2006\u20132008 Gallup poll, only 21% of respondents from Azerbaijan stated that religion is an important part of their daily lives.\nOf the nation's religious minorities, the estimated 280,000 Christians (3.1%) are mostly Russian and Georgian Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic (almost all Armenians live in the break-away region of Nagorno-Karabakh). In 2003, there were 250 Roman Catholics. Other Christian denominations as of 2002 include Lutherans, Baptists and Molokans. There is also a small Protestant community. Azerbaijan also has an ancient Jewish population with a 2,000-year history; Jewish organizations estimate that 12,000 Jews remain in Azerbaijan, which is home to the only Jewish-majority town outside of Israel and the United States. Azerbaijan also is home to members of the Bah\u00e1\u02bc\u00ed, Hare Krishna and Jehovah's Witnesses communities, as well as adherents of the other religious communities. Some religious communities have been unofficially restricted from religious freedom. A U.S. State Department report on the matter mentions detention of members of certain Muslim and Christian groups, and many groups have difficulty registering with the agency who regulates religion, The State Committee on Religious Associations of the Republic of Azerbaijan.\nEducation.\nA relatively high percentage of Azerbaijanis have obtained some form of higher education, most notably in scientific and technical subjects. In the Soviet era, literacy and average education levels rose dramatically from their very low starting point, despite two changes in the standard alphabet, from Perso-Arabic script to Latin in the 1920s and from Roman to Cyrillic in the 1930s. According to Soviet data, 100 percent of males and females (ages nine to forty-nine) were literate in 1970. According to the United Nations Development Program Report 2009, the literacy rate is 99.5 percent.\nSince independence, one of the first laws that Parliament passed to disassociate itself from the Soviet Union was to adopt a modified-Latin alphabet to replace Cyrillic. Other than that the Azerbaijani system has undergone little structural change. Initial alterations have included the reestablishment of religious education (banned during the Soviet period) and curriculum changes that have reemphasized the use of the Azerbaijani language and have eliminated ideological content. In addition to elementary schools, the education institutions include thousands of preschools, general secondary schools, and vocational schools, including specialized secondary schools and technical schools. Education through the ninth grade is compulsory.\nCulture.\nThe culture of Azerbaijan has developed as a result of many influences; that is why Azerbaijanis are, in many ways, bi-cultural. National traditions are preserved despite Western influences, including globalized consumer culture. For example, Novruz Bayram is a family holiday derived from the traditional celebration of the New Year in Zoroastrianism.\nAzerbaijani national and traditional dresses are the chokha and papakhi. There are radio broadcasts in Russian, Georgian, Kurdish, Lezgian and Talysh languages, which are financed from the state budget. Some local radio stations in Balakan and Khachmaz organize broadcasts in Avar and Tat. In Baku several newspapers are published in Russian, Kurdish (\"Dengi Kurd\"), Lezgian (\"Samur\") and Talysh languages. Jewish society \"Sokhnut\" publishes the newspaper \"Aziz\".\nArchitecture.\nAzerbaijani architecture typically combines elements of East and West, with heavy influences from Persian architecture. Many ancient architectural treasures are preserved, such as the Maiden Tower and Palace of the Shirvanshahs in the Walled City of Baku. Entries on the UNESCO World Heritage tentative list include the Ateshgah of Baku, Momine Khatun Mausoleum, Hirkan National Park, Binagadi asphalt lake, L\u00f6kbatan Mud Volcano, Shusha State Historical and Architectural Reserve, Baku Stage Mountain, Caspian Shore Defensive Constructions, Ordubad National Reserve and the Palace of Shaki Khans.\nAmong other architectural treasures are Quadrangular Castle in Mardakan, Parigala in Yukhary Chardaglar, several bridges spanning the Aras River, and several mausoleums. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, little monumental architecture was created, but distinctive residences were built in Baku and elsewhere. Among the most recent architectural monuments, the Baku subways are noted for their lavish decor.\nThe task for modern Azerbaijani architecture is diverse application of modern aesthetics, the search for an architect's own artistic style and inclusion of the existing historico-cultural environment. Major projects such as Heydar Aliyev Cultural Center, Flame Towers, Baku Crystal Hall, Baku White City and SOCAR Tower have transformed the country's skyline and promotes its contemporary identity.\nMusic and dance.\nMusic of Azerbaijan builds on folk traditions that reach back nearly a thousand years, evolving around the badge of monody, producing rhythmically diverse melodies. The music has a branchy mode system, where chromatization of major and minor scales is of great importance. Among national musical instruments there are 14 string instruments, eight percussion instruments and six wind instruments. According to \"The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians\", \"in terms of ethnicity, culture and religion the Azerbaijani are musically much closer to Iran than Turkey.\"\nMugham is usually a suite with poetry and instrumental interludes. When performing mugham, the singers have to transform their emotions into singing and music. In contrast to the mugham traditions of Central Asian countries, Azerbaijani mugham is more free-form and less rigid; it is often compared to the improvised field of jazz. UNESCO proclaimed the Azerbaijani mugham tradition a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Meykhana is a kind of traditional Azerbaijani distinctive folk unaccompanied song, usually performed by several people improvising on a particular subject.\nAshiq combines poetry, storytelling, dance, and vocal and instrumental music into a traditional performance art that stands as a symbol of Azerbaijani culture. It is a mystic troubadour or traveling bard who sings and plays the saz. This tradition has its origin in the shamanistic beliefs of ancient Turkic peoples. Ashiqs' songs are semi-improvised around common bases. Azerbaijan's ashiq art was included in the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO in 2009.\nSince the mid-1960s, Western-influenced Azerbaijani pop music, in its various forms, that has been growing in popularity in Azerbaijan, while genres such as rock and hip hop are widely produced and enjoyed. Azerbaijani pop and Azerbaijani folk music arose with the international popularity of performers like Alim Qasimov, Rashid Behbudov, Vagif Mustafazadeh, Muslim Magomayev, Shovkat Alakbarova and Rubaba Muradova. Azerbaijan is an enthusiastic participant in the Eurovision Song Contest. Azerbaijan made its debut appearance at the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest. The country's entry gained third place in 2009 and fifth the following year. Ell and Nikki won the first place at the Eurovision Song Contest 2011 with the song \"Running Scared\", entitling Azerbaijan to host the contest in 2012, in Baku. They have qualified for every Grand Final up until the 2018 edition of the contest, entering with X My Heart by singer Aisel.\nThere are dozens of Azerbaijani folk dances. They are performed at formal celebrations and the dancers wear national clothes like the chokha, which is well-preserved within the national dances. Most dances have a very fast rhythm.\nArt.\nAzerbaijani art is represented by a wide range of handicrafts, such as chasing, jeweling, engraving in metal, carving in wood, stone, or bone, carpet-making, lasing, pattern weaving and printing, and knitting and embroidery. Each of these types of decorative art, evidence of the endowments of the Azerbaijan nation, is very much in favor here. Many interesting facts pertaining to the development of arts and crafts in Azerbaijan were reported by numerous merchants, travelers, and diplomats who had visited these places at different times.\nThe Azerbaijani carpet is a traditional handmade textile of various sizes, with a dense texture and a pile or pile-less surface, whose patterns are characteristic of Azerbaijan's many carpet-making regions. In November 2010 the Azerbaijani carpet was proclaimed a Masterpiece of Intangible Heritage by UNESCO. Azerbaijani carpets can be categorized under several large groups and a multitude of subgroups. Scientific research of the Azerbaijani carpet is connected with the name of Latif Karimov, a prominent Soviet-era scientist and artist.\nAzerbaijan has been since ancient times known as a center of a large variety of crafts. Archeology testifies to the well-developed agriculture, stock raising, metalworking, pottery, ceramics, and carpet-weaving that date as far back as to the 2nd millennium BC. Archeological sites in Dashbulaq, Hasansu, Zayamchai, and Tovuzchai uncovered from the BTC pipeline have revealed early Iron Age artifacts.\nThe Gamigaya Petroglyphs, which date back to the 1st to 4th millennium BC, are located in Azerbaijan's Ordubad District. They consist of some 1,500 dislodged and carved rock paintings with images of deer, goats, bulls, dogs, snakes, birds, fantastic beings, and people, carriages, and various symbols were found on basalt rocks. Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl was convinced that people from the area went to Scandinavia in about 100 AD, took their boatbuilding skills with them, and transmuted them into the Viking boats in northern Europe.\nOver the centuries, Azerbaijani art has gone through many stylistic changes. Painting is traditionally characterized by a warmth of colour and light, as exemplified in the works of Azim Azimzade and Bahruz Kangarli, and a preoccupation with religious figures and cultural motifs. Azerbaijani painting enjoyed preeminence in Caucasus for hundreds of years, from the Romanesque and Ottoman periods, and through the Soviet and Baroque periods, the latter two of which saw fruition in Azerbaijan. Notable artists include Sattar Bahlulzade, Togrul Narimanbekov, Tahir Salahov, Alakbar Rezaguliyev, Mirza Gadim Iravani, Mikayil Abdullayev and Boyukagha Mirzazade.\nLiterature.\nThe earliest known figure in written Azerbaijani literature was Izzeddin Hasanoghlu, who composed a divan consisting of Persian and Azerbaijani ghazals. In Persian ghazals he used a pen-name, while his Azerbaijani ghazals were composed under his own name of Hasanoghlu. Among the medieval authors was Persian poet and philosopher Nizami, called Ganjavi after his place of birth, Ganja, who was the author of the Khamsa (\"The Quintuplet\"), composed of five romantic poems, including \"The Treasure of Mysteries\", \"Khosrow and Sh\u012br\u012bn\", and \"Leyli and Mejn\u016bn\".\nClassical literature was formed in the 14th century based on the various Early Middle Ages dialects of Tabriz and Shirvan. Among the poets of this period were Gazi Burhanaddin, Haqiqi (pen-name of Jahan Shah Qara Qoyunlu), and Habibi. The end of the 14th century was the start of literary activity of Imadaddin Nasimi, one of the greatest Azerbaijani Hurufi mystical poets of the late 14th and early 15th centuries and one of the most prominent early divan masters in Turkic literary history, who also composed poetry in Persian and Arabic. The divan and ghazal styles were further developed by poets Qasem-e Anvar, Fuzuli and Safavid Shah Ismail I who wrote under the pen name \"Khata'i\".\nThe \"Book of Dede Korkut\" consists of two manuscripts copied in the 16th century, and was not written earlier than the 15th century. It is a collection of 12 stories reflecting the oral tradition of Oghuz nomads. The 16th-century poet Fuzuli produced his timeless philosophical and lyrical \"Qazals\" in Arabic, Persian, and Azerbaijani. Benefiting immensely from the fine literary traditions of his environment, and building upon the legacy of his predecessors, Fuzuli was destined to become the leading literary figure of his society. His major works include \"The Divan of Ghazals\" and \"The Qasidas\". In the same century, Azerbaijani literature further flourished with the development of ashik () poetic genre of bards. During the same period, under the pen-name of Khat\u0101\u012b ( for \"sinner\") Shah Ismail I wrote about 1,400 verses in Azerbaijani, which were later published as his \"Divan\". A unique literary style known as \"qoshma\" ( for \"improvisation\") was introduced in this period and developed by Shah Ismail and later by his son and successor, Shah Tahmasp I.\nIn the span of the 17th and 18th centuries, Fuzuli's unique genres as well ashik poetry were taken up by prominent poets and writers such as Qovsi of Tabriz, Shah Abbas Sani, Agha Mesih Shirvani, Nishat, Molla Vali Vidadi, Molla Panah Vagif, Amani, Zafar and others. Along with Turks, Turkmens and Uzbeks, Azerbaijanis celebrate the Epic of Koroglu (from for \"blind man's son\"), a legendary folk hero. Several documented versions of Koroglu epic remain at the Institute for Manuscripts of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan.\nMedia.\nThe first newspaper in Azerbaijani, \"Akinchi\" was published in 1875. There are three state-owned television channels: AzTV, Idman TV and Medeniyyet TV. There is one public channel and 6 private channels: \u0130ctimai Television, Space TV, Lider TV, Azad Azerbaijan TV, Xazar TV, Real TV and ARB.\nCinema.\nThe film industry in Azerbaijan dates back to 1898. Azerbaijan was among the first countries involved in cinematography, with the apparatus first showing up in Baku. In 1919 a documentary \"The Celebration of the Anniversary of Azerbaijani Independence\" was filmed on the first anniversary of Azerbaijan's independence from Russia, 27 May, and premiered in June 1919 at several theatres in Baku. After the Soviet power was established in 1920, Nariman Narimanov, chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of Azerbaijan, signed a decree nationalizing Azerbaijan's cinema. This also influenced the creation of Azerbaijani animation.\nIn 1991, after Azerbaijan gained its independence from the Soviet Union, the first Baku International Film Festival East-West was held in Baku. In December 2000, former President Heydar Aliyev signed a decree proclaiming 2 August to be the professional holiday of filmmakers of Azerbaijan. Today Azerbaijani filmmakers are again dealing with issues similar to those faced by cinematographers prior to the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1920. Once again, both choices of content and sponsorship of films are largely left up to the initiative of the filmmaker.\nCuisine.\nAzerbaijani cuisine uses an abundance of seasonal vegetables and greens. Fresh herbs, including mint, cilantro (coriander), dill, basil, parsley, tarragon, leeks, chives, thyme, marjoram, green onion, and watercress, are popular and often accompany main dishes on the table. Climatic diversity and fertility of the land are reflected in the national dishes, which are based on fish from the Caspian Sea, local meat (mainly mutton and beef), and seasonal vegetables and greens.\nSaffron-rice plov is the flagship food in Azerbaijan, and black tea is the national beverage. Azerbaijanis often use traditional armudu (pear-shaped) glass as they have very strong tea culture. Popular traditional dishes include bozbash (lamb soup that exists in several regional varieties with the addition of different vegetables), qutab (fried turnover with a filling of greens or minced meat) and dushbara (dumplings filled with ground meat and spices).\nSport.\nFreestyle wrestling has been traditionally regarded as Azerbaijan's national sport, in which Azerbaijan has won fourteen medals, including four golds, since joining the International Olympic Committee. The most popular sports are football and wrestling.\nThe Association of Football Federations of Azerbaijan, with 9,122 registered players, is the largest sporting association in the country. The national football team demonstrates relatively low performance in the international arena compared to the nation football clubs. The most successful clubs are Neft\u00e7i, Qaraba\u011f, and Gabala. In 2012, Neftchi Baku became the first Azerbaijani team to advance to the group stage of a European competition. In 2014, Qaraba\u011f became the second Azerbaijani club advancing to the group stage of UEFA Europa League. In 2017, after beating Copenhagen 2\u20132 (a) in the play-off round of the UEFA Champions League, Qaraba\u011f became the first Azerbaijani club to reach the group stage.\nFutsal is another popular sport in Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijan national futsal team reached fourth place in the 2010 UEFA Futsal Championship, while domestic club Araz Nax\u00e7ivan clinched bronze medals at the 2009\u201310 UEFA Futsal Cup and 2013\u201314 UEFA Futsal Cup. Azerbaijan was the main sponsor of Spanish football club Atl\u00e9tico de Madrid during seasons 2013/2014 and 2014/2015, a partnership that the club described should 'promote the image of Azerbaijan in the world'.\nAzerbaijan is one of the traditional powerhouses of world chess, having hosted many international chess tournaments and competitions and became European Team Chess Championship winners in 2009, 2013 and 2017. Notable chess players include Teimour Radjabov, Shahriyar Mammadyarov, Vladimir Makogonov, Vugar Gashimov and former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov. As of 2014[ [update]], country's home of Shamkir Chess a category 22 event and one of the highest rated tournaments of all time. Backgammon also plays a major role in Azerbaijani culture. The game is very popular in Azerbaijan and is widely played among the local public. There are also different variations of backgammon developed and analyzed by Azerbaijani experts.\nAzerbaijan Women's Volleyball Super League placed fourth at the 2005 European Championship. Over the last years, clubs like Rabita Baku and Azerrail Baku achieved great success at European cups. Azerbaijani volleyball players include likes of Valeriya Korotenko, Oksana Parkhomenko, Inessa Korkmaz, Natalya Mammadova, and Alla Hasanova.\nOther Azerbaijani athletes are Namig Abdullayev, Toghrul Asgarov, Rovshan Bayramov, Sharif Sharifov, Mariya Stadnik and Farid Mansurov in wrestling, Nazim Huseynov, Elnur Mammadli, Elkhan Mammadov and Rustam Orujov in judo, Rafael Aghayev in karate, Magomedrasul Majidov and Aghasi Mammadov in boxing, Nizami Pashayev in Olympic weightlifting, Azad Asgarov in pankration, Eduard Mammadov in kickboxing, and K-1 fighter Zabit Samedov.\nAzerbaijan has a Formula One racetrack, constructed in 2012, and the country hosted its first Formula One Grand Prix in 2016 and the Azerbaijan Grand Prix since 2017. Other annual sporting events held in the country are the Baku Cup tennis tournament and the Tour d'Azerba\u00efdjan cycling race.\nAzerbaijan hosted several major sport competitions since the late 2000s, including the 2013 F1 Powerboat World Championship, 2012 FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup, 2011 AIBA World Boxing Championships, 2010 European Wrestling Championships, 2009 Rhythmic Gymnastics European Championships, 2014 European Taekwondo Championships, 2014 Rhythmic Gymnastics European Championships, and 2016 World Chess Olympiad. Baku was selected to host the 2015 European Games. Baku hosted the fourth Islamic Solidarity Games in 2017 and the 2019 European Youth Summer Olympic Festival, and was a host of UEFA Euro 2020.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Stack/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["746"], "permutation_1": ["746"], "permutation_2": ["746"], "permutation_3": ["746"]}
{"id": "nq_-5020967530524006916", "docs_added": {"5674948": "When You Say Nothing at All\n1988 single by Keith Whitley\n\"When You Say Nothing at All\" is a country song written by Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz. It was a hit song for four different performers: Keith Whitley, who took it to the top of the \"Billboard\" Hot Country Singles chart on December 24, 1988; Alison Krauss & Union Station, whose version was their first solo top-10 country hit in 1995; Irish singer Frances Black, whose 1996 version became her third Irish top-10 single and brought the song to the attention of Irish pop singer Ronan Keating, whose 1999 version was his first solo single and a number-one hit in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and New Zealand.\nOrigin.\nSongwriters Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz came up with \"When You Say Nothing at All\" at the end of an otherwise unproductive day. Strumming a guitar, trying to write their next song, they were coming up empty. \"As we tried to find another way to say nothing, we came up with the song\", Overstreet later told author Ace Collins. They thought the song was OK, but nothing special. When Keith Whitley heard it, he loved it, and was not going to let it get away. Earlier, he had recorded another Overstreet-Schlitz composition that became a No. 1 hit for another artist - Randy Travis' \"On the Other Hand.\" Whitley did not plan to let \"When You Say Nothing at All\" meet the same fate.\nKeith Whitley.\nRCA released \"When You Say Nothing at All\" as the follow-up single to the title song of Whitley's \"Don't Close Your Eyes\" album. The former song already had hit No. 1 on the \"Billboard\" Hot Country Singles chart, his first chart-topper after three prior singles made the top 10. \"When You Say Nothing at All\" entered the Hot Country Singles chart on September 17, 1988, at No. 61, and gradually rose to the top, where it stayed for two weeks at the end of the year. It was the second of five consecutive chart-topping singles for Whitley, who did not live to see the last two, as he died on May 9, 1989, of alcohol poisoning. \"Keith did a great job singin' that song,\" co-composer Schlitz told author Tom Roland. \"He truly sang it from the heart.\" In 2004, Whitley's original was ranked 12th among CMT's \"100 Greatest Love Songs\". It was sung by Sara Evans on the show. As of February 2015, the song has sold 599,000 digital copies in the US after it became available for download.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nAlison Krauss & Union Station version.\nIn 1994, bluegrass music group Alison Krauss & Union Station covered the song for a tribute album to Whitley titled '. After this cover began to receive unsolicited airplay, BNA Records, the label that had released the album, issued it to radio in January 1995. That version, also featured on Krauss' compilation ', peaked at No. 3 on the \"Billboard\" Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart, and a commercial single reached No. 2 on the same magazine's Hot Country Singles Sales chart. The B-side of the single was Keith Whitley's \"Charlotte's in North Carolina\", which was another previously unreleased track featured on the Tribute album.\nIts success, as well as that of the album, caught Krauss by surprise. \"It's a freak thing,\" she told a \"Los Angeles Times\" reporter in March 1995. \"It's kinda ticklin' us all. We haven't had anything really chart before. At all. Isn't it funny though? We don't know what's goin' on...The office said, 'Hey, it's charting,' and we're like, 'Huh?'\"\nMike Cromwell, then the production director at WMIL-FM in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, concocted a duet merging elements of the Alison Krauss & Union Station version with Whitley's original hit version. The \"duet\" garnered national attention, and it spread from at least Philadelphia to Albuquerque. This \"duet\" was however never officially serviced to radio and has never been available commercially.\nThe Alison Krauss & Union Station recording won the 1995 CMA award for \"Single of the Year\". It has sold 468,000 digital downloads as of May 2017.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nFrances Black version.\n\"When You Say Nothing At All\" is the opening track on Frances Black's third solo album, \"The Smile on Your Face\" (1996), the title of the album being a lyric from this song. Released in August 1996 as the album's first single, this single became her third to reach the Irish top 10, peaking at number eight during an 11-week run in the top 30.\nPersonnel.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nRonan Keating version.\n\"When You Say Nothing at All\" was released as the debut solo single by Irish singer-songwriter Ronan Keating. The song was recorded for the soundtrack to the film \"Notting Hill\" and also appeared on Keating's debut solo album, \"Ronan\". This cover was released on July 26, 1999, in the United Kingdom. It peaked at number one in the UK, Ireland, and New Zealand. The single is certified double platinum in the UK and platinum in Australia, Denmark, and Sweden.\nIn February 2003, Keating re-recorded the song as a duet with Mexican singer Paulina Rubio in Spanglish, which was released in Spain, Mexico, and Latin America (excluding Brazil) to promote Keating's second studio album, \"Destination\". In Brazil, Ronan chose the Brazilian singer Deborah Blando to re-record the song in English and English-Portuguese for the \"10 Years Of Hits\" album exclusive for that country. A music video was recorded for this version with Blando.\nCritical reception.\n\"Daily Record\" wrote that Keating \"sounds like Marti Pellow on this drippy ballad.\" The Spanish website \"Jenesaispop\" described the Spanglish version as one of the most \"squeaky\" bilingual collaboration, while Victor Gonz\u00e1lez of \"GQ Spain\" praised the collaboration as \"great\" in an article of \"unusual collaborations\".\nTrack listings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCredits and personnel.\nCredits are taken from the UK CD1 liner notes.\nStudios\nPersonnel\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3691124": "Nothing (Janet Jackson song)\n\"Nothing\" is a song recorded by American singer-songwriter Janet Jackson. It was released on March 23, 2010 by A&M Records and So So Def Recordings as a soundtrack single from the film \"Why Did I Get Married Too?\", which starred Jackson. The song was later included on Jackson's compilation album \"\". It was written by Jackson, Johnt\u00e1 Austin, Bryan-Michael Cox and Jermaine Dupri and produced by Jackson, Cox, and Dupri. Initially titled \"Trust in Me\", the song was written about the different character's personas and emotions in the film.\n\"Nothing\" received mostly positive reviews from music critics, who praised it as \"classic pop\", and noted that it was possibly influenced by her brother Michael Jackson's recent death. Despite the fact that it was not officially released to radio formats for airplay, the song managed to achieve moderate rotation on adult contemporary and jazz formats. A music video for the song was directed by Tim Palen and premiered in April 2010. Jackson performed \"Nothing\" on the ninth season finale of \"American Idol\" and on the Essence Music Festival, which Jackson headlined.\nBackground.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"Nothing\" is about the characters in the movie; I tried to write at least one verse for each couple. I think the fans can relate because, if you look at the characters, there is something in one - or, as in my case, many of them, that you can relate to...In that way, music and movies are very similar; you relate to the story when you experience them, and that is what makes it powerful.\"\n\u2014 Janet Jackson on the concept of \"Nothing\"\n\"Nothing\" was composed by Janet Jackson, Johnt\u00e1 Austin, Bryan-Michael Cox and Jermaine Dupri and produced by Jackson, Cox, and Dupri. It was released on March 30, 2010 as the theme for \"Why Did I Get Married Too?\", which starred Jackson. It was released as a stand-alone single in addition to appearing on the \"Why Did I Get Married Too?\" soundtrack, and was later included on Jackson's \"\" compilation. \"Nothing\" was strongly considered for a nomination for \"Best Original Song\" at the 83rd Academy Awards, but ultimately was not nominated.\nOn February 11, 2010 Jackson revealed the song's title on her official Twitter account. Janet's official site announced \"Janet composed 'Nothing' as an emotional ballad that reflects and supports the powerful themes of the film..[&] evokes the emotional turmoil the \"Why Did I Get Married Too?\" characters experience throughout the film.\" Initially titled \"Trust in Me\", Jackson spoke to \"The LA Times\" about the song, stating \"Even though it sounds like a sad song, it's hopeful. When you really listen to it, it's really hopeful.\" When asked why she felt the song resonated with so many fans, Janet replied that she felt the song helped people relate to the characters in the movie.\nMusic supervisor Joel C. High, who recruited artists to appear on the film's soundtrack, commented \"we were lucky to have Janet involved, especially at a time where she was going through a lot. We were basically finished with the picture when she told Tyler she wanted to write something. It's a strong love song [...] and is our big end title finish.\" Co-producer Jermaine Dupri also spoke about the song, revealing \"We had to do this record in like three days to get it into this movie \u2013 it was a last minute thing that her and Tyler [Perry] talked about.\" Dupri also added \"You haven't heard Janet sound like this in a long time and I think the song is perfect for the movie. It's a really good record.\"\nPromotion.\nTo promote the song and film, Janet held a contest on her official website titled \"Janet's Everything for Nothing Experience\", which allowed the winner to receive a personally autographed copy of her \"Number Ones\" compilation, with the grand-prize winner receiving an autographed \"Why Did I Get Married Too?\" poster. Expressing gratitude to her fans, Jackson tweeted \"Thank u for all the love on 'Nothing.' I hope u will enjoy Why Did I Get Married Too this week!\"\nCritical reception.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"Janet Jackson, by virtue of coming from the same DNA pool as Michael, and by virtue of having grown up singing with him, likely finds it very natural to sing in a manner that sounds very similar to that of her late brother\u2019s effeminate voice. And frankly, she\u2019s one of the few people in the world who has a right to sound that much like Michael. She\u2019s at this point the de facto representative of the Jackson clan, and the closest thing we have remaining in terms of his legacy.\"\n\u2014 \"Beatweek Magazine\" on Janet's vocals sounding similar to Michael Jackson's in \"Nothing\" \nMTV qualified \"Nothing\" as having \"waves of heartfelt emotion\" and \"mournful beauty\". \"Rolling Stone\" described the track as \"classic pop,\" adding that the lyrics reflect the tensions and turmoil between the film characters. Cristen Maher from AOL Music's \"The Boombox\" called the song \"an uplifting ballad...about the ups and downs that occur when two people are in love. The overall message is that when it comes to love, nothing can stand in the way of making things right.\" Maher adds \"Jackson \u2014 who is still coping with the loss of her brother Michael \u2014 drew inspiration from her grief for her theatrical performance...transferring her sorrow beautifully into a moving and deeply heartfelt ballad.\"\nIdolator stated that the song \"reminds us that, despite all the overproduction and sexed-up whispering on her last few singles, Janet can actually still deliver solid vocals\u2014something that was hardly apparent on \u201cWe Are The World 25\". \"Entertainment Weekly\" described the song as an \"airy ballad, on which she cries out for more communication in a troubled relationship.\" Deborah Vankin of \"The Los Angeles Times\" called it \"a touching, melodic ballad about truth, trust and relationships\", adding that the song is \"generating almost as much Oscar buzz as it feels riddled with grief [...] Even though Jackson says \"Nothing\" is not about her brother, whom she won't talk about much these days, the song's melancholy and emotional grit leads one to wonder. It's no stretch to think that Jackson, who's known for having a particularly strong work ethic and occasionally losing herself in creative projects during turbulent times, was channeling the fallout of her personal tragedy into her music.\"\nMusic video.\nJackson shot the music video for \"Nothing\" on March 24, 2010, with it being premiered the following week on AOL Music. The video was directed by Tim Palen, photographer and co-President of Theatrical Marketing at Lions Gate Entertainment, the company that released \"Why Did I Get Married Too?\". The video features several shots of Jackson in mirror-like projections accompanied by powerful and passionate clips from the film. Internationally, the video was released to music channels on July 19. A behind the scenes segment on the filming of the video was shown on TV Guide Network's \"Hollywood 411\". The \"Nothing\" music video was included in the \"Special Features\" segment of the \"Why Did I Get Married Too?\" Blu-ray and DVD.\nAOL Music's \"The Boombox\" commented \"the superstar\u2019s newest video for \u2018Nothing\u2019 encompasses the message of the song, with a stark blackness acting as a backdrop to Jackson's emotional release.\" \"Idolator\" called the video \"heavy on the singing, light on the Nasty\", noting the stripped down approach of the clip was \"hardly a tour de force\".\nLive performances.\nJackson made a surprise appearance on the ninth season finale of \"American Idol\" to perform a medley of \"Nothing\" and \"Nasty\" after joining the contestants to perform a rendition of her hit ballad \"Again\". MTV expressed that Jackson provided the audience with waves of heartfelt emotion as she sang \"Nothing\". Zap2it stated that the performance of \"Nothing\" was moving. Neon Limelight stated that Jackson \"brought the crowd to its feet.\nThe song was also performed at the Essence Music Festival, which Jackson headlined, with the performance from the event broadcast on TV One. \"Nothing\" was later included on the setlist of Jackson's Number Ones, Up Close and Personal tour in 2011. The song was performed after a video interlude displaying scenes from Jackson's various acting roles, including \"Poetic Justice\", \"Why Did I Get Married Too?\", and \"Good Times\". \"MuuMuse\" commented on the tour's performance, saying \"Perched on top of a stool, Jackson delivered a 1-2-3 punch of some of her biggest ballads\u2013including 'Again,' 'Let's Wait Awhile,' and her latest offering, 'Nothing'\u2013as the crowd lovingly swayed and sang along.\"\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "9532152": "Stories and Texts for Nothing\nLiterary work\nStories and Texts for Nothing is a collection of stories by Samuel Beckett. It gathers three of Beckett's short stories (\"The Expelled,\" \"The Calmative,\" and \"The End\": all written in 1946) and the thirteen short prose pieces he named \"Texts for Nothing\" (1950\u20131952). All of these works are collected in the Grove Press edition of Beckett's complete short prose. They were originally written in French and published in 1955 by Les \u00c9ditions de Minuit as \"Nouvelles et Textes pour rien\", with a second edition illustrated edition published by the same publisher in 1958.\nThe Stories.\nAll three stories deal with the displacement or expulsion of old men who are forced to leave their modest lives in search of a new niche where they might fit.\n\"The Expelled\".\nThough the story deals with rejection and the forcible ejection of the narrator, it begins with the narrator's complaints regarding the difficulty of counting the stairs down which he had to go once he was expelled. The story follows the narrator as he tries to find a new place for himself, all the while presenting his bitterness and anger towards many things in the world. The resentment in the story is not directed at the injustices of being thrown out of what we assume is the narrator's home, but of the more general injustices of life, such as being born at all, for which the only consolation the narrator finds is in distractions like mathematics.\n\"Texts for Nothing\".\nNone of the thirteen \"Texts for Nothing\" were given titles; they present a variety of voices thrust into the unknown. According to S. E. Gontarski: \"What one is left with after the \"Texts for Nothing\" is 'nothing,' incorporeal consciousness perhaps, into which Beckett plunged afresh in English in the early 1950s to produce a tale rich in imagery but short on external coherence.\" Thus these texts, when compared to the three earlier stories, as well as \"First Love\", may be interpreted as representing a movement in Beckett's writing from modernism to postmodernism. Unlike the earlier stories, these pieces are no longer completed stories but shards - \"aper\u00e7us of a continuous unfolding narrative, glimpses at a never to be complete being (Narrative).\" This idea is voiced in text 4, where the narrator admits stories are not required any more:\nThere's my life, why not, it is one, if you like, if you must, I don't say no, this evening. There has to be one, it seems, once there is speech, no need of a story, a story is not compulsory, just a life, that's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "10579161": "Whatever You Say, Say Nothing\nWhatever You Say, Say Nothing is the fourth studio album by Scottish rock band Deacon Blue, released in March 1993 by Columbia Records. It was the group's final original album before their initial dissolution in mid-1994.\nWishing to pursue a new musical direction, Deacon Blue recorded the album with the dance production team of Steve Osborne and Paul Oakenfold, hoping that the team's different background would provide a creative challenge. Oakenfold agreed to the project in hopes of changing the band's sound to something edgier, but recording sessions were fraught with disagreement and Oakenfold, who believed the group were uninterested in his ideas, lost interest in the project. Breaking with the band's earlier, more soulful and folky work, \"Whatever You Say\" is a visceral, guitar-driven alternative rock record with dance textures and driving rhythms. Lead singer Ricky Ross pens lyrics with more universal themes than on earlier records.\nPromoted by the lead single and UK Top 20 hit \"Your Town\", \"Whatever You Say, Say Nothing\" reached number four in the UK Albums Chart, but was less successful than the band's earlier albums, and failed to chart in the United States. The album received an unenthusiastic response from music critics and the group's new direction baffled some of their fans. Some critics have described the album as a late entry into the dance-rock and baggy movements of the early 1990s. In support of the album, Deacon Blue toured Europe in 1993, with an elaborate stage set featuring scaffolding and corrugated sheets. The record was re-released in 2012 by Edsel Records as a two CD and DVD set.\nBackground.\nDeacon Blue's third album, \"Fellow Hoodlums\" (1991), sold half as many copies as its predecessor, \"When the World Knows Your Name\" (1989), and was critically panned, though it did receive a Platinum certification in the United Kingdom. Believing that they had firmly \"established their sound\" by the release of \"Fellow Hoodlums\", lead singer Ricky Ross comments that the band wished to pursue a drastic change in direction for the follow-up album, \"Whatever You Say, Say Nothing\". Craig Winn of \"M8\" believed the band's \"need to attract a new audience\" was comparable to Wet Wet Wet, who \u2013 having been criticised for attracting a teenage audience \u2013 released the \"mature\" album \"High on the Happy Side\" (1992) and became fashionable, but writes that Deacon Blue \"had the opposite problem\" of having a mature audience and wanting younger fans.\nOn impetus for the band's new stylistic change, Ross commented that after the band achieved their original aim of recording an album and appearing on \"Top of the Pops\", he realised that he is \"actually quite ambitious and [wanted] to take it somewhere [he] hadn't imagined possible\". He also credited \"boredom factor\" as a reason, commenting that, as a songwriter, he originally joined the band because it would be \"interesting\", adding: \"I'm pushing it having done three albums and trying to do four. So you may as well push your luck the whole way and make a fourth album that is actually quite adventurous.\" Ross said that, rather than commercial motivations driving the band's desire for new fans, he was more interested in \"us being a band and staying a band and having fun being in a band\", as \"it's about really sparking and really pushing yourself hard because you just get lazy.\" \nDeacon Blue chose dance producers Steve Osborne and Paul Oakenfold to produce the album. Bassist Ewen Vernal said that the production duo were recommended by A&R staff, and that the group chose them because their musical background was highly different to \"anything we've ever done\", believing that it had \"got to the point where any new project we want to get into we try and approach with some kind of challenge in mind.\" According to Ross, the duo of Osborne and Oakenfold were one of several \"oddball names\", another being David Byrne, that the band piled with A&R workers, hoping to find \"someone to visit the studio every two weeks and be a kind of upsetting factor in the whole thing\". He said the decision to hire Oakenfold came down to his vague knowledge of him as a DJ, but was only familiar with his work on an INXS song. Ross has denied that the production team's work with U2 influenced the band's decision.\nOakenfold and Osborne had recently completed their work on the Happy Mondays' \"Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches\" (1990) when Sony approached them to produce the Deacon Blue album. As Oakenfold later explained, he considered them to be \"an out-and-out pop band, real cheese in some respects\", and was uninterested in taking on the project, but was persuaded by the group's A&R man, who ensured him that the band \"really want to change, to come up with a more interesting sound.\" As Deacon Blue were a Platinum-selling pop band, the producer decided it could be \"a great thing to do, because it's not the obvious thing to do. We could completely change their sound. People would be able to see our production qualities, because we'd taken a pop band made them more edgy.\"\nRecording.\nDeacon Blue recorded \"Whatever You Say, Say Nothing\" in three English studios: London's AIR Studios, and Oxfordshire's The Manor Studio and Outside Studios. A fourth studio, Eden Studios in London, was used to mix the record. Paul Corkett recorded the album with assistance from Adrian Bushby, Danton Supple, Gorby and Steve Orchard. Vernal said the record was difficult to record, due to the band entering \"territory which we'd never been in before'.\"\nMusic author Richard Norris writes that although recording with Oakenfold and Osborne was intended to \"invigorate the band's creativity with a fresh new approach\", the sessions were not wholly successful in this regard. Oakenfold said that Deacon Blue initially agreed to his ideas about moving their sound in an edgier direction, but that once he and Osborne entered the studio, the band changed their mind, having just released their best-selling single. The producer said that after completing the first track, which was \"great\", he told them \"we now need to go more edgy...they're all getting nervous, and I'm saying trust me, this is where we're going now.\"\nOakenfold credits co-vocalist Lorraine McIntosh \u2013 Ross' partner \u2013 for driving the band's resistance to his ideas: \"it was one of those cliches where she had his ear, and what she wanted was what went on.\" According to Ross and McIntosh in an interview with \"The Observer\", Oakenfold and Osborne \"took their carte blanche control of song selection to extreme tyrannical proportions\", on occasion driving McIntosh to tears. The band's guitarist Graeme Kelling believed that, despite hiring the producers to break up the band's familiar way of working, \"we were trying to force ourselves in to another jacket \u2013 a terrible-looking spangly one \u2013 and didn't realise that what we had was actually quite special.\"\nOakenfold lost interest by the end of the sessions as the album \"was becoming more and more pop. Obviously it had all our sounds in terms of production, so the mix was a lot harder than the band were used to, but it was nowhere near where I wanted it to be.\" He said: \"In the end you just think, fuck it, they ain't listening.\" He later said that despite losing interest, Osborne remained engaged. Ross viewed Osborne, rather than Oakenfold, as the album's central influence, saying: \"I think Steve's input was 75% and Paul's 25%. Steve\u2019s a huge part of the deal. Paul's very good at coming in and going 'Yeah, I know' to things, and they work together as a team. I think the logic of why they worked together as a team defied some of the band at the time because of how little Paul's input was on anything.\"\nComposition.\nMusical style and themes.\nFor \"Whatever You Say, Say Nothing\", Ricky Ross stirred Deacon Blue's sound into a more rock-oriented direction than their previous folk-tinged work, with the \"unlikely\" team-up with Osborne and Oakenfold contributing to the \"major sonic departure\" and giving it a dance edge. Considered an alternative rock record, the music is guitar-driven, something which pleased Kelling, who believed it marked a departure from the keyboard-oriented material on their earlier albums; he stated that Ross \"wrote that album on guitar, and the songs were a lot more direct.\" The sound is broader and more visceral, and is further characterised by its driving rhythms, dense textures, and percussive dance flavour, achieved with the producers. The rhythms have been described as techno-esque and repetitive, while the use of \"acoustic guitar, strings and a variety of percussion\" leads to what reviewer Virginia Trioli describes as the album's distinctive British rock sound. Music critic Barbara Jaegar believes the group \"boosted its rhythm quotient\" for a more immediate feel, departing from the ethereal, soulful pop sound of its predecessors.\nThe reviewer John Harris contends that the album \u2013 through Oakenfold and Osborne's input \u2013 features a similar sound to Happy Mondays' \"Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches\". According to critic William Ruhlmann, Ross adopts a \"high, breathy singing voice with lots of echo\", and writes lyrics with more universal themes in contrast to earlier songs inspired by the Glasgow neighbourhood he grew up in. Kelling's guitar work is raw and melodic, inspiring comparison to James Honeyman-Scott of the Pretenders. Elements of the group's earlier sound remain, such as the midtempo pacing and the continued interplay between the two vocalists, Ross and McIntosh. Ross denied that they \"set out to make a dance record\" but added that a club mix of \"Your Town\" was produced because, as the song ran at 125 bpm, Osborne had the idea to \"dance-up a Deacon Blue record\" and surprise the band's fans. Nicole Meighan of \"The Scotsman\" wrote of the \"fierce undercurrent of frustration and ragged anger\" that characterises parts of the album, considering it \"an impression, perhaps, of a band at sea, fighting against the tide.\"\nSongs.\nThe group's new direction is immediately apparent with the tense opening song, \"Your Town\", a galloping protest song with heavy guitars, keyboards, dance-like rhythms and breathy harmonies. Ross's unusually-altered vocals are distorted and muffled, inspiring comparison with industrial music, and Bono's vocals on U2's \"The Fly\" (1991). One reviewer commented that Ross' vocals are \"compressed and equalized into an AM-radio buzz.\" His vocals are surrounded by the swirling guitars and the restrained, martial drums, while acoustic textures more typical of the band are placed low in the mix. Meighan describes the song as an \"emotional juggernaut\" through which drummer Dougie Vipond evokes Fleetwood Mac's \"Big Love\" (1987). The lyrics express anger at former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who had been out of office since 1990, with lines like \"When you're gone, they will curse you\". Ross credits the venomous lyrics to the song being written in the leadup to the 1992 general election, saying: \"We had had three Tory governments, and everyone was really sick, fed up with them, and it was that sort of political song.\" McIntosh has since described the song as one of her favourites by the group, praising its \"unbelievable energy and power.\"\nThe sombre nature of \"Your Town\" continues with \"Only Tender Love\". \"Peace & Jobs & Freedom\" is a political song that features the highest prominence of McIntosh's vocals. Harris compares it to the \"filthy-sounding\" Happy Mondays song \"Bob's Your Uncle\" (1990). The driving, guitar-driven \"Hang Your Head\" features dance beats and \"stainless steel guitar strings\", while \"Bethlehem's Gate\" is one of several songs characterised by what Ruhlmann describes as \"relentless, martial drumming and rhythmic instruments that played pulse patterns rather than complete chords\". \"Will We Be Lovers\" is driven by a \"semi-dance beat\", and was compared by Harris to the Happy Mondays' \"Judge Fudge\" (1991), while \"Fall So Freely Down\" features some atypical guitar work atop its heavy beats. \"Cut Lip\" is a funky, Prince-esque song with a Motown-style piano lick, an example of the soul-styled beats that appear throughout the record. \"Last Night I Dreamed of Henry Thomas\" was singled out by reviewer Andy Gill as an anomaly for its \"odd, miasmic arrangement and sounds lurking and looming out of the work\". The final song, \"All Over the World\" is midtempo and anthemic.\nRelease and promotion.\nAs the lead single from \"Whatever You Say, Say Nothing\", \"Your Town\" was released in November 1992 and debuted at number 14 on the UK Singles Chart, becoming the highest new entry that week. The song stayed on the chart four eight weeks. In their review of \"Our Town\", \"i-D\" wrote that \"Oakenfold did with U2 and does it again here...\" Reviewing the United States single release in May 1993, \"The Hard Report\" compared the song to the Beloved and praised it as a \"great tune\" which \"has adult appeal written all over it\", adding that it could attract both \"the flannel wearing college kids \"and\" your corporate commercial radio guys\". Further singles charted in the UK: \"Will We Be Lovers\" reached number 31 in February 1993, \"Only Tender Love\" reached number 22 in April, and the \"Hang Your Head\" EP reached number 21 in July. The latter contained the title track, \"Freedom Train\", \"Here on the Wind\" and \"Indigo Sky\".\nDeacon Blue's fourth album, \"Whatever You Say, Say Nothing\" was released in the United Kingdom on 1 March 1993 through Columbia Records. Similarly to U2's \"Achtung Baby\", the album is titled with an \"ironic slogan\", and coinciding with its release, Ross began wearing sunglasses and \"rock star togs\", in a manner that Harris compared with Bono. It reached number four on the UK Albums Chart, but was relatively unsuccessful compared to earlier records by the band. It only spent three weeks in the Top 20 and fell off the chart completely seven weeks later. It has been certified Gold by the British Phonographic Industry for 100,000 sales. The record also reached number 43 in the Netherlands, and number 91 in Germany. In the United States, the album was released on 23 June 1993, featuring alternate artwork. It was a major flop in the country and failed to chart.\nDeacon Blue followed the album with a 1993 European tour. For the shows, Ross dressed in silvery lurex and wraparound sunglasses, drawing comparison to Bono, and used a megaphone and inspection lamp, similar to Tom Waits. The stage set was \"cheapjack\", featuring scaffolding and several silver-painted corrugated sheets. The set design was compared by some to U2's eccentric Zoo TV Tour, but according to Ross, the actual inspiration was Tom Waits' Big Time tour. \"Liverpool Echo\"'s Penny Kiley, reviewing the two April shows in Liverpool's Royal Court Theatre, noted that while the album had been criticised for its \"stadium rock direction\", the group eschewed large-size venues for theatre gigs, evidencing the band's \"commitment to reaching local audiences that fits their grass-roots style of song\". This, she contends, was in contrast to the ambitious and highly visual nature of the shows, which heavily used lanterns, spotlights, torches and candles. The group cancelled their planned autumn 1993 tour, instead postponing it for spring 1994. Ross recalled that by the start of 1994, it had become clear that the tour \"would be our last outing together\", ahead of their split later in the year.\nCritical reception.\n\"Whatever You Say, Say Nothing\" received unenthusiastic reviews from music critics, and the group's new direction baffled many of their fans. In his \"NME\" review, John Harris criticised the album for exuding \"the wish to play the reinvention game \"\u00e0 la\" U2, and suddenly become fashionable\", believing that the band's A&R staff told them to \"get trendy\" in face of their failure to reach stadium-selling status. He added that \"among all the cod-baggy wooliness\", the band had \"lost the knack of writing silly-but-hummable pop songs\". \"Cross Rhythms\" critic Rupert Loydell noted how the band joined many other bands in \"the reinvention game\", adopting \"the U2-esque semi-collage method of dance music, grandiose songs and sonic interruption/layering.\" He considered the approach to work effectively on songs like \"Your Town\" but believed the songs are otherwise \"lost\", feeling that Ross was \"trying too hard to be hip\" and not allowing his lyrics and melodies to \"speak for themselves\", resulting in a generally unmemorable album.\nAndy Gill of \"The Independent\" described the album as \"a belated jump onto a baggy bandwagon\" that fell out of fashion with the Happy Mondays' \"Yes Please!\" (1992), but noted that while Oakenfold and Osborne were hired to \"jolly up\" Deacon Blue's sound, they \"seem baffled by Deacon Blue's mundanity, and seem to settle for an approximation of concert acoustics on many songs.\" In his review, \"The Daily Herald\"'s Rick Anderson described \"Whatever You Say, Say Nothing\" as \"just plain better than average\" and praised \"Your Town\", but believed the album failed to keep its momentum, with the following songs \"shadows of the opening track\". \"Sunday Republican\" critic Kevin O'Hara wrote that Deacon Blue \"comes out hitting hard\", with some songs profiling Ross' best ever singing. While he considered the album's second half weaker, overall he lauded the band's broadening style.\n\"The Sunday Record\"'s Barbara Jaegar believed the"}, "descending_order": ["5674948", "3691124", "9532152", "10579161"], "permutation_1": ["5674948", "9532152", "10579161", "3691124"], "permutation_2": ["10579161", "5674948", "9532152", "3691124"], "permutation_3": ["5674948", "3691124", "9532152", "10579161"]}
{"id": "nq_-5004135488075453818", "docs_added": {"463262": "David Wenham\nAustralian actor\nDavid Wenham is an Australian actor who has appeared in film, television and theatre. He is known for his roles as Faramir in \"The Lord of the Rings\" film trilogy, Friar Carl in \"Van Helsing\" and ', Dilios in \"300\" and its sequel ', Al Parker in \"Top of the Lake\", Lieutenant John Scarfield in \"\", and Hank Snow in \"Elvis\". He is known in his native Australia for his role as Diver Dan in \"SeaChange\" and Price Galese in \"Les Norton\".\nEarly life.\nWenham has five older sisters; Helen, Anne, Carmel, Kathryn, and Maree; and one older brother, Peter. He was raised in the Roman Catholic faith and attended Christian Brothers' High School, Lewisham, Sydney.\nCareer.\nWenham started his career as an actor after graduating from Theatre Nepean at the University of Western Sydney with a Bachelor of Arts (Performing Arts) in 1987. Wenham's television credits include several telefilms, such as his AFI award-winning role in 1997's \"Simone de Beauvoir's Babies\"; and his role as the outwardly laid back but deeply enigmatic diver Dan Della Bosca in the 1998 and 1999 seasons of the ABC television series \"SeaChange\". His role as \"Diver Dan\" has made the actor something of a sex symbol, although he dislikes thinking of himself as such, and he has been voted Australia's \"sexiest man alive\". A portrait of Wenham by artist Adam Cullen won the Archibald Prize in 2000.\nAustralian films Wenham has starred in include \"The Boys\" (1998) based on the play of the same name premiered at Griffin Theatre Company and in turn based on the murder of Anita Cobby; ' (1999), based on the life of Father Damien; \"The Bank\" (2001); \"Gettin' Square\" (2003); \"Stiff\" (2004); \"The Brush-Off\" (2004) and \"Three Dollars\" (2005). Wenham has periodically appeared in Hollywood films; he is known for playing Faramir, son of Denethor II, in New Line Cinema's ' and \"\".\nHe was seen in \"Van Helsing\" playing Hugh Jackman's sidekick, Friar Carl. His character, Dilios, narrated and appeared in the 2007 film \"300\". He reprises his role of Dilios in both the 2014 sequel, ' and the video game, ' for Sony PlayStation Portable, which contains a substantial amount of new dialogue. Minor roles of Wenham's in overseas films include in \"The Crocodile Hunter\" as a park ranger, and briefly in \"Moulin Rouge!\" as Audrey. Wenham stars in the music video for Alex Lloyd's single \"Brand New Day\". In 2008's \"Australia\", he reunited with Hugh Jackman playing antagonist Neil Fletcher.\nIn 2009, he appeared in \"Public Enemies\" as one of John Dillinger's men. He also returned to the stage, this time as the lead actor, Jerry Springer, in the British musical \"\". During its 6-day run at the Sydney Opera House he played in sold-out performances alongside ARIA award-winning singer Kate Miller-Heidke.\nIn 2010, he played the character 'Len' in the Australian drama film \"Oranges and Sunshine\". Also in 2010, Wenham starred as the disgraced Melbourne lawyer Andrew Fraser in the Australian television series \"Killing Time\". This ten-part series shows Fraser's fall from grace as he defends many Melbourne criminals during the 1980s and 1990s. It was shown on TV1 in late 2011.\nWenham plays New Zealand detective Al Parker alongside Elisabeth Moss in the 2013 BBC series \"Top of the Lake\".\nIn 2013, Wenham returned to the stage to play the lead role of John Proctor, in the Melbourne Theatre Company's mid-year production of Arthur Miller's \"The Crucible\".\nIn 2014, Wenham starred as Patrick Jones in \"Paper Planes\", released on 15 January 2015. That same year, Wenham voiced the role Jacko a frilled-neck lizard, in \"Blinky Bill the Movie\". In 2016, Wenham played the role of John, the adoptive father of Saroo Brierley in \"Lion\".\nWenham played the role of the villain Harold Meachum in the Netflix original television series \"Iron Fist\", which premiered in March 2017.\nIn 2018, Wenham plays the voice of Johnny Town-Mouse in \"Peter Rabbit\", a role he reprised in the 2021 sequel \"\".\nIn 2020, it was announced that Wenham was cast as Jasper Queller in the upcoming Netflix thriller series \"Pieces of Her\", which is adapted from the Karin Slaughter novel of the same name.\nIn 2022, Wenham returned to work with director Baz Luhrmann again to play the role of country singer Hank Snow in the biographical film \"Elvis\".\nIn November 2022, Wenham played Scrooge in a production of A Christmas Carol, his performance was praised as showing Scrooge as traumatised.\nHe was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2023 Australia Day Honours.\nPersonal life.\nWenham met actress and yoga teacher Kate Agnew at a play at Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney, Australia in 1994. They began a relationship that year. They have two daughters. As of 2020, they live together in a $2.75 million-dollar house in Brisbane, Australia.\nOn 20 September 2006, Wenham read a poem called \"The Crocodiles are Crying\" by Rupert McCall at the memorial service for Steve Irwin.\nWenham is a Sydney Swans supporter.", "21786170": "Faramir\nFictional character in The Lord of the Rings\nFaramir is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's \"The Lord of the Rings\". He is introduced as the younger brother of Boromir of the Fellowship of the Ring and second son of Denethor, the Steward of Gondor. \nFaramir enters the narrative in \"The Two Towers\", where, upon meeting Frodo Baggins, he is presented with a temptation to take possession of the One Ring. In \"The Return of the King\", he leads the forces of Gondor in the War of the Ring, coming near to death, succeeds his father as Steward, and wins the love of \u00c9owyn, lady of the royal house of Rohan.\nTolkien wrote that of all his characters, Faramir was the most like him: Tolkien had fought in the First World War and had similarly had a vision of darkness. Scholars have likened Faramir's courage to that in the Old English poem \"The Battle of Maldon\", and his hunting green-clad in Ithilien to the English folk hero and outlaw Robin Hood. The Tolkien scholar Jane Chance sees Faramir as central to a complex web of Germanic allegiance-relationships.\nFaramir has been the subject of illustrations by Tolkien artists including John Howe, Ted Nasmith and Anke Ei\u00dfmann. He was voiced by Andrew Seear in the BBC's 1981 radio adaptation. He was played by David Wenham in Peter Jackson's film trilogy.\nNarrative.\nBackground.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n[Faramir] read the hearts of men as shrewdly as his father, but what he read moved him sooner to pity than to scorn. He was gentle in bearing, and a lover of lore and of music, and therefore by many in those days his courage was judged less than his brother's. But it was not so, except that he did not seek glory in danger without a purpose.\n J.R.R. Tolkien\n , Appendix A to \"The Lord of the Rings\"\nFaramir is the son of Denethor, who becomes steward of Gondor a year after Faramir's birth. His mother is Finduilas, daughter of Prince Adrahil of Dol Amroth; she dies when Faramir is five, and is to him \"but a memory of loveliness in far days and of his first grief\". After her death Denethor becomes sombre, cold, and detached, but the relationship between Faramir and his elder brother Boromir, who is five years older, only grows closer, even though Denethor openly favours Boromir. Faramir is used to giving way and not airing his own opinions. Faramir displeases his father by welcoming the wizard Gandalf to Minas Tirith, Gondor's capital. Faramir, eager for knowledge, learns much from Gandalf about Gondor's history.\nFaramir looks much like Boromir, who is described as \"a tall man with a fair and noble face, dark-haired and grey-eyed, proud and stern of glance\". In Faramir, \"by some chance the blood of Westernesse [runs] nearly true\". He does not enjoy fighting for its own sake.\nGondor had long been threatened by the nearby realm of Mordor, and in 3018 (when Faramir was 35) the Dark Lord Sauron begins the War of the Ring, attacking the ruined city of Osgiliath that guards the river crossing to Minas Tirith. Faramir and Boromir commands the defence.\nShortly before the battle, Faramir has a prophetic dream, in which a voice speaks of the \"Sword that was Broken\" that is to be found at Imladris far to the north, about the awakening of \"Isildur's Bane\", the approach of \"Doom\", and the appearance of \"the Halfling\". Faramir decides to journey to Imladris and seek the advice of Elrond the Half-elven, but Denethor sends Boromir instead.\n\"The Two Towers\".\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n \u201cFor myself,\u201d said Faramir, \u201cI would see the White Tree in flower again in the courts of the kings, and the Silver Crown return, and Minas Tirith in peace: Minas Anor again as of old, full of light, high and fair, beautiful as a queen among other queens: not a mistress of many slaves, nay, not even a kind mistress of willing slaves. War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend: the city of the Men of N\u00famenor; and I would have her loved for her memory, her ancientry, her beauty, and her present wisdom.\u201d\n J.R.R. Tolkien\n , \"The Two Towers\"\nFaramir first encounters the hobbits Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee in Ithilien, and recognises them to be the Halflings mentioned in his dreams. Faramir questions Frodo about his quest, and Frodo reveals that he, along with eight other companions including Boromir, had set out from Rivendell. During the interrogation, Faramir asks often about Boromir, since he knows, as Frodo does not, that Boromir is already dead. One night, Faramir had waded down to the Anduin after seeing a boat there. It contained the dead body of his brother, who had been killed by Orcs after Frodo had left the group. Frodo tries to avoid the subject of his quest, but Faramir realises that Frodo was carrying something important to Sauron. Sam accidentally speaks of Boromir's desire for the One Ring, thus revealing what Frodo is carrying. Faramir then shows the crucial difference between him and his proud brother:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nFaramir is wise enough to know that such a weapon is not to be used. He sees how his brother had been tempted beyond his strength, and wishes that he had gone on the quest himself. He gives the Hobbits provisions and sends them on their way, warning Frodo that their guide, Gollum, is treacherous, and that an unknown terror lives on the pass of Cirith Ungol, where Gollum is leading them.\n\"The Return of the King\".\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n [Pippin said:] 'Here was one with an air of high nobility such as Aragorn at times revealed, less high perhaps, yet also less incalculable and remote: one of the Kings of Men born into a later time, but touched with the wisdom and sadness of the Elder Race. [...] He was a captain that men would follow, [...] even under the shadow of the black wings [of the Nazg\u00fbl].'\n J.R.R. Tolkien\n , \"The Return of the King\"\nThe following evening, Faramir sends his company to reinforce the garrison at Osgiliath, while he and three men ride to Minas Tirith. They are pursued by the Nazg\u00fbl. Faramir rides back to help the fallen and is rescued by Gandalf. At Minas Tirith, Faramir reports to Denethor and Gandalf that he had met Frodo and Sam. Denethor becomes angry that Faramir had let them go to Mordor with the Ring, instead of bringing it to him.\nThe Witch-king of Angmar, leader of the Nazg\u00fbl, leads a large army from Minas Morgul, and seizes Osgiliath. Faramir stays with the rearguard, and is gravely wounded. The city's cavalry bring him back to Minas Tirith, and the Battle of the Pelennor Fields begins. Denethor believes the unconscious Faramir to be fatally injured. He has a funeral pyre built for himself and Faramir. The Hobbit Pippin Took, sworn into Denethor's service, alerts Gandalf, and Faramir is rescued from the flames. Mad with grief, Denethor lies down on the pyre, burning himself alive.\nAfter the battle, Aragorn heals Faramir with \"athelas\" in the Houses of Healing. Recuperating, Faramir meets the Lady \u00c9owyn of Rohan, and falls in love with her. At first, \u00c9owyn refuses his advances, only desiring to find honour in death, but soon she loves him in return. Faramir becomes Steward, and prepares the city for the arrival of Aragorn, now King of Gondor. On the day of the coronation, Faramir surrenders his Stewardship. Aragorn, however, renews the office, announcing that as long as his line lasts, Faramir's descendants would be Stewards of Gondor. He makes Faramir Prince of Ithilien. In addition, as Steward Faramir serves as the King's chief counsellor and rules Gondor when the King is absent. With \u00c9owyn, he settles in Ithilien, among the hills of the Emyn Arnen; they have a son named Elboron. After Faramir's death at the age of 120, his son succeeds him. Barahir, Faramir's grandson, writes \"The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen\", said in the frame story to have been inserted in the \"Thain's Book\" by the writer Findegil.\nAnalysis.\nMedieval knight.\nThe Tolkien scholar Elizabeth Solopova states that Faramir's decision to reject the One Ring shows influences from a kind of courage and behaviour that was known to Tolkien from the medieval poem \"The Battle of Maldon\". By not taking the Ring, Faramir rejects the desire for power and glory which a defeat of Sauron would bring him.\nThe Tolkien scholar Jane Chance analyses Faramir's place in what she identifies as an elaborate web of relationships based on a medieval Germanic worldview. Firstly, she describes Faramir and Boromir as a pair of opposites, good and evil brothers, which she likens to Theoden and Denethor whom she considers a pair of good and evil \"Kings\". Secondly, she explores what she sees as a series of parallel instances of feudal allegiance (a man's oath of service to his lord, in return for protection) and betrayal (the breaking of that oath) involving Faramir and Frodo. Sam serves Frodo faithfully, but accidentally betrays him to Faramir with the smoke from his cooking fire and then by mentioning the Ring. Gollum's allegiance to Frodo is in the form of an oath sworn on the Ring, to obey Frodo and not to run off. Frodo \"betrays\" Gollum by luring him into the captivity of Faramir's men. Gollum then swears to Faramir that he will never return to the forbidden pool. The last of the parallel allegiance relationships is that Faramir grants Frodo protection, in the manner of a Germanic lord, and in return Frodo offers his service. Thirdly, after the War of the Ring, society is renewed as Aragorn marries Arwen, bringing the races of Man and Elf together, while in parallel to that Faramir marries \u00c9owyn, bringing together the nations of Rohan and Gondor.\nMedieval outlaw.\nSeveral scholars have noted a likeness between Faramir and the legendary medieval figure of Robin Hood. Marjorie Burns sees a sign of Englishness, \"a Robin Hood touch\", in the green-clad Faramir and his men hunting the enemy in the forested Ithilien. P.N. Harrison comments that Faramir's \"wilderness dwelling, his skill with the bow, and his choice of a green cloak, mask, and gauntlets as clothing all invite direct comparisons\" with the outlaw of Sherwood Forest. Ben Reinhard, in \"Mythlore\", writes that while there are medieval-style knights in \"The Lord of the Rings\", and Faramir's conduct and speech are in many ways perfectly chivalric, he is definitely not a \"knight in shining armour\". Instead, he leads the attack on the men of Harad \"in a thoroughly unchivalric guerilla ambuscade\", while \"clothing, weaponry, tactics, and [concealed] refuge\" all indicate the opposite of the shining knight: the outlaw in the Greenwood.\nTolkien's personal experiences.\nTolkien's biographer John Garth, in his book \"Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth\", writes that the resemblance between Faramir and the author, which Tolkien admitted in a letter (\"As far as any character is 'like me', it is Faramir\"), was that the two men were both soldiers and scholars, Faramir having \"a reverence for the old histories and sacred values that helps him through a bitter war.\" Tolkien served as an officer in the British Army during the First World War, fighting in the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Tolkien bestowed his dream of \"darkness unescapable\" on Faramir, who narrates the dream to \u00c9owyn. Of this, Tolkien wrote, \"when Faramir speaks of his private vision of the Great Wave, he speaks for me. That vision and dream has been ever with me \u2014 and has been inherited (as I only discovered recently) by one of my children, Michael.\"\nThe scholar of literature Melissa A. Smith suggests that Tolkien's First World War experience of war brides may be reflected in Faramir's brief courtship of \u00c9owyn. She notes that Tolkien wrote in response to criticism that \"In my experience feelings and decisions ripen very quickly (as measured by mere 'clock-time', which is actually not justly applicable) in periods of great stress, and especially under the expectation of imminent death\". Smith adds that Tolkien indeed married Edith Bratt just before he was posted to the Western Front in France.\nDevelopment.\nIn \"The History of The Lord of the Rings\", Christopher Tolkien recorded that his father had not foreseen the emergence of Faramir during the writing of the book, only inventing him at the actual point of his appearance in \"The Two Towers\". Tolkien himself noted that the introduction of Faramir had led to postponement of the book's d\u00e9nouement and to further development of the background for Gondor and Rohan.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nFaramir said: \"Do not scorn pity that is the gift of a gentle heart, \u00c9owyn! But I do not offer you my pity. For you are a lady high and valiant and have yourself won \nrenown that shall not be forgotten; and you are a lady beautiful, I deem, beyond even the words of the Elven-tongue to tell. And I love you. Once I pitied your sorrow. But now, were you sorrowless, without fear or any lack, were you the blissful Queen of Gondor, still I would love you. \u00c9owyn, do you not love me?\"\n J.R.R. Tolkien\n , \"The Return of the King\", after Tolkien had edited out all the \"thou\" and \"thee\" forms.\nIn early drafts, Tolkien had used the familiar forms \"thou\" and \"thee\" to show a sudden shift in the relationship between Faramir and \u00c9owyn, a \"deliberate change to a form of affection or endearment\". Christopher Tolkien comments that\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The 'sudden change' to which he referred here ... is possibly to be seen in their first meeting in the garden of the Houses of Healing, where Faramir says: 'Then, \u00c9owyn of Rohan, I say to you that you are beautiful', but at the end of his speech changes to the 'familiar' form, 'But thou and I have both passed under the wings of the Shadow' (whereas \u00c9owyn continues to use 'you'). In the following meetings, in this text, Faramir uses the 'familiar' forms, but \u00c9owyn does not do so until the last ('Dost thou not know?'); and soon after this point my father went back over what he had written and changed every 'thou' and 'thee' to 'you'.\nPortrayal in adaptations.\nArt.\nFaramir appears in several illustrations created by John Howe, Ted Nasmith and Anke Ei\u00dfmann for \"The Lord of the Rings\" and related products. One of the scenes from the book that received many depictions is Faramir and \u00c9owyn's meeting at the top of Minas Tirith.\nRadio.\nIn the BBC's 1981 radio adaptation of \"The Lord of the Rings\", Faramir is voiced by Andrew Seear. The radio drama adhered faithfully to the books, and Peter Jackson gave the adaptation credit in the production of his film trilogy.\nFilm.\nIn Rankin/Bass' 1980 adaptation of \"The Return of the King\", a dark-haired man taken to be Faramir is shown next to \u00c9owyn in greeting Aragorn as he arrives to Minas Tirith.\nIn Peter Jackson's \"The Lord of the Rings\" film trilogy, Faramir is played by David Wenham. The actor joked that he got the role because he and Sean Bean, who played Boromir, both had large noses. The plot of the second film, \"\", introduces a significant deviation from the book: Faramir does not at first let Frodo, Sam, and Gollum go, but decides to bring them and the Ring to Gondor. He takes them to Osgiliath and not until the Nazg\u00fbl attack the city and Frodo comes under the threat of capture does he release them. Jackson's explanation is that he needed another adventure to delay Frodo and Sam, because the episode at Cirith Ungol was moved to the third film, and so a new climax was needed. On the timeline given by Tolkien, Frodo and Sam had only reached the Black Gate at the time of the fall of Isengard. Jackson argues that it was necessary for Faramir to be tempted by the Ring because in his films everyone else was tempted, and letting Faramir be immune would seem inconsistent to a film audience. Jackson's portrayal of the Rangers' treatment of Gollum, who is beaten up, and Faramir's implicit compliance, have been criticised. In the book, Faramir calls the creature \"Sm\u00e9agol\" instead of \"Gollum\", and tells his men to \"treat him gently, but watch him\".\nIn the extended edition of \"The Two Towers\", Jackson included an invented flashback scene in which Denethor neglects Faramir in favour of Boromir when sending him to Rivendell, so that Faramir wanted to please his father by bringing him the Ring. (The relationship is similarly strained in the book, but his father's favouritism does not seem to affect his decisions in Ithilien.) Reviewers have opined that the extended edition presents Faramir in a more favourable light.\nVideo games.\nFaramir is a bonus playable character in the video game \"\". In a bonus video track within this game, Wenham says that \"Faramir and Boromir were brothers, and it isn't beyond possibility that Faramir would have gone to Rivendell instead. And if that [had] happened, Faramir could have survived and returned to Gondor.\"\nReferences.\nPrimary.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSecondary.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "23140032": "Frodo Baggins\nFictional hobbit protagonist in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings\nFrodo Baggins (Westron: \"Maura Labingi\") is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's writings and one of the protagonists in \"The Lord of the Rings\". Frodo is a hobbit of the Shire who inherits the One Ring from his cousin Bilbo Baggins, described familiarly as \"uncle\", and undertakes the quest to destroy it in the fires of Mount Doom in Mordor. He is mentioned in Tolkien's posthumously published works, \"The Silmarillion\" and \"Unfinished Tales\".\nFrodo is repeatedly wounded during the quest and becomes increasingly burdened by the Ring as it nears Mordor. He changes, too, growing in understanding and compassion, and avoiding violence. On his return to the Shire, he is unable to settle back into ordinary life; two years after the Ring's destruction, he is allowed to take ship to the earthly paradise of Valinor.\nFrodo's name comes from the Old English name \"Fr\u00f3da\", meaning \"wise by experience\". Commentators have written that he combines courage, selflessness, and fidelity and that as a good character, he seems unexciting but grows through his quest, an unheroic person who reaches heroic stature.\nInternal history.\nBackground.\nFrodo is introduced in \"The Lord of the Rings\" as Bilbo Baggins's cousin and adoptive heir. Frodo's parents, Drogo Baggins and Primula Brandybuck, had been killed in a boating accident when Frodo was twelve; Frodo spends the next nine years living with his maternal family, the Brandybucks, in Brandy Hall. At the age of twenty-one, he is adopted by Bilbo, who brings him to live at his home, Bag End in the Shire. He and Bilbo share the same birthday, the 22nd of September. Bilbo introduces Frodo to the Elvish languages, and they often go on long walking trips together.\n\"The Fellowship of the Ring\".\nFrodo comes of age as Bilbo leaves the Shire. Frodo inherits Bag End and Bilbo's ring. Gandalf, uncertain about the origin of the ring, warns Frodo to avoid using it and to keep it secret. Frodo keeps it hidden for the next seventeen years, and it gives him the same longevity it had given Bilbo. Gandalf returns to tell him that it is the One Ring of the Dark Lord Sauron, who is seeking to recover and use it to conquer Middle-earth.\nRealising that he is a danger to the Shire as long as he remains there, Frodo decides to take the Ring to Rivendell, home of Elrond, a mighty Elf-lord. He leaves with three companions: his gardener Samwise Gamgee and his cousins Merry Brandybuck and Pippin Took. They are just in time, for Sauron's most powerful servants, the Nine Nazg\u00fbl, have entered the Shire as Black Riders, looking for the Ring. They follow Frodo's trail, nearly intercepting him.\nThe hobbits escape into the Old Forest. They are waylaid by the magic of Old Man Willow, but rescued by Tom Bombadil, who gives them shelter and guidance. They are caught in fog on the Barrow Downs by a barrow-wight and put under a spell. Frodo breaks free, attacks the barrow-wight, and summons Bombadil, who again rescues the hobbits and sets them on their way.\nAt the \"Prancing Pony\" inn, Frodo receives a delayed letter from Gandalf and meets a man calling himself Strider, a Ranger; his real name is Aragorn. The One Ring slips onto Frodo's finger in the inn's common room, turning him invisible. This attracts the Nazg\u00fbl, who ransack the hobbits' empty rooms in the night. Strider leads the group through the marshes.\nWhile encamped on Weathertop, they are attacked by five Nazg\u00fbl. The leader, the Witch-king of Angmar, stabs Frodo with a Morgul blade, the wound threatening to turn him into a wraith under the Nazg\u00fbl's control. Reaching Rivendell, he is healed by Elrond.\nThe Council of Elrond resolves to destroy the Ring by casting it into Mount Doom in Mordor, Sauron's realm. Frodo, realizing that he is destined for this task, steps forward to be the Ring-bearer. A Fellowship of nine companions is formed to assist him: the hobbits, Gandalf, Aragorn, the dwarf Gimli, the elf Legolas, and Boromir, a man of Gondor. Bilbo, living in Rivendell, gives Frodo his sword Sting and a coat of Dwarf mail made of \"mithril\". The company, unable to cross the Misty Mountains by a pass, enters the mines of Moria. Frodo is stabbed by an Orc with a spear, but his \"mithril\" mail-shirt saves his life. Gandalf was killed battling a Balrog. Aragorn leads them out to Lothl\u00f3rien. There Galadriel gives Frodo an Elven cloak and a phial, which carries the Light of E\u00e4rendil to aid him on his quest.\nThe Fellowship travels by boat down the Anduin River and reaches the lawn of Parth Galen, just above the impassable falls of Rauros. There, Boromir, succumbing to the lure of the Ring, tries to take it by force. Frodo escapes by putting it on. This breaks the Fellowship; the company is scattered by invading Orcs. Frodo chooses to continue the quest alone, but Sam follows him.\n\"The Two Towers\".\nFrodo and Sam make their way through the wilds, followed by the monster Gollum, who has been tracking them, seeking to reclaim the Ring, which he had lost to Bilbo (as portrayed in \"The Hobbit\"). Gollum attacks the hobbits, but Frodo subdues him with Sting. He takes pity on Gollum and spares his life, making him promise to guide them through the dead marshes to the Black Gate. They find the gate impassable; Gollum tells them of \"another way\" into Mordor, and Frodo, over Sam's objections, lets him lead them south into Ithilien. There they meet Faramir, younger brother of Boromir, who takes them to a hidden cave. Frodo allows Gollum to be captured by Faramir, saving Gollum's life but leaving him feeling betrayed. Faramir provisions the hobbits and sends them on their way, warning Frodo to beware of Gollum's treachery.\nThey pass Minas Morgul, where the pull of the Ring becomes overwhelming, and climb the Endless Stair to cross into Mordor. At the top they enter a tunnel, not knowing it is the home of the giant spider Shelob. Gollum hopes to deliver the hobbits to her and retake the Ring after she had killed them. Shelob stings Frodo, rendering him unconscious, but Sam drives her off with Sting and the Phial of Galadriel. Believing that Frodo is dead, Sam takes the Ring and continues the quest. Soon, however, he overhears Orcs taking Frodo for questioning, saying that he is still alive.\n\"The Return of the King\".\nSam rescues Frodo and returns the Ring. Dressed in scavenged Orc-armour, they set off, trailed by Gollum. At Mount Doom, Frodo enters the chasm where Sauron had forged the Ring. Here Frodo loses the will to destroy the Ring, and puts it on, claiming it for himself. Gollum attacks the invisible Frodo, biting off his finger and reclaiming the Ring. As he dances in elation, Gollum falls with the Ring into the fiery Cracks of Doom. The Ring is destroyed, and with it Sauron's power. Frodo and Sam are rescued by Great Eagles as Mount Doom erupts, destroying Mordor.\nAfter Aragorn's coronation, the four hobbits return home. They find that the fallen wizard Saruman and his agents have taken over the Shire and started to industrialize it. Frodo and his companions lead a rebellion and defeat the intruders. Even after Saruman attempts to stab Frodo, Frodo lets him go, only for Saruman to be killed by his henchman Gr\u00edma Wormtongue. The hobbits restore the Shire to its prior state of peace and goodwill. While successful in his quest, Frodo never recovers from the physical and emotional wounds he suffered on the quest. After two years, Frodo and Bilbo as Ring-bearers are granted passage to Valinor.\nOther works.\n\"The Sea-Bell\" was published in Tolkien's 1962 collection of verse \"The Adventures of Tom Bombadil\" with the sub-title \"Frodos Dreme\". Tolkien suggests that this enigmatic narrative poem represents the despairing dreams that visited Frodo in the Shire in the years following the destruction of the Ring. It relates the unnamed speaker's journey to a mysterious land across the sea, where he tries but fails to make contact with the people who dwell there. He descends into despair and near-madness, eventually returning to his own country, to find himself utterly alienated from those he once knew.\n\"Frodo the halfling\" is mentioned briefly at the end of \"The Silmarillion\", as \"alone with his servant he passed through peril and darkness\" and \"cast the Great Ring of Power\" into the fire.\nIn the poem \"Bilbo's Last Song\", Frodo is at the Grey Havens at the farthest west of Middle-earth, about to leave the mortal world on an elven-ship to Valinor.\n\"The Hunt for the Ring\" in \"Unfinished Tales\" describes how the Black Riders travelled to Isengard and the Shire in search of the One Ring, purportedly \"according to the account that Gandalf gave to Frodo\". It is one of several mentions of Frodo in the book.\nFamily tree.\nThe Tolkien scholar Jason Fisher notes that Tolkien stated that hobbits were extremely \"clannish\" and had a strong \"predilections for genealogy\". Accordingly, Tolkien's decision to include Frodo's family tree in \"Lord of the Rings\" gives the book, in Fisher's view, a strongly \"hobbitish perspective\". The tree also, he notes, serves to show Frodo's and Bilbo's connections and familial characteristics. Frodo's family tree is as follows:\nConcept and creation.\nFrodo did not appear until the third draft of \"A Long-Expected Party\" (the first chapter of \"The Lord of the Rings\"), when he was named Bingo, son of Bilbo Baggins and Primula Brandybuck. In the fourth draft, he was renamed Bingo Bolger-Baggins, son of Rollo Bolger and Primula Brandybuck. Tolkien did not change the name to Frodo until the third phase of writing, when much of the narrative, as far as the hobbits' arrival in Rivendell, had already taken shape. Prior to this, the name \"Frodo\" had been used for the character who eventually became Pippin Took"}, "descending_order": ["21786170", "23140032", "463262"], "permutation_1": ["23140032", "463262", "21786170"], "permutation_2": ["23140032", "463262", "21786170"], "permutation_3": ["463262", "23140032", "21786170"]}
{"id": "nq_-2761219366903641261", "docs_added": {"29289743": "National Open University of Nigeria\nOpen and distance learning university\nThe National Open University of Nigeria is a federal open and distance learning (ODL) institution, the first of its kind in the West African sub-region. It is Nigeria's largest tertiary institution in terms of student numbers, and is popularly referred to as NOUN.\nHistory.\nThe university was initially established on 22 July 1983 as springboard for open and distance learning in Nigeria. It was suspended by the government on 25 April 1984. However, its resuscitation was begun on 12 April 2001 by the former President of Nigeria, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo. At take off of the university, pioneer student enrollment stood at 32,400.\nOrganisation.\nIn 2011, NOUN had about 57,759 students. The Vice Chancellor at the time was Prof. Vincent Tenebe. The university for years operated from its administrative headquarters in Victoria Island, Lagos, before vice chancellor Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu, moved it to its permanent headquarters in Jabi, Abuja, in 2016. The current Vice Chancellor is Prof. Olufemi Peters. It has over 75 study centres throughout the country.\nIt offers over 50 programmes and 750 courses.\nBy its nature as an ODL institution, NOUN does not provide lectures to students in normal classrooms except some certain study centres. The study centre in Lagos for instance provides lectures to all the law undergraduates and supplies course materials to all students after the payment of tuition fees. All courses offered by the university are accredited by the National Universities Commission (NUC).\nThe registrar serves as the secretary to council and senate bodies. The registry department's primary responsibility is to provide support services for the general administration of the university with emphasis on council affairs, senate matters, recruitment of staff, student admission and welfare, staff welfare and related activities. The current registrar is Mr. Oladapo Adetayo Ajayi.\nStudents.\nRequirements.\nStudents from all walks of life attend the university, similar to other Open Universities such as the Open University in the United Kingdom. For most courses there are no stringent entry requirements other than the ability to study at an appropriate level such as the West African Examination, and other national diplomas to qualify for direct entry admission. Most postgraduate courses require evidence of previous study or equivalent life experience. This open admissions policy makes undergraduate university study accessible to all.\nUndergraduates.\nWhile most of those studying are mature students, an increasingly large proportion of new undergraduates are aged between 17 and 25. The reduction in financial support for those attending traditional universities, coupled with the use of sites such as YouTube and Khan Academy that appeal to this demographic, is believed to be behind this growth.\nSchool of Postgraduate Studies.\nThe school seeks to address Nigeria's increasing need for highly specialized knowledge and skill development in order to help the country contribute to the worldwide knowledge economy.\nImmunity to strikes.\nThe Act of Parliament which established the university prohibits any form of union for staff or for students. This has made the university unaffected by strikes such as the ASUU strikes (which lasted for eight months), which have the effect of extending the duration of students' studies.\nNational Youths Service Corps.\nThe NOUN has made efforts to ensure its graduates below age 30 (the maximum age limit) participate in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).\nTechnological platforms.\nThe E-Learn portal provides students with access to the university's learning resources, including:\nExamination.\nThe university uses computer-based test (CBT) for first and second year students, except for law undergraduates who sit conventional pen-on-paper (POP) from their first year of admission. POP examinations are used for all students after the second year, and for postgraduate students.\nThe CBT examinations have two formats: multiple choice questions and fill in the gap questions. The Computer Base Test (CBT) system been criticised by some students, who say that the system requires students memorize their textbooks and produce answers that match those stored on the school's computers.\nAssessment.\nTutor-marked assignments (TMAs) are continuous assessments(C.A) that accounts for 30% of a student's total score. Students are expected to answer all TMAs, which must be answered and submitted before students sit for the end of course examination. The end of course examinations account for the other 70% of a student's score.\nFacilities.\nE-library.\nThe NOUN has an e-library at the headquarters situated at Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria which all students have access to after providing a valid student's identity card. Students have access to the internet, books, journals, projects, theses of past students and other educational materials.\nRadio station.\nThe NOUN 105.9 FM radio station broadcasts on workdays and provides opportunities for Mass Communication students.\nScholarships.\nIn May 2014, the Nollywood movie star Ini Edo was offered a scholarship to study law at the university. Other actresses and actors including Desmond Elliot have also been offered scholarships. Chioma Chukwuka-Akpotha, Francis Duru, Doris Simeon and Sani Danja were announced as ambassadors for the NOUN. All four were presented by the Vice Chancellor Prof. Vincent A. Tenebe, with scholarships to study their courses of choice.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "5365495": "University of Abuja\nFederal University in Abuja, Nigeria\nThe University of Abuja or Yakubu Gowon University is a federal university located in Abuja, Nigeria. It was established in January 1988 (under Decree No. 110 of 1992 as amended) as a dual-mode university with the mandate to run conventional and distance learning programmes. Academic work began at the university in 1990 with the matriculation of its pioneer students.\nIt was later renamed by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to \"Yakubu Gowon University\" on 16 December 2024, in honor of General Yakubu Gowon; a former head of state and president of Nigeria on his 90th birthday, for his exceptional contribution to Nigeria\u2019s unity and his commitment to the country\u2019s progress.\nHistory.\nThe university took off from a temporary site, made up of three blocks of building meant for a primary school in Gwagwalada, tagged the \"mini-campus\". Academic activities started on the mini-campus in 1990, after which the university was allocated an expanse of land covering over along the Abuja city Airport road for the development of its main campus.\nRelocation to the permanent site has been ongoing to date. The campus now hosts three female and two male hostels housing thousands of students. However, the distance learning offices of the university are located within the Abuja municipality (Area 3 Garki) where contact sessions of the programme are also held.\nLibrary.\nThe University Library was established in 1988 to support teaching, learning and research to meet the objectives of the University of Abuja with information resources online and offline. The university main library is located on the main Campus alone Airport Road, Abuja.\nAcademics.\nThe university offers diploma, undergraduate and post-graduate degree programmes as well as a Centre for Distance Learning School which provides university education to those who cannot acquire such education through the regular university system and those interested in acquiring new knowledge and specialised skills.\nA list of faculties and colleges currently at the University of Abuja include:\nThe university had plans to commence the Geology and Mining program in the 2023/2024 academic session.\nCouncil and Administration.\nThe key organs and officers involved in the administration and governance of the university are the Governing Council, the Senate, the Congregation and the Convocation, the Vice-Chancellor, Two Deputy Vice Chancellors (Administration and Academic), the Registrar and Secretary to Council, the Bursar, the University Librarian, Deans of Faculties, Directors of Centres and Institutes and Heads of Department. All these organs and officials are supported by the Committee system which is the pivot of administration of the university.\nThe Governing Council.\nThe Council consists of the chairman who is also the Pro-Chancellor of the university, the Vice Chancellors (Administration and Academic) a representative of the Federal Ministry of Education, four persons appointed by the National Council of Ministers representing broad national interests, four persons appointed by the Senate from its members, one persons each appointed by the Congregation and the Convocation among their members and the Registrar as Secretary to Council. The council is the highest policy-making organ of the university.\nThe Senate.\nThe Senate is the highest University authority on academic matters. It is the general function of the Senate to organise and control teaching at the university and the admission and discipline of students, as well as the promotion of research. The Senate comprises the Vice-Chancellor as chairman, the Deputy Vice-Chancellors, the Professors, the University Librarian, Deans, Directors and Deputy Deans, Heads of Academic Departments, one member of academic staff representing each Faculty and the Registrar as Secretary.\nThe Congregation.\nThe Congregation is made up of all members of staff of the university who were university graduates by appointment. The Vice-Chancellor is its chairman and the Registrar is the Secretary. Congregation meetings, being statutory, are called to afford members opportunities to have a say in matters affecting their welfare.\nThe university runs a consultancy services sub-degree program and an institute of education to cater for the professional needs of teachers and specialised needs of government education bodies; it provides avenues for the establishment of linkages on education matters with organisations and institutions within and outside Nigeria.\nThe university during its 96th regular meeting in May 2023 promoted 19 of its academic staff to professorial rank. 8 were promoted to the rank of professor, while 11 were promoted to the rank of associate professor.\nDuring the 96th Regular meeting, the Governing Council of the University of Abuja approved the appointment of the youngest professor of law in Nigeria and the first female professor of law from Northwest Nigeria, Aisha Sani Maikudi, alongside Professor Philip Afaha as Deputy Vice Chancellors Academic and Administrative respectively.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "56823": "Abuja\nCapital of the Federal Republic of Nigeria\nAbuja (; , ) is the capital city of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, strategically situated at the geographic midpoint of the country within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). As the seat of the Federal Government of Nigeria, it hosts key national institutions, landmarks, and buildings spread across its over 50 districts. It replaced Lagos (the most populous city in Nigeria) as the capital on 12 December 1991.\nAbuja's geography is defined by Aso Rock, a monolith left by water erosion. The Presidential Complex, National Assembly, Supreme Court and much of the city extends to the south of the rock. Zuma Rock, a monolith, lies just north of the city on the expressway to Kaduna.\nAt the 2006 census, the city of Abuja had a population of 776,298 and 179,674 households making it one of the ten most populous cities in Nigeria (eighth place in 2006). According to the United Nations, Abuja grew by 139.7% between 2000 and 2010, making it the fastest-growing city in the world. As of 2015[ [update]], the city is experiencing an annual growth of at least 35%, retaining its position as the fastest-growing city on the African continent and one of the fastest-growing in the world. As of 2016, the metropolitan area of Abuja is estimated at six million people, placing it behind only Lagos as the most populous metro area in Nigeria.\nMajor religious sites include the Nigerian National Mosque and the Nigerian National Christian Centre. The city is served by the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport. Abuja is known for being one of the few purpose-built capital cities in Africa, as well as being one of the wealthiest.\nAbuja is Nigeria's administrative and political capital. It is also a key capital on the African continent due to Nigeria's geo-political influence in regional affairs. Abuja is also a conference centre and hosts various meetings annually, such as the 2003 Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting and the 2014 World Economic Forum (Africa) meetings. Abuja joined the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities, in 2016.\nHistory.\n\"Abuja\" was in the earlier 20th century the name of the nearby town now called Suleja.\nThe indigenous inhabitants of Abuja are the Abawa (Ganagana), Basa, Gwandara, Gbagyi (Gwari) having the majority population in the region. Other groups in the area include the Gade, Dibo, Egburra, Nupe and Koro.\nThe Gwandara speaking people in Abuja are mostly found in AMAC and Bwari Area Council. Some of their villages/settlements are Wuse, Asokoro now relocated to Sabon Wuse, Aso in Niger and other neighbouring states. Others are Karshi, Kurudu, Nyanya, Idu, Gwagwa, Jiwa, Sheretti, Karmo, Takunshara, Burum, Dutse Alhaji, Zuba, Kuje, Kwoi, Karon-Magaji, Ija, Kanwu, Sherre.\n In the light of the ethnic and religious divisions of Nigeria, plans had been devised since Nigeria's independence to have its capital in a place deemed neutral to all major ethnic parties, and also in close proximity to all the regions of Nigeria. The location was eventually designated in the centre of the country in the early 1970s as it signified neutrality and national unity. \nAnother impetus for Abuja came because of Lagos' population boom that made that city overcrowded and conditions squalid. As Lagos was already undergoing rapid economic development, the Nigerian government felt the need to expand the economy towards the inner part of the country, and hence decided to move its capital to Abuja. The logic used was similar to the way Brazil planned its capital, Bras\u00edlia.\nThe Federal Military Government of Nigeria promulgated decree No. 6 on 4 February 1976, which initiated the removal of the Federal Capital from Lagos to Abuja. The initial work for Abuja's planning and implementation was carried out by the Military Government of General's Murtala Mohammed and Olusegun Obasanjo. However, the foundation of Abuja was under the Administration of Shehu Shagari in 1979. Construction started in 1979 but, due to economic and political instability, the initial stages of the city were not complete until the late 1980s.\nThe move of Nigeria's Capital to Abuja was controversial, and the biggest opposition to it was led by Obafemi Awolowo. Awolowo, as a politician and a representative of the Yoruba people, defended their claims against the move of the Capital from Lagos. During the hotly-contested campaign for the presidency, he vowed to hire the American Walt Disney Company to convert the new site (Abuja) into an amusement park if he was elected. However, after his election as president, Alhaji Shehu Shagari laid the first foundation for Abuja's infrastructure and pushed for its early completion. His first journey outside of Lagos after his election was to Abuja, where he visited contractors and workers on site to urge a speedy completion of the project. On his return, he confided in Alhaji Abubakar Koko his disappointment with the slow progress of work. Shehu Shagari rescheduled the planned relocation to Abuja from 1986 to 1982 which later proved difficult.\nThe International Planning Associates (IPA) was commissioned in June 1977, by the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) to produce the Abuja Master Plan and its regional grid. According to the terms of reference, the master planning process was to include a review of relevant data, selection of a capital city site, preparation of regional and city plans and the accompanying design and development standards manual.\nIPA did not exist prior to the Nigerian Government's engagement with an internationally reputable firm to design the master plan. IPA was formed by a consortium of three American firms which won the worldwide competitive bidding. The firms were Planning Research Corporation (PRC), Wallace, McHarg, Roberts and Todd, and Archisystems (a division of the Hughes Organisation). After winning the bid, and completing the project, the firms were disbanded.\nThe final report was submitted to the pioneer Executive Secretary of FCDA, Alhaji Abubakar Koko, on 15 February 1979. In the preface to the master plan, the following declaration was made by IPA:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"The master plan for Abuja the new Capital City of Nigeria represents the culmination of 18 months' work by the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) board, and several advisory panel consultants. Without the unstinting efforts of these experts, the momentum now exhibited at the beginning of the actual implementation of the new capital could not have been achieved. The plan itself represents a milestone in the process of building the new capital city. It is a necessary element in the monumental effort about to be undertaken by the Nigerian people.\"\nThe master plan for Abuja defined the general structure and major design elements of the city that are now visible. More detailed design of the central areas of the capital, particularly its monumental core, was accomplished by Japanese architect Kenzo Tange, with his team of city planners at Kenzo Tange and Urtec company. Most countries relocated their embassies to Abuja, and many maintain their former embassies as consulates in Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria. Abuja is the headquarters of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the regional headquarters of OPEC. Abuja and the FCT have experienced huge population growth; it has been reported that some areas around Abuja have been growing at 20% to 30% per year. Squatter settlements and towns have spread rapidly in and outside the city limits. Tens of thousands of people have been evicted since former FCT minister Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai started a demolition campaign in 2003.\nAbuja is a planned city built mainly in the 1980s based on a master plan by International Planning Associates (IPA), a consortium of three American planning and architecture firms made up of Wallace, Roberts, McHarg & Todd (WRMT \u2013 a group of architects) as the lead, Archi systems International (a subsidiary of the Howard Hughes Corporation), and Planning Research Corporation. The Central Business District of Abuja was designed by Japanese architect Kenzo Tange.\nAdministration.\nThe Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC) is the local government authority responsible for administering the city of Abuja. It operates under the oversight of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA), which governs the entire Federal Capital Territory (FCT). The AMAC's chairman is responsible for leading the council's activities and representing the interests of the municipality's residents. The Minister of the FCT, Nyesom Wike, heads the FCTA while AMAC's chairman is Christopher Zaka Maikalangu.\nPhases.\nFor ease and co-ordination of developmental efforts, the city was divided into 'Phases' by its planners, with the city's development taking a concentric form with Phase 1, which consists of the city's inner districts-Central Area, Maitama, Asokoro, Wuse, Wuse II, Garki, Garki II, Guzape and Guzape II-at its core spreading out from the foot of Aso Rock, while Phase 5, consisting of the newly created Kyami District covering the vicinity of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport and the permanent campus of the University of Abuja, over 40 kilometres west of Aso Rock. Each Phase is separated from the other by an expressway (some still under construction); for example, Phases 1 and 2 are separated from each other by the Nnamdi Azikiwe expressway, while the entirety of the city proper (Phases 1\u20135) is enclosed by the Murtala Muhammed (Outer Northern-ONEX and Outer Southern-OSEX) expressways as well as the Federal A2 highway which traverses the Federal Capital Territory on its way to Kaduna (north-bound) and Lokoja (south-bound). Thus, there is an integration of the city's road network with the Federal highway network, providing access to the immediate outlying countryside and the surrounding states of the country i.e. Niger State to the west, Kaduna State to the north, Nasarawa State to the east and Kogi State to the south.\nAbuja is organised into phases, which are further divided into districts.\nPhase 1.\nAsokoro District.\nAsokoro, the doyen of the districts, houses all of the state's lodges/guesthouses. The ECOWAS secretariat is a focal point of interest. Asokoro is to the east of Garki District and south of Central District. It is one of the most exclusive districts of Abuja and houses virtually all of the federal cabinet ministers as well as most of the diplomatic community in the city; in addition, the Presidential Palace (commonly referred to as Aso Rock) is in Asokoro District. By virtue of this fact, Asokoro is the most secure area of the city.\nCentral Business District.\nAbuja's Central District, also called Central Area, is a strip of land stretching from Aso Rock in the east to the National Stadium and the Old City gate in the West. It is like the city's spinal cord, dividing it into the northern sector with Maitama and Wuse, and the southern sector with Garki and Asokoro. While each district has its own clearly demarcated commercial and residential sectors, the Central District is the city's principal Business Zone, where practically all parastatals and multinational corporations have their offices. An attractive area in the Central District is the region known as the Three Arms Zone, so-called because it houses the administrative offices of the executive, legislative and judicial arms of the federal government. A few of the other sites worth seeing in the area are the federal secretariats alongside Shehu Shagari Way, Aso Hill, the Abuja Plant Nursery, Eagle Square (which has important historic significance, as it was in this grounds that the present democratic dispensation had its origin on 29 May 1999) and in which all subsequent Presidential Inauguration ceremonies have taken place. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is situated across Shehu Shagari Way facing Eagle Square. This section is usually closed to traffic during the annual Armed Forces Remembrance Day ceremonies that is observed on 15 January. The National Mosque and National Christian Centre are opposite each other on either side of Independence Avenue. A well-known government office is the Ministry of Defense, colloquially nicknamed \"Ship House\". Also located here is the yet-to-be-completed National Square, Millennium tower and Nigeria Cultural Centre multi-functional complex.\nGarki District.\nThe Garki District is the area in the southwest corner of the city, having the Central District to the north and the Asokoro District to the east. The district is subdivided into units called \"Areas\". Garki uses a distinctive naming convention of \"Area\" to refer to parts of Garki. These are designated as Areas 1 to 11. Garki II is used to differentiate the area from Garki Area 2. Visitors may find this system confusing.\nGarki is presently the principal business and administrative district of Abuja. Numerous buildings of interest are in this area. Some of them include the General Post Office, Abuja International Conference Centre along the busy Herbert Macaulay Way, Nicon Luxury Hotel (formally known as Abuja Sofitel Hotel and Le Meridian), Agura Hotel and Old Federal Secretariat Complex Buildings (Area 1). A new five-star hotel, Hawthorn Suites Abuja, is in Garki.\nArea 2 is mainly used for residential purposes, although a zoological garden, as well as a small shopping centre, are to be found here as well. Several banks and other commercial offices are located along Moshood Abiola Way in Area 7. The headquarters of the Nigerian Armed Forces \u2013 Army, Airforce and Navy \u2013 is located on Muhammadu Buhari Way in the Garki District.\nThe tallest building in this district is the Radio House located in the Area 11 sector, which houses the Federal Ministry of Information and Communications, the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) and Voice of Nigeria (VON). The Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) stations and corporate headquarters are also in Garki. The Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) which oversees and runs the Administration of the Federal Capital Territory has its offices in Garki.\nThe Office of the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory is in Area 11. This is the location of the Federal Capital Development Authority and other administrative buildings. A popular sub-neighbourhood here is found in the vicinity of Gimbiya Street because it has the unique characteristic of being a purely administrative zone on weekdays while transforming purely into an entertainment zone on weeknights and weekends.\nOther places of note include the Cyprian Ekwensi Arts & Culture Centre and The Nigerian Police Mobile Force CID (Criminal Investigation Department) headquarters in Area 10. The Abuja Municipal Area Council, which is the local government administration has its headquarters in Area 10. The new United States Embassy is in the Diplomatic Zone which adjoins Garki.\nMaitama District.\nMaitama District is to the north of the city, with the Wuse and Central Districts lying to its southwest and southeast respectively. This area is home to the top-bracket sections of society and business and has the reputation of being very exclusive and very expensive. Interesting buildings include the Transcorp Hilton Abuja, Nigerian Communications Commission Headquarters (NCC), National Universities Commission (NUC), Soil Conservation Complex, and Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The British High Commission is located along Aguiyi Ironsi Way, in Maitama. Also, the Maitama District Hospital is another notable building in Maitama. Maitama District is home to many of the European and Asian embassies.\nMaitama II.\nMaitama II District Cadastral Zone A10 is a new district created by the FCT administration of Muhammed Bello in 2018. Maitama 2 as it is unofficially called was created from Mpape Hills, a suburb bothering the Bwari and Maitama Districts of the FCT. Maitama II has a high net worth of individuals especially legislators as allottees, which makes it a destination for real estate investors who desire to secure the future today.\nIt is not very clear what the government plans for the district as not much has been said by government agents, but cadastral zoning A indicates the government has good plans for Maitama 2 to correct some errors in Maitama District.\nIt was learned that plots of land were revoked from allottees of Mpape district to create the new Maitama II District, although a compensation plan is underway to relocate the revoked allottees to another district the government intends to create. Fortunately, some developers of the Mpape district who have building plan approval and have started building maintain their plots and allocations and are covered in the Maitama II District layout. It is not clear though if a fresh allocation bearing Maitama II District has been issued to this set of allottees.\nNotable landmarks of the Maitama 2 district are Jubilation Avenue, Mount Pleasant Haven and Hilltop Estate.\nThe district infrastructure is in top gear as the Federal Government had in the 2018 and 2019 budgets allocated about N1.3b for the engineering design of the district. Villages around the district are living in fear of demolition at any time with the information reaching them that government will commence the infrastructure project of Maitama II District.\nWuse District.\nWuse District is the northwestern part of the city, with the Maitama District to its north and the Central District to its south. The District is numbered Zones 1\u20136. The Wuse Market is Abuja's principal market. The second most important post office in the city is here. This district houses the Sheraton Hotel and Towers (Zone 4), Grand Ibro International Hotel, the Federal Road Safety Corps Headquarters (Zone 3), Nigerian Customs Services Headquarters, Federal Civil Service Commission (Zone 3), National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration (NAFDAC) (Zone 7), Wuse General Hospital, and the Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation. Just as Garki District has Garki II, Wuse has Wuse II. This is distinct from Wuse Zone 2. Like other inner Abuja districts such as Asokoro or Garki, there are very few large housing estates. Instead, office buildings, mansions and apartment blocks are prominent features of the area.\nPhase 2.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nPhase 3.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nPhase 4.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nThere are five suburban districts: Nyanya, Karu, Gwagwalada, Kubwa, and Jukwoyi. Along the Airport Road (Now Umaru Musa Yar'Adua Express Way) are clusters of satellite settlements, namely Lugbe, Chika, Kuchigworo and Pyakassa. Other satellite settlements are Idu (the main industrial zone), Mpape, Karimu, Gwagwa, Dei-Dei (housing the International Livestock market and also International Building materials market).\nCityscape.\nConstruction of the Millennium Tower started in 2005 and was halted in 2017 after funds ran out. This structure looms above the city and is the tallest artificial structure in Abuja. The tower is part of a huge cultural development complex called the Nigeria National Complex including the Nigeria Cultural Centre, a structure dedicated to the art and culture of Nigeria. The Cultural Centre and the Millennium Tower have been designed by the Italian architect Manfredi Nicoletti.\nLandmarks include the Millennium Tower, the Central Bank of Nigeria headquarters, the Nigerian Presidential Complex, the Ship House, the National Stadium, which was the main venue of the 2003 All Africa Games and some games, including the final, of the 2009 FIFA Under-17 World Cup, National Mosque, the National Church, Aso Rock and Zuma Rock.\nParks and open areas.\nAbuja is home to several parks and green areas with the largest one being Millennium Park. Millennium Park was designed by architect Manfredi Nicoletti and was officially opened by the United Kingdom's Queen Elizabeth II (the former Queen of Nigeria) in December 2003. Another open area park is located in Lifecamp Gwarimpa; near the residence of the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory. The park is located on a slightly raised hilltop which contains sports facilities like Basketball and Badminton courts another park is the city park, which is located in Wuse 2 and is home to numerous outdoor and indoor attractions such as a 4D cinema, Astro-turf, lawn tennis court, paintball arena and a variety of restaurants. The National Children's Park and Zoo host a number of animals and recreation spots.\nBush Bars.\nAbuja has a variety of informal spaces known as \"Bush Bars\" that usually, though not always, include a covered area with tables and chairs where people can sit and have drinks (alcoholic and non-alcoholic) and sometimes there are snacks such as suya, grilled catfish, pounded yam, egusi soup and other small items available for purchase. They are located all over Abuja.\nGeography.\nThe elevation is .\nClimate.\nAbuja under K\u00f6ppen climate classification features a tropical wet and dry climate (K\u00f6ppen: \"Aw\"). The FCT experiences three weather conditions annually. This includes a warm, humid rainy season and a blistering dry season. In between the two, there is a brief interlude of harmattan occasioned by the northeast trade wind, with the main feature of dust haze and cloudless skies.\nThe rainy season begins from April and ends in October, when daytime temperatures reach to and nighttime lows hover around to . In the dry season, daytime temperatures can soar as high as and overnight temperatures can dip to . Even the coolest nights can be followed by daytime temperatures well above . The medium altitude and undulating terrain of the FCT act as a moderating influence on the weather of the territory. The city's inland location causes the diurnal temperature variation to be much larger than coastal cities with similar climates such as Lagos.\nRainfall in the FCT reflects the territory's location on the windward side of the Jos Plateau and the zone of rising air masses with the city receiving frequent rainfall during the rainy season from April to October every year.\nThe effects of climate change have been observed in Abuja, according to a study conducted by the Nigerian Meteorological Agency and Atmospheric Science Group of Imo State University. Between 1993 and 2013, the average maximum temperature trended downward, but the average minimum and mean temperatures trended upwards. There was a downward trend for rainfall in Abuja, based on data collected between 1986 and 2016. The drought occurrence probability for Abuja increased by 15.4% between 1975 and 2014.\nVegetation.\nThe FCT falls within the Guinean forest-savanna mosaic zone of the West African sub-region. Patches of rain forest, however, occur in the Gwagwa plains, especially in the rugged terrain to the southeastern parts of the territory, where a landscape of gullies and rough terrain is found. These areas of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) form one of the few surviving occurrences of the mature forest vegetation in Nigeria.\nDemographics.\nAt the 2006 census, the city of Abuja had a population of 776,298, making it than the eighth most populous city in Nigeria. United Nations figures showed that Abuja grew by 139.7% between 2000 and 2010, making it the fastest-growing city in the world. As of 2015[ [update]], the city is experiencing an annual growth of at least 35%, retaining its position as the fastest-growing city on the African continent and one of the fastest-growing in the world.\nConurbation.\nAbuja has witnessed a huge influx of people into the city; the growth has led to the emergence of satellite towns, such as Karu Urban Area, Suleja, Gwagwalada, Lugbe, Kuje and smaller settlements towards which the planned city is sprawling. The urban agglomeration centred upon Abuja had a population estimated at 3,770,000 in 2022. The metropolitan area of Abuja was estimated in 2016 at six million people, the country's second-most populous metro area. The city has a large and growing immigrant community consisting mainly of nationals from the ECOWAS sub-region. The city has been undergoing a rapid pace of physical development over the last fifteen years.\nEconomy and infrastructure.\nReal estate.\nReal estate is a major driver of the Abuja economy. This correlates with the considerable growth and investment the city has seen as it has developed. The sources of this investment have been both foreign and local. The real estate sector continues to have a positive impact on the city, as it is a major avenue for employment.\nAnnual trade fair.\nThe Abuja International Trade Fair (AITF) has been held annually since 2005, under the auspices of the Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI). ACCI has also sought to link businesses to enhance trade with East Africa.\nPostal system.\nAbuja is served by the Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST) which maintains postal codes, street names and zones.\nTransportation.\nAirport.\nNnamdi Azikiwe International Airport is the main airport serving Abuja and the surrounding capital region. It was named after Nigeria's first president, Nnamdi Azikiwe. The airport has international and domestic terminals.\nHighways.\nAbuja is also linked to Nasarawa, Plateau, Benue and Northeast Nigeria by the A234 Federal Highway, which starts from the city as the Goodluck Jonathan expressway, some portions of which are still under construction. A direct highway link to Minna in Niger State is still under construction. The A2 expressway links Abuja with Kaduna in the north and Lokoja in the south. There are also other highway links with the outlying region, such as that linking the suburb of Dutse Alhaji with the Lower Usuma and Gurara Dams, which supply water to the city.\nRail.\nAbuja is on the route of the planned Lagos\u2013Kano Standard Gauge Railway, which has been completed between Abuja and Kaduna. Trains for Kaduna depart from the Idu Railway Station in Abuja. There is a car park at the train station for passengers travelling to the city centre.\nAbuja light rail opened in 2018 and became the first rapid transit in the country and in Western Africa. Abuja's light rail system was shut down in 2020 due to the COVID-19 epidemic. Traffic resumed on"}, "descending_order": ["5365495", "56823", "29289743"], "permutation_1": ["5365495", "29289743", "56823"], "permutation_2": ["29289743", "5365495", "56823"], "permutation_3": ["29289743", "56823", "5365495"]}
{"id": "nq_219689462061815935", "docs_added": {"634936": "Lisa Whelchel\nAmerican actress, author, speaker and singer (b. 1963)\nLisa Diane Whelchel (born May 29, 1963) is an American actress, singer, songwriter, author, and life coach. She is known for her appearances as a Mouseketeer on \"The New Mickey Mouse Club\" and her nine-year role as the preppy and wealthy Blair Warner on \"The Facts of Life\". In 1984, she was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Inspirational Performance for her contemporary Christian album \"All Because of You\". In 2012, Whelchel participated as a contestant on the CBS competitive reality series \"\" and tied for second place. She was also voted fan favorite and was awarded $100,000.\nEarly life.\nLisa Whelchel was born on May 29, 1963, in Littlefield, Texas. She is the daughter of Virginia \"Genny\" (n\u00e9e French), a real estate agent, and James \"Jimmy\" Whelchel Sr., an electrician. Her parents divorced in 1981, and her mother married Roy Coleman in 1983. Lisa is the elder sister of James \"Cody\" Whelchel Jr., and the elder half-sister of Casey Justice Coleman. She also has a nephew, Chasin (Cody's son). Lisa and Cody were raised for most of their childhood in Fort Worth, Texas, and she was in the class of 1980.\nActing career.\n\"The New Mickey Mouse Club\".\nAt age 13, Whelchel was recruited in Texas by talent scouts who were looking for children interested in working with Disney Studios as a Mouseketeer on \"The New Mickey Mouse Club\". She moved to California the next year and appeared on the show in syndication from 1977 to 1978.\n\"The Facts of Life\".\nWhelchel is probably best known for being a main cast member of \"The Facts of Life\" where she portrayed Blair Warner, an uptight prep student. She also played the character on \"Diff'rent Strokes\", the show from which \"The Facts of Life\" spun off. Whelchel once refused a storyline that would have made her character the first among the four main young women on the show to lose her virginity. Having become a Christian when she was ten years old, Whelchel declined due to her religious beliefs, and the storyline was rewritten for the character of Natalie, portrayed by Mindy Cohn. This was the only episode of the series in which Whelchel did not appear.\nIn 2001, Whelchel reprised her role as Blair Warner for the made-for-television movie, \"The Facts of Life Reunion\".\nOn March 7, 2004, Whelchel was reunited with Charlotte Rae to perform \"The Facts of Life\" theme song at the 2nd Annual TV Land Awards at the Hollywood Palladium in Hollywood. In spring 2006, she appeared with two of her \"Facts of Life\" co-stars on \"The Today Show\" to promote the show's DVD releases of the first and second seasons, admitting to being \"really bummed out\" that Kim Fields was unable to attend. On February 1, 2007, Whelchel was reunited with Fields on WFAA-TV's \"Good Morning Texas\". Fields was in Dallas to promote her appearance in the production \"Issues: We've All Got 'Em'\", when Whelchel was introduced as a surprise guest. On April 10, 2011, Whelchel and the cast of \"The Facts of Life\", including Charlotte Rae, Nancy McKeon, Mindy Cohn, Kim Fields, Geri Jewell, and Cloris Leachman were honored with the Pop Culture Award at the 9th Annual TV Land Awards at the Javits Center in New York City.\nIn 2021, Whelchel, Fields, and Cohn reunited again on the set of \"Live in Front of a Studio Audience\"'s reenactment of the show's third season episode \"Kids Can Be Cruel\". Whelchel also sang the show's theme song that evening.\nCohn has said that before his death, Norman Lear thought about a reboot of the series, however \"one of the girls\" went behind the others' backs and tried to work out a separate deal for a spinoff of her character. Rumors indicate it was Whelchel.\nMusic career.\nIn 1984, Whelchel released a Christian pop album entitled \"All Because of You\". The album reached No. 17 on the \"Billboard\" Contemporary Christian music charts. She was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Inspirational Performance and was recognized as the writer of the title song, \"All Because of You\". Among the songs featured on the album were \"All Because of You\", \"Just Obey\", \"Cover Me Lord\", and \"Good Girl\". She did not record a second album. While she was appearing on \"The Facts of Life\", she made a cameo appearance in the music video for contemporary Christian music singer-songwriter Steve Taylor's song \"Meltdown (at Madame Tussaud's)\". The song was the title track from the album \"Meltdown\".\nSpeaking.\nFor years, Whelchel was a regular inspirational speaker at churches and conferences nationwide. In 2000, she founded Momtime Ministries, a religious network of mothers' groups who met weekly to \"equip and refresh and encourage\" each other.\nIn 2021, Whelchel appeared on friend and \"The Facts of Life\" co-star Mindy Cohn\u2019s podcast, \"Mondays with Mindy\", on which she talked about how her faith has changed and evolved over time. She explained that her speaking commitments have shifted over the years, as she no longer operates from a \"fear-based, punishment-based\" mentality. She explained, \"Jesus came, ultimately, to bring grace. I can speak that message in any situation, but a lot of churches \u2014 when they find out that I believe that there are many ways to experience God, not just Jesus, then the invitations kind of dry up.\"\nWriting.\nWhelchel has written ten books on motherhood, child discipline, adult friendships, homeschooling, and finding Jesus through the development of holiday traditions. Additional topics from a spiritual point of view include prayer and wisdom. She is the bestselling author of \"So You're Thinking About Homeschooling\" and \"The Facts of Life (and Other Lessons My Father Taught Me)\".\n\"Survivor\".\nOn August 20, 2012, Whelchel was announced as a contestant in \"\" as a member of the Tandang tribe. She joined retired Major League Baseball star Jeff Kent as one of the season's two \"celebrity\" contestants. A former television star, she elected to keep her true identity a secret from the other contestants, many of whom were too young to have watched \"The Facts of Life\" during its original run and thus did not recognize her. Michael Skupin and Jonathan Penner, who were around Whelchel's age, as well as eventual winner Denise Stapley, were the only ones to recognize her as \"Blair Warner\".\nOn November 14, 2012, Whelchel announced via her Twitter account that she was suffering from West Nile fever and had been advised by her doctor that recovery would take approximately one year. She did not specify whether she had contracted the arbovirus while in the Philippines shooting \"Survivor\".\nOn December 16, 2012, Whelchel made it to the Final Tribal Council, where fellow contestant and jury member Jonathan Penner revealed to the rest of the jury that she was a former child star. In the end, she received one jury vote from RC Saint-Amour and tied with returning contestant Michael Skupin for runner-up, both losing to eventual winner Denise Stapley. She was also voted the Sprint Player of the Season, winning $100,000 by a margin of about .7 percent against Malcolm Freberg.\nHosting duties.\nOn January 14, 2013, Whelchel co-hosted several episodes of \"The Jeff Probst Show\" with \"Survivor\" host, Jeff Probst.\nIn April 2019, Whelchel hosted a \"The Facts of Life\" marathon on the MeTV television network, as a lead-in for a preview of her series \"Collector's Call\" that debuted later that year and will be in Season 6 slated to begin in 2025.\nPersonal life.\nOn July 9, 1988, Whelchel married Steven Cauble, who was an associate pastor at The Church on the Way in Van Nuys, California, which Whelchel attended at the time. The couple, who have three adult children, divorced in March 2012. In 2019, Whelchel married Pete Harris, who is a psychologist based in Nashville, Tennessee.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "30857719": "List of The Facts of Life characters\nThis is a list of characters from the NBC sitcom \"The Facts of Life\".\nCharacters table.\n<onlyinclude>\n</onlyinclude>\nMain characters.\nEdna Garrett.\nEdna Ann Garrett Gaines, known as Mrs. Garrett or Mrs. G, was played by the actress Charlotte Rae from 1978 to 1986. Garrett was the youngest child in a large family, born and raised on a farm near Appleton, Wisconsin. Her exact age was never disclosed during the series but on several occasions, it was hinted or implied that she was somewhere in her fifties. On \"Diff'rent Strokes\", she was the housekeeper to the Drummond family in New York City after Willis and Arnold's mom Lucy (the Drummonds' original housekeeper) died. In 1979, she took a job as house mother at the Eastland School for Girls in Peekskill, New York (Kimberly Drummond attended Eastland). Over the years, Mrs. Garrett's role on \"The Facts of Life\" changed. At first she was merely a live-in supervisor for the girls of Eastland; in the second season she became their in-house dietitian who managed the school's cafeteria. The producers didn\u2019t know that in order to become a registered dietitian, she would have needed a four-year degree in Nutrition, satisfied internship requirements and passed a national exam-impossible to have accomplished in one season. Mrs. Garrett was married twice, divorced (first marriage) and widowed (second marriage); one early episode showed Mr. Garrett coming to town to woo her and reconcile but she was unsuccessful because Edna felt that his gambling addiction would always be an obstacle. She had two sons, a singer/songwriter/carpenter named Alex (Tom Fitzsimmons) (born 1953) and an accountant named Raymond (Joel Brooks). Raymond helped her raise funds and secure commercial space so she could open her own gourmet food shop, \"Edna's Edibles\", in the fall of 1983. The girls, who had previously lived with Mrs. Garrett at Eastland and worked with her in the kitchen to pay off various restitution-related expenses (see below), moved into the living space attached to \"Edna's Edibles\" and continued to work for Mrs. Garrett in the shop (this time on the payroll). In the fall of 1985, \"Edna's Edibles\" was extensively damaged by fire; it was rebuilt as a gift shop called \"Over Our Heads.\" Since the insurance on \"Edna's Edibles\" was insufficient to rebuild it by the time of the fire, the girls contributed their insurance claim checks to help rebuild, effectively making Mrs. Garrett and the girls equal partners in the business. Edna Garrett was a mentor to the girls at Eastland, functioning \"in loco parentis\". At times the girls would take her for granted and forget that Edna herself had problems. Many times Edna would lash out at the girls when they got careless with her. In one episode, she actually fires them from \"Edna's Edibles\" when their irresponsible behavior ends up costing her $500 in fines after a dismal health inspection. She hires them back the next day when the girls promise her that they will be more responsible at their jobs. She also fires George, when he falls behind on his work constructing \"Over Our Heads\" but they later make up. Mrs. Garrett is a Democrat. She is also against censorship, such as book banning. Mrs. Garrett remarried in 1986. She and her new husband, Dr. Bruce Gaines (Robert Mandan), rejoined the Peace Corps to work in eastern Africa (Charlotte Rae's contract had expired and she did not want to continue with the series). Edna was replaced by her sister, Beverly Ann Stickle (Cloris Leachman). However, in the reunion movie that aired in 2001, Mrs. Garrett reunited with the three girls (Blair, Natalie and Tootie) at a hotel owned by Blair and which was run by Mrs. Garrett's son Raymond. It was also revealed that Mrs. Garrett and Tootie were widows. It's revealed that she was in a romantic relationship with a ship captain. Mrs. Garrett also appears on the \"Hello, Larry\" episode \"The Trip\", the first of three crossovers between the shows \"Diff'rent Strokes\" and \"Hello, Larry\". \nBlair Warner.\nBlair Warner was played by Lisa Whelchel. She was 14 in the series' pilot episode; an episode in the 1985\u20131986 season centered on her 21st birthday. \nAt the series' beginning in 1979, Blair was portrayed as a very rich and very rebellious girl from a blue blood background. She was seen smoking cigarettes, drinking beer and enjoying great popularity with boys; unlike many of her classmates, she was looking to lose her virginity. \nWhen the show was retooled in 1980, all instances of her rebellion were either dropped or given to the new character of Jo Polniaczek, and Blair was rewritten as an extremely wealthy and unashamedly spoiled \"daddy's girl\" and socialite from Manhattan. \nBlair was vain, arrogant, egotistical, and shallow; but, also funny, kind-hearted, generous, and loving to Mrs. Garrett and her friends, especially Jo Polniaczek.\nBlair's chief foil was Jo. At first, the two made no secret of their mutual dislike: They were both completely different. However, over time, Blair began sticking up for and standing by Jo in her time of need (and vice versa). The two eventually developed a close friendship. In the final season episode \"Down and Out in Malibu: Part 1\", Jo even introduced Blair as her official best friend.\nBlair was also intelligent, scoring barely below Jo on the Eastland entrance exam. At Eastland, she won most awards and was seen to be a talented artist. At Langley College, she passed her law school LSATs with only one weekend of studying. \nBlair's delusions of grandeur were usually played for laughs when Natalie, Tootie or Jo would make sarcastic remarks about her \"beauty,\" \"perfect\" personality or \"naturally blonde hair.\" \nInitially, Blair felt she was more important than \"regular\" people because she was the heiress to her father's multimillion-dollar business, Warner Textile Mills. However, Blair eventually developed a more down-to-earth attitude, especially after she suffered a car accident (after falling asleep at the wheel) that left her slightly scarred, spoiling her \"perfect\" beauty. \nIn the hospital after her accident, she privately tells Jo a story from her childhood to illustrate how her mother had insisted that she be perfect from a young age. \nAny crisis at Eastland would usually prompt a suggested solution from Blair, preceded by her catch phrase: \"I just had another one of my \"brilliant\" ideas!\" More often than not, though, her \"brilliant ideas\" were actually quite the opposite, although on at least two occasions they turned out to actually be good (In the episode \"Growing Pains\", it was her idea to have Mrs. Garrett punish them after Tootie gets drunk on wine that Blair, Jo and Natalie were responsible for instead of going to the headmaster, which would have resulted in all of them being expelled. In The Four Musketeers, it was her idea to move back into the room and work in the kitchen to pay off the debt incurred when she and the other girls get into a paint fight while painting the room.). She also said this on occasion to be sarcastic, particularly with Jo. For example, she said her catchphrase once while Jo was distractedly mopping the cafeteria floor and followed it up with 'if you move your feet around while mopping, we just might be done by lunchtime'. \nBlair's parents (played by Nicolas Coster and Marj Dusay) were divorced on June 14, 1973, and although she didn't usually show it, Blair wished that she had a nuclear family like all of her friends. Later in the series, her mother remarried (for the fourth time) and gave birth to a baby girl (Bailey) fathered by her most recent ex-husband. Blair had misgivings about her mother's pregnancy but fell in love with baby Bailey as soon as she saw her.\nA secret Blair originally kept from her friends was that her cousin Geri (played by comedian Geri Jewell) had cerebral palsy. She was not embarrassed by her cousin, but rather jealous of her, since Blair was used to being the center of attention. Mrs. Garrett told Blair not to lash out against Geri because of her jealousy and Blair joined Geri, a successful comedian, onstage at an impromptu comedy show Geri threw at the Eastland Academy. \nIn other episodes, Blair's former step sister Meg (played by Eve Plumb) visited Eastland to tell her that she was going to become a nun. In \u201cBest Sister Part 1\" and \u201cBest Sister Part 2\" it's revealed that Blair is an atheist because she asked God to not allow her parents' divorce to become final in 1973 but her parents split up nevertheless. \nBlair attended Eastland and upon graduating in 1983, attended nearby Langley College. She worked with Mrs. Garrett at \"Edna's Edibles\" and later, \"Over Our Heads.\" After graduating from Langley, she enrolled in law school. At one point, she purchases the local community center where Jo is employed as a social worker in order to save the facility.\nIn the series finale, she purchases the financially troubled Eastland Academy and turns it into a co-educational school. \nIn the episode \"Legacy,\" Blair, initially enthusiastic about a library being built with her family's funds and named after her late maternal grandfather, Judge Carlton Blair, thus immortalizing the name \"Blair,\" was horrified to learn her grandfather had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. The revelation devastated Blair and made her question all her assumptions about her supposed \"superiority,\" even though Jo assured her \"You're not prejudiced; you're a \"snob\".\" She almost withdrew the library funding to avoid commemorating her grandfather but finally agreed to let it be built so long as it was not given the \"Blair\" name. \nIn addition to the \"Diff'rent Strokes\" episode \"The Girls School\" that serves as the pilot for \"The Facts of Life\", Blair appears in \"The Older Man\". \nIn the 2001 TV movie \"The Facts of Life Reunion\", Blair, who became a lawyer, is wealthier than ever and owns a hotel empire (Warner Enterprises) with her husband Tad Warner (no relation), managed by Mrs. Garrett's son Raymond; she and Tad have no children. Jo's daughter calls her \u201cAunt Blair.\u201d At end of the movie, she and Tad decided to adopt a child. \nNote: Actress Geri Reischl (\"fake Jan\" of \"The Brady Bunch Hour\") was given the role of Blair Warner in the television pilot \"Garrett's Girls\" (later renamed \"The Facts of Life\") but was forced to give it up due to her contract with General Mills.\nTootie Ramsey.\nDorothy \"Tootie\" Ramsey was played by Kim Fields. She was the youngest of the main characters at the age of 12 until 21 and is the only black girl in the class. She and her family hailed from Washington, D.C., where her parents worked as lawyers. Tootie\u2019s dream was to become an actress. She attended Eastland Academy for most of the show's run. Tootie's most-remembered attributes were her penchant for rollerskates (at first used by \"Facts of Life\" producers to mask Fields' short stature), her gossipy nature and her braces. In real life, Fields had to wear braces for three years, finally having them removed in 1984, after the show begins the sixth season. A lot of Tootie's gossip landed her and her friends in trouble. She was notable for her catchphrase, \"We are in \"trou-ble!\u200a\"\" Tootie was involved in all issue-based storylines. For example, Tootie befriended a boy named Fred who insisted that she only associate with black people, in an attempt to realize \"her true roots.\" In another episode, Tootie was chosen by a photographer to model for newspaper advertisements, but was instead lured into a borderline kiddie porn operation and was saved by Mrs. Garrett at the last minute. During a trip to New York, Tootie was almost strong-armed into prostitution before Mrs. Garrett found her and took her home. In another episode, she struggled again with racial issues when her best friend Natalie dated a relative of hers and Tootie intervened, causing conflict between her and Natalie. Tootie's favorite singer is Michael Jackson's older brother Jermaine Jackson. Tootie helped Mrs. Garrett with her own bakery, Edna's Edibles, after-school and then worked full-time at the gift shop, called \"Over Our Heads\" after she graduated from high school in 1986.\nIn the 2001 \"The Facts of Life Reunion\" TV movie, Tootie had attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in the UK city of London to pursue an acting career, was a Hollywood-based talk show host and was the single mother of Tisha, a 10-year-old (fathered by her longtime boyfriend and later deceased husband, Jeff Williams). After her visit, Tootie (who now prefers to be called \"Dorothy\") decided to quit her talk show \"Waking Up with Dorothy\" and move to New York to take up the theater, but not until becoming the co-owner of the Peekskill Playhouse. Tisha Williams remained behind to attend Eastland Academy (no longer owned by Blair) and continue the family tradition.\nIn addition to the \"Diff'rent Strokes\" episode \"The Girls School\" that serves as the backdoor pilot for \"The Facts of Life\", Tootie also appears in \"The Slumber Party\", \"The Bank Job\", \"First Day Blues\" and \"The Team\".\nNatalie Green.\nNatalie Green was played by Mindy Cohn. Natalie's best friend was Tootie; they were close in age. Natalie's age was 12 at the series' beginning. Natalie's most defining physical attribute was that she was large-figured but she had a healthy self-image, once quoted as saying, \"Who wants to be a skinny pencil? I'd rather be a happy Magic Marker!\" Natalie is Jewish, as Mindy Cohn is in real life. Her faith was featured in several episodes. In one, she celebrated Chanukah while the others celebrated Christmas. Her heritage was highlighted when her father, Dr. Green, died unexpectedly; Natalie's bottled-up grief was a continuing storyline. Although she wasn't a mold-fitting \"traditional beauty,\" Natalie was involved in many storylines regarding sex. In an early episode, she dated a boy who spread a rumor that Natalie was easy. In another episode, she was almost sexually assaulted on the way back from a costume party. In the controversial episode \"The First Time,\" toward the series' end, she became the first of the girls to have sex when she slept with her boyfriend Snake on their first anniversary as a couple. A budding writer, she wrote for the Eastland School newspaper. Natalie graduated from Eastland in 1985, in \"Bus Stop\" (Season 6, Episode 25). She delayed attending college for a year to travel across the country by bus, leaving family and friends dismayed because she was postponing Princeton. At the year's end, she decided to attend Langley College, and she became a reporter for the local newspaper in Peekskill. She went to New York City towards the end of the series and decided to stay and pursue her writing career. The episode in which she inspects the SoHo loft she will eventually call home features Richard Grieco and David Spade as her future roommates. The episode (aired in 1988) was originally set up for Mindy Cohn to transition into a spinoff series, but the plans did not materialize.\nIn the TV-movie \"The Facts of Life Reunion\", she is revealed to be a television news producer at CNN and is also involved with two different men; neither of whom knows of the other. Her boyfriends Robert and Harper were willing, for a short time, to compete for her heart. Though her friends deemed Robert the winner, Natalie eventually choose Harper; Robert accepted this and parted with Natalie on good terms. Natalie was the only one of the girls who was adopted. In one episode, Blair successfully tracked down Natalie's birth mother but Natalie\u2014who realized that her adoptive parents were her true parents, even though they weren't biologically related to her\u2014refused to answer the phone and hear the results of the search, instead inviting her friends to taste the cake \"my mother made.\" However, after an argument with her adoptive mother during a 1982 episode, the subject arose again. Her adoptive mother told Natalie who her biological mother was. Natalie located and met her, but as before, Natalie still considered the mother who had reared her to be her mother.\nNatalie also appears in two episodes of \"Diff'rent Strokes\": \"The Slumber Party\" and \"The Older Man.\"\nJo Polniaczek.\nJoanna Marie \"Jo\" Polniaczek was played by Nancy McKeon. Jo was first introduced in the second season in 1980, at 15 years old, arriving at the Eastland Academy on her motorcycle. \nAt first, she formed a dislike for fellow schoolmate Blair Warner; the two came from completely different backgrounds and had completely different personalities. However, her relationship with Blair became close as time went on (Jo would even refer to Blair as her best friend by the last season), although the two still argued, traded wisecracks, and made fun of each other from time to time.\nIn the episode Ain't Miss Beholden, Jo learns that she will lose her scholarship due to budget cuts. She learns that the only scholarship she qualifies for is offered by Blair's family and due to her belief that Blair would hold it over her for the rest of her life she refuses to apply. Blair is at first unconcerned, but Natalie explains that Jo would not be returning the following year due to the cost of attending the school, making Blair realize the seriousness of Jo's situation. Blair secretly sends in an application for Jo and she gets the scholarship. Angry because Blair went behind her back, Jo expects to be in Blair's debt only to have Blair explain that sole reason for her doing it was because she didn't want Jo to leave and expects nothing in return except the cost of the postage for sending it in. She also emphatically states that regardless of how badly they antagonize each other she can admit they were friends regardless of whether Jo could do it. Jo admits they are, marking the first time they express it outright. \nJo was Polish American and from the Bronx. She came from an economically disadvantaged background. Early on, she was rebellious, but also highly intelligent (she and Blair achieved the highest scores on the Eastland entrance exams) and secretly sensitive. Jo's mother sent her to Eastland after she, in response to difficulties between her parents, had joined a gang in her hometown. Over time, she grew less angry and hostile toward others. She was ultimately shown to be extremely protective and loyal toward her new friends, particularly Blair. \nWhen she originally arrived at Eastland on her motorcycle, Jo convinced the girls to steal the school van and use fake IDs to buy drinks at a bar. The van was wrecked and the girls were forced to work in the Eastland cafeteria to make up the repair costs; this was from the second season two-part premiering in November 1980 \"The New Girl Part 1\". \nIn the second episode \"The New Girl Part 2\", the girls were also placed on house probation and were forced to live across the hall from Mrs. Garrett's room above the cafeteria for a year. \nWhen the punishment expired, all four girls found other living arrangements but were responsible for cleaning and painting their former room. While painting, their friendship began to rekindle, culminating into an all-out paint fight. This severely damaged the hardwood floor, which required expensive repairs. The girls decided to move back in together and continued to work in the kitchen to pay off the bill for the damaged floor. \nAnother problem for Jo came when she shoplifted a blouse for Mrs. Garrett's birthday; Mrs. Garrett was subsequently arrested when she went to exchange the blouse for the smaller size, not knowing the garment was stolen. Jo had to work off the payment of that blouse while Tootie and Natalie did her duties.\nEarly in the series, Jo's sailor boyfriend, Eddie Brennan (Clark Brandon), came to Eastland and convinced her to marry him. They planned to elope to West Virginia, where the marriage age was lower, but Mrs. Garrett and Blair tracked her down at a nearby motel to stop her. Jo had by that point already begun to change her mind when she realized just how difficult teenage marriage would be. Jo returned to Peekskill without Eddie. \nEddie visited again the following season but things had changed between them. They were moving in different directions and keeping the long-distance relationship going was proving to be very difficult, so they decided to see other people for the time being. Eddie returned late in the fifth season, now an officer in the Navy, but Tootie discovered he was married to a girl in Italy. Clark Brandon's last appearance was in the 5th season's 23rd episode \"Seems Like Old Times\". \nIn the 15th episode of the 4th season called \"Teacher's Pet\", Jo developed a close friendship with her 26-year-old English teacher, Miss Gail Gallagher (played by Deborah Harmon), who was raised in a similar environment to that of Jo. Gail inspired Jo to think about becoming a teacher herself. When Jo learned from Blair that Gail was quitting Eastland, she became very disappointed, believing that the reason was for a higher-paying job. She was crushed when she found out from Mrs. Garrett that it was because of a terminal illness and had a difficult time coming to terms with her emotions and friendship. \nEarly in the series, many of Jo's stories revolved around her tomboyish ways. Jo got into verbal spars with girls who didn't think she was \"feminine enough\" and boys (including some of her boyfriends) were threatened by her mechanical aptitude, which she displayed by getting a job at a local garage. In the later seasons, Jo's tomboyish image softened considerably, as she and the girls were growing up and was rarely raised as an issue again. \nDuring one earlier episode, Blair became upset when her boyfriend asked Jo to a country club dance instead of her. Later, Blair nearly attacked him (surprisingly it was Jo who stopped her) after finding out he tried to sexually assault and humiliate Jo due to his views on women (he thinks Blair's the kind of girl men want in their future and Jo is the kind of girl they need in their past. Blair sums it up as 'There are two kinds of women. The kind you marry, and the kind you...don't). A subsequent conversation between Jo and Blair made them suddenly realize that although they have different backgrounds they can still have the same problems. This had the unexpected (for them) consequence of them actually understanding each other and sparking a mutual respect.\nJo and Blair shared many emotional moments throughout the series, showcasing the intensity and complexity of their relationship. When Blair is in a car accident, she is vulnerable only with Jo \u2014 who is the first to visit her in the hospital the night of her accident (after hours) \u2014 about her fears regarding her looks. In episodes where Jo considers leaving Eastland or where she decides not to get married as a teenager, she openly cries in front of Blair.\nJo graduated from Eastland as valedictorian of her class and attended Langley College with Blair. She worked at the campus radio station and graduated with a degree in education. When the series ended, she was a social worker at a community center owned by Blair. Jo had asked Blair to donate money to keep the facility open for the clients in need. \nRegarding her romances, during Season 6, Jo met and was romanced by a young rock singer named Flyman (played by Michael Damian) in the two-part episode, \"Gone With the Wind\". She was reunited with him in Season 7, where it was revealed he now had a lounge act in Atlantic City. \nIn the last season, Jo married Rick Bonner, a concert musician. She asked Blair to be her maid of honor. In the reunion special after the series ended, Jo's daughter Jamie referred to Blair as \"Aunt Blair\".\nJo did not appear at the reunion TV special because it was stated that she was now in the police force and was working; however, Rick and Jamie did attend. This also coincided with Nancy McKeon's role as a police detective in the drama series \"The Division\" since the reason she couldn't participate in the reunion was a conflict in her working schedule.\nSteven Bradley.\nSteven Bradley is the headmaster of Eastland Academy and has been nicknamed the \"Freud of Sigma Chi\". When doing his job, he relied on Emily Mahoney for the first four episodes in order to understand how the academy works as he originally worked in the public school system. In addition to his job, he also taught different classes. He is the authority figure of the series in the first season. \nBradley also looks out for his students, such as when he had to rescue Blair and Tootie in \"Flash Flood\" and wanting to support Molly when her parents get a divorce in \"Molly's Holiday\". He was also offended when he found that some of the students were smoking marijuana in \"Dope\" which led to him having those students expelled which Blair and Sue Ann managed to avoid.\nThe character was dropped after season one and was replaced by Charles Parker.\nEmily Mahoney.\nEmily Mahoney is a teacher at Eastland Academy who teaches history and science. She is a stickler for rules where Steven Bradley often undermines her.\nThe character was dropped after the episode \"I.Q.\"\nNancy Olsen.\nNancy Olsen was portrayed by Felice Schachter. She is an All-American teenager who has the highest I.Q. than any of the girls at Eastland. Nancy has an unseen boyfriend named Roger Butler who she is often talking on the phone with for hours.\nThe character of Nancy Olsen was gradually written out of the show between summer 1980 and winter 1982, with the character making only a few appearances during seasons two and three. However, she reappeared in the 1986 reunion episode \"The Little Chill\" where she is engaged to Roger and is three-months pregnant with their first child.\nSue Ann Weaver.\nSue Ann Weaver was portrayed by Julie Piekarski. She is an intelligent and boy-crazy girl from Kansas City who always got good grades in school, though her I.Q. is lower than the other students'. Mrs. Garrett once told Sue Ann that I.Q. has nothing to do with her abilities. When it comes to chasing boys, Sue is often in competition with Blair.\nThe character of Sue Ann Weaver was gradually written out of the show between summer 1980 and winter 1982, with the character making only a few appearances during seasons two and three. However, she reappeared in the 1986 reunion episode \"The Little Chill\" where she is now a gofer at a company while claiming that she had other positions. Though Jo found out the truth and kept quiet about it to the other girls.\nCindy Webster.\nCindy Webster was played by Julie Anne Haddock. She was around 14 years old at the beginning of \"The Facts of Life\". Cindy was an athletic tomboy, who, at the start of the series, was worried she wasn't \"normal\". The first episode of \"The Facts of Life\", which aired in August 1979, focused on Cindy, who was concerned that she might like girls, after hearing disparaging remarks from snobby Blair. The episode tackled a sensitive issue during an era when lesbianism was rarely talked about on television, although reaction from modern-day critics has been mixed. Stephen Tropiano, writing in"}, "descending_order": ["30857719", "634936"], "permutation_1": ["634936", "30857719"], "permutation_2": ["634936", "30857719"], "permutation_3": ["30857719", "634936"]}
{"id": "nq_5794174937723861896", "docs_added": {"723638": "Journey to the Center of the Earth\n1864 science fiction novel by Jules Verne\nJourney to the Center of the Earth (), also translated with the variant titles A Journey to the Centre of the Earth and A Journey into the Interior of the Earth, is a classic science fiction novel written by French novelist Jules Verne. It was first published in French in 1864, then reissued in 1867 in a revised and expanded edition. Professor Otto Lidenbrock is the tale's central figure, an eccentric German scientist who believes there are volcanic tubes that reach to the very center of the earth. He, his nephew Axel, and their Icelandic guide Hans rappel into Iceland's celebrated inactive volcano Sn\u00e6fellsj\u00f6kull, then contend with many dangers, including cave-ins, subpolar tornadoes, an underground ocean, and living prehistoric creatures from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras (the 1867 revised edition inserted additional prehistoric material in Chaps. 37\u201339). Eventually the three explorers are spewed back to the surface by an active volcano, Stromboli, located in southern Italy.\nThe category of subterranean fiction existed well before Verne. However his novel's distinction lay in its well-researched Victorian science and its inventive contribution to the science-fiction subgenre of time travel\u2014Verne's innovation was the concept of a prehistoric realm still existing in the present-day world. \"Journey\" inspired many later authors, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his novel \"The Lost World\", Edgar Rice Burroughs in his \"Pellucidar\" series, and J. R. R. Tolkien in \"The Hobbit\".\nPlot.\nThe story begins in May 1863, at the home of Professor Otto Lidenbrock in Hamburg, Germany. While leafing through an original runic manuscript of an Icelandic saga, Lidenbrock and his nephew Axel find a cyphered note written in runic script along with the name of a 16th-century Icelandic alchemist, Arne Saknussemm. When translated into English, the note reads:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Go down into the crater of Snaefells J\u00f6kull, which Scartaris's shadow caresses just before the calends of July, O daring traveler, and you'll make it to the center of the earth. I've done so. Arne Saknussemm\nLidenbrock departs for Iceland immediately, taking the reluctant Axel with him. After a swift trip via Kiel and Copenhagen, they arrive in Reykjav\u00edk. There they hire as their guide Icelander Hans Bjelke, a Danish-speaking eiderduck hunter, then travel overland to the base of Sn\u00e6fellsj\u00f6kull.\nIn late June they reach the volcano and set off into the bowels of the earth, encountering many dangers and strange phenomena. After taking a wrong turn, they run short of water and Axel nearly perishes, but Hans saves them all by tapping into a subterranean river, which shoots out a stream of water that Lidenbrock and Axel name the \"Hansbach\" in the guide's honor.\nFollowing the course of the Hansbach, the explorers descend many miles, during which, Axel accidentally gets separated from Lidenbrock and Hans and briefly gets lost in the caverns, but survives a rockslide before being found again. Eventually, the explorers reach an underground world, with an ocean (which Lidenbrock christens the Lidenbrock Sea, after himself) and a vast ceiling with clouds, as well as a permanent Aurora giving light. The travelers build a raft out of semipetrified wood and set sail. On the shoreline, they see the gazelle-like \"Leptotherium\", the cattle-like \"Merycotherium\", a \"Lophiodon\" (which is described to be tapir-like), an \"Anoplotherium\" (which is described to be a compound of a horse, a rhinoceros, a camel, and a hippopotamus), a mastodon, a \"Megatherium\", and a \"Protopithecus\" while a \"Pterodactylus\" flies in the sky.\nWhile at sea, they encounter prehistoric fish such as \"Pterichthyodes\" (here called \"Pterichthys\") \"Dipterus\" (referred to as \"Dipterides\") and giant marine reptiles from the Age of the Dinosaurs, namely an \"Ichthyosaurus\" and a \"Plesiosaurus\", in which a fight between the monsters almost endangers the raft. A lightning storm threatens to destroy the raft and its passengers, but instead throws them onto the site of an enormous fossil graveyard (which Lidenbrock, at first, thinks is on the coast they'd departed from, assuming the storm blew them back the way they'd come), including bones from a \"Pterodactylus\", a \"Megatherium\", a \"Deinotherium, a Glyptodon,\" a mastodon, and the preserved body of a prehistoric hominid.\nLidenbrock and Axel venture into a forest featuring primitive vegetation from the Tertiary Period. In its depths they are stunned to find a prehistoric humanoid that is described to be more than twelve feet in height with a head that was huge and unshapely like a European bison, a mane that is similar to a prehistoric elephant that hid most of its head, and wielding a primitive staff. It was watching over a herd of mastodons like a shepherd and surpassed the height of the known prehistoric hominids that Lidenbrock and Axel know. Fearing the humanoid may be hostile, Lidenbrock and Axel leave the forest before it can see them.\nContinuing to explore the coastline, the travellers find a passageway marked by Saknussemm as the way ahead, but it has been blocked by a recent cave-in. The adventurers lay plans to blow the rock open with gun cotton, meanwhile paddling their raft out to sea to avoid the blast. On executing this scheme, they open a bottomless pit beyond the impeding rock and are swept into it as the sea rushes down the huge open gap. After spending hours descending at breakneck speed, their raft reverses direction and rises inside a volcanic chimney that ultimately spews them into the open air. When they regain consciousness, they learn that they have been ejected from Stromboli, a volcanic island located off Sicily.\nThe trio returns to Germany, where they enjoy great acclaim; Professor Lidenbrock is hailed as one of the great scientists of the day, Axel discovers that the poles on the compass got reversed during the storm and marries his sweetheart Gr\u00e4uben, and Hans returns to his peaceful, eiderduck-hunting life in Iceland.\nPublication notes.\nThe original French editions of 1864 and 1868 were issued by J. Hetzel et Cie, a major Paris publishing house owned by Pierre-Jules Hetzel.\nThe novel's first English edition, translated by an unknown hand and published in 1871 by the London house Griffith & Farran, appeared under the title \"A Journey to the Centre of the Earth\" and is now available at Project Gutenberg. A drastically rewritten version of the story, it adds chapter titles where Verne gives none, meanwhile changing the professor's surname to Hardwigg, Axel's name to Harry, and Gr\u00e4uben's to Gretchen. In addition, many paragraphs and details are completely recomposed.\nAn 1877 London edition from Ward, Lock, & Co. appeared under the title \"A Journey into the Interior of the Earth\". Its translation, credited to Frederick Amadeus Malleson, is more faithful than the Griffith & Farran version, though it, too, concocts chapter titles and modifies details. Its text is likewise available at Project Gutenberg.\nThere are 2 modern English translations by Frank Wynne, edited by p. W. Gogman of Penguin Classics in 2009 and by Matthew G. Jonas in 2022.\nAdaptations.\nOther.\nhttps://dn790005.ca.archive.org/0/items/JourneyToTheCenterOfTheEarth_201902/Journey%20to%20the%20Center%20of%20the%20Earth.pdf\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n (original French text, 1864)", "567508": "Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959 film)\n1959 film by Henry Levin\nJourney to the Center of the Earth (also called Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth) is a 1959 American science fiction adventure film directed by Henry Levin and starring James Mason, Pat Boone, Arlene Dahl and Diane Baker. Based on the 1864 novel of the same name by Jules Verne, it was written for the screen by Charles Brackett (who also produced) and Walter Reisch. Bernard Herrmann wrote the film score.\nThe film was released by 20th Century Fox on December 16, 1959. It was a commercial success and well-received by critics, earning three Academy Award nominations.<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nPlot.\nIn 1880 Edinburgh, Professor Sir Oliver Lindenbrook, a geologist at the University of Edinburgh, is given a piece of volcanic rock by his admiring student, Alec McEwan, who is in love with Lindenbrook's niece Jenny. Finding the rock unusually heavy, Lindenbrook discovers a plumb bob inside bearing a cryptic inscription. Lindenbrook and Alec discover that it was left by a scientist named Arne Saknussemm, who, almost 100 years earlier, had found a passage to the center of the Earth by descending into the volcano Sn\u00e6fellsj\u00f6kull, in western Iceland. After translating the message, Lindenbrook immediately sets off with Alec to follow in the Icelandic pioneer's footsteps.\nProfessor G\u00f6teborg, upon receiving correspondence from Lindenbrook regarding the message, attempts to reach the Earth's center first. Lindenbrook and McEwan chase him to Iceland. There, G\u00f6teborg and his assistant kidnap and imprison them in a cellar. They are freed by local Hans Bjelke and his pet duck Gertrud. They later find G\u00f6teborg dead in his hotel room. Lindenbrook finds potassium cyanide crystals in G\u00f6teborg's goatee and concludes that he was murdered.\nG\u00f6teborg's widow, Carla, who initially believed Lindenbrook was trying to capitalize on her deceased husband's work, learns the truth. She provides the equipment and supplies that her husband had accumulated, including much sought after Ruhmkorff lamps, but only on the condition that she accompanies them to protect her husband's reputation. Lindenbrook grudgingly agrees. Hans and Gertrud also join the new expedition.\nOn a specific date, they mark the sunrise's exact location on Sn\u00e6fellsj\u00f6kull and descend into the Earth from there, following markings left by Saknussemm. However, they are not alone. G\u00f6teborg's murderer, Count Saknussemm, believes that, as Saknussemm's descendant, only he has the right to be there. He and his manservant trail the group secretly. When Alec becomes separated from the others, he comes upon Saknussemm. When Alec refuses to take the place of Saknussemm's servant, who has died from overexertion, Saknussemm shoots Alec in the arm. Lindenbrook locates them through the gunshot's echoes and, after a quick trial for murder, sentences Saknussemm to death. No one is willing to execute him, however, so they reluctantly take him along.\nThe explorers eventually come upon a subterranean ocean. They construct a raft to cross it, but not before narrowly escaping a family of large \"dimetrodons\". Their raft begins circling in a large mid-ocean whirlpool. The professor deduces that this must be the center of the Earth: The magnetic forces of north and south meet there and are powerful enough to snatch away even the gold in their rings and tooth fillings. Now completely exhausted, they reach the opposite shore.\nWhile the others are asleep, a hungry Saknussemm catches and eats Gertrud. When Hans finds out, he rushes at the count. Reeling back, Saknussemm inadvertently loosens a column of large stones and is buried beneath them, killing him. Right behind the collapse, the group comes upon the ruins of the sunken city of Atlantis. They also find the skeleton of Arne Saknussemm, whose right hand points toward a volcanic chimney. While a strong updraft suggests it leads directly to the surface, a huge rock partially blocks the way. Lindenbrook decides to blow up the obstruction with gunpowder left by Saknussemm, and they take shelter in a large sacrificial altar bowl. A giant lizard attacks, but is buried under molten lava released by the explosion. The bowl floats toward the passage and is finally driven upward at great speed by a lava plume. It finally reaches the surface, where the explorers are ejected, coming down away from the lava eruption.\nWhen they return to Edinburgh, they are hailed as heroes. Lindenbrook turns down all the honors due to the loss of their documented evidence, but encourages the next generations to follow in their footsteps. Alec soon marries Jenny, and Lindenbrook and Carla kiss, a pledge of their coming wedding.\nCast.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>* James Mason as Sir Oliver Lindenbrook \nProduction.\nThe film was a co-production between 20th Century-Fox and Joseph M. Schenck, who had been instrumental in helping establish Fox in 1935. The film was produced by Charles Brackett, who said:\nOur picture describes action and events, with not the slightest shadow of Freud. The serious thing about Jules Verne is that all he does is tell a story in exciting episodes, but his stories have always pushed man a little closer towards the unknown. What we've tried to do is retell his story in the best way of all - in the Verne vernacular.\nBrackett called the original story \"a delightful book, written for young people. We simply couldn't have any solemnity about it. I wanted very much to do it at this time. I'm tired of all these films based on thoughts at the back of sick minds.\"\nThe script was written by Walter Reisch who later said:\nI had written a lot of science fiction for magazines, and Charles Brackett knew about that. They also knew that I had written magazine articles on Jules Verne. I had studied Jules Verne, and always wanted to write his biography, but I never got around to doing it. When they bought the Jules Verne novel from his estate and assigned me, I was delighted. The master's work, though a beautiful basic idea, went in a thousand directions and never achieved a real constructive \"roundness\". With the exception of the basic idea, there is very little of the novel left in the film. I invented a lot of new characters\u2014the Pat Boone part, the part of the professor's wife played by Arlene Dahl, the [part of the] villain\u2014and the fact that it all played in Scotland. \nPat Boone was the first star announced. He said he was reluctant to make the film because it was science fiction, even after Fox promised to add some songs. It was only when they offered him 15% of the profits that he agreed at the urging of his management. He said, \"Later on, I was very glad I did it, because it was fun to do, it had some good music and it became a very successful film\".\nFollowing up on that point, \"Diabolique\" magazine later observed:\nIt remains a mystery why Boone never appeared in another fantasy/sci-fi adventure in his entire career. Boone was believable in them, and he could easily sing a song over the credits if he wanted. He wouldn\u2019t have to worry about kissing any of his co-stars or \u201cmorality\u201d issues. And it wasn\u2019t as though Fox weren\u2019t making them. When he was under contract they turned out \"The Lost World\" (1960), \"Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea\" (1961) and \"Five Weeks in a Balloon\" (1962). The last two even featured pop stars Frankie Avalon and Fabian respectively, but no Boone. Was he too expensive? Did the dates not work out? Did he insist on playing the lead? Whatever the reason it was a great shame. For me, this is the biggest misstep Boone made in his film career.\nThe role of the professor was meant to be played by Clifton Webb. Reisch said:\nThat was absolutely the most beautiful idea, because Clifton Webb had a certain tongue-in-cheek style, suited to playing a professor with crazy notions, which could be paired with Pat Boone as his favorite disciple. Every week Clifton visited Brackett's office, where we described scenes to him and he became very excited at the prospect of playing that kind of part. Maybe two or three weeks before we actually began to shoot, Clifton Webb went to the hospital for a checkup, and they never let him out. He had to undergo major surgery. Unless my memory fails me completely, it was a double hernia, and he was, as you can imagine, a very sensitive man, very touchy about sickness. He called Zanuck himself on his private line, and said he could not play the part because it was such a physical part.\nWebb was replaced at the last minute by James Mason, who had previously appeared as Captain Nemo in Disney's earlier adaptation of Jules Verne's novel, \"20,000 Leagues Under the Sea\" (1954). Reisch:\nI think it was [longtime head of Twentieth Century-Fox casting] Billy Gordon or Lew Schreiber [Twentieth Century-Fox production executive] who suggested James Mason. James Mason was, of course, British, with a beautiful voice, and he liked the idea [of the part]. He felt it was his duty as Clifton's colleague to take over. From there on it was clear sailing, except that Pat Boone had about three or four songs, if not more, and I think all of them died in the end, with the exception of one or two. The moment that Zanuck saw [their effect on] the action, those songs just fell by the wayside.\nSome of the underground sequences for \"Journey to the Center of the Earth\" were filmed at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Other shooting locations included Amboy Crater and Sequit Point, California, as well as Edinburgh, Scotland. Principal photography took place from late June to mid-September 1959.\nOriginally, \"Life\" magazine editor and science writer Lincoln Barnett was to write the screenplay and later acted as one of the technical advisers on the film.\nThe giant \"Dimetrodon\" depicted at the center of the Earth action sequence were actually rhinoceros iguanas with a large, glued-on make-up appliance added to their back. The giant chameleon seen later in the ruins of Atlantis scene was actually a painted Tegu lizard or a monitor lizard.\nBoone recalled filming the dramatic whirlpool sea scene:\n James Mason, Arlene Dahl, Peter Ronson and I were on a raft, caught in a giant whirlpool. It was a tricky thing to shoot \u2014 the raft was on a revolving platform that tilted when it went around. It had to look like we were being tossed violently. Hundreds of gallons of water were being dumped on us to simulate a stormy sea. The noise was deafening, but not enough to drown out Dahl, who started screaming as she held on for dear life. She screamed at the director, Henry Levin, 'Get me off this thing. Get me down. I'm going to pass out!' She kept yelling. Mason had little patience for it. He thought Dahl had already overplayed the role of a dainty creature when we had to wear very heavy parkas, feigning winter amid very hot July weather, for another scene (Dahl complained then of heat prostration). Mason was not amused as this time he yelled back at her, 'Shut up woman! We're going to have to do this ten times if you don't keep quiet.' We were going to have to dub dialogue anyway, and they got the shot.\nDahl became unconscious and it took 30 minutes to revive her.\nReception.\nBox office.\nAt the time of release, \"Journey to the Center of the Earth\" was a financial success, grossing $10,000,000 at the box office (well over its $3.44 million budget).\nCritical response.\nFilm review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes assigns a rating of 84% based on 31 critics, with an average rating of 6.9/10. The website's critical consensus describes \"Journey to the Center of the Earth\" as \"a silly but fun movie with everything you'd want from a sci-fi blockbuster \u2013 heroic characters, menacing villains, monsters, big sets and special effects\".\nUpon the film's release, \"New York Times\" film critic Bosley Crowther said \"Journey to the Center of the Earth\" is \"really not very striking make-believe, when all is said and done. The earth's interior is somewhat on the order of an elaborate amusement-park tunnel of love. And the attitudes of the people, toward each other and toward another curious man who happens to be exploring down there at the same time, are conventional and just a bit dull\".\nIan Nathan, writing a retrospective review for \"Empire\", gave the film four stars, stating that \"it has dated a fair bit, but it's a film that takes its far-fetchedness seriously, and delivers a thrilling adventure untrammelled by cheese, melodrama or ludicrous tribes of extras, shabbily dressed bird-beings or lizard men\", ultimately concluding that the film is \"still captivating despite the obviously dated effects\".\nAccolades.\n\"Journey to the Center of the Earth\" won a second place Golden Laurel award for Top Action Drama in 1960.\nThe film was nominated for three Academy Awards: for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Lyle R. Wheeler, Franz Bachelin, Herman A. Blumenthal, Walter M. Scott, Joseph Kish), for Best Effects, Special Effects, and for Best Sound (Carlton W. Faulkner).\nReferences.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "5247901": "Journey to the Center of the Earth (TV series)\n1967 American animated TV series\nJourney to the Center of the Earth is an American science fiction Saturday-morning cartoon, consisting of 17 episodes, each running 30 minutes. Produced by Filmation in association with 20th Century Fox Television, it aired from September 9, 1967, to September 6, 1969, on ABC Saturday Morning. It featured the voice of Ted Knight as Professor Lindenbrook/Sacknussem. It was later shown in reruns on Sci Fi Channel's Cartoon Quest.\nIt appears to have taken the 1959 film, \"Journey to the Center of the Earth\", as its starting point rather than Jules Verne's original 1864 novel; e.g., including the character of Count Sacknussem and Gertrude the duck. However, it moved even further away from Verne's novel than the 1959 film did.\nThere are currently no plans to release the series on DVD and/or Blu-ray Disc from 20th Century Studios Home Entertainment, although most of the series is available for viewing on YouTube.\nOpening narration.\n\"Long ago, a lone explorer named Arne Sacknussem made a fantastic descent to the fabled lost kingdom of Atlantis at the Earth's core. After many centuries, his trail was discovered: first by me, Professor Oliver Lindenbrook, my niece Cindy, student Alec McEwen, our guide Lars and his duck Gertrude. But we were not alone. The evil Count Sacknussem, last descendant of the once noble Sacknussem family, had followed us... to claim the center of the Earth for his power-mad schemes. He ordered his brute-like servant, Torg, to destroy our party. But the plan backfired, sealing the entrance forever. And so, for us, began a desperate race to the Earth's core... to learn the secret of the way back. This is the story of our new journey to the center of the Earth!\"\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "9617369": "Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008 theatrical film)\n2008 American theatrical film\nJourney to the Center of the Earth (also promoted as Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D or Journey 3D) is a 2008 American 3D science fantasy action-adventure film directed by Eric Brevig and starring Brendan Fraser in the main role, Josh Hutcherson, and Anita Briem. Produced by Walden Media, it is an adaptation of Jules Verne's 1864 novel (which had previously been adapted multiple times, most notably in the 1959 film of the same name) and was released in 3D theaters by Warner Bros. Pictures through their New Line Cinema division on July 11, 2008. It tells the story of a volcanologist and his nephew who embark on a mission to go look for his missing brother with help from an Icelandic guide as they come across the center of the Earth.\nThe film also introduced the 4DX movie format, featuring \"4D\" motion effects in a specially designed cinema in Seoul, South Korea, using tilting seats and other effects to convey motion, wind, sprays of water and sharp air, probe lights to mimic lightning, fog, scents, and other theatrical special effects.\nThe film received generally positive reviews from critics and earned $244.2 million against a $60 million budget. A sequel, \"\", was released on February 10, 2012 with only Hutcherson returning of the main cast.\nPlot.\nIn 2007, Trevor Anderson is a Bostonian volcanologist whose 13-year-old nephew, Sean, is supposed to spend ten days with him. Trevor learns at work that his brother's lab is being shut down because of a lack of funding. Trevor has forgotten that Sean is coming until he receives several messages from Sean's mother Elizabeth. When Sean's mother drops him off, she leaves Trevor with a box of items that belonged to Max, Trevor's brother and Sean's father, who disappeared 10 years before. Sean suddenly takes interest in what Trevor has to say after he tells him about his father, whom he never really had a chance to know. In the box, Trevor discovers the novel \"Journey to the Center of the Earth\" by Jules Verne. Inside the book Trevor finds notes written by his late brother. Trevor goes to his laboratory to find out more about the notes. There he realizes that he must go to Iceland to investigate for himself.\nHe intends to send Sean back to his mother, but relents at Sean's protest and brings Sean to Iceland with him. They start by looking for another volcanologist. When they get to that scientist's institution, they meet his daughter Hannah, who informs them he is dead. She also tells them that both her father and Max believed that Jules Verne's books were factual accounts. However she offers to help them climb up to the instrument that has suddenly started sending data again. While hiking the mountain, a lightning storm forces the three into a cave. The cave entrance collapses, trapping them, so they have no alternative but to go deeper in the cave, which turns out to be an abandoned mine.\nTrevor, Sean, and Hannah investigate further into the mine until they fall into a deep hole, taking them to the \"Center of the Earth\". They all continue until they discover a cave-dwelling that Max lived in. Trevor and Sean find Max's old journal. Hannah and Trevor discover Max's dead body and bury him. Trevor reads a message from Max's journal that was written on Sean's 3rd birthday (8.14.97). Trevor continues to read Max's journal until he realizes from his notes that they must quickly leave, as the temperature is steadily rising.\nTrevor figures that they must find a geyser that can send them to the surface. They must do this in 48 hours or all of the water to create the geyser will be gone. They also figure that they must get out before the temperature rises past 135 degrees. They start building a raft to cross the underground ocean, and then the two adults become separated from Sean. Sean's guide is now a little glowing bird who has been present since the trio entered the center, and it takes him towards the river. However, he encounters an albino \"Giganotosaurus\", and Trevor \u2013 who desperately is searching for him \u2013 saves him. When they arrive at the geyser it is all dried up. All the water is on the other side of the walls.\nTrevor uses a flare to ignite the magnesium in the wall and causes a geyser to shoot them through Mount Vesuvius in Italy. When they destroy the vineyard of an Italian man, Sean gives him a diamond that he had found earlier. Trevor sees that he has many more in his backpack and he uses them to fund his brother's laboratory. Throughout the adventure, Hannah and Trevor gradually become so attached to each other that they share a kiss.\nOn the final day of Sean's visit with Trevor (and now Hannah), he is leaving their new home, which was purchased with some of the diamonds Sean took from the cave, and Trevor hands Sean a book titled \"Atlantis\", suggesting they could maybe hang out at Sean's during Christmas break. It was also shown that the glowing bird was also smuggled out by Sean in attempt to keep it as a pet only for Trevor to turn it down as the bird flies off.\nProduction.\nDevelopment and filming.\nIn September 2001, Walden Media announced that Eric Brevig was hired and set to direct \"Journey to the Center of the Earth\" based on the book of the same name by Jules Verne. Michael D. Weiss, Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett wrote the script for the film. Beau Flynn and Charlotte Huggins produced the film with the budget of $60 million for release in 2008. In 2003, Brendan Fraser, Anita Briem, Josh Hutcherson, Seth Meyers, Jean-Michel Par\u00e9, Jane Wheeler, Giancarlo Caltabiano and Garth Gilker joined the film. Andrew Lockington composed the music for the film. The development and filming of the film were completed in Canada and Iceland in March 2006, followed by principal photography and production which began on April 20. In January 2007, New Line Cinema acquired distribution rights to the film. The film transposes the novel into the present day and is mostly live action, with only the landscape and creatures supplied by computer-generated graphics. The film is projected using Real D Cinema and Dolby 3D.\nJosh Hutcherson's character, Sean, is named after the professor and conservation biologist Dr. Sean Anderson.\nThe computer graphics in the film were produced by the Canadian company Meteor Studios, which declared bankruptcy immediately after having finished work on \"Journey to the Center of the Earth\", leaving its employees and freelancers unpaid after having postponed their paychecks for three months; after a lawsuit and the direct intervention of Brendan Fraser, the former Meteor personnel settled for 70% of what was owed.\nRelease.\nMarketing.\nThe first trailer was shown before screenings of \"Meet the Robinsons\", the re-release of \"The Nightmare Before Christmas\" and the release of \"Beowulf\", with the \"\", and during the 2008 Kids' Choice Awards. Warner Bros. marketed the film like a theme park attraction. However, the studio had to slightly tweak the campaign (including dropping \"3D\" from the title) when it became clear that the film would be shown in 3-D in far fewer theaters than anticipated.\nTheme parks.\nIn May 2009, the film premiered as \"Journey to the Center of the Earth 4-D\" at Stone Mountain Park in Georgia. It also opened in the motion simulator at Dollywood under the same name on June 12 the same year. It also featured the new 4D Cinema at the Weston Super-Mare Grand Pier in the U.K. and was shown in Movieworld on the Gold Coast.\nHome media.\n\"Journey to the Center of the Earth\" was released on DVD and Blu-ray on October 28, 2008, in standard 2D format as well as a magenta / green anaglyph. It opened at #2 at the DVD sales chart, selling 843,224 units in the 1st week which translates to $13,238,617 in revenue. As per the latest figures, 1,642,994 DVD units have been sold, bringing in $25,346,260 in revenue. This doesn't include Blu-ray Disc sales / DVD rentals. The 2008 2-disc BD edition of the movie doesn't conform to the \u2013 only later established \u2013 3D Blu-ray specifications, which means that this version doesn't take advantage of any dedicated 3D HDTVs, although it can be watched on 3D HDTVs, as well as on any other TV in anaglyph 3D, by using red-cyan paper glasses (four pairs are included). A 3D Blu-ray version was released on January 17, 2012. Both the \"Standard 2D Version\" and the 3D BD version, released in 2008 by Roadshow Home Entertainment in Australia, appeared under the title \"Journey to the Centre of the Earth\".\nReception.\nCritical response.\nOn Rotten Tomatoes, it has an approval rating of 61% based on 158 reviews with an average rating of 6/10. The website's critical consensus reads: \"Modern visuals and an old fashioned storyline make this family adventure/comedy a fast-paced, kitschy ride\". Metacritic gave the film a 57 out of 100, based on 35 reviews, indicating \"mixed or average reviews\". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade \"A\u2212\" on scale of A to F.\nRoger Ebert of the \"Chicago Sun-Times\" gave the film two stars out of four, and wrote: \"This is a fairly bad movie, and yet at the same time maybe about as good as it could be. There may not be an 8-year-old alive who would not love it.\" Peter Travers of \"Rolling Stone\" gave it two and a half out of four, but warned \"Remove a star from the rating if you take this Journey without wearing 3-D glasses. That\u2019s where the real fun comes in.\" Owen Glieberman of \"Entertainment Weekly\" gave it a B\u2212 and said \"Journey is just the new version of a 1950s comin'-at-ya roller coaster, with a tape measure, trilobite antennae, and giant snapping piranha thrust at the audience.\"\nBox office.\n\"Journey to the Center of the Earth\" grossed $101.7 million in the United States and $142.5 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $244.2 million.\nThe film opened at #3 in North America, behind \"\" and \"Hancock\". The film grossed $21 million in 2,811 theaters in its first week of release with an average of $7,477. In its second weekend, it dropped to $12.3 million, and $9.7 million in its third.\nSequel.\nIn March 2009, Universal and Walden Media announced a sequel film, \"\", starring Hutcherson, Dwayne Johnson, Michael Caine, Luis Guzman, and Vanessa Hudgens. Fraser and Briem did not return, and Jane Wheeler was replaced by Kristin Davis. \"Journey 2\" was filmed between November 2010 and February 2011 and was released in February 2012. Like the first movie, the sequel was shot in 3D, and the script is loosely based on a Verne novel \u2013 \"The Mysterious Island\".\n\"Journey to the Center of the Earth: 4-D Adventure\".\n\"Journey to the Center of the Earth 4-D Adventure\" is a 15-minute 4D film shown at various 4D theatres all over the world. It retells the condensed story of the film with the help of 3D projection and sensory effects, including moving seats, wind, mist and scents. Produced by SimEx-Iwerks, the 4D experience premiered in 2009. Locations included Warner Bros. Movie World (2010\u20132012), Dollywood (2009\u20132012), Enchanted Kingdom (2009\u2013), Stone Mountain, and Rainbow"}, "descending_order": ["567508", "5247901", "9617369", "723638"], "permutation_1": ["723638", "5247901", "9617369", "567508"], "permutation_2": ["723638", "567508", "9617369", "5247901"], "permutation_3": ["9617369", "567508", "5247901", "723638"]}
{"id": "nq_733016474692161086", "docs_added": {"11269605": "The Big Bang Theory\nAmerican television sitcom (2007\u20132019)\nThe Big Bang Theory is an American television sitcom created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady for CBS. It aired from September 24, 2007, to May 16, 2019, running for 12 seasons and 279 episodes.\nThe show originally centered on five characters living in Pasadena, California: Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki) and Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons), both physicists at Caltech, who share an apartment; Penny (Kaley Cuoco), a waitress and aspiring actress who lives across the hall; and Leonard and Sheldon's similarly geeky and socially awkward friends and coworkers, aerospace engineer Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg) and astrophysicist Raj Koothrappali (Kunal Nayyar). Over time, supporting characters were promoted to starring roles, including neuroscientist Amy Farrah Fowler (Mayim Bialik), microbiologist Bernadette Rostenkowski (Melissa Rauch), and comic book store owner Stuart Bloom (Kevin Sussman).\nThe show was filmed in front of a live audience and produced by Chuck Lorre Productions, with Warner Bros. Television handling distribution. It received mixed reviews throughout its first season, but reception was more favorable in the second and third seasons. Despite early mixed reviews, seven seasons were ranked within the top ten of the final season ratings, and it ultimately reached the No. 1 spot in its eleventh season. It was nominated for the Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series from 2011 to 2014 and won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series four times for Parsons, totaling seven Emmy Awards from 46 nominations. Parsons also won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Television Comedy Series in 2011.\nThe series' success launched a multimedia franchise. A prequel series based on Parsons' character Sheldon Cooper, \"Young Sheldon\", aired from 2017 to 2024, with Parsons as the narrating adult Sheldon. The third series in the franchise, a sequel series to \"Young Sheldon\" titled \"Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage\", premiered in October 2024 and follows Sheldon's older brother, Georgie, and his wife, Mandy. A fourth series, following Stuart, his girlfriend Denise, and geologist Bert Kibbler, is in development for Max.\nProduction.\nThe show's pilot episode premiered on September 24, 2007. This was the second pilot produced for the show. A different pilot was produced for the 2006\u201307 television season but never aired. The structure of the original unaired pilot was different from the series' current form. The only main characters retained in both pilots were Leonard (Johnny Galecki) and Sheldon (Jim Parsons), who are named after Sheldon Leonard, a longtime figure in episodic television as a producer, director, and actor. A minor character, Althea (Vernee Watson), appeared in the first scene of both pilots that was retained generally as-is. The first pilot included two female lead characters - Katie, \"a street-hardened, tough-as-nails woman with a vulnerable interior\" (played by Canadian actress Amanda Walsh), and Gilda, a scientist colleague and friend of the male characters (played by Iris Bahr). Sheldon and Leonard meet Katie after she breaks up with a boyfriend, and they invite her to share their apartment. Gilda is threatened by Katie's presence. Test audiences reacted negatively to Katie, but they liked Sheldon and Leonard. The original pilot used Thomas Dolby's hit \"She Blinded Me with Science\" as its theme song.\nAlthough the original pilot was not picked up, its creators were given an opportunity to retool it and produce a second pilot. They brought in the remaining cast and retooled the show to its final format. Katie was replaced by Penny (Kaley Cuoco). The original unaired pilot has never been officially released, but it has circulated on the Internet. On the evolution of the show, Chuck Lorre said, \"We did the 'Big Bang Pilot' about two and a half years ago, and it sucked ... but there were two remarkable things that worked perfectly, and that was Johnny and Jim. We rewrote the thing entirely, and then we were blessed with Kaley and Simon and Kunal.\" As to whether the world will ever see the original pilot on a future DVD release, Lorre said, \"Wow, that would be something. We will see. Show your failures...\"\nThe first and second pilots of \"The Big Bang Theory\" were directed by James Burrows, who did not continue with the show. The reworked second pilot led to a 13-episode order by CBS on May 14, 2007. Prior to its airing on CBS, the pilot episode was distributed on iTunes free of charge. The show premiered on September 24, 2007, and was picked up for a full 22-episode season on October 19, 2007. The show is filmed in front of a live audience, and it is produced by Chuck Lorre Productions and Warner Bros. Television. Production was halted on November 6, 2007, due to the Writers Guild of America strike. Nearly three months later, on February 4, 2008, the series was temporarily replaced by a short-lived sitcom, \"Welcome to The Captain\". The series returned on March 17, 2008, in an earlier time slot, and ultimately only 17 episodes were produced for the first season.\nAfter the strike ended, the show was picked up for a second season, airing in the 2008\u20132009 season, premiering in the same time slot on September 22, 2008. With increasing ratings, the show received a two-year renewal through the 2010\u201311 season in 2009. In 2011, the show was picked up for three more seasons. In March 2014, the show was renewed again for three more years through the 2016\u201317 season. This marked the second time the series gained a three-year renewal. In March 2017, the series was renewed for two additional seasons, bringing its total to 12, and running through the 2018\u201319 television season.\nSeveral of the actors on \"The Big Bang Theory\" previously worked together on the sitcom \"Roseanne\", including Johnny Galecki, Sara Gilbert, Laurie Metcalf (who plays Sheldon's mother, Mary Cooper), and Meagen Fay (who plays Bernadette's mother). Additionally, Lorre was a writer on the series for several seasons.\nScience consultants.\nDavid Saltzberg, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles, checked scripts and provided dialogue, mathematics equations, and diagrams used as props. According to series co-creator Bill Prady, Sheldon was given an actual equation to be worked on throughout the first season, with the actual progress displayed on whiteboards in Sheldon and Leonard's apartment. Saltzberg, who has a Ph.D. in physics, served as the science consultant for the show for six seasons and attended every taping. He saw early versions of scripts that needed scientific information added to them, and he also pointed out where the writers, despite their knowledge of science, had made a mistake. He was usually not needed during a taping unless a lot of science, and especially the whiteboard, was involved.\nSaltzberg sometimes consulted with Mayim Bialik, who has a Ph.D. in neuroscience, on the subject of biology.\nTheme song.\nThe Canadian alternative rock band Barenaked Ladies wrote and recorded the show's theme song, which describes the history and formation of the universe and the Earth. Co-lead singer Ed Robertson was asked by Lorre and Prady to write a theme song for the show after the producers attended one of the band's concerts in Los Angeles. Coincidentally, Robertson had recently read Simon Singh's 2004 book \"Big Bang\", and at the concert he improvised a freestyle rap about the origins of the universe. Lorre and Prady phoned him shortly thereafter and asked him to write the theme song. Having been asked to write songs for other films and shows, but ending up being rejected because producers favored songs by other artists, Robertson agreed to write the theme only after learning that Lorre and Prady had not asked anyone else.\nOn October 9, 2007, a full-length (1 minute and 45 seconds) version of the song was released commercially. Although some unofficial pages identify the song title as \"History of Everything,\" the cover art for the single identifies the title as \"Big Bang Theory Theme.\" A music video also was released via special features on \"The Complete Fourth Season\" DVD and Blu-ray set. The theme was included on the band's greatest hits album, \"Hits from Yesterday & the Day Before\", released on September 27, 2011. In September 2015, TMZ uncovered court documents showing that Steven Page sued former bandmate Robertson over the song, alleging that he was promised 20 percent of the proceeds, but that Robertson has kept that money for himself.\nActors' salaries.\nFor the first three seasons, Galecki, Parsons, and Cuoco, the three main stars of the show, received up to $60,000 per episode. Their salaries rose to $200,000 per episode for the fourth season, then went up an additional $50,000 in each of the following three seasons, culminating in $350,000 per episode in the seventh season. In September 2013, Bialik and Rauch renegotiated the contracts they held since they were introduced to the series in 2010. On their old contracts, each was making $20,000\u2013$30,000 per episode, while the new contracts doubled that, beginning at $60,000 per episode, increasing steadily to $100,000 per episode by the end of the contract, as well as adding another year for both.\nBy season seven, Galecki, Parsons, and Cuoco were also receiving 0.25percent of the series' back-end money. Before production began on the eighth season, the three plus Helberg and Nayyar looked to renegotiate new contracts, with Galecki, Parsons, and Cuoco seeking around $1million per episode, as well as more back-end money. Contracts were signed in the beginning of August 2014, giving the three principal actors an estimated $1million per episode for three years, with the possibility to extend for a fourth year. The deals also include larger pieces of the show, signing bonuses, production deals, and advances towards the back-end. Helberg and Nayyar were also able to renegotiate their contracts, giving them a per-episode pay in the \"mid-six-figure range\", up from around $100,000 per episode they each received in years prior. The duo, who were looking to have salary parity with Parsons, Galecki, and Cuoco, signed their contracts after the studio and producers threatened to write the characters out of the series if a deal could not be reached before the start of production on season eight. By season 10, Helberg and Nayyar reached the $1million per episode parity with Galecki, Parsons, and Cuoco, due to a clause in their deals signed in 2014.\nIn March 2017, the main cast members (Galecki, Parsons, Cuoco, Helberg, and Nayyar) took a 10percent pay cut to allow Bialik and Rauch an increase in their earnings. This put Galecki, Parsons, Cuoco, Helberg and Nayyar at $900,000 per episode, with Parsons, Galecki, and Helberg also receiving overall deals with Warner Bros. Television. By the end of April, Bialik and Rauch had signed deals to earn $500,000 per episode each, with the deals also including a separate development component for both actors. The deal was an increase from the $175,000\u2013$200,000 the duo had been making per episode.\nRecurring themes and elements.\nScience.\nMuch of the series focuses on science, particularly physics. The four main male characters are employed at Caltech and have science-related occupations, as do Bernadette and Amy. The characters frequently banter about scientific theories or news (notably around the start of the show) and make science-related jokes.\nScience has also interfered with the characters' romantic lives. Leslie breaks up with Leonard when he sides with Sheldon in his support for string theory rather than loop quantum gravity. When Leonard joins Sheldon, Raj, and Howard on a three-month Arctic research trip, it separates Leonard and Penny at a time when their relationship is budding. When Bernadette takes an interest in Leonard's work, it makes both Penny and Howard envious and results in Howard confronting Leonard and Penny asking Sheldon to teach her physics. Sheldon and Amy also briefly end their relationship after an argument over which of their fields is superior.\nAs the theme of the show revolves around science, many distinguished and high-profile scientists have appeared as guest stars on the show. Astrophysicist and Nobel laureate George Smoot had a cameo appearance in the second season. Chemical engineer and Nobel laureate Frances Arnold portrayed herself in the 12th season. Theoretical physicist Brian Greene appeared in the fourth season, as well as astrophysicist, science popularizer, and physics outreach specialist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who also appeared in the twelfth season. Cosmologist Stephen Hawking made a short guest appearance in a fifth-season episode; in the eighth season, Hawking video conferences with Sheldon and Leonard, and he makes another appearance in the 200th episode. In the fifth and sixth seasons, NASA astronaut Michael J. Massimino played himself multiple times in the role of Howard's fellow astronaut. In the sixth season, NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin had a cameo appearance. Bill Nye appeared in the seventh and twelfth seasons.\n\"Nerd\" media.\nThe four main male characters are all avid fans of nerd culture. Among their shared interests are science fiction, fantasy, comic books, and collecting memorabilia.\n\"Star Trek\" in particular is referred to frequently, and Sheldon identifies strongly with the character of Spock, so much so that when he is given a used napkin signed by Leonard Nimoy as a Christmas gift from Penny, he is overwhelmed with excitement and gratitude (\"I possess the DNA of Leonard Nimoy?!\"). ' cast members William Shatner and George Takei have made cameos, and Leonard Nimoy made a cameo as the voice of Sheldon's vintage Mr. Spock action figure. ' cast members Brent Spiner and LeVar Burton have had cameos as themselves, while Wil Wheaton has a recurring role as a fictionalized version of himself. Leonard and Sheldon have had conversations in Klingon.\nThey are also fans of \"Star Wars\", \"Battlestar Galactica\", and \"Doctor Who\". James Earl Jones, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill made guest appearances. In the episode \"The Ornithophobia Diffusion\", when there is a delay in watching \"Star Wars\" on Blu-ray, Howard complains, \"If we don't start soon, George Lucas is going to change it again\" (referring to Lucas' controversial alterations to the films). In \"The Hot Troll Deviation\", Katee Sackhoff of \"Battlestar Galactica\" appeared as Howard's fantasy dream girl. The characters have different tastes in franchises, with Sheldon praising \"Firefly\" but disapproving of Leonard's enjoyment of \"Babylon 5\". With regard to fantasy, the four make frequent references to \"The Lord of the Rings\" and \"Harry Potter\" novels and movies. Additionally, Howard can speak Sindarin, one of the two Elvish languages from \"The Lord of the Rings\".\nWednesday night is the group's designated \"comic book night\" because that is the day of the week when new comic books are released. The comic book store is run by fellow geek and recurring character Stuart. On a number of occasions, the group members have dressed up as pop culture characters, including The Flash, Aquaman, Frodo Baggins, Superman, Batman, Spock, The Doctor, Green Lantern, and Thor. As a consequence of losing a bet to Stuart and Wil Wheaton, the group members are forced to visit the comic book store dressed as Catwoman, Wonder Woman, Batgirl, and Supergirl. DC Comics announced that, to promote its comics, the company would sponsor Sheldon wearing Green Lantern T-shirts.\nVarious games have been featured, as well as referred to, on the series (e.g. \"World of Warcraft\", \"Halo\", \"Mario\", Donkey Kong, etc.), including fictional games like \"Mystic Warlords of Ka'a\" (which became a reality in 2011) and Rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock.\nLeonard and Penny's relationship.\nOne of the recurring plot lines is the relationship between Leonard and Penny. Leonard becomes attracted to Penny in the pilot episode, and his need to do favors for her is a frequent point of humor in the first season. Meanwhile, Penny dates a series of muscular, stereotypically \"attractive,\" unintelligent, and insensitive jocks. Their first long-term relationship begins when Leonard returns from a three-month expedition to the North Pole in the season 3 premiere. However, when Leonard tells Penny that he loves her, she realizes she cannot say it back, and they break up. Both Leonard and Penny go on to date other people, most notably with Leonard dating Raj's sister Priya for much of season 4. This relationship is jeopardized when Leonard mistakenly comes to believe that Raj has slept with Penny, and it ultimately ends when Priya sleeps with a former boyfriend in \"The Good Guy Fluctuation\".\nPenny, who admits to missing Leonard in \"The Roommate Transmogrification\", accepts his request to renew their relationship in \"The Beta Test Initiation\". After Penny suggests having sex in \"The Launch Acceleration\", Leonard breaks the mood by proposing to her. Penny says \"no\" but does not break up with him. She stops a proposal a second time in \"The Tangible Affection Proof\". In the sixth-season episode, \"The 43 Peculiarity\", Penny finally tells Leonard that she loves him. Although they both feel jealousy when the other receives significant attention from the opposite sex, Penny is secure in their relationship, even when he leaves on a four-month expedition to the North Sea in \"The Bon Voyage Reaction\". After he returns, the relationship blossoms over the seventh season. In the penultimate episode \"The Gorilla Dissolution\", Penny admits that they should marry and when Leonard realizes that she is serious, he proposes with a ring that he has been carrying for years. Leonard and Penny decide to elope to Las Vegas in the season 8 finale, but beforehand, wanting no secrets, Leonard admits to kissing another woman, Mandy Chow (Melissa Tang) while on the expedition. Despite this, Leonard and Penny finally marry in the season 9 premiere and remain happy. By the Season 9 finale, Penny and Leonard decide to have a second wedding ceremony for their family and friends, to make up for eloping. In season 10, Sheldon moves into Penny's old apartment with Amy, allowing Penny and Leonard to finally live on their own as husband and wife.\nIn season 12, Penny announces that she does not want to have any children and Leonard reluctantly supports her decision. Later, her old boyfriend Zack and his new wife want Leonard to be a surrogate father to their kid since Zack is infertile. Penny reluctantly agrees to let Leonard donate his sperm. However, when she tries to seduce Leonard despite knowing he has to be abstinent for a few days, her visiting father, Wyatt, points out to Penny that her own actions suggest she is more conflicted over having kids than she lets on, and she admits she feels bad about letting him and Leonard down if she never has children. He says that despite her flaws, parenthood is the best thing that ever happened to him, and he does not want her to miss out, but that he will support her no matter what she does. Leonard eventually changes his mind, not wanting a child in the world that he cannot raise. In the series finale, Penny is pregnant with Leonard's baby, and she has changed her mind about not wanting children.\nSheldon and Amy's relationship.\nIn the third-season finale, Raj and Howard sign Sheldon up for online dating to find a woman compatible with Sheldon, and they discover neurobiologist Amy Farrah Fowler. Like Sheldon, she has a history of social ineptitude and participates in online dating only to fulfill an agreement with her mother. This spawns a story line in which Sheldon and Amy communicate daily while insisting to Leonard and Penny that they are not romantically involved. In \"The Agreement Dissection\", Sheldon and Amy talk in her apartment after a night of dancing, and she kisses him on the lips. Instead of getting annoyed, Sheldon says \"fascinating\" and later asks Amy to be his girlfriend in \"The Flaming Spittoon Acquisition\". The same night he draws up \"The Relationship Agreement\" to verify the ground rules of him as her boyfriend and vice versa (similar to his \"Roommate Agreement\" with Leonard). Amy agrees but later regrets not having had a lawyer read through it.\nIn \"The Launch Acceleration\", Amy tries to use her \"neurobiology bag of tricks\" to increase the attraction between herself and Sheldon. Her efforts appear to be working because Sheldon is not happy, but he makes no attempt to stop her. In the fifth-season finale, \"The Countdown Reflection\", Sheldon takes Amy's hand as Howard is launched into space. In the sixth-season premiere, \"The Date Night Variable\", after a dinner in which Sheldon fails to live up to this expectation, Amy gives Sheldon an ultimatum that their relationship is over unless he tells her something from his heart. Amy accepts Sheldon's romantic speech even after learning that it is a line from the first \"Spider-Man\" movie. In \"The Cooper/Kripke Inversion\", Sheldon states that he has been working on his discomfort about physical contact and admits that \"it's a possibility\" that he could one day have sex with Amy. Amy is revealed to have similar feelings in \"The Love Spell Potential\". Sheldon explains that he never thought about intimacy with anyone before Amy.\n\"The Locomotive Manipulation\" is the first episode in which Sheldon initiates a kiss with Amy. Although initially done in a fit of sarcasm, he discovers that he enjoys the feeling. Consequently, Sheldon slowly starts to open up over the rest of the season, and he starts a more intimate relationship with Amy. However, in the season finale, Sheldon leaves town temporarily to cope with several changes and Amy becomes distraught. However, 45 days into the trip, Sheldon gets mugged and calls for Leonard to drive him home, only to be confronted by Amy, who is upset over not being contacted by him in weeks. When Sheldon admits he did not call her because he was too embarrassed to admit that he could not make it on his own, Amy accepts that he is not perfect. In \"The Prom Equivalency\", Sheldon hides in his room to avoid going to a mock prom reenactment with her. In the resulting standoff, Amy is about to confess that she loves Sheldon, but he surprises her by saying that he loves her too. This prompts Amy to have a panic attack.\nIn the season-eight finale, Sheldon and Amy get into a fight about commitment on their fifth anniversary. Amy tells Sheldon that she needs to think about the future of their relationship, unaware that Sheldon was about to propose to her. Season nine sees Sheldon harassing Amy about making up her mind until she breaks up with him. Both struggle with singlehood and trying to be friends for the next few weeks until they reunite in episode ten and have sex for the first time on Amy's birthday. In season ten, Amy's apartment is flooded, and she and Sheldon decide to move in together into Penny's apartment as part of a five-week experiment to determine compatibility with each other's living habits. It goes well and they decide to make the arrangement permanent.\nIn the Season 11 premiere, Sheldon proposes to Amy, and she accepts. The two get married in the eleventh-season finale.\n\"Soft Kitty\".\nThe song \"Soft Kitty\" is described by Sheldon as a song sung by his mother when he was ill. Its repeated use in the series popularized the song. A scene showing the origin of the song in Sheldon's childhood is depicted in an episode of \"Young Sheldon\", which aired on February 1, 2018. It shows Sheldon's mother, Mary, singing the song to her son, who has the flu.\nHoward's mother.\nIn scenes set at Howard's home, he interacts with his rarely seen mother (voiced by Carol Ann Susi until her death) by shouting from room to room in the house. She similarly interacts with other characters in this manner. She reflects the Jewish mother stereotype in some ways, such as being overly controlling of Howard's adult life and sometimes trying to make him feel guilty about causing her trouble. She is dependent on Howard, as she requires him to help her with her wig and makeup in the morning. Howard, in turn, is attached to his mother to the point where she still cuts his meat for him, takes him to the dentist, does his laundry and \"grounds\" him when he returns home after briefly moving out. Until Howard's marriage to Bernadette in the fifth-season finale, Howard's former living situation led Leonard's psychiatrist mother to speculate that he may suffer from some type of pathology and Sheldon to refer to their relationship as Oedipal. In season 8, Howard's mother dies in her sleep while in Florida, which devastates Howard and Stuart, who briefly lived with Mrs. Wolowitz.\nApartment building elevator.\nIn the apartment building where Sheldon, Leonard, and Penny (and later Amy) live, the elevator has been out of order throughout most of the series, forcing characters to have to use the stairs. Stairway conversations between the characters as they walk up the three flights to their apartments occur in almost every episode, often serving as a transition between longer scenes. The Season 3 episode, \"The Staircase Implementation\" reveals that the elevator was broken when Leonard was experimenting with rocket fuel. In the penultimate episode of the series, the elevator is returned to an operational state, causing Sheldon some angst, until he realizes that the fixed elevator reverted things to the \"status quo\".\nVanity cards.\nLike most shows created by Chuck Lorre, \"The Big Bang Theory\" ends by showing for one second a vanity card written by Lorre after the credits, followed by the Warner Bros. Television closing logo. These cards are archived on Lorre's website. The series' final vanity card reads simply \"The End\".\nRelease.\nBroadcast.\n\"The Big Bang Theory\" premiered in the United States on September 24, 2007, on CBS. The series debuted in Canada on CTV in September 2007. On February 14, 2008, the series debuted in the United Kingdom on channels E4 and Channel 4. In Australia the first seven seasons of the series began airing on the Seven Network and 7mate from October 2015 and also gained the rights to season 8 in 2016, although the Nine Network has rights to air seasons nine & ten. On January 22, 2018, it was announced that Nine had acquired the rights to Season 1\u20138.\nSyndication and streaming.\nIn May 2010, it was reported that the show had been picked up for syndication, mainly among Fox's owned and operated stations and other local stations, with Warner Bros. Television's sister cable network TBS holding the show's cable syndication rights. Although details of the syndication deal have not been revealed, it was reported the deal \"set a record price for a cable off-network sitcom purchase\". \nOn September 17, 2019, as part of an extension of the TBS agreement through 2028, Warner Bros.' then-upcoming streaming service HBO Max (now Max) acquired the exclusive U.S. streaming rights to the series. In December 2024, it was announced that CBS parent company Paramount Global had acquired non-exclusive cable rights to \"The Big Bang Theory\" for Nick at Nite and MTV, beginning December 24, 2024 and January 1, 2025 respectively; \"Deadline Hollywood\" reported that the current contract with TBS had made the linear television rights non-exclusive, allowing them to be shared with other broadcasters. Beginning in 2025 \"The Big Bang Theory\" was made available on Disney+ in certain regions via the Star hub alongside its spin-off \"Young Sheldon\" in an unprecedented move.\nHome media.\nThe first and second seasons were only available on DVD at their time of release in 2008 and 2009. Starting with the release of the third season in 2010 and continuing every year with every new season, a Blu-ray disc set has also been released in conjunction with the DVD. In 2012, Warner Bros. released the first two seasons on Blu-ray, marking the first time that all episodes were available on the Blu-ray disc format.\nReception.\nCritical response.\nAlthough the initial reception was mixed, the show went on to receive a more positive reception. The review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports an 81% approval rating from critics. On Metacritic, the series holds a score of 61 out of 100, based on reviews from 27 critics, indicating generally favorable reviews. In 2013, \"TV Guide\" ranked the series #52 on its list of the 60 Best Series of All Time.\nU.S. ratings.\n\"The Big Bang Theory\" started off slowly in the ratings, failing to make the top 50 in its first season (ranking 68th), and ranking 40th in its second season. When the third season premiered on September 21, 2009, however, \"The Big Bang Theory\" ranked as CBS's highest-rated show of that evening in the adults 18\u201349 demographic (4.6/10) along with a then-series-high 12.83\u00a0million viewers. After the first three seasons aired at different times on Monday nights, CBS moved the show to Thursdays at 8:00 ET for the 2010\u20132011 schedule, to be in direct competition with NBC's Comedy Block and Fox's \"American Idol\" (then the longest reigning leading primetime show on U.S. television from 2004 to 2011). During its fourth season, it became television's highest rated comedy, just barely beating out \"Two and a Half Men\" (which held the position for the past 8 years). However, in the age 18\u201349 demographic (the show's target age range), it was the second highest-rated comedy, behind ABC's \"Modern Family\". The fifth season opened with viewing figures of over 14 million.\nThe sixth season boasts some of the highest-rated episodes for the show so far, with a then-new series high set with \"The Bakersfield Expedition\", with 20 million viewers, a first for the series, which along with \"NCIS\", made CBS the first network to have two scripted series reach that large an audience in the same week since 2007. In the sixth season, the show became the highest rated and viewed scripted show in the 18\u201349 demographic, trailing only the live regular \"NBC Sunday Night Football\" coverage, and was third in total viewers, trailing \"NCIS\" and \"Sunday Night Football\". Season seven of the series opened strong, continuing the success gained in season six, with the second episode of the premiere, \"The Deception Verification\", setting the new series high in viewers with 20.44 million.\nShowrunner Steve Molaro, who took over from Bill Prady with the sixth season, credits some of the show's success to the sitcom's exposure in off-network syndication, particularly on TBS, while Michael Schneider of \"TV Guide\" attributes it to the timeslot move two seasons earlier. Chuck Lorre and CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler also credit the success to the influence of Molaro, in particular the deepening exploration of the firmly established regular characters and their interpersonal relationships, such as the on-again, off-again relationship between Leonard and Penny. Throughout much of the 2012\u201313 season, \"The Big Bang Theory\" placed first in all of the syndication ratings, receiving formidable competition from only \"Judge Judy\" and \"Wheel of Fortune\" (first-run syndication programs). By the end of the 2012\u201313 television season, \"The Big Bang Theory\" had dethroned \"Judge Judy\" as the ratings leader in all of the syndicated programming with 7.1, \"Judy\" descending to second place for that season with a 7.0. \"The Big Bang Theory\" did not place first in syndication ratings for the 2013\u201314 television season, beaten out by \"Judge Judy\".\nUK distribution and ratings.\nThe show made its United Kingdom debut on Channel 4 on February 14, 2008. The show was also shown as a 'first-look' on Channel 4's digital offshoot E4 prior to the main channel's airing. While the show's ratings were not deemed strong enough to warrant broadcast on the main channel, they were considered the opposite for E4. For each following season, all episodes were shown first-run on E4, with episodes only aired on the main channel in a repeat capacity, usually on a weekend morning. From the third season, the show aired in two parts, being split so that it could air new episodes for longer throughout the year. This was due to rising ratings. The first part began airing on December 17, 2009, at 9:00\u00a0p.m. while the second part, containing the remaining eleven episodes, began airing in the same time period from May 6, 2010. The first half of the fourth season began airing on November 4, 2010, at 9:00\u00a0p.m., drawing 877,000 viewers, with a further 256,000 watching on the E4+1 hour service. This gave the show an overall total of 1.13 million viewers, making it E4's most-watched programme for that week. The increased ratings continued over subsequent weeks.\nThe fourth season's second half began on June 30, 2011. Season 5 began airing on November 3, 2011, at 8:00\u00a0p.m. as part of E4's Comedy Thursdays, acting as a lead-in to the channel's newest comedy, \"Perfect Couples\". Episode 19, the highest-viewed episode of the season, attracted 1.4\u00a0million viewers. Season 6 premiered on November 15, 2012, with 1.89 million viewers and a further 469,000 on the time shift channel, bringing the total to 2.31 million, E4's highest viewing ratings of 2012, and the highest the channel had received since June 2011. The sixth season returned in mid-2013 to finish airing the remaining episodes. Season 7 premiered on E4 on October 31, 2013, at 8:30\u00a0pm and hit multiple ratings records this season. The second half of season seven aired in mid 2014. The eighth season premiered on E4 on October 23, 2014, at 8:30\u00a0pm. During its eighth season, \"The Big Bang Theory\" shared its 8:30\u00a0pm time period with fellow CBS comedy, \"2 Broke Girls\". Following the airing of the first eight episodes of that show's fourth season, \"The Big Bang Theory\" returned to finish airing its eighth season on March 19, 2015.\nNetflix UK & Ireland announced on February 13, 2016, that seasons 1\u20138 would be available to stream from February 15, 2016.\nCanadian ratings.\n\"The Big Bang Theory\" started off quietly in Canada, but managed to garner major success in later seasons. \"The Big Bang Theory\" is telecast throughout Canada via the CTV Television Network in simultaneous substitution with cross-border CBS affiliates. Now immensely popular in Canada, \"The Big Bang Theory\" is also rerun daily on the Canadian cable channel The Comedy Network.\nThe season 4 premiere garnered an estimated 3.1 million viewers across Canada. This was the largest audience for a sitcom since the series finale of \"Friends\". The show later increased in viewership and became the most-watched entertainment television show in Canada.\nAccolades.\nIn August 2009, the sitcom won the best comedy series TCA award and Jim Parsons (Sheldon) won the award for individual achievement in comedy. In 2010, the show won the People's Choice Award for Favorite Comedy, while Parsons won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. On January 16, 2011, Parsons was awarded a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series\u00a0\u2013 Comedy or Musical, an award that was presented by co-star Kaley Cuoco. On September 18, 2011, Parsons was again awarded an Emmy for Best Actor in a Comedy Series. On January 9, 2013, the show won People's Choice Award for Favorite Comedy for the second time. August 25, 2014, Jim Parsons was awarded an Emmy for Best Actor in a Comedy Series. \"The Big Bang Theory\" also won the 2016 People's Choice Awards for under \"Favorite TV Show\" and \"Favorite Network TV Comedy\" with Jim Parsons winning Favorite Comedic TV Actor. On January 20, 2016, \"The Big Bang Theory\" also won the International category at the UK's National Television Awards.\nMerchandise.\nOn March 16, 2014, a Lego Ideas project portraying the living room scene in Lego style with the main cast as mini-figures reached 10,000 supporters on the platform, which qualified it to be considered as an official set by the Lego Ideas review board. On November 7, 2014, Lego Ideas approved the design and began refining it. The set was released in August 2015, with an exclusive pre-sale taking place at San Diego Comic-Con.\nOffshoots.\nPlagiarized series.\nThrough the use of his vanity cards at the end of episodes, Lorre alleged that the program had been plagiarized by a show produced and aired in Belarus in 2010. Officially titled \"\u0422\u0435\u043e\u0440\u0435\u0442\u0438\u043a\u0438\" (\"The Theorists\"), the show features \"clones\" of the main characters, a similar opening sequence, and what appears to be a very close Russian translation of the scripts. Lorre expressed annoyance and described his inquiry with the Warner Bros. legal department about options. The television production company and station's close relationship with the Belarus government was cited as the reason that any attempt to claim copyright infringement would be in vain because the company copying the episodes is operated by the government.\nHowever, no legal action was required to end production of the other show: as soon as it became known that the show was unlicensed, the actors quit and the producers canceled it. Dmitriy Tankovich (who plays Leonard's counterpart, \"Seva\") said in an interview, <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I'm upset. At first, the actors were told all legal issues were resolved. We didn't know it wasn't the case, so when the creators of \"The Big Bang Theory\" started talking about the show, I was embarrassed. I can't understand why our people first do, and then think. I consider this to be the rock bottom of my career. And I don't want to take part in a stolen show.\nSpin-offs.\n\"Young Sheldon\".\nIn November 2016, it was reported that CBS was in negotiations to create a spin-off of \"The Big Bang Theory\" centered on Sheldon as a young boy. The prequel series, described as \"a \"Malcolm in the Middle\"-esque single-camera family comedy\" would be executive-produced by Lorre and Molaro, with Prady expected to be involved in some capacity, and intended to air in the 2017\u201318 season alongside \"The Big Bang Theory\". The initial idea for the series came from Parsons, who passed it along to \"The Big Bang Theory\" producers. In early March 2017, Iain Armitage was cast as the younger Sheldon, as well as Zoe Perry as his mother, Mary Cooper. Perry is the real-life daughter of Laurie Metcalf, who portrays Mary Cooper on \"The Big Bang Theory\".\nOn March 13, 2017, CBS ordered the spin-off \"Young Sheldon\" series. Jon Favreau directed and executive produced the pilot. Created by Lorre and Molaro, the series follows 9-year-old Sheldon Cooper as he attends high school in East Texas. Alongside Armitage as 9-year-old Sheldon Cooper and Perry as Mary Cooper, Lance Barber stars as George Cooper, Sheldon's father; Raegan Revord stars as Missy Cooper, Sheldon's twin sister; and Montana Jordan stars as George Cooper Jr., Sheldon's older brother. Jim Parsons reprises his role as adult Sheldon Cooper, as narrator for the series. Parsons, Lorre, Molaro and Todd Spiewak also serve as executive producers on the series, for Chuck Lorre Productions and Warner Bros. Television. The show's pilot episode premiered on September 25, 2017. Subsequent weekly episodes began airing on November 2, 2017, following the broadcast of the 237th episode of \"The Big Bang Theory\".\nArmitage appeared on the series' 265th episode, \"The VCR Illumination\", by way of a videotape recorded by the younger Sheldon and viewed by the current-day Sheldon.\nOn January 6, 2018, the show was renewed for a second season. On February 22, 2019, CBS renewed the series for both the third and fourth seasons. On March 30, 2021, CBS renewed the series for a fifth, sixth, and seventh season.\nThe prequel series came to an end on May 16, 2024, with an hour long episode which included George Cooper's funeral and a cameo from Parsons and Mayim Bialik as their older characters. The audience learns that Young Sheldon has been a memoir of Sheldon's life all along.\n\"Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage\".\nIn January 2024, it was announced that there will be a spin-off series of \"Young Sheldon\" focused on Georgie Cooper and Mandy McAllister that will be slated for the 2024\u201325 season on CBS.\n\"Stuart Fails to Save the Universe\".\nOn April 12, 2023, it was announced that a spin-off of the original series was in development. On October 10, 2024, it was announced that the third spin-off will feature Stuart Bloom, Denise, and Bert Kibbler, with Kevin Sussman, Lauren Lapkus, and Brian Posehn reprising their roles. On March 19, 2025, it was announced that the title of the show will be \"Stuart Fails to Save the Universe\".\nTelevision special.\nOn May 16, 2019, a television special titled \"Unraveling the Mystery: A Big Bang Farewell\" aired following the series finale of \"The Big Bang Theory\". It is a backstage retrospective featuring Johnny Galecki and Kaley Cuoco.\nLawsuit.\nIn March 2023, political analyst Mithun Vijay Kumar filed a court case in Mumbai against Netflix due to the series insulting Madhuri Dixit in an episode of season 2 by calling her a \"leprous prostitute\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["11269605"], "permutation_1": ["11269605"], "permutation_2": ["11269605"], "permutation_3": ["11269605"]}
{"id": "nq_-6135089499413822505", "docs_added": {"1941155": "Taylor Momsen\nAmerican musician and former actress (born 1993)\nTaylor Michel Momsen (born July 26, 1993) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, model, and former actress. Prior to her retirement from acting, she portrayed the character of Cindy Lou Who in the film \"How the Grinch Stole Christmas\" (2000) and Jenny Humphrey on The CW's teen drama series \"Gossip Girl\" (2007\u20132010; 2012). Momsen has been the frontwoman of the American rock band the Pretty Reckless since their inception in 2009.\nEarly life.\nMomsen was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her parents are Michael and Collette Momsen. She also has a younger sister, Sloane Momsen, who is also an actress. She is of partial Russian descent. She was raised Catholic, attending Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School for elementary school and later Herbert Hoover Middle School (in Potomac, Maryland), but is now non-religious. She also studied ballet at the Center of Creative Arts (COCA) in St. Louis.\nCareer.\nActing.\nShe began acting professionally at three years of age in a 1997 national commercial for Shake 'n Bake. She was then cast in \"The Prophet's Game\".\nIn 2000, Momsen played the role of Cindy Lou Who in Dr.\u00a0Seuss' \"How the Grinch Stole Christmas\", her breakout role. In 2002, she played Gretel in \"Hansel and Gretel\" and Alexandra, the President's daughter, in \"\".\nMomsen's career came to a halt for over three years until she received a lead role in the WB series \"Misconceptions\", which never aired. After that, she appeared in the 2006 film \"Saving Shiloh\". She also auditioned for the title role in \"Hannah Montana\", and was in the top three, but the role was instead awarded to Miley Cyrus\u2014a decision that Momsen was happy with in retrospect. In 2007, she starred in the Walt Disney Pictures film \"Underdog\" as Molly and as Jennifer in the movie \"Paranoid Park\", directed by Gus Van Sant.\nBeginning in 2007, she played the character of Jenny Humphrey in The CW television series \"Gossip Girl\", based on the book series by Cecily von Ziegesar. Momsen's appearances on the series became increasingly sporadic, and, by the end of the first half of the fourth season, she had only appeared in four episodes. It was then announced that the actress would be scheduled for an indefinite hiatus from the show, which ended with her leaving the series as a regular cast member after the completion of the fourth season in 2011. On August 16, 2011, Momsen told \"Elle\" magazine that she had quit acting to focus on her music career. On October 16, 2012, it was reported that Momsen would be returning to \"Gossip Girl\" for its final episode, in which she appeared briefly in the wedding sequence.\nReflecting on her child acting career, she described it as an \"alienating\" experience, detailing bullying she received after her performance in \"How the Grinch Stole Christmas\".\nModeling.\nMomsen was signed with Ford Models at a very young age: \"My parents signed me up with Ford [Modeling] at the age of two. No two-year-old wants to be working, but I had no choice. My whole life, I was in and out of school. I didn't have friends. I was working constantly and I didn't have a real life.\"\nIn June 2008, at the age of 14, Momsen signed to IMG Models. She was the face of British fashion chain New Look for its spring/summer 2010 collection. After weeks of speculation about who would be the face of Madonna's 2010 fashion line \"Material Girl\", Momsen was announced on July 15, 2010. A week later, Momsen was announced as the model for John Galliano's new women's fragrance, scheduled to launch in autumn 2010. In 2010, she appeared in a video for Galliano's \"Parlez-Moi d'Amour\" fragrance ad campaign.\nMomsen is the face of Samantha Thavasa's handbag line. She has done multiple photoshoots, press events, and commercials.\nMomsen appeared on the cover of \"Page Six Magazine\" when she was 15 years old in 2009. She also appeared on the February 2010 cover of \"Seventeen\". In October 2010, Momsen wore a pair of platform stilettos, thigh-high stockings, and a holster strapped around her leg for \"Revolver\". She appeared on the cover of \"FHM\"'s March 2012 edition and \"FHM\" ranked Momsen #29 in its 2012 Hot 100 issue. She also made her cover debut for \"Maxim\" in the November 2013 issue.\nIn an interview with music journalist Jason Tanamor, when asked about posing for \"Playboy\", she said, \"I was at the mansion last week and took some pictures. Does that count?\"\nMusic.\nMomsen has said that \"music is where I can be me\", stating that \"acting is easy. I've been doing it for so long and I totally love it. But you're playing a character instead of yourself. Music is more personal because you're writing it and you're involved in every step of it.\" At seven years old, Momsen recorded the song \"Where Are You Christmas?\" for the soundtrack to \"How the Grinch Stole Christmas\". In 2002, she recorded the songs \"One Small Voice\" and \"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer\" for the compilation album \"School's Out! Christmas\".\nIn March 2009, Momsen stated in an interview with \"OK!\" magazine that her band the Pretty Reckless had signed a deal with Interscope Records. She played her first tour with her band opening for The Veronicas on their Revenge Is Sweeter Tour in spring 2009. After the tour, Momsen began working with guitarist Ben Phillips, who would soon join the band. Momsen subsequently swapped out her former bandmates. She co-writes songs with Phillips; in addition to lead vocals, Momsen also plays rhythm guitar.\nThe band's debut album \"Light Me Up\" was released on August 30, 2010, in the UK, where it debuted at number 6, as well as at number 18 in Ireland. The first single \"Make Me Wanna Die\" was released on May 30, 2010, while the second single \"Miss Nothing\" which was released on August 23, 2010, peaked at number 39. \"Just Tonight\" was released as the album's third single. Songs from this album have featured in the movie \"Kick-Ass\" as well as the television series \"The Vampire Diaries\" and \"Gossip Girl\".\nTelevision personality Heidi Montag recorded \"Blackout\", a song written by Momsen. According to Momsen, she wrote the song when she was 8 years old and recorded it as a demo with a producer. Montag released the song as a digital only single, with the music video being directed by her husband Spencer Pratt. Momsen commented about the recording: \"I'm like, okay, dude, you're singing an 8-year-old's words, but that's cool. It's so funny because I didn't shop it or anything and I get this call going, 'Did you write a song for Heidi Montag'? And I'm like, 'What?'\" The track was later included on Montag's debut studio album, \"Superficial\" (2010).\nOn July 27, 2011, Momsen announced that the band would be the supporting act for Evanescence during the fall of 2011. Throughout 2012, Momsen and her band toured North America; the second headlining tour, titled the Medicine Tour, began in March 2012 and culminated with supporting dates for Marilyn Manson's 2012 world tour Hey Cruel World... Tour. Momsen also appeared as guest vocalist on the first track of ex Ministry member Paul Barker's 2012 album \"Fix This\".\nOn November 30, 2012, it was announced that the Pretty Reckless' fourth single \"Kill Me\" would be released on December 11. The track was the last song to be featured in the \"Gossip Girl\" series finale.\nMomsen cites Kurt Cobain, Chris Cornell, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Who, Pink Floyd, AC/DC, Marilyn Manson, Oasis, and Shirley Manson of Garbage as some of her personal influences.\n\"Going to Hell\" was released on March 18, 2014. The release marked the band's largest sales week to date and landed at number five on the Billboard 200 with over 35,000 copies sold in its first week. The success of the record saw Taylor, along with the rest of the band, break records when they became the first female-fronted band to reach No. 1 on the rock radio charts with its first two singles: \"Heaven Knows\" in March 2014 and \"Fucked Up World\" in September 2014. The Pretty Reckless also spent the majority of late 2013 throughout 2014 on tour supporting \"Going To Hell\". In 2014, her band also supported Fall Out Boy in their European leg of the Save Rock n Roll Tour along with New Politics.\nThroughout 2015, Momsen continued to record new material for the third Pretty Reckless album. On September 29, 2016, the band released the single \"Take Me Down\", which reached number one on the \"Billboard\" Mainstream Rock chart. The third album, \"Who You Selling For,\" was released in October 2016.\nIn 2020, Momsen lent her vocals to the American rock band Evanescence for \"Use My Voice\", a single from the band's album \"The Bitter Truth,\" alongside other artists such as American rock vocalist Lzzy Hale from Halestorm, Dutch symphonic metal vocalist Sharon den Adel from Within Temptation, and electronic violinist Lindsey Stirling.\nThe Pretty Reckless released their fourth album, \"Death by Rock and Roll\", on February 12, 2021. The Pretty Reckless became the first female-fronted band to have five number one singles when \"Death by Rock and Roll\" hit number one on the charts.\nPersonal life.\nMomsen was friends with Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell and record producer Kato Khandwala. After their respective deaths in 2017 and 2018, she isolated herself, and fell into depression, eventually using music to deal with the trauma.\nDiscography.\nThe Pretty Reckless studio albums\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4867859": "How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000 film)\n2000 Christmas film by Ron Howard\nDr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas is a 2000 American Christmas fantasy comedy film directed by Ron Howard, who also produced with Brian Grazer, from a screenplay by Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman. Based on Dr. Seuss's 1957 children's book of the same name, this marked the first Dr. Seuss book to be adapted into a full-length feature film. It is the first live-action adaptation and the second adaptation of the book, following the 1966 animated TV special. Narrated by Anthony Hopkins, the film stars Jim Carrey as the eponymous character, with Jeffrey Tambor, Christine Baranski, Bill Irwin and Molly Shannon in supporting roles. The story revolves around the Grinch, a grumpy, green recluse living on Mount Crumpit, who despises Christmas and the joyful residents of Whoville and sets out to sabotage their holiday celebration.\n\"Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas\" was released on November 17, 2000, by Universal Pictures. The film received mixed reviews from critics upon release, with praise for Carrey's performance and the film's visual effects, while its dark humor and tone were criticized. It emerged as a major commercial success at the box-office, grossing $347 million worldwide and spending four weeks as the top film in the U.S. It became the highest-grossing film of 2000 domestically and the sixth-highest grossing film of 2000 worldwide. It is on the second highest-grossing holiday film of all time behind \"Home Alone\" (1990), until it was surpassed by the 2018 animated version of \"The Grinch\" produced by Universal's Illumination animation division.\nAt the 73rd Academy Awards, \"How the Grinch Stole Christmas\" won Best Makeup and Hairstyling, in addition to earning nominations for Best Production Design and Best Costume Design. Carrey's performance earned him a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture \u2013 Musical or Comedy.\nPlot.\nAs the Whos of Whoville prepare for their beloved Christmas celebrations, the Grinch, a bitter and misanthropic green creature who resides in a cave on Mount Crumpit, despises the holiday and plans to ruin it. Six-year-old Cindy Lou Who, disillusioned by the town's obsession with the materialistic aspects of Christmas, has a chance encounter with the Grinch at the Whoville post office, where he reluctantly saves her after she falls into a mail-sorting machine.\nWishing to learn why the supposedly-evil Grinch saved her, Cindy makes inquiries and learns from the townspeople that the orphaned Grinch was raised by two elderly female Whos. While in school, the Grinch and his classmate Martha May Whovier had mutual crushes on each other. Class bully Augustus MayWho, who was also interested in Martha, told the Grinch that Martha would never like him because of his hairy face. The Grinch tried to shave with an electric razor just before the class Christmas Party, but ended up cutting himself numerous times. When Augustus, the teacher and every other classmate but Martha laughed at the result, the Grinch snapped, declared his hatred of Christmas, and fled to Mount Crumpit.\nDetermined to try to make things right, Cindy nominates the Grinch as the town's Holiday Cheermeister; the townsfolk agree, but Augustus, who is now the Mayor, strongly objects. Cindy personally travels to Mount Crumpit to invite the Grinch, who is reluctantly persuaded to come after he learns Martha will be there. At the ceremony, the Grinch participates in various events and greatly enjoys himself, until Mayor MayWho gives him an electric razor as a present, deliberately reminding him of his unhappy childhood. To further humiliate the Grinch, Mayor MayWho proposes to Martha in front of everyone, offering her a new car as an engagement gift. Inflamed, the Grinch lashes out at the Whos, accusing them of valuing Christmas only for its materialism. He then shaves the mayor's head and lights the town's Christmas tree on fire before returning to his cave on Mount Crumpit.\nLearning that the Whos have a spare tree and are still planning to celebrate, the Grinch hatches a plan to steal all the Whos' Christmas presents, decorations, and food while they sleep. Disguising himself as Santa Claus and dressing his dog Max as a reindeer, the Grinch descends into Whoville on a high-tech sleigh. He starts by sneaking into Cindy Lou Who's house. Cindy spots him, but mistakes him for Santa Claus, and the Grinch manages to convince her he is just taking the tree to the North Pole for repairs. After she goes to bed, the Grinch strips the entire town of its Christmas goods, stuffing everything into a giant sack and driving it to the top of Mount Crumpit.\nOn Christmas morning, the Whos wake up to discover the theft, much to their dismay. Mayor MayWho accuses Cindy of causing the Grinch to ruin Christmas, but her father, postmaster Lou Lou Who, defends her, reminding the town that Christmas is about more than gifts and decorations. Inspired by his words, the Whos come together, join hands, and begin singing Christmas carols, while Cindy once again sneaks off to Mount Crumpit to visit the Grinch. \nAs the Grinch prepares to push the sleigh full of stolen goods off the top of Mount Crumpit, he hears the Whos singing below and realizes that his plan has failed. Struck by the true meaning of Christmas, the Grinch's heart literally grows three sizes, and he is overcome with emotion. He then notices the sleigh is about to slip off the mountain into the gorge below, with Cindy sitting atop it. In an impressive feat of strength, the Grinch bodily lifts the sleigh, saving Cindy and the town's Christmas decor.\nReturning to Whoville, the Grinch gives back the stolen goods and apologizes. He surrenders to the police, but they decide to pardon him, despite Mayor MayWho's objections. Martha May immediately returns Mayor MayWho's engagement ring and professes her love for the Grinch. After joining the Whos for more carol singing, the reformed Grinch allows the Whos to hold their traditional Christmas feast in his cave, personally carving and serving the Roast Beast.\nProduction.\nDevelopment.\nBefore his death in 1991, Dr. Seuss consistently declined offers to sell the film rights to his books. However, following his passing, his widow Audrey Geisel began entertaining several merchandising deals, including clothing lines, accessories, and CDs. In July 1998, her agents made a significant announcement: the film rights to \"How the Grinch Stole Christmas\" would be auctioned. The terms were stringent\u2014suitors had to be willing to pay $5 million upfront, 4% of the box-office gross, 50% of merchandising revenue, 70% of book tie-in profits, and music-related income. In addition, any actor considered for the role of the Grinch had to be of a similar stature to Adam Sandler or Jim Carrey. Only directors or writers who had previously earned at least $1 million on a previous project were eligible to participate.\nSeveral studios and filmmakers pitched their vision for the live-action \"Grinch\". 20th Century Fox, with director Tom Shadyac and producers Dave Phillips and John Davis, pitched their version with Jack Nicholson in mind for the Grinch. The Farrelly brothers and John Hughes also submitted their own versions. Universal Pictures, represented by Brian Grazer and Gary Ross, also made a presentation, but all offers were initially rejected by Geisel. Grazer, however, enlisted his producing partner, Ron Howard, to join negotiations. Though Howard was initially uninterested in a live-action \"Grinch\" and was focused on adapting \"The Sea-Wolf\", Grazer convinced him to visit Geisel for a pitch. While reviewing the book, Howard became intrigued by Cindy Lou Who's character and developed a vision for a film with an expanded role for her, a deeper portrayal of the Whos, and a more fleshed-out backstory for the Grinch.\nIn September 1998, Howard officially signed on to direct and co-produce the film, with Jim Carrey cast as the Grinch. John Stamos auditioned for the role, but backed out due to being allergic to prosthetics. It was later revealed that Universal Pictures paid $9 million for the rights to \"How the Grinch Stole Christmas\" and \"Oh, the Places You'll Go!\". Before Howard's involvement, Tim Burton was approached to direct but turned down the offer due to a scheduling conflict with \"Sleepy Hollow\".\nThe final screenplay, written by Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman (known for \"Who Framed Roger Rabbit\" and \"Doc Hollywood\"), underwent eight drafts before reaching a final version. Audrey Geisel had significant control over the script, vetoing several jokes she found inappropriate, including one about a family called the \"Who-steins\" who lacked a Christmas tree and presents. Additionally, she rejected the inclusion of a stuffed trophy of \"The Cat in the Hat\" on the Grinch's wall. Alec Berg, David Mandel and Jeff Schaffer, writers from \"Seinfeld\", contributed to an uncredited rewrite.\nFilming and makeup.\nPrincipal photography for \"How the Grinch Stole Christmas\" took place from September 1999 to January 2000. Audrey Geisel, Dr. Seuss' widow, visited the set in October 1999. The majority of the Whoville set was constructed on the Universal Studios Backlot, located behind the iconic Bates Motel set from \"Psycho\" (1960). Rick Baker, the makeup artist, was responsible for designing and creating the prosthetic makeup for Jim Carrey and the rest of the cast. According to Baker on an episode of \"The Joe Rogan Experience\", originally, \"they wanted me to paint Jim Carrey green and that was it\" but after leaking a test video of himself in Grinch-makeup, the studio agreed to Baker's version in the film. After several tests, Carrey was impressed by a photo of Baker's first makeup test, leading to the decision to use Baker's initial design. The Grinch costume was made of yak hair, dyed green, and sewn onto a spandex suit.\nThe makeup application process for Carrey took up to two and a half hours each day, and Carrey often compared wearing the costume to \"being buried alive.\" In his frustration, he once kicked a hole in the wall of his trailer. Kazu Hiro, Carrey's makeup artist, recalled that Carrey was initially difficult to work with on set, often being irritable and disappearing during shoots. This led to significant production delays, with only three days' worth of footage being completed after two weeks of filming. Hiro eventually left the production, but after discussions with Ron Howard and Baker, Carrey agreed to control his temper, and Hiro returned to the set. To help Carrey cope with the grueling makeup process, producer Brian Grazer hired a consultant to train him in methods for \"enduring torture\".\nJosh Ryan Evans, who portrayed the eight-year-old Grinch, wore the same type of makeup and bodysuit as Carrey. Over the course of filming, Carrey spent 92 days in Grinch makeup and eventually became more comfortable with the process. Most of the makeup appliances used for the actors were connected to their upper lips, along with prosthetic noses, ears, dentures, and wigs.\nTo keep Carrey's spirits up during production, Howard once donned a Grinch suit himself, and on another occasion, he invited actor Don Knotts to the set, knowing Carrey was a fan of Knotts' work. Carrey also wore uncomfortable yellow contact lenses for his portrayal of the Grinch, but due to the discomfort, many scenes required post-production digital alterations to color his eyes.\nDuring one scene, where the Grinch is directing his dog, Max, Carrey improvised by mimicking Howard's directing style. Howard found the impression hilarious and decided to include the moment in the final cut of the film.\nVisual effects.\nThe film's visual effects were provided by Rhythm & Hues Studios (R&H) and Digital Domain, who crafted the CGI environments and characters.\nIn addition to the visual effects, the movie relied heavily on practical effects and extensive makeup to transform Jim Carrey into the Grinch. This involved hours of makeup application using pioneering techniques that allowed for flexibility in Carrey's facial expressions, enabling him to maintain his comedic timing and exaggerated movements despite the prosthetics.\nMusic.\nThe soundtrack for the album was released on November 7, 2000. It features a collection of music performed by several artists, including Busta Rhymes, Faith Hill, Eels, Smash Mouth, and NSYNC.\nAn expanded edition of the soundtrack featuring more cues from Horner's score was released on November 1, 2022 on La-La Land Records.\nAll song lengths via Apple Music.\nRelease.\nTheatrical.\n\"How the Grinch Stole Christmas\" was first screened on November 8 at the Universal Amphitheatre to the cast and crew, as well as others in the industry, including Will Smith.\n\"How the Grinch Stole Christmas\" was theatrically released by Universal Pictures in the United States and Canada on November 17, 2000. Then on November 23, 2000 it was released in Germany and one week later on November 30 it was released in Argentina, Australia, Malaysia and Netherlands. Later on December 1, 2000 the film received widespread release in The United Kingdom, Denmark, Spain, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Uruguay and South Africa. Throughout December the film would also be released in France, Croatia, Chile, Hungary, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, Russia as well as others.\n\"How the Grinch Stole Christmas\" was later re-released in Germany on November 15, 2001.\nTelevision.\n\"How the Grinch Stole Christmas\" premiered on television on ABC on November 25, 2004, and aired there until 2014 (with the exception of 2009). From 2010 to 2014, it was paired with the animated television special, airing annually as part of ABC Family's 25 Days of Christmas, which later became Freeform's event. During its airings, additional deleted scenes were featured that were not part of the original theatrical, VHS, or DVD releases. These included extended scenes such as Cindy's dad maxing out his credit card on gifts, Cindy inquiring about the Grinch before school, Lou visiting Cindy after she stayed late at school, and extended Grinch scenes in his cave and at the Christmas party. Other added content involved Martha May and Betty Lou competing in the Christmas Lights Contest in which it was won by Martha May, the Grinch trying on different outfits, and various moments showing the Whos preparing for Christmas.\nSince 2015, \"How the Grinch Stole Christmas\" has aired on NBC on Christmas night, typically following the animated television special. However, it did not air in 2022 due to an NFL game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Arizona Cardinals. In 2020, it aired on FX to promote the television premiere of the 2018 animated film of The Grinch.\nMarketing.\nIn Summer 2000, a trailer for \"How the Grinch Stole Christmas\" debuted in theaters, attached to screenings of '. This was part of an agreement between Paramount Pictures and Universal Pictures, in which Paramount agreed to show the \"Grinch\" trailer in exchange for Universal screening a Paramount trailer in front of '. A second trailer debuted on October 6, 2000, along with the release of \"Meet the Parents\".\nSimultaneously, Toys \"R\" Us launched a massive promotional campaign for the film, transforming their stores into \"Whobilation Headquarters\" with one of the most elaborate visual merchandising displays in the company's history. Stores featured floor-to-ceiling window graphics of the film's characters, and in some locations, 8-foot 3D Grinch-themed characters adorned the entrances. Wendy's also joined the promotion, offering kids meal toys featuring the Grinch. Additional promotional partners included Kellogg's, Nabisco, Hershey's, Visa, Coca-Cola and United States Postal Service.\nTo further coincide with the film's release, Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal's Islands of Adventure introduced Grinchmas, a holiday event that has since become an annual tradition at the theme parks.\nHome media.\n\"How the Grinch Stole Christmas\" was released on VHS and DVD on November 20, 2001. In its first week of release, it sold a combined total of <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />8+1\u20442 million home video units, including three million DVDs and four million VHS copies, making it the best-selling holiday home video title at that time. The film became one of only four titles\u2014alongside \"\", \"Shrek\" and \"The Mummy Returns\"\u2014to sell more than two million DVD copies during their opening weeks. It also achieved the distinction of being the second-highest opening week home video sales for any live-action film, following \"Titanic\".\nIn December 2001, \"Variety\" reported that the film was the second-biggest selling home video release of the year, with 16.9 million copies sold and $296 million in revenue. A Blu-ray/DVD combo pack was released on October 13, 2009, followed by a digitally remastered Blu-ray release on October 13, 2015. The film was also remastered in 4K and released on Ultra HD Blu-ray on October 17, 2017.\nReception.\nBox office.\n\"How the Grinch Stole Christmas\" grossed $260 million domestically and $85.1 million in other territories, resulting in a worldwide gross of $345.1 million, making it the sixth-highest grossing film of 2000.\nIn the United States, the film debuted at #1 on its opening day, earning $15.6 million. Over the weekend, it grossed $55.1 million, with an average of $17,615 from 3,127 theaters. At the time of its release, it held the sixth-highest three-day opening weekend of any film, trailing behind \"Toy Story 2\", \"X-Men\", ', ' and \"\". Additionally, it surpassed \"Batman Forever\" to secure the largest opening weekend for a Jim Carrey film and set a new record for Ron Howard's highest-grossing opening weekend, overtaking \"Ransom\" (1996). The film became the first non-Disney film to top the Thanksgiving weekend box office since \"Mrs. Doubtfire\" in 1993. It held the record for the highest opening weekend for a Christmas-themed film for 18 years, until the 2018 animated version of \"The Grinch\" surpassed it with $67.6 million.\nIn its second weekend, the film grossed $52.1 million, dropping just 5.1%, setting a record for the highest-grossing second weekend for any film at that time, surpassing \"The Phantom Menace\". It remained at the top of the box office for four weekends, until it was overtaken by \"What Women Want\" and \"Dude, Where's My Car?\" in mid-December. It continued to draw holiday crowds, outperforming another family film, \"The Emperor's New Groove\". By then, it had surpassed \"Mission: Impossible 2\" to become the top-grossing film of the year. The film ended its theatrical run on March 1, 2001, with a final domestic gross of $260,044,825. \"Box Office Mojo\" estimates that the film sold over 48.1 million tickets in North America.\nCritical response.\nOn Rotten Tomatoes, \"How the Grinch Stole Christmas\" holds an approval rating of 49% based on 144 reviews with an average rating of 5.6/10. The site's critical consensus reads, \"Jim Carrey shines as the Grinch. Unfortunately, it's not enough to save this movie. You'd be better off watching the TV cartoon.\" On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 46 out of 100 based on 29 critics, indicating \"mixed or average reviews\". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of \"A\u2212\" on an A+ to F scale.\nRoger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars, describing it as \"a dank, eerie, weird movie about a sour creature\" and noting that the production design lacked the festive brightness that the material required. Ebert remarked that Carrey \"works as hard as an actor has ever worked in a movie, to small avail\", but noted that adults might appreciate Carrey's effort \"in an intellectual sort of way.\"\nPaul Clinton of CNN highlighted Carrey's dominance in the film, stating that \"Carrey was born to play this role\" and adding that \"if he's not in the scene, there is no scene\". Similarly, Owen Gleiberman of \"Entertainment Weekly\" commented on the Grinch's \"mischievously divided\" personality and praised how Carrey's performance transitions from chaotic to heartfelt, concluding that Carrey \"carreys the movie\" [\"sic\"] by skillfully balancing his wild antics with a genuine emotional turn.\nPeter Stack of the \"San Francisco Chronicle\" said, \"Nobody could play the Grinch better than Jim Carrey, whose rubbery antics and maniacal sense of mischief are so well suited to \"How the Grinch Stole Christmas\". Dr. Seuss himself might have turned to Carrey as a model for the classic curmudgeon had the actor been around in 1957.\" However, he wondered why Carrey \"made himself sound like Sean Connery\" and warned that the character's intensity may frighten small children. James Berardinelli of ReelViews wrote that Carrey's \"off-the-wall performance is reminiscent of what he accomplished in \"The Mask\", except that here he never allows the special effects to upstage him. Carrey's Grinch is a combination of Seuss's creation and Carrey's personality, with a voice that sounds far more like a weird amalgamation of Sean Connery and Jim Backus (Bond meets Magoo!) than it does Karloff.\" He concluded that Carrey \"brings animation to the live action, and, surrounded by glittering, fantastical sets and computer-spun special effects, Carrey enables Ron Howard's version of the classic story to come across as more of a welcome endeavor than a pointless re-tread.\"\nOther reviews were more mixed. Stephanie Zacharek of \"Salon\" criticized the film, writing that \"Carrey pulls off an admirable impersonation of an animated figure ... It's fine as mimicry goes \u2013 but mimicry isn't the best playground for comic genius.\" While acknowledging a few \"terrific ad-libs,\" she felt Carrey's jokes were \"nothing more than a desperate effort to inject some offbeat humor into an otherwise numbingly unhip, nonsensical and just plain dull story.\"\nTodd McCarthy of \"Variety\" echoed some of these sentiments, noting that Carrey \"tries out all sorts of intonations, vocal pitches, and delivery styles\" in his performance, at times reminding viewers of James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart. However, McCarthy felt that while Carrey's antics hit the mark at times, they also seemed \"arbitrary and scattershot.\" He further commented that Carrey's \"free-flowing tirades, full of catch-all allusions and references, are pitched for adult appreciation\" and were likely to \"sail right over the heads of pre-teens.\"\nPossible sequel.\nIn December 2024, despite the widow's disapproval and prohibition over producing live-action adaptations of Seuss' works in the future, Carrey stated that he was open to reprising his role as the Grinch in a new film on the condition that he could portray The Grinch through motion capture technology, citing his \"extremely excruciating\" experience with makeup in the original film.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "50758480": "The Grinch (film)\n2018 animated film by Scott Mosier and Yarrow Cheney\nThe Grinch, also known as Dr. Seuss' The Grinch, is a 2018 American animated Christmas comedy film produced by Universal Pictures and Illumination, and distributed by Universal. The third screen adaptation of Dr. Seuss' 1957 book \"How the Grinch Stole Christmas!\", following the 1966 television special and the 2000 live-action feature-length film, it is Illumination's second Dr. Seuss film adaptation, after \"The Lorax\" in 2012. The plot follows the Grinch, who plans to stop Whoville's Christmas celebration by stealing all the town's decorations and gifts, with his pet dog Max.\nThe film was directed by Scott Mosier and Yarrow Cheney and produced by Chris Meledandri and Janet Healy, from a screenplay written by Michael LeSieur and Tommy Swerdlow. The film stars the voices of Benedict Cumberbatch as the title character, with Rashida Jones, Kenan Thompson, Angela Lansbury, and Pharrell Williams, who serves as the narrator. The film was announced in 2013, and by 2016, Cumberbatch was cast as the titular character, and Cheney and Peter Candeland were set to direct. However, in 2018, Mosier took over Candeland's"}, "descending_order": ["4867859", "50758480", "1941155"], "permutation_1": ["1941155", "50758480", "4867859"], "permutation_2": ["1941155", "4867859", "50758480"], "permutation_3": ["1941155", "50758480", "4867859"]}
{"id": "nq_-8258760753576276233", "docs_added": {"543470": "Barney Miller\nAmerican sitcom\nBarney Miller is an American sitcom television series set in a New York City Police Department police station on East 6th Street in Greenwich Village (Lower Manhattan). The series was broadcast on ABC from January 23, 1975, to May 20, 1982. It was created by Danny Arnold and Theodore J. Flicker. Former character actor Noam Pitlik directed 102 of the 170 episodes. It spawned a spin-off series, \"Fish\", that ran from February 5, 1977, to May 18, 1978, focusing on the character Philip K. Fish.\nPremise.\n\"Barney Miller\" takes place almost entirely within the confines of the detectives' squad room and Captain Barney Miller's adjoining office of New York City's fictional 12th Precinct, located in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. A typical episode featured the detectives of the 12th bringing in several complainants or suspects to the squad room. Usually, there were two or three separate subplots in a given episode, with different officers dealing with different crimes. Rarely, about once a year, an episode would feature one or more of the detectives outside of the walls of the precinct, either on a stakeout or at their homes.\nThe squad consists of:<br>\nCapt. Bernard (Barney) Miller. An affable, personable senior officer who tries to maintain a sense of order while his detectives process a noisy parade of unusual criminals and victims. He reasons with the various complainants to effect a successful conclusion or compromise. Barney is noted around the squad room for his compassion, dedication, and diplomacy, but he does have to cope with the personal problems of his squad. His marriage is troubled; both husband and wife love each other, but Mrs. Miller constantly worries for Barney's safety in dangerous police situations, and agitates for him to leave his job or move somewhere else.\nSgt. Philip K. Fish. The senior member of the squad, the sad-faced Sgt. Fish is a world-weary police veteran who is friendly enough but seldom smiles. He usually makes pointed observations about the strange situations in the squad room. He is constantly telephoned by his lonely wife Bernice, who saddles him with her own problems. Bernice is seldom seen in person; the character is almost always played by Florence Stanley, and once by Doris Belack.\nSgt. Nick Yemana. Second in seniority, Sgt. Yemana is an even-tempered, good-humored Japanese bachelor. He usually shows only mild surprise at the craziness in the squad room, and makes quietly humorous remarks. He is energy efficient, making only token attempts to handle the mountain of police paperwork, but he does follow through on cases. His hobbies are gambling (he is constantly following horse races) and Japanese cooking, and he makes the worst coffee in town.\nDet. Stanley (Wojo) Wojciehowicz. Originally written as the house dumb-bell with a goofy laugh and funny remarks, Wojo becomes an \"average man\" character who often brings his troubles to the office and turns to Barney as a father figure. Wojo cares about people's problems, and worries about the consequences of governmental inactivity. (This first manifested itself when Wojo discovered there was no plan in place to evacuate New York in case of an emergency.) In these cases, he takes matters into his own hands and summons federal officials, much to Barney's embarrassment. Away from the squad room, Wojo is a ladies' man, whose late nights make him constantly late for work. \nSgt. Ron Harris. Harris is a black bachelor, and early episodes have him using urban street slang. He becomes a literate, intelligent detective who lapses into dialect only under stress. Harris always dresses impeccably and enjoys the finer things in life, with a thirst for more respect and prestige. He moonlights as a writer of fiction, with magazine stories to his credit. His squad-based novel becomes a success, and his self-centered pursuit of wealth occupies many of his working hours.\nSgt. Chano Amengual. Amengual is a Puerto Rican bachelor and, like Wojo, is sensitive to people's problems. An excellent detective, he is very observant and his unusual methods solve cases. He is bilingual, which is helpful when the need arises, and he is disgusted and frankly embarrassed by the influx of petty criminals who are also Puerto Rican. \nSgt. Arthur Dietrich. When Fish retires, Dietrich replaces him. The bespectacled Dietrich is very low-key and highly intelligent, having trained in both the medical and legal professions, and he has a vast knowledge of specialized topics. He can be counted on to define some esoteric concept quickly and clearly. He is an unusually thorough detective, going to great lengths to follow leads when he thinks he's right, and he uses his wide knowledge to solve baffling cases. Away from the squad room, he is a bachelor who loves jazz and plays a poor clarinet, and he enjoys sports, TV cartoons, and The Three Stooges.\nOfficer Carl Levitt. An ambitious, obsequious patrolman who delivers the daily mail. He never fails to remind Barney that he is available for plainclothes detective work, and ultimately the persistent Levitt is allowed to work part-time among the detectives. Levitt occasionally displays surprising skills that help solve cases. Away from the squad room, Levitt also enjoys the Stooges, particularly Shemp Howard.\nCast.\nRecurring characters.\nOther officers and staff.\n\u2021 \"Murdock, Gorman, and Leiber all made guest appearances in other roles in addition to their regularly recurring series roles.\"\n12th Precinct regulars.\nThe 12th Precinct had a number of regular complainants, habitu\u00e9s of the holding cell, or other people who often dropped by. Characters seen on three or more episodes included:\nPilot.\nThe series was born out of an unsold television pilot, \"The Life and Times of Captain Barney Miller\", that aired on August 22, 1974, as part of an ABC summer anthology series, \"Just for Laughs\". Linden and Vigoda were cast in their series roles; no other eventual cast members were present. Abby Dalton played Barney Miller's wife, Liz, while Val Bisoglio, Rod Perry, and a pre-\"Hill Street Blues\" Charles Haid rounded out the cast of the pilot. Guest stars included Mike Moore, Chu Chu Mulave, Henry Beckman, Buddy Lester, Michael Tessier and Anne Wyndham.\nThe pilot script was later largely reused in the debut episode \"Ramon\". For this reworked episode, Bisoglio's lines were more or less evenly split between the new characters of Yemana and Chano, while Haid's character of Kazinski became Max Gail's Wojciehowicz. Rod Perry's character, Sgt. Wilson, was replaced by Harris in the reworked episode, although Wilson would reappear one more time in the first-season episode \"Experience\" before disappearing from the series entirely. Abby Dalton was replaced by Barbara Barrie as Liz, and Henry Beckman's character of Uncle Charlie was dropped entirely. The rest of the guest cast (Moore, Malave, Lester, Tessier, and Wyndham) reprised their roles in the debut episode.\nUnlike the remainder of the series, the pilot was shot on film at CBS Studio Center, where the sets of the 12th Precinct and the Miller apartment were originally built. When the show went into regular production in late 1974, it was recorded on videotape. The sets were moved to the ABC Television Center in Hollywood, where they remained until production ended in 1982.\nThe pilot was never broadcast in syndication. It was released in 2011 as part of Shout Factory's complete series set on DVD.\nOpening theme.\nThe show's theme music is an instrumental in a jazz fusion style, written by Jack Elliott and Allyn Ferguson. The theme opens with a distinctive bass line performed by studio musician Chuck Berghofer. The bass line was improvised by Berghofer at the request of producer Dominik Hauser: \"Can you do something on the bass? This guy is a cop in New York. Can we just start it out with the bass?\" Several versions of the theme were used during different seasons.\nThe theme plays over scenes of the Manhattan skyline, followed by shots of the characters and opening credits. Season 1 opened and closed with a shot of Midtown Manhattan as seen from Weehawken, New Jersey. Season 2 onward opened with a shot of Lower Manhattan as seen from Brooklyn Heights, with a barge being towed in the foreground, and closed with a shot of the Midtown Manhattan skyline as seen from Long Island City.\nThe theme song was ranked No. 23 and No. 27, respectively, by \"Complex\" and \"Paste\" magazines, in their lists of \"best TV theme songs\".\nProduction.\nStaging.\nProduction of \"Barney Miller\" deliberately resembled a theatrical stage play; scenes rarely strayed from the precinct station's squad room, with its prominent open-barred holding cell, and Miller's adjoining office. The room was said to be on the second or third floor, depending on the episode. Clutter was plentiful and much of it seemed immobile over the years, including a coat hanging on a clothes rack near Harris' desk. A handful of episodes (fewer than a dozen of 170) were partially or fully set in other locations, including a stakeout location (\"Stakeout\"), a hospital room (\"Hair\"), an undercover operation (\"Grand Hotel\"), a jail (three separate rooms in \"Contempt\"), a hotel room (\"Chinatown\"), and the apartments of Barney (\"Ramon\" and \"Graft\"), Chano (\"The Hero\"), Fish (\"Fish\") and Wojo (\"Wojo's Girl\"). In \"The DNA Story\", we finally see the inside of the men's room. \"Barney Miller\" tended to obey two of the three classical unities of drama: unity of place and unity of time. The third unity, unity of action, was not followed, since each episode had multiple subplots.\n\"Barney Miller\" was one of the few sitcoms of the period that occasionally mentioned the then-current year or allowed the audience to infer the then-current year.\nTaping.\n\"Barney Miller\" was notorious for its marathon taping sessions. Early seasons were recorded before a live studio audience and used a laugh track for sweetening reactions during post-production. Creator and executive producer Danny Arnold would then rewrite and restage entire scenes after the audience departed, actively looking for quieter, subtler moments that would not play well before a crowd; a taping session that began in the afternoon or early evening would then continue into the early morning hours. Max Gail referred to this in the Jack Soo retrospective episode aired on May 17, 1979, remarking that one of the clips shown was a scene that \"we finished around 2:30 in the morning.\" In a 1977 blooper, a crew member mentions it being 3:15\u00a0a.m.\nWriter Tom Reeder described working on the show:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Danny Arnold was the creator of the show, and especially in the early years, he was a marvel. When he was \"on\", he could spin out entire scenes, ad-libbing dialogue\u2014and great jokes\u2014for every character. By the time those scenes got to script form, though, he obsessively rewrote them.\nThat's true of a lot of showrunners, but Danny couldn't seem to stop himself. Sometime during season 2 (or maybe it was 3) the show was no longer taped in front of an audience, partly because the script was rarely done by show night. When one season began, six pages were in print. Not six scripts\u2014six pages of one script.\nThis meant that on the day the show was taped, the actors would hang around on the stage, waiting for pages to be sent down. Then\u2014sometimes at 2 a.m.\u2014they would have to learn new scenes. Ron Carey (Officer Levitt) would get his fairly quickly: \"Here's your mail, Captain.\" On the other hand, poor Steve Landesberg (Dietrich) might have to memorize long speeches explaining how nuclear fission works.\nIn the early years, Danny benefited from the heroic writing efforts of Chris Hayward, who was a veteran writer, and rookies Tony Sheehan and Reinhold Weege who, like me, didn't know any better. They were the \"Barney Miller\" writing staff. My agent wisely turned down Danny's annual offers of staff jobs, negotiating freelance assignments (so-called \"multiple deals\") for me instead. Even so, the pace was frantic\u2014on one assignment I was given three hours to write the story outline. On another occasion, a friend came into my office at ABC-Vine Street and said, \"Hey, Reeder, want to go get some lunch?\" I pointed to the paper in my typewriter and said, \"This script is on the stage\u2014thanks anyway.\"\nEmploying a live audience became impractical as lengthy reshoots became commonplace. By Season 4, only a quiet laugh track was used when necessary.\nBarney Miller's wife.\nWhen \"Barney Miller\" premiered in January 1975, actress Barbara Barrie was hired as a regular cast member to play Liz Miller, Barney's wise, faithful, and loving wife. She received second billing in the opening credits after Hal Linden. During that half-season, Barrie appeared in seven episodes out of thirteen. At that time, the premise of the show was to focus on Barney's career as a police captain at the 12th Precinct as well as his home life with his wife and children.\nAt the start of the 1975\u201376 season, when it became evident that storylines at the 12th Precinct were taking precedence, Barrie went to producer Danny Arnold and asked to be released from the show. Arnold reluctantly agreed and Barrie appeared in only two episodes that year: \"The Social Worker\", which was the second episode of the second season, and the holiday installment \"Happy New Year\". But she continued to receive second billing in the opening credits throughout the second year.\nIn the third season, Barrie's character as well as Barney's children were occasionally mentioned but never seen. In the spring of 1978, Barrie returned to the series as a guest star reprising her role of Liz Miller in the episode \"Quo Vadis\". In that episode, Barney gets shot on duty, but survives his attack virtually unharmed. Liz, upset by the incident and unable to withstand the pressures of being a policeman's wife, gives Barney an ultimatum to either give up his police job so they can move to a safer neighborhood or end their marriage. At the end of the episode, Barney and Liz separate.\nDuring the 1978\u201379 season, Barrie made her final appearance on \"Barney Miller\" in the Christmas show \"Toys\". In that episode, Liz meets Barney at the 12th Precinct on Christmas Eve to discuss celebrating the holidays with their children, leading up to the possibility of a reconciliation. After this episode, Liz is never seen again, but toward the end of the fifth season, Barney happily announces to his staff that he and Liz have ended their separation and that he is moving back to their apartment. Despite Barrie's absence, her character continues to be mentioned throughout the rest of the show's run, and when a dangerous police emergency is announced on radio or television, Liz always calls to check on Barney's safety.\nFish.\nIn the first season of \"Barney Miller\", the character of Fish (played by Abe Vigoda) proved so popular that ABC was considering a spin-off as early as October 1975, and the actor Vigoda tried to emphasize his importance to \"Barney Miller\". Author Richard Meyers reported, \"Abe Vigoda had been complaining loudly and often that if it were not for Fish, \"Barney\" might be a bust. He wanted more attention, more credit, and more money. [\"TV Guide\"] said that he wanted the show changed to \"Fish and Barney\", although he would accept \"Barney and Fish\".\" Producer Danny Arnold settled the situation by giving Vigoda his own show, provided that he appeared on at least some of the \"Barney Miller\" episodes in the meantime.\n\"Fish\" premiered on February 5, 1977. It focused on the domestic side of Fish's life as he and his wife Bernice (played by Florence Stanley) became foster parents to five racially mixed children known as \"Persons in Need of Supervision\" (PINS). Fish continued to appear sporadically in the second half of Season 3 of \"Barney Miller\" while also starring in \"Fish\". During the 1977\u201378 season, Fish officially retired from the NYPD in Season 4, Episode 2 episode of \"Barney Miller\". \"Fish\" had reasonably good ratings but did not match \"Barney Miller\"'s. ABC was going to renew the show for a third season, but, according to cast member Todd Bridges, Vigoda demanded more money than the producers were willing to pay. As a result, ABC canceled \"Fish\" in May 1978 without a series finale. \nThere was talk of Abe Vigoda returning to \"Barney Miller\" as a regular cast member. According to Vigoda, producer Danny Arnold approached him: \"Danny wined and dined me at the Park Lane Hotel the other day in New York, trying to convince me to come back. He wants me either as a regular or to do some guest shots, as well as a \"Barney Miller\" movie to be shot in New York for European distribution. I told him I could not make a commitment at the present time because of other offers.\" Arnold told reporters, \"We've made an offer to him but we haven't received a definite response.\" Vigoda held out for more money, Arnold refused, and Vigoda finally walked away from negotiations. \nAfter the smoke had cleared from Vigoda's departure, syndicated columnist Gary Deeb wrote candidly about the situation: \"A major factor in his disappearing act is the fact that it was Detective Fish, not Abe Vigoda, whom millions of viewers had fallen in love with. Vigoda's recent difficulty in locating respectable work has been triggered by his own personality. According to many Hollywood performers, the guy is a royal pain -- and in many cases, it's simply not worth the hassle to hire him. During his three-and-a-half seasons on \"Barney Miller\", Vigoda drove Danny Arnold, the program's creator, up the wall.\" In the spring of 1981, Vigoda did make a final appearance as Fish as a guest in the seventh-season episode \"Lady and the Bomb\", thus giving his character some closure.\nWojo pilot.\nAfter \"Fish\" was canceled, a special one-hour episode of \"Barney Miller\" aired on January 25, 1979. It was created as a pilot episode for another possible \"Barney Miller\" spin-off to star series regular Max Gail. Titled \"Wojo's Girl\", the first half of the episode was set at the 12th Precinct in which Wojo (played by Gail) decides to have his girlfriend Nancy, a former prostitute (played by Darlene Parks), live with him. The second half of the installment takes place entirely in Wojo's apartment as he and Nancy struggle to adjust to living together. The pilot did not sell, Parks's character of Nancy was never seen again and Gail remained with \"Barney Miller\" until the series ended in the spring of 1982.\nLinda Lavin.\nShortly after the premiere of \"Barney Miller\" in early 1975, actress Linda Lavin guest starred as Detective Janice Wentworth on the eighth episode \"Ms. Cop\". Her character in that installment went over very well with audiences and Lavin was brought back as a semi-regular for \"Barney Miller\"'s second year. During that season, a romance began at the 12th Precinct between Detective Wentworth and Detective (Wojo) Wojciehowicz (played by Max Gail). However, at the same time, Lavin had just completed a television pilot for CBS called \"Alice\", which was based on the Academy Award-winning film \"Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore\". The pilot quickly sold to CBS and they included it on their schedule for the 1976\u20131977 season. As a result, Lavin left \"Barney Miller\" at the end of the show's second season. \"Alice\" ran for nine years on CBS and immediately established Lavin as a television star. Lavin never returned to \"Barney Miller\" although her character of Detective Janice Wentworth was seen briefly as a flashback in the last episode of the series, \"Landmark: Part 3\".\nDownstairs.\nThe \"Barney Miller\" episodes often made references to the uniformed policemen \"downstairs\" in the station house, particularly desk sergeant Kogan (played by actor Milt Kogan). During the first two seasons Kogan himself would visit the squad room on business. Thereafter the actor was no longer seen but \"Kogan\" lived on as the desk sergeant downstairs, whom Barney would telephone whenever his detectives needed reinforcements from the policemen on duty. Officer Carl Levitt (played by Ron Carey) was one of these \"uniforms\".\nOther officers.\nThe captain's life was sometimes complicated by visits from officers in other departments. The most frequent visitor was Inspector Franklin D. Luger (played by James Gregory). Luger was a battle-scarred veteran of the force whose glory days were the 1940s, when he was a rough-and-ready cop alongside his partners Kleiner, Foster, and Brown. Although his career advanced, his mindset did not. Luger was constantly living in the past, telling and retelling stories of the old days to anyone who would listen, and his clueless and often tactless treatment of current-day felons and detainees was always being salvaged more diplomatically by Barney. Away from the station Luger was equally out of date, living alone in a one-room apartment with a hot plate and an antique DuMont television set.\nBarney's constant antagonist was Lieutenant Ben Scanlon (played by George Murdock) of the vice squad. The reptilian Scanlon always popped up whenever he heard of irregular activity at the 12th Precinct, and was determined to cause trouble for the unflappable Barney. \nDeath of Jack Soo.\nToward the end of the fourth year, Jack Soo was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and was absent for the last five episodes of the 1977\u201378 season. To help fill the void during his medical leave, actress Mari Gorman was brought in for three installments as Officer Roslyn Licori. Cast member Ron Carey's role of Officer Carl Levitt was also expanded at this time to compensate for Soo's absence. Soo returned to \"Barney Miller\" at the start of the 1978\u201379 season but his cancer had already metastasized and spread very quickly. As a result, he was only able to complete nine episodes that year. By the time he taped his last appearance which was the installment \"The Vandal\" that aired on November 9, 1978, Soo's illness was quite evident in his rapid weight loss. Two months later, he died on January 11, 1979, at the age of 61. The fifth-season finale \"Jack Soo: A Retrospective\" aired on May 17, 1979, and was a tribute to him. For this installment, the cast of \"Barney Miller\" led by Hal Linden appeared as themselves on the 12th Precinct office set as they fondly shared stories and reminiscences about Soo as an actor. At the end of the episode, the cast raised their coffee cups in loving memory of Jack Soo.\nReplacing Soo.\nDuring the seventh season, in an attempt to fill the void left by Jack Soo, a new character was added to \"Barney Miller\": Detective Sergeant Eric Dorsey. The role was filled by young actor Paul Lieber, who had shown promise during the previous season as an inept gunman in \"The Architect\". Sgt. Dorsey antagonized the squad members immediately by assuming they were all corrupt. Even though he eventually realized that his convictions were not true, the downbeat character was not popular with viewers. As a result, Lieber's tenure on the show lasted only a few weeks with his character of Dorsey reassigned to another precinct.\nLGBT.\nMarty Morrison (played by Jack DeLeon) was an effeminate shoplifter always getting caught and always trying to plead for clemency from Capt. Miller. Both DeLeon and his dialogue always played for laughs, and Marty became the first popular \"guest\" character in the show (Marty made the most appearances of any recurring character). After several solo appearances Marty was joined by his more serious friend Darryl Driscoll (played by Ray Stewart). These were among the earliest recurring gay characters on American television. Danny Arnold worked closely with the Gay Media Task Force, an activist group that worked on LGBT representation in media, in developing the characters. Initially both characters were presented in a stereotypically effeminate manner but in later appearances Darryl began dressing and speaking in a more mainstream fashion, and in the episode \"The Child Stealers\" Darryl disclosed that he was formerly heterosexual but now divorced. In the same episode Officer Zitelli (played by Dino Natali), the new mailroom clerk who had been keeping his homosexuality secret from everyone except Capt. Miller, was angered by hostile remarks and declared, \"\"I'm\" gay.\"\nSlow ratings growth.\nThe series took a while to become a hit, but ABC supported it anyway.\nIn the 1975 \"The Courtesans\" episode (S1 E5) with Nancy Dussault, creator/producer/showrunner Danny Arnold threatened to quit his own show, if network censors removed a risqu\u00e9 punchline. (At the end of the episode, Wojo made an especially cutting remark to the prostitute, who responded in kind and left the station house. Wojo then timidly asked Barney for the loan of fifty dollars.) The network relented and the resulting publicity over the x-rated episode that was banned in two markets ensured the series' ratings survival, according to Hal Linden.\nReprieve.\nDanny Arnold had planned to end production of \"Barney Miller\" in May 1981, and his decision came as a shocking surprise to the cast and crew. \"I never saw so many white faces in one place in my life,\" said Arnold's spokesman Bob Garon. \"There were tears in everyone's eyes, including Hal [Linden's].\" Garon explained that Arnold could not find a suitable replacement for writer-producer Tony Sheehan, and that Arnold didn't want the show repeating storylines. The same report cited that Arnold faced \"intense pressure from ABC\" to reconsider his decision. Arnold finally agreed, and the series continued for one more year before he made good his resolution to end the series. The show was not canceled; the network was reluctant to see the highly rated show leave the air.\nReception by police.\n\"Barney Miller\" retains a devoted following among real-life police officers, who appreciate the show's emphasis on dialog and believably quirky characters, and its low-key portrayal of cops going about their jobs. In a 2005 op-ed for the \"New York Times\", New York police detective Lucas Miller wrote:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Real cops are not usually fans of cop shows. [...] Many police officers maintain that the most realistic police show in the history of television was the sitcom \"Barney Miller\", [...] The action was mostly off screen, the squad room the only set, and the guys were a motley bunch of character actors who were in no danger of being picked for the N.Y.P.D. pin-up calendar. But they worked hard, made jokes, got hurt and answered to their straight-man commander. For real detectives, most of the action does happen off screen, and we spend a lot of time back in the squad room writing reports about it. Like Barney Miller's squad, we crack jokes at one another, at the cases that come in, and at the crazy suspect locked in the holding cell six feet from the new guy's desk. Life really is more like \"Barney Miller\" than \"NYPD Blue\", but our jokes aren't nearly as funny.\nSimilarly, during his appearance on Jon Favreau's Independent Film Channel talk show \"Dinner for Five\", Dennis Farina, who worked as a Chicago police officer before turning to acting, called \"Barney Miller\" the most realistic cop show ever seen on television.\nAwards and honors.\n\"Barney Miller\" won a DGA Award from the Directors Guild of America in 1981. The series won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1982, after it ended. It received six other nominations in that category, from 1976 to 1981. The series won Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series in 1980 (in addition to nominations in 1976, 1977 and 1982), Outstanding Directing in a Comedy or Comedy-Variety or Music Series in 1979, and was nominated for a number of others. It won Golden Globe Awards for in 1976 and 1977 (from a total of seven nominations), and won a Peabody Award in 1978. In 2013, \"TV Guide\" ranked \"Barney Miller\" at No. 46 on its list of the 60 best series of all time.\nHome media.\nSony Pictures Home Entertainment has released the first three seasons of \"Barney Miller\" on DVD in Region 1. Season 1 was released on January 20, 2004, to slow sales, and Sony decided not to release any more seasons. However, the decision was later reversed and Season 2 was released in 2008 (four years after the release of Season 1), followed by Season 3 in 2009.\nShout! Factory acquired the rights to the series in 2011 and subsequently released a complete series set on October 25, 2011. The 25-disc set features all 168 episodes of the series as well as bonus features and the first season of the Abe Vigoda spin-off, \"Fish\".\nIn 2014, Shout! began releasing individual season sets, season 4 was released on January 7, 2014, season 5 on May 13, 2014. Season 6 on December 9, 2014. and Season 7 on April 7, 2015, followed by the eighth and final season on July 7, 2015.\nSeason 1 was released on DVD in Region 4 on December 20, 2006.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "41905167": "Tom Barney\nAmerican bass guitarist\nTom Barney is an American bass guitarist.\nCareer.\nBarney first came to prominence in the late 1970s, when he appeared on different jazz albums by Turk Mauro and Walter Davis Jr., following to appear on records by such artists as Chaka Khan, Judy Collins, Miles Davis, Bob Mintzer, Terumasa Hino, Jane Fonda, Dizzy Gillespie and Lonnie Liston Smith in the early 80s. On December 15, 1984, he appeared on Saturday Night Live with The Honeydrippers. Some of these opportunities led him to play on albums by Mike Stern, Mitchel Forman, Tania Maria, Grover Washington Jr., Lillo Thomas, Ornella Vanoni, Teddy Pendergrass, Desiree Coleman, Regina Belle and Michael Kamen's Lethal Weapon 2 soundtrack. In 1989, along with Philippe Saisse, Omar Hakim, Don Alias and Hiram Bullock he was the constant bass player for saxophonist David Sanborn's Sunday Night/Night Music show.\nIn the 90s, he played on records by Toshinobu Kubota, James Newton Howard, Alex Foster, Ronnie Cuber, Pierce Turner, Doc Powell, Bernadette Peters, Angelique Kidjo as well as Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige, Lauryn Hill, Jennifer Lopez, Rosie O'Donnell and on Santana's Grammy-Award-winning album \"Supernatural\". He was also a member of Steely Dan and played at the Copenhagen Jazz Festival as part of the David Sanborn Band in 1991. Along with Herbie Hancock, Vanessa L. Williams, Pat Metheny, Bruce Hornsby, Dee Dee Bridgewater, John McLaughlin and others, he appeared on the 1994 VHS release of \"The Carnegie Hall Jazz Band\".\nSince 2000, Barney has appeared on records by Anastacia, Rod Stewart, Joss Stone, Trina Broussard, Toby Lightman as well as Elbow Bones & the Racketeers. From 2008\u20132010 he was the constant bass player of the Las Vegas musical \"The Showgirl Must Go On\" starring Bette Midler and is the current bass player of the musical \"The Lion King\" in New York City.\nDiscography.\nWith Lonnie Liston Smith\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "12900121": "Barney Baxter\nAmerican comic strip by Frank Miller\nBarney Baxter in the Air is an American comic strip by Frank Miller. It started its run on September 30, 1935, for the Denver's \"Rocky Mountain News\". Starting on December 7, 1936, it was syndicated by King Features. \"Barney Baxter\" was an \"adventure strip\" involving heroic exploits centering on aviation.\nThe strip was drawn by Miller until 1943 when Bob Naylor took over the duties for a short period. In 1943, the title was shortened to Barney Baxter. Miller returned to the strip in 1946. The strip was discontinued by King Features on January 22, 1950, following Miller's death on March 12, 1949.\nCharacters and story.\nYoung aviator Barney Baxter experienced numerous airborne adventures, and during World War II, he battled both German and Japanese villains. Baxter was often accompanied by his sidekick Gopher Gus, who (unlike the rest of the characters) was drawn with the exaggerated facial features of a \"humour strip\" character. Other characters were Barney's mother, his rival love interests, Patricia and Maura, and his buddy Hap Walters. Comic strip historian Don Markstein noted:\nBarney wasn't your standard pretty-boy hero. He was a bit on the short side and pudgy. His face looked kind of lumpy and was covered with freckles. He didn't have a big, toothy grin\u2014in fact, he didn't smile very much at all. Of course, he wasn't downright ugly\u2014his pal, Gopher Gus, a desert rat turned pilot, was the ugly one. His other pal, Hap Walters, a sometime-girlfriend named Patricia and Barney's mom rounded out the cast. They had one thrilling adventure after another, fighting spies, air pirates, Latin American warlords and, when the time came, Nazis and Japs; and they kept it up for almost a decade and a half. The cartoonist behind Barney and his entourage was Frank Miller\u2014but not the Frank Miller who became famous decades later for his work on \"Elektra\", \"Batman\" and \"Sin City\". This Frank Miller was born in 1898 and spent his early thirties working on staff at Denver's \"Rocky Mountain News\". There, he created \"Barney\" in 1935 for the paper's \"Junior Aviator\" page. At first the hero was a boy just entering his teens, who had a burning interest in airplanes; but the series took a more adventurous turn when a grown-up aviator named Cyclone Smith took him (with Mom's permission) on a trip to Alaska. By the time Barney got home, he was a seasoned crime fighter. \"Barney Baxter in the Air\" (as the strip was originally called\u2014it dropped the last part in 1943) had been running a little more than a year when Miller moved East to work at William Randolph Hearst's \"New York Mirror\"; and from then on, Barney was no longer a one-paper strip. Starting in December, 1936, it was distributed by Hearst's King Features Syndicate. By that time, Barney had rapidly aged to about his late teens or early twenties. Miller's plots moved fast enough to keep most readers from noticing the occasionally large holes in them.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "27302168": "Miller Miller Miller &amp; Sloan\nAmerican funk/pop band\nMiller Miller Miller & Sloan was an American funk/Pop band, based in New York City, that reached its zenith in the early 1980s. The band was made up of the three Miller brothers Dan, C.B. \"Barney\" and Mike, plus and their childhood friend, Blake Sloan. The band opened for The Clash, as well as Tom Tom Club and Chaka Khan"}, "descending_order": ["543470", "41905167", "12900121", "27302168"], "permutation_1": ["41905167", "27302168", "12900121", "543470"], "permutation_2": ["27302168", "543470", "41905167", "12900121"], "permutation_3": ["543470", "41905167", "12900121", "27302168"]}
{"id": "nq_8369988510358802033", "docs_added": {"40586106": "Carolyn Rafaelian\nAmerican designer, philanthropist, and businesswoman\nCarolyn Rafaelian is an American-Armenian entrepreneur and businesswoman. She is the founder of the accessories and jewelry company Alex and Ani, and the owner of the Belcourt of Newport, Bar and Board Bistro in Newport, Rhode Island and Carolyn's Sakonnet Vineyards.\nBackground.\nRafaelian's father opened a jewelry factory in 1966, Cinerama Jewelry, in which Rafaelian and her sister worked. Over time she helped her father design pieces and produced original designs herself for her father's jewelry manufacturing company. She attended Prout Memorial High School for Girls (later known as The Prout School). She attended the University of Rhode Island between 1987 and 1989, and then she transferred to and graduated from the American College for the Applied Arts in Los Angeles. In 1994 she joined her father's business, and eventually began to work on her own line. In 2002 Rafaelian became co-owner of Cinerama with her sister. Rafaelian's designs became the main seller for the company, and in 2016 Alex and Ani bought the manufacturing facility for an undisclosed sum.\nBusiness career.\nIn 2004 Rafaelian founded Alex and Ani, a jewelry line named after her two eldest daughters. The brand started with five cocktail rings and expanded into a full line of jewelry anchored by its patented expandable wire bangle.\nRafaelian has been interviewed by newspapers regarding current events, including the \"New York Daily News\". Rafaelian received the 2012 Rhode Island Small Businessperson of the Year award from the Small Business Administration for her work with Alex and Ani, and also the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of Year in the products category for New England. Her firm's revenue grew from $5 million in 2010 to over $500 million in 2016 and the company's Charity By Design initiative, where 20% of sales go to charity, makes up 20% of sales.\nRafaelian owns Bar and Board Bistro in Newport and a cafe franchise called Teas and Javas; some of its cafes are attached to Alex and Ani stores, and some are independent. She is also the owner of the Rhode Island winery Carolyn's Sakonnet Vineyard, purchased in 2012 which features wine making, dining area and locally sourced foods. Since taking over, the vineyard has won a number of awards in international competition.\nPersonal life.\nRafaelian is divorced from her first husband.\nRafaelian is the owner of a 60-room mansion, the Belcourt of Newport, formerly known as Belcourt Castle, in Newport, Rhode Island, built in 1894.\n\"Rhode Island Monthly\" described Rafaelian's charitable work as including \"Project USA, a nonprofit, which has raised funds for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, survivors of breast cancer, and endangered species\" as well as separate projects with the Humane Society of the United States.\nRafaelian was listed 22nd in \"Forbes\" America's Richest Self-Made Women in 2016, with net worth estimated at $700 million in June 2016. In May 2017, she was recognized by the David Lynch Foundation for her humanitarian efforts. In June 2018, Rafaelian was estimated to be worth $1 billion, and 18th on the \"Forbes\" list of America's richest self-made women, owning 80% of Alex and Ani. By June 2019 her net worth had dropped to an estimated $520 million.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "40586081": "Alex and Ani\nJewelry company\nAlex and Ani is an American retailer and producer of jewelry located in Cranston, Rhode Island.\nHistory.\nThe firm was founded in 2004 by Carolyn Rafaelian. The name comes from a combination of the first names of Rafaelian's two daughters. The company originally stated that they wanted to produce \"bangle bracelets, necklaces, earrings and rings that adorn the body, enlighten the mind, and empower the spirit\". The company first manufactured its jewelry in a factory that was founded by Rafaelian's father in 1966 and all materials were made in America.\nThe first retail Alex and Ani store opened in Newport in 2009, and in addition to the stand-alone stores, the jewelry was sold through national departments stores. In 2011, American retail company The Paper Store LLC invested over $10 million to build \"shop within a shop\" areas featuring the jewelry brand Alex and Ani in many of their stores.\nIn 2010 Giovanni Feroce joined the company as CEO and drove the company's expansion, increasing the sales total for the year by more than 20 times its previous annual total. In 2011, the company launched its Charity By Design program where 20% of sales go to charity. It also partnered with the Newport Folk Festival and Newport Jazz Festival to create specialty charms for each ticket buyer of each festival. In 2013 the company partnered with the New England Patriots and New England Revolution sports teams to provide sports-themed merchandise and uniforms. That year the company also published \"Path of Life: Why I Wear My Alex and Ani\", a book co-authored by Feroce and Alex and Ani corporate historian Cyd McKenna.\nThe company\u2019s revenue grew from $5 million in 2010 to over $500 million in 2016. In 2012, the company acquired a majority stake in the advertising agency Mediapeel after becoming the firm's largest client, changing the company name to Seven Swords Media. Also in 2012, the firm opened its first European branded stores. That year, JH Partners acquired a large stake in the firm, adding it to its lifestyle portfolio. JH Partners cashed out in 2014, selling its 40% stake in the company to British buyout firm Lion Capital, in a deal that valued the company at $1 billion.\nIn March 2014, Rafaelian fired Feroce, the company's CEO. In March 2015, Harlan Kent, a former CEO of Yankee Candle, became the new president of the company. That year, the company expanded into Japan, and began a partnership with Disney Parks, to provide jewelry for their souvenir stores. Kent left the company within a year.\nIn 2016, Rafaelian purchased original copper from the Statue of Liberty and the company launched the Liberty Copper Collection. In 2017, Alex and Ani became the primary \"presenting sponsor\" of David Lynch's arts and music festival, the Festival of Disruption.\nIn October 2017, the company's Australian distributor, House of Brands, closed the Alex and Ani concept store in Melbourne, as well as all related kiosks in malls in Australia, announcing that it would shut down the related website in January 2018. House of Brands had been the company's distributor in Australia and New Zealand since December 2015.\nAt the end of 2017, the company's CEO, Cindy DiPietrantonio, and its CFO, Bob Woodruff, left the company; over serving in their roles for just over a year. In September 2018, the company announced that it intended to sell more of its pieces directly to consumers, rather than through distributors, with a goal of 75 to 80 percent of sales being through its stores or its websites by March 2020, up from its current 50 percent. The company said it planned to open 25 to 30 more concept stores within a year.\nIn July 2019, Alex and Ani filed a $1.1 billion federal lawsuit against Bank of America, asserting that the lender had discriminated in its treatment of the woman-led company. The company dismissed the suit in August, and in September 2019 agreed to a new debt structure with its syndicate of lenders, led by Bank of America. As part of the restructuring, Rafaelian had given up her controlling equity interest, and Lion Capital installed a new CEO, Bob Trabucco. In May 2020, Rafaelian was officially terminated as an employee of the company.\nOn June 9, 2021, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company attributes their bankruptcy filing to falling revenue in the wake of operational and supply chain difficulties as well as major turnover in their C-suite, which led to a 2019 out-of-court restructuring, plus the COVID-19 pandemic played a major role in the company's revenue decline.\nAt the time of the bankruptcy filing, founder Rafaelian was no longer involved with the company she started. In late 2022, Rafaelian launched Metal Alchemist, another jewelry company based in Rhode Island that uses American-made products and sticks to Rafaelian's Rhode Island roots.\nEarly in 2023, Alex and Ani had 38 stores across the United States. In June 2023, Alex and Ani had closed another 21 stores and their corporate headquarters in Rhode Island overnight, leaving 7 locations still open.\nIn November 2023, months after Alex and Ani abruptly vacated their East Greenwich, Rhode Island headquarters, it left behind thousands of pieces of equipment, and unpaid bills from local business owners, its landlord, and the town of East Greenwich. Sal Corio, the owner of SJ Corio Company conducted the auction and told The Boston Globe that the bagging equipment alone was worth \"more than $200,000\" if it had been purchased new. He was initially hired by Alex and Ani to auction off their own equipment, but told The Boston Globe that they \"locked him out\" and never communicated with him again. Not long after, Corio was contacted by the property owner, who hired him to carry out the auction. The auction attracted more than 900 bidders.\nActivities.\nThe firm produces bangles, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and rings. The company first came to national attention in 2004 when they produced a necklace featuring an apple for Gwyneth Paltrow following the birth of her daughter Apple, leading to many orders of similar merchandise.\nThe firm has begun collaborating with national organizations to create custom pieces and give a portion of proceeds to the respective charity.\nA signature design feature of the company's products is the \"patented sliding mechanism that replaces the traditional clasp, making each bracelet entirely adjustable\" making it \"one-size-fits-all\". Rafaelian patented the Alex and Ani 14-gauge wire bangle in 2004; it is one of about 30 patents the company now holds.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "180232": "Alex Van Halen\nAmerican drummer (born 1953)\nAlexander Arthur Van Halen ( , ; born May 8, 1953) is an American musician who was the drummer and a co-founder of the rock band Van Halen, which was formed in 1972 by Van Halen and his younger brother Eddie under the name \"Mammoth\" before adding Michael Anthony and David Lee Roth in 1974 and changing their name to Van Halen.\nWarner Bros. signed the band in 1977, and the band's debut album was released a year later. Prior to their disbandment in 2020, following Eddie's death, Van Halen released 12 studio albums, and the brothers were the only two constant members of the band. Noted for his technical prowess, speed, and power, Alex Van Halen is widely regarded as one of the greatest drummers of all time.\nEarly life.\nVan Halen was born in Amsterdam. The family name in Dutch is \"van Halen\" (with lower-case 'v') and is pronounced in Dutch as . His Dutch father, Jan van Halen (1920\u20131986), was an accomplished jazz saxophonist and clarinetist. His mother, Eugenia van Beers (1914\u20132005), was an Indo (Eurasian) from Rangkasbitung, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Alex spent his early years in Nijmegen in the east of the Netherlands. The family moved to Pasadena, California, in 1962. The Dutch prefix \"van\" was capitalized by Alex's parents during the family's immigration to the US. Alex and his brother Eddie became naturalized U.S. citizens.\nBoth brothers were trained as classical pianists during childhood. Although Alex is known as a professional drummer, he began his musical aspirations as a guitarist, with his brother Eddie taking up drums. While Eddie was delivering newspapers to pay for his drum kit, Alex would practice playing on them. After spending some time playing Eddie's drum kit, Alex became more skilled than Eddie was as a drummer. After Eddie heard Alex's mastery of The Surfaris drum solo in the song \"Wipe Out\", he decided to learn to play the electric guitar. Alex was influenced by Budgie drummer Ray Phillips.\nAlex, Eddie and three other boys formed their first band, calling themselves \"The Broken Combs\", while attending Hamilton Elementary School in Pasadena, in which Alex played saxophone. When Eddie was in the fourth grade, they performed at lunchtime at the school.\nIn 1971, Van Halen graduated from Pasadena High School. He then took classes in music theory, scoring, composition and arranging at Pasadena City College for a short while. While there, Alex met Michael Anthony and David Lee Roth. They formed the band Mammoth, and Alex, along with the others, left Pasadena City College.\nCareer.\nAlex and Eddie Van Halen had several early bands before the formation of Van Halen. In addition to The Broken Combs, there were The Space Brothers, The Trojan Rubber Company, and Mammoth.\nIn 1972, the brothers formed Mammoth with Mark Stone on bass and Eddie on lead vocals. The band rented David Lee Roth's PA system for their shows. Soon after, Eddie became tired of singing lead, and asked Roth to join the band. Later, in 1974, since the name Mammoth was already taken by another band, the name was changed to Van Halen, and Stone was replaced by Michael Anthony. Roth has claimed that it was his idea to rename the band Van Halen, and that he actually named it after Alex. In addition to his musical duties at this time, Alex handled managerial duties, such as booking gigs, and the like for the band. Their 1978 self-titled debut album \"Van Halen\" was released to much fanfare, influencing many musicians in hard rock. Van Halen had released eleven more studio albums since then, and officially disbanded a month after Eddie's death on October 6, 2020.\nAlthough the term \"brown sound\" is generally associated with Eddie's guitar, it was actually coined by Alex to refer to the sound of his snare drum.\nAlex never recorded any music without his brother being involved, with Michael Anthony saying that \"the only person that he plays with is Ed.\" The only recording Alex has made outside of the band is playing keyboards on the Eddie Van Halen instrumental \"Respect the Wind\", done for the \"Twister\" soundtrack and earning the Van Halen brothers a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.\nIn June 2024, Alex auctioned off all of his drum gear he had in storage for decades. This led people to believe that he will no longer be involved in music without his brother Edward on stage with him.\nAlex released a book called \"Brothers\" on October 22, 2024 and commenced a 3 date promotional tour. \nEquipment.\nVan Halen endorses Ludwig drums, pedals and hardware, Paiste cymbals, Remo drumheads and Regal Tip drumsticks. A Paiste endorser since March 1983, Van Halen, in co-operation with Paiste developed a signature ride cymbal\u2014a 2002 24\" Big ride\u2014which Paiste introduced at the 2010 Winter NAMM Show. He also had two Ludwig signature snares. Alex has used Rototoms and octobans in the past as well as electronic drums and is renowned for using extravagantly sized drum kits that feature an on-fire orchestral gong and four bass drums, having originally used only two.\nRegal Tip created the Alex Van Halen signature drumsticks when he became an endorser.\nInfluences.\nVan Halen's main influences include Billy Cobham, Ginger Baker, Keith Moon and John Bonham, and he has cited jazz drummer Buddy Rich's work as having an early and lifelong impact.\nPersonal life.\nVan Halen married Valeri Kendall in June 1983, after a two-year engagement. The marriage ended in divorce two months later. In 1984 he married Kelly Carter. Their son Aric Van Halen, was born October 6, 1989. The couple divorced in August 1996. Carter was sued by Van Halen in 2013, over her commercial use of the 'Van Halen' surname. The case was settled in 2015. His son Aric is a passionate runner and competed in the Olympic trials for the steeplechase in 2016. He is also a talented photographer.\nVan Halen married his current wife, Stine Schyberg, in 2000. She is the mother of his son Malcolm Van Halen. Malcolm shares the passion of fast cars and racing with his father and uncle. \nVan Halen is the uncle of Wolfgang Van Halen.\nVan Halen is an ordained minister. He presided at the second wedding of his brother Eddie in 2009 and his son Malcolm's wedding in 2024.\nDue to years of playing loud music, Alex is said to have major hearing loss in both ears. \"In 1995 Alex Van Halen complained to his stage engineer Jerry Harvey about it. He could no longer hear the band onstage and was putting his hearing in jeopardy. Harvey built a simple in-ear monitor using two speakers that were originally designed for a pacemaker. He tuned one for bass, the other for treble.\"\nDiscography.\nSolo discography\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1060174": "Alex (comic strip)\nBritish cartoon strip\nAlex is a British cartoon strip by Charles Peattie and Russell Taylor. It first appeared in the short-lived \"London Daily News\" in 1987. It moved to \"The Independent\" later that year and then to \"The Daily Telegraph\" in 1992. A translated version was published in the German newspaper \"Financial Times Deutschland\". It was also published translated into Dutch for some years in the main financial newspaper of the Netherlands, \"Het Financieele Dagblad\" \"(FD)\", around the turn of the century.\nThe strip with its storylines-with-a-twist proved so popular that, in the course of its transfer to the \"Telegraph\", it was preceded by a nationwide billboard campaign.\nThe strip occurs in 'real-time', i.e. time passes and characters age and develop as in real life. Alex and Penny married in the strip's early days and had a son called Christopher, who grew up, went to school, had work experience and has now started college. Alex and Penny themselves are now middle-aged.\nStyle and humour.\nThe humour in the strip derives from wordplay and twist endings related to Alex's world of yuppie values, Conservative politics, obsession with appearances, displays of wealth and schemes to stay one up in the world of international finance. A common theme is to contrast the old days of the traditional City of London (alcohol-fueled lunches, insider dealing, corporate jollies) with the modern American-influenced financial world (abstemiousness, compliance, corporate-speak).\nPeattie and Taylor are reputed to work closely with a variety of London financial contacts to ensure that their strips accurately reflect the recent scandals and rumours which pass around the City. Much gossip has circulated as to the likely inspiration for some of the characters. A storyline in March 2009 had one of Alex's old colleagues leave the city to become a teacher, coinciding with a British government plan to ease the amount of time spent on teacher training and encouraging \"fantastic mathematicians... who would have once perhaps gone into the City but now actually might be more interested in a career in teaching\".\nThe most common kind of joke features a conversation between the characters, where in the final frame a twist ending becomes apparent \u2013 the context of the conversation was not what the reader had supposed, usually reflecting on the protagonists' materialistic values and priorities.\nFor instance, in a restaurant, an embarrassed Alex apologises to the ma\u00eetre d' after his dinner guest answers a call on his mobile, which has been frowned upon in the past. The ma\u00eetre d's claim that the restaurant's policy on phones is very relaxed these days does not alleviate Alex's embarrassment since his concern was due to being seen with a companion who was not using the latest model, and not (as the reader may have supposed) due to talking on a cellphone in a restaurant.\nAnother kind of strip which appears occasionally consists of only two large frames, showing two different characters, or the same character in two different situations, giving a monologue composed of almost exactly the same words, but which, in the different situations, have very different meanings.\nDuring Christmas times, the strip usually takes on storylines featuring fantasy characters and situations, such as 'A Close Encounter' with aliens (1990), visits to Santa Claus (2006, 2009) or a trip to Narnia (2005). In 2013, a 15-part storyline was published, featuring Alex taking over his boss Cyrus's job after the latter committed suicide. However a supernatural agreement saw reversal to \"normal\" circumstances.\nThe complexities of the jokes has meant that the strip has often had to take time off (i.e., not appear for two or more weeks) while the writers come up with new material.\nList of characters.\nAlex Masterley (born 24 February 1960) is the protagonist of the comic strip. He is an experienced investment banker working in London's Docklands. Alex is totally obsessed with personal status, with his work coming second and his family a distant third. His commitment to social standing requires him to have all of the latest professional gadgets, including a BlackBerry and a 3G mobile phone. For him, the most important thing is displaying your wealth to all and sundry. Alex usually works for Rupert Sterling at Megabank, but has, in the past, worked for Mr Hardcastle as his Head of Corporate Strategy. He became a Conservative Member of Parliament in 2019 United Kingdom general election.\nPenny Masterley (n\u00e9e \"Wright\") is Alex's long-suffering wife. They married very early in the strip's history, and have one son, Christopher. Penny enjoys the affluent lifestyle that Alex provides, but has little patience for Alex's obsessions with status and his work. The two spend very little time together, and are not very close. Alex has cheated on Penny a number of times, including a protracted affair with his secretary, Wendy, in 1991, and a one-night stand with a co-worker while travelling on business in 1998. In 2006, Alex started an affair with a client, Carolyn. Penny came very close to divorcing Alex after the affair with his secretary, and has considered leaving him on other occasions. In the summer of 2009, Penny went out to work (for the first time ever) as a redundancy counsellor: a move that upset Alex as he worried that having a working wife might draw people to conclude that he had himself lost his job. In 2013 Penny's work in the charity sector led to her being headhunted into a career as a company non-executive director. Fast-tracked in the corporate world due to her gender, her professional success has already begun to undermine Alex's standing and self-worth.\nChristopher Masterley (born 11 September 1989) is Alex's son. At first, Christopher was very much his father's son, and shares his concern for status and his nose for business. Alex mostly sees Christopher as a symbol of his success, and often makes him a victim of his quest for status. Though initially educated at a top public school, Christopher was withdrawn during the City slump in 2004, when Alex was out of work, and faced the humiliation of leaving the school with a black plastic bag containing his things, a fate city stockbrokers often face, and which was set up by his own father. In 2009 Christopher went to college to study art, much to Alex's chagrin. Christopher is currently unemployed and back living with his parents.\nClive Reed is Alex's co-worker, and even Alex's boss from June 2004 to October 2005 (afterwards he got side-lined by Rupert but refused to resign, thus forced to accept a demotion). Until recently he lived with his longterm girlfriend and subsequent wife Bridget. Although a fellow Oxford graduate, Clive is Alex's inferior in every way. He is less socially skilled, and frequently commits embarrassing gaffes in public. He is less professionally skilled, and often makes bad financial investments or fails to manage his subordinates. Alex enjoys Clive's company because it provides many opportunities to show his superiority. Clive is also a dreadful wimp, and readily retreats from any situation of conflict or difficulty. In spite of this, Clive is something of a womaniser, and has enjoyed a moderate amount of success. In particular, Clive had a long and guilt-ridden affair with an American colleague Ruth while he was engaged to Bridget. Clive also enjoys just enough professional success to maintain his career and his affluent lifestyle. In August 2008, Clive was made redundant, a fact Alex knew but used to win a bet. However, he soon returned after it emerged that the bank had fired the wrong Clive Reed.\nBridget Mann is Clive's ex-wife. Unlike the pleasant Penny, Bridget has a calculating and sadistic temperament. She takes delight in any opportunity to expose Clive for the wimp and loser that he is. This, together with the affluent lifestyle that Clive somehow manages to provide, seems to have been her main reason for staying with him. In 2013, Clive and Bridget had a pair of twins, after years of failed IVF's; but two years later Clive discovered Bridget in bed with his American boss Cyrus. She subsequently expelled Clive from their house and has sought a divorce, which was finalized by December 2018.\nRupert Sterling is a retired senior bank executive. For many years, he was Alex and Clive's boss, and before retirement he served as senior director at Megabank. He and Alex are on the same wavelength as regards status and appearances. This has not stopped Rupert from sacking Alex on a number of occasions, though never for long. Rupert was once tried and jailed for financial fraud; this did not affect his life style too much: his wife would arrive on visiting day only to be told that her husband was in a meeting.\nGreg Masterley is Alex's brother and a reporter. There appears to be little mutual affection or respect between the two siblings. Their elderly parents live in retirement.\nSir Stewart Hardcastle is the stereotypical Northern boss of a manufacturing company. Hardcastle employs Megabank for a lot of his financial work. Bluff and down-to-earth, it is surprising that he puts up with Alex's expensive and flash City ways. Alex worked for him during the City slump in around 2002, though he found every excuse from getting away from Hardcastle's northern-based offices to enjoy the pleasures of London and Ascot. Previously always known as Mr Hardcastle, he was knighted in the Queen's Birthday Honours, 2013.\nVince is a money broker from the dealing floor at Megabank. Representing the 'East End Barrow boy' type, Vince wears white socks, talks in cockney rhyming slang (\"flute\" = suit, \"jam jar\" = car) and is ignorant of the finer points of culture and etiquette at Glyndebourne and the Royal Opera that Alex and Clive revel in.\nChristian is a European junior working his way through the ranks. Although sometimes described as \"Eurotrash\" he is actually a sophisticated and highly educated member of a rich French family. He disdains the 'Anglo' culture and in return is often the butt of Alex's jokes. He speaks a number of languages which the other staff find rather frustrating, especially when he and another foreign worker speak out openly \u2014 in English rather than French or Spanish about how badly the English cricket team is doing. Christian has not appeared in the strip since before the Brexit referendum and his present status is unknown.\nJane was Alex's head of department in 1996. A decisive and masterful figure, he was in awe of her the moment they first met. She herself had an apparently genuine passion for Alex and they had a brief affair. This ended when she had to resign for undisclosed reasons \"after a full and frank discussion with the board\". Her last act was to send a late night email to all her staff thanking them for showing her \"kindness, warmth, respect, personal support, encouragement, loyalty, hospitality and friendship\", concluding that all of this was now completely wasted since someone else would be determining their bonuses.\nRuth was Clive's American lover, not seen much lately. An expatriate investment banker and a frequent character in early years, she would appear in strips in which she and her female colleagues would complain about the treatment of women in the City\nShelley is Director of Human Resources at Megabank. While other staff members come and go, her appointment appears to be a permanent one. She was briefly (2002) Rupert Sterling's lover.\nWendy Tanner was Alex's secretary and had an affair with him. When his wife Penny found out they almost divorced, but later made up. Alex decided that there was no future with Wendy and felt it unwise to continue any longer since her probationary period was due to end and it is hard to sack clerical staff once they become full-time.\nCyrus is Alex's God-fearing American head of department who arrived on the scene in 2006, soon after the Megabank merger and the apparent promotion of Rupert to senior banker status. Cyrus is an unabashed workaholic who bows his head during Thanksgiving dinner grace in order to use his Blackberry for work. In spite of his strongly-held religious values Cyrus is currently (2016) having an adulterous affair with Bridget, wife of his subordinate Clive. Bizarrely this led to a duel at dawn with pistols on Hampstead Heath.\nCarolyn is Alex's client and mistress, with whom he has been secretly involved. She's herself married, and her husband once challenged Alex in a boxing match after he found out their affair. The relationship, both commercial and romantic, appears to have cooled and Carolyn has not appeared in recent strips.\nFaberge is a lapdancer that Clive meets regularly outside work. Clive cannot believe that's not her real name. By contrast with Clive, Faberge appears to have a practical and realistic view of life.\nRobin Thorne was a graduate trainee who was employed at Megabank at the time of the dot-com bubble. Being of a new generation, his knowledge and use of the internet made him quite a contrast to Alex. The differences between two generations could be quite big with one having to painstakingly explain to the other how everything worked and being frustrated when they seemed unable to grasp basic essentials: like Robin using the internet to order sandwiches and get Alex's drycleaning done without having to do it himself and denying Alex the pleasure of demeaning him in the process. When the dot-com bubble burst, Alex finally got the opportunity to assign such tasks to Robin, who eventually left the bank. Alex was later asked to contact the head of a start-up hedge fund who, instead of being wined and dined, would be quite satisfied with sandwiches in his office: the potential client was Robin, who sent Alex out to get the sandwiches. As a result of the credit crunch, Robin's business went bust in early 2009 and he called on Alex for a possible job back at Megabank. Since they had done a lot of business with the hedge fund Alex felt that it was only fair to grant him an interview, give him 30 seconds to give his best three investment ideas and then leave \u2014 Alex getting pleasure by treating Robin the way he had treated him. To make ends meet, Robin later turned his home into a bed and breakfast, and ended up serving meals to Alex again.\nJustin is a banker who successfully stood as a candidate for the Conservative Party in the 2010 UK General Election. He claimed his motivation for wishing to enter politics was his disgust at the recent United Kingdom Parliamentary expenses scandal, but then revealed that he had funded his campaign via various bogus claims on his expense account at the bank. Alex offered a job exchange to Justin during the 2019 United Kingdom general election, with Alex taking up Justin's place as MP and Justin resuming his bank career.\n...plus a cast of match sellers, policemen, and all the characters one would expect to find in a cosmopolitan world financial centre.\nBooks.\n\"Alex\" cartoons are collected into annual volumes.\nStage play.\n\"Alex\" was turned into a stage play by Peattie and Taylor and was performed at the Arts Theatre, London in October, 2007. Robert Bathurst portrayed the titular character in a one-man act assisted by animated cartoons of the other characters and the various locations. The plot revolved around Alex finding his personal and professional life in crisis when his wife Penny leaves him and a deal involving his perennial client Mr Hardcastle threatens to go sour. With his trademark cynical machinations Alex manages to turn both situations to his advantage and come out on top. Bathurst took \"Alex\" on an international tour, beginning in Melbourne, Australia in September 2008 and concluding in London in December. During the tour, it was announced that Bathurst would reprise the role of Alex in a film adaptation that was being developed by independent production company BreakThru Films. The film is to be a live-action/animation hybrid. Since the initial announcement, no further information has been published, though a trailer exists, suggesting a film of some form has been made.\nRadio adaptation.\nBathurst reprised the role in 2010 in a radio version of \"Alex\", broadcast in ten weekly episodes on Classic FM. The show did not mention that Alex was a fictional character voiced by an actor and \u2013 in the manner of Orson Welles\u2019 The War of the Worlds radio broadcast \u2013 many listeners believed that they were listening to a real banker airing his controversial opinions on national radio (the financial crisis of 2007\u20132008 was in full swing and bankers were \"persona non grata\" at the time). In 2011, the show won a Media Week award and a Sony Award for Best Branded Content.\nControversy.\nIn 2017 the cartoon introduced a transgender character, Stephanie. She was an old-school, middle-aged boss transitioning to being a woman, but attempting to retain her previous privileges. The character was intended to draw attention to gender disparities. However \"The New Zealand Herald\" dropped \"Alex\" on 11 April 2019 following complaints from some readers about the character. Stephanie has not appeared in the strip since.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2609306": "Aoi House\nHarem manga series\nAoi House is a harem original English-language (OEL) manga series written by Adam Arnold, with art by Shiei, and published by Seven Seas Entertainment. The story follows the misadventures of two down-on-their-luck college guys named Alexis \"Alex\" Roberts and Sandy Grayson who are thrown out of their college dorm and join an anime club dominated by crazed yaoi fangirls.\nPlot.\nCollege roommates Alexis \"Alex\" Roberts and Sandy Grayson have been evicted from their dorm after a series of infractions, the latest involving showing lewd anime, and the antics of Sandy's pet hamster, Echiboo. After seeing a flyer for the anime clubhouse AOI House, the two men believed they found the perfect place. However, the two boys soon learn that the clubhouse consists of five crazed yaoi fangirls who have mistaken Alex and Sandy for a gay couple\u2014the flyer having neglected to mention that only girls and gay guys were permitted and the clubhouse's original name was \"Yaoi House\", but the \"Y\" fell off of the clubhouse's sign. Once the truth is revealed that Sandy and Alex are two straight males, the two boys are allowed to stay because the housing committee has been on AOI House's case to get more members. The girls have some fun with Sandy and Alex in an attempt to turn them into yaoi-lovers, or at least make them the lodge's token gay couple.\n Morgan's \"yaoi-pet\", and perhaps"}, "descending_order": ["40586081", "180232", "40586106", "1060174", "2609306"], "permutation_1": ["2609306", "40586081", "1060174", "180232", "40586106"], "permutation_2": ["40586106", "180232", "1060174", "2609306", "40586081"], "permutation_3": ["40586106", "2609306", "1060174", "40586081", "180232"]}
{"id": "nq_-2580586614367053709", "docs_added": {"28077217": "Joel Kinnaman\nSwedish actor (born 1979)\nCharles Joel Nordstr\u00f6m Kinnaman (; born 25 November 1979) is a Swedish-American actor. He first gained recognition for his roles in the 2010 Swedish film \"Easy Money\" and the \"Johan Falk\" crime series. Kinnaman is known internationally for his television roles as Detective Stephen Holder in AMC's \"The Killing\", Takeshi Kovacs in the first season of \"Altered Carbon,\" and Governor Will Conway in the American version of \"House of Cards\". He has also played Alex Murphy in the 2014 \"RoboCop\" remake, and Rick Flag in the Warner Bros. film adaptations of the DC Comics anti-hero team \"Suicide Squad\" (2016), as well as its sequel, \"The Suicide Squad\" (2021). Since 2019, he has starred as NASA astronaut Ed Baldwin in the Apple TV+ science fiction drama series \"For All Mankind\".\nEarly life.\nCharles Joel Nordstr\u00f6m Kinnaman was born and raised in Stockholm, Sweden. His mother, Bitte (Nordstr\u00f6m), a therapist, is a Swedish citizen. His father, Steve Kinnaman (originally David Kinnaman), is an American who was drafted during the Vietnam War and deserted the military from his base in Bangkok. Kinnaman is a dual citizen of Sweden and the United States. His father, whose family was from the American Midwest, is of Irish and Scottish descent; whereas his maternal grandmother is of Ukrainian Jewish descent. \nHe has five sisters, one of whom is actress Melinda Kinnaman (paternal half-sister). During his childhood, Kinnaman learned two languages as he \"spoke English with my dad and Swedish with my mom\". He grew up with fellow actors Alexander Skarsg\u00e5rd and Noomi Rapace, and spent a year in Del Valle, Texas, as a high school exchange student. After graduating from high school, he decided to travel around the world. To finance the trips, he worked in various jobs \u2014 as a beer factory line worker and roof-sweeper in Norway, and as a bar manager in the French Alps. He then traveled for four to five months at a time over a period of two years in Southeast Asia and South America, the latter with fellow Scandinavian actor David Dencik.\nCareer.\nKinnaman began his acting career as a child actor in Swedish soap opera \"\" (1990). His older sister was dating one of the show's directors, and he asked Kinnaman to audition for a part on the show. After portraying Felix Lundstr\u00f6m in 22 episodes, he stepped away from acting.\nKinnaman restarted his acting career in 2002. While studying at drama school, Kinnaman featured in several films such as \"Hannah med H\" and \"God Save the King\" (Swedish: \"Tjenare kungen\"). He also worked on productions staged at the Backa Theatre in Gothenburg. He graduated from Malm\u00f6 Theatre Academy in 2007 and started working at the Gothenburg City Theatre. In the same year, he attracted the attention of Swedish media with the role of Raskolnikov in a stage adaptation of \"Crime and Punishment\". In 2009, he starred in the film \"In Your Veins\" (Swedish: \"\") and played the role of a police informant in six films of the \"Johan Falk\" film series. He was cast in the film \"Easy Money\" (released January 2010), which brought him mainstream attention in Sweden and at the international film market, and also earned him a Guldbagge Award in the Best Actor category.\nLooking to expand his acting career, Kinnaman hired an agent in the United States. It was announced in the spring of 2010 that he would be making his international film debut in the thriller \"The Darkest Hour\", which began filming in Moscow in June 2010 and was released in December 2011. Between April 2011 and August 2014, Kinnaman had a four-season starring role as Detective Stephen Holder in the AMC television series \"The Killing\", based on the Danish television series \"Forbrydelsen\". Kinnaman was one of the contenders for the lead roles in \"Thor\" (2011) and \"\" (2015). Although Kinnaman said that he is eager to work and become recognized in the U.S., he added that \"I absolutely don't feel that I have to take any role that I can get just because it is the United States. I'm looking for something interesting, I'm still young in my artistry, and I must dare to do things even when there's a risk for failure\".\nIn 2012, Kinnaman reunited with \"Easy Money\" director Daniel Espinosa in the latter's Hollywood debut, \"Safe House\", and also starred in the indie film \"Lola Versus\". On 3 March 2012, it was confirmed that Kinnaman would play the lead role of Alex James Murphy/RoboCop in the remake of 1987's \"RoboCop\". The film was released in February 2014. In 2015, he starred in the action thriller \"Run All Night\" and mystery drama \"Child 44\".\nIn 2016, Kinnaman played Rick Flag in the Warner Bros. film adaptation of DC Comics anti-hero team \"Suicide Squad\", directed by David Ayer. He reprised his role as Rick Flag in its 2021 sequel/soft reboot, \"The Suicide Squad\", directed by James Gunn. He also starred in the independent drama-thriller film \"Edge of Winter\", in which he plays Elliot Baker, a father of two who takes his children on a shooting trip that goes wrong. The film was released on demand on 27 July 2016, and in select theaters on 12 August 2016.\nBetween 2016 and 2019, Kinnaman worked on 4 different original productions of streaming television networks such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+. Kinnaman played Governor Will Conway in Seasons 4 and 5 of the American version of \"House of Cards\" on the streaming service Netflix, and the protagonist Takeshi Kovacs in Netflix's \"Altered Carbon\", an adaption of Richard K. Morgan's hardboiled cyberpunk science fiction novel of the same name. Also in 2019, Kinnaman starred as Erik in the Amazon Prime Video series \"Hanna,\" an adaptation of the 2011 action film of the same name. Since 2019, Kinnaman starred as NASA astronaut Ed Baldwin in the Apple TV+ original science fiction space drama series \"For All Mankind\".\nIn 2019, Kinnaman played Pete Koslow in Andrea Di Stefano's action thriller film \"The Informer.\" In 2020, Kinnaman starred as Thomas Steinman in Yuval Adler's post-war thriller \"The Secrets We Keep\". Kinnaman also starred in J\u00e9r\u00e9mie Guez's crime drama \"Brothers by Blood\" which was released in the United States in 2021. In January 2021, it was announced that Kinnaman was cast in Season 4 of the \"In Treatment\" reboot at HBO. He will star as Adam, the on and off boyfriend of the main character Dr. Brooke Taylor (played by Uzo Aduba). He also reprised his role as Ed Baldwin in Season 2 of \"For All Mankind\", which aired in 2021.\nBetween 2022 and 2023, Kinnaman reprised his role as Ed Baldwin in Season 3 of \"For All Mankind\" and once again for Season 4, airing in 2022 and 2023 respectively.\nPersonal life.\nKinnaman grew up with the condition of pectus excavatum, with a caved-in appearance of the chest. He underwent surgery prior to the filming of \"Altered Carbon\", inserting two metal bars to push the sternum outward to correct the deformity.\nKinnaman has been a fan of his hometown football club Hammarby IF from an early age.\nDue to his constant traveling, Kinnaman's accent is noticeably mixed. While he identifies it as an American accent, he has stated that the \"melody\" is wrong and has since been working to perfect it.\nKinnaman was married to Swedish tattoo artist Cleo Wattenstr\u00f6m from 2015 to 2018. He subsequently began a relationship with Swedish-Australian model Kelly Gale in early 2019. The couple announced their engagement in January 2021. Gale confirmed via Instagram that the couple married in 2024 during the Burning Man Festival. \nLegal issues.\nOn 6 August 2021, Kinnaman filed and was granted a temporary restraining order against Gabriella Magnusson, whom he alleged was threatening him in an attempt to extort him after they had been in a brief romantic relationship in late 2018. Magnusson denied trying to extort Kinnaman. On 11 August 2021, the Swedish Prosecution Authority confirmed that Kinnaman had been accused of rape in an ongoing investigation. The investigation was closed without prosecution in October 2022.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "49260324": "House of Cards season 5\nSeason of the American television drama series House of Cards\nThe fifth season of \"House of Cards\", an American political drama television series created by Beau Willimon for Netflix, was released on May 30, 2017. Frank Pugliese and Melissa James Gibson took over as showrunners in place of Willimon, who departed the series. The fifth season follows Frank and Claire Underwood (Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright) and their attempt to win the 2016 presidential election against Republican Party nominee Will Conway (Joel Kinnaman). The Underwoods are also faced with mounting insubordination from staff and congressional colleagues as the threat of impeachment looms.\nFollowing a series of sexual misconduct allegations made against Kevin Spacey in October 2017, Netflix fired the actor, making the fifth season his final appearance in the series. It consists of 13 episodes and was followed up by a final sixth season released in 2018.\nProduction.\nCasting began for the season on June 17, 2016. Filming had begun by July 20, 2016, and finished by February 14, 2017.\nOn January 28, 2016, Netflix renewed \"House of Cards\" for a fifth season. It was also announced that series creator Beau Willimon would step down as showrunner following the fourth season. It was announced in February 2016 that Melissa James Gibson and Frank Pugliese, who both joined the show in the third season, would serve as co-showrunners for the fifth season. In October 2016, it was announced that Patricia Clarkson and Campbell Scott had been cast for the fifth season. The first trailer for the season was released on May 1, 2017. The season was released on May 30, 2017.\nEpisodes.\n<onlyinclude></onlyinclude>\nReception.\nCritical response.\nOn Rotten Tomatoes, the season has an approval rating of 72% based on 46 reviews, with an average rating of 7.1/10. The consensus reads, \"\"House of Cards\" enjoys a confident return to form this season, though its outlandish edge is tempered slightly by the current political climate.\" On Metacritic, the season has a weighted average score of 60 out of 100, based on 11 critics, indicating \"mixed or average reviews\".\nAccolades.\n\"House of Cards\" received four major nominations for the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series, Kevin Spacey for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, Robin Wright for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, and Michael Kelly for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series.\nControversy.\nFollowing the fifth season's release during early production of the sixth season in October 2017, sexual misconduct allegations against Kevin Spacey surfaced. Netflix briefly halted production and made the decision in November 2017 to part ways with the actor, marking the fifth season as his final appearance in the series.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "40007287": "Frank Underwood (House of Cards)\nFictional 46th president of the United States in House of Cards\nFrancis Joseph Underwood is a fictional character and the villain protagonist of the American adaptation of \"House of Cards\", portrayed by Kevin Spacey. He is depicted as a ruthless politician who rises from United States House of Representatives majority whip to president of the United States through treachery, deception and murder. He is based on Francis Urquhart, the protagonist of the British novel and television series \"House of Cards\", from which the American Netflix series is drawn. He is married to Claire Underwood (Robin Wright), and also had a sexual relationship with Zoe Barnes (Kate Mara) in season 1. He made his first appearance in the series' pilot episode, \"Chapter 1\".\nUnderwood is from Gaffney, South Carolina. He graduated from The Sentinel (a fictionalized version of The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina) in 1980 and, subsequently, Harvard Law School in 1984. Some of Underwood's dialogue throughout the series is presented in a direct address to the audience, a narrative technique that breaks the fourth wall. The character speaks with a Southern accent. During season 1, he is the Democratic majority whip in the United States House of Representatives. In season 2, he is the newly appointed vice president of the United States, before becoming president of the United States in the season finale.\nUnderwood has been described as conniving, Machiavellian, sociopathic, and a symbol of political corruption. Throughout the series, he manipulates and destroys several people, including those he calls friends, for his own ends. Among other crimes, he personally commits murder twice, signs off on another murder committed by a subordinate, orders the deaths of two former employees, critically injures a member of his cabinet to prevent her testifying against him, attempts to murder his wife, and indirectly allows the murder of a civilian for political ends.\nWhile Spacey received positive reviews for his portrayal of Frank Underwood, the character itself has been criticized for its repetitive nature, as well as one-dimensionality. Spacey was one of the first three actors playing leading roles in web-television series to be nominated for Primetime Emmy Awards at the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards. Spacey has also been nominated for two Golden Globe Awards, winning one, and five Screen Actors Guild Awards, including two cast nominations and including two wins, for his performances.\nOn November 3, 2017, following sexual assault claims made against Spacey, Netflix cut ties with the actor, putting the character's fate in question. In a teaser trailer for the sixth season of \"House of Cards\", it is shown that Underwood died in 2017 and is now buried next to his father in South Carolina. The series finale reveals that his right-hand man, Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly), poisoned him in order to stop him from killing Claire.\nBackground and description.\nEarly life.\nFrancis J. Underwood was born on November 5, 1959, to Catherine and Calvin T. Underwood in Gaffney, South Carolina. He is an only child. He was raised in impoverished circumstances, with the threat of bank foreclosure on the farm they lived on. He entered The Sentinel, a military school in Charleston, South Carolina, loosely based on The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, in the fall of 1976. He graduated in 1980 and, despite having made poor grades, gained admittance into Harvard Law School. He received his J.D. degree from there in 1984. While at the Sentinel, he had a homosexual relationship with his roommate, Tim Corbet (David Andrews), which lasted until his first year of law school. Underwood was raised Christian and publicly pays lip service to religious faith, but privately holds God in complete contempt and considers Christianity a source of weakness.\nFamily.\nUnderwood's great-great-great-grandfather, Corporal Augustus Elijah Underwood, was a Confederate soldier who served in the 12th South Carolina Infantry Regiment of Samuel McGowan's Brigade at the Battle of Spotsylvania. He served at the Bloody Angle on May 12, 1864, during the Civil War and was killed by a bludgeon to the back of the head from his own regiment during the middle of the night. Underwood is fascinated by his ancestry, even though he dismisses the Confederacy as \"weak\" and their cause of preserving slavery \"asinine\". When Underwood falls into a coma following an assassination attempt, Augustus appears in several of his hallucinations. His great-great grandfather was two when Augustus was killed.\nHis father, Calvin T. Underwood, was a peach farmer in his home town of Gaffney who died at the age of 43 of a heart attack. The Underwoods lived in poverty, and nearly lost the farm when Frank was a child; to get a bank loan and avoid foreclosure, his father attended a meeting of the Ku Klux Klan, of which the bank manager was a member. Underwood speaks fondly of his father in public, but this is a political ploy; in his asides to the audience, Underwood describes his father as a weak man who accomplished nothing with his life. He even urinates on his father's grave in season 3. Despite disliking his father, however, Underwood was influenced by him. Calvin was an abusive alcoholic and caused his wife and son years of misery. Underwood has said that when he was 13, he walked in on his father putting a shotgun in his mouth. Calvin asked him to pull the trigger, which he refused to do. He has stated that his biggest regret is not killing his father when he had the chance.\nPolitical career.\nSouth Carolina Legislature.\nUnderwood was elected at the age of 25 to the South Carolina State Senate as one of the youngest members in the state's legislative history after graduating from Harvard in 1984. He was re-elected to the state senate at 29 in 1988 for his second, and last, term as a State Senator.\nCongressional Election.\nUnderwood was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1990 as a Democratic representative for the 5th Congressional District of South Carolina, being sworn in on January 3, 1991. He won another 11 consecutive elections, winning his final term in 2012. He was elected Whip for the Democratic Party in 2005, serving as House Majority Whip between 2005 and 2013.\nPersonal life.\nPersonality.\nUnderwood is utterly ruthless and Machiavellian, and is willing to commit any crime, including murder, to further his goal of attaining power. Many critics have described him as a sociopath and as \"pure evil\".\nOften, Underwood's thoughts throughout the series are presented in a direct address to the audience, a narrative technique known as breaking the fourth wall. Immediately prior to starring in \"House of Cards\", Spacey had starred in a production of William Shakespeare's \"Richard III\" as Richard III of England, a character that serves as a partial basis for both Urquhart and Underwood. His last name is derived from Oscar Underwood, who served as the first Democratic House Minority Whip from about 1900 to 1901. His few vices include smoking cigarettes and playing video games; when the Secret Service cuts off his online gaming service after he becomes vice president, he takes up creating model figurines.\nSpacey viewed portraying Underwood for a second season as a continuing learning process. \"There is so much I don't know about Francis, so much that I'm learning... I've always thought that the profession closest to that of an actor is being a detective... We are given clues by writers... Then you lay them all out and try to make them come alive as a character who's complex and surprising, maybe even to yourself.\"\nAccording to \"Time\" television critic James Poniewozik, by the end of the first episode, it becomes clear that Underwood both literally and figuratively uses meat as his metaphor of choice. He may begin a day with a celebratory rack of ribs, because \"I'm feelin' hungry today!\", and he depicts his life with meat metaphors. For example, he describes the White House Chief of Staff with grudging admiration: \"She's as tough as a two-dollar steak\" and plans to destroy an enemy the way \"you devour a whale. One bite at a time\". He also endures a tedious weekly meeting with House leaders, as he tells the audience, by \"[imagining] their lightly salted faces frying in a skillet.\"\nTim Goodman of \"The Hollywood Reporter\" notes that, in Season 2, with Underwood's new position as vice president, \"He's got more power now and that means he instills more fear in his enemies\". At one point during the season, he states \"The road to power is paved with hypocrisy and casualties. I need to prove what the vice president is capable of.\" Underwood and Claire \"continue their ruthless rise to power as threats mount on all fronts.\"\nSexuality.\nUnderwood's sexuality is ambiguous throughout much of the first two seasons; he has sexual liaisons with both men and women, but he is never explicitly identified by any sexual label. Before Season 2, various sources speculated about his homosexuality. It is revealed in \"Chapter 8\" he had an experience with homosexuality in college. Underwood and Claire are never depicted having sex in season 1. \"Slate\" journalist Hanna Rosin noted: if Frank and Claire Underwood were a real-life Washington couple and they were found each to be having an affair, he would be accused of being \"secretly gay, turned on by women only when he can use them for a pure power play\". Other sources make no definite stance on Underwood's sexuality, but hypothesize that he is not sexually attracted to Claire. In season 2, Underwood is involved in a threesome with Claire and Secret Service agent Edward Meechum (Nathan Darrow), while in season 3, there is a moment of sexual tension between Underwood and his biographer, Tom Yates (Paul Sparks), who later embarks in a physical and romantic emotional relationship with Claire. The same season, however, also features the only scene in the series in which Underwood and Claire have sex exclusively with each other. In season five, he has sex with Eric Rawlings (Malcolm Madera), his male personal trainer.\nRelationships.\nRelationship with Claire Underwood.\nStelter described Frank and Claire Underwood as a \"scheming\" couple. Michael Dobbs, the author of the trilogy of novels upon which the British miniseries is based, compares the compelling nature of their relationship favorably to the characters in the original miniseries, and likens them to Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Underwood says, \"I love that woman. I love her more than sharks love blood.\" While Underwood is Machiavellian, Claire, like Lady Macbeth, encourages her husband to do whatever is necessary to seize power. Hank Stuever of \"The Washington Post\" describes her as an ice-queen wife. She encourages his vices while noting her disapproval of his weakness, saying, \"My husband doesn't apologize... even to me.\" Her overt encouragement gives a credibility to their symbiosis. Smith says \"The Underwoods have proven themselves almost robotic in their pursuit of power.\" Upon viewing a four-episode preview of season 2, Goodman says the series \"...sells husband and wife power-at-all-costs couple...as a little too oily and reptilian for anyone's good.\" Willimon notes that \"What's extraordinary about Frank and Claire is there is deep love and mutual respect, but the way they achieve this is by operating on a completely different set of rules than the rest of us typically do.\" \"Los Angeles Times\" critic Mary McNamara makes the case that \"House of Cards\" is a love story on many levels, but most importantly between Underwood and Claire. It is a story about a man who will commit any crime imaginable while in pursuit of power and a political wife who gives him the encouragement to pursue that power.\nUnderwood and Claire engage in a threesome with their Secret Service bodyguard Edward Meechum at one point in season 2, but have otherwise largely given up intramarital and extramarital sex in favor of their pursuit of power. \"International Business Times\" critic Ellen Killoran notes that this may relate back to Underwood's quotation of Oscar Wilde to Zoe Barnes in Season 1: \"A great man once said, 'everything is about sex \"except\" sex. Sex is about \"power\".'\" Avoiding sex may retain the balance of power in their relationship. His relationship with Claire is the epicenter of season 2.\nRelationship with Zoe Barnes.\nUnderwood develops an intimate relationship with \"Washington Herald\" and \"Slugline\" reporter Zoe Barnes (Kate Mara), with Claire's knowledge. As the show begins, Barnes is desperate to rise from covering the Fairfax County Council beat to covering what's going on \"behind the veil of power in the Capitol hallways.\" By the end of the first episode, Barnes is among the cadre of Underwood's accomplices. They begin a relationship, with Barnes promising to earn his trust and not \"ask any questions\" in return for his supplying her with sensitive political information. Toward the end of Season 1, she ends their personal relationship and begins investigating his connection to the apparent suicide of Congressman Peter Russo (Corey Stoll) (Underwood had in fact killed him by flooding his car with carbon monoxide while the Congressman was passed out drunk). Underwood ultimately kills Barnes in the season 2 premiere, by pushing her in front of an oncoming Washington Metro train after she begins to follow clues related to the murder.\nRelationship with Edward Meechum.\nUnderwood is fond of the head of his Secret Service detail, Edward Meechum (Nathan Darrow), and it is hinted several times that they harbor unacknowledged sexual feelings for each other. When Meechum stumbles upon Underwood watching pornography, Underwood and Claire joke about there being sexual chemistry between the two men. Shortly after Underwood becomes vice president, he, Claire and Meechum have a threesome.\nMeechum remains Underwood's bodyguard once he becomes the president, and there does not appear to be any continuing sexual relationship. Meechum remains fiercely loyal, however; he warns Underwood's biographer Tom Yates (Paul Sparks) not to write anything that would damage Underwood's reputation. In season 4, Underwood traces Meechum's hand with a marker on one of the walls of the White House when he wants to replace a Confederate painting; Meechum suggests he put up something he likes instead.\nWhen Lucas Goodwin shoots Underwood during a campaign event, Meechum trades fire with the would-be assassin, and both die at the scene. Meechum's death is one of the tragedies Claire mentions in a press briefing for a gun control bill she is sponsoring, and Underwood has him buried in Arlington National Cemetery, a rare privilege for a Secret Service agent. When Underwood recovers and finds that Meechum's hand tracing has been painted over, he expresses grief and regret at the loss to Claire, who says that Meechum was one of the few people who truly understood them.\nUnderwood-Urquhart comparisons.\nUnderwood is an Americanized version of the original BBC series lead character Francis Urquhart, a Machiavellian post-Margaret Thatcher Chief Whip of the Conservative Party. Urquhart employs deceit, cunning, murder, and blackmail to influence and pursue the office of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. According to series producer Beau Willimon, the change in last name stemmed from the \"Dickensian\" feeling and \"more legitimately American\" sounding resonance of the name 'Underwood'. Whereas Urquhart is an aristocrat by birth, Underwood is a self-made man, having been born into a poor Southern family with an alcoholic father. Urquhart was one of television's first antiheroes, whereas Underwood follows the more recent rash of antiheroes that includes Tony Soprano of \"The Sopranos\", Walter White of \"Breaking Bad\", and Dexter Morgan of \"Dexter\". However, unlike most other antiheroes, Underwood is not forced into immorality either by circumstance (White), birth (Soprano) or upbringing (Morgan). In his review of Season 2, \"Slant Magazine\"'s Alan Jones writes that Underwood is evil by choice. Although the character is based on the BBC show's lead character, in interviews during the writing and filming of season 2, creator and showrunner Willimon said that he used Lyndon B. Johnson as a source of themes and issues addressed in \"House of Cards\". Unlike the right wing Urquhart, who leads the Conservative Party, Underwood is a member of the Democratic Party, but cares little for ideology in favor of \"ruthless pragmatism\" in furthering his own political influence and power.\nBreaking the fourth wall.\nSpacey summed up Underwood's relationship with the viewer\u2014i.e. whenever he breaks the fourth wall\u2014as being like that of a \"best friend\" and \"the person [he trusts] more than anyone.\" Because of this, his asides to the viewer serves as an indication of Underwood's true feelings and intentions\u2014typically when he is feigning politeness and courtesy to people whom he despises. In the season 2 premiere, after having gone the whole episode without doing so, Underwood addresses the viewer directly, saying, \"Did you think I had forgotten you? Perhaps you hoped I had.\" In addition, in season 3, after an argument with Claire that ends with her storming out on him, a seething Underwood vents his anger by lashing out at the viewer; looking directly into the camera, he snaps \"What're you lookin' at?!\"\nFor the first four seasons, Underwood was the only character to break the fourth wall until the very end of the fourth season, during which Claire\u2014though silent\u2014addresses the camera directly with him. In the fifth season, Claire also addresses the camera directly, on one occasion explaining that she had always known the viewer was there, but didn't know if she could trust them. At the end, after usurping the Presidency from Underwood and deciding not to grant him a pardon, she looks into the camera again and states \"My turn.\"\nFictional character biography.\nSeason 1.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nPower is a lot like real estate. It's all about location, location, location. The closer you are to the source, the higher your property value.\n\u00a0\u2014 Underwood\nAt the start of the show, Underwood is a Democratic Majority Whip in the House of Representatives, where he has represented South Carolina's 5th congressional district since 1990.\nUnderwood is passed over for an appointment as United States Secretary of State even though he had been promised the position after ensuring the election of Colorado Governor Garrett Walker (Michel Gill) as president. Walker's chief of staff, Linda Vasquez (Sakina Jaffrey), gives him this news prior to the January 2013 United States presidential inauguration. With the aid of Claire, and his fiercely loyal Chief of Staff Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly), Underwood uses his position as House Whip to seek retribution. He quickly allies with \"Washington Herald\" reporter Zoe Barnes (Kate Mara), whom he uses to undermine his rivals via the press. The viciousness of Underwood's manipulations escalates over the course of the season. He befriends Pennsylvania Rep. Peter Russo (Corey Stoll), encouraging him to quit drinking and run for Governor of Pennsylvania; then his underlings create enough pressure in the race to push Russo into publicly falling off the wagon and ruining his career. Underwood finally murders him (with unexpected remorse) and makes it look like suicide. He persuades Vice President Jim Matthews (Dan Ziskie) to resign so he can run for the office he previously held, Governor of Pennsylvania, the race being wide open following Russo's death. In the season finale, \"Chapter 13\", Underwood is appointed Vice President to replace Matthews.\nSeason 2.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nThere are two types of vice presidents: doormats and Matadors. Which do you think I intend to be?\n\u00a0\u2014 Underwood\nUnderwood assumes the position of Vice President of the United States. Over the course of the season, he \"faces challenges from similarly ambitious businessmen, the Chinese government and Congress itself\" as he continues to pursue his political aspirations. His plotline revolves around battles with billionaire Raymond Tusk (Gerald McRaney), involving Chinese money laundering. Over the course of the season his biggest challenges are the institutional power of the Office of the President and Tusk's power as a billionaire industrialist.\nHe finds new rivals in Tusk, who seeks to maintain his position as Walker's right-hand adviser against Underwood's intrusion, and his former communications director, Remy Danton (Mahershala Ali), who is now a lobbyist working with Tusk.\nAt the beginning of the season, Underwood is trying to erase all links to Russo's death. Thus, he kills Barnes by shoving her in front of an oncoming Washington Metro train, and frames her colleague and lover Lucas Goodwin (Sebastian Arcelus) for cyberterrorism. Another early task for newly promoted Underwood is finding his own replacement as House Majority Whip. He supports Jacqueline Sharp (Molly Parker), a military veteran and third-term Representative from California, although he refrains from offering public backing.\nToward the end of the season, Underwood orchestrates Walker's downfall. He secretly leaks the details of the money laundering, for which Walker is blamed. While publicly supporting Walker, Underwood works behind the scenes to have him impeached, with Sharp's help. In the season finale, \"Chapter 26\", Walker resigns, and Underwood succeeds him as President of the United States.\nSeason 3.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nWhen they bury me, it won't be in my backyard, and when they come to pay their respects, they'll have to wait in line.\n\u00a0\u2014 Underwood\nSeason 3 begins with Underwood's presidency off to a rocky start: six months into his term, he is unpopular with the public, and Congress is blocking his attempts to move legislation forward. He plans to secure his legacy with an ambitious jobs bill, America Works, but the Democratic Congressional leadership refuses to support it; they also tell him that they will not support him if he seeks the presidential nomination in the next election. He nominates Claire for United States Ambassador to the United Nations, but her nomination is defeated after she makes a gaffe during a Senate nomination hearing.\nUnderwood announces that he will not run for reelection, and advocates for America Works, which he intends to pay for by stripping entitlement programs. He fails to get the bill through Congress and uses that as a reason to renege on his promise to not run in 2016. Solicitor General Heather Dunbar (Elizabeth Marvel) announces that she will seek the presidential nomination, and actually gives Underwood a battle. Underwood convinces Sharp to get married so she can announce her candidacy, for the sole reason of sapping women's votes from Dunbar, at which point she will withdraw and accept the nomination for VP. After the presidential debate, in which Underwood publicly humiliates Sharp in order to go after Dunbar, Sharp retaliates by backing Dunbar's campaign. Ultimately, however, Underwood wins the Iowa caucuses.\nMeanwhile, the Underwoods' marriage is faltering. Underwood gives Claire the ambassador job in a recess appointment, but she is forced to resign in order to solve a diplomatic crisis. Claire begins to question whether she still loves her husband, and they get into an ugly fight in which he tells her that she is nothing without him. Season 3 ends with Claire leaving Underwood as he prepares for the New Hampshire primary.\nSeason 4.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nThat's right, we don't submit to terror. We \"make\" the terror.\n\u00a0\u2014 Underwood\nUnderwood trails Dunbar in the polls, eventually losing the New Hampshire primary. Realizing that he needs Claire to win, he persuades her to come back by promising to support her run for a congressional district in Texas. However, he sandbags her prospective candidacy by endorsing a political ally's daughter, in order to keep Claire focused on his campaign. On the day of the South Carolina primary, Claire retaliates by arranging for two compromising photos to be leaked: one of Underwood's father with a Klansman, and one of Underwood posing with a Confederate Civil War re-enactor. Underwood deduces that Claire was behind the leaks, and confronts her. Claire calmly admits what she did, and puts forth a proposition: that"}, "descending_order": ["49260324", "40007287", "28077217"], "permutation_1": ["49260324", "40007287", "28077217"], "permutation_2": ["49260324", "40007287", "28077217"], "permutation_3": ["49260324", "28077217", "40007287"]}
{"id": "nq_6460577503260443185", "docs_added": {"50635073": "Scars to Your Beautiful\n\"Scars to Your Beautiful\" is a song recorded by Canadian singer-songwriter Alessia Cara. Def Jam Recordings and Universal Music Group serviced it to contemporary hit radio on July 26, 2016, as the third single from her debut studio album \"Know-It-All\" (2015). A pop ballad, the song was written by Cara along with its producers Pop & Oak, Sebastian Kole, and DJ Frank E.\nIn the United States, \"Scars to Your Beautiful\" peaked at number eight. It marked Cara's second top-ten single on US \"Billboard\" Hot 100. It also reached the top ten in Australia, Iceland, Slovenia, and Sweden.\nBackground.\nCara felt motivated to make the song after viewing an episode of \"Botched\". In an interview with Idolator's Mike Wass, Cara stated about the process behind the song:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"Basically, that song is about body image. It's directed at women, but I think men can relate to it as well. It's just a song about these things that certain women go through on a daily basis in order to feel loved or in order to love themselves. I think that's such a thing that goes on in today's world. These weird things are instilled in us. You know? They tell us that we\u2019re not good enough or that there's only one kind of beauty. This song basically is contradicting that idea. It's saying, 'Well, if the world doesn't like how you look then they should change. They should change their perspective. You don\u2019t have to change yourself.' I mean, I thought that that was important, you know, just to put out next. Especially because I think that's kind of the direction we're going in, you know, with 'Here'. 'Here' was about not belonging anywhere and 'Wild Things' was about finding a space you belong. Now 'Scars To Your Beautiful' is basically about embracing yourself and finally coming to that conclusion where you feel love and you can love yourself. I think it's cool to put out third because I feel like I have a bigger platform now. The point of the song is to reach as many women, or people, as possible.\"\nCara also noted that the song was inspired by Christina Aguilera's 2002 ballad \"Beautiful\".\nCritical reception.\n\"The Guardian\"'s Kitty Empire said that \"There's substance on Scars to Your Beautiful, where Cara tackles the beauty myth \u00e0 la Beyonc\u00e9. The verses pack some good stuff \u2013 'What's a little bit of hunger? I can go a little bit longer.'\" and later went on to say \"the thumping motivational chorus merely suggests we are all stars.\" Katy Iandoli of Idolator stated \"Scars to Your Beautiful is a modern-day version of TLC's 'Unpretty', in its acknowledgment of the beauty in both visible and invisible imperfections.\"\n\"Billboard\" ranked \"Scars to Your Beautiful\" at number 77 on their \"Billboard\"'s 100 Best Pop Songs of 2016: Critics' Picks\" list, commenting \u201cBody-positivity anthems typically don't get this dark, but on \"Scars To Your Beautiful,\" Alessia Cara isn't afraid to talk cutting, tears and eating disorders, before getting to the uplifting chorus, where she delivers some of the most empowering, horizon-expanding lyrics of this year: \u2018You don't have to change a thing / The world could change its heart.\u2019\u201d\nMusic video.\nThe music video was published on July 11, 2016, with a cameo appearance by singer JoJo.\nBackground.\nOn the concept of the music video, LALALALALALCara said in an interview with \"Cosmopolitan\": \"I wanted to do this kind of video for a very long time. Since we had this song \u2014 and since we knew it was going to be a single \u2014 I had this vision of many different cinematic shots of different kinds of people. I wanted all kinds of people \u2014 young, old, whatever their situation, whether it's visible scars, non-visible scars \u2014 just a bunch of different women, and there are some men in there as well because it can reach out to guys too. But I wanted real shots of real people telling their stories, and showing the story through little vignettes.\"\nImpact and usage in media.\nThe song is featured in episodes of the television shows \"The Bold Type\", \"\", and \"Family Law\".\nThe song was used in the international trailer of \"A Wrinkle in Time\", as well as the background music for the introduction video of \"Dirt Rally 2.0\".\nIn 2018, the song was featured in television commercials for ULTA Beauty.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "33456745": "Scars on 45\nScars on 45 are an English indie rock band from Bradford.\nRecent success.\nAfter years struggling to become known in England, the band rose from obscurity when their song \"Beauty's Running Wild\" was featured in an episode of \"\".\nThe band were soon signed to Atlantic Records' Chop Shop Records label, which has been successful in getting previously-unsigned bands heard through song placements in popular TV programmes. The band's single, \"Heart on Fire\" was selected as the lead song for the eighth series's soundtrack on ABC's top-rated hospital drama, \"Grey's Anatomy\".\nScars on 45\u2019s first EP, \"Give Me Something\", was released in January 2011 and yielded a hit single of the same name that rose to the top 5 of the Adult Alternative Charts and was recognised as one of the \"Top 3 Singles of the Year\" by Amazon.com. The quintette was also named to \"Entertainment Weekly's\" \"Must List\".\nTheir second EP, which also features \"Heart on Fire\", was released on 24 October 2011.\nThe band released \"Scars on 45\", their first full-length studio album, on 10 April 2012. The album was selected by the editors at Amazon.com as number 7 out of 50 \"Best Albums of 2012\".\nHistory.\nEarly years (2007 - present).\nWhen a broken foot ended lead singer Danny Bemrose's professional football career as a striker for Huddersfield Town A.F.C., he earnestly decided to learn how to play his father's guitar. After his injury, Bemrose struck up a close friendship with another former footballer, Stuart Nichols, who had played for rival Bradford City A.F.C. Bemrose taught Nichols to play bass as they spent the next few years improving their skills and making computer recordings to develop their music. After adding pianist/keyboard player David \"Nova\" Nowakowski, the band began playing the local music scene, rounding out their performances with a variety of other guitarists and drummers that came and went over time.\nWhen Bemrose wrote \"Insecurity\", which is featured on the \"Heart on Fire\" EP, the band began looking for a female singer that could complement his vocals. Soon thereafter, Nova was at home playing The Cure's \"Friday I'm in Love\" while his visiting schoolmate, Aimee Driver, was making a cup of tea and chimed in with the lyrics. \"I just started singing along when Nova rushed in seeming really shocked,\" Driver recalls. \"I thought his dad had a heart attack or something! He made me stand there in his living room and sing to him - which was the scariest thing ever at the time. At first I wouldn't do it, but he wouldn't shut up so I just put my tea down, shut my eyes and sang...just to stop him pestering me. Danny recorded me on 'Insecurity'. The next thing I knew I was in the band. When I told my family and friends they were saying, 'but you can't sing, can you?'\" Before joining the band, Driver had never performed in public.\nStuart Nichols recruited drummer Chris Durling after meeting him in a pub and giving him a CD of the band's music. After a late night out, Durling returned to his house and gave it a listen. He enjoyed the results and agreed to work with them on recordings. He ended up becoming the final member of the band a short time later.\nThe band had difficulties deciding on a name. They realised that a name was critical after a chance meeting with one of their musical influences, Noel Gallagher of Oasis. A friend introduced Nichols and Bemrose to Gallagher who asked the band's name, but they did not have one. \"A band with no name?\" Gallagher reportedly asked, \"What kind of fucking band is that?\" and walked off on them.\nThe name Scars on 45 comes from an Emmylou Harris interview Bemrose heard in which she talks about scratching up her dad's records and being scolded by him for getting \"Scars on his 45\u2019s\", and is also a play on a Dutch medley act from the 1980s whose group name and records alternately used versions of the phrase \"Stars on 45\". 'Scars on 45' was one of the few names considered that band members did not dismiss out of hand.\n2010 \u2013 present.\nOn several occasions, the band was poised on the brink of success only to have their hopes for a record deal dashed at the last moment. When their song \"Beauty's Running Wild\" was selected for an extended closing scene of an episode of \"CSI: New York\", they finally had a select amount of money in hand to purchase equipment for recording. They also caught the ear of TV music supervisor Alex Patsavas. At the time, Patsavas had just entered an agreement with Atlantic Records to acquire her Chop Shop label under which the band is now signed.\nTheir EP \"Give Me Something\" was released digitally by Chop Shop Records in January 2011, and the physical EP came out in June. A video for the single \"Give Me Something\", produced by DJ Brauner, turned out a bit darker and sadder than originally scripted. \"The video was weird,\" explained Bemrose. \"It tells the tale of young kids that fall in love, going through the years, and at the very end, the old fella walks back to the tree where they'd carved their names, and she's passed away. That's not how it was supposed to be. There was an old woman cast to play the part, so at the end, both were going to be there and fall in love again, but [the actor] couldn't be bothered to turn up, so we just killed her off.\"\nOn 13 September 2011, the \"Grey's Anatomy Vol. 4\" soundtrack was released featuring \"Heart on Fire\" as the lead track. The song was also used heavily in ABC's TV promotion of the new season, and a music video directed by Jordan Bahat was produced with the band for the ABC Music Lounge. In addition to \"CSI: New York\" and \"Grey's Anatomy\", they have also had their music featured on TV's \"One Tree Hill\", \"The Cleaner\", \"Pretty Little Liars\", \"Warehouse 13\", \"Lost Girl\", and \"Supernatural\". Their second EP with Chop Shop Records, \"Heart on Fire\", debuted on 24 October 2011, as well as the band's cut of the music video, also directed by Bahat.\nIn the winter of 2012, the band conducted their first headlining tour of North America, featuring support from solo artist Anya Marina who is also signed to Atlantic's Chop Shop record label. Scars on 45 also participated in a west coast tour with The Fray in February 2012. After supporting The Fray, Scars on 45 resumed the final dates of their headline tour. The band made their American network television debut as musical guests on \"The Tonight Show with Jay Leno\" on Friday, 2 March 2012. The band's self-titled debut album, \"Scars on 45\", was released on 10 April 2012. In support of the album, Apple's iTunes featured the album's 6th track, \"Burn the House Down\", as the free \"single of the week\". The album also entered Billboard's \"Heatseekers\" album chart in the number 4 position. Scars on 45 played some solo dates in April, and toured with singer Ingrid Michaelson for dates in May 2012. After that they headlined throughout the summer and played additional dates in support of \"The Voice\" finalist Dia Frampton. On 10 August 2012, Scars on 45 played a show back home in Bradford, Yorkshire, England, at The Live Lounge (also known as Utopia) which was a venue dedicated to supporting local musicians. In September 2012 Scars on 45 embarked on their first European tour, supporting American recording artist/songwriter Joshua Radin, including dates in Sweden, The Netherlands, Germany, England, Scotland and Ireland. The band toured US with dates beginning in October 2012. \nIn early 2014 the band were touring the US and the UK to promote their album \"Safety In Numbers\", which was released on 7 October 2014 in the US and 23 February in the UK.\nIn April 2015, the band released its \"Tasted Every Tear\" EP, with four tracks: the title track, \"Runaway\", \"Show Me What I Want\", and \"Love Plays Blind\". In late 2015, Scars on 45 was back in the US performing select private shows before heading back to the UK to work on their third record.\nIn November 2016, the hit CW television show \"Reign\" featured the band's song \"Golden\" in the 5th episode of season 3, titled \"In a Clearing\".\nIn October 2017, the band announced that Aimee made the decision to stop touring with the band for the foreseeable future (however she came back and had recently toured in America) . It was announced that Katie Dean would fill in for the remainder of shows in 2017 including their slot supporting Tori Amos.\nOn 3 August 2018 the band released their third studio album, \"Satellite Town\".\nThe band had scheduled a limited dates American tour in June 2020 that would feature co-vocalist Aimee Driver, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all scheduled performances were cancelled. The band pivoted to perform virtually, including a performance for Downtown Boise's \"Alive After Five\" music series, and for ticketed performances streaming via Zoom. The band has used the time on lockdown to actively write and record new music for their 4th studio album.\nIn February 2021 Scars on 45 had four music credits in the movie short \"Patrick\", three self penned songs \"Love Can Tear Down Walls\", \"Soul Saver\" and \"Tomorrow Never Knows\" and Lisa Swain Bennet's \"Til Then\".\nThe band's original lineup reunited for a show at the Leeds Beckett Students' Union on 25 January 2025.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "33869414": "Scars &amp; Stories\nScars & Stories is the third studio album by American alternative rock band the Fray. It was released on February 7, 2012.\nBackground.\n\"Scars & Stories\" was recorded beginning in March 2011, and concluded in July 2011. Unlike their debut album \"How to Save a Life\" and their self-titled second album, which were both produced by Aaron Johnson and Mike Flynn, their third album was produced by Brendan O'Brien. During a performance at the Hard Rock cafe in Boston, Massachusetts, Isaac Slade stated that the album \"Scars & Stories\" was named after a B-side that did not make it onto the third record. He went on to explain that each of the band members have been through a lot of hardships, but collectively they were able to pull through.\n\"We've been through a lot of stuff personally, and as band we're still together, and I think we like the idea of scars you know, because they're healed you know. They are not like wounds necessarily, but they're still kind of a road map of where you been, and sometimes kinda point to where you want to go.\"\nThe album artwork was revealed on November 16, 2011; following the video premiere of the first single, Heartbeat.\nThe album was made available to pre-order on October 18, 2011 on the band's website. On December 20, 2011 the deluxe edition of the album became available for pre-order on iTunes, featuring 5 bonus tracks; all covers. In addition, the band made the single \"The Fighter\" available for download.\nWriting and recording.\nDuring an interview with Vevo the band revealed that they used part of the album's budget to travel and see the world before writing and recording songs for Scars and Stories. The band wrote over 70 songs, and narrowed it down to what they hoped were the [best 12 songs], most of which were heavily influenced by their travels abroad. For instance, the first single \"Heartbeat\" was inspired by a trip to Rwanda. Slade talked about his encounter with an expatriate woman who was talking about the genocides in Rwanda. In the midst of their conversation she held his hand, and he could feel a pulse, but was unable to tell if it was his pulse or hers.\nAlso the song the sixth track titled \"1961\", personifies the Berlin Wall, as two brothers that are at odds with each other:\n\"We wrote that song about The Berlin Wall and the division it represented in regards to one unified city becoming two cities still under the covering of a country. They're both German, but in a sense, they were as far from each other as they could possibly be. I think that's how our relationships can be sometimes. Not to sound clich\u00e9, but we all as people build these walls that don't really come down until someone comes into our lives, tears them down, and says, 'Enough!'\"\nIn addition the eight track on the album titled \"Munich\" follows the same mode of inspiration, as it is inspired by a particle collider in Switzerland. During an interview Slade mentions that \"...they're looking for the God Particle, basically, the particle that holds it all together. That song is really just about the mystery of why we're all here and what's holding it all together, you know?\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"Scars & Stories may be nothing more than a pleasant retread of The Fray\u2019s established style, but it does a commendable job of delivering quality in lieu of novelty. Every element of the band\u2019s back catalogue can be found here, polished and presented just differently enough to give long time fans a reason to get excited. The record starts strong and gets stronger, with some of its best offerings coming at the back end of the album\u2019s run time. The result is a record that, while admittedly comfortable in its lateral movement, continually improves until you feel like you have grown with it. There is just this overwhelming presence of worthwhile material \u2013 and a sheer surplus of catchiness \u2013 that enables Scars & Stories to unravel gradually and gracefully. So if a change in approach means looking towards greener pastures, then The Fray stand stubbornly within their established empire \u2013 and they deliver one hell of a defense.\"\n\u2014Sputnikmusic's review of the album.\nJoe King explained \"You pull from different locations and places. There\u2019s the cultures and the different people you meet living life...You have to live life, you have to have experiences in order to be able to write stories.\u201d\nSuch stories served as the inspiration for the tenth track entitled \"48 To Go\". During an interview with Jim Shearer on VH1's Big Morning Buzz Live Slade revealed that inspiration for this song came from a road trip he and his wife, Anna took (while they were just dating) from Denver, Colorado to Los Angeles. During the road trip they stopped multiple times to \"make-out\"; as a result they became lost and ended up 600 miles off course; as Isaac Slade put it \"...[we were] two states in and forty-eight states to go\".\nDuring a performance at the University at Buffalo, Isaac Slade mentions that he wrote the song \"The Fighter\" while on a \"getaway\" in a cottage, located in the mountains of Colorado. The song was inspired by a picture called \"Strictly a Sharpshooter\" by Norman Rockwell that he saw in a book he purchased. The painting depicts a boxer who has succumbed to his opponent, and a female companion by his side.\nReception.\nCommercial performance.\n\"Scars & Stories\" debuted at number 4 on the \"Billboard\" 200 charts, with first-week sales of 87,000 copies.\nCritical reception.\nUpon its release, the album received generally mixed reviews from music critics, and holds a Metacritic score of 55/100, indicating \"generally mixed reviews\". Stephen Thomas Erlewine from Allmusic gave to the album three stars out of five and opined that \"O'Brien helps them articulate their ideas, giving them definition and muscle, attributes that are appealing when the songs lack distinct hooks. A positive review came from Ryan Gardner writer of Absolute Punk, he stated that they \"definitely take a different approach this time around, welcoming producer Brendan O\u2019Brien to the boards, which brings a more rock and roll sound to this record.\" He concluded the review, examining that \"As Scars & Stories comes to a close, it sums up everything The Fray have been about the past seven years. While they don\u2019t throw any curveballs or stir the pot too much, the band definitely stays true to their core, crafting yet another memorable piano pop-rock record with these stories.\" Rusty Redden wrote a positive review for American Songwriter, praising the album for being their \"most-produced and boldest album yet.\" He also mentioned that the band \"achieves a bigger sounding record as Coldplay or Switchfoot, but does so in a way that is unmistakably their own.\" Sputnikmusic's review was also positive, saying that the album \"chooses to defend the band\u2019s empire instead of pushing towards newer and greener pastures.\" \"Billboard\"'s Gary Greff wrote that the album \"pushes things perceptibly forward.\" The A.V. Club gave a negative review, saying \"Ultimately, these mid-tempo, mid-volume tunes flounder in mediocrity.\" Jon Dolan, reviewing for \"Rolling Stone\" magazine, gave a similar review, stating \"They're still pumping American-Coldplay ballads full of sky-groping choruses and symphonic rushes.\" He went on to pan the lyrics, saying \"If it were a Lonely Island parody of an earnest rock band it'd be kind of funny. Unfortunately, the Fray are terrifyingly serious.\" and gave the album 2 stars out of 5.\nMelissa Maerz wrote a mixed review for \"Entertainment Weekly\" that the band is \"too serious\" and that \"even producer Brendan O'Brien can't save Scars & Stories from generic TV-soundtrack mediocrity.\"\nSingles.\nThe lead single from the album is titled \"Heartbeat\". It was released to radio October 8, 2011, and surfaced online via radio music ripping. Shortly after it was officially released for download on October 11, 2011.\nThe music video for the second single, \"Run for Your Life\" was released on March 11, 2012.\nPersonnel.\nThe Fray\nAdditional Musicians\nProduction.\nStudios\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1952016": "Scarling\nAmerican band\nScarling. was an American noise pop band formed in Los Angeles in 2001. The band consisted of lead vocalist Jessicka Addams and guitarist Christian Hejnal.\nName.\nThe band's name comes from a fictional word created by singer/fine artist Jessicka in 1999. In 2001 the definition appeared on Scarling's website: \"Middle English, from Old English scaerlinc, from scar+ -ling, -linc -ling; akin to Old High German von scar, Latin scarnos 1. the smallest mark on your heart left by the healing of a severe injury. 2. he or she who is scarred densely almost emotionless. 3. a mentally challenged/physically handicapped sibling of a normal star. 4. a band from Los Angeles. The \"S\" in Scarling. is sometimes lower case and the word itself ends in a full stop or period.\"\nHistory.\nFormation & \"Sweet Heart Dealer\" (2002-2004).\nScarling. was formed by singer Jessicka Fodera (known simply as Jessicka) after the dissolution of her band, Jack Off Jill, and guitarist Christian Hejnal. They were introduced by guitarist Lisa Leveridge, and they began rehearsing and recording in a San Fernando Valley performance space; after the pair had written a number of songs together, they began a search for additional band members and eventually cemented the first and very short-lived lineup of Scarling.\nIn early 2002, Jessicka was introduced to Long Gone John, owner of Sympathy for the Record Industry, by mutual friend Mark Ryden. On March 19, 2003, Scarling's debut single, \"Band Aid Covers the Bullet Hole\" (produced by Chris Vrenna), was released on the Sympathy for the Record Industry label. Its cover featured an illustration called \"Wound 39\" by Mark Ryden.\nIn April 2004, Scarling. released their debut album, \"Sweet Heart Dealer\", a seven-song release again produced by Vrenna and packaged by Ryden. Later that year, Jessicka was featured on the cover of \"ROCKRGRL\" magazine's vocalist issue. Scarling was then invited to join the lineup of the Robert Smith-organized Festival, performing on select West Coast dates alongside Interpol, The Rapture, Mogwai, Cursive, The Cooper Temple Clause, and longtime inspirations The Cure. Smith described the band's music as \"dark, desperate, chaotic, gorgeous pop music, the sound of the end of the world\" and nominated \"Sweet Heart Dealer\" for the 2004 Shortlist Music Prize. While \"Alternative Press Magazine\" said Scarling. sounded like, \"being French kissed by the most beautiful beings in the world, really alluring yet massive stuff.\" Three weeks before joining the Curiosa tour, drummer Garey Snider left and was briefly replaced by Samantha Maloney in order to perform live at a group art showing at the Copro/Nason Gallery (Santa Monica, California). Weeks later they found drummer Beth Gordon, who served as Scarling's permanent replacement. Scarling, with the help of friend and fill-in bassist Radio Sloan, continued to play around Los Angeles and San Francisco at clubs such as The Bottom Of The Hill, Spaceland and The Troubadour.\nOn October 21, 2004, John Peel, English disc jockey and radio presenter, invited Robert Smith to stand in for him while he was in Peru as a guest DJ on what turned out to be the last Peel Session show. Smith played Scarling's Crispin Glover as one of the tracks in his eclectic set. Scarling. were also chosen by Smith to be part of his Celebrity Playlist on iTunes along with Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, Supergrass, Nirvana, Placebo, The Psychedelic Furs, and several bands that played on the Curiosa tour earlier that year. Smith wrote a quote about each song and wrote \"Beautiful shadows\" next to the Scarling. track.\n\"So Long, Scarecrow\" & touring (2005-2007).\nAfter a series of 7-inch singles on Sympathy, Scarling announced in early 2005 that their second album, \"So Long, Scarecrow\", would appear later that year; it was preceded by the single \"We Are the Music Makers\", and was released on August 23, 2005. \"So Long, Scarecrow\" was co-produced by Rob Campanella, formerly of The Brian Jonestown Massacre, at his studio, The Committee to Keep Music Evil headquarters. The critical reception for \"Scarecrow\" was generally strong: \"Alternative Press\" gave the album a 5 out of 5 rating. Simon Price from The Independent said, \"In contrast to the abrasive JOJ sound, Scarling. work up a wonderfully hazy guitar swirl, reminiscent of post-My Bloody Valentine noise-pop from the Britain of the early Nineties.\" Chris Beyond from \"No-Fi Magazine\" described \"Scarecrow\" as \"somewhere between Blonde Redhead and Sonic Youth and said \"there are 13 tracks on this album, but they leave you wanting more.\" Scarling's was touted as resurrecting goth' by \"Venus\" magazine: \"Goth isn\u2019t dead. It\u2019s just evolved into a sweeter version with Scarling\u2019s variety of distorted but, dare I say, gorgeous version of the once-dreary genre. On the band\u2019s full-length debut, So Long, Scarecrow, frontwoman Jessicka\u2019s syrupy yet cautious vocals are quite different than her former angry, self-mutilating persona in the late \u201990s Marilyn Manson-esque group Jack off Jill.\"\nIn December 2005, Scarling. embarked on its first UK tour, creating a buzz for themselves and selling out most venues. SLS's first single \"City Noise\" is featured on the compilation \"Alright, This Time Just the Girls Vol. 2\" and 2006's \"Staring To The Sun\". The song \"Bummer\" from \"SLS\" was featured on Showtime's \"The L Word\" season 3 episode \"Latecomer\", as well as an Urban Outfitters/Filter magazine compilation. An episode of the medical drama \"Grey's Anatomy\" (season 2) is titled \"Band Aid Covers the Bullet Hole\".\nIn 2006, Scarling continued to tour in the United States and Europe, embarking on their first co-heading with UK shoegaze outfit Amusement Parks on Fire and opening for The Wedding Present and Depeche Mode later in the year.\nHiatus (2007-2013).\nScarling. currently resides in the neighborhood of Silver Lake, Los Angeles, California. On February 14, 2006 (Valentine's Day), while on a break from touring, Jessicka and guitarist Christian Hejnal were engaged. Their wedding took place on October 13, 2007, at the Oviatt Penthouse in Los Angeles. The band was largely on hiatus for six years following their marriage, with Jessicka returning to focus on her art career.\nScarling. performed at the wedding of Bravo's Shear Genius finalist Janine Jarman and Matthew Wolcott at the Houdini Mansion in Hollywood on June 26, 2010.\nReturn to activity (2013-2014).\nJessicka has stated that, after her art show \"Little Grey Secrets\", Scarling. would resume. \nScarling. released their single \"Who Wants To Die For Art?\" digitally in the US on iTunes October 29, 2013. Jessicka Addams suffered health problems shortly after the release of the songs.\nOn May 13, 2014, Mark Ryden released an album entitled \"The Gay Nineties Old Tyme Music: Daisy Bell\", that features Scarling along with other artists all giving a different rendition of the same song, \"Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)\". The album, printed on 180 g red vinyl, was limited to 999 copies, all hand-numbered and signed by Ryden. Half of the records were sold at the Michael Kohn gallery. The proceeds from the record will benefit Little Kids Rock, a nonprofit that supports musical education in disadvantaged elementary schools.\nDiscography.\nStudio albums\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "36698422": "Battle Scars\n\"Battle Scars\" is a song performed by Australian recording artist Guy Sebastian featuring American rapper Lupe Fiasco. It was released digitally in Australia and New Zealand on 10 August 2012 by Sony Music Entertainment. The song lyrics and music were written by Sebastian and David Ryan Harris, with the rap written by Fiasco. It was the third single lifted from Sebastian's seventh album \"Armageddon\". Fiasco added \"Battle Scars\" to his fourth album, \"\" in countries other than Australia. It was released as the fourth single on 28 August 2012, credited as a duet.\n\"Battle Scars\" debuted at number one on the ARIA Singles Chart in its first week of release and has been certified 14\u00d7 platinum. It was Sebastian's tenth of 12 top ten singles in Australia and sixth to reach number one, and Fiasco's third top ten and first number one single. \"Battle Scars\" was the third highest selling single in Australia in 2012, the highest selling single by an Australian act. Sebastian received ARIA Award nominations for Best Pop Release and Best Male Artist for the song. \"Battle Scars\" also reached number two and triple platinum certification in New Zealand and gold certification in Sweden.\nIn the United States \"Battle Scars\" peaked on the \"Billboard\" charts at number 71 on the Hot 100, number 23 on the Digital Song Chart and number one on the R&B/Hip-hop Digital Song Chart.<ref name=\"R&B R&B/Hip-hop Digital Song Chart\">. Billboard.biz. Archived from the original on 13 September 2012.</ref> The song spent 20 nonconsecutive weeks in the Hot 100 and has been certified platinum. \"Battle Scars\" also reached number two in Norway. It was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Duo, Group or Collaboration, and won the R&B/Hip category in the 2013 International Songwriting Competition.\nBackground.\n\"Battle Scars\" is a song about the scars left from hurtful and broken relationships. In a radio interview Sebastian said, \"It's about your own personal battle scars and for every individual those are different; some might be words or labels... it might be relationship scars. When I wrote this song, and when Lupe wrote his bits, we just really wanted it to be something that just inspired people to, sort of, confront those things, and also maybe try and work to think about burying and ripping up those labels; throwing them away.\"\nSebastian said Fiasco was always his first preference to contribute the rap, as he wanted to stay true to the theme of the song and found Fiasco's work very deep. Sebastian said, \"He doesn't rap about booty shaking or cash, he's much more political and insightful and exactly what I wanted.\" He looked at other options as well, as he didn't know if Fiasco would be interested, and said he was overwhelmed when he heard Fiasco wanted to come on board.\nExplaining why he agreed to participate in the song Fiasco said, \"Guy's vocal performance first got me about the song because it's great and then the story of the song was attractive; I just tried to enhance it.\" Speaking of what it meant to have Fiasco collaborate on \"Battle Scars\" Sebastian said, \"Just to get someone like Lupe on the track I knew it was going to have heart and have depth.\" He said of Fiasco, \"He is a lyrical genius and he has really portrayed the emotion of the track\". Sebastian says \"Battle Scars\" is his \"proudest release\", adding, \"Every now and then in your career you release something that you feel has a deeper meaning and purpose. I don't know how it will chart, but I am really proud of it regardless of what it does.\"\nComposition and recording.\n\"Battle Scars\" is an R&B ballad with a hip hop rap, and is written in the key of F minor. Sebastian and Fiasco contribute equally in the song, with the sung and rap vocals interspersed throughout. Sebastian performs the pre-chorus and chorus, with Fiasco performing the intro and two rap verses. Both artists contribute to the bridge. Music writer and radio announcer David Lim said, \"unlike the majority of these rent-a-rapper verses, Lupe Fiasco's contribution here actually feels valid and in equal weighting to Guy's sung vocals. I don't know, y'guys \u2013 it just felt like they spent a minute on this and it's not just another vanity project.\"\nIn interviews during the release week Sebastian explained that usually when he writes a song he comes up with the melody first with no words. However this time some of the lyrics came at the same time. While driving to a friend's house he started singing \"These battle scars\", and then other phrases such as \"Don't look like they're fading, don"}, "descending_order": ["50635073", "33456745", "33869414", "1952016", "36698422"], "permutation_1": ["33869414", "36698422", "1952016", "33456745", "50635073"], "permutation_2": ["33456745", "1952016", "36698422", "50635073", "33869414"], "permutation_3": ["1952016", "50635073", "36698422", "33869414", "33456745"]}
{"id": "nq_4263792488281887333", "docs_added": {"30873818": "Don't Look Back in Anger\n1996 single by Oasis\n\"Don't Look Back in Anger\" is a song by English rock band Oasis. It was written by the band's lead guitarist and chief songwriter Noel Gallagher, and produced by Gallagher and Owen Morris. Released on 19 February 1996 by Creation Records as the fifth single from their second studio album, \"(What's the Story) Morning Glory?\" (1995), it became Oasis's second single to reach number one on the UK Singles Chart, earning a quintuple-platinum sales certification in the UK. It was the first Oasis single with lead vocals by Noel, who had previously only sung lead on B-sides, instead of his brother Liam. Noel would later sing lead vocals on six other singles. The music video was directed by Nigel Dick, featuring the band performing at a mansion where a large group of women appears.\nIt is one of the band's signature songs, and was played at almost every live show from its release to the dissolution of the band in 2009. In 2012, it was ranked number one on a list of the \"50 Most Explosive Choruses\" by \"NME\", and the same year it was voted the fourth-most-popular No. 1 single of the last 60 years in the UK by the public in conjunction with the Official Charts Company's 60th anniversary. In 2015, \"Rolling Stone\" readers voted it the second-greatest Britpop song after \"Common People\" by Pulp. On 29 May 2017, Absolute Radio 90s broadcast a programme counting down the top 50 songs written by Noel Gallagher to mark his 50th birthday, with the song being voted No. 1. In August 2020, the song was voted as the greatest song of the 1990s by listeners of Absolute Radio 90s as part of celebrations for the station's tenth anniversary. In 2025, \"Don't Look Back in Anger\" became Oasis's second song to hit a billion streams in Spotify, after \"Wonderwall\".\nBackground and writing.\nNoel Gallagher was so excited about the potential of the song when he first wrote it that he used an acoustic set to perform a work-in-progress version, without the second verse and with a few other slight lyrical differences, at an Oasis concert at the Sheffield Arena on 22 April 1995. He said before playing that he had only written it the previous Tuesday (18 April 1995) and that he didn't even have a title for it yet.\nNoel Gallagher said of the song, \"It reminds me of a cross between \"All the Young Dudes\" and something the Beatles might have done.\" Of the character \"Sally\" referred to in the song, he commented, \"I don't actually know anybody called Sally. It's just a word that fit, y'know, might as well throw a girl's name in there.\" He explained the song by saying, \"It's about not being upset about the things you might have said or done yesterday, which is quite appropriate at the moment. It's about looking forward rather than looking back. I hate people who look back on the past or talk about what might have been.\" Oasis later said they named the song after David Bowie's 1979 song \"Look Back in Anger\" (from \"Lodger\" (1979)).\nIn August 2007, Gallagher told \"Uncut\" magazine, \"We were in Paris playing with the Verve, and I had the chords for that song and started writing it. We were due to play two days later. Our first-ever big arena gig, it's called Sheffield Arena now. At the sound check, I was strumming away on the acoustic guitar, and our kid (Liam) said, 'What's that you're singin'?' I wasn't singing anyway, I was just making it up. And our kid said, 'Are you singing, 'So Sally can wait'?' And I was like\u2014that's genius! So I started singing, 'So Sally can wait.' I remember going back to the dressing room and writing it out. It all came really quickly after that.\" Gallagher claims that the character \"Lyla\", from Oasis's 2005 single, is Sally's sister. In the interview on the DVD released with the special edition of \"Stop the Clocks\", he also revealed that a girl approached him and asked him if Sally was the same girl mentioned in the Stone Roses track \"Sally Cinnamon\". He replied that he had never thought of that, but thought it was a good reference anyway.\nIn a 2019 \"Esquire\" magazine interview, Gallagher stated, \"I remember writing it in Paris on a rainy night. We had just played a strip club: our set finished, the strippers came on. We were nothing, an insignificant little band. And I remember going back to my hotel room and writing it, and thinking, 'That'll be pretty good when we record it.' If I'd have known that night what I know now about people playing it at fucking funerals and weddings, I'd never have finished the song. Too much pressure.\"\nGallagher admits that certain lines from the song are lifted from John Lennon: \"I got this tape in the United States that had apparently been burgled from the Dakota Hotel and someone had found these cassettes. Lennon was starting to record his memoirs on tape. He's going on about 'trying to start a revolution from me [sic] bed, because they said the brains I had went to my head.' I thought, 'Thank you, I'll take that!'\" The line \"revolution from me bed\" refers to Lennon's notorious bed-ins in 1969 as Gallagher was reading \"\" published in 1994. The piano in the introduction of the song strongly resembles Lennon's \"Imagine\", as well as \"Watching the Wheels\".\nAs Oasis are often criticised for borrowing parts of other artists' songs, Gallagher commented on the intro's similarity to \"Imagine\":\nRelease.\nThe single's picture sleeve contains a photo by Brian Cannon. He intended the cover as a homage to an incident where Ringo Starr, having briefly left the Beatles in 1968 during the recording of the \"White Album\", was persuaded to return and George Harrison decorated Starr's drum kit in red, white and blue flowers to show their appreciation.<ref name=\"NME/Oasis\"></ref>\nThe B-side \"Step Out\" was originally intended for the \"(What's the Story) Morning Glory?\" album but was taken off after Stevie Wonder requested 10 per cent of the royalties as the chorus bore a similarity to his song \"Uptight (Everything's Alright)\". Because of this, Wonder, Henry Cosby and Sylvia Moy received credit for writing the song, along with Noel.\nThe song's chart success coincided with its usage at the end of the final episode of the BBC television drama \"Our Friends in the North\". The show's producers had included the track without knowing it was going to be released as a single.\nCritical reception.\n\"Don't Look Back in Anger\" was met with high critical praise and it became a commercial hit. Larry Flick from \"Billboard\" said, \"Noel Gallagher reveals a deft sense of timing and craft that turn his improprieties into masterful pop gems.\" David Stubbs from \"Melody Maker\" commented, \"It's Oasis at their least incandescent, another outing for the chamber orchestra, supposedly elegiac but actually coming across as jaded and shagged. The chorus sounds like a Mott the Hoople reunion gig.\" The Stud Brothers of \"Melody Maker\" stated, \"From its 'Imagine' intro to its storming conclusion this is, as we all already know, a very good song indeed.\" \"Music Week\" rated it five out of five and named it Single of the Week, writing, \"Cheekily opening with John Lennon's \"Imagine\" riff, another Beatles-inspired single which will turn on the fans on Brits day. The inclusion of the ill-advised Slade cover of \"Cum On Feel the Noize\" is a low point, however.\" John Robinson from \"NME\" remarked, \"When That Noel Moment arrives with 'Don't Look Back in Anger', he instructs us not to \"put your life in the hands of a rock and roll band\".\" Andrew Harrison from \"Select\" praised it as \"superior\" and \"sung beautiful by Noel.\" He felt the song \"captures a wistful mood of confusion and loss, but you're never sure what it's all about.\" Also editors Helen Lamont and Leesa Daniels from \"Smash Hits\" gave the single five out of five in two separate reviews. Lamont named it \"a new rock 'n' roll classic, imagine that.\" Daniels wrote, \"Noel's turn to have a go at the singing lark, and by God it's fantastic! A rip-roaring, fist-punching-the-air type of anthem.\"\nIn December 1996, \"Melody Maker\" ranked \"Don't Look Back in Anger\" number 31 in their list of \"Singles of the Year\". In a 2006 readers' poll conducted by \"Q\" magazine, it was voted the 20th-best song of all time. In May 2007, \"NME\" magazine placed \"Don't Look Back in Anger\" at No. 14 in its list of the \"50 Greatest Indie Anthems Ever\".\nChart performance.\nThe song reached No. 1 in the singles charts of Ireland and the United Kingdom, and it was a moderate success by reaching the top 60 in various countries. The song was the 10th-biggest-selling single of 1996 in the UK. It is Oasis's second-biggest-selling single in the UK (after \"Wonderwall\"), going quintuple platinum in the process. The song returned to the UK charts in 2017 following Chris Martin and Jonny Buckland's cover version at the One Love Manchester concert, reaching No. 25. \"Don't Look Back in Anger\" is Oasis's sixth-biggest \"Billboard\" hit in the US, reaching the No. 10 spot on the Modern Rock Tracks for the week of 22 June 1996.\nMusic video.\nThe accompanying music video for \"Don't Look Back in Anger\" was directed by British music video and film director Nigel Dick and features Patrick Macnee, the actor who played John Steed in the 1960s television series \"The Avengers\", apparently a favourite of Oasis. It was filmed at 1145 Arden Road in Pasadena, California on 4 December 1995. It features the band being driven by Macnee in a black cab to a mansion similar to the Playboy Mansion and performing the song there; a group of women dressed in white also occasionally lip sync to the lyrics. While filming the video, drummer Alan White met future wife Liz Carey, who also became as one of the models for the video. They married on 13 August 1997 at Studley Priory in Oxfordshire, but later divorced in 2004.\nThere are two uploads of the music video made available on YouTube. One being posted by the band themselves in 2008 with over 229 million views, and another posted in collaboration with Vevo in 2014 with over 120 million views.\nLive performances.\nThe song became a favourite at Oasis's live performances.\nNoel Gallagher encouraged the crowd to sing along and often kept quiet during the first chorus, allowing the fans instead to sing along while he played the song's guitar part. During the Dig Out Your Soul Tour, Noel abandoned the song's previous, full-band live arrangement in favour of a much slower, primarily acoustic arrangement. From 2008 through to Oasis's break-up, the song was performed by Gallagher on his Gibson J-200 acoustic guitar backed up by Gem Archer on electric guitar, Jay Darlington playing keyboards and Chris Sharrock playing tambourine. On 11 and 12 July 2009, during performances of the song at London's Wembley Stadium, Gallagher did not sing a word; instead, he stood back, played guitar, and allowed the crowd to sing the entire song. Since 2011, he has alternated between the acoustic version and the original arrangement when playing the song with his solo project, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds.\nOasis became the first act since the Jam to perform two songs on the same showing of \"Top of the Pops\", performing \"Don't Look Back in Anger\", followed by their cover of Slade's \"Cum on Feel the Noize\", also on the single.\nIn June 2017, Liam Gallagher performed an a cappella version of the song at Glastonbury, making it the first time he had performed the song rather than Noel.\nManchester Arena bombing.\nFollowing the Manchester Arena bombing on 22 May 2017 in the band's hometown of Manchester, the song was used by the people of Manchester in remembrance of the bombing's 22 victims and to show the city's spirit. The song was sung by students of Manchester's Chetham's music school on 23 May, and on 25 May it was spontaneously sung by the crowd gathered for a minute of silence in the city centre. The woman who started the singing told \"The Guardian\", \"I love Manchester, and Oasis is part of my childhood. \"Don't Look Back in Anger\"\u2014that's what this is about: we can't be looking backwards to what happened, we have to look forwards to the future.\" The song re-entered the charts, along with Ariana Grande's \"One Last Time,\" which was No. 1 on the iTunes single charts as of 26 May. On 27 May, the song was performed as a tribute by 50,000 audience members of a performance by the Courteeners in Manchester.\nIt was performed by Coldplay's Chris Martin and Jonny Buckland on either side of Ariana Grande at the One Love Manchester concert on 4 June 2017. Martin introduced the song by saying \"Ariana, you've been singing a lot for us, so I think we in Britain want to sing for you. This is called \"Don't Look Back in Anger\", and this is from us to you\".\nIt was also performed by the military band of the French Republican Guard on 13 June 2017, at the France versus England football match at the Stade de France, as a tribute to the victims of the attacks in Manchester and, more recently, London.\nTrack listing.\nAll songs were written by Noel Gallagher except where noted.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nPersonnel.\nOasis\nAdditional personnel\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "73437": "Dont Look Back\n1967 documentary film directed by D. A. Pennebaker\nDont Look Back is a 1967 American documentary film directed by D. A. Pennebaker that covers Bob Dylan's 1965 concert tour in England.\nIn 1998, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being deemed \"culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant\". In a 2014 \"Sight & Sound\" poll, film critics voted \"Dont Look Back\" the joint ninth best documentary film of all time.\nSynopsis.\nThe opening scene of the film has Bob Dylan displaying and discarding a series of cue cards bearing selected words and phrases from the lyrics to his 1965 song \"Subterranean Homesick Blues\" (including intentional misspellings and puns). This was the first single from his most recent album, \"Bringing It All Back Home\", and a top ten hit in the UK when he filmed it there (a fact discussed in the film). Allen Ginsberg appears in the background having a discussion with Bob Neuwirth.\nThe film features Joan Baez, Donovan and Alan Price (who had just left the Animals), Dylan's manager Albert Grossman and his road manager Neuwirth. Marianne Faithfull, John Mayall, Ginger Baker and Allen Ginsberg may also be glimpsed in the background. Notable scenes include:\nTitle.\nThe original title of this film is \"Dont Look Back\", without an apostrophe in the first word. D. A. Pennebaker, the film's writer director, decided to punctuate the title this way because \"It was my attempt to simplify the language\". Many sources, however, have assumed this to be a typographical error and have \"corrected\" the title to \"Don't Look Back\". In the commentary track to the DVD release, Pennebaker said that the title came from the Satchel Paige quote, \"Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you,\" and that Dylan shared this view.\nProduction.\n\"Dont Look Back\" was shot in black-and-white with a handheld 16mm-film camera and utilized direct sound, thus creating the template for the \"rockumentary\" film genre. Production began when Dylan arrived in England on April 26, 1965, and ended shortly after his final UK concert at the Royal Albert Hall on May 10. Pennebaker has stated that the famous \"Subterranean Homesick Blues\" music video that is shown at the beginning of the film was actually shot at the very end of filming. Pennebaker decided during editing to place it at the beginning of the film as a \"stage\" for Dylan to begin the film.\nRelease.\nThe film was first shown publicly May 17, 1967, at the Presidio Theater in San Francisco, and opened that September at the 34th Street East Theater in New York.\nA transcript of the film, with photographs, was published in 1968 by Ballantine Books.\nReception and legacy.\n\"Dont Look Back\" has been very well received by critics. It has a rating of 91% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 55 reviews. The websites critics consensus reads, \"\"Dont [sic] Look Back\" leaves the mysteries of Dylan largely intact while offering a gripping verite-style account of a pivotal moment in his incredible career.\" The film received a 5-star review from AllMovie and has a Metacritic score of 84, indicating \"universal acclaim\". In August 1967, a \"Newsweek\" reviewer wrote, \"\"Dont Look Back\" is really about fame and how it menaces art, about the press and how it categorizes, bowdlerizes, sterilizes, universalizes or conventionalizes an original like Dylan into something it can dimly understand\".\nKurt Cobain identified it as the only \"good documentary about rock and roll\" in a 1991 interview with his Nirvana bandmates, a sentiment with which Dave Grohl concurred.\nThe film has been parodied and paid homage to by many other films and television shows including \"This Is Spinal Tap\", \"Bob Roberts\", and \"Documentary Now!\". The opening sequence featuring \"Subterranean Homesick Blues\" has likewise inspired many music videos, including INXS' \"Mediate\", MC Evidence's \"The Far Left,\" \"Weird Al\" Yankovic's \"Bob\" and Hozier's \"Almost (Sweet Music),\" and was cited by journalist Roger Friedman as \"the most copied, most revered, music video of all time\".\nHome media.\n\"Dont Look Back\" has been released and re-released on home video in many formats, from VHS to Blu-ray, over the decades. A digitally remastered deluxe DVD edition was released on February 27, 2007. The two-disc edition contained the remastered film, five additional audio tracks, commentary by filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker and Tour Road Manager Bob Neuwirth, an alternative version of the video for \"Subterranean Homesick Blues\", the original companion book edited by D. A. Pennebaker to coincide with the film's release in 1968, a flip-book for a section of the \"Subterranean Homesick Blues\" video, and a brand new documentary by D. A. Pennebaker and edited by Walker Lamond called \"65 Revisited\". The DVD packaging was also given new artwork.\nOn November 24, 2015, The Criterion Collection released a newly restored 4K transfer of the film on Blu-ray and DVD. The Criterion version contained new special features.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "954551": "Look Back in Anger\n1956 play by John Osborne\nLook Back in Anger (1956) is a realist play written by John Osborne. It focuses on the life and marital struggles of an intelligent and educated but disaffected young man of working-class origin, Jimmy Porter, and his equally competent yet impassive upper-middle-class wife Alison. The supporting characters include Cliff Lewis, an amiable Welsh lodger who attempts to keep the peace; and Helena Charles, Alison's snobbish friend.\nOsborne drew inspiration from his personal life and failing marriage with Pamela Lane while writing \"Look Back in Anger\", which was his first successful outing as a playwright. The play spawned the term \"angry young men\" to describe Osborne and those of his generation who employed the harshness of realism in the theatre in contrast to the more escapist theatre that characterised the previous generation. This harsh realism has led to \"Look Back in Anger\" being considered one of the first examples of kitchen sink drama in theatre.\nThe play was received favourably in the theatre community, becoming an enormous commercial success, transferring to the West End and Broadway, and even touring to Moscow. It is credited with turning Osborne from a struggling playwright into a wealthy and famous personality, and also won him the Evening Standard Drama Award as the most promising playwright of 1956. The play was adapted into a motion picture of the same name by Tony Richardson, starring Richard Burton and Mary Ure, which was released in 1959. Film production credited circa 1958.\nSynopsis.\nAct 1.\nAct 1 opens on a dismal April Sunday afternoon in Jimmy and Alison's cramped attic in the Midlands. Jimmy and Cliff are reading the Sunday papers, plus the radical weekly, \"price ninepence, obtainable at any bookstall\" as Jimmy snaps, claiming it from Cliff. This is a reference to the \"New Statesman\", and in the context of the period would have instantly signalled the pair's political preference to the audience. Alison is attempting to do the week's ironing and is only half listening as Jimmy and Cliff engage in the expository dialogue.\nIt becomes apparent that there is a huge social gulf between Jimmy and Alison. Her family is upper-middle-class military, while Jimmy belongs to the working class. He had to fight hard against her family's disapproval to win her. \"Alison's mummy and I took one look at each other, and from then on the age of chivalry was dead,\" he explains. We also learn that the sole family income is derived from a sweets confectionery stall in the local market\u2014an enterprise that is surely well beneath Jimmy's education, let alone Alison's \"station in life\".\nAs Act 1 progresses, Jimmy becomes more and more vituperative, transferring his contempt for Alison's family onto her personally, calling her \"pusillanimous\" and generally belittling her to Cliff. (Some actors play this scene as though Jimmy thinks everything is just a joke, while others play it as though he really is excoriating her.) The tirade ends with physical horseplay, resulting in the ironing board overturning and Alison's arm getting burned. Jimmy exits to play his trumpet off stage.\nAlison, alone with Cliff, confides that she's accidentally pregnant and can't quite bring herself to tell Jimmy. Cliff urges her to tell him. When Jimmy returns, Alison announces that her actress friend Helena Charles is coming to stay; Jimmy despises Helena even more than Alison, he flies into a rage.\nAct 2.\nAct 2 opens on another Sunday afternoon, with Helena and Alison making lunch. In a two-handed scene, Alison says that she decided to marry Jimmy because of\nher own minor rebellion against her upbringing and her admiration for Jimmy's campaigns against the dereliction of life in postwar England. She describes Jimmy to Helena as a \"knight in shining armour\". Helena says, firmly, \"You've got to fight him\".\nJimmy enters, and the tirade continues. If his Act 1 material could be played as a joke, there's no doubt about the intentional viciousness of his attacks on Helena. When the women put on hats and declare that they are going to church, Jimmy's sense of betrayal peaks. When he leaves to take an urgent phone call, Helena announces that she has forced the issue. She has sent a telegram to Alison's parents asking them to come and \"rescue\" her. Alison is stunned but agrees that she will go.\nThe next evening, Alison's father, Colonel Redfern, comes to collect her to take her back to her family home. The playwright allows the Colonel to come across as quite a sympathetic character, albeit totally out of touch with the modern world, as he himself admits. \"You're hurt because everything's changed\", Alison tells him, \"and Jimmy's hurt because everything's stayed the same\". Helena arrives to say goodbye, intending to leave very soon herself. Alison is surprised that Helena is staying on for another day, but she leaves, giving Cliff a note for Jimmy. Cliff in turn hands it to Helena and leaves, saying \"I hope he rams it up your nostrils\".\nAlmost immediately, Jimmy bursts in. His contempt at finding a \"goodbye\" note makes him turn on Helena again, warning her to keep out of his way until she leaves. Helena tells him that Alison is expecting a baby, and Jimmy admits grudgingly that he's taken aback. However, his tirade continues. They first come to physical blows, and then as the Act\u00a02 curtain falls, Jimmy and Helena are kissing passionately and falling on the bed.\nAct 3.\nAct 3 opens as a deliberate replay of Act\u00a01, but this time with Helena at the ironing-board wearing Jimmy's Act\u00a01 red shirt. Months have passed. Jimmy is notably more pleasant to Helena than he was to Alison in Act\u00a01. She actually laughs at his jokes, and the three of them (Jimmy, Cliff, and Helena) get into a music hall comedy routine that obviously is not improvised. Cliff announces that he's decided to strike out on his own. As Jimmy leaves the room to get ready for a final night out for the three of them, he opens the door to find Alison, looking like death. He snaps over his shoulder \"Friend of yours to see you\" and abruptly leaves.\nAlison explains to Helena that she lost the baby (one of Jimmy's cruellest speeches in Act\u00a01 expressed the wish that Alison would conceive a child and lose it). The two women are reconciled, but Helena realises that what she's done is immoral and she in turn decides to leave. She summons Jimmy to hear her decision and he lets her go with a sarcastic farewell.\nThe play ends with a sentimental reconciliation between Jimmy and Alison. They revive an old game they used to play, pretending to be bears and squirrels, and seem to be in a state of truce.\nBackground of the play.\nWritten in 17 days in a deck chair on Morecambe Pier, \"Look Back in Anger\" was a strongly autobiographical piece based on Osborne's unhappy marriage to actress Pamela Lane and their life in cramped accommodation in Derby. While Osborne aspired towards a career in theatre, Lane was more practical and materialistic. It also draws from Osborne's earlier life; for example, the wrenching speech of witnessing a loved one's death was a replay of the death of his father, Thomas.\nWhat it is best remembered for, though, are Jimmy's tirades. Some of these are directed against generalised British middle-class smugness in the post-atomic world. Many are directed against the female characters, a very distinct echo of Osborne's uneasiness with women, including his mother, Nellie Beatrice, whom he describes in his autobiography \"A Better Class of Person\" as \"hypocritical, self-absorbed, calculating and indifferent\". Madeline, the lost love Jimmy pines for, is based on Stella Linden, the older rep-company actress who first encouraged Osborne to write. After the first production in London, Osborne began a relationship with Mary Ure, who played Alison; he divorced his first wife (of five years) Pamela Lane to marry Ure in 1957.\nCast and characters.\nCharacters:\nProduction.\nThe play was premiered at London's Royal Court Theatre, on 8 May 1956 by the English Stage Company under the direction of Tony Richardson, setting by Alan Tagg, and music for songs by Tom Eastwood. The press release called the author an \"angry young man\", a phrase that came to represent a new movement in 1950s British theatre. Audiences supposedly gasped at the sight of an ironing board on a London stage.\nThe cast was as follows: Kenneth Haigh (Jimmy), Alan Bates (Cliff), Mary Ure (Alison), Helena Hughes (Helena Charles) and John Welsh (Colonel Redfern). The following year, the production moved to Broadway under producer David Merrick and director Tony Richardson. Retaining the original cast but starring Vivienne Drummond as Helena, it received three Tony Award nominations, including for Best Play and Best Dramatic Actress for Ure.\nCritical reception.\nAt the time of production reviews of \"Look Back in Anger\" were deeply negative. Kenneth Tynan and Harold Hobson were among the few critics to praise it, and they now are regarded among the more influential critics of the time.\nFor example, on BBC Radio's \"The Critics\", Ivor Brown began his review by describing the play's setting\u2014a one-room flat in the Midlands\u2014as \"unspeakably dirty and squalid\" such that it was difficult for him to \"believe that a colonel's daughter, brought up with some standards\", would have lived in it. He expressed anger at having watched something that \"wasted [his] time\". The \"Daily Mail\"'s Cecil Wilson wrote that the beauty of Mary Ure was \"frittered away\" on a pathetic wife, who, \"judging by the time she spends ironing, seems to have taken on the nation's laundry\". Indeed, Alison, Ure's character, irons during Act One, makes lunch in Act Two, and leaves the ironing to her rival in Act Three.\nOn the other hand, Kenneth Tynan wrote that he \"could not love anyone who did not wish to see \"Look Back in Anger\"\", describing the play as a \"minor miracle\" containing \"all the qualities...one had despaired of ever seeing on the stage\u2014the drift towards anarchy, the instinctive leftishness, the automatic rejection of \"official\" attitudes, the surrealist sense of humour (e.g.,\u00a0Jimmy describes an effeminate male friend as a 'female Emily Bront\u00eb'), the casual promiscuity, the sense of lacking a crusade worth fighting for and, underlying all these, the determination that no one who dies shall go unmourned.\" Harold Hobson was also quick to recognise the importance of the play \"as a landmark of British theatre\". He praised Osborne for the play, despite the fact that \"blinkers still obscure his vision\".\nAlan Sillitoe, author of \"Saturday Night and Sunday Morning\" and \"The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner\" (both of which are also part of the \"angry young men\" movement), wrote that Osborne \"didn't contribute to British theatre, he set off a landmine and blew most of it up\".\nOther notable productions.\nBates reprised his role as Cliff Lewis, alongside Drummond as Helena Charles, on ITV's \"Play of the Week\" in 1956, shortly after the theatrical production premiered. Richard Pasco and Doreen Aris assumed the roles of Jimmy and Alison Porter, respectively. It was co-directed by Richardson and Silvio Narizzano.\nThe Renaissance Theatre Company's August 1989 production at the Lyric Theatre, London was directed by Judi Dench, with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. A television version of the production was broadcast in Britain in December of that year. In 1995, Greg Hersov directed a production at the Royal Exchange, Manchester with Michael Sheen as Jimmy, Claire Skinner as Alison, Dominic Rowan as Cliff, and Hermione Norris as Helena. Hersov directed a second production in 1999, again starring Sheen, at the Royal National Theatre in London.\nIn 2012, it was adapted by Sam Gold off-Broadway starring Matthew Rhys, Adam Driver, and Sarah Goldberg at the Roundabout Theatre Company. A 2024 adaptation started by Billy Howle as Jimmy, Ellora Torchia as Alison, Morfydd Clark as Helena, and Iwan Davies as Cliff at the Almeida Theatre.\nSequel.\nIn 1989 Osborne wrote a sequel to the play titled \"D\u00e9j\u00e0vu\", which was first produced in 1992. \"D\u00e9j\u00e0vu\" depicted Jimmy Porter, now known as J.P., in middle age, living with his daughter Alison. He rants about the state of the country to his old friend Cliff, while his Alison irons, just as her mother had done in \"Look Back\". The play was not a commercial success, closing after seven weeks. It was Osborne's last play.\nIn popular culture.\n\"Look Back in Anger\"'s turtleneck sweater, and wife ironing while wearing a slip, became symbols that both represented the Angry Young Men movement and which others satirised.\nReferences.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "25825389": "Don't Look Back (Fine Young Cannibals song)\n\"Don't Look Back\" is a song by British pop-rock band Fine Young Cannibals. It was released as the third single from the band's 1988 album \"The Raw & the Cooked\". The song reached the top 40 charts in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.\nMusic and lyrics.\nWritten by lead vocalist Roland Gift and bassist David Steele, the lyrics of \"Don't Look Back\" are mostly pessimistic, and depict someone who tries desperately to leave their difficult past behind them without looking back. \nWhile the band's previous two hits, the US number ones \"She Drives Me Crazy\" and \"Good Thing\", were influenced by American rhythm and blues, \"Don't Look Back\" features guitar riffs that are more reminiscent of The Byrds and The Beatles.\nRelease and reception.\nReleased in August 1989, \"Don't Look Back\" hit number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart, number 8 on the Singles Sales chart, number 18 on the Hot 100 Airplay chart, number 9 on the Modern Rock chart and number 10 on the Cash Box Top 100 chart.\nThe song peaked at number 10 on the Canadian Singles Chart in October. \nIt also reached number 34 in the UK, \nnumber 23 in New Zealand, and number 38 in Australia.\nChart performance.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "7967316": "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)\n\"It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)\" is a song written and performed by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and first released on his 1965 album \"Bringing It All Back Home\". It was written in the summer of 1964, first performed live on October 10, 1964, and recorded on January 15, 1965. It is described by Dylan biographer Howard Sounes as a \"grim masterpiece\".\nAmong the well-known lines sung in the song are \"He not busy being born is busy dying,\" \"Money doesn't talk, it swears,\" \"Although the masters make the rules, for the wisemen and the fools\" and \"But even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.\" The lyrics express Dylan's anger at the perceived hypocrisy, commercialism, consumerism, and war mentality in contemporary American culture. Dylan's preoccupations in the lyrics, nevertheless, extend beyond the socio-political, expressing existential concerns, touching on urgent matters of personal experience.\nDylan said that \"It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)\" is one of his songs that means the most to him, and he has played the song often in live concerts. Since its original release on \"Bringing It All Back Home\", live versions of the song have been issued on ', \"Before the Flood\", ', and \"Bob Dylan at Budokan\". Dylan can also be seen performing the song in the film \"Dont Look Back\" and the video of the HBO special \"Hard to Handle\". The song has been covered by a number of other artists, including Roger McGuinn, the Byrds, Billy Preston, Hugo Race, Terence Trent D'Arby, Mick Farren, Caetano Veloso, Marilyn Scott, and The Duh"}, "descending_order": ["73437", "30873818", "954551", "25825389", "7967316"], "permutation_1": ["30873818", "73437", "7967316", "25825389", "954551"], "permutation_2": ["954551", "25825389", "7967316", "30873818", "73437"], "permutation_3": ["30873818", "7967316", "954551", "25825389", "73437"]}
{"id": "nq_3349222009418924424", "docs_added": {"871053": "Tom and Jerry\nAmerican cartoon series and franchise\nTom and Jerry is an American animated media franchise and series of comedy short films created in 1940 by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Best known for its 161 theatrical short films by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the series centers on the enmity between the titular characters of a cat named Tom and a mouse named Jerry. Many shorts also feature several recurring characters.\nIn its original run, Hanna and Barbera produced 114 \"Tom and Jerry\" shorts for MGM from 1940 to 1958. During this time, they won seven Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Film, tying for first place with Walt Disney's \"Silly Symphonies\" with the most awards in the category. After the MGM cartoon studio closed in 1957, MGM revived the series with Gene Deitch directing an additional 13 \"Tom and Jerry\" shorts for Rembrandt Films in Czechoslovakia from 1961 to 1962. \"Tom and Jerry\" became the highest-grossing animated short film series of that time, overtaking \"Looney Tunes\". Chuck Jones produced another 34 shorts with Sib Tower 12 Productions between 1963 and 1967. Five more shorts have been produced since 2001, making a total of 166 shorts.\nA number of spin-offs have been made, including the television series \"The Tom and Jerry Show\" (1975), \"The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show\" (1980\u20131982), \"Tom & Jerry Kids\" (1990\u20131993), \"Tom and Jerry Tales\" (2006\u20132008), and \"The Tom and Jerry Show\" (2014\u20132021). In 1992, the first feature-length film based on the series, \"\", was released. 13 direct-to-video films have been produced since 2002. In 2019, a musical adaptation of the series, titled \"Tom and Jerry: Purr-Chance to Dream\", debuted in Japan, in advance of \"Tom and Jerry\"'s 80th anniversary. In 2021, a live-action/animated hybrid film was released.\nPlot.\nThe series features comic fights between an iconic set of adversaries, a house cat (Tom) and a house mouse (Jerry). The plots of many shorts are often set in the backdrop of a house, centering on Tom (who is often enlisted by a human) trying to capture Jerry, and the mayhem and destruction that follows. Tom rarely succeeds in catching Jerry, mainly because of Jerry's cleverness, cunning abilities, and luck. However, on several occasions, they have displayed genuine friendship and concern for each other's well-being. At other times, the pair set aside their rivalry in order to pursue a common goal, such as when a baby escapes the watch of a negligent babysitter, causing Tom and Jerry to pursue the baby and keep it away from danger, in the shorts \"Busy Buddies\" and \"Tot Watchers\" respectively. Despite their endless attacks on one another, they have saved each other's lives every time they were truly in danger, except in \"The Two Mouseketeers\", which features an uncharacteristically morbid ending, and \"Blue Cat Blues\", where both sit on a railroad track at the end after being jilted by girlfriends. The cartoon irises out with the whistle of an oncoming steam train.\nThe cartoons are known for some of the most violent cartoon gags ever devised in theatrical animation: Tom may use axes, hammers, firearms, firecrackers, explosives, traps and poison to kill Jerry. Jerry's methods of retaliation are far more violent, with frequent success, including slicing Tom in half, decapitating him, shutting his head or fingers in a window or a door, stuffing Tom's tail in a waffle iron or a mangle, kicking him into a refrigerator, getting him electrocuted, pounding him with a mace, club or mallet, letting a tree or electric pole drive him into the ground, sticking matches into his feet and lighting them, tying him to a firework and setting it off, and so on. While \"Tom and Jerry\" has often been criticized as excessively violent, there is no blood or gore in any scene.\nMusic plays a very important part in the shorts, emphasizing the action, filling in for traditional sound effects, and lending emotion to the scenes. Musical director Scott Bradley created complex scores that combined elements of jazz, classical, and pop music. Bradley often used contemporary pop songs and songs from other films, including MGM films like \"The Wizard of Oz\" and \"Meet Me in St. Louis\".\nEven though Tom and Jerry almost never speak, the shorts also often had dialogue from other characters. Minor characters are not similarly limited, and the two lead characters speak English on rare occasions. For example, the character Mammy Two Shoes has lines in nearly every cartoon in which she appears. Most of the vocal effects used for Tom and Jerry are their high-pitched laughs and gasping screams.\nCharacters.\nTom and Jerry.\nTom, named \"Jasper\" in his debut appearance, is a gray and white domestic shorthair cat. \"Tom\" is a generic name for a male cat. He is usually but not always, portrayed as living a comfortable, or even pampered life, while Jerry, whose name is not explicitly mentioned in his debut appearance, is a small, brown house mouse who always lives in close proximity to Tom. Despite being very energetic, determined and much larger, Tom is no match for Jerry's wits. Jerry possesses surprising strength for his size, approximately the equivalent of Tom's, lifting items such as anvils with relative ease and withstanding considerable impacts.\nAlthough cats typically chase mice to eat them, it is quite rare for Tom to actually try to eat Jerry. He tries to hurt or compete with him just to taunt Jerry, even as revenge, or to obtain a reward from a human, including his owner(s)/master(s), for catching Jerry, or for generally doing his job well as a house cat. By the final \"fade-out\" of each cartoon, Jerry usually gets the best of Tom.\nOther results may be reached. On rare occasions, Tom triumphs, usually when Jerry becomes the aggressor or he pushes Tom a little too far. In \"The Million Dollar Cat\", Jerry learns that Tom will lose his newly acquired wealth if he harms any animal, especially mice. He then torments Tom a little too much until he retaliates. In \"Timid Tabby\" Tom's look-alike cousin pushes Jerry over the edge. Occasionally and usually ironically, they both lose, usually because Jerry's last trap or attack on Tom backfires on him or he overlooks something. In Chuck Jones' \"Filet Meow\", Jerry orders a shark from the pet store to scare Tom away from eating a goldfish. Afterward, the shark scares Jerry away as well. They occasionally end up being friends, although there is often a last-minute event that ruins the truce. One cartoon that has a friendly ending is \"Snowbody Loves Me\".\nBoth characters display sadistic tendencies, in that they are equally likely to take pleasure in tormenting each other, although it is often in response to a triggering event. However, when one character appears to truly be in mortal danger from an unplanned situation or due to actions by a third party, the other will develop a conscience and save him. Occasionally, they bond over a mutual sentiment towards an unpleasant experience and their attacking each other is more play than serious attacks. Multiple shorts show the two getting along with minimal difficulty, and they are more than capable of working together when the situation calls for it, usually against a third party who manages to torture and humiliate them both.\nSometimes this partnership is forgotten quickly when an unexpected event happens, or when one character feels that the other is no longer necessary. This is the case in \"Posse Cat\", when they agree that Jerry will allow himself to be caught if Tom agrees to share his reward dinner, but Tom then reneges. Other times, Tom keeps his promise to Jerry and the partnerships are not quickly dissolved after the problem is solved.\nTom changes his love interest many times. The first love interest is Toots who appears in \"Puss n' Toots\", and calls him \"Tommy\" in \"The Mouse Comes to Dinner\". He is interested in a cat called Toots in \"The Zoot Cat\" although she has a different appearance to the original Toots. The most frequent love interest of Tom's is Toodles Galore, who never has any dialogue in the cartoons.\nDespite five shorts ending with a depiction of Tom's apparent death, his demise is never permanent. He even reads about his own death in a flashback in \"Jerry's Diary\". He appears to die in explosions in \"Mouse Trouble\", after which he is seen in heaven, \"Yankee Doodle Mouse\" and in \"Safety Second\", while in \"The Two Mouseketeers\" he is guillotined offscreen. The short \"Blue Cat Blues\" ends with both Tom and Jerry sitting on the railroad tracks with the intent of suicide while the whistle of an oncoming train is heard foreshadowing their imminent death.\nTom and Jerry speaking.\nAlthough many supporting and minor characters speak, Tom and Jerry rarely do so themselves. One exception is \"The Lonesome Mouse\" where they speak several times briefly, primarily Jerry, to contrive to get Tom back into the house. Tom more often sings while wooing female cats. For example, Tom sings Louis Jordan's \"Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby\" in the 1946 short \"Solid Serenade\". In that short and \"Zoot Cat\", Tom woos female cats using a deep, heavily French-accented voice in imitation of then-popular leading man, actor Charles Boyer.\nAt the end of \"The Million Dollar Cat\", after beginning to antagonize Jerry he says, \"Gee, I'm throwin' away a million dollars... BUT I'M HAPPY!\". In \"\", Jerry says, \"No, no, no, no, no.\" when choosing the shop to remove his ring. In \"The Mouse Comes to Dinner\", Tom speaks to his girlfriend Toots while inadvertently sitting on a stove: \"Say, what's cookin'?\", to which Toots replies \"You are, stupid.\"\nAnother instance of speech comes in \"Solid Serenade\" and \"The Framed Cat\", where Tom directs Spike through a few dog tricks in a dog-trainer manner. In \"Puss Gets the Boot\", Jerry prays for his life when Tom catches him by the tail. Jerry has whispered in Tom's ear on several occasions. In \"Love Me, Love My Mouse\", Jerry calls Toots \"Mama\".\nCo-director William Hanna provided most of the squeaks, gasps, and other vocal effects for the pair, including the most famous sound effects from the series, Tom's leather-lunged scream, created by recording Hanna's scream and eliminating the beginning and ending of the recording, leaving only the strongest part of the scream on the soundtrack, and Jerry's nervous gulp.\nThe only other reasonably common vocalization is made by Tom when some external reference claims a certain scenario or eventuality to be impossible, which inevitably thwarts Tom's plans \u2013 at which point, a bedraggled and battered Tom appears and says in a haunting, echoing voice \"Don't you believe it!\", a reference to the then-popular 1940s radio show \"Don't You Believe It!\". In \"Mouse Trouble\", Tom says \"Don't you believe it!\" after being beaten up by Jerry, which also happens in \"The Missing Mouse\". In the 1946 short \"Trap Happy\", Tom hires a cat disguised as a mouse exterminator who, after several failed attempts to dispatch Jerry and suffering a lot of accidents in the process, changes profession to \"Cat\" exterminator by crossing out the \"Mouse\" on his title and writing \"CAT\", resulting in Tom spelling out the word out loud before reluctantly pointing at himself.\nOne short, 1956's \"Blue Cat Blues\", is narrated by Jerry in VoiceOver, voiced by Paul Frees, as they try to win back their ladyfriends. Jerry was voiced by Sara Berner during his appearance in the 1945 MGM musical \"Anchors Aweigh\". \"\" is the first, and so far only installment of the series where the famous cat-and-mouse duo regularly speaks or is able to be understood by humans. In that film, Tom was voiced by Richard Kind, and Jerry was voiced by Dana Hill.\nSpike and Tyke.\nIn his attempts to catch Jerry, Tom often has to deal with Spike, known as \"Killer\" and \"Butch\" in some shorts, an angry, vicious but gullible bulldog who tries to attack Tom for bothering him or his son Tyke while trying to get Jerry. Originally, Spike was unnamed and mute, aside from howls and biting noises as well as attacking indiscriminately, not caring whether it was Tom or Jerry though usually attacking Tom. In later cartoons, Spike spoke often, using a voice and expressions, performed by Billy Bletcher and later Daws Butler, modeled after comedian Jimmy Durante. Spike's coat has altered throughout the years between gray and creamy tan. The addition of Spike's son Tyke in the late 1940s led to both a slight softening of Spike's character and a short-lived spin-off theatrical series called \"Spike and Tyke\".\nMost cartoons with Spike in them conform to a theme: usually, Spike is trying to accomplish something, such as building a dog house or sleeping, when Tom and Jerry's antics stop him doing it. Spike then presumably due to prejudice, singles out Tom as the culprit, and threatens him that if it ever happens again, he will do \"something horrible\" to him, effectively forcing Tom to take the blame, while Jerry overhears. Afterward, Jerry usually does anything he can to interrupt whatever Spike is doing, while Tom barely manages to stop him, usually getting injured in the process. Usually, Jerry eventually wrecks whatever Spike is doing in spectacular fashion, and leaves Tom to take the blame, forcing him to flee from Spike and inevitably lose.\nOff-screen, Spike does something to Tom, and Tom is generally shown injured or in a bad situation while Jerry smugly cuddles up to Spike unscathed. Tom sometimes gets irritated with Spike. An example is in \"That's My Pup!\", when Spike forces Tom to run up a tree every time his son barked, causing Tom to hang Tyke on a flag pole. At least once, Tom does something that benefits Spike, who promises not to interfere ever again, causing Jerry to frantically leave the house and run into the distance, in \"Hic-cup Pup\". Spike is well known for his famous \"\"Listen pussycat!\"\" catchphrase when he threatens Tom, his other famous catchphrase is \"\"That's my boy!\"\" normally said when he supports or congratulates his son.\nTyke is described as a cute, sweet-looking, happy and lovable puppy. He is Spike's son. Unlike Spike, Tyke does not speak and only communicates, mostly towards his father, by barking, yapping, wagging his tail, whimpering and growling. Spike would always go out of his way to care and comfort his son and make sure that he is safe from Tom. Tyke loves his father and Spike loves his son and they get along like friends, although most of time they would be taking a nap or Spike would teach Tyke the main facts of life of being a dog. Like Spike, Tyke's appearance has altered throughout the years, from gray, with white paws, to creamy tan. When \"Tom & Jerry Kids\" first aired, this was the first time that viewers heard Tyke speak.\nButch and Toodles Galore.\nButch is a black, cigar-smoking alley cat who also wants to eat Jerry. He is Tom's most frequent adversary. For most of the shorts he appears in, he is usually seen rivaling Tom over Toodles. Butch was Tom's chum as in some cartoons, where Butch is leader of Tom's alley cat buddies, who are mostly Lightning, Topsy, and Meathead. Butch talks more often than Tom or Jerry in most shorts.\nButch and Toodles were originally introduced in Hugh Harman's 1941 short \"The Alley Cat\", but were integrated into \"Tom and Jerry\" rather than continuing in their own series.\nNibbles.\nNibbles is a small gray mouse who often appears in shorts as an orphan mouse. He is a carefree individual who very rarely understands the danger of the situation, simply following instructions the best he can both to Jerry's command and his own innocent understanding of the situation. This can lead to such results as \"getting the cheese\" by simply asking Tom to pick it up for him, rather than following Jerry's example of outmaneuvering and sneaking around Tom. Many times Nibbles is an ally of Jerry in fights against Tom, including being the second Mouseketeer. He is given speaking roles in all his appearances as a Mouseketeer, often with a high-pitched French tone. However, during a short in which he rescued Robin Hood, his voice was instead more masculine, gruff, and cockney accented.\nThe Housekeeper.\nThe housekeeper, usually seen from the torso down, is a heavy-set, middle-aged black woman who often has to deal with the mayhem generated by the lead characters. Voiced by character actress Lillian Randolph, she is often seen as the owner of Tom, and perhaps the homeowner as well. Her face was only shown once, very briefly, in \"Saturday Evening Puss\". Her appearances have often been edited out, dubbed, or re-animated as a slim white woman in later television showings, since her character is a mammy archetype that had been protested as racist by the NAACP and other civil rights groups since the 1940s. In a 1975 article in Film Comment she was referred to as \"Mammy Two Shoes,\" a moniker that has been inaccurately attributed to the character ever since, The name \"Mammy Two-Shoes\" was on the Disney model sheets for a character in a Silly Symphony cartoon, though the name was never spoken in the cartoon. A similar housekeeper then appeared in MGM Bokso cartoons by Harman and Ising, also without a name. At no time, ever, was the name used in any Tom and Jerry cartoon, The author of the 1975 article later apologized, but too much time had established the incorrect information, including on the DVD release DVD releases of the cartoons, in which the script read by Whoopi Goldberg on the \"Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection: Vol. 2\" DVD set, while explaining the importance of African-American representation in the cartoon series, however stereotyped, mentions the incorrect name numerous times.\nHistory.\n\"Tom and Jerry\" was a commonplace phrase for young men given to drinking, gambling, and riotous living in 19th-century London, England. The term comes from \"Life in London; or, The Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn, Esq., and his elegant friend, Corinthian Tom\" (1821) by Pierce Egan, the British sports journalist who authored similar accounts compiled as \"Boxiana\". However Brewer notes no more than an \"unconscious\" echo of the Regency era, and thus Georgian era, origins in the naming of the cartoon.\nHanna-Barbera era (1940\u20131958).\nIn August 1937, animator and storyman Joseph Barbera began to work at MGM, then the largest studio in Hollywood. He learned that co-owner Louis B. Mayer wished to boost the animation department by encouraging the artists to develop some new cartoon characters, following the lack of success with its earlier cartoon series based on the \"Captain and the Kids\" comic strip. Barbera then teamed with fellow Ising unit animator and director William Hanna, who joined Harman-Ising Productions in 1930, and pitched new ideas, among them was the concept of two \"equal characters who were always in conflict with each other\". An early thought involved a fox and a dog before they settled on a cat and mouse. The pair discussed their ideas with producer Fred Quimby, then the head of the short film department who, despite a lack of interest in it, gave them the green-light to produce one cartoon short.\nThe first short, \"Puss Gets the Boot\", features a cat named Jasper and an unnamed mouse, named Jinx in pre-production, and an African American housemaid named Mammy Two Shoes. Leonard Maltin described it as \"very new and special [...] that was to change the course of MGM cartoon production\" and established the successful \"Tom and Jerry\" formula of comical cat and mouse chases with slapstick gags. It was released onto the theatre circuit on February 10, 1940. The pair, having been advised by management not to produce any more, focused on other cartoons including \"Gallopin' Gals\" (1940) and \"Officer Pooch\" (1941). Matters changed when Texas businesswoman Bessa Short sent a letter to MGM, asking whether more cat and mouse shorts would be produced, which helped convince management to commission a series.\nA studio contest held to rename both characters was won by animator John Carr, who suggested Tom the cat and Jerry the mouse. Carr was awarded a first-place prize of $50, . It has been suggested, but not proven, that the names were derived from a 1932 story by Damon Runyon, who took them from the name of a popular Christmastime cocktail, itself derived from the names of two characters in an 1821 stage play by William Moncrieff, an adaptation of 1821 Egan's book titled \"Life in London\" where the names originated, which was based on George Cruikshank's, Isaac Robert Cruikshank's, and Egan's own careers. \"Puss Gets the Boot\" was a critical success, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Short Subject: Cartoons in 1941 despite the credits listing Ising and omitting Hanna and Barbera.\nAfter MGM gave the green-light for Hanna and Barbera to continue, the studio entered production on the second \"Tom and Jerry\" cartoon, \"The Midnight Snack\" (1941). The pair continued to work on the series for the next fifteen years of their career. The composer of the series, Scott Bradley, made it difficult for the musicians to perform his score which often involved the twelve-tone technique developed by Arnold Schoenberg. The series developed a quicker, more energetic and violent tone which was inspired by the work of MGM colleague Tex Avery. Hanna and Barbera made minor adjustments to Tom and Jerry's appearance so they would \"age gracefully\". Jerry lost weight and his long eyelashes, while Tom lost his jagged fur for a smoother appearance, had larger eyebrows, and received a white and gray face with a white mouth. He adopted a quadrupedal stance at first, like a real cat, to become increasingly and almost exclusively bipedal.\nHanna and Barbera produced 114 cartoons for MGM, thirteen of which were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Subject. Seven went on to win, breaking the winning streak held by Walt Disney's studio in the category. \"Tom and Jerry\" won more Academy Awards than any other character-based theatrical animated series. Barbera estimated the typical budget of $50,000 for each \"Tom and Jerry\" cartoon which made the duo take \"time to get it right\". A typical cartoon took around six weeks to make.\nAs per standard practice for American animation production at the time, Barbera and Hanna did not work with a script beforehand. After coming up with a cartoon idea together, Barbera would flesh out the story by drawing a storyboard and provide character designs and animation layouts. Hanna did the animation timing - planning the music and temporal beats and accents the animation action would occur on - and assigned the animators their scenes and supervised their work. Hanna provided incidental voice work, in particular Tom's numerous screams of pain. Despite minimal creative input, as head of the MGM cartoon studio, Quimby was credited as the producer of all cartoons until 1955.\nThe rise in television in the 1950s caused problems for the MGM animation studio, leading to budget cuts on \"Tom and Jerry\" cartoons due to decreased revenue from theatrical screenings. In an attempt to combat this, MGM ordered that all subsequent shorts be produced in the widescreen CinemaScope format. The first, \"Pet Peeve\", was released in November 1954. The studio found that re-releases of older cartoons were earning as much as new ones, resulting in the executive decision to cease production on \"Tom and Jerry\" and later the animation studio on May 15, 1957. The final cartoon produced by Hanna and Barbera, \"Tot Watchers\", was released on August 1, 1958. The pair decided to leave and went on to focus on their own production company Hanna-Barbera Productions, which went on to produce such popular animated television series including \"The Flintstones\", \"Yogi Bear\", \"The Jetsons\" and \"Scooby-Doo\".\nProduction formats.\nBefore 1954, all \"Tom and Jerry\" cartoons were produced in the standard Academy ratio and format. In 1954 and 1955, some of the output was dually produced in dual versions: one Academy-ratio negative composed for a flat widescreen (1.75:1) format and one shot in the CinemaScope process. From 1955 until the close of the MGM cartoon studio a year later, all \"Tom and Jerry\" cartoons were produced in CinemaScope. Some even had their soundtracks recorded in Perspecta directional audio. All of the Hanna and Barbera cartoons were shot as successive color exposure negatives in Technicolor.\nGene Deitch era (1961\u20131962).\nIn 1961, MGM revived the \"Tom and Jerry\" franchise, and contracted European animation studio Rembrandt Films to produce 13 \"Tom and Jerry\" shorts in Prague, Czechoslovakia. All were directed by Gene Deitch and produced by William L. Snyder. Deitch wrote most of the cartoons, with occasional assistance from Larz Bourne and Eli Bauer. \u0160t\u011bp\u00e1n Kon\u00ed\u010dek provided the musical score for the Deitch shorts. Sound effects were produced by electronic music composer Tod Dockstader and Deitch. The majority of vocal effects and voices in Deitch's films were provided by Allen Swift and Deitch.\nDeitch states that, being a \"UPA man\", he was not a fan of the \"Tom and Jerry\" cartoons, thinking they were \"needlessly violent\". However, after being assigned to work on the series, he quickly realized that \"nobody took [the violence] seriously\", and it was merely \"a parody of exaggerated human emotions\". He also came to see what he perceived as the \"biblical roots\" in Tom and Jerry's conflict, similar to David and Goliath, stating \"That's where we feel a connection to these cartoons: the little guy can win (or at least survive) to fight another day.\"\nSince the Deitch/Snyder team had seen only a handful of the original \"Tom and Jerry\" shorts, and since the team produced their cartoons on a tighter budget of $10,000, the resulting films were considered surrealist in nature, though this was not Deitch's intention. The animation was limited and jerky in movement compared to the more fluid Hanna-Barbera shorts, and often utilized motion blur. Background art was done in a more simplistic, angular, Art Deco-esque style. The soundtracks featured sparse and echoic electronic music, futuristic sound effects, heavy reverb and dialogue that was mumbled rather than spoken. According to Jen Nessel of \"The New York Times\", \"The Czech style had nothing in common with these gag-driven cartoons.\"\nWhereas Hanna-Barbera's shorts generally took place in and outside of a house, Deitch's shorts opted for more exotic locations, such as a 19th-century whaling ship, the jungles of Nairobi, an Ancient Greek acropolis, or the Wild West. In addition, Mammy Two Shoes was replaced as Tom's owner by a bald, overweight, short-tempered, middle-aged white man, who bore a striking resemblance to another Deitch character, Clint Clobber. Just like Spike the Bulldog, he was also significantly more brutal and violent in punishing Tom's actions as compared to previous owners, often beating and thrashing Tom repeatedly; the character and his extreme treatment of Tom was poorly received.\nTo avoid being linked to Communism, Deitch modified the Czech names of his crew in the opening credits of the shorts to look more conventional to English-speaking audiences, e.g. \u0160t\u011bp\u00e1n Kon\u00ed\u010dek became \"Steven Konichek\" and V\u00e1clav L\u00eddl became \"Victor Little\". These shorts are among the few \"Tom and Jerry\" cartoons not to carry the \"Made In Hollywood, U.S.A.\" phrase on the end title card. Due to Deitch's studio being behind the Iron Curtain, the production studio's location is omitted entirely on it. After the 13 shorts were completed, Joe Vogel, the head of production, was fired from MGM. Vogel had approved of Deitch and his team's work, but MGM decided not to renew their contract after Vogel's departure. The final of the 13 shorts, \"Carmen Get It!\", was released on December 21, 1962.\nDeitch's shorts were commercial successes. In 1962, the \"Tom and Jerry\" series became the highest-grossing animated short film series of that time, dethroning \"Looney Tunes\", which had held the position for 16 years. However, unlike the Hanna-Barbera shorts, none of Deitch's films were nominated for any Academy Awards. In retrospect, these shorts are often considered the worst of the \"Tom and Jerry\" theatrical output. Deitch stated that due to his team's inexperience as well as their low budget, he \"hardly had a chance to succeed\", and \"well understand[s] the negative reactions\" to his shorts. He believes \"They could all have been better animated \u2013 truer to the characters \u2013 but our T&Js were produced in the early 1960s, near the beginning of my presence here, over a half-century ago as I write this!\" Despite the criticism, Deitch's \"Tom and Jerry\" shorts are appreciated by some fans due to their uniquely surreal nature. The shorts were released on DVD in 2015 in \"\".\nThe 1960s entries were done in Metrocolor but returned to the standard Academy ratio and format.\nChuck Jones era (1963\u20131967).\nAfter the last of the Deitch cartoons were released, Chuck Jones, who had been fired from his 30-plus year tenure at Warner Bros. Cartoons, started his own animation studio, Sib Tower 12 Productions (later renamed MGM Animation/Visual Arts), with partner Les Goldman. Beginning in 1963, Jones and Goldman went on to produce , all of which carried Jones' distinctive style, and a slight psychedelic influence.\nJones had trouble adapting his style to \"Tom and Jerry\"'s brand of humor, and a number of the cartoons favored full animation, personality and style over storyline. The characters underwent a slight change of appearance: Tom was given thicker eyebrows (resembling Jones' Grinch, Count Blood Count or Wile E. Coyote), a less complex look (including the color of his fur becoming gray), sharper ears, longer tail and furrier cheeks (resembling Jones' Claude Cat or Sylvester), while Jerry was given larger eyes and ears, a lighter brown color, and a sweeter, Porky Pig-like expression.\nSome of Jones' \"Tom and Jerry\" cartoons are reminiscent of his work with Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, included the uses of blackout gags and gags involving characters falling from high places. Jones co-directed the majority of the shorts with layout artist Maurice Noble. The remaining shorts were directed by Abe Levitow and Ben Washam, with Tom Ray directing two shorts built around footage from earlier \"Tom and Jerry\" cartoons directed by Hanna and Barbera, and Jim Pabian directed a short with Maurice Noble. Various vocal characteristics were made by Mel Blanc, June Foray and even Jones himself. These shorts contain a memorable opening theme, in which Tom first replaces the MGM lion, then is trapped inside the \"O\" of his name.\nThough Jones's shorts were generally considered an improvement over Deitch's, they had varying degrees of critical success. MGM ceased production of \"Tom and Jerry\" shorts in 1967, by which time Jones had moved on to television specials and the feature film \"The Phantom Tollbooth\". The shorts were released on DVD in 2009 on \"\".\n\"Tom and Jerry\" hit television.\nBeginning in 1965, the Hanna and Barbera \"Tom and Jerry\" cartoons began to appear on television in heavily edited versions. The Jones team was required to take the cartoons featuring Mammy Two Shoes and remove her by pasting over the scenes featuring her with new scenes. Most of the time, she was replaced with a similarly fat white Irish woman. Occasionally, as in \"Saturday Evening Puss\", a thin white teenager took her place instead, with both characters voiced by June Foray.\nRecent telecasts on Cartoon Network and Boomerang retain Mammy with new voiceover work performed by Thea Vidale to remove the stereotypical black jargon featured on the original cartoon soundtracks. The standard \"Tom and Jerry\" opening titles were removed as well. Instead of the roaring MGM Lion sequence, an opening sequence featuring different clips of the cartoons was used instead. The title cards were also changed. A pink title card with the name written in white font was used instead.\nDebuting on CBS' Saturday morning schedule on September 25, 1965, \"Tom and Jerry\" moved to CBS Sundays in 1967 and remained there until September 17, 1972.\nSecond Hanna-Barbera era: \"The Tom and Jerry Show\" (1975\u20131977).\nIn 1975, Tom and Jerry were reunited with Hanna and Barbera, who produced \"The Tom and Jerry Show\" for Saturday mornings. These 48 seven-minute cartoon shorts were paired with \"Grape Ape\" and \"Mumbly\" cartoons, to create \"The Tom and Jerry/Grape Ape Show\", \"The Tom and Jerry/Grape Ape/Mumbly Show\", and \"The Tom and Jerry/Mumbly Show\", all of which initially ran on ABC Saturday mornings between September 6, 1975, and September 3, 1977. In these cartoons, Tom and Jerry, now with a red bow tie, who had been enemies during their formative years, became nonviolent pals who went on adventures together, as Hanna-Barbera had to meet the stringent rules against violence for children's TV. This format has not been used in newer Tom and Jerry entries.\nFilmation era (1980\u20131982).\nFilmation Studios were commissioned by MGM Television to produce a \"Tom and Jerry\" TV series, \"The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show\", which debuted in 1980 and featured new cartoons starring Droopy, Spike, Slick Wolf, and Barney Bear, not seen since the original MGM shorts. The Filmation \"Tom and Jerry\" cartoons were noticeably different from Hanna-Barbera's efforts, as they returned \"Tom and Jerry\" to the original chase formula, with a somewhat more \"slapstick\" humor format. This incarnation, much like the 1975 version, was not as well received by audiences as the originals, and lasted on CBS Saturday mornings from September 6, 1980, to September 4, 1982.\nTom and Jerry's new owners.\nIn 1986, MGM was purchased by WTBS founder Ted Turner. Turner sold the company a short while later, but retained MGM's pre-1986 film library. \"Tom and Jerry\" became the property of Turner Entertainment Co., where the rights stand today via Warner Bros., and have in subsequent years appeared on Turner-run stations, such as TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, The WB, Boomerang, and Turner Classic Movies.\nThird Hanna-Barbera era: \"Tom & Jerry Kids\" (1990\u20131994).\nOne of the biggest trends for Saturday morning television in the 1980s and 1990s was the \"babyfication\" (child versions) of classic cartoon stars. On March 2, 1990, \"Tom & Jerry Kids\", co-produced by Turner Entertainment Co. and Hanna-Barbera Productions, which was sold to Turner in 1991, debuted on Fox Kids, and aired for a few years on British children's block, CBBC. It featured a youthful version of the famous cat-and-mouse duo chasing each other. As with the 1975 H-B series, Jerry wears his red bowtie, while Tom now wears a red cap. Spike and his son Tyke, who now had talking dialogue, and Droopy and his son Dripple, appeared in back-up segments for the show, which ran until November 18, 1994. \"Tom & Jerry Kids\" was the last \"Tom and Jerry\" cartoon series produced in 4:3 (full screen) aspect ratio.\nOne-off productions (2001; 2005).\nIn 2001, a new television special titled \"\" premiered on Boomerang. It featured Joe Barbera (who was also a creative consultant) as the voice of Tom's owner, whose face is never seen. In this cartoon, Jerry, housed in a habitrail, is as much of a house pet as Tom is, and their owner has to remind Tom to not \"blame everything on the mouse\".\nIn 2005, a new Tom and Jerry theatrical short, titled \"The Karate Guard\", which had been written and directed by Barbera and Spike Brandt, storyboarded by Joseph Barbera and Iwao Takamoto and produced by Joseph Barbera, Spike Brandt, and Tony Cervone premiered in Los Angeles cinemas on September 27, 2005, as part of the celebration of \"Tom and Jerry\"'s sixty-fifth anniversary. This marked Barbera's first return as a writer, director and storyboard artist on the series since his and Hanna's original MGM cartoon shorts, and last overall. He died shortly after production ended. Director/animator, Spike Brandt was nominated for an Annie award for best character animation. The short debuted on the Cartoon Network on January 27, 2006. The short was filmed in the standard Academy ratio and format.\nWarner Bros. era (2006\u2013present).\nIn 1996, Turner merged with Time Warner, the parent company of Warner Bros. The characters from the MGM library, including \"Tom and Jerry\", were placed under the control of Warner Bros. Animation. A relaunch of the theatrical shorts series was planned for 2003 alongside a similar relaunch of the \"Looney Tunes\" theatrical shorts, but was canceled after the financial failure of \"\".\nIn 2006, a new series called \"Tom and Jerry Tales\" premiered. Thirteen half-hour episodes each consisting of three shorts were produced. Some of the segments, like \"The Karate Guard\", had originally been produced and completed in 2003 as part of the planned theatrical cartoon relaunch. The show debuted in markets outside the US and UK, before premiering in February 2006 on the UK version of Boomerang, and the following autumn in the US on Kids' WB on The CW. \"Tales\" is the first \"Tom and Jerry\" TV series that utilizes the original style of the classic shorts, along with the slapstick. \"Tales\" is the first \"Tom and Jerry\" production produced in 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, but was cropped to 4:3 fullscreen aspect ratio when initially aired on in the United States. The series was canceled in 2008, shortly before the Kids' WB block shut down.\nCartoon Network, which began rerunning \"Tom and Jerry Tales\" in January 2012, subsequently launched a series titled \"The Tom and Jerry Show\" consisting of two 11-minute shorts, later produced as separate 7-minutes length episodes, per episode that likewise sought to maintain the look, core characters and sensibility of the original theatrical shorts. Similar to other reboot works like \"Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated\" and \"New Looney Tunes\", several episodes the new series brought Tom and Jerry into contemporary environments, telling new stories and relocating the characters to more fantastic worlds, from a medieval castle to a mad scientist's lab. The series was produced by Warner Bros. Animation, with Sam Register serving as executive producer in collaboration with Darrell Van Citters and Ashley Postlewaite at Renegade Animation. Originally slated for a 2013 Cartoon Network premiere, the series was pushed back to April 9, 2014. It is the second \"Tom and Jerry\" production presented in 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio.\nIn November 2014, a two-minute sketch was shown as part of the Children in Need telethon in the United Kingdom. The sketch was produced as a collaboration with Warner Bros.\nIn May 2016, WB Kids began releasing excerpts from various \"Tom and Jerry\" works to the online platform YouTube. By January 2017, compilation videos of the \"Tom and Jerry\" franchise began to be released by WB Kids on the platform.\nOn February 20, 2021, Warner Bros. released two new shorts onto HBO Max titled \"Tom and Jerry Special Shorts\" to honor the 81st anniversary of \"Tom and Jerry\", as well as to promote the 2021 film. These shorts share the style of the other HBO Max original \"Looney Tunes Cartoons\", also produced by Warner Bros. Animation.\nA new Tom and Jerry series made its debut on July 1, 2021, as a Max Original on HBO Max, called \"Tom and Jerry in New York\", which basically served as a spin-off of \"The Tom and Jerry Show\" by having the exact same animation style and slapstick, except that the events take place in the city of New York City. It was loosely based on the 2021 film, as the humans in the series were shown with the faces intact.\nOn November 11, 2022, Cartoon Network in Japan premiered a new series of animated shorts, \"Tom and Jerry\" (), marking the first Japanese production based on the property. Featuring the voices of Megumi Aratake (as Tom), Aya Yonekura (as Jerry) and Eri Tanaka (as Tuffy), the shorts were animated by Fanworks in co-operation with Studio Nanahoshi. Ayu handled the character design and Captain Mirai composed the musical scores. The November 11, 2022 premiere coincided with Cartoon Network's celebration of Cheese Day, which is organized by cheese industry in Japan.\nOn July 25, 2023, the Southeast Asian version of \"Tom and Jerry\" animated shorts was announced, to be presented on Cartoon Network Asia alongside HBO Asia streaming platform HBO GO before it was aired globally. The animated shorts, which was set in Singapore, was produced by Warner Bros. Discovery Asia-Pacific's director of original kids content Carlene Tan, with animation by Aum Animation Studios India alongside Singapore-based Robot Playground Media and Chips and Toon Studios for both the stories and designs.\nOutside the United States.\nWhen shown on terrestrial television in the United Kingdom, from April 1967 to February 2001, usually on the BBC, \"Tom and Jerry\" cartoons were not edited for violence, and Mammy was retained. As well as having regular slots, mainly after the evening BBC News with around two shorts shown every evening and occasionally shown on children's network CBBC in the morning, \"Tom and Jerry\" served the BBC in another way. When faced with disruption to the schedules, for example when live broadcasts overran, the BBC would invariably turn to \"Tom and Jerry\" to fill any gaps, confident that it would retain much of an audience that might otherwise channel hop. This proved particularly helpful in 1993, when \"Noel's House Party\" had to be cancelled due to an IRA bomb scare at BBC Television Centre. \"Tom and Jerry\" was shown instead, bridging the gap until the next programme. In 2006, a mother complained to Ofcom about the smoking shown in the cartoons, since Tom often attempts to impress love interests with the habit, resulting in reports that the smoking scenes in \"Tom and Jerry\" films may be subject to censorship.\nDue to its very limited use of dialogue, \"Tom and Jerry\" was easily translated into various foreign languages. \"Tom and Jerry\" began broadcast in Japan in 1965. A 2005 nationwide survey taken in Japan by TV Asahi, sampling age groups from teenagers to adults in their sixties, ranked \"Tom and Jerry\" No. 85 in a list of the top 100 \"anime\" of all time. Their web poll taken after the airing of the list ranked it at No. 58 \u2013 the only non-Japanese animation on the list, and beating anime classics like \"\", \"A Little Princess Sara\", and the ultra-classics \"Macross\" and \"Ghost in the Shell\". In Japan, the word \"anime\" refers to \"all\" animation regardless of origin, not just Japanese animation.\n\"Tom and Jerry\" serve as the long-time licensed mascots for Gifu-based Juroku Bank. Unlike some other Western cartoons such as \"Bob the Builder\", whose characters had to be doctored to have five fingers in each hand instead of the original four, \"Tom and Jerry\" aired in Japan without such edits, as did other series starring non-human protagonists such as \"SpongeBob SquarePants\".\n\"Tom and Jerry\" have long since been popular in Germany. The different shorts are usually linked together with key scenes from \"Jerry's Diary\" (1949), in which Tom reads about his and Jerry's past adventures. The cartoons are introduced with rhyming German language verse, and when necessary, a German voice spoke the translations of English labels on items and similar information.\nThe show was aired in mainland China by CCTV in the mid-1980s to the early 1990s and was extremely popular at the time. Collections of the show are still a prominent feature in Chinese book stores.\nIn the Philippines, the series was aired on ABS-CBN from 1966 until its closure due to the country's declaration of martial law in 1972, with the later Hanna-Barbera shorts from Barbecue Brawl to Tot Watchers and all of Gene Deitch and Chuck Jones shorts. RPN aired most of Hanna-Barbera shorts from 1977 until 1989. ABS-CBN would later return to the air after the restoration of democracy in 1986 and air the same shorts as in the pre-martial law era. This lasted until the end of 1988.\nIn Indonesia, the series was aired on TPI (later re-branded as MNCTV) from the mid-1990s to early 2010s and RCTI during 2000s.\nEven though Gene Deitch's shorts were created in Czechoslovakia (1960\u20131962), the first official TV release of \"Tom and Jerry\" were in 1988. It was one of the few cartoons of western origin broadcast in Czechoslovakia (1988) and Romania (until 1989) before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989.\nFeature films.\nTom and Jerry's first feature film appearance was in the 1945 MGM musical \"Anchors Aweigh\", in which Jerry performs a dance number with Gene Kelly. In this scene, Tom made a cameo as a servant. Filmmakers had wanted Mickey Mouse for the scene, but Walt Disney had rejected the deal, as the Disney studio was focusing on its own cartoons to help pay off its debts after World War II. William Hanna and Joe Barbera supervised animation for the scene.\nIn 1953, Tom and Jerry's second feature film appearance was swimming with Esther Williams in a dream sequence in another MGM musical, \"Dangerous When Wet\".\nOn October 1, 1992, the first international release of \"\" arrived when the film was released overseas to theaters in Europe and then domestically by Miramax Films on July 30, 1993, with future video and DVD releases that would be sold under Warner Bros., which, following Disney's acquisition of Miramax and Turner's subsequent merger with Time Warner, had acquired the film's distribution rights. Barbera served as creative consultant for the picture, which was produced and directed by Phil Roman. The film was a musical with a structure similar to MGM's blockbusters, \"The Wizard of Oz\" and \"Singin' in the Rain\".\nIn 2001, Warner Bros., which had, by then, merged with Turner and assumed its properties, released the duo's first direct-to-video film, \"\", in which Tom covets a ring that grants mystical powers to the wearer, and has become accidentally stuck on Jerry's head. It was the last time Hanna and Barbera co-produced a \"Tom and Jerry\" cartoon together, as William Hanna died shortly after \"The Magic Ring\" was released.\nFour years later, Bill Kopp scripted and directed two more \"Tom and Jerry\" DTV features for the studio, ' and ', the latter one based on a story by Barbera. Both were released on DVD in 2005, marking the celebration of Tom and Jerry's 65th anniversary. In 2006, another direct-to-video film, ', tells the story about the pair having to work together to find the treasure. Joe came up with the storyline for the next film, ', as well as the initial idea of synchronizing the on-screen actions to music from Tchaikovsky's \"Nutcracker Suite\". This DTV film, directed by Spike Brandt and Tony Cervone, was Joe Barbera's last \"Tom and Jerry\" project due to his death in December 2006. The holiday-set animated film was released on DVD in late 2007 and dedicated to Barbera.\nA new direct-to-video film, \"Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes\", was released on August 24, 2010. It is the first made-for-video \"Tom and Jerry\" film produced without any of the characters' original creators. The next direct-to-video film, \"Tom and Jerry and the Wizard of Oz\", was released on August 23, 2011, and was the first made-for-video \"Tom and Jerry\" film made for Blu-ray. It had a preview showing on Cartoon Network. \"\" was released on Blu-ray and DVD on October 2, 2012.\n\"Tom and Jerry's Giant Adventure\" was released in 2013 on Blu-ray and DVD. ' was released on DVD on September 2, 2014. ' was released on DVD on June 23, 2015. ' was released on DVD on June 21, 2016. ' was released on DVD on July 11, 2017.\nA live action/3D animated hybrid film was directed by Tim Story and starred Chlo\u00eb Grace Moretz, Michael Pe\u00f1a Colin Jost, Rob Delaney and Ken Jeong. The film was released on February 26, 2021.\nOn December 12, 2024, it was announced that a new animated Tom and Jerry feature film is in the works from Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, with Rashida Jones, Will McCormack and Michael Govier writing the script.\nControversies.\nLike many animated cartoons from the 1930s to the 1950s, \"Tom and Jerry\" featured racial stereotypes. After explosions, for example, characters with blasted faces would resemble blackface stereotypes, with large lips and bow-tied hair. Perhaps the most controversial element of the show is the character Mammy Two Shoes, a poor black maid who speaks in a stereotypical \"black accent\". Joseph Barbera, who was responsible for these gags, claimed that they did not reflect his racial opinion; they were just reflecting what was common in society and cartoons at the time and were meant to be humorous. Today, the blackface gags are often censored when these shots are aired.\nFollowing the 1949 re-issue of the 1943 \"Tom and Jerry\" short \"The Lonesome Mouse,\" the NAACP, which had begun protesting stereotypical and racist depictions of African-Americans in Hollywood cinema, began a campaign against the use of the maid character in the \"Tom and Jerry\" shorts. Lillian Randolph left her role as the voice of Mammy Two Shoes in 1952 to instead take a job on television in \"Amos & Andy\", and Hanna and Barbera retired the character at that time.\nIn the 1960s, shorts featuring Mammy Two Shoes were re-animated in part by Chuck Jones' team at MGM, alongside their work on the newer entries produced by Jones, in order to be shown on television. These versions of the shorts replace the African-American maid with a white woman, voiced by June Foray with an Irish accent. These versions of the \"Tom and Jerry\" shorts were broadcast on television until the MGM catalog's acquisition by Turner in 1986. Turner redubbed Mammy Two Shoes' voice in these shorts in the mid-1990s to make the character sound less stereotypical.\nTwo shorts \u2013 \"His Mouse Friday\", which depicts cannibals, and \"A Mouse in the House\", which shows Mammy getting spanked repeatedly by Tom and Butch in the end resulting in racial abuse \u2013 have been removed from circulation. Two others in particular \u2013 \"Casanova Cat\", which features a scene where Jerry's face is blackened by Tom with cigar smoke and he is forced to perform a minstrel dance, and \"Mouse Cleaning\", where Tom is shown with blackface speaking in a stereotypical \"Negro dialect\" \u2013 were omitted from DVD/Blu-ray releases. Notably the other two \u2013 \"Fraidy Cat\", showed Tom biting Mammy in the rear near the end, and \"The Mouse Comes to Dinner\", including Jerry briefly dressing up as a Native American stereotype during the beginning \u2013 have Mammy edited in complete absence.\nAt the start of the 2005 \"Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection: Vol 2.\" DVD set, a disclaimer by actress and comedian Whoopi Goldberg warns viewers about the potentially offensive material in the cartoons. Goldberg's disclaimer emphasizes that the racial and ethnic stereotypes present in the shorts were \"wrong then and they are wrong today\", borrowing a phrase used in disclaimers done for Warner Bros. \"Looney Tunes Golden Collection\" DVD sets. This disclaimer is also used in the \"Tom and Jerry Golden Collection: Volume 1\" Blu-ray/DVD/digital release as well.\nSince 2020, all episodes featuring Mammy Two Shoes are no longer seen on Cartoon Network and Boomerang and are removed from the Boomerang app. There are other shorts (\"The Lonesome Mouse\", \"Blue Cat Blues\", and \"The Mouse from H.U.N.G.E.R.\") that are found inappropriate for the intended audiences rather than just having racist contents and are censored from the two channels as well.\nIn 2006, the British version of the Boomerang channel made plans to edit \"Tom and Jerry\" cartoons being aired in the UK where the characters were seen to be smoking. There was a subsequent investigation by UK media watchdog Ofcom. It has also taken the U.S. approach by censoring blackface gags, though this seems to be random as not all scenes of this type are cut. One Gene Deitch-era short, \"Buddies Thicker Than Water\", is shortened as one scene involves drunkenness.\nIn 2013, it was reported that Cartoon Network of Brazil censored 27 shorts on the grounds of being \"politically incorrect\". In an official release, the channel confirmed that it had censored only two shorts, \"The Two Mouseketeers\" and \"Heavenly Puss\" \"by editorial issues and appropriateness of the content to the target audience\u2014children of 7 to 11 years\".\nIn other media.\nComic books.\n\"Tom and Jerry\" began appearing in comic books in 1942, as one of the features in Dell Comics' \"Our Gang Comics\". In 1949, with MGM's live-action \"Our Gang\" shorts having ceased production five years earlier, the series was renamed \"Tom and Jerry Comics\". That title ran 212 issues with Dell before being handed off to Western Publishing, where it ran until issue #344 in 1984. Tom and Jerry continued to appear in various comic books for the rest of the 20th century. Tom and Jerry comics were also extremely popular in Norway, Germany, Sweden, the UK, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia and Australia. A licensed European version has been drawn by Spanish artist Oscar Martin since 1986. Another licensed version was published in Yugoslavia, started in 1983 and drawn by a number of artists, including Zoran Kova\u010devi\u0107, Bojan \u0110uki\u0107, Zdravko Zupan and Du\u0161an Relji\u0107.\nComic strip.\nA \"Tom and Jerry\" comic strip was syndicated from 1950 to 1952. Although credited to MGM animation studio head Fred Quimby, experts believe the strips were ghosted by Gene Hazleton and possibly Ernie Stanzoni and Dan Gormley. Tom and Jerry was revived as a comic strip from 1989 to 1994, syndicated to the South American market by Editors Press Service. The strip was produced by Kelley Jarvis during this era, with the exception of a short period in 1990\u20131991 when it was done by Paul Kupperberg & Rich Maurizio.\n\"Tom to Jerry: Nanairo\".\nTom to Jerry: Nanairo () is a short-lived series of Japanese comics authored by Chara Chara Makiart as a spin-off of \"Tom and Jerry\". It was first featured in the August 2021 issue of the \"Nakayoshi\" magazine. \"Nanairo\", along with Chara Chara Makiart's other project \"Harapeko Penguin Cafe\", was cancelled in December 2021 as Kodansha (\"Nakayoshi\"'s publisher) has terminated its contract with the creative unit after one of Makiart members was found guilty for sexually assaulting a minor.\nMusical adaptation.\nA musical, or , adaptation of the cartoon series, titled , debuted in Japan in 2019 in advance of the series' upcoming 80th anniversary. The musical was composed by Masataka Matsutoya, staged by Seiji Nozoe, and written by Shigeki Motoiki.\nCultural influences.\nThroughout the years, the term and title \"Tom and Jerry\" became practically synonymous with never-ending rivalry, as much as the related \"cat and mouse fight\" metaphor has. Yet in \"Tom and Jerry\" it was not the more powerful Tom who usually came out on top. In 2005, TV Asahi ranked \"Tom and Jerry\" as 58th of the Top 100 Animated TV Series in Japan overall, outranking titles like \"Rurouni Kenshin\", \"Initial D\", and even \"Macross\". In January 2009, IGN named \"Tom and Jerry\" as the 66th best in the Top 100 Animated TV Shows.\nIn popular culture.\nIn 1973, the magazine \"National Lampoon\" referenced \"Tom and Jerry\" in a violence-filled comic book parody, \"Kit 'n' Kaboodle\". In \"The Simpsons\", \"The Itchy & Scratchy Show\" is a spoof of \"Tom and Jerry\"\u2014a \"cartoon within a cartoon\". In an episode of the series titled \"Krusty Gets Kancelled\", \"Worker and Parasite\", a replacement cartoon for \"Itchy & Scratchy\", is a reference to Soviet-era animation.\nTom & Jerry made a cameo appearance in the 1992 animated TV special \"The Rosey and Buddy Show\".\nIn an interview found on the DVD releases, several \"Mad TV\" cast members stated that \"Tom and Jerry\" is one of their biggest influences for slapstick comedy. Also in the Cartoon Network show \"MAD\", Tom and Jerry appear in three segments: \"Celebrity Birthdays\", \"Mickey Mouse Exterminator Service\", and \"Tom and Jury\". Johnny Knoxville from \"Jackass\" has stated that watching \"Tom and Jerry\" inspired many of the stunts in the films.\nThe supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei likened the rivalry between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran to Tom and Jerry, with the United States in the role of Tom and Iran in the role of Jerry.\nHome media.\nIn the pre-video era, \"Tom and Jerry\" cartoons were a popular subject for 8mm home movies, with the UK-based Walton Films issuing dozens of titles as colour one-reel Super 8 films, in both silent and sound editions. Walton's agreement with MGM obligated them to release the films in slightly edited form, even though the single-reel format would have comfortably accommodated the cartoons' seven to eight minute running time. These releases were discontinued before the dawn of the 1980s.\nAs early as 1981, MGM/CBS released \"Tom and Jerry Cartoon Festival\", the very first \"Tom and Jerry\" release on numerous home video formats, including VHS, Betamax, CED Videodisc, and Laserdisc, and mostly consisted the original Hanna-Barbara-era shorts (excluding the CinemaScope cartoons). The VHS and Beta versions released a total of four volumes up through 1984, while releases on the other two formats were discontinued after the second volume due to marketing difficulties of Laserdisc and CED players during that time period.\nBetween the late 1980s and early 1990s, MGM/UA Home Video released a series of \"Tom and Jerry\" VHS tapes under their \"Cartoon Movie Stars\" banner. Also in the early 1990s, MGM/UA released a released three volumes of Laserdisc box sets for collectors, entitled \"The Art of Tom & Jerry\". Volumes 1 and 2, contain all of the Hanna and Barbera era shorts in chronological order, with the CinemaScope shorts being presented in letterboxed versions. The cartoons were mostly presented uncut with three exceptions: \"His Mouse Friday\", where the cannibal's dialogue had been removed, \"Saturday Evening Puss\", which is the re-drawn version with June Foray's voice added, and \"The Framed Cat\" where Mammy-Two Shoes' dialogue had been redubbed. A third volume to \"The Art of Tom & Jerry\" was released and contains all of the Chuck Jones-era \"Tom and Jerry\" shorts, however omitted any of the Gene Deitch-era shorts. This was the final home media release of \"Tom and Jerry\" release by MGM.\nIn 1999, three years after Time Warner's acquisition of Turner Broadcasting, the rights to \"Tom and Jerry\" (along with the rest of MGM's Pre-1986 library) moved from MGM to Warner Bros. with Warner Home Video handling all future releases. DVD and Blu-Ray releases of \"Tom and Jerry\" have encountered difficulties in terms of restoration, due to most of the original film negatives being destroyed in vault fire in the 1970s, leaving only inferior duplicate copies.\nIn April 2004, Warner Home Video released \"\" in Regions 2 and 4; a six disc double-sided DVD box-set in the United Kingdom, and 12 single-layer individual DVD volumes issued throughout Western Europe and Australia. The set includes almost every single \"Tom and Jerry\" cartoon released between 1940 and 1967 in chronological order; with the exceptions of \"The Million Dollar Cat\" and \"Busy Buddies\", were not included for unexplained reasons. The cartoons on this set were sourced from unrestored 1980s Turner broadcast prints as seen on TNT and Cartoon Network, and therefore many of the shorts were censored: with many blackface gags being cut (including \"His Mouse Friday\" being heavily edited) and almost all of Mammy Two Shoes' dialogue being redubbed by Thea Vidale. Also the CinemaScope cartoons were presented in 4:3 pan and scan, with the exceptions of \"The Egg and Jerry\", \"Tops with Pops\" and \"Feedin' the Kiddie\" which were released in non-anamorphic widescreen as seen on \"The Art of Tom and Jerry\" laserdiscs. \"The Classic Collection\" also contained no bonus material. Unlike the U.S. DVDs however, \"Mouse Cleaning\" and \"Casanova Cat\" were included on these sets and were presented uncut.\nThere have been several \"Tom and Jerry\" DVDs released in Region 1 (United States and Canada), such as the \"Tom and Jerry's Greatest Chases\" DVDs. In October 2004, Warner Home Video released the first volume of \"Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection\"; a two-disc set with an assortment of \"Tom and Jerry\" cartoons presented in random order. Much like the U.K \"Classic Collection\" most of the cartoons were unrestored and sourced from the '80s Turner prints, however the CinemaScope cartoons were restored in their correct 2.35:1 aspect ratios and released in 16:9 anamorphic widescreen. The \"Spotlight Collection\" also contained numerous special features. In October 2005, Volume 2 of the \"Spotlight Collection\" was released - which much like the first volume had a random assortment of cartoons, sourced from unrestored Turner Prints (except the CinemaScope cartoons), and contained numerous extras - including an introduction by Whoopi Goldberg about the politically incorrect content in some cartoons. Despite this however, some of the cartoons on Volumes 1 & 2 were censored: having cuts and redubbed Mammy Two Shoes dialogue. Warner Home Video eventually offered a disc replacement program offering fixing these errors, and modern pressings of Volumes 1 & 2 present the cartoons uncut. A third and final volume of the \"Spotlight Collection\" was released in September 2007 - bringing a total of 112 of the 114 original Hanna and Barbera-era \"Tom and Jerry\" shorts having been released. Volume 3 received a negative response from fans due to \"His Mouse Friday\" being edited (with an extreme zoom-in towards the end to avoid showing a pygmy cannibal), the CinemaScope cartoon \"Pup on a Picnic\" being cropped to 16:9, and the cartoons \"Mouse Cleaning\" and \"Casanova Cat\" being excluded from these sets due to brief blackface gags.\nIn October 2011, Warner Home Video released the first volume of the \"Tom and Jerry Golden Collection\" on DVD and Blu-ray. Unlike the \"Spotlight Collections\", the \"Golden Collections\" were aimed at adult collectors. This time the cartoons were presented uncut, in chronological order and restored from CRI negative elements resulting in a much more pristine image quality. Despite this however, 12 cartoons (\"Puss N' Toots\", \"The Bowling Alley Cat\", \"Sufferin' Cats\", \"The Lonesome Mouse\", \"The Zoot Cat\", \"The Million-Dollar Cat\", \"Puttin' on the Dog\". \"Mouse Trouble\", \"Quiet Please!\", \"The Milky Waif\", \"Heavenly Puss\" and \"Jerry's Diary\") were sourced from 1960s Metrocolor prints, resulting in a washed out image, which drew some criticism from fans and collectors. A second volume of the \"Golden Collection\" series was scheduled to be released in June 2013. However, in February 2013, it was announced by TVShowsOnDVD.com that - much like the \"Spotlight Collections\" - \"Mouse Cleaning\" and \"Casanova Cat\" would not be included. Many collectors and fans posted negative reviews of the product on Amazon and other various websites, which eventually led Wanrer Home Video to cancel Volume 2 and the \"Golden Collection\" series. The transfers made for Volume 2 (excluding \"Mouse Cleaning\" and \"Casanova Cat\"), were eventually made available on the ITunes Store and YouTube Movies.\nPrior to 2015, the Gene Deitch-era \"Tom and Jerry\" shorts saw limited availability on home media, with the most notable release being on the U.K. \"Classic Collection\" box-set. On June 2, 2015, Warner Home Video released ' DVD which contained all thirteen shorts as well as special features. The Chuck Jones-era \"Tom and Jerry\" shorts were released in a two-disc set titled ' in June 2009.\nIn February 2025, to coincide with \"Tom and Jerry's\" 85th Anniversary, Warner Archive Collection released \"\", a single disc Blu-Ray set which contained all 23 CinemaScope \"Tom and Jerry\" cartoons presented in their correct aspect ratios - including \"Pup on a Picnic\". The set also inclued three non-\"Tom and Jerry\" CinemaScope cartoons by Hanna and Barbera - \"Good Will to Men\" (1955), \"Give and Tyke\" and \"Scat Cats\" (both 1957) - which were included as extras. This set received mostly positive feedback from fans and collectors.\nTheatrical shorts.\nThe following cartoons won the Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons:\nThese cartoons were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons, but did not win:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences"}, "descending_order": ["871053"], "permutation_1": ["871053"], "permutation_2": ["871053"], "permutation_3": ["871053"]}
{"id": "nq_-1430395086209347743", "docs_added": {"53085": "Toy Story\n1995 Pixar film\n \nToy Story is a 1995 American animated adventure comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It is the first installment in the \"Toy Story\" franchise and the first entirely computer-animated feature film, as well as the first feature film from Pixar. The film was directed by John Lasseter, written by Joss Whedon, Andrew Stanton, Joel Cohen, and Alec Sokolow based on a story by Lasseter, Stanton, Pete Docter, and Joe Ranft, produced by Bonnie Arnold and Ralph Guggenheim, and features the voices of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Annie Potts, John Ratzenberger, Don Rickles, Wallace Shawn, and Jim Varney.\nTaking place in a world where toys come to life when humans are not present, the plot of \"Toy Story\" focuses on the relationship between an old-fashioned pullstring cowboy doll named Woody and a modern space cadet action figure, Buzz Lightyear, as Woody develops jealousy towards Buzz when he becomes their owner Andy's favorite toy.\nFollowing the success of \"Tin Toy\", a short film that was released in 1988, Pixar was approached by Disney to produce a computer-animated feature film that was told from a small toy's perspective. Lasseter, Stanton, and Docter wrote early story treatments, which were rejected by Disney, who wanted the film's tone to be \"edgier\". After several disastrous story reels, production was halted and the script was rewritten to better reflect the tone and theme Pixar desired: \"toys deeply want children to play with them, and ... this desire drives their hopes, fears, and actions\". The studio, then consisting of a relatively small number of employees, produced \"Toy Story\" under minor financial constraints.\n\"Toy Story\" premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on November 19, 1995, and was released in theaters in North America on November 22 of that year. It was the highest-grossing film during its opening weekend, eventually grossing over $373 million worldwide, making it the second highest-grossing film of 1995. The film received critical acclaim, with praise directed towards the technical innovation of the animation, script, Randy Newman's score, appeal to all age groups, and voice performances (particularly Hanks and Allen), and holds a approval rating on film aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes. The film is frequently lauded as one of the best animated films ever made and, due to its status as the first computer-animated film, one of the most important films in the medium's history and film at large. The film received three Academy Award nominations\u2014Best Original Screenplay (the first animated film to be nominated for the award), Best Original Song for \"You've Got a Friend in Me\", and Best Original Score\u2014in addition to being honored with a non-competitive Special Achievement Academy Award.\nIn 2005, \"Toy Story\" was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being \"culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant\", one of nine films designated in its first year of eligibility. The success of \"Toy Story\" launched a multimedia franchise, spawning four sequels beginning with \"Toy Story 2\" (1999); a spin-off film \"Lightyear\" (2022); and numerous short films. The film also had a theatrical 3D re-release in 2009 as part of a double feature with the second film.\nPlot.\nA group of sentient toys, who pretend to be lifeless when humans are around, are preparing to move into a new house with their young owner Andy Davis, his infant sister Molly, and their single mother Mrs. Davis. Learning that Andy's birthday party has been unexpectedly moved to an earlier date, several toys \u2014 including Mr. Potato Head, Slinky Dog, Rex the tyrannosaur, Hamm the piggy bank, and Bo Peep the porcelain doll \u2014 become concerned that Andy might receive something that will replace them. To calm them, Sheriff Woody, Andy's favorite toy and their \"de facto\" leader, sends Sarge and his green army men to spy on Andy's birthday party with a baby monitor. Andy receives a Buzz Lightyear action figure, who believes he is an actual Space Ranger and does not know he is really a toy. Buzz impresses the others with his high-tech features and becomes Andy's new favorite toy, provoking Woody's jealousy.\nTwo days before the move, Andy's family plans for a dinner at Pizza Planet. To ensure Andy brings him along and not Buzz, Woody tries knocking Buzz behind the desk with RC, the radio-controlled car. However, Buzz is accidentally knocked out of the bedroom window instead, and most of the other toys believe Woody has deliberately killed Buzz. Andy takes Woody with him, but Buzz furiously confronts him in the car. The two fight, fall out of the car, and are left behind; after a further quarrel, they hitch a ride to the restaurant on a Pizza Planet delivery truck.\nAt Pizza Planet, Buzz mistakes a claw crane full of toy aliens for a rocket, and climbs in, pursued by Woody. Sid Phillips, Andy's sadistic next-door neighbor, takes the two from the crane to his house, where they encounter his Bull Terrier Scud and his \"mutant\" toys, made from parts of other toys Sid has destroyed.\nBuzz witnesses a television commercial promoting him and suffers an existential crisis, realizing he is a toy after all. He attempts to fly but falls and severs his arm. After Sid's toys fix Buzz, Sid tapes Buzz to a firework rocket, planning to blow him up the following day. Overnight, Woody helps Buzz realize that his purpose is to make Andy happy, restoring Buzz's resolve. Sid takes Buzz out to blow him up, but Woody rallies the mutant toys to come to life in front of Sid and frighten him into never harming toys again.\nNow freed, Woody and Buzz pursue the Davis' moving truck, but Scud attacks Woody. Buzz stays behind to fight off the dog; Woody climbs into the truck, and pushes RC out to rescue Buzz. Thinking Woody has killed another toy, the others also toss him out of the truck. When Woody and Buzz pursue the truck on RC, the other toys see them and realize their mistake. RC's batteries run out, forcing Woody to ignite the rocket strapped to Buzz. Buzz opens his wings to sever the tape just before the rocket explodes; he and Woody glide through the sunroof of Mrs. Davis' car, landing safely inside.\nAs the toys listen in on the Christmas gift opening in the new house, Mr. Potato Head is delighted when Molly gets a Mrs. Potato Head. Woody and Buzz jokingly ponder what gift could be \"worse\" than Buzz, only to nervously smile at each other when Andy gets a dachshund puppy.\nProduction.\nDevelopment.\nJohn Lasseter's first experience with computer animation was during his work as an animator at Walt Disney Feature Animation, when two of his friends showed him the light-cycle scene from \"Tron\". It was an eye-opening experience that awakened Lasseter to the possibilities offered by the new medium of computer-generated animation. Lasseter tried to pitch \"The Brave Little Toaster\" as a fully computer-animated film to Disney, but the idea was rejected and Lasseter was fired. He then went on to work at Lucasfilm and in 1986, he became a founding member of Pixar. In 1986, Pixar was purchased by entrepreneur and Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs. At Pixar, Lasseter created short, computer-animated films to show off the Pixar Image Computer's capabilities. In 1988, Lasseter produced the short film \"Tin Toy\", which was told from the perspective of a toy, referencing Lasseter's love of classic toys. \"Tin Toy\" won the 1989 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, the first computer-generated film to do so.\n\"Tin Toy\" gained Disney's attention, and the new team at The Walt Disney Company, CEO Michael Eisner and chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg in the film division, sought to get Lasseter to come back. Lasseter, grateful for Jobs' faith in him, felt compelled to stay with Pixar, telling co-founder Ed Catmull, \"I can go to Disney and be a director, or I can stay here and make history.\" Katzenberg realized he could not lure Lasseter back to Disney and therefore set plans into motion to ink a production deal with Pixar to produce a film. Disney had always made all their movies in-house and refused to change this. But when Tim Burton, who used to work at Disney, wanted to buy back the rights to \"The Nightmare Before Christmas\", Disney struck a deal allowing him to make it as a Disney film outside the studio. This allowed Pixar to make their movies outside Disney.\nBoth sides were willing. Catmull and fellow Pixar co-founder Alvy Ray Smith had long wanted to produce a computer-animated feature, but only by the early 1990s were the computers cheap and powerful enough to make this possible. In addition, Disney had licensed Pixar's Computer Animation Production System (CAPS), and that made it the largest customer for Pixar's computers. Jobs made it apparent to Katzenberg that although Disney was happy with Pixar, it was not the other way around: \"We want to do a film with you,\" said Jobs. \"That would make us happy.\"\nCatmull, Smith, and head of animation Ralph Guggenheim met with Walt Disney Feature Animation president Peter Schneider in the summer of 1990 to discuss making a feature film, but they found the atmosphere to be puzzling and contentious. They later learned that while Katzenberg was pushing the idea of working with Pixar, Schneider did not want to bring in a non-Disney animation studio. Katzenberg arranged to meet directly with the Pixar contingent, this time including Lasseter and Jobs. The Pixar team proposed a Christmas television special, \"A Tin Toy Christmas\", as a first step, but Katzenberg countered that as long as they were gearing up to transition from 30-second commercials to a half-hour special, they might as well go all the way and make a feature-length film.\nKatzenberg also made it clear that he was only working with Pixar to get access to Lasseter's talents, and that the Pixar team would be signing up to work with a self-described \"tyrant\" and micro-manager. However, he invited them to talk with Disney's animators and get their opinions on working under him and Lasseter was impressed with what he heard. The two companies began negotiations, although they disagreed on key points including whether Disney would get the rights to Pixar's animation technology or whether Pixar would retain partial ownership of the films, characters, and home video and sequel rights. As Pixar was nearing bankruptcy and desperate for funds, they settled on a deal that would allow Disney to have complete ownership and control of the films and characters, including the rights to make sequels without Pixar's involvement, while Pixar would get approximately 12.5% of ticket sales. These early negotiations became a point of contention between Jobs and Eisner for many years.\nAn agreement to produce a feature film based on \"Tin Toy\" with a working title of \"Toy Story\" was finalized, and production began soon thereafter.\nWriting.\nOriginally, \"Toy Story\" was going to feature \"Tinny\", the wind-up one-man band toy from the \"Tin Toy\" short film, along with \"the dummy\", a ventriloquist's dummy. While the film's premise was still about toys' desire to be played with by children, the rest of the film's script, which involved Tinny being left behind at a gas station, meeting up with the dummy, and having a series of adventures before finding their way into a kindergarten classroom where they can be played with every day, was quite different. Katzenberg was unhappy with the treatment drafted by Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, and Pete Docter, as the two character's motivations were too similar. Instead, he encouraged them to write it as a buddy film, giving the two main characters contrasting personalities, and having them only become friends after being forced to work together. Lasseter, Stanton, and Docter delivered a revised treatment in September 1991 that more closely resembles the final version of the film: Tinny replaces the ventriloquist dummy as a child's favorite toy, their bickering causes them to be left behind at a gas station, they almost catch up to the family at a pizza restaurant, they have to escape a kid that mutilates toys, and the movie ends with a chase scene as the two toys try to catch up to the family's moving van.\nThe script went through many changes before the final version of it. Lasseter decided Tinny was \"too antiquated\"; the character was first changed to a military action figure in the likes of \"G.I. Joe\" and was then given a space theme. Tinny's name changed to Lunar Larry, then Tempus from Morph, and eventually Buzz Lightyear (after astronaut Buzz Aldrin). Lightyear's design was modeled on the suits worn by Apollo astronauts as well as the aforementioned \"G.I. Joe\" action figures. Also, the green and purple color scheme on Lightyear's suit was inspired by Lasseter and his wife, Nancy, whose favorite colors are green and purple, respectively. Woody was inspired by a Casper the Friendly Ghost doll that Lasseter had when he was a child; he was a ventriloquist's dummy with a pull-string (hence the name \"Woody\"). This was until character designer Bud Luckey suggested that Woody could be changed to a cowboy ventriloquist dummy. Lasseter liked the contrast between the Western and the science fiction genres and the character immediately changed. Eventually, all of the ventriloquist dummy aspects of the character were deleted as the dummy looked \"sneaky and mean\". However they kept the name \"Woody\" to pay homage to the Western actor Woody Strode. The story department drew inspiration from films such as \"Midnight Run\" and \"The Odd Couple\", and Lasseter screened Hayao Miyazaki's \"Castle in the Sky\" for further influence.\nSince \"Toy Story\"'s script writers had little experience with feature films, they attended a seminar given by screenwriter Robert McKee. They were inspired by his guidance, based on Aristotle's \"Poetics\", that the main character in a story should be defined by how they react to the obstacles they face, and that it is those obstacles that make characters interesting. Disney also appointed the duo Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow and, later, Joss Whedon to help develop the script. Whedon thought that while the script did not work, it had \"a great structure\". He added the character of Rex and sought a pivotal role for a Barbie doll; the latter transformed into Bo Peep as Mattel would not license the character. Whedon also re-visioned Buzz Lightyear from being a dim-witted but cheerful and self-aware character to an action figure who isn't aware that he's a toy\u2014an epiphany that transformed the film. A brainstorming session with members of Disney Animation's creative team resulted in the addition of the three-eyed squeaky toy aliens.\nCasting.\nKatzenberg approved the script on January 19, 1993, at which point voice casting began. Paul Newman, who subsequently accepted the role of Doc Hudson in the 2006 Pixar film \"Cars\", was considered for the role of Woody. Robin Williams and Clint Eastwood were also considered for Woody, but Lasseter always wanted Tom Hanks to play the role. Lasseter claimed that Hanks \"has the ability to take emotions and make them appealing. Even if the character, like the one in \"A League of Their Own\", is down-and-out and despicable.\" To gauge how an actor's voice might fit with a character, Lasseter borrowed a common Disney technique: animate a vocal monologue from a well-established actor to meld the actor's voice with the appearance or actions of the animated character. This early test footage, using Hanks' voice from \"Turner & Hooch\", convinced Hanks to sign on to the film.\nBilly Crystal was approached to play Buzz, and was given his own monologue, utilizing dialogue from \"When Harry Met Sally\". However, he turned down the role, believing the film would be unsuccessful due to its animation. Crystal regretted this upon seeing the film; he subsequently accepted the role of Mike Wazowski in the 2001 Pixar film \"Monsters, Inc.\". In addition to Crystal, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase and Jim Carrey, along with a number of other actors, including Jason Alexander, Dan Aykroyd, Matthew Broderick, Kevin Costner, Michael J. Fox, Richard Gere, David Hasselhoff, Michael Keaton, Wayne Knight, Bill Paxton, Dennis Quaid, Kurt Russell, Adam Sandler and John Travolta, were also considered for the role of Buzz. Lasseter took the role to Tim Allen, who was appearing in Disney's \"Home Improvement\", and he accepted. Crystal later stated in an interview that he would not have been right as Buzz, and that Allen was \"fantastic\" in the role. Before Wallace Shawn and Jim Varney were cast as Rex and Slinky Dog, Rick Moranis and John Cleese were originally considered for the roles.\nTo cast Andy, Pixar held an open call for young male actors to bring a toy with them. John Morris (who voices Andy in the film) brought multiple toys, specifically 45 \"X-Men\" figures, contrary to the instructions of bringing just one, and Pixar reacted to his dumping of the toys with laughter.\n\"Toy Story\" was both Hanks' and Allen's first animated film, and they recorded their lines together to make their characters' chemistry and interactions realistic.\nProduction shutdown.\nEvery couple of weeks, Lasseter and his team showed Disney their latest storyboards or footage. Disney was impressed by Pixar's technical innovation, but less so of the plot. Katzenberg discarded most of Pixar's script ideas, giving his own extensive notes. Katzenberg primarily wanted to add \"more edginess\" to the two main characters, as Disney wanted \"Toy Story\" to appeal to both children and adults, and they asked for adult references to be added to the film. The characters ended up being stripped of their charm, with Hanks, while recording Woody's dialogue for the story reels, pointed out that the Woody character had been made into a \"real jerk\". Pixar screened the first half of the film for Disney executives on November 19, 1993\u2014an event they later dubbed the \"Black Friday Incident\". The results were disastrous, and Disney's head of feature animation, Peter Schneider, halted production. Katzenberg asked colleague Thomas Schumacher why the reels were bad, to which Schumacher answered, \"Because it's not their movie anymore; it's completely not the movie that John set out to make.\"\nLasseter was embarrassed by the current state of the film, later recalling, \"It was a story filled with the most unhappy, mean characters that I've ever seen.\" Katzenberg allowed him to take the script back to Pixar for rewrites, and the production crew shifted to television commercials while the head writers worked out a new script, being funded personally by Jobs until Disney resumed production. Although Lasseter attempted to keep morale high by remaining outwardly buoyant, the production shutdown was \"a very scary time\" according to story department manager BZ Petroff. Schneider appealed directly to Eisner to cancel the project altogether. Stanton and the other story artists worked to quickly produce new script pages, with help from consultants such as Whedon, and the first revisions were completed in two weeks as promised.\nPixar's script rewrites took three months, and saw Woody transformed from a tyrant to a wise leader. It also included a more adult-oriented staff meeting amongst the toys rather than the juvenile group discussion that had existed in earlier drafts. Buzz Lightyear's character was also changed \"to make it more clear to the audience that he genuinely doesn't know he's a toy\". Katzenberg and Schneider resumed production with the new script by February 1994, and the voice actors returned one month later to record their new lines. The crew grew from 24 people to 110, and now included 27 animators and 22 technical directors. In comparison, \"The Lion King\", released in 1994, required a staff of 800. In the early budgeting process, Jobs was eager to produce the film as efficiently as possible, impressing Katzenberg with his focus on cost-cutting. However, the $17\u00a0million production budget was no longer going to be sufficient, and Jobs requested more funds from Disney to compensate them for the time lost in rewrites based on Katzenberg's notes. Catmull was able to reach a compromise on a new budget, but the incident led Jobs to rethink their deal with Disney.\nAnimation.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nWe couldn't have made this movie in traditional animation. This is a story that can only really be told with three-dimensional toy characters. ... Some of the shots in this film are so beautiful.\n\u2014Tom Schumacher, Vice President of Walt Disney Feature Animation\nRecruiting animators for \"Toy Story\" was brisk; the magnet for talent was not the pay, which was mediocre, but the allure of taking part in the first computer-animated feature. Lasseter said of the challenges of computer animation, \"We had to make things look more organic. Every leaf and blade of grass had to be created. We had to give the world a sense of history. So the doors are banged up, the floors have scuffs.\" The film began with animated storyboards to guide the animators in developing the characters. 27 animators worked on the film, using 400 computer models to animate the characters. Each character was first either created out of clay or modeled from a computer-drawn diagram before reaching the computer-animated design.\nOnce the animators had a model, its articulation and motion controls were coded; this allowed each character to move in a variety of ways, such as talking, walking, or jumping. Out of all of the characters, Woody was the most complex, as he required 723 motion controls, including 212 for his face and 58 for his mouth. The first piece of animation, a 30-second test, was delivered to Disney in June 1992, when the company requested a sample of what the film would look like. Lasseter wanted to impress Disney with several things in the test that could not be done in traditional, hand-drawn animation, such as Woody's yellow plaid shirt with red stripes, the reflections in Buzz's helmet and the decals on his spacesuit, or Venetian blind shadows falling across Andy's room.\nThere were eight teams that were responsible for different aspects of all of the shots. The art department was responsible for determining the overall color and lighting scheme. The layout department was responsible for determining the position of all elements of the shot, as well as programming the virtual camera's position and movements. The animation department created the movements of the characters, generally with one animator being assigned to animate an entire shot, but occasionally with each character having its own animator. The shading team used Pixar's RenderMan software to assign surface textures and reflectivity properties to objects. The lighting team placed global, spot, and flood lighting within the scenes. The \"Render Farm\" used Sun Microsystems computers, running around the clock, to produce the final frames of the film. The camera team recorded the finished frames, which had been rendered at a resolution of 1536 by 922, onto film stock. Finally, Skywalker Sound mixed sound effects, the musical score, and the dialogue to create the audio for the film.\nIn order to make the film feel as realistic as possible, the layout department, led by Craig Good, avoided the sweeping camera shots popular in computer animation at the time, and instead focused on emulating what would have been possible had the film been shot in live-action with real film cameras. The animation department, led by Rich Quade and Ash Brannon, used Pixar's Menv software to hand pose the characters at key frames based on videotape of the actors recording their lines, and let the software do the inbetweening. To sync the characters' mouths and facial expressions to the actors' recorded voices, animators spent a week per eight seconds of animation, as Lasseter felt that automatic lip syncing would not properly convey a character's emotions. The shading team, led by Tom Porter, used scans of real objects, as well as textures drawn by artists and created with procedural generation algorithms, to \"dress\" the objects in the film.\nThe film required 800,000 machine hours and 114,240 frames of animation in total, divided between 1,561 shots that totaled over 77 minutes. Pixar was able to render less than 30 seconds of the film per day.\nMusic.\nLasseter did not want to make \"Toy Story\" into a musical, as he felt that it would make the film feel less genuine. Whedon later agreed, saying \"It would have been a really bad musical because it's a buddy movie. It's about people who won't admit what they want, much less sing about it. ... Buddy movies are about sublimating, punching an arm, 'I hate you.' It's not about open emotion.\" However, Disney preferred to make it a musical, as they had had much success with incorporating Broadway-style musical numbers into their animated films, and encouraged Pixar to do the same. As a compromise, although the characters would not sing, the movie would feature non-diegetic songs as background music. Despite this not happening, the first musical number is seen at the end of \"Toy Story 2\" (1999), and \"\" (2012) is the first version of the original to actually feature the cast of characters singing.\nRandy Newman was hired, and composed three original songs for the film. It marks as Newman's first film soundtrack for an animated film. The film's signature song \"You've Got a Friend in Me\", was written in one day. The song \"Hakuna Matata\" from \"The Lion King\" is heard briefly during the climax when Woody and Buzz are trying to get into the truck while riding RC.\nOn Newman, Lasseter said, \"His songs are touching, witty, and satirical, and he would deliver the emotional underpinning for every scene.\" The soundtrack for \"Toy Story\" was produced by Walt Disney Records and was released on November 22, 1995, the week of the film's release.\nEditing and pre-release.\nThe film's editors, including Lee Unkrich, worked on \"Toy Story\" up until the September 1995 deadline to deliver a final cut for scoring and sound design. According to Unkrich, a scene removed from the original final edit featured Sid torturing Buzz and Woody violently at his house before the scene where Sid interrogates Woody with a magnifying glass. The torture scene was removed because the crew felt that the audience would be so invested in Buzz and Woody's characters by that point that they would be uncomfortable watching them being subjected to such violence. Another scene, in which Woody tries to get Buzz's attention when he was stuck in the box crate while insincerely apologizing for accidentally getting him knocking out of the window, was shortened because the creators felt it would lose the energy of the film. A test screening in July 1995 received encouraging responses from the audience, but the film was not rated as highly as had been hoped, leading to another last-minute round of edits. Eisner, who attended the screening, suggested that the final shot of the film should be of both Woody and Buzz, leading to the film's final shot of the two worried about the arrival of Andy's new puppy.\nThe crew had difficulty analysing the film's quality due to footage being in scattered pieces. Some animators felt the film would be a significant disappointment commercially but felt animators and animation fans would find it interesting. Schneider had grown optimistic about the film as it neared completion, and he announced a United States release date of November, coinciding with Thanksgiving weekend and the start of the winter holiday season.\nSources indicate that Jobs lacked confidence in the film during its production, and had been exploring the possibility of selling Pixar to companies such as Hallmark Cards and Microsoft. However, as the film progressed, Jobs, like Schneider, became increasingly passionate about the film and the transformative nature of what Pixar might be able to accomplish. Eager for Pixar to have the funds necessary to negotiate with Disney as an equal partner, and optimistic about the impact the finished film would have, Jobs decided that he would schedule an initial public offering (IPO) of Pixar just a week after the film's November release.\nRelease.\nBoth Disney and Pixar held separate premieres for \"Toy Story\", with Disney holding theirs at their flagship El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on November 19, 1995, and Pixar holding theirs the following night at the Regency Center in San Francisco. According to David Price's 2008 book \"The Pixar Touch\", the film deeply resonated with audiences, with even the adults being noticeably moved by the film.\nIn some international territories, the theatrical release of the film was preceded by a re-release of the \"Roger Rabbit\" short \"Roller Coaster Rabbit\".\nIn addition to showing at the El Capitan, where tickets included admission to the \"Totally Toy Story\" funhouse that Disney had built in the Hollywood Masonic Temple next door, the film opened on 2,281 screens on the 22nd and later expanded to 2,574.\nThe film was also shown at the Berlin International Film Festival out of competition from February 15 to 26, 1996. Elsewhere, the film opened in March 1996.\nMarketing.\nMarketing for \"Toy Story\" included $20\u00a0million spent by Disney for advertising as well as advertisers such as Burger King, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, and Payless ShoeSource paying $125\u00a0million in promotions for the film. Marketing consultant Al Ries reflected on the promotion: \"This will be a killer deal. How can a kid, sitting through a one-and-a-half-hour movie with an army of recognizable toy characters, not want to own one?\" Despite this, Disney Consumer Products was slow to see the potential of \"Toy Story\". When the Thanksgiving release date was announced in January 1995, many toy companies were accustomed to having eighteen months to two years of lead time and passed on the project. Disney shopped the film at the Toy Fair trade show in February 1995, where only the small Canadian company Thinkway Toys, was interested in licensing the toy rights for the \"Toy Story\" characters. Disney promoted the film by inserting its trailer into the home-video re-release of \"Cinderella\", showing a behind-the-scenes documentary on the Disney Channel, and incorporating the characters into a parade at the Disney-MGM Studios theme park in Florida.\nIt was screenwriter Joss Whedon's idea to incorporate Barbie as a character who could rescue Woody and Buzz in \"Toy Story\"'s final act. The idea was dropped after Mattel objected and refused to license the toy. Producer Ralph Guggenheim claimed that Mattel did not allow the use of the toy as \"They [Mattel] philosophically felt girls who play with Barbie dolls are projecting their personalities onto the doll. If you give the doll a voice and animate it, you're creating a persona for it that might not be every little girl's dream and desire.\" Hasbro likewise refused to license (mainly because Sid was going to blow one up, prompting the filmmakers to instead use a fictional toy, Combat Carl), but they did license Mr. Potato Head. The only real-life toy in the film that was not in production was Slinky Dog, which had been discontinued since the 1970s. When designs for Slinky were sent to Betty James (Slinky inventor Richard James's wife) she said that Pixar had improved the toy and that it was \"cuter\" than the original.\n3-D re-release.\nOn October 2, 2009, \"Toy Story\" was re-released in Disney Digital 3-D. The film was also released with \"Toy Story 2\" as a double feature for a two-week run which was extended due to its success. In addition, the film's second sequel, \"Toy Story 3\", was also released in the 3-D format. Lasseter commented on the new 3-D re-release:\nThe \"Toy Story\" films and characters will always hold a very special place in our hearts and we're so excited to be bringing this landmark film back for audiences to enjoy in a whole new way thanks to the latest in 3-D technology. With \"Toy Story 3\" shaping up to be another great adventure for Buzz, Woody, and the gang from Andy's room, we thought it would be great to let audiences experience the first two films all over again and in a brand new way.\nTranslating the film into 3-D involved revisiting the original computer data and virtually placing a second camera into each scene, creating left eye and right eye views needed to achieve the perception of depth. Unique to computer animation, Lasseter referred to this process as \"digital archaeology\". The process took four months, as well as an additional six months for the two films to add the 3-D. The lead stereographer Bob Whitehill oversaw this process and sought to achieve an effect that affected the emotional storytelling of the film:\nWhen I would look at the films as a whole, I would search for story reasons to use 3-D in different ways. In \"Toy Story\", for instance, when the toys were alone in their world, I wanted it to feel consistent with a safer world. And when they went out to the human world, that's when I really blew out the 3-D to make it feel dangerous and deep and overwhelming.\nUnlike other countries, the United Kingdom received the films in 3-D as separate releases. \"Toy Story\" was released on October 2, 2009. \"Toy Story 2\" was instead released January 22, 2010. The re-release performed well at the box office, opening with $12,500,000 in its opening weekend, placing at the third position after \"Zombieland\" and \"Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs\". The double feature grossed $30.7\u00a0million in its five-week release.\nDisney100 re-release.\nAs part of Disney's 100th anniversary, \"Toy Story\" was re-released in selected CINEMARK theaters from July 21 to August 3, 2023, as well as UK cinemas from September 29 to October 5, and Latin American theaters from October 12 to 18 alongside \"Cinderella\".\nHome media.\n\"Toy Story\" was released by Walt Disney Home Video on VHS and LaserDisc in the United States and Canada on October 29, 1996, with no bonus material. Within the first few weeks of this release, VHS rentals and sales totaled $5.1\u00a0million, ranking \"Toy Story\" as the No. 1 video, beating out \"Twister\". Over 21.5\u00a0million VHS copies were sold during the first year. A deluxe edition widescreen LaserDisc 4-disc box set was released on December 18, 1996. This THX-certified LaserDisc release features bonus material, including the history and development of characters, storyboards and story reels, abandoned concepts and characters, audio commentary, outtakes, deleted animation and trailers. On January 11, 2000, the film was re-released on VHS, but this time as the first video to be part of the Walt Disney Gold Classic Collection with the bonus short film \"Tin Toy\". This release sold two million copies.\n\"Toy Story\" was released for the first time on DVD on October 17, 2000, in a two-pack with its first sequel \"Toy Story 2\". The same day, a 3-disc \"Ultimate Toy Box\" set was released, featuring \"Toy Story\", \"Toy Story 2\", and the third disc of bonus materials. Both DVD versions have the \"Tin Toy\" short, as well as the THX certification. The twin-pack release was later released individually on March 20, 2001. The DVD two-pack, the Ultimate Toy Box set, the Gold Classic Collection VHS and DVD, and the original DVD were all put in the Disney Vault on May 1, 2003. On September 6, 2005, a 2-disc \"10th Anniversary Edition\" was released featuring much of the bonus material from the \"Ultimate Toy Box\", including a retrospective special with John Lasseter and a brand new DTS sound mix. This DVD went back in the Disney Vault on January 31, 2009, along with \"Toy Story 2\". The 10th Anniversary release was the last version of \"Toy Story\" to be released before being taken out of the Disney Vault lineup along with \"Toy Story 2\". Also on September 6, 2005, a UMD of \"Toy Story\" featuring some deleted scenes, a filmmakers' reflect, and a new \"Legacy of Toy Story\" was released for the Sony PlayStation Portable.\n\"Toy Story\" was available for the first time on Blu-ray in a Special Edition Combo Pack that included two discs, the Blu-ray, and the DVD versions of the film. This combo-edition was released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on March 23, 2010, along with its sequel. There was a DVD-only re-release on May 11, 2010. Another \"Ultimate Toy Box\", packaging the Combo Pack with those of both sequels, became available on November 2, 2010. On November 1, 2011, the first three \"Toy Story\" films were re-released all together, each as a DVD/Blu-ray/Blu-ray 3D/Digital Copy combo pack (four discs each for the first two films, and five for the third film). They were also released on Blu-ray 3D in a complete trilogy box set. The film had a re-release on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray on June 4, 2019.\nReception.\nBox office.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nYes, we worry about what the critics say. Yes, we worry about what the opening box office is going to be. Yes, we worry about what the final box office is going to be. But really, the whole point of why we do what we do is to entertain our audiences. The greatest joy I get as a filmmaker is to slip into an audience for one of our movies anonymously and watch people watch our film. Because people are 100 percent honest when they're watching a movie. And to see the joy on people's faces, to see people really get into our films... to me is the greatest reward I could get.\n\u2014John Lasseter, reflecting on the impact of the film\nBefore the film's release, executive producer and Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs stated \"If \"Toy Story\" is a modest hit\u2014say $75\u00a0million at the box office, we'll [Pixar and Disney] both break even. If it gets $100\u00a0million, we'll both make money. But if it's a real blockbuster and earns $200\u00a0million or so at the box office, we'll make good money, and Disney will make a lot of money.\" Upon its release on November 22, 1995, \"Toy Story\" managed to gross more than $350\u00a0million worldwide. Disney chairman Michael Eisner stated \"I don't think either side thought \"Toy Story\" would turn out as well as it has. The technology is brilliant, the casting is inspired, and I think the story will touch a nerve. Believe me, when we first agreed to work together, we never thought their first movie would be our 1995 holiday feature, or that they could go public on the strength of it.\"\nThe film's first five days of domestic release (on Thanksgiving weekend) earned it $39.1 million. Moreover, \"Toy Story\" earned a total of $158.6 million from ticket sales combined with the five-day Wednesday opening. It would go on to hold this record until \"Independence Day\" took it the next year. The film placed first in the weekend's box office with $29.1\u00a0million and maintained the number-one position at the domestic box office for the next two weekends. It was displaced by \"Jumanji\" in its fourth weekend, but still remained ahead of \"Heat\" with $10.9 million. \"Toy Story\" went on to become the highest-grossing domestic film of 1995, beating \"Batman Forever\", \"Apollo 13\" (also starring Tom Hanks), \"Pocahontas\", \"Casper\", \"Waterworld\", \"GoldenEye\", and other films. At the time of its release, it was the third-highest-grossing animated film of all time, after \"The Lion King\" (1994) and \"Aladdin\" (1992). \"Toy Story\" became the second-highest-grossing film of 1995, just $3 million behind \"Die Hard with a Vengeance\". When not considering inflation, \"Toy Story\" is number 96 on the list of the highest-grossing domestic films of all time. The film had gross receipts of $223.2\u00a0million in the U.S. and Canada and $171.2\u00a0million in international markets from its original 1995 release and three re-releases for a total of $394.4\u00a0million worldwide. At the time of its release, the film ranked as the 17th-highest-grossing film (unadjusted) domestically and the 21st-highest-grossing film worldwide.\nCritical response.\n\"Toy Story\" earned a rare approval rating of based on professional reviews on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of . Its critical consensus reads, \"Entertaining as it is innovative, \"Toy Story\" reinvigorated animation while heralding the arrival of Pixar as a family-friendly force to be reckoned with.\" Metacritic (which uses a weighted average) assigned \"Toy Story\" a score of 96 out of 100 based on 26 critics, indicating \"universal acclaim\". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of \"A\" on an A+ to F scale.\nParticular praise was offered for the film's 3D animation. Leonard Klady of \"Variety\" commended its \"razzle-dazzle technique and unusual look\" and said that \"the camera loops and zooms in a dizzying fashion that fairly takes one's breath away.\" Roger Ebert of the \"Chicago Sun-Times\" compared the animation to Disney's \"Who Framed Roger Rabbit\", saying that \"both movies take apart the universe of cinematic visuals and put it back together again, allowing us to see in a new way.\" Due to the film's creative animation, Richard Corliss of \"TIME\" claimed that it was \"the year's most inventive comedy\".\nThe voice cast was also praised by various critics. Susan Wloszczyna of \"USA Today\" approved of the selection of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen for the lead roles. Kenneth Turan of the \"Los Angeles Times\" stated that \"Starting with Tom Hanks, who brings an invaluable heft and believability to Woody, \"Toy Story\" is one of the best voiced animated features in memory, with all the actors ... making their presences strongly felt.\"\nSeveral critics also recognized the film's ability to appeal to various age groups. Owen Gleiberman of \"Entertainment Weekly\" wrote \"It has the purity, the ecstatic freedom of imagination, that's the hallmark of the greatest children's films. It also has the kind of spring-loaded allusive prankishness that, at times, will tickle adults even more than it does kids.\"\nIn 1995, \"Toy Story\" was ranked eighth in \"TIME\"'s list of the \"Best 10 films of 1995\". In 2011, \"TIME\" named it one of the \"25 All-TIME Best Animated Films\".\nIt also ranks at number 99 in \"Empire\" magazine's list of the \"500 Greatest Films of All Time\" and as the \"highest-ranked animated movie\".\nIn 2003, the Online Film Critics Society ranked the film as the greatest animated film of all time. In 2007, the Visual Effects Society named the film 22nd in its list of the \"Top 50 Most Influential Visual Effects Films of All Time\". The film is ranked 99th on the AFI's list of the \"100 greatest American Films of All-Time\". It was one of the only two animated films on that list, the other being \"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs\" (1937). It was also the sixth best in the animation genre on AFI's 10 Top 10.\nIn more recent years, director Terry Gilliam has praised the film as \"a work of genius. It got people to understand what toys are about. They're true to their own character. And that's just brilliant. It's got a shot that's always stuck with me when Buzz Lightyear discovers he's a toy. He's sitting on this landing at the top of the staircase and the camera pulls back and he's this tiny little figure. He was this guy with a massive ego two seconds before... and it's stunning. I'd put that as one of my top ten films, period.\"\nAccolades.\nThe film won and was nominated for various other awards including a Kids' Choice Award, MTV Movie Award, and a British Academy Film Award, among others. John Lasseter received a Special Achievement Academy Award in 1996 \"for the development and inspired application of techniques that have made possible the first feature-length computer-animated film\". Additionally, the film was nominated for three Academy Awards, two to Randy Newman for Best Music\u2014Original Song, for \"You've Got a Friend in Me\", and Best Music\u2014Original Musical or Comedy Score. It was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay for the work by Joel Cohen, Pete Docter, John Lasseter, Joe Ranft, Alec Sokolow, Andrew Stanton and Joss Whedon, making it the first animated film to be nominated for an Academy Award writing category.\n\"Toy Story\" won eight Annie Awards, including Best Animated Feature. Animator Pete Docter, director John Lasseter, musician Randy Newman, producers Bonnie Arnold and Ralph Guggenheim, production designer Ralph Eggleston, and writers Joel Cohen, Alec Sokolow, Andrew Stanton, and Joss Whedon all won awards for Best Individual Achievement in their respective fields for their work on the film. The film also won Best Individual Achievement in technical achievement.\n\"Toy Story\" was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards, one for Best Motion Picture\u2014Comedy or Musical, and one for Best Original Song\u2014Motion Picture for Newman's \"You've Got a Friend in Me\". At both the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards and the Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards, the film won \"Best Animated Film\". \"Toy Story\" is also among the top ten in the BFI list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14, and the highest-placed (at No. 99) animated film in \"Empire\" magazine's list of \"500 Greatest Movies of All Time\". In 2005, \"Toy Story\", along with \"Toy Story 2\" was voted the fourth greatest cartoon in Channel 4's 100 Greatest Cartoons poll, behind \"The Simpsons\", \"Tom and Jerry\", and \"South Park\".\nInfluence and legacy.\n\"Toy Story\" had a large effect on the film industry with its innovative computer animation. After the film's debut, various industries were interested in the technology used for the film. Graphics chip makers desired to compute imagery similar to the film's animation for personal computers, game developers wanted to learn how to replicate the animation for video games, and robotics researchers were interested in building artificial intelligence into their machines that compared to the film's lifelike characters. Various authors have also compared the film to an interpretation of \"Don Quixote\" as well as humanism. In addition, \"Toy Story\" left an impact with its catchphrase \"To Infinity and Beyond\", sequels, and software, among others. In 2005, \"Toy Story\" was selected by the United States Library of Congress to be preserved in the National Film Registry for being \"culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant\".\n\"To Infinity... and Beyond!\".\nBuzz Lightyear's line \"To Infinity and Beyond!\" has been used not only on themed merchandise, but among philosophers and mathematical theorists as well. In 2008, during STS-124, astronauts took an action figure of Buzz Lightyear into space on Space Shuttle \"Discovery\" as part of an educational experience for students while stressing the catchphrase. The action figure was used for experiments in zero-g. It was reported in 2008 that a father and son had continually repeated the phrase to help them keep track of each other while treading water for 15 hours in the Atlantic Ocean. The phrase occurs in the lyrics of Beyonc\u00e9's 2008 song \"Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)\", during the bridge. In 2012, the late Capital STEEZ released a song titled \"Infinity and Beyond\" in reference to the phrase as part of his \"AmeriKKKan Korruption\" mixtape.\nDisney has also recycled the phrase in homage to \"Toy Story\" at least twice. In the \"blooper reel\" shown during the credits of \"A Bug's Life\", Dave Foley says the line while in character as Flik, and Tim Allen himself repeated his famous line in \"The Shaggy Dog\", in a scene when the titular character jumps off a bridge onto a moving vehicle.\nOther influences.\n\"Toy Story\"'s cast of characters forms the basis for the naming of the releases of the Debian computer operating system, from Debian 1.1 \"Buzz\", the first release with a codename, in 1996, to Debian 14 \"Forky\", the most-recently announced future release.\nIn 2013, Pixar designed a \"Gromit Lightyear\" sculpture based on the Aardman Animations character Gromit for Gromit Unleashed, which sold for \u00a365,000.\nSequels and spin-off.\n\"Toy Story 2\".\nThe first sequel, titled \"Toy Story 2\", was released on November 24, 1999. In the film, Woody is stolen by a toy collector, leading Buzz and his friends to launch a rescue mission. Initially, \"Toy Story 2\" was going to be a direct-to-video release, with development beginning in 1996. However, after the cast from \"Toy Story\" returned and the story was considered to be better than that of a direct-to-video release, it was announced in 1998 that the sequel would see a theatrical release.\n\"Toy Story 3\".\n\"Toy Story 3\" was released on June 18, 2010. In the film, Andy's toys are accidentally donated to a day-care center as he prepares to leave for college.\n\"Toy Story 4\".\n\"Toy Story 4\" was released on June 21, 2019, with most of the main cast returning for the film. In the film, Woody, Buzz, and the rest of the gang get used to living with Bonnie, who creates a new toy named Forky, from recycled materials from school. As they go on a road trip with Bonnie, Woody is also reunited with Bo Peep, and must decide where his loyalties lie.\n\"Lightyear\".\nA spin-off film, \"Lightyear\", was released on June 17, 2022, with Chris Evans portraying the original Buzz Lightyear, upon whom the toy given to Andy in the first film was based.\n\"Toy Story 5\".\nOn February 8, 2023, Disney announced that a fifth \"Toy Story\" film is in development.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["53085"], "permutation_1": ["53085"], "permutation_2": ["53085"], "permutation_3": ["53085"]}
{"id": "nq_-3160283135379258497", "docs_added": {"28416": "San Francisco Giants\nMajor League Baseball franchise in San Francisco, California, US\nThe San Francisco Giants are an American professional baseball team based in San Francisco. The Giants compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West Division. Founded in 1883 as the New York Gothams, the team was renamed the New York Giants three years later, eventually relocating from New York City to San Francisco in 1958. The Giants play their home games at Oracle Park in San Francisco.\nThe franchise is one of the oldest and most successful in professional baseball, with more wins than any other team in the history of major American sports. The team was the first major-league organization based in New York City, most memorably playing home games at several iterations of the Polo Grounds. The Giants have played in the World Series 20 times. In 2014, the Giants won their then-record 23rd National League pennant; this mark has since been equaled and then eclipsed by the rival Los Angeles Dodgers, who won their 25th NL crown in 2024. The Giants' eight World Series championships are tied for second-most in the NL\u2014alongside the Dodgers\u2014and are tied for the fifth-most of any franchise.\nThe franchise won 17 pennants and five World Series championships while in New York, led by managers John McGraw, Bill Terry, and Leo Durocher. New York-era star players including Christy Mathewson, Carl Hubbell, Mel Ott, and Willie Mays join 63 other Giants in the Baseball Hall of Fame, the most of any franchise. The Giants' rivalry with the Dodgers, one of the longest-standing and most famed rivalries in American sports, began in New York and continued when both teams relocated to California in 1958.\nDespite the efforts of Mays and Barry Bonds, regarded as two of baseball's all-time best players, the Giants endured a 56-year championship drought following the move west, a stretch that included three World Series losses. The drought finally ended in the early 2010s; under manager Bruce Bochy, the Giants embraced sabermetrics and eventually formed a baseball dynasty that saw them win the World Series in 2010, 2012, and 2014, making the Giants the second team in NL history to win three championships in five years.\nThrough 2024, the franchise's all-time record is 11,541\u201310,019\u2013163 (). Since moving to San Francisco in 1958, the Giants have an overall win\u2013loss record of 5,474\u20135,121\u20136 () through the end of 2024. The team's current manager is Bob Melvin.\nHistory.\nNew York Giants.\nThe Giants originated in New York City as the New York Gothams in 1883, and were known as the New York Giants from 1885 until the team relocated to San Francisco after the 1957 season. During most of their 75 seasons in New York City, the Giants played home games at various incarnations of the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan.\nNumerous inductees of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum played for the New York Giants, including John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, Mel Ott, Bill Terry, Willie Mays, Monte Irvin, and Travis Jackson. During the club's tenure in New York, they produced five of the franchise's eight World Series wins (1905, 1921, 1922, 1933, 1954) and 17 of its 23 National League pennants. Famous moments in the Giants' New York history include the 1922 World Series, in which the Giants swept the Yankees in four games, the 1951 home run by New York Giants outfielder and third baseman Bobby Thomson known as the \"Shot Heard 'Round the World\", and the defensive feat by Mays during Game 1 of the 1954 World Series known as \"the Catch\".\nThe Giants had intense rivalries with their fellow New York teams, the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Giants faced the Yankees in six World Series and played the league rival Dodgers multiple times per season. Games between any two of these three teams were known collectively as the Subway Series. The Dodgers-Giants rivalry continues, as both teams moved to California after the 1957 season, with the Dodgers relocating to Los Angeles. The New York Giants of the National Football League (NFL) are named after the team.\nSan Francisco Giants.\nThe Giants, along with their rival Los Angeles Dodgers, became the first Major League Baseball teams to play on the West Coast. On April 15, 1958, the Giants played their first game in San Francisco, defeating the former Brooklyn and now Los Angeles Dodgers, 8\u20130. The Giants played for two seasons at Seals Stadium (from 1931 to 1957, the stadium was the home of the PCL's San Francisco Seals) before moving to Candlestick Park in 1960. The Giants played at Candlestick Park until 1999, before opening Pacific Bell Park (now known as Oracle Park) in 2000, where the Giants currently play.\nThe Giants struggled to sustain consistent success in their first 50 years in San Francisco. They made nine playoff appearances and won three NL pennants between 1958 and 2009. The Giants lost the 1962 World Series in seven games to the New York Yankees. The Giants were swept in the 1989 World Series by their cross-Bay rival Oakland Athletics, a series best known for the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which caused a 10-day delay between Games 2 and 3. The Giants also lost the 2002 World Series to the Anaheim Angels. One of the team's biggest highlights during this time was the 2001 season, in which outfielder Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs, breaking the record for most home runs in a season. In 2007, Bonds would surpass Hank Aaron's career record of 755 home runs. Bonds finished his career with 762 home runs (586 hit with the Giants), which is still the MLB record.\nThe Giants won three World Series championships in 2010, 2012, and 2014, giving the team eight total World Series titles, including the five won as the New York Giants.\nPlayers inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum as members of the San Francisco Giants include CF Willie Mays, 1B Orlando Cepeda, P Juan Marichal, 1B Willie McCovey, and P Gaylord Perry.\nUniforms.\n1958\u20131972.\nUpon moving to San Francisco, the Giants kept the same uniform they wore in New York, save for two changes. The cap logo now had an interlocking \"SF\" in orange, while the road uniform now featured \"San Francisco\" in black block letters with orange trim. Neckline, pants and sleeves feature thin black and orange stripes.\n1973\u20131976.\nChanging to double-knit polyester, the Giants made a few noticeable changes to their uniform. The color scheme on the letters was changed to orange with black trim, and player names were added on the back. The cap logo remained the same.\n1977\u20131982.\nFor the 1977 season, the Giants switched to pullover uniforms. \"Giants\" on the home uniform was changed from serifed block lettering to cursive script, and the color scheme returned to black with orange trim. The road uniform became orange, with letters in black with white trim. Neck and sleeve stripes are in black, orange and white. Both uniforms received chest numbers. The standard cap was changed to feature an orange brim.\nThe 1978 season saw the Giants add a black alternate uniform, an inverse of their road orange uniform. All three uniforms now featured the \"Giants\" script previously exclusive to the home uniform.\n1983\u20131993.\nBefore the 1983 season, the Giants returned to a traditional buttoned uniform designed by Sidjakov Berman & Gomez. This design returned to the classic look they wore early in their San Francisco tenure, but with a few exceptions. The lettering became more rounded (save for the player's name), the neck stripes were removed, and the interlocking \"SF\" and black piping was added on the road gray uniform. The caps returned to an all-black design.\n1994\u20131999.\nIn 1994, the Giants made a few changes to their uniform. The road uniform reverted to \"San Francisco\" in front and removed the piping. The front of both uniforms returned to stylized block letters with pointed edges, but kept the rounded numbers. The \"SF\" on the cap was also changed to reflect the lettering change.\n2000\u2013present.\nCoinciding with the move to Oracle Park (then Pacific Bell Park) in 2000, the Giants unveiled new uniforms which were aesthetically close to the style they originally wore in their early years. On each uniform, numbers returned to a block letter style.\nHome.\nThe base of the home uniform was changed to cream. The \"Giants\" wordmark kept the same stylized block letter treatment but the arrangement was changed from a vertical to a radial arch. Neck stripes also returned with this uniform. Gold drop shadows were also added. A sleeve patch containing the team logo and the words \"San Francisco Baseball Club\" was also featured.\nRoad.\nThe gray road uniform returned to the classic \"San Francisco\" wordmark used in the 1960s, though in 2005 gold drop shadows were also added. This uniform was then tweaked to include black piping in 2012. Two sleeve patches were used. Between 2000 and 2010, the patch featured \"SF\" in orange letters in front of a baseball, with the full name added within a black circle. In 2011, this was changed to the sleeve patch used on the home uniform. Until 2020, only the road uniform featured player names; since 2021, all Giants uniforms have player names on the back.\nBlack alternate.\nIn 2001, the Giants added a road and home alternate black uniform. Each uniform shared the same design as their home and road counterparts, with the exception of the road alternate receiving gold drop shadows. The home design was dropped after only one season, and the road version was retired the following year. Both sets were worn with an all-black cap but with the squatchee in black (the primary cap has an orange squatchee) and the \"SF\" wordmark changed to black with orange trim.\nIn 2015, the Giants unveiled a new black alternate uniform to be used on select Saturday home games. This set has the interlocking \"SF\" in front along with orange piping and a new sleeve patch containing the Golden Gate Bridge atop the \"Giants\" wordmark. Initially, the letters were in black with orange trim, but this was changed to orange with black trim and orange drop shadows.\nOrange alternate.\nBefore the 2010 season, the Giants unveiled a new orange alternate uniform to be used on Friday home games. Initially, this design was similar to the home uniform save for a trim change to cream, but in 2011, the sleeve patch was changed to the one previously used on the team's road uniform. In 2014, the orange alternate were tweaked slightly, adding black piping and a new sleeve patch featuring the interlocking \"SF\" logo, and returning to the script \"Giants\" lettering previously used in the late 1970s. This design is usually paired with a black cap with orange brim featuring the \"SF\" logo.\nRoad alternate.\nBetween 2012 and 2019, the Giants wore a second gray road uniform. This design was similar to the primary roads, but with the \"SF\" in place of the city name (a nod to the 1983\u20131993 road uniforms).\nCity Connect.\nIn 2021, Major League Baseball and Nike introduced the \"City Connect\" program, with teams wearing special uniforms that reflect the pride and personality of their community. The Giants' version is a white base with orange accents, featuring the stylized \"G\" in an orange/white gradient. The gradient represents the San Francisco fog that envelopes the Bay Area many months per year. An orange silhouette of the Golden Gate Bridge is printed on the sleeves. The uniform is paired with an all-orange cap with the \"SF\" in orange with white trim. The uniforms are usually worn on Tuesday home games. In 2025, Nike announced they were making changes the \"City Connect\" program, the Giants are confirmed to be changing their \"City Connect\" uniform for the 2025 Major League Baseball season.\nRivalries.\nThe Giants' rivalry with the Los Angeles Dodgers dates back to when the two teams were based in New York, as does their rivalry with the New York Yankees. The Dodger and Giants rivalry is one of the longest rivalries in sports history. Their rivalry with the Oakland Athletics dates back to when the Giants were in New York and the A's were in Philadelphia and played each other in the 1905, 1911, & 1913 World Series, and was renewed in 1968 when the Athletics moved from Kansas City and the teams again played each other in the earthquake-interrupted 1989 Bay Bridge World Series. The 2010 NLCS inaugurated a Giants rivalry with the Philadelphia Phillies after confrontations between Jonathan S\u00e1nchez and Chase Utley, and between Ram\u00f3n Ram\u00edrez and Shane Victorino. However, with the Philadelphia Phillies dropping off as one of the premier teams of the National League, this rivalry has died down since 2010 and 2011. Another rivalry that has intensified recently is with the St. Louis Cardinals, whom the team has faced 4 times in the NLCS.\nThe rivalry between the New York Giants and Chicago Cubs in the early 20th century was once regarded as one of the most heated in baseball, with Merkle's Boner leading to a 1908 season-ending matchup in New York of particular note. That historical rivalry was revisited when the Giants beat the Cubs in the 1989 National League Championship Series, in their tiebreaker game in Chicago at the end of the 1998 season, on June 6, 2012, in a \"Turn Back The Century\" game in which both teams wore replica 1912 uniforms, and in the 2016 National League Division Series in which the Cubs won.\nLos Angeles Dodgers.\nThe Giants-Dodgers rivalry is one of the longest-standing rivalries in team sports.\nThe Giants-Dodgers feud began in the late 19th century when both clubs were based in New York City, with the Dodgers based in Brooklyn and the Giants playing at the Polo Grounds in upper Manhattan. After the 1957 season, Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley decided to move the team to Los Angeles primarily for financial reasons. Along the way, he managed to convince Giants owner Horace Stoneham (who was considering moving his team to Minnesota) to preserve the rivalry by taking his team to San Francisco as well. New York baseball fans were stunned and heartbroken by the move. Given that the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco have long been competitors in economic, cultural and political arenas, their new California venues became fertile ground for transplantation of the ancient rivalry. In the wake of the Giants' and Dodgers' leaving New York, a new ballclub was born in 1962 in Queens: The New York Mets. The team's colors (blue and orange) were an homage to the recently departed teams.\nBoth teams' having endured for over a century while leaping across an entire continent, as well as the rivalry's growth from cross-city to cross-state, have led to its being considered one of the greatest in sports history.\nThe Giants-Dodgers rivalry has seen both teams enjoy periods of success at the expense of the other. While the Giants have more total wins and head-to-head wins in their overall franchise histories, the Dodgers have more total wins and head-to-head wins since the two teams moved to California in 1958. The Dodgers have also won the National League West 14 more times than the Giants since the start of division play in 1969. Both teams have made the postseason as a National League wild card three times. The Giants won their first world championship in California in 2010, while the Dodgers won their most recent world title in 2024. As of the end of the 2024 baseball season, the Los Angeles Dodgers lead the San Francisco Giants in California World Series triumphs, 7\u20133, whereas in 20th-century New York, the Giants led the Dodgers in World Series championships, 5\u20131. Overall, the two franchises are tied 8\u20138 in total World Series championships.\nOakland Athletics.\nA geographic rivalry with the cross-Bay American League Athletics greatly increased with the 1989 World Series, nicknamed the \"Battle of the Bay\", which Oakland swept (and which was interrupted by the Loma Prieta earthquake moments before the scheduled start of Game 3 in San Francisco). This dates back to when the Giants and Athletics were rivals, when the Giants were in New York and the Athletics in Philadelphia. They met in the 1905, 1911, and 1913 World Series. In addition, the introduction of interleague play in 1997 has pitted the two teams against each other for usually six games every season since 1997, three in each city (but only four in 2013, two in each city). Before 1997, they played each other only in Cactus League spring training. Their interleague play wins and losses (63\u201357 in favor of the A's) have been fairly evenly divided despite differences in league, style of play, stadium, payroll, fan base stereotypes, media coverage and World Series records, all of which have heightened the rivalry in recent years. The intensity of the rivalry and how it is understood varies among Bay Area fans. A's fans generally view the Giants as a hated rival, while Giants fans generally view the A's as a friendly rival much lower on the scale. This is most likely due to the A's lack of a historical rival, while the Giants have their heated rivalry with the Dodgers. Some Bay Area fans are fans of both teams. The \"split hats\" that feature the logos of both teams best embodies the shared fan base. Other Bay Area fans view the competition between the two teams as a \"friendly rivalry\", with little actual hatred compared to similar ones such as the Subway Series (New York Mets vs. New York Yankees), the Red Line Series (Chicago Cubs vs. Chicago White Sox) and the Freeway Series (Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Los Angeles Angels).\nThe Giants and A's enjoyed a limited rivalry at the start of the 20th century before the Yankees began to dominate after the acquisition of Babe Ruth in 1920, when the Giants were in New York and the A's were in Philadelphia. The teams were managed by legendary leaders John McGraw and Connie Mack, who were considered not only friendly rivals but the premier managers during that era, especially in view of their longevity (Mack for 50 years, McGraw for 30) since both were majority owners. Each team played in five of the first 15 World Series (tying them with the Red Sox and Cubs for most World Series appearances during that time period). As the New York Giants and the Philadelphia A's, they met in three World Series, with the Giants winning in 1905 and the A's in 1911 & 1913. After becoming the San Francisco Giants and Oakland A's, they met in a fourth Series in 1989 resulting in the A's last world championship (as of 2024).\nNew York Yankees.\nThough in different leagues, the Giants have also been historical rivals of the Yankees, starting in New York before the Giants moved to the West Coast. Before the institution of interleague play in 1997, the two teams had little opportunity to play each other except in seven World Series: 1921, 1922, 1923, 1936, 1937, 1951 and 1962, the Yankees winning last five of the seven Series. The teams have met five times in regular season interleague play: In 2002 at the old Yankee Stadium, in 2007 at Oracle Park (then known as AT&T Park), in 2013, 2016, and 2023 at the current Yankee Stadium, and in 2019 at Oracle Park. The teams' next regular season meetings will occur yearly, with the advent of the balanced schedule format introduced in 2023.\nIn his July 4, 1939, farewell speech ending with the renowned \"Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth\", Yankee slugger Lou Gehrig, who played in 2,130 consecutive games, declared that the Giants were a team he \"would give his right arm to beat, and vice versa\".\nBaseball Hall of Famers.\nAs of 2024, the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame has inducted 66 representatives of the Giants (55 players and 11 managers) into the Hall of Fame, more than any other team in the history of baseball.\nOther.\nThe following inducted members of the Hall of Fame played or managed for the Giants, but either played for the Giants and were inducted as a manager having never managed the Giants, or managed the Giants and were inducted as a player having never played for the Giants:\nBroadcasters Russ Hodges, Lon Simmons, and Jon Miller are permanently honored in the Hall's \"Scribes & Mikemen\" exhibit as a result of winning the Ford C. Frick Award in 1980, 2004, and 2010 respectively. As with all Frick Award winners, none are officially recognized as an inducted member of the Hall of Fame.\nWall of Famers.\nThe Giants Wall of Fame recognizes retired players whose records stand highest among their teammates on the basis of longevity and achievements.\nThose honored have played a minimum of nine seasons for the San Francisco Giants, or five seasons with at least one All-Star selection as a Giant.\nRetired numbers.\nThe Giants have retired 11 numbers in the history of the franchise, most recently Will Clark's number 22 in 2022.\nOf the Giants whose numbers have been retired, all but Bonds and Clark have been elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. In 1944, Carl Hubbell (#11) became the first National Leaguer to have his number retired by his team. Bill Terry (#3), Mel Ott (#4), and Hubbell played or managed their entire careers for the New York Giants. Willie Mays (#24) began his career in New York, moving with the Giants to San Francisco in 1958; he did not play in most of 1952 and all of 1953 due to his service in the Korean War. Mathewson and McGraw are honored by the Giants, but played in an era before uniform numbers became standard in baseball.\nThe Giants had originally scheduled to retire Will Clark's #22 on July 11, 2020, but the ceremony was postponed until July 30, 2022, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nAlso honored.\nJohn McGraw (3B, 1902\u201306; manager, 1902\u201332) and Christy Mathewson (P, 1900\u201316), who were members of the New York Giants before the introduction of uniform numbers, have the letters \"NY\" displayed in place of a number.\nBroadcasters Lon Simmons (1958\u201373, 1976\u201378, 1996\u20132002 & 2006), Russ Hodges (1949\u201370), and Jon Miller (1997\u2013current) are each represented by an old-style radio microphone displayed in place of a number.\nThe Giants present the Willie Mac Award annually to the player that best exemplifies the spirit and leadership shown by Willie McCovey throughout his career.\nTeam captains.\nThe Giants have had ten official recorded captains over the years:\nDuring the 2021 and 2022 season, player Brandon Belt gave himself the title of self-proclaimed captain, but this was not considered an official captaincy.\nSeason records.\nNote: These statistics are current as of end of 2023 season.\nMinor league affiliations.\nThe San Francisco Giants farm system consists of seven minor league affiliates.\nRadio and television.\nGiants' television telecasts are on NBC Sports Bay Area (cable) with select games simulcasted on KNTV (broadcast). KNTV's broadcast contract with the Giants began in 2008, one year after the team and KTVU mutually ended a relationship that dated to 1961. Jon Miller regularly called the action on KNTV, which used to be exclusive to the NBC Bay Area channel up until 2021, while the announcing team for NBCSBA telecasts is Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow, affectionately known as \"Kruk and Kuip\" (pronounced \"Kruke\" and \"Kype\"). During the 2016 season, the Giants had an average 4.71 rating and 117,000 viewers on primetime TV broadcasts. Since the 2022 season, as Krukow is unable to travel with the team due to his inclusion body myositis, the pair only work home games and select road games, which the road games are done via \"SplitKast\" where Kuiper would be at the away ballpark and Krukow will be at the NBC Sports Bay Area studio in San Francisco. Shawn Estes, Javier L\u00f3pez, and Hunter Pence serve as an alternate analysts for all other Giants road games with either Kuiper or Flemming.\nThe Giants' flagship radio station is KNBR (680 AM). KNBR's owner, Cumulus Media, is a limited partner in San Francisco Baseball Associates LP, the owner of the team. Jon Miller and Dave Flemming are the regular play-by-play announcers. Joe Ritzo and F.P. Santangelo serves as a backup play by play when Jon is absent and Dave is on TV. In addition to KNBR, the Giants can be heard throughout Northern California and parts of Nevada, Oregon, and Hawaii on the Giants Radio Network. Erwin Higueros and Tito Fuentes handle Spanish-language radio broadcasts on KXZM (93.7 FM).\nFight song and other music.\nFirst used for Giants radio broadcasts on KSFO, the team's fight song \"Bye, Bye Baby!\" is currently used following any Giants home run. The song is played in the stadium, and an instrumental version is played on telecasts when the inning in which the home run was hit concludes. The title and chorus \"Bye bye baby!\" coming from famed former Giants broadcaster Russ Hodges, which was his home run call.\nFollowing a Giants home win, Tony Bennett's \"I Left My Heart in San Francisco\" is played in Oracle Park in celebration.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "24089250": "New York Giants (baseball)\nProfessional baseball team in Manhattan, New York, 1883\u20131957\nThe New York Giants were a Major League Baseball team in the National League that began play in the 1883 season as the New York Gothams and became known as the Giants in 1885. They continued as the New York Giants until the team moved to San Francisco, California after the 1957 season, where the team continues its history as the San Francisco Giants. The team moved west at the same time as its longtime rival, the Brooklyn Dodgers, also in the National League, moved to Los Angeles in southern California as the Los Angeles Dodgers, continuing the National League, same-state rivalry.\nDuring most of their 75 seasons in New York City, the Giants played home games at various incarnations of the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan.\nNumerous inductees of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum played for the New York Giants, including Christy Mathewson (a member of the Hall of Fame's inaugural class), John McGraw, Mel Ott, Bill Terry, Willie Mays, Monte Irvin, Frankie Frisch, Ross Youngs and Travis Jackson. During the club's tenure in New York, it won five of the franchise's eight World Series championships and 17 of its 23 National League pennants. Famous moments in the Giants' New York history include the 1922 World Series, in which the Giants swept the Yankees in four games, Bobby Thomson's 1951 home run known as the \"Shot Heard 'Round the World\", and the defensive feat by Willie Mays during the first game of the 1954 World Series known as \"the Catch\".\nThe Giants had intense rivalries with their fellow New York teams the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, facing the Yankees in six World Series and playing the league rival Dodgers multiple times per season. Games between any two of these three teams were known collectively as the Subway Series.\nThe New York Giants of the National Football League were named after the team; to distinguish the two clubs, the football team was legally incorporated as the \"New York Football Giants\", which remains its corporate name to this day.\nThe New York Giants had an overall win\u2013loss record of 6,067\u20134,898\u2013157 () during their 74 years in New York. Nineteen former New York Giants players were elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.\nHistory.\nEarly days.\nThe Giants began as the second baseball club founded by millionaire tobacconist John B. Day and veteran amateur baseball player Jim Mutrie. The Gothams, as the Giants were originally known, entered the National League seven years after its 1876 formation, in 1883, while their other club, the Metropolitans played in the rival American Association (1882\u20131891). Nearly half of the original Gothams players were members of the disbanded Troy Trojans in upstate New York, whose place in the National League the Gothams inherited. While the Metropolitans were initially the more successful club, after they won the 1884 AA championship, Day and Mutrie began moving star players to the NL Gothams, whose fortunes improved while the Metropolitans' afterwards slumped.\nIt is said that after one particularly satisfying victory over the Philadelphia Phillies, Mutrie (who was also the team's manager) stormed into the dressing room and exclaimed, \"My big fellows! My giants!\" From then on (1885), the club was known as the Giants. However, more recent research has suggested that the \"New York World\" was already widely using the Giants nickname throughout the 1885 season, before the legendary game was played.\nThe team won its first National League pennant in 1888, as well as a victory over the St. Louis Browns in an early incarnation of the pre-modern-era World Series. They repeated as champions the next year with a pennant and world championship victory over Brooklyn.\nThe Giants' original home stadium, the Polo Grounds, also dates from this early era. It had been built in 1876 as a pitch for playing polo, and was located north of Central Park adjacent to Fifth and Sixth Avenues and 110th and 112th Streets, in Harlem in upper Manhattan. After their eviction from that first incarnation of the Polo Grounds after the 1888 season, they moved further uptown to various fields which they also named the \"Polo Grounds\" located between 155th and 159th Streets in Harlem and Washington Heights, playing at the famous Washington Heights location at the foot of Coogan's Bluff until the end of the 1957 season, when they moved to San Francisco.\nThe Giants were a powerhouse in the late 1880s, winning their first two National League Pennants and World Championships in 1888 and 1889. But nearly all of the Giants' stars jumped to the upstart newly organized rival loop, the Players' League, whose New York franchise was also named the Giants, in 1890. The new team even built a stadium next door to the NL Polo Grounds. With a decimated roster, the NL Giants finished a distant sixth. Attendance took a nosedive, and the financial strain affected Day's tobacco business as well. The Players' League dissolved after the single season, and Day sold a minority interest in his NL Giants to the defunct PL Giants' principal backer, Edward Talcott. As a condition of the sale, Day had to fire Mutrie as manager. Although the Giants rebounded to third place in 1891, Day was forced to sell a controlling interest to Talcott at the end of the '91 season.\nIn 1894, the Giants, as runner-up in the National League, took part in the 1894 Temple Cup championship series against the Baltimore Orioles, sweeping in four games and winning the first Temple Cup.\nFour years later, Talcott sold the Giants to Andrew Freedman, a real estate developer with ties to the Tammany Hall, the political machine of the Democratic Party that ran New York City. Freedman was one of the most detested owners in baseball history, getting into heated disputes with other owners, writers and his own players, most famously with star pitcher Amos Rusie, author of the first Giants no-hitter. When Freedman offered Rusie only $2,500 for 1896, the disgruntled hurler sat out the entire season. Attendance fell off throughout the league without Rusie, prompting the other owners to chip in $50,000 to get him to return for 1897. Freedman even hired former owner Day as manager for part of the 1899 season.\nThe John McGraw era.\nIn 1902, after a series of disastrous moves that left the Giants <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />53+1\u20442 games behind the front-runner, Freedman signed John McGraw as player-manager, convincing him to jump in mid-season from the Baltimore Orioles (1901\u20131902) of the fledgling American League and bring with him several of his teammates. McGraw went on to manage the Giants for three decades until 1932, one of the longest and most successful tenures in professional sports. Hiring \"Mr. McGraw\", as his players referred to him, was one of Freedman's last significant moves as owner of the Giants, since after that 1902 season he was forced to sell his interest in the club to John T. Brush. McGraw went on to manage the Giants to nine National League pennants (in 1904, 1905, and every year from 1911 to 1913) and three World Series championships (in 1905, 1921, and 1922), with a tenth pennant and fourth world championship as Giants owner in 1933 under his handpicked player-manager successor, Bill Terry.\nThe Giants already had their share of stars beginning in the 1880s and 1890s, such as \"Smiling\" Mickey Welch, Roger Connor, Tim Keefe, Jim O'Rourke, and John Montgomery Ward, the player-lawyer who formed the renegade Players' League in 1890 to protest unfair player contracts. McGraw, a veteran of the infamous 1890s Baltimore Orioles, in his three decades managing the Giants, McGraw managed star players including Christy Mathewson, \"Iron Man\" Joe McGinnity, Jim Thorpe, Red Ames, Casey Stengel, Art Nehf, Edd Roush, Rogers Hornsby, Bill Terry and Mel Ott.\nThe Giants under McGraw famously snubbed their first modern World Series chance in 1904 by refusing the invitation to play the reigning world champion Boston Americans (Red Sox) because McGraw considered the newly established American League of 1901, as little more than a minor league and disliked its firebrand president, Ban Johnson. He also resented his Giants' new intra-city rival New York Highlanders, who almost won the pennant but lost to Boston on the last day, and stuck by his refusal to play"}, "descending_order": ["28416", "24089250"], "permutation_1": ["28416", "24089250"], "permutation_2": ["24089250", "28416"], "permutation_3": ["24089250", "28416"]}
{"id": "nq_8639701427393876538", "docs_added": {"50344748": "Bank of England \u00a35 note\nSmallest denomination of England's banknotes\nThe Bank of England \u00a35 note, also known as a fiver, is a sterling banknote. It is the smallest denomination of banknote currently issued by the Bank of England. On 5 June 2024 and 13 September 2016, a new polymer note was introduced, featuring the images of King Charles III and the late Queen Elizabeth II on the obverse and a portrait of Winston Churchill on the reverse. The old paper note, first issued in 2002 and bearing the image of prison reformer Elizabeth Fry on the reverse, was phased out and ceased to be legal tender after 5 May 2017.\nHistory.\nIntroduction.\nFive pound notes (\u00a35) were introduced by the Bank of England in 1793, following the ten pound note, which had been introduced in 1759 as a consequence of gold shortages caused by the Seven Years' War. The 5 pound note was introduced again, due to gold shortages caused by the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars and was the lowest denomination of note issued until 1797. The earliest notes were handwritten and were issued to individuals as needed. These notes were written on one side only and bore the name of the payee, the date and the signature of the issuing cashier.\nRestriction period.\nIn 1797, due to the extra money needed to fund the war and the uncertainty caused as Britain declared war on France, a series of bank runs drained the Bank of England of its gold supply. The Bank was forced to stop exchanging gold for notes and to issue notes of \u00a31 and \u00a32 denominations. This was known as the 'restriction period', as the exchange of notes for their value in gold was restricted.\nThe Restriction Period ended in 1821 as the Government had to anchor the value of the currency to gold in order to control sharply rising inflation and national debt. After a brief period to offset any sudden deflation, the UK returned to the gold standard on 1 May 1821. These notes could again be exchanged in full, or in part, for an equivalent amount of gold when presented at the bank. If redeemed in part, the banknote would be marked to indicate the amount that had been redeemed. From 1853 printed notes replaced handwritten notes, with the declaration \"I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of five pounds\" replacing the name of the payee. This declaration remains on Bank of England banknotes to this day. A printed signature of one of three cashiers appeared on the printed notes, though this was replaced by the signature of the Chief Cashier from 1870 onward.\nMove away from gold standard.\nThe right to redeem banknotes for gold ceased in 1931, when Britain stopped using the gold standard. Metal thread was introduced on the \u00a35 note in 1945 as a security feature. The printed black and white notes were replaced from 1957 onwards by new, two-sided notes. The first two-sided \u00a35 notes (series B) were blue and featured a bust of Britannia on the front and a lion on the back. Series C notes, first introduced in 1963, were the first notes to feature an image of the monarch on the front, with Britannia being relegated to the back. From 1971 onward, with the introduction of series D, a British historical figure was portrayed on the reverse: the soldier and statesman the Duke of Wellington in this case. Series E notes, first issued in 1990, are multicoloured, although they are predominantly turquoise-blue. These notes feature a portrait of railway pioneer George Stephenson, as well as for the first time 'windowed' metal thread; this thread appears as a dashed line, yet forms a single line when held up to the light.\n2002 Varnish issue.\nIn 2002, a problem was identified in which the serial numbers could be rubbed off some notes. The problem was highlighted after six members of the public complained to The Bank of England; banks as well as Post Offices stopped distributing the notes at the request of the Bank of England to stop issuing the new \u00a35 notes. The Bank said the move was a \"precautionary measure while we carry out further tests and investigative work into what might have caused the fault and how widespread the problem is\". The bank consequently did rigorous testing and found the problem to be that the serial numbers were printed over the varnish rather than under it allowing the ink to be removed if enough force was applied. The Bank started to varnish the notes in an attempt to make them last longer than previous notes which only had an estimated lifespan of nine months.\nA spokesman for the Bank of England said: \"The notes are still legal tender and the public shouldn't have a problem spending them in the shops. As long as shopkeepers check the anti-counterfeit measures, then the lack of serial numbers is not a problem.\n\"If members of the public are concerned, then they should take the notes back to the bank where they will be exchanged.\"\nThe F series \u00a35 note was never issued.\nMoving to polymer.\nIn April 2013, the Governor of the Bank of England Sir Mervyn King announced on behalf of the bank that Elizabeth Fry would be replaced by Winston Churchill on the next \u00a35 note which would enter circulation in 2016. It was also announced that the images featured on the reverse would include the famous 1941 portrait of Churchill (\"The Roaring Lion\") by Yousuf Karsh, a view of the Houses of Parliament, a quote by Churchill (\"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat\") and a background image of Churchill's Nobel Prize in Literature, while the obverse would feature an image of Queen Elizabeth II.\nIn December 2013 the Bank of England announced that the next \u00a35 note would be printed on a polymer, rather than cotton paper. The bank cited that they would be cleaner, more secure and more durable. It was also said that the new polymer notes would be more environmentally friendly, lasting 2.5 times as long as cotton paper notes, according to the Bank's own environmental testing.\nThe note was introduced on 13 September 2016, with an initial print run of 440 million notes (worth \u00a32.2 billion), over the period of co-circulation. It was announced that there would be a co-circulatory period with the old series E notes, and then on 5 May 2017, the series E would cease to be legal tender. However, as with all Bank of England notes, they can be exchanged at face value at any time in the future.\nIngredients controversy.\nIn November 2016, there was controversy when the Bank of England confirmed that the new notes contained traces of tallow. According to an online petition on this issue, this is unacceptable to vegans, vegetarians, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Jews and other groups in the UK, and one Cambridge cafe boycotted the new note. The note's manufacturer, Innovia Security, was looking into changing the recipe for the polymer used, so as to contain no animal products, which are added to polymer pellets at an early stage of production. However, on 10 August 2017 the Bank of England announced that all future notes, including future \u00a35 note prints would continue the use of traces of tallow.\nDesign.\nList of historical designs.\nSources from the Bank of England:\nCurrent designs.\nThe series G (polymer) note is the only \u00a35 note that is currently legal tender. The old paper series E was withdrawn, following a co-circulation period with both notes being legal tender which ended on 5 May 2017.\nCirculation.\nThe Bank of England is responsible for printing and issuing notes to ensure a smooth monetary supply across the United Kingdom. It reports the number of notes in circulation at any given time. The \u00a35 note circulation peaked in 1979 before the \u00a350 was re-introduced.\nTable sources from the Bank of England Statistics\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "270680": "Banknotes of the pound sterling\nPromissory notes denominated in pounds sterling\nThe pound sterling (symbol: \u00a3; ISO 4217 currency code: GBP) is the official currency of the United Kingdom, Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, British Antarctic Territory, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, and Tristan da Cunha. The Bank of England has a legal monopoly of banknote issuance in England and Wales. Six other banks (three in Scotland and three in Northern Ireland) also issue their own banknotes as provisioned by the Banking Act 2009, but the law requires that the issuing banks hold a sum of Bank of England banknotes (or gold) equivalent to the total value of notes issued.\nVersions of the pound sterling issued by Crown dependencies and other areas are regulated by their local governments and not by the Bank of England. Three British Overseas Territories (Gibraltar, Saint Helena, and the Falkland Islands) also have currencies called pounds which are at par with the pound sterling. Pound sterling paper banknotes were the first to be issued in Europe, printed and circulated by the Bank of Scotland in 1696.\nCurrently circulating Bank of England notes.\nThe pound sterling banknotes in current circulation consist of Series G Bank of England notes in denominations of \u00a35, \u00a310, \u00a320 and \u00a350. The obverse of these banknotes issued through 4 June 2024 feature the portrait of Elizabeth II originally introduced in 1990. Starting on 5 June 2024, the Bank of England began issuing notes featuring a portrait of Charles III, which will circulate alongside the Elizabeth II notes and gradually replace them. Select banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland also issue their own banknotes at par with Bank of England issues. Scottish and Northern Irish notes, which are not legal tender but are promissory notes, are occasionally rejected as payment in England by merchants unfamiliar with them, and are likely difficult or impossible to exchange outside Britain.\nHistory.\nUntil the middle of the 19th century, privately owned banks in Great Britain and Ireland were free to issue their own banknotes. Paper currency issued by a wide range of provincial and town banking companies in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland circulated freely as a means of payment.\nAs gold shortages affected the supply of money, note-issuing powers of the banks were gradually restricted by various acts of Parliament, until the Bank Charter Act 1844 gave exclusive note-issuing powers to the central Bank of England. Under the act, no new banks could start issuing notes; and note-issuing banks gradually vanished through mergers and closures. The last private English banknotes were issued in 1921 by Fox, Fowler and Company, a Somerset bank.\nHowever, some of the monopoly provisions of the Bank Charter Act 1844 only applied to England and Wales.\nThe Bank Notes (Scotland) Act 1845 was passed the following year, and to this day, three retail banks retain the right to issue their own sterling banknotes in Scotland, and four in Northern Ireland. Notes issued in excess of the value of notes outstanding in 1844 (1845 in Scotland) must be backed up by an equivalent value of Bank of England notes.\nFollowing the partition of Ireland, the Irish Free State created an Irish pound in 1928; the new currency was pegged to sterling until 1979. The issue of banknotes for the Irish pound fell under the authority of the Currency Commission of the Republic of Ireland, which set about replacing the private banknotes with a single Consolidated Banknote Issue in 1928. In 1928, the Currency and Bank Notes Act 1928 reduced the fiduciary limit for Irish-bank issued sterling banknotes circulating in Northern Ireland to take account of the reduced size of the territory concerned.\nElizabeth II was not the first British monarch to have her face on UK banknotes. George II, George III and George IV appeared on early Royal Bank of Scotland notes and George V appeared on 10/\u2013 and \u00a31 notes issued by the British Treasury between 1914 and 1928. However, prior to the issue of its Series C banknotes in 1960, Bank of England banknotes generally did not depict the monarch. Today, notes issued by Scottish and Northern Irish banks do not depict the monarch.\nThe monarch is depicted on banknotes issued by the Crown dependencies and on some of those issued by overseas territories.\nEveryday use and acceptance.\nThe wide variety of sterling notes in circulation means that acceptance of different sterling banknotes varies. Their acceptance may depend on the experience and understanding of individual retailers, and it is important to understand the idea of \"legal tender\", which is often misunderstood (see section below).\nIn summary, the various banknotes are used as follows:\nBank of England banknotes.\nMost sterling notes are issued by the Bank of England. These are legal tender in England and Wales. Bank of England notes are generally accepted in the Overseas Territories which are at parity with sterling. In Gibraltar, there are examples of pairs of automatic cash dispensers placed together, one stocked with Bank of England notes, and the other with local ones.\nScottish banknotes.\nThese are the recognised currency in Scotland, although they are not legal tender (nor are Bank of England notes). They are always accepted by traders in Scotland, and are usually accepted elsewhere in the United Kingdom. However, some outside Scotland may be unfamiliar with the notes and they are sometimes refused. Institutions such as clearing banks, building societies and the Post Office will readily accept Scottish bank notes. Branches of the Scottish note-issuing banks situated in England dispense Bank of England notes and are not permitted to dispense their own notes from those branches. Modern Scottish banknotes are denominated in sterling, and have exactly the same value as Bank of England notes; they should not be confused with the former pound Scots, a separate currency which was abolished in 1707.\nNorthern Irish banknotes.\nBanknotes issued by Northern Irish banks have the same legal status as Scottish banknotes in that they are promissory notes issued in pounds sterling and may be used for cash transactions anywhere in the United Kingdom. However, they are rarely seen outside of Northern Ireland. In England and Wales, although they might be accepted by any shop, they are often not accepted without explanation. Like Scottish notes, clearing banks and building societies will accept them. Northern Irish pound sterling banknotes should not be confused with the Irish pound (or \"punt\"), the former currency of the Republic of Ireland, which was replaced by the euro in 2002.\nBanknotes of the Crown dependencies.\nThe Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey, and the Isle of Man, are possessions of the Crown but are outside the UK; they are in currency union with the United Kingdom and issue pound sterling banknotes in local designs (Jersey and Guernsey pounds are freely interchangeable within the Channel Islands). In the United Kingdom, they are intermittently accepted by merchants. However, they are accepted by banks and post offices and the holder can exchange these notes for other sterling banknotes. They also issue their own coinage.\nBritish Overseas Territories.\nThere are fourteen British Overseas Territories, many of which issue their own currencies which are distinct under ISO 4217: Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands, and St Helena, Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha have their own pounds which are at par with sterling. These notes cannot be used in the UK or outside the territories of origin. Falkland Island pounds are also valid in South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands and the British Antarctic Territory. Saint Helena pounds, however, cannot be used in the constituent territory of Tristan da Cunha, where sterling is the only official currency.\nThe remaining British Overseas Territories use the Bermudian dollar, the Cayman Islands dollar, the Eastern Caribbean dollar, the Euro, the New Zealand dollar, or the United States dollar.\nLegal tender.\nIn the UK legal tender specifically relates to the settlement of debts: a debtor cannot successfully be sued for non-payment if they pay the exact amount into court in legal tender. Legal tender is solely for the guaranteed settlement of debts, and does not imply a right to pay with cash in other contexts. \nBanknotes do not have to be classed as legal tender to be acceptable for trade; millions of retail transactions are carried out each day in the UK using debit cards and credit cards, none of which is a payment using legal tender. Equally, traders may offer to accept payment in foreign currency, such as the euro, yen, or US dollars. Acceptability as a means of payment is essentially a matter for agreement between the parties involved. Where a transaction is subject to VAT, the transaction must be converted to sterling for tax purposes.\nMillions of pounds' worth of sterling banknotes in circulation are not legal tender, but that does not mean that they are illegal or of lesser value; their status is of \"legal currency\" (that is to say that their issue is approved by the British parliament) and they are backed up by Bank of England securities.\nBank of England notes are the only banknotes that are legal tender in England and Wales. Scottish and Northern Irish banknotes are not legal tender anywhere, and Jersey, Guernsey and Manx banknotes are only legal tender in their respective jurisdictions. Although these banknotes are not legal tender in the UK, this does not mean that they are \"illegal\" under English law, and creditors and traders may accept them if they so choose. Traders may, on the other hand, choose not to accept banknotes as payment, as contract law across the United Kingdom allows parties not to engage in a transaction at the point of payment if they choose not to.\nIn Scotland and Northern Ireland, no banknotes, not even those issued by local banks, are legal tender. They have a similar legal standing to cheques or debit cards, in that their acceptability as a means of payment is essentially a matter for agreement between the parties involved, although Scots law requires any reasonable offer for settlement of a debt to be accepted.\nUntil 31 December 1984, the Bank of England issued \u00a31 notes, and these notes did have legal tender status in Scotland and Northern Ireland while they existed. The Currency and Bank Notes Act 1954 defined Bank of England notes of less than \u00a35 in value as legal tender in Scotland. Since the English \u00a31 note was removed from circulation in 1988, this leaves a legal curiosity in Scots law whereby there is no paper legal tender in Scotland. HM Treasury has proposed extending legal tender status to Scottish banknotes. The proposal has been opposed by Scottish nationalists who believe it would reduce the independence of the Scottish banking sector.\nMost of the notes issued by the note-issuing banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland have to be backed by Bank of England notes held by the issuing bank. The combined size of these banknote issues is well over a billion pounds. To make it possible for the note-issuing banks to hold equivalent values in Bank of England notes, the Bank of England issues special notes with denominations of one million pounds (\"Giants\") and one hundred million pounds (\"Titans\") for internal use by the other banks.\nBanknotes are no longer redeemable in gold, and the Bank of England will only redeem sterling banknotes for more sterling banknotes or coins. The contemporary sterling is a fiat currency which is backed only by securities; in essence promissory notes from the Treasury that represent future income from the taxation of the population. Some economists term this \"currency by trust\", as sterling relies on the faith of the user rather than any physical specie.\nIssuing banks and authorities.\nThe following table lays out the various banks or authorities which are authorised to print pound sterling banknotes, organised by territory:\nBank of England notes.\nIn 1921, the Bank of England gained a legal monopoly on the issue of banknotes in England and Wales, a process that started with the Bank Charter Act 1844 when the rights of other banks to issue notes was restricted.\nThe bank issued its first banknotes in 1694, although before 1745 they were written for irregular amounts, rather than predefined multiples of a pound. It tended to be times of war, which put inflationary pressure on the British economy, that led to greater note issue. In 1759, during the Seven Years' War, when the lowest-value note issued by the Bank was \u00a320, a \u00a310 note was issued for the first time. In 1793, during the war with revolutionary France, the Bank issued the first \u00a35 note. Four years later, \u00a31 and \u00a32 notes appeared, although not on a permanent basis. Notes did not become entirely machine-printed and payable to the bearer until 1855.\nAt the start of the First World War, the government issued \u00a31 and 10/\u2013 Treasury notes to replace the sovereign and half-sovereign gold coins. The first coloured banknotes were issued in 1928, and were also the first notes to be printed on both sides. The Second World War saw a reversal in the trend of warfare creating more notes: to combat forgery, higher denomination notes (some as high as \u00a31,000) were removed from circulation.\nThere are no Welsh banknotes in circulation; Bank of England notes are used throughout Wales. The last Welsh banknotes were withdrawn in 1908 upon the closure of the last Welsh bank, the North and South Wales Bank. An attempt was made in 1969 by a Welsh banker to revive Welsh banknotes, but the venture was short-lived and the notes did not enter general circulation, surviving today only as a collectors' curiosity.\nAll Bank of England notes issued since Series C in 1960 through June 2024 depict Elizabeth II, who was monarch at the time, on the obverse side, in full view facing left; her image also appears as a hidden watermark, facing right; recent issues have the anti-photocopier security EURion constellation around.\nIn September 2022, following the death of Elizabeth II, speculation arose as to precisely when the Bank of England would begin replacing banknotes with her portrait on for ones with the portrait of Charles III. After the end of the mourning period, the Bank announced that the portrait of the King intended for use on its banknotes would be released by the end of 2022. New banknotes with the portrait of the King would circulate alongside existing banknotes with the image of the late Queen for an unspecified period of time. Images of the revised notes featuring a new portrait of the King, as well as his personal cypher, were released by the Bank of England on 20 December 2022, and entered circulation on 5 June 2024. The portrait of Charles III is based on a photograph taken when he was in his early 60s.\nThe Bank of England has a set of criteria for choosing characters for banknotes \u2013 initially, it looks at who has previously featured, to allow for a reflection of the diversity of society. It does not accept fictional characters, or any living people with the exception of the reigning monarch, but instead aims for individuals that are both widely admired, and are considered to have made an important contribution to British society and culture. The final criterion is that the individual has an easily recognisable portrait available for use. This does not need to be a painting, as, up to 2025, there have been two sculptures and two photographs used.\nSeries D.\nIn the mid-1960s, shortly after the introduction of Series C, the Bank of England proposed to introduce a new banknote series featuring people from British history. In addition to enhancing the appearance of banknotes, the complexity of the new designs was intended to make counterfeiting harder. The task of designing the new Series D notes was given to the Bank's new in-house designer, Harry Eccleston, who not only designed the notes themselves, but also created three individual portraits of the Queen. It was initially envisaged that all of the denominations of notes then in circulation would be issued under Series D. To that end, a Series D 10/\u2013 note was designed, featuring Sir Walter Raleigh, and which would become the 50 pence note upon decimalisation, and intended to be the first of the new series to be issued. However, inflation had shorted the estimated lifespan of the note to roughly five months in circulation. As a result, the new note was not introduced, and the 10/- note was instead replaced with a 50p coin in 1969. Instead, the \u00a320 note was the first Series D note to enter circulation in 1970, with William Shakespeare on the reverse.\nRunaway inflation through the 1970s also considerably eroded the lifespan of the \u00a31 note, and the Series D \u00a31 note, featuring Sir Isaac Newton, was discontinued in 1984, having been replaced by a coin the year before, and was officially withdrawn from circulation in 1988. Nonetheless, all banknotes, regardless of when they were withdrawn from circulation, may be presented at the Bank of England where they will be exchanged for current banknotes. Other banks may also decide to exchange old banknotes, but they are under no obligation to do so.\nSeries E.\nWhen Series E was introduced in 1990, a new portrait of the Queen was commissioned based on photographs by Don Ford, one of the Bank of England's photographers. In this portrait, intended for all of the Series E banknotes, the Queen is shown wearing the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara, Queen Alexandra's cluster earrings and Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee necklace. Two different Series E sets were produced, each with a different set of historical figures - the first Series E banknote was the \u00a35 featuring George Stephenson, followed by the \u00a320 (Michael Faraday), the \u00a310 (Charles Dickens) and the \u00a350 (Sir John Houblon). The three lower denominations were replaced by the Series E (Variant) series, featuring Elizabeth Fry, Charles Darwin and Sir Edward Elgar; the \u00a350 note was not replaced during this period.\nSeries F.\nThe Series F banknotes consists of the \u00a320 note introduced in 2007 and the \u00a350 introduced in 2011; no \u00a35 or \u00a310 notes were designed for this series. Its launch was announced on 29 October 2006 by the Governor of the Bank of England. These notes were withdrawn on 30 September 2022, after which they are only exchangeable for Series G banknotes.\nThe first of these new notes, a \u00a320 note, features the Scottish economist Adam Smith, the first Scot to appear on an English note. (The first non-Englishman, Anglo-Irish Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, appeared on the Series D \u00a35 in 1971.) Smith also features on \u00a350 notes issued by the Clydesdale Bank. Previous issues of Bank of England \u00a320 notes were known to have suffered from a higher incidence of counterfeiting (276,000 out of 290,000 cases detected in 2007) than any other denomination. The note, which also includes enhanced security features, entered circulation on 13 March 2007.\nThe next new Series F banknote, the \u00a350 note, entered circulation on 2 November 2011. It is the first Bank of England banknote to feature two Britons on the reverse: James Watt (another Scotsman) and Matthew Boulton.\nSeries G.\nIn 2011, the Bank of England announced plans to begin introducing a new set of banknotes, which were to become Series G. As part of the initial consultation, the bank obtained opinion on whether the planned new banknotes should continue to be made from banknote paper, or if they should be polymer. Having made the decision to switch to polymer banknotes, the first note of Series G, the polymer \u00a35 note, entered circulation on 13 September 2016; the \u00a310 note on 14 September 2017; the \u00a320 note on 20 February 2020; and the \u00a350 on 23 June 2021. The material used to make the banknotes is biaxially oriented polypropylene.\nIn April 2013, the Bank of England announced that its next planned new note issue, intended to be the \u00a35 note in 2016, would feature former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The selection of Churchill to replace Elizabeth Fry raised some debate about the representation of women on British banknotes, with critics raising concerns that Bank of England notes would portray exclusively male figures, other than Elizabeth II who appears on every sterling coin and Bank of England note. In July 2013 it was announced that the Series F \u00a310 note design would bear a portrait of 19th century author Jane Austen. In 2015, the Bank announced that they were accepting suggestions from the public for a figure from the visual arts to appear on the \u00a320 note to replace Adam Smith, with the new note to be introduced in 2020. In April 2016, it was announced that J. M. W. Turner had been selected to appear on the new \u00a320 note.\nIn September 2013 the Bank of England opened a period of public consultation about the introduction of polymer, or plastic, banknotes, which would be introduced into circulation from 2016 if the proposals were supported. The polymer notes will be \"around 15% smaller\" than the notes being replaced. Following the consultation, in December 2013, the Bank confirmed that plastic or polymer notes would be brought into circulation in 2016 with the introduction of the \u00a35 note featuring Sir Winston Churchill. A spokesman for LINK, the company that operates many of the cash machines in the United Kingdom, said there would need to be significant investment as machines would need to be altered to fit the polymer \u00a35 banknotes, which would be smaller than the previous ones. The Jane Austen polymer \u00a310 note went into circulation in September 2017. The \u00a320 shows J. M. W. Turner (from a ), the quote \"Light is therefore colour\" from an 1818 lecture by Turner, and a view of \"The Fighting Temeraire\".\nIn March 2018, the Treasury began a consultation looking at the potential withdrawal of the \u00a350 note, as well as the one and two pence coins, on the basis that they are used significantly less than other denominations, with an additional rationale over the \u00a350 note being the perception in the UK of its use in money laundering, tax evasion and other financial crime, despite the demand for it overseas. The Series F version was introduced in 2011, while its predecessor was in circulation for twenty years, so there was some consideration to withdrawing the \u00a350 note entirely as a way of combatting tax evasion, and the fact that cash transactions using such a high value note are becoming increasingly rare. However, in October 2018 the Bank of England announced plans to introduce a Series G polymer \u00a350 note, following the review by the government. The new \u00a350 note is planned for introduction once the Series G \u00a320 note featuring J. M. W. Turner is released. In July 2019, it was announced that the new note would feature computer pioneer Alan Turing, from a photograph taken by the Elliott & Fry photographic studio in 1951, a table of formulae from Turing's 1936 work \"On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem\", an image of the Automatic Computing Engine Pilot machine, technical drawings of the British bombe machine, the quote \"This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be\" from an interview Turing gave to \"The Times\" on 11 June 1949, and a ticker tape showing Turing's date of birth in binary code.\nHigh-value notes.\nNot since 1945 have notes with a higher value than \u00a350 been issued for general circulation by the Bank of England, although banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland still use \u00a3100 notes. However, the Bank of England does produce higher-value notes that are used to maintain parity with Scottish and Northern Irish notes. Banknotes issued by Scottish and Northern Irish banks have to be backed pound for pound by Bank of England notes (other than a small amount representing the currency in circulation in 1845), and special \u00a31\u00a0million and \u00a3100\u00a0million notes are used for this purpose. Their design is based on the old Series A notes.\nScotland and Northern Ireland.\nWhile provincial banks in England and Wales lost the right to issue paper currency altogether, the practice of private banknote issue has continued in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The right of Scottish banks to issue notes is popularly attributed to the author Sir Walter Scott, who, in 1826, waged a campaign to retain Scottish banknotes under the pseudonym \"Malachi Malagrowther\". Scott feared that the limitation on private banknotes proposed with the Bankers (Scotland) Act 1826 would have adverse economic consequences if enacted in Scotland because gold and silver were scarce and Scottish commerce relied on small notes as the principal medium of circulating money. His action eventually halted the abolition of private banknotes in Scotland.\nScottish and Northern Irish banknotes are unusual, firstly because they are issued by retail banks, not central banks, and secondly, as they are technically not legal tender anywhere in the UK \u2013 not even in Scotland or Northern Ireland \u2013 as they are in fact promissory notes.\nSix retail banks have the authority of HM Treasury to issue sterling banknotes as currency. Despite this, the notes can be refused at the discretion of recipients in England and Wales, and are often not accepted by banks and exchange bureaus outside of the United Kingdom. This is particularly true in the case of the Royal Bank of Scotland 's \u00a31 note, which is the only \u00a31 note to remain in circulation within the UK.\nIn 2000, the European Central Bank indicated that, should the United Kingdom join the Euro, Scottish banks (and, by extension, Northern Irish banks) would have to cease banknote issue. During the 2007\u20132008 financial crisis, the future of private banknotes in the United Kingdom was uncertain as several banks were rescued from collapse by the United Kingdom government. The Banking Act 2009 was passed to improve protection for holders of banknotes issued by the authorised banks, so that the notes would have the same level of guaranteed value to that of Bank of England notes. Critics of the 2009 Act expressed concerns that it would restrict the issue of banknotes by commercial banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland by removing many of the provisions of the earlier Acts quoted above. Under the original proposals, banks would have been forced to lodge sterling funds with the Bank of England to cover private note issue for a full week, rather than over a weekend, thereby losing four days' interest and making banknote production financially unviable. Following negotiations among the UK Treasury, the Bank of England and the Scottish banks, it was agreed that the funds would earn interest, allowing them to continue to issue their own notes.\nDuring the public debate leading up to the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the question of Scotland's future currency was discussed. Whilst the SNP advocated a currency union between an independent Scotland and the remaining United Kingdom, HM Treasury issued a statement in April 2013 stating that the present relationship with the Bank of England could be changed after independence, with the result that Scottish banks might lose the ability to issue banknotes backed by Bank of England funds.\nScotland.\nUntil 1701 Scotland issued its own pound, the Pound Scots. The issuing of retail-bank banknotes in Scotland is subject to the Bank Charter Act 1844, Banknotes (Scotland) Act 1845, the Currency and Bank Notes Act 1928, and the Coinage Act 1971. Pursuant to some of these statutes, the Commissioners for Revenue and Customs publishes an account of \"the Amount of Notes authorised by Law to be issued by the several Banks of Issue in Scotland, and the Average Amount of Notes in Circulation, and of Bank of England Notes and Coin held\" in the \"London Gazette\". See for example \"Gazette\" Issue 58254 published 21 February 2007 at page 2544.\nBank of Scotland notes.\nAll Bank of Scotland notes bear a portrait of Sir Walter Scott on the front in commemoration of his 1826 \"Malachi Malagrowther\" campaign for Scottish banks to retain the right to issue their own notes. Bank of Scotland's 2007 redesign of their banknotes are known as the \"Bridges of Scotland\" series. These notes were introduced on 17 September 2007, and show Scotland's most famous bridges on the reverse side. The \"Bridges of Scotland\" series is currently being refreshed with the issue of new polymer notes with designs that follow the same basic theme of \"bridges\". The previous \"Tercentenary\" series notes are being withdrawn from circulation and replaced with the 2007 series (or polymer series as these are issued), but remain legal currency."}, "descending_order": ["50344748", "270680"], "permutation_1": ["270680", "50344748"], "permutation_2": ["270680", "50344748"], "permutation_3": ["270680", "50344748"]}
{"id": "nq_-7872371234829639950", "docs_added": {"292416": "First Brazilian Republic\n1889\u20131930 federal republic in South America\nThe First Brazilian Republic, also referred to as the Old Republic (, ), officially the Republic of the United States of Brazil, refers to the period of Brazilian history from 1889 to 1930. The Old Republic began with the coup d'\u00e9tat that deposed emperor Pedro II in 1889, and ended with the Revolution of 1930 that installed Get\u00falio Vargas as a new president. During the First Republic, the country's presidency was dominated by the most powerful states of S\u00e3o Paulo and Minas Gerais. Because of the power of these two states, based on the production of coffee and dairy, respectively, the Old Republic's political system has been described as \"milk coffee politics\". At local level, the country was dominated by a form of machine politics known as \"coronelism\", in which the political and economic spheres were centered around local bosses, who controlled elections.\nThe country was also marked by a series of rebellions and revolutions against the ruling oligarchies, which culminated into the Revolution of 1930, when the Liberal Alliance, a force of urban middle-class, planters from outside S\u00e3o Paulo and military reformists composed mostly by junior officers (known as \"Tenetism\"), deposed ruling president Washington Lu\u00eds (representative of the S\u00e3o Paulo oligarchies) and led to the ascension of Get\u00falio Vargas as president, heralding the start of the Vargas Era.\nOverview.\nOn November 15, 1889, Field Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca deposed Emperor Pedro II, declared Brazil a republic, and reorganized the government.\nAccording to the new republican Constitution enacted in 1891, the government was a constitutional democracy, but democracy was nominal. In reality, the elections were rigged, voters in rural areas were pressured or induced to vote for the chosen candidates of their bosses (see coronelismo) and, if all those methods did not work, the election results could still be changed by one sided decisions of Congress' \"verification of powers commission\" (election authorities in the Rep\u00fablica Velha were not independent from the executive and the Legislature, dominated by the ruling oligarchs). This system resulted in the presidency of Brazil alternating between the oligarchies of the dominant states of S\u00e3o Paulo and Minas Gerais, who governed the country through the Republican Party of S\u00e3o Paulo (PRP) and the Republican Party of Minas Gerais (PRM). This regime is often referred to as \"\"caf\u00e9 com leite\"\", 'coffee with milk', after the respective agricultural products of the two states.\nThe Brazilian republic was not an ideological offspring of the republics born of the French or American Revolutions, although the Brazilian regime would attempt to associate itself with both. The republic did not have enough popular support to risk open elections. It was a regime born of a \"coup d'\u00e9tat\" that maintained itself by force. The republicans made Deodoro president (1889\u201391) and, after a financial crisis, appointed Marshal Floriano Vieira Peixoto Minister of War to ensure the allegiance of the military.\nRule of the landed oligarchies.\nThe officers who joined Field Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca in ending the Empire had made an oath to uphold it. The officer corps would eventually resolve the contradiction by linking its duty to Brazil itself, rather than to transitory governments. The Republic was born rather accidentally: Deodoro had intended only to replace the cabinet, but the republicans manipulated him into founding a republic.\nThe history of the Old Republic was dominated by a quest for a viable form of government to replace the monarchy. This quest lurched back and forth between state autonomy and centralization. The constitution of 1891, establishing the United States of Brazil (\"Estados Unidos do Brasil\"), granted extensive autonomy to the provinces, now called States. A federal system was adopted, and all powers not granted in the Constitution to the Federal Government belonged to the States. It recognized that the central government did not rule at the local level. The Empire of Brazil had not absorbed fully the regional provinces, and now they reasserted themselves. Into the 1920s, the federal government in Rio de Janeiro was dominated and managed by a combination of the more powerful states of S\u00e3o Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul, and to a lesser extent Pernambuco and Bahia.\nBecause the monarchy had been overthrown by the Brazilian military, the history of the outset of republic in Brazil is also the story of the development of the Army as a national regulatory and interventionist institution. With the monarchy suddenly eliminated, the Army was left as the country's only long-lasting and powerful national institution. Although the Roman Catholic Church continued its presence throughout the country, it was not national but rather international in its personnel, doctrine, liturgy, and purposes. The Army assumed this new position strategically; the monarchy had become unpopular with Brazil's conservative economic elite after the abolition of slavery, and the Army capitalized on that shift in opinion to amass support for itself within the upper class. Thanks to their success in this area, the Army's prestige managed to eclipse even other military institutions, like the Navy and the National Guard. The Navy's attempts to prevent such hegemony were defeated militarily during the early 1890s. Although it had more units and men in Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul than elsewhere, the Army's presence was felt throughout the country. Its personnel, its interests, its ideology, and its commitments were national in scope.\nIn the last decades of the 19th century, the United States, much of Europe, and neighboring Argentina expanded the right to vote. Brazil, however, moved to restrict access to the polls. In 1874, in a population of about 10 million, the franchise was held by about one million, but in 1881 this had been cut to 145,296. This reduction was one reason the Empire's legitimacy foundered, but the Republic did not move to correct the situation. By 1910 there were only 627,000 voters in a population of 22 million. Throughout the 1920s, only between 2.3% and 3.4% of the total population could vote.\nThe instability and violence of the 1890s were related to the absence of consensus among the elites regarding a governmental model, as the armed forces were divided over their status, relationship to the political regime, and institutional goals. The lack of military unity, and the disagreement among civilian elites about the military's role in society, explain partially why a long-term military dictatorship was not established. Although the military did not directly control Brazil, military men were very active in politics; early in the decade, ten of the twenty state governors were officers. The Constituent Assembly, which drew up the constitution of 1891, was divided between two factions. One group sought to limit executive power, which was dictatorial in scope under President Deodoro da Fonseca; the other was the Jacobins, radical authoritarians who opposed the paulista coffee oligarchy and who wanted to preserve and intensify presidential authority. The constitution created by this assembly established a federation that was officially governed by a president, a bicameral National Congress (Congresso Nacional; hereafter, Congress), and a judiciary. However, the real power was held by the states, and by local potentates called \"colonels.\" The colonels largely controlled Brazil's internal politics through a system of unwritten agreements known as \"coronelismo\". Coronelismo, which supported state autonomy, was called the \"politics of the governors\". Under it, the local oligarchies chose the state governors, who in turn selected the president.\nThis informal but real distribution of power emerged, the so-called politics of the governors, to take shape as the result of armed struggles and bargaining. The populous and prosperous states of Minas Gerais and S\u00e3o Paulo dominated the system and swapped the presidency between them for many years. The system consolidated the state oligarchies around families that had been members of the old monarchical elite. And to check the nationalizing tendencies of the army, this oligarchic republic and its state components strengthened the navy and the state police. In the larger states, the state police were soon turned into small armies. The Head of the Brazilian army ordered that it would doubled so they could defend them.\n\"Latif\u00fandio\" economies.\nAround the start of the 20th century, the vast majority of the population lived in communities that were essentially semi-feudal in structure, though accumulating capitalist surpluses for overseas export. Because of the legacy of Ibero-American slavery, abolished as late as 1888 in Brazil, there was an extreme concentration of such landownership reminiscent of feudal aristocracies: 464 great landowners held more than 270,000\u00a0km2 of land (\"latif\u00fandios\"), while 464,000 small and medium-sized farms occupied only 157,000\u00a0km2.\nAfter the Second Industrial Revolution in the advanced countries, Latin America responded to mounting European and North American demand for primary products and foodstuffs. A few key export products\u2014 coffee, sugar, and cotton\u2014 thus dominated agriculture. Because of specialization, Brazilian producers neglected domestic consumption, forcing the country to import four-fifths of its grain needs. As in most of Latin America, the economy around the start of the 20th century therefore rested on certain cash crops produced by the \"fazendeiros\", large estate owners exporting primary products overseas who headed their own patriarchal communities. Each typical \"fazenda\" (estate) included the owner's chaplain and overseers, his indigent peasants, his sharecroppers, and his indentured servants.\nBrazil's dependence on factory-made goods and loans from the technologically and economically superior North Atlantic diminished its domestic industrial base. Farm equipment was primitive and largely non-mechanized; peasants tilled the land with hoes and cleared the soil through the inefficient slash-and-burn method. Meanwhile, living standards were generally squalid. Malnutrition, parasitic diseases, and a lack of medical facilities limited the average life span in 1920 to twenty-eight years. Because of the comparative advantage system and lack of an open market, Brazilian industries could not compete against the technologically superior Anglo-American economies. In this context the Encilhamento (a Boom & Bust process that first intensified, and then crashed, in the years between 1889 and 1891) occurred, the consequences of which were felt in all areas of the Brazilian economy throughout the subsequent decades.\nThe middle class was not yet active in political life. The patron-client political machines of the countryside enabled the coffee oligarchs to dominate state structures to their advantage, particularly the weak central state structures that effectively devolved power to local agrarian oligarchies. Known as \"coronelismo\", this was a classic boss system under which the control of patronage was centralized in the hands of a locally dominant oligarch known as a coronel, who would dispense favors in return for loyalty.\nThus, high illiteracy rates went hand in hand with the absence of universal suffrage by secret ballot and the demand for a free press, independent from the then dominant economic influence. In regions where there was not even the telegraph, far from major centers, the news could take 4 to 6 weeks longer to arrive. In those circumstances, for lack of alternatives, along the last decade of the 19th century and the first of the 20th, a free press created by European immigrant anarchists started to develop, and, due to non-segregated conformation (ethnically speaking) of Brazilian society, spread widely, particularly in large cities.\nDuring this period, Brazil did not have a significantly integrated national economy. Rather, Brazil had a grouping of regional economies that exported their own specialty products to European and North American markets. The absence of a big internal market with overland transportation, except for the mule trains, impeded internal economic integration, political cohesion and military efficiency. The regions, \"the Brazils\" as the British called them, moved to their own rhythms. The Northeast exported its surplus cheap labor and saw its political influence decline as its sugar lost foreign markets to Caribbean producers. The wild rubber boom in Amaz\u00f4nia lost its world primacy to efficient Southeast Asian colonial plantations after 1912. The nationally oriented market economies of the South were not dramatic, but their growth was steady and by the 1920s allowed Rio Grande do Sul to exercise considerable political leverage. Real power resided in the coffee-growing states of the Southeast\u2014 S\u00e3o Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro\u2014 which produced the most export revenue. Those three and Rio Grande do Sul harvested 60% of Brazil's crops, turned out 75% of its industrial and meat products, and held 80% of its banking resources.\nBrazil in World War I.\nPreceding.\nPolitical dynamics.\nFollowing the creation of the republic in 1889, there were many political and social rebellions that had to be subdued by the regime, such as the Two Naval Revolts (1891 & 1893\u201394), the Federalist Rebellion (1893\u201395), War of Canudos (1896\u201397), Vaccine Revolt (1904), Revolt of the Whip (1910) and the Revolt of Juazeiro (\"Sedi\u00e7\u00e3o de Juazeiro\", 1914). The Contestado War, a rebellion pitting settlers against landowners, also raged from 1912 to 1916. Therefore, with the onset of World War I, Brazilian elites were interested in studying the events of the Mexican Revolution with more attention than those related to the War in Europe.\nBy 1915 it was also clear that the Brazilian elites were dedicated to making sure Brazil followed a conservative political path; they were unwilling to embark upon courses of action, whether domestically (i.e. adopting the secret ballot and universal suffrage) or in foreign affairs (making alliances or long-term commitments), that could have unpredictable consequences and potentially risk the social, economic, and political power held by the Brazilian elite. This course of conduct would extend throughout the 20th century, an isolationist foreign policy interspersed with sporadic automatic alignments against \"disturbing elements of peace and international trade\".\nRuy Barbosa was the main opposition leader, campaigning for internal political changes. He also stated that, due to the natural conflict between Brazilian commercial interests and the Central Powers' strategic ones (demonstrated for example in the German submarine campaign as well as in the Ottoman control over the Middle East), Brazilian involvement in the war would be inevitable. So he advised that the most logical way to proceed would be to follow the United States, which was working for a peace agreement but at the same time since the sinking of the RMS \"Lusitania\" was also preparing for war.\nSocial Dynamics.\nThe formation of the operary class takes its place at the end of 19th century, and it was related with the ongoing changes caused by the expansion of the coffee economy. Because of that expansion, the \"progress\" of the capitalist economy sufficed the conditions for the establishment of a \"nucleus\" of service and fabril workers at S\u00e3o Paulo. Beyond that, many immigrants from Europe had arrived, and between them were the refugees of the Paris Commune, bringing communist and anarchist ideas. Because of those ideas, problems for the very conservative regime of large estate owners emerged. Further on, masses of industrial workers became unhappy with the \"status quo\" and began engaging in massive protests, mostly in S\u00e3o Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. After a General Strike in 1917, the government attempted to brutally repress the labor movement in order to prevent new movements from beginning. This repression, supported by legislation, was very effective in preventing the formation of labor unions considered to be really free by the workers involved.\nWar.\nThere were two main lines of thought regarding Brazil's joining the war: One, led by Ruy Barbosa, called for joining the Entente; another side was concerned about the bloody and fruitless nature of trench warfare, nurturing critical and pacifist feelings in the urban worker classes. Therefore, Brazil remained neutral in World War I until 1917. However, as denunciations of corruption exacerbated internal problems in the state, President Venceslau Br\u00e1s began feeling the need to divert public attention from his government; this goal could be accomplished by focusing on an external enemy and thus stoking a sense of unity and patriotism.\nDuring 1917, the German Navy sank Brazilian civilian ships off the French coast, creating such an opportunity. On October 26 the government declared war on the Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. Soon after, the navy was ordered to capture Central Powers' ships found on the Brazilian coast, and three small military groups were dispatched to the Western Front. The first group consisted of medical staff from the Army, the second consisted of Army sergeants and officers, and the third consisted of military aviators, both of Army and Navy. The Army's members were attached to the French Army, and the Navy's aviators to the British Royal Air Force. By 1918 all three groups were already in action in France.\nBy that time Brazil had also sent a Naval fleet, the Naval Division in War Operations or \"DNOG\", to join the Allies' Naval Forces in the Mediterranean.\nDuring 1918, protests broke out against the military recruitment; this, in conjunction with the news of the ongoing revolution in Russia, only strengthened the isolationist sentiment among the Brazilian elites. In addition, the devastating advent of Spanish flu further prevented the Br\u00e1s administration from getting involved more deeply. Ultimately, the armistice in November 1918 prevented the government from carrying out its plan for war. Despite its modest participation, Brazil gained the right to partake in the Paris Peace Conference.\nDemographic changes.\nFrom 1875 until 1960, about 3 million Europeans emigrated to Brazil, settling mainly in the four southern states of S\u00e3o Paulo, Paran\u00e1, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul. Immigrants came mainly from Portugal, Italy, Germany, Spain, Japan, Poland, and the Middle East. The world's largest Japanese community outside Japan is in S\u00e3o Paulo. In contrast, Brazil's indigenous population, located mainly in the northern and western border regions and in the upper Amazon Basin, continued to decline during this same period; largely due to the effects of contact with the outside world such as commercial expansion into the interior. Consequently, indigenous full-blooded Amerindians now constitute less than 1% of Brazil's population.\nDevelopments under the Old Republic.\nIn the early twentieth century, demographic changes and structural shifts in the economy threatened the primacy of the agrarian oligarchies. Under the Old Republic, the growth of the urban middle sectors, though slowed by dependency and entrenched oligarchy, was eventually strong enough to propel the middle class into the forefront of Brazilian political life. In time, growing trade, commerce, and industry in S\u00e3o Paulo undermined the domination of the republic's politics by the landed gentries of that state (dominated by the coffee industry) and Minas Gerais, dominated by dairy interests, known then by observers as the politics of \"caf\u00e9 com leite\"; 'coffee with milk'.\nLong before the first revolts of the urban middle classes to seize power from the coffee oligarchs in the 1920s, Brazil's intelligentsia and farsighted agro-capitalists, dreamed of forging a modern, industrialized society inspired by positivism\u2014 the \"world power of the future\". This sentiment was later nurtured throughout the Vargas years and under successive populist governments, before the 1964 military junta repudiated Brazilian populism. While these populist groups were somewhat ineffectual under the Old Republic, the structural changes in the Brazilian economy opened up by the Great War strengthened these demands.\nThe outbreak of World War I in August 1914 was the turning point for the dynamic urban sectors. Wartime conditions prevented Britain from exporting goods to Brazil, thus creating space for Brazil's domestic manufacturing sector to grow. These structural shifts in the Brazilian economy helped to increase the ranks of the new urban middle classes. Meanwhile, Brazil's manufacturers and those employed by them enjoyed these gains at the expense of the agrarian oligarchies. This process was further accelerated by the declining world demand for coffee during World War I. The central government, dominated by rural gentries, responded to falling world coffee demand by bailing out the oligarchs, reinstating the valorization program. Valorization, government intervention to maintain coffee prices by withholding stocks from the market or restricting plantings, had some successes in the short term; however, coffee demand plunged even more precipitously during the Great Depression, creating a decline too steep for valorization to reverse.\nParadoxically, economic crisis spurred industrialization and a resultant boost to the urban middle and working classes. The depressed coffee sector freed up the capital and labor needed for manufacturing finished goods. A chronically adverse balance of trade and declining rate of exchange against foreign currencies was also helpful; Brazilian goods were simply cheaper in the Brazilian market. The state of S\u00e3o Paulo, with its relatively large capital base, large immigrant population from Southern and Eastern Europe, and wealth of natural resources, led the trend, eclipsing Rio de Janeiro as the center of Brazilian industry. Industrial production, though concentrated in light industry (food processing, small shops, and textiles) doubled during the war, and the number of enterprises (which stood at about 3,000 in 1908) grew by 5,940 between 1915 and 1918. The war was also a stimulus for the diversification of agriculture. Growing wartime demand of the Allies for staple products\u2014 for instance, sugar, beans, and raw materials\u2014 sparked a new boom for products other than sugar or coffee. Foreign interests, however, continued to control the more capital-intensive industries, distinguishing Brazil's industrial revolution from that of the rest of the West.\nStruggle for reform.\nWith manufacturing on the rise and the coffee oligarchs imperiled, the old order of \"caf\u00e9 com leite\" and \"coronelismo\" eventually gave way to the political aspirations of the new urban groups: professionals, government and white-collar workers, merchants, bankers, and industrialists. Increasing support for industrial protectionism marked 1920s Brazilian politics with little support from a central government dominated by the coffee interests. Under considerable middle class pressure, a more activist, centralized state adapted to represent the interests that the new bourgeoisie had been demanded for years \u2014 one that could utilize a state interventionist policy consisting of tax breaks, lowered duties, and import quotas to expand the domestic capital base. Manufacturers, white-collar workers, and the urban proletariat alike had earlier enjoyed the respite of world trade associated with World War I. However, the coffee oligarchs, relying on the decentralized power structure to delegate power to their own patrimonial ruling oligarchies, were uninterested in regularizing Brazil's personalistic politics or centralizing power. Get\u00falio Vargas, leader from 1930 to 1945 and later for a brief period in the 1950s, would later respond to these demands.\nDuring this time period, the state of S\u00e3o Paulo was at the forefront of Brazil's economic, political, and cultural life. Known colloquially as a \"locomotive pulling the 20 empty boxcars\" (a reference to the 20 other states) and still today Brazil's industrial and commercial center, S\u00e3o Paulo led this trend toward industrialization due to the foreign revenues flowing into the coffee industry.\nProsperity contributed to a rapid rise in the population of recent working class Southern and Eastern European immigrants, a population that contributed to the growth of trade unionism, anarchism, and socialism. In the post-World War I period, Brazil was hit by its first wave of general strikes and the establishment of the Communist Party in 1922.\nMeanwhile, the divergence of interests between the coffee oligarchs\u2014 devastated by the Depression\u2014 and the burgeoning, dynamic urban sectors was intensifying. According to prominent Latin American historian Benjamin Keen, the task of transforming society \"fell to the rapidly growing urban bourgeois groups, and especially to the middle class, which began to voice even more strongly its discontent with the rule of the corrupt rural oligarchies\". In contrast, the labor movement remained small and weak (despite a wave of general strikes in the postwar years), lacking ties to the peasantry, who constituted the overwhelming majority of the Brazilian population. As a result, disparate social reform movements would crop up in the 1920s, ultimately culminating in the Revolution of 1930. The 1920s revolt against the seating of Artur Bernardes as president signaled the beginning of a struggle by the urban bourgeoisie to seize power from the coffee-producing oligarchy.\nThis era sparked the Tenente revolts as well. Junior military officers (\"tenentes\", or lieutenants), who had long been active against the ruling coffee oligarchy, staged their own revolt in 1922 amid demands for various forms of social modernization, calling for agrarian reform, the formation of cooperatives, and the nationalization of mines. Though ultimately unsuccessful, the Tenente revolts illustrated the conflicts that would go on to underpin the Revolution of 1930.\nFall of the Old Republic.\nThe 1930 general election.\nThe Great Depression set off the tensions that had been building in Brazilian society for some time, spurring revolutionary leaders to action.\nThe elections of 1930 pitted J\u00falio Prestes, of the pro-establishment Republican Party of S\u00e3o Paulo, against Get\u00falio Vargas, who led a broad coalition of middle-class industrialists, planters from outside S\u00e3o Paulo, and the reformist faction of the military known as the \"tenentes\".\nTogether, these disparate groups made up the Liberal Alliance. Support was especially strong in the provinces of Minas Gerais, Para\u00edba and Rio Grande do Sul, because in nominating another Paulista to succeed himself, outgoing President Washington Lu\u00eds had violated the traditional alternation between Minas Gerais and S\u00e3o Paulo. Vargas campaigned carefully, needing to please a large range of supporters. He used populist rhetoric and promoted bourgeois concerns. He opposed the primacy of S\u00e3o Paulo, but did not challenge the planters' legitimacy and kept his calls for social reform moderate.\nThe election itself was plagued by corruption and denounced by both sides: when the victory of Prestes with 57,7% of votes was declared, Vargas and the Liberal Alliance refused to concede defeat, sparking tensions in the country. On July 26, 1930, vice-presidential candidate Jo\u00e3o Pessoa of the Liberal Alliance was assassinated in Recife, sparking the beginning of the Brazilian Revolution.\nThe Revolution.\nThe 1930 revolution began in Rio Grande do Sul on October 3 at 5:25pm. Osvaldo Aranha telegraphed Juarez T\u00e1vora to communicate the beginning of the Revolution. It spread quickly through the country. Eight state governments in the northeast of Brazil were deposed by revolutionaries.\nOn the 10th of October, Vargas launched the manifesto, \"Rio Grande standing by Brazil\" and left, by rail, towards Rio de Janeiro, the national capital at the time.\nIt was expected that a major battle would occur in Itarar\u00e9 (on the border with Paran\u00e1), where the federal troops were stationed to halt the advance of the revolutionary forces, led by Colonel G\u00f3is Monteiro. However, on October 12 and 13, the Battle of Quatigu\u00e1 took place (possibly the biggest fight of the revolution), although it has been little studied. Quatigu\u00e1 is located to the east of Jaguaria\u00edva, near the border between S\u00e3o Paulo state and Paran\u00e1. The battle did not occur in Itarar\u00e9 since the generals Tasso Fragoso and Mena Barreto and Admiral Isaiah de Noronha ousted President Washington Lu\u00eds on October 24 and formed a joint government.\nAt 3pm on November 3, 1930, the junta handed power and the presidential palace to Getulio Vargas; the new administration abrogated the 1891 Constitution, dissolved the National Congress and started to rule by decree, ending the Old Republic. A Constituent Assembly was convened in 1934, following the failed Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932: the Assembly enacted a new Constitution and elected Vargas as new President of Brazil, starting the Second Brazilian Republic.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "25942141": "Decline and fall of Pedro II of Brazil\n1880s events surrounding Pedro II of Brazil\nThe decline and fall of Pedro II of Brazil took place in the 1880s. It coincided with a period of economic and social stability and progress for the Empire of Brazil, with the nation achieving a prominent place as an emerging power in the international arena.\nWhile Pedro II's rule began in 1840, the roots of the collapse of the monarchy can be traced as far back as 1850, when Pedro II's youngest male child died. From that point onward, the emperor himself ceased to believe in the monarchy as a viable form of government for Brazil's future, as his remaining heir was a daughter. Although constitutionally permitted, a female ruler was considered unacceptable by both Pedro II and the ruling circles. This issue was deferred for decades, while the country became more powerful and prosperous. So long as the emperor was in good health, the question of succession could be ignored.\nFrom 1881 on, Pedro II's health began to fail, and he gradually withdrew from public affairs. Weary of being tied to a throne that he doubted would survive his death, he persevered because there seemed to be no immediate alternative and because it was his duty. His daughter and heir, Isabel, also did not exhibit a desire to assume the crown. Both, however, had the support of the Brazilian people. The royal family's indifference to the Imperial system allowed a discontented republican minority to grow bolder and eventually launch the coup that overthrew the Empire.\nPedro II may be considered a rare instance of a head of state who, despite being considered a highly successful ruler to the end, was ultimately overthrown and exiled.\nDecline.\nDuring the 1880s, Brazil became more prosperous and socially diverse, seeing the first wave of women's rights activism. The country had changed greatly in the five decades since Pedro II's accession to the throne. The liberalism adopted by successive government cabinets favored private initiatives and resulted in decades of economic prosperity. Brazil's international trade reached a total value of Rs79.000:000000 (see Brazilian currency) between 1834 and 1839. This continued to increase every year until it reached Rs472.000:000000 between 1886 and 1887 (an annual growth rate of 3.88% since 1839). Brazilian economic growth, especially after 1850, was on par with that of the United States and European nations. Brazilian journalist and historian H\u00e9lio Vianna estimates the value of GDP at Rs 50.000:000000 in 1840, reaching the figure of Rs 500.000:000000 in 1889 (an annual growth rate of 4.81% from 1840 to 1889, totaling 49 years of GDP growth of 4.81%). Obtaining a per capita income of 34882 thousand r\u00e9is in 1889. The national revenue, which amounted to Rs11.795:000000 in 1831, rose to Rs160.840:000000 in 1889. By 1858, it was the eighth largest in the world. To give an idea of the economic potential of the country during the Empire, if \"it had been able to sustain the level of productivity achieved in 1870 and managed to increase exports at a pace equal to that verified in the second half of the 19th century, its \"per capita\" income in 1950 would be comparable to the average per capita income of the Western European nations\".\nThere was large-scale development during this period, which anticipated similar initiatives in European countries. In 1850, there were 50 factories valued at more than Rs7.000:000$000. At the end of the Imperial period in 1889, Brazil had 636 factories (representing an annual rate of increase of 6.74% from 1850) valued at approximately Rs401.630:600$000 (annual growth rate of 10.94% since 1850). As one historian reported, \"building in the 1880s was the second greatest in absolute terms in Brazil's entire history. Only eight countries in the entire world laid more track in the decade than The Brazilian Empire.\" The first railroad line, with only 15\u00a0kilometers, was opened on 30 April 1854 at a time when many European countries had no rail service. By 1868, there were 718\u00a0kilometers of railroad lines, and by the end of the Brazilian Empire in 1889, this had grown to 9,200\u00a0kilometers (with another 9,000\u00a0kilometers under construction), making it the country with \"the largest rail network in South and Latin America and also the ninth country with the largest rail network in the world\".\nTopik continues: \"Factories also sprang throughout the Brazilian Empire in the 1880s at an unprecedented rate, and its cities were beginning to receive the benefits of gas, electrical, sanitation, telegraph, and tram companies. \" It was the fifth country in the world to install modern sewers in cities, the third to have sewage treatment, and one of the pioneers in installing telephone lines (the Empire of Brazil being the second country in the world and second in the Americas, after the United States and the first in South and Latin America to have a telephone). What's more, it was the first South American nation to adopt public electric lighting (in 1883) and the second in the Americas (behind the United States and the first in South and Latin America) to establish a direct telegraph connection to Europe (in 1874). The first telegraph line had been installed in 1852 in Rio de Janeiro. By 1889, there were 18,925\u00a0kilometers of telegraph lines connecting the country's capital to distant Brazilian provinces such as Par\u00e1, and even linking to other South American countries such as Argentina and Uruguay.\nThe Brazilian Empire was admired internationally for its democratic system and for its respect for freedom of speech. In politics there were \"solid and competitive parties, an active parliament, a free press, open debate\". The Argentine President Bartolom\u00e9 Mitre called the country a \"crowned democracy\" and Venezuelan President Rojas Pa\u00fal, after learning of the Emperor's fall, said, \"It has ended the only republic that existed in [South] America: the Empire of Brazil.\" The Brazil of the last year of Pedro II's reign was a \"prosperous and [internationally] respected\" nation which held unchallenged leadership in Latin America (the Empire of Brazil (1870-1889) no rivals in Latin America). The Brazilian Navy was among the 10 most powerful (due to the acquisition of the battleships Riachuelo in 1883 and Aquafaba in 1885, both equipped with torpedo launch tubes) in the world (1883-1889) and the most powerful warships in the Americas (the battleships Riachuelo (1883) and Aquafaba (1885).The Emperor was beloved by the Brazilian people and was regarded with \"respect, almost veneration\" in North America and Europe. The remarks made by a former U.S. consul at Rio de Janeiro, who met Pedro II in late 1882, tell much of the general view that foreigners had of Brazil and its Emperor by the end of the 1880s:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Dom Pedro II, Emperor of Brazil \u2026 has an intellectual head, eyes a grayish blue \u2026 beard full and gray, hair well trimmed, also gray, complexion florid, and expression sober. He is erect, and has a manly bearing \u2026 During this long period [of his rule] there have been some provincial rebellions and some local turmoil, but the Emperor has always shown tact, energy, and humanity that helped much to restore order, quite, and good feeling. Thus, while he has held the scepter his country has continued to prosper. Its vast area has been held intact, and it has become an important Empire. As I have looked at his gray head, when he has been driving in his carriage through the streets of Rio, I have said to myself, 'There certainly is an august"}, "descending_order": ["292416", "25942141"], "permutation_1": ["25942141", "292416"], "permutation_2": ["292416", "25942141"], "permutation_3": ["292416", "25942141"]}
{"id": "nq_3841903667794871564", "docs_added": {"41688283": "Nico Liersch\nGerman actor (born 2000)\nNico Liersch (born 17 July 2000) is a German actor. He is best known for his role as Rudy Steiner in the 2013 film \"The Book Thief\". He is also known for his work in the German television series \"Das ist Gut\" where he played Phillip Greenyard, a caveman without parents.\nPersonal life.\nLiersch was born on 17 July 2000 in Munich, Germany. He is currently resided in Olching.\nCareer.\nNico started acting at the age of seven, when he appeared in a McDonald's Happy Meal commercial with Kai Pflaume. In 2008, he also appeared in a supporting role in \"Der Einsturz\". \nIn 2012, Liersch appeared in episodes of the German TV series \"Inga Lindstr\u00f6m\" and \"Das Traumhotel\", then later feature film \"Kokow\u00e4\u00e4h 2\", a sequel to \"Kokow\u00e4\u00e4h\". In February 2013, he was cast in the film adaptation of the best-selling novel \"The Book Thief\". He played Rudy Steiner, the best friend of the titular book thief, Liesel Meminger. Markus Zusak, who wrote the novel that inspired the movie, was pleased with Nico's portrayal of his character and wrote: \u00a8He's magnificent, indeed. He is Rudy.\u00a8\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4664700": "Rollo Weeks\nBritish actor\nRollo Percival Loring Weeks (born 20 March 1987) is a British former actor. He is best known for his titular roles in the films \"The Little Vampire\" (2000) and \"The Thief Lord\" (2006).\nEarly life.\nWeeks was born in Chichester, England, the son of Robin and Susan Weeks, and the younger brother of British actresses Honeysuckle Weeks and Perdita Weeks. He attended the Sylvia Young Theatre School and Stowe School.\nCareer.\nWeeks' first screen appearance was, according to his sister Honeysuckle, who told the story when appearing on \"The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson\" in 2014, for a Devon Custard advertisement, aged 6, which ended abruptly when Rollo was sick whilst eating the sponsors product. Weeks' debut film, as a child actor, was playing vampire Rudolph Sackville-Bagg in \"The Little Vampire\" (2000), directed by Uli Edel, which earned Weeks a Young Artist Award nomination. He also appeared in Stephen Poliakoff's \"The Lost Prince\" (filmed 2002, released 2003) as the young George, Duke of Kent, in a film about the disabled Prince John. This was followed by roles in \"Girl With a Pearl Earring\" (2003) and \"The Queen of Sheba's Pearls\" (2004). \nHis second turn as a title character came as Scipio in \"The Thief Lord\" (2006), a movie based on Cornelia Funke's novel \"The Thief Lord\" and directed by Richard Claus. Weeks has also appeared in two television shows: \"Berkeley Square\" (1998) as Lord Louis Wilton and \"Goggle Eyes\" (1993) as Joseph. In 2009 he appeared in the second part of the \"Shark Week\" special \"Blood in the Water\" and played the character Guido in \"Ch\u00e9ri\". In 2010, he played Jacob in \"Booked Out\", about the lives of characters within an aging block of flats.\nIn 2016, Weeks was reported to be one of \"a dynamic trio of young hospitality industry insiders\" opening a new fast food outlet called Fancy Funkin Chicken in Coldharbour Lane, Brixton. The restaurant closed permanently in 2020.\nWeeks now works as a photographer and advertising cinematographer, publicly appearing under the name \u2018Rollo Wade.\u2019", "39308200": "The Book Thief (film)\n2013 film by Brian Percival\nThe Book Thief is a 2013 war drama film directed by Brian Percival and starring Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson, and Sophie N\u00e9lisse. The film is based on the 2005 novel of the same name by Markus Zusak and adapted by Michael Petroni. The film is about a young girl living with her adoptive German family during the Nazi era. Taught to read by her kind-hearted foster father, the girl begins \"borrowing\" books and sharing them with the Jewish refugee being sheltered by her foster parents in their home. The film features a musical score by Oscar-winning composer John Williams.\n\"The Book Thief\" premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival on October 3, 2013, and was released for general distribution in the United States on November 8, 2013. The film received mixed reviews upon its theatrical release with some reviewers praising its \"fresher perspective on the war\" and its focus on the \"consistent thread of humanity\" in the story, with other critics faulting the film's \"wishful narrative\". With a budget of $19 million, the film was successful at the box office, earning over $76 million.\n\"The Book Thief\" received Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for its score. For her performance in the film, Sophie N\u00e9lisse won the Hollywood Film Festival Spotlight Award, the Satellite Newcomer Award, and the Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Performance by a Youth in a Lead or Supporting Role \u2013 Female. The film was released on Blu-ray and DVD on March 11, 2014.\nPlot.\nSet in Nazi Germany, \"The Book Thief\" (2013) follows Liesel Meminger, a young girl sent to live with foster parents Hans and Rosa Hubermann in the town of Molching during World War II. After stealing \"The Grave Digger\u2019s Handbook\" at her brother\u2019s funeral, Liesel develops a love of reading, encouraged by Hans, who teaches her to read. She befriends her neighbour Rudy Steiner and joins the Hitler Youth, though she grows disillusioned with the regime.\nAt a book burning, Liesel salvages a scorched book, an act witnessed by Ilsa Hermann, the mayor\u2019s wife, who later allows her access to her private library. The Hubermanns hide Max Vandenberg, a Jewish man whose father once saved Hans\u2019s life. Liesel and Max bond over books and shared trauma, but when Hans publicly defends a Jewish neighbour, Max leaves to protect the family.\nLiesel briefly sees Max again as he is marched through town with other prisoners. Soon after, an unannounced air raid devastates Molching. Liesel survives in the basement, but Hans, Rosa, Rudy, and others are killed. She is later reunited with Max after the war and lives to old age, with the story narrated by Death, who reflects on her life and the enduring power of words.\nCast.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>* Sophie N\u00e9lisse as Liesel Meminger, the titular \"book thief\".\nProduction.\nA search for an actress to play the eponymous book thief, Liesel Meminger, occurred across the world. On February 4, 2013, it was announced that Canadian actress Sophie N\u00e9lisse was cast in the role and that Australian actor Geoffrey Rush and English actress Emily Watson would be playing Meminger's foster parents.\nPrincipal photography began in early March 2013 at Babelsberg Studio in Potsdam-Babelsberg, Germany. Locations included Marquardt Palace. The first trailer was released on August 21, with the Bastille song \"Haunt\" as the music.\nMarkus Zusak, Australian author of the best-selling, award-winning book on which the film is based, confirmed on his blog that the film would be narrated by the character of \"Death\", as was the novel. After some speculation that Death might be voiced by the anonymous American actor who was used in the official trailer, it was announced that English actor Roger Allam of \"Game of Thrones\" would portray Death in the film.\nSoundtrack.\nThe music for the film was composed and conducted by John Williams, and the soundtrack album containing the score was released by Sony Classical and Fox Music. The album was released in the United States on November 5, 2013. It was nominated for an Academy Award, BAFTA and Golden Globe for Best Original Score. It won Best Instrumental Album at the 57th Grammy Awards.\n\"The Book Thief\" marked the first time since 2005 that Williams had scored a film not directed by Steven Spielberg.\nRelease.\nOriginally scheduled for January 17, 2014, \"The Book Thief\"'s limited theatrical release was moved forward to November 8, 2013, due to the fact that it was finished ahead of schedule and in order to compete in the 2013\u201314 award season. It premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival on October 3, 2013, and was screened at the Savannah Film Festival on October 29, 2013. It expanded to a wide release on November 27, 2013.\nReception.\nCritical response.\n\"The Book Thief\" received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 49%, based on 151 reviews, with an average score of 5.80/10. The site's consensus states, \"A bit too safe in its handling of its Nazi Germany setting, \"The Book Thief\" counters its constraints with a respectful tone and strong performances.\" On Metacritic, the film has a score of 53 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating \"mixed or average reviews\".\nIn her review for the \"New Empress Magazine\", Mair\u00e9ad Roche praised the film for providing a \"fresher perspective on the war\" through the experiences of ordinary Germans who lived through the Nazi era. In addition to the \"Oscar-baiting beautiful\" cinematography and John Williams's film score that contribute to the film's emotional appeal, Roche singled out the performance of young Sophie N\u00e9lisse as Liesel that \"matches the well-measured and seemingly effortless efforts of both Rush and Watson\". Roche concluded,\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"The Book Thief\" weaves a consistent thread of humanity through its narrative via the commonality of Death, storytelling, and the concept of free will. The disturbing sight of children in Hitler Youth uniforms and Allied blanket bombing, when shown through the innocence of a child, humanises the German generation just living their lives without the hindsight of history. A blurring of vision due to tears is to be expected, but that effect is delivered with respect and dignity to the audience.\nIn his review following the Mill Valley Film Festival, Dennis Harvey at \"Variety\" magazine wrote, \"Rush generously provides the movie's primary warmth and humor; Watson is pitch-perfect as a seemingly humorless scold with a well-buried soft side.\" Harvey also praised the film's cinematography and film score, noting that \"impeccable design contributions are highlighted by Florian Ballhaus'[s] somber but handsome widescreen lensing and an excellent score by John Williams that reps his first feature work for a director other than Steven Spielberg in years.\"\nStephanie Merry of \"The Washington Post\" was less impressed with the film, giving it two and half out of four stars. Merry felt that the film \"has its moments of brilliance, thanks in large part to an adept cast\" but that the film ultimately shows the difficulties of bringing a successful novel to the screen. In his review for the \"Los Angeles Times\", Robert Abele was also unimpressed, describing the film as \"just another tasteful, staid Hollywoodization of terribleness, in which a catastrophic time acts as a convenient backdrop for a wishful narrative rather than the springboard for an honest one\".\nHome media.\n\"The Book Thief\" was released on Blu-ray and DVD on March 11, 2014.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1330774": "Thief (film)\n1981 film by Michael Mann\nThief is a 1981 American independent neo-noir heist film written and directed by Michael Mann in his feature film debut. It stars James Caan as a professional safecracker trying to escape his life of crime, and Tuesday Weld as his wife. The supporting cast includes Jim Belushi, Robert Prosky, Dennis Farina, and Willie Nelson. The screenplay is inspired by the memoir \"The Home Invaders: Confessions of a Cat Burglar\", by former cat burglar Frank Hohimer. The original musical score was composed and performed by Tangerine Dream.\nProduced by Jerry Bruckheimer and James Caan's brother Ronnie, \"Thief\" was screened at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d'Or. It was released in the United States on March 27, 1981, to widespread critical acclaim. \"Thief\" earned $11.5 million at the box office, on a $5.5 million budget.\nPlot.\nFrank is a jewel thief and ex-convict who has a set structure to his life since being released from Joliet Correctional Center in Joliet, Illinois. With a pair of successful Chicago businesses (a bar and a car dealership) as fronts for his criminal enterprise, Frank sets out to fulfill the missing part of his life vision: a family with Jessie, a cashier he has begun dating.\nAfter taking down a major diamond score, Frank gives the diamonds to his fence, Joe Gags. However, before Frank can collect his $185,000 share, Gags is thrown from a twelve-story window for skimming from the payments he had been collecting from loan shark clients. Barry, Frank's friend and associate making the pick-up, discovers that Attaglia, a plating company executive Gags was working for, is responsible for Gags' murder and stealing Frank's payoff. In a confrontation at the plating company, Frank demands his money back.\nThis leads to a meeting with Attaglia's employer Leo, a high-level fence and Chicago Outfit boss. Unknown to Frank, Leo has been receiving Frank's goods from Gags for some time. Leo returns the money and says he admires Frank's eye for quality stolen goods and professionalism. He wants Frank working directly for him, offering large profits. Their meeting is monitored from a distance by police surveillance.\nFrank is initially reluctant, not wanting the added exposure or complications, but later that night, a conversation with Jessie changes his mind when she agrees to be part of his life, after he relates a tale of prison survival via a toughened mental attitude. Frank now agrees to do just one big score for Leo, telling Barry that this will be their last job. After being rejected at the state adoption agency, with Leo's help Frank is able to acquire a baby boy on the black market, whom he names David after his late mentor, nicknamed Okla.\nAfter resisting a shakedown from a group of corrupt police detectives, and then subsequently ditching their surveillance, Frank and his crew are involved in a large-scale Los Angeles diamond heist organized by Leo. All goes well with Frank's \"burn job\" and he is expecting the agreed-upon sum of $830,000 for the unmounted stones with a wholesale value $4 million. But when Frank returns from the job, Leo gives him less than $100,000. This is all that Frank will receive in cash according to Leo, who says he invested the rest of Frank's cut in shopping centers in Fort Worth and Dallas, Texas, an idea Frank had previously rejected. In addition, Leo has set up a Palm Beach score for Frank in six weeks without consulting him. Frank tells Leo that their deal is over and takes the cash as he leaves, demanding the rest of his money in 24 hours.\nFrank drives to his car lot, unaware that Leo's henchmen have already beaten and captured Barry and are waiting to ambush him. Frank is knocked out and Barry is killed by the enforcers. Frank awakens with Leo staring down at him, surrounded by his henchmen. Leo informs him that he, Jessie, their child, and everything he owns are Leo's property. He threatens Frank's family if he does not continue working for him. Leo warns Frank to focus on his responsibilities. When Frank returns home, he orders an uncomprehending Jessie out of their house, telling her their marriage is over, that she must immediately leave, and that he will not be joining her. Frank instructs an associate to drive her, the baby, and $410,000 in cash to somewhere where they cannot be located.\nWith nothing to lose, Frank blows up their home using high-explosive charges. He then drives to his business establishments and does likewise. Armed with a pistol, he quietly breaks into Leo's house in a peaceful neighborhood and pistol whips Attaglia in the kitchen. Frank hunts for Leo, killing him in the living room. Frank then pursues Attaglia as he tries to escape from the house, but is confronted in the front yard by Leo\u2019s bodyguards. In the ensuing gunfight, Frank is shot, but manages to kill the trio. Frank loosens what appears to be a bulletproof vest he was wearing beneath his jacket, and walks away into the night.\nCast.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nBackground.\n\"Thief\" marked the feature film debut of Michael Mann as director, screenwriter and executive producer, after five years in television drama.\nMann made his directorial debut with the TV film \"The Jericho Mile\". This was partly shot in Folsom Prison. Mann says that influenced the writing of \"Thief\":\nIt probably informed my ability to imagine what Frank's life was like, where he was from, and what those 12 or 13 years in prison were like for him. The idea of creating his character, was to have somebody who has been outside of society. An outsider who has been removed from the evolution of everything from technology to the music that people listen to, to how you talk to a girl, to what do you want with your life and how do you go about getting it. Everything that's normal development, that we experience, he was excluded from, by design. In the design of the character and the engineering of the character, that was the idea.\nAlso notable is the scene where Leo disposes of bodies at an auto body shop, placing them in a plating solution in the exact same manner as used in the Charles Bronson movie The Mechanic.\nProduction.\nDevelopment.\nMann made James Caan do research as a thief for his role, and said:\nI always find it interesting, people who are aware, alert, conscious of what they do and are pretty good at it\u2026 People who want to put in 50-60 hours a week and go home and are not really conscious of life moving by, don't really interest me very much... As part of the curriculum designed for an actor getting into character, I try to imagine what's going to really help bring this actor more fully into character. And so I try to imagine what experiences are going to make more dimensional his intake of Frank, so that he is Frank spontaneously when I'm shooting. So one of the most obvious things is it'd be pretty good if [James Caan] was as good at doing what Frank does as is Frank.The character Leo was patterned after Chicago Outfit bosses Felix Alderisio and Leo Rugendorf.\nCasting.\n\"Thief\" marks the first film appearance of actors Dennis Farina, William Petersen, James Belushi and Robert Prosky. At the time a Chicago police officer, Farina appears as a mob henchman. Conversely, John Santucci (real name: John Schiavone), who plays the role of corrupt cop Urizzi, was a recently paroled thief on whom the character Frank was partly based, and acted as a technical adviser on the film. Another actor in the film, W.R. \u2018Bill\u2019 Brown, was also a former safecracker and associate of Joseph Scalise. Chuck Adamson (Detective Ancell) and Nick Nickeas (Nick) were also Chicago police officers, while Gavin MacFadyen, who plays Detective Boresko, was a journalist who later served as adviser to Mann\u2019s 1999 film \"The Insider\".\nIn 1986, Farina and Santucci both were cast in Mann and Adamson's TV series \"Crime Story\", Farina as a Chicago police lieutenant and Santucci as a jewel thief. Petersen, who later would star (along with Farina) in the Mann film \"Manhunter\", appears briefly as a barman at a club. The influential Chicago improv teacher Del Close has a brief appearance as a mechanic, in a scene that was improvised with the other mechanic actors.\nFilming.\n\"Thief\" was filmed on-location in Chicago and Los Angeles. Jerry Bruckheimer and Ronnie Caan served as the film's producers.\nBeing Michael Mann's feature film directorial debut, \"Thief\" showcases many of the cinematic techniques that would later become his trademarks. Chief among these is the cinematography (by Donald E. Thorin), utilizing light and shadow to give the proceedings, especially those taking place in the darkness of night, a sense of danger. The film also earns plaudits for its meticulous attention to detail: the tools and techniques of the trade, right down to the oxy lance used to penetrate a safe, are authentic, the result of Mann's decision to hire real-life thieves to serve as technical advisers.\nThe still of Frank holding a gun on Attaglia as he attempts to recover his money in an early scene was used for one of the movie's posters.\nNear the end of the film, Frank destroys his house. The film company built a false front onto a real house and attempted to destroy it with explosives. The explosions severely damaged the real house, however, leading to its demolition.\nJames Caan's emotional several-minute monologue with Weld in a coffee shop is often cited as the film's high point, and Caan has long considered the scene his favorite of his career. The actor liked the movie although he found the part challenging to play. \"I like to be emotionally available but this guy is available to nothing.\"\nMusic.\nMann has gained a reputation as a director who uses cutting-edge music for his films.\n\"Thief\"'s moody soundscapes were composed and performed by Tangerine Dream, and was their second of many notable film scores composed by the group throughout the 1980s. The film was nominated for a Razzie Award for Worst Musical Score, but that didn't deter Mann from choosing them a second time to compose the music for his next feature film, the ill-fated 1983 WWII fantasy horror \"The Keep\".\nHe originally intended to score the music with Chicago blues music. He said, \"However, I felt that what the film was saying, thematically, and the facility with which the film might be able to have resonance with audience. I felt that to be so regionally specific in the music choice would make Frank's experience specific only to Frank. So I wanted the kind of transparency, if you like, the formality of electronic music, and hence Tangerine Dream.\" He utilizes jazz/blues in one scene when Frank races to meet Jessie after the offer from Leo, transitioning from the meetup, all the way to the jazz club.\nAdditional music cues were composed by Craig Safan.\nReception.\nUnder the working title \"Violent Streets\", the film debuted at the 34th Cannes Film Festival. It went on to open in theaters in the United States on March 27, 1981, earning a modest $4.3 million. While not a financial success in its initial release, the film has become a reference point in Mann's career, especially with the release of his crime epic, \"Heat\", with which this movie has many similarities.\nCritical response.\nOn the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, of 85 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.7/10. The website's consensus reads: \"\"Thief\"'s enigmatic conclusion will rob some audiences of satisfaction, but it's an authentic and sleekly rendered neo-noir, powered by a swaggering James Caan at the peak of his charisma.\" Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the a score of 78 out of 100, based on eight critics, indicating .\nRoger Ebert described \"Thief\" as \"one of the most intelligent thrillers I've seen\" and gave the film <templatestyles src=\"Fraction/styles.css\" />3+1\u20442 out of 4 stars, writing that \"If \"Thief\" has a weak point, it is probably in the handling of the Willie Nelson character\" and went further, stating \"Willie has played the character so well that we wanted more. But, then, I suppose it is a good thing when a movie creates characters we feel that strongly about, and \"Thief\" is populated with them. It's a thriller with plausible people in it. How rare.\"\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "286893": "Rudy (film)\n1993 film by David Anspaugh\nRudy is a 1993 American biographical sports film directed by David Anspaugh. It is an account of the life of Daniel \"Rudy\" Ruettiger, who harbored dreams of playing football at the University of Notre Dame despite significant obstacles. It was the first film that the Notre Dame administration allowed to be shot on campus since \"Knute Rockne, All American\" in 1940.\nIn 2005, \"Rudy\" was named one of the best 25 sports movies of the previous 25 years in two polls by ESPN (#24 by a panel of sports experts, and #4 by ESPN.com users). It was ranked the 54th-most inspiring film of all time in the American Film Institute's \"100 Years\" series.\nThe film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 18, 1993, and was released in the United States on October 13, 1993, by TriStar Pictures. It stars Sean Astin as the title character, along with Ned Beatty, Jason Miller, Robert Prosky and Charles S. Dutton. The film had supporting roles from Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn, being both actors' first film roles. The script was written by Angelo Pizzo, who created \"Hoosiers\" (1986), which was also directed by Anspaugh.\nPlot.\nIn the 1960s in Joliet, Illinois, Daniel Eugene \"Rudy\" Ruettiger dreams of playing football at Notre Dame. However, he lacks the grades and money to attend along with the talent and physical stature to play major college football. Following high school, Rudy works at a steel mill with his father, a Notre Dame fan, and older brother Frank. After Rudy's supportive best friend Pete is killed in a mill explosion, Rudy decides to follow his dream.\nIn 1972, Rudy visits Notre Dame but is academically ineligible to enroll. With the help of local priest and former Notre Dame president Father John Cavanaugh, Rudy enrolls at nearby Holy Cross College, hoping to transfer. He approaches Fortune, head groundskeeper at Notre Dame Stadium, and is given a job. Homeless, Rudy sneaks into Fortune's office through a window to sleep on a cot; initially indifferent to Rudy's plight, Fortune later leaves him with blankets and a key to the office. Rudy learns that Fortune, despite working at the stadium for years, has never seen a Notre Dame football game.\nRudy befriends teaching assistant D-Bob, who helps him study in return for Rudy's helping him socially with girls. D-Bob tests Rudy for a learning disability; the results indicate that Rudy suffers from dyslexia, which he then overcomes to become a better student. At Christmas, Rudy returns home to find that his family appreciates his college academic achievements, but Frank still mocks Rudy for his attempts to play college football. Rudy persists, and even losing his girlfriend to his older brother Johnny does not deter him.\nAfter two years at Holy Cross and three rejections from Notre Dame, Rudy is finally admitted and attends football tryouts in the hope of making the team as a \"walk-on\". Assistant coach Warren warns the walk-ons that 35 scholarship players will not even make the \"dress roster\" of players who take the field during games. However, Coach Joe Yonto notices Rudy's determination and gives him a spot on the daily practice squad. Rudy tells Fortune and persuades him to promise to see Rudy's first game.\nRudy's hard work and dedication in practice convinces head coach Ara Parseghian to let him suit up for one home game in his senior year. However, Parseghian retires following the 1974 season and is replaced by former Green Bay Packers head coach Dan Devine, who refuses to put Rudy on the game-day roster. Frustrated by not being on the dress list for the last home game, Rudy quits the team.\nFortune finds a distraught Rudy and reveals that he had actually played for Notre Dame years earlier. However, Fortune quit the team because he felt that his skin color kept him from playing; Fortune has regretted this decision ever since. Reminded that he has nothing to prove to anyone but himself and will forever regret quitting, Rudy returns to the team. Each of his fellow seniors, led by team captain and All-American Roland Steele, lines up to lay his jersey on Devine's desk. Each player requests that Rudy be allowed to dress in his place for the season's final game. Devine lets Rudy suit up against Georgia Tech.\nWith Rudy's family and D-Bob in attendance, Steele invites Rudy to lead the team onto the field, and Fortune is there to see the game as promised. With Notre Dame leading 17\u20133 late in the fourth quarter, Devine sends all the seniors into the game except Rudy, despite Steele's and the assistant coaches' urging. Fans are aware of Rudy's goal from a story in the student newspaper, and a \"Rudy!\" chant begins in the stadium. Hearing this, the Notre Dame offense, led by tailback Jamie O'Hara, overrules Devine's call for victory formation and scores a quick touchdown. This gives defensive player Rudy a chance to get in the game and be entered onto the Fighting Irish roster. Devine finally lets Rudy play on the Notre Dame kickoff to Georgia Tech. Rudy stays in for the final play, sacks the Georgia Tech quarterback, and is carried off the field on his teammates' shoulders to cheers from the stadium.\nAn epilogue states that since 1975, no other Notre Dame player has been carried off the field as of the time of the film's release in 1993. Rudy graduated in 1976, and five of his younger brothers went on to earn college degrees.\nCast.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>*Sean Astin as Daniel \"Rudy\" Ruettiger\nProduction.\nIn 1982, Daniel \"Rudy\" Ruettiger initially pitched a film project based on his life story to Hollywood executives but failed to generate interest. Later, he entered into a deal with a screenwriter who allegedly deceived him, resulting in the loss of his life savings. Residing in South Bend, Indiana, where the University of Notre Dame is located, Ruettiger found renewed inspiration after watching the 1986 film \"Hoosiers\". A fortuitous encounter in South Bend led him to obtain contact information for \"Hoosiers\" screenwriter Angelo Pizzo. Around 1989, Ruettiger persistently pursued Pizzo, who initially had no interest in creating another Indiana-based sports film, especially one set at Notre Dame, a school he disliked. Despite initial reluctance, Pizzo eventually mentioned the project to \"Hoosiers\" director David Anspaugh and producer Robert Fried.\nIn 1991, Fried successfully sold the project to Columbia Pictures, securing Anspaugh as the director and Pizzo as the writer. However, when Columbia's chairman Frank Price departed for Savoy Pictures, the new chairman Mark Canton put the film into turnaround in early 1992. Although Savoy Pictures nearly acquired the rights from Columbia, they opted out when foreign deals failed to materialize in time for an October 1992 production start.\nTriStar Pictures joined the project in September 1992 and gave the green light to the $13-million film after resolving \"last-minute rights claims against the property.\" Filmmakers had a two-week window to revise the script and just two days to secure permission to film at Notre Dame. The school had not agreed to allow its campus to be used as a film location since 1940's \"Knute Rockne, All American\". Initially uninterested in another film about Notre Dame football, the university's administration, led by executive vice president Reverend William Beauchamp, changed its stance after reading Pizzo's script. They recognized it as a \"heartwarming, enlivening story\" about hard work that embodied the school's values.\nThe 50-day filming commenced on October 26, 1992, on the campus north of South Bend. Notre Dame, Holy Cross Junior College, and the local bar Cap N' Cork, served as filming sites. Notre Dame-specific locations encompassed its twin lakes, Notre Dame Stadium, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, and the Golden Dome. Crowd scenes were captured during halftime at Notre Dame football games against Boston College and Penn State. The pivotal scene where players carry \"Rudy\" off the field was shot during that year's Notre Dame vs. Boston College game, with the 59,000 fans present chanting Rudy's name. N.F.L. Films, the National Football League's cinematic division, handled the filming of football action scenes. Following the six-week stint in South Bend, the production relocated to Chicago, Illinois, where the Thompson Steel Mill was used. The nearby town of Whiting, Indiana, stood in for Joliet, Illinois.\nActor Sean Astin, portraying the titular character, experienced \"head-to-toe bruises\" during the filming process. Additionally, Astin's stuntman sustained injuries, necessitating knee surgery by the conclusion of the shoot.\nSoundtrack.\nThe soundtrack to \"Rudy\" was composed and conducted by veteran composer Jerry Goldsmith. Goldsmith had previously worked with filmmakers Angelo Pizzo and David Anspaugh on their successful 1986 film \"Hoosiers\", garnering the film an Oscar nomination for Best Original Score and thus making Goldsmith their first choice to compose a soundtrack for \"Rudy\".\nAccording to Soundtrack.net, \"Tryouts\" has been used in 12 trailers, including those for \"Angels in the Outfield, BASEketball, The Deep End of the Ocean, Good Will Hunting\", \"The Little Vampire\", \"Mafia!\", \"Seabiscuit\" and \"\".\nIn 2008, Senator John McCain used \"Take Us Out\" as an official anthem during his presidential run. The piece of music was played at major events such as after Senator McCain's acceptance speech to the Republican National Convention and after John McCain announced Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate in Dayton, Ohio.\n\"Take Us Out\" was played in the pilot episode of \"About a Boy\", based on the 2002 film of the same name.\nAlso recorded in the film are performances of various Notre Dame fight songs by the Notre Dame Glee Club.\nHistorical accuracy.\nIn reality, Coach Dan Devine had announced that Rudy would dress for the Georgia Tech game during practice a few days before. The dramatic scene in which Rudy's senior teammates laid their jerseys on Devine's desk in protest never happened. According to Ruettiger, Devine was persuaded to allow him to dress only after a number of senior players requested that he do so. Devine had agreed to be depicted as the \"heavy\" in the film for dramatic effect but was chagrined to find out the extent to which he was vilified, saying: \"The jersey scene is unforgivable. It's a lie and untrue.\"\nAs a guest on \"The Dan Patrick Show\" on September 8, 2010, Joe Montana, who was an active member of the team when Ruettiger played in the Georgia Tech game, confirmed that the jersey scene never happened, stating: \"It's a movie, remember. Not all of that is true...The crowd wasn't chanting, nobody threw in their jerseys. He did get in the ball game. He got carried off after the game.\"\nNearly 10 years later in an interview on Barstool Sports' \"Pardon My Take\" podcast, Montana reiterated that the jersey scene and crowd chanting did not actually occur. He also implied that carrying Ruettiger off the field was sarcastic rather than celebratory, saying: \"Was there a lot of things that happened? Yeah. He got in, he got a sack. Was the crowd chanting? No. Did I throw in my jersey? No. Did he get carried off the field? He got carried off by three of the biggest pranksters on the team.\"\nReception.\nThe film was the closing night gala at the 1993 Toronto International Film Festival.\n\"Rudy\""}, "descending_order": ["41688283", "4664700", "39308200", "1330774", "286893"], "permutation_1": ["1330774", "4664700", "41688283", "39308200", "286893"], "permutation_2": ["286893", "41688283", "1330774", "39308200", "4664700"], "permutation_3": ["286893", "1330774", "4664700", "39308200", "41688283"]}
{"id": "nq_-1562606920471895787", "docs_added": {"2262540": "Christian Coulson\nEnglish actor\nChristian Peter Coulson is an English actor known for playing young Tom Marvolo Riddle (Lord Voldemort) in the 2002 fantasy film \"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\".\nEarly life.\nCoulson was born in Manchester. He attended Arnold House Preparatory School in London, before attending Westminster School on an academic scholarship. He was a member of the UK's National Youth Music Theatre from 1990 to 1997, and went on to the University of Cambridge, where he received a degree in English from Clare College in 2000. While at university, he played the M.C. (Master of Ceremonies) in \"Cabaret\", Arturo Ui in \"The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui\" and Claire in \"The Maids\", as well as appearing in film and television.\nCareer.\nCoulson gained worldwide attention and popularity for his role in 2002's \"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\", in which he portrayed a 16-year-old Tom Riddle, even though he was 23 at the time. However, in 2007, director David Yates indicated on MTV that Coulson would not reprise his role in \"Half-Blood Prince\", since, at 29, he was by then too old.\nHe also wrote the lyrics and book for a rock musical called \"The Fallen\" which was performed at Bedford Modern School in 1998.\nAs of 2015, Coulson resides and works in New York City as an actor, director and photographer.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "163234": "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\n1998 fantasy novel by J. K. Rowling\nHarry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is a fantasy novel written by British author J. K. Rowling. It is the second novel in the \"Harry Potter\" series. The plot follows Harry's second year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, during which a series of messages on the walls of the school's corridors warn that the \"Chamber of Secrets\" has been opened and that the \"heir of Slytherin\" would kill all pupils who do not come from all-magical families. These threats are found after attacks that leave residents of the school petrified. Throughout the year, Harry and his friends Ron and Hermione investigate the attacks.\nThe book was published in the United Kingdom on 2 July 1998 by Bloomsbury and later in the United States on 2 June 1999 by Scholastic Inc. Although Rowling says she found it difficult to finish the book, it won high praise and awards from critics, young readers, and the book industry, although some critics thought the story was perhaps too frightening for younger children. Much like with other novels in the series, \"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\" triggered religious debates; some religious authorities have condemned its use of magical themes, whereas others have praised its emphasis on self-sacrifice and the way one's character is the result of one's choices.\nSeveral commentators have noted that personal identity is a strong theme in the book and that it addresses issues of racism through the treatment of non-human, non-magical, and non-living people. Some commentators regard the story's diary that writes back as a warning against uncritical acceptance of information from sources whose motives and reliability cannot be checked. Institutional authority is portrayed as self-serving and incompetent.\nThe film adaptation of the novel, released in 2002, became (at the time) the fifth highest-grossing film ever and received generally favourable reviews. Video games loosely based on \"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\" were also released for several platforms, and most obtained favourable reviews.\nPlot.\nWhile spending the summer with the Dursleys, the twelve-year-old Harry Potter is visited by Dobby, a house-elf. Dobby says Harry is in danger and must promise not to return to Hogwarts. When Harry refuses, Dobby uses magic to destroy a pudding made by Aunt Petunia. Believing that Harry created the mess, Uncle Vernon locks him in his room. The Ministry of Magic sends a notice accusing Harry of performing underage magic and threatening to expel him from Hogwarts.\nThe Weasley brothers Ron, Fred, and George arrive in their father's flying car and take Harry to their home. When Harry and the Weasleys go to Diagon Alley for school supplies, they meet Gilderoy Lockhart, a celebrity author who is the new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor. At King's Cross station, Harry and Ron cannot enter Platform 9\u00be to board the Hogwarts Express, so they fly to Hogwarts in the enchanted car.\nDuring the school year, Harry hears a strange voice emanating from the castle walls. Argus Filch's cat is found Petrified, along with a warning scrawled on the wall: \"The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir, beware\". Harry learns that the Chamber supposedly houses a monster that attacks Muggle-born students, and which only the Heir of Slytherin can control. During a Quidditch match, a rogue Bludger strikes Harry, breaking his arm. Professor Lockhart botches an attempt to mend it, which sends Harry to the hospital wing. Dobby visits Harry and reveals that he jinxed the Bludger and sealed the portal at King's Cross. He also tells Harry that house-elves are bound to serve a master, and cannot be freed unless their master gives them clothing.\nAfter another attack from the monster, students attend a defensive duelling class. During the class, Harry displays the rare ability to speak Parseltongue, the language of snakes. Moaning Myrtle, a ghost who haunts a bathroom, shows Harry and his friends a diary that was left in her stall. It belonged to Tom Riddle, a student who witnessed another student's death when the Chamber was last opened. During the next attack by the monster, Hermione Granger is petrified.\nHarry and Ron discover that the monster is a Basilisk, a gigantic snake that can kill victims with a direct gaze and Petrify them with an indirect gaze. Harry realizes the Basilisk is producing the voice he hears in the walls. After Ron's sister Ginny is abducted and taken into the Chamber, Harry and Ron discover the Chamber entrance in Myrtle's bathroom. When they force Lockhart to enter with them, he confesses that the stories he told of his heroic adventures are fabrications. He attempts to erase the boys' memories, but his spell backfires and obliterates his own memory.\nHarry finds an unconscious Ginny in the Chamber. A manifestation of Tom Riddle appears and reveals that he is Lord Voldemort and the Heir of Slytherin. After explaining that he opened the Chamber, Riddle summons the Basilisk to kill Harry. Dumbledore's phoenix Fawkes arrives, bringing Harry the Sorting Hat. While Fawkes blinds the Basilisk, Harry pulls the Sword of Gryffindor from the Hat. He slays the serpent, then stabs the diary with a Basilisk fang, destroying it and the manifestation of Riddle. Later, Harry liberates Dobby by tricking his master into giving him clothing. At the end of the novel, the Petrified students are cured and Gryffindor wins the House Cup.\nPublication and reception.\nDevelopment.\nJ.K Rowling found it difficult to finish \"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\" because she was afraid it would not live up to the expectations raised by \"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone\". After delivering the manuscript to Bloomsbury on schedule, she took it back for six weeks of revision.\nIn early drafts of the book, the ghost Nearly Headless Nick sang a self-composed song explaining his condition and the circumstances of his unknown death. This was cut because the book's editor did not care for the poem, which has been subsequently published as an extra on J. K. Rowling's official website. The family background of Dean Thomas was removed because Rowling and her publishers considered it an \"unnecessary digression,\" and she considered Neville Longbottom's own journey of discovery \"more important to the central plot.\"\nGilderoy Lockhart's character was inspired by an acquaintance of Rowling who was, in her words, \"even more objectionable than his fictional counterpart\" and \"used to tell whopping great fibs about his past life, all of them designed to demonstrate what a wonderful, brave and brilliant person he was.\"\nPublication.\n\"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\" was published in the UK on 2 July 1998 and in the US on 2 June 1999. It immediately took first place in UK bestseller lists, displacing popular authors such as John Grisham, Tom Clancy and Terry Pratchett, and making Rowling the first author to win the British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year for two years in succession. In June 1999, it went straight to the top of three US bestseller lists, including in \"The New York Times\".\nFirst edition printings had several errors, which were fixed in subsequent reprints. Initially, Dumbledore said Voldemort was the last remaining ancestor of Salazar Slytherin instead of his descendant. Gilderoy Lockhart's book on werewolves is entitled \"Weekends with Werewolves\" at one point and \"Wanderings with Werewolves\" later in the book.\nCritical response.\n\"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\" was met with near-universal acclaim. On \"BookBrowse\", a site that aggregates book reviews such as media reviews, the book received a from \"Critics' Opinion\".\nIn \"The Times\", Deborah Loudon described it as a children's book that would be \"re-read into adulthood\" and highlighted its \"strong plots, engaging characters, excellent jokes and a moral message which flows naturally from the story\". Fantasy author Charles de Lint agreed, and considered the second Harry Potter book to be just as good as \"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone\", a rare achievement among series of books. Thomas Wagner regarded the plot as very similar to that of the first book, based on searching for a secret hidden under the school. However, he enjoyed the parody of celebrities and their fans that centres round Gilderoy Lockhart, and approved of the book's handling of racism. Tammy Nezol found the book more disturbing than its predecessor, particularly in the rash behaviour of Harry and his friends after Harry withholds information from Dumbledore, and in the human-like behaviour of the mandragoras used to make a potion that cures petrification. Nevertheless, she considered the second story as enjoyable as the first.\nMary Stuart thought the final conflict with Tom Riddle in the Chamber was almost as scary as in some of Stephen King's works, and perhaps too strong for young or timid children. She commented that \"there are enough surprises and imaginative details thrown in as would normally fill five lesser books.\" Like other reviewers, she thought the book would give pleasure to both children and adult readers. According to Philip Nel, the early reviews gave unalloyed praise while the later ones included some criticisms, although they still agreed that the book was outstanding.\nWriting after all seven books had been published, Graeme Davis regarded \"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\" as the weakest of the series, and agreed that the plot structure is much the same as in \"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone\". He described Fawkes's appearance to arm Harry and then to heal him as a \"deus ex machina\": he said that the book does not explain how Fawkes knew where to find Harry; and Fawkes's timing had to be very precise, as arriving earlier would probably have prevented the battle with the basilisk, while arriving later would have been fatal to Harry and Ginny.\nAwards and honours.\nRowling's \"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\" was the recipient of several awards. The American Library Association listed the novel among its 2000 Notable Children's Books,\nas well as its Best Books for Young Adults. In 1999, Booklist named \"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\" as one of its Editors' Choices, and as one of its Top Ten Fantasy Novels for Youth. The Cooperative Children's Book Center made the novel a CCBC Choice of 2000 in the \"Fiction for Children\" category. The novel also won Children's Book of the Year British Book Award, and was shortlisted for the 1998 Guardian Children's Award and the 1998 Carnegie Award.\n\"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\" won the Nestl\u00e9 Smarties Book Prize 1998 Gold Medal in the 9\u201311 years division. Rowling also won two other Nestl\u00e9 Smarties Book Prizes for \"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone\" and \"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban\". The Scottish Arts Council awarded their first ever Children's Book Award to the novel in 1999, and it was also awarded Whitaker's Platinum Book Award in 2001. In 2003, the novel was listed at number 23 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.\nMain themes.\n\"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\" continues to examine what makes a person who he or she is, which began in the first book. As well as maintaining that Harry's identity is shaped by his decisions rather than any aspect of his birth, \"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\" provides contrasting characters who try to conceal their true personalities: as Tammy Nezol puts it, Gilderoy Lockhart \"lacks any real identity\" because he is nothing more than a charming liar. Riddle also complicates Harry's struggle to understand himself by pointing out the similarities between the two: \"both half-bloods, orphans raised by Muggles, probably the only two Parselmouths to come to Hogwarts since the great Slytherin.\"\nOpposition to class, death and its impacts, experiencing adolescence, sacrifice, love, friendship, loyalty, prejudice, and racism are constant themes of the series. In \"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\" Harry's consideration and respect for others extends to the lowly, non-human Dobby and the ghost Nearly Headless Nick. According to Marguerite Krause, achievements in the novel depend more on ingenuity and hard work than on natural talents.\nEdward Duffy, associate professor at Marquette University, says that one of the central characters of \"Chamber of Secrets\" is Tom Riddle's enchanted diary, which takes control of Ginny Weasley \u2013 just as Riddle planned. Duffy suggests Rowling intended this as a warning against passively consuming information from sources that have their own agendas. Although Bronwyn Williams and Amy Zenger regard the diary as more like an instant messaging or chat room system, they agree about the dangers of relying too much on the written word, which can camouflage the author, and they highlight a comical example, Lockhart's self-promoting books.\nAntonello Fabio Caterino, an Italian forensic linguist and philologist, stated that the conversations Harry and Voldemort had through the diary could be considered a \"modern transposition\" of Petrarca's \"Secretum\", a text often compared to a diary, which details an imaginary dialogue between the writer and Augustine of Hippo. Caterino analysed similarities between themes found in both books, starting from the idea of a fragmented soul: Harry and Voldemort are both seeking Voldemort's Horcruxes, which are fragments of his soul, and Petrarca also focuses on the concept \"animae fragmenta\", meaning soul's fragments.\nImmorality and the portrayal of authority as negative are significant themes in the novel. Marguerite Krause states there are few absolute moral rules in Harry Potter's world, for example Harry prefers to tell the truth, but lies whenever he considers it necessary\u00a0\u2013 very like his enemy Draco Malfoy. At the end of \"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\", Dumbledore retracts his promise to punish Harry and Ron if they break any more school rules \u2013 after Professor McGonagall estimates they have broken over 100\u00a0\u2013 and lavishly rewards them for ending the threat from the Chamber of Secrets. Krause further states that authority figures and political institutions receive little respect from Rowling. William MacNeil of Griffith University, Queensland, Australia states that the Minister for Magic is presented as a mediocrity. In his article \"Harry Potter and the Secular City\", Ken Jacobson suggests the Ministry as a whole is portrayed as a tangle of bureaucratic empires, saying that \"Ministry officials busy themselves with minutiae (e.g. standardising cauldron thicknesses) and coin politically correct euphemisms like 'non-magical community' (for Muggles) and 'memory modification' (for magical brainwashing).\"\nThis novel implies it begins in 1992: the cake for Nearly-Headless Nick's 500th deathday party bears the words \"Sir Nicholas De Mimsy Porpington died 31 October 1492\".\nConnection to \"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince\".\n\"Chamber of Secrets\" has many links with the sixth book of the series, \"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince\". In fact, \"Half-Blood Prince\" was the working title of \"Chamber of Secrets\" and Rowling says she originally intended to present some \"crucial pieces of information\" in the second book, but ultimately felt \"this information's proper home was book six\". Some objects that play significant roles in \"Half-Blood Prince\" first appear in \"Chamber of Secrets\": the Hand of Glory and the opal necklace that are on sale in Borgin and Burkes; a Vanishing Cabinet in Hogwarts that is damaged by Peeves the Poltergeist; and Tom Riddle's diary, which is later revealed to be a Horcrux. Additionally, these two novels are the ones with the most focus on Harry's relationship with Ginny Weasley.\nAdaptations.\nFilm.\nThe film version of \"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\" was released in 2002. Chris Columbus directed the film, and the screenplay was written by Steve Kloves. It became the third film to exceed $600\u00a0million in international box office sales, preceded by \"Titanic\", released in 1997, and \"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone\", released in 2001. The film was nominated for a Saturn Award for the Best Fantasy Film, According to Metacritic, the film version of \"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\" received \"generally favourable reviews\" with an average score of 63%, and another aggregator, Rotten Tomatoes, gave it a score of 82%.\nVideo games.\nFive unique video games by different developers were released between 2002 and 2003 by Electronic Arts, loosely based on the book:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "667368": "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (film)\n2002 film by Chris Columbus\nHarry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is a 2002 fantasy film directed by Chris Columbus from a screenplay by Steve Kloves. It is based on the 1998 novel \"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\" by J. K. Rowling. Produced by David Heyman, it is the sequel to \"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone\" (2001) and the second instalment in the \"Harry Potter\" film series. The film stars Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter, with Rupert Grint and Emma Watson as his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger respectively. The story follows Harry's second year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where the Heir of Salazar Slytherin opens the Chamber of Secrets, unleashing a monster that petrifies the school's students.\nThe film was released in the United Kingdom and the United States on 15 November 2002, by Warner Bros. Pictures. Critics praised its darker plot, sets, performances (especially Branagh, Coltrane and Isaacs), and a story appropriate for a young audience, and it became a critical and commercial success, grossing $878 million worldwide (domestic 29.7% and foreign 70.2%) and becoming the second-highest-grossing film of 2002. The film was nominated for many awards, including the BAFTA Award for Best Production Design, Best Sound, and Best Special Visual Effects. It was followed by \"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban\" (2004).\nPlot.\nWhile spending the summer with the Dursleys, Harry Potter meets Dobby, a house-elf who warns him not to return to Hogwarts or danger will strike. When Harry refuses, Dobby sabotages an important dinner for the Dursleys, who lock up Harry to prevent his departure. Harry's friend Ron Weasley and his brothers Fred and George rescue him in their father's flying car.\nIn Diagon Alley, Harry, the Weasleys, and Hermione Granger notice a book signing by Gilderoy Lockhart, Hogwarts' new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. There, Harry sees Draco Malfoy's father, Lucius, slip a book into Ginny Weasley's cauldron. After being blocked from entering Platform Nine and Three-Quarters at King's Cross railway station, Harry and Ron take the car to Hogwarts. They crash into the Whomping Willow, breaking Ron's wand, and receive detention.\nIn detention, Harry hears a strange voice and later finds caretaker Argus Filch's cat, Mrs Norris, petrified with a message written in blood: \"The Chamber of Secrets has been opened, enemies of the heir... beware.\" One of Hogwarts' founders, Salazar Slytherin, supposedly constructed a secret Chamber containing a monster that only his heir can control, capable of purging the school of Muggle-borns. To solve this mystery, Harry, Ron, and Hermione plan to question Malfoy, using polyjuice potion, which they brew in a bathroom haunted by Moaning Myrtle, a ghost.\nDuring a Quidditch game, Harry's arm is broken by a rogue Bludger. Dobby visits him in the infirmary and reveals that he closed the barrier to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters and made the Bludger chase Harry to force him to leave the school. He also reveals that the Chamber had been opened in the past. When Harry communicates with a snake, the school starts to believe he is the heir. Disguised as Malfoy's friends, Harry and Ron learn he is not the heir, but know that a Muggle-born girl died when the Chamber was last opened. Harry finds an enchanted diary owned by a former student Tom Marvolo Riddle, who opened the Chamber and blamed Rubeus Hagrid, leading to his expulsion. When the diary is stolen and Hermione is petrified, Harry and Ron question Hagrid. Professor Dumbledore, Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge, and Lucius arrive to take Hagrid to Azkaban and remove Dumbledore from office, but he discreetly tells the boys to \"follow the spiders\". In the Forbidden Forest, Harry and Ron meet Hagrid's giant pet spider, Aragog, who reveals Hagrid's innocence and provides a small clue of the Chamber's monster.\nA book page in Hermione's hand identifies the monster as a basilisk, a giant serpent that kills people who make direct eye contact; the petrified victims only saw it indirectly. The school staff learns Ginny has been taken into the Chamber, and nominate Lockhart to save her. Harry and Ron find Lockhart preparing to flee, exposing him as a fraud. Deducing that Myrtle was the Muggle-born girl that the basilisk killed, they find the Chamber's entrance in the bathroom she haunts. Once inside, Lockhart tries to erase Harry and Ron\u2019s memories so he can document this as his own adventure. However, because he was using Ron's broken wand, the spell backfired, erasing Lockhart's memory and causing a cave-in, separating Harry from Ron and Lockhart.\nHarry enters the Chamber alone and finds Ginny unconscious. Riddle, who turns out to be Slytherin's heir and Voldemort's younger self, uses the diary to manipulate Ginny into reopening the Chamber. After Harry expresses his loyalty to Dumbledore, the latter's pet phoenix Fawkes arrives with the Sorting Hat, causing Riddle to summon the basilisk. Fawkes blinds the basilisk, and the Sorting Hat produces the Sword of Gryffindor, which Harry uses to kill the basilisk after a battle, but is poisoned by one of its fangs.\nDespite being injured, Harry stabs the diary with the basilisk fang, destroying Riddle and reviving Ginny. Fawkes's tears heal Harry, who returns to Hogwarts with his friends and a baffled Lockhart. This earns Dumbledore's praise and Hagrid's release. Harry accuses Lucius, Dobby's master, of planting the diary in Ginny's cauldron and tricks him into freeing Dobby. The basilisk's victims are healed, Hermione reunites with her friends, and Hagrid is released from Azkaban.\nCast.\nSeveral actors from \"Philosopher's Stone\" reprise their roles in this film. Harry Melling portrays Dudley Dursley, Harry's Muggle cousin. James and Oliver Phelps play Fred and George Weasley, Ron's twin brothers; Chris Rankin appears as Percy Weasley, Ron's other brother and a Gryffindor prefect; and Bonnie Wright portrays their sister Ginny. Tom Felton plays Draco Malfoy, Harry's rival in Slytherin, while Jamie Waylett and Joshua Herdman appear as Crabbe and Goyle, Draco's minions. Matthew Lewis, Devon Murray and Alfred Enoch play Neville Longbottom, Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas, respectively, three Gryffindor students in Harry's year. David Bradley portrays Argus Filch, Hogwarts' caretaker, and Sean Biggerstaff as Oliver Wood, the Keeper of the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Leslie Phillips voices the Sorting Hat. Eleanor Columbus, Chris Columbus's daughter, appears as Susan Bones, Edward Randell appears as Justin Finch-Fletchley, Charlotte Skeoch as Hannah Abbott, and Louis Doyle as Ernie MacMillan; Hufflepuff students. Emily Dale appears as Katie Bell, Rochelle Douglas as Alicia Spinnet, and Danielle Tabor as Angelina Johnson; Gryffindor girls. Jamie Yeats appears as Marcus Flint, Scott Fearn as Adrian Pucey; and David Holmes, David Massam, and Tony Christian appear as Slytherin quidditch players. Gemma Padley appears as Penelope Clearwater, a Ravenclaw student and Percy's girlfriend. Luke Youngblood plays Lee Jordan, the Quidditch comentator.\nChristian Coulson appears as Tom Marvolo Riddle, a manifestation of young Lord Voldemort. Mark Williams portrays Arthur Weasley, Ron's father. Shirley Henderson plays Moaning Myrtle, a Hogwarts ghost. Miriam Margolyes appears as Pomona Sprout, Hogwarts' Herbology professor and head of Hufflepuff. Hugh Mitchell portrays Colin Creevey, a first year student that is a fan of Harry's. Robert Hardy appears as Cornelius Fudge, the Minister for Magic. Toby Jones voices Dobby, a House-elf, while Julian Glover voices Aragog, an acromantula. Jim Norton appears as Mr. Mason and Veronica Clifford appears as Mrs. Mason. Alfred Burke appears as Master Dippet in a memory of Tom Riddle. Daisy Bates, David Tysall and Peter Taylor appear as moving pictures. Helen Stuart plays Millicent Bulstrode, a Slytherin girl.\nHugh Grant was rumoured to be the first choice to play the role of Gilderoy Lockhart, but due to reported scheduling conflicts he was unable to play the character. Columbus later denied that Grant had been considered and stated that they had not met. Alan Cumming and Rupert Everett were also considered for Lockhart. Cumming backed out over a salary dispute. Jason Issacs also auditioned for Lockhart, but was offered for the role of Lucius Malfoy instead, he was reluctant to take the role as he was already signed on to play Captain Hook in \"Peter Pan\" (2003), but his family convinced him to take the role and accepted it. Before Coulson was cast as Tom Riddle, James McAvoy and Eddie Redmayne \u2013 who later played Newt Scamander in the \"Fantastic Beasts\" films \u2013 auditioned for the role.\nProduction.\nCostume and set design.\nProduction designer Stuart Craig returned for the sequel to design new elements previously not seen in the first film. He designed the Burrow based on Arthur Weasley's interest in Muggles, built vertically out of architectural salvage. Mr. Weasley's flying car was created from a 1962 Ford Anglia 105E. The Chamber of Secrets, measuring over long and wide, was the biggest set created for the saga. Dumbledore's office, which houses the Sorting Hat and the Sword of Gryffindor, was also built for the film.\nLindy Hemming was the costume designer for \"Chamber of Secrets\". She retained many of the characters' already established appearances, and chose to focus on the new characters introduced in the sequel. Gilderoy Lockhart's wardrobe incorporated bright colours, in contrast with the \"dark, muted or sombre colours\" of the other characters. Branagh said, \"We wanted to create a hybrid between a period dandy and someone who looked as if they could fit into Hogwarts.\" Hemming also perfected Lucius Malfoy's costume. One of the original concepts was for him to wear a pinstripe suit, but was changed to furs and a snake head cane in order to remark his aristocrat quality and to reflect a \"sense of the old.\"\nFilming.\nPrincipal photography began on 19 November 2001, only three days after the wide release of the first film. Second-unit work had started three weeks before, primarily for the flying car scene. Filming took place mainly at Leavesden Film Studios in Hertfordshire, as well as on the Isle of Man. King's Cross railway station was used as the filming location for Platform 9\u00be, though St Pancras railway station was used for the exterior shots. Gloucester Cathedral was used as the setting for Hogwarts School, along with Durham Cathedral, Alnwick Castle, Lacock Abbey, and the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. The Burrow was built in Gypsy Lane, Abbots Langley, in front of Leavesden Studios.\nRoger Pratt was brought on as director of photography for \"Chamber of Secrets\", in order to give the film \"a darker and edgier feel\" than its predecessor, which reflected \"the growth of the characters and the story.\" Director Chris Columbus opted to use handheld cameras to allow more freedom in movement, which he considered \"a departure for [him] as a filmmaker.\" University of Cambridge linguistics professor Francis Nolan created Parseltongue, the language spoken by snakes in the film. Principal photography wrapped in July 2002.\nSound design.\nDue to the events that take place in \"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\", the film's sound effects were much more expansive than in the previous instalment. Sound designer and supervising sound editor Randy Thom returned for the sequel using Pro Tools to complete the job, which included initial conceptions done at Skywalker Sound in California and primary work done at Shepperton Studios in England.\nThom wanted to give the Whomping Willow a voice, a deep growl for which he used his own voice slowed down, equalised and bass-boosted. For the mandrakes, he combined baby cries with female screams, in order to \"make it just exotic enough so that you think, 'Hmm, I've never heard anything quite like \"that\" before.'\"\nThom described the basilisk as a challenge, \"because it's a giant snake, but it's also like a dragon \u2014 not many snakes have teeth like that. He had to hiss, he had to roar and there were times at the end when he was in pain.\" He mixed his own voice, tiger roars, and horse and elephant vocalizations.\nSpecial and visual effects.\nVisual effects took nine months to make, until 9 October 2002, when the film was finished. Industrial Light & Magic, Mill Film, the Moving Picture Company (MPC), Cinesite and Framestore CFC handled the approximately 950 visual effect shots in the film. Jim Mitchell and Nick Davis served as visual effects supervisors. They were in charge of creating the CGI characters Dobby the House Elf, the Basilisk, and the Cornish pixies, among others. Chas Jarrett from MPC served as CGI supervisor, overseeing the approach of any shot that contains CGI in the film. With a crew of 70 people, the company produced 251 shots, 244 of which made it to the film, from September 2001 to October 2002.\nThe visual effects team worked alongside creature effects supervisor Nick Dudman, who devised Fawkes the Phoenix, the Mandrakes, Aragog the Acromantula, and the first of the Basilisk. According to Dudman, Aragog was the most challenging character to create. The giant spider stood tall with an foot leg span, each of which had to be controlled by a different team member. The whole creature weighed three quarters of a ton. It took over 15 people to operate the animatronic Aragog on set.\nThe Whomping Willow sequence required a combination of practical and visual effects. Special effects supervisor John Richardson and his team created mechanically operated branches to hit the flying car. A 1:3 scale set was built on stage at Shepperton Studios, which featured the fully-sized top third of the tree with a forced perspective to appear a height of over high. The courtyard and the tree were built in 3D. Some shots ended up being entirely digital. Jarret identified the rendering as \"the biggest challenge\" of the scene, because \"there was just so much going on in [it] ... It was simply massive.\"\nMusic.\nJohn Williams, who composed the previous film's score, returned to score \"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\". Composing the film proved to be a difficult task, as Williams had just completed scoring \"\" and \"Minority Report\" when work was to begin on \"Catch Me If You Can\". Because of this, William Ross was brought in to arrange themes from the \"Philosopher's Stone\" into the new material that Williams was composing whenever he had the chance. Ross also conducted the scoring sessions with the London Symphony Orchestra. The soundtrack album was released on 12 November 2002.\nDistribution.\nMarketing.\nFootage for the film began appearing online in the summer of 2002, with a teaser trailer debuting in cinemas with the release of \"Scooby-Doo\" that June. A video game based on the film was released in early November 2002 by Electronic Arts for several consoles, including GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox. The film also continued the merchandising success set by its predecessor, with reports of shortages on Lego's \"Chamber of Secrets\" tie-ins.\nHome media.\nThe film was originally released in the United Kingdom, United States and Canada on 11 April 2003 on both VHS tape and in a two-disc special edition fullscreen/widescreen DVD digipack, which included extended and deleted scenes and interviews. On 11 December 2007, the film's Blu-ray version was released. An Ultimate Edition of the film was released on 8 December 2009, featuring new footage, TV spots, an extended version of the film with deleted scenes edited in, and a feature-length special \"Creating the World of Harry Potter Part 2: Characters\". The film's extended version has a running time of about 174 minutes, which has previously been shown during certain television airings.\nReception.\nBox office.\n\"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\" held its world premiere at Odeon Leicester Square on 3 November 2002, and was released in the United Kingdom and the United States on 15 November 2002. The film broke multiple records upon its opening. In the United States and Canada, the film opened to an $88.4million opening weekend, playing on 8,515 screens at 3,682 theaters, making it the third-largest opening at the time, behind \"Spider-Man\" and its predecessor \"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone\". The film would hold the record for having the largest number of screenings until it was surpassed by \"X2\" the next year. It was also No. 1 at the box office for two non-consecutive weekends. \"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\" was the second 2002 film to return to the number one spot, just after Mel Gibson's \"Signs\". The film joined \"Die Another Day\" and \"The Santa Clause 2\" to outperform the weak opening of \"Treasure Planet\". Both \"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\" and \"Die Another Day\" were the most recent films to reclaim the number one spot for six months until June 2003 when \"Finding Nemo\" became the next film to do so. In the United Kingdom, the film broke all opening records that were previously held by \"Philosopher's Stone\". It made \u00a318.9million during its opening including previews and \u00a310.9million excluding previews.\n It went on to make \u00a354.8million in the UK; at the time, the fifth-biggest tally of all time in the region.\nInternationally, the film earned $59.5 million during its opening weekend. The film earned $3.7 million in Japan, making it the highest opening of any film in the country until it was surpassed a year"}, "descending_order": ["163234", "667368", "2262540"], "permutation_1": ["667368", "163234", "2262540"], "permutation_2": ["2262540", "163234", "667368"], "permutation_3": ["163234", "2262540", "667368"]}
{"id": "nq_4850550971808396769", "docs_added": {"55023268": "The Hate U Give (film)\n2018 film by George Tillman, Jr.\nThe Hate U Give is a 2018 American coming-of-age teen drama film produced and directed by George Tillman Jr. from a screenplay by Audrey Wells (who died the day before the film's release), based on the 2017 young adult novel of the same name by Angie Thomas. The film was produced by Marty Bowen, Wyck Godfrey, Robert Teitel and Tillman Jr., and stars Amandla Stenberg, Regina Hall, Russell Hornsby, Lamar Johnson, KJ Apa, Sabrina Carpenter, Common, and Anthony Mackie, and follows the fallout after a high school student witnesses a police shooting.\nThe project was announced on March 23, 2016, and casting took place during August and September 2017. Principal photography began on September 12, 2017, in Atlanta, Georgia. On February 5, 2018, it was announced that Kian Lawley's role was recast after a video of his use of racially offensive slurs resurfaced. A month later, it was announced that Lawley had been replaced by Apa.\n\"The Hate U Give\" premiered at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival on September 7, 2018, and was released in the United States on October 5, 2018, by 20th Century Fox. The film grossed $34.9 million worldwide against its $23 million budget and received acclaim from critics, with many praising the performances (particularly Stenberg and Hornsby), Wells' screenplay, and Tillman Jr.'s direction. The film was nominated for and won numerous accolades, including Stenberg's winning of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture and being nominated for a Critics' Choice Award.\nPlot.\nStarr Carter is a 16-year-old African-American girl who lives in the predominantly black neighborhood of Garden Heights and attends a predominantly white private school called Williamson Prep.\nAfter a firearm is discharged at a party Starr is attending, she is driven home by her best friend, Khalil. They are stopped by a police officer for failing to signal at a lane change. The officer in question, Brian MacIntosh Jr., barks orders at Khalil. Khalil disagrees with MacIntosh, who instructs him to exit the car.\nWhile outside the car, MacIntosh retrieves Khalil's driver\u2019s license and instructs him to keep his hands on the roof. Instead, Khalil reaches through the driver side window and pulls out a hairbrush, MacIntosh incorrectly assumes he pulled out a gun and shoots Khalil, killing him. When Starr is cuffed and taken into custody, she is able to get MacIntosh's badge number: 115.\nWhile MacIntosh is placed on administrative leave, the killing becomes a national news story and causes a town-wide protest against what is believed to be an example of racial injustice. Starr's identity as the witness is initially kept secret from everyone outside her family; this leaves her friends, Hailey Grant and Maya Yang, and her boyfriend, Chris\u00a0\u2013 who all attend Williamson Prep\u00a0\u2013 unaware of her connection to the killing.\nStarr agrees to be interviewed on television and to testify in front of a grand jury. While defending Khalil's character during her interview, in which her identity is hidden, she names the King Lords, the gang that is the true scourge of her neighborhood. The gang retaliates by threatening Starr and her family, forcing them to move in with her Uncle Carlos, her mom's brother, who is a police detective.\nCarlos was a father figure to Starr when her father, Maverick, spent three years in prison for a crime he confessed to. Following his release, Maverick left the gang and became the owner of the Garden Heights grocery store where Starr and her half-brother Seven work. Maverick was only allowed to leave the King Lords because his false confession to the crime kept gang leader King from being locked up. King, who is widely feared, now lives with Seven's mother Iesha, as well as Seven's half-sister Kenya, who is friends with Starr, and Kenya's younger sister Lyric.\nAfter a grand jury does not indict MacIntosh, Garden Heights erupts into both peaceful protests and warlike riots. In reaction to the decision, Starr takes an increasingly public role, including speaking out during the protests. Her increasing identification with the people of Garden Heights causes tension with her school friends, especially between her and Chris. Starr and Maya start standing up to Hailey's racist comments, breaking up their friendship, while Chris remains supportive of Starr.\nStarr and Seven get trapped in Maverick's grocery store, which is fire-bombed by King and his gang. The two escape with the help of Maverick and other Garden Heights business owners. The community stands up against King, who goes to jail. Starr promises to keep Khalil's memory alive and to continue her advocacy against police violence by \"any means necessary\".\nProduction.\nDevelopment.\nOn March 23, 2016, it was announced that Amandla Stenberg would star as Starr Carter in the film, based on the novel \"The Hate U Give\" by Angie Thomas. George Tillman Jr. would direct, from a screenplay by Audrey Wells, while producers would be Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey through State Street Pictures and Temple Hill Entertainment. On August 1, 2017, Russell Hornsby and Lamar Johnson were cast in the film to play Maverick Carter, Starr's father, and Seven Carter, Starr's brother, respectively. On August 3, Regina Hall was added as Lisa Carter, Starr's mother, and on August 15, Algee Smith also joined, to play Khalil, Starr's childhood best friend. On August 22, it was reported that Common had been cast as Starr's uncle, a police officer.\nOn August 23, 2017, Issa Rae was cast in the film to play April, the social activist who encourages Starr to speak out publicly. On August 24, Sabrina Carpenter was added as well, playing Hailey, one of Starr's high school friends. On September 12, Anthony Mackie and Kian Lawley joined the film to play the local drug dealer King, and Starr's boyfriend, Chris, respectively until on February 5, 2018, it was announced that Lawley had been fired from the film due to a resurfaced video showing Lawley using racially offensive slurs, resulting in his role being recast and his scenes reshot. On April 3, 2018, it was announced that KJ Apa would replace Lawley.\nFilming.\nPrincipal photography on the film began on September 12, 2017, in Atlanta, Georgia. and wrapped on November 4, 2017. Reshoots were shot along with the KJ Apa's scenes in April 2018.\nRelease.\n\"The Hate U Give\" began a limited release in the United States on October 5, 2018, before a scheduled expansion the following week, and then a wide release on October 19, the day it opened worldwide. It was previously scheduled to go directly into wide release on the 19th.\nThe day prior to the film's release, screenwriter Audrey Wells died from cancer at the age of 58. 20th Century Fox released a statement saying, \"We are simply heartbroken. Audrey's was a voice of empowerment and courage, and her words will live on through the strong, determined female characters she brought to life. Our thoughts are with Brian, Tatiana, and all of Audrey's family and friends at this difficult time.\"\nHome media.\n\"The Hate U Give\" was released on digital download on January 8, 2019, and on DVD/Blu-Ray on January 22, 2019.\nReception.\nBox office.\n\"The Hate U Give\" grossed $29.7 million in the United States and Canada, and $5.2 million in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $34.9 million. When Disney acquired Fox, \"The Hollywood Reporter\" stated that the film had lost Fox a total of $30\u201340 million due to its $23 million production budget and $30 million spent on marketing.\nIn its limited opening weekend, \"The Hate U Give\" made $512,035 from 36 theaters, for an average of $14,233 per venue, finishing 13th. Playing in a total of 248 theaters the following weekend, the film made $1.8 million, finishing ninth. The film was projected to gross $7\u20139 million when it expanded to 2,303 theaters on October 19. It made $2.5 million on its first day of wide release, including $300,000 from Thursday night previews. It went on to gross $7.5 million over the weekend, finishing sixth at the box office. It fell 33% to $5.1 million the following weekend, remaining in sixth.\nCritical response.\nOn review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, and an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, \"Led by a breakout turn from Amandla Stenberg, the hard-hitting \"The Hate U Give\" emphatically proves the YA genre has room for much more than magic and romance.\" On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 81 out of 100, based on 44 critics, indicating \"universal acclaim\". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare average grade of \"A+\" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it an 88% positive score and a 74% \"definite recommend\".\nWriting for \"Rolling Stone\", Peter Travers gave the film four out of five stars, calling it an \"exceptional adaptation\", and writing, \"It is impossible to over-praise Stenberg's incandescent performance, a gathering storm that grows in ferocity and feeling with each scene. Stenberg nails every nuance of a role that keeps throwing challenges at her, none more devastating than when it becomes impossible for Starr to remain stuck in neutral.\" Scott Mendelson, writing for \"Forbes\", stated that the film deserved to be an Academy Awards frontrunner for its screenplay, Stenberg and Russell Hornsby's performances, and the picture itself, saying it \"belongs among the final list of would-be Best Picture nominees.\"\nKeith Watson of \"Slant Magazine\", however, gave the film two out of four stars, writing, \"Given its intensely relevant subject matter, the film can't help but churn up a lot of raw emotions\u2014and the allusions to Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, and Emmett Till are reminders of the real-life sorrow that birthed this film\u2014but Tillman's anonymous direction is content merely to illustrate the screenplay without ever bringing it to life. Even scenes that are meant to be tinged with menace and danger\u2014run-ins with a local gang, a shooting at a party\u2014feel about as raw as an episode of \"\"\". The film was also criticized by some female African-American critics as well, including Soraya Nadia McDonald of \"Andscape\", who said that \"In dealing with all of it, the book character finds her confidence and her voice. But the movie version of \"The Hate U Give\" leaves me unsure that its makers ever found theirs.\"\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "36791152": "Sabrina Carpenter\nAmerican singer and actress (born 1999)\nSabrina Annlynn Carpenter (born May 11, 1999) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She gained prominence starring on the Disney Channel series \"Girl Meets World\" (2014\u20132017), and signed with the Disney-owned Hollywood Records. She released her debut single, \"Can't Blame a Girl for Trying\" in 2014, followed by the studio albums \"Eyes Wide Open\" (2015), \"Evolution\" (2016), ' (2018), and ' (2019).\nCarpenter moved to Island Records in 2021 and released her fifth studio album, \"Emails I Can't Send\" (2022) which was supported by the singles \"Nonsense\" and \"Feather\". Her sixth studio album, \"Short n' Sweet\" (2024), debuted atop the \"Billboard\" 200, produced the top-three Hot 100 singles \"Espresso\", \"Please Please Please\" and \"Taste\", and also earned two Grammy Awards.\nCarpenter has appeared in films, including \"Adventures in Babysitting\" (2016), \"The Hate U Give\" (2018), \"The Short History of the Long Road\" (2019), \"Clouds\" (2020), and \"Emergency\" (2022). She has also starred in the Netflix films \"Tall Girl\" (2019), \"Tall Girl 2\" (2022), and \"Work It\" (2020), the latter of which she executive-produced. On Broadway, she played Cady Heron in the musical \"Mean Girls\" (2020).\nEarly life.\nSabrina Annlynn Carpenter was born on May 11, 1999, in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, to David and Elizabeth Carpenter, and raised in East Greenville. She has three older sisters and was homeschooled. She is a niece of actress Nancy Cartwright. Around the age of 10, she began posting videos on YouTube of herself singing Christina Aguilera and Adele songs. Her father built a recording studio for her to fuel her passion for music. In 2009, she placed third in a singing contest \"The Next Miley Cyrus Project\", run by Miley Cyrus.\nCareer.\n2011\u20132014: Breakthrough with Disney.\nCarpenter's first acting role was in 2011 in a guest role on the NBC drama series '. Around the same time, she performed as part of the Hunan Broadcasting System's \"Gold Mango Audience Festival\" program in China, singing \"Something's Got a Hold on Me\". In the summer of 2012, Carpenter had a recurring role in the Fox sitcom \"The Goodwin Games\". She appeared in \"Horns\" (2013) and recorded \"Smile\" for the compilation album ', inspired by the \"Disney Fairies\" film series; the song charted on Radio Disney. She had a recurring role as Princess Vivian in \"Sofia the First\", for which she performed the song \"All You Need\" with Ariel Winter.\nIn January 2013, Carpenter was cast in a Disney Channel series \"Girl Meets World\", a spin-off of \"Boy Meets World\", as Maya Hart. The show consisted of 72 episodes, and concluded on January 20, 2017. Carpenter recorded the show's theme song alongside her co-star Rowan Blanchard. From 2010 to 2013, Carpenter released various independent promotional singles before signing a five-album deal with Disney label Hollywood Records in 2014.\nIn March 2014, Carpenter released her debut single, \"Can't Blame a Girl for Trying\", which was co-written by Meghan Trainor. The single received positive reviews and titled her debut EP of the same name that was released in April 2014. In July 2014, Carpenter contributed lead vocals to the \"Disney Channel Circle of Stars\" cover version of \"Do You Want to Build a Snowman?\". She recorded \"Stand Out\" for the Disney Channel movie, \"How to Build a Better Boy\", which premiered in August 2014. She released her first Christmas single, \"Silver Nights\", that same year.\n2015\u20132017: \"Eyes Wide Open\" and \"Evolution\".\nIn January 2015, Carpenter released \"We'll Be the Stars\". It served as the lead single for her debut studio album \"Eyes Wide Open\", which was released on April 14, 2015, and peaked at number 43 on the \"Billboard\" 200. The album is primarily a teen pop album with elements of folk-pop. According to \"Billboard\", it sold over 12,000 copies in its first week. Upon release, the album received positive reviews and went on to win two Radio Disney Music Awards. The album was followed with a second single, \"Eyes Wide Open\". In August, Carpenter performed at the D23 Expo. In December, Carpenter released her second Christmas single, \"Christmas The Whole Year Round\".\nIn February 2016, Carpenter released the standalone single titled \"Smoke and Fire\". She performed the song at the 2016 Radio Disney Music Awards. In June 2016, Carpenter starred in the Disney Channel Original Movie \"Adventures in Babysitting\" (2016) alongside Sofia Carson. For the film, the two performed the theme track, \"Wildside\", together. Later that year, she appeared in a Pasadena Playhouse production of \"Peter Pan and Tinker Bell: A Pirate's Christmas\". In August, Carpenter headlined the Bethlehem's Musikfest festival. She began voicing Melissa Chase on \"Milo Murphy's Law\".\nIn October 2016, Carpenter released her second studio album, \"Evolution\" which debuted on the \"Billboard\" 200 at number 28, selling 13,000 copies in its first week. The album produced two singles including \"On Purpose\" and \"Thumbs\" with the former being nominated for a Radio Disney Music Award, and the latter peaking at number one on \"Billboard\"'s Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart and was later certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Two promotional singles were released from the album including \"All We Have Is Love\" and \"Run and Hide\". Carpenter performed \"Thumbs\" on \"The Today Show\" and \"The Late Late Show with James Corden\". She embarked on her first headlining concert tour, the Evolution Tour, in autumn of 2016.\nIn March 2017, Carpenter performed the theme song for the Disney Channel show \"Andi Mack\". In May, Carpenter featured on the single \"Hands\" with The Vamps and Mike Perry. In July, Carpenter released the single \"Why\", which received positive reviews, and peaked at number 21 on the \"Billboard\" Bubbling Under Hot 100, becoming her second entry on the chart. It was nominated for a Radio Disney Music Award. In the summer of that year, Carpenter embarked on her second headlining concert tour, the De-Tour. She opened for Ariana Grande on her Dangerous Woman Tour in S\u00e3o Paulo.\nIn December, Carpenter released a cover of \"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas\". That same year, she released covers of \"Sign of the Times\" and \"You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch\" with British singer Jasmine Thompson and violinist Lindsey Stirling respectively.\n2018\u20132020: \"Singular\" and films.\nIn March 2018, Carpenter released the song \"Alien\" with English DJ Jonas Blue. The song reached number one on the US Dance Club Songs chart and number 12 on the US Dance/Electronic Songs chart. The duo performed it on \"Jimmy Kimmel Live!\". In May, Carpenter was included in \"Nylon\" magazine's \"25 Gen Z'ers Changing The World\". In September, Carpenter appeared in \"The Hate U Give\" (2018), based on the novel of the same name.\nOn November 9, 2018, Carpenter released her third studio album, \"\", which received positive reviews. Set to be released as one album, Carpenter announced that the album would be split into two acts with second act set for release in early 2019. The album garnered two singles, \"Almost Love\" and \"Sue Me\", which both reached number one on the US Dance Club Songs chart. Two promotional singles preceded the album: \"Paris\" and \"Bad Time\". Carpenter promoted the album on \"The Today Show\", as well as \"Live with Kelly and Ryan\".\nIn March 2019, Carpenter embarked on her third headlining concert tour, the Singular Tour. That month, Carpenter featured on Alan Walker's single, \"On My Way\", alongside Farruko. In June 2019, she starred in the drama film \"The Short History of the Long Road\". The film had had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival and was released by FilmRise. It received positive reviews with Carpenter's role being praised.\nOn July 19, 2019, Carpenter released her fourth studio album, \"\". The album received positive reviews upon release and found Carpenter exploring more personal topics than her previous works, including themes of anxiety and self-reflection. Three singles were released for the album including \"Pushing 20\", \"Exhale\" and \"In My Bed\". To promote the album, she performed on \"Good Morning America\"'s Summer Concert Series and released a promotional single titled \"I'm Fakin\" ahead of the album's release. In September 2019, Carpenter appeared in the Netflix film \"Tall Girl\". She was cast in an adaptation of \"The Distance From Me to You\".\nIn February 2020, Carpenter released an R&B single titled \"Honeymoon Fades\" which was received positively by critics. A month later, she made her Broadway debut in \"Mean Girls\". The show closed mid-month due to the COVID-19 pandemic closing Broadway and never reopened. In May 2020, she performed \"Your Mother and Mine\" on the ABC broadcast television special, \"The Disney Family Singalong Volume II\". She had a recurring role in \"Royalties\" for which she performed \"Perfect Song\" for the soundtrack.\nIn July 2020, Carpenter released the song, \"Let Me Move You\", for the Netflix film \"Work It\", in which she starred and executive produced. Her role received generally positive reviews. The film's soundtrack featured Zara Larsson's \"Wow\", which led to Carpenter featuring on the remix of the song, released in September of that year. In October, Carpenter starred in the Disney+ film \"Clouds\", based on the life of Zach Sobiech. She contributed to the film's soundtrack. In December 2020, Carpenter was listed under \"Forbes\"' 30 Under 30 list in the Hollywood and entertainment category.\n2021\u20132023: \"Emails I Can't Send\".\nIn January 2021, Carpenter announced that she had signed with Universal Music Group's Island Records. She released her first single under the label, \"Skin\", on January 22, 2021. The song peaked at number 48 and 33 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and the \"Billboard\" Global 200, becoming her first entry on both charts. Carpenter performed the song on \"The Late Late Show with James Corden\" and at the 32nd annual GLAAD Media Awards. In September, she appeared in the third volume of Prime Video's \"Savage X Fenty Show\". On September 9, 2021, Carpenter released \"Skinny Dipping\", the lead single from her then-forthcoming fifth studio album. She released \"Fast Times\" on February 18, 2022, as a follow-up single. That same month, she appeared in \"Tall Girl 2\". In May 2022, Carpenter appeared in Amazon Studios' film \"Emergency\" which had premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival that January.\nOn July 15, 2022, Carpenter released her fifth studio album, \"Emails I Can't Send\", which debuted and peaked at number 23 on the \"Billboard\" 200 with 18,000 album equivalent units sold. The album was further promoted with the singles: \"Vicious\" \"Because I Liked a Boy\", and \"Nonsense\". The Emails I Can't Send Tour began in September of that year. \"Nonsense\", the album's fifth single, went viral on TikTok due to Carpenter performing newly improvised sexually suggestive outros for the song on tour. The song peaked at number 56 on the Hot 100, was certified Platinum by the RIAA, and reached the top-10 on the US Pop Airplay chart.\nIn March 2023, Carpenter released a deluxe edition of \"Emails I Can't Send\". One of the bonus tracks, \"Feather\", became the final single in August 2023, peaking at number one on the US Pop Songs chart and number 21 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. She performed the song at the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards pre-show and at Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve. The song\u2019s music video, released in October 2023, drew polarized reactions due to its violent imagery and was filmed at the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church in Brooklyn, New York. The pastor apologized for allowing the shoot, unaware of the content. Carpenter responded, stating advance permission was granted and noting, \u201cJesus was a carpenter.\u201d Bishop Robert J. Brennan relieved the pastor of his duties and held a Mass of reparation to restore the church's sanctity. The investigation into the priest who granted permission uncovered evidence that led to the indictment of New York City mayor Eric Adams.\nCarpenter was the opening act for the Eras Tour by Taylor Swift for a number of its Latin American, Australian and Singaporean shows throughout 2023 and 2024. She released a cover of Swift's \"I Knew You Were Trouble\" as a Spotify special and said that opening for Swift was a \"childhood dream come true\". Carpenter described her experience at the Eras Tour as \"unlike any crowd I've ever played to before\". On November 17, 2023, Carpenter released a Christmas-themed EP, \"Fruitcake\", featuring \"A Nonsense Christmas\" which was released a year earlier.\n2024\u2013present: \"Short n' Sweet\".\nIn March 2024, Carpenter featured on Norwegian singer-songwriter Girl in Red's single \"You Need Me Now?\". On April 11, Carpenter released the single \"Espresso\", and performed at the 23rd Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival the following day. \"Espresso\" topped the \"Billboard\" Global 200, peaked at number three on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart and went on to win the MTV Video Music Award for Song of the Year. At the end of the year, \"Espresso\" became the second most streamed song of the year on Spotify at 1.6 billion. Carpenter followed with a second single, \"Please Please Please\" on June 6, 2024, which became her second global chart-topper and her first US Hot 100 number one single. With these songs, she became the first female artist to hold the number one and two positions on the UK singles chart for three weeks in a row.\nCarpenter released her sixth studio album, \"Short n' Sweet\", on August 23, debuting at number one the Billboard 200 with 362,000 units sold in its first week. All tracks charted in the top 50 of the Hot 100. At the 67th Annual Grammy Awards, Carpenter earned six nominations, including Best New Artist, while the album was nominated for Best Pop Vocal Album and Album of the Year. It won Best Pop Vocal Album, and \"Espresso\" won Best Pop Solo Performance. The third single, \"Taste,\" debuted at number two on the Hot 100, making Carpenter the first act since The Beatles to chart their first three top-five hits within a single week. The first three singles stayed in the top ten for seven consecutive weeks, a record for any female artist. Carpenter also became the first artist in 71 years to spend 20 weeks atop the UK singles chart in a calendar year, with \"Taste\" as the longest-running UK number one of 2024. A deluxe version, featuring five additional tracks including a duet of \"Please Please Please\" with Dolly Parton, was released on February 14, 2025.\nIn September 2024, Carpenter appeared on Christina Aguilera's live Spotify-exclusive special celebrating the 25th anniversary of Aguilera's self-titled debut album, duetting on \"What a Girl Wants\", which was later nominated for a Webby Award. That month, she embarked on the Short n' Sweet Tour, her first arena tour. Carpenter produced and starred in a Netflix holiday special, \"A Nonsense Christmas with Sabrina Carpenter\", released on December 6 and featuring duets with Chappell Roan, Tyla, and Shania Twain, among others.\nArtistry.\nInfluences.\nCarpenter named R&B as a genre that often influences her work. She cited Christina Aguilera and Rihanna as her biggest musical influences. Carpenter stated that Aguilera's 2002 song \"Beautiful\" helped her \"showcase and develop [her] own voice\", citing Aguilera's vocals as an inspiration. She has also named Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston and Etta James as early musical influences, she cited Beyonc\u00e9 as her genre-bending influence, and cited Taylor Swift and Lorde as her songwriting influences. She claimed that Swift's live performances and work ethic have inspired her. In an interview with \"Rolling Stone\", Carpenter said Madonna, Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, and Aguilera were some of the artists who introduced her to pop music. In 2018, Carpenter stated, that she admired Ariana Grande. Carpenter's music and image have often been compared to Grande's in the media.\nMusical styles.\nEarly in her career, Carpenter was described as a \"teen pop singer\". Later on in her career, Carpenter began to embrace pop music, with \"I.D.\" writer Barry Pierce noting that after the release of \"Emails I Can't Send\", she \"can rightfully claim the title of fully fledged popstar\". \"Variety\" writer Thania Garcia noted that while Carpenter was \"considered a Disney princess for years, her transition from child actor to pop star [...] has been slow, steady and intentional\". Carpenter felt that her transition from a Disney-star was hard, with Pierce noting that she has since had more autonomy over her work. Carpenter noted in an interview with \"Vogue\" that her \"prior music put forth a facet of herself that she didn't feel was authentic at the time\". Her stage presence has also been praised with \"Vogue\" writer Chelsea Sarabia noting that \"as an artist and performer, [Carpenter] wields the full range of human expression as if it were an instrument of its own\".\nCarpenter's albums contain elements of folk pop, acoustic, country, electropop and house music. Her albums post-\"\" have delved into styles such as dance-pop, trap, hip-hop, and R&B. On her sound, Carpenter noted that her music has \"elements of everything\". In an interview with \"Variety\" in 2024, Carpenter noted that she felt separated from her albums pre-\"Emails I Can't Send\", noting that it was \"largely due to the shift in who I am as a person and as an artist, pre-pandemic and post-pandemic\". Alex Hopper of \"American Songwriter\" remarked storytelling as a motif of Carpenter's songs. Carpenter's voice has been described as a soprano. \nSongwriting.\nCarpenter has co-written most of her songs, with sole lyricist credits for two tracks on \"Emails I Can't Send\"; she has stated in interviews that she is the main songwriter on her songs. Her preferred songwriting process is to start writing by deciding the song's title and building on from there, documenting her life experiences confessionally. Producer Jack Antonoff, who collaborated with Carpenter on the production of her sixth album \"Short n' Sweet\", commended the way she weaved humor into her music and her songwriting voice. Antonoff mentioned that he worked solely on the music of \"Sharpest Tool\" with Carpenter handling the lyrics. Of \"Emails I Can't Send\", Carpenter said \"I would hope that if someone had never listened to my music before, and they listened to this album, they would leave it feeling like they know me better as a person.\"\nCarpenter also worked on the compositions of some of her songs, including \"Espresso\" and \"Please Please Please\". She also performs her own musical accompaniment, with musical knowledge of the piano, bass, ukulele, guitar, and drums. She played the guitar during her set on the Short n' Sweet tour, and played the piano and electric guitar during her Coachella set in 2024.\nOther ventures.\nActivism and philanthropy.\nThroughout her career, Carpenter has actively supported charitable organizations. In 2016, Carpenter became an ambassador for the Ryan Seacrest Foundation and visited children's hospitals across the country on their behalf. That same year, for the release of her single \"Smoke and Fire\", Carpenter released merchandise with proceeds going towards American Red Cross's 2Steps2Minutes campaign which brought awareness to fire safety.\nIn 2017, Carpenter performed at the We Day California event. That same year, Carpenter partnered with DoSomething's Love Letters Challenge, aimed to combat isolation for senior citizens. Throughout her career, Carpenter has been an avid supporter of the LGBTQ+ community, and in 2018, she participated in writing a love letter to the community for \"Billboard\". She noted that \"When [fans] come to my shows with pride flags, screaming the lyrics at the top of [their] lungs, I hope [they] feel an overwhelming rush of love and safety.\" In April 2020, Carpenter appeared in a charity version of \"If the World Was Ending\", which supported Doctors Without Borders during the COVID-19 pandemic.\nIn June 2024, Carpenter announced she was partnering with the nonprofit PLUS1 on her Short n' Sweet Tour to create the Sabrina Carpenter Fund, dedicated to supporting the \"well-being of people and animals\", focusing on \"mental health, animal welfare, and support for the LGBTQ+ community\". Later that month, it was also announced that her espresso-flavored ice cream collaboration with Van Leeuwen Ice Cream would have fifty percent of its profits benefit the Ali Forney Center, the largest nonprofit organization in the United States dedicated to helping homeless LGBTQ+ youth. In the leadup to the 2024 United States presidential election, Carpenter became the artist partnering with HeadCount that registered the highest number of voters in the year.\nEndorsements and products.\nIn 2017, Carpenter endorsed Converse's Forever Chuck campaign alongside Rowan Blanchard, Alton Mason and Cole Sprouse. In 2018, she became a brand ambassador for A\u00e9ropostale. She became a brand ambassador for Samsung USA in 2021, as part of the company's \"Team Galaxy\" partnership program. She performed at the Galaxy Creator Collective event hosted by Samsung in March 2022. Additionally, following her album's release in 2022, she performed a livestream concert at Samsung and \"Billboard\"'s Summer of Galaxy annual event.\nIn September 2022, Carpenter released her debut fragrance in partnership with Scent Beauty, titled Sweet Tooth. The fragrance was nominated as a finalist by the Fragrance Foundation Awards for \"Fragrance of the Year\". In 2023, Carpenter announced her second fragrance, Caramel Dream. In July 2024, she announced her third fragrance, Cherry Baby.\nIn April 2024, Carpenter endorsed, and modeled for, new pieces for a campaign for Skims' Fits Everybody and Stretch Lace collections. She noted that \"I loved the femininity of the whole creative\" and that \"I've always been a fan of the brand.\" That year in July, Carpenter appeared in an NBC advertisement for the 2024 Summer Olympics. In December 2024, Carpenter collaborated with Dunkin' Donuts to release an iced beverage, \"Sabrina's Brown Sugar Shakin' Espresso\", named in honor of her song \"Espresso\".\nPersonal life.\nCarpenter was previously in a relationship with actor Bradley Steven Perry from 2014 to 2015. She briefly dated singer Shawn Mendes in 2023.\nCarpenter began a relationship with Irish actor Barry Keoghan in December 2023. They moved in together at a $4.4 million house in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles in May 2024. In December 2024, it was reported that the couple had split.\nTours.\nHeadlining\nOpening act\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["55023268", "36791152"], "permutation_1": ["55023268", "36791152"], "permutation_2": ["36791152", "55023268"], "permutation_3": ["55023268", "36791152"]}
{"id": "nq_-1624494308902733978", "docs_added": {"5482963": "You Give Love a Bad Name\n1986 single by Bon Jovi\n\"You Give Love a Bad Name\" is a song by American rock band Bon Jovi, released as the first single from their 1986 album \"Slippery When Wet\". Written by Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora, and Desmond Child about a woman who has jilted her lover, the song reached No. 1 on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100 on November 29, 1986, and became the band's first number-one hit. In 2007, the song re-entered the charts at No. 29 after Blake Lewis performed it on \"American Idol\". Despite the lyrics of the chorus, the song should not be confused with \"Shot Through the Heart\", an unrelated song from Bon Jovi's 1984 self-titled debut album.\nComposition.\nThe chorus tune of \"You Give Love a Bad Name\" was originally recorded by Bonnie Tyler under the title \"If You Were a Woman (And I Was a Man)\" with different lyrics commissioned by its producer Jim Steinman. Dissatisfied with its success in the US and the UK (which he attributed to reticence on the part of her label in promoting it), Desmond Child re-wrote the song with Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora.\nUpon the release of the Ava Max song \"Kings & Queens\" in 2020, comparisons were drawn with that song, \"You Give Love a Bad Name\", and Bonnie Tyler's \"If You Were a Woman (And I Was a Man)\", and reviews highlighted Desmond Child's credit as a songwriter for \"Kings & Queens\".\nReception.\n\"Cash Box\" called it a \"jackhammer single\" that could push Bon Jovi to massive success and said that \"Jon Bon Jovi\u2019s grinding vocal and the anthemic production spell A-O-R.\" \"Billboard\" called it \"hard rock, raspy and aggressive.\" In a retrospective analysis, Chris Molanphy expressed his disgust at the song, calling its lyrics \"sub-Meat Loaf\" (Meat Loaf being best known for his work with Steinman). However, he did credit it for introducing the genre of hair metal to the mainstream. He also noted in another commentary how the song shared many similarities with Steinman's songs due to Child's involvement, saying \"Steinman might as well have [produced it]\", due to Child using devices such as its verbose title and anthemic chorus, likening it to \"'Bat Out of Hell' infused with Aqua Net\". It was placed at No. 20 on VH1's list of the \"100 Best Hard Rock Songs\".\nMusic video.\nThe music video for the song used all-color concert footage (the only all-color video song from \"Slippery When Wet\") and photogenic shots primarily of Jon Bon Jovi, as well as other band members in concert. This video was filmed at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. Bon Jovi was now being managed by Doc McGhee, who realized that Bon Jovi needed a video for MTV. Doc hired video director Wayne Isham, who had directed videos for Doc's other band, M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce. The two bands were competitive with each other and M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce felt betrayed that Wayne would direct one of Bon Jovi's videos. Wayne had the band's name painted on the stage and made sure that the band did not see it until they began shooting. Bon Jovi had been opening for 38 Special but became a headlining act after the video debuted.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "15306499": "Blame It on Your Heart\n\"Blame It on Your Heart\" is a song written by Harlan Howard and Kostas and recorded by American country music artist Patty Loveless. It was released in April 1993 as the first single from her album \"Only What I Feel\". A cover version by Deborah Allen was featured prominently in the 1993 film \"The Thing Called Love\".\nContent.\nThe song and its video describe an ex-boyfriend who has a \"lying, cheating, cold dead-beating, two-timing, double-dealing, mean-mistreating, loving\" heart that he should blame for whatever backstabbing he gets from any other woman he does to what he did to its narrator.\nMusic video.\nThe music video for \"Blame It on Your Heart\" was directed by Sherman Halsey, and premiered in early 1993. David Keith played the ex-boyfriend in the video.\nCritical reception.\nIn 2024, \"Rolling Stone\" ranked the song at number 147 on its \"200 Greatest Country Songs of All Time\" ranking.\nChart performance.\nThe song charted for 20 weeks on the \"Billboard\" Hot Country Singles and Tracks chart, reaching number 1 during the week of June 19, 1993.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "14239311": "Shot Through the Heart (album)\nShot Through the Heart is the fifth album by American singer/songwriter Jennifer Warnes, released on Arista Records in 1979. It peaked at #13 on the Billboard Country albums chart and #94 on the main Billboard albums chart.\nThe premier single from the album: \"I Know a Heartache When I See One\", peaked at #19 on the \"Billboard\" singles chart and reached #10 on the Hot Country Songs (C&W) listing, becoming Arista Records' lone C&W Top Ten hit prior to 1990. The song peaked at #14 on the Adult Contemporary charts; follow-up singles \"Don't Make Me Over\" and \"When the Feeling Comes Around\" also made the Adult Contemporary charts. Despite modest sales, the album has always been a favorite recording of the artist's fans.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "42510343": "I Blame Myself\n\"I Blame Myself\" is a song by American singer Sky Ferreira from her debut studio album, \"Night Time, My Time\" (2013). It was released in the United Kingdom on June 9, 2014, by Capitol Records as the second single from the record. The song was written and produced by Ariel Rechtshaid and Justin Raisen, with additional songwriting provided by Ferreira, Daniel Nigro, and Jordan Benik. \"I Blame Myself\" is an electropop and synth-pop song, in which Ferreira acknowledges that she is responsible for her public image.\nContemporary music critics commended \"I Blame Myself\" in their reviews of \"Night Time, My Time\", and placed particular praise on its production. An accompanying music video for the track was filmed in Compton, California, and directed by Grant Singer; it was premiered through Ssense on April 16, 2014. It depicts Ferreira as a gang leader, who is called in to settle a conflict between rivaling groups. She has performed the track on \"The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon\" in April 2014.\nBackground.\nIn February 2014, it was reported that \"Boys\" would be serviced as the second single from \"Night Time, My Time\", following its lead single \"You're Not the One\" which had been premiered in September 2013. However, Capitol Records instead released the song as a free digital download in the United Kingdom on March 1, preceding the launch of \"Night Time, My Time\" in the country. \"I Blame Myself\" was confirmed as the official second single from the record in April, while Ferreira was filming its accompanying music video.\n\"I Blame Myself\" was written and produced by Ariel Rechtshaid and Justin Raisen, with additional songwriting provided by Ferreira, Daniel Nigro, and Jordan Benik. Rechtshaid and Raisen additionally collaborated for the drums. Individually, Rechshaid contributed vocal production, while Raisen was responsible for recording, Pro Tools engineering, additional vocals, synthesizers, and mixing. Mereki Beach provided additional vocals for the track, while Jeremiah Raisen assisted during its production.\nFerreira commented that she had co-written the track during summer 2013; she sings \"10 years old without a voice / I feel like nothing's really changed / Now I'm just a little older\" during the second verse, which she revealed was inspired by a two-year period in which she did not speak because she felt like she had had nothing to offer.\nComposition.\nDrawing from electropop and synth-pop music, \"I Blame Myself\" incorporates minimalist production elements with styles commonly seen in new wave music. Distinguished as the \"poppiest\" track from \"Night Time, My Time\", its lyrics see Ferreira accepting that her behavior contributes to the public image she is given by the media; during the chorus, she states \"I just want you to realize I blame myself for my reputation.\" \"I Blame Myself\" was assumed to have been inspired by the \"anthemic pop fizz\" from her breakthrough single \"Everything Is Embarrassing\" from her second extended play \"Ghost\" (2012). Jenn Pelly from \"Pitchfork\" implied that \"I Blame Myself\" referenced the struggles Ferreira faced while creating her long-delayed debut studio album; Pelly suggested that the track was inspired by her frequent conflicts with her record label during production of the project, and added that it \"lays out the emotional core\" of her process. Jillian Mapes from the same publication assumed that Ferreira crafted the song in response to being labeled a \"socialite [and] Forever 21 model\" and receiving criticism after her drug arrest in September 2013, which she expected would highlight that her side projects \"have nothing to do with the kind of songs Ferreira writes these days\". \"I Blame Myself\", in addition to the tracks \"24 Hours\" and \"Love in Stereo\", blend \"tenderized vocal hooks [and] chiming synth melodies\", which reminded Lauren Martin from \"Fact\" of 1980s music. With his similar observation, Dan Keenan from \"Impact\" noted that the \"chiming synths\" that Martin recognized developed into the \"undeniably cathartic\" refrain.\nCritical reception.\n\"I Blame Myself\" received generally favorable reviews from contemporary music critics. Writing for \"The A.V. Club\", Annie Zaleski called the track the \"most stunning song\" from \"Night Time, My Time\"; she commended Ferreira's \"confident\" vocal delivery and the \"strident tone\" of the recording, which Zaleski felt was \"deeply affecting.\" Dan Keenan from \"Impact\" felt that its lyrics showcased that pop music is not always equivalent with insincerity. Writing for \"Pitchfork\", Carrie Battan felt that \"I Blame Myself\" sounded like \"an uptempo beast\" that deserved to be successful. Jordan Sargent from \"Spin\" felt that \"I Blame Myself\" positively exemplified a \"darkness\" among the stand-out tracks from the record, which he credited to having her adolescence \"drained away by airplane flights, photo shoots, and useless recording sessions\". \"The New York Times\"' Jon Caramanica was unsure why Ferreira \"[painted] such a dark picture of herself\" with the lyrics, and felt that the self-punishment was unnecessary given the strength of \"I Blame Myself\" and \"Night Time, My Time\" overall. John Preston from \"Polari\" believed that the track was a worthy substitute for fans that \"mourn the overall departure\" of the mainstream pop sound of Ferreira's 2010 single \"One\", and raved that it was an example of \"airy and gleaming brilliance\".\nTwo critics from \"Pitchfork\" reviewed \"I Blame Myself\" separately from \"Night Time, My Time\". Jenn Pelly ranked the track as the twelfth-best song released in 2013. She spoke favorably of its lyrical content, commending the chorus lyrics \"How could you know what it feels like to fight the hounds of hell?\" and \"You think you know me so well\" for painting Ferreira as an exemplar for \"bullied high school weirdos\", and appreciating that the lines \"I know it's not your fault / That you don't understand / I blame myself\" for acknowledging her own wrongdoings with the intention of starting anew. Jillian Mapes complimented the \"bluntness\" that was delivered throughout the song, and suggested that the track had \"anthem potential\". She praised the verses for verbalizing self-confidence issues that are often associated with young women, with particular acclaim being placed on the lines \"I'm just a face without a choice / Trust you'd never like to guess what I think above the shoulders.\" She concluded her review by noting that the song should be recognized as a \"declaration of force [and] a song about the power of vulnerability\" rather than confusing it for an \"admission of weakness\".\nMusic video.\nAn accompanying music video for \"I Blame Myself\" was filmed in Compton, California, and directed by Grant Singer. During an interview with Idolator, Ferreira commented that \"I can't really give too many details about it yet, but I shot it in L.A. with Grant Singer, who does all my other videos. And my family's in it.\" A 15-second preview of the project was released on April 14, 2014, while the final product was premiered through the online retailer Ssense on April 16, 2014. It was the first of several \"shoppable\" music videos released through the retailer, in partnership with London magazine \"System\". The clip was inspired by the visuals for 1990s hip hop music and the catalog of Michael Jackson, which Ferreira revealed \"inspire me and played a big part of my childhood.\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"Would you feel more at ease if I danced with a bunch [of] blond white boys at a mall? Should I consciously only cast white dancers for now on? If I'm racist does that mean you're pro-segregation?! I'm from LA & shot the video there. I referenced 90s hip-hop videos and Michael Jackson because both of those things inspire me & played a big part of my childhood.\"\n\u2014 Ferreira responding to the allegations of racism for the music video of \"I Blame Myself\".\nThe video depicts an ongoing conflict between gangs, which Ferreira attempts to remedy upon her arrival; she is eventually taken in for questioning by law enforcement, although she resists her arrest and later escapes from jail. She commented that its concept was inspired by real events, and elaborated that \"people always ask me questions about certain things, and it's kind of like my response.\" Jeremy Gordon from \"Pitchfork\" interpreted Ferreira's commentary to be referencing her arrest in September 2013, in which she was charged with possession of ecstasy. Ferreira was criticized on social media networks for allegedly objectifying African-American people in the music video, with whom she was seen dancing with during several scenes interspersed throughout the clip. On her Facebook account, Ferreira commented that \"I never have and never will look at any human being as a prop\" and criticized false assumptions of the \"rich little white girl exploiting the black people and the ghetto\".\nLive performances.\nHaving appeared as the musical guest that evening, Ferreira performed \"I Blame Myself\" on \"The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon\" on April 5, 2014. She was dressed in a sequined blazer, a white shirt, black shorts, a black tie, and sunglasses. Ferreira stood in place while singing the track; the onstage visuals consisted of several blue and red strobe lights. Having taken place before the music video was made publicly available, she revealed that the visuals for the song had been filmed and would be released shortly.\nCredits and personnel.\nCredits adapted from the liner notes of \"Night Time, My Time\".\nPersonnel.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3025484": "Beat of My Heart\n2005 single by Hilary Duff\n\"Beat of My Heart\" is a song by American actress and singer Hilary Duff from her first compilation album \"Most Wanted\" (2005). She co-wrote the track with its producers Dead Executives, a record production team consisting of Jason Epperson, Joel and Benji Madden. Along with the three other new songs on \"Most Wanted\", \"Beat of My Heart\" was crafted with the intention of having a \"totally different sound\" from Duff's previous material. It is an up-tempo new wave-inspired electropop song that incorporates elements of bubblegum pop in its production. Lyrically, \"Beat of My Heart\" can be interpreted in many ways. For Duff, it tells the story of a woman \"com[ing] out of her shell again\" after a bad break-up.\nFollowing the success of previous single, \"Wake Up\", \"Beat of My Heart\" was issued as the second international single from \"Most Wanted\". It was released in Australia by Festival Mushroom Records on December 11, 2005, and in several European countries on March 6, 2006, by Angel Records. The single achieved moderate commercial success, charting in four countries. Its highest position was in Italy, where it peaked at number eight. It reached the top 20 in Australia and Spain, and secured a position towards the lower end of the chart in Switzerland. Critical reception of \"Beat of My Heart\" was generally mixed, with some critics pointing out its repetitive and childish nature, while others commended it for its sound.\nThe accompanying music video for \"Beat of My Heart\" was directed by Phil Harder. The music video, which paid homage to Bond girls, debuted a \"more mature\" image of Duff. It emulates the title sequences of James Bond films from the 1960s to 2000s, high-tech 3D designs. Duff has performed \"Beat of My Heart\" live on all of her concert tours since its inception. A pre-recorded performance of the song was played during the 2006 edition of \"Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve\", which would later become a regular feature during future editions of the program.\nBackground and development.\nOn May 20, 2005, MTV News reported that Hilary Duff would be releasing a new album in August, comprising previously released tracks and four new recordings. The following month, in an interview with MTV News, Duff said that she had been working with brothers Joel and Benji Madden, of the American rock band Good Charlotte, and Jason Epperson (together known under the production name the Dead Executives) to write and produce new songs for the compilation. She said that \"\u00a0... they're three of my favorite songs I've ever done. ... It was really fun being in the studio with them.\" Described by Duff as the first time when \"all the responsibility was on [her]\", she went into the recording studio without the guidance of her record label or management.\nAccording to Duff, she did not tell anyone at her record label that she was working with the Dead Executives. Joel, whom Duff had been dating at the time, was aware that she needed new material for a compilation album, and knew that she wanted a \"totally different sound\". Together, the Dead Executives went into the recording studio and worked on new music for Duff, before bringing her into the studio to collectively work on them. Duff described working with them as pleasant, and the music as a new milestone in her career, stating that working with \"people you're close with makes a world of difference when you're recording and being creative.\" At the same time, Duff was also nervous about how her fans would react to the new music. Duff recorded four tracks for the album, three of which were co-written and produced with the Dead Executives.\nFor Duff, who stated that the song can be interpreted in many ways, \"Beat of My Heart\" tells the story of a heterosexual relationship, in which the woman was in love with the man, but he was not \"as into her as she was him\". After the couple broke up, she found herself in a place where she \"wasn't herself\". She then \"comes out of her shell again\", which Duff described as: \"Coming out again, dancing again, smiling again, having fun and seeing everything in a brighter light.\" The Dead Executives were instrumental in the instrumentation of \"Beat of My Heart\", performing on the bass and guitars. They also mixed and engineered the song; the latter was also conducted by Todd Parker and Grant Conway and assisted by Allan Hessler. It was mixed and recorded at the Foxy Studio in Los Angeles, California. The drums featured on the track was performed by Dean Butterworth while Monique Powell and The Fruit performed backing vocals. The song was then mastered by Joe Gastwirt.\nComposition.\n\"Beat of My Heart\" is an up-tempo new wave-inspired electropop song that incorporates elements of bubblegum pop and dance music in its production. It contains a \"soft electronic pop\" sound and has the heart beat sound as its base, as well as guitar strums at a \"feverish pace\" throughout the song. Spence D. of IGN described \"Beat of My Heart\" as a \"glorious uninhibited slab of Euro pop as filtered through the vocal chords of a warm-blooded American girl.\"\n\"Beat of My Heart\" opens with the sound of a beating heart. In the pre-chorus, Duff's vocals are made distant by the song's use of guitars and synth keyboards. She sings that she is going to follow her own interests: \"To the beat of my / To the beat of my / To the beat of my heart\". In the first verse, a disinterested Duff sings that she is eager to speak her mind and \"yield to her every desire\". In the chorus, she sings that her confidence has strained her relationships with her friends. In the second verse, she sings of being over her depression. An \"angry guitar\" and a \"goth piano\" interrupts the song in its bridge. Duff sings that she is only listening to herself from now on. According to Chuck Taylor of \"Billboard\" magazine, the line \"beat of my heart\" is repeated forty-four times in the song.\nCritical response.\n\"Beat of My Heart\" received generally mixed reviews from music critics. Pam Avoledo of Blogcritics wrote that Duff sounds like she is bored and \"going through the motions\" on the song. She further stated that Duff has \"lost her sauciness and ironically, her spunk\" in the song. Avoledo concluded her review by calling \"the bland electro pop\" song an \"insult to the genre. It's like spilling ramen on a Vivenne Westwood evening gown.\" A reviewer from CBBC Newsround commented that the song is so repetitive that you will feel like \"you've listened to it 20 times after just one play\". The reviewer praised the heartbeat present on the track, writing that it \"make it a bit of a foot-tapper\", but deemed the lyrics to be \"meaningless\". The reviewer concluded that: \"You'll find yourself humming it but will be hard pushed to remember what on earth she was singing about!\" Spence D. of IGN wrote that \"Beat of My Heart\" does not try for subtlety as it utilizes the \"much overused heartbeat\" for the \"foundation rhythm\" of the song.\nA reviewer for \"Billboard\" noted that the song \"seems to toss her back to her Disney days\". They concluded that: \"Pop music is always appreciated, but this is a kiddie anthem, plain and simple [...] it is hardly a contender for contemporary radio\". Bill Lamb of About.com found the song, along with \"Break My Heart\", to be \"disappointing cookie cutter copies\" of Avril Lavigne's \"Sk8er Boi\". He stated that although the songs are \"easy to listen\", they \"break no new ground\". Gabriel Leong of MTV Asia stated that \"Beat of My Heart\" sounds \"very much like\" songs that Debbie Gibson, Tiffany Darwish and Bananarama would have recorded in 1980s, a direction that suits Duff \"much better than the whole budding rock chick image she's been trying out.\"\nCommercial performance.\n\"Beat of My Heart\" was a moderate commercial success. The single managed to chart in four countries, reaching its highest position in Italy, where it peaked at number eight on the week ending on April 6, 2006, after debuting at number ten. In Australia, \"Beat of My Heart\" outperformed \"Wake Up\" by reaching number 13; it stayed on the chart for a total 14 weeks. The song gained lower positions in Spain, where it managed to peak inside the top twenty by reaching number 17; and in Switzerland, where it reached number 89. In 2006, \"Beat of My Heart\" was placed at number 90 on the Australian year-end singles chart, and at number 74 on the year-end Australian Physical Singles chart.\nPromotion.\nMusic video.\nThe music video for \"Beat of My Heart\" was shot in Los Angeles, California on the week of September 26, 2005. It was directed by Phil Harder for Harder/Fuller Films. The video, which pays homage to Bond girls, contains \"that hip sensibility\" of James Bond films and presents a \"more mature\" image of Duff. A representative for Duff's record label said that: \"She's always been a huge James Bond fan. She watched those movies with her sister growing up, and she loved the Bond girls, because they were always so stylish, and she's stylish.\" The music video was made available to purchase on the iTunes Store from November 2, 2005. It later made its on-air premiere on MTV's \"Total Request Live\" a week later, on November 9. The music video was also promoted during January 2006 on the Disney Channel as well.\nThe music video emulates the title sequences of Bond films from the 1960s to the 2000s, high-tech 3D designs. In the opening sequence, one of the graphics turns into a wire frame of a beating electronic heart, which \"pulls out\" with each beat. As the camera zooms, the heart grows in size and \"weaves\" to become Duff. According to MTV News, while she doesn't \"take on\" Pussy Galore, Plenty O'Toole, Holly Goodhead, or any other Bond girl, she becomes a \"Bond girl in spirit\", switching from era to era with different looks, with her hair blowing and flying around in graphic silhouettes. Instead of cutting from image to image, the shots evolve in a Bond-like style \"as shapes take on different forms to reveal something else\". Duff performs in silhouette, with a microphone, \"where a gun would otherwise be\". In another shot, her band is a silhouette. The edition of the video is matched to the beat of the song, \"zapping the view in and out, until a lull in the song, when the view travels back into her eyes, through her skin and back to her beating heart.\"\nLive performances.\nDuff premiered \"Beat of My Heart\" as part of the set list of the Still Most Wanted Tour, which commenced on July 12, 2005, in Los Angeles. She performed \u201cBeat of My Heart\u201d at American Music Awards of 2005 on November 22, 2005. She co-hosted the 2006 edition of \"Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve\". A pre-recorded performance of \"Beat of My Heart\" was played during the program. The event also featured a live performance from Times Square by Mariah Carey\u2014the first in the show's history. These live performances would become a regular feature during future editions of \"New Year's Rockin' Eve\". Duff performed the song as part of the set list of the Dignity World Tour (2007\u20132008).\nTrack listings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCredits and personnel.\nCredits adapted from the liner notes of \"Beat of My Heart\" CD single.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "60358671": "Greater (song)\n\"Greater\" is the second single by contemporary Christian music band MercyMe for their eighth studio album, \"Welcome to the New\" (2014). It was released as a single on June 20, 2014. The song peaked at No. 2 on the US Hot Christian Songs chart, blocked from the top by \"Oceans (Where Feet May Fail)\" by Hillsong United. It was their record-extending twelfth Christian Airplay chart topper. It lasted 49 weeks on the overall chart. It also peaked at No. 14 on the \"Billboard\" Bubbling Under Hot 100. The song is played in a D major key, and 116 beats per minute.\nThe song also appears in the compilation album, \"WOW Hits 2016\".\nBackground.\n\"Greater\" was released on June 20, 2014 as the second single from their eighth studio album \"Welcome to the New\". Bart Millard, the band's frontman, revealed the meaning of the song in an interview with \"NewReleaseToday\", \"My kids have memorized the album already. Nothing warms your heart more than to hear your kids sing this message. The thing with 'Greater' is that my middle son Charlie is a lot like me. In fact, I went through a lot of grief counseling these past few years. My grief counselor said if I ever want to know what I'm like when in a healthy family to watch Charlie. One day I was trying to tell my son, because he has a stuttering problem, we were talking, and I said, \"Buddy, people may make fun of you, but you have something inside of you that is telling you that you're something different, that you're stronger than that and that you're beautiful. We were at church one day and some kids made of him and he was kind of down. I told him, 'You know what I've told you. That's not them. The enemy may be using them, but these kids are good kids. They're not coming after you, it's just the enemy is taking shots at you. He's taking shots at you because you're something special and he's afraid of something you may do. I've always told him to set his mind on things above, and he started singing this song, 'You are holy, righteous and redeemed.' I just started bawling. From time to time I can hear him singing this song in the house and I've thought that's the reason to make a record.\"\nComposition.\n\"Greater\" is an CCM, Worship and Pop Rock track with Amerciana, folk and country elements and some acoustic elements, which has a \"campfire sing-along\" vibe, and this takes a cue from Rend Collective's music. It is originally in the key of D major, with a tempo of 116 beats per minute. Written in common time, Millard's vocal range spans from D3 to B4 during the song. Commercial performance\n\"Greater\" spent 16 weeks at No. 1 on the Christian Airplay chart, and peaked at No. 2 on both the Christian Digital Songs chart and the Christian Songs chart. It also appeared on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart at No. 14 and Heatseekers Songs chart at No. 21.\nMusic video.\nThe lyric video of \"Greater\" was published on YouTube on July 11, 2014. As of March 2019, the video has received more than 40 million views. The official music video of \"Greater\" was released on November 21, 2014, through YouTube.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "29992019": "Lonely Is the Night (Air Supply song)\n1986 single by Air Supply\n\"Lonely Is the Night\" is a song by Australian-British band Air Supply, released in 1986, as the lead single from their ninth studio album, \"Hearts in Motion\" (1986). The ballad was written by Albert Hammond and Diane Warren, while John Boylan produced it. \"Lonely Is the Night\" was a minor success in the United States, reaching number 76 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 but found better success on the Adult Contemporary chart, reaching at number 12.\nComposition and lyrics.\n\"Lonely Is the Night\" was written by Albert Hammond with songwriter Diane Warren, while production was done by John Boylan. Lyrically, the song talks about the difficulty of dealing with a long-distance relationship. In the beginning, Russell Hitchcock sings that he thought he'd live well without his girlfriend, \"Really thought that I could live without you, Really thought that I could make it on my own,\" he sings. However, he realizes that he's lost without the one he loves, \"Now I'm so lost without you, now you're not here and now I know.\" In the chorus, he sings about how difficult it is to spend the night away from his love. \"Lonely is the night when I'm not with you, lonely is the night ain't no light shining through, till you're in my arms till you're here by my side, lonely am I.\"\nRelease and reception.\n\"Lonely Is the Night\" was released as the first single from Air Supply's ninth studio album, \"Hearts in Motion\" (1986). The song was affiliated with the grand opening of Nancy's Golden Needle store in Evansville, Indiana in the fall of 1986. The song was later included on their compilation \"Ultimate Collection\", released in 2000. Later, the song was included on 2002's \"Best of Air Supply\". In 2004, the song was included on the compilation \"Platinum & Gold Collection\", while in 2005, \"Lonely Is the Night\" was the opening song of the second disc of their compilation, \"\". \nFinally, the song made the cut on their 2006 compilation \"Collections\", on their 2007 compilation \"The Best of Air Supply: Ones That You Love\" and on their 2009 compilation, \"The Collection\". While reviewing the compilation \"The Collection\", Jason Lymangrover of AllMusic referred to the song as \"obscure.\"\nDespite the song's popularity outside North America, the band did not include this song on their setlists on subsequent tours after their appearance at the Vi\u00f1a del Mar International Song Festival in 1987.\nChart performance.\nIn the United States, \"Lonely Is the Night\" spent 8 weeks on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart, peaking at number 76, in 1986. To date, \"Lonely Is the Night\" is both the lowest-charting single from the band as well as the band's most recent song to reach the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. On the Adult Contemporary chart, the song fared better, peaking at number 12, and remaining on the chart for eleven weeks.\nMusic video.\nThe song's official video, which features the duo and their band performing the song in front of a crowd, was filmed at the Grand Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, California, during the band's United States leg of their Hearts in Motion tour. However, the brief close-up shots of their then-touring drummer Ralph Cooper were filmed at The Forum in a separate concert.\nIn addition to Lonely Is the Night, the music video of \"One More Chance\" also used the same stage design and venue.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "41664924": "Heart to Heart (James Blunt song)\n\"Heart to Heart\" is a song performed by British singer-songwriter James Blunt, from his fourth studio album, \"Moon Landing\" (2013). It was released on February 3, 2014, as a digital download. The song has peaked to number 42 on the UK Singles Chart, the song has also charted in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Switzerland. The song was written by Blunt, Daniel Omelio, and Daniel Parker.\nMusic video.\nA music video to accompany the release of \"Heart to Heart\" was first released onto YouTube on December 17, 2013, at a total length of 3:41 minutes.\nCharts and certifications.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["15306499", "14239311", "42510343", "3025484", "60358671", "29992019", "41664924", "5482963"], "permutation_1": ["29992019", "3025484", "60358671", "15306499", "41664924", "14239311", "5482963", "42510343"], "permutation_2": ["14239311", "42510343", "5482963", "41664924", "15306499", "60358671", "29992019", "3025484"], "permutation_3": ["60358671", "29992019", "5482963", "14239311", "41664924", "42510343", "3025484", "15306499"]}
{"id": "nq_2439635506160657637", "docs_added": {"44726936": "2017 NFL season\n2017 National Football League season\nThe 2017 NFL season was the 98th season in the history of the National Football League (NFL) and the 52nd of the Super Bowl era. The season began on September 7, 2017, with the Kansas City Chiefs defeating the defending Super Bowl LI champion New England Patriots in the NFL Kickoff Game. The season concluded with Super Bowl LII, in which the National Football Conference (NFC) champion Philadelphia Eagles defeated the American Football Conference (AFC) champion New England Patriots 41\u201333 to win their first Super Bowl title, and fourth NFL championship, in franchise history, and making the NFC East the first and currently only division where every team has won a Super Bowl.\nThis would be the last season until 2023 when no regular season games ended in a tie.\nFor the second time since the league expanded to a 16-game season, a team finished winless in a full season, as Cleveland lost all 16 of their games this season. The last team to do so was the 2008 Detroit Lions.\nFor the second consecutive year, a team relocated to the Los Angeles metropolitan area, as the former San Diego Chargers announced their intent to do so in January 2017. This was the first time that the Los Angeles metropolitan area had two teams since 1994.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nPlayer movement.\nThe 2017 NFL League year began on March 9 at 4:00\u00a0p.m. ET. On March 7, clubs were allowed to contact and enter into contract negotiations with the agents of players who became unrestricted free agents upon the expiration of their contracts two days later. On March 9, clubs exercised options for 2017 on players who have option clauses in their contracts, submitted qualifying offers to their restricted free agents with expiring contracts and to those who desire to retain a Right of Refusal/Compensation, submitted a Minimum Salary Tender to retain exclusive negotiating rights to their players with expiring 2016 contracts and who have fewer than three accrued seasons of free agent credit, and teams were required to be under the salary cap using the \"Top-51\" definition (in which the 51 highest paid-players on the team's payroll must have a collected salary cap hit below the actual cap). The 2017 trading period also began the same day.\nThis season's salary cap increased to $167 million per team, up from $155.27 million in 2016.\nFree agency.\nA total of 496 players were eligible for some form of free agency at the beginning of the free agency period. Notable players to change teams via free agency included:\nTrades.\nThe following notable trades were made during the 2017 league year:\nNotable retirements.\nOthers.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>*Branden Albert\nDraft.\nThe 2017 NFL draft was held on April 27\u201329 in Philadelphia. The Cleveland Browns selected Myles Garrett with the first overall pick.\nOfficiating changes.\nAlberto Riveron replaced Dean Blandino as the league's Vice President of Officiating. Blandino would then be hired by Fox Sports as a rule analyst.\nThe following officials were hired:\nRule changes.\nThe following rule changes were approved for the 2017 NFL season at the owners' meeting on March 28, 2017:\nThe following rule changes were approved for the 2017 NFL season at the NFL Spring League meeting on May 23, 2017:\nThe ban on teams contacting potential coaching candidates until that candidate's team has been eliminated from the playoffs was tabled.\n2017 deaths.\nThe following people associated with the NFL (or AFL) died in 2017.\nOthers.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nPreseason.\nTraining camps for the 2017 season were held in late July through August. Teams started training camp no earlier than 15 days before the team's first scheduled preseason game.\nPrior to the start of the regular season, each team played four preseason exhibition games, beginning on August 10. The preseason began on August 3, with the 2017 Pro Football Hall of Fame Game between the Dallas Cowboys (represented in the 2017 Hall of Fame Class by owner Jerry Jones) and the Arizona Cardinals (represented by quarterback Kurt Warner). It was televised nationally on NBC. The preseason schedule ended on August 31; One preseason game between the Dallas Cowboys and Houston Texans, was canceled in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.\nRegular season.\nThe 2017 regular season's 256 games were played over a 17-week schedule which began on September 7. Each of the league's 32 teams plays a 16-game schedule, with one bye week for each team. The slate also features games on Monday nights. There are games played on Thursday, including the National Football League Kickoff game in prime time on September 7 and games on Thanksgiving Day. The regular season concluded with a full slate of 16 games on Sunday, December 31, all of which were the intra\u2013division matchups, as it has been since 2010.\nUnder the NFL's current scheduling formula, each team plays the other three teams in its own division twice. In addition a team plays against all four teams in one other division from each conference. The final two games on a team's schedule are against the two teams in the team's own conference in the divisions the team was not set to play which finished the previous season in the same rank in their division (e.g. the team which finished first in its division the previous season would play each other team in its conference that also finished first in its respective division). The preset division pairings for 2017 will be as follows.\nHighlights of the 2017 schedule included:\nThe entire schedule was released on April 20, 2017.\nIn-season scheduling changes.\nThe following games were moved or canceled because of severe weather, by way of flexible scheduling, or for other reasons:\nRegular season standings.\nDivision.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nConference.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nPostseason.\nThe 2017 playoffs began on January 6\u20137, 2018 with the Wild Card playoff round. The four winners of these playoff games visited the top two seeded teams in each conference in the Divisional round games played on January 13\u201314. The winners of those games advanced the Conference championship games was held on January 21. The two Conference champions advanced to Super Bowl LII was held on February 4 at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. The 2018 Pro Bowl was held at Camping World Stadium in Orlando on January 28.\nNotable events.\nProtesting police brutality.\nDuring a September 22, 2017 speech, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, made controversial remarks criticizing the practice of taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem\u2014a practice popularized by Colin Kaepernick in 2016 as part of an effort to protest alleged racial inequality and police brutality. Trump suggested that those who partake in the practice were disrespecting the country's heritage, and asked his audience, \"wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, 'Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He's fired. He's fired!'\" During the subsequent weekend of games, over 200 players protested the remarks, by either kneeling or locking arms during the playing of the national anthem. The Pittsburgh Steelers (with the exception of offensive tackle and former Army Ranger Alejandro Villanueva), Tennessee Titans and Seattle Seahawks chose to not go out on field at all during the anthem.\nSale of the Carolina Panthers.\nOn December 17, 2017, Jerry Richardson, owner of the Carolina Panthers, announced he was putting the team up for sale. Richardson had previously indicated the team would be put up for sale after his death (since his only living son left the team in 2009), but an expose in \"Sports Illustrated\" accused Richardson of paying hush money to cover up questionable conduct, including racial slurs and sexually suggestive requests of employees, hastening Richardson's decision. The Panthers' lease on Bank of America Stadium expired after the 2018 season, which would have allowed any incoming owner to relocate the team out of the Carolinas to another market of their choice without penalty had they so desired.\nAwards.\nIndividual season awards.\nThe 7th NFL Honors, saluting the best players and plays from 2017 season, was held at the Northrop Auditorium in Minneapolis, Minnesota on February 3, 2018.\nAll-Pro team.\nThe following players were named First Team All-Pro by the Associated Press:\nPlayers of the week/month.\nThe following were named the top performers during the 2017 season:\nStadiums.\nAtlanta Falcons.\nThe Atlanta Falcons played their first season at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, after playing in the Georgia Dome for the previous 25 seasons. The Georgia Dome was demolished by implosion on the morning of November 20, 2017.\nRelocations.\nSan Diego Chargers' relocation to Los Angeles.\nOn January 12, 2017, the San Diego Chargers exercised their option to relocate to Los Angeles as the Los Angeles Chargers. They joined the Los Angeles Rams as tenants in their new stadium, SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California when that stadium opened in 2020. Between 2017 and 2019, the Chargers played at the 30,000 seat StubHub Center in Carson, California, the smallest venue (in terms of number of seats) the league has used for a full season since 1956.\nOakland Raiders' relocation to Las Vegas.\nOn January 19, 2017, the Oakland Raiders filed paperwork to relocate to Las Vegas, Nevada. The NFL officially approved the Raiders relocation to Las Vegas on March 27. Unlike the Chargers, the Raiders remained at the Oakland\u2013Alameda County Coliseum through the 2018 and 2019 seasons while Allegiant Stadium was built, with the team moving to Nevada in 2020.\nAttendance.\nThe Los Angeles Rams, who had capped season ticket sales at 55,000 for the 2017 season, announced to have 60,128 spectators in the first home game on week 1. However, reports estimate that spectators only filled a third of the 93,607 seats of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The Los Angeles Chargers did not sell out their week 2 game at the StubHub Center, which was never expanded to 30,000 seats as originally stated and has typically had less than 26,000 fans in attendance. When the StubHub Center was at capacity, the majority of the fans present were supporters of the opposing team. Among the most notable examples was the October 1 game against Philadelphia Eagles being a mainly pro-Philadelphia crowd.\nThe San Francisco 49ers reported a Week 3 attendance total that exceeded the capacity of Levi's Stadium, even as wide swaths of empty seats were seen throughout the game. This followed similar sparse attendance for the 49ers' home opener. Even the Dallas Cowboys, a team whose fan base is among the largest in the United States, played their week 13 \"Thursday Night Football\" game in front of a half-empty AT&T Stadium. The lifting of the league's blackout policy was cited as one factor in the decline in ticket sales, as viewers would rather watch from the comfort of their homes, especially when weather conditions were less than ideal. At a Colts-Bills game held in blinding lake-effect snow on December 10, scalpers said they had not sold any tickets, an extreme rarity. A majority of television sets in all Western New York were tuned into some portion of the game, the highest viewership for a non-Super Bowl NFL game in the region since record-keeping began.\nMedia.\nBroadcast rights.\nTelevision.\nThis was the fourth season under the league's broadcast contracts with its television partners. ESPN continued to air \"Monday Night Football\", while ESPN2 simulcast ESPN Deportes' Spanish-language \"Monday Night Football\" broadcasts for the first nine weeks of the regular season; this served as filler programming for the channel until the start of its Monday-night college basketball broadcasts. Along with ESPN's Wild Card game on ABC, ESPN also simulcast the 2018 Pro Bowl on ABC, marking the return of the Pro Bowl to ABC for the first time since 2003.\nThe practice of \"cross-flexing\" (switching) Sunday afternoon games continued between CBS and Fox before or during the season, regardless of whether the visiting team is in the AFC (which CBS normally airs) or the NFC (which is normally carried by Fox). NBC continued to air \"Sunday Night Football\", the annual Kickoff game, and the primetime Thanksgiving game, and broadcast Super Bowl LII. This also was the second and final year of the current \"Thursday Night Football\" contract with CBS, NBC, and NFL Network. \nAlthough never explicitly announced, the league continued the moratorium on its blackout policy, ensuring all games would be televised in the market of their home teams regardless of ticket sales.\nBecause of fog and smoke obstruction, NBC was forced to televise large portions of two of their \"Sunday Night Football\" games from the skycam angle. Positive reception led NBC to experiment with increased usage of the angle as a primary view during its November 16 and December 14 \"Thursday Night Football\" telecasts. Because the angle distorts distance, the traditional sideline camera angle was used for close-yardage situations such as the red zone.\nDigital.\nIn over-the-top rights, Amazon Video acquired non-exclusive streaming rights to the 10 broadcast television \"Thursday Night Football\" games for $50 million. These streams are exclusive to paid Amazon Prime subscribers, in contrast to Twitter, which held the rights to the same package in 2016 and had made those streams free to most of the world.\nVerizon Communications acquired international streaming rights to an NFL London Game between the Baltimore Ravens and Jacksonville Jaguars, in a similar arrangement to the 2015 game that was streamed by Yahoo!\u2014which was acquired by Verizon in 2017. The game was streamed by Yahoo and other Verizon-owned platforms, including AOL, go90, and Complex. NFL Network remains a partner with Twitter for online content, including its new streaming news program \"NFL Blitz Live\". The NFL also reached a deal with Facebook in September 2017 to offer video highlights following games, and streaming programs on the service's new Watch platform.\nThis was the final season of the NFL's exclusive mobile streaming contract with Verizon Wireless; the league intended to no longer have a single exclusive partner going forward, citing changes to viewing habits. On December 11, 2017, the NFL announced that it had agreed to a new 5-year, $2.5 billion digital rights agreement with Verizon, allowing it to stream in-market Sunday afternoon games, as well as all nationally televised games, across its mobile platforms. Unlike the previous deal, these streams are no longer exclusive to Verizon Wireless subscribers, as Verizon planned to leverage the divisions of its digital media subsidiary Oath (including the aforementioned Yahoo) as a platform to promote these streams to a larger audience, as well as other digital content and expanded highlights rights. As part of the agreement, Verizon began allowing access to its existing mobile streams to non-customers for the 2017\u201318 playoffs. As the new contract is non-exclusive, the NFL's television partners may negotiate to add the mobile streaming rights that were reserved to Verizon under the previous contract; NBC was the first to do so.\nTwo new international digital rights deals led to user criticism over their quality of service. In Canada, NFL Sunday Ticket shifted from distribution through television providers to the over-the-top provider DAZN, while in Europe, Deltatre took over European distribution of NFL Game Pass and launched new mobile apps. Both services faced criticism over their streaming quality, while Delatre's app faced criticism for having bugs and initially lacking features seen in the previous version of the platform. \"The Independent\" exposed that Deltatre had also issued an internal e-mail instructing its employees to give the apps 5-star reviews. DAZN subsequently announced that it would return to distributing Sunday Ticket through Canadian television providers in addition to their OTT service.\nRadio.\nThis was the final season of the NFL's existing national radio contract with Westwood One. Entravision (in the last year of a three-year deal) and ESPN Deportes Radio split Spanish broadcast rights.\nCommercials.\nThe league has sought to reduce the number of standard commercial breaks (media timeouts) on its telecasts from 21 to 16, four in each quarter, with each break extended by one additional 30-second commercial. One particular scenario the league sought to eliminate is the \"double-up\", in which a network cuts to a commercial after a scoring play, then airs the kickoff, and again goes to commercial before play from scrimmage resumes. Under the proposal, the league will allow networks to cut to commercial during instant replay reviews, which it had not been allowed to do before. Commissioner Roger Goodell stated that the changes are being made in an attempt to consolidate downtime between the actual game play so that there are fewer and less noticeable interruptions; he does not expect the changes to have an appreciable impact on the real-time length of a game, which currently clocks in at slightly over three hours.\nThe NFL has also, as a trial, lifted its ban on the broadcast of commercials for distilled spirits during its telecasts. However, they are subject to restrictions; a maximum of four liquor ads may be broadcast per-game, along with two per-pregame and postgame show. These ads may not contain football-related themes or target underage viewers, and must contain a \"prominent social responsibility message\".\nPersonnel changes.\nTony Romo, who announced his retirement as a player on April 4, 2017, joined CBS, where he replaced Phil Simms as lead color commentator. Simms and Nate Burleson, who comes over from NFL Network, will replace Tony Gonzalez and Bart Scott on CBS's pregame show, \"The NFL Today\". Jay Cutler also announced his retirement from professional football on May 5 and was slated to join Fox as a color analyst for its NFL coverage; he later rescinded that announcement in August and joined the Miami Dolphins. Gonzalez will move to Fox, where he will join \"Fox NFL Kickoff\"; upon his departure, Gonzalez stated that he wished to pursue opportunities closer to his home in California, rather than travel to New York weekly to appear on CBS. James Lofton, coming over from radio, will replace Solomon Wilcots as a CBS analyst.\nOn May 31, 2017, it was announced that Mike Tirico would replace Al Michaels on play-by-play on NBC's portion of the \"Thursday Night Football\" package, joined by Cris Collinsworth. The NFL had previously required this role to be filled by NBC's lead broadcast team of Michaels and Collinsworth; Tirico called a limited slate of games in 2016, including several NBC-broadcast games as a fill-in for Michaels (who voluntarily took several games off due to the increased number he was calling that season), and as part of a secondary team for selected games the \"TNF\" package. He will also succeed Bob Costas as the lead studio host for NBC. However, due to its proximity to the 2018 Winter Olympics (where he also succeeded Bob Costas as lead host), Tirico did not participate in NBC's Super Bowl LII coverage.\nBeth Mowins became the second woman to call play-by-play for a national NFL broadcast, following Gayle Sierens in 1987, when she served as play-by-play announcer for the nightcap in ESPN's Week 1 Monday Night doubleheader, with Rex Ryan as her color commentator. In an unusual case of a broadcaster working for two networks in the same season, Mowins also called a regional game for CBS in Weeks 3, 15 and 17, with Jay Feely as her partner.\nAlso, this would end up being the last season for the Monday Night Football broadcast team of Sean McDonough, Jon Gruden, and Lisa Salters. Gruden would return to coaching the next year for the Oakland Raiders, while McDonough would return to doing College Football for ESPN, although Salters will still be on MNF. McDonough will be replaced by Joe Tessitore, who has done work for ESPN as a College Football announcer, like McDonough, while Jason Witten, who would end up retiring after this season, will replace Gruden, with Booger McFarland, being added as a field analyst.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "61475123": "NFL on television in the 2010s\nOverview of NFL TV in the 2010s\nUntil the broadcast contract ended in 2013, the terrestrial television networks CBS, NBC, and Fox, as well as cable television's ESPN, paid a combined total of US$20.4 billion to broadcast NFL games. From 2014 to 2022, the same networks will pay $39.6 billion for exactly the same broadcast rights. The NFL thus holds broadcast contracts with four companies (ViacomCBS, Comcast, Fox Corporation and The Walt Disney Company/Hearst Corporation, respectively) that control a combined vast majority of the country's television product. League-owned NFL Network, on cable television, also broadcasts a selected number of games nationally. In 2017, the NFL games attracted the top three rates for a 30-second advertisement: $699,602 for \"NBC Sunday Night Football\", $550,709 for \"Thursday Night Football\" (NBC), and $549,791 for \"Thursday Night Football\" (CBS).\nUnder the current contracts, regionally shown games on Sunday afternoons are televised on CBS and Fox, which primarily carry games of AFC and NFC teams respectively (the conference of the away team determines the broadcaster of an inter-conference game). Nationally televised regular season games on Sunday and Monday nights are aired on NBC and ESPN, respectively, while NBC, FOX and NFL Network share Thursday night games during the regular season. During the postseason, ESPN airs one game, NBC airs two, while CBS and Fox air the rest of the AFC and NFC games, respectively. The Super Bowl has rotated annually among CBS, Fox, and NBC since the 2006 season.\nNFL preseason telecasts are more in line with the other major sports leagues' regular-season telecasts: preseason telecasts are more locally produced, usually by a local affiliate of one of the above terrestrial television networks. Some preseason games will air nationally, however. Under the NFL's anti-siphoning rules for cable games, these stations usually will air simulcasts of ESPN and/or NFL Network games in their local markets if the local team is playing.\nYear-by-year breakdown.\n2010.\nWith an average U.S. audience of 106.5 million viewers, Super Bowl XLIV on CBS was, at the time, the most-watched Super Bowl telecast in the championship game's history as well as the most-watched program of any kind in American television history, beating the record previously set 27 years earlier by the final episode of \"M*A*S*H\", which was watched by 105.97 million viewers. The game telecast drew an overnight national Nielsen rating of 46.4 with a 68 share, the highest for a Super Bowl since Super Bowl XX in 1986; and drew a 56.3 rating in New Orleans and a 54.2 rating in Indianapolis, first and fourth respectively among local markets. Super Bowl XLV surpassed the record a year later and was itself topped by Super Bowl XLVI in 2012.\nThe 2010 schedule, released on April 20, placed a Sunday night game (Pittsburgh Steelers at New Orleans Saints) against a World Series game for the first time since the NBC Sunday night contract began. It also continued the previous practice of scheduling a Sunday night game during every week of the season, and declaring the games in Weeks 11 through 16 (November 21 through December 26) as \"flex games\", meaning they reverted to Sunday afternoon if a more attractive matchup arose.\nA new graphics package for Fox's NFL telecasts debuted during an August 19, 2010 pre-season game, as the network began to broadcast its sports programming with graphics optimized for 16:9 displays rather than the safe area, resulting in the network asking cable and satellite providers to comply and use the #10 Active Format Description code to send out over Fox programming, which displays 16:9 content in a letterboxed format on 4:3 screens (largely on the analog affiliate feed carried by the provider), in concert with Fox News Channel and its related news productions for the Fox network also switching to full widescreen presentation. This was promoted during that first game by the Fox broadcast team as giving a \"widescreen viewing experience\" to standard definition viewers, using the usual examples of more video information on the screen to demonstrate the new presentation (such as two cheerleaders off to the side displayed in a widescreen shot, but cut out of a 4:3 shot).\nThe graphics package is an upgraded version of the 2006 design with a \"much more colorful 3D look\", implemented using a new infrastructure using products developed by Vizrt, which was also rolled out to other Fox Sports networks in subsequent months. The score banner previously used was replaced by an unconventional FoxBox-styled layout, positioned in the top left corner of the screen, with team logos and scores on either side, lights indicating timeouts on the side rims, with the play clock and quarter positioned in the center. Initially, the play clock also appeared within the center area with 10 seconds remaining, sliding the time remaining in the quarter upward. However, the play clock indicator was soon moved to the bar sliding out of the bottom to show downage.\nDue to issues with some cable providers and Fox affiliates (particularly those carried by digital subchannels or low-power analog television stations) in implementing the AFD #10 widescreen mode, or for other broadcasters that still broadcast with content framed for 4:3 displays instead of defaulting to 16:9 like Fox (such as CBS and NBC, along with ESPN and NFL Network until they also switched to 16:9 with letterboxed SD feeds), feeds of Fox's NFL games have been offered with graphics positioned for 4:3 displays instead of 16:9, and in most cases, only one game per week was broadcast with 16:9 graphics.\nOn November 15, 2010, the Eagles visited the Redskins, in what was Donovan McNabb's second game against the Eagles since being traded on April 4 of that year. The Redskins won the first meeting that season by a score of 17\u201312; however, in the first half of the game, Eagles star quarterback Michael Vick suffered a rib injury knocking him out of the game, resulting in Kevin Kolb taking over. After the game, McNabb gave a post-game speech in the locker room in which he stated the Eagles made a mistake by trading him. Before the game, McNabb signed a five-year contract extension worth $78 million, after being benched in the fourth quarter just a week earlier. The very first play of the game Vick threw an 88-yard touchdown pass to DeSean Jackson.\nThe Redskins were criticized for their lack of coverage because the Eagles were known for going deep on the first play; the Eagles' next two possessions led to touchdowns. The very first play of the second quarter, with Philadelphia up 28\u20130, saw Vick throw a 48-yard touchdown to Jeremy Maclin. With Philadelphia up 45\u201321 at halftime, Vick threw a three-yard touchdown to Jason Avant in the third quarter to make the score 52\u201321. During the play, Vick scrambled, waiting for someone to get open when Albert Haynesworth (who signed a six-year $100 million contract with the Redskins the year prior) had fallen down and continued to lie on the field as Vick continued to scramble. The very next Redskins possession had McNabb throw a pick six to Dimitri Patterson, helping the Eagles score seven points.\nThe Redskins went on to score one more touchdown, however their seven-point run was not able to stop Philadelphia, which defeated Washington 59\u201328. McNabb finished the game with 295 yards on 17 for 31, along with two touchdowns and three interceptions. The Eagles finished with 593 offense yards (setting a new team record); Vick went 20 of 28 for 333 yards throwing four touchdowns, and also ran for 80 yards and two touchdowns on eight carries. He became the first player with at least 300 yards passing, 50 yards rushing four passing touchdowns and two rushing touchdowns in a game. Vick's performance in the game also moved him past Steve Young for second place on the all-time list for rushing yards by a quarterback.\nOn November 28, 2010, CBS broadcast its 5,000th NFL game. The game in question involved the Miami Dolphins visiting the Oakland Raiders, with Gus Johnson and Steve Tasker calling play-by-play.\nFox presented a limited Monday night game between the New York Giants and Minnesota Vikings on December 13, 2010. The game had been originally scheduled to be played on the afternoon on December 12, but due to the collapse of the roof of the Metrodome early that morning due to weight from heavy snowpack, the game was moved on short notice to Ford Field in Detroit as that facility already had their full television setup still in place after a Packers\u2013Lions game. Fox Sports had kept their cameras on in the Metrodome overnight the night before the originally scheduled game day and captured the stadium roof collapse in full detail; the video of the early morning collapse, captured at multiple angles, aired on that day's edition of \"Fox NFL Sunday\" and quickly went viral.\nThe game was only made available on the main Fox stations in the New York and Twin Cities media markets; owned-and-operated station WNYW and affiliate WXXA-TV aired the game in the New York City and Albany television markets, while Minneapolis\u2013St. Paul owned-and-operated station KMSP-TV, and affiliates KXLT-TV in Rochester and KQDS-TV in Duluth, Minnesota carried the game for the Vikings' markets. The game was also carried on satellite provider DirecTV through its NFL Sunday Ticket package.\nCoincidentally, this was the first game since 1992 that Brett Favre did not start an NFL game, as he was placed on the inactive list due to a shoulder injury, ending his streak of 297 consecutive regular season games; Tarvaris Jackson started in his place and subsequently Joe Webb had his first ever down in an NFL game. In addition, it was the first ever regular-season Monday night game in Ford Field.\nIn December 2010, Fox experimented with using an in-game soundtrack during a regional game between the Arizona Cardinals and Carolina Panthers. The following week on December 16, Fox publicly announced that it would also feature it during a game on December 20 between the San Francisco 49ers and Seattle Seahawks. Fox Sports president Eric Shanks revealed that \"\" composer Jeff Cardoni had contributed music for the experiment, and saw potential in the concept, explaining that \"just like music in movies, you have to use it at the right times. And imagine trying to score a movie the first time you're seeing it.\" The concept was met with mixed reaction; sports blogger Michael David Smith believed that the music was \"goofy\", distracting and added nothing to the game.\nThe Week 16 game, between the Minnesota Vikings and Philadelphia Eagles, originally scheduled for December 26, was moved to December 28 due to a major blizzard that affected most of the Eastern United States. The NFL postponed the game after Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter declared a snow emergency for the city. It was the 23rd NFL game to be played on a Tuesday, but the first since 1946. This was the only game, outside of the final Sunday night, to be \"flexed\" in the 2010 season; the original schedule called for the San Diego Chargers to play the Bengals in Cincinnati (the game was moved to CBS, and was indeed blacked out in Cincinnati). Because of this, a full 90-minute edition of \"Football Night\" aired on December 26, with a short five-minute pre-game leading into the game on the 28th, while Faith Hill's introduction was not played due to time constraints before kickoff.\nFor the Week 17 matchup, NBC featured the 7\u20138 St. Louis Rams playing the 6\u20139 Seattle Seahawks in a win-and-in game, where the winner of the game would qualify for the playoffs as the NFC West Division Champion while the loser will be eliminated. The Seattle Seahawks defeated the St. Louis Rams by a score of 16\u20136, thus advancing to the playoffs whilst the Rams were eliminated from playoff contention \n2011.\nOn January 23, 2011, \"Fox NFL Sunday\" also broadcast an on-location edition at Soldier Field in Chicago for the 2010 NFC Championship; the program held its Super Bowl XLV pregame show in Arlington, Texas on February 6, 2011.\nThe 2011 schedule, released on April 19, once again placed a Sunday night game (Indianapolis Colts at New Orleans Saints on October 23, the fourth straight time these teams played each other on national television) opposite a World Series game. Sunday night games between November 13 and December 18 (inclusive) were \"flex games\", which could have reverted to Sunday afternoon if a more competitive matchup arose (one was; see below). The final Sunday night of the season \u2013 January 1, 2012 \u2013 was likewise a \"flex game\"; the slot, vacant when the schedule was released, was filled by the game between the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants (see below). The Hall of Fame Game scheduled for August 7, and to be shown on NBC, was canceled due to the lockout that offseason; it was the only game to be affected.\nFor the second consecutive season, and third overall, the last Sunday night game that was flexed in featured a contest in which the winner would become the division champions and earn a home game in the playoffs while the loser would be eliminated. This particular matchup was for the NFC East between the New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys at MetLife Stadium, a rematch of Week 14's Sunday night broadcast. This was the first time NBC had shown both meetings of division rivals during a regular season.\nStarting with the 2011 NFL season, \"Fox NFL Sunday\" introduced a new feature called \"Fox :45\", which is usually formatted a sing-along parody of a famous song, or as a comedic sketch. The parodies and sketches usually relate to current events occurring during the football season. The program also introduced the \"Twitter Tracker\", which scrolls tweets from NFL players and coaches.\nSmall tweaks were also made by Fox for the 2011 season, including the timeout indicators counting upward instead of downward, and the possession indicator now appearing alongside the team that currently is in possession of the ball. Additionally, the scoreboard next to the Fox Sports bug for other ongoing NFL games was replaced by a traditional ticker first seen on Fox Major League Baseball broadcasts; the bug was made slightly smaller and rounder as well. Special holiday animations also appeared with the banner package; digitally animated leaves fell on top of the FoxBox on Thanksgiving, while falling snow piles on top during the last two weeks of December in observance of the Christmas and holiday season, with the timeout indicators being changed in the latter instance to resemble strings of Christmas lights.\nESPN renewed its contract with the NFL in 2011 which extends to ESPN the NFL broadcast rights through the 2021\u201322 season. ESPN increased the purchase price for the eighteen-game package, which will include in 2015 the Pro Bowl. Cable television operators condemned the contract, noting that ESPN has the highest retransmission consent fees of any national cable television channel, nearly five times higher than the nearest competitor (TNT), and raises fees on an annual basis. Nevertheless, the other networks had intended to follow suit by renewing their contracts through 2021\u201322, increasing their price to over $1 billion per year. The remaining networks announced they had indeed renewed with the NFL on December 14, 2011. Both the new ESPN and broadcast deals take effect in 2014-15 and will continue through Super Bowl LVI in 2022.\nOn October 3, 2011, Hank Williams Jr. made controversial remarks during an interview on Fox News Channel's \"Fox & Friends\", when talking about a golf outing he went on that summer with Barack Obama, John Boehner, Joe Biden and John Kasich. Williams compared President"}, "descending_order": ["44726936", "61475123"], "permutation_1": ["44726936", "61475123"], "permutation_2": ["61475123", "44726936"], "permutation_3": ["44726936", "61475123"]}
{"id": "nq_-4170560282806275018", "docs_added": {"3091152": "Tariff of 1816\nUnited States tariff\nThe Tariff of 1816, also known as the Dallas Tariff, is notable as the first tariff passed by Congress with an explicit function of protecting U.S. manufactured items from overseas competition. Prior to the War of 1812, tariffs had primarily served to raise revenues to operate the national government. Another unique aspect of the tariff was the strong support it received from Southern states.\nThe bill was conceived as part of a solution to the purely domestic matter of avoiding a projected federal deficit reported by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander J. Dallas. International developments added key facts to the debate; in 1816 there was widespread concern among Americans that war with the United Kingdom might be rekindled over economic and territorial issues. A tariff on manufactured goods, including war industry products, was deemed essential in the interests of national defense.\nThe tariff was approved on April 27, 1816, as a temporary measure, authorized for only three years (until June 1820). Northern efforts to establish permanent protection in 1820, after tensions with Britain had eased, provoked a backlash among Southern legislators. The South consistently opposed protective tariffs during the remainder of the antebellum period.\nUS manufacturing advances in the Napoleonic Era.\nThe trade restrictions imposed by Britain and France during the Napoleonic Wars, the US Embargo Act of 1807 and non-intercourse policies, as well as the War of 1812: all these crises led Americans to develop domestic manufactures to provide goods formerly supplied by Europe. Through necessity American domestic industries had grown and diversified significantly, especially cotton and woolen textiles, and iron production.\nSectional characteristics of the country were also taking shape: the Northeast was transitioning from trade and shipping towards industrial enterprises; the Deep South concentrating on cotton cultivation, and the West seeking transportation routes to market their agricultural goods. \nDespite these sectional developments, America emerged from the War of 1812 as a young nation-state, with a renewed sense of self-reliance and common identity.\nPost-War European threats and the rise of US economic nationalism.\nThe Treaty of Ghent in December 1814 did not resolve US\u2013British boundary and territorial disputes in Louisiana and Spanish Florida. The frontier remained a flashpoint for international strife. In addition, tensions between British and American manufacturers continued to exist. In a move to recapture American markets, British manufacturers proceeded to systematically flood the US markets with superior manufactured items at cut-rate prices, which caused their American counterparts, particularly those in the Northeast, to rapidly lose business. \n \nThese geostrategic and economic tensions led to a shift in American domestic policy. The strict constructionist ideologists of the dominant Jeffersonian Republican Party \u2013 though averse to concentrating power into the hands of the federal government \u2013 recognized the expediency of nationalizing certain institutions and projects as a means of achieving national growth and economic security.\nIn his Seventh Annual Message to the Fourteenth Congress on December 5, 1815, President James Madison suggested legislation to create 1) a national bank with regulatory powers 2) a program of federally funded internal improvements for roads and canals, and 3) a protective tariff to shelter emerging American manufacturing from the advanced industries in Europe.\nThe Federal deficit and the tariff debate.\nIn December 1815, Treasury Secretary Alexander J. Dallas presented a federal budget report to Congress projecting a substantial government deficit by the end of 1816. Though his budget figures were not in dispute, the means of raising the funds were, and proposals for direct or excise taxes were generally unpopular. Secretary Dallas called for a limited protective tariff on manufactures to forestall the deficit. His proposal provoked opposition from two economic sectors: commerce and agriculture.\nCommercial maritime centers in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states had anticipated a lucrative import and export exchange with the post-war reopening of European and global markets. A protective tariff might provoke retaliatory measures, impeding free trade and profits.\nAgrarians in most regions of the US were also advocates of open markets. Northerners, like most Southerners, were still farmers (84% for the whole country). The North, however, was increasingly industrial, with 20 percent of its workforce engaged in manufacturing, compared to 8 percent in the South. Southerner planters, committed to a pastoral slave-based culture and economy, were net consumers of manufactured goods \u2013 goods which would cost more under a tariff regime. The South expressed hostility to the measure throughout the debates, but a substantial number ultimately were compelled to consider its protective advantages.\nSupport for the duties was strongest in manufacturing centers, the immediate beneficiaries of the protection, particularly in Pennsylvania and New York. The tariff was also popular in Kentucky, among those who hoped to develop new textile industries weaving locally grown hemp. Economic interests aside, \"both protectionists and freetraders were in agreement that the country needed more revenue\" \nThe reasons for Southern support of the tariff.\nThe tariff of 1816 was the first \u2013 and last \u2013 protective tariff that received significant Southern support during the \"thirty-year tariff war\" from 1816 to 1846. A number of historical factors were important in shaping Southern perceptions of the legislation. Acknowledging the need to provide sufficient government funding, and with no adequate alternative propositions, the South felt compelled to consider protection. Southern support of the tariff was not demonstrably linked to any significant trend towards industry in the South, or to the existence of textile mills in the Congressional districts of Southern representatives.\nSouthern legislators were keenly aware of the effect that British merchants were having on the US economy and emerging American industries by flooding manufactured goods onto the US market. A group of Southern politicians known as the War Hawks had been some of the most strident foes of confrontation with Britain and fierce champions of the national government; among these statesmen were Speaker of the House Henry Clay of Kentucky, Henry St. George Tucker, Sr. of Virginia and Alexander C. Hanson of Maryland, all supporting the tariff as a war measure.\nThere were fears among Americans that economic tensions with Britain would lead to a resumption of armed conflict. In that event, a healthy US manufacturing base \u2013 including war industries \u2013 were vital to the American economy. Rejecting doctrinaire anti-Federalism, Representative John C. Calhoun of South Carolina called for national unity through interdependence of trade, agriculture and manufacturing. Recalling how poorly prepared the United States had been for war in 1812, he demanded that American factories be provided protection. John Quincy Adams, as US minister to Great Britain, concurred with Calhoun, discerning a deep hostility from the capitols of Europe towards the fledgling United States.\nOld Republicans (also known as \"tertium quids\"), such as Representative John Randolph of Virginia, were marginal figures in this struggle, where strict constructionists were at their nadir. This faction of the Jeffersonian Republican Party remained adamant in upholding the principles of state sovereignty and limited government, rejecting any protection whatsoever as an assault upon \"poor men and on slaveholders\". Among more moderate Southern leaders who remained skeptical about supporting an openly protectionist tariff, there were four additional considerations:\nFirst, the tariff was understood to be a temporary expedient to deal with clear and present dangers. The duties would be lowered in three years (June 1819) by which time the strife would likely have subsided.\nSecond, the tariff would only be applied to cotton and woolen products, and iron; the bulk of imported goods the South regularly bought from foreign countries would not be affected.\nThird, the agrarian South was economically prosperous at the time of the debates, easing concerns about the financial burden the tariff would impose. Those who backed tariffs believed that the economic benefits that would accrue to the North and the West were in the national interest, and that the South could absorb a mild and temporary increase in the cost of imported goods.\nFinally, Jeffersonian Republicans, emerging from the War of 1812 with the opposition Federalist Party in disgrace, felt sufficiently in control of the political landscape to permit an experiment in centralizing policies.\nThe passage of the tariff.\nAs a protective measure, the tariff legislation was very temperate. It placed a duty of twenty-five percent on cottons and woolens for a period of three years (until June 1819), at which time it would drop to twenty percent. A duty of thirty percent was placed on iron, leather, hats, writing paper and cabinet ware, as well as three cents on a pound of sugar. (Iron duties were further increased in 1818 as a defense measure.) \nLow grade printed fabrics from British India, however cheaply they were priced, were accessed at a fixed rate of twenty-five cents per square yard. This was the only overtly protective feature of the legislation, and served to exclude these foreign textiles altogether from US markets. \nThe bill \u2013 requiring a simple majority for passage \u2013 passed 88 yeas to 54 nays in the House (62% to 38%). Both parties were divided, with Republicans voting nationwide 63 yeas to 31 nays, and the Federalists voting 25 yeas to 23 nays.\nThe influence of d\u00e9tente on support for protection.\nA gradual easing of British-American territorial and economic disputes commenced shortly after the passage of the Dallas tariff. \nThe Rush\u2013Bagot Treaty of 1817 demilitarized the Great Lakes regions and the following year the Treaty of 1818 drew the forty-ninth parallel from the Lake of the Woods west to the Rocky Mountains. With this, Britain tacitly acknowledged the legitimacy of US claims to the vast Louisiana territory. \nAnother potentially volatile international development \u2013 General Andrew Jackson's military incursion into Spanish Florida and his summary execution of two British citizens \u2013 failed to incite British retaliation, diplomatically or militarily. The Adams\u2013On\u00eds Treaty of 1819 transferred all of Florida into US hands, ending Spain's attempts to enlist British help in recovering Louisiana from the United States. By 1820, US\u2013British diplomatic relations had significantly improved. \nBritish mercantilist policies and trade monopolies also weakened during this period. Britain recognized that its prosperity was inextricably connected to the industrial growth and territorial expansion of the United States. British\u2013American trade wars had virtually vanished by 1820 and with it the argument that protectionist tariffs were necessary to sustain war industries.\nIn the three years following the passage of the Dallas tariff, the issues that prompted appeals for protection \u2013 trade wars, geostrategic disputes and the federal deficit \u2013 had largely been resolved.\nThe Panic of 1819 and the end of Southern protectionism.\nThe tariff of 1816 supplied comfortable federal surpluses from 1817 to 1819; even with the scheduled reduction in duty rates for 1819, the tariff was expected to provide sufficient revenue. \nThe Panic of 1819 caused an alarming, but temporary drop in the projected federal revenue for 1820. Manufacturers and other protectionists, as well as agrarian anti-protectionists, agreed that the existing tariff of 1816 would perform adequately during the economic recovery. Secretary Dallas warned that any increase in customs on cotton, wool and iron during the economic crisis would actually depress revenues further.\nProtectionists were eager to distance themselves from the revenue issue \u2013 if revenues were adequate, they could hardly argue for an increase in duties. Manufacturers sought a new argument to support higher tariffs \u2013 economic distress due to the downturn. In reality, the Panic had benefited manufacturing by causing a drop in the price of raw materials; even as the retail sales of the cotton goods plummeted, so did the wholesale cost of raw cotton \u2013 textile producers could still turn a profit. The primary producers in the agricultural South, however, saw the value of their goods decline and sell at a loss.\nBy 1820, the support for higher tariffs was less an argument for government revenue, than an effort by Western and Northern interests to establish protection as a principle of economic national well-being. Unlike the tariff in 1816, the tariff legislation in 1820 included higher duties and a long list of new items, and the duties were to be permanent. No longer a mere expedient, this tariff reflected the new loose constructionist principles of the National Republicans, deviating from the strict constructionist requirements of the Democratic-Republican wing of the party. This the Southern agrarians could not abide, when no external threat to the nation at large remained.\nHistorian Norris W. Preyer summarized the shift in Southern opinion this way:\nBy 1820 the South realized that the earlier arguments and appeals of protectionism were no longer valid. In 1816 it was not a desire for manufacturing, but a combination of prosperity, patriotism, and promises that had swayed Southerners. None of these factors now existed to influence them. One consideration, however, which had always been a strong influence on the thinking of Southerners still remained \u2013 the need to defend their economic interests. Now, with no other views to challenge or obscure this desire, the South turned almost unanimously against the tariff bill of 1820. The brief Southern experiment in supporting protection had come to an end, and from then on that section would consistently oppose all protective tariffs.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\nCited in footnotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "3873491": "History of tariffs in the United States\n \nTariffs serve a key role in the trade policy of the United States. Their purposes include to generate revenue for the federal government and to allow for import substitution industrialization (industrialization of a nation by replacing imports with domestic production) by acting as a protective barrier around infant industries. They also aim to reduce the trade deficit and the pressure of foreign competition. Tariffs were one of the pillars of the American System that allowed the rapid development and industrialization of the United States.\nThe United States pursued a protectionist policy from the beginning of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th century. Between 1861 and 1933, they had one of the highest average tariff rates on manufactured imports in the world. After 1942, the U.S. began to promote worldwide free trade. After the 2016 presidential election, the US increased trade protectionism. \nAccording to Dartmouth economist Douglas Irwin, tariffs have served three primary purposes: \"to raise revenue for the government, to restrict imports and protect domestic producers from foreign competition, and to reach reciprocity agreements that reduce trade barriers.\" From 1790 to 1860, average tariffs increased from 20 percent to 60 percent before declining again to 20 percent. From 1861 to 1933, which Irwin characterizes as the \"restriction period\", the average tariffs increased to 50 percent and remained at that level for several decades. From 1934 onwards, which Irwin characterizes as the \"reciprocity period\", the average tariff declined substantially until it leveled off at 5 percent. \nTariff revenues.\nTariffs were the greatest (approaching 95% at times) source of federal revenue until the federal income tax began after 1913. For well over a century the federal government was largely financed by tariffs averaging about 20% on foreign imports. At the end of the American Civil War in 1865 about 63% of Federal income was generated by the excise taxes, more than twice the 25.4% generated by tariffs. In 1915 during World War I, tariffs generated 30.1% of revenues. Since 1935, tariff income has continued to be a declining percentage of Federal tax income.\nHistorical summary.\nAfter the United States achieved independence in 1783, under the Articles of Confederation, the U.S. federal government could not collect taxes directly but had to \"request\" money from each state. The power to levy taxes and tariffs, when proposed by the United States House of Representatives, was granted to the federal government by the United States Constitution after it came into effect in 1789. The new government needed a way to collect taxes from all the states that was easy to enforce and had only a nominal cost to the average citizen. The Tariff Act of 1789 was the second bill signed by President George Washington imposing a tariff of about 5% on nearly all imports, with a few exceptions. In 1790 the United States Revenue Cutter Service was established to primarily enforce and collect the import tariffs. This service later became the United States Coast Guard.\nThe UK was the first country to employ a strategy of promoting emerging industry on a large scale. However, its most fervent supporter was the United States; Paul Bairoch called the U.S. \u201cthe mother country and bastion of modern protectionism.\u201d\nMany American intellectuals and politicians during the country's catching-up period felt that the free trade theory advocated by British classical economists was not suited to their country. They argued that the country should develop manufacturing industries and use government protection and subsidies for this purpose, as Britain had done before them. Many of the great American economists of the time, until the last quarter of the 19th century, were strong advocates of industrial protection: Daniel Raymond who influenced Friedrich List, Mathew Carey and his son Henry, who was one of Lincoln's economic advisers. The intellectual leader of this movement was Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury of the United States (1789\u20131795).\nThe United States rejected David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage and protected its industry. The country pursued a protectionist policy from the beginning of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th century, after the Second World War.\nIn \"Report on Manufactures\", which is considered the first text to express modern protectionist theory, Alexander Hamilton argued that if a country wished to develop a new activity on its soil, it would have to temporarily protect it. According to him, this protection against foreign producers could take the form of import duties or, in rare cases, prohibition of imports. He called for customs barriers to allow American industrial development and to help protect infant industries, including bounties (subsidies) derived in part from those tariffs. He also believed that duties on raw materials should be generally low. Hamilton argued that despite an initial \"increase of price\" caused by regulations that control foreign competition, once a \"domestic manufacture has attained to perfection... it invariably becomes cheaper\".\nIn this report, Hamilton also proposed export bans on major raw materials, tariff reductions on industrial inputs, pricing and patenting of inventions, regulation of product standards and development of financial and transportation infrastructure. The U.S. Congress adopted the tariffs but refused to grant subsidies to manufactures. Hamilton shaped the pattern of American economic policy until the end of World War II, and his program created the conditions for rapid industrial development.\nAlexander Hamilton and Daniel Raymond were among the first theorists to present the infant industry argument. Hamilton was the first to use the term \"infant industries\" and to introduce it to the forefront of economic thinking. He believed that political independence was predicated upon economic independence. Increasing the domestic supply of manufactured goods, particularly war materials, was seen as an issue of national security. And he feared that Britain's policy towards the colonies would condemn the United States to be only producers of agricultural products and raw materials.\nBritain initially did not want to industrialize the American colonies, and implemented policies to that effect (for example, banning high value-added manufacturing activities). Under British rule, America was denied the use of tariffs to protect its new industries. Thus, the American Revolution was, to some extent, a war against this policy, in which the commercial elite of the colonies rebelled against being forced to play a lesser role in the emerging Atlantic economy. This explains why, after independence, the Tariff Act of 1789 was the second bill of the Republic signed by President Washington allowing Congress to impose a fixed tariff of 5% on all imports, with a few exceptions.\nBetween 1792 and the war with Britain in 1812, the average tariff level remained around 12.5%, which was too low to encourage consumers to buy domestic products and thus support emerging American industries. When the Anglo-American War of 1812 broke out, all rates doubled to an average of 25% to account for increased government spending. The war paved the way for new industries by disrupting manufacturing imports from the UK and the rest of Europe. A major policy shift occurred in 1816, when American manufacturers who had benefited from the tariffs lobbied to retain them. New legislation was introduced to keep tariffs at the same levels \u2014especially protected were cotton, woolen, and iron goods. The average rate rose to 35% in 1816. The public agreed, and by 1820, the average rate in the U.S. had risen to 40%. Between 1816 and the end of World War II, the U.S. had one of the highest average import tariffs on manufactured goods in the world.\nIn the 19th century, statesmen such as Senator Henry Clay continued Hamilton's themes within the Whig Party under the name \"American System\" which consisted of protecting industries and developing infrastructure in explicit opposition to the \"British system\" of free trade.\nThe American Civil War (1861\u20131865) was partly triggered by the tariff question. Southern agricultural states opposed any form of protection, while northern industrial states wanted to maintain protection. The fledgling Republican Party led by Abraham Lincoln, who called himself a \"Henry Clay tariff Whig\", strongly opposed free trade. Early in his political career, Lincoln was a member of the protectionist Whig Party and a supporter of Henry Clay. In 1847, he declared: \"Give us a protective tariff, and we shall have the greatest nation on earth\". He implemented a 44-percent tariff during the Civil War\u2014in part to pay for railroad subsidies and for the war effort, and to protect favored industries. Tariffs remained at this level even after the war, so that the North's victory in the Civil War allowed the U.S. to remain one of the largest users of tariff protection for industry.\nFrom 1871 to 1913, \"the average U.S. tariff on dutiable imports never fell below 38 percent [and] gross national product (GNP) grew 4.3 percent annually, twice the pace in free trade Britain and well above the U.S. average in the 20th century,\" notes Alfred Eckes Jr, chairman of the U.S. International Trade Commission under President Reagan.\nAfter the United States caught up with European industries in the 1890s, the Mckinley Tariff's argument was no longer to protect \u201cinfant industries\u201d, but to maintain workers' wages, support agricultural protection and the principle of reciprocity.\nIn 1896, the GOP platform pledged to \"renew and emphasize our allegiance to the policy of protection, as the bulwark of American industrial independence, and the foundation of development and prosperity. This true American policy taxes foreign products and encourages home industry. It puts the burden of revenue on foreign goods; it secures the American market for the American producer. It upholds the American standard of wages for the American workingman\".\nIn 1913, following the electoral victory of the Democrats in 1912, there was a significant reduction in the average tariff on manufactured goods from 44% to 25%. However, the First World War rendered this bill ineffective, and new \"emergency\" tariff legislation was introduced in 1922, after the Republicans returned to power in 1921.\nAccording to economist Ha-Joon Chang, the protectionist period thus corresponded to the golden age of American industry, when US economic performance outstripped that of the rest of the world. They pursued an interventionist, protectionist policy to promote and protect their industries through tariffs. This would have enabled the United States to enjoy the fastest economic growth in the world throughout the 19th century, right up to the 1920s. It was only after the Second World War that the U.S. liberalized its trade (although not as unequivocally as Britain did in the mid-nineteenth century).\nTariffs and historical American politicians.\nIn 1896, the GOP platform pledged to \"renew and emphasize our allegiance to the policy of protection, as the bulwark of American industrial independence, and the foundation of development and prosperity. This true American policy taxes foreign products and encourages home industry. It puts the burden of revenue on foreign goods; it secures the American market for the American producer. It upholds the American standard of wages for the American workingman.\"\nGeorge Washington.\n\"I use no porter or cheese in my family, but such as is made in America,\" the inaugural President George Washington wrote, boasting that these domestic products are \"of an excellent quality.\" One of the first acts of Congress Washington signed was a tariff among whose stated purpose was \"the encouragement and protection of manufactures.\" In his 1790 State of the Union Address, Washington justified his tariff policy for national security reasons:\nA free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies.\nThomas Jefferson.\nAs President Thomas Jefferson wrote in explaining why his views had evolved to favor more protectionist policies: \"In so complicated a science as political economy, no one axiom can be laid down as wise and expedient for all times and circumstances, and for their contraries.\"\nAfter the War of 1812, Jefferson's position began to resemble that of Washington, some level of protection was necessary to secure the nation's political independence. He said:\nexperience has taught me that manufactures are now as necessary to our independence as to our comfort: and if those who quote me as of a different opinion will keep pace with me in purchasing nothing foreign where an equivalent of domestic fabric can be obtained, without regard to difference of price.\nHenry Clay.\nIn 1832, then the United States Senator from Kentucky, Henry Clay said about his disdain for \"free traders\" that \"it is not free trade that they are recommending to our acceptance. It is in effect, the British colonial system that we are invited to adopt; and, if their policy prevail, it will lead substantially to the re-colonization of these States, under the commercial dominion of Great Britain.\" Clay said:\nWhen gentlemen have succeeded in their design of an immediate or gradual destruction of the American System, what is their substitute? Free trade! Free trade! The call for free trade is as unavailing as the cry of a spoiled child, in its nurse's arms, for the moon, or the stars that glitter in the firmament of heaven. It never has existed; it never will exist. Trade implies, at least two parties. To be free, it should be fair, equal and reciprocal.\nClay explained that \"equal and reciprocal free trade never has existed; [and] it never will exist.\" He warned against practicing \"romantic trade philanthropy... which invokes us to continue to purchase the produce of foreign industry, without regard to the state or prosperity of our own.\" Clay that he was \"utterly and irreconcilably opposed to trade which would throw wide open our ports to foreign productions without reciprocation\".\nJames Monroe.\nIn 1822, President James Monroe observed that \"whatever may be the abstract doctrine in favor of unrestricted commerce,\" the conditions necessary for its success\u2014reciprocity and international peace\u2014\"has never occurred and can not be expected.\" Monroe said, \"strong reasons... impose on us the obligation to cherish and sustain our manufactures.\"\nAbraham Lincoln.\nPresident Abraham Lincoln declared, \"Give us a protective tariff and we will have the greatest nation on earth.\" Lincoln warned that \"the abandonment of the protective policy by the American Government... must produce want and ruin among our people.\"\nLincoln similarly said that, \"if a duty amount to full protection be levied upon an article\" that could be produced domestically, \"at no distant day, in consequence of such duty,\" the domestic article \"will be sold to our people cheaper than before.\"\nAdditionally, Lincoln argued that based on economies of scale, any temporary increase in costs resulting from a tariff would eventually decrease as the domestic manufacturer produced more.\nLincoln did not see a tariff as a tax on low-income Americans because it would only burden the consumer according to the amount the consumer consumed.\nBy the tariff system, the whole revenue is paid by the consumers of foreign goods... the burthen of revenue falls almost entirely on the wealthy and luxurious few, while the substantial and laboring many who live at home, and upon home products, go entirely free.\nLincoln argued that a tariff system was less intrusive than domestic taxation: The tariff is the cheaper system, because the duties, being collected in large parcels at a few commercial points, will require comparatively few officers in their collection; while by the direct tax system, the land must be literally covered with assessors and collectors, going forth like swarms of Egyptian locusts, devouring every blade of grass and other green thing.\nWilliam McKinley.\nPresident William McKinley stated the United States' stance under the Republican Party as:\nUnder free trade the trader is the master and the producer the slave. Protection is but the law of nature, the law of self-preservation, of self-development, of securing the highest and best destiny of the race of man. [It is said] that protection is immoral... Why, if protection builds up and elevates 63,000,000 [the U.S. population] of people, the influence of those 63,000,000 of people elevates the rest of the world. We cannot take a step in the pathway of progress without benefiting mankind everywhere.\n[Free trade] destroys the dignity and independence of American labor... It will take away from the people of this country who work for a living\u2014and the majority of them live by the sweat of their faces\u2014it will take from them heart and home and hope. It will be self-destruction.\nHe also categorically rejected the \"cheaper is better\" argument:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />They [free traders] say, 'Buy where you can buy the cheapest.' That is one of their maxims... Of course, that applies to labor as to everything else. Let me give you a maxim that is a thousand times better than that, and it is the protection maxim: 'Buy where you can pay the easiest.' And that spot of earth is where labor wins its highest rewards.\nThey say, if you had not the Protective Tariff things would be a little cheaper. Well, whether a thing is cheap or whether it is dear depends on what we can earn by our daily labor. Free trade cheapens the product by cheapening the producer. Protection cheapens the product by elevating the producer.\nThe protective tariff policy of the Republicans... has made the lives of the masses of our countrymen sweeter and brighter, and has entered the homes of America carrying comfort and cheer and courage. It gives a premium to human energy, and awakens the noblest aspiration in the breasts of men. Our own experience shows that it is the best for our citizenship and our civilization and that it opens up a higher and better destiny for our people.\nTheodore Roosevelt.\nPresident Theodore Roosevelt believed that America's economic growth was due to the protective tariffs, which helped her industrialize. He acknowledged this in his State of the Union address from 1902:\nThe country has acquiesced in the wisdom of the protective-tariff principle. It is exceedingly undesirable that this system should be destroyed or that there should be violent and radical changes therein. Our past experience shows that great prosperity in this country has always come under a protective tariff.\nDonald Trump.\nThe \"first Trump tariffs\" were imposed by executive order (not by act of Congress) during the first presidency of Donald Trump as part of his economic policy. In January 2018, Trump imposed tariffs on solar panels and washing machines of 30 to 50 percent. He soon imposed tariffs on steel (25%) and aluminum (10%) from most countries. On June 1, 2018, this was extended on the European Union, Canada, and Mexico. Separately, on May 10, the Trump administration set a tariff of 25% on 818 categories of goods imported from China worth $50 billion (~$ in 2023). The only country which remained exempt from the steel and aluminum tariffs was Australia. Argentinian and Brazilian aluminum tariffs were started on December 2, 2019, in reaction to currency manipulation.\nJoe Biden.\nIn May 2024, the Biden administration doubled tariffs on solar cells imported from China and more than tripled tariffs on lithium-ion electric vehicle batteries imported from China. The administration also raised tariffs on imports of Chinese steel, aluminum, and medical equipment. The tariff increases will be phased in over a period of three years.\nColonial Era to 1789.\nIn the colonial era, before 1775, nearly every colony levied its own tariffs, usually with lower rates for British products. There were taxes on ships (on a tonnage basis), import taxes on slaves, export taxes on tobacco, and import taxes on alcoholic beverages. The London government insisted on a policy of mercantilism whereby only British ships could trade in the colonies. In defiance, some American merchants engaged in smuggling.\nDuring the Revolution, the British blockade from 1775 to 1783 largely ended foreign trade. In the 1783\u201389 Confederation Period, each state set up its own trade rules, often imposing tariffs or restrictions on neighboring states. The new Constitution, which went into effect in 1789, banned interstate tariffs or trade restrictions, as well as state taxes on exports.\nEarly National period, 1789\u20131828.\nThe framers of the United States Constitution gave the federal government authority to tax, stating that Congress has the power to \"...lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.\" and also \"To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.\" Tariffs between states is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution, and all domestically made products can be imported or shipped to another state tax-free.\nResponding to an urgent need for revenue and a trade imbalance with England that was fast destroying the infant American industries and draining the nation of its currency, the First United States Congress passed, and President George Washington signed, the Hamilton Tariff of 1789, which authorized the collection of duties on imported goods. Customs duties as set by tariff rates up to 1860 were usually about 80\u201395% of all federal revenue. Having just fought a war over taxation, among other things, the U.S. Congress wanted a reliable source of income that was relatively unobtrusive and easy to collect. It also sought to protect the infant industries that had developed during the war but which were now threatened by cheaper imports, especially from England.\nTariffs and excise taxes were authorized by the United States Constitution and recommended by the first United States Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton in 1789 to tax foreign imports and set up low excise taxes on whiskey and a few other products to provide the Federal Government with enough money to pay its operating expenses and to redeem at full value U.S. Federal debts and the debts the states had accumulated during the Revolutionary War. The Congress set low excise taxes on only a few goods, such as, whiskey, rum, tobacco, snuff and refined sugar. The tax on whiskey was highly controversial and set off massive protests by Western Farmers in the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, which was suppressed by General Washington at the head of an army. The whiskey excise tax collected so little and was so despised it was abolished by President Thomas Jefferson in 1802.\nAll tariffs were on a long list of goods (dutiable goods) with different customs rates and some goods on a \"free\" list. Books and publications were nearly always on the free list. Congress spent enormous amounts of time figuring out these tariff import tax schedules.\nWith tariffs providing the basic federal revenue, an embargo on trade, or an enemy blockade, would threaten havoc. This happened in connection with the American economic warfare against Britain in the 1807\u201315 period. In 1807 imports dropped by more than half and some products became much more expensive or unobtainable. Congress passed the Embargo Act of 1807 and the Non-Intercourse Act (1809) to punish British and French governments for their actions; unfortunately their main effect was to reduce imports even more. The War of 1812 brought a similar set of problems as U.S. trade was again restricted by British naval blockades. The fiscal crisis was made much worse by the abolition of the First Bank of the U.S., which was the national bank. It was reestablished right after the war.\nThe lack of imported goods relatively quickly gave very strong incentives to start building several U.S. industries in the Northeast. Textiles and machinery manufacturing plants especially grew. Many new industries were set up and run profitably during the wars and about half of them failed after hostilities ceased and normal import competition resumed. Industry in the U.S. was advancing up the skill set, innovation knowledge and organization curve as they adapted to the Industrial Revolution's new machines and techniques.\nThe Tariff Act of 1789 imposed"}, "descending_order": ["3091152", "3873491"], "permutation_1": ["3873491", "3091152"], "permutation_2": ["3091152", "3873491"], "permutation_3": ["3091152", "3873491"]}
{"id": "nq_8006501015949677757", "docs_added": {"42764": "Hagia Sophia\nMosque and former church in Istanbul, Turkey\nHagia Sophia (; ; ; ; lit.\u2009'Holy Wisdom'), officially the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque (; ), is a mosque, museum and former church serving as a major cultural and historical site in Istanbul, Turkey. The last of three church buildings to be successively erected on the site by the Eastern Roman Empire, it was completed in AD 537, becoming the world's largest interior space and among the first to employ a fully pendentive dome. It is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture and is said to have \"changed the history of architecture\". The site was an Eastern rite church from AD 360 to 1453, except for a brief time as a Latin Catholic church between the Fourth Crusade in 1204 and 1261. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, it served as a mosque, having its minarets added shortly later, until 1935, when it became a museum, before being redesignated as a mosque in 2020. In 2024, the upper floor of the mosque began to serve as a museum.\nThe current structure was built by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I as the Christian cathedral of Constantinople between 532\u2013537 and was designed by the Greek geometers Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles. It was formally called the Church of God's Holy Wisdom, () the third church of the same name to occupy the site, as the prior one had been destroyed in the Nika riots. As the episcopal see of the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, it remained the world's largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years, until the Seville Cathedral was completed in 1520.\nHagia Sophia became the quintessential model for Eastern Orthodox church architecture, and its architectural style was emulated by Ottoman mosques a thousand years later. The Hagia Sophia served as an architectural inspiration for many other religious buildings including the Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki, Panagia Ekatontapiliani, the \u015eehzade Mosque, the S\u00fcleymaniye Mosque, the R\u00fcstem Pasha Mosque and the K\u0131l\u0131\u00e7 Ali Pasha Complex.\nAs the religious and spiritual centre of the Eastern Orthodox Church for nearly one thousand years, the church was dedicated to Holy Wisdom. The church has been described as \"holding a unique position in the Christian world\", and as \"an architectural and cultural icon of Byzantine and Eastern Orthodox civilization\". It was where the excommunication of Patriarch Michael I Cerularius was officially delivered by Humbert of Silva Candida, the envoy of Pope Leo IX in 1054, an act considered the start of the East\u2013West Schism. In 1204, it was converted during the Fourth Crusade into a Catholic cathedral under the Latin Empire, before being restored to the Eastern Orthodox Church upon the restoration of the Byzantine Empire in 1261. Enrico Dandolo, the doge of Venice who led the Fourth Crusade and the 1204 Sack of Constantinople, was buried in the church.\nAfter the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453, it was converted to a mosque by Mehmed the Conqueror and became the principal mosque of Istanbul until the 1616 construction of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque.<ref name=\"http://www.livescience.com/27574-hagia-sophia.html2\"></ref> The patriarchate moved to the Church of the Holy Apostles, which became the city's cathedral. The complex remained a mosque until 1931, when it was closed to the public for four years. It was re-opened in 1935 as a museum under the secular Republic of Turkey, and the building was Turkey's most visited tourist attraction as of 2019[ [update]]. In 2020, the Council of State annulled the 1934 decision to establish the museum, and the Hagia Sophia was reclassified as a mosque. The decision was highly controversial, sparking divided opinions and drawing condemnation from the Turkish opposition, UNESCO, the World Council of Churches and the International Association of Byzantine Studies, as well as numerous international leaders, while several Muslim leaders in Turkey and other countries welcomed its conversion.\nHistory.\nChurch of Constantius II.\nThe first church on the site was known as the () because of its size compared to the sizes of the contemporary churches in the city. According to the \"Chronicon Paschale\", the church was consecrated on 15 February 360, during the reign of the emperor Constantius II (r.\u2009337\u00a0\u2013\u00a0361) by the Arian bishop Eudoxius of Antioch. It was built next to the area where the Great Palace was being developed. According to the 5th-century ecclesiastical historian Socrates of Constantinople, the emperor Constantius had c.\u2009346 \"constructed the Great Church alongside that called Irene which because it was too small, the emperor's father [Constantine] had enlarged and beautified\". A tradition which is not older than the 7th or 8th century reports that the edifice was built by Constantius' father, Constantine the Great (r.\u2009306\u00a0\u2013\u00a0337). Hesychius of Miletus wrote that Constantine built Hagia Sophia with a wooden roof and removed 427 (mostly pagan) statues from the site. The 12th-century chronicler Joannes Zonaras reconciles the two opinions, writing that Constantius had repaired the edifice consecrated by Eusebius of Nicomedia, after it had collapsed. Since Eusebius was the bishop of Constantinople from 339 to 341, and Constantine died in 337, it seems that the first church was erected by Constantius.\nThe nearby Hagia Irene (\"Holy Peace\") church was completed earlier and served as cathedral until the Great Church was completed. Besides Hagia Irene, there is no record of major churches in the city-centre before the late 4th century. Rowland Mainstone argued the 4th-century church was not yet known as Hagia Sophia.\nThe church is known to have had a timber roof, curtains, columns, and an entrance that faced west. It likely had a narthex and is described as being shaped like a Roman circus. This may mean that it had a U-shaped plan like the basilicas of San Marcellino e Pietro and Sant'Agnese fuori le mura in Rome. However, it may also have been a more conventional three-, four-, or five-aisled basilica, perhaps resembling the original Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem or the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. The building was likely preceded by an atrium, as in the later churches on the site.\nAccording to Ken Dark and Jan Kostenec, a further remnant of the 4th century basilica may exist in a wall of alternating brick and stone banded masonry immediately to the west of the Justinianic church. The top part of the wall is constructed with bricks stamped with brick-stamps dating from the 5th century, but the lower part is of constructed with bricks typical of the 4th century. This wall was probably part of the propylaeum at the west front of both the Constantinian and Theodosian Great Churches.\nThe building was accompanied by a baptistery and a \"skeuophylakion\". A hypogeum, perhaps with an martyrium above it, was discovered before 1946, and the remnants of a brick wall with traces of marble revetment were identified in 2004. The hypogeum was a tomb which may have been part of the 4th-century church or may have been from the pre-Constantinian city of Byzantium. The \"skeuophylakion\" is said by Palladius to have had a circular floor plan, and since some U-shaped basilicas in Rome were funerary churches with attached circular mausolea (the Mausoleum of Constantina and the Mausoleum of Helena), it is possible it originally had a funerary function, though by 405 its use had changed. A later account credited a woman called Anna with donating the land on which the church was built in return for the right to be buried there.\nExcavations on the western side of the site of the first church under the propylaeum wall reveal that the first church was built atop a road about wide. According to early accounts, the first Hagia Sophia was built on the site of an ancient pagan temple, although there are no artefacts to confirm this.\nThe Patriarch of Constantinople John Chrysostom came into a conflict with Empress Aelia Eudoxia, wife of the emperor Arcadius (r.\u2009383\u00a0\u2013\u00a0408), and was sent into exile on 20 June 404. During the subsequent riots, this first church was largely burnt down. Palladius noted that the 4th-century \"skeuophylakion\" survived the fire. According to Dark and Kostenec, the fire may only have affected the main basilica, leaving the ancillary buildings intact.\nChurch of Theodosius II.\nA second church on the site was ordered by Theodosius II (r.\u2009402\u00a0\u2013\u00a0450), who inaugurated it on 10 October 415. The \"Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae,\" a fifth-century list of monuments, names Hagia Sophia as , while the former cathedral Hagia Irene is referred to as . At the time of Socrates of Constantinople around 440, \"both churches [were] enclosed by a single wall and served by the same clergy\". Thus, the complex would have encompassed a large area including the future site of the Hospital of Samson. If the fire of 404 destroyed only the 4th-century main basilica church, then the 5th century Theodosian basilica could have been built surrounded by a complex constructed primarily during the fourth century.\nDuring the reign of Theodosius II, the emperor's elder sister, the \"Augusta\" Pulcheria (r.\u2009414\u00a0\u2013\u00a0453) was challenged by the patriarch Nestorius (r.\u200910 April 428\u00a0\u2013\u00a022 June 431). The patriarch denied the \"Augusta\" access to the sanctuary of the \"Great Church\", likely on 15 April 428. According to the anonymous \"Letter to Cosmas\", the virgin empress, a promoter of the cult of the Virgin Mary who habitually partook in the Eucharist at the sanctuary of Nestorius's predecessors, claimed right of entry because of her equivalent position to the \"Theotokos\" \u2013 the Virgin Mary \u2013 \"having given birth to God\". Pulcheria along with Pope Celestine I and Patriarch Cyril of Alexandria had Nestorius overthrown, condemned at the ecumenical council, and exiled.\nThe area of the western entrance to the Justinianic Hagia Sophia revealed the western remains of its Theodosian predecessor, as well as some fragments of the Constantinian church. German archaeologist Alfons Maria Schneider began conducting archaeological excavations during the mid-1930s, publishing his final report in 1941. Excavations in the area that had once been the 6th-century atrium of the Justinianic church revealed the monumental western entrance and atrium, along with columns and sculptural fragments from both 4th- and 5th-century churches. Further digging was abandoned for fear of harming the structural integrity of the Justinianic building, but parts of the excavation trenches remain uncovered, laying bare the foundations of the Theodosian building.\nThe basilica was built by architect Rufinus. The church's main entrance, which may have had gilded doors, faced west, and there was an additional entrance to the east. There was a central pulpit and likely an upper gallery, possibly employed as a matroneum (women's section). The exterior was decorated with elaborate carvings of rich Theodosian-era designs, fragments of which have survived, while the floor just inside the portico was embellished with polychrome mosaics. The surviving carved gable end from the centre of the western fa\u00e7ade is decorated with a cross-roundel. Fragments of a frieze of reliefs with 12 lambs representing the 12 apostles also remain; unlike Justinian's 6th-century church, the Theodosian Hagia Sophia had both colourful floor mosaics and external decorative sculpture.\nAt the western end, surviving stone fragments of the structure show there was vaulting, at least at the western end. The Theodosian building had a monumental propylaeum hall with a portico that may account for this vaulting, which was thought by the original excavators in the 1930s to be part of the western entrance of the church itself. The propylaeum opened onto an atrium which lay in front of the basilica church itself. Preceding the propylaeum was a steep monumental staircase following the contours of the ground as it sloped away westwards in the direction of the Strategion, the Basilica, and the harbours of the Golden Horn. This arrangement would have resembled the steps outside the atrium of the Constantinian Old St Peter's Basilica in Rome. Near the staircase, there was a cistern, perhaps to supply a fountain in the atrium or for worshippers to wash with before entering.\nThe 4th-century \"skeuophylakion\" was replaced in the 5th century by the present-day structure, a rotunda constructed of banded masonry in the lower two levels and of plain brick masonry in the third. Originally this rotunda, probably employed as a treasury for liturgical objects, had a second-floor internal gallery accessed by an external spiral staircase and two levels of niches for storage. A further row of windows with marble window frames on the third level remain bricked up. The gallery was supported on monumental consoles with carved acanthus designs, similar to those used on the late 5th-century Column of Leo. A large lintel of the \"skeuophylakion\"'s western entrance \u2013 bricked up during the Ottoman era \u2013 was discovered inside the rotunda when it was archaeologically cleared to its foundations in 1979, during which time the brickwork was also repointed. The \"skeuophylakion\" was again restored in 2014 by the Vak\u0131flar.\nA fire started during the tumult of the Nika Revolt, which had begun nearby in the Hippodrome of Constantinople, and the second Hagia Sophia was burnt to the ground on 13\u201314 January 532. The court historian Procopius wrote:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />And by way of shewing that it was not against the Emperor alone that they [the rioters] had taken up arms, but no less against God himself, unholy wretches that they were, they had the hardihood to fire the Church of the Christians, which the people of Byzantium call \"Sophia\", an epithet which they have most appropriately invented for God, by which they call His temple; and God permitted them to accomplish this impiety, foreseeing into what an object of beauty this shrine was destined to be transformed. So the whole church at that time lay a charred mass of ruins.\nChurch of Justinian I (current structure).\nOn 23 February 532, only a few weeks after the destruction of the second basilica, Emperor Justinian I inaugurated the construction of a third and entirely different basilica, larger and more majestic than its predecessors. Justinian appointed two architects, mathematician Anthemius of Tralles and geometer and engineer Isidore of Miletus, to design the building.\nConstruction of the church began in 532 during the short tenure of Phocas as praetorian prefect. According to John the Lydian, Phocas was responsible for funding the initial construction of the building with 4,000 Roman pounds of gold, but he was dismissed from office in October 532. John the Lydian wrote that Phocas had acquired the funds by moral means, but Evagrius Scholasticus later wrote that the money had been obtained unjustly.\nAccording to Anthony Kaldellis, both of Hagia Sophia's architects named by Procopius were associated with the school of the pagan philosopher Ammonius of Alexandria. It is possible that both they and John the Lydian considered Hagia Sophia a great temple for the supreme Neoplatonist deity who manifestated through light and the sun. John the Lydian describes the church as the \"\"temenos\" of the Great God\" ().\nOriginally the exterior of the church was covered with marble veneer, as indicated by remaining pieces of marble and surviving attachments for lost panels on the building's western face. The white marble cladding of much of the church, together with gilding of some parts, would have given Hagia Sophia a shimmering appearance quite different from the brick- and plaster-work of the modern period, and would have significantly increased its visibility from the sea. The cathedral's interior surfaces were sheathed with polychrome marbles, green and white with purple porphyry, and gold mosaics. The exterior was clad in stucco that was tinted yellow and red during the 19th-century restorations by the Fossati architects.\nThe construction is described by Procopius in \"On Buildings\" (, ). Columns and other marble elements were imported from throughout the Mediterranean, although the columns were once thought to be spoils from cities such as Rome and Ephesus. Even though they were made specifically for Hagia Sophia, they vary in size. More than ten thousand people were employed during the construction process. This new church was contemporaneously recognized as a major work of architecture. Outside the church was an elaborate array of monuments around the bronze-plated Column of Justinian, topped by an equestrian statue of the emperor which dominated the Augustaeum, the open square outside the church which connected it with the Great Palace complex through the Chalke Gate. At the edge of the Augustaeum was the Milion and the Regia, the first stretch of Constantinople's main thoroughfare, the \"Mese\". Also facing the Augustaeum were the enormous Constantinian \"thermae\", the Baths of Zeuxippus, and the Justinianic civic basilica under which was the vast cistern known as the Basilica Cistern. On the opposite side of Hagia Sophia was the former cathedral, Hagia Irene.\nProcopius lauded the Justinianic building, writing in \"De aedificiis\":\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />... the Emperor Justinian built not long afterwards a church so finely shaped, that if anyone had enquired of the Christians before the burning if it would be their wish that the church should be destroyed and one like this should take its place, shewing them some sort of model of the building we now see, it seems to me that they would have prayed that they might see their church destroyed forthwith, in order that the building might be converted into its present form.\nUpon seeing the finished building, the Emperor reportedly said: \"Solomon, I have surpassed thee\".\nJustinian and Patriarch Menas inaugurated the new basilica on 27 December 537, 5 years and 10 months after construction started, with much pomp. Hagia Sophia was the seat of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and a principal setting for Byzantine imperial ceremonies, such as coronations. The basilica offered sanctuary from persecution to criminals, although there was disagreement about whether Justinian had intended for murderers to be eligible for asylum.\nEarthquakes in 553 and on 557 caused cracks in the main dome and eastern semi-dome. According to the \"Chronicle\" of John Malalas, during a subsequent earthquake in 558, the eastern semi-dome collapsed, destroying the ambon, altar, and ciborium. The collapse was due mainly to the excessive bearing load and to the enormous shear load of the dome, which was too flat. These caused the deformation of the piers which sustained the dome. Justinian ordered an immediate restoration. He entrusted it to Isidorus the Younger, who used lighter materials. The entire vault had to be taken down and rebuilt 20 Byzantine feet () higher than before, giving the building its current interior height of . Moreover, Isidorus changed the dome type, erecting a ribbed dome with pendentives whose diameter was between 32.7 and 33.5\u00a0m. Under Justinian's orders, eight Corinthian columns were disassembled from Baalbek, Lebanon and shipped to Constantinople around 560. This reconstruction, which gave the church its present 6th-century form, was completed in 562. The poet Paul the Silentiary composed an \"ekphrasis\", or long visual poem, for the re-dedication of the basilica presided over by Patriarch Eutychius on 24 December 562.\nAccording to the history of the patriarch Nicephorus I and the chronicler Theophanes the Confessor, various liturgical vessels of the cathedral were melted down on the order of the emperor Heraclius (r.\u2009610\u00a0\u2013\u00a0641) during the Byzantine\u2013Sasanian War of 602\u2013628. Theophanes states that these were made into gold and silver coins, and a tribute was paid to the Avars. The Avars attacked the extramural areas of Constantinople in 623, causing the Byzantines to move the \"garment\" relic () of Mary, mother of Jesus to Hagia Sophia from its usual shrine of the Church of the \"Theotokos\" at Blachernae just outside the Theodosian Walls. On 14 May 626, the \"Scholae Palatinae\", an elite body of soldiers, protested in Hagia Sophia against a planned increase in bread prices. The Persians under Shahrbaraz and the Avars together laid the siege of Constantinople in 626; according to the \"Chronicon Paschale\", on 2 August 626, Theodore Syncellus, a deacon and presbyter of Hagia Sophia, was among those who negotiated unsuccessfully with the \"khagan\" of the Avars. A homily, attributed by existing manuscripts to Theodore Syncellus and possibly delivered on the anniversary of the event, describes the translation of the Virgin's garment and its ceremonial re-translation to Blachernae by the patriarch Sergius I after the threat had passed.\nIn 726, the emperor Leo the Isaurian issued a series of edicts against the veneration of images, ordering the army to destroy all icons \u2013 ushering in the period of Byzantine iconoclasm. At that time, all religious pictures and statues were removed from the Hagia Sophia. Following a brief hiatus during the reign of Empress Irene (797\u2013802), the iconoclasts returned. Emperor Theophilus (r.\u2009829\u00a0\u2013\u00a0842) had two-winged bronze doors with his monograms installed at the southern entrance of the church.\nThe basilica suffered damage, first in a great fire in 859, and again in an earthquake in 869 that caused the collapse of one of the half-domes. Emperor Basil I ordered repair of the tympanas, arches, and vaults.\nIn his book \"De Ceremoniis\" (\"Book of Ceremonies\"), the emperor Constantine VII (r.\u2009913\u00a0\u2013\u00a0959) wrote a detailed account of the ceremonies held in the Hagia Sophia by the emperor and the patriarch.\nEarly in the 10th century, the pagan ruler of the Kievan Rus' sent emissaries to his neighbors to learn about Judaism, Islam, and Roman and Orthodox Christianity. After visiting Hagia Sophia his emissaries reported back: \"We were led into a place where they serve their God, and we did not know where we were, in heaven or on earth.\"\nIn the 940s or 950s, probably around 954 or 955, after the Rus'\u2013Byzantine War of 941 and the death of the Grand Prince of Kiev, Igor I (r.\u2009912\u00a0\u2013\u00a0945), his widow Olga of Kiev \u2013 regent for her infant son Sviatoslav I (r.\u2009945\u00a0\u2013\u00a0972) \u2013 visited the emperor Constantine VII and was received as queen of the Rus' in Constantinople. She was probably baptized in Hagia Sophia's baptistery, taking the name of the reigning \"augusta\", Helena Lecapena, and receiving the titles \"z\u014dst\u0113 patrik\u00eda\" and the styles of \"archontissa\" and hegemon of the Rus'. Her baptism was an important step towards the Christianization of the Kievan Rus', though the emperor's treatment of her visit in \"De caerimoniis\" does not mention baptism. According to an early 14th-century source, the second church in Kiev, Saint Sophia's, was founded in \"anno mundi\" 6460 in the Byzantine calendar, or c.\u2009952. The name of this future cathedral of Kiev probably commemorates Olga's baptism.\nAfter an earthquake in 989 collapsed the western dome arch, Emperor Basil II asked for the Armenian architect Trdat, creator of the Cathedral of Ani, to direct the repairs. He erected again and reinforced the fallen dome arch, and rebuilt the west side of the dome with 15 dome ribs. The extent of the damage required six years of repair and reconstruction; the church was re-opened on 13 May 994. At the end of the reconstruction, the church's decorations were renovated, including the addition of four immense paintings of cherubs; a new depiction of Christ on the dome; a burial cloth of Christ shown on Fridays, and on the apse a new depiction of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus, between the apostles Peter and Paul. On the great side arches were painted the prophets and the teachers of the church.\nIn 1181, the daughter of the emperor Manuel I, Maria Comnena, and her husband, the \"caesar\" Renier of Montferrat, fled to Hagia Sophia at the culmination of their dispute with the empress Maria of Antioch, regent for her son, the emperor Alexius II Comnenus. Maria Comnena and Renier occupied the cathedral with the support of the patriarch, refusing the imperial administration's demands for a peaceful departure. According to Niketas Choniates, they \"transformed the sacred courtyard into a military camp\", garrisoned the entrances to the complex with locals and mercenaries, and despite the strong opposition of the patriarch, made the \"house of prayer into a den of thieves or a well-fortified and precipitous stronghold\", while \"all the dwellings adjacent to Hagia Sophia and adjoining the Augusteion were demolished by [Maria's] men\". A battle ensued in the Augustaion and around the Milion, during which the defenders fought from the \"gallery of the Catechumeneia (also called the Makron)\" facing the Augusteion, from which they eventually retreated and took up positions in the exonarthex of Hagia Sophia itself. At this point, \"the patriarch was anxious lest the enemy troops enter the temple, with unholy feet trample the holy floor, and with hands defiled and dripping with blood still warm plunder the all-holy dedicatory offerings\". After a successful sally by Renier and his knights, Maria requested a truce, the imperial assault ceased, and an amnesty was negotiated. Greek historian Niketas Choniates compared the preservation of the cathedral to the efforts made by the 1st-century emperor Titus to avoid the destruction of the Second Temple during the siege of Jerusalem in the First Jewish\u2013Roman War. Choniates reports that in 1182, a white hawk wearing jesses was seen to fly from the east to Hagia Sophia, flying three times from the \"building of the \"Th\u014dmait\u0113s\"\" (a basilica erected on the southeastern side of the Augustaion) to the Palace of the Kathisma in the Great Palace, where new emperors were acclaimed. This was supposed to presage the end of the reign of Andronicus I Comnenus (r.\u20091183\u00a0\u2013\u00a01185).\nChoniates writes that in 1203, during the Fourth Crusade, the emperors Isaac II Angelus and Alexius IV Angelus stripped Hagia Sophia of all gold ornaments and silver oil-lamps to pay off the Crusaders who had ousted Alexius III Angelus and helped Isaac return to the throne. In the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, the church was further ransacked and desecrated by the Crusaders, as described by Choniates, though he did not witness the events in person. According to his account, Hagia Sophia was stripped of its remaining metal ornaments, its altar was smashed into pieces, and a \"woman laden with sins\" sang and danced on the synthronon. He adds that mules and donkeys were brought into the cathedral's sanctuary to carry away the spoils, and that one of them slipped on the marble floor and was accidentally disembowelled, further contaminating the place. According to Ali ibn al-Athir, whose treatment of the Sack of Constantinople was probably dependent on a Christian source, the Crusaders massacred some clerics who had surrendered. Much of the interior was damaged and would not be repaired until its return to Orthodox control in 1261. The sack of Hagia Sophia, and Constantinople in general, remained a sore point in Catholic\u2013Eastern Orthodox relations.\nDuring the Latin occupation of Constantinople (1204\u20131261), the church became a Latin Catholic cathedral. Baldwin I of Constantinople (r.\u20091204\u00a0\u2013\u00a01205) was crowned emperor on 16 May 1204 in Hagia Sophia in a ceremony which closely followed Byzantine practices. Enrico Dandolo, the Doge of Venice who commanded the sack and invasion of the city in 1204, is buried inside the church, probably in the upper eastern gallery. In the 19th century, an Italian restoration team placed a cenotaph marker, frequently mistaken as being a medieval artifact, near the probable location and is still visible. The original tomb was destroyed by the Ottomans during the conversion of the church into a mosque.\nUpon the capture of Constantinople in 1261 by the Empire of Nicaea and the emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus, (r.\u20091261\u00a0\u2013\u00a01282), the church was in a dilapidated state. In 1317, emperor Andronicus II Palaeologus (r.\u20091282\u00a0\u2013\u00a01328) ordered four new buttresses () to be built in the eastern and northern parts of the church, financing them with the inheritance of his late wife, Irene of Montferrat (d.1314). New cracks developed in the dome after the earthquake of October 1344, and several parts of the building collapsed on 19 May 1346. Repairs by architects Astras and Peralta began in 1354.\nOn 12 December 1452, Isidore of Kiev proclaimed in Hagia Sophia the long-anticipated ecclesiastical union between the western Catholic and eastern Orthodox Churches as decided at the Council of Florence and decreed by the papal bull \"Laetentur Caeli\", though it would be short-lived. The union was unpopular among the Byzantines, who had already expelled the Patriarch of Constantinople, Gregory III, for his pro-union stance. A new patriarch was not installed until after the Ottoman conquest. According to the Greek historian Doukas, the Hagia Sophia was tainted by these Catholic associations, and the anti-union Orthodox faithful avoided the cathedral, considering it to be a haunt of demons and a \"Hellenic\" temple of Roman paganism. Doukas also notes that after the \"Laetentur Caeli\" was proclaimed, the Byzantines dispersed discontentedly to nearby venues where they drank toasts to the Hodegetria icon, which had, according to late Byzantine tradition, interceded to save them in the former sieges of Constantinople by the Avar Khaganate and the Umayyad Caliphate.\nAccording to \"Nestor Iskander's Tale on the Taking of Tsargrad\", the Hagia Sophia was the focus of an alarming omen interpreted as the Holy Spirit abandoning Constantinople on 21 May 1453, in the final days of the Siege of Constantinople. The sky lit up, illuminating the city, and many people gathered and saw on the Church of the Wisdom, at the top of the window, a large flame of fire issuing forth. It encircled the entire neck of the church for a long time. The flame gathered into one; its flame altered, and there was an indescribable light. At once it took to the sky. ... The light itself has gone up to heaven; the gates of heaven were opened; the light was received; and again they were closed. The eventual fall of Constantinople had long been predicted in apocalyptic literature. Hagia Sophia is mentioned in a hagiography of uncertain date detailing the life of the Eastern Orthodox saint Andrew the Fool. The text is self-attributed to Nicephorus, a priest of Hagia Sophia, and contains a description of the end time in the form of a dialogue, in which the interlocutor, upon being told by the saint that Constantinople will be sunk in a flood and that \"the waters as they gush forth will irresistibly deluge her and cover her and surrender her to the terrifying and immense sea of the abyss\", says \"some people say that the Great Church of God will not be submerged with the city but will be suspended in the air by an invisible power\". The reply is given that \"When the whole city sinks into the sea, how can the Great Church remain? Who will need her? Do you think God dwells in temples made with hands?\" The Column of Constantine, however, is prophesied to endure.\nAccording to Laonicus Chalcocondyles, Hagia Sophia was a refuge for the population during the city's capture. Despite the ill-repute and empty state of Hagia Sophia after December 1452, Doukas writes that after the Theodosian Walls were breached, the Byzantines took refuge there as the Turks advanced through the city. He attributes their change of heart to a prophecy.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />What was the reason that compelled all to flee to the Great Church? They had been listening, for many years, to some pseudo-soothsayers, who had declared that the city was destined to be handed over to the Turks, who would enter in large numbers and would massacre the Romans as far as the Column of Constantine the Great. After this an angel would descend, holding his sword. He would hand over the kingdom, together with the sword, to some insignificant, poor, and humble man who would happen to be standing by the Column. He would say to him: \"Take this sword and avenge the Lord's people.\" Then the Turks would be turned back, would be massacred by the pursuing Romans, and would be ejected from the city and from all places in the west and the east and would be driven as far as the borders of Persia, to a place called the Lone Tree ... That was the cause for the flight into the Great Church. In one hour that famous and enormous church was filled with men and women. An innumerable crowd was everywhere: upstairs, downstairs, in the courtyards, and in every conceivable place. They closed the gates and stood there, hoping for salvation.\nIn accordance with the traditional custom of the time, Sultan Mehmed II allowed three full days of unbridled pillage in the city shortly after it was captured. This period saw the destruction of many Orthodox churches; Hagia Sophia itself was looted as the invaders believed it to contain the greatest treasures of the city. Shortly after the defence of the Walls of Constantinople collapsed and the victorious Ottoman troops entered the city, the pillagers and looters made their way to the Hagia Sophia and battered down its doors before storming inside. Once the three days passed, Mehmed was to claim the city's remaining contents for himself. However, by the end of the first day, he proclaimed that the looting should cease as he felt profound sadness when he toured the city.\nThroughout the siege of Constantinople, the trapped people of the city participated in the Divine Liturgy and the Prayer of the Hours at the Hagia Sophia, and the church was a refuge for many of those who were unable to contribute to the city's defence, including women, children, elderly, the sick and the wounded. As they were trapped in the church, the many congregants and other refugees became spoils-of-war to be divided amongst the triumphant invaders. The building was desecrated and looted, and those who sought shelter within the church were enslaved. While most of the elderly and the infirm, injured, and sick were killed, the remainder (mainly teenage males and young boys) were chained and sold into slavery in the Ottoman Empire.\nMosque (1453\u20131935).\nConstantinople fell to the attacking Ottoman forces on 29 May 1453. Sultan Mehmed II entered the city and performed the Friday prayer and \"khutbah\" (sermon) in Hagia Sophia. The church's priests and religious personnel continued to perform Christian rites, prayers, and ceremonies until they were compelled to stop by the invaders. When Mehmed and his entourage entered the church, he ordered that it be converted into a mosque immediately. One of the \"\u02bfulam\u0101\u02be\" (Islamic scholars) present climbed onto the church's ambo and recited the \"shahada\" (\"There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger\"), thus marking the conversion of the church into a mosque. Mehmed is reported to have taken a sword to a soldier who tried to pry up one of the paving slabs of the Proconnesian marble floor.\nAs described by Western visitors before 1453, such as the C\u00f3rdoban nobleman Pero Tafur and the Florentine geographer Cristoforo Buondelmonti, the church was in a dilapidated state, with several of its doors fallen from their hinges. Mehmed II ordered a renovation of the building. Mehmed attended the first Friday prayer in the mosque on 1 June 1453. Aya Sofya became the first imperial mosque of Istanbul. Most of the existing houses in the city and the area of the future Topkap\u0131 Palace were endowed to the corresponding waqf. From 1478, 2,360 shops, 1,300 houses, 4 caravanserais, 30 \"boza\" shops, and 23 shops of sheep heads and trotters gave their income to the foundation. Through the imperial charters of 1520 and 1547, shops and parts of the Grand Bazaar and other markets were added to the foundation.\nBefore 1481, a small minaret was erected on the southwest corner of the building, above the stair tower. Mehmed's successor Bayezid II (r.\u20091481\u00a0\u2013\u00a01512) later built another minaret at the northeast corner. One of the minarets collapsed after the earthquake of 1509, and around the middle of the 16th century they were both replaced by two diagonally opposite minarets built at the east and west corners of the edifice. In 1498, Bernardo Bonsignori was the last Western visitor to Hagia Sophia to report seeing the ancient Justinianic floor; shortly afterwards the floor was covered over with carpet and not seen again until the 19th century.\nIn the 16th century, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (r.\u20091520\u00a0\u2013\u00a01566) brought two colossal candlesticks from his of the Kingdom of Hungary and placed them on either side of the \"mihrab\". During Suleiman's reign, the mosaics above the narthex and imperial gates depicting Jesus, Mary, and various Byzantine emperors were covered by whitewash and plaster, which were removed in 1930 under the Turkish Republic.\nDuring the reign of Selim II (r.\u20091566\u00a0\u2013\u00a01574), the building started showing signs of fatigue and was extensively strengthened with the addition of structural supports to its exterior by Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan, who was also an earthquake engineer. In addition to strengthening the historic Byzantine structure, Sinan built two additional large minarets at the western end of the building, the original sultan's lodge and the t\u00fcrbe (mausoleum) of Selim II to the southeast of the building in 1576\u20131577. In order to do that, parts of the Patriarchate at the south corner of the building were pulled down the previous year. Moreover, the golden crescent was mounted on the top of the dome, and a respect zone 35 \"ar\u015f\u0131n\" (about 24\u00a0m) wide was imposed around the building, leading to the demolition of all houses within the perimeter. The t\u00fcrbe became the location of the tombs of 43 Ottoman princes. Murad III (r.\u20091574\u00a0\u2013\u00a01595) imported two large alabaster Hellenistic urns from Pergamon (Bergama) and placed them on two sides of the nave.\nIn 1594 \"Mimar\" (court architect) Davud A\u011fa built the t\u00fcrbe of Murad III, where the Sultan and his \"valide\", Safiye Sultan were buried. The octagonal mausoleum of their son Mehmed III (r.\u20091595\u00a0\u2013\u00a01603) and his \"valide\" was built next to it in 1608 by royal architect Dalgi\u00e7 Mehmet A\u011da. His son Mustafa I (r.\u20091617\u00a0\u2013\u00a01618,\u00a01622\u00a0\u2013\u00a01623) converted the baptistery into his t\u00fcrbe.\nIn 1717, under the reign of Sultan Ahmed III (r.\u20091703\u00a0\u2013\u00a01730), the crumbling plaster of the interior was renovated, contributing indirectly to the preservation of many mosaics, which otherwise would have been destroyed by mosque workers. It was usual for the mosaic's tesserae\u2014believed to be talismans\u2014to be sold to visitors. Sultan Mahmud I ordered the restoration of the building in 1739 and added a \"medrese\" (a Koranic school, subsequently the library of the museum), an \"imaret\" (soup kitchen for distribution to the poor) and a library, and in 1740 he added a \"\u015eadirvan\" (fountain for ritual ablutions), thus transforming it into a \"k\u00fclliye\", or social complex. A new sultan's lodge and a new mihrab were built inside.\nRenovation of 1847\u20131849.\nThe 19th-century restoration of the Hagia Sophia was ordered by Sultan Abdulmejid I (r.\u20091823\u00a0\u2013\u00a01861) and completed between 1847 and 1849 by eight hundred workers under the supervision of the Swiss-Italian architect brothers Gaspare and Giuseppe Fossati. The brothers consolidated the dome with a restraining iron chain and strengthened the vaults, straightened the columns, and revised the decoration of the exterior and the interior of the building. The mosaics in the upper gallery were exposed and cleaned, although many were recovered \"for protection against further damage\".\nEight new gigantic circular-framed discs or medallions were hung from the cornice, on each of the four piers and at either side of the apse and the west doors. These were designed by the calligrapher Kazasker Mustafa Izzet Efendi and painted with the names of Allah, Muhammad, the Rashidun (the first four caliphs), and the two grandsons of Muhammad. In 1850, the architects Fossati built a new maqsura or caliphal loge in Neo-Byzantine columns and an Ottoman\u2013Rococo style marble grille connecting to the royal pavilion behind the mosque. The new maqsura was built at the extreme east end of the northern aisle, next to the north-eastern pier. The existing maqsura in the apse, near the mihrab, was demolished. A new entrance was constructed for the sultan: the . The Fossati brothers also renovated the minbar and mihrab.\nOutside the main building, the minarets were repaired and altered so that they were of equal height. A clock building, the , was built by the Fossatis for use by the muwaqqit (the mosque timekeeper), and a new madrasa (Islamic school) was constructed. The was also built under their direction. When the restoration was finished, the mosque was re-opened with a ceremony on 13 July 1849. An edition of lithographs from drawings made during the Fossatis' work on Hagia Sophia was published in London in 1852, entitled: \"Aya Sophia of Constantinople as Recently Restored by Order of H.M. The Sultan Abdulmejid\".\nOccupation of Istanbul (1918\u20131923).\nIn the aftermath of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, Constantinople was occupied by British, French, Italian, and Greek forces. On none }}, the Greek Orthodox Christian military priest Eleftherios Noufrakis performed an unauthorized Divine Liturgy in the Hagia Sophia, the only such instance since the 1453 fall of Constantinople. The anti-occupation Sultanahmet demonstrations were held next to Hagia Sophia from March to May 1919. In Greece, the 500 drachma banknotes issued in 1923 featured Hagia Sophia.\nMuseum (1935\u20132020).\nIn 1935, the first Turkish President and founder of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atat\u00fcrk, transformed the building into a museum. During the Second World War, the minarets of the museum housed MG 08 machine guns. The carpet and the layer of mortar underneath were removed and marble floor decorations such as the \"omphalion\" appeared for the first time since the Fossatis' restoration, when the white plaster covering many of the mosaics had been removed. Due to neglect, the condition of the structure continued to deteriorate, prompting the World Monuments Fund (WMF) to include the Hagia Sophia in their 1996 and 1998 Watch Lists. The building's copper roof had cracked, causing water to leak down over the fragile frescoes and mosaics. Moisture entered from below as well. Rising ground water increased the level of humidity within the monument, creating an unstable environment for stone and paint. The WMF secured a series of grants from 1997 to 2002 for the restoration of the dome. The first stage of work involved the structural stabilization and repair of the cracked roof, which was undertaken with the participation of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The second phase, the preservation of the dome's interior, afforded the opportunity to employ and train young Turkish conservators in the care of mosaics. By 2006, the WMF project was complete, though many areas of Hagia Sophia continue to require significant stability improvement, restoration, and conservation.\nIn 2014, Hagia Sophia was the second most visited museum in Turkey, attracting almost 3.3 million visitors annually.\nWhile use of the complex as a place of worship (mosque or church) was strictly prohibited, in 1991 the Turkish government allowed the allocation of a pavilion in the museum complex (\"Ayasofya M\u00fczesi H\u00fcnkar Kasr\u0131\") for use as a prayer room, and, since 2013, two of the museum's minarets had been used for voicing the call to prayer (the ezan) regularly.\nFrom the early 2010s, several campaigns and government high officials, notably Turkey's deputy prime minister B\u00fclent Ar\u0131n\u00e7 in November 2013, demanded the Hagia Sophia be converted back into a mosque. In 2015, Pope Francis publicly acknowledged the Armenian genocide, which is officially denied in Turkey. In response, the mufti of Ankara, Mefail H\u0131zl\u0131, said he believed the Pope's remarks would accelerate the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque.\nOn 1 July 2016, Muslim prayers were held again in the Hagia Sophia for the first time in 85\u00a0years. That November, a Turkish NGO, the \"Association for the Protection of Historic Monuments and the Environment\", filed a lawsuit for converting the museum into a mosque. The court decided it should stay as a 'monument museum'. In October 2016, Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs (\"Diyanet\") appointed, for the first time in 81 years, a designated imam, \u00d6nder Soy, to the Hagia Sophia mosque. Since then, the adhan has been regularly called out from the Hagia Sophia's minarets five times a day.\nOn 13 May 2017, a large group of people, organized by the Anatolia Youth Association, gathered in front of Hagia Sophia and prayed the morning prayer with a call for the re-conversion of the museum into a mosque. On 21 June 2017 the Directorate of Religious Affairs (\"\") organized a special programme, broadcast live by state-run television TRT, which included the recitation of the Quran and prayers in Hagia Sophia, to mark the Laylat al-Qadr.\nReversion to mosque (2018\u2013present).\nSince 2018, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan had talked of reverting the status of the Hagia Sophia back to a mosque, as a populist gesture. On 31 March 2018 Erdo\u011fan recited the first verse of the Quran in the Hagia Sophia, dedicating the prayer to the \"souls of all who left us this work as inheritance, especially Istanbul's conqueror,\" strengthening the political movement to make the Hagia Sophia a mosque once again. In March 2019 Erdo\u011fan said that he would change the status of Hagia Sophia from a museum to a mosque, adding that it had been a \"very big mistake\" to turn it into a museum. As a UNESCO World Heritage site, this change would require approval from UNESCO's World Heritage Committee. In late 2019 Erdo\u011fan's office took over the administration and upkeep of the nearby Topkap\u0131 Palace Museum, transferring responsibility for the site from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism by presidential decree.\nIn 2020, Turkey's government celebrated the 567th anniversary of the Conquest of Constantinople with an Islamic prayer in Hagia Sophia. In May, during the anniversary events, passages from the Quran were read in the Hagia Sophia. Greece condemned this action, while Turkey in response accused Greece of making \"futile and ineffective statements\".\nIn June, the head of Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs said that \"we would be very happy to open Hagia Sophia for worship\" and that if it happened \"we will provide our religious services as we do in all our mosques\". On 25 June, John Haldon, president of the International Association of Byzantine Studies, wrote an open letter to Erdo\u011fan asking that he \"consider the value of keeping the Aya Sofya as a museum\".\nOn 10 July 2020, the decision of the Council of Ministers from 1935 to transform the Hagia Sophia into a museum was annulled by the Council of State, decreeing that Hagia Sophia cannot be used \"for any other purpose\" than being a mosque and that the Hagia Sophia was property of the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Han Foundation. The council reasoned Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II, who conquered Istanbul, deemed the property to be used by the public as a mosque without any fees and was not within the jurisdiction of the Parliament or a ministry council. Despite secular and global criticism, Erdo\u011fan signed a decree annulling the Hagia Sophia's museum status, reverting it to a mosque. The call to prayer was broadcast from the minarets shortly after the announcement of the change and rebroadcast by major Turkish news networks. TA presidential spokesperson said it would become a working mosque, open to anyone similar to the Parisian churches Sacr\u00e9-C\u0153ur and Notre-Dame. The spokesperson also said that the change would not affect the status of the Hagia Sophia as a UNESCO World Heritage site, and that \"Christian icons\" within it would continue to be protected.\nA presidential spokesperson claimed that all political parties in Turkey supported Erdo\u011fan's decision, but the Peoples' Democratic Party had previously released a statement denouncing the decision, saying \"decisions on human heritage cannot be made on the basis of political games played by the government\". The mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem \u0130mamo\u011flu, said that he supports the conversion \"as long as it benefits Turkey\", adding that he felt that Hagia Sophia has been a mosque since 1453. Ali Babacan attacked the policy of his former ally Erdo\u011fan, saying the Hagia Sophia issue \"has come to the agenda now only to cover up other problems\". Orhan Pamuk, Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate, publicly denounced the move, saying \"Kemal Atat\u00fcrk changed... Hagia Sophia from a mosque to a museum, honouring all previous Greek Orthodox and Latin Catholic history, making it as a sign of Turkish modern secularism\".\nOn 17 July, Erdo\u011fan announced that the first prayers in the Hagia Sophia would be open to between 1,000 and 1,500 worshippers, stating that Turkey had sovereign power over Hagia Sophia and was not obligated to bend to international opinion.\nWhile the Hagia Sophia has now been rehallowed as a mosque, the place remains open for visitors outside of prayer times. Entrance was initially free, but starting from 15 January 2024, foreign nationals have to pay an entrance fee.\nOn 22 July, a turquoise-coloured carpet was laid to prepare the mosque for worshippers. The mosque opened for Friday prayers on 24 July, the 97th anniversary of the signature of the Treaty of Lausanne, which established the borders of the modern Turkish Republic. The mosaics of the Virgin and Child in the apse were covered by white drapes. Ali Erba\u015f, President of the Directorate of Religious Affairs, proclaimed during his sermon, \"Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror dedicated this magnificent construction to believers to remain a mosque until the Day of Resurrection\". Erdo\u011fan and some government ministers attended the midday prayers as many worshippers prayed outside; at one point the security cordon was breached and dozens of people broke through police lines. Turkey invited foreign leaders and officials, including Pope Francis, for the prayers. It is the fourth Byzantine church converted from museum to a mosque during Erdo\u011fan's rule.\nDays before the final decision on the conversion was made, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople stated in a sermon that \"the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque would disappoint millions of Christians around the world\". The proposed conversion was decried by other Orthodox Christian leaders, the Russian Orthodox Church's Patriarch Kirill of Moscow stating that \"a threat to Hagia Sophia [wa]s a threat to all of Christian civilization\".\nFollowing the Turkish government's decision, UNESCO announced it \"deeply regret[ted]\" the conversion \"made without prior discussion\", and asked Turkey to \"open a dialogue without delay\", stating that the lack of negotiation was \"regrettable\". UNESCO further announced that the \"state of conservation\" of Hagia Sophia would be \"examined\" at the next session of the World Heritage Committee, urging Turkey \"to initiate dialogue without delay, in order to prevent any detrimental effect on the universal value of this exceptional heritage\". Ernesto Ottone, UNESCO's Assistant Director-General for Culture said \"It is important to avoid any implementing measure, without prior discussion with UNESCO, that would affect physical access to the site, the structure of the buildings, the site's moveable property, or the site's management\".\nThe World Council of Churches condemned the decision to convert the building into a mosque, saying that would \"inevitably create uncertainties, suspicions and mistrust\". At the recitation of the Sunday Angelus prayer at St Peter's Square on 12 July Pope Francis said, \"My thoughts go to Istanbul. I think of Santa Sophia and I am very pained\" ().\nJosep Borrell, the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Vice-President of the European Commission, released a statement calling the decisions by the Council of State and Erdo\u011fan \"regrettable\" and pointing out that \"as a founding member of the Alliance of Civilisations, Turkey has committed to the promotion of inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue and to fostering of tolerance and co-existence.\" According to Borrell, the European Union member states' twenty-seven foreign ministers \"condemned the Turkish decision to convert such an emblematic monument as the Hagia Sophia\" at meeting on 13 July, saying it \"will inevitably fuel the mistrust, promote renewed division between religious communities and undermine our efforts at dialog and cooperation\" and that \"there was a broad support to call on the Turkish authorities to urgently reconsider and reverse this decision\".\nGreece denounced the conversion and considered it a breach of the UNESCO World Heritage titling. Greek culture minister Lina Mendoni called it an \"open provocation to the civilised world\" which \"absolutely confirms that there is no independent justice\" in Erdo\u011fan's Turkey, and that his Turkish nationalism \"takes his country back six centuries\". Greece and Cyprus called for EU sanctions on Turkey. Morgan Ortagus, the spokesperson for the United States Department of State, noted: \"We are disappointed by the decision by the government of Turkey to change the status of the Hagia Sophia.\" Jean-Yves Le Drian, foreign minister of France, said his country \"deplores\" the move, saying \"these decisions cast doubt on one of the most symbolic acts of modern and secular Turkey\".\nVladimir Dzhabarov, deputy head of the foreign affairs committee of the Russian Federation Council, said that it \"will not do anything for the Muslim world. It does not bring nations together, but on the contrary brings them into collision\" and calling the move a \"mistake\". The former deputy prime minister of Italy, Matteo Salvini, held a demonstration in protest outside the Turkish consulate in Milan, calling for all plans for accession of Turkey to the European Union to be terminated \"once and for all\". In East Jerusalem, a protest was held outside the Turkish consulate on 13 July, with the burning of a Turkish flag and the display of the Greek flag and flag of the Greek Orthodox Church.\nErsin Tatar, prime minister of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is recognized only by Turkey, welcomed the decision, calling it \"sound\" and \"pleasing\". Through a spokesman the Foreign Ministry of Iran welcomed the change, saying the decision was an \"issue that should be considered as part of Turkey's national sovereignty\" and \"Turkey's internal affair\". Sergei Vershinin, deputy foreign minister of Russia, said that the matter was of one of \"internal affairs, in which, of course, neither we nor others should interfere.\" The Arab Maghreb Union was supportive.\nEkrema Sabri, imam of the al-Aqsa Mosque, and Ahmed bin Hamad al-Khalili, grand mufti of Oman, both congratulated Turkey on the move. The Muslim Brotherhood was also in favour of the news. A spokesman for the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas called the verdict \"a proud moment for all Muslims\". Pakistani politician Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi of the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) welcomed the ruling, claiming it was \"not only in accordance with the wishes of the people of Turkey but the entire Muslim world\". The Muslim Judicial Council group in South Africa praised the move, calling it \"a historic turning point\". In Nouakchott, capital of Mauritania, there were prayers and celebrations topped by the sacrifice of a camel. On the other hand, Shawki Allam, grand mufti of Egypt, ruled that conversion of the Hagia Sophia to a mosque is \"impermissible\".\nWhen President Erdo\u011fan announced that the first Muslim prayers would be held inside the building on 24 July, he added that \"like all our mosques, the doors of Hagia Sophia will be wide open to locals and foreigners, Muslims and non-Muslims.\" Presidential spokesman \u0130brahim Kal\u0131n said that the icons and mosaics of the building would be preserved, and that \"in regards to the arguments of secularism, religious tolerance and coexistence, there are more than four hundred churches and synagogues open in Turkey today.\" The Turkish foreign minister, Mevl\u00fct \u00c7avu\u015fo\u011flu, told TRT Haber on 13 July that the government was surprised at the reaction of UNESCO, saying that \"We have to protect our ancestors' heritage. The function can be this way or that way \u2013 it does not matter\".\nOn 14 July the prime minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, said his government was \"considering its response at all levels\" to what he called Turkey's \"unnecessary, petty initiative\", and that \"with this backward action, Turkey is opting to sever links with western world and its values\". In relation to both Hagia Sophia and the Cyprus\u2013Turkey maritime zones dispute, Mitsotakis called for European sanctions against Turkey, referring to it as \"a regional troublemaker, and which is evolving into a threat to the stability of the whole south-east Mediterranean region\". Dora Bakoyannis, Greek former foreign minister, said Turkey's actions had \"crossed the Rubicon\", distancing itself from the West.\nArmenia's Foreign Ministry expressed \"deep concern\" about the move, adding that it brought to a close Hagia Sophia's symbolism of \"cooperation and unity of humankind instead of clash of civilizations.\" Catholicos Karekin II, the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, said the move \"violat[ed] the rights of national religious minorities in Turkey.\" Sahak II Mashalian, the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, perceived as loyal to the Turkish government, endorsed the decision to convert the museum into a mosque. He said, \"I believe that believers' praying suits better the spirit of the temple instead of curious tourists running around to take pictures.\"\nIn July 2021, UNESCO asked for an updated report on the state of conservation and expressed \"grave concern\". There were also some concerns about the future of its World Heritage status. Turkey responded that the changes had \"no negative impact\" on UNESCO standards and the criticism is \"biased and political\".\nArchitecture.\nHagia Sophia is one of the greatest surviving examples of Byzantine architecture. Its interior is decorated with mosaics, marble pillars, and coverings of great artistic value. Justinian had overseen the completion of the greatest cathedral ever built up to that time, and it was to remain the largest cathedral for 1,000 years until the completion of the cathedral in Seville in Spain.\nThe Hagia Sophia uses masonry construction. The structure has brick and mortar joints that are 1.5 times the width of the bricks. The mortar joints are composed of a combination of sand and minute ceramic pieces distributed evenly throughout the mortar joints. This combination of sand and potsherds was often used in Roman concrete, a predecessor to modern concrete. A considerable amount of iron was used as well, in the form of cramps and ties.\nJustinian's basilica was at once the culminating architectural achievement of late antiquity and the first masterpiece of Byzantine architecture. Its influence, both architecturally and liturgically, was widespread and enduring in the Eastern Christianity, Western Christianity, and Islam alike.\nThe vast interior has a complex structure. The nave is covered by a central dome which at its maximum is from floor level and rests on an arcade of 40 arched windows. Repairs to its structure have left the dome somewhat elliptical, with the diameter varying between .\nAt the western entrance and eastern liturgical side, there are arched openings extended by half domes of identical diameter to the central dome, carried on smaller semi-domed exedrae, a hierarchy of dome-headed elements built up to create a vast oblong interior crowned by the central dome, with a clear span of .The theories of Hero of Alexandria, a Hellenistic mathematician of the 1st century AD, may have been utilized to address the challenges presented by building such an expansive dome over so large a space. Svenshon and Stiffel proposed that the architects used Hero's proposed values for constructing vaults. The square measurements were calculated using the side-and-diagonal number progression, which results in squares defined by the numbers 12 and 17, wherein 12 defines the side of the square and 17 its diagonal, which have been used as standard values as early as in cuneiform Babylonian texts.\nEach of the four sides of the great square Hagia Sophia is approximately 31\u00a0m long, and it was previously thought that this was the equivalent of 100 Byzantine feet. Svenshon suggested that the size of the side of the central square of Hagia Sophia is not 100 Byzantine feet but instead 99 feet. This measurement is not only rational, but it is also embedded in the system of the side-and-diagonal number progression (70/99) and therefore a usable value by the applied mathematics of antiquity. It gives a diagonal of 140 which is manageable for constructing a huge dome.\nFloor.\nThe stone floor of Hagia Sophia dates from the 6th century. After the first collapse of the vault, the broken dome was left \"in situ\" on the original Justinianic floor and a new floor was laid above the rubble when the dome was rebuilt in 558. From the installation of this second Justinianic floor, the floor became part of the liturgy, with significant locations and spaces demarcated in various ways using different-coloured stones and marbles.\nThe floor is predominantly made up of Proconnesian marble, quarried on Proconnesus (Marmara Island) in the Propontis (Sea of Marmara). This was the main white marble used in the monuments of Constantinople. Other parts of the floor, like the Thessalian verd antique \"marble\", were quarried in Thessaly in Roman Greece. The Thessalian verd antique bands across the nave floor were often likened to rivers.\nThe floor was praised by numerous authors and repeatedly compared to a sea. The Justinianic poet Paul the Silentiary likened the ambo and the solea connecting it to the sanctuary with an island in a sea, with the sanctuary itself a harbour. The 9th-century \"Narratio\" writes of it as \"like the sea or the flowing waters of a river\". Michael the Deacon in the 12th century also described the floor as a sea in which the ambo and other liturgical furniture stood as islands. During the 15th-century conquest of Constantinople, the Ottoman caliph Mehmed is said to have ascended to the dome and the galleries in order to admire the floor, which according to Tursun Beg resembled \"a sea in a storm\" or a \"petrified sea\". Other Ottoman-era authors also praised the floor; T\u00e2c\u00eez\u00e2de Cafer \u00c7elebi compared it to waves of marble. The floor was hidden beneath a carpet on 22 July 2020.\nNarthex and portals.\nThe Imperial Gate, or Imperial Door, was the main entrance between the exo- and esonarthex, and it was originally exclusively used by the emperor. A long ramp from the northern part of the outer narthex leads up to the upper gallery.\nUpper gallery.\nThe upper gallery, or matroneum, is horseshoe-shaped; it encloses the nave on three sides and is interrupted by the apse. Several mosaics are preserved in the upper gallery, an area traditionally reserved for the Empress and her court. The best-preserved mosaics are located in the southern part of the gallery.\nThe northern first floor gallery contains runic graffiti believed to have been left by members of the Varangian Guard. Structural damage caused by natural disasters is visible on the Hagia Sophia's exterior surface. To ensure that the Hagia Sophia did not sustain any damage on the interior of the building, studies have been conducted using ground penetrating radar within the gallery of the Hagia Sophia. With the use of ground-penetrating radar (GPR), teams discovered weak zones within the Hagia Sophia's gallery and also concluded that the curvature of the vault dome has been shifted out of proportion, compared to its original angular orientation.\nDome.\nThe dome of Hagia Sophia has spurred particular interest for many art historians, architects, and engineers because of the innovative way the original architects envisioned it. The dome is carried on four spherical triangular pendentives, making the Hagia Sophia one of the first large-scale uses of this element. The pendentives are the corners of the square base of the dome, and they curve upwards into the dome to support it, thus restraining the lateral forces of the dome and allowing its weight to flow downwards. The main dome of the Hagia Sophia was the largest pendentive dome in the world until the completion of St Peter's Basilica, and it has a much lower height than any other dome of such a large diameter.\nThe great dome at the Hagia Sophia is in diameter and is only thick. The main building materials for the original Hagia Sophia were brick and mortar. Brick aggregate was used to make roofs easier to construct. Due to the material's plasticity, it was chosen over cut stone due to the fact that aggregate can be used over a longer distance. According to Rowland Mainstone, \"it is unlikely that the vaulting-shell is anywhere more than one normal brick in thickness\".\nThe weight of the dome remained a problem for most of the building's existence. The original cupola collapsed entirely after the earthquake of 558; in 563 a new dome was built by Isidore the Younger. Unlike the original, this included 40 ribs and was raised 6.1 meters (20 feet), in order to lower the lateral forces on the church walls. A larger section of the second dome collapsed as well, over two episodes, so that as of 2021, only two sections of the present dome, the north and south sides, are from the 562 reconstructions. Of the whole dome's 40 ribs, the surviving north section contains eight ribs, while the south section includes six ribs.\nAlthough this design stabilizes the dome and the surrounding walls and arches, the actual construction of the walls of Hagia Sophia weakened the overall structure. The bricklayers used more mortar than brick, which is more effective if the mortar was allowed to settle, as the building would have been more flexible; however, the builders did not allow the mortar to cure before they began the next layer. When the dome was erected, its weight caused the walls to lean outward because of the wet mortar underneath. When Isidore the Younger rebuilt the fallen cupola, he had first to build up the interior of the walls to make them vertical again. Additionally, the architect raised the height of the rebuilt dome by approximately so that the lateral forces would not be as strong and its weight would be transmitted more effectively down into the walls. Moreover, he shaped the new cupola like a scalloped shell or the inside of an umbrella, with ribs that extend from the top down to the base. These ribs allow the weight of the dome to flow between the windows, down the pendentives, and ultimately to the foundation.\nHagia Sophia is famous for the light that reflects everywhere in the interior of the nave, giving the dome the appearance of hovering. This effect was achieved by inserting forty windows around the base of the original structure, which also reduced its weight.\nButtresses.\nNumerous buttresses have been added throughout the centuries. The flying buttresses to the west of the building, although thought to have been constructed by the Crusaders upon their visit to Constantinople, were actually built during the Byzantine era. This shows that the Romans had prior knowledge of flying buttresses, which can also be seen at in Greece, at the Rotunda of Galerius in Thessaloniki, at the monastery of Hosios Loukas in Boeotia, and in Italy at the octagonal basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna. Other buttresses were constructed during the Ottoman times under the guidance of the architect Sinan. A total of 24 buttresses were added.\nMinarets.\nThe minarets were an Ottoman addition and not part of the original church's Byzantine design. Mehmed had built a wooden minaret over one of the half domes soon after Hagia Sophia's conversion from a cathedral to a mosque. This minaret does not exist today. One of the minarets (at southeast) was built from red brick and can be dated back from the reign of Mehmed or his successor Beyaz\u0131d II. The other three were built from white limestone and sandstone, of which the slender northeast column was erected by Bayezid II and the two identical, larger minarets to the west were erected by Selim II and designed by the famous Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan. Both are in height, and their thick and massive patterns complete Hagia Sophia's main structure. Many ornaments and details were added to these minarets on repairs during the 15th, 16th, and 19th centuries, which reflect each period's characteristics and ideals.\nNotable elements and decorations.\nOriginally, under Justinian's reign, the interior decorations consisted of abstract designs on marble slabs on the walls and floors as well as mosaics on the curving vaults. Of these mosaics, the two archangels Gabriel and Michael are still visible in the spandrels (corners) of the bema. There were already a few figurative decorations, as attested by the late 6th-century \"ekphrasis\" of Paul the Silentiary, the \"Description of Hagia Sophia\". The spandrels of the gallery are faced in inlaid thin slabs (\"opus sectile\"), showing patterns and figures of flowers and birds in precisely cut pieces of white marble set against a background of black marble. In later stages, figurative mosaics were added, which were destroyed during the iconoclastic controversy (726\u2013843). Present mosaics are from the post-iconoclastic period.\nApart from the mosaics, many figurative decorations were added during the second half of the 9th century: an image of Christ in the central dome; Eastern Orthodox saints, prophets and Church Fathers in the tympana below; historical figures connected with this church, such as Patriarch Ignatius; and some scenes from the Gospels in the galleries. Basil II let artists paint a giant six-winged seraph on each of the four pendentives. The Ottomans covered their faces with golden stars, but in 2009, one of them was restored to its original state.\nLoggia of the Empress.\nThe loggia of the empress is located in the centre of the gallery of the Hagia Sophia, above the Imperial Gate and directly opposite the apse. From this matroneum (women's gallery), the empress and the court-ladies would watch the proceedings down below. A green stone disc of verd antique marks the spot where the throne of the empress stood.\nLustration urns.\nTwo huge marble lustration (ritual purification) urns were brought from Pergamon during the reign of Sultan Murad III. They are from the Hellenistic period and carved from single blocks of marble.\nMarble Door.\nThe Marble Door inside the Hagia Sophia is located in the southern upper enclosure or gallery. It was used by the participants in synods, who entered and left the meeting chamber through this door. It is said that each side is symbolic and that one side represents heaven while the other represents hell. Its panels are covered in fruits and fish motifs. The door opens into a space that was used as a venue for solemn meetings and important resolutions of patriarchate officials.\nNice Door.\nThe Nice Door is the oldest architectural element found in the Hagia Sophia dating back to the 2nd century BC. The decorations are of reliefs of geometric shapes as well as plants that are believed to have come from a pagan temple in Tarsus in Cilicia, part of the Cibyrrhaeot Theme in modern-day Mersin Province in south-eastern Turkey. It was incorporated into the building by Emperor Theophilos in 838 where it is placed in the south exit in the inner narthex.\nImperial Gate.\nThe Imperial Gate is the door that was used solely by the Emperor and his personal bodyguard and retinue. At it is the largest door in the Hagia Sophia and has been dated to the 6th century. Byzantine sources say it was made with wood from Noah's Ark.\nIn April 2022, the door was vandalised by unknown assailant(s).\nWishing column.\nAt the northwest of the building, there is a column with a hole in the middle covered by bronze plates. This column goes by different names; the \"perspiring\" or \"sweating column\", the \"crying column\", or the \"wishing column\". Legend states that it has been moist since the appearance of Gregory Thaumaturgus near the column in 1200. It is believed that touching the moisture cures many illnesses.\nViking inscription.\nIn the southern section of Hagia Sophia, a 9th-century Viking inscription has been discovered, which reads, \"Halvdan was here.\" It is theorized that the inscription was created by a Viking soldier serving as a mercenary in the Eastern Roman Empire.\nMosaics.\nThe first mosaics which adorned the church were completed during the reign of Justin II. Many of the non-figurative mosaics in the church come from this period. Most of the mosaics, however, were created in the 10th and 12th centuries, following the periods of Byzantine Iconoclasm.\nDuring the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, the Latin Crusaders vandalized valuable items in every important Byzantine structure of the city, including the golden mosaics of the Hagia Sophia. Many of these items were shipped to Venice, whose Doge Enrico Dandolo had organized the invasion and sack of Constantinople after an agreement with Prince Alexios Angelos, the son of a deposed Byzantine emperor.\n19th-century restoration.\nFollowing the building's conversion into a mosque in 1453, many of its mosaics were covered with plaster, due to Islam's ban on representational imagery. This process was not completed at once, and reports exist from the 17th century in which travellers note that they could still see Christian images in the former church. In 1847\u20131849, the building was restored by Gaspare and Giuseppe Fossati, and Sultan Abdulmejid I allowed them to also document any mosaics they might discover during this process, which were later archived in Swiss libraries. This work did not include repairing the mosaics, and after recording the details about an image, the Fossatis painted it over again. The Fossatis restored the mosaics of the two \"hexapteryga\" (six-winged angels; it is uncertain whether they are seraphim or cherubim) located on the two east pendentives, and covered their faces again before the end of the restoration. The other two mosaics, placed on the west pendentives, are copies in paint created by the Fossatis since they could find no surviving remains of them. As in this case, the architects reproduced in paint damaged decorative mosaic patterns, sometimes redesigning them in the process. The Fossati records are the primary sources about a number of mosaic images now believed to have been completely or partially destroyed in the 1894 Istanbul earthquake. These include a mosaic over a now-unidentified \"Door of the Poor\", a large image of a jewel-encrusted cross, and many images of angels, saints, patriarchs, and church fathers. Most of the missing images were located in the building's two tympana.\nOne mosaic they documented is Christ Pantocrator in a circle, which would indicate it to be a ceiling mosaic, possibly even of the main dome, which was later covered and painted over with Islamic calligraphy that expounds God as the light of the universe. The Fossatis' drawings of the Hagia Sophia mosaics are today kept in the Archive of the Canton of Ticino.\n20th-century restoration.\nMany mosaics were uncovered in the 1930s by a team from the Byzantine Institute of America led by Thomas Whittemore. The team chose to let a number of simple cross images remain covered by plaster but uncovered all major mosaics found.\nBecause of its long history as both a church and a mosque, a particular challenge arises in the restoration process. Christian iconographic mosaics can be uncovered, but often at the expense of important and historic Islamic art. Restorers have attempted to maintain a balance between both Christian and Islamic cultures. In particular, much controversy rests upon whether the Islamic calligraphy on the dome of the cathedral should be removed, to permit the underlying Pantocrator mosaic of Christ as Master of the World to be exhibited (assuming the mosaic still exists).\nThe Hagia Sophia has been a victim of natural disasters that have caused deterioration to the buildings structure and walls. The deterioration of the Hagia Sophia's walls can be directly attributed to salt crystallization. The crystallization of salt is due to an intrusion of rainwater that causes the Hagia Sophia's deteriorating inner and outer walls. Diverting excess rainwater is the main solution to the deteriorating walls at the Hagia Sophia.\nBuilt between 532 and 537, a subsurface structure under the Hagia Sophia has been under investigation, using LaCoste-Romberg gravimeters to determine the depth of the subsurface structure and to discover other hidden cavities beneath the Hagia Sophia. The hidden cavities have also acted as a support system against earthquakes. With these findings using the LaCoste-Romberg gravimeters, it was also discovered that the Hagia Sophia's foundation is built on a slope of natural rock.\nImperial Gate mosaic.\nThe Imperial Gate mosaic is located in the tympanum above that gate, which was used only by the emperors when entering the church. Based on style analysis, it has been dated to the late 9th or early 10th century. The emperor with a nimbus or halo could possibly represent emperor Leo VI the Wise or his son Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus bowing down before Christ Pantocrator, seated on a jewelled throne, giving his blessing and holding in his left hand an open book.\nSouthwestern entrance mosaic.\nThe southwestern entrance mosaic, situated in the tympanum of the southwestern entrance, dates from the reign of Basil II. It was rediscovered during the restorations of 1849 by the Fossatis. The Virgin sits on a throne without a back, her feet resting on a pedestal, embellished with precious stones. The Christ Child sits on her lap, giving his blessing and holding a scroll in his left hand. On her left side stands emperor Constantine in ceremonial attire, presenting a model of the city to Mary. On her right side stands emperor Justinian I, offering a model of the Hagia Sophia. The composition of the figure of the Virgin enthroned was probably copied from the mosaic inside the semi-dome of the apse inside the liturgical space.\nApse mosaics.\nThe mosaic in the semi-dome above the apse at the east end shows Mary, mother of Jesus holding the Christ Child and seated on a jewelled \"thokos\" backless throne. Since its rediscovery after a period of concealment in the Ottoman era, it \"has become one of the foremost monuments of Byzantium\". The infant Jesus's garment is depicted with golden \"tesserae\".\nGuillaume-Joseph Grelot, who had travelled to Constantinople, in 1672 engraved and in 1680 published in Paris an image of the interior of Hagia Sophia which shows the apse mosaic indistinctly. Together with a picture by Cornelius Loos drawn in 1710, these images are early attestations of the mosaic before it was covered towards the end of the 18th century. The mosaic of the Virgin and Child was rediscovered during the restorations of the Fossati brothers in 1847\u20131848 and revealed by the restoration of Thomas Whittemore in 1935\u20131939. It was studied again in 1964 with the aid of scaffolding.\nIt is not known when this mosaic was installed. According to Cyril Mango, the mosaic is \"a curious reflection on how little we know about Byzantine art\". The work is generally believed to date from after the end of Byzantine Iconoclasm and usually dated to the patriarchate of Photius I (r.\u2009858\u00a0\u2013\u00a0867,\u00a0877\u00a0\u2013\u00a0886) and the time of the emperors Michael III (r.\u2009842\u00a0\u2013\u00a0867) and Basil I (r.\u2009867\u00a0\u2013\u00a0886). Most specifically, the mosaic has been connected with a surviving homily known to have been written and delivered by Photius in the cathedral on 29 March 867.\nOther scholars have favoured earlier or later dates for the present mosaic or its composition. Nikolaos Oikonomides pointed out that Photius's homily refers to a standing portrait of the \"Theotokos\" \u2013 a \"Hodegetria\" \u2013 while the present mosaic shows her seated. Likewise, a biography of the patriarch Isidore I (r.\u20091347\u00a0\u2013\u00a01350) by his successor Philotheus I (r.\u20091353\u00a0\u2013\u00a01354,\u00a01364\u00a0\u2013\u00a01376) composed before 1363 describes Isidore seeing a standing image of the Virgin at Epiphany in 1347. Serious damage was done to the building by earthquakes in the 14th century, and it is possible that a standing image of the Virgin that existed in Photius's time was lost in the earthquake of 1346, in which the eastern end of Hagia Sophia was partly destroyed. This interpretation supposes that the present mosaic of the Virgin and Child enthroned is of the late 14th century, a time in which, beginning with Nilus of Constantinople (r.\u20091380\u00a0\u2013\u00a01388), the patriarchs of Constantinople began to have official seals depicting the \"Theotokos\" enthroned on a \"thokos\".\nStill other scholars have proposed an earlier date than the later 9th century. According to George Galavaris, the mosaic seen by Photius was a \"Hodegetria\" portrait which after the earthquake of 989 was replaced by the present image not later than the early 11th century. According to Oikonomides however, the image in fact dates to before the Triumph of Orthodoxy, having been completed c.\u2009787\u2013797, during the iconodule interlude between the First Iconoclast (726\u2013787) and the Second Iconoclast (814\u2013842) periods. Having been plastered over in the Second Iconoclasm, Oikonomides argues a new, standing image of the Virgin \"Hodegetria\" was created above the older mosaic in 867, which then fell off in the earthquakes of the 1340s and revealed again the late 8th-century image of the Virgin enthroned.\nMore recently, analysis of a hexaptych menologion icon panel from Saint Catherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai has determined that the panel, showing numerous scenes from the life of the Virgin and other theologically significant iconic representations, contains an image at the centre very similar to that in Hagia Sophia. The image is labelled in Greek merely , but in the Georgian language the inscription reveals the image is labelled \"of the semi-dome of Hagia Sophia\". This image is therefore the oldest depiction of the apse mosaic known and demonstrates that the apse mosaic's appearance was similar to the present day mosaic in the late 11th or early 12th centuries, when the hexaptych was inscribed in Georgian by a Georgian monk, which rules out a 14th-century date for the mosaic.\nThe portraits of the archangels Gabriel and Michael (largely destroyed) in the bema of the arch also date from the 9th century. The mosaics are set against the original golden background of the 6th century. These mosaics were believed to be a reconstruction of the mosaics of the 6th century that were previously destroyed during the iconoclastic era by the Byzantines of that time, as represented in the inaugural sermon by the patriarch Photios. However, no record of figurative decoration of Hagia Sophia exists before this time.\nEmperor Alexander mosaic.\nThe Emperor Alexander mosaic is not easy to find for the first-time visitor, located on the second floor in a dark corner of the ceiling. It depicts the emperor Alexander in full regalia, holding a scroll in his right hand and a globus cruciger in his left. A drawing by the Fossatis showed that the mosaic survived until 1849 and that Thomas Whittemore, founder of the Byzantine Institute of America who was granted permission to preserve the mosaics, assumed that it had been destroyed in the earthquake of 1894. Eight years after his death, the mosaic was discovered in 1958 largely through the researches of Robert Van Nice. Unlike most of the other mosaics in Hagia Sophia, which had been covered over by ordinary plaster, the Alexander mosaic was simply painted over and reflected the surrounding mosaic patterns and thus was well hidden. It was duly cleaned by the Byzantine Institute's successor to Whittemore, Paul A. Underwood.\nEmpress Zoe mosaic.\nThe Empress Zoe mosaic on the eastern wall of the southern gallery dates from the 11th century. Christ Pantocrator, clad in the dark blue robe (as is the custom in Byzantine art), is seated in the middle against a golden background, giving his blessing with the right hand and holding the Bible in his left hand. On either side of his head are the \"nomina sacra\" \"IC\" and \"XC\", meaning \"I\u0113sous Christos\". He is flanked by Constantine IX Monomachus and Empress Zoe, both in ceremonial costumes. He is offering a purse, as a symbol of donation, he made to the church, while she is holding a scroll, symbol of the donations she made. The previous heads have been scraped off and replaced by the three present ones. Perhaps the earlier mosaic showed her first husband Romanus III Argyrus or her second husband Michael IV. Another theory is that this mosaic was made for an earlier emperor and empress, with their heads changed into the present ones.\nComnenus mosaic.\nThe Comnenus mosaic, also located on the eastern wall of the southern gallery, dates from 1122. The Virgin Mary is standing in the middle, depicted, as usual in Byzantine art, in a dark blue gown. She holds the Christ Child on her lap. He gives his blessing with his right hand while holding a scroll in his left hand. On her right side stands emperor John II Comnenus, represented in a garb embellished with precious stones. He holds a purse, symbol of an imperial donation to the church. His wife, the empress Irene of Hungary stands on the left side of the Virgin, wearing ceremonial garments and holding an eiletarion scroll. Their eldest son Alexius Comnenus is represented on an adjacent pilaster. He is shown as a beardless youth, probably representing his appearance at his coronation aged seventeen. In this panel, one can already see a difference with the Empress Zoe mosaic that is one century older. There is a more realistic expression in the portraits instead of an idealized representation. The Empress Irene, daughter of Ladislaus I of Hungary, is shown with plaited blond hair, rosy cheeks, and grey eyes, revealing her Hungarian descent. The emperor is depicted in a dignified manner.\nDe\u00ebsis mosaic.\nThe De\u00ebsis mosaic (, \"Entreaty\") probably dates from 1261. It was commissioned to mark the end of 57 years of Latin Catholic use and the return to the Eastern Orthodox faith. It is the third panel situated in the imperial enclosure of the upper galleries. It is widely considered the finest in Hagia Sophia, because of the softness of the features, the humane expressions and the tones of the mosaic. The style is close to that of the Italian painters of the late 13th or early 14th century, such as Duccio. In this panel the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist are imploring the intercession of Christ Pantocrator for humanity on Judgment Day. The bottom part of this mosaic is badly deteriorated. This mosaic is considered as the beginning of a renaissance in Byzantine pictorial art.\nNorthern tympanum mosaics.\nThe northern tympanum mosaics feature various saints. They have been able to survive due to their high and inaccessible location. They depict Patriarchs of Constantinople John Chrysostom and Ignatios of Constantinople standing, clothed in white robes with crosses, and holding richly jewelled Bibles. The figures of each patriarch, revered as saints, are identifiable by labels in Greek. The other mosaics in the other tympana have not survived probably due to the frequent earthquakes, as opposed to any deliberate destruction by the Ottoman conquerors.\nDome mosaic.\nThe dome was decorated with four non-identical figures of the six-winged angels which protect the Throne of God; it is uncertain whether they are seraphim or cherubim. The mosaics survive in the eastern part of the dome, but since the ones on the western side were damaged during the Byzantine period, they have been renewed as frescoes. During the Ottoman period each face was covered with metallic lids in the shape of stars, but these were removed to reveal the faces during renovations in 2009.\nWorks influenced by the Hagia Sophia.\nMany buildings have been modeled on the Hagia Sophia's core structure of a large central dome resting on pendentives and buttressed by two semi-domes.\nByzantine churches influenced by the Hagia Sophia include the Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki, and the Hagia Irene. The latter was remodeled to have a dome similar to the Hagia Sophia's during the reign of Justinian. Neo-Byzantine churches modeled on the Hagia Sophia include the Kronstadt Naval Cathedral, Holy Trinity Cathedral, Sibiu and Poti Cathedral. Each closely replicates the internal geometry of the Hagia Sophia. The layout of the Kronstadt Naval Cathedral is nearly identical to the Hagia Sophia in size and geometry. Its marble revetment also mimics the style of the Hagia Sophia. The Catedral Metropolitana Ortodoxa in S\u00e3o Paulo and the \u00c9glise du Saint-Esprit (Paris) both replace the two large tympanums beneath the main dome with two shallow semi-domes. Several churches combine elements of the Hagia Sophia with a Latin cross plan. For instance, the transept of the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis (St. Louis) is formed by two semi-domes surrounding the main dome. The church's column capitals and mosaics also emulate the style of the Hagia Sophia. Other examples include the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Sofia, St Sophia's Cathedral, London, Saint Clement Catholic Church, Chicago, and the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.\nSeveral mosques commissioned by the Ottoman dynasty have plans based on the Hagia Sophia, including the S\u00fcleymaniye Mosque and the Bayezid II Mosque.\nSynagogues based on the Hagia Sophia include the Congregation Emanu-El (San Francisco), Great Synagogue of Florence, and Hurva Synagogue.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\n\"See also the thematically organised full bibliography in Stroth (2021), pp.\u00a0137\u2013183.\"\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\n Articles \n Mosaics "}, "descending_order": ["42764"], "permutation_1": ["42764"], "permutation_2": ["42764"], "permutation_3": ["42764"]}
{"id": "nq_-4749096275428462645", "docs_added": {"4069893": "Stephanie Mills (All in the Family)\nStephanie Mills is a character from the 1970s American television situation comedy \"All in the Family\" and the follow-up series \"Archie Bunker's Place\". She was portrayed by child actress Danielle Brisebois, who joined \"All in the Family\" in 1978. Brisebois continued in the role until \"Archie Bunker's Place\" ended its run in 1983.\nCharacter background.\nStephanie was introduced in the \"All in the Family's\" ninth-season premiere as the 9-year-old niece of Archie and Edith Bunker (although she was actually the daughter of Edith's step-cousin). Stephanie was abandoned at the doorstep of the Bunkers' home by her father Floyd Mills, a chronic alcoholic. Floyd was Edith's step-cousin from her aunt's second marriage. Stephanie's mother \u2014 Floyd's wife, Marilyn \u2014 had died some time earlier in a car accident.\nEdith is more than delighted to take in Stephanie, but Archie is decidedly less so, especially since he was finally looking forward to some peace and quiet after his daughter and son-in-law, Gloria and Mike \"Meathead\" Stivic, moved to California. Eventually, Stephanie wins over Archie, and he grows to love her as his own daughter. She also appeared to hold liberal views in contrast with the conservative Archie. Shortly after moving in with the Bunkers, Stephanie reveals herself to be Jewish, something that at first upsets Archie. While he learns to live with Stephanie's religious beliefs, Archie was not stopped from making his usual bigoted remarks against Judaism from time to time.\nStephanie proved to be very talented as a singer and dancer, showcasing her talents on several episodes of \"All in the Family\" and \"Archie Bunker's Place\". She once applied to a fine arts school (despite Archie's decidedly reluctant support), but she was turned down because of her less-than-stellar grades.\nOn several occasions, Stephanie's relatives tried to take Stephanie away from the Bunkers. Not long after Edith died, Stephanie's wealthy grandmother Estelle Harris (portrayed by Celeste Holm) sued Archie for custody, citing his bigoted attitudes and blue-collar background. A judge sides with Archie, but grants Estelle liberal visitation rights. Stephanie's father Floyd (Ben Slack) also re-appears on occasion, asking to take his daughter back (in one instance, extorting money from Archie and Edith in exchange for allowing them to keep Stephanie); however, the Bunkers manage to foil him each time.\nStephanie first attended an unnamed elementary school and later Ditmars Junior High School. Her best friend (and sometimes rival) was classmate Amy Bloom (played by Seven Anne MacDonald).\nIn the latter years of \"Archie Bunker's Place\", Stephanie would be one of two teenaged girls living under Archie's roof, the other being Archie's 18-year-old niece Barbara Lee \"Billie\" Bunker (portrayed by Denise Miller). Stephanie would also make fewer appearances during the final two seasons of the series.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "6390027": "Stephanie Forrester (The Bold and the Beautiful)\nFictional character from The Bold and the Beautiful\nStephanie Douglas Forrester (n\u00e9e Douglas) is a fictional character from \"The Bold and the Beautiful\", an American soap opera on the CBS network. Stephanie is known as a strong woman who acts decisively and sometimes also controversially, to protect her children and her marriage to the famed fashion designer Eric Forrester. The determination to overprotect her children stems as a result the abuse Stephanie suffered as a child at the hands of her father John Douglas. Stephanie had a long-standing rivalry with Brooke Logan, who at first was a serious competitor for Eric's love, and later was involved with her two sons Ridge and Thorne. She had also rivalries with other women that were competitors for Eric's love, such as Margo Lynley, Beth Logan, Sheila Carter, Sally Spectra, Maggie Forrester, Lauren Fenmore, Jackie Marone and Donna Logan, but with some of them, she also developed friendships (like Brooke, Sally, Maggie, Lauren and Jackie). She had also rivalries with Deveney Dixon, who at first was pretend to be her daughter Angela, and later was involved with her son Thorne, and Morgan DeWitt who was involved with her son Ridge, and even got pregnant from him when both was young, but Stephanie took her to have an abortion at the clinic. Stephanie had also a good friendship with her daughter-in-law Taylor Hayes, and she always preferred her over her second daughter-in-law Brooke. Out of respect for friendship with Stephanie, Taylor was involved with Eric only after her death. She has been portrayed since the show's inception in 1987 by Emmy-winning actress Susan Flannery. Stephanie's lung cancer diagnosis played a central role in the series, and the character died of the disease on November 26, 2012.\nCasting and creation.\nThe role of Stephanie was created for actress Susan Seaforth Hayes (who played Julie Olson Williams on \"Days of Our Lives\") but Hayes turned it down. The producers then contacted Hayes' former \"Days\" co-star, Susan Flannery, and she eventually won the role. Hayes did, however, appear in 2003 and 2005 as Joanna Manning, the mother of Lauren Fenmore. Flannery initially did not want the role and the producers had to ask her three times to come in and talk about the role. Jane Elliot had been contacted by producer Gail Kobe for the Stephanie role, but lost to Flannery at the behest of creator William J. Bell. Stephanie was played from the show's beginning in 1987 by Flannery, who also directed some of the show's episodes. In September 2007, Flannery asked for a medical leave, as she had fibromyalgia.\nFlannery, along with John McCook as Eric Forrester, Katherine Kelly Lang as Brooke Logan and Ronn Moss as Ridge Forrester were referred to as the \"core four\", having been in the series from the start. However, on August 11, 2012, it was announced that after twenty-five years, Moss would be leaving the show, breaking up the core four, and leaving Flannery, Kelly Lang, and McCook as the sole remaining characters from the show's inception. On October 10, 2012, it was announced that Flannery had decided to quit the show also, after twenty-five years. During a 2012 interview with \"TV Guide\", Bradley Bell announced that Stephanie's character would die of cancer. Bell said: \"It is huge. And amazing. I knew this day was coming but I've been in denial about it. I've been loving and treasuring every one of these last few days we have with Susan.\" Flannery signed a contract that would allow the show to build a storyline surrounding her exit. Stephanie departed on November 26, 2012, and reappeared in video recordings on December 7 and 10, 2012.\nOn February 9, 2018, Flannery returned for a cameo as the voice of Stephanie on Brooke and Ridge's wedding day.\nOn December 15, 2023, Flannery returned for a cameo as a ghost appearing by her husband, Eric Forrester\u2019s hospital bed\nCharacter development.\nBradley Bell said that Stephanie: \"has always been a woman of great strength and character.\" She is known for her long-running feud with Brooke Logan (Katherine Kelly Lang). However, in recent times, it has calmed down and they are extremely close. Bell has stated that: \"Stephanie and Brooke are the true supercouple of B&B.\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"I wanted to create the biggest mountain possible for Stephanie to overcome. It's the weightiest, most intimate and difficult thing she has ever had to wrestle with and to have to share it with Brooke is torture. This is a story about a highly functioning woman that will delve deeply into issues of self-worth and denial. But it's not going to be morbid or depressing. Stephanie is determined to party right into her grave. It'll be a hell of a lot of fun to watch.\"\n\u2014executive producer and head writer Brad Bell, during an interview with \"TV Guide\" on the storyline\nDuring a confrontation with Brooke, Stephanie collapsed. On September 24, 2010, after being taken to the hospital, Stephanie was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. Brooke became the only person to know this secret; instead of \"rejoicing\" that her nemesis and arch-rival may soon be out of the picture, she became a confidant and motivator to Stephanie. At first, Stephanie refused treatment. Head writer and executive producer of \"The Bold and the Beautiful\", Brad Bell, said that this was because she felt that her family and the family company (Forrester Creations) no longer needed her. Bell also said that \"She'd rather die than be the center of attention.\" When asked about the development of the storyline, Flannery said that the advice she offered head writer Brad Bell\u2014having survived through colon cancer herself\u2014was for Stephanie to keep her sense of humor while diagnosed with Cancer. Stephanie then created a goofy bucket list; Bell said that this was all a part of her denial, and wanting to focus on something else other than her cancer.\nIn a second-level to the story, Stephanie meets a young woman, Dayzee Leigh (Kristolyn Lloyd) who gives her a new lease on life, and convinces her to undergo treatment. Dayzee lived on skid row in Los Angeles; Stephanie wanted to survive her cancer to advocate for poverty after learning more about it. Stephanie has since overcome her cancer. Prior, there was much speculation that Flannery was leaving the show, and that Stephanie would be killed off. During an interview with \"TV Guide\" in February 2011, she explained:\nThe storyline not only raised awareness about cancer, it also raised awareness about the Union Rescue Mission through Dayzee's character. In 2012, she was diagnosed again, and according to Bell: \"She receives the diagnosis that the cancer has spread and that there is no chance for survival.\" Stephanie decided to throw a party which would be the last time she sees her loved ones.\nStorylines.\nStephanie Douglas Forrester is the matriarch of the Forrester fashion dynasty and the mother of five children: Ridge, Thorne, Kristen, Felicia, and Angela. Eventually her husband Eric Forrester became interested in other women such as Margo Lynley and his former college love, Beth Logan. Eric dated Beth years earlier in college but left her when Stephanie became pregnant. Eric found Beth catering a party one night and reconnected with her. Stephanie decided against an affair with gigolo Clarke Garrison, whom Stephanie had hired to date Kristen. Stephanie was also enraged when Ridge began romancing Beth's daughter Brooke. Stephanie had mysterious absences. It was revealed she was visiting a comatose brain damaged girl; It was Angela, the daughter Stephanie had, who she said died at birth. The couple grew closer over Angela. However, it was revealed that the doctor hired an actress to play Angela to get money from the Forresters; and the real Angela had in fact died. The fake Angela escaped. Stephanie also had to deal with her warring sons, Thorne and Ridge, who were both in love with Caroline Spencer, Thorne's wife.\nStephanie lost it when her other son, Thorne, got involved with Brooke. Stephanie terrorized Brooke at the Big Bear cabin with a fire poker before punching her and trying to strangle her. But Thorne proposed to Brooke, and Stephanie had a stroke. In the hospital, Stephanie again tried to choke Brooke. The stroke made Eric reevaluate his feelings for Stephanie, and he remarried Stephanie at her bedside. Brooke tried to make inroads with the wheelchair-using Stephanie by massaging Stephanie's feet. Brooke and Thorne's ex-wife, Macy Alexander, were battling over Thorne and got into a car accident, where Macy died in an explosion. Macy's mother, Sally, exposed Thorne's continuing involvement with Brooke at Macy's funeral, and Stephanie had a second stroke. Stephanie softened toward Brooke a bit when Brooke gave Stephanie a photo album documenting Stephanie's life.\nYears before, Stephanie had forced teenaged Morgan DeWitt to abort Ridge's baby. Morgan came back and befriended Ridge's wife, Taylor, in a scheme to again carry Ridge's child. Morgan faked a series of e-mails between Ridge and Taylor to make it seem like Taylor gave Ridge \"permission\" to impregnate Morgan. After Taylor found out and Morgan lost the baby, Morgan kidnapped Taylor's daughter, Steffy Forrester, and imprisoned Taylor. Morgan escaped after Ridge rescued Taylor and Steffy, but showed up as a clown for a Forrester kiddie party. Morgan fell into the pool and Stephanie left her to drown, but later Morgan tried to drown Stephanie in her bathtub. Stephanie survived, and later mended fences with her daughter, Kristen, after Kristen got involved with the HIV-positive Antonio Dominguez.\nMassimo Marone, Stephanie's childhood friend and first love, came back to romance Stephanie, who wasn't interested. But when Ridge lost blood in an accident, it turned out that Ridge and Eric's blood types didn't match, and Massimo was revealed as Ridge's father. Stephanie hid the truth from Eric and Ridge. Meanwhile, Brooke, who couldn't have Ridge, had an affair with Deacon Sharpe, her daughter's husband. Stephanie was outraged, but later, Stephanie tried to help Brooke turn over a new leaf and even helped deliver baby Hope at the Big Bear cabin with Bridget.\nStephanie and Massimo saved Amber after Sheila kidnapped Amber to make way for Sheila's daughter, Erica Lovejoy. But when Taylor died in an altercation with Sheila, Stephanie was devastated, and the repercussions included Ridge, who'd been told of his paternity by Massimo, considering a relationship with Bridget, which forced the issue of Ridge's paternity. Stephanie finally told Eric that Massimo was Ridge's father, and Eric walked out on her. Stephanie warned Jackie Marone to stay away from Eric, although Stephanie encouraged Jackie's son, Nick Marone, to be with Brooke, and arranged for Nick and Brooke to be stranded on an island together. After Sally and Stephanie, who had become friends, drowned their sorrows, a soused Sally gave Stephanie a sloppy haircut. For Christmas, Stephanie gave Sally a locket with both their pictures inside.\nStephanie and Brooke bonded briefly when Ridge was believed to be dead. Later, when Thorne defected to Spectra, Stephanie apologized for having always played favorites with Ridge. Stephanie worried when Ridge claimed he had seen Taylor, but Taylor was indeed alive, having been spirited away from the hospital by Prince Omar, who healed Taylor in his palace and held her prisoner. Stephanie paid off a doctor and faked a heart attack to manipulate Ridge into returning to Taylor. The ploy worked, but when Brooke uncovered it, the entire Forrester family turned their backs on Stephanie.\nStephanie was about to leave Los Angeles when she found papers in Eric's safe that said Stephanie was the true owner of Forrester Creations. When it came out that Eric had known about it for decades, Stephanie kneed Eric in the groin, fired him, and installed Thorne as president. Meanwhile, Bridget was hurt when Brooke moved on with Bridget's ex-husband, Nick. Stephanie responded by giving Brooke a gift-wrapped gun with which to shoot herself. Instead, Brooke fired at Stephanie, but missed. Stephanie was stunned when Eric remarried Brooke to keep her away from Nick. But Eric and Stephanie drew together and remarried for the sake of their daughter, Felicia, who had cancer. Felicia \"died,\" but Stephanie secretly forced an unconscious Felicia to have chemotherapy against Felicia's wishes, and the treatment was successful.\nThe low point of the Forrester-Logan feud was when Stephanie convinced Ridge to go for full custody of Ridge Jr and Hope Logan. Stephanie was convinced that Brooke would get in bed with a guy because he was available and Brooke was easy. So after following Brooke Logan to a bar she told a stranger, Andy, Brooke was lonely and needed company. When the stranger seemed hesitant, Stephanie let it be known that Brooke was a girl from the Valley and revealed Brooke kept a house key under the doormat. Within a week Brooke was raped when Andy used the house key. Ridge dropped the custody case. When Eric, Ridge, and Brooke found out Stephanie's role in Brooke's attack, Stephanie left town, to coincide with Susan Flannery's medical leave. Stephanie came back to ask for forgiveness and everyone soon learned about Brooke being raped and Stephanie's hand in it. In the end, Stephanie would be shot at the end of Forrester Creations Fashion show by Storm Logan, who had suppressed years of anger and resentment toward his father for abandoning his family decades earlier.\nAfter Eric had an affair with Donna Logan he divorced Stephanie and married Donna then forced Stephanie out of Forrester Creations. Stephanie became a partner at Jackie M Designs. Stephanie attended the reading of the will of her good friend Bill Spencer. Bill's daughter Karen Spencer delivered a note that offered his respect to Stephanie over the years and asked that she mentor Karen just as she did Karen's twin sister Caroline. Stephanie enacted her revenge on Eric and Donna via a webcast titled The Logan Chronicles at Spencer Publications by working with Bill Spencer, Jr. Bill eventually took over Forrester Creations obeying his father's final wishes to avenge Stephanie. Ridge's daughter Steffy regained control of Forrester Creations by nearly seducing him and split the ownership between Ridge, Eric, Stephanie, and Taylor. Stephanie felt compelled to leave Jackie M and return to Forrester. Eric let Stephanie stay at the Forrester mansion, where she encountered Donna's mother, Beth, who was suffering from the latter stages of Alzheimer's disease. Stephanie and Beth had an argument at the Forrester pool that resulted in Beth drowning after Stephanie walked away. Donna wanted Stephanie arrested, a conflict which ended Donna and Eric's marriage and sent Eric back to Stephanie. Stephen tried to avenge Beth by seducing Stephanie's sister Pam into going off her medication. Stephen put a gun in Pam's hand and pushed for Pam to shoot Stephanie, but Stephanie got the gun away from Pam and shot Stephen instead.\nStephanie fought for her granddaughter Steffy's marriage to Liam Cooper, who was revealed to be Bill Spencer, Jr.'s son, warning him to think carefully but to finally choose between Hope and Steffy. Eric was looking for a way to celebrate 50 years with Stephanie, so when Sally's old friend, Gladys Pope (Phyllis Diller), arrived as a gardener who could also perform marriages, Stephanie remarried Eric in an impromptu and very informal ceremony at the Forrester mansion. In October 2012, Doctor Lewis told Stephanie that her lung cancer has returned. Despite the desperate pleas of her family and friends, Stephanie refused to accept treatment; she decided instead that she would like to enjoy her final days. An Irish-themed party was thrown in her honor. She was last left under Brooke's care after saying good-bye to all her loved ones. On November 26, 2012, Stephanie died of cancer lakeside at Big Bear cabin after asking Brooke to sing her to sleep in her arms.\nReception.\nIn 2022, Charlie Mason from \"Soaps She Knows\" placed Stephanie first on his ranked list of \"The Bold and the Beautiful\u2019s Best of the Best Characters Ever\", commenting \"Never in the history of daytime television, much less the history of \"The Bold and the Beautiful\", has any character stung quite as hard as three-time Emmy winner Susan Flannery\u2019s queen bee. Eric can hang whomever\u2019s portrait he wants in the living room, but for our money, that space now and always shall belong to his first wife.\" In 2024, Mason from included Stephanie in his list of the worst mothers in American soap operas, calling her a \"domineering mama\" who would \"grizzly lie to son Thorne that she loves all her kids equally \u2014 even though we all know that Ridge was her favorite. Followed by Felicia, the blonde girl, Angela, Fake Angela and then, finally, Thorne.\" Mason also placed Stephanie sixth on his ranked list of \"Soaps' 40 Most Iconic Characters of All Time\", writing, \"Beware the queen bee's sting! From 1987\u20132012, Susan Flannery packed a punch \u2014 often literally \u2014 as the domineering matriarch of the fashion-forward Forrester family\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "7136665": "Stephanie (LazyTown)\nLazyTown character\nStephanie is a fictional character from the children's television show \"LazyTown\". She is an aspiring cheerleader and dancer who inspires the other citizens of the titular town to stay active. She has pink hair and as such is nicknamed 'Pinky' by the puppet character Trixie. She came to town to visit her uncle, Milford Meanswell, the mayor of LazyTown. Upon meeting the other children, she unsuccessfully attempted to get them to play along as opposed to staying at home playing video games and eating candy. This changed when Stephanie asked for the help of Sportacus. When he finally arrived, the whole town worked together to make LazyTown a more active place to live. Each episode of the show ends with Stephanie performing a song and dance routine to \"Bing Bang\", the show's ending theme.\nThe character\u2019s original Icelandic name is Solla Stir\u00f0a. In the Icelandic version of the TV series, her voice was dubbed in Icelandic by \u00d3l\u00f6f Krist\u00edn \u00deorsteinsd\u00f3ttir.\nThe role of Stephanie was performed by Julianna Rose Mauriello in seasons 1 and 2. In 2011, Julianna confirmed she would be leaving \"LazyTown\", as she had grown too old to play the role of Stephanie. She was replaced by Chloe Lang for seasons 3 and 4. Stephanie was also played by Kimberly Pena in \"LazyTown Live! The Pirate Adventure\", a stage production that toured throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland in 2009.\nDescription.\nStephanie was depicted as being an athletic, sweet, shy, sassy, caring, optimistic, and smart 8-year-old girl. Surprised by the inactivity of the residents of LazyTown, she cheerfully encourages them to participate in more active, energetic hobbies or pastimes such as sports, games, and much more when they are downhearted when the temptations of candy or video games overcome her prodding. Despite this, Stephanie is characterized by her optimism and self-confidence, which she proudly promotes and shares with her peers in encouragement against all odds or challenges, always victoriously triumphing over any obstacles or antagonists by the conclusion of an episode.\nStephanie's attempts are often nearly thwarted by Robbie Rotten, but his plans are never foolproof and always end with Stephanie winning.\nDevelopment.\nStephanie was originally created by Magn\u00fas Scheving for the stage play \"\u00c1fram Latib\u00e6r\" as \"Solla Stir\u00f0a\" (\"Solla Stiff\"), a girl with stiff joints who dreamt of becoming a dancer. Solla also appeared in the sequel to the stage play, \"Glanni Gl\u00e6pur \u00ed Latab\u00e6\". She was played by Selma Bj\u00f6rnsd\u00f3ttir and Linda \u00c1sgeirsd\u00f3ttir, respectively.\nMagn\u00fas Scheving reworked Solla into Stephanie for the \"LazyTown\" television show. Shelby Young was originally pegged to play Stephanie in 2003, and filmed one unaired pilot before departing due to union issues.\nUltimately, Julianna Rose Mauriello was chosen to play Stephanie, and played her for the first two seasons and \"LazyTown Extra\" before departing due to aging out of the role.\nChloe Lang picked up the role of Stephanie for seasons three, four, and LazyTown Motivational Campaigns. And as of 2024, she is the most recent actress to play Stephanie.\nAppearance.\nStephanie tends to wear a pink sleeveless dress with pale blush pink tights, pink socks, white and pink sneakers and a purple hairband. Her outfit, though, changes from time to time. For example, in \"LazyTown Goes Digital\" and \"Energy Book\", she wears pink leggings with her usual dress. She also wears tracksuits and other items of clothing, but they are nearly always pink. Her short bob hair is dyed pink. All her accessories are also pink. She also has long, curled eyelashes and slightly blushing cheeks. She is often seen carrying a pink purse with a heart on it, in which she carries her pink diary. As a pirate, she wore a pink bandanna with a white, fancy letter \"S\" on it for Stephanie, as well as a striped shirt, loose ripped pink leggings and pink socks. As a princess, she had longer curly hair in pigtails and wore a loose fuchsia princess dress.\nReception.\nChild development authors Lyn Mikel Brown and Sharon Lamb assert that Stephanie is interesting and makes pink a \"power color\" due to her quick thinking, computer gaming and sporty nature.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3376120": "Stephanie Plum\nFictional character\nStephanie Plum is a fictional character and the protagonist in a series of novels written by Janet Evanovich. She is a spunky combination of Nancy Drew and Dirty Harry, and\u2014although a female bounty hunter\u2014is the opposite of Domino Harvey. She is described by the author as \"incredibly average and yet heroic if necessary\".\nEvanovich claims the inspiration for Stephanie's character came after watching \"Midnight Run\" starring Charles Grodin and Robert De Niro, adding, \"If Mickey Spillane wrote \"Archie and Veronica\", Stephanie would be Betty.\" As the series has progressed, Stephanie has become more stable and responsible, and a better bounty hunter. \"But truthfully,\" Evanovich says, \"Stephanie has stayed the same more than she's changed.\"\nAs of 2021, Stephanie has appeared in 28 full-length novels, four holiday novellas, and a short story in a compilation of various authors' works. The first book, \"One for the Money\", was adapted as a 2012 film starring Katherine Heigl as Stephanie.\nCharacter history.\nEvanovich admits that Stephanie Plum's character is inspired by her own, in both history and \"similar embarrassing experiences\". Evanovich says, \"I wouldn't go so far as to say Stephanie is an autobiographical character, but I will admit to knowing where she lives.\"\nLike Evanovich, Stephanie originates from New Jersey, although Janet hails from South River and Stephanie was born in Trenton, New Jersey, the city where the series is set. Stephanie grew up in the Chambersburg neighborhood known to locals as \"the Burg\", and\u2014like Evanovich\u2014attended Douglass College, although Stephanie graduated \"without distinction\". The Burg is often portrayed in the series as a close-knit community, from which people rarely leave. Stephanie often finds former classmates and neighbors still living in the Burg, only a few streets away from their childhood home. After graduation, Stephanie married Dickie Orr, then promptly divorced him after discovering him in their new home, cheating on her with rival Joyce Barnhardt on their brand new dining room table.\nAt the beginning of the first book, \"One for the Money\", Stephanie has been laid off from her job as a lingerie buyer, she is being forced to sell off her appliances one by one in order to pay her rent, and her car is repossessed. This last straw prompts her to turn to her cousin Vinnie, owner of Vincent Plum Bail Bonds, for a job. She originally hopes to find a file clerk job at the Bail Bonds office but the position was taken, and the only position available is as an apprehension agent or bounty hunter. Vinnie refuses to hire her, but she manages to convince him to give her a shot by threatening to blackmail him. Stephanie's financial situation is still rather perilous, partially due to her poor financial skills, and she often finds herself seeking alternative ways to earn money in order to pay her bills.\nWhen the series begins, Stephanie Plum is single and living with her hamster, Rex, in an apartment building with predominantly elderly neighbors. She regularly visits her parents who live several miles away in the Burg for meals, \"family time,\" and pineapple upside-down cake. While Stephanie finds her family stressful, they often give her tips or connections which assist in her job.\nAppearance.\nStephanie Plum briefly describes herself in the first chapter of each book, typically mentioning her Italian-Hungarian descent, fast metabolism, with light skin, naturally curly brown hair (that she keeps shoulder-length), and blue eyes, and is tall, and roughly . Katherine Heigl of \"Grey's Anatomy\" landed the role for the feature film, One for the Money, released on January 27, 2012.\nFriends and colleagues.\nLula.\nLula was introduced as a minor character working as a hooker in the first book in the series, \"One For the Money\". In \"Two For the Dough\", she becomes Vinnie's filing clerk and Stephanie's occasional partner. Stephanie refers to her as a plus-sized black woman who attempts to shove a size 16 body into size 10 spandex. She reappears in later books after she begins to work as a file clerk at the bail bonds office. The other file clerk quit after Vinnie attempted to sexually harass her. Lula is a quick file clerk, and this frequently allows her the time to accompany Stephanie when she is going after bonded clients who have not shown up for their court appearance (known colloquially as Failure to Appear, or FTAs). By the 11th book, Lula has worked her way up into being a full-time bounty hunter and takes over for Stephanie after she quits working as a bounty hunter. Eventually Stephanie returns to the job, and Lula goes back to being the file clerk and Stephanie's sometime partner. By the 22nd book office filing is largely digital, so a file clerk is no longer needed, though she retains the job title. She appeared in the film adaptation of One for the Money, Lula is played by Sherri Shepherd.\nConnie Rosolli.\nConnie is Vinnie's receptionist/office manager. Her ties to the Mafia are hinted at but never fully explored. She is short and curvy with a hairy upper lip. Stephanie went to school with her little sister Tina. She is occasionally described as Betty Boop with a moustache. In the \"One for the Money\" film, she is played by Ana Reeder.\nMary Lou.\nMary Lou Stankovic is Stephanie's best friend. Married to Lenny Stankovic with children and a dog. Stephanie occasionally pays her a visit, usually to talk about Morelli. Maiden name is Mary Lou Molnar. In the film, Mary Lou is played by Annie Parisse and Lenny by Danny Mastrogiorgio.\nVinnie Plum.\nVinnie is the owner of Vincent Plum's Bail Bonds, where Stephanie is employed. He is also Stephanie's cousin, and he can barely tolerate his employees. He's rumored to have had romantic relationships with farm animals and is usually locked away in his office talking with his bookie; taking a snooze or having a conversation with his \"Johnson\". In the film he played by Patrick Fischler.\nFamily.\nGrandma Mazur.\nGrandma Mazur is Stephanie's maternal grandmother. In \"Two For The Dough\" her real name is revealed to be Edna. She has lived in Stephanie's parents' house ever since her husband died of heart failure. In \"Lean Mean Thirteen\" Grandma Mazur uses his real name: Harry. She is a woman unwilling to grow old, ever. Stephanie relates to Grandma Mazur more than any other member of her family. Beginning in \"Two For the Dough\", Grandma Mazur begins to tag along on cases with Stephanie, often pulling a gun out of her purse at inappropriate moments. Grandma Mazur also frequents the local funeral parlors because they are the social centers of the neighborhood. She sometimes peeks underneath the casket lid to see the dead body, causing hysteria in the parlor. Grandma Mazur is also the official owner of Big Blue, a '53 powder blue Buick that men love and women hate. The car is virtually indestructible, and Grandma Mazur got it from Stephanie's Grand Uncle Sandor. She moved in with Stephanie for a short period of time during \"Hot Six\". She also occasionally watches pay-per-view porn, on account that \"The Weather Channel doesn't have enough action\".\nIn several interviews, Evanovich says that Grandma Mazur is \"loosely based on my Aunt Lena and my Grandma Fanny,\" adding \"She's who I want to be when I grow up.\"\nIn the film she is played by Debbie Reynolds.\nValerie.\nValerie, Stephanie's older sister who moved to California after getting married, is mentioned briefly in the first six books as being the perfect daughter. For the first six books, Valerie lived in California. In \"Seven Up\", Valerie moves back in with her parents after a failed marriage, her two daughters\u2014Angie and Mary Alice\u2014in tow. Angie is much like Valerie was at her age, and Mary Alice has a vivid imagination more like her Aunt Stephanie. Valerie tries to become a lesbian in book seven but doesn't like it. Her husband is mentioned, but never appears in the books, as having run away with Angie's and Mary Alice's babysitter. In \"Hard Eight\", Valerie becomes bumbling lawyer Albert Kloughn's receptionist, and the two begin a relationship. In \"Visions of Sugar Plums\" Valerie becomes pregnant with Kloughn's daughter, whom they name Lisa. In \"Eleven on Top\", Valerie and Kloughn cancel their wedding after a stressful bout of wedding planning, but are eventually tricked into getting married in \"Plum Lovin'\" after Val gets pregnant with Kloughn's second child.\nStephanie's parents.\nHer mother, Helen (or Ellen) and father, Frank, have the type of relationship built to last. Her father gets served first in exchange for getting to pretend he controls the house, and to keep him from stabbing Grandma Mazur with his fork. Her mother gets to cook and rule the house. Her mother thinks Stephanie should have a relationship like hers but Steph is skittish about marrying again. Her mother also wants Stephanie to get a nice, safe job and reminds her regularly, \"They're hiring at the button factory!\" Her father seems less concerned about Stephanie and her job. Stephanie's father also drives a cab part-time to get away from Grandma Mazur and, later in the series, Valerie and Albert Kloughn when they move into Stephanie's parents' house. In the film they are played by Debra Monk and Louis Mustillo respectively.\nBob.\nBob is a big golden retriever a policeman acquaintance conned Stephanie into dog-sitting for in \"Hot Six\". The arrangement becomes permanent when the owner refuses to reclaim the dog, and Bob becomes a part of Stephanie's life. By \"Seven Up\", Bob has decided to move in with Joe Morelli, and he and Stephanie now have shared ownership of him. Bob has been described as a big, orange bottomless pit. He'll eat just about anything (including various items of clothing\u2014thongs, socks, shoes, etc.) and usually leaves big dog piles wherever he goes\u2026 which is why Stephanie likes to walk him on Joyce Barnhardt's lawn.\nRex.\nStephanie's roommate/hamster. Spends most of his time sleeping in his soup can or running on his wheel. Known to bite when scared or frightened.\nAfter 25 books, Rex is becoming notable as fiction's oldest hamster.\nRomantic relationships.\nJoseph Morelli.\nJoe Morelli is Stephanie's on-and-off boyfriend, a former bad boy turned vice cop. He is also known as Officer Hottie or the Italian Stallion. Her history with Morelli started with a \"choo choo\" incident when she was six. At the age of sixteen, Stephanie lost her virginity to Morelli in the Tasty Pastry shop behind the \u00e9clair stand, after which he never called (but left quite a few flattering messages in bathroom and stadium walls around town). Three years later she saw Morelli and ran over him with her father's Buick, breaking his leg. A few years later in \"One for the Money\" Morelli was suspected of murder and was her first FTA, and Stephanie chased him around town, much to his annoyance. Eventually, she turns him in (after locking him in a freezer truck with three bodies) and clears his name. In \"Three To Get Deadly\", she notices that he's stopped flirting and trying to get her into bed. After she asks him why, Morelli claims that \"A man would have to be a total masochist to be interested in you\", but by the end, he is interested in her again. Their relationship has since evolved into a romance that runs alternately passionately hot and ice cold.\nAt various times, both Stephanie and Morelli have seriously considered marriage, but never at the same time. They both know they are not ready for commitment, but often comment on the idea together and have lived together more than once. Their relationship runs cold as a result of many arguments\u2014usually over her job (she has been known to stress Morelli enough that he takes Rolaids & Maalox and tells her that he is quickly deteriorating because of her) and they eventually lead to her"}, "descending_order": ["4069893", "6390027", "7136665", "3376120"], "permutation_1": ["3376120", "6390027", "4069893", "7136665"], "permutation_2": ["6390027", "3376120", "7136665", "4069893"], "permutation_3": ["3376120", "7136665", "4069893", "6390027"]}
{"id": "nq_8057227130837067256", "docs_added": {"54985555": "Light It Up (Luke Bryan song)\n\"Light It Up\" is a song co-written and recorded by American country music singer Luke Bryan. It was released in August 2017 as the first single from his 2017 album \"What Makes You Country\". Bryan wrote this song with Brad Tursi of the band Old Dominion.\nContent.\n\"Rolling Stone\" Country described the song as \"a moody production, underpinned by a programmed beat and choppy piano chords, while icy synthesizer fills lifted from Eighties new wave ratchet up the tension.\" The song is an expression of unrequited love, with the narrator pleading for an unresponsive lover to \"light it up\", in reference to his cellular phone.\nBryan wrote the song with Brad Tursi of the band Old Dominion, while Jeff Stevens and his son Jody produced it.\nMusic video.\nA video directed by Michael Monaco was released on October 26, 2017. It features Jimmy Butler in the lead role, in anticipation of a text as described in the lyrics from his girlfriend played by well known, international, Nashville based model LeeAnna Burton.\nChart performance.\nFor the charts dated September 9, 2017, \"Light It Up\" debuted at No.\u00a020 on Country Airplay and No.\u00a021 on Hot Country Songs. It sold 18,000 downloads in under two days and debuted at No. 3 on the Country Digital Song Sales chart. The following week it rose to No. 2 on Country Digital Song Sales with 22,000 copies sold on a full week of sales. It also debuted at number 76 on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart for the week of September 16, 2017. The song has sold 164,000 copies in the United States as of January 2018. On March 5, 2019, the single was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales of over a million digital copies in the United States.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "45190518": "Light Me Up (Hunter Hayes song)\n\"Light Me Up\" is a song written and recorded by American country music artist Hunter Hayes. Co-written by busbee and Shane McAnally, it was originally recorded for Hayes's self-titled debut studio album (2011) but was only included on the 2013 \"Encore\" edition re-issue. The song was re-recorded in 2015, and was released to the UK and Oceania on March 13, 2015. as the lead single for Hayes's international compilation album, \"I Want Crazy\" (2015).\nComposition.\n\"Light Me Up\" was written by Hayes with pop songwriter busbee and country music singer Shane McAnally as an upbeat country pop song about the excitement of love. Beginning with a drum loop and B-3, its instrumentation later incorporates guitar, banjo, and bouzouki. Bob Paxman at \"Nash Country Weekly\" described the chorus, which features firework and sunshine imagery, as \"uplifting.\"\nThe UK single version downplays the country elements of the original for a more pop-oriented sound. Drawing influences from electropop and dance-pop, the remix features a more heavily processed vocal and synthesized backbeat.\nBackground and release.\nConceived during the writing sessions for Hayes's self-titled debut studio album, \"Light Me Up\" was originally recorded sometime in 2011 but was ultimately not included on the original release of the album due to not fitting the tone of the album at the time. In 2012, the song was re-recorded and offered to fans for free through Hayes' official Facebook page as part of a partnership with Country Financial. After the success of \"Wanted\" and the inspiration he received during his Most Wanted Tour, Hayes began working on new material. It was mutually decided by Hayes and his label in late 2012 that it \"[wasn't] necessarily the right time... to make a new record,\" so the \"Encore\" edition of the album was developed as an alternative to make the newly-written songs and a handful of re-recorded tracks (including a new version of \"Light Me Up\") available to the fans. In 2015, the song was partially re-recorded for a fourth time and given a pop mix for an exclusive UK single release.\nCritical reception.\n\"Light Me Up\" was mostly well received by critics in review for its parent album. Marc Engel of Fox News praised the mainstream appeal of the song, noting that \"with chiming guitars plus a sing-a-long chorus it\u2019s easy to understand why \u201cLight Me Up\u201d has become a fan favorite.\" Matt Bjorke at \"Roughstock\" wrote that the song \"feel[s] like [a] potential hit\" and \"gets the listener in a good mood,\" while complimenting Hayes's use of the song as a concert opener. Robert Silva at Dotdash Meredith was more critical of the song's repetitive lyrics and the overall sameness of the new tracks on \"Encore\".\nCommercial performance.\nUpon the release of \"Hunter Hayes (Encore)\", \"Light Me Up\" sold over 13,000 units. This prompted a number 50 debut on the \"Billboard\" Country Digital Songs (the digital sales component of Hot Country Songs).\nMusic video.\nA lyric video for the UK version of the song premiered on 22 January 2015.\nThe official music video premiered on 9 February 2015 exclusively through \"Digital Spy\". It features Hayes playing the guitar, keyboard, and drums to the song, and \"letting his inner rock star out.\"\nPersonnel.\nCredits adapted from the \"Hunter Hayes (Encore)\" album liner.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4562542": "I Saw the Light (Hank Williams song)\n\"I Saw the Light\" is a country gospel song written by Hank Williams. Williams was inspired to write the song while returning from a concert by a remark his mother made while they were arriving in Montgomery, Alabama. He recorded the song during his first session for MGM Records, and released in September 1948. Williams' version did not enjoy major success during its initial release, but eventually it became one of his most popular songs and the closing number for his live shows. It was soon covered by other acts, and has become a country gospel standard and often a classic for summer camps.\nIn September 1946, Hank Williams auditioned for Nashville's Grand Ole Opry but was rejected. After the failure of his audition, Williams and his wife Audrey tried to interest the recently formed music publishing firm Acuff-Rose Music. Williams and his wife approached Fred Rose, who signed him to a six-song contract, and leveraged a deal with Sterling Records. In December 1946, Williams had his first recording session. The songs \"Never Again (Will I Knock on Your Door)\" and \"Honky Tonkin'\" became successful, and earned Williams the attention of MGM Records. His first MGM session took place on April 21, 1947. The first song he recorded was \"Move It on Over\". The second was \"I Saw the Light\".\nComposition.\nWilliams was inspired to write the song in January 1947 while returning from a show in Fort Deposit, Alabama. His mother, Lilly, drove him and the band back to Montgomery that night. As she was approaching the city, she spotted the lights of Dannelly Field Airport. Williams, who slept inebriated in the backseat of the car, was roused by his mother, who told him \"I just saw the light\", announcing to him that they were close to Montgomery. He wrote the first draft on January 26, 1947. The lyrics and the melody by Williams closely resembled Albert E. Brumley's \"He Set Me Free\", published in 1939 and released in March 1941 by the Chuck Wagon Gang. Biblical citations were used, including the Gospels of Matthew and John, as well as excerpts from the First Epistle to the Thessalonians and Book of Revelation. As Williams' biographer Colin Escott astutely observes, while the melody and even some of the lyrics bear a passing resemblance to the earlier Brumley tune, \"'I Saw the Light' wasn't just 'He Set Me Free' with new lyrics, though. It was the prayer of the backslider, who lives in hope of redemption.\"\nRecording and release.\nWilliams recorded the song during his first session with MGM Records on April 21, 1947. The band was composed by part of Red Foley's backing, including Zeke and Zeb Turner (guitar), Brownie Raynolds (bass), Tommy Jackson (fiddle) and Smokey Lohman (steel guitar). Williams also recorded a version of the song during a later session with his wife, which he sent to Rose on August 19. In the accompanying letter, he discouraged the producer from issuing the recording. Audrey, like many people who sing badly, seemed to have no sense of how bad she was as a vocalist. Country-music biographer Colin Escott wrote, \"Her duets with Hank were like an extension of their married life in that she fought him for dominance on every note.\" \nWhile the release of Williams' recording was held, the first issued version was by Clyde Grubb, who recorded it on August 13, 1947. Grubb's version was released by RCA Records (RCA 20-2485) in October 1947 with \"When God\" on the flipside, backed by his Tennessee Valley Boys. Williams' version was released in September 1948, while it was later copyrighted on November 16. It was backed with \"Six More Miles (To the Graveyard)\" and issued on MGM Records (MGM 10271). \"Boys' Life\" favored the record, stating: \"It's a typical Hank Williams lament, which you western and hillbilly fans will eat up\". Hank Williams first appeared on the \"Kate Smith Evening Hour\" on March 26, 1952, and joined in with the rest of the cast singing \"I Saw The Light.\"\nLegacy.\n\"I Saw the Light\" was not a commercial success upon its release but has since become his most recognized hymn and one of his most popular songs. The song became a standard for both the country music and gospel music genres, and has been covered by several artists of the two genres and beyond. \"Allmusic\" called it one of Williams' \"finest songs concerning his strong religious conviction\". It was ranked first in Country Music Television's \"20 Greatest Songs of Faith\" in 2005. The 2015 Williams biopic starring Tom Hiddleston was named after the song.\nBob Dylan has also referred to it as a source for religious significance.\nThe University of Mississippi's 'Pride of the South' marching band performs a marching band arrangement of the song as part of their pregame repertoire. As many as 60,000 fans can be heard clapping along to the beat of the music.\nThe song is referenced in George Jones' 1985 single, \"Who's Gonna Fill Their Shoes\", using the line, \"You can tell it when he sang \"I Saw The Light\"\nFootnotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "50059008": "Lights Come On\n\"Lights Come On\" is a song written by Jimmy Robbins, Jordan Schmidt, Brad Warren, Brett Warren, and Florida Georgia Line members Tyler Hubbard and Brian Kelley and recorded by American country music artist Jason Aldean. It was released on April 1, 2016, as the lead single from Aldean's 2016 album \"They Don't Know\".\nCritical reception.\nThe single has mostly received negative reviews from critics. Kevin John Coyne of \"Country Universe\" was critical of the concert-orientated theme of the song, writing that \"\u201cLights Come On\u201d seems written for the sole purpose of kicking off a Jason Aldean concert. It's all very meta, and easy to picture the audience saying, \u201cHey! He\u2019s singing about us! Cool!\u201d\" and \"But that\u2019s every Jason Aldean song these days, isn\u2019t it? Soulless, monotonous, assembly line records that are interchangeable with one another and forgotten as soon as the song ends.\" He rated the song a D grade.\nAn uncredited \"Taste of Country\" review was more favorable, praising the country rock instrumentation and compared the song favorably to that of Aldean's earlier hits \"My Kinda Party\" and \"She's Country.\"\nCommercial reception.\nThe song debuted at No. 29 on the Country Airplay chart, his third highest debut on the chart. The airplay also placed the song at No. 43 on the Hot Country Songs. The following week when the song was released for sale, Jason Aldean performed the song at the 2016 ACM Awards where he won Entertainer of the Year. The song sold 70,000 copies in its first sales week, which made it the No. 1 on the Country Digital Songs chart, and its sales pushed it up to No. 7 on Hot Country Songs. The song has sold 408,000 copies in the US as of September 2016.\nMusic video.\nThe music video was directed by Shaun Silva and premiered in June 2016. It is 5 minutes long, and combines tour footage of Aldean's 2016 Six String Circus Tour, with an in-depth interview with Aldean, in which he states what touring means to him.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18137164": "Every Light in the House\n\"Every Light in the House\" is a song written by Kent Robbins and recorded by American country music artist Trace Adkins. It was released in August 1996 as the second single from his debut album \"Dreamin' Out Loud\". It was his first Top 5 single on the Hot Country Singles & Tracks (now Hot Country Songs) chart, where it peaked at #3.\nContent.\nThe song is a mid-tempo ballad mostly accompanied by piano and fiddle in which the narrator has recently split from his wife. He turns every light on in the house and keeps them on for her in case she wants to return to his side.\nCritical reception.\nDeborah Evans Price, of \"Billboard\" magazine reviewed the song favorably, saying that \"Adkins' deep, powerful voice does justice to the yearning in this lyric about a man who has left the lights on waiting for his lover to return.\" Rick Cohoon of AllMusic gave the song a favorable review, calling it a \"creative approach to the age-old 'goodbye, I miss you' song.\" He commended Adkins' voice for \"communicat[ing] pain so well\" despite the singer's stature, although he considered some of the similes forced (e.g. \"the backyard's bright as the crack of dawn\").\nMusic video.\nThe music video for this song is in black-and-white, and begins with Adkins sitting on the porch of a house with his dog after his woman left home. He then gets off the porch, and he and some workers get to work on a power generator. Scenes also feature him singing inside of the same house which also featured an alternative sub chorus \"Drinkin' Bush Light til the crack of dawn\" whilst a slew of empty Busch cans can be seen next to the generator, ultimately this scene and lyric was scrubbed and the original was used.\nChart performance.\n\"Every Light in the House\" debuted at number 72 on the Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart dated August 24, 1996. It charted for 21 weeks on that chart, and peaked at number 3 on the country chart dated December 14, 1996, giving Adkins the first Top 5 single of his career. In addition, it peaked at number 78 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, also marking his first entry on that chart.\nParodies.\nOn his 1998 album \"Did I Shave My Back for This?\", country parodist Cledus T. Judd parodied the song as \"Every Light in the House Is Blown\". Trace Adkins is featured in the music video when the song begins and after it ends.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "659166": "Love Shine a Light\n1997 song by Katrina and the Waves\n\"Love Shine a Light\" is a song by British rock band Katrina and the Waves written by Kimberley Rew. It represented the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest 1997 held in Dublin, resulting in the country's fifth and most recent win at the contest. It was released as a single on 28 April 1997 and later included on the band's ninth studio album, \"Walk on Water\" (1997), serving as the album's lead single.\nThe song was the group's biggest success since their 1985 hit \"Walking on Sunshine\". It peaked within the top five of the charts in Austria, Ireland, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. In 2022, it was named the best UK Eurovision entry by \"The Daily Telegraph\".\nBackground.\nComposition and Eurovision selection.\nThe song was composed by the group's guitarist and regular songwriter Kimberley Rew following a request from the brother of the group's drummer Alex Cooper for an anthem for Samaritans in recognition of the thirtieth anniversary of the Swindon branch of that organization \u2013 Cooper's brother being a member of that branch. In a 1997 interview Katrina and the Waves lead vocalist Katrina Leskanich indicated that it was members of the Samaritans who opined that \"Love Shine a Light\" \"was the type of song which would win the Eurovision Song Contest and [so] at the last minute, [Katrina and the Waves] submitted the song with our \u00a3250 [entrance fee]\" for consideration to vie in the \"Great British Song Contest\", the organised by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to select its song and performer for the 42nd edition of the Eurovision Song Contest.\nIt was also reported that Carmina Cooper, the manager of Katrina and the Waves and Alex Cooper's wife, met up with BBC Radio Cambridgeshire's breakfast presenter (and Head of Music) Dan Chisholm to play the track for him: Chisholm's response was to urge that the number be entered in the \"Great British Song Contest\", and after affording \"Love Shine a Light\" its radio airplay debut, Chisholm declared it \"the song which will win this year's Eurovision Song Contest\".\nIn a 2010 interview Leskanich would state that \"Great British Song Contest\" executive producer Jonathan King had in fact initiated Katrina and the Waves involvement in the \"Great British Contest\" as he had contacted Leskanich to ask if her group had a song which might be a suitable contender to vie for the UK entrant at Eurovision 1997. Leskanich would paraphrase her response to King as being: \"Yes, we have this song called 'Love Shine A Light' which we\u2019ve never put on a record because it's too cheesy, too ABBA, too Eurovision, so it would be perfect for you.\"\nLeskanich stated in 2010 that the original plan was that an act other than Katrina and the Waves would be found to perform \"Love Shine a Light\" for Eurovision consideration but that Warner Bros. Records executive Steve Allan \u2013 who Leskanich describes as \"a big Eurovision fan...it\u2019s always been his dream to win it\" \u2013 said: \"Look, you guys have a name, we can still do business in Europe. All you need is a hit song, and we want you to do it. And if you do do it we\u2019ll give you a record deal\"; adds Leskanich: \"So we couldn\u2019t say no.\" Leskanich would also state that Kimberley Rew had said of Katrina and the Waves pursuing the Eurovision title with his composition: \"I\u2019m not having anything to do with it\". \nThe 9 March 1997 broadcast of the \"Great British Song Contest\" final featured a taped interview with Rew, in which he described Eurovision as \"one of those great institutions of life\"; he also accompanied Leskanich onstage to be congratulated for \"Love Shine a Light\"'s being announced as the British entrant for Eurovision 1997. However, he didn't perform on stage for this appearance or the Eurovision final held on 3 May 1997.\nIn a 2020 interview, Leskanich revealed that she was asked if she could \"try and talk like an English person\" as some people were not happy with the UK being represented at the Eurovision Song Contest by an American artist.\nOne of eight songs aired in the \"Great British Song Contest\" semi-final broadcast on BBC Radio 2 on 7 February 1997, \"Love Shine a Light\" was one of four songs advanced by televote to the \"Great British Song Contest\" final. The \"Great British Song Contest\" final was a live performance show broadcast by BBC TV on 9 March 1997, at the conclusion of which \"Love Shine a Light\" was announced as the 1997 UK entrant in Eurovision, the song having received 69,834 televotes \u2013 11,138 more than the second-place finisher.\nEurovision performance.\nOn 3 May 1997, the Eurovision Song Contest was held at the Point Theatre in Dublin hosted by (RT\u00c9), and broadcast live throughout the continent. Katrina and the Waves performed \"Love Shine a Light\" twenty-fourth in a field of twenty-five songs being preceded by the Croatian entry \"Probudi me\" and followed with the Icelandic entry \"Minn hinsti dans\".\nLeskanich would later state she'd supplied her own outfit for her performance on Eurovision: \"the boys [ie. the Waves] were getting beautiful suits made by William Hunt and my outfit was an afterthought. They came [in] with five different designers and every single outfit made me look like a clown or a chair cover...I ended up wearing this green blouse I\u2019d been wearing all week that I\u2019d bought in the Cambridge market for \u00a33 [with] a [dark velvet] jacket that my sister had sent me, which was a Donna Karan second and it only had one shoulder pad. So while I was doing the song, I had to remember to lift my left shoulder slightly to even it out with the other\". She also wore black leather trousers and black high-heeled boots.\nThe Eurovision performance of \"Love Shine a Light\" was simply staged with Leskanich singing center stage fronting background vocalists Beverley Skeete and Miriam Stockley: Skeete and Stockley, respectively dark-haired and blonde and clad in long dark dresses, also provided accompaniment with tambourines and handclaps. Two of Leskanich's co-members in Katrina and the Waves: drummer, Alex Cooper, and bassist, Vince de la Cruz (on this occasion playing guitar), were positioned towards the right side of the stage, while Phil Nicholl played bass stage left.\nPhil Nicholl was not a permanent member of Katrina and the Waves being a substitute for the group's regular guitarist \u2013 and the song's composer \u2013 Kimberley Rew, who Leskanich would later state had disassociated himself from the group's participating with his song in Eurovision. Don Airey, who played as a session musician on the single recording of the song, arranged and conducted the live version for Katrina & The Waves. He added strings, brass and a vibrato flute, giving the song a more anthemic feel.\nEurovision scoring.\nIn a pre-performance interview on the night of the Eurovision finale Leskanich had stated that Katrina and the Waves winning Eurovision was \"more than a dream \u2013 it's probably going to be a reality. I mean we wouldn't come here unless we were intending to win...For Eurovision [success] you need a song with a universal message, lighters in the air, Coca-Cola, heartwarming positive 'all-unite' [message]...[Our] song has a universality about it that unites everyone and I think people are looking for that message in Eurovision...they want something uplifting and positive, and I think once in a while a song comes along that says Eurovision and I think that's what 'Love Shine a Light' says and I'm just lucky that I'm the one that gets to sing it.\"\n\"Love Shine a Light\" did indeed win Eurovision 1997 easily: with its first 12-point score being awarded by Austria the fourth reporting jury \"Love Shine a Light\" assumed permanent possession of first place on the scoreboard with its final vote tally an unprecedented 227 points besting the second-place entrant, the entrant for Ireland, \"Mysterious Woman\", by 70 points. The final vote tally for \"Love Shine a Light\" set a record unsurpassed until 2004, when the introduction of the semi-final greatly expanded the number of countries voting in the final (indeed, entire top three polled more than 227 points that year). It also received the maximum 12 points from ten countries, a feat not matched until 2005 and not beaten until 2009.\nBy a more directly comparable measure, \"Love Shine a Light\" received an average of 9.458 points per country or 78.82% of total votes available, the third-highest in the history of the present voting system, behind only \"Save Your Kisses for Me\" by Brotherhood of Man in 1976 (9.647 points per jury, 80.39% of available points) and \"Ein bi\u00dfchen Frieden\" by Nicole in 1982 (9.470 votes per jury, 78.91% of available points). Furthermore, the song received maximum points from ten of twenty-four countries (41.7%), the fourth highest of all time behind \"Euphoria\" by Loreen in 2012 (which received 12 points from eighteen of forty-one countries, or 43.9%), \"Non ho l'et\u00e0\" by Gigliola Cinquetti in 1964 (receiving the then-maximum 5 points from eight of fifteen countries, or 53.3%) and \"Ein bi\u00dfchen Frieden\" in 1982 (12 points from nine of seventeen countries, or 52.9%).\nKatrina Leskanich commented that it was the second landslide of the week \u2013 the Labour Party led by Tony Blair had won the UK general election held two days earlier, on 1 May 1997.\nAftermath.\nIn a 2009 interview Leskanich restated her opinion of \"Love Shine a Light\": \"It was such a feel-good, lighters-in-the-air, cheesy number.\", while adding: \"Our song was quickly forgotten because we didn't have any sensational gimmick like Bucks Fizz\". Leskanich also stated that Katrina and the Waves Eurovision victory boosted the group's profile on the European cabaret circuit at the expense of their rock band credibility which heavily factored into the band's 1999 breakup.\nOn 22 October 2005, Leskanich co-hosted the Eurovision fiftieth anniversary competition \"\", held in Copenhagen, alongside Ren\u0101rs Kaupers and sang her winning song in the opening sequence of the show with flag holders of all the nations who ever participated in Eurovision. The hosts of the Eurovision Song Contest 2006 \u2013Sakis Rouvas and Maria Menounos\u2013 closed the opening act of its semi-final singing the song. A remix of the song was performed during the UK selection process final of 2008, \"Eurovision: Your Decision\". In 2009, Leskanich performed it with the Dutch SuperVoices made up of 2000 Dutch choir singers. She also performed the song in UK's Eurovision selection process \"Eurovision: You Decide\" aired on BBC Four in 2016.\nOn 15 December 2019, Leskanich performed the song during \"Het Grote Songfestivalfeest\", a Dutch live television concert programme starring artists of the Eurovision Song Contest as a prelude to the Eurovision Song Contest 2020 that had been scheduled to be held in Rotterdam, the Netherlands in May 2020. Following the 2020 contest's cancellation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the contest organisers subsequently organised the replacement show \"\", whose title was inspired by the song. The song itself was performed during the show as an orchestral rendition by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, and again near the end of the show by all the artists set to take part in the cancelled contest (with the exception of Hooverphonic from Belgium), with Leskanich finishing.\nCritical reception.\nBritish magazine \"Music Week\" rated \"Love Shine a Light\" three out of five, writing, \"Though perfectly suited for Eurovision with its universal, everyone-come-together message, this anthemic-sounding song will require a decent competition performance to win over record buyers if it is to do anything chartwise.\"\nTrack listings.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "7293095": "You Light Up My Life (song)\n1977 single by Debby Boone\n\"You Light Up My Life\" is a ballad written by Joseph Brooks, and originally recorded by Kasey Cisyk for the soundtrack album to the 1977 film of the same title. The song was lip synced in the film by its lead actress, Didi Conn. The best-known cover version of the song is a cover by Debby Boone, the daughter of singer Pat Boone. It held the No. 1 position on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart for ten consecutive weeks in 1977 and topped \"Record World\" magazine's Top 100 Singles Chart for a record 13 weeks.\nOriginal film version.\nCisyk's original soundtrack recording was included in the film's soundtrack album. It was then later released as a single to bolster sales of the soundtrack album after Debby Boone included her version on her first solo album (also titled \"You Light Up My Life\"). Although the soundtrack album was certified Gold, peaking at No. 17 on the \"Billboard\" 200 albums chart, it never included Boone's hit single version of the song.\nCisyk's single was credited to \"Original Cast\", not to Cisyk herself, and even though Brooks is listed on the A-side of the single, the \"Original Cast\" B-side charted on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and only reached No. 80. Brooks also released an instrumental version of the song from the soundtrack as a promotional single, but that version failed to chart.\nFollowing the success of Boone's version, the song earned Brooks a Grammy Award for Song of the Year, an Academy Award for Best Original Song, a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song and an American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) award.\nTrack listing.\n7\" vinyl single\nThe Joseph Brooks controversies.\nIn a 2013 biographical essay about Cisyk, Cisyk's second husband, Ed Rakowicz (who worked as a sound engineer, but not for this song), wrote that songwriter Brooks was initially pleased with Cisyk's recording of the song with orchestra (and her version appeared in the movie and soundtrack) but \"tried to evade payment by false promises and by asking her to be an incidental actor in his film, implying huge rewards yet to come...\" Rackowicz claimed that Brooks made improper advances toward Cisyk, that after being rebuffed, he refused to speak directly to her again, and that he continued to evade payments to her while commissioning another recording with Debby Boone.\nAccording to Rackowicz, \"Besides wanting Boone to copy Kacey's [sic] iconic hit reading of his songs, Brooks needed to cover up Kacey's vocal leakage in the microphones in the piano recorded at the original demo session on which was overdubbed the orchestral track used in the film. Brooks didn't want to pay to re-record the piano and orchestra again.\" In 2003, Boone admitted, \"I had no freedom whatsoever. Joe told me exactly how to sing it and imitate every inflection from the original recording.\" in an interview with \"Entertainment Weekly Magazine.\" Cisyk later retained a lawyer and sued Brooks for the fees she had earned for her work on the record and for credit on the soundtrack, which she later received.\nDebby Boone version.\nIn 1977, Debby Boone, Pat Boone's daughter, recorded the song under the guidance of Curb Records executive Mike Curb and songwriter Joseph Brooks. Boone recorded her vocals over a pre-existing instrumental track that Brooks already had developed for the film's soundtrack. The song was released as both a Warner-Curb Records single and as the title track to her first solo album, \"You Light Up My Life,\" which she released on Warner Bros. Records, Curb Records' parent label.\n\"Cash Box\" said that \"Ms. Boone builds it to a powerful emotional peak as a massive string section lends support.\"\nThe single became the biggest single of the 1970s in the United States, setting a new \"Billboard\" Hot 100 record for most weeks spent at number one. Elvis Presley's double-sided hit \"Don't Be Cruel/Hound Dog\", then recognized as the longest-running number one song of the rock era, spent eleven weeks atop the \"Billboard\" Best Sellers chart in 1956, before the 1958 debut of the Hot 100. The previous Hot 100 record was held by Bobby Darin's \"Mack the Knife\", Percy Faith's recording of \"Theme from \"A Summer Place\"\" (1960) and the Beatles' \"Hey Jude\" (1968), all three of which remained at No. 1 for nine weeks. The ten-week record was matched in 1982 by Olivia Newton-John's \"Physical\", but was not surpassed until a 1991 change in chart methodology allowed songs to achieve longer reigns at No. 1. In 1992, \"End of the Road\" by Boyz II Men would set the new record with 13 weeks.\nBesting her chart performance in \"Billboard\", Boone's \"You Light Up My Life\" single topped \"Record World\"'s Top 100 Singles Chart for an unbroken record of 13 weeks. On \"Billboard\"'s chart, Boone was unseated from No. 1 by the Bee Gees, with \"How Deep Is Your Love\", the first of three No. 1 singles from the \"Saturday Night Fever\" soundtrack. On \"Record World\"'s chart, Boone kept the Bee Gees out of the number-one spot. In \"Cash Box\" magazine, \"You Light Up My Life\" managed only an eight-week stay at the top of the chart, before being dethroned by Crystal Gayle's \"Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue\". Its least-lengthy run was on the \"Radio and Records\" chart, with six weeks at No. 1 before relinquishing the spot to the Bee Gees; it had knocked Carly Simon's \"Nobody Does It Better\" out of the top spot after only one week.\nThe single, which was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), also hit No. 1 on the Adult Contemporary chart and reached No. 4 on the Country chart. The single peaked at No. 48 on the UK Singles Chart. Boone's hit single led to her winning the 1978 Grammy Award for Best New Artist, with additional Grammy nominations for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female and Record of the Year. Boone also won the 1977 American Music Award for Favorite Pop Single.\nDecades after its release, the Debby Boone version is still considered one of the top ten \"Billboard\" Hot 100 songs of all time. In 2008, it was ranked at No. 7 on \"Billboard\"'s \"Hot 100 All-Time Top Songs\" list (August 1958 - July 2008). An updated version of the all-time list in 2013 ranked the song at No. 9.\nAlthough it was written by Brooks as a love song, the devout Boone interpreted it as inspirational and proclaimed that it was instead God who \"lit up her life.\" This fact was later alluded to when the song appeared in \"The Simpsons"}, "descending_order": ["45190518", "4562542", "50059008", "18137164", "659166", "7293095", "54985555"], "permutation_1": ["7293095", "659166", "4562542", "50059008", "54985555", "45190518", "18137164"], "permutation_2": ["50059008", "7293095", "4562542", "54985555", "18137164", "659166", "45190518"], "permutation_3": ["45190518", "7293095", "18137164", "4562542", "54985555", "659166", "50059008"]}
{"id": "nq_7811273331944324574", "docs_added": {"25511393": "(I'd Be) A Legend in My Time\n\"(I'd Be) A Legend in My Time\" is a song written and recorded by Don Gibson in 1960. It appeared as the B-side of his hit \"Far Far Away\", from the album \"Sweet Dreams\". Gibson re-recorded the song on the 1972 album \"Country Green\".\nRonnie Milsap version.\nThe song was recorded by Ronnie Milsap and released in November 1974 as the lead single from his album \"A Legend in My Time\". This was Milsap's sixth country hit and his third number one. The single stayed at number one for a single week and spent a total of ten weeks within the top 40. Milsap's recording altered the song from its original 3/4 time signature to a 4/4 time signature.\nOther cover versions.\nFrequently covered, the song is usually titled without the parenthetical lead. Versions have been recorded by\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "22843483": "A Legend in My Time\nA Legend in My Time is the fourth studio album by American country music artist Ronnie Milsap, released in 1975. Two singles were released from the album, including the Don Gibson penned \"(I'd Be) A Legend in My Time,\" which reached No. 1 on country charts and Al Dexter's \"Too Late to Worry, Too Blue to Cry\", which peaked at #6.\nThe album reached No. 4 on Country charts and made its debut on the Billboard 200 chart, peaking at #138. Allmusic stated that the tempo was \"switched up\" \"a little\" from the previous album, marking it as having a bit more \"variety.\" In 1975, it was named as the Country Music Association's Album of the Year.", "1575279": "John Legend\nAmerican R&B singer (born 1978)\nJohn Roger Stephens (born December 28, 1978), known professionally as John Legend, is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. He began his musical career working behind the scenes for other artists, playing piano on Lauryn Hill's \"Everything Is Everything\", and performing as an uncredited backing vocalist on Jay-Z's \"Encore\" and Alicia Keys' \"You Don't Know My Name\". He was the first artist to sign with Kanye West's GOOD Music, through which he released his debut studio album, \"Get Lifted\" (2004). The album reached the top ten of the \"Billboard\" 200, received double platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and spawned his first hit song, \"Ordinary People\".\nLegend won three Grammy Awards from eight nominations at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards\u2014\"Ordinary People\" won Best Male R&B Vocal Performance, \"Get Lifted\" won Best R&B Album, and Legend won Best New Artist; the album's final single, \"So High\" (remixed with Lauryn Hill), was nominated for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. His second album, \"Once Again\" (2006), was met with continued success, supported by the lead single \"Save Room\". His third album, \"Evolver\" (2008), further diversified his artistry with other genres; its funk-inspired lead single, \"Green Light\" (featuring Andr\u00e9 3000) peaked within the top 30 of the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and received double platinum certification by the RIAA. That same year, Legend released the live album \"\" (2008), followed by his collaborative album, \"Wake Up!\" (2010) with Philadelphia-based hip hop band the Roots.\nLegend's fourth studio album, \"Love in the Future\" (2013) was preceded by the hit single \"All of Me\". The pop ballad saw his furthest commercial success as it peaked atop the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, spent 23 consecutive weeks in the chart's top ten, and received diamond (14\u00d7 platinum) certification by the RIAA. In 2015, he co-performed with Meghan Trainor on her single \"Like I'm Gonna Lose You\", which peaked at number seven on the chart. The following year, he released his fifth album \"Darkness and Light\" (2016) and departed from GOOD Music. Legend has since released \"A Legendary Christmas\" (2018), \"Bigger Love\" (2020)\u2014which won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Album\u2014and his ninth album, \"Legend\" (2022).\nThroughout his musical career, Legend has won 12 Grammy Awards. In 2007, he won the Hal David Starlight Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Legend won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for his 2015 single \"Glory\" (with Common), which was released for the film \"Selma\". He won the NAACP's President's Award in 2016. In Broadway acting, Legend won a Tony Award for co-producing the stage play \"Jitney\" (2017), and portrayed the titular character in NBC's adaptation of the rock opera \"Jesus Christ Superstar\" (2018). He received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for his acting role, and won the award for his role as a producer of the show, making him the first Black male and second youngest recipient of all four of the major American entertainment awards: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony (EGOT) in 2018. Legend also has served as a vocal coach for the reality competition series \"The Voice\" for ten seasons since its sixteenth season in 2019. He became the show's senior coach following Blake Shelton's 2023 departure. He currently serves as the Chief Music Officer for Headspace.\nEarly life and education.\nJohn Roger Stephens was born on December 28, 1978, in Springfield, Ohio. He is the second eldest of four children of Phyllis Elaine (n\u00e9e Lloyd), a seamstress, and Ronald Lamar Stephens, a factory worker at International Harvester. His father was a drummer, while \"his mother sang and directed the church choir, and his grandmother was the church organist\".\nIn 2004, Legend stated that his parents were divorced for 12 years before reuniting. Legend was homeschooled by his mother. He began playing the piano at age 4. At the age of 7, he performed with his church choir. Because of his academic talent, he skipped two grades.\nAt the age of 12, Legend entered North High School in Springfield, Ohio and graduated salutatorian. At the age of 15, Legend won a Black History Month essay competition sponsored by McDonald's, following the prompt \"How do you intend to make Black history?\" with an essay about how he intended to be a successful musician.\nAt the age of 16, he enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he served as president and musical director of the co-ed jazz and pop a cappella group, the Counterparts. His lead vocals on the group's recording of Joan Osborne's \"One of Us\", written by fellow University of Pennsylvania alum Eric Bazilian of the Hooters, received critical acclaim, landing the song on the track list of the 1998 \"Best of Collegiate a Cappella\" compilation CD. Legend was also a member of the Sphinx Senior Society, one of Penn's undergraduate senior societies, and Onyx Senior Honor Society. While at Penn, Legend was introduced to American singer Lauryn Hill by a mutual friend; Hill hired him to play piano on \"Everything Is Everything\", a song from her album \"The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill\". He graduated \"magna cum laude\" with a bachelor's degree in English, with an emphasis on African-American literature in 1999.\nCareer.\nCareer beginnings.\nAfter graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, Stephens worked as a management consultant at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and began producing, writing, and recording his own music. He released two albums independently: his self-titled demo (2000) and \"Live at Jimmy's Uptown\" (2001), which he sold at his shows. He subsequently began working on a demo tape and began sending his work to various record labels.\nIn 2001, Devo Springsteen introduced Legend to Kanye West, a then up-and-coming hip-hop artist; Stephens was hired to co-write or perform hooks on several of West's songs. After signing to West's GOOD Music, Stephens chose his stage name from an idea that was given to him by poet J. Ivy, due to what he perceived as an \"old-school sound\". Ivy told Stephens: \"I heard your music and it reminds me of that music from the old school. You sound like one of the legends. As a matter of fact, that's what I'm going to call you from now on! I'm going to call you John Legend.\" After Ivy continued to call him by the new moniker \"John Legend\", others quickly caught on, including West. Despite Stephens' reluctance to adopt a stage name, he ultimately announced his new artist name as John Legend.\n2004\u20132007: Debut album and Grammy Award.\nLegend released his debut studio album, \"Get Lifted\", through GOOD Music, in a joint venture with Sony BMG's Columbia Records in December 2004. It featured production from Kanye West, Dave Tozer, and will.i.am, and debuted at number seven on the US \"Billboard\" 200, selling 116,000 copies in its first week. It went on to sell 540,300 copies in the United States and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). An international success, \"Get Lifted\" also reached number one on the Norwegian Albums Chart and peaked within the top ten in the Netherlands and Sweden, resulting in worldwide sales of 850,000 copies. Critically acclaimed, it won the 2006 Grammy Award for Best R&B Album, and earned Legend another two nominal awards for Best New Artist and Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. Altogether, the album produced four singles, including debut single \"Used to Love U\", which entered the top 30 of the New Zealand and UK Singles Chart, and Grammy Award-winning \"Ordinary People\" which peaked at 24 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. Legend also co-wrote Janet Jackson's \"I Want You\", which was certified platinum and received a nomination for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance at the 47th Annual Grammy Awards.\nLegend was featured on several records in the following years. He appeared on albums by Fort Minor, S\u00e9rgio Mendes, Jay-Z, Mary J. Blige, the Black Eyed Peas, Stephen Colbert, Rich Boy, MSTRKRFT, Chemistry, and Fergie, among others. Legend also tentatively recorded with Michael Jackson on a future album, for which he had written one song. In August 2006, Legend appeared in an episode of \"Sesame Street\", where he performed the song \"It Feels Good When You Sing a Song\", a duet with Hoots the Owl. He also performed during the pregame show of \"Super Bowl XL\" in Detroit, and the halftime show at the \"2006 NBA All-Star Game\".\nIn October 2006, Legend's second album, \"Once Again\", was released. Legend co-wrote and co-produced the bulk of the album, which saw him returning to work with West, will.i.am and Tozer, as well as other producers including Raphael Saadiq, Craig Street, Sa-Ra, Eric Hudson, Devo Springsteen, and Avenue. Released to major commercial success, it reached number three on the \"Billboard\" 200 and debuted atop the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. It has since received platinum certification by the RIAA, and attained gold certification in Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. At the 2007 Grammy Awards, the song \"Heaven\" won Best Male R&B Vocal Performance, while lead single \"Save Room\" received a nomination in the Best Male Pop Vocal category. That same night, Legend won Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals for his cover of \"Family Affair\", a collaboration with Sly & the Family Stone, Joss Stone and Van Hunt, from the former's remix album, \"Different Strokes by Different Folks\" (2005).\n2008\u20132010: \"Evolver\".\nIn January 2008, Legend sang in a video for Barack Obama, produced by will.i.am called \"Yes We Can\". The same year, Legend had a supporting, singing-only role in the 2008 movie \"Soul Men\", where he plays the deceased lead singer of a fictitious soul group that includes Samuel L. Jackson and Bernie Mac. In October, he released his third studio album, \"Evolver\". Speaking about the reasons for calling the album \"Evolver\", he stated: \"I think people sometimes come to expect certain things from certain artists. They expect you to kind of stay in the same place you were at when you started out. Whereas I feel I want my career to be defined by the fact that I'm NOT gonna stay in the same place, and that I'm always gonna try new things and experiment. So, as I think this album represents a manifestation of that, I came up with the title 'Evolver'.\" The album was preceded by dance-pop-influenced up tempo single \"Green Light\" which featured rapper Andre 3000 of OutKast and became his highest-charting single since \"Ordinary People\"; it was also nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration. On March 30, 2008, Legend performed \"America the Beautiful\" in front of a sold-out crowd of 74,635 in the Orlando Citrus Bowl, now known as Camping World Stadium, for WWE's WrestleMania XXIV.\nIn 2009, Legend performed in \"The People Speak\", a documentary feature film that uses dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries, and speeches of everyday Americans, based on historian Howard Zinn's \"A People's History of the United States\". Also in 2009, Legend and the Roots teamed up to record a collaborative album, \"Wake Up!\", which was released on September 21, 2010. The first single released from the album was \"Wake Up Everybody\" featuring singer Melanie Fiona and rapper Common. In November 2010, Legend was featured on West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy album, listed a feature on the song 'Blame Game'. In February 2011, Legend won three prizes at the 53rd Annual Grammy Music Awards. He was awarded Best R&B Song for \"Shine\", while he and the Roots won Grammy Awards for Best R&B Album and Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance for \"Hang On in There\". In March 2011, Legend and the Roots won two NAACP Image Awards, one for Outstanding Album (\"Wake Up!\") and one for Outstanding Duo, Group or Collaboration.\n2011\u20132015: Federal lawsuit and 50-date tour.\nOn July 5, 2011, songwriter Anthony Stokes filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Legend in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, alleging that Legend's song \"Maxine's Interlude\" from his 2006 album \"Once Again\" derives from Stokes' demo \"Where Are You Now\". Stokes claimed he gave Legend a demo of the song in 2004 following a concert at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Legend denied the allegations, telling E! Online, \"I never heard of his song until he sued me. I would never steal anyone's song. We will fight it in court and we will prevail.\" However, nearly 60,000 people took a TMZ.com poll that compared the two songs and 65% of voters believed that Legend's \"Maxine's Interlude\" is a rip-off of Stokes' \"Where Are You Now\". A year later, Legend confirmed that he settled out of court with Stokes for an undisclosed amount.\nAlso in 2011, Legend completed a 50-date tour as a guest for British soul band Sade. In the San Diego performance, Legend confirmed that he was working on his next studio album and played a new song called \"Dreams\". Later, via his official website, he revealed the official title of the album to be \"Love in the Future\", and debuted part of a new track called \"Caught Up\". The album has been executive-produced by Legend himself, along with Kanye West and Dave Tozer \u2013 the same team who worked on Legend's previous albums \"Get Lifted\", \"Once Again\", and \"Evolver\". Legend has stated that his intention for the record was \"To make a modern soul album \u2013 to flip that classic feel into a modern context.\"\nLegend was granted an honorary doctorate degree from Howard University at the 144th Commencement Exercises on Saturday, May 12, 2012. Legend was a judge on the ABC music show \"Duets\" along with Kelly Clarkson, Jennifer Nettles, and Robin Thicke. Legend's spot was originally for Lionel Richie, who had to leave the show due to a scheduling conflict. \"Duets\" debuted on Thursday, May 24, 2012.\nHe released his fourth studio album, \"Love in the Future\", on September 3, 2013, debuting number 4 on the \"Billboard\" 200, selling 68,000 copies in its first week. The album was nominated for Best R&B album at the 2014 Grammy Awards. Legend's third single from the album, \"All of Me\", became an international chart success, peaking at number one on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 for three consecutive weeks and reaching the top of six national charts and the top ten in numerous other countries, becoming one of the best-selling digital singles of all time. It was ranked the third best-selling song in the United States and the United Kingdom during 2014. The song is a ballad dedicated to his wife, Chrissy Teigen, and was performed at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards.\nIn 2014, Legend partnered with the rapper Common to write the song \"Glory\", featured in the film \"Selma\", which chronicled the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches. The song won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song as well as the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Legend and Common performed \"Glory\" at the 87th Academy Awards on February 22, 2015.\nLegend was featured on Meghan Trainor's \"Like I'm Gonna Lose You\" from her debut studio album, which reached number eight on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. On February 1, 2015, he sang \"America the Beautiful\" in the opening ceremony of Super Bowl XLIX. He provided guest vocals on Kelly Clarkson's song \"Run Run Run\" for her album \"Piece by Piece\". He also co-wrote and provided vocals for French DJ David Guetta's song \"Listen\", as part of the album \"Listen\".\n2016\u2013present: Resurgence.\nLegend released his new album \"Darkness and Light\", with first single \"Love Me Now\", on December 2, 2016, with songs featuring Chance the Rapper and Miguel. Legend featured on Kygo's song \"Happy Birthday\" for his debut studio album \"Cloud Nine\" released in 2016.\nFor the 2017 film \"Beauty and the Beast\", Legend and Ariana Grande performed a duet on the title track, a remake of the 1991 original version sung by Celine Dion and Peabo Bryson. In April 2017, \"Crow: The Legend\", a short animation film, premiered its prologue at the Tribeca Film Festival. Legend was cast in the title role as the character Crow. He also served as executive producer for the project and performed the original song \"When You Can Fly\". The film won at thirteen different film festivals including the LA Film Festival where it made its North American premiere in 2018. The film won Best Animation VR Experience at the 2018 Raindance Film Festival and received nomination for Best Virtual Reality Production at the 46th Annual Annie Awards.\nOn December 19, 2017, NBC announced that Legend had been cast in the title role in the live concert production of \"Jesus Christ Superstar\" at the Marcy Avenue Armory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The production was broadcast live on NBC television on April 1, 2018 (the date of Easter Sunday that year in Western Christianity). On May 8, 2018, Google chose Legend as one of the six new Google Assistant voices.\nLegend was one of the few celebrities to appear and speak out in the Lifetime documentary \"Surviving R. Kelly\". The six-part docuseries details sex abuse allegations spread over four decades against acclaimed R&B singer R. Kelly. It focuses on women who allege that the musician and record producer used his status and influence to sexually and physically abuse women and young girls for decades. Legend lambasted R. Kelly during his interview in the final episode of the series, asserting that \"R. Kelly has brought so much pain to so many people. Time's up for R. Kelly.\"\nIn spite of numerous public allegations and controversies regarding Kelly, Legend stood as the only major recording artist willing to come forward and speak against him in the documentary. In response to fans who labeled him as \"brave\" for his actions, Legend stated the following on Twitter ahead of the program's debut: \"To everyone telling me how courageous I am for appearing in the doc, it didn't feel risky at all. I believe these women and don't give a fuck about protecting a serial child rapist. Easy decision.\" Executive producer Dream Hampton revealed that it was \"incredibly difficult\" to get men and women who had artistically collaborated with Kelly to come forward, including those who had criticized him. During an interview with \"Detroit Free Press\" she said, \"We asked Lady Gaga. We asked Erykah Badu. We asked C\u00e9line Dion. We asked Jay-Z. We asked Dave Chappelle. [They're] people who have been critical of him. That makes John Legend even more of a hero for me.\"\nOn May 21, 2019, Legend was the winning coach on \"The Voice\", and won the competition with his artist Maelyn Jarmon. In November, Legend was named \"People\"'s Sexiest Man Alive. In 2020, Legend was working on a seventh album. On May 13, 2020, he announced the album would be titled \"Bigger Love\". It was released on June 19. On May 28, 2020, Legend received an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music.\nOn June 19, 2020, Legend performed alongside Alicia Keys for episode fifteen of \"Verzuz\". Legend is featured on Carrie Underwood's Christmas album \"My Gift\". Legend wrote his featured track entitled \"Hallelujah\". Legend was among the performers in the \"Celebrating America\" television event held on Inauguration Day 2021. He delivered the commencement address to the Duke University Class of 2021. On November 12, 2021, Legend signed with Republic Records after completing the contract that lasted for 17 years with Sony Music.\nIn February 2022, Legend launched the music-based NFT platform, OurSong. On April 3, 2022, performed a new song called \"Free\" at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards as a tribute to the fallen citizens of Ukraine amid Russo-Ukrainian War. He was joined on stage alongside by three Ukrainian female artists Siuzanna Iglidan, Mika Newtown, and poet Lyuba Yakimchuk. On September 9, 2022, he released his eighth studio album titled \"Legend\". The following month, Legend became \"The Voice\"'s senior coach in its 24th season after the departure of singer Blake Shelton.\nPhilanthropy.\nLegend performed a benefit concert in Springfield, Ohio in 2005 in support of a tax levy for the Springfield City School District.\nIn May 2007, Legend partnered with Tide laundry detergent to raise awareness about the need of families in St. Bernard Parish (Chalmette, Louisiana), one of the areas most devastated by Hurricane Katrina; he spent a day folding laundry at the Tide \"clean start\" mobile laundromat and visited homes that Tide was helping to rebuild in that community. On July 7, 2007, Legend participated in the Live Earth concert in London, performing \"Ordinary People\". After reading Professor Jeffrey Sachs' book \"The End of Poverty\", Legend started his \"Show Me Campaign\" in 2007. In this campaign, Legend called on his fans to help him in his initiative for residents in Bosaso Village, Somalia and non-profit organizations partnered with the campaign.\nIn early 2008, he began touring with Alexus Ruffin and Professor Jeff Sachs of Columbia University's Earth Institute to promote sustainable development as an achievable goal. Legend joined Sachs as a keynote speaker and performer at the inaugural Millennium Campus Conference. Legend then joined the Board of Advisors of the Millennium Campus Network (MCN), and has aided MCN programs through online support and funding fellowships for MCN summer interns through the Show Me Campaign. In 2009, Legend gave AIDS Service Center NYC permission to remix his song \"If You're Out There\" to create a music video promoting HIV/AIDS awareness and testing.\nOn January 22, 2010, he performed \"Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child\" on the \"\" telethon show. On September 8, 2010, John Legend joined the national board of Teach For America. Legend also sits on the boards of the Education Equality Project, the Harlem Village Academies, and Stand for Children. He serves on the Harlem Village Academies' National Leadership Board. On September 9, 2010, he performed \"Coming Home\" on the Colbert Report as a tribute song for the end of combat operations in Iraq, and for the active troops and the veterans of the United States Armed Forces. In 2011, he contributed the track \"Love I've Never Known\" to the Red Hot Organization's most recent album \"Red Hot+Rio 2\". The album is a follow-up to the 1996 \"Red Hot+Rio\". Proceeds from the album sales were donated to raise awareness and money to fight AIDS/HIV and related health and social issues. On March 6, 2012, John Legend was appointed by the World Economic Forum to the Forum of Young Global Leaders. Later that year, Legend stopped by Children's Hospital Los Angeles for a surprise visit and acoustic performance as a part of Get Well Soon Tour. On June 1, 2013, Legend performed at Gucci's global concert event in London whose campaign, \"Chime for Change\", aims to raise awareness of women's issues in education, health and justice. At a press conference before his performance, Legend identified himself as a feminist saying, \"All men should be feminists. If men care about women's rights the world will be a better place.\"\nIn 2014, Legend founded the FREEAMERICA campaign, which aims to help reform incarceration in the United States. He also supported the 2018 ballot initiative to pass Florida Amendment 4, which restored the voting rights of Floridians with felony convictions.\nIn 2016, Legend co-signed a letter to the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calling for a more humane drug policy, along with people such as Richard Branson, Jane Fonda, and George Shultz. The following year, Legend appeared on Salem State University's speaker series and was recognized by Voices Against Injustice (formerly known as the Salem Award Foundation for Human Rights and Social Justice) as the inaugural Salem Advocate for Social Justice. Also in 2017 Legend donated $500,000 to Springfield City School District to renovate an auditorium, which is named in his honor, within the Springfield Center of Innovation. He performed at the John Legend Theater on October 9, 2016. In 2018, he starred in an animated virtual-reality short film written and directed by Eric Darnell, titled \"Crow: The Legend\", together with Oprah Winfrey, telling a Native American origin tale. He also sits on the advisory board & is a financial supporter of FUSE Corps, mitigating racial inequality and breaking down barriers which contribute to racism.\nPersonal life.\nLegend met model Chrissy Teigen in 2006 while filming the music video for his song \"Stereo\". They became engaged in December 2011 and were married on September 14, 2013, in Como, Italy. His 2013 song \"All of Me\" is dedicated to her. The couple has four children: a daughter born in April 2016, a son born in May 2018, and a daughter born in January 2023. Their first three children were all conceived via in vitro fertilization. On June 28, 2023, Teigen announced on social media that the couple had a fourth child, a son, born via surrogacy on June 19, 2023.\nIn 2020, the couple was expecting a third child, but Teigen lost the baby at twenty weeks due to a pregnancy complication. The pregnancy loss was described by media as a late miscarriage; in 2022, Teigen clarified that the loss was \"an abortion to save my life for a baby that had absolutely no chance\".\nOn the PBS series \"Finding Your Roots\", it was determined that Legend's genetic makeup is 64% African, 32% European, and 4% Native American.\nLegend endorsed Kamala Harris for the 2024 US Presidential election.\nDiscography.\nStudio albums\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "47489451": "The Gaunga Dyns\nAmerican rock band\nThe Gaunga Dyns are an American rock band from New Orleans, Louisiana, who were active from 1965 through 1968 and who regrouped in 2013. In 1967, they released two singles and a had a local hit with \"Stick with Her\". In the intervening years their work has come to the attention of garage rock enthusiasts, particularly some of their bolder songs such as \"Rebecca Rodifier\", which is one of the earliest rock songs to address the topic of abortion, and \"No One Cares\", which employs odd time signatures and changes. They reunited with most of the members from their best-known configuration for the Ponderosa Stomp festival in 2013 and have since been intermittently active with different lineups featuring guitarist Steve Staples and vocalist Beau Bremer.\nHistory.\nOrigins.\nThe Guanga Dyns formed in 1965 in the Algiers section of New Orleans, Louisiana, located on the West Bank of the Mississippi River, and the bulk of their membership was made up of students from Behrman High School in Algiers as well as other area schools. They and another band, the Twilights, were both from Algiers and would eventually merge to form the better known version of the band. The Twilights' membership included three members later to join the Guanga Dyns, which featured two lead singers, Beau Bremer and Neal Lundgren, as well as Steve Staples on guitar. The Guanga Dyns' original membership included Bobby Carter on bass and his brother David on guitar, as well as Johnny Baker on vocals. Their band name was created as a pun equating Rudyard Kipling's poem, \"Gunga Din\" with popular nightspot on Bourbon Street called the Gunga Den. In consultation with Bobby Carter, he has recounted the origins of the name to be attributed to Steve Staples Grandmother, who after being disturbed by a band practice session in the garage where the band was rehearsing by exclaiming \"What is all this Gunga Din?\" The Twilights had been around slightly longer than the Gaunga Dyns, but were not satisfied with their current bass player. Two of the members in the Guanga Dyns, both guitarists, after graduating from high school and did not wish to continue in the band. So, the bands merged retaining the name, the Gaunga Dyns and settled into a lineup consisting of Beau Bremer and Neal Lundgren on vocals, Steve Staples on rhythm guitar and backing vocals, Mike King on lead guitar, Bobby Carter on bass, Brian Collins on organ, and Ricky on drums.\nThe young age of the band did not impede them from landing gigs. In New Orleans during the sixties it was not uncommon for underage bands to play at bars. However, there were two teenage nightclubs in the New Orleans area, which did not serve alcohol and hosted shows for bands, one of which was the Hullabaloo on Airline Highway in Metairie. As they became more popular, the Gaunga Dyns sometimes played on the same bill with famous New Orleans R&B legends in the clubs. According to Steve Staples, \u201cA couple of times, we were Ernie K-Doe's backup band. He came and did a whole set with us. That was fun. That was at the Hullabaloo Club,\u201d says Staples. \"We played with Irma Thomas and Benny Spellman at Your Father's Mustache.\u201d \"And we also played VFW halls,\u201d he says. \u201cWe were playing all over in Mississippi and Alabama and the Gulf Coast. We didn't ever go to Texas, but we were in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, mostly.\"\nThe new Gaunga Dyns worked hard, practicing daily after school and gigging on weekends. According to Steve Staples: \u201cEvery battle of the bands that we were ever in...we won...we were extremely well-rehearsed...\u201d Their break came when Jeb Banashak, also a student at Behrman High, offered to manage the band. His father was Joe Banashak, a very successful player in New Orleans\u2019 record business, whose A-1 Record Distributors had handled most of the Crescent City's top labels. He had formed Minit Records with popular WYLD-AM deejay Larry McKinley in 1959, which had provided hits for numerous R&B legends such as Benny Spellman, Irma Thomas, and Ernie K-Doe, and Instant Records for which Chris Kenner recorded the original version of \u201cLand Of 1000 Dances.\u201d Allen Toussaint served in the role of arranger and producer for many of the recordings done on these labels. Additionally, Jeb Banashak'a sister older sister was married to Tom Collins, who along with his twin brother, was a deejay at WNOE's FM station, provided the band another valuable contact.\nRecording.\nBanashak introduced the Busy-B label in 1967 and signed the band. \"Rebecca Rodifer\" was group's first release and was written by Staples and lead guitarist King. It was recorded at legendary engineer, Cosimo Matassa's studio on Gov. Nichols St. in the French Quarter. Its lyrics tell a story about a fictional female character who dies in the aftermath of having an abortion. According to Staples: \nBack then, abortions were illegal. Completely illegal...at the high school we went to, there were supposedly true stories about girls and people who had used coat hangers to perform abortions. And so I had heard that story, and I just extrapolated from that...I knew a girl that got pregnant in high school and had an abortion. She didn't die from it, but it was illegal. So...I thought, 'God, somebody could die from this!' ...so we recorded the record and released it. And then my mother heard it for the first time. She flipped! She went ballistic on me, but it was too late.\u201d\n\u201cStick With Her,\u201d the flip side, was a cover of a song by Houston band, the Glass Kans. According to Staples, \u201cBobby, our bass player, knew the guy Scott who was one of the co-writers of that song,\u201d The Gaunga Dyns recorded the songs on their next single on separate dates later that year with Cosmo Matassa. \u201cJeb and the engineer and Joe produced the first record,\u201d says Staples. Beau Bremmer sang lead on all four of their Busy-B sides, with Steve Staples adding vocal harmonies. \"Clouds Don't Shine\" b/w \"No One Cares\" was their next Busy-Bee release. \u201cThe second record, he let us produce it ourselves,\u201d says Staples, who wrote it after a painful breakup. \u201cMy girlfriend at the time, her name was Suzette,\u201d he says. \u201cShe was going to break up with me, and she did break"}, "descending_order": ["25511393", "22843483", "1575279", "47489451"], "permutation_1": ["22843483", "1575279", "25511393", "47489451"], "permutation_2": ["1575279", "47489451", "25511393", "22843483"], "permutation_3": ["1575279", "22843483", "47489451", "25511393"]}
{"id": "nq_-3477475420748052845", "docs_added": {"4926056": "Insect wing\nBody part used by insects to fly\nInsect wings are adult outgrowths of the insect exoskeleton that enable insects to fly. They are found on the second and third thoracic segments (the mesothorax and metathorax), and the two pairs are often referred to as the forewings and hindwings, respectively, though a few insects lack hindwings, even rudiments. The wings are strengthened by a number of longitudinal veins, which often have cross-connections that form closed \"cells\" in the membrane (extreme examples include the dragonflies and lacewings). The patterns resulting from the fusion and cross-connection of the wing veins are often diagnostic for different evolutionary lineages and can be used for identification to the family or even genus level in many orders of insects.\nPhysically, some insects move their flight muscles directly, others indirectly. In insects with direct flight, the wing muscles directly attach to the wing base, so that a small downward movement of the wing base lifts the wing itself upward. Those insects with indirect flight have muscles that attach to and deform the thorax, causing the wings to move as well.\nThe wings are present in only one sex (often the male) in some groups such as velvet ants and Strepsiptera, or are selectively lost in \"workers\" of social insects such as ants and termites. Rarely, the female is winged but the male not, as in fig wasps. In some cases, wings are produced only at particular times in the life cycle, such as in the dispersal phase of aphids. Wing structure and colouration often vary with morphs, such as in the aphids, migratory phases of locusts and polymorphic butterflies. At rest, the wings may be held flat, or folded a number of times along specific patterns; most typically, it is the hindwings which are folded, but in a few groups such as the vespid wasps, it is the forewings.\nThe evolutionary origin of the insect wing is debated. During the 19th century, the question of insect wing evolution originally rested on two main positions. One position postulated insect wings evolved from pre-existing structures, while the second proposed insect wings were entirely novel formations. The \u201cnovel\u201d hypothesis suggested that insect wings did not form from pre-existing ancestral appendages but rather as outgrowths from the insect body wall.\nLong since, research on insect wing origins has built on the \u201cpre-existing structures\u201d position that was originally proposed in the 19th century. Recent literature has pointed to several ancestral structures as being important to the origin of insect wings. Among these include: gills, respiratory appendages of legs, and lateral (paranotal) and posterolateral projections of the thorax to name a few.\nAccording to more current literature, possible candidates include gill-like structures, the paranotal lobe, and the crustacean tergal plate. The latter is based on recent insect genetic research which indicates that insects are pan-crustacean arthropods with a direct crustacean ancestor and shared genetic mechanisms of limb development.\nOther theories of the origin of insect wings are the paranotal lobe theory, the gill theory and the dual theory of insect wing evolution. These theories postulate that wings either developed from paranotal lobes, extensions of the thoracic terga; that they are modifications of movable abdominal gills as found on aquatic naiads of mayflies; or that insect wings arose from the fusion of pre-existing endite and exite structures each with pre-existing articulation and tracheation.\nMorphology.\nInternal.\nEach of the wings consists of a thin membrane supported by a system of veins. The membrane is formed by two layers of integument closely apposed, while the veins are formed where the two layers remain separate; sometimes the lower cuticle is thicker and more heavily sclerotized under a vein. Within each of the major veins there is a nerve and a trachea, and, since the cavities of the veins are connected with the hemocoel, hemolymph can flow into the wings.\nAs the wing develops, the dorsal and ventral integumental layers become closely apposed over most of their area forming the wing membrane. The remaining areas form channels, the future veins, in which the nerves and tracheae may occur. The cuticle surrounding the veins becomes thickened and more heavily sclerotized to provide strength and rigidity to the wing. Two types of hair may occur on the wings: microtrichia, which are small and irregularly scattered, and macrotrichia, which are larger, socketed, and may be restricted to veins. The scales of Lepidoptera and Trichoptera are highly modified macrotrichia.\nVenation.\nIn some very small insects, the venation may be greatly reduced. In chalcidoid wasps, for instance, only the subcosta and part of the radius are present. Conversely, an increase in venation may occur by the branching of existing veins to produce accessory veins or by the development of additional, intercalary veins between the original ones, as in the wings of Orthoptera (grasshoppers and crickets). Large numbers of cross-veins are present in some insects, and they may form a reticulum as in the wings of Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies) and at the base of the forewings of Tettigonioidea and Acridoidea (katydids and grasshoppers respectively).\nThe archedictyon is the name given to a hypothetical scheme of wing venation proposed for the very first winged insect. It is based on a combination of speculation and fossil data. Since all winged insects are believed to have evolved from a common ancestor, the archedictyon represents the \"template\" that has been modified (and streamlined) by natural selection for 200 million years. According to current dogma, the archedictyon contained 6\u20138 longitudinal veins. These veins (and their branches) are named according to a system devised by John Comstock and George Needham\u2014the Comstock\u2013Needham system:\nCosta (C) \u2013 the leading edge of the wing\nSubcosta (Sc) \u2013 second longitudinal vein (behind the costa), typically unbranched\nRadius (R) \u2013 third longitudinal vein, one to five branches reach the wing margin\nMedia (M) \u2013 fourth longitudinal vein, one to four branches reach the wing margin\nCubitus (Cu) \u2013 fifth longitudinal vein, one to three branches reach the wing margin\nAnal veins (A1, A2, A3) \u2013 unbranched veins behind the cubitus\nThe costa (C) is the leading marginal vein on most insects. Sometimes, there is a small vein above the costa called the precosta, although in almost all extant insects, the precosta is fused with the costa. The costa rarely ever branches because it is at the leading edge, which is associated at its base with the humeral plate. The trachea of the costal vein is perhaps a branch of the subcostal trachea. Located after the costa is the third vein, the subcosta, which branches into two separate veins: the anterior and posterior. The base of the subcosta is associated with the distal end of the neck of the first axillary (see section below). The fourth vein is the radius (R), which is branched into five separate veins. The radius is generally the strongest vein of the wing. Toward the middle of the wing, it forks into a first undivided branch (R1) and a second branch, called the radial sector (Ra), which subdivides dichotomously into four distal branches (R2, R3, R4, R5). Basally, the radius is flexibly united with the anterior end of the second axillary (2Ax).\nThe fifth vein of the wing is the media. In the archetype pattern (A), the media forks into two main branches: a media anterior (MA), which divides into two distal branches (MA1, MA2), and a median sector, or media posterior (MP), which has four terminal branches (M1, M2, M3, M4). In most modern insects the media anterior has been lost, and the usual \"media\" is the four-branched media posterior with the common basal stem. In the Ephemerida, according to present interpretations of the wing venation, both branches of the media are retained, while in Odonata the persisting media is the primitive anterior branch. The stem of the media is often united with the radius, but when it occurs as a distinct vein its base is associated with the distal median plate (m') or is continuously sclerotized with the latter. The cubitus, the sixth vein of the wing, is primarily two-branched. The primary forking of the takes place near the base of the wing, forming the two principal branches (Cu1, Cu2). The anterior branch may break up into a number of secondary branches, but commonly it forks into two distal branches. The second branch of the cubitus (Cu2) in Hymenoptera, Trichoptera, and Lepidoptera was mistaken by Comstock and Needham for the first anal. Proximally the main stem of the cubitus is associated with the distal median plate (m') of the wing base.\nPostcubitus (Pcu) is the first anal of the Comstock\u2013Needham system. The postcubitus, however, has the status of an independent wing vein and should be recognized as such. In nymphal wings, its trachea arises between the cubital trachea and the group of vannal tracheae. In the mature wings of more generalized insect the Postcubitus is always associated proximally with the cubitus and is never intimately connected with the flexor sclerite (3Ax) of the wing base. In Neuroptera, Mecoptera, and Trichoptera the postcubitus may be more closely associated with the vannal veins, but its base is always free from the latter. The postcubitus is usually unbranched; it is primitively two branched. The vannal veins (lV to nV) are the anal veins that are immediately associated with the third axillary, and which are directly affected by the movement of this sclerite that brings about the flexion of the wings. In number the vannal veins vary. from 1 to 12, according to the expansion of the vannal area of the wing. The vannal tracheae usually arise from a common tracheal stem in nymphal insects, and the veins are regarded as branches of a single anal vein. Distally the vannal veins are either simple or branched. Jugal Veins (J) of the jugal lobe of the wing is often occupied by a network of irregular veins, or it may be entirely membranous; but sometimes it contains one or two distinct small veins, the first jugal vein, or vena arcuata, and the second jugal vein, or vena cardinalis (2J).\nC-Sc cross-veins \u2013 run between the costa and subcosta\nR cross-veins \u2013 run between adjacent branches of the radius\nR-M cross-veins \u2013 run between the radius and media\nM-Cu cross-veins \u2013 run between the media and cubitus\nAll the veins of the wing are subject to secondary forking and to union by cross-veins. In some orders of insects the cross-veins are so numerous that the whole venational pattern becomes a close network of branching veins and cross-veins. Ordinarily, however, there is a definite number of cross-veins having specific locations. The more constant cross-veins are the humeral cross-vein (h) between costa and subcosta, the radial cross-vein (r) between R and the first fork of Rs, the sectorial cross-vein (s) between the two forks of R8, the median cross-vein (m\u2013m) between M2 and M3, and the mediocubital cross-vein (m-cu) between media and cubitus.\nThe veins of insect wings are characterized by a convex-concave placement, such as those seen in mayflies (i.e., concave is \"down\" and convex is \"up\") which alternate regularly and by its triadic type of branching; whenever a vein forks there is always an interpolated vein of the opposite position between the two branches. A concave vein will fork into two concave veins (with the interpolated vein being convex) and the regular alteration of the veins is preserved. The veins of the wing appear to fall into an undulating pattern according to whether they have a tendency to fold up or down when the wing is relaxed. The basal shafts of the veins are convex, but each vein forks distally into an anterior convex branch and a posterior concave branch. Thus the costa and subcosta are regarded as convex and concave branches of a primary first vein, Rs is the concave branch of the radius, posterior media the concave branch of the media, Cu1 and Cu2 are respectively convex and concave, while the primitive Postcubitus and the first vannal have each an anterior convex branch and a posterior concave branch. The convex or concave nature of the veins has been used as evidence in determining the identities of the persisting distal branches of the veins of modern insects, but it has not been demonstrated to be consistent for all wings.\nFields.\nWing areas are delimited and subdivided by fold-lines along which the wing can fold, and flexion-lines along which the wing can flex during flight. The fundamental distinction between the flexion-lines and the fold-lines is often blurred, as fold-lines may permit some flexibility or vice versa. Two constants that are found in nearly all insect wings are the claval (a flexion-line) and jugal folds (or fold line); forming variable and unsatisfactory boundaries. Wing foldings can be very complicated, with transverse folding occurring in the hindwings of Dermaptera and Coleoptera, and in some insects the anal area can be folded like a fan.\nThere are about four different fields found on the insect wings:\nRemigium\nAnal area (vannus)\nJugal area\nAxillary area\nAlula\nMost veins and crossveins occur in the anterior area of the remigium, which is responsible for most of the flight, powered by the thoracic muscles. The posterior portion of the remigium is sometimes called the clavus; the two other posterior fields are the anal and jugal areas. When the vannal fold has the usual position anterior to the group of anal veins, the remigium contains the costal, subcostal, radial, medial, cubital, and postcubital veins. In the flexed wing the remigium turns posteriorly on the flexible basal connection of the radius with the second axillary, and the base of the mediocubital field is folded medially on the axillary region along the plica basalis (bf) between the median plates (m, m') of the wing base.\nThe \"vannus\" is bordered by the vannal fold, which typically occurs between the postcubitus and the first vannal vein. In Orthoptera it usually has this position. In the forewing of Blattidae, however, the only fold in this part of the wing lies immediately before the postcubitus. In Plecoptera the vannal fold is posterior to the postcubitus, but proximally it crosses the base of the first vannal vein. In the cicada the vannal fold lies immediately behind the first vannal vein (lV). These small variations in the actual position of the vannal fold, however, do not affect the unity of action of the vannal veins, controlled by the flexor sclerite (3Ax), in the flexion of the wing. In the hindwings of most Orthoptera a secondary vena dividens forms a rib in the vannal fold. The vannus is usually triangular in shape, and its veins typically spread out from the third axillary like the ribs of a fan. Some of the vannal veins may be branched, and secondary veins may alternate with the primary veins. The vannal region is usually best developed in the hindwing, in which it may be enlarged to form a sustaining surface, as in Plecoptera and Orthoptera. The great fanlike expansions of the hindwings of Acrididae are clearly the vannal regions, since their veins are all supported on the third axillary sclerites on the wing bases, though Martynov (1925) ascribes most of the fan areas in Acrididae to the jugal regions of the wings. The true jugum of the acridid wing is represented only by the small membrane (Ju) mesad of the last vannal vein. The jugum is more highly developed in some other Polyneoptera, as in the Mantidae. In most of the higher insects with narrow wings the vannus becomes reduced, and the vannal fold is lost, but even in such cases the flexed wing may bend along a line between the postcubitus and the first vannal vein.\nThe \"jugal region\", or neala, is a region of the wing that is usually a small membranous area proximal to the base of the vannus strengthened by a few small, irregular veinlike thickenings; but when well developed it is a distinct section of the wing and may contain one or two jugal veins. When the jugal area of the forewing is developed as a free lobe, it projects beneath the humeral angle of the hindwing and thus serves to yoke the two wings together. In the Jugatae group of Lepidoptera it bears a long finger-like lobe. The jugal region was termed the neala (\"new wing\") because it is evidently a secondary and recently developed part of the wing.\nThe \"axillary region\" is the region containing the axillary sclerites and has in general the form of a scalene triangle. The base of the triangle (a-b) is the hinge of the wing with the body; the apex (c) is the distal end of the third axillary sclerite; the longer side is anterior to the apex. The point d on the anterior side of the triangle marks the articulation of the radial vein with the second axillary sclerite. The line between d and c is the plica basalis (bf), or fold of the wing at the base of the mediocubital field. The is the outer margin of the wing, between apex and hind or anal angle.\nAt the posterior angle of the wing base in some Diptera there is a pair of membranous lobes (squamae, or calypteres) known as the alula. The alula is well developed in the house fly. The outer squama (c) arises from the wing base behind the third axillary sclerite (3Ax) and evidently represents the jugal lobe of other insects (A, D); the larger inner squama (d) arises from the posterior scutellar margin of the tergum of the wing-bearing segment and forms a protective, hoodlike canopy over the haltere. In the flexed wing the outer squama of the alula is turned upside down above the inner squama, the latter not being affected by the movement of the wing. In many Diptera a deep incision of the anal area of the wing membrane behind the single vannal vein sets off a proximal alar lobe distal to the outer squama of the alula.\nJoints.\nThe various movements of the wings, especially in insects that flex the wings horizontally over the back when at rest, demand a more complicated articular structure at the wing base than a mere hinge of the wing with the body. Each wing is attached to the body by a membranous basal area, but the articular membrane contains a number of small articular sclerites, collectively known as the pteralia. The pteralia include an anterior humeral plate at the base of the costal vein, a group of axillaries (Ax) associated with the subcostal, radial, and vannal veins, and two less definite median plates (m, m') at the base of the mediocubital area. The axillaries are specifically developed only in the wing-flexing insects, where they constitute the flexor mechanism of the wing operated by the flexor muscle arising on the pleuron. Characteristic of the wing base is also a small lobe on the anterior margin of the articular area proximal to the humeral plate, which, in the forewing of some insects, is developed into a large, flat, scale-like flap, the tegula, overlapping the base of the wing. Posteriorly the articular membrane often forms an ample lobe between the wing and the body, and its margin is generally thickened and corrugated, giving the appearance of a ligament, the so-called axillary cord, continuous mesally with the posterior marginal scutellar fold of the tergal plate bearing the wing.\nThe articular sclerites, or pteralia, of the wing base of the wing-flexing insects and their relations to the body and the wing veins, shown diagrammatically, are as follows:\n Humeral plates\n First Axillary\n Second Axillary\n Third Axillary\n Fourth Axillary\n Median plates (m, m')\nThe humeral plate is usually a small sclerite on the anterior margin of the wing base, movable and articulated with the base of the costal vein. Odonata have their humeral plate greatly enlarged, with two muscles arising from the episternum inserted into the Humeral plates and two from the edge of the epimeron inserted into the axillary plate.\nThe first axillary sclerite (lAx) is the anterior hinge plate of the wing base. Its anterior part is supported on the anterior notal wing process of the tergum (ANP); its posterior part articulates with the tergal margin. The anterior end of the sclerite is generally produced as a slender arm, the apex of which (e) is always associated with the base of the subcostal vein (Sc), though it is not united with the latter. The body of the sclerite articulates laterally with the second axillary. The second axillary sclerite (2Ax) is more variable in form than the first axillary, but its mechanical relations are no less definite. It is obliquely hinged to the outer margin of the body of the first axillary, and the radial vein (R) is always flexibly attached to its anterior end (d). The second axillary presents both a dorsal and a ventral sclerotization in the wing base; its ventral surface rests upon the fulcral wing process of the pleuron. The second axillary, therefore, is the pivotal sclerite of the wing base, and it specifically manipulates the radial vein.\nThe third axillary sclerite (3Ax) lies in the posterior part of the articular region of the wing. Its form is highly variable and often irregular, but the third axillary is the sclerite on which is inserted the flexor muscle of the wing (D). Mesally it articulates anteriorly (f) with the posterior end of the second axillary, and posteriorly (b) with the posterior wing process of the tergum (PNP), or with a small fourth axillary when the latter is present. Distally the third axillary is prolonged in a process which is always associated with the bases of the group of veins in the anal region of the wing here termed the vannal veins (V). The third axillary, therefore, is usually the posterior hinge plate of the wing base and is the active sclerite of the flexor mechanism, which directly manipulates the vannal veins. The contraction of the flexor muscle (D) revolves the third axillary on its mesal articulations (b, f) and thereby lifts its distal arm; this movement produces the flexion of the wing. The Fourth Axillary sclerite is not a constant element of the wing base. When present it is usually a small plate intervening between the third axillary and the posterior notal wing process and is probably a detached piece of the latter.\nThe median plates (m, m') are also sclerites that are not so definitely differentiated as specific plates as are the three principal axillaries, but nevertheless they are important elements of the flexor apparatus. They lie in the median area of the wing base distal to the second and third axillaries and are separated from each other by an oblique line (bf) which forms a prominent convex fold during flexion of the wing. The proximal plate (m) is usually attached to the distal arm of the third axillary and perhaps should be regarded as a part of the latter. The distal plate (m') is less constantly present as a distinct sclerite and may be represented by a general sclerotization of the base of the mediocubital field of the wing. When the veins of this region are distinct at their bases, they are associated with the outer median plate.\nMuscles.\nThe muscles that control flight in insects can take up to 10% to 30% of the total body mass. The muscles that control flight vary with the two types of flight found in insects: indirect and direct. Insects that use first, indirect, have the muscles attach to the tergum instead of the wings, as the name suggests. As the muscles contract, the thoracic box becomes distorted, transferring the energy to the wing. There are two \"bundles\" of muscles, those that span parallel to the tergum, the dorsolongitudinals, and those that are attached to the tegum and extend to the sternum, the dorsoventrals. In direct muscle, the connection is directly from the pleuron (thoracic wall) to individual sclerites located at the base of the wing. The subalar and basilar muscles have ligament attachments to the subalar and basilar sclerites. Here resilin, a highly elastic material, forms the ligaments connecting flight muscles to the wing apparatus.\nIn more derived orders of insects, such as Diptera (flies) and Hymenoptera (wasp), the indirect muscles occupy the greatest volume of the pterothorax and function as the primary source of power for the wingstroke. Contraction of the dorsolongitudinal muscles causes the severe arching of the notum which depresses the wing while contraction of the dorsoventral muscles causes opposite motion of notum. The most primitive extant flying insects, Ephemeroptera (mayflies) and Odonata (dragonflies), use direct muscles that are responsible for developing the needed power for the up and down strokes.\nInsect wing muscle is a strictly aerobic tissue. Per unit protein it consumes fuel and oxygen at rates taking place in a very concentrated and highly organized tissue so that the steady-state rates per unit volume represent an absolute record in biology. The fuel and oxygen rich blood is carried to the muscles through diffusion occurring in large amounts, in order to maintain the high level of energy used during flight. Many wing muscles are large and may be as large as 10\u00a0mm in length and 2\u00a0mm in width. Moreover, in some Diptera the fibres are of giant dimensions. For instance, in the very active \"Rutilia\", the cross-section is 1800\u00a0\u03bcm long and more than 500\u00a0\u03bcm wide. The transport of fuel and oxygen from the surroundings to the sites of consumption and the reverse transport of carbon dioxide therefore represent a challenge to the biologist both in relation to transport in the liquid phase and in the intricate system of air tubes, i.e. in the tracheal system.\nSensors.\nSeveral types of sensory neurons are found on insect wings: gustatory bristles, mechanosensory bristles, campaniform sensilla, and chordotonal organs. These sensors provide the nervous system with both external and internal proprioceptive feedback necessary for effective flight and grooming.\nCoupling, folding, and other features.\nIn many insect species, the forewing and hindwing can be coupled together, which improves the aerodynamic efficiency of flight by joining the forewing and hindwing into one bigger wing. The most common coupling mechanism (e.g., Hymenoptera and Trichoptera) is a row of small hooks on the forward margin of the hindwing, or \"hamuli\", which lock onto the forewing, keeping them held together (hamulate coupling). In some other insect species (e.g., Mecoptera, Lepidoptera, and some Trichoptera) the jugal lobe of the forewing covers a portion of the hindwing (jugal coupling), or the margins of the forewing and hindwing overlap broadly (amplexiform coupling), or the hindwing bristles, or frenulum, hook under the retaining structure or retinaculum on the forewing.\nWhen at rest, the wings are held over the back in most insects, which may involve longitudinal folding of the wing membrane and sometimes also transverse folding. Folding may sometimes occur along the flexion lines. Though fold lines may be transverse, as in the hindwings of beetles and earwigs, they are normally radial to the base of the wing, allowing adjacent sections of a wing to be folded over or under each other. The commonest fold line is the jugal fold, situated just behind the third anal vein, although, most Neoptera have a jugal fold just behind vein 3A on the forewings. It is sometimes also present on the hindwings. Where the anal area of the hindwing is large, as in Orthoptera and Blattodea, the whole of this part may be folded under the anterior part of the wing along a vannal fold a little posterior to the claval furrow. In addition, in Orthoptera and Blattodea, the anal area is folded like a fan along the veins, the anal veins being convex, at the crests of the folds, and the accessory veins concave. Whereas the claval furrow and jugal fold are probably homologous in different species, the vannal fold varies in position in different taxa. Folding is produced by a muscle arising on the pleuron and inserted into the third axillary sclerite in such a way that, when it contracts, the sclerite pivots about its points of articulation with the posterior notal process and the second axillary sclerite.\nAs a result, the distal arm of the third axillary sclerite rotates upwards and inwards, so that finally its position is completely reversed. The anal veins are articulated with this sclerite in such a way that when it moves they are carried with it and become flexed over the back of the insect. Activity of the same muscle in flight affects the power output of the wing and so it is also important in flight control. In orthopteroid insects, the elasticity of the cuticle causes the vannal area of the wing to fold along the veins. Consequently, energy is expended in unfolding this region when the wings are moved to the flight position. In general, wing extension probably results from the contraction of muscles attached to the basilar sclerite or, in some insects, to the subalar sclerite.\nFlight.\nFlight mechanisms.\nTwo groups of relatively large insects, the Ephemeroptera (mayflies) and the Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies) have the flight muscles attached directly to their wings; the wings can beat no faster than the rate at which nerves can send impulses to command the muscles to beat. All other living winged insects fly using a different mechanism, involving indirect flight muscles which cause the thorax to vibrate; the wings can beat faster than the rate at which the muscles receive nerve impulses. This mechanism evolved once, and is the defining feature (synapomorphy) for the infraclass Neoptera.\nAerodynamics.\nThere are two basic aerodynamic models of insect flight. Most insects use a method that creates a spiralling leading edge vortex. Some very small insects use the fling and clap or Weis-Fogh mechanism in which the wings clap together above the insect's body and then fling apart. As they fling open, the air gets sucked in and creates a vortex over each wing. This bound vortex then moves across the wing and, in the clap, acts as the starting vortex for the other wing. Circulation and lift are increased, at the price of wear and tear on the wings.\nMany insects can hover by beating their wings rapidly, requiring sideways stabilization as well as lift.\nA few insects use gliding flight, without the use of thrust.\nEvolution.\nSometime in the Carboniferous Period, some 350 million years ago, when there were only two major land masses, insects began flying. How and why insect wings developed, however, is not well understood, largely due to the scarcity of appropriate fossils from the period of their development in the Lower Carboniferous. Three main theories on the origins of insect flight are that wings developed from paranotal lobes, extensions of the thoracic terga; that they are modifications of movable abdominal gills as found on aquatic naiads of mayflies; or that they developed from thoracic protrusions used as radiators.\nFossils.\nFossils from the Devonian (400 million years ago) are all wingless, but by the Carboniferous (320 million years ago), more than 10 different genera of insects had fully functional wings. There is little preservation of transitional forms between the two periods. The earliest winged insects are from this time period (Pterygota), including the Blattoptera, Caloneurodea, primitive stem-group Ephemeropterans, Orthoptera and Palaeodictyopteroidea. Very early Blattopterans (during the Carboniferous) had a very large discoid pronotum and coriaceous forewings with a distinct CuP vein (an unbranched wing vein, lying near the claval fold and reaching the wing posterior margin). Even though the oldest possible insect fossil is the Devonian \"Rhyniognatha hirsti\", estimated at 396\u2013407 million years old, it possessed dicondylic mandibles, a feature associated with winged insects, although it is later considered as possible myriapod.\nDuring the Permian, the dragonflies (Odonata) were the dominant aerial predator and probably dominated terrestrial insect predation as well. True Odonata appeared in the Permian and all are amphibious. Their prototypes are the oldest winged fossils, go back to the Devonian, and are different from other wings in every way. Their prototypes may have had the beginnings of many modern attributes even by late Carboniferous and it is possible that they even captured small vertebrates, for some species had a wing span of 71\u00a0cm. The earliest beetle-like species during the Permian had pointed, leather like forewings with cells and pits. Hemiptera, or true bugs had appeared in the form of Arctiniscytina and Paraknightia having forewings with unusual venation, possibly diverging from Blattoptera.\nA single large wing from a species of Diptera in the Triassic (10\u00a0mm instead of usual 2\u20136\u00a0mm) was found in Australia (Mt. Crosby).This family Tilliardipteridae, despite the numerous 'tipuloid' features, should be included in Psychodomorpha sensu Hennig on account of loss of the convex distal 1A reaching wing margin and formation of the anal loop.\nHypotheses.\nSuggestions have been made that wings may have evolved initially for sailing on the surface of water as seen in some stoneflies. An alternative idea is that it derives from directed aerial gliding descent\u2014a preflight phenomena found in some apterygote, a wingless sister taxa to the winged insects. The earliest fliers were similar to dragonflies with two sets of wings, direct flight muscles, and no ability to fold their wings over their abdomens. Most insects today, which evolved from those first fliers, have simplified to either one pair of wings or two pairs functioning as a single pair and using a system of indirect flight muscles.\nNatural selection has played an enormous role in refining the wings, control and sensory systems, and anything else that affects aerodynamics or kinematics. One noteworthy trait is wing twist. Most insect wings are twisted, as are helicopter blades, with a higher angle of attack at the base. The twist generally is between 10 and 20 degrees. In addition to this twist, the wing surfaces are not necessarily flat or featureless; most larger insects have wing membranes distorted and angled between the veins in such a way that the cross-section of the wings approximates an airfoil. Thus, the wing's basic shape already is capable of generating a small amount of lift at zero angle of attack. Most insects control their wings by adjusting tilt, stiffness, and flapping frequency of the wings with tiny muscles in the thorax (below). Some insects evolved other wing features that are not advantageous for flight, but play a role in something else, such as mating or protection.\nSome insects, occupying the biological niches that they do, need to be incredibly maneuverable. They must find their food in tight spaces and be capable of escaping larger predators \u2013 or they may themselves be predators, and need to capture prey. Their maneuverability, from an aerodynamic viewpoint, is provided by high lift and thrust forces. Typical insect fliers can attain lift forces up to three times their weight and horizontal thrust forces up to five times their weight. There are two substantially different insect flight mechanisms, and each has its own advantages and disadvantages \u2013 just because odonates have a more primitive flight mechanism does not mean they are less able fliers; they are, in certain ways, more agile than anything that has evolved afterward.\nMorphogenesis.\nWhile the development of wings in insects is clearly defined in those who are members of Endopterygota, which undergo complete metamorphosis; in these species, the wing develops while in the pupal stage of the insects life cycle. However, insects that undergo incomplete metamorphosis do not have a pupal stage, therefore they must have a different wing morphogenesis. Insects such as those that are hemimetabolic have wings that start out as buds, which are found underneath the exoskeleton, and do not become exposed until the last instar of the nymph.\nThe first indication of the wing buds is of a thickening of the hypodermis, which can be observed in insect species as early the embryo, and in the earliest stages of the life cycle. During the development of morphological features while in the embryo, or embryogenesis, a cluster of cells grow underneath the ectoderm which later in development, after the lateral ectoderm has grown dorsally to form wind imaginal disc. An example of wing bud development in the larvae, can be seen in those of White butterflies (\"Pieris\"). In the second instar the histoblast become more prominent, which now form a pocket-like structure. As of the third and fourth instars, the histoblast become more elongated. This greatly extended and evaginated, or protruding, part is what becomes the wing. By the close of the last instar, or fifth, the wing is pushed out of the wing-pocket, although continues to lie under the old larval cuticle while in its prepupal stage. It is not until the butterfly is in its pupal stage that the wing-bud becomes exposed, and shortly after eclosion, the wing begins to expand and form its definitive shape.\nThe development of tracheation of the wings begin before the wing histoblast form, as it is important to note that they develop near a large trachea. During the fourth instar, cells from the epithelium of this trachea become greatly enlarged extend into the cavity of the wing bud, with each cell having developed a closely coiled tracheole. Each trachcole is of unicellular origin, and is at first intracellular in position; while tracheae are of multicellular origin and the lumen of each is intercellular in position. The development of tracheoles, each coiled within a single cell of the epithelium of a trachea, and the subsequent opening of communication between the tracheoles and the lumen of the trachea, and the uncoiling and stretching out of the tracheoles, so that they reach all parts of the wing.\nIn the earlier stages of its development, the wing-bud is not provided with special organs of respiration such as tracheation, as it resembles in this respect the other portions of the hypodermis of which it is still a part. The histoblast is developed near a large trachea, a cross-section of which is shown in, which represents sections of these parts of the first, second, third and fourth instars respectively. At the same time the tracheoles uncoil, and extend in bundles in the forming vein-cavities of the wing-bud. At the molt that marks the beginning of the pupal stadium stage, they become functional. At the same time, the larval tracheoles degenerate; their function having been replaced by the wing tracheae.\nNomenclature.\nMost of the nomenclature of insect orders is based on the Ancient Greek word for wing, (\"\"), as the suffix \"-ptera\".\nAdaptations.\nVariation.\nInsect wings are fundamental in identifying and classifying species as there is no other set of structures in studying insects more significant. Each order and insect family has distinctive wing shapes and features. In many cases, even species may be distinguished from each other by differences of color and pattern. For example, just by position one can identify species, albeit to a much lesser extent. Though most insects fold their wings when at rest, dragonflies and some damselflies rest with their wings spread out horizontally, while groups such as the caddisflies, stoneflies, alderflies, and lacewings hold their wings sloped roof-like over their backs. A few moths wrap their wings around their bodies, while many flies and most butterflies close their wings together straight upward over the back.\nMany times the shape of the wings correlates with the type of insect flight. The best-flying insects tend to have long, slender wings. In many species of Sphingidae (sphinx moths), the forewings are large and sharply pointed, forming with the small hindwings a triangle that is suggestive of the wings of fast, modern airplanes. Another, possibly more important correlation, is that of the size and power of the muscles to the speed and power of flight. In the powerfully flying insects, the wings are most adapted for the stresses and aerodynamics of flight. The veins are thicker, stronger, and closer together toward the front edge (or \"leading edge\") and thinner yet flexible toward the rear edge (or \"trailing edge\"). This makes the insect wing an excellently constructed airfoil, capable of exerting both propulsion and lift while minimizing drag.\nVariation of the wing beat may also occur, not just amongst different species, but even among individuals at different times. In general, the frequency is dependent upon the ratio between the power of the wing muscles and the resistance of the load. Large-winged, light-bodied butterflies may have a wing beat frequency of 4\u201320 per second whereas small-winged, heavy-bodied flies and bees beat their wings more than 100 times a second and mosquitoes can beat up to 988\u20131046 times a second. The same goes for flight; though it is generally difficult to estimate the speed of insects in flight, most insects can probably fly faster in nature than they do in controlled experiments.\nColeoptera.\nIn species of Coleoptera (beetles), the only functional wings are the hindwings. The hindwings are longer than the elytra, folded longitudinally and transversely under the elytra. The wing is rotated forwards on its base into flight position. This action spread the wing and unfolded longitudinally and transversely. There is the spring mechanism in the wing structure, sometimes with the help of abdomen movement, to keep the wing in folded position. The beetle wing venation is reduced and modified due to the folding structure, which include:\nIn most species of beetles, the front pair of wings are modified and sclerotised (hardened) to form elytra and they protect the delicate hindwings which are folded beneath. The elytra are connected to the pterathorax; being called as such because it is where the wings are connected (\"pteron\" meaning \"wing\" in Greek). The elytra are not used for flight, but tend to cover the hind part of the body and protect the second pair of wings (\"alae\"). The elytra must be raised in order to move the hind flight wings. A beetle's flight wings are crossed with veins and are folded after landing, often along these veins, and are stored below the elytra. In some beetles, the ability to fly has been lost. These include some ground beetles (family Carabidae) and some \"true weevils\" (family Curculionidae), but also some desert and cave-dwelling species of other families. Many of these species have the two elytra fused together, forming a solid shield over the abdomen. In a few families, both the ability to fly and the elytra have been lost, with the best known example being the glow-worms of the family Phengodidae, in which the females are larviform throughout their lives.\nLepidoptera.\nThe two pairs of wings are found on the middle and third segment, or mesothorax and metathorax respectively. In the more recent genera, the wings of the second segment are much more pronounced, however some more primitive forms have similarly sized wings of both segments. The wings are covered in scales arranged like shingles, forming the extraordinary variety seen in color. The mesothorax is evolved to have more powerful muscles to propel moth or butterfly through the air, with the wing of said segment having a stronger vein structure. The largest superfamily, Noctuidae, has the wings modified to act as tympanal or hearing organs Modifications in the wing's venation include:\nThe wings, head parts of thorax and abdomen of Lepidoptera are covered with minute scales, from which feature the order 'Lepidoptera' derives its names, the word \"lepteron\" in Ancient Greek meaning 'scale'. Most scales are lamellar, or blade-like and attached with a pedicel, while other forms may be hair-like or specialized as secondary sexual characteristics. The lumen or surface of the lamella, has a complex structure. It gives color either due to the pigmentary colors contained within or due to its three-dimensional structure. Scales provide a number of functions, which include insulation, thermoregulation, aiding gliding flight, amongst others, the most important of which is the large diversity of vivid or indistinct patterns they provide which help the organism protect itself by camouflage, mimicry, and to seek mates.\nOdonata.\nSpecies of Odonata (Damselflies and dragonflies) both have two pairs of wings which are about equal in size and shape and are clear in color. There are five, if the R+M is counted as 1, main vein stems on dragonfly and damselfly wings, and wing veins are fused at their bases and the wings cannot be folded over the body at rest, which also include:\nThe main veins and the crossveins form the wing venation pattern. The venation patterns are different in different species. There may be very numerous crossveins or rather few. The Australian Flatwing Damselfly's wings are one of the few veins patterns. The venation pattern is useful for species identification. Almost all Anisoptera settle with the wings held out sideways or slightly downward, however most Zygoptera settle with the wings held together, dorsal surfaces apposed. The thorax of Zygoptera is so oblique that when held in this way the wings fit neatly along the top of the abdomen. They do not appear to be held straight up as in butterflies or mayflies. In a few zygopteran families the wings are held horizontally at rest, and in one anisopteran genus (e.g. Cordulephya, Corduliidae) the wings are held in the typical damselfly resting position. Adult species possess two pairs of equal or subequal wings. There appear to be only five main vein stems. A nodus is formed where the second main vein (subcosta) meets the leading edge of the wing. In most families a conspicuous pterostigma is carried near the wing tip. Identification as Odonata can be based on the venation. The only likely confusion is with some lacewings (order Neuroptera) which have many crossveins in the wings. Until the early years of the 20th century Odonata were often regarded as being related to lacewings and were given the ordinal name Paraneuroptera, but any resemblance between these two orders is entirely superficial. In Anisoptera the hindwing is broader than the forewing and in both wings a crossvein divides the discoidal cell into a Triangle and Supertriangle.\nOrthoptera.\nSpecies of Orthoptera (grasshoppers and crickets) have forewings that are tough opaque tegmina, narrow which are normally covering the hindwings and abdomen at rest. The hindwings are board membranous and folded in fan-like manner, which include the following venation:\nPhasmatodea.\nStick insect have forewings that are tough, opaque tegmina, short and covering only the base part of the hindwings at rest. Hindwings from costa to Cubitus are tough and opaque like the forewings. The large anal area are membranous and folded in fan-like manner. There are no or very few branching in stick insect wing veins.\nDermaptera.\nOther orders such as the Dermaptera (earwigs), Orthoptera (grasshoppers, crickets), Mantodea (praying mantis) and Blattodea (cockroaches) have rigid leathery forewings that are not flapped while flying, sometimes called \"tegmen\" (pl. \"tegmina\"), \"elytron\" (pl. \"elytra\"), or \"pseudoelytron\".\nHemiptera.\nIn Hemiptera (true bugs), the forewings may be hardened, though to a lesser extent than in the beetles. For example, the anterior part of the front wings of stink bugs is hardened, while the posterior part is membranous. They are called \"hemelytron\" (pl. \"hemelytra\"). They are only found in the suborder Heteroptera; the wings of the Homoptera, such as the cicada, are typically entirely membranous. Both forewings and hindwings of Cicada are membranous. Most species are glass-like although some are opaque. Cicadas are not good fliers and most fly only a few seconds. When flying, forewing and hindwing are hooked together by a grooved coupling along the hindwing costa and forewing margin. Most species have a basic venation as shown in the following picture.\nAlso notice there are the ambient veins and peripheral membranes on the margin of both wings.\nDiptera.\nIn the Diptera (true flies), there is only one pair of functional wings, with the posterior pair of wings are reduced to halteres, which help the fly to sense its orientation and movement, as well as to improve balance by acting similar to gyroscopes. In Calyptratae, the very hindmost portion of the wings are modified into somewhat thickened flaps called calypters which cover the halteres.\nBlattodea.\nSpecies of Blattodea (cockroaches) have a forewing, are also known as tegmen, that is more or less sclerotized. It is used in flight as well as a form of protection of the membranous hindwings. The veins of hindwing are about the same as front wing but with large anal lobe folded at rest between CuP and 1A. The anal lobe usually folded in a fan-like manner.\nHymenoptera.\nHymenoptera adults, including sawflies, wasps, bees, and non-worker ants, all have two pairs of membranous wings.\nThe forward margin of the hindwing bears a number of hooked bristles, or \"hamuli\", which lock onto the forewing, keeping them held together. The smaller species may have only two or three hamuli on each side, but the largest wasps may have a considerable number, keeping the wings gripped together especially tightly. Hymenopteran wings have relatively few veins compared with many other insects, especially in the smaller species.\nOther families.\nTermites are relatively poor fliers and are readily blown downwind in wind speeds of less than 2\u00a0km/h, shedding their wings soon after landing at an acceptable site, where they mate and attempt to form a nest in damp timber or earth. Wings of most termites have three heavy veins along the basal part of the front edge of the forewing and the crossveins near the wing tip are angled, making trapezoidal cells. Although subterranean termite wings have just two major veins along the front edge of the forewing and the cross veins towards the wingtip are perpendicular to these veins, making square and rectangular cells.\nSpecies of Thysanoptera (thrips), Ptiliidae and other flying microinsects have slender front and hindwings with long fringes of hair, called fringed wings, also referred to as ptiloptery. While species of Trichoptera (caddisfly) have hairy wings with the front and hindwings clothed with setae.\nMale Strepsiptera also have halteres that evolved from the forewings instead of the hindwings. This means that only their hindwings are functional at flying, as opposed to Diptera which have functional forewings and halteres for hindwings. Also the hindwings in males of Coccidae are reduced to halteres (or are absent).\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["4926056"], "permutation_1": ["4926056"], "permutation_2": ["4926056"], "permutation_3": ["4926056"]}
{"id": "nq_3056380758828935087", "docs_added": {"5064824": "O.P.P. (song)\n\"O.P.P.\" is a song by American hip hop group Naughty by Nature, released in August 1991 by Tommy Boy as the lead single from the group's self-titled second album (1991). It was one of the first rap songs to become a pop hit when it reached No. 6 on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and No. 35 on the UK Singles Chart. Rodd Houston and Marcus Raboy directed the music video for the song. Its declaration, \"Down wit' O.P.P.\" was a popular catchphrase in the US in the early 1990s.\nThe song was a hugely successful single; \"Spin\" magazine named it one of the greatest singles of the 1990s, offering a brief verdict with the rhetorical question, \"Ever wonder where Puffy came from?\" It also made some media outlets' lists of one of the best rap songs of all time: including \"The Source\", VH1 (No. 22), and \"Rolling Stone\" (No. 80). The song was also ranked No. 20 in VH1's \"40 Greatest Hip Hop Songs of the '90s\" in 2012 and No. 96 in \"Billboard\" magazine's \"500 Best Pop Songs of All Time\" in 2023.\nContent.\nThe song samples Melvin Bliss' \"Synthetic Substitution\" and The Jackson 5's \"ABC\". Its lyrics concern sexual infidelity, with \"O.P.P.\" standing for \"other people's pussy\" and \"other people's penis\". Treach told in an interview with \"New York Times\", \"'O.P.P.' is about crazy messing with other people's girls. Everybody knows about that, girls messing, guys messing, you know the bit. It goes on, so everybody could relate, the fellas and the girls, and it's got a hook for the party and everybody can crazy groove to it.\"\nCritical reception.\nUpon the single release, Larry Flick from \"Billboard\" remarked that here, the act drops samples of the Jackson Five's \"ABC\" onto \"a rousing hip-hop beat-base. Anthemic rhymes are icing on the cake. Have a taste.\" James Bernard from \"Entertainment Weekly\" described it as \"a sly, body-rocking tune with a melodic pop hook and plenty of cute double entendres\". Dennis Hunt from \"Los Angeles Times\" viewed it as a \"lively, lewd hit single\", \"which is cleverly constructed on the framework of the Jackson 5\u2019s bubble-gum soul classic\". David Bennun from \"Melody Maker\" called it \"a genitally-fixated rap on the joys of infidelity\". A reviewer from \"Music & Media\" felt \"It's further proof of the new direction in rap heading more towards a normal pop song. The combination of the piano hook and the female backup makes this funky rhyme memorable.\"\nPeter Watrous from \"New York Times\" wrote, \"There are a couple of signs that \"O.P.P.\", an old-fashioned cheating song by Naughty by Nature [...] is shaping up as one of the summer's hits on local streets. The first indication is the sound of \"O.P.P\" coming from the back of Jeeps; the second is that bootleg T-shirts advertising the band\u2014Trech (Trech Criss), Vin Rock (Vinnie Brown) and Kay Gee (Keir Gist) -- are being sold all over lower Manhattan.\" Johnny Lee from \"Smash Hits\" declared the song as \"everso jumpy\". Scott Poulson-Bryant from \"Spin\" said, \"I'm definitely down with \"O.P.P.\"\u2014you will be too.\"\nRetrospective response.\nGerman rock and pop culture magazine \"Spex\" included \"O.P.P.\" in their \"The Best Singles of the Century\" list in 1999. In a 2021 retrospective review, Jesse Ducker from Albumism said about the song, \"It's one of the most light-hearted songs about infidelity this side of Clarence Carter's \"Back Door Santa\", as Treach gleefully lists the virtues of engaging in sexual congress with someone else's girl.\" Stanton Swihart of AllMusic felt it's \"a song that somehow managed the trick of being both audaciously catchy and subversively coy at the same time.\" He added, \"Its irrepressible appeal was so widespread, in fact, that it played just as well to the hardcore heads in the hood as it did to the hip-hop dabblers in the suburbs.\" Jean Rosenbluth from Los Angeles Times stated, \"The fabulously wicked chant \"O.P.P.\" masterfully captured hip-hop's silly side even better than that genre's prime exponent, Digital Underground.\" In October 2023, \"Billboard\" magazine ranked it number 96 in their \"500 Best Pop Songs of All Time\", saying, \"Three decades later, all it takes is the opening piano plinks to remind even the most conservative \u201890s kid that deep down, damn skippy, they\u2019re still a card-carrying member.\" Same year, \"Time Out\" ranked \"O.P.P.\" number 60 in their \"The 100 Best Party Songs Ever Made\".\nMusic video.\nA music video was produced to promote the single, directed by Rodd Houston and Marcus Raboy. It begins with a man removing his wedding ring and dropping it. The group raps at a club behind a fence and people dance behind them. The video was later made available on Naughty by Nature's official YouTube channel in 2010, and had generated more than 19 million views as of January 2023.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nIn popular culture.\nThe song has been used as a soundtrack to various films as well as television series, including the TV sitcoms \"The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air\" and \"The Office\", and the films \"La Haine\", \"Jarhead\", and \"Up in the Air\". In the film \"\", the song was parodied as 'Down With G.O.D'. In the video game \"Minecraft\", the phrase \"Down with O.P.P.!\" was used as a splash text which appeared on the game's menu screen. The splash was added on February 7, 2010 in Java Edition version Indev 20100207-1 but was later removed in version 1.16 Release Candidate 1 on June 18, 2020. The song was also featured in .\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "333873": "Naughty by Nature\nAmerican hip hop trio\nNaughty by Nature is an American hip hop group formed in East Orange, New Jersey in 1986, consisting of Treach (Anthony Criss), Vin Rock (Vincent Brown), and DJ Kay Gee (born Keir Lamont Gist).\nHistory.\n1980s.\nTreach formed Naughty by Nature with Vin Rock and DJ Kay Gee in 1986 as The New Style in East Orange, New Jersey, where they attended the same high school. The group first appeared on the music scene in 1989, releasing an album called \"Independent Leaders\", and the album generated the minor hit \"Scuffin' Those Knees\". After the release of their first album, the group was mentored by fellow New Jersey native Queen Latifah, and subsequently changed their name. Queen Latifah introduced them to her label Tommy Boy Records and her management company.\n1990s.\nNaughty by Nature's first hit was \"O.P.P.\", which sampled the Jackson 5's hit \"ABC\" and was released in 1991 on their self-titled album \"Naughty by Nature\". The track peaked at #6 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, and was named one of the top 100 rap singles of all time in 1998 by \"The Source\" magazine, and being ranked the 20th best single of the 1990s by \"Spin\" magazine. The album generated another hit with a reworking of Bob Marley's \"No Woman No Cry\" called \"Everything's Gonna Be All Right\" (the track was also called \"Ghetto Bastard\" on some explicit releases). That song detailed the experiences of Treach growing up in poverty, and now rising up to live a better life. Powered by the success of that song and \"O.P.P.\", their self-titled album went platinum.\nFellow New Jersey native Tony D accused Naughty by Nature of stealing a sample from his album \"Music Makes You Move\" and using it on \"O.P.P.\" The matter was settled out of court. Naughty by Nature scored a hit with the track \"Uptown Anthem\" from the soundtrack to the 1992 film \"Juice\", in which Treach had a cameo appearance. Treach began to pursue an acting career after befriending Tupac Shakur on the set of \"Juice\", and Naughty by Nature appeared in the 1993 film \"The Meteor Man\" as a street gang. After Shakur's murder in 1996, Treach recorded a tribute song titled \"Mourn You Til I Join You\".\nLater, the group had multiple hits from its third and fourth albums, called \"19 Naughty III\" and \"Poverty's Paradise\" respectively. Both albums reached the #1 spot on the R&B/Hip-Hop Charts. \"Hip Hop Hooray\" was a success from the album \"19 Naughty III\". Its video was directed by Spike Lee and featured cameos by Queen Latifah, Eazy-E, Run-D.M.C., and Da Youngstas. \"Poverty's Paradise\" won the Grammy Award in 1996 for Best Rap Album, becoming the first album to win this award. It also spawned a hit song in \"Feel Me Flow\" which peaked at No. 17 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100.\nThey produced a remix of the Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson song \"Scream\" in 1995.\nIn the mid-1990s, Naughty by Nature started their own music imprint, Illtown Records, and in 1995 released an album from their prot\u00e9g\u00e9s the Rottin Razkals.\nIn 1999, the group released its fifth album, titled \"\". The album was fairly successful, being certified Gold by the RIAA, and spawned the hit \"Jamboree\" that peaked at #10 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100.\n2000\u20132012.\nAfter the release of \"Nineteen Naughty Nine: Nature's Fury\", a dispute regarding finances developed between Kay Gee and Treach. Treach blamed Kay Gee for squandering the group's finances. Due to these disagreements DJ Kay Gee decided to leave Naughty by Nature in late 2000. He started to develop his own record label Divine Mill. In 2001, the group released a song 'Here Comes The Money' that has constantly been used as the entrance theme for Shane McMahon in WWE. The remainder of the group, Treach and Vin Rock, released an album in 2002 called \"IIcons\". Due to Kay Gee's absence, the group used a variety of different producers including Da Beatminerz. The album, however, received a lukewarm reception from the public. In 2002, the group disbanded.\nIn May 2006, Kay Gee reunited with Treach and rejoined Naughty by Nature at a concert at B.B. King's nightclub. In April 2010 they released the single \"Get to Know Me Better\", featuring rapper Pitbull, while the B-side of the single was called \"I Gotta Lotta\". Later in 2010 they released the group's first mixtape, \"\". In 2011 the three worked on their long-delayed seventh group album, and it finally saw release. Titled \"Anthem Inc.\", it came out December 13, 2011. It featured brand new material as well as re-recordings of the group's past hits.\nOn June 11, 2011, Naughty by Nature became the first hip-hop group to perform at Fenway Park. They performed \"Hip Hop Hooray\" as part of the mega boyband NKOTBSB's concert.\nIn March 2012, following the release of a documentary on fellow New Jersey\u2013based hip hop group Sugar Hill Gang, Naughty by Nature performed in Asbury Park, NJ at the Garden State film festival.\n2013 - present: breakup and reconciliation.\nIn May 2013, frontman Treach shocked fans when he revealed that Vin Rock had been \"fired\" from the group after failing to put in the same amount of energy as himself and DJ Kay Gee. At the time, Treach said he and Vinnie had not been on speaking terms for around two years.\nIn April 2015, Treach said he and Vinnie had resolved their issues, but now their relationship was strictly \"business\". \"You got teammates, sometimes, that's on the same team, they may not feel each other. At the end of the day, you going out to win. That's what we doing\", Treach said. Although the two were cordial, he said another Naughty by Nature album was unlikely.\nIn January 2016, in celebration of their 25th anniversary, Naughty by Nature posted the video for their song \"God Is Us\" from \"Anthem Inc.\" to their YouTube channel.\nOn May 2, 2019, the Mixtape Tour commenced in Cincinnati, Ohio. Performers included Naughty by Nature, Salt-N-Pepa, Debbie Gibson, and Tiffany, with New Kids on the Block being billed as the headline performers.\nAwards and nominations.\nGrammy Awards\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Awards table/styles.css\" />\nAmerican Music Awards\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "25206228": "It's On\n\"It's On\" is a song by American hip hop trio Naughty by Nature, released on June 8, 1993 by Tommy Boy as the second single from the trio's third album, \"19 Naughty III\" (1993). The song was produced and written by the three members of the group, and found decent success on the US \"Billboard\" charts, making it to number 74 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and number 48 on the \"Billboard\" Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. It samples jazz artist Donald Byrd's \"French Spice\", for which he received writing credits. The official remix was produced by the production duo The Beatnuts and featured on the B-side of the single.\nCritical reception.\nIn a retrospective review, Jesse Ducker from Albumism stated that the song \"is a musical change of pace, as Treach and Vinnie rhyme over a horn-heavy loop from Donald Byrd's 'French Spice'.\" Upon the single release, Larry Flick from \"Billboard\" described it as \"another wildly infectious, fist-waving anthem that combines rapid-fire rhymes and live, butt-shaking beats.\" He added, \"Chanted chorus could open deserved doors at top 40 formats, though track is hard enough to keep that all-important street cred in check.\" Andrew Smith from \"Melody Maker\" wrote, \"Naughty by Nature specialize in cultivating a groove, and there are a few funky ones on show here, though I could do without the gun on the cover.\" Andy Beevers from \"Music Week\" felt that \"this hard-hitting rap track will appeal to established fans but appears to lack the crossover appeal of 'OPP' or 'Hip Hip Hooray'.\" Dele Fadele from \"NME\" opined that it \"lacks bite, seeming inconsequential in the face of the floor-filling, arms-waving 'Hip Hop Hooray'.\" Tour\u00e9 from \"Rolling Stone\" named it a \"strong\" single.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "25204708": "Everything's Gonna Be Alright (Naughty by Nature song)\n1991 single by Naughty by Nature\n\"Everything's Gonna Be Alright\" is the second single released in November 1991 from American hip hop group Naughty by Nature's self-titled second album (1991). The song is titled \"Ghetto Bastard\" on uncensored versions of the eponymous album. While not as successful as their previous single, \"O.P.P.\", \"Everything's Gonna Be Alright\" managed to make it to 53 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and 9 on the Hot Rap Singles. The song would later appear on both of the group's compilation albums, 1999's \"Nature's Finest: Naughty by Nature's Greatest Hits\" and 2003's \"Greatest Hits: Naughty's Nicest\". It was rerecorded for the 2011 release, \"Anthem Inc.\"\nThe song's chorus is derived from Bob Marley's \"No Woman, No Cry\".\nCritical reception.\nLarry Flick from \"Billboard\" wrote, \"Follow-up to platinum single \"O.P.P.\" is not as light and fluffy, though it will establish rap act as lyricists to be reckoned with. Story lines about surviving fatherless homes seem to be all the rage at the moment. Here, topic is handled with an intelligent and optimistic hand.\" \"New Musical Express\" said, \"Here they hook up to the jamdown sound of Bob Marley and the Wailers' classic of yore and impregnate it with their own special blend of ghetto wisdom. A subtle and welcome switch from the usual Uzi-toting brag that many rappers prefer to spout and a clear indication that rap has still got a lot to say.\" A reviewer from \"Music & Media\" noted that here, the \"talented rap crew\" had replaced the reggae beat of the Marley song with a modern dance groove, complimenting it as \"easy programmable.\"\nRetrospective response.\nJesse Ducker from Albumism said in his 2021 retrospective review of the \"Naughty by Nature\" album, that \"Everything's Gonna Be Alright\" is \"the stronger and more incisive recording [than its predecessor].\" He described it as \"unremittingly bleak\", adding, \"I can think of few songs that are better at presenting a first-person account of despair and poverty.\" Jean Rosenbluth from \"Los Angeles Times\" wrote that in the \"bittersweet\" song, the group delivered \"an astonishingly powerful song (melody and all)\" that is second in life-in-the-ghetto resonance only to the Geto Boys' \"Mind Playing Tricks on Me\".\nMusic video.\nA music video was produced to promote the single, featuring the band rapping as they walk on sidewalks throughout the inner city. While hanging out they chase away a drug dealer and scare him with a machete. The video was later published on Tommy Boy Records' official YouTube channel in June 2018. It has amassed more than 2.8 million views as of October 2021.", "7178873": "Hip Hop Hooray\n\"Hip Hop Hooray\" is a song by American hip hop group, Naughty by Nature, released in December 1992 by Tommy Boy Records as the first single from their third album, \"19 Naughty III\" (1993). The song spent one week at number one on the US \"Billboard\" Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, and reached number eight on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. It contains samples from \"Funky President\" by James Brown, \"Don't Change Your Love\" by Five Stairsteps, \"Make Me Say it Again, Girl\" by Isley Brothers, \"You Can't Turn Me Away\" by Sylvia Striplin and \"Sledgehammer\" by Peter Gabriel. Pete Rock made a remix that samples Cannonball Adderley's \"74 Miles Away\". It was certified Platinum by the RIAA and has sold over 1,100,000 copies in the United States. The music video for \"Hip Hop Hooray\" was directed by Spike Lee and filmed in Brooklyn, New York City.\nThe song contains lyrics boasting the group's love of hip hop and their fascination with good-looking women. The Seattle Mariners would play the song after Ken Griffey Jr. was officially announced coming to bat at the Kingdome, especially in 1995, the year of the Mariners' first Major League Baseball playoff appearance. It played at Yankee Stadium after a Yankees player hits a home run from 2017 until the middle of the 2019 season. It was brought back for the 2020 season and used until the 2022 season. In 2024, \"Billboard\" ranked \"Hip Hop Hooray\" number three in their \"The 100 Greatest Jock Jams of All Time\".\nBackground and composition.\nNaughty by Nature member Vin Rock stated: \"I knew the 'hey ho' chorus would connect to the East Coast partygoers because it was a popular saying at parties, roller rinks, etc. Once we incorporated it into the beat KayGee provided, I definitely felt confident it would be well received.\" He also said: \"'Hip Hop Hooray' sums up what hip-hop culture is: a celebration of the inner city's ability to endure and create one of the largest music and art cultures in the world. It's the epitome of crowd participation and togetherness. Once people hear it, they immediately throw their hands in the air, wave and sing in unison. It's a song that will live forever.\"\nNaughty by Nature member KayGee stated: \"We like to call it our unofficial hip-hop anthem.\"\nCritical reception.\nIn a 2018 retrospective review, Jesse Ducker from Albumism said the song is \"just about as ubiquitous\" as \"O.P.P.\". He added, \"Most people remember the \"Hey! Ho! Hey! Ho!\" hook, but Treach and Vinnie Rock do a solid job trading four bar stanzas through the song's three verses. And Treach using \"Tippy-tippy, pause, tippy-tippy pause\" to describe him sneaking up on wack emcees is, if nothing else, creative.\" Upon the single release, Larry Flick from \"Billboard\" described it as \"invigorating\", noting that \"once again, an anthemic chorus is the anchor for clever rhymes and a contagious melody. Rap purists will dig raw groove/lyrical undercurrent, though glossy production will glide right into the hearts of radio programmers.\" \nReviewing \"19 Naughty III\", James Bernard from \"Entertainment Weekly\" stated, \"Yes, there's an \"O.P.P.\" on this one. \"Hip Hop Hooray\" is as catchy as the charttopper this New Jersey rap trio rode to superstardom, only the new flavor is not quite as frisky.\" Jean Rosenbluth from \"Los Angeles Times\" remarked that \"the beats are mostly snappy and the rhymes catchy\". Pan-European magazine \"Music & Media\" commented, \"One of the golden rules for a hit is a good hook. When these rappers repetitively shout \"Hey Hoo\", like cheerleaders, everyone will join in automatically. \"Hot hit hurray!\" if you ask us.\" James Hamilton from \"Music Week\"'s \"RM\" Dance Update described it as a \"moderately jaunty rap swayer\". Tour\u00e9 from \"Rolling Stone\" named it a \"strong single\", and an \"anthem\". Rupert Howe from \"Select\" called it \"over-catchy\". Johnny Lee from \"Smash Hits\" felt that it \"sounds a bit\" like Jazzy Jeff's \"Summertime\", giving it three out of five.\nMusic video.\nThe accompanying music video for \"Hip Hop Hooray\" was directed by American film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and author Spike Lee, who also appears in it. Queen Latifah, Eazy-E, Monie Love, Da Youngsta's, Kris Kross, Tupac Shakur and Run\u2013D.M.C. also make appearances in the video. A second version of the video was later published on Tommy Boy Records' official YouTube channel on January 6, 2018 that has removed Eazy-E's appearance from the video, replacing it with footage from previous scenes. It is also missing the copyright message that was displayed at the end of the original version. It is unclear when this edited video was produced or what the reason was for Eazy-E's removal. The video had generated more than 33 million views as of January 2023. The original unedited video is available on Naughty by Nature's YouTube channel.\nTalking about Eazy-E's cameo in the video, Vin Rock stated: \"The cameo appearances were awesome, especially Eazy-E from NWA. He was resetting his career after parting ways with Dr. Dre. So Eazy spent a lot of time on the East Coast as well. KayGee and Treach wrote and produced a few songs for Eazy.\"\nNaughty by Nature member KayGee stated: \"Treach's initial idea for the video was to look like Fat Albert in the junkyard.\"\nVin Rock stated: \"Director Spike Lee was super professional, had multiple setups ready for us, and he even pulled KayGee out of bed to get started because he didn't want to be late for his Knicks game!\" Vin Rock also commented: \"It was great to shoot in Brooklyn. Historically, if you weren't from the five boroughs you weren't respected as rappers, but Brooklyn definitely showed us Jersey boys tons of love.\"\nMedia usage.\n\"Hip Hop Hooray\" is featured as a playable track in the video game \"Rayman Raving Rabbids\". In September 2017, the song was featured as one of the soundtracks of 2K's video game series, \"NBA 2K18\".\nRita Wilson, actor, singer, and wife of another A-List entertainer, Tom Hanks, while in Australia, recovering from a bout with COVID-19, submitted a social media clip of herself performing the song. She later collaborated with members of Naughty By Nature to produce a remix of the song that posted on Youtube, to support a campaign, \"MusiCares COVID-19 Relief Fund\".\nThe song is played in the \"Simpsons\" episode \"The Burns and The Bees\", in which the basketball team's gorilla mascot costume is shot after making a basket.\nThe song had been used by the New York Yankees when they score a home run in Yankee Stadium. The New Jersey Devils also use the song when they win a home game at the Prudential Center.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3265218": "19 Naughty III\n19 Naughty III is the third album from Naughty by Nature, released on February 23, 1993, through Tommy Boy Records. Recording sessions took place at Unique Recording Studios, Soundtrack Studios and Electric Lady Studios in New York City from February 1992 to January 1993. Three singles were released from the album, the group's second top 10 hit, \"Hip Hop Hooray,\" as well as the minor hits \"It's On\" and \"Written on Ya Kitten.\" Production was handled entirely by group member Kay Gee himself, with additional production from S.I.D. Reynolds. It includes guest appearances from Heavy D, Queen Latifah, Freddie Foxxx and Rottin Razkals.\nReception.\nThe album did well commercially and critically, with 4-star ratings from AllMusic and \"Rolling Stone\" and platinum certification from the RIAA. AllMusic stated in its review that the album ranked \"as Naughty by Nature's second straight triumph.\"\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2897802": "Naughty by Nature (album)\nNaughty by Nature is the second album from Naughty by Nature, released on September 3, 1991, by Tommy Boy Records. The album was recorded through November 1990 to August 1991. It was a critical and commercial success, having been certified platinum on February 6, 1992, thanks in large part to the hit single, \"O.P.P.,\" which reached #6 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 in 1991. \nAdditional singles released from the album were \"Everything's Gonna Be All Right\" and \"Uptown Anthem,\" both of which were minor hits on the \"Billboard\" charts.\nReception.\nStanton Swihart of AllMusic claims that \"O.P.P.\" was the most \"contagious crossover radio smash in the autumn of 1991.\" In addition, Swihart considers \"Naughty by Nature\" to be \"both a pop and a rap classic,\" as well as a \"must-have album for fans of East Coast rap.\"\nSamples.\n\"Yoke the Joker\"\n\"Wickedest Man Alive\"\n\"O.P.P.\"\n\"Everything's Gonna Be Alright\"\n\"Let the Ho's Go\"\n\"Every Day All Day\"\n\"Guard Your Grill\"\n\"Pin the Tail on the Donkey\"\n\"1, 2, 3\"\n\"Rhyme'll Shine On\"\n\"Thankx for Sleepwalking\"\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "7220211": "Naughty Girl (Beyonc\u00e9 song)\n2004 single by Beyonc\u00e9\n\"Naughty Girl\" is a song by American singer Beyonc\u00e9 from her debut solo album, \"Dangerously in Love\" (2003). It was written by Beyonc\u00e9, Scott Storch, Robert Waller and Angela Beyinc\u00e9, and produced by Storch and Beyonc\u00e9. The song was released by Columbia Records as the fourth and final single from the album on March 14, 2004. Musically, \"Naughty Girl\" is an R&B song that interpolates from Donna Summer's 1975 song \"Love to Love You Baby\". Influenced by Arabic music, dancehall, funk and reggae, the song contains lyrics that reference to a celebration of sexual lust and conquest, leading up to a desire for a one-night stand.\n\"Naughty Girl\" received positive feedback by music critics, who praised Beyonc\u00e9's assertive vocals and the song's sensual vibe. However, opinions about how convincingly Beyonc\u00e9 was able to portray a naughty girl were polarized. The song was nominated in the category Best R&B/Soul Single by a Female Artist at the 2005 Soul Train Music Awards. \"Naughty Girl\" peaked at number three on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart, becoming Beyonc\u00e9's fourth consecutive release from the album to reach the top-five on that chart. The single reached the top-ten in New Zealand, Australia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. \"Naughty Girl\" was certified gold by the American and Australian trade associations of record producers. It was also certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand.\nThe song's accompanying music video was directed by Jake Nava and was inspired by the dancing of Cyd Charisse and Fred Astaire in the 1953 musical comedy film \"The Band Wagon\". In it, Beyonc\u00e9 flirtatiously and seductively dances with R&B singer Usher to portray a naughty girl. The video received four nominations at the 2004 MTV Video Music Awards and eventually won the Best Female Video accolade. The song was included on Beyonc\u00e9's set lists on her tours. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) recognized \"Naughty Girl\" as one of the most performed songs of 2005 at the ASCAP Pop Music Awards. \"Naughty Girl\" has been covered by singer-songwriter Roesy and band Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine.\nBackground and release.\nAfter the release of her former group Destiny's Child's 2001 album, \"Survivor\", Beyonc\u00e9 began a solo career and recorded her debut solo album, \"Dangerously in Love\" (2003). Beyonc\u00e9 stated that it is more personal than her previous records because she was writing for herself. She contacted Scott Storch, Robert Waller and her cousin and personal assistant Angela Beyinc\u00e9; together, they composed \"Naughty Girl\" among many other songs. It was planned to be the lead single from the album, but \"Crazy in Love\" was eventually chosen. \"Naughty Girl\" was subsequently released as the fourth and final single by Columbia Records; it was serviced for airplay in the United States on March 14, 2004, under formats that included rhythmic contemporary and urban contemporary ones. The single was added to contemporary hit radios playlists on an unknown date.\n\"Naughty Girl\" was first released in the United Kingdom as a maxi single, which contained four tracks as well as a multimedia one, on April 5, 2004, and later as a CD single on May 18, 2004. In the US, it was later released as a 12\" single and a CD single on April 20, 2004. A different CD single was released in Australia on April 23, 2004; it included the album version and two remixes of the song (one of them featuring Lil' Kim), and Destiny's Child's song \"I Know\" from \"The Fighting Temptations\" soundtrack. \"Naughty Girl\" was also made available as a digital download in the same country on June 1, 2004. On April 26, 2004, it was released in Germany as a maxi single and different CD singles were additionally made available in its iTunes Store and on Amazon.com. The song was released as a digital EP in several European countries, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, and Sweden in early May 2004. The same EP was also serviced in Canada and was exclusively released as a CD single in Switzerland on May 31, 2004. \"Naughty Girl\" was released as a download-only single in New Zealand on June 1, 2004.\nMusic and lyrics.\n\"Naughty Girl\" is an R&B song written in the key of F\u266f minor (in the C\u266f Phrygian dominant mode). It is written in common time and moves at a moderate tempo of 100 beats per minute. Beyonc\u00e9's vocal range spans around one and a half octaves in the song, from B3 to F5. Storch and Beyonc\u00e9 interpolated the refrain of the 1975 song \"Love to Love You Baby\", originally performed by Donna Summer and written by Summer, Pete Bellotte and Giorgio Moroder. Musically, \"Naughty Girl\" is influenced by Arabic music, resulting to an uptempo and disco-oriented sound. The song also displays dancehall as well as reggae influences, and is built on squiggling synth grooves weave.\nAccording to Spence D. of IGN Music, Beyonc\u00e9's vocals on the song are layered, making them sound like \"a harem of Beyonc\u00e9's warbling for the affections of some sultan of swing.\" According to James Poletti of Yahoo! Music, the female protagonist in the song sings about her \"potential to turn on the filth.\" Lyrically, the song is a celebration of sexual lust and conquest, culminating in a desire for a one-night stand. This \"lustful sexual confidence\" is further demonstrated in the lyrics of the first verse: \"I'm feeling sexy / Wa[nt to] hear you say my name, boy/ If you can reach me, you can feel my burning flame / Feeling kind of N A S T Y / I might just take you home with me\" and the chorus lines: \" Tonight I'll be your naughty girl / I'm callin' all my girls / We're gonna turn this party out / I know you want my body.\" Throughout the song, Beyonc\u00e9 sings the lines \"I'd love to love you, baby\" almost whispering.\nCritical reception.\n\"Naughty Girl\" was critically lauded for its sensual vibe. Sal Cinquemani of \"Slant Magazine\" wrote that Beyonc\u00e9 delivers a \"convincing impression of Donna Summer\". \"Los Angeles Times\"' Natalie Nichols wrote that \"the deliberately Donna Summer-esque 'Naughty Girl' [...] successfully meld [Beyonc\u00e9] breathy cooing with hip, interesting production.\" Lewis Dene of BBC commented that Beyonc\u00e9 sings \"lustfully and sexually confident\", and Spence D. of IGN stated that she creates \"a brief aura of aural hypnotism\", an effect made during the line \"I'm feeling sexy\". He also added that the song was guaranteed to have even \"the most staid of folks slithering across the dance floor.\" James Poletti of Yahoo! Music wrote that \"Naughty Girl\" mingles \"Holly Valance Moorish"}, "descending_order": ["333873", "25206228", "5064824", "25204708", "7178873", "3265218", "2897802", "7220211"], "permutation_1": ["25206228", "7178873", "3265218", "2897802", "25204708", "7220211", "5064824", "333873"], "permutation_2": ["7178873", "3265218", "5064824", "25206228", "333873", "2897802", "7220211", "25204708"], "permutation_3": ["2897802", "3265218", "5064824", "25204708", "7178873", "7220211", "333873", "25206228"]}
{"id": "nq_7207146533356144547", "docs_added": {"54678461": "Don't Smile at Me\n2017 EP by Billie Eilish\nDon't Smile at Me (stylized as dont smile at me) is the debut extended play by American singer Billie Eilish, released on August\u00a011, 2017, via Darkroom and Interscope Records. Eilish and her brother Finneas O'Connell wrote all the material on the EP's original release and were solely responsible for its production. It is an electropop and bedroom pop record with elements of R&B and jazz.\nSeven singles were released to support \"Don't Smile at Me\". \"Ocean Eyes\" and \"Idontwannabeyouanymore\" were both sleeper hits, charting on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and UK Singles Chart. \"Bellyache\" reached the top five on the \"Billboard\" Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart for a milestone of 32 weeks, while \"Copycat\" peaked at number 12 on the chart. Eilish embarked on the Don't Smile at Me Tour and Where's My Mind Tour in 2017 and 2018, respectively, to further promote the EP.\nThe EP received generally favorable reviews from music critics, with many praising the music and Eilish's vocals. \"Hostage\" received a nomination for Best Cinematography at the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards. \"Don't Smile at Me\" was commercially successful, reaching number 14 on the US \"Billboard\" 200 and number 12 on the UK Albums Chart. It entered the top 10 in many other countries, including Lithuania, where it reached number one.\nThe EP was later reissued on December 22, 2017, to include the single, \"&Burn\" with Vince Staples. The song was certified gold in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). An expanded edition of the EP was released on digital platforms and features two more previously released singles, \"Lovely\" with Khalid and \"Bitches Broken Hearts\". \"Lovely\" was commercially successful, peaking at number 64 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and number 47 on the UK Singles Chart. \"Bitches Broken Hearts\" was certified platinum in the US and Canada by the RIAA and Music Canada (MC), respectively.\nBackground.\nIn July 2017, Eilish told \"Billboard\" that \"each track off \"Don't Smile at Me\" will follow a distinct plot\". She explained, \"The only tie-together? I'm pretty sure I don't have any songs that are about how much I love someone. They're all either about like, 'I hate you,' or 'you make me hate me'.\"'\nEilish spoke about the EP's title: \"My EP is called \"Don't Smile at Me\" for a lot of reasons, but one of them would be when [someone tells you], 'Smile. Why aren't you smiling? It's so much more beautiful when you smile.' Everyone's taught to smile. Girls are like, 'Look happy, look like you're having fun!' I'm not gonna look like anybody except what I am. I want to impress myself.\" Eilish and her brother Finneas O'Connell wrote most of the material for \"Don't Smile at Me\". Finneas produced the EP in its entirety. Studio personnel John Greenham and Rob Kinelski handled the mastering and mixing, respectively.\nMusic and lyrics.\n\"Don't Smile at Me\" is primarily an electropop and bedroom pop record, with R&B and jazz influences. The EP opens with \"Copycat\", a hip hop-influenced electronica and pop track. It features minimalist production consisting of a bass guitar and piano. The song is Eilish's response to people she felt kept copying everything she was doing. The following track, \"Idontwannabeyouanymore\", is a pop and R&B song, with a jazz and neo soul-influenced melody. The track features Eilish singing about self-doubt and low self-esteem. According to Baeble Music's Olivia Lewis, \"My Boy\" begins with a \"chiller, jazz-like vibe, and a layer of darkness and mystery\". It features hip hop-influenced production, using a hi-hat and keyboard. Musically, the track is a pop song.\nWith \"Watch\", described as a pop ballad, Eilish sends a message to her former lover, saying she is leaving their toxic relationship. The track begins with the sound of a match strike that continues throughout the song as its main beat. \"Party Favor\" is a folk track with Eilish playing the ukulele. The song addresses Eilish's break up with her boyfriend on his birthday with a phone call. \"Bellyache\" is a mid-tempo electropop and R&B song with influences of hip hop, deep house and Latin macabre in its instrumentation. The song's lyrics were written from the perspective of a psychopath who kills those close to her, including her friends and lover.\n\"Ocean Eyes\" is a dream pop, pop, synth-pop, indie pop and R&B ballad. The song features percussion, bass guitar and a synthesizer. \"Ocean Eyes\" is a love letter to Eilish's crush with her lover's \"ocean\" eyes. \"Don't Smile at Me\" closes with \"Hostage\", a stripped-down pop track. Lyrically, the track is about an intense love that Eilish feels for someone and an overwhelming desire she has for them. The reissue of the EP contains one additional track; \"&Burn\" with Vince Staples\u2014\u2014a hip hop-influenced pop track. \"[B]ooming kick drums\" and \"velvety keys\" support the track. Like \"Watch\", the song starts with the sound of a match striking and uses it for the main beat. When Eilish and Finneas were recording the song, it was titled \"Watch & Burn\". The track later became two separate songs\u2014\"Watch\" and \"&Burn\".\nThe expanded edition of \"Don't Smile at Me\" contains two extra tracks. \"Lovely\", featuring Khalid, is a chamber pop-based stripped back ballad. The track features minimalist production consisting of a piano, violin strings provided by Madison Leinster, and percussion, as Eilish and Khalid sing about the feeling of being trapped inside of one's own mind. \"Bitches Broken Hearts\" is an R&B track. Emmit Fenn handled additional production of the track, the first song by Eilish to feature production by someone other than her brother. Lyrically, the song delves into the aftermath of a breakup, with Eilish pretending she no longer needs or cares about her former lover.\nPromotion.\nSingles and other songs.\n\"Ocean Eyes\" was originally released on November 18, 2015, via SoundCloud and YouTube. On November 18, 2016, it was re-released as the lead single from \"Don't Smile at Me\". Although the song did not chart initially, it became a sleeper hit in 2019 after Eilish released her debut studio album \"When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?\", reaching number 72 on the UK Singles Chart and number 84 on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100. The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) certified the song quadruple platinum in Australia. It received triple platinum certifications in the United States, Canada and Denmark from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Music Canada (MC) and IFPI Denmark, respectively. The song spawned two music videos; Megan Thompson directed the first released on March\u00a024, 2016. The second is a dance performance video released on November 22, 2016. A remix EP for the track was released on January 14, 2017. It includes remixes by Astronomyy, Blackbear, Goldhouse, and Cautious Clay.\n\"Bellyache\" was released on February 24, 2017, as the second single from \"Don't Smile at Me\". The song was also a sleeper hit, reaching number three on the US Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart for a milestone of 32 weeks, and number 79 on the UK Singles Chart. It was certified double platinum in the US, Australia, and in Mexico by the Asociaci\u00f3n Mexicana de Productores de Fonogramas y Videogramas (AMPROFON). Miles and AJ directed an accompanying music video released on March\u00a022, 2017. Marian Hill remixed \"Bellyache\" and released it on May\u00a0 5, 2017. \"Watch\" was released as the third single from \"Don't Smile at Me\" on June\u00a030, 2017. Megan Park directed the song's music video which was released on September\u00a018, 2017. The track was certified platinum in the US, Canada, and Australia. \"Copycat\" was released as the EP's fourth single on July\u00a014, 2017. Sofi Tukker remixed it and released it on January\u00a012, 2018. The song peaked at number 12 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart; it ultimately was certified in the US.\n\"Idontwannabeyouanymore\" was released as the fifth single from \"Don't Smile at Me\" on July\u00a021, 2017. It charted at number 96 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and number 78 on the UK Singles Chart. The track was certified double platinum in the US. A vertical video for the track was released to Spotify in December 2017. The EP's sixth single, \"My Boy\", was released on July 28, 2017. The song received a remix by TroyBoi entitled \"MyBoi\", released on March\u00a09, 2018. \"My Boy\" was certified platinum in the US. \"&Burn\", featuring American rapper Vince Staples, was released as a single on December\u00a015, 2017 and later included on the EP's reissue. The song was certified gold in the US. \"Party Favor\" was released on an exclusive pink 7-inch vinyl as the seventh and final single from \"Don't Smile at Me\" on April\u00a021, 2018, coinciding with that year's Record Store Day. A cover of \"Hotline Bling\", originally performed and written by Canadian rapper Drake, was released as the B-side. \"Party Favor\" was certified gold in the US.\n\"Lovely\", featuring Khalid, was released as the lead single for \"13 Reasons Why: Season 2 (Music from the Original TV Series)\" on April\u00a019, 2018, and later included on the expanded edition of the EP. Taylor Cohen and Matty Peacock directed its music video. The song reached number 64 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 and number 47 on the UK Singles Chart. It was certified octuple platinum in Australia and Canada, triple platinum in Mexico and in Poland (certified by the Polish Society of the Phonographic Industry (PSPI)), and double platinum in the US and New Zealand\u2014certified by Recorded Music NZ (RMNZ). \"Bitches Broken Hearts\" was originally released as a standalone single on March 30, 2018. It was later included on the expanded edition of \"Don't Smile at Me\" and the physical deluxe edition of Eilish's debut studio album \"When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?\". The song was certified platinum in the US and Canada. Despite not being released as a single, Henry Scholfield produced a music video for \"Hostage\". It was initially released exclusively via Apple Music on July 11, 2018. The video was later uploaded to Eilish's YouTube channel on October 8, 2018. \"Hostage\" was ultimately certified platinum in the US and Canada.\nTours.\nTo promote the EP, Eilish embarked on the Don't Smile at Me Tour and Where's My Mind Tour during 2017 and 2018. In Europe, Eilish would open with \"Bellyache\". Eilish would then sing \"&Burn\" without Staples. It would begin with the original arrangement before the beat drops and Eilish would break into dance. Eilish would finish with \"Copycat\", red lights would flash as she sang it. The staff of \"Billboard\" magazine praised Eilish's performance at The Bowery Ballroom. Lyndsay Havens described the performance as \"explosive\" but \"at times tender, and entirely exciting\". She added the performance was \"the type of show where you are acutely aware that the artist you are currently watching will outgrow the venue they are playing almost immediately\". The staff of \"The Gazette\" felt Eilish \"wants to bring the audience into her world, creating an experience for them\".\nReception.\nCritical reception.\n\"Don't Smile at Me\" was met with generally favorable reviews by music critics. Kristin Smith of Plugged In said of the EP, \"A fusion of multiple genres, sounds and styles, these nine tracks capture the young singer's undeniably engaging perspective and personality. We hear the honest confessions of a teenager who has known heartbreak, self-loathing and love. \"Don't Smile at Me\" is dreamy and depressing, enchanting and haunting. And it warrants both praise and caution.\" Nicole Almeida of \"Atwood Magazine\" wrote \"Don't Smile at Me\" was a \"powerful declaration\", and a \"statement coming from the mouth of someone who knows who she is. The title perfectly embodies the strength and ambition of Eilish's debut EP and of Eilish herself as an artist.\" Robert Christgau, writing for \"Vice\", commended Eilish's \"still-fragile melodies and still-pure voice\" on the EP, but considered the songwriting and production to be less accomplished than that of her debut single \"When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?\". Tom Hull mentioned that \"Don't Smile at Me\"'s singles are \"more pop\", and more \"easily distinguished from the filler\". Brenton Blanchet of \"Spin\" magazine lauded the EP, saying it was the \"first sample of what Eilish could create in her bedroom\", saying the \"airy and atmospheric project showcased pop craft beyond her age\".\nCommercial performance.\n\"Don't Smile at Me\" became a sleeper hit in the US, debuting at number 185 on the US \"Billboard\" 200 a month and a half after its release. The EP later broke into the top 100 in the week ending May\u00a031, 2018, its 21st week on the chart, at number 97 with 7,000 album-equivalent units. \"Don't Smile at Me\" reached the top 40 of the \"Billboard\" 200 in the week ending July\u00a028 at number 38 with 12,000 units, including 10,000 streaming equivalent album units, before peaking at number 14 in its 56th charting week for the issue dated January\u00a026, 2019. As of April 2019, the EP has sold 947,000 album-equivalent units in the US and has also generated more than 1.2\u00a0billion on-demand audio streams for its tracks. \"Don't Smile at Me\" was more successful outside the United States. The EP peaked at number 12 on the UK Albums Chart. In Australia, it peaked at number six on the ARIA Charts. It was most successful in Lithuania, peaking at number one on the chart. In early 2019, Eilish became the youngest artist to hit one billion streams on Spotify with \"Don't Smile at Me\".\nTrack listing.\nNotes\nPersonnel.\nCredits adapted from the album's liner notes.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "65336045": "Don't Smile at Me Tour\n2017 concert tour by Billie Eilish\nThe Don't Smile at Me Tour (stylized as dont smile at me tour) was the first headlining concert tour by American singer-songwriter Billie Eilish. It was launched in support of her debut EP \"Don't Smile at Me\" (2017), and consisted of 17 concerts, 12 in North America and 5 in Europe. The North America dates were announced in July 2017, with more dates being added later. The set list featured all of the songs from \"Don't Smile at Me\". The tour was positively received by critics.\nSynopsis.\nEilish would start the tour with \"Copycat\" over flickering lights. They would slow the show and play \"Idontwannabeyouanymore\". \"Watch\" would then come next. She would then perform \"Party Favor\" while playing on a ukulele and would later transition into a cover of the Drake song \"Hotline Bling\". She would later perform an unreleased song called \"Listen Before I Go\". Eilish ended her regular set with \"Ocean Eyes\". Eilish would return with a performance of \"Bellyache\" during the encore.\nSet list.\nThis set list is representative of the show in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on October 20, 2017. It is not representative of all concerts for the duration of the tour.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4842561": "Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)\n1975 single by Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel\n\"Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)\" is a song by the English rock band Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, released on 31 January 1975 by EMI as the lead single from the band's third studio album \"The Best Years of Our Lives\". The song was written by Harley, and produced by Harley and Alan Parsons. In February 1975, the song reached number one on the UK chart and received a gold certification from the British Phonographic Industry in October 2021. It spent nine weeks in the Top 50, and as of 2015, has sold over 1.5 million copies worldwide. The song is one of the most-played songs in British broadcasting history.\nMore than 120 cover versions of the song have been recorded by other artists, most notably by Duran Duran and Erasure, although Harley stated his favourite cover version was by the Wedding Present.\nWriting and composition.\nThe song was the first single to be released under the name \"Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel\", as opposed to simply \"Cockney Rebel\". In July 1974, the original Cockney Rebel disbanded, and Harley then assembled a new line-up later in the year. \"Make Me Smile\" described Harley's feelings on the band's split. For many years, it was believed that Harley purposely chose to disband the original line-up and embark on a new career path. Years later, Harley began to reveal the truth behind the band's split.\nBetween May and July 1974, Cockney Rebel embarked on a major British tour to promote their second studio album \"The Psychomodo\". As the tour progressed, the band began facing growing tensions, which ultimately led to their split at the end of the tour in late July. On 18 July, the band received a 'Gold Award' for outstanding new act of 1974, and a week later they had split up over their disagreements. Jean-Paul Crocker, Milton Reame-James and Paul Jeffreys had approached Harley, insisting they could also write material for the group. Harley, the band's sole songwriter, felt this was unfair as he had been the one to originally hire the musicians for his group, and explained the deal to them at the time.\nAfter the band split, only the original line-up's drummer, Stuart Elliott, would join the new line-up. In a television interview recorded in 2002, Harley described how the lyrics were vindictively directed at the former band members who, he felt, had abandoned him.\nOn \"The One Show\" in October 2010, Harley called the lyric \"a finger-pointing piece of vengeful poetry. It's getting off my chest how I felt about the guys splitting up a perfectly workable machine. I wrote it saying 'Look, you'll learn how well we're doing here, we're doing well, why are you doing this?'\" He elaborated:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Three of them came to me in a little posse with several ultimatums. They wanted to write songs for the third album, and I said 'Well you know I started the band, and I auditioned you, and I told you the deal at the time. We're not moving the goal posts here.' They knew this, and they came to me demanding that they could write songs too, and I just said 'Well go and do it then'.\nHarley began writing the song only days after the band's split. The tune was based on an unused Harley-penned track called \"Laid in the Shade\", which was the first song Harley ever performed when he began playing in London folk clubs on open-mike nights in 1971 and one which he demoed that same year using his classical guitar at Venus Recording Studios in Whitechapel. He later recalled the song was \"absolute rubbish\" but felt \"the tune worked\". Returning to this earlier tune, he wrote new lyrics and came up with a slow blues track with a dark mood, a song vastly different from the one that was recorded. In January 2012, he told \"Uncut\" magazine that the first verse was probably written at four in the morning after a bottle of brandy, feeling sorry for himself. On \"The One Show\" Harley added, \"I was in distress, there's no doubt at all, out of adversity I had to talk about it, I had to write about it. I had to say these things, I had to get it off my chest.\"\nIn \"One Thousand UK Number One Hits\" by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh, Harley recalled the end of Cockney Rebel version 1:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />We split up because they wanted to take my leadership away. They wanted to dilute it and \"Make Me Smile\" is saying 'Come back one day and I'll laugh.' It was arrogant but I knew they were wrong - they didn't understand the group like I did.\nRecording.\nThe new line-up of the band recorded \"The Best Years of Our Lives\" album in November\u2013December 1974 at Abbey Road Studios in London. On a day in November, Harley arrived at the studio and played the band the original \"slow blues\" version of the song for them to rehearse. Harley recalled to \"Uncut\" in 2012 that it was \"a little dirgy, slower and a little pedestrian, very on the beat\", while guitarist Jim Cregan recounted in 2022 that the original presentation was \"a bit ramshackle\" and \"not an obvious single\".\nAfter producer Alan Parsons heard the song, he suggested speeding the song's tempo up, as he felt it would suit the song better. Harley then developed the song further, introducing tacets, dead stops and gaps into it. Harley recalled in 2014: \"Alan was great, he didn't try to dissuade me, he just said, 'Do it'.\" On \"The One Show\", Harley added: \"Suddenly it was swinging, and bopping, and ooh-la-la. We saw a hit record being built here, there was no doubt.\"\nIn a 2015 interview for \"Songwriting Magazine\", Parsons recalled:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />I think a good producer can transform a song. If you make a small change compositionally that really makes a song gel then you can say production is part of songwriting. For example I remember on Steve Harley's \"Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)\" he was phrasing the chorus completely differently and I suggested that he made it more rhythmic and I think that is part of the hook of the whole record, so I take a bit of credit for that \u2013 although I didn't get paid for it.\nKeyboardist Duncan Mackay came up with the ascending notes used for the song's introduction. A saxophone solo was originally planned for the song's instrumental break. However, after hearing Harley's idea for the solo, Cregan began to play the idea on the guitar. Harley recalled in 2014:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The guitar solo was over a completely new chord sequence. The middle-eight is totally separate from the rest of the song, with no lyrics, so it's an instrumental break that's a little bit left field. We took ages getting the solo right. Some of the guys who play the guitar for me now have a lot of problems with it. It's a tough solo to play properly. It was a composite of three separate takes.\nA number of backing singers contributed to the song, including future chart-topper Tina Charles, as well as Yvonne Keeley, Linda Lewis and Liza Strike.\nWhen the song was near completion, Harley played an early mix of the song to Bob Mercer, who was the head of A&R at EMI. Harley remembered: \"We were all drinking Martini, it was late at night, and we were completely knackered. Bob came in and was absolutely blown away. I asked him what he thought and he said simply, 'Number one'\".\nBy the time the song was finished, Harley and the band felt confident the song was a hit single. He recalled: \"We certainly smelled something cooking that was very special. We had a huge chorus on there. Once they'd [the backing vocalists] had done their bit I came up with The Beatles bit \u2013 'Ooh-la-la-la' \u2013 kind of from their \"Rubber Soul\" period. I made the song really hooky because the lyrics are quite dark and cynical, frankly.\"\n2000 version.\nIn 1999, Harley re-recorded \"Make Me Smile\", with backing vocals by the London Community Gospel Choir, for the British film \"Best\", which was released in 2000. In a 2000 interview with VH-1, Harley said he was approached by the film's producers, \"They wanted a different [version]. They knew my voice had changed and I said I wanted to put a gospel choir on it, so we've done a new one.\" He added to the \"Southern Daily Echo\": \"It's very similar to the original, I'm sad to say. I would have liked very much to have gone for broke and got something new out of it. But they had already filmed the end sequence, which the song ties in with, and they needed something with the same tempo.\" In 2005, a remix of the 1999 recording, featuring a new lead vocal track, was released as a single to celebrate the song's 30th anniversary. Harley stated, \"It's a bit quicker [than the original] and has a real edge to it\".\nRelease.\n\"Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)\" was released in the UK by EMI Records on 31 January 1975. It was also released in various European countries, Australasia, South Africa and Japan, as well as in the US in 1976. The single's B-side was the non-album track \"Another Journey\", which was written by Harley.\n\"Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)\" became Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel's biggest selling hit and has sold over 1.5 million copies worldwide as of 2015. It was also the band's only number-one hit in their home country, topping the UK Singles Chart in February 1975. It reached number one on the Irish Singles Chart the same month. In addition to this, it was the band's only \"Billboard\" entry in the US, reaching number 96 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart in 1976.\nReissues.\n\"Make Me Smile\" has been reissued a number of times in the UK. Its first was through EMI on 3 October 1980 to promote the compilation album \"The Best of Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel\". On 25 November 1983 and again on 28 October 1991, it was reissued on the Old Gold label, with a picture sleeve included with the 1991 release. All three reissues failed to chart.\nOn 13 April 1992, EMI reissued the single on 7-inch, cassette and CD formats ahead of their \"Make Me Smile \u2013 The Best of Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel\" compilation. It reached number 46 in the UK charts and remained in the top 75 for two weeks. Old Gold reissued the single on CD format on 30 October 1995, and another EMI reissue followed on cassette and CD on 18 December 1995, to coincide with the song's use in a Christmas TV advertisement for Carlsberg. This release reached number 33 in the UK and spent three weeks in the chart.\nOn 20 June 2005, a \"30th Anniversary Re-mix\" of the song, based on the 2000 re-recorded version, was released as a single by Gott Discs. It reached number 55 in the UK and spent two weeks in the charts. Following a request on \"Top Gear\" to download the song, \"Make Me Smile\" re-entered the UK charts at number 72 in early February 2015.\nUse in film and media.\nThe song has been used in the soundtracks of the films \"Rik Mayall Presents Dancing Queen\" (1993), \"The Full Monty\" (1997), \"Velvet Goldmine\" (1998), \"Best \u2013 The George Best Story\" (2000), \"Saving Grace\" (2000), and \"Blackball\" (2003). It was also used in a 2006 Marks & Spencer advertisement and during the opening of episode 3 of \"Phoenix Nights\" series 1 (2001). The song also featured in adverts for Furniture Village. The song was also featured in an advert for Viagra Connect drug for erectile dysfunction, first broadcast in the UK in May 2018.\nThe song was later included as a playable song in \"Lego Rock Band\" (2009) for the seventh generation of games consoles.\n\"Top Gear\".\nIn late 2014, Harley received a speeding fine of \u00a31,000, and six points on his licence, after being caught by a speed camera doing 70 miles per hour on the M25 in Kent, in an area where the limit had been temporarily reduced to 40\u00a0mph. In January 2015, this incident was discussed on the BBC television series \"Top Gear\". The show's presenters Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May urged viewers to download the song in a bid to help him pay the fine. Clarkson had commented, \"He's making a meagre living out of, let's be honest, one hit single. Everybody loves that song \u2013 you can't trust someone who doesn't like that song.\" Hammond added, \"Imagine if everybody did it \u2013 he would wake up tomorrow and think 'I'm number one, where did that come from?' It would cheer him up.\"\nThe campaign, dubbed the \"Make Me Smile Foundation\" by Clarkson, saw Harley respond with a message via Twitter: \"Thanks Jeremy Clarkson for kicking off the Make Me Smile Foundation, more than happy to subsidise the poor sods who drive down Swanley Way!\" Additionally, Harley posted a YouTube video where he performed a forty-second version of the song acoustically, with a new set of lyrics relating to the speeding fine.\nIn late January 2015, the song entered the Top 30 on iTunes, the Top 15 on Amazon.co.uk's Top 100 Bestsellers, and the number one best-seller under the Rock category on the same website. On 27 January, the song entered at number 25 on the official UK mid-week chart, and number 72 on the overall chart for the week.\nPromotion.\nUpon its original release, the band performed the song on UK music show \"Top of the Pops\". The performance on the show featured mimed instrumental backing, with Harley performing a live vocal. On the show, Harley was suffering from jet-lag, and subsequently forgot the lyrics to the majority of the second and third verses. According to the EMI producer of the single, Tony Clark, it was Marc Bolan who made the phone call to \"Top of the Pops\", and had Harley in the BBC studio that same evening of the recording. The band also performed the song on the \"Russell Harty Show\" while it was at number one.\nCritical reception.\nThe reaction from the UK music press was mixed. In \"Melody Maker\", Colin Irwin criticised Harley's vocals as \"excruciatingly stylised\" but called the song a \"strongly Dylanish, tuneful thing\", and commended Harley for having \"concentrated on producing a good song without relying so heavily on his own syle and character to see it through\". However, Steve Clarke of \"NME\" stated that it was \"not a good song\" and that it \"employed those irritating stop-go instrumental/vocal touches\". Sue Byrom of \"Record & Popswop Mirror\" felt the song lacked the \"punch\" and \"innovative flash\" of the original Cockney Rebel, but predicted it would be a hit. John Peel, writing for \"Sounds\", rated it three out of five stars and predicted it would reach the top 10. He considered it to show a \"softer Harley\" as he \"put[s] his stylised voice to work on an attractive pop song\" with the \"soft accompaniment [of] acoustic guitar, classical guitar and singing ladies\". \"The Irvine Herald\" felt the song \"knocks spots off their old material\" and added that the guitar solo is \"a delight to listen to\". Jim Green of \"Trouser Press\" considered it \"simple and somewhat catchy\", with Harley's \"excessively mannered vocal provid[ing] a nice contrast to the chick singers hooting in the background\".\nAlan Jones, writing for \"Music Week\" in 1995, called the song a \"classic contrivance\" that is \"forged mainly from tongue-in-cheek observation of Dylan mannerisms, though it does have a melodic strength and grace all of its own.\" In a retrospective review of \"The Best Years of Our Lives\", Donald A. Guarisco of AllMusic described it as a \"romantic pop tune\" that \"pairs Harley's clever wordplay with a clever pop tune that boasts an inventive stop-start arrangement and a lovely flamenco-styled acoustic guitar solo\".\nTrack listing.\n7-inch single\n7-inch single (1980 UK reissue)\n7-inch single (1983 and 1991 UK reissue)\n7-inch and cassette single (1992 UK reissue)\nCD single (1992 UK reissue)\nCassette single (1995 UK reissue)\nCD single (1995 UK reissue)\n7-inch single (2005 UK 30th Anniversary Re-mix)\nCD single (2005 UK 30th Anniversary Re-mix)\nPersonnel.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nDuran Duran version.\nA live cover version of \"Make Me Smile\" was released as the B-side to Duran Duran's 1984 number one single \"The Reflex\". On the label and sleeve, the song's original title was reversed and listed as \"Come Up and See Me (Make Me Smile)\". The band frequently covered the song during their early concerts, and this recording was made during a live performance for the BBC College Concert series. The entire concert was released on the live CD/DVD \"Live at Hammersmith '82!\" in September 2009.\nAfter dropping the song from their set list for over twenty years, the reunited Duran Duran brought the song back as a surprise encore at their 28 May 2005 homecoming gig at the Birmingham Football Ground to an audience of 25,000 fans. Harley was invited to perform with them, but was unable to attend.\nThe Duran Duran version of the song appeared on the soundtrack to the movie \"Threesome\" (1994), and as a bonus track on the double"}, "descending_order": ["54678461", "65336045", "4842561"], "permutation_1": ["4842561", "54678461", "65336045"], "permutation_2": ["65336045", "54678461", "4842561"], "permutation_3": ["65336045", "54678461", "4842561"]}
{"id": "nq_7326500515087014094", "docs_added": {"10030613": "Melissa Rauch\nAmerican actress (born 1980)\nMelissa Ivy Rauch (; born June 23, 1980) is an American actress. She is best known for playing Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz on the CBS sitcom \"The Big Bang Theory\" from 2009 to 2019, for which she was nominated for the Critics Choice Television Award in 2013. From 2004 to 2008, Rauch worked as a regular contributor on the VH1 series \"Best Week Ever\". \nRauch's other acting credits include playing Tina on the American remake of \"Kath & Kim\", Summer on the HBO fantasy horror drama \"True Blood,\" and currently plays the lead role on NBC's revival of \"Night Court\".\nRauch also starred in, co-wrote, and co-produced the 2015 sports comedy-drama film \"The Bronze\" and provided the voice of DC character Harley Quinn in the 2017 animated film \"Batman and Harley Quinn\". Rauch also had supporting roles in \"I Love You, Man\" (2009), \"\" and \"Flock of Dudes\" (both 2016), and \"Ode to Joy\" and \"The Laundromat\" (both 2019).\nEarly life.\nRauch was born to David and Susan Rauch in Marlboro Township, New Jersey. She is Jewish. She has a younger brother, Ben. She developed an interest in acting while attending Marlboro High School. Her Bat Mitzvah had a \"Melissa\u2019s Comedy Club\" theme. Rauch earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in acting and graduated from Marymount Manhattan College in New York City in 2002.\nCareer.\nSome of Rauch's early work was as a regular contributor to VH1's \"Best Week Ever\" television show.\nIn 2009, Rauch began playing the recurring role of Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz, a co-worker of Penny's at The Cheesecake Factory who began to date Howard Wolowitz, in the third season of CBS's \"The Big Bang Theory\". The following season, her character became Howard's fianc\u00e9e, and Rauch was promoted to a series regular. The characters married in the season five finale. In December 2011, Rauch and fellow cast members of \"The Big Bang Theory\" received the first of six nominations for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series.\nOther acting credits include \"True Blood\" (in which she had a recurring role in 2010 as Summer, a girl who likes Hoyt), \"The Office\", the American remake of the Australian TV series \"Kath & Kim\", \"Wright v Wrong\", and the film \"I Love You, Man\".\nRauch is also part of the comedic stage show \"The Realest Real Housewives\" cast with Casey Wilson, June Diane Raphael, Jessica St. Clair and Danielle Schneider. The show began running at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in 2011.\nRauch co-wrote and co-produced the film \"The Bronze\", in which she starred as Hope Ann Greggory, a bronze medal-winning gymnast clinging to her glory days of 12 years earlier. It opened the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. \"Variety\" said, \"Rauch, who co-wrote the screenplay with her husband Winston, has never carried a film before. But she delivers the best breakthrough comedic performance by an actress since Melissa McCarthy in \"Bridesmaids\".\" Sony Pictures Classics acquired the film in September 2015.\nIn 2017, Rauch voiced Harley Quinn in the animated film \"Batman and Harley Quinn\" and she voiced Light Thief in \"Light Riders\" from \"Blaze and the Monster Machines\".\nShe currently stars in the \"Night Court\" revival series playing Judge Abby Stone, the daughter of Judge Harold T. Stone and Gina Stone from the original \"Night Court\" series. Season 1 premiered on NBC on January 17, 2023, and is co-produced by Rauch and her husband Winston Beigel, in association with Warner Bros. Television Studios and Universal Television.\nPersonal life.\nRauch is married to writer Winston Beigel, who collaborated with her on \"The Miss Education of Jenna Bush\" and other projects. Rauch announced that she was pregnant on July 11, 2017, and disclosed that she had a miscarriage previously. On December 4, 2017, Rauch announced on Instagram that she had given birth to a baby girl. On May 4, 2020, Rauch announced the birth of her son.\nRauch modeled the voice of Bernadette after her parents: the \"sweet, high-pitched purr\" is modeled after her mother, while the \"eerie, haranguing imitation\" of Mrs. Wolowitz is modeled after her father. Both are \"very different\" from Rauch's real voice.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "28528166": "The Big Bang Theory season 4\nThe fourth season of the American television sitcom \"The Big Bang Theory\" aired on CBS from September 23, 2010 to May 19, 2011. Melissa Rauch and Mayim Bialik auditioned and were promoted to the main cast during this season as Dr. Bernadette Rostenkowski and Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler respectively. \nJohnny Galecki received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series at the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards for the episode \"The Benefactor Factor\". Jim Parsons won the same award for the episode \"The Agreement Dissection\".\nProduction.\nDuring the season, Kaley Cuoco's character Penny was absent from episodes 5 and 6 after Kaley fell off a horse and broke her leg. When returning to the series, she was shown working as a bartender instead of waitressing at her usual workplace, The Cheesecake Factory, to hide her injury.\nCast.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nEpisodes.\n<onlyinclude>\n</onlyinclude>\nReception.\nThe fourth season received particular praise for character developments. Alan Sepinwall of Uproxx praised the additions of Bernadette and Amy to the cast, writing that \"With Amy Farrah Fowler and Bernadette promoted to semi-permanent status, the show is now able to spend large chunks of each episode focusing only on the women, and in the process has made Penny a much more well-rounded character rather than just a foil for the nerds\". Emily VanDerWerff of \"The A.V. Club\" wrote that \"Jim Parsons and Kaley Cuoco's interplay remains the show's secret weapon\", and Eric Hochberger of TV Fanatic wrote: \"Really though, everything about the main story worked amazing. Mayim fits in perfectly in \"The Big Bang Theory\" cast and played off of Kaley Cuoco just as well as Emmy Award-winning Parsons\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "27382642": "The Big Bang Theory season 3\nThe third season of the American television sitcom \"The Big Bang Theory\" aired on CBS from September 21, 2009 to May 24, 2010. It received higher ratings than the previous two seasons with over 15 million viewers. The third season saw the first appearances of future main cast members Melissa Rauch and Mayim Bialik as Bernadette Rostenkowski and Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler respectively. \nChristine Baranski was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series at the 62nd Primetime Emmy Awards for the episode, \"The Maternal Congruence\". Jim Parsons won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for the episode \"The Pants Alternative\".\nCast.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nEpisodes.\n<onlyinclude>\n</onlyinclude>\nReception.\nThe third season received critical acclaim. Maureen Ryan of \"Chicago Tribune\" who wrote that \"\"Big Bang Theory,\" which is in its third season, is doing many things very right\", Alan Sepinwall of \"The Star-Ledger\" wrote \"the Penny/Sheldon interaction was gold, as always\", and Ken Tucker of \"Entertainment Weekly\", who wrote that \"what lifts \"The Big Bang Theory\" into frequent excellence is its one constant from the start: the brilliantly nuanced performance of Jim Parsons\".\nThe American Film Institute ranked season three one of the ten best television seasons of 2009.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "35907495": "The Stag Convergence\n\"The Stag Convergence\" is the 22nd episode of the fifth season of the American sitcom \"The Big Bang Theory\". The episode premiered on April 26, 2012, on CBS. In it, the main characters go to the bachelor party to celebrate Howard (Simon Helberg) and Bernadette's (Melissa Rauch) upcoming marriage. At the party, a drunk Raj (Kunal Nayyar) reveals some information about Howard's past sexual encounters. When Bernadette picks them up from the party, Howard and Rajesh find out that Bernadette learned about Howard's sexual history from a video posted on the internet.\nThe story and concept of the episode was written by series co-creator Bill Prady, and writers Steve Holland and Eric Kaplan. The teleplay was written by co-creator Chuck Lorre, and writers Steven Molaro and Jim Reynolds. Peter Chakos served as director. Upon airing, \"The Stag Convergence\" garnered 12.65 million viewers in the United States and 4.1 Nielsen rating in the 18\u201349 demographic. The episode received mixed reviews from television critics, noting that it was not as heavy on jokes compared to other episodes in the series.\nPlot.\nSheldon, Leonard, Howard and Raj discuss Howard's bachelor party, with Howard reaffirming to Raj that strippers are banned from the party. Raj then suggests a wine tasting train trip through Napa Valley but, despite Sheldon's approval, this idea is rejected as well. Meanwhile, Amy is filming Bernadette and Penny making wedding party gifts. She begins to ask a question about consummation but Penny tells her to ask something normal, such as what Bernadette's married name will be.\nThe bachelor party proves to be a failure, with Sheldon's jokes falling flat and Barry Kripke complaining about the lack of strippers. A drunk Raj then begins his speech by saying that he was lonely when he first moved to America until he met Howard. He then tells embarrassing stories about Howard's sexual history, including how Howard lost his virginity to his second cousin, had a threesome with Raj and a \"Sailor Moon\" cosplayer at ComicCon and slept with a prostitute.\nLater, Bernadette comes to drive Howard and Raj home and reveals that Wil Wheaton (playing himself) put a video of Raj's speech on YouTube. Howard had previously claimed that he told her about every girl he had been with, but had not done so. Back at her apartment, she questions whether she can marry him. She is also upset at Penny, who originally set her up with Howard.\nHoward shows up at Bernadette's apartment and asks Penny to give Bernadette his heartfelt and genuine apology, which reduces Penny to tears. Bernadette overhears this and forgives him. Amy is relieved that she is still a maid of honor and the four hug. Leonard later meets Penny in the laundry room and wants to have sex, but Penny declines.\nProduction.\nThe story and concept for \"The Stag Convergence\" were written by series co-creator Bill Prady, and writers Steve Holland and Eric Kaplan. The teleplay for the episode was written by series co-creator Chuck Lorre and writers Steven Molaro and Jim Reynolds. It was directed by Peter Chakos and filmed on March 27, 2012. Guest stars included Kevin Sussman as Stuart Bloom, John Ross Bowie as Barry Kripke, and Wil Wheaton as himself. Ian Scott Rudolph returns as Captain Sweatpants along with actors Jesse Heiman and Zack Sonnenberg at the bachelor party as guests in non-speaking roles.\nReception.\nRatings.\nThe episode was originally broadcast on April 26, 2012, followed by \"Rules of Engagement\". Upon airing, \"The Stag Convergence\" garnered 12.65 million viewers while airing simultaneously with \"American Idol\" on Fox, \"Community\" on NBC, \"Missing\" on ABC and \"The Vampire Diaries\" on The CW. With the exception of \"American Idol\", which had 14.87 million viewers, it beat all other programs in its timeslot. Under the Nielsen rating system, the episode received a 4.1 rating and a 13 percent share among adults between the ages of 18 and 49.\nIn Canada, the episode aired on the same date on CTV Total and 3.17 million households watched it; the episode was the most watched TV show that week. In the United Kingdom, it aired on May 24, 2012, and garnered 1.444 million E4 viewers. On E4 +1, the show was watched by 0.403 million viewers, giving the episode a total of 1.847 million viewers on the night of its first broadcast and making it most watched that night on both channels. In Australia, it aired on Nine Network on May 22, 2012, and 1.27 million viewed the show; the episode was ranked second on the network and second overall that night.\nCritical reception.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nOh my god, Howard! That's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard. And it came out of you.\nPenny: her quote was praised by Carla Day of \"TV Fanatic\"\nThe episode received mixed critical reception. Oliver Sava of \"The A.V. Club\" graded it a C, claiming that Amy \"gets some of the episode's best lines\". Sava noted that it \"has a lot of Jew humor, and Mayim Bialik and Simon Helberg are the perfect people to deliver it\", although disliked Barry and Wil and said that \"their jokes wore thin fairly quickly\". R.L. Shaffer of IGN also gave the episode a mixed review, saying that \"The Big Bang Theory\" has become more \"cynical and chauvinistic\" towards female characters. Shaffer also noted he was more frustrated about \"the revelation that Bernadette wouldn't allow strippers at Wolowitz's bachelor party\", as it is never explained why. Shaffer claimed that there were \"only a few laughs here and there\" and scored the episode 5.5 out of 10, classifying it as \"mediocre\".\nCarla Day of \"TV Fanatic\" gave a more positive review, rating the episode 4.5 out of 5, and praising Penny's response to Howard's apology and claiming that it \"provided a nice chuckle.\" Jill Mader of \"Inside Pulse\" also gave the episode a more positive review, praising \"that the episode ended with a really sweet moment for Howard as, after all, he is a character who doesn't often get to be sweet\" and claimed that it was \"definitely about people changing and moving forward, and \"The Big Bang Theory\" has done a great job of emotionally maturing many of their characters over the past couple seasons\". Despite this, she said that \"the episode wasn't as funny as [she had] hoped it would be\" and \"felt like there was more potential in Howard's bachelor party than just revealing some unflattering secrets to Bernadette.\" Robin Pierson of \"The TV Critic\" rated the episode as 56 out of 100, describing Howard's \"little speech\" as \"very well written and performed\". However, he considered most of the comedy \"generic\", especially in regards to the jokes about Jewish stereotypes and Penny's dismissal of Leonard. Overall, Pierson said it \"wasn't the strongest episode of comedy\" and \"wasn't a particularly interesting episode until the end\".\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "16709386": "List of The Big Bang Theory franchise characters\nThe American television sitcom franchise \"The Big Bang Theory\", began with the multi-cam laugh track sitcom of the same name created and executive produced by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, which premiered on CBS on September 24, 2007, and ended on May 16, 2019, followed by the single-camera spin-off prequel television series \"Young Sheldon\", created and executive produced by Lorre alongside Jim Parsons and Steven Molaro, which premiered on CBS on September 25, 2017, and concluded on May 16, 2024, with the third series in the franchise, a multi-cam spin-off sequel to \"Young Sheldon\" entitled \"Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage\", premiering on October 17, 2024. A fourth series, a multi-cam spin-off sequel to \"The Big Bang Theory\", will be entitled \"Stuart Fails to Save the Universe\". It will feature Stuart Bloom, Denise, and Bert Kibbler, with Kevin Sussman, Lauren Lapkus, and Brian Posehn reprising their roles.\n\"The Big Bang Theory\" initially centers on five characters: Sheldon Lee Cooper and Leonard Hofstadter, two physicists and roommates; Penny, their neighbor who is a waitress and aspiring actress; Sheldon and Leonard's friends and coworkers aerospace engineer Howard Joel Wolowitz and astrophysicist Raj Koothrappali.\nOver time, several supporting characters have been introduced and promoted to starring roles, including physicist Leslie Winkle, neuroscientist Amy Farrah Fowler, microbiologist Bernadette Maryann Rostenkowski-Wolowitz, and comic book store proprietor and friend of the other characters Stuart Bloom. The series also features numerous supporting characters, each of whom plays a prominent role in a story arc. Included among them are parents of the main characters, their dates, and their coworkers. Celebrities such as Stephen Hawking appear in cameo roles as themselves.\n\"Young Sheldon\" initially centers on Sheldon Cooper at the age of nine, going to high school and living with his family in the fictional town of Medford, East Texas, Sheldon's mother, Mary; his father and the head football coach at Medford High, George Sr.; his twin sister, Missy; his older brother, George Jr.; and his grandmother, Constance \"Connie\" Tucker, also known as \"Meemaw\". The series also features numerous supporting characters, each of whom plays a prominent role in a story arc. Included among them are Sheldon's present and former classmates, their dates and coworkers, and those of his family. Celebrities such as Elon Musk appear in cameo roles as themselves. Jim Parsons, who portrays the adult Sheldon Cooper on \"The Big Bang Theory\", narrates the series and serves as an executive producer.\nMain characters.\nCast table.\n<templatestyles src=\"Cast indicator/styles.css\"/>\nList indicators\nThis section includes .* An empty grey cell indicates the character was not in the season.* \u00a0V indicates a voice-only role.\n \n\"The Big Bang Theory\" main characters.\nLeonard Hofstadter.\nLeonard Leakey Hofstadter (portrayed by Johnny Galecki; seasons 1\u201312) is an experimental physicist with an IQ of 173. Originally from New Jersey, he received his PhD at age 24, spending at least some of his time at Princeton University. He shared an apartment in Pasadena with colleague and friend Dr. Sheldon Cooper for much of the series. Unlike his equally geeky friends, Leonard is interested and adept in building relationships with other people. Compared to his friends, he is relatively successful with women. Leonard comes from an accomplished family. His mother, Dr. Beverly Hofstadter, is a neuroscientist and world-renowned psychiatrist with whom he has a strained relationship. His sister is a medical researcher, his father, Dr. Alfred Hofstadter, is an anthropologist, and his brother Michael is a Harvard law professor. He and Penny date on and off throughout the series, eventually marrying and finding out that Penny is pregnant in the series finale. \nLeonard makes a brief non-speaking cameo as a child in the Season 2 finale of \"Young Sheldon\"; he was portrayed by Isaac Harger as a child.\nSheldon Cooper.\nSheldon Lee Cooper (portrayed by Jim Parsons; \"The Big Bang Theory\" seasons 1\u201312, \"Young Sheldon\" season 7; voiced by Parsons; narrator: \"Young Sheldon\"; and by Iain Armitage; guest: \"The Big Bang Theory\" season 12; main: \"Young Sheldon\") is a theoretical physicist, possessing a B.S, M.S, M.A, Ph.D, Sc.D, I.Q. of 187, and eidetic memory. Born in East Texas, he was a child prodigy and received his PhD at age 16 from the California Institute of Technology. He is a cold, condescending, self-centered, and immature person but is rarely malicious. He is obsessed with routines and any disruptions distress him enormously. He shows signs of obsessive\u2013compulsive personality disorder, often shown through his compulsive need to knock three times on a door while saying the name of the person behind the door three times too and the superiority complex. Despite his narcissism, selfishness, and lack of social graces, he does care about his friends and family. In seasons 1\u20139, he shares an apartment in Pasadena with friend and fellow physicist Dr. Leonard Hofstadter. From then after, he moves in with his girlfriend and eventual wife, Amy. It is revealed in \"Young Sheldon\" that they have kids too. \nHis interest in science fiction and comic books borders on the extreme. He has a particular affinity for Spock from the \"Star Trek\" franchise. Although he has the tendency to take things literally, he is fond of occasionally telling a joke or playing a prank, which he typically punctuates with his trademark exclamation, \"Bazinga!\"\nAs portrayed in \"Young Sheldon\", he is a child prodigy who finishes primary school before his twin sister, Missy, and joins the same high-school class as his older brother, Georgie, at the age of nine. He reads widely and possesses an eidetic memory. He prefers to learn topics that interest him on his own\u2014such as Faraday's law of induction and gravitational lensing\u2014than the standard curriculum of grade school. In this series, the origins of his interests in the sciences, engineering, computers, trains, comic books, and science fiction (especially the character Spock from \"Star Trek\") are revealed. Sheldon moves on to college while Missy remains in middle school. Despite their rivalry, Sheldon and Missy are closer than they first appear.\nIain Armitage, who plays young Sheldon on the spin-off, briefly appears in a video tape during a final season episode of \"The Big Bang Theory\"; it is the only time Parsons and Armitage have appeared together so far.\nPenny.\nKindhearted and outgoing, Penny (portrayed by Kaley Cuoco) is Leonard and Sheldon's neighbor across the hallway from the inception of the series, replacing the apartment's former occupant, Louis/Louise, a \"transvestite with a skin condition\" according to Sheldon. Originally from a small town outside Omaha, Nebraska, she was a waitress and occasional bartender at the local Cheesecake Factory until season seven, and is an aspiring actress. Sheldon describes her as a \"good-natured simpleton\" and is critical of her dropping out of community college.\nInitially, not much is known about Penny's family, but it is mentioned in the series that her father, Wyatt (portrayed by Keith Carradine,) raised her like a boy, her mother smoked marijuana while she was pregnant with her, her sister shot her husband while they were intoxicated, and her brother is a meth dealer. Her mother, Susan (Katey Sagal), and brother, Randall (Jack McBrayer), are finally seen in the first episode of season ten. Her last name is never revealed during the series. Leonard and Penny date on and off throughout the series which is a big plot point of the show, they eventually marry and find out they're pregnant in the series finale. \nPenny makes a brief non-speaking cameo as a child in the Season 2 finale of \"Young Sheldon\", she was portrayed by Quinn Aune as a child. Cuoco additionally voices the pool water, part of one of young Sheldon's nightmares, in the spinoff.\nHoward Wolowitz.\nHoward Joel Wolowitz, M.Eng. (portrayed by Simon Helberg; main: \"the Big Bang Theory\" seasons 1\u201312; guest: \"Young Sheldon\" season 5) is an aerospace engineer at Caltech's Department of Applied Physics who often hangs out at Leonard and Sheldon's apartment. Unlike Sheldon, Leonard, and Raj, Howard does not have a doctorate and often gets disparaged as a result, especially by Sheldon. He defends this by pointing out that he has a master's degree in engineering from MIT and that the equipment he designs is launched into space, unlike the theoretical work of his friends. In the fifth-season finale, Howard goes to the International Space Station on Expedition 31.\nHoward lives in Altadena with his domineering, belittling, and unseen mother, who treats him like a child. While he sometimes expresses irritation at this treatment, for the most part, he appears to prefer it. Howard and his mother often communicate with each other from different rooms by yelling, a habit which Bernadette also adopts in later episodes. Howard fancies himself a ladies' man and attempts pick-up lines whenever a woman is present, although he drops this habit once he starts going out with Bernadette. He is a non-observant Jew. Over the course of the series, he and Bernadette marry and have two children. \nIn the pilot episode, he speaks English, French, Mandarin, Russian, Arabic, and Persian, along with fictional languages like Klingon and Sindarin. Howard suffers from asthma, transient idiopathic arrhythmia, allergies to peanuts, almonds, and walnuts, and is prone to canker sores and pink eye.\nHoward makes a brief non-speaking appearance in the Season 2 finale of \"Young Sheldon\", in which he was portrayed by Ethan Stern as a child; he returns to reprise himself in a narration with Helberg's voiceover for a Season 5 episode. \nRaj Koothrappali.\nRajesh Ramayan Koothrappali, PhD (portrayed by Kunal Nayyar) is Howard Wolowitz's best friend. Often called \"Raj\" by his friends, he is from New Delhi, India, and works in the physics department at Caltech, researching astroparticle physics. Raj comes from a very wealthy family in India, and often communicates with his parents, Dr. and Mrs. Koothrappali, via webcam. He did at least part of his higher education at the University of Cambridge and like most of the scientists bar Howard he also has a PhD. He has a younger sister, Priya. He lives in an apartment in Pasadena. As with his friends, he is mutually involved with and obsessed with science fiction and comic books in general. He is also a fan of Harry Potter and Indian music, but appreciates the Indian lullabies his mother sang and the catchiness of Hindi phrases. Unlike his male friends, Raj has many feminine interests, such as reading \"Archie\" comics and \"Twilight\" and watching chick flicks such as \"Bridget Jones's Diary\". It is speculated that Raj might be gay due to his feminine interests and his close friendship with Howard, with whom he has arguments similar to those of a married couple. However, Raj has always stated that he is straight, but metrosexual. He was infatuated with Penny, and secretly wrote love poems about Bernadette. \nRaj is a Hindu and believes in karma (reincarnation), but eats beef. He is very shy around women outside of his family, and during the first six seasons of the show, found himself unable to speak to women while in their presence unless he drank alcoholic beverages, or believed he had done so. He eventually is able to get over this condition and starts to, unsuccessfully and for short periods, date women. \nRaj makes a brief non-speaking cameo as a child in the Season 2 finale of \"Young Sheldon\", he was portrayed by Rishabh Prabhat as a child.\nLeslie Winkle.\nLeslie Winkle, PhD (portrayed by Sara Gilbert; main: season 2; recurring: season 1; guest: seasons 3 and 9) is an experimental physicist who shares her lab with Leonard. In appearance, she is essentially Leonard's female counterpart, equipped with black-framed glasses and sweat jackets. She suffers from lazy eye. She is one of Sheldon's archenemies due to their conflicting scientific ideas and takes every opportunity to insult Sheldon for mistreating her.\nThe character is based on Gilda, a coworker to Leonard and Sheldon envisioned by creators Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady in the unaired original pilot.\nBernadette Rostenkowski.\nBernadette Maryann Rostenkowski-Wolowitz, PhD (portrayed by Melissa Rauch; main: seasons 4\u201312; recurring: season 3) is originally a waitress and co-worker of Penny's at The Cheesecake Factory, using her wages to pay for her graduate studies in microbiology. She is a smart, short-tempered, ruthless, competitive young woman. Despite her short stature and squeaky voice, she is regarded as being intimidating, largely because of her sharp tongue, aggressive demeanor and tendency to be a bully. A recurring joke in the series references Bernadette and her lab team handling dangerous or infectious specimens, leading to accidental byproducts. \nWhile initially not getting along with Howard's mother, she eventually becomes like her, domineering and passive aggressive, even adopting her signature yell. \nShe and Howard have two children, Halley and Neil Michael (who they call Michael), in seasons 10 and 11 respectively. \nBernadette is of Polish origin and Catholic upbringing, and was originally seen wearing a cross necklace. \nBernadette makes a brief non-speaking cameo as a child in the Season 2 finale of \"Young Sheldon\", she was portrayed by A. J. Coggeshall as a child.\nAmy Fowler.\nAmy Farrah Fowler, PhD (portrayed by Mayim Bialik; main \"The Big Bang Theory\": seasons 4\u201312; guest: \"The Big Bang Theory\" season 3, \"Young Sheldon\" season 4, 7) is a neuroscientist with a research focus on addiction in primates and invertebrates, occasionally mentioning such experiments involving addiction. (Bialik herself has a PhD in neuroscience.) She is Sheldon's love interest in the series, and they marry at the end of season 11. They are revealed to have children in \"Young Sheldon\". \nEarly on, Amy is essentially a female counterpart to Sheldon; as the series progresses, she begins a campaign to increase Sheldon's feelings for her by becoming more involved in his interests, including video games and \"Star Trek\", and treating him as his mother did. \nIn 2020, a year after \"The Big Bang Theory\" went off the air, it was revealed that Kate Micucci, who ultimately got the role of Lucy, had auditioned for the role of Amy Farrah Fowler.\nAmy makes two appearances in \"Young Sheldon\". She makes an appearance as a child in the Season 2 finale where she is portrayed in a non-speaking role by Lily Sanfelippo. Bialik returns to play Amy in the narration of the season 4 premiere, and in a physical appearance in the series finale.\nStuart Bloom.\nStuart David Bloom (portrayed by Kevin Sussman; main: seasons 6 and 8\u201312; recurring: seasons 2\u20135 and 7) runs the Comic Center in Pasadena, the comic book store that the characters often visit. Stuart is characterized by his low self-esteem and loneliness, which often result in pathetic attempts to engage with women and win favor with the gang. This is despite owning his own business and being a talented portraiture artist who attended the Rhode Island School of Design.\nOne of the running gags on the show is Stuart's medical situation. It is depicted as disastrous, so much so that he can be seen under various medical treatments. He is said to have depression and possible malnutrition, among other problems. \nIn the last season, Stuart's life seems to be turning around. His comic store becomes successful and he gets a steady, long-term relationship. \nKevin Sussman was a recurring guest actor from seasons two to five, and was promoted to starring role for the sixth season onwards.\nEmily Sweeney.\nEmily Sweeney, M.D., (portrayed by Laura Spencer; main: season 9; recurring: seasons 7\u20138; guest: season 10) is a dermatology resident at Huntington Hospital, whom Raj finds on an online dating site. Raj enlists Amy's help to be his \"online wingman\" and talk to Emily in his behalf. Amy tells Emily about this and it puts her off. Amy and Emily end up hitting it off, having both gone to Harvard and both being into quilting. While Amy and Emily are at lunch together, Raj crashes the lunch. This drives Emily away from both Raj and Amy this time. Later, Raj and Emily meet again, accidentally and hit it off. They eventually double date with Howard and Bernadette, which horrifies Howard. He and Emily had a horrible date, which ended because Howard had gas station sushi, got food poisoning and clogged and overflowed her toilet. Emily is not afraid to stand up for herself or to others when necessary. She is shown to have a slightly alarming personality trait: she delights in the macabre.\nRaj ends up breaking up with her before Valentine's Day so he could be with Claire (Alessandra Olivia Toreson). Unfortunately for Raj, Claire had just gotten back together with her boyfriend. So, he eventually lost them both. Emily attempted to get back into Raj's good graces and did manage to sleep with him one last time, but it didn't last. \nLaura Spencer was a recurring guest actress on the series in seasons seven and eight. During production of season 9, she was promoted to a \"fractional\" starring role; the upgraded status ensured her availability on an as-needed basis, without requiring her in every episode. She returned as a guest in season 10.\n\"Young Sheldon\" main characters.\nMary Cooper.\nMary Cooper (\"n\u00e9e\" Tucker) (portrayed by Laurie Metcalf in \"The Big Bang Theory\"; recurring: seasons 7 and 9\u201312; guest: seasons 1 and 3\u20135 and by Zoe Perry in \"Young Sheldon\") is Sheldon's short-tempered, but loving and deeply religious mother from Texas. She is able to control Sheldon, with Leonard once describing her to Penny as \"Sheldon's kryptonite\". A devout Southern Baptist, she also has two other children \u2014 Sheldon's twin sister, Missy, and brother, Georgie, who is five years older than the twins. Her husband, a rambunctious alcoholic, was also named George, but he later died in Sheldon's childhood. To Mary's relief, her other children do not share Sheldon's precociousness, even once commenting to Leonard, \"I thank the good Lord my other kids are as dumb as soup\". Mary herself is not intellectual but is quite wise, though she is prone to making outdated and insensitive remarks. She is nevertheless kind at heart and is tolerant of other faiths. Leonard wishes his mother were as loving as Sheldon's mother, although Sheldon himself appears at best ambivalent about her parenting. Sheldon mentions that Mary once hit him with a Bible because he refused to eat his Brussels sprouts. She apparently thought something was wrong with her son while he was growing up since Sheldon will often remark after someone calls him crazy, \"I'm not crazy; my mother had me tested!\" Mary confirms this, though she wishes that she had taken him to Houston for further testing.\nA younger version of Mary, played by Zoe Perry, is a main character in the prequel series \"Young Sheldon\". Perry is Metcalf's real life daughter.\nGeorge Cooper Sr..\nGeorge Cooper Sr. (portrayed by Lance Barber; main: \"Young Sheldon\"; guest \"The Big Bang Theory\" season 11) was the husband of Mary Cooper and father of Georgie, Sheldon, and Missy. He was the high school football coach for Medford High. In \"The Big Bang Theory\", it is established that he died when Sheldon and Missy were fourteen years old due to an off-screen heart attack.\nBarber previously portrayed Jimmy Speckerman in one episode of \"The Big Bang Theory\" (guest: season 5).\nGeorgie Cooper.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Visible anchor/styles.css\" />George Marshall \"Georgie\" Cooper Jr. (portrayed by Jerry O'Connell as an adult; recurring: \"The Big Bang Theory\" seasons 11\u201312 and Montana Jordan as a youth; \"Young Sheldon\" and \"Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage\") is Sheldon and Missy's older brother who resides in Texas and runs a car tire business. Often at odds while growing up, the Cooper brothers later reconcile their differences"}, "descending_order": ["10030613", "28528166", "27382642", "35907495", "16709386"], "permutation_1": ["28528166", "16709386", "27382642", "10030613", "35907495"], "permutation_2": ["27382642", "16709386", "10030613", "28528166", "35907495"], "permutation_3": ["10030613", "35907495", "28528166", "16709386", "27382642"]}
{"id": "nq_3000330028642816269", "docs_added": {"14763763": "Zachary Gordon\nAmerican actor (born 1998)\nZachary Adam Gordon (born February 15, 1998) is an American actor. He is known for his lead role as Greg Heffley in the \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" film series (2010\u20132012), which earned him nominations for a Kids' Choice Award and seven Young Artist Awards. His other lead film roles include \"Huevos: Little Rooster's Egg-cellent Adventure\" (2016) and \"Dreamcatcher\" (2021). He has had notable supporting roles in films such as \"Georgia Rule\" (2007), ' (2008), \"The Incredible Burt Wonderstone\" (2013), ' (2020), and \"Violet\" (2021).\nIn television, Gordon had a lead voice role as Gil on the Nickelodeon series \"Bubble Guppies\" (2011\u20132013). His live-action recurring roles include Jason Cohen on the Freeform series \"Dead of Summer\" (2016), and Tate Wilson on the Freeform drama series \"Good Trouble\" (2019\u20132020).\nEarly life.\nGordon was born in Oak Park, California, to Linda and Kenneth Gordon. He has two older brothers and was raised in Southern California. Gordon graduated from Oak Park High School in his hometown.\nCareer.\nGordon has made multiple television appearances on programs such as \"How I Met Your Mother\" and \"All of Us\". He also appeared in the 2008 pilot of \"Desperate Housewives\", plus two other episodes, and in two episodes of \"24\" that aired in January 2009. Gordon appeared in three episodes as a guest star on \"Last Man Standing\", where he played Mike Baxter's daughter's boyfriend.\nGordon's film credits include \"Sex and Death 101\", \"Lower Learning\", the Garry Marshall film \"Georgia Rule\" (for which he won the Young Artist Award for his portrayal of Ethan), \"The Brothers Bloom\", as young Bloom, and in \"\".\nGordon has been credited with numerous voice over roles including Brad Spolyt in \"The Chubbchubbs Save Xmas\", Ricky Garcia in \"Project Gilroy\", San San in Nick Jr.'s \"Ni Hao, Kai-Lan\" and \"The Mighty B!\" He was a series regular as the original voice of Gil in the Nickelodeon series \"Bubble Guppies\".\nGordon had voice cameo roles as Baby Melman in the animated film \"\", Kotaro in \"Afro Samurai: Resurrection\", and young Tony Stark in \"The Super Hero Squad Show\". In 2010, he played Greg Heffley in the film \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\". In 2011, he voiced Papi Jr. in \"Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2\" and as Paws in Disney's \"The Search for Santa Paws\".\nIn June 2010, 20th Century Fox announced a sequel to \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\"; Gordon returned as Greg Heffley and the film, \"\", was released on March 25, 2011.\nIn 2011, Gordon provided voices for Charlie Brown, Linus, and Franklin on the comedy show \"Robot Chicken\", and in 2012, he reprised the role of Greg Heffley in '. In the fourth film, ', he was replaced by Jason Drucker. In October 2013, Gordon was chosen to host a miniseries for Nintendo, titled \"Skylander's Boomcast\", on YouTube channel SkylandersGame, reviewing and talking about the video game series \"Skylanders\". In April 2023, it was announced Gordon would be the new voice of Tighnari in \"Genshin Impact\", replacing Elliot Gindi.\nAdditional films for 2013 included \"The Incredible Burt Wonderstone\" and a role as Pete Kidder in Walden Media's and Hallmark Channel's \"Pete's Christmas\".\nPersonal life.\nHe is Jewish.\nIn May 2023, Gordon stated on social media that he had lost his voice due to torn muscles in his throat, causing his acting career to be put on hold.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "11263766": "Diary of a Wimpy Kid (book)\n2007 novel by Jeff Kinney\nDiary of a Wimpy Kid is a children's illustrated novel written and illustrated by Jeff Kinney. It is the first book in the \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" series. The book is about a boy named Greg Heffley and his attempts to become popular in his first year of middle school.\n\"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" first appeared on FunBrain in 2004, where it was read 20\u00a0million times. The abridged hardcover adaptation was released on April 1, 2007. The book was named a \"New York Times\" bestseller, among other awards and received generally positive reviews. The book was adapted into a live action feature film, which released on March 19, 2010, and an animated film adaptation was released on Disney+ on December 3, 2021.\nPlot.\nThe protagonist Greg Heffley, a student at Larry Mack Junior Middle School, writes a diary to detail his time \"stuck in middle school with a bunch of morons\" to a future audience reading when he is \"rich and famous\". Greg details the local myth surrounding a moldy piece of cheese that has been left at his school's basketball court for a long time. If someone touches the cheese, they have the curse-like \"Cheese Touch\" which makes them repellent to others; the victim is stuck with it until they pass it on by touching someone else. The last victim of the Cheese Touch has moved away to California, and Greg hopes nobody starts it up again.\nGreg also talks about his best friend, Rowley Jefferson, characterizing him as immature or somewhat stupid, and that his [Greg's] ideas go \"in one ear and out the other\" with Rowley. At home, Greg is bullied by his older brother Rodrick, and resents his little brother, a toddler named Manny, who is spoiled and gets away with everything that Greg does not. Greg's father does not encourage his son's way of life\u2014playing video games all day\u2014and would rather Greg go outside and play sports.\nNear Halloween, Greg writes that his father likes to hide in the bushes on Halloween night and drench teenagers that walk by their driveway with a trash can full of water. Greg and Rowley decide to make a haunted house after seeing the popularity of Crossland High School's haunted house, but they only end up profiting two dollars. On Halloween night, Greg and Rowley go trick-or-treating, but are challenged by a group of teenagers who spray them with a water-filled fire extinguisher. When they get home, they are soaked with a trash can full of water by Greg's father, who mistakes them for teenagers.\nIn Geography, Greg fails a test on state capitals after a girl named Patty Farrell reminds the teacher that he needs to cover the map of the United States that shows the state capitals. At home, Greg's mother forces him into auditioning for the school play (based on \"The Wizard of Oz\"). Greg lands the role of a tree, while Patty Farrell is cast as Dorothy, the protagonist of the novel. During the show's performance, Greg becomes too nervous to sing, confusing the other trees. Patty gets frustrated, and Greg starts throwing apples at her. The other trees join in, and the play eventually has to be shut down after Patty's glasses are broken. Greg's mother is disappointed, but Greg enjoyed getting back at Patty.\nAfter getting bad presents for Christmas, Greg decides to play a game with Rowley in which Rowley must ride a Big Wheel down a hill while Greg tries to knock him off with a football. On one of Greg's tries, the ball goes under the front wheel, which causes Rowley to fall off and break his hand. When Rowley goes to school with a plaster cast, the girls take care of him (carrying his books, feeding him food), which makes Greg jealous.\nGreg decides to join the Safety Patrols at his school, hoping that he will be able to control the other kids. He gets Rowley to sign up as well and enjoys the benefits of being a Safety Patrol, such as getting free hot chocolate. He tries to get a spot in the school's newspaper as a cartoonist and teams up with Rowley. Greg comes up with a strip called \"Zoo-Wee Mama!\", and he and Rowley produce a number of strips. Eventually, Greg starts wanting to do other strips, but Rowley wants to continue with \"Zoo-Wee Mama!\"; Greg submits his comics to the teacher and ends up getting the cartoonist job. However, the teacher completely changes Greg's comic, even making his character a \"curious student\" instead of a \"cretin.\"\nAfter an incident where Greg chases some kindergartners with a worm on a stick and is mistaken for Rowley, Rowley gets suspended from the Safety Patrols for a week. However, after it is cleared up that Greg was the real culprit, Rowley is reinstated and promoted while Greg is dismissed.\nGreg notices that the school year is coming to a close and tries to get on the yearbook's Class Favorites page. He plans to go for \"Class Clown,\" but his plans do not work out. At lunch, he gets an issue of the school newspaper and learns that Rowley is the new cartoonist, with his \"Zoo-Wee Mama!\" strip left completely unchanged.\nGreg confronts Rowley for not even listing him as co-creator and hogging all the fame. Rowley retaliates by saying that the \"Zoo-Wee Mama!\" comic was his idea and that Greg \"had nothing to do with it.\" As they argue, the teenagers who chased them at Halloween appear and force Greg and Rowley to eat the Cheese. Greg gets out of it by falsely claiming to be allergic to dairy, while Rowley is forced to eat the whole thing. The next day, when everyone notices that the Cheese is gone, Greg takes the fall for Rowley and lies by saying that he threw it away. Greg reconciles with Rowley and lets people think that he has the Cheese Touch.\nThe book concludes with Greg getting his yearbook, seeing Rowley on the \"Class Clown\" page, and throwing it in the garbage. This means Greg now has the Cheese Touch, which carries on into the next book.\nBackground.\nIn May 2004, FunBrain and Jeff Kinney released an online version of \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\". The website made daily entries from September of that year to June 2005. The online book became an instant hit, and had received approximately 20 million views by 2007. Many online readers requested a printed version. At the 2006 New York Comic Con Kinney proposed \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" to Charles Kochman, Editorial Director of the ComicArts division of Abrams Books, who purchased the rights to the book. According to Kochman, the two initially conceived it as a book for adults, believing it would appeal to audiences similar to that of the TV series \"The Wonder Years\". Kochman brought it before the Abrams publishing board, which convinced Kinney and Kochman that it would be better aimed toward children. In 2007, \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\", an abridged version of the original online book, was published.\nMain characters.\nThe main character, Greg, has trouble with family, friends, and his local middle school. He is very concerned about how popular he is at school, and he daydreams a lot about being rich and famous when he grows up. He tries to fit in at his school, but usually he does not succeed. Facing many challenges, Greg attempts to handle them very creatively, but unfortunately his antics often backfire on him.\nGreg's best friend has a larger than average frame. He is always willing to do what Greg tells him, including dangerous stunts. Rowley goes on vacations all the time, which annoys Greg. Rowley is a loyal friend, but he sometimes behaves in an immature or childish manner. He also dresses in an unusual way.\nGreg's \"spoiled\" little brother, a three-year-old toddler. He never gets in trouble no matter what, even when he really deserves it. Manny is not yet potty trained.\nRodrick is Greg's teenage brother and he never misses a chance to be cruel to Greg. He is known for sleeping excessively in the morning and for his rebellious attitude. Rodrick is part of a basement band (garage band in the movies) called \"L\u00f6ded Diper\". Rodrick will do anything to embarrass Greg and will even cause problems for Manny to make everyone's life miserable.\nSequels.\n\"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" is the first book in an ongoing franchise. A total of nineteen \"Wimpy Kid\" books have been released, the sequels to the first book are: ' (2008) which was listed on the \"New York Times\" Best Sellers list for 117 weeks, ' (2009) which was on the \"New York Times\" Best Sellers list for 65 weeks, peaking at number one, ' (2009) which was ranked at number one on the \"New York Times\" Best Sellers List for all 25 weeks of inclusion, making it the #1 best selling book of 2009, ' (2010), ' (2011), ' (2012), ' (2013), ' (2014), ' (2015), ' (2016), ' (2017), ' (2018),\" \" (2019), ' (2020), ' (2021), ' (2022), ' (2023), and (2024).\nReception.\nThe book won the Blue Peter Book Award 2012, revealed live on British kids channel CBBC on March 1, 2012. In 2012 it was ranked number 76 on a list of the top 100 children's novels published by \"School Library Journal\".\nAdaptations.\nA film adaptation, \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid,\" was released by 20th Century Fox on March 19, 2010. The film stars Zachary Gordon as Greg Heffley, Robert Capron as Rowley Jefferson, Steve Zahn as Frank Heffley (Dad), Rachael Harris as Susan Heffley (Mom), Devon Bostick as Rodrick Heffley, Chlo\u00eb Grace Moretz as Angie Steadman (a character exclusive to the live-action film), and Connor & Owen Fielding as Manny Heffley, Greg's brother. It would later go on to spawn three sequels.\nAnother film adaptation, this time animated, serving as a reboot of the film series was released on December 3, 2021 exclusively on Disney+.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "24717406": "Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010 film)\n2010 film by Thor Freudenthal\nDiary of a Wimpy Kid is a 2010 American comedy film directed by Thor Freudenthal and based on Jeff Kinney's 2007 book of the same name. The film stars Zachary Gordon, Robert Capron, Devon Bostick, Rachael Harris, Steve Zahn, and Chlo\u00eb Grace Moretz.\n20th Century Fox released the film theatrically in the United States on March 19, 2010, receiving mixed reviews from critics and grossing $76 million worldwide against a $15 million budget.\nThe film spawned a film franchise and was followed by three sequels: ' (2011), ' (2012), and ' (2017). An animated reboot of the same name was released in 2021, which was followed by two sequels of its own: a (2022) and ' (2023). A book detailing the film's creation process, titled \"The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary\", was released on March 16, 2010.\nPlot.\nPreteen Greg Heffley illustrates his daily life in a diary. He says he is writing in one for when he is \"rich and famous\", but is in middle school for now. Greg lives with his parents, Susan and Frank, his spoiled younger brother, Manny, and his older brother, Rodrick, who torments Greg. On Greg's first day of middle school, he quickly discovers the ups and downs, such as the missing stall doors in the boys' bathroom and the difficulties of obtaining a seat during lunch. During physical education, Greg and his childish best friend, Rowley Jefferson, escape from a game of Gladiator and meet Angie Steadman, a seventh-grader who isolates herself from the other students to \"survive\". They also notice a moldy piece of cheese on the basketball court. When Greg almost touches it, their friend, Chirag Gupta, tells them that whoever touches it gets \"The Cheese Touch\", where they become a social outcast due to everyone being disgusted by that person because they touched the cheese, and that the only way to get rid of \"The Cheese Touch\" is to pass it on to someone else by touching them. Greg states his intention of becoming the most popular student in school, as well as earning a place in the school yearbook as a class favorite, only for several of his attempts to fail. \nOn Halloween, when Greg and Rowley go out trick-or-treating, a group of teenage boys drive by in a pickup truck, and spray a fire extinguisher at them. When Greg threatens to call the police, the boys chase him and Rowley to Greg's grandmother's house, but the latter two escape them after Greg accidentally damages their truck with a weed eater.\nThe boys join the Safety Patrol team at school in another effort to become popular and try out for a contest that offers a student a chance to become the cartoonist for the school paper. When Greg accidentally breaks Rowley's arm, during a dangerous game the duo invented, Rowley becomes extremely popular and wins the cartoonist contest, making Greg envious of him. During a Safety Patrol assignment, Greg walks kindergartners down a neighborhood street without Rowley, but panics when he encounters a truck identical to the teenagers' from Halloween and hides himself and the kids in a construction zone. He is then confronted by a neighbor who mistakes him for Rowley, having borrowed Rowley's coat, forcing him to abandon the kindergarteners and flee. To his bewilderment, Rowley is suspended from Safety Patrol, but Greg eventually confesses his guilt to him, foolishly offering it as a joke and saying that they could both learn \"lessons\" from the incident. Distraught and angered over Greg's mistreatment of him, Rowley ends their friendship. When the truth soon comes to light, Greg is fired from the service while Rowley is reinstated as captain and befriends their classmate, Collin, who replaces Greg as Rowley's best friend. Greg attempts to pursue popularity without Rowley, but those efforts also fail. Greg tries to reconcile with Rowley while attending the Mother and Son Sweetheart Dance at his school with Susan, but lies to Rowley about missing him when he notices he is with Collin. \nOne day after school, Greg and Rowley confront each other in rage and a circle of students encourages them to fight. However, neither of them are good at fighting. The teenagers from Halloween arrive at the scene and force Rowley to eat part of the cheese after the other kids, except for Greg, are chased inside the school. They flee the scene when the school's physical education teacher, Coach Eduardo Malone, arrives, but when the other kids come back out and notice the cheese has been eaten, Greg takes the blame to save Rowley's reputation, and they reconcile. At the end of the school year, Greg and Rowley make the yearbook class favorites page as \"Cutest Friends\".\nProduction.\nAn adaptation of the first \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" novel was announced in 2008, with Thor Freudenthal signing on as director in December 2008. In July 2009, Zachary Gordon was cast in the lead role of Greg Heffley. Rachael Harris also signed on for the role of Susan Heffley, Greg's mother. In August 2009, Steve Zahn was cast as Frank Heffley, Greg's father. In the same month, Devon Bostick and Robert Capron were cast as Rodrick Heffley and Rowley Jefferson, respectively. Filming began on August 12, 2009.\nVisual effects.\nThe mold for the Cheese was completely digital. Filmmakers left a real square of cheese outside for a few days inside a wire cage to keep animals out and sunlight in, and after this, a piece of cheese was made out of silicone and had mold effects added using CGI.\nThe animated sequences were not 2D animated, but in fact made with 3D animation. The animated sequences were first animated in 3D, and then rendered in a rough sketch shader to make them look 2D.\nRelease.\nTie-in book.\nA tie-in book, written by Kinney, called \"The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary\", was published on March 16, 2010, by Amulet Books (an imprint of Abrams Books). It includes film stills, storyboards, preliminary concept drawings and also behind-the-scenes information to humorously chronicle the making of \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\", ', and '. It also includes some new illustrations.\nHome media.\nThe film was released on DVD and Blu-ray on August 3, 2010. The Blu-ray version features six pages from Rowley's diary, \"Diary of an Awesome, Friendly Kid\". It was released on the streaming service Disney+ on November 12, 2019; its launch date.\nReception.\nCritical response.\nReview aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 55% based on 106 reviews and an average rating of 5.5/10. The website's critical consensus reads, \"Unlike its bestselling source material, \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" fails to place a likable protagonist at the center of its middle-school humor \u2013 and its underlying message is drowned out as a result.\" It also holds a rating of 56 out of 100 at Metacritic, based on 26 reviews, indicating \"mixed or average reviews\". Audience surveyed by CinemaScore gave this film an \"A-.\"\nRoger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, writing \"It's nimble, bright and funny. It doesn't dumb down. It doesn't patronize. It knows something about human nature.\" Glenn Whipp of the \"Associated Press\" was less positive, saying, \"In transferring the clean, precise humor of Kinney's illustrations and prose to the big-screen, the material loses just a bit of its charm.\" \"At the Movies\" host David Stratton gave the film one star while co-host Margaret Pomeranz gave it half a star. Stratton called the film \"tiresome\" and said there was \"nothing remotely interesting in Thor Freudenthal's direction or the screenplay.\" Pomeranz disliked the character of Greg Heffley, saying \"I really thought he was unpleasant. I did not want to spend time with him. I could not wait for the end of this film.\"\nOregonLive.com gave the film a C+ grade, criticizing it for being \"too often dull, unappealing and clumsy, hobbled by unnecessary changes and inventions that add no charm, energy or, truly, point.\"\nBox office.\nDespite a lack of distinctive marketing, \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" drew a decent crowd, opening to $22.1 million on approximately 3,400 screens at 3,077 sites, in second place at the weekend box office behind \"Alice in Wonderland\" but beating out the heavily hyped \"The Bounty Hunter\". It was the biggest start ever for a non-animated, non-fantasy children's book adaptation. \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" grossed more in its first three days than other film adaptions to children's novels like \"How to Eat Fried Worms\" and \"Hoot\" grossed in their entire runs. The film grossed $64,003,625 in North America and $11,696,873 in other territories for a worldwide total of $75,700,498.\nExpanded franchise.\nSequels.\nThree sequels were released in 2011, 2012 and 2017 respectively. ' was released on March 25, 2011. It was based on the second book in the series, '. Zachary Gordon reprised his role in the film. ' was released on August 3, 2012, and is based on ' and ', including scenes from both books. An animated short film, ', was released along with the DVD of \"Dog Days\". A film based on \"\" was released in May 2017 and features a new cast starring Jason Drucker, Alicia Silverstone, and Tom Everett Scott, but received generally negative reviews.\nAnimated reboot and sequels.\nAn animated reboot directed by Swinton Scott was released on Disney+ on December 3, 2021. Unlike the other films, this was the first \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" film to be animated fully in computer-generated imagery and features Greg and the characters in colors. Originally set as an adaptation of \"\" by Kinney, it was re-announced in 2018 as an animated series but switched to a CGI movie in 2019. It stars Brady Noon, Ethan William Childress, and Chris Diamantopoulos.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "32162249": "Diary of a Wimpy Kid (film series)\nFamily comedy film series\nDiary of a Wimpy Kid is a series of family comedy films based on the book series of the same name by Jeff Kinney. It consists of four live action films and three animated films.\nFilms.\nLive-action films.\n\"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" (2010).\nPrincipal production began on August 12, 2009, and was completed on October 16, 2009. The film was directed by Thor Freudenthal and starred Zachary Gordon as Greg Heffley, Robert Capron as Rowley Jefferson, Rachael Harris as Susan Heffley, Steve Zahn as Frank Heffley, Devon Bostick as Rodrick Heffley, Connor and Owen Fielding as Manny Heffley, Chlo\u00eb Grace Moretz as Angie Steadman, Grayson Russell as Fregley, Laine MacNeil as Patty Farrell, and Karan Brar as Chirag Gupta. It was the only film in the series to be directed by Freudenthal. The musical score was composed by Theodore Shapiro. It received mixed reviews from critics. It was released on March 19, 2010, as it moved up from a previously scheduled April 2 release date.\n\"Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules\" (2011).\nBased on the second book, \"Rodrick Rules\", with elements from \"The Last Straw\". Principal photography began on August 23, 2010, and was completed on October 27, 2010, with filming taking place in Vancouver and New Westminster. The film was directed by David Bowers, with Zachary Gordon reprising his role as Greg Heffley. New main characters include Holly Hills (Peyton List), Grandpa (Terence Kelly), and Bill Walter (Fran Kranz). Edward Shearmur composes the original score for the film. It also received mixed reviews from critics. It was released on March 25, 2011.\n\"Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days\" (2012).\nBased on the third book \"The Last Straw\" and the fourth book \"Dog Days\", the film was directed by David Bowers and features the same familiar cast of characters, introducing a few new ones, and also focusing on lesser characters not elaborated on in previous films, including Frank Heffley (Steve Zahn), Mr. Jefferson (Alf Humphreys) and Holly Hills (Peyton List). The film is the last one to feature the original cast, as they had outgrown their roles after filming wrapped. It also received mixed reviews from critics. It was released on August 3, 2012.\n\"Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul\" (2017).\nFeaturing an entirely new cast, the plot follows Greg and his brother, Rodrick, unwillingly being taken on a family road trip to their great-grandmother's house for her 90th birthday party. Greg sees this as an opportunity to meet his Internet idol, Mac Digby, and get people to forget about him being dubbed as a meme known as \"Diaper Hands\". The film was panned by critics and audiences, with most of the criticism aimed at the casting change. It was released on May 19, 2017.\nAnimated reboot films.\n\"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" (2021).\nIn August 2018, 20th Century Fox CEO Stacey Snider announced that a fully animated television series based on \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" was in development. On August 6, 2019, after the acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney, the project was confirmed to be still in development for their streaming service, Disney+.\nIn December 2020, the project was confirmed to have been redeveloped as an animated film. On September 2, 2021, Disney officially confirmed that the new movie would be simply titled \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\", and would be released on December 3, 2021. The movie is a re-adaptation of the first book and the characters appear similar in design to their appearances in the book series. The first trailer was officially released in October 2021. Unlike the previous films, which were produced by 20th Century Fox, this film was produced by Walt Disney Pictures, although it was originally in production at 20th Century Animation.\n\"Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules\" (2022).\nOn October 23, 2021, ahead of the first film's release, Jeff Kinney revealed that sequels are already in development. For Disney+ Day, Kinney revealed that the sequel, based on \"\", was released on December 2, 2022. Unlike the first animated film, a copyright notice at the end of the trailer indicates that 20th Century Studios has involvement in the film.\n\"Diary of a Wimpy Kid Christmas: Cabin Fever\" (2023).\nOn September 8, 2023, it was announced that a Disney+ film based on the sixth book, \"Cabin Fever\", released on December 8, 2023.\nFuture.\nJeff Kinney stated that he intends to adapt all books into animated features for Disney+. An animated film based on \"The Last Straw\" is currently in development.\n\"Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Class Clown\" short film.\nAn animated short film set after the events of the third film, titled \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Class Clown\", was included on the home media release of \"Dog Days\" in 2012. The short is told through Greg's point-of-view as he explains his humorous experience and why he deserves the title of Class Clown. Zachary Gordon reprises his role as Greg Heffley along with other cast members voicing their characters from the films in minor roles.\nCanceled TV special.\nIn 2012, Jeff Kinney, the author of the \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" books, announced the possibility for an animated film to be based on ' as the next installment. In an interview for ', Kinney stated he was working with FOX on a half-hour special based on \"Cabin Fever\", which was scheduled to air in late-2014. The special was meant to be an animated production developed at 20th Century Fox Animation, and had begun development while Kinney worked on the live-action films. Nothing regarding the special ever materialized. A separate adaptation was eventually released in 2023 as \"\".\nRecurring cast and characters.\n<templatestyles src=\"Cast indicator/styles.css\"/>\nList indicators\nThis section includes .* An empty grey cell indicates the character was not in the film, or that the character's official presence has not yet been confirmed.* \u00a0E indicates an appearance not included in the theatrical cut.* \u00a0O indicates an older version of the character.* \u00a0U indicates an uncredited appearance.* \u00a0V indicates a voice-only role.* \u00a0Y indicates a younger version of the character.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "21300993": "List of Diary of a Wimpy Kid characters\nCharacters in Diary of a Wimpy Kid\nThe \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" franchise contains a large cast of characters. It centers on protagonist Greg Heffley, his best friend Rowley Jefferson, and Greg's family: his mother Susan, father Frank, and brothers Rodrick and Manny.\nMain characters.\nGreg Heffley.\nGregory \"Greg\" Heffley serves as the central character of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. He is depicted as the middle son of Frank and Susan Heffley, navigating the trials of middle school with an intense desire for popularity. This ambition often leads him to go to great lengths, including displaying antagonistic behavior or manipulating his best friend, Rowley. Despite these tendencies, Greg occasionally shows moments of kindness, suggesting a more complex personality beneath his relentless quest for social status.\nIn \"\", for instance, Greg persuades Rowley to do his homework, only to annoy him and impede Rowley's concentration, underscoring Greg's tendency to exploit his friend.\nIn the film adaptations, Greg is portrayed by Zachary Gordon in the first three films, Jason Drucker in ', and Brady Noon in the animated films until ', where Wesley Kimmel provides his voice.\nRowley Jefferson.\nRowley Jefferson is characterized to be Greg's best friend. Rowley is characterized as friendly, good-natured, and somewhat naive, remaining loyal to Greg despite frequently getting caught up in Greg\u2019s schemes. In \"\", Rowley begins dating Abigail Brown, initially Greg\u2019s intended date for the Valentine's Day dance.\" This relationship continues into \", where Rowley drifts away from Greg to spend more time with Abigail. However, by the end of the book, Rowley and Abigail break up, allowing Rowley and Greg to rekindle their friendship.\nRowley\u2019s interests are often portrayed as \"immature\" by Greg, such as his enthusiasm for the pop singer Joshie, who is marketed toward young children, and his enjoyment of action figures Greg considers childish. Greg\u2019s jealousy also becomes apparent when Rowley receives a diary for his birthday and suggests they could be \u201cDiary Twins,\u201d prompting Greg to dismissively respond with a light punch, showing his annoyance. Rowley is the original creator of the comic strip \"Zoo Wee Mama!\" Although Greg claims to have contributed, Rowley maintains in the first book that Greg had little involvement in and made fun of the comic, a rare instance where Rowley asserts himself.\nIn \"\", Rowley is the protagonist, with Greg taking on a more antagonistic role, showcasing Rowley\u2019s perspective on their friendship.\nIn the film series, Rowley is portrayed by Robert Capron in the first three films, Owen Asztalos in \"The Long Haul\", and Ethan William Childress in the animated films until \"\", where he was voiced by Spencer Howell instead.\nFrank Heffley.\nFranklin \"Frank\" Heffley is depicted to be Greg's overreactive but well-meaning father. He is interested in U.S. history, with his replica of a Civil War battlefield serving as a recurring plot point in the series. In the books, Frank despises Rowley, and does not appreciate Greg's skill at video games. He is also shown to loathe heavy metal and adolescents. Frank tries to toughen Greg up and threatens to send him to a military academy in ', although ultimately this does not come to fruition, much to Greg's relief. However, Greg and Frank grow together in ', despite a brief period when Frank does not speak to Greg after almost getting arrested and going to jail. He was Greg\u2019s Aunt Cakey\u2019s boyfriend for a short time, but then he revealed to like her sister Susan more, whom he went on to marry.\n"}, "descending_order": ["11263766", "24717406", "32162249", "21300993", "14763763"], "permutation_1": ["14763763", "11263766", "24717406", "21300993", "32162249"], "permutation_2": ["21300993", "32162249", "14763763", "24717406", "11263766"], "permutation_3": ["32162249", "14763763", "21300993", "11263766", "24717406"]}
{"id": "nq_6602232341246631977", "docs_added": {"574536": "List of United States presidential assassination attempts and plots\nAssassination attempts and plots on the president of the United States have been numerous, ranging from the early 19th century to the present day. This article lists assassinations and assassination attempts on incumbent and former presidents and presidents-elect, but not on those who had not yet been elected president.\nFour sitting presidents have been killed: Abraham Lincoln (1865, by John Wilkes Booth), James A. Garfield (1881, by Charles J. Guiteau), William McKinley (1901, by Leon Czolgosz), and John F. Kennedy (1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald). Ronald Reagan (1981, by John Hinckley Jr.) is the only sitting U.S. president to have been injured in an assassination attempt. Theodore Roosevelt (1912, by John Schrank) and Donald Trump (2024, by Thomas Matthew Crooks) are the only two former presidents to be injured in an assassination attempt, both while campaigning for reelection. Roosevelt would go on to lose his reelection bid, while Trump won his.\nIn all of these cases, the attacker's weapon was a firearm, and all the subjects were male. Gerald Ford experienced two attempted assassinations with a woman as the assailant.\nMany assassination attempts, both successful and unsuccessful, were motivated by a desire to change the policy of the American government. Not all such attacks, however, had political reasons. Many other attackers had questionable mental stability, and a few were judged legally insane. Historian James W. Clarke suggests that most assassination attempters have been sane and politically motivated, whereas the Department of Justice's legal manual claims that a large majority have been insane. Some assassins, especially mentally ill ones, acted solely on their own, whereas those pursuing political agendas have more often found supporting conspirators. Most assassination plotters were arrested and punished by execution or lengthy detention in a prison or insane asylum.\nThe fact that the successor of a removed president is the vice president, and all vice presidents since Andrew Johnson have shared the president's political party affiliation, may discourage such attacks, at least for policy reasons, even in times of partisan strife. The third person in line, the Speaker of the House, as outlined in the Presidential Succession Act, is often of the opposing party, however.\nThreats of violence against the president are often made for rhetorical or humorous effect without serious intent, while \"credibly\" threatening the president of the United States has been a federal felony since 1917.\nPresidents assassinated.\nAbraham Lincoln.\nAbraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was the first U.S. president to be assassinated (though not the first to die in office). The assassination took place on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., at about 10:15 PM. The assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was a well-known actor and a Confederate sympathizer from Maryland; though he never joined the Confederate Army, he had contacts within the Confederate Secret Service. In 1864, Booth formulated a plan (very similar to one of Thomas N. Conrad previously authorized by the Confederacy) to kidnap Lincoln in exchange for the release of Confederate prisoners. After attending an April 11, 1865 speech in which Lincoln promoted voting rights for Black people, Booth decided to assassinate the president instead. Learning that the president would be attending Ford's Theatre, Booth planned with co-conspirators to assassinate Lincoln at the theater. The conspiracy also included assassinating Vice President Andrew Johnson in Kirkwood House, where Johnson lived while Vice President, and Secretary of State William H. Seward at Seward's house. On April 14, 1865, Lincoln attended the play \"Our American Cousin\" at Ford's Theatre. As the president sat in his state box in the balcony watching the play with his wife Mary and two guests, Major Henry Rathbone and Rathbone's fianc\u00e9e Clara Harris, Booth entered from behind. He aimed a .44-caliber Derringer pistol at the back of Lincoln's head and fired, mortally wounding him. Rathbone momentarily grappled with Booth, but Booth stabbed him and escaped. An unconscious Lincoln was examined by doctors and taken across the street to the Petersen House. After remaining in a coma for nine hours, Lincoln died at 7:22\u00a0AM on April 15.\nAs he died, his breathing grew quieter, his face more calm. According to some accounts, at his last drawn breath, on the morning after the assassination, he smiled broadly and then expired. Historians, particularly author Lee Davis, have emphasized Lincoln's peaceful appearance when and after he died: \"It was the first time in four years, probably, that a peaceful expression crossed his face.\" Field wrote in a letter to \"The New York Times\": \"there was 'no apparent suffering, no convulsive action, no rattling of the throat...[only] a mere cessation of breathing'... I had never seen upon the President's face an expression more genial and pleasing.\" The president's secretary, John Hay, saw \"a look of unspeakable peace came upon his worn features\".\nBeyond Lincoln's death, the plot failed: Seward was only wounded, and Johnson's would-be attacker did not follow through. After being on the run for 12 days, Booth was tracked down and found on April 26, 1865, by Union Army soldiers at a farm in Virginia, some south of Washington. After refusing to surrender, Booth was fatally shot by Union cavalryman Boston Corbett. Four other conspirators were later hanged for their roles in the conspiracy.\nPresident Lincoln was succeeded by Vice President Andrew Johnson on April 15, 1865.\nJames A. Garfield.\nThe assassination of James A. Garfield, the 20th president of the United States, took place at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C., at 9:20 AM on Saturday, July 2, 1881, less than four months after he took office. As the president was arriving at the train station, writer and lawyer Charles J. Guiteau shot him twice with a .442 Webley British Bull Dog revolver; one bullet grazed the president's shoulder, and the other pierced his back. For the next eleven weeks, Garfield endured the pain and suffering from having been shot, before dying on September 19, 1881, at 10:35\u00a0PM, of complications caused by iatrogenic infections, which were contracted by the doctors' relentless probing of his wound with unsterilized fingers and instruments. He had survived for a total of 79 days after being shot.\nGuiteau was immediately arrested. After a highly publicized trial lasting from November 14, 1881, to January 25, 1882, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. A subsequent appeal was rejected, and he was executed by hanging on June 30, 1882, in the District of Columbia, two days before the first anniversary of the shooting. Guiteau was assessed during his trial and autopsy as mentally unbalanced or suffering from the effects of neurosyphilis. He claimed to have shot Garfield out of disappointment at being passed over for appointment as Ambassador to France. He attributed the president's victory in the election to a speech he wrote in support of Garfield.\nPresident Garfield was succeeded by Vice President Chester A. Arthur on September 19, 1881.\nWilliam McKinley.\nThe assassination of United States president William McKinley took place at 4:07\u00a0PM on Friday, September 6, 1901, at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York. McKinley, attending the Pan-American Exposition, was shot twice in the abdomen at close range by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, who was armed with a .32-caliber Iver Johnson \"Safety Automatic\" revolver that was concealed underneath a handkerchief. The first bullet ricocheted off either a button or an award medal on McKinley's jacket and lodged in his sleeve; the second shot pierced his stomach. Although McKinley initially appeared to be recovering, his condition rapidly declined due to gangrene setting in around his wounds and he died on September 14, 1901, at 2:15\u00a0AM.\nMembers of the crowd, started by James Benjamin Parker, subdued and captured Czolgosz. Afterward, the 4th Brigade, National Guard Signal Corps, and police intervened, beating Czolgosz so severely it was initially thought he might not live to stand trial. On September 24, after a two-day trial, in which the defendant refused to defend himself, Czolgosz was convicted and later sentenced to death. He was executed by the electric chair in Auburn Prison on October 29, 1901. Czolgosz's actions were politically motivated, although it remains unclear what outcome, if any, he believed the shooting would yield.\nFollowing President McKinley's assassination, Congress directed the Secret Service to protect the president of the United States as part of its mandate.\nPresident William McKinley was succeeded by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt on September 14, 1901. \nJohn F. Kennedy.\nThe assassination of United States president John F. Kennedy took place at 12:30\u00a0PM on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, during a presidential motorcade in Dealey Plaza. Kennedy was riding with his wife Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife Nellie when he was fatally shot by former U.S. Marine and American defector Lee Harvey Oswald (using a 6.5\u00d752mm Carcano Model 38 rifle) from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. He was shot once in the back, the bullet exiting via his throat, and once in the head. Governor Connally was seriously wounded, and bystander James Tague received a minor facial injury from a small piece of curbstone that had fragmented after it was struck by one of the bullets. The motorcade rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where President Kennedy was declared dead at 1:00\u00a0PM. Oswald was arrested and charged by the Dallas Police Department for the assassination of Kennedy and for the murder of Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit, who was shot dead in a residential neighborhood in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas just hours later. On Sunday, November 24, while being transferred from the city jail to the county jail, Oswald was fatally shot in the basement of Dallas Police Department Headquarters by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby. Ruby was convicted of Oswald's murder, albeit his conviction was later overturned on appeal. In 1967, Ruby died in prison while awaiting a new trial.\nIn September 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Kennedy and Tippit were both killed by Oswald, that Oswald had acted entirely alone in both murders, and that Ruby had acted alone in killing Oswald. Nonetheless, polls conducted from 1966 to 2004 found that up to 80% of Americans surveyed suspected that there was a plot or cover-up to kill President Kennedy. Conspiracy theories have persisted to the present day.\nPresident John F. Kennedy was succeeded by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson on November 22, 1963.\nIncumbent presidents wounded.\nRonald Reagan.\nOn March 30, 1981, as Ronald Reagan was returning to his limousine after speaking at the Washington Hilton hotel, would-be assassin John Hinckley Jr., fired six gunshots using a .22 caliber R\u00f6hm RG-14 revolver toward him, striking Reagan and three others. Reagan was seriously wounded by a bullet that ricocheted off the side of the presidential limousine and hit him in the left underarm, breaking a rib, puncturing a lung, and causing serious internal bleeding. Although \"close to death\" upon arrival at George Washington University Hospital, Reagan was stabilized in the emergency room, and then underwent emergency exploratory surgery. He recovered and was released from the hospital on April 11. Besides Reagan, White House press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy, and police officer Thomas Delahanty were also wounded. All three survived, but Brady suffered brain damage and was permanently disabled; Brady's death in 2014 was considered a homicide because it was ultimately caused by this injury.\nHinckley was immediately arrested, and later said he had wanted to kill Reagan to impress actress Jodie Foster. He was deemed mentally ill and confined to an institution. Hinckley was released from institutional psychiatric care on September 10, 2016, 35 years after the incident and 12 years after Reagan's death from pneumonia complicated by Alzheimer's disease.\nFormer presidents wounded.\nTheodore Roosevelt.\nThree-and-a-half years after he left office, Theodore Roosevelt ran in the 1912 presidential election as a member of the Bull Moose Party. While campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on October 14, 1912, John Schrank, a saloon-keeper from New York who had been stalking him for weeks, shot Roosevelt once in the chest with a .38-caliber Colt Police Positive Special. The 50-page text of his campaign speech titled \"\", folded over twice in Roosevelt's breast pocket, and a metal glasses case slowed the bullet, saving his life. Schrank was immediately disarmed, captured, and might have been lynched had Roosevelt not shouted for Schrank to remain unharmed. Roosevelt assured the crowd he was all right, then ordered police to take charge of Schrank and to make sure no violence was done to him.\nRoosevelt, as an experienced hunter and anatomist, correctly concluded that since he was not coughing blood, the bullet had not reached his lung, and he declined suggestions to go to the hospital immediately. Instead, he delivered his scheduled speech with blood seeping into his shirt. He spoke for 84 minutes before completing his speech and accepting medical attention. His opening comments to the gathered crowd were, \"Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.\" Afterwards, probes and an x-ray showed that the bullet had lodged in Roosevelt's chest muscle, but did not penetrate the pulmonary pleurae. Doctors concluded that it would be less dangerous to leave it in place than to attempt to remove it, and the bullet remained in Roosevelt's body for the remainder of his life. He spent two weeks recuperating before returning to the campaign trail. Despite his tenacity, Roosevelt ultimately lost his bid for reelection to the Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson.\nAt Schrank's trial, the would-be assassin claimed that William McKinley had visited him in a dream and told him to avenge his assassination by killing Roosevelt. He was found legally insane and was institutionalized until his death in 1943.\nDonald Trump.\nOn July 13, 2024, Donald Trump, while he was a former president of the United States and the Republican Party's presumptive nominee in the 2024 presidential election, was shot by a bullet wounding his right ear while addressing a campaign rally near Butler, Pennsylvania. Shortly after Trump began addressing the rally, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks fired eight rounds with an AR-15\u2013style rifle from the roof of a building located around from the stage. Crooks also killed audience member Corey Comperatore and critically injured two other audience members. Crooks was shot and killed by the U.S. Secret Service's counter-sniper team. Video of the incident showed Trump clasping his right ear before taking cover on the floor of the podium, where he was shielded by Secret Service personnel. After agents helped him to his feet, Trump emerged with blood on his ear and face. He then either mouthed or shouted the words \"Fight! Fight! Fight!\" Photojournalist Evan Vucci of the Associated Press captured images of a bloodied Trump pumping his fist in the air, with an American flag in the background, which went viral on social media and were widely praised as iconic and historically significant. Trump was escorted off-stage and taken to a nearby hospital before being released in stable condition a few hours later. He won the election in November 2024.\nAs of August\u00a02024[ [update]], an investigation by the FBI has been underway. Crooks's motivation remains unknown.\nOther attacks, assassination attempts, and plots.\nGerald Ford.\nThe two assassination attempts on Gerald Ford in September 1975 are the only two known cases of women attempting to assassinate an American president.\nDeaths rumored to have been assassinations.\nZachary Taylor.\nOn July 9, 1850, President Zachary Taylor died from an illness that was diagnosed as cholera morbus, which allegedly came after eating cherries and milk at a 4th of July celebration. Almost immediately after his death, rumors began to circulate that Taylor was poisoned by pro-slavery Southerners, and similar theories have persisted into the 21st century. In 1991 a neutron activation analysis conducted on samples of Taylor's remains found no evidence of poisonings due to insufficient levels of arsenic. Marxist political scientist Michael Parenti questions the traditional explanation for Taylor's death. Relying on interviews and reports by forensic pathologists, he argues that the procedure used to test for arsenic poisoning was fundamentally flawed.\nWarren G. Harding.\nIn June 1923, President Warren G. Harding set out on a cross-country Voyage of Understanding, planning to meet with citizens and explain his policies. During this trip, he became the first president to visit Alaska, which was then a U.S. territory. Rumors of corruption in the Harding administration were beginning to circulate in Washington, D.C., by 1923, and Harding was profoundly shocked by a long message he received while in Alaska, apparently detailing illegal activities by his own cabinet that were allegedly unknown to him. At the end of July, while traveling south from Alaska through British Columbia, he developed what was thought to be a severe case of food poisoning. He gave the final speech of his life to a large crowd at the University of Washington Stadium (now Husky Stadium) at the University of Washington campus in Seattle, Washington. A scheduled speech in Portland, Oregon, was canceled. The president's train proceeded south to San Francisco. Upon arriving at the Palace Hotel, he developed pneumonia. Harding died in his hotel room of either a heart attack or a stroke at 7:35\u00a0PM on August 2, 1923. The formal announcement, printed in \"The New York Times\" of that day, stated: \"A stroke of apoplexy was the cause of death.\" He had been ill exactly one week.\nNaval physicians surmised that Harding had suffered a heart attack. The Hardings' personal medical advisor, homeopath and Surgeon General Charles E. Sawyer, disagreed with the diagnosis. His wife Florence Harding refused permission for an autopsy, which soon led to speculation that he had been the victim of a plot, possibly carried out by Florence, as he apparently had been unfaithful to her. Gaston Means, an amateur historian and gadfly, noted in his book \"The Strange Death of President Harding\" (1930) that the circumstances surrounding his death led to suspicions that he had been poisoned. A number of individuals attached to him, both personally and politically, would have welcomed Harding's death, as they would have been disgraced in association by Means' assertion of Harding's \"imminent impeachment\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "13434603": "List of presidents of the United States who died in office\nSince the office was established in 1789, 45 individuals have served as president of the United States. Of these, eight have died in office, of whom four were assassinated and four died of natural causes. In each of these instances, the vice president has succeeded to the presidency. This practice is now governed by Section One of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1967, which declares that, \"the Vice President shall become President\" if the president is removed from office, dies, or resigns. The initial authorization for this practice was provided by , of the U.S. Constitution.\nThe first incumbent U.S. president to die was William Henry Harrison, on April 4, 1841, only one month after Inauguration Day. He died from complications of what at the time was believed to be pneumonia. The second U.S. president to die in office, Zachary Taylor, died on July 9, 1850, from acute gastroenteritis. Abraham Lincoln was the third U.S. president to die in office, and was the first to be assassinated. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth on the night of April 14, 1865, and died the following morning. Sixteen years later, on July 2, 1881, James A. Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, surviving for 79 days before dying on September 19, 1881.\nOn September 14, 1901, William McKinley died, eight days after being shot by Leon Czolgosz. Next, Warren G. Harding suffered a heart attack, and died on August 2, 1923. On April 12, 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt (who had just begun his fourth term in office) collapsed and died as a result of a cerebral hemorrhage. The most recent U.S. president to die in office was John F. Kennedy, who was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas.\n1841: William Henry Harrison.\nOn March 26, 1841, William Henry Harrison became ill with a cold after being caught in a torrential downpour without cover. His symptoms grew progressively worse over the ensuing two days, at which time a team of doctors was called in to treat him. After making a diagnosis of right lower lobe pneumonia, they proceeded to place heated suction cups on his bare torso and to administer a series of bloodlettings, to supposedly draw out the disease. When those procedures failed to bring about improvement, the doctors treated him with ipecac, Castor oil, calomel, and finally with a boiled mixture of crude petroleum and Virginia snakeroot. All this only weakened Harrison further.\nInitially, no official announcement was made concerning Harrison's illness, which, the longer he remained out of public view, fueled public speculation and concern. By the end of the month large crowds were gathering outside the White House, holding vigil while awaiting any news about the president's condition. On the evening of April 4, 1841, nine days after becoming ill, and exactly one month after his inauguration, Harrison died at age 68. His last words were to his attending doctor, though assumed to be directed at Vice President John Tyler:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />Sir, I wish you to understand the true principles of the government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more.\nA 30-day period of mourning commenced following the president's death. Various public ceremonies, modeled after European royal funeral practices, were held. An invitation-only funeral service was also held, on April 7, in the East Room of the White House, after which Harrison's coffin was brought to Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., where it was placed in a temporary receiving vault.\nThat June, Harrison's body was transported by train and river barge to North Bend, Ohio. Then, on July 7, 1841, the nation's 9th president was buried in a family tomb at the summit of Mt. Nebo, overlooking the Ohio River\u00a0\u2013 the William Henry Harrison Tomb State Memorial.\nHarrison's death sparked a brief constitutional crisis regarding succession to the presidency, as the U.S. Constitution was unclear as to whether Vice President Tyler should assume the office of president or merely execute the duties of the vacant office as acting president. Tyler claimed a constitutional mandate to carry out the full powers and duties of the presidency and took the presidential oath of office, setting an important precedent for an orderly transfer of presidential power when a president leaves office intra-term.\nCoincidentally, all but one of the presidents who later died in office had, like Harrison, won a presidential election in a year ending in a zero (1840 through 1960). This pattern of tragedies came to be known as the Curse of Tippecanoe, or the Curse of Tecumseh, the name of the Shawnee leader against whom Harrison fought in the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe. Also sometimes referred to as the \"Zero Factor\" legend, the pattern was disrupted by Ronald Reagan, who survived an assassination attempt in 1981 (69 days after taking office) and lived to complete two full terms.\n1850: Zachary Taylor.\nZachary Taylor was known to have consumed copious amounts of ice water, cold milk, green apples, and cherries on July 4, 1850, after attending holiday celebrations and the laying of the cornerstone of the Washington Monument. That same evening, he became severely ill with an unknown digestive ailment. Doctors used popular treatments of the time. On the morning of July 9, the president asked his wife Margaret not to grieve saying:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nTaylor died late that evening, five days after becoming ill, at age 65. Contemporary reports listed the cause of death as \"bilious diarrhea or a bilious cholera.\" He was succeeded by Vice President Millard Fillmore.\nTaylor's funeral took place on July 13, and like Harrison's nine years earlier, was held in the East Room of the White House. Afterward, an estimated 100,000 people gathered along the funeral route to Congressional Cemetery where his coffin was placed temporarily in the Public Vault; that October it was transported to Louisville, Kentucky. On November 1, 1850, Taylor was buried in his family's burial ground on the Taylor estate, \"Springfield\", which became the Zachary Taylor National Cemetery.\nAlmost immediately after his death, rumors began to circulate that he had been poisoned by pro-slavery Southerners, and various conspiracy theories persisted into the late-20th century. The cause of Taylor's death was definitively established in 1991, when his remains were exhumed and an autopsy conducted by Kentucky's chief medical examiner. Subsequent neutron activation analysis conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory revealed no evidence of poisoning, as arsenic levels were too low. The analysis concluded Taylor had contracted cholera morbus (acute gastroenteritis), as Washington had open sewers, and his food or drink may have been contaminated.\n1865: Abraham Lincoln.\nThe assassination of Abraham Lincoln took place on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, as the Civil War was drawing to a close. He died the following morning at the age of 56. The assassination occurred five days after General Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant and the Army of the Potomac following the Battle of Appomattox Court House. Lincoln was the first American president to be killed by an assassin. (The first U.S. president to be confronted by a would-be assassin was Andrew Jackson 30 years earlier, in January 1835.)\nThe assassination of President Lincoln was planned and carried out by the well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer, vehement in his denunciation of Lincoln, and a strong opponent of the abolition of slavery in the United States. Booth and a group of co-conspirators originally plotted to kidnap Lincoln, but later planned to kill him, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William H. Seward in a bid to help the Confederacy's cause. Johnson's would-be-assassin, George Atzerodt did not carry out his part of the plan, and Johnson succeeded Lincoln as president while Lewis Powell only managed to wound Seward.\nLincoln was shot once in the back of his head while watching the play \"Our American Cousin\" with his wife Mary Todd Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on the night of April 14, 1865. An army surgeon who happened to be at Ford's, Doctor Charles Leale, assessed Lincoln's wound as mortal. The unconscious president was then carried across the street from the theater to the Petersen House, where he remained in a coma for eight hours before dying the following morning.\nWithin two weeks of the manhunt for Lincoln's killers, on April 26, 1865, Booth and David Herold were caught in a tobacco barn in Port Conway, Virginia. While Herold surrendered, Booth was shot to death by Boston Corbett, a Union Corporal.\nA three-week series of official functions were held following the president's death. He lay in state in the East Room of the White House which was open to the public on April 18. A funeral service was held the next day, and then the coffin was transported in a procession down Pennsylvania Avenue to the United States Capitol, where a ceremonial burial service was held in the rotunda. After lying in state at the Capitol, Lincoln's remains were transported by train to Springfield, Illinois, for burial. He was interred on May 4, 1865, at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield\u00a0\u2013 the Lincoln Tomb State Historic Site since 1895.\n1881: James A. Garfield.\nThe assassination of James A. Garfield happened in Washington, D.C., on July 2, 1881. Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau at 9:30a.m., less than four months into his term as the nation's 20th president. He died 11 weeks later on September 19, 1881, at the age of 49. Vice President Chester A. Arthur succeeded him as president. Garfield was scheduled to leave Washington on July 2, 1881, for his summer vacation. On that day, Guiteau lay in wait for the president at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station, on the southwest corner of present-day Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.\nPresident Garfield came to the Sixth Street Station on his way to his alma mater, Williams College, where he was scheduled to deliver a speech. Garfield was accompanied by two of his sons, James and Harry, and Secretary of State James G. Blaine. Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln waited at the station to see the president off. Garfield had no bodyguard or security detail; with the exception of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, early U.S. presidents never used any guards.\nAs President Garfield entered the waiting room of the station, Guiteau stepped forward and pulled the trigger from behind at point-blank range. \"My God, what is that?!\" Garfield cried out, flinging up his arms. Guiteau fired again and Garfield collapsed. One bullet grazed Garfield's shoulder; the other hit him in the back, passing the first lumbar vertebra but missing the spinal cord before coming to rest behind his pancreas.\nGarfield, conscious but in shock, was carried to an upstairs floor of the train station. Lincoln sent for D.C. Bliss, a prominent Washington physician, who soon arrived and examined Garfield's wounds several times, probing for the bullet that remained lodged in the president's body with his fingers and metal probes. Two additional doctors were summoned, and they also probed the entry wound. Eventually there were about twenty people in the room, including at least ten physicians. As Garfield was being cared for, Lincoln, thinking back to the death of his father, said \"How many hours of sorrow I have passed in this town.\"\nGarfield was carried back to the White House. Although doctors told him that he would not survive the night, the president remained conscious and alert. The next morning his vital signs were good and doctors began to hope for recovery. A long vigil began, with Garfield's doctors issuing regular bulletins that the American public followed closely throughout the summer of 1881. His condition fluctuated. Fevers came and went. Garfield struggled to keep down solid food and spent most of the summer eating little, and that only liquids.\nGarfield had been a regular visitor to the shore town of Long Branch, New Jersey, one of the nation's premier summer vacation spots until World War I. In early September, it was decided to bring him to Elberon, a quiet beach town just to the south of Long Branch, in hopes that the beach air would help him recover. When they heard that the president was being brought to their town, local citizens built more than half a mile of tracks in less than 24 hours, enabling Garfield to be brought directly to the door of the oceanfront Franklyn cottage, rather than being moved by carriage from the local Elberon train station. However, Garfield died 12 days later. A granite marker on Garfield Road identifies the former site of the cottage, which was demolished in 1950. Throughout the five-month drama, anxious Americans across the country were kept informed of developments by the news media. The publisher of \"Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper\", Miriam Leslie, was especially quick to publish fully illustrated accounts of key moments, from Garfield's shooting to the embalming of his body.\nChester Arthur was at his home in New York City on the night of September 19, when word came that Garfield had died. After first getting the news, Arthur said \"I hope\u2014my God, I do hope it is a mistake.\" But confirmation by telegram came soon after. Arthur took the presidential oath of office, administered by a New York Supreme Court judge, then left for Long Branch to pay his respects before traveling on to Washington. Garfield's body was taken to Washington, where it lay in state for two days in the Capitol Rotunda before being taken to Cleveland, where the funeral was held on September 26.\nWhen the tracks that had been hastily built to the Franklyn cottage were later torn up, actor Oliver Byron bought the wooden ties, and had local carpenter William Presley build them into a small tea house, in commemoration of the president. The red & white (originally red, white & blue) \"Garfield Tea House\" still survives, resting a couple of blocks away from the site of the cottage on the grounds of the Long Branch Historical Museum, a former Episcopal Church. The church is nicknamed \"The Church of the Presidents,\" as it had been attended by, in addition to Garfield, presidents Chester A. Arthur, Ulysses S. Grant, Benjamin Harrison, Rutherford Hayes, William McKinley, and Woodrow Wilson, during their own visits to Long Branch.\n1901: William McKinley.\nWilliam McKinley was assassinated on September 6, 1901, inside the Temple of Music on the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley was shaking hands with the public when Leon Czolgosz, a Polish-American anarchist, shot him. The 58-year-old president died eight days later on September 14 from gangrene caused by the bullet wounds.\nMcKinley had been elected for a second term in 1900. He enjoyed meeting the public, and was reluctant to accept the security available to his office. The secretary to the president, George B. Cortelyou, feared an assassination attempt would take place during a visit to the Temple of Music, and twice took it off the schedule. McKinley restored it each time.\nCzolgosz had lost his job during the economic Panic of 1893 and turned to anarchism, a political philosophy whose adherents had previously killed foreign leaders. Regarding McKinley as a symbol of oppression, Czolgosz felt it was his duty as an anarchist to kill him. Unable to get near McKinley during the earlier part of the presidential visit, Czolgosz shot McKinley twice as the President reached to shake his hand in the reception line at the temple. One bullet grazed McKinley; the other entered his abdomen and was never found.\nMcKinley initially appeared to be recovering, but took a turn for the worse on September 13 as his wounds became gangrenous, and died early the next morning; Vice President Theodore Roosevelt succeeded him. Roosevelt was hiking near the top of Mt. Marcy, in New York's Adirondack region, when a runner located him to convey the news. After McKinley's murder, for which Czolgosz was put to death in the electric chair, the United States Congress passed legislation to officially charge the Secret Service with the responsibility for protecting the president.\n1923: Warren G. Harding.\nWarren G. Harding died from a sudden heart attack in his hotel suite while visiting San Francisco on the evening of August 2, 1923, at the age of 57. His death quickly led to theories that he had been poisoned or committed suicide. Rumors of poisoning were fueled, in part, by a book called \"The Strange Death of President Harding\" by private detective and former Ohio Gang member"}, "descending_order": ["574536", "13434603"], "permutation_1": ["574536", "13434603"], "permutation_2": ["574536", "13434603"], "permutation_3": ["574536", "13434603"]}
{"id": "nq_1409018580919009397", "docs_added": {"1715836": "Spirit in the Sky\n1969 song by Norman Greenbaum\n\"Spirit in the Sky\" is a song by American singer-songwriter Norman Greenbaum, originally written and recorded by Greenbaum and released in December 1969 from his album \"Spirit in the Sky\". The single became a gold record in the United States, selling two million copies from 1969 to 1970, and reached No. 3 on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100 where it lasted for 15 weeks in the Top 100. \"Billboard\" ranked the record as the No. 22 song of 1970. It also climbed to No. 1 on the UK, Australian and Canadian charts in 1970.\n\"Rolling Stone\" ranked \"Spirit in the Sky\" No. 333 on its list of the \"500 Greatest Songs of All Time\". Cover versions by Doctor and the Medics and Gareth Gates have also made the No. 1 spot in the UK. The song was voted one of the top ten one-hit wonders in a \"Rolling Stone\" reader's poll.\nOriginal version by Norman Greenbaum.\n\"Spirit in the Sky\" makes several religious references to Jesus, though Greenbaum himself is Jewish. In a 2006 interview with \"The New York Times\", Greenbaum told a reporter he was inspired to write the song after watching Porter Wagoner singing a gospel song on TV. Greenbaum said: \"I thought, 'Yeah, I could do that,' knowing nothing about gospel music, so I sat down and wrote my own gospel song. It came easy. I wrote the words in 15 minutes.\" Greenbaum had previously been a member of psychedelic jug band Dr. West's Medicine Show and Junk Band. When they split up, he won a solo contract with producer Erik Jacobsen for Reprise Records. Jacobsen had previously worked with the Lovin' Spoonful.\nGreenbaum first arranged the song for an acoustic jug band; then he tried a folk version and then a Delta blues style, but none of these were satisfactory. Under Jacobsen's direction, the song started to gel at Coast Recorders studio on Bush Street in San Francisco, with Jacobsen's chosen session players Russell DaShiell on guitar, Doug Killmer from the band Crowfoot on bass, and drummer Norman Mayell from the band Sopwith Camel. Greenbaum used a Fender Telecaster guitar with a fuzz-tone circuit built into the body to generate the song's characteristic guitar sound. Jacobsen finally brought in the Stovall Sisters (Joyce, Lillian, and Netta) from Oakland to support the song with gospel hand percussion and vocal stylings, joined by additional singers.\nThe resulting sound was an \"oddly good and compelling\" combination of boogie rock (of which genre the song is considered one of the first examples), blues, gospel and hard rock music, with loud drums, distorted electric guitar, clapping hands, and tambourines. Because of the song's length and lyrics, the record company was initially reluctant to issue it, but it was finally released as a single after two other singles from the album had poor sales. \"Spirit in the Sky\" became a worldwide hit and was the best-selling single for the Reprise label. In his famous 1970 \"Lennon Remembers\" interview for \"Rolling Stone\", John Lennon stated that he liked the song. Music historian Simon Reynolds has referred to the sound of \"Spirit in the Sky\" as \"proto-glam\".\nThe song received criticism from some Christians for including the lines, \"Never been a sinner/I've never sinned/I got a friend in Jesus\", as most Christian views on sin state that \"there is no one who has never sinned\". Greenbaum had explained that because he was not a Christian, he had been unaware of that when he wrote the song. In an interview with \"American Songwriter\", he said, \"I did flub it I guess, cause if I was a Christian and was writing from that mindset, I would have said, 'I've been a sinner' ... But since I didn't have that upbringing, it never occurred to me that it was wrong.\" While some Christian artists have recorded the song using Greenbaum's original lyrics, others have changed those lines, such as DC Talk, who instead sang, \"You know I've been a sinner/We've all sinned\".\nLater albums and singles by Greenbaum were not embraced by the market. By the 1980s, Greenbaum had abandoned his music career and worked as a sous-chef and restaurant kitchen manager.\nThe song was reworked by Doctor and the Medics in June 1986, achieving chart success in the UK. This cover version was heard in the 1987 film \"Maid to Order\", catalyzing renewed media interest in the original song. The original version is heard in the films \"Miami Blues\" (1990), \"Wayne's World 2\" (1993), \"Apollo 13\" (1995), \"Remember the Titans\" (2000), \"Ocean's Eleven\" (2001), \"The Sandlot 2\" (2005), \"Katie and Orbie\", \"Lovelace\" (2013), \"Suicide Squad\", and \"The Founder\" (2016). Kellogg's cereal tapped the song for a television advertisement in 1997, and it was the highlight of a lengthy television commercial for Nike shoes in 2005. Greenbaum reflected on the song in 2011, saying, \"It sounds as fresh today as when it was recorded. I've gotten letters from funeral directors telling me that it's their second-most-requested song to play at memorial services, next to 'Danny Boy'.\"\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nDoctor and the Medics version.\nIn June 1986, Doctor and the Medics reached No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart with their version of \"Spirit in the Sky\", spending three weeks at the top. In New Zealand, the song reached No. 2 on the RIANZ Singles Chart, while in Canada, it peaked at No. 1 for a week and was the fifth-highest-selling single of 1986. The song has been certified silver by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and platinum by the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA).\nGareth Gates (with the Kumars) version.\n\"Spirit in the Sky\" served as the first single from \"Pop Idol\" runner-up Gareth Gates's second studio album, \"Go Your Own Way\". The single was released on March 10, 2003, and was the official \"Comic Relief\" charity single for 2003. The song features guest vocals from the Kumars. The song peaked at number one on the UK Singles Chart, becoming Gates' fourth number-one single. Gates' version has been certified platinum by BPI in the UK.\nTrack listings.\nUK CD1\nUK CD2\nUK cassette single\nUK DVD single\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nOther versions.\nA version by Dorothy Combs Morrison reached No. 99 on \"Billboard\"'s Hot 100 in October 1970, and No. 47 in Canada during November of that same year.\nIn popular culture.\nSince the 1970s, Manchester United fans have used the song as the base for a chant to support George Best.\nThe campaign for opens with a cutscene featuring the song.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "872488": "Norman Greenbaum\nAmerican singer-songwriter\nNorman Joel Greenbaum (born November 20, 1942) is an American singer-songwriter, known for his 1969\u20131970 hit song \"Spirit in the Sky\". The song makes Greenbaum one of the most famous and best-selling one-hit wonders of all time.\nEarly life.\nGreenbaum was born in Malden, Massachusetts. He was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household and attended Hebrew school at Congregation Beth Israel. His initial interest in music was sparked by Southern blues music and the folk music that was popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He performed with various bands in high school and studied music at Boston University for two years. In college he performed at local coffeehouses but eventually dropped out and moved to Los Angeles in 1965.\nCareer.\nIn the late 1960s, Norman Greenbaum was the leader and composer for Dr. West's Medicine Show and Junk Band, which recorded the novelty hit \"The Eggplant That Ate Chicago\". The group's psychedelic approach was too eccentric for mainstream show business; the group's name suggested a novelty or comedy act incorporating music.\nGreenbaum went solo as a folk artist and submitted an original song, \"Spirit in the Sky\", to Reprise Records. His demonstration recording was a simple folk rendition, with Greenbaum accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. Reprise handed Greenbaum to staff producer Erik Jacobsen, who radically rearranged the song for a new recording session. The updated version now had pulsing electric guitar, gospel-styled backup singers, and an insistent rhythm accompanying Greenbaum, whose vocal was now double-tracked. Reprise released the record in late 1969, and it skyrocketed to #1 in almost all worldwide markets. It sold two million copies in 1969 and 1970, and received a gold disc from the RIAA. It has subsequently been used in many films, advertisements, and television shows.\nAlthough \"Spirit in the Sky\" has a clear Christian theme, Greenbaum is Jewish, having grown up in an observant Orthodox Jewish household, although he no longer practices the religion. Greenbaum says he was inspired to write the song after watching a Christian-themed song performed by Porter Wagoner on television. Greenbaum also stated Western movies were a major inspiration for \"Spirit in the Sky\":\nNorman Greenbaum: If you ask me what I based \"Spirit in the Sky\" on\u00a0... what did we grow up watching? Westerns! These mean and nasty varmints get shot and they wanted to die with their boots on. So to me that was spiritual, they wanted to die with their boots on.\nRay Shasho: So that was the trigger that got you to write the song?\nNorman Greenbaum: Yes. The song itself was simple, when you're writing a song you keep it simple of course. It wasn't like a Christian song of praise it was just a simple song. I had to use Christianity because I had to use something. But more important it wasn't the Jesus part, it was the spirit in the sky. Funny enough\u00a0... I wanted to die with my boots on.\nAll of the accoutrements added to \"Spirit in the Sky\" in the recording studio made it impossible for Greenbaum to replicate the recording in live performances. His televised appearance on Dick Clark's \"American Bandstand\" compelled the singer to synchronize his performance to a playback of the hit record.\nGreenbaum's upbeat \"Canned Ham\" followed in 1970, and the record reached number 46 on the American charts and number 26 in the Canadian charts.\nAfter the release in 1972 of his album \"Petaluma\" (named after his hometown in California), Greenbaum left the music business and returned to his dairy farm. He returned to the music industry as a manager and promoter in the mid-1980s. \nPersonal life.\nGreenbaum has been a long-time resident of Santa Rosa, California. On March 28, 2015, he was seriously injured when a car, in which he was a passenger, made a left turn in the path of a motorcycle on Occidental Road, killing the motorcyclist and injuring the motorcycle passenger. Greenbaum has since gone back to performing.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "9613658": "Blue Sky (song)\n\"Blue Sky\" is a song by the American rock band The Allman Brothers Band from their third studio album, \"Eat a Peach\" (1972), released on Capricorn Records. The song was written and sung by guitarist Dickey Betts, who penned it about his girlfriend (and later wife), Sandy \"Bluesky\" Wabegijig. The track is also notable as one of guitarist Duane Allman's final recorded performances with the group. The band's two guitarists, Duane Allman and Dickey Betts, alternate playing the song's lead: Allman's solo beginning 1:07 in, Betts joining in a shared melody line at 2:28, followed by Betts's solo at 2:37. The song is notably more country-inspired than many songs in the band's catalogue.\nBackground.\nHis debut as a vocalist for the band, Dickey Betts composed \"Blue Sky\" about his Indigenous Canadian girlfriend, Sandy \"Bluesky\" Wabegijig, whom he would later marry. The lyrics leave out any references to gender to make it nonspecific: \"Once I got into the song I realized how nice it would be to keep the vernaculars\u2014he and she\u2014out and make it like you\u2019re thinking of the spirit, like I was giving thanks for a beautiful day. I think that made it broader and more relatable to anyone and everyone,\" he later said. Betts initially wanted the band's lead vocalist, Gregg Allman, to sing the song, but guitarist Duane Allman encouraged him to sing it himself: \"Man, this is your song and it sounds like you and you need to sing it.\" An embryonic version of the song can be found on the fan bootleg, \"The Gatlinburg Tapes\", a recording of the band jamming in April 1971 in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.\nThe song was one of Duane Allman's last recorded performances with the band. \"As I mixed songs like \"Blue Sky,\" I knew, of course, that I was listening to the last things that Duane ever played and there was just such a mix of beauty and sadness, knowing there's not going to be any more from him,\" said Johnny Sandlin.\nAlternate versions.\nWhile Duane Allman died before \"Eat a Peach's\" release, the band played the song live several times before and after the album's studio version was recorded. Only one of these performances, recorded live during a , has been released by the band; several bootleg recordings from other shows circulate. Two versions of \"Blue Sky\" were being performed as of 2012: An Allman Brothers take on the SUNY Stony Brook/Eat a Peach original (with Warren Haynes on lead vocals, though Gregg Allman does them sometimes), and an arrangement which evolved between 1973 and 2001 played by Dickey Betts and his band Great Southern.\nCover versions.\nIn 2018 singer and guitarist Frank Hannon released a cover of \"Blue Sky\" featuring Dickey Betts' son Duane Betts on guitar. Frank Hannon is the son-in-law of Dickey Betts. The cover album titled \"From one place...to Another! Vol.1\" reached #27 on Billboards Folk / Americana charts.\n\"Blue Sky\" has been covered several times in the past including by Joan Baez on her 1975 album \"Diamonds & Rust\", also released as a single.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "60118781": "Spirit in the Sky (Keiino song)\n2019 song by Keiino\n\"Spirit in the Sky\" is a song by Norwegian music group Keiino. It was released as a digital download and for streaming on 25 January 2019 as the lead single from their debut studio album \"Okta\". It represented Norway in the Eurovision Song Contest 2019 in Tel Aviv, Israel. It was performed during the second semi-final on 16 May 2019, and qualified for the final. It placed first in the televote with 291 points and finished in sixth place with 331 points overall.\nBackground.\nThe song is an uptempo number, inspired by 80s disco and dance music, which has been described as dance-pop, electropop, yoik, and Sami folk music. It is about the struggles for equal rights regardless of ethnicity, gender identity and sexuality, given their long struggle in pursuit of equal rights. The music video of \"Spirit in the Sky\" was released on 4 April 2019.\nIt contains some lyrics in the Northern Sami language, (\"Show me the light\") and the non-lexical vocables, \"He l\u00e5 e loi la\" as part of the yoiking segment.\nEurovision Song Contest.\nThe song was selected to represent Norway in the Eurovision Song Contest 2019, after Keiino were chosen through \"Melodi Grand Prix 2019\", the music competition that selects Norway's entries for the Eurovision Song Contest. On 28 January 2019, a special allocation draw was held which placed each country into one of the two semi-finals, as well as which half of the show they would perform in. Norway was placed into the second semi-final, to be held on 16 May 2019, and was scheduled to perform in the second half of the show. After all the competing songs for the 2019 contest had been released, the running order for the semi-finals was decided by the show's producers rather than through another draw, so that similar songs were not placed next to each other. Norway performed in position 15, and qualified for the final, which took place on 18 May 2019. It placed first in the televote with 291 points and overall finished in sixth place with 331 points.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "37554700": "Spirit in the Sky (disambiguation)\n\"Spirit in the Sky\" is a 1969 song by Norman Greenbaum, later covered by other artists.\nSpirit in the Sky may also refer to:\nSee also.\nTopics referred to by the same term\n<templatestyles src=\"Dmbox/styles.css\" />\n This page lists associated with the title .", "37044976": "Spirit in the Sky (album)\nSpirit in the Sky is the debut solo album by American singer-songwriter Norman Greenbaum. It contains his popular hit song, the title track \"Spirit in the Sky\".\nVar\u00e8se Sarabande released it on CD in 2001, with seven bonus tracks, and on vinyl for Record Store Day, on April 19, 2014.\nTrack listing.\nAll selections written by Norman Greenbaum.\nSide 1\nSide 2\nCD bonus tracks\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "12730099": "Spirit Dancer\nSpirit Dancer is the fifth studio album by American country music band Blackhawk. It was also their only album on the Columbia Records label, and the first recorded after the death of former member Van Stephenson. The tracks \"Days of America\" and \"One Night in New Orleans\" were released as singles. \"Gloryland\" was re-recorded by Keni Thomas (whose version featured backing vocals from BlackHawk themselves) on his 2005 album \"Flags of Our Fathers\". \"One Night in New Orleans\" was released as a single by The Povertyneck Hillbillies from their self-titled album in 2006.\nContext.\nPrior to \"Spirit Dancer\", BlackHawk had not released a studio album since 1998's \"The Sky's the Limit\", and did not chart a top ten country album since \"Love & Gravity\" in 1997. Furthermore, the group was released from their record deal with Arista in June 2000, after the label was bought out by RCA Records. This came shortly after news that lead guitarist Van Stephenson would exit the band to combat cancer. He died the following year. To replace Stephenson, the band added backup members Randy Threet (bass and tenor vocals), Mike Radovsky (drums) and Chris Anderson (guitar) to the lineup. The next month, BlackHawk signed with Columbia Nashville to begin work on a new album, reuniting them with CEO Allen Butler, whom they had previously worked with at Arista, Later in the year, they signed with the Columbia Records branch of Sony Imprint, who went on to release their single \"Days of America,\" a track that was included on \"Spirit Dancer.\" \nContent.\nThe album begins with the track \"One Love\", a song performed for Van Stephenson at the end of his life that was played once more at his funeral. It was written by band members Henry Paul and Dave Robbins along with 1990s country music singer-songwriter Billy Montana Upon hearing the song, Stephenson stated \"There's your hit\u2014there's the radio song,\" however the track was never released by the band as a single.\nThe second track, \"One Night in New Orleans\" was released as a single, peaking at 51 on country charts in 2002. To date, it was the last charting single for Blackhawk. Written by Gilles Godard, Tim Nichols and Rick Giles, the song caught the attention of band member Henry Paul, who called fellow member Dave Robbins stating \"Man, you gotta hear this tune.\" According to Robbins, upon hearing it he \"loved it\" and remarked that \"it's different from anything we've ever done.\" Paul reflected on the song, commenting that \"it's the lighthearted moment of the record\" and is \"fun.\"\nThe album's next song, \"Days of America\" was released as a single eleven months prior to the release of \"Spirit Dancer\", soon after the 9/11 attacks. Centered around the plight of workers at a Pittsburgh Steel Mill, the song peaked at number 37 in 2002. Paul and Robbins, along with Lee Miller, wrote the song in April 2001. Although they stated it was not really \"so patriotic\" but instead a \"testimony to the people who go about making up this place on earth we live,\" it was featured on the first edition of the Patriotic Country release in 2004.\nWritten by Paul and Robbins along with former Survivor band member Jim Peterik, the album's fourth track, the title track \"Spirit Dancer\", was written as a tribute to Van Stephenson. It begins with chants of \"I love you\" in Cherokee. Robbins noted that the song sounded \"like something Van would have written\" and Paul noted that the lyrics contain \"a very personal and inside message of love\" citing the lines: \"Our hearts weren't ready to let him go / so this is our way to let him know / that we miss him and our love for him will never die\".\nThe fifth track, \"I Will\" penned by Bonnie Baker and Carol Ann Brown, enchanted Robbins once he heard it, calling the song \"a wonderful thing to be saying to somebody\", Paul reflected these sentiments by stating that the tune \"is a really interesting perspective about how you can put someone else before yourself when it comes to love.\" It was released as a single in 2002 but did not chart. The \"power ballad\" previously appeared on Billy Ray Cyrus' 2000 album \"Southern Rain\".\nThe next song, \"Brothers of the Southland\" is a tribute to Southern rockers, which according to Paul includes the \"Marshall Tucker Band, Allman Brothers, [and] Lynyrd Skynyrd.\" Robbins, who wrote the song along with Paul and Peterik, stated that what BlackHawk does up on stage today is a part of what those guys (Southern rockers) did.\"\nThe seventh track, \"Gloryland\", was described by About.com \"as a country version of Bryan Adams' Summer of '69 that sounds as though it came from a \"John Mellencamp album.\" Paul, who wrote the song along with Robbins and Montana, states that it has \"a veiled message\" that shows how people have changed yet \"still have the child-like wish to be approved.\" Robbins cites the existence of \"the message of the ultimate Gloryland\" as what people can relate to in the song. Keni Thomas included a partially rewritten version of the song on his 2005 album \"Flags of Our Fathers: A Soldier's Story\". Thomas' version, which featured backing vocals from Blackhawk, peaked at number 56 that year.\n\"Forgiveness\", written by Paul and Montana, is described by Robbins as his \"favorite thing (track) on the record.\" Paul reflected that the song was his attempt to \"balance\" his \"karma book\" and doing his \"part to come clean.\" The next track, \"Faith is the Light\" was written by Paul, Robbins and singer-songwriter Henry Gross. The song is uptempo and was described by Paul as \"kick-ass\" and a perfect followup to \"Forgiveness\" from a \"conceptual standpoint.\" According to Robbins, the track is \"positive\" and explains \"what really moves you on through this life.\"\n\"Spirit Dancer\"'s 10th song, \"I'll Always Love You\" is the only track on the album to feature lead vocals from Dave Robbins instead of Henry Paul, who both penned the song along with country songwriter Pat Bunch, who previously authored songs for the band including the single \"I Need You All the Time\" from the 2000 Greatest Hits. Although Robbins described it as a \"different little spot on the record\" Paul praised Robbins' vocals stating that it suited his \"rather appealing view of love.\"\nThe final track of the album, \"Leavin' the Land\" is about the band's recovery from the loss of Van Stephenson, and its departure from the metaphorical \"land of the broken hearted\" while living above the \"status quo.\" The song was written by Paul and Robbins as well as country songwriter Lee Thomas Miller, whose work was also displayed on the track \"Days of America.\" The song uses the band's theme to describe a situation where a couple takes chances and promises to never part each other.\nCritical reception.\nAllmusic gave the album three out of five stars and described it as the group's \"most personal\" release. They commended the title track as \"one of several earnest and sincere efforts\" but criticized Paul's voice as being \"whiny,\" singling out the songs \"Forgiveness\" and \"Leavin' the Land of the Broken Hearted\" as not being \"any more deeply felt than the other deeply felt songs on the album\" while being \"more revealing and touching.\" The publication stated that the album was one that BlackHawk \"had to make\" and was a \"risk\" but \"one worth taking\" at that stage of the group's career.\nMatt Bjorke of About.com praise the album stating \"...the group sounds just as good as they did when Van was there. Somewhere, I think Van is smiling in approval.\"\nPersonnel.\nCompiled from liner notes.", "967911": "Empty Sky\nEmpty Sky is the debut studio album by British singer-songwriter Elton John, released in the United Kingdom on 6 June 1969. Although imported UK copies of the album were available in the United States, \"Empty Sky\" was not issued in the US until January 1975 (on MCA Records), with different cover art, well after John's fame had been established internationally.\nBackground.\nRecorded during the winter of 1968 and spring of 1969 in a DJM Records 8-track studio, \"Empty Sky\" is the only album in the early part of Elton John's career not produced by Gus Dudgeon, instead helmed by friend and DJM staffer Steve Brown. The album was released in the UK in both stereo and mono, the latter now being a rare collector's item.\nJohn plays harpsichord on several tracks, including \"Skyline Pigeon\", which John has described as being \"the first song Bernie and I ever got excited about that we ever wrote.\"\nJohn used musicians who were friends of either him or Brown or both. Guitarist Caleb Quaye and drummer Roger Pope, both at the time members of the band Hookfoot, played on many of the tracks. (Quaye and Pope would rejoin John a few years later as part of his studio and touring band behind \"Rock of the Westies\" in 1975 and \"Blue Moves\" in 1976.) Tony Murray from The Troggs played bass. \"Empty Sky\" is the first appearance with John of then Plastic Penny and Spencer Davis Group member Nigel Olsson, who played drums on \"Lady What's Tomorrow?\" (Olsson and fellow Spencer Davis bandmate, bassist Dee Murray, would soon join John as his early 1970s touring band.) Also listed in the production credits is Clive Franks, who would later produce John's live sound in concert for much of his touring career, and would occasionally co-produce with John on albums such as \"A Single Man\" and \"21 at 33\". The original sleeve design was done by David Larkham (billed as \"Dave\"), who would go on to create designs for John and other artists.\n\"Skyline Pigeon\" is the most popular and best-known song on the album, which John, albeit infrequently, performed as part of his live shows. The more definitive version of \"Skyline Pigeon\" featuring an orchestra and piano backing in place of harpsichord was recorded for 1973's \"Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player\", and initially appeared as the B-side of \"Daniel\" in 1973. Another appearance of the song was in 1974, when a version recorded in London was featured as the opening track on the \"Here and There\" live LP and its 1995 CD reissue. The only other song from the album that was played live was the title track, \"Empty Sky\", was included at various stops on John's 1975 Rock of the Westies Tour.\nAlthough John has since called the album na\u00efve, he does have fond memories of making the record. These include walking home from recording at 4 a.m. and lodging at The Salvation Army Regent Hall on Oxford Street, which was run by Steve Brown's father. \"I remember when we finished work on the title track \u2013 it just floored me. I thought it was the best thing I'd ever heard in my life,\" John recalled. He later recalled that he was \"unsure what style I was going to be ... [maybe what] Leonard Cohen sounds like.\"\nReception.\nA contemporary review from \"Disc & Music Echo\" said, \"Can't help feeling that the lyrics could still do with a little more intensity, a little less youthful pretension. But that's just carping because the music is so nice and pretty that you can't really put it down. Well worth a good, deep listen.\" AllMusic's retrospective review showed a subdued reaction to the material, concluding \"There aren't any forgotten gems on \"Empty Sky\", but it does suggest John's potential.\"\nPersonnel.\nProduction\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "36624275": "Spirit Indestructible\n\"Spirit Indestructible\" is a song by Canadian recording artist Nelly Furtado. The song was released on July 31, 2012, as the second single from her fifth studio album, \"The Spirit Indestructible\". The song was written by Furtado and co-written and produced by Rodney \"Darkchild\" Jerkins.\nLyrically, it has a positive and upbeat message \u2014 about having a spirit that is indestructible and unbreakable, along with a heart that's pure and a body that's a miracle. The song received mixed reviews from music critics, some praised the \"epic chorus\" and the uplifting lyrics, but others felt that the song was a \"mess\" and a strange choice of single.\nThe music video was shot on Vancouver's scenic Grouse Mountain and captures the song's empowering and spiritual message, featuring snow-capped mountains and beach bonfires, as well as Furtado performing in a theater alongside a kid playing on a miniature piano. The song performed modestly on the charts, reaching the top forty in Germany, Slovakia and Switzerland.\nFurtado performed the song at the 2025 Invictus Games in Vancouver.\nBackground and release.\n\"Spirit Indestructible\" is the first song Furtado and Darkchild recorded together at 2nd Floor Studio in California. In an interview she has described the song as \"a tribute to the humanity\" and \"how strong our spirits are.\" Her trip to Kenya, as an ambassador for charity Free The Children, helped her to write the song. She also recorded a Spanglish version of the song, titled \"Esp\u00edritu Invencible\". The song was released via digital download in Europe on July 31, 2012, in Germany on August 3, and on August 14, 2012, in the U.S. Digital Amazon store.\nComposition.\n\"Spirit Indestructible\" was written by Furtado and co-written and produced by Rodney \"Darkchild\" Jerkins. The song features Freestyle influences, in the same style of lead single \"Big Hoops (Bigger the Better)\". The song starts out with a piano introduction and then Nelly starts singing the first verse: \"Through my one square foot window, I can see outside / I have chains on my feet, but not in my mind.\" After the first chorus, a driving drum beat enters as the second verse is sung. The post chorus features a military-drum breakdown, with Furtado singing 'AEIOU'.\nSpeaking about the song, Furtado says: \"It's an ode to the spirit which resides in all of us and triumphs over anything\". \"It is inspired by people I have met, and special moments in history that I have read about.\"\nCritical reception.\nThe song received mostly mixed reviews from music critics. Katharine St. Asaph of \"Pop Dust\" gave the song 3 out of 5 stars, commenting, \"You end up wishing the entire song was like the second half\u2013the lyrics are the same, so it's no less inspirational, and it's more inspiring anyway to move than to wonder whether you're listening to a half-finished demo, where the producers fleshed out Nelly's voice but didn't get around to half the instruments yet. It's probably too disjointed for radio play, and it's a strange choice of single even with Darkchild producing again.\" Nolan Feenay from Entertainment Weekly's Music Mix wrote that \"the song has a chorus as epic and uplifting as you'd expect with a new-age title like that.\" However, he called it \"a Frankenstein of musical styles. The opening keyboard recalls the intro to Lady Gaga's 'Marry the Night,' and the Timbaland-esque beat that kicks in later sounds like a rhythmic repeat of their 2006 hit 'Promiscuous'. Now throw in a vowel-chanting breakdown, a cinematic war cry of a bridge, and some guitar for the heck of it? Woah, Nelly. That's a lot of song you've got there.\"\nBecky Bain of Idolator commented: \"Oddly, there's something totally 80s about whatever's going on in this hot mess of a song. It needs a lot more work to make the whole thing mesh together. And we know Nelly has always been a bit nasal, but here she just sounds like she's whining.\"\nCommercial performance.\n\"Spirit Indestructible\" debuted at number 41 on the \u00d63 Austria Top 75 chart. Later, the song fell to number 44, but jumped to number 42, in its third week. In Germany, the song peaked at number 23 on the Media Control AG chart. In Switzerland, the song reached number 32 on the Schweizer Hitparade.\nMusic video.\nA lyric video was released before the official video. The video is about Spencer West, a paraplegic who climbed Mount Kilimanjaro using only his hands. The official music video for \"Spirit Indestructible\" was filmed on June 15, 2012, at Grouse Mountain in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. On July 13, 2012, Furtado uploaded via her\nYouTube account, a behind-the-scenes video. The video was directed by Aaron A, who worked on her video, \"Bajo Otra Luz\". The video premiered on July 18, 2012, on VEVO. The video begins with Furtado singing in a stage accompanied by a young boy playing a piano and when the beat of music starts, Furtado suddenly is on a mountain, where she twirls around while conjuring up her own unbeatable inner strength. Furtado then leads a crew of men to a beach for a spiritual drum circle session and a dance around a bonfire. The second part of the video shows her walking with"}, "descending_order": ["1715836", "872488", "9613658", "60118781", "37554700", "37044976", "12730099", "967911", "36624275"], "permutation_1": ["1715836", "37554700", "967911", "9613658", "60118781", "36624275", "12730099", "37044976", "872488"], "permutation_2": ["37554700", "12730099", "60118781", "1715836", "9613658", "37044976", "967911", "36624275", "872488"], "permutation_3": ["12730099", "1715836", "37554700", "60118781", "36624275", "967911", "37044976", "872488", "9613658"]}
{"id": "nq_-1772481505772795628", "docs_added": {"43163633": "The Legend of Korra (video game)\n2014 video game\n is a 2014 action game developed by PlatinumGames and published by Activision, based on the animated television series of the same name which aired on Nickelodeon from 2012 to 2014. It was released in October 2014 for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, and received mixed reviews.\nThe game is one of two video games based on the series. The other, The Legend of Korra: A New Era Begins, is a turn-based strategy game was developed by Webfoot Technologies for the Nintendo 3DS.\nThe game was removed from sale on all digital storefronts three years after its release on December 21, 2017.\nGameplay.\n\"The Legend of Korra\" is a third-person action game, supporting single-player play only. Players control Korra, the series' heroine, as she fights villains from the first two seasons of the series with the bending arts, a spiritual and physical practice similar in appearance to Eastern martial arts by which practitioners move and alter the elements of water, earth, fire and air. Korra can switch between four different elements on the fly, each with its own combat styles and special moves.\nWaterbending is acquired first and specializes in ranged attacks. Earthbending, acquired next, features slow attacks that are very powerful and cannot be blocked. Firebending is a balanced style that once upgraded, features all three forms of attacks: Fast combos, slow but powerful, and ranged. Airbending, acquired late in the game, features fast and powerful attacks that can affect all surrounding targets. Korra also acquires the \"avatar state\" near the end of the game; it lasts a shorts period, but grants Korra powerful attacks that combine all four elements.\nThe game tries to persuade the player into using counterattacks. The player can initiate a counterattack by blocking an enemy attack just before it connects. Counterattacks are orders of magnitude more powerful than direct attacks. Counterattacking is the only way of defeating bosses in a reasonable amount of time, as defeating them with direct attacks can take hours. Electrical and earth-based attacks cannot be countered.\nThe game takes about four to six hours to play through, but contains \"a New Game+ of sorts\". These include an endless runner with Naga, and pro-bending matches, where teams of three try to bend each other out of an arena. This mode, which implements the pro-bending rules depicted in the series, is available after completing the game, with the player controlling the \"Fire Ferrets\" team made up of Korra and her friends Mako and Bolin.\nSetting and plot.\nThe game takes place in the two weeks between the second and third seasons of the series, which aired in 2013 and 2014 respectively. Korra is opposed by a \"chi-blocker\" who, at the start of the game, strips Korra of her bending abilities, which she has to regain over the course of the game. The game's main villain, Hundun, is named after a chaotic entity in Chinese mythology. An ancient, evil being previously trapped in the spirit world, he was released into the physical world by Korra's opening of the spirit portals at the end of the second season. The game sees him sow chaos in the world and pursue his grudge against the Avatar.\nDevelopment.\n\"The Legend of Korra\", the animated drama TV series on which the game is based, aired on Nickelodeon and online from 2012 to 2014 as a sequel to the series \"\". It received critical acclaim, and was commissioned to run for four seasons and a total of 52 episodes.\nThe game based on the series was announced in June 2014. It was developed by PlatinumGames, known for the \"Bayonetta\" series of action games among others, and published by Activision. The game is scripted by Tim Hedrick, a writer of the TV series, who collaborated with series creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino on the plot and main villain. The cutscenes are animated by Titmouse, Inc., and the cover art (chosen by public vote) is by series character designer Christie Tseng. The game made use of the voice actors and the music of the TV series.\nRobert Conkey of Activision explained that they chose Platinum on account of their record of developing action games, which he described as having a \"very smooth, very flashy, and very cool\" style. Platinum producer Atsushi Kurooka said that Platinum chose to adapt \"The Legend of Korra\", a series unknown in Japan, after watching it with the aid of translated scripts, and being impressed by the series's blend of \"interesting action, a really good story, comedy, and romance\". According to Kurooka, the studio aimed to make the game emulate the look and feel of the television series as closely as possible, including its visual and sound direction: Kurooka said that screenshots of the game were indistinguishable from those of the series.\nReception.\nPre-release.\nAppraisals of the game during development were positive. After playing an alpha build of the game in June 2014, \"Destructoid\" described the game as a \"pretty solid action brawler\". The reviewer praised the thorough implementation of the various bending styles, the detailed and fluid combat system, and the cel-shaded art style. \"GameSpot\"'s reporter was \"encouraged by the art style and some aspects of the combat\", but uncertain whether the developers would be able to balance the demands of faithfulness to a franchise and the expectations of quality combat gameplay raised by their previous titles. IGN described the early version as having \"all the depth I\u2019d expect to see from this developer bundled with a faithful artistic interpretation\" of the source material, noting the \"surprisingly deep\" combat system and the \"tastefully re-created animations\" from the series.\nPost-release.\n\"The Legend of Korra\" received \"mixed or average\" reviews, according to video game review aggregator Metacritic. It was panned by Dan Stapleton of IGN as a \"poorly made tie-in that can\u2019t even stand up as a competent third-person action game\". The reviewer noted the game's simplistic combat, the absence of the series' wit and charm, and the low-quality cutscenes. Kevin VanOrd of GameSpot was also highly critical of the game, writing that it \"tries its best to boot M. Night Shyamalan's \"The Last Airbender\" film out of its rightful position as 'worst Avatar-related thing yet produced.'\" Chris Carter at \"Destructoid\" summed up the game as a \"nice but brief romp\" with no real narrative that \"plays out like a 'light' version of Platinum's previous games\". At \"Polygon\", Philip Kollar described the game as a \"shallow, short experience full of segments that feel poorly designed and ill-considered\", with frustrating mechanics and annoying mini-games. Paul Tassi of \"Forbes\", noting the \"scathing\" reviews the game received, wrote that, like other adaptations of the series, it showed \"a fundamental misunderstanding of the source material, all but completely devoid of a plot and other characters outside Korra herself\". For \"Eurogamer\"'s Simon Parkin, the game's shortcomings were the \"hallmarks of a work-for-hire project rushed to meet a Christmas deadline\", and he considered the game \"a misfire that means Platinum's name no longer guarantees quality\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "28039598": "The Legend of Korra\nAmerican animated television series\nThe Legend of Korra (abbreviated as TLOK and also known as Avatar: The Legend of Korra or more rarely simply as Korra) is an American animated fantasy action drama television series created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko for Nickelodeon. It is a sequel to their previous series \"\" (2005\u20132008), and ran for 52 episodes (\"chapters\") across four seasons (\"books\") from April 14, 2012, to December 19, 2014. It has since continued as a comic book series.\nLike its predecessor, the series is set in a where certain people can telekinetically manipulate, or \"bend\", one of the four elements: water, earth, fire, or air. Only one individual, the \"Avatar\", can bend all four elements, and is responsible for maintaining balance in the world. The series follows Avatar Korra, the successor and reincarnation of Aang from the previous series, as she faces political and spiritual unrest in a modernizing world.\nThe main characters are voiced by Janet Varney, Seychelle Gabriel, David Faustino, P. J. Byrne, J. K. Simmons and Mindy Sterling, and supporting voice actors include Aubrey Plaza, John Michael Higgins, Kiernan Shipka, Lisa Edelstein, Steve Blum, Eva Marie Saint, Henry Rollins, Anne Heche, and Zelda Williams. Some of the people who worked on \"Avatar: The Last Airbender\" (including designer Joaquim Dos Santos, writers Joshua Hamilton and Tim Hedrick, composer Jeremy Zuckerman and sound designer Benjamin Wynn) returned to work on \"The Legend of Korra\".\n\"The Legend of Korra\" has received critical acclaim, with praise for its writing and production values, and has been nominated for and won awards such as the Annie Awards, a Daytime Emmy Award, and a Gracie Award. The series was also praised for addressing sociopolitical issues such as social unrest and terrorism, as well as for going beyond the established boundaries of youth entertainment with respect to issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation. The series' final scene, intended to depict the beginning of a same-sex romance between Korra and Asami Sato, was unprecedented at the time and has been credited with paving the way for LGBT representation in children's television.\nSeries overview.\n\"The Legend of Korra\" was initially conceived as a twelve-episode miniseries. Nickelodeon declined the creators' pitch for an \"Avatar: The Last Airbender\" follow-up animated film based on what then became the three-part comics \", \" and \"\", choosing instead to expand \"Korra\" to 26 episodes. The series was expanded further in July 2012 to 52 episodes. These episodes are grouped into four separate seasons (\"Books\") composed of twelve to fourteen episodes (\"Chapters\") each, with each season telling a stand-alone story. Beginning with episode 9 of season 3, new episodes were first distributed through the Internet rather than broadcast. \"The Legend of Korra\" concluded with the fourth season.\nSetting.\n\"The Legend of Korra\" is set in the fictional world of \"Avatar: The Last Airbender\", 70 years after the events of that series. The people of the world belong to four nations: the Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom, the Fire Nation, and the Air Nomads. The distinguishing element of the series is \"bending\", the ability of some people to telekinetically manipulate the classical element associated with their nation (water, earth, fire, or air). Bending is carried out by spiritual and physical exercises, portrayed as similar to Chinese martial arts. As a result of a genocide in the series's backstory, there is only one living family of airbenders at the time of the series.\nOnly one person, the \"Avatar\", can bend all four elements. Cyclically reincarnating among the world's four nations, the Avatar maintains peace and balance in the world. \"The Legend of Korra\" focuses on Avatar Korra, a seventeen-year-old girl from the Southern Water Tribe and the successor of Avatar Aang from \"The Last Airbender\".\nThe first season is mostly set in Republic City, the capital of the United Republic of Nations, a new multicultural sovereign state founded by Avatar Aang after the end of \"The Last Airbender\". The 1920s-inspired metropolis is described as \"if Manhattan had happened in Asia\" by the series' creators, and its residents are united by their passion for \"pro-bending\", a spectator sport in which two teams composed of an earthbender, waterbender, and firebender throw each other out of a ring using bending techniques. Rapid technological growth has displaced the spirituality of bending, and what was considered a renowned martial art in \"Avatar: The Last Airbender\" is now commonplace, with benders in Republic City using their abilities to commit crime, compete in spectator sports, and fulfill everyday jobs. The second season adds the southern polar region, home of the Southern Water Tribe, as a main setting in addition to Republic City, while the third and fourth seasons take place largely in the Earth Kingdom.\nSynopsis.\nThe first season, \"Book One: Air\", sees Korra move to Republic City to learn airbending from Tenzin, Avatar Aang's son. She joins a pro-bending team alongside the brothers Bolin and Mako, and befriends Asami Sato, heiress to a leading engineering corporation. The ambitious politician Tarrlok enlists Korra to fight the anti-bender uprising of the \"Equalists\", led by the masked Amon, who strips benders of their abilities. Korra and her friends, aided by police chief Lin Beifong, unmask Amon as a waterbender himself and Tarrlok's brother, ending the Equalists' coup.\nIn the second season, \"Book Two: Spirits\", Korra's uncle Unalaq, chief of the Northern Water Tribe, seizes power in the southern tribe. While Korra's friends seek support against Unalaq, Korra learns of the first Avatar, Wan, who fused his soul with the spirit of light, Raava, to imprison Vaatu, the spirit of darkness. Unalaq frees Vaatu during the Harmonic Convergence, a decamillennial alignment of planets, and unites with him to become a dark Avatar. After defeating Unalaq, Korra chooses to leave open the portals between the material world and the spirit world, allowing a new coexistence of spirits and humans.\nThe third season, \"Book Three: Change\", begins as nonbenders begin developing airbending powers as a result of Harmonic Convergence, and Tenzin, Korra, and her friends attempt to recruit them to re-establish the extinct Air Nomads. One new airbender is Zaheer, the leader of the anarchist Red Lotus society. The Red Lotus assassinates the Earth Queen, throwing her kingdom into chaos, and captures Korra to attempt to kill her and end the Avatar cycle. They are defeated by Korra's friends and the new airbenders, but Korra is severely injured and psychologically traumatized.\nThe final season, \"Book Four: Balance,\" takes place three years later. Korra slowly recovers from her mental and physical trauma. The metalbender Kuvira, assigned to reunite the fractured Earth Kingdom, declares herself head of the new, authoritarian \"Earth Empire\". Kuvira builds a spirit-powered superweapon and attempts to conquer Republic City. When Korra and her friends destroy the weapon, defeating Kuvira, the blast creates another portal to the Spirit World. The series ends with the prospect of democracy for the former Earth Kingdom, as Korra and Asami leave together for a vacation in the spirit world.\nCast and characters.\nKorra (Janet Varney) is the series' 17-year-old \"headstrong and rebellious\" protagonist, and Aang's reincarnation as the Avatar. Her transformation \"from brash warrior to a spiritual being\", according to DiMartino, is a principal theme of the series. The character was inspired by Bryan Konietzko's \"pretty tough\" sister, and by female MMA fighters.\nThe series focuses on Korra and her friends, sometimes called \"Team Avatar\", which include the bending brothers Mako and Bolin and the non-bender Asami. Mako (David Faustino), the older brother, is a firebender described as \"dark and brooding\". The character was named after the late Mako Iwamatsu, the voice actor for Iroh in the first two seasons of the original series. His younger brother Bolin (P. J. Byrne) is an earthbender described as lighthearted, humorous, and \"always [having] a lady on his arm\". Asami Sato (Seychelle Gabriel), the only non-bender among the leading characters, is the daughter of the wealthy industrialist Hiroshi Sato.\nThe other main characters are the airbending master Tenzin, one of Aang's grown children (J. K. Simmons), and his family, which include his wife Pema (Maria Bamford) and their daughters Jinora (Kiernan Shipka) and Ikki (Darcy Rose Byrnes) and sons Meelo (Logan Wells) and Rohan. Jinora is calm and an avid reader. She is an airbender and joins the main cast in season 2. Ikki is described as \"fun, crazy, and a fast talker\". Little brother Meelo is super-active and comically aggressive, and baby Rohan is born during the third-to-last episode of Book One. Other recurring characters include Republic City police chief Lin Beifong (Mindy Sterling), and Korra's animal friends Naga and Pabu (both Dee Bradley Baker, the voice of a number of animals including Appa and Momo in the original series). Pabu was inspired by Futa, a famous standing Japanese red panda. Jeff Bennett as the voice for Shiro Shinobi, fast-talking probending match announcer in Book One. He also does the voice-overs for the short recaps during the opening sequence of each episode.\nAccording to critic Mike Hoffman, the romantic interests of Korra and her companions are less in the foreground than in \"Avatar\", and feature mainly in the first two seasons. In Book One, Bolin pines for Korra, who is interested in Mako, who dates Asami. By the end of the season, Mako has broken up with Asami and entered a relationship with Korra. This ends around the end of Book Two, during which Bolin suffers from an abusive relationship with the waterbender Eska. In the fourth season, Bolin dates the airbender Opal, while Asami and Korra become closer friends. The series' final scene indicates a romantic connection between them. Mike DiMartino wrote that the scene \"symbolizes their evolution from being friends to being a couple\". They continue in a relationship in the comics.\n\"Book One: Air\" features two main adversaries for Korra: the Equalists' masked leader Amon (Steve Blum) who has the power to remove a person's bending-powers, and the ambitious, charismatic politician Tarrlok (Dee Bradley Baker), who resorts to increasingly repressive methods against the Equalists. Tenzin's parents (Eva Marie Saint), and Avatar Aang (D. B. Sweeney), main characters of the \"\" series, also made recurring appearances. Chris Hardwick and Kate Higgins voiced Sokka and Toph Beifong in guest appearances. Amon's lieutenant is voiced by Lance Henriksen, and Asami's father Hiroshi Sato by Daniel Dae Kim. Sato's character, the self-made founder of Future Industries, was inspired by Theodore Roosevelt and by the Japanese industrialists Keita Goto and Iwasaki Yatar\u014d. Rami Malek voices Tahno, a pro-bending athlete. Richard Epcar voices Saikhan, captain of the Republic City Metalbending Police Force. Both Amon and Tarrlok are identified as the sons of mob boss Yakone (Clancy Brown). Korra is also supported by General Iroh (Dante Basco, who voiced Zuko in the original series), a member of the United Forces who is described as \"a swashbuckling hero-type guy\". He is named after Iroh, Zuko's uncle in the original series.\n\"Book Two: Spirits\" features Tenzin's and Korra's families, including Tenzin's elder siblings Kya (Lisa Edelstein) and Bumi (Richard Riehle) as well as Korra's father Tonraq (James Remar) and mother Senna (Alex McKenna). Book 2 also introduces John Michael Higgins as the corrupt businessman and inventor Varrick, with Stephanie Sheh voicing his assistant Zhu Li, along with Korra's uncle Unalaq (Adrian LaTourelle), aided by his twin children Desna (Aaron Himelstein) and Eska (Aubrey Plaza), and Vaatu (Jonathan Adams), the spirit of disorder. Spencer Garrett joined the cast as the voice for Raiko, the president of the United Republic. The season also explains the Avatar mythos though the first Avatar Wan (Steven Yeun) and Vaatu's polar opposite Raava (April Stewart). Making a few appearances in Books Two and Three, Greg Baldwin reprises Iroh from the previous series. Set six months after the events of the first season, \"Book Two: Spirits\" sees Mako as a police officer, Asami in charge of Future Industries, and Bolin leading a new pro-bending team with little success.\nThe anarchist antagonists introduced in \"Book Three: Change\", the Red Lotus, comprise the new airbender Zaheer (Henry Rollins), the armless waterbender Ming-Hua (Grey DeLisle, who previously voiced a dark spirit), the combustionbender P'Li (Kristy Wu), and the lavabender Ghazan (Peter Giles). Supporting characters include the Earth Queen Hou-Ting (Jayne Taini), the retired Fire Lord Zuko (Bruce Davison), Lin's half-sister Suyin Beifong (Anne Heche), Suyin's trusted advisor Aiwei (Maurice LaMarche) and her captain of the guards Kuvira (Zelda Williams). New airbenders are also introduced in the season including the young thief Kai (Skyler Brigmann) and Suyin's daughter Opal (Alyson Stoner), both of Earth Kingdom origins and the love interests of Jinora and Bolin respectively. Jim Meskimen voices a Republic City merchant and later airbender named Daw, as well as Suyin's husband, the architect Baatar. Jason Marsden as the voice for Huan, second oldest son of Suyin, along Marcus Toji voicing Wei and Wing are the twin sons of Suyin. Greg Cipes as the voice for Tu, the cousin of Mako and Bolin, along Susan Silo voices a their grandmother Yin.\nThe final season, \"Book Four: Balance\", features Kuvira as Korra's antagonist at the head of an army bent on uniting the Earth Kingdom. The cast is also joined by Sunil Malhotra as Prince Wu, the vain heir to the Earth Kingdom throne, and Todd Haberkorn as Baatar Jr., Suyin's estranged son who is Kuvira's fianc\u00e9 and second-in-command. Philece Sampler voices the aged Toph Beifong, another returning character from \"Avatar\" whose young adult version was voiced by Kate Higgins in Books 1 and 3. April Stewart was cast as Zuko's daughter, Fire Lord Izumi, in a minor role.\nProduction.\nInfluences.\nThe art design of Republic City, described as \"if Manhattan had happened in Asia\", was inspired by the 1920s and incorporates influences from American and European architecture from that time period. Elements of film noir and steampunk also influenced the city's art concept. The design for the metalbending police force is based on 1920s New York City police uniforms, crossed with samurai armor.\nThe fighting styles employed by characters in the original show \"Avatar: The Last Airbender\" were derived from different distinct styles of Chinese martial arts. Set 70 years later, the fighting style in the multicultural Republic City has modernized and blended, with the creators incorporating three primary styles: traditional Chinese martial arts, mixed martial arts, and tricking. The pro-bending sport introduced in the series was inspired by mixed martial arts (MMA) tournaments.\nChinese martial arts instructor Sifu Kisu consulted on \"Avatar: The Last Airbender\" and returned as a consultant for the fight scenes in \"The Legend of Korra\". MMA fighters Jeremy Humphries and Mac Danzig were credited with \"providing a lot of the moves you'll see in the Probending arena\", and Steve Harada and Jake Huang provided the stylized flips and acrobatics of \"tricking\" to the series' fighting style.\nDevelopment.\n\"The Legend of Korra\" was co-created and produced by Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino at Nickelodeon Animation Studios in Burbank, California. To illustrate the length of the production process (about 10 to 12 months per episode) and the overlap of the various phases, Konietzko wrote in July 2013 that their team was already developing the storyboards for the first episode of \"Book 4\" while the last episodes of \"Book 2\" were not yet finished.\nProduction of the series was announced at the annual San Diego Comic-Con on July 22, 2010. It was originally due for release in October 2011. Tentatively titled \"Avatar: Legend of Korra\" at the time, it was intended to be a twelve-episode mini series set in the same fictional universe as the original show, but seventy years later. In 2011, the title was changed to \"The Last Airbender: Legend of Korra\", and again in March 2012 to \"The Legend of Korra\". The premiere was eventually delayed to April 14, 2012. South Korean animation studio Mir was involved in the pre-production, storyboarding and animation of the series which allows the studio more creative input on directing the martial arts scenes that the series and its predecessor are known for.\nAccording to animation director Yoo Jae-myung, Nickelodeon was initially reluctant to approve the series and suspended production because, according to Konietzko, conventional wisdom had it that \"girls will watch shows about boys, but boys won't watch shows about girls\". The creators eventually persuaded the channel's executives to change their mind. Konietzko related that in test screenings, boys said that Korra being a girl did not matter to them.\nThe creators wrote all of the episodes of the first season themselves, omitting \"filler episodes\" to allow for a concise story. Once the series was expanded from its original 12-episode schedule to 26 and then to 52, more writers were brought in so that the creators could focus on design work. Joaquim Dos Santos and Ryu Ki-Hyun, who worked on the animation and design of the original series, also became involved with creating \"The Legend of Korra\", as is storyboarder Ian Graham. Jeremy Zuckerman and Benjamin Wynn, who composed the soundtrack for the original series as \"The Track Team,\" also returned to score \"The Legend of Korra\".\nThe second season, \"\", premiered on September 13, 2013, and concluded on November 22, 2013. It consists of fourteen episodes. Animation work was done by the South Korean animation studio Mir as well as the Japanese animation studio Pierrot. Studio Mir was expected to solely work on \"Book 2\", but executive director Jae-myung Yoo decided that Studio Mir would animate \"The Boondocks\" instead because the animation process was less rigorous. Pierrot was eventually called in to fill the void and animate \"Book 2\". According to Jae-myung Yoo, Studio Mir was later contacted and re-asked to animate \"Book 2\". Yoo feared that, if \"Book 2\" failed, Studio Mir and Korean animators would have their reputations tarnished for Pierrot's failures. Consequently, Studio Mir accepted the offer and worked alongside Pierrot.\nThe third season, \"\", aired its first three episodes on June 27, 2014, soon after some episodes were leaked online. It takes place two weeks after the events of \"Book Two: Spirits\". Episodes nine to thirteen were streamed online, rather than being broadcast as a television program.\n\"\", the final season, was produced in parallel to the previous two seasons. The crew, at one point, worked on approximately 30 episodes at the same time: post-production for season 2, production for season 3 and pre-production for season 4. Some production steps, such as color correction and retakes, continued up until the date of the series finale, December 19, 2014. Season 4 started online distribution a few months after the third season's finale on October 3, 2014. After Nickelodeon cut the season's budget by the amount required for one episode, DiMartino and Konietzko decided to include a clip show, which reuses previously produced animation, as episode 8 (\"Remembrances\") instead of dismissing many of the creative staff. Studio Mir was helped by its companion studio, a subunit called Studio Reve, while working on Book 4.\nConcerning the development of the much-discussed final scene intended to show the friends Korra and Asami becoming a romantic couple, Bryan Konietzko explained that at first he and DiMartino did not give the idea much weight, assuming they would not be able to get approval for portraying their relationship. But during the production of the finale they decided to test that assumption, approached the network and found them supportive up to a certain limit. They decided to change the final scene from Korra and Asami only holding hands, to also facing each other in a pose referencing the marriage scene a few minutes prior and the pose made by Aang and Katara in the finale of \"\".\nAnimation style.\n\"The Legend of Korra\" was produced mainly as traditional animation, with most frames drawn on paper in South Korea by the animators at Studio Mir and scanned for digital processing. Each episode comprises about 15,000 drawings. The series makes occasional use of computer-generated imagery for complex scenes or objects, most noticeably in the animations of the pro-bending arena or the mecha-suits of the later seasons.\nWhile \"The Legend of Korra\" was produced in the United States and therefore not a work of Japanese animation (\"anime\") in the strict sense, \"The Escapist\" magazine argued that the series is so strongly influenced by anime that it would otherwise easily be classified as such: its protagonists (a superpowered heroine, her group of talented, supporting friends, a near-impervious villain who wants to reshape the world), its themes (family, friendship, romance, fear, and death) and the quality of its voice acting as well as the visual style are similar to those of leading anime series such as \"\", \"Bleach\" or \"Trigun\". A notable difference from such series is the absence of lengthy opening and ending sequences set to J-pop songs; to save broadcast time, \"The Legend of Korra\"'s openings and endings last only a few seconds. The series mostly abstains from using the visual tropes characteristic of anime, but does occasionally use exaggerated facial expressions to highlight emotions for comic effect.\nAs in \"Avatar\", the series adds to its Asian aesthetic by presenting all text that appears in its fictional world in traditional Chinese characters, without translating it. For example, on the \"Wanted\" posters seen in the episode \"The Stakeout\", the names of the protagonists are written as \u5bc7\u62c9 (Korra), \u99ac\u9ad8 (Mako) and \u613d\u6797 (Bolin).\nMusic.\n\"The Legend of Korra\" is set to music by Jeremy Zuckerman, who previously wrote the music for \"Avatar: The Last Airbender\" with Benjamin Wynn. For \"The Legend of Korra\", Zuckerman is the sole composer while Wynn is the lead sound designer; the two collaborate with Foley artist Aran Tanchum and showrunner Mike DiMartino on the soundscape of the series. Konietzko and DiMartino's concept for the score was to blend traditional Chinese music with early jazz. On that basis, Zuckerman composed a score combining elements of Dixieland, traditional Chinese music and Western orchestration. It is performed mainly by a string sextet and various Chinese solo instruments, including a dizi (flute), paigu (drums), a guqin, an erhu and a Mongolian matouqin.\nA soundtrack CD, \"The Legend of Korra: Original Music from Book One\", was published on July 16, 2013. Music from \"Korra\" and \"Avatar\" was also played in concert at the PlayFest festival in M\u00e1laga, Spain in September 2014. The series's soundtrack was nominated as best TV soundtrack for the 2013 GoldSpirit Awards.\nSoundtrack.\nOn July 16, 2013, Nickelodeon and Sony Music Entertainment's Legacy Recordings released \"The Legend of Korra: Original Music from Book One\".\nRelease.\nBroadcast.\nUnited States.\nThe first season (\"Book One: Air\") aired in the United States on Nickelodeon on Saturday mornings between April 14, 2012, and June 23, 2012. Unlike its predecessor, the series was broadcast in high-definition. It was broadcast in other countries on the local Nickelodeon channels beginning in August 2012.\nThe second season (\"Book Two: Spirits\") began airing on Nickelodeon in the United States on September 13, 2013, on Friday evenings. The season ended on November 22, 2013.\nThe third season (\"Book Three: Change\") began airing on Nickelodeon in the United States on June 27, 2014, also on Friday evenings, two episodes at a time. The broadcast was announced one week in advance after several episodes of the new season were leaked on the Internet. After the first seven episodes aired to low ratings, Nickelodeon removed the last five episodes from its broadcast schedule. The remainder of the episodes were then distributed online via Amazon Video, Google Play, Xbox Video and Hulu as well as the Nickelodeon site and apps. \"The Escapist\" compared \"The Legend of Korra\" to \"Firefly\" as \"a Friday night genre series with a loyal fan following built up from previous works by the creators that is taken off the air after the network fails to advertise it properly or broadcast episodes in a logical manner.\" Series creator Michael DiMartino said that the series' move to online distribution reflected a \"sea change\" in the industry: While \"Korra\" did not fit in well with Nickelodeon's other programming, the series did extremely well online, with the season 2 finale having been Nickelodeon's biggest online event.\nThe fourth season (\"Book Four: Balance\") began distribution in the United States on October 3, 2014, through Nick.com, Amazon Video, iTunes and Hulu. Beginning on November 28, 2014, with episode 9, the fourth season was officially premiered back on television on Fridays on Nicktoons.\nWorldwide.\n\"The Legend of Korra\" is broadcast subtitled or dubbed on Nickelodeon channels outside of the U.S.\nIn Germany, the first and second seasons received a German-language broadcast on Nickelodeon Germany. The third and fourth seasons are broadcast in 2015 on the German Nicktoons pay TV channel. In France, only the first season has been broadcast on Nickelodeon France and J-One. A fandub project to complete the French dub was launched in 2015.\nIn 2017, the Kenya Film Classification Board banned \"The Legend of Korra\", together with the cartoon series \"The Loud House\", \"Hey Arnold!\", \"Steven Universe\", \"Clarence\" and \"Adventure Time\", from being broadcast in Kenya. According to the Board, the reason was that these series were \"glorifying homosexual behavior\".\nStreaming and home media.\n\"The Legend of Korra\" got added to Netflix for streaming on August 14, 2020 in the United States. \"The Legend of Korra\" will be removed from Netflix on April 16, 2025 in the United States.\nAll episodes of the series have also been released through digital download services, DVD and Blu-ray formats. The DVD releases contain extra features such as audio commentary from the creators, cast and crew for some episodes, and the Blu-ray releases contain commentary for additional episodes.\nThe following table indicates the release dates of the DVD and Blu-ray versions of the series:\nReception.\nRatings.\nThe series premiere averaged 4.5 million viewers, ranking it as basic cable's number-one kids' show and top animated program for the week with total viewers. \"The Legend of Korra\" also ranks as the network's most-watched animated series premiere in three years.\n\"Book One: Air\" drew an average of 3.8 million viewers per episode. This was the highest audience total for an animated series in the United States in 2012.\n\"Book Two: Spirits\" premiered with 2.6 million viewers. Suggested explanations for the reduced number of broadcast viewers were: the long period between seasons, a change in time slot (Friday evening instead of Saturday morning), the increased availability of digital download services, and generally reduced ratings for the Nickelodeon channel.\n\"Book Three: Change\" aired on short notice in June 2014 after Spanish-language versions of some episodes were leaked on the Internet. The season premiered with 1.5 million viewers. After declining TV ratings in the third season, Nickelodeon stopped airing the series on its main network"}, "descending_order": ["28039598", "43163633"], "permutation_1": ["28039598", "43163633"], "permutation_2": ["28039598", "43163633"], "permutation_3": ["43163633", "28039598"]}
{"id": "nq_9113541389757925266", "docs_added": {"42076862": "Southern Charm\nSouthern Charm is an American reality television series that premiered on Bravo on March 3, 2014. The series chronicles the personal and professional lives of several socialites who reside in Charleston, South Carolina.\nThe show focuses on the Southern culture, along with the political history of the area, and has featured local historical places including Lewisfield Plantation and Mikell House.\nProduction.\nOn July 14, 2014, \"Southern Charm\" was renewed for a second season, which premiered on March 16, 2015. Jenna King did not return. The second season featured Craig Conover, Shep Rose, Cameran Wimberly, Thomas Ravenel, and Whitney Sudler-Smith all returning, with Kathryn Calhoun Dennis and Landon Clements joining the main cast.\nThe third season premiered on April 4, 2016. All cast members returned from the previous season. The fourth season was announced on February 16, 2017, and premiered on April 3. Sudler-Smith left the main cast after season three, and was featured in a recurring capacity in following seasons. Conover, Rose, Wimberly, Ravenel, Dennis and Clements all returned for season four, with Austen Kroll being added to the main cast.\nIn February 2018, Bravo announced the fifth season and it premiered on April 5, 2018. Clements did not return, and Chelsea Meissner was promoted to the main cast for season five. In August 2018, Ravenel announced his departure from the show after five seasons due to sexual assault allegations against him, as well as claiming that the show \"took advantage of him.\" Bravo confirmed his departure in September 2018 after Ravenel was arrested and charged with assault and battery. The sixth season premiered on May 15, 2019, with Wimberly, Rose, Conover, Dennis, Kroll, and Meissner all returning, with both Naomie Olindo and Eliza Limehouse added to the main cast.\nSeason seven was announced on September 24, 2020, and premiered on October 29, 2020. Filming of the seventh season was paused in spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In May 2020, it was confirmed that Cameran Eubanks, Naomie Olindo, and Chelsea Meissner would not be returning to the show for the seventh season. In August 2020, Eliza Limehouse confirmed that she too was departing the series ahead of season seven. Leva Bonaparte, Madison LeCroy, and John Pringle were introduced as series regulars, joining Conover, Rose, Dennis, and Kroll in the main cast.\nSeason 8 premiered on June 23, 2022, with Olivia Flowers, Venita Aspen, Chleb Ravenell and Taylor Ann Green joining Conover, Rose, Dennis, Kroll, Bonaparte, and Olindo as part of the main cast. Madison LeCroy and John Pringle were reduced to recurring roles, while Marcie Hobbs was introduced as a friend of the cast. Filming for the season wrapped in December 2021, and the trailer dropped on May 16, 2022.\nIn August 2023, it was announced that the ninth season of the show would premiere on September 14, 2023. Conover, Rose, Kroll, Bonaparte, Aspen, Flowers and Green all returned along with LeCroy who was upgraded back to a full time role. Rod Razavi, Rodrigo Reyes and Jarrett Thomas joined as new main cast members. Dennis and Olindo did not return.\nIn October 2024, it was announced that the tenth season would premiere on December 5, 2024. Conover, Rose, Kroll, Bonaparte, Aspen, Green, LeCroy, Reyes and Thomas all returned, alongside new main cast members Ryan Albert, Salley Carson and Molly O\u2019Connell joining the cast. Flowers and Razavi were not asked back to return for the tenth season. In November 2024, Thomas exited the series after two seasons, saying that he would cease filming the series immediately.\nSpin-offs.\nOn October 27, 2016, Bravo ordered a spin-off series to \"Southern Charm\", titled \"Southern Charm Savannah\". The series follows the same premise as its predecessor series but is set in Savannah, Georgia. The series is produced by Haymaker Production and Aaron Rothman, Irad Eyal, Sara Nichols, Luke Neslage and Jessica Chesler, Jason Weinberg, Bryan Kestner and Whitney Sudler-Smith serve as the series' executive producers. The series premiered on May 8, 2017.\nIn April 2017, Bravo announced it was ordering two spin-offs, \"Southern Charm New Orleans\" and \"RelationShep.\" \"RelationShep\" premiered on December 4, 2017, and followed the \"Southern Charm\" cast member as he looked for love. \"Southern Charm New Orleans\" premiered on April 15, 2018 and its second season premiered on June 2, 2019.\nIn February 2021, main castmembers Craig Conover and Austen Kroll were involved in a joint spin-off of \"Southern Charm\" and \"Summer House\" titled \"Winter House\", in which Conover and Kroll join stars of \"Summer House\" for a trip to Stowe, Vermont. A preview of the spin-off aired after the fifth-season finale of \"Summer House\" in April 2021, and it premiered in October 2021. Conover and Kroll returned for the second season of \"Winter House\", which premiered on October 13, 2022.\nIn May 2022, Bravo ordered a spin-off starring main cast member Leva Bonaparte titled \"Southern Hospitality\" that follows Bonaparte and the staff of her Charleston nightclub, Republic Garden & Lounge. The series debuted on November 28, 2022.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "64267959": "Reagan Charleston\nAmerican jewelry designer, lawyer and reality television personality\nReagan Charleston (n\u00e9e Tucker) (born 1988) is an American jewelry designer, lawyer and reality television personality known for appearing on Southern Charm New Orleans.\nEarly life and education.\nReagan Tucker was born and raised in Mandeville, Louisiana, and is of Louisiana Creole descent. She is a descendant of Mary Peychaud, a member of the family which created Peychaud's Bitters and who is credited with creating the Sazerac cocktail.\nCharleston's grandparents and mother were copper sculpture artists and owned an art gallery in the French Quarter. She has stated that her family background in art inspired her to become a jewelry designer. \nIn 2015, she began attending Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, and graduated on May 12, 2018.\nCareer.\nJewelry design.\nCharleston founded Reagan Charleston Design, a jewelry and fashion accessory company, after returning from a trip to Florence, Italy in 2012. She grew up in her Grandparents art galleries and studios in the French Quarter of New Orleans, where her mother and grandparents made copper sculptures. She works with her sister, Reina, and mother, Lauren, both artists and metalsmiths. Her designs take inspiration from the culture of New Orleans, as well as European history and architecture, especially Italian, French and Croatian culture. On October 18, 2018 she opened a jewelry shop called Reagan Charleston Jewelry in One Canal Place. In October of 2021, she debuted a collaborative collection with Eugenia Kim with her jewelry adorning the Eugenia Kim hats.\nSouthern Charm New Orleans.\nReagan and Jeff Charleston became cast members of the reality television series Southern Charm New Orleans in 2017. Reagan Charleston had previously lived in Charleston, South Carolina and was a friend of Whitney Sudler-Smith, the executive producer of Southern Charm. Both Reagan and Jeff reprised their roles in season 2 of \"Southern Charm New Orleans\". \nOther work.\nCharleston sits on the board of Jennifer Hale's Sideline Pass, and on the style board for One Canal Place. On April 26, 2019 Charleston announced via Instagram that she passed the bar examination in Louisiana. She was also Grand Marshall for the 2020 Krewe of Pandora in the Jefferson Parish Mardi Gras parade.\nPersonal life.\nReagan married Jeff Charleston in 2012. The couple separated in 2018, and later divorced.\nIn December 2018 she married Reece Thomas. She decided to keep the last name Charleston because it was on all her professional documents and business. Their daughter Reece Ellis Thomas was born on June 12, 2019. Their son Rexford Vance Thomas was born August 23, 2021.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "56749920": "Charmed (2018 TV series)\n2018 American fantasy drama television series\nCharmed is an American fantasy drama television series developed by Jennie Snyder Urman, Jessica O'Toole, and Amy Rardin. It is a reboot of the WB series of the same name, created by Constance M. Burge, which originally aired from 1998 to 2006. \"Charmed\" premiered in the United States on October 14, 2018, on The CW. Carter Covington served as showrunner for the first season, before married duo Liz Kruger and Craig Shapiro took over for the second and third seasons. Jeffrey Lieber, Joey Falco, and Nicki Renna replaced Kruger and Shapiro as showrunners for the fourth season.\nThe first three seasons follow the lives of sisters Macy (Madeleine Mantock), Mel (Melonie Diaz) and Maggie (Sarah Jeffery), who, after the death of their mother, discover they are the Charmed Ones, the most powerful trio of good witches destined to protect both innocent lives and the world from demons and other dark forces. Each sister has an individual magical power, which is noticeably stronger when all three sisters work together as the \"Power of Three\" to defeat their enemies. The sisters are aided by a Whitelighter, Harry Greenwood (Rupert Evans), an advisor who protects and guides witches.\nThe reboot is known for being more diverse than the original series by casting three women of color in the lead roles, and for its LGBT representation by making one of the sisters a lesbian. Urman explained that television viewers already \"had a chance to see three white witches\" on the original \"Charmed\", and that she was adamant on developing a different version of the series in which people of color and the LGBT community could see themselves represented onscreen and \"be the hero of the story\". The reboot sparked controversy from some cast members and fans of the original \"Charmed\"; Holly Marie Combs and Alyssa Milano both criticized The CW's decision to reboot the series without any involvement from the original cast or crew, while fans campaigned via Twitter to stop the network from moving forward with the pilot episode.\nThe first season of \"Charmed\", which aired on Sundays, helped The CW return to original programming on Sunday nights for the first time since the 2008\u201309 U.S. television season. \"Charmed\" was renewed for a fourth season in February 2021, which premiered on March 11, 2022. In May 2022, it was announced that the fourth season would be its final season.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nPremise.\nThe series begins in the fictional college town of Hilltowne, Michigan, where sisters Mel (Melonie Diaz) and Maggie Vera (Sarah Jeffery) are living with their mother Marisol (Valerie Cruz), who shortly afterward is attacked and killed by an unknown dark force. Three months later, Mel and Maggie discover that they have an older half-sister, Macy Vaughn (Madeleine Mantock), who was kept a secret by their mother for years but recently moved to Hilltowne for a new job at the local university the sisters attend. When Macy meets her sisters for the first time at the family's Vera Manor, lightning flashes and the house's power goes out, indicating the sisters' magical powers have been activated now that all three of them are together. Macy receives the power of telekinesis, middle sister Mel can freeze time, and Maggie, the youngest, can hear people's thoughts. Soon afterward, their Whitelighter\u2014an advisor who protects and guides witches\u2014Harry Greenwood (Rupert Evans) gathers all three sisters together in their attic; he reveals to the sisters that they are witches and presents them with their family's \"Book of Shadows\"\u00a0\u2013 a spell book and guide to using the \"Power of Three\". Marisol had bound her daughters' powers when they were each born to protect them and let them live normal lives but was in the process of unbinding their powers on the night she was murdered. By the end of the first episode, Macy moves into the Vera Manor and the sisters ultimately accept their new destiny as the Charmed Ones, the most powerful trio of good witches who protect both innocent lives and the world from demons and other dark forces.\nThe reboot changes several elements from the original \"Charmed\" series, including moving the fictional setting from San Francisco to Hilltowne; making the middle sister a lesbian; giving the youngest sister the power of telepathy instead of premonition; changing the family name from Halliwell to Vera; and having all three of the sisters' alliterative names begin with 'M' instead of 'P'. Additionally, the reboot has a more ethnically diverse cast: Mantock is Afro-Caribbean, Diaz is Puerto Rican, and Jeffery is African American, English and Indigenous Canadian. In the show, the sisters are of mixed ethnic background, having Latina, African-American and white heritage.\nIt was originally thought that Macy was the half-sister, until the tenth episode of the first season revealed that Macy and Maggie are full sisters, sharing the same father, and Mel is the real half-sister, sharing the same mother as Macy and Maggie but a different father (Ray Vera).\nIn a parallel to the original series, Macy dies at the end of the third season while fighting off evil, and in the fourth season, a new Charmed One, Michaela \"Kaela\" Danso is introduced in her place.\nProduction.\nBackground and development.\nA reboot of the original \"Charmed\" series had been announced since October 2013, when it was originally being developed for CBS by \"Party of Five\" co-creator Christopher Keyser and Sydney Sidner. The CBS reboot's pilot script was going to revolve \"around four sisters who discover their destiny \u2013 to battle against the forces of evil using their witchcraft.\" However, CBS ultimately decided not to move forward with the reboot. On January 5, 2017, it was announced that The CW network was developing a new reboot of \"Charmed\" by \"Jane the Virgin\" showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman for the 2017\u201318 television season. Urman had been approached in 2016 by CBS Television Studios (who own the rights to \"Charmed\") to work on a new reboot of the show. Urman, knowing that \"Jane the Virgin\" writers Jessica O'Toole and Amy Rardin were fans of the original series, brought them on board with her along with director Brad Silberling. On why she wanted to reboot the series, Urman explained: \"The original was so much about female empowerment and sisterhood and strong women taking over the world and I feel like that's what we need right now. It felt like a good time to get back to that and show women kicking ass.\" On the reason they chose not to revive the series with the original cast, O'Toole explained: \"That show wrapped everything up so wonderfully \u2014 they all got their happy endings, and there were even glimpses of their future. We felt like it told a complete story.\" Urman added that they did not want to mess around with the original because it was eight years of mythology. The CW president Mark Pedowitz weighed in on why \"Charmed\" was better as a reboot than a revival, saying \"We wanted to take a different path\" with Urman's \"great\" perspective, calling the original series \"a great show for that time and place\" only.\nThe CW reboot's original pilot script was going to be a prequel set in 1976 about three witches (Tina, Paige and Annie), who are not related but are brought together to fight evil in a small New England town. O'Toole stated that the prequel would have \"explicitly explore[d] the links between the feminist movement and witchcraft.\" At the time, Pedowitz described the reboot as \"a self-contained, self-sustained\" and \"very standalone show\" that would not have any ties to the original series. However, on February 3, 2017, \"The Hollywood Reporter\" announced that the reboot would be redeveloped and delayed until the 2018\u201319 television season, as the pilot draft script \"didn't come in the way the network had hoped\" and that Urman, who had prior commitments with \"Jane the Virgin\", did not have enough time to fully commit to the reboot for the 2017\u201318 season. Pedowitz gave an update on the reboot during the Television Critics Association press tour in August 2017, saying that it was still in the redevelopment process and that the network was waiting to see what Urman had come up with for the redeveloped script.\nOn January 25, 2018, The CW officially ordered the \"Charmed\" reboot to pilot. The redeveloped script was changed to be set in the present day and was described by The CW as \"a fierce, funny, feminist reboot\" centered on \"three sisters in a college town who, after the tragic death of their mother, are stunned to discover they are witches.\" The description also stated that the reboot would revolve around the sisters \"vanquishing supernatural demons\" and \"tearing down the patriarchy,\" while \"maintaining familial bonds.\" O'Toole told BuzzFeed News that the reason the redeveloped script was changed to the present day was because of the results of the 2016 United States presidential election. She explained, \"Suddenly it didn't feel like it should be a period piece anymore. All of the themes seemed more relevant, and we wanted to reconceptualize some things, and it felt like it really should be set in a contemporary world.\" The pilot episode was written by O'Toole and Rardin, and was based on a story by Urman. All three women became executive producers for the first season alongside Silberling, Ben Silverman, Howard T. Owens, and Carter Covington. The pilot episode was also directed by Silberling. After the pilot was filmed, Silberling told the \"Metro\" newspaper that the appeal of the reboot is to be \"fun and contemporary\" with its timely social observations. On May 11, The CW picked up the pilot and ordered the \"Charmed\" reboot to series with 13 episodes. On October 8, The CW ordered five additional scripts for the first season, and a month later, The CW ordered an additional nine episodes, bringing the first season total up to 22 episodes. On January 31, 2019, The CW gave the series an early renewal for a second season. According to Lesley Goldberg of \"The Hollywood Reporter\", \"Charmed\" was renewed due to strong international sales.\nOn March 25, 2019, it was announced that showrunner Carter Covington would be departing \"Charmed\" after the first season, with married duo Liz Kruger and Craig Shapiro taking over as showrunners for the second season. Covington was originally brought in as showrunner after \"Charmed\" was picked up to series, in order to help executive producers Jessica O'Toole and Amy Rardin, neither of whom had run a show before. Following the change in showrunners, media outlets reported that the second season would lean harder into the supernatural storylines, with less focus on the family dynamics that Covington helped make. However, ahead of the second-season premiere, Kruger stated in an interview with TV Insider that the core of the show and \"the heart of the story is still about the power of sisterhood and how powerful women can change the world.\" Shapiro also told TV Insider that they changed the whole tone and visual look of the show to become more \"darker, moodier, edgier\" and \"more cinematic\" than the first season. Both Jeffrey Lieber and director Stuart Gillard also joined the second season as additional executive producers. On January 7, 2020, the series was given another early renewal for a third season.\nThe CW renewed \"Charmed\" for a fourth season on February 3, 2021. On August 27, 2021, TVLine reported that Lieber, Joey Falco, and Nicki Renna would take over as showrunners for the fourth season, while Kruger and Shapiro would remain on the show as executive producers. Falco told TVLine that he and Renna \"had a lot of time to think about things we want to see more of on the show\", and described the fourth season as \"the most fun, sexy, exciting season of \"Charmed\" yet\". Renna commented that they are looking forward to taking \"the show to places we've been wanting to, with storylines and emotional arcs that really excite us\" and further added that the fourth season would focus more on stories about the sisters. With the then-pending sale of The CW to Nexstar Media Group and its emphasis on sports and acquired programming, on May 12, 2022, The CW announced that the fourth season would be its final season.\nCasting.\nCasting details for \"Charmed\" were first revealed by TVLine on February 7, 2018, with the three sisters bearing the unofficial names of Macy, Mel and Madison Pruitt. It also revealed that all ethnicities were being considered for each of the roles and that one of the sisters would be a lesbian, a major change from the original \"Charmed\" series where all Halliwell sisters were straight women. TVLine also revealed that casting was underway for the trio's \"devilishly handsome\" advisor/whitelighter Harry, Macy's \"documentary filmmaker-boyfriend\" Galvin, Madison's \"sensitive loner ex-beau\" Brian, and Mel's detective girlfriend Soo Jin. During production, Madison's name was later changed to Maggie, the sisters' family name was changed from Pruitt to Vera, Soo Jin's name was changed to Niko, and Galvin was rewritten as a scientist. Former \"Into the Badlands\" British actress Madeleine Mantock was cast as the eldest sister Macy, \"a practical, driven, and brilliant geneticist\". Mantock was cast after \"Jane the Virgin\" writer Micah Schraft, who she had worked with on another show five years prior, recommended her to the \"Charmed\" producers. Mantock did a Skype interview with the producers because she was in London at the time. In an interview with \"Teen Vogue\", Mantock revealed that she wanted to be part of the show after reading \"how funny and smart and conscious\" the pilot script was, saying \"I thought it was a wonderful way to broach important subjects, be they women's issues or political issues, in a way that's also tied into this wonderful magical fantasy that everybody loves.\"\nFilm actress Melonie Diaz was cast as the middle sister Mel, \"a passionate, outspoken activist\" and lesbian. Diaz, who was the first sister cast in \"Charmed\", was chosen after a successful meeting with the producers, which she felt was \"an instantaneous connection\". Diaz was impressed with their vision for \"Charmed\", saying \"I thought it was a really clever, unique way to kind of modernize this big show.\" Canadian actress Sarah Jeffery was cast as the youngest sister Maggie, \"a bubbly college freshman\" and sorority pledge. Jeffery revealed that the producers were at first wary of her auditioning for the show because she was still attached to \"Shades of Blue\". She auditioned for the show with scenes involving a demon dog and a fight with one of Maggie's sisters. Jeffery was eventually released from \"Shades of Blue\" so she could do \"Charmed\". Mantock, Diaz and Jeffery did not do any screen tests together, but the latter two described the trio's instant chemistry as \"miraculous\". Diaz stated, \"We really feel like sisters,\" while Jeffery added, \"We were lucky \u2013 it was an immediate connection. We have a sisterly rapport and it's reflected onscreen.\"\nThe lead actresses are of different ethnic backgrounds: Mantock is Afro-Caribbean, Diaz is Puerto Rican, and Jeffery is African American, English and Indigenous Canadian. The shows creators have stated that the sisters are of mixed ethnic backgrounds, having Latina, African-American and white heritage. Executive producer Jessica O'Toole told BuzzFeed News, \"It was always written that way, specifically to have characters who were of color, and with the casting it all kind of came together.\" O'Toole also added that the decision to make the lead actresses non-white was one of the reasons the producers decided the show would not be based on the Halliwell sisters' children from the original \"Charmed\" series, who were all white. Executive producer Jennie Snyder Urman explained that \"we've had a chance to see three white witches\" and working on \"Jane the Virgin\", which had a predominantly Latino cast, helped her realize the importance of representation and \"what it's like to see yourself onscreen and see yourself be the hero of the story\".\nFormer \"Man in the High Castle\" British actor Rupert Evans was cast as Harry, a college professor and the sisters' Whitelighter. Ser'Darius Blain was cast as Galvin, a love interest of Macy's. Blain departed the show at the end of the first season after his character was killed off. Charlie Gillespie was cast as Brian, a love interest of Maggie's who only appeared in the first two episodes of the series. Ellen Tamaki was cast in the first season as Niko, \"a detective on the Hilltowne police force\" and lesbian who is a love interest of Mel's. Tamaki did not return for the second season. Nick Hargrove was also cast in the first season as Parker, a fraternity president and new love interest of Maggie's. He was initially cast as recurring and was later promoted to the main cast. Hargrove did not return as a regular in the second season but did make several guest appearances during it. Jordan Donica was cast in the second season as Jordan, a mysterious law student and amateur boxer. Former \"Shannara Chronicles\" British actress Poppy Drayton also joined the second season as Abigael Caine, a powerful half-witch and half-demon. Both Donica and Drayton returned as regulars for the third season.\nIn July 2021, it was announced that Mantock had departed \"Charmed\", which resulted in her character Macy's death in the third-season finale. Mantock spoke of her departure in a statement to TVLine, saying: \"Playing Macy on \"Charmed\" for the last three seasons has been an immense privilege and I have so enjoyed working with our fantastic producers, creatives, cast and crew. I'm incredibly grateful to The CW and CBS Studios for my time on the show and for being a brilliant support in my difficult decision to leave.\" Showrunners Liz Kruger and Craig Shapiro also told TVLine that they respect Mantock's decision to move on and that the door would always be \"open for a return visit from Macy. . . one way or another!\" On September 8, 2021, Australian actress Lucy Barrett was announced as Mantock's replacement as a new Charmed One for the upcoming fourth season. However, details about her character are being kept under wraps, including her name, backstory, powers, and connection to the show's remaining lead characters, Mel and Maggie. Showrunners Jeffrey Lieber, Joey Falco and Nicki Renna described Barrett's character as \"an artist\" who is \"fun, irreverent, impulsive, strong-willed, and will bring a brand-new energy to the Power of Three\".\nFilming.\n\"Charmed\" is filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, where several other CW shows are filmed. Interior scenes for the show are filmed at the Whites Ironwood Studios in Vancouver. The historical J.E. Phillips House, located at 323 Queens Avenue in New Westminster, is used as the exterior for the show's fictional Vera Manor. It pays homage to the original \"Charmed\"'s Halliwell Manor, in that it is a similar-looking red Victorian house. The exterior scenes used for Hilltowne University during the first season were filmed at the University of British Columbia's Point Grey Campus. The pilot episode was filmed from March 19 to April 7, 2018. After the pilot was picked up and \"Charmed\" was ordered to series, filming for the remainder of the first season resumed on August 13, 2018, and ended on April 26, 2019.\nThe second season began filming on July 24, 2019, and was expected to end on April 16, 2020. However, production was shut down early on March 12, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with only 19 of the ordered 22 episodes completed. The nineteenth episode ended up becoming the second-season finale, with the remaining three episodes filmed as part of the third season when production resumed, as the showrunners wanted to wrap up the storylines as they initially planned. Filming for the third season began on September 30, 2020, under strict COVID-19 protocols and concluded on May 22, 2021. The scenes used as Seattle State College during the third season were filmed at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. The fourth season began filming on October 14, 2021, and concluded on April 13, 2022.\nRelease.\nIn the United States, \"Charmed\" premiered on The CW on October 14, 2018. The first season aired on Sundays at 9:00pm, with \"Supergirl\" as its lead-in at 8:00 pm. The pairing of \"Charmed\" and \"Supergirl\" returned the network to original programming on Sunday nights for the first time since the 2008\u201309 U.S. television season. The CW president Mark Pedowitz explained, \"We wanted to have an established show on Sunday night. We wanted name value with \"Charmed\" on there. We felt that it was two shows that are empowered women. We were making a statement that we were not kidding, that we're not phoning it in on Sunday night, that we were going to compete.\" Its second season premiered on October 11, 2019. The show's third-season premiere was delayed until January 24, 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The fourth season premiered on March 11, 2022.\nAll complete seasons of \"Charmed\" are available to stream on Netflix in the U.S. only, as part of The CW's previous output deal with Netflix. Each season is released in full on Netflix eight days after its season finale has aired on The CW. The complete first season of \"Charmed\" was released on Netflix in May 2019. The first season was also released on region 4 DVD in Australia and New Zealand on September 25, 2019, and on region 1 DVD in the U.S. and Canada on October 1, 2019. It was released on region 2 DVD in the United Kingdom on March 16, 2020. The complete second season was released on Netflix in May 2020, and on region 1 DVD on September 29, 2020. The complete third season of \"Charmed\" was released on Netflix in July 2021. The DVDs were distributed by Paramount Home Entertainment under the label CBS DVD (identified as CBS Home Entertainment on-screen).\nReception.\nCritical response.\nThe review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 71% approval rating with an average rating of 6.53/10, based on 31 reviews. The website's consensus reads, \"\"Charmed\"'s updates are as fun as they are surprisingly feminist \u2013 and with a sharper focus, it could conjure up an even stronger show than the one that came before it\". Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 55 out of 100, based on 13 critics, indicating \"mixed or average reviews\".\nControversies.\nOriginal cast, crew and fan reactions.\nShortly after the pilot's announcement in January 2018, Holly Marie Combs, a cast member from the original \"Charmed\" series, took to Twitter and criticized The CW's decision to reboot the show without any input from the original cast or crew. Combs claimed to have an issue with The CW's \"reimagining\" of \"Charmed\" as the network, formerly known as The WB, chose not to renew the show in 2006 for a ninth season. Combs accused The CW of trying to cash in on the \"Charmed\" name and concept, while \"capitalizing\" on the original cast and crew's hard work. Combs also took issue with the network's description of a \"feminist\" reboot, which she felt implied the original series was not, by sarcastically tweeting: \"Guess we forgot to do that the first go around. Hmph.\" Combs then implied that the reboot should have a new title, as she felt that it is a brand new show with no ties to the original \"Charmed\". She tweeted that television reboots or remakes \"usually have storylines so similar to the original that they are legally required to use the same title and buy the rights to that title\", further adding, \"If it's not similar then it's just another show. A new show with a new title.\" Another original cast member, Alyssa Milano, told \"Entertainment Tonight\" that she wished the original cast were involved with the reboot from the beginning of its development at The CW, further adding \"I do hope that it reaches the newer generation and impacts that generation the way ours was able to do for its generation.\"\nShannen Doherty was more positive about the reboot to fans on Twitter, stating that it was a testament to the original that a reboot was even being considered. She also added that she was \"intrigued by the idea that a new generation might be comforted, inspired like you all were. \"Charmed\" helped us all in some way.\" However, Doherty admitted that she did take issue with The CW's description of a \"feminist\" reboot, by tweeting that their wording was \"terrible and a bit offensive,\" but understood that \"everyone makes mistakes\". Doherty further voiced her support for the reboot in an interview with \"Entertainment Tonight\", stating \"I think it's great. I think it's awesome...I'm happy to see that a show, that back then was all about strong women who supported and loved each other, is now coming back again in this day and age.\" Doherty appreciated the reboot for providing a lot of job opportunities for people, wished the cast and crew well, and hoped that fans of the original series would give the reboot a chance. Rose McGowan was also positive towards the reboot and showed her support to the new lead actresses by tweeting \"fly girls, fly.\" McGowan also added that she had no issues with the reboot and wished \"everyone the best\". McGowan further voiced her support for the reboot on Instagram, posting \"I wish nothing but the best for the new female actors whose careers hopefully will be launched by this show into something long and prosperous.\"\nNews of the reboot was met with a mixed response from fans of the original series. Some fans were positive about the reboot, while others were not impressed about the changes made to the series. Following the reboot announcement, fans took to Twitter and began to share the #StopCharmedReboot hashtag in attempts to prevent The CW from moving forward with the pilot. The CW's president Mark Pedowitz stated that he would like the fans to give the reboot a chance, telling fans that \"before you make a decision, watch the series\". In an interview with HuffPost in May 2018, Combs spoke up about the reboot again, this time criticizing the show's marketing and the casting of younger actors. She stated that although she appreciates \"the jobs and opportunities the \"Charmed\" reboot has created\", she \"will never understand what is fierce, funny, or feminist in creating a show that basically says the original actresses are too old to do a job they did 12 years ago\". Milano also spoke up about the reboot again to \"Us Weekly\" in May 2019, stating that she felt"}, "descending_order": ["42076862", "64267959", "56749920"], "permutation_1": ["56749920", "64267959", "42076862"], "permutation_2": ["56749920", "42076862", "64267959"], "permutation_3": ["56749920", "64267959", "42076862"]}
{"id": "nq_-482327507489667798", "docs_added": {"469794": "To Tell the Truth\nAmerican television game show\nTo Tell the Truth is an American television panel show. Four celebrity panelists are presented with three contestants (the \"team of challengers\", each an individual or pair) and must identify which is the \"central character\" whose unusual occupation or experience has been read aloud by the show's host. When the panelists question the contestants, the two impostors may lie whereas the \"central character\" must tell the truth. The setup adds the impostor element to the format of \"What's My Line?\" and \"I've Got a Secret\".\nThe show was created by Bob Stewart and originally produced by Mark Goodson\u2013Bill Todman Productions. It first aired on CBS from 1956 to 1968 with Bud Collyer as host. From 1969 to 1978, the show was revived in syndication, with Garry Moore as the first host. Former panelist and frequent guest host Joe Garagiola took over in 1977, following Moore's health issues. Garagiola hosted until the show's cancellation.\nRobin Ward hosted a 1980\u201381 syndicated revival of the program, and a 1990\u201391 revival on NBC featured a succession of different hosts: Gordon Elliott, Lynn Swann and Alex Trebek. The show was revived again in syndication from 2000 to 2002 with John O'Hurley as host. The most recent version aired on ABC from 2016 to 2022 with Anthony Anderson as host.\nBasic rules.\nAlthough there have been some variations in the rules over the years (including the addition of a secondary game in some versions), certain basic aspects have remained consistent throughout all versions of \"To Tell the Truth.\" Three challengers are introduced, all claiming to be the central character. The announcer typically asks the challengers, who stand side by side, \"What is your name, please?\" Each challenger then states, \"My name is [central character's name].\" The celebrity panelists then read along as the host reads aloud a signed affidavit about the central character.\nThe panelists are each given a period of time to question the challengers. Questions are directed to the challengers by number (designated \"Number One,\" \"Number Two\" and \"Number Three\"), with the central character sworn to give truthful answers, and the impostors permitted to lie and pretend to be the central character.\nAfter questioning is complete, each member of the panel votes on which of the challengers he or she believes to be the central character, either by writing the number on a card or holding up a card with the number of their choice, without consulting the other panelists. Any panelist who knows one of the challengers or has another unfair advantage is required to recuse or disqualify themselves, which, for scoring purposes, is counted as an incorrect vote. They would also sit out of the questioning.\nOnce the votes are in, the host asks, \"Will the real [person's name] please stand up?\" The central character then stands, often after some brief playful feinting and false starts among all three challengers. Occasionally, the central character would be asked to do something else related to his or her story instead of standing up. The two impostors then reveal their real names and their actual occupations. Prize money is awarded and divided among all three of the challengers, based on the number of incorrect votes received by the impostors.\nHistory.\n1956\u20131968, CBS.\n\"To Tell the Truth\" was to have premiered on Tuesday, December 18, 1956, on CBS in primetime as \"Nothing But The Truth\", but the program title was changed to \"To Tell the Truth\" the day before the show's debut. (There was one pilot episode titled \"Nothing But The Truth\"; both the planned and eventual titles derive from the standard English court oath \"to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.\")\nThe series was recorded in New York City, initially at CBS Studio 52 (the future Studio 54), before moving to the Ed Sullivan Theater late in its run. The existence of an audience ticket for a taping indicates that the show originated in color at the CBS Broadcast Center in late 1966.\nBud Collyer was the show's host (Mike Wallace hosted the pilot); recurring panelists by the 1960s included Tom Poston, Peggy Cass, Orson Bean, and Kitty Carlisle. (Cass and Carlisle stayed on as panelists for most subsequent editions.) Earlier regular panelists included Johnny Carson, Polly Bergen, Jayne Meadows, Don Ameche, Hy Gardner, Dick Van Dyke, Faye Emerson, Hildy Parks, John Cameron Swayze, Betty White, and Ralph Bellamy. Bern Bennett, Collyer's announcer on \"Beat the Clock,\" was the inaugural announcer of \"To Tell the Truth\" in the 1950s. Upon Bennett's transfer to CBS's Los Angeles studios, Johnny Olson, who in time became the best-known of all Goodson\u2013Todman Productions announcers, joined the show in 1960 and remained with the show until 1972.\nOn the pilot and the primetime run, three games were played per episode. For the pilot, a wrong vote from each of the four-member panel and one wrong vote derived from the majority vote of the audience (a total of five votes) paid $300, the total prize money divided among the three challengers. The studio audience also voted, with the majority vote counting equally with that of one by a celebrity panelist; thus, the maximum of five incorrect votes resulted in $1,500 divided among the challengers. If there was a tie for the highest vote from the audience, and for each panelist who was disqualified, a wrong vote was counted. There was no consolation prize for no wrong votes.\nFor the majority of the primetime run there was no audience vote, thus each wrong vote from the four-member panel paid $250, divided among the three challengers, for a possible $1,000 for a complete stump of four wrong answers. A consolation prize of $150 was awarded and divided among the three challengers if there were no wrong votes. For each panelist who was disqualified, a wrong vote was counted. A design element in the set for this series was a platform situated directly above and behind the emcee's desk. The contestants stood on this platform during their introduction, allowing the camera to pan directly down to the host. They then traveled down a curved staircase to the main stage level to play the game. Some subsequent versions would use a variation of the original set design; others did not and had all the action at floor level.\nOn Monday, June 18, 1962, a daytime five-day-per-week edition was introduced, running at 3 p.m. Eastern Time. The daytime show, also hosted by Collyer, featured a separate panel for its first three years, with actress Phyllis Newman as the only regular. The evening panel took over the afternoon show in 1965; in early 1968, Bert Convy replaced Poston in the first chair.\nThe daytime show was reduced to two games to accommodate a five-minute CBS news bulletin towards the half-hour mark. On the CBS daytime run, each wrong vote paid the three challengers $100 for a possible total of $400 divided among the three challengers for a \"complete stump\" of all four wrong votes. If all the votes were correct, the challengers split a consolation prize of $75. During the show's final year and a half, the studio audience also voted, with the majority vote counting equally with that of one of the celebrity panelists, thus a maximum of $500 divided among the challengers could be awarded for the maximum five incorrect votes. If there was a tie for the highest vote from the audience, and for each panelist who was disqualified, a wrong vote was counted. The audience vote was utilized on the nighttime show for its final six episodes (increasing the maximum possible payout to $1,250).\nOne CBS daytime episode featuring Dorothy Kilgallen, best known as a regular panelist on \"What's My Line?\", was broadcast in the Eastern, Central, and Mountain time zones on Monday, November\u00a08, 1965, as news of her sudden death was circulated by wire services. The breaking news story prompted CBS newscaster Douglas Edwards to announce her death immediately after the episode ended. She had videotaped the program six days earlier, according to the \"New York Herald Tribune\". The newspaper added that Kilgallen and Arlene Francis both pretended to be Joan Crawford while sitting next to the real Crawford in a celebrity segment that the daytime series featured regularly starting in 1965. The episode was one of the large majority of \"To Tell the Truth\" daytime episodes that were destroyed because of the common practice of wiping videotape for reuse, prior to the development of less expensive technology. This was a different half-hour telecast from the 1962 primetime episode on which Kilgallen can be seen and heard as one of the panelists. Game Show Network repeated that episode decades later.\nThe primetime show ended on May 22, 1967, with the daytime show ending on September 6, 1968. The latter was replaced by the expansions of \"Search for Tomorrow\" and \"Guiding Light,\" the last two remaining 15-minute programs on daytime television, to 30 minutes apiece, in a scheduling shuffle with \"The Edge of Night\", \"The Secret Storm\", and \"Art Linkletter's House Party.\" Like the primetime version, the daytime show's popularity underwent a steady decline toward the end of its run, as it faced two popular daytime dramas on ABC and NBC, \"General Hospital\" and \"Another World,\" respectively.\nMetropole Orchestra leader Dolf van der Linden composed the show's first theme, \"Peter Pan\", used from 1956 to 1961. From 1961 to 1967, the show switched to a Bob Cobert-penned theme with a beat similar to \"Peter Pan\", and then to a Score Productions tune during its final CBS daytime season.\nMost episodes of the original nighttime run of the series were preserved on black-and-white kinescope, along with a few color videotape episodes. Only a handful of shows remain from the CBS daytime series' first three years because of the then-common practice of wiping videotapes and reusing them due to their high cost and limited storage space. Many daytime episodes (including some in color) from 1966 to 1968 exist, including the color finale.\nReruns of the black-and-white kinescopes have been shown on Buzzr and Game Show Network.\n1969\u20131978, syndication.\n\"To Tell the Truth\" returned only a year later, in autumn of 1969, in first-run syndication. During the early years of its run, the syndicated \"Truth\" became a highly-rated component of stations' early-evening schedules after the Federal Communications Commission imposed the Prime Time Access Rule in 1971, opening up at least a half hour (a full hour, usually, on Eastern Time Zone stations) to fill with non-network fare between either the local or network evening newscast and the start of their networks' primetime schedules for the evening. Other stations found success running the program in place of a daytime network game or soap opera, or in the afternoon fringe time period between the end of network daytime programming at 4:30/3:30 Central and the evening newscasts.\nLike the network editions that preceded it, the syndicated \"To Tell the Truth\" taped its episodes in New York for its entire run. Initially occupying the same studio space at the Ed Sullivan Theater that it had for the last few years of the network series, the show would eventually move operations to NBC's studios\nat 30 Rockefeller Plaza in the early 1970s.\nEach wrong vote in this version was worth $50 to the challengers; complete stumps of the entire panel won the challengers a total of $500. There were two games per episode, and there was often a live demonstration or video clip to illustrate the central character's story after many of the games.\nThe show was first released to local stations on September 8, 1969. A total of 1,715 episodes of this version were produced, with the series ending on September 7, 1978. Some markets that added the series after its initial 1969 release opted to carry the show for another season or two after 1978 in order to catch up on the episodes that had not aired in their viewing area.\nTo host the revival series, Goodson and Todman made a call to original host Bud Collyer; however, Collyer had been suffering from a series of health issues that led to his death on the day the 1969 series premiered, and he told them \"I'm just not up to it.\" The next call they made was to Garry Moore, the former host of \"I've Got a Secret\" as well as the CBS variety series \"The Garry Moore Show.\" Moore had largely been away from television since his variety series was cancelled in 1964 (he left \"I've Got a Secret\" around the same time), but he decided the time was right to return and he accepted the offer to host the new series. Regular panelists included Orson Bean during the first year, Peggy Cass, Kitty Carlisle and Bill Cullen, who was also the designated substitute host whenever necessary. Many regulars from the original run appeared, including Tom Poston and Bert Convy. Semi-regulars during the 1968\u201373 time period included Gene Rayburn, Joe Garagiola, Alan Alda, Tony Roberts and Nipsey Russell.\nIn late 1976, during the eighth season, Moore was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and left for the remainder of the season to deal with his illness. As he had done numerous times before, Bill Cullen became his replacement. As Cullen's time as host continued on, Mark Goodson noted how Cullen's serving as host, rather than as a panelist, hurt the chemistry he had shared with Cass and Carlisle. A decision was made to have Cullen return to the panel permanently and give semi-regular panelist Joe Garagiola the hosting position. Using a baseball term for \"substitute,\" Garagiola stated that he was \"pinch hitter\" for Moore, who returned to the series for a farewell performance on the ninth-season premiere in 1977. Moore explained why he had left the program, then after presiding over one last game, announced his final retirement from television and handed the host position to Garagiola permanently. \"To Tell the Truth\" ended production at the end of the season.\nJohnny Olson stayed with \"To Tell the Truth\" when it moved to syndication. He left in 1972, when he moved to Los Angeles to announce the Goodson-Todman revivals of \"The Price Is Right\" and \"I've Got a Secret.\" NBC staff announcer Bill Wendell succeeded Olson from 1972 to 1977, with Alan Kalter taking over during the final season. Don Pardo, also an NBC staff announcer, served as a backup to Wendell and Kalter.\n\"To Tell the Truth\" used three distinctive sets throughout its nine-year syndicated run. The first, designed by Theodore Cooper and making heavy use of the psychedelic art styles popular in the period, was used for the first two seasons and the first four weeks of the third; those designs were muted somewhat with pastel shades on the second set used from that point through the first 30 weeks of the fourth season. The third\u2014and longest-lived\u2014set, which Cooper also designed, was a mostly-blue block motif with gold accents, and included a large on-stage representation of the show's new logo, which made use of stacking and interlocking letters, behind the panel. This set was used for the remainder of the run, and the logo would be reused on the future 1990 revival.\nThis version featured a lyrical, pop music-styled theme song written and composed by Score Productions chief Bob Israel and \"Truth\" producer Paul Alter, along with veteran theme composer Charles Fox; an instrumental, and orchestral, version would be used for the 1990 series.\nThe bulk of this version is intact. However, the current status of the first season is unknown, and is presumed to be lost to wiping. GSN has never rerun the first season of the show, and had always begun with the second season, in 1970. One episode from the first season exists in the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Buzzr began airing episodes from 1973 in October 2018.\nOn the October 5, 1973, episode, one of the challengers was Georg Olden, who disclosed that he was the graphic designer who created the \"To Tell the Truth man\" icon that was used during the 1956\u20131978 seasons.\n1980\u20131981, syndication.\nOn September 8, 1980, a new \"To Tell the Truth\" series premiered in syndication. The new series emanated once again from Rockefeller Plaza in New York, and Canadian TV personality Robin Ward served as the host, with Alan Kalter returning as announcer. A new theme and set were commissioned for this edition of \"Truth.\" Even though previous regulars Bill Cullen, Peggy Cass, and Kitty Carlisle made frequent appearances, there was no regular panel for this edition. The new \"Truth\" aired for one season in syndication, but it never recaptured the popularity of the original, and aired its final episode on June 12, 1981, with reruns airing until September 11, 1981.\nTwo games were played, and each wrong vote paid the challengers $100; $500 was paid if the entire panel had been fooled. No consolation prize was given if the entire panel correctly identified the subject.\nAfter the second game, a new game called \"One on One\" was played with the four impostors from earlier. One fact had been purposely withheld from the panel about one of the impostors and it was up to the panelists to determine correctly to which of the impostors it applied. One at a time, each panelist would be given twenty seconds to question the impostor sitting directly across from him or her and would then say whether he or she believed the fact applied to that impostor. Wrong votes still paid $100, with $500 paid if the panel did not correctly determine to whom the fact pertained.\nThe 1980 edition of \"To Tell the Truth\" was a rarity in that it was still based in New York while nearly all television game show production had moved to California by this point. There was only one other game show in production during the run of this \"To Tell the Truth\" series that emanated from New York. \"The $50,000 Pyramid\", which premiered at the midway point of the 1980-81 season, was the other; the series was taped at ABC\u2019s Studio TV-15, the former Elysee Theater, on West 58th Street. These two would be the last non-cable productions to tape regularly in New York until 1999 when \"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?\" premiered on ABC.\n1990\u20131991, NBC.\n\"To Tell the Truth\" returned to NBC for a run that lasted only eight months, from September 3, 1990 (Labor Day) to May 31, 1991. Unlike previous versions that originated from New York, the 1990 version was taped at NBC's The Burbank Studios in California. The show's theme music was an orchestral remix of the 1969\u201378 theme (minus the lyrics), and the show utilized the block-letter logo from 1973 to 1978. All episodes of this series exist and have aired on GSN in reruns.\nActor Richard Kline hosted two pilot episodes with Charlie O'Donnell as announcer; one of these was accidentally aired as the premiere episode in the Eastern and Central time zones. Australian \"A Current Affair\" reporter Gordon Elliott hosted \"To Tell the Truth\" for its first eight weeks (September 3 to October 26, 1990). The bespectacled Elliott bore a passing resemblance to former \"To Tell the Truth\" emcee and panelist Bill Cullen. A dispute with Elliott's former employers in Australia temporarily forced him off American television altogether; his replacement was then-frequent panelist Lynn Swann. Swann, the first African-American host of \"To Tell the Truth\", hosted the show for the next 14 weeks (October 29, 1990 to February 1, 1991) until his job as a reporter for ABC Sports at the time forced him to leave. Alex Trebek was brought in as his replacement for the remainder of the run (February 4 to May 31, 1991), at the same time he was hosting \"Classic Concentration\" on NBC and \"Jeopardy!\" in syndication. Mark Goodson filled in for two episodes Trebek missed when his wife Jean went into labor during a taping with their son Matthew. The announcer for the 1990 series was Burton Richardson (O'Donnell served as his substitute).\nThe celebrity panelists for \"To Tell the Truth\" during this period included several of the 1970s panel stalwarts, including Kitty Carlisle, who appeared on a majority of the shows, taking the fourth and most upstage seat. The first seat, furthest downstage, saw Ron Masak and Orson Bean alternate on the panel for 34 of the 39 weeks the series was on air. The chair next to that was occupied by rotating guests, although voice actress Dana Hill appeared in the seat most often. The third chair most often featured David Niven Jr. as a panelist, although Masak and Bean would also sit there if both were to appear on the same program. Polly Bergen and Peggy Cass, who began appearing on the original series, would appear from time to time, and other frequent panelists included Vicki Lawrence, Cindy Adams, and Betty White. The panelists were introduced in twos, with the male panelists escorting the female panelists down the set's main staircase, followed by the host. For one week, Monty Hall (who would later replace Bob Hilton as a permanent guest host on the 1990 version of \"Let's Make a Deal\") sat in the first seat.\nTwo games were played with two sets of impostors. Any incorrect votes up to two paid $1,000. If three of the panelists had voted incorrectly, the players split $1,500. On the pilot, each incorrect vote earned $500. If the panel was fooled entirely, the players split $3,000.\nAfter the second game, a new version of the \"One on One\" game from the 1980 series was played. A seventh civilian player was brought out with two stories, and a member of the studio audience was given an opportunity to win money by trying to figure out which of the two stories was true. Each panelist was given the opportunity to ask the contestant one question for each story, and after both stories had been presented the audience member chose which one he or she thought was the truth. After the choice was made, the contestant revealed the right answer and if the audience member came up with it, he or she won $500. If the contestant stumped the audience member, that player won $1,000.\nOccasionally, celebrities whose faces were not well known would attempt to stump the audience during this part of the game. For example, Hank Ketcham, the creator of \"Dennis the Menace\" and a challenger on the original \"To Tell the Truth\" in May 1962, tried during the show's Christmas Day episode to convince an audience member that he was really the songwriter to \"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer\" (Johnny Marks had actually done this), but was unsuccessful in doing so.\n2000\u20132002, syndication.\nThe show then had a two-year run in syndication, starting in 2000, with John O'Hurley hosting, and Burton Richardson returning as the announcer. The series was again produced at NBC Studios in Burbank, California. Gary Stockdale supplied the music for this edition. In most markets, it was paired up with \"Family Feud\", which was then hosted by Louie Anderson; O'Hurley would eventually join that program in 2006 and host it until 2010, when Steve Harvey took over.\nActor Meshach Taylor was the only regular to appear on every episode of this edition, while Paula Poundstone was a regular during the first season. Panelists appearing in at least six weeks of episodes included Brooke Burns, Dave Coulier, Brad Sherwood, Traci Bingham, Kim Coles, and Cindy Margolis. The show's website touted Coles and Burns as regulars for season two in place of Poundstone, though neither panelist was featured in every show that year. Kitty Carlisle appeared as a panelist for one episode in the first season, making her the only panelist to have appeared on all incarnations of this show to that point. It was Carlisle's final appearance in the franchise before her death in 2007.\nThis edition of \"To Tell the Truth\" brought back the audience vote that the original series had last used. Its vote was revealed after the panel had cast their votes, just before O'Hurley asked for the subject to identify himself or herself. Each incorrect vote paid $1,000, with a maximum of $5,000 available if the challengers managed to completely fool both the panel and the audience. (A tie in the audience vote or panel disqualification counted as a wrong vote, as they had in previous versions.) In the first several weeks of shows, a game that resulted in five incorrect votes was worth $10,000 for the challengers.\nAccording to Steve Beverly's tvgameshows.net, this edition of \"Truth\" never received a rating higher than 1.8. It was cancelled on January 28, 2002, only 96 episodes into its second season. However, repeats continued to air through March 15, 2002. Episodes of this series have aired on GSN in reruns.\n2016\u20132022, ABC.\nABC ordered six episodes of the show, hosted by Anthony Anderson, which taped in July 2015 and began airing on ABC on June 14, 2016. Anderson is the second African-American host of the franchise; the first was Lynn Swann on the short-lived 1990 NBC daytime version.\nThe new, weekly 60-minute primetime series, while maintaining the show's core gameplay elements, presented itself as more of a comedy series. Most notably, it refocused the competition on the panelists themselves, who received points for correctly identifying the central character(s) in each round; at show's end, the winning panelist was briefly recognized while the \"loser\" was made to suffer a small comical humiliation. No mention was ever made on-air as to compensation to the central characters or impostors.\nAlso appearing on the new series was Doris Day Bowman, Anderson's mother, presented as the \"scorekeeper.\" In some cases, where a panelist knows the central character or one of the impostors, Bowman also plays on their behalf. When Anderson's family appeared on \"Celebrity Family Feud\", the behavior of \"Mama Doris\" was so outrageous that the producers approached Anderson about having her on \"To Tell The Truth\".\nThe first season also included a house band, Cheche and His Band of Liars, and David Scott as an offstage announcer; these were replaced in season 2 by prerecorded music and an introduction provided by Anderson himself.\nIn this version, most contestants introduce themselves solely by claiming the central character's story, rather than by name (e.g., \"I was a Bond girl\" rather than \"My name is ...\"); some panels have contestants of different genders. The questioning period is not split distinctly among the panelists, and Anderson and Bowman often participate in the questioning.\nFive rounds were played per episode, along with one additional round entitled \"Before You Go\", which was played with the two impostors of the just-completed round, one of whom had their own story.\nMany episodes include a demonstration by one of the central characters.\nScoring.\nPanelists receive 10 points for correctly identifying the central character in each round, or 20 points for the final round (1 and 2 points in earlier episodes).\nAt the end of the episode, the losing panelist is subjected to some sort of minor humiliation; if panelists are tied, Bowman chooses the loser. In season one, the losing panelist was subjected to \"Tweet a Lie,\" in which Anderson posted an embarrassing tweet to that panelist's Twitter account. In later episodes, the panelist was awarded a \"dummy\" crown by Bowman and asked to promenade in the style of a beauty pageant winner.\nStarting with the August 11, 2019, episode, panelists who earn a perfect score win the \"Doris Award,\" a gold-colored bust of Bowman. To date, three panelists have won the Doris Award: Oliver Hudson, on September 22, 2019; Deon Cole, on June 25, 2020; and Michael Strahan, on August 6, 2020. (Bowman had to play one round on Strahan's behalf, as he knew the central characters.)\nPanelists.\nThe first season featured three regular panelists: Betty White, NeNe Leakes, and Jalen Rose; White has appeared on all three broadcast network versions of the show. In season two, the regular panelists were eliminated.\nTo maintain social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, the sixth season reduced the number of panelists from four to three.\nFour panelists made ten or more appearances on the show: Sherri Shepherd (eleven), Nikki Glaser (ten), Joel McHale (ten), and Jalen Rose (ten, including six as a season one regular). Former host Alex Trebek was a panelist in a 2018 episode, making him the first host to appear on a subsequent version as a panelist.\nMerchandise.\nA board game was released by Lowell in 1957.\nDuring the run of the 2000 version, a single-player online game was offered by the short-lived website Uproar.com, and promoted by host John O'Hurley at the end of each episode.\nA video slot machine game, based on the 1969 version, was released to American casinos nationwide by Bally Gaming Systems in 2002.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "42214284": "Tell the Truth (British game show)\n1957 British TV game show (1957\u20131961, 1983\u20131990)\nTell the Truth is a panel game show based on the US version, \"To Tell the Truth\". It was originally aired on ITV and produced by ATV from 17 September 1957 to 6 September 1961. Hosted first by David Jacobs in 1957, McDonald Hobley took over as host from July 1958. Finally, Shaw Taylor took over as host from 1959 to 1961.\nIt was then revived on Channel 4 in 1983, produced by LWT in association with Goodson-Todman Productions and Talbot Television until November 1985. During this time it was hosted by Graeme Garden and then finally aired back on ITV produced by TVS in association with Mark Goodson Productions and Talbot Television from 11 April 1989 to 26 October 1990, during which time it was hosted by Fred Dinenage.\nTransmissions.\nATV era.\nNone of the ATV episodes survived.\nChannel 4 era.\nAll 51 Channel 4 episodes survived.\nTVS era.\nNone of the TVS episodes survived.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "404557": "Johnny Olson\nAmerican television announcer (1910\u20131985)\nJohn Leonard Olson (May 22, 1910 \u2013 October 12, 1985) was an American radio personality and television announcer. Olson is perhaps best known for his work as an announcer for game shows, particularly the work he did for Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions. Olson was the longtime announcer for the original \"To Tell the Truth\" and \"What's My Line?\", and spent over a decade as the announcer for both \"Match Game\" and \"The Price Is Right\", working on the latter series at the time of his death.\nEarly career.\nSome of Olson's earliest radio work occurred in the mid 1930's at WTMJ in Milwaukee, where he appeared on the variety show \"The Grenadiers\". He soon was hosting \"Johnny Olson Rhythm Rascals\", where callers would request songs for him to sing. His future wife Penny was a frequent caller to the show. Olson's first network job on radio was in New York City in 1944, hosting (with his wife) the audience-participation show \"Ladies Be Seated\", a stunt game along the lines of \"Truth or Consequences\", broadcast on ABC Radio. From 1950-1951 Olson was the host of \"Johnny Olson's Luncheon Club\", which was the follow-up replacement for \"Ladies Be Seated\". He had previously hosted several radio shows in Chicago, including the second iteration of \"Johnny Olson's Rumpus Room\", a late-night variety show broadcast from 10:30\u00a0p.m. to midnight, which was also the name of a later daytime talk show he hosted on the DuMont Television Network.\nWork for DuMont Television Network.\nIn 1945, Olson and his wife hosted a five-week run of a TV version of \"Ladies Be Seated\".577 From May 1947 to July 1949, Olson hosted \"Doorway to Fame\", an evening television talent show on the new DuMont Television Network. From January 1949 to July 1952, Olson hosted \"Johnny Olson's Rumpus Room\", a daytime television talk show which was the first daytime show broadcast from DuMont's flagship station WABD over DuMont's small East Coast network. Olson also hosted the Saturday-morning children's show \"Kids and Company\" on DuMont from September 1951 to June 1952, with co-host Ham Fisher.\nEarly announcing work.\nOn television, Olson was an announcer on \"Break the Bank\" and was the announcer and sometimes the host on \"Fun for the Money\" on ABC-TV in 1949.372 Olson also was the announcer for \"Play Your Hunch\".288-289\nOlson was host of \"Homemaker's Jamboree\", an audience-participation game show that debuted on WJZ-TV on October 5, 1952.\nBeginning in 1960, Olson announced the CBS prime-time panel game \"To Tell the Truth\". The following year, he added duties on sister show \"What's My Line?\", and in 1962 began announcing on the original \"Match Game\" in daytime on NBC until that series ended in 1969. Before going live, Olson did an audience warm-up by asking questions and getting the audience ready for the live telecast.\nTwice, in 1965 and again in 1974, he appeared as the mystery guest on \"What's My Line?\". The first time he managed to stump the panel; the second time, Arlene Francis guessed his identity.\nOlson was also the announcer for \"The Jackie Gleason Show\" from 1962 until its cancellation in 1970.\nOlson continued to announce \"What's My Line?\" and \"To Tell the Truth\" after both shows moved from CBS to syndication in the late 1960s. His involvement with those shows ended when he was designated announcer of the 1972 revivals of \"The Price Is Right\" and \"I've Got a Secret\", both of which were taped in Hollywood, where he relocated.\nHe was the announcer for five of The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethons from 1966 to 1970.\n\"The Price Is Right\".\nAlthough \"Name That Tune\", \"To Tell the Truth\", \"What's My Line?\" and \"Match Game\" put Olson in the elite class of television game-show announcers, the revival of \"The Price"}, "descending_order": ["469794", "42214284", "404557"], "permutation_1": ["42214284", "404557", "469794"], "permutation_2": ["42214284", "404557", "469794"], "permutation_3": ["42214284", "404557", "469794"]}
{"id": "nq_2109453642825282368", "docs_added": {"667371": "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (film)\n2004 film by Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n\nHarry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is a 2004 fantasy film directed by Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n from a screenplay by Steve Kloves. It is based on the 1999 novel \"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban\" by J. K. Rowling. It is the sequel to \"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\" (2002) and the third instalment in the \"Harry Potter\" film series. The film stars Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter, alongside Rupert Grint and Emma Watson as Harry's best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger respectively. It chronicles Harry's third year at Hogwarts and his quest to uncover the truth about his past, including the connection recently-escaped Azkaban prisoner Sirius Black has to Harry and his deceased parents.\nWith this film, the \"Harry Potter\" series switched to a longer eighteen-month production cycle. Cuar\u00f3n was selected as director from a list that included Callie Khouri and Kenneth Branagh. The cast of previous instalments returned for the film, with the additions of Gary Oldman, David Thewlis, Timothy Spall, and Emma Thompson, among others. It was the first appearance of Michael Gambon as Professor Albus Dumbledore, due to Richard Harris's death in 2002. Principal photography began in February 2003 at Leavesden Film Studios. It was the first in the series to extensively use real-life locations, with sets built in Scotland and scenes shot in London. Filming wrapped in November 2003.\nThe film was released on 31 May 2004 in the United Kingdom, and on 4 June 2004 in North America. It was the first \"Harry Potter\" film to use IMAX Technology and released into IMAX theatres. \"Prisoner of Azkaban\" grossed a total of $808 million worldwide, making it the second-highest-grossing film of 2004, behind \"Shrek 2\". Critics praised Cuar\u00f3n's direction and the lead actors' performances. It is credited for marking a notable shift in the franchise's tone and directing style and is often regarded by critics and fans alike as the best \"Harry Potter\" film. It was nominated for two Academy Awards, Best Original Music Score and Best Visual Effects, at the 77th Academy Awards in 2004. It was followed by \"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire\" in 2005.\nPlot.\nHarry Potter spends another dissatisfying summer with the Dursleys. On his thirteenth birthday, Vernon's visiting sister Marge viciously insults Harry and his parents, and an angry Harry accidentally causes her to inflate and float away. Expecting to be expelled for using magic outside school, Harry flees.\nThe Knight Bus, an emergency transport for stranded witches and wizards, takes Harry to the Leaky Cauldron, where the Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge assures Harry that he will not face punishment. Upon reuniting with his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, Harry learns that Sirius Black, a supporter of Lord Voldemort, has escaped Azkaban and plans to kill him. While journeying to Hogwarts, the Hogwarts Express is boarded by Dementors, ghostly prison guards searching for Black. One enters Harry's compartment, causing him to faint, but the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Remus Lupin, uses a Patronus Charm to repel it. At Hogwarts, Headmaster Albus Dumbledore announces that Dementors will patrol the school until Black is captured. Rubeus Hagrid is appointed as the Care of Magical Creatures teacher, but his first class goes awry when Draco Malfoy provokes a Hippogriff named Buckbeak to attack him; as a result, Draco's father, Lucius, has Buckbeak sentenced to death.\nReturning to Gryffindor Tower, the students find the Fat Lady's portrait has been attacked, and the terrified Fat Lady warns Dumbledore that Black entered the castle. Hogwarts is put into lockdown until Dumbledore deems the area safe. During a stormy Quidditch match, Dementors cause Harry to fall off his broomstick, which is destroyed by the Whomping Willow. Dumbledore uses the Slowing Charm to break Harry's fall, who later wakes up in the infirmary.\nHarry, after leaving the infirmary, is caught trying to visit Hogsmeade by Fred and George, who give him the Marauder's Map. Using the map, Harry sneaks into Hogsmeade. He follows Professor Minerva McGonagall, Madam Rosmerta, and Minister Fudge and learns that Black is actually his godfather but divulged the Potters' whereabouts to Voldemort and murdered their mutual friend Peter Pettigrew. The map is later discovered in Harry's possession by Lupin, who confiscates it.\nDetermined to ward off the Dementors, Harry convinces Lupin to teach him the Patronus Charm. Watching Buckbeak's execution, Ron is dragged by a large black dog into a hole at the base of the Whomping Willow. This leads the trio through an underground passage into the Shrieking Shack, where the dog is revealed to be Black, an Animagus who can transform into an animal.\nLupin appears, embracing Black as an old friend before revealing himself to be a werewolf. Snape arrives to apprehend Black but is knocked out by Harry's spell. Lupin and Black reveal that Ron's familiar, a rat named Scabbers, is actually the Animagus form of Pettigrew. Having betrayed Harry's parents, he faked his death and framed Black for his own crimes. Turning Pettigrew back into human form, the group heads back to the castle, intending to both expose Pettigrew as the true criminal and exonerate Sirius, but the full moon causes Lupin to transform into a werewolf and Pettigrew escapes. Black transforms into his animal form and fights off werewolf Lupin, who seriously injures Black. Black manages to escape when a distant wolf cry distracts Lupin and sends him off. Harry finds Black, who are then both attacked by Dementors until an unseen figure casts a powerful Patronus charm to ward them off. Harry falls unconscious, awakening in the infirmary with Dumbledore and Hermione.\nAfter learning that Black is sentenced to the Dementor's Kiss, Harry and Hermione use Hermione's Time-Turner to go back three hours. They witness their earlier actions and save Buckbeak from execution. When Dementors attack past Harry and Black, Harry realizes he was the one who saved himself and Black with a Patronus charm, and uses it to drive the Dementors away. They successfully free Black, who escapes on Buckbeak. Returning to the infirmary, they find Lupin, exposed as a werewolf, resigning and giving Harry back the Marauder's Map. Black gifts Harry a Firebolt broomstick, which he joyfully rides.\nCast.\nSeveral actors from the previous film reprise their roles in \"Prisoner of Azkaban\". Harry Melling appears as Dudley Dursley, Harry's Muggle cousin. James and Oliver Phelps play Fred and George Weasley, Ron's twin brothers; Chris Rankin appears as Percy Weasley, Ron's other brother and a Hogwarts head boy; and Bonnie Wright portrays their sister Ginny, while Mark Williams plays their father, Arthur Weasley. Tom Felton portrays Draco Malfoy, Harry's rival in Slytherin, while Jamie Waylett and Josh Herdman appear as Crabbe and Goyle, Draco's minions. Matthew Lewis and Devon Murray play Neville Longbottom and Seamus Finnigan respectively, two Gryffindor students in Harry's year. David Bradley appears as Argus Filch, Hogwarts' caretaker, while Robert Hardy portrays Cornelius Fudge, the Minister for Magic.\nPam Ferris portrays Aunt Marge, Vernon's sister; Lee Ingleby plays Stan Shunpike, conductor of the Knight Bus; and Jim Tavar\u00e9 appears as Tom, innkeeper of The Leaky Cauldron, replacing Derek Deadman from the first film. Dawn French plays the Fat Lady, a painting at Hogwarts, replacing Elizabeth Spriggs from the first film. Julie Christie appears as Madam Rosmerta, the barmaid at the Three Broomsticks. Warwick Davis appears as the conductor of the Hogwarts choir. The role was offered to him by producer David Heyman due to Filius Flitwick, Davis' original role, being absent from the script. The change in appearance for the new character later became Flitwick's look for the rest of the series.\nProduction.\nDevelopment.\nWith the film adaptation of \"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban\", production of the \"Harry Potter\" films switched to an eighteen-month cycle, which producer David Heyman explained was \"to give each [film] the time it required.\" Chris Columbus, the director of \"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone\" (2001) and \"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\" (2002), decided not to return to helm the third instalment as he wanted to spend more time with his children. Even so, Columbus remained on as a producer alongside Heyman, as Columbus felt that such capacity offered him a better work-life balance, allowing him to not be present on the set all the time and spend time with his children. Guillermo del Toro was approached to direct, but had envisioned a more Dickensian version of the stories, and was put off by the first two films which he found too \"bright and happy and full of light\". Marc Forster turned down the film because he had made \"Finding Neverland\" (2004) and did not want to direct child actors again. M. Night Shyamalan was considered to direct but turned it down because he was working on his own film, \"The Village\" (2004). Warner Bros. then composed a three-name shortlist for Columbus's replacement, which consisted of Callie Khouri, Kenneth Branagh (who played Gilderoy Lockhart in \"Chamber of Secrets\") and eventual selection Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n in July 2002. Cuar\u00f3n was initially reluctant to direct, as he had not read any of the books or seen the films. Del Toro berated him for his arrogance and told him to read the books. After reading the series, he changed his mind and signed on to direct, as he had immediately connected to the story.\nCuar\u00f3n's appointment pleased J. K. Rowling, who loved his film \"Y tu mam\u00e1 tambi\u00e9n\" (2001) and was impressed with his adaptation of \"A Little Princess\" (1995). Heyman found that \"tonally and stylistically, [Cuar\u00f3n] was the perfect fit.\" As his first exercise with the actors who portray the central trio, Cuar\u00f3n assigned Radcliffe, Grint and Watson to write an autobiographical essay about their character, written in the first person, spanning birth to the discovery of the magical world, and including the character's emotional experience. Cuar\u00f3n recalls, \"Emma's essay was 10 pages long. Daniel's was exactly two. Rupert didn't deliver the essay. When I questioned why he didn't do it, he said, 'I'm Ron; Ron wouldn't do it.' So I said, 'Okay, you do understand your character.' That was the most important piece of acting work that we did on \"Prisoner of Azkaban\", because it was very clear that everything they put in those essays was going to be the pillars they were going to hold on to for the rest of the process.\"\nCostume and set design.\nCuar\u00f3n wanted to establish a more mature tone in the characters' costumes and the sets. He explained, \"What I really wanted to do was to make Hogwarts more contemporary and a little more naturalistic.\" He studied English schools and noted, \"Each teenager's individuality was reflected in the way they wore their uniform. So I asked all the kids in the film to wear their uniforms as they would if their parents weren't around.\" Columbus considered the costumes changes as \"a reflection of the character development within the books themselves\" and their transition to teenagers. Whereas in the first two films the characters are constantly in their uniforms, in \"Prisoner of Azkaban\" the characters often wear modern street clothes. Rowling, who was consulted for this change, stated, \"for me the cloaks and everything makes sense for the academic time but in personal time they would be wearing their own clothes.\" Jany Temime joined the film as costume designer, eventually working on all of the following instalments in the series.\nFor Remus Lupin, Temime opted for \"tweeds typical of England.\" Cuar\u00f3n stated that the character should look like \"an uncle who parties hard on the weekends\", so Temime preserved his gown \"unkempt and more shabby than the other teachers\u2019 robes.\" For Trelawney, Thompson made sketches of the costumes and sent them to Temime and Cuar\u00f3n. Thompson saw the character as \"a person who hasn't looked in the mirror for a long time\". In order to highlight the character's short-sightedness, Temime used material filled with mirrors and eyes, as well as oversized glasses with magnifying lenses. Cuar\u00f3n wanted Dumbledore to look like \"an old hippie, but still very chic and with a lot of class\". Temime used tie-dyed silk that would float behind him while walking, which she considered \"a much lighter look\" that gave the character more energy, in contrast with the \"heavy and majestic\" costumes designed for Harris' portrayal of Dumbledore.\nCuar\u00f3n's main concern was for Hogwarts to have a larger scope and be grounded in the real world. The scale model of the Hogwarts exterior designed for the first film was expanded by around 40% for \"Prisoner of Azkaban\". Production designer Stuart Craig and art director Gary Tomkins added constructions including a clock tower and a courtyard, and the hospital wing was redesigned and rebuilt. Other sets constructed for the film included the Hogsmeade village and The Three Broomsticks public house.\nThe use of real-life locations significantly changed the look of Hagrid's hut. For \"Prisoner of Azkaban\", the landscape around the set changed from being completely flat to the side of a hill. The hut doubled in size, with a separate bedroom built on the back and the addition of a large pumpkin patch and a chimney. Craig cited the Shrieking Shack as a particularly challenging set to create. It was built on a large hydraulic platform with the help of the special effects department, \"creaking and moving as if being continually buffeted by the wind\" in order to appear almost alive.\nSome sets were either reused from earlier films or used for more than one space. The Defence Against the Dark Arts and Divination classrooms were filmed in the same set. The Honeydukes set was a redress of the set of Flourish & Blotts that was seen in \"Chamber of Secrets\", which, in turn, had been redressed from the Ollivanders set from the first film.\nFilming.\nPrincipal photography began on 24 February 2003, at Leavesden Film Studios, and ended on 28 November 2003.\nThe third film was the first to extensively use real-life locations, as much of the first two films had been shot in the studio. Three sets for the film were built in Glen Coe, Scotland, near the Clachaig Inn. Harry's ride on Buckbeak over Hogwarts' Lake was filmed at the Virginia Water Lake in Surrey. The Black Lake was also filmed from Loch Shiel, Loch Eilt and Loch Morar in the Scottish Highlands. Incidentally, the Glenfinnan Viaduct railway, which was also featured in \"Chamber of Secrets\", is opposite Loch Shiel and was used to film the sequences when the Dementor boarded the train. A small section of the Knight Bus scene, where it weaves in between traffic, was filmed in North London's Palmers Green on 2 April 2003. Some parts were also filmed in and around Borough Market and Lambeth Bridge in London. Certain scenes were also filmed at the University of Oxford; those set in the hospital wing were filmed at the university's Divinity School.\nDirector of photography Michael Seresin considered the story much darker compared to its two predecessors, so he employed \"moody [lighting], with more shadows\". He used a variety of wide-angle lenses to amplify Hogwarts prominence in the story, and only used close-ups sparingly. \"We prefer to observe the kids from further away, as I find body language to be very interesting\", Cuar\u00f3n explained.\nRowling allowed Cuar\u00f3n to make minor changes to the book, on the condition that he stuck to the book's spirit. She allowed him to place a sundial on Hogwarts' grounds, but rejected a graveyard, as that would play an important part in the then-unreleased sixth book. Rowling said she \"got goosebumps\" when she saw several moments in the film, as they inadvertently referred to events in the final two books, she stated, \"people are going to look back on the film and think that those were put in deliberately as clues.\" When filming concluded, Cuar\u00f3n found that it had \"been the two sweetest years of my life,\" and expressed his interest in directing one of the sequels.\nThe Knight Bus sequence was shot over several weeks at various locations in London. In order to give the impression of the vehicle moving at , stunt coordinator Greg Powell explained, \"We drove the bus at about and the other cars were going only about . It took weeks of planning with stunt drivers, and even the people you see on the street are stunt men and women, who were trained to walk incredibly slow just to make the bus look faster.\"\nSpecial and visual effects.\nIndustrial Light & Magic (ILM) and Framestore handled the key visual effects shots for the film, while The Moving Picture Company, Cinesite, and Double Negative crafted additional VFX material.\nCuar\u00f3n originally wanted to move away from CGI toward puppetry. He hired master puppeteer Basil Twist and experimented with underwater puppets to figure out the movements of dementors. The tests were shot in slow motion, but ultimately the method wasn't practical. The water test footage provided creative direction for the visual effects team, adding the intangible metaphysical quality Cuar\u00f3n was seeking. Visual effects supervisors Tim Burke and Roger Guyett, the Industrial Light & Magic VFX team, and Temime collaborated in the creation of dementors.\nCuar\u00f3n commented on the difficulty of creating Buckbeak, which took months of research and preparation, beginning with the creature's skeletal design. Cuar\u00f3n said, \"Once we worked out the physiology, the way his bones would actually move, we had to capture his personality, which is a mixture of regal elegance, particularly when he is flying, and the clumsy and greedy creature he becomes back on land.\" Creature effects supervisor Nick Dudman created several practical hippogriffs for the production, while Burke and Guyett oversaw the creation of the computer-generated version. Guyett cited the complex movement of the feathers as an achievement that had \"never been done before.\"\nThe inflation of Aunt Marge was achieved practically. Ferris said, \"I wore various prosthetic bodies, which inflated at different rates, and at my largest I was about four and a half feet wide.\" The costume prevented Ferris from walking and eating. Thirty-eight tweed suits of increasing size were used for the sequence.\nCinesite was in charge of the time travel shot featured in the film, which was over a minute long. The main action was filmed on a steadicam against bluescreen, and four minutes of background footage was shot separately. The background was then sped up and composited behind the main action. Two other plates of background footage were tiled together as the camera turned.\nMusic.\nWhen it was announced that Cuar\u00f3n would direct \"Prisoner of Azkaban\", there was initial speculation that his collaborative composer Patrick Doyle (who would score the following film) would do the music. Cuar\u00f3n, however, retained John Williams, for whom it would be the third and final movie he scored in the series. The soundtrack was a significant departure from the previous two, as Cuar\u00f3n wanted the score to take a different approach. One of the new themes, \"Double Trouble\", was written during production for a children's choir to perform in Hogwarts's Great Hall in one of the film's earlier scenes. The lyrics of the song were taken from William Shakespeare's \"Macbeth\". The soundtrack album was released by Atlantic Records on 25 May 2004.\nDifferences from the book.\n\"Prisoner of Azkaban\" was, at the time of publication, the series' longest book. The increasing plot complexity necessitated a looser adaptation of the book's finer plot lines and back-story. The connection between Harry's father and the Marauder's Map is only briefly mentioned, as is Remus Lupin's association to the map. Additionally, it was never mentioned who the Marauders were or who the nicknames Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs referred to. Some exposition was removed for dramatic effect: both the Shrieking Shack and Scabbers the rat are mentioned only very briefly in the film, while they receive more thorough coverage in the novel. Most of Sirius Black's back story is also cut, with no mention of how he escaped from Azkaban.\nOn account of pace and time considerations, the film glosses over detailed descriptions of magical education. Only one Hippogriff, Buckbeak, is seen, and only Draco Malfoy and Harry are seen interacting with the Hippogriff during Care of Magical Creatures lessons. Most other lessons, including all of Snape's Potions classes, were cut from the film. The Fidelius Charm's complicated description is removed entirely from the film, with no explanation given of exactly how Sirius is supposed to have betrayed the Potters to Lord Voldemort. Many of this scene's lines are redistributed amongst Cornelius Fudge and Minerva McGonagall; in compensation, McGonagall's exposition of the Animagus transformation is instead given by Snape.\nThe romantic connection between Ron and Hermione is more prominent in the film than the book; in response to criticism of the first two films for sacrificing character development for mystery and adventure, the emotional development of all three lead characters is given more attention in the third film. However, any mention of Harry's crush on Cho Chang is removed, and she first appears in the fourth film. \"Prisoner of Azkaban\" also shows a darker tone and more of Harry's emotions. For instance, after learning of Black's \"betrayal\" of Harry's parents, he shouts in anger \"I'm gonna kill him\", whereas in the book he is \"too stunned to move\".\nIn the book, Gryffindor wins the Quidditch Cup for the first time in the series, a rather significant character-development subplot that is almost completely omitted from the film. Only the first Quidditch match of the school year (where Harry's Nimbus 2000 broomstick is destroyed) is part of the film's narrative, and there are no other mentions of the sport or the Gryffindor team's successful campaign for the Cup during the rest of the film. The final scene before the credits shows Harry on his new broomstick, the Firebolt, as a known gift from Sirius after his aided escape from captivity, whereas in the book, the new broomstick is an anonymous gift midyear from Sirius (unbeknownst to Harry or anyone else at the time) that is examined by the Hogwarts staff for safety and security reasons before it eventually is given to Harry for use in pursuit of the Cup championship.\nDistribution.\nMarketing.\nAs with the series' previous instalments, \"Prisoner of Azkaban\" was a large merchandising opportunity. The video game version, designed by EA UK, was released on 25 May 2004. Mattel released film tie-ins that included the \"Harry Potter Championship Quidditch\" board game and character action figures. Lego also expanded on its previous merchandising for the first two films with the release of sets that included the Knight Bus, Shrieking Shack and a new Hogwarts castle.\nHome media.\n\"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban\" was released on DVD and on VHS on 23 November 2004. The 2-disc Special Editions later came out on DVD and Blu-ray on 4 October 2016. The film was also released on Ultra HD Blu-ray on 7 November 2017.\nReception.\nBox office.\n\"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban\" held its New York premiere at Radio City Music Hall on 23 May 2004, followed by its London premiere at Leicester Square on 30 May 2004. The film then opened in the United Kingdom on 31 May 2004, and on 4 June 2004 in the United States. It was the first film in the series to be released in both conventional and IMAX theatres. Upon release, the film broke the record for a biggest single day in the United Kingdom's box office history making \u00a35.3million on a Monday. It went on to break records both with and without previews, making \u00a323.9 million including previews and \u00a39.3 million excluding them. \"The Prisoner of Azkaban\" had the highest-opening weekend at the UK's box office, until \"Spectre\" beat the record in 2015. It went on to make a total of \u00a345.6million in the UK. The film made $93.7million during its opening weekend in the United States and Canada playing on 8,900 screens at 3,855 theaters, achieving, at the time, the third-biggest-opening weekend of all time. This opening also broke \"Hulk\"'s record ($62.1million) for the highest-opening weekend for a film released in June. \"The Prisoner of Azkaban\" held this record for five years until \"\" topped it in 2009 with $109million. Additionally, it surpassed \"The Matrix Reloaded\" for having the largest opening weekend for a Warner Bros. film. The film was also No. 1 at the North American box office for two consecutive weekends.\n\"The Prisoner of Azkaban\" made a total of $808.5million worldwide, which made it 2004's second-highest-grossing film worldwide behind \"Shrek 2\". In the U.S. and Canada, it was only the year's sixth-highest-grossing film, making $250.1million. However, it was the year's number one film internationally, making $558.3million compared to \"Shrek 2\"'s $487.5million. Despite its successful box office run, \"The Prisoner of Azkaban\" is the lowest-grossing \"Harry Potter\" film, and the third lowest-grossing film of the Wizarding World series.\nCritical response.\nOn Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 91% based on 264 reviews, with an average rating of 7.9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, \"Under the assured direction of Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n, \"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban\" triumphantly strikes a delicate balance between technical wizardry and complex storytelling.\" On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 82 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating \"universal acclaim\". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of \"A\" on an A+ to F scale.\nMick LaSalle of the \"San Francisco Chronicle\" lauded the film's more mature tone and said it was \"darker, more complex, rooted in character.\" \"The Hollywood Reporter\" called the film \"a deeper, darker, visually arresting and more emotionally satisfying adaptation of the J.K. Rowling literary phenomenon,\" especially compared to the first two instalments. Peter Travers of \"Rolling Stone\" gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars: \"Not only is this dazzler by far the best and most thrilling of the three Harry Potter movies to date, it's a film that can stand on its own even if you never heard of author J.K. Rowling and her young wizard hero.\" Stephanie Zacharek of \"Salon\" considered it \"one of the greatest fantasy films of all time.\" Nicole Arthur of \"The Washington Post\" praised the film as \"complex, frightening, [and] nuanced.\" Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars, saying that the film was not quite as good as the first two, but still called it \"delightful, amusing and sophisticated\". He praised the cast, but felt the need for a better plot. Claudia Puig from \"USA Today\" found the film to be \"a visual delight,\" and added that \"Cuar\u00f3n is not afraid to make a darker film and tackle painful emotions\"; while Richard Roeper called the film \"a creative triumph.\" Sean Smith from \"Newsweek\" said: \"\"The Prisoner of Azkaban\" boasts a brand-new director and a bold new vision,\" and called the film \"moving,\" praising the performances by the three main leads. \"Entertainment Weekly\" praised the film for being more mature than its predecessors.\n\"The Guardian\" gave the film 3 stars out of 5, saying, \"This new Harry Potter picture will cast a spell on its fanbase. But the broomstick's losing altitude.\" \"Screen Daily\" commented, \"Cuaron delivers a genuinely spooky and emotionally involving adventure which gives the world of \"Potter\" much-needed character and atmosphere\". The BBC commended the sets and direction, but did not find it \"emotionally engrossing\". Hollywood.com gave a positive review, praising the plot and storyline, despite a deviation from the first two films.\nAccolades.\n\"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban\" received two Academy Award nominations: Best Visual Effects and Best Original Score for John Williams. The film was also nominated for four BAFTA Awards: Best British Film, Best Production Design, Best Makeup & Hair, and Best Visual Effects, and won public-voted Orange Film of the Year award. It received nine Saturn Awards nominations. It won two Visual Effects Society Awards and was nominated for three others. The Broadcast Film Critics Association nominated it for Best Family Film, Best Young Actor (for Daniel Radcliffe), and Best Young Actress (for Emma Watson).\nThe film ranks at No. 471 in \"Empire\" magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time. IGN designated \"Prisoner of Azkaban\" as the fifth best fantasy film. Additionally, Moviefone designated the film as the tenth best of the decade. In 2011, the film was voted Film of the Decade at the First Light Awards by children aged 5\u201315. The American Film Institute nominated it for the 2007 revision of AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies, and for AFI's 10 Top 10 in the fantasy genre.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "254498": "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban\n1999 fantasy novel by J. K. Rowling\nHarry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban ( ; also ) is a fantasy novel written by British author J. K. Rowling. It is the third instalment in the \"Harry Potter\" series. The novel follows Harry Potter, a young wizard, in his third year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Along with friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, Harry investigates Sirius Black, an escaped prisoner from Azkaban, the wizard prison, believed to be one of Lord Voldemort's old allies.\nThe book was published in the United Kingdom on 8 July 1999 by Bloomsbury and in the United States on 8 September 1999 by Scholastic, Inc. Rowling found the book easy to write, finishing it just a year after she began writing it. The book sold 68,000 copies in just three days after its release in the United Kingdom and since has sold over three million in the country. The book won the 1999 Whitbread Children's Book Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the 2000 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel and was short-listed for other awards, including the Hugo.\nThe film adaptation of the novel was released in 2004, grossing more than $796 million and earning critical acclaim. Video games loosely based on \"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban\" were also released for several platforms, and most obtained favourable reviews.\nPlot.\nDuring the summer, Harry accidentally performs magic at the home of his Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon by blowing up his Aunt Marge, causing her to float into the sky. After this incident, he leaves their house and travels to London by The Knight Bus. At London, he spends his summer there. While staying at the Leaky Cauldron inn, Harry is visited by Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge, who warns him about Sirius Black, a mass-murderer who escaped from the wizard prison Azkaban.\nWith Black at large, Dementors have been stationed at Hogwarts as a security measure. During a Care of Magical Creatures lesson with Hagrid, Draco Malfoy is injured after provoking a hippogriff named Buckbeak. Draco's father, Lucius Malfoy, gets Hagrid put on trial for owning a dangerous creature. Harry repeatedly faints in the presence of the Dementors, but eventually is taught by Professor Lupin, a new teacher, how to repel them using the Patronus Charm. When Harry is unable to participate in weekend trips to Hogsmeade Village, Fred and George give him a magical map that shows him how to get there using a secret passage. At the Three Broomsticks pub, Harry overhears that Black is his godfather, that he betrayed Harry's parents to Voldemort, and that he now seeks to kill Harry as well. \nWhen Ron's pet rat Scabbers disappears, he blames Hermione and her cat Crookshanks. Ron and Hermione stop talking to each other, although Hermione is distraught when Ron survives an attack by Black inside the Gryffindor dormitory. After the attack, Black cannot be found. After Harry, Ron and Hermione learn that Buckbeak will be executed, they console Hagrid, and Ron and Hermione resume their friendship. Ron also finds Scabbers, who was hiding in Hagrid's hut. As the friends make their way back to the castle, Ron is attacked by a large black dog, which drags him through the passageway leading to Hogsmeade. Harry and Hermione give chase, and find themselves in the Shrieking Shack, where the dog is revealed to be Black in his Animagus form. Lupin arrives, and Black states that he intends to kill Scabbers, not Harry. He explains that Scabbers is Peter Pettigrew, who betrayed Harry's parents to Voldemort and framed Black for mass murder. Black and Lupin compel Pettigrew to transform into human form, then haul him back to Hogwarts.\nOn the way to the castle, the full moon causes Lupin to transform into a werewolf. Pettigrew escapes and is pursued by Black, Harry and Hermione, who encounter Dementors and lose consciousness. They awaken in the castle, where Black is now being held captive. Harry and Hermione proclaim his innocence to Dumbledore, who suggests using Hermione's Time Turner. Harry and Hermione travel back in time and save both Black and Buckbeak, who fly away together. Snape blames Lupin for Black's disappearance and makes his werewolf-identity public, which forces Lupin to resign. On the train back to London, Harry receives a letter from Black, expressing his gratitude for saving his life.\nPublication and reception.\nPre-release history.\n\"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban\" is the third book in the \"Harry Potter\" series. The first, \"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone\", was published by Bloomsbury on 26 June 1997 and the second, \"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\", was published on 2 July 1998. Rowling started to write the \"Prisoner of Azkaban\" the day after she finished \"The Chamber of Secrets\". Rowling said in 2004 that \"Prisoner of Azkaban\" was \"the best writing experience I ever had...I was in a very comfortable place writing (number) three. Immediate financial worries were over, and press attention wasn't yet by any means excessive\".\nCritical reception.\nUpon release, \"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban\" received mostly positive reviews. \"The Daily Telegraph\" reported on reviews from several British publications with a rating scale for the novel out of \"Love It\", \"Pretty Good\", \"Ok\", and \"Rubbish\": \"Daily Telegraph\", \"Guardian\", \"Times\", \"Independent\", \"Sunday Telegraph\", and \"Sunday Times\" reviews under \"Love It\" and \"Observer\" review under \"Pretty Good\". \"The Guardian\" reported an average rating of 9 out of 10 for the book based on reviews from multiple British newspapers. On \"BookBrowse\", based on American press, the book received a from \"Critics' Consensus\" and for the media reviews on a rating scale out of five: \"Kirkus Reviews\" and \"School Library Journal\" reviews under five"}, "descending_order": ["254498", "667371"], "permutation_1": ["667371", "254498"], "permutation_2": ["667371", "254498"], "permutation_3": ["254498", "667371"]}
{"id": "nq_8246087612673955123", "docs_added": {"16864333": "Here I Am, Lord\nHymn written by Dan Schutte\n\"Here I Am, Lord\", also known as \"I, the Lord of Sea and Sky\" after its opening line, is a Christian hymn written by the American composer of Catholic liturgical music Dan Schutte in 1979 and published in 1981. Its words are based on Isaiah 6:8 and 1 Samuel 3:4. It is published by OCP Publications.\nSchutte wrote the song at age 31 when he was studying theology at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. He was requested to compose, on short notice, a piece for the ordination Mass of a deacon, incorporating in the lyrics God's word, of Jesus as the light, and the bread and wine of the Eucharist.\nSchutte's hymn is also sung in many Protestant worship services and is found in multiple hymnals and missalettes.\nIn 2004 a survey conducted by \"the Tablet\", an international Catholic magazine, reported \"Here I Am, Lord\" as readers' favorite. A poll conducted by the National Association of Pastoral Musicians found among members that it came in second among \"songs that make a difference\".\nIn 2013 a survey conducted by \"Songs of Praise\", \"Here I Am, Lord\" was named the fifth most popular hymn in Britain.\nIn 2017 \"America\" ran an article detailing the impact this song has had on the spirituality of American Catholics.\nIn 2019 \"I, the Lord of Sea and Sky\" was voted the United Kingdom's 10th favorite hymn.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "27097676": "Here I Am (Monica song)\n\"Here I Am\" is a song by American recording artist Monica, taken up from her sixth studio album, \"Still Standing\" (2010). It was composed by the former along with Ester Dean, Paul Dawson, Mark Hartnett, Jason Perry, and her cousin Polow da Don, featuring production by the latter. Chiefly written by Dean, the smoky downtempo song was initially written for and recorded by a male singer but partially reconstructed for Monica. Lyrically, \"Here I Am\" outlines a woman's physical desires over a dubstep-lite instrumental.\nThe album version of the song was lined up for a dual single release along with \"Nothing Like Me\" to US radios in fall 2009. However, its release was scrapped twice in favor of \"Everything to Me\" and \"Love All Over Me\", both of which served as the first two singles from the album. Eventually picked as the third and final single from \"Still Standing\", the song was officially remixed with vocals from American singer Trey Songz. The duet version was released as a digital download in October 2010 and earned positive reviews from music critics. Prior to the album's release, the original version had charted on the \"Billboard\" Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs at number eighty-three.\nBackground and release.\n\"Here I Am\" was written by Ester Dean, Paul Dawson, Mark Hartnett, Jason Perry, Monica and her cousin, Polow da Don, with production handled by the latter. It was one of the first songs on which Monica and da Don collaborated on for her-then upcoming album, \"Still Standing\" (2010), and one out of two songs that he was initially expected to contribute to the album. Monica later told \"Rap-Up\" magazine that she was very happy and keen to work with da Don, and that their personal bond had transformed \"Here I Am\" into a standout record amongst the tracks they had previously recorded. Referring to its style, she further added: \u201cIt\u2019s a special song to me because it\u2019s totally different than what I normally do.\u201d Chiefly written by singer\u2013songwriter Ester Dean, it was originally crafted for a man and a man previously recorded it. Upon playing it to Monica in the recording studio, the team decided on flipping it and made it fitting for a woman.\nOn October 27, 2009, Monica revealed on her Twitter account, that \"Here I Am\" along with Dean and Polow's other contribution, \"Nothing Like Me\", an uptempo collaboration with rapper T-Pain, was to be released as a dual lead single from \"Still Standing\". Speaking on this decision, she tweeted: \"This was the best way to satisfy my fans of 15 years and the new fans that I hope to gain.\u201d However, its release was eventually scrapped, with Monica confirming in December 2009, that some undisclosed legal issues surrounding \"Nothing Like Me\" \"didn't get cleared\" in time. On April 2, 2010, Monica again turned to Twitter to announce that \"Here I Am\" was scheduled to be released as the album's second single, containing newly recorded vocals from J Records label mate Jamie Foxx. In a last minute change, the single was later switched to fan-favorite \"Love All Over Me\". \"I didn't have a choice [...] I would never ignore the fans so we switched\", the singer later replied. During touring with singer Trey Songz on the Passion, Pain & Pleasure Tour, \"Here I Am\" was eventually announced as the album's third single. In addition, it was revealed that Songz had replaced Foxx on the duet remix version of the original track.\nCritical reception.\nIn a review of the remix, music blog DJBooth.net wrote that \"Trey Songz steps into the role of the fella who fulfills the singer\u2019s needs when her main man is off at the club. After lacing Polow Da Don\u2018s reverb-drenched instrumental with a little soulful call-and-response and some glittering harmonies, the collaborators crescendo to a climax featuring some of the most dazzling vocal pyrotechnics.\" A fan of the original version, entertainment website ThatGrapeJuice.net called the song \"R&B at its best\", finding that \"this stunning version deserves kudos in its own right\". They added: that \"despite not featuring new vocals from Monica, the addition of Songz surprisingly breathed new life into the song, with their respective vocals meshing exceptionally well. What\u2019s more, Songz\u2019s powerful runs sees this serve as one of his best vocal out yet.\" M. Gosho Oakes from SoulCulture wrote that \"Responding with persuasive assurances of satisfaction, Trey Songz follows Monica\u2018s call all the way to the official remix for 'Here I Am'.\" \"Rap-Up\" magazine classified \"Here I Am\" as a \"smoky slow jam\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "15308310": "Here I Am (Patty Loveless song)\n\"Here I Am\" is a song written by Tony Arata and recorded by American country music artist Patty Loveless. It was released in November 1994 as the second single from her seventh album, \"When Fallen Angels Fly\" (1994). The song reached a number four peak in February 1995.\nCritical reception.\nRichard McVey from \"Cash Box\" wrote, \"A far cry from her previous release, \"I Try To Think About Elvis,\" this easy-paced, guitar/vocally-driven tune is classic Loveless. She pours emotions through her vocals like few can, and \"Here I Am\" is no exception.\"\nMusic video.\nThe accompanying music video for \"Here I am\" premiered in December 1994.\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4333011": "Here I Am to Worship (song)\n\"Here I Am to Worship\" is a song written by Tim Hughes and was released as the title song of his debut album \"Here I Am to Worship\". The song is a popular worship ballad. It is commonly sung at Christian churches, festivals and youth gatherings. The song was ranked No. 1 on the Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) two years in a row and was still ranked on their Top 25 Songs list in 2016.\nWriting and inspiration.\nHughes wrote the song in 1999 as a response to how he felt after reading Philippians 2. The passage speaks about Christ's humility and how He willingly left His throne in heaven, came to earth as a man, and sacrificed Himself on the cross all because of His love for us. With this passage in mind, he picked up his guitar and, as he sang, the words to the song flowed out, but he was not satisfied with the chorus and felt that it did not flow well with the song. For several months, he struggled with the chorus and even put the song aside for about six months before finally finishing it. However, he was still not confident in the chorus. It was not until he played this song at his home church Soul Survivor, and his pastor told him to play the song more often, that he realized the potential the song had. Since then, this song has spread and become widely known. Hughes himself said. \"No one has been more surprised than myself at seeing how God has used this worship song.\" The themes in the song are the life of Jesus, thankfulness, and worship.\nComposition.\n\"Here I Am to Worship\" is a slow worship ballad with a length of five minutes and fifteen seconds. The song is set in common time and has a tempo of 75 beats per minute. It is written in the key E Major. The verses follow the chord progression E - B - F\u266fm - A - E - B - A, the chorus follows the progression E - B - C\u266fm - A, and the bridge follows the progression B - E - A.\nVersions.\nIt has been covered by other contemporary worship musicians, including:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "661110": "Dan Schutte\nAmerican Christian singer\nDaniel Laurent Schutte is an American composer of Catholic and contemporary Christian liturgical music, best known for composing the hymn \"Here I Am, Lord\" (1981, also known as \"I, the Lord of Sea and Sky\") and approximately 171 other hymns and Mass settings.\nBiography.\nSchutte was born in Neenah, Wisconsin, on December 28, 1947, grew up in Elm Grove, Wisconsin, and graduated from Marquette University High School before entering the Society of Jesus.\nAs a Jesuit seminarian, he was one of the founding members of the St. Louis Jesuits, composers who popularized a contemporary style of church music set to sacred texts sung in English due to the liturgical reforms initiated by the Second Vatican Council. Other members of the St. Louis Jesuits are Bob Dufford, Roc O'Connor, John Foley, and Tim Manion.\nHe released ten collections with the St. Louis Jesuits, including a 30th-anniversary collection in 2005. Their second recording, \"Earthen Vessels,\" sold over one million albums. As a result, beginning with hymnals such as \"Glory and Praise\", their music became standard repertoire in Catholic parishes in the English-speaking world.\nSchutte left the Society of Jesus in 1986.\nSchutte continues as a prolific composer of liturgical music, releasing nine solo collections with OCP Publications. Many of his newer compositions found their way into permanent hymnals and missals. Schutte's \"Mass of Christ the Savior,\" released in 2012, quickly became one of the most widely used Mass Settings throughout the English-speaking world.\nNotable Christian artists, including Chris Christian, Amy Grant, and John Michael Talbot, have recorded his compositions. His music is credited in movie and television soundtracks, including Dark Waters, Yes, God, Yes, Everybody Loves Raymond, Will and Grace, and Mistresses. \u00a0\nIn 2009, he wrote \"Walking the Sacred Path \u2013 Spiritual Exercises for Today,\" 2012, \"God With Us - A Prayer Book For Advent and Christmas\" and, 2014, \"From Ashes To Glory - A Prayer Book For Lent and Easter\". With the outbreak of COVID-19, he developed a series of virtual spiritual retreats that gained a worldwide audience.\nIn addition to his Jesuit formation, Schutte holds two master of arts degrees, one in theology and one in liturgy, from The Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. Schutte is also an alumnus of St. Louis University and Seattle University. He did graduate studies in music composition under the direction of Fr. Kevin Waters S.J. at Seattle University. He was a student of celebrated American painter and artist, Sr. Thomasita Fessler, OSF at Studio San Damiano. He has received four honorary doctoral degrees for his contribution to the life of the church. Two honorary doctorates are in humane letters, and two are in music.\nSchutte presently is Composer-in-Residence at the University of San Francisco. He continues to compose new music and write about spirituality.\nLegacy.\nSchutte's compositions are primarily written for Catholic liturgical use, but over time have been used in Protestant worship. Some of the more notable include \"City of God\" (1981), \"Only This I Want\" (1981), \"Blest Be the Lord\" (1976), \"You Are Near\" (1971), \"Though the Mountains May Fall\" (1975), \"Sing a New Song\" (1972), \"Glory and Praise to Our God\" (1976), \"Here I Am, Lord\" (1981), \"Table of Plenty\" (1992), \"River of Glory\" (2001), \"These Alone Are Enough\" (2004), his setting of the Ignatian Suscipe prayer and \"Saints and Beloved of God\" (2016).\n\"The St. Louis Jesuit Mass\" (1973), co-authored during his collaborative years, was the most-used Mass setting in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s. With the implementation of the Roman Missal, Third Edition in 2012, it wasn't easy to revise the original Mass setting text and well-known melody with the new style of the translation, which follow the original Latin texts more closely. The Publisher and composers decided not to publish a revision. \"Mass of Christ the Savior,\" released in 2012, quickly became one of the most widely used Mass Settings throughout the English-speaking world.\nIn a circular of July 29, 2008, the Congregation for Divine Worship directed that \"in liturgical celebrations, in songs and prayers the name of God in the form of the tetragrammaton YHWH is neither to be used or pronounced.\" Schutte agreed with the directive. Accordingly, for Catholic liturgical services, the refrain of Schutte's \"You Are Near,\" which began as \"Yahweh, I know you are near\" now begins with \"O Lord, I know you are near.\"\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "17896897": "Gwahoddiad\n1872 Welsh-language hymn\n\"Gwahoddiad\" is a Welsh hymn of American origin.\n, also known as and by its first line , was originally the English-language gospel song \"I Am Coming, Lord\", the first line of which is \"I hear thy welcome voice\". The English words and the tune were written in 1872 by the American Methodist minister and gospel songwriter Lewis Hartsough (1828\u20131919) during a revival meeting at Epworth, Iowa, where Hartsough was minister. Hartsough was musical editor of \"The Revivalist\", a collection of hymns which had begun in 1868 and continued through 11 editions. The English words with Hartsough's tune first appeared in the 1872 edition.\nThe tune is in 3/4 time, with fermatas at the option of the songleader. The metrical pattern is 6686 with refrain 5576. The rhyme scheme is ABCB; the second and fourth lines rhyme, whether in the verse or in the refrain.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nIn 1906 the American gospel singer and composer Ira D. Sankey wrote:\nThe words and music of this beautiful hymn were first published in a monthly entitled \"Guide to Holiness\", a copy of which was sent to me in England. I immediately adopted it, and had it published in \"Sacred Songs and Solos\". It proved to be one of the most helpful of the revival hymns, and was often used as an invitation hymn in England and America. \nThe Welsh version was translated by Calvinistic Methodist minister and musician Ieuan Gwyllt (literally John the Wild, bardic name of John Roberts) (1822\u20131877). It has become so well known in Wales that, despite its American origin, many people believe it to be an indigenously Welsh hymn.\n\"I Am Coming, Lord\" is an invitation song, typically sung at the end of a sermon in evangelistic meetings. The tune is usually called WELCOME VOICE in American hymnals and may be labeled CALVARY in British hymnals. During World War I Hartsough expressed gratification not only for having heard the song in various languages but also for having learned of its popularity with soldiers in the trenches of Europe.\nConsider now the lyrics, with the Welsh version printed first.\nWelsh words.\nThe Roberts (Gwyllt) translation has four verses. The first verse is a virtual equivalent of Hartsough's original (see \"infra\"). Roberts essentially skipped Hartsough's second verse and then conflated the remaining three verses into similar but not verbatim thoughts matching Welsh to the metrical pattern of Hartsough's tune.\nOriginal English words.\n\"I Am Coming, Lord!\" as it appeared in the \"Revivalist\" (1872, p.\u00a0231, No. 464):\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nThe theology of the fourth verse from Hartsough's original has attracted some clarification from editors. The Calvinist Roberts (Gwyllt) in the Welsh version simply massaged the concerns away via the translation. English-language editors who are unhappy with the theology have sometimes gone the way of B. B. McKinney in simply eliminating the verse\nor Elmer Leon Jorgenson in revising it as follows:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\nAmerican hymn editor William Jensen Reynolds asserted in 1976, as he had done earlier, in 1964, another verse, between the third and fourth verses above:\n'Tis Jesus who confirms\nThe blessed work within,\nBy adding grace to welcomed grace,\nWhere reigned the power of sin. \n\nBut that verse is included in the 1875 edition of Sankey's \"Sacred Songs and Solos\".\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "27745700": "Here I Am (Kelly Rowland album)\nAlbum by American recording artist Kelly Rowland\nHere I Am is the third studio album by American singer Kelly Rowland, released through Universal Motown and Universal Music Group on July 22, 2011. The album is Rowland's first release since parting ways with her manager Mathew Knowles and longtime Sony Music record label Columbia Records (through Knowles' Music World Entertainment). \"Here I Am\" is predominately a pop, R&B and dance album. It follows Rowland's assertion that \"no one puts her in a box\" with common themes around womanhood, sexual intimacy and love. Originally scheduled for release in 2010, the album was pushed back after the first round of singles were released to mixed critical and commercial reception.\n\"Commander\" (2010) produced by and featuring David Guetta topped the US Hot Dance Club Songs chart and became a top-ten hit in the United Kingdom and some other European territories. Three other singles: \"Forever and a Day\", \"Rose Colored Glasses\" and \"Grown Woman\", all had limited commercial success and are subsequently included on selected editions of the album or excluded altogether. The international version of the album features seventeen songs including ones excluded from the US editions and some remixes. \"Here I Am\" also features guest performances from Lil Wayne, Nelly, Rico Love, Lil Playy, The WAV.s and Big Sean. Production of the album was handled by the likes of Rodney Jerkins, Guetta, Jim Jonsin, Hit-Boy, RedOne and The Runners. Love wrote half of the songs on the album, while Rowland co-wrote three songs on the album.\nAfter re-recording the majority of the album, a new single featuring Lil Wayne titled \"Motivation\", preceded the album in the United States. It was greeted with a positive reception from critics and topped the US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart as well as peaking in the top-twenty of the \"Billboard\" Hot 100, becoming Rowland's second most successful single as a lead artist in the United States. \"Here I Am\" was received well by critics, many of whom praised the strong productions and vocal performances but questioned some of the guests and a lack of the up-tempo dance sound Rowland had spoken of. \"Here I Am\" debuted at number one on the US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and number three on the US \"Billboard\" 200 albums chart, selling 77,000\u00a0copies. To date, it's Rowland's highest-charting album in the United States.\nBackground.\nDuring her 2008 performances at T4 on the Beach in Weston-Super-Mare, United Kingdom, Rowland was exposed to British bands and live festival music. It inspired her to pursue a new sound for her then untitled third album. She then travelled the South of France for vacation in Summer 2008 where she was exposed to dance music. It was here that she met French disc jockey (DJ) David Guetta and heard the foundations of \"When Love Takes Over\", a song that would leave a lasting impression on the singer. After falling in love with the song, Rowland would take it back to London to write and record the vocals with Australian songwriters, The Nervo Twins. However Columbia Records were not impressed with the new sound and the record was left unfinished until it was rediscovered by Guetta, when compiling his \"One Love\" album.\nIn March 2009, it was revealed that the singer was parting ways with Columbia Records. Speaking of her decision to leave, Rowland said, \"as a solo artist, I felt the need to explore new directions, new challenges, and new freedoms outside my comfort zone and my friends and family at Columbia have been incredibly understanding about my evolution. I want to thank everyone at Columbia for the love and support they've shown and I will never forget how many good times we've had over the years.\" It was also announced in March that Guetta was releasing \"When Love Takes Over\", his collaboration with Rowland. The song went on to be a worldwide success for the duo. Jason Lipshutz of \"Billboard\" said \"the success comes at an intriguing time in Rowland's career\", having noted that she had landed a hosting job on Bravo's \"The Fashion Show\" and was in between labels.\nIn October 2009 it was suggested that the success of the single had made Rowland consider signing a new record deal with EMI Music. Despite earlier claims, Rowland told \"Entertainment Weekly\" in 2010 that she didn't leave Columbia Records of her own accord. She was dropped because her previous album, \"Ms. Kelly\" (2007), was not commercially successful. Then in May 2010, speculation of Rowland's new record ended when an official press release revealed that she had signed to Universal Motown Records. It was whilst recording within the studios with Guetta that Rowland caught the attention of the head of Universal Motown, Sylvia Rhone, which led to the new deal. On the decision to go with Rhone's label, Rowland said \"they have really embraced me and have set me up to succeed. I decided, after careful thought, to sign with Universal Motown not only because of their track record of success, but also because they truly put their artists first\". \"Here I Am\" has a distinctly different sound to Rowland's previous albums. \"Simply Deep\" (2002) followed a rock\u2013dance sound, while \"Ms. Kelly\" featured an urban sound. However, on her third album, there are a lot of up-tempo tracks. The album is tailored specifically towards individual markets, with the US version of the album featuring more traditional R&B and pop records, while the international version of the album features more of an \"up-tempo dancey\" sound.\nMusical style.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n \"I remember hearing Janet Jackson saying once 'With every album we grow, and we can't be afraid of it. Because we never know everything, and we learn something new every day.' \"\n\u2014Kelly Rowland\nIn an interview with \"The Independent\", Rowland admitted that with her first two records she struggled to find her sound. \"I was in a stage with the first two records where I was searching and I was like, let me try a rock-dance approach, the label [and management] wanted me to try it and I did it... And then after that came a more urban approach with \"Ms. Kelly\" in 2007.\" She further described the songs on her previous albums as sounding very much the same, which led her to the realisation that she \"needed refreshing\". She told \"Entertainment Focus\" that meeting French DJ David Guetta \"changed her perspective and helped to inspire the new sound\". She then spent more time in Europe in 2009, something which she said had influenced her. \"It's different being over here in Europe and just being able to look at different magazines and fashion shows and things like that. And just thinking about the look and working with different stylists as well. I wanted to make sure it was a look that was all me, you know?.\" She noted that seeing people's reactions to dance music made her feel \"completely intoxicated!.\" In July 2010, Rowland said during an interview with Alex Catarinella of \"Paper\" magazine that \"I spent about a year of my life in Europe really listening to a whole bunch of European DJs and hearing dance music a lot on the radio and really loving it. 'When Love Takes Over' was my first introduction to dance music [and] it was a whole other monster. It's really a culture and I love it.\"\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n I'm trying to take a page from the amazing books of Donna Summer and Diana Ross. They were so powerful and glam on stage and such a voice for women. I looked at them to take inspiration from and then thought of a way to make it my own.\"\n\u2014Kelly Rowland\nWhen she was interviewed for \"Blues & Soul\" in 2010, Rowland explained that the album would blend her urban roots with a strong dance music influence. \"I'd say the main difference between this new album and my previous albums, is that this time I wasn't afraid to take a risk. I didn't care whether it was urban, dance, hip hop, WHATEVER... I just wanted a great track that I could sing and that people would enjoy.\" Part of the inspiration for the new sound on the album was wanting to do something different. In her interview with \"The Independent\", she said \"For me, it was being kind of at a flat line with urban music and wanting something different ... when I did 'When Love Takes Over', it was easy to do it \u2013 it was almost like it happened before me in spirit and I walked right into it. ...so I knew I couldn't be afraid of this direction, and I wasn't going to let the thoughts and opinions of others make me afraid to go in this direction.\" Then in response to criticisms that her long-standing fans would not have their expectations met, she said \"I did not forget about my urban roots, nor will I ever ... That is one of the reasons I am here period ... I thank everyone for being so wonderful and so open to me trying something new. I won't let you down this record, I promise you.\"\nShe expressed frustrations with the constant comparisons to Beyonc\u00e9 and opinions that urban artists should only produce urban records. Defending her decision to widen the range of genres on the new album, she said \"Nobody puts me in a box!.\" Alex Cantaranella of \"Paper\" magazine described her position on the album as \"an unassuming, poised woman who isn't fazed by the 'bullshit that comes with the territory'.\" Rowland would go on to say that the album was \"a mixture of different sounds that express me and where I'm at right now in my career\", and promised that the album would be a \"defining moment\" in her career.\nUpon completion of the album, Rowland said: <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"I'm so excited for everyone to hear the rest of the album. For a long time, I thought about, 'Should it be dance or should it be urban or should it be this or should it be that?' And I was like, 'Why am I allowing people to make me think like that?\" She added, \"It's just about artistry, it's just about freedom,\" she continued. \"It's just about music. It's about being alive and being happy and living life and being a woman, just feeling amazing...\"\nWriting and composition.\nSessions took place in Los Angeles, New York City and Miami with Rowland specifically wanting a wide range of songs to choose from.\nOne of the first people she actually entered the studios with was David Guetta. He co-wrote and produced the song, \"Commander\", a song with themes of taking control and being sexy. Rowland said of the song, \"I hope to see women singing the song like they're in charge. It's important to know that we are commanders who have the power to shape our own destiny.\" Rico Love wrote the song and, according to Rowland, had credits on around half of the album. \"Commander\" features on the album as track number nine, while its urban remix featuring Nelly features on the deluxe edition as track fourteen. Guetta also had a hand in co-producing \"Forever and a Day\" with Danish producer Jonas Jeberg. The song was written by Sam Watters, Andre Merrit, Jeberg and Rowland. During the album's New York listening party in June 2010, \"Forever and Day\" was described by \"Honey Mag\" as a display of Rowland's \"vocals\" with \"long-winded riffs and sky-high notes.\" It was released as a single in some international markets in September 2010. Aside from Guetta, Rowland was reunited with The Nervo Twins who previously helped Rowland to write \"When Love Takes Over\".\nAmerican R&B singer-songwriter Ne-Yo was also involved in the album and wrote three songs which were produced by StarGate. \"Shake Them Haters Off\" is an \"up-tempo\" and fun record with lyrics such as \"Its like a job I that I never get a break from/because haters never take a vacation.\" Another collaboration titled \"Grown Ass Woman\" (later changed to \"Grown Woman\") was described by Rowland as her favorite song on the album. Ne-Yo conceptualized the song in a three-minute conversation with Rowland, where she told him she wanted a record where she could claim \"I'm grown!\". According to Janine Simon from \"Honey Mag\", on \"Grown [Ass] Woman\" Rowland digs \"through old pictures from the Destiny's Child days reflecting on how far she has come yet how 'Grown and silly' she still is.\" It would later be released as one of the album's two US lead singles. The pair collaborated on a third song, \"Heaven n Earth\", described by Simon as a ballad using imagery to demonstrate a \"sonic portrait, painted with flecks of sentiment; a picture of what the singer believes is what 'we deserve as a people'.\" According to Rowland, one of these three records was also recorded as a duet featuring Ne-Yo's vocals. None of these songs made the album apart from \"Heaven n Earth\", which features as song number eleven on the deluxe edition.\nEster Dean and Dr. Luke also worked on the album, respectively writing and producing the other US lead single \"Rose Colored Glasses\". The song's lyrics portray \"the issues that arise when one plays the fool in a relationship.\" During Rowland's concert series for iHeartRadio, the singer took time out to reflect on the song. She recalled, \"The first time I heard the song it made me think of all of the relationships where I had to wear rose-colored glasses.\" It was also revealed that, during the studio recording session with Dean, she began to cry at the thought of all the \"toxic relationships\" she had been in \"where she needed to leave.\" Later in an interview with \"The Belfast Telegraph\", Rowland said that the song had taken its toll on her. She said \"It brought back a few memories, and when I recorded it I cried so much my vocal chords got swollen.\" Dean also worked alongside Rowland during last minute studio sessions with producer Tricky Stewart, which spawned a female empowerment song called \"I'm Dat Chick\". Although \"Rose Colored Glasses\" was omitted from the US track listing, Dean's song \"I'm Dat Chick\" made the album appearing as the opening song. Written as a \"confidence-boosting\" anthem, \"I'm Dat Chick\" is built around an urban-electro club beat designed to get \"even shy women to come out of their shells\" according to \"Rap-Up\" magazine. Meanwhile, Dean's third contribution, \"Lay It on Me\", features rapper Big Sean and centers on an up-tempo R&B melody with 808s and high NRG-led production. It features a \"tinkling piano\" melody and light R&B beat.\n\"Take Everything\", another song recorded for the album, is one of several songs written by Love and produced by Jim Jonsin and was the first record that Rowland recorded with the duo. Jonsin praised his studio sessions with Rowland, describing the new sound as Donna Summer-esque. During an interview with 103.5 KTU FM, she accidentally revealed she had collaborated with Pitbull, but it was not until August 15, 2010, during an interview with 97.9 The Box FM, that it was revealed that he features on \"Take Everything\". Another song written and produced by the duo is titled \"Motivation\" featuring Lil Wayne. It was released as the album's lead single in April 2011. Speaking of how the record came about, Rowland said \"'Motivation' came about when I was in the studio with [producers] Jim Jonsin and Rico Love, and we kind of were just vibing. I told Rico I wanted something really sexy ... and he came up with 'Motivation' along with Jim. It turned into this amazing record... I played [\u00a0'Motivation' for Lil Wayne\u00a0] and he got on it, and it was just as simple as that.\" The racy lyrics center around Rowland asking her man to use his hands all over her body, and are accompanied by a \"synth-saturated beat\" produced by Jonsin. In terms of instruments, \"Motivation\" uses sparse keyboard notes, programmed beats and pulsing synths in the chorus. Wayne adds a rap verse complementing Rowland's seductive suggestions, using the kitchen and a car as metaphors for sex.\nA press release also revealed she had worked with Salaam Remi, something which Love confirmed when he said he had worked on a song with Remi called \"Love Is the Greatest\" that he hoped would make the album. Of these recordings, only \"Motivation\" made the album appearing as song number three, while its Rebel Rock Remix appears on the deluxe edition as track thirteen. Shondrae 'Bangladesh' Crawford who is best known for producing \"Diva\" and \"Video Phone\" by Rowland's ex-bandmate and close friend Beyonc\u00e9, revealed to \"Rap-Up\" that he had also been in the studio with Rowland. Of the collaborations, Bangladesh said, \"the music that we've done is just hard, it's edgy, but it's still sexy, and it's not raunchy ... What I like to do when I go in with artists, I like to recreate and reinvent 'em, even if they didn't need that.\" Another song recorded for the album was the Brian Kennedy-produced dance song \"On and On\" which was written by Kennedy, Merritt, Rowland and Robert Allen. \"On and On\" was used in episode fifteen of the MTV reality TV series \"The Hills\". Both Bangladesh and Kennedy productions are omitted from the album.\nOther studio sessions took place with Akon, while new writing sessions were planned with season eight \"American Idol\" runner-up Adam Lambert. No songs from either"}, "descending_order": ["16864333", "27097676", "15308310", "4333011", "661110", "17896897", "27745700"], "permutation_1": ["27097676", "4333011", "661110", "27745700", "16864333", "17896897", "15308310"], "permutation_2": ["15308310", "661110", "27745700", "17896897", "4333011", "27097676", "16864333"], "permutation_3": ["15308310", "27097676", "661110", "17896897", "4333011", "27745700", "16864333"]}
{"id": "nq_-1059413729358146363", "docs_added": {"2871832": "Virginia Is for Lovers\nTourism and travel slogan of the U.S. commonwealth of Virginia\n\"Virginia is for Lovers\" is the tourism and travel slogan of the U.S. commonwealth of Virginia. Used since 1969, it has become a well-recognized and often imitated part of American jargon. In 2012, \"Advertising Age\" magazine called \"Virginia is for Lovers\" \"one of the most iconic ad campaigns in the past 50 years.\"\nHistory.\nA team led by David N. Martin and George Woltz of Martin and Woltz Inc. of Richmond, Virginia created the slogan after winning the Virginia State Travel account in 1968. Originally, they had come up with history ads, \"Virginia is for History Lovers\"; beach ads, \"Virginia is for Beach Lovers\"; and mountain ads, \"Virginia is for Mountain Lovers\". This approach was eventually discarded as too limiting, and the qualifiers were dropped. Martin and Woltz Inc. eventually gained prominence and grew to become The Martin Agency. The Martin Agency says that, contrary to some claims, the slogan is not a reference to the United States Supreme Court's 1967 ruling in \"Loving v. Virginia\", which legalized interracial marriage in the United States.\nIn 1969, the Virginia State Travel Service (now the Virginia Tourism Corporation) adopted the \"Virginia is for Lovers\" slogan and the first ad campaign using the tagline appeared in March 1969, in an issue of \"Modern Bride\".\nAccolades.\nIn 2009, \"Virginia is for Lovers\" was inducted into the Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame, a creation of Advertising Week, the largest collection of advertising, marketing and media professionals in North America. These inductees were also included in the Advertising Icon Museum. Also in 2009, \"Virginia is for Lovers\" was acknowledged as one of the top ten tourism marketing campaigns of all time by \"Forbes.com\". \nIn 2016, the Virginia Tourism Corporation began its first-ever LGBTQ+ marketing efforts. It made available the iconic Virginia is for Lovers logo, filling the red heart with a rainbow pride version. Coordinating with statewide Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs), LGBT organizations and Queer-owned businesses, the Virginial.org/lgbt website and corresponding @visitgayva Instagram channel were created, sharing LGBTQ+ and Queer-centric visitor experiences, and linking to LGBT and Ally-owned lodging, events, dining and attractions. Also, the state began it VA State Pride Guide and blog series, and selling pride apparel and gear on the Virginia is for Lovers merchandise website. \nThe slogan began appearing on the state's license plates in 2014 and the state's welcome signs in 2015.\nIn popular culture.\nThe slogan has been mentioned by a variety of artists over the years. In 2005, post-hardcore band Hawthorne Heights alluded to the phrase in the title of their single \"Ohio Is for Lovers\", which would become widely regarded as an anthem of the early 2000\u2019s emo music scene. \"American Idol\" winner Jordin Sparks recorded a song called \"Virginia is for Lovers\" in 2007, which was featured as a bonus track on her self-titled debut album. The slogan is mentioned in The Hold Steady song \"Killer Parties\", and Willie Adler, guitarist for Lamb of God, has the slogan printed on the neck of his custom guitars. The slogan is also mentioned in the Kenny Chesney song \"Get Along\". The slogan is also mentioned in the Fountains of Wayne song \"I-95\", from their 2007 album Traffic and Weather, singing \"They've got most of / the Barney DVDs / and coffee mugs and tees / that say Virginia is for lovers, but it's not.\" Virginia Beach-based rap group Clipse include the slogan in their song \"Virginia,\" from their 2002 album Lord Willin', proclaiming: \"Virginia's for lovers, but trust there's hate here / For out-of-towners, who think they're gon' move weight here.\" Space travel company Rocket Lab launched their first US based space flight in the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) LC-2 launch pad (the first use of that launch pad overall) on Wallops Island, Virginia in 2023. The slogan was referenced by Rocket Lab with the title they gave the launch \"Virginia Is For Launch Lovers\" which used the Rocket Lab developed Electron rocket.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "37353822": "David N. Martin\nDavid N. Martin (April 19, 1930 \u2013 October 2, 2012) was an American advertising executive. In 1965, Martin and his business partner, George Woltz, co-founded The Martin Agency, an advertising agency headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. Martin also created the iconic tourism advertising slogan, \"Virginia is for Lovers\", to market the U.S. state of Virginia as a tourist destination. In 2012, \"Advertising Age\" called \"Virginia is for Lovers\", which was first unveiled in 1969, \"one of the most iconic ad campaigns in the past 50 years.\" The advertising campaign is still used by Virginia as of 2016.\nBiography.\nEarly life.\nMartin was born in Tucson, Arizona, on April 19, 1930. His father, Hawley Phillips Martin, worked as the director of advertising and communications for the Southern States Cooperative and later became the Richmond branch of a Washington D.C. ad agency. He attended Thomas Jefferson High School in Richmond. Martin obtained his bachelor's degree in social science in 1952 from Hampden\u2013Sydney College in Hampden Sydney, Virginia.\nCareer.\nMartin's career after college began as an editorial cartoonist for a newspaper published once a week. He then joined the staff of VanSant Dugdale, an ad agency based in Baltimore, where he drew storyboards and wrote scripts for television commercials. He briefly worked in New York City during his early career, where he worked as a television producer, creating live content for \"The Today Show\" and \"The Tonight Show\" on NBC.\nHe moved back to Richmond, Virginia, in 1956 to take a position with Cargill & Wilson. Martin was promoted to partner and vice president of account services within the company.\nMartin and business partner, George Woltz, founded their ad agency, Martin & Woltz, in 1965. In 1975, Martin and Woltz agreed to divide the firm, which Martin renamed The Martin Agency. His company Martin's until 1986, when The Martin Agency was sold to Scali, McCabe, Sloves. (In turn, Scali, McCabe, Sloves was later acquired by the Interpublic Group of Companies). David Martin retired from The Martin Agency in 1988, two years after selling the ad agency.\nMartin is perhaps best known as the \"brainchild\" behind the famous \"Virginia is for Lovers\" tourism campaign, which was first launched in 1969. He was a member of the team which created the slogan. Martin publicly credited Robin McLaughlin, an advertising copyeditor, with writing the original tagline, \"Virginia is for history lovers.\" Martin approved of McLaughlin's work, but suggested that they omit the word \"history\" from the slogan. The rest of the advertising team agreed with Martin's suggestion, leading to the iconic \"Virginia is for Lovers\" campaign.\nHe remained in advertising after leaving The Martin Agency. He soon opened a new agency, Hawley Martin Partners, with his brother, Stephen H. \"Steve\" Martin. The firm was named for their father. Martin served the agency's creative plans director and chairman, while Steve Martin was the company's president and CEO. Interpublic Group acquired Hawley Martin Partners in 1993. Interpublic merged it with Fahlgren and renamed the new agency, which was based in Atlanta, as Fahlgren Martin. Fahlgren Martin was next purchased by Arnold Worldwide in 1995, which combined it Finnegan & Agee, another acquisition, to create Arnold Finnegan Martin.\nWhile Martin largely retired from advertising in 1995 to pursue writing and painting, he continued to partner with his sons for other ventures. In 1999, Martin co-founded and served as the chairman of Martin Branding Worldwide with his son, Rob Martin. One year later, Martin launched another company, BrandSync, with his younger son, Dave H. Martin, in 2000.\nHe also served as a regional head for Associated Actors and Artistes of America (4As), a performing arts trade union federation.\nMartin died from cancer on October 2, 2012, at the age of 82. He was survived by his wife, Ann Louise; four children - Sarah Martin Herguner, Susan Mitchell, Robert Martin and David Martin; and nine grandchildren.\nRecognitions.\nMartin received many awards and recognitions during his career. The Richmond Ad Club named him \"Advertising Person of the Year\" in 1969, the same year that the \"Virginia is for Lovers\" ad campaign was launched. Virginia Commonwealth University also inducted him into its Mass Communications Hall of Fame in 1987. In 2012, a portrait of Martin by Louis Briel, an artist from Richmond, was added to the collection of the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.\nPainting and writing.\nMartin also pursued writing. He published two books specifically dealing with marketing and branding - \"Romancing the Brand\" and \"Be the Brand: How to Find a Powerful Identity and Use It to Drive Sales.\" He also wrote and released two novels, \"Under a Lemon Moon\" and \"Where the Whores Dance at Midnight.\"\nHe also began painting after working with painter and illustrator Norman Rockwell on an ad campaign for Colonial Williamsburg. Martin painted approximately eighty pieces during his life.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "33626541": "List of city nicknames in Virginia\nThis partial list of city nicknames in Virginia compiles the aliases, sobriquets and slogans that cities in the U.S. state of Virginia are known by (or have been known by historically), officially and unofficially, to municipal governments, local people, outsiders or their tourism boards or chambers of commerce. \nCity nicknames can establish a civic identity, help outsiders recognize a community, attract people to a community because of its nickname, promote civic pride, and build community unity. Nicknames and slogans that successfully create a new community \"ideology or myth\" are also believed to have economic value. This value is difficult to measure, but there are anecdotal reports of cities that have achieved substantial economic benefits by \"branding\" themselves by adopting new slogans.\nSome unofficial nicknames are positive, while others are derisive. The unofficial nicknames listed here have been in use for a long time or have gained wide currency.\n<onlyinclude>\n</onlyinclude>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "896238": "Virginia Slims\nAmerican cigarette brand\nVirginia Slims is an American brand of cigarettes owned by Altria. It is manufactured by Philip Morris USA (in the United States) and Philip Morris International (outside the United States).\nVirginia Slims are narrower ( circumference) than standard cigarettes (hence, \"Slims\"), and are also longer than normal \"king-sized\" cigarettes (which are ). They are sold only in longer lengths, to afford the cigarettes a more \"elegant\" appearance and ostensibly to reduce the amount of smoke that they produce. They are also sold in \"Superslims\", \"Lights\" (now called \"Gold\"), and \"Ultra Lights\" (now called \"Silver\") varieties. All varieties are available in both menthol and non-menthol flavors. The original packaging was designed by Walter Landor and was white with colored stripes running lengthwise along the left side. In 2016, the packaging design was updated to replace the stripes with a more floral, mottled appearance.\nHistory.\nPhilip Morris introduced Virginia Slims on July 22, 1968 and marketed the brand as a female-oriented spinoff of the company's Benson & Hedges brand. The blends, flavorings, color scheme and overall marketing concepts closely followed the Benson & Hedges model. Early packs (1968-1978) read \"Benson and Hedges Park Avenue New York\" near the bottom. \nThe first test market was San Francisco. Originally scheduled for six months, it was cut short after seven weeks because of the success of the introduction. Distribution and marketing was implemented nationwide, and by September 30, 1968, the entire U.S. was covered. Then, in 1976, a full-flavor packing was test-marketed in Fresno, California. Designed to compete with R. J. Reynolds' More brand, the test ultimately failed and the product was withdrawn.\nVirginia Slims Lights were successfully introduced in 1978. Although early marketing concepts depicted soft packs, Philip Morris decided to use a box-pack design only. During the 1970s and early 1980s, Virginia Slims Lights' sales were so significant that competitors began introducing their own slim, female-oriented brands (such as American Tobacco Company's Misty, Brown & Williamson's Capri, Liggett's Eve, and R. J. Reynolds' Dawn). In 1984, Virginia Slims Ovals were test-marketed in Rochester, Birmingham and Las Vegas, but were unsuccessful and withdrawn. Ovals were light and had an oval-shaped cross section.\nIn 1985, Virginia Slims Luxury Lights 120's were introduced - a length packaging intended to better compete with R. J. Reynolds' More brand, as well as other 120's on the market. After successfully test marketing in Portland, Oregon and Nashville, the new style was rolled out nationally. While there was initial concern that 120's might cannibalize customers from other packings (especially Lights), this proved to be unfounded, as the 120's appeared to attract a slightly older demographic. The packing has since become a mainstay of the smoking glamour community. It is arguable as to whether Virginia Slims Luxury Lights 120's are truly \"light,\" as their strength compares closely with that of full-flavor cigarettes.\nIn 1987, Ultra Lights 100's were introduced, in keeping with changing consumer tastes, other competitive entries and the Benson & Hedges model. Marginally successful, this packing remains on the market today.\nIn 1989, Superslims 100's (both menthol and non-menthol) were introduced in response to ultra-thin ( circumference) competition and consumer demand for an \"ultra low-tar\" and \"low-smoke\" product entry. These were also marginally successful, and remain on the market today. \nIn 1993, a 10-pack version of Lights 100's was introduced, with 10 cigarettes per pack, costing approximately half the price of a 20-pack. This entry had limited success and came under attack from critics; it was ultimately withdrawn.\nIn 1994, Virginia Slims Kings ( length) were designed as a discount entry and possibly to compete with other king-size entries such as R. J. Reynolds' Camel brand. It is not clear whether Kings were ever test-marketed, but they were never introduced on a nationwide basis.\nIn 2003, a box pack was introduced for full flavor 100's in response to consumer demand. This packing is steadily displacing the classic soft pack. Also in 2003, the package graphics were slightly altered, changing the colors and striping along the edge.\nIn 2004, Luxury Ultra Lights 120's (both menthol and non-menthol) were introduced with marginal success. It is likely that this packing will continue to be supported.\nIn 2008, Virginia Slims Superslims were introduced in a smaller-sized \"Purse Pack.\"\nIn 2016, the package graphics for all styles were slightly altered, changing the stripes along the edge to a more mottled and floral-like appearance.\nAll packings were simultaneously introduced in both menthol and non-menthol varieties. Unlike with most other brands, menthol represents 40\u201355% of the total sales of Virginia Slims (vs. 25\u201335% for other brands).\nIn all, there have been 11 packings introduced or test marketed in the U.S., of which seven remain on the market. There are other varieties marketed in the Asia-Pacific region (including the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and Vietnam), Russia and South Africa. Virginia Slims has never had a significant European or South American presence.\nMarketing.\nFrom inception, Virginia Slims have been designed and marketed as a female-oriented fashion brand, generally targeted to a younger demographic (18- to 35-year-olds). While various themes emerged in the marketing campaigns over the years, the basic threads have been independence, liberation, slimness, attractiveness, glamour, style, taste and a contrast to men's cigarettes. Thus, Virginia Slims functioned to implement a female-centered marketing strategy, also known as \"femvertising\".\nA report by the Surgeon General of the United States has interpreted these marketing strategies as attempting to link smoking \"to women's freedom, emancipation, and empowerment.\" This report also tied the increase of smoking among teenage girls to rises in sales of Virginia Slims and other \"niche\" brands marketed directly to women.\nIn the 1960s and 1970s, the themes of feminism and women's liberation, with the \"You've Come a Long Way, Baby\" slogan, were often used in advertising for Virginia Slims. These ads often featured anecdotes about women in the early 20th century who were punished for smoking, usually by their husbands or other men, as compared to the present day when women had equal rights such as the right to vote. Later campaigns have used the slogan \"It's a Woman Thing\" in the 1990s and \"Find Your Voice\" in the 2000s.\nTelevision and print ads often featured well-known models and designer fashions. Print ads were generally placed in women's magazines, and formed the mainstay of the marketing campaign, supplemented with billboards and point-of-purchase displays. From 1969 until cigarette advertising on television was prohibited in 1971, television advertising was an important component. The commercials would begin with actors in period costumes reenacting the early 20th century anecdotes in comedic fashion, followed by a glamorous modern-day model smoking the product while dressed in the latest fashions, accompanied by \"You've Come a Long Way, Baby,\" an up-tempo, catchy pop-rock jingle:\n<poem>You've come a long way, baby\nTo get where you've got to today\nYou've got your own cigarette now, baby\nYou've come a long, long way\n</poem>\nOn January 1, 1971 at 11:59 p.m, an ad for Virginia Slims was aired during \"The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson\" that became notable as the final cigarette advertisement to air on television before the implementation of the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act, which prohibited the radio and television advertising of all cigarettes in the United States.\nSeveral other, less important, marketing vehicles were employed, such as the Virginia Slims Book of Days (a day timer/calendar book), fashion shows and an extensive line of products, apparel and accessories.\nThe \"Find Your Voice\" ad campaign was criticized as offensive to those who have lost their voices to throat cancer from smoking, especially in light of the well-publicized laryngectomy of Janet Sackman, a former model for another cigarette brand who developed throat and lung cancer. The campaign was an attempt to associate the brand with themes of empowerment, independence, women's rights and sexual allure. The campaign was also criticized for targeting minority women. The campaign was also criticized for the slogan \"NEVER let the goody two shoes get you down,\" which uses reactance to promote product use. It has also been suggested that it urges smokers to disregard health warnings. The campaign also featured a model using a throat-touching gesture, which echoes earlier ads that made more explicit claims of voice box benefits.\nThe Leo Burnett advertising agency handled the Virginia Slims account throughout most of the product lifetime.\nMarket share.\nFrom its inception until 1978, Virginia Slims saw a steady increase in market share to 1.75% (3.9% of all female smokers). With the introduction of Lights in 1978, the market share increased to 2.5%. Other packings, including 120's, Ultra Lights, and Superslims helped push the market share to a peak of 3.1% (nearly 7% of female smokers) in 1989. With increased competition from other brands, notably Capri and Misty, the brand lost ground but stabilized at around 2.4% though 2003. Since then, it has lost about 0.1% per year, and was 2.0% in 2007 and 1.8% in 2009. This slow but steady decline is expected to continue, since the brand is no longer heavily promoted. Despite this, brand loyalty is well above average, and is still one of the highest in the industry.\nMarkets.\nVirginia Slims are mainly sold in the United States, but also were or still are sold in the British Virgin Islands, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, France, Switzerland, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, Cyprus, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and Australia.\nSponsorship.\nWomen's tennis.\nVirginia Slims sponsored the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) Tour from 1971 to 1978 and again from 1983 to 1994. This sponsorship is sometimes credited for the growth and success of women's tennis during the 1970s and early 1980s.\nVirginia Slims also sponsored the Virginia Slims Circuit, a tennis tour consisting of a group of originally nine female professional players. Formed in 1970, the Virginia Slims Circuit eventually became the basis for the later WTA Tour. The players, dubbed the Original 9, rebelled against the United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA) because of the wide inequality between the prize money paid to male and female tennis players.\nMagazine publisher and former tennis pro Gladys Heldman, with the assistance of Joe Cullman of Philip Morris, paid $5,000 out of her own pocket to allow the \"Original 9\" to sign token $1 contracts and set up their own tour of eight professional tournaments in 1970, sponsored by Virginia Slims. This independent women's professional tennis circuit provided more prize money than had been provided previously by the USLTA and other organizations. Despite the USLTA's suspension of the \"Original 9\" from its tournaments, by the end of the year, the Virginia Slims Circuit was able to boost its numbers from nine to 40 members, which helped pave the way for the first full year season of the circuit in 1971. In the aftermath of the creation of the WTA in 1973, the Virginia Slims Circuit would eventually absorb the ILTF's Women's Grand Prix circuit and become the WTA Tour.\nIn popular culture.\nMusic.\n\"You've Come a Long Way, Baby\" is the name of the second album of the electronic musician Fatboy Slim, released in 1998. The Black Lips' song \"Dog Years\" references Virginia Slims Ultra Lights. Greyson Chance references Virginia Slims as his mother's favorite brand and mentions it multiple times on his 'Portraits' album.\nOutkast\u2019s \u201cElevators (Me and You)\u201d makes specific references to the cigarette and its famous tag line in the last verse, when Andr\u00e9 3000 raps, \u201c Yes, we done come a long way like them slim-ass cigarettes. From Virginia...\u201d\nSinger Britney Spears admits in her book \u201cThe Woman in Me\u201d that this is the brand of cigarettes she usually smokes. In chapter 4 of the book she says: \"My mom was a typical young Southern mom, often gossiping, always smoking cigarettes with her friends at the bar (she smoked Virginia Slims, the same cigarettes I smoke now) or talking with them on the phone.\"\nTelevision.\nEpisode 66 of the animated television show \"Duckman\" is titled \"You've Come a Wrong Way, Baby\" and its plot involves the tobacco industry.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4753490": "Bristol Virginia-Tennessee Slogan Sign\nThe Bristol Virginia-Tennessee Slogan Sign is a landmark in the twin cities of Bristol, Virginia and Bristol, Tennessee, United States. The sign is positioned over State Street, a roadway along the border separating the two states. Although the landmark is technically located in both Tennessee and Virginia, the National Register considers the location as Tennessee.\nHistory.\nIn 1901, the center of Main Street was officially designated as the state line separating Tennessee and Virginia by the United States Congress. The street has since been renamed State Street.\nAccording to the Bristol Historical Association's booklet \"The Historical Bristol Sign\", the Bristol Gas and Electric Company donated and erected the sign atop a hardware store in 1910 to advertise the city. The sign originally contained the lighted slogan \"PUSH! - THAT'S BRISTOL\" referring to the hopes of continued growth and future prosperity for the two cities. In 1915, the sign was moved to its current location. In 1921, a contest was held in order to select a new slogan. The winning slogan, \"A GOOD PLACE TO LIVE\", has remained the slogan ever since. The sign is featured at the beginning of a 2016 commercial for GEICO insurance.\nIt was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.\nTechnical details.\nThe lighted sign currently contains 1,332 light bulbs.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "33626577": "List of city nicknames in West Virginia\nThis partial list of city nicknames in West Virginia compiles the aliases, sobriquets and slogans that cities in West Virginia are known by (or have been known by historically), officially and unofficially, to municipal governments, local people, outsiders or their tourism boards or chambers of commerce. City nicknames can help in establishing a civic identity, helping outsiders recognize a community or attracting people to a community because of its nickname; promote civic pride; and build community unity. Nicknames and slogans that successfully create a new community \"ideology or myth\" are also believed to have economic value. Their economic value is difficult to measure, but there are anecdotal reports of cities that have achieved substantial economic benefits by \"branding\" themselves by adopting new slogans.\nSome unofficial nicknames are positive, while others are derisive. The unofficial nicknames listed here have been in use for a long time or have gained wide currency.\n<onlyinclude>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "34596483": "The Martin Agency\nAdvertising agency based in Richmond, Virginia\nThe Martin Agency is one of the top American creative advertising agencies. A holding of the Interpublic Group of Companies, Martin is long-known for helping brands \"impact culture\" in the United States and internationally. The company's chief executive officer is Danny Robinson and its chief creative officer is Jerry Hoak.\nHistory.\nThe Martin Agency was founded as Martin & Woltz in Richmond, Virginia in 1965 by David N. Martin and George Woltz. \nThe development of the \"Virginia is for Lovers\" tagline, one of the most recognized taglines in the tourism industry and beyond, launched the trajectory of the agency. Written in 1969 by copywriter Robin McLaughlin, the slogan entered the Madison Avenue Walk of Fame in 2009.\nMartin and Woltz divided the firm in 1975 and Martin renamed the company The Martin Agency.\nIn 1986, Scali, McCabe, Sloves purchased a majority interest in The Martin Agency. Scali, McCabe, Sloves was acquired by Lowe Group in 1993. The Interpublic Group of Companies (IPG) bought controlling interest in The Martin Agency in 1994. The Martin Agency was previously under McCann Worldgroup and is currently part of the MullenLowe network at IPG.\nThe agency\u2019s current client roster (as of February 2024) includes GEICO (since 1995), OREO, Bud Light Seltzer, UPS, Google, Gold Bond, Hanes, Papa Johns, Unilever\u2019s AXE brand, RITZ, DoorDash, CarMax, Hanes, TIAA, Royal Caribbean, Gap Inc.\u2019s Old Navy, Sanofi, ScottsMiracle-Gro, Virginia Tourism, Busch Light, Nerf, Clue, Santander, Donate Life America (pro-bono), Skrewball Peanut Butter Whiskey, Timberland PRO, UScellular, and others. \nThe Martin Agency and GEICO are credited with pioneering a new way of advertising in the insurance category in the early 1990s, spawning a list of imitators in the category.\nPrevious agency clients include: Walmart, Buffalo Wild Wings, Discover, NASCAR, Mercedes-Benz, Pizza Hut, Saab, Wrangler, CarFax, Subway, The Learning Channel, the American Cancer Society and others. \nIn 2009, \"Adweek\" named The Martin Agency as its \"U.S. Agency of the Year.\"\nIn 2020, \"Adweek\" again named The Martin Agency as its \"U.S. Agency of the Year.\". Danny Robinson became the Agency's Chief Creative Officer in this year as well.\nIn 2021, \"Adweek\" named The Martin Agency as its \"U.S. Agency of the Year,\" only the third agency to win the honor in back-to-back years. \"Ad Age\" named The Martin Agency #8 on its annual A-List.\nIn 2023, \"Ad Age\" named The Martin Agency as its \"Agency of the Year.\"\nCoinbase Super Bowl ad controversy.\nIn February 2022, former Martin Agency CEO Kristen Cavallo criticized Coinbase CEO Brian Robinson for not acknowledging the role that agencies had played in the creation of its Super Bowl ad.\nThe incident prompted a wider dialogue within the industry about how agencies are treated.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "964985": "List of city nicknames in the United States\nThis partial list of city nicknames in the United States compiles the aliases, sobriquets and slogans that cities are known by (or have been known by historically), officially and unofficially, to municipal governments, local people, outsiders or their tourism boards or chambers of commerce.\nCity nicknames can help establish a civic identity, help outsiders recognize a community, attract people to a community because of its nickname, promote civic pride, and build community unity. Nicknames and slogans that successfully create a new community \"ideology or myth\" are also believed to have economic value. This value is difficult to measure, but there are anecdotal reports of cities that have achieved substantial economic benefits by \"branding\" themselves by adopting new slogans.\nIn 2005 the consultancy Tagline Guru conducted a small survey of professionals in the fields of branding, marketing, and advertising aimed at identifying the \"best\" U.S. city slogans and nicknames. Participants were asked to evaluate about 800 nicknames and 400 slogans, considering several criteria in their assessments. The assigned criteria were: whether the nickname or slogan expresses the \"brand character, affinity, style, and personality\" of the city, whether it \"tells a story in a clever, fun, and memorable way,\" uniqueness and originality, and whether it \"inspires you to visit there, live there, or learn more.\"\nThe top-ranked nickname in the survey was New York City's \"The Big Apple,\" followed by \"Sin City\" (Las Vegas), \"The Big Easy\" (New Orleans), \"Motor City\" (Detroit), and \"The Windy City\" (Chicago). In addition to the number-two nickname, Las Vegas had the top-rated slogan: \"What Happens Here, Stays Here.\" The second- through fifth-place slogans were \"So Very Virginia\" (Charlottesville, Virginia), \"Always Turned On\" (Atlantic City, New Jersey), \"Cleveland Rocks!\" (Cleveland, Ohio), and \"The Sweetest Place on Earth\" (Hershey, Pennsylvania).\nSome unofficial nicknames are positive, while others are derisive. The unofficial nicknames listed here have been in use for a long time or have gained wide currency.\n<templatestyles src = \"Nonumtoc/styles.css\" /><templatestyles src=\"TOC limit/styles.css\" /><templatestyles src=\"Horizontal TOC/styles.css\" /><templatestyles src=\"Hlist/styles.css\"/>\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nSee also.\nGeneral:\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n<templatestyles src=\"Dmbox/styles.css\" />\nThis article includes . <br> If an [ internal link] incorrectly led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.", "91239": "Virginia Beach, Virginia\nLargest city in Virginia, United States\nVirginia Beach (colloquially VB) is the most populous city in the U.S. commonwealth of Virginia. The population was 459,470 at the 2020 census. Located on the southeastern coast of Virginia, it is the sixth-most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic and the 42nd-most populous city in the U.S. Located on the Atlantic Ocean at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, Virginia Beach is a principal city in the Hampton Roads metropolitan area which has more than 1.8 million inhabitants and is the 37th-largest metropolitan area in the U.S.\nVirginia Beach is a resort city with miles of beaches and hundreds of hotels, motels, and restaurants along its oceanfront. Near the point where the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean meet, Cape Henry was the site of the first landing of the English colonists who eventually settled in Jamestown; modern Virginia Beach was established in 1906. It is home to several state parks, protected beaches, and military bases. Virginia Wesleyan University, Regent University, Christian Broadcasting Network, the U.S. headquarters of Stihl, and the Association for Research and Enlightenment are based in Virginia Beach. It also hosts the annual East Coast Surfing Championships and Neptune Festival.\nThe city is listed in the \"Guinness Book of Records\" as having the longest pleasure beach in the world. It is located at the southern end of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, which was the world's longest bridge-tunnel complex until the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge opened in 2018.\nHistory.\nThe Chesepian were the historic indigenous people of the area now known as Tidewater in Virginia at the time of European encounter. Little is known about them but archeological evidence suggests they may have been related to the Carolina Algonquian, or Pamlico people. They would have spoken one of the Algonquian languages. These were common among the numerous tribes of the coastal area, who made up the loose Powhatan Confederacy, numbering in the tens of thousands in population. The Chesepian occupied an area which is now defined as the independent cities of Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake, and Virginia Beach.\nIn 1607, after a voyage of 144 days, three ships headed by Captain Christopher Newport, and carrying 105 men and boys, made their first landfall in the New World on the mainland, where the southern mouth of the Chesapeake Bay meets the Atlantic Ocean. They named it Cape Henry, after Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, the eldest son of King James I of England. These English colonists of the Virginia Company of London moved on from this area, as they were under orders to seek a site further inland, which would be more sheltered from ships of competing European countries. They created their first permanent settlement on the north side of the James River at Jamestown.\nAdam Thoroughgood (1604\u20131640) of King's Lynn, Norfolk, England is one of the earliest Englishmen to settle in this area, which was developed as Virginia Beach. At the age of 18, he had contracted as an indentured servant to pay for passage to the Virginia Colony in the hopes of bettering his life. He earned his freedom after several years and became a leading citizen of the area. In 1629, he was elected to the House of Burgesses for Elizabeth Cittie [\"sic\"], one of four \"cities\" (or incorporations) which were subdivided areas established in 1619.\nIn 1634, the Colony was divided"}, "descending_order": ["2871832", "37353822", "33626541", "896238", "4753490", "33626577", "34596483", "964985", "91239"], "permutation_1": ["33626541", "91239", "4753490", "37353822", "33626577", "896238", "2871832", "964985", "34596483"], "permutation_2": ["964985", "33626577", "34596483", "2871832", "37353822", "896238", "91239", "4753490", "33626541"], "permutation_3": ["33626541", "37353822", "33626577", "2871832", "34596483", "91239", "896238", "964985", "4753490"]}
{"id": "nq_4784641874222624232", "docs_added": {"35716992": "The Last Song I'll Write for You\n\"The Last Song I'll Write for You\" is a song recorded by \"American Idol\" season 7 winner and singer-songwriter David Cook. It was released independently as a single through Cook's imprint Analog Heart Music on May 4, 2012, following his departure from RCA Records.\nContent.\n\"The Last Song I'll Write for You\" is a mid-tempo rock ballad that draws on elements of both pop rock and alternative rock. Kevin Rutherford of \"Billboard\" described the song's style as \"adult alternative.\" Its lyrics describe a breakup and moving on from a relationship that is no longer healthy, which, given the timing of its release, has led critics to speculate that the song refers to Cook's split from his record label. Cook, however, has dismissed this theory, explaining to Yahoo! Music that the ballad was inspired by \"an ex from long, long, long ago.\"\nBackground and release.\n\"The Last Song I'll Write for You\" was written by Cook, Andy Skib, and Daniel James, and was produced by John Fields. It was released to digital retailers on May 4, 2012 before Cook premiered the song on the May 10, 2012 episode of the eleventh season of \"American Idol\".\nReception.\nCommercial performance.\nThe single sold 15,000 copies in its first week of release, debuting and peaking at number 45 on the \"Billboard\" Pop Digital Songs chart.\nCritical reception.\nGrady Smith of \"Entertainment Weekly\" says \"the slow-burn hook on this self-released breakup ballad is earnestly catchy.\"\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "4470696": "I'll Stand by You\n1994 single by the Pretenders\n\"I'll Stand by You\" is a song recorded by English-American rock band the Pretenders from their sixth studio album, \"Last of the Independents\" (1994). The song was written by Chrissie Hynde and the songwriting team of Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg, and produced by Ian Stanley. The song is a ballad in which the singer pledges love and faithful assistance to a loved one in times of personal darkness.\nReleased on April 11, 1994, \"I'll Stand by You\" reached the top 20 in several countries, including Australia, Belgium, Canada, Iceland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The accompanying music video was directed by London-based director Zanna, featuring Hynde taking care of an ill man in a hut. \"I'll Stand by You\" also became a major hit for British girl group Girls Aloud in late 2004 and American country singer Carrie Underwood in early 2007, both times recorded as a charity single. Colombian singer Shakira performed the song for the live charity telethon \"Hope for Haiti Now\" in early 2010; her cover version was released on the charity benefit album, which was also entitled \"Hope for Haiti Now\".\nRelease and commercial reception.\n\"I'll Stand by You\" was released as the second single from the album \"Last of the Independents\" (1994), and it reached number 16 on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100, number 21 on \"Billboard\"'s Modern Rock Tracks chart, and number 10 in the United Kingdom. It charted higher in the UK and the US than \"Night in My Veins\", the album's first single. The music video for \"I'll Stand by You\" was released in 1994 and features Chrissie Hynde caring for an ill man. On the long-running BBC program Songwriters Circle, Hynde mentions her embarrassment at having set out to write a \"hit.\" She goes on to say that she felt better about the song after Noel Gallagher said \"he wished he'd written it.\". Since 2010 the song has been used in an appeal advert for the NSPCC, and also the Girls Aloud version was used in an advert for Aptamil follow-on milk.\nCritical reception.\nLarry Flick from \"Billboard\" wrote that Chrissie Hynde \"returns with a worn, but warm vocal that evokes a powerful, moving presence.\" Steve Baltin from \"Cashbox\" felt that \"from the opening note, this song oozes \"nice\". Hard to believe this is the same Chrissie Hynde who, in the song \"Precious\", once told the world to \"fuck off\". Fourteen years ago, what drew people to her was the conviction she sang with. Though this song has a decidedly different tone, the feeling is as strong as ever. In addition, Hynde's singing has grown to where she can wail with the best of them, as she does here against a backdrop that increases perfectly with the rising emotion in her voice.\" Ken Tucker from \"Entertainment Weekly\" stated that the singer \"matches form with content again and again\" on the album, noting that she is \"pledging solemn faithfulness to a loved one on the somber anthem\". Irish \"Evening Herald\" opined that the song \"showcases an updated Pretenders' sound.\" Linda Ryan from the \"Gavin Report\" declared it one of the album's \"beautiful, heart-stopping ballads\", adding that it \"will be a monster hit in a variety of formats.\" Caroline Sullivan from \"The Guardian\" remarked its \"simple vow\".\nChuck Campbell from \"Knoxville News Sentinel\" viewed it as \"straightforward and endearing\". In his weekly UK chart commentary, James Masterton wrote, \"Stand by to have your heartstrings tugged.\" He explained that it is \"a gorgeous ballad of the kind Ms Hynde can churn out easily if she puts her mind to it. A potential classic to rival \"2000 Miles\" and the ode to motherhood that was their last chart hit, the track may well rise further.\" Caren Myers from \"Melody Maker\" deemed it \"an unsurprising single which works better as a humble track\", while Paul Mathur called it the \"worst track\" of the album. Pan-European magazine \"Music & Media\" named it \"this spring's biggest ballad\", adding, \"Such symmetry between big time sensuality, kitsch, pathos and wall of sound!\" Alan Jones from \"Music Week\" gave it four out of five and named it Pick of the Week, writing, \"Unlike Pretenders' hits of the past it is slightly formulaic but it nonetheless a seductively swaying rock anthem.\" A reviewer from \"People Magazine\" felt it's the \"weakest track\" of the album, describing it as \"an anthem of blind support.\" \"Sandwell Evening Mail\" viewed it as \"excellent\". Paul Evans from \"Rolling Stone\" stated that Hynde \"nails devotion\" on the song, \"and like any master, makes it all seem easy.\" Roy Wilkinson from \"Select\" wrote that it \"may have a lighter-wielding tendency that should keep a few OPEC members smiling\".\nMusic video.\nA music video was produced to promote the single, directed by London-based director Zanna. It takes place in an old wooden hut, featuring Hynde singing the song towards a man who is in a worried state. Throughout the video, Hynde tries to comfort and take care of him. When he arrives in the beginning, she greets him and knocks over a glass of milk before singing in his direction. It is unclear whether the man hears her or is even aware of her presence. The man, obviously worried, holds a bullet in his hand. He also looks into a map. Other times he plays with a coin or a card deck. Hynde tries to comfort him. She holds her arms around him, and also mends his clothes with needle and sewing thread. She helps him with tools when he tries to fix a machine. Later after struggling with awakening him, she carries the ill man to a bath tub, where she washes and nurses him. In the end, the man, now fully dressed again, leaves the hut, while Hynde watches him. On the table lies an ace card with a knife stuck through it. Zanna also previously directed the video for the band's previous single, \"Night in My Veins\".\nLegacy.\n\"Idolator\" included \"I'll Stand by You\" in their ranking of \"The 50 Best Pop Singles of 1994\" in 2014. An editor, Jonathan Riggs, said, \"Regardless of how representative of Hynde's oeuvre with the Pretenders it really was, \"I'll Stand By You\" continues to resonate decades later.\"\nPersonnel.\nAdditional musicians\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nGirls Aloud versions.\nIn 2004, British-Irish all-female pop group Girls Aloud recorded a cover of \"I'll Stand by You\" as the official charity single for the 2004 Children in Need fundraising campaign. Their version was produced by Brian Higgins and his production team Xenomania. The track was announced a single just ten days before its November 15, 2004, release. It became Girls Aloud's second number one on the UK Singles Chart, spending two weeks at the top position and receiving a silver certification from the British Phonographic Industry. The song appears on Girls Aloud's second studio album \"What Will the Neighbours Say?\" (2004).\nThe music video, directed by Trudy Bellinger, saw Girls Aloud stranded in a desert as they \"stand by\" each other. \"I'll Stand by You\" was promoted through various live appearances and has since been performed on a number of the group's concert tours. Despite its success, Girls Aloud's cover of the song was largely panned by contemporary music critics.\nA new version of the song, I'll Stand By You (Sarah's Version), was released on the 20th anniversary of its original release on November 15, 2024. This version features lead vocals from Sarah Harding in tribute to the singer who died in 2021. It will once again raise money for Children in Need 2024.\nBackground and release.\nThe first version of \"I'll Stand by You\" that Xenomania created was described as a \"weird, modernist breakbeat version\", which was scrapped upon deciding an updated version of the original song would be better suited for Children in Need. The track's release was announced a single just ten days before its release date. Nicola Roberts said, \"Hopefully if our single does well it's a lot of money going to the charity.\"\nThe single was released on November 15, 2004, in the UK, the week of the Children in Need 2004 telethon. It was available on two different CD singles. The first disc includes \"Real Life\", a song taken from Girls Aloud's second album \"What Will the Neighbours Say?\". The second CD format featured a medley of songs taken from the album, as well as the Tony Lamezma's Club Romp remix of the track. The Gravitas Vocal Dub Mix Edit of \"I'll Stand by You\" appears on the \"Wake Me Up\" single.\nIn order to promote the release, Girls Aloud toured radio stations across the United Kingdom and performed an acoustic arrangement of \"I'll Stand by You\" that they arranged themselves. They also visited children's hospitals.\nCritical reception.\nGirls Aloud's version of \"I'll Stand By You\" was largely panned by music critics. It was called \"a particular soggy area\" on Girls Aloud's album. Alexis Petridis of \"The Guardian\", who praised Girls Aloud's album, said that \"I'll Stand by You\" was \"a thing of death-dealing tedium.\" BBC Music felt it was \"arguable whether this cover adds much to the Pretenders' original.\" Sam Shepherd of musicOMH bluntly stated \"perhaps the children most in need, are those that part with their pocket money for this drivel [...] This is a sub-karaoke version, limp, tired, and uninspired.\"\nHowever, Stylus Magazine actually commended the song, comparing it to Shakespears Sister and calling it \"far, far better than anyone gives it credit for.\"\nChart performance.\n\"I'll Stand by You\" debuted at number one on the UK Singles Chart on November 21, 2004, becoming Girls Aloud's second single to do so. Despite competition from four new top ten entries, the song also remained at the top for a second week. It slipped to number four in its third week, making way for Band Aid 20's take on \"Do They Know It's Christmas?\". Girls Aloud spent a fourth week in the top five. The single spent two further weeks in the top ten, holding on at number nine. Overall, \"I'll Stand by You\" spent fourteen weeks in the top 75, including nine weeks in the top forty. The single was ranked thirty-fourth on the year-end chart (see 2004 in British music). It was certified silver by the British Phonographic Industry. Following Sarah Harding's death in September 2021, the song had a resurgence in popularity with a surge of 1068%.\nThe song entered the Irish Singles Chart at number four. It spent a second week at number four, before rising to number three. It spent three more consecutive weeks at number three. It then slipped back down to number four, and spent two more weeks in the top five.\nMusic video.\nThe video for Girls Aloud's version of \"I'll Stand by You\" was directed by Trudy Bellinger. It begins with each member of the group lying or sitting motionless in a parched desert. At the song's climax, a thunderstorm begins, and the members of Girls Aloud come together and stand in a circle. A special \"Children in Need\" version of the video depicts the group members holding \"Pudsey\" teddy bears, the mascot of the organisation, towards the end of the video.\nLive performances.\nGirls Aloud toured radio stations across the United Kingdom and performed an acoustic arrangement of \"I'll Stand by You\" that they arranged themselves. As the charity's official single of the year, the song was showcased as the Children in Need 2004 telethon. They also performed the song on television programmes such as \"Blue Peter\", \"\", \"Countdown\", \"Diggin' It\", \"GMTV\", \"Ministry of Mayhem\", \"Popbusters\", \"Top of the Pops\", and \"Xchange\". In 2005, Girls Aloud performed \"I'll Stand by You\" at Dublin's ChildLine Concert and on the TV show \"All Time Greatest Love Songs\". In 2006, they performed the song on Australia's \"Sunrise\". The group also performed the cover version on their 2005 MTV special (as seen on the \"Girls on Film\" DVD) and ITV1's \"The Girls Aloud Party\" (2008).\n\"I'll Stand by You\" has been performed by Girls Aloud on most of their concert tours. For 2005's What Will the Neighbours Say...? Tour, Girls Aloud's first tour, they sang the song in colorful, simple evening gowns. It was also included on 2006's and 2007's The Greatest Hits Tour. \"I'll Stand by You\" was included on a ballad section on 2008's Tangled Up Tour, in which Girls Aloud walk along a catwalk which reaches the middle of the crowd.\nTrack listings and formats.\nThese are the formats and track listings of major single releases of \"I'll Stand by You\".\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCarrie Underwood version.\n\"I'll Stand by You\" was covered in 2007 by Carrie Underwood as a charity single, recorded for the \"American Idol\" special, \"Idol Gives Back\" which aired on April 25, 2007.\nCarrie Underwood performed the song during her visit to Africa. The song was used as the soundtrack for a video vignette where Underwood is seen singing to children and doing various activities with them. The single and the video were released on the U.S. iTunes Store on April 26, 2007. Ryan Seacrest announced that all money made on digital downloads would be donated to charity to help millions of poor children at the time.\nOn its first few days of release, the song sold 124,496 digital downloads, prompting a debut on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot 100 at number six, Underwood's highest Hot 100 position since her 2005 debut single \"Inside Your Heaven\", which debuted at number one.\nIt was eventually removed from iTunes, leading the single to have one of the biggest falls in Hot 100 history. The single collected over 300,000 digital downloads in the time it was available for download. As announced, all profits from the sale of the single were donated to charity. The single also received unsolicited airplay on U.S. country music radio stations, despite not being officially released to country radio.\nDuring one of the elimination episodes of \"American Idol\" Season 6, the song was used as the send-off song for contestant Phil Stacey (the first of two eliminated contestants that week) instead of Daughtry's \"Home,\" the show's main send-off song that season. Underwood performed the song during the Idol Finale on May 23, 2007.\nMusic video.\nThe music video was filmed in Africa. Underwood is seen singing to young children and helping them with different art projects, such as painting. At one point in the video, she is seen walking into a cemetery with a girl in her arms, and a boy by her hand who is carrying flowers. Underwood is also seen crying towards the end of the video when she is helping an ill person. This music video was made available for download on the U.S. iTunes Store.\nShakira version.\nColombian singer Shakira covered \"I'll Stand by You\" in 2010 as a promotional charity single for the Hope for Haiti Now campaign and was released on January 23, 2010, in the wake of the devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake. Recorded live on the charity telethon \"\" on January 22, 2010, in New York City. She performed the song during the program, exactly before Wyclef Jean's speech and after Reese Witherspoon's call on the phone bank. The song is found on the charity benefit album, \"Hope for Haiti Now\".\nTrack listing.\nAlbum version\nOther notable covers.\nFor BBC Children in Need in 2014, 1,685 children sang the song live in unison live from 10 towns across the UK. The choirs performed the song and starting in the studio it cut between the choirs, in real time, giving each choir about 15\u201320 seconds on air. The choirs sang from: Elstree at Elstree Studios the studio just outside London where the main telethon was held, Bradford at Bradford College, Norwich at The Millennium Library in The Forum, Newport at The Newport Centre, Birmingham at Think Tank, Belfast at BBC Blackstaff House, Plymouth at Plymouth Life Centre, Blackpool at The Blackpool Tower Circus, Chatham at Chatham Historic Dockyard and Glasgow at BBC Pacific Quay\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "76405549": "\u00daltima (song)\n2024 song by Shakira\n\"\u00daltima\" () is a Latin pop song by Colombian singer-songwriter Shakira. The song was released on 22 March 2024 as a part of Shakira's twelfth studio album \"Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran\".\nBackground and release.\n\"\u00daltima\" was initially announced on 29 February 2024, when Shakira shared the tracklist of her twelfth studio album \"Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran\" on her social media accounts. The song is one of the two piano ballads on the album, the other one being \"Acr\u00f3stico\", and the last song she wrote for the album. Shakira shared that creating the album was an \"alchemical process\" and that she \"rebuilt herself\" writing each song: \"As I sang them, my tears were transformed into diamonds and my vulnerability into resilience\".\n\"\u00daltima\" is written about Shakira's ex-partner Gerard Piqu\u00e9, who she was in a relationship with for 11 years and who she separated from following his infidelity. Lyrically the song is a heartfelt ballad in which she bids a final farewell to the retired soccer player. She said in an interview that she hopes it's the last song she'll write about him. Before creating the song she felt that she had to create it: \"I have to spit it out or I won't be able to do it, you know, \u00a0I'll choke\". Being able to finish the song was \"a great relief\" for her.\nOn 19 March, Shakira posted a preview of the song on her social media accounts. Based on the preview, Judith del Rio from \"La Vanguardia\" called the song \"the final farewell to her great love\". \"Europa FM\" emphasized how in the song Shakira \"shows that all the pain that [Piqu\u00e9] has caused her is definitively behind her\".\nDuring an interview with Zane Lowe on \"Apple Music 1\", Shakira discussed why \"\u00daltima\" will be the last song she writes about Piqu\u00e9: despite pressure from her record label to finish her album \"Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran\", Shakira insisted on including the song and ultimately recorded and mixed it in one afternoon. When she shared the song with Sony Latin, the head of marketing cried, leading Shakira to reflect that the song is not just about her, and how music can have a universal connection and emotional impact on people.\nReception.\nPablo Gil from \"El Mundo\" described the song as a \"piano ballad with a soap opera echo\", adding that it's perhaps the most 'morbid' song on the album. Thania Garcia from \"Variety\" depicted how the 'confessional' \"\u00daltima\" is one of the two \"most vulnerable songs\" on the album alongside \"Acr\u00f3stico\". Lucas Villa from \"NME\" emphasized that \"Shakira is one of Latin music\u2019s most prolific and poetic songwriters, and she offers the most insight into her breakup with Piqu\u00e9 on the heartbreaking ballad\", outlining how she \"sounds like she\u2019s on the verge of tears as she reflects on what went wrong\" on the song.\nOn 23 June 2024, \"Rolling Stone\" included \"\u00daltima\" on their list of great songs of 2024 by Spanish-speaking artists that far.\nMusic video.\nOn 30 March 2024, Shakira was seen filming the music video for \"\u00daltima\" in the New York City Subway at nighttime. Wearing a black coat, she was shivering in the cold wind yet appeared dedicated to her work. The music video, co-directed by Shakira and Jaume de la Iguana, was released on 22 March 2025, a year after the album's release.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "23892988": "I'll Try Anything\n\"I'll Try Anything\" is a 1967 single by Dusty Springfield which reached the UK Top 20 and the US Top 40.\"I'll Try Anything\" was co-written by Mark Barkan and Vic [aka Victor] Millrose.\nIn the US \"I'll Try Anything\" peaked at #40 in April 1967 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 \u2013 with peaks in \"Cashbox\" and \"Record World\" of respectively #29 and #34 \u2013 making it the sixth of Springfield's ten US Top 40 solo hits.\n\"I'll Try Anything\" reached #38 in Australia and #19 in Canada. The track had its strongest chart impact in Singapore with a #6 peak in June 1967.\nBackground.\nBarkan had written the hits \"I'm Gonna Be Warm This Winter\" for Connie Francis and \"I Don't Wanna Be a Loser\" for Lesley Gore, while Millrose had written the Gene Pitney hit \"Last Chance to Turn Around\" and would later write \"This Girl Is a Woman Now\" for Gary Puckett & the Union Gap. Barkan, intending to write a song for Dusty Springfield, had already written the chorus for \"I'll Try Anything\" when Millrose came on board to co-write the verses. Springfield visited Barkan's residence to hear the song which Barkan sang to her while playing the piano, and although Springfield reacted favorably to the song she still wanted to hear a demo, and Barkan obliged by prepping a demo with Ellie Greenwich as vocalist.\nSpringfield began recording \"I'll Try Anything\" in a December 1966 session at the CBS Recording Studios (NYC) produced by Herb Bernstein: Barkan, who was present, recalls that the session lasted for nine hours with the first eight spent on Springfield recording another song: \"The Morning After the Night Before\", and the last hour spent on her recording \"I'll Try Anything\". On 22 January 1967 Springfield and Bernstein had another session at CBS Recording Studios which yielded a completed master of \"I'll Try Anything\": however Springfield elected to have the master's rhythm track extracted and used as the basis for a new recording of the song made at the Philips Studios in Stanhope Place in a 29 January 1967 session.\nSince making her solo debut in 1963 with the upbeat \"I Only Want to Be With You\" Springfield had subsequently shifted her musical focus to a softer sound as exemplified by her 1966 career record \"You Don't Have to Say You Love Me\". \"I'll Try Anything\" was largely a return to Springfield's original upbeat sound and might have been a more substantial hit for her somewhat earlier. \"Billboard\" described the song as a change of pace for Springfield and a \"strong rocker served up in the best emotional Springfield manner.\" However, by 1967 the track had a markedly out-of-date sound and in its UK release peaked at #13 breaking a Top Ten streak for Springfield which had lasted for three hits.\nOther versions.\nApart from Springfield's version, the only evident recordings of the song are two non-English renderings: \nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "61824711": "The Last Time (The Script song)\n\"The Last Time\" is a song by Irish rock band The Script, released through Sony Music UK as the lead single from their sixth studio album, \"Sunsets & Full Moons\", on 20 September 2019.\nBackground.\nFrontman Danny O'Donoghue said the song was written \"about the intense feelings you experience when you realise you may be seeing the one you love [...] for the last time\".\nCritical reception.\nMike Wass of \"Idolator\" wrote that the track is a \"throwback to the anthemic stadium-rock of \"Science & Faith\" and \"No Sound Without Silence\"\" as well as a \"bruised and battered breakup song\" and \"relatable and instantly catchy\". Beth Casteel of \"Substream Magazine\" described it as a \"poignant little number\".\nMusic video.\nThe music video was released the same day as the song and directed by Charles Mehling. It was filmed in London and stars Polish model Anna Jagodzi\u0144ska.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "6658422": "The Last Song (The All-American Rejects song)\n\"The Last Song\" is a song by American rock band The All-American Rejects, released as the second single from their self-titled debut studio album on April 21, 2003.\nBackground and composition.\n\"The Last Song\" was written by Nick Wheeler and Tyson Ritter. According to Ritter, after breaking up with his girlfriend, he \"got inspired to write something that wasn't about an all-girl topic\", he explained, \"[it's] about leaving your town and making something of yourself. Every other song [on the band's self-titled debut] is about one girl, so to put a song on the album that wasn't about her, that made it a little extra special.\"\n\"The Last Song\" begins with the sound of a radio in mid-tune, followed by a string arrangement that slips into a chugging guitar line with the help of an electronic segue. Ritter doesn't really know how or why he and Wheeler came up with the distinct structure that's unlike anything else on the album. \"it just comes out of nowhere,\" and \"when two songwriters get into the studio, you don't know what the hell is going to come out. It's just one of the many surprises, like stuttering electronic beats, flourishes of majestic organs and a dance-inspired thump, that pepper the album.\"\nRitter also commented that \"The Last Song\" is his favorite song off of the band's debut album.\nReception.\nCritical reception.\nThe song received mixed reviews from music critics. musicOMH stated \"'The Last Song' is very much the slice of teen heartache that 'Swing, Swing' was. It lacks, however, the catchy hook or sing-along chorus. The band chug their way through a pop-punk ditty that simply won't match their previous success, and, unfortunately, that only fans will remember the track seems a distinct likelihood.\"\nRockfeedback rated the song 3 out of 5 stars and reviewed saying that the song is \"convenient\" and \"[the band's] Pretty In Pink-soundtrack, signature-riffage is evident yet again on the Rejects' \"The Last Song\"; poppy, melodic, 80's fun, scattered with tales of rejection, break-up and sceptical self-analysis. This is four minutes of unstoppably lurching melodies and soppy, accompanying lyrics \"This may be the last thing I write for love\"' simply curdling the sickly sweet taste in your mouth. Another hit no doubt. CityLife describes the track as \"About half way between Busted and Limp Bizkit on the \"turn that bloody racket down\" scale.\" and commented saying \"After the slow, considered start it quickly descends into something much more apt for fans of the skate punk sound. But at the same time it manages to maintain a respectable feel.\"\nChart performance.\n\"The Last Song\" spent eight weeks on the \"Billboard\" Modern Rock Tracks chart in the United States from May 24 to July 12, 2003, as well as one week on the UK Singles Chart in November, 2003.\nMusic video.\nThe music video for \"The Last Song\" was directed by Charles Jensen and shot in April 2003 in Pasadena, California and was released the following month on May 13. It involves the band first driving around an abandoned city, then performing the song in the middle of the Rose Bowl Stadium without an audience. Shots of each band member - appearing to be enjoying the isolation - are overlapped through the video; lead guitarist Nick Wheeler is seen in a grocery store - roaming the aisles with a trolley and putting any food he can gain to it - and consuming some of the groceries, while rhythm guitarist Mike Kennerty and drummer Chris Gaylor leisure in a golf park in easy chairs with refreshments and lead vocalist and bassist Tyson Ritter ditches his car for a convertible and performs doughnuts in a parking lot. Towards the end of the video, people appear at the locations of where each band member is, all looking bewildered to what they are doing.\nAccording to Ritter, the plot of the video is about \"leaving home to encompass a much broader concept: the rest of the world leaving them. It's a dream come true for every child who's ever imagined they were the last ones on Earth. Without anyone to stop them.\"\n\"I race a car around like hell, and do doughnuts in the parking lot,\" he continues, \"It's this badass car, like a '73 cherry-red convertible Ford Mustang. I couldn't believe it ... I got to tear ass in a hot rod. I worked with a stuntman, but my dad used to drag cars, so I know how to drive all right, so he just let me do what I want. It was crazy, man. I couldn't believe the DreamWorks reps let me do that, 'cause I was doing some crazy shit. It was awesome.\"\nTrack listing.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCharts and awards.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "7581571": "I'll Be on My Way\nSong written by Lennon\u2013McCartney\n\"I'll Be on My Way\" is a song written by Paul McCartney, credited to Lennon\u2013McCartney, first released on 26 April 1963 by Billy J. Kramer with the Dakotas as the B-side of their hit debut single \"Do You Want to Know a Secret\", a song also written by Lennon\u2013McCartney. The single reached number two in the UK charts while \"From Me to You\" by the Beatles occupied the number 1 position. The Beatles recorded a version of the song on 4 April 1963 for BBC radio, first released on the 1994 compilation album \"Live at the BBC\".\nComposition.\nJohn Lennon explained \"I'll Be on My Way\" \"was early Paul.\" Credited to Lennon\u2013McCartney, Paul McCartney wrote the song in the first half of 1959. Author Todd Compton attributes it to \"McCartney\u2013Lennon.\" McCartney wrote the song on his first guitar, a Framus Zenith acoustic guitar. In \"The Beatles Anthology\", McCartney recalls, \"All my first songs... were written on the Zenith; songs like 'Michelle' and 'I Saw Her Standing There'. It was on this guitar that I learnt 'Twenty Flight Rock', the song that later got me into the group The Quarry Men.\" When first written, the song had little beyond its melody. The song was fleshed out years later after the Beatles added it to their live repertoire.\nThe song is heavily inspired by Buddy Holly. Musicologist and writer Ian MacDonald writes, \"Played a little faster, the song reveals its debt to Buddy Holly's simple three-chords schemes. (Imagine each chorus finishing 'I'll be on my way ah-hey-hey'.)\" Everett agrees, writing the song \"has strong Holly ties, especially in the duet refrain,\" as does Lewisohn who calls the song \"Hollyesque.\" The rising and falling chromatic line of the guitar intro comes from the Crickets' cover of \"Don't Ever Change\", especially the augmented E chord. After measure 11, McCartney's vocal part moves to a descant in parallel thirds above Lennon's, a technique derivative of Holly's normal double-tracked vocal patterns.\nThough Lennon sang the lead vocal as a harmony duet with McCartney, he never liked the song. Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn writes that while performing it, \"when they got to the line 'this way will I go'\u2014[Lennon] pulled a crip face and hunched himself Quasimodo-like around the microphone. Paul had no choice but to ride the laughter.\"\nRecording.\nMcCartney made a demo of the song prior to Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas recording it. Dakotas guitarist Mike Maxfield claims that he still owns the acetate and that all of the Beatles play on it, though this claim has never been substantiated.\nThe Beatles recorded the song on 4 April 1963 at the BBC Paris Theatre, London, and broadcast on the BBC radio show \"Side by Side\" on 24 June 1963. Everett writes that George Harrison's guitar solo features \"the clash of bent unison double-stops\", similar to those of Scotty Moore in Elvis Presley's \"Just Because\" and \"Jailhouse Rock\" and in Jerry Lee Lewis's \"Livin' Lovin' Wreck\".\nRelease and reception.\nEverett suggests the Beatles recorded a rendition of the song only to help promote Kramer's record. The Beatles released their version on the 1994 album \"Live at the BBC\". It is the only non-cover song on the album that was previously unreleased.\nMacDonald describes the lyrics and music as \"almost derisively naive\". Lewisohn singles out the lyric \"When the June light turns to moonlight\" as the kind Lennon and McCartney \"usually spurned\" in others. McCartney reflected on the work in his official biography, \"\", saying \"It's a little bit too June-moon for me, but these were very early songs and they worked out quite well.\" In 1980, John Lennon said of the song, \"That's Paul, through and through. Doesn't it sound like him? Tra la la la la [laughs]. Yeah, that's Paul on the voids (joys) of driving through the country.\" Everett writes the \"this way I will go\" lyrics, \"are too closely related, in an innocent way, to those of \"I'll Follow the Sun.\" He concludes that the chord transitions are ultimately uninteresting.\nPersonnel.\nAccording to Ian MacDonald:\nThe Billy J. Kramer version.\nKramer and"}, "descending_order": ["35716992", "4470696", "76405549", "23892988", "61824711", "6658422", "7581571"], "permutation_1": ["61824711", "35716992", "76405549", "6658422", "7581571", "4470696", "23892988"], "permutation_2": ["7581571", "4470696", "76405549", "23892988", "35716992", "61824711", "6658422"], "permutation_3": ["35716992", "4470696", "6658422", "76405549", "7581571", "61824711", "23892988"]}
{"id": "nq_-8066272209572674196", "docs_added": {"1084138": "Jared Harris\nBritish actor (born 1961)\nJared Francis Harris (born 24 August 1961) is a British actor. His roles include Lane Pryce in the drama series \"Mad Men\" (2009\u20132012), for which he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series; King George VI in the historical drama series \"The Crown\" (2016\u20132017); and Valery Legasov in the miniseries \"Chernobyl\" (2019), for which he won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actor and was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie\".\" \nHarris also had roles as David Robert Jones in the science fiction series \"Fringe\" (2008\u20132012), Anderson Dawes in the science fiction series \"The Expanse\" (2015\u20132017) and Captain Francis Crozier in the series \"The Terror\" (2018). He is also known for his significant supporting roles in films such as \"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button\" (2008), \"\" (2011), and Hari Seldon, a leading character in the science fiction series \"Foundation\" (2021).\nEarly life.\nHarris was born on 24 August 1961 in Hammersmith, London, the second of three sons of Irish actor Richard Harris and his first wife, Welsh actress Elizabeth Rees-Williams (1936\u20132022). His younger brother is actor Jamie Harris, his older brother is director Damian Harris and his maternal grandfather was politician David Rees-Williams, 1st Baron Ogmore.\nEducation.\nHarris was educated at Ladycross School, a former preparatory boarding independent school in the coastal town of Seaford in East Sussex, as were his brothers Jamie and Damian. He says, \"They were famous for discipline, with cold showers every morning\", and that \"You were never known by your first name there. You were either called by your number, or your last name. Since there were three of us, Damian was 'Harris Ma' for major. I was 'Harris Mi' for minor, and Jamie was 'Harris Minimus,' being the youngest and the smallest\". He then attended Downside School, a Catholic boarding independent school in the village of Stratton-on-the-Fosse (near the market town of Shepton Mallet) in Somerset, in South West England. He went on to Duke University in the U.S., graduating in 1984 with a BFA in drama, then returned to England to train as an actor at the Central School of Speech and Drama, graduating in 1989.\nCareer.\n1983\u20132008.\nHarris began his film career directing \"Darkmoor\" (1983), an unfinished feature-length film for Duke University's Freewater Films. His first film appearance as an actor was in \"The Rachel Papers\" (1989). He took minor roles in films such as the western romance \"Far and Away\" (1992), the historical epic \"The Last of the Mohicans\" (1992), and the crime drama \"Natural Born Killers\" (1994). He took the role of Benmont Tench in Jim Jarmusch's \"Dead Man\" (1995). He portrayed the role of the aged Will Robinson in the 1998 movie adaptation of the television series \"Lost in Space\". That same year he portrayed Vladimir in the controversial black comedy drama film \"Happiness\" (1998), written and directed by Todd Solondz. He portrayed Kenneth Branagh's character's doppelg\u00e4nger in \"How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog\" (2000).\nOther notable roles include Andy Warhol in \"I Shot Andy Warhol\", John Lennon in the television movie \"Two of Us\" (2000) and King Henry VIII in the 2003 BBC film adaptation of the novel \"The Other Boleyn Girl\". Harris portrayed Dr. Charles Ashford in \"\" (2004). He portrayed the gruff Captain Anderson in the BBC2 adaptation of \"To the Ends of the Earth\"; Mac McGrath in the movie \"Mr. Deeds\"; Eamon Quinn on the FX series \"The Riches\"; and David Robert Jones on \"Fringe\".\n2009\u20132017.\nHe gained widespread fame for his portrayal of Lane Pryce in the AMC period drama series \"Mad Men\" from 2009 until 2012. The show focuses on the lives of Ad Men in New York City during the 1960s. He first appeared in season three where he arrives as a British newcomer to Sterling Cooper, and later becomes a partner of the new agency Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Paul MacInnes of \"The Guardian\" wrote of Lane Pryce, \"For much of his three season tenure on the show, Lane has seemed like the archetypal Englishman...He was polite, courteous, dry-witted, stingy. He was also apparently logical and keenly stoic, keeping calm and carrying on when Sterling Cooper broke up and its successor nearly went under.\" Harris received critical acclaim for his final appearance in the episode \"Commissions and Fees\" as well as a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series, losing to Aaron Paul for \"Breaking Bad\" in 2012. He returned to the series to direct the 11th episode of season 7, which aired in 2015. \nHe portrayed Ulysses S. Grant in Steven Spielberg's acclaimed historical drama film \"Lincoln\" (2012). \nHis portrayal of King George VI in the first season of \"The Crown\" received praise from critic Matt Zoller Seitz, who stated that despite the series' large ensemble, \"Harris still manages to communicate the character\u2019s understated sensitivity and awareness of his circumscribed role in England\u2019s drama so poignantly that one can\u2019t help being moved by the performance\". He received nominations for the British Academy Television Award for Best Supporting Actor and the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Guest Performer in a Drama Series.\n2018\u2013present.\nHe portrayed Captain Francis Crozier in the 2018 series \"The Terror\", based on the Dan Simmons novel of the same name that provided a fictional account of the fate of Franklin's lost expedition. In November 2018, Harris was one of the first recipients of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society's Louie Kamookak Medal, awarded \"for making Canada's geography better known to Canadians and to the world\", for his portrayal of Captain Crozier. Harris said that he was \"gratified\" that the series inspired curiosity about the real expedition, remarking, \"It\u2019s sort of fitting that history will recall that it was the RCGS that first recognized \"The Terror\", and that we as the recipients walked in the footsteps of Louie Kamookak.\"\nIn 2019, Harris portrayed Valery Legasov in the acclaimed miniseries \"Chernobyl\", which revolves around the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 and the cleanup efforts that followed. For that role he won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor and was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie and Golden Globe Award for Best Actor \u2013 Miniseries or Television Film. The series was produced by HBO in the United States and Sky UK in the United Kingdom.\nIn March 2019, Harris joined Jared Leto in Sony's Spider-Man spinoff \"Morbius\". He plays the developer of psychohistory Hari Seldon in the \"Foundation\" television series produced for Apple TV+ which premiered in September 2021. In March 2021, Harris was announced to have joined the cast of the biographical drama film \"Rothko\", directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson.\nIn 2024, he played the father of a returning missing child in the British psychological thriller film \"Reawakening\", alongside Erin Doherty and Juliet Stevenson.\nPersonal life.\nHarris married Jacqueline Goldenberg in 1989 and they divorced three years later.\nHarris married actress Emilia Fox, the daughter of actors Edward Fox and Joanna David, on 16 July 2005. Divorce filings were made in January 2009; the divorce was finalised in June 2010.\nIn April 2009, Harris met Allegra Riggio, a lighting designer and television host, at a comedy club where a mutual friend was performing. They married on 9 November 2013.\nHarris resides in Los Angeles.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "9371304": "Charles Edwards (actor)\nEnglish actor (born 1969)\nCharles Peter Keep Edwards (born 1 October 1969) is an English actor with a career in theatre, TV, and film. His roles include Michael Gregson in \"Downton Abbey\" (2012\u20132013), Alexander McDonald in \"The Terror\" (2018), Sir Martin Charteris in \"The Crown\" (2019\u20132020), and Celebrimbor in \"\" (2022\u20132024).\nEarly life.\nEdwards was born 1 October 1969, in the town of Haslemere in Surrey, England, and grew up in Grayshott, Hampshire.\nHe is the youngest of four sons of Sally Anne Lake Coghlan and Ronald Derek Keep Edwards.\nEducation.\nFrom an early age, Edwards attended Amesbury School in Hindhead, Surrey. Edwards was further educated at Winchester College, Hampshire, from 1983 to 1987, where he boarded in Moberly's house. His father, Ronald Edwards, also attended the College from 1948\u20141953 as did his older brother, Simon, who attended from 1974\u20141978. Both father and sons boarded at the same House.\nEdwards went on to pursue acting at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, from which he graduated in 1992.\nCareer.\nTheatre.\nEdwards debut in acting was on stage as a gingerbread man in a play of Hansel and Gretel. Edwards' first professional theatre engagement was in \"Blithe Spirit\" at age 24. Since then he has appeared in many shows such as \"The Duchess of Malfi\", \"Hay Fever\", \"Private Lives\" and \"The Apple Cart\".\nEdwards received acclaim for his Broadway debut performance as Richard Hannay in the 2005 play of \"The 39 Steps\", in the first London production in 2006, and in the first US productions in 2007 (Boston) and 2008 (New York City). He is the only actor from the London production to transfer to the US productions. Edwards concluded his run in the play on 6 July 2008.\nHe has made appearances in a number of Shakespeare plays, including Peter Hall's production of \"Twelfth Night\" at the Royal National Theatre (Cottesloe auditorium) as Sir Andrew Aguecheek; as Benedick in \"Much Ado About Nothing\" at Shakespeare's Globe; \"The Merchant of Venice;\" and \"A Midsummer Night's Dream,\" playing Oberon to Judi Dench's Titania. For his performance in \"Much Ado About Nothing\", Edwards was shortlisted for Best Actor at the 2011 Evening Standard Theatre Awards. He also received a WhatsOnStage Award nomination, in 2012, for his performance in \"Twelfth Night\".\nIn 2012, Edwards played the lead role of George VI in the original stage play of \"The King's Speech\" on a nationwide tour and also the West End, gaining positive feedback from critics across the board. Drama critic Michael Billington wrote of his performance, \"Edwards, who has been edging towards stardom for several seasons, has now unequivocally arrived.\" Later in 2012, he took on the role of Conservative Whip Jack Weatherill in James Graham's \"This House\" at the National Theatre. Towards the end of the year, he was shortlisted again for Best Actor at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards for his performance in both plays.\nIn 2013, Edwards starred as Charles Marsden in a Simon Godwin adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer prize winning play \"Strange Interlude\" at the National's Lyttleton Theatre. In 2014, Edwards co-starred in Michael Blakemore's adaptation of Coward's \"Blithe Spirit\", opposite Dame Angela Lansbury. He played Richard II in Simon Godwin's production at Shakespeare's Globe, and Henry Trebell in Harley Granville Barker's play \"Waste\" at the National Theatre, both in 2015.\nIn March 2017, he starred as Henry Higgins in the Brisbane and Melbourne seasons of Lerner and Loewe's \"My Fair Lady\", presented by Opera Australia and John Frost and directed by Dame Julie Andrews.\nEdwards worked with playwright James Graham again in 2021, playing Gore Vidal in \"Best of Enemies\" at the Young Vic. He received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for Best Actor the following year.\nTV and film.\nIn 2002, he played David, also known as King Edward VIII, in the feature-length TV drama \"Bertie and Elizabeth\" for ITV.\nIn 2011, he played Michael Palin in \"Holy Flying Circus\", a dramatisation of the controversy surrounding \"Monty Python's Life of Brian\". In October 2012, Edwards appeared in the third season of the television series \"Downton Abbey\" as Michael Gregson. Edwards appeared in the 2013 film, \"Diana\", charting the final few years of Diana, Princess of Wales, where he played Diana's private secretary Patrick Jephson. He made an appearance in BBC series \"Sherlock\", as David Welsborough, on the first episode of the fourth series which aired 1 January 2017 titled 'The Six Thatchers'. Also in 2017, he took on the lead role of the fictional King Henry IX in the TV series \"Henry IX\" for Sky channel GOLD.\nEdwards' other film and television credits include \"Batman Begins\", \"An Ideal Husband\", \"Monarch of the Glen\", \"The Halcyon\", \"Mansfield Park\", \"\", \"The Shell Seekers\", \"Colditz\" and \"Midsomer Murders\".\nIn 2019 and 2020, he appeared in the third and fourth seasons of the widely acclaimed Netflix series \"The Crown\" as Martin Charteris, Queen Elizabeth II's private secretary, taking over the role from Harry Hadden-Paton, who played a younger Charteris in the first two seasons. In 2021, Edwards worked on a New Zealand TV mini series \"Under The Vines\", filmed in Central Otago wine region of the South Island and released on 19 January 2022. \nIn 2022, Edwards played the key role of Celebrimbor, the elven smith responsible for forging the Rings of Power in \"\". Edwards was named an honorable mention for \"TVLine\"'s \"Performer of the Week\" for the week of September 23, 2024, for his performance.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "59583648": "The Crown season 1\nSeason of television series\nThe first season of \"The Crown\" follows the life and reign of Queen Elizabeth II. It consists of ten episodes and was released on Netflix on 4 November 2016.\nClaire Foy stars as Elizabeth, with main cast members Matt Smith, Vanessa Kirby, Eileen Atkins, Jeremy Northam, Victoria Hamilton, Ben Miles, Greg Wise, Jared Harris, John Lithgow, Alex Jennings, and Lia Williams.\nPremise.\n\"The Crown\" traces the life of Queen Elizabeth II from her wedding in 1947 through the wedding of Charles and Camilla in 2005. \nThe first season, in which Claire Foy portrays the Queen in the early part of her reign, depicts events up to 1955, taking in the death of King George VI, prompting Elizabeth\u2019s accession to the throne, and leading up to the resignation of Winston Churchill as prime minister and the Queen's sister Princess Margaret deciding not to marry Peter Townsend.\nCast.\nMain.\nFeatured.\nThe following actor is credited in the opening titles of a single episode:\nRecurring.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nGuest.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nEpisodes.\n<onlyinclude></onlyinclude>\nRelease.\nThe series's first two episodes were released theatrically in the United Kingdom on 1 November 2016. The first season was released on Netflix worldwide in its entirety on 4 November 2016. Season one was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the United Kingdom on 16 October 2017 and worldwide on 7 November 2017.\nMusic.\nAll music composed by Rupert Gregson-Williams, except where noted:\nReception.\nThe review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported 88% approval for the first season based on 77 reviews, with an average rating of 8.60/10. Its critical consensus reads, \"Powerful performances and lavish cinematography make \"The Crown\" a top-notch production worthy of its grand subject.\" On Metacritic, the series holds a score of 81 out of 100, based on 29 critics, indicating \"universal acclaim\".\n\"The Guardian\"'s TV critic Lucy Mangan praised the series and wrote that \"Netflix can rest assured that its \u00a3100m gamble has paid off. This first series, about good old British phlegm from first to last, is the service's crowning achievement so far.\" Writing for \"The Daily Telegraph\", Ben Lawrence said, \"\"The Crown\" is a PR triumph for the Windsors, a compassionate piece of work that humanises them in a way that has never been seen before. It is a portrait of an extraordinary family, an intelligent comment on the effects of the constitution on their personal lives and a fascinating account of postwar Britain all rolled into one.\" Writing for \"The Boston Globe\", Matthew Gilbert also praised the series saying it \"is thoroughly engaging, gorgeously shot, beautifully acted, rich in the historical events of postwar England, and designed with a sharp eye to psychological nuance\". Vicki Hyman of \"The Star-Ledger\" described it as \"sumptuous, stately but never dull\". \"The A.V. Club\"'s Gwen Ihnat said it adds \"a cinematic quality to a complex and intricate time for an intimate family. The performers and creators are seemingly up for the task\".\n\"The Wall Street Journal\" critic Dorothy Rabinowitz said, \"We're clearly meant to see the duke [of Windsor] as a wastrel with heart. It doesn't quite come off\u2014Mr. Jennings is far too convincing as an empty-hearted scoundrel\u2014but it's a minor flaw in this superbly sustained work.\" Robert Lloyd writing for the \"Los Angeles Times\" said, \"As television it's excellent\u2014beautifully mounted, movingly played and only mildly melodramatic.\" Hank Stuever of \"The Washington Post\" also reviewed the series positively: \"Pieces of \"The Crown\" are more brilliant on their own than they are as a series, taken in as shorter, intently focused films\". Neil Genzlinger of \"The New York Times\" said, \"This is a thoughtful series that lingers over death rather than using it for shock value; one that finds its story lines in small power struggles rather than gruesome palace coups.\" \"The Hollywood Reporter\"'s Daniel Fienberg said the first season \"remains gripping across the entirety of the 10 episodes made available to critics, finding both emotional heft in Elizabeth's youthful ascension and unexpected suspense in matters of courtly protocol and etiquette\". Other publications such as \"USA Today\", \"Indiewire\", \"The Atlantic\", \"CNN\" and \"Variety\" also reviewed the series positively.\nSome were more critical of the show. In a review for \"Time\" magazine, Daniel D'Addario wrote that it \"will be compared to \"Downton Abbey\", but that .. was able to invent ahistorical or at least unexpected notes. Foy struggles mightily, but she's given little...\"The Crown\"'s Elizabeth is more than unknowable. She's a bore\". \"Vulture\"'s Matt Zoller Seitz concluded, \"\"The Crown\" never entirely figures out how to make the political and domestic drama genuinely dramatic, much less bestow complexity on characters outside England's innermost circle.\" Verne Gay of \"Newsday\" said, \"Sumptuously produced but glacially told, \"The Crown\" is the TV equivalent of a long drive through the English countryside. The scenery keeps changing, but remains the same.\" \"Slate\" magazine's Willa Paskin, commented: \"It will scratch your period drama itch\u2014and leave you itchy for action.\"\nAwards.\nLithgow won the 2017 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for his performance in the episode \"Assassins.\"\nHistorical accuracy.\nThe re-enactment of the removal of King George VI's cancerous lung, originally performed by Sir Clement Price Thomas, was researched and planned by Pankaj Chandak, a specialist in transplant surgery at Guy's Hospital, London. Chandak and his surgical team then became part of the actual scene filmed for the show, with surgeon Nizam Mamode appearing as Price Thomas. The surgical model of King George VI was donated to the Gordon Museum of Pathology in King's College, London for use as a teaching aid.\nThe show has been interpreted as perpetuating the idea that the Queen and Churchill forced Princess Margaret to give up her plan to marry Peter Townsend and depicted the Queen informing her that, due to the Royal Marriages Act 1772, she would no longer be a member of the family if they married. However, there is clear evidence that, in reality, efforts had been made by the Queen and Anthony Eden in developing a plan that would have allowed Princess Margaret to keep her royal title and her civil list allowance, stay in the country, and continue with her public duties but she would have been required to renounce her rights of succession and those of her children.\nThough the show depicted a dispute over Michael Adeane being the natural successor to Tommy Lascelles as the Queen's private secretary, this did not, in reality, happen; Martin Charteris accordingly took the role in 1972.\nRoyal biographer Hugo Vickers denied that Princess Margaret had acted as monarch while the Queen was on tour and claimed that her speech at the ambassador's reception never happened. Charteris was on tour with the Queen and not in London during these events. The Queen Mother bought the Castle of Mey a year earlier than depicted on the show, and often looked after Prince Charles and Princess Anne while the Queen was away.\nChurchill's wife Clementine is depicted as overseeing the burning of her husband's portrait by artist Graham Sutherland shortly after Churchill's retirement. In reality, the painting was destroyed by the brother of their private secretary, Grace Hamblin, without the involvement of Hamblin herself.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "47048067": "The Crown (TV series)\nHistorical drama television series\nThe Crown is a historical drama television series about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, created and principally written by Peter Morgan and produced by Left Bank Pictures and Sony Pictures Television for Netflix. Morgan developed the series from his film \"The Queen\" (2006) and his stage play \"The Audience\" (2013), which also focused on Elizabeth. \nThe series consists of six seasons spanning almost six decades, beginning shortly before the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten in 1947 and ending with the 2005 wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles. The principal cast of the series has been changed every two seasons; Elizabeth was played by Claire Foy in the first and second seasons, Olivia Colman in the third and fourth, and Imelda Staunton in the fifth and sixth.\nFilming took place at Elstree Studios in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, with location shooting taking place in the United Kingdom and internationally. Netflix released the first season on 4 November 2016; the sixth was released in two parts, the first on 16 November 2023 and the second on 14 December 2023.\n\"The Crown\" has been praised by critics for its acting, directing, writing, cinematography, and production value. However, its historical inaccuracies have been criticised, particularly in the latter half of the series' run. The series has won numerous awards, including a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series and two Golden Globe Awards for Best Television Series-Drama.\nPlot.\n\"The Crown\" portrays the life of Queen Elizabeth II from her wedding in 1947 to Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, until the early 21st century:\nCast and characters.\nFeatured.\nThe following actors are credited in the opening titles of up to two episodes in a season:\nProduction.\nDevelopment.\nIn November 2014, it was announced that Netflix was to adapt the 2013 stage play \"The Audience\" into a television series. Peter Morgan, who wrote the 2006 film \"The Queen\" and the play, is the main scriptwriter for \"The Crown\". The directors of the first season are Stephen Daldry, Philip Martin, Julian Jarrold, and Benjamin Caron. The first 10-part season was the most expensive drama produced by Netflix and Left Bank Pictures, costing at least \u00a3100\u00a0million. A second season was commissioned, with the series intended to span 60 episodes over six seasons. By October 2017, \"early production\" had begun on an anticipated third and fourth season. By the following January, Netflix confirmed the series had been renewed for third and fourth seasons.\nIn January 2020, Morgan announced that the series had been renewed for a fifth and final season. Speaking to ending the series with five seasons, after it had been intended to last six, Morgan said while crafting the stories for season five, \"it has become clear to me that this is the perfect time and place to stop\"; Netflix and Sony supported Morgan's decision. However, in July 2020, Netflix announced that the series would receive a sixth season as originally intended. Morgan said that when the storylines were being discussed for season five, \"it soon became clear that in order to do justice to the richness and complexity of the story we should go back to the original plan and do six seasons\". He added that the final two seasons would enable them \"to cover the same period in greater detail\". As of 2020, the estimated production budget of \"The Crown\" has been reported to be $260\u00a0million, making it one of the most expensive television series ever.\nCasting.\nBy November 2014, Claire Foy had entered negotiations to portray Queen Elizabeth II. By May 2015, Vanessa Kirby was in negotiations to portray Princess Margaret. In June 2015, John Lithgow was cast as Winston Churchill, Matt Smith was cast as Prince Philip, and Foy was confirmed as Queen Elizabeth II. Victoria Hamilton, Jared Harris, and Eileen Atkins were also starring in the first season. Foy reprised her role as the young Queen in cameos in seasons 4, 5 and 6. For her appearance in \"48:1\", the eighth episode of season 4, Foy won an Emmy.\nThe producers recast the continuing roles with older actors every two seasons as the timeline moves forward. In October 2017, Olivia Colman was cast as Queen Elizabeth II for the third and fourth seasons. By January 2018, Helena Bonham Carter and Paul Bettany were in negotiations to portray Princess Margaret and Prince Philip, respectively, for these seasons. However, by the end of the month, Bettany was forced to drop out due to the time commitment required. By the end of March 2018, Tobias Menzies was cast as Prince Philip for the third and fourth seasons. In early May 2018, Bonham Carter was confirmed to have been cast alongside Jason Watkins as Prime Minister Harold Wilson. The next month, Ben Daniels was cast as Tony Armstrong-Jones for the third season, along with Erin Doherty joining the series as Princess Anne. A month later, Josh O'Connor and Marion Bailey were cast as Prince Charles and the Queen Mother, respectively, for the third and fourth seasons. In October 2018, Emerald Fennell was cast as Camilla Shand. In December 2018, Charles Dance was cast as Louis Mountbatten. In April 2019, Emma Corrin was cast as Lady Diana Spencer for the fourth season. Gillian Anderson, who had been rumoured since January 2019 to be in talks to portray Margaret Thatcher in the fourth season, was officially confirmed for the role in September 2019.\nIn January 2020, Imelda Staunton was announced as succeeding Colman as the Queen in the fifth season, with her role in the final season reported in July. Also in July 2020, Lesley Manville was announced as portraying Princess Margaret, and the following month, Jonathan Pryce and Elizabeth Debicki were cast as Prince Philip and Diana, Princess of Wales, respectively. In October 2020, Dominic West was in talks to play Prince Charles. His casting was confirmed in April 2021, when the start date for production of the fifth season was announced. In June 2021, Jonny Lee Miller was cast as John Major. During the same month, Olivia Williams confirmed during an interview that she had joined the cast as Camilla Parker Bowles for the series's fifth and sixth seasons. In July 2021, actress Marcia Warren joined the cast during filming as Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. That same month, the casting of Claudia Harrison as Princess Anne was also confirmed. In September 2021, Khalid Abdalla and Salim Daw were announced to play Dodi Fayed and Mohamed Al-Fayed, respectively. Later that month, it was confirmed that Timothy Dalton had been cast as Peter Townsend. In January 2022, Humayun Saeed was cast as Dr Hasnat Khan.\nA casting search for actors to play teenage Prince William and Prince Harry in the sixth season began in March 2022. The new actor for Prince William would replace Senan West, who was cast as a young Prince William for season five, with the other new castings for the fifth season expected to remain for the sixth season. In April 2022, a casting call was posted for a young Catherine Middleton to be portrayed in the sixth season.\nIn September 2022, it was announced that Rufus Kampas and Ed McVey would portray Prince William, and Meg Bellamy would portray Catherine Middleton.\nGender pay gap controversy.\nThe Left Bank producers stated that Smith was paid more than Foy for the first two seasons, partly because of his \"Doctor Who\" fame. This led to a gender pay gap controversy, including the creation of a petition asking Smith to donate the difference between his and Foy's salary to the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund. Left Bank later apologised to Foy and Smith and said that they had been at the center of a media storm \"through no fault of their own\", adding that they \"are responsible for budgets and salaries; the actors are not aware of who gets what, and cannot be held personally responsible for the pay of their colleagues\". They added that they support \"the drive for gender equality in film and TV and [were] eager to talk to the British Time's Up campaign and [were] already speaking to Era 50:50, a group campaigning for gender equality on screen and stage\". Suzanne Mackie, Left Bank's creative director, did note that in the future, no actor would be paid more than the actress portraying the Queen.\nRegarding the controversy, Foy was \"not surprised\u201d that it became a big story, \u201cin the sense that it was a female-led drama\u201d. Smith noted that he supported Foy and was \"pleased that it was resolved and [the producers] made amends for it because that's what needed to happen\". \"The Hollywood Reporter\" noted it was unclear what Smith was referring to as resolved since Netflix and Left Bank had not commented further. Foy later described reports that she had received backpay to bring her salary up to parity as \"not quite correct\".\nFilming.\nAn estimated 25% of the first season was filmed at Elstree Studios in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, with the remainder filmed on location, altogether taking 152 days. Sets for private quarters, the interior of a private jet, the cabinet room, and the exterior of 10 Downing Street were built at Elstree Studios. At the same time, Lancaster House, Wrotham Park, and Wilton House were used to double as Buckingham Palace. Ely Cathedral and Winchester Cathedral stood in for Westminster Abbey, while locations in South Africa doubled as Kenya. Additional locations in the UK included Belvoir Castle, Waddesdon Manor, Eltham Palace, the Royal Naval College, Goldsmiths' Hall, Shoreham Airport, New Slains Castle, Balmoral Castle, Cruden Bay, Lyceum Theatre, Loseley Park, Hatfield House, The Historic Dockyard Chatham, Southwark Cathedral, Ardverikie House, Englefield House, Wellington College, the Great Central Railway and the Glenfeshie Estate.\nFilming for the second season began in early October 2016. Each episode of the first two seasons would shoot for about 22 days with each costing about \u00a35\u00a0million to produce. The third season began filming in July 2018 and concluded in February 2019. The fourth season began filming in August 2019 and wrapped in March 2020. Shooting locations used to double foreign settings included Manchester (as New York City), M\u00e1laga and Almer\u00eda (as Sydney and other Australian settings), as well as Atlanterra, C\u00e1diz (as Mustique).\nThe filming of the fifth season began in July 2021. The year break in filming between the end of season four and the start of season five was built into the series's production schedule. It was not related to the COVID-19 pandemic. On 16 February 2022, items previously used in the series's production worth \u00a3150,000 were stolen from three vehicles, most of which were described as having \"limited value for resale\" but \"are valuable as pieces to the UK film industry\". Locations featured in series five included Cobham Hall, which doubled as Eton College, and the Historic Dockyard at Chatham, both in Kent. Filming for the sixth season began in August 2022, but Morgan noted he expected it to stop for a period of time in September following the death of Elizabeth II \"out of respect\". In October 2022, it was reported that the events just before and right after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in Paris would be filmed for season six.\nHistorical accuracy.\nThe series has been criticised for its depiction of historical events, particularly from the fourth season onwards. The programme's historical consultant, Robert Lacey, has stated that \"there are two sorts of truth. There's historical truth, and then there's the larger truth about the past\" and that \"when history gets departed from, it's not done casually. It's done on the basis of wanting to convey a particular message that can only be conveyed by invention.\" An example of such a departure is the season one plot in which the Queen and the government oppose Princess Margaret's desire to marry Peter Townsend, which would have required the monarch's permission under the Royal Marriages Act 1772; in reality, a plan was made to amend the Act to allow the marriage while removing Margaret and her children from the line of succession.\nThe fourth season was criticised in the UK press as \"inaccurate\" and \"anti-monarchy\". It was described as \"fake history\" by Simon Jenkins in \"The Guardian\", and the royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith stated that \"because \"The Crown\" is such a lavish and expensive production, so beautifully acted and cleverly written, and so much attention has been paid to visual details about historical events, viewers are tricked into believing that what they are seeing actually happened\". The British culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, and the actress Judi Dench both suggested that the series should have a fiction warning at the beginning as a disclaimer, with Dench arguing that the show could mislead non-British audiences with its use of dramatic license. In October 2022, Netflix added a disclaimer to the series's title synopsis page on its website and to the YouTube description of the trailer for season five, which describes it as a \"fictional dramatisation\" that was \"inspired by"}, "descending_order": ["9371304", "59583648", "47048067", "1084138"], "permutation_1": ["47048067", "9371304", "59583648", "1084138"], "permutation_2": ["47048067", "1084138", "59583648", "9371304"], "permutation_3": ["47048067", "1084138", "59583648", "9371304"]}
{"id": "nq_-2210383401821285362", "docs_added": {"2154731": "Darin Brooks\nAmerican actor\nDarin Lee Brooks (born May 27, 1984) is an American actor. He is known for portraying Max Brady on the NBC daytime soap opera \"Days of Our Lives\", Alex Moran on the Spike TV series \"Blue Mountain State\", and Wyatt Spencer on the CBS soap opera \"The Bold and the Beautiful\".\nEarly life.\nBrooks was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. Brooks graduated from Henry J. Kaiser High School in 2002. He is of Polish descent.\nCareer.\nBrooks started his acting career with the theater program at his high school. He played Rapunzel's prince in his high school's production of \"Into the Woods\". He later enrolled in acting classes, began modeling, and worked as an extra in films. He was discovered by casting director Kathy Henderson.\nWhen Brooks moved to Los Angeles, California, he called Henderson immediately, took acting classes at the renowned Ivana Chubbuck Studios, and got an agent. Two years after the move, he auditioned for the soap operas \"One Life to Live\" and \"The Young and the Restless\", and he was cast as Max Brady on the NBC's \"Days of Our Lives\". He later starred as Alex Moran on the Spike TV series \"Blue Mountain State\". In 2010, Brooks starred as Mr. Blake Owens on the web series \"Miss Behave\". In June 2013, Brooks began playing Wyatt Spencer on the CBS soap opera \"The Bold and the Beautiful\". In October 2023, after a decade on the show, Brooks announced his exit from the role and made his final appearance on January 19, 2024 .\nPersonal life.\nBrooks enjoys playing the guitar, bass guitar, and drums. In 2010, he started dating actress Kelly Kruger. In February 2014, they partnered with an organization called Aid Still Required. On March 21, 2016, he and Kruger got married. In April 2019, it was announced that he and Kruger were expecting their first child. The couple's first child was born on September 22, 2019. \nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "40060422": "Wyatt Spencer\nFictional character\nWyatt Spencer is a fictional character from the original CBS Daytime soap opera, \"The Bold and the Beautiful\", portrayed by Darin Brooks.\nCreated and introduced by executive producer Bradley Bell in 2013, Wyatt is the previously unknown oldest son of media mogul Bill Spencer, Jr. (Don Diamont) and Quinn Fuller (Rena Sofer). In addition to expanding the Spencer family, Wyatt immediately becomes a rival to his half-brother, Liam Spencer (Scott Clifton), for their father's affections and the affections of Liam's longtime love, Hope Logan (Kim Matula). Wyatt is raised by his single mother, Quinn, and becomes accustomed to doing anything to survive. However, it is his relationship with Hope that helps him change for the better. Despite Wyatt trying to live the best life he can, those around him, specifically Liam, consistently throw his past in his face and accuse him of being bad for Hope and bad for businesses. Wyatt and Liam's rivalry continues when he gets involved with Liam's exes, Ivy Forrester (Ashleigh Brewer) and Steffy Forrester (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood), and he also gets involved with his father's ex-wife, Katie Logan (Heather Tom). Brooks exited the role in January 2024.\nBrooks' performance has been met with critical acclaim, having garnered him a Daytime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 2021.\nCreation.\nCasting.\nOn May 15, 2013, Michael Logan of \"TV Guide\" exclusively announced that Darin Brooks, known for his Emmy winning portrayal of Max Brady on \"Days of Our Lives\" had joined the cast in the newly created role of Wyatt. Brooks filmed his first scenes on May 8, 2013, with his first airdate slated for June 21. Ironically, Brooks's first airdate coincided with the anniversary of his first appearance on \"Days of our Lives\". Brooks revealed told \"Soap Opera Digest\" about how he got the job. \"It happened super-quick,\" said Brooks of his casting. He continued, \"On Monday, my manager called and said, 'We've got a chemistry test for BOLD.' On Wednesday, I went in, met people; it was great. They called afterward and asked me to come back on Friday to chemistry read with somebody else. I went in and did that, and by about noon on Friday, they were like, 'Okay, let's do this.\" Brooks also revealed that he was in talks to reprise his role of Max on \"Days of our Lives\" but said, \"the timing just didn't work out.\" However, when it comes to \"Bold\", Brooks said, \"The opportunity presented itself.\" Brooks also met with executive producer, Brad Bell before, and previously worked with supervising producer, Ed Scott during his tenure at \"Days\". Brooks tested opposite Kim Matula who played Hope, for his first chemistry read. The second test was with Scott Clifton, who played Liam.\nIn January 2021, a crossover event between The Bold and the Beautiful and \"The Young and the Restless\" was announced involving Brooks\u2019 character along with the character of Flo Fulton and Y&R character of Summer Newman. Brooks\u2019 appearances on The Young and the Restless were January 12 and 15, 2021.\nIn October 2023, after ten years on canvas, Brooks announced his exit from the soap; he initially made his final appearance in September 2023. Several months later, Brooks taped his last scenes, which were then aired on the January 17 and 19, 2024, episodes during which Wyatt announced his departure from Los Angeles.\nCharacterization.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"With Hope, he's that nice guy, the boy next door, but he's also a little bit dangerous, a little scary.\"\nBrooks on Wyatt's appeal.\nA representative for the series described Wyatt as \"clever and mysterious.\" Wyatt is the kind of man \"who will stand up for himself\" Brooks revealed. \"He's a badass\" Brooks stated to \"TV Guide\". \"He's a take-charge, powerful kind of guy,\" Brooks said of the character in an interview with \"CBS Soaps In Depth\". \"He's strong, he stubborn, and he's ready for anything,\" Brooks continued. Brooks also described Wyatt as a \"charmer.\" According to Brooks, it is Wyatt's charming personality that makes his such a good business man. However, Wyatt's has a \"dangerous charm.\" In an interview with \"On-Air On-Soaps\", Brooks said, \" Wyatt is the type of guy who goes after what he feels, and he doesn\u2019t care!\" In this way, he is very much like his father, Bill Spencer (Don Diamont). Wyatt has that \"bad boy-ness\" in him. According to Brooks, Wyatt can also be a \"nice good-natured guy.\" When compared to the heroic Max on \"Days\", Brooks described Wyatt as being \"more of a playboy.\" Wyatt is a very \"strong stubborn character,\" and he is willing to \"take on any challenge -- or he'll at least try to.\" Brooks compared the character to many of Jack Nicholson's role where he plays a villain, but \"he's so likeable. You hate him, but you love him.\"\nDevelopment.\nIntroduction.\nThe character's introduction came on the heels of the announcement that Jacqueline MacInnes Wood, who played Steffy Forrester had decided not to renew her contract and would depart from the series (she later agreed to sign on recurringly). Wood's departure would take away from the show's major romantic triangle featuring the characters of Hope (Kim Matula), Liam (Scott Clifton) and Steffy. Brooks had quite a few meetings with Brad Bell before he booked the role of Wyatt which led the actor to believe that the producers were trying to figure out \"how and where\" to fit the character into the canvas. Bell told Brooks that they would figure out the character as the storyline unfolded. Brooks himself suggested that Wyatt be a bit of \"bad boy,\" and Bell \"took it and ran with it.\" Bell crafted a back-story for the character and presented it to Brooks. Brooks said of the character's introduction, \"We are sort of piecing it all together as it is unraveling.\" \"As the story unfolds, he moves into that whole fashion-industry world and you'll find out his connection to everything\" Brooks said to Michael Logan.\nPaternity reveal.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"When Wyatt found out about that he has a father, everything sort of came crashing down on him at that moment. He has been told all these lies, and it can really put your mind in a tailspin, and then you find out you have a brother, and all these families\u2019 members, and this hidden life that has been kept from you. So he is angry, and he wants to know why? Then he finds out that Bill had given Quinn money for the abortion, and that hurts, too.\"\nBrooks on Wyatt's reaction to his paternity revelation.\nJust five days after it was announced that Brooks had joined the cast, it was also announced that Rena Sofer, known for her portrayal of Lois Cerullo on \"General Hospital\" was cast in the role of Wyatt's mother, Quinn Fuller. According to Brooks, Wyatt's world is \"rocked\" by the revelation of his paternity. At the time, Wyatt has just \"poured his heart and soul into pursuing Hope,\" only for her to reject him for Liam. What hurts the most is that Quinn lied to him about his father. Wyatt views the situation as \"We've been struggling as hard as we can to get our jewelry business off the ground and you've been keeping a billionaire from my life? This is crazy!\" He sees the revelation as a potentially good thing. However, when Wyatt learns that Bill gave Quinn money to get an abortion, \"He's torn between his lying mother and a father who didn't want him in the first place.\" Had these secrets come out over a period of time, Wyatt may have been able to take them in stride, but because everything comes out at once, Wyatt is left feeling like, \"Nobody wants me. My parents are heartless liars. I'm related to a wishy-washy guy, and my girl doesn't want me.\" Though Wyatt initially comes off as a nice guy, Wyatt's reaction to being Bill's son \"keeps people guessing what is he going to do next?\" Though Wyatt is able to overlook Bill not wanting him, he clashes with Bill again when after learning he has \"abandoned\" his youngest son Will with estranged wife, Katie Logan (Heather Tom). According to Brooks, \"Wyatt is disappointed to see his new family already coming apart.\" Wyatt may have gotten \"overly excited\" about the idea of a family. And because he sees so much of himself in Bill, it scares him to see what Bill is doing to his other family. Though Bill puts distance between himself and his son for Wyatt's judgement. Of the storyline, Brooks said that Wyatt experiences so many emotions that he doesn't know how to react \"so he is lashing out.\" Brooks said, \" Wyatt has always wanted love from his father, and he feels after all this lost time, he wants to prove himself and be loved.\"\nFeud with Liam and romantic triangle.\nWyatt immediately becomes a rival for his brother, Liam Spencer (Scott Clifton) for the affections of Hope Logan (Kim Matula). Brooks said Wyatt's introduction sends Liam \"reeling with the realization that Hope's heart, may not, in fact, be perpetually on hold for him!\" Wyatt does not shy away from the challenge of battling Liam for Hope's affection. Of Wyatt's competitive nature with his brother Liam, Brooks said, \"[Wyatt] has always wanted a love from a brother, but he finds it fun competition for him right now in trying to get the girl! So it\u2019s kind of power and love at the same time.\" According to Brooks, challenging Liam is Wyatt's attempt at testing the \"boundaries\" to \"see if Liam is a worthy adversary.\" Wyatt relishes in \"getting under Liam's skin,\" Brooks said of Wyatt convincing Hope to accompany him to Mexico. Besides Hope, Bill seeing so much of himself in Wyatt, also causes tension between the brothers. While Bill considers some of Liam's behavior to be \"un-Spencer like,\" but when he meets Wyatt, according to Don Diamont, Bill thinks, \"Hey, look at this kid, he's great! Built in my own image!\" Hope and Wyatt's business relationship serves as a catalyst to advance their personal relationship and Liam is very much threatened. Wyatt enjoys to pulling Liam's strings and \"[giving] him a run for his money.\" According to Brooks, Wyatt continues \"turning the knife,\" in an effort to get a reaction from Liam. Brooks said that there would always be \"some kind of sibling rivalry between [Wyatt and Liam] and fighting for someone's affection, whether it's their dad's affection or Hope's affection.\" Though they are both generally nice guys, Liam's at times comes off as a pushover and \"Wyatt's hoping that [Liam] does step up to make it a challenge.\" With tensions high after the paternity revelation, Wyatt thinks he can help Liam by showing him some \"tough love\" and forcing him to be a \"stronger person.\" In a joint interview with \"Soap Opera Digest\", Brooks and Clifton discussed Wyatt and Liam's dynamic as the feuding brothers. According to Brooks, regardless of any kind of \"animosity and jealousy\" between the brothers, there is an \"underlying love that anybody would have if they were an only sibling and now they have somebody.\" When asked to describe the relationship, Clifton said jokingly, \"Liam no like Wyatt.\" He continued, \"I would say layered, dialectical, and in some ways paradoxical.\" Brooks said, \"Obviously competitive, jealous, but there's also a huge need for a brother's love that they've never had, for both of them.\"\nRelationship with Hope.\nWyatt is immediately \"smitten\" with Hope explained Brooks. Wyatt has no problem challenging Liam for Hope's affections nor is he put off by her complicated romantic past. Hope initially rejects Wyatt's advances because she is engaged to Liam, but she enjoys the fact that he only has eyes for her, while Liam is consistently torn between her and her stepsister, Steffy Forrester. Later, Kim Matula commented that Hope is \"super intrigued by this Wyatt guy,\" so the moment she finds an out with Liam, she takes it. The partnership between \"Forrester Creations\" and \"Quinn Artisan\" forces the duo to spend more time together and allows them to get closer. According to Brooks, Wyatt legitimately adores Hope. The actor revealed that he intentionally tried to portray the best in Wyatt when he is with Hope. Hope is the only person besides his mother that Wyatt seems to be completely \"genuine\" with. Despite claiming he doesn't have an ulterior motive, Wyatt views their business trip to Mexico to see the Hope Diamond as his chance to finally win Hope's affections. The diamond is a \"\"Romancing the Stone\"-type of thing, where [Hope and Wyatt] go off to a foreign land in search of this diamond. It's sexy and it's Latin and it's great,\" Brooks said of the duo's Mexican adventure.\nStorylines.\nHope sees the mysterious Wyatt taking a solar shower and takes his picture. However, he catches her, and a chase ensues which leads to her falling and hitting her head. Wyatt is immediately taken with Hope even going so far as to kiss her to wake her up. Wyatt finds Hope's cell phone and returns it to her in Los Angeles where she invites him to accompany her to a 4 July party. Hope's estranged ex, Liam Spencer (Scott Clifton) is unsettled when he finds them together at the party. They share another kiss as Hope spots his sword necklace, which is identical to Liam and his father, Bill (Don Diamont)'s. Thanks to Hope's machinations, Wyatt discovers that Bill is his long lost father and that his mother, Quinn (Rena Sofer) actually designed the original sword necklace. Angry about Quinn's lies, Wyatt moves in with Liam and Bill. However, Wyatt continues pursuing Hope and kisses her again which leads to Liam hitting him.\nLiam wants to put Wyatt out of the house, but Bill convinces them to try and work through their differences. But when Wyatt berates Bill about abandoning his wife, Katie (Heather Tom) and youngest son, Will, after his affair with Katie's sister and Hope's mother, Brooke Logan (Katherine Kelly Lang), Bill disowns Wyatt anyway. Wyatt reconciles with Quinn and moves back in with her. Brooke explains the extenuating circumstances allowing Wyatt to soften toward Bill and has Bill see the situation from Wyatt's perspective. Caroline tells Bill he's treating Wyatt the same way Bill Spencer Sr. treated Bill. Bill eventually accepts Wyatt again and they start to establish a father-son relationship. Hope decides to use \"Quinn Artisan\" as the jewelry designer to tie to her fashion line, \"Hope For the Future\" and Wyatt continues pursuing Hope. Liam feels threatened and tries to convince Hope to cancel the deal, but Hope decides against it. In October 2013 at Quinn's encouragement, Wyatt takes Hope to Mexico to see the Hope Diamond as he plans to integrate the diamond into the jewelry line. Wyatt tries to get Hope to leave Liam, and be with him, but she refuses. Hope calls off her engagement to Liam after she receives an e-mail with Liam's romantic video of his life with Steffy. Quinn admits to sending the video, and Wyatt eventually comes clean about his mother's interference, and she forgives him for keeping the secret. To impress Hope, Wyatt stages a jewelry heist and manages to disarm actual jewel thieves. Liam convinces Hope that they should get married and pressures her into severing all ties with Wyatt. Abiding by Hope's wishes, Wyatt says goodbye to Hope on her the day of her wedding to Liam as he plans to go to Hawaii. He is however shocked when Hope leaves Liam at the altar after seeing him with Steffy again and travels to Hawaii with him. Liam follows soon after and reveals that Quinn set them up and convinced Steffy to return from Paris after finding out that she can now conceive again but Hope decided to start a relationship with Wyatt putting Liam in her past. However, their happiness is short lived when Liam reveals that Wyatt took the Hope Diamond and it almost ends their relationship, but Hope forgave Wyatt, and they reunite.\nHope then has a pregnancy scare and after months of exclusively dating Wyatt, Liam persuaded Hope to share equal time and make a final decision on who she wants to be with. Wyatt reluctantly agrees. When Ridge goes missing in Abu Dhabi, everyone starts blaming Quinn for it because she sends Ridge a selfie email of her and Bill. During a heated argument between Liam and Quinn at Forrester, he calls her a manipulative bitch, Wyatt enters and punches Liam for calling his mother that. Hope realises what happened and becomes upset at Wyatt for punching Liam and leaves with Liam. She feels guilty for bringing Quinn and Wyatt into the company, so she chooses to be with Liam, and they kiss. Liam later proposes to Hope, who accepts. Wyatt and Quinn are fired, but later Deacon and Wyatt learn of Quinn's plan to murder Liam. Wyatt saves his brother, and Quinn decides to check herself into a mental health facility, while Liam decides not to press charges. Liam and Wyatt decide to have a brotherly relationship, and at his urging, Hope rehires Wyatt, who will be working with the newly arrived Ivy Forrester. But then, Wyatt learns Ricardo Montemayor died and willed the Hope for the Future Diamond to him. Shocked but saddened by Ricardo's demise, Wyatt uses this opportunity to win Hope back by gifting her with the diamond. He then throws a big press conference, announcing Ricardo's death and his will, and gifts the diamond publicly to Hope, who accepts, much to Liam's chagrin. Wyatt soon learns his mother is back in LA and keeps it a secret. Quinn tells Wyatt she is better and is an outpatient. He warns her to stay away from Liam, and not involve herself in his love life.\nSoon, Wyatt gets a call from the Mexican police saying they want to interview him about Ricardo's death. Wyatt asks his mom if she killed Ricardo, but she denies it. Later, Wyatt, Rick and Hope all travel to Paris for a photoshoot promoting the diamond. Hope tells Wyatt that Liam will meet her in Paris to marry her after the photoshoot and she will be forced to return the diamond. Wyatt tries to convince her to dump Liam and come back to him, to no avail. Wyatt tells his mother about his troubles and warns her to stay away from Liam. However, unknown to him, Quinn follows Ivy and Liam to Paris and sabotages Liam's plans to marry Hope by pushing Ivy into the River Seine, forcing Liam to save her. Hope believes Liam decided not to show up, since they argued about Wyatt and the diamond before the photoshoot. Devastated, she accompanies Wyatt on the Spencer jet to Monte Carlo to be on Bill's yacht. Wyatt tells her that Liam has always failed her, but he never will. He then proposes to Hope on the yacht with the HFTF diamond. Hope, realizing that Wyatt is the man she has really wanted all along and that Liam was just a fantasy for her, marries him on the yacht. Liam later finds out from Bill and is devastated. Hope finds out about Quinn pushing Ivy into the Seine which resulted in Liam being late to meet her. Hope almost ends the marriage to reunite with Liam but finds out she is pregnant with Wyatt's baby. Hope then demands that Wyatt keep Quinn away from her and the baby in future but during a confrontation with Quinn, Hope falls down the steps at the Logan Mansion and has a miscarriage. Blaming Wyatt for not keeping his mother away from her, Hope leaves LA to join her mother in Milan, Italy. Wyatt follows Hope and off screen tries to reconcile with his wife. However, after a period of time Wyatt returns to LA and files for divorce, mutually ending the marriage.\nWyatt returns to work at Forrester Creations but after a confrontation with the CEO who is also his former brother in-law, Rick Forrester, Wyatt briefly resigns only to get his job back at Bill and Liam's demand, who are trying to get Rick out of the company and take it over. Wyatt than has a brief relationship with Nicole Avant, who is the younger sister of Maya Avant. The relationship ends when Nicole finds out that Wyatt was only using her to find out what Maya's secret was in order to get her boyfriend, Rick out as CEO. Wyatt than has an attraction toward Steffy Forrester, Liam's ex-wife and they kiss. However, nothing comes of it when it is clear that Steffy isn't over Liam. Eventually, Liam chooses Steffy over Ivy, and Ivy and Wyatt enter into a relationship on the rebound, sleeping together and having strong feelings. But Ivy ultimately cheats on Wyatt, kissing Thomas. Wyatt decides to forgive her, but later overhears her admit that she still loves Liam. Wyatt breaks up with her, and she unsuccessfully tries to get back with Liam, only to be rejected and returns to Australia. Later, Liam disappears (he was really kidnapped by Quinn and lost his memory), and Wyatt comforts Steffy, telling her that Liam must have once again let her down. He shows her how to have fun by surfing on the beach and even buys her a motorcycle, which she hasn't driven since her miscarriage. The two fall in love and eventually get married on the beach. The two then get matching wedding band tattoos to symbolise their love for each other.\nWyatt began making Steffy the face of Spencer Publications' social media and promised her that Quinn would no longer be a problem for them. However, Wyatt soon discovers that Quinn had begun an affair with Steffy's grandfather, Eric Forrester. Quinn and Eric were married in September 2016, and Wyatt stood by Steffy and the rest of the Forrester family in boycotting the wedding. Wyatt supports Quinn when she is appointed interim CEO while Eric recovers from a brain aneurysm, caused by an argument he was having with his family over the wedding boycott. During this time, Ridge and Steffy lied to Quinn and the rest if the Forrester family by claiming that Ridge had Eric's power of attorney, when in fact Quinn had it. Ridge's attempt to regain control of Forrester Creations failed and Wyatt told Quinn about Steffy and Ridge's lie. When Steffy finds out that Wyatt had betrayed her trust and that their marriage was based on the lie of Liam's disappearance, Steffy filed for divorce, and returned to Liam. A few weeks before the divorce was due to be finalised, Quinn suggested to Eric that Steffy should be made CEO of Forrester Creations, to which he agrees. Wyatt and Steffy realise that this was part of Quinn's scheme to reunite them, and Wyatt agreed to fast-track the divorce as a result.\nWyatt and Steffy both have their wedding band tattoos removed after the finalisation of the divorce, and Wyatt leaves his position at Forrester Creations to return to Spencer Publications. Wyatt did not attend Steffy and Liam's wedding in Australia.\nWhen Katie stepped in Wyatt's old PR position at Forrester Creations, Wyatt decided to help her and together they created a fashion event focusing on swimwear to be held during the Forrester/Spectra fashion duel in Monte Carlo. Excited over the success of the show, Katie and Wyatt kissed repeatedly, but Katie was dubious about exploring things with him because of their connections to Bill and Quinn. Katie and Wyatt decided to keep their newfound relationship a secret and to have a no-strings attached relationship. Over time, Katie and Wyatt's relationship is discovered by Eric, Quinn, Brooke, Ridge and Liam. When Wyatt saw Katie kissing Thorne Forrester (Ingo Rademacher), he broke off their no-strings attached relationship and let Katie go. In the time of their separation, Wyatt understood his true feelings for Katie, and he proposed to her. Wyatt and Katie got engaged and they prepared themselves to tell the truth to Bill. Bill reacts with anger to the news, threatening Wyatt and Katie to break off the engagement or else he will remove all of Wyatt's family privileges as well as sue for full custody of Will, believing no judge would side with them since Wyatt is engaged to his half-brother's mother.\nReception.\n\"\"The Bold and the Beautiful\" just added a little more star power to its cast\" said \"Daytime Confidential\" in response to the casting announcement. \"Liam is gonna crap\" said Michael Logan in response to the character coming in between Liam and Hope. Michael Fairman said \"Wowza!\" in response to the casting and applauded the series for \"finally\" expanding the triangle. \"Well, it\u2019s about freaking time!\" said Kambra Clifford in response to the decision to give Hope a love interest besides Liam.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\n\"Brooks brought his charm, sex appeal, and acting chops to B&B after winning a Daytime Emmy a few years ago on DAYS, and working in primetime. Now back on soaps, Brook\u2019s Mr. Fuller is really making a case for Hope (Kim Matula) to be with him \u2026 instead of wishy-washy Liam (Scott Clifton)!\"\n\"On-Air On-Soaps\" on the character of Wyatt and Brooks's portrayal.\nAccording to Brooks, the reaction to Wyatt on social media was initially very mixed. However, his co-star Scott Clifton said the support for Wyatt was very overwhelming due to Liam's checkered past with Hope. \"TV Source Magazine\" described Brooks's introduction as \"memorable.\" Dan J. Kroll described Wyatt's first appearance as \"eye-opening.\" Luke Kerr said the series \"isn't wasting a moment\" getting Brooks to strip, in reference to Wyatt being naked in his first scene. \"CBS Soaps In Depth\" said of the character's introduction: \"Most men would get slapped for going around planting unsolicited kisses on a girl who is adamantly engaged to someone else, but somehow, Wyatt manages to not only pull it off but also melt our hearts in the process.\" \"ABC Soaps In Depth\" listed Wyatt in their \"Best & Worst of 2013\" list as the \"Coolest Cat.\" Of the character, the magazine said, \"we can't help being charmed by Liam's new sibling Wyatt. Although the guy's cockiness easily could have come off as obnoxious, portrayer Darin Brooks instead had us eating out of the palm of his hand!\" When asked to compare Brooks to Wyatt, Scott Clifton said much like his portrayer, Wyatt has a certain \"ease\" when he comes into a new environment. \"They're very comfortable and it makes you very comfortable around them. Darin brings a lot of that to Wyatt. Wyatt doesn't walk around worried about how people are going to perceive him. That's a cool quality that I wish I had more of, actually.\" However, Clifton said \"The arrogance\" in Wyatt is what sets Brooks apart from his character. Michael Fairman said that Wyatt's vow to never interfere in a marriage makes him \"a bit more redeemable.\" Michael Fairman of \"On-Air On-Soaps\" described the character of Wyatt as \"defiant and confident\" and said the character's introduction as a \"breath of fresh air into the Liam/Hope relationship.\" In their \"Best and Worst of 2013\" list, \"On-Air On-Soaps\" listed the character of Wyatt as the \"Best New Character, Male.\"\nIn 2022, Charlie Mason from \"Soaps She Knows\" placed Wyatt 19th on his ranked list of \"The Bold and the Beautiful\u2019s Best of the Best Characters Ever\", commenting \"Just don\u2019t you \"dare\" call Darin Brooks' character the poor man's Liam. He\u2019s flip-flopped half as much as his half-brother and had us rooting for him every misstep of the way!\"\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "191591": "The Bold and the Beautiful\nAmerican television soap opera (since 1987)\nThe Bold and the Beautiful (often referred to as B&B) is an American television soap opera created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell for CBS. It premiered on March 23, 1987, as a sister show to the Bells' other soap opera \"The Young and the Restless\"; several characters from each of the two shows have crossed over to the other since the early 1990s. Set in Los Angeles, California, the show centers upon the Forrester family and their haute couture business.\nThe program features an ensemble cast, headed by its longest-serving actors John McCook as Eric Forrester and Katherine Kelly Lang as Brooke Logan. Since its premiere, the show has become the most-watched soap in the world, with an audience of an estimated 26.2 million viewers. As of 2010, it continued to hold on to the second-place position in weekly Nielsen Ratings for daytime dramas. \"The Bold and the Beautiful\" has also won 77 Daytime Emmy Awards, including three for Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series, in 2009, 2010, as well as 2011.\nOn September 7, 2011, the series switched to high-definition television, making it the second-to-last American soap to make the switch, at the time. \"B&B\" was the last American soap opera to make the transition due to the cancellation of ABC's \"One Life to Live\" before it returned along with \"All My Children\" on April 29, 2013. It is the youngest airing daytime soap opera in the United States, celebrating its thirtieth anniversary on March 23, 2017. The serial aired its 9,000th episode on April 18, 2023. Currently, the series has been renewed by CBS to run through the 2024\u20132025 television season.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nPremise.\n\"The Bold and the Beautiful\" debuted on March 23, 1987. Set in Los Angeles, it centers around the Forrester family and their fashion house business, Forrester Creations. Like many soap operas, \"B&B\" looks into the lives of wealthy families and how love affairs, scandals, and betrayals affect each of the family members and their relationships with each other.\nFollowing the original premise of sister show \"The Young and the Restless\" (\"Y&R\") with the wealthy Brooks and the working-class Foster families, \"B&B\" also introduced the middle-class Logan family as a source of conflict with the Forresters. Like the Fosters of \"Y&R\", the Logans were also initially headed by a single mother. The rivalry between Forrester matriarch Stephanie Forrester and the Logan's eldest daughter Brooke Logan plays a key role in the drama of \"B&B\", like the Katherine Chancellor\u2013Jill Abbott rivalry in \"Y&R\". Another enduring \"B&B\" storyline is the star-crossed love of Brooke and the Forresters' eldest son Ridge.\nThe back story was that Stephanie Douglas, the strong-willed daughter of wealthy Chicago businessman John Douglas, met her husband-to-be Eric Forrester, who aspired to become a fashion designer, while they both studied at Northwestern University in 1959. The young lovers rushed to get married after Stephanie became pregnant, forcing Eric to break up with his college sweetheart Elizabeth \"Beth\" Henderson in the process.\nEric and Stephanie then moved to Los Angeles where they established Forrester Creations, designing and producing upscale men's and women's fashion, based on a combination of a loan from Stephanie's father, Eric's designing talent and Stephanie's business acumen and connections. While winning international recognition, fame, and wealth with their work, the couple managed to raise four children: elder and favorite son Ridge Forrester, brother Thorne Forrester and younger sisters Kristen Forrester and Felicia. Meanwhile, Beth married their classmate Stephen Logan on the rebound, raising their own family in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. The Logans had four children of their own: eldest son Stephen \"Storm\" Jr., and daughters Brooke, Donna and Katie. Unable to achieve success like Eric, Stephen walked out on the family, leaving Beth as a single working-class mother.\nStart and development of the series.\nThe pilot episode of the show focuses on the preparations of the wedding of the Forrester's eldest son, Ridge, to Caroline Spencer Forrester, the daughter of the media mogul Bill Spencer. At this time Ridge has already become a fashion designer and vice president of Forrester Creations. Many media outlets throughout the world, from the big television networks to the most honorable newspapers, to the last gossip newspapers publicize their wedding, declaring it \"the wedding of the year in the fashion world.\" Thousands of women see the pictures of Ridge and speculate on the identity of the woman who has won the heart of the man who has, until recently, been a playboy, and who has refused to settle for one woman.\nOne of the curious is Brooke, whose life soon becomes a key element in the series. Her love affair with Ridge sets up much of the storyline, beginning in the first year after the aforementioned \"wedding of the year in the fashion world\" was called off when Ridge was caught cheating on Caroline with an old flame. Every so often, Ridge and Brooke reunite only to break up due to various circumstances, and Ridge invariably finds comfort (in most cases, this would lead to marriage) with another love of his life, Taylor Hayes. Following one of her breakups with Ridge, Brooke marries his father, Eric, who divorces Stephanie to do so. Brooke gives birth to two children with Eric. The couple eventually divorce and Eric reconciles with Stephanie. Likewise, Brooke and Ridge resume their pattern of an on-again-off-again relationship, between Brooke's relationships with other men and Forrester family members, and Ridge's multiple reunions with Taylor. Eric eventually marries Brooke's sister, Donna Logan, and legally adopts her son Marcus. They later divorce due to their family's bitter history.\nThe rivalry between Stephanie and Brooke also becomes a key storyline in the series. The strong willed Stephanie originally has a cordial relationship with the Logans after hiring their catering company. But she soon disapproves of Brooke becoming part of the Forresters' lives, believing she is an \"opportunist from the valley\" who swooped in after the \"wedding of the year in the fashion world\" was called off. Stephanie also does not initially recognize that Beth is the same woman who was Eric's former college girlfriend. Having marital problems since the start of series, Eric soon seeks the comfort of Beth. Once Stephanie learns of the affair, she secretly hires a private investigator to track down Steven Logan and then sends an anonymous letter to the Logan household as to his whereabouts. After Donna finally convinces their father to return home, Stephanie arranges with Bill Spencer to give Stephen a job in Paris. Only Brooke figures out that Stephanie was the one working behind the scenes. When confronted, Stephanie justifies"}, "descending_order": ["40060422", "191591", "2154731"], "permutation_1": ["40060422", "2154731", "191591"], "permutation_2": ["191591", "40060422", "2154731"], "permutation_3": ["191591", "2154731", "40060422"]}
{"id": "nq_-3406412495959097318", "docs_added": {"46919750": "The Touch of the Master's Hand\nChristian poem and song\n\"The Touch of the Master's Hand\", also sometimes called \"The Old Violin\", is a Christian poem written in 1921 by Myra Brooks Welch.\nThe poem tells of a battered old violin that is about to be sold as the last item at an auction for a pittance, until a violinist steps out of the audience and plays the instrument, demonstrating its beauty and true value. The violin then sells for $3,000 instead of a mere $3. The poem ends by comparing this instrument touched by the hand of a master musician to the life of a sinner that is touched by the hand of God.\nBiblical allusions.\nMess of pottage is used to describe that for which a sinner might sell his or her soul. This term was first coined by John Capgrave in reference to the Biblical story of Esau selling his birthright to Jacob for lentil stew, found in .\nLegacy.\nWelch's famous poem inspired other works. The poem was adapted into song lyrics and set to music by John Kramp in 1974 while a freshman at Baylor University. The song was recorded by Contemporary Christian artist Wayne Watson for his first album \"Workin' In The Final Hour\" in 1980 and re-recorded 12 years later on his \"How Time Flies\" compilation project.\nA short film also titled \"The Touch of the Master's Hand\" won the Short Film Jury Award \u2013 U.S. Fiction at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.\nAdaptations.\nThe poem has been adapted into three films:\nAbout the author.\nMyra Brooks Welch was born in 1877 and died in 1959. While she authored many other poems, she is best known for this work.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "54306538": "Myra Brooks Welch\nAmerican poet\nMyra Brooks Welch (October 12, 1877 \u2013 August 11, 1959 Los Angeles, California) was a poet that is known for her Christian poem \"The Touch of the Master's Hand\", which was also adapted into a film.\nPersonal life.\nMyra Brooks was born on October 12, 1877, in Farmington Township, Fulton County, Illinois to Mary (n\u00e9e Eshelman) and John W. Brooks. She was the youngest of four other siblings: Charles, David, Frank and Dessie. By 1900, she and her parents had relocated to Independence, Oregon, where she was working as a sales clerk in a store. Around 1901, she married Otis Melvin Welch, who was a clerk in a dry goods store and had two children, Otis and Doris. By 1920, her parents had moved with her and her family and they were all living in La Verne, California.\nWelch's most noted poem, \"The Touch of the Master's Hand\" was written in 1921 and published on February 26, 1921, in the \"Gospel Messenger\". She published four books of poetry \"The Years Between\" (1929), \"Dorcas\" (1930), \"High Songs\" (1933) and \"The Touch of the Master's Hand\" (1941). \nWelch was disabled in a wheelchair from arthritis. Her arthritis later caused her to not be able to play music, such as the organ which she used to play. Her hands were disabled, but she wrote poems on a typewriter by pressing the keys with pencil erasers, despite the pain that it caused. She was named \"the poet with the singing soul\".\nShe was a resident of La Verne, California. As a youngster her special joy was playing the organ but this was denied her in later life as she was severely affected by arthritis and spent much of her time in a wheelchair. She wrote with an inverted pencil in each of her gnarled hands and would pick out the words on a typewriter. She said that the joy of her writing outweighed the pain of her efforts. \nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3300749": "Touch (1997 film)\nTouch is a 1997 American black comedy drama film written and directed by Paul Schrader. It is based on a 1987 novel by Elmore Leonard. It stars Christopher Walken, Richard Schiff, Bridget Fonda, Skeet Ulrich, Tom Arnold, Gina Gershon, Lolita Davidovich, Janeane Garofalo, LL Cool J, and Paul Mazursky. It was shot in Fullerton, California.\nPlot.\nA young man, Juvenal, is apparently able to cure the sick by the laying-on of hands. Mysterious stigmata appear from time to time on his flesh.\nThe former evangelist Bill Hill, tired of selling mobile homes for a living, persuades his friend Lynn Faulkner to befriend the innocent ex-monk and encourage him to aim for the big-time. But matters become complicated when the young couple falls in love, and even more complicated when fundamentalist August Murray takes exception to their relationship.\nCast.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>* Skeet Ulrich as Juvenal\nSoundtrack.\nThe soundtrack is composed and recorded by Dave Grohl and released on his Capitol Records imprint, Roswell Records. Nine of the tracks are instrumental. The remaining four tracks feature lyrics. One has Grohl on vocals titled \"How Do You Do,\" another has John Doe on vocals titled \"This Loving Thing\", and the other two songs titled \"Touch\" and \"Saints in Love\" feature vocals from Grohl and Louise Post of Veruca Salt. The release would also mark the first time Grohl used his pseudonym Late, as credited in the liner notes, since the release of \"Pocketwatch\" in 1992.\nReception.\nOn the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, of 18 critics' reviews are positive. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the a score of 56 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating .\nIn a review that awarded 2 and 1/2 stars out of 4, Roger Ebert wrote, \"The plot of 'Touch' sounds like a comedy. But the experience of seeing the film is subduing; the movie plays in a muted key. Actors like Tom Arnold, who approach their characters more broadly, sound like they're talking too loudly in church. The dominant tone is set by Skeet Ulrich, as Juvenal: He's sweet, soft-spoken, not sure what it all means. Schrader has said his movie has 'a whole cast of ironic characters, with an existential character in the center.' If the viewer doesn't figure this out, some scenes play very oddly.\" John Petrakis of the \"Chicago Tribune\" labelled the film as \"cryptic\" in his 1997 review, and praised Ulrich's performance, stating that he \"proves as gentle here as he was evil in \"Scream\".\" \"Touch\" was included in \"Magill's Cinema Annual 1998: A Survey of the Films of 1997\", with the book describing the film as \"too unconvincing and confused in tone to be truly satisfying.\"\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18943073": "The Master Touch\nThe Master Touch (Italian: Un uomo da rispettare) is a 1972 crime film directed by Michele Lupo starring Kirk Douglas and Florinda Bolkan.\nPlot summary.\nSteve Wallace, a safecracker, has just been released from prison. He attempts one last burglary with the help of a circus gymnast in Germany, who later becomes fat.\nRelease.\n\"The Master Touch\" was distributed theatrically in Germany in 8 December 1972.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "27792502": "The Master's Touch\nThe Master's Touch is a jazz album by Lester Young.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\nGridley, Mark C. Jazz Styles: History & Analysis. 9th N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2006. Print.", "3093606": "Touch-move rule\nChess rule requiring a player to move or capture a piece deliberately touched\nThe touch-move rule in chess specifies that a player, having the move, who deliberately touches a piece on the board must move or capture that piece if it is legal to do so. If it is the player's piece that was touched, it must be moved if the piece has a legal move. If the opponent's piece was touched, it must be captured if it can be captured with a legal move. If the touched piece cannot be legally moved or captured, there is no penalty. This is a rule of chess that is enforced in all formal <dfn id=\"\">over-the-board</dfn> competitions. \nA player claiming a touch-move violation must do so before themselves touching a piece. A player who wants to adjust a piece on its square without being required to move it can announce the French \"j'adoube\" (\"I adjust\") before touching the piece. While \"j'adoube\" is internationally understood, a local language equivalent such as \"adjusting\" is usually acceptable. A player may not touch the pieces on the board during the opponent's turn. \nThere is a separate rule that a player who lets go of a piece after making a legal move cannot retract the move. Thus, touching a piece that can be legally moved or captured commits the player to moving or capturing that piece.\nOnline chess often does not use the touch rule, letting players \"pick up\" a piece and then bring it back to the original square before selecting a different piece, and also allowing players to premove pieces while waiting for the opponent to move. A few sites such as the USCF and FIDE online chess websites enforce touch-move by disallowing any other pieces to be played after picking up one. In the case that the piece cannot move, the player is free to choose another piece.\nDetails.\nA player having the move who deliberately touches one or more of that player's pieces must move the first touched piece that can be legally moved. So long as the hand has not left the piece on a new square, the piece can be placed on any accessible square. Accidentally touching a piece (e.g., brushing against it while reaching for another piece) or adjusting a piece does not count as a deliberate touch.\nA player who touches an opposing piece must capture it if the piece can be captured. A player who touches one of the player's own pieces and an opponent's piece must make that capture if it is a legal move. Otherwise, the first of the touched pieces must be moved or captured. If it cannot be determined whether the player's piece or the opponent's piece was touched first, it is assumed that the player's piece was touched first. If a player touches more than one piece, the player must move or capture the first piece that can be legally moved or captured.\nCastling is a king move, so the king must be touched first. If the rook is touched first instead, a rook move must be made. If the player touches a rook at the same time as touching the king, the player must castle with that rook if it is legal to do so. If the player completes a two-square king move without touching a rook, the player must move the correct rook accordingly if castling on that side is legal. Otherwise, the move must be withdrawn and another king move made. This may include castling on the other side. If the player touches both pieces in attempting to castle illegally, the king must be moved if possible, but even if there is no legal king move, there is no requirement to move the rook.\nWhen a pawn is moved to its <dfn id=\"\">eighth rank</dfn>, once the player releases the pawn, a different move of the pawn can no longer be substituted. The move is not complete, however, until the promoted piece is released on that square.\nExamples.\nIn the diagram, from a game between future world champion Bobby Fischer and Jan Hein Donner, White had a probably winning advantage; Black had just moved 29...Qg5\u2013f5 and White fell for a swindle. Fischer touched his bishop, intending to move 30.Bd3, which seems like a natural move, but then realized that Black could play 30...Rxc2, and after 31.Bxf5 Rc1 32.Qxc1 Bxc1, the game would be a draw, because of the opposite-coloured bishops endgame. After touching the bishop, he realized that 30.Bd3 was a bad move, but since he was obligated to move the bishop, and other bishop moves were even worse, after several seconds he played 30.Bd3. The queens and rooks were exchanged (as above) and a draw by agreement was reached after the 34th move. Had Fischer won the game, he would have tied with Boris Spassky for first place in the 1966 Piatigorsky Cup tournament.\nThe touch-move rule produced an even more disastrous result for Fischer in his game as Black against Wolfgang Unzicker at Buenos Aires 1960. In the position diagrammed, Fischer touched his h-pawn, intending to play 12...h6. He then realized that White could simply play 13.Bxh6, since 13...gxh6 would be illegal due to the pin on the g-<dfn id=\"\">file</dfn> by White's queen. Having touched his h-pawn, the touch-move rule required Fischer to play either 12...h6?? or 12...h5??, an almost equally bad move that fatally weakens Black's <dfn id=\"\">kingside</dfn>. Fischer accordingly played 12...h5?? and resigned just ten moves later\u2014his shortest loss ever in a serious game.\nIn this position in a rapid game between former world champion Anatoly Karpov and Alexander Chernin in Tilburg in 1992, White had just promoted a pawn to a queen on the e8-square. Black made the discovered check 53...Kd6+. Karpov, with very little time remaining, did not see that he was in check and played the illegal move 54.Qe6+. The arbiter required Karpov to play a legal move with his queen instead (since he touched it), and he selected 54.Qe7+?? (54.Qd7+ Rxd7+ 55.Kg6 would still have drawn.) After 54...Rxe7+, Karpov lost the game.\nIn the 1889 game between Siegbert Tarrasch and Semyon Alapin at Breslau, Alapin was expecting 5.d4, the normal move after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 d6 4.Nf3 Nxe4 in Petrov's Defence. But by the time he looked at the position he had already touched his <dfn id=\"\">king's bishop</dfn>, intending 5...Be7 in reply to 5.d4, not noticing that White actually played 5.d3 attacking his knight. Now compelled to move the bishop, he would lose the knight without compensation, so he resigned immediately.\nAdjusting pieces.\nIf a player wishes to adjust one or more pieces on their squares without being required to move them, the player can announce \"j'adoube\" (, \"I adjust\"), or words to that effect in other languages. If a player does not announce an adjustment in advance, the player may be penalized accordingly. \"J'adoube\" is internationally recognized by chess players as announcing the intent to make incidental contact with their pieces.\nThe phrase is used to give warning from a player to the opponent that the player is about to touch a piece on the board, typically to centralize it on its square, without the intent of making a move with it. Although this French term is customary, it is not obligatory; other similar indications may be used. Only a player having the move may adjust pieces, and the opponent must be present.\nExample of misuse.\nThere have been occasions in chess history when a player has uttered \"j'adoube\" suspiciously late. It is possible a late announcement of an adjustment can be used after starting to make a losing move in order to retract it, thus avoiding the touch-move rule. Such behaviour, when intentionally used for a retraction, is regarded as cheating. The Yugoslav grandmaster Milan Matulovi\u0107 was nicknamed \"J'adoubovic\" after such an incident.\nHistory.\nThe touch-move rule has existed for centuries. In the Middle Ages, strict rules were considered necessary because chess was played for stakes. Luis Ramirez de Lucena gave the rule in his 1497 book \"Repetici\u00f3n de amores y arte de ajedrez\". Benjamin Franklin referred to it in his 1786 essay \"The Morals of Chess\". At one time, the rule also required the player who played an illegal move to move the king. In the first half of the nineteenth century, rule XIII of the London Chess Club provided: If a player make a false move, i.e., play a Piece or Pawn to any square to which it cannot legally be moved, his adversary has the choice of three penalties; viz., 1st, of compelling him to let the Piece or Pawn remain on the square to which he played it; 2nd, to move correctly to another square; 3rd, to replace the Piece or Pawn and move his King. While this rule existed, it occasionally led to tragicomedies such as in the 1893 game between Lindemann and Echtermeyer, at Kiel. In that game, after 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 White, probably intending the usual 3.Nc3, instead placed his <dfn id=\"\">queen's bishop</dfn> on c3. Since that move was illegal, White was compelled to instead move his king. After the forced 3.Ke2??, Black gave checkmate with 3...Qe4#.\nIn England, the 1862 laws of the British Chess Association rejected the above rule. The association's law VII provided instead that if a player made an illegal move, \"he must, at the choice of the opponent, and according to the case, either move his own man legally, capture the man legally, or move any other man legally moveable.\" The German chess master Siegbert Tarrasch wrote in \"The Game of Chess\" (originally published in 1931 as \"Das Schachspiel\") that the former rule requiring a player who made an illegal move to move the king had only been changed a few years earlier.\nUnusual scenarios.\nThe Fischer random chess variant (also known as Chess960) has custom castling rules wherein the king and the rook end up where they would be in a normal chess game even if they start on different squares because of the randomized start positions. It is thus possible for the king or rook to not move while castling, or for the destination square for the king to already be occupied by the rook, yet by convention touch-move requires that the king be touched and moved first. Players are expected to use only a single hand, so picking up both simultaneously is not an option. A dispute arose at the FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship 2019 in a speed chess game between Ian Nepomniachtchi and Wesley So. Nepomniachtchi attempted to castle, but he first moved the rook out of the way for his king to take the rook's former square. The arbiter initially required Nepomniachtchi to make a rook move as a result of touching the rook first rather than castling. This was appealed, and the appeals committee overturned the original ruling; the game was replayed.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "31643470": "Akshay Kumar Sen\n19th century Bengali mystic and saint\nAkshay Kumar Sen was one of the lay disciples of Sri Ramakrishna, the 19th century Bengali mystic and saint. He was the author of the book \"Sri Ramkrishna Punthi\", a long narrative poem on the life and teachings of one of the most illustrious figures of 19th-century India. After reading the work, Swami Vivekananda wrote from the United States to a brother monk in India, \"Give Akshaya a hundred thousand hearty embraces from me. Through his pen Sri Ramakrishna is manifesting himself. Blessed is Akshaya.\"\nBiography.\nEarly days.\nAkshay Kumar Sen was born in 1854 in a village called Maynapur in the Bankura district of Bengal to Haladhar Sen and Bidhumukhi Devi. He belonged to a very poor family and did not have means to get a good education. He was married and had two sons and a daughter. Sen moved to Calcutta, where he was employed as a private tutor of the children of the Tagore family. In 1885, he had a chance encounter of Sri Ramakrishna when the later came down to visit one of his devotees, Mahimacharan in Calcutta. Akshaya accompanied another devotee, Devendranath Majumdar, to Mahimacharan's house.\nSubsequent meetings with Sri Ramakrishna.\nAfter the first meeting, Akshay had several other meetings with Sri Ramakrishna. He went to Dakshineswar temple with one of his friends. Although he himself did not have much interaction with Ramakrishna, he listened to his discourses keenly, which subsequently formed the subject of his writings on Sri Ramakrishna. In April 1885 Devendra arranged a festival at his house in Sri Ramakrishna's honour and Akshay was invited. He often had experiences by which he felt that the master was deliberately ignoring him. But he kept coming back to Sri Ramakrishna with patience and devotion.\nKalpataru (the wish fulfilling tree) day.\nIn December 1885, the condition of Sri Ramakrishna, who was suffering from throat cancer, worsened, and he had to be transferred to a spacious rented garden house in Cossipore, near Calcutta. On 1 January 1886, Sri Ramakrishna came out for a walk and showered blessings on all his disciples. The day is known as \"Kalpataru Day\" in the circle of Sri Ramakrishna devotees. Kalpataru is a mythical wish fulfilling tree.\nAkshay recalls what happened to him in his own narrative: \"When it was about 3 o'clock, the Master came downstairs and walked towards the garden path. The devotees followed him. All others, who were elsewhere, hearing that the Master was walking in the garden, rushed there. We came down at once and quickly went to the place where the Master was walking with the other devotees. I stood on one side behind the Master. Two beautiful champa flowers were in my hands. The great devotee Girish (Chandra Ghosh) was near the Master and talking with him. The Master was charmingly dressed that day. Looking at him once, the form cannot be forgotten. He wore a red bordered cotton cloth. A green coloured coat was on his body. He had a cotton cap which covered his head and also his ears. On his feet there were socks and slippers which had decorations of creepers and leaves on them. His face was shining and luminous. Though the body was emaciated by his terrible illness, his face was charming and rays of light were always playing on it... A little afterwards, the Master blessed the devotees and raising his right hand said, 'May you have (God)consciousness. What else can I say?' Then the Master returned to the path leading towards the house. I was standing some distance away. From there he addressed me, 'Hello, my boy, what are you doing?' He then came near, touched my chest with his hand and recited something in my ear which, being a Maha-mantra, I shall keep secret. What did I see and what did I hear? I shall only say that my heart's desire was fulfilled that day and I only wish to pass the rest of my days in singing the glory of Sri Ramakrishna.\"\nLiterary pursuits.\nAfter Sri Ramakrishna's death in August 1886, Akshay decided to pen down some of his teachings in the form of a long narrative poem. He was encouraged in this effort by Swami Vivekananda. In 1887, he started writing the verses and after finishing a part of it he got it reviewed by Swami Vivekananda who was impressed by his writings and took him to holy mother Sri Sarada Devi. He wrote the work in the form of a panchali or long narrative poem in a local style prevalent in Bengal between 1884 and 1901. He sent a copy of his work to Swami Vivekananda, who was ecstatic by the depiction. The book was initially named as Charitamrita and then later came to be known as Sri Sri Ramakrishna Punthi. The book has been translated into English prose under the title A Portrait of Sri Ramakrishna. Apart from the Punthi, Akshay also wrote The Teachings of Sri Ramakrishna in 1896 and The Glory of Sri Ramakrishna (Sr\u00ee Sr\u00ee R\u00e2makrishna\nMahim\u00e2) in 1910, both in Bengali. Critics say the Punthi is a complementary work to two other authoritative volumes on Sri Ramakrishna, the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna by 'M' and Sri Ramakrishna the Great Master by Swami Saradananda.\nLater life.\nAfterwards Akshaya returned to his native village and despite moderate success of his books he remained poor. He travelled to the birthplace of Sri Ramakrishna, Kamarpukur and met the holy mother Sarada Devi. He died of bloody dysentery on 7 December 1923.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "13320978": "Touch of Death\nFatal martial arts technique using little force\nThe touch of death (or death-point striking) is any martial arts technique reputed to kill using seemingly less than lethal force targeted at specific areas of the body.\nThe concept known as dim mak (), alternatively () traces its history to traditional Chinese medicine acupuncture. Tales of its use are often found in the Wuxia genre of Chinese martial arts fiction. \"Dim mak \"is depicted as a secret body of knowledge with techniques that attack pressure points and meridians, said to incapacitate or sometimes cause immediate or even delayed death to an opponent. Little scientific or historical evidence exists for a martial arts \"touch of death\"; however, in rare cases, death can occur in response to trauma such as commotio cordis, an often lethal disruption of heart rhythm that occurs as a result of a blow to the area directly over the heart.\nThe concept known as vibrating palm originates with the Chinese martial arts \"Neijin\" (\"internal\") energy techniques that deal with the \"qi\" energy and the type of force (\"jin\") used: \"a technique that is part psychic and part vibratory, this energy is then focused into a wave\".\nClaims of practicability.\nIn 1985, an article in \"Black Belt\" magazine speculated that the death of Bruce Lee in 1973 might have been caused by \"a delayed reaction to a Dim-Mak strike he received several weeks prior to his collapse\". Other authors have also said Lee's death may have been due to a \"quivering palm technique\" (alongside an article about Choy Li Fut instructor Wong Doc-Fai) to the effect that \"dim mak does actually exist and is still taught to a few select kung fu practitioners.\" A 1986 book on \"qi\" identifies \"dim mak\" as \"one of the secret specialities\" of \"wing chun\". \nDuring the late 1980s, Erle Montaigue (1949\u20132011) published a number of books and instruction videos on \"dim mak\" with Paladin Press. Montaigue claims to be \"the first Westerner to be granted the degree of 'Master' in \"taijiquan\", awarded by Master Wang Xin-Wu in 1985. According to Montaigue's own account, \"dim mak\" is an aspect of traditional old Yang style \"taji quan\" which he claims he began learning in 1978 from a master called Chiang Yiu-chun who died in the month of May. Montaigue stated this man was an illegal immigrant, making his existence difficult to verify. Erle subsequently learned the remaining \"qi\"-disruptive\" forms of \"wudang shan\" from Liang Shih-kan in 1995. Paladin Press has other titles on the topic of \"dim mak\", including Kelly (2001) and Walker and Bauer (2002), both with a foreword by Montaigue.\nAround 1990, Taika Seiyu Oyata founded the style of Ry\u016b-te which involves \"pressure point fighting\" (\"\"). In the 1990s, karate instructor George Dillman developed a style that involves \"ky\u016bshojutsu\", a term that he identifies with \"dim mak\". Dillman eventually went as far as claiming to have developed \"qi\"-based attacks that work without physical contact (\"no-touch knockout\" techniques), a claim that did not stand up to third-party investigation and was consequently denounced as fraudulent.\nIn East Asian popular culture.\nA \"Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique\" appears in both the Shaw Brothers films \"Clan of the White Lotus\" (1980) and \"Executioners of Shaolin\" (1977). It is used by the protagonist in the climax of \"\". The \"delayed action\" of \"dim mak\" is depicted in \"Executioners of Shaolin\" (1977), where a \"100-step Soul Catching\" move allows the victim to take a certain number of steps before dying. A \"dim mak\" attack is used to paralyze a character in \"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon\" (2000).\nThe manga \"Fist of the North Star\" centers around the fictional martial art school \"Hokuto Shinken\", whose practitioners are trained to kill or incapacitate opponents by striking the specific pressure points on an opponent's body. The protagonist of the story, Kenshiro, is the successor of this style and will often end a battle stating how much time the opponent has left to live after delivering a finishing move, or follow up with his famous catchphrase, \"You are already dead\", before his opponent dies, usually from violently exploding.\nIn the \"Naruto\" series, and its sequel \"\", Dim Mak is a basis for the fictional Gentle Fist fighting style used by the Hyuga Clan.\nIn contemporary western pop culture.\n\"Dim mak\" has become a kind of camp pop culture item which is recognized also outside the genre of martial arts films. In Thomas Pynchon's novel \"Vineland\", one of the protagonists uses the \"Quivering Palm Death Touch\", which kills the opponent one year after it is used. In the TV series \"Quincy, M.E.\", a 1977 episode entitled \"Touch of Death\" features a martial-arts movie star whose mysterious death is found to be a result of a \"dim mak\" attack against him ten days earlier. The lead character of the British TV series \"Gangsters\" (1978) is murdered by hired assassin \"The White Devil\" using a similar attack, with death occurring four days after he is touched. Dan Brown's novel \"Inferno\" depicts a character incapacitating a guard by putting pressure on his wrist, explaining the technique as \"Dim Mak\". In the comedy film \"The Men Who Stare at Goats\", George Clooney's character claims to have been hit with the Touch of Death, a \"light tap\" that causes death at an unknown point in the future, in one case \"about eighteen years later\".\n\"Dim mak\" is referenced in \"Bloodsport\" (1988). In the film, Dux (Jean-Claude Van Damme) proves that he has been trained by Senzo Tanaka (who is also well-respected within the fighting world) by demonstrating a variation of \"dim mak\" to the judges to back his claim. He proceeds to strike at a stack of bricks with his hand very carefully positioned before he aims downward at a specific force of speed and angle, breaking only the bottom brick. His invitation ends up being honored. Chong Li also uses the \"dim mak\" technique on Pumola during the Kumite before ending the match.\nIn the \"Star Trek\" universe, the Vulcan nerve pinch is frequently used as a non-lethal method of applying pressure to a pressure point in order to render the target unconscious.\nIn \"Doctor Who\", the Third Doctor describes himself as a master of Venusian aikido on various occasions, accounting for his unique form of hand-to-hand combat, which allows him to immobilize opponents in a manner similar to the Vulcan nerve pinch. Later incarnations of the Doctor have shown varying degrees of expertise in hand-to-hand combat, although only some spin-off material explicitly identifies the later Doctors' combat skills as originating from Venusian aikido.\nIn the \"Kung Fu Panda\" movie series, the Wuxi Finger Hold technique used by Po is a form of Dim Mak. Likewise, the villain Tai Lung and the mentor Oogway both use a nerve-strike attack to paralyze the opponent.\nIn the \"\" series, the character Ty Lee uses a form of Dim Mak called chi-blocking to cripple or immobilize opponents and leave them unable to \"bend\" (control the elements). The fighting style is reintroduced in \"The Legend of Korra\" as the primary fighting style of the Equalists, who specifically target those able to bend elements.\nIn the \"\" episode \"Day of the Samurai\", Kyodai Ken, Bruce Wayne's rival from his days training in Japan, forces Master Yoru to reveal his secret death touch. Wayne survives the technique by wearing a protective pad to absorb the force of the blow.\nIn \"\", a 2004 American martial arts film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, a martial arts teacher named Pai Mei uses his Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique to kill opponents after they have taken five steps.\nIn the 2012 video game \"Sleeping Dogs\" it is the final and most powerful move that can be learned.\nIn \"The Suicide Squad\" 2021 film, Bloodsport, Peacemaker and Rick Flag use dim mak to kill their captors.\nIn \"Mortal Kombat 1\", the Kameo character Shujinko uses a fatality that imitates a scene where the Bride kills Bill.\nSteve Aoki's independent label Dim Mak Records is a reference to Bruce Lee's Death Touch martial art.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "75311868": "John Linde\nAmerican music producer\nJohn Linde is an American music producer. Musically, he has been involved in genres which include, doo-wop, r&b, soul, pop, and heavy rock. As a producer, his work includes the albums \"The Beat Goes On\" for Vanilla Fudge, \"Sir Lord Baltimore\" by Sir Lord Baltimore, and \"A Mouth in The Clouds\" for The Group Image. He produced the singles, \"Where Are We Going\" by Bobby Bloom, \"A Touch of Baby\" for The Tymes, \"The Letter\" for The Outrage and others. He has also composed hits for Peter Antell, The Percells and Bobby Bloom.\nBackground.\nJohn Linde was born in Oceanside, New York. He also grew up there. While attending high school, he was a percussionist in the school's band.\nAfter leaving school he formed The Chants in 1959. He had a dual role as the band's drummer as well as their manager. The group was made up of Pete Antell on guitar and vocals, Bobby Butts on sax and vocals, Mike DeVivo on lead vocals, John Linde on drums and Mickey Lee Lane on bass. Between 1961 and 1962, the group recorded three singles. The first, \"Respectable\" bw \"Kiss Me Goodbye\" was released on Tru Eko 3567 in 1961. It was also released on MGM 13008 the same year. And in the same year, \"Dick Tracy\" bw \"Choo Choo\" was released. The following year, \"Respectable\" was released on U.W.R. 4243.\nHe would go on to produce recordings for the New York Rock & Roll Ensemble, Mickey Lee Lane,"}, "descending_order": ["46919750", "54306538", "3300749", "18943073", "27792502", "3093606", "31643470", "13320978", "75311868"], "permutation_1": ["3093606", "13320978", "31643470", "54306538", "46919750", "27792502", "3300749", "75311868", "18943073"], "permutation_2": ["46919750", "75311868", "18943073", "13320978", "27792502", "31643470", "54306538", "3300749", "3093606"], "permutation_3": ["75311868", "3300749", "18943073", "13320978", "54306538", "31643470", "27792502", "3093606", "46919750"]}
{"id": "nq_-305894151957592456", "docs_added": {"73875": "The Godfather Part II\n1974 epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola\nThe Godfather Part II is a 1974 American epic crime film produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, loosely based on the 1969 novel \"The Godfather\" by Mario Puzo, who co-wrote the screenplay with Coppola. It is both a sequel and a prequel to the 1972 film \"The Godfather\", presenting parallel dramas: one picks up the 1958 story of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), the new Don of the Corleone family, protecting the family business in the aftermath of an attempt on his life; the other covers the journey of his father, Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro), from his Sicilian childhood to the founding of his family enterprise in New York City. The ensemble cast also features Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, Morgana King, John Cazale, Marianna Hill and Lee Strasberg.\nFollowing the first film's success, Paramount Pictures began developing a follow-up, with many of the cast and crew returning. Coppola, who was given more creative control, had wanted to make both a sequel and a prequel to \"The Godfather\" that would tell the story of Vito's rise and Michael's fall. Principal photography began in October 1973 and wrapped up in June 1974. \"The Godfather Part II\" premiered in New York City on December 12, 1974, and was released in the United States on December 20, 1974. It grossed $48 million in the United States and Canada and up to $93\u00a0million worldwide on a $13\u00a0million budget. The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, and became the first sequel to win Best Picture. Its six Oscar wins also included Best Director for Coppola, Best Supporting Actor for De Niro and Best Adapted Screenplay for Coppola and Puzo. Pacino won Best Actor at the BAFTAs and was nominated at the Oscars.\n\"The Godfather Part II\" is considered to be one of the greatest films of all time, as well as a rare example of a sequel that rivals its predecessor. Like its predecessor, \"Part II\" remains a highly influential film, especially in the gangster genre. In 1997, the American Film Institute ranked it as the 32nd-greatest film in American film history and it retained this position 10 years later. It was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1993, being deemed \"culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant\". \nPauline Kael wrote: \"\"The Godfather\" was the greatest gangster picture ever made, and had metaphorical overtones that took it far beyond the gangster genre. In Part II, the wider themes are no longer merely implied. The second film shows the consequences of the actions in the first; it\u2019s all one movie, in two great big pieces, and it comes together in your head while you watch.\"\n\"The Godfather Part III\", the final installment in the trilogy, was released 16 years later in 1990. \nPlot.\nThe film interweaves events some time after \"The Godfather\" and the early life of Vito Corleone.\nVito.\nIn 1901, nine-year-old Vito Andolini escapes from Corleone, Sicily in the Kingdom of Italy to New York City after mafia chieftain Don Ciccio kills the rest of his family. An immigration officer registers him as Vito Corleone. By 1917 Vito is married in Little Italy and has an infant son, Sonny. Black Hand extortionist Don Fanucci preys on the neighborhood, costing Vito his grocery store job. He begins stealing for a living with his neighbor Peter Clemenza and has two more children: Fredo and Michael.\nVito, Clemenza and Salvatore Tessio sell stolen dresses door-to-door. Fanucci demands payoffs of $200 from Vito and his partners. Vito doubts Fanucci's muscle and decides to offer less. He meets Fanucci and offers $100, which Fanucci grudgingly accepts. Emboldened, Vito tracks Fanucci back to his apartment and kills him. Vito's reputation spreads, and neighbors ask him to defend them from other predatory figures.\nIn 1922, Vito and his family travel to Sicily to start an olive oil importing business. He and business partner Don Tommasino visit an elderly Don Ciccio. He obtains Ciccio's blessing for their business, then reveals his identity and slices Ciccio's stomach, avenging the Andolini family.\nMichael.\nIn 1958, Don Michael Corleone has several meetings at his Lake Tahoe compound during the First Communion of his son Anthony. Johnny Ola, representing Jewish Mob boss Hyman Roth, promises support in taking over a Las Vegas casino. Corleone \"capo\" Frank Pentangeli asks for help defending Bronx territory from Roth affiliates, the Rosato brothers. Michael refuses, frustrating Pentangeli. Senator Pat Geary demands a bribe to secure the casino license and insults Michael's Italian heritage. That night, Michael narrowly escapes an assassination attempt. Suspecting a traitor in the family, he leaves \"consigliere\" Tom Hagen in charge and leaves the compound.\nMichael separately tells Pentangeli and Roth that he suspects the other of planning the hit, and arranges a peace meeting between Pentangeli and the Rosatos. At the meeting the brothers attempt to strangle Pentangeli. A police officer drops in, forcing the brothers to flee. Hagen blackmails Geary into cooperating with the Corleones by having him framed for the death of a prostitute.\nRoth invites Michael to Havana to invest in his activities under the Batista government. Michael expresses reservations, given the growing Cuban Revolution. Later Roth becomes angry when Michael asks who ordered the Rosatos to kill Pentangeli. Michael and Ola attend a New Year's Eve party where Fredo pretends not to know Ola but later slips. Michael realizes that Fredo is a traitor and orders both Roth and Ola killed. Batista resigns and flees amid rebel advances, and Michael, Fredo and Roth separately escape Cuba. Ola is murdered by hitman Bussetta, who is himself killed by a soldier while attempting to murder Roth at a Havana hospital after Roth was taken there after falling ill. Back home, Hagen tells Michael that his wife Kay miscarried.\nA Senate committee on organized crime investigates the Corleone family. Pentangeli agrees to testify against Michael and is placed under witness protection. On returning to Nevada, Fredo tells Michael that he did not realize that Roth was planning an assassination. Michael disowns Fredo but orders that he should not be harmed while their mother Carmela is alive. Michael attends the committee hearing with Hagen and Pentangeli's brother Vincenzo. Pentangeli, upon seeing Vincenzo, retracts his statement implicating Michael in organized crime, and the hearing dissolves in an uproar. Kay tells Michael that she had an abortion and intends to leave him and take their children. Michael strikes her in rage and banishes her alone.\nAt Carmela's funeral, Fredo hugs a reluctant Michael and befriends Anthony over fishing. Roth returns to the United States after being refused entry to Israel. Corleone \"capo\" Rocco Lampone assassinates him at the airport and is shot dead trying to escape. Hagen visits Pentangeli at the army barracks where he is held and they discuss how failed conspirators against a Roman emperor could commit suicide to save their families. Pentangeli is later found dead in his bathtub, having slit his wrists. Enforcer Al Neri takes Fredo fishing and shoots him as Michael watches from the compound.\nMichael recalls Vito's 50th birthday party on December 7, 1941. While the family waits for Vito, Michael announces that he has dropped out of college and joined the Marines, angering Sonny and surprising Hagen. Only Fredo supports his decision. When Vito is heard arriving, Michael sits alone at the table while the others welcome him in surprise. After Fredo's death, Michael sits pensively, alone, by the lake.\nCast.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>* Al Pacino as Michael Corleone\nProduction.\nDevelopment.\nMario Puzo started writing a script for a sequel in December 1971, before \"The Godfather\" was even released; its initial title was \"The Death of Michael Corleone\". Francis Ford Coppola's idea for the sequel would be to \"juxtapose the ascension of the family under Vito Corleone with the decline of the family under his son Michael... I had always wanted to write a screenplay that told the story of a father and a son at the same age. They were both in their thirties and I would integrate the two stories... In order not to merely make \"Godfather I\" over again, I gave \"Godfather II\" this double structure by extending the story in both the past and in the present\". Coppola met with Martin Scorsese about directing the film, but Paramount refused. Coppola also, in his director's commentary on \"The Godfather Part II\", mentioned that the scenes depicting the Senate committee interrogation of Michael Corleone and Frank Pentangeli are based on the Joseph Valachi federal hearings and that Pentangeli is a Valachi-like figure.\nProduction, however, nearly ended before it began when Pacino's lawyers told Coppola that he had grave misgivings with the script and was not coming. Coppola spent an entire night rewriting it before giving it to Pacino for his review. Pacino approved it and the production went forward.\nThe film's original budget was $6\u00a0million but costs increased to over $11\u00a0million, with \"Variety\"'s review claiming it was over $15\u00a0million.\nCasting.\nSeveral actors from the first film did not return for the sequel. Marlon Brando initially agreed to return for the birthday flashback sequence, but the actor, feeling mistreated by the board at Paramount, failed to show up for the single day's shooting. Coppola then rewrote the scene that same day. Richard S. Castellano, who portrayed Peter Clemenza in the first film, also declined to return, as he and the producers could not reach an agreement on his demands that he be allowed to write the character's dialogue in the film, though this claim was disputed by Castellano's widow in a 1991 letter to \"People\" magazine. The part in the plot originally intended for the latter-day Clemenza was then filled by the character of Frank Pentangeli, played by Michael V. Gazzo.\nCoppola offered James Cagney a part in the film, but he refused. James Caan agreed to reprise the role of Sonny in the birthday flashback sequence, demanding he be paid the same amount he received for the entire previous film for the single scene in \"Part II\", which he received. Among the actors depicting Senators in the hearing committee are film producer/director Roger Corman, writer/producer William Bowers, producer Phil Feldman, and actor Peter Donat.\nFilming.\n\"The Godfather Part II\" was shot between October 1, 1973, and June 19, 1974. The scenes that took place in Cuba were shot in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Charles Bluhdorn, whose Gulf+Western conglomerate owned Paramount, felt strongly about developing the Dominican Republic as a movie-making site. Forza d'Agr\u00f2 was the Sicilian town featured in the film.\nUnlike with the first film, Coppola was given near-complete control over production. In his commentary, he said this resulted in a shoot that ran very smoothly despite multiple locations and two narratives running parallel within one film. Coppola discusses his decision to make this the first major U.S. motion picture to use \"Part II\" in its title in the director's commentary on the DVD edition of the film released in 2002. Paramount was initially opposed because they believed the audience would not be interested in an addition to a story they had already seen. But the director prevailed, and the film's success began the common practice of numbered sequels.\nOnly three weeks prior to the release, film critics and journalists pronounced \"Part\u00a0II\" a disaster. The cross-cutting between Vito and Michael's parallel stories were judged too frequent, not allowing enough time to leave a lasting impression on the audience. Coppola and the editors returned to the cutting room to change the film's narrative structure, but could not complete the work in time, leaving the final scenes poorly timed at the opening.\nIt was the last major American motion picture to have release prints made with Technicolor's dye imbibition process until the late 1990s.\nMusic.\nThe score is by Nino Rota with additions by Carmine Coppola. It won the 1974 Academy Award for Best Original Score.\nRelease.\nTheatrical.\n\"The Godfather Part II\" premiered in New York City on December 12, 1974, and was released in the United States on December 20, 1974.\nHome media.\nCoppola created \"The Godfather Saga\" expressly for American television in a 1975 release that combined \"The Godfather\" and \"The Godfather Part\u00a0II\" with unused footage from those two films in a chronological telling that toned down the violent, sexual, and profane material for its NBC debut on November 18, 1977. In 1981, Paramount released the \"Godfather Epic\" VHS box set, which also told the story of the first two films in chronological order, again with additional scenes, but not redacted for broadcast sensibilities. Coppola returned to the film again in 1992 when he updated that release with footage from \"The Godfather Part\u00a0III\" and more unreleased material. This home viewing release, under the title \"The Godfather Trilogy 1901\u20131980\", had a total run time of 583 minutes (9 hours, 43 minutes), not including the set's bonus documentary by Jeff Werner on the making of the films, \"The Godfather Family: A Look Inside\".\n\"The Godfather DVD Collection\" was released on October 9, 2001, in a package that contained all three films\u2014each with a commentary track by Coppola\u2014and a bonus disc that featured a 73-minute documentary from 1991 entitled \"The Godfather Family: A Look Inside\" and other miscellany about the film: the additional scenes originally contained in \"The Godfather Saga\"; \"Francis Coppola's Notebook\" (a look inside a notebook the director kept with him at all times during the production of the film); rehearsal footage; a promotional featurette from 1971; and video segments on Gordon Willis's cinematography, Nino Rota's and Carmine Coppola's music, the director, the locations and Mario Puzo's screenplays. The DVD also held a Corleone family tree, a \"Godfather\" timeline, and footage of the Academy Award acceptance speeches.\nThe restoration was confirmed by Francis Ford Coppola during a question-and-answer session for \"The Godfather Part\u00a0III\", when he said that he had just seen the new transfer and it was \"terrific\".\nRestoration.\nAfter a careful restoration by Robert A. Harris of Film Preserve, the first two \"Godfather\" films were released on DVD and Blu-ray on September 23, 2008, under the title \"The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration\". The Blu-ray Disc box set (four discs) includes high-definition extra features on the restoration and film. They are included on Disc 5 of the DVD box set (five discs).\nOther extras are ported over from Paramount's 2001 DVD release. There are slight differences between the repurposed extras on the DVD and Blu-ray Disc sets, with the HD box having more content.\nParamount Pictures restored and remastered \"The Godfather\", \"The Godfather Part II\", and \"\" (a re-edited cut of the third film) for a limited theatrical run and home media release on Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the premiere of \"The Godfather\". The disc editions were released on March 22, 2022.\nVideo game.\nA video game based on the film was released for Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in April 2009 by Electronic Arts. It received mixed or average reviews and sold poorly, leading Electronic Arts to cancel plans for a game based on \"The Godfather Part III.\"\nReception.\nBox office.\nAlthough \"The Godfather Part II\" did not surpass the original film commercially, it grossed $47.5 million in the United States and Canada. and was Paramount Pictures' highest-grossing film of 1974, and the seventh-highest-grossing picture in the United States. According to its international distributor, the film had grossed $45.3 million internationally by 1994, for a worldwide total of $93 million.\nCritical response.\nPauline Kael in \"The New Yorker\" was an early champion of the film, writing that it was visually \"far more complexly beautiful than the first, just as it's thematically richer, more shadowed, more full.\" She writes: \"Twice I almost cried out at the acts of violence that De Niro's Vito committed. I didn't look away from the images, as I sometimes do in routine action pictures. I wanted to see the worst; there is a powerful need to see it. You need these moments as you need the terrible climaxes in a Tolstoy novel. A great novelist does not spare our feelings (as the historical romancer does); he intensifies them, and so does Coppola.\" However, while the film's cinematography and acting were immediately acclaimed, many criticized it as overly slow-paced and convoluted. Vincent Canby of \"The New York Times\" viewed the film unfavorably, describing it as \"stitched together from leftover parts. It talks. It moves in fits and starts but it has no mind of its own... The plot defies any rational synopsis.\" \"Variety\" noted that Canby had been downbeat on the original too and claimed that he was in a minority of one and reported that the film had drawn mostly strongly admiring reviews. In A.D. Murphy's review in \"Variety\" he described it as a \"masterful sequel\" and \"outstanding in all respects\".\nWilliam Pechter of \"Commentary\", while admiring the movie, regretted what he saw as its archness and self-importance, calling it an \"overly deliberate and self-conscious attempt to make a film that's unmistakably a serious work of art,\" and professing to \"know of no one except movie critics who likes \"Part II\" as much as part one.\" Stanley Kauffmann of \"The New Republic\" cited what he called \"gaps and distentions\" in the story. \nRoger Ebert awarded three out of four and wrote that the flashbacks \"give Coppola the greatest difficulty in maintaining his pace and narrative force. The story of Michael, told chronologically and without the other material, would have had really substantial impact, but Coppola prevents our complete involvement by breaking the tension.\" Though praising Pacino's performance and lauding Coppola as \"a master of mood, atmosphere, and period\", Ebert considered the chronological shifts of its narrative \"a structural weakness from which the film never recovers\". Gene Siskel gave the film three-and-a-half out of four, writing that it was at times \"as beautiful, as harrowing, and as exciting as the original. In fact, \"The Godfather, Part II\" may be the \"second\" best gangster movie ever made. But it's not the same. Sequels can never be the same. It's like being forced to go to a funeral the second time\u2014the tears just don't flow as easily.\"\nCritical re-assessment.\nThe film quickly became the subject of a critical re-evaluation. Whether considered separately or with its predecessor as one work, \"The Godfather Part II\" is now widely regarded as one of the greatest films in world cinema. Many critics compare it favorably with the original\u00a0\u2013 although it is rarely ranked higher on lists of \"greatest\" films. On Rotten Tomatoes, it holds a 96% approval rating based on 126 reviews, with an average rating of 9.7/10. The consensus reads, \"Drawing on strong performances by Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, Francis Ford Coppola's continuation of Mario Puzo's Mafia saga set new standards for sequels that have yet to be matched or broken.\" Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 90 out of 100 based on 18 critics, indicating \"universal acclaim\".\nMichael Sragow's conclusion in his 2002 essay, selected for the National Film Registry website, is that \"[a]lthough \"The Godfather\" and \"The Godfather Part II\" depict an American family's moral defeat, as a mammoth, pioneering work of art it remains a national creative triumph.\" In his 2014 review of the film, Peter Bradshaw of \"The Guardian\" wrote \"Francis Coppola's breathtakingly ambitious prequel-sequel to his first \"Godfather\" movie is as gripping as ever. It is even better than the first film, and has the greatest single final scene in Hollywood history, a real\u00a0coup de cin\u00e9ma.\"\n\"The Godfather Part II\" was featured on \"Sight & Sound\"'s Director's list of the ten greatest films of all time in 1992 (ranked at No. 9) and 2002 (where it was ranked at No. 2. The critics ranked it at No. 4) On the 2012 list by the same magazine the film was ranked at No. 31 by critics and at No. 30 by directors. In 2006, Writers Guild of America ranked the film's screenplay (Written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola) the 10th greatest ever. It ranked No. 7 on \"Entertainment Weekly\"'s list of the \"100 Greatest Movies of All Time\", and #1 on \"TV Guide\"'s 1999 list of the \"50 Greatest Movies of All Time on TV and Video\". \"The Village Voice\" ranked \"The Godfather Part II\" at No. 31 in its Top 250 \"Best Films of the Century\" list in 1999, based on a poll of critics. In January 2002, the film (along with \"The Godfather\") made the list of the \"Top 100 Essential Films of All Time\" by the National Society of Film Critics. In 2017, it ranked No. 12 on Empire magazine's reader's poll of \"The 100 Greatest Movies\". In an earlier poll held by the same magazine in 2008, it was voted 19th on the list of 'The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time'. In 2015, it was tenth in the BBC's list of the 100 greatest American films.\nMany believe Pacino's performance in \"The Godfather Part II\" is his finest acting work. It is now regarded as one of the greatest performances in film history. In 2006, \"Premiere\" issued its list of \"The 100 Greatest Performances of all Time\", putting Pacino's performance at #20. Later in 2009, \"Total Film\" issued \"The 150 Greatest Performances of All Time\", ranking Pacino's performance fourth place.\nThe Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited it as one of his 100 favorite films.\nEbert added the film to his Great Movies canon, noting he \"would not change a word\" of his original review but praising the work as \"grippingly written, directed with confidence and artistry, photographed by Gordon Willis... in rich, warm tones.\" He praises the score: \"More than ever, I am convinced it is instrumental to the power and emotional effect of the films. I cannot imagine them without their Nino Rota scores. Against all our objective reason, they instruct us how to feel about the films. Now listen very carefully to the first notes as the big car drives into Miami. You will hear an evocative echo of Bernard Hermann\u2019s score for \"Citizen Kane\", another film about a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it.\"\nAccolades.\nThis film is the first sequel to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. \"The Godfather\" and \"The Godfather Part II\" remain the only original/sequel combination both to win Best Picture. Along with \"The Lord of the Rings\", \"The Godfather Trilogy\" shares the distinction that all of its installments were nominated for Best Picture; additionally, \"The Godfather Part II\" and \"\" are so far the only sequels to win Best Picture. Al Pacino became the third actor to be Oscar-nominated twice for playing the same character.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "20913302": "Robert De Niro\nAmerican actor (born 1943)\nRobert Anthony De Niro ( , ; born August 17, 1943) is an American actor and film producer. He is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential actors of his generation. De Niro is the recipient of various accolades, including two Academy Awards and a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for eight BAFTA Awards and four Emmy Awards. He was honored with the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2003, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2009, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2011, and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2019. De Niro was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by U.S. president Barack Obama in 2016.\nDe Niro studied acting at HB Studio, Stella Adler Conservatory, and Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio. His first credited screen role was in Brian de Palma's \"Greetings\" (1968). De Niro's first collaboration with Martin Scorsese was with the crime drama film \"Mean Streets\" (1973). De Niro has earned two Academy Awards: one for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's \"The Godfather Part II\" (1974) and the other for Best Actor portraying Jake LaMotta in Scorsese's drama \"Raging Bull\" (1980). De Niro was also Oscar-nominated for \"Taxi Driver\" (1976), \"The Deer Hunter\" (1978), \"Awakenings\" (1990), \"Cape Fear\" (1991), \"Silver Linings Playbook\" (2012), and \"Killers of the Flower Moon\" (2023).\nHe is also known for his film roles in \"Bang the Drum Slowly\" (1973), \"1900\" (1976), \"The King of Comedy\" (1982), \"Once Upon a Time in America\" (1984), \"Brazil\" (1985), \"The Mission\" (1986), \"Angel Heart\" (1987), \"The Untouchables\" (1987), \"Goodfellas\" (1990), \"This Boy's Life\" (1993), \"Mary Shelley's Frankenstein\" (1994), \"Heat\" (1995), \"Casino\" (1995), \"Jackie Brown\" (1997), \"Joker\" (2019), and \"The Irishman\" (2019). He directed and acted in both \"A Bronx Tale\" (1993) and \"The Good Shepherd\" (2006). His comedic roles include \"Hi, Mom!\" (1970), \"Midnight Run\" (1988), \"Wag the Dog\" (1997), \"Analyze This\" (1999) and its sequel, \"Analyze That\" (2002), the \"Meet the Parents\" films (2000\u20132010), and \"The Intern\" (2015).\nAlso known for his television roles, De Niro portrayed Bernie Madoff in the HBO film \"The Wizard of Lies\" (2017), earning a nomination for Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. He received further Emmy Award nominations for producing the Netflix limited series \"When They See Us\" (2019), and for portraying Robert Mueller on \"Saturday Night Live\".\nDe Niro and producer Jane Rosenthal founded the film and television production company TriBeCa Productions in 1989, which has produced several films alongside his own. Also with Rosenthal, he founded the Tribeca Film Festival in 2002. Many of De Niro's films are considered classics of American cinema. Six of De Niro's films have been inducted into the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as \"culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant\" as of 2023. Five films are featured on the American Film Institute's (AFI) list of the 100 greatest American films of all time. \"Timeout\" magazine's list of 100 best movies included seven of De Niro's films, as chosen by actors in the industry.\nEarly life and education.\nRobert Anthony De Niro was born in the Manhattan borough of New York City on August 17, 1943, the only child of painters Virginia Admiral and Robert De Niro Sr. His father was of Irish and Italian descent, while his mother had Dutch, English, French, and German ancestry. His parents, who had met at the painting classes of Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, Massachusetts, separated when he was two years old after his father announced that he was gay. De Niro was raised by his mother in the Greenwich Village and Little Italy neighborhoods of Manhattan. His father lived nearby, and remained close with De Niro during his childhood. Nicknamed \"Bobby Milk\" because of his pale complexion, De Niro befriended many street kids in Little Italy, much to the disapproval of his father. Some, however, have remained his lifelong friends. His mother was raised Presbyterian but became an atheist as an adult, while his father had been a lapsed Catholic since the age of 12. Against his parents' wishes, his grandparents had De Niro secretly baptized into the Catholic Church while he was staying with them during his parents' divorce.\nDe Niro attended PS 41, a public elementary school in Manhattan, through the sixth grade. He began acting classes at the Dramatic Workshop and made his stage debut in school at age 10, playing the Cowardly Lion in \"The Wizard of Oz\". He later went to Elisabeth Irwin High School, the upper school of the Little Red School House, for the seventh and eighth grades. He was then accepted into the High School of Music & Art for the ninth grade, but attended for only a short time before transferring to a public junior high school: IS 71, Charles Evans Hughes Junior High School. De Niro attended high school at McBurney School and later, Rhodes Preparatory School. He found performing as a way to relieve his shyness, and became fascinated by cinema, so he dropped out of high school at 16 to pursue acting. He later said, \"When I was around 18, I was looking at a TV show and I said, 'If these actors are making a living at it, and they're not really that good, I can't do any worse than them.'\" He studied acting at HB Studio and Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio. De Niro also studied with Stella Adler, of the Stella Adler Conservatory, where he was exposed to the techniques of the Stanislavski system. As a young actor, De Niro was inspired by the work of Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Greta Garbo, Geraldine Page, and Kim Stanley.\nCareer.\n1963\u20131973: Early roles and breakthrough.\nDe Niro had minor film roles in \"Encounter, Three Rooms in Manhattan\" (both released in 1965) and \"Les Jeunes Loups\" (1968). Shortly afterwards, De Niro landed a major role in \"Greetings\" (1968), a satirical film about men avoiding the Vietnam War draft. The film marked the first of a series of early collaborations between De Niro and director Brian De Palma. A year later, De Niro appeared in the drama \"Sam's Song\" in which he portrays a New York City filmmaker. Also in 1969, he appeared in De Palma's comedy \"The Wedding Party\"; although it was filmed in 1963, it was kept unreleased for six years. De Niro, who was still unknown at the time, gained a favorable review from \"The New York Times\"' Howard Thompson: \"This farcical comedy, modestly produced by a trio of young people and utilizing some unfamiliar faces, is great fun\".\nHe then appeared in Roger Corman's low-budget crime drama \"Bloody Mama\" (1970), a loose adaptation of Ma Barker's life, who was the mother of four American criminals, of which De Niro portrayed one: Lloyd Barker. Thompson praised the film and thought the cast gave \"fine performances\". Next, De Niro starred in De Palma's comedy \"Hi, Mom!\" (1970), a sequel to \"Greetings.\" Writing for \"The New Yorker\", Richard Brody opined that De Niro \"brings unhinged spontaneity\" to his character. He also had a small role in \"Jennifer on My Mind\" (1971) and in Ivan Passer's \"Born to Win\" (1971). His last film appearance of 1971 was in \"The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight\", a crime-comedy based on the 1969 novel by Jimmy Breslin.\nIn 1972, De Niro starred in two performances at The American Place Theatre, directed by Charles Maryan. He then returned to the big screen with \"Bang the Drum Slowly\" (1973), in which he played the lead role as Bruce Pearson, a Major League Baseball player with Hodgkin disease. His co-stars were Michael Moriarty and Vincent Gardenia. Adapted from the 1956 novel of the same name by Mark Harris, the film received critical acclaim and helped De Niro gain further recognition. \"The Hollywood Reporter\" wrote, \"De Niro proves himself to be one of the best and most likable young character actors in movies with this performance\". \"Variety\" magazine's Alex Belth also took note of De Niro's \"touching\" portrayal, while Gardenia was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Harris later wrote about De Niro, \"He learned only as much baseball as he needed for his role [...] I doubt that he ever cared to touch a baseball again\".\nIn 1973, De Niro began collaborating with Martin Scorsese when he appeared in the crime film \"Mean Streets\" (1973), co-starring Harvey Keitel. Although De Niro was offered a choice of roles, Scorsese wanted De Niro to play \"Johnny Boy\" Civello, a small time criminal working his way up into a local mob. While De Niro and Keitel were given freedom to improvise certain scenes, assistant director Ron Satlof recalls De Niro was \"extremely serious, extremely involved in his role and preparation\", and became isolated from the rest of the cast and crew. \"Mean Streets\" debuted at the Cannes Film Festival, followed by the New York Film Festival five months later, to a generally warm response. Film critic Roger Ebert thought De Niro gave a \"marvelous performance, filled with urgency and restless desperation\". Pauline Kael of \"The New York Times\" was equally impressed by De Niro, writing he is \"a bravura actor, and those who have registered him only as the grinning, tobacco-chewing dolt of that hunk of inept whimsey \"Bang the Drum Slowly\" will be unprepared for his volatile performance. De Niro does something like what Dustin Hoffman was doing in \"Midnight Cowboy\", but wilder; this kid doesn't just act \u2013 he takes off into the vapors\". In 1997, \"Mean Streets\" was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being \"culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant\".\n1974\u20131980: Scorsese collaboration and acclaim.\nDe Niro had"}, "descending_order": ["20913302", "73875"], "permutation_1": ["73875", "20913302"], "permutation_2": ["20913302", "73875"], "permutation_3": ["73875", "20913302"]}
{"id": "nq_-6923990046808557384", "docs_added": {"5533829": "Jessie (Toy Story)\nFictional character in the Toy Story franchise\nJessie is a fictional cowgirl rag doll and one of the three central characters in the Disney\u2013Pixar \"Toy Story\" franchise. She first appeared in \"Toy Story 2,\" and returned in the sequels, \"Toy Story 3\" and \"Toy Story 4\". The idea for introducing a female character was suggested by Nancy Lasseter, while John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Ash Brannon, and Andrew Stanton developed and created the character. She is voiced by Joan Cusack in the \"Toy Story\" filmography, while Sarah McLachlan is her singing voice in \"Toy Story 2\". Kat Cressida voices the character in the video games, including the \"Disney Infinity\" series.\nIn the franchise, Jessie is a brave and excitable rag doll who was abandoned by her first owner after she outgrew her. Years of being in storage leads her to develop claustrophobia and abandonment issues. She is eventually rescued by series protagonist Woody and finds a new owner in Andy Davis. Years later, she and her friends are donated to a new owner in Bonnie Anderson, who claims Jessie as her new favorite toy. With Woody's departure after reuniting with Bo Peep, she is given his sheriff badge as a token of her significance to Bonnie.\nJessie has received a largely positive critical reception since her debut, with praise for her tragic backstory and her overall characterization and role in the franchise, However, many critics criticized Pixar for sidelining her in the fourth film, giving her a minimal role. Cusack's vocal performance of the character was positively received, and she was awarded for voicing Jessie at the 2000 Annie Awards.\nDevelopment.\nConception and design.\nThe story concept for \"Toy Story 2\" began with director John Lasseter considering what scenario would be most upsetting for a toy. He decided that the idea of a toy collector who seals toys in cases ensuring that they will never to be played with was worse than being replaced by another toy. He took inspiration from a toy collector character that appeared in an early draft of \"Toy Story\" but was removed. The concept involved series protagonist Woody being part of a collectible set, an idea that originated in a draft story titled \"A Tin Toy Christmas\". Ralph Guggenheim, a producer on \"Toy Story 2\", said that the team took inspiration from 1950s children's cowboy television series, including \"Howdy Doody\" and \"Hopalong Cassidy,\" to define the rest of the characters in Woody's set: \"You would find a gruff old prospector. You would find other characters, like an Annie Oakley-Calamity Jane sort of character, a tough frontier girl.\" Lasseter's wife Nancy also encouraged him to include a female character that would appeal to girls and to make her a more substantial character than Bo Peep. Jessie was originally created as a character named Se\u00f1orita Cactus, designed as a Mexican sidekick of the prospector character to entice Woody with her feminine charms. By the time she had been redefined as Jessie, her personality was also updated to be tougher.\nThe Pixar team knew that a key aspect of the plot was to find a reason for Woody to leave Andy's room, so they wanted to create a compelling character to engage with Woody emotionally. Chief creative officer Pete Docter said that the team knew that Woody could not be convinced to leave through logic and reason so they decided that it needed to centre on a relationship: \"Jessie brought this sense of responsibility and duty\". \"Toy Story 4\" director Josh Cooley said that Jessie was created to support Woody and show him a new perspective and as she evolved she continued to support him. Production designer Bob Pauley described Jessie as \"superfun and energetic and a nice complement to Woody\". She was initially designed by Jill Culton, who found her hair particularly difficult, but her design was later upgraded. Lasseter said that the team worked hard on making Jessie a strong female character. He explained that after being abandoned by her owner, Jessie believes that her only opportunity to be loved by children again is in a museum, which requires a Woody doll: \"her whole love of children is hinged around the fact that Woody got there\". He said that several attempts were made to create the scene in which Jessie tells her backstory but when this failed to work, they found that it was better expressed through the song \"When She Loved Me\", written by Randy Newman and performed by Sarah McLachlan. Lasseter explained that, \"every time she would tell the story, it lost some emotion\". Although the Pixar team generally avoided having characters break into song, they decided that the song was the right format for expressing the emotion: \"It brought tears to our eyes.\"\nVoices.\nJoan Cusack was cast as the voice actor for Jessie in \"Toy Story 2\" and voiced the role in the third and fourth \"Toy Story\" feature films. Discussing her voice work, she commented that Jessie's voice is \"inherent in that cowboy genre\" and that much of her characterisation is \"just being a kid\". Lasseter was a fan of McLachlan, so she took on the singing part of the role. Newman said that she had the ability to hold long notes, so he wrote Jessie's song with her voice in mind. He was tasked by the Pixar team to write a song that would explain Jessie's relationship with her owner and her sadness when the girl grew up. In the fictional 1950s series \"Woody's Roundup\", Jessie's yodelling voice is provided by Mary Kay Bergman. On the film soundtrack, which was released after the film, Devon Dawson, a yodeller discovered by Riders in the Sky at a music festival, sings the part of Jessie in two songs. In addition, Kat Cressida has voiced Jessie in various media, including \"Disney Infinity\". In \"Jessie's Wild West Rodeo\" and \"Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure\", Jessie was voiced by Bettina Devin.\nCharacteristics.\nJessie is a red-haired, energetic, yodeling cowgirl doll. She is a part of a collectible toy set based on a fictional 1950s cowboy puppet television series named \"Woody's Roundup\", which consists of Sheriff Woody, Jessie, a prospector named Stinky Pete and Woody's steed Bullseye. This valuable toy collection is destined to be sold to a museum in Tokyo by a collector named Al McWhiggin. Despite having a lively spirit, Jessie has a tragic history. The song \"When She Loved Me\" reveals that she once had an owner who loved her until the girl eventually abandoned her. This loss leaves Jessie in a depressed state with a deep longing to be loved and played with once more. In addition, her experience of being placed in storage as a collectible toy results in her being severely claustrophobic. After making friends with Woody and the other toys, Jessie's outgoing personality returns and she develops a romantic attachment to Buzz Lightyear. Cusack described her as a \"can-do girl\".\nAppearances.\n\"Toy Story\" films.\n\"Toy Story 2\".\nWhen Woody is stolen by Al McWhiggin, he meets Jessie, Bullseye and Stinky Pete at Al's apartment. Woody learns that he is a rare vintage doll based on a character of the same name from a popular 1950s series titled \"Woody's Roundup\". Upon discovering that he and the others will be sold to a toy museum in Tokyo, Woody tells them that he must get back home to his owner, which causes Jessie to become enraged due to her fear of being kept in storage. After his arm is torn off, Woody has no choice but to stay and get it fixed, while blaming Jessie for waking Al that night. Woody later has a change of heart after hearing of Jessie's traumatic past (by way of her song \"When She Loved Me\"), when she was loved by a girl named Emily, but was abandoned on the side of the road. As a result, Woody decides to stay with his roundup gang. A group of Andy's toys show up to rescue Woody, but he refuses. He eventually decides to go back to his owner and asks Jessie and Bullseye to come with him, but Stinky Pete will not let them leave and the group is taken to the airport. Woody and Bullseye escape, but Jessie is taken to the airplane. With the help of Bullseye and Buzz Lightyear, Woody rescues her from the airplane. Once Andy arrives home, he accepts them into his collection, dubbing her as \"Bazooka Jane.\"\n\"Toy Story 3\".\nAfter Andy appears to throw his toys away, Jessie convinces the other toys to find a new home at Sunnyside Daycare, refusing to relive the trauma she felt when she was given away by Emily. She tries to persuade Woody to join the others at the daycare, but he leaves to return to Andy alone. Jessie and the other toys discover that they have been placed in a room with very young children who play with them too roughly. Mrs. Potato Head sees Andy searching for his missing toys through her missing eye, causing Jessie and the others to realize that they were wrong about him. They decide to return home, only for Lotso to order his henchmen to imprison them with the help of a reset Buzz. Following another rough play date with the young children, Andy's toys are reunited with Woody, who has a change of heart and decides to rescue his friends. The toys carry out their plan to break out of Sunnyside but accidentally reset Buzz to a Spanish mode. Spanish Buzz makes his love for Jessie apparent by passionately wooing her. Jessie is initially uncomfortable with this drastic change, but grows to like this romantic side of Buzz. When the toys get stuck in a garbage truck along with Lotso, Jessie is rescued by Spanish Buzz, who appears to be crushed by a broken television set. She despairs over his apparent death, but hugs him in relief after he is returned to normal. After the toys are nearly killed in a trash incinerator, Andy's Alien toys rescue them using a crane. They return home to Andy and prepare to be stored in the attic, but are instead given to a girl named Bonnie after Woody leaves a note for Andy, and Jessie quickly adapts to her new life as one of Bonnie's toys.\n\"Toy Story 4\".\nDuring the prologue, set between the events of \"Toy Story 2\" and \"Toy Story 3\", Jessie helps Woody, Bo Peep, and the other toys save RC from the storm. Jessie is now Bonnie's favorite toy and she wears Woody's badge as a result. After Bonnie creates Forky, her parents decide to go on a road trip, taking several of her toys with her. Forky escapes and Woody follows him. The following morning, Buzz takes it upon himself to find Woody, resulting in Jessie becoming the temporary leader. Bonnie's parents begin to leave, but Jessie is able to stop them by popping the RV tires. At night, Jessie comes up with an idea to slow down Bonnie's parents and to meet up with Woody, Buzz, and Forky. Once the vehicle is parked in front of the carousel, Jessie and the other toys reunite with Bo Peep. Woody, deciding not to go back home, gives Jessie his badge and they share a heartwarming farewell before he departs. The following year, Jessie introduces Karen Beverly to Bonnie's other toys, which gets the attention of Forky.\n\"Toy Story 5\".\nJessie was confirmed to be appearing in the upcoming film \"Toy Story 5\" in an image revealed at Disney's D23 Expo.\nOther films.\nJessie was featured as a minor character in \"Toy Story That Time Forgot\", a television special for ABC. In \"Toy Story of Terror!\", Jessie plays a prominent role in a story where she is forced to confront her claustrophobia after Bonnie and the toys stay over at a motel. She also makes an appearance in \"Pixar Popcorn\" shorts. Jessie also appears in the short films \"Toy Story Toons\". She makes several cameo appearances in other Disney films. She makes an appearance in \"Monsters, Inc.\" as one of Boo's toys. She can also be seen in \"Meet the Robinsons\" on a basketball poster.\nVideo games.\nJessie has been featured in numerous Disney and Pixar-related video games. She makes an appearance in \".\" She is a playable character in '. She was introduced as a playable character in \"Disney Infinity\" as part of a \"Toy Story\" playset in October 2013. In the \"Disney Infinity\" series, she is voiced by Kat Cressida. In 2018, Jessie became an unlockable character for the mobile game '. Additionally, a character skin for Jessie, after the release of \"Toy Story 4\", was made available in a Toy Story Mashup Pack in \"Minecraft\" in June 2019.\nTheme parks and attractions.\nJessie appears as a towering figure above Toy Story Land at Walt Disney World, Orlando. In Toy Story Midway Mania!, Jessie and her friends are featured in the interactive dark ride at Disney California Adventure and Disney's Hollywood Studios. In 2019, Jessie's Critter Carousel opened at Disney California Adventure. In 2022, Jessie's Trading Post Store and Roundup Rodeo Barbecue opened in Toy Story Land at Disney's Hollywood Studios. Jessie is also a meet and greet character in Toy Story Land alongside Woody and Buzz. She has also made appearances with the other \"Toy Story\" characters in Disney on Ice.\nMerchandise.\nDisney heavily promoted Jessie following the release of \"Toy Story 2\", as she was a character that they could market to girls, something the original film did not really provide. Among the toys released were 10\" and 12\" fashion-style dolls, plush and rag doll-type dolls, and action figures in the \"Toy Story 2\" and \"Toy Story and Beyond\" lines. Other merchandise included wallets, purses and other accessories for girls, nightlights and other bedroom accessories, costumes and dress-up sets, and sculptures and collectibles. Following the film's release, many stores were sold out of Jessie dolls. During the 1999 Christmas season, Jessie dolls were in high demand.\nReception and legacy.\nJessie has received a largely positive reception. \"Rolling Stone\" ranked Jessie as the fifth best Pixar movie character, highlighting Cusack\u2019s \"bubbly, fragile performance\" and noting that in her song \"When She Loved Me\", she epitomises the end of childhood. Psychologists Alan M. Schwitzer and Lawrence C. Rubin described Jessie's arc in \"Toy Story 2\" as \"a poignant story of abandonment, loss, and reconnection.\" Gwen Ihnat of \"The A.V. Club\" summarised Jessie's abandonment by her owner as \"gut-wrenching\" and a \"sobfest\", commenting that parents would especially feel the emotional impact of the loss of childhood innocence. She felt that the scene \"elevated the movie from an adventurous romp...to a meditation on the losses associated with growing up\". Peter Bradshaw writing for \"The Guardian\" opined that Jessie's abandonment story is really about a parent's fear of their child growing up and becoming independent: \"a part of you will wind up, like cowgirl Jessie, left under the child's bed, forgotten\". Christine Seghers of \"IGN\" praised \"Toy Story of Terror!\" for putting Jessie in a position where she must face up to her fears of abandonment and claustrophobia and is empowered to overcome them.\nIn a review of \"Toy Story 2\", Roger Ebert described Jessie as \"spunky\" and \"liberated\", commenting that \"she brings new life to the cast by confronting the others for the first time with a female character who's a little less domestic than Mrs. Potato Head\". Tim Luisi cited Jessie as a turning point in the \"Toy Story\" franchise's gendered representations of support and described her as the franchise's first female character who was as important as the male characters. Jessie has been described as a \"strong, independent and assertive female character\", though Lilian Munk R\u00f6sing described this strength as \"boyish\" and \"manic\". Matthew Wilkinson of \"Screen Rant,\" ranking her as the best supporting character in \"Toy Story\", stated, \"Jessie really brought the girl power into the franchise in a big way.\" Angie Han of \"SlashFilm\" listed Jessie as one of the best Pixar female characters, praising Pixar for dwelling on her emotional scars. In a \"Mic\" article looking at female representation in Pixar films, Anna Swartz said that Jessie is possibly, \"the most substantive female character Pixar introduced up to this point\", noting her traumatic backstory, but highlighted that it is Woody and Buzz that are clearly placed as the stars of \"Toy Story 2\".\n\"Body+Souls\" writer Courtney Thompson felt that Jessie was not the feminist hero she could have been, commenting that despite being \"adventurous, independent and funny\", she is restricted to a sexist romance plot: \"Jessie was an opportunity for Pixar to give young girls someone to look up to without having her pander to men at all.\" Conversely, her developing relationship with Buzz Lightyear received positive commentary from Sara Martin Alegre, who said that it could be considered a subversion of the dominant male romance trope due to the \"healthy and consensual feelings that Buzz and Jessie bear for one another\". Ella Alexander of \"Harper's Bazaar\" noted that in \"Toy Story 3\", Jessie is pushed to the background except for her scenes involving her romance with Buzz Lightyear, while in \"Toy Story 4\", she is again given a minor supporting role in favour of Bo Peep: \"It is, for Pixar at least, too much of a stretch to feature two women in key roles.\" Steve Rose of \"The Guardian\" also discussed Pixar's treatment of its female characters by listing Jessie as one of several characters alongside Dory and Mrs Incredible that take second billing to the male characters in Pixar films: \"at worst they're token love-interests, stay-at-home mums and other stereotypes bent on spoiling the boys' party\". Angelica Florio writing for \"Bustle\" described Jessie as a \"feminist icon\", despite noting that \"Toy Story 2\" features no female interactions with other female characters, thereby failing the Bechdel test. \"Time\" writer Stephanie Zacharek noted the significance of Woody handing over his sheriff badge to Jessie in \"Toy Story 4\", commenting, \"the reign of the white man is coming to an end\".\nCusack received praise for her voice work as Jessie. Marc Snetiker of \"Entertainment Weekly\" remarked on her \"fizz-pop-crackle twang\" and considered Jessie to be \"one of the most fully realized and precisely layered characters on Pixar\u2019s roster\". Simon Kinnear of \"GamesRadar+\" listed Jessie as one of the greatest female characters in film stating, \"Cusack nails Jessie's central dichotomy of a personality branded by manufacturers to be bubbly but driven by reality to be desperately sad\". \"MovieWeb\" writer Katey Hicks ranked Jessie as Cusack's best performance commenting that she creates a convincing and heartbreaking portrayal of the character. Cusack also won the category for Female Voice Acting in a Feature Production at the 2000 Annie Awards for her voice work as Jessie in \"Toy Story 2\". Jessie also received the Patsy Montana Entertainer Award from the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "8928720": "Woody (Toy Story)\nFictional character in the Toy Story franchise\nSheriff Woody Pride (or simply Woody) is a fictional pull-string cowboy doll who appears in the Disney\u2013Pixar \"Toy Story\" franchise. In the films, Woody is one of the main protagonists, alongside Buzz Lightyear and Jessie. He is primarily voiced by Tom Hanks, who voices him in the \"Toy Story\" films, short films, and TV specials. Hanks's brother, Jim Hanks, voices him in video games, attractions, and other merchandise.\nWoody was created by directors and writers John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, and Joe Ranft. His facial features are based on the former Disney animator Tone Thyne. Woody was designed by Bud Luckey, and is based on John Lasseter's Casper pull-string doll he had as a kid, as well as the Howdy Doody puppets from the 1950s show. Woody is named after Woody Strode, a character actor known for many roles in western films. In August 2009, \"Toy Story 3\" director, Lee Unkrich, stated in his Twitter feed that Woody's last name is Pride and has been since the making of the original movie.\nIn the first film, Woody is Andy Davis's favorite toy and is the leader of Andy's toys. When Andy gets a new toy called Buzz Lightyear, Woody\u2019s position is jeopardized but later becomes friends with him. In the second, he figures out he used to be in a popular TV show called \"Woody's Roundup\" alongside other three toys and is asked to stay with the group, but he decides to stay with Andy's toys; all but one member of the group also join Andy's toys. In the third, Andy leaves to go to college so he decides to give his toys to a little girl named Bonnie Anderson; he had initially planned to take Woody to college, before seeing that Bonnie loved him. In the fourth, Bonnie's family decides to go on a vacation and Woody finds his long-lost girlfriend, Bo Peep. He decides he will remain with Bo Peep forever and help lost toys find new owners. Since his debut, Woody has received largely positive reception from reviewers due to his character's arc and personality, as well as Tom Hanks's vocal performance.\nDevelopment.\nSteve Jobs, founder and former owner of Pixar, made a deal with Disney, under Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, to work on the film \"Toy Story\" together, which would be the first feature-length computer-animated film. The original draft for the film \"Toy Story\", by Pixar animators John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, and Pete Docter, had almost nothing to do with the eventually finished film. It had Tinny, the one-man band from \"Tin Toy\", as the main character and Woody as an evil ventriloquist dummy. Woody would be the main villain, abusing the other toys until they rallied against him. After Disney executives saw the draft, they sent negative feedback about it and production on the movie was shut down, until a better draft could be revised. Tom Hanks, the primary voice of Woody, was unhappy with the character and reportedly shouted \"This guy is a jerk!\" while recording lines for the story reel. Katzenberg thought the original draft for \"Toy Story\" was bad and told Lasseter to redo it, making it more of an odd-couple buddy picture, where the characters Tinny and Woody would be forced to bond with each other despite their different characteristics.\nAfter the negative feedback, Lasseter, Stanton, and Docter got together in early September 1991 with the second draft of the film, and although the lead characters were still Tinny and the dummy, the outline of the final film was beginning to take shape. The Pixar team came back with a new script three months later, with the character of Woody altered from being the tyrannical boss of Andy's toys to being their wise and caring leader.\nWoody was inspired by a Casper the Friendly Ghost doll that Lasseter had when he was a kid and the puppets from the children's television show \"Howdy Doody\". They based his facial features on Disney animator Tone Thyne. Woody stayed a ventriloquist's dummy with a pull-string (hence the name Woody), until his character designer, Bud Luckey, suggested that Woody could be changed to a cowboy ventriloquist dummy. Lasseter liked the difference between the western and the science fiction genres, so Woody was instantly changed. Eventually, all the ventriloquist dummy features of Woody were deleted as the dummy looked \"sneaky and mean\". However, they kept the name Woody in homage to the Western actor Woody Strode. In August 2009, Lee Unkrich, \"Toy Story 3\" director, stated on his Twitter feed that Woody's last name is Pride and has been since earliest days of development.\nVoice.\nPaul Newman, Robin Williams, and Clint Eastwood were all considered for the voice of Woody, but John Lasseter always wanted Tom Hanks to voice Woody, stating that Hanks \"has the ability to take emotions and make them appealing. Even if the character, like the one in \"A League of Their Own\", is down-and-out and despicable.\" To see how Hanks's voice might fit with Woody, Lasseter borrowed a common Disney technique: animate a vocal monologue from a well-established actor to meld the actor's voice with the appearance or actions of the animated character. The early test footage of using Hanks's voice from \"Turner & Hooch\" convinced Hanks to sign on to the film. At Hanks's suggestion, Pixar employed his brother Jim Hanks to perform Woody's voice for video games, toys, attractions, and other merchandise.\nCharacteristics.\nWoody is an old-fashioned floppy pull-string cowboy doll. The voice-box that is activated by the pull-string says many simple phrases such as \"Reach for the sky!\", \"You're my favorite deputy!\", \"There's a snake in my boot!\", and \"Somebody's poisoned the waterhole!\". His construction includes an \"original hand-painted face, natural dyed-blanket stitched vest\", and \"hand-stitched poly-vinyl hat\". Woody also wears an empty gun holster at his belt.\nHe has been Andy's favorite toy since kindergarten, with a special spot on the bed, and is the leader and the brains of the toys in Andy's room. Andrew Stanton said that he understood that Woody would need to be a lovable, yet flawed leader since he is somewhat selfish. In \"Toy Story 2\", it was revealed that he starred as the main character from a popular 1950s TV show \"Woody's Roundup\". When Al is bargaining with Andy's mom in an attempt to take Woody, Andy's mom declines, stating that Woody is \"an old family toy.\" Prospector also directly and derogatorily refers to him as a \"hand-me-down cowboy doll\" later in the movie. John Lasseter said \"we always thought\" that Woody is \"kind of a hand-me-down\" to Andy from his father.\nIn the mock outtakes of \"Toy Story 2\", Woody is shown to have a more mischievous side by pulling pranks on Buzz Lightyear, which includes drawing on his helmet, using his wings as advertising space for rent when they suddenly pop open for the end scene, and hiding in a Buzz Lightyear cardboard box to make faces as he walks past the hundreds of Buzz Lightyear toys on the shelves.\nAppearances.\nFilms.\n\"Toy Story\" (1995).\nWoody is the favorite toy of his owner Andy Davis and is the leader of the toys in Andy's room. However, his position is jeopardized by the arrival of Buzz Lightyear, an astronaut action figure that Andy got as a birthday present. Buzz is convinced that he is an actual Space Ranger instead of a toy. The other toys quickly come to like him more than Woody. Annoyed and jealous, Woody tries to knock Buzz behind a desk, in hopes of retaining his status as Andy's favorite toy, but accidentally knocks Buzz out an open window. The other toys (except for Bo Peep and Slinky Dog) accuse Woody of getting rid of Buzz on purpose. Woody tries to explain that it was just an accident, but the toys (again except for Bo and Slinky) do not believe him and become more antagonistic towards him (especially Mr. Potato Head and Hamm the Piggy Bank).\nWhile on the way to Pizza Planet, a fight separates them from Andy at a gas station, which leads to them to being captured by Sid Phillips, Andy's malicious neighbor who likes to destroy toys for fun. While at Sid's house, Buzz becomes depressed after realizing he is an action figure, but Woody cheers him up by explaining how happy he made Andy. They work together and eventually reunite with Andy as he and his family move to a new house. Woody is also re-accepted among the other toys and forms a strong friendship with Buzz.\n\"Toy Story 2\" (1999).\nWhile Woody is trying to save another toy from being sold at Andy's family yard sale, Al McWhiggin, a toy collector, spots Woody and steals him to bring him to his apartment. At Al's apartment, Woody discovers his past and legacy as the star of a 1957 Western children's show titled \"Woody's Roundup.\" It starred Stinky Pete the Prospector, cowgirl Jessie, and Woody's horse Bullseye. Woody learns that he and the other \"Roundup\" toys are going to be shipped to Japan by Al to be displayed in a toy museum, which will only accept the collection if Woody is in it.\nProspector is intent to make sure that the \"Roundup\" toys get into the museum; he convinces Woody to go along to Japan and forget Andy. Buzz and a few of the toys arrive to rescue Woody, who changes his mind and decides to return home. However, Prospector prevents Woody from leaving the apartment, ultimately leading to a confrontation at the airport, where the Prospector's plan is foiled. Woody, Buzz, and the other toys return to Andy's house, bringing Jessie and Bullseye with them.\n\"Toy Story 3\" (2010).\nAndy is now 17 years old, and is preparing to leave for college. When Andy's other toys mistakenly believe that they are being thrown out as trash, they decide to donate themselves to the Sunnyside Daycare Center. While the others chose to stay at the daycare, Woody attempts to return to Andy, but instead is found and taken home by a little girl named Bonnie, who attends Sunnyside. At Bonnie's house, Woody becomes friends with her toys, who are horrified that he came from Sunnyside and tell him about the true nature of the daycare.\nWoody returns to the daycare to tell the other toys the true story of Sunnyside, but finds that Andy's toys are being imprisoned during the night by the daycare toys' bitter leader, Lotso. During the day Woody gathers Andy's toys and tries to devise a plan to help them escape the daycare at night. The plan works out until Lotso figures out where they are and confronts them near the daycare's dumpster. During the confrontation, they all end up inside the dumpster and are taken to a landfill by the nearby dump truck. Andy's toys escape from the fiery landfill, when the toy aliens use the giant claw inside the landfill to grab them and take them to a safe spot. The toys return to Andy's house, and Woody arranges for the toys to be donated to Bonnie's house to enjoy life with a new owner. Andy describes to Bonnie how he viewed his old toys and states that Woody is his favorite toy because he is loyal and will never give up on anyone.\n\"Toy Story 4\" (2019).\nBy the events of \"Toy Story 3\", Woody is struggling to adapt to life with Bonnie, as he is no longer the leader of the group (Dolly is the leader of Bonnie's toys); furthermore, Bonnie has lost interest in him. Later, Bonnie creates a new toy, Forky, who believes himself to be trash because his body consists primarily of a disposable spork. Woody tries repeatedly to keep Forky from throwing himself away. In one instance, the two become separated from Bonnie and the other toys while on vacation. While trying to reunite with Bonnie, Woody teaches Forky the joys and responsibilities of being a toy. Woody later encounters Bo Peep, who has lived on her own for years without an owner, after being sold by Andy's mother nine years earlier.\nWoody and Bo later team up to rescue Forky from a doll named Gabby Gabby, who wants Woody's voice box in return for Forky's release. Bo and Woody get into an argument after their rescue plan fails, with Woody telling Bo that loyalty is something a lost toy would not understand. He then agrees to give up his voice box after realizing Gabby Gabby had lived life as an unwanted toy due to her own defective voice box. After Buzz assures Woody that Bonnie will be okay without him, Woody and Bo reconcile and decide to stay together. Saying goodbye to their friends, Woody and Bo go on to help lost toys find new homes.\n\"Toy Story 5\" (2026).\nWoody was confirmed to be appearing in the upcoming film \"Toy Story 5\" in an image revealed at Disney's D23 Expo.\nOther films.\nWoody appears in the animated mock outtakes of \"A Bug's Life\" as the clapperboard holder. He also appears in the Andy's room sequence of \"\" where he is voiced by Jim Hanks. Later, he appears in the end credit epilogue of Pixar's 2006 movie \"Cars\" as a toy station wagon voiced by Tom Hanks. He also appears in the three Toy Story Toons shorts \"Hawaiian Vacation\", \"Small Fry\", and \"Partysaurus Rex\", which were released from 2011 to 2012. He is also featured in the television specials \"Toy Story of Terror!\" (2013) and \"Toy Story That Time Forgot\" (2014). Woody, voiced by Jim Hanks, appears in a show called \"Toy Story Treats\", as well as the Disney+ short \"Lamp Life\".\nMiscellaneous.\nTheme parks.\nWoody appears in all the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. He can be met through meet and greets at all four Toy Story Lands, which are at France's Walt Disney Studios Park (Toy Story Playland), Hong Kong Disneyland, Shanghai Disneyland, and Walt Disney World's Hollywood Studios. A twenty-feet-tall statue of Woody can be seen at the entrance of Hollywood Studios and Hong Kong Disneyland's Toy Story Land. There is also one restaurant and an upcoming restaurant both named after him called Woody's Lunch Box and Woody's Roundup Rodeo BBQ. At Shanghai's Toy Story Land, there is a ride called Woody's Roundup. At Hollywood Studios, Disneyland, and Tokyo DisneySea, Woody is featured in a 4D shooting arcade ride called Toy Story Mania!.\nAt the Magic Kingdom, Woody can be seen on a parade float in the Move It! Shake It! Dance and Play It! Street Party parade. There is also an entire section of Disney's All-Star Movies Resort dedicated to \"Toy Story\" that includes a statue of Woody. After twenty-five years of the same character look, Woody and some other \"Toy Story\" characters got an update to their look at Hong Kong Disneyland when it reopened in 2021. Woody received a new outfit, updated facial details, and the overall height and proportion of his character was edited.\n\"Toy Story: The Musical\".\nWoody appeared in the rock musical \"\". The musical, based on the movie, was created by Walt Disney Creative Entertainment for Disney Cruise Line, and made its first appearance on the Disney Wonder on April 10, 2008, and closed on May 7, 2016. Woody was originally portrayed by Geoffrey Tyler and was later portrayed by Patrick Pevehouse. The musical follows the storyline of the original movie with a few differences.\nDisney on Ice.\nAdam Loosley appeared as Woody in \"Disney on Ice: Toy Story 3\"; it includes a \"Hoedown Throwdown\" scene where Woody, Jessie, and others skate dance to Miley Cyrus's song \"Hoedown Throwdown\" from the Disney Channel series \"Hannah Montana\". He has also been portrayed by Daniel Harris in Disney on Ice: Worlds of Fantasy. Woody has also appeared in Disney on Ice: Mickey's Search Party and has been portrayed by Benji Toedte in Disney on Ice: Celebrate Memories. Nelson Sanchez-Leemet portrayed Woody in Disney on Ice: Road Trip Adventures, where in one scene he skates to the song \"Old Town Road\". Woody has also appeared in Disney on Ice: 100 Years of Magic.\nMerchandise.\nAfter the release of \"Toy Story\" in 1995, Disney began releasing merchandise for Woody and other \"Toy Story\" characters. They made a talking Woody doll, along with mugs, magnets, figures, trading cards, throw blankets, bedding, lunch kits, calendars, greeting cards, gift wraps, and other merchandise with Woody on them. After the release of \"Toy Story 4\", Disney created an interactive talking action figure Woody. Woody also appears in multiple Disney and \"Toy Story\" related-video games, including \"Disney Infinity\", , \"\", \"Disney Magic Kingdoms\", \"Kingdom Hearts III\", \"Lego The Incredibles\", and \"Disney Dreamlight Valley\".\nWoody appears in multiple Disney comics published by Boom! Entertainment from May to August 2009. They published four issues of a limited comic book series called \"Toy Story: Mysterious Strange\". Woody also appears in the Toy Story Comics, published from May to August 2012, by Marvel and Disney Publishing called \"Toy Story: Tales from the Toy Chest\". Woody was also featured in the Toy Story magazine, that was launched by Egmont in July 2010. It was a monthly magazine with 24 pages with the first one having 28 pages. Dark Horse Comics published a 72-page graphic novel related to \"Toy Story 4\" in 2019 that had Woody in it.\nOscars.\nWoody, along with other \"Toy Story\" characters, voiced by their primary actors, have appeared and presented awards at the 6"}, "descending_order": ["5533829", "8928720"], "permutation_1": ["8928720", "5533829"], "permutation_2": ["8928720", "5533829"], "permutation_3": ["8928720", "5533829"]}
{"id": "nq_-7667070357968465996", "docs_added": {"17601857": "Devon Bostick\nCanadian actor (born 1991)\nDevon Bostick (born November 13, 1991) is a Canadian actor. He is known for his main role as Rodrick Heffley in the \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" film series (2010\u20132012). His other lead roles include \"Adoration\" (2008), \"Dead Before Dawn 3D\" (2012), \"Okja\" (2017), and \"Tuscaloosa\" (2019). Bostick has also had a number of supporting roles in films such as \"Godsend\" (2004), \"Saw VI\" (2009), \"The Art of the Steal\" (2013), \"Regression\" (2015), \"Words on Bathroom Walls\" (2020), and \"Oppenheimer\" (2023).\nIn television, Bostick is known for his main role as Jasper Jordan on the CW science fiction series \"The 100\" (2014\u20132017). He has also had recurring roles as Leo Strange in the CBC series \"Being Erica\" (2009\u20132011), Green on the Quibi series \"Most Dangerous Game\" (2020), and Oscar on the Netflix series \"FUBAR\" (2023).\nEarly life and education.\nBostick was born in Toronto, Ontario. His mother, Stephanie Gorin, is a casting director in Toronto, who works on stage and screen and his father, Joe Bostick, is an actor as well as a film fight coordinator.\nBostick is of British and Norwegian descent. He began acting in the fifth grade and is a graduate of the Etobicoke School of the Arts in Toronto.\nCareer.\nBostick has had roles in the television series \"\", \"Flashpoint\" and in the film \"Citizen Duane\", and appeared in the series premiere of \"Rookie Blue\". His film work has included roles in \"Godsend\", \"Fugitive Pieces\" and \"The Stone Angel\".\nIn \"Adoration\" (2008), Bostick played Simon, a boy who being raised by his uncle (played by Scott Speedman) after his parents' death. He also appeared in an online spoof trailer for a hoax movie called \"Ice Fortress.\" He had roles in \"The Poet\", a World War II drama starring Roy Scheider and Colm Feore, \"Saw VI\" as Brent and \"\" as Ezio Auditore.\nBostick also played Erica's deceased brother Leo in CBC Television's series \"Being Erica\", and Rodrick Heffley in the movies of \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\". He played Alan in three episodes of \"The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel\". In \"Oppenheimer\" (2023), Bostick played Seth Neddermeyer, a physicist who worked at Los Alamos Laboratory during the Manhattan Project and suggested the use of an implosion-type nuclear weapon in the Trinity Test.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "32162249": "Diary of a Wimpy Kid (film series)\nFamily comedy film series\nDiary of a Wimpy Kid is a series of family comedy films based on the book series of the same name by Jeff Kinney. It consists of four live action films and three animated films.\nFilms.\nLive-action films.\n\"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" (2010).\nPrincipal production began on August 12, 2009, and was completed on October 16, 2009. The film was directed by Thor Freudenthal and starred Zachary Gordon as Greg Heffley, Robert Capron as Rowley Jefferson, Rachael Harris as Susan Heffley, Steve Zahn as Frank Heffley, Devon Bostick as Rodrick Heffley, Connor and Owen Fielding as Manny Heffley, Chlo\u00eb Grace Moretz as Angie Steadman, Grayson Russell as Fregley, Laine MacNeil as Patty Farrell, and Karan Brar as Chirag Gupta. It was the only film in the series to be directed by Freudenthal. The musical score was composed by Theodore Shapiro. It received mixed reviews from critics. It was released on March 19, 2010, as it moved up from a previously scheduled April 2 release date.\n\"Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules\" (2011).\nBased on the second book, \"Rodrick Rules\", with elements from \"The Last Straw\". Principal photography began on August 23, 2010, and was completed on October 27, 2010, with filming taking place in Vancouver and New Westminster. The film was directed by David Bowers, with Zachary Gordon reprising his role as Greg Heffley. New main characters include Holly Hills (Peyton List), Grandpa (Terence Kelly), and Bill Walter (Fran Kranz). Edward Shearmur composes the original score for the film. It also received mixed reviews from critics. It was released on March 25, 2011.\n\"Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days\" (2012).\nBased on the third book \"The Last Straw\" and the fourth book \"Dog Days\", the film was directed by David Bowers and features the same familiar cast of characters, introducing a few new ones, and also focusing on lesser characters not elaborated on in previous films, including Frank Heffley (Steve Zahn), Mr. Jefferson (Alf Humphreys) and Holly Hills (Peyton List). The film is the last one to feature the original cast, as they had outgrown their roles after filming wrapped. It also received mixed reviews from critics. It was released on August 3, 2012.\n\"Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul\" (2017).\nFeaturing an entirely new cast, the plot follows Greg and his brother, Rodrick, unwillingly being taken on a family road trip to their great-grandmother's house for her 90th birthday party. Greg sees this as an opportunity to meet his Internet idol, Mac Digby, and get people to forget about him being dubbed as a meme known as \"Diaper Hands\". The film was panned by critics and audiences, with most of the criticism aimed at the casting change. It was released on May 19, 2017.\nAnimated reboot films.\n\"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" (2021).\nIn August 2018, 20th Century Fox CEO Stacey Snider announced that a fully animated television series based on \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" was in development. On August 6, 2019, after the acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney, the project was confirmed to be still in development for their streaming service, Disney+.\nIn December 2020, the project was confirmed to have been redeveloped as an animated film. On September 2, 2021, Disney officially confirmed that the new movie would be simply titled \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\", and would be released on December 3, 2021. The movie is a re-adaptation of the first book and the characters appear similar in design to their appearances in the book series. The first trailer was officially released in October 2021. Unlike the previous films, which were produced by 20th Century Fox, this film was produced by Walt Disney Pictures, although it was originally in production at 20th Century Animation.\n\"Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules\" (2022).\nOn October 23, 2021, ahead of the first film's release, Jeff Kinney revealed that sequels are already in development. For Disney+ Day, Kinney revealed that the sequel, based on \"\", was released on December 2, 2022. Unlike the first animated film, a copyright notice at the end of the trailer indicates that 20th Century Studios has involvement in the film.\n\"Diary of a Wimpy Kid Christmas: Cabin Fever\" (2023).\nOn September 8, 2023, it was announced that a Disney+ film based on the sixth book, \"Cabin Fever\", released on December 8, 2023.\nFuture.\nJeff Kinney stated that he intends to adapt all books into animated features for Disney+. An animated film based on \"The Last Straw\" is currently in development.\n\"Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Class Clown\" short film.\nAn animated short film set after the events of the third film, titled \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Class Clown\", was included on the home media release of \"Dog Days\" in 2012. The short is told through Greg's point-of-view as he explains his humorous experience and why he deserves the title of Class Clown. Zachary Gordon reprises his role as Greg Heffley along with other cast members voicing their characters from the films in minor roles.\nCanceled TV special.\nIn 2012, Jeff Kinney, the author of the \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" books, announced the possibility for an animated film to be based on ' as the next installment. In an interview for ', Kinney stated he was working with FOX on a half-hour special based on \"Cabin Fever\", which was scheduled to air in late-2014. The special was meant to be an animated production developed at 20th Century Fox Animation, and had begun development while Kinney worked on the live-action films. Nothing regarding the special ever materialized. A separate adaptation was eventually released in 2023 as \"\".\nRecurring cast and characters.\n<templatestyles src=\"Cast indicator/styles.css\"/>\nList indicators\nThis section includes .* An empty grey cell indicates the character was not in the film, or that the character's official presence has not yet been confirmed.* \u00a0E indicates an appearance not included in the theatrical cut.* \u00a0O indicates an older version of the character.* \u00a0U indicates an uncredited appearance.* \u00a0V indicates a voice-only role.* \u00a0Y indicates a younger version of the character.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "11263766": "Diary of a Wimpy Kid (book)\n2007 novel by Jeff Kinney\nDiary of a Wimpy Kid is a children's illustrated novel written and illustrated by Jeff Kinney. It is the first book in the \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" series. The book is about a boy named Greg Heffley and his attempts to become popular in his first year of middle school.\n\"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" first appeared on FunBrain in 2004, where it was read 20\u00a0million times. The abridged hardcover adaptation was released on April 1, 2007. The book was named a \"New York Times\" bestseller, among other awards and received generally positive reviews. The book was adapted into a live action feature film, which released on March 19, 2010, and an animated film adaptation was released on Disney+ on December 3, 2021.\nPlot.\nThe protagonist Greg Heffley, a student at Larry Mack Junior Middle School, writes a diary to detail his time \"stuck in middle school with a bunch of morons\" to a future audience reading when he is \"rich and famous\". Greg details the local myth surrounding a moldy piece of cheese that has been left at his school's basketball court for a long time. If someone touches the cheese, they have the curse-like \"Cheese Touch\" which makes them repellent to others; the victim is stuck with it until they pass it on by touching someone else. The last victim of the Cheese Touch has moved away to California, and Greg hopes nobody starts it up again.\nGreg also talks about his best friend, Rowley Jefferson, characterizing him as immature or somewhat stupid, and that his [Greg's] ideas go \"in one ear and out the other\" with Rowley. At home, Greg is bullied by his older brother Rodrick, and resents his little brother, a toddler named Manny, who is spoiled and gets away with everything that Greg does not. Greg's father does not encourage his son's way of life\u2014playing video games all day\u2014and would rather Greg go outside and play sports.\nNear Halloween, Greg writes that his father likes to hide in the bushes on Halloween night and drench teenagers that walk by their driveway with a trash can full of water. Greg and Rowley decide to make a haunted house after seeing the popularity of Crossland High School's haunted house, but they only end up profiting two dollars. On Halloween night, Greg and Rowley go trick-or-treating, but are challenged by a group of teenagers who spray them with a water-filled fire extinguisher. When they get home, they are soaked with a trash can full of water by Greg's father, who mistakes them for teenagers.\nIn Geography, Greg fails a test on state capitals after a girl named Patty Farrell reminds the teacher that he needs to cover the map of the United States that shows the state capitals. At home, Greg's mother forces him into auditioning for the school play (based on \"The Wizard of Oz\"). Greg lands the role of a tree, while Patty Farrell is cast as Dorothy, the protagonist of the novel. During the show's performance, Greg becomes too nervous to sing, confusing the other trees. Patty gets frustrated, and Greg starts throwing apples at her. The other trees join in, and the play eventually has to be shut down after Patty's glasses are broken. Greg's mother is disappointed, but Greg enjoyed getting back at Patty.\nAfter getting bad presents for Christmas, Greg decides to play a game with Rowley in which Rowley must ride a Big Wheel down a hill while Greg tries to knock him off with a football. On one of Greg's tries, the ball goes under the front wheel, which causes Rowley to fall off and break his hand. When Rowley goes to school with a plaster cast, the girls take care of him (carrying his books, feeding him food), which makes Greg jealous.\nGreg decides to join the Safety Patrols at his school, hoping that he will be able to control the other kids. He gets Rowley to sign up as well and enjoys the benefits of being a Safety Patrol, such as getting free hot chocolate. He tries to get a spot in the school's newspaper as a cartoonist and teams up with Rowley. Greg comes up with a strip called \"Zoo-Wee Mama!\", and he and Rowley produce a number of strips. Eventually, Greg starts wanting to do other strips, but Rowley wants to continue with \"Zoo-Wee Mama!\"; Greg submits his comics to the teacher and ends up getting the cartoonist job. However, the teacher completely changes Greg's comic, even making his character a \"curious student\" instead of a \"cretin.\"\nAfter an incident where Greg chases some kindergartners with a worm on a stick and is mistaken for Rowley, Rowley gets suspended from the Safety Patrols for a week. However, after it is cleared up that Greg was the real culprit, Rowley is reinstated and promoted while Greg is dismissed.\nGreg notices that the school year is coming to a close and tries to get on the yearbook's Class Favorites page. He plans to go for \"Class Clown,\" but his plans do not work out. At lunch, he gets an issue of the school newspaper and learns that Rowley is the new cartoonist, with his \"Zoo-Wee Mama!\" strip left completely unchanged.\nGreg confronts Rowley for not even listing him as co-creator and hogging all the fame. Rowley retaliates by saying that the \"Zoo-Wee Mama!\" comic was his idea and that Greg \"had nothing to do with it.\" As they argue, the teenagers who chased them at Halloween appear and force Greg and Rowley to eat the Cheese. Greg gets out of it by falsely claiming to be allergic to dairy, while Rowley is forced to eat the whole thing. The next day, when everyone notices that the Cheese is gone, Greg takes the fall for Rowley and lies by saying that he threw it away. Greg reconciles with Rowley and lets people think that he has the Cheese Touch.\nThe book concludes with Greg getting his yearbook, seeing Rowley on the \"Class Clown\" page, and throwing it in the garbage. This means Greg now has the Cheese Touch, which carries on into the next book.\nBackground.\nIn May 2004, FunBrain and Jeff Kinney released an online version of \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\". The website made daily entries from September of that year to June 2005. The online book became an instant hit, and had received approximately 20 million views by 2007. Many online readers requested a printed version. At the 2006 New York Comic Con Kinney proposed \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" to Charles Kochman, Editorial Director of the ComicArts division of Abrams Books, who purchased the rights to the book. According to Kochman, the two initially conceived it as a book for adults, believing it would appeal to audiences similar to that of the TV series \"The Wonder Years\". Kochman brought it before the Abrams publishing board, which convinced Kinney and Kochman that it would be better aimed toward children. In 2007, \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\", an abridged version of the original online book, was published.\nMain characters.\nThe main character, Greg, has trouble with family, friends, and his local middle school. He is very concerned about how popular he is at school, and he daydreams a lot about being rich and famous when he grows up. He tries to fit in at his school, but usually he does not succeed. Facing many challenges, Greg attempts to handle them very creatively, but unfortunately his antics often backfire on him.\nGreg's best friend has a larger than average frame. He is always willing to do what Greg tells him, including dangerous stunts. Rowley goes on vacations all the time, which annoys Greg. Rowley is a loyal friend, but he sometimes behaves in an immature or childish manner. He also dresses in an unusual way.\nGreg's \"spoiled\" little brother, a three-year-old toddler. He never gets in trouble no matter what, even when he really deserves it. Manny is not yet potty trained.\nRodrick is Greg's teenage brother and he never misses a chance to be cruel to Greg. He is known for sleeping excessively in the morning and for his rebellious attitude. Rodrick is part of a basement band (garage band in the movies) called \"L\u00f6ded Diper\". Rodrick will do anything to embarrass Greg and will even cause problems for Manny to make everyone's life miserable.\nSequels.\n\"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" is the first book in an ongoing franchise. A total of nineteen \"Wimpy Kid\" books have been released, the sequels to the first book are: ' (2008) which was listed on the \"New York Times\" Best Sellers list for 117 weeks, ' (2009) which was on the \"New York Times\" Best Sellers list for 65 weeks, peaking at number one, ' (2009) which was ranked at number one on the \"New York Times\" Best Sellers List for all 25 weeks of inclusion, making it the #1 best selling book of 2009, ' (2010), ' (2011), ' (2012), ' (2013), ' (2014), ' (2015), ' (2016), ' (2017), ' (2018),\" \" (2019), ' (2020), ' (2021), ' (2022), ' (2023), and (2024).\nReception.\nThe book won the Blue Peter Book Award 2012, revealed live on British kids channel CBBC on March 1, 2012. In 2012 it was ranked number 76 on a list of the top 100 children's novels published by \"School Library Journal\".\nAdaptations.\nA film adaptation, \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid,\" was released by 20th Century Fox on March 19, 2010. The film stars Zachary Gordon as Greg Heffley, Robert Capron as Rowley Jefferson, Steve Zahn as Frank Heffley (Dad), Rachael Harris as Susan Heffley (Mom), Devon Bostick as Rodrick Heffley, Chlo\u00eb Grace Moretz as Angie Steadman (a character exclusive to the live-action film), and Connor & Owen Fielding as Manny Heffley, Greg's brother. It would later go on to spawn three sequels.\nAnother film adaptation, this time animated, serving as a reboot of the film series was released on December 3, 2021 exclusively on Disney+.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "64771955": "Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2021 film)\n2021 film by Swinton Scott\nDiary of a Wimpy Kid is a 2021 animated comedy film directed by Swinton Scott (in his feature directorial debut) from a screenplay by Jeff Kinney, based on his 2007 book of the same name. It is the second film adaptation of the book, following the 2010 live-action film, while serving as the first fully animated reboot in the \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" film series, and the fifth installment overall. The film stars the voices of Brady Noon, Ethan William Childress, Chris Diamantopoulos, Erica Cerra, and Hunter Dillon.\n\"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" was produced by Walt Disney Studios and Bardel Entertainment, with the latter providing animation services, and was released on Disney+ as a Disney+ original film on December 3, 2021. It received generally positive reviews from critics.\nA sequel, \"\", was released on December 2, 2022.\nPlot.\nBest friends Greg Heffley and Rowley Jefferson are about to enter middle school. Greg gets advice from his older brother Rodrick on how to \"survive\", putting emphasis on avoiding the Cheese Touch, which supposedly makes one incredibly unpopular. Figuring that Rowley's childish tendencies will cause them to be bullied, Greg tries to urge Rowley to grow up, almost telling him about the cheese, but deciding against it, not wanting to scare him too much. Before long, the first day of school arrives, and Greg tries to help Rowley adjust, though both end up shunned by the majority of the students, mostly due to Rowley's somewhat childish antics, which include using the word \"play\" over \"hang out\". Nevertheless, they manage to avoid scraping the bottom of the school hierarchy.\nOn Halloween night, Greg and Rowley are forced to take the former's younger brother Manny with them. While at first annoyed, Greg realizes that Manny's adorable pirate costume allows them to acquire a large amount of candy. Eventually, Manny and Rowley become tired, but Greg insists that they continue on and take a shortcut through Snake Road, despite his mother Susan forbidding it. They encounter a trio of teenage boys who begin to mock and chase them with water balloons down the road. The younger boys manage to evade them by tricking them into driving their truck into a ditch and making it home right on time, only to be soaked by Greg's father Frank, who mistook them for teenagers. Manny then outs \"Snake Road\" to Susan, who grounds Greg from playing video games for a week.\nLater on, while playing the \"Rumble Trike\", Greg accidentally breaks Rowley's arm. Susan discovers this but chooses not to punish Greg any further. Instead, she encourages him do the right thing and be a good friend to Rowley. Greg instead tries to take advantage of Rowley's broken arm, only to get shunned further by the other students, who dote on Rowley and demonize Greg for breaking it in the first place. Greg attempts to take a different approach and become a cartoonist for the school paper; Rowley takes an interest in a scrapped idea of his, in which the punchline of every line is \"Zoo-Wee Mama!\", but Greg insists on a new one he drew, urging Rowley to make his own comic instead of working together. Greg's entry gets him accepted as the new cartoonist, but the librarian butchers his comic, making his classmates mock him. After Greg resigns from his position, Rowley's comic, which features the stolen phrase, gets accepted, causing the boys to argue and break their friendship.\nRowley befriends a boy named Chirag Gupta and starts seeing him more often. In an attempt to get back at him, Greg decides to hang out with Fregley, an incredibly strange and unpopular boy. Greg has a sleepover at his house but is immediately put off by his odd eccentricities. The next day, Greg and Rowley confront each other and are urged to fight by the other kids, only for the trio of teenagers to return to get revenge on the boys. The teenagers force Rowley to eat a piece of the cheese and are about to force Greg to do the same, but are saved by Mr. Underwood, the school's gym coach.\nThe other students return to see what has transpired. To protect Rowley, Greg claims that \"he\" was the one who ate the cheese, causing everyone else to run from him in terror. Greg and Rowley resume their friendship as the former quickly realizes that having the Cheese Touch is a blessing as it forces everyone to give him and Rowley space, as well as a personal lunch table to themselves.\nProduction.\nDevelopment.\nFollowing the release of ', the likelihood of a fourth live-action film was slim. In 2012, Jeff Kinney, the author of the \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" books, had announced the possibility for an animated film to be based on \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever\" as the next installment. In an interview for ', Kinney stated he was working with Fox on a half-hour special based on \"Cabin Fever\", which was scheduled to air in late-2014. The special was meant to be an animated production developed at 20th Century Fox Animation, and had begun development while Kinney worked on the live-action films. However, the project never came to fruition.\nIn August 2018, CEO of 20th Century Fox Stacey Snider stated that an animated television series based on \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" was in development, after Kinney decided not to allow any more live action adaptations of the series following the film adaptation of \"\". In August 2019, after the acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney, the project was confirmed to be still in development exclusively for streaming on Disney+.\nIn December 2020, the project was confirmed to have been redeveloped as an animated reboot feature film simply titled, \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" at the Disney Investor Day event. Alongside this announcement, it was revealed that production was underway with a tentative release date slated for mid-2021. By September 2021, it was announced that the film would be an adaptation of the first book in the series; while the film was scheduled for a December 3, 2021 release date. Swinton Scott was announced as director, with Kinney serving as the writer and producer. Brady Noon, Ethan William Childress, and Chris Diamantopoulos were revealed as the voice cast.\nAnimation.\nThe animation was provided by Bardel Entertainment, with offices in Vancouver and Kelowna composed by a team of 82 people all using the animation rendering software Arnold. Kinney chose to use CGI in spite of the book's hand-drawn-style drawing because he wanted the animation to \"feel like the books had come to life\". Pixar RenderMan was also used for the film.\nMusic.\nOn September 23, 2021, it was revealed that John Paesano would be serving as composer. The soundtrack was released on December 17, 2021.\nAll music composed by Paesano:\nRelease.\nMarketing.\nThe first look of the film was shown on December 10, 2020, at Disney's Investor Day, depicting Greg trying to roll a large snowball up a hill, only to roll down the hill with it. This would not be used in the film itself. The teaser poster was revealed on September 2, 2021 (the same day the release date was announced). The film was marketed under the Disney brand, leading to speculation that Walt Disney Pictures was involved in the film, which turned out to be true when the film was released. The trailer was released on October 19, 2021, by Walt Disney Studios' YouTube channel (the YouTube channel for Walt Disney Pictures), further increasing speculation. Additionally, the song \"Bring Your Friends\" by Sam Shrieve was heavily used in the film's marketing campaign but was not featured in the film itself.\nA reprint of the original book featured a new Disney+ cover variant to serve as a tie-in release to the movie (this book featured a first look at Rowley Jefferson in his CG-animated form). Like the original book, Amulet Books released the book, but this time, in association with Disney Enterprises, Inc. and 20th Century Studios. It was released on November 23, 2021.\nStreaming.\nThe film was released by Disney Platform Distribution, as a Disney+ original film, on Disney+, on December 3, 2021. However, the film was released on the service under Walt Disney Pictures instead of 20th Century Studios. It was moved from 20th Century Studios and 20th Century Animation to Walt Disney Pictures sometime during production for unknown reasons.\nReception.\nCritical reception.\nOn the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, of 16 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.50/10. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the a score of 50 out of 100, based on 4 critics, indicating .\nCourtney Howard of \"Variety\" gave the film a positive review, saying, \"Similar to its 2010 counterpart, this animated reboot amusingly tackles universal aspects of adolescence like first-day jitters, the fleeting nature of popularity, navigating cafeteria social hierarchies and the frustrations of not fitting in. [...] With this notable sense of visual dexterity and stirring sentiments surrounding friendship and individuality that don\u2019t come across as hollow platitudes, the brisk 56-minute feature is yet another noteworthy start to a burgeoning franchise reboot.\" Nicolas Rapold of \"The New York Times\" complimented the animation, found the misadventures experienced by the characters to be good-humored and believed that the film manages to explore how friendship can evolve. John Serba of \"Decider\" found the movie entertaining and lively, complimented the depiction of teachable moments, and compared Greg to Homer Simpson, describing him as a reliable anti-role model. Jennifer Green of \"Common Sense Media\" rated the movie 3 out of 5 stars, complimented the depiction of positive messages, citing self-authenticity and true friendship, and found agreeable the presence of role models, stating both Greg and Rowley demonstrate loyalty.\nJesse Hassenger of \"The A.V. Club\" gave the movie a mixed review, writing, \"On that level, the new version of Wimpy Kid has its moments. It bounces between vignettes, some amusing and some choppily edited, testing the mettle of Heffley and his optimistic best pal Rowley (Ethan William Childress), perhaps Kinney\u2019s most durable creation. [...] Even if their minds wander, most grown-ups probably won\u2019t be as bored as the actors playing Heffley\u2019s parents' sound; they both give oddly flat and colorless vocal performances. It\u2019s these hints of indifference that make \"Diary Of A Wimpy Kid\" feels like a contractual obligation, or a cobbling together of streaming content, rather than the start of a new series.\" Sarah Bea Milner of \"Screen Rant\" rated the movie 1.5 out of 5, stating, \"Existing fans of the \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" franchise will at least get some enjoyment from watching such a faithful adaptation. [...] Perhaps 2021's animated reboot can serve as a cautionary tale for the industry: being a good writer does not make one a good screenwriter and sometimes the best way to stay faithful to the spirit of a book is to have a competent and experienced professional write the adaptation.\"\nAccolades.\nJessica Mikayla received a nomination for Best Performance in a Voice Acting Role: Youth Actress at the 2022 Young Artist Awards. \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" was a nominated for Best Animation TrailerByte for a Feature Film at the 2022 Golden Trailer Awards.\nFuture.\nSequel.\nOn October 23, 2021, ahead of the first film's release, Jeff Kinney revealed that sequels are already in development. On Disney+ Day, Kinney revealed that the sequel, based on \"Rodrick Rules\", would be released in 2022. In March 2022, composer John Paesano confirmed that he would return to score the film's music. A poster for the film was released on September 12, 2022, announcing the film's release date of December 2, 2022.\nKinney stated that he intends to adapt all his books into animated features for Disney+.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "18682466": "Diary of a Wimpy Kid\nComic-style book series by Jeff Kinney\nDiary of a Wimpy Kid is an illustrated children's novel series and media franchise created by American author and cartoonist Jeff Kinney. The series follows Greg Heffley, a middle-schooler who illustrates his daily life in a diary (although he insists that it is a journal).\nKinney spent eight years working on the first book before showing it to a publisher. In 2004, Funbrain and Kinney released an online version of \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\". The website made daily entries from September 2004 to June 2005. The online version had received almost 20 million views by 2009. Nonetheless, many online readers requested a printed version. In February 2006, during the New York Comic Con, Kinney signed a multi-book deal with publisher Abrams Books to turn \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" into a printed book series. The first installment was released in April 2007 and received immediate success. In April 2009, \"Time\" magazine named Kinney in the \"Time\" 100 most influential people.\nAs of October 2024, the series consists of nineteen main entries, as well as an activity book. A spin-off series centering on the character Rowley Jefferson has three installments as of 2021. 20th Century Studios produced a live-action film series of the same name from 2010 to 2017, and three animated films in the early 2020s.\nSince the release of the online version, most of the books have garnered positive reviews and commercial success. As of 2020, more than 250 million copies have been sold globally, making it the fourth best-selling book series of all time.\nChronology.\nSpin-offs.\nA spin-off series has been published, written from Rowley's perspective. The first installment, \"\", was released on April 9, 2019, and is a series of anecdotes about Greg and Rowley's friendship. The second, \"Rowley Jefferson's Awesome Friendly Adventure\", is in the style of a fantasy adventure and was released on August 4, 2020. The book's original release date was April 7, 2020, but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The third, \"Rowley Jefferson's Awesome Friendly Spooky Stories\", was released on March 16, 2021.\nAudiobooks.\nAudiobooks have been released for each main installment in the \"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" series. The Recorded Books versions are read by Ramon de Ocampo, while the Penguin Books versions are read by Dan Russell, who has done so since \"The Third Wheel\", and in 2018 he re-narrated the first 6 books for the markets where Penguin publish the series.\nAchievements.\nCommercial success.\n\"Diary of a Wimpy Kid\" was well received from \"The Princeton Review\", \"Gold Card Association\", \"The Dallas"}, "descending_order": ["32162249", "11263766", "64771955", "18682466", "17601857"], "permutation_1": ["64771955", "18682466", "32162249", "11263766", "17601857"], "permutation_2": ["11263766", "17601857", "18682466", "64771955", "32162249"], "permutation_3": ["17601857", "32162249", "18682466", "64771955", "11263766"]}
{"id": "nq_8706217051392437696", "docs_added": {"14945185": "I Could Not Ask for More\n1999 single by Edwin McCain\n\"I Could Not Ask for More\" is a song composed by American songwriter Diane Warren and originally recorded and released in February 1999, by American singer-songwriter Edwin McCain for the original soundtrack of the 1999 romantic drama film \"Message in a Bottle\", starring Kevin Costner, Robin Wright Penn and Paul Newman. It was also on his third studio album \"Messenger\" (1999) and became a \"Billboard\"-charted top 40 single in the summer of 1999.\nIn 2001, American country music artist Sara Evans popularly covered the song on her third studio album \"Born to Fly\" (2000). Her rendition was released as the album's second single and peaked at number 2 on the US \"Billboard\" Hot Country Songs chart.\nMusic video.\nThe music video features McCain walking and taking a taxi through a busy city decorated like a 19th century village with people in 19th century costumes. While McCain is traveling, a number of people are sitting in a park tree. He reaches the tree just as a branch a woman is sitting on breaks and manages to catch her as she falls. \nChart performance.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nSara Evans cover.\nAmerican country music singer Sara Evans' cover version of the song was released in February 2001 as the second single from her 2000 album \"Born to Fly\". Evans' version was a Top 5 hit on the country music charts.\nMusic video.\nThe music video for Evans' rendition was directed by Peter Zavadil, and features shots of her on location in White Sands National Monument in New Mexico singing the song in different outfits and frequently sitting in different chairs throughout the video.\nChart performance.\n\"I Could Not Ask for More\" debuted at number 52 on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart for the week of February 17, 2001. It soon reached number 2 on that chart.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\n ", "762369": "Birgit Nilsson\nSwedish dramatic soprano (1918\u20132005)\nM\u00e4rta Birgit Nilsson (17 May 1918 \u2013 25 December 2005) was a Swedish dramatic soprano. Although she sang a wide repertoire of operatic and vocal works, Nilsson was best known for her performances in the operas of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. Her voice was noted for its overwhelming force, bountiful reserves of power, and the gleaming brilliance and clarity in the upper register.\nBiography.\nEarly life.\nBirgit Nilsson was born M\u00e4rta Birgit Svensson on a farm at V\u00e4stra Karup in Sk\u00e5ne (100\u00a0km/60 miles north of Malm\u00f6) to Nils Svensson and Justina Svensson (n\u00e9e Paulsson). When she was three years old she began picking out melodies on a toy piano her mother bought for her. She once told an interviewer that she could sing before she could walk, adding, \"I even sang in my dreams\". Her vocal talent was first noticed when she began to sing in her church choir. A choirmaster near her home heard her sing and advised her to take voice lessons.\nShe studied with Ragnar Blennow in \u00c5storp for six months to prepare for an audition at the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in Stockholm where she came in first out of a group of 47 singers and was awarded the Christina Nilsson scholarship named for the famous soprano. Her teachers at the academy were Joseph Hislop and Arne Sunneg\u00e5rdh. However, she considered herself self-taught: \"The best teacher is the stage\", she told an interviewer in 1981. \"You walk out onto it, and you have to learn to project.\" She deplored her early instruction and attributed her success to native talent. \"My first voice teacher [Hislop] almost killed me ... [T]he second was almost as bad.\"\nEarly career.\nIn 1946, Nilsson made her debut at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm with only three days' notice, replacing the ailing singer scheduled for the role of Agathe in Carl Maria von Weber's \"Der Freisch\u00fctz\". Conductor Leo Blech was not very kind to her and, as she wrote in her autobiography, she even contemplated suicide after the performance. In 1947 she claimed national attention in Verdi's \"Lady Macbeth\" conducted by Fritz Busch. A wealth of parts followed, from Richard Strauss and Verdi to Wagner, Puccini, and Tchaikovsky. In Stockholm she built up a steady repertoire of roles in the lyric-dramatic field, including Donna Anna in \"Don Giovanni\", \"Aida\", Lisa in \"The Queen of Spades (opera)\", \"Tosca\", Venus in \"Tannh\u00e4user\", Sieglinde in \"Die Walk\u00fcre\", Senta in \"Der fliegende Holl\u00e4nder\" and the Marschallin in \"Der Rosenkavalier\", one of her favourite roles, all sung in Swedish. In 1949 she sang in \"Ariadne auf Naxos\" with Hj\u00f6rdis Schymberg and Elisabeth S\u00f6derstr\u00f6m among others.\nInternational engagements.\nUnder Fritz Busch's tutelage, her career took wing. He was instrumental in securing her first important engagement outside Sweden, as Electra in Mozart's \"Idomeneo\" at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1951. Her debut at the Vienna State Opera in 1953 was a turning point; she would be a regular performer there for more than 25 years. It was followed by Elsa in Wagner's\n\"Lohengrin\" at the Bayreuth Festival in 1954, then her first Br\u00fcnnhilde in a complete \"Ring\" at the Bavarian State Opera, at the Munich Opera Festival of 1954. Later she returned as Sieglinde, Br\u00fcnnhilde, and Isolde until 1969.\nShe took the title role of \"Turandot\", which is brief but requires an unusually big sound, to La Scala in Milan in 1958, and then to the rest of Italy. Nilsson made her American debut as Br\u00fcnnhilde in Wagner's \"Die Walk\u00fcre\" in 1956 with the San Francisco Opera. She attained international stardom after a performance as Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in 1959, which made front-page news. She said that the single biggest event in her life was being asked to perform at the opening of the 180th season at La Scala as Turandot in 1958. She performed at many major opera houses in the world including Vienna, Berlin, the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, Tokyo, Paris, Buenos Aires, Chicago, and Hamburg.\nShe sang with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in the all-Wagner concert that opened the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House in 1973.\nFrom the 1960s through to the 1980s.\nNilsson was widely known as the leading Wagnerian soprano of her time, the successor to the great Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad, particularly as Br\u00fcnnhilde. However, she also sang many of the other famous soprano roles, among them Leonore, Aida, Turandot, Tosca, Elektra, and Salome. She had, according to \"The New York Times\", a \"voice of impeccable trueness and impregnable stamina\".\nThe conductor Erich Leinsdorf thought that her longevity, like Flagstad's, had something to do with her Scandinavian heritage, remarking that Wagner required \"thoughtful, patient and methodical people.\" Nilsson attributed her long career to no particular lifestyle or regimen. \"I do nothing special\", she once said. \"I don't smoke. I drink a little wine and beer. I was born with the right set of parents.\"\nIn sheer power, her high notes were sometimes compared to those of the Broadway belter Ethel Merman. However Nilsson claims her \"explosive\" high notes that were her biggest asset on-stage \"have not been recorded like they should have been\" in the studio. She later lamented: \"It always made me a little bit sad when I heard my own recordings. And many people told me that I sang much better in person than I do on the recordings! That didn't flatter me at all, because I know what's going to be left when I am no longer singing\".\nTwice at the Met, Nilsson sustained injuries that kept her from performing. In February 1971, she sprained her ankle during a performance of \"Elektra\" that resulted in cancellation of one performance (that was replaced by a historic performance of \"Fidelio\" starring Christa Ludwig). Nilsson recovered to sing the broadcast performance of \"Elektra\" on 27 February. More seriously, in March 1974 she fell and dislocated her shoulder during a rehearsal of \"G\u00f6tterd\u00e4mmerung\". While recuperating in her hospital room at Roosevelt Hospital she said, \"other than my bruises and my black and blues I feel fine\". Although able to sing Br\u00fcnnhilde for the first two performances with her arm in a sling, her injury caused her to miss subsequent performances, including that season's \"G\u00f6tterd\u00e4mmerung\" broadcast. \"The New York Times\"' review of the production's 8 March opening night is reprinted in the Metropolitan Opera Archives.\n\"Miss N.\".\nBeginning at the summer of 1968 at the Bayreuth Festival, Nilsson was obsessively stalked by a much younger American actress and model, Nell Theobald, until Theobald's suicide nine years later in 1977. Nilsson recounted her experiences with Theobald at length in her memoir, \"La Nilsson\", in which she referred to Theobald solely as \"Miss N.\" The stalking incident was later featured in \"Opera News\" magazine and \"The New York Times\".\nNilsson's humour.\nNilsson did not get along with famous conductor Herbert von Karajan. Once when rehearsing on stage at the Vienna Staatsoper, her string of pearls broke. While helping her retrieve them, Karajan asked, \"Are these real pearls bought with your La Scala fees?\" Nilsson replied, \"No, these are fake pearls bought with your Vienna Staatsoper fees.\" When Nilsson first arrived at the Met to rehearse the production of \"Die Walk\u00fcre\" conducted by Karajan, she said, \"Nu, where's Herbie?\" And Karajan once sent Nilsson a cable several pages long, proposing in great detail a variety of projects, different dates and operas. Nilsson cabled back: \"Busy. Birgit.\"\nThe Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson, who became world famous for his documentation of pregnancy from conception to birth, was asked by the magazine \"Life\" to photograph Birgit Nilsson's vocal cords as she sang high C. Birgit Nilsson turned the proposal down with the words \"Your photographer wants me to swallow the tiny camera so he can take pictures of the vocal cord [\"sic\"]. I don't want that, since I know where it has been before.\" Eventually, though, she agreed on having the pictures taken.\nThere was a healthy competition between Nilsson and tenor Franco Corelli as to who could hold the high C the longest in Act II of \"Turandot.\" In one tour performance, after she outlasted him on the high C, he stormed off to Rudolf Bing during the next intermission, saying that he was not going to continue the performance. Bing, who knew how to handle Corelli's tantrums, suggested that he retaliate by biting Nilsson on the neck when Calaf kisses Turandot in Act III. Corelli didn't bite her but he was so delighted with the idea that he told her about Bing's suggestion. She then cabled Bing, informing him she had to cancel the next two performances because she had contracted rabies.\nWhen Nilsson started singing \"Aida\" at the Met, soprano Zinka Milanov was miffed as Aida had theretofore been \"her\" role. After one performance in which Nilsson was singing, Milanov commandeered and drove off in the Rolls-Royce Nilsson had hired for after the performance. When asked about this afterwards, Milanov said \"If Madame Nilsson takes my roles, I must take her Rolls.\"\nThe secret to singing Isolde, she said, was \"comfortable shoes.\" After a disagreement with the Australian soprano Joan Sutherland, Nilsson was asked if she thought Sutherland's famous bouffant hairdo was real. She answered: \"I don't know. I haven't pulled it yet.\"\nOnce, asked what was her favourite role, she answered: \"Isolde made me famous. Turandot made me rich.\" When long-time Metropolitan Opera director Sir Rudolf Bing was asked if she was difficult, he reportedly said \"Not at all. You put enough money in, and a glorious voice comes out.\" When Nilsson was preparing her taxes and was asked if she had any dependents, she replied, \"Yes, just one, Rudolf Bing.\"\nBusiness.\nNilsson was also famous for her ability to make money. She became one of the highest-paid singers in the field, in part because of the rarity of her skills. Being a shrewd businesswoman, she negotiated much of her own career. She never ranted or engaged in tantrums. She would begin contract talks by refusing every offer and being evasive about her availability. This tack would continue until the impresario offered something she wanted. Nilsson's reply would be \"maybe\".\nInteractions with conductors.\nNilsson was known for standing up to conductors. In a 1967 rehearsal of \"Die Walk\u00fcre\" with Herbert von Karajan conducting, Nilsson responded to the gloomy lighting of the production by wearing a miner's helmet (complete with Valkyrian wings). When on some occasion von Karajan urged a retake \"but this time with more heart. That's the place where you have your purse\", Nilsson replied, \"I'm so pleased to find we have something in common.\" When Georg Solti, in \"Tristan und Isolde\", insisted on tempos too slow for Nilsson's taste, she made the first performance even slower, inducing a change of heart in the conductor.\nSelf-criticism.\nDespite her worldwide recognition, Nilsson said she was nervous before every major performance. \"Before a premiere, on the way to the opera, I'd hope for just a small, small accident, it didn't need to be much, but just so I would not have to sing\", she said in a 1977 interview on Swedish TV. Nilsson often spoke of her limits. She said her voice was not a good fit with what she described as the softer textures and refined tones of Italian operas. Nonetheless, she sang roles in Italianate operas such as Donna Anna in \"Don Giovanni\".\nRecordings.\nNilsson recorded all of her major roles in major commercial recordings of the complete works, as well as about a dozen solo recitals of arias, art songs, concerts, and hymns\u2014all were originally released on vinyl LP format and most have been reissued on CD or in digital format. Partly because of her availability to play Br\u00fcnnhilde, Decca Records undertook the expensive project of making a studio recording of Wagner's four-opera \"Ring Cycle\", conducted by Solti and produced by John Culshaw. The effort took seven years, from 1958 to 1965. A film of the proceedings made her a familiar image for arts-conscious television viewers.\nAbsence from New York and Salzburg.\nThough a frequent visitor to the Metropolitan Opera, Nilsson did not always see eye to eye with its redoubtable general manager, Rudolf Bing (who was often said to dislike Wagner), nor with conductor Herbert von Karajan. Subsequently, she made fewer New York appearances than hoped in the early 1970s and was virtually excluded from the Salzburg Festival. Her American career was derailed in the mid-1970s by US Internal Revenue Service claims filed for back taxes. Several years later a schedule of payments was worked out, and Nilsson's hiatus from the United States ended. When she returned, Donal Henahan wrote in \"The New York Times\", \"The famous shining trumpet of a voice is still far from sounding like a cornet.\"\nNilsson appeared at the Metropolitan Opera 223 times in 16 roles. She sang two complete \"Ring\" cycles in the 1961\u201362 season, and another in 1974\u201375. She was Isolde 33 times, and Turandot 52. She played most of the other major soprano parts: Aida, Tosca, the Dyer's Wife in Strauss's \"Die Frau ohne Schatten\", Salome, Elektra, Verdi's Lady Macbeth, and Leonore in Beethoven's \"Fidelio\". In 1966 she simultaneously performed the roles of Venus and Elisabeth (who never appear together) in Wagner's \"Tannh\u00e4user.\" She memorably appeared as replacement Sieglinde to Rita Hunter's Br\u00fcnnhilde in the 1970s. She appeared 232 times at the Vienna State Opera from 1954 to 1982, and the Vienna Philharmonic, the company's orchestra, made her an honorary member in 1999. \"If there ever was someone that one can call a real star today and a world-famous opera singer during her time then that was Frau Nilsson\", said Ioan Holender, director of the Vienna State Opera.\nLater life.\nNilsson's autobiography, \"Mina minnesbilder\" (\"My memoirs in pictures\") was published in Stockholm in 1977. She retired in 1984 to her childhood home in the Sk\u00e5ne province of southern Sweden, where her father had been a sixth-generation farmer and she had worked to grow beets and potatoes until she was 23. In an interview in the mid-1990s, she appeared happy, serene and as unpretentious as ever. \"I've always tried to remember what my mother used to tell me\", she said. \"Stay close to the earth. Then when you fall down, it won't hurt so much.\"\nIn 1981, Sweden issued a postage stamp showing Nilsson as Turandot. She received the Illis quorum gold medal, today the highest award that can be conferred upon a Swedish citizen by the Government of Sweden. In 1988, on the occasion of the 350th anniversary of New Sweden, the first Swedish settlement in America, The American-Scandinavian Foundation named their prize for promising young American opera singers the Birgit Nilsson Prize. Nilsson personally chaired several competitions.\nDeath.\nNilsson died, aged 87, on 25 December 2005 at her home at Bj\u00e4rl\u00f6v, a small village near Kristianstad in Sk\u00e5ne in the same county where she was born. No cause of death was released. She was survived by her husband Bertil Niklasson (died March 2007), a veterinary surgeon whom she had met on a train and married in 1948. They had no children.\nLegacy.\nThree years after Nilsson's death, in December 2008, the Birgit Nilsson Foundation announced that it would award a prize every two to three years to a concert or opera singer, a classical or opera conductor, or a specific production by an opera company. The prize was funded by Nilsson herself. The foundation said that Nilsson had chosen the first winner, to be announced in early 2009.\nOn 20 February 2009, Spanish tenor Pl\u00e1cido Domingo was announced as the inaugural recipient of the prize, which carried with it a cash award of $1,000,000. The first award ceremony took place in the Royal Swedish Opera on 13 October 2009. King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden personally presented the prize to the designated winner. A jury has been set up by the foundation to make recommendations for future prizes. The second winner of the Birgit Nilsson prize was Riccardo Muti, who received the award in Stockholm on 13 October 2011. On 9 April 2014 it was announced that the third recipient of the prize would be the Vienna Philharmonic.\nA P\u00e5gat\u00e5gen train has been named for Nilsson by operator Sk\u00e5netrafiken, with the train \"Birgit Nilsson\" being the first in the new X61 series to depart Malm\u00f6 Central Station in December 2009.\nOn 6 April 2011, the Bank of Sweden announced that Nilsson's portrait will feature on the 500 kronor banknote, beginning in October 2016.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nGeneral\nAudio\nTelevision appearances\nInterviews and articles", "61978262": "I Can't Ask for Anymore Than You\n\"I Can't Ask for Anymore Than You\" is a song by British singer Cliff Richard, released as the third single from his album \"I'm Nearly Famous\" in July 1976. It reached number 17 in the UK Singles Chart and number 80 in the \"Billboard\" Hot 100. It also did particularly well in Ireland, reaching number 2.\nRelease.\n\"I Can't Ask for Anymore Than You\" was written by Ken Gold and Michael Denne. Produced by Bruce Welch, it features Richard signing in falsetto, something he hadn't done before. Tony Rivers has said that \"the original demo featured Mick singing the lead vocals in his high voice and Bruce liked it so much he kept it in the same key, and got Cliff to sing it in that key!\". It was released as a single with the B-side \"Junior Cowboy\", written by Michael Allison and Peter Sills.\nTrack listing.\n7\": EMI / EMI 2499\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "8746786": "Florence Easton\nEnglish opera singer\nFlorence Easton (25 October 1882 \u2013 13 August 1955) was an English dramatic soprano of the early 20th century. She was one of the most versatile singers of all time, appearing in more than 100 roles, covering a wide range of styles and periods, from Mozart, Meyerbeer, Gounod, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, Strauss, Schreker and Krenek. She sang virtually every Wagnerian soprano part, large and small, from Senta in \"Der Fliegende Holl\u00e4nder\" onwards, including Br\u00fcnnhilde in \"G\u00f6tterd\u00e4mmerung\".\nEaston described herself as a \"lyric dramatic soprano\", which seems barely adequate in relation to the range and types of roles in which she excelled. Her international reputation, founded mainly in North America and Germany, was almost unique for a British singer of her time. She could move easily through all stages from the light coloratura to the Hochdramatische, from girlish romanticism to the powerful drama of Wagner and Strauss. The voice could be light and airy, gently melancholic or intensely passionate. The involvement in the character of the role was total. John Steane has suggested that \"This great strength of hers was also, in a strange way, a source of weakness. She sang so many roles very well that she never quite became identified with any of these\". Despite some minor difficulty with Italian diction, she was chosen by Puccini to create Lauretta in his 1917 opera \"Gianni Schicchi.\"\nBiography.\nEarly life.\nFlorence Easton was the elder daughter of John Thomas Easton and Isabella Yarrow, and niece of Fletcher Easton. Known professionally as 'the nightingale of South Bank', she was born on 25 October 1882 at 52 Napier Street, South Bank, Middlesbrough (many biographies show her birthdate incorrectly as 1884). Her parents left England when she was 5 years old and settled with Florence (then known as Flossie) and her younger brother in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Flossie sang in the choir of Parkdale Methodist Church, where her father was choirmaster and her mother was organist. Her musical talent became evident in early childhood and she had piano, organ and singing lessons with JDA Tripp and Mr Harrison. She appeared publicly as a pianist when she was 8 years old.\nShe said \"\"I began as a pianist, and had no thought of singing, let alone the opera, when I began the study of music\". \" Florence was one of the first women to be made a fellow of the Royal Academy of Music on 25 March 1909.\nWhen her mother died in 1899, Florence returned with her father to Middlesbrough, where he joined a partnership in a wholesale fruit merchants business with William Henry Easton, his father and Fletcher Easton, his brother. A collection in Middlesbrough raised enough money for her to study for a year at the Royal Academy of Music in London\u2014she lost the money on her first day in the capital, and her father had to find replacement funds. She started in May 1900 and studied singing for a year. The 1901 Census shows her as an 18-year-old student at the Royal Academy of Music, living at Hendon, Middlesex.\nIn 1901 she went to Paris to study singing with Elliott Haslam, a friend of her father's. \"\"But not long after this my father died, and my grandparents (who had good old-fashioned ideas that a woman's place to sing was in the home) discouraged my efforts. They even carried paternalism far enough to select a husband for me. When this point had been reached, I quietly disappeared, and once more went back to my vocal work\".\"\nProfessional career.\nFlorence was determined, and her debut operatic appearance was as the Shepherd boy in \"Tannh\u00e4user\" at Newcastle upon Tyne in 1903 with the touring Moody-Manners Opera Company. On the first evening of the company's season at Covent Garden she sang Stephano in \"Rom\u00e9o et Juliette\". Her first leading role at the Covent Garden Opera House was Arline in \"The Bohemian Girl\", and she was a success there in 1903, as the lead in \"Madama Butterfly\".\nFlorence married twice; in May 1904 she married Francis Maclennan (born 1873, died 1935), an American tenor with the Moody-Manners Opera Company. She made her American debut as Gilda in \"Rigoletto\" in Baltimore with Henry W. Savage's English Grand Opera Company in November 1905, and she sang a number of roles with this company in the US and Canada over the next 2 years. In 1905 Maclennan had the title role in Henry W. Savage's Parsifal tour of America, and Florence gave up her singing career to set up home in America. They had a son in 1906 and a daughter (Wilhelmina) in 1912; they divorced in 1928. Wilhelmina died in the flu epidemic of 1919.\nHer first notable success in America came in Henry Savage's 1906\u201307 season as Cio-Cio-San in the premiere of \"Madama Butterfly\" (in English). Her performance on 27 October 1906 was the second ever in the US, following that of Elsa Szamosy by only twelve days. Florence held a world record of more than three hundred appearances in Madama Butterfly, her favourite role.\nFrom 1907 to 1913 she and her husband Francis Maclennan were members of the Berlin Royal Opera, singing a variety of roles. She had to learn the role of Marguerite in German within 10 days, and followed up by learning and performing Aida within 48 hours without rehearsal. She was immediately given a five-year contract. They became firm friends of Kaiser Wilhelm. Florence was coached by Richard Strauss for the title role in the English version of his \"Elektra\", at the London premiere at Covent Garden in 1910. After the 1912\u201313 season the Maclennans joined the Hamburg Opera Stadtische Opera, where she first sang with Enrico Caruso in 1913.\nIn 1915\u201316, the couple toured America where Florence appeared in a single performance as Br\u00fcnnhilde in \"Siegfried\", achieving a great popular and critical success. Due to the First World War it was too risky to return to Germany, so they remained in the United States, becoming members of the Chicago Opera Association where she debuted in \"Siegfried\". She remained with the Chicago Opera for two seasons, becoming one of the best-known Wagnerian sopranos in the United States. In 1917, she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York as Santuzza in \"Cavalleria Rusticana\". She remained at the Met for 12 seasons, singing 41 parts and nearly 300 performances. While in New York, Easton studied with Anna Eug\u00e9nie Schoen-Ren\u00e9 who had studied with Pauline Viardot-Garc\u00eda and Manuel Garc\u00eda.\nIt was her performance as the Saint Elisabeth in the staged version of Liszt's \"Die Legende von der heiligen Elisabeth\" in 1918 which set her into the first rank of Metropolitan Opera stars.\nFlorence created the role of Lauretta at the world premiere of Puccini\u00b9s \"Gianni Schicchi\" on 14 December 1918 at the Met; she was the first to sing the now famous aria \"O mio babbino caro\" (\"O My Beloved Papa\"). Puccini could not get to New York for the premiere, so the Met's general manager Giulio Gatti-Casazza sent a telegram to Puccini after the performance:\n\"\"Most happy to announce the complete authentic success of the Trittico. At the end of each opera long very sincere demonstrations more than forty warm curtain calls altogether. In spite of public notice forbidding encores by insistence Lauretta's aria was repeated. Principal strength Moranzoni magnificent. Farrar, Muzio, Easton, De Luca, Montesanto, Didur incomparable singers and actors. Daily press confirms success expressing itself very favourably on worth of the operas enthusiastically for Schicchi\".\"\nFlorence sang many other premiere roles including Aelfrida in Deems Taylor's \"The King's Henchman\" on 17 February 1927 and Mother Tyl in Wolff's \"L'oiseau bleu\". She was also featured in many American premieres including \"La cena delle beffe\", \"Cos\u00ec fan tutte\" and \"Der Rosenkavalier\". Her repertoire included more than 100 roles in 4 languages. She appeared with Enrico Caruso at his final performance, on 24 December 1920, in Halevy's \"La Juive\". By 1926, she was earning $800 for each performance of \"Turandot\". In 1929 she sang her last premiere for the Metropolitan, Otto Kahn's staging of the jazz opera \"Jonny spielt auf\". In 1929, she went to Europe for several months enjoying herself on the proceeds from years of singing with only a few short breaks. However, she lost a fortune in the Wall Street crash of 1929.\nIn the fortnight between 3 and 17 November 1927 she sang Maddalena in \"Andrea Ch\u00e9nier\", \"La Gioconda\", Rachel in \"La Juive\", \"Madama Butterfly\" and the Marschallin in \"Der Rosenkavalier\"; it was surprising that she could manage them all and in such a relatively short space of time. The critical response to nearly every one was laudatory. Though unlike her in so many ways, Easton had this much in common with Lilli Lehmann. By dint of application, intelligence, musical facility and sheer hard work, she was able to transform a lightweight lyric soprano into a dramatic instrument capable not merely of scaling the Wagnerian heights but with the stamina to stay up there season in and season out.\nFlorence Easton was famous for her ability to take an unknown part at 8 in the morning and perform it flawlessly in public 12 hours later. Frequently she was called upon to substitute for some leading soprano suddenly indisposed. She sang her first Isolde without a single rehearsal, called to do so at the last minute. In the middle of the 1929 season however, her memory suddenly failed her, and she asked to be released from her contract. She announced her retirement from opera and moved to a house in Hampstead, London. She married Robert Stanley Rogers, a New York banker and executive of the Celanese Corporation of America and baritone singer, in 1931.\nThe following year she returned to singing and recorded \"Siegfried\" with Lauritz Melchior at Covent Garden. Between 1932 and 1935 she sang at Covent Garden, Sadler's Wells and at the Promenade Concerts under Sir Henry Wood, with the London Philharmonic under Sir Thomas Beecham and with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the first worldwide hook-up broadcast. Her regular accompanist was Harold Craxton. At Covent Garden in 1932 she was Isolde in \"Tristan und Isolde\" and Brunnhilde in \"Siegfried\" opposite Lauritz Melchior, the only time they appeared together. She was \"Tosca\", an unlikely \"Carmen\", sang in Mendelssohn's \"Elijah\" and gave Lieder and song recitals. Leaving England finally in 1935, she found that she had lost the tour to the new sensation, Kirsten Flagstad (but she remained an unstinting admirer of the great Norwegian). Easton's last appearance on the operatic stage was as Br\u00fcnnhilde in \"Die Walk\u00fcre\" in New York on 28 February 1936.\nIn an interview in New York in 1935 she suggested the reason for her absence from the Metropolitan Opera: \"\"It was an accident during a performance of Carmen in England a year ago which incapacitated me for a number of months last year. Reeling in Carmen's death-throes, I happened to catch my heel in the skirt of my dress and fell, twisting my spine, directly in the path of the curtain. The audience hadn't the remotest idea that the apparently lifeless Carmen who lay there was almost lifeless \u2013 and indeed, I actually would have been two minutes later if I had not retained sufficient consciousness to edge out of the path of the descending curtain on its way to deposit about a ton of iron weighting on my head. However, all these things must be taken in one's stride\".\"\nOn one occasion, Florence Easton was engaged to sing the title role in \"Madama Butterfly\" in Washington, D.C., a place celebrated for the strictest child labour laws of any city in the country. The child 'Trouble' (Butterfly's son who appears only in the last act), is always recruited locally, and a resourceful stage manager from somewhere produced a midget. Nobody told Mme. Easton, lest she be a bit squeamish. It is customary for the child playing Trouble to be introduced to the soprano at the first intermission to get him (more often her) accustomed to the Japanese costume and makeup. Mme. Easton asked the traditional three questions:<br>\"Would you like to go to the bathroom?\" \u2013 \"No\".<br>\"Would you like some chocolate?\" \u2013 \"No\".<br>\"How old are you?\" \u2013 \"Forty two\" the little fellow piped up.<br>But this was nothing to Easton\u00b9s confusion in the last act. When she pressed him to her ample bosom he didn\u00b9t want to let go.\nRetirement and final years.\nFlorence retired from public performance in 1939; her last appearance with the orchestra was in a 1942 broadcast where she sang excerpts from \"Tristan und Isolde\" using her own English translations. She then taught privately and at the Juilliard School of Music, and still gave occasional recitals in New York. Her final appearance was made at New York Town Hall, in a song recital in 1943. At the end of World War II she moved with her husband to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and they returned to New York in 1950. She was suffering from heart trouble and she died on 13 August 1"}, "descending_order": ["762369", "61978262", "14945185", "8746786"], "permutation_1": ["61978262", "8746786", "762369", "14945185"], "permutation_2": ["8746786", "762369", "14945185", "61978262"], "permutation_3": ["8746786", "61978262", "14945185", "762369"]}
{"id": "nq_-2257668422597880217", "docs_added": {"5671742": "History of McDonald's\n \nThe American fast-food restaurant chain McDonald's was founded in 1940 by the McDonald brothers, Richard and Maurice, and has since grown to the world's largest restaurant chain by revenue. The McDonald brothers began the business in San Bernardino, California where the brothers set out to sell their barbecue. However, burgers were more popular with the public and the business model switched to a carhop drive-in style of restaurant. From the 1940s to the mid-1950s, the brothers expanded their business, even incorporating the famous Golden Arches, until Ray Kroc turned their small business into the well-known and commercially successful business it is today. Kroc convinced the brothers to move into a more self-serve business model and to expand nationwide. \nKroc and the McDonald brothers worked together for several years until conflicts over their visions for what McDonald's as a brand should be came to a climax. Kroc asked the McDonald brothers in 1961 how much they would be willing to leave the business for and the brothers agreed to leave for 2.7 million dollars. Harry J. Sonneborn and Kroc worked together until Sonneborn's resignation in 1967. In the 1970s, McDonald's expanded internationally and still has locations in several countries around the globe. McDonald's operates as one of the largest private employers in the world. Their current CEO is Christopher J. Kempczinski. Their revenue hits about $26 billion every year. \n1930s.\nThe McDonald family moved from Manchester, New Hampshire to Hollywood, California in the late 1930s, where brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald (\"Dick\" and \"Mac\") began working as set movers and handymen at motion-picture studios. In 1937, their father Patrick McDonald opened The Airdrome, a food stand, on Huntington Drive (Route 66) near the Monrovia Airport in the Los Angeles County city of Monrovia.\n1940s.\nThe McDonald's brothers opened their first McDonald's restaurant on May 15, 1940 in San Bernardino, California. Originally, a carhop drive-in system was used to serve customers. The initial menu items were centered around barbecue and the first name the brothers used for their business was \"McDonald's Famous Barbecue.\" In 1948, the McDonald brothers realized that most of their profits derived from the sale of hamburgers. They shuttered their successful carhop drive-in to establish a streamlined system with a simple menu that consisted of only hamburgers, cheeseburgers, potato chips, coffee, ice cream, soft drinks, and apple pie.\n1950s.\nIn April 1952, the brothers decided that they needed an entirely new building to achieve two goals: further efficiency improvements and a more eye-catching appearance. They collected recommendations for an architect and interviewed at least four, choosing Stanley Clark Meston, who practiced in nearby Fontana. The brothers and Meston worked together closely in the design of the new building. They achieved the extra efficiencies that they needed by, among other things, drawing the actual measurements of every piece of equipment in chalk on a tennis court behind the McDonald house (with Meston's assistant, Charles Fish). \nThe new design achieved a great deal of notice for its gleaming surfaces of red and white ceramic tile, stainless steel, brightly colored sheet metal and glass; pulsing red, white, yellow and green neon; and two 25-foot yellow sheet-metal arches trimmed in neon, which they named the \"Golden Arches\" at the design stage. A third, smaller arch sign at the roadside depicted a pudgy character in a chef's hat known as Speedee striding across the top, trimmed in animated neon. The brothers implemented several techniques to encourage customers to eat more quickly and not to linger in the restaurant, such as reduced heating in the dining area, fixed and angled seating to place customers directly over their food, distance between seats to reduce socialization and cone-shaped cups, which would force customers to hold their drinks while eating.\nIn late 1953, with only a rendering of Meston's design in hand, the brothers began seeking franchisees. Their first was Neil Fox, a distributor for General Petroleum Corporation. Fox's stand, the first with Meston's golden arches design, opened in May 1953 at 4050 North Central Avenue and Indian School Road in Phoenix, Arizona. The cost was a flat fee of $1,000 (). His restaurant was the first to employ the McDonald brothers' \"Golden Arches\" standardized design, created by Southern California architect Stanley Clark Meston and his assistant Charles Fish. Fox's use of the \"McDonald's\" name came as a surprise to the brothers. One of their franchisees (Charles Cox in North Hollywood, CA) would use the name \"Peaks\" from 1953 until 1965, but all others would be \"McDonald's\".\nTheir second franchisee was the team of Fox's brother-in-law Roger Williams and Burdette \"Bud\" Landon, both of whom also worked for General Petroleum. Williams and Landon opened their stand on August 18, 1953 at 10207 Lakewood Boulevard in Downey, California. The Downey stand is the oldest surviving McDonald's restaurant.\nRay Kroc joins and expands franchise operation.\nIn 1954, Ray Kroc, a seller of Prince Castle brand Multimixer milkshake machines, learned that the McDonald brothers were using eight of his machines at their San Bernardino restaurant. His curiosity was piqued, and he flew to California to visit the restaurant himself. The McDonald brothers operated six franchise locations.\nBelieving that the McDonald's formula was a ticket to success, Kroc suggested that the brothers franchise their restaurants throughout the United States. The brothers were skeptical that the self-service approach could succeed in colder, rainier climates; furthermore, their thriving business in San Bernardino, and franchises already operating or planned, made them reluctant to risk a national venture. Kroc offered to assume the major responsibility for establishing the new franchises elsewhere. He returned to his home outside of Chicago with rights to set up McDonald's restaurants throughout the country, except in a handful of territories in California and Arizona already licensed by the McDonald brothers. The brothers were to receive 0.5% of gross sales.\nSonneborn model and shift to real-estate holdings.\nIn 1956, Ray Kroc met Harry J. Sonneborn, a former vice president of finance for Tastee-Freez, who offered an idea to accelerate the growth and investment grade of Kroc's planned McDonald's operation: to own the real estate upon which future franchises would be built. Kroc hired Sonneborn and his plan was executed by forming a separate company, Franchise Realty Corp, to hold McDonald's real estate. The new company signed leases and procured mortgages for both land and buildings, passing these costs on to the franchisee with a 20-40% markup and a reduced initial deposit of $950. The \"Sonneborn model\" of real-estate ownership within the franchise persists to this day, and may be the most important financial decision in the company's history. McDonald's present-day real-estate holdings represent $37.7 billion on its balance sheet, about 99% of the company's assets and 35% of its annual gross revenue.\n1960s.\nBy 1960, McDonald's restaurants were grossing $56 million annually. The growth in U.S. automobile use that came with suburbanization and the interstate highway system contributed heavily to McDonald's success. In 1961, Kroc's conflict over the vision of the company with the founding brothers had escalated, and he asked them how much money they wanted to leave their business to him entirely. The brothers asked for $2.7 million ($23.4 million in 2021 dollars), which Kroc did not have. Harry J. Sonneborn was able to raise the money for him, and Kroc bought the founding brothers' interests in the company. This purchase laid the groundwork for positioning the company for an IPO and making McDonald's the top fast-food chain in the country. The exact process by which the company was sold is not known; it is depicted as a hostile takeover by Kroc in the 2016 biographical film \"The Founder,\" but that portrayal has been disputed, and interviews from the time suggest a more voluntary transition.\nKroc and Sonneborn disagreed over expansion of the company, leading to Sonneborn's resignation in 1967. Kroc took over the title of CEO and president.\nIn 1968, a man named Herman Petty was the first African American to franchise a McDonald's. This came off the heels of the civil rights movement and was informally recognized as African American's initial business entry into McDonald's as a cooperation. \nMcDonald's success in the 1960s was largely the result of the company's skillful marketing and flexible response to customer demand. In 1962, the Filet-O-Fish sandwich, billed as \"the fish that catches people,\" was introduced. In 1967, the Big Mac was created by Jim Delligatti, whose franchised McDonald's was in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, and was added to McDonald's national menu the next year.\n1970s.\nIn 1970, the first restaurant outside of Northern America opened in San Jos\u00e9, Costa Rica. In 1971, McDonald's opened its first European restaurant in Zaandam, Netherlands. The first restaurant in Asia opened in Tokyo, Japan in July 1971, and in December that year, the first German restaurant, which was then in West Germany, opened in Munich\u2013Obergiesing. The first restaurant in Oceania opened in 1971 in Yagoona, Australia.\nThere was some skepticism about the company's phenomenal growth internationally. When Wally and Hugh Morris approached the corporation in 1974 to bring McDonald's into New Zealand, they were firmly shunned by Kroc who, citing a visit to the country, stated, \"There aren't any people... I never met a more dead-than-alive hole in my life.\" The same year, McDonald\u2019s came to the UK, a restaurant was opened in Woolwich, South East London. The Morris brothers were finally granted a franchise in May 1975. They negotiated a deal with the corporation by selling New Zealand cheese to the U.S. to offset the high costs of importing plant equipment. The first New Zealand restaurant opened in June 1976 in Porirua, near Wellington, to much more success than the corporation had predicted.\nIn 1972, the National Black McDonald's Operators Association (NBMOA) was founded. Herman Petty, the first African American to franchise a McDonald's, helped establish the association and it soon became a representation of Black people's voices inside of the company.\nIn 1979, the first McDonald's restaurant in Southeast Asia opened at Liat Towers in Orchard Road, Singapore.\n1980s.\nThe first McDonald's outlet in Malaysia opened at Jalan Bukit Bintang on April 29, 1982.\nOn October 29, 1985, the first McDonald's restaurant in Mexico opened in Pedregal, Mexico City.\nIn 1984, the company ran a promotion for the 1984 Olympics saying \"When the U.S. wins, you win,\" promising free food items for each medal the U.S. got. However, the Soviets organized a boycott and with minimal competition, the US dominated, winning 174 medals. Over 6,000 locations faced shortages, and the corporation has never admitted to how much money they lost, though it's estimated to be in the millions.\nIn 1988, McDonald's Japan introduced prepaid cards at three of its outlets in Tokyo. Intended to make payments faster, it offered cards in 1,000, 3,000 and 5,000 yen denominations.\n1990s.\nThe first McDonald's Express locations opened in 1991. These are smaller-scale prototypes, usually constructed in prefabricated buildings or urban storefronts, that do not feature certain menu items such as milkshakes and Quarter Pounders.\nThe first McDonald's in Mainland China opened in Dongmen, Shenzhen in October 1990. \nThe Extra Value Meal, a burger, fries and drink combination deal, was introduced from 1993, originally as part of a \"Jurassic Park\" tie-in.\nOn April 28 and 29, 1992, the Taiwan McDonald's bombings occurred when bombs were planted in or near various McDonald's restaurants in Taiwan as part of an extortion attempt, causing the death of a policeman and injuries to four civilians, including two young children, and the temporary closure of all 57 McDonald's locations in that country.\nA week later on May 7, Sydney River McDonald's murders took place in Sydney River, Nova Scotia, Canada when a botched robbery committed by employee Derek Wood and two accomplices resulted in the murder of three employees, and the permanent disablement of a fourth employee shot in the head.\nOn October 12 1992 Mark Hopkins was electrocuted at McDonald's Manchester Arndale store.\nMcDonald's Japan's 1,000th outlet opened in September 1993. It plans to boost sales by opening a novelty shop selling T-shirts and cotton kimonos emblazoned with golden arches and McDonald's characters and release a video game featuring Ronald McDonald with Sega Enterprises, Ltd.\nIn 1997, the first McDonald's outlet in Bolivia was opened in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. In November 2002, McDonald's closed all its locations in that country, due to cultural rejection from citizens and the government, but especially due to losses from franchisee Arcos Dorados, enabling its exit from the Bolivian market effective November 30, 2002, making Bolivia and Cuba the only Latin American countries without McDonald's. Shortly after its closure, rival chain Burger King acquired its locations.\nMcDonald's offered pizza options in the 1990s.\n2000s.\nMore than 11,000 McDonald's locations were opened outside the United States after the conclusion of the 1990s. In 2000, a McDonald's in Dearborn, Michigan in Greater Detroit was the first one in Michigan and the only one east of the Mississippi River to offer halal food for Muslim customers.\n2010s.\nIn January 2012, the company announced that revenue for 2011 reached an all-time high of $27 billion, and that 2,400 restaurants would be updated and 1,300 new ones opened worldwide.\nIn the middle of the decade, the restaurant began to suffer from declining profits. In response, McDonald's began to offer a limited selection of its breakfast menu all day starting in 2015. At first, the launch was unpopular with franchisees who claimed that the changes caused service to slow down. However, the plan paid off with CNBC reporting that the company's fourth quarter earnings \"easily topped analysts' forecasts\".\nOn July 22, 2016 the 2016 Munich shooting took place when David Sonboly, an 18-year-old German-Iranian man opened fire at a McDonald's restaurant known to be frequented by immigrants, before shooting at bystanders in the street outside and then in Olympia shopping mall, and then killing himself. Nine people were killed, and 16 more injured.\n2020s.\nOn March 8, 2022, McDonald's suspended operations at all 850 of its locations in Russia, in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine twelve days prior. The move comes after similar decisions by other Western companies and pressure from critics. The brand relaunched on June 12, 2022 as 'Vkusno & tochka' (\u0412\u043a\u0443\u0441\u043d\u043e \u0438 \u0442\u043e\u0447\u043a\u0430, Tasty and that's it) by local franchisee Alexander Govor.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "13688144": "McCaf\u00e9\nMcDonald's coffee bar\nMcCaf\u00e9 is a coffee shop-style food and beverage chain, owned by McDonald's. Conceptualised and launched in Melbourne, Australia in 1993 and introduced to the public with help from McDonald's CEO Charlie Bell and then-Chairman and future CEO James Skinner, the chain reflects a consumer trend towards espresso coffees.\nReports indicated that McCaf\u00e9 outlets generated 15% more revenue than a regular McDonald's and, by 2003, were the largest coffee shop brand in Australia and New Zealand. After McDonald's Australia experimented with automatic espresso-pronto machines in the last decade and it failed to catch-on, all Australian stores were subsequently renovated and converted to McCafe outlets.\nInternational expansion.\nThe McCaf\u00e9 concept was designed to help create atmosphere and foot-traffic at the entrance to the McDonalds stores at Swanston Street, Melbourne (a very large store with the front counter a considerable distance from the shop's entrance). The idea was developed between Charlie Bell and the local Regional Corporate team (David Bayes, Mike Tregurtha and Jim Vasiliadis). The first McCaf\u00e9 opened as a Corporate store in Melbourne. The first one in the United States opened in Chicago, Illinois, in May 2001 when there were about 300 worldwide. In 2004 McCaf\u00e9 opened in Costa Rica and in France, and the next year, the concept was launched in Italy. In 2007, the chain expanded to Japan as part of McDonald's efforts to boost sales with healthier soup and sandwich offerings and reach out to new customers who favoured traditional coffee shops. Despite being a relatively small part of McDonald's overall strategy, there are currently 1,300 worldwide.\nIn June 2006, the first McCaf\u00e9 in Bulgaria opened at the Mall of Sofia.\nMcCaf\u00e9 arrived In Paraguay in 2007.\nIn August 2008, McDonald's expanded their McCaf\u00e9 concept to South Africa, where the McDonald's franchise is already a household name and one of the largest fast-food chains in the country.\nAt the end of 2009 McCaf\u00e9 drinks were available at McDonald's restaurants in the United States.\nMcCaf\u00e9 opened in El Salvador on July 6, 2010, located in McDonald's restaurants in the Zona Rosa and Pr\u00f3ceres Boulevard with the goal of providing the aroma, flavor and texture of 100% Salvadorian gourmet coffee.\nMcCaf\u00e9 opened in Madrid, Spain on June 28, 2008, located in McDonald's Montera restaurants.\nIn 2011, McDonald's started expansion of McCaf\u00e9 in Ukraine. There are 6 McCaf\u00e9s in Kyiv, 1 in Lviv, 1 in Odesa, 1 in Dnipropetrovsk and 1 in Kharkiv as of January 2014.\nIn July 2010, the McCaf\u00e9 added real fruit smoothies to their drink list. In November 2010, mocha and hot chocolate were added to their drink list. In July 2011, Frozen Strawberry Lemonade and Mango Pineapple Smoothie were added to the U.S. menu.\nOn November 7, 2011, McDonald's Canada launched McCaf\u00e9 across the nation after being available only in select stores prior to this announcement. With the introduction of McCaf\u00e9 in Canada, participating McDonald's stores have added mocha, cappuccino, espresso, americano, latte, iced latte, iced mocha and hot chocolate to their menus. With McCaf\u00e9, McDonald's is now in direct competition with Coffee Time, Country Style, Second Cup, Starbucks, Tim Hortons, and Timothy's in the Canadian coffee market.\nOn June 16, 2012, McDonald's launched the first McCaf\u00e9 Malaysia in Kota Damansara, with a few others subsequently opening in the Bandar Utama, Subang Jaya, Titiwangsa, and Taman Connaught outlets - all currently located in Klang Valley as well as in Greenlane, Birch House, IJM Promenade and Penang International Airport - all in Penang.\nIn Turkey, McCaf\u00e9 operates under the name \"McD Caf\u00e9\". The first coffee shop opened in July 2012 at Sabiha G\u00f6k\u00e7en Airport. As of April 2016, there are 8 Mcd Caf\u00e9s on the Asian side of Istanbul, 6 on the European side, 3 in Antalya, 2 each in Adana and Kocaeli, and one each in Afyonkarahisar, Aksaray, Ankara and K\u0131r\u015fehir.\nIn December 2012, McDonald's announced that it would be bringing the McCaf\u00e9 brand and line of products to all of the McDonald's restaurants in the United Kingdom. This would include the addition of iced frapp\u00e9s, iced fruit smoothies and a rebranding of the standard McDonald's coffee to \"McCaf\u00e9.\"\nOn October 14, 2013, McDonald's launched the first McCaf\u00e9 India in the South Mumbai area in Mumbai, Maharashtra.\nMcDonald's introduced a coffee line called \"McCaf\u00e9\" nationwide in the United States. \nIn August 2014, the company announced it was going to start to selling its coffee for home brewing in supermarkets across the United States. Manufactured and distributed in partnership with Kraft Foods, the coffee is currently available in prepackaged bags and K-Cups.\nIn December 2015, McDonald's Canada opened its first standalone McCafe store in Toronto Union Station's newly built York concourse area.\nOn March 20, 2018, the first McCaf\u00e9 in Minsk, Belarus was opened. Another McCaf\u00e9 opened its doors in Minsk on June 24, 2018, and one more was planned to open by the end of 2018.\nIn 2019, McCaf\u00e9 opened in different cities of Pakistan.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "33664910": "Oldest McDonald's restaurant\nUnited States historic places\nThe oldest McDonald's restaurant that is still in business operation is a drive-up hamburger stand at 10207 Lakewood Boulevard at Florence Avenue in Downey, California, United States. Opened on August 18, 1953, it is the third McDonald's restaurant outlet to be opened and is the second restaurant franchised by Richard and Maurice McDonald, before the involvement of Ray Kroc in the company. The outlet still retains the original, standardized Golden Arches fa\u00e7ade design and is one of Downey's main tourist attractions. Along with its sign, it was deemed eligible for addition to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, although it was not added at the time because the owner objected.\nThe site of the first McDonald's restaurant in San Bernardino, California is now occupied by an outlet that is the de facto headquarters of the \"Juan Pollo\" chicken restaurant chain, with an unofficial museum nearby.\nHistory of the oldest operating McDonald's in Downey, California.\nThe original owners of the Downey, California McDonald's were Roger Williams, the brother-in-law of McDonald's first franchisee Neil Fox, and his business partner Bud Landon. Williams and Fox worked for Occidental Petroleum and used their expertise in siting Occidental gasoline stations in choosing the location. Like the McDonald brothers' other franchisees, they were required to use Stanley Clark Meston's design.\nThe purchase of the chain from the McDonald brothers by Ray Kroc did not affect the Downey restaurant, as it was franchised under an agreement with the McDonald brothers, not with Kroc's company McDonald's Systems, Inc., which later became McDonald's Corporation. As a result, the restaurant was not subject to the modernization requirements that McDonald's Corporation placed on its franchisees. Its menu came to differ from that of other McDonald's restaurants, and lacked items such as the Big Mac that were developed by the corporation. In part due to these differences, as well as a corporate McDonald's opening in the mid-1970s less than half a mile away, the restaurant suffered from poor sales, and was eventually acquired by McDonald's Corporation in 1990, when it was the only remaining McDonald's that was independent of the chain.\nWith low sales, damage from the 1994 Northridge earthquake, and the lack of a drive-up window and indoor seating, the restaurant was closed, and McDonald's planned to demolish it and incorporate some of its features in a modern \"retro\" restaurant nearby. However, it was listed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's 1994 list of the 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. With both the public and preservationists demanding the restaurant be saved, McDonald's spent two years restoring the restaurant and reopened it. Customers can visit the restored restaurant and an adjoining gift shop and museum.\nOther early McDonald's restaurants still in operation.\nA restaurant built in 1962 at 2434 Almaden Road in San Jose, California, is the only other remaining early McDonald's still in operation in California, although a modern restaurant is now attached to it. This location is listed as one of the city's historic resources.\nOther early McDonald's restaurant locations.\nOriginal location (demolished).\nThe McDonald brothers opened their first restaurant adjacent to the Monrovia Airport in 1937. It was a tiny octagonal building informally called The Airdrome. That octagonal building was later moved to 1398 North E Street in San Bernardino, California in 1940. It was originally a barbecue drive-in, but the brothers discovered that most of their profits came from hamburgers. In 1948, they closed their restaurant for three months, reopening it in December as a walk-up hamburger stand that sold hamburgers, potato chips, and orange juice; the following year, french fries and Coca-Cola were added to the menu. This simplified menu, and food preparation using assembly line principles, allowed them to sell hamburgers for 15 cents, or about half as much as at a sit-down restaurant. The restaurant was very successful, and the brothers started to franchise the concept in 1953.\nThe original hexagonal McDonald's hamburger stand in San Bernardino was demolished in 1953 and replaced by a building in the now familiar Golden Arches style. In an oversight, the McDonald brothers failed to retain rights to the McDonald's name when they sold the chain to Kroc, and were forced to rename it \"The Big M\". It went out of business and was demolished in 1972, although part of the sign remains.\nThe site of the original McDonald's was purchased in 1998 by Albert Okura, owner of the \"Juan Pollo\" outlet, for $135,000 in a foreclosure sale. Okura turned the property into the headquarters for his chain of restaurants and opened an unofficial McDonald's museum on the site, which, Okura refers to as the \"historic site of the original McDonald's\". Okura said though he did not intend to open the museum, an erroneous news story that mentioned he was planning on opening a museum gave him the idea; former employees and customers sent the museum many of the items on display.\nStore #2 (demolished).\nThe second outlet opened in North Hollywood, California on Victory Blvd on August 1, 1953, licensed by McDonald's and operated as Peaks, was demolished in 1986 for an Arby\u2019s.\nStore #7 (no longer a McDonald's).\nThe seventh McDonald's, at 1057 East Mission Boulevard in Pomona, California, opened in 1954 and closed as a McDonald's in 1968. It later became a taco stand, and as of 2020, was a doughnut shop. It is currently the second-oldest existing McDonald's building after the Downey location.\nStore #9 (demolished).\nKroc's 1955 McDonald's franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois, the 9th in the chain, was demolished in 1984, but a replica was built on the original foundation and was described as the McDonald's No. 1 Store Museum. The replica was also demolished due to repeated issues with flooding, with the sign removed in January 2018.\nStore #11 (demolished).\nThe 11th McDonald's at 1900 South Central Avenue in Los Angeles, later a taco restaurant, was demolished in 2016.\nOther locations.\nThe site of the first franchised McDonald's restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona, opened in 1953 or 1954, is now a Yoshi\u2019s.\nAn early McDonald's stood at 9100 SE Powell Boulevard in Portland, Oregon, on Southeast 91st Avenue and Powell Boulevard. It was not attached to the adjacent McDonald's but was available for party rentals. It was demolished on February 22, 2018, and the site was occupied by the expanded modernized McDonald's outlet.\nHistoric signs.\nAn older single-arch McDonald's sign of historic significance is located outside McDonald's restaurant #91, 1587 Shawano Avenue in Green Bay, Wisconsin, dates from 1959, was restored in 2005, and still operates. The sign is located in front of a modern, retro-styled McDonald's restaurant.\nA single-arch McDonald's sign at 2801 S. Olive Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas, dating from 1962, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2006 although the McDonald's at that location is modern.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2480627": "McDonald's\nAmerican fast food restaurant corporation\nMcDonald's Corporation, doing business as McDonald's, is an American multinational fast food chain, founded in 1940 as a restaurant operated by Richard and Maurice McDonald, in San Bernardino, California, United States. They rechristened their business as a hamburger stand and later turned the company into a franchise, with the Golden Arches logo being introduced in 1953 at a location in Phoenix, Arizona. In 1955, Ray Kroc, a businessman, joined the company as a franchise agent and, in 1961, bought out the McDonald brothers. Previously headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois, it moved to nearby Chicago in June 2018. McDonald's is also a real estate company through its ownership of around 70% of restaurant buildings and 45% of the underlying land (which it leases to its franchisees).\nMcDonald's is the world's second largest fast food restaurant chain by number of locations, surpassed by Chinese chain Mixue Ice Cream & Tea as of September 2024. McDonald's serves over 69 million customers daily in over 100 countries in more than 40,000 outlets as of 2021. McDonald's is best known for its hamburgers, cheeseburgers and french fries, although their menu also includes other items like chicken, fish, fruit, and salads. Their bestselling licensed item is their french fries, followed by the Big Mac. The McDonald's Corporation revenues come from the rent, royalties, and fees paid by the franchisees, as well as sales in company-operated restaurants. In 2018, McDonald's was the world's second-largest private employer with 1.7 million employees (behind Walmart with 2.3 million employees), the majority of whom work in the restaurant's franchises.\nMcDonald's has been subject to criticism over the health effects of its products and its participation in various legal cases.\nHistory.\nSiblings Richard and Maurice McDonald opened the first McDonald's at 1398 North E Street at West 14th Street in San Bernardino, California, on May 15, 1940. The brothers introduced the \"Speedee Service System\" in 1948, putting into expanded use the principles of the modern fast-food restaurant that predecessor White Castle had put into practice more than two decades earlier. The original mascot of McDonald's was a hamburger-headed chef who was referred to as \"Speedee\". In 1962, the Golden Arches replaced Speedee as the universal mascot. Clown mascot Ronald McDonald was introduced in 1963 to market the chain to children.\nOn May 4, 1961, McDonald's first filed for a U.S. trademark on the name \"McDonald's\" with the description \"Drive-In Restaurant Services,\" which continues to be renewed. By September 13, McDonald's, under the guidance of Ray Kroc, filed for a trademark on a new logo\u2014an overlapping, double-arched \"M\" symbol. But before the double arches, McDonald's used a single arch for the architecture of their buildings. Although the \"Golden Arches\" logo appeared in various forms, the present version was not used until November 18, 1968, when the company was granted a U.S. trademark.\nThe present corporation credits its founding to franchised businessman Ray Kroc on April 15, 1955. This was the ninth opened McDonald's restaurant overall, although this location was destroyed and rebuilt in 1984. Kroc was recorded as being an aggressive business partner, driving the McDonald brothers out of the industry.\nKroc and the McDonald brothers fought for control of the business, as documented in Kroc's autobiography. In 1961, he purchased the McDonald brothers' equity in the company and began the company's worldwide reach. The sale cost Kroc $2.7 million, a huge sum during that time. The San Bernardino restaurant was eventually torn down in 1971, and the site was sold to the Juan Pollo chain in 1998. This area serves as headquarters for the Juan Pollo chain, and a McDonald's and Route 66 museum. With the expansion of McDonald's into many international markets, the company has become a symbol of globalization and the spread of the American way of life. Its prominence has made it a frequent topic of public debates about obesity, corporate ethics, and consumer responsibility.\nProducts.\nMcDonald's predominantly sells hamburgers, various types of chicken, chicken sandwiches, French fries, soft drinks, shakes, breakfast items, and desserts. In most markets, McDonald's offers salads and vegetarian items, wraps and other localized fare. On a seasonal basis, McDonald's offers the McRib sandwich. Some speculate the seasonality of the McRib adds to its appeal. During March of each year, McDonald's offers a Shamrock Shake to honor Saint Patrick's Day.\nIn addition, the chain also sells some items within the United States on a regional basis; for example, the Hatch Green Chile Double Cheeseburger, which is topped with New Mexico green chile, is only available in the southwestern state of New Mexico.\nProducts are offered as either \"dine-in\" (where the customer opts to eat in the restaurant) or \"take-out\" (where the customer opts to take the food off the premises). \"Dine-in\" meals are provided on a plastic tray with a paper insert on the floor of the tray. \"Take-out\" meals are usually delivered with the contents enclosed in a distinctive McDonald's-branded brown paper bag. In both cases, the individual items are wrapped or boxed as appropriate.\nSince Steve Easterbrook became CEO of the company in 2015, McDonald's has streamlined the menu which in the United States contained nearly 200 items. The company has looked to introduce healthier options and removed high-fructose corn syrup from hamburger buns. The company has removed artificial preservatives from Chicken McNuggets, replacing chicken skin, safflower oil and citric acid found in Chicken McNuggets with pea starch, rice starch, and powdered lemon juice.\nIn September 2018, McDonald's USA announced that they no longer use artificial preservatives, flavors and colors entirely from seven classic burgers sold in the U.S., including the hamburger, cheeseburger, double cheeseburger, McDouble, Quarter Pounder with Cheese, double Quarter Pounder with Cheese and the Big Mac. Nevertheless, the pickles will still be made with an artificial preservative, although customers can choose to opt out of getting pickles with their burgers.\nIn November 2020, McDonald's announced McPlant, a plant-based burger, along with plans to develop additional meat alternative menu items that extend to chicken substitutes and breakfast sandwiches. This announcement came after the successful testing of Beyond Meat plant based meat substitutes. In late 2022, McDonald's announced the addition of the Double McPlant at all restaurants in the United Kingdom and Ireland starting January 4 due to the success of the McPlant. In 2024, select McDonald's in the UK were testing vegan ice cream called Choco Scoop and Strawberry Scoop and receiving positive reviews.\nThe company often introduces items temporarily or brings them back after long absences.\nInternational menu variations.\nMcDonald's Menu is customized to reflect consumer tastes in their respective countries. Restaurants in several countries, particularly in Asia, serve soup. This"}, "descending_order": ["5671742", "13688144", "33664910", "2480627"], "permutation_1": ["2480627", "33664910", "13688144", "5671742"], "permutation_2": ["2480627", "33664910", "13688144", "5671742"], "permutation_3": ["13688144", "2480627", "5671742", "33664910"]}
{"id": "nq_4500427599248578420", "docs_added": {"616917": "Will Turner\nFictional character in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series\nWilliam Turner Jr. is a fictional character in the \"Pirates of the Caribbean\" films. He appears in ' (2003), ' (2006), ' (2007), and ' (2017). He is portrayed by Orlando Bloom (and as a child by Dylan Smith in the prologue of \"The Curse of the Black Pearl\").\nWilliam Turner is a blacksmith's apprentice working in Port Royal, Jamaica. He secretly loves the governor's daughter, Elizabeth Swann (played by Keira Knightley and Lucinda Dryzek), although he occupies a lower social class than she does. Will is the son of Bootstrap Bill Turner, and he works to free his father from service to Davy Jones. He marries Elizabeth Swann in \"At World's End\", and they have a son named Henry (played by Dominic Scott Kay, Lewis McGowan, and Brenton Thwaites). Alongside Hector Barbossa, Turner serves as an additional foil to Jack Sparrow's character, taking the role of the straight man with his subdued, good-natured personality.\nFictional biography.\nEarly life.\nWill is the only child of \"Bootstrap\" Bill Turner (portrayed by Stellan Skarsgaard). According to Jack Sparrow, Will strongly resembles his father, both in appearance and ability. However, his father was absent during his early childhood in England. Will grew up believing his father to be a merchant seaman. Following his mother's death, Will, then about twelve years old, emigrated to Port Royal.\n\"The Curse of the Black Pearl\".\nWeatherby Swann and his daughter Elizabeth sail to Port Royal after Weatherby is appointed governor. Elizabeth spots Will clinging to a floating piece of a shipwreck. She discovers a gold medallion around his neck, and hides it to prevent anyone from believing that Will is a pirate. Later Elizabeth finds out the medallion is in fact Cursed Aztec Gold.\nOver the next eight years, Will and Elizabeth maintain a respectful friendship, although Will conceals his romantic feelings for her. He is now a blacksmith's apprentice in Port Royal. Will has developed into a master craftsman of fine swords, although his often-drunk master usually claims credit for Will's exquisite workmanship. Will is also an exceptional, self-taught swordsman. The DVD commentary states that he is the best among the characters in the film, including Barbossa, Norrington, and Jack Sparrow. When Jack Sparrow attempts to evade arrest, Will engages him in a duel. Sparrow outwits Will in a sword fight; Will claims Jack \"cheated\" by ignoring the \"rules of engagement.\"\nWill learns that his father was the pirate \"Bootstrap Bill\" Turner, who served aboard the \"Black Pearl\" when it was commanded by Captain Jack Sparrow. Despite Sparrow's comments that Bootstrap was \"a good man,\" Will remains deeply conflicted over the fact that his father was a pirate. Will learns that when First Mate Barbossa and the crew mutinied and marooned Sparrow, only Bootstrap defended him. Infuriated by Bootstrap's betrayal, Barbossa and his crew had looted a chest of Aztec gold. This resulted in them becoming undead and unable to feel physical pleasure. It was only after they had thrown Bootstrap overboard that they learned how to break the curse: they needed to return all of the gold pieces, and each pirate who took the gold had to make a blood offering as a form of repayment. Because Bootstrap only had one child, Barbossa decides to track down and kidnap the child in order to lift the curse.\nIt is revealed that the pirate's medallion stolen by Elizabeth is one of the pieces of Aztec gold. Believing her to be the daughter of Bootstrap Bill, Barbossa kidnaps her. After Elizabeth is kidnapped, Will forms an alliance with Sparrow. He helps Sparrow escape from prison. They commandeer a ship and recruit a crew in Tortuga. They sail to Isla de Muerta, where Barbossa has taken Elizabeth. Unbeknownst to Will, Sparrow intends to use him to bargain back the \"Black Pearl\". When Will learns his role in lifting the curse, he barters himself to Barbossa to free Elizabeth and the crew. In the end, Sparrow and Will succeed in lifting the curse; Sparrow kills Barbossa, and the pirate crew is defeated. At Sparrow's execution in Port Royal, Will declares his love for Elizabeth before attempting to rescue Sparrow from the gallows. They are quickly subdued by redcoats, but Will refuses to abandon Sparrow. Elizabeth intervenes and saves Will by declaring her love for him and vouching for Sparrow. Will is pardoned, while Sparrow escapes by falling off the rampart and into the bay where the \"Black Pearl\" awaits.\n\"Dead Man's Chest\".\nWill returns with the other main characters from \"\". \nFor aiding Jack Sparrow's escape, Will and Elizabeth are arrested just prior to their wedding ceremony by Lord Cutler Beckett, a man made wealthy and powerful by profits from the East India Trading Company. Beckett threatens Will and Elizabeth with execution for aiding Sparrow's escape, but offers clemency if Will can find Sparrow's compass for Beckett's use. This magical compass will allow Beckett to find the heart of Davy Jones. Beckett also possesses a Letter of Marque with which he intends to recruit Jack as a privateer.\nTo save Elizabeth, Will hunts for Jack Sparrow and the \"Black Pearl\". He finds the crew captive on Pelegosto, a cannibal-inhabited island. They escape, and are unexpectedly reunited with Pintel and Ragetti. Jack agrees to give Will his compass if he helps him find a key, though he has no idea what it unlocks. Jack seeks out Tia Dalma, a voodoo priestess who takes a particular interest in Will, proclaiming he has a \"touch of destiny.\" Dalma says the key is to the Dead Man's Chest containing the heart of Davy Jones. Sparrow had once struck a bargain with Davy Jones to raise the \"Black Pearl\" from the ocean bottom and to make Jack captain for 13 years. Sparrow would then serve aboard the \"Dutchman\" for a century. When Jones attempts to collect on this deal, Jack reneges on the bargain.\nThe crew searches for Jones, and Will soon finds himself stranded on a wrecked vessel that Jack claimed was Jones' ghost ship, the \"Flying Dutchman\". When the real \"Flying Dutchman\" suddenly arrives, Jack attempts to barter Will to Davy Jones to repay his blood debt, but Jones refuses, saying one soul is unequal to another. Instead, he keeps Will as a \"good faith\" payment and demands an additional 99 souls. Otherwise, Jack must surrender or face the Kraken.\nWill, now an indentured sailor aboard Jones' ghost ship, meets his father \"Bootstrap\" Bill Turner. When Will challenges Davy Jones to Liar's Dice, betting his soul against the key to the \"Dead Man's Chest\", Bootstrap joins in and purposely loses to save his son from eternal enslavement. With Bootstrap's help, Will steals the key from Jones and escapes in a longboat, vowing to one day free his father. A passing ship rescues Will, but Jones summons the Kraken to destroy it. Will survives and stows back aboard the \"Dutchman,\" now headed for Isla Cruces where the Dead Man's Chest containing Jones' heart is buried.\nOn Isla Cruces, Will is reunited with Elizabeth, who has escaped jail and joined Jack Sparrow's crew. Also present are Sparrow and former Commodore James Norrington, who has also joined the crew. They locate the chest. Will, Jack, and Norrington each claim the heart for their own purposes. Norrington ultimately steals the heart and the Letters of Marque, escaping just as Davy Jones' crew attacks.\nThe \"Black Pearl\" flees, outrunning the \"Flying Dutchman\", but Davy Jones again summons the Kraken. Will leads the crew in temporarily fending it off, gaining enough time to abandon ship. When Elizabeth realizes that Sparrow is the Kraken's sole prey, she distracts him with a passionate kiss while handcuffing him to the mast. Unbeknownst to her, Will witnesses this and believes Elizabeth now loves Sparrow. From the longboat, the crew watches the Kraken drag the \"Pearl\" and Sparrow to Davy Jones' Locker.\nWill, Elizabeth, and the crew seek refuge with Tia Dalma. Gibbs proposes a toast to their fallen captain, to which Will glumly raises his mug. Seeing Elizabeth's tears and believing she loves Sparrow, he tries comforting her. Will and the crew agree to attempt to rescue Sparrow from the Locker.\n\"At World's End\".\nWill is next seen in Singapore with Elizabeth, Barbossa, Tia Dalma, and the \"Black Pearl\" crew. They attempt bargain with Sao Feng, the Pirate Lord of the South China Sea, for the navigational charts leading to World's End and Davy Jones' Locker, so that they can rescue Jack Sparrow. Will had already attempted to steal the charts, but was captured. Ostensibly, the group's mission is to rescue Jack Sparrow from the Locker, but, like the others, Will has a secret motive: to retrieve the \"Black Pearl\" and free his father from Davy Jones. When Mercer and the East India Trading Company soldiers attack Sao Feng's bathhouse, Feng strikes a secret bargain with Will: Jack Sparrow in exchange for the \"Black Pearl\". Will and the others journey to World's End on Feng's ship, sailing over an enormous waterfall into the Locker. There, they find Jack aboard the \"Pearl\". Jack sets sail with them, although he and Barbossa dispute who is captain. Will learns that Elizabeth sacrificed Jack to the Kraken. And though he now understands why Elizabeth has been distant and despondent, she believes that her unrelenting guilt over causing Sparrow's doom is her burden alone to bear. Will tells her their relationship will not endure if they lack trust in one another and make their choices alone.\nSao Feng betrays Will in lieu of another bargain with Lord Beckett, though Beckett double-crosses Feng. Feng then offers Barbossa the \"Black Pearl\" in exchange for Elizabeth, who he mistakenly believes is the sea goddess, Calypso. Elizabeth is stunned that Will betrayed Jack Sparrow to achieve his goal. Ignoring Will, she agrees to Feng's terms in exchange for the crew's safety. Jack tosses Will in the brig, but he soon escapes. Still plotting to obtain the \"Pearl\", Will leaves a trail of bodies for Lord Beckett to follow to Shipwreck Cove, the Brethren Court stronghold. Jack catches him, but surprisingly hands Will his magical compass before pushing him overboard. Clinging to a floating barrel, Will drifts towards Beckett's ship, \"Endeavour\".\nWill is exchanged for Jack during parley with Beckett and Davy Jones. Elizabeth tells Will she now understands the burden he bears, but having been aboard the \"Dutchman\", she believes Bootstrap can no longer be saved, although Will disagrees. When Barbossa releases Calypso from her human form, Will tells her that Davy Jones betrayed her to the First Brethren Court. This causes her to turn her fury against both the pirates and Jones, forming a giant maelstrom.\nDuring the maelstrom battle, Will proposes to Elizabeth, convincing her this may be their only opportunity to wed. Barbossa performs an impromptu wedding as the battle continues.\nWill defends Elizabeth from Davy Jones. He stabs Jones, but Jones is unharmed. Jones mortally wounds Will. Jack, who now possesses Jones' heart guides Will's hand to stab the heart and kill Jones. Bootstrap carves out his son's heart and places it in the Dead Man's Chest. Will becomes the \"Flying Dutchman\"'s immortal captain. Now under Will's command, the \"Flying Dutchman\" resurfaces, and the crew has reverted to human form. Will commands the \"Dutchman\" against the \"Endeavour\" and the combined firepower of the \"Black Pearl\" and the \"Flying Dutchman\" destroy the \"Endeavour\", killing Cutler Beckett. The remaining armada retreats without a fight.\nWill is now a psychopomp, bound to ferrying souls of those who died at sea to the next world. Will is allowed one day ashore before beginning his ten-year duty aboard the \"Dutchman\". Bootstrap Bill decides to remain on the crew with his son. Elizabeth, a mortal, is unable to accompany them. Will spends his one day with Elizabeth on an island where they consummate their marriage. Before returning to the \"Dutchman\" at sunset, he entrusts the Dead Man's Chest containing his beating heart to her care. The \"Flying Dutchman\" disappears from the horizon amid the Green Flash.\nWill returns ten years later, where he meets Elizabeth and their son, Henry.\n\"Dead Men Tell No Tales\".\nOrlando Bloom reprises his role as Will Turner in the fifth film, seen with barnacles forming upon his face, implying he's failing at the responsibilities as Captain of the \"Flying Dutchman\". At the start of the film, Henry Turner deliberately attempts to drown himself to lure in the \"Dutchman\", believing that he has found a way to cure his father of his curse, but Will rejects this idea, certain that there is no way to free him from his duty, asking Henry to forget him. Nine years later, Jack Sparrow recruits Henry, his small crew, a girl named Carina Smyth (who is secretly the daughter of Barbossa) and Barbossa to help him find the Trident of Poseidon, the destruction of the Trident breaking all curses imposed by the sea, including the curse that binds Will to the \"Dutchman\". At the film's conclusion, Will is reunited with Elizabeth. In the post-credits sequence, Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann are asleep when their bedroom is entered by the shadow of an apparently resurrected Davy Jones. Will then awakens and, assuming that he was simply dreaming, goes back to sleep, not seeing a puddle of water and barnacles on the floor. Although the post-credits scene of \"Dead Men Tell No Tales\" featured Will Turner having a dream of Davy Jones seemingly resurrected from the dead, directors Joachim R\u00f8nning and Espen Sandberg confirmed the scene was meant to \"pay respect to a legendary villain in the franchise\" as well as be a tease or hint that it could be the \"beginning of the end\" or \"just a dream or nightmare\".\nGames/video games.\nWill Turner appears in the \"Pirates of the Caribbean\" world, Port Royal/The Caribbean, of \"Kingdom Hearts II\" and \"Kingdom Hearts III\". In the Japanese version of \"Kingdom Hearts II\" as well as in the movies he's voiced by Daisuke Hirakawa, who was also the Japanese voice for Legolas, another famous character portrayed by Bloom. Crispin Freeman provided the voice of Will for the U.S. version of the game since Orlando Bloom was unavailable due to the filming of \"Dead Man's Chest\" and \"At World's End\". Freeman was also the voice of Will in the video game ' and in the video game adaptation of '.\nWill Turner appears in the video game ' and in ' as a playable character in both games and was again voiced by Crispin Freeman. He also appears in the game \"Pirates of the Caribbean Online\" game as the character who gives the player their first sword. In the earlier versions of the game, Will urges the player to run and locate Tia Dalma after soldiers can be heard banging on his door. Will stays behind to confront them, drawing his sword. In the newer version, undead skeletons appear inside instead.\nWill Turner appears as a playable character in the video game \"Disney Magic Kingdoms\".\nCharacter development and portrayal.\nDescribed as the \"traditional Errol Flynn type\" of character compared to Johnny Depp's Keith Richards-inspired portrayal of Jack Sparrow, Will Turner was originally written as a prison guard who freed Sparrow to rescue Elizabeth Swann in early drafts of \"The Curse of the Black Pearl\". Actor Orlando Bloom, who took the role of Turner after playing Legolas in Peter Jackson's \"The Lord of the Rings\" film trilogy, stated that he read the script after Geoffrey Rush, whom he was working with on \"Ned Kelly\", suggested it to him. Tobey Maguire, Jude Law, Ewan McGregor, Ben Peyton, Christian Bale and Heath Ledger were also considered for the role, with Tom Hiddleston also auditioning for the role.\nBy the end of filming the \"Pirates\" trilogy in 2006 and the release of \"At World's End\" in 2007, both Bloom and Keira Knightley repeatedly stated that they were done with \"Pirates\" series, noting that there was closure for Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann in \"At World's End\", and was quoted in saying they wanted to move on from the franchise, and so did not return for the fourth film '. However, Bloom made statements about returning to the \"Pirates\" franchise as early as October 2011. In 2012, Moviehole.Net reported that a \"separate Disney contact\" gave this one-line response: \"Will Turner's story might not be finished...\" While there were discussions for him to reprise his role as Will Turner by 2014, his involvement in fifth film ' was announced in Disney D23. Bloom alluded to his character's new \"gnarly\" appearance after taking over Davy Jones' post in \"At World's End\", stating that it would be \"fun to do something where I\u2019m rumbling round the bottom of the ocean, because I won\u2019t look anything like me.\" Although it was announced as a supporting role, Bloom ultimately appeared as a cameo in \"Dead Men Tell No Tales\", which was released in May 2017.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "54804449": "Paulsgrave Williams\nPirate operating during the Golden Age of Piracy\nPaulsgrave Williams (c. 1675 \u2013 after 1723), first name occasionally Paul, Palsgrave, or Palgrave, was a pirate who was active 1716\u20131723 and sailed in the Caribbean, American eastern seaboard, and off West Africa. He is best known for sailing alongside Samuel Bellamy.\nHistory.\nIn 1715, Williams, about 40 years old, was living in Boston with his wife and children. There he met Sam Bellamy, who intended to loot the wrecks of the 1715 Spanish treasure fleet, reportedly to impress the family of Mary Hallett, whose Cape Cod family disapproved of her marrying a poor sailor. Williams' family life and well-to-do lineage made him an unlikely pirate. Together in early 1716 they traveled to the Caribbean with a few dozen treasure-hunters and searched the wrecks unsuccessfully. Despairing, they traded their canoes for small periaguas and turned to piracy.\nThey were driven off from a captured sloop by the approach of several ships. The approaching ships were not Royal Navy or privateers; they were fellow pirates led by Henry Jennings, James Carnegie, and Leigh Ashworth. They hid in nearby marshes to observe Jennings\u2019 fleet before hailing them. Joining forces, they captured a French ship that happened into the area. Jennings took his group to chase another ship, leaving Bellamy and Williams to loot the French ship, which they promptly did and sailed away before Jennings could return.\nSoon they met with Benjamin Hornigold. Impressed with Bellamy and Williams \u2013 and no fan of Jennings - Hornigold took them in and joined forces with them alongside Olivier Levasseur\u2019s ship \"Postillion\". While successful, Hornigold\u2019s crew resented his reluctance to attack English ships. They voted him out of command in Spring, electing Bellamy as Captain of Hornigold\u2019s ship \"Marianne\", and placing Hornigold and a few supporters in a captured sloop to make their way back to New Providence. Bellamy appointed Williams as his quartermaster and sailed with Levasseur for several months. Williams and Bellamy continued to operate out of Nassau through 1716. Near the Virgin Islands in December 1716 they captured two ships, \"Pearl\" and \"Sultana\". Bellamy transferred to the \"Sultana\", giving Williams the \"Marianne\" and letting \"Pearl\" go free with all the sailors who refused to take up piracy.\nThey took several more ships together in the coming months before Levasseur went his own way. In February 1717 they spotted the slave ship \"Whydah Gally\" (occasionally \"Ouidah, Wedaw, Whido\", etc.); they pursued it for three days before it surrendered. Bellamy transferred to the \"Whydah\", giving its captain the \"Sultana\" in exchange. Now with one of the largest and best-armed ships on their side of the Atlantic, Williams and Bellamy sailed northward, pillaging ships up the American east coast. Separated by fog and storms off Virginia, they soon met up again and sailed toward Rhode Island. Bellamy granted the captured ship \"Anne Galley\" to his quartermaster Richard Noland. They agreed to meet off the coast of Maine; Bellamy took the \"Whydah\" back toward Cape Cod with Noland while Williams put in at Block Island in mid-April to visit relatives.\nWhile waiting off Maine in May 1717 Williams learned that the \"Whydah\" and one of Bellamy's prize ships had been caught in a terrible storm that April and were wrecked on the coast with almost all hands lost, including Samuel Bellamy. Williams may have visited the site of the wreck before sailing back south to New Providence. Williams had a number of sailors on board whom he'd forced into piracy, including his carpenter; on the way south he had to put down a mutiny among his crew when a number of them (led by the forced sailors) rebelled. He arrived in the Bahamas at almost the same time as Noland, who had survived the storm that claimed \"Whydah\". He sold the worn-out \"Marianne\" and along with Hornigold and many others, accepted the pardon offered by King George to all pirates who surrendered by September 1718.\nWilliams was soon back at sea, serving first under William Moody and then as quartermaster under his old accomplice Olivier Levasseur in 1720 off the coast of Africa. He was said to be unhappy no longer being in command, and sailors were advised to continue calling him \u201cCaptain\u201d to get on his good side. Some sources claim that Williams retired from piracy in 1723 to settle down with a new wife and family, dying peacefully sometime in 1723 or after, though this is not attested in period sources.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "19903189": "True Caribbean Pirates\nTrue Caribbean Pirates is a documentary that aired on the History Channel in 2006.\nThe documentary tells about pirates of the Caribbean such as Blackbeard, Henry Morgan, Anne Bonny and Black Bart Roberts. Larger than life, more dangerous than legend - pirates and buccaneers set sail for plunder. True Caribbean Pirates recreates the rise of piracy in the Caribbean and its climactic, inevitable downfall.\nShow history.\n\"True Caribbean Pirates\" captures the events and tales of piracy that were said to take place in the Caribbean during the time when Christopher Columbus made his landing in the West Indies during 1492. Within this time, the land of the Caribbean had attracted the attention of many but was dominated by Spain; as they mined plenty of riches and gold out of the region. This drew attention to the land and disruptions arose- creating chaos in the new world. Regions such as the Netherlands, England and France all began to send privateers into the land so they could, too, establish a presence.\nCharacters.\nIn the days of pirates and treasures, privateering was used to fight battles and disrupt the Spanish without having to pay for real navy within the Caribbean. Privateers were known to disrupt commerce and take part in the disruption of the enemies warships to protect trade against raiders.\nSir Henry Morgan- played by Lance J.Holt- was one of the most famous privateers to cross the Caribbean land was known for his ruthless acts against his ways to bring down them down through his brutal acts. The privateer turned pirate was most notorious for his two most famous attacks on Porto Bello and Panama. Porto Bello was targeted by Morgan due to it being the third most relevant Spanish city in regards to its saturation of warehouses that stored the riches discovered by Spanish colonies. Morgan and his men then went to capture Panama where they were much more capable of destruction compared to the opposing Spanish attackers. Sir Henry Morgan died unlike many other pirates- dying from what may have been tuberculosis and was buried at Palisadoes cemetery.\nBlackbeard- played by Patrick Lander- earned his stripes by attacking Spanish ships during the Spanish Succession and to withhold the stolen goods which transformed him into an experienced sea robber, allowing him to join a group of Caribbean Pirates. Many stories have been retold time and time again about Blackbeard\u2019s capturing ships with hostages and bribing them with their lives in turn for favors to benefit his conquests.\nThe fearful pirate in 1718, eventually took an offer of a pardon by the Governor of South Carolina and retired to the isle of Ocracoke an outer island off the coast of North Carolina. He indulged in a bit of smuggling but was ultimately lured to his death in 1719 by 2 British Navy Ships.\nLieutenant Robert Maynard set a trap for the supposedly reformed pirate by having both ships anchored off shore in rough seas, making the 2 seemingly distressed boats appear almost empty by pretending most of the crew had died. Blackbeard fell for it and saw only an easy target and not a trap, taking only a few men with him on board.\nHe swaggered on board and was ambushed, refusing to go down easily. According to the logs of Lieutenant Maynard and his commanding officer Captain Gordon, Blackbeard took over 24 cuts from the sword after seemingly fighting for hours. Both men were impressed with his bravery and resilience but in the end it did Blackbeard no favor.\nAfter eventually killing him during the vigorous battle, Lieutenant Maynard then decapitated the infamous pirate and strung his head up the mast.\n\"Calico\" Jack Rackham- played by David Joseph Boyd- was a pirate who conducted his operations in the Bahamas and Cuba. Rackham was not as successful in his missions as the previous two pirates mentioned and was mostly known for his relations with the two female pirates Anne Bonny (played by Michelle Michaels) and Mary Read (played by Kimberly Adair), who served under his command. He was captured in October 1720 after a short battle and imprisoned alongside his crew in Jamaica. Jack is tried, found guilty of piracy, and hanged on November 18, 1720.\n\"Black Bart\" Roberts- played by Scott Silbor- was a Welsh pirate who raided ships off the Americas and West Africa between 1719 and 1722. He was the most successful pirate of the Golden Age of Piracy (as measured by vessels captured), taking over 400 prizes in his career. He was originally the third mate on the slave ship \"Princess\" when it was captured by pirates off West Africa in 1719, and Roberts and several other of the crew of the Princess were forced to join the pirate crew. After the captain was killed in an ambush on the island of Principe, Roberts was elected as the new captain. After avenging the previous captain by ransacking Principe, he sailed for Brazil in 1719 and later to the Caribbean. After sailing back to the African coast, he was finally killed in action off Cape Lopez in 1722.\nThe stories of these pirates have been retold in this documentary as it separates the truth from the tales; truly depicting the true story of Piracy's Golden Age.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "54523478": "William Burke (pirate)\nIrish pirate and trader\nWilliam Burke (died 1699, first name occasionally Thomas, last name occasionally Burk, Burt, Bourck, Burch, or Burcke) was an Irish pirate and trader active in the Caribbean and near Newfoundland, best known for aiding William Kidd.\nHistory.\nBurke had been active through early 1699 as a pirate off Newfoundland in his 140-man, 24-gun ship \"Marigold\". He was known to colonial governors as \"very strong, and said to have a good ship\". After menacing the Newfoundland fishing fleets he sailed to the Caribbean, trading slaves between Barbados and Curacao.\nIn May 1699 he visited Governor Lorentz of St. Thomas offering to fence goods from William Kidd, who had been in the area to sell off his remaining plunder and sell or replace his leaking ship \"Quedagh Merchant\" (which Kidd had renamed \"Adventure Prize\"). Burke had purchased Kidd's pirated loot just a few weeks earlier, before Kidd left for New York to try clearing his name. The Governor had already rebuffed Kidd's entreaties and refused Burke as well. The local Brandenburg representative Van Belle accepted Burke's offer and through intermediaries took possession of Kidd's merchandise. Six of Kidd's sailors left the \"Quedagh Merchant\" with Burke, who sailed for Curacao. Governor Lorentz had Burke arrested on June 1, though he was released a week later; Van Belle paid Burke's fines.\nIn August 1699 Burke's ship was lost in a hurricane. He and all but 7 or 8 of his crew perished. Governor Bellomont of New York, who had written the King complaining of Lorentz and other Caribbean governors protecting Burke and Kidd, hailed this: \"Tis good news.\"\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "55522801": "William Lewis (pirate)\nWilliam Lewis (fl. 1687?) was a pirate supposedly active in the Caribbean, off the American east coast, and off the west coast of Africa in the 18th century. He was known for sparing his victims and for being killed after announcing he had made a pact with the Devil. He is likely the fictional creation of \"Captain Charles Johnson\" who presented his story among those of real historical pirates.\nJohnson's creation.\n\"Captain Charles Johnson\" was a pseudonym, either of Daniel Defoe, Nathaniel Mist, or another early 18th-century writer. His book \"A General History of the Pyrates\" influenced years of pirate researchers, scholars, and writers, though it was later found to have a great many errors. Its first volume is generally considered more accurate and historical; the second volume presents accounts of known and well-documented pirates such as Samuel Bellamy and Nathaniel North, but includes the fictional captains William Lewis, John Cornelius, and Captain Misson. Later authors such as Grey, Gosse, and Ellms repeated the fictional accounts nearly verbatim. There was a real pirate named William Lewis, but he was never a Captain; active 20 years after Johnson\u2019s \"William Lewis,\" the real William Lewis was hanged with the surviving members of John Auger's crew when they were captured by pirate turned pirate-hunter Benjamin Hornigold.\nHistory (purported).\nLewis sailed as a boy with the crew of pirate Joseph Bannister, who was captured and hanged in Port Royal in 1687. He was spared (hung by his waist instead of his neck) and sailed with other ships out of Jamaica until he was captured by the Spanish. Escaping with a few others in a canoe, the multi-lingual Lewis took over a small periagua, then captured a sloop, pressing some captured crew into service as pirates and releasing others. He continued capturing small vessels, looting them and taking some crew. With 40 men he took a larger pink, using it to take several other ships near Campeche. He then looted several sloops, beating the captain of sloop who surrendered too easily, and kept the largest 12-gun sloop for his own.\nNow with a mixed crew of 80 white and black sailors, he plundered vessels from Florida to the Carolinas and Virginia. He put down a mutiny by English crewmembers who planned on marooning the Frenchmen among them. Sailing north to Newfoundland, he raided the fishing fleets and boarded a 24-gun galley. The ship\u2019s captain convinced Lewis to send his quartermaster John Cornelius ashore for supplies, where he was captured. When shore batteries fired on Lewis\u2019 ship he fled the galley and sailed offshore. Capturing two small shallops, he demanded the release of his quartermaster in exchange for his prisoners, to which they agreed. He then captured a 24-gun French ship and left Canadian waters.\nSailing across the Atlantic to the coast of Guinea with 200 men in the newly renamed \"Morning Star\", he captured several more ships, finally spotting a vessel from the Carolinas. Here the incident occurred for which Lewis would be best known: \u201cWhile he was in chase of this vessel a circumstance occurred, which made his men believe he dealt with the devil; his fore and main top-mast being carried away, he, Lewis, running up the shrouds to the maintop, tore off a handful of hair, and throwing it into the air used this expression, \"good devil, take this till I come\". And it was observed, that he came afterwards faster up with the chase than before the loss of his top-masts.\u201d\nSoon after, the Frenchmen of his crew rebelled. Lewis let them sail away in a captured sloop but immediately captured it back from them while they lay at anchor. He marooned the Frenchmen, allowing only a few back aboard the \"Morning Star\". That night the Frenchmen tried to retake the ship; they were defeated, but not before assassinating Lewis in his cabin. Other versions say his sailors were superstitious and killed Lewis because they feared that he\u2019d actually made a pact with the Devil. The quartermaster John Cornelius was chosen Captain to succeed him.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "23413256": "The Secret of the Purple Reef\n1960 film by William Witney\nThe Secret of The Purple Reef is a 1960 20th Century Fox CinemaScope DeLuxe Color film based on a short story by Dorothy Cottrell entitled \"The Silent Reefs\". It starred soon-to-be-famous actors Richard Chamberlain and Peter Falk. It is a Caribbean-based mystery involving the disappearance of a ship called the \"Cloud\".\nAlthough considered a \"B\" film, \"The Secret of The Purple Reef\" is notable in that it introduces Richard Chamberlain and Peter Falk to moviegoers as part of their early film career.\nIt was Richard Chamberlain's film debut, made before finding fame as Dr Kildare. In 1986 Chamberlain called it \"easily the worst movie ever made, or at least the most boring\".\nPlot.\nBrothers Mark (Jeff Richards) and Dean Christopher (Richard Chamberlain) and show up in a mid-'50s four door Citro\u00ebn Traction Avant in early era San Juan, Puerto Rico. They arrive to solve the mystery of the circumstances of their father's drowning death in the Caribbean. They run up against a gang of unruly pirates who seem to know more than they reveal. One of the film's highlights is several scenes of an E.G. Van de Stadt designed 35 foot sailing yacht, the \"Starwright\". The vessel adds to the Caribbean charm and plays an integral part of moving the pirates to other parts of the island.\nProduction.\nThe story was published in 1953.\nRobert L. Lippert brought Peter Falk to Hollywood to appear in \"Murder Inc\". Lippert liked him so much he used him on this film, which was shot in Puerto Rico. Filming took place in July 1960.\nMargia Dean enjoyed working with direction Witney and later hired him when she produced \"The Long Rope\" (1961).\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "8770750": "Pirates of the Caribbean (film series)\nFilm series\nPirates of the Caribbean is an American fantasy supernatural swashbuckler film series produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and based on Walt Disney's theme park attraction of the same name. The film series serves as a major component of the titular media franchise. The films' plots are set primarily in the Caribbean, based on a fictionalized version of the Golden Age of Piracy (c.\u20091650\u20131726) while also leading to the range of a mid-1700s setting.\nDirectors of the series include Gore Verbinski (films 1\u20133), Rob Marshall\u00a0(4), Joachim R\u00f8nning (5), and Espen Sandberg (5). The series is primarily written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio (1\u20134); other writers include Stuart Beattie (1), Jay Wolpert (1) and Jeff Nathanson (5).\nThe stories follow the adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), with Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) and Josh"}, "descending_order": ["616917", "54804449", "19903189", "54523478", "55522801", "23413256", "8770750"], "permutation_1": ["55522801", "54804449", "616917", "19903189", "8770750", "54523478", "23413256"], "permutation_2": ["616917", "19903189", "54523478", "8770750", "55522801", "23413256", "54804449"], "permutation_3": ["54523478", "55522801", "616917", "54804449", "19903189", "8770750", "23413256"]}
{"id": "nq_-8113383032913678202", "docs_added": {"49676264": "The 5th Wave (series)\nYoung adult book trilogy by Rick Yancey\nThe 5th Wave is a trilogy of young adult post-apocalyptic sci-fi novels written by American author Rick Yancey. The series started in May 2013 with the first book, \"The 5th Wave\". A sequel titled \"The Infinite Sea\" was published in 2014. The trilogy concluded in 2016 with the final book, \"The Last Star\". In 2018, \"The 5th Wave: 5th Year Anniversary\" was published with additional chapters.\n\"The 5th Wave\" trilogy centers around four main characters: Cassie, Ben (nicknamed Zombie), Evan, and Cassie's brother Sammy (nicknamed Nugget). Themes such as betrayal, love, and hope persist throughout the trilogy. Through an intriguing expedition to find her brother during an alien invasion, Cassie is met with callous decisions to maintain survival. Leading to murder, mayhem, and chaos, Cassie is required to fight the army that resides in Camp Haven. The books are remembered for their eerie appeal.\nPremise.\nIn the year 2013, the earth is systematically attacked by a group of aliens known as \"the Others\". They exist in an unknown form and attack through a series of \"waves\" as their mothership orbits the planet:\nThe First Wave: \"Lights Out\".\nA powerful electromagnetic pulse is emitted by the Others, causing the immediate failure of all technology. Planes crash, cellphones go out, and automobiles cease function. The estimated death toll is about 500,000.\nThe Second Wave: \"Surf's Up\".\nDue to the large concentration of the human population within close proximity to coastlines, the Others drop large metal rods \"twice as tall as the Empire State Building and three times as heavy\" onto the earth's major fault lines. The resulting tsunamis obliterate every ocean front and raise sea levels dramatically. The estimated death toll is roughly 40% of the surviving population.\nThe Third Wave: \"Pestilence\".\nUsing the earth's birds as carriers, the Others spread a deadly virus thought to be a modified strain of Ebola. As the virus progresses, symptoms slowly deteriorate from a fever and cough to profuse bleeding from every orifice. The Pestilence claims an estimated 97% of the remaining survivors.\nThe Fourth Wave: \"Silencers\".\nAfter being \"implanted\" by the Others prior to the Arrival, people infested with alien consciousnesses are tasked with killing the remaining humans.\nAfter the first four waves decimate the human population, those who remain are terrified and desperately clinging to hope. As humanity awaits the arrival of a new Fifth Wave, one that will supposedly wipe the human race off the planet, distrust is shown as people realize the existence of fifth column imposters in their midst, imposters intent on thwarting any possible plan for human retaliation.\nOrigins.\nYancey stated in an interview with \"Lightspeed Magazine\" that the basis for \"The 5th Wave\" came from a question he asked his wife about her worst fears. \"It was one of those three a.m. conversations where your mind starts going, and I asked her, on the spur of the moment, 'What is your greatest fear?' She said, without hesitation, 'Alien abduction.'\" Yancey continued on, telling how he developed the plot for the series. \"It was basically trying to think like an alien, and considering the fact that if they are out there, they probably wouldn\u2019t attack without getting to know us very, very well. They would learn how we think, they would learn about what do humans do in times of crisis, and they would turn that to their own advantage. So, when I was working through how the attacks might work, I realized first that it couldn\u2019t just be one attack\u2014the world\u2019s too big\u2014you\u2019d have to do it in stages, or waves.\" The first book was officially published on May 7, 2013.\nBooks.\n\"The 5th Wave\".\n\"The 5th Wave\" is the first book in the series and was released on May 7, 2013.\nThe book opens in the midst of the Fourth Wave and follows Cassie's quest to find her brother, Sammy, after he is taken by U.S. Army soldiers. Cassie is shot by an Other-affiliated sniper, a \"Silencer\", from the woods on her trek, and is later rescued by Evan Walker, who nurses her back to health and agrees to help her find her brother. Meanwhile, Sammy arrives at Wright-Patterson AFB, which is now a \"training camp\" called Camp Haven. It is revealed over the course of the story that the soldiers are recruiting (truly, abducting) children into an army, telling them they are the last hope for fighting back against the Others. Sammy is placed in Squad 53 and befriends squadmate Ben Parish, who is coincidentally Cassie's long-lost crush from high school. After the two set out, Cassie and Evan are attacked by a squad from Wright-Patterson, and, after seeing how easily Evan dispatches them, Cassie finds out that Evan was the Silencer who originally shot her. He then helped her because he had fallen in love and couldn't bring himself to kill her. The two, though uneasily, coordinate a plan to extract Sammy then begin executing it. While deployed, Ben and his squadmate Ringer start to piece together their true purposes and learn that Wright-Patterson is actually run by the Others. It is revealed that the Others are masquerading as a resistance force, abducting and training the children into a fighting force, which they will deploy as the Fifth Wave to end humanity. Ben and Ringer decide to bolt with the rest of Squad 53, but Ben insists on going back for Sammy, who was left on base due to his age.\nBen and Cassie both enter the base. They eventually run into each other and join each other. They find Sammy but are taunted and thwarted by the acting commander of the base, Colonel Alexander Vosch. Evan saves them and says his goodbyes to Cassie before he detonates bombs that level the base, though he is lost in the process. Cassie, Ben, and Sammy ride off with Squad 53 as Wright-Patterson is destroyed.\nThe book was adapted into a film by J Blakeson and Columbia Pictures, under the title \"The 5th Wave\" and was released on January 22, 2016. After box office performance was poorer than expected and heavy criticism as of January 11, 2022, there have been no further talks in making a sequel. However, Sony has not officially confirmed its cancellation of the movie series.\n\"The Infinite Sea\".\n\"The Infinite Sea\" is the second installment in the series, released on September 16, 2014.\nThe book becomes much more involved with the members of Squad 53 and the character Ringer. The group takes refuge in an old hotel near the ruins of Wright-Patterson, at Cassie's insistence that Evan is still alive. Ringer sets out to find an alternate route, though it goes awry when she mistakes Teacup, a small girl of the squad, for a Silencer, shoots her, and is taken by an approaching helicopter. Evan is revealed to have survived, having been rescued by another Silencer named Grace. Evan attempts to kill Grace after he finds out she is hunting Cassie, and though he fails, he manages to flee during an attack by hidden assailants. Evan finds the hotel Cassie is stationed at, though he is shot and knocked out in a misunderstanding with Squad 53. Cassie tends to him, while Ben angrily awaits his awakening. Later, a helicopter quickly flies over the hotel, and then a small girl, whom Sammy identifies as one Megan, appears. Evan wakes up and warns them that she is rigged with a bomb that explodes when it comes into contact with human breath. Evan and Cassie extract the bomb from Megan's throat. Grace appears and, after a violent confrontation, is killed when Private Poundcake detonates the bomb near her, also killing himself and destroying the hotel.\nThe second part of the story follows Private Ringer. She is taken to a base somewhere, similar to Wright-Patterson, and meets the alive-and-well Colonel Vosch. Vosch constantly thwarts her with mind games and preaches to her a philosophy that \"rage is not the answer\". She semi-befriends a recruit called Razor, who is aware that Vosch and the staff of the base are indeed the Others. Vosch installs Ringer with a piece of technology, the \"twelfth system\", that enhances her strength. He also reveals to Ringer that Silencers were never actually Others, just humans planted with fake memories and enhanced by the twelfth system with a link to the alien Mothership. It is concluded that there are only dozens of true Others in the world, and that the Mothership is the last remnant of their society programmed with the goal of eradicating humans. Ringer and Razor attempt to escape, though Razor secretly conspired with Vosch, and they were being monitored the entire time. Ringer learns, neutralizes Razor, and runs off, but not fast enough to evade Vosch, who incapacitates her. Razor is ordered to rejuvenate Ringer, though he does more and the two sleep together in a rough, hazy love. When they arrive back on base, Razor kills Teacup, whom Vosch used as a bargaining chip, in order to set Ringer free. Razor is shot dead, and Ringer escapes the base.\nAs the novel closes, Cassie and Squad 53 recover from the bomb that destroyed the hotel, when Evan, weak and exhausted, emerges from the woods.\nThe book was noted for its dark appeal and was released to the same good reception as its predecessor.\n\"The Last Star\".\n\"The Last Star\", the third and final book in \"The 5th Wave\" series, was released on May 24, 2016.\nThe Fifth Wave is still commencing, or so the characters believe. Ringer and Evan know that once Vosch and the other few Others are withdrawn from the surface, the Mothership will drop massive bombs on the surface to obliterate any trace of humanity left on Earth. Cassie and Squad 53 settle in the dead Silencer Grace's former home. Ringer returns to Vosch knowing that he will kill Ben Parish and the rest of Squad 53 if she does not kill the persistently rebellious Evan Walker for him. She takes a helicopter to the town that the squad stationed themselves in and is attacked by a Silencer. She is met by Ben after the Silencer is killed, and the two head to the house. Ringer immediately attempts to kill Evan, but they are interrupted by an incoming helicopter. Evan realizes why Ringer intended to kill him and he submits and is taken.\nThe group devises a plan to not only save Evan but to end the Others permanently. Cassie and Ringer infiltrate the base via a hijacked helicopter. Ringer detonates several bombs to incite chaos on the base, and, after many complications, they reach the command center of the base. Ben, having stayed behind to protect Sam and Megan, is attacked by a patrol and the three are taken back to the base. Cassie and Ringer attempt to find Evan's data on the CPU to locate him, though they do not know how to sift through each cell individually, and so Cassie downloads the data of every logged person to her own head to find it. She learns everything there is to know about anything who was ever downloaded in the CPU, and she learns the codes and layout of the base. Evan arrives, now completely devoid of humanity at the hands of the twelfth system. He fights Ringer and disables her easily. However, he walks into a trap when Cassie drops a live electric cable on the wet surface beneath him (as a result of the sprinkler system). Ringer wakes up to see Vosch, who has become attached to her and wishes to bring her with him in his extraction pod. The conversation is only a decoy from Ringer, allowing Cassie to shoot and kill him from behind. Cassie then uses the knowledge she gained to open Vosch's escape pod and she ascends into the sky. Ringer gets ahold of a device from Vosch that will electrocute any soldier with a tracking implant in them. Without much else of a choice, she activates it. Ben, Sam, and Megan dive out of their helicopter as the soldiers and pilot die, and they realize Cassie and Ringer must still be alive.\nCassie, now ascending to the Mothership, has a chance to glimpse the memories that she now has from tens of thousands of people. She begins to truly think about what humanity is worth, when the pod nears the Mothership. She takes out an explosive pill from her pocket that Vosch originally gave to Ringer so she could kill herself rather than be destroyed in the bombs of the Fifth Wave. She bites down on the pill, and the Mothership explodes. Ben and the kids witness this to their sorrow and delight. They enter the base and find Ringer paralyzed on the floor.\nSometime later, the group has settled down in a house in Marble Falls, with Ben and Ringer raising Sam and Megan like their own children, and Evan (the twelfth system having kept him alive, and the group having restored his memories and humanity with the CPU) watches over them. Seeing no future for himself there, he sets off away from the four, on a mission to kill every single Silencer and Fifth Waver there is left in the world.\nCharacters.\nMain characters.\nCassiopeia \"Cassie\" Marie Sullivan - the main protagonist of the series. Her namesake is the constellation Cassiopeia. Both of her parents died in the first four waves. Her younger brother Sammy is taken by The Others to a \"training camp\" called Camp Haven, formerly, Wright-Patterson AFB. She is seventeen years old and is described as a short, strawberry-blonde girl with average features.\nEvan Walker - a farm boy from rural Ohio. All of his family and girlfriend were killed in the Third Wave by the Red Death. Earlier in his life at a carnival, he meets Grace, who is the only person he finds to be like him, an Other. He saves Cassie after she is shot by an Other sniper, the \"Silencer\". Cassie soon finds out that Evan is actually an Other and not truly human. He is described as being a tall boy, at least eighteen or nineteen years old, being very muscular with chocolate-brown hair. Cassie also notes his soft hands. He develops strong feelings for Cassie, and so does she. Though, these feelings are strained when Cassie learns that Evan is an Other. Evan is rescued by Grace, who tries to seduce him, but, after they are attacked and Grace is wounded, he makes his way to Cassie. Grace, however, follows him there. A confrontation ensues, after which Poundcake blows up the hotel after Evan was left behind in the hotel, and it is not clear if Evan survives. However, at the end of \"The Infinite Sea\", he emerges from the woods to find Cassie.\nBenjamin \"Ben\" Thomas Parish or \"Zombie\" - the varsity quarterback of the football team at Cassie's school. Cassie secretly was in love with him. His family was killed during the first four waves by a group of psychotic looters. He is crushed by the fact that he ran while his baby sister was killed. He keeps a locket with a photo of her. He becomes a member of Camp Haven's makeshift army, not knowing that they are The Others (though he eventually finds out), taking the nickname \"Zombie\". After one of his squadmates goes crazy, or \"Dorothy\", Private Ringer replaces him. He obsesses with getting her to smile. Cassie describes him as overall gorgeous.\nMarika \"Ringer\" - a member of Squad 53. Her father was an Atheist and a chess player. He taught her how to play. Marika's father was usually drunk. Her father is infected with the Red Death and dies of the disease. Marika wandered through the wilderness before forcefully being recruited into Camp Haven's army, where she took the nickname \"Ringer\". She is a replacement after Private Tank of Squad 53 went crazy, \"Dorothy\", and pulled a gun on his squad. Zombie is obsessed with getting Ringer to smile. On their first patrol, she and Zombie find that Camp Haven's officials are actually The Others. She is described as having glossy black hair and mild Asian features. In \"The Infinite Sea\", she grows closer to Private Teacup, and, after being captured, grows feelings for a recruit named Razor.\nSammy \"Nugget\" Sullivan - Cassie's five-year-old little brother. At his refugee camp, he boards a bus from Camp Haven and is recruited into its army, unaware of his father's death. He joins Squad 53 and friends Zombie deeply. Sammy is not allowed to go on his squad's patrol due to his age. (We later find out the purpose of kids his age at Camp Haven in \"The Infinite Sea\".) Zombie, Cassie, and Evan unite after Commander Vosch attempts to kill Sammy. Evan destroys the base, though it is not clear whether he survives or not, and Cassie, Sam and Ben escape.\nSecondary characters.\nLieutenant Colonel Alexander Vosch - The main antagonist though the trilogy. He leads the 5th wave bases and Silencers stationed across the world. Throughout the books he is steadily sadistic and cruel. First introduced by killing Cassie's father and gathering her brother Sam into a yellow school bus under the guise of safe keeping. Followed by brainwashing Ben into submitting to a cruel military-style training at Camp Haven. He later destroys Camp Haven, and kills thousands of children in the process. Regularly the reader is reminded of Vosch's hatred, and deep understanding of humanity. He rigs carbon-monoxide bombs into young children's throats to sew mistrust in survivors. He takes memories from the Wonderland program to make himself more trustworthy. One example is mimicking Ringer's father during a chess game to weaken her resolve. He later \"enhances\" Ringer (Marika) with alien technology called The 12th System, a piece of Other technology. Then offers her a place in the existential Wonderland the \"other\" survive in.\nGrace - a Silencer like Evan, programmed by the 12th System to believe she is a part of the immortal alien \"Others\" taking over. They befriended each other before the waves began. Grace saves Evan after finding him severely wounded in an escape pod. Unknowingly harboring a tractor to \"their kind\" after he destroys Camp Haven. The night after one of her hunts, she tries to seduce Evan, but he attacks her and renders her unconscious. Believing her to be dead, Evan heads back to the hotel Cassie's group has taken refuge in, which they had nicknamed \"The Walker Hotel\". She watches him get slower, the 12th systems breaking down in his body. Waits for him to get inside, get settled. And silently starts her pillage. Cassie's group where she then attacks them. After this violent confrontation, Private Poundcake, now mortally wounded, goes back to the hotel to retrieve the bomb dropped by Sammy and detonates it an arms-length away from Grace, killing both of them.\nDumbo - the twelve year old medical officer in Squad 53. One of his most prominent features is his extraordinarily large ears, like his namesake. He's known for his loyalty, risking himself for the other characters many times over throughout the series. Traveling through Urbana on a hopeless mission to save Teacup and Ringer, he dives into Zombie at the last second and takes a bullet to the back. Unable to stay Zombie leaves Dumbo with the promise to return with Ringer and Teacup. When he returns he finds Dumbo has crawled ten blocks away in delirium, looking for Zombie.\nAllison \"Teacup\" or \"Cup\" - a seven-year-old member of Squad 53. She is described as \"the meanest seven-year-old you've ever seen\" by Zombie. Teacup grows close to Ringer as the only other female in Squad 53, especially after the destruction of Camp Haven. She is shot by Ringer who mistakes her for an Other. Ringer surrenders to Vosch knowing it is the only way to save Teacup's life, and Vosch uses Teacup as leverage against Ringer. Teacup is killed by Razor so Vosch will have no more leverage against her.\nPoundcake - a chubby member of Squad 53 who is mostly silent. His mother was killed by the Red Death. While he was on a supply run, he returned to find his brother gone. On the supply run, he found only a sweet treat, his namesake, as his drill sergeant thought he was \"so sweet\". He sacrificed himself to save the others of his group by detonating a bomb rigged to detonate on high concentrations of carbon dioxide in close proximity to Grace, a Silencer targeting the group.\nMegan - a seven-year-old girl rescued and taken to Camp Haven. She meets and befriends Sammy on the bus they ride. Megan is, along with many other kids her age that are part of the Fifth Wave, rigged with a carbon dioxide-bomb. She is dropped off near Cassie's group's hideout. Evan and Cassie manage to get the bomb out of her, for which they plan to use to attack the others, though Poundcake ends up detonating it to save the others from Grace. She inevitably lives on, independent and untrusting of any character in the books.\nFlintstone \"Flint\" - a boy around Ben and Cassie's age. He is the former leader of Squad 53, until his drill sergeant, Reznik, replaced him with Zombie. In disbelief that Camp Haven could be a coup, he accidentally kills himself by taking the tracking devices and detonating his own kill-switch.\nTank - a young boy in Squad 53. He goes \"Dorothy\" (crazy) and is replaced by Ringer. Zombie and Dumbo discover him dead in the P&D Hangar (Processing and Disposal).\nKenny \"Oompa\" - an eight-or-nine-year-old boy on Squad 53. He is killed by grenade shrapnel on the squad's first patrol.\nRazor - Alex a recruit at the northern base where Ringer was captured. He is ordered to bring her food three times a day after she's injected with the 12th system. Despite being ordered not to speak to her he rambles during their time together: his favorite things in life, before and after the others. Prayer circles. His grandmother nippy purse dog he prayed would not die because his grandmother told him to. Even though he hated the dog, he was upset when it died. He introduces a game of his own creation: Chaseball (baseball played on a chessboard using a quarter). He orchestrates her and Teacup's escape from the military base though secrets codes traced on board. After jumping from a Blackhawk manned by Lieutenant Bobband surviving, the two kiss. But Ringers 12th includes a CPU attached to her brain that interprets physiological biofeedback. She knew immediately something was wrong. She takes his gun and knocks him out, then finds Vosch inside of the hospital Teacups was supposed to be hiding in. After fighting with Vosch, Ringer is left to heal in an abandoned hospital with Razor assigned to watch her. They are tasked to rid hundreds of dead bodies. He and Ringer attempt to reconcile, her talking much more now, finding she misses the talkative nature he had taken in the military base. By the end of the week they sleep together. He does not have to convince her not to go back to the base: Teacup is there and Razor knows that is Ringer's only weakness. When they return to the base, he shoots Teacup so that Vosch will have no leverage over Ringer. He in turn is shot and killed himself by 5th Wave soldiers.\nLieutenant Bob - Was forced to commandeer a Black Hawk helicopter and escort Ringer, Teacup, and Razor away from Vosch's base. She made him jump out and then crashed it. As if once wasn't enough, she later forced him to fly another Black Hawk back into the base and then blew it up.\nFilm adaptation.\nIn March 2012, Columbia Pictures picked up the film rights to the trilogy, with Graham King and Tobey Maguire attached as producers. A film adaptation of the first novel in the series was released on January 22, 2016. It was directed by J Blakeson, with a screenplay by Susannah Grant, Akiva Goldsman, and Jeff Pinkner. While the film was a moderate box office success, it was negatively reviewed by critics and audiences, and there has been no word on any sequels.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "2333919": "The 5th Wave (comic strip)\nAmerican gag cartoon, from 1981, weekly single-panel comic\nThe 5th Wave is a weekly gag cartoon by Rich Tennant, published on Sundays. Started in 1981, the comic usually deals with computers and technology. Tennant's cartoons regularly appear in the \"For Dummies\" book series, and have appeared in \"PC Magazine\" and \"Computerworld\", a magazine for which he worked from 1987 to 1999. Like most gag cartoons, Tennant's comics have no continuity, no recurring characters, and no storylines that continue into the next week.\nThe name of the comic comes from \"Future Shock\" by Alvin Toffler. In this book, societies are listed in waves, e.g., the Agricultural Age is the First Wave, the Industrial Age is the Second Wave, and the Information Age is the Third Wave. Tennant wanted to call his comic \"The Fourth Wave\", but \"through a series of missteps and miscommunications\", it was first published in a newspaper under the title \"The 5th Wave\", and the name stuck.", "41283012": "The 5th Wave (novel)\n2013 novel by Rick Yancey\nThe 5th Wave is a young adult science fiction novel written by American author Rick Yancey. It was published on May 7, 2013, by G. P. Putnam's Sons. The novel is the first in the \"5th Wave\" trilogy, followed by \"The Infinite Sea\" and \"The Last Star\". The story follows 16-year-old Cassie Sullivan as she tries to survive in a world devastated by waves of alien invasions that decimated the Earth's population.\nSony Pictures released a film adaptation in January 2016.\nPlot.\nAn alien invasion consisting of four \"waves\" of increasing severity has resulted in the death of most of the human population, with survivors scattered in mostly rural areas. As part of the fourth wave, the aliens, known as the \"Others\", physically imitate human forms and hunt down the rest of the human population. Such aliens are called \"Silencers.\"\n16-year-old Cassie Sullivan searches for her brother, five-year-old Sammy. While traveling, she is shot by a Silencer. Meanwhile, Cassie's high school crush Ben Parish is coerced into joining the army by Commander Vosch, who killed Cassie's father prior to the events of the novel. He joins Squad 53 and becomes known as Private Zombie.\nCassie awakes in a country house mostly healed. Her savior is a man named Evan Walker, who claims he found her delirious on the highway. The two develop a romance, and Evan agrees to help her find her brother. Cassie harbors suspicions of how he came to find her, however, and suspects him of being the Silencer that tried to kill her. Meanwhile, Sammy has been recruited into the army and joins Zombie's squad with other child soldiers. The squad rises through the ranks and becomes one of the best in the camp. While the army purports to be fighting the others, they soon discover that they have been tricked into targeting fellow human survivors. This is revealed to be the fifth wave.\nCassie and Evan are attacked by a group of soldiers from the camp. Evan defeats them easily, and he admits that he is a Silencer as Cassie suspected. Conflicted, she eventually agrees to let him help rescue Sammy. Cassie infiltrates the camp and meets her brother and Zombie, but they are captured by Vosch. They are rescued by Evan, who is revealed to have planted bombs throughout the camp. The group, along with the rest of Squad 53, ride off as the camp detonates.\nReception.\nCritical reception of the book was fairly positive, although some reviewers noted an overreliance on genre tropes.\nIt received starred reviews from \"Publishers Weekly\" and Kirkus. Justin Cronin of \"The New York Times\" wrote that while \"just about everything here is borrowed from one venerable pop culture source or another\", it was a \"rip-roaring setup, and as the bodies accumulate, the pages turn themselves.\" The critic Katherine Schulten listed it as one of the best young adult books of 2013.\nSequels.\n\"The 5th Wave\" is the first book in a trilogy. The second book in the series, \"The Infinite Sea\", was released on September 16, 2014. The third book in the series, \"The Last Star\", was released on May 24, 2016.\nFilm adaptation.\nA film adaption with the same name was released by Columbia Pictures on January 22, 2016. It was directed by J Blakeson, with a screenplay by Susannah Grant, Akiva Goldsman, and Jeff Pinkner.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "43142604": "The 5th Wave (film)\n2016 film by J Blakeson\nThe 5th Wave is a 2016 American science fiction action film directed by J Blakeson from a screenplay by Susannah Grant, Akiva Goldsman and Jeff Pinkner, based on Rick Yancey's 2013 novel of the same name. The film stars Chlo\u00eb Grace Moretz, Nick Robinson, Ron Livingston, Maggie Siff, Alex Roe, Maria Bello, Maika Monroe, and Liev Schreiber.\nDevelopment began in March 2012, when Columbia Pictures picked up the film rights to the trilogy of novels, with Graham King's production company GK Films and Tobey Maguire's Material Pictures. Filming took place in Atlanta, Georgia, from October 2014 to January 2015.\n\"The 5th Wave\" was released in the United States on January 22, 2016 by Columbia Pictures (via Sony Pictures Releasing). Despite negative reviews from critics, the film was moderately successful, grossing $109.9 million worldwide against a $38\u201354 million budget.\nPlot.\nOhio high-schooler Cassie Sullivan, armed with an M4 carbine, emerges from the woods to raid an abandoned gas station. Upon entering, she hears a voice calling for help. She finds a wounded man who points a gun at her, and then each of them asks the other to put their weapon down. When he pulls his other hand out from under his jacket, she mistakes the metallic glint of a Christian cross for that of a gun, so she kills him: the screen then cuts to black, and her backstory begins.\nA colossal alien spaceship is circling Earth, guided by extraterrestrial life referred to as \"the Others.\" Ten days later, The Others unleash their 'First Wave,' an electromagnetic pulse that disables all electrical power and communications worldwide and shuts off the engines of moving vehicles, including planes in mid-flight. The 'Second Wave' gives the Others power to manipulate the planet's geology and fault lines, causing earthquakes and megatsunamis that destroy coastal cities and islands, including Miami, London, Bangkok and New York City. In Ohio, Lake Erie floods; Cassie and her younger brother Sam escape by climbing a tree. For the 'Third Wave,' the Others modify a strain of avian influenza and spread it across the planet via birds. The population is decimated, with Cassie's mother, Lisa, one of the victims. In the 'Fourth Wave,' the Others control humans and start killing other humans.\nCassie, Sam, and their father, Thomas, find a summer camp in the woods that is used as a refuge for 300 survivors or so. A few days later, a United States Army unit with working vehicles rolls into the camp. The unit's commander, Colonel Alexander Vosch, claims there is an imminent threat of a 'Fifth Wave.' He states that the Army will take the children to safety at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and will bring the buses back for the adults. Cassie is separated from Sam and witnesses the Army unit massacre all the adults, including Thomas. Cassie makes her way toward the base but is shot in the leg by a sniper and passes out. \nA week or so later, she wakes up in the farmhouse of a young man named Evan Walker, who tells her that he saved her life. Cassie leaves, heading towards the base with Evan; but she learns that he is an Other, sent years ago as a sleeper agent. He merged his consciousness into a human host. The sleepers roam their designated zones, killing human survivors. Evan admits his humanity was reactivated when he saw her, and that he is not willing to cooperate with his training and the invasion; he lets her leave. He warns that Vosch and the military are possessed by the consciousness of individual Others.\nAt the base, the military have used deception and technology to convince the rescued children that all humans outside the base have been possessed. They provide military training to the children, forming them into squads to go on killing missions outside the base. Sam has been placed into a squad led by Ben Parish, a boy Cassie had a crush on, along with Ringer, a tough teenage girl, Dumbo, a teenage boy who survived the 'Second Wave,' and Teacup. While on their kill mission, Ringer removes her military implant, causing her to register as an Other-possessed human on the squad's scopes. The squad deduces that the plan is to have them kill any non-possessed humans: i.e., they are the 'Fifth Wave.' Ben sends his squad into the woods and returns to base, claiming his squad was killed, in order to retrieve Sam, who was left behind. Ben confronts Vosch about child warriors being the 'Fifth Wave.' Cassie kills Sergeant Reznik during her one-on-one indoctrination. Ben and Cassie find each other and leave to find Sam. Evan sets off numerous bombs and advises them to find Sam before the destruction of the entire facility. Vosch and the surviving military Others evacuate with the human children by military aircraft. Cassie, Ben, and Sam escape, with help from Ringer, just as Evan completes the base's destruction. Ben's squad is reunited, and Cassie ponders the strength of hope as humanity's driving force for survival.\nCast.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>* Chlo\u00eb Grace Moretz as Cassie Sullivan\nProduction.\nDevelopment.\nIn March 2012, Columbia Pictures picked up the film rights to the trilogy, with Graham King and Tobey Maguire attached as producers. On April 15, 2014, it was officially announced that Chlo\u00eb Grace Moretz would star as Cassie Sullivan, and that J Blakeson would direct from a script by Susannah Grant. From June through August 2014, Nick Robinson and Alex Roe joined the film as male protagonists Ben Parish and Evan Walker, respectively, while Liev Schreiber was cast as the villain. Over the following months, Maika Monroe, Zackary Arthur, Tony Revolori, Ron Livingston, Maggie Siff, and Talitha Bateman joined the film.\nFilming.\nPrincipal photography began on October 18, 2014, in Atlanta, Georgia. According to production designer Jon Billington, the production team scouted a number of cities but Atlanta was ultimately selected for its \"visual diversity and interest\". A total of $21.7 million was spent shooting in Georgia. 967 local crew members were hired to help with the production of the film, and they spent 17,843 man-days working on the film. Billington designed the various sets used throughout the movie around the Cassie and her story. He viewed the film as \"Cassie's 'Odyssey'\" and envisioned five \"worlds\" that she travels through linearly. A few scenes taking place in the forest were shot on the Jackson trail, outside of Winder, Georgia, US. Three months after production began, on January 11, a planned explosion of a bus in downtown Macon, Georgia, for the film went awry when it spread wider than planned, blowing out more than forty windows on Cotton Avenue, collapsing ceilings, destroying store fronts, setting one building on fire, and leaving soot on the brick buildings as well. The production company promised to cover all damages caused by the 3:45 am incident, but the work that was done was done badly and remained incomplete"}, "descending_order": ["49676264", "2333919", "41283012", "43142604"], "permutation_1": ["2333919", "49676264", "41283012", "43142604"], "permutation_2": ["49676264", "43142604", "41283012", "2333919"], "permutation_3": ["43142604", "49676264", "41283012", "2333919"]}
{"id": "nq_5094542458783361362", "docs_added": {"73670": "A Christmas Carol\n1843 novella by Charles Dickens\nA Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, commonly known as A Christmas Carol, is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall in 1843 and illustrated by John Leech. It recounts the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. In the process, Scrooge is transformed into a kinder, gentler man.\nDickens wrote \"A Christmas Carol\" during a period when the British were exploring and re-evaluating past Christmas traditions, including carols, and newer customs such as cards and Christmas trees. He was influenced by the experiences of his own youth and by the Christmas stories of other authors, including Washington Irving and Douglas Jerrold. Dickens had written three Christmas stories prior to the novella, and was inspired following a visit to the Field Lane Ragged School, one of several establishments for London's street children. The treatment of the poor and the ability of a selfish man to redeem himself by transforming into a more sympathetic character are the key themes of the story. There is discussion among academics as to whether this is a fully secular story or a Christian allegory.\nPublished on 19 December, the first edition sold out by Christmas Eve; by the end of 1844 thirteen editions had been released. Most critics reviewed the novella favourably. The story was illicitly copied in January 1844; Dickens took legal action against the publishers, who went bankrupt, further reducing Dickens's small profits from the publication. He subsequently wrote four other Christmas stories. In 1849 he began public readings of the story, which proved so successful he undertook 127 further performances until 1870, the year of his death. \"A Christmas Carol\" has never been out of print and has been translated into several languages; the story has been adapted many times for film, stage, opera and other media.\n\"A Christmas Carol\" captured the zeitgeist of the early Victorian revival of the Christmas holiday. Dickens acknowledged the influence of the modern Western observance of Christmas and later inspired several aspects of Christmas, including family gatherings, seasonal food and drink, dancing, games and a festive generosity of spirit.\nPlot.\nThe book is divided into five chapters, which Dickens titled \"staves\".\nStave one.\n\"A Christmas Carol\" opens on a bleak, cold Christmas Eve in London, seven years after the death of Ebenezer Scrooge's business partner, Jacob Marley. Scrooge, an ageing miser, dislikes Christmas and refuses a dinner invitation from his nephew Fred. He turns away two men seeking a donation to provide food and heating for the poor and only grudgingly allows his overworked, underpaid clerk, Bob Cratchit, Christmas Day off with pay to conform to the social custom.\nThat night Scrooge is visited at home by Marley's ghost, who wanders the Earth entwined by heavy chains and money boxes forged during a lifetime of greed and selfishness. Marley tells Scrooge that he has a single chance to avoid the same fate: he will be visited by three spirits and must listen or be cursed to carry much heavier chains of his own.\nStave two.\nThe first spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Past, takes Scrooge to Christmas scenes of Scrooge's boyhood, reminding him of a time when he was more innocent. The scenes reveal Scrooge's lonely childhood at boarding school, his relationship with his beloved sister Fan, the long-dead mother of Fred, and a Christmas party hosted by his first employer, Mr Fezziwig, who treated him like a son. Scrooge's neglected fianc\u00e9e Belle is shown ending their relationship, as she realises that he will never love her as much as he loves money. Finally, they visit a now-married Belle with her large, happy family on the Christmas Eve that Marley died. Scrooge, upset by hearing a description of the man that he has become, demands that the ghost remove him from the house.\nStave three.\nThe second spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Present, takes Scrooge to a joyous market where people are buying the makings of Christmas dinner and to celebrations of Christmas in a miner's cottage and in a lighthouse. Scrooge and the ghost also visit Fred's Christmas party. A major part of this stave is taken up with Bob Cratchit's family feast and introduces his youngest son, Tiny Tim, a happy boy who is seriously ill. The spirit informs Scrooge that Tiny Tim will die unless the course of events changes. Before disappearing, the spirit shows Scrooge two hideous, emaciated children named Ignorance and Want. He tells Scrooge to beware the former above all and mocks Scrooge's concern for their welfare.\nStave four.\nThe third spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, shows Scrooge a Christmas Day in the future. The silent ghost reveals scenes involving the death of a disliked man whose funeral is attended by local businessmen only on condition that lunch is provided. His charwoman, laundress and the local undertaker steal his possessions to sell to a fence. When he asks the spirit to show a single person who feels emotion over his death, he is only given the pleasure of a poor couple who rejoice that his death gives them more time to put their finances in order. When Scrooge asks to see tenderness connected with any death, the ghost shows him Bob Cratchit and his family mourning the death of Tiny Tim. The ghost then allows Scrooge to see a neglected grave, with a tombstone bearing Scrooge's name. Sobbing, Scrooge pledges to change his ways.\nStave five.\nScrooge awakens on Christmas morning a changed man. He makes a large donation to the charity he rejected the previous day, anonymously sends a large turkey to the Cratchit home for Christmas dinner and spends the afternoon at Fred's Christmas party. The following day he gives Cratchit an increase in pay, and begins to become a father figure to Tiny Tim. From then on Scrooge treats everyone with kindness, generosity and compassion, embodying the spirit of Christmas.\nBackground.\nThe writer Charles Dickens was born to a middle-class family which got into financial difficulties as a result of the spendthrift nature of his father John. In 1824 John was committed to the Marshalsea, a debtors' prison in Southwark, London. Dickens, aged 12, was forced to pawn his collection of books, leave school and work at a dirty and rat-infested shoe-blacking factory. The change in circumstances gave him what his biographer, Michael Slater, describes as a \"deep personal and social outrage\", which heavily influenced his writing and outlook.\nBy the end of 1842 Dickens was a well-established author with six major works as well as several short stories, novellas and other pieces. On 31 December that year he began publishing his novel \"Martin Chuzzlewit\" as a monthly serial; it was his favourite work, but sales were disappointing and he faced temporary financial difficulties.\nCelebrating the Christmas season had been growing in popularity through the Victorian era. The Christmas tree was introduced in Britain during the 18th century, and its use was popularised by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. In the early 19th century there had been a revival of interest in Christmas carols, following a decline in popularity over the previous hundred years. The publication of Davies Gilbert's 1823 work \"Some Ancient Christmas Carols, With the Tunes to Which They Were Formerly Sung in the West of England\" and William Sandys's 1833 collection \"Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern\" led to a growth in the form's popularity in Britain.\nDickens had an interest in Christmas, and his first story on the subject was \"Christmas Festivities\", published in \"Bell's Weekly Messenger\" in 1835; the story was then published as \"A Christmas Dinner\" in \"Sketches by Boz\" (1836). \"The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton\", another Christmas story, appeared in the 1836 novel \"The Pickwick Papers\". In the episode, a Mr Wardle describes a misanthropic sexton, Gabriel Grub, who undergoes a Christmas conversion after being visited by goblins who show him the past and future. Slater considers that \"the main elements of the \"Carol\" are present in the story\", but not yet in a firm form. The story is followed by a passage about Christmas in Dickens's editorial \"Master Humphrey's Clock\". The professor of English literature Paul Davis writes that although the \"Goblins\" story appears to be a prototype of \"A Christmas Carol\", all Dickens's earlier writings about Christmas influenced the story.\nLiterary influences.\nDickens was not the first author to celebrate the Christmas season in literature. Among earlier authors who influenced Dickens was Washington Irving, whose 1819\u201320 work \"The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.\" included four essays on old English Christmas traditions that he experienced while staying at Aston Hall near Birmingham. The tales and essays attracted Dickens, and the two authors shared the belief that returning to Christmas traditions might promote a type of social connection that they felt had been lost in the modern world.\nSeveral works had an influence on the writing of \"A Christmas Carol\", including two essays by his friend Douglas Jerrold: one from an 1841 issue of \"Punch\", \"How Mr. Chokepear Keeps a Merry Christmas\" and one from 1843, \"The Beauties of the Police\". More broadly, Dickens was influenced by fairy tales and nursery stories, which he closely associated with Christmas, because he saw them as stories of conversion and transformation.\nSocial influences.\nDickens was touched by the lot of poor children in the middle decades of the 19th century. In early 1843 he toured the Cornish tin mines, where he was angered by seeing children working in appalling conditions. The suffering he witnessed there was reinforced by a visit to the Field Lane Ragged School, one of several London schools set up for the education of the capital's half-starved, illiterate street children.\nIn February 1843 the \"Second Report of the Children's Employment Commission\" was published. It was a parliamentary report exposing the effects of the Industrial Revolution upon working class children. Horrified by what he read, Dickens planned to publish an inexpensive political pamphlet tentatively titled, \"An Appeal to the People of England, on behalf of the Poor Man's Child\", but changed his mind, deferring the pamphlet's production until the end of the year. In March he wrote to Dr Southwood Smith, one of the four commissioners responsible for the \"Second Report\", about his change in plans: \"you will certainly feel that a Sledge hammer has come down with twenty times the force\u2014twenty thousand times the force\u2014I could exert by following out my first idea\".\nIn a fundraising speech on 5 October 1843 at the Manchester Athenaeum, Dickens urged workers and employers to join together to combat ignorance with educational reform, and realised in the days following that the most effective way to reach the broadest segment of the population with his social concerns about poverty and injustice was to write a deeply felt Christmas narrative rather than polemical pamphlets and essays.\nWriting history.\nBy mid-1843 Dickens began to suffer from financial problems. Sales of \"Martin Chuzzlewit\" were falling off, and his wife, Catherine, was pregnant with their fifth child. Matters worsened when Chapman & Hall, his publishers, threatened to reduce his monthly income by \u00a350 if sales dropped further. He began \"A Christmas Carol\" in October 1843. Michael Slater, Dickens's biographer, describes the book as being \"written at white heat\"; it was completed in six weeks, the final pages being written in early December. He built much of the work in his head while taking night-time walks of around London. Dickens's sister-in-law wrote how he \"wept, and laughed, and wept again, and excited himself in a most extraordinary manner, in composition\". Slater says that \"A Christmas Carol\" was\nintended to open its readers' hearts towards those struggling to survive on the lower rungs of the economic ladder and to encourage practical benevolence, but also to warn of the terrible danger to society created by the toleration of widespread ignorance and actual want among the poor.\nGeorge Cruikshank, the illustrator who had earlier worked with Dickens on \"Sketches by Boz\" (1836) and \"Oliver Twist\" (1838), introduced him to the caricaturist John Leech. By 24 October Dickens invited Leech to work on \"A Christmas Carol\", and four hand-coloured etchings and four black-and-white wood engravings by the artist accompanied the text. Dickens's hand-written manuscript of the story does not include the sentence in the penultimate paragraph \"...\u00a0and to Tiny Tim, who did \"not\" die\"; this was added later, during the printing process.\nCharacters.\nThe central character of \"A Christmas Carol\" is Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly London-based businessman, described in the story as \"a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!\" Kelly writes that Scrooge may have been influenced by Dickens's conflicting feelings for his father, whom he both loved and demonised. This psychological conflict may be responsible for the two radically different Scrooges in the tale\u2014one a cold, stingy and greedy semi-recluse, the other a benevolent, sociable man. The professor of English literature Robert Douglas-Fairhurst considers that in the opening part of the book covering young Scrooge's lonely and unhappy childhood, and his aspiration for money to avoid poverty \"is something of a self-parody of Dickens's fears about himself\"; the post-transformation parts of the book are how Dickens optimistically sees himself.\nScrooge could also be based on two misers: the eccentric John Elwes, MP, or Jemmy Wood, the owner of the Gloucester Old Bank and also known as \"The Gloucester Miser\". According to the sociologist Frank W. Elwell, Scrooge's views on the poor are a reflection of those of the demographer and political economist Thomas Malthus, while the miser's questions \"Are there no prisons?\u00a0... And the Union workhouses?\u00a0... The treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?\" are a reflection of a sarcastic question raised by the philosopher Thomas Carlyle, \"Are there not treadmills, gibbets; even hospitals, poor-rates, New Poor-Law?\"\nThere are literary precursors for Scrooge in Dickens's own works. Peter Ackroyd, Dickens's biographer, sees similarities between the character and the elder Martin Chuzzlewit character, although the miser is \"a more fantastic image\" than the Chuzzlewit patriarch; Ackroyd observes that Chuzzlewit's transformation to a charitable figure is a parallel to that of the miser. Douglas-Fairhurst sees that the minor character Gabriel Grub from \"The Pickwick Papers\" was also an influence when creating Scrooge. It is possible that Scrooge's name came from a tombstone Dickens had seen on a visit to Edinburgh. The grave was for Ebenezer Lennox Scroggie, whose job was given as a meal man\u2014a corn merchant; Dickens misread the inscription as \"mean man\". This theory has been described as \"a probable Dickens hoax\" for which \"[n]o one could find any corroborating evidence\".\nWhen Dickens was young he lived near a tradesman's premises with the sign \"Goodge and Marney\", which may have provided the name for Scrooge's former business partner. For the chained Marley, Dickens drew on his memory of a visit to the Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in March 1842, where he saw\u2014and was affected by seeing\u2014fettered prisoners. For the character Tiny Tim, Dickens used his nephew Henry, a disabled boy who was five at the time \"A Christmas Carol\" was written. The two figures of Want and Ignorance, sheltering in the robes of the Ghost of Christmas Present, were inspired by the children Dickens had seen on his visit to a ragged school in the East End of London.\nThemes.\nThe transformation of Scrooge is central to the story. Davis considers Scrooge to be \"a protean figure always in process of reformation\"; Kelly writes that the transformation is reflected in the description of Scrooge, who begins as a two-dimensional character, but who then grows into one who \"possess[es] an emotional depth [and] a regret for lost opportunities\". Some writers, including the Dickens scholar Grace Moore, consider that there is a Christian theme running through \"A Christmas Carol\", and that the novella should be seen as an allegory of the Christian concept of redemption. Dickens's biographer, Claire Tomalin, sees the conversion of Scrooge as carrying the Christian message that \"even the worst of sinners may repent and become a good man\". Dickens's attitudes towards organised religion were complex; he based his beliefs and principles on the New Testament. His statement that Marley \"had no bowels\" is a reference to the \"bowels of compassion\" mentioned in the First Epistle of John, the reason for his eternal damnation.\nOther writers, including Kelly, consider that Dickens put forward a \"secular vision of this sacred holiday\". The Dickens scholar John O. Jordan argues that \"A Christmas Carol\" shows what Dickens referred to in a letter to his friend John Forster as his \"\"Carol\" philosophy, cheerful views, sharp anatomisation of humbug, jolly good temper\u00a0... and a vein of glowing, hearty, generous, mirthful, beaming reference in everything to Home and Fireside\". From a secular viewpoint, the cultural historian Penne Restad suggests that Scrooge's redemption underscores \"the conservative, individualistic and patriarchal aspects\" of Dickens's \"\"Carol\" philosophy\" of charity and altruism.\nDickens wrote \"A Christmas Carol\" in response to British social attitudes towards poverty, particularly child poverty, and wished to use the novella as a means to put forward his arguments against it. The story shows Scrooge as a paradigm for self-interest, and the possible repercussions of ignoring the poor, especially children\u2014personified by the allegorical figures of Want and Ignorance. The two figures were created to arouse sympathy with readers\u2014as was Tiny Tim. Douglas-Fairhurst observes that the use of such figures allowed Dickens to present his message of the need for charity without alienating his largely middle-class readership.\nPublication.\nAs the result of the disagreements with Chapman and Hall over the commercial failures of \"Martin Chuzzlewit\", Dickens arranged to pay for the publishing himself, in exchange for a percentage of the profits. Production of \"A Christmas Carol\" was not without problems. The first printing was meant to have festive green endpapers, but they came out a dull olive colour. Dickens's publisher Chapman and Hall replaced these with yellow endpapers and reworked the title page in harmonising red and blue shades. The final product was bound in red cloth with gilt-edged pages, completed only two days before the publication date of 19 December 1843. Following publication, Dickens arranged for the manuscript to be bound in red Morocco leather and presented as a gift to his solicitor, Thomas Mitton.\nPriced at five shillings (equal to \u00a3 in 2025 pounds), the first run of 6,000 copies sold out by Christmas Eve. Chapman and Hall issued second and third editions before the new year, and the book continued to sell well into 1844. By the end of 1844 eleven more editions had been released. Since its initial publication the book has been issued in numerous hardback and paperback editions, translated into several languages and has never been out of print. It was Dickens's most popular book in the United States, and sold over two million copies in the hundred years following its first publication there.\nThe high production costs upon which Dickens insisted led to reduced profits, and the first edition brought him only \u00a3230 (equal to \u00a3 in 2025 pounds) rather than the \u00a31,000 (equal to \u00a3 in 2025 pounds) he expected. A year later, the profits were only \u00a3744, and Dickens was deeply disappointed.\nReception.\nAccording to Douglas-Fairhurst, contemporary reviews of \"A Christmas Carol\" \"were almost uniformly kind\". \"The Illustrated London News\" described how the story's \"impressive eloquence\u00a0... its unfeigned lightness of heart\u2014its playful and sparkling humour\u00a0... its gentle spirit of humanity\" all put the reader \"in good humour with ourselves, with each other, with the season and with the author\". The critic from \"The Athenaeum\", the literary magazine, considered it a \"tale to make the reader laugh and cry\u00a0\u2013 to open his hands, and open his heart to charity even toward the uncharitable\u00a0... a dainty dish to set before a King.\" William Makepeace Thackeray, writing in \"Fraser's Magazine\", described the book as \"a national benefit and to every man or woman who reads it, a personal kindness. The last two people I heard speak of it were women; neither knew the other, or the author, and both said, by way of criticism, 'God bless him!'\"\nThe poet Thomas Hood, in his own journal, wrote that \"If Christmas, with its ancient and hospitable customs, its social and charitable observances, were ever in danger of decay, this is the book that would give them a new lease.\" The reviewer for \"Tait's Edinburgh Magazine\"\u2014Theodore Martin, who was usually critical of Dickens's work\u2014spoke well of \"A Christmas Carol\", noting it was \"a noble book, finely felt and calculated to work much social good\". After Dickens's death, Margaret Oliphant deplored the turkey and plum pudding aspects of the book but admitted that in the days of its first publication it was regarded as \"a new gospel\", and noted that the book was unique in that it made people behave better. The religious press generally ignored the tale but, in January 1844, \"Christian Remembrancer\" thought the tale's old and hackneyed subject was treated in an original way and praised the author's sense of humour and pathos. The writer and social thinker John Ruskin told a friend that he thought Dickens had taken the religion from Christmas, and had imagined it as \"mistletoe and pudding\u2014neither resurrection from the dead, nor rising of new stars, nor teaching of wise men, nor shepherds\".\nThere were critics of the book. \"The New Monthly Magazine\" praised the story, but thought the book's physical excesses\u2014the gilt edges and expensive binding\u2014kept the price high, making it unavailable to the poor. The review recommended that the tale should be printed on cheap paper and priced accordingly. An unnamed writer for \"The Westminster Review\" mocked Dickens's grasp of economics, asking \"Who went without turkey and punch in order that Bob Cratchit might get them\u2014for, unless there were turkeys and punch in surplus, someone must go without\".\nDickens had criticised the US in \"American Notes\" and \"Martin Chuzzlewit\", making American readers reluctant to embrace his work, but by the end of the American Civil War, the book had gained wide recognition in American households. In 1863 \"The New York Times\" published an enthusiastic review, noting that the author brought the \"old Christmas\u00a0... of bygone centuries and remote manor houses, into the living rooms of the poor of today\".\nAftermath.\nIn January 1844 Parley's Illuminated Library published an unauthorised version of the story in a condensed form which they sold for twopence. Dickens wrote to his solicitor\nI have not the least doubt that if these Vagabonds can be stopped they must.\u00a0... Let us be the \"sledge-hammer\" in this, or I shall be beset by hundreds of the same crew when I come out with a long story.\nTwo days after the release of the Parley version, Dickens sued on the basis of copyright infringement and won. The publishers declared themselves bankrupt and Dickens was left to pay \u00a3700 in costs. The small profits Dickens earned from \"A Christmas Carol\" further strained his relationship with his publishers, and he broke with them in favour of Bradbury and Evans, who had been printing his works to that point.\nDickens returned to the tale several times during his life to amend the phrasing and punctuation. He capitalised on the success of the book by publishing other Christmas stories: \"The Chimes\" (1844), \"The Cricket on the Hearth\" (1845), \"The Battle of Life\" (1846) and \"The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain\" (1848); these were secular conversion tales which acknowledged the progressive societal changes of the previous year, and highlighted those social problems which still needed to be addressed. While the public eagerly bought the later books, the reviewers were highly critical of the stories.\nPerformances and adaptations.\nBy 1849 Dickens was engaged with \"David Copperfield\" and had neither the time nor the inclination to produce another Christmas book. He decided the best way to reach his audience with his \"Carol philosophy\" was by public readings. During Christmas 1853 he gave a reading in Birmingham Town Hall to the Industrial and Literary Institute. He insisted that tickets be reserved for working-class attendees at quarter-price and the performance was a great success. Thereafter, he read the tale in an abbreviated version 127 times, until 1870 (the year of his death), including at his farewell performance.\nIn the years following the book's publication, responses to the tale were published by W. M. Swepstone (\"Christmas Shadows\", 1850), Horatio Alger (\"Job Warner's Christmas\", 1863), Louisa May Alcott (\"A Christmas Dream, and How It Came True\", 1882), and others who followed Scrooge's life as a reformed man\u00a0\u2013 or some who thought Dickens had got it wrong and needed to be corrected.\nThe novella was adapted for the stage almost immediately. Three productions opened on 5 February 1844, one by Edward Stirling, \"A Christmas Carol; or, Past, Present, and Future\", being sanctioned by Dickens and running for more than 40 nights. By the close of February 1844 eight rival \"A Christmas Carol\" theatrical productions were playing in London. The story has been adapted for film and television more than any of Dickens's other works. In 1901 it was produced as \"Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost\", a silent black-and-white British film; it was one of the first known adaptations of a Dickens work on film, but it is now largely lost. The story was adapted in 1923 for BBC radio. It has been adapted to other media, including opera, ballet, animation, stage musicals and a BBC mime production starring Marcel Marceau.\nDavis considers the adaptations have become better remembered than the original. Some of Dickens's scenes\u2014such as visiting the miners and lighthouse keepers\u2014have been forgotten by many, while other events often added\u2014such as Scrooge visiting the Cratchits on Christmas Day\u2014are now thought by many to be part of the original story. Accordingly, Davis distinguishes between the original text and the \"remembered version\".\nLegacy.\nThe phrase \"Merry Christmas\" had been around for many years\u2014the earliest known written use was in a letter in 1534\u2014but Dickens's use of the phrase in \"A Christmas Carol\" popularised it among the Victorian public. The exclamation \"Bah! Humbug!\" entered popular use in the English language as a retort to anything sentimental or overly festive; the name \"Scrooge\" became used as a designation for a miser and was added to the \"Oxford English Dictionary\" as such in 1982.\nIn the early 19th century the celebration of Christmas was associated in Britain with the countryside and peasant revels, disconnected to the increasing urbanisation and industrialisation taking place. Davis considers that in \"A Christmas Carol\", Dickens showed that Christmas could be celebrated in towns and cities, despite increasing modernisation. The modern observance of Christmas in English-speaking countries is largely the result of a Victorian-era revival of the holiday. The Oxford Movement of the 1830s and 1840s had produced a resurgence of the traditional rituals and religious observances associated with Christmastide and, with \"A Christmas Carol\", Dickens captured the zeitgeist while he reflected and reinforced his vision of Christmas.\nDickens advocated a humanitarian focus of the holiday, which influenced several aspects of Christmas that are still celebrated in Western culture, such as family gatherings, seasonal food and drink, dancing, games and a festive generosity of spirit. The historian Ronald Hutton writes that Dickens \"linked worship and feasting, within a context of social reconciliation\".\nThe novelist William Dean Howells, analysing several of Dickens's Christmas stories, including \"A Christmas Carol\", considered that by 1891 the \"pathos appears false and strained; the humor largely horseplay; the characters theatrical; the joviality pumped; the psychology commonplace; the sociology alone funny\". The writer James Joyce considered that Dickens took a childish approach with \"A Christmas Carol\", producing a gap between the na\u00efve optimism of the story and the realities of life at the time.\nRuth Glancy, the professor of English literature, states that the largest impact of \"A Christmas Carol\" was the influence felt by individual readers. In early 1844 \"The Gentleman's Magazine\" attributed a rise of charitable giving in Britain to Dickens's novella; in 1874, Robert Louis Stevenson, after reading Dickens's Christmas books, vowed to give generously to those in need, and Thomas Carlyle expressed a generous hospitality by hosting two Christmas dinners after reading the book. In 1867 one American businessman was so moved by attending a reading that he closed his factory on Christmas Day and sent every employee a turkey, while in the early years of the 20th century Maud of Wales\u2014the Queen of Norway\u2014sent gifts to London's crippled children signed \"With Tiny Tim's Love\". On the novella, the author G. K. Chesterton wrote \"The beauty and blessing of the story\u00a0... lie in the great furnace of real happiness that glows through Scrooge and everything around him.\u00a0... Whether the Christmas visions would or would not convert Scrooge, they convert us.\"\nAnalysing the changes made to adaptations over time, Davis sees changes to the focus of the story and its characters to reflect mainstream thinking of the period. While Dickens's Victorian audiences would have viewed the tale as a spiritual but secular parable, in the early 20th century it became a children's story, read by parents who remembered their parents reading it when they were younger. In the lead-up to and during the Great Depression, Davis suggests that while some saw the story as a \"denunciation of capitalism,\u00a0...most read it as a way to escape oppressive economic realities\". The film versions of the 1930s were different in the UK and US. British-made films showed a traditional telling of the story, while US-made works showed Cratchit in a more central role, escaping the depression caused by European bankers and celebrating what Davis calls \"the Christmas of the common man\". In the 1960s, Scrooge was sometimes portrayed as a Freudian figure wrestling with his past. By the 1980s he was again set in a world of depression and economic uncertainty.\nNotes.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\nBooks.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nOnline resources.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nNewspapers, journals and magazines.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "52243430": "The Man Who Invented Christmas (film)\n2017 film directed by Bharat Nalluri\nThe Man Who Invented Christmas is a 2017 Christmas biographical comedy-drama film about Charles Dickens directed by Bharat Nalluri and written by Susan Coyne. Based on Les Standiford's 2008 non-fiction book of the same name, the joint Canadian and Irish production stars Dan Stevens, Christopher Plummer, and Jonathan Pryce, and follows Dickens (Stevens) as he conceives and writes his 1843 novella \"A Christmas Carol\".\nThe film was produced by Parallel Film and Rhombus Media. It was released by Bleecker Street in the United States on 22 November 2017, and by Thunderbird Releasing in the United Kingdom on 1 December 2017. It received generally positive reviews from critics.\nPlot.\nIn 1843, four years after the success of \"Oliver Twist\", Charles Dickens is suffering financial hardship after the failures of his last three books. Rejected by his publishers, he sets out to write a new one and publish it himself, to restore his finances. \nSeeing inspiration around London, most notably a rich man's funeral that is largely unattended and a mean-spirited old man who gives him the catchphrase \"Humbug\" and inspiration of a new character, Charles begins writing \"A Christmas Carol\". It's due in six weeks in order to be published by Christmas, despite his friends and publishers telling him that the book will also be a failure, as Christmas (at the time) was considered irrelevant and few people celebrated it.\nAs Charles develops the story, he interacts with the characters that manifest in front of him, most notably Ebenezer Scrooge. He is helped by one of his servants, Tara, a literate Irish nursemaid to his children, with whom he discusses story elements.\nWhile writing his book, Charles is greeted by the unannounced arrival of his eccentric father John Dickens, whom Charles views as immature and fiscally irresponsible. When Charles shows Tara the next draft, she is distraught that Scrooge would not save Tiny Tim. She believes that people can change and suggests instead that Scrooge saves Tiny Tim.\nHowever, Charles is unable to believe that a man as cruel and cold as Scrooge could change. He rejects the notion but it continues to haunt him in the form of writer's block. Charles' relationship with his family and friends is increasingly strained as he struggles with Scrooge's ending, and his debts mount. \nFinally Charles sends both his parents and Tara out of the house in a fit of rage. The next morning, he regrets dismissing her, but is unable to find and rehire her. His wife, Catherine Dickens, tearfully confronts Charles over his recklessness and instability, and admits that she believes that he puts his work before his own family.\nIt is revealed that much of Charles' animosity toward his father stems from his childhood trauma of laboring in a blacking factory after his family was taken to debtors' prison, all due to John Dickens' failure to pay his debts. \nReturning to the long-abandoned factory, Charles is forced to confront his own insecurities through Scrooge. He realizes that his story should be one of redemption and races home to finish his manuscript. As Charles is about to leave his home to submit it to his printer, he finds that Tara has come to return a book that he had lent her, and he apologizes for his angry outburst and invites her back to the household.\nHis wife suggests that Charles do the same with his father, who is about to board a train to leave London. He does so and, after reconnecting with his family, submits the manuscript in time for publishing before Christmas.\nThe Dickens family celebrates the holiday, while a text epilogue explains the overnight success of \"A Christmas Carol\" and its lasting impact on the Christmas holiday.\nCast.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>* Dan Stevens \u2013 Charles Dickens\nProduction.\nIn addition to filming at Ardmore studios in Wicklow in Ireland, location filming was completed in and around Dublin (including Henrietta Street and North Great Georges Street) as well as in Wicklow; the latter was \"transformed into 1840\u2019s Victorian England\" according to one source. Principal photography was completed on 21 January 2017.\nHistorical accuracy.\nIn an interview, Stevens said of the film's historical accuracy: \"Frankly, whether it's historically accurate, I'm not that concerned about. I was interested in that moment of the creative process, watching a great man struggle \u2013 to me, that's dramatically and comedically interesting. Certainly, I was keen not to play Dickens as a bearded old sage.\" He also expressed an interest in Miriam Margolyes' theory that Dickens was bipolar, saying: \"There were moments when he was bleak and depressive. But I think there were moments when he was great fun to be around, very silly and playful.\"\nA \"Time\" magazine review mentions that \"some major plot points are the product of dramatic license\" but concludes that the film \"does provide viewers with a fairly accurate sense of how Dickens successfully changed the way Christmas is celebrated\".\nDickens is shown visiting Warren's Blacking Factory as an adult, but this building was demolished in the early 1830s.\nRelease and reception.\nThe film was released in the United States in 500 theaters on 22 November 2017.\nCritical response.\nOn Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of"}, "descending_order": ["73670", "52243430"], "permutation_1": ["73670", "52243430"], "permutation_2": ["52243430", "73670"], "permutation_3": ["73670", "52243430"]}
{"id": "nq_-405219225172997040", "docs_added": {"17349106": "Ariel Winter\nAmerican actress (born 1998)\nAriel Winter Workman (born January 28, 1998) is an American actress. She is best known for playing Alex Dunphy in the ABC sitcom \"Modern Family\" (2009\u20132020), for which she and her several costars won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series four consecutive times from 2010 to 2013.\nEarly life.\nAriel Winter Workman was born on January 28, 1998, in Fairfax, Virginia. She is the daughter of Chrisoula (\"n\u00e9e\" Batistas) and Glenn Workman. Through her mother, she is of Greek descent, and through her father, of German descent. She is the younger sister of actors Shanelle Workman and Jimmy Workman.\nCareer.\nWinter obtained her first entertainment industry job in a Cool Whip commercial advertisement in 2002 when she was four years old. She had her first television role in an episode of \"Listen Up\", and followed it with appearances in a variety of television shows such as \"Freddie\", \"Monk\", \"Bones\", and \"ER\".\nShe voiced the character of Gretchen in the animated Disney Channel series \"Phineas and Ferb\" before winning the regular role of Alex Dunphy in the ABC series \"Modern Family\", which premiered in 2009 and ended in 2020. She has continued to work in TV animation, including providing the voice of Marina on Disney Junior's \"Jake and the Never Land Pirates\". In 2012, Winter was cast as the voice of Sofia, the lead character in a then-new Disney animated franchise \"Sofia the First\". The series premiered in January 2013 on Disney Junior. \nIn 2014, she voiced Penny Peterson, Sherman's adversary-turned-friend in the DreamWorks Animation film \"Mr. Peabody and Sherman\". She also lent her voice to characters in two animated films - Disney's \"Bambi II\" and Blue Sky's \"\".\nWinter has appeared in feature films, most notably in \"Kiss Kiss Bang Bang\", \"Speed Racer\", \"Duress\", and \"Opposite Day\". She also appeared on the Halloween-themed TV film \"\". For her leading role in the film \"The Chaperone\", she was nominated at the Young Artist Awards 2012 as \"Best Actress in a Motion Picture\".\nPersonal life.\nIn 2012, Winter's sister Shanelle Workman filed to become her guardian, alleging that their mother had been physically and emotionally abusive. In 2014, the court awarded guardianship to Shanelle Workman and permanently removed Winter from her mother's guardianship. Their mother later released a statement saying that \"the family has moved beyond the conflict\". In 2015, when she was 17 years old, Winter declared on Twitter that she was officially emancipated.\nShe is a purple belt in taekwondo.\nIn 2015, Winter underwent breast reduction surgery. In a 2016 interview with \"ABC News Nightline\", Winter explained the awkwardness of developing at 12 years old in the public eye, combined with the back pain that rendered her unable to stand up straight at times, was \"really ostracizing and excruciatingly painful.\" Describing the improvement that the surgery had on her both physically and psychologically, she told \"Glamour\" magazine that it was \"amazing to finally feel right. This is how I was supposed to be.\" At the 2016 Screen Actors Guild Awards, Winter gained media attention for wearing a Romona Kaveza gown that revealed her surgical scars. She was shocked after walking down the red carpet to see the photos the next day and \"every headline be about my cleavage and -- not about my talent.\" Winter later tweeted: \"Guys there is a reason I didn't make an effort to cover up my scars! They are part of me and I'm not ashamed of them at all.\"\nWinter attended Campbell Hall School in Los Angeles, graduating in June 2016. She was accepted to University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and scheduled to begin there in the fall quarter of 2016. However, she later confirmed that she planned to attend UCLA in fall 2017. On her decision to attend college, she explained, \"You gotta have something else you can do. I've always been interested in law, so I think it'll definitely be something that I'll love to do and also go to school for.\" In 2018, Winter took an indefinite hiatus from UCLA to focus on her work.\nWinter is a member of the Greek Orthodox Church.\nShe dated Canadian actor Levi Meaden for three years; they split in 2019. The couple lived together in Winter\u2019s 3,200-square-foot home in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles. Since 2020, she has been in a relationship with actor Luke Benward. In 2022, Winter moved from Southern California to Nashville, Tennessee.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "16283233": "Ferb Fletcher\nFictional character from Phineas and Ferb\nFerbs \"Ferb\" Fletcher is one of the two main protagonists in the animated television series \"Phineas and Ferb\". Voiced by British actor Thomas Sangster on \"Phineas and Ferb\"'s original run and American actor David Errigo Jr. since 2018, with a singing voice by series composer Danny Jacob, he was created by \"Phineas and Ferb\" co-founders Dan Povenmire and Jeff \"Swampy\" Marsh. He first appeared in the show's pilot episode, \"Rollercoaster\". Ferb was born on February 29.\nFerb and his step-brother Phineas Flynn spend their days during summer vacation from school striving to have fun. They are featured in the majority of episodes as the A-Plot constructing large scale inventions or taking part in other outlandish activities. Ferb, an engineering genius, allows Phineas to do most of the talking for the pair and is \"more of a man of action.\" When Ferb does speak, it is almost always a single sentence. In a conversation in the future time of \"Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo\", it is revealed that he was at Camp David.\nFerb was named after a set-builder named Frank Leasure, a construction foreman on several \"Star Trek\" properties and a friend of Povenmire and Marsh. His wife Melinda, an artist on \"The Simpsons\" and \"King of the Hill\" nicknamed him \"Ferb\". In \"Vanessassary Roughness\" Ferb explains that his name is short for something, but he didn't get a chance to say it. On Twitter, Povenmire announced that Ferb was actually short for \"Ferbs\". He cares for Vanessa Doofenshmirtz (daughter of Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz) and saves her in the same episode when she gets tangled up and a lawn mower almost gets her, but he is able to save her with a giant tool which appears to be an exaggerated version of a Swiss Army Knife. In \"Summer Belongs To You\" Vanessa asks Candace what Ferb is short for; Candace realizes she doesn't know herself what it is short for. In the fourth season episode \"Act Your Age\", he as a teenager appears to be in a relationship with Vanessa. Ferb's design is based on a rectangle and also shaped like an \"F\" and is inspired by the style of late animator Tex Avery. As a character, Ferb has been critically well-received and appears in several pieces of \"Phineas and Ferb\" merchandise, including toys, T-shirts, and video games.\nRole in \"Phineas and Ferb\".\nFerb comes from a blended family, a premise the creators considered underused in children's programming and which reflected Marsh's own upbringing. Ferb's birth mother is never revealed, but the series shows that both Ferb and his father Lawrence hail from England. Lawrence married Ferb's step-mother Linda after meeting her at a 1990s concert by the fictional band Love H\u00e4ndel. Marsh considers explaining the family background \"not important to the kids' lives. They are a great blended family and that's all we need to know.\" Ferb and his family live in the fictional town of Danville, in a large, suburban neighborhood. Throughout their summer vacation, Ferb and Phineas conceive outrageous schemes to defeat boredom while sitting lazily beneath a tree in their backyard. Phineas mainly conceives each project while Ferb spearheads its construction. Their activities are almost always beyond the capability of a typical child and have included toy design (in \"Toy to the World\"); treasure-hunting (in \"The Ballad of Badbeard\"); engineering (in \"It's About Time!\"); and restaurant management (in \"Chez Platypus\"). Ferb's step-sister, Candace, is always trying to get the two in trouble with their mother for their schemes, but is never able to. Ferb talks very rarely, usually having only one line per episode. He speaks with a British accent. There are a total of 11 episodes in which he had no lines and the longest he ever spoke was in \"The Lizard Whisperer\" when he gave a speech which totalled 129 words.\nCharacter.\nCreation and conception.\nFerb was created by \"Phineas and Ferb\" co-creators Dan Povenmire and Jeff \"Swampy\" Marsh, who originally met as layout artists on the Fox Network animated series \"The Simpsons.\" \"Phineas and Ferb\" was inspired by their boyhood memories of summer vacation; Povenmire and Marsh both felt the theme of school in television had fallen to redundancy and wanted to create a series that took place solely in the summertime.\nFerb's name was derived from that of a mutual friend of Povenmire and Marsh named Frank, who \"owns more tools than anyone [they] know.\" Frank was a set-builder who had worked building and designing sets for shows such as \".\" Frank's wife disliked Frank's name and gave him the unusual nickname \"Ferb\".\nDesign and voice.\nFerb was given a simplistic structure so that young audiences would be able to draw him easily. As with the other characters of \"Phineas and Ferb,\" Ferb's design is constructed of geometric shapes in homage to animator Tex Avery. Ferb's head is based on a rectangle with a wider top than bottom. A square is used for his nose, and an egg-shaped oval is used for his eyes. The eye furthest from the screen is always drawn larger than the other. Povenmire uses a nine-step process to draw Ferb, starting with his head and ending with touch ups.\nFerb was originally going to be voiced by actor Mitchel Musso. However, when \"Phineas and Ferb\" was picked up as a full series, Povenmire and Marsh chose to make Ferb British and cast Thomas Sangster as his voice. However, they enjoyed Musso to a level that they recast him as the voice of the character Jeremy Johnson; although Musso no longer voiced a title character, his new role allowed him more lines. Sangster himself is a British actor and was among several cast members hired that hailed from England. Marsh himself had lived in the country for seven years and developed a fondness for the culture and people.\nPersonality.\nFerb was devised as a character devoid of ill will. Marsh explained, \"It was important to us that [Phineas and Ferb] never did anything with any animosity. They never tried to get their sister in trouble or outsmart their mother and get away with it.\" Instead, he and his brother create things for the sheer enjoyment of it or to help out others (\"and for the ladies\"); for example, Ferb and Phineas carve Candace's face into Mount Rushmore for her birthday, set up a roller derby for a rematch race with his Grandmother Betty Jo's old rival, create a haunted house for their friend Isabella to cure her hiccups and make a super-computer to find out what to do for their mom after being so kind to them.\nPovenmire and Marsh intended for Ferb's creative drive to stem primarily from a desire to have fun, and in one episode, \"Thaddeus and Thor\", Phineas openly confirms this as his and his brother's only goal in their daily schemes \u2013 though Ferb adds that they also do it \"for the ladies.\"\nIn the original pitch to overseas The Walt Disney Company executives, Povenmire and Marsh constructed storyboards and recorded them with dialogue and sound effects. As a prototype, Ferb did not speak at all. However, after considering comedy's \"big duos\" including Wallace and Gromit and Jay and Silent Bob, the creators chose to have Ferb speak at least once in most episodes (but in \"Summer Belongs To You\" he spoke nine times and in \"The Lizard Whisperer\" gives an entire short speech that lasts about 45 seconds), but to have him remain silent and allow Phineas to speak for him the majority of the time. Although Ferb's taciturnity is generally not commented on in the series, Phineas mentions it while he and his brother were in England on the episode \"A Hard Day's Knight\": \"I'll be the top half since I tend to do more of the talking and you will be on the bottom part because of your long spindely legs\". Despite being quiet, Ferb is a polyglot, being able to speak in human, animal, and alien tongues.\nFerb also seems to possess good insight, which is probably the main character trait, other than his silence, distinguishing his character from Phineas. Jean Yoo, an official press member for Disney Channel, notes that when Ferb does speak, \"it always shows a greater understanding of the situation than his countenance would indicate.\" He usually says one or two sentences per episode, such as \"They [platypuses] are the only mammals to lay eggs,\" \"Sharks have to keep moving forward, or they'll drown,\" and shortly after, \"Well, he [Buford] was all up in my face,\" or \"Candace, we [Phineas and Ferb] are just kids.\" He also has a crush on Vanessa Doofenshmirtz.\nReception.\nCritical reception for the character has been generally positive. Emily Ashby of \"Common Sense Media\" describes him as a \"go-to engineering guru\" and considers him and Phineas to be \"partner[s] in crime.\" Susan Stewart, reviewing the show in \"The New York Times\", notes that Phineas and Ferb \"work on a heroic scale and are apparently not limited by the laws of nature.\" Josh Jackson, editor of \"Paste\" magazine, listed Ferb's \"dry wit\" as the third of five reasons as to why the series is the \"Best Kids Show on TV,\" writing that \"Ferb gets about one line per episode, but it's always a doozy.\"\nEd Stetzer, Richie Stanley, and Jason Hayes, author's the book \"Lost and Found: The Younger Unchurched and the Churches That Reach Them,\" wrote that Ferb and Phineas, along with the cast of \"High School Musical,\" are examples of creating a \"whole new culture\" in households. Stetzer, Stanley, and Hayes continued to write that \"[O]ur culture has connected with media that shows not only the Cinderella and Prince Charming life we all wish for, but also the life in which we all live with real trials, real joys, and real fears.\"\n\"Backyard Beach,\" a song Danny Jacob performs as Ferb in the episode \"Lawn Gnome Beach Party of Terror,\" became very popular among viewers and was voted as the second best song in the series by viewers in the special 2009 event, \"Phineas and Ferb's Musical Cliptastic Countdown\". The best, according to viewers, was \"Gitchee Gitchee Goo\" from \"Flop Starz,\" which Jacob performs in as Ferb. Ferb is also credited as the singer in the music video version of \"My Ride from Outer Space\" from the episode \"The Chronicles of Meap\" (actually performed again by Danny Jacob).\nIn other media.\nBesides the series \"Phineas and Ferb,\" Ferb has been featured in several other pieces of merchandise from the series. To date, he has appeared in all \"Phineas and Ferb\" novelizations, published by Disney Press. Ferb appears in the Nintendo DS video game based on the series, simply titled \"Phineas and Ferb.\" Dan Povenmire has said that he saw nothing of the game until its release date, on which he was given a copy for free. Phineas and Ferb made a cameo in the \"MAD\" sketch \"The Straight A-Team\" where they decided to beat the Straight A-Team. They appear again in the sketch \"DolPhineas and Ferb Tale\" where they are spoofed alongside the film \"Dolphin Tale\". Their design in \"MAD\" was unrealistic to their regular design.\nPlush toys of the character, along with toys representing Phineas and Perry, have been manufactured. Ferb also appears on most of the \"Phineas and Ferb\" T-shirts. Ferb is set to appear in the forthcoming comic book series based on the series, though details are unconfirmed. Costumed versions of Ferb and Phineas have appeared in Disneyland, for the pre-taping of the annual Walt Disney World Christmas Day Parade.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "77154206": "Phineas and Ferb season 5\nThe fifth season revival of \"Phineas and Ferb\" is set to air on Disney Channel on June 5, 2025, with the Disney+ premiere being on June 6, 2025. Created by Dan Povenmire and Jeff \"Swampy\" Marsh, the series stars Phineas Flynn and Ferb Fletcher (Vincent Martella and David Errigo Jr.), two step-brothers on another summer vacation, while their older sister Candace (Ashley Tisdale) continues her attempts to bust them as the boys' pet Perry the Platypus (Dee Bradley Baker)\u2014who lives a double life as a secret agent\u2014thwarts the evil scientist Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz (Povenmire). Confirmed returning supporting cast includes Caroline Rhea as Linda Flynn-Fletcher, Alyson Stoner as Isabella Garcia-Shapiro, and Marsh as Major Monogram.\nPremise.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />\"The new season of \"Phineas and Ferb\" will follow the inventive stepbrothers as they tackle another 104 days of summer. Candace is more determined than ever to finally bust her little brothers while their pet platypus, Perry, continues to lead a double life as the suave Agent P, whose sole mission is to thwart Dr. Doofenshmirtz from taking over the Tri-State area.\"\nBackground.\n\"Phineas and Ferb\" was renewed for a fourth season in August 2011. The-then series finale was announced in May 2015; the hour-long episode, \"Last Day of Summer\", aired on June 12, 2015. Povenmire and Marsh remained with the network and together created the series \"Milo Murphy's Law\" (2016\u20132019).\nProduction.\nWriting.\nDevelopment on the fifth season of \"Phineas and Ferb\" began in May 2023, at which point Povenmire confirmed the then-ongoing Writers Guild of America strike. Povenmire and Marsh admitted their concerns that they would have trouble coming up with new ideas for the revival, but explained those concerns were alleviated due to their confidence in the writers' room, which contained both returning and new writers. They cited seven episodes in particular as standouts which they felt would appeal most to the returning audience.\nVoice recording.\nVoice recording began by September 2023, and was not affected by the then-ongoing 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Candace Flynn actress Ashley Tisdale was concurrently pregnant during voice recording and refused to record new screams, feeling it would \"scare the baby\"; she suggested the producers use any of her \"17 years\" worth of archive audio instead.\nDavid Errigo Jr. voices Ferb Fletcher full-time from this season onward, replacing original actor Thomas Brodie-Sangster, and reprising his role from the \"Milo Murphy's Law\" episode \"The Phineas and Ferb Effect\", and the 2020 Disney+ film \"\".\nAnnouncement and promotion.\nOn January 13, 2023, during the winter press tour for the Television Critics Association, Disney Branded Television announced that 40 new episodes of \"Phineas and Ferb\" were ordered, to be split across two seasons, with Povenmire returning as executive producer. The deal also included a second-season renewal for Povenmire's series \"Hamster & Gretel\". In March 2023, it was revealed that Marsh would also return as executive producer and voice director for the revival. In April 2023, a press release commemorating the 40th anniversary of Disney Channel confirmed that the revival will air on the network. The revival was originally scheduled to be released in 2024.\nAt Disney Television Animation's presentation during the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in June 2024, Povenmire and Marsh made an appearance to promote the series and give details on the production. They specified the revival was being treated as \"\"Phineas and Ferb\" season 5\", and that it would take place in the following year after the events of the first four seasons during a new summer vacation. The duo also previewed a musical animatic which introduces the first episode.\nPremiere.\nThe fifth season of \"Phineas and Ferb\" has been given a premiere window on Disney Channel and Disney+ during summer 2025.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "16280301": "Phineas Flynn\nFictional character from Phineas and Ferb\nPhineas Flynn is a fictional character and one of the two title characters from the animated television series \"Phineas and Ferb\". He is voiced by Vincent Martella. Phineas, along with his quiet but intelligent stepbrother Ferb Fletcher, stars in the A-Plot of most episodes.\nThe series concerns Phineas and Ferb's attempts to avoid boredom by finding something new to do for each day of their summer vacation, often with many other neighborhood children. The activities they devise usually involve outlandish contraptions, including roller coasters, haunted houses, roller rinks, and a backyard beach etc. which Phineas and Ferb design and build cooperatively. Phineas's sister is Candace Flynn, who tries to reveal their outrageous creations to their mother, but to no avail.\nPhineas comes from a blended family. The creators chose this arrangement because they considered it underused in children's programming as well as from creator Jeff \"Swampy\" Marsh's past experiences in one. As a character, Phineas has received positive critical response, with one reviewer describing him and his stepbrother as a \"comical pairing.\" Phineas appears in \"Phineas and Ferb\" merchandise, including plush toys, t-shirts, and a video game.\nRole in \"Phineas and Ferb\".\nPhineas comes from a blended family, a decision co-creator Marsh made to reflect his own experiences growing up. Phineas's birth father is never present or discussed in the series, something Marsh and Povenmire have stated that they fully intend to keep that way. It is established that his mother, Linda Flynn-Fletcher married Ferb's father, Lawrence Fletcher, after dating him for a while in the 1990s. They fell in love at a concert of the fictitious band \"Love H\u00e4ndel\" after they were put on the kiss cam.\nPhineas is portrayed as an intelligent, creative, innovative, and good-natured child. As a means to defeat boredom, he and Ferb devise outrageous activities throughout their summer vacation, often participating in activities such as toy design (in \"Toy to the World\"); piracy (in \"The Ballad of Badbeard\"); time travel (in \"It's About Time!\"); restaurant management (in \"Chez Platypus\"); all usually inaccessible to children. Phineas lives in the fictional town of Danville (part of the Tri-State Area), in a large, suburban neighborhood; he comes up with most of his ideas while sitting with Ferb in their backyard.\nConcept and creation.\nDan Povenmire and Jeff \"Swampy\" Marsh had conceived the idea of the \"Phineas and Ferb\" series while working as layout artists on \"The Simpsons.\" After planning the basics of the show, the two began laying out characters. Povenmire, eating dinner with his family at a Wild Thyme restaurant in South Pasadena, California, drew a quick sketch of a \"triangle kid.\" Povenmire named the triangle doodle \"Phineas,\" saying he \"look[ed] like [one]\", and with reference to the character Phileas Fogg (often misreferenced as \"Phineas Fogg\") from \"Around the World in 80 Days\" (1873). Povenmire tore the paper out and called Marsh that night, telling him \"Hey, I think we have our show.\"\nAfter designing the show, the two had significant difficulties getting the series green lit. It was not picked up for fifteen years. In their final pitch to the Walt Disney Company, the creators designed a recorded storyboard, featuring a very rough outline of characters. The prototype Phineas was ruder to others than the version in the eventual show, where the creators decided to make him more good-natured. Citing comedy's \"big duos\" including Wallace and Gromit and Jay and Silent Bob, the creators chose to give Phineas most of the dialogue while Ferb remains almost silent.\nDesign.\nAll characters in \"Phineas and Ferb\" were drawn in a design borrowed from Tex Avery's style, with geometric shapes being included in their structure; Phineas in particular is that of a triangle. The triangle face has been stated in the series as being just his nose that covers the entire head. The goal while drawing characters was to make them simple enough to be drawn by child viewers and be recognized by silhouette. Phineas's eyes lie on the top of his head and are of oval shape. For his hair, three \"tufts\" are put in the back and front, while three freckles lie underneath. For the ear, a small 3 is used to represent the ear lobe. Povenmire uses thin, spindly arms for every character as a simple reason to add fun.\nVoice.\nYoung actor Vincent Martella, previously known for The CW series \"Everybody Hates Chris\", was cast for the role of Phineas. Martella originally auditioned for the role five months before his initial pickup, but was left without feedback for the time. When Dan Povenmire was given a tape of Martella in \"Everybody Hates Chris,\" he called him to do Phineas for the pilot. He designed a different voice than his own which he describes as \"wacky [and] crazy.\" The creators were afraid of him losing it when his voice changed, though he was still able to retain it for the most part even afterward, though the tone is now slightly different from the original sound.\nWhile in recording sessions, Martella has a large amount of enthusiasm and describes it as humorous to watch himself doing a take. In interviews Martella has said that he enjoys working on the series and voicing Phineas, and appreciates the opportunity to work alongside guest stars, especially Malcolm McDowell.\nMartella once wrote as an article for \"Popstar! Magazine\" his thoughts on the role and of the show itself:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The greatest thing about being on \"Phineas\" so far is that I can get my parents to laugh! We all sat down to see the beach episode on New Years Eve! Once I saw all the adults laughing along with me and my 10-year-old brother, that was the greatest thing in the world to me!\nHallmarks.\n\"Phineas and Ferb\" makes liberal use of running gags, and Phineas has several recurrent lines that are featured in most episodes. When he comes up with an idea of what adventure he and his brother are going to have that day, he says \"Ferb, I know what we're gonna do today!\" During the course of an adventure, Phineas is generally asked by a disbelieving adult \"Aren't you a little bit young to be...\" doing whatever he's doing in that episode. For example, while constructing a shrine of his sister on the face of Mount Rushmore, a park ranger asks him \"Aren't you boys a little young to be restoring a national monument?\" Phineas generally answers \"Yes, yes we are,\" though on a few occasions has responded \"No\" or \"Well, I don't think so.\"\nIn every episode, Phineas and Ferb's pet platypus, Perry, disappears to carry out his job as a secret agent. The kids almost always notice this, asking \"Hey, where's Perry?\" Then, when Perry comes home, they say, \"Oh, there you are, Perry.\" Discussing Perry, co-creator Povenmire cited the example of his own pet cat, Sprocket, which he claimed led a \"secret life\" with his neighbors in order to get extra food.\nCharacterization.\nPersonality and traits.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />His [Phineas'] confidence makes people think, \"He must be a prodigy.\" People rarely ask him if he's too young. He'd never lie to an adult or try to get away with anything. He's just motivated by fun. If he thought mom would actually dislike the things they're doing, he would probably stop, but since he's never gotten in trouble for it, he doesn't think of it as getting into trouble.\nPhineas is portrayed as being a highly intelligent, imaginative, optimistic, and adventurous boy. The Disney Channel promos for \"Phineas and Ferb\" describe him as someone who \"thinks big\", refusing to let any day be ordinary. Povenmire also characterizes him as assertive, someone so secure in his abilities that others assume he is a prodigy. Povenmire and Marsh wanted the series to reflect their own childhood memories of going out during the summer and have fun, digging trenches and building tunnels, forts, and tree houses.\nThe creators wanted Phineas, like Ferb, to be a character who would never \"[do] anything with any animosity,\" or to agitate his sister or outsmart his mother purposely. Instead, the character was supposed to be motivated only by enjoyment and free from mean spiritedness. He is very friendly, caring, well-mannered, and several of his plots involve helping someone out. He tries to please his sister Candace, carving her face into Mount Rushmore for her birthday in one episode and helping her retrieve a tape detailing his summer adventures even though she intended on using the footage as evidence to \"bust\" him and Ferb. Another episode has him throwing an extravaganza for his mother's birthday, and yet another has him (along with Ferb and Candace) recreating their parents' most romantic moment for their wedding anniversary. He has also been shown helping his grandparents, reenacting his step-grandfather Reginald's daredevil stunt from his youth and setting up a roller derby for a rematch race with his grandmother Betty Jo's old rival. In the episodes \"One Good Scare Ought to Do It!\" and \"Hail Doofania!\", Phineas goes to great lengths to help his friend Isabella. Other episodes, like \"Unfair Science Fair,\" \"Oil on Candace,\" \"The Bully Code,\" and \"Voyage To The Bottom of Buford,\" further explore Phineas's generosity toward all of his friends. He even has plans at the beginning of \"The Bully Code\" for a jellybean currency system for emerging nations.\nOccasionally, Phineas's ideas, plots, and schemes have upset others, intentionally or otherwise. Most notably Candace is constantly frustrated in her efforts to \"bust\" her brothers throughout the series, and in rare cases, Phineas has unwittingly caused misfortune to others. For example, in the episode \"Get That Bigfoot Outta My Face,\" Phineas gives all the kids at camp a fright when he tricks them into thinking Bigfoot is attacking, though this is mostly getting into the spirit of spooky story telling.\nNonetheless, Povenmire and Marsh intended for Phineas and Ferb to be motivated only by fun. In one episode, \"Thaddeus and Thor\", Phineas says that fun is his only goal in his daily schemes \u2013 though Ferb adds that they also do it \"for the ladies.\" Phineas also says that he wants his adventures to give him something interesting to say when he gets back to school, a setting the creators have confirmed they will never put him in.\nPhineas is also very modest. He tends to put Ferb's name on inventions. However, he never seems angry or resentful of giving his stepbrother the credit.\nPhineas appears to be addicted to inventing. In \"Bully Bromance Break Up\" he goes into withdrawal when the other kids insist on climbing a mountain without using any crazy gadgets.\nIn a few episodes, Phineas shows an angrier side of himself, first seen in the ' film, where Phineas gets angry at Perry after finding out his secret identity because Perry \"never trusted him\" by telling him the truth, but later realizes that Perry kept his identity hidden because if Phineas and his family found out, Perry would be forced to relocate to another family. Another episode, ', again demonstrates Phineas' angry side, when he got angry at Candace when she accidentally caused Baljeet to turn into a Hulk-type version of himself, but they later made amends at the end of the episode. Later, on \"Phineas and Ferb Save Summer\", when Candace tries to power-up the machine, Phineas starts raising his voice at her in order for her to stop, to which Buford breaks the fourth wall by saying: \"Must be a special episode, he's yelling at his sister again!\".\nReception.\nPhineas has received mostly positive reviews. Emily Ashby of \"Common Sense Media\" describes Phineas as \"boisterous,\" and he and Ferb as \"partner[s] in crime.\" Susan Stewart, reviewing the show in \"The New York Times\", notes that Phineas and Ferb \"work on a heroic scale and are apparently not limited by the laws of nature.\" Jean Yoo, an official press member for Disney Channel, describes him as \"a precocious bundle of energy whose tolerance for sitting still is just a little thinner than his patience for the social echelon in which he finds himself.\" She as well notes that he is \"endearing and smart.\"\n\"Variety\" calls Phineas's adventures \"spectacular.\" \"Animation Insider\" reporter Aaron Bynum described him as a \"wiz kid idea machine.\" \"The Seattle Times\" wrote that both Phineas and Ferb were \"young heroes.\" The song \"Ain't Got Rhythm,\" which Vincent Martella performed in the voice of Phineas alongside Steve Zahn and Thomas Sangster in the episode \"Dude, We're Getting the Band Back Together,\" was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2008 for \"Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics.\"\nLegacy.\nBesides the series \"Phineas and Ferb,\" Phineas has been featured in several other pieces of merchandise from the series. To date, he has appeared in all \"Phineas and Ferb\" novelizations, published by Disney Press. Phineas appears in the Nintendo DS video game based on the series, simply titled \"Phineas and Ferb.\" Dan Povenmire has said that he saw nothing of the game until its release, on which he was given a copy for free. \"Paste\" claimed that Phineas, alongside Ferb are 33rd best cartoon characters of all time.\nPlush toys of the character, along with toys representing Ferb and Perry, have been manufactured. Phineas also appears on most of the \"Phineas and Ferb\" t-shirts. Phineas is set to appear in the forthcoming comic book series based on the series, though details are unconfirmed. Phineas and his brother Ferb have as well both been referenced in the book \"Lost and Found: How Churches Are Connecting to Young Adults\" as examples of how media and television characters can be influential in people's lives.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "22388597": "List of Phineas and Ferb characters\nThe following is a character list of main and secondary characters on the Disney Channel series \"Ph"}, "descending_order": ["16283233", "77154206", "16280301", "22388597", "17349106"], "permutation_1": ["17349106", "16280301", "22388597", "77154206", "16283233"], "permutation_2": ["22388597", "17349106", "16280301", "16283233", "77154206"], "permutation_3": ["16280301", "17349106", "77154206", "16283233", "22388597"]}
{"id": "nq_3870149834336375200", "docs_added": {"4187191": "Figure skating at the Olympic Games\nFigure skating was first contested in the Olympic Games at the 1908 Summer Olympics. Since 1924, the sport has been a part of the Winter Olympic Games.\nMen's singles, women's singles, and pair skating have been held most often. Ice dance joined as a medal sport in 1976 and a team event debuted at the 2014 Olympics. Special figures were contested at only one Olympics, in 1908. Synchronized skating has never appeared at the Olympics but aims to be included.\nHistory.\nFigure skating was first contested as an Olympic sport at the 1908 Summer Olympics, in London, United Kingdom. As this traditional winter sport could be conducted indoors, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) approved its inclusion in the Summer Olympics program. It was featured a second time at the Antwerp Games, after which it was permanently transferred to the program of the Winter Olympic Games, first held in 1924 in Chamonix, France.\nIn London, figure skating was presented in four events: men's singles, women's singles, men's special figures, and mixed pairs. The special figures contest was won by Russian Nikolai Panin, who gave his country its first ever Olympic gold medal. He remains the event's sole winner, as it was subsequently dropped from the program.\nIce dance joined as a medal sport in 1976, after appearing as a demonstration event at Grenoble 1968.\nA team event debuted at the 2014 Olympics. It consists of two segments: qualification and finals. During qualification each team has one men's single skater, one women's single skater, one pair, and one ice dance couple skate their short program/dance. Before the finals, each team is allowed to replace up to two skaters/couples. The final consists of each skater/couple skating their free program/dance. Results are determined by placement points.\nQualifying.\nThe number of entries for the figure skating events at the Olympic Games is limited by a quota set by the International Olympic Committee. There are 30 participants in each singles events (women and men), 20 pairs, and 24 ice dance duos.\nIn the past, skaters must represent a member nation of the International Skating Union and reach the age of fifteen before July 1 of the previous year. After the previous 2022 Olympic Games, this rule has changed and the new age requirement by the next Olympics will be 17-years-old. They are also required to be citizens of the country they are representing. Competitors have until just before the Olympics to receive citizenship. Since nationality rules are less strict for the ISU Championships, sometimes skaters who have competed at World or European championships are not eligible for the Olympics.\n80% of the Olympic spots (24 men/women, 19 dance couples, 16 pairs) are allotted to countries according to the results of the previous year's World Figure Skating Championships. A country may have a maximum of three entries per discipline. Countries earn two or three entries by earning points through their skaters' placements. The points are equal to the sum of the placements of the country's skaters (top two if they have three). If a country only has one skater/couple, that skater/couple must place in the top ten to earn two entries and in the top two to earn three entries. If a country has two skaters/teams, the combined placement of those teams must be 13 or less to qualify 3 entries, and 28 or less to qualify two entries. The remaining places are awarded to one skater/couple each from countries that failed to get multiple places, in order of their skaters' placement in the world championships.\nFollowing the World Championships, countries that have not qualified an entry in a particular discipline receive another opportunity in an international competition held in the autumn (usually the Nebelhorn Trophy) prior to the Olympic Games. Six spots are available in men's singles, six in women's singles, four in pairs, and five in ice dance. At some Olympics, the host country is automatically entitled to one entry in each discipline, e.g. in 1994, 2010, and 2018 if minimum scores are achieved. If a country receives a spot by being the host, one fewer spot is available in the autumn qualifying competition.\nThe selection of representatives is at the national governing body's discretion. Some countries rely on the results of their national championships while others have more varied criteria. This may include reaching a certain placement at the European Figure Skating Championships and the Four Continents Figure Skating Championships.\nScoring and judging system.\nA very specific scoring system is used for every discipline in the Olympics. This is referred to as the International Judging System (IJS). Competitors are scored on the technical score and the program components. Each technical element that is attempted in a program has a specific base value of points, which varies based on the element. Additionally, elements such as spins and step sequences can achieve different levels, which can add or subtract points from that element's final score. At the end of the program, all of the competitors' technical element points are added up to form their technical scores. The program components are determined by the overall presentation of a performance and are separated into five categories. The categories consist of skating skills, transitions, performance, composition, and interpretation of the music. Again, these categories are added together at the end of the program to determine the program components score. The technical elements score and the program components score are added together to create a final segment score. \u00a0\nThe judging system consists of two parts, the technical panel and the judges. The technical panel involves five people that play different roles in judging the technical elements of a skaters program. First, there is the technical specialist, who uses the rules developed by the International Skating Union to identify each element and its level of difficulty. The two judges who support the main technical specialist are referred to as the technical controllers and assistant technical specialist. They make sure the primary specialist has correctly identified the elements and make any final decisions on the technical elements presented in the program. The final two roles presented by the technical panel are the data operator and video replay operator. Separate from the technical panel is the judging panel, which is made up of nine judges. Their job is to judge the quality of each element done by the skater regarding the technical elements, as well as evaluate the program components shown in the program. They do this by a great of execution score, GOE, that ranges from \u20135 to +5 and determines how many points can be added or subtracted from the base value of an element.\nAge rules.\nWithin figure skating, there is a set minimum age limit for all elite competitors through the sport. This age was formerly 15 years old, until after the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing. During this event, 15-year-old Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva was the favorite to win the women's single event, until she was found to have a positive drug test for a banned substance previous to the competition. The International Olympic Committee had to conduct an investigation into Valieva during the Olympics, which brought a great amount of chaos and controversy as to whether she should have been allowed to compete or not. More importantly, it brought attention to the conditions young athletes are faced with physically, mentally, and emotionally as they are preparing for this event, this not being the first time a situation such as this has occurred in post-Soviet states. After the 2022 Games, the International Skating Union voted to increase the minimum age limit for elite competitors throughout the sport to 17, by a vote of 100 to 16. This limit will be implemented over the course of the next three years, before the 2026 Games in Milan. This decision was based on preserving the physical, mental, and emotional health and wellbeing of figure skaters, and can be summarize by Eric Radford, three-time Canadian Olympic medalist, who stated, \"Is a medal worth risking the health of a child or young athlete?\"\nSynchronized skating in the Olympics.\nThe discipline of synchronized skating adds a team element to figure skating, having eight to twenty skaters on the ice at once. They skate together in unison performing difficult step sequences and formations together. This discipline has not yet been included in the Olympic Games. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) determines whether to add a sport or a discipline to the Olympics based on how many athletes and officials would be included, how popular the sport is, and how much money it would bring to them. The ISU has been making efforts the past several years to \"investigate, strategize and gather the information required for Synchronized Skating to be accepted as an Olympic discipline.\"\u00a0\nMedal table.\n\"Accurate as of 2022 Winter Olympics.\"\nParticipating nations.\nThe number in each box represents the number of figure skaters the nation sent.\nReferences.\nGeneral\nSpecific\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n Media related to at Wikimedia Commons", "6193738": "History of figure skating\n \nThe history of figure skating stretches back to prehistoric times. Primitive ice skates appear in the archaeological record from about 3000 BC. Edges were added by the Dutch in the 13th and 14th century. International figure skating competitions began appearing in the late 19th century; in 1891, the European Championships were inaugurated in Hamburg, Germany, and in 1896, the first World Championship were held in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire. At the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, England, figure skating became the first winter sport to be included in the Olympics.\nArchaeology and earliest historical documentation.\nThe exact time and process by which humans first learned to ice skate is unknown. Primitive animal bone ice skates have been found in Scandinavia and Russia, some dating back to about 3000 BC. In the ancient world, ice skating was a form of transportation; as figure skating historian James R. Hines put it, passage over frozen surfaces \"was a necessity for survival during harsh winter months\".\nThe \"Prose Edda\" (c.\u20091220) included mentions of ice skating. The earliest clear, written mention of ice skating is found in a book written in the 12th century by William Fitzstephen, a monk in Canterbury. In the work, centered on Thomas Becket, he describes a scene taking place below the northern city walls of Canterbury during the winter:\n...if the moors in Finsbury and Moorfield freeze over, children from London play. Some of the children have attached bones to their ankles, and carry well-worn sticks. They fly across the ice like birds, or well-fired arrows. Suddenly, two children will run at each other, sticks held high in the air. They then attack each other until one falls down. Often, the children injure their heads or break their arms or legs...\nThe sticks that Fitzstephen refers to were used for movement, as the primitive bone-made ice skates did not have sharp gliding edges like modern ice skates. Adding edges to ice skates was invented by the Dutch in the 13th or 14th century. According to figure skating historian James R. Hines, the Dutch revolutionized ice skating in the 13th century by sharpening the blades of ice skates, which were made of steel at the time. These ice skates were made of steel, with sharpened edges on the bottom to aid movement. The construction of modern ice skates has remained largely the same. The only other major change in ice skate design came soon after. Around the same time period as steel edges were added to ice skates, another Dutchman, a table maker's apprentice, experimented with the height to width ratio of the metal blade of the ice skates, producing a design that remains almost unaltered to this day. The user of the skates no longer needed to use sticks for propulsion, and movement on skates was now freer and more stable.\nThe first depiction of ice skating in a work of art was made in the 15th century. The picture, of Saint Lidwina, patron saint of ice skaters, falling on the ice was the first work of art to feature ice skating as a main theme. Another important aspect of the painting is a man seen in the background, who is skating on one leg. This means that the ice skates the man was wearing must have sharp edges similar to those found on modern ice skates.\nSocial status of ice skating.\nIn the Netherlands, ice skating was considered proper for all classes of people to participate in, as shown in many pictures by the Old Masters. Skating was used as a means of transportation because the waterways which connected Dutch towns sometimes froze for months on end, hampering the economy.\nIn other regions, participation in ice skating was limited to only members of the upper classes. Emperor Rudolf II of the Holy Roman Empire enjoyed ice skating so much he had a large ice carnival constructed in his court in 1610 in order to popularize the sport. King Louis XVI of France brought ice skating to Paris during his reign. Madame de Pompadour, Napoleon I, Napoleon III, and the House of Stuart were, among others, royal and upper class fans of ice skating.\n1500s to 1800s.\nIn 1572, the Dutch used ice skates during their revolt against Spain in Amsterdam. While the Spanish wore clogs with spikes to travel over the frozen sea during battles, the Dutch fought on bladed skates, which allowed them to defeat their enemy.\nIn 1713, bladed ice skates were used for the first time in North America. The next step in the development of ice skating came in 1744, when the first ice skating association in the world was formed, the Edinburgh Skating Club. The first instructional book concerning ice skating was published in London in 1772. The book, written by a British artillery lieutenant, Robert Jones, describes basic figure skating forms such as circles and figure eights. The book was written solely for men, as women did not normally ice skate in the late 18th century. It was with the publication of this manual that ice skating split into its two main disciplines, speed skating and figure skating.\nIn 1813, Jean Garcin published the first book about ice skating in France, entitled \"Le vrai pattineur\" (\"The True Skater\"). Garcin was the first to place equal importance on skating backward to skating forward, necessary for the quickly increasing figures developed during the 19th century. He also emphasized artistry over athleticism and related skating to ballet. He was a member of the Gilets Rouge (or Red Waistcoats), a French skating fraternity.\nIn 1830, the London Skating Club was formed; as of 2011, it was the oldest skating club still in existence. The first skating club in North America was founded in St. John, New Brunswick, in 1833. In 1849, the Philadelphia Skating Club was formed; its name was changed to the Philadelphia Skating Club and Humane Society in 1861. The club was one of the first members of the U.S. Figure Skating Association (now known as U.S. Figure Skating) and continues to exist today.\nBy the last 25 years of the 19th century, skating became a rapidly growing and popular sport in Canada, with clubs being founded in many cities and competitions occurring frequently within and between them. In 1888, the Amateur Skating Association, which oversaw figure skating and speed skating in Canada, was formed in Montreal. Eventually, the name of the Canadian federation was changed to Skate Canada in 2000.\nGeorge Anderson, who was the second major British writer about figure skating and president of the skating club in Glasgow for many years, wrote \"The Art of Skating\" in 1852, under the pseudonym Cyclos. At the time of the book's publication, it included a section about skating in England and Scotland during the time. A second edition was published in 1868, under Anderson's name but without the historical section, which had taken up half of the previous edition.\nEdward F. Gill wrote \"The Skater's Manual\", the first book about skating written in North America, in 1863.\nIn the winter of 1858\u201359, a skating pond opened in New York's Central Park, re-igniting interest in the activity. Sex segregation at ponds disappeared early on and skating became \"one of the only activities that single men and women could do together unchaperoned.\" Additional skating ponds opened in Brooklyn, Hoboken, Jersey City, and Staten Island as the activity grew in popularity. The Skating Club of New York was founded in 1863. Jackson Haines, an American, was the first skater to incorporate ballet and dance movements into his skating, as opposed to focusing on tracing patterns on the ice. He also invented the sit spin and developed a shorter, curved blade for figure skating that allowed for easier turns. Haines was also the first to wear blades that were permanently attached to the boot. He won the first Championships of America held in Troy, New York in 1864.\nFor a time, the stiff and rigid British figure skating forms dominated in America, trumping Haines's more artistic way of skating. Haines instead attempted to spread his innovations in ice skating style in Europe, gaining success in such countries as Sweden and Austria. His style was still opposed by both his American colleagues as well as skaters from Victorian England, who continued to advocate a stiffer and more restrained style of skating. Haines continued to add new dance elements to his routines, and astounded a crowd in Vienna in the winter of 1868. Haines's performance led to the establishment of the Vienna School, which continued to develop Haines's artistic style. Although Haines himself died at the age of 35 in 1875 from the effects of tuberculosis, his influence lived on. His students at the Vienna School established the International Skating Union in 1892, the first international ice skating organization, and one of the oldest sports associations still in existence. It was founded in Scheveningen, in the Netherlands, but is now based in Lausanne, Switzerland. The Union created the first codified set of figure skating rules.\nThe Vienna Skating Club was formed in 1867; according to Hines, it was still in existence in 2011. Figure skating historian Nigel Brown said this about the development of figure skating in the late 1800s: \"To the Viennese, skating meant primarily something to see, to the English it was something to do\". For writer Ellyn Kestnbaum, not only does this distinction applies to the difference between spectator and participatory sports, it \"also points to skating's perennial status as both sport and performing art\".\nThe first time the new sport was called \"figure skating\" was by H.E. Vandervell and T. Maxwell Witham, in their book \"Figure Skating\", which was published in 1869. The first attempts to make artificial ice occurred during the 1870s in England and the U.S. The first notable indoor ice rink was made in 1876, by John Gamgee, in Chelsea along the north bank of the Thames River; it measured 24 by 40 feet. By the end of the 19th century, many major cities in Europe and North America had indoor rinks. In 1879, the first artificial ice rink opened in the U.S., at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Also in 1879, the Madison Square Garden rink was the venue for the Grand Carnival, which Hines called \"large and spectacular\" and was one of the carnivals popular in the U.S. and Europe, especially by the Vienna Skating Club, at the time. Carnivals, beginning in the 1870s, provided opportunities for skaters of all skills and levels to present shows for their parents and families, and for the general public.\nIn 1879, the National Skating Association, the oldest national national federation overseeing the rules of speed skating and figure skating (now known as British Ice Skating), was formed. It was organized to regulate the rules of speed skating, but figure skaters joined within a year of its forming.\nThe first international figure skating competition was held in Vienna in 1882; according to Kestnbaum, it established the precedence for future competitions. Sponsored by the Vienna Skating Club, competitors from Vienna came in first and second place, with Leopold Frey, who was a student of Haines', coming in second place. Axel Paulsen from Norway came in third place. Competitors were judged on 23 compulsory figures, a four-minute free skating program, and special figures.\nThe International Skating Union (ISU), the organization that oversees the sport of figure skating, was founded in 1892, in the Netherlands. Pim Mulier from the Netherlands was the ISU's first president. The ISU adopted the international style of skating instead of the American style and English style. The American style disappeared by World War I; the English style continued into the 21st century. According to Hines, the \"English and international styles can be described by the body style employed for their figures\". The English style employed a rigid body style in combined skating; the international style included more use of the skater's arms. The American style of skating, which included dancing on the ice and figures that were not tied to special figures, tended to combine the English and international styles. Grapevines, which Hines calls \"a uniquely North American innovation\", required skaters to keep both feet on the ice for the duration of the figure.\nThe first World Championships was held in 1896, in St. Petersburg, Russia. Only male skaters competed. The Cambridge Skating Club was founded in 1898. In 2011, it was one of the only outdoor natural skating facilities still in existence and was a member of U.S. Figure Skating. As Hines reports, it depended upon weather patterns; as of 2011, the club was able to provide about 30 days of skating per winter. Theresa Weld, Nathaniel Niles, Sherwin Badger, Roger Turner, Maribel Vinson, Joan Tozzer, and Bernard Fox trained there in the years before World War II.\nEarly 20th century.\nIn the beginning of the 20th century, figure skating was lent a more athletic character through the developments of Ulrich Salchow, a Swede. Salchow was considered the greatest figure skater of his day by far, winning the world championships ten times. The crowning achievement of his career, however, was his development of ice skates with slightly serrated blades, giving enough traction on the ice to launch long jumps. The salchow jump, still used prominently in figure skating routines today, is named for him, and was considered Salchow's greatest contribution to figure skating.\nThe number of carnivals increased dramatically by the early 20th century, due to increase in numbers of skating clubs, the development of artificial ice, and the increase of availability of covered and indoor ice rinks. Their heyday occurred between World War I and World War II.\nFigure skating's Olympic debut came at the 1908 Summer Olympics\u2014it was the first winter sport introduced to the Olympics. The competition included men's singles, ladies' singles, pairs, and special figures.\nThe largest public ice rink in the world, the Sportpalast in Berlin, opened in the 1910s. The rink had an area of 2,400\u00a0m2 (25,800\u00a0ft2), with dimensions of 60\u00a0m by 40\u00a0m (197\u00a0ft by 131\u00a0ft). The new rink increased both the public interest in figure skating as well as the number of people who practiced the sport. Many new figure skaters came from Germany, among them Werner Rittberger and Charlotta Oelsch\u00e4gel. Rittberger invented another jump, at first named eponymously, but eventually changed to the name it is known by today, the loop jump. Oelschl\u00e4gel won a championship in the United States at the age of 17, and had a professional career spanning ten years.\nNo major international championships were held from 1915 to 1921 due to World War I and the post-war recovery. In 1922, the World and European Championships were renewed and in 1924 figure skating was part of the first Winter Olympics, held in Chamonix, France. Norway's Sonja Henie and Austria's Karl Sch\u00e4fer dominated the sport during the inter-war period. Henie, a ten-time world champion, brought a new style to figure skating in both athletic practice and dress. Previously, female figure skaters had skated in bulky clothing and long skirts. Henie broke with tradition by wearing a short knee-length skirt during her routines. In addition, her fluid and unlabored movements and overall elegance were considered to be a major advancement for figure skating.\nIn 1924, the U.S. Figure Skating Association sponsored the first of annual association-wide carnivals held for three years in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. By that time, carnivals often featured professional and elite skaters. By the 1930s, carnivals began to dwindle in number and influence due to the formation of professional traveling ice shows, although a few have survived into the 21st century, including in Dallas, Texas, and by the Skating Club of Boston, which produced a carnival called Ice Chips, the oldest carnival in existence and presented annually since 1912.\nAustrian men dominated the sport between World War I and II; collectively, Sch\u00e4fer, Willy B\u00f6ckl, and Fritz Kachler won 14 out of 18 World championships during those years. In the period from 1929 to 1936, Sch\u00e4fer won the European title eight times and the World title seven times. Herma Szabo won the World Championships in the women's discipline five times, between 1922 and 1926. During Henie's years of domination, beginning in 1927, Fritzi Burger, Melitta Brunner, Hilde Holovsky, and Liselotte Landbeck won 11 of the 20 silver and bronze medals contested at Worlds during that time. Burger earned the silver medal during two Winter Olympics. Austrian pairs teams won 20 medals at Worlds during this time, including gold medals by Helene Engelmann and Alfred Berger in 1922 and 1924, Szabo and Ludwig Wrede in 1925 and 1927, and Lily Scholtz and Otto Kaiser in 1929.\nAlthough the Russian Empire hosted the first World Championships and Nikolai Panin won gold in special figures at the 1908 Olympics, its successor state, the Soviet Union, was largely absent from international figure skating competitions for several decades.\nPost-World War II to present day.\nNot held from 1940 due to World War II, the European and World Championships returned in 1946. The construction of new ice rinks, built solely for ice skating, allowed much more intensive training and improved performance on the ice. This led to other changes in the sport, such as a heavier emphasis on the free skate, a move which disenchanted some spectators.\nIn 1952, ice dancing was added to the World Championships. It appeared at the 1968 Winter Olympics as a demonstration sport and was added as a medal sport at the 1976 Olympics.\nBecause of the years of war, Europe fell behind North America in terms of figure skating dominance. Many of the new top competitors came from the United States and Canada, bringing with them a style that emphasized speed, endurance, and dynamic movements. They included Americans Richard Button (who was the first skater to complete both the double Axel jump and a loop jump with three rotations), Hayes Alan Jenkins, David Jenkins, Tenley Albright, and Carol Heiss; and Canadians Barbara Ann Scott and Donald Jackson. In 1961, the crash of Sabena Flight 548 claimed the lives of the entire United States figure skating team and their coaches. The event sharply reduced American strength in the sport for a period but by the late 1960s the country began a resurgence led by Peggy Fleming.\nThe Soviet Union began appearing on the international scene in the late 1950s. Winning gold at the 1964 Winter Olympics, Ludmila Belousova / Oleg Protopopov began a forty-year Soviet/Russian gold medal streak in pair skating\u2014the longest in Olympic sports history, running from 1964 to 2006. Canadian men were on the podium at the World's Championships every year between 1982 and 1997 except for one year, 1996.\n1973 was the last year in which solid gold medals were awarded in figure skating. Once worth 60% of the score in single skating, compulsory figures steadily decreased in value to 20% and were eliminated from international competition after the 1989\u201390 season.\nSkaters were able to achieve greater speed with improvements in blade sharpening and water purification (affecting ice quality). According to S. Schonmetzler, average distances traveled during a singles' long program were 1100 metres for men and 970 metres for women in 1980, growing to 1320 m and 1150 m respectively by the 1986 World Championships. In 1992, women performed an element on average every 10.4 seconds and men every 12.8 seconds.\nFigure skaters were once subject to restrictive amateur status rules. In May 1990, the International Skating Union voted to allow skaters who were intending to skate professionally to return to ISU competition if they obtained their national association's permission. In June 1992, skaters who had already lost their eligibility were given an opportunity to apply for reinstatement in order to compete at the 1994 Winter Olympics. The Champions Series was introduced in 1995 and retitled the Grand Prix series in 1998. The Four Continents Figure Skating Championships were held for the first time in 1999 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.\nFollowing the 2002 Winter Olympics, and the 2002 Winter Olympics figure skating scandal, the classic 6.0 system of judging was retired, and the ISU Judging System (IJS), or New Judging System(NJS), was put in place. The 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy was the first Olympics to be judged using this protocol. Overall, the ISU Judging System has resulted in major shifts in program design, and technical scoring, and perpetual searching to \"game the system\" with each iteration of rule updates. In 2009, the first team event was founded in Tokyo, Japan, (World Team Trophy). After the 2009\u201310 season, the ice dancing competition was reduced from three segments to two by combining the compulsory and original dances into the short dance. The team event made its Olympic debut at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Beginning in the 2014\u201315 season, all disciplines are allowed to use music with lyrics or words, previously restricted to ice dancing.\nThe competitive figure skating season runs from August until the date of the World Figure Skating Championships, typically held in March. Competitions may include various pre-novice levels, novice, junior, and senior events. Since the 1980s, four skating has disappeared while synchronized skating and solo ice dance have grown in popularity. The first World Synchronized Skating Championships were held in 2000. In September 2014, the International Skating Union sent the IOC a formal proposal for the inclusion of synchronized skating in the Winter Olympics.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\n Media related to at Wikimedia Commons", "11152": "Figure skating\nIce sport performed on figure skates\nFigure skating is a sport in which individuals, pairs, or groups perform on figure skates on ice. It was the first winter sport to be included in the Olympic Games, with its introduction occurring at the 1908 Olympics in London. The Olympic disciplines are men's singles, women's singles, pair skating, and ice dance; the four individual disciplines are also combined into a team event, which was first included in the Winter Olympics in 2014. The non-Olympic disciplines include synchronized skating, Theater on Ice, and four skating. From intermediate through senior-level competition, skaters generally perform two programs (the short program and the free skate), which, depending on the discipline, may include spins, jumps, moves in the field, lifts, throw jumps, death spirals, and other elements or moves.\nFigure skaters compete at various levels from beginner up to the Olympic level (senior) at local, regional, sectional, national, and international competitions. The International Skating Union (ISU) regulates international figure skating judging and competitions. These include the Winter Olympics, the World Championships, the World Junior Championships, the European Championships, the Four Continents Championships, the Grand Prix series (senior and junior), and the ISU Challenger Series.\nThe sport is also associated with show business. Major competitions generally conclude with exhibition galas, in which the top skaters from each discipline perform non-competitive programs. Many skaters, both during and after their competitive careers, also skate in ice shows, which run during the competitive season and the off-season.\nTerminology.\nThe term \"professional\" in skating refers not to skill level but competitive status. Figure skaters competing at the highest levels of international competition are not \"professional\" skaters. They are sometimes referred to as amateurs, even though some earn money. Professional skaters include those who have lost their ISU eligibility and those who perform only in shows. They may also include former Olympic and World champions who have ended their competitive career, as well as skaters with little or no international competitive experience. In addition to performing in ice shows, professional skaters often compete in professional competitions, which are held throughout the world, each with its own format and rules.\nThe term \"figure skating\" is an English language term; the sport is called \"Eiskunstlauf\" in German and \"patinage artistique\" in French.\nFigure skates.\nThe most visible difference from ice hockey skates is that figure skates have a set of large, jagged teeth called \"toe picks\" on the front part of the blade. These are used primarily in jumping and should not be used for stroking or spins. If used during a spin, the toe pick will cause the skater to lose momentum, or move away from the center of the spin. Blades are mounted to the sole and heel of the boot with screws. Typically, high-level figure skaters are professionally fitted for their boots and blades at a reputable skate shop. Professionals are also employed to sharpen blades to individual requirements.\nBlades are about thick. When viewed from the side, the blade of a figure skate is not flat, but curved slightly, forming an arc of a circle with a radius of . This curvature is referred to as the \"rocker\" of the blade. The \"sweet spot\" is the part of the blade on which all spins are rotated; this is usually located near the stanchion of the blade, below the ball of the foot. The blade is also \"hollow ground\"; a groove on the bottom of the blade creates two distinct edges, inside and outside. The inside edge of the blade is on the side closest to the skater; the outside edge of the blade is on the side farthest from the skater. In figure skating, it is always desirable to skate on only one edge of the blade. Skating on both at the same time (which is referred to as a \"flat\") may result in lower skating skills scores. The apparently effortless power and glide across the ice exhibited by elite figure skaters fundamentally derives from efficient use of the edges to generate speed.\nSkates used in singles and pair skating have a set of large, jagged teeth called a toepick on the front of each blade. The toepicks are mainly used to help launch the skater into the air for the take-off when performing jumps. Ice dance blades have smaller toepicks than blades used for the other disciplines.\nDuring a spin, skaters use the sweet spot of the blade, which is one of two rockers to be found on a blade and is the roundest portion of the blade. The sweet spot is located just behind the toe pick and near the middle of the blade. The other rocker is the more general curvature of the blade when stroking or gliding.\nIce dancers' blades are about an inch shorter in the rear than those used by skaters in other disciplines, to accommodate the intricate footwork and close partnering in dance. Dancers' blades also have a smaller toepick as they do not require the large toepick used for jumping in the other"}, "descending_order": ["6193738", "11152", "4187191"], "permutation_1": ["11152", "4187191", "6193738"], "permutation_2": ["6193738", "4187191", "11152"], "permutation_3": ["11152", "4187191", "6193738"]}
{"id": "nq_5021859994305686924", "docs_added": {"45281": "Indigenous peoples\nPeoples who identify as Indigenous and have a special attachment to their traditional territory\nThere is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples, although in the 21st century the focus has been on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territory, and an experience of subjugation and discrimination under a dominant cultural model.\nEstimates of the population of Indigenous peoples range from 250 million to 600 million. There are some 5,000 distinct Indigenous peoples spread across every inhabited climate zone and inhabited continent of the world. Most Indigenous peoples are in a minority in the state or traditional territory they inhabit and have experienced domination by other groups, especially non-Indigenous peoples. Although many Indigenous peoples have experienced colonization by settlers from European nations, Indigenous identity is not determined by Western colonization.\nThe rights of Indigenous peoples are outlined in national legislation, treaties and international law. The 1989 International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples protects Indigenous peoples from discrimination and specifies their rights to development, customary laws, lands, territories and resources, employment, education and health. In 2007, the United Nations (UN) adopted a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples including their rights to self-determination and to protect their cultures, identities, languages, ceremonies, and access to employment, health, education and natural resources.\nIndigenous peoples continue to face threats to their sovereignty, economic well-being, languages, cultural heritage, and access to the resources on which their cultures depend. In the 21st century, Indigenous groups and advocates for Indigenous peoples have highlighted numerous apparent violations of the rights of Indigenous peoples.\nEtymology.\n\"Indigenous\" is derived from the Latin word , meaning \"sprung from the land, native\". The Latin \"\" is based on the Old Latin \"in, within\" + \"gignere\" \"to beget, produce\". \"Indu\" is an extended form of the Proto-Indo-European \"en\" or \"in\".\nDefinitions.\nThere is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples in the United Nations or international law. Various national and international organizations, non-government organizations, governments, Indigenous groups and scholars have developed definitions or have declined to provide a definition.\nHistorical.\nAs a reference to a group of people, the term \"indigenous\" was first used by Europeans to differentiate the Indigenous peoples of the Americas from enslaved Africans. The first known use was by Sir Thomas Browne in 1646, who wrote \"and although in many parts thereof there be at present swarms of \"Negroes\" serving under the \"Spaniard\", yet were they all transported from \"Africa\", since the discovery of \"Columbus\"; and are not indigenous or proper natives of \"America\".\"\nIn the 1970s, the term was used as a way of linking the experiences, issues, and struggles of groups of colonized people across international borders. At this time 'indigenous people(s)' also began to be used to describe a legal category in Indigenous law created in international and national legislation. The use of the plural 'peoples' recognizes the cultural differences between various Indigenous peoples.\nThe first meeting of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP) was on 9 August 1982 and this date is now celebrated as the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples.\nRecent.\nIn the 21st century, the concept of Indigenous peoples is understood in a wider context than only the colonial experience. The focus has been on self-identification as indigenous peoples, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territory, and an experience of subjugation and discrimination under a dominant cultural model.\nUnited Nations.\nNo definition of Indigenous peoples has been adopted by a United Nations agency. The Secretariat of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues states, \"in the case of the concept of 'indigenous peoples', the prevailing view today is that no formal universal definition of the term is necessary, given that a single definition will inevitably be either over- or under-inclusive, making sense in some societies but not in others.\"\nHowever, a number of UN agencies have provided statements of coverage for particular international agreements concerning Indigenous peoples or \"working definitions\" for particular reports.\nThe International Labour Organization's (ILO) Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (ILO Convention No. 169), states that the convention covers:peoples in independent countries who are regarded as indigenous on account of their descent from the populations which inhabited the country, or a geographical region to which the country belongs, at the time of conquest or colonisation or the establishment of present state boundaries and who, irrespective of their legal status, retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions.The convention also covers \"tribal peoples\" who are distinguished from Indigenous peoples and described as \"tribal peoples in independent countries whose social, cultural and economic conditions distinguish them from other sections of the national community and whose status is regulated wholly or partially by their own customs or traditions or by special laws or regulations.\"\nThe convention states that self-identification as indigenous or tribal is a fundamental criterion for determining the groups to which the convention applies. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples does not define Indigenous peoples but affirms their right to self-determination including determining their own identity.\nInter-American Commission on Human Rights.\nThe Inter-American Commission on Human Rights does not provide a definition of Indigenous peoples stating that, \"such a definition is not necessary for purposes of protecting their human rights.\" In determining coverage of Indigenous peoples, the commission uses the criteria developed in documents such as ILO Convention No. 169 and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The commission states that self-identification as indigenous is a fundamental criterion.\nWorld Bank.\nThe World Bank states, \"Indigenous Peoples are distinct social and cultural groups that share collective ancestral ties to the lands and natural resources where they live, occupy or from which they have been displaced.\"\nAmnesty International.\nAmnesty International does not provide a definition of Indigenous peoples but states that they can be identified according to certain characteristics:\nScholars.\nAcademics and other scholars have developed various definitions of Indigenous peoples. In 1986\u201387, Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ednez Cobo, developed the following \"working definition\" :Indigenous communities, peoples, and nations are those that, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing in those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop, and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal systems.Mart\u00ednez Cobo states that the following factors are relevant to historical continuity: occupation of ancestral lands, or at least of part of them; common ancestry with the original occupants of these lands; cultural factors such as religion, tribalism, dress, etc.; language; residence in certain parts of the country, or in certain regions of the world; and other relevant factors.In 2004, James Anaya, defined Indigenous peoples as \"living descendants of pre-invasion inhabitants of lands now dominated by others. They are culturally distinct groups that find themselves engulfed by other settler societies born of forces of empire and conquest\".\nIn 2012, Tuck and Yang propose a criterion based on accounts of origin: \"Indigenous peoples are those who have creation stories, not colonization stories, about how we/they came to be in a particular place \u2013 indeed how we/they came to be a place. Our/their relationships to land comprise our/their epistemologies, ontologies, and cosmologies\". Indigenous peoples such as the Maasai and the M\u0101ori have oral traditional histories involving migration to their current location from somewhere else.\nAnthropologist Manvir Singh states that the term may lack coherence, pointing to inconsistencies in which ethnic groups are called Indigenous or not, and notes several scholars who suggest that it instead acts as a relabeling of discredited and colonial ideas about \"primitive\" people. Singh states that some Indigenous people argue that the term and identity has resulted in pressure to appear \"primordial\" and \"unchanging\", and erases complex and modern identities.\nOther views\nIt is sometimes argued that all Africans are Indigenous to Africa, all Asians are Indigenous to parts of Asia, or that there can be no Indigenous peoples in countries which did not experience large-scale Western settler colonialism. Many countries have avoided the term Indigenous peoples or have denied that Indigenous peoples exist in their territory, and have classified minorities who identify as Indigenous in other ways, such as 'hill tribes' in Thailand, 'scheduled tribes' in India, 'national minorities' in China, 'cultural minorities' in the Philippines, 'isolated and alien peoples' in Indonesia, and various other terms.\nHistory.\nClassical antiquity.\nGreek sources of the Classical period acknowledge Indigenous people whom they referred to as \"Pelasgians\". Ancient writers saw these people either as the ancestors of the Greeks, or as an earlier group of people who inhabited Greece before the Greeks. The disposition and precise identity of this former group is elusive, and sources such as Homer, Hesiod and Herodotus give varying, partially mythological accounts. Dionysius of Halicarnassus in his book, \"Roman Antiquities\", gives a synoptic interpretation of the Pelasgians based on the sources available to him then, concluding that Pelasgians were Greek.\nAfrica.\nIn European late antiquity, many Berbers, Copts and Nubians of north Africa converted to various forms of Christianity under Roman rule, although elements of traditional religious beliefs were retained. Following the Arab invasions of North Africa in the 7th century, many Berbers were enslaved or recruited into the army. The majority of Berbers, however, remained nomadic pastoralists who also engaged in trade as far as sub-Saharan Africa. Coptic Egyptians remained in possession of their lands and many preserved their language and Christian religion. By the 10th century, however, the majority of the population of north Africa spoke Arabic and practiced Islam.From 1402, the Guanche of the Canary Islands resisted Spanish attempts at colonization. The islands finally came under Spanish control in 1496. Mohamed Adhikari has called the conquest of the islands a genocide.\nEarly 15th-century Portuguese exploration of the west coast of Africa was motivated by a quest for gold and crusading against Islam. Portugal's first attempt at colonization in what is now Senegal ended in failure. In the 1470s, the Portuguese established a fortified trading post on the West coast of Africa, south of the Akan goldfields. The Portuguese engaged in extensive trade of goods for gold and, in later years, slaves for their sugar plantations in the islands off West Africa and in the New World. In 1488, Portuguese ships rounded the Cape of Good Hope and by the 17th century, Portugal had established seaborn trading routes and fortified coastal trading posts from West Africa to India and Southern China, and a settler colony in Brazil.\nIn 1532, the first African slaves were transported directly to the Americas. The trade in slaves expanded sharply in the 17th century, with the involvement of the French, Dutch and English, before declining in the 19th century. At least 12\u00a0million slaves were transported from Africa. The slave trade increased inter-tribal warfare and stunted population growth and economic development in the west African interior.\nAmericas.\nIndigenous encounters with Europeans increased during the age of discovery. The Europeans were motivated by a range of factors including trade, the exploitation of natural resources, spreading Christianity, and establishing strategic military bases, colonies and settlements.\nFrom 1492, the Arawak peoples of the Caribbean islands encountered Spanish colonizers initially led by Christopher Columbus. The Spanish enslaved some of the native population and forced others to work on farms and gold mines in a system of labor called \"encomienda\". Spanish settlements spread from Hispaniola to Puerto Rico, the Bahamas and Cuba, leading to a severe decline in the Indigenous populations from disease, malnutrition, settler violence and cultural disruption.\nIn the 1520s, the peoples of Mesoamerica encountered the Spanish who entered their lands in search of gold and other resources. Some indigenous peoples chose to ally with the Spanish to end Aztec rule. The Spanish incursions led to the conquest of the Aztec Empire and its fall. The Cempoalans, Tlaxcalans and other allies of the Spanish were given some autonomy, but the Spanish were de facto rulers of Mexico. Smallpox devastated the indigenous population and aided the Spanish conquest.\nIn 1530, the Spanish sailed south from Panama to the lands of the Inca Empire in the west of South America. The Inca, weakened by a smallpox epidemic and civil war, were defeated by the Spanish at Cajamarca in 1532, and the emperor Atahualpa was captured and executed. The Spanish appointed a puppet emperor and captured the Inca capital of Cuzco with the support of a number of native peoples. The Spanish established a new capital in 1535 and defeated an Inca rebellion in 1537, thus consolidating the conquest of Peru.\nIn the 1560s, the Spanish established colonies in Florida and in 1598 founded a colony in New Mexico. However, the heartland of the Spanish colonies remained New Spain (including Mexico and most of Central America) and Peru (including most of South America).\nIn the 17th century, French, English and Dutch trading posts multiplied in northern America to exploit whaling, fishing and fur trading. French settlements progressed up the St Lawrence river to the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi to Louisiana. English and Dutch settlements multiplied down the Atlantic coast from modern Massachusetts to Georgia. Native peoples formed alliances with the Europeans in order to promote trade, preserve their autonomy, and gain allies in conflicts with other native peoples. However, horses and new weapons made inter-tribal conflicts more deadly and the native population was devastated by introduced diseases. Native peoples also experienced losses from violent conflict with the colonists and the progressive dispossession of their traditional lands.In 1492, the population of the Americas as a whole was about 50 to 100\u00a0million. By 1700, introduced diseases had reduced the native population by 90%. European migration and transfer of slaves from Africa reduced the native population to a minority. By 1800 the population of North America comprised about 5\u00a0million Europeans and their descendants, one million Africans and 600,000 indigenous Americans.\nNative populations also encountered new animals and plants introduced by Europeans. These included pigs, horses, mules, sheep and cattle; wheat, barley, rye, oats, grasses and grapevines. These exotic animals and plants radically transformed the local environment and disrupted traditional agriculture and hunting practices.\nOceania.\nThe indigenous populations of the Pacific had increasing contact with Europeans in the 18th century as British, French and Spanish expeditions explored the region. The natives of Tahiti had encounters with the expeditions of Wallis (1766), Bougainville (1768), Cook (1769) and many others before being colonized by the French. The indigenous inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands first encountered Europeans in 1778 when Cook explored the region. Following increasing contact with European missionaries, traders and scientific expeditions, the indigenous population fell before their lands were annexed by the United States in 1893.\nThe M\u0101ori of New Zealand also had sporadic encounters with Europeans in the 17th and 18th centuries. Following encounters with Cook's exploration parties in 1769\u201370, New Zealand was visited by numerous European and North American whaling, sealing, and trading ships. From the early 19th century, Christian missionaries began to settle New Zealand, eventually converting most of the M\u0101ori population. The M\u0101ori population declined to around 40% of its pre-contact level during the 19th century; introduced diseases were the major factor. New Zealand became a British Crown colony in 1841.\nThe Aboriginal inhabitants of Australia, after brief encounters with European explorers in the 17th and 18th centuries, had extensive contact with Europeans when the continent was progressively colonized by the British from 1788. During colonization, the Aboriginal people experienced depopulation from disease and settler violence, dispossession of their land, and severe disruption of their traditional cultures. By 1850, indigenous peoples were a minority in Australia.\nEuropean justifications for colonization.\nFrom the 15th to the 19th centuries, European powers used a number of rationales for the colonization of newly encountered lands populated by indigenous peoples. These included a duty to spread the Gospel to non-Christians, to bring civilization to barbarian peoples, a natural law right to explore and trade freely with other peoples, and a right to settle and cultivate uninhabited or uncultivated land which they considered \"terra nullius\" (\"no one's land\").\nRobert J. Miller, Jacinta Ruru, Larissa Behrendt and Tracey Lindberg argue that European powers rationalized their colonization of the New World by the discovery doctrine, which they trace back to papal decrees authorizing Spain and Portugal to conquer newly discovered non-Christian lands and convert their populations to Christianity. Kent McNeil, however, states, \"While Spain and Portugal favoured discovery and papal grants because it was generally in their interests to do so, France and Britain relied more on symbolic acts, colonial charters, and occupation.\" Benton and Strauman argue that European powers often adopted multiple, sometimes contradictory, legal rationales for their acquisition of territory as a deliberate strategy in defending their claims against European rivals.\nSettler independence and continuing colonialism.\nAlthough the establishment of colonies throughout the world by various European powers aimed to expand those powers' wealth and influence, settler populations in some localities became anxious to assert their own autonomy. For example, settler independence movements in thirteen of the British American colonies were successful by 1783, following the American Revolutionary War. This resulted in the establishment of the United States of America as an entity separate from the British Empire. The United States continued and expanded European colonial doctrine through adopting a version of the discovery doctrine as law in 1823 with the US Supreme Court case \"Johnson v. McIntosh\". Statements at the \"Johnson\" court case illuminated the United States' support for the principles of the discovery doctrine:The United States ... [and] its civilized inhabitants now hold this country. They hold, and assert in themselves, the title by which it was acquired. They maintain, as all others have maintained, that discovery gave an exclusive right to extinguish the Indian title of occupancy, either by purchase or by conquest; and gave also a right to such a degree of sovereignty, as the circumstances of the people would allow them to exercise. ... [This loss of native property and sovereignty rights was justified, the Court said, by] the character and religion of its inhabitants ... the superior genius of Europe ... [and] ample compensation to the [Indians] by bestowing on them civilization and Christianity, in exchange for unlimited independence.\nPopulation and distribution.\n21st-century estimates of the population of Indigenous peoples range from 250 million to 750\u00a0million. In 2007, Mirjan Hirch, a researcher with the Center for World Indigenous Studies, estimated the population at 750 million to a billion, comprising six to seven thousand distinct peoples. The United Nations estimated in 2009 that there were over 370\u00a0million Indigenous people living in over 90 countries worldwide, belonging to at least 5,000 distinct peoples. In 2011, the World Bank estimated 300 million indigenous peoples, including 23 million in Latin America, 106 million in China, 95 million in South Asia, 30 million in Southeast Asia, 22 million in Africa, 15 million in the Arab States and 9 million in the rest of the world. The International Labor Organization in 2019 estimated, based on census data, that there were 476 million Indigenous people in 58 countries. Both the UN and the ILO described their estimates as minimums with the latter calculated using \"the most reliable lower bound estimates available.\" \nAs there is no universally accepted definition of Indigenous Peoples, their classification as such varies between countries and organizations. In the Americas, Australia and New Zealand, Indigenous status is often applied unproblematically to groups descended from the peoples who lived there prior to European settlement. However, In Asia and Africa, Indigenous status has sometimes been rejected by certain peoples, denied by governments or applied to peoples who may not be considered \"Indigenous\" in other contexts. The concept of indigenous peoples is rarely used in Europe, where very few indigenous groups are recognized, with the exception of groups such as the S\u00e1mi.\nEnvironmental and economic benefits of the Indigenous stewardship of land.\nA WRI report mentions that \"tenure-secure\" Indigenous lands generates billions and sometimes trillions of dollars' worth of benefits in the form of carbon sequestration, reduced pollution, clean water and more. It says that tenure-secure Indigenous lands have low deforestation rates, they help to reduce GHG emissions, control erosion and flooding by anchoring soil, and provide a suite of other local, regional and global ecosystem services.\nHowever, many of these communities find themselves on the front lines of the deforestation crisis, and their lives and livelihoods threatened.\nIndigenous peoples and the environment.\nMisconceptions about the historical relationship between Indigenous populations and their landbase has informed some Westerners view of California's \"wild Eden\", which may influence policy decisions about the \"wilderness\". Some academics assumed that the only pre-Colonial human interactions with nature were as \"hunter-gatherers\". Others say that the relationship was one of \"calculated tempered use of nature as active agents of environmental change and stewardship\". They argue that a view of \"wilderness\" as uninhabited nature has resulted in removal of Indigenous inhabitants to preserve \"the wild\", and that depriving the land of traditional Indigenous practices such as controlled burns, harvesting, and seed scattering has yielded dense understory shrubbery or tickets of young trees which are inhospitable to life. Recent studies indicate that Indigenous peoples used land sustainably, without causing substantial losses of biodiversity, for thousands of years.\nA goal is to ascertain an unbiased view of Indigenous practices of resource management. Historical literature, archaeological findings, ecological field studies, and Native Peoples' cultures show indications that Indigenous land management practices were largely successful in promoting habitat heterogeneity, increasing biodiversity, and maintaining certain vegetation types, sustaining human lives while conserving natural resources.\nRecently, it has come to light that the deforestation rate of Indonesian rainforests has been far greater than estimated. Such a rate could not have been the product of globalization as understood before; rather, it seemed that ordinary local people dependent on these forests for their livelihoods are in fact \"joining distant corporations in creating uninhabitable landscapes.\"\nIn eastern Penan, three categories of misrepresentation are noticeable: The Molong concept is purely a stewardship notion of resource management. Communities or individuals take ownership of specific trees, maintaining and harvesting from them sustainably over a long period of time. Some feel this practice has been romanticized in environmentalist writings. Landscape features and particularly their names in local languages provided geographical and historical information for Penan people; whereas in environmentalist accounts, it has turned into a spiritual practice where trees and rivers represent forest spirits that are sacred to the Penan people. A typical stereotype of some environmentalists' approach to ecological ethnography is to present Indigenous \"knowledge\" of nature as \"valuable\" to the outside world because of its hidden medicinal benefits. In reality, eastern Penan populations do not identify a medicinal stream of \"knowledge\". These misrepresentations in the \"narrative\" of Indigeneity and \"value\" of Indigenous knowledge might have been helpful for Penan's people in their struggle to protect their environment, but it might also have disastrous consequences. What happens if another case did not fit in this romantic narrative, or another Indigenous knowledge did not seem beneficial to the outside world. These people were being uprooted in the first place because their communities did not fit well with the state's system of values.\nAt the 2024 United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP16), Nations agreed to a new permanent body for Indigenous peoples, which will allow them to advise and offer their view at biodiversity COPs directly.\nIndigenous peoples by region.\nIndigenous populations are distributed in regions throughout the globe. The numbers, condition and experience of Indigenous groups may vary widely within a given region. A comprehensive survey is further complicated by sometimes contentious membership and identification.\nAfrica.\nSub-Saharan Africa.\nIn the postcolonial period, the concept of specific Indigenous peoples within the African continent has gained wider acceptance, although not without controversy. The highly diverse and numerous ethnic groups that comprise most modern, independent African states contain within them various peoples whose situation, cultures and pastoralist or hunter-gatherer lifestyles are generally marginalized and set apart from the dominant political and economic structures of the nation. Since the late 20th century these peoples have increasingly sought recognition of their rights as distinct Indigenous peoples, in both national and international contexts.\nThough the vast majority of African peoples are \"indigenous\" in the sense that they originate from that continent, in practice, identity as an \"Indigenous people\" per the modern definition is more restrictive, and certainly not every African ethnic group claims identification under these terms. Groups and communities who do claim this recognition are those who, by a variety of historical and environmental circumstances, have been placed outside of the dominant state systems, and whose traditional practices and land claims often come into conflict with the objectives and policies implemented by governments, companies and surrounding dominant societies.\nNorth Africa.\nThe indigenous peoples of North Africa predominantly comprise the Berbers in the Maghreb and the Copts and Nubians in the Nile Valley. The vast majority of them have been Arabized after the Islamic conquests under the Rashidun and Umayyad caliphates.\nAmericas.\nIndigenous peoples of the Americas are broadly recognized as being those groups and their descendants who inhabited the region before the arrival of European colonizers and settlers (i.e., pre-Columbian). Indigenous peoples who maintain, or seek to maintain, traditional ways of life are found from the high Arctic north to the southern extremities of Tierra del Fuego.\nThe impacts of historical and ongoing European colonization of the Americas on Indigenous communities have been in general quite severe, with many authorities estimating ranges of significant population decline primarily due to disease, land theft and violence. Several peoples have become extinct, or very nearly so. But there are and have been many thriving and resilient Indigenous nations and communities.\nNorth America.\nNorth America is sometimes referred to by Indigenous peoples as Abya Yala or Turtle Island.\nIn Mexico, about 11\u00a0million people, or 9% of Mexico's total population, self-reported as Indigenous in 2015, making it the country with the highest Indigenous population in North America. In the southern states of Oaxaca (65.73%) and Yucat\u00e1n (65.40%), the majority of the population is Indigenous, as reported in 2015. Other states with high populations of Indigenous peoples include Campeche (44.54%), Quintana Roo, (44.44%), Hidalgo, (36.21%), Chiapas (36.15%), Puebla (35.28%), and Guerrero (33.92%).\nIndigenous peoples in Canada comprise the First Nations, Inuit and M\u00e9tis. The descriptors \"Indian\" and \"Eskimo\" have fallen into disuse in Canada. More currently, the term \"Aboriginal\" is being replaced with \"Indigenous\". Several national organizations in Canada changed their names from \"Aboriginal\" to \"Indigenous\". Most notable was the change of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANDC) to Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) in 2015, which then split into Indigenous Services Canada and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Development Canada in 2017. According to the 2016 Census, there are around 1,670,000 Indigenous people in Canada. There are currently over 600 recognized First Nations governments or bands spread across Canada, such as the Cree, Mohawk, Mikmaq, Blackfoot, Coast Salish, Innu, Dene and more, with distinctive Indigenous cultures, languages, art, and music. First Nations peoples signed 11 numbered treaties across much of what is now known as Canada between 1871 and 1921, except in parts of British Columbia.\nThe Inuit have achieved a degree of administrative autonomy with the creation in 1999 of the territories of Nunavik (in Northern Quebec), Nunatsiavut (in Northern Labrador) and Nunavut, which was until 1999 a part of the Northwest Territories. The autonomous territory of Greenland within the Kingdom of Denmark is also home to a recognized Indigenous and majority population of Inuit (about 85%) who settled the area in the 13th century, displacing the Indigenous European Greenlandic Norse.\nIn the United States, the combined populations of Native Americans, Inuit and other Indigenous designations totaled 2,786,652 (constituting about 1.5% of 2003 U.S. census figures). Some 563 scheduled tribes are recognized at the federal level, and a number of others recognized at the state level.\nCentral and South America.\nIn some countries (particularly in Latin America), Indigenous peoples form a sizable component of the overall national population\u00a0\u2013 in Bolivia, they account for an estimated 56\u201370% of the total nation, and at least half of the population in Guatemala and the Andean and Amazonian nations of Peru. In English, Indigenous peoples are collectively referred to by different names that vary by region, age and ethnicity of speakers, with no one term being universally accepted. While still in use in-group, and in many names of organizations, \"Indian\" is less popular among younger people, who tend to prefer \"Indigenous\" or simply \"Native, with most preferring to use the specific name of their tribe or Nation instead of generalities. In Spanish or Portuguese speaking countries, one finds the use of terms such as \u00edndios, \"pueblos ind\u00edgenas\", \"amerindios\", \"povos nativos\", \"povos ind\u00edgenas\", and, in Peru, \"Comunidades Nativas\" (Native Communities), particularly among Amazonian societies like the Urarina and Mats\u00e9s. In Chile, there the most populous indigenous peoples are the Mapuche in the Center-South and the Aymaras in the North. Rapa Nui of Easter Island, who are a Polynesian people, are the only non-Amerindian indigenous people in Chile.\nIndigenous peoples make up 0.4% of all Brazilian population, or about 700,000 people. Indigenous peoples are found in the entire territory of Brazil, although the majority of them live in Indian reservations in the North and Center-Western part of the country. On 18 January 2007, FUNAI reported that it had confirmed the presence of 67 different uncontacted peoples in Brazil, up from 40 in 2005. With this addition Brazil has now overtaken the island of New Guinea as the country having the largest number of uncontacted peoples.\nAsia.\nWest Asia.\nDue to changes in the demographic history of Palestine, there are competing claims that Jews and Palestinian Arabs are indigenous to the region. The argument entered the Israeli\u2013Palestinian conflict, with Jews claiming indigeneity, citing historical and religious connections to the land as their ancient homeland. Palestinians claim Indigenous status as a pre-existing population displaced by Jewish settlement, and currently constituting a minority in the State of Israel. In 2007, the Negev Bedouin were officially recognized as Indigenous peoples of Israel by the United Nations. This has been criticized both by scholars associated with the Israeli state, who dispute the Bedouin's claim to indigeneity, and those who argue that recognizing just one group of Palestinians as indigenous risks undermining others' claims and \"fetishizing\" nomadic cultures.\nSouth Asia.\nIndia's Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Indian Ocean are also home to several Indigenous groups such as the Andamanese of Strait Island, the Jarawas of Middle Andaman and South Andaman Islands, the Onge of Little Andaman Island and the uncontacted Sentinelese of North Sentinel Island.\nIn Sri Lanka, the Indigenous Vedda people constitute a small minority of the population today.\nNortheast Asia.\nAinu people are an ethnic group indigenous to Hokkaido, the Kuril Islands, and much of Sakhalin. As Japanese settlement expanded, the Ainu were pushed northward and fought against the Japanese in Shakushain's Revolt and Menashi\u2013Kunashir Rebellion, until by the Meiji period they were confined by the government to a reservation near Lake Akan in Hokkaido. In a ground-breaking 1997 decision involving the Ainu people of Japan, the Japanese courts recognized their claim in law, stating that \"If one minority group lived in an area prior to being ruled over by a majority group and preserved its distinct ethnic culture even after being ruled over by the majority group, while another came to live in an area ruled over by a majority after consenting to the majority rule, it must be recognized that it is only natural that the distinct ethnic culture of the former group requires greater consideration.\"\nThe Dzungar Oirats are indigenous to the Dzungaria in Northern Xinjiang.\nThe Sarikoli Pamiris are indigenous to Tashkurgan in Xinjiang.\nThe Tibetans are indigenous to Tibet.\nThe Ryukyuan people are indigenous to the Ryukyu Islands.\nThe languages of Taiwanese aborigines have significance in historical linguistics, since in all likelihood Taiwan was the place of origin of the entire Austronesian language family, which spread across Oceania.\nIn Hong Kong, the indigenous inhabitants of the New Territories are defined in the Sino-British Joint Declaration as people descended through the male line from a person who was in 1898, before Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory. There are several different groups that make up the indigenous inhabitants, the Punti, Hakka, Hoklo, and Tanka. All are nonetheless considered part of the Cantonese majority, although some like the Tanka have been shown to have genetic and anthropological roots in the Baiyue people, the pre-Han Chinese inhabitants of Southern China.\nThe Russians invaded Siberia and conquered the indigenous people in the 17th\u201318th centuries.\nNivkh people are an ethnic group indigenous to Sakhalin, having a few speakers of the Nivkh language, but their fisher culture has been endangered due to the development of oil field of Sakhalin from 1990s.\nIn Russia, definition of \"Indigenous peoples\" is contested largely referring to a number of population (less than 50,000 people), and neglecting self-identification, origin from indigenous populations who inhabited the country or region upon invasion, colonization or establishment of state frontiers, distinctive social, economic and cultural institutions. Thus, indigenous peoples of Russia such as Sakha, Komi, Karelian and others are not considered as such due to the size of the population (more than 50,000 people), and consequently they \"are not the subjects of the specific legal protections.\" The Russian government recognizes only 40 ethnic groups as indigenous peoples, even though there are 30 other groups to be counted as such. The reason of nonrecognition is the size of the population and relatively late advent to their current regions, thus indigenous peoples in Russia should be numbered less than 50,000 people.\nSoutheast Asia.\nThe Malay Singaporeans are the Indigenous people of Singapore, inhabiting it since the Austronesian migration. They had established the Kingdom of Singapura back in the 13th century. The name \"Singapore\" is an anglicisation of the Malay name \"Singapura\" which is derived from the Sanskrit word for 'lion city'. The native Malay name for the main island of Singapore is \"Pulau Ujong\".\nDayak People are one of the Indigenous groups of Borneo. It is a loose term for over 200 riverine and hill-dwelling ethnic groups, located in Borneo, each with its own dialect, customs, laws, territory, and culture, although common distinguishing traits are readily identifiable.\nThe Cham are the Indigenous people of the former state of Champa which was conquered by Vietnam in the Cham\u2013Vietnamese wars during Nam ti\u1ebfn. The Cham in Vietnam are only recognized as a minority, and not as an Indigenous people by the Vietnamese government despite being indigenous to the region.\nThe Degar (Montagnards) are indigenous to Central Highlands (Vietnam) and were conquered by the Vietnamese in the Nam ti\u1ebfn.\nThe Khmer Krom are the Indigenous people of the Mekong Delta and Saigon which were acquired by Vietnam from Cambodian King Chey Chettha II in exchange for a Vietnamese princess.\nIn Indonesia, there are 50 to 70\u00a0million people who are classified as Indigenous peoples by the local Indigenous rights advocacy group \"Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara\". However, the Indonesian government does not recognize the existence of indigenous peoples, classifying every Native Indonesian ethnic group as \"indigenous\" despite the clear cultural distinctions of certain groups. This problem is shared by many other countries in the ASEAN region.\nIn the Philippines, there are 135 ethno-linguistic groups, 110 of which are considered as Indigenous peoples by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples. The Indigenous people of Cordillera Administrative Region and Cagayan Valley in the Philippines are the Igorot people. The Indigenous peoples of Mindanao are the Lumad peoples and the Moro (Tausug, Maguindanao Maranao and others) who also live in the Sulu archipelago. There are also others sets of Indigenous peoples in Palawan, Mindoro, Visayas, and the rest central and south Luzon. The country has one of the largest Indigenous peoples population in the world. The recognition of the rights of Indigenous peoples was legally enshrined in 1997 with the Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act.\nIn Myanmar, indigenous peoples include the Shan, the Karen, the Rakhine, the Karenni, the Chin, the Kachin and the Mon. However, there are more ethnic groups that are considered indigenous, for example, the Akha, the Lisu, the Lahu or the Mru, among others.\nEurope.\nVarious ethnic groups have lived in Europe for millennia. However, the concept of Indigenous peoples is rarely used in the European context.\nIndigenous minority populations in Europe include the S\u00e1mi peoples of northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland and northwestern Russia (in an area also referred to as S\u00e1pmi); the Nenets of northern Russia, and the Inuit of Greenland, and the Irish travelers (also referred to as Pavees or Minc\u00e9rs) of Ireland. Some sources describe the S\u00e1mi as the only recognized Indigenous peoples in Europe, with others describing them as the only Indigenous people in the European Union.\nOther groups, particularly in Central, Western and Southern Europe, that might be considered to fit the description of Indigenous peoples in the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989, such as the Sorbs, are generally categorized as national minorities instead.\nOceania.\nAustralia.\nIn Australia, the Indigenous populations are the Aboriginal Australian peoples (comprising many different nations and language groups) and the Torres Strait Islander peoples (also with sub-groups). These two groups are often referred to as Indigenous Australians, although terms such as First Nations and First Peoples are also used.\nPacific Islands.\nPolynesian, Melanesian and Micronesian peoples originally populated many of the present-day Pacific Island countries in the Oceania region over the course of thousands of years. European, American, Chilean and Japanese colonial expansion in the Pacific brought many of these areas under non-Indigenous administration, mainly during the 19th century. During the 20th century, several of these former colonies gained independence and nation-states formed under local control. However, various peoples have put forward claims for Indigenous recognition where their islands are still under external administration; examples include the Chamorros of Guam and the Northern Marianas, and the Marshallese of the Marshall Islands. Some islands remain under administration from Paris, Washington, London or Wellington.\nThe remains of at least 25 miniature humans, who lived between 1,000 and 3,000 years ago, were recently found on the islands of Palau in Micronesia.\nIn most parts of Oceania, Indigenous peoples outnumber the descendants of colonists. Exceptions include Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii. In New Zealand, based on various factors including census data and self-identification, the proportion of full or part M\u0101ori of the population on 30 June 2021 was estimated to be 17%. M\u0101ori developed from Polynesian people who settled in New Zealand after migrations from other Pacific islands, probably in the 13th century. Many leaders of M\u0101ori nations (iwi) signed a written agreement with the British Crown in 1840, known as the Treaty of Waitangi.\nA majority of the Papua New Guinea population is Indigenous, with more than 700 different nationalities recognized in a total population of 8\u00a0million. The country's constitution and key statutes identify traditional or custom-based practices and land tenure, and explicitly set out to promote the viability of these traditional societies within the modern state. However, conflicts and disputes concerning land use and resource rights continue between indigenous groups, the government, and corporate entities.\nIndigenous rights and other issues.\nThe 1989 ILO Convention on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples mainly concerns non-discrimination but also covers indigenous peoples' rights to development, customary laws, lands, territories and resources, employment, education and health. By 2013, the convention had been ratified by 22 countries, mainly in Latin America.\nIn 2007, the United Nations (UN) adopted a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) specifying the collective rights of Indigenous peoples, including their rights to self-determination and to protect their cultures, identities, languages, ceremonies, and access to employment, health, education and natural resources. The declaration is not a formally binding treaty but some provisions might be considered customary international law. The declaration has been endorsed by at least 148 states but its provisions have not been consistently implemented.\nIndigenous peoples confront a diverse range of concerns associated with their status and interaction with other cultural groups, as well as changes in their inhabited environment. Some challenges are specific to particular groups; however, other challenges are commonly experienced.\nWherever Indigenous cultural identity is asserted, common societal issues and concerns arise. These concerns are often not unique to Indigenous groups. Despite the diversity of Indigenous peoples, they share common problems and issues in dealing with the prevailing, or invading, society. They are generally concerned that the cultures and lands of Indigenous peoples are being lost and that Indigenous peoples suffer both discrimination and pressure to assimilate into the surrounding or colonizing societies. This is borne out by the fact that the lands and cultures of nearly all of the peoples listed at the end of this article are under threat. Notable exceptions are the Sakha and Komi peoples (two northern Indigenous peoples of Russia), who now control their own autonomous republics within the Russian state, and the Canadian Inuit, who form a majority of the territory of Nunavut (created in 1999). Despite the control of their territories, many Sakha people have lost their lands as a result of the Russian Homestead Act, which allows any Russian citizen to own any land in the Far Eastern region of Russia.\nIn Australia, a landmark case, \"Mabo\" v \"Queensland\" (No 2), saw the High Court of Australia reject the idea of . This rejection ended up recognizing that there was a pre-existing system of law practiced by the Meriam people.\nA 2009 United Nations publication says:Although indigenous peoples are often portrayed as a hindrance to development, their cultures and traditional knowledge are also increasingly seen as assets. It is argued that it is important for the human species as a whole to preserve as wide a range of cultural diversity as possible, and that the protection of indigenous cultures is vital to this enterprise.\nHuman rights violations.\nAccording to Samuel Totten, some governments do not respect the rights of Indigenous peoples. In the latter part of the twentieth century the genocide of Indigenous peoples in Australia and Namibia attracted more attention from the international community including scholars and human rights organizations.\nThe Bangladeshi government has stated that there are \"no indigenous peoples in Bangladesh\". This statement has angered the Indigenous peoples of Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh, collectively known as the Jumma. Experts have protested against this move of the Bangladesh government and have questioned the government's definition of the term \"indigenous peoples\". This move by the Bangladesh government is seen by the Indigenous peoples of Bangladesh as another step by the Government to further erode their already limited rights.\nHindu Chams and Muslim Chams have both experienced religious and ethnic persecution and restrictions on their faith under the current Vietnamese government, with the Vietnamese state confiscating Cham property and forbidding Cham from observing their religious beliefs. Hindu temples were turned into tourist sites against the wishes of the Cham Hindus. In 2010 and 2013 several incidents occurred in Th\u00e0nh T\u00edn and Ph\u01b0\u01a1c Nh\u01a1n villages where Cham were murdered by Vietnamese. In 2012, Vietnamese police in Chau Giang village stormed into a Cham Mosque, stole the electric generator, and also raped Cham girls. Cham in the Mekong Delta have also been economically marginalized, with ethnic Vietnamese settling on land previously owned by Cham people with state support.\nThe Indonesian government has outright denied the existence of Indigenous peoples within the countries' borders. In 2012, Indonesia stated that 'The Government of Indonesia supports the promotion and protection of indigenous people worldwide\u00a0... Indonesia, however, does not recognize the application of the indigenous peoples concept\u00a0... in the country'. Along with the brutal treatment of the country's Papuan people (a conservative estimate places the violent deaths at 100,000 people in West New Guinea since Indonesian occupation in 1963, see Papua conflict) has led to Survival International condemning Indonesia for treating its Indigenous peoples as the worst in the world.\nThe Vietnamese viewed and dealt with the Indigenous Montagnards from the Central Highlands of Vietnam as \"savages\", which caused a Montagnard uprising against the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese were originally centered around the Red River Delta but engaged in conquest and seized new lands such as Champa, the Mekong Delta (from Cambodia) and the Central Highlands during Nam Tien. While the Vietnamese received strong Chinese influence in their culture and civilization and were Sinicized, and the Cambodians and Laotians were Indianized, the Montagnards in the Central Highlands maintained their own Indigenous culture without adopting external culture and were the true Indigenous of the region. To hinder encroachment on the Central Highlands by Vietnamese nationalists, the term \"Pays Montagnard du Sud-Indochinois\" (PMSI) emerged for the Central Highlands along with the indigenous being addressed by the name Montagnard. The tremendous scale of Vietnamese Kinh colonists flooding into the Central Highlands has significantly altered the demographics of the region. The anti-ethnic minority discriminatory policies by the Vietnamese, environmental degradation, deprivation of lands from the Indigenous people, and settlement of Indigenous lands by an overwhelming number of Vietnamese settlers led to massive protests and demonstrations by the Central Highland's indigenous ethnic minorities against the Vietnamese in January\u2013February 2001. This event gave a tremendous blow to the claim often published by the Vietnamese government that in Vietnam \"There has been no ethnic confrontation, no religious war, no ethnic conflict. And no elimination of one culture by another.\"\nIn May 2016, the Fifteenth Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) affirmed that Indigenous peoples are distinctive groups protected in international or national legislation as having a set of specific rights based on their linguistic and historical ties to a particular territory, prior to later settlement, development or occupation of a region. The session affirms that, since Indigenous peoples are vulnerable to exploitation, marginalization, oppression, forced assimilation, and genocide by nation states formed from colonizing populations or by different, politically dominant ethnic groups, individuals and communities maintaining ways of life indigenous to their regions are entitled to special protection.\nThe Indigenous people from Tanzania's Maasai community were reportedly subjected to eviction from their ancestral land to make way for a luxury game reserve by Otterlo Business Corporation in June 2022. The game reserve was reportedly being set up for the royals of the United Arab Emirates also linked to OBC or the Otterlo Business Corporation. According to lawyers and human rights groups and activists, approximately 30 Maasai people were injured by security forces in the process of eviction and delimiting a land area of . A 2019 UN report has described OBC as a 'UAE-based' luxury-game hunting company, granted a license to hunt by the Tanzanian government in 1992 for \"the UAE royal family to organize private hunting trips\", denying the Maasai people access to their own land.\nHealth issues.\nIn December 1993, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People, and requested UN specialized agencies to consider with governments and indigenous people how they can contribute to the success of the Decade of Indigenous People, commencing in December 1994. As a consequence, the World Health Organization (WHO), at its Forty-seventh World Health Assembly, established a core advisory group of Indigenous representatives with special knowledge of the health needs and resources of their communities, thus beginning a long-term commitment to the issue of the health of Indigenous peoples.\nThe WHO noted in 2003 that \"Statistical data on the health status of indigenous peoples is scarce. This is especially notable for indigenous peoples in Africa, Asia and eastern Europe\", but snapshots from various countries (where such statistics are available) show that indigenous people are in worse health than the general population, in advanced and developing countries alike: higher incidence of diabetes in some regions of Australia; higher prevalence of poor sanitation and lack of safe water among Twa households in Rwanda; a greater prevalence of childbirths without prenatal care among ethnic minorities in Vietnam; suicide rates among Inuit youth in Canada are eleven times higher than the national average; infant mortality rates are higher for Indigenous peoples everywhere.\nThe first UN publication on the State of the World's Indigenous Peoples revealed alarming statistics about indigenous peoples' health. Health disparities between indigenous and non-indigenous populations are evident in both developed and developing countries. Native Americans in the United States are 600 times more likely to acquire tuberculosis and 62% more likely to commit suicide than the non-Indian population. Tuberculosis, obesity, and type 2 diabetes are major health concerns for the indigenous in developed countries. Globally, health disparities touch upon nearly every health issue, including HIV/AIDS, cancer, malaria, cardiovascular disease, malnutrition, parasitic infections, and respiratory diseases, affecting indigenous peoples at much higher rates. Many causes of Indigenous children's mortality could be prevented. Poorer health conditions amongst indigenous peoples result from longstanding societal issues, such as extreme poverty and racism, but also the intentional marginalization and dispossession of Indigenous peoples by dominant, non-Indigenous populations and societal structures.\nRacism and discrimination.\nIndigenous peoples have frequently been subjected to various forms of racism and discrimination. Indigenous peoples have been denoted as being \"barbaric\", \"primitive\", \"savage\" or \"uncivilized\". These terms were commonly used during the heyday of European colonial expansion, and they are still being used by certain societies in modern times.\nDuring the 17th century, Europeans commonly labeled Indigenous peoples \"uncivilized\". Some philosophers, such as Thomas Hobbes (1588\u20131679), considered Indigenous people mere \"savages\". Others (especially literary figures in the 18th century) popularized the concept of \"noble savages\". Those who were close to the Hobbesian view tended to believe that they had a duty to \"civilize\" and \"modernize\" the Indigenous.\nSurvival International runs a campaign to stamp out media portrayals of Indigenous peoples as \"primitives\" or \"savages\".\nAfter World War I (1914\u20131918), many Europeans came to doubt the morality of the means which were used to \"civilize\" peoples. At the same time, the anti-colonial movement, and advocates for the rights of Indigenous peoples, argued that words such as \"civilized\" and \"savage\" were products and tools of colonialism, and they also argued that colonialism itself was savagely destructive. In the mid-20th century, European attitudes began to shift to the view that Indigenous and tribal peoples are the only peoples who should have the right to decide what should happen to their ancient cultures and their ancestral lands.\nCultural appropriation.\nNew Age and Neopagan adherents often look to the cultures of Indigenous peoples seeking to find ancient traditional truths and spiritual practices to appropriate into their lifestyles and worldviews.\nEnvironmental injustice.\n At an international level, Indigenous peoples have received increased recognition of their environmental rights since 2002, but few countries respect these rights in reality. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted by the General Assembly in 2007, established Indigenous peoples' right to self-determination, stating rights to manage natural resources, and cultural and intellectual property. In countries where these rights are recognized, land titling and demarcation procedures are often put on delay, or leased out by the state as concessions for extractive industries without consulting Indigenous communities.\nMany in the United States federal government are in favor of exploiting oil reserves in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where the Gwich'in Indigenous people rely on herds of caribou. Oil drilling could destroy thousands of years of culture for the Gwich'in. On the other hand, some of the Inupiat people, from another Indigenous community in the region, favor oil drilling because they could benefit economically.\nThe introduction of industrial agricultural technologies such as fertilizers, pesticides, and large plantation schemes have destroyed ecosystems that Indigenous communities formerly depended on, forcing resettlement. Development projects such as dam construction, pipelines and resource extraction have displaced large numbers of Indigenous peoples, often without providing compensation. Governments have forced Indigenous peoples off of their ancestral lands in the name of ecotourism and national park development. Indigenous women are especially affected by land dispossession because they must walk longer distances for water and fuel wood. These women also become economically dependent on men when they lose their livelihoods. Indigenous groups asserting their rights has most often resulted in torture, imprisonment, or death.\nThe building of dams can hurt Indigenous peoples by hurting the ecosystems that provide them water, food. For example, the Munduruku people in the Amazon rainforest are opposing the building of Tapaj\u00f3s dam with the help of Greenpeace.\nMost Indigenous populations are already subject to the deleterious effects of climate change. Climate change has not only environmental, but also human rights and socioeconomic implications for Indigenous communities. The World Bank acknowledges climate change as an obstacle to Millennium Development Goals, notably the fight against poverty, disease, and child mortality, in addition to environmental sustainability.\nUse of indigenous knowledge.\nIndigenous knowledge is considered as very important for issues linked with sustainability. Indigenous peoples play an essential role in conserving biodiversity around the world. An oft-cited statistic is that Indigenous peoples steward lands which comprise 80% of the world's biodiversity. In 2024, Fern\u00e1ndez-Llamazares et al. investigated the origin of this claim in \"Nature\" and found that it is without basis, also stating that \"biodiversity\" is broad and not precisely defineable, and that the claim may do more harm than good. With a specific description, such as \"natural lands\" (that being lands with low levels of ecological disturbance), it can be said that at least 37% of remaining natural lands fall within the territories of Indigenous peoples. Fern\u00e1ndez-Llamazares et al. state that the 80% claim \"could undermine these and other rigorous studies \u2014 as well as effective efforts to conserve biodiversity by Indigenous Peoples on the ground\".\nThe Western and Eastern Penan people are two major groups of Indigenous populations in Malaysia. The Eastern Penan are famous for their resistance to loggers threatening their natural resources, specifically Sago palms and various fruit bearing trees. Because of the Penan's international fame, environmentalists often visited the area to document such happenings and learn more about and from the people there, including their perspective on the land's invasion. \nEnvironmentalists such as Davis and Henley, who Brosius writes lumped all native groups of Malaysia into one homogeneous group with the same ideas and traditions, and lacked dialectical connections needed to deeply understand the Penan, lacked full knowledge of the situation's specific weight to the Indigenous peoples. The two embarked on a mission, stating they wished to help with conservation of the Penan's land resources, but Brosious states they were among the many who repackaged traditional knowledge into something that fit a Western narrative and agenda, and that Davis and Henley romanticized and misconstrued the traditional Penan concept of molong (meaning: \"to preserve\"\u00a0\u2013 the Penan marked trees for personal use and to preserve them for future harvesting of fruits or for materials).\nAnother common occurrence is to extend Indigenous knowledge beyond its limits and into unrelated meanings that western consumers find spiritually profound. This tendency of journalists extends beyond Davis and Henley. It serves non-Natives to add a narrative and value beyond that which already exists within the knowledge base of Indigenous peoples. Not only do these fictionalized accounts of some Indigenous knowledge and traditions skew the beliefs of onlookers, but they also contribute to cultural genocide as the actual spiritual and religious beliefs of the Indigenous people are disappeared and replaced with the westernized fiction.\nSee also.\n<templatestyles src=\"Div col/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["45281"], "permutation_1": ["45281"], "permutation_2": ["45281"], "permutation_3": ["45281"]}
{"id": "nq_-8470204240623408957", "docs_added": {"41677925": "Black Panther (film)\n2018 Marvel Studios film\nBlack Panther is a 2018 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. Produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, it is the 18th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The film was directed by Ryan Coogler, who co-wrote the screenplay with Joe Robert Cole, and it stars Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa / Black Panther alongside Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Sterling K. Brown, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, and Andy Serkis. In \"Black Panther\", T'Challa is crowned king of Wakanda following his father's death, but he is challenged by Killmonger (Jordan), who plans to abandon the country's isolationist policies and begin a global revolution.\nWesley Snipes planned to make a Black Panther film in 1992, but the project did not come to fruition. In September 2005, Marvel Studios listed a Black Panther film as one of ten films based on Marvel characters intended to be distributed by Paramount Pictures. Mark Bailey was hired to write a script in January 2011. \"Black Panther\" was officially announced in October 2014, and Boseman made his first appearance as the character in \"\" (2016). Cole and Coogler had joined by then, with additional casting in May. \"Black Panther\" was the first Marvel Studios film with a Black director and a predominantly Black cast. Principal photography took place from January to April 2017 at EUE/Screen Gems Studios in the Atlanta metropolitan area, and in Busan, South Korea.\n\"Black Panther\" premiered at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on January 29, 2018, and was released theatrically in the United States on February 16, as part of of the MCU. Critics praised its direction, writing, acting (particularly that of Boseman, Jordan, and Wright), costume design, production values, and soundtrack, but some criticized the visual effects. Many critics considered the film to be one of the best in the MCU and it was noted for its cultural significance. The National Board of Review and the American Film Institute named \"Black Panther\" one of the top-ten films of 2018. It grossed over $1.3\u00a0billion worldwide and broke numerous box office records, becoming the highest-grossing film directed by a Black filmmaker, the ninth-highest-grossing film at the time of its release, the third-highest-grossing film in the U.S. and Canada that year, and the second-highest-grossing film of 2018.\n\"Black Panther\" was nominated for seven awards at the 91st Academy Awards, winning three, and received numerous other accolades. It was the first superhero film to receive a Best Picture nomination, and the first MCU film to win an Academy Award. A sequel, \"\", was released on November 11, 2022, with Wright taking over as the lead following Boseman's death in 2020, while a third film is in development. An animated series, \"Eyes of Wakanda\", will be released in August 2025 on Disney+.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nPlot.\nThousands of years ago, five African tribes warred over a meteorite containing the metal vibranium. One warrior ingests a \"heart-shaped herb\" affected by the metal and gains superhuman abilities, becoming the first \"Black Panther\". He unites all but the Jabari Tribe to form the nation of Wakanda. Over centuries, the Wakandans use vibranium to develop advanced technologies and isolate themselves from the world by posing as an underdeveloped country. In 1992, Wakanda king T'Chaka visits his brother N'Jobu, who is working undercover in Oakland, California. T'Chaka accuses N'Jobu of assisting black-market arms dealer Ulysses Klaue with stealing vibranium from Wakanda. N'Jobu's partner reveals he is Zuri, another undercover Wakandan, and confirms T'Chaka's suspicions.\nIn the present day, following T'Chaka's death, his son T'Challa returns to Wakanda to assume the throne. He and Okoye, leader of the Dora Milaje, extract T'Challa's ex-lover Nakia from an undercover assignment so she can attend his coronation ceremony with his mother Ramonda and younger sister Shuri. At the ceremony, the Jabari Tribe's leader M'Baku challenges T'Challa for the crown in ritual combat without the benefit of the heart-shaped herb. T'Challa defeats M'Baku when he persuades him to yield rather than die.\nWhen Klaue and his accomplice Erik Stevens steal a Wakandan artifact from a London museum, T'Challa's friend and Okoye's husband W'Kabi urges him to bring Klaue back alive. T'Challa, Okoye, and Nakia travel to Busan, South Korea, where Klaue plans to sell the artifact to CIA agent Everett K. Ross. A firefight erupts, and Klaue attempts to flee but is caught by T'Challa, who reluctantly releases him to Ross's custody. Klaue tells Ross that Wakanda's international image is a front for a technologically advanced civilization. Erik attacks and extracts Klaue as Ross is gravely injured protecting Nakia. Rather than pursue Klaue, T'Challa takes Ross to Wakanda, where their technology can save him.\nWhile Shuri tends to Ross, T'Challa confronts Zuri about N'Jobu, since Erik wore a necklace that belonged to him. Zuri explains that N'Jobu had become disillusioned with Wakanda's isolationism and planned to share Wakanda's technology with people of African descent to help them overcome their oppressors, with Klaue's assistance. Before T'Chaka could apprehend N'Jobu, N'Jobu attacked Zuri, forcing T'Chaka to kill him. T'Chaka instructed Zuri to claim that N'Jobu had vanished and to leave behind N'Jobu's American son, N'Jadaka, to uphold the story. This boy grew up to become Erik, a U.S. black ops Navy SEAL who took on the nickname \"Killmonger.\" Meanwhile, Killmonger kills Klaue and brings his body to Wakanda. He is presented before the tribal elders, revealing himself as N'Jadaka and asserting his claim to the throne. Killmonger challenges T'Challa to ritual combat and kills Zuri; without the powers of the heart-shaped herb, T'Challa is severely injured and presumed dead after Killmonger throws him over a waterfall. Killmonger ingests the heart-shaped herb and orders the rest to be incinerated, but Nakia manages to extract one. Killmonger, backed by W'Kabi and his army, prepares to distribute shipments of Wakandan weapons to operatives worldwide.\nNakia, Shuri, Ramonda, and Ross flee to the Jabari Tribe for aid. They find a comatose T'Challa, rescued by the Jabari as repayment for sparing M'Baku's life. Healed by Nakia's herb, T'Challa returns to fight Killmonger, who also dons a nanotech suit similar to T'Challa's. W'Kabi and his army fight Shuri, Nakia, and the Dora Milaje while Ross remotely pilots a jet and shoots down the planes carrying vibranium weapons before they can leave Wakanda. M'Baku and the Jabari arrive to reinforce T'Challa. Confronted by Okoye, W'Kabi and his army stand down. Fighting in Wakanda's vibranium mine, T'Challa disrupts Killmonger's suit and stabs him. Killmonger refuses to be healed, choosing to die as a free man rather than be incarcerated; T'Challa shows him the Wakanda sunset, and Killmonger dies peacefully.\nT'Challa establishes an outreach center at the building where N'Jobu died, to be run by Nakia and Shuri. In a mid-credits scene, T'Challa appears before the United Nations to reveal Wakanda's true nature to the world. In a post-credits scene, Shuri helps Bucky Barnes with his rehabilitation.\nCast.\nAdditionally, Florence Kasumba and John Kani reprise their respective roles of Ayo and T'Chaka from \"Captain America: Civil War\"; Kani's son Atandwa Kani portrays a young T'Chaka. Wakandan elders in the film include Isaach de Bankol\u00e9 for the River Tribe,i Connie Chiume for the Mining Tribe,i Dorothy Steel for the Merchant Tribe, and Danny Sapani for the Border Tribe.i Sydelle Noel appears as Xoliswa, a member of the Dora Milaje. Marija Abney, Janeshia Adams-Ginyard, Maria Hippolyte, Marie Mouroum, J\u00e9nel Stevens, Zola Williams, Christine Hollingsworth, and Shaunette Ren\u00e9e Wilson also play Doras.i Nabiyah Be initially announced that she was playing criminal Tilda Johnson, but her character was simply named Linda in the final film due to Gabrielle Dennis being cast as Johnson in the second season of \"Luke Cage\".i Comedian Trevor Noah voices Griot, a Wakandan ship A.I., Black Panther co-creator Stan Lee has a cameo as a patron in the South Korean casino, and Sebastian Stan makes an uncredited appearance in the post-credits scene reprising his role as Bucky Barnes, now named the White Wolf.\nProduction.\nDevelopment.\nIn June 1992, Wesley Snipes announced his intention to make a film about Black Panther, and began work on it by that August. Snipes felt that Africa had been portrayed poorly in Hollywood films previously, and that this film could highlight the majesty of the continent due to the title character being noble and \"the antithesis of [African] stereotypes\". The next July, Snipes planned to begin \"The Black Panther\" after starring in \"Demolition Man\" (1993), and a month later he expressed interest in making sequels to the film as well. In January 1994, Snipes entered talks with Columbia Pictures to portray Black Panther, and Black Panther co-creator Stan Lee joined the film by March; it entered early development by May. Snipes had discussions with several different screenwriters and directors about the project, including Mario Van Peebles and John Singleton. When the film had not progressed by January 1996, Lee explained that he had not been pleased with the scripts for the project. Snipes said that one of the issues with the project's development was confusion among those unfamiliar with the comics, who thought the film was about the Black Panther Party.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nWe've yet to have a major Black comic book hero on the screen. Especially the Black Panther, which is such a rich, interesting life. It's a dream come true to originate something [like] that.\n\u2013Actor Wesley Snipes, who worked on early iterations of \"Black Panther\"\nIn July 1997, \"Black Panther\" was listed as part of Marvel Comics' film slate, and in March 1998, Marvel reportedly hired Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti, who at the time were editors of the Black Panther comics, to work on it; Quesada and Palmiotti have both denied this. That August, corporate problems at Marvel put the project on hold. A year later, Snipes was set to produce, and possibly star, in the film, while Artisan Entertainment announced a deal with Marvel in May 2000 to co-produce, finance, and distribute the film. In March 2002, Snipes planned to make the film or \"\" (2004) over the next year. In July 2004, \"Blade 3\" director David S. Goyer stated that he felt Snipes starring as Black Panther in addition to Marvel's Blade \"might be overkill\".\nIn September 2005, Marvel chairman and CEO Avi Arad announced \"Black Panther\" as one of ten films being developed by the new Marvel Studios. Marvel Studios received financing to produce the slate of ten films to be distributed by Paramount Pictures. In June 2006, Snipes said he hoped to have a director for the project soon, and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige reiterated in February 2007 that \"Black Panther\" was in development. By that July, Singleton had been approached to direct the film. Two months earlier, \"Fantastic Four\" (2005) director Tim Story expressed his interest in casting Djimon Hounsou as Black Panther if he were to direct another \"Fantastic Four\" film after \"\" (2007), but a third \"Fantastic Four\" film helmed by Story went unproduced. In March 2009, Marvel hired writers to help come up with creative ways to launch its lesser-known properties, including Black Panther; Nate Moore, the head of the writers program, was overseeing the development of \"Black Panther\" specifically. Snipes's involvement stalled at this time, as he was convicted of failing to file a tax return, serving his sentence from June 2010 to April 2013. In January 2011, Marvel Studios hired documentary filmmaker Mark Bailey to write a script for \"Black Panther\", to be produced by Feige. By October 2013, the metal vibranium, which comes from Black Panther's home nation Wakanda, was introduced in the Marvel Cinematic Universe; Marvel had considered showing Wakanda itself as early as \"Iron Man 2\" (2010), but were waiting until they had \"a full idea\" of how to depict it.\nIn October 2014, Feige announced that \"Black Panther\" would be released on November 3, 2017, with Chadwick Boseman cast as T'Challa / Black Panther. Boseman did not audition for the role, instead discussing what he wanted to do with the part with Marvel, and earned $2\u00a0million for appearing in the film. The actor was set to first portray the character in ' (2016). Snipes gave his support for the project, despite no longer being involved. Feige said that Marvel was considering minority writers and directors for the film, but would prioritize \"the best filmmakers, the best writers, the best directors possible. So I'm not going to say for sure that we're going to hire from any one demographic\". He added that they had met with former \"Black Panther\" comics writer Reginald Hudlin. In January 2015, Boseman said that the film was going through a \"brainstorming phase\", and the next month Marvel pushed back the release date to July 6, 2018. Also in February, Feige stated that casting for the film was underway, and added that he was set to meet with directors about the film following the release of ' (2015) at the end of April.\nBy May 2015, Marvel had discussions with Ava DuVernay to work on either \"Black Panther\" or \"Captain Marvel\" (2019) as director. In June, Feige confirmed that he had met with several directors, including DuVernay, and said that he expected a decision to be made by mid- to late 2015. By early July, DuVernay had passed on directing the film, explaining that she had been drawn to the cultural importance of depicting a Black hero to the whole world, but disagreed with Marvel on the story and did not want to compromise her vision. By October 2015, F. Gary Gray and Ryan Coogler had been considered as directors for the film, though negotiations with Coogler had cooled, and Gray had chosen to direct \"The Fate of the Furious\" (2017) instead. Joe Robert Cole, a member of the Marvel writers program, was in talks to write the screenplay, and Marvel changed the release date once again, moving it to February 16, 2018. By December, discussions with Coogler were reignited after the successful opening of his film \"Creed\" (2015).\nPre-production.\nCoogler was confirmed as director in January 2016, and said that the film was his \"most personal movie to date\" in part because he grew up reading comics, adding, \"I feel really fortunate to be able to work on something I'm this passionate about again.\" After being \"wooed\" by Feige for months, Coogler agreed to direct the film if he could bring collaborators from his previous films to differentiate the film from other MCU films that are often \"shot, composed, and edited by the same in-house people\". This included \"Fruitvale Station\" (2013) cinematographer Rachel Morrison, as well as production designer Hannah Beachler and composer Ludwig G\u00f6ransson, who both worked with Coogler on \"Fruitvale Station\" and \"Creed\". Coogler felt \"Black Panther\" would be unique while still fitting within the MCU's overall narrative.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nWhat's so great about Panther is he's a superhero who ... [is] a leader in his country. It just so happens that the country is a warrior-based nation where the leaders have to be warriors, as well, so sometimes he has to go fight.\n\u2013Ryan Coogler, director of \"Black Panther\"\nIn April 2016, Feige said that Coogler was working on the script with Cole, and that filming would begin at the beginning of 2017. He added that the film would be the first Marvel Studios production to feature a \"primarily African-American cast\": Lupita Nyong'o soon entered negotiations to star as T'Challa's love interest, and Michael B. Jordan joined in an undisclosed role, after previously working with Coogler on \"Fruitvale Station\" and \"Creed\". Nate Moore, serving as a producer on the film by the end of May, stated that filming would occur in Atlanta, Georgia, with Marvel \"definitely investigating shooting in Africa\" as well.\nAt San Diego Comic-Con 2016, Nyong'o was confirmed for the film, in the role of Nakia, while Jordan's role was revealed to be Erik Killmonger. Also announced was Danai Gurira as Okoye. Coogler confirmed that filming would begin in January 2017. Additional casting occurred from September 2016 until the start of filming, with Winston Duke cast as M'Baku, a role that Yahya Abdul-Mateen II had also tested for as well as Michael James Shaw, who was later cast as Corvus Glaive in ' (2018) and ' (2019), out of interest of visiting Africa before passing on the role; Forest Whitaker as Zuri; Daniel Kaluuya as W'Kabi; Angela Bassett as T'Challa's mother, Ramonda; Sterling K. Brown as N'Jobu; and Letitia Wright in an unspecified role, later to be revealed as Shuri. Dominique Thorne, who would go on to play Riri Williams / Ironheart in the sequel \"\" (2022), also auditioned to play Shuri. Florence Kasumba was revealed to be reprising her role as Ayo from \"Captain America: Civil War\". Amandla Stenberg, who is biracial and light skinned, was considered for a role in the film but was not comfortable taking the place of a dark-skinned actor, and described her decision to pass on the role as \"really challenging\". By January 2017, Marvel received permission from the Oakland, California\u2013based public transit agency AC Transit to use their logo in the film for the opening flashback sequence. The setting was chosen due to Coogler growing up in that area.\nWriting.\nThe production team was inspired by Ta-Nehisi Coates's run on \"Black Panther\", who was writing the comic at the same time as they were working on the film. Of particular inspiration was Coates's poetic dialogue, Brian Stelfreeze's art, and \"some of the questions that it's asking\". The film was also inspired by the comic runs of Jack Kirby, Christopher Priest (which Coogler felt most influenced the film), Jonathan Hickman, and Hudlin. Characters for the film were picked from throughout the comics based on what worked for the film's story. The ceremonial betrothal aspect of the Dora Milaje was not adapted from the comics for the film. Coogler had hoped to include Spider-Man villain Kraven the Hunter early in the process because of a scene in Priest's run that had T'Challa fighting Kraven, but the rights to the character were not available due to Sony Pictures owning all rights to Spider-Man characters. Donald Glover and his brother Stephen made some minor contributions to an early draft of the script, developing the relationship between T'Challa and his younger sister Shuri. Moore noted that an early script had more scenes outside of Wakanda to explore \"what it means to be African and African-American in the world a bit more\", and hoped these could be revisited in a later film, particularly a \"super cool\" sequence that was storyboarded before being cut. Coogler and Robert Cole had considered including the Golden Age black hero Eli Bradley / Patriot for a while, but they ultimately excluded him to focus on Wakanda. Eli Bradley was eventually featured in the Disney+ miniseries \"The Falcon and the Winter Soldier\" (2021), portrayed by Elijah Richardson.\nFeige described \"Black Panther\" as \"a big geopolitical action adventure\" that focuses on family and T'Challa learning to be king, with \"Civil War\" laying the groundwork for T'Challa's morality and establishing the geopolitical landscape that he would have to deal with on returning to Wakanda. Moore compared the politics and humor of the film to ' (2014), saying that the former would be inherent but not \"preachy\", and that the latter would avoid the tones of \"Guardians of the Galaxy\" (2014) and \"Ant-Man\" (2015). He also said the film would be a cross between \"The Godfather\" (1972) and the James Bond films as a \"big, operatic family drama centered around a world of international espionage\". Coogler was influenced by 1970s films such as the works of Francis Ford Coppola in that decade, as well as crime fiction. He also watched the film \"A Prophet\" (2009) for inspiration. Feige called the film's story \"rich in culturally relevant ideas\", with Boseman indicating there were parallels to \"pull from\" in the film in relation to Donald Trump becoming President of the United States after Barack Obama, though Feige added that \"these are conversations we were having two years ago because that is inherently the story within the comics.\" Moore said the film does not depend on the plots of any other MCU films, but it does affect the wider MCU moving forward, with Feige stating the film was \"a very important\" link to ' (2018) and \"\" (2019). \"Civil War\" did introduce the Wakandan language, based on the Xhosa language, which Boseman was taught by John Kani, who portrays T'Challa's father, King T'Chaka. Additional actors portraying Wakandans in \"Black Panther\" learned the language, with Coogler making the use of the language \"a priority... as much as possible\". Coogler tried to incorporate Xhosa \"in natural and authentic situations\", such as when multiple Wakandans were speaking in the presence of nonnatives and wanted to say something they would not understand. John Kani's son Atandwa served as a dialect coach on the film along with his father.\nDesign.\nCole called the film an historic opportunity to depict a Black superhero \"at a time when African-Americans are affirming their identities while dealing with vilification and dehumanization\". It was important to root the film in the actual cultures of Africa, with the filmmakers consulting with experts on the region of Africa that Wakanda is supposed to be located in, rooting the film \"in reality first and then build[ing] out from there\". Coogler's vision for Wakanda was inspired by the southern African country Lesotho, a country which has historically been \"an enclave, able to protect its independence because of its terrain\" and was only lightly colonized by the British; the country's traditional blankets are also featured in the film. Coogler compared the rarity of vibranium existing only in Wakanda to the real-life mineral coltan that can almost only be found in Congo. He wanted Wakanda to feel like a full country with multiple distinct tribes, and created a project bible that detailed each Wakandan tribe to guide the design process. Special care was taken to create a futuristic look that was not alien, as some of Jack Kirby's original comic designs appeared.\nSets.\nBeachler wanted to honor the comic designs, but fill in the gaps with research concentrated on Sub-Saharan Africa, pulling inspiration from Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Congo-Kinshasa, Ethiopia, as well as the designs of Zaha Hadid, and the pre-colonization architecture of the historic Mali Empire and the city of Timbuktu. Moore described this approach of taking inspiration from many different sources as a love letter to Africa. Beachler looked at the architecture of existing tribes, and then tried to advance the technology naturally rather than if Wakanda had been colonized. Circular motifs, signifying the transmission of energy, were an important theme throughout the film. Older locations depicted in the film, such as Warrior Falls, the City of the Dead, and the Hall of Kings, were juxtaposed with the more modern Afro-punk style of the Golden City, the capital. Rondavels were incorporated into the tops of Wakanda's skyscrapers, inspired by the appearance of mountains at Blyde River Canyon in South Africa.\nBeachler created different sigils and architecture for each of the Wakandan tribes, with the Border Tribe inspired by Lesotho, the Merchant Tribe having a sigil based on Nigerian writing, and the Golden Tribe using a sun symbol found throughout Africa. Gorilla City, home to the Jabari Tribe, was originally set in a rain forest, but Coogler suggested that it be found up a mountain in snow. Beachler based the written form of the Wakandan language on an old Nigerian language. She consulted with mining and metallurgy experts for the vibranium technology, including for the vibranium mine where the substance is depicted as glowing blue rocks before it is refined into the stainless steel look previously seen in the MCU. The film also adapts the kimoyo bead technology from the comics, and features sand-based technology. Beachler wanted futuristic elements of the film to be consistent with projections of what real world technology may be like in 25 or 30 years, such as the maglev and hovercraft technology used in vehicles. The Wakandan vehicles include a maglev train for carrying vibranium; the king's Royal Talon Fighter, which looks like a mask from the top and bottom; and the Dragon Flyer, inspired by the Congo peafowl.\nThe majority of Beachler's sets were constructed on sound stages in Atlanta, including the Tribal Council, Shuri's design space, and the Hall of Kings. The Tribal Council set was built with a glass floor through which an old ruin can be seen. The exterior set for Warrior Falls was built on a backlot north of Atlanta, and was inspired by the Oribi Gorge. The set was , made up of a pool, and then cliff faces that were designed to be extended to with visual effects. A framework for the cliffs was hand-sculpted from industrial styrofoam, with a system of tunnels built-in to the design to allow extras to climb up to different areas of the cliffs. The framework was then covered with of foam that was sculptured to match rocks found at Oribi Gorge. The pool was filled using six large pumps, so as to create a waterfall above the ledge at the bottom. The base of the pool was made from padding so stunts could safely be carried out on the set, but designed to look like rocks and to have enough grip that the actors would not fall over in the water. The set was completed in four months, and was used for two weeks of filming.\nCostumes.\nCostume designer Ruth E. Carter referenced the Maasai, Himba, Dogon, Basotho, Tuareg, Turkana, Xhosa, Zulu, Suri and Dinka people in her designs. She also examined appropriate works by Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake, French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, and American fashion designer Donna Karan. Winnie Mandela provided inspiration to Carter for Angela Bassett's costumes.\nThe Dora Milaje costumes primarily used red to reflect different African cultures, and included beaded tabards that feature talismans that would be passed down from mother to daughter. Carter wanted to avoid the \"girls in the bathing suits\" look, and instead have the Dora Milaje wear full armor that they would practically need for battle. She also had to take actors' stunt work into consideration. Anthony Francisco, the Senior Visual Development Illustrator, noted the Dora Milaje costumes were based 80 percent on the Maasai, five percent on samurai, five percent on ninjas, and five percent on the Ifugao people from the Philippines. The arm band and neck rings were a reference to the Southern Ndebele people and denote stature. As such, General Okoye has gold bands and rings while the other Dora Milaje wear silver.\nThe costumes for T'Challa combined his role as king and as the head of the military, including combining a kente cloth cloak with military boots. Carter also used distinct colors and patterns for each of Wakanda's tribes, such as green with shells for the River Tribe based on the Suri; blue with wood for the Border Tribe; black with royal purple for the Black Panther and the Royal Palace; plums and purples for the Merchant Tribe in reference to the Tuareg; and ochre for the Mining Tribe inspired by the Himba. Three out of every five people in Wakanda go barefoot. The Wakandans wear \"normal\" clothes outside of the country, with the colors of their costumes kept consistent. Overall, Carter created 700 costumes for the film, working with \"an army\" of illustrators, designers, mold makers, fabric dyers, jewelry makers and more.\nHair department head Camille Friend referenced traditional African art, fabrics, hair, and textures, and the current-day natural hair movement in her designs. Friend strived to keep the actors' hair natural, using \"braids, locs and twists\", and when necessary, extensions and wigs. As with Carter, Friend designed each tribe to have their own identifiable aesthetic, such as the Jabari Tribe having hair styled with \"very straight, clean lines\" and war-paint detail, inspired by Senegalese warriors.\nFilming.\nPrincipal photography had begun by January 21, 2017, at EUE/Screen Gems Studios in the Atlanta metropolitan area, under the working title \"Motherland\". Filming also took place at Pinewood Atlanta Studios, and in the Sweet Auburn neighborhood in Atlanta, which doubled as Oakland; the High Museum of Art, which served as the fictional Museum of Great Britain in London; and Atlanta City Hall, which served as a United Nations building. Cinematographer Rachel Morrison, who was eager to work on \"Black Panther\" after working with Coogler on \"Fruitvale Station\", first watched all of the other MCU films to understand the established \"language\". She wanted to \"push\" that language and feature more contrast in color. Visual effects supervisor Geoff Baumann provided Morrison with before-and-after shots of scenes from \"Civil War\" so she could understand what elements are captured on set and what is created digitally. She filmed in 3.4K ArriRaw with Arri Alexa XT Plus cameras and Panavision Primo lenses, primarily using a two-camera set-up with a third or fourth camera on occasion. Morrison said that lighting was her biggest challenge, the magnitude of which \"was much bigger than I'd experienced before\", and made extensive use of Arri SkyPanel LED light fixtures, which she could preprogram from an iPad. Some sets were completely surrounded by SkyPanels.\nShortly after filming started, Atandwa Kani stated that he would appear in the film alongside his father, the latter reprising the role of T'Chaka, while on-set photographs revealed that Martin Freeman would reprise his role as Everett K. Ross. Marvel announced that production was underway on January 26, and confirmed the casting of Freeman, Wright, and John Kani, while revealing that Andy Serkis would reprise his role as Ulysses Klaue from \"Avengers: Age of Ultron\". Atandwa portrays a younger version of his father's character, and also served as a cultural consultant during filming. Dialect coach Beth McGuire worked to ensure there was continuity between the various actors who had to use \"Wakandan accents\". Jordan joined the production later than the rest of the core cast. He felt that this aided his performance, since his character is separate from and in conflict with the other characters. Because of this, Jordan kept to himself while he was on set. Since \"Black Panther\" and \"Avengers: Infinity War\" were filming simultaneously in Atlanta, both production teams worked together closely to ensure a unified presentation of Wakanda in the films, as the country also plays a large role in \"Infinity War\".\nAdditional filming took place in South Korea, with the city of Busan serving as the setting of a car chase scene that involved 150 cars and over 700 people. Coogler and Morrison referenced the car chase sequences from \"Bullitt\" (1968), \"Drive\" (2011), and \"The French Connection\" (1971), taking the best elements from each for \"Black Panther\"'s sequence. Filming in Busan began on March 17, at the Jagalchi Fish Market. Filming moved to Gwangalli Beach on March 21, with other South Korean filming locations including Marine City in the Haeundae District and at the Gwangandaegyo Bridge. The production crew hired hundreds of current and former film students from local universities as staff or assistant staff during the South Korea filming. Filming in the country wrapped on March 27, with additional location shooting also taking place at the Rwenzori Mountains and Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda. John Marzano served as cinematographer for aerial footage of South Africa, Zambia, Uganda, and South Korea. At CinemaCon 2017, Wright was revealed to be portraying Shuri in the film. Filming concluded on April 19, 2017.\nPost-production.\nEditing.\n\"Black Panther\" was edited by Michael Shawver and Debbie Berman, with Shawver spending time on set during filming as well as at an editing suite near the Atlanta production base. Berman joined the film after an initial director's cut had been produced, two weeks after she completed work on Marvel's \"\" (2017), because Coogler likes to have both a male and female editing his films. She believed that she was chosen by Marvel because she is South African, and had been expressing interest in \"Black Panther\" throughout the editing process for \"Homecoming\" after first seeing the character in \"Civil War\". Shawver said that a lot of their time editing was spent discussing how their work was affecting the audience. For instance, Shawver felt that initial versions of the first Warrior Falls fight fell \"flat\" and used techniques he learned working with Coogler on \"Creed\" to have the editing move back-and-forth to mimic the back-and-forth of the fighters. He also felt that adding more reaction shots to the crowd during the fight gave more weight to T'Challa's victory at the end. During work on the final battle, Berman pointed out to Coogler that the female Dora Milaje are rescued by the all-male Jabari tribe, which she felt undermined the focus on female characters leading up to that moment. Coogler agreed, and subsequently added female Jabari fighters to the scene through additional photography, including the first onscreen Jabari fighter in the scene. Berman felt that this was an important change that would not have been made if only men were editing the film.\nAs first hinted by Coogler in January 2018, the film includes two post-credit scenes: one showing T'Challa address the United Nations; and one featuring Sebastian Stan reprising his role as Bucky Barnes. The first scene was originally intended to be part of the actual ending of the film, but was moved to during the credits so the film could conclude in Oakland, where it begins. Coogler felt having this symmetry was important. In the scene, T'Challa says \"The foolish build barriers, while the wise build bridges.\" Some felt this was a reference to the political climate of the presidency of Donald Trump, but Coogler stated that the line was added before Trump's election and was simply an African proverb that his wife had found. His intention with the scene was to inspire the audience by making T'Challa seem like a real person in a familiar, real-world environment, similar to how Tony Stark was treated in \"Iron Man\" (2008). Coogler was not mandated by Marvel to feature connections to other films, but was interested in addressing the fact that Barnes was in Wakanda (per the end of \"Civil War\") because it would be fun for the audience. He did not feel the character fit in the body of the film, but felt that an end-credits scene was appropriate. Coogler originally pitched a post-credits scene teasing Namor, which would have depicted wet footprints leading to the throne in the Wakandan palace; this did not occur in part because of rights issues with the character. Namor debuts instead in \"Black Panther: Wakanda Forever\", portrayed by Tenoch Huerta.\nVisual effects.\nVisual effects for the film were created by: Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) with help from Virtuos, Stereo D, and Scanline VFX; Double Negative; Luma Pictures; Mammal Studios; Method Studios; Perception; Rise Visual Effects Studios; Torm Studios; Trixter; Cantina Creative; Lola VFX; Capital T; Exceptional Minds; Technicolor VFX; Rodeo FX; Imageloom VFX; Anibrain; Method Pune; Bot VFX; Pixstone Images; Futureworks; Vertigo Visual; FX3X; and Yannix Thailand Co. Previsualization was completed by Digital Domain and The Third Floor. Geoffrey Baumann served as visual effects supervisor.\nComparing \"Black Panther\" to other MCU films, Baumann noted that the visual effects department often have free rein when creating otherworldly science fiction designs, but had to be more specific with this film due to the need to be authentic to African culture and geography. For the Warrior Falls environment, the amphitheater-like cliff walls had to be populated with digital spectators that could not simply be copy-and-pasted around the set due to the precise costume designs created by Carter for each tribe and character. Instead, the visual effects department had to work with the costumers to individually model each digital extra for the sequence. Additionally, visual effects were also used to adjust the opening sequence after test audiences were confusing the characters of T'Chaka and T'Challa, both dressed as the Black Panther. Artists digitally added some grey to T'Chaka's beard and gold trimmings to his suit to help differentiate the characters.\nILM was primarily responsible for creating the digital urban environments of Wakanda. ILM VFX supervisor Craig Hammack compared this work to his time on \"Tomorrowland\" (2015), but noted the additional challenge of not just building a futuristic city, but also one that was culturally appropriate. He explained that African culture has a \"certain amount of earthy material qualities that make things difficult to design as a futuristic city,\" which would typically use much steel and glass. ILM looked to real life examples that blend modern architecture with natural environments like One Central Park in Sydney and The Pearl of Africa Hotel in Kampala, but also had to \"depart from a strict understanding of physics and go into a movie cheat world\" at times to produce the desired look. Hammack was also inspired by the architecture of Uganda, where he spent time while aerial footage for the film was being shot. 60,000 individual buildings were designed and modeled for the city, which Hammack said was the first thing ILM began work on and also the last thing they were doing when the film was completed. Other things that ILM worked on during the production included set extensions and blue-screen replacements for interior sets, and the first rhinoceros shown in the film. For T'Challa's ancestral plane scenes, ILM replaced the basic set that was used with a full CG environment including an acacia tree and animated panthers. The sky was based on the Northern Lights, with this first designed for nighttime scenes before being replicated for daytime scenes in which the animators had to work hard to keep the effects visible. ILM also added additional sand for the burial sequences so Boseman could breathe during filming, and additional flames when Killmonger burns the heart-shaped herb.\nMethod Studios created many of the natural environments of Wakanda. The company built a landscape that is visible in various aerial shots in the film, which was based on multiple landscapes from across Africa. Method was also responsible for creating Black Panther's and Killmonger's digital suits, including developing the look of the nanotechnology they use. They created many of the film's digital characters, vehicles, and weapons, with some of those digital creatures being rhinoceroses for the final battle, a sequence that Method did the majority of the work for. Because these rhinoceroses did not have to be seen on screen with the one designed by ILM, only basic structures, scale, and details of the character models had to be shared between the two companies. Much of the work for the final fight included crowd simulation, with Method working alongside the stunt coordinators in motion capture sessions to give each fighter a unique style. In addition to randomizing the height and weight of each digital fighter, the models had to incorporate specific design elements from the costumers. Method also worked on the vibranium mine and Shuri's laboratory, including animating the gadgets seen in the latter.\nLuma Pictures worked on the Busan car chase sequence, digitally creating the cars featured in the sequence based on CAD models and on-set reference. Multiple digital versions of the same car were created, so the production could have the actual cars crash and do various stunts with them, with Luma then inserting the digital versions to augment these moments. Luma also created the sonic forces from Klaue's cannon, while Scanline VFX worked on digitally removing Serkis's left arm for the London museum heist sequence. Several companies worked on the vibranium sand effects used in Wakandan technology, including ILM for the beginning of the film. Perception spent 18 months researching real-world technologies, phenomena, and visual themes to aid them in their work on the film. Their designs for the vibranium sand were based on research being done with ultrasonic transducers for the purpose of mid-air haptics and acoustic levitation. They integrated this research into the kimoyo beads worn by Wakandans and as a working interface on the royal talon fighter. Perception also created the traditional displays on the talon fighter and in Shuri's lab. For the talon fighter, the company \"experimented with parallax, depth, and volume in the information being displayed, as well as developing a unique color palette to brand the Wakandan tech\". In Shuri's lab, Perception adjusted the hues on the wall to match her attire, and for her healing room \"proposed that the hexagonal pattern seen on the wall actually reveal itself to be articulating panels\" that \"pulse and ripple\". The company also created the function of Black Panther's suit with nano technology and \"layering the suit with different patterns as well as adding 'sub-dermal' luminescent tattoos\", the virtual car chase with Shuri and T'Challa, and designed the opening prologue, with the final version created by Storm VFX. Perception also created the main-on-end title sequence.\nMusic.\nAfter reading the script, composer Ludwig G\u00f6ransson decided to go to Africa to do research for the film. He spent a month in Senegal, first traveling around with musician Baaba Maal on his tour, and then spending several weeks working with local musicians to form the \"base\" of his score. G\u00f6ransson was particularly drawn to the talking drum and the tambin, or Fula flute, to use in his character themes, along with horns. Nate Moore compared the work G\u00f6ransson did in defining the sound of the film to the use of music by James Gunn in the \"Guardians of the Galaxy\" films, with the composer pushing Marvel out of their comfort zone.\nKendrick Lamar produced the film's curated soundtrack, \"Black Panther: The Album\", along with Top Dawg Entertainment founder Anthony Tiffith, after Coogler wanted to include original songs from Lamar in the film because his \"artistic themes align with those we explore in the film\". The soundtrack features songs that are heard in the film as well as others that are inspired by it, with the other artists featured the majority of \"top-billing names\" under Top Dawg Entertainment. G\u00f6ransson collaborated with Lamar and producer Sounwave on the soundtrack. Three singles from the album were released throughout January and February 2018: \"All the Stars\", \"King's Dead\", and \"Pray for Me\". \"Black Panther: The Album\" was released on February 9, 2018, while a soundtrack of G\u00f6ransson's score was released on February 16. An extended play titled \"Black Panther: Wakanda Remixed\", featuring remixes of five cues from G\u00f6ransson's score, was released on August 16, 2018. G\u00f6ransson worked with several other artists to create the remixes.\nMarketing.\nMarvel debuted early footage and concept art from the film at a press event in April 2017. Kyle Buchanan of \"Vulture\" praised the cinematography, costume and production design, and Black cast, saying \"\"Black Panther\" doesn't look like any of the other Marvel movies ... If this is what the future of superhero movies looks like, deal me in.\" The screened footage was the first time Marvel had shown raw dailies, which Feige said they did to show off the \"highest-class cast we've had\" despite editing having not yet begun. A poster was released ahead of the first teaser trailer, which premiered during Game 4 of the 2017 NBA Finals. Fans on Twitter felt the poster was poorly photoshopped, and it was compared to a real-life picture of Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton. The trailer received a much more positive response, with Peter Sciretta of \"/Film\" finding it unexpected and refreshing, io9's Charles Pulliam-Moore calling it \"every bit as intense as you were hoping it would be\", and Andrew Husband for Uproxx feeling the single teaser outshone the entire \"Homecoming\" marketing campaign. It was viewed 89\u00a0million times in 24 hours, generating 349,000 mentions (second only to the amount the \"\" (2017) teaser received) and \"dominated the conversation on social media\" over Game 4. Per comScore and its PreAct service, the film was the subject of the most new social media conversations for the rest of the week, and the second-most for the week ending June 18, behind \"Homecoming\".\nCostumes from the film were on display at D23 Expo 2017 and the 2017 San Diego Comic-Con, with Coogler, Boseman, and other members of the cast presenting exclusive footage of the film at the latter event, to a standing ovation from the audience. In September, Coogler, Gurira, and Moore participated in a panel at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's Annual Legislative Conference, where exclusive footage from the film was also shown and met with a positive response. On October 16, 2017, a full trailer was released. Dave Trumbore for Collider praised the trailer for showing an \"unmistakable sense of style\" unique to the character, while BamSmackPow's Brendan Day felt the trailer \"does everything right\". Writing for \"Rolling Stone\", Tre Johnson felt the trailer showed T'Challa as \"someone with the arrogance of [John] Shaft, the coolness of [Barack] Obama and the hot-headed impulsiveness of Kanye West\". A few days later, Marvel Comics published a prelude tie-in comic focusing on one of T'Challa's first missions as the Black Panther set around the time of \"Iron Man\". The first College Football Playoff National Championship halftime show was organized by Disney for the 2018 championship game, with Kendrick Lamar performing to promote \"Black Panther: The Album\" and the beginning of ticket sales for the film.\nBy February 12, \"Black Panther\" was the most-tweeted about film of 2018 with more than 5\u00a0million tweets globally, and in mid-March it became the most-tweeted-about film ever with 35\u00a0million. During New York Fashion Week, designers Cushnie et Ochs, Ikir\u00e9 Jones, Tome, Sophie Theallet, Fear of God, Chromat, and LaQuan Smith created custom pieces that were inspired by the film for an event titled \"Welcome to Wakanda: Fashion for the Black Panther Era\". Marvel Studios formed a partnership with Lexus on the film, with the 2018 Lexus LC being featured in it. The partnership produced a graphic novel, \"Black Panther: Soul of a Machine\", which was released in December 2017 from writers Fabian Nicieza, Geoffrey Thorne, and Chuck Brown; a concept coupe from Lexus inspired by the character; and a Super Bowl LII commercial featuring Boseman, Gurira and Wright, which had 4.3\u00a0million views on social media after its Super Bowl airing, according to RelishMix. Other marketing partners included shoe manufacturer Clarks creating a film-inspired variant of their Originals' Trigenic Evo shoe; PepsiCo and Unilever launching an arts program for young people in urban areas to be mentored by established artists; Brisk created an interactive \"Black Panther\" installation at the 2018 NBA All-Star Game; Lanc\u00f4me highlighted a line of makeup that Nyong'o and Wright used at the film's premiere; and Synchrony Financial with Marvel awarded the Ghetto Film School Fellows program with a $50,000 grant, with Coogler speaking to the school's students.\nOverall, \"Black Panther\" had the most expansive advertising budget and biggest line of merchandise of any Marvel non-sequel. \"Deadline Hollywood\" estimated that budget to be $150\u00a0million. Asad Ayaz, Executive Vice President of Marketing for Marvel films, said the campaign was about \"super-serving\" Black audiences while still trying to appeal to all, in order to make the film \"feel like a cultural event\". Disney and Marvel created a \"synergy program\" with the College Football Playoffs on ESPN, the ABC television series \"Black-ish\", \"Grey's Anatomy\", \"Scandal\", and \"How to Get Away With Murder\", the Freeform series \"Grown-ish\", and the Bravo franchise \"The Real Housewives\". Marketing outside the United States was \"fairly uniform\", though in the Middle East the focus was kept on Black Panther in-costume as superhero films \"just keep working\" there according to Gianluca Chakra of Middle East distributor Front Row. This was the same for Asian territories. A Wakanda exhibit was featured in malls in seven Chinese cities, along with displays showing Black Panther with other MCU characters. A special trailer created for China had Boseman explain the character's connection to other MCU films. Weibo attended the Los Angeles premiere to take pictures and videos with the cast and crew in real time for China, the first time the company has partnered with a foreign studio for this type of engagement.\nRelease.\nTheatrical.\n\"Black Panther\" had its world premiere at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on January 29, 2018. The premiere featured a purple carpet that was flanked by women dressed as the Dora Milaje, while Coogler, cast members, and other guests wore African clothing at the request of Marvel for attendees to wear \"royal attire\", honoring the African setting of the film. Ahead of the premiere screening, Coogler received an extended standing ovation before he announced the cast of the film. \"Black Panther\" was released in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, and Taiwan on February 13, in South Korea on February 14, and the United States on February 16. In the United States, the film opened in 4,020 theaters, with over 3,200 of those in 3D, 404 in IMAX, over 660 in premium large format, and over 200 D-Box locations. In addition, \"Black Panther\" was the first MCU film to be converted to ScreenX, a 270-degree wraparound format, that played in over 101 locations in eight countries. The film opened in most markets in its first weekend of release including a \"cross-nation release\" in Africa, a first for a Disney film. \"Black Panther\" was originally scheduled for release on November 3, 2017, before moving to July 6, 2018, to accommodate \"\" (2017). It was then moved to the final February date to accommodate \"Ant-Man and the Wasp\" (2018). \"Black Panther\" is part of of the MCU.\nWhen \"Black Panther\" premiered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on April 18, 2018, it was the first public film viewing after a nearly-30-year-old ban on cinemas was rescinded in December 2017. The premiere took place in a cinema owned by AMC Theatres in the King Abdullah Financial District of Riyadh. Disney's regional distributor, Italia Film, said 40 seconds of the film had been removed, which was in line with cuts made to the film across the region. Awwad Alawwad, Saudi Arabia's Minister of Culture and Information, and Adam Aron, CEO of AMC Entertainment, were in attendance for the premiere along with other diplomats and industry experts; no one from the cast or production team was in attendance. \"Black Panther\" screened there for five days before \"Avengers: Infinity War\" premiered on April 26.\n\"Black Panther\" returned to 250 AMC Theatres in the United States from February 1 until February 7, 2019, for free, with two showings of the film occurring at each theater for the week. The week-long return was in honor of the start of Black History Month and the film winning two Screen Actors Guild Awards and earning an Academy Award Best Picture nomination. Disney also gave a $1.5\u00a0million grant to the United Negro College Fund.\nHome media.\n\"Black Panther\" was released for digital download by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on May 8, 2018, and on Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD on May 15, 2018. The digital and Blu-ray releases included several bonus features: behind-the-scenes featurettes, audio commentary, deleted scenes, a blooper reel, an exclusive look at \"Ant-Man and the Wasp\", and a featurette on the first ten years of the MCU. As of \u00a011, 2018[ [update]], the film's Blu-ray and DVD releases have sold 4.2million units and grossed $ in the United States, making it the best-selling film of 2018. \"Black Panther\" was originally made available on Netflix, but was removed in March 2020 after Disney regained license for the film. It was released on Disney+ on March 4, 2020, in the United States and Canada.\nOn June 19, 2020, TBS, TNT, and truTV aired the film, along with \"Just Mercy\" (2019), another film which also starred Jordan, to coincide with the celebrations of Juneteenth and to support social justice against systemic racism in response to the murder of George Floyd. On August 30, 2020, ABC hosted a television special \"Chadwick Boseman: A Tribute for a King\", aired after the film's commercial-free premiere on the same day, to honor Boseman, who died on August 28, 2020, from colon cancer. The special was presented by Robin Roberts, and featured about Boseman's life, career and legacy, as well as tributes served by celebrities, political figures and fans; it also featured other Marvel co-stars, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Mark Ruffalo, and Paul Rudd, along with Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige, and Disney CEO Bob Iger, sharing their experiences on working with Boseman, and the legacy he had left behind. The special released on Disney+ after its television debut.\nOn November 29, 2020, Marvel changed the studio's production logo animation in the opening of the film to include images of Boseman from the film, as well as his appearances in \"Captain America: Civil War\", \"Avengers: Infinity War\", and \"Avengers: Endgame\". \"Black Panther\" concept art and excerpts from the script were also included. This change was done on the Disney+ version of the film, to honor Boseman on what would have been his 44th birthday. Despite being released in IMAX theaters in the 1.90:1 aspect ratio, the home media release only includes the cropped aspect ratio version that was used for non-IMAX screenings. The IMAX Enhanced version of the film was made available on Disney+ beginning on November 12, 2021.\nReception.\nBox office.\n\"Black Panther\" grossed $700.4million in the United States and Canada, and $649.5million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $1.350billion. It became the highest-grossing solo superhero film, the third-highest-grossing film of the MCU and superhero film overall, the ninth-highest-grossing film of all time, and the highest-grossing film by an African-American director. It is the fifth MCU film and the 33rd film overall to surpass $1billion at the box office, and it is the second-highest-grossing film of 2018. \"Deadline Hollywood\" calculated the film's net profit as $476.8\u00a0million, accounting for production budgets, marketing, talent participations, and other costs; box office grosses and home media revenues placed it second on their list of 2018's \"Most Valuable Blockbusters\".\nPre-sale tickets.\nThe film had the fourth-highest pre-sale tickets sold on Fandango, and became the top pre-seller for a superhero film and for a film released in February as well as the first quarter of a year. The first 24 hours of ticket pre-sales on the site were the largest for a Marvel film. \"Black Panther\" also had the highest number of ticket pre-sales for any superhero film at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, while out-selling all previous Marvel films at AMC Theatres, and having strong pre-sales at Atom Tickets. Four days before its United States opening, IMAX Entertainment CEO Greg Foster revealed that \"Black Panther\" had the most advanced IMAX ticket sales of any Marvel film, which did not appear to have peaked 10 days before opening as with most films; \"Black Panther\", he said, \"feels like it's going to peak the day it opens\". Fandango's pre-sales ultimately accounted for 30% of the film's United States and Canada opening weekend gross, one of the largest box office shares for any film in Fandango's history.\nUnited States and Canada.\nEarly projections for \"Black Panther\"'s opening weekend ranged from $80\u2013170million, with rival film studios projecting the total to be as high as $180\u2013200million; Disney projected the gross to be around $150million. It ultimately earned $75.8million on its opening day (including $25.2million from Thursday night previews), and $242.1million over the four-day Presidents' Day weekend. This was the best Presidents' Day weekend opening, and the best opening weekend for a Black director and predominantly Black cast. With a total gross of $202 million, the film had the highest February opening weekend, surpassing \"Deadpool\" (2016). For AMC Theatres, \"Black Panther\" became the highest-grossing film ever at 33 locations, and had the biggest opening weekend for 150 of them. Overall, this was the second-largest opening weekend ever for the chain with 4.4million admissions. Atom Tickets sold more tickets for \"Black Panther\" than any other superhero film. Anthony D'Alessandro of \"Deadline Hollywood\" described the success as \"summer box office records during the second month of the year\".\nThe week after its opening weekend was also strong, with a record-setting Tuesday and Thursday earnings, becoming the MCU film with the highest first-week gross. It also surpassed $300million in eight days, becoming the fastest MCU film to do so. In its second weekend, the film earned $112million, which was a 45 percent decrease from its opening week, the smallest decline in a second weekend for any MCU film. It was the second-best second weekend ever, and the best second weekend for a Marvel film beating \"The Avengers\" ($103million). \"Black Panther\" also became the highest-grossing film released in February, surpassing \"The Passion of the Christ\" (2004) ($370.3\u00a0million).\n\"Black Panther\" was the first film to hold the number one spot at the box office for at least five weekends since \"Avatar\" (2009), and the first February release to hold the top box office spot for five weekends since \"Wayne's World\" in 1992. The film declined over subsequent weekends, but remained in the top ten through its tenth. In its eleventh weekend, the film rose back up at the box office, in part because of the release of \"Avengers: Infinity War\" the same weekend, and the following weekend it earned $3.14\u00a0million from over 1,600 locations. D'Alessandro noted the gross from that number of locations indicated people were continuing to see \"Black Panther\" in conjunction with \"Infinity War\". \"Black Panther\" was in the top ten again in its thirteenth weekend.\nIn its 25th weekend, Disney increased the film's theater count from 10 to 25 to help the film become the third ever to surpass $700million. Brian Gallagher of \"IGN\" felt the film surpassing $700million was more impressive than \"Infinity War\"'s $2.045billion worldwide gross at the time. Gallagher pointed to \"Black Panther\" being more consistent each week, never having more than a 50% weekend decrease until the 15th frame while \"Infinity War\" dropped 55% in its second weekend, its February release date without any major competition from other films, and the fact it was \"a rallying cry for diversity and representation\". \"Black Panther\" is the highest-grossing film of 2018 and became the third-highest-grossing film of all time, as well as the highest-grossing superhero film. Its IMAX total of $36million is the most for any MCU film. In July 2020, due to the worldwide closure of cinemas during the COVID-19 pandemic and limits on which films played, \"Black Panther\" returned to 421 theaters\u2014mostly drive-ins\u2014and grossed $367,000, the second-highest for the weekend behind \"The Empire Strikes Back\"'s (1980) re-release.\nOther territories.\nOutside the United States and Canada, the film opened in 48 territories in its first weekend and earned $184million, opening at number one in most territories (though second in some, where \"Fifty Shades Freed\" performed better, such as Germany and Italy). It became the top February opening in many countries, including in the African market and the Middle East, while taking the top spot across Latin America. IMAX accounted for $11.5million of the opening weekend gross, from 272 screens, which included record opening weekends in the format for Nigeria, Kenya, and Indonesia. In its second weekend, in 55 territories, the film earned $83.5million and remained number one in most, including across Latin America, while becoming the top film in Germany. The West Africa region saw a 7% increase, which resulted in the biggest three-day weekend ever there. Trinidad had the biggest opening weekend ever ($700,000) and the IMAX release in Russia ($1.7million) was a February record for that country.\nIn its third weekend, the film remained number one across many of its 56 territories, including the entire Latin America region, while its opening in Japan was the top Western film for the weekend, the second overall. In its fourth weekend, \"Black Panther\" opened in China ($66.5\u00a0million) with the fourth-highest MCU and superhero opening ever in the country. This included the biggest opening day and opening weekend ($7.3\u00a0million) of March for IMAX in China. The film also remained at number one in the United Kingdom and the Latin America region (except Argentina) for the fourth straight weekend, as well as number one in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. \"Black Panther\" was the top film in South Africa for seven weeks, where it became the highest-grossing film ever. It also became the highest-grossing film of all time in West and East Africa, and the southern Africa region, and the highest-grossing superhero film ever in the Netherlands. As of \u00a08, 2018[ [update]], the film's largest markets were China ($104.6\u00a0million), the United Kingdom ($67.7million), and South Korea ($42.8million). It became the fifth-highest-grossing MCU film of all time in other territories.\nCritical response.\nThe review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of , with an average score of , based on reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, \"\"Black Panther\" elevates superhero cinema to thrilling new heights while telling one of the MCU's most absorbing stories\u2014and introducing some of its most fully realized characters.\" As of \u00a018, 2018[ [update]], it was the best-reviewed live-action superhero film on the site, beating \"The Dark Knight\" (2008) and \"Iron Man\" (both 94%). Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 88 out of 100 based on 55 critics, indicating \"universal acclaim\". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of \"A+\" on an A+ to F scale, the second live-action superhero film to receive that grade after Marvel's \"The Avengers\". Filmgoers polled by comScore's PostTrak service gave the film a 95% positive score and an 88% \"definite recommend\", with a third of people planning to see the film again. RelishMix reported that the use of Twitter hashtags for #BlackPanther and tagging of the film's Twitter account from those leaving the theater was the highest for a film's opening weekend, with 559,000 unique posts in one day (100,000 posts for a film is average). \"Black Panther\" was listed on many critics' top ten lists as a top film of 2018.\nCritics called \"Black Panther\" one of the best standalone Marvel films, one of the best Marvel origin films, one of the best superhero films of the century, and a \"refreshing answer to the increasingly stale world of superhero cinema\". Peter Travers of \"Rolling Stone\" called it unlike any other Marvel film, \"an exhilarating triumph on every level from writing, directing, acting, production design, costumes, music, special effects to you name it\". Jamelle Bouie put the film in the same league as \"Superman\" (1978), \"Spider-Man 2\" (2004), and \"The Dark Knight\", superhero films that do not \"transcend the genre as much as they embrace it in all its respects\". Bouie concluded, \"\"Black Panther\" could have been just another Marvel romp [but] Coogler and company had the power, and perhaps the responsibility, to do much more. And they did.\" The cast was acclaimed. Todd McCarthy of \"The Hollywood Reporter\" stated Boseman \"certainly holds his own, but there are quite a few charismatic supporting players\" including Jordan, Nyong'o, and Wright.\nThe writing was praised for its handling of themes of Africans. Manohla Dargis honored \"Black Panther\" as an \"emblem of a past that was denied and a future that feels very present\" due to its focus on Black imagination, creation, and liberation. At the \"Los Angeles Times\", Kenneth Turan praised the themes of the film and their exploration of what wealthy countries owe to the poor and oppressed, and noted that the film \"draws energy from Coogler's sense of excitement at all he's attempting\", saying that the film was worth seeing twice which he felt was rare for a modern superhero film. Richard Roeper, writing for the \"Chicago Sun-Times\", said audiences should watch the film if they appreciate \"finely honed storytelling with a Shakespearean core; winning performances from an enormously talented ensemble; provocative premises touching on isolationism, revolution and cultures of oppression, and oh yeah, tons of whiz-bang action sequences and good humor\". Brian Truitt of \"USA Today\" stated, \"While the themes are deep, \"Black Panther\" is at the same time a visual joy to behold, with confident quirkiness, insane action sequences and special effects, and the glorious reveal of Wakanda\".\nNatasha Alford of \"The Grio\" called the film a \"movement, a revolution in progress, and a joy to experience all wrapped into one\", and called it \"a master class in what it means to be proud of who you are\". Jamie Broadnax of Black Girl Nerds called the film a masterpiece that is \"afro-futuristic and Blackity-black as hell. It's everything I've ever desired in a live-action version of this popular superhero and yet so much more.\" Bouie said, \"it is fair to say that \"Black Panther\" is the most political movie ever produced by Marvel Studios, both in its very existence... and in the questions its story raises.\" Devindra Hardawar at Engadget was critical of the CGI, notably the digital actors used, calling them \"weightless, ugly and, worst of all, incredibly distracting\". Hardawar felt two \"particularly disappointing\" CGI shots were when T'Challa flips over a car during the Korea chase, and when T'Challa and Killmonger punch each other as they fall within the vibranium mines.\nAnalysis.\nCultural importance.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nMany have wondered why \"Black Panther\" means so much to the Black community and why schools, churches and organizations have come to the theaters with so much excitement. The answer is that the movie brings a moment of positivity to a group of people often not the centerpiece of Hollywood movies... [Racial and ethnic socialization] helps to strengthen identity and helps reduce the likelihood on internalizing negative stereotypes about one's ethnic group.\n\u2014Erlanger Turner, assistant professor of Psychology at the University of Houston\u2013Downtown\nWriting for \"Time\", Jamil Smith felt \"Black Panther\" would \"prove to Hollywood that African-American narratives have the power to generate profits from all audiences\", and described it as a resistance to \"a regressive cultural and political moment fueled in part by the white-nativist movement... Its themes challenge institutional bias, its characters take unsubtle digs at oppressors, and its narrative includes prismatic perspectives on Black life and tradition.\" Discussing the film as a defining moment for Black America in \"The New York Times Magazine\", Carvell Wallace said that in contrast to earlier Black superhero films, \"Black Panther\" \"is steeped very specifically and purposefully in its Blackness\". He felt Wakanda would become a \"promised land\" for future generations of Black Americans, \"untroubled by the criminal horrors of our [current] American existence.\" Historian Nathan D. B. Connolly said \"Black Panther\" was \"a powerful fictional analogy for real-life struggles\" that taps into a \"500-year history of African-descended people imagining freedom, land and national autonomy.\" Connolly also felt, culturally, the film would be this generation's \"A Raisin in the Sun\" (1961). Writer and activist Shaun King found the film to be a cultural moment in American Black history similar to Rosa Parks' Montgomery bus boycott, Martin Luther King Jr.'s \"I Have a Dream\" speech, or Barack Obama being elected president.\nBy contrast, James Wilt, writing for \"Canadian Dimension\", stated that \"at its core, \"Black Panther\" contains a fundamentally reactionary understanding of Black liberation that blatantly advocates respectability politics over revolution\" allowing \"white folks such as myself to feel extremely comfortable watching it\". Wilt found the scene where Ross is portrayed as \"the hero\" for shooting down the Wakandan ships to be the film's way of approving the vanquishing of armed resistance against oppression. Wilt also felt that Killmonger was given the \"most hideous traits imaginable [making] the only major African-American character and agitator for revolution a manic killer consumed by rage and violence\". Russell Rickford of Africa is a Country wrote that Killmonger's role as a character is \"to discredit radical internationalism\". Faisal Kutty from Middle East Eye felt the film had underlying Islamophobic themes, with the only Islamic characters being a Boko Haram\u2013based group that kidnapped several girls and forced them to wear hijab.\nScience & Entertainment Exchange Director for the National Academy of Sciences Richard Loverd felt the film would increase interest in science, technology, and Africa for young Black Americans, similarly to how \"The Hunger Games\" films and \"Brave\" (2012) sparked girls' interest in archery. Broadnax felt many people who generally do not watch comic book films would go to \"Black Panther\" since \"they're going to see themselves reflected in a huge way that they just haven't been able to see before\", especially since the film avoided the plight typically depicted in films about the Black experience. She also stated that the strong female characters, such as Shuri, would be an inspiration for girls.\nGil Robertson, co-founder and president of the African American Film Critics Association, called the film \"critically important\" and \"a gate-opener opportunity for other Black-centered projects\". In 2022, producer and actress Viola Davis credited the film for helping her film \"The Woman King\" (2022) get made. Child development expert Deborah Gilboa felt the film would \"make a huge impact on children's spirits\" by offering positive role models. Scholar Marlene D. Allen felt the saying \"if you can see it, you can be it\" applied to the film, especially with the female characters in the film. Allen felt the women of Wakanda \"are the very definition of 'Black Girl Magic', a term coined by CaShawn Thompson in 2013 'to celebrate the beauty, power, and resilience of Black women.'\" Tre Johnson of \"Rolling Stone\" felt that \"after decades of trying to nail the modern Black superhero, we may finally be getting what we've asked for\", with Johnson saying \"Black Panther\" felt different from the Blaxploitation films of the 1970s and the \"Blaxploitation-lite\" attempts at Black superhero films in the 1990s and 2000s because it was \"respectable, imaginative and powerful\", setting \"a new direction\" for the depiction of Black superheroes. In the film's opening weekend, 37% of audiences in the United States were African-American, according to PostTrak, compared to 35% Caucasian, 18% Hispanic, and 5% Asian. This was the most diverse audience for a superhero film ever (African-Americans generally make up 15% of audiences for superhero films). In its second weekend, demographics were 37% Caucasian, 33% African American, 18% Hispanic and 7% Asian.\nIn early January 2018, philanthropist Frederick Joseph created a GoFundMe drive to raise money for children of color at the Boys & Girls Club in Harlem to see \"Black Panther\". Joseph said the film was a \"rare opportunity\" for underserved children of color to see \"a Black major ... comic book character\" brought to film. Joseph promoted the drive with Boseman on \"The Ellen DeGeneres Show\". The drive went on to raise over $45,000, exceeding its goal, with the money also funding other programs for children in Harlem. Joseph also started the \"Black Panther Challenge\" where he encouraged other people to create similar drives for their communities. GoFundMe made a centralized site for those wishing to start a drive for the challenge. 400 additional drives were started around the world, and the overall drive became the largest GoFundMe in history for an entertainment event, raising over $400,000. Many celebrities offered their support and contributions to the drives, including Ellen DeGeneres, Snoop Dogg, Chelsea Clinton, J. J. Abrams, Octavia Spencer, and British actress Jade Anouka.\nIn June 2018, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture announced they had acquired several items from the film for their collection, including Boseman's Black Panther costume and a shooting script for the film signed by Coogler, Feige, Moore, and Cole. The museum said that the collection provides a \"fuller story of Black culture and identity\" by showing the progression of Black Americans in film, \"an industry that [once] regulated them to flat, one-dimensional and marginalized figures.\" In conjunction with \"The Hollywood Reporter\"'s Women in Entertainment Mentorship Program, and its partner the Greater Los Angeles chapter of Big Brothers Big Sisters, Walt Disney Studios created \"The \"Black Panther\" Scholarship\", worth US$250,000 to Loyola Marymount University. Boseman, Nyong'o, and Gurira presented the scholarship to its first recipient at \"The Hollywood Reporter\"'s 2018 Women in Entertainment event in early December 2018.\nAfrican and African-American representation.\nDwayne Wong (Omowale) writing in \"HuffPost\" saw the film and its comic origins as addressing \"serious political issues concerning Africa's relationship to the West that is very rarely given the serious attention that it deserves\", with Wakandans portrayed as suspicious towards outsiders. He concluded that while the country is fictional, the politics \"are very real. The end of colonialism did not end Western tampering in Africa's politics\". Carlos Rosario Gonzalez of \"Bam! Smack! Pow!\" said the struggle between T'Challa and Killmonger represents the collision of \"what it means to be African\" and \"what Africa means to Afro-minorities today\". In this view, Wakanda represents Africa without Western colonialism, and Killmonger shows us that \"we can sometimes inevitably become what we seek to destroy,\" concluding that Killmonger wants to use Wakanda's resources to become a colonizer of the West while \"Wakanda's conservative ways created the very problem that sought to destroy them, Erik Killmonger\". Jelani Cobb, writing in \"The New Yorker\", discussed the divide between Africans and African Americans, which he called a \"fundamental dissonance\". He felt T'Challa and Killmonger represented \"dueling responses to five centuries of African exploitation at the hands of the West. The villain, to the extent that the term applies, is history itself\". Cobb added that \"Black Panther\" is political in a way previous MCU films were not because in those \"we were at least clear about where the lines of fantasy departed from reality [while this film is set in] in an invented nation in Africa, a continent that has been grappling with invented versions of itself ever since white men first declared it the 'dark continent' and set about plundering its people and its resources.\" Writing for \"The Atlantic\", Adam Serwer argued against the assertion that Erik Killmonger was a representation for Black liberation, positing instead that he represented imperialism. He felt that this was emphasized through his actions, as Killmonger's attempts to take over several of the world's major cities notably include Hong Kong. Since China does not have a white Western hegemony in need of overthrowing, Killmonger's desire to conquer China was purely for the sake of power. Ultimately, he argues that \"\"Black Panther\" does not render a verdict that violence is an unacceptable tool of Black liberation\u2014to the contrary, that is precisely how Wakanda is liberated. It renders a verdict on imperialism as a tool of Black liberation, to say that the master's tools cannot dismantle the master's house.\"\nPatrick Gathara, writing in \"The Washington Post\", described the film as offering a \"regressive, neocolonial vision of Africa\", which\u2014rather than a \"redemptive counter-mythology\"\u2014offers \"the same destructive myths\". Gathara highlighted the Africa that is portrayed, still essentially a European creation, as being divided and tribalized, with Wakanda run by a wealthy and feuding elite that despite its advanced technical abilities does not have a means of succession beyond lethal combat. The Wakandans \"still cleanly fit into the Western molds [of] a dark people in a dark continent\" according to Gathara, and they \"remain so remarkably unsophisticated that a 'returning' American can basically stroll in and take over ... [The film] should not be mistaken for an attempt at liberating Africa from Europe. Quite the opposite. Its 'redemptive counter-mythology' entrenches the tropes that have been used to dehumanize Africans for centuries.\" Christopher Lebron, in a piece for \"Boston Review\", called the film racist because it depicts Black Americans who had been left in poverty and oppression, as exemplified by Killmonger, as still being \"relegated to the lowest rung of political regard\" in the film, treated as less deserving of empathy and less capable of their acts being deemed heroic, than even Ross's white spy. Lebron felt that T'Challa could have shown himself a good person by understanding how Killmonger was affected by American racism and T'Chaka's \"cruelty\", and could have agreed that justice sometimes requires violence as a last resort against oppression. He summed up by commenting that \"In 2018, a world home to both the Movement for Black Lives and a president [Donald Trump] who identifies white supremacists as fine people, we are given a movie about Black empowerment where the only redeemed Blacks are African nobles [who] safeguard virtue and goodness against the threat not of white Americans or Europeans, but a Black American\".\nAccolades.\nAt the 91st Academy Awards, \"Black Panther\" received nominations for Best Picture, Best Original Song, Best Sound Editing, and Best Sound Mixing; and won Best Costume Design, Best Production Design and Best Original Score. The film's other nominations include a British Academy Film Award (which it won), twelve Critics' Choice Movie Awards (winning three), and three Golden Globe Awards. Its nominations for the Academy Award for Best Picture and Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture \u2013 Drama were firsts for a superhero film, while its Academy Award wins were the first for Marvel Studios and an MCU film. The National Board of Review and the American Film Institute named \"Black Panther\" one of the ten-best films of 2018. The film was the top entertainment Google Search of 2018 along with the sixth overall. In December 2021, its screenplay was listed number fifty-seven on the Writers Guild of America's \"101 Greatest Screenplays of the 21st Century (So Far)\".\nOscars campaign.\nBy late August 2018, Disney hired Academy Award campaign strategist Cynthia Swartz to create a nomination campaign on behalf of the film for the 91st Academy Awards, with Feige and Marvel Studios said to have given the film a noteworthy budget for the awards season, an obligation which Marvel didn't consider for previous films. The campaign was focused to highlight \"the film's creative accomplishments and the global impact it made\" in the hopes of receiving a Best Picture nomination; the campaign was not altered with the announcement of the new Best Popular Film award, which appeared to be \"designed to reward blockbusters like \"Black Panther\"\" in the event they did not receive a Best Picture nomination. The Best Popular Film award was ultimately not implemented for the 91st Academy Awards, in order for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to \"examine and seek additional input regarding\" it. Glenn Whipp of the \"Los Angeles Times\" felt the \"blueprint\" for the film's Best Picture campaign was to \"communicate to Oscar voters that this is an auteur-driven superhero movie possessing a deep significance both to its director and to people historically underrepresented in Hollywood films.\" Another Oscar campaign consultant felt reminding the Oscar voters \"Black Panther\" \"wasn't just a movie, it was a phenomenon\" would help the film earn a nomination. Another said voters \"want to reward good movies and they also want to reward movies that say something significant and make the industry look good.\" The consultants also felt if \"Black Panther\" could earn multiple nominations in the craft award categories, it would bolster its chances for a Best Picture nomination; Whipp believed that Morrison, Beachler, Carter, Friend and Harlow, and Lamar all had the possibility to be nominated for Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and Best Original Song, respectively. A few weeks later, Disney revealed their For Your Consideration list, with consideration in all Awards of Merit categories, aside from Best Actress and categories it was not eligible for, such as those for animation, short films, and documentaries.\n\"Black Panther\" was ultimately nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, Best Original Score, Best Original Song (for \"All the Stars\"), Best Sound Editing, and Best Sound Mixing. The film was the first superhero film ever to be nominated for Best Picture, while Beachler's nomination for Best Production Design was the first for an African American. Feige called the Best Picture nomination \"the highest form of recognition from our peers\". On her nomination, Beachler said she felt \"a certain responsibility. It means breaking down walls ... for young women of color and boys and girls of color to see that this is not impossible.\"\nFuture.\nSequels.\nA sequel, \"Black Panther: Wakanda Forever\", was released on November 11, 2022, with Coogler returning as co-writer and director. Nyong'o, Gurira, Freeman, Wright, Duke, and Bassett reprise their roles, while Tenoch Huerta joined them as Namor. In August 2020, Boseman died from colon cancer; Coogler, Feige, and executives at Marvel Studios had been unaware of Boseman's illness. Feige stated in December 2020 that the role of T'Challa would not be recast, with Wright taking over as the lead in the sequel.\nBy November 2024, Coogler had had discussions with Denzel Washington about casting him for a role in a third film. The next month, Moore announced plans to exit his role at Marvel Studios in March 2025 to pursue producing outside the studio, though he would return to produce \"Black Panther 3\" along with Marvel Studios.\nTelevision series.\n\"Eyes of Wakanda\".\nIn December 2023, Marvel Studios Animation announced \"Eyes of Wakanda\", an animated series created in collaboration with Coogler's production company Proximity Media. In May 2024, Todd Harris was revealed to have created the series, and he serves as the director. He previously served as a storyboard artist at Marvel Studios. \"Eyes of Wakanda\" is scheduled to premiere on Disney+ on August 6, 2025, and will consist of four episodes. The series tells the story of Wakandan warriors, the Hatut Zaraze, who carry out dangerous missions around the world to retrieve vibranium artifacts throughout history, and features an ensemble cast.\nUnproduced spin-off series.\nBy February 2021, Coogler was developing a drama series set in Wakanda for Disney+ through Proximity Media. Gurira had signed on to star as Okoye in the series by May 2021, with it focusing on the character's origin story. The series was no longer being made by February 2025.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["41677925"], "permutation_1": ["41677925"], "permutation_2": ["41677925"], "permutation_3": ["41677925"]}
{"id": "nq_-8768447023333946855", "docs_added": {"202354": "Vietnam\nCountry in Southeast Asia\nVietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100\u00a0million, making it the world's fifteenth-most populous country. One of the two Marxist\u2013Leninist states in Southeast Asia, Vietnam shares land borders with China to the north, and Laos and Cambodia to the west. It shares maritime borders with Thailand through the Gulf of Thailand, and the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia through the South China Sea. Its capital is Hanoi and its largest city is Ho Chi Minh City.\nVietnam was inhabited by the Paleolithic age, with states established in the first millennium BC on the Red River Delta in modern-day northern Vietnam. Before the Han dynasty's invasion, Vietnam was marked by a vibrant mix of religion, culture, and social norms. The Han dynasty annexed Northern and Central Vietnam, which were subsequently under Chinese rule from 111 BC until the first dynasty emerged in 939. Successive monarchical dynasties absorbed Chinese influences through Confucianism and Buddhism, and expanded southward to the Mekong Delta, conquering Champa. During most of the 17th and 18th centuries, Vietnam was effectively divided into two domains of \u0110\u00e0ng Trong and \u0110\u00e0ng Ngo\u00e0i. The Nguy\u1ec5n\u2014the last imperial dynasty\u2014surrendered to France in 1883. In 1887, its territory was integrated into French Indochina as three separate regions. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the nationalist coalition Viet Minh, led by the communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh, launched the August Revolution and declared Vietnam's independence from the Empire of Japan in 1945.\nVietnam went through prolonged warfare in the 20th century. After World War II, France returned to reclaim colonial power in the First Indochina War, from which Vietnam emerged victorious in 1954. As a result of the treaties signed between the Viet Minh and France, Vietnam was also separated into two parts. The Vietnam War began shortly after, between the communist North Vietnam, supported by the Soviet Union and China, and the anti-communist South Vietnam, supported by the United States. Upon the North Vietnamese victory in 1975, Vietnam reunified as a unitary socialist state under the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) in 1976. An ineffective planned economy, a trade embargo by the West, and wars with Cambodia and China crippled the country further. In 1986, the CPV initiated economic and political reforms similar to the Chinese economic reform, transforming the country to a socialist-oriented market economy. The reforms facilitated Vietnamese reintegration into the global economy and politics.\nVietnam is a developing country with a lower-middle-income economy. It has high levels of corruption, censorship, environmental issues and a poor human rights record. It is part of international and intergovernmental institutions including the ASEAN, the APEC, the Non-Aligned Movement, the OIF, and the WTO. It has assumed a seat on the United Nations Security Council twice.\nEtymology.\nThe name (, ch\u1eef H\u00e1n: <templatestyles src=\"vi-nom/fonts.css\" />\u8d8a\u5357), literally \"Viet South\", means \"Viet of the South\" per Vietnamese word order or \"South of the Viet\" per Classical Chinese word order. A variation of the name, Nanyue (or Nam Vi\u1ec7t, <templatestyles src=\"vi-nom/fonts.css\" />\u5357\u8d8a), was first documented in the 2nd century BC. The term \"Vi\u1ec7t\" (Yue) (: Cantonese Yale: Wade\u2013Giles: ) in Early Middle Chinese was first written using the logograph \"\u6209\" for an axe (a homophone), in oracle bone and bronze inscriptions of the late Shang dynasty (c.\u20091200 BC), and later as \"\u8d8a\". At that time, it referred to a people or chieftain to the northwest of the Shang. In the early 8th century BC, a tribe on the middle Yangtze were called the Yangyue, a term later used for peoples further south.\nBetween the 7th and 4th centuries BC, 'Yue'/'Vi\u1ec7t' referred to the State of Yue in the lower Yangtze basin and its people. From the 3rd century BC, the term was used for the non-Chinese populations of southern China and northern Vietnam, with particular ethnic groups called Minyue, Ouyue, Luoyue (Vietnamese: L\u1ea1c Vi\u1ec7t), etc., collectively called the Baiyue (B\u00e1ch Vi\u1ec7t, : Cantonese Yale: lit. 'Hundred Yue/Viet').\nThe term 'Baiyue'/'B\u00e1ch Vi\u1ec7t' first appeared in the book \"L\u00fcshi Chunqiu\" compiled around 239 BC. By the 17th and 18th centuries AD, educated Vietnamese apparently referred to themselves as \"ng\u01b0\u1eddi Vi\u1ec7t\" (Viet people) or \"ng\u01b0\u1eddi Nam\" (southern people).\nThe form (<templatestyles src=\"vi-nom/fonts.css\" />\u8d8a\u5357) is first recorded in the 16th-century oracular poem \"S\u1ea5m Tr\u1ea1ng Tr\u00ecnh\". The name has also been found on 12 steles carved in the 16th and 17th centuries, including one at Bao Lam Pagoda in H\u1ea3i Ph\u00f2ng that dates to 1558. In 1802, Nguy\u1ec5n Ph\u00fac \u00c1nh (who later became Emperor Gia Long) established the Nguy\u1ec5n dynasty. In the second year of his rule, he asked the Jiaqing Emperor of the Qing dynasty to confer on him the title 'King of Nam Vi\u1ec7t / Nanyue' ( in Chinese character) after seizing power in Annam. The Emperor refused because the name was related to Zhao Tuo's Nanyue, which included the regions of Guangxi and Guangdong in southern China. The Qing Emperor, therefore, decided to call the area \"Vi\u1ec7t Nam\" instead, meaning \"South of the Viet\" per Classical Chinese word order but the Vietnamese understood it as \"Viet of the South\" per Vietnamese word order. Between 1804 and 1813, the name Vietnam was used officially by Emperor Gia Long. It was revived in the early 20th century in Phan B\u1ed9i Ch\u00e2u's \"History of the Loss of Vietnam\", and later by the Vietnamese Nationalist Party (VNQD\u0110). The country was usually called Annam until 1945, when the imperial government in Hu\u1ebf adopted .\nHistory.\nPrehistory and early history.\nArchaeological excavations have revealed the existence of humans in what is now Vietnam as early as the Paleolithic age. Stone artefacts excavated in Gia Lai province have been claimed to date to 780,000 years ago, based on associated find of tektites, however this claim has been challenged because tektites are often found in archaeological sites of various ages in Vietnam. \"Homo erectus\" fossils dating to around 500,000 BC have been found in caves in L\u1ea1ng S\u01a1n and Ngh\u1ec7 An provinces in northern Vietnam. The oldest \"Homo sapiens\" fossils from mainland Southeast Asia are of Middle Pleistocene provenance, and include isolated tooth fragments from Tham Om and Hang Hum. Teeth attributed to \"Homo sapiens\" from the Late Pleistocene have been found at Dong Can, and from the Early Holocene at Mai Da Dieu, Lang Gao and Lang Cuom. Areas comprising what is now Vietnam participated in the Maritime Jade Road, as ascertained by archaeological research.\nBy about 1,000 BC, the development of wet-rice cultivation in the Ma River and Red River floodplains led to the flourishing of \u0110\u00f4ng S\u01a1n culture, notable for its bronze casting used to make elaborate bronze \u0110\u00f4ng S\u01a1n drums. At this point, the early Vietnamese kingdoms of V\u0103n Lang and \u00c2u L\u1ea1c appeared, and the culture's influence spread to other parts of Southeast Asia, including Maritime Southeast Asia, throughout the first millennium BC.\nDynastic Vietnam.\nAccording to Vietnamese legends, H\u1ed3ng B\u00e0ng dynasty of the H\u00f9ng kings first established in 2879 BC is considered the first state in the history of Vietnam (then known as X\u00edch Qu\u1ef7 and later V\u0103n Lang). In 257 BC, the last H\u00f9ng king was defeated by Th\u1ee5c Ph\u00e1n. He consolidated the L\u1ea1c Vi\u1ec7t and \u00c2u Vi\u1ec7t tribes to form the \u00c2u L\u1ea1c, proclaiming himself An D\u01b0\u01a1ng V\u01b0\u01a1ng. In 179 BC, a Chinese general named Zhao Tuo (\"Tri\u1ec7u \u0110\u00e0\") defeated An D\u01b0\u01a1ng V\u01b0\u01a1ng and consolidated \u00c2u L\u1ea1c into Nanyue. However, Nanyue was itself incorporated into the empire of the Chinese Han dynasty in 111 BC after the Han\u2013Nanyue War. For the next thousand years, what is now northern Vietnam remained mostly under Chinese rule. Early independence movements, such as those of the Tr\u01b0ng Sisters and Lady Tri\u1ec7u, were temporarily successful, though the region gained a longer period of independence as V\u1ea1n Xu\u00e2n under the Anterior L\u00fd dynasty between AD 544 and 602. By the early 10th century, Northern Vietnam had gained autonomy, but not sovereignty, under the Kh\u00fac family.\nIn AD 938, the Vietnamese lord Ng\u00f4 Quy\u1ec1n defeated the forces of the Chinese Southern Han state at B\u1ea1ch \u0110\u1eb1ng River and achieved full independence for Vietnam in 939 after a millennium of Chinese domination. By the 960s, the dynastic \u0110\u1ea1i Vi\u1ec7t (\"Great Viet\") kingdom was established, Vietnamese society enjoyed a golden era under the L\u00fd and Tr\u1ea7n dynasties. During the rule of the Tr\u1ea7n dynasty, \u0110\u1ea1i Vi\u1ec7t repelled three Mongol invasions. Meanwhile, the Mah\u0101y\u0101na branch of Buddhism flourished and became the state religion. Following the 1406\u20137 Ming\u2013H\u1ed3 War, which overthrew the H\u1ed3 dynasty, Vietnamese independence was interrupted briefly by the Chinese Ming dynasty, but was restored by L\u00ea L\u1ee3i, the founder of the L\u00ea dynasty. The Vietnamese polity reached their zenith in the L\u00ea dynasty of the 15th century, especially during the reign of emperor L\u00ea Th\u00e1nh T\u00f4ng (1460\u20131497). Between the 11th and 18th centuries, the Vietnamese polity expanded southward in a gradual process known as (\"Southward expansion\"), eventually conquering the kingdom of Champa and part of the Khmer Kingdom.\nFrom the 16th century onward, civil strife and frequent political infighting engulfed much of \u0110\u1ea1i Vi\u1ec7t. First, the Chinese-supported M\u1ea1c dynasty challenged the L\u00ea dynasty's power. After the M\u1ea1c dynasty was defeated, the L\u00ea dynasty was nominally reinstalled. Actual power, however, was divided between the northern Tr\u1ecbnh lords and the southern Nguy\u1ec5n lords, who engaged in a civil war for more than four decades before a truce was called in the 1670s. Vietnam was divided into North (Tr\u1ecbnh) and South (Nguy\u1ec5n) from 1600 to 1777. During this period, the Nguy\u1ec5n expanded southern Vietnam into the Mekong Delta, annexing the Central Highlands and the Khmer lands in the Mekong Delta. The division of the country ended a century later when the T\u00e2y S\u01a1n brothers helped Tr\u1ecbnh to end Nguy\u1ec5n, they also established new dynasty and ended Tr\u1ecbnh. However, their rule did not last long, and they were defeated by the remnants of the Nguy\u1ec5n lords, led by Nguy\u1ec5n \u00c1nh. Nguy\u1ec5n \u00c1nh unified Vietnam, and established the Nguy\u1ec5n dynasty, ruling under the name Gia Long.\nFrench Indochina.\nIn the 1500s, the Portuguese explored the Vietnamese coast and reportedly erected a stele on the Ch\u00e0m Islands to mark their presence. By 1533, they began landing in the Vietnamese delta but were forced to leave because of local turmoil and fighting. They also had less interest in the territory than they did in China and Japan. After they had settled in Macau and Nagasaki to begin the profitable Macau\u2013Japan trade route, the Portuguese began to involve themselves in trade with H\u1ed9i An. Portuguese traders and Jesuit missionaries under the \"Padroado\" system were active in both Vietnamese realms of \"\u0110\u00e0ng Trong\" (Cochinchina or Quinan) and \"\u0110\u00e0ng Ngo\u00e0i\" (Tonkin) in the 17th century. The Dutch also tried to establish contact with Quinan in 1601 but failed to sustain a presence there after several violent encounters with the locals. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) only managed to establish official relations with Tonkin in the spring of 1637 after leaving Dejima in Japan to establish trade for silk. Meanwhile, in 1613, the first English attempt to establish contact with H\u1ed9i An failed following a violent incident involving the East India Company. By 1672 the English did establish relations with Tonkin and were allowed to reside in Ph\u1ed1 Hi\u1ebfn.\nBetween 1615 and 1753, French traders also engaged in trade in Vietnam. The first French missionaries arrived in 1658, under the Portuguese \"Padroado\". From its foundation, the Paris Foreign Missions Society under \"Propaganda Fide\" actively sent missionaries to Vietnam, entering Cochinchina first in 1664 and Tonkin first in 1666. Spanish Dominicans joined the Tonkin mission in 1676, and Franciscans were in Cochinchina from 1719 to 1834. The Vietnamese authorities began to feel threatened by continuous Christianisation activities. After several Catholic missionaries were detained, the French Navy intervened in 1843 to free them, as the kingdom was perceived as xenophobic. In a series of conquests from 1859 to 1885, France eroded Vietnam's sovereignty. At the siege of Tourane in 1858, France was aided by Spain (with Filipino, Latin American, and Spanish troops from the Philippines) and perhaps some Tonkinese Catholics. After the 1862 Treaty, and especially after France completely conquered Lower Cochinchina in 1867, the V\u0103n Th\u00e2n movement of scholar-gentry class arose and committed violence against Catholics across central and northern Vietnam.\nBetween 1862 and 1867, the southern third of the country became the French colony of Cochinchina. By 1884, the entire country was under French rule, with the central and northern parts of Vietnam separated into the two protectorates of Annam and Tonkin. The three entities were formally integrated into the union of French Indochina in 1887. The French administration imposed significant political and cultural changes on Vietnamese society. A Western-style system of modern education introduced new humanist values. Most French settlers in Indochina were concentrated in Cochinchina, particularly in Saigon, and in Hanoi, the colony's capital.\nDuring the colonial period, guerrillas of the royalist C\u1ea7n V\u01b0\u01a1ng movement rebelled against French rule and massacred around a third of Vietnam's Christian population. After a decade of resistance, they were defeated in the 1890s by the Catholics in reprisal for their earlier massacres. Another large-scale rebellion, the Th\u00e1i Nguy\u00ean uprising, was also suppressed heavily. The French developed a plantation economy to promote export of tobacco, indigo, tea and coffee. However, they largely ignored the increasing demands for civil rights and self-government. An increasing dissatisfaction, even led to half-hearted, badly co-ordinated, and still worsely executed plots to oust the French, like the infamous Hanoi Poison Plot of 1908.\nA nationalist political movement soon emerged, with leaders like Phan B\u1ed9i Ch\u00e2u, Phan Ch\u00e2u Trinh, Phan \u0110\u00ecnh Ph\u00f9ng, Emperor H\u00e0m Nghi, and H\u1ed3 Ch\u00ed Minh fighting or calling for independence. This resulted in the 1930 Y\u00ean B\u00e1i mutiny by the Vietnamese Nationalist Party (VNQD\u0110), which the French quashed. The mutiny split the independence movement, as many leading members converted to communism.\nThe French maintained full control of their colonies until World War II, when the war in the Pacific led to the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in 1940. Afterwards, the Japanese Empire was allowed to station its troops in Vietnam while the pro-Vichy French colonial administration continued. Japan exploited Vietnam's natural resources to support its military campaigns, culminating in a full-scale takeover of the country in March 1945. This led to the Vietnamese Famine of 1945 which killed up to two million people.\nFirst Indochina War.\nIn 1941, the Vi\u1ec7t Minh, a nationalist liberation movement based on a communist ideology, emerged under the Vietnamese revolutionary leader H\u1ed3 Ch\u00ed Minh. The Vi\u1ec7t Minh sought independence for Vietnam from France and the end of the Japanese occupation. After the military defeat of Japan in World War II and the fall of its puppet government Empire of Vietnam in August 1945, Saigon's administrative services collapsed and chaos, riots, and murder were widespread. The Vi\u1ec7t Minh occupied Hanoi and proclaimed a provisional government, which asserted national independence on 2 September.\nIn July 1945, the Allies had decided to divide Indochina at the 16th parallel to allow Chiang Kai-shek of the Republic of China to receive the Japanese surrender in the north while Britain's Lord Louis Mountbatten received their surrender in the south. The Allies agreed that Indochina still belonged to France.\nBut as the French were weakened by the German occupation, British-Indian forces and the remaining Japanese Southern Expeditionary Army Group were used to maintain order and help France reestablish control through the 1945\u20131946 War in Vietnam. H\u1ed3 initially chose to take a moderate stance to avoid military conflict with France, asking the French to withdraw their colonial administrators and for French professors and engineers to help build a modern independent Vietnam. But the Provisional Government of the French Republic did not act on these requests, including the idea of independence, and dispatched the French Far East Expeditionary Corps to restore colonial rule. This resulted in the Vi\u1ec7t Minh launching a guerrilla campaign against the French in late 1946. The resulting First Indochina War lasted until July 1954. The defeat of French colonialists and Vietnamese loyalists in the 1954 battle of \u0110i\u1ec7n Bi\u00ean Ph\u1ee7 allowed H\u1ed3 to negotiate a ceasefire from a favourable position at the subsequent Geneva Conference.\nThe colonial administration was thereby ended and French Indochina was dissolved under the Geneva Accords of 21 July 1954 into three countries\u2014Vietnam, and the kingdoms of Cambodia and Laos. Vietnam was further divided into North and South administrative regions at the Demilitarised Zone, roughly along the 17th parallel north (pending elections scheduled for July 1956). A 300-day period of free movement was permitted, during which almost a million northerners, mainly Catholics, moved south, fearing persecution by the communists. This migration was in large part aided by the United States military through Operation Passage to Freedom. The partition of Vietnam by the Geneva Accords was not intended to be permanent, and stipulated that Vietnam would be reunited after the elections. But in 1955, the southern State of Vietnam's prime minister, Ng\u00f4 \u0110\u00ecnh Di\u1ec7m, toppled B\u1ea3o \u0110\u1ea1i in a fraudulent referendum organised by his brother Ng\u00f4 \u0110\u00ecnh Nhu, and proclaimed himself president of the Republic of Vietnam. This effectively replaced the internationally recognised State of Vietnam by the Republic of Vietnam in the south\u2014supported by the United States, France, Laos, Republic of China and Thailand\u2014and H\u1ed3's Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north, supported by the Soviet Union, Sweden, Khmer Rouge, and the People's Republic of China.\nVietnam War.\nFrom 1953 to 1956, the North Vietnamese government instituted agrarian reforms including \"rent reduction\" and \"land reform\", which resulted in significant political repression. This included 13,500 to as many as 100,000 executions. In the South, Di\u1ec7m countered North Vietnamese subversion (including the assassination of over 450 South Vietnamese officials in 1956) by detaining tens of thousands of suspected communists in \"political reeducation centres\". This programme incarcerated many non-communists, but was successful at curtailing communist activity in the country, if only for a time. The North Vietnamese government claimed that 2,148 people were killed in the process by November 1957. The pro-Hanoi Vi\u1ec7t C\u1ed9ng began a guerrilla campaign in South Vietnam in the late 1950s to overthrow Di\u1ec7m's government. From 1960, the Soviet Union and North Vietnam signed treaties providing for further Soviet military support.\nIn 1963, Buddhist discontent with Di\u1ec7m's Catholic regime erupted into mass demonstrations, leading to a violent government crackdown. This led to the collapse of Di\u1ec7m's relationship with the United States, and ultimately to a 1963 coup in which he and Nhu were assassinated. The Di\u1ec7m era was followed by more than a dozen successive military governments, before the pairing of Air Marshal Nguy\u1ec5n Cao K\u1ef3 and General Nguy\u1ec5n V\u0103n Thi\u1ec7u took control in mid-1965. Thi\u1ec7u gradually outmaneuvered K\u1ef3 and cemented his grip on power in fraudulent elections in 1967 and 1971. During this political instability, the communists began to gain ground. To support South Vietnam's struggle against the communist insurgency, the United States used the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident as a pretext for increasing its contribution of military advisers. US forces became involved in ground combat operations by 1965, and at their peak several years later, numbered more than 500,000. The US also engaged in sustained aerial bombing. Meanwhile, China and the Soviet Union provided North Vietnam with significant material aid and 15,000 combat advisers. Communist forces supplying the Vi\u1ec7t C\u1ed9ng carried supplies along the H\u1ed3 Ch\u00ed Minh trail, which passed through Laos.\nThe communists attacked South Vietnamese targets during the 1968 T\u1ebft Offensive. The campaign failed militarily, but shocked the American establishment and turned US public opinion against the war. During the offensive, communist troops massacred over 3,000 civilians at Hu\u1ebf. Facing an increasing casualty count, rising domestic opposition to the war, and growing international condemnation, the US began withdrawing from ground combat roles in the early 1970s. This also entailed an unsuccessful effort to strengthen and stabilise South Vietnam. Following the Paris Peace Accords of 27 January 1973, all American combat troops were withdrawn by 29 March 1973. In December 1974, North Vietnam captured the province of Ph\u01b0\u1edbc Long and started a full-scale offensive, culminating in the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. South Vietnam was ruled by a provisional government for almost eight years while under North Vietnamese military occupation.\nReunification and reforms.\n1970s.\nOn 2 July 1976, North and South Vietnam were merged to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The war had devastated Vietnam and killed 966,000 to 3.8\u00a0million people. A 1974 US Senate subcommittee estimated nearly 1.4\u00a0million Vietnamese civilians were killed or wounded between 1965 and 1974\u2014including 415,000 killed. In its aftermath, under L\u00ea Du\u1ea9n's administration, there were no mass executions of South Vietnamese who had collaborated with the US or the defunct South Vietnamese government, confounding Western fears, but up to 300,000 South Vietnamese were sent to reeducation camps, where many endured torture, starvation, and disease while being forced to perform hard labour. The government embarked on a mass campaign of collectivisation of farms and factories. Many fled the country following the conclusion of the war. In 1978, in response to the Khmer Rouge government of Cambodia ordering massacres of Vietnamese residents in the border villages in the districts of An Giang and Ki\u00ean Giang, the Vietnamese military invaded Cambodia and removed them from power after occupying Phnom Penh. The intervention was a success, resulting in the establishment of a new, pro-Vietnam socialist government, the People's Republic of Kampuchea, which ruled until 1989. However, this worsened relations with China, which had supported the Khmer Rouge. China later launched a brief incursion into northern Vietnam in 1979, causing Vietnam to rely even more heavily on Soviet economic and military aid, while mistrust of the Chinese government escalated.\n1980s to present.\nAt the Sixth National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) in December 1986, reformist politicians replaced the \"old guard\" government with new leadership. The reformers were led by 71-year-old Nguy\u1ec5n V\u0103n Linh, who became the party's new general secretary. He and the reformers implemented a series of free-market reforms known as (\"Renovation\") that carefully managed the transition from a planned economy to a \"socialist-oriented market economy\". Although the authority of the state remained unchallenged under \"\u0110\u1ed5i M\u1edbi\", the government encouraged private ownership of farms and factories, economic deregulation, and foreign investment, while maintaining control over strategic industries. Subsequently, Vietnam's economy achieved strong growth in agricultural and industrial production, construction, exports, and foreign investment, although these reforms also resulted in a rise in income inequality and gender disparities.\nIn 2021, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Nguyen Phu Trong, was re-elected for his third term in office, meaning he was Vietnam's most powerful leader in decades. He died 19 July 2024, and was followed by To Lam as General Secretary of the Communist Party.\nGeography.\nVietnam is located on the eastern Indochinese Peninsula between the latitudes 8\u00b0 and 24\u00b0N, and the longitudes 102\u00b0 and 110\u00b0E. It covers a total area of or . The combined length of the country's land boundaries is , and its coastline is long. At its narrowest point in the central Qu\u1ea3ng B\u00ecnh province, the country is as little as across, though it widens to around in the north. Vietnam's land is mostly hilly and densely forested, with level land covering no more than 20%. Mountains account for 40% of the country's land area, and tropical forests cover around 42%. The Red River Delta in the north, a flat, roughly triangular region covering , is smaller but more intensely developed and more densely populated than the Mekong River Delta in the south. Once an inlet of the Gulf of Tonkin, it has been filled in over the millennia by riverine alluvial deposits. The delta, covering about , is a low-level plain no more than above sea level at any point. It is criss-crossed by a maze of rivers and canals, which carry so much sediment that the delta advances into the sea every year. The exclusive economic zone of Vietnam covers in the South China Sea.\nSouthern Vietnam is divided into coastal lowlands, the mountains of the Annamite Range, and extensive forests. Comprising five relatively flat plateaus of basalt soil, the highlands account for 16% of the country's arable land and 22% of its total forested land. The soil in much of the southern part of Vietnam is relatively low in nutrients as a result of intense cultivation. Several minor earthquakes have been recorded. The northern part of the country consists mostly of highlands and the Red River Delta. Fansipan (also known as Phan Xi P\u0103ng), which is located in L\u00e0o Cai province, is the highest mountain in Vietnam, standing high. From north to south Vietnam, the country also has numerous islands; Ph\u00fa Qu\u1ed1c is the largest. The Hang S\u01a1n \u0110o\u00f2ng Cave is considered the largest known cave passage in the world since its discovery in 2009. The Ba B\u1ec3 Lake and Mekong River are the largest lake and longest river in the country.\nClimate.\nDue to differences in latitude and the marked variety in topographical relief, Vietnam's climate tends to vary considerably for each region. During the winter or dry season, extending roughly from November to April, the monsoon winds usually blow from the northeast along the Chinese coast and across the Gulf of Tonkin, picking up considerable moisture. The average annual temperature is generally higher in the plains than in the mountains, especially in southern Vietnam compared to the north. Temperatures vary less in the southern plains around Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta, ranging from between over the year. In Hanoi and the surrounding areas of the Red River Delta, the temperatures are much lower between . Seasonal variations in the mountains, plateaus, and the northernmost areas are much more dramatic, with temperatures varying from in December and January to in July and August. During winter, snow occasionally falls over the highest peaks of the far northern mountains near the Chinese border. Vietnam receives high rates of precipitation in the form of rainfall with an average amount from during the monsoon seasons; this often causes flooding, especially in the cities with poor drainage systems. The country is also affected by tropical depressions, tropical storms and typhoons. Vietnam is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, with 55% of its population living in low-elevation coastal areas.\nBiodiversity.\nAs the country is located within the Indomalayan realm, Vietnam is one of twenty-five countries considered to possess a uniquely high level of biodiversity. This was noted in the country's National Environmental Condition Report in 2005. It is ranked 16th worldwide in biological diversity, being home to approximately 16% of the world's species. 15,986 species of flora have been identified in the country, of which 10% are endemic. Vietnam's fauna includes 307 nematode species, 200 oligochaeta, 145 acarina, 113 springtails, 7,750 insects, 260 reptiles, and 120 amphibians. There are 840 birds and 310 mammals are found in Vietnam, of which 100 birds and 78 mammals are endemic. Vietnam has two World Natural Heritage Sites\u2014the H\u1ea1 Long Bay and Phong Nha-K\u1ebb B\u00e0ng National Park\u2014together with nine biosphere reserves, including C\u1ea7n Gi\u1edd Mangrove Forest, C\u00e1t Ti\u00ean, C\u00e1t B\u00e0, Ki\u00ean Giang, the Red River Delta, Mekong Delta, Western Ngh\u1ec7 An, C\u00e0 Mau, and Cu Lao Cham Marine Park.\nVietnam is also home to 1,438 species of freshwater microalgae, constituting 9.6% of all microalgae species, as well as 794 aquatic invertebrates and 2,458 species of sea fish. In recent years, 13 genera, 222 species, and 30 taxa of flora have been newly described in Vietnam. Six new mammal species, including the saola, giant muntjac and Tonkin snub-nosed monkey have also been discovered, along with one new bird species, the endangered Edwards's pheasant. In the late 1980s, a small population of Javan rhinoceros was found in C\u00e1t Ti\u00ean National Park. However, the last individual of the species in Vietnam was reportedly shot in 2010. In agricultural genetic diversity, Vietnam is one of the world's twelve original cultivar centres. The Vietnam National Cultivar Gene Bank preserves 12,300 cultivars of 115 species. The Vietnamese government spent US$49.07\u00a0million on the preservation of biodiversity in 2004 alone and has established 126 conservation areas, including 30 national parks.\nIn Vietnam, wildlife poaching has become a major concern. In 2000, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) called Education for Nature \u2013 Vietnam was founded to instill in the population the importance of wildlife conservation in the country. In the years that followed, another NGO called GreenViet was formed by Vietnamese youngsters for the enforcement of wildlife protection. Through collaboration between the NGOs and local authorities, many local poaching syndicates were crippled by their leaders' arrests. A study released in 2018 revealed Vietnam is a destination for the illegal export of rhinoceros horns from South Africa due to the demand for them as a medicine and a status symbol.\nThe main environmental concern that persists in Vietnam today is the legacy of the use of the chemical herbicide Agent Orange, which continues to cause birth defects and many health problems in the Vietnamese population. In the southern and central areas affected most by the chemical's use during the Vietnam War, nearly 4.8\u00a0million Vietnamese people have been exposed to it and suffered from its effects. In 2012, approximately 50 years after the war, the US began a US$43\u00a0million joint clean-up project in the former chemical storage areas in Vietnam to take place in stages. Following the completion of the first phase in \u0110\u00e0 N\u1eb5ng in late 2017, the US announced its commitment to clean other sites, especially in the heavily impacted site of Bi\u00ean H\u00f2a.\nThe Vietnamese government spends over VN\u011010\u00a0trillion each year ($431.1\u00a0million) for monthly allowances and the physical rehabilitation of victims of the chemicals. In 2018, the Japanese engineering group Shimizu Corporation, working with Vietnamese military, built a plant for the treatment of soil polluted by Agent Orange. Plant construction costs were funded by the company itself. One of the long-term plans to restore southern Vietnam's damaged ecosystems is through the use of reforestation efforts. The Vietnamese government began doing this at the end of the war. It started by replanting mangrove forests in the Mekong Delta regions and in C\u1ea7n Gi\u1edd outside H\u1ed3 Ch\u00ed Minh City, where mangroves are important to ease (though not eliminate) flood conditions during monsoon seasons. The country had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 5.35/10, ranking it 104th globally out of 172 countries.\nApart from herbicide problems, arsenic in the ground water in the Mekong and Red River Deltas has also become a major concern. And most notoriously, unexploded ordnances (UXO) pose dangers to humans and wildlife\u2014another bitter legacy from the long wars. As part of the continuous campaign to demine/remove UXOs, several international bomb removal agencies from the United Kingdom, Denmark, South Korea and the US have been providing assistance. The Vietnam government spends over VN\u01101\u00a0trillion ($44\u00a0million) annually on demining operations and additional hundreds of billions of \u0111\u1ed3ng for treatment, assistance, rehabilitation, vocational training and resettlement of the victims of UXOs.\nGovernment and politics.\nVietnam is a unitary Marxist-Leninist one-party socialist republic, one of the two communist states (the other being Laos) in Southeast Asia. Although Vietnam remains officially committed to socialism as its defining creed, its economic policies have grown increasingly capitalist, with \"The Economist\" characterising its leadership as \"ardently capitalist communists\". Under the constitution, the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) asserts their role in all branches of the country's politics and society. The president is the elected head of state and the commander-in-chief of the military, serving as the chairman of the Council of Supreme Defence and Security, and holds the second highest office in Vietnam as well as performing executive functions and state appointments and setting policy.\nThe general secretary of the CPV performs numerous key administrative functions, controlling the party's national organisation. The prime minister is the head of government, presiding over a council of ministers composed of five deputy prime ministers and the heads of 26 ministries and commissions. Only political organisations affiliated with or endorsed by the CPV are permitted to contest elections in Vietnam. These include the Vietnamese Fatherland Front and worker and trade unionist parties.\nThe National Assembly of Vietnam is the unicameral state legislature composed of 500 members. Headed by a chairman, it is superior to both the executive and judicial branches, with all government ministers being appointed from members of the National Assembly. The Supreme People's Court of Vietnam, headed by a chief justice, is the country's highest court of appeal, though it is also answerable to the National Assembly. Beneath the Supreme People's Court stand the provincial municipal courts and many local courts. Military courts possess special jurisdiction in matters of state security. Vietnam maintains the death penalty for numerous offences.\nIn 2023, a three-person collective leadership was responsible for governing Vietnam. President V\u00f5 V\u0103n Th\u01b0\u1edfng, Prime Minister Ph\u1ea1m Minh Ch\u00ednh (since 2021) and the most powerful leader Nguy\u1ec5n Ph\u00fa Tr\u1ecdng (since 2011) as the Communist Party of Vietnam's General Secretary. On 22 May 2024, T\u00f4 L\u00e2m, who previously served as the Minister of Public Security, was voted as the president of Vietnam by the National Assembly, after V\u00f5 V\u0103n Th\u01b0\u1edfng resigned in March of the same year due to corruption charges against him. On 3 August 2024, T\u00f4 L\u00e2m, who is also serving as the president, was elected by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam as the general secretary following the death of Nguy\u1ec5n Ph\u00fa Tr\u1ecdng on 19 July 2024. On 21 October 2024, the National Assembly appointed army general L\u01b0\u01a1ng C\u01b0\u1eddng as president, succeeding T\u00f4 L\u00e2m.\nAdministrative divisions.\nVietnam is divided into 57 provinces (, ch\u1eef H\u00e1n: ). There are also six municipalities (), which are administratively on the same level as provinces.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nProvinces are subdivided into provincial municipalities (, 'city under province'), townships () and counties (), which are in turn subdivided into towns () or communes ().\nCentrally controlled municipalities are subdivided into districts () and counties, which are further subdivided into wards ().\nForeign relations.\nThroughout its history, Vietnam's main foreign relationship has been with various Chinese dynasties. Following the partition of Vietnam in 1954, North Vietnam maintained relations with the Eastern Bloc, South Vietnam maintained relations with the Western Bloc. Despite these differences, Vietnam's sovereign principles and insistence on cultural independence have been laid down in numerous documents over the centuries before its independence. These include the 11th-century patriotic poem \"\"Nam qu\u1ed1c s\u01a1n h\u00e0\" and the 1428 proclamation of independence \"B\u00ecnh Ng\u00f4 \u0111\u1ea1i c\u00e1o\"\". Though China and Vietnam are now formally at peace, significant territorial tensions remain between the two countries over the South China Sea. Vietnam holds membership in 63 international organisations, including the United Nations (UN), Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), International Organisation of the Francophonie (La Francophonie), and World Trade Organization (WTO). It also maintains relations with over 650 non-governmental organisations. As of 2010 Vietnam had established diplomatic relations with 178 countries.\nVietnam's current foreign policy is to consistently implement a policy of independence, self-reliance, peace, co-operation, and development, as well openness, diversification, multilateralisation with international relations. The country declares itself a friend and partner of all countries in the international community, regardless of their political affiliation, by actively taking part in international and regional cooperative development projects. Since the 1990s, Vietnam has taken several key steps to restore diplomatic ties with capitalist Western countries. It already had relations with communist Western countries in the decades prior. Relations with the United States began improving in August 1995 with both states upgrading their \"liaison\" offices to embassy status. As diplomatic ties between the two governments grew, the United States opened a consulate general in Ho Chi Minh City while Vietnam opened its consulate in San Francisco. Full diplomatic relations were also restored with New Zealand, which opened its embassy in Hanoi in 1995; Vietnam established an embassy in Wellington in 2003. President of the United States, Bill Clinton, made a historic visit to Vietnam in November 2000. He was the first U.S. leader ever to officially visit Hanoi and the first to visit Vietnam since U.S. troops withdrew from the country in 1975. Pakistan also reopened its embassy in Hanoi in October 2000, with Vietnam reopening its embassy in Islamabad in December 2005 and trade office in Karachi in November 2005. In May 2016, US President Barack Obama further normalised relations with Vietnam after he announced the lifting of an arms embargo on sales of lethal arms to Vietnam. Despite their historical past, today Vietnam is considered to be a potential ally of the United States, especially in the geopolitical context of the territorial disputes in the South China Sea and in containment of Chinese expansionism.\nMilitary.\nThe Vietnam People's Armed Forces consists of the Vietnam People's Army (VPA), the Vietnam People's Public Security and the Vietnam Self-Defence Militia. The VPA is the official name for the active military services of Vietnam, and is subdivided into the Vietnam People's Ground Forces, the Vietnam People's Navy, the Vietnam People's Air Force, the Vietnam Border Guard and the Vietnam Coast Guard. The VPA has an active manpower of around 450,000, but its total strength, including paramilitary forces, may be as high as 5,000,000. In 2015, Vietnam's military expenditure totalled approximately US$4.4\u00a0billion, equivalent to around 8% of its total government spending. Joint military exercises and war games have been held with Brunei, India, Japan, Laos, Russia, Singapore and the US. In 2017, Vietnam signed the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.\nHuman rights and sociopolitical issues.\nThe authoritarian government of Vietnam carries many legacies of its past; the communist state which emerged in the 20th century has been described either as totalitarian or not totalitarian but autocratic, and today, the freedom of assembly, association, expression, press and religion as well as civil society activism are tightly restricted. Under the current constitution, the CPV is the only party allowed to rule, the operation of all other political parties being outlawed. Other human rights issues concern freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press. In 2009, Vietnamese lawyer L\u00ea C\u00f4ng \u0110\u1ecbnh was arrested and charged with the capital crime of subversion; several of his associates were also arrested. Amnesty International described him and his arrested associates as prisoners of conscience. Vietnam has also suffered from human trafficking and related issues.\nEconomy.\nThroughout the history of Vietnam, its economy has been based largely on agriculture\u2014primarily wet rice cultivation. Bauxite, an important material in the production of aluminium, is mined in central Vietnam. Since reunification, the country's economy is shaped primarily by the CPV through Five Year Plans decided upon at the plenary sessions of the Central Committee and national congresses. The collectivisation of farms, factories, and capital goods was carried out as part of the establishment of central planning, with millions of people working for state enterprises. Under strict state control, Vietnam's economy continued to be plagued by inefficiency, corruption in state-owned enterprises, poor quality and underproduction. With the decline in economic aid from its main trading partner, the Soviet Union, following the erosion of the Eastern bloc in the late 1980s, and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as the negative impacts of the post-war trade embargo imposed by the United States, Vietnam began to liberalise its trade by devaluing its exchange rate to increase exports and embarked on a policy of economic development.\nIn 1986, the Sixth National Congress of the CPV introduced socialist-oriented market economic reforms as part of the reform programme. Private ownership began to be encouraged in industry, commerce and agriculture and state enterprises were restructured to operate under market constraints. This led to the five-year economic plans being replaced by the socialist-oriented market mechanism. As a result of these reforms, Vietnam achieved approximately 8% annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth between 1990 and 1997. The United States ended its economic embargo against Vietnam in early 1994. Although the 1997 Asian financial crisis caused an economic slowdown to 4\u20135% growth per year, its economy began to recover in 1999, and grew at around 7% per year from 2000 to 2005, one of the fastest in the world. On 11 January 2007, Vietnam became the 150th member of the WTO (World Trade Organization). According to the General Statistics Office of Vietnam (GSO), growth remained strong despite the late-2000s global recession, holding at 6.8% in 2010. Vietnam's year-on-year inflation rate reached 11.8% in December 2010 and the currency, the Vietnamese \u0111\u1ed3ng, was devalued three times.\nDeep poverty, defined as the percentage of the population living on less than $1 per day, has declined significantly in Vietnam and the relative poverty rate is now less than that of China, India and the Philippines. This decline can be attributed to equitable economic policies aimed at improving living standards and preventing the rise of inequality. These policies have included egalitarian land distribution during the initial stages of the \"\u0110\u1ed5i M\u1edbi\" programme, investment in poorer remote areas, and subsidising of education and healthcare. Since the early 2000s, Vietnam has applied sequenced trade liberalisation, a two-track approach opening some sectors of the economy to international markets. Manufacturing, information technology and high-tech industries now form a large and fast-growing part of the national economy. Although Vietnam is a relative newcomer to the oil industry, it is the third-largest oil producer in Southeast Asia with a total 2011 output of . In 2010, Vietnam was ranked as the eighth-largest crude petroleum producer in the Asia and Pacific region. The US bought the biggest share of Vietnam's exports, while goods from China were the most popular Vietnamese import.\nBased on findings by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2022, the unemployment rate in Vietnam was 2.3%, the nominal GDP US$406.452\u00a0billion, and a nominal GDP per capita $4,086. Besides the primary sector economy, tourism has contributed significantly to Vietnam's economic growth with 7.94\u00a0million foreign visitors recorded in 2015.\nAgriculture.\nAs a result of several market liberalization measures, Vietnam has become a major exporter of agricultural products. It is now the world's largest producer of cashew nuts, with a one-third global share; the largest producer of black pepper, accounting for one-third of the world's market; and the second-largest rice exporter in the world after Thailand since the 1990s. Subsequently, Vietnam is also the world's second largest exporter of coffee. The country has the highest proportion of land use for permanent crops together with other states in the Greater Mekong Subregion. Other primary exports include tea, rubber and fishery products. Agriculture's share of Vietnam's GDP has fallen in recent decades, declining from 42% in 1989 to 20% in 2006 as production in other sectors of the economy has risen.\nSeafood.\nThe overall fisheries production of Vietnam from capture fisheries and aquaculture was 5.6 million MT in 2011 and 6.7 million MT in 2016. The output of Vietnam's fisheries sector has seen strong growth, which could be attributed to the continued expansion of the aquaculture sub-sector.\nScience and technology.\nIn 2010, Vietnam's total state spending on science and technology amounted to roughly 0.45% of its GDP. Vietnamese scientists have made many significant contributions in various fields of study, most notably in mathematics. Ho\u00e0ng T\u1ee5y pioneered the applied mathematics field of global optimisation in the 20th century, while Ng\u00f4 B\u1ea3o Ch\u00e2u won the 2010 Fields Medal for his proof of fundamental lemma in the theory of automorphic forms. Since the establishment of the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST) by the government in 1975, the country is working to develop its first national space flight programme especially after the completion of the infrastructure at the Vietnam Space Centre (VSC) in 2018. Vietnam has also made significant advances in the development of robots, such as the TOPIO humanoid model. One of Vietnam's main messaging apps, Zalo, was developed by V\u01b0\u01a1ng Quang Kh\u1ea3i, a Vietnamese hacker who later worked with the country's largest information technology service company, the FPT Group.\nAccording to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Vietnam devoted 0.19% of its GDP to science research and development in 2011. Vietnam was ranked 44th in the Global Innovation Index in 2024, it has increased its ranking considerably since 2012, where it was ranked 76th. Between 2005 and 2014, the number of Vietnamese scientific publications recorded in Thomson Reuters' Web of Science increased at a rate well above the average for Southeast Asia, albeit from a modest starting point. Publications focus mainly on life sciences (22%), physics (13%) and engineering (13%), which is consistent with recent advances in the production of diagnostic equipment and shipbuilding.\nTourism.\nTourism is an important element of economic activity in the nation, contributing 7.5% of the total GDP. Vietnam hosted roughly 13 million tourists in 2017, an increase of 29.1% over the previous year, making it one of the fastest growing tourist destinations in the world. The vast majority of the tourists in the country, some 9.7\u00a0million, came from Asia; namely China (4\u00a0million), South Korea (2.6\u00a0million), and Japan (798,119). Vietnam also attracts large numbers of visitors from Europe, with almost 1.9\u00a0million visitors in 2017; most European visitors came from Russia (574,164), followed by the United Kingdom (283,537), France (255,396), and Germany (199,872). Other significant international arrivals by nationality include the United States (614,117) and Australia (370,438).\nThe most visited destinations in Vietnam are the largest city, Ho Chi Minh City, with over 5.8\u00a0million international arrivals, followed by Hanoi with 4.6\u00a0million and H\u1ea1 Long, including H\u1ea1 Long Bay with 4.4\u00a0million arrivals. All three are ranked in the top 100 most visited cities in the world. Vietnam is home to eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites. In 2018, \"Travel + Leisure\" ranked H\u1ed9i An as one of the world's top 15 best destinations to visit.\nTransport.\nMuch of Vietnam's modern transportation network can trace its roots to the French colonial era when it was used to facilitate the transportation of raw materials to its main ports. It was extensively expanded and modernised following the partition of Vietnam. Vietnam's road system includes national roads administered at the central level, provincial roads managed at the provincial level, district roads managed at the district level, urban roads managed by cities and towns and commune roads managed at the commune level. In 2010, Vietnam's road system had a total length of about of which are asphalt roads comprising national, provincial and district roads. The length of the national road system is about with of its length paved. The provincial road system has around of paved roads while district roads are paved.\nBicycles, motorcycles and motor scooters remain the most popular forms of road transport in the country, a legacy of the French, though the number of privately owned cars has been increasing in recent years. Public buses operated by private companies are the main mode of long-distance travel for much of the population. Traffic collisions remain the major safety issue of Vietnamese transportation with an average of 30 people losing their lives daily. Traffic congestion is a growing problem in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City especially with the growth of individual car ownership. Vietnam's primary cross-country rail service is the Reunification Express from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi, a distance of nearly . From Hanoi, railway lines branch out to the northeast, north, and west; the eastbound line runs from Hanoi to H\u1ea1 Long Bay, the northbound line from Hanoi to Th\u00e1i Nguy\u00ean, and the northeast line from Hanoi to L\u00e0o Cai. In 2009, Vietnam and Japan signed a deal to build a high-speed railway\u2014shinkansen (bullet train)\u2014using Japanese technology. Vietnamese engineers were sent to Japan to receive training in the operation and maintenance of high-speed trains. The planned railway will be a -long express route serving a total of 23 stations, including Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, with 70% of its route running on bridges and through tunnels. The trains will travel at a maximum speed of per hour. Plans for the high-speed rail line, however, have been postponed after the Vietnamese government decided to prioritise the development of both the Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City metros and expand road networks instead.\nVietnam operates 20 major civil airports, including three international gateways: Noi Bai in Hanoi, Da Nang International Airport in \u0110\u00e0 N\u1eb5ng and Tan Son Nhat in Ho Chi Minh City. Tan Son Nhat is the country's largest airport handling the majority of international passenger traffic. According to a government-approved plan, Vietnam will have another seven international airports by 2025, including Vinh International Airport, Phu Bai International Airport, Cam Ranh International Airport, Phu Quoc International Airport, Cat Bi International Airport, Can Tho International Airport, and Long Thanh International Airport. The planned Long Thanh International Airport will have an annual service capacity of 100\u00a0million passengers once it becomes fully operational in 2025. Vietnam Airlines, the state-owned national airline, maintains a fleet of 86 passenger aircraft and aims to operate 170 by 2020. Several private airlines also operate in Vietnam, including Air Mekong, Bamboo Airways, Jetstar Pacific Airlines, VASCO and VietJet Air. As a coastal country, Vietnam has many major sea ports, including Cam Ranh, \u0110\u00e0 N\u1eb5ng, H\u1ea3i Ph\u00f2ng, Ho Chi Minh City, H\u1ea1 Long, Qui Nh\u01a1n, V\u0169ng T\u00e0u, C\u1eeda L\u00f2 and Nha Trang. Further inland, the country's extensive network of rivers plays a key role in rural transportation with over of navigable waterways carrying ferries, barges and water taxis.\nEnergy.\nVietnam's energy sector is dominated largely by the state-controlled Vietnam Electricity Group (EVN). As of 2017, EVN made up about 61.4% of the country's power generation system with a total power capacity of 25,884 MW. Other energy sources are PetroVietnam (4,435 MW), Vinacomin (1,785 MW) and 10,031 MW from build\u2013operate\u2013transfer (BOT) investors.\nMost of Vietnam's power is generated by either hydropower or fossil fuel power such as coal, oil and gas, while diesel, small hydropower and renewable energy supplies the remainder. The Vietnamese government had planned to develop a nuclear reactor as the path to establish another source for electricity from nuclear power. The plan was abandoned in late 2016 when a majority of the National Assembly voted to oppose the project due to widespread public concern over radioactive contamination.\nThe household gas sector in Vietnam is dominated by PetroVietnam, which controls nearly 70% of the country's domestic market for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). Since 2011, the company also operates five renewable energy power plants including the Nh\u01a1n Tr\u1ea1ch 2 Thermal Power Plant (750 MW), Ph\u00fa Qu\u00fd Wind Power Plant (6 MW), H\u1ee7a Na Hydro-power Plant (180 MW), Dakdrinh Hydro-power Plant (125 MW) and V\u0169ng \u00c1ng 1 Thermal Power Plant (1,200 MW).\nAccording to statistics from BP, Vietnam is listed among the 52 countries that have proven crude oil reserves. In 2015 the reserve was approximately 4.4\u00a0billion barrels ranking Vietnam first place in Southeast Asia, while the proven gas reserves were about 0.6\u00a0trillion cubic metres (tcm) and ranking it third in Southeast Asia after Indonesia and Malaysia.\nTelecommunication.\nTelecommunications services in Vietnam are wholly provided by the Vietnam Post and Telecommunications General Corporation (now the VNPT Group) which is a state-owned company. The VNPT retained its monopoly until 1986. The telecom sector was reformed in 1995 when the Vietnamese government began to implement a competitive policy with the creation of two domestic telecommunication companies, the Military Electronic and Telecommunication Company (Viettel, which is wholly owned by the Vietnamese Ministry of Defence) and the Saigon Post and Telecommunication Company (SPT or SaigonPostel), with 18% of it owned by VNPT. VNPT's monopoly was finally ended by the government in 2003 with the issuance of a decree. By 2012, the top three telecom operators in Vietnam were Viettel, Vinaphone and MobiFone. The remaining companies included: EVNTelecom, Vietnammobile and S-Fone. With the shift towards a more market-orientated economy, Vietnam's telecommunications market is continuously being reformed to attract foreign investment, which includes the supply of services and the establishment of nationwide telecom infrastructure.\nWater supply and sanitation.\nVietnam has 2,360 rivers with an average annual discharge of 310\u00a0billion m3. The rainy season accounts for 70% of the year's discharge. Most of the country's urban water supply systems have been developed without proper management within the last 10 years. Based on a 2008 survey by the Vietnam Water Supply and Sewerage Association (VWSA), existing water production capacity exceeded demand, but service coverage is still sparse. Most of the clean water supply infrastructure is not widely developed. It is only available to a small proportion of the population with about one third of 727 district towns having some form of piped water supply. There is also concern over the safety of existing water resources for urban and rural water supply systems. Most industrial factories release their untreated wastewater directly into the water sources. Where the government does not take measures to address the issue, most domestic wastewater is discharged, untreated, back into the environment and pollutes the surface water.\nIn recent years, there have been some efforts and collaboration between local and foreign universities to develop access to safe water in the country by introducing water filtration systems. There is a growing concern among local populations over the serious public health issues associated with water contamination caused by pollution as well as the high levels of arsenic in groundwater sources. The government of Netherlands has been providing aid focusing its investments mainly on water-related sectors including water treatment projects. Regarding sanitation, 78% of Vietnam's population has access to \"improved\" sanitation\u201494% of the urban population and 70% of the rural population. However, there are still about 21\u00a0million people in the country lacking access to \"improved\" sanitation according to a survey conducted in 2015. In 2018, the construction ministry said the country's water supply, and drainage industry had been applying hi-tech methods and information technology (IT) to sanitation issues but faced problems like limited funding, climate change, and pollution. The health ministry has also announced that water inspection units will be established nationwide beginning in June 2019. Inspections are to be conducted without notice, since there have been many cases involving health issues caused by poor or polluted water supplies as well unhygienic conditions reported every year.\nDemographics.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nAs of 2021[ [update]], the population of Vietnam stands at approximately million people. The population had grown significantly from the 1979 census, which showed the total population of reunified Vietnam to be 52.7\u00a0million. According to the 2019 census, the country's population was 96,208,984. Based on the 2019 census, 65.6% of the Vietnamese population live in rural areas while only 34.4% live in urban areas. The average growth rate of the urban population has recently increased which is attributed mainly to migration and rapid urbanisation. The dominant Viet or Kinh ethnic group constitute 82,085,826 people or 85.32% of the population. Most of their population is concentrated in the country's alluvial deltas and coastal plains. As a majority ethnic group, the Kinh possess significant political and economic influence over the country. Despite this, Vietnam is also home to various ethnic groups, of which 54 are officially recognised, including the Hmong, Dao, T\u00e0y, Th\u00e1i and N\u00f9ng. Many ethnic minorities such as the Muong, who are closely related to the Kinh, dwell in the highlands which cover two-thirds of Vietnam's territory.\nSince the partition of Vietnam, the population of the Central Highlands was almost exclusively Degar (including more than 40 tribal groups); however, the South Vietnamese government at the time enacted a programme of resettling Kinh in indigenous areas. The Hoa (ethnic Chinese) and Khmer Krom people are mainly lowlanders. Throughout Vietnam's history, many Chinese people, largely from South China, migrated to the country as administrators, merchants and even refugees. Since the reunification in 1976, an increase of communist policies nationwide resulted in the nationalisation and confiscation of property especially from the Hoa in the south and the wealthy in cities. This led many of them to leave Vietnam.\nUrbanisation.\nThe number of people who live in urbanised areas in 2019 is 33,122,548 people (with the urbanisation rate at 34.4%). Since 1986, Vietnam's urbanisation rates have surged rapidly after the Vietnamese government implemented the \u0110\u1ed5i M\u1edbi economic programme, changing the system into a socialist one and liberalising property rights. As a result, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (the two major cities in the Red River Delta and Southeast regions respectively) increased their share of the total urban population from 8.5% and 24.9% to 15.9% and 31% respectively. The Vietnamese government, through its construction ministry, forecasts the country will have a 45% urbanisation rate by 2020 although it was confirmed to only be 34.4% according to the 2019 census. Urbanisation is said to have a positive correlation with economic growth. Any country with higher urbanisation rates has a higher GDP growth rate. Furthermore, the urbanisation movement in Vietnam is mainly between the rural areas and the country's Southeast region. Ho Chi Minh City has received a large number of migrants due mainly to better weather and economic opportunities.\nA study also shows that rural-to-urban area migrants have a higher standard of living than both non-migrants in rural areas and non-migrants in urban areas. This results in changes to economic structures. In 1985, agriculture made up 37.2% of Vietnam's GDP; in 2008, that number had declined to 18.5%. In 1985, industry made up only 26.2% of Vietnam's GDP; by 2008, that number had increased to 43.2%. Urbanisation also helps to improve basic services which increase people's standards of living. Access to electricity grew from 14% of total households with electricity in 1993 to above 96% in 2009. In terms of access to fresh water, data from 65 utility companies shows that only 12% of households in the area covered by them had access to the water network in 2002; by 2007, more than 70% of the population was connected. Though urbanisation has many benefits, it has some drawbacks since it creates more traffic, and air and water pollution.\nMany Vietnamese use mopeds for transportation, since they are relatively cheap and easy to operate. Their large numbers have been known to cause traffic congestion and air pollution in Vietnam. In the capital city alone, the number of mopeds increased from 0.5\u00a0million in 2001 to 4.7\u00a0million in 2013. With rapid development, factories have sprung up which indirectly pollute the air and water, for example in the 2016 Vietnam marine life disaster. The government is intervening and attempting solutions to decrease air pollution by decreasing the number of motorcycles while increasing public transportation. It has introduced more regulations for waste handling. The amount of solid waste generated in urban areas of Vietnam has increased by more than 200% from 2003 to 2008. Industrial solid waste accounted for 181% of that increase. One of the government's efforts includes attempting to promote campaigns that encourage locals to sort household waste, since waste sorting is still not practised by most of Vietnamese society.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Largest_cities/styles.css\" />\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nLanguages.\nThe national language of the country is Vietnamese, a tonal Austroasiatic language (Mon\u2013Khmer), which is spoken by the majority of the population. Vietnam's minority groups speak a variety of languages, including: T\u00e0y, M\u01b0\u1eddng, Cham, Khmer, Chinese, N\u00f9ng, and Hmong. The Montagnard peoples of the Central Highlands also speak a number of distinct languages, some belonging to the Austroasiatic and others to the Malayo-Polynesian language families. In recent years, a number of sign languages have developed in the major cities.\nThe French language, a legacy of colonial rule, is spoken by many educated Vietnamese as a second language, especially among those educated in the former South Vietnam, where it was a principal language in administration, education and commerce. Vietnam remains a full member of the International Organisation of the Francophonie () and education has revived some interest in the language. Russian, and to a lesser extent German, Czech and Polish are known among some northern Vietnamese whose families had ties with the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. With improved relations with Western countries and recent reforms in Vietnamese administration, English has been increasingly used as a second language and the study of English is now obligatory in most schools either alongside or in place of French. The popularity of Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin Chinese have also grown as the country's ties with other East Asian nations have strengthened. Third-graders can choose one of seven languages (English, Russian, French, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German) as their first foreign language. In Vietnam's high school graduation examinations, students can take their foreign language exam in one of the above-mentioned languages.\nReligion.\n<templatestyles src=\"Pie chart/styles.css\"/>\nUnder Article 70 of the 1992 Constitution of Vietnam, all citizens enjoy freedom of belief and religion. All religions are equal before the law and each place of worship is protected under Vietnamese state law. Religious beliefs cannot be misused to undermine state law and policies. According to a 2007 survey 81% of Vietnamese people did not believe in a god. Based on government findings in 2009, the number of religious people increased by 932,000. The official statistics, presented by the Vietnamese government to the United Nations special rapporteur in 2014, indicate the overall number of followers of recognised religions is about 24\u00a0million of a total population of almost 90\u00a0million. According to the General Statistics Office of Vietnam in 2019, Buddhists account for 4.79% of the total population, Catholics 6.1%, Protestants 1.0%, Hoahao Buddhists 1.02%, and Caodaism followers 0.58%. Other religions includes Islam, Baha\u02bc\u00eds and Hinduism, representing less than 0.2% of the population.\nThe majority of Vietnamese do not follow any organised religion, though many of them observe some form of Vietnamese folk religion. Confucianism as a system of social and ethical philosophy still has certain influences in modern Vietnam. Mah\u0101y\u0101na is the dominant branch of Buddhism, while Theravada is practised mostly by the Khmer minority. About 8 to 9% of the population is Christian\u2014made up of Roman Catholics and Protestants. Catholicism was introduced to Vietnam in the 16th century and was firmly established by Jesuits missionaries (mainly Portuguese and Italian) in the 17th centuries from nearby Portuguese Macau. French missionaries (from the Paris Foreign Missions Society) together with Spanish missionaries (from the Dominican Order of the neighbouring Spanish East Indies) actively sought converts in the 18th, 19th, and first half of the 20th century. A significant number of Vietnamese people, especially in the South, are also adherents of two indigenous religions of syncretic Caodaism and quasi-Buddhist Hoahaoism. Protestantism was only recently spread by American and Canadian missionaries in the 20th century; the largest Protestant denomination is the Evangelical Church of Vietnam. Around 770,000 of the country's Protestants are members of ethnic minorities, particularly the highland Montagnards and Hmong people. Although it is one of the country's minority religions, Protestantism is the fastest-growing religion in Vietnam, expanding at a rate of 600% in recent decades. Several other minority faiths exist in Vietnam, these include: Bani, Sunni and non-denominational sections of Islam which is practised primarily among the ethnic Cham minority. There are also a few Kinh adherents of Islam, other minority adherents of Baha'i, as well as Hindus among the Cham's.\nEducation.\nVietnam has an extensive state-controlled network of schools, colleges, and universities and a growing number of privately run and partially privatised institutions. General education in Vietnam is divided into five categories: kindergarten, elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and universities. A large number of public schools have been constructed across the country to raise the national literacy rate, which stood at 90% in 2008. Most universities are located in major cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City with the country's education system continuously undergoing a series of reforms by the government. Basic education in the country is relatively free for the poor although some families may still have trouble paying tuition fees for their children without some form of public or private assistance. Regardless, Vietnam's school enrolment is among the highest in the world. The number of colleges and universities increased dramatically in the 2000s from 178 in 2000 to 299 in 2005. In higher education, the government provides subsidised loans for students through the national bank, although there are deep concerns about access to the loans as well the burden on students to repay them. Since 1995, enrolment in higher education has grown tenfold to over 2.2\u00a0million with 84,000 lecturers and 419 institutions of higher education. A number of foreign universities operate private campuses in Vietnam, including Harvard University (United States) and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (Australia). The government's strong commitment to education has fostered significant growth but still need to be sustained to retain academics. In 2018, a decree on university autonomy allowing them to operate independently without ministerial control is in its final stages of approval. The government will continue investing in education especially for the poor to have access to basic education.\nHealth.\nBy 2015, 97% of the population had access to improved water sources. In 2016, Vietnam's national life expectancy stood at 80.9 years for women and 71.5 for men, and the infant mortality rate was 17 per 1,000 live births. Since the partition, North Vietnam has established a public health system that has reached down to the hamlet level. After the national reunification in 1975, a nationwide health service was established. In the late 1980s, the quality of healthcare declined to some degree as a result of budgetary constraints, a shift of responsibility to the provinces and the introduction of charges. Inadequate funding has also contributed to a shortage of nurses, midwives and hospital beds; in 2000, Vietnam had only 24.7 hospital beds per 10,000 people before declining to 23.7 in 2005 as stated in the annual report of Vietnamese Health Ministry. The controversial use of herbicides as a chemical weapon by the US military during the war left tangible, long-term impacts upon the Vietnamese people that persist in the country today. For instance, it led to three million Vietnamese people suffering health problems, one million birth defects caused directly by exposure to the chemical and 24% of Vietnam's land being defoliated.\nSince the early 2000s, Vietnam has made significant progress in combating malaria. The malaria mortality rate fell to about five per cent of its 1990s equivalent by 2005 after the country introduced improved antimalarial drugs and treatment. Tuberculosis (TB) cases, however, are on the rise. TB has become the second most infectious disease in the country after respiratory-related illness. With an intensified vaccination programme, better hygiene and foreign assistance, Vietnam hopes to reduce sharply the number of TB cases and new TB infections. In 2004, government subsidies covering about 15% of health care expenses. That year, the United States announced Vietnam would be one of 15 states to receive funding as part of its global AIDS relief plan. By the following year, Vietnam had diagnosed 101,291 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) cases, of which 16,528 progressed to acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS); 9,554 have died. The actual number of HIV-positive individuals is estimated to be much higher. On average between 40 and 50 new infections are reported daily in the country. In 2007, 0.4% of the population was estimated to be infected with HIV and the figure has remained stable since 2005. More global aid is being delivered through The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to fight the spread of the disease in the country. In September 2018, the Hanoi People's Committee urged the citizens of the country to stop eating dog and cat meat as it can cause diseases like rabies and leptospirosis. More than 1,000 stores in the capital city of Hanoi were found to be selling both meats. The decision prompted positive comments among Vietnamese on social media, though some noted that the consumption of dog meat will remain an ingrained habit among many people.\nCulture.\nVietnamese culture is considered part of the Sinosphere. Vietnam's culture has developed over the centuries from indigenous ancient \u0110\u00f4ng S\u01a1n culture with wet rice cultivation as its economic base. Some elements of the nation's culture have Chinese origins, drawing on elements of Confucianism, Mah\u0101y\u0101na Buddhism, and Taoism in its traditional political system and philosophy. Vietnamese society is structured around (ancestral villages); all Vietnamese mark a common ancestral anniversary on the tenth day of the third lunar month. The influence of Chinese culture such as the Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien, and Hainanese cultures is more evident in the north where Buddhism is strongly entwined with popular culture. Despite this, there are Chinatowns in the south, such as in , where many Chinese have intermarried with Kinh and are indistinguishable among them. In the central and southern parts of Vietnam, traces of Champa and Khmer culture are evidenced through the remains of ruins, artefacts as well within their population as the successor of the ancient Sa Hu\u1ef3nh culture. In recent centuries, Western cultures have become popular among recent generations of Vietnamese.\nThe traditional focuses of Vietnamese culture are based on humanity () and harmony () in which family and community values are highly regarded. Vietnam reveres a number of key cultural symbols, such as the Vietnamese dragon which is derived from crocodile and snake imagery; Vietnam's national father, is depicted as a holy dragon. The is a holy bird representing Vietnam's national mother . Other prominent images that are also revered are the turtle, buffalo and horse. Many Vietnamese also believe in the supernatural and spiritualism where illness can be brought on by a curse or sorcery or caused by non-observance of a religious ethic. Traditional medical practitioners, amulets and other forms of spiritual protection and religious practices may be employed to treat the ill person. In the modern era, the cultural life of Vietnam has been deeply influenced by government-controlled media and cultural programmes. For many decades, foreign cultural influences, especially those of Western origin, were shunned. But since the recent reformation, Vietnam has seen a greater exposure to neighbouring Southeast Asian, East Asian as well to Western culture and media.\nThe main Vietnamese formal dress, the , is worn for special occasions such as weddings and religious festivals. White is the required uniform for girls in many high schools across the country. Other examples of traditional Vietnamese clothing include the , a four-piece woman's dress; the , a form of the in five-piece form, mostly worn in the north of the country; the , a woman's undergarment; the , rural working \"pyjamas\" for men and women; the , a formal brocade tunic for government receptions; and the , a variant of the worn by grooms at weddings. Traditional headwear includes the standard conical , the \"lampshade-like\" , and the traditional turban, . In tourism, a number of popular cultural destinations include the former Imperial City of Hu\u1ebf, the World Heritage Sites of Phong Nha \u2013 K\u1ebb B\u00e0ng National Park, and , coastal regions such as Nha Trang, the caves of H\u1ea1 Long Bay and the Marble Mountains.\nLiterature.\nVietnamese literature has centuries-deep history and the country has a rich tradition of folk literature based on the typical six\u2013to-eight-verse poetic form () called which usually focuses on village ancestors and heroes. Written literature has been found dating back to the 10th century Ng\u00f4 dynasty, with notable ancient authors including , , and . Some literary genres play an important role in theatrical performance, such as in . Some poetic unions have also been formed in Vietnam, such as the . Vietnamese literature has been influenced by Western styles in recent times, with the first literary transformation movement of emerging in 1932. Vietnamese folk literature is an intermingling of many forms. It is not only an oral tradition, but a mixing of three media: hidden (only retained in the memory of folk authors), fixed (written), and shown (performed). Folk literature usually exists in many versions, passed down orally, and has unknown authors. Myths consist of stories about supernatural beings, heroes, and creator gods, and reflect the viewpoint of ancient people about human life. They consist of creation stories, stories about their origins ( and ), culture heroes (and) which are referred to as a mountain and water spirit respectively and many other folklore tales.\nMusic.\nTraditional Vietnamese music varies between the country's northern and southern regions. Northern classical music is Vietnam's oldest musical form and is traditionally more formal. The origins of Vietnamese classical opera () can be traced to the Mongol invasions in the 13th century when the Vietnamese captured a Chinese opera troupe. Throughout its history, Vietnam has been the most heavily impacted by the Chinese musical tradition along with those of Japan, Korea and Mongolia. is the most popular form of imperial court music, is a form of generally satirical musical theatre, while or ( singing) is a type of Vietnamese folk music. (alternate singing) is popular in the former H\u00e0 B\u1eafc province (which is now divided into and provinces) and across Vietnam. Another form of music called or is used to invoke spirits during ceremonies. is a modern form of Vietnamese folk music which arose in the 1950s, while (also known as ) is a popular folk music. can be thought of as the southern style of . There is a range of traditional instruments, including the (a monochord zither), the (a two-stringed fiddle with coconut body), and the (a two-stringed fretted moon lute). In recent times, there have been some efforts at mixing Vietnamese traditional music\u2014especially folk music\u2014with modern music to revive and promote national music in the modern context and educate the younger generations about Vietnam's traditional musical instruments and singing styles. Bolero music has gained popularity in the country since the 1930s, albeit with a different style\u2014a combination of traditional Vietnamese music with Western elements. In the 21st century, the modern Vietnamese pop music industry known as V-pop incorporates elements of many popular genres worldwide, such as electronic, dance and R&B.\nMedia.\nVietnam's media sector is regulated by the government under the 2004 Law on Publication. It is generally perceived that the country's media sector is controlled by the government and follows the official communist party line, though some newspapers are relatively outspoken. The Voice of Vietnam (VOV) is the official state-run national radio broadcasting service, broadcasting internationally via shortwave using rented transmitters in other countries and providing broadcasts from its website, while Vietnam Television (VTV) is the national television broadcasting company. Since 1997, Vietnam has regulated public internet access extensively using both legal and technical means. The resulting lockdown is widely referred to as the \"Bamboo Firewall\". The collaborative project OpenNet Initiative classifies Vietnam's level of online political censorship to be \"pervasive\", while Reporters Without Borders (RWB) considers Vietnam to be one of 15 global \"internet enemies\". Though the government of Vietnam maintains that such censorship is necessary to safeguard the country against obscene or sexually explicit content, many political and religious websites that are deemed to be undermining state authority are also blocked.\nCuisine.\nTraditionally, Vietnamese cuisine is based around five fundamental taste \"elements\" (): spicy (metal), sour (wood), salty (water), bitter (fire) and sweet (earth). Common ingredients include fish sauce, shrimp paste, soy sauce, rice, fresh herbs, fruits and vegetables. Vietnamese recipes use lemongrass, ginger, mint, Vietnamese mint, long coriander, Saigon cinnamon, bird's eye chilli, lime and basil leaves. Traditional Vietnamese cooking is known for its fresh ingredients, minimal use of oil and reliance on herbs and vegetables; it is considered one of the healthiest cuisines worldwide. The use of meats such as pork, beef and chicken was relatively limited in the past. Instead freshwater fish, crustaceans (particularly crabs), and molluscs became widely used. Fish sauce, soy sauce, prawn sauce and limes are among the main flavouring ingredients. Vietnam has a strong street food culture, with 40 popular dishes commonly found throughout the country. Many notable Vietnamese dishes such as (salad roll), (rice noodle roll), (rice vermicelli soup) and noodles originated in the north and were introduced to central and southern Vietnam by northern migrants. Local foods in the north are often less spicy than southern dishes, as the colder northern climate limits the production and availability of spices. Black pepper is frequently used in place of chillis to produce spicy flavours. Vietnamese drinks in the south also are usually served cold with ice cubes, especially during the annual hot seasons; in contrast, in the north hot drinks are more preferable in a colder climate. Some examples of basic Vietnamese drinks include (Vietnamese iced coffee), (egg coffee), (salted pickled lime juice), (glutinous rice wine), (sugarcane juice) and (Vietnamese lotus tea).\nHolidays and festivals.\nThe country has eleven national recognised holidays. These include: New Year's Day on 1 January; Vietnamese New Year () from the last day of the last lunar month to fifth day of the first lunar month; H\u00f9ng Kings' Festival on the 10th day of the third lunar month; Reunification Day on 30 April; International Workers' Day on 1 May; and National Day on 2 September. During , many Vietnamese from the major cities will return to their villages for family reunions and to pray for dead ancestors. Older people will usually give the young a (red envelope) while special holiday food, such as (rice cake) in a square shape together with variety of dried fruits, are presented in the house for visitors. Many other festivals are celebrated throughout the seasons, including the , and various temple and nature festivals. In the highlands, Elephant Race Festivals are held annually during the spring; riders will ride their elephants for about and the winning elephant will be given sugarcane. Traditional Vietnamese weddings remain widely popular.\nSports.\nThe Vovinam, and are widespread in Vietnam, while football is the country's most popular sport. Its national team won the ASEAN Football Championship in 2008, 2018 and 2024; and reached the 2007 AFC Asian Cup, quarter-finals of 2019 AFC Asian Cup, its junior team of under-23 became the runners-up of 2018 AFC U-23 Championship and reached fourth place in 2018 Asian Games, while the under-20 managed to qualify the 2017 FIFA U-20 World Cup for the first time in their football history. And the under-17 achieved the fourth place per 10 Teams of the 2000 AFC U-16 Championship. The women's national football team had first appearance at the FIFA Women's World Cup in 2023, became the first 11-a-side national football team to participate in a World Cup tournament, and also traditionally dominates the Southeast Asian Games, along with its chief rival, Thailand. Other Western sports such as badminton, tennis, volleyball, ping-pong and chess are also widely popular. Vietnam has participated in the Summer Olympic Games since 1952. After the partition of the country in 1954, only South Vietnam competed in the games, sending athletes to the 1956 and 1972 Olympics. Since the reunification of Vietnam in 1976, it has competed as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, attending every Summer Olympics from 1988 onwards. The present Vietnam Olympic Committee was formed in 1976 and recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1979. Vietnam has never participated in the Winter Olympic Games. In 2016, Vietnam won their first gold medal at the Olympics. Basketball has become an increasingly popular sport in Vietnam, especially in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and .\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nSources.\nPrint.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nLegislation and government source.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nAcademic publications.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nNews and magazines.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nWebsites.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nFree content.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\n\u00a0This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA IGO 3.0. Text taken from \"UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030\u200b\", 713\u2013714, UNESCO, UNESCO Publishing. \nFurther reading.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />\nExternal links.\nMiscellaneous.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />"}, "descending_order": ["202354"], "permutation_1": ["202354"], "permutation_2": ["202354"], "permutation_3": ["202354"]}
{"id": "nq_1639713192288067625", "docs_added": {"1056165": "Lennon\u2013McCartney\nSongwriting partnership between John Lennon and Paul McCartney\nLennon\u2013McCartney is the songwriting partnership between the English musicians John Lennon (1940\u20131980) and Paul McCartney (born 1942) of the Beatles. It is widely considered one of the greatest, best known and most successful musical collaborations ever by records sold, with the Beatles selling over 600\u00a0million records worldwide as of 2004[ [update]]. Between 5 October 1962 and 8 May 1970, the partnership published approximately 180 jointly credited songs, of which the vast majority were recorded by the Beatles, forming the bulk of their catalogue.\nUnlike many songwriting partnerships that comprise a separate lyricist and composer, such as George and Ira Gershwin, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Kander & Ebb or Elton John and Bernie Taupin, both Lennon and McCartney wrote lyrics and music. Sometimes, especially early on, they would collaborate extensively when writing songs, working \"eyeball to eyeball\" as Lennon phrased it. During the latter half of their partnership, it became more common for either of them to write most of a song on their own with minimal input from the other, and sometimes none at all. By an agreement made before the Beatles became famous, Lennon and McCartney were credited equally with songs that either one of them wrote while their partnership lasted.\nLennon\u2013McCartney compositions have been the subject of numerous cover versions. According to \"Guinness World Records\", \"Yesterday\" has been recorded by more musicians than any other song.\nMeeting.\nAlthough McCartney had previously seen and noticed Lennon in the local area without knowing who he was, the pair first met on 6 July 1957, at a local church f\u00eate, where 16-year-old Lennon was playing with his skiffle group the Quarrymen. The 15-year-old McCartney, brought along by a mutual friend, Ivan Vaughan, impressed Lennon with his ability on the guitar and his version of Eddie Cochran's \"Twenty Flight Rock\". Soon afterwards, Lennon asked McCartney if he would join the Quarrymen; McCartney accepted. The duo's first musical idols were the Everly Brothers, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, and they learned many of their songs and imitated their sound. Their first compositions were written at McCartney's home (20 Forthlin Road), at Lennon's aunt Mimi's house (251 Menlove Avenue), or at the Liverpool Institute. They often invited friends\u2014including George Harrison, Nigel Walley, Barbara Baker, and Lennon's art school colleagues\u2014to listen to performances of their new songs. The first song that Lennon and McCartney wrote together, according to Mark Lewisohn, was titled \"Too Bad About Sorrows\".\nWriting chemistry.\nLennon said the main intention of the Beatles' music was to communicate, and that, to this effect, he and McCartney had a shared purpose. Author David Rowley points out that at least half of all Lennon\u2013McCartney lyrics have the words \"you\" and/or \"your\" in the first line. In Lennon's 1980 \"Playboy\" interview, he said of the partnership:\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />[Paul] provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness, the discords, the bluesy notes. There was a period when I thought I didn't write melodies, that Paul wrote those and I just wrote straight, shouting rock 'n' roll. But, of course, when I think of some of my own songs\u2014\"In My Life\", or some of the early stuff, \"This Boy\"\u2014I was writing melody with the best of them.\nHistorian Todd Compton has noted that there is some truth to Lennon's statement regarding McCartney's optimism. However, it does not tell the whole story, as some of McCartney's most characteristic songs are tragic, or express themes of isolation, such as \"Yesterday\", \"She's Leaving Home\", \"Eleanor Rigby\" or \"For No One\".\nAlthough Lennon and McCartney often wrote independently\u2014and many Beatles songs are primarily the work of one or the other\u2014it was rare that a song would be completed without some input from both writers. In many instances, one writer would sketch an idea or a song fragment and take it to the other to finish or improve; in some cases, two incomplete songs or song ideas that each had worked on individually would be combined into a complete song. Often one of the pair would add a middle eight or bridge section to the other's verse and chorus. George Martin attributed the high quality of their songwriting to the friendly rivalry between the two.\nAs time went on, the songs increasingly became the work of one writer or the other, often with the partner offering up only a few words or an alternative chord. \"A Day in the Life\" is a well-known example of a later Beatles song that includes substantial contributions by both Lennon and McCartney, where a separate song fragment by McCartney (\"Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head\u00a0...\") was used to flesh out the middle of Lennon's composition (\"I read the news today, oh boy\u00a0...\"). \"Hey Jude\" is another example of a later McCartney song that had input from Lennon: while auditioning the song for Lennon, when McCartney came to the lyric \"the movement you need is on your shoulder\", McCartney assured Lennon that he would change the line\u2014which McCartney felt was nonsensical\u2014as soon as he could come up with a better lyric. Lennon advised McCartney to leave that line alone, saying it was one of the strongest in the song.\nThough Lennon and McCartney's collaborative efforts decreased in later years, they continued to influence one another. As Lennon stated in 1969, \"We write how we write now because of each other. Paul was there for five or ten years, and I wouldn't write like I write now if it weren't for Paul, and he wouldn't write like he does if it weren't for me.\"\nCredit variations and disputes.\nJoint credit.\nWhen McCartney and Lennon met as teenagers and began writing songs together, they agreed that all songs written by them (whether individually or jointly) should be credited to both of them. The precise date of the agreement is unknown; however, Lennon spoke in 1980 of an informal agreement between him and McCartney made \"when we were fifteen or sixteen\". Two songs written (primarily by Lennon) in 1957, \"Hello Little Girl\" and \"One After 909\", were credited to the partnership when published in the following decade. The earliest Beatles recording credited to Lennon\u2013McCartney to be officially released is \"You'll Be Mine\", recorded at home in 1960 and included on \"Anthology 1\" 35 years later.\nSome other songs from the band's early years are not credited to the partnership. \"In Spite of All the Danger\", a 1958 song that the band (then the Quarrymen) paid to record to disc, is attributed to McCartney and George Harrison. \"Cayenne\", recorded at the same time as \"You'll Be Mine\", is a solo McCartney song. \"Cry for a Shadow\", an instrumental recorded during the Beatles' sessions with Tony Sheridan in June 1961 (one of the only full instrumentals the group recorded), was written by Harrison and Lennon.\nBy 1962, the joint credit agreement was in effect. From the time of the Beatles' A&R Decca audition in January that year, until Lennon's announcement in September 1969 that he was leaving the band, virtually all songs by McCartney or Lennon were published with joint credit, although, on a few of their first releases, the order was reversed (see below). The only other exceptions were a handful of the McCartney songs released by other musicians (viz. \"Woman\" by Peter and Gordon in 1966 (McCartney using Bernard Webb as a pseudonym), \"Cat Call\" by Chris Barber in 1967, and \"Penina\" by Carlos Mendes in 1969). Lennon kept the joint credit for \"Give Peace a Chance\", his first single with the Plastic Ono Band.\nAfter the partnership had ended, Lennon and McCartney each gave various accounts of their individual contribution to each jointly credited song, and sometimes claimed full authorship. Often their memories of collaboration differed, and often their own early and late interviews are in conflict. In 1972, Lennon offered \"Hit Parader\" a list of Beatles songs with comments regarding his and McCartney's contributions to each song. In his response to the article at the time, McCartney disputed only one of Lennon's entries.\n Lennon described the song as co-written in 1965 interviews. In late interviews, he claimed full authorship. McCartney's stated help was on the \"countermelody\", estimating the song as \"70\u201330\" to Lennon. In 1984, McCartney said \"John and I wrote it at his house in Weybridge for the film.\"\n In 1965, Lennon claimed that the song was \"three-quarters mine and Paul changed it a bit. He said let's alter the tune.\" However, in 1980, Lennon said that McCartney's contribution was limited to \"the way Ringo [Starr] played the drums\". In \"Many Years from Now\", McCartney said \"we sat down and wrote it together\u00a0... give him 60 percent of it.\"\n Lennon's entry for \"In My Life\" was the only one that McCartney disputed in his response to the \"Hit Parader\" article. Lennon said that McCartney helped only with \"the middle eight\" of the song. McCartney said that he wrote the entire melody, taking inspiration from Smokey Robinson songs.\n In the 1997 biography \"Many Years from Now\", McCartney recalled writing the music to \"Eleanor Rigby\" on a piano at Jane Asher's family home in Wimpole Street, and then playing it to Donovan, who supported that the song lacked any serious lyrics at that point. In 1972, Lennon said that he wrote 70 percent of the lyrics, but Pete Shotton, Lennon's childhood friend, remembered Lennon's contribution as being \"absolutely nil\". In 1985, McCartney said that Lennon had contributed \"about half a line\" to the song, but elsewhere (including a 1966 interview) he describes finishing the song with more substantial collaboration with Lennon. Harrison also contributed to this song. According to journalist Hunter Davies, the last verse was finished with all the Beatles giving suggestions in the studio.\n McCartney claimed to have helped on the lyric, estimating the song as \"80\u201320\" to Lennon. In \"Hit Parader\", Lennon did not acknowledge any contributions from McCartney.\n In \"Hit Parader\", Lennon said he authored the song and took the words from a circus poster. He did not acknowledge McCartney as a contributor. In 2013, McCartney recalled spending an afternoon with Lennon writing the song based on the poster: \"I read, occasionally, people say, 'Oh, John wrote that one.' I say, 'Wait a minute, what was that afternoon I spent with him, then, looking at this poster?'\"\nLennon\u2013McCartney vs McCartney\u2013Lennon.\nIn October 1962, the Beatles released their first single in the UK, \"Love Me Do\", credited to \"Lennon\u2013McCartney\". However, on their next three releases the following year (the single \"Please Please Me\", the \"Please Please Me\" LP, and the single \"From Me to You\"), the credit was given as \"McCartney\u2013Lennon\". According to McCartney, the decision to consistently order the credit with Lennon first was made at an April 1963 band meeting. With the \"She Loves You\" single, released in August 1963, the credit reverted to \"Lennon\u2013McCartney\", and all subsequent official Beatles singles and albums list \"Lennon\u2013McCartney\" (UK) or \"John Lennon-Paul McCartney\" (US) as the author of songs written by the two.\nIn 1976, McCartney's band Wings released their live album \"Wings over America\" with songwriting credits for five Beatles songs reversed to place McCartney's name first. Neither Lennon nor his wife Yoko Ono publicly objected to the flipped credits at the time. \nMany years after Lennon's death however, in the late 1990s, McCartney and Ono became involved in a dispute over the credit order. McCartney's 2002 live album, \"Back in the U.S.\", also used the credit \"Paul McCartney and John Lennon\" for all of the Beatles songs. When Ono objected to McCartney's request for the reversed credit to be used for the 1965 song \"Yesterday\", McCartney said that he and Lennon had agreed in the past that the credits could be reversed, if either of them wanted to, on any future releases. In 2003, he relented, saying, \"I'm happy with the way it is and always has been. Lennon and McCartney is still the rock 'n' roll trademark I'm proud to be a part of \u2013 in the order it has always been.\" \nAn in-depth analysis of the legal issues was the subject of a 66-page article in the \"Pepperdine Law Review\" in 2006.\nSubsequent Paul McCartney live albums \"Good Evening New York City\" (2009) and \"Amoeba Gig\" (2019) featured original credit to Lennon-McCartney songs. The new Paul McCartney and Wings live-in-the-studio album \"One Hand Clapping\" (2024) featured reverted credits to the Beatles songs.\nLennon\u2013McCartney and others.\nA number of songs written primarily by the duo and recorded by the Beatles were credited as follows:\nThe German-language versions of \"I Want to Hold Your Hand\" and \"She Loves You\" were also credited to additional songwriters for assisting with the translation. \"Komm, gib mir deine Hand\" was credited to Lennon\u2013McCartney\u2013Nicolas\u2013Hellmer, and \"Sie liebt dich\" was credited to Lennon\u2013McCartney\u2013Nicolas\u2013Montague.\nLegacy.\nCultural impact.\nLennon\u2013McCartney, as well as other British Invasion songwriters, inspired changes to the music industry because they were bands that wrote and performed their own music. This trend threatened the professional songwriters that dominated the American music industry. Ellie Greenwich, a Brill Building songwriter, said, \"When the Beatles and the entire British Invasion came in, we were all ready to say, 'Look, it's been nice, there's no more room for us\u2026 It's now the self-contained group- makes, certain type of material. What do we do?\" In 1963, \"The Sunday Times\" called Lennon and McCartney the greatest composers since Ludwig van Beethoven.\nThe Lennon\u2013McCartney brand would prove to be a model for several other songwriting teams in the rock genre, including, according to Lennon, the Rolling Stones' Jagger\u2013Richards partnership. Subsequent Beatlesque songwriting teams attracted comparisons in the media to Lennon\u2013McCartney. The new wave band Squeeze's partnership of Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook was dubbed the \"new Lennon\u2013McCartney\" by music writers. Difford and Tilbrook expressed ambivalence about the comparison: Tilbrook felt that they \"got a bit pompous\" as a result, while Difford noted that, although the tag was \"very useful\" to Squeeze for getting the attention of radio programmers, the label \"might have been a burden\" on Tilbrook \"because he had to live up to the challenge of [the Beatles'] kind of songwriting, which he didn't need to do because he's such an incredible songwriter in his own right.\" \"Record Mirror\" pondered in 1980 whether Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys, the founding duo of electronic band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, were emerging as \"the Lennon and McCartney of the electronic world\"; music journalists subsequently began to describe the pair as \"the Lennon\u2013McCartney of synth-pop\".\nWhen McCartney teamed up with Elvis Costello in 1989, Costello's acerbic style earned him comparisons to Lennon in his role as McCartney's collaborator. McCartney, despite conceding that Costello has \"got a bit of Lennon in him\", characterized the pairing as \"a new thing\".\nBeatles catalogue.\nThe Lennon\u2013McCartney songwriting partnership makes up the majority of the Beatles' catalogue. The first two UK studio albums included 12 cover tunes and 15 Lennon\u2013McCartney songs, with one track (\"Don't Bother Me\") credited to George Harrison. Their third UK album, \"A Hard Day's Night\" (1964), is the only Beatles album made up entirely of Lennon\u2013McCartney compositions. The next album released, \"Beatles for Sale\" (1964), included six covers and eight Lennon\u2013McCartney originals. The subsequent release, \"Help!\" (1965), had two covers and two Harrison compositions along with ten Lennon\u2013McCartney tracks; it was the last Beatles album to feature a non-original composition until \"Let It Be\", which included an arrangement of the traditional Liverpool folk song \"Maggie Mae\". Among the songs in this post-\"Help!\" output, Harrison contributed between one and four songs per album, and Ringo Starr wrote two songs in total and received a joint credit with Lennon and McCartney for a third (\"What Goes On\"). In addition, \"Flying\" and \"Dig It\" were credited to all four Beatles. The rest of the catalogue came from Lennon and McCartney.\nLennon and McCartney gave songs to Starr to sing, and to Harrison before he started writing his own material. As for the songs they kept for themselves, each partner mostly sang his own composition, often with the other providing harmonies, or they shared lead vocal. If each contributed a fragment to make a whole song, he might sing his portion, as in the case of \"I've Got a Feeling\" and \"A Day in the Life\". \"Every Little Thing\" is a rare example of a Lennon\u2013McCartney song in which one member of the partnership was primary composer (McCartney) but the other sang lead vocal (Lennon). McCartney sings in unison with Lennon on the verses, but Lennon's vocal is more prominent. McCartney sings the high harmony on the chorus.\nIn January 2017, McCartney filed a suit in United States district court against Sony/ATV Music Publishing seeking to reclaim ownership of his share of the Lennon\u2013McCartney song catalogue beginning in 2018. Under US copyright law, for works published before 1978 the author can reclaim copyrights assigned to a publisher after 56 years. McCartney and Sony agreed to a confidential settlement in June 2017.\nNon-Beatles songs.\nSeveral songs credited to Lennon\u2013McCartney were originally released by bands other than the Beatles, especially those managed by Brian Epstein. Recording a Lennon\u2013McCartney song helped launch new performing-artists' careers. Many of the recordings below were included on the 1979 compilation album \"The Songs Lennon and McCartney Gave Away\". Beatles versions of some of these were recorded; some were not released until after their split, on compilations such as \"Live at the BBC\" (1994) and \"The Beatles Anthology\" (1995\u201396).\nIn April 2024, the surviving Beatles sons James McCartney and Sean Ono Lennon worked together on the song \"Primrose Hill\" for McCartney's upcoming album.\nFour songs and a soundtrack album were released during this period but credited solely to Paul McCartney:\nUnreleased songs.\nThe following compositions are believed to have been written by Lennon and McCartney, but never officially released by the Beatles or any other artist except as noted below. Many have appeared on Beatles bootlegs, an exception being \"Carnival of Light\". The list of unreleased songs includes some of the earliest Lennon\u2013McCartney joint works dating back to the Quarrymen, the group that evolved into the Beatles. Several of these songs were revisited during the \"Get Back\" sessions of early 1969.\nReferences.\nCitations.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />\nBibliography.\n<templatestyles src=\"Refbegin/styles.css\" />", "772896": "How Do You Sleep? (John Lennon song)\n\"How Do You Sleep?\" is a song by English rock musician John Lennon from his 1971 album \"Imagine\". \nThe song makes scathing personal attacks aimed at his former Beatles bandmate and songwriting partner, Paul McCartney. Lennon wrote the song in response to what he perceived as personal slights by McCartney on the latter's \"Ram\" album, particularly on the song \"Too Many People\".\nThe track includes a slide guitar solo played by George Harrison, and was co-produced by Lennon, Phil Spector and Yoko Ono.\nComposition and lyrics.\nLennon wrote \"How Do You Sleep?\" in the aftermath of Paul McCartney's successful lawsuit in the London High Court to dissolve the Beatles as a legal partnership. This ruling was caused by the publication of Lennon's remarks about the Beatles in a December 1970 interview with \"Rolling Stone\" magazine, and McCartney and his wife taking full-page advertisements in the music press, in which, as an act of mockery towards Lennon and Yoko Ono, they were shown wearing clown costumes and wrapped up in blankets, which some perceive as being a reference to bagism. Following the release of McCartney's album \"Ram\" in May 1971, Lennon felt attacked by McCartney, who later admitted that lines in the song \"Too Many People\" were intended as digs at Lennon. Lennon thought that other songs on the album, such as \"3 Legs\", contained similar attacks, although McCartney denied the claim.\nThe lyrics of \"How Do You Sleep?\" refer to the \"Paul is dead\" conspiracy theory (\"Those freaks was right when they said you was dead\"). The song begins with the line \"So Sgt. Pepper took you by surprise\", referring to the Beatles' landmark 1967 album. Preceding this first line are ambient sounds evocative of those heard at the beginning of the \"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band\" album.\nThe lyrics \"The only thing you done was yesterday / And since you've gone you're just another day\" are directed at McCartney, referencing the Beatles' 1965 song \"Yesterday\" and McCartney's single \"Another Day\", released in February 1971. Lennon initially penned the lyrics \"You probably pinched that bitch anyway\", as a reference to McCartney's claims that he was not sure if he had plagiarized \"Yesterday\", having asked Lennon, Harrison, George Martin and others if they had heard that melody before. Although Lennon received the sole writing credit for \"How Do You Sleep?\", a contemporary account by Felix Dennis of \"Oz\" magazine indicates that Yoko Ono, as well as Allen Klein, Lennon's manager, also contributed lyrics.\nRecordings.\nLennon recorded \"How Do You Sleep?\" on 26 May 1971 at Ascot Sound Studios, during the sessions for his \"Imagine\" album. String overdubs took place on 4 July 1971 at the Record Plant, in New York City. The song features a slide guitar part played by George Harrison. Aside from Lennon on rhythm guitar and vocals, the track also includes Klaus Voormann on bass, Alan White on drums, acoustic guitar played by Ted Turner, Rod Linton and Andy Davis, as well as additional piano parts by Nicky Hopkins and John Tout. Although he had been united with Lennon, Ringo Starr and Klein, against McCartney, in the recent lawsuit, Harrison recalled that the period was one of \"very strange, intense feelings\" among all the former Beatles, and he was initially wary of Lennon's invitation to play on the new album. Given this, Harrison added, he was relieved that Lennon was \"openly pleased I came\".\nAs with all the tracks on \"Imagine\", several outtakes of \"How Do You Sleep?\" became available on bootleg albums and in documentary films about Lennon. A run-through of the song in the 2000 film \"Gimme Some Truth\" includes what authors Chip Madinger and Mark Easter describe as \"John's query to Paul\", as Lennon faces the camera and sings: \"How do you sleep, ya cunt?\" Starr visited the studio during the recording of the song and was reportedly upset, saying: \"That's enough, John.\" The final mix version as released on the album is in mono rather than stereo, unlike all the other tracks. In 2018, two versions of the original recording sessions were released in 5.1 surround sound as part of the \"Imagine\" box set.\nCritical reception.\nIn a contemporary review of \"Imagine\", Ben Gerson of \"Rolling Stone\" highlighted \"How Do You Sleep?\" among the album's three \"really worthy, musically effective numbers\" but found it \"horrifying and indefensible\" as a song that \"lay waste to Paul's character, family and career\". Gerson concluded: \"The motives for 'Sleep' are baffling. Partly it is the traditional bohemian contempt for the bourgeois; partly it is the souring of John's long-standing competitive relationship with Paul.\" Writing in the \"NME\", Alan Smith said of the track: \"Musically, it's tremendous \u2013 open, big, powerful, thundering, dramatic \u2013 but this is a song which will be remembered for its lyrics \u2026\" As its ultimate putdown of McCartney, Smith identified the couplet \"The sound you make is muzak to my ears / You must've learned something in all those years.\" In \"Melody Maker\", Roy Hollingworth lauded \"Imagine\" as the best work that Lennon had ever done and described \"How Do You Sleep?\" as \"the unnerving slash at McCartney \u2026 a slow funk with Commanche or maybe Sioux flavoured strings\".\nThomas MacFarlane wrote about the song: \n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />The space created for \"How Do You Sleep?\" seems to be a photo negative of the one created for \"Imagine\". ... Here, it seems as if a storm is brewing, and its awesome power will not be denied.\nAftermath.\nA few months after \"Imagine\" was released, Lennon stated that the song \"was an answer to \"Ram\"\" but added: <templatestyles src=\"Template:Blockquote/styles.css\" />There's really no feud between me and Paul. It's all good, clean fun. No doubt there will be an answer to 'Sleep' on his next album, but I don't feel that way about him at all. It works as a complete song with no relation to Paul. It works as a piece of music. I started writing it in 1969, and the line 'So Sergeant Pepper Took You By Surprise ...' was written about two years before anything happened. There was always a musical difference between me and Paul \u2013 it didn't just happen last year. But we've always had a lot in common, and we still do. The thing that made The Beatles what they were was the fact that I could do my rock 'n roll, and Paul could do the pretty stuff ... But hardly a week goes by when I don't see, and/or hear from one of them.\"\nShortly before his death in 1980, Lennon stated in an interview with \"Playboy\": \"I used my resentment against Paul \u2026 to create a song \u2026 not a terrible vicious horrible vendetta \u2026 I used my resentment and withdrawing from Paul and The Beatles, and the relationship with Paul, to write 'How Do You Sleep'. I don't really go 'round with those thoughts in my head all the time\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1131883": "McCartney (album)\nMcCartney is the debut solo studio album by the English rock musician Paul McCartney, released on 17 April 1970 by Apple Records. McCartney recorded it in secrecy, mostly using basic home-recording equipment at his house in St John's Wood. Mixing and some recording took place at professional London studios. In its loosely arranged performances, \"McCartney\" eschewed the polish of the Beatles' past records in favour of a lo-fi style. Apart from occasional contributions by his wife, Linda, McCartney performed the entire album alone by overdubbing on four-track tape.\nMcCartney recorded the album during a period of depression and confusion, following John Lennon's private departure from the Beatles in September 1969. Conflicts over the release of McCartney's album further estranged him from his bandmates, as he refused to delay the album's release to allow for Apple's previously scheduled titles, notably the Beatles' album \"Let It Be\". A press release in the form of a self-interview supplied with UK promotional copies of \"McCartney\" led to the Beatles' break-up.\n\"McCartney\" received mostly negative reviews, while McCartney himself was vilified for seemingly ending the Beatles. The record was widely criticised for being under-produced and for its unfinished songs, although the ballad \"Maybe I'm Amazed\" was consistently singled out for praise. Commercially, \"McCartney\" benefited from the publicity surrounding the break-up; it held the number 1 position for three weeks on the US \"Billboard\" Top LPs before yielding that position to \"Let It Be\". It peaked at number 2 in Britain.\nIn later years, the album was credited for influencing DIY musicians and lo-fi music styles. McCartney also recorded two successor albums: \"McCartney II\" (1980) and \"McCartney III\" (2020). In 2011, the first \"McCartney\" record was reissued with bonus tracks as part of the \"Paul McCartney Archive Collection\".\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:TOC limit/styles.css\" />\nBackground.\nAfter John Lennon requested a \"divorce\" from the Beatles in a band meeting on 20 September 1969, Paul McCartney withdrew to his farm in Campbeltown, Scotland. Author Robert Rodriguez describes his frame of mind as \"brokenhearted, shocked, and dispirited at the loss of the only job he had ever known\". While Lennon's departure was not made official, partly for business reasons, McCartney's period in seclusion with his family coincided with widespread rumours in America that he had died \u2013 an escalation of the three-year-old \"Paul Is Dead\" rumour. The rumour was dispelled by journalists from BBC Radio and \"Life\" magazine, who tracked him down at his farm, High Park.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nI nearly had a breakdown. I suppose the hurt of it all, and the disappointment, and the sorrow of losing this great band, these great friends\u00a0... I was going crazy.\n \u2013 McCartney to daughter Mary, 2001\nMcCartney's two months in Scotland created an estrangement between him and his bandmates, further to the division caused by their appointment of Allen Klein as business manager in May that year. McCartney later cited Klein's appointment as the first \"irreconcilable difference\" within the Beatles, since he continued to favour New York lawyers Lee Eastman and John Eastman \u2013 father and brother, respectively, of his wife Linda. For McCartney, the period following Lennon's departure was also marked by a bout of severe depression, during which, in his own estimation, he came close to suffering a nervous breakdown.\nIn his book \"Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney\", Howard Sounes writes of the McCartneys' exile at High Park: \"This was grim for Linda. She had a seven-year-old and a baby to look after, with a husband who was depressed and drunk. She later told friends it was one of the most difficult times in her life, while Paul reflected that he might have become a rock 'n' roll casualty at this point in his career.\" With Linda's encouragement, McCartney began to consider a future outside the Beatles, by writing or finishing songs for his first solo album, \"McCartney\".\nContent and recording.\nStuder home recordings, December 1969 \u2013 January 1970.\n<templatestyles src=\"Template:Quote_box/styles.css\" />\nI was like a professor in his laboratory. Very simple [set-up], as basic as you can get\u00a0... Even now that album has an interesting sound. Very analogue, very direct.<ref name=\"Du Noyer/Mojo p 60\"></ref>\n\u2013 McCartney, 2001\nMcCartney and his family returned to London shortly before Christmas 1969, and he started work on the album at his home in Cavendish Avenue, St John's Wood. The recordings were carried out on a recently delivered Studer four-track tape recorder, without a mixing desk, and therefore without VU displays as a guide for recording levels. McCartney described his home-recording set-up as \"Studer, one mic, and nerve\". He played all the musical instruments on the album \u2013 from acoustic and electric guitars and bass to keyboards, drums and various percussion instruments \u2013 with Linda supplying backing vocals on some songs.\nThe album's recordings eschewed the musical sophistication that distinguished the Beatles' work with producer George Martin, particularly the band's 1969 release \"Abbey Road\". According to \"The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll\", \"McCartney\" is \"a one-man-studio-band LP\" with \"a pronounced homemade quality; it was spare and sounded almost unfinished\". Rodriguez writes that in his avoidance of the \"Abbey Road\" studio aesthetic, \"In his own way, [McCartney] was fulfilling the 'as-nature-intended' theme of the aborted 'Get Back' sessions, albeit as a one-and-a-half man band.\"\nMcCartney first taped a 45-second portion of a song he wrote in Campbeltown, \"The Lovely Linda\". As with much of the album, McCartney sang the composition accompanied by acoustic guitar before filling the remaining tracks on the Studer with a second guitar part, bass and percussive accompaniment. Although this performance of \"The Lovely Linda\" was only intended as a test of the new equipment, it would be included on the official release, as the opening track, complete with the sound of McCartney giggling at the end of the recording. Reflected in the sequencing of the album, the second and third songs McCartney taped were \"That Would Be Something\", also written in Scotland, and the instrumental \"Valentine Day\". The latter was one of three selections on \"McCartney\" that its creator \"ad-libbed on the spot\", he later claimed, along with the similarly rock-oriented \"Momma Miss America\" and \"Oo You\".\nOn 3 January 1970, he interrupted work on \"McCartney\" to participate in the Beatles' final recording session, when he, George Harrison and Ringo Starr recorded the Harrison composition \"I Me Mine\" at EMI Studios (now Abbey Road Studios). The next day, the three musicians revisited McCartney's \"Let It Be\", a song recorded by the band in January 1969 for their forthcoming \"Get Back\" film project.\nMorgan Studios, February 1970.\nOn 12 February, McCartney took his Studer tapes to Morgan Studios, in the north-west London suburb of Willesden, in order to copy all the four-track recordings onto eight-track tape, to allow for further overdubbing. To maintain the project's secrecy, McCartney worked at Morgan under the pseudonym \"Billy Martin\". By this point, he had also taped \"Junk\" and \"Teddy Boy\" at Cavendish Avenue, two songs he began writing during the Beatles' 1968 visit to India and had rehearsed with the band in January 1969. The other recordings transferred to eight-track included \"Glasses\" \u2013 a sound effects piece featuring \"wineglasses played at random\", in McCartney's description \u2013 and \"Singalong Junk\", an instrumental version of \"Junk\" to which he now added a strings part played on a Mellotron. Among other overdubs on these eight-track mixes, McCartney supplied a vocal to the previously instrumental \"Oo You\".\nWhile at Morgan, he also taped \"Hot as Sun\", a \"Polynesian-influenced\" instrumental dating from the late 1950s, according to author Bruce Spizer, and \"Kreen-Akrore\", which Sounes describes as an \"experimental percussion track\". Recorded on 15 February, \"Kreen-Akrore\" was McCartney's attempt to describe sonically a hunt by the Kreen-Akrore tribespeople of the Brazilian Amazon, after he had watched an ATV documentary on their way of life. Amid musical interludes featuring electric guitar, organ and piano, McCartney used a bow and arrow he purchased at the Knightsbridge department store Harrods, according to engineer Robin Black. The latter was among the few people who knew that McCartney was making a solo album. Linda contributed the breathing and animal-like sounds, with McCartney, on \"Kreen-Akrore\".\nEMI Studios, February\u2013March 1970.\nOn 21 February 1970, McCartney moved to the more familiar EMI Studios, with the booking again under the name of Billy Martin. There, he carried out further mixing on the previously recorded material, as well as taping new selections. On 22 February, McCartney recorded \"Every Night\" \u2013 another composition rehearsed during the \"Get Back\" sessions, and a song that authors Chip Madinger and Mark Easter note as the \"first"}, "descending_order": ["1056165", "772896", "1131883"], "permutation_1": ["1131883", "772896", "1056165"], "permutation_2": ["1056165", "1131883", "772896"], "permutation_3": ["1131883", "772896", "1056165"]}
{"id": "nq_-9124097907989779648", "docs_added": {"2813318": "I Wanna Talk About Me\n\"I Wanna Talk About Me\" is a song written by Bobby Braddock and recorded by American country music artist Toby Keith. The single was released on August 20, 2001 as the second single from Keith's 2001 album \"Pull My Chain\". The song was his seventh number one single on the US \"Billboard\" Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart.\nBackground.\nBraddock (\"He Stopped Loving Her Today\") initially intended the song for Blake Shelton's debut album, which Braddock produced. When audience testing of the song yielded negative results, Shelton's record label decided against including it on the album. Recalling the spoken-word verses of Keith's 1998 single \"Getcha Some\", Braddock then decided to pitch it to him.\nKeith told \"Billboard\" magazine that he knew he would get \"banged a little\" for cutting the song. \"They're going to call it a rap, [although] there ain't nobody doing rap who would call it a rap.\"\nContent.\nSimilar to Keith's 1998 single \"Getcha Some\", \"I Wanna Talk About Me\" is cited as an example of country-rap, due to the use of a strong beat and rhythmically spoken lyrics. \"I Wanna Talk About Me\" tells of a male's frustration in his inability to converse with his partner, who wants to talk about herself. In the chorus, the singer states \"I like talking about you, you, you, you, usually / But occasionally / I wanna talk about me\". A musical strength of the song is its use of a I-V-vi-IV arpeggio played in a punchy rhythm.\nCritical reception.\nRay Waddell, of \"Billboard\" magazine said that men could relate to the song, \"which Keith manages to sell through sheer force of personality.\" For \"The Washington Post\", Paul Farhi called the song \"a good-natured ditty\" whose chorus \"is either a justified demand for equal time or the response of an egotistical jerk.\" In contrast, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of All Music Guide called the song a \"mocking macho white-rap\" and the \"weakest track\" on \"Pull My Chain\".\nReviewing the music video, Edward Morris of Country Music Television called the video a \"comic gem and all the proof...that Keith can handle any acting chore.\"\nMusic video.\nThe music video was directed by Michael Salomon and shows Keith in many different situations, including a man shopping with his girlfriend or wife, a police officer, a pimp, a motorcycle rider, and a surgeon. It premiered on CMT on August 28, 2001.\nChart performance.\n\"I Wanna Talk About Me\" debuted at number 51 on the U.S. \"Billboard\" Hot Country Singles & Tracks for the week of August 25, 2001.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "37539297": "Talk a Good Game\nTalk a Good Game is the fourth studio album by the American singer Kelly Rowland. Formerly titled \"Year of the Woman\", the album was released on June 18, 2013, by Universal Republic and its affiliated record labels. Incorporating a base core of R&B and pop music, \"Talk a Good Game\" was influenced by the likes of Whitney Houston, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder among Rowland's other idols. She wanted the album to be a celebration of womanhood and referred to the record as her most personal album to date. On the album, she co-wrote all but one song, \"Freak\", a cover version of the 2010 song by the entertainer Jamie Foxx from his fourth studio album \"Best Night of My Life\". A deluxe edition, and a Target-exclusive edition of the album with bonus tracks, were released simultaneously with the twelve-track standard edition.\n\"Talk a Good Game\" was promoted with live versions of the album's songs during the Lights Out Tour, a co-headline concert tour between Rowland and The-Dream. The album was also preceded by the release of the lead single, a Mike Will Made It and Marz production called \"Kisses Down Low\", which peaked in the top-thirty of the US \"Billboard\" Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. A second single, The-Dream-produced \"Dirty Laundry\", was released a month before the album. The song talks about the domestic abuse that Rowland suffered during a previous relationship.\nOn its release, music critics commended the album's cohesive sound and themes throughout, often noting Rowland's most personal and vulnerable lyrics as well as the strength of her vocals. \"Talk a Good Game\" entered the US \"Billboard\" 200 at number four, selling 68,000 copies in its opening week, and was Rowland's third top ten album. The album also entered the US R&B/Hip-Hop Albums Chart at number four. In 2014, Rowland left her label, wanting a new start elsewhere and signalling the end of the \"Talk a Good Game\" era. The album was her only release under Republic Records.\nBackground.\nWork on Rowland's fourth studio album reportedly began in 2011, after the release of her third studio album, \"Here I Am\". In March 2012, Lonny Bereal told Kempire Radio that for the album Rowland would be returning to her R&B roots. \"She's going in so hard with the R&B. Of course, she is going to give the Pop crowd what they're looking for. But, she really is returning to R&B on this album. Her delivery is real confident now. It's definitely a new Kelly Rowland. She wouldn't even let me put autotune on her voice this time round. She was like 'No, I want people to really get me'.\" The following month, Rowland told \"MTV News\" that the album would have a theme and that she had been documenting the recording process of the album for her fans to see. During an interview with \"Vegas\" magazine in June 2012, she described the album as a dedication to \"my ladies\". She explained, \"I want to tell women how incredible we are, how our intuition is so spot-on. Sometimes we don't listen to it, but it is the thing that can actually make us happier.\" She cited Whitney Houston, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder as the album's inspirations.\nIn August 2011, the producer Rico Love told \"Rap-Up\" magazine, \"While she's on tour, I'm gonna be writing records for her new album. We can kinda roll that out and drop her new single in late spring. Excited about that.\" H also said that he wanted to continue developing an R&B sound with Rowland, following the US chart success of her single \"Motivation\" (2011), which he co-wrote and co-produced. \"I believe in R&B and I believe that if we make new age records and don't make dated records and keep it classic, I think we'll be fine.\" Rowland also worked with Amber \"Se7en\" Streeter, Da Internz, Eric Bellinger, Eric Hudson, Kevin Cossom, Lonny Bereal, Nikeshia Briscoe, Redd Stylez, Rock City, T-Minus, Rodney \"Darkchild\" Jerkins, The Runners and Beau Vallis. On March 23, 2012, Rowland confirmed via Twitter that she was working with rapper T-Pain. Sean Garrett revealed in an interview with \"Rap-Up\" on May 9, 2012 that he also contributed to the album. He stated, \"Her swag is dope and I'm just so happy to see her get her shot. I'ma do what I can to make sure Kelly right.\" In August 2012, the Grammy-winning songwriter Diane Warren mentioned her involvement, saying that she had been working with Rowland \"because Beyonc\u00e9 was telling her to get together with me\".\nIn November 2012, Rowland revealed she had been working with production duo Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Speaking of their collaboration to \"Billboard\"'s Keith Caulfield, she said \"Let me tell you something, they are a part of the foundation of who I am\u00a0...\u00a0Because their sound was one of the first things I remember about R&B. Being in the studio with them, I wanted to pinch myself.\" However, it was later revealed that the songs she recorded with Jam and Lewis did not make the album. In February 2013, Rowland revealed that she had over fifty songs recorded for the album that she was continuously working on to put together the final collection. Rowland also worked with The-Dream, Pharrell Williams and Boi-1da. According to \"USA Today\" in April 2013,the rapper Pusha T was to make an appearance on the album. In April 2013, Rowland revealed she had more than 70 songs to choose from, among a feature vocal from Lil Wayne, the album features Wiz Khalifa and a duet with Pharrell Williams. Rowland reunited with her former Destiny's Child bandmates Beyonc\u00e9 and Michelle Williams for a song on the album, Rowland stressed that it was not a Destiny's Child reunion but rather a song by herself featuring Beyonc\u00e9 and Williams.\nMusical style, writing and composition.\n\"Talk a Good Game\" was inspired by R&B artists New Edition, Pebbles, and Babyface, Rowland spoke on the album's musical direction saying \"[It] feels like everything I wanted to make as far as music and R&B, I wanted to make sure my roots were really pronounced on this album.\" Rowland cited Whitney Houston, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder as the album's inspirations.\nThe album opens with \"Freak\", an electro-R&B song that was originally recorded by American entertainer Jamie Foxx for his album \"Best Night of My Life\" (2010) It references Michael Jackson's \"Thriller\" as well as including a spoken bridge towards the end. Then comes \"Kisses Down Low\", an R&B and electronic track written by Marquel Middlebrooks, Timothy and Theron Thomas, Rowland, Mike Will Made It, with the latter producing the song. \"Rap-Up\" described the song as a \"bedroom banger\", whilst \"Billboard\"'s Andrew Hampp described the song as an \"unofficial\" sequel to Rowland's most successful and sexually explicit single, 2010's \"Motivation\" (featuring Lil Wayne). Third in the album, is the adult contemporary-influenced \"Gone\", which features the hip-hop rapper Wiz Khalifa. Harmony Samuels produced the \"base-heavy\" and radio friendly \"snapping\" beat which features a prominent sample of \"Big Yellow Taxi\", a 1970 single by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell. It lyrically speaks about a \"man who played with her heart\" and how \"she's done putting up with his games\". Lyrics from Rowland include \"There's a million ways that I could tell you / But I think I would rather show you that it's over / And I won't be back no more\", whilst Khalifa raps \"I been here before / And you know Kelly never lied / So you can get your stuff / And get to going / I'll get back to getting high\".\nThe album is named after track four, \"Talk a Good Game\" which features Kevin Cossom. Over a \"snaky but sweet\" production from T-Minus Rowland sings \"I don't think I can take another broken promise / Why do things the hard way when you can just be honest\". Hampp stated that Cossom's rap gave the song a \"street edge\". It takes the listener on an emotional journey according to \"The Honesty Hour\". The next song, \"Down on Love\", is a mid-tempo production featuring another classic sample, this time the 1987 song \"Rock Steady\" by R&B group The Whispers. Using her mezzo-soprano vocals, Rowland takes on a downtrodden romantic situation, \"We want two different things at two different times / You know how the story go / Easy come easy go\". \"Dirty Laundry\" was co-written by Rowland, Carlos McKinney and The Dream, and is an R&B \"confessional\" ballad, containing \"R&B jam spools\" and a piano-led melody. It details a \"frank and often poignant commentary\" on Rowland's life. The song is a \"brutal\" chronicle of the last ten years of Rowland's life, covering her envy of Beyonc\u00e9's solo success and the end of an abusive relationship. Amongst the lyrics, Rowland sings \"Kinda lucky I was in her shadow / Phone call from my sister what's the matter / She said, 'Oh no / You gotta leave' / I'm on the kitchen floor / He took the keys.\"\nThis moves onto another track called \"You Changed\" that features her former Destiny's Child bandmates Beyonc\u00e9 and Michelle Williams. Lyrically the song talks about a relationship that has gone \"awry\". Rowland takes prominence on the track, though Beyonc\u00e9 and Williams each get their \"own cathartic verse to go off on a clueless ex\". The \"Honesty Hour\" compared \"You Changed\" to the 2004 Destiny's Child single \"Girl\". Production on the album then moves on to a light mid-tempo dance track on \"I Remember\", which was produced by The Runners. Atop a \"tinkling piano and propulsive dance beat\", Rowland's \"characteristically soulful vocals\" can be heard. Hampp said that the song incorporated tribal music and a vibe that \"consciously stops short of being a full-on four-on-the-floor banger.\" According to the \"Honesty Hour\", \"I Remember\" remains firmly a ballad, but incorporates elements of techno and EDM. Rowland dabbles in some 80's funk pop on the Boi-1da and Matthew Burnett-produced \"Red Wine\". The song features dreamy synths and a soaring chorus, in a vintage throwback. It was compared to songs by Brandy Norwood. The pace continues on the romantic \"This is Love\" which focuses on a guy that \"got [Rowland] goin' on cloud 9\". Over the light production, Rowland sings \"I'm waiting and anticipating for you to give it to me / Boy I'm trying to hold it inside / Heart racing, my body shaking / 'Cause when you give it to me, boy you are the truth, I can't lie.\" According to the \"Honesty Hour\", \"This is Love\" had crossover appear for both R&B and pop radio.\n\"Street Life\" sees Rowland opt for a \"no BS\" attitude. She sings about how \"chasing fast money takes precedence over self-improvement\" atop a mid-2000s pop music production, built around layers of hand drums and horn stabs. It was produced by Pharrell Williams and opens with Rowland saying \"Ooh 'dere go my baby daddy!\". The lyrics then continue on to speak about the current problems society is facing, \"the recession ate me alive / Tryin' to get where the breeze is nice / So I can breathe.\" She then goes on to speak about social issues and the breakdown of society on lyrics like \"coming from the street life we know it's letting go / We like to go to school for education / But the street life we know don't write no notes / It's like parole with the time we're facing.\" Pusha T appears in the song's middle 8 where he raps about honor and US president Barack Obama, \"this is for my niggas with them four baby mamas...this Presidential Rollie don't make me Obama / so don't judge me by my jewelry, please your honor\". The \"Huffington Post\" described \"Street Life\" as a departure from Rowland's previous \"softer sound\". The standard edition of the album finishes with \"Stand in Front of Me\", a 1950s' doo-wop inspired \"ode to love\". The simple production and lyrics include the lines \"You just do it / Mean it / Prove it\"; Hampp of \"Billboard\" wrote that one could expect to hear the song at weddings.\nRelease and promotion.\nOn October 10, 2012, Rowland announced on her official website that the album would be called \"Year of the Woman\", and wrote that it \"is one of my greatest pieces of work and I cannot wait to share it with you guys!\". During an interview with \"Billboard\" magazine in November 2012, Rowland spoke about the type of songs she had been recording for the album, saying \"With the things that I'm talking about, I think that it's probably the most vulnerable I've been on a record. And I wanted to just touch a woman's hand, talk to her, you know what I mean? Like, this is my sister and I think that's one of the things that I wanted to really pronounce on this album, is a celebration of a woman.\" During a back stage interview at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards, Rowland revealed that working with so many producers inspired her to rename the album \"Talk a Good Game\". The album was originally due for release from June 3, 2013, but, during an interview with \"The Madd Hatta Morning Show\" on 97.9 Box FM, Rowland revealed that the album had been pushed back to June 18, 2013. The album was made available to pre-order on May 21, 2013, ahead of its June 18, 2013 US release. In August 2013, vocal producer Lonny Bereal said that Rowland was working on new music, including songs produced by Bereal, for a re-release of \"Talk a Good Game\". In March 2014, Rowland confirmed that she had left Republic Records in search of a \"fresh start\" and that she had already begun work on her next studio album, signalling the end of the \"Talk a Good Game\" era.\nIn June 2012, it was announced that the Sean Garrett-penned song \"Ice\", which features rapper Lil Wayne, would serve as the album's first single. \"Ice\" is the third collaboration between Rowland and Wayne, following the Destiny's Child collaboration \"Soldier\" (2004), and her solo single \"Motivation\". It was sent to urban radio in the United States on August 14, 2012, and was released via iTunes Stores from August 24, 2012. \"Ice\" reached number 24 on the US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, number 88 on the US \"Billboard\" Hot 100 chart, and number 25 on the South Korea Gaon International Chart. Upon unveiling the track listing it was revealed that \"Ice\" would not feature on the album.\nRowland performed in support of \"Talk a Good Game\" at the RiverFest 2013, on May 25, 2013 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Here, Rowland performed \"Dirty Laundry\" live for the first time. Rowland performed \"Dirty Laundry\" live for the second time on May 26, 2013, during the opening date of her co-headline tour with The-Dream, the Lights Out Tour. On May 28, 2013, Rowland visited \"The Raheem DaVaughn Show\" on BLIS.fm, where she premiered \"You Changed\", her collaboration with Beyonc\u00e9 and Michelle Williams, as well as \"Gone\" featuring Wiz Khalifa and \"Talk a Good Game\" featuring Kevin Cossom.\nOn April 30, 2013, it was confirmed that Rowland would be co-headlining a US concert tour with The-Dream, who produced two songs on \"Talk a Good Game\". Speaking about the tour, Rowland said: \"To be able to work with [The-Dream] in this capacity and have the opportunity to showcase our new music to our fans live and in person is going to be extremely rewarding! I can't wait.\". The Lights Out Tour was originally scheduled to have twenty-two shows, but this was later changed to five, after Rowland was forced to cancel many of the shows because she signed on to become a judge on \"The X Factor US\". The tour kicked off on May 26, 2013 in Washington, D.C. and ended on June 2, 2013 in Mashantucket.\nSingles.\nThe album's first single, \"Kisses Down Low\", made its worldwide premiere on January 18, 2013, and was released via iTunes Stores on February 1, 2013. The single impacted US urban radio on February 5, 2013, and US rhythmic radio on March 26, 2013. In the United States \"Kisses Down Low\" debuted at number 96 on the \"Billboard\" Hot 100 for the issue dated March 10, 2013. On its third week the song peaked at number 72.\nOn May 9, 2013, Rowland released a teaser for the album's The-Dream-penned second single \"Dirty Laundry\". The minute-long clip featured a scene from a laundromat. The song premiered on May 15, 2013 and was released for digital download on May 21, 2013. The track begins during a \"rough period\" of time after the release of her debut album \"Simply Deep\" (2002). In the lyrics, Rowland confronts a mixture of emotions that she experienced over former bandmate Beyonc\u00e9's post-Destiny's Child success; emotions including resentment and job. The second half of the song discusses an abusive past relationship. It was officially sent to US urban radio on May 15, 2013, and to US rhythmic radio on July 30, 2013. On August 7, 2013, Rowland announced that \"Gone\" featuring Wiz Khalifa would be released as the album's third single. However, in March 2014, it was confirmed that Rowland had left Republic Records for a new start and already started work on her fifth album, signalling the end of the \"Talk a Good Game\" era.\nCritical reception.\nUpon release, \"Talk a Good Game\" has received mostly positive reviews. According to Metacritic, where they assign a weighted average score out of 100 to ratings and reviews from selected mainstream critics, the album received an average of 65, based on 12 reviews. Kyle Kramer from the Chicago's \"RedEye\" entertainment newspaper called \"Talk a Good Game\" a \"fantastically bold re-introduction for those who haven't checked in on Rowland in a decade.\" He noted that although at times Rowland experiments with adult contemporary music (on \"Gone\" featuring Wiz Khalifa) the majority of albums sits \"between post-Drake R&B and \"high energy highlights\". Kramer concluded by calling \"Talk a Good Game\" a risk-taking project, which \"as a result, [is] the right [move]\". For VH1, Felicia Dennis and Samantha Friedman wrote that, on hearing the album, every song could have been a single. For \"AllMusic\", Andy Kellman wrote that \"Talk a Good Game\" was a similar make-up of pop and R&B music to Rowland's releases. He described the album as full of \"satisfying, if mostly unexciting, material\", comparing it to \"Here I Am\" (2011) except for the lack of dance-pop songs on the new album.\nJim Farber from \"The New York Daily News\" thought that the \"90s-style R&B might keep [Rowland] from receiving the mainstream appeal of her peers\". Apart from \"Dirty Laundry\", which Farber called \"a tad desperate\" as the message gets lost in the melody, he thought the album \"has a focused sound, based on the slow grind. As on many of Rowland's most effective songs of the past, her latest keep the center of gravity low. The songs let her slippery voice slide over loping, bass-driven beats.\" \"The Boston Globe\"'s Sarah Rodman agreed that when people looked beyond \"Dirty Laundry\", the album \"reflects a better balance of sound and sentiment\". Writing for \"Slant Magazine\", Annie Galvin awarded the album three out of five stars. Commenting that \"Rowland is still grappling with how to create an authentic artistic identity\", Galvin concluded that \"\"Talk a Good Game\"'s standout tracks prove that she's closer to carving a niche for herself than she has been on prior efforts that suppressed rather than addressed that difficulty\".\n\"Spin\"'s Julianne Shepherd wrote that \"Talk a Good Game\" was \"a slive above \"Here I Am\"\". In the review, she wrote, \"Rowland is good at anything, it's being bona fide through and through. She's an extremely likable figure in pop music, more relatable than her goddess-sis Beyonc\u00e9, more down-to-earth lyrically than many of her R&B peers. \"Talk a Good Game\" is her realness in full flower, an album that balances world-weariness about relationships with infectious dollops of sexual agency, tackling the vagaries of love almost exclusively and offering anthems for experiences that every woman has had (or will have) at some point.\" Andrew Hampp from \"Billboard\" agreed in his track-by-track review. He wrote, \"Kelly Rowland finally comes into her own on 'Talk a Good Game' her most focused, consistent and honest album to date. Picking up where 2011's 'Here I Am' left off, the singer's new album has an additional layer of honesty and openness courtesy ... the album is still a refreshing hyper-focus on contemporary R&B.\" \"Vibe\"'s Kathy Iandoli also agreed, saying that \"\"Talk a Good Game\" sets her far apart from the status quo of mass-produced R&B... Kelly finally knows who she is and how she'd like to sound.\" \"Rowland finally hits her stride,\" is what Robert Copsey wrote in his review for \"Digital Spy\", where he also called the album \"a collection of classy and sophisticated R&B\".\nCommercial performance.\nOn June 23, 2013, \"Talk a Good Game\" opened on the UK R&B Albums Chart at number seven, besting previous album \"Here I Am\" (2011) by one chart position. However, on the UK Albums Chart, \"Talk a Good Game\" failed to match \"Here I Am\"'s peak position of forty-three, only managing to debut at number eighty. As a result, it became Rowland's lowest charting album in the UK to date. In the US, \"Talk a Good Game\" debuted on the \"Billboard\" 200 chart at number four, having sold 68,000\u00a0copies; it became Rowland's third top-ten album, though sold 9,000\u00a0copies fewer than \"Here I Am\". \"Talk a Good Game\" also debuted at number four on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, failing to match \"Here I Am\"'s peak of number one. In its second week, the album dropped to number 11. As of December 2013, \"Talk a Good Game\" has sold 215,000 copies worldwide.\nTrack listing.\nNotes and sample credits\nPersonnel.\nAdapted from AllMusic and album liner.\nRecording locations\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nTechnical\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nCharts.\n<templatestyles src=\"Col-begin/styles.css\"/>\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "60610132": "Sing It with Me\n\"Sing It with Me\" is a song by English singer-songwriter JP Cooper and Norwegian singer and songwriter Astrid S. It was released as a single on 3 May 2019 by Island Records.\nBackground.\nWhen talking about the song, Cooper said, \"I\u2019m pretty sure that the reason most guys pick up a guitar and write a song for the first time, it's usually down to a girl. 'Sing It With Me' is a song about just that. It's the idea of writing a song for somebody that you didn't quite have the courage to simply say hi to. It's a romanticised version of that I guess, only this time the guy gets the girl (for me in reality I'd likely record it 50 times, only to decide it\u2019s terrible and scrap it). I wanted to feature an artist with an incredibly sweet voice and Astrid S fit the bill perfectly. I was so excited to hear her on the track and she definitely delivered. I tried my best to write a chorus that was almost as infectious as 'Baby Shark' but very quickly realised that it was impossible. Overall, I think it turned out pretty well.\"\nMusic video.\nA music video to accompany the release of \"Sing It with Me\" was first released onto YouTube on 30 May 2019. When talking about the music video, Cooper said, \"I love 90's American indie films like Slacker, Rushmore and Napoleon Dynamite so the fact that it nods to that era\u2026 is great. We filmed it in Estonia with a brief for the location and the characters to all have a slight Wes Anderson feel, which I think the production company nailed. I\u2019m usually quite nervous about making music videos. This is the first one of mine that I\u2019ve watched back and smiled all the way through.\"\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "3288810": "Marie Daulne\nBelgian singer\nMarie Daulne (born 20 October 1964) is a Belgian singer.\nDaulne was born in Isiro, Haut-Uele District, Democratic Republic of the Congo to a Belgian who was killed that same year by Simba rebels, and to a local Congolese woman. Daulne and her mother and sisters were airlifted out to Kinshasa in an emergency evacuation by Belgian paratroopers and flown to Belgium because their father had been a Belgian citizen. Daulne was raised in Belgium and as of 2007 calls Brussels home, but lived in New York City for three years starting in 2000.\nDaulne is the founder and lead singer of the music group Zap Mama whose second album, \"Adventures in Afropea 1,\" \"became 1993's best-selling world music album and established Zap Mama as an international concert sensation.\" With \"over six albums and countless concerts, she continues to pay tribute to the family's saviors.\" Daulne insists that \"one tune on each of her reggae-, soul-, funk- and hip-hop-infused albums be a traditional Pygmy song.\"\nDaulne says her mission is to be a bridge between the European and the African and bring the two cultures together with her music. \"What I would like to do is bring sounds from [Africa] and bring it to the Western world, because I know that through sound and through beats, that people discover a new culture, a new people, a new world.\" Daulne specializes in polyphonic, harmonic music with a mixture of heavily infused African instruments, R&B, and Hip-hop and emphasizes voice in all her music. \"The voice is an instrument itself,\" says Daulne. \"It's the original instrument. The primary instrument. The most soulful instrument, the human voice.\" Daulne calls her music afro-European.\nEarly life and musical origins.\nDaulne was born in Isiro, Haut-Uele District, one of the largest cities in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as the fourth child of a white civil servant, Cyrille Daulne, a Walloon (French-speaking Belgian) and Bernadette Aningi, a woman from Kisangani, formerly Stanleyville, the third largest city in Congo Kinshasa.\nWhen Daulne was only a week old, her father was attacked and killed by Simba rebels, who were opposed to mixed-race relationships. \"He did not have a chance to come with us because he was captured,\" Daulne says. \"He said to my mother, 'Escape,' and we escaped into the forest, and the Pygmies hide us while we were waiting to see what happens,\" says Daulne. \"He was a prisoner of the rebels for a while, then they killed him.\" Her mother was arrested by the rebels but was later set free because she spoke their language. Daulne pays tribute to those pygmies who rescued her family in the song \"Gati\" from \"Supermoon\". \"They saved my family and many others during the Congolese rebellion,\" Daulne says, \"and they deserve recognition for that.\" \"My promise to them was I used your song to be known in the world and my goal is to talk about you,\" Daulne added.\nAfter eight months in the interior of the country, Daulne and her mother, brother and sisters were eventually airlifted out to Isiro in an emergency evacuation by Belgian paratroopers and flown to Belgium because their father had been a Belgian citizen. \"I think the experience of the political situation is more my mother, who had to survive. I was a baby, and I just was protected by my mother. What I know that I learned from my mother is to be strong and to stay positive in any kind of situation; that's the best weapon to survive. That's what I learned, and this is the main message I pass into my music,\" says Daulne. Everything was different when Daulne, her mother, five other sisters, and an aunt arrived in Belgium. \"When we arrived, it was snowing, and my mother said, 'Look \u2014 the country of white people is white!'\" says Daulne.\nGrowing up in Belgium was hard for Daulne. \"It was hard as a kid, you want to look like everybody else, and there aren\u2019t many black people in Belgium \u2013 compared to England, or America or France,\" says Daulne. \"It became easier as I grew older. There were more black role models about \u2013 musicians and sports stars. At school I started to see my mixed heritage as a bonus \u2013 I could be part of both the African and Belgian communities.\"\nInterest in European music.\nDaulne listened to European music as she grew up. \"We had the radio when I was growing up in Belgium, so we heard a lot of French music. And of course, American music was also very popular all over Europe. Since our mother did not want us to watch TV in our home, we entertained ourselves by creating our own music. We were very musical.\" Daulne was introduced to black music watching television. \"When I was growing up, there weren't many black people in Europe -- my family was alone. Then I saw an American musical comedy with black people on TV. And I couldn't believe it. I said, \"That's us!\" My whole fantasy life was based on that movie.\" Daulne felt a special connection to blue songs like \"Damn your eyes\" by Etta James. \"When I was a teenager I listened to a lot of American blues,\" says Daulne. \"That song brought me happiness while I was going through the pain of a broken love. It helped me to open the door and see the life in front of me.\" Daulne said she sang that song as a teenager \"alone in my room.\" \"It\u2019s a magic song, it transforms \u2014 when I sang that song I cried, and you need to cry to heal.\" \"I sing it now and I hope, in my turn, that I can help another teenager to do the same if they are having pain from love.\"\nWhen Daulne was 14 she went to England and first heard reggae. \"I discovered Bob Marley -- my favorite album was \"Kaya\". I know that whole album by heart.\" Then Daulne became interested in the rap music of Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys. \"I was into breakdancing at the time. I formed a gang, and we would beatbox like the Americans, like the Fat Boys.\"\nInterest in African music.\n\"When I was growing up, I refused all this tradition,\" Daulne says. \"It was boring . . . because it was not what we talked about at school, the bands of the moment. Nobody was talking about Pygmies and sounds from Africa. It was a little bit of shame to talk about the African roots.\" But although Daulne was encouraged to adopt the language and culture of Belgium, her mother kept Congolese music alive in the household. \"In Africa, before you eat or do something, you sing to call the spirits of the peace, and my mother teach me that,\" Daulne says. \"I discover that, with my two cultures, I have something very rich in me.\"\nAlthough Daulne remembers that her mother sang some songs from Congo Kinshasa around the house, her mother did not teach them to the children, stressing mastery of French instead but after Daulne left home she remembered the African songs her mother sang to her as a child. \"Our mother would make"}, "descending_order": ["37539297", "2813318", "60610132", "3288810"], "permutation_1": ["37539297", "60610132", "2813318", "3288810"], "permutation_2": ["60610132", "2813318", "37539297", "3288810"], "permutation_3": ["60610132", "3288810", "37539297", "2813318"]}
{"id": "nq_-782287682246517661", "docs_added": {"391541": "John DiMaggio\nAmerican actor (born 1968)\nJohn William DiMaggio ( ; born September 4, 1968) is an American actor. His various voice roles include Bender on \"Futurama\", Jake the Dog on \"Adventure Time\", Marcus Fenix in the \"Gears of War\" series, Dr. Drakken on \"Kim Possible\", Hak Foo in \"Jackie Chan Adventures\", The Scotsman on \"Samurai Jack\", Brother Blood on \"Teen Titans\" and \"Teen Titans Go!\", Shnitzel on \"Chowder\", Fu Dog on ', Hammerhead and Sandman on \"The Spectacular Spider-Man\", Aquaman on ', King Z\u00f8g on \"Disenchantment\", Jocktopus on \"Fish Hooks\", Wakka and Kimahri in \"Final Fantasy X\", Rath in the \"Ben 10\" franchise, Crosshairs, Leadfoot, Nitro Zeus, Transit and Stratosphere in the \"Transformers\" film franchise, and Gonza in the English version of \"Princess Mononoke\".\nEarly life.\nBorn and raised in North Plainfield, New Jersey, DiMaggio graduated from North Plainfield High School in 1986. He is of Italian descent, and was raised in the Catholic faith. He attended Rutgers University. One of his schoolmates was political strategist Steve Schmidt.\nCareer.\nDiMaggio is known for his roles as Bender in \"Futurama\", Marcus Fenix in the \"Gears of War\" franchise, Dr. Drakken in \"Kim Possible\", Jake the Dog in \"Adventure Time\", Wakka and Kimahri in \"Final Fantasy X\", and Niblet in \"Pound Puppies\". He is a former comedian, appearing on stage as part of a comic duo named \"Red Johnny and the Round Guy\" and has several on-screen credits, such as Steve Ballmer in \"Pirates of Silicon Valley\" (the docudrama about the history of Apple Computer and Microsoft) and as Dr. Sean Underhill, a recurring character in \"Chicago Hope\".\nIn 2013, DiMaggio was the executive producer and narrator of \"I Know That Voice\", a documentary on voice acting, along with producer Tommy Reid and director Lawrence Shapiro.\nIn 2022, upon news that \"Futurama\" would be revived for a second time through Disney and Hulu, DiMaggio ran into conflict during negotiations while demanding more money to reprise the role of Bender, which he dubbed \"#BenderGate\". Fans supported DiMaggio's hold out for better pay, while DiMaggio stated that he felt the entire cast deserved better pay and that it reflected a corporate attempt to take advantage of voice actors. The effort also received support from DiMaggio's colleagues, including veteran voice actors Tara Strong, Kari Wahlgren, and Mark Hamill, while James Adomian noted that a casting call for a sound-alike of DiMaggio had been sent out by the studio. While it was initially reported that DiMaggio would not be returning to the role, he later announced his decision to return. DiMaggio revealed that though he did not succeed in negotiating a pay increase, he felt the attention to the issue of proper compensation in the voice acting industry was worthwhile.\nPersonal life.\nDiMaggio lives in Los Angeles and New York City. He has been married to actress Kate Miller since 2014.", "31830158": "Jake the Dog\nFictional character in the animated series Adventure Time\nJake the Dog is a character and one of the two protagonists in the American animated television series \"Adventure Time\" and resulting franchise created by Pendleton Ward. He also appeared in the spin-off series \"\". He is voiced by John DiMaggio. The character made his debut in the original pilot. During the events of the show, Jake says that he is 28 \"magical dog years\" old.\nJake can stretch, shrink, or mold any part of his body to any shape and almost any size, ranging from becoming gigantic to becoming incredibly small. He acts as a confident mentor to his energetic adopted brother Finn the Human, though he tends to give somewhat questionable advice. His powers help Finn considerably in combat and transportation but are sometimes used as nothing more than pleasant forms of expression. He has a girlfriend named \"Lady Rainicorn\" (voiced by Niki Yang); they have five children together, as seen in \"Jake the Dad\". He is quite skilled at playing the viola, which houses a worm named \"Shelby Butterson the Worm Who Lives in Jake's Viola\".\nJake has received generally positive reviews from critics. A gender-swapped version of Jake called Cake the Cat appeared in the third-season episode \"Fionna and Cake\", and is a main character of the spinoff series \"\".\nDesign and voice acting.\nSeries creator Pendleton Ward has stated that he wrote Finn and Jake, including \"Adventure Time\" as a whole, as though he were playing a session of \"Dungeons & Dragons,\" a tabletop role-playing game. Ward commented that Finn and Jake's motivations are noble, with a desire to \"slay monsters, explore dungeons, find loot.\" He further said that \"Jake was more into the loot\". Ward spent much of his childhood at home, describing his \"[indoor] adventure experience\" as inspiring Finn and Jake the Dog's adventures. Early on in the development of the show, Ward had intended for Finn and Jake to be nomads who lived in tents. However, this was changed to having them live in a permanent home at Cartoon Network's request. Jake has three, four, or five fingers on each hand, as well as both hands and paws, which means, according to Ward, that he has the ability to grow and be flexible. He first appeared in the short film \"Adventure Time\", which centers around rescuing Princess Bubblegum (Hynden Walch) from the evil Ice King (John Kassir). This short aired as part of Nickelodeon's \"Random! Cartoons\" showcase in 2008. John DiMaggio voiced the character, then called Jake, in short.\nIn 2018, as \"Adventure Time\" was ending, DiMaggio said \"Until something's signed on the line there is no speculation ... this is it. It's over. It's done. And that's OK.\" He further said \"A lot of me is in Jake, and I'll miss that part, that connection.\" \"Adventure Time\" composer Tim Kiefer said that the show had gradually become an exploration of the \"Hero's journey\" through the characters.\nPersonality and character traits.\nBackground.\nAccording to the series, Jake was conceived when his father, Joshua, was bitten by the shapeshifting extra-dimensional creature Warren Ampersand during a detective investigation with his wife Margaret, and was later born from a pustule on his father's head originating from the creature's bite. It is inferred that Jake's magical powers are a result of his biological relationship with Ampersand, though he is apparently unaware of the circumstances of his birth and instead believes his powers to be the result of having rolled around in a \"magical mud puddle\" as a pup. After his birth, Jake was raised normally by Joshua and Margaret as their son, alongside their own biological son Jermaine and their adoptive human son Finn.\nLittle has been shown in the series about Jake's subsequent childhood life with his family, though in his youth, he was known to be a successful criminal and the leader of his own gang, a position he later retired from to take part in a more respectable life as an adventurer with Finn. Around this time, he also began a romantic relationship with Lady Rainicorn, with whom he has five children\u2014daughters Charlie, Viola, and Jake Jr., and sons T.V. and Kim Kil Whan. Although Jake eventually passes away at some point after the end of the series, \"Come Along With Me\", \"Graybles 1000+\", and \"\" show glimpses of a future Ooo in which Jake's descendants have established a spacefaring civilization.\nAppearances.\nJake the Dog is one of the main characters of \"Adventure Time\" and often appears alongside his best friend and adopted brother Finn the Human.\nIn the series finale \"Come Along With Me,\" Finn and Jake help Princess Bubblegum fight her dictatorial uncle Gumbald. Realizing that violence is not the answer to the conflict, they ally with Gumbald to defeat the evil deity GOLB, who is intent on destroying Ooo. GOLB is defeated, although Fern dies in the aftermath. Jake and Finn promises to plant Fern's seedling in the ruins of the treehouse, which has been destroyed. The seedling grows into a new treehouse, with a grass sword inside. Finn and Jake are shown relaxing on a beach witnessing the humans return to Ooo for the first time in centuries.\nThe \"\" special \"Together Again\" takes place sometime after the end of the series, after Jake has died. Finn, who has recently died, journeys through the Dead Worlds to be reunited with Jake, who died many years before him. After they reunite in the afterlife, the two choose to reincarnate back into the living world.\nOthers.\nSince \"Adventure Time\"'s inception, Jake has appeared in various comic book series, video games, and other merchandise. Jake's first console game appearance was as a playable character in ', which was released on Nintendo DS and 3DS in 2012. He was subsequently a playable character in ' (2013), ' (2014), and ' (2018).\nJake has also made crossover appearances in other franchises and media. He appeared in the seventh season \"Futurama\" episode \"Leela and the Genestalk\". In the \"Futurama\" episode, Jake had a minor dialogue, and was still voiced by DiMaggio, who also voiced one of the main characters in \"Futurama\", Bender. The opening sequence couch gag in the 28th season \"The Simpsons\" episode \"Monty Burns' Fleeing Circus\", Homer Simpson appears as Jake in an extended couch gag parodying the opening sequence of \"Adventure Time\". He also appeared in the \"Uncle Grandpa\" episodes \"Pizza Eve\" and \"Cartoon Factory\". He also appeared in the \"OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes\" episode, \"Crossover Nexus\". Jake is a playable character in toys-to-life game \"Lego Dimensions\" (2015), beat 'em up game \"\" (2016), crossover game \"Bloons Tower Defense: Adventure Time\" (2018), and fighting game \"Brawlhalla\" (2019), and action-adventure game \"Immortals Fenyx Rising\" (2020). In November 2021, Jake was confirmed to appear as a playable character in the fighting game \"MultiVersus\" (2022). He appeared in the \"Teen Titans Go!\" episode, \"Warner Bros. 100th Anniversary\".\nFionna and Cake.\nA gender-swapped version of Jake called Cake the Cat appeared in the season 3 episode \"Fionna and Cake\", and was brought back in subsequent episodes. Cake is a main character in the spin-off series \"Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake\". The concept for Fionna and Cake came from drawings made by \"Adventure Time\" storyboard artist Natasha Allegri. Both Fionna and Cake the Cat became popular with \"Adventure Time\" fans. Cake later appeared in the fifth-season episode \"Bad Little Boy\", the sixth-season episode \"The Prince Who Wanted Everything\", the eighth-season episode \"Five Short Tables\", and the ninth season episode \"Fionna and Cake and Fionna\". Cake went on to star in the spin-off series \"\".\nReception.\nJake has received generally positive reviews from critics. Brandon Zachary of \"Comic Book Resources\" claimed that Jake is the best character on TV, stating that \"while Finn has experienced a strong character arc, Jake has proved to be far more fascinating.\" Dan Neilan of \"The A.V. Club\" claimed that \"Jake is the ultimate sidekick,\" stating further that \"Not only can he grow, shrink, and transform into any shape that might help his buddy Finn during battle, but he can also dance, sing, and make a mean plate of bacon pancakes.\" Richard Whittaker of \"The Austin Chronicle\" noted that he felt that the \"strong but emotionally vulnerable\" Cake was written in a way that successfully provided a female analog for Jake as a gender-swapped version. Cassidy Ward of \"Syfy\" mentioned of how \"bizarre\" the biology of Jake. Writing for \"Vox\", Emily VanDerWerff called the series \"this era's finest coming-of-age story\", mentioning how Jake \"has moved from happy wanderer to something like adulthood.\"\nJake became popular among \"Adventure Time\"'s fanbase. In 2019, Rich Goldstein of \"The Daily Beast\" commented on Jake's popularity among cosplayers, saying \"Halloween nights and comic conventions of the last few years have seen an increase in the number of children (and adults) all over the U.S. who wore Finn and Jake costumes.\" John DiMaggio recalled \"walking around at conventions and seeing everybody wearing their Finn costumes and their Jake costumes and how the characters endeared themselves to people\". A float in Jake's likeness was included in the 2013 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "1438315": "Dog's Life\n2003 video game\nDog's Life is an action-adventure video game developed by Frontier Developments and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 2. It was released in 2003 in Europe and 2004 in North America by Hip Games.\nGameplay.\nThe game allows the player control or interact with over 15 dog breeds each with distinct traits and abilities. They handle things in different ways, that can also be used in challenges or puzzles.\nThe game is divided into three areas: Clarksville, a rural town; Lake Minniwahwah, a ski resort; and Boom City. These are then divided into smaller areas such as districts or farms. Humans willing to give missions in exchange for bones populate every area. Bones can also be found buried underground or hiding somewhere. Bones are used to increase your stats, which will make it easier to complete missions.\nCertain smells picked up through the game's \"Smellovision\" will activate challenges against a local dog. In each small section of the game there are four challenges, two of which are to find eight smells of the same colour and compete against a local dog. These missions include races, obedience trials, tug-of-war games and a territorial game where the player must run around urinating in marked areas to obtain territory.\nThere are also salons in some levels where Jake can get his coat cleaned and brushed. He also gains a shiny new collar with a silver 'J' at the front.\nOnce these dogs are beaten, the player is able to take control of that dog and use their special abilities to find other bones. Other challenges include scent-collecting challenges, and a minigame called \"Doggy Do\", where the player must copy the moves of the local dog. There are also dangers in certain areas, such as the dog catcher and his Doberman. The player must also keep Jake healthy by feeding him, allowing him to defecate and coax people into giving Jake snacks by growling and barking or performing tricks unlocked by doing the obedience trials. Jake is able to do a range of tricks including begging, sitting, lying down and marking his territory.\nJake can interact with many characters including: chasing, shaking and throwing chickens, stealing sausages, and shaking kittens.\nPlot.\nThe game opens in Clarksville, a city located in the American countryside. One day, the protagonist, Jake the flatulent American Foxhound, witnesses Daisy, a Labrador Retriever, whom he has a crush on, being taken away by dog-catchers and resolves to rescue her. He follows them from the small town of Clarksville, to a mountain resort called Lake Minniwahwah, and finally to Boom City, using information gained from overhearing conversations between humans to track them down. Throughout his adventure, he is continually harassed by Killer, a Dobermann belonging to a dog catcher.\nEventually it is revealed that Miss Peaches, head of a cat food company, is arranging for dogs to be caught and smuggled to a factory where they will be made into her cat food. Jake ultimately makes it to the dog pound, and after rescuing a number of dogs and bribing Killer with bones, gains entry to the factory. There, he manages to prevent Daisy from being killed by the machinery as she is taken through it on a conveyor belt, only for Miss Peaches to appear with a shotgun. Jake farts, sending her falling onto the conveyor belt, killing her and turning her into cat food.\nThe epilogue reveals that all the stolen dogs were saved and that Jake and Daisy are together.\nReception.\n\"Dog's Life\" received \"mixed\" reviews according to video game review aggregator Metacritic.\nEurogamer found the game amusing, but felt that it offered little for experienced gamers, being aimed at a younger audience. They praised the game's \"warm sense of humour\" and \"cute visuals\" and found the idea of controlling a dog to be \"actually quite cool\". Although GameSpot called the game charming and entertaining, they said that there is not much to do in the game, other than playing and controlling the dogs. GameSpy called it \"a nice change of pace\" but found the game bland and considered it to be aimed more at younger children than teenagers. IGN called the gameplay \"simple and well-executed\", but noted that the visuals \"look like the game was ripped from a PSone title\" and that the audio seemed \"all over the place\". Charles Herold of \"The New York Times\" called the game fun but forgettable. In Japan, \"Famitsu\" gave it a score of one eight, one six, and two sevens, for a total of 28 out of 40.\nAccording to the \"Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition 2009\", \"Dog's Life\" holds the world record for the most video game voice-overs recorded by one person in a game. Kerry Shale voiced 32 characters from the game.\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "52793973": "Finn the Human and Jake the Dog\n\"Finn the Human\" and \"Jake the Dog\" are the first and second episodes of the fifth season of the American animated television series \"Adventure Time\". \"Finn the Human\" was written and storyboarded by Tom Herpich and Jesse Moynihan, whereas \"Jake the Dog\" was written and storyboarded by Cole Sanchez and Rebecca Sugar. The stories for both episodes were developed by Patrick McHale, Kent Osborne, and Pendleton Ward. It originally aired on Cartoon Network on November 12, 2012. The episodes guest star Ron Perlman as the Lich, Kumail Nanjiani as Prismo, Ming-Na as Farmworld Finn's mother, Cloris Leachman as Farmworld Marceline, James Kyson as Big Destiny & Trami, Eric Bauza as Tromo, and Jeff Bennett as Choose Bruce.\nThe series follows the adventures of Finn (voiced by Jeremy Shada), a human boy, and his best friend and adoptive brother Jake (voiced by John DiMaggio), a dog with magical powers to change shape and grow and shrink at will. In this episode, Finn and Jake chase The Lich through a dimensional portal where they meet Prismo, a wish granter, who tells them that the Lich wished for the extinction of all life. This leads Finn to wish that the Lich had never existed. Finn is then transported to an alternate timeline, where he is a normal human living with his family and his dog, Jake, on a farm. In the alternate reality, Finn discovers a magical ice crown, which he attempts to use to repay his family's debt. After placing it on his head, he is magically imbued with power over ice and snow. Prismo tells Jake that if he can change The Lich's original wish, everything will go back to normal. Jake\u2014with help from Prismo\u2014eventually wishes that the Lich had actually desired for Finn and Jake to return home. Thus, the world is righted again.\nBoth \"Finn the Human\" and \"Jake the Dog\" are a continuation of the fourth season finale \"The Lich\". Because \"Finn the Human\" and \"Jake the Dog\" were being worked on by four separate storyboardists, they coordinated their ideas so that the resultant two products would work together. The resulting episodes were collectively watched by 3.435 million viewers and received critical acclaim, with writers from \"The A.V. Club\" and IndieWire applauding the episodes for being both an excellent season premiere, as well as being refreshing and creative.\nPlot.\n\"Finn the Human\".\nIn the fourth season finale \"The Lich\", Finn and Jake are tricked by the Lich\u2014disguised as their hero Billy\u2014into opening a portal to the multiverse by using the Enchiridion. After the Lich passes through, Finn and Jake give chase. They eventually reach a time room at the center of the multiverse that is inhabited by Prismo, a wish-granter. They arrive just in time to see the Lich vanish after making his wish for the extinction of all life. After a short conversation with Prismo, Finn wishes that the Lich had never existed and is promptly transported into the reality created by his wish.\nThe scene then shifts to the art style featured in the end of \"The Lich\", as part of the wish-created reality\u2014known as \"Farmworld\"\u2014in which Finn is a normal human living with his family and his dog, Jake, on a farm. Picking up from the last scene from \"The Lich\", Finn is called by his mother and told to sell his beloved mule Bartram to pay off the family's debt to the Destiny Gang. While going to town to the sell the creature, Finn and Jake fall down an opening in the earth and discover the long-dead skeleton of Simon Petrikov. An aged and decrepit Marceline\u2014who never became a vampire\u2014reveals herself and tells Finn that Simon gave his life stopping a mutagenic bomb from exploding by freezing it in ice. She tells them that she has been guarding Simon's body, and the ice crown, ever since his demise so that no one is ever harmed from the crown's power.\nFinn manages to steal the crown, hoping to sell it instead of Bartram. In town, however, the Destiny Gang steal the crown as well as Bartram. Finn, furious, riles up the town, who begin to riot, as they are sick of being abused by the Destiny Gang. Finn goes to the Destiny Gang's mansion to confront their leader, Big Destiny. Once there, Big Destiny returns the crown, noting that it is the last possession that he will ever own. Finn looks out the window and sees that the gang is burning the city. Finn races to his home, taking Marceline with him. When he arrives at his house, the gang has already set it on fire with his parents and infant sibling trapped upstairs. Finn asks Marceline if the crown is magic and she tells him it is very dangerous magic. He then puts the crown on his head, and the power begins to flow through him.\n\"Jake the Dog\".\nAfter putting on the crown, Finn becomes corrupted by its power, going mad. He attacks the Destiny Gang\u2014who his family owed a debt as established in the previous episode\u2014and put out the fires that they started, but his uncontrolled power causes the mutagenic bomb that Simon stopped to explode, destroying the surrounding area. Jake, however, falls into a mutagenic puddle and is mutated into a creature similar to the Lich, which attacks Finn.\nIn the Time Room, Prismo explains to Jake about Finn being transported to a separate and altered world based on his wish. Together, they watch the events in Finn's world on Prismo's television and Prismo asks Jake what he would like to wish for. Jake wishes for a sandwich, but Prismo urges him to consider using his wish on something important, such as helping Finn. Jake tells Prismo he will use it when he knows Finn will be in real danger, and after a conversation, the two decide to hang out; Prismo mutes the TV and the two begin to ignore the events happening in Finn's timeline.\nEventually, the Cosmic Owl joins Prismo and Jake, and the two chat in a hot tub. While reaching for chips, the Cosmic Owl unmutes the TV, and Jake realizes that Finn is in trouble. Prismo explains that Jake can still save Finn by using his wish, but reveals that his wish must be very specific, as Prismo's wishes have a tendency to have a monkey's paw\u2014an ironic twist\u2014connected to them. After coaching by Prismo, Jake wishes that the Lich's original wish had been for Finn and Jake to return home. Prismo grants the wish and Finn and Jake are indeed transported back to Ooo. Finn has no recollection of his time in the alternate reality, but Jake does.\nProduction.\n\"Finn the Human\" was written and storyboarded by Jesse Moynihan and Tom Herpich, whereas \"Jake the Dog\" was written and storyboarded by Rebecca Sugar and Cole Sanchez. The stories for both episodes were developed by Patrick McHale, Kent Osborne, Pendleton Ward. The two episodes were directed by Larry Leichliter, with Nick Jennings serving as the show's art director. Nate Cash served as the supervising director for \"Finn the Human\" and Adam Muto served as supervising director for \"Jake the Dog\". Despite \"Finn the Human\" being officially storyboarded by Moynihan & Herpich, and \"Jake the Dog\" being officially storyboarded Cole Sanchez & Rebecca Sugar, the four writers and storyboarders collaborated amongst themselves. For instance, the majority of the scenes with Prismo were created by Sanchez and Herpich, whereas \"Finn going insane\" was the product of Sugar.\nThe two episodes guest star Ron Perlman as the Lich, Kumail Nanjiani as Prismo, Ming-Na Wen as Farmworld Finn's mother, Cloris Leachman as Farmworld Marceline, James Kyson as Big Destiny & Trami, Eric Bauza as Tromo, and Jeff Bennett as Choose Bruce. Kyson and Bauza's characters, the Destiny Gang, were designed to not \"really fit in the Adventure Time world\". Moynihan designed the characters, basing their look at least partially on characters from the Japanese manga series \"Fist of the North Star\". On his website, he expressed his fear that their appearance would be \"a little bit jarring\", but he was not dissuaded from trying it.\nThe music for these episodes was composed by Tim Kiefer. To create the song \"Prismatic\", Kiefer took the song \"Lil' Booty Dance\", first heard in the second season episode \"Mortal Recoil\" and remixed it so that it would fit with the theme of \"inter-dimensional travel\" present in the episode. Kiefer explained, \"I threw my own music from the Season 2 finale 'Mortal Folly / Mortal Recoil' on my turntables and went wild \u2013 pitching, reversing, rewinding, scratching and more \u2013 transforming Jake\u2019s 'Lil\u2019 Booty Dance' bongo song into a booming, merry-go-round dance celebration.\"\nReception.\n\"Finn the Human\" and \"Jake the Dog\" first aired on Cartoon Network on November 12, 2012. The episodes were collectively watched by 3.435 million viewers, and scored a 0.7 percent in the 18\u201349 demographic Nielsen household rating. Nielsen ratings are audience measurement systems that determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States, which means that the episodes were seen by 0.7 percent of all 18- to 49-year-olds watching television at the time of the airing. The episodes first saw physical release as part of the 2014 \" Finn the Human\" DVD, which included 16 episodes from the series' third, fourth, fifth, and sixth seasons.\nOliver Sava of \"The A.V. Club\" awarded the two episodes an \"A\u2212\". He noted that, together, both episodes come together to make \"a dense premi\u00e8re that evokes nearly all aspects of this series.\" He was appreciative of the fact that \"Finn the Human\" was \"an action-packed, mythology-heavy chapter\" and a \"nice change of pace\". Likewise, he wrote that \"Jake the Dog\" focused \"on humor and relationships\", and had various \"irreverent silly note[s]\" that helped balance the episode's more serious story line.\nEric Kohn of IndieWire praised the episodes for being \"irreverent and narratively engaging\". He called the collective episodes \"the ideal testament to animation's glorious pliability in an commercial arena otherwise defined by restrictions.\" Kohn felt that the show's exploration of \"sad subtext\"\u2014such as the series' mysterious Mushroom War and the relationship between Marceline and the Ice King\u2014and the characters' abilities to \"deny the bad vibes their surrounding world invites\" via \"cheery songs and vibrant artwork\" were some of the series' strongest points. Finally, he praised the exploration of the multiverse and its impact on the show, noting that it was an \"interesting creative challenge\".\nReferences.\n<templatestyles src=\"Reflist/styles.css\" />", "45092988": "Jake Paque\nAmerican voice actor\nJake Paque ({{IPAc-en|p|e\u026a|k}} {{Respell|PAYK}}) is an American voice actor. He is best known for playing Caydan Phoenix in the video game \"\".", "36069256": "List of Sadie J characters\nThe following is a list of characters from the CBBC children's series Sadie J, which began airing on 14 January 2011.\nSadie Jenkins.\nSadie Jenkins (played by Georgia Lock) is seen to be always speaking to the camera. She is portrayed as a girl who often takes advantage of her friends namely Dede Baxter and Kit Karter, for talents and takes credit for them. She realises about her wrongdoings and her friends stick by her. Sadie has a sibling played by Danny Jenkins, and her parent played by Steve Jenkins, with her dog played by Roger and a mechanical apprentice (Keith) with whom she shares a household. All of these are male people, hence, her habits are those of a boy and there is no girl role model for her to look up to apart from Cheryl Cole who she calls 'Chezza'. This is the reason why some of her fashion tastes are so boyish, she has such bad manners and is better than her brother and his best friend at football. Sadie is often called the 'Sasster' and 'Sassie J'. She has a boyfriend, Taylor at the beginning of the third series who her father doesn't accept at first, but does so eventually.\nDede Baxter.\nDeliah 'Dede' Baxter (played by Priyanka Patel) one of the three primary main characters is portrayed as a girl who is extremely clever and determined to achieve 100% in everything. She does not have much in common with Sadie, but she is often taken advantage of and has her talents exploited. This happens to Dede more often than it does to Kit. For example, she has 'the voice of Mariah Carey' in one episode, when Sadie is determined to prove herself as a fantastic singer, she uses Dede's voice and mimes so that she is no longer a social outcast. In a bid to prove herself to Kit as a fashion icon, Sadie attempts to make a dress that everyone thinks is horrible. Dede agrees to help her and uses her history knowledge to create the 'perfect costume' for 'The Y Fundraiser'. Everyone agrees it is a wonderful dress and Sadie takes credit for it. Dede is also known as the 'Deedster'.\nKit Karter.\nChristopher \"Kit\" Karter (played by Ronan Carter) is also one of three primary main characters and is a flamboyant teenager. He always participates in productions and knows the latest fashions off by heart. He is a celebrity follower and knows the latest music too. It is also revealed that he has a secret talent for cooking and he makes top quality 'Pixie Lott Pies'. He has common interests with Sadie in that both of them want to be at the top of the social hierarchy. He also calls himself 'Kitty Kat', with other characters calling him it as well. In the third series, he leaves to live with his dad in Brazil.\nDanny Jenkins.\nDanny Jenkins (played by Will Nye) is Sadie's little brother who is always up to mischief with his best friend Jake. He is nearly always seen with the family dog.\nJake.\nJake (played by Bobby Fuller) is Danny's partner in crime. He also has a crush on Sadie.\nChloe.\nChloe (played by Rose Liston) is the waitress at the Y in series 1 and Sadie's rival. She leaves in series 2 and is replaced by Ashlii.\nMs. V.\nMs. V is the owner of the 'Y' Diner and is branded by Sadie as 'scary diner owner'. She is Russian and portrayed as a strict woman, determined to make her diner the best business.\nSteve Jenkins.\nSteve Jenkins is the widowed father of Sadie and Danny and runs a mechanic business from his garage. He stands up for Sadie and his character is a kind, but gruff person who can be considered 'uncool' and loves his family. In the third series, he begins dating Beverley who runs a salon, but takes a while to tell Sadie.\nKeith Woods.\nKeith Woods is Steve's apprentice. He is portrayed as stupid and often helps Steve with many other things besides his mechanics business. He lives with Steve and his family and is like Steve's brother or son.\nAshlii Summers.\nAshlii Summers is Sadie's nemesis. She boasts about her looks. In Blackmailamundo, in return for not telling Steve that Sadie broke her curfew, she treats Sadie like a slave. She only appears in series 2, taking over the waitress job from Chloe. She is the daughter of Steve's new girlfriend Beverley", "37953055": "Adventure Time season 3\nThe third season of \"Adventure Time\", an American animated television series created by Pendleton Ward, premiered on Cartoon Network on July 11, 2011, and concluded on February 13, 2012, and was produced by Frederator Studios and Cartoon Network Studios. The season follows the adventures of Finn, a human boy, and his best friend and adoptive brother Jake, a dog with magical powers to change shape and size at will. Finn and Jake live in the post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo, where they interact with the other main characters of the show: Princess Bubblegum, The Ice King, Marceline the Vampire Queen, Lumpy Space Princess, and BMO.\nThis season saw the series grow and progress, featuring the first of the popular Fionna and Cake episodes, as well as marking the first time that fan-submitted content was canonized. Ward also noted that the storyboard artists affected the overall tone of the show, moving it towards more bizarre and spiritual matters. The season was storyboarded and written by Ako Castuera, Tom Herpich, Adam Muto, Rebecca Sugar, Jesse Moynihan, Bert Youn, Kent Osborne, Somvilay Xayaphone, Pendleton Ward, and Natasha Allegri.\nThe first episode of the season, \"Conquest of Cuteness\" was watched by 2.686 million viewers; this marked an increase in viewers watching Cartoon Network when compared to the previous season's debut. The season ended with the cliffhanger \"Incendium\", which was resolved at the start of season four. The season was met with largely positive critical reception. In addition, several episodes and writers were nominated for awards; the episode \"Thank You\" was nominated for an Annie Award as well as an award at the Sundance Film Festival. \"Too Young\" was nominated for an Emmy Award. Storyboard artist Rebecca Sugar was also nominated for an Annie Award. Several compilation DVDs that contained episodes from the season were released after the season finished airing. The full season set was released on February 25, 2014, on DVD and Blu-ray.\nDevelopment.\nConcept.\nThe season follows the adventures of Finn the Human, a human boy, and his best friend Jake, a dog with magical powers to change shape and grow and shrink at will. Finn and Jake live in the post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo, wherein they interact with the other major characters, including: Princess Bubblegum, The Ice King, Marceline the Vampire Queen, Lumpy Space Princess, and BMO. Common storylines revolve around: Finn and Jake discovering strange creatures, battling the Ice King, and battling monsters in order to help others. This season expands upon the backstories of Marceline and Ice King, and concludes with Finn attempting to understand his attraction towards Bubblegum and developing a crush on newly introduced Flame Princess.\nProduction.\nAfter the increasing success of the series, on November 29, 2010 \"Deadline Hollywood\" announced that Cartoon Network had renewed the series for a third season. The episode titles were released on April 6, 2011, by Frederator Studios, while the show was nearing the end of its second season. Based on production numbers, \"Conquest of Cuteness\" was the first episode that underwent production, which was also the first episode"}, "descending_order": ["31830158", "1438315", "52793973", "45092988", "36069256", "37953055", "391541"], "permutation_1": ["45092988", "36069256", "1438315", "37953055", "52793973", "391541", "31830158"], "permutation_2": ["36069256", "37953055", "45092988", "1438315", "52793973", "391541", "31830158"], "permutation_3": ["45092988", "52793973", "1438315", "391541", "36069256", "31830158", "37953055"]}